Ronin cursed quietly as Alexander’s father introduced himself. Why hadn’t he looked at the message before blindly pressing buttons?

“Sleeping… son?” He asked, adjusting the already perfect black tie at his neck before smoothing out his gray suit jacket. “I suppose that’s understandable; you had a busy day… after all.” Moving over to Ronin’s desk, he pulled up his pants slightly as he sat down.

“We don’t actually need sleep anymore. Did you know that? It took me nearly five years to break the habit… even now, I can’t help but close my eyes on a particularly difficult day.”

Ronin listened to Leo’s calm voice. The man wasn’t saying anything of note, just talking about small things. He reached out as he spoke and accessed the globe floating over the desk. Manipulating the controls, he zoomed in on various areas, looking at Ronin’s set up and talking about items of little importance.

“I had planned on asking you for the credits you brought with you… but I see that you have spent them already.” He eventually said with a sigh, leaning back from the pocket world.

“I… uh, I mean I… yes sir” Ronin managed to say eventually. It was strange, he was an adult, and had been responsible for himself for the last twenty-five years. Yet here, lying in bed, with the father of a man he’d helped to kill, Ronin felt like a small child.

“Now, now Alex. There’s no need to call me sir.” He said with a broad smile that failed to reach his slate grey eyes. “I’m your father… call me dad.”

“I, um, don’t think that is appropriate, si…”

“Was I not clear?” Leo interrupted, running a hand through his slicked back hair. It was jet black with grey at the temples and looked too perfect to be natural. He hadn’t so much as raised his voice, yet Ronