Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

by Vasily Mahanenko

  I had never had to pound out such a long message before. Though, I hadn’t done much shorter ones either. I wonder how people managed to communicate in Morse code in years gone by? Besides being incredibly inconvenient, the slightest mistake could flip the entire meaning of the message upside down.

  “R R G O R D…S A Y…K R I E G…D O N E”

  “QSL (I acknowledge receipt) K R I E G…D O N E”

  “RRGORD…RRGOrd…RRgord…rrgord…rrg…”

  The knocking grew quieter and quieter and finally fell silent. Either my companion had fallen asleep or, more likely, had left this world. Every game plot has the same trope: If you passed on the message, you may die with peace of mind. I on the other hand, needed to do some serious thinking…

  And so!

  First—in Galactogon, there is no such thing as a “mission.” That is, the concept exists but not in the form that players of other games are used to: with a journal that contains a record of everything you need to do and how, and with a map of the locality and waypoints upon it designating any critters you haven’t yet killed. There are no alerts, records or hints. Sometimes you won’t even realize that you stumbled onto a unique mission at all. The locals simply ask you about this or that, after which they evaluate how you fulfilled their request—whether you did good or not—and thereby determine whether they’ll maintain a relationship with you or not. In that sense, Galactogon is quite like the real world—the more influential the local asking you to do something, the greater the probability that not fulfilling his request will lead to negative consequences. It’s very difficult to know when a request becomes an assignment, especially for a newbie who’s used to neat mission descriptions popping up in front of his eyes.

  Then again, there are exceptions. According to the forums, the Emperor may issue a call to action to all his subjects, asking them to perform some task he needs done. In the Qualian Empire, such a call has been issued six times over the six years of the game’s existence, so when it comes, everyone drops whatever they’re doing and runs to help the Emperor. Even perfunctory participation in the event, without performing any key functions, is rewarded with a huge bonus to Rapport.

  But this was obviously not one of those instances. Someone, most likely a local, had turned to me in the dungeons of the Training Sector with a request to let another Empire know that some kind of KRIEG or something had been completed. Moreover, I had to relay this message to some guy named Rrgord. Relations between these two empires were not strained—just the opposite: Officially, the Precians were allied with the Qualians, which made encountering one of them in prison all the more strange. Another notable thing about Galactogon’s missions was that they had to be completed in-game. Even if, in real life, I asked some player familiar with Rrgord to pass on the message to this local—nothing would happen. Rrgord would simply not hear the messenger, even if he yelled it right into his ear and posted signs all around him. This was just another limitation in the game…And again, this was all under the assumption that this was a mission and not some ordinary request…Life in Galactogon sure was complicated.

  I memorized the correct sequence to the question “Where are you?” and switched back into the somatic interface where I continued my train of thought.

  Let’s assume this is a mission. Getting to the planet in question isn’t too hard, especially with a ship. The main thing is not to get pulverized by the planetary defenses—about ten class-A orbital stations and one Legendary-class Grand Arbiter. A Grand Arbiter is the apex of battle power in Galactogon. These ships are off limits to players, and each Empire only has about one thousand of them. They are used to combat piracy in the systems under imperial control. Not a single Grand Arbiter has ever been destroyed during the game’s history. Many players have tried, organizing and launching raids targeted specifically at these ships. As such, more than ten thousand ships have challenged one Grand Arbiter before, and only a meager hundred managed to escape the meat grinder that the locals arranged for them.

  But now I’ve gone and gotten distracted again…If this is indeed a mission, then I’ve received it in a very unconventional place. I doubt that players frequently find their way to these solitary cells. According to the guide the beard sent me, I was supposed to be thrown into a general holding cell where I was to approach some guard with a special insignia on his sleeve. But now…Switching again to Third Person mode, I told Stan to scan all Qualian forums for information about the prison in the training sector. I needed to know whether someone has been here or not…

  My mysterious neighbor was no longer responding to the interrogative “Where are you?” which I went on tapping out at minute-long intervals. Having foisted on me the responsibility of passing on the danger warning, it seemed that he really had turned up his toes (or whatever it is that Precians have). Speaking of which, there was no guarantee that he was a Precian at all—he could just as easily have been a Qualian or some a citizen of some other Empire…But here I was thinking about utterly pointless things again…What I needed to figure out at the moment was whether I was ready to wait 20 days in this solitary cell, indefinitely putting off my search for the billion, or risk it and give into my great desire to fulfill this mission I’d stumbled across. If this Rrgord was a person of any note, then he could probably help my search quite a bit…Maybe he could even tell me where the planet I needed was.

  It’s decided then!

