Web of Worlds

by Michael Atamanov

  “Yes, Assassins are something of a ‘gold standard’ among Miyelonian pirates,” Uline the Trader confirmed with a satisfied look. “They’re reliable laser cannons, devastating and made of lightweight alloys. We’d save four hundred pounds per cannon too which, for a starship especially a light interceptor, is very significant. It’ll be no problem to sell a cannon like this for eight hundred thousand crystals. If we put it up with pickup from the spaceport only, it’ll be gone in an ummi. However...” my business partner faltered, as if reading my thoughts, “this is exactly the kind of thing we want for ourselves. If the value of the other stuff is enough for a dowry, I’d prefer to put the Assassins on our frigate and sell the old cannons!”

  Yes, that was just the thing to do. I asked the Engineer to tell me more of what we’d found. The Miyelonian turned and pointed a clawed paw at Tini the kitten, who was using his thief’s tools to open the frigate’s airlock:

  “Soon we’ll see with our own eyes. For now all I know is what we can see outside. It hit the water just about flat with a little lurch to the right. The fuselage broke up along the stabilizer seams, you can see a fissure in the longerons. The nose section was most badly damaged. I’m afraid little could be salvaged there. Navigation equipment, communications systems and locators — don’t count on any of that. I usually install a shield generator and cloaking system close to the middle of the starship, but with such a powerful impact, everything down below is also shattered. Anyhow, we’ll see... But the tail section was well preserved, and the thrusters can be repaired. A hyperspace, main and both maneuver drives. A couple days’ repair and they’ll be good as new. As for the power unit, I’ll need to see as well. I can’t say right now.”

  “If the thrusters can be salvaged, that’s already very good!” Uline Tar turned on her palmtop and started calculating. “Three and a half million, consider it in your pocket. Plus the million and a half crystals, Leng Gnat, that you are like supposed to have left after paying for paying to transport your former faction’s troops by ferry.” My business partner raised her head, expecting confirmation and I nodded in agreement. “And the broken Tikon-Mra V might give up a bit more, maybe another half million if we disassemble it and sell it for parts. At least it’s enough for the dowry already. We won’t even have to sell the Assassins. But still it would be nice to find another couple million...”

  Gerd Ustinov walked over to our group, all red in excitement. Not one bit ashamed at my companions, the scientist said with great gusto:

  “Gnat, what fantastic luck! A real spacefaring vehicle! I’ve taken pictures of the starship from all angles. I also photographed certain junctures and elements. The guards allowed me to even take samples of the insulation and armor paneling. It would be so cool if we could scan this mess with your tool. A three-dimensional diagram of a starship, even in such a dilapidated state is a real treasure! It would allow humanity to take another big step toward the stars!”

  Uh, duh, didn’t I already know that? Still I had to disappoint the scientist because I had a big problem with the Prospector Scanner...

  Right after the meeting in Lozovsky’s office where we were discussing the attack on the Human-8 Faction, I entered the game. Losing my progress to level 84 was upsetting, but I expected it. I was much more soured when I checked my inventory and discovered my scanner was missing. It must have fallen as loot after my character died. It was a very valuable item, especially the data contained in the scanner. So I got right to it and flew on the antigrav from Rocky Island to the Human-3 Faction capital until I found the place where I died. I discovered a spent Geological Analyzer there and lots of tracks from forest creatures. But as for the lost device, it was nowhere to be found. I didn’t know who might have wanted it — only a Prospector or Listener could use such a specific device after all.

  And again I sensed concentrated attention directed at me. And although it was a very bright day, and I had two armed pilot-escorts with me, I still felt uneasy. Scanning turned up nothing dangerous nearby, but I already knew that meant nothing. Then I straightened up and shouted into the forest, first in Geckho, then repeated the same message in Miyelonian:

  “Oh wise Vaa! I am no enemy to you! I was the one who brought your body to this planet on a request from my Morphian friend so you could eat your fill here and come back from a two-year state of suspended animation. If you need details, come out and we can talk. I also came to say that I am flying away in two days. And if you want to leave this planet, come to the Geckho spaceport. I’m sure with your abilities it won’t be any trouble to get there. And if you’re the one who took my Prospector Scanner, give it back. I really need it!”

