Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “Roger,” the snake replied, without bothering to ask what it was I wanted it to do. This crew didn’t question orders.

  “Gunner, I need you to clear a path,” I went on issuing commands, pointing Yalrock in the direction of the biggest Zatrathi ship—the very same orbital station that kept us from slipping out of this place. “As soon as you get the chance, fire at will at the closest enemy ships. Make sure to save at least ten torpedoes.”

  “It will be impossible to clear a passage completely,” said the snake—hanging another shield on our hull. The powercore had begun to whine—our Elo levels were approaching zero. A warning appeared, indicating that our beam absorbers were being overloaded—the snake had moved the shields from that side of the ship—and yet none of this mattered very much: We continued to fly Yalrock at the enemy station at full steam. Basically, I only had one way out—ram the orbital station while setting off all the torpedoes I had on board my ship. Every other option would lead to defeat.

  “A Pirate I Was Meant To Be” Mission Progress: 12 of 150 interceptors destroyed.

  You have received the “First Defender” title. You are the first player to destroy a Zatrathi ship in Galactogon. Contact any empire to receive a unique reward from the Emperor himself.

  The notification almost knocked all my adrenaline out of me—Zatrathi ships counted towards my pirate mission and now I had a way to get into the central Precian system where the Uldans’ secret base was located. It was no matter that the gunner had spent three torpedoes on destroying that interceptor. The fact itself was important—the Zatrathi could be destroyed despite the speed of their ships.

  “Contact!” Braniac moaned as the ship shook. “Damage report: 54% of the bow-mounted beam absorbers have been destroyed. The graviton engines can no longer redirect thrust to the bow. Slizosaur Functionality is down to 22%. Ship thrust is down to 44%. Contact with inbound torpedoes in 20 seconds.

  Braniac’s report offered no good news, but we had broken through the noose of torpedoes, at the cost of half the ships’ Durability. Yalrock was instantly hit by dozens of beams from the circling interceptors and frigates, but at the moment I had one immense advantage—the enemy station’s immense size prevented the Zatrathi vessels from maneuvering close to us, whereas Yalrock could keep on bouncing in any direction it felt like—well, any direction, if you discounted the one that the torpedoes were coming from.

  “Gunner, aim for the big ship,” I ordered again and rotated the ship to show our enemies the already damaged side. I needed one side to remain undamaged and twenty seconds wasn’t enough for the interceptors to breach the hull, as damaged as it already was. “All shields forward. We’re going to ram them!”

  “Seventy-two torpedoes inbound. Contact in 47 seconds,” the snake said just in case. “Torpedoes are away. Damage report: The beam absorbers have been breached. The portside engine has been incapacitated. The research laboratory has been incapacitated…The torpedoes have reached their target. The enemy vessel has taken 35% damage. Warning collision imminent! Please take evasive maneuvers immedia…”

  If before I’d thought that the torpedoes had really shaken us, I was very wrong. The ten torpedoes that I had held onto, managed to tear through the Zatrathi station’s hull and rip off one of its appendages. Without giving it much thought, I pointed Yalrock at the opening that had appeared. I was planning on flying into the center of the station and detonating my ship—perhaps even finishing off the enemy flagship—but the klamir turned out to be a surprisingly tough ship. The collision sent me and my chair flying into the instrument panel. Stars danced across my eyes—a very realistic touch—but it only took several seconds for me to again begin parsing Braniac’s voice as I slowly came to.

  “Damage report: Hull Durability is down to 16%. The beam absorbers are gone. Crew Functionality is down to 18%. Ship thrust is down to 4%. To continue flying, this ship requires an external overhaul, requiring seven tons of Raq. We are also critically low on Elo. The current energy reserves are 13%. Unauthorized access attempt detected—and blocked. I have identified an open access port to the enemy ship’s network.”

  “Hack it!” I replied, getting up. “How’s the marine?”

  “The cryptosaur is currently incapable of undertaking assault operations.”

