The one thing that stood out again was the lack of people. The ship had no crew, but the normal compliment for a Hunter-class was fifty minimum and up to two-hundred if people got cozy with one another.
“Where is everyone?” I gestured around the barren halls. “Shouldn’t there be a full crew?”
“No, not at all. It’s just us,” Tulip said, smiling at me. “And Turner, of course.”
I couldn’t hide my disbelief as I asked, “You and Turner are the only ones on this ship?”
“Well, yes,” she said, frowning slightly as she tugged on her ear. “You see, some of the Resistance’s commanders … they’ve lost faith, you see.” Tulip turned to me, stroking my chest with one hand. “They wanted to pull all the monitoring ships entirely, focus all resources on directly fighting the Matriarchy, but I pleaded with them.” She let out a little laugh, her lips pulling into a wry grin. “This was their concession to me. Fortunately, while it’s just Turner and me, the command did make sure we were fully stocked to get you ready, assuming we found you.”
Ah, now it made sense. Part of me couldn’t argue with the commanders’ thoughts, but the rest of me was glad that Tulip had kept the faith. “I understand. You have to make hard choices when you’re responsible for peoples’ lives, but I’m happy to know you threw your weight around.”
Tulip smiled and turned back to the doors. “I’m happy too. Now, I want to show you this room and more importantly, start getting you truly ready for action.” She pushed open the doors and entered the chamber beyond.
I followed closely behind, knowing what the room was the moment I saw it, a combat training room, just like the one commonly found in social hubs in Star Conqueror. It was a large room, maybe fifty feet across, and every surface was the same uniform white color. I’d spent many hours in rooms like this, practicing with new weapons and testing builds before I invested my hard-earned power credits.
“Are we going to fight?” I asked with a bit of a chuckle. We had never fought in-game, but I’d always wondered how it would go down. She had such a graceful fighting style compared to my more brute force approach.
“Maybe, if you get me mad,” she said as she sauntered over to a white cabinet on the wall. “I’m more interested in what you look like once we get you out of those clothes.” She gave me an appraising look before she pressed a button. The cabinet opened to reveal a pair of power suits hanging from a pole. “Because I think you’ll look way better in your very own power suit.” She looked me up and down. “Not that the jeans and button up thing isn’t working for me.”
“You have power suits?” I said, my mouth practically falling open as I stared at the gleaming, bleeding-edge tech hanging there just waiting to be taken.
“Yes, of course we do, and I think we need to get you outfitted with one now.” Tulip nodded, trying to suppress a grin. “We can’t let anything happen to that sweet body of yours.” She winked at me playfully.
I barely heard her because I was too busy focusing on the suits. After all, a power suit was everything in Star Conqueror. It protected you from various types of attacks, and it was also the power source for many weapons and items you used, but neither of those things were really what made it awesome.
No, the upgrades were what really did it. And the better your suit was to begin with, the more powerful your upgrades would be. At the beginning of the game, your suit had pitiful stats and a limited power supply, but nearly every aspect of it was customizable and upgradeable. Sure, the power suit started only as powerful as your base self, but the tech within it let you transfer a measure of a defeated enemy’s power credits into your suit, making you and it more powerful.
I salivated, looking at the fitted jumpsuit hanging from the hook. It looked innocuous, but there were so many surprises hidden in the nanite-powered suit. “Does it work the same as in the game?”
“Yes, and I know what you are wondering. Yes, you can collect power credits and apply them to this suit’s power. You just have to kill the enemy first to do it.” She took the suit off the hook and brought it over to me. “So, hopefully you’ll kill a hell of a lot of bad guys.”
“I can do that.” I nodded as she rubbed her hand along the smooth material before handing it over to me. The moment I touched it, my mouth nearly fell open. “Wait … is this a DVRX 1100 power suit?”
The DVRX 1000 was the most powerful base suit in the game, and it cost nearly a million power credits to get the base model. Having it was like the difference between a spear and an Abrams tank. And this one was even better. Crazy.
“It is.” Tulip smiled at me, clearly pleased I recognized the suit. “These suits are of Dr. Eldridge’s design, the very person that created Star Conqueror. It’s the best one out there.”
“I can’t believe you’re giving me this to start.” I’d never seen a power suit more beautifully constructed. The color, well, white wasn’t my thing. Hopefully, it would have the same color customization options as in the game.
Sure, vanity is a sin, but if you’re putting your life on the line for the galaxy, you could afford to look good doing it, right?
“Why wouldn’t we, David? This is real life. While the Resistance pulled back on monitoring duty, they still gave us the best gear to give to you.” She reached out, touching my chest with one slender finger. “Prophecies are great, but I think it’s always best to help fate along. If you died because we didn’t give you every possible advantage we could, well, we’d be fools, no?” She paused, waving off her words with a hand, giving me the distinct impression she’d actually made that argument before, probably to Resistance command. “Now, go ahead. Try it on.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” I quickly stripped down to my lucky platypus boxers before sliding my legs in and pulling the suit up and over my shoulders. It fit much like a jumpsuit, reaching to my wrists and ankles. I zipped the front up to my neck and hit the pressure nozzle on the side of the collar with my thumb. There was a hiss of compressed air as the suit tightened around me, form fitting to my body.
