Condition Evolution 3: A LitRPG / Gamelit Adventure

by Kevin Sinclair

  “I will. But we’ve done the hard bit. Flying away should be a walk in the park.”

  C12

  When in Doubt, Delegate

  It was no fucking walk in the park getting away from the Arus. It turns out the smuggler's moon had an array of impressive artillery to call upon. Also, fun fact: Torax can sweat. I’d previously thought it impossible, having never seen it before, but there were literal rivers running down Calegg’s head and face. He looked like he was carved from granite as he stood arched over his control panel flying the ship. Even so, we seemed to have coped relatively well, with other Torax gunners occasionally crying out that they had scored a hit.

  There wasn’t much to say to the crew. We just had to get the fuck out of there as quickly and safely as possible. I patted Calegg on the back. “You're doing great, Calegg,” I said, then loudly spoke to the rest of the bridge crew. “You guys are doing great! Keep up the good work.”

  I went into my office; I trusted them to get us out of there. My mind had now flipped to concern for Elyek. They were stuck on the moon that we were running away from at full speed. There was only one option I could think of, and that was to ask Astrid to pick up Elyek and the others. I fiddled with the comm on my desk a bit, bringing up a line to the Thoth. A crewmate I didn't know picked up the line, but thankfully was able to pass me through to Astrid.

  “Hello, Shaun. Is everything okay?”

  “Not really, Astrid. We’re fleeing from Arus with all speed. We’re probably gonna have to make a jump if we continue to be pursued.”

  “Oh, I see. We’ll come and assist.”

  “No. That's not what I need at the minute, we should be fine. However, we have another problem. Elyek and 11 new crewmates are still on the surface. They’re not in any danger, as far as I know, but we can't get to them. I’m hoping the Thoth won't be on anyone's radar yet, so can you pick them up?”

  “Of course, Shaun. We’re just finishing up here. Rufus has found what we think is a fantastic contract, well paid. I’ll fill you in with the details later.”

  “That's great, Astrid,” I said as the ship rocked violently. I just managed to keep my feet. “By the sounds of it, our escape is taking a turn for the worse. We’re going to need to jump. What's the direction of this contract?” I asked desperately.

  “I’m not sure Shaun, I’ll just check,” Astrid said with concern.

  “No wait. Just ask your pilot what coordinates the Thoth would use if you were going to our destination. Preferably somewhere relatively isolated too, please.”

  “Sure, Shaun. Bear with me a moment.” The comm went silent, the ship continued to move erratically. As much as I wanted to pace, I took a seat before I had an accident. My mind was ablaze with scenarios and concerns, so it was a relief to be brought out of my cyclical thoughts by Astrid’s voice.

  “Hey, Shaun. I’m sending over the coordinates for the jump directly to you. Good luck. We’ll see you soon.”

  “Great! Astrid, thanks so much for your help. I'm really grateful fate has put us all together again.”

  “Me too, Shaun. We’re a team, so you don't have to thank me for doing my job. Now, go and get safe.”

  With that, we ended the link. I quickly brought Ember up over the comm. “Shaun?” she answered as a question.

  “It doesn't seem to be getting any easier for us, Ember. We’re gonna have to make a jump. I’ve just spoken to Astrid, and they’ve agreed to pick up Elyek and the others. The Thoth and its crew won't be marked, as we now seem to be.”

  “That makes sense. I’ve been chewing over leaving Elyek back there, even though I knew we wouldn’t have left them there forever. Well done for getting that sorted out.”

  “Thanks, Ember. It’s a relief, for sure.”

  “How will the Thoth and Seshat find us if we jump? I mean, I know they can track us, but if we do a full jump, that might take them days, if not weeks.”

  “Ah, yeah. Don’t worry about that. They’ve found us a job. I’ll explain later. Their pilot has just sent over some coordinates in that direction. Somewhere quiet in the area. So we’re gonna use those coordinates.”

  “Brilliant thinking, Shaun. You’re impressing me in more ways than just your jammy-bastardness lately. Keep it up.”

  “Will do,” I said, “Now, gotta go get this jump sorted out. See you soon.”

