“Braniac,” I ordered the computer, “assemble all the information you can find about my crew’s capabilities. Sort it by skills and make sure to include any limitations that follow the use of such skills. I mean limitations like this cooldown paralysis that follows the triggering of the ‘Turbo’ skill.”
“Understood. It will take three days to prepare a complete report for each member of the crew.”
“Why so long?” I asked surprised.
“This task necessitates the processing of a large volume of data. I will have to commit 30% of my resources to preparing such a report.”
“Is he dead?” the Delvian interrupted my conversation with Braniac and carefully approached the rhinoceros. Opening another crate I received more Raq, a powercell and a token. Eh! Again a slug! Or maybe this was the typical loot for all the enemies? That would be too bad. By the way, I’d need to remember to avoid fighting the Zatrathi marines one on one—they’d crush me without even noticing me.
“He’s fine—relax! Better, tell me what you meant by ‘They’ve implanted personal mines on us and we can’t leave the station’? Nothing is keeping us from getting out of here at the moment.”
“We cannot leave this amphitheater,” the fox-girl explained sadly. “Each one of us has been assigned an area on this ship. If we leave its boundaries, we will explode. My area, for instance, skirts right next to your marine. That’s why the others can’t approach him. You saw yourself what happened with the Qualian—it wasn’t the force field that destroyed him. The personal mine did that.”
Raq, a vial of black powder, a token—but this time a black one instead of a metallic one like the slugs had dropped. Hmm…It looked like this item could be used to build Rapport with some kind of faction, for example, soldiers in general or something like that. I saw no further use for it at the moment.
“You have two hours and ten minutes before the barricade is breached,” my virtual pedant reminded me, giving me a new idea.
“Braniac, send over the engineer. I need his help. Tell him to bring his tools. There’s some work for him here.”
The Delvian placed her hand on the overheated cryptosaur, the way clerics would heal their allies in Runlustia. No miracle followed, however—the rhino continued to lie in a heap as before.
“He’s hot,” the fox-girl yanked away her hand. “Are you sure he’s okay?”
“Sure I’m sure,” I told her again. “Tell me, since we have several minutes, what is the KRIEG?”
“KRIEG slarata?” Rrgord repeated behind us, frowning. He was standing several feet away.
“I’m even more interested if every time I say that word, the Precian highness there reacts the way he does,” I pointed at Rrgord who’d narrowed his eyes in rage. No, there was definitely something sinister and curious about this word and now I wanted to know what it was all about.
“Where did you hear that word?” the fox found a way of asking me without indulging in unnecessary screaming or angry speeches in alien tongues.
The need of building some kind of Rapport with the Precian forced me to relate how my life in Galactogon had begun and communicate the gist of my conversation—or rather knocked exchange—in solitary. I needed to start pressuring the Precian into telling me about the prize planet, so I embellished as much as I felt comfortable.
“That’s how I found out about Rrgord and the KRIEG,” I finished my tale, noting that the droids had arrived, carefully lifted the cryptosaur onto some kind of hover-gurney (I had no idea we even had one of those) and departed back to the warehouse to revive the rhino.
“Braniac, have everyone bring their Functionality up to 100%,” I ordered, realizing that since there were so many resources still at the warehouse, it’d be stupid to leave them to the Zatrathi.
The fox girl began translating my story to Rrgord, so I went back to opening the loot crates.
Raq, Raq, a powercell, a token—another slug by the looks of it and hopefully the last. The last two crates were slug crates too. I was long overdue for some primo loot.
Raq, a powercell, a vial of black powder, a black token—this was loot from the second fog.
Raq, a Zatrathi Combat blaster, a universal armor enhancer, a gold token—finally the loot from one of the three Zatrathi warriors. I whistled a little when I compared this combat blaster with my assault blaster—across all its attributes, including damage, magazine size, durability, and firing rate, the C-class Zatrathi Combat Blaster was about twice as good as my B-class Zatrathi Assault Blaster. If I had had this gun when I was facing the slugs, all I’d have needed was 400 shots to solve the problem of the crawling Zatrathi. And of course now it was clear why my armor couldn’t handle the Zatrathi warriors as well as it could the slugs. If it hadn’t been for the cryptosaur, I’d be back on Blood Island already.
