A Check for a Billion

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “Here!”

  Bending over, I pulled the portable forcefield and plasma cutter out of my inventory. As I cut, the powerful stream of gas blew the sparks away from the Arbiter and as soon as the hole was big enough, I tumbled through it, crashing to the floor. By the end, I was acting entirely on autopilot, barely conscious. The suit’s medical injections had ended and the heat had done its job. I even lost consciousness for a couple of minutes until the suit cooled off. Brainiac’s insistent voice was the only thing that kept me from drifting off into oblivion. Pulling out a spare armor suit from my inventory, I got out of my current stove. As soon as my poor body slipped into the new suit, I felt a sense of relief. The onboard computer even squealed a warning and began resuscitation procedures. It couldn’t cope with all my debuffs, but at least I could function normally. Rising to my feet, I sat down a couple of times, getting used to the new armor. It wasn’t my legendary suit of course, but it should do for the mission at hand.

  Looking at what was left of my main, I sighed heavily. I do not even know how I managed to survive in this pile of tattered metal.

  “What’s next, Brainiac?”

  “You need to go down the corridor, then take a right and walk another twenty meters. There are no network connectors where you are.”

  “Got it. I’m on it.”

  The door slid up and I almost butted heads with a Precian redshirt. His astonishment was so sincere that you’d think the technician lost contact with reality, gaping at the armored colossus before him. That is what did him in. I could not allow him to shout or warn his superiors about my presence, so I quickly grabbed the poor fellow with a manipulator and flung him at the ceiling with all my might. The Precian went limp but didn’t turn into a crate. Releasing the motionless body, I cocked my blaster, when a crazy thought popped into my head. I had several Jolly Roger tokens in my inventory. Why not test a pet theory I’d concocted? If it works, great — if not, no big loss.

  I slipped a token into the unconscious Precian’s jacket pocket and then turned him into a shimmering loot crate. I didn’t pick it up. Let the locals do it themselves. They have some means of locating where one of their number had died. Let’s see how they react to find the Jolly Roger’s calling card.

  I traveled the rest of the way without incident, following Brainiac’s directions. Barricading the last door behind me just in case, I pulled out a remote terminal.

  “What is the plan?” asked Brainiac as he hacked the Arbiter’s security layer. The locals’ ship stood no chance against the advanced Uldan AI.

  “Two objectives. The first and most important is that we’re about to send three frigates full of marines into Fighting Breed’s no-fly zone. The Arbiter has to perceive them as friendlies with all the access that entails.”

  “Give me a second to locate the relevant permissions. Got it! You may launch the frigates. The Arbiter will now treat them as its own family.”

  “Graykill, you’ve got the green light.” I immediately called the marine. “Move out!”

  “If I lose my armor suit, I will flay you alive and wear your hide into battle,” he muttered in reply. “Everyone head out!”

  “I see the frigates,” reported Brainiac. “Taking control now. Got it! Labeling them friendly now.”

  “Full speed ahead, boys. Semper Fi and all that…!” I ordered into my comm. The players were tarrying at the very edge of the no-fly zone, expecting the Arbiter to react. The Arbiter did nothing, however, and three glittering lightning bolts zipped toward the Breed’s cruisers. Encased in their armors, the marines began to file out of their frigates, dispersing throughout the hulls and burrowing like termites into a tree. Brainiac could monitor Graykill’s actions and he relayed the video stream from the marine’s suit to me. The marines did not make their own jobs harder; they breached just outside the bridge deck. Their plasma cutters erupted in a shower of sparks and one by one the players slipped into the hull. A smattering of shots, a quick dash to the bridge, the cutting of the door to the bridge and then the bridge’s clearance. Everything went so fast that no one understood what was going on. Neither on the planet, nor on the ship itself.

  “We’re in position!” Graykill reported.

  “We’re in position! We’re in position!” reported the other squads. We had captured the bridge decks, the remote terminals had been connected. Now the marines were busy digging in against any counterattack.

  “Do your magic, Brainiac!” As soon as I issued the order, three progress bars appeared before my eyes. One went faster than the others but on the whole all of them grew steadily to 100%.

  “Three ships without friendly tags are about to appear in the Galvar system. The Arbiter should not be able to see them.”

  “Understood. Executing now.” For a few moments, the progress bars paused and then began moving again. I watched each percentage with a skipping heart.

  Seventy percent.

  Fighting Breed’s leaders had begun to suspect something. I could see new ships scrambling from the planet; they began to circle the cruisers, making docking requests. There was no reply, however.

  Eighty percent.

  A frigate joined the fighters. Like everyone else, it circled around the ships, trying to figure out what was going on.

  Ninety percent.

  Puffing heavily with its engines, a destroyer rose from the planet’s surface next. I even began to wonder how they had managed to land it to begin with — I had thought that this vessel type was only space-faring. The destroyer did not rush around chaotically, but stopped in front of the cruiser that had been taken by Aalor’s marines. Perhaps, Fighting Breed was still hoping to solve the problem through negotiations. They were too late.