  “See you, Shaun. I'll come along in a bit.” She left, and I missed her immediately. She always loaned me a lot more confidence in myself than she rudely took. I jumped up out of my seat. I had shit to do. I needed to get the space-folding drive charging quickly. As I walked out of the office, I saw Calegg hadn’t moved an inch. Everything was just as intense as I left it.

  I was about to tell Calegg to sort out the folding drive when it hit me that he was 110% focused on getting us out of here, and couldn’t do this alone. And Elyek was not here. To my shame, I had no clue how to switch the fucking thing on and had never bothered to learn. I smashed the buttons on the comm on my bridge chair for Ember. “Do you know how to turn the bloody folding drive on?” I cried desperately over the private channel.

  “No, sorry Shaun. We should probably do something about that soon. I'll ask the Veiletians, now. One of them might be able to help.”

  I frantically paced by my seat, praying one of them might be able to help. A flood of relief washed over me when four Veiletians came running in only seconds later. “Hey, guys!” I greeted them eagerly. “This is the folding-drive control panel. We need to set it charging to escape. I also have coordinates to enter. It takes 15 minutes to charge, so time is precious.”

  “We’ll work it out, Captain. Have no fear,” the confident, red-haired Veiletian replied. I won't lie, I was a little happy they were among those who had turned up. They had been amazingly useful so far. They all moved over and began looking over the terminal. They talked quickly and quietly among themselves.

  To my surprise, it wasn't the red-haired one that took charge at the panel; it was a tall, slender Veiletian, fingers flashing like lightning over the screen. “There!” they said proudly. “It is charging.”

  One of the other Veiletians now moved to the panel, gently shifting the other out of the way. They began to go through the panel at lightning speed for a short while, a calm in the storm. Finally, they looked up. “I can reduce the charge time. Regrettably, this will cut the power to non-essential parts of the ship. Unless you have any other sources of power?”

  “Do it! But I don’t think we’ve any other sources of power, other than fuel. Is that any good?”

  “Suldr!” one of the Torax shouted over.

  “Oh, shit! Of course, I didn’t even think about that. We’ve a load of Suldr fire gems.”

  “They will do, perfectly,” said the Veiletian now at the terminal. “We should use the ship's power for now. Then, we can replenish what is used with Suldr.”

  “Okay. How much time can you take off the charge rate?”

  They didn’t answer; just began tapping at the screen again. The lights began flashing. Speaking eventually, they announced, “I’ve re-routed power from the ship and bypassed the safety measures to prevent overcharging the drive’s cores. We now have five minutes until we can make the jump.”

  I nodded then opened the file on my chair. “Here are the coordinates to put in, guys,” I said.

  The one who had set the ship to charging came over and then hit a few buttons in quick succession on my terminal. “There! All done. It’s set,” they said, sounding smugly satisfied.

  “Don't you need to enter them in the folding-drive?”

  “No,” they looked at me oddly. “The captain's terminal has a direct line to all of the systems on the ship.”

  “Oh, right,” I replied, a little embarrassed – I had a lot to learn.

  “Don't worry, we’ll get you up to speed, Captain.”

  “Oh, thanks. That’d be great. If you guys can offer any other help on the bridge, I'd be more than grateful.”


  They nodded and moved back over to the folding-drive terminal.

  With that problem sorted, I went back over to Calegg. I was torn. He was clearly under a lot of strain still, but I wanted him to know we appreciated his efforts. I put my hand on his shoulder, then removed it quickly. It was seriously fucking hot and actually burnt my hand. I noticed then that the sweat had stopped, to be replaced by a barely visible steam rising off him. I attempted some words of comfort: “You're doing great, dude. Thanks for your efforts.”

  He didn’t respond. Yet I knew he had appreciated my words, as his look of intense stress seemed to change slightly into resolve.

  At that moment, I felt completely impotent, a total fraud. All these people saving our bacon, and there I was, wandering around like a lost fucking lamb, burning my hand on a damn crewmate’s shoulder. “Shaun, you’ve brought these people together. You’ve organized the escape with your telepathy. And you’ve arranged for Astrid to collect Elyek, while coordinating efforts on the Uprising,” Havok said, uncharacteristically soothingly for him. My hand was already healed thanks to his ministrations.

  “Thanks, man. I don’t know if you're right, but it was nice to hear,” I responded, just as a massive impact shook the ship. Everyone was reeling from that one. We felt a series of smaller hits as we continued our hasty withdrawal. At that point, it didn’t feel like we were going to make it. A second big impact, and the power cut out; only the dim emergency lights remained on. It seems I had overestimated our ability to get away from the moon.

  Calegg turned to me, horrified, “I've lost controls. We're dead!”

  Our screen to the outside had gone blank, as had everyone's terminals. The Uprising was a sitting duck. We all looked at each other, almost saying goodbye with our gazes.

  “Uh, hey everyone,” a Veiletian said, “I'm really sorry but this is my misjudgment. I may have miscalculated how much energy would be drained from…” The folding-drive suddenly kicked in. Blackness descended.

  Once the jump had completed, those who hadn't been seated now picked themselves up from the floor. The Veiletian randomly continued speaking, as if nothing had happened “…drained from the ship in the process.”

  “You mean, we didn’t lose energy because we’d been badly hit?” I groaned, still disorientated.

  “I thought it odd, because our shields were still holding,” Calegg said.

  “Luckily, our enemies also thought we were finished from their assault,” the red-haired Veiletian added.

  “So, we’ve jumped. Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yes!” The Veiletians all said together, joyously. One of them asked for the Suldr to recharge the ship's functionality for efficiency.

  I sent them off with a couple of the Torax gunners to get what they needed. As they left, Ember was just arriving on the bridge. “Phew! Well, that was fucking close,” I said to her, then had a mild panic attack, “Shit! We didn’t let Elyek know what the plan was! They won’t know to contact the Thoth. And can Astrid even get in touch with them?”

  “Don’t worry, dipshit. I sorted all that out. All we need to do is recover and wait for them to arrive tomorrow. Okay?”

  I let out a huge exhale of air through puffed out cheeks. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” I said, deflated.

  “You're potentially immortal. You'll never get too old for this shit.”

  “You know though, I’ve just done to Elyek what I berated Ogun for doing to me. I ran and deserted them.”

  “Don’t be stupid. They’re in a Veiletian enclave, where they’re safe and comfortable. In fact they actually used to live there. And we have a ship that’s far safer to travel on than ours going to pick them up exactly when they’re supposed to be picked up,” Ember offered.

  “Thanks for trying to justify it Ember, but I ran. Whether or not it was for the right reasons, I left one of our best friends and crewmates behind.”

  “Well, you were too hard on Ogun anyway, maybe this will give you a bit of perspective, you dipshit.”

  I laughed at her reply, “Yeah, it has. I feel like an asshole.”

  “That’s fine Shaun, you are an asshole. Now stop moping and go see Calegg, he looks like he could do with some attention.”

  I responded with a shrug, then walked over to Calegg. Poking him with a finger to make sure he had cooled down, I then grabbed him in a hug while singing his praises. “Great work my friend. You sure saved our bacon.”

  “That was so intense. I hope we never have to do that again,” he replied as we broke the hug.

  I turned around to the others. “Really well done to everyone! That was a great team effort. Does anyone know how bad the ship is?”

  “No,” Calegg answered, “We won't be able to tell until all the systems come back online. I totally thought that when the systems went down, we’d been hit bad and that had caused the power cut. If it was just the folding drive taking power, then hopefully the damage isn’t too bad.”

  “I bloody hope so.” Just as I finished speaking, the lights sprang to life, followed by the terminals.

  “Brilliant. Calegg, tell me how bad it is? No, wait… tell me how good it is?”

  Calegg scanned his screen for a few moments before looking round to me. “It's actually not that bad, Captain. Hardly anything got through the shields, and what damage there is, is negligible.”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic! Thanks again, Calegg.”

  “Yeah, Calegg. You did amazing,” Ember added as the bridge doors opened, admitting the four Veiletians and their two Torax escorts.

  “You too, guys. I doubt we would’ve escaped if it weren’t for you.”

