Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) (20 page)

“We should be, but there’s no way to tell now. The changes in the ship’s mass could have affected the jump. An hour in hyperspace is enough to toss us into literally any point of
Galactogon
. The only thing we can say for sure is that we’re not inside a star. Otherwise, Miloš would have been incinerated instantly.”

“Alright, since there’s no other way out,” I replied after some thought, “we’ll reconvene tomorrow at ten and try to jump to Daphark in short hops instead of one long one. I want to thank all of you for today’s battle. It was sweet.” Having said that, I activated the self-destruct procedure and took a deep breath. I really didn’t want
The Space Cucumber
to go back to class-C.

A second later, I took another breath and repeated the self-destruct procedure.

After another ten seconds, I wasn’t taking breaths anymore, but simply hammering the self-destruct button sequence.

“Something’s not working,” Miloš pointed out emphatically and then broke out in a fit of laughter. “We don’t have the power in the core left to activate the detonation. What an ‘epic fail,’ as the ancients used to say.”

To say that I was surprised would have been an understatement. Finding oneself immured in a giant stone sarcophagus without a single exit, is quite a thing even for a computer game.

“Hey Marina, this is Surgeon again. Got a minute?” I instantly called the girl. If we couldn’t destroy ourselves from within, then we had to destroy ourselves from without.

“Only if you make it quick. How’s the battle?”

“That’s what I’m calling you about. We managed to jump into hyperspace from an asteroid and…”

“Say that again—you did what?” Marina interrupted. It sounded to me like she could barely contain her laughter. “Wait, wait, I’m going to put you on speakerphone…Alright, Surgeon, all the officers are here. Could you repeat what you just said?”

“I can see now that I probably shouldn’t’ve done that, huh? By the way, partner, it’s not very nice of you to mock me like this. I’ve been in
Galactogon
like two months and haven’t yet had time to learn all the nuances. But since you want me to repeat it, I will. We jumped into hyperspace while still on the surface of an asteroid.”

There was some tentative laughter despite what I’d said, but Marina instantly cut off the speakerphone.

“Sorry,” she said calmly, “it’s just that any captain knows not to jump into hyperspace while even close to any kind of mass, much less on the surface of a planetoid. I lost a ship like that myself many years ago, so…How thick is whatever you’re encased in?”

“One hundred feet of solid rock.”

“Do you have enough power to blow yourself up?”

“No. I don’t have anything at all at the moment—neither energy nor any idea of where we are, nor any means of returning back to…”

“That’s precisely your biggest problem. You guys could be anywhere at the moment. Even in a different galaxy. The developers had some fun when they wrote the code for jumping with an unaccounted-for mass. Basically, you’ve been carried to some unknown reaches of
Galactogon
. And that’ll happen every time. I tried it out several times by stuffing extra powercells and a nav comp into a scout. After the jump, we cut a way out through the rock and found ourselves on the map. And each time we’d be in an utter backwater. So if you want to know where you are at the moment, then finding your ship will be basically impossible.”

“Is there really no solution?” I asked sadly.

“Sorry, no. There isn’t. In your situation, I recommend you stuff your inventory with anything of value or importance, point the blaster at your head and pull the trigger with your toe. You can’t save your ship anymore, so at least save a part of your equipment. Read the forums. They do a good job of describing a jump from a planetary surface and its consequences. Later!”

Marina disconnected, leaving me in utter shock. I didn’t even want to think that she was saying the truth, so I turned to my crew and issued new orders.

“Guys, we have a small problem. We’ll meet again tomorrow at ten, as usual. Until then, I’d like you to study the question of jumping into hyperspace from some planetary surface as much as you can. Tomorrow we’ll decide how we’re gonna get out of here…”

I waited to sign out until my crew had departed, leaving
The Space Cucumber
last like a true captain.

“Greetings, Master,” Stan began to run through his customary script as soon as the cocoon’s lid slid aside. “Shower, mail, dinner?”

“Cancel everything,” I replied, getting comfortable at my work desk. “I need everything you can find about hyperjumps.”