Raq, a powercell, a universal armor enhancer, a golden token—the other two loot crates had the same contents, minus the blaster. No big deal—it’s not like I’d be looking to sell them.
“Rrgord says that you deserve a reward. However, he is not currently in the position to give it to you,” the Delvian translated the Precian prince’s speech. “So you should contact his father. Rrgord will transfer the access key to the Precian capital system to your PDA. Do you accept his gift?”
Mission Unlocked: “The Imperial Gift.”
Description: You have been given a unique opportunity to meet the Precian Emperor and receive a reward from him personally. Do you wish to accept this mission?
I would be thrilled! The developers had even included a prompt allowing you to accept or decline a mission in this patch! This was an incredibly convenient feature. It was never pleasant when some shopkeeper would beg you to bring him one hundred million pig’s tails. Before, you’d have to sit there and wonder: Did I get a mission or not? But now the players could decide for themselves what they were going to do in this game. Of course, the description did not explain what would happen if the player accepted or declined, but this was still a huge step forward. Before you knew it, they may even go so far as to turn Galactogon into an ordinary game, instead of some weird guessing contest.
“I accept the prince’s gift,” I replied, pressing the virtual button and dismissing the notification about my receiving the access key. “But I still didn’t get an answer to my question: What’s the KRIEG?”
“It is neither the right time nor the right place to explain this,” said the fox girl. “Go now. You must save yourself and tell the rest of the galaxy about us.”
“Not so fast,” I smiled, seeing my engineer come crawling in. A gasp of astonishment came from the princes and princesses and they all clumped together from terror—it’s not every day you see a 30-foot-long snake. I was forced to reassure everyone:
“This is another one of my crew members. Don’t be afraid.”
“Why?” the snake wondered, looking back at me. “Let them be afraid! I am a scary and terrible serpent. I will eat everyone and all that jazz! What’d you call me for anyway?”
“I need to get all these sentients out of here,” I pointed at the noble crowd. “But they claim that they’ve been booby-trapped with some kind of personal mines. Can you figure it out? We can’t leave them to the Zatrathi.”
“Mines, you say?” the snake said pensively. His tail shot out in the direction of the hostages, wound itself around the Delvian and carried her back. The fox girl seemed convinced that she was about to be eaten alive.
“Curious,” said the snake, carefully examining the girl’s body. “Very curious…Oh! I see!” exclaimed the snake and carefully set the girl back on the floor. “The princess knows about…”
“She knows and there’s no need to talk about it!” the fox girl cut off the engineer, obviously hiding something. “What about the mine?”
“Nothing. That is, I can’t do anything about it. It’s connected to the central onboard computer, so you can’t just hack it on the spot. Does anyone have access to the station computer?”
“You know yourself that we don’t, slizo-dude,” I said.
“I’m a dudette, but that’s beside the point. In that case, I won’t be able to take off the mine. Or, to be more precise, I can take off the mine but doing so will decapitate the hostage. Will that work?”
“Zatrathi progress through the barricade has accelerated,” Braniac advised me. “The barricade will be breached in one hour and ten minutes.”
“Back to the ship!” I ordered and then turned to the Delvian: “Sorry, princess. We won’t be able to rescue you this time. I have one more question for Rrgord, before I leave you. Please translate this for me: ‘Where can I find the planet with the check?’”
“With the what?” the Delvian translated the puzzled Precian’s response. “He doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Neither do I, actually.”
“I have reason to believe that Rrgord knows the coordinates of a planet I am looking for. It would be a new, unexplored planet that he maybe came across while traveling around Galactogon.”
“Prince Rrgord discovered seven planets and doesn’t know which one you’re interested in. Besides, he doesn’t have all their coordinates memorized. They are in his ship’s computer and his ship is back on his home planet. Ask his father. He will give you access to the ship and you can look up the info yourself. Rrgord will send you the access key now…”
As soon as I saw a notification telling me that I had received an access key to the prince’s ship, I asked the Delvian, “May I do something for you? Maybe you want to pass along a letter, some message, or an item? I’ll be telling all of Galactogon about you guys and I’ll be sure to mention that we’ll first have to capture the station and destroy the computer before coming to save you. But all that will take some time. I figured that maybe you…”
“You need to go to my home planet—here’s the system access key—and find Alviaan. Tell him that I…that we…tell him that ‘we made it!’ He’ll understand what I mean.”
Mission Unlocked: “The Stork and the Fox.”
Description: Notify Alviaan, First Councilor of the Delvian Emperor, that the princess and he have “made it.”
The Delvian froze and I could see even through her furry face that she was blushing. I had never seen such a strange mission description and had to read it several times. Was she really pregnant? How fun! I had never encountered pregnant locals in a video game before and didn’t quite know how to react. How could I leave her like this with the Zatrathi? How far along was she? And most importantly—what did I have to do with all this? I had a specific goal that I felt I was more than halfway to. All I had to do was find out the coordinates of the seven planets and carefully explore each one. At that point, my time in Galactogon would probably come to an end.
“I’ll let him know,” I replied, still wondering why I was taking on all these additional errands. On the other hand, that prize check was unlikely to go anywhere while I took a little trip to the Delvians. I doubted that any of the remaining contestants had even left their Training Sectors yet…Speaking of which!
“Sorry, I have another question for Rrgord. I need to get a recruit out of a Training Sector before she has officially graduated. May I have an access key to Planet Vozban in the Gantanil-3 system?”
“You want to take a recruit out of the Training Sector before they have completed their training?” the Delvian asked with surprise, making no move to translate my question to the Precian. “That’s impossible! You can’t release unprepared recruits into the larger world! They will fall easy prey to the Zatrathi!”
“Princess, please just relay my question to Rrgord,” I insisted. “It’s very important for me to get this person out of the Training Sector because…Well, she is a woman and she and I ‘made it’ too.”
The Delvian blushed all over again, sucked in a large gulp of air to say something, changed her mind, sighed heavily and passed my question on to Rrgord. The Precian raised his eyebrows in astonishment, stared at me like I was some mythical creature and finally shook his head in the negative. The prince was against the idea. The fox girl tried to explain something to him, but Rrgord was as adamant as a cliff—he refused to grant me access to the Precian Training Sector.
“It won’t work, pirate,” the girl said sadly. “I knew it’d be pointless to ask Rrgord. Recruits are an extremely sensitive topic for any empire. No empire would allow anyone to remove players from its Training Sector. Go now. You can’t stay here any longer…”
I flew the two miles separating me from Yalrock in ten minutes, stopping by the warehouse along the way to stuff my inventory full of Raq. Evidently the developers had planned some kind of epic battle to save the hostages and therefore wouldn’t allow me to rescue them prematurely. Otherwise, there’d be no incentive for the players to join the war against the Zatrathi. At least now, the objectives would be clear: Board the station and rescue the VILs without space support. Best of luck with all that! At the moment, I was more concerned with how I was going to escape this place without falling to Zatrathi marines or frying the imperial beau monde.
If I flew out into open space, I’d still be caught in the space disruption field that the station projected. I couldn’t simply fly away from the station either—the enemy ships were simply too fast for Yalrock. Breaking through by giving battle wasn’t an option either—outrunning a hundred torpedoes happens once every blue moon. The only remaining option—already tested with The Space Cucumber—was to hyperjump from inside the station. I knew that this would result in a 90-foot-thick layer of metal forming around my ship, but couldn’t see another way out. At the very least, I had enough powercells on board to ensure my self-destruct once I had jumped away from this place. The main thing was to get away.
