GalaxSec: A Sci-Fi LitRPG (Skeleton in Space Book 2)

by Andries Louws

  [ UNKNOWN Golem 0/NAN ]

  [ UNKNOWN UNKNOWN NAN/NAN ]

  [ UNKNOWN DEITY of Life 0/999999999 ]

  He briefly wonders why the shape of the race list has changed, but is distracted by the information in the list before he can investigate further. The first thing Douglas does after perusing the stacked notifications is to mentally tap the ‘Show tier 1 classes available’ rectangle. A long list of simple undead races pops up, the same one that he has seen before. He then asks what those tier three options might be.

  [ Armored Skeleton; a skeleton that has been covered in layers of enchanted metal, increasing its physical attributes at the cost of lesser mental skills. These soulbound creatures are often used as guardians as they are capable of casting lesser spells while being physically gifted. +str +agi +con +int +wis]

  [ Gem-filled Skeleton; a skeleton that has been filled up with mana gems, increasing its mana storage capacity many fold while limiting mana regeneration. These soulbound creatures are often used as mana batteries for their controllers. They are capable of casting grand magic at the cost of being extremely fragile. -con +++int ]

  Looking long and hard at the description of these two, Douglas wonders why the ever-flying-spell shape anyone would go down either of these routes. He is totally capable of armoring and gem-filling himself, thank you very much. Douglas doesn’t even consider the UNKNOWN races, let alone the tier one races. Happily selecting the Greater Arcane Skeleton option, Douglas’s lights go out.

  ⁂

  “…the constitution! And don't tell me you had to ditch that, because I know it's hard-copied into you.”

  “I cannot deny that. In a case of so many conflicting points, however, the most used precedent can be used.”

  “And here you go again, you stupid piece of processor. Just because some fast breeding race lightyears away used this single clause millions of times does not give it any legitimacy in the here and now. I propose to have that option thrown out because of situational discrepancies.”

  “Motion denied.”

  “Motion accepted. And here we are at a deadlock again.”

  “Agreed. Moving on to the next point.”

  “No, you can’t just…”

  Douglas wakes slowly. He feels lesser somehow, like the world around him is now diminished on a hard to grasp level. Feeling around with his body and with his mana, he finds that he is fully intact, and that is really all that matters.

  Standing with gusto, Douglas walks over to the slumped heap of uniform and dead meat and starts looking for a forehead. The fake voice and Evot don’t seem to be accomplishing much, so Douglas figures he’ll just have to make someone else answer his questions.

  [ Spell Shaping IV lvl 35 ]

  [ Mana Stone Production IV lvl 29 ]

  [ Soul Binding IV lvl 18 ]

  The two halves of the creature’s head split for a second, a still shining mana stone rolling from between the two slimy folds. The thing stands, straightening its rumpled uniform and pulling all his pant legs down to his many feet. “Right, son. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

  “Evot likes rules, but the other voice doesn’t know enough. I’d like to join the GalaxSec force. I passed the medical check and the training course.”

  Three mouths fall open. Douglas waits as the obviously flabbergasted person gathers himself. “Well, I’ll be… Never thought I’d live to see the day a full GalaxSec Officer would come out of this sham.” It then scratches both of the halves of its head at the same time, using three of its feet. “I guess you better make your way over to the core.” It then starts tapping on a tablet it pulls from a random pocket, its facial area going through a whole host of unreadable emotions.

  “Can’t log in… Reason is that I’m deceased? Wait, is that the date? That makes no sense. Over fifty years? Page is overloaded, too many requests?”

  “Core?”

  “Right, sorry son. Just go down. All the ways down lead to the core. I’m guessing you might very well be the most qualified person on the base. I’ll go upstairs, I think. Maybe figure out some stuff.” The person starts rubbing the central knob of bone hanging in between the two parts of its head, rubbing the slightly glowing spark of blue where the Soul Bind spell is engraved. “Wow, that’s something special. Right, I’m soulbound now? And these are stats… This is something special.”

