"No one will hold you back, just as no one will forbid you from having friends, girlfriends, favorites and even lovers in Perimeter Defense. But the rules of the game remain as before: you cannot reveal the fact that you are in Crown Prince Georg's body, and you must hold out for six months while fighting back the Alien attacks. And another rule, just from me: you cannot divorce my character in game. You also cannot have more children, and you must defend the Unatari star system at any cost. These are crucial issues. Failing at any of them will result in in your contract being terminated with no pay. And, what's more, I would have no more reason to give even the tiniest shit about keeping you alive in the real world. Consider this both a warning and an official rule."
I frowned, though I did understand Miya’s reason for insisting on these demands. The last thing she needed was another player in a position to disrupt her schemes. Her demands were basically fair. I had nothing against them and only asked one clarification:
"Miya, I can easily understand the divorce part. In the game world, it would threaten little Crown Princess Deia's position in society. I can also understand why no more children. Your daughter has no need for competition or other heirs. But what makes Unatari in particular so special?"
Miya looked at me with something like pity, as if she was once again frustrated with my intellectual capabilities:
"Don't you know? Because, according to the game storyline, Deia should be sleeping soundly in her nursery on Unatari right now. And your mission is to protect your daughter from danger, no matter the cost."
"Let's clarify the mission then. Do I need to protect Deia or the Unatari star system? If I take her out of Unatari to a safe location, will protecting Unatari remain a priority mission?"
She considered it briefly, then said:
"Ruslan, of course, you are right to question this. The only problem is that, unfortunately, your bright idea came too late. You won't be able to get Deia out of Unatari. I am not a normal player, after all, but a Truth Seeker with terrifying abilities. The game admins trust me. My character can be away from Perimeter Defense for long stretches of time. For now, my daughter is serving as a beacon for me; I can always return to the game through her. That means I can slip into the game without the admins noticing. But there are technical nuances here that make doing that somewhat difficult. I need that very exit point to stay right where I left it. As briefly as possible, protecting the Unatari star system is of critical importance not only to me, but to you as well. If it is lost, you will not be able to leave Perimeter Defense and get back to the real world."
"Am I understanding correctly that you will not be with me in Perimeter Defense then?" I asked, clearing up an important point, which the redheaded beauty verified.
"Yes, that's true. In the game, I am too vulnerable to my master, so I don't want to risk being near you."
"You don't trust me?" I laughed.
"Of course not. I don't trust anyone at all. Not you, not Mr. G.I., and not the game admins. Do you think I could have lived this long in Perimeter Defense if I was the trusting type? I leave you the ability to call me three times for a short period, but only if extremely necessary. Making a jump between the game and the real world is very tiring, even to me. Do you understand my conditions?"
I responded with a silent nod.
"So then, we can consider the contract agreed upon. I see no reason to sign it. The last time that was done just for atmosphere, to make you sense the weight of your decision. You won't be able to take paper copies with you into the game anyway and, what's more, there's no time for such senselessness. Georgiy can barely wait. Alright then, you need to prepare your mind for the transfer."
"And how do I do that?" I wondered. Miya explained:
"You need to fall asleep or get very drunk. As we have very little time, I suggest the easy way: here are some sleeping pills."
Miya extended her hand, revealing a pair of unstamped pills in a yellow glossy packet. My whole life's experience, and all my cautious instincts were crying out at that moment that it was a bad idea to take unknown drugs from the hands of someone I barely knew, but I willed the voice of reason down to a dull whisper. I washed down the two semi-sweet pills with a swig of mineral water and started waiting.
I was already feeling it ten seconds later. The restaurant began swimming before my eyes. The two enforcers at the neighboring table took on the appearance of Ravaash soldiers. Miya's clothing changed from an orange dress into a set of brightly colored ribbons, and her straight red hair, previously styled down, crawled up into a bun. I started feeling quite sure that I had just made the biggest mistake of my life.
