Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “I know another participant—a woman. I have a request: Could you make sure she’s resettled? I really wouldn’t like for another out-of-control flyer to fall onto Lucille.”

  “All of the remaining contestants will be resettled today. So your request is too late. Is that all?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “I have nothing to hide, so I give you permission to use my private data as you see fit. I understand that you will use it anyway, but for the sake of the record…Tell me, is Eunice, one of the three who were with me, still alive?”

  As much as I wished to refrain from broaching this topic, Eunice and I had spent a night together and, as a true gentleman, I was compelled to take an interest in her wellbeing. She wasn’t going to talk to me and she had deleted her vidphone account, so I could only find out through the old man how she was doing. What if she was one of the six victims?

  “Please wait for the court order and continue your search for the prize planet. Thank you for giving us permission to use your private data. That makes things a bit easier for us…And, yes, she is still alive.”

  The screen blinked and then dissolved, leaving me deep in thought. So that’s how it was!

  We really were being targeted and eliminated—and the organizers of this “last man standing” contest had really taken an interest in the massive demise of their contestants. Considering their status, I had to assume that they had checked everyone and everything. And yet, the flyer that had come crashing down onto my house couldn’t care a bit about that—as well as whoever had arranged for that to happen…

  A few hours later, as promised, I received the court order decreeing my house arrest. The police took all the issues of settling the matter with the flyer’s owners on themselves. I was assured that my childhood home would be completely repaired in a matter of weeks, settlement money quickly appeared in my account and it was already late at night when I could finally count on some peace from the day’s happenings. I couldn’t even think about signing back into Galactogon to temporarily forget the day’s events. At three in the morning, Stan gave me a dose of sleeping pills and insisted I take them. According to him, I was beginning to show signs of prolonged, heightened blood pressure and would run the risk of a stroke if I went on this way. Only after I took the pills and sat down on my couch did I understand the magnitude of the shock I had experienced. Once my body relaxed, my psyche lost all control. I began crying like a little child whose favorite candy had been taken away—and was utterly incapable of stopping. My tears flowed like a river and all I could do was simply wipe them away and wait for the next batch, pressing my knees to my chest. It’s embarrassing to admit, but the best paladin of Runlustia, the winner of tournaments and vanquisher of terrible monsters was sitting and bawling like a little child, having realized that he could have easily been in the place of the person who had replaced him. If Stan hadn’t found me this house, then there would have only been five contestants left…

  Jesus Christ!

  I finally fell asleep late in the morning when the sunlight had already begun to stream through my shutters. At some point my eyes closed and when I opened them again, it was night out.

  “Good evening, Master!” Stan’s voice instantly greeted me. “Repair work on your house has already commenced. You have received $700,000 in damages from the trucking company. This amount is on top of the cost of the repairs. The insurance company has also paid out for your claim on the house in the amount of…”

  Stan went on, explaining how the flyer that came crashing down on my house was actually a quite profitable incident—but I only began to shake all over again. It’s not like something like that happens every day, after all.

  “Get the capsule ready,” I interrupted his report. “How is your search for the vector to Blood Island going?”

  “As I already told you, I do not have enough resources to perform this task in a timely manner,” Stan instantly switched over to the topic at hand and began making excuses. “There is insufficient information to…”

  “Alright, I’m changing the assignment,” I said, getting to my feet. “The old one’s not so important now…”

  Having fled to Galactogon, I found my team in the same exact place where I’d left them a day and a half ago. The three animal-robots stood frozen like wax figures, patiently awaiting their commander’s orders and making absolutely no move to deal with their own business. Unlike the players, who have their limits, this team was utterly perfect for my search of the planet with the check. A thought instantly flashed across my mind—why would I ever abandon this round ship and return to The Space Cucumber? Marina would probably be more than happy to buy my old frigate, since she had invested quite a bit of money into her anyway. And this sphere would be more than enough for me, even regardless of her level and speed. She had an advantage you couldn’t argue with—she didn’t need a human crew. For instance, what if I had decided to sign into the game at night and my human crew was nowhere to be found. Then I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere or do anything. Thanks but no thanks: I didn’t need such encumbrances during my search. It was quite enough that flyers were falling on my house.

  I felt a twinge of regret for not sending Stan an image of the command key so that he could decipher the writing on it, but I pushed that back—now was not the time for self-reproaches. I needed to forget everything—the attempt on my life, the things I’d lost, the things I wanted. The important thing at present was the game and the search for the check. This was why I had logged in to Galactogon anyway—I had learned a long time ago to leave problems that concerned my life back in reality. The game was only there for the players. Fixing my error, I slipped out of somatic-immersion, made a copy of the command key and ordered Stan to decipher it ASAP. No point in letting him relax…

  “Man your stations,” I ordered my crew, activating the ship. The perfectly smooth sphere twitched as several passages opened in its surface—for me any my crew. Whereas my entrance looked like any other in a typical spaceship—like in The Space Cucumber, for instance—the entrances for the animals were quite amusing. For example, hand holds appeared for the orangutan, along which he instantly climbed up to the top of the shining ship and vanished in some kind of nacelle that wasn’t visible from the ground. A giant hatch opened for the rhinoceros in the ship’s bilge, revealing various machines and equipment within, and the giant machine trotted into its berth, with the hatch closing instantly behind it. The snake simply slithered up to the hull, drew up as high as it could and coiled itself around the ship. The last thing I expected was for the ship’s surface to suddenly turn liquid, sending waves along her expanse, as most of the snake simply sank into the ship, leaving only its tail to protrude. A second later the tail drew into the hull too and my command key flashed with a green light—the crew had taken up its positions. That left the captain—but no sooner had I taken a step toward the ship than my comm came alive with a shrill ringing. Someone with my number wanted to speak to me.

