Chapter 2. Training Sector.
Lying as
comfortably
on my mattress as my cell’s cold, hard floor allowed, I began to study the details
of Galactogon’s political world. A
prison is a prison, but no one could forbid me from popping back into reality,
gathering everything that Stan had prepared for me, sending it to my character’s
mail account and reading as much as I wished. While I was at it, I figured out
how the mail system worked. It was a very interesting system and could be best
described as “there was no system.” More precisely, players couldn’t
communicate with each other remotely without having specialized equipment to do
so—transmitters, communicators etc. As a result, the beloved mail system that
all games had and which could be used not only to send each other letters, but
also to store things (quite a lot of things actually) did not exist in Galactogon at all.
However, the
designers had made one concession to the player himself, which is precisely
what I took advantage of now—and that was the player’s personal PDA. This item,
which the player could never lose even through death, was a device in which you
could make various notes and things. These could then be synched with a special
component of the gaming capsule and thereby receive textual information from
the outside world.
And so, the political
system of Galactogon…
There are a total twelve
Empires, united unto three alliances, which are in a state of armed neutrality
with one another. Officially, the Imperial armies remain at their bases or academies;
however, mercenaries and players can do whatever they feel like. Trade routes
exist both between and within the alliances; however, to prevent enemies from
encroaching deep into their territory, each empire has specialized trade
planets which are protected, at times, better than the governing planets. Money
is critical in Galactogon because it
can solve basically any problem. The Qualians have several trade centers: Adriada,
Raydon and, the most popular—Shylak XIV, where more than 60% of commerce with
other empires takes place.
The Qualian Empire
is part of the Altan alliance, which includes the Precian and Anorxian empires,
as well as Vrakas—not an empire, but a single enormous organism controlled by
several individuals. Whereas the Qualians and Precians are humanoids (having
two arms and legs and one head, all attached to one body), the Anorxians and
Vraxsis are robotic and insectoid respectively.
As a player who’s
started out playing for the Qualians, I can freely travel to any allied empire,
having offered my services and requested to land on one of the hundreds of possible
planets. The other alliances are closed to me, however. More precisely, they
are open to all players except for me—travelling from one alliance to another
costs money—real money. It’s one of those things you just have to pay real
money for in Galactogon.
The twenty days
flew by almost unnoticeably, spent in reading and dividing my labors: I would
spend my daytime in real life and my nighttime in solitary, rolled up in a ball
on the tough mattress, observing yet another dream…On the whole, I had no
difficulties serving my sentence. The only thing I regretted was that twenty
game days ended up becoming a month of real life, during which the other eleven
players were going through training and setting out on their quest for the
billion-pound prize.
It seems that my
mysterious neighbor really did depart this mortal coil—there were no further
knocks during my remaining time in solitary. In fact, there were no other
sounds at all, except for the daily buzzing of the dumbwaiter, lowering the
next meal to my humble abode. At least the food here was plentiful…
Stan never managed
to find a single mention of solitary confinement in the Training Sector. The jail
reserved for rowdy recruits came up, as well as several references to underground
tournaments held in it (thus bringing the value of the beard’s information down
to zip), but there was simply no mention of solitary. Not once—even in jest. It
was as if the dripping walls didn’t physically exist and the place I was in was
some kind of febrile dream. No big deal. Judging by the description of jail, if
a player ends up in it, then he is even prohibited from studying during his
incarceration, whereas I will be able to understand all the basic aspects of
life in Galactogon soon enough and
from there set out to find that billion-pound check.
“Recruit
Surgeon—step out!” Barely had the incarceration timer reached 00:00 when the
door to my cell opened and I was paid a visit by a guard with a rubber club
underarm. “Or do you like it so much here that you’ve decided to spend your
entire training in isolation?”
Oh, but this guard
has wit! I’m noticing that the developers endowed the locals with a decent
intellect—not reserving it simply for the key NPCs. Sometimes in Runlustia, you’d start flirting with
some servant girl and she’d just look at you with bovine eyes, totally missing
your drift. Even a slight pinch below the waist would hurt her and summon the
guards for attacking an NPC. In that game, the developers had not tried too
hard to “humanize” each and every NPC, but focused only on the important ones.
But here, your ordinary guard was capable of sarcasm—and pulled it off so well
that you’d think he was simply created for the purpose. Recalling the local bozo-bully
whose job it was to kickstart recruits into moving toward the allocation center,
it became clear to me why players were gradually switching more and more to Galactogon. The realism here was an
order of magnitude higher than in other games I’d played. In any case, that was
my opinion in that moment, and only time would tell whether it was accurate or
not.
Mission:
Deliver package to Qualian citizen Zaltoman located on the trade planet Shylak
XIV (Coordinates: 7446244 х 3366181 х 4642990). Mission deadline: 2 hours.
