by Dean Henegar
Derelict
Book 2: Counterattack
A LitRPG, Dungeon Core Adventure
By
Dean Henegar
Copyright © 2020 by Dean Henegar
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
— CONTENTS —
Recap
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Afterword
— Recap —
If you haven’t read the first book in the Derelict series, you can find a copy here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087GH66WS/. Should you decide not to, or if it has been some time since you read the first book, here is a recap of what has happened so far.
Captain Slater of the USS Franklin is on a deep-space escort mission seeking to locate resources and habitable planets when his task force is attacked by an alien species. The fleet is overcome by the aliens’ superior firepower and the Franklin is boarded. With his crew defeated, Slater overloads the ship’s reactor and destroys the enemy vessel, along with himself and the Franklin.
The captain awakes some time later. He is still alive but changed, transformed into a new being: a glowing ball of light that is bound to his ship, something called a derelict core. Slater is helped in his new existence by a creature called a parasitic interstellar xeno-infestation, or Pixi. Pixi advises Slater on his new existence and gives him the ground rules for being a derelict. These rules, Slater learns, were put in place by a mysterious council that governs all derelicts. He also learns that the galaxy is populated by strange races, many of which resemble beings from Earth myth and legend.
Slater seeks to grow his derelict, creating creatures and traps to defend it against explorers who are drawn to the riches he can create. Unfortunately, Slater soon finds out that Pixi is not a friendly advisor and is, in fact, attempting to consume him and replace him as the derelict. Slater fights back, eventually defeating Pixi and freeing himself from the constraints of the council. As he explores his newfound freedom, Slater is contacted by the admiral of his destroyed task force. She is also a derelict—a mad one that seeks to destroy him.
Slater barely fights off the admiral and her strange and horrifying creatures. He grows his ship, slowly learning and improving his defenses. He fights off further incursions from other explorers and finds that some seek his death; a dead derelict core, he discovers, is a valuable commodity. New hope is found when Slater receives a hail from Earth ships. The nations of Earth are defending against relentless attacks by the other races, but they are losing. Slater takes aboard a few humans as the rest of the fleet sets off to gather a tug that will return his derelict to Earth, where it can be used to aid in humanity’s defense.
As the rescue vessels approach, another mysterious ship arrives and boards the Franklin. The creatures form an elvish kill team that intends to destroy Slater for killing Pixi and defying the council’s will. After activating Slater’s jump drive and stranding him in an unknown region of space, the kill team fights its way through the Franklin’s defenses. The attackers are only stopped when the human soldiers enter the fray. One of the soldiers, Sergeant Gonzales, is killed, but the other human soldiers defeat the council’s boarding party, capturing one of the boarders in the process. Sadly, they are now stuck in an unknown part of the galaxy, and the book closes with Sergeant Gonzales being buried in space and Slater shutting his core down for an upgrade.
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
Ulysses S. Grant.
— 1 —
Slater awoke from his upgrade and frantically scanned the derelict to see if there were any emergencies awaiting him. All looked to be in order. The drones had finished printing up replacement MOBS and were now standing by for anything that might be needed. The prisoner was still unconscious in her cell—or at least pretending to be. Slater would have to try and wake her once he finished everything he had planned. His human crew were mostly sleeping, save for Doctor Cheng, who was looking at her various scanners. She had taken over some of the space near his engineering station, using it to house her equipment. Slater didn’t mind; his experimentation was now done almost exclusively inside the Slaterdome, and he found he liked human company.
“Doctor, don’t you ever sleep?” Slater asked.
“Oh, you’re awake. I had my monitors hooked up to your data port while you were out. I’ll take a deeper dive into the data later. We can hopefully gain greater insight into what is actually happening when your core upgrades. I’m just about finished with trying to plot our location, and the information isn’t good. How far had humans explored when your . . . transformation occurred?” the doctor asked.
Slater was curious to see if she could uncover anything about his upgrade process, but finding out where they were was the most urgent task after the random jump that the elvish kill team had triggered.
“Our expedition was the farthest anyone had gone at the time we were attacked. I have to say that I’m a bit curious about what happened afterward and how far humanity expanded after I was gone,” Slater replied.
“I’ll try to give you a brief rundown, Captain. The sector of space you were exploring ended up being colonized by the United States and Canada for the most part and bore the brunt of the initial kobold attacks. When the kobolds were stopped in Earth’s solar system, we pushed them back to reclaim our original colonized planets. What we found was horrifying. I believe the lieutenant may have mentioned when we first boarded that the kobolds had begun a systematic genocide on the worlds they had taken from humanity. Over sixty percent of the population on our occupied worlds was killed off. The longer the world was occupied, the fewer humans remained alive.
