A Check for a Billion

by Vasily Mahanenko

  Silence.

  “Hey, are you alive in there?”

  “Shh,” someone shushed me. “What’s your proof?”

  “You know who Tryd is? Hilvar? The Corsican?” I listed the most famous pirates I knew. Surely the old guard would know them.

  Those on the other side of the barricade — there were clearly a handful in there — began to confer among each other in whispers. And they were so quiet about it that no matter how Brainiac tried, he could not catch the gist of what they were discussing. All he made out were snatches: ‘trap,’ ‘aid,’ ‘pirate,’ ‘food,’ ‘water.’

  “How do we know you’re not with her?” the eyes reappeared in their hole. These ones were hazel, however.

  “‘Cause I’m the one who killed her.” There was no doubt who the pirates had in mind. “It’s time to get out of here, oh my brothers. Are you with me?”

  “There be one and a half thousand souls on this ship,” the eyes were replaced by another pair. Bright yellow ones. “Will you take them all?”

  “I won’t take anyone at all. You’ll fly out of here on your own.”

  “This ship is dead!”

  “This ship has been rewired to channel any energy in it to the creatures outside. That can be fixed with a few hours of work, and I have someone for the job. I will enter, and we…”

  “Stay where you are!” came the barked response, accompanied by a guttural gurgle. Given the speaker’s already weak voice, the sound effect was horrible. “Just try and touch our barrier and I’ll blow this wheelhouse! It’s better to die a final death than to be consumed by that creature.”

  I realized now why the pirates hadn’t simply died and respawned — Belmarad had broken their bindings to their planetary spirits, just as Mercaloun had once done to me. That’s why they were still here — clinging on. It was pure suffering, but they were clinging on.

  “Once again: The monster is dead and I am about to head home. I need the cruiser to do that. I’ll get this damn tub started even if you do blow up the wheelhouse. And then I’ll get out of here — with or without you!”

  The eyes disappeared again and again I could hear whispering. I started a timer but the yellow eyes returned almost immediately:

  “Who is the head of the Brotherhood?”

  “The Corsican. Hilvar’s his second-in-command.”

  “Why he’s worth a bitch’s guts!” spat someone behind the barricade and then added some choice curses. It didn’t sound like this bit of news was very pleasant to them. “All right. Come in! I’m not about to let that mongrel and his flying barrel run our upstanding organization!”

  Where did he have the strength for all this emotion? The yellow-eyed pirate had uttered the last phrase in an almost normal voice. A pair of kicks and the flimsy barricade collapsed, raising clouds of dust.

  “Snuff out the lantern, lad! We’ve lived here without light for three years.”

  Three years? I calculated the time difference between the black hole and the rest of Galactogon. The Corsican has been running the Brotherhood for thirty years. One year a decade? I’d better hurry up or I might miss the end of the war out there. Although, how do the devs deal with the time difference for the player? I’m no local. You can’t just hibernate me for years at a time. Will they blame Belmarad for everything? That it was his presence that stopped time? It would sound plausible enough.

  I obediently turned off my light and examined my audience in the 3D rendering provided by my spatial scanner. Ragged, scabby, frail and weak. Five officers, barely able to stand on their feet. The captain — also the former head of the Brotherhood — looked better than the rest. He still sported his uniform at least. It hung like a sack on the Bufondian, yet managed to conceal the toad’s emaciated body. That would be the last thing I would want to see.

  “What’s your name then?” I asked the captain. The toad croaked scornfully in response.

  “I can see you’re a shabby pirate. In my day, they wouldn’t even let you up the front steps. Ignoramus!”

  “There was no time to learn. They made me lieutenant just yesterday and today I’m already here. By the way, thirty years have passed out there, in the big world. So if anyone knew about you ‘in your day,’ well…now they don’t. Maybe one or two.”

  There was a general ruckus. The officers began peppering me with questions, but the captain quickly squashed the din.

  “Quiet! Shut yer yapps. To your stations! Look alive! If you get us out of here, lad, I’ll make you major! You’ll fill me in on the Brotherhood’s history. I’m Captain Wit-Verr. Now let’s get to work!”

  The exhausted, yet unbroken pirates helped as best they could. And this at its core entailed not getting in the way and not making a mess in their trousers when they saw a ten-meter talking snake. With that said, the haler among them arranged themselves in a chain to transport elo. Unfortunately, more than half of the crew had lost their eyes and, even with a great desire to help the common cause, really just could not. As Captain Wit-Verr explained, Belmarad considered eyes a great delicacy and would periodically visit their ship to get a bite of his favorite snack.

  “This tub’s ready to fly, Cap’n.” It took the engineer three hours to figure out the intricacies of the half-fried electronics. During this time, the pirates had devoured my orbship’s food supplies. Everything that could be eaten or drunk was eaten and drunk. Even the liquid in the brainworm’s fishbowl. Was it nutritional? You bet! No one even thought to complain about the taste.

  “Cap’n, I am detecting multiple enemies in the vicinity of our ship. I am afraid that they will attack us as soon as we try to leave.”

  “How much time will we need to turn around?”