My emergence from
solitary was marked with some news. The first—the good news—was that I only had
10 game days remaining in the Training Sector. My twenty days of solitary had
counted after all. Unfortunately, that was it for the good news. It turned out
that the thirty days of training were divided into five units—repair, science, harvesting/mining,
flight training and assault tactics. Each non-core unit entailed four days of instruction
followed by an exam. If the player passed, he would earn a novice rank in that
field. The rest of the time was reserved for teaching the player’s core occupation—in
my case, flight training. If the player failed his core exam, he had only two
ways out—either switch his occupation to one in which he had passed the exam,
or start all over and redo the Training Sector—another thirty days. In my
situation, Repair, Science and Harvesting/Mining were already off limits—I
could no longer get official work in these fields. I could let that go—but the
most upsetting thing was that I had missed eight days of learning how to fly a
ship! And, as though in deference to Murphy’s Law, from solitary they sent me
straight into a pop quiz that the instructors had arranged—cramming a bunch of
us into some ship simulators…
One glance at the
constellation of buttons speckling the ship’s navigation panel was enough to
bring me into utter despair. I had not the slightest idea of what to do. Any log-out
into reality during training was strictly punished with an automatic Fail, so I
hadn’t much of a choice but to push anything that I came across, hoping that
something would work. Damn! If someone were to ask me, for example, where
Shylak XIV was and what role it played in Qualian trade policy, I could have
replied without hesitation. But how to pilot this ship …Well, I had
purposefully skipped this topic in my time during solitary, naïvely assuming
that I would start my training from scratch upon release.
“Are
you sure you wish to engage the Accelerator?” No sooner had I
pushed some blue button than the simulator replied with a notification on the
ship’s flight screen.
“No,” I declined, pressing the only
button I understood, the one that said: “Abort.” The inscriptions on the other
buttons were utterly unintelligible, having nothing in common with human
language. Instead, they were covered with some kind of squiggles, crosses and
circles. I could have been mistaken, but, more than likely, this was the
Qualian language. In that case, I’d have to study it too. So much fun…
“Are you sure you wish to engage the
stabilization system?” another notification from the emulator brought me to
despair. For eight days, the recruits were lectured on the principles of flight
and ship instrumentation—the right buttons to press and the right order to
press them in. And not just eight days, but 192 hours of training, during which
you could—forget players—teach a monkey to fly a spaceship. No doubt, everyone
except for me was already on Shylak trying to find Zaltoman.
“Yes!” If I understood correctly, the
green button beside “Abort” would confirm the action—and the time had come to
take a risk. Either I would fail my training now, or take off—logically
speaking, one would probably want things to be stable before zooming off
through the atmosphere.
“Stabilization System has been engaged!
Warning: No force field detected! Warning: Fuel pumps inactive!—followed by
ten more similar warnings. “Your ship has
been destroyed! Please leave the simulator—you have failed in your mission…”
“Recruit Surgeon!”
Scarcely had I tumbled out of the giant steel box that served as the model of a
ship when one of the Qualians got in my face. “You have failed the mission and
are disqualified from further piloting instruction! For the time remaining in
this unit, you are being transferred to the logistics division! You will
prepare the nourishment for those who place their education first.”
Well, that’s
definitely it now. Since I’ll have to start the Training Sector all over again
either way, I can’t afford the luxury of wasting time on becoming a marine.
From what I’ve managed to glean about this occupation, the player becomes
quickly bogged down in an immense hierarchy—Private to Sergeant to Lieutenant
to so on. A marine can’t go off to travel freely before his first battle. If he
does so, he’ll be listed as a deserter on all military bases and will suffer an
imperial Rapport malus that reflects this status. I don’t need that and I
definitely don’t want to run around in an armor suit with blaster in hand
terrifying the aborigines. I want to fly, therefore…
I was already
familiar with the sequence of menus leading to the delete character dialog, so
it only took a few movements for the final delete confirmation to pop up, after
which the Training Sector would welcome a new and somewhat wiser Surgeon, when
suddenly:
“Move it!” the
Qualian growled rudely and pushed me in the back, reminding me of his presence.
Tripping over a step in the staircase, I stretched myself out the length of six
stairs, triggering the laughter of my escort. “Only worthy recruits have the
right to stay on their feet! The other chaff must crawl to the kitchen on their
stomachs!”
The smirk on the
Qualian’s face was so irritating that a plan of revenge ripened in my mind. It’s
dumb, of course, to seek vengeance against a script, but to delete a character who
suffered naught but humiliation in his short life…As a paladin, I could never brook
such injustice!
“What’s up kiddie?
Are you upset?” the Qualian continued to sneer. It was precisely these words
that finally pushed me to action. Producing the pacifier from my inventory, I
aimed it right at his sneering mug and activated it.
If I have to leave
this game, let my parting be a memorable one.
Like I managed to
point out, the denizens of the Training Sector are not very fond of armor. Even
the guards were wearing simple leather jerkins, which may as well have been
cuirasses considering that almost all the instructors and recruits wore breezy
clothes made of some light fabric. I had nothing to lose, since deleting my
character would destroy all the items I had acquired, including my two
pacifiers. In fact, all that could happen now was a nice bit of entertainment.
And so, I smeared
the Qualian’s sneering mug across the ceiling, smashing him up over and over
again. He tried to resist at first, splaying out his arms, but I quickly
snapped them against the very stairs he had kicked me into not a minute ago.
The nine-foot ceilings did not offer enough height to accelerate him properly,
so it took me a while to hammer the Qualian to his death—about thirty seconds.
Hardly had his formless mass crumpled to the floor (with, to my surprise, not a
drop of blood escaping it) when I received another notification about decreased
Rapport with the empire and heard a siren begin to blare. To hell with it! I
spent twenty days sitting around in full solitary and now have every right in
the world to entertain myself!
I didn’t bother
searching the Qualian’s body—it would do no good against the guy in the mech
suit and the money would vanish upon deletion anyway. So I got out the second
pacifier and returned to the hall with the flight simulators. As I recalled,
the ceilings were much higher there.
After a little
while, I confirmed a very important fact—you really can’t destroy other players
in the Training Sector. I didn’t disrupt anyone’s training, but whenever a
player emerged from his “box,” smiling triumphantly, I’d lift him 20 feet into
the air and let him plummet. It took only two such flights to bring the
recruits down to 1% health, but that was it. I couldn’t finish them off beyond
that. Laying around the floor and cursing at me, the players now looked unable to
get back up—it seemed they needed medical assistance. This only made me happy,
as now they couldn’t get in my way.
“Drop the
pacifier!” came the booming command. The hall’s vaulted roof parted and a
marine in a mech suit, accompanied by much dust and gravel, came flying in.
Performing a pretty bank and thereby demonstrating his tight control of the jet
engine strapped to his back, the marine stopped, hovering a few yards before me.
Well, that’s an end to my spree, I guess. The pacifier is useless against the
active defense and isn’t much of a weapon to begin with, seeing as how it’s
designed to lift things and…Hold on! Lift things?!
“I’m dropping it,”
I burbled, pointing the beam at one of the big simulator crates. Ample in its
dimensions, this piece of equipment would weigh in at about a ton if not more.
If the pacifier could do nothing against the active defense, then we could try
a different approach…
“I’m counting to
five! One! Two! Three!”
A hit!
One pacifier was
not capable of lifting an emulator. I established that much right away. Then
again, I also established quite quickly that two pacifiers work wonderfully swell
in tandem, allowing you to lift what one cannot.
A hit!
New
level reached: Your B-class pacifier has reached level 13. Durability, number
of charges and energy have been restored by 30%.
It took a while to
pound the marine into the floor—about a minute—and this pleasure cost me two simulators,
the first breaking in half without having done any damage worth mentioning. I
was lucky in that each blow would stun the marine for a few moments, allowing
me time to lift the second simulator before he could point his weapon at me.
You
have earned a new title: “Maniac.” You have reached Rank III of the “Enemy of
the Empire” and “Murderer” Achievements, without having left the Training
Sector. The shadow guilds of Galactogon
are now aware of you.
Smiling to myself,
I dismissed the notification—quite a dubious achievement, or rather title. It’ll
sound very pretty along with my name—“Maniac Surgeon.” Quite a ring to it!
Having sent several other guards and instructors, who came running into the
hall, to flight, I paused and waited, not wishing to leave such an advantageous
place. If another marine shows up, I’ll have several other compelling arguments
for him in the form of simulators…as long as they show up one at a time and once
a minute, otherwise…
Master,
I’d like to inform you that news of your actions in the Training Sector has triggered
a wave of outrage among the new players. The fora already bristle with demands
to the administrators to get involved in the ongoing conflict and punish the
perpetrator. That is, you. I will continue to monitor the news…
My desire to
delete this character and forget this nightmare ever happened was so great that
it took all my willpower to take ahold of myself and approach the vanquished
marine—my personal satisfaction indicator was not quite there yet. Bending over
the pile of wreckage, once a handsome and self-assured Qualian, I touched the
barrel of some black rifle when…
Qualian
Marine Armor. Weight: 212. Durability: 23%. Item class: D-44. Resistance to all
attacks: 112. Maximum weight to carried items: +400.
Qualian
Assault Blaster. Weight: 12. Durability: 23%. Item class: D-44. Damage dealt:
60 (Radiation). Charges: 98 of 100.
Acquired
credits: 588 GC.