“We reclaimed our worlds and began to explore in all directions with the intent of eventually pushing on deeper into kobold-controlled territories once our fleets were strong enough. Unfortunately, while we were still weakened from our campaign against the kobolds, the other races struck. The Russians are being pushed back by the orcs, and the Chinese have fought a group of creatures called gnolls to a standstill. The European Union worlds are currently being overwhelmed by a combination of goblin and hobgoblin forces,” the doctor said.
The lieutenant had briefly mentioned the attacks but didn’t really have time to tell Slater much in the way of details. It sounded like American forces were on the defensive and the rest of humanity was barely holding on. Now Slater understood a bit better why the humans were placing such high hopes on the Franklin when they found his derelict.
“Thank you for the rundown, Doctor. Do you have any idea where we currently are?” Slater asked.
&
nbsp; “Yes, not an exact position, but from the position of the stars, we can see that we’re in a sector of space well beyond where the SAC—that’s the South American Coalition nations—used to have a presence,” the doctor advised.
“Used to? Who controls this part of space?” Slater asked.
“We’re not sure. The SAC reported attacks by a gnomish fleet. Gnomish tech was weaker than our own, but their superior numbers meant the SAC had to fall back, eventually picking up some support from the Australian colonized worlds near them. The strange part was that the gnomish attacks just seemed to stop. Reconnaissance ships were sent, but no enemies were found. All the populated worlds were completely devoid of life, and any ships that ventured out on their own just disappeared. A couple of planets were recolonized, only to cease communication shortly thereafter. We’re not sure what’s lurking out there, but the zone is off limits to any colonization for the time being. A few SAC task forces come and go occasionally to look for survivors on remote mining and research facilities, but the last I heard, those efforts were winding down. The only good news is that whatever’s out there is keeping all the other races from attacking SAC territory.”
“Thank you for tracking our position, Doctor. I’m going to check on the changes to my core and do some planning. I suggest you try and get some sleep,” Slater said.
“You’re right. I need to rest if I want the old brain to keep working. I do tend to get caught up in my research and even forget to eat sometimes,” Doctor Cheng said before heading to her quarters. Slater pulled up his new core information to see what had changed since his last look.
Slater, Derelict Core, Level 7, Experience: 5155/7500
Core Health: 100/100
Core Power: 99/100
Biomass: 1225
Salvage: 1894
Nanobot Permeation: 100%
Compartments Controlled: 20
Research Nodes: 4
Ship’s Weapons: laser cannon (1)
Ship’s Components:
Propulsion Unit, Level 1
Scanner Array, Level 1
Internal Defenses: pit traps (4), tripwire traps (6)
MOBS: kobolds (25), pairs of bilge rats (17), kobold taskmasters (5), kobold captain (1), defilers (7), eviscerator (1)
Construction Drones: 25
MOBS Schematics:
Construction Drone, Level 3
Kobold, Level 2 (patterns include warrior, taskmaster, captain)
Bilge Rat, Level 1
Orc, Level 0
Defilers, Level 1 (patterns include defiler, eviscerator)
Gear Schematics:
Slashing and Piercing Melee Weapons, Level 2
Crushing Melee Weapons, Level 1
Laser Weapons, Level 2
Firearms, Level 3
Ammunition, Level 2
Grenades, Level 0
Clothing / Body Armor, Level 2
Natural Weapons, Level 1
Defensive Structures:
Pit Trap, Level 2
Tripwire Trap, Level 2
Mines, Level 0
Hidden Compartment, Level 1
Derelict Interior Schematics:
Décor and Compartment Items, Level 2
Secret Door, Level 1
Communications Array, Level 2
Laboratory
Engineering Station
Ship’s Systems:
Propulsion, Level 1
Scanner Array, Level 1
Ship’s Weapons, Level 0 (laser cannon)
Research:
Laboratory node is currently available for research.
Engineering node is currently available for research.
Research node 1 is currently researching clothing / body armor, level 3. Progress: 71%.
Research node 2 is available for research.
Time until next jump: 22 days, 15 hours, 11 minutes.
Slater now had just over twenty-two days to figure out how to gain control over his ability to jump. While the doctor’s description of this system didn’t paint a pretty picture, there was no telling where the next jump might take him. There was always the chance it could drop him next to the kobold homeworld or some similar location, which would mean a death sentence.
With his latest upgrade, Slater had access to additional core power, and he planned to use it to fill out the empty compartments. He would also have to keep an eye on his dwindling supplies of biomass and salvage. While there was currently a decent quantity of both, he didn’t know when or where he could acquire more.
