by Hugo Huesca
“Incoming!” an NPC shouted behind me. I jumped to my left just in time to avoid an industrial exo-skeleton hauling a bunch of metal crates towards a colossal freighter, shaped like a flying brick.
The sizes and shapes of the spaceships in the hangar were enough to keep me staring the entire night. Even with my limited knowledge of Rune, I could distinguish their function most of the time. The sleek and small ones were fighters, with almost zero cargo space; the bulky ones, round and with heavy-looking backsides, were merchant ships; and the ones in between had to be frigates.
They came in every size and shape. Some of them were modeled after famous spaceships from other videogames or movies. I hadn’t seen Star Wars, but I’d played the ancient flight simulator, and I could see at least three imperial TIE fighters and one rebel X-Wing. I was sure there were others, but I couldn’t recognize them.
It seemed like most of the pilots were players like me. None of them still carried the Terran gray overalls, instead they were dressed like pilots. Some of them had suits like modern military pilots —but in more colors—, others were covered toe to head in power-armor that made them look almost like the SWAT-Drones the police deployed in hostage situations and the like. The ones in the Star Wars ships were dressed as their movie counterparts and I had to wonder how Nordic managed the copyright issue.
Rune offered players as much freedom towards their ships as they offered them with their planets and quests. Some of those ships were even on sale. Dark gold holograms floated above them, as big as the ships themselves, proclaiming its category and the price. The cheapest reached the hundreds of thousands of databytes.
My own wallet included a hundred databytes. I looked at the ships like a street kid staring,¿ during a snowstorm at a warm fireplace inside a house.
But I had my own ship, right? Kipp had gifted it to me so I could reach the Prime sub-sector. It wasn’t listed in my inventory, though.
I imagined myself zipping across space like a blur. Would I feel the speed in Rune? The simulators Kipp and me played when we were kids used old polygonal models and even then they were one of the most fun experiences I could remember. We used to fly in tandem in those that included co-operative gameplay, a duo of destruction that annihilated anything the storyline could throw at us, until the only ones who could challenge us were each other.
Back on Rune’s version of Earth, fighting the mutants was exhilarating. What would it be like to fly?
He said I had to get the ship transported here, I remembered. But that costs money, too, right?
Perhaps someone out here could explain to me how to get a loan from a bank. Or I could start a quest while Rylena arrived?
How do you find a quest giver anyway? I thought. The Terran Federation storyline was out of the question, I had to literally stumble into a quest of my own. How did that worked?
“Hi,” I greeted one of the NPCs in hangar officer uniform. “Do you know where can I get a loan? I’m looking for a bank or something.”
The NPC was a woman in her mid-forties, taller and bulkier than me. She smoked a futuristic cigarette that managed to stay in place on her lower lip as she talked. “A loan, like in a bank? You’ll only find banks willing make business with spacers in deep space. Not in the Argus, of course. Only banks ran by spacers deal with spacers.”
Took me a moment to realize “spacers” was the NPC lingo for “players”. So the only banks for players were ran by players? That sounded… messy. Was Rune Universe supposed to be played with a spreadsheet software?
“Well, I’m in need of some spare cash,” I explained.
“Aren’t we all?” she said. She turned around and the conversation was over.
Boy, some sort of Personal Assistant program sure could come in handy for this kind of things, a part of me thought. Shut up, me. I refuse to learn from my mistakes as a matter of principle.
“If you want to find a quest you need to try a bit harder than just questioning random hangar staff,” a woman’s voice said behind me. “If you press her she may give you a smuggling job, and knowing you, you’ll end up with half the Terran Federation on your tail.”
“But, you don’t know me,” I told her as I turned around. I recognized her from the profile picture of her messages. The pink hair and lips, the glowing cybernetic eyes.
“I know enough,” Rylena snorted. She wore a purple power-suit that added several inches to her height. An advanced drone flew around her like a hyperactive little bird. As she walked closer, she dismissed the little metal ball with a gesture of her hand and pocketed it in her inventory. “For example, you are the guy who waited two days to check the message in his inventory.”
