Binary Systems [Complete, Slice-of-Life Sci-Fi Romance]

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Gordon: Glad to have you aboard.

Harry: My little stream will join with your larger stream to create a cataract!
Claire: Eww. That is not the mental image we will be going with.

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Saturday, November 16th, 2090, about 3:00 pm MST, Ghostlands

They had been streaming for several hours by the time Claire finally got a handle on exactly what was going on with the Caravan.

Basically, what she had taken to be prisoner transport was indentured prisoners found for the mines, ie, bondsman, ie, slaves.

They looked like just your typical assortment of medieval peasants, except these ones were inside the cage, not walking on the road outside.

In the rear were the six grand wagons now doubled up, going to a stride each of those with its attendant monk.

And in the front the Pathfinder the coach with the noble and his right now it seems to be his nurse maid bizarrely enough plus guards and the Chuckwagon or mobile dining thing it's with the food was claire had never had a reason to look up the anatomy of the Caravan before she prided herself on her understanding of logistics it was important when you were part of procurement—the head of HR everyone in a small business or at least a business with a small administrative staff knows that sometimes you have to wear many different hats and that had been one of Claire's.

She thought about it a little less the wagons trundled along down the narrow switch back through the forest someone would have to feed the cows every time you stopped someone would have to harness them and unharness them keep track of where they were someone had to keep track of where all the goods were on the Caravan lest they grow legs and run away.

It wasn't a simple as find a room with some beds in it and go to bed they were she used spoiled by the conveniences of modern cars that you can just lock and forget about, more or less.

Karen, apparently bored, had been going up and down the wagon chatting to the NPCs about their lives and aspirations and generally being friendly. Claire found that other than her friends, she didn't even care much about the other players—she was, she admitted to herself, terribly insular.

Birds flitted overhead in a rush of wings. The breeze kicked up, bringing sweet floral scents to her nose. She breathed deeply. The sun was low in the sky, and the shadows were interesting—stripes of light and darkness falling over everything as their source lowered in the sky.

That was when the first ghoul smashed into the side of the caravan.

–––❖–––

It was exactly as bad as she had been afraid it would be.

The ghoul emerged from the woods—fifty meters from the nearest guard.

It didn't roar. It didn't hiss. It just ran.

Fast. Wrong-jointed. Head low, claws ready, eyes like burnt glass. It crossed the distance like it had been waiting for this moment.

Claire shouted—words she didn't remember choosing. One of the guards turned. The other didn't.

Too slow.

The ghoul slammed into the side of the mess wagon, claws ripping across the canvas, then turned on a heel and threw itself at the back cart. At her cart.

Inside the cage below her, the prisoners began shouting, scrambling, and dragging chains.

Claire was already casting.

"Fireblast—close range—target mark—no friendly radius—execute!"

The spell flared from her hand in a burst of heat and light, more signal than impact—but it made the ghoul pause. Just enough for Karen to react, for Harry to push up off the bars, for the entire caravan to realize:

They were under attack.

–––❖–––

Despite all the work Gordon had put into customizing the distribution of guardsmen and wagons in the caravan, there was still—simply—not enough people.

Claire watched with hopeless frustration as the first ghoul climbed the six-foot wheels of one of the enormous wheat carts, smashing straight through a truss beam.

Thoughtless, she thought. These things are souped up, for sure. Barrow King spawn.
Barrow Lord, she corrected herself. Right. I see you already.

She hadn't expected any warning. That would've been foolish. She'd paid the Barrow Lord not to talk to them in advance. Still—this wasn't a good sign.

"Harry," she said, pointing. "Look."

The ghoul had finished climbing and pounced on the priest seated at the front of the cart.

The man's holy regalia flared with a warm, soothing light—golden undertones flickering into green-blue—smoke rising from the whole side of his body where the creature touched him.

"I've got to run!" the priest shouted.

