I conveyed all this to the Uldan, but he showed no interest. He seemed to have his doubts.
“Ask Eine! He will confirm that the KRIEG is dangerous,” I pressed, trying to look convincing. Name-dropping the German had its effect — the Uldan looked down at the KRIEG.
“I want to see it in action,” he said, handing the KRIEG back to me.
“No problem! Let’s go see your planetary spirit! If you want to see it in action, you’ll see it in action,” I promised. I was in the most of fighting moods. I even descended from the dock to the ground, but then the bushes parted and four rhinos stepped out to the clearing. I quickly clambered back up to my ship.
Mission accomplished: One Last Shot.
“Enter the following sequence,” Zubrail’s resident Uldan gave up. He dictated the letters and digits to the riddle, I entered those into the cylinder, and the last green light went on. There was a click. They cylinder jerked and opened like a high-tech puzzle from a sci-fi horror movie. Like Lumara had said, cracking Belmarad’s gift would be dangerous. Tiny explosives were packed just inside the casing. In the center, inside a glass bulb, lay a quite ordinary-looking piece of paper with numbers scrawled on it. It didn’t take much time for Brainiac to decipher the coordinates. Once that was done, the Uldan kindly projected a giant 3D map of the galaxy in front of us. Judging by this map, the Zatrathi homeplanet was way out on the periphery.
“Two hyper-hours from the nearest discovered planet,” Brainiac quickly estimated. “We would need a full cargo hold of elo to travel one way.”
This was bad news indeed. It would be impossible to send a scout ahead — a smaller ship wouldn’t have the fuel to make it. On top of this, I doubt I could accomplish much with just my orbship — and we wouldn’t have the elo to get back.
“What is that?” Eunice asked peering closely at part of the map across the galaxy from us. While Brainiac and I pondered how to get to the ‘X’ marking the spot, my wife busied herself with photographing and recording Galactogon’s projection. The star system that attracted her attention was as far from the galactic center as the Zatrathi planet.
“Nothing!” The Uldan waved his hand and that part of the map faded.
“Brainiac?”
“Don’t worry, Captain. I managed to triangulate it. It is impossible to establish the coordinates, but we do have a vector.”
“It would take two hours to fly there, no less!” Eunice interrupted with her habitual strictness. “An error of even a hundredth of a degree would throw us light years off track. You two get distracted too easily. I’d get back to the task at hand, if I were you.”
“Scout it out in the battlesphere?” I suggested, returning to the problem.
“I have no reflectors,” Eunice replied. “We’ll be spotted.”
“And they’ll be sure to reinforce their defenses if they do,” added Brainiac.
“As it stands, the static defenses in their home system might be too much for the battlesphere. We might not even be able to get close to the planet,” said Eunice, finishing off my idea completely.
“In that case, we need a cruiser — and preferably several cruisers,” I summed up our brainstorming session. “But where can we get them?”
I asked this rhetorically, yet the Universe took pity on me and answered. And so clearly, that the choice of allies became instantly obvious:
Attention all members of Jolly Roger 2.0!
The first Brotherhood assembly shall take place five hours from now. All Brotherhood officers are required to attend. The rendezvous point will be Barganil III, Barganil System.
The pirates had the forces and the will to plunder, they were hotheads and there were basically no players among them, so there’d be no need to wait for someone or haggle about random nonsense. Offer to split the loot with the NPCs and let them do the heavy lifting. Exactly what I needed most right now…It’s decided then! I’ll set out for the Zatrathi planet with the pirates, but first I’ll need to do Wit-Verr’s quest and deal with the Praline base.
Eunice took a rain check. According to her, I would have to complete Wit-Verr’s mission on my own and preferably before the meeting. It wouldn’t do for a major in the Brotherhood to show up otherwise. She did not say what she was planning to do without me, but I could say for certain that the battlesphere departed Zubrail before me.
At first glance, Wit-Verr’s mission seemed like a cakewalk: fly in, fix the transmitter and be on my way. There was no reason to assume I’d encounter another ancient Uldan on the base. More likely, the transmitter had just broken or something. Some mundane malfunction.
And as a result of such thoughts, I was completely unprepared to discover six Zatrathi flying fortresses arranged in a circular garrison around the Praline system.
“We are being locked on by EM cannons! Our hyperdrive is being disrupted! I am detecting…”
Suddenly, Warlock went dead. There were no shots, no damage notifications. Simply the orbship lost power. Oddly enough though, my armor suit went on functioning as before. Everything on me read nominal. I activated the backup power circuit and waited for Brainiac to say something clever.
“Captain, it’s a tractor beam!” he began. “We are being dragged into…”
Then he went dead again as did my ship around me. I had gotten so used to my orbship’s speed and power that I forgot entirely about tractor beams! Properly operated, these could capture ships just as flycatchers caught torpedoes. If the tractor beam was large enough, it would depower the ship to boot. As it happened, we had emerged from hyperspace right under the stern of a flying fortress — as good as on a platter for the Zatrathi.
