Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “Welp,” I decided, “let’s take her out and see what this scout wants—and what The Space Cucumber can do. Let’s dance, boys!”

  Chapter 4

  The First Battle and its Aftermath

  “Shields are up. We’re ready for battle,” said Lestran as soon as I finished the preflight check. That took me about ten minutes, during which the scout managed to traverse half the solar system. Annoyed at my own carelessness (why didn’t I just sign in earlier and bind the launch procedure to one button?), I gritted my teeth and hoped that the scout had not travelled too far. I really wanted to test The Space Cucumber in battle and the scout made for a perfect practice target. The emulator had taught me how to fly but no emulator could prepare you for combat with real players. That kind of experience only came through real battles. The only silver lining I saw was that the scout was at most a D-class and therefore wasn’t likely to be equipped with active sensors. In other words, the scout hadn’t seen us sitting on our planetoid.

  “Let’s go,” I said nervously and lifted the frigate from the planetoid’s surface. As I piloted, I barked orders at myself for the sake of practice: “Bearing 200, thrust at 50%.”

  “They’ve seen us,” Lestran instantly announced. Indeed, the scout was turning sharply in our direction. According to the forums, the Qualian Emperor had made no mention of The Space Cucumber being armed, so everyone basically reckoned us easy prey that, beyond simply being destroyed, could also be boarded and captured. Judging by her actions, the scout had a crew of three—two of whom were about to try to get on board my ship. Well, well…

  “Jerks aboard frigate The Space Cucumber,” said a mocking voice over the ship’s comm, “my terms are as follows: Surrender your ship, return the engines and restart the game with new characters. Neither you, Surgeon, nor you, Lestran, have any more business in Galactogon!”

  “Greetings to you too, three derps in a scout,” I replied, no less mockingly, “I hope you have something fun to do with the time until your next respawn. Our fun will be blasting you to pieces!”

  “Yeah? Best of luck with that. Ey, Dora—light ‘em up…”

  Thrust 100%, bearing 22, roll to portside…As I had assumed, an emulator was one thing and real players who knew how to fly were something else entirely. The idea was supposed to be that we approach one another until our weapons are in range and then trade shots head to head. The scout, however, released two torpedoes at us and then darted sharply upwards. Of course, in space upwards and downwards don’t really make sense, so more precisely, the scout turned perpendicular to us, baiting us with his bilge a little too obviously…

  “Oh! I’m going to let him have it in his belly!” Lestran chortled, seeing our enemy’s maneuver.

  “Hold your fire!” I commanded, sensing a trap. My meager experience with flying a ship—all ten minutes of it—was screaming that this was not something one should do. It followed that this was some kind of ruse. “Work on the incoming torpedoes, without using the cannons. That’s an order!”

  “How am I supposed to knock them out without shooting them?” Lestran asked surprised. “They’ll smash our shields to pieces.”

  “In that case, we’ll perform a tactical retreat,” I decided, turning the ship sharply around. According to the manual, a torpedo’s effective range was 0.1 parsecs, so all we had to do was run for the other end of the solar system.”

  “Where ya going there guy?” the scout came over the intercom again, as soon as I had turned the frigate and begun to flee the torpedoes. Having engines of their own, the missiles instantly adjusted their trajectory, but their engines were no match for The Space Cucumber’s.

  “I’m going to a part of the solar system that doesn’t stink as much as this one,” I said. “I’ve heard that end there’s a pleasant-smelling place.”

  “Why’d you do that, Surgeon?” asked Lestran. “We could’ve destroyed the torpedoes, after all.”

  “I want to see what The Space Cucumber is capable of,” I said honestly. “How she behaves during acceleration, how well she maneuvers. For instance, we haven’t even pushed these new engines to twenty percent yet. Why not try it out? We should use the chance we have now, before someone a bit scarier shows up and we have more pressing problems to deal with.”

  “You’re waiting for someone scarier?”