I’m not sure what I expected it to feel like exactly, but it was strangely comfortable. Well, at least when it was unarmored, anyway. Using the wrist pad, I activated armored mode.
In an instant, the internal nanomachines of the suit constructed layers of plating that felt like metal to the touch but were as light as plastic. They clicked into place over the base suit before connecting into a nearly impenetrable shell of armor around me. I moved my arms and legs around, testing my mobility with the suit fully armored. It was both comfortable and maneuverable.
Pressing another button on the wrist pad caused the fabric to grow over my hands and form perfectly fitted gloves with a plate of armor over the back of my hands like gauntlets. Another button press did the same for the boots, and a moment later, I took a few steps. That was all it took to get my feet adjusted to the feel of them. They were thick but comfortable like the rest of the suit.
“Damn. I feel like I could take on an army by myself.” I nodded at Tulip who smiled at me like a cat with cream.
“That’s the idea.” She smirked at me. “This one has a new option too. In addition to the transparent dome helmet, there’s also an energy version, like a force field. Try it out.”
“Really?” As she nodded, I found the option on my wrist pad and hit it. A golden dome of energy burst from the collar, surrounding my head in a nearly impenetrable force field. This was crazy.
The old one had reminded me a bit of the old-fashioned pulp magazine concept of a space helmet, but the force field gave me full visibility and protection from small arms fire and most melee attacks with none of the weird mobility issues I’d experienced by having a giant dome around my head.
“Does it still have the full environmental protection and air filtration?” I asked. “Or will I need the helmet for that?” Obviously, one of the biggest and most important purposes of a power suit was survival in space and alien environments. In the game, as long your h
elmet was fine and your suit had power, you could survive just about any environmental condition.
“Yes, but it uses a lot more power.” She rubbed her chin. “You’d be better off using the dome in those situations if possible.” She shrugged.
“Right.” I said as I hit another button on my wrist pad. A heads-up display straight out of Star Conqueror flashed to life in front of me. It was basic suit setup information, and while I could access it all from my wrist pad, I’d always found the HUD a lot easier to work with.
Thank God, they had a whole suit of color options. I quickly scrolled through them, adjusting the polychromatic paint job to a near-black color that shimmered to a deep purple in the light. Now, I wanted a mirror to see how badass I looked in the suit.
Just like in the game, the right arm of my suit also had a built-in retractable display that I could use to select everything in the menus if I didn’t want to use the wrist pad or the eye controls for the HUD projection to access the suit’s options. It was even detachable for use as a tablet computer, though I had never done too much with those hacking or robotics upgrade trees in the game, the ones that got the most use out of the detachable computer.
“It’s crazy how familiar this all seems. I mean, I know I did it all in Star Conqueror, but even still …” I said, turning to look at Tulip.
“That’s the idea. The game was designed to get you used to being in your suit, flying our ships, all that stuff,” Tulip said, the look on her face something I couldn’t quite explain. Part hunger, part something else I couldn’t recognize. “How’s the suit feel?”
It was probably nothing, some alien thing that I just wasn’t familiar with. “Good,” I said, looking down at myself and touching the material. “I’m ready to kick ass.”
“I’m glad, David. We’re counting on you. We need you more than you know.” She paused for a beat to let that sink in before continuing, “Do you have any questions about your suit?”
I opened the menu and scrolled through it. Nothing else seemed to come to mind until I saw a number at the top left of the screen next to a swirling, golden coin.
“Hey, I’ve got power credits,” I said, looking at my display in shock. “I thought you had to earn these in combat?”
“Of course, you do, silly. Though you do start with what an amount the system gauges based on your core potential. Everyone is unique in that regard, since it is influenced by species, age, training, and a billion other factors I don’t even begin to understand. That’s why you have some even though you haven’t taken any from enemies.”
Tulip smiled at me. “Like I said before, it’s just like in the game where you can use them to upgrade your abilities.” She gestured for me to go for it. “You can spend them now if you’d like. In fact, I suggest you do. This is a crazy, mixed-up galaxy and you never know when trouble will come knocking.”
“But how does that even work?” I asked, confused. “Shouldn’t I just have access to everything?” I gestured at myself. “After all, that’s why you gave me the suit, right?”
“No.” Tulip shook her head. “All suits have baseline abilities, but they’re completely customizable.” She smirked. “The system is similar to Star Conqueror, otherwise we’d have just given you everything at the start of the game. After all, the whole point of it was to prepare you for this moment.”
“But how does that even work?” I rubbed my face. “Like the science of it.”
“Complex math, magic, and a whole bunch of words even I didn’t understand.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Suffice it to say that it does work. When you kill someone, the suit will absorb some of their power, which you can use to make yourself stronger.” She rubbed her temples, eyes lost in thought for a second. “I remember having it explained to me before, but even with my understanding of quantum computing and artificial intelligence matrices, it still blew past me. So, just go with it until Dr. Eldridge can explain it to you. Even then, don’t feel bad if you don’t understand it.”
