Slice of Chaotic Life

It was around 23 in the night when my scanner alarm went off. I took it at once, although lately it has always been messages from fellow agents of the Enlightenment. This time, however, someone was attacking my job portal, where I had the rare multi-hack as well as a few links. I suspected the reason was the link to it from Bergen, which basically cut a slice off the country. You cannot make links that cut through another link, so anyone in south-western Norway was barred from making large links or fields going outside that area.

It soon became clear that this was not a drive-by attack. The Resistance agent continued relentlessly after we both had used a good deal more XM than a scanner can hold, meaning we were both using from our precious storage of power cubes. I had not needed those for a long time and had a decent stack, considering how rare they are, and I was ready to spend them all. But I did not get the chance. It was painfully clear that my portal was dwindling rapidly while I recharged my scanner from power cubes. This meant the attacker had much larger powercubes than I, meaning again that he was much higher level. This was indeed the case. When he had razed my shields and resonators, he put up his own resonators, which went all the way to level 8. I was still level 4, so there was a despairingly large difference. I would have to reload twice as often as he, not counting that he started with 4000 more XM than me in the first place. That explained it. (There was also a 2% energy loss due the distance from Mandal to Kristiansand, but that was far less important than the level difference.)

I have fended off attacks before when the opponent was not willing to spend power cubes. That is a major step to take, these things don’t grow on trees. He also did not move on to other portals downtown, so it seems he was after this one specifically, probably because of that link from Bergen.