Deathworld (audio story)

Deathworld was the third and final story of Vienna: Series One, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Chase Masterson as Vienna Salvatori.

Publisher's summary
The planet Mercator. Twenty trained assassins enter a game arena, armed only with their wits to compete against each other in a harsh environment. Twenty killers go in. One comes out.

Amongst the killers is Vienna Salvatori. This is the moment she has trained her whole life for, honing her skills as an assassin to become the best in the galaxy.

As the killers are wiped out one by one, Vienna fights on in the hope of finally learning the truth about her past. In the last battle, only one can be the last assassin standing.

Plot
Vienna resets her on-board computer to the previous setting. Suddenly, a voice overhead ends the simulation claiming that Vienna has scored just forty-three percent, much to Vienna's disappointment. She leaves the immersion pod and is helped by Malrick. Malrick plays back her adventures aboard Custodian and with the New Church of Wonderment, claiming they have been only training simulations that have taken six months. Malrick boasts his ninety-eight percent at the same training programs. Vienna is then advised to prepare for the opening ceremony for the Tournament of Death, which is taking place in the induction hall.

In the induction hall, Felman Shazarel introduces himself and the Tournament of Death, which entails a group of unarmed assassins fighting to the death until one remains. He wishes them luck and shows them towards the hovership. Aboard the ship, Vienna learns that Malrick was born on this world, growing up in the Warrior Cast and moving to the Assassin's Academy. Vienna tells Malrick that what the students have been witnessing in the simulations have actually happened to her. Malrick tries to convince her that she only thinks that due to the simulations being indistinguishable from real life. However, Vienna knows she's correct because she has memories after leaving Kendra. Malrick states that that would be impossible as that's the end of the simulation.

Vienna recalls that the next thing she did was go to therapy. She recalls turning on psychoanalytic mode on her ship and excitedly telling her that she had found Crevo Finn on a planet called Kazbar. The computer informs Vienna that she has already uploaded this information to the harddrive and then deleted it, thinking it would allow her to work more effectively. This leaves Vienna confused. The computer restores her memories. During her childhood, Vienna had been living with her parents on Mercator. In her bedroom, her mother places her to sleep and through her see-through roof, she watches the ice moons before she falls asleep. She is then awoken from her sleep by the noise of an intruder, who intent on murdering her parents. Vienna is placed inside the airducts by her mother before a man enters the room. When the man asks for Vienna's whereabouts, Vienna's mother tells him that she's with her grandparents on Miracle 3. Crevo goes ahead and murders her. Finn then leaves, allowing Vienna to exit the duct. Vienna states that one day, she will find Finn and take her revenge.

After that, she was taken to the Warrior Cast to be raised and fast-tracked to the Assassin Academy. The ship informs her that her mother is alive on Miracle 3, and that all of the proceeds of Vienna's assassinations have been going towards her treatments. Vienna recalls visiting her mother in a hospital two years prior. Her mother is wired to a machine, in a coma since the attack. Vienna refuses to forget ever again and sets a course for the planet Kazba.

Vienna's reminiscing is interrupted by Malrick, who informs her of their arrival. Vienna and Malrick agree to a temporary team-up until the end. Malrick agrees just so that he can hear the rest of her story. A man by the name of Galaron Darvil overhears them and takes the matter personally. Vienna warns him that when the door opens, he better begin running. The Tournament officially begins. Vienna notes the numerous terrains crammed into one area. Within minutes, Darvil makes his first kill. Vienna and Malrick go off to find higher ground.

As they continue, Darvil narrowly misses them with his poison darts. The two of them split up and launch a surprise attack on Darvil who accidentally inhales a poison dart, temporarily knocking him off. Believing him to be dead, they move onward. They find a cave and go to shelter. Malrick asks her to continue her story:

Vienna recalls that after landing on Kazba, she headed towards he magisterial palace and broke in. She hijacks a perimeter guard and locates Finn in room fourteen. The robot starts to panic and so agrees to show her directly to Finn. After an attempt to warn the other guard of Vienna's jamming device, Vienna then blows up the other robot and decides to make her own way. Inside the room, she finds Crevo Finn. She takes out her weapon and introduces herself as his executioner. The man before her claims he has no idea what she's talking about. Apparently, thirty years ago, he'd have been a kid himself, to which Vienna does not believe him. He states he can prove his innocence and just as she accepts it, other attackers can be heard from outside. Vienna saves him, so that only she can kill him.

With the perimeter guards having their loyalty circuits scrambled by someone else, Crevo Finn becomes their new target. Vienna, now shooting anything that gets in her way, decides to protect Finn at all costs. Vienna steals a hover skimmer to aid their getaway. She hands the wheel to Crevo as she tries to shoot at the other skimmers. The vehicle then starts to run out of fuel and so Vienna uses this as her opportunity to finally gain the truth. She uses a memory scan to find out what Crevo did those thirty years ago. Struggling to drive and think, Crevo's memory scan loads slowly but before completion, Crevo is shot dead, leaving Vienna with eighty-five percent of a memory scan. She then calls her ship who picks her up with a winching cable.

Back at the Tournament, the issue of food is brought up. As neither of them wishes to hunt, Vienna states that the next best option is to explore the cave. Deep in the cave, they find bones of a half-eaten carcass. The predator isn't far away either. Vienna manages to kill the creature with a falling icicle. With four contestants remaining, Vienna and Malrick are eating the food. Vienna remembers uploading the memory of Finn to her computer, which tells her that there is no memory of visiting her house during her childhood. However, the computer also points out that not only is the memory scan incomplete, but also the use of a memory box is equally as plausible. Vienna is stunned to hear that there is a complete memory available for the night of the murder of her father, thus giving Finn an alibi, meaning that either Finn's memory has been tampered with, Vienna's memory has been tampered with or that there are two Crevo Finns.

At that point, the ship comes under attack. Vienna forces the computer to lower shields and give her manual control. Her only plan is to crash the ship into the planet below, and convince authorities that they have sustained high damage. After crashing, Vienna creates a small radiation leak to scramble any scanners nearby. Activating distress call, Vienna plays dead. The intruder knows of Vienna. Vienna jumps up and starts intruder protocols, holding him in a stasis field. Within the suit is Canton Malrick who is here to kill her as revenge.

Back in the cave, Malrick is shocked to hear that he was the man in the suit. He notes that the memories are on the tip of his tongue. Vienna decides to put him out of his memory and wishes to proceed with the story. Malrick states they perhaps they should move on. Now, only they and Darvil remain alive. Vienna decides that they should leave the fire burning and attack whoever comes to investigate, leaving the two of them to fight it out. Malrick decides that now is the perfect time to finish the story.

Back on the ship, having revealed the intruder to be Malrick, Vienna refuses all knowledge of the newcomer. Malrick states that thirty years ago, on the planet Mercator, Vienna forced her way into his home and murdered his father. She states that that memory belongs to her. A memory scan by the computer dictates that he is telling what appears to be the truth. Vienna watches the memory of her apparently attempting to murder his mother and denies its factuality. She states that someone has stolen and edited her own memory and implanted it into him.

At the Tournament, Malrick now can recall the conversation but not what happened afterwards. Back in the past, Vienna suggests that whoever is culpible is using Malrick as a pawn. Suddenly, the stasis field fails. As Malrick reaches for his gun, she shoots him dead. Malrick is the present now remembers this but doesn't understand how he could still be alive. Vienna states that the truth behind the both of their lives is obvious. Malrick is starting to recall the truth too. Meanwhile, Darvil is heading towards them.

As they hide and plan on how to kill Darvil, Malrick informs Vienna that he remembers who is truly is. As Vienna approaches Darvil from the rear, a concealed Malrick gives away her location on purpose. Darvil shoots a poison dart at her, which hits. Malrick them grabs Darvil and pushes him off a cliff, causing him to be the winner. The adjudicators acknowledge that the only lifesign belongs to Malrick and send a craft to collect him.

Back at the city, Canton Malrick is unveiled before a crowd as the winner of the Tournament of Death. He asks for a private word with Felman Shazarel. Back in private, Malrick informs Shazarel that he's aware that this world is not real. He recalls Vienna pointing out to him that the stars are not in any order, just placed at random. Malrick is convinced that the Mercator here and now is, in fact, the reality, and that all of the missions that were undertaken by himself were the real world. He also is aware that the real Shazarel is in a control room in the real world. Shazarel congratulates Malrick on working it out. But Malrick reveals his true identity. According the this fake Malrick, the real Malrick died aboard Vienna's ship two days prior. Malrick's avatar changes to that of Vienna, who reveals her true self.