I looked around desperately. The self-destruct button was powered by a backup circuit that just died. Damn, damn, damn! These Zatrathi are a bunch of…well…Zatrathi!
Acceptance follows recognition and once I’d recognized the situation we were in, I promptly got pissed. I won’t give up without a fight! My armor suit’s a legendary, my cargo hold’s full of elo, I have several grenades and five starving cacodemons. Why I’ll blow up the entire place if I feel like it! You Zatrathi should have just blasted me while I was out in space.
When the ship stopped shaking, I knew that we had been pulled inside. There followed an unpleasant sound, as if something metallic had been scraped along our hull. I cocked my blasters, summoned my cacodemons and prepared to throw myself at my enemies as soon as they appeared. Let the battle begin!
But the seconds ticked by and no one tried to breach our hull. To the contrary, the metal screeching stopped and I heard a polite knocking on my hull.
“Captain Surgeon, the elo has been delivered!” said a muffled voice in the common tongue. “We can provide you with technicians to repair any damaged modules or equipment you might have.”
Having no idea what was going on, I didn’t know what to reply and so I just waited, shifting from one foot to the other.
Another thirty seconds passed, but no one touched the orbship. Everything was quiet. The cacodemons began to whine. They were ready for a meal, yet it wasn’t forthcoming. Realizing that perhaps I was doing something utterly stupid, I walked over to the control panel and opened a passage in the hull. I gestured to the cacodemons to stay in place. Let them cover me.
The orbship had been pulled into one of the hangars of the flying fortress. Around us, Zatrathi slugs went creeping on some errands, squads of warriors marched to and fro and even several black fogs drifted by. Everyone went about their business, paying no attention to me and my ship. The only ones interested in my person were a robot translator and a slug technician. They were standing by the ship with carts heaped full of elo.
I gulped, still unsure of what to say. Then I took several deep breaths, wishing I could pinch myself inside my armor suit. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could and opened my eyes wide. Nothing changed. The Zatrathi showed no aggression.
“We’ve been ordered to supply your orbship with anything you need,” the robot translated for
the slug. “Do you need help changing the elo? The energy blocking system consumes all the elo you have onboard. It must be replaced.”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded, shocked by the warm welcome. A few more slugs joined the technician. They disappeared into my ship, deftly carting in the elo and carting out the spent fuel.
“There are five hungry creatures on board. Shall we feed them?”
“Eh?!” I had no idea what they were talking about. When I realized he meant the cacodemons, all I managed was a feeble nod. “Sure…feed them.”
What in the hell is going on here anyway? The cacodemons piled out of the orbship and threw themselves on a heap of elo that was brought up. In just a couple of minutes they gorged themselves until each was the size of a prize cow and then rolled aside with satiated looks.
“It’s the Zatrathi, Captain!” Brainiac panicked as soon as he came back online. I tensed up, assuming that the technicians had begun digging around some sensitive ship system. I even dashed back to the bridge deck but found no traces of trouble. The orbship remained whole and mine.
“What about the Zatrathi?” I asked.
“We are inside a flying fortress! Surrounded! By enemies! Battle Stations! Battle Stations! Shall I open fire?!”
“At what?! Hold your fire! The Zatrathi are our…allies… I think…” With this phrase I told Brainiac everything that I thought about this matter.
“What do you mean, ‘allies?’” Brainiac almost stuttered.
The computer’s amazement was no less than mine, yet the question still had to be answered. It’s one thing to have to pick up your own jaw on the floor and another entirely when it’s that of your subordinates.
“Oh just like that. I made a deal with the Queen. Until the deadline expires, the Zatrathi won’t bother us.” Or at least that’s what I imagined had happened. I didn’t bother to mention my doubts on the matter.
“But Captain…these are the enemies of all of Galactogon! How can we possibly work with them? Everyone will hate us.”
“No they won’t. Because we’re not going to tell them. Do you know what a spy is?” The computer grunted an affirmative. “Welp, that’s exactly what we are. Anyway, enough talking — let’s get to work! Connect to this flying fortress and download everything you can get your digital digits on!”
Brainiac quickly warmed up to his new role. The snake crawled out with a network cable. The Zatrathi paid no attention to my engineer plugging into their ship’s jack.
“I have full access!” Brainiac exclaimed. “I don’t even need to hack anything! Captain — what do you say we steal this fortress? I can pull it off! I swear!”
“Next time,” I promised. “We have other business right now. Patch me through to the captain.”
“I greet the messenger of Her will,” the Relay said, clarifying my current status at the same time. Indeed, it seems the Queen had made an effort to hold up her side of our bargain. It looked like she was quite concerned about recovering that escaped brainworm. An interesting fact to take note of. “How may I serve you?”