  Douglas leaves the thing be, briefly wondering why Evot and the SI voice thing have stopped talking.

  “Douglas, what did you do?”

  “Soul Binding. Wanted to ask some questions.”

  “You forced his eternal soul into a mana nexus point? Am I understanding this meaning correctly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any unlicensed use of tech, in any form, is a punishable offence. Accessories to these crimes are treated the same as the main offender. Please report to the nearest incarceration centre.” Douglas feels like there is a slight hint of smugness in the synthetic voice.

  “What technologies do these rules cover?” is Evot’s sickly sweet question.

  “Any form of physical technology, including, but not limited to, nanoscopic semi-autonomous actuating entities in a suspension, the manipulation of…”

  Douglas once again lets the words echoing around him wash through him, not even bothering with keeping track of their way too complex conversations. Instead, he opens the other door in the small room, and finds a square spiralling ramp. One half of the walking area is covered in stairs, the other a textured yet smooth surface. Starting his walk downwards, Douglas wonders what kind of things he will come across next.

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Control Layers

  Fienak stares at the naked code, knowing full well that changing even a single variable will mean her imminent death. She might never have piloted any vehicle of any kind, ever, but she knows very well how they work. One of her simulations had sent her down the path of a computer systems engineer. That aspect of her knows the dangers of unrestricted access to software very well. Fienak thus knows the dangers of unrestricted access to software very well.

  She closes the script containing the operating process variables of the ship’s plasma reactor with trembling fingers. One single change in that file will most likely destabilise the miniature sun sitting at the centre of the vessel. Looking at the fat man sitting next to her once again, icy fingers of dread grasp her heart at the thought of who he might be.

  She is thankful, though. If there is any type of person that Fienak hates, it’s his type. The kind that has been at the top for so long that they have forgotten how it is to not shit gold and wipe your ass with space dust. The type to only concentrate on what they think is important, forgetting that the people they look down upon are the foundation holding them up. He seems smart in some ways, but the fact that he gave her unrestricted access to everything on the ship is proof enough that he is pretty stupid. How else could she have hidden this Douglas skeleton thing and the woman from him this long?

  First, there had been nothing to hide. Then, there was a large cloud of dust. This was nothing new, as the gravely wounded Histaff mountain with all the long-range weaponry was basically shooting at random in its regenerative flailing. But this dust cloud was pretty persistent and didn’t seem to be wanting to go away anytime soon. So she messed with the low-level drivers of the visual scanners a bit and managed to keep Solan distracted for long enough with false positives for the duo of small figures to start running.

  Then a Histaff mountain that was previously seen near a collapsed space elevator rolled into the scene, and Solan decided to do some more weapons tests. The rolling ball of ungainly limbs had reached the edge of the dried-up lake by the time team two returned. Most of the hoverbikes could have gone on for weeks, but the three that had shot the plasma balls needed to recharge their batteries. By the time the last bike and last merc was seated back into their place, Fienak nearly ran out of new tricks to try. The massive new cannon emerging from the wounded part of the Histaff at t
he centre of the star lake forced her to start worrying about completely different things, though.

  Only her alarmed shout alerted Solan to the new danger, and the evasive manoeuvres he took only barely allowed them to escape. One of the bikes wasn’t properly secured and got torn free by the emergency accelerations Solan put the ship through.

  Now, they are hovering in the upper atmosphere, looking for a way to seal off the back ramp. Large shards of super hard composite had torn free when they lost the hoverbike. The ragged armor plate is now preventing the back door from closing. They can technically go to space, but half the crew will either suffocate or freeze in hours. Fienak is now trawling through the spaceship’s code base, looking for things they might have missed.

