Chapter 44

Battlestate

16:09 EDT

It really wasn’t going well.

“These guns fucking suck!” Mason yelled from behind us, venting his anger. “And when I collapse the shields on one ship, one of these assholes moves in front of it and shields it!”

Mason hadn’t been able to destroy a single ship, and the smaller ships were more than fast enough to keep up with us. While we weren’t doing any damage to them, that wasn’t true for them. An indicator in the top left of the viewscreen was showing that our shields were only at twenty-eight percent. The weapons on the enemy ships weren’t any better than ours were, but it was five versus one and the steady stream of fire was slowly draining our shields.

I took a look at the counter in the top right and cursed under my breath.

00:19:49

“Fuck this! I’m going to go get suited up,” Mason shouted as I heard him get up.

“What? What for?” Ben asked.

“Typically when people lie in wait for someone to fall into their trap, it’s to capture their ship, not destroy it,” Mason explained. “As soon as the shields are down, they’re going to disable the engines and attempt to board us. I want to be ready when that happens.”

After he finished talking, I heard his heavy footfalls get quieter and quieter as he ran to the small armory.

“Transfer all power from the weapons to the shields and then go get suited up as well,” I told Ben.

“Done. What about you?”

I looked up at the indicator in the top left and saw that our shields had only risen from twenty-eight percent up to thirty-four percent. That wouldn’t buy us more than a few minutes, at best, now that Mason wasn’t firing back.

“I can’t exactly evade some of this fire if I’m not at the controls. Come back when you get suited up and take over for me so I can do the same.”

As he ran to get geared us as well, I returned my focus to the task at hand; dodging as many energy beams as possible. It was either a lot harder than I thought it would be, or the five chasing us were quite experienced. It could be that they had all played this game a ton, or all five were active in the navy. Either way, very few of the sustained beams went sailing past our ship, the vast majority of them taxing our shield briefly before winking out as they recharged or cooled down.

I dodged as much as I could over the next three or four minutes, watching the shield drop almost seven percent in that time. At the rate the shields were falling, I knew we would be cutting it very close. I also knew, without a doubt, that the five pursuers knew that as well.

I heard footsteps growing closer, and a moment later Ben was standing beside me, clad in armor that was not unlike the armor we wore in the real world. It wasn’t one-size fits all like our armor was, since that armor required mana to resize it, but luckily they had a variety of different sizes in stock. Including armor for Issurons that had a hole for their tail to stick through.

“So what do I do?” he asked.

“It’s pretty intuitive,” I replied while I continued to dodge as many beams as I could. “Watch me for like thirty seconds and you should get the jist of it.”

As he watched, I went through a bunch of different movements, making sure that he had at least some grasp of how everything worked. “You’ve played some games where you’ve had to play aircraft so you know how things work, for the most part. Just don’t touch the yaw controls or the pitch controls and we should be fine.”

“Got it. I think,” he said.

Standing up while holding onto the controls, I moved over to the side and allowed him to take a seat. As soon as he was seated and his hands were on the controls, I let go. “If you have any problems, shout and I’ll run back. Be back in a few minutes.”

I sprinted to the rear of the ship where the armory was located, right next to the cargo bay. As I got there, I saw Mason sitting down with the tablet in his hands.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I moved over to where my armor was stored and began pulling it all out.

“Checking to see where the likely breach points are,” he answered. “There are only two entrances which are the main hatch and the cargo bay. Neither of those are viable access points, so they’ll probably latch on with all five ships at various locations and use shaped charges. They’ll want to limit the amount of damage done to the ship, so that limits where they can breach the ship to gain entry.”

I began putting on the lower half of the suit while looking over to him. “So what are you thinking?”

“I’ve found a few places on top of the ship that they could punch through without doing any major damage. One of them is right over the galley, while the other is over the cargo bay. Besides that, there are only four more options that I can see that are spread out all over the ship. One of them is on the starboard side, pretty much directly opposite of the hatch, while the other three are all under the ship; one in the cargo bay, one near our quarters and the other is in the lavatory. There is really no way to know where they’re going to come from, and it makes it extremely difficult to deal with, especially since neither you or Ben have any actual experience with firearms.”

