Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) (13 page)

Thrust 95%, yaw to portside, bearing 90 and
The Space Cucumber
began to zoom away from her pursuers with all her virtual sails. I had no desire to stay and finish them off. I wasn’t that experienced yet and it would have been dumb to risk all that Raq in our cargo holds. We needed to escape this system before someone even scarier showed up.

“Enough fighting,” I explained my maneuver to my partner. “We need to offload the Raq and find a homeworld before we start taking risks. Therefore…Oh boy! Lestran, battle stations!”

This last exclamation was intended more for myself, since my partner was already boosting the shields to maximum.

“You said that they wouldn’t have a cruiser! Just look at that thing!”

“I was wrong! We have no time to turn—we’ll head right into her! As soon as we get closer, launch the torpedoes! All shields forward! I’m going full throttle!”

My panic was understandable—a leviathan had surfaced from the depths of space to pay us a visit. The cruiser
Dauntless Warrior
was a D-class vessel like
The
Space Cucumber
and yet by all indications, she surpassed us exponentially in everything except perhaps speed and maneuverability. It looked like it would be better to just dump the Raq and run than to try and fight this humongous, terrifying and deadly vessel—which, appearing not far from us, opened fire without any preliminaries or discussions.

I wondered how many interceptors were in there. According to the manual, giants of her size could carry up to 120 interceptors, 10 harvesters, plus scouts and transports—oh, and about 500 marines to top it all off. I really doubted that this guild could have mobilized so many players (even to avenge the scouts we’d downed) on such short notice, so it was safe to assume that
Dauntless
was operating at half capacity. Or, more likely, a skeleton crew of fifteen players, the minimal amount required to fly her. So we still had a chance to get through, but the last thing I wanted was to tangle with any interceptors at the moment.

“They’re going to burn through our shields!” Lestran almost whimpered, watching his screen.

“It’ll be okay. We have some powerful engines in this baby. They’ll get us through,” I replied, trying to thread our ship between the fatal beams of
Dauntless
’s ten nose cannons.

My plan was as simple as it got—fly at full speed right under the hull of the enemy cruiser, launch all our remaining torpedoes (for fun) and then get the heck out of this stupid system—first using our regular engines and after—when we got a minute of peace—by jumping to hyperspace. By the time that giant tub turned herself around and picked up steam again, our trail would have long gone cold.

“Ten torpedoes heading right for us! Damn, I don’t have time to both hang the shields and do point defense!”

“Don’t worry—if we make it out of here, we’ll find us a gunner. Heck, we’ll get two! Hang on—we’re passing under her hull…”

“No-no-no! Not under her hull!” Lestran screamed wildly, forcing me to reflexively yank the frigate aside.

“Full shields to starboard!” I yelled, realizing that I had just served us up on a plate. The cruiser, however, didn’t rush to take advantage of this chance to burn down our starboard. Instead, her bilge flickered, unleashing a larger version of the flea catcher we’d seen earlier. This time, though, we were the flea. Interceptors began to file out of the cruiser along with the device, but this wasn’t important anymore: We had already been captured by the flea catcher’s force field.

“Frigate
The Space Cucumber
! This is the captain of
Dauntless Warrior
speaking. If you surrender peacefully, we are prepared to allow you to keep ten percent of whatever’s in your cargo holds. You have one minute to make your decision. I know that you have no self-destruct mechanism on your ship and I will not allow you to jump to hyperspace. If you do not comply, I will take everything and send you back to your Planetary Spirit. The minute starts now.”

“What if we just let him have it with all the torpedoes we have?” I asked my taciturn partner.

“Won’t work,” Lestran shook his head. “That force field has locked down our systems, including the torpedoes. Even if I took manual control and tried shooting the beam cannons at them, it’d take us two hours to drill through their shields…Damn it! Wasn’t it obvious that if their scouts had those capabilities, then the cruiser would have it by default?”

“Alright, alright, don’t grumble. Better let’s think about how we can get out of this…”

“Surgeon, sir, pardon me, but there simply isn’t a way! They’ve got us right by the scruff…”

“Time’s up! What did you decide? Resist our boarding party and die, or surrender your vessel and keep 10% of your cargo.”

