by Hugo Huesca
Up in space, in the middle of the two nearest bases, the starfighters were already approaching.
Beard, Anders, and Joseph went for the Lucky Star’s cabin and Walpurgis and I rushed to the ship’s cargo bay where the Teddy waited for us. As we reached it, reality parted near my ship and Mai materialized as she powered off the IFG.
“That thing boosted my Sneak so much it was ridiculous,” she told us while we jumped inside the Teddy.
We could feel the Lucky Star’s engines roar to life. Most of the power went to the shields at first, since the landing strip was already under heavy laser fire from the starfighters. The floor shook beneath us and threatened to throw us down (with magnetized boots, that would probably break our legs), but we had been in combat like this a hundred times over and knew the drill. We held on to the rails, and as I reached the cabin followed by the two women, the Teddy’s roared to life around us.
“Finally, some action!” called a holographic Galadriel from the captain’s seat. She jumped away as I jumped in. “Mind your manners, ring-bearer—”
“Cut it out, Francis! Focus on the enemy,” Walpurgis barked as she and Mai manned the turrets.
“Just because you can’t multitask with that fleshy brain of yours doesn’t mean I can’t either,” muttered the hologram, but it dissolved in a gust of pixels. “No fun at all.”
“Fun starts in ten seconds,” I told him. “We ready?”
“All systems nominal,” Francis announced. “I kept this baby hot and running for you guys.”
“Ew,” Mai said somewhere behind me.
“Didn’t meant it like that.” He actually sounded sincere this time around.
I knew, even if I couldn’t see it, how the Lucky Star would react in the next few seconds. It would push the engines for a hard acceleration—the only way it could avoid being caught by a lethal close-range volley by the starfighters.
The cabin shook with enough violence to rip me away from the pilot’s chair and all the way towards the comm controls. I smashed my head against a hard edge, but didn’t die, because I was wearing a helmet. Instead, my shields went down a smidgen and my pride suffered most of the damage.
We were upside down. The straps and steel chains that we had used to secure the Teddy to the cargo bay had probably snapped, and my ship was thrashing in zero g inside the bay, like a toy inside a box of cereal.
I was upside down… While the ship was upside down itself, so I was technically standing up… But we were in space anyway, so it didn’t matter.
Focus, man.
I activated my suit’s oxygen streams and returned to my seat with a smooth lunge. This time I strapped the seatbelt on. Always wear your seatbelt.
“Mai, Walps, you two okay?—Francis, screens! Sync with the Lucky Star’s AI, show me what they’re seeing.”
“We’re OK,” came back Mai and Walpurgis’ response.
Francis took an entire second to turn the screens on. As he did so, I maneuvered the Teddy using its own streams to align it back to the Lucky Star, and had it pointing its nose at the bay’s doors.
The screens showed the Lucky Star flying full-speed away from the asteroid belt and trying to avoid the starfighters. It was being pestered by a rain of laser and plasma, but so far the targeting systems of the smugglers were failing to get a hard-lock on the freighter.
“C’mon, Beard, get us a window,” I whispered. My hands were flying around the controls, a blur of metallic fingers pressing buttons, turning levers, and flicking switches.
The next part was going to be tricky, but if we pulled it off, the battle would be over. If we failed… the battle would be over anyway.
We’ll always have the story, I guess.
The gist of it is, Rune is unrealistic. It has to be, to be fun. Concessions have to be made at spots where reality is just not interesting enough for a videogame. All ships were equipped with one such concession, including the Teddy. It was called an Inertia Dampener and it was half the reason ship engines were built on antimatter.
An Inertia Dampener worked on bullshitonium (not the official name) and it had a single, simple use. For a brief period of time, it grabbed Newton by the ear and put him in a timeout.
Thanks to these devices, Rune got cool space battles for players to toy with. Without them, dogfights in space would look very different.
How different? You can find out, no trouble at all. Just look for a videogame made in 1979 called Asteroids. The ship in that game moves closer to how a real ship would move in real space than every single science fiction movie in almost a hundred years has shown.