  They looked surprised by my addressing them.

  “Yeah. How the hell did you know how to speed the folding drive up like that?” Ember asked the Veiletian who did it.

  “I didn’t know of this ship’s drive, but I do know that any charging technology can usually be sped up – although it is not always safe to do so. I checked through the drive’s option files and settings. It was risky, but I had felt it was worth trying it to escape. Thankfully, you had the foresight to stock all that Suldr we found hanging in your cargo hold. A really lucky coincidence.”

  “Yes, it was. Now, after you’ve helped to save the ship, I really need to learn all of your names. I believe the best way to do that is over dinner. I don’t know about you lot, but I'm famished.” I turned to Ember. “Canteen, dear?” I asked, holding out my arm.

  “Why of course, Captain. I could eat a damn horse myself,” Ember replied, linking my arm. We exited towards the canteen, followed from the bridge by the Veiletians and a few Torax. Calegg just slumped down in his chair, as did Koparr.

  Sitting around a large table in the canteen, the four Veiletians, Ember and I had steaming food of varying descriptions. I looked at the Veiletian folding-drive speeder-upper. “What’s your name then?”

  They stuttered a little, showing more discomfort under my direct scrutiny than they did when we were under attack. “It's Wulek, Captain,” they finally replied.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Wulek.” I turned to the one who had initiated the drive-charging. “And your name?”

  Again there was discomfort. “I am Hwista,” they replied.

  “Hwista, huh? I was expecting you to have ek in your name, after Wulek and Elyek.”

  The red-haired wonder who had been so useful throughout spoke next. “We have a few common suffixes among our people: ‘ek’ is perhaps the most common. I am Acclo, by the way.”

  “Thanks for that, Acclo. Great to meet you, too,” I turned to the last Veiletian. “And finally, your name?”

  “I am Miraek. Thank you for bringing us along, I haven’t had this much fun in forever!”

  After only ten minutes, I found myself liking all of these Veiletians very much. They were helpful, useful and quirky. “Hey, Ember. I think we should get these guys as bridge crew, straight away. There are a few workstations normally free, although I'm not going to lie and tell you I know w
hat any of those stations do. These four are quick, clever and capable,” I said in her mind.

  Ember responded in my head. “Totally agree. We can even ditch a few of the Torax from the gun stations if need be. There are a couple of them who are more useless than you up there.”

  “Thanks so much for the kind words, dear. And that’s fine. As long as it does not cause too much ill will. To be honest, we need to have people on the bridge the whole time. We can arrange shifts, so as to keep the majority happy. Although our priority is to have the best people on the bridge, even if it means hurting a few feelings,” I said, then quickly added, “Before you say it, I’ll still need to be on the bridge: useless or not. At least until you’ve deposed my tyrannical rule.”

  She actually snorted out loud at that, causing the Veiletians to zero in on her with their gazes.

  There was nothing more forthcoming from Ember, so I plowed ahead, speaking aloud. “Miraek, Acclo, Hwista and Wulek, I’ve already mentioned how impressed we were with your work. We want you on the bridge crew. We’ll work out shift rotations over the next few days. Preferably when Elyek comes back. They know the lay of the land better than me around all that business.”

  “That’s because you're just a tyrannical mascot,” Ember slipped into my mind, which threw me from my thoughts.

  They all nodded enthusiastically at the prospect, which was good.

  I really had fuck all idea of what to do with these different groups of people, other than to instruct one of their more skilled members to train the rest and report to one of us. It had all seemed to be working fine so far. Nonetheless, we were potentially heading towards a war zone. I might need to polish up on my leadership skills.

  We relaxed, chatting amiably with the Veiletians, then decided to turn in. But before I could do that, I had to make sure we had someone to cover for Elyek. “Any of you energetic enough to work alongside Calegg? We need a fast learner to pick up the pilot functions. Calegg will need to rest soon, and we need cover until Elyek gets back.” Although in reality I was thinking that I'd like to pull Elyek away from piloting all together to focus more on managing our increasing numbers of personnel. We couldn’t do it before because we didn’t have skilled-enough crew to take over piloting duties, but now we could.