“A jump through hyperspace is one of the most complicated processes in Galactogon, technically as well as mathematically. The jump initialization takes 60 seconds (this time may be decreased to 40 by equipping the ship with a more powerful navigation computer or engines), during which the onboard navigation computer calculates the jump vector, its duration and the point of egress. The calculation takes into account only the dimensions of the vessel; however, it is worth pointing out that in actual fact, the hyperdrive sends the space around the ship into hyperspace as well. The dimensions of the total actual space sent to hyperspace depends on the power of the vessel’s hyperdrive and may vary from between an offset of three feet for scouts, up to an offset of one hundred feet for cruisers. An imperative condition for performing a successful hyperjump is that the ship remain utterly uninfluenced by any outside force for the duration of the hyperdrive’s initialization. This includes beam attacks, collisions with other vessels’ hulls, close proximity to a foreign mass, and solar flares. The vessel should also not be painted by a space disrupter beam…The larger the difference between the real mass sent to hyperspace and the mass as calculated by the navigation computer, the larger will be the deviation at the point of egress.”

Stan supplied me this excerpt from the official game manual, pointing out that this information was included in the mandatory training course for ship captains. I never imagined that my smart home would start giving me lip too. The above text was followed by real examples provided by other players—and here I was forced to really sink my head in despair: Everyone claimed in unison that the only way out was to abandon their ship. The cruisers fared worst of all—even a marine in a suit of armor couldn’t drill through one hundred feet of rock. I made a note to order Miloš to start trying to drill through first thing tomorrow anyway though. Despite the fact that 99.9% of all the posts on this topic ended with the scuttling of the ship and starting all over again, I found several mentions of a way out of this impasse. First it was necessary to break out to the surface of the ship. After that all the crew members could gather in one place wearing suits of armor, and setting their suits’ thrusters to full, slingshot the ship at the closest star. This process could take a while—distances in
Galactogon
were in no way small—but doing so would force your ship to be respawned. There were no other plausible options—only miracles like someone stumbling on our ship in the middle of nowhere. Every player said the same thing—jumping into hyperspace from a planetary surface was just not done. Where had they all been earlier?

“Master, you have an incoming call from one of the members of your whitelist. Will you take it?”

The panic mode, which I had never canceled, allowed only a few people to get in touch with me—more precisely just one: Alonso, my companion from my time in
Runlustia
.

“Excellent! I see that you’re not bathing today?” he greeted me sarcastically. “What are you getting into?”

“I just got out of
Galactogon
. Was going to go jog for a bit. Why? Got a better idea?”

“Do you even need to ask? You owe me our wake in honor of
Runlustia
! It’s been a month already! You thought I forgot? While Lucy is battling it out in
Galactogon
, I propose we meet up and have a drink.”

“Deal. What about you? Haven’t seen you IRL much lately. Doesn’t seem like you.”

“Eh, I’m exhausted with all this studying I have to do—you know how much I hated being a monkey in
Runlustia
. All I do in
Galactogon
is study, study and study some more. I only have a week left in the Training Sector, but I just can’t keep ‘playing’ at the moment. I need some downtime. How about yourself?”

“Well…Let’s meet up at the bar and I’ll tell you…”

“Get out of here!” Alonso exclaimed after I told him my story with the pirates. Ordering another pint, he leaned forward to prop his head up on the bar and looked me up and down with half-sober eyes. “So you are the Surgeon?”

“Yah, but again—not a word to anyone about that. I’d rather not run into Cyanide IRL.”

“If all you say is true, I’d start looking for you myself. Dang! To get out of the Training Sector without even completing it! To destroy a cruiser of a guild and get away in one piece! I am just quivering with jealousy here! I still have to sweat it out in the Sector, like I told you. And then Lucy has another three weeks as well.”

“Lucille is in the Training Sector?” I asked surprised. “I thought you said that she was the head of a guild or something.”

“You can’t say a word about that to anyone either!” Alonso placed a finger to his lips conspiratorially. “She deleted her character a month ago and handed off her guild to her deputy. It’s only temporary of course, but now she’s an ordinary player like you or I…Although, I guess you’re doing better than just ordinary.”

“Why would a guild leader reset her character?” I asked sounding puzzled and trying not to betray the adrenaline that had suddenly flooded me. Had Lucille too been brought into the bet?

“Well, you see, Alexis…I can’t tell that to anyone, even you. Lucille will kill me if she finds out. She only spends seven hours in the game a day and always comes out unhappy and angry—so, forgive me, I can’t tell you about that.”

“Not even a thing, Alonso,” I reassured my friend, clapping him on the shoulder. “I understand perfectly. As I recall it, you’re playing with the Vraxis?”