Your
Rapport with the Qualian Empire has decreased. Current Rapport: -43.
It took only a moment
for me to realize that my fun was just beginning! One or two hours won’t change
the things much and I’m morally compelled to try out such a miracle gift fallen
from the heavens. Qualian Marine Armor plus a blaster with 98 shots…What could
be better for a player who is consciously heading toward resurrection?
“I wrote down your
name! You’re dead meat! I’ll find you IRL!” the players went on frothing
helplessly. I paid them no attention, however. The suit of armor was much more
important to me. Coming to grips with the realization that I had no idea how to
pilot this piece of equipment and that I might cause harm to myself doing so
(by the way, what kind of injuries can a character suffer?) I pushed the “Engage”
button. Let’s see what happens…
The nice thing
about the suit was that I didn’t have to put it on piecemeal. It instantly
embraced me, helpfully showing me its control interface. Crap! Once more, I
found myself facing a bunch of buttons with strange inscriptions. Though, this
time I wasn’t hampered by the emulator’s limitations and so, leaving the
somatic interface, switched into Third Person mode.
“Master, I continue
to receive messages about…”
“Don’t panic! Stan,
I need complete and, simultaneously, concise information about how to pilot
Qualian Marine Armor. You have ten seconds, get on with it!”
“I have collected
the requested information and sent it to your PDA. Master, I strongly advise
you cease your aggression towards the Qualian Empire and…”
Stan’s further
advice remained a secret, as I switched back into First Person mode. Nothing
had happened while I was gone. The players continued to strew the floor in a
cursing heap. Marine reinforcements had not yet shown up and the guards and
instructors were either dead or had decided that they had no business being
there. Smart of them!
In Runlustia, I was used to the mechanic
that even if the player hadn’t the requisite skill to wear full plate armor, he
could still don a steel cuirass and calmly head into the fray. Sure, he wouldn’t
benefit from the cuirass’s special attributes—say, stat bonuses or magic
resistance— but defense against physical attacks was enabled automatically. In Galactogon, this aspect turned out both
more complicated and basic at the same time.
First of all, the
player can use any item he finds in Galactogon’s
vastness, as long as this item doesn’t require multiple players to control it
at once.
Second of all, to
use this stumbled-upon item, the player must know the correct combination of
buttons to press—for, in Galactogon
everything has buttons.
And third of all…The
correct combination of button presses can be found in real life just as in the
game—which is what I decided to do now.
The Qualian Marine
Armor turned out to be a pretty interesting device. It was about eight feet
long and made of some kind of alloy which fully covered the player, while
moving him along the ground on two legs supported by powerful and clingy little
paws. Judging by it all, a marine could even move vertically without much
difficulty—as long as he could find places for the paws to cling to. The player’s
legs only reached down to the suit’s hips, so losing an appendage did not
actually hurt the player. The same applied to the arms. I could see several
screens which showed everything that was happening around me. But even if the
cameras were damaged, the cockpit surrounding me was transparent. This was
probably to help you understand where you needed to flee to if it came to that…
According to the
information Stan sent over, the instrumentation panel before me could be
controlled with my eyes, allowing my arms and legs to focus on controlling the
armor’s movements. It followed that if I wanted to walk, I just needed to walk
inside the suit—though only after finding a way to turn it on. And precisely
this was what they spent four days of training on.
Red-green-blue-red—the
armor vibrated palpably. This sequence activated the suit, allowing the player
to start inputting commands. The screens went pitifully red, indicating that my
suit’s durability was critically low, but at the moment this was meaningless—I
only needed it for a few hours. Next, I needed to transfer control to my arms
and legs in order to move…Activate vision…Microphone…Stabilizer…Shields…
Who cooked all
this up?! To make the first step, I had to enter twenty different commands in
sequence, adjusting the suit of armor to my body. Nevertheless, I persevered
and got through the lot of them, knowing that next time this would be much
easier. In fact, it was already clear what I had to do.
“Stan, I need
instructions for how to use and reload a Qualian Assault Blaster!”
It took me about
five minutes to absorb the principles behind the suit’s operation and to get a handle
on how to keep my balance without cracking up the crowd of fallen newbies
around me. These were five minutes which were gifted to me by the instructors’
and guards’ unwillingness to disturb me with their presence. Aiming the primed
blaster at the mess of newbies, I turned on the PA and said, “Nothing personal,
you guys. This is just target practice.”
I pulled the
trigger. So I’ll waste one shot—at least I’ll be certain that the blaster
works…
You
have earned a new title: “Destroyer.” You have destroyed another player in the
Training Sector. The shadow guilds of Galactogon
are now curious about you. This title is logged and tracked officially. Number
of players who have this title: 388.