I could agree with that. I hadn’t wanted to play either of the two FPS games my mom showed us because I would likely perform very poorly and dying would probably be quite unpleasant. It figures that we’d get in a firefight within hours of playing this game.

“And that’s not even taking into account the possibility that they use gas,” Mason said, causing me to freeze as I was in the process of putting on the upper portion of the armor.

“Gas?”

“It may not be something lethal, in fact I would bet that it would be some sort of sleep agent, but these suits have a limited supply of air. They could just punch through in one area and then flood the ship with the gas to eventually knock all of us out. We wouldn’t be able to purge it either, because then we wouldn’t have any air left to breathe.”

“What do you mean we wouldn’t have any air left to breathe?”

He gave me a look. “You’re telling me that you’re the owner of one of, if not the most advanced ships in the universe and you don’t know how the life support works on it?”

“I didn’t think to ask,” I shrugged.

“It may be different on other ships, but this one uses a combination of air scrubbers and tanks to supply breathable air for a long duration. If we need to purge the toxins then that uses up a sizable portion of our air. If they do it once we can probably deal with it, but any more than that and we probably won’t have anything left to breathe.”

I grimaced at the thought of that. It seemed like the only option would be to fend them off, but if they did decide to use gas, then there would be absolutely nothing we could do. By then, our engines will have been disabled meaning that we wouldn’t be able to jump to hyperspace until they were repaired. Give us a few days to familiarize ourselves with the ship and read through the manual and we might be able to fix it, but I had little to no hope of us being able to do that right now.

I finished suiting up and then booked it to the bridge. Ben began getting up before I even got there, but he held on to the controls until I could take over.

“How many shots do you think we can take without the shields?” I asked Ben as I tried to keep us out of the line of fire.

“I have absolutely no idea. Maybe two or three, but if we take too many hits then something is bound to get broken. Why? What do you have in mind?”

“Start transferring power from all non-essential systems and life support to the inertial dampeners.”

“Uhh, we need life support to breathe,” he said.

“It’ll only be for a few minutes, at most, and hopefully it will buy us the time we need to be able to jump back into hyperspace.”

I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye and then he began typing on the console in front of him. A moment later, he looked back up. “Done, though I don’t know how much power the inertial dampeners are meant to be able to take.”

“Well, they’re going to have to take quite a bit more. On my mark, drop the shields and transfer the remaining power to the inertial dampeners.”

“Give me a moment. I can do it with a push of a button if I set things up beforehand.”

I nodded and continued my job while I waited, glancing up at the top left and the top right to check what the shields were at, and how much time we had left until we could jump. The shields were at fourteen percent and we had about six minutes to go before we could safely enter hyperspace.

“Done,” Ben called out from beside me.

“Alright, both of you get buckled in. This isn’t going to be pleasant, especially not for me,” I said as I started securing myself while trying to dodge a few more hits.

“Ready!”

“Me too!”

“Alright, on mark! Three! Two! One! Mark!”

On mark, I pulled back on the throttle, cutting all forward thrust while simultaneously flipping the ship end over end until we were facing our pursuers. They were already getting closer, though they all appeared to try to dodge, expecting us to counter attack. As soon as I saw our shields fall, I immediately pushed the throttle forward, burning at maximum speed to decelerate.

Even with all the extra power that we were feeding into the inertial dampeners, the force of us slowing down so quickly pushed all of us back into our seats and shook the entire ship. Having originated on a low gravity planet, I was sure that the g-forces acting on my body were doing some seriously bad things. If it got us out of this, and my character survived, then it would be well worth it.

The enemy ships had rapidly overshot us, and if we could look back we would probably see all of them flipping end over end to perform the same maneuver. What I was counting on was them having worse inertial dampeners and the fact that it would take them time to transfer power to be able to pull it off.

I breathed a sigh of relief just as a bout of nausea hit me. Turning my head to the side, I regurgitated all of the food that I had made a few hours earlier. When I was done emptying my stomach contents, everything went dark.

It got bright again a moment later, and that was when I realized that I was back in the game lobby. Bazuth appeared immediately afterward, as did some furniture to sit on.

