Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) (34 page)

“There is no forward, Braniac. Reroute me around this hallway.” Not wishing to argue with a simulation of a simulation, I decided to go around.

“Here is the new route,” Braniac replied a second later and the virtual line on my screen updated. “I wish to remark that this is route is inefficient due to…”

“What’s going on with the Raq in the warehouse?” I interrupted the pedant.

“Currently the slizosaur—the engineer and shieldsman—is in the warehouse increasing his Functionality to 50% as you ordered. The strabosaur—the gunner—is currently at 13%. In three minutes he will depart for the warehouse. Please note that the enemy has burned through six feet of the obstructed passageway. The speed of their progress has grown.”

“As soon as the slizosaur reaches 50%, tell him to start making repairs to the ship,” I issued further orders. It didn’t make sense to ferry the Raq to my own cargo holds because the enemy would get it all back when we hit the self-destruct anyway. But using it on repairs—that was a minus both to me and my foe. To me because the respawned ship would come back fully repaired anyway (albeit a class lower)—and to the Zatrathi because it would waste their reserves. If we couldn’t take the stuff, we’d burn it…

“Understood.”

“Stop! Before that, get the engineer to repair all the droids! Only after that, let him work on the ship.” I even stopped in my tracks when the idea came to me. This was a great opportunity to use our access to all this wealth! It was unforgivable to have two living and two half-living droids out of a complement of thirty—especially since respawning wouldn’t restore them.

“Orders updated,” Braniac replied—and as he did so, I ran into another wall.

“Give me a third route!” I ordered, examining the wall closely. It was no different from all the others—except like the earlier one, it was positioned right across the hallway, preventing me from approaching the twenty life forms. This only made me want to see them all the more. No one’s going to put in walls like this in a game for no reason.

“There are no other possible routes. These are the only two hallways that lead to the area in question.”

“Braniac, it’s time to earn your name!” I retorted, really getting into this hunt now. “If we can’t get there directly, there must be some kind of vents or secret passages or something! Stop downloading the menu from the local restaurant and find me a way to get in there!”

“If you continue straight…” The computer continued to bumble pedantically, refusing to acknowledge the wall in front of me.

“I’m not going to go straight. I don’t want to! I want to crawl around basements, sewage pipes and so on. Get on with it! Find a way.”

“The requested information cannot be found…”

“Where does the door to my left lead?” Realizing that it was pointless to expect a miracle from Braniac, I decided to do the planning myself. Looking around, I chose one of the numerous doors around me and decided to try my luck there. Maybe it’d work?

“A small 9x9-foot room. There is no description. This room has no further passages to other rooms.”

Employing the station skeleton key (my blaster), I found myself in a small bedroom. A soft bed, a chair, a table, a latrine behind a separator—the rooms’ furnishings simply screamed that a humanoid lived here. Not some slug or some brown four-armed marine, no—everything about the room and in the room suggested that the only creature that could use it walked upright on two legs. How many creatures in the game resembled humanoids? Out of the twelve empires, only six could brag about their resemblance to the human race. There were the players too of course, but I wasn’t counting them.

Unless of course, this was a prison cell for a player!

Pointing my blaster in the direction I ultimately wanted to go, I pulled the trigger. I already understood that a B-class blaster was too weak for the hallways walls, but what would happen if I aimed it at this room’s wall? It could handle doors fine, after all!

“You have passed into a neighboring room, having bypassed the standard system of hallways,” Braniac reported, once I’d crawled through the small hole. The blaster hadn’t done the job at first—but I noticed that the wall wasn’t absorbing the energy bolts. Instead, it had begun melting, spitting molten pieces all over the place. I kept on and used two powercells worth of ammo to create a passage large enough to accommodate my armor and allow me to squeeze into the neighboring cell. Instead of a bed, this room had a perch near the ceiling—which suggested that this cell had been built with a Pyrrhenian in mind. They were the only ones who like to fly and roost up near the ceiling. Hilvar was one such example. So it followed that the Zatrathi stations had accommodations for each imperial race? An interesting factoid, if one that I wasn’t sure was very valuable. I guess it didn’t do me any harm to know.

“You have passed into a neighboring room, having bypassed the standard system of hallways,” Braniac reported again, once I’d repeated the operation on the next wall. “Droid repairs complete. Thirty assault droids are now ready for battle. Crew Functionality is now at 50%. Ship repairs have commenced. Estimated time until completion—3 hours, 22 minutes.”