I could understand the cruiser’s captain: To board and capture
The Space Cucumber
, his marines would have to breach her hull, make their way inside, kill us and only then take the ship. Why spend money on repairs, if you could just take her through bargaining? They didn’t care one bit about us, after all—only those engine prototypes.

“Alright,” I decided. “No point in losing 10% of the cargo, so we…”

“Attention all vessels! Attention all vessels!” A woman’s voice burst from the ship’s comm, cutting me off. “This is the captain of the cruiser
Alexandria
. I am declaring this system a no-fire zone. If one of you scoundrels shoots, I’ll open fire from all batteries. I hope everyone understands that this is no bluff!”

“Kiddo!” exclaimed Lestran almost reverently, hearing the voice of
Galactogon
’s top pirate. An A-class cruiser had popped into our solar system.

“Captain of
Dauntless Warrior
, release…err…release
The Space Cucumber
immediately.” Marina’s voice came over the intercom again.

“Are you prepared to fight the Cyanide Guild?” responded the captain who had captured us. His tone, however, was not as assured as it had been a minute earlier.

“Is that a declaration of war, Nadeep?”

“No, Marina—we don’t want to fight, but we also need that frigate. We deserve a reward for her capture!”

“This ship is mine and I advise you to come to grips with that fact,” the girl replied coolly. The two were discussing our fates as if we were some piece of furniture that needed to be arranged in the proper corner. “I need to scan her computer banks.”

“So all you’re interested in is data?” Nadeep seized the chance of getting his prey after all. “Not the ship herself?”

“What am I going to do with that tub? A D-class frigate with no upgrades—she’s an ordinary fleet ship. I don’t collect trash. Once I see that there’s nothing of interest on the ship, you can have her.”

“Along with her contents?”

“Only if she’s not stuffed with Raq,” smirked the girl.

“If they have even a kilo of Raq on board,” Nadeep’s voice became jovial with relief, “I formally promise to pay those poor fools the official market rate for it and let them keep it to boot! I’m feeling gracious today!”

As his laughter was now echoed by Marina, I could no longer contain myself and asked, “What’s the current market rate for Raq?”

“Fifty GCs per kilo,” replied Nadeep and addressed Marina: “Tell your guys to get ready to latch onto
The Space Cucumber
. I’ll be releasing her in thirty seconds.”

“Okay. If I don’t find anything interesting, you can have her…”

“Guys, guys, before you start plundering my vessel, I’d like to figure out this Raq deal,” I spoke up again. “My total cargo capacity, as far as I know, is one hundred tons. Half of that—so fifty tons—is pure, unadulterated Raq. Now what did you say it costs again?”

The silence over the ether was music to my ears.

“You have fifty tons of Raq on board?” Marina inquired carefully.

“Why do you think the Qualians are after us? For the prototypes? Hah! They want their Raq back!”

“So you do have the prototypes after all?”

“I do.”

“Forgive me, dear Nadeep, but I’ll be taking
The Space Cucumber
after all. By the way, who am I speaking to?”

“This is Surgeon,” I introduced myself.

“Very well. Surgeon—I will make sure that the Cyanide Guild will pay you the money they promised. Did you hear that, Nadeep?”

“Who do you think I am to believe any random person I meet? Marina, he’s trying to play us off against each other like two kids! How would a ship from the Training Sector have Raq on board? Much less fifty tons of it?”

“That’s not hard to check,” Marina replied. “Surgeon, open you hatch for my interceptor to dock. My officer will check out your claim. Nadeep, you can send one of your own too.”

“Of course…”

Two-and-a-half million credits popped into my character’s account about ten minutes after the high commission visited my ship. Nadeep showed up in person to get a look at the bastard (that is, me), but I didn’t take off my suit of armor, while Lestran prudently hid himself in the cabin. We didn’t feel like showing up on anyone’s radar too much.

“So how’d you guys get away anyway?” asked Lisp, Kiddo’s representative. Marina had sent over such a scrawny player that I was even a little worried about him and wanted to give him something to eat. He looked like one burst of wind would carry him off if he didn’t take something heavy with him when he went out.