  No answer followed, but the feeling of anxiety, like I was being watched disappeared. The Morphian heard me and probably understood, but didn’t want to come out and talk. Okay then, that was its right. I waited a minute, after which I turned and walked the forest path to the Geckho Diplomat’s hut. But I was too late. There was no metal hut where it once stood, just withered grass and an imprint in the ground confirming that a temporary structure once stood there. The viceroy had moved into a residence more befitting his high status. One of the residences built by the Geckho in the village adjacent to the spaceport. And the viceroy had brought Anna the refugee with him. Too bad, I wanted to speak with them so badly. I had a ton of questions for them both, especially the medic.

  “Okay, I got it open!” Tini’s shout of delight jerked me from my thoughts and memories. “The doorway is dented, so the door won’t open all the way. But I can squeeze in.”

  “Good job!” I walked over and tenderly patted my ward on the nape of his neck. “I see your skills are growing. Well, shall we go in?”

  I turned on the flashlight and was first to enter the crack. Inside it was wet and slippery. I just about stepped on a crab which skittishly ran out from under a broken panel. There was enough light even with no flashlight because sun came in through the many gaps in the fuselage. I tried to get my bearings. This was the corridor heading to the cockpit. Now it was twisted and blocked by sharp debris. Here, seemingly, was the gunner’s seat. And the lounge room was located behind that accordioned barrier. Hrm... Quite a sight. It would have been absolutely impossible to survive that crash. But at least there were no dead bodies. In the game, they disappeared after a certain amount of time.

  While I stood and looked around, Tini was scouring the starship, hurriedly sticking any little thing of any value into his inventory. It was all just personal items and light weaponry from the dead crew but still there was plenty of stuff lying around. Ayni the Translator was also filling her pockets. I didn’t sink to such petty marauding although I was also looking around to see what I could maybe make a buck on.

  “Too bad...” came the disappointed voice of the Miyelonian Engineer, sticking his whiskered nose into every nook and cranny. “Everything that could break did. The shield generator is in pieces. The power unit is beyond repair. That’s bad... I won’t even look in the cockpit, I already get the picture. So, what do we have here? Captain, look! This is a miracle!”

  I didn’t understand what Orun Va-Mart wanted to show me, pointing his flashlight at a bunch of cables and mess of plastic and metal debris. It all looked basically like a big heap of trash.

  “Captain, that piece there,” the Miyelonian impatiently cut the bunch of wires blocking his path with a knife. Then pointed its tip at a wet metal sphere approximately three feet in radius, which was hanging down off the wires. “This is the cloak generator! It survived all the chaos! By the way, the GGG-HI8 is a very good and expensive model. And compatible with our ship’s hardware.”

  “Four and a half million crystals at least,” came Uline Tar’s voice, muted by the thin wall. The heavyset Geckho woman couldn’t crawl into the broken ship but was carefully listening to our conversation. “Can you get it out at all?”

  “Yes! We’ll just cut a hole in the fuselage and extract it through there. There won’t be anything else of value, so we
can go the simplest and fastest way,” Orun Va-Mart replied.

  Nothing of value? Looking at the chaos and destruction around, it was easy to believe. However, before us was not some unknown frigate, but the ship of a very famous and successful leader of the pirate pride of the Bushy Shadow, Gerd Abi Pan-Miay. I was severely disappointed. Was there nothing special on the flagship of a pirate fleet? Maybe even something not so much of value, but at least of interest, something unusual? Some little knick-knack, a trophy from some massacre? But I didn’t see anything like that.

  “Where is the captain’s bunk on these frigates?” I asked the Engineer, and Orun Va-Mart, thinking, pointed confidently at a dark gap going vertically up with the remnants of a stairway sticking out of the wall. We really hadn’t checked that small dark room.

  But how to get in there? I called Tini and pointed my kitten to the hole, which was potentially an interesting source of trophies. In two jumps, very gracefully off the walls, the Miyelonian teen shot upward and hooked his clawed paw into the edge. He contracted his body and climbed up. I wanted to praise my ward for his unbelievable agility when suddenly the orange Ayni next to me repeated the same trick, shooting up like a spring and landing right next to Tini. My jaw simply fell. I wasn’t expecting that from the modest and bashful Translator!