I had played that game for an entire afternoon, but got bored of it because Kipp’s highscore had way more zeroes than mine—and he wasn’t a graceful winner. And, well, I just like space-sims better. You see, I’m good at those.
Thanks, Inertia Dampener. There are more uses for one such device; just go ask a scientist and he’ll tell you a couple after he’s finished laughing.
In the Teddy’s situation, holed up inside a ship’s cargo bay like a futuristic kangaroo, I knew of one that not a single NPC (nor most players) would figure out until it hit them in the face.
“They’re lined up nice,” Beard’s voice came from our crew’s private channel. Technically we were only a couple hundred feet away, cabin to cabin, so close-range comms worked just fine. “You sure you want to try your little trick?”
“Throw flares at the same time, or I’ll get vaporized,” I reminded him. “Tell your AI to talk to mine and synch with the flares.”
Otherwise, the flares would blink Teddy’s circuitry too.
“Roger,” said Beard.
“Done and done,” said Francis.
The screens showed a nice, tight formation of the three starfighters tailing the freighter. At this distance, the Lucky Star would never get away from them and it was starting to look like a trio of wolves getting ready to pounce on their tired prey. Shields were only seconds away from failing. And the smugglers had a lock-on.
“Flares away!” ordered Beard. At the same moment, just as we had coordinated, the cargo bays threw themselves open with a roar of oxygen being suctioned out.
The Lucky Star’s vision was replaced with our own, and the scene was explosion-white. The flares were doing their job of throwing off the missiles. Then Francis kicked in and the whiteness disappeared like it had only been a mirage.
We could see the starfighters, but they couldn’t see us.
The bay was open, but Teddy couldn’t take off without blowing apart half the freighter. This was the reason carrier ships were expensive—they needed special machinery and shields to work. Shooting from inside would destroy the Lucky Star, too. It was only a matter of missing a single shot.
Right now, there was no part of the Teddy in contact with the Lucky Star, but the Teddy was still inside the bigger ship, just floating in the cargo bay without a care in the world.
Had we felt the odds too stacked against us, we could’ve tried to Jump away.
We weren’t planning on Jumping out. The Quest prompt was clear. The Lion Fang needed to be wiped out if we wanted to finish it.
Let’s finish them, then.
“We’re in!” I exclaimed, mostly in case Walpurgis and Mai somehow missed what was going on.
One second after the cargo bays were open, the Teddy launched itself out of the freighter. Instead of zipping past the three enemy ships, which would’ve happened if we had started accelerating, we remained calmly behind the Lucky Star and in front of the blind smugglers, matching everyone’s speed.
Here’s how I did it. First, turn Inertial Dampener on, manually, the same way you’d do with a manual transmission on those cars in the museums. Laws of physics were set aside for a brief instant, while Teddy’s computers went all, “Oh, you want to do a maneuver? Let’s go, boss, we’re ready. Any time, boss. Ready for anything.” Instead, I simply turned the Inertial Dampener off again. One second where momentum was paused, and then resumed.
Boom. Precision braking in space.
Thanks to something so minor, we now had a position that any pilot would cream themselves over. Three blind targets immobile for all effects and purposes, and all our weapons pointed at them.
I faintly heard Walpurgis laugh like a maniac while we unloaded Teddy’s weapons in a massive barrage of plasma hell. Missiles, torpedoes, laser cannons, laser turrets, railgun turret, EMP blasts. No sounds in space, but Francis provided the appropriate sound effects, because he knew I enjoyed them. Pew pew.
There were no explosions in space, either, only a lot of molten armor and imploding antimatter engines.
Only one ship had good enough reflexes to break formation when our massive line of fire started. Thanks to a well-timed barrel roll (Inertial Dampeners!) it soon became the only survivor of the former Lion Fang space navy. It still took enough of our firepower that it wasn’t in any condition to keep fighting.
