Chapter 69

When it came time to look over Oya’s initial sketch of Mason’s design, I was both surprised and intrigued. Surprised in that he didn’t meet or exceed the six million cubic meter limit I had imposed--he didn’t even come close, using a little over half--and by the overall design of the ship.

The design was that of a yacht, and not a space yacht, but of an actual water yacht that you might find on Earth. It had an overall length of approximately three hundred fifty meters which was very big for a yacht, but it was a yacht all the same. It didn’t look like it would be a very space worthy design, however. Not with the hundreds of windows. It was when he told me the total volume of the ship, which was somewhere around one-point-two million cubic meters that I knew he was up to something.

“Alright, out with it,” I said.

He smiled and Oya brought out a second design that was just as long, but was a whole lot wider and taller, and it actually looked like a spaceship. There wasn’t anything special about the ship, though like most designs it was wider at the back than the front. The overall dimensions were three hundred fifty meters long, one hundred fifty meters wide and one hundred meters tall. If he was building a Borg cube or something, it would be close to the limit but Oya, working her magic, was able to bring the design down. It was four-point-seven million cubic meters in size, which told me exactly what Mason wanted.

“Both?” I asked, to which he nodded immediately.

“The yacht isn’t just a yacht, either, but as cool as all this is, it isn’t home, if you know what I mean. I’m sure I’ll return to Earth pretty often, and I doubt that my mom would ever want to leave other than for a pseudo vacation like this trip, but with the first design, she would be able to travel back and forth at will. Can you bring up the design again, Oya?”

She nodded and the smaller ship was back on her tablet.

“The ship would be both space worthy and sea worthy, with the former being possible through metal plates. Oya didn’t have time to create another sketch of how it would look, but when ready to head into orbit, thick plates would come up over the windows and lock into place. They won’t be as thick as a regular ships’ hull would be, but I’m told that it would protect the occupants well enough, especially made out of something like Warvynium. With or without a forcefield active, the ship would also be fully submersible as well, but they won’t know how deep it can go until it is actually built.”

“Now normally the engines in ships on Earth take up quite a bit of room, but we’ll be upgrading from diesel engines to two smallish power cores that will power one pretty beefy engine and the four thrusters on the back. It won’t be breaking any speed records in space, but it should be able to move a hell of a lot faster than anything else on the water. Still, the engine and the two power cores still take up less room than a diesel engine would, so we get to have some fun with the rest of the design. Do you know what these are?” he asked, pointing to two pairs of tubes that ran parallel with the ship.

One thing immediately came to mind. “Torpedo tubes?”

“Missile tubes, actually. They wouldn’t be nearly as big as those massive ones you’re planning on using, but they would be pretty respectable. I was thinking about a mass driver or two, but they’re such a power hog when charging.”

“So what? This ship is basically going to be a pleasure craft, right? Unless you or your mom are going to be hosting wild parties on it, then go all out. You would only need a crew big enough to man all the stations and keep it in working order. You could make a ship that size ten percent living spaces while the rest would be dedicated to offense or defense, or both. I know one thing for sure though, we both know that this is going to be a gift for your mom, so you need to either get her in on the design, or get a woman to design it for you. Done right, it could almost be like a luxury home, all while still being able to bring the pain. So what about the other ship? What are you doing with that one?”

“No idea yet, honestly. I didn’t know whether or not you would say yes to two ships, so we just worked on making sure that both would fit under the limit if you did. No point in going into a lot of detail if it was one or the other. I probably would’ve just gone with the yacht in that case.”

“It doesn’t matter to me, the cost wouldn’t differ much anyways. You could’ve gone with several thousand fighters if you wanted to. In fact, that would be rather cheap in comparison.”

“Anyways,” Mason said, completely ignoring the part about the fighters. “I think I want a ship that is very speedy. Obviously nothing is going to be as fast as those new missile ships since they’re like twenty percent engines, but something faster than the average. For weapons, I don’t know. I’m thinking about ion cannons paired with some powerful turreted railguns. Bigger than gauss cannons, but smaller than mass drivers. Somewhere in the middle. You can do that, right?”