  From above, I heard Tini’s voice almost at once:

  “Gerd Abi’s personal things are here. Mostly just trash, although there is a pair of blades that look pretty sweet!”

  “And a very impressive collection of trophy tails on the wall, although now they’re all wet and pitiful,” Ayni added.

  None of that really merited attention. I activated the scanning icon, zoomed in my mini-map as far as possible and looked at the captain’s bunk. There it was!

  Scanning skill increased to level fifty-one!

  Eagle Eye skill increased to level seventy-eight!

  “Tini, check the wall to your left. There are some niches a bit higher up. Based on my map, there is a suspicious cavity in the wall there.”

  Three seconds passed and an exultant double Miyelonian scream rolled through the ruined ship’s hallways. And Ayni couldn’t hold back her emotions, joyfully howling even louder than the teenage Tini:

  “Captain, there’s a hidden safe!”

  The next fifteen minutes were spent trying to open the lock with picks and code breakers. And Engineer Orun Va-Mart lost patience long ago, suggesting we resort to radical measures and simply cut through the wall. But I asked them to wait a second. Tini was levelling up over and over again right before my eyes, practicing his thief skills and improving them. And my ward did it! But the contents of that promising safe were, to put it lightly, disappointing:

  “Master Gnat, there’s nothing here in the safe. Or... Well there is a peace of white plastic with some numbers scratched in.”

  The kitten jumped down and handed me the broken chunk of plastic. At first glance it was trash. You see something like this on the ground, you probably wouldn’t even pick it up. But on the surface of the ductile sheet, there was a whole system of interlaced rectangles etched in with something sharp. Miyelonian numerals. Lots of them. I had to crawl out into the sunlight to make sense of the cobweb of intersecting lines.

  789609.960412 157890.233308 012500.3423-9

  After that long series of numbers, it showed a date. Approximately half a tong ago in a time system that was accurate down to one ten thousandth of an ummi.

  Intelligence increased to 33.

  Astrolinguistics skill increased to level ninety!

  I just about lost it looking at the endless rectangles! Even the game system considered my intellectual feat worth rewarding, giving Gnat a third boost to Intelligence, the last one I could ever get. I read the number aloud, but that didn’t make things one bit easier to understand. What was this? Why was that Miyelonian Pirate storing a chunk of plastic with numbers in a secret safe?

  “That’s probably the number of a bank account and an access code,” Ayni suggested, but the Trader immediately objected that the format didn’t correspond to a banking number, and the time and date would be useless in that case.

  “It doesn’t look like coordinates either, too many digits,” I said thoughtfully and the others agreed.

  Still no one had any other ideas. What a shame. A huge one. But as much as it was, we were going to have to set the pirate captain’s secret aside. There was zero time left, and I had a whole bunch of other stuff planned for today. I stored the mysterious item in my inventory and mentally shook myself, preparing for the burst of activity just around the corner.

  “Uline, get our trophies to the spaceport and sell them. Orun Va-Mart will go with you and help with everything. Take as many people as you need. They’re all,” I said, making a broad gesture at all the many people gathered around the debris, “technically still part of all kinds of factions and even live in different worlds, but everyone here is actually my faction, Relict Faction!”

  Authority increased to 62!

  I looked up at the sun. It was almost touching the evening sea. Then I turned my gaze away to the team, which was preparing to leave with me.

  “Okay, friends, let’s go to the Sio-Mi-Dori! It’s time to fly to Antique Beach. They should start loading Human-3 troops onto the ferry in half an hour. And ideally at least I will be there by then so there won’t be any linguistic confusion between the people and Geckho.”

  I didn’t say what I was thinking, but the main problem was nothing to do with lack of translators. I needed to have a talk with the leadership of the Human-3 Faction for a totally different reason. The issue was that, at the same time as the first ferry, another ferry was supposed to be starting off with a landing party. That was Gerd Minn-O La-Fin kindly agreeing to help me out with three hundred of her best soldiers commanded by the best commander of the La-Fin Faction, a level-102 Machinegunner by the name Gerd Lang-Yu.

