“Insufficient system resources…Memory defragmentation underway…Decryption process initialized…Insufficient system resources…Resource reallocation underway…Insufficient system resources…”
I felt Warlock’s computer strain as hard as it could, trying to complete the task, but the damage was too serious. The AI needed help.
“Can you use my PDA?”
“Negative. Your device uses a different architecture.”
“What about the droids’ CPUs?”
“Already connected to the core-stack. There are not enough resources. “
“The marine?”
A long pause.
“Using the cryptosaur’s system resources will require partitioning his drives and hard-resetting him.”
“Do it!”
The rhino’s roar bellowed in my headphones. The marine saluted me before dying.
“Hacking under way. Time remaining: 120 seconds.”
Two minutes. I took up a defensive position in case anyone came. A battlesphere’s capabilities weren’t much different than an orbship’s. It stood to reason that there would be an engineer, a gunner and a marine onboard as well. The local ‘Brainiac’ is no doubt already arranging a welcoming party for me.
I was not mistaken.
Exactly a minute later the wall of the bridge deck dissolved, revealing the battlesphere’s gunner. Mangled and broken, with only two hands left, he would have posed a serious threat to any other player but me. Had it been anyone else, it would’ve gone differently. The orangutan aimed his blasters, but I simply tore them away with his arms attached. A legendary pair of manipulators is no joke! I didn’t stop there either — zoning out the orangutan with a few precise volleys, I took aim and fired at his center mass. He collapsed to the floor and froze. Thankfully no one from PETA was around to see it. Then again, this was no time for robotic simian rights in space!
You have acquired an unclassified ship. The closest category is an upgraded destroyer. Item class: Legendary. For a detailed description of the ship’s properties, see its logbook.
You are the first player to own this ship and may name it as you wish. Current name: N/A.
This vessel is damaged, current functionality: 15%.
There is no planetary binding. If this vessel is destroyed, it will respawn at the nearest ship graveyard.
The battlesphere’s crew is inactive.
Exhausted, I collapsed in my new captain’s chair. That’s it. The deed is done! I have access to the system and Eine will definitely get his planet. I knew exactly what I’d do with the battlesphere — I had wanted to pull off this trick for a long time, but had no suitable vessel. The main thing was to remember to call Hansa: They had promised me quite a bit for a chance to root around inside the innards of a battlesphere. All that remained was to blow this thing to Kingdom Come and take a relaxing break.
“How are you, Eunice?” I asked into the microphone when she answered my call. I hadn’t the strength to go back to her. The debuffs kept popping up and my suit’s medunit did not have time to cope with them. Apparently, the crash had turned me into a piece of meat, and I was kept alive entirely by my suit’s constant ministrations.
“I’m pretty damn bad,” the girl snapped.
“If you’re angry, then you’re alive. What shall we name the battlesphere?”
A pause.
“You…captured…her?”
“Uh-huh. Eunice, I’m tired and I’d like to respawn as soon as possible. I need a name. Will you suggest one or are you okay flying on the Nebuchadnezzar?”
“I don’t understand…”
“Honey, I’m giving you the battlesphere!” I said. “After all, I wouldn’t trade Brainiac for any other AI!”
“Captain…I am touched…We are touched…All of us…Thank you!”
“Spare me the waterworks, Brainiac. Save your energy. Eunice, I need a name!”
“Lexus! I want the name to be Lexus!” my wife blurted out.
“I get your hint, but you should know that I never like to give the same present twice,” I laughed and entered the new name. “Brainiac, update Lexus’ maps and download her specifications. I want to understand how she manages to jump so deftly. We need that capability too.”
“Affirmative.”
A loading bar appeared before my eyes. As I had figured, the battlesphere turned out to be a powerful but ancient ship with the typical Uldan crew complement. The coordinate grid was very different from what we were used to — just as it was when I first got my Warlock. The sync procedure was supposed to fix that.
“What about Eine?” I suddenly remembered our passenger.
“He’s alive, but unconscious. His debuffs will last another half hour. I don’t know when he’ll come to. It is surprising that he is still in the game.”
“All right, let him rest. Maybe he’ll be more talkative next time.”
The update had reached almost one hundred percent when a new system notification knocked the air out my lungs. Eunice’s scream, the annoying calls to my PDA, Brainiac’s report that the update was complete and that we were ready to self-destruct — I heard none of it. I just sat there and stared at the message. Self-destruction was the last thing I needed right now.
You have lost ownership of Blood Island. Current owner: [~Liberium~] Aalor.
Chapter Twenty-One
The difference between being a professional and an amateur is knowing when it’s time to ignore one’s emotions. Want to make a living playing games? Then remember that the virtual world is there for work, not for pleasure. No attachments. No desire for virtual objects or possessions. Otherwise, your problems will be countless.
