Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

by Vasily Mahanenko

Mmm…yeah…

  Several dozen metallic and whitish creatures which looked more like lumps of slime than sentient beings crawled slowly but surely along the corridor, holding in their numerous appendages blasters and energy shields which they used to block my droids’ blaster fire. The Zatrathi did not seem to have legs, so it looked like they were sliding along the floor. It became apparent now why they had taken so long to get to our crash site—they simply couldn’t move any faster.

  All of this flashed through my mind in the first fractions of a second, without impairing me from pulling the trigger and adding my one blue blaster bolt to my droids’ outbound three. Fire—block—fire—block—fire—block—the Zatrathi closest to me didn’t raise his shield in time and, for a little while at least, the corridor had one enemy fewer and a shiny new loot crate.

  You have gained XP…

  You have received a unique title: “Semper Fidelis!”

  You were the first player in Galactogon to destroy a Zatrathi in close combat.

  Contact any empire to receive a unique reward from the Emperor himself.

  Another goodie in the bank—but I paid it no attention, at least for now. The discovery that my C-class trophy weapon was more effective than a Qualian assault blaster (which I hadn’t even brought with me) was much more important. Either the Zatrathi weapon was simply better, or the difference in class made itself known (after all, I had been working with D-class instead of C-class), or the update had adjusted the output damage—but now it really seemed to me like I had a formidable weapon in my hands. One that offered me the chance to survive and even get out of this mess—as long as my armor held out…

  Gained XP…

  Gained XP…

  “Cover me!” I yelled at the last remaining, firing droid as soon as my armor’s power meter began to blink critically red yet again. Despite the fact that the system had guaranteed me five minutes of calm battle, a notification popped up just three minutes later asking me to insert another powercell or have my defense fall to zero. Then, I had to insert another cell and after that another and another…So by the tenth minute of battle, I had not a single powercell left and yet my armor and blaster demanded more Elo still. My droid had been blasted to pieces three minute earlier, leaving one last droid sitting not far from me but refusing to leave cover since his blaster had run out of power and I had not powercells to give him. There was no way to get back to the ship either—if the Zatrathi had anything it was Elo, which meant their barrage kept up unslaked.

  Understanding that the slugs would keep coming—the first hundred had already been joined by the rest of the 320—and that the only thing between me and this army was the hallway which could accommodate no more than thirty at a time, I decided to counterattack. What difference did it make under what circumstanced I’d meet my Planetary Spirit—on the floor or heroically blowing up among my enemies? The latter would be more fun anyway.

  By now the corridor was full of shimmering loot crates, through which the slugs kept coming without taking any notice. If I risked it and opened myself to enemy fire, maybe my armor would hold out long enough for me to reach the nearest crate, open it and instantly use one of the powercells. I had no doubts that there’d be one in there—the first ten had all contained at least one. The only question was whether my armor would suffice and whether I’d have enough energy in my blaster to destroy the crawling Zatrathi. Either way, I’d never know if I didn’t give it a shot.

  “Kill the bastards!” I yelled more for my benefit than anyone else’s and jumped to my feet to the covering fire of my last droid.

  “Get some! Get some! Get some!” I yelled as I ran forward, sending blaster bolt after blaster bolt down the corridor. There were so many slugs ahead of me that I had no trouble hitting something, even if some of my shots were blocked.

  Your Zatrathi Assault Blaster has reached a new class. Current class: B-1. All blaster parameters have increased by 20%. Durability and Energy have been fully restored.

  Damage blocked…

  Only that second notification could bring me to my senses and force me to take two more quick steps and dive to the ground, leaving less of myself for the Zatrathi in the rear to shoot at. A class-B blaster! This was no mere weapon—this was a…a…Well, I didn’t even have the words to describe my joy. Yet the damage notification forced me to return my senses and look around myself. A loot crate lay right in front of me. My armor’s energy meter was no longer simply blinking red—it had already gone dim several times, immobilizing me, so I reached as far as I could to the loot crate and pursed my lips in anticipation. Would it be there or not? Would I get lucky or not?