“Pft. Give me a break, it’s my first VRS ever.”
“Which is why Kipp should have put me in charge of this operation from the beginning,” she said, her face stern. “You don’t belong here.”
Now it was me who snorted. “This isn’t a game. You wrote that, remember? Kipp’s my friend and he asked me for my help. So, he has it.”
She stared at me, unmoving, like she was trying to intimidate me into submission.
Is intimidation a skill? I wondered, idly. I refused to play her game and instead blinked furiously.
“Your stats are seriously low,” she muttered, “and you are lacking like seven skill points for someone with your playtime. Did you skip the tutorial?”
“Maybe.”
She rolled her eyes. “I promised Kipp I’d help him solve his murder, not help level-up some noob friend of his.”
“You’re the one who insisted to come,” I said. “If you’ve changed your mind, you can go back to whatever hole you came out of. If you don’t want to help, I’m good on my own.”
To my surprise, she smiled pleasantly and relaxed her shoulders. “I certainly did insist. Kipp told me you were as stubborn as him… We’re going to need that, I suspect. Don’t get up in arms, Cole. We are going to tread dangerous waters, you know? I have to know you are on the level.”
“Oh, really?” I asked, drowning in sarcasm. “Any other insight you want to share?”
“Yes. But not here. You got a ship?”
“Technically. I don’t have money to get it transported here,” I explained. She nodded.
“Most of your databytes you’ll get by mining and farming wreckage from space fights, not by questing. You quest to gain skills faster than by training them, to get notoriety, and to earn favors from NPCs.”
“I thought you guys never broke character,” I said. “Why do you call them NPCs?”
“What else would you call them? Most of the fun is in Alliance fights anyway. Don’t pay too much attention to it, Cole.”
She made me a gesture and I followed her towards the hangar. “This time I’ll spot you the databytes. As a Battlemind, I don’t bother with my own ship, otherwise, we could use it and save us the trouble.”
“How did you get here, then?”
“Booked a passage in three different freighters,” she said. With a flourish, she opened her inventory screen and did some quick operations. “Took me almost an hour. Here, use the terminal over there to call your ship. I already transferred enough funds to your wallet.”
The loan was of ten thousand databytes. Several times my entire net-worth in game, I suspected. I did as she asked and walked over to the terminal. It recognized me and displayed a virtual, low-res, mostly empty hangar. It had one ship at its front.
Do you wish to Transport the “Apollo Wing” to the Argus Space Station?
The price was exactly ten thousand databytes. Welp, there goes my new fortune. I keyed a quick “yes” and the transaction was complete. The ship silhouette disappeared from its virtual environment and a laser-sharp blue light methodically drew the same silhouette in the empty pod in front of me. It reminded me of a 3D-printer, but about a thousand years more advanced.
When it was finished, the laser left behind a ship the size of a frigate with the sleek curves of a fighter. It was marbl
e-white with gold reinforced armor covering half of its front and sides. The cabin’s glass was a polished blue and shaped in a way that reminded me of the old military jets. Blackbirds, I believe they were called.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, breathless. And it was all mine.
“Oh,” said Rylena, who was standing beside me. “Cole, we better leave right now.”
“I know, I can’t wait to fly this beauty,” I said, as proud of my ship as if I’d been the one who built it.
Rylena shook her head. “I mean, right now. That’s the Apollo Wing. It’s a legendary ship.”
“A legendary ship?” I didn’t know the game had those, “that’s fantastic!”
“Yeah, totally,” she said, in a tone that implied the exact opposite, “if you have a battalion of expert pilots and battleships ready to escort you.”
“A battalion?”
She walked towards the ships doors, which were too high for us to climb. I followed her, and the ship sensed my intentions, because a gray metal stair extended down for us like a “welcome” mat.
“Pirates like to jump and steal expensive ships,” Rylena explained. “And I don’t have a million databytes to help you insure it.”
