Rune Universe: A Virtual Reality novel (The RUNE UNIVERSE trilogy Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  Then again, perhaps they wouldn’t.

  “MASTER, LET ME GIVE YOU A HAND,” called Francis, as happy as ever, “I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF CHECKING THE GAME’S DATA OF THE TIME YOU MADE THAT PACT—”

  “Assistants can’t do that,” muttered Rylena with dismay. I gestured at her to shut up. Don’t mess with our psychotic digital-Frankenstein, please.

  “—AND I FOUND A LOOPHOLE. THE CONTRACT GAVE MASTER RYLENA AND YOU A FIGHTER SHIP FOR YOUR PERSONAL USE, BUT THAT SHIP BLEW UP .001 SECONDS BEFORE TRANSFERRING OWNERSHIP TO YOU.”

  “That’s classic Posse of Iron,” Walpurgis said.

  “And it’s legal, they’ve done it many times. The bomb with the timer is set on the ship before the contract is made. If they don’t need it, they just disarm it with a codeword. The explosion happens before the ship becomes our property, so—”

  “YEAH, YEAH, BUT NO ONE HAD HAD ME TO HELP THEM BEFORE, RIGHT? LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO AN OLD-TIMER’S VERB CALLED LAG. LAG IS THE DELAY BETWEEN YOUR MINDJACK’S ACTIONS AND THE MOMENT THE GAME REGISTERS IT—”

  “We know what lag means,” said Walpurgis.

  “WELL, YOU’LL BE HAPPY TO KNOW THE PLAYER WHO SIGNED THAT CONTRACT IS LOCATED IN SINGAPORE. THAT’S LAG OF SEVERAL MICROSECONDS.”

  “But the contract runs on server time,” said Rylena, who apparently was hellbent on antagonizing our wonderful lawyer-AI. She’s a bit of a rules-lawyer, I knew, but this was stretching it.

  “WELL, DON’T YOU TELL THAT TO THE TERRAN FEDERATION ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES, MASTER RYLENA!” Francis voice was triumphant. “I JUST… EH, PERSUADED THEM… THE CONTRACT HAPPENED TAKING THE LAG INTO ACCOUNT, SO THEY THINK THE EXPLOSION HAPPENED WHEN YOU OWNED THE SHIP.

  “IT WAS THE HARDEST THING I’VE EVER DONE. TOOK ME HALF A SECOND. THE CONTRACT IS NULL AND VOID!”

  There were several stunned seconds of silence before Rylena had the presence of mind to check with the Terran Federation. She nodded towards me to confirm what Francis just said. “I hope you don’t think that’s a normal behavior for an AI to have, Cole. Because it really, really, really isn’t.”

  “I’M NOT A NORMAL AI! I’M YOUR FRIEND, FRANCIS!”

  “Good enough for me,” I declared. It was only fitting, a part of me thought. This was Kipp’s Personal Assistant, after all.

  He had said to me, last time I saw him, that his PA would give us a hand in reaching Validore. Well, he was right.

  Contract was null and the Posse of Iron was just realizing it. I smiled fiercely. Good. Let them know what’s going to happen to them.

  I set course straight towards Lance and the Apollo Wing while Rylena uploaded a battle plan for our wingmen of the PDF. Cockily, the Posse of Iron spread themselves into a battle formation with the Apollo at its center. They were right to be cocky. After all, they had superior gear thanks to Kipp’s ship.

  The Teddy may not have been a legendary ship like the Apollo, but it was ours. This time, we were a full crew, not two players fooling around. I wasn’t playing around.

  Flying against the Apollo felt right, somehow. Like I was doing something I should’ve done a long time ago. It wasn’t for Kipp’s quest. It was for me.

  Rune agreed with me, apparently, because a screen appeared in front of me with a cheerful ping! I pushed it aside without bothering to read it: I needed my full attention for the upcoming dogfight. And I already knew what it said. It was only fitting, after all. This account had already had a class, before Kipp reset it.

  Congratulations! You have unlocked the Captain class. You have completed the following secret requisites:

  You earned a loyal crew.

  You built a ship that’s yours.

  You confronted old enemies.

  You acquired enough skill points.

  Your character development is very pleasing.