“How much of the barricade do the Zatrathi have left?” I inquired, wishing to get a handle on how much time I had.

“The enemy has advanced nine feet. At the current rate of progress, the hallways will be breached in three hours and 45 minutes.”

“Keep those repairs going!” I ordered, blasting the door to the third room. In the previous room, the door had led right into the wall that had blocked my passage in the hallway. But now…

“Braniac, update my route to those life forms,” I shouted happily when I emerged into the hallway on the other side of the barrier. I’d made it! Who were these twenty that the Zatrathi had tucked them away like this? And, by the way—what if they were dangerous?

One hundred yards later, the corridor brought me to a large hall that was quite similar to the one that
Yalrock
had crash landed in. The only difference was that this amphitheater was in one piece and divided in two parts with force fields. The twenty life forms that Braniac had identified were all behind the force field.

“
Derang avarta
!” came a terrible roar and a Zatrathi in brown armor approached the field from the other side. It only took me several moments to understand that he couldn’t walk or shoot through the field, so I calmly entered the amphitheater arena and came to a halt several steps from the marine. The attachments on his armor, which I had first seen through the barricade I had made, were additional weapons—something resembling rocket launchers. Four arms with two elbow joints apiece, two legs, a disproportional torso and a head that was too large—with two slits for eyes. The appearance of the Zatrathi left something to be desired.

“Hello everyone!” I said in a business tone, looking past the marine to the others in the amphitheater. Hmm…One gray Qualian, one blue Precian, a flying Vraxsis, a Pyrrhenian, an Anorxian, a female Delvian (and a quite attractive one at that)…As I understood it, the group here consisted of one member from each of
Galactogon
’s twelve empires—and they were all guarded by three slugs, three marines and two strange, dark blobs that bore more resemblance to fog than “life forms.”

Twelve representatives of the twelve empires of
Galactogon
…

“Who are you, soldier?” asked the gray Qualian—speaking the only in-game language my character understood.

“I’m Surgeon, a mighty pirate,” I replied honestly. “I’m just looking around for some sweet loot to pillage and plunder—don’t mind me.”

“A pirate?” the Qualian asked surprised and barked something to the others.

“
Krandal gartava!
” the Zatrathi marine yelled threateningly. No one paid him any attention—all twelve prisoners approached the edge of the force field and began to examine me. The strange thing was that as they approached, the bombastic warrior stepped aside as if not wishing to draw further attention to himself.

“How did a pirate manage to find his way onto the Zatrathi flagship station?” the Delvian girl asked in a pleasant voice, turning flirtatiously with her puffy tail. The little fox had such a heavy accent that I barely understood her—and yet I couldn’t help but notice that she knew Qualian.

“I was just passing by when I came across this place. So I figured I’d stop in and have a look around for some filthy lucre to misappropriate,” I continued, suddenly realizing that I was standing before the twelve princesses and princes of the new global scenario. These were the very sentients that every empire and player in the game was currently looking for. An enormous reward awaited the person who could rescue them. And of course, Rrgord—the Precian prince who would know where my prize planet was—had to be among them!

“And do you often like to go wandering about these parts?” the girl went on inquiring.

“It happens,” I shrugged and turned serious. “People, tell me, what would happen if I destroyed all of you now? Would you return to your respective homeworlds?”

“No.” The fox shook her head sadly. “The enemy has unbound us from our homeworlds and made us truly mortal. If you destroy us, we will die for good. You wanted to save us by destroying us?”

“I was thinking about it,” I confessed, suddenly realizing that I couldn’t blow up
Yalrock
. Even if I brought these aristocrats to my ship (which, by the way, I had no idea how to do), then if the Zatrathi blew us up, the princes and princesses would die too. I wondered whether the game devs had though this through very well. You couldn’t always predict everything. And the probability that the Zatrathi station would undergo an attack was pretty small. I also understood now why they hadn’t tried to get at me from space—the Zatrathi were afraid of destroying their station! They needed these prisoners too!

Boy—what a dilemma this was!

“Has the station been cleared already?” the Qualian asked.

“No, this sector is blocked off. But the barricade will be breached in a few hours and a whole mob of these brown dudes,” I nodded in the Zatrathi’s direction, “will come surging to pay us a visit. I rammed the station wanting to do the most damage I could, but my ship survived and now…”

“How far is it?” the Qualian cut me off.

“About a mile and a half from here…”

“Nothing will happen to the station itself, but this sector will become uninhabitable,” the prince said pensively. “The shockwave from your self-destruction won’t dissipate over two miles and the blast will reach this hall through the corridors. Will this force field hold it?”

The Qualian said exactly what I was thinking—I couldn’t blow up
Yalrock
at the moment. In that case, I only had one way out—and one that I had already tried in this game…But I really didn’t want to go through that again!

“I’d like to speak with Rrgord, but I don’t speak Precian. Will you help?” I asked the Qualian, still contemplating what would happen if I self-destructed anyway. So I’d kill all this nobility…Well, things happen. This was a game, after all. Would the game logic blame me for their deaths? Would all the empires turn against me? What if the Confederacy joined them too? And the most important part—what would happen if I didn’t discover where the planet with the check was?

“Have we met?” the Qualian translated Rrgord’s speech for me.

“No, but I have some information for you—the KRIEG has been built!” I said, figuring that the Precian wasn’t going to just tell me about the prize planet for no reason and therefore needed to be buttered up—for example, with news of the KRIEG’s completion.

Instead of translating my words, the Qualian prince froze in horror—his three eyes grew as large as dinner plates.

“KRIEG
slarata
?” Rrgord asked me directly frowning and turned to the Qualian who was still looking at me in shock. “KRIEG
slarata
?”

“
Delvar
KRIEG,
delron narapist!
” said the fox girl, also turning to the Qualian. Why, they all understood each other perfectly well here! And here I was feeling like I’d just sat down in Chinese 101. It was very pretty and all, but I had no idea what was being said.

“KRIEG
delvar
!” whispered Rrgord and jumping up to the Qualian who had just come to his senses, grabbed him by the scruff and hurled him into the force field. This was followed by a tremendous crackling noise, a shout from the Zatrathi guards, the screams of the princes and princesses, and the appearance of a global notification that everyone in the game would see:

Mourn, oh Qualians! Your prince has died a final death!

All trade deals with the Qualian Empire are suspended during the mourning period (30 days). All items belonging to Qualian players require 50% more XP to level up during the mourning period (30 days). All players incur -1000 Rapport with the Qualian Empire!

Chapter 13

Escape

Damage taken. Current health: 97%…

Damage taken. Current health: 94%…

As soon as
the Qualian prince touched the force field, he became a small heap of ash and the field itself vanished. A pause descended on the place—which the three Zatrathi marines used to their advantage. I was instantly hit with a barrage from their blasters. What astonished me most of all was that my super-duper pumped up armor couldn’t handle all of the damage and began to let some of it through to my character. This was highly unpleasant.

“
Slizaar
!” yelled Rrgord, stepping in between me and one of the Zatrathi warriors.

“Run, brother!” The fox girl translated, screening me from the other warrior. “They’ve put personal mines on us, so we can’t leave the station! Get away from here!”

The third Zatrathi continued to shoot me, since none of the remaining aristocrats wished to risk their lives on my account, but the two warriors that Rrgord and the Delvian had blocked held their fire. Instead, they dashed toward me, producing some kind of shimmering clubs from their belts. This was followed by a new notification:

Damage taken. Current health: 91%…

“Save me Braniac!” I yelled, realizing that this notification had popped up against the floor—on which I was already lying face down, while the three Zatrathi continued to attack me. The armor was again insufficient to block all the damage and slowly but surely I was heading to meet my Planetary Spirit.

“Support is on its way,” the computer instantly replied. “ETA is three minutes.”

“That’s too long!” I yelled in a panic when the next notification informed me that my health had fallen to 70%. I tried to get rid of the extra weight by squirming back and forth, but they were holding me so tightly that my armor suit refused to move an inch. “Tell them to hurry as fast as they can!”

“Activating ‘Turbo’ skill. Support will arrive in fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…one. Support has arrived. Your order has been fulfilled.”

Damage taken. Current health: 22%…

For the first time in the game I felt my head spin. Something raised me from the floor and threw me clear across the entire amphitheater, slamming me into the opposing wall with tremendous force. Several notifications popped up, but the blow had been so realistic that I completely lost sense of what was up and what was down. All I could see was a shimmering mass of something or other tearing around the hall knocking over the remaining eleven princes and princesses and slamming the Zatrathi guards into the walls.

“Cryptosaur Functionality is down to 10%,” said Braniac, bringing me back to consciousness. “It is advised to send a squad of droids to transport the cryptosaur back to the station’s cargo holds in order to replenish him with Raq.”

“Is there any left?” I asked, through my teeth, getting up. My marine armor was on its last legs, with a Durability of 5%. I finally saw the rhinoceros, lying on his side with one of the Zatrathi’s legs twitching beneath him. A second later the leg vanished, leaving a virtual loot crate shimmering in its stead. My marine was barely breathing. His tongue, burning with a red flame, had tumbled out of his mouth. All three eyes had rolled up. It was like the animal was on its deathbed, so—concerned with my crew member’s life—I issued another command: “Braniac, send the droids over immediately!”

“Droids have been dispatched. ETA is seven minutes. To answer your earlier question: Per your earlier orders, all crew members have been restored to 50% Functionality, all droids have been fully repaired and ship repairs are almost complete. The Raq levels in the station’s warehouse are currently at 80%.”

“As soon as the cryptosaur can walk again, tell him to start transporting the Raq to
Yalrock
’s holds.” I finally committed to the one course of action I’d been most hesitant about. “And get the droids on that too. I want the ship fully loaded in forty minutes.”

“Understood,” replied Braniac.

“Pirate, is that animal with you?” asked the Delvian girl, looking apprehensively at the fallen rhino. “Is he dangerous?”

“That’s the marine from my ship. He’s not dangerous,” I replied, approaching the nearest loot crate. The other eight crates shimmered as alluringly as a new computer shimmers to an inveterate gamer. I had already seen the loot that the slugs dropped—now I wanted to see what the Zatrathi marines and the still-nameless fogs had dropped.

“Your marine moved as fast as lightning,” the Delvian went on nagging me, while I popped open some loot: Raq, Raq, a token. The first crate, it seemed, belonged to a slug, since I had already seen such loot before. “That’s impossible!”

“Well, there he is, helplessly wallowing on the floor. It begs the choice: Does the captain save himself or save his crew,” I replied approaching the next crate. But in general the Delvian had a point—covering two miles in fifteen, okay, let’s say twenty seconds if I count my conversation with Braniac, is a pretty unreal speed. The rhino must have travelled at a speed of about—let’s see, 1.5 miles in fifteen seconds, convert that to an hour, that’s…that’s 360 miles per hour! No way! That’s faster than a flyer’s top speed! Although, wait! He could’ve been at the warehouse! From there to the amphitheater was only 500 yards, so the marine’s speed was closer to 70 mph…Also very fast—but at least I wasn’t dealing with a total monster.

“Braniac,” I ordered the computer, “assemble all the information you can find about my crew’s capabilities. Sort it by skills and make sure to include any limitations that follow the use of such skills. I mean limitations like this cooldown paralysis that follows the triggering of the ‘Turbo’ skill.”

“Understood. It will take three days to prepare a complete report for each member of the crew.”

“Why so long?” I asked surprised.

“This task necessitates the processing of a large volume of data. I will have to commit 30% of my resources to preparing such a report.”

“Is he dead?” the Delvian interrupted my conversation with Braniac and carefully approached the rhinoceros. Opening another crate I received more Raq, a powercell and a token. Eh! Again a slug! Or maybe this was the typical loot for all the enemies? That would be too bad. By the way, I’d need to remember to avoid fighting the Zatrathi marines one on one—they’d crush me without even noticing me.

“He’s fine—relax! Better, tell me what you meant by ‘They’ve implanted personal mines on us and we can’t leave the station’? Nothing is keeping us from getting out of here at the moment.”

“We cannot leave this amphitheater,” the fox-girl explained sadly. “Each one of us has been assigned an area on this ship. If we leave its boundaries, we will explode. My area, for instance, skirts right next to your marine. That’s why the others can’t approach him. You saw yourself what happened with the Qualian—it wasn’t the force field that destroyed him. The personal mine did that.”

Raq, a vial of black powder, a token—but this time a black one instead of a metallic one like the slugs had dropped. Hmm…It looked like this item could be used to build Rapport with some kind of faction, for example, soldiers in general or something like that. I saw no further use for it at the moment.

“You have two hours and ten minutes before the barricade is breached,” my virtual pedant reminded me, giving me a new idea.

“Braniac, send over the engineer. I need his help. Tell him to bring his tools. There’s some work for him here.”

The Delvian placed her hand on the overheated cryptosaur, the way clerics would heal their allies in
Runlustia.
No miracle followed, however—the rhino continued to lie in a heap as before.

“He’s hot,” the fox-girl yanked away her hand. “Are you sure he’s okay?”

“Sure I’m sure,” I told her again. “Tell me, since we have several minutes, what is the KRIEG?”

“KRIEG
slarata
?” Rrgord repeated behind us, frowning. He was standing several feet away.

