Fire at Will: A Space Opera Adventure With LitRPG Elements

by Christian Kallias

  “I should be able to write a crude two-way communication and remote-control protocol with this ship within ten minutes, maybe less.”

  “What about the other ships?”

  “Fortunately, the main destroyer in this fleet is fully networked with the others in the fleet.”

  “That’s good news. So we can take the entire fleet with us to go rescue the princess?”

  “Not exactly. Four of the ships will have to stay here for now. We can always come back for them later. Two have depleted all their energy reserves and the other two are simply too low in energy to power their engines.”

  “Bottom line?”

  “We’ll have a tad over half a fleet. But, I must point out that their weaponry, while top of the line a thousand years ago, aren’t exactly up to snuff today.”

  “One problem at a time. Let’s get crackin’.”

  “What about her?”

  “I’ll deal with her myself.”

  Ziron quickly walked next to Boomer and searched Lacuna.

  “What are you doing?” asked Kevin.

  He removed a small oval pink capsule that looked like jewelry from Lacuna’s attire and threw it to Kevin.

  “That’s how she incapacitated me.”

  When Lacuna woke up, she was securely tied a chair at the back of the shuttle, which they had used to get onto the Orus.

  “My—my head is killing me,” she moaned.

  “Well, at least you’re still breathing,” said Kevin. “I think a headache is not too bad a tradeoff.”

  “Where am I?”

  “In the shuttle we’re giving you.”

  “Why am I tied up?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “I do. I learned my lesson, I promise. I’m just looking forward to going back to Omicron and hope we never cross paths again.”

  “You got that right. You’re in luck, that’s exactly where this shuttle is programmed to go. And since it doesn’t have hyperspace capabilities, it will take you a few weeks to get there. Let you practice patience and give you ample time to reflect on your actions.”

  She looked at her arm and saw an IV attached to it. “Is that what this is for?”

  “Yeah, we wouldn’t want you to die of thirst or hunger on your way back, but it’s not secured all that well, so there’s no guarantee it won’t fall off if you struggle trying to get yourself free.”

  “I can’t get stuck here for weeks,” she protested, “someone’s gonna take all that’s mine in Omicronia’s tower!”

  “You should have thought about that before trying to double-cross us. And, technically, they’ll be taking over Jared’s operation, won’t they? You know what? I’d love to stay and chat, but I have lots to do.”

  Kevin took a step forward and lowered his head to Lacuna’s level.

  “Goodbye kiss?” she asked.

  “Not a chance, knowing you, you have your tongue layered with nerve agent.”

  Lacuna smiled. “You’re a quick learner, but Kevin, let me ask you one question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to give me more than that.”

  “Why keep me alive? You know that if the positions were reversed, you’d be floating in space right now, so why not just kill me? Why give me a chance to get back at you in the future?”

  “Because I don’t consider myself a cold-hearted killer. And because not everybody is an asshole, at least not from where I come from anyway.”

  “You should go back there, this universe will swallow you whole and spit out your bones.”

  Kevin shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Looking forward to seeing you again, nugget.”

  “I’m not. Nighty night,” said Kevin before squeezing the pink sleep-gas container next to Lacuna’s nose.

  Kevin then pressed two controls on the shuttle and exited in a hurry. He looked as the backdoor closed and the shuttle lifted off the Orus’ landing bay and flew through the atmospheric shield before heading into space.

  Even though I hope we never see each other again, something tells me we will. And, weirdly enough, I’m kind of okay with that.

  “What am I supposed to eat now?” complained Boomer in his Beagle form. “You didn’t let me eat Lacuna, and you won’t let me have Zee fricassee. Be reasonable.”

  Kevin smiled. “What’s wrong with the rations we brought back from the Orus?”

  “Oh, yeah, thousand-year-old rations, yuuuummm! Have you tried this stuff? Even I have better standards than that?”

  “You’ve eaten worse things and you know it.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do we really want to go there?”

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Hey, Kevin, can I ask you a question?”

  “Plenty of time until we go into battle again, so sure, shoot.”

  “Why did you keep her alive? I mean, that Lacuna chick is bad news, surely you can see that.”

  “I can. But I chose to give her a second chance. Though I might live to regret it.”

  “Well, with what soon awaits us, one can only hope.”

  They both laughed.

  “We’ll be fine. We didn’t go through all of this to let a single Kregan dreadnought and a few measly pirate ships stand in our way, am I right or am I right?”

  Boomer barked.

  Kevin was rubbing his chin as he looked at the holographic representation of the enemy fleet. He’d been looking at it for longer than he cared to, but he still wasn’t completely sure how to pull off the rescue mission.

  Brute force? Stealth approach? Diversion? A mixture of all three? After all, each had their pros and cons.

  “So have you decided on a game plan yet?” asked Ziron as Boomer snored in the background.

  Game plan. If only this was a game. I could just restart from the checkpoint if I died or messed up my objective. But it’s not. This is life and death, ours, as well as Kalliopy’s. I can’t afford to screw this up.

  Kevin rubbed his eyes, unable to hide his fatigue anymore, both mental and physical. “I’m not sure. Why can’t we just beam her out again?”

