“Ye could probly keep that one, sir. It’s dead. Just don’t be keeping any that are still in one piece.” Deegan started throwing the carcasses of the Mechanurge drones back into their Harvester ship pressurization chamber.
The Captain heard the bell in his implant signaling he had completed both assignments and both bonuses.
“Time to pull out the grog, mates! We completed the assignment. And got rid of the stinky trash!” The Captain yelled out to anyone who was within yelling distance. ”Finally, we completed an assignment. Time to get paid, boy!” He slapped Deegan on the shoulder.
“What about Rego? He’s still on the ship,” Deegan asked after he unloaded the last drone.
“You mean the mutinous shark bait who never did one thing to help ye? That Rego?” The Captain raised his eyebrows as he studied the body language of one of his best crew members.
Gore pulled out his pair of dice. He rarely gambled on his decisions. This one, this one was going to be fun. With both hands lightly clasped over the dice, he blew into his palms for luck. Then he threw the small, deadly dice against the open door leading to the Mechanurge ship.
Snake eyes.
The Captain slowly walked over and picked up his dice. He looked at Deegan menacingly and silently slit his finger across his throat.
“Rego, who?” Deegan shrugged his shoulders and closed the door separating the two ships and began the job of welding it shut. They had another door they could use to exit the ship when they got back to port. They just wouldn’t be able to carry anything big with them when they disembarked as the only working door was less than 145 centimeter high and 120 centimeters wide. It was a passenger door, not meant for cargo.
Right before they pulled away from the Harvester, the Captain heard an incessant banging on the door Deegan just closed up. He looked to Deegan who just twisted his mouth and walked away.
“Must be the Mechanurge’s boarding ramp falling apart.” The Captain mused as he walked out of the loading bay and made his way to the bridge. “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.” He sang as he sauntered along.
“Cap’n on the bridge!” Wyko barked when Gore walked to his command chair.
“Weigh anchor and set sail men! We be heading home for repairs and much needed shore leave.”
Not a soul mentioned the missing crewmember as they set their sights to the Rimda Omega Space Station.
Once they were far enough away, and they could no longer see the Harvester ship on their sensors, the Captain opened up his HUD and searched for the game completion scenario notice.
..::..::..||..::..::..//\..::..::..||..::..::..
CARGO DELIVERY SCENARIO COMPLETE!
Outfit Aggregate: 2300 points
Play of the Scenario: Captain Gore walk the plank (1500 points)
Fan Favorite: Captain Gore (1000 points)
Congratulations! Your rating has improved. You are now a Level 4 Pirate.
Your new level entitles you to the following:
1 software upgrade (Class III or lower)
1 wench for a day (Class II or lower)
You have received one message from an anonymous sponsor:
[Hey! Good work with the Mechanurge. Glad to see you finally got rid of your dead weight! Everyone knows he was the reason you lost last time. We added a small bonus for giving us a surprise ending. No one believed you would do it.]
CALCULATING SKILL AWARDS…
DISARM OPERATOR: +1
ACQUIRE MECHANURGE ADVANCED ARSENAL: +1
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED THIS SCENARIO!
COLLECT SCENARIO REWARD AND SUBMIT EXPENSE REPORT AT ANY UMBRA TERMINAL
..::..::..||..::..::..\//..::..::..||..::..::..
The End, for now.
Did you enjoy this foray into the genre mashup of Military Scifi and litRPG? If you did, then look for more by J.L. Hendricks and S R Witt, coming soon!
Operation: Snowblind by S R Witt is out now!
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Author’s Notes
Thank you for reading this book and coming all the way to my notes! This story was so much fun to write! I mean, who doesn’t love pirates? And space pirates to boot! S R Witt (Sam) and are involved with Phoenix Prime, which is a Ph.D. level program designed to stretch us to our limits! And it is! This story was written by us for this program. We are writing more in this universe so keep a look out for them!
Sam created the universe to start and I added bits and pieces to it. Then when it came time for me to lead a collaboration, I wanted space pirates. He was more than happy to oblige me in this fantasy of mine. So we set out to make the best story we could. We included elements of litRPG and military scifi (more along the lines of merc’s than actual space marines) and took what is usually a fantasy genre, into a science fiction genre. It was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed this and look for the rest of our books in this universe!
I want to give a shout out to Dawnya Goode for helping with beta reading! She reads all of my books and helps me to find the stuff I miss.
If you want to check out Sam’s book, it’s called Operation: Snowblind, and we both wrote content for each other’s book. He took point on Snowblind and I took point on Pirates. So the writing styles will be a bit different, but if you pay close attention, you will see us both in each book. J
Link for Operation: Snowblind - books2read.com/u/3nePER
Operation: Pirates vs Drones: Gamer's Universe Page 5