The lights went
out in the hall, submerging us in darkness. A single beam of light sliced
through the opening above. The siren, which I had already become accustomed to,
fell quiet for a moment and then erupted so loudly that the newbies on the
floor began writhing, trying to stop their ears. Oh so this is how they want to
play! An attempt to break my will with sound? How will the developers explain their
use of this sonic weapon to the other players?
“Surgeon!” came a
deafening roar, stifling the newbs’ moans. “Put down your weapons and come out
with your hands up! You have five minutes to make up your mind!”
What, am I no
longer considered a recruit? Well, well…
The siren fell
silent along with the other players’ moans and, as I watched astounded,
basically all of the recruits turned transparent and then vanished entirely. I’d
guess they simply logged off into the real world—though a few remained.
“Hey, Surgeon, can
you hear me? Wave your hand if you can!”
Waving my blaster
at the remaining player to tell him to leave me alone, I continued to watch the
doors with interest. I was wondering whether the assault would come through the
roof or through the doors. I was still extremely insecure about my ability to
pilot this craft—I sure wouldn’t have tried to fly the way that marine had done
it—so I knew that I needed to be prepared to resist without the benefit of maneuverability.
“Perfect,” the
prone recruit went on. “My name is Lestran. I’m a repairman but I also just
passed the piloting exam. If you take me with you, I’ll help you get off this
planet! Better think fast—pretty soon you’ll have no time for me.”
“Getting out of
here isn’t possible! And even if we do, the Empire is closed to us,” I replied
neutrally, as if everything was under control and I knew exactly what I was
doing.
“You don’t trust
me? Fine, but I know all about the pirates—if you doubt my abilities, check my
status—I even won a local tournament. Do you even know how to get to it?”
“Through the jail
with the guard who has the thingy on his sleeve,” I ventured, growing more
curious about this player. “Big deal…I’ve gotten myself a suit of armor—but you
don’t see me bragging about it—whereas you keep going on about some tourney…”
“Listen, I
enrolled in training on purpose, so that I could get to the pirates. You, as I
understand it, have already basically done it—but without my help, you’ll never
get off this planet! I spent seven months finding a way out of here. Without
me, you’re not going anywhere for at least as long! So make up your mind:
Either you’re about to delete and restart, in which case everyone is already
pissed at you anyway, or you can trust me and take me with you. You got three
minutes left!”
What else could I
do? Trusting my experience, I made my decision: This player needed something
and I could use that to my advantage. Anyway, as long as the current events didn’t
take up too much of my time, I could allow myself to go on playing. I could
always delete Surgeon, but I was still curious what the Qualians would do and
how Lestran wanted to escape the Training Sector.
“The armor has a
medkit—first, you’ll need to heal me. The button combination is
gel-pax-pax-glar-kree.”
“Let’s speak
human, okay? Qualian may as well be Greek to me.”
“So how’d you
manage to start the suit?” Lestran asked surprised.
“The buttons are
color-coded—blue, red and so on.”
“Bunch of
nonsense…Alright, hang on a second…The medkit is blue-red-red-orange-green. I
can’t believe I’m even doing this…If anyone finds out, they’ll laugh their…”
“If it works, it
works,” I replied, bending down over Lestran and putting my arm beside him. Barely
had I entered the necessary combination when a needle extended from my suit’s
index finger and punctured the recruit’s body. His health began to rise.
“Okay, now stay on
my heels! We’ve got two minutes before they come!” yelled Lestran, jumping to
his feet and running toward the doors. “Move it! We need to descend to the
lower levels.”
Lestran ran out of
the hall so confidently that I had no other choice but to follow him.
“Shoot it,” I took
thirty or so heavy, metal-clanging steps, when I almost ran into him, standing
still and pointing with his hand at a niche in the wall. “You need to knock that
down with your blaster.”
“Knock what down?”
“The wall! What are
you waiting for? The passage to the levels we need are on the other side!”
I didn’t bother to
ask how this player could be so sure of himself. Instead, I pressed myself to
the opposite wall, aimed the weapon at the wall and pulled the trigger.
Instantly, I hoped that Lestran had managed to dart behind a corner. Fragments
of rubble flew everywhere, reducing the Durability of my armor by 1%. This was followed
by my temporary ally’s invective:
“You dingbat! You
couldn’t wait until I took cover? What are you standing around for? Heal me!”
Before I could
administer another dose of the healing injection, I had to remove two large
boulders that had pinned Lestran to the floor. The wall’s demolition had turned
out very realistic—there was so much dust that I even thought I was back in
real life for a second. Typically, most games try to avoid taxing the capsule’s
system resources on rendering such insignificant details.
Bit by bit, the
outlines of a passage began to flicker through the dust. Opening the
instructions I had received from Stan, I entered the command to turn on the
floodlights. Two bright beams split the murk and our eyes encountered a steep
winding staircase, running both up and down.
“This way!”