“Uh-huh and boy am I sick of those chitinous mugs! You know, it was much more pleasant to look at elf girls than these bugs…Want to have another drink? Remember how we set off the Black Death?”

Taking him up on his offer, I called over the bartender and ordered another round of beer. I wanted to show Alonso that I was still on the same wavelength as he. Meanwhile, a single thought occupied my mind—I had found one of the remaining ten players who were looking for the billion pounds with me. I had to find the other nine…

“Master, I have prepared the information you requested,” Stan woke me early the next morning. My head felt like a hundred church bells had suddenly decided to play compositions of their own creation and which were in no way in harmony with one other. I was scared to even imagine what was going on inside my mouth, and here was Stan with his “information you requested”…Lemme sleep, you robot!

“What you got?” I managed, forcing my tongue to move.

“I have identified the two players pictured on your phone. Would you like to see their personal information?”

“Come on then.”

“Constantine Gauranga, age 29. Resided at…”

“What do you mean by ‘resided?’ Why the past tense?” I interrupted Stan. Even through the fog of my hangover, the sentence set off alarm bells.

“Mr. Gauranga passed away in an accident eight days ago,” replied Stan, taking my hangover right off. Constantine was dead?!

“What about Eunice?”

“Eunice Dormouse, age 30. Current place of residence unknown. Has lived here in this city for the past nine months. I found information about her contacts and her phone number on the web. I’d like to point out that it seems she too has turned engaged panic mode. I found her phone number only by parsing old logs in the game
Draanmir
. All newer data, from the past two years, were either deleted or are outdated. Neither her email, nor her phone, nor website is currently active. Would you like to contact Eunice?”

“Not at the moment,” I shook my head, pushing away the encroaching weakness. “Give me something to help with my hangover and prepare the capsule. I need to get back into
Galactogon
. Although, wait—send her a message that I want to talk to her. You can add that at least two of the twelve are already dead.”

“Your message has been sent. The capsule and the anti-hangover shot have been prepared. Do you wish to eat your breakfast?”

Even thinking of that turned me inside out, so I said no and dove back into
Galactogon
, freeing my mind from the morning’s hangover.

Chapter 7

An Unexpected Encounter

“That’s it.
That’s the last of them,” said Miloš, hauling out the last powercell from the harvester. Our attempt to wire the harvester’s power supply into the contour running to
The Space Cucumber
’s self destruct mechanism had failed miserably, wiping out basically half of the Elo we had on board. Elo was the universal fuel in
Galactogon
, so we decided to move on to plan B, which consisted of drilling a hole in our stone egg. Like ancient lizards awoken by some cataclysm, we began to whittle away at the ossified egg—but it turned out that making a small opening was one thing and carving a full-sized passage through which we could get out to open space was something else entirely—not exactly the proper task for a simple combat blaster. Miloš melted away the rock piece by piece, while we ferried the melted piles to the cargo holds. Once the blaster’s powercell was finished, we wired it into the harvester’s powercells, but even those were eventually all but exhausted.

“How much more do we have to go?”

“About three feet. We should have enough juice, but…Personally, I’m not sure what we’ll do afterwards. My armor has 15% power left and I assume that you guys have not much more than that. We’ll be able to change the ship’s orbit only once—after that, we’re icicles. What do you think, Surgeon? Maybe we should shoot ourselves before it’s too late?”

“And admit that we’ve wasted four hours for nothing?” I smirked. “Sorry, but no way. Let’s get to the outside and then see what our chances are. Maybe we’re only several days’ journey from some star and already falling towards it as it is. We’ll always have the chance to respawn. I don’t feel like losing the ship in such a dumb way.”

“Didn’t Marina promise you a new frigate?” Wally spoke up. But I interrupted him right away.

“What do we need an F-class tub for? What are we going to do with it? With
The Space Cucumber
, we defeated a cruiser. All we’ll be doing in an F-class frigate is running from Cyanide from one system to the next. If there’s a chance of saving the frigate, we need to take it. If not, we’ll think about something else…”

That morning Marina had called me to ask how things were going and suggested that we abandon
The Space Cucumber
, taking with us anything of value we could carry. The captain of
Alexandria
promised to give me and my crew a new frigate. It would have to be F-class, albeit with whatever upgrades she found on hand. I promised to consider her offer as soon as we’d reach a dead end in our attempts to salvage
The Space Cucumber
. Then, we got to work, toiling to get through the rock and, now, when there were only a few feet left until the end, my crew turned out to be utterly demoralized. We needed a single goal that could unite us, but at the moment I couldn’t see it. Everything was just too bad.