Shazarel is shocked to find out that the real world immersion pod for Vienna is empty. Vienna explains that after killing Malrick, she decided to discover who had given him her own memories. Vienna's computer had scanned Malrick's dead mind and found that four weeks to his arrival on her ship, Malrick had been inside a training immersion pod when the fake memories had been implanted. The computer reveals that he had left Mercator in the star system Galvan 5 for the planet Kazban. This revelation had caused Vienna to head for Mercator, where she found a organisation named Death Incorporated.

Death Incorporated steals orphaned children, plugs them into immersion pods, tells them that they're in a high-tech ultracity and trains them to be assassins. Once fully trained, the assassin believes that they're leaving reality and entering a simulation, rather than the other way around. Upon finishing their mission, they return to the pods and enter what they believe to be reality. Vienna tells Shazarel that the only reason she pretended to be Malrick was to find out why her memories of her father's murder had been stolen from her. Sharazel find this to be incredibly amusing.

Shazarel explains that those memories aren't hers. They, too, were implanted into her memory during the simulation so that she would kill Crevo Finn, at the request of one of his commercial rivals, the Vernagulos Empire. Shazarel allows her to work out that she's one of "them", a stolen orphan. Demanding the knowledge of her real parents, Shazarel reveals that this particular memory was removed a long time ago. All of the money transferred to Miracle 3 is revealed to have gone into the accounts of Death Incorporated.

Shazarel demands to know who was controlling her avatar, to which she explains it was the artificial intelligence of her onboard computer. She also tells him that the computer's orders were to remind her of the Simulacrum and get her out. In the real world, Malrick's pod opens and Vienna gets out, welcomed by her computer. The computer scrambles their scanners as she makes her escape. Shazarel orders the activation of the assassins to aid in her capture. As she makes her way towards Shazarel's control room, she is stopped by the real Galaron Darvil.

Darvil convinces Shazarel that perhaps killing Vienna himself would be much more satifying. He agrees, but upon entering the control room, Darvil pulls a gun and holds everyone to gunpoint. According to Darvil, Shazarel forced his way into Darvil's home when he was a child and murdered his father. Shazarel tries to convince him that the memory is fake but Vienna asks whether it feels fake, to which Darvil is very much convinced of its reality. Vienna reveals that she has implanted that same altered memory into every assassin in the building, and that those assassins will stop at nothing until he is dead.

Vienna promises to let him live if he tells her the identity of her real parents. Apparently she was bought by Death Incorporated over thirty years ago from Carlo and Delta Tuvala at Forest Gala I. Despite her promise, she allows Darvil to kill him. Vienna then orders one of the workers to wipe every file on the system and shut everything down, including the tournaments. She tells Darvil that from now on, they carve their own destinies. Without Death Incorporated they start again.

In the ship, Vienna sets her course for Forest Gala I but then cancels it. She then makes the computer upload her conversation with Shazarel into the data core and makes the computer delete it from her mind. Vienna believes that her parents wouldn't want to see their daughter turned into a murderer, despite the computer attempting to correct her to 'heroine'. The memory is deleted despite the computer's protests. From far away, someone else orders her computer to take her to Focal Magnus. The mysterious gentleman claims that all these years, Vienna has been unaware that she has been working for him.

Cast

 * Vienna Salvatori - Chase Masterson
 * Felman Shazarel - Michael Chance
 * Canton Malrick - Andrew Dickens
 * Crevo Finn / Galaron Darvil - Mark Frost

Worldbuilding

 * The rules of the Tournament of Death deny the use of weapons, allow the recording of all progress and state that only one person may win.
 * A fake memory was implanted into Vienna's memories of her mother in a coma on the planet Miracle 3. Vienna's fees were being sent there to cover the costs of her treatment. In reality, all of it was a false memory and all payments were sent to the bank accounts of Death Incorporated.
 * The Simulacrum is an invention of Death Incorporated that takes orphans and inducts them into a fake reality, training them to be assassins.

Continuity

 * The simulations taken by the students entail Vienna's previous adventures onboard the Custodian and with the New Church of Wonderment were part of a training simulation. (AUDIO: Dead Drop, Bad Faith)
 * Vienna's payments to Miracle 3 have been paying for her mother's treatment following Crevo Finn's attempted murder. (AUDIO: The Memory Box et al)
 * Shazarel explains that all payments to Miracle 3, in fact, went to Death Incorporated.
 * Vienna notes that the real Malrick could have been using a memory box to hide true memories. She notes that memory boxes would not appear on her memory scan. (AUDIO: The Memory Box et al)