  You have received the following items: Raq, Raq, powercell, metal token.

  Got it! I couldn’t contain a yelp of joy when the armor’s energy meter went from dark-red to yellow. Twenty-five percent energy and three additional minutes of life. It may as well have been an eternity!

  “Hold your positions!” I ordered my droids after picking up another ten crates of loot. Another 12 units of Raq, nine powercells and tokens, as well as two flexible pieces of armor allowed me to feel relatively safe. As long as I had the energy, my armor wouldn’t be punctured…and it was already at A-89, which meant that Legendary was not too far off! Legendary Marine Armor! That would be a thing to see!

  “What now, oh Space Invaders? Shall we have ourselves a proper war?”

  Getting comfortable on the floor, I began to carefully aim and fire bolt after bolt down the corridor, periodically swapping the powercells in my blaster. If I got out of this slaughter alive, I’d need to make Marina some kind of present for giving me this marine suit—without it I would’ve been dead meat long ago…

  “I am observing massive movement in the enemy sectors,” came Braniac’s voice as soon as I splattered the last slug from this mortal coil. I didn’t know how the resurrection thing worked for them, but at the moment they had definitely departed this world. My blaster had gained several levels and my armor’s XP bar was at the halfway mark, while the suit itself was in tatters—its Durability was just above 10%—but I had achieved my main objective: All the Zatrathi had been destroyed. I had sent 430 assailants to their well earned rest! Who’d dare refuse me the title of great warrior after such a feat?

  “What movement are you talking about?” I replied, getting up. Even though this was just a game, no one said I couldn’t feel mentally drained. With all due respect to myself, I would not be able to handle another battle like that.

  “Enemy forces have begun massing on the borders of our sector. Their speed is several times greater than that of the forces you destroyed, which suggests that these are Zatrathi marines. Assuming their current speed remains the same, fresh enemy assault squads will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Damn it all again! It was like I’d just battled an army of janitors who, armed with brooms and dustpans, had wanted to kick us out of their station. No wonder they couldn’t take out my armor. Now, however, the real assault troops had landed on the station and were rapidly approaching my position.

  “How many of them are there?”

  “According to preliminary data—twelve thousand. Their numbers continue to grow however. Unfortunately, I have no access to other sectors of the station and cannot provide accurate information about enemy forces.”

  “Got it…Alright, let’s gather all the loot and put it in my inventory,” I nodded at the four droids, calling them over. Wistfully, I looked at the four hundred shimmering crates of loot strewn all over each other and muttered, “Too bad we won’t be able to get it all. Fifteen minutes is just not enough…Braniac, is there any way to delay the incoming horde? Even by ten minutes or so?”

  “Analyzing data now…Affirmative—We have the option of blocking a corridor that serves as a bottleneck about 500 yards from here.”

  “Set up a remote uplink and throw the map up on my HUD,” I yelled. Then, I unloaded all the Raq from my inventory and gave it to my droids. Who knew what I’d
encounter in this station. Maybe the extra room in my inventory would come in handy. Opening several other loot crates, I picked up all the powercells and then sprinted along the dotted red guideline that Braniac had projected on my armor’s HUD. I needed to win at least half an hour in order to harvest all the loot, return to Yalrock and pack everything in my bag before blowing myself up. Hopefully, this game would allow me to overload my inventory at the cost of mobility.

  “What do I do now?” I shouted into my comm two minutes later and snapped in yet another powercell—running at top speed made the armor consume energy faster than powering its shields. I was facing yet another rounded corridor that resembled a cylinder built into the station. Its five-foot diameter forced even little old me to bend down in order to enter it. I could see nothing that could stop the enemy’s assault squads. It was just an ordinary thirty-foot-long hallway.

  “According to the station layout, this hallway connects two independent areas of our sector. If you blow it up, the enemy will be forced to repair it. This should afford you enough time to gather the loot.”