  As a Captain your crew skills are improved when fighting as a team. This bonus improves as your ranking does. NPCs will react differently to your reputation and you’ll earn extra skill points in Negotiation, Survival, and self-defense related skills.

  Your rank is currently Bronze.

  We clashed against the Apollo squadron with a fury of lasers and plasma.

  When two ships are flying in opposite directions against each other and neither of the pilots is feeling suicidal, they have two options: first, do a flyby to the side somewhere before a collision route and try to pepper the other ship with their side-turrets. Second, they may do a circle flow.

  A flyby would expose our sides to the powerful turrets of the Apollo. And with our wingmen covering us with their flares and a rain of laser fire, the frontal lasers of the legendary ship had managed to take out a third of our shields. Even with the extraordinary accuracy of Walpurgis and the constant barrage of electronic interference that Rylena was unleashing over their targeting, we couldn’t survive a fair fight.

  So I wasn’t going to fly fair. Instead, I pulled my flight-stick as I reduced our acceleration slightly, just as the Apollo got in close range with us. Just in time, too, because Lance launched two missiles a second later. Their computers weren’t as powerful as the ones the Janus Station had used against us, and they hadn’t time to lock on to the Teddy as we traced a semicircle perpendicular to our former direction.

  Lance reacted quickly and did the same, downward from us. It was the right move. If he had kept going, when Teddy finished tracing the circle, we would have had a perfect line of fire for a missile barrage against the Apollo’s top hull.

  “Damn, Cole, tell me when you’re going to put us upside down!” complained Beard. The Apollo was just beneath us and he took potshots at it from our top-turret, without much success. Their shields were just under 80% capacity. Somewhere nearby, one of our wingmen had exploded when the Posse fighters outmaneuvered him.

  We met again with the Apollo as we both finished our circle flow. I spiraled us to the right before the ship’s crew had time to lock onto us with their laser fire.

  I pressed on forward, in the direction of the planet. Our shields were trying to regenerate the damage, but they wouldn’t be fast enough.

  Lance thought I was making a break for the planet and turned around to chase us, which was just what I hoped. See, battles in space don’t work like they do in a normal earth-like dogfight. There’s no air resistance to break apart your ship if you try something like my signature Dorsett Gambit.

  I turned off our engines, which in space only meant we no longer had any acceleration, but our speed remained constant. Thanks to Rylena’s interference, the Apollo had no idea what’d just happened and continued their pursuit as it tried to regain the acceleration it had lost. I had a small window of opportunity and I took it: there’s a similar system in every ship, similar to our spacesuit oxygen jets, designed for small course corrections that would be impossible on a normal flight. You could use these to move your ship up (relative to itself, of course, there’s no up in space) or down without changing your forward course, for example.

  That’s what the jets were intended for. Instead, I pushed a lever all the way in a single instant and sent a powerful oxygen jet out of the right side of the Teddy’s nose. The ship turned instantly towards the left like an invisible giant had spun it around. Before it could keep going (and make us turn in circles all the way into the atmosphere of the planet, where we would blow up) I hit the stream in the opposite direction, the exact same amount of time and strength.

  “Holy s—!” I heard Beard exclaim. Even Walpurgis cursed in surprise at the sudden change in direction and nasty braking an instant later. Rylena held on to her copilot controls and if I’d had time to enjoy it, I’d have celebrated the fact she hadn’t actualized our flight patterns to the new direction. Yes, girl, I can surprise you yet.

  “Walpurgis! Missiles!” I exclaimed. “And everyone, hang on!”

  All in all, it had taken us a single second and now the Teddy had made a perfect 180° turn. We were facing the Apollo Wing as we moved away from it. Our forward moment
um hadn’t changed, see, we were effectively moving in reverse at fuck-you speeds.

  The next part sucked. I turned the engines back on and pressed slightly on the acceleration.

  I instantly felt my virtual organs press against my spine and my back try to fuse with the seat behind me. I heard my crew gasp as air exited our lungs. All around the cabin, warning lights flashed red and an alarm blared as several windows appeared on-screen. Half the ship’s systems didn’t know Teddy was built out of Z-Alloy, so they were trying to inform us the ship had broken apart.

  Instead, Teddy held as everywhere around us the ship’s joints tensed and complained.