That’s when I realized everyone in the hangar was staring at my ship. A hundred players of all skill-levels and ranks, looking at it with bright, intense, greedy eyes. Some of them reached for their communicators.
“You are obviously a noob and a Diamond-ranked player isn’t going to dissuade anyone from trying their chances at a legendary ship.” Rylena said while climbing towards the door. “Violence is forbidden on the Argus, but we can’t stay here forever, can we? We have to leave before anyone decides to try their luck.”
“How much time do we have?” I asked, following her. Rylena dissappeared on the ship’s interior. One second later, I was inside too.
A small passageway got us to the cabin. If the Apollo Wing’s exterior was beautiful, the interior was a mixture of functional and expensive. I had never expected a space ship to have mahogany furnishings.
Rylena went straight to a disk in the middle of the controls. A holographic map appeared, filled with symbols I couldn’t comprehend.
“Someone gave mercenaries a call already,” she said. “They are trying to blockade the Argus.”
I sat in the pilot’s seat and stared at the controls.
“I don’t think you sitting there is a great idea, you have 0 piloting skills.”
“And you do?” I asked her.
“My character build doesn’t need them, I hire my services to Alliances,” she said.
For a moment, I thought Rylena was right. The controls seemed to be modeled after real aircraft, and as such had hundreds of buttons, lever and digital read-outs that made no sense to me.
C’mon, Cole. Focus. You’ve been here before. Staring at each button, they made no sense. But the entire control panel… Yes, there was a flight stick, with its throttle at the side. That row of levers must be the launching pad… Slowly, like reading in a long forgotten language, the secrets of the control panel revealed themselves before me. Not everything made sense, like what was the radar supposed to say, but enough did.
I flipped a lever and the Apollo Wing came to life. It levitated three meters above the hangar. Readout screens turned on everywhere: fuel, system integrity, energy distribution… I realized I could do this. I could pilot the Apollo.
“You said you’d never played before,” Rylena said, as I finished the launching procedure.
“I haven’t,” this was true. I had never piloted a Rune ship. But these controls were almost identical to my old space simulators. Instead of telling Rylena that, I said, “I’m actually just guessing a lot right now. I wonder what this stick does…”
And I pushed the acceleration at maximum. Rylena screamed something murderous and the Apollo Wing propelled itself at mind-boggling speeds towards the hangar’s walls.
At the last second, I pushed a button on the side of the flight stick and inclined it to the right. The spaceship spiraled to the right and set a straight line towards the hangar’s doors.
The spinning almost launched me out of my seat and made me lurch forward against the controls. Only luck and perhaps a bit of skill allowed me to retain control of the ship instead of crashing against the floor of the hangar. I felt every movement, every shake of the Apollo, could feel how the acceleration pressed my insides against my back. Better to learn this way instead of in combat, right?
Every player near the hangar was looking in our direction. Not admiring my piloting, mind you, but mostly pointing in a panic and diving for cover. A couple experienced pilots rushed towards their own expensive ships and ordered every dredge of energy into their shields.
“There is an autopilot to leave space stations!” Rylena said as we crossed the vast expanse of the hangar, went past the invisible forcefields that separated us from the vacuum, and dove straight into deep space. Like diving into a pool, I could no longer hear anything coming from the outside, and every sound inside the ship was amplified.
“I have to get used to the controls,” I explained. It wasn’t entirely true…
There’s only so many times you can call a person a noob until he wants to show off a little, alright?
“You’re a simulator player,” Rylena said. “That explains why Kipp had that joystick custom-installed.”
“How do you know?”
“It doesn’t have a mahogany finish.”
In front of us, Earth’s curve rose and occupied half the ship’s screens. I had seen pictures. There was no difference with this simulated Earth and the one I came from. Except, right here, in front of me, it was a thousand times more beautiful than any picture.
What would happen if I went to Earth? Could I fly to San Mabrada? Perhaps there was a seventeen-year-old NPC somewhere in the city, lying at night on his sofa, dreaming of another world’s wonders and of a spaceship to chase after them.
