Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) (27 page)

I couldn’t help but smile when I reached the armaments section. Even though I was already on cloud nine, this aspect of my new ship took me even higher. First of all, the ship had six beam cannons distributed along its entire perimeter, which could rotate however the gunner wished. That is, the cannons were free to move along the hull, as though floating in water, and in so doing, seemed to break all laws of physics. This was simply impossible, after all…but here I go repeating myself.

Like the beam cannons, the ship also had four EM cannons to knock down enemy shields, as well as twenty-two A-class torpedoes and an autonomous torpedo manufactory that would create a new torpedo every five minutes.

Two independent powercores, a repair bay, a hangar for assault droids which already contained thirty-two fully-armed droids, a research lab, a cargo hold with several hundred units worth of capacity (unfortunately empty), an advanced onboard computer…When I finally realized what I had received, it became clear to me that this ship would have to be mine! I couldn’t care less how much money I’d get for it—there was no way I’d part with such a piece of equipment. Finding the self-destruct button and sighing with relief, I made a perhaps faulty but understandable decision:
Yalrock
would become my new ship, while
The Space Cucumber
would be transferred to Lestran’s command. I didn’t want to sell the frigate, since I understood perfectly well that
Yalrock
would become the prize for the entire gameworld and a temporary safe-ship in the form of the frigate would come in handy. Before anything else, however, I needed to transfer all the cartographic data from
The Space Cucumber
to
Yalrock
and then respawn the frigate—it would come in handy again. While I was at it, I could charge my marine armor—I felt naked without it in this game. I couldn’t understand how players could go around without wearing one.

Adjusting captain’s chair and control panel to captain’s ergonomics.

Activating the ship, I encountered my first surprise—the chair was adapted to fit its new owner. Considering its former Uldan owner had two huge wings on his back, the seat had been built in a manner that did not exactly allow me to kick back and enjoy my flight. At first I wrote this off as a trivial discomfort, since nothing could be perfect after all, but as soon as the ship came on, the captain’s chair instantly began to transform to fit my, human, ergonomics. This was quite convenient. I’d have to try it again after I’d put on my armor.

Several screens popped up before me, displaying the surroundings outside of
Yalrock
at different scales, which included even a view of the current solar system. Then, as the ancient had told me, a control orb appeared. This was a miniature of the ship hanging in some kind of magnetic field. Along with the mini-ship, the projection also showed the surrounding environment, scaled to fit the ship’s current speed. Considering the ship’s ability to change her course instantly, this means of control was quite specific. There were neither levers nor buttons—just a simple projection which could be moved in space. An amazing device!

Carefully touching the projection, I lifted it above the planet and felt myself sink into my chair as the ship began to move. The map’s scale instantly changed to accommodate
Yalrock
’s current speed and I moved the projection in the direction of
The Space Cucumber
’s location. The testing phase had begun…

“Captain, the data transfer has been completed—recoding is underway,” the slizosaur informed me after we stretched a long cable between
Yalrock
and
The Space Cucumber
. It seemed that in deciding that energy could only be transferred through a cable, the developers had decided to accommodate reality at least in some way. I’d have had a good long laugh if I had been able to simply transmit the Elo’s energy straight into the frigate through ninety feet of rock. Thankfully, the devs spared me the laughing fit, making the recharge process of
The Space Cucumber
quite realistic.

Adapting my seat to the dimensions of my marine armor, I received the snake’s report that all the data had been transferred from
The Space Cucumber
—with the exception of several spy modules that were sending the ship’s coordinates somewhere into space. I guess we hadn’t found all our stowaway insects after all!

…Establishing current location…

…Current location established…

…Nearest inhabited planet: Zamir, Pyrrhenian Empire (Voldan Alliance).

…Calculating optimal hyperspace route…

…Hyperspace route calculated—ETA: 30 minutes.

One of the screens displayed the known parts of
Galactogon
along with a distant point which indicated the location of Blood Island. My eyes almost popped out of my head once I realized how far my thoughtless hyperjump had taken us from the known systems. This may as well have been as far as anyone had ever gone from the chief, inhabited systems of
Galactogon
.

“Computer?” I said aloud, by habit more than anything else. Long, long ago, Stan had become if not my friend, then an invaluable component of my life, and I had become so used to communicating with him by voice that I automatically tried it here too. As I had already found out, for instance,
The Space Cucumber
’s computer did not respond to such voice commands.

“Orders, Captain?” replied the space around me. My jaw dropped: the ship was “alive!”

“Give me a brief report on the ship’s status,” I decided to try a test phrase to get a sense of how developed the AI was. I had just finished looking over this same data several minutes ago and wanted to see what the ship would tell me about the same information.

“Taking into account that the information you just reviewed accounts for 90% of the ship’s status report, I will add that the assault droids require Tiron to function at full power. The assault droids suffered cumulative damage of 47% after the last battle. Most units require a complete overhaul. Only four droids of the thirty-two on board are currently battle-ready. It is also preferable to refill the ship’s Elo reserves. Current onboard energy reserves will last about a week under typical operating conditions. One hundred thousand years of standby have an effect even on a
Klamir
-type ship. All systems are currently nominal. There are no deviations, aside from the crew’s status. Crew readiness is currently at 25%. The crew requires further training. It is not recommended to engage another ship in direct combat until the general level of crew readiness has reached 50% or higher. Planetary scan complete. Elo reserves have been identified. It is recommended to fully mine the identified Elo lode. Do you wish to dispatch the harvester to do so?”

