Web of Worlds

by Michael Atamanov

  Valeri laughed happily, and her sonorous giggle was like the peal of silver bells:

  “I never did suspect that I was being tracked from orbit, or that someone would think me strange! I was just living, hunting and surviving as best I could. I was kidnapped by slavers, but I escaped, taking weapons from flying people. Then a shuttle came down from the sky and my sister and I were taken for research. But seemingly they were disappointed by what they found.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Denni confirmed. “Everything that made us think she was strange had a very simple explanation. Valeri’s mother, a Tailaxian, came to the savage planet as part of a group of missionaries. Her father was a native that kidnapped her mother, but he was long dead by the time we found Valeri. We confiscated the blaster. The slaver and black-market trade base was already abandoned. We discovered that she had psionic abilities, but nothing more. Basically, to the Quarantine Service, neither Valeri or her family was of any interest. We helped her mother and younger sister get back to Tailax, but Valeri-Urla wanted to stay on her home planet. So we stopped observing the little hunter. But just half a year later, I happened to hear that Valeri-Urla had been accused of murder and would soon be executed. I intervened, and my authority as a Quarantine Service employee was enough to get her transferred to a Tailaxian court.”

  “The world ‘Urla’ in my name means ‘hunter,’“ she explained in an even tone, as if this wasn’t even about her. “Hunters do not have the right to kill people, doing so is punishable by death. I broke the law by siccing Little Sister against some creep who was following me and threatening to rape me. Denni saved me from the gallows. I was brought by starship to Tailax, and once there sentenced to three tongs in the game that bends reality. As I requested, Little Sister was placed in my virt pod with me. She would never have left my side anyway. Then Denni met me on the projection of Tailax in the game world and, ever since, we’ve been travelling together.”

  So the game was a method of punishing criminals? As a matter of fact, why was that surprising? I myself had been sent under the Dome as an alternative to prison time. All this information was very intriguing, but I was most interested in Tailax and the Gilvar Syndicate. I asked about their two factions in the game that bends reality. Denni answered, but quickly admitted that he was a simple man and didn’t know much:

  “The Gilvar Syndicate is a commonwealth of eight densely-populated and highly-developed human planets. In the game they are all vassals of the Meleyephatian race. I know less about Tailax. It is a very closed society both in the game and the real world.”

  “A highly developed society, governed by religious figures,” Valeri-Urla continued. “It is also part of the Meleyephatian horde, but functions as a nearly independent state whose policies don’t always align with those of their suzerains. Tailax is considered a leader among human governments in microelectronics and applied psionics. It’s hard to get onto Tailax, they do not welcome outsiders. And they don’t let their own leave either. The body of every Tailaxian citizen contains so many cleverly hidden bugs of all kinds that it is generally thought to be impossible to even find them all. And Tailaxian intelligence uses them to always keep their citizens in line no matter where they are. In the game, my overseers gather information about the world through these devices, and sometimes use painful shocks and commands in my head to alter my behavior if there’s something they don’t like. They usually don’t care where I am or what I’m doing. But recently, I was ordered to get onto the frigate of Gnat the Listener. Something in your gameplay has the Tailaxians interested, Captain.”

  “You were asked to spy on us, and now you’re telling us openly?!” Eduard Boyko objected.

  Despite the Space Commando’s outraged judgmental tone, Valeri was absolutely calm:

  “We’re in a hyperjump. There is no signal here, so no one can track this conversation. I figured I better just get it out there while I have the chance before Gerd Gnat reads it in my thoughts.”

  I activated Scanning, zoomed in, took a look and gave a surprised whistle. Yep. Valeri was speaking the truth. I detected at least eight miniature foreign objects in the Beastmaster’s body. Two were in her head, one very deep in her brain. There were three in her neck, one in her left shoulder blade, one in her right lung and another inside her heart — the millimeter-sized capsule was stuck to the wall of her right atrium and could stop her pulse at any second. Clearly, this was a little bomb her jailers controlled, a guarantee that she would remain loyal and obedient. Most likely, Valeri had more implants lower in her body, but I didn’t keep looking because I’d seen enough. By the way...