  Switching out once more, I told Stan to yank me out of Galactogon only in the event of an emergency. Then, reentering the somatic interface again, I lay down right there on the floor and went to sleep. Twenty days of utter calm and solitude was not a bad price to pay for a chance to escape the utter bottom of the game’s social pyramid…Well, that or find myself in even deeper difficulties…

  Chapter 2

  The Training Sector

  Lying as comfortably on my mattress as my cell’s cold, hard floor allowed, I began to study the details of Galactogon’s political world. A prison is a prison, but no one could forbid me from popping back into reality, gathering everything that Stan had prepared for me, sending it to my character’s mail account and reading as much as I wished. While I was at it, I figured out how the mail system worked. It was a very interesting system and could be best described as “there was no system.” More precisely, players couldn’t communicate with each other remotely without having specialized equipment to do so—transmitters, communicators etc. As a result, the beloved mail system that all games had and which could be used not only to send each other letters, but also to store things (quite a lot of things actually) did not exist in Galactogon at all.

  However, the designers had made one concession to the player himself, which is precisely what I took advantage of now—and that was the player’s personal PDA. This item, which the player could never lose even through death, was a device in which you could make various notes and things. These could then be synched with a special component of the gaming capsule and thereby receive textual information from the outside world.

  And so, the political system of Galactogon…

  There are a total twelve Empires, united unto three alliances, which are in a state of armed neutrality with one another. Officially, the Imperial armies remain at their bases or academies; however, mercenaries and players can do whatever they feel like. Trade routes exist both between and within the alliances; however, to prevent enemies from encroaching deep into their territory, each empire has specialized trade planets which are protected, at times, better than the governing planets. Money is critical in Galactogon because it can solve basically any problem. The Qualians have several trade centers: Adriada, Raydon and, the most popular—Shylak XIV, where more than 60% of commerce with other empires takes place.

  The Qualian Empire is part of the Altan alliance, which includes the Precian and Anorxian empires, as well as Vrakas—not an empire, but a single enormous organism controlled by several individuals. Whereas the Qualians and Precians are humanoids (having two ar
ms and legs and one head, all attached to one body), the Anorxians and Vraxsis are robotic and insectoid respectively.

  As a player who’s started out playing for the Qualians, I can freely travel to any allied empire, having offered my services and requested to land on one of the hundreds of possible planets. The other alliances are closed to me, however. More precisely, they are open to all players except for me—travelling from one alliance to another costs money—real money. It’s one of those things you just have to pay real money for in Galactogon.

  The twenty days flew by almost unnoticeably, spent in reading and dividing my labors: I would spend my daytime in real life and my nighttime in solitary, rolled up in a ball on the tough mattress, observing yet another dream…On the whole, I had no difficulties serving my sentence. The only thing I regretted was that twenty game days ended up becoming a month of real life, during which the other eleven players were going through training and setting out on their quest for the billion-pound prize.

  It seems that my mysterious neighbor really did depart this mortal coil—there were no further knocks during my remaining time in solitary. In fact, there were no other sounds at all, except for the daily buzzing of the dumbwaiter, lowering the next meal to my humble abode. At least the food here was plentiful…

  Stan never managed to find a single mention of solitary confinement in the Training Sector. The jail reserved for rowdy recruits came up, as well as several references to underground tournaments held in it (thus bringing the value of the beard’s information down to zip), but there was simply no mention of solitary. Not once—even in jest. It was as if the dripping walls didn’t physically exist and the place I was in was some kind of febrile dream. No big deal. Judging by the description of jail, if a player ends up in it, then he is even prohibited from studying during his incarceration, whereas I will be able to understand all the basic aspects of life in Galactogon soon enough and from there set out to find that billion-pound check.

  “Recruit Surgeon—step out!” Barely had the incarceration timer reached 00:00 when the door to my cell opened and I was paid a visit by a guard with a rubber club underarm. “Or do you like it so much here that you’ve decided to spend your entire training in isolation?”

  Oh, but this guard has wit! I’m noticing that the developers endowed the locals with a decent intellect—not reserving it simply for the key NPCs. Sometimes in Runlustia, you’d start flirting with some servant girl and she’d just look at you with bovine eyes, totally missing your drift. Even a slight pinch below the waist would hurt her and summon the guards for attacking an NPC. In that game, the developers had not tried too hard to “humanize” each and every NPC, but focused only on the important ones. But here, your ordinary guard was capable of sarcasm—and pulled it off so well that you’d think he was simply created for the purpose. Recalling the local bozo-bully whose job it was to kickstart recruits into moving toward the allocation center, it became clear to me why players were gradually switching more and more to Galactogon. The realism here was an order of magnitude higher than in other games I’d played. In any case, that was my opinion in that moment, and only time would tell whether it was accurate or not.

  Mission: Deliver package to Qualian citizen Zaltoman located on the trade planet Shylak XIV (Coordinates: 7446244 х 3366181 х 4642990). Mission deadline: 2 hours.