The ghoul's eyes began to smoke—pale sky blue flame kindling within them, sending twin columns of vapor into the air.

"Wight!" Claire screamed. "WIGHT!"

Its claws lengthened mid-leap, shimmering with the same unearthly fire—not heat, but ravaging cold. Its hands steamed from a bladespell. It struck the priest five times in quick succession—three to the chest, two slashing down. What was left of him spilled forward off the cart and onto the nail-studded driver's plank below.

"I've got it!" Karen called, springing her horse into a quick trot, aiming to take the reins and prevent a stop.

But Claire had already seen it.

The very first thing the necromancer had done was take the rapid response unit—Karen—and nail her to a single flank.

He was smart.

Too smart to be a guess. He had eyes on them.

And he wasn't done.

With a triumphant screech, the wight tore itself free from the broken wheat bags and flung itself down into the shadow between the carts.

The creeping thing moved closer, darting around, its movements unpredictable like a spider's. Its eyes burned a sky-blue flame, sending up smoke and the odor of burnt hair and charred flesh.

"Where's the army?" complained Claire. She'd been up that night running numbers and coverage area. What counters a horde? A lavascape. But … that required finding the horde.

Unlike players on different teams, they were able to use the voice chat to speak from a distance. They could, of course, have typed in the chat, but that wouldn't quite have the same effect. Perfect total coordination. Now, that wasn't to say they had ever exhibited perfect total coordination, just that it should be possible.

Karen had tied up her horse to the wagon and taken the driver's seat, flicking the reins. The oxen were never much faster than two miles an hour and saw no reason to change their habits now, angry swordswoman or no.

"We've got to ditch the cart," Karen said.

"It's part of the quest!" complained Claire.

"You hired a fucking necromancer!" said Karen. The censor cut her profanity, and she removed the second proactively. Karen had been getting good at that. Nobody watching the stream would hear the sentence at all.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

>TheBabyEatingThing: Ohhh, Karen's cussing again. Shit's about to go down,

>TotalNewbBreath: Who would win in a fight?

>TheBabyEatingThing: Probably Karen, Claire's a bit light on physical stats.

"Oh, stop it," said Claire. "Karen and I are besties, and we will always be besties. She's going to cry at my wedding, I'm gonna cry at her funeral, we've got it all planned out. Go look for your drama elsewhere."

"My funeral?" asked Karen.

"I'll be inconsolable."

The wight sprang up from behind the cart, lungs smoking, fingers reaching for Karen's throat. When it landed, its head fell off. Karen was turned the other direction, searching for targets in the way it had come. "I'm just not seeing them," she complained. "This guy is good."

The bamboo forest, like most bamboo forests, was nearly entirely vertical—a wall of bamboo with little leaves and sprouts up near the top, thickening such that it darkened but did not completely dim the forest floor. What little floor was left between bamboo stalks and the occasional tree, possibly planted long before the bamboo took hold, provided shelter and space for navigation. The path they were on had clearly been burnt into the foliage relatively recently and was quite clear and dark with carbon. It snaked down the steep hillside with embankments and sheer drop-offs between layers of the switchbacking road. Karen had expected a significant issue at the first corner, but no; the teamsters were intelligent enough, or the animals were, or possibly just the guy directing the entire thing. But someone had control over the circus on wheels and had slowed everything down until there was slack in the ropes to turn.

"This is a bad idea," Claire said to Karen. "Listen, you've got your stupid ropes, okay? They can just pull it along behind. It won't—they won't make the turn."

Claire nodded reluctantly. Karen had a point.

"Well," she said, "I guess just don't die."

"Thanks," said Karen. "I'm better as a scout anyway."

"That is not true," Claire groused as Karen vanished into the bamboo.

The main rush happened seconds later. Now, without anyone steering from the back, negotiating the next turn was made impossible. The caravan was about the length of one entire tier of the climbing road, and as they approached the bottom of the dangerous drop-off, it was halfway through completing a turn.