  “I don’t have any explosives!” I bristled realizing that Braniac had just wasted five minutes of my looting time. If I couldn’t do anything with the corridor (shooting at the wall had done nothing), then there had been absolutely no reason for me to come here.

  “Analyzing data…Forty yards in the direction of our ship, there is a passage to some service quarters. According to the downloaded data, that area serves as storage for exterior panels used in station repair. Considering that you have two pacifiers…”

  I didn’t listen any further and took off in the direction of this next waypoint. Braniac lived up to his name—if the corridor couldn’t be destroyed, it could be obstructed! The Zatrathi marines would have some fun removing several rows of panels which would likely have beam absorption properties! I just hoped I had enough time!

  “What’s the code?” I bellowed, stopping in front of an inconspicuous, wide door— which turned out to be locked.

  “I do not have this information,” Braniac replied. “Analyzing data…”

  To hell with the analysis! I pointed my blaster at the door and pulled the trigger as far as it would go—I had absolutely no time to sit there guessing the right code when I had a universal skeleton key right there in my hands!

  “Enemy marine units will arrive in thirty seconds,” Braniac informed me as I placed yet another panel into the corridor. The humongous, heavy and unwieldy slabs filled the entire corridor—I had made sure to tessellate them in order to make it more difficult to remove the obstruction. Basically, I had erected a pyramid of panels that had created a barricade fifteen feet deep.

  “Delrang gardan!” came a terrible shout from the other end of the hallway. I caught a glimpse of a Zatrathi through the panels I had piled together. This was the Zatrathi marine. He wore a kind of brown marine armor which was outfitted with all kinds of knobs and appendages. His dark visor obscured his face and his limbs had multiple segments and joints. He looked quite imposing in short and I was sure that I was facing real warriors now. Their sharp, quick movements, their disciplined chatter, and the several attempts they made to shoot me through the obstacle I had erected—all suggested that these brown Zatrathi were quite different from their sluggish brethren. I wasn’t sure anymore that I could’ve held out against these guys—class-A marine armor or not.

  “Braniac, can you monitor the progress that the Zatrathi make in clearing my barricade?” Pushing my throttle all the way forward I flew back to the loot crates. “Can you estimate how long they’ll be occupied with it?”

  “I have begun tracking their progress. There is no preliminary estimate, however. Initiating scan of our sector. Warning! I have identified twenty life forms in Yalrock’s current sector.”

  “Where?” I asked, slowing my pace. If twenty marines had managed to get through, my chances of surviving would plummet drastically. Oh but look! I was already thinking about survival, as opposed to gathering some loot. By the way, damn it, the loot…

  “Opposite side of the sector, right beyond the station warehouse. The life forms are not doing anything. They are standing in place. Tracking them now.”

  The station warehouse!

  What a crazy day this was becoming!

  “Braniac, will my team be able to reach the warehouse on its own?” I asked, still running as fast as I could.

  “Negative. In order to exercise the mobility function, overall Functionality must be at 15%. The current Functionality level of every crew member is 12%.”

  “How much Raq do I need to raise the Functionality by three percent?” I managed to yell as I zoomed into the hallway with the loot from the slugs.

  “Fifteen units of Raq lead to a 0.1% increase in Functionality,” came the instant reply. “Extrapolating from the previous loot yield of fifteen units of Raq per ten enemies killed, we can assume that there are 645 units of Raq among the loot in the hallway. This will lead to a 4.3% increase in Functionality. This would allow us to send the cryptosaur to transport Raq from the station’s warehouse back to the ship.”