  “Of course! Surely that scout’s already sent our coordinates to his people and there’s a frigate just like ours on its way here. I doubt this guild would have a cruiser—but a frigate surely. It took us thirty minutes to get here. Let’s play tag with the scout for ten minutes and get down to business after that.”

  The scout could not have more than four torpedoes on board, two of which were already somewhere out there. I wasn’t too worried about the beam cannons. To breach our shields, they would have to shoot at us point blank for several minutes, which obviously I’d never allow. Two more torpedoes, however, did make me nervous, so I went on playing tag. Better safe than sorry, if you ask me.

  “Running’s no good,” smirked the scout, briskly adjusting his course and heading to cut us off.

  Bearing 120, thrust at 45%—I adjusted The Space Cucumber’s trajectory relative to the chasing torpedoes and scout, leaving them further behind us. If Runlustia had no flying in it, I’d probably be in trouble now—it was very difficult to orient oneself in a three dimensional space. Even two hours in the emulator—during which the system had prompted me with what I needed to press and when, as well as what to look for and what could be ignored—was not enough to get a hang of piloting. Only practice could do that—and a lot of practice at that.

  “Okay, I’m a bit puzzled,” Lestran spoke up again. “According to the mechanics, our beam cannons are powered by the ship’s powercore, meaning we don’t have to worry about ammo or anything …If I were in the scout, I’d already be wondering why we’re running instead of trying to knock down their shields.”

  “Agreed,” I replied after a slight pause during which I checked my PDA. Beam cannons would keep on shooting as long as there was power for them, and we had tons of power to spare. “Use the tail turret.”

  “Roger…though, it’s pointless at the moment. We can’t knock down those torpedoes—they have their own shields—and shooting at the scout from this range…I’m not that confident in my abilities. Anyway, the tail turret consumes power like no other. I only brought this stuff up so you’d know.”

  “Then we’ll just continue on our way,” I reasoned, yawing even further to port and throttling up to 60% thrust. Hmm…This girl was pretty spry—both the scout and the torpedoes quickly fell far behind us.

  “And how long are you planning on running scared?” came the mocking voice. “You know, I’m getting tired of this. My dinner’s going cold back in real life!”

  “Multiple bandits to portside, starboard and straight ahead! They’re all around us!” yelled Lestran, seeing what I saw: Five more scouts jumped out of the depths of space, surrounding us—two high and low on both flanks, and one more ahead of us. No matter what vector we’d take now, at least two scouts could move to intercept us. What could I say? These boys really had played this one well.

  “Maybe you’re done wasting our time now?” asked the same voice. The torpedoes launched earlier were far behind. The monitor was showing that they had reached the limits of their range so I didn’t have to worry about them any longer. But the newcomers were a pressing problem as it was.

  “Any ideas?” I asked Lestran, trying to calculate some way out of this mess. Six versus one—not deadly odds, but I still didn’t have enough piloting skills to be sure of surviving, much less winning this one. Lestran had no ideas either. “In that case, we’ll have to improvise. Here we go!”

  The sharp turn made my head spin for a second—the ship’s artificial gravity responded perfectly, while the gaming capsule translated the inertia to our frail bodies.

  “Hold on!” I warned my companion by rote habit, worked out in Runlustia wher
e you really could fall off a griffon if you didn’t hold on. “Once we’re within 200 clicks, launch a torpedo and be ready to deflect the two that he still has.”

  “Roger. I’ll let him have it right in his mug!” Lestran answered joyously, feeling the heat of battle.

  At 80% thrust, we were simply flattened into our seats. I don’t know how Lestran felt about it, but even in my armor, which soaked up the majority of the inertia, I felt extremely uncomfortable. Note for the future—all pilots should be made to wear this sort of gear. For some reason, I hadn’t come across this mentioned anywhere, as if it was just assumed by default.

