Fire at Will: A Space Opera Adventure With LitRPG Elements

by Christian Kallias

  Xonax ground his teeth. “That’s unfortunate, for both you and your sister. But fear not, I’ll make sure you see every one of her bones being snapped before you join her.”

  “Please, don’t do this, there has to be something I can give you in exchange for our lives.”

  Xonax rubbed his chin for a moment. “Perhaps there is.”

  “Whatever I can give you, I will. Just don’t hurt Urania.”

  “I want the boy.”

  Kalliopy’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What boy?”

  “Don’t play dumb. He’s no longer on Earth.”

  Perhaps he was on his way to free her. She could only hope. In fact, she wished he were here already. And perhaps, in time, Ziron would be successful, with Kevin’s help. But that hope was thin and Kalliopy knew why. Xonax had an entire battlegroup with him. One that was not only made of the Kregan flagship they were in but also an army of rag-tag pirate ships and other allies he must have assembled behind his father’s back.

  While in her quarters, she had seen many such ships fly in formation around the flagship. She had recognized some of them, but others were of a design she had no recollection of seeing before. Though it begged the question, had that vision been real or part of the deception? Her instincts told her to trust the former.

  “I think you’re going to have to spell it out for me, because I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Alright. The one called Kevin, the boy whose mind you used to defeat us in the last battle. I want him. He’s special. I don’t know how or why yet, but he clearly turned the tide of an assured defeat of your forces, and I want to know how he did it.”

  “Oh…him,” said Kalliopy, trying to deflect a connection between them. “We haven’t exactly kept in touch. I actually never met him in person.”

  “But you will, and soon.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “You don’t need to. You just need to obey my every order or your sister will pay the price, and when I’m done with her, I’ll space you myself.”

  “That was amazing!” cheered Mira. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Thanks. But we need to find a way to get to the next level, we’ve wasted enough time fighting aliens and tin cans alike. Not to mention that my power levels are below twenty percent now. So the last thing we want is to give the enemy more time to send reinforcements.”

  “Let me scan the room. Hang on.”

  Energy levels aside, Kevin was seriously spent, both physically and mentally. He needed a soft bed and at least a couple of hours of rest before dealing with the next crazy plot to save Kalliopy. And perhaps a shower too.

  “I wasn’t gonna say anything,” whispered Mira.

  “Stay out of my head!”

  “Apologies, Kevin. I didn’t mean to be nosey.”

  Right. And yet you and Ziron are at every chance.

  Mira had the good sense to not say anything more. Kevin had no idea if she was still listening to his thoughts or not. But the first thing Ziron would do upon his return would be to install a privacy mode in his neuronal interface, even if Kevin had to skin his long blue fur to make him comply.

  Speaking of Ziron, he is getting his ass kicked to Neverland if anything has happened to Boomer.

  “Still no communication with the Osiris?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What the hell is Ziron doing?”

  “I’m sure everything he can. He’s a real genius, but sometimes, you know.”

  “Yeah, I got the message, his tech has bugs.”

  Kevin thanked the stars he hadn’t encountered one with his smart armor, he probably wouldn’t be breathing otherwise. So better hope Mira was right and Ziron would fix whatever problem he had when trying to beam both Kevin and Boomer on Omicronia.

  Kevin was not a stranger to lingering bugs. Some felt like they never got fixed, no matter how many updates and operating system upgrades he had put on his computer. Every so often his CTRL key would act up and feel like it was stuck, wrecking havoc as he tried to use his computer.

  According to one of his schoolmates, this bug existed before they were born and was still triggered every now and then. For Kevin, it was so often that he wondered if perhaps his body’s electro-magnetic field had something to do with all this bug triggering.

  “So?” said Kevin when he ran out of meaningless inner-chitchat. “Did you find a way for us to go higher?”

  “Yes and no,” answered Mira.

  “Why don’t I like the sound of that?”