“Fine.” I nodded to her. “Considering most of this is beyond me anyway, you’re probably right. I can take a thing or two on faith.”
Tulip smiled and nodded. “Faith is what can set us free.”
She was right, and I acknowledged the sentiment with a smile as I went back to my suit’s menus. As they popped up on my HUD, I realized I had two hundred and twenty power credits as a base line. That seemed like a lot, especially since the starting amount in Star Conqueror had always been around twenty.
“Wow, I’ve got a lot. Over two hundred—"
“You have over two hundred?” Tulip gasped, coming toward me. “Jesus, David. That’s incredible.” She chewed on her lip. “It must be because you’re a dragon. With species as a factor, that would grant you amazing potential.” She snickered. “Turner is gonna be pissed. He thought he was hot shit because he started with eighty.”
“Ha, well, remind me to rub it in his face then. You know, just once.”
She laughed as I began to study the different options I had in the various upgrade trees. Right away, I saw a few differences from how Star Conqueror would normally play out. A starting character would normally have to pick a base class, and that class would give you a baseline upgrade tree to work from. You would also get your choice of one of three specialty trees that can only be selected at character creation. From there, it was just spending your starting points and that was that.
I didn’t have a class choice, which I suppose made some sense. It wasn’t like I was a newly born baby, and as the classes also determined what weapons and equipment you started trained in, well, I already knew my way around all manner of firearms and other weapons. Apparently, that had been enough for me to be assigned the Space Marine class, pretty fitting to be honest), along with the baseline Assault upgrade tree for that class. Also, much to my surprise, I had the Dragon upgrade tree already unlocked, something that had required both a story mission and a million power credits to unlock in the game.
On top of that, I still had my choice of specialty trees. Spacer, Vanguard, and Ascension were all glowing green choices in my HUD. The Spacer tree had a ton of options based around space combat and zero-gee environments, both ship piloting and basic combat. It wasn’t my cup of tea in Star Conqueror, there weren’t enough space-based missions to make it feel worthwhile to me. I usually went for Vanguard, an upgrade tree that offered a lot of the baseline survivability bonuses that helped me survive my frontline tendencies. In fact, I was about to pick it without even considering the last option when I realized something important.
I didn’t have to pick some of the more newbie options because I had two hundred points and Dragon Form.
That might be enough for a viable Ascension build.
It wasn’t the most common build, since it involved buying a bunch of skills that were sort of useless until you had them all, but then the synergy would make it ten times better. The problem was, you’d be gimped until you got them all, and thanks to the extremely high respec cost in Star Conqueror, getting it that way wasn’t a viable option, and even fewer had wanted to level up gimped to get it.
Hell, I’d only done it once during an event, but I still remembered how powerful it felt.
Taking a deep breath, I scrolled down past my other two choices to Ascension. Taking a deep breath, I read the description.
Harness your inner dragon. The Ascension tree allows the user to use a portion of his dragon abilities while in human form, making him stronger, faster, and tougher.
That right there was the main problem with the build. You had to select Ascension at the start of character creation if you didn’t want to spend the ten million points (and lose all the skills you’d already bought) to change your specialty tree, and it didn’t work until you got Dragon Form, the actual active ability. Considering what Tulip had been I figured I had Dragon Form already unlocked, but it paid to make sure.
A few quick clicks through the menus and there it was. Dragon Form, already pur
chased. That in itself was insane since, in Star Conqueror the game, that upgrade had cost me nearly sixteen million credits and involved mastering several upgrade trees that were truly terrible. That was, in essence, seventeen million free power credits in total. It was almost mind-blowing to think about.
Turning back to the suit setup options, I selected the Ascension tree for my specialty and hit accept. The second it flashed to life, I began looking at the skills in the tree as I thought through what to do.
My first choice was Breath of the Wilds, and as I selected it, the description popped up in front of me.
* * *
Breath of the Wilds
Cost: 50 power credits
When activated, this ability allows the user to drastically increase his tolerance to the elements for 1 minute.
Power Cost: 5% of maximum
Cooldown: 3 minutes
* * *
Even though it always irked me that Breath of the Wilds cost so much more than other starting active abilities in other trees that did similar things, I took it anyway, as did most players once they learned Dragon Form if they were going for Ascension. That skill was especially useful because it basically allowed me ignore fire, which, as a dragon, was pretty useful, as well as certain energy weapons, like lasers and plasma.
Taking a deep breath, I purchased Breath of the Wilds. As I did, it deducted the fifty points required to open a tree. Like in the game, it seemed none would actually be spent until I finalized my selections. That was good. I wouldn’t have to waste points if I didn’t have enough to get the build I wanted.
Next, I selected an upgrade to the left of it called Dragon’s Revolt.
* * *
Dragon’s Revolt
Cost: 25 power credits
When activated, this ability allows the user to increase offensive and defensive attacks when engaged in battles where the user is outnumbered. For every enemy combatant actively engaged against the user, all abilities will be augmented by 1% for 1 minute.
Star Conqueror: An Epic Space Adventure Page 5