Hayir nodded. “Using human measurements, the railguns on the initial design for Jonathan’s heavy transports are capable of firing solid projectiles with a maximum diameter of three hundred twenty millimeters. Those can easily be scaled up to whatever you like.”

“How big are the rounds in something like the Grasshopper’s gauss cannons? Just for reference,” Mason asked.

“Around forty-two millimeters in diameter,” Oya answered. “That’s rounded up, as our system of measurement and your own don’t match up perfectly.”

Mason whistled upon hearing how big the rounds were. When I looked at him quizzically, he explained. “I know you said that the rounds fired from the gauss cannons were forty percent larger, but I thought you meant in total mass, not diameter. The GAU-8 already shreds through armor using high-explosive incendiary rounds or the depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds, but the gauss cannons are significantly more powerful. On lightly-armored craft, I bet that the gauss cannons suffer from over penetrating when using a round primarily made out of depleted uranium or tungsten. Actually, in space they probably don’t suffer from that at all when you take the vacuum of space into account.”

“What about the overall length of the barrels on the heavy transports?” Mason asked, turning back to look at Hayir.

“I’m not exactly sure, but it is somewhere between four-point-five and five meters. You can make barrels longer or shorter, but you should take three things into account,” he answered. “The first is the velocity of the round being propelled down the barrel. The longer the barrel, the more coils can be added, increasing the velocity and destructive power with each one. Second is power. The more coils you have, the more power you need to fire them at maximum power. Lastly, size. The longer the barrels are, the more spaced out they will need to be so they don’t interfere with each other. Most ships have turrets that can rotate three hundred sixty degrees, with a firing arc of one hundred eighty degrees. They naturally have safeguards in place so one turret doesn’t destroy another turret, but if you have long barrels and turrets that are close together, then that complicates things.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Mason replied. “I’m just trying to get a sense of how big the rail guns should be. While they would probably be more than sufficient in the atmosphere, a three hundred twenty millimeter round isn’t that big. At least I don’t think it is. What...”

It took a while for Mason to eventually settle on what type of weaponry he wanted on the ship. After that, they focused on the engines, thrusters, shields, and much of the other things that one needed to take into account when designing a ship. Eventually, I interrupted them, since Mason would have plenty of opportunity to finalize the design before we left for Earth, and he could always send Oya his thoughts. There was about thirty minutes before we needed to leave, and I had something else that I needed to get the ball rolling on as well.

“Abi has sent you four separate ideas we want you to mock up for us, Oya,” I said.

She nodded and typed on her tablet, and began speaking without looking up. “Let me see ... two tanks, an armored personnel carrier and a mobile missile launcher? Some of the vehicles for your heavy transports, I presume?”

I nodded. “And not just any vehicles. These ones will be rather unique, and there is no real restriction on the size of the first tank on the list. Make it as small as you can, while allowing it to project a forcefield around it with a minimum diameter of twenty meters, as well as the ability to shroud. The gun on it doesn’t need to be that large, as it would fulfill the role of what we would call an infantry tank on Earth.”

“The second tank doesn’t need to have a forcefield capable of extending as far outside of the tank, but we want it to have one. We want it to be able to hover and shroud as we want its main defense to be its ability to hide. In terms of armament, we want something like the railguns on the heavy transport, but fixed in place in the hull. That negates the need for a full-sized turret, but it would need a gauss cannon for anti-personnel and anti-aircraft capability. There should be an image accompanying the rest of the files, giving you an idea of what it might look like.”

She tapped a few times on her tablet and then made a gesture towards the hologram, and an image appeared. “This one?”