  One hundred percent.

  You have acquired a new vessel: Cruiser General Gracie. Item class: B-87

  You have acquired a new vessel: Cruiser General Liddell. Item class: A-12

  You have acquired a new vessel: Cruiser Vehement. Item class: B-66

  “Here I am!” announced Brainiac. “I have assigned ‘friendly’ status to all three cruisers. Calculating hyperjump now. One minute. Oh…the Arbiter has opened fire…”

  For a few moments there was silence over the air. My heart sank, I even stopped breathing, waiting for everything to fall apart. The pause dragged on.

  “Brainiac, what’s going on over there?”

  “Ah, it’s all fine, Captain. Fighting Breed lost their cool and attacked. Then the Grand Arbiter intervened and put them in their place. It wasn’t shooting at us. That’s it! The cruisers have jumped!”

  On my screen, the three giant ships blinked and zipped away into the starfield.

  “Okay, Brainiac. Your next assignment is to download everything you can get your digital tentacles on,” I smiled, taking off my suit and putting it in inventory. I understood perfectly well that I could not be extracted. Therefore, I had to make the most of my forced respawn. Five minutes later, the Precians had triangulated my location and began trying to break into my room. Pulling out a grenade, I closed my eyes and pulled the pin. I’ll have to part with this set of body armor I’m wearing. In exchange, the Jolly Roger insignia stamped on my pauldrons should knock the Precians off my trail. Let them suspect anyone at all, so long as it isn’t Surgeon.

  There was a bang…

  You were killed and will respawn on Blood Island.

  Your rapport with the Corsican has grown. Current Rapport: 10,000.

  You have impressed the leader of the Brotherhood of the Jolly Roger.

  Chapter Seven

  “Freak…”

  “Dead man walking…”

  Uh-huh.

  “Run while you can…”

  “This is your last warning…”

  “Freak…”

  I see. Neither originality nor creativity.

  Having scanned through the messages, I added yet another member of Fighting Breed to my blacklist. Getting a third list from Hansa is like being a member in some special
club. In addition to the ecstasy of merely reading the capabilities of their weapons, you can’t help but revel in the exclusivity of it all. My new armor suit made my pulse race, pumping endorphins to every bit of my digital body. I preened in front of the mirror for several minutes, observing how well the cloaking field worked. The slightest distortion, a waver in the room’s air, indicated that the player Surgeon was in fact preening in front of the mirror. Eh it’s too bad I didn’t have this thing when I was in my teens.

  Checking the cloak’s effect with a thermal imager and infrared motion sensors, I was pleased to discover that I didn’t even show up when accelerating. This piece of gear really was worth the credits I’d spent on it. Especially since I’d earned the money so quickly and easily.

  Vargen paid me twenty-two billion GCs for the three Fighting Breed cruisers as well as for the contents of their holds and equipment. He tried to bargain, naturally, but Eunice made it clear that he couldn’t win in this deal. I really enjoyed their exchange and mostly just sat back and kept my mouth shut. Vargen couldn’t say no because he would lose face in front of his friends in that elite ‘league’ of his. As a result, the head of Liberium was forced to haggle, complaining that the cruisers were in poor condition and that it was unseemly of me, a friend of his guild, to ask for their nominal market price. At this point, Brainiac kindly played a recording of Vargen saying, ‘You are a friend of our guild, not an officer.’ The whole thing was a lark, in other words.

  I won another eight billion from the bet and one more from Ash personally as a ‘gift.’ The head of Vanguard called me on my PDA and floated the idea of sharing the data I had obtained from the Arbiter with the public at large. ‘The public at large,’ naturally, consisted of two or three powerful acquaintances of his. They were interested in the Arbiter’s layout, performance characteristics, vulnerabilities and capabilities. Ash understood perfectly well that I would not have left the defensive citadel without getting ahold of this very information. I had no choice but to act like I was happy to share. I’ll assume that this is an investment in our future relationship. Having dealt with all my payments and debts, I dumped half of my GCs on two armor suits from Hansa’s third tier and was quite satisfied with the results.

  “Are you going to preen and pout in front of that mirror for a long time, small fry?” Tryd asked, surly at my delay. “We have no time to spare — it’s time to head to Shurtan!”

  The pirate had a point. I would need to go meet the Corsican tomorrow and I still wasn’t ready. After the last operation, I decided that I would reach out to Vargen or Kiddo (for that matter) only as a last resort because working with partners like that was by far the most difficult thing in Galactogon.

  “We’ve received the reconnaissance data.” Eunice turned on one of the screens. Without my noticing, my wife had gradually become an important member of Warlock’s crew, taking over the routine and business affairs. Do we need to contract some scouts to explore the system? No problem! Do we need to supply our ship at the lowest price possible? Already done! Even the Hansa engineers were more willing to deal with her than with me.