I didn’t know myself when I’d stopped being a professional. Blood Island was my home. Brainiac and Warlock’s crew were my family. Now the enemy had invaded my home and taken it from me. Neither my anger, nor my desire to find the insolent bastard and tear him to pieces as quickly as possible interfered with my consideration of an even more important issue: Who the hell had given him our coordinates? On his own, Aalor could have looked for my planet until the second coming of Space Jesus to no avail. There were only two options. The first was that a tracking beacon had been planted on Warlock or in Eunice’s fighter during our stay on Belket. The second was that Alonso and Lucille had ratted us out. I preferred the first option a lot more, even though it left me without an object to take my anger out on. Making an effort, I rid myself of any notion that my friends might have betrayed me.
“Lex, Eine called. He is conscious again, but he cannot move. He only has enough medicine to last him thirty minutes, then he’ll respawn. The German requests that we do anything we can to keep him with us.”
Eunice had been immobilized as well, yet she still managed to get through to me. I took a few deep breaths, soothing my burning nerves. I had to come to my senses and think. As if hearing my prayers, a message from Aalor appeared on my PDA:
“You can go ahead and delete your character. Take your losses and count your winnings!”
Kids are childish when they hold a grudge, but adults are much worse, especially when it comes to gloating after they’ve had their revenge. And Aalor had something to gloat about. In addition to my planet, he had captured my A-class fighter and all my reserves of raq, elo and every other resource I’d been hoarding. Even the inventory I didn’t want to carry around in my ship’s holds was now his. At the same time, Aalor hadn’t been too lazy to call and then send a message when I didn’t pick up. I mean, is this middle school or what? But I did feel better. I’m not the only ‘professional’ around here. An officer of ‘~Liberium~’ wants to start a war? So let’s have us a war then.
“Hello, Herr Eine! Yes, I was out, just like you. We will need a transport to deliver us to the shipyard. Could you arrange it? Coordinates? I’m sending them as we speak.”
Respawning was now out of the question, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up and just go with the flow or whatever. The German called his s
ubordinates and then called me back:
“Herr Alexis, we have a Lot of Problems. Ze rescue Party vill take forty Minutes of Flight. I vill not survive such a long Time. You must come up vit a different Solution. I have ordered a Transport to come for us as a backup Plan.”
Yes, indeed, the problem is that transports were rather slow, especially the ones big enough to accommodate us in their holds. I looked at my screens in confusion, unsure of what to do next. We were at an empty location at the very edge of the system with absolutely nothing interesting around us. There was not a single soul nearby, only six Uldan orbital stations, which remained indifferent to the battlesphere’s destruction.
“Brainiac,” I ordered out of sheer helplessness, “transmit the following in Uldan: ‘Mayday! We require assistance. We are in need of urgent repairs! Our ships are damaged and have no planetary bindings. We will not be able to reach the repair docks on our own. We do have access to this system!’”
“Response received: Repair is available at a cost of six million tons of raq.”
I almost choked when I heard this reply. Our way out was right there under our noses and here I was reinventing the wheel! The price was steep, but I wasn’t in a position to bargain.
“Ask them whether we can pay them the credit equivalent at the current exchange rate? And if not, tell them that we can deliver the raq within twelve hours while repairs are still in progress.”
“They do accept payment in GC. A transport has been dispatched to recover us.”
Glory be to all the devs! They didn’t bother nerding out and cooking up some special payment system for the Uldans. The hull shuddered and I heard a metal screeching.
“We have received an invoice for GC 300,000,000.”
“Pay it and let’s go get patched up!”
I don’t even want to think about how the orbital stations have access to Galactogon’s banking system. Let’s just assume it’s a feature. The shaking stopped and was replaced by a low roar and tremor. Suddenly, a spherical droid appeared on one of the battlesphere’s screens and asked in the common tongue:
“Your clarification is required. What is to be done with the ships? Shall they be split up or repaired as a single vessel in their current, integrated form?”
Now this was curious. The Uldans had never let on that they spoke the common tongue before. Coupled with their access to the banking system, it’s clear that someone had been working with these orbital stations.
“I’d like the ships split up.”
“You have paid the repair price for only one ship. Your payment does not include the separation and recovery of the second vessel.”
“Send me the invoice and I’ll pay it. I have three wounded casualties on board. We need medical assistance.”
“Medical care is not covered by the pay…”
“Hold up! Let me just ask a simple question: Can I deposit a billion credits to an escrow account so that you can simply withdraw whatever you need each time, without asking me any questions?”
“That is acceptable. We have issued the invoice.”