  “The hell are you doing, ya jerk?!” the first scout’s voice suddenly sounded surprised. The scouts above and below us began to move to help him, but were catastrophically behind—catastrophically for the first scout, that is…

  “Fire!” I yelled as soon as the distance between us and the scout reached zero.

  “Fox Three away! It’s locked on!” Lestran yelped happily, managing his duties despite having to work two stations. “Torpedo inbound, portside. I’ll try to deflect it with the shields.”

  “You’re one dead newb…” came over the speakers right before a notification popped up before me:

  You have earned the “Destroyer Rank I” Achievement. Experience required to level all your vessels has been decreased by 1%.

  New level reached: Frigate The Space Cucumber (Class-D) is now Level 78. Durability and power restored by 30%.

  “Grab anything you can,” I ordered, making another sharp bank and stopping The Space Cucumber in the spot where our torpedo had smashed into the scout. Our scanners were now showing wreckage in its place, and that’s exactly what I wanted. “You have ten seconds!”

  “A repair kit! Got it!” my partner instantly replied. “Allows us to repair 5% of the ship’s paintjob. Shall we get out of here?”

  “Why?” I smirked. “The game’s only beginning…We’ll continue in the same vein!”

  Bearing 90, thrust to 75% and yaw to portside—which, as the flight instructors advised, allowed you to dodge the majority of beam shots without having to use your shields—and we were already flying headlong into the next scout, approaching us from the right.

  “He’s belly-flopping again!” This scout jerked up her nose and showed us her bilge, almost begging us to send a torpedo straight into it. A strange maneuver considering that his allies were approaching us from all sides. “Should I fire?”

  “No!” I replied again in the negative. Instead, I made another bank, turning the frigate 180 degrees.

  “Take it easy!” groaned Lestran when I jacked the engines to 85% power. “You’re not transporting potatoes over here!”

  “Fire!” I yelled, nearing our pursuers. It seemed that the pilot of the scout behind us had not expected a seemingly ordinary frigate to be so agile and so was late with his belly-flopping maneuver. No sooner had he begun to pitch his nose than there were a mere 200 clicks between us (a click being Galactogon’s standard unit of distance). Whatever the point of their fancy maneuver, these guys were already too late.

  “Roger that! Fox Three! It’s a hit! Crap! Two more torpedoes—incoming from portside. Our shields won’t deflect them!”

  “We’re leaving.” Turning The Space Cucumber 90 degrees, I headed away from our pursuers. There was no time to pick up the loot from the second downed scout—there were three ships already within breathing distance from us. Maybe a little latter…Thrust to 70%, bearing 140…

  “Shields to stern. Four torpedoes inbound aft—two are fizzling though.” Lestran narrated the information scrolling across his screen. “Surgeon! Look!”

  My HUD began to pulsate, but I had already spied our next quarry with my own eyes—the scout that had shown us her bilge earlier hadn’t managed to adjust in time and had fallen behind the pack. Three ships were chased us as fast as they could and the one that fell behind was trying to intercept us, having launched a torpedo as a screen. She was the next one on the menu then…Even if the belly-flopping was a trap, which I didn’t doubt for a second, I wanted to see what the purpose of that strange maneuver was.

  Bearing 90, thrust to 80% and off we went!

  “I’m hammering the torpedo’s shields.” I didn’t have to explain anything to Lestran—he already understood what I wanted him to do. “Got it! No new torpedoes…He’s diving up again! Should we wait?”

  “Let him have it all the way,” I advised. “I want to know what all the belly-flopping is about!”

  An explosion blossomed straight ahead of us and instantly vanished in the vacuum of space—the torpedo that Lestran had hit hadn’t lived a long time.

  “I’ve got a lock!” my partner informed me. “Fox Three is away. Contact in five…four…three…two…what in the hell?!”