  “Hey Surgeon!” came Lestran’s happy voice as soon as I picked up the call. “We’re already done for today and I stayed back ‘cause I wanted to have a chat with you. How’s your search for the Elo going?”

  “Not very well, for now,” I said just in case. Lestran was a nice kid and all, but…“I already found the lode and just have to figure out how to get all this stuff to work. I think that by tomorrow, The Space Cucumber will be in the ship graveyard ready for pick up.”

  “Wonderful! We really need a fifth player. Wally’s an awesome dude and all, but it’s not like I escaped the Training Sector with him. Plus, he’s too careful—we never go after large ships and spend our time hunting minnows instead. It’s boring! It’ll take forever to become a pirate this way. Come back soon.”

  “I will, don’t worry,” I assured him and ended the call. The time had come to see what the ship of the ancients could do.

  You have earned the “Star Wolf” Achievement. You are now the owner of a unique ship.

  You ha
ve acquired an uncategorized ship. The closest analogous category is the cruiser. Weight: 650,000. Item class: B-44. For a detailed description of this vessel, please consult the ship’s manual.

  You are the first player to own this ship and may change her name. There is no current name.

  “Yalrock,” I replied without hesitation. The Uldan had helped me acquire this wonder and given me all the requisite rights and access, so it was only right to commemorate him by naming the ship in his memory. An uncategorized B-class ship was not simply an unheard of power—it was a danger to the game’s balance. I could see that I was done playing for today, as the rest of the evening would have to be spent in studying the ship’s manual as well as the ship itself. And, while I was dealing with formalities, I knew it would be best to insure myself just in case. For, ignorance of the law was not a valid legal defense.

  Dear Galactogon Admins,

  During a mission, I obtained an uncategorized, B-class ship, which is a unique game item. I hereby request that you confirm that I obtained this vessel without infringing on the game’s logic or rules, and that I am indeed the only owner of this game item.

  Respectfully yours,

  Surgeon

  Even back in Runlustia I learned that if you didn’t understand something, it was better to ask. This game item could cost anywhere from one credit (if it couldn’t fly) to tens of millions (if it really was ancient and unique). If the admins decided that all I could use it for was to lift off and destroy The Space Cucumber, it’d be pointless to argue with them, since that was exactly what I had been given the ship for. Everything else was up to me. However! As I had not (in my view) broken a single rule or mechanic, I should be able to do with the ship whatever I liked—up to and including flying it back to the main game world. It would suck to suddenly show up in such a unique vessel in the middle of all the other players, who’d instantly decide they needed to have one too…

  Crud! Really—I hadn’t even considered that! From what I could gather, there were thousands of players in Galactogon looking for and collecting unique items—if not tens of thousands—so showing up in Yalrock would be extremely stupid. The collectors would start such a hunt after me that I wouldn’t even have time to look for my check—I’d be spending all my time running from the players coveting my ship. What could I do? Sell it and go on traveling in The Space Cucumber? Why—that was an option! Surely there’d be plenty players who’d open their purses for such a lovely sphere…

  The question was whether I actually wanted to part with it.

  Welcome to the Yalrock ship manual. Select a topic you wish to study:

  General ship description

  Crew composition

  Cargo holds

  Weapons Systems

  Defense Systems

  Powercore

  Sensors…

  As soon as I activated the manual, twenty or so topics popped up on my screen, running the gamut from guest accommodations to the research lab, which, it turned out, Yalrock had too. I would need a lot of time to study everything in depth and therefore started with the very first topic—a general description of the ship. The important thing was to start—everything else would come later.

  Dear Surgeon,

  Thank you for contacting Galactogon Tech Support. We hope that your time in Galactogon has been pleasurable—for our part, we…

  There was so much pointless boilerplate in the letter I received back that I was even surprised. It looked like the players had turned to the courts because of Galactogon’s tech support so frequently—claiming that the associates weren’t polite enough or in-depth enough and so on and so forth—that it felt like every sentence in the letter was born of some piece of litigation. Scanning the boilerplate and noticing that the letter even addressed neglect of pets while in-game, I finally reached the gist of this missive:

  In response to you request (Ticket #730003) we hereby notify you that your use of the uncategorized ship does not infringe on any game regulations, and you have discovered her within a mission sequence involving the search for ancient and unique items. Thank you for your inquiry and please keep in mind that…

  This was followed by another mile of text about how to properly exit a capsule, how to pay attention to the time you spent in-game, as well as how lucky we all were that there was such a wonderful game to begin with. It looked like the game’s tech support was fond of telling fairy tales—so all I could do was say farewell to these fabulists and get back to my new ship.