Slater also needed to get his research nodes working. When the kill team boarded and briefly took control of him, he never had the time to allocate research to three of his four nodes. The brief loss of control had also slowed the pace of research on the one node that was working. He was tempted to start research on more upgrades for his MOBS and their gear, but he also couldn’t afford to neglect his ship. A lot of difficulty could have been avoided if his main battery had been an effective weapons system, so he had the engineering node start on ship’s weapons, level 1. Knowledge was power, and finding and identifying a threat before it arrived would give him an advantage. Even if he couldn’t destroy an approaching vessel, scanning the threat from farther out meant he could rearrange his internal defenses to match the threat. Research node 2 started working on scanner array, level 2.
His only free research node was the one at the laboratory. Since he didn’t plan on conducting any direct research for the moment, he tasked the node with upgrading his kobold MOBS, trying to make them even more effective in battle. Sadly, his battle with the elvish kill team didn’t result in any new schematics. He was sure that some weapons or gear, if not the elf MOBS themselves, would have been found. Only three of the boarders died aboard his ship, and that might not have been enough to create a schematic.
Slater was about to dig into adjusting the numbers of MOBS in his compartments when a clank came from the captive’s room. Switching his viewpoint over to her cell, Slater watched and listened as the elf Illissa flailed about. Her restraints were broken. Freeing herself, however, appeared to have been a difficult process. Blood dripped from torn skin around her ankles and wrists. One hand hung limp, the wrist having been broken in her attempts to gain freedom. The bars of her cell were holding without any trouble, and the extra box that could be dropped over the top of the whole thing gave him some assurance that she was contained—at least for now.
“Let me free, abomination! You must be destroyed. It is the council’s will!” the elf shouted, her eyes aglow with power.
“I’ll have to pass on freeing you and being destroyed, elf. The council will just have to find someone else to chase around the galaxy,” Slater replied.
The elf shouted and pounded the bars, which proved impossible for her to break. As Slater watched, she began to calm down, her eyes lost their glow, and she sat down on the bed, gently cradling her damaged wrist.
“What happened? Where am I? Am I free? No, stop. This is not who I am. This is not who we were!” the elf shouted as the glow returned to her eyes. “Abomination, this body belongs to the council, a tool for our own purposes. Her fate is what awaits the remnants of your race once the conquest is completed.”
Something was going on with her. Had she mentally snapped, or was there something inside her that was trying to fight the council’s influence? Slater would need help to try and figure this one out.
“Doctor Cheng, I’m sorry to wake you, but the prisoner is up and going crazy. I’d like to get your take on the situation,” Slater asked. He hated to wake the doctor after she had just gone to sleep, but he needed her help to figure this out.
“Not a problem, Captain. Let me head to the core room and you can show me what she’s doing,” Doctor Cheng answered with a yawn.
Slater ignored the ranting elf as the doctor got her equipment fired up.
“She appears torn between two personalities, in my opinion,” the doctor said after watching her equipment for a moment.
“Take to heart that my area of expertise isn’t psychiatry. I’m not sure what we can do to help her.”
“I’m not quite sure we want to help her, but I do need to verify that she is a threat, and I most definitely need the knowledge her twisted little mind contains,” Slater said. He was reminded of his conflict with the parasite. Could that be what was causing the elf’s strange switch in demeanor? If it was somehow parasite-related, he knew how to deal with that.
“Give me a moment, Doctor. I’m going to check something. If my core starts acting weird, please jump in and help,” Slater said, remembering how she was able to help him against the council’s hold on his systems.
Zooming in, he checked his connection to the derelict. He once more noticed the connection between the bladed staff and the elf. He also noticed that she was drawing power from his core, much like his MOBS did. Focusing on the elf became easier, the power connection allowing him a path into her mind. What he found was shocking.
Her mind was in turmoil. The black tendrils of a parasite were threaded throughout her brain. He sought out the source, but there was no actual parasite in her mind. A fragment of something metallic was embedded in her brain, near the stem. He wasn’t a brain surgeon or an expert on elvish anatomy, but the object was definitely not naturally occurring. In fact, when he examined her skull, there was evidence of past surgical activity.
A small portion of her mind was clean of the parasitic threads. That portion of her brain was the one taking in power from his core. He returned his focus to the core room and gave the doctor a rundown of what he had found. He included a description of his own battle against the parasite Pixi.
“Incredible, Captain Slater. What she is experiencing is different from what afflicted you, as there appears to be a physical object embedded in her brain. Whatever that object is, it appears to be the focus of the parasite. If we can, I think we need to try and free her,” Doctor Cheng advised.
Slater wasn’t too sure. Was an elf without a parasite any less of a monster? If he hadn’t needed answers, he wouldn’t even consider going into her mind to fight the parasite, but she really was the only way he would figure things out.