Lestran ordered joyously and deftly squeezed through the opening in the wall. “We
need to go down!”
“One second,” I
replied, squeezing through the opening with some difficulty, after which I
stuck my arm and blaster back through it and took several shots at the walls
and ceiling of the hallway we had come from. In a few minutes, the assault
would commence and I didn’t want to leave an obvious trace of where we had
gone. Let them suffer a bit removing the boulders, while I got to be Maniac for
a bit longer. I needed to find out after all, how Lestran had learned about
this secret passage.
“Right on!” the
player agreed with me, descending several steps lower. “No one knows that you
can bust through there and since it’s all buried now, they’ll think of looking
in the hangar last of all.”
“Do you know what’s
up there?” I pointed up the staircase.
“Sure. General
Trank’s office—he’s in charge of all of Training Sector Alpha-332. I managed to
find this stairwell during my last life, but they caught me in the office and
sent me to jail—and boy did my imperial Rapport suffer a hit. So I had to start
all over…Otherwise, this is a very curious building, which I’ve managed to dig
around in quite sufficiently by now…”
“So what’s the
deal? Do you think they’ll look for us there?” I asked Lestran, pausing my
descent. “Is it very far up?”
“Look for us?”
Lestran also halted his descent and even climbed a few steps back toward me. “Doubt
it. The office is three floors up and…Wait, don’t tell me you want to go take a
look?”
“Well what do you
think would be better: If we approach the pirates with data we’ve stolen from
the computer of the executive officer of the Training Sector or simply show up
willy nilly saying ‘take us as we are—we’re so cute, after all?’” I said,
applying pressure to Lestran’s sore point. Why was he so set on getting in with
the pirates? And why wouldn’t I use that fact to my advantage? From my time in Runlustia, I could safely say that the
offices of commanders typically had something worth stealing. At the very
least, there would be some nice items up there.
“Let’s go,”
Lestran made up his mind, squeezed past me and began to ascend. “Though, on
second thought, wait here. If there’s anyone in the office, we won’t go in—we
can’t let them know where we are. If there’s no one in there…I gotta say, I’m
damn lucky to have met you! What’s your guild anyway?”
“Let’s do that
later—the loot’s getting cold!”
Lestran merely
smiled and began climb the stairs.
Just then, a
menacing and mighty voice shook the entire building: “Surgeon! You refuse to
listen to reason and will therefore be placed under arrest until the
investigation has been completed! Commence the assault!”
“It’s clear up
there.” My partner said, returning. Then he nodded in the direction of the
rubble, “D’you hear? They’re looking for you already.”
I could hear one
of the Qualian commanders issuing orders through the wall: “First team take the
rec area. Second team, you’ve got the exam hall. Third team—you take the mess.
Fifth team—lecture rooms.”
“Those boys are
not playing around,” Lestran smiled again. “Come on. The general’s office is
empty.”
“Why this is just
paradise,” whispered Lestran, as soon as he stepped into the office. “How
things have changed in here!”
My new partner’s
astonishment was justified—we really had found a nice place. The ubiquitous
gray walls of the Training Sector were covered bookcases. I could already see pacifiers,
blasters and energy cells strewn about their shelves. There weren’t any force
fields, so Lestran instantly dashed to the weapons rack and grabbed the first
blaster he could get his hands on.
“Now we can play
war for real,” he said satisfied. I, however, stopped in my tracks: What if my
partner decided to use his weapon against me and then give me up to the locals,
claiming that I had taken him hostage?
“Chill,” Lestran
laughed seeing me hesitate. “I don’t betray my friends.”
A desk covered in
papers and a holographic screen occupied the center of the office, so while my
partner armed himself, I took a seat in the general’s plush chair, causing it
to wince beneath my armor’s enormous weight, and commenced with some industrial
espionage. Unable to understand the value of each separate paper, I
photographed everything that got underway with my PDA, having first plugged my
comm cable into the desk’s data port. The office computer wasn’t password
protected, so I simply tasked my PDA with copying whatever it got its little
hands on. Thank god I didn’t have to worry about the device’s memory—the player’s
PDA had seemingly limitless resources.
“Check out what I
found,” Lestran whispered to me loudly. His voice was so happy that I was
forced to give up photographing the papers for a second. “This is an access key
to a frigate!”
“And?”
“My escape plan
had been to hide in the hold of a cargo ship or transport—one of the ones in
the hangars below—but now, we can fly out of here on our own! With our own
ship!”
“Do you know how
to fly it?”
“Why sure! I’ve
done the Training Sector eight times already, trying to get in with the
pirates!”
“How many crew
does a frigate need?” I again restrained myself from asking why Lestran was so
eager to join the baddies. As far as I understood it, he had decided for
himself that I was motivated by the same purpose and therefore could trust me.