  “What about the droids?” I asked just in case, still unsure whether I needed to activate the self-destruct or wait longer. The fact that we had survived our ramming attack and now had the chance to dig around in the Zatrathi internal systems, suggested that I needed to continue leveraging what little success I had had. Any downloaded data could easily be sold for a good profit. The main thing was to prevent boarding and capture.

  “Four droids are ready to perform both assault and security functions,” Braniac replied. “Shall I activate them?”

  “Do it and send them here,” I replied. “What’s the status of our beam cannons?”

  “They are incapacitated and require a full overhaul,” Braniac came out with more bad news like a broken record. “The current status of the strabosaur does not allow him to use his personal weapons.”

  “Hang on, what happened to the torpedoes that were coming at us?” I remembered a bit late. Seventy missiles couldn’t just vanish without trace.

  “There is no more information about them—our external sensors have been destroyed. There is no visual contact. I have obtained access to the internal network of the enemy ship—what are your instructions?”

  “Dump any and all data you can get your axons on. I’m interested in everything: from ship specifications to base locations to operational documents concerning the invasion.”

  “Roger that. I have obtained read-only access to the station’s neural backbone. I have established Yalrock’s location. Warning! There are currently 43 enemy assault squads heading in our direction. ETA of the first squad is three minutes. This squad consists of ten warriors. Downloading data now.”

  “Where are they going to come from?” I asked, smirking. It would have been silly to assume that the developers would allow my data dump to go unnoticed. Obviously, every available force on board the station would make its way toward us. Most likely, the inbound assault squads only included the security forces in our immediate vicinity. The station itself probably had much more soldiers than that.

  “The last remaining passage leading to us is located about a hundred feet away,” replied Braniac, displaying a projection of Yalrock on the remaining screen. Hmm…My perfectly round ship had turned into a dirty, tattered, cracked cube with several holes that seemed to run all the way through it. Yalrock had smashed up several decks of the station and come to a stop basically in the center of a large amphitheater. It was difficult to say why the station had such a facility, but the fact remained—a part of my ship was located in the arena, a part of it had knocked down the walls and crushed several rows of seats—while the opening that we had come hurtling through had already been sealed with some kind of force field. Braniac illuminated a smallish passage that the first ten Zatrathi—no doubt equipped with active-defense-equipped armor—would have to use to reach us. On the one hand, I had no chances of surviving against such a mob and it was perhaps better to blow up my ship before it was too late. On the other hand, the progress bar for the data transfer was moving quickly enough to give me pause for thought. Information was money and I simply could not pass it by without a fight. I’d have to make the best of what I had.

  “Send the droids outside,” I ordered, retrieving my two pacifiers. Practice had shown that a pacifier was a very effective weapon in close quarters—as long as you had enough debris around you to throw around. In this case, there was only one possible approach and it was littered with junk. Plus, the droids had their own defensive systems, both passive and active. It was time to make a stand.

  “I have located the station’s cargo holds,” Braniac went on reporting into my earpiece as I emerged from my ship…although, “emerge” is probably too strong a word. In ac
tual fact, I had to squeeze between some wreckage and a crumpled door that refused to do what a door is made to do. Four droids—which resembled steel human skeletons fitted with servos, mini-powercores and blasters—crawled out of Yalrock behind me and took up positions around the entrance to the amphitheater. These four would take the brunt of the first assault until I joined the fight.

  “What’s in the cargo holds?” I asked, more automatically than anything else, as I was more occupied with activating my pacifier and lifting a large piece of the hull wreckage around me.

  “Forty-two tons of Raq, 32 tons of Elo, 22 tons of Trion, 13 tons of Shlir,” Braniac ran down the list, forcing me to clench my fists helplessly. Forty-two tons of Raq was a jackpot that came along once in a lifetime, but I had absolutely no chances of getting it. I could now really appreciate the old proverb: “Honey is sweet but the bee stings.”