Our emergence into open space wasn’t even greeted as a victory—by that point, Miloš’s blaster had been fully discharged, so we had to use Wally’s, then Lestran’s. We finally broke through with Tristan’s rifle. By the end of it, Haggis and I were the only remaining armed players on
The Space Cucumber
. At least our weapons had leveled up to class-D…and a full D at that…

The bungled hyperjump had brought us to the center of some uncharted solar system. All my PDA could do was whine pitifully, finding no nav beacons. Scans of the sky map also revealed nothing about what part of
Galactogon
we were in. I would have to get Stan on this job. If anyone could figure out where we were, he would. The only thing we could say at the moment was that we were lost…like, really lost.

“Flying to that star would take days upon days,” Wally appraised the situation as soon as we had all emerged from the ship. “If we pointher at that star and expend all the fuel our suits have left to accelerate her, then—give me a secon
d‏
—then considering the star’s mass,
The Space Cucumber
will fall into the sun in seven months. That’s under ideal conditions, mind.”

“Guys,” Lestran suddenly exclaimed from the other side of the frigate, “take a look at this!”

We floated over to the engineer who was pointing at a direction away from the sun and saw a small spot, set apart from the surrounding stars by its blue-green hue.

“
Planet with vegetation
,” my PDA happily reported. “
Belongs to the category of planets which have an indigenous flora and fauna. Probability of finding Raq: 0%. Probability of finding Elo: 74%. Probability of finding…”

The PDA went on reporting a ton of information about the planet, without, however, providing its name or location in the game’s universe. It was a typical planet with vegetation somewhere on the periphery of
Galactogon
. There were millions of such planets.

“Hmm…” Wally said expressively, evidently calculating something. “Hmm…”

“How informative,” Tristan replied sarcastically. “Well, don’t leave us in the dark—pun intended. What’d you come up with?”

“My preliminary calculations suggest that that planet is moving toward us and will pass literally clicks from us. If we adjust the frigate’s trajectory to intercept its orbit…I have no idea how we’ll land the ship without engines, but heck, this part isn’t rocket science: We should be smashed into a pancake. What do you say?”

“Which way do we adjust?” I instantly made up my mind. If there was a way to save
The Space Cucumber
, I was all for it.

“We have two hours until contact, so let’s all push from this side.” Wally instantly flew over to the far side of the rock cocoon, pressed up against it and opened his suit’s throttle to maximum. “What’re you all standing around for? We might not get another chance!”

With two percent power remaining, each player began to push
The Space Cucumber
. And once the power ran out, we headed back into the ship. If the frigate was doomed, it was preferable to be inside of it and respawn all together. Otherwise, we would have to spend a long time looking for our belongings at the “graveyard”—the place where players’ ships respawned.

“Ten minutes until reentry,” said Wally, checking his PDA.

“Listen, how do you know all this stuff anyway?” I asked unable to contain my curiosity any longer. “Whatever crap happens to us, you seem to have either a plan or a tool to deal with it.”

“I want to become a navigator,” Wally smirked mysteriously. Our suits’ power went down to basically zero, so we took off our helmets in case we needed to shoot ourselves in the head with blasters.

“And?” I didn’t understand such a mysterious admission.

“The captain of the ship is the one who makes the decisions about how and where the ship goes,” Lestran explained for Wally. “All ships—with the exception of cruisers—combine the role of captain and navigator into one player. But a navigator on a cruiser is an indispensable position. After all, it’s he who pilots this giant vessel through space. Marina has utterly insane requirements for her navigators. I once read how…”

“I am currently fifth in line for the position,” said Wally proudly, as if admitting that he was some superman. Judging by the reactions from Lestran and the gunners, this wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Let me see!” Tristan exclaimed, as if he had heard some wondrous news.

Wally pressed several buttons on his PDA and a hologram appeared of a fiery number five. The sacred significance of this presentation remained a mystery to me.

“Well then!” Haggis cursed and patted the shieldsman on his shoulder. “You’ll be our protégé in case of anything. Fifth navigator…I can’t believe it. How is it that Marina let you go?”