  One unit of Raq, if I remembered correctly, weighed about 5lbs. Consequently, 645 units would weigh in at about 1.5 tons…If we recalled that I managed to sell fifty tons of the stuff for several million…I began to see that maintaining my crew and repairing it after battle would cost me an arm and two legs! The only alternatives would be either to level them up from zero or dump a bunch of money into them…

  “Let’s do it,” I decided, realizing that there was no time to waste. It was time to reap the loot harvest that my droids and I had sowed. “Get the ship ready to accept the droids with the Raq. They’re going to feed the cryptosaur…”

  Opening and organizing the enormous number of loot crates took me about an hour. By that time, as Braniac informed me, the Zatrathi marines had managed to burn through a mere two feet of the hallway that I had barricaded. I guess they had no pacifiers with them. On the other hand, they did have an unlimited supply of powercells, which meant that I could expect them in the next eight hours or so.

  I had no idea what I was supposed to do with 430 metal tokens. Most likely, I could trade them in for some kind of reward, so I wasn’t about to throw them away. Anyway, the tokens didn’t weigh anything and took up no space. Overall, the loot I received for my first battle included 22 blasters, about 100 pieces of flexible armor (which I had no idea how to use) and a mountain of powercells. I fed all my Raq to the rhino, who began to slowly move his legs.

  “Braniac, plot a path for me to the warehouse,” I ordered as soon as the last powercell had been hauled up to Yalrock. Even if they destroyed us and all our cargo would drop in place, the Zatrathi would at least be grateful that I hadn’t strewn their powercells all over their station.

  While the computer calculated the route, my marine came crawling out of the ship, panting so heavily his sides were heaving. He had none of that former spryness with which he’d chased me around Blood Island. At the moment he seemed more like a mule who’d spent the past week sleeping and who’d suddenly been yoked and forced to haul hay. All he lacked were bags under his eyes.

  “Follow me,” I ordered, making my way along the path that Braniac had plotted for me. “Braniac, what’s the distance to the objective?”

  “Following the hallways, the objective is one mile away. Enemy progress through the barricade currently stands at three feet…”

  Realizing that the Zatrathi marines would soon pick up some steam—after all, the obstruction I’d built was only about fifteen feet thick—I again engaged my acceleration and began sprinting. If I could at least save the rhino, respawning would be much more fun.

  “Increase your Functionality to 50%,” I waved at the rhino as soon as the door to the warehouse buckled under my blaster’s fire. To my surprise, the cryptosaur hadn’t fallen behind me, despite the fact that we had covered one mile in a mere four minutes—not a bad speed even for athletes.


  The rhino sniffed the air like a real animal and took off at a gallop, weaving between the shelves of goods. I heard the clatter of falling metal, after which Braniac began to count: “Cryptosaur Functionality increased by 0.1%. Cryptosaur Functionality increased by 0.1%. Cryptosaur…”

  “Stop it, Braniac. Where are those twenty life forms you mentioned?” I interrupted the computer and decided to take a look at the creatures that Braniac had mentioned earlier. “Don’t forget to transport whatever’s valuable in the warehouse back to the ship. The gunner and the engineer can get to the cargo on their own, once the marine brings back enough Raq to get them moving.”

  Braniac plotted a new guide line to the life forms and I began moving in that direction. I had nothing to do in the warehouse myself and exploring the Zatrathi station was the sacred duty of any true player in this situation. I could sell the video log of my exploration for millions later on—the main thing was to drive a hard bargain.

  “Braniac, the route you gave me ends in a dead end!” After about ten minutes of walking down a drab, slightly-undulating corridor, the route I had been following disappeared into a blank wall. Just in case, I made sure that I was looking at a real wall and not some hologram and even shot it a few times with my blaster to see if I could break through it. That having failed, I got in touch with the ship’s computer. He was the one who’d brought me here, so perhaps he could explain where I was supposed to go now.

  “There are no walls along this route,” Braniac answered flatly. “Please continue moving forward.”

  “What do you mean there aren’t any walls? What am I looking at then?”

  “You are currently located in the middle of an empty hallway,” Braniac continued without taking any interest in what I was saying. “According to the map I downloaded, the only walls in your vicinity are along the sides of the hallway. Please continue moving forward.”