"Clean up after us!" Miya said to the lizards in Imperial language, and both reptiles gave affirmative nods in reply.
The Truth Seeker looked at her watch, then at me.
"Ugh, Ruslan. Pray we won't be late, and that I have enough energy..."
The last thing I noticed, already losing consciousness, was Miya stretching out her hand to the Chinese souvenir lying on the table, carelessly popping the transparent package open and... tossing the "plastic pearl" right down her throat!
* * *
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
My body arched back in severe pain, and I pried open my eyes in horror. There was a blinding white light. There were some darkened figures bending over me. The voices were gurgling, as if speaking under water.
"His pulse is falling again!"
"Clear!"
I couldn't figure out what to even react to before another of the figures was bowing down over me. The defibrillator shock forced my body to buckle in again. I screamed. Actually, instead of a deafening scream, I was only able to squeeze out a barely audible whimper. There were tubes down my throat and an oxygen mask on my face getting in the way.
"We have a pulse!"
"His pupils are reacting to light!"
"Brain activity detected!"
"Blood pressure: sixty over thirty and rising!"
"Give me two CC's of nanite-7. We need him to start improving faster."
I felt a needle poke into my neck. I tried to concentrate and focus my eyes, but I couldn't. As before, I could only see the people as dark, blurry contours. My hearing, though, was stabilizing gradually.
"Arrhythmia worsening," came a voice belonging to a young woman. "Pulse unstable: fifteen beats per minute. Should we give him another shock?"
"No, that won't be necessary. There should already be enough oxygen in the blood. His blood pressure is stabilizing,” replied another voice with a strange accent, sounding almost inhuman.
"Pulse is at twenty-eight and rising."
"Blood pressure is at seventy-five over forty. Brain activity increasing."
"Patient conscious!" The joyful scream of the third figure rang in my ears.
One of them bent down over me. I tried to focus my vision and, with surprise, I saw Miya in surgeon's whites with a mask on her face. She was looking down at me with panic and suddenly locked eyes with me.
"I can tell that you can hear and understand me. Ruslan, you scared the crap out of me! The transfer wasn't totally smooth. I don't really know why. Maybe, despite all my tricks, some automatic defense mechanisms from the admins detected the change in IP-address or ID-capsule. Your account was banned. In the game it looked like a sudden heart failure. You spent three minutes clinically dead. I spent practically all my energy trying to pull you back from the other side. But you were able to squeeze out. The character is unblocked, and that is all that matters.
Take care of yourself, get your strength back. For now, like I said, I'll have to leave you. There's no point in trying to call me into Perimeter Defense for the next month and a half or so. I simply won't have the power for another jump. So, you'll have to deal with everything on your own. The Unatari defense forces are waiting for you.
Good luck!"
Capital Encircled
It was difficult for me to wake up. My panicked, disjointed dream just didn't want to let me
go. Finally, I opened one eye and took a look around. On the walls and ceiling, there were gilded lamps in the shape of natural crystals. To my left, there was a huge bronze statue of an unknown creature with eight limbs. The room was familiar, but I simply couldn't imagine where I'd seen it before. Maybe it was that hotel in Turkey? But no, there was a huge picture window in that hotel room. Just instinctively, I called up the interactive map to get my bearings. It wasn't the first time in the last few months I had tried to do so out of habit. I hadn’t actually succeeded, though, until this very moment. Before my eyes appeared a semitransparent map.
Seventh dormitory wing of the space yacht, Queen of Sin
The last traces of my dream instantly left me. That’s right! I was in the game again! For a second, the previous day flashed before my eyes. The clinic, the call from an unknown number, negotiations with Miya, terrified doctors leaning over me... By the way, how did that story with the bungled character change end, and how was it affecting my health? I carefully moved my arms and legs, then felt my chest. On my body, under a layer of long underwear, I detected some flat, round stickers plastered on my skin, which clearly contained some kind of medical equipment. They didn't make me feel uncomfortable, or impede my movement, so I let them be. In fact, I forgot about them quickly, as my gaze was caught by something else: a huge gut that should not have been there. The starship echoed with my enraged scream. The only words that were not swearing were interjections.