  Indeed, that was the right question and I had to make a note to myself to check out how I could equip The Space Cucumber with that thing. As our torpedo neared its target, a hatch slipped open in the scout’s bilge and some kind of strange device popped out—and somehow captured our torpedo. The giant missile, equipped with its own shields and engine, enabling it to dodge its target’s beam weapons, was suddenly locked down by some kind of force field, which jammed all its functions—even our sensors lost track of the torpedo, as if it had detonated. This was no good. I wasn’t about to hang around and keep feeding these scouts with extra munitions.

  Thrust 95%, yaw to portside, bearing 90 and The Space Cucumber began to zoom away from her pursuers with all her virtual sails. I had no desire to stay and finish them off. I wasn’t that experienced yet and it would have been dumb to risk all that Raq in our cargo holds. We needed to escape this system before someone even scarier showed up.

  “Enough fighting,” I explained my maneuver to my partner. “We need to offload the Raq and find a homeworld before we start taking risks. Therefore…Oh boy! Lestran, battle stations!”

  This last exclamation was intended more for myself, since my partner was already boosting the shields to maximum.

  “You said that they wouldn’t have a cruiser! Just look at that thing!”

  “I was wrong! We have no time to turn—we’ll head right into her! As soon as we get closer, launch the torpedoes! All shields forward! I’m going full throttle!”

  My panic was understandable—a leviathan had surfaced from the depths of space to pay us a visit. The cruiser Dauntless Warrior was a D-class vessel like The Space Cucumber and yet by all indications, she surpassed us exponentially in everything except perhaps speed and maneuverability. It looked like it would be better to just dump the Raq and run than to try and fight this humongous, terrifying and deadly vessel—which, appearing not far from us, opened fire without any preliminaries or discussions.

  I wondered how many interceptors were in there. According to the manual, giants of her size could carry up to 120 interceptors, 10 harvesters, plus scouts and transports—oh, and about 500 marines to top it all off. I really doubted that this guild could have mobilized so many players (even to avenge the scouts we’d downed) on such short notice, so it was safe to assume that Dauntless was operating at half capacity. Or, more likely, a skeleton crew of fifteen players, the minimal amount required to fly her. So we still had a chance to get through, but the last thing I wanted was to tangle with any interceptors at the moment.

  “They’re going to burn through our shields!” Lestran almost whimpered, watching his screen.

  “It’ll be okay. We have some powerful engines in this baby. They’ll get us through,” I replied, trying to thread our ship between the fatal beams of Dauntless’s ten nose cannons.

  My plan was as simple as it got—fly at full speed right under the hull of the enemy cruiser, launch all our remaining torpedoes (for fun) and then get the heck out of this stupid system—first using our regular engines and after—when we got a minute of peace—by jumping to hyperspace. By the time that giant tub turned herself around and picked up steam again, our trail would have long
gone cold.

  “Ten torpedoes heading right for us! Damn, I don’t have time to both hang the shields and do point defense!”

  “Don’t worry—if we make it out of here, we’ll find us a gunner. Heck, we’ll get two! Hang on—we’re passing under her hull…”

  “No-no-no! Not under her hull!” Lestran screamed wildly, forcing me to reflexively yank the frigate aside.

  “Full shields to starboard!” I yelled, realizing that I had just served us up on a plate. The cruiser, however, didn’t rush to take advantage of this chance to burn down our starboard. Instead, her bilge flickered, unleashing a larger version of the flea catcher we’d seen earlier. This time, though, we were the flea. Interceptors began to file out of the cruiser along with the device, but this wasn’t important anymore: We had already been captured by the flea catcher’s force field.

  “Frigate The Space Cucumber! This is the captain of Dauntless Warrior speaking. If you surrender peacefully, we are prepared to allow you to keep ten percent of whatever’s in your cargo holds. You have one minute to make your decision. I know that you have no self-destruct mechanism on your ship and I will not allow you to jump to hyperspace. If you do not comply, I will take everything and send you back to your Planetary Spirit. The minute starts now.”