  “I have found an electro-magnetically sealed trap door on the ceiling. But there’s no way for me to open it.”

  “And I take it you tried hacking it already?”

  “Tried and failed.”

  “That’s just great, I go through all this and you’re telling me I can’t get any higher?”

  “My deep scans and hack attempts do seem to tell me that there is a code, probably more like a frequency, that will open this door.”

  “And you’re trying frequencies, right?”

  “Yes, but it could take hours or days for me to find the right one, as its dependent on patterns as much as the frequency itself and the encryption on this thing is—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it. It’s unhackable.”

  “Well, it would probably take more time than we have or want to spend here.”

  On their own, the lights in the room turned back on, and Kevin had to blink multiple times to allow his eyes adjust.

  “What the heck?” he said.

  The deep resonating voice spoke again. “Impressive how you’ve dispatched so many enemies. But I’m afraid that won’t give you an audience on the seven-hundredth floor. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Kevin’s tone was sharp.

  “Unless you’re willing to destroy the thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “Believe me when I say you don’t want to know.”

  Kevin let out a long frustrating breath.

  “Yeah, well, what’s one more thing at this point. And if I don’t want to know, how am I to destroy it? Anyway, bring it on and make sure you open the goddamn door once I recycle it.”

  “Such feistiness, is it courage? Or stupidity.”

  “I guess we’re about to find out,” said Kevin.

  “We are indeed. If you defeat the thing, the access will be revealed. If you don’t, well…”

  That female voice was really getting on Kevin’s nerves.

  “Yeah, yeah, death, blah blah blah.”

  “It’s your funeral.”

  “Can we get a move on? I’ve officially gone through my own personal threshold of the numbers of clichés I can deal with.”

  And I want that bed and shower, sooner rather than later.

  Hundreds of pieces of metal scattered all over the large battle arena started moving and floating on their own, merging into a metallic blob that morphed into a giant robot the height of the room. Kevin noticeably swallowed hard.

  “Ahhh, shit.”

  15

  The massive robot didn’t look like it would be as easy to bring down as the large mech, which in comparison now looked tiny. Teeny-tiny, in fact.

  “How the hell am I supposed to kill that thing?”

  “Size doesn’t always matter,” Mira smirked.

  Yeah, well, in this case it kind of does!

  “Make sure those words are engraved on my tombstone if I fail, will ya?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I was trying to be…sarcastic.”

  “Oh.”

  When both of the giant robot’s red eyes lit up and two powerful lasers shot toward Kevin, he knew that was his cue to move away from his location. His helmet rematerialized on the fly, not that Kevin had any doubt that this thing could crush it like a soda can.

  I guess I need to step up my game.

  That thought alone gave Kevin an idea. A while back, when his life was just a meaningles
s ‘get up and go to sleep’ routine, he had discovered an old Japanese robot anime program. UFO Grendizer. The question was, could his armor morph in size to match the image he had in his head.

  He was about to find out as he dodged away from his current position to avoid three-dozen plasma bolts intent on blowing him into the next life. Something he wasn’t too keen on experiencing.

  Before he realized it, his thoughts started materializing, and he sat in the pilot’s chair of the giant-horned robot he had watched defeat Golgoths (giant monster robots also known as Saucer Beasts & Vega Monsters), during his seventy-four episode binge watch.

  The chair swiveled on its axis as he ascended to the cockpit of the robot warrior that was located in the head. Everything materialized as he remembered it, even the old school buttons on the armrest of his pilot’s chair.

  “Now we’re talking.”

  His enemy was still bigger than his large UFO-fighting robot. At least now they were on somewhat fair footing.

  Before he knew it, his robot was shooting lightning bolts from its yellow horns, sending high electric current toward his enemy. He then shot his detachable rocket-fueled right fist dead center in the Thing’s chest. The velocity at which it impacted made the robot stumble backward and fall on its metallic ass, making the entire top-tier levels of the massive building tremble. The metal fist returned to Kevin’s giant robot.