The dogfight, beginning with the Lucky Star’s takeoff, had lasted two minutes.
Since we had first set foot inside the hangar, from start to completion, it had taken us less than ten minutes to finish off the smuggling ring.
“But Cole,” someone may object, “this contradicts half of what you’ve been saying all along. First, the Quest is not over until Lion Fang is over, and there’s still the rest of the asteroids with buildings over them. Then, you told us those bases were chock full with anti-ship defenses, but those never shot at the Lucky Star at any point.”
Well… wait for it.
The Teddy’s screens flared and Francis announced the Lion Fang was trying to parley.
“Patch them through,” I called with satisfaction as I flew the Teddy into a nice protective position over the Lucky Star.
The face of the smuggler was covered in sweat. He was pale with shame and rage, and not a small amount of terror. “We surrender, you monsters. Please, spare our lives…”
“Let’s negotiate terms first,” I told him.
He was actively fighting not to smash his head against his keyboard, from what I could tell. “What did you do? Maizer’s dead, our fighters are out… I just can’t believe this…”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Mai give me a thumbs up.
We used a super-high amount of the Sneak skill, buddy. We infiltrated your network, patched our AI through it, then he and Mai simply shot down your systems. It was super easy to do, thanks to Jarred’s intel.
No defenses for the entire smuggling ring. No ships to stop us from turning those asteroids into glass from afar. Not even shields to slow us down. Nothing they could do.
Rule number three. There’s no kill like overkill.
“None of your business, bud,” I told him. “You’re out of the fight, that’s what counts. You know it. We know it.”
“What do you want?”
“Follow me on this. How screwed are you after our little bout? How’s the future looking for the Lion Fang? I want to hear the exact truth, and I’ll kill you all if you’re lying.”
“We’re screwed alright,” he said after stuttering a bit. “You made damn sure of that. Why—?” He caught my warning gesture. “Okay, fine! Maizer’s dead, right? The fighters are out, most of our pilots are dead… Well, we still have the storage facility, I guess we could rebuild in a decade…”
Earlier, Mai had uploaded the plans of the smuggling bases. The Lucky Star and the Teddy rotated as one to the storage facility and turned it and the surrounding asteroid into a shiny, hot, messy strip of glass. Neither the Teddy nor Beard’s freighter were equipped as bombardment ships, so doing this took most of our ammo. The smuggler wasn’t in a position to be rational and realize it, of course.
“Sweet smuggling gods!” came the pained voice of the smuggler. “Why would you even do that? You could’ve taken them for yourself! Oh, please, don’t glass me too!”
“I bet you’ve got some reinforcements coming,” I told him nonchalantly. I felt I owed the poor guy an explanation. “Can’t be that your entire force is just sitting idly at base. We probably can’t take them all… so we went for the next best thing, buddy. We can’t have it; you can’t have it. Now that I think of it, can you even pay your people’s salaries?”
Smugglers don’t use databytes, because databytes are Federation’s currency and are easy to track. No smuggled shit means no money.
“What—?” His voice failed him. He swallowed and tried again. “No… No, we can’t. Darn you, we can’t.” I’d treasure forever the image of a tough smuggler telling me, “Darn you,” because of the weird profanity filter. I’d forever treasure the fuck out of it.
“So, what are the chances of rebuilding Lion Fang?”
“We’re… done…” As he spoke, he slowly came to the realization himself. I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t faking it. You can’t fake utter and total defeat, not in this way. “We’ll have to disband, we can’t even pay salaries… Oh, gods, not even fuel… The Lion Fang is over…”
You have completed a Quest! By cowardly abusing the game’s systems, you annihilated the Lion Fang. Congratulations! The universe is just a smidgen safer thanks to your killing spree, which makes it all okay.
Reward: General Jenkins has made progress towards your special project. You should contact him ASAP. Your item: Personal Invisibility Field Generator (rare) has been repaired. But you already knew this.
Your skills have gone up! Piloting (99th level), Shooting (59th level), Persuasion (89th level).