“Is my character dead?” I asked him.

“No, though there was quite a bit of internal damage from the maneuver you pulled. Your character will be incapacitated while your friends attempt to get you some help.”

“It worked, then?”

“It should, though it is too early to tell. The game put you here a few seconds after your character went unconscious. I will be able to tell you for sure in a few minutes.”

“I see. How did those players know to wait for us there? Actually, were they even players?”

“I can’t answer your first question, I apologize. You’ll have to figure that out on your own, if your character survives. I can confirm that they were players, however.”

There were only really two explanations I could come up with as to why a group of players would be waiting for us at that exact spot. It was a straight shot from Othora-4 to Zecciea, and it was probably well known that beginner ships require downtime between hyperspace to prevent engine damage. It could have been that they calculated the midway point between the two stations and decided to stake it out.

The second explanation actually tied into the first one, and that was that the group of pirates had some inside information. Whether that was from the company that offered the job, or someone that just found out about it, I wasn’t sure, and I wouldn’t know how to go about investigating it. With that information, they could just wait for us to appear along a certain stretch of space, certain that we would show up, eventually.

“So this is what happens when your character gets injured?”

“It depends on the severity of the injury. A player is always returned to the lobby when they are knocked unconscious or killed. In the latter case, that player’s character will cease to exist, as will any progress they’ve made up to that point. Any equipment on your character or in your inventory will also be deleted, though anything you have stored on your ship or in your guild’s base will remain accessible when you create a new character.”

“Huh,” I replied, unaware that the game was hardcore, to an extent. “So how do guild bases work?”

“There are three ways to go about creating a base, though keep in mind that each gets progressively more expensive,” he said as a screen appeared behind him showing a large open piece of land, made up largely of tall grasses. As he continued speaking, the scene began to change as the land was developed. “The cheapest way to create a base is to purchase a plot of land on a habitable planet. This can vary wildly in price, however, depending on if you want to go with a pre-built base or build one of your own. The downside to choosing to build a base on a planet is that large ships are not able to land, and you have to deal with the government of the planet you choose.

The scene changed, this time depicting a massive space station that looked heavily fortified with many large cannons spread about. Around it were ships of various sizes, as well as some that flew inside the behemoth.

“The starbase is the second option, and is considered by most to be the best one. Starbases are mobile with fierce defenses that make them very hard to attack. They start out relatively small, but they can be upgraded over time to look similar to the one behind me,” he explained as the large base disappeared and a much smaller one replaced it.

It started off as a central sphere with six identical cylindrical columns. Oriented as it was, one column was directly on top and another was on the bottom. The other four were spread out at ninety degree increments around the central sphere. As time went on, many disk-like objects were fitted onto the columns and locked in place. Some of the disks varied in size and seemed to have different uses. There was even one disk fitted onto the end of one of the columns which was literally just a large block of engines.

“The last, and most expensive, is to build inside of a hollowed out asteroid, or build on a dead world,” he said, the screen splitting into two to show both of them.

The depicted asteroid was similar to the space station, but was truly massive with a few openings large enough for even the largest ships to fly into. Wrapped around its surface were what looked like thick cables which were probably there to help keep the large rock intact. Spread haphazardly around its surface were also an incredible amount of cannons in various sizes.

The other screen showed a similar scene, though the majority of the building was on the surface of the rocky planet. There were many large ships landed on the surface of the planet, as well as a few that flew into large hangers built just below the surface. As far as defenses, it seemed like planets were the way to go. Dotted all around the planet were what looked like two types of guns. The first was clearly a mass driver and the other was some sort of anti-aircraft gun. I couldn’t tell if they were railguns or energy weapons, but they were clearly meant to shoot down fighters and lightly armored craft.

On top of that, there was a network of satellites that orbited the planet. They weren’t any bigger than the cargo ship we purchased, but they didn’t need to be. They were pretty much flying guns, with a small engine on the back, likely for repositioning, as well as a half-sphere on the side that was probably the generator to power the thing.