“We have a harvester too?” I asked, riffling through the ship’s attributes with astonishment. I could swear I had not seen it in the ship’s manifest.

“The cryptosaur model attached to this ship as a marine and droid commander has the additional capability of mining certain resources. A harvester performs the closest analogue to this function in this galaxy; therefore, I took the liberty of substituting the semantic sense of the word. The cryptosaur can extract the Elo.”

“I approve the extraction,” I managed, and one of the screens flashed over to show the cryptosaur’s first person view. The hull opened and the animal burst out as fast as it could in some direction known only to him. Although, that’s not true—the onboard computer knew that too, but…Oh! By the way!

“Computer, what is the proper way to address you? Do you have a name, number, model or personal preference?”

“Negative,” came the response. “The former captain did not use my voice functionality.”

“In that case, I will refer to you as Braniac. It’s just not nice to not have a name. What do you mean when you say the captain didn’t use your voice function? Do you have some kind of telepathic link option or something?”

“No, the former captain used the command key. As a rule, the Uldans did not like to use voice commands.”

“Got it. Tell me, do you have any information concerning the history of this race? Who are they? Where did they come from? Why did they disappear? What wars did they fight? Maybe you know where their secret bases could still be located?” I asked the last question out of sheer curiosity, knowing very well that—in this ship and crew—the
Galactogon
devs had already given me an utterly insane present. By the looks of things, nothing short of a cruiser could challenge a klamir (as Braniac referred to this ship type)—everything else would be sheer suicide. Even a flycatcher would do no good against her. I could tear up a frigate’s shields and blast her apart with my beam cannons without having to resort to torpedoes. I couldn’t understand why the designers had decided to introduce such an imba, game-breaking ship, but I was happy to be on my side of this issue. She was mine, after all. I could even risk taking on a cruiser—
Yalrock
’s class was much higher than I had expected. I thought that B-class ships didn’t just fall from the sky, but the game had proved me dead wrong.

“I have transferred all information about the Uldan race to your personal PDA,” came Braniac’s reply. “Including a description of their wars, history, origins and eventual demise. As for secret bases, unfortunately…” There followed a short pause, during which I shrugged my shoulders and smiled, thinking if no, then no. “According to my calculations, there is a probability that one of the Uldan bases survived. All the others were based on planets that no longer exist.”

“One base?” I barely squelched an expletive. “Where are its coordinates?”

“Considering current imperial territorial and administrative divisions, the base is located on one of the three moons of Zalva, the capital of the Precian Empire. The Uldans built their bases deep underground, so, assuming that the moon is still in one piece, the base should still be there.”

All my joy at hearing that there was an ancient stash after all evaporated as soon as Braniac told me where this stash was. From what I knew about the game, a solar system containing a capital planet was basically in the center of the empire and was therefore one of the best defended places in that empire as well. Those systems were swarming with Grand Arbiters—against which other ships were nothing but toys. Players could only go to such a system by receiving an invitation and considering my not-so-friendly relations with the Altan Alliance, of which the Precian Empire was a part, obtaining such an invitation was beyond impossible. It was too bad…

“The cryptosaur has found the Elo lode and has begun mining it,” said Braniac, directing my attention to the appropriate screen which showed a huge clump of a blue mineral, surrounded by scorched earth—Elo irradiated and destroyed anything around it. The rhino didn’t try to reinvent the wheel in extracting the resource and did what his kind normally do—ran at it at full speed. His horn struck the lode, knocking off a piece of the mineral, at which the rhino simply ate this fallen piece. After just ten minutes, the cryptosaur’s capacity bar filled up and he turned to go back to the ship to unload.

“Ten hours left until the lode has been fully exhausted,” Braniac commented on the mining progress. What a good name I’d given him! “Travel time is ten minutes. I recommend we approach the lode and shorten the harvester’s trip length.”

“Agreed,” I nodded my head and gingerly touched the control orb. “Gunner, get ready to destroy the frigate as soon as we are at a sufficient distance from it. Engineer, tell the cryptosaur that we are headed toward him—tell him to wait for us by the lode.”

“Consider it done, Cap,” the snake instantly responded as I carefully lifted
Yalrock
from the ground. The time had come to say goodbye to
The Space Cucumber
.

Frigate
The Space Cucumber
has been destroyed. Due to its destruction, all ship attributes have been decreased by one class. Current ship class: B.

“Lestran?” I called my partner as soon as
Yalrock
alighted near the Elo lode. The rhino instantly got onboard and threw up everything that he had managed to mine by that point. A robotic arm emerged from the wall and loaded a heap of Elo into a container. Fun little operation this…

“Hey Surgeon!” the young man answered chipper as ever. He was still in the game.

“I have an assignment for you tomorrow. I need you to go to Qirlats and retrieve
The Space Cucumber
from the graveyard. Wally isn’t around, so I’m giving you this assignment. Can you handle it?”

“No need to ask, sir! Hold on, what about you? You can’t kill yourself?”

“No, it’s not that. I’ll show up a bit later. Return the frigate she gave us back to Marina and tell her thanks. Then, continue doing Hilvar’s missions. Agreed?”

“Alright! Everything will be done to a T.”

After I hung up, I spent a few minutes watching the cryptosaur mine the Elo lode, running to the ship and back, and finally signed out of the game. I had had enough adventures for today. The main testing of
Yalrock
would come tomorrow. The important thing was for Stan to decipher that command key…