“Yup! It’s called the Stridsvagn 103B, also affectionately known as the S-Tank. It was developed by a country called Sweden shortly after the end of the Second World War, and as you can see, they elected to go without a turret. It was aimed by turning the entirety of the hull, while also using hydraulic systems to pivot the front of the tank up or down. Now the S-Tank was primarily a defensive tank as Sweden was worried about their neighbors to the East, but the tank we want would be capable of either offense or defense. With the shroud, it would be able to hide in plain sight, allowing it to get surprise attacks off, and with the shield it would be able to stand toe-to-toe with other tanks, and win. In theory, at least.”

“An intriguing design,” Hayir said. “Recoil might be a concern if you want it to hover rather than be on the ground, but I suppose that can be worked around in the prototype stage, or you can leave it to the individual crews.”

“Yeah, Abi figured that there would need to be thrusters on the back of the tank, which would help counteract the recoil while also allow the tank to move into position faster, or make a quick escape, again, in theory. The APC and the missile launcher are pretty straight forward in comparison, I think, though having a shroud on both would be a plus.”

Oya nodded. “I’ll have to confer with some people who deal primarily with ground vehicles, but I’m sure I’ll have a design of each of them for you to look over before you leave. Speaking of which, the two of you should probably be going, if you’re planning on cleaning up a bit or changing before we go.”

I nodded. “That’s why I interrupted. I wanted to let you know about these four ideas we had before we left.”

“You still haven’t said where we’re going,” Mason said, looking right at me.

“I’d let you know if I knew. Ask her,” I said, thumbing towards Zaszi who was sitting behind me.

“Hah, like that’ll happen,” he replied.

I turned around to see that Zaszi had a smile on her face, but she didn’t say a single word.

“Anyways, we’d better get going then. See you two in a bit?”

Ercan nodded. “We’ll see you in a bit.”

Rather than lead us through all of the teleporters and back to the hangar, Zaszi instead opened up a portal directly from Ercan’s office to the ramp leading up and into Abi. Mason and I headed to our respective rooms, showered and put on a clean set of clothes, and then stepped into our new suits. Once we were done, we met up with our friends and Vixa, whom they had been looking after for most of the day.

They, too, were in their new suits, as were the majority of people we had seen as we traveled the hallways, en route to the ramp leading us outside of the ship. When we had arrived, Mason and I had noticed that things had changed much in the short time that we were inside of the ship. The six Grasshoppers had been moved out of Abi’s landing bay and the Watchdogs were filing into them. When they loaded, the ramps closed and then all six of them lifted off, turned, and then exited the hangar through the dual airskin shields.

When I looked around the hangar, I saw a very familiar scene, though everyone wasn’t dressed up in dresses or suits this time. No, this time they were all dressed in suits of armor that differed minimally. It seemed that the armor that had been distributed to my friends and I had also been distributed to the many people present. The only people that weren’t wearing the suits were some of the members of The Indomitables, with three people in particular drawing most of the attention. Without saying anything, Vixa and I walked over.

“Jonathan! How are ye’?” the apparent heir to the Dvergr throne, Tala Telar, asked. “I heard ye’ got shot!”

I nodded. “A round from a gauss cannon. It’s all healed up now though. You remember Vixa?”

“I would expect nothin’ less and aye, I do. Hiya, Vixa!”

“So who are your shadows?” I asked, gesturing towards the two men in mechs even bigger than hers. They were colored in the same shade of red and with her family crest on the torso.

“I guess my da’ found out that ye’ were here, and he knows about the bounty and the most recent attempt. Apparently, he also knows tha’ I’ve been in close proximity to ye’, so he sent these to bozos to watch over me. They can’t have their heir up and die on ‘em.”

“Only two? I figured there would be more. I’ve got like ninety.”

“Hey, it’s not a contest!” she laughed. “Nah, there is another team watching little Marra, but the rest of the team is waitin’ at our destination.”

“Where is that, by the way?”

“Uh-uh,” she replied. “I’ve already been told not to tell ye’ where we’re goin’. Ye’ll find out when everyone else does.”

I grinned. “Worth a shot.”