CHAPTER TWENTY
Neon and Plasteel
The overdone theme of the Lucky Star’s cabin didn’t feel as grating after our victory. It was kinda fitting, like some elf was about to start delivering medals while an army gave us an ovation.
“Can’t believe no one died,” said Beard.
“Besides who-knows-how-many NPCs, of course,” said Mai.
“Sure, but those don’t count.”
Everyone had gained at least one or two levels in their favored skills. Technically, because we hadn’t looted a single thing, we had lost money, because we would need to restock the ships with ammo and pay for our suits maintenance. Still. Worth.
The Lucky Star was high-tailing it for the Argus Station. The sooner we talked with General Jenkins, the better. I felt like we could take whatever the CIL could throw at us with even less trouble.
In the real world, Derry had recently returned from his surveillance, but he had refrained from logging back in. I vaguely told him that the mission was successful and that we could be on the tail of Keles very soon.
Perhaps after getting some sleep. My eyes were closing by themselves.
“Do you have any coffee around here?”
“Of course,” Derry said, like coffee and secret agents went hand in hand. “Who do you think I am?”
He left for the kitchen and rummaged through some plastic containers until he took out a tube with vacuum-sealed coffee mix.
Oh no. I thought. That was synthetic coffee. A powder with caffeine and artificial flavors that some human rights organizations had been trying to ban for decades.
Someone said my name in-game and I gladly tried to forget the crime against coffee that Derry was about to commit.
“I admit I didn’t think you could direct a raid, Dorsett,” Joseph was telling me.
“I had a lot of help.” I shrugged. “And it wasn’t that smooth. I almost got fragged by the mercenaries back in Maizer’s office.”
It was a mixture of Rylena’s rulebook and a lot of missions as a Captain. My class was supposed to grab a lot of different players and make them work together, so doing that had become second nature to me.
“The flying trick you pulled off wasn’t luck,” Mai pointed out. “I’ve never seen such a blatant abuse of Rune’s mechanics. I’m impressed.”
“Keep talking like that and it’ll get to his head,” Walpurgis said, but I could see a flash of a smile there.
I wasn’t accustomed to praise, so I soon felt awkwar
d just standing there shrugging and looking like an idiot. Time to change the subject.
“How’s our prisoner?”
“Jarred? He’s still recovering in the medbay. Anders is looking after him, since he’s the one with the most levels in Field Medicine. What are we going to do with him anyways? With Jarred, I mean,” said Beard.
“We can’t just release him,” said Walpurgis. “He’ll tell the Federation that we kidnapped him. I say we space him, we don’t have time to play at caretakers.”
“Not sure, Walpie,” said Beard. “You’re talking of killing someone in cold blood.”
“Uh. I’m talking about getting rid of an annoying NPC. It’s not like they’re real people.”
Francis would’ve something to say at that. I thought.
Walpurgis looked around the cabin. “Well?”
Mai was CIA, right? Even she looked uneasy with the idea, but Joseph just shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t care either way. But… Even if he were a real person—and he isn’t—he’s still a liability.”
Even the disgusting mix that Derry was preparing in the real world started to become more appealing than this conversation. Too little sleep.
“I’ll see if I can persuade him, or something,” I told them. After all, we had promised him we wouldn’t kill him. Going back on a promise was just plain wrong, even if it was to a fake person.
Since no one else cared strongly about the subject, I just left for the medbay. Anders wasn’t there; he had logged to snag some minutes of sleep.
I wish I could do the same. But I never had the skill to take a nap. It was either all the sleep or none of it. No half measures here.
Jarred turned painfully from side to side in the medical bed. His skin was covered in a silver-like liquid that seemed to shift slowly on his wounds. It was a nanobot-infused plasma, designed to provide the tiny robots with the materials to rebuild damaged organs and tissue.
I’d used a lot of the stuff myself. It tickled.
“We need to talk,” I told him. He didn’t respond, but I saw a flash of recognition in his drugged out eyes.