I heard the sharp squeal of a circular saw spinning up and the battlesphere’s bridge deck filled with sparks. The repairs had begun without any further ado. As soon as the hole in the hull was big enough, a giant mechanical arm entered the cabin, pulled me out and took off my armor suit, which was basically junk by this point. I managed to catch a glimpse of Eunice and Eine being extracted from the orbship in a similar way. After that, we were moved to the medbay. The medcapsule’s lid closed shut and an alert appeared before my eyes:
Your condition is critical. Time until full recovery: 3 hours. Would you like to watch a movie?
Engrossed in a clever comedy, the time flew by and I even rued having to return to a gameworld full of troubles and tribulations — one that on top of everything now also had a crazed, vengeful Aalor running about it. When I did come out, Eunice and Eine were already waiting for me. Whole, healthy and extremely curious about their new surroundings.
“Welcome to the automated Uldan orbital station,” the spherical droid greeted us again, hovering at eye level. “We will need another 24 hours to repair your ships. We recommend you relax in our humanoid reception suite. It is designed for your race.”
“Can we walk around the station?” asked Eunice, probing how much of a leash we were really on.
“Your access level is insufficient for walking around the station,” said the orb in an utterly neutral tone and then added: “Violators will be terminated.”
“We would like to visit the planet,” Eine tried another angle.
“Your request is acceptable. Would you like to use the surface shuttle?”
Why of course we would! Less than ten minutes later we stepped out on the surface. The orbital station allocated us a special transport, assuring us that we could return whenever we liked. Now that’s service! Though it did cost a penny or two, but that’s a different issue.
New planet discovered: Zubrail.
You are not allowed to claim this planet or assign it a second name. This planet is reserved for game scenarios.
Achievement unlocked: Explorer (Rank II)
A portion of the resources mined on this planet will belong to you (current value: 9%, distributed in equal shares among players Eine, Nurse and Surgeon)
The landing dock of our new mysterious planet was in the middle of a dense forest. As soon as we left the circular platform, an Uldan glided down from the thick canopy.
“You’re not welcome here! Go away!” The winged creature first addressed us in his guttural Uldan tongue, but when we failed to understand anything, he switched to the common one and repeated his message. “This planet is off-limits for visitors. You don’t have permission to be here.”
The lower branches around us shook, parting to reveal five rhino marines. The branches higher up set in motion as well, as the orange silhouettes of orangutan gunners flashed among the leafage.
“Forgive us for the disturbance…We need help,” Eunice said in a pleading tone, but the Uldan refused to hear her out:
“That does not concern us. Get out!”
His haughty glance left me in no doubt that the winged creature harbored some kind of grudge against us. Although I would be offended too, if he had taken my orbship from me. Asking for forgiveness seemed useless, so I just pulled out the cylinder and held it out in front of me.
“We will go, but first hear us out! This is a gift from Belmarad. It contains something that will allow us to rid Galactogon of the Zatrathi forever. It’s not we who need help, but the entire galaxy!”
Sounded a bit dramatic, but it did the trick: The winged creature flinched at the name of the dark lord.
“You’re lying! Belmarad is locked away in a secure prison! No one can escape from there! Neither Belmarad, nor anyone else!”
“Your secure prison no longer exists. The Precians currently have the body of Belmarad. Your dark lord succumbed to an ordinary parasite. The same kind that’s enslaved hundreds of thousands of your brothers. I call them brainworms — they call themselves Relays. They are the ones who relay Her will.”
The Uldan flinched again. Even though I hadn’t mentioned any names, he understood exactly who I was talking about.
“What does it contain?” The ancient asked, nodding at the cylinder uncertainly.
“The coordinates of their homeworld. If we manage to get to it, we can destroy it. Then the Zatrathi will stop being reborn.”
“You don’t have anything that can kill a planetary spirit!”
“How about the Vengeance?” I whipped out the Lira, Lora, Lara as I spoke these words.
“You think you can kill a spirit with that pea shooter?” The Uldan smiled scornfully. “Why that’s just a Vraxis toy. The bugs thought they could harm us with it! It is true, the Vengeance can annihilate a planet, but the spirit will remain intact. The ship graveyard will remain untouched. The rebirth point will remain untouched too. Nothing will change
! Why should I help you? Get off my planet! You don’t have permission to be here!”
I realized that the Uldan wasn’t lying and that the Vengeance really couldn’t hurt the Zatrathi. Destroy a ship or two — yes. Something more important — nope. No wonder the Precian adviser had hinted that they wanted to use the Vengeance for their own purposes. In their fight against the Qualians, not the Zatrathi.
Oh! The Qualians!
“I know where I can find a weapon that will destroy a planetary spirit! How about the KRIEG?” The butterfly’s face didn’t change at all, yet Eine, standing beside me, started with surprise. “A weapon that is capable of annihilating everything within a radius of two hyperminutes. It leaves nothing behind. It is a forbidden weapon created by my contemporaries.”
A Check for a Billion Page 34