  That wasn’t exactly what I’d asked my wife for: I wanted a loan of her faction’s four Sio-Mi-Dori antigravs. But the proud princess was unexpectedly stubborn and set two nonnegotiable conditions. First of all, her La-Fin Faction had to be able to take part in the combat operation. According to Minn-O, it would be a great chance for her to prove herself a successful commander before her subjects and to raise her Authority, while the whole faction had the chance to demolish the stereotype that they were merely an implacable enemy of my world. Second, the La-Fin Faction no longer had just four Sio-Mi-Dori assault landing antigravs, but six: two of the aircrafts had recently been repaired. Princess Minn-O La-Fin offered to use them all, but as a loyal wayedda she was supposed to also take part in the battle and fly off in the same vehicle as her husband.

  I had to agree. And as for now, imagining Ivan Lozovsky’s eyes going wide at the news that he would have to fight side by side with the Dark Faction, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was all the harder to imagine the reaction of the Human-3 Faction rank and file, most of whom had a poor understanding of the politics of the magocratic world and didn’t know the different dynasties. When they heard that they would be liberating the two Dark Faction-occupied North American nodes with the help of... “the Dark Faction,” who could say what would happen.

  Chapter Twenty-Six. Night Assault

  A GROUP of seven Sio-Mi-Doris with lights off and locators inactive passed over the stormy night sea just skirting the high waves with its antigrav pancakes. To my eye, there was no need for so much risk, but Major Filippov who was leading the aerial assault, by the way now up to level-43, insisted we be as stealthy as possible. And that included complete radio silence, although the chance that the enemy might intercept messages between the landing groups was, to my eye, something from the realm of science fiction.

  However, the level-61 Jarg Analyst was in enthusiastic support of Major Filippov’s precaution so I didn’t argue. The spiny armadillo had made more than one long-reaching conclusion and proven his advice to be effective and useful. What was more, my adviso
r Mage Diviner Mac-Peu Un-Roi had determined that all the antigrav pilots had sufficient skills and experience that the probability of all seven aircrafts reaching the enemy shore safe and sound was 94%. And from there, according to the diviner, the possible timelines diverged severely and, for now, he couldn’t say for certain which we were heading for.

  If the enemy was relaxed and careless as usual, then the active part of the operation could be over in eleven or twelve minutes, leaving us in control of both Human-8 nodes. We were expecting minimal losses. It was even possible we’d lose no one.

  Mac-Peu was coming from the perspective that the Human-8 Faction was not at all militaristic and most of their players were of peaceful professions. We already knew a team of enthusiasts had founded the faction, mostly students at Canadian universities, and at first they used the game’s capabilities to heal the hopelessly ill. Only a bit later did their activity catch the interest of the Canadian government (it would have been impossible not to notice the tall corncob-shaped buildings sprouting up on the campus of Quebec University), and the operation was transferred to a nearby military base. But even after they had soldiers playing full-time for their faction, most of them were still former chronically ill patients, which meant the vast majority of the Human-8 Faction were Financiers, Administrators, Engineers, Medics, and things of that nature. No more than twenty percent of them belonged to combat professions. And if that was all we were up against, three hundred Financiers who could barely even hold a weapon properly, our job sounded pretty easy.

  But it if the enemy was somehow informed of our plans and prepared for defense, the picture changed completely. In that case, the lines of fate predicted horrible, bloody battles. The success of the operation as a whole was not guaranteed then. After all, in that eventuality, we could expect not only three hundred and six battle-ready Human-8 players (the total number of people in the infiltrated North American faction) but also a large number of La-Varrez faction mages, a small contingent of whom were there round the clock to keep watch. Then add to that some well-equipped and prepared combat subdivisions from the La-Varrez Faction and its ten or so vassals. That whole force might consist of more than fifteen thousand soldiers. Taking down all that power with six hundred commandos from a ferry and hundreds of landing troops from the Sio-Mi-Dori was unimaginable.