  “Continue downloading the data.” I decided to change the topic, dropping the piece of hull wreckage to the ground. There was still a minute left before the first assault wave would arrive and I needed to conserve my pacifier’s power—I had completely forgotten that I needed to recharge them and they were down to 50%. That would be enough to kill a couple Zatrathis of course…Oh! By the way! I still had no idea what those guys looked like! There had been no images in the changelog, I had been unable to see inside the interceptors during the battle, and Braniac had not offered any images of the assault teams on their way toward us. I wondered who, in the minds of the developers, could create these strange, angular, porcupine ships?

  Just as Braniac had predicted—I received an answer to my question precisely one minute later.

  Chapter 12

  The Zatrathi Orbital Station

  According to the map that Braniac sent me, the only approach to the amphitheater where we had crash landed was through a doorway around which my four droids had now arrayed themselves. Beyond the doorway lay a thirty-foot-long corridor, making our current defensive position ideal. Anyone wishing to expel us from the orbital station would have to first charge into a barrage of four A-class assault blasters which were impervious to active resistance. However, I could not wield one myself as all the blasters were attached to the droids.

  “Target identified.” A notification from one of the droids popped up before me. “Awaiting orders to engage.”

  “Fire at will!” I ordered, overcoming my desire to approach the portal and peek into the corridor. I was very curious what the Zatrathi looked like, but there was also see a steady stream of fire coming from the other end of the hallway, trying to knock out my droids. I was now engaged in my first serious shootout in Galactogon and could not help but notice that my warriors’ blaster fire was blue, while that of our assailants was red. Did this convenient color-coding happen only when engaging locals or would the same thing happen in PvP duels too? It was very helpful to telling what was going on in the battle.

  Droid #18 has leveled up. Current level: A-14.

  Droid #29 Functionality is down to 2%.

  A sudden silence descended on the amphitheater. The torrent of red blaster fire from the corridor dried up and my remaining droids lowered their weapons. The first assault had been turned away, though not without losses: The melted skeleton of Droid #29 lay on the ground.

  “The next squad shall arrive in five minutes,” Braniac told me some good news as soon as I realized that my four droids had just fought off ten Zatrathi. Ten for one really was a nice trade, considering that I could still repair the downed droid too. I wondered whether the droids would keep their current health or return healed when my ship respawned.

  “How is the data transfer going?” I asked and then added, “What are you transferring anyway?”

  “At the moment I am downloading the menu from the station’s mess hall,” came the shocking reply. “The channel bandwidth and the incessant countermeasures are constraining my access to the network. However, I have already obtained a detailed plan of our station sector, as well as a detailed inventory of the items in the station’s warehouse. I have also downloaded the crew quarters’ cleaning schedule. The repair manifest is next in the download queue. Unfortunately, as I have previously mentioned, the channel’s bandwidth does not allow me to download at a faster rate.”

  “Goddamn it!” Dropping my hands, I couldn’t contain myself. Instead of blowing up the ship and selling operative information concerning the Zatrathi deployment, I was downloading some kind of garbage! The mess hall menu! But no, I already had much more valuable information—the crew quarters’ cleaning schedule! I couldn’t even imagine how I had survived without it until now.

  Realizing that I had no further business on this station, I decided that I would at least get a look at the Zatrathi. Ten of them should be lying around the hallway right this moment and…

  WAIT!

  The loot!

  How could I have forgotten that the dead Zatrathi should have dropped loot?

  “Braniac, can any of the droids that are back at the ship move?”

  “Two droids are still in satisfactory condition.”

  “Order one to carry the remains of 29 back to the ship and order the other to come escort me to the dead Zatrathi.”

  I didn’t want to abandon my melted warrior. A new droid was expensive and an engineer could make the repairs, assuming he had the knowhow and the materials.