My friends ended up walking over and joining us, but before long, there were a hundred or so people gathered and all of us were called over where a bunch of people were waiting. That included Zaszi and her team, my mom and dad, my sisters, Ercan, Oya and Hayir as well as Tessa and her parents. Surprisingly, of all of them, it was Tessa to speak.

“Welcome, everyone! I’m sure you’re wondering what the big mystery is, and why you were asked to wear your armor, or were given some if you didn’t have any at all. It’s a security precaution, first and foremost and while we’re not expecting today to be dangerous, it is better to be prepared than not.”

“In a few short moments, a portal will open and everyone will head on through. I will tell you now that our destination is the WI stadium where we’ll be watching the Verian Mostzals go up against the Grenduhr Blacksmiths!”

There were a few cheers throughout the hanger, but none was louder than that of Tala Telar.

“Mostzals? Hah! The Blacksmiths are gonna mop the floor with ‘em!” she shouted.

There was some additional cheering and yelling back and forth, but Tessa was soon able to continue.

“Now, as I was saying ... We’ll be watching the Mostzals go up against the Blacksmiths today. For those of you who have no idea what is going on, I’ll explain that now. The Mostzals and the Blacksmiths are two roatag teams, which are part of the Galactic Roatag Premier League, or the GRPL.”

“The GRPL consists of a sixty-three game season in which all sixty-four teams play each other once. After the regular season is over, the top thirty-two teams make the playoffs while the bottom sixteen teams enter the relegation tournament. In the relegation tournament, the bottom sixteen teams in the GRPL are joined by the top sixteen teams of the Galactic Roatag Major League, or GRML.”

“In the relegation tournament, teams are assigned randomly to one of four groups of eight, where each team will proceed to each play three games against other teams in their group. The top four teams in each group by the end of the tournament advance back to the GRPL for the next season, while the bottom four teams in each group are demoted to the GRML.”

“The playoffs are nothing special in terms of how they work. The thirty-two teams are numbered one through thirty-two and seeded into the tournament with one playing against thirty-two, two playing against thirty-one, et cetera. Each series is a best of nine, however, with the final being a best of eleven.”

“We’re only about three quarters of the way through the season, so you won’t see any playoff games today, but I can promise you an entertaining and extremely competitive match. To give you some background, Grenduhr and Veria are two of the original founding teams of the league when it started 2,612 years ago. They’ve been rivals ever since, and that rivalry has only grown more hostile and competitive, especially over the last decade or so.”

“For nine straight years, Veria has defeated Grenduhr in the regular season, but in the four times they have met in the playoffs during that time, Grenduhr has won. They’ve all been extremely close as well, with three of them going to the ninth game and the other ending after the eighth.”

“Now, many of you are probably wondering just what roatag is. The easiest way to describe it would be sort of a mix between touch American football, soccer, and ice hockey. It is a full contact, thirty versus thirty sport where each team designates three players on their team as Runners. A Runner’s job is to basically run around the field while avoiding the other teams players’ attempts at grabbing a flag attached to their waist. If a flag is stolen by the opposing team then they automatically gain three points, and if a team is in possession of all six flags, then they automatically win the game.”

“That isn’t it, though. Every player wears a pair of hover skates, and this is where the comparison to both soccer and ice hockey comes in. While the flags could be considered the main objective, a team can also win by scoring more goals than the other team has points by the end of the game, using a ball that isn’t dissimilar from a soccer ball. If Team A has scored ten goals and Team B has scored three goals and stolen two flags, then the final score would be ten to nine. Everyone with me?”

There were nods all around the room and Mason and I looked at each other with big grins on our faces. It sounded exactly like our kind of game.

“Oh! One more thing. To make the game as fair as possible, especially with many different species taking part, every player who one day hopes to make it to the big league is absolutely restricted from entering dungeons whatsoever, to make sure that they are all level one. Players are tested regularly and if they are more capable than they otherwise should be, then they are suspended immediately while being the subject of a full investigation. There are other rules in place as well to prevent some species from having massive advantages over others, but it is as fair as it can possibly be, at present.”