  Time for the killing blow!

  Kevin’s robot reached on his back to grab two crescent moon-shaped blades at the end of a long metallic fighting stick. He merged both together to create double-sided axes that he swiveled around his head before smashing it toward the Thing that was struggling to get back up.

  But at the moment the blade should have decapitated it, everything in Kevin’s cockpit blinked red and his weapon vanished out of thin air. Kevin’s robot ended up looking like he was doing a badly executed dance move instead of finishing up the Thing.

  “Power overload” flashed on the console in front of Kevin before it cracked and sparked.

  “Uh-oh, and things were going so well until now,” said Kevin out loud.

  By the time Kevin ended his sentence, the robot blinked a couple of times as if it were a flashing hologram and disappeared entirely. Then gravity did its thing.

  “Noooo! Kevin!” shouted Mira’s hologram before also vanishing.

  The nano-armor was all but disabled now, covering Kevin’s skin in a black bodysuit with no armor properties or augments at his disposal. He was in a free fall toward the hard floor at speeds he knew he should never be unless he was diving into a pool.

  That’s it! This is how I’m going to die.

  The floor approached rapidly, and it looked like Kevin would hit it and break every bone in his body. He mentally asked for a parachute, but nothing happened.

  Of all the times for the nano-suit of armor to run out of power; why couldn’t it last just half a second longer?

  But that was a moot point, and Kevin was about to feel like Douglas Adams’ whale plunging toward the ground. Kevin already knew he and the ground would not make friends in any sense of the word.

  About ten meters before impact, the ground exploded with a loud roar that filled the battle arena. The resulting shockwave made Kevin feel, for a moment, like he was floating in zero gravity, and before he realized what happened, he was sitting on a scaly surface.

  Is that a dragon?

  He saw the head of the dragon reposition itself before roaring again and spraying fire at the Thing, making sure it did not get back on its feet.

  “Boomer? Is that you?” Kevin asked as his heartbeat played a speed metal version of Flight of the Bumblebee’s drum line.

  “No,” said a deep voice. Kevin could feel each of the booming syllables trembling through the scales he sat on. “I’m the fucking mailman, of course it’s me!”

  Kevin let a long sigh of relief escape his lungs.

  “Boy, your timing couldn’t have been better.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that. Now what’s the plan?”

  “We have to destroy it.”

  “Mind providing me with some cover fire?”

  “Wish I could, buddy, but my armor is dead.” Kevin shrugged, “Battery Aziz!” He added in a funny Middle Eastern accent.

  “If you spent a tenth of the time you waste watching movies and played chess instead, you wouldn’t be in this predicament, you know that, right?”

  Kevin knew. Most of his life he had preferred instant gratification over careful strategizing, something requiring long periods of uninterrupted focus. Not exactly Kevin’s or his generation’s forte with all the distractions of social media and online video-watching binges.

  Not having a fallback position or trying to think more than one move ahead could cost him his life today. He was fully aware that he had to work on that in the future.

  “Yeah. But right now, I’m just deliriously happy to see you.”

  “As long as it’s not the Megan Fox kind of happy, so am I.”

  And right there Kevin made another mental note about things you should and shouldn’t do in front of your pet. You know, should he one day be given speech.

  “Ten-four!”

  Boomer chuckled, which resulted in a weird tingly sensation for Kevin. “You’re such a geek.”

  “Gonna be hard to argue with you on that one, but what do you say we go Dragonheart on the Thing?”

  “Sounds about right. Hang on tight!”

  Boomer stabilized his position with well-balanced wing flaps and fired at the Thing again. The metallic beast became engulfed in a scorching inferno. Three large plasma bolts emerged from the flames heading toward Boomer’s face but he saw it in time and dodged by throwing his head to the right.

  The unfortunate side effect of the move sent Kevin hurtling to the side and rekindling with his friend, aka gravity, in a manner he neither expected nor cared for. For some reason, now he had the same thought as the proverbial ball of petunias.