And so they boiled up from the depths, climbing arm over arm in utter silence, and it wasn't until the first one tried to silently cross the path that the humans realized they were trapped.

"Zombies!" she announced to the chat.

"What about them?" asked Claire, not really paying attention.

They were able to get quite close before Claire saw them. The necromancer had obviously taken control over them, preventing their instinctual cries. They attacked in grim silence. Those with bows and slings, without mercy, began to pepper Claire's position with arrows.

Generally, Claire and Harry had experienced ghouls which loosed arrows from the bow as quickly as possible. These ghouls, however, pulled the arrow all the way back and aimed before shooting. They've been artificially handicapped the entire time, thought Claire.

Of course, this thought arrived on the heels of several arrows: one which buried itself into her shoulder, one which buried itself into her collarbone, and one which skinned the top of her trapezius. "Holy hell, I'm gonna die!" she said, scrambling to hide behind Harry's shield.

On the back of his shield, he had sewn with great perseverance (considering that it was sewing and he was playing a game) row on row of small leather pockets. Each of these held a small vial full of sparkling potion. She uncorked one and drank it hurriedly before tugging on the arrows embedded in her shoulder.

"I can't get these out!" she realized.

Her lover gave her a pained expression. "Good thing there's no broadhead in the way," he said wryly, and reached down and tore the first arrow completely free. The bodkin point would've been a terrible thing to tear free; fortunately, these were hunter points, diamond-shaped. It came free relatively easily. The healing potion did its work, but not immediately. She felt the scrape against bone, her NeuroLink suit giving her the closest approximation to reality as was currently technologically feasible—which was pretty damn close. Her darling's warm hands, which in other circumstances were so gentle, tore another arrow out of her shoulder.

"Shit!" she said. "You didn't warn me at all!"

"I thought you'd tense up," he said.

Healing draughts were extremely effective and extremely short-lived. Hers had already worn off. She took another one. More bolts whirred against the shield or pinged off his armor. She felt the change in the magic in the air when he activated his shield. A torrent of water blasted out at blistering speed. Uncountable gallons from the depths of the nether oceans flooded out into the chaotic, densely clustered, shambling foe, outright throwing many of them, hurling them spinning off the edge of the embankment they had just climbed to break with wet, THWACK sounds in the bamboo far below. He sloshed the shield side to side.

"So, this is nice," Harry said, "having you here with me. Doing anything later?"

"Are you seriously going to hit on me right now?"

"Better now than never," he said.

He had a point. "Well, all right, big boy," she said. "I suppose you'll know where to find me."

The chat appreciated that.

> MillinialFalcon: He rizzed up the ice queen!

> Randoon_the_Wizard: Don't call her the ice queen, that's not very nice! She's clearly a volcano princess!"

Randoon_the_Wizard totally had her back. He just didn't realize she wasn't wearing armor. Or a shirt. Or much of anything.

Not his fault—her priestess outfit wasn't visible to anyone without adult content enabled. The vaguely religious, tribal tattoos festooning her torso wouldn't exactly be visible without adult content enabled. Or with a shirt on.

She remembered Harry telling her, unprompted, in response to something in the chat she was so used to seeing that she hadn't even worried about it: "I don't think you're an ice queen."

"What?" she had asked.

"I don't think you're an ice queen. You make me think of a deeply banked fire, like lava under a Pacific island. It's there, and it's hot. On an unrelated note, you would look great as a volcano priestess," he told her.

And one night, she had been so drunk she had re-factored her character to try it, on AC mode. The results had been very satisfactory.

She'd been sneaking off with Harry periodically ever since.

"I swear," came the impatient voice of her best friend. "You'd better stop flirting and help."

"What do you think that was? Pressure washing?" complained Harry. "I'm helping!" "

"Not you, princess funbags there," Karen complained.

Harry froze.

Karen froze.

"What are you talking about?" Harry asked, fishing bluntly.