“Braniac, plot a hyperspace jump to Qirlats,” I said, as soon as the door to my ship dissolved behind me. Yalrock once again looked like a perfectly smooth metal sphere.
“I must recommend against attempting a hyperjump from inside the station,” the computer instantly struck up his Canary song.
“Braniac, that order stands as issued.” I cut him off before he could get in the swing of it. “Calculate a jump to Qirlats. I know exactly what will happen. That’s a direct order!”
“Understood. Jump will be initialized in one minute and twenty seconds.”
“Since we have some time, why don’t you tell me what you’ve managed to haul away from that warehouse…”
Forty tons of Raq, two tons of Tiron, five of Elo—the droids had done their best and still they hadn’t managed to fill Yalrock’s cargo holds even halfway. Considering that the orangutan and marine had regained 100% Functionality, which meant that respawning wouldn’t do anything to them, we had really taken a good bite out of the Zatrathi riches. It was too bad that I hadn’t managed to rescue the aristocracy but the other players could handle that just as well. My reconnaissance operation had turned out well and now I just had to get the information out to the main world. Or rather sell it.
“Ship is ready to jump to hyperspace!” Braniac said unwillingly and couldn’t help adding, “If we jump from inside the orbital station, Yalrock will become covered in a 120-foot-thick layer of metal.”
“I thought it’d be close to 90 feet thick?”
“One hundred and twenty feet. In the worst case scenario, 150.”
“Will we be able to break through it?”
Braniac fell silent for about twenty seconds, then reluctantly said, “Using all of the cryptosaur’s Functionality, we will be able to make a tunnel in the shell that would be wide enough for the slizosaur to exit. If we feed her with the Raq that we have, we will be able to remove 80% of the metal layer.”
“Will the remaining 20% be around the ship or just on some side of it?”
“If we aim the slizosaur at the body of the klamir, she will be able to…”
“Braniac, stop dilly-dallying! Will we be able to remove the outer shell without the ship having to self-destruct or not?”
“Self-destruct?” a note of alarm sounded in the computer’s metallic voice. “Why would we self-destruct Yalrock?”
“Because you keep dragging your legs instead of giving me an answer! Enough talk! If we can’t free ourselves from the metal shell, we’ll blow ourselves up. Engage jump!”
“Roger,” Braniac said in as crestfallen a voice as I’ve heard a computer use. “For your information, the Zatrathi marines have just broken through the barricaded hallway and will be arriving in twelve seconds…eleven…ten…Hyperdrive engaged. Entering hyperspace now.”
I sighed with relief once our surroundings had turned into shimmering lines—up until the last moment, I was afraid that the station’s space disruptor would block our hyperjump even inside the station itself. The danger passed. It seemed that the Zatrathi had not anticipated that someone would sacrifice their ship to escape. I guess Runlustia’s devs had something to teach their Galactogon counterparts after all.
“How long will we be in hyperspace?”
“ETA is twenty minutes. Egress coordinates remain undetermined.”
“We’ll figure that out. The important thing is not to collide with anything bigger than us. Give me a rundown of the information you managed to steal about the Zatrathi vessels. Speed, firepower, weak points and strengths—in other words, anything that will help us fight them. We need to study our enemy from every possible angle.”
“Transmitting data to the screen now,” Braniac replied after a short pause. “According to the preliminary analysis, the enemy ships may be divided into several categories…”
The twenty minutes of hyperspace travel passed unnoticed in the study of the stolen data. The best way to characterize my sense of time was with a phrase I heard someone say somewhere once: “One and the same minute passes in different ways for a person on a date with someone they love and a person who’s rushing to get to the bathroom.” Braniac did such a good job of presenting the crucial moments of the battle, the battle characteristics of the Zatrathi ships, their tactics, the speed of their torpedoes and so on that I couldn’t help but rub my hands in anticipation—this kind of data would garner good money from a number of Galactogon’s guilds. I just had to make sure to sell it the right way.
Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) Page 30