“I’m even more interested if every time I say that word, the Precian highness there reacts the way he does,” I pointed at Rrgord who’d narrowed his eyes in rage. No, there was definitely something sinister and curious about this word and now I wanted to know what it was all about.

“Where did you hear that word?” the fox found a way of asking me without indulging in unnecessary screaming or angry speeches in alien tongues.

The need of building some kind of Rapport with the Precian forced me to relate how my life in
Galactogon
had begun and communicate the gist of my conversation—or rather knocked exchange—in solitary. I needed to start pressuring the Precian into telling me about the prize planet, so I embellished as much as I felt comfortable.

“That’s how I found out about Rrgord and the KRIEG,” I finished my tale, noting that the droids had arrived, carefully lifted the cryptosaur onto some kind of hover-gurney (I had no idea we even had one of those) and departed back to the warehouse to revive the rhino.

“Braniac, have everyone bring their Functionality up to 100%,” I ordered, realizing that since there were so many resources still at the warehouse, it’d be stupid to leave them to the Zatrathi.

The fox girl began translating my story to Rrgord, so I went back to opening the loot crates.

Raq, Raq, a powercell, a token—another slug by the looks of it and hopefully the last. The last two crates were slug crates too. I was long overdue for some primo loot.

Raq, a powercell, a vial of black powder, a black token—this was loot from the second fog.

Raq, a Zatrathi Combat blaster, a universal armor enhancer, a gold token—finally the loot from one of the three Zatrathi warriors. I whistled a little when I compared this combat blaster with my assault blaster—across all its attributes, including damage, magazine size, durability, and firing rate, the C-class Zatrathi Combat Blaster was about twice as good as my B-class Zatrathi Assault Blaster. If I had had this gun when I was facing the slugs, all I’d have needed was 400 shots to solve the problem of the crawling Zatrathi. And of course now it was clear why my armor couldn’t handle the Zatrathi warriors as well as it could the slugs. If it hadn’t been for the cryptosaur, I’d be back on Blood Island already.

Raq, a powercell, a universal armor enhancer, a golden token—the other two loot crates had the same contents, minus the blaster. No big deal—it’s not like I’d be looking to sell them.

“Rrgord says that you deserve a reward. However, he is not currently in the position to give it to you,” the Delvian translated the Precian prince’s speech. “So you should contact his father. Rrgord will transfer the access key to the Precian capital system to your PDA. Do you accept his gift?”

Mission Unlocked: “The Imperial Gift.”

Description: You have been given a unique opportunity to meet the Precian Emperor and receive a reward from him personally. Do you wish to accept this mission?

I would be thrilled! The developers had even included a prompt allowing you to accept or decline a mission in this patch! This was an incredibly convenient feature. It was never pleasant when some shopkeeper would beg you to bring him one hundred million pig’s tails. Before, you’d have to sit there and wonder: Did I get a mission or not? But now the players could decide for themselves what they were going to do in this game. Of course, the description did not explain what would happen if the player accepted or declined, but this was still a huge step forward. Before you knew it, they may even go so far as to turn
Galactogon
into an ordinary game, instead of some weird guessing contest.

“I accept the prince’s gift,” I replied, pressing the virtual button and dismissing the notification about my receiving the access key. “But I still didn’t get an answer to my question: What’s the KRIEG?”

“It is neither the right time nor the right place to explain this,” said the fox girl. “Go now. You must save yourself and tell the rest of the galaxy about us.”

“Not so fast,” I smiled, seeing my engineer come crawling in. A gasp of astonishment came from the princes and princesses and they all clumped together from terror—it’s not every day you see a 30-foot-long snake. I was forced to reassure everyone:

“This is another one of my crew members. Don’t be afraid.”

“Why?” the snake wondered, looking back at me. “Let them be afraid! I am a scary and terrible serpent. I will eat everyone and all that jazz! What’d you call me for anyway?”

“I need to get all these sentients out of here,” I pointed at the noble crowd. “But they claim that they’ve been booby-trapped with some kind of personal mines. Can you figure it out? We can’t leave them to the Zatrathi.”

“Mines, you say?” the snake said pensively. His tail shot out in the direction of the hostages, wound itself around the Delvian and carried her back. The fox girl seemed convinced that she was about to be eaten alive.

“Curious,” said the snake, carefully examining the girl’s body. “Very curious…Oh! I see!” exclaimed the snake and carefully set the girl back on the floor. “The princess knows about…”