> x_TremeSnooze: I mean, you don't need to call her out.

> x_TremeSnooze: That makes flat girls insecure.

"First, rude," said Claire.

"Claire, control," Karen said. A plea for PR intervention.

Claire was long past that.

"How long have you been playing on adult content?" said Claire.

> Randoon_the_Wizard: OOOOOOHGM, you guys. OMG the CONTEXT CLUES

> Nazzibish: *Oooooomg"

> TheBabyEatingThing: Did you just grammar nazzibish onomatopoeia?

> JellyDoughnut: We don't claim her

"I can't tell you, because that would violate the terms of service," Karen hedged. Then she paused. "Actually, the AI can handle it. "Since fucking before I was fucking 18."

The censor duly muted them to livestream.

That made complete sense. Karen prodded her to join, and Claire just defaulted to playing on normal mode, because of course she defaulted to playing on normal mode. Who defaults to playing with adult content? And then she got with Harry, and they thought they'd try out all the features of their new suits—and one thing led to another—and she just never got the urge to turn it off.

"We are going to have a talk," she told her friend. "We are going to have a girl-to-girl talk."

> Randoon_the_Wizard: That's right.

> Randoon_the_Wizard: No one insults the funbags.

"Randoon, you are usually such a charmer, but I'm going to ban you if you don't drop this one," Claire said firmly.

> Randoon_the_Wizard: That would make me very sad. Noted, ma'am.

"Address her highness, head of HR," advised Karen. Then: "He doesn't know any better, Claire. This is on me anyway."

"It did look like an accident," Harry put a hand on her shoulder. She felt vaguely grateful in that moment that he, at least, had been fully clothed for every part of the stream in which they were not alone together in the game.

"How are you?" he breathed in her ear. "I don't think it was intentional, although I don't think it was necessarily very thoughtful either. Do you need a moment? Are you okay?"

"It's going to be fine," she said shortly. "We've got a battle to fight."

The din of the chat stopped. Harry's shield was presumably a good way through its massive timer. Simply being a shield—or a shield-sized portal to the bottom of the ocean—it wasn't exactly a high-tier spell, so it would last quite a long time, but still…

"I think it's time for Plan A," Claire said.

Harry looked amused. "Gordon would have a fit," he said. He didn't try to stop her, though. "It's just a game. You do you."

She cast Lava Field. She had to peek around the edge of the shield to place the nodes, each of them opening as a little spigot and then a large one, belching forth blistering, caustic, smoking lava.

"What the actual fuck?" came Karen's voice. "I am in the forest!"

"Oh, shit," said Harry. "Bamboo burns, Claire."

"Do not immolate me a second time, I swear!" said Karen.

"How about a mani-pedi?" offered Claire. It was, perhaps, the best she could do.

"Are you trying to hint to me that it's too late and you're already going to burn the forest down?"

Claire's voice was apologetic when she responded. "Yes?"

"Damn it! All right, I'm going underground. I did not want to do this."

The lava spread quickly. Lava Field was, after all, a spell designed for covering fields. The trees burnt. The bamboo burnt. It all sent up its own smoke, thick and dark gray.

Claire began to cough. "Forgot about the smoke," she grumbled, fumbling for her Gust of Wind spell. Her magic fled. "Mother… cough, cough, cough… fucker, he's locking me down! I can't even see!"

Harry's shield glinted as the enchantment around them faded. It was just a steel shield again. "I should have used that after Plan A," he noted.

"I need a new Plan A," Claire said. Her character was doubled up, coughing. She was not okay. Status effects were something you could opt out of, as was pain. She preferred to leave pain on a low level—enough that she could feel it for immersion, not enough to be debilitating. True to his class, Harry kept his all the way up. He said the percentage boost that the pain gave you to your hit points was more than worth it. Claire, who had tried it briefly, strongly disagreed.

"Well," said Harry, "I guess it's time to play wack a zombie."