“That’s classified,” I shook my head. “Until I’ve processed it and checked it to my satisfaction, I won’t be revealing it to anyone.”

“I understand,” Lisp nodded approvingly and returned to his examination of our engines. “Right…Uh-huh…Interesting. Marina, can you hear me? The ship’s computer’s got nothing—I checked. But these prototypes are really something. My recommendation is we take them and level them up to A-class as soon as possible. Judging by their growth curve, they should make
Alexandria
35% faster…Yeah, that is a nice little boost…What should I tell these two? Hmm…Are you sure? No, Marina, of course I’m not arguing…Alright, that’s what I’ll do then.”

Lisp screwed up his face, as if he was about to tell us some unpleasant news.

“Alright, here’s what’s gonna happen,” he blurted out. “We’re taking your ship and everything on it. You’ll be dropped off on the nearest inhabited planet. You have plenty of money now, so I think you’ll be okay. Basically, sirs, you need to get off our ship now. Come on, I’ll take you to
Alexandria
.”

Nice and simple. Fifty tons of Raq and the prototypes had piqued the pirates’ interest in my
The Space Cucumber
—so now they were kicking us out like some meddlesome kittens. And if you don’t like it, that’s your problem. I scanned Lisp’s armor. It was A-class and equipped with some extra boosters. I understood that messing with him would be a waste of time. He’d smash me to pieces without a second thought. And, after all, I still had no idea where I’d respawn—perhaps, it’d be in the same exact Training Sector we just escaped from so heroically…I really didn’t want to find out, so I gritted my teeth and followed Lisp to the shuttle which brought us to
Alexandria
. I could at least be thankful that they hadn’t zapped us from the get-go.

“Make yourself comfortable in the guest quarters. We’ll reach the Rost System in four hours. That’s where you get off. And don’t worry—the system is in Confederate space, so you won’t be in danger of those Qualian freaks showing up,” said Lisp, jumping out of the shuttle and seemingly losing all further interest in us.

Realizing that I wouldn’t get much support from Lestran who was already all puppy eyes looking around the ship of his dreams (even though the insides of this cruiser were no different than those of any other), I called Lisp back: “Why freaks? They seem like the most humanoid race out of all the ones in
Galactogon
…”

“Why freaks? Why, because they’re freaks—that’s why!” It seemed like this was a sore topic for Lisp. He stopped, turned around and even took a few steps back to us. “When we decided to cross Cyanide, we were thinking that your ship would contain some kind of information that would help us in our struggle against the Qualians. But of course y’all had not a damn thing beside those engines! In the end, all we got for our trouble was beef with a new guild…Eh! What am I wasting my breath on you for!” Lisp cursed, turned and continued on his way.

So they were looking for classified data? And they weren’t after just the ship? They had assumed that the ship’s computer would hold something that would help them against the Qualians!

“Hold on!” I yelled in his wake. “The ship couldn’t have had what you were looking for! What idiot would copy his entire PDA to the ships’ computers?”

“His PDA?” Lisp stopped dead in his tracks and craned back to look at me.

“Hi! Hello! Pleasure to meet you. I think we should chat,” I said, starting to feel more in my element. “I’m a reasonable man—commerce is my game.”

“On what grounds…WHO ARE YOU?”
The nice thing that distinguished
Galactogon
from other MMOs (
Runlustia
included) was that you could go back to any moment in the game you’d played and play it back. Moreover, the logging system allowed playback in multiple formats—written, audio and even video. Using this last feature, I projected the events in General Trank’s office onto the screen that Marina provided me with. The legendary captain turned out to be a normal girl of average size. She had no distinguishing features—a normal appearance, a normal uniform, a normal voice. Everything about her seemed so average and ordinary that I began wondering how this 5’0” girl with piercing gray eyes had become such a legend among gamers. Though, perhaps those eyes of hers did suggest an answer: Their gaze was so direct that I felt like they were about to jump out and, using little adroit paws, dig into my brain and start rummaging around there for the information they wanted.