“Anyways, enough of my rambling. Zaszi, I think we’re ready,” she finished.

“Thank you, Tessa,” Zaszi said as she stepped forward. “Now, Mr. Warvyn has graciously allowed us to use his suite this evening, which is more than spacious enough to fit everyone here, and still have enough room to fit a hundred or so more people. Once we arrive there, you will be restricted from leaving the suite to explore the stadium for the duration of the game. When it is over and it is time to depart, a portal will be formed leading back here.”

“During the game, there will be waiters and waitresses who will be around to take orders for food and drinks, all of which are completely free. There are also bathrooms and a full bar in the suite, so you should have no need to leave the suit whatsoever. If you do wish to leave the suite, then track down myself or any member of my team, the four of which are behind me, and we will open up a portal back here for you. Keep in mind that it is a one way trip. Are there any questions?”

The volume picked up a little bit, but no one asked any questions. After waiting for a minute or so, Zaszi turned and signaled to Zogyr, who brought up both of his hands and opened up a portal. Ercan, Oya and Hayir were the first to pass through it, though others weren’t far behind. Before long, Zaszi turned towards the rest of us and waved us through.

As I was walking towards it with my friends and Vixa in tow, I heard the sound of engines spooling up behind us.

[I guess you’ll be watching over us this evening?] I asked.

[Indeed, ] she replied. [I’ll be in geostationary orbit over the stadium and the six Grasshoppers will be spread out evenly around it. Together, we’ll be scanning the area to ensure that a cloaked ship doesn’t get anywhere near the stadium.]

[Sounds good. I also just had an idea for an upgrade to the Grasshoppers, but I’ll tell you about that later.]

[Alrighty. Enjoy the game, and in the miniscule chance that someone gets passed all of the security, don’t do anything stupid.]

[I won’t, ] I promised, before stepping through the portal.

When we arrived on the other side, we were all standing inside of a large, rectangular room that had a large glass window covering one side. There were a few rows of expensive cushioned chairs on multiple levels close to it and behind those were a number of small tables with chairs positioned looking towards the playing field. In the middle of the back wall was a bar with stools and many screens, so people didn’t necessarily need to watch the game through the glass if they didn’t want to.

Everyone that had come through before us had made their way over to a table or had already taken a seat in one of the cushioned chairs, but I wanted to see what the playing field actually looked like. I was expecting something like a soccer field, and that wasn’t too far off. What was insane was just how large the field was.

[Abi, how big is a standard soccer field?]

[One hundred five meters by sixty-eight meters. Why do you ask?]

[Just wondering how much bigger this roatag field is.]

She chuckled. [Six hundred forty-six meters long, and two hundred two meters wide. The hover skates the players use allow them to get from one side of the field pretty quickly, and that combined with the size of the field and the amount of players playing at a time necessitates the large size. Before hover skates were developed, the field was about a quarter of the size it is now. Much bigger than a rink or a football field, huh?]

[Yup, ] I replied.

As I stood there leaning on the railing that separated the cushioned chairs from the small tables, Tessa walked up, bumping my hip as she did so. When I looked over, I saw that Vixa was in her arms.

“Hey. So you set all this up, huh?” I asked.

She smiled and nodded. “Hover skates aren’t just a way for kids to get around. They also play a huge part in what is probably the biggest sport in this region of the galaxy. After you took me skating and talked about hockey, I thought you would appreciate it. I’ve been here a few times since my dad does so much work with Mr. Warvyn. I contacted him while we were on our way here and asked if he would allow us to use it for a game.”

“I see. So how does this work, exactly, especially with the field being so big? Even from up here there is no way that we’ll be able see the entire field. Not with it being well over six hundred meters long.”

“Well, there are two ways to go about that. For Scyftans, like you and I, we can simply change our eyes and that will suffice. For others, special glasses are available that will magnify everything to make it easier to follow. If one doesn’t want to wear the glasses, then the screens are the next best bet,” she finished, pointing up at the large screens that were above the glass. “Oh, I forgot about these new suits. Each one comes equipped with a feature that can magnify whatever you’re looking at, so that is another option.”