  Hang in there, Ted, you can do this…

  Even our shields drained as the inertia-dampener sucked energy from all systems, trying as fast as it could to avoid the opposite forces from folding the ship’s hull like an accordion.

  But our hull was reinforced with our Z-Alloy armor, and Teddy could withstand forces that would disintegrate lesser ships.

  Before Lance and the Apollo crew even processed what had just happened, they weren’t pursuing a far away enemy. We were right in front of them and our gunner didn’t need to wait for a targeting lock. Walpurgis, stunned and all, would never miss a shot like that and she didn’t. Four plasma missiles shot forward into the Apollo Wing and an instant later, I spiraled us away from the collision. Even then, the explosion of the plasma against the shields was so close to us that it dented Teddy’s shields.

  “That got them! Good job, Cole!” exclaimed Beard.

  “We haven’t won yet, Gabrijel,” said Rylena. She plotted a new course, this time against the nearest Posse of Iron fighter, who was pursuing one PDF wingman with no shields. “Look at the screen feed.”

  She was right.

  “I’LL LOCK ONTO THAT NASTY SHIP FOR YOU GUYS,” said Francis and a corner of the cabin’s screens showed the Apollo Wing retreating back from us. The ship’s shields were still a quarter full and we had emptied our plasma on them.

  “Bullshit!” exclaimed Beard, “they ate enough firepower to take out a freighter.”

  “Don’t let them get away!” roared Walpurgis, “they will regenerate their shields and then we’re fucked.”

  Instead of turning back, I targeted the fighter engaging with our PDF ship and Walpurgis instantly shot it down just as a solitary missile crashed against the PDF fighter and took it out.

  “We can’t,” Rylena said, “our shields are at 33%, that turn plastered them. We need to regenerate too.”

  Only one surviving Iron fighter was left and it retreated when the Apollo Wing demanded its help. His pursuing PDF fighter was destroyed when it tried to do a suicide run on the Apollo.

  The last PDF fighter joined with us and opened a communications channel. She was a woman covered head-to-toe in middle-level gear. “Make a run for the planet, I can buy you enough time.”

  “No, you can’t,” I told her, “they are faster than us.”

  My teeth were clenched so hard against each other it hurt. If I didn’t think of something soon, we’d lose the fight and our quest would end there.

  “Walpurgis, how are we on armament?”

  “We’re out of plasma, only one artillery missile left, full flares. We are packing no EMP torpedoes or mines of any kind,” came the answer.

  “I didn’t have time to buy enough ammo for a war,” Beard said, “sorry.”

  “You can do this, Cole,” Rylena said. Francis’ screen-feed showed the Apollo and its wingman closing the distance from us. Their shields were already at 33%, same as us, and growing slowly. “You are a better pilot than him.”

  “I sure am, but I can’t win this by flying at him… and we don’t have enough firepower to outlast them in a laser fight.”

  “Then find some way to win by flying at him. Hurry up, they are about to launch missiles…”

  It was like every dogfight I ever had in space simulators flashed in front of my eyes. There was no combat maneuver that would give us enough advantage…

  Even the best chess player in the world won’t win a match against a middle-schooler if he’s going against a full board with only a rook. And Lance wasn’t a newbie, he obviously had played simulators himself. Of course he would’ve, with the way he loved to pretend he was a real soldier…

  Just like that, I had a plan.

  Also, three missiles coming hot on our tails. I turned the Teddy to face the planet and accelerated at full.

  “Flares?” came Rylena’s suggestion.

  “No, hold them. Francis, patch me to our wingman.”

  The AI did so instantly.

  There was no time to sugar coat this. “I need you to intercept those missiles.”

  Praise for those who deserve praise. The PDF woman didn’t even flinch. “Acknowledged. Good flying, Captain.”

  She broke formation with us and positioned herself behind us as she deployed her own flares. Then she killed her engines. The missiles were too close for the flares to make a difference at this point. They all hit the fighter. The explosion was silent and bright enough to rival the golden shine of Validore.

  “She called you captain?” Beard asked to himself.

  “New class,” I explained. Somehow, that unknown lady’s sacrifice had given me a knot in the throat.

  Better make it count.