All the success I had had improving his body, which had taken me six months of hard work to accomplish, had been undone by my replacement in no time at all! That... bad man, Mr. G.I., had once again put on weight, returning his figure to its initial state. His body was once again swimming in flab! I needed to see this from another angle right away in order to evaluate the scale of the disaster.
I carefully set my bare feet on the ground and tried to stand. My head was spinning slightly, though it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. And it definitely was better than what you could expect out of a body that had truly just lived through clinical death. I took a few steps and stopped in front of a huge mirror. The man in the mirror looking back at me was very fat, with a noticeable white spot in his dark hair. What's that then? When my last contract had ended, Crown Prince Georg had just a couple little gray hairs in his thick, dark mane. Astra had even experimented with trying to pluck them. The man looking back at me now had graying hair, and looked bulbous and old. And the shoulders... I even took the semitransparent white turtle-neck off to check with my eyes if the mirror was lying. The tattooed three-eyed skulls were gone. From my right shoulder, the little winged ass was smiling up at me once again, his eyes bulging out as if constipated. On my left forearm, there was a naked beauty with bright red hair lying in a seductive pose. The unknown artist of the sketch had perhaps exaggerated the voluptuousness of the female form a bit, but it was easy to recognize who it was supposed to be.
So then, what else? My right eye, wounded once upon a time in combat with the Aliens had healed completely and was working as normal again. The web of scars on the Crown Prince's face had disappeared, probably removed with the help of good cosmetic surgeons. Georg had left just one thin white scar, clearly intentionally, which went from his eyebrow down along the right cheek to the lip, giving his face an appearance of stern masculinity. The fact that a manly soldier's face did not make for a harmonious combination with his pear-shaped, bulky body, which undulated when he walked like a slab of bacon, probably had not occurred to Mr. G.I. His body looked somewhat comical, like a hastily glued-together Frankenstein made of two different men.
Yep. I'll have to deal with the body again. I already realize he’s been neglecting it, and I'll have to do all that hard work in the gym over again. But now, I should check to see what had happened with his characteristics. I took a look at my character's information:
Georg royl Inoky ton Mesfelle, Crown Prince of the Empire
Age: 48
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Aristocrat/Mystic
Achievements: Chameleon Elder Female, Discovered Arite Race, Alien Killer, Researcher of the Unknown, Imperial Conqueror, Ex-Fleet Commander for Sector Eight, Malingerer, Abandoned Friend, Denied Paternity
Fame: 31
Standing: -52
What??? My eyes rolled back into my head, both from the overabundance of new "achievements," as well as from my now utterly ruined standing. On a purely technical level, I had no idea how he had managed to let his character's standing fall by 100 points in just three mo... Wait a second! With confusion, I stared at the date in the corner of the interactive menu. Impossible. It hadn't been just three months since the end of the last contract, but a whole seven!!! How?!
Seven months! Princess Astra should already have given birth to my child! On a related note... the indelible, shameful brand "Denied Paternity" was probably related precisely to that event. After all, it would seem that I had made no reaction when the legal deadlines for recognizing a child came and went, so the child not only did not become a Crown Prince, but did not even get a "ton" attached to its name, meaning it didn't even have confirmation of noble birth... Feeling vexed, I banged my fist on the fatass looking back at me in the mirror, as if the reflection was guilty of something.
Damn, I even bruised my hand! I shook my beat-up fist.
Miya! I'll strangle that bitch if I ever see her again!!! I recognized clearly now that she was a lying villain, and had tricked me. The red-headed lady's story about the game for the military didn't really click with my experience: the "souvenir" I brought ended up being real crystals, time was passing at different rates, and... if you thought about it... there were two Chameleons, who had somehow gotten out of the game into the real world. I had been sold and, promising me the moon, popped right back into Perimeter Defense.
