Sector Eight (Perimeter Defense: Book #1)

by Michael Atamanov

  Family Affairs

  I was standing next to Captain Oorast Pohl when we made the warp jump, so I was lucky enough to observe the fantastic event as it unfolded before my very eyes. The cosmos rolled itself up into an endless tunnel as all nearby stars grew dim and began shifting around the sky.

  "The flight to Himora will be eight hours and forty minutes, my Prince," explained the captain in a nonplussed tone, not paying any attention to the light show taking place on the screen. "Where would you like to dine?"

  "Oh, come on," I said, trying very hard to make my voice sound bored enough, even though it wasn't very easy given the level of sensory overload.

  "In the large dining hall with the other senior officers, or in the small one?" asked the yacht captain, clarifying my choice while making some notes on the screen.

  "In the small one. It would be even better if I could take it in my office. I'll eat alone," I said, somewhat afraid at the perspective of eating strange food and having to follow etiquette rules I didn't know with whoever happened to be there.

  I took a small risk, given that I wasn't sure that there was a "my office" on the yacht. But there were no questions or clarifications, so I figured that I would be able to eat lunch in my office. Now I just needed to figure out where "my office" was. It occurred to me that I could ask someone to take me there, but that might lead my servant to the logical question of why the Prince suddenly doesn't know how to get around his own ship. So, instead, I called up the map.

  Deck four of Queen of Sin

  The area I was looking for turned out to be on deck two. In fact, Prince Georg's huge apartments occupied practically the whole second deck of the 1,000-foot yacht. After picking the right cabin, which was marked "Office," I first tried my best to memorize the order of turns and staircases, but then I found the "create route" function in the properties of the map, and it worked just like GPS in a car. This brought up a "distance to destination" box and a brightly colored marker to show me what direction to go in.

  I felt like a cyborg as I walked through unfamiliar hallways with absolutely no fear of getting lost. No, this is cheating. It isn't even fun to play this way! Would the story of Theseus be of any interest to us now if he could have just pulled up a navigation system and walked out of the Labyrinth? The hero shows up. He's been training since childhood to become a strong, agile master of hand-to-hand combat. And he kills the ill-fated, stupid and clumsy beast created by the geneticists of Olympus. Where's the heroism?

  Of course, with my build, I wasn't exactly in the same league as the muscular and athletic Theseus. The body bothered me. My eyes were a different distance from the floor, my fingers were too short and awkward, and I wasn't used to having such a big gut. Once, I even got stuck in a door frame, and hurt myself quite badly. And there was the wheeze, too. I couldn't even make it 10 feet at a clip without having to take a breather. I wonder if physical exercise in a virtual gym would help my virtual body? I'd like to understand how a character's body is defined in the program code, and how and what numbers are stored. I had a pretty good idea how databases worked. Maybe I'd be able to fix it...

  It was with these fairly strange and distant thoughts that I walked through the halls of the huge space yacht, only making note of the attention-grabbing luxury. Any metallic detail that struck my eye was gilded (or maybe even solid gold, who can tell?). The sheer number of pieces of art on display was enough to make your eyes light up. There was so much gem encrusting in the interior that you couldn't even stop to admire it for feeling so strongly that you didn't belong there. The ship looked so over-saturated with luxury that you immediately felt it was fake. It could only be possible in a virtual world where it was possible to draw any number of diamonds and emeralds without paying for them. Basically, as a customer and a player, I was dissatisfied with the result and wouldn't have given higher than a three out of five to the programmers and artists that made the decorations for the prince's yacht in the game.

  Once I arrived at the office, my already familiar butler was setting the table. Even in his advanced years, Bryle worked nimbly and carefully. I even marveled at how precise he was in placing the dishes on the table. Then my eye was caught by the second set of silverware, which the old man placed on a napkin to the right of the first set for some reason. And the second seat at the table also made me uneasy. I thought I had been clear that I wanted to dine alone.

  "Crown Princess Lika wanted to accompany you over lunch," said Bryle, explaining the unexpected preparation.