  My emergence from solitary was marked with some news. The first—the good news—was that I only had 10 game days remaining in the Training Sector. My twenty days of solitary had counted after all. Unfortunately, that was it for the good news. It turned out that the thirty days of training were divided into five units—repair, science, harvesting/mining, flight training and assault tactics. Each non-core unit entailed four days of instruction followed by an exam. If the player passed, he would earn a novice rank in that field. The rest of the time was reserved for teaching the player’s core occupation—in my case, flight training. If the player failed his core exam, he had only two ways out—either switch his occupation to one in which he had passed the exam, or start all over and redo the Training Sector—another thirty days. In my situation, Repair, Science and Harvesting/Mining were already off limits—I could no longer get official work in these fields. I could let that go—but the most upsetting thing was that I had missed eight days of learning how to fly a ship! And, as though in deference to Murphy’s Law, from solitary they sent me straight into a pop quiz that the instructors had arranged—cramming a bunch of us into some ship simulators…

  One glance at the constellation of buttons speckling the ship’s navigation panel was enough to bring me into utter despair. I had not the slightest idea of what to do. Any log-out into reality during training was strictly punished with an automatic Fail, so I hadn’t much of a choice but to push anything that I came across, hoping that something would work. Damn! If someone were to ask me, for example, where Shylak XIV was and what role it played in Qualian trade policy, I could have replied without hesitation. But how to pilot this ship …Well, I had purposefully skipped this topic in my time during solitary, naïvely assuming that I would start my training from scratch upon release.

  “Are you sure you wish to engage the Accelerator?” No sooner had I pushed some blue button than the simulator replied with a notification on the ship’s flight screen.

  “No,” I declined, pressing the only button I understood, the one that said: “Abort.” The inscriptions on the other buttons were utterly unintelligible, having nothing in common with human language. Instead, they were covered with some kind of squiggles, crosses and circles. I could have been mistaken, but, more than likely, this was the Qualian language. In that case, I’d have to study it too. So much fun…

  “Are you sure you wish to engage the stabilization system?” another notification from the emulator brought me to despair. For eight days, the recruits were lectured on the principles of flight and ship instrumentation—the right buttons to press and the right order to press them in. And not just eight days, but 192 hours of training, during which you could—forget players—teach a monkey to fly a spaceship. No doubt, everyone except for me was already on Shylak trying to find Zaltoman.

  “Yes!” If I understood correctly, the green button beside “Abort” would confirm the action—and the time had come to take a risk. Either I would fail my training now, or take off—logically speaking, one would probably want things to be stable before zooming off through the atmosphere.

  “Stabilization System has been engaged! Warning: No force field detected! Warning: Fuel pumps inactive!—followed by ten more similar warnings. “Your ship has been destroyed! Please leave the simulator—you have failed in your mission…”

  “Recruit Surgeon!” Scarcely had I tumbled out of the giant steel box that served as the model of a ship when one of the Qualians got in my face. “You have failed the mission and are disqualified from further piloting instruction! For the time remaining in this unit, you are being transferred to the logistics division! You will prepare the nourishment for those who place their education first.”

  Well, that’s definitely it now. Since I’ll have to start the Training Sector all over again either way, I can’t afford the luxury of wasting time on becoming a marine. From what I’ve managed to glean about this occupation, the player becomes quickly bogged down in an immense hierarchy—Private to Sergeant to Lieutenant to so on. A marine can’t go off to travel freely before his first battle. If he does so, he’ll be listed as a deserter on all military bases and will suffer an imperial Rapport malus that reflects this status. I don’t need that and I definitely don’t want to run around in an armor suit with blaster in hand terrifying the aborigines. I want to fly, therefore…

  I was already familiar with the sequence of menus leading to the delete character dialog, so it only took a few movements for the final delete confirmation to pop up, after which the Training Sector would welcome a new and somewhat wiser Surgeon, when suddenly:

  “Move it!” the Qualian growled rudely and
pushed me in the back, reminding me of his presence. Tripping over a step in the staircase, I stretched myself out the length of six stairs, triggering the laughter of my escort. “Only worthy recruits have the right to stay on their feet! The other chaff must crawl to the kitchen on their stomachs!”

  The smirk on the Qualian’s face was so irritating that a plan of revenge ripened in my mind. It’s dumb, of course, to seek vengeance against a script, but to delete a character who suffered naught but humiliation in his short life…As a paladin, I could never brook such injustice!

  “What’s up kiddie? Are you upset?” the Qualian continued to sneer. It was precisely these words that finally pushed me to action. Producing the pacifier from my inventory, I aimed it right at his sneering mug and activated it.

  If I have to leave this game, let my parting be a memorable one.

  Like I managed to point out, the denizens of the Training Sector are not very fond of armor. Even the guards were wearing simple leather jerkins, which may as well have been cuirasses considering that almost all the instructors and recruits wore breezy clothes made of some light fabric. I had nothing to lose, since deleting my character would destroy all the items I had acquired, including my two pacifiers. In fact, all that could happen now was a nice bit of entertainment.

  And so, I smeared the Qualian’s sneering mug across the ceiling, smashing him up over and over again. He tried to resist at first, splaying out his arms, but I quickly snapped them against the very stairs he had kicked me into not a minute ago. The nine-foot ceilings did not offer enough height to accelerate him properly, so it took me a while to hammer the Qualian to his death—about thirty seconds. Hardly had his formless mass crumpled to the floor (with, to my surprise, not a drop of blood escaping it) when I received another notification about decreased Rapport with the empire and heard a siren begin to blare. To hell with it! I spent twenty days sitting around in full solitary and now have every right in the world to entertain myself!