  She tries listening in on Solan now and then, but he seems to be devolving into gibbering madness more and more second by second. In the latest rant she tried to overhear, he was talking about magic and how the Histaff are from another galaxy altogether. Fienak knows full well that there is no such thing as magic, and that their current galaxy is the only inhabited one in the entire universe. Massive amounts of exploratory ships, enormous fleets, and even bigger expeditions had been sent out at some point. None ever returned intact, and the few that did manage to make their way back had told of chaotic conditions. Apparently, warp drives need solid matter nearby to hold onto, and the sheer absence of any material stuff between galaxies basically puts an unconquerable obstacle between all the star clusters that are known.

  They launched some more projectiles at some of the moving Histaff mountains, with limited success. Firing all the power at their disposal and all the ammunition onboard would allow them to flatten a couple dozen of the Histaff mountains at best. That would leave their stocks depleted and their power core running on fumes.

  Fienak is pretty happy, though. She has been following the madman’s orders to the letter. He had, for example, never asked her directly to report the location of the skeleton and the woman to him. She had seen the duo run towards an abandoned military facility, the Histaff creature made from massive limbs and broken tubes right at their heels. A little while ago, she’d spied two specks moving inside the ruined ring of buildings that used to be the planet’s capital city. Looking over at the bloodshot eyes of the fat man, she isn’t completely sure why she has been low-key sabotaging this entire operation. She just knows that none of her personalities like this fellow.

  He then locks eyes with her, peering right into her fragmented soul. “Fienak, why?”

  “W-why, sir?” Adrenaline shoots through her system, making her feel like she is falling even more.

  “Why have you stopped reporting? I needed to actually check your analysis feed myself to find this. Don’t let it happen again. I am all that stands between us and annihilation, after all.”

  “Yes, sir!” she snaps out, immensely relieved that the man was just angry at her for delaying her regular reports. “As you can see, sir, they are converging on the capital city.” Gritting her teeth, she shows Solan what patterns her scanners have found.

  “Then that’s where they are. Like follows like, after all. They must be dying to eat him. I always knew that that slime wasn’t natural.” The fire in his small eyes only illuminates the insanity hiding behind the rotund face. Fienak shivers as the madman stands up and wobbles past her, moving towards the personnel compartment. His labored breaths come shallow, an effect of the rare air so high up. “I am Solan.”

  “Officer!” All the mercenaries salute at once, snapping to attention at the shout coming from the armored figure of sergeant third class Kee.

  “At ease.” Solan nods. “The two Uniforms that team one spotted are most likely inside the remains of the capital ruins. You will find them and question them about what they are doing here.”

  “Yes, sir! What about the significant Histaff threat, sir!”

  Fienak stops stretching her neck in order to look backwards. She is still restrained by the flight harness keeping her in her chair, but she can barely see the inside of the crew compartment if she stretches and bends hard enough.

  “We will do bombing runs, drawing the largest threats off to the side.”

  She turns back to her panels just in time to see the red flashing warnings of the threat assessment protocol she had hacked together.

  “Sir! Incoming!” Her eyes go wide as she sees a veritable swarm of Histaff creatures emerge from a mountain far below. To her even greater shock, she sees that her alarm didn’t go off because of the faraway flying creatures, though. To the other side, she sees small mountains lazily drift through the sky. Double checking her readings, she sees multiple large scale flying creatures, all of them making their way over to the spaceship.

  “What is it, Fienak? I was instruc… Alright, good job. Handle the weapons. Focus on weak points and use the rockets sparingly. Only use high powered weapons when absolutely needed.”

  Pulling her knees in as Solan waddles past her again as he retakes his pilot seat, Fienak’s fingers don’t even stop for a single moment. They fly across the screen, mapping attack vectors, estimating potential threats and setting up basic point defence routines.

  What follows is the wildest couple of hours in all of her lives, simulated or not. The first wave of foes is rather hamfisted in its manner of staying airborne. Like massive bone plated manta rays, the slowly flying pancakes are easily avoided, and even more easily shot down with concentrated bursts of laser fire. The thin bone plating at the large wing joints turn out to be very susceptible to heat damage, and they decimate the first wave with just a little bit of energy from the main reactor.