  I held my tongue, though I really wanted to ask "and who is she?" It seemed like that question was a step too far, even for such an unflappable and loyal servant, assuming that Prince Georg really was well acquainted with this lady. And I didn't even say out loud how dissatisfied I was with the fact that some Crown Princess thought she could overrule my orders on my personal yacht. But I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe she really did have that right? After all, I hadn't had the chance to study the rank tables around here yet, and didn't really have an understanding of my place in Imperial Royalty. It was completely possible that this Lika person was above me in status and thus could overrule my commands. The only thing was that this Crown Princess being there turned a normal lunch into a new test that could end in me looking like a jackass. After all, I had no idea how table manners worked here, and all the dishes on the table were really weird and unfamiliar. Maybe I should refuse lunch and blame it on my bad health...

  I can’t say what conclusions I may have reached though, because just then the doors swung open, and a long-legged little girl flew into the room. She looked to be about ten years old with dark short shorts and a light-gold, sleeveless blouse. Her long hair was an unusual shade of bright green, and I immediately began gawking inadvertently. As I stared, I noticed that nestled in among her green locks was a thin gold band in the shape of a crown.

  "Hi, dad!" said the young Crown Princess carelessly, as she confidently took a seat in the second chair.

  I rushed my way through the character notes, already having a pretty good idea of what I'd see:

  Likanna royl Georg ton Mesfelle-Kyle, Crown Princess of the Empire

  Age: 11

  Race: Human

  Gender: Female

  Relation to you: Your legal daughter

  Class: Aristocrat

  Achievements: None

  Fame: +1

  Reputation: +3

  Presumed personal opinion of you: +99 (completely trusting)

  "Hi, Lika. What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in class?" The reply just came out on its own. I was just utterly convinced that an eleven-year-old Princess probably should be studying a bunch of different kinds of sciences and skills, starting with dances and music and ending with genealogy and etiquette.

  "Of course I'm supposed to be," retorted my daughter, agreeing mildly as she nimbly manipulated what looked like a big pair of tweezers to bring a plate of unfamiliar, oblong, dark blue-purple fruits towards herself from the common dish. "I just heard on the news that you and mom fought back an alien invasion, so I decided to fly up and take a look. I was worried."

  For some reason, Lika ignored the other fruits, intentionally picking only the dark blue-purple fruits that looked like little weirdly colored apricots. I wonder if they're the tastiest? Before my daughter had a chance to empty the dish, I also picked up a pair of the tweezers and grabbed one, tossing it in my mouth. Yum. So it really is an apricot, even though it's not the color I'm used to. Lika snorted back happily:

  "I’ve always told the table etiquette teacher it’d be easier to eat right from the grabber without putting it on a stupid plate first."

  I chuckled too, happy to myself that my mistake, which had been due to my unfamiliarity with table manners, was taken as a joke by my daughter. Nevertheless, it was a good idea to be more careful and only eat the same exact way my daughter was doing.

  "Don't spoil your appetite on fruit. Save some room for the main courses," I suggested to
Lika, but all she did was carelessly brush it aside. "Well, I ate not too long ago when I got to the battlefield. There wasn't even anything alien to see there on the backdrop of broken pieces of Imperial and Kingdom of Fastel ships. So I figured right away that actually it was just you and mom fighting with each other."

  "And I bet you'll say it was mom that almost bit right through my neck too," I said, pointing at my bandage.

  Lika started guffawing, and I joined her. Then my daughter unexpectedly started complaining:

  "Dad, Joan royl Reyekh is teasing me again. She tells everyone that I don't have an ear for music. And it's all because I'm gonna be playing in the school orchestra instead of her."

  "That's not called teasing. What she's doing is called gossip," I said thoughtfully, correcting Likanna. "And what am I supposed to do about Joan royl Reyekh now then? Bomb her home planet to dust or just break that unbearable little snot’s arm?"