  “Ten squads shall arrive simultaneously in three minutes,” Braniac warned me when I entered the hallway. The three functioning droids had already entrenched themselves next to the doorway, taking up positions for the coming battle, so I decided against disturbing them. Instead, I had one of the damaged droids that needed repairs follow me, hobbling on one damaged leg and with his arm hanging limply at one side. Despite his current condition, this brave soldier managed to calmly carry twice the weight I could fit in my Journeyman’s Satchel. I didn’t want to leave the loot in the corridor. Before blowing up my ship, I’d first stuff my inventory with anything I could, making myself immobile, and only then meet my Planetary Spirit. I wouldn’t leave my enemies a single crumb!

  I did not get a chance to see what the Zatrathi looked like—there was nothing on the floor but ten small, virtual crates which represented the loot fallen from our vanquished foes. The bodies of Galactogon’s invaders had already dissolved, so I still had no idea what kind of creatures these were. Considering that ten squads would come visit us in three minutes—a hundred soldiers in total—I figured I’d get a good look anyway.

  “The next assault wave will arrive in two minutes,” said pedantic Braniac, bringing me back down to earth yet again. I hurried to open the remaining crates. As soon as I touched a shimmering, spinning crate, it would burst, dropping items onto the floor around it:

  A blaster, some Raq and a metal token…A piece of armor, some Raq, an Elo powercell and a metal token…A powercell, a powercell, some Raq and a metal token…Some Raq, some more Raq, a piece of armor and a metal token…

  “Let’s go!” I commanded the limping droid as soon as the last pieces of Raq were in my inventory. To my surprise the droid had not come in handy. All of the loot had fit snugly in my inventory—and yet it had also given rise to a good number of questions.

  I became the happy owner of an odd-looking assault blaster, three pieces of soft armor, fifteen pieces of Raq, ten powecells and ten metallic tokens which were almost exact copies of a sheriff’s star-badge from the Wild West. I knew what to do with the energy—two powercells went straight to recharging my pacifiers and another three to recharging my marine armor—but the Raq remained a mystery…as well as why the storm troops had it to begin with. The correct thing to do was to use the Raq to repair Yalrock, but if I was going to blow up the ship anyway, then she’d come back fully repaired, regardless of what I’d do to her now. And this meant that I’d be wasting the valuable Raq for nothing. Then again, if I left it in my cargo hold, it would be left behind as loot at the site of the ship’s destruction. So, again, I’d be wast
ing it. The only right thing to do was to leave the Raq in my inventory, hoping that we wouldn’t get any more loot—my Journeyman’s Satchel could only hold about 40 units of Raq total. Such a shame.

  “The assault wave will arrive in thirty seconds. We have acquired fifteen units of Raq,” said Braniac, showing that he could count too. “I recommend we use this to increase the Functionality of the slizosaur by 0.1%.”

  “Braniac, if we die and respawn, what will happen to the crew Functionality?”

  “It will drop down to 10% plus whatever improvements we have made. In the case of the slizosaur, the engineer’s Functionality will be at 10.1% upon respawning on Blood Island. The enemy has arrived…”

  “Target acquired,” one of the assault droids informed me yet again. “Awaiting orders to engage.”

  “Fire at will!” I ordered, grabbed the blaster I had looted and approached the doorway—three droids against a hundred Zatrathi was not a fair fight. “Braniac, as soon as I die, I want you to detonate Yalrock.”

  “Roger!” replied the ship’s computer, allowing me to turn my complete attention to the red torrent of blaster fire punctuated by rare bursts of blue.

  Damage blocked…

  Damage blocked…

  Damage blocked…

  Despite my trying my best to keep as close to the floor as possible—and generally trying to stay out of the fray—the barrage of fire from the hallway was so intense that it was simply impossible to avoid taking hits. The good thing was that, at the moment, my marine armor was soaking up all the damage and burning through its energy reserves in the process. Judging by the energy bar, I could hold out for another five minutes. As soon as the power ran out, I’d be doomed. But for now, my A-class marine armor afforded me the opportunity to get a close long look at the Zatrathi.