“That’s the beauty
of it! The two of us will be enough!”
“There’s one
problem though—I never took the classes…”
“You know your
colors, don’t you? You can check out how to do it right in real life later. Oh
boy!” my partner exclaimed once more upon opening a wardrobe.
“What now?”
“Oh—no big
deal…Just, here—catch!” A symbolical bag of money came flying in my
direction—the developers of Galactogon,
it seems, had decided to implement the transfer of money between players in a
manner that was universally recognizable. Being utterly symbolic, the bag could
contain anywhere from one credit to several billion. The symbol here mattered
more than the size.
Acquired
credits: 15,339 GC.
“That’s exactly
half, I swear,” added Lestran. “When you’re done with the data, change your clothes.”
My partner indicated another wardrobe: “There are some pretty good class-C
clothes in here—with high resistance stats. Plus several medkits, grab them too.
I’m gonna check out that safe, for the time being.”
Acknowledging my
partner with a wave of my hand, I turned my attention to my PDA’s display,
which had projected a strange notification: “General,
you requested information that has been classified as ‘Secret.’ Please enter
your access code…”
It seems that my
PDA had already copied everything that there was in the office computer and had
begun to send its little tentacles further out, where, of course, it
encountered some protection. Knowing that to go on would be probably pointless,
I nevertheless ran a search on the data I already had for the string “Code”…Who
knows those developers were thinking…
“Access
Code Accepted. You have gained access to the KRIEG Project…”
The KRIEG Project?
The same one that the mysterious stranger had mentioned in solitary? To my
immense surprise (and grave failure on the part of the general), the access
code was recorded in a plaintext file with the very descriptive name “Access
Code.” The file contained only one line, which once entered in the password
prompt, allowed me to peek where I shouldn’t have. I say “shouldn’t have”
because literally a moment later, the following notification appeared on the
screen: “Unauthorized data transfer
detected. Download progress: 77%. Access to Project KRIEG has been limited.
General, please remain in your seat—you will shortly be contacted for verification…”
“Lestran, we’ve
got a problem!” I instantly apprised my partner. “It looks like we need to get
out of here!”
“General Trank!” A
holographic head of some Qualian appeared about three feet above the desk and
began yelling with a voice full of authority. “On what grounds…WHO ARE YOU?”
Counting my
blessings for not having removed my armor, which kept my face a mystery to the
screaming head, I slammed my fist down on the comm’s holo-crystal, cutting the
transmission. I ain’t scared of you, hollerin’ head…
“You’re right,
time to boogie,” Lestran agreed, throwing two blasters over his shoulder. “I’m
not getting anywhere with this safe anyway—don’t have the skills for it…Are you
going to change or not?”
“Sure,” I said and,
not wishing to make my friend suspicious with my hesitation to grab some more
loot, approached the indicated wardrobe and opened its doors. To my further
satisfaction with the mechanics in Galactogon,
I didn’t have to remove my armor to change the clothes underneath. It’s not that
I distrusted Lestran, but…
“What do you
think?” smirked Lestran, once I literally froze in my tracks before the
wardrobe. Under the clothes and the medkits (which quickly took up residence in
my inventory), the wardrobe also contained one item which, having read its
description, caused me to swear in surprise:
Journeyman’s
Satchel with Anti-Grav. Weight: 1. Item class: D-44. Decreases weight of items
in satchel by 200.
“There were only
two of them. I took one for myself. Nice little item, eh?”
The item was more
than nice. Considering that things in Galactogon
have their own size and weight, having an extra two hundred units of carrying
capacity is simply a godsend to a starting player. Along with the money I’d
accumulated, I was beginning to loathe the idea of deleting my current
character. Pirates, after all, could be a swell crowd to run with. As soon as
the opportunity presented itself, I would have to read a bit about the game’s shadow
guilds.
“Stan, my man, gather
all the information you can find about pirates in Galactogon and copy it to a separate file. I’m interested in both
locals as well as human pirates,” I ordered, popping momentarily out of the
somatic interface. I was unwilling to leave this question for later. If we ever
did manage to get off this planet, I wanted to know everything there was to
know about piracy in Galactogon.
“Alright, let’s
scram,” Lestran offered, approaching the door and pushing a bookcase onto it.
The door was hung to open inward, so unless our pursuers decided to use their
weapons, it would take them a long time to break into their boss’s office.
“Let’s go,” I
agreed, but then, feeling suddenly mischievous, I inquired: “Where’d you say
the safe was?”
For a player
dressed in marine armor, breaking a safe out of the wall was a question of
several seconds. Several strange cables ran from the safe to the wall. These I
cut with my built in knife. If that was the alarm, then it wouldn’t do us much
harm, and if that was a dead switch that destroyed anything inside the safe…Well…we
could simply consider ourselves unlucky. Putting the safe in my bag, which could
easily accommodate this new weight due to its newly upgraded carrying capacity,
I set off after Lestran.