“You can see why they are the most expensive option. You can build anyway you like, but it often requires a very large guild to make a base on an asteroid or on a dead world like the one behind me. This is because bases on habitable worlds can be built using construction companies, and the rings are mass-produced. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to hire a construction company to build a base somewhere without atmosphere, so the work usually has to be done by the guild itself.”

I wasn’t very interested in the first of the three options, but the other two were pretty interesting. And not just in the game, either. It made me wonder how long it would take until Abi would be able match one of the space stations in size.

I saw Bazuth look over to the side for a moment before looking back to me. “Ah. It seems that your friends were able to escape, after all. It took some time for your friend to figure out how to take the ship into hyperspace, but they are now safely on their way to Zecciea.”

Now that was a relief.

“Can you let them know that I’m sitting in the lobby? If you haven’t already, that is.”

“I have already done so,” he nodded. “One of them will log out of the game as soon as there is an opportune time to do so. They are currently in the process of making sure your character is stable.”

I nodded and he continued answering my questions. Both Ben and Mason appeared about twenty minutes later, with Mason scooping me up in a bear hug while Ben immediately created a screen and began tapping on it.

“Nicely done, man,” Mason said when he let me go.

“Thanks. It was the only thing I could think of to get us out of that situation. How are your characters holding up?”

“We’re both fine. It seems that our bodies are quite a bit more durable than your own.”

“That and the fact that our suits are designed to prevent us from losing consciousness,” Ben said as he joined us. “If we hadn’t been wearing them then we would probably be dead. You definitely would be with the g’s we were pulling.”

“How is the damage to my character’s body?”

“It’s not great,” Ben replied. “We put you inside of the medical pod, though it’s a pretty basic one and can’t do more than keep you alive until we can get you to a hospital. The scanner said that you had some minor internal lacerations from the vibrations combined with the g-forces, but the big thing is that your brain was compressed, causing some tissue damage. I’m pretty sure that’s why you threw up before losing consciousness.”

“I thought you said the suits were designed to prevent us from losing consciousness.”

“From lack of blood flow to the brain, yes, but you didn’t lose consciousness from that. All a g-suit does is prevent blood from rushing to your lower body using inflatable bladders, acting almost like a tourniquet.”

“Oh,” I replied.

“By the way, you should set a task for your character unless you just want him to stand there, Mason.” Ben said.

“Oh yeah. How do I do that again?” he asked.

Ben ran him through the process and then we logged out of Battlestate so we could check out another game while we waited. We ended up selecting Everus Online, creating characters and then just fooling around until it was time for Ben and Mason to head back, both to get my character some help and deliver the cargo. We really needed those extra thousand credits.

It took an extra hour of in-game time before my character regained consciousness and I could log back in, but I was still stuck in the much more advanced med chamber until it finished doing it’s job. Ben had told the doctor what had happened to me, so I received a stern talking to before she would let me leave.

Soon after that, Ben and I were taking the tram to where our ship was docked while the cargo was unloaded. They were actually done by the time we arrived, and we just barely managed to get Mason’s attention so he would stop raising the ramp, allowing us to board.

“Good timing,” he said as we jogged up the ramp. “How’s the head?”

“I’ve got a mean headache, but the doctor said that it should subside over the next few days. I’ll need to take some good old fashioned pills for the pain, in the meantime,” I said, holding up the small canister.”

“Cool. Anyways, we’re now four thousand credits richer. Can we get any upgrades with that?” he asked, directing the question to Ben.

“Wait, four thousand credits? Where did the other thousand come from?”

“I guess the guy really needed whatever was in those crates quickly, so he tipped us an extra thousand credits.”

“I’m not sure what we can get for four thousand credits, but I’ll take a look momentarily. We’ll also need to stop and get some crates to hold any ore we’re able to gather, assuming that’s still the plan?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be, we haven’t really lost any time. We started at around 14:40, and we’ve been in-game for what, ten and a half or eleven hours? That’s only two and a half hours or so of real time, if not a little bit more. How far away is that asteroid field you were talking about, anyways?”

“Not far, only about five hours or so by hyperspace.”

I leaned over towards Mason and partially covered my mouth, “Not far, he says.”