I sat down on the edge of the huge bed. Seven months had passed. The thought of it! And my fleet... Here I was struck by a cold sweat. Joan the Fatty and the ships with her! The crews had been sitting on their laurels with no pay for more than half a year. And, to top it all off, they were God-knows-where in Swarm territory! They must have run out of provisions long ago. The ships wouldn't have been able to pay for repair or technical service at Iseyek stations, nor even replace the fuel in their reactors. And I bet they're cursing their commander with every breath in their bodies!
I would have to fix this situation right away! I must transfer the funds to my ships! By the way, how was the money situation? I opened the internal finances interface... and closed it right away. There were just one-point-five million credits left in the account. But then what, I wonder, was Mr. G.I. able to spend the three hundred million I had left him with on? New sculptures for the yacht? I tried to figure out the transaction history from the account, but it had been very thoroughly cleared.
So then, I should think about what to do with the situation I'd inherited. I had a miserable amount of money, my fleet was God knows where, the fate of those close to me was unknown, and also there was the fact that the Mystic class had reappeared in my character information. This all bore eloquent witness to the fact that Georg had once again become very addicted to narcotic crystals. To be honest, my arms just sank...
I tried to call the Chameleons in hope of receiving an answer to my questions. However, no one came to my call. And that was also strange.
I calmed down a bit and went off to search for any kind of clothes. It isn't appropriate for a noble Imperial Crown Prince to promenade around in his underwear, even on his own yacht. Fortunately, I found a clothing cabinet in the very same room. I dug through the whole wardrobe but, for some reason, couldn't find even one military uniform. Not the Sector Eight Fleet Commander's one, and not even an Orange House uniform of any kind. What the hell? The only thing I could find were two frivolous flashy peacock outfits, a pair of multi-colored tights and bright pink and purple shoes. I even first supposed that I had accidentally gotten into my wife's closet, but wha
t stopped me was the fact that the gargantuan swim trunks I found could fit four women Miya's size. Also, the size eleven pink shoes with magnetic fasteners would clearly have been a bit large for the Truth Seeker.
Having somehow gotten dressed, hoping that I didn't look too comical, I took another look around the room. Now, after calling up the interactive map, I finally remembered: yes, I had been here before. It was a bedroom, one of the thirty that belonged to Crown Prince Georg royl Inoky ton Mesfelle on the luxurious yacht. At the very beginning of my time in Perimeter Defense, I had visited it a few times, but mostly chose to stay and sleep in completely different rooms. I stood with difficulty and, simply for curiosity's sake, approached the many-armed bronze titan, which clearly served as the main decoration in the room.
"Ma-radgi, the last soldier," by Veron ton Gep
Its information dutifully popped up before me, telling me fairly sparsely about the figure. The inscription on the stand said the same thing.
The statue of a huge bronze octopus looked like a number of shaggy tentacles poking out through a crack in a rock face. Nothing in its form served to indicate that this creature was a fierce warrior, and not simply a hunter relaxing after a satisfying meal or a doting mother protecting her children. But I decided that the sculptor probably knew best, especially if that sculptor was the great Veron ton Gep, whose artistry I had recently heard Miya lauding. In my previous contract in Perimeter Defense, I had realized once and for all that I knew nothing about art, and so I didn't get at all upset by not understanding the sculptor's concept.
"Prince Georg, are you awake yet?" A resonant female voice rang out right behind me. I almost screamed in surprise.
I turned around, trying to put on a look somewhere between bored and lofty, as if walking around the starship in this flashy peacock getup was the most normal thing in the world for the Crown Prince. But I was, unfortunately, unable to pull off the high-and-mighty look with my stomach swaying side to side in inertia, making a gurgling sound as it jostled. I noticed a fleeting smile pass over the face of the young girl with short dark hair in an Orange House Fleet uniform.
New Contract (Perimeter Defense Book #3) Page 3