“Listen, the mercenaries are after us,” Rylena said, examining the radar’s globe that made no sense to me. “We need to put some distance between them and us before jumping or they’ll just follow us. We can’t go into Earth without a Federation permit or the orbital defenses will shoot us out of the sky, legendary ship or not.”
“Then, what do we do? Can we fight them off?”
“There’s seven of them right here in-system and if we wait, they’ll probably bring their entire fleet here,” she said. “Follow this marker, it leads to Earth’s debris belt. We clear it before them and we can warp in a straight line before they can chase us. It’ll interfere with their radar.”
A green marker appeared on my screen, telling me to go towards a point in my right. I followed the marker and soon the debris belt was in sight. Parts of satellites, derelict ships, orbiting asteroids, and mining equipment extended as far as I could see. Some of them were as big as our ship.
“The shields will take care of the smaller ones,” Rylena said, “but avoid anything as big as the Apollo or you’ll blow our generators.”
“I think we have bigger problems,” I said, pointing forwards. Two menacing fighters painted black came out from behind a Russian stealth satellite. They had three menacing wings with guns at the ends and a blade-shaped cabin, painted black. “They thought the same thing you did.”
“Those are Posse of Iron bounty hunters,” Rylena said, “they are the second biggest Alliance in Rune, so we really want to get out of here before they get a Battleship in Terran Federation space.”
“Got it,” I said, as I positioned the Apollo in a straight flight course. “Sadly for them, they are in my sights.”
As the ships flew towards us, they tried to surround the Apollo by going to its right and left flank. It was a basic “enemy grunt” maneuver in most sims, and I was expecting something like it. I instantly sent the Apollo spinning to the left, clasping at the controls with all my strength as not to lose grip. The Apollo stopped spinning just as th
ey both appeared on screen, one behind the other. Perfect pattern for a laser barrage.
The Apollo unleashed a mighty volley of red lasers much faster than any bullet. I got out about two dozens of them right in the spot the enemy ships would be in one second. I could not hear them in space, but my brain supplied the sound effects: “pew, pew, pew! Lazors!”
With perfect aim, the dozen or so lasers managed to hit every point around the ships while missing them exactly. The stealth satellite blew up in an spectacular explosion. The ships flew onwards and tried to stay clear of easy shots.
“What?!” I yelled, bursting with indignation, “that’s bullshit! It was a perfectly lined shot!”
“How many skill points do you have in shooting? Or in piloting?”
“I don’t need skill points to shoot in a goddamn straight line—!”
“Head for the debris, Cole, I’ll handle the shooting,” she said, and she jumped out of her copilot seat and went to the back of the cabin, somewhere I couldn’t see. “And cut down all this spinning!”
I dove into the debris field, trying to follow a zig-zag pattern and not a straight line. But, my failed attack had sacrificed any positioning advantage I had, and I knew the two fighters were behind me. The Apollo shook as lasers pattered against its rear armor. I hung tightly to the seat, ready for the damage to roll in…
In the cabin’s screen, a blue line over the spaceship armor integrity went slightly down, about five out of a hundred units.
“We’re rolling around in a flying tank!” Came Rylena’s surprised remark somewhere behind me. Then, “I found the turrets, give me an angle!”
“Which side?”
“Starboard!”
So, right side. The shields were down almost ten percent. I had to change position, fast. The two halves of a death transporter approached fast overhead. I flew towards it, the shields absorbing the river of metal and burnt fuselage of whatever impact had killed the ancient craft. Behind me, the Posse of Iron fighters followed suit. At the radar’s center was a miniature Apollo Wing, immobile, and behind it approached two red triangles. From the triangles, two pairs of red pulsing dots emerged and moved forwards, in my direction. An alarm blared in the cabin and I knew that torpedoes were in pursuit. My hands trembled with adrenaline and my mouth tasted of copper. Five seconds and I’d smash against the transporter. Six and the torpedoes would hit.
