Page 105 of Blow Me Down
“Aye, and we’re going to do that as any true pirate would,” he answered, releasing me as he turned to the remaining people. A handful of men and fewer women stood waiting. “MySamurai Squirrelis anchored next to your sloop.
We’ll use theSquirrelto hunt down Bart and bring an end to both him and his vendetta.”
I looked from Corbin to the harbor, where the silhouettes of two more big ships were visible as they sailed into the harbor. The first ship—a frigate—was firing again, the shots reaching the docks, tearing them and the sloop to shreds.
It would be only a few more minutes before the town itself would come in range of those big guns.
“How are we supposed to fight those ships with just one ship?” I asked, sick at the idea of Bart winning, but unable to see how we stood even a remote chance against him.
Corbin smiled, shocking me. “Sweetheart, you have to have a little faith in me.”
“I have oodles of faith in you,” I told him, trying to think of a nice way to phrase my thought that retreat may be our best bet. “I am a veritable font of faith in you. But that doesn’t negate the fact that one ship, shorthanded at that, against a herd of warships is bound to be doomed.”
“Fleet, not herd,” he said, giving me a gentle shove forward. “To Randy Daniel’s Cove, mates! We’ve got a ship to sail.”
“Randy Daniel’s Cove?” I asked as he pushed me along.
“Aye, it’s the name of the spot you chose to leave your sloop. Legend says that a pirate named Daniel used to meet his lady friend there, until one day her father discovered her and took her away. His ghost is said to haunt the cove, mourning his lost love.”
“Lost love,” I gasped, the memory of something Bart said chiming in my mind.
“Bart said that you’d stolen his true love. He wasn’t talking about a woman—
he meant this game.”
Corbin’s face was thoughtful in the light of the lantern he held. To the south of the town, Holder was leading a trail of people and carts toward the coast, where the entrance to the mine was located. They had to skirt the edges of the fire to get there, but I knew Holder would keep everyone safe. We were headed in the opposite direction, following the path that led to the tiny beach where my ship had been left. Fire had started attacking this side of the island, small patches of grass and dense shrubs burning, but we managed to avoid the worst of it, keeping a quick pace as we went single file through the overgrowth to the cliff path down to the sea.
“That makes sense—Paul always did seem possessive of the game, not wanting to make changes unless I insisted.”
“So he set up this whole convoluted plan to trap you to pay you back for… for what? You said he left you.”
“True, but only after we’d had some pretty serious arguments about the direction the game was taking. He wanted to turn it into a war-focused game, where players could be killed. I wanted it to be a social experience in which war between islands was just one facet—not the sole focus—and people could experience life as pirates. After he refused to take out some mechanisms for completely wiping out towns and entire crews, I fired him.”
I blew out a breath, my mind turning over the facts, trying to arrange them in a pattern that made sense. “You fired him, he vowed his revenge and set up this virtual mantrap, and he gets… what? He said it would ruin you, but I don’t see how.”
Corbin pulled me abruptly to the side as I was about to walk right into a burning patch of grass. “Watch where you’re walking, love. I suspect his plan is to destroy me in the game, which would disable my access to it. He knows I have just the one character to use—once I’m gone, he can do anything he wants, including corrupting the game data and even wiping the server clean.”
“He could kill the game itself?” I asked, pausing for a moment at the edge of the cliff path. Sharply angled, it led down to the tiny beach, little yellow blobs lighting the path as the makeshift crew started their way down it. The sharp tang of the sea stung my eyes, but I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that Corbin was just as tired as I was. I grabbed a root dangling from the edge of the cliff, and jumped the three feet to the path. “Don’t you have backups?”
“Several, but if he has the ability to kill the game, nothing will stop him from doing so every time I restore a clean version. Getting him out of the game isn’t the solution—I need to kill his character so his influences are gone, then I can run diagnostics and see what sorts of things he’s modified.”
The next few minutes absorbed all of my (breathless) attention as we worked our way down the path, my tired and overworked muscles making the journey much harder than it would have been in normal circumstances.
“What happens to us if we die in the game?” I asked Corbin as we reached the shore, pulling off my boots so I could wade out to his pretty blue and whiteSamurai Squirrel.
“Nothing. Your character is deleted from the game, although the data remains so that you can’t resurrect yourself under the same name.”
“But what happens to you, the real you? The physical body, I mean.”
“Ah. You go to the log-in screen, where you can create a new pirate, or log off.”
The warm water stung the scratches on my legs as I held my boots up, wading out to the ship. “Wait a minute—are you saying we could have gotten out of the game by just dying?”
“No. You’re taken to the log-in screen—you still have to log off, and you can’t do that without using the glasses. Since Paul shut down the access to the glasses—that’s why we can’t feel them—it means there is no way for us to log off so long as his character is still online and influencing the game.”
“Damn,” I swore, accepting Corbin’s help up onto the ship. There went my plans for an easy way out of the situation.
Corbin took immediate charge of the ship, ordering people to various stations, putting those with knowledge of sailing in the key positions, quickly explaining to the others what they were to do.