  At first, Lika froze in fear with her food half way from the plate to her mouth, but then she began giggling again:

  "It's always fun with you, dad. Of course, it would be nice to punish that pain-in-the-butt and bomb the Purple Palace to the ground, but I'm afraid the leader of the Purple House, Duke Takuro royl Andor wouldn’t allow it. To put it lightly, he has no love lost for our Orange House. And I won’t be able to break Joan royl Reyekh's arm either. She's a crown princess too, unfortunately, so laying a hand on her would be illegal."

  I smiled at my overly serious daughter and took the risk of starting my meal in earnest, as my stomach was groaning in hunger. I only took food that I could tell how to consume in polite company: a thin, pureed soup (there was only one spoon among the tableware, so there was no way I could make a mistake with that), pieces of dark bread, cheese balls, and a light wine.

  Lika saw my appetite and enounced thoughtfully:

  "You know what? I think I'm gonna join you. I haven't had anything but fruit since yesterday."

  That turned out to be really helpful and I was finally able to watch how you're supposed to consume all these tartlets, round thin sausages, and jelly balls. Some time passed in silence, but then my daughter broke it:

  "Dad, my summer break's starting soon, so I'm not gonna go back to school. Sound good? I'll just spend some time with mom on Fastel-XI."

  "Alright, but we aren't on our way to Fastel right now. We're going to Himora. The fleet needs to be repaired."

  "If you say so," agreed the Crown Princess, somewhat reluctantly. "If we're going to Himora, then Himora it is. I mean, it is literally the most boring place in the Universe, but it's only five hours from Uncle Roben's flying palace on Tesse. Can you tell my teachers that I'm with you then? They won't give you any crap for me playing hooky. Dad, can you pay a couple bills for me? On my way here, there weren't any adults with me, so I told everyone that the Orange House was paying."

  "Of course I'll pay. It's not a question," I agreed. Not one second later, I heard a sound as if I'd gotten an email.

  I opened the window that popped up:

  Total payment due: 3076.89 credits. Pay (yes/no)?

  I could also go into detail and see every item on the bill. I probably wouldn't do that with any other character as not to pry into their private life, but with my daughter I would play the father. I opened the list, and my eyes darted across the lines.

  "So, what is this? 'Alcoholic cocktail: 2.3 credits?' Who sold it to you?" I asked indignantly, while shooting my underage daughter a severe look.

  "That was at the cargo terminal station Unguay-3. I got stuck there for half a day. There weren't any space flights in or out of that one-horse shithole. I was thirsty, but the bar didn't have anything for kids. And, dad, there aren't any restrictions on selling alcohol to kids in the Unguay system, so I didn't break any laws."

  The picture I was imagining was an eleven-year-old girl hitchhiking with no money wandering into places that weren't exactly made with kids in mind. In the real world, that situation would scare me. Either there weren't problems with criminals in the virtual game, or Lika had just been lucky.

  "And how did you get out of there, then?" I wondered, not able to hide the worry in my voice.

  "Duh, dad. I jumped an ore-carrier that was unloading at Unguay-3. I demanded to meet with the captain and ordered him to immediately bring me to the Vorta beacon near where the battle happened. I promised that the Orange House would pay any expenses. You should have seen the captain apologizing for the mess. His team absolutely scoured the halls! It didn't look like it had ever been cleaned until I came on board. What was even funnier was how they tried to hide an illegal immigrant prostitute on their tiny little ship, then tried to pass her off as staff. She had to pretend to be their washerwoman, cleaning dirty underwear. It was just too rich!"

  I had no words. When I was eleven, I not only didn't understand what the word "prostitute" meant, I had never heard it before. And this underage space Princess travels in the company of a prostitute and a bunch of sullen stevedores and thinks it's fun! But Lika had no understanding of why I was so upset.

  "You can get mad if you want, dad! But what could possibly happen to a Crown Princess on Imperial territory?! Not even the baddest crook in the Galaxy would dare lay a finger on the heir to the Imperial throne, because the punishment for it is unavoidable and final. Plus, everyone in the Galaxy knows that Princesses never travel alone. Who cares if there's no bodyguards visible? That means nothing. Your chameleons aren't visible, but they're probably with us here right now."