  Finally certain that Yalrock belonged to me alone and that I was free to fly it wherever I wished, I went on with my study of the ship’s manual.

  And so!

  This miracle of engineering was equipped with two graviton drives, which were paired with hyper-accelerators. I had no idea if such a combination was even physically possible, but the ancient shipbuilders had evidently decided that this was a good idea. Let’s see how right they were. Due to the particulars of these engines, it didn’t matter one bit where the ship’s bow or stern were. Accordingly, the ship’s maneuvering characteristics were very different from those taught in the Training Sector. Basically, if Yalrock was equipped with an inertia dampening system—which would prevent the player inside from being smeared all over the cabin (the IDS wasn’t equipped by default, but had a slot for it)—then the ship could jump in any direction at any moment in time. At any speed…Such a chaotic little ball would be able to dart all over the place, utterly befuddling both its enemies and their targeting systems.

  The ship had three defensive systems—shields that were similar to that of The Space Cucumber, hull-mounted beam absorbers, and as I decided to call it, an anti-torpedo system. I didn’t manage to figure out exactly how this last one worked—it seemed that I would need to keep reading about the finer points of defense—but the basic gist was that the shieldsman (that is, the snake) could lock onto an inbound torpedo and capture it. The torpedo would freeze in place and turn into something like a mine—as soon as some ship approached it, it would explode. Moreover, along with being captured, the torpedo was also reconfigured to become a unique kind of trap—as soon as a flycatcher caught it, the torpedo would begin a self-destruct countdown of three minutes. This seemed calculated based on the length of time it generally took a ship to approach a captured torpedo and load it on board. The anti-torpedo system could only interdict and capture one torpedo per minute, so it wasn’t exactly a gamebreaker, but if you could combine this with the ship’s insane maneuverability…There were some pretty good possibilities here! Frigate-level ships, to say nothing of scouts and interceptors, were very frugal with torpedoes. Having only twelve torpedoes on board, no player would pass up the opportunity to pick up a free one floating in space. With this system, their ship was as good as dead, since a torpedo detonating inside a frigate would blow it to tiny pieces. Even a cruiser wouldn’t find that too pleasant—if one did decide to capture one of those perilous things. Of course, one torpedo couldn’t take out an entire cruiser—but the damage would be severe.

  I couldn’t help but smile when I reached the armaments section. Even though I was already on cloud nine, this aspect of my new ship took me even higher. First of all, the ship had six beam cannons distributed along its entire perimeter, which could rotate however the gunner wished. That is, the cannons were free to move along the hull, as though floating in water, and in so doing, seemed to break all laws of physics. This was simply impossible, after all…but here I go repeating myself.

  Like the beam cannons, the ship also had four EM cannons to knock down enemy shields, as well as twenty-two A-class torpedoes and an autonomous torpedo manufactory that would create a new torpedo every five minutes.

  Two independent powercores, a repair bay, a hangar for assault droids which already contained thirty-two fully-armed droids, a research lab, a cargo hold with several hundred units worth of capacity (unfortunately empty), an advanced onboard computer…When I finally realized what I had received, it became clear to me th
at this ship would have to be mine! I couldn’t care less how much money I’d get for it—there was no way I’d part with such a piece of equipment. Finding the self-destruct button and sighing with relief, I made a perhaps faulty but understandable decision: Yalrock would become my new ship, while The Space Cucumber would be transferred to Lestran’s command. I didn’t want to sell the frigate, since I understood perfectly well that Yalrock would become the prize for the entire gameworld and a temporary safe-ship in the form of the frigate would come in handy. Before anything else, however, I needed to transfer all the cartographic data from The Space Cucumber to Yalrock and then respawn the frigate—it would come in handy again. While I was at it, I could charge my marine armor—I felt naked without it in this game. I couldn’t understand how players could go around without wearing one.

  Adjusting captain’s chair and control panel to captain’s ergonomics.

  Activating the ship, I encountered my first surprise—the chair was adapted to fit its new owner. Considering its former Uldan owner had two huge wings on his back, the seat had been built in a manner that did not exactly allow me to kick back and enjoy my flight. At first I wrote this off as a trivial discomfort, since nothing could be perfect after all, but as soon as the ship came on, the captain’s chair instantly began to transform to fit my, human, ergonomics. This was quite convenient. I’d have to try it again after I’d put on my armor.

  Several screens popped up before me, displaying the surroundings outside of Yalrock at different scales, which included even a view of the current solar system. Then, as the ancient had told me, a control orb appeared. This was a miniature of the ship hanging in some kind of magnetic field. Along with the mini-ship, the projection also showed the surrounding environment, scaled to fit the ship’s current speed. Considering the ship’s ability to change her course instantly, this means of control was quite specific. There were neither levers nor buttons—just a simple projection which could be moved in space. An amazing device!