  “Valeri, does that mean that I can use you to quickly send messages to Tailax? That might be very important! Imran, leave the game and tell our directors. They’ve been looking for a way to get in touch with the other human factions in space. We may have just found one!”

  The Dagestani athlete didn’t even go to his bunk, just sat on the floor in the common room and froze as his mind left his game body. We then kept talking. In my turn, I gave a fairly brief retelling of my story to our new crew and introduced the rest of my team. Then the Miyelonians walked over, their ritual complete, and immediately threw themselves on the snacks and alcohol. And Uline Tar, thirsting for interaction, left her bunk. Then Imran came back into the game and got up off the floor. He looked dejected.

  “Well, did you tell Lozovsky?” I asked, but the Dagestani Gladiator seemingly didn’t hear me.

  With a heavy sigh and taking a bit of air into his lungs, Imran squeezed out:

  “When I got under the dome, I didn’t see any players. There was a wailing siren and a recorded message from Alexander Antipov being played over the loudspeakers saying the Dark Faction has attacked and announcing an official CtA (Call to arms). WAR!”

  Chapter Two. Unrelenting Hospitality

  NATURALLY, given that, we could no longer even think of staying at Kasti-Utsh III for long. We’d calculate coordinates for a new hyperspace jump, this time to Earth itself, recharge if necessary then fly off to aid the Human-3 Faction! Otherwise, soon enough, Captain Gnat would be logging out permanently alongside a third of his crew. And there would be issues with piloting the frigate, because none of the remaining crew had piloting skills, and I was controlling many ship systems directly.

  None of the crew objected. Perhaps my business partner Uline Tar had a differing opinion, but if she did, she kept it to herself. Minn-O also immediately stated her position that after our marriage and the death of her grandfather, there was no longer anything to connect her with her former faction. What was more, having a mage husband was the princess’s only remaining chance to survive in the hostile magocratic world. With Gnat out of the picture, Minn-O La-Fin would very quickly die “on accident” because she stood in the way of too many ruthless bloodsuckers, who were currently salivating over the riches of the La-Fin family. I could read unhidden panic in my junior wife’s tone, and I assured my wayedda that it was too early to count me out. I would not allow the H3 faction to be destroyed. I was not going to force the Princess to fight against her subjects either though. The mere fact that Minn-O would not be interfering or telling the enemy our plans was enough.

  And although we still had a day before things would really heat up, the rest of the party was subdued because no one was in the mood to celebrate anymore. Those who were quickly finished their cocktails and the open boxes of fancy food then left, some to their quarters, some to go on shift. The Miyelonians just went into the real world.

  I called the white Kirsan over, who I considered the most senior of the three Mechanics, and finally gave the repair bot my Annihilator. Previously we lacked either the materials or time to modify my weapon and had little reason to increase its firepower. It could already shred through any barrier and chew enemies into hunks of flesh already. But increasing its accurate range seemed important because now I couldn’t hit anything farther than twenty or thirty feet away. And increasing the battery capacity or even addi
ng a special firing mode with more conservative power usage wouldn’t hurt. As it was, a nuclear battery on full charge was good for thirty shots at most and the fact that I had my last one in the gun now didn’t paint a pretty picture. Buying an extra battery was a big challenge. There were very few on the market and batteries for guns and Relict artifacts were not exactly available at every station. And they cost way too much. I was no Croesus nor Count of Monte Cristo to be using weapons that cost two hundred crystals per shot.