  “We’ve been over this, they’ve deactivated her sub-space implant, so you’ll need to wear one and inject her with one as well when you reach her. But let’s count our blessings here. If it wasn’t for the extra blueprints Lacuna had on the data crystal, I wouldn’t have been able to beam you in the ship with their shields up. But with that info, I can beam you in and both of you out again once you’ve injected her with the implant.”

  “At least there’s that,” said Kevin with a long drawn-out yawn.

  “We still have three hours, perhaps you should try and sleep at least one or two of those.”

  There’s nothing I want more, but I can’t.

  “I wish I could, believe me. Can’t you just inject me with a boosting cocktail? You know, some stims of some kind.”

  “I’m not sure that would be good idea.”

  “Not what I asked, Zee. Yes or no?”

  “I suppose…”

  Kevin slowly dropped his head to the side.

  “Okay, yes,” continued Ziron, “I can, but maybe we should do that later, so that you don’t crash in the middle of your rescue mission.”

  That’s actually not a half-bad idea.

  “And you’re sure there’s no way to fix my smart armor?”

  “Not going to happen. It would require weeks to make a new fully functional prototype I’m afraid.”

  “What about a less functional one?”

  “I don’t think you want to risk your life using my beta software, and even if you did, I simply don’t have the resources or the time.”

  Kevin worried that infiltrating the Kregan ship without that advantage was suicidal. He could stay aboard, command the fleet remotely, and send Boomer in his stead, but as much as he trusted his dog to be able to pull it off, he couldn’t
possibly imagine putting him in the line of fire.

  No, I can’t do that. Think, Kevin!

  “What about Boomer’s armor? Did you juice it up? And can’t you just transfer it to me?”

  “It will be back to nearly full power by the time we deploy, yes. As for transferring it to you, I wish I could, but the smart nanites network already adjusted to his physiology, so—”

  “What would be the downside of that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kevin let his palm slide from his forehead to his chin. “I mean, technically speaking, if you were to transfer the armor to me, what would happen?”

  “If you survive the link, which I cannot guarantee, though I suppose we can run simulations to make sure we limit transfer risks to a bare minimum; then the nanites in the armor would transform you into a Beagle as your resting form. And there might be side effects if your interaction with the armor is prolonged for too long.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, if you start randomly scratching yourself out of the blue after the mission, don’t come and complain to me ‘cause I don’t think this option is worth exploring.”

  “Swell, and warnings aside, once I wear his armor, could I then just simply morph into myself to compensate?”

  “No, like I told you, this is an older model, it will only work with a quadruped transformation due to the adaptability of the neuronal nanite matrix. Its imprint is now fixed to quadrupeds. I know, that’s quite the design flaw, but that’s how it is. So, you could still transform into all sorts of things that walk on four legs, even a walking dog or dragon, but not a human that naturally walks on two legs.”

  “That’s why Boomer looked more like the alien in the third movie of the franchise. I think I understand the limitation.”

  Ziron’s eye blinked slowly. “I’m not sure you fully do, Kevin. Movie references aside, the chances of you being able to perform as a quadruped as well as Boomer can, are slim at best. Your conscious mind is simply too accustomed to walking on two feet.”

  “But you said that I can walk on two legs in these forms, like Boomer could.”

  “Yeah, being able to do it is not the issue. Look at me, I can walk too if I choose to, but it’s more comfortable, and more importantly, natural and instinctive to just use all four legs. I can run faster too. There’s no way I can compete with you in a race on just two legs, just like I’ll smoke you on all fours.”

  “Then I should just go with Arcadian space marine armor and guns blazing.”

  “Without heavy shields, that’s just plain crazy. You said it yourself. It would be suicidal.”

  “I can’t believe I screwed this up by trying to become a giant robot. What was I thinking?”

  “Hey, give yourself a break, you didn’t know that would damage the armor permanently by overloading its power source. I should have warned you to never deplete or push the power cell beyond its limits. I share the blame for this too.”

  But it didn’t matter whose fault it was. And Kevin was painfully aware of that. Not to mention part of him wasn’t sure he would have acted differently even if he had known the limitations.

  “You don’t understand, Ziron. I always do these things. It’s like when I got a newer, less crappy computer last year and heard of the art of overclocking. I went at it heads down, without doing my research but confident I knew enough about tech to make it work easy-peasy. With the dumb illusion that I could get more muscle out of that CPU, instead of enjoying the nice bump in power it already provided. Well, would have, if I had not burned it to a crisp, may it rest in peace. I get these shiny toys, and when I do, I have the bad habit of wanting them to be better, and more often than not I end up breaking them. Look at the Thalamos. I ruined the best prototype ship you ever built.”

  “You can’t possibly blame yourself for saving the Arcadian Confederate. Screw the fact that the Thalamos was destroyed in the process. That was a victory, one that saved all our lives. I won’t have you denigrate this achievement of yours. And speaking of victories so was your ascension to the seven-hundredth floor on Omicronia’s tower. And I don’t think wishing a different outcome now can help us in any way. What’s done is done.”