  “Hold on tight, we’re making planet-fall,” I said as the Teddy broke into Validore’s atmosphere.

  At the speed we were going, a red flame instantly surrounded the shields of the ship as they drained themselves.

  “Turn shields off,” I told Rylena as I pointed Teddy’s nose into a dive. There was no point in keeping them on with the atmosphere’s re-entry drain.

  “The Apollo is hot behind us,” she replied. “If it nails us with a missile we’ll burn on reentry.”

  “They won’t have a solid hit,” I predicted. This was our last chance.

  “What’s your plan?” she asked as she turned our ship’s shields off. Lance and his crew saw it clearly on their screens this time because they reacted instantly and dove towards us like a dropbear attack, firing from their front turrets constantly. Their wingman was farther behind them: fighters aren’t built for aggressive re-entry.

  I turned right without slowing down and dodged the deadly laser barrage. We needed tight, close turns for my maneuver to work.

  “I’m going to win by flying at them,” I answered Rylena.

  At the speed we were dropping, the ship was in a constant fight against gravity. We were falling with the grace of a rock towards the ground. The extra speed from the freefall gave me enough velocity to dodge the furious volley of laser fire from the Apollo, which followed us with fury.

  The Apollo Wing’s shields were still up, which meant that Lance remembered the asskicking we gave him a few minutes ago. The constant burn of the atmosphere drained them, but at a slower rate than it would’ve done ours. That’s a legendary engine for you. He shouldn’t have bothered: there was no possible way to use a stream of oxygen to pull a 180 on a ship now that gravity was involved. Most we could manage would be to tear the ship in two.

  As I dodged the Apollo’s attack, I slowly corrected our freefall towards an ample curve perpendicular to the ground. We kept most of our speed, but forced the Apollo to either follow our trail or try and cut us and risk an overshoot. Lance wasn’t letting his prey go that easily: he turned contrary to my maneuver and slowly circled down trying to lock on to Teddy. It was the right move, all things considered: since he was flying slower and had the advantage on me, he could react to any change in direction I tried.

  Underneath us, a golden desert that sprawled all over the horizon grew closer and closer on the ship’s screens.

  “I need him to come closer!” I warned my crew. This was crucial. If he kept his distance, he would either get a lucky shot or lock on when I’d be forced to correct course or crash against the golden sand.

  Teddy shook violently all of a sudden with such a stren
gth that I was almost torn out of my seat, seatbelt and all.

  “WE HAVE SUFFERED STRUCTURAL DAMAGE,” warned Francis. “Assessing…”

  “Yeah, I can see it!”

  Our broadside wing had a scorched patch right where a laser shot had managed to reach us. A hit that solid would’ve torn apart any other ship, especially by tearing our wing.

  “ASSESSMENT FINISHED. WE’RE RIDING IN A DAMN TANK, GUYS!”

  As Teddy flew in circles closer and closer to the ground, the Apollo followed close behind. Its shields, as they burned against the atmosphere, left a trail of ozone behind them. If you looked at the sky from Validore’s surface, you’d see a quickly approaching DNA spiral of smoke rapidly nearing the ground. And right behind that spiral came the last Posse of Iron fighter, shooting at us from the flank.

  “You need to slow down, Cole,” said Rylena with the surprising calm of someone who had assisted several daredevil pilots along her career.

  “I forged that armor myself!” exclaimed Beard, “trust my ship, kid! It can shake off more than this!”

  Rylena’s suggested path would lift us into a defensive barrel roll that could force Lance to sacrifice accuracy in order to keep chasing our tail. It would also keep the battle going.

  And that, we couldn’t afford.

  Instead, I pointed Teddy’s nose almost straight down and pressed the accelerator at full power. “Shields on when I say so! Francis, communications with the Apollo Wing in two seconds, Rylena, throw everything you have at them right after shields!”

  “Got it,” she said.

  “Hell yes,” agreed Beard. Walpurgis confirmed with a much more vulgar combination of words.

  Communications opened. I saw Lance’s face contorted with fury, fighting to keep up after me. He was red and his eyes were unfocused, like a maddened beast.

  “I’m going to get you, you son-of-a—”

  Teddy was going to vaporize itself against the desert in thirty seconds.