  “Ideally, change it away from the disposable nuclear batteries to ones that we can recharge from the ship’s power systems,” I kept dreaming and Kirsan looked attentively at me with his faceted eyes. The repair bot was actively moving his many little hands both to say how long it would take and trying to get a thought across: “That might be a tall order, captain, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  The huge metal millipede stashed the invaluable weapon in a hole in its chest and crawled nimbly off toward the supply room. Before that, I never suspected that the repair bots’ chest pieces could move aside to reveal a storage compartment. For some reason I instantly realized three electromagnetic bombs could easily fit, and the thin and flexible millipede could get into even the hardest to reach places on the starship including the maintenance area behind the hyperspace drives. The white Kirsan’s chest cavity was empty before he put the Annihilator in there. But I ran a scan, which showed that the other two millipedes had something in theirs. Some pieces or patches of metal. I couldn’t see better, so I would have to check what my Mechanics were hiding in these secret spots when I got the chance.

  At the same time, I checked up on the other two repair bots through the security cameras. One of them was lying out pieces of the destroyed relict combat drone on the floor of an empty room, thoughtfully crawling between them and, one after the next, lifting them up and carefully inspecting them with its many mechanical eyes. Apparently, repairing the Small Relict Guard Drone was going to be very difficult, so I didn’t want to distract Kirsan.

  The last of the metal millipedes was turning something over very quickly in its jointed hands, spinning and twisting the object every which way as if solving a Rubik’s Cube. With a certain surprise, I realized that it was the Pyramid Signal Booster, although it didn’t look quite as disk shaped as before. In fact, it was now an articulated fractal construction, more reminiscent of a three-dimensional asymmetrical snowflake. Yeah, that was it. I had given the ancient artifact to my Mechanics so they could remove the “only for Relicts” limitation and, the mechanoid repair bost had seemingly discovered it could unfold.

  I took over for Dmitry Zheltov on the bridge and sent the Starship Pilot to get some rest. The frigate was on autopilot going through a hyperspace jump, so there was virtually no work to be done on the bridge. If nothing out of the ordinary happened, this would be a long boring shift of around an ummi and a half, after which Ayukh would take over. Still, I wasn’t going to just sit around for eight hours. In fact, I was planning to use that time to maximum effect, levelling Gnat’s skills as much as possible, above all those connected with psionics and controlling machines. After all, when would I get a better chance to practice directly operating the various frigate systems?! With the whole crew resting, they wouldn’t even notice. I could also afford to pull Astrolinguistics up a bit. Sure I was understanding Relict glyphs better all the time, but some of the messages from my Listener Energy Armor were still indecipherable.

  So then, how was my little Gnat doing for abilities? What to improve first? I opened my information:

  Gerd Gnat. Human. H3 Faction.

  Level-74 Listener

  Statistics:

  Strength14

  Agility18

  Intelligence23 + +5

  Perception27 + 2

  Constitution16

  Luck modifier+3

  Parameters:

  Hitpoints1612 of 1612

  Endurance points1008 of 1209

  Magic points759 of 899

  Carrying capacity62 lbs.

  Fame66

  Skills:

  Electronics61

  Scanning35

  Cartography57

  Astrolinguistics83

  Rifles51

  Mineralogy 50

  Medium Armor54

  Eagle Eye70

  Sharpshooter34

  Targeting23

  Danger Sense48

  Psionic 73

  Mental Fortitude54

  Mysticism24

  Machine Control66

  My firearm skills were noticeably lagging. To have Rifles at just 51 and Sharpshooter at 34, with my character at seventy-four was not even funny. As far as I’d heard from the First Legion, it was considered standard to have main combat skills one point five times higher than character level. Targeting was even further behind, even though discovering and highlighting targets for others to shoot was Gnat’s only effective method of long-distance combat.

  Sure, here I had the excuse that I had changed class, and a Listener was more a mage that knew how to control machines than a classic gunman or scout. But that did nothing about the worrisome fact that Gnat hadn’t been to the firing range in a very long time. As for my psionic abilities, things were looking a bit better, but still not exactly one point five times over character level, so I had plenty of work to do there as well.