  “A flying fortress, an orbital station, two cruisers in the repair docks and a total of three hundred and twenty smaller ships. Look here. They’re preparing two more repair docks at the flying fortress. That means there are more cruisers en route.”

  “If we jump in there right now, we won’t last a minute.” I soberly assessed the prospects of a raid onto Shurtan. “We’ll need help.”

  “And fairly elaborate help at that. I’ve studied the flying fortress’s capabilities. The only weapon that can pose a threat to her is Ringold’s cannon.

  Seeing my puzzled face, Eunice sighed and explained:

  “A scroll of Black Death in Runlustia terms. It’s analogous to the Yamato cannon that Kiddo has on Alexandria. But Ringold’s cannon is no panacea either. It’ll only be able to eliminate the flying fortress and maybe any ships that are in the path of its fire. We’ll need another five or six cruisers for the remaining enemies.”

  “I just settled my accounts with Vargen and don’t feel like renewing our partnership,” I gritted my teeth.

  “Vargen alone won’t be enough. His ships don’t have a Ringold’s cannon and he’ll ask too much for his services. Of course there’s Kiddo, but…Well, basically, we need a reliable group.”

  “We could bring Gammon and Kiddo instead of just Kiddo. They will work together for sure.”

  Tryd snorted contemptuously.

  “Arr. Pirates today are a meagre, mangy breed. All you scurvy lot know is how to beg for help.”

  Eunice and I exchanged glances and turned to Tryd, waiting for a hint.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “What can an old pirate suggest?! Jump right into the thick of it! Take a risk!”

  “Then we will try to solve the problem ourselves,” Eunice backed him. I wanted to argue, but she didn’t give me a chance. “Wait! Hear me out. Tryd didn’t show up for no reason. Right? He’s reminding us that we have to get back to the pirate-based gameplay. And before you go to the Corsican!”

  “Yes, but this doesn’t mean that we have to run headlong into certain death!”

  “We have to think, Lex. Tryd is hinting that we should do this ourselves.”

  “I don’t see any alternative to going in guns blazing.” I examined the system map once again, giving in to Eunice’s and Tryd’s combined onslaught. “Running the gauntlet won’t work — neither with speed nor with stealth. There are just too many Zatrathi there!”

  “Here it is! The key phrase is ‘too many!’ What does that mean?”

  “That I don’t understand hints?” I said. “Come on, out with it.”

  “There’s constant traffic in and out of the planet — frigates, scouts and small transports. The traffic is huge. Some of them stop here on this moon. The Zatrathi harvesters are mining something there. Could be stone for construction, could be sand for hourglasses, who knows. I don’t see any resources there. Our job will be to get to the moon, stow away on a transport and reach the planet surface in its hold. There are so many ships in this system that there’s no way they inspect the cargo holds. The main obstacle will be surviving the landing.”

  Hmm…I stared at the jumble of ships. We’d only had cloaks on our armor suits for a few hours and Eunice had already found a use for them. Hold up!

  “Let’s say we manage to sneak in. What are we going to do with Tryd? He doesn’t have a cloak on his suit.”

  We turned to look at the Delvian.

  “I have to get in there,” he declared, correctly interpreting our looks. The idea of leaving him on the ship seemed self-evident. “Keep thinking!”

  “Can the scout you hired figure out what the harvesters are mining?”

  Eunice nodded and went to negotiate. The image on the screen changed, zooming in on the quarries that the Zatrathi had set up. I was forced to commend the courage of our scout, who was verging on pure recklessness. The player had crept to the very edge of the quarry, recording the entire mining and transportation operation.

  The Zatrathi were quarrying marble. The harvesters were cutting out giant slabs of the stone and loading them on conveyor belts. These ferried the slabs to the transports. We counted seven slabs before the transport shut its hold and made way for the next one in line.

  “That’s enough,” Eunice ordered and the player crawled away to safety.

  I looked at the topographic map of the moon again and drew Eunice’s attention to a point near the transports’ landing zone. It was very well hidden from the larger area by a sizeable boulder.

  “Can your scout explore that area? Tell him to look for a cleft or a pit large enough to conceal a slab of marble.”

  The player was a real pro: Twenty minutes later we found the hideout we needed.

  “Now a question for everyone. How can we get to that moon without aggroing the Zatrathi?”

  “Only in a scout with its reflectors turned
on,” both Eunice and Tryd replied simultaneously.

  “Brainiac, isn’t our orbship an Uldan scout? Do we have reflectors?”

  “Unless this system has some active scanners in place, it should be no problem to get to the back of the moon without being noticed. We could even risk it if there are active scanners, as long as they’re in the outer orbits and not looking for us specifically. But I would not want to go there. Remember: The Zatrathi know how to disrupt planetary spirit bindings.”