  “To shoot? None at all. All the ships are already facing the cube. We can shoot right this instant. It’s what will happen after that remains unclear.”

  I recalled Belmarad’s answer about how he would slip through the guards. “We’ll figure that out,” he said and he really had begun to do this, transferring energy to the woodlice. What if the lack of energy wasn’t a result of something the Uldan had done to the ship, but a consequence of the dense helium we were in, absorbing all the energy? But why then doesn’t it do the same to the orbship and the armor suits? It was a bit of a stretch, of course, but I thought I had an explanation. The orbship was the brainchild of the Uldans, so there was not much wonder there. As for the armor suits — well, these had players inside of them, and the game was for the players to play. If it had been an NPC in the armor suit, perhaps everything would be different. It was worth checking.

  “Captain Wit-Verr!” I called the pirate over. “I need a victim. Is there anyone on your crew who you wouldn’t mind losing? I need to test a theory before we try to take off.”

  Wit-Verr’s expression was far from accommodating, so I felt it prudent to explain my theory about the soufflé. The toad bared his sharp fangs, grinning with a vicious grimace.

  “I’ll cut your throat if you dare stick one of my men overboard. I’ll go myself!”

  “Come now, Captain! Your job is to command. You can’t afford to play the hero.”

  “We survived all those years only because we stuck together. We shared everything! What kind of captain would I be if I betray one of my crew? I’ll go, lad. Full stop!”

  The Bufondian’s armor suit resembled an assault mech. A two-meter hull on four stumpy legs. The engineer merely groaned when he heard the creaking in its joints. Deprived of normal maintenance, the machine had rusted thoroughly. And yet, Wit-Verr piloted this pile of junk quite expertly, following me to the airlock. Just before stepping out, he said:

  “If anything happens to me, lad, make sure to retrieve my body. I don’t want it to be eaten.”

  And that was it. A simple request for a decent burial. My esteem of Captain Wit-Verr grew significantly. Even granite is known to crack and crumble from time to time, yet not this pirate captain’s will.

  “We’re being attacked! Bring him back!”r />
  The woodlice aggroed as soon as a fully-charged armor suit carrying a ‘local’ stepped into the dense helium. Three black rays immediately struck the pirate captain, trying to crush him to a tiny point. My gunner opened up with a withering pataflafla of plasma, mercilessly blasting the woodlice, but the rays appeared again and again. The woodlice died, spattering the snow-white soufflé with their green entrails but still more woodlice spawned in their wake. Meanwhile, Wit-Verr’s armor lost its energy instantly and I was forced to use my manipulators to haul the captain back onboard. The snake hooked up two wires to the armor suit and the toad flopped out and onto the floor where he lay convulsively inhaling air. Both his front paws had been crushed and his ribs protruded from his jacket. The woodlice had managed to crush the armor suit enough to hurt its pilot.

  “I’ll see to him.” Without further ado, the snake dragged the captain off to the medcapsule. She reported back a few minutes later: “It’s not serious. He’ll be as good as new in a day. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor look at him. Cap’n, he’s regaining consciousness. He wishes to speak with you. I’m patching him through.”

  “What’s the result?” The toad’s voice had grown husky and gurgling. It sounded like he had suffered some kind of internal trauma as well.

  “Negative. The creatures immediately attack any device filled with energy. We can’t launch the cruiser right now. We’ll need to think.”

  “Think, lad, think! Get us out of here!”

  New mission available: Greetings from Beyond the Horizon. Description: Find a way to escape the black hole’s guardians and rescue the pirates of Captain Wit-Verr. Reward: Rank of Major in the Brotherhood of the Jolly Roger.

  “The orbship won’t be able to accommodate one and a half thousand crew members,” Brainiac warned immediately, as if reading my thoughts. “The question may as well be written on your face, Cap’n. But it just won’t work. We need to find another way.”

  I glanced at my PDA. This was one of those rare instances when I could use outside advice. The only problem was the notification I’d received earlier:

  You may not contact other players in the given scenario. Would you like to contact Galactogon customer support?

  I stared blankly at my screens, trying to figure out a way out of our bind. And I knew for sure that there was some solution to the problem, otherwise it wouldn’t have been a mission to begin with. Furthermore, the solution must be rather straightforward because the reward sure wasn’t much to write home about. So what do we have? As soon as the ship tries to blast off, it will be surrounded by woodlice and turned into a small, high-density particle. Warlock won’t be able to cope with all our enemies. Clearly the soufflé around us was crawling with woodlice. This means that I have to concoct a situation in which the woodlice leave us alone for a full minute. A diversion? But how? The intuitive solution would be to launch some other ship in another part of the black hole, but the problem was that there was no way to signal in the dense gas. And this meant that the launch couldn’t be done remotely, while Wit-Verr would refuse to sacrifice any of his crew. A timer then? It’s an option, but I didn’t actually have a timer. I conferred with the engineer who shook her head — she wouldn’t be able to slap something together quickly enough.

  What was it that Belmarad had said? ‘The guards shouldn’t pose any problems.’