  Anyhow, I started with Scanning. I gave a mental command, activating the ship scanners and requested a complete picture of everything happening outside my frigate. I had no idea what I could get from scanning in hyperjump, or if the scanners even worked like this, but the mental command worked. The computer froze for a long time, trying to interpret the clearly unusual feedback, then it brought up some long parallel stripes and something strange — a spot of light moving quickly away. A second later, some words came on screen in Geckho:

  Gravitational anomaly. Class SA-113/FF.

  At the same time, my heart clenched in pain and foreboding. I was at serious risk. I felt a prick as if a needle got stuck all the way into my heart. It felt like I was squeezed in a vice for a few painful seconds, but then the feeling gradually retreated, leaving me sitting in the pilot’s seat and reading a flurry of messages, my eyes open wide in fear. Apparently there had been problems with the ship:

  ATTENTION!!! Gravitational scanner has gone out of order!

  ATTENTION!!! Short-wave radar has gone out of order!

  ATTENTION!!! Neutrino scanner has gone out of order!

  In parallel with this, I saw many messages run past about changes to Gnat’s statistics:

  Scanning skill increased to level thirty-six!

  Scanning skill increased to level thirty-seven!

  Electronics skill increased to level sixty-two!

  Danger Sense skill increased to level forty-nine!

  Machine Control skill increased to level sixty-seven!

  You have reached level seventy-five!

  You have received three skill points.

  If I had been out fishing, the closest analogy would be a bite from an especially feisty lunker knocking me off balance, breaking the line and making off with my tackle. What even was that??? I waited one second, decided not to sound the alarm and just called Ayukh and Dmitry Zheltov. But first to come on the bridge was my Wayedda Minn-O, running in panicked:

  “Gnat, what happened? I was sleeping and it felt like someone poured a bucket of cold water on me! My Danger Sense jumped up twice!”

  Ayukh the Navigator then pushed her out of the doorway and strode quickly into the control room looking disheveled. He had also been awoken. Behind him was the Starship Pilot and Uline Tar for some reason. I pointed the crew to the system malfunction messages on screen and briefly explained what caused them.

  The furry gray Navigator stroked his nose with a clawed paw in thought:

  “I don’t understand, Gerd Gnat. Why did you run a scan in a hyperjump? Here in hyper, everything goes by too fast. The scanner pulse travels at light speed, so it will never reach
a target and bounce back while we’re travelling faster than light! Even a child knows that!”

  It looked like my abilities as a captain had seriously fallen in the Navigator’s eyes. In response I just shrugged my shoulders indefinitely, then made the same motion in Geckho body language, jutting out my lower lip and rolling my eyes. What could I have said in my defense? That I didn’t know it was pointless to scan in hyper? But it worked!

  After another half minute of grumbling, the Navigator took a seat and opened the astronomical body classification system. Ayukh, like all the others, was looking for the “Anomalies” section. The object I scanned was eventually found in the category “Rare, unconfirmed:”

  “SA-113/FF class anomalies are found moving at faster-than-light speeds in hyperspace. They have very high mass, similar to that of planetary moons class 3B and higher. Much information about this anomaly is conjecture. Only one has ever been clearly detected two hundred eleven tongs ago in the star system 5С-678/PP by a Meleyephatian scout-research ship. They are thought to correspond to ships of Supercarrier or Titan class. However, starships of super-heavy classes have not been built by the great space-faring races for more than three hundred tongs, and the few remaining ones have long been scuttled, so the most probable explanation is that this is the signature of a starship of an unknown race. WARNING! These objects react very poorly to detection, and are known to destroy ships shortly after discovery.”

  Woah! How lucky we apparently were that this contact with hot-headed unknown aliens had merely taken a few scanning systems offline. We could easily replace the fried systems. As far as I could tell from my captain’s tablet, all the required parts were already in storage. After some six or seven hours work for the repair bots, all negative consequences of this unpleasant encounter would be done with. But I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this was not random, and I would be finding out more about this mysterious object despite its clear danger and unfriendly reputation.