I nodded. “So what about the game itself? You gave a little rundown, but you didn’t go too in depth. I also noticed that you compared it to a couple of games from Earth.”

“As soon as I knew it was happening and that I would be the one telling everyone about it, I did a little bit of research so I would be able to explain it a bit better. I suppose you want to know how the game is split up and things like that?”

“Yeah. How long do games last, are there periods or quarters or something similar?”

She nodded and then explained how it worked. “So in the regular season, games last for ninety minutes and are split into six periods of fifteen minutes each, with ten minutes inbetween each period. If the game is tied at that point, then it goes to sudden death overtime, just like many sports on Earth. The difference is that in overtime, goals don’t matter whatsoever and there is no time limit. At that point, the first team to steal a flag from the other team is the winner, so games often end up in a big brawl. Players from each team try to get past the defenders of the other to grab a flag. It usually doesn’t take very long at all.”

“It’s pretty simple, otherwise, and is much like soccer. Highly competitive, full contact soccer. It differs from team to team and species to species, but a portion of the players will be assigned to defend the players holding the flags, while the other portion tries to score goals. It gets harder and harder as one team accrues more of the flags, because only one flag can be held by a player at a time. So team A might have five of the flags, but since they need to pull more players back to defend the flag holders, that leaves them with less players to actually score goals.”

“What happens if a player picks up a flag and they already have one? Are there penalties?” I asked

“Only a few. Since it is a full contact sport, all contact to the head is banned, even accidental head contact. If it happens, the offending player is removed from the game and one of that teams’ flags is handed over to the other team. It can be a game-losing penalty, but brain injuries are incredibly difficult to heal.”

“If a player has a flag and closes their hand on another one, even to throw it to a teammate, that player is penalized, and must forfeit their flag to the opposing team. That rarely happens though, because the player will often take their flag and toss it to a teammate or onto the ground, before grabbing another one. Using abilities to acquire a flag is also a big no-no, and they also incur a penalty of a flag being forfeited over to the other team.”

“That’s about it, really. There are a few other sportsmanship penalties, but they aren’t nearly as severe. Because players being injured isn’t a huge concern, there isn’t really the need to create as many rules that need to be enforced.”

“So what about the size difference between species? I mean, Dvergr and Pygmaeans are relatively close in height, but what about something like Jotunn going up against a smaller species, or Scyftans shifting into different species to gain an advantage?”

“Size is pretty much a non-issue. There is a Jotunn team, but they rarely make it to the premier league. While they can run quite fast, they aren’t nearly as nimble as a Pygmaean might be, which makes it hard for them to grab the other teams’ flags. They can defend their own like no other species can, but they’re too easy to evade. As for Scyftans, there are many rules in place to prevent us from having too much of an advantage. For example, at the start of each match, the captain of the team chooses a form to transform into for that match, if they choose to transform at all. The rest of the team can only use that form, and they must remain in that form for the entirety of the game.”

“I just named Jotunn as an example, I didn’t think they would actually have a team considering they’re part of the Confederation.”

“There are many species from the Confederation that have teams, even though the Confederation is at war with our people,” she replied. “They aren’t at war with any of the other species though, and they allow teams to pass through their borders freely. After heavy inspection, of course. It would take something big to get the Confederation banned, and their leadership definitely doesn’t want that. It’s very good for morale, and it makes them a fair bit of credits in which to fuel their war with. That isn’t to say that the games between Scyftans and Confederation species aren’t the most entertaining, however. They’re just as competitive, if not more so than the game we’ll be watching this evening. Speaking of which...”

It wasn’t even close to being night time, but the entirety of the stadium went dark. After a few moments, an energetic female voice came over the many speakers located around the stadium and even inside the suite. As she spoke, multiple spotlights were trained on one of the entrances to the left-hand side of the field. Suddenly there was a shower of sparks, and a group of people barreled out of the tunnel.