  Not again!

  But his fear was short-lived as Boomer’s tail cradled him and threw him back in place with great dexterity.

  “What part of hold on tight didn’t you understand? I can’t fight that thing and worry about you falling off every few seconds.”

  “Cranky, are we?”

  “You know me, especially when I haven’t eaten in hours, and believe me, I really had to restrain myself from having a cat entree for dinner today.”

  Was it night already?

  When half a dozen plasma projectiles screamed past both Boomer and Kevin’s ears, Kevin said: “I think we need a change of strategy.”

  “Tell me about it, I really thought this thing would have melted by now.”

  “Could be using some sort of shielding or fire-resistant coating.”

  “I doubt it’s just fire resistant.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Uh-huh. Watch this.”

  Boomer did a round fly-by as the Thing emerged from the inferno and sent more plasma attacks their way. Boomer flew with the precision of an eagle. It was impressive to be a witness to it and a little soil-your-pants scary.

  While Kevin had experienced flying a dragon in VR, he now realized how far the tech still had to go to be totally immersive. The smell of sulfur emanating from Boomer’s nostrils, the wind in his hair, and the near-miss plasma bolts that made him feel like his heart would stop; these were all too real. On the other hand, Kevin would gladly swap the ‘immersiveness’ that comes with near death experiences with playing a relaxed VR game with his pals.

  Boomer flew with agility and precision to dodge the incoming plasma fire when his eyes lit red and two rays shot at the Thing. Upon impact, it quickly shrunk to the size of a soda can. Boomer landed next to it.

  “Won’t you finish it off?” asked Kevin.

  “I thought I’d let you do the honors, after all, it seems only appropriate since you fought the entire day.”

  “Thanks, buddy!”

&nbs
p; Kevin slipped off Boomer’s back and landed with both feet onto the Thing, smashing it to bits with small sparks and what sounded like a tiny woodland creature screech as he did.

  Boomer’s dragon morphed back to its original Beagle form, and he barked.

  “Did your armor run out of energy too?”

  “No, but it’s running on fumes, so now that there’s no more danger, better not drain its power source too much seeing that we now know it can disable it completely.”

  “Good thinking. I should have kept an eye on my own reserves. I think I bricked mine forever.”

  “Well, if all it takes is Ziron to spit at us to make a new one, I think we’ll be fine.”

  Kevin smiled. “Hopefully. How did you think of miniaturizing this thing?”

  “From one of those weirdo science comedy flicks you once made me watch. The one with the shrinking kids.”

  “Right—all I remember from that movie is falling asleep pretty fast,” said Kevin.

  “Lucky you. I was wide awake the whole time. Not your best movie night pick, by the way.”

  Kevin smiled. “Well, let’s be thankful for that, it did just save our hides.”

  Boomer joyfully barked in agreement.

  A circular trap on the high ceiling opened and a column of blue energy fell in front of them.

  “Congratulations,” said the deep female voice. “As promised, you can now get up to the seven-hundredth level. Step into the circle.”

  Kevin and Boomer did and soon gravity lost its grasp on the both of them as they began to ascend.

  16

  The seven-hundredth level was nothing like Kevin expected. There was someone on a big worn-out faux-leather chair looking at multiple holo-feeds, with their back to Kevin and Boomer. The person swiveled and Kevin was surprised by what he saw.

  “That doesn’t look like Jared Trax,” said Boomer.

  “Who?” asked Kevin.

  “You really need to start paying attention to our mission briefings. Jared is the person we were supposed to meet up here. The hacker, ring a bell?”

  “Riiiiiight.”

  Kevin always had trouble remembering people’s names. He was, however, very good with faces. And the young girl sitting in the oversized luxurious chair he had seen before, even though she looked different now. Her hair was cut shorter and was blue, but Kevin was certain it was her. The warrior girl he had met in the VR simulation before coming here for his mission.