  This phrase refused to leave my head. The dark Uldan had been feeding the local mobs, channeling energy to them. As a result, they left him alone. But neither Brainiac nor I knew how to do this. So what do? How was Belmarad going to negotiate with the woodlice?

  I looked at the screens again. An orbship, a cruiser, the destroyer a little ways off, and beyond that only shadows. Hold up! Why is the destroyer so close to the cruiser anyway? In normal space terms, this wasn’t just ‘close to’ but ‘in the same spot.’ The distance between the ships was so insignificant that even another cruiser would be unable to pass between them without touching one of the ships. About three hundred meters. In the infinite sprawl of a black hole, such an arrangement of ships was really quite an amazing coincidence, one worth considering.

  “Brainiac, fly us over in that direction!”

  At first glance, the destroyer was no different from the other ships. No crew, no energy. And yet my engineer had quickly identified the distinguishing characteristic — the huge deposits of elo that were piled around its reactor. The powercells were interconnected with each other by means of switching connectors, forming a single supply loop.

  “Check it out, Cap’n,” the engineer pulled a clockwork mechanism out of the jumble of wires. “It’s a timer set for thirty minutes. It activates the elo, which supplies the reactor and…And all the energy just gets dumped out. I don’t get it…”

  I even stopped breathing: Unlike the snake, I did get it! Belmarad had trained the woodlice to absorb free energy. The guardians would be unable to resist and energy whirlpool around the destroyer. They will rush to gobble it all up, giving us the time we needed. The Uldan had planned his escape masterfully, calculating every little detail. If it hadn’t been for the brainworm, the dark lord would have certainly made it out to Galactogon and caused a disaster out there.

  It took us a lot of time to make our preparations. I had to empty the destroyer’s food reserves in order to give some strength to the exhausted pirates. Then the time came to train them, since almost all the officers and their aides had lost their eyes. We were forced to seek out those who could see anything at all and then instruct them in how to operate the cruiser’s systems. This required plenty of effort, emotion and patience, and by the end of the training I myself looked like one of the pirates: desiccated and emotionally drained.

  “Look alive, you space rats!” Wit-Verr went on issuing orders from his stretcher. The rhino had dragged the captain to the bridge and I helped the crippled toad get settled in a chair, securing him with straps. “What are you bumbling about for like zombies? You’re not zombies! You’re pirates! It’s time to get out of this hellhole! Bartok, why do you keep staring at your screen like a space slug at a space amoeba? Pull yourself together, sailor! Our life depends on you!”

  The captain was exaggerating. We weren’t about to let any of the trainees near the critical systems, but they wouldn’t know that anyway. It was important to raise the crew’s morale and Wit-Verr knew how to do this like no other.

  “Lad, we’re ready! Synch your watch!”

  You wouldn’t think the toad was afraid by his outward appearance. If I made some mistake and the destroyer fails to draw the woodlice, the cruiser would be doomed. Wit-Verr understood this too but made no effort to share this with his crew. The pirates had to believe that they were going home up until the very last moment.

  We had agreed on the precise sequence of actions and thus exactly twenty minutes after checking the clock I started the timer on the destroyer. In forty minutes the moment of truth would come. Either we’d be free or we’d be doomed. The orbship hovered near the cruiser in tedious silence as we waited. Almost a day of preparations had come down to this one minute. And there was no guarantee that we would get it for free.

  “Captain, it is time,” Brainiac reminded me. The engineer was beside me, nervously jerking her tail from side to side, her eyes fixed on the screens. I felt an anxious weight settle in my stomach. I even bit my lip, trying not to blink, so as not to miss the right moment.

  Now!

  The destroyer blinked and lit up, sparkling like a Christmas tree inside a Tesla coil and arcing lightning all around it. The soufflé immediately began swirling as the woodlice appeared around the ship and began to absorb the discharges with their bodies. There were no black rays this time. The creatures had come to feed and were in no hurry to rid the black hole of their energy source.

  “Fire!”

  The pirate cruiser came to life and a thick beam of plasma from its main cannon slammed into the rainbow cube. The next two seconds seemed like an eternity — until sudden
ly the soufflé disappeared. It was like it had been shut off, and at last I could assess the size and scale of the space prison we were in. It truly was immense. Brainiac counted more than fifty cruisers alone and there were even several Grand Arbiters in here with us. There were also quite a few woodlice. Several hundred had plastered themselves to the destroyer devouring the energy it was discharging — and a few thousand more circulated around the other ships. The plasma beam went out and the central cube began to pulsate. At first slowly, but faster and faster with every second. At the same time it swelled like a sponge.

  “We’re out Captain. We’re back in normal space!” Brainiac cried excitedly. “Calculating hyperjump now! Setting course for Blood Island! I will need forty-five seconds!”

  The woodlice caught on that something had gone drastically wrong, but they could not react to it. They remained stuck in place, twitching in different directions. The sudden absence of the dense gas made them helpless. The destroyer meanwhile continued to shoot sparks into the surrounding space. As the hyperjump timer counted down, I watched comfortably as the surviving guardians exploded one after another.