“Here we are,” my
partner whispered, peeking through a slit in the hangar’s door panel. “There’re
three engineers in the hangar repairing something. Shall we wait until they
leave?”
“We don’t have time
to wait. Pretty soon the general will return to his office and find the door
blocked. Even a local can do that math. You took several pacifiers, didn’t you?
Those are quite powerful against defenseless creatures. I don’t suggest we use
the blasters—might damage the ships.”
“In that case, you
get those two on the right and I’ll take that one on the left. I’m going in!”
The procedure for
restraining the careless technicians was in no way different from the earlier
one involving the instructors and the guards—lift them up high and let them
down (not lightly). Repeat as necessary. To my immense surprise, there was no
one else in the cavernous hanger. Either there was a personnel shortage here,
or everyone had taken off to help track down some renegade player—me, that is.
“Check these beauties
out,” Lestran uttered lovingly after he had dealt with his engineer and gotten
a chance to look around the hangar. It contained nine ships—two frigates, five
interceptors, a harvester and a transport. It became more and more evident to
me why gamers loved Galactogon so
much—up close, the vessels were quite impressive. Still not knowing which
frigate would be ours—the green one or the blue one—I simply marveled at the
stately might of each ship. Each line and curve was exactly where it needed to
be. Two giant beam cannons in the nose cowling and two more in the fairings of
the forward fuselage made the frigate seem like a formidable weapon. Each
frigate was about three hundred feet long, much larger than the smallish
interceptors and the harvester. Only the pot-bellied transport approached it in
its dimensions; however, even for an inveterate landlubber like me, it was
evident that you couldn’t get far in a tub like that.
“The blue one is
ours, I’ll tell you what to do!”
We couldn’t help
but grab four repair bots along our way to the ship. Since repair was Lestran’s
main occupation, he was fully capable of not only controlling these strange, arachnoid
creatures, but could also fix my armor with their help. Over the past hour, I
had gotten so used to my suit, that I didn’t even notice it anymore. That which
had initially struck me as incredibly inconvenient (for example, the HUD) was
gradually beginning to seem ideal to me. Maybe I should become a marine after
all?
The entrance to
the ship was right behind the forward bulkhead. With a trembling hand, Lestran put
the access key to the door, which instantly opened with a slight hiss of steam.
“Look at that!
Alright, Surgeon—let’s figure out whose ship this is now rather than later. The
system is asking me about it—which one of us should I register as its owner?”
“Me,” I replied
without a second thought. “One of us can’t fly it. You said so yourself, so we’ll
play together. But if it weren’t for me, you’d still be doing the Training
Sector over and over again. That’s number one. Number two is that since we’re
heading to meet up with some pirates, the ship owner has to be the one whom
they’re interested in. Otherwise they’ll just attack us, take the ship and then
tell us to get lost. I already received a notification that Galactogon’s shadow guilds are curious
about me. Have you gotten one?” I turned to Lestran, eloquently tipping my head
to one side.
“Well then the
robots are mine!” Lestran burbled petulantly. “And we split the loot 50-50!”
“That works for me.”
“What a greedy pig
you are,” my partner said, still unwilling to calm down. He did something on
the panel before him and I received a pretty welcome notification:
You
have earned the “Captain” Achievement. You are now the owner of a spaceship.
You
have acquired a space frigate. Weight: 250,000. Item class: D-77. For a
detailed description of the frigate, please consult the ship’s manual.
You are
the first player to own this frigate and have the right to change its name. The
current name is Dratistan.
Uh, excuse me, but
no! I have very little desire to go flying around in something called the Dratistan.
“Couldn’t think of
anything more clever?” quipped Lestran, when the ship’s name changed. “Sit
here. I’ll explain to you what sequence you need to press the buttons in. I’ll
sit beside you and plot our course. Do you even have a slight idea of where we
need to go?”
“I do. First into
space and then to some backwater planet without resources. We’ll leave the ship
there, then pop out of the game and check out the instructions. I won’t take a
single step further until I know how to fly. By the way, how are you on time?”
“I’m fine. I’ve
got a month at least.” Lestran pointed at a dark-red, almost maroon, button and
continued, “Check it out, first we need to start the reactor and after that…”
I listened eagerly
to Lestran’s introductory lecture on piloting a space frigate. Of course, I
could absorb the entire process this very night by finding some emulators, but
at the moment we needed to take off and fly away, having broken through the
planetary defense ring—and that, as my partner pointed out, was a problem in and
of itself. Especially, he underscored, for a ship with a name like ours.
Listening
attentively and writing down the sequence of commands, I smiled to myself:
Today would see the maiden voyage of The Space
Cucumber. My Stan would be happy to hear the news…
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