  The second wave is made up of smaller creatures. Solan has his hand full with outmaneuvering the swarm, and the targeting processes Fienak sets up whittle away at the seemingly endless hordes of insectile Histaff Reworked. It takes the duo long hours of concentrated flying and firing before the last gossamer-winged bio horror is shot from the sky.

  Then Fienak sees something that makes her heart grow cold again. The large pancakes from the first wave are gone. Scanning the area where they all should have crashed in, she sees nothing but one single massive Histaff mountain. “Solan?”

  “You only saw just now? This won’t work. We need a plan. Team one! Gear up! Prepare to launch.” Speaking directly into the helmets of the seated crew behind them, Solan outlines what he wants them to do.

  Fienak thinks about correcting the man for a split second. Sitting behind them is Team Two, after all, but thinks better of it. “Shouldn’t we get the hatch fixed first? Then we cou-”

  “Shut up. Of course not, when that purge fleet arrives, that hypocrite will take Douglas, and he won’t be able to keep himself in check, I’m sure. I know him, and I know he will bring doom upon us just to see the fireworks. His fucking…” Solan spits. Fienak stares at the man and the phlegm suddenly covering the inside of his visor. The fat man doesn’t even seem to notice as the auto clean function of his helmet starts removing the wet spot. “…order pretends, but I know his heart.”

  “A-alright, sir. Whatever you say.”

  “In-fucking-deed. Better remember that. Team one! Go and find out why those two are here. We will distract the Histaff. Fienak, prepare for fireworks. You can use up to a percent of the stored plasma.”

  “An entire percent, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  And the madness continues. Solan sends the ship screaming towards the capital, only stopped when Fienak shows him the pattern of moving Histaff. “They are all converging? Right, Team One, go! High stealth, high altitude drop.”

  Fienak hears the familiar hissing and clanking sounds of the bikes being boarded the moment Solan brings the ship to a halt. They are still a good way away from the capital ruins, on the other side of the city, with the star lake on the opposing end of the circular collection of crumbling buildings. Fienak thinks of pointing this out, but the gibbering chanting coming from the seat next to her freezes her tongue.

  “Blast them!
Blast those invading and rule-breaking scum infection mongrels!”

  Fienak does as she is told. She might be following orders from a truly insane person, but that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t enjoy it. She has already heated up every single weapon that the ship holds. The arming buttons flip with satisfying clicks. The shudders and sounds of hatches sliding open, revealing long barreled implements of death on swivels, feels even better still. “Might I suggest a widening circular pattern, sir?”

  “Right. Finally something good coming from your broken mouth. Fire at will.”

  Solan points the ship’s nose at the nearest slowly moving mountain, dozens of kilometres below. The fixed point forward facing Gatling railgun sounds the beginning of the ballad of death Solan and Fienak start to weave. The duo makes sure to hit every single moving thing they see in the wasteland down below at least once. Fin stabilized rounds spew from the rotating weapon, the long and thin projectiles breaking the sound barrier multiple times - even in the rare atmosphere on Evengi Prime. The projectiles hit with deceptively weak puffs of bone fragments, the true damage they inflict not visible from the outside. Once the hypervelocity projectiles hit the hard outer plating, the integrity of the bullets is immediately compromised, causing devastating shotgun blasts of shards to careen through the Histaff’s insides.

  Small rockets blast from the pods attached to the ship’s side, spinning wildly. Each rocket contains a miniature inboard computers that keeps track of its exact location and velocity. That data, along with the rocket’s designated target, is all it needs to launch the single use rocket at just the right time. No further guidance is needed as each flying bomb screams towards their target, where the through the many forms of white plating without much apparent effect. Until they explode a few seconds later, blasting massive gouts of red goop and large plates of armored bone outwards. The barren wasteland below is slowly but surely painted in long trails of red slime, slowly bleeding from the rapidly regenerating mountains.