  "But you didn't have any guards with you!" I insisted.

  "That's right. But who knew?" Lika sneered.

  I just shook my head and paid my daughter's bills. What's more, I even had to pay double for the ore freight from the Avaricious Miner to compensate the crew for their trouble. I'm sure some nerves were fried by having an impudent young girl with a title on board. After that, we continued our meal over an uninhibited, very friendly conversation. Mostly Lika spoke, enthusiastically telling me about her private school for the upper aristocracy in the Throne World. I responded with nods and "yeah, yeahs," while thinking about something else entirely.

  I never had kids in the real world. I had had girlfriends, and even two or three long-term relationships with regular sex. But I never saw the necessity of deepening an existing relationship, or taking one as far as marriage. Nevertheless, I discovered in despair at that moment that I had always wanted a daughter deep down. I would do all it took so she would turn out like Likanna: careless, happy, with a boundless trust of the world around her and utterly convinced that her parents are capable of anything.

  Of course, it was entirely possible that Likanna was actually being played by some rich retiree looking to have a second childhood, or maybe even some fat, bald guy sitting at his monitor as he scratches his sweaty balls and wipes his greasy fingers on the keyboard. But for some reason, I got the impression that Lika wasn't just playing a child, she really was a child. It came so naturally to her that no actor could possibly have been behind such an authentic eleven-year-old girl.

  After lunch, Lika stood up from the table and said anxiously:

  "I think I ate too much. I'm gonna go down to the gym and swim for an hour in the pool. Look at me, I even had a wrinkle show up on my skin. I guess I'll never fill out." She tried her best to find and show me the wrinkle, but it was no use.

  When Lika had left, I finally had the opportunity to really study the game world for the first time since I started playing. In my less than a whole day, I had already accumulated hundreds of questions: What are the Empire and Great Houses? What are the relationships between the two like? What are the roles of the mystics and the aristocracy? What kinds of ships are there? How fast do they go? What star systems are in Perimeter Sector Eight, and what countries are in it? What moves are possible between the beacons in the zone I'm responsible for, etc. and so on.

  I spent five hours sitting in front of the huge screen in my office until my eyes were fried and my head ref
used to take in any new information. After a light dinner with my daughter, I spent another hour studying the characteristics of the military ships and went off to find the gym.

  * * *

  My whole body was aching. Every muscle fiber was shouting to my brain as if to say "I'm here, and I'm not happy with the violence you're inflicting on me!" I wondered if the Prince had made it down to pump iron even once in his nearly half century of carefree life. As if! The fitness instructor at least tried to pretend there was nothing wrong with me, but the sympathy was written on his face a bit too clearly. "Don't worry about it," I said to reassure myself. I have another half year left to turn this amorphous lump of fat into something that resembles a man's body.

  In the shower, where I went to clean off the abundant sweat that was pouring off my body, there was a surprise waiting for me. It turned out that the space yacht had three nice-looking girls on staff whose job description included sponge-bathing Prince Georg's body and being responsible for his hygiene in general. Initially, I wanted to protest, but eventually I gave in to their skilled, capable hands. I was massaged, lathered and rinsed, shaved, and sprayed down with a number of lotions and colognes, before having my hair done and finally getting my finger- and toenails repainted. I tried to refuse the polish, but it was obvious they didn't understand what I was asking for, instead thinking I was just sick of the color. For that reason, my nails got painted orange and pink. It was horrifying, of course, but I didn't argue, because changing Prince Georg's habits too quickly would risk me being unmasked.

  A warning signal rang out over the intercom. "Ten minutes to warp tunnel exit." I hurried to fleet headquarters, trying not to look too bow-legged after how sore I’d made myself. As soon as I noticed that Prince Georg had his own personal seat in the headquarters in front of the big screen, I hurried to take it. The staff officers were obviously surprised at my showing up, but no one said a word. Though it was already too late, I considered the fact that such a commonplace occurrence as coming out of warp hardly merited the personal presence of a Crown Prince, but I wasn't going to leave my post at that point. As it turned out, I had not miscalculated.