“Seven minutes till contact,” replied Wally, smirking, and as he did so,
The Space Cucumber
began to shake from side to side. “We’re entering the atmosphere. I suggest that anyone who doesn’t want to go prematurely buckle up snug…”

Our crash onto the surface was so violent that I was almost ejected out of my captain’s chair. For a second I lost consciousness and naïvely decided that this was it—the respawning sequence in
Galactogon
. My body felt broken and stars played across my eyes. I planned on appearing on Qirlats and resuming my travels in the frigate, but…
The Space Cucumber
was not in agreement with this kind of continuation:

Hull Durability is now 1%. The ship requires a complete overhaul to fly again.

All life support systems have shut down.

A hundred feet worth of rock skin had cushioned our entry into the planet’s atmosphere. As we plummeted to the surface, the rock layer took the brunt of the impact, distributing the damage evenly across the ship’s volume. Everything took damage from the fall, even our suits, but the worst news was that
The Space Cucumber
had remained in one piece—our rock cocoon had saved us from respawning. As soon as my vision cleared, I realized that neither Lestran nor Tristan were with us. It seemed that they had failed to buckle in securely enough and had as a result been smashed and smeared against the transparent cabin windshield. On the floor, I saw several spare parts for armor and an empty engineer’s blaster, suggesting that our two departed friends had been on board until the end.

“It didn’t work,” Wally sounded disappointed as he stretched his neck. “Now we’ll definitely have to abandon the frigate—I have no idea how to destroy it. Maybe we can chip away at the remaining 1% with a pickax?”

“Yeah of course, but…” I began but cut myself off. I didn’t want to abandon
The Space Cucumber
. I didn’t want to abandon her very badly! I hadn’t stolen her and improved her to lose her like this over nothing.

“I think my armor’s out of power,” Miloš fretted. “You guys can figure out what our next move will be. I’m going to get some rest. Surgeon, you can still move, can’t you? Send me back to Qirlats. I got nothing else to do here…”

“Me neither,” added the second gunner. “Shall we meet up again tomorrow at nine and decide what to do next?”

I didn’t say anything and simply raised the blaster, pulling the trigger twice. Since the players had already taken off their helmets, it wasn’t too difficult to send them to respawn. Literally ten minutes later—the length of time it takes to respawn in
Galactogon
—they would appear back on Qirlats.

“Wally?”

“I guess I should get some rest too. How are you holding up?”

“I don’t even know…I just don’t want to lose the ship in such a stupid way. Such a childish mistake…”

Raising my blaster a third time, I left myself alone on
The Space Cucumber
.

My marine armor beeped mournfully, reminding me that its batteries were almost empty. I had to make a decision. I could either shoot myself with my blaster and go respawn with everyone else, or I could leave the suit in the ship and go look for some way of destroying
The Space Cucumber
. A countdown timer appeared, showing that I had all of thirty seconds to make up my mind. If I couldn’t come to a decision during this time, the suit would become my little tomb and I wouldn’t get another chance to respawn for about a week—when I would finally starve to death. This particular form of suicide was always an option in
Galactogon
too…

As a great man once said, “Alea iacta est.” My suit of armor beeped one last time and fell silent. Fresh air drifted in from the hole we had drilled through
The Space Cucumber
’s hull, so I was alright wearing my regular clothes. It’s funny but players tend to wander around
Galactogon
without their armor suits, wearing them only when they’re on board their ships—I, however, had grown so comfortable with that hunk of steel that, now, I felt naked. The repair materials that had been left behind by my crew were enough to repair my blaster, ensuring that it wouldn’t randomly explode in my hands when I tried to use it. However, its ammo did not increase as a result. The blaster had about twenty more shots in it before it turned into a shoddy metal club, so I would have to be very careful with when I’d choose to use it.

The only good news was that, according to my PDA, there was a great likelihood of finding Elo deposits on this planet. The distinguishing feature of this resource was that you didn’t have to actually refine it to stuff it into your energy cells: It was enough to simply place your powercells on the Elo and in several minutes, they’d be ready to go. Though, even here the developers had included several limitations. You could only use this method to recharge the powercells of one fully-assembled item. If you simply put an empty powercell against a lode of Elo, the cell would remain empty. Plus, you could only charge items using these Elo lodes—Elo already stored in a powercell, for example, didn’t have such properties. Finally, the most unpleasant limitation for any guild that came across such an invaluable lode was that the lode would deplete, growing smaller in proportion to the energy that had been transferred from it. You couldn’t use one lode of Elo forever—sooner or later it would run dry.