  Ziron was right. Lamenting over things Kevin could have done differently was not helping, but ultimately, it was human nature through and through. Who in his or her life never wished they could rewrite parts of it? Especially the parts they considered their most abject failures.

  “Alright. If we were to attempt the armor transference, could you equip Boomer with a basic neuronal interface? Something similar to what was used by the pill I swallowed back on Earth when I met that dying Arcadian? The one that allowed me to control the dead body a few galaxies away.”

  “Yes, very easily in fact, but for what purpose?”

  “If I’m going to be a Beagle going to rescue a princess, I need Boomer to remote pilot the fleet for me while I’m rescuing her. I can’t be in two places at once.”

  Boomer’s ears raised up and he yawned.

  “Did I hear my name?” he said.

  “Kind of, come here.”

  Boomer stretched, vigorously shook his head, catapulting drool filaments all over before coming to sit next to Kevin and Ziron.

  “What did I miss?” he asked.

  “We’re talking the possibility of transferring your smart nano-armor to me so I can infiltrate the Kregan ship as a quadruped, while you remote-pilot the fleet as a diversion” said Kevin.

  Boomer blinked his eyes multiple times and then smiled. “I’m still sleeping, right? Because that didn’t make any sense.”

  “No, I assure you, you’re awake.”

  “Oh—You were being serious. While I have a pretty good inkling of what your life is and have watched you play many games and binged many movies with you, I don’t think you have done the same about me. What I mean is that I don’t think you know what the life of a dog, or any quadruped is like, at least not as much as you think you do.”

  “I’ve seen you lick your balls at least a hundred times.”

  “I rest my case, your honor. Seriously, in what universe will that info help you in the midst of battle?”

  “Boomer is right,” commented Ziron.

  “I know,” conceded Kevin. “But I still think this could work.”

  “It’s your life, buddy, but maybe you should let me go get the princess and you remote kick the Kregan fleet’s ass from here.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered that option. But we can’t do that, you may need human instinct and reflexes. Remember the stick incident?”

  “Yeah, that was embarrassing. I get your point. However…”

  Both Ziron and Kevin answered in concert: “However what?”

  “Nah, it’s probably a stupid idea.”

  “We won’t know until you tell us,” insisted Ziron.

  “Well,” Boomer proposed, “if you’re gonna equip me with a neuronal link to fly the fleet in the first place, and that’s cool, you know, no pressure, I can deal with that, I think…”

  “Boomer,” said Kevin impatiently.

  “Right, sorry. Can’t you just link my consciousness to the armor so I could take care of the instincts part that’s needed as far as quadruped mobility? You know—Okay, I just heard what I said and it sounded dumber than I thought it would be, so never mind, that’s a stupid idea.”

  “Actually, it’s not,” said Ziron. “If I could isolate just your natural-born instincts brain patterns, those you rely on for running, jumping, and the such, I think I could feed them to the smart armor’s AI and perhaps even sync some of it with your consciousness waves. At the very least, I could build a neuronal-net model of that knowledge that would allow Kevin to think what he wants to do, but the actual movements of each limb would derive from that simulated model. That could actually work. Good job, Boomer!”

  Boomer slapped his ears with his paws. “Is the translator malfunctioning? I didn’t understand a single word you just
said.”

  Kevin smiled. “I think it works fine, and we finally have the building blocks of a solid plan.”

  22

  Everyone was on the bridge, minutes away from crunch time. Ziron had made last minute modifications to Boomer’s implant to access the speech part of his brain and have his implant replicate what the armor AI was doing so that they could still talk to him with words and for him to be able to answer back.

  “What’s your status, Boomer?” asked Kevin.

  “My status is that I think I’m gonna shit myself, how’s that? Seriously, are you insane to think I can pilot a fleet of ships just because I saw SciFi movies and watched you play Wing Commander?”

  “Remember the techno-gibberish you didn’t understand about me getting quadruped instincts and all that?”

  “Kind of, though truth be told, the more I think about it, the more I get the urge to chase my own tail.”

  Kevin chuckled. Dogs will be dogs.

  “Well, the bottom line is that the idea can work both ways,” reassured Kevin. “So you don’t actually need to know how it all works to the point of stressing yourself out. Zee created a neuronal model of my experience in these matters and gave me access to your neuronal link. So, just think of attacking a certain ship, or retreating, or boosting your ship’s defenses and your neuro-interface will feed Mira the necessary data she needs to use my own tactics to fight the ships, make power distribution changes, and the like. Or a close enough simulation anyway. Just think of what you need done in the simplest of terms and let the implant do the rest.”

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler to just let her do that without me attached altogether?”

  “AI’s lack instincts and that real-time flare that makes us alive. We have the fight or flight reactions, and we feel things on deeper levels than just brain power, and more importantly, we have instincts. It’s best if you do this.”

  “Why can’t Ziron do it?”

  “His instincts are a little too hardwired to running and hiding. No offense, Zee.”

  “None taken,” shrugged Ziron.

  “And, really, Boomer,” Kevin continued, “when someone tells the story of the boy who saved the universe, do you want the sidekick to be a cat or a dog?”