“Is Praline under your control?”
“Yes, we are currently using it to cultivate shlocage for this entire sector.
“‘Shlocage’ seems to be the Zatrathi’s chief source of nutrition,” Brainiac explained helpfully.
“There used to be a pirate base on that planet. What happened to it?”
“It has been cleared. Such is Her will! Are you here for a long time? We can offer you and your crew some rest and recreation.”
I hesitated to answer, because I did not know how long the maintenance of the ship would take and whether it was worth agreeing to the R&R. But my silence was taken for consent and a pair of slugs crawled over to Warlock’s hull. Unlike the engineer slugs, these were smaller and had some fancy tentacles dangling on their heads.
“The gerudo know what humans like and will be happy to serve the messenger with its tentacles.”
It took me a bit to realize what he was talking about. And when I did realize it, I found myself at a loss for words. What is this ‘gerudo’ and ‘tentacles’ crap? I mean, I may not know the word ‘gerudo’ but I do know what tentacles are used for in hentai. It’s not my thing, but I know it anyway.
“No, the R&R won’t be necessary, thank you very much! Is the ship all right? May I take off?”
“Yes, messenger. We did not expect your appearance and assumed you were a threat. This is why you were brought in with the tractor beam. It will not happen again. We have recorded your orbship’s transponder signal. We all hope that you will successfully fulfill the mission She has entrusted you!” said the captain and disconnected.
What have I gotten myself into?! Loud laughter rolled all over the ship. A longshot attempt to buy myself a few extra minutes of life during my audience with the Qualian Emperor had somehow turned into an alliance with the Zatrathi. And now they were offering me slugs with tentacles. What is happening to this game anyway?
To clear my conscience, I flew to Praline. I’d been promised loot from one of the warehouses — what if something was still down there? Alas it was not to be. The Zatrathi really had cleared out every last bit of the place. Furthermore, there was now a crew of slugs working on demolishing what was left of the base. It seemed like they didn’t even want to leave scrap raq behind.
Mission updated: A Praline Pirate.
Report to Wit-Verr that the base has been captured.
Praising myself for my foresight, I decided to test the waters. I needed to understand whether the new Zatrathi attitude towards me had been changed in only this one system or throughout all of Galactogon. In the latter case, I doubt I’d need any allies whatsoever. Eunice and I could calmly jump somewhere in the vicinity of the Zatrathi home system, I could load up on elo from her battlesphere and then head out on my own.
After rushing around the system and making sure that I did not arouse the attention of any of the flying fortresses, I popped into some of the Delvians’ former core systems. Two of these had large stars, which the Queen wasn’t ‘mature’ enough to devour yet. And although every time we emerged from hyperspace, Brainiac announced that we were being tracked and locked onto, as soon as the Zatrathi figured out who we were, they’d leave us alone. This suited me just fine.
The countdown to the pirates’ assembly was winding down to zero, so I headed for Barganil. The system has changed noticeably since my last visit. The already hefty garrison had been reinforced with additional Arbiters and orbital stations, emblazoned with the Brotherhood’s new, giant insignia. Wit-Verr had chosen this system as his new headquarters and seen to its defense.
I was assigned to dock #30, which struck me as odd. If this planet is the pirate capital, then you’d think they’d be a bit more deferential to a major of the Brotherhood. Brainiac began the descent — when I aborted it at the last moment. The system scan had just completed and I now had a list of all the cruisers in system — I didn’t like it one bit. In particular, the presence of the cruisers Alexandria, Ajaccio, and Watto: Kiddo, the Corsican and Hilvar respectively.
I continued orbiting, as the dispatcher muttered with irritation. In addition to the aforementioned trio, there were another dozen or so ships here from the old Brotherhood. Mostly cruisers, but also several destroyers. In fact the entire system was abuzz with traffic — with fighters and scouts scrambling back and forth and driving the ground control operators to the verge of aneurisms.
And yet, the presence of pirates and players from the old Brotherhood was not the only news. Tucked away on the other side of the system from us — and therefore hidden behind the local star, which kept me from seeing it right away — was the main battle fleet of the Anorxian Empire. The Motherboard had deployed a portion of its navy to the pirate’s assembly.
This was getting really interesting. What does the presence of all these guests mean?
As soon as Warlock landed, customs descended on us in full force. The pirate inspectors were quite thorough — after
all, they knew all the smugglers’ tricks. Snooping around, I noticed that Eunice’s battlesphere was moored in the dock next to us. Judging by the loading crews bringing up elo, my wife had been on this planet for a while already and had long since passed her inspections.
A little while later, I found myself entering a sumptuous palace. The Bufondian, like the Corsican before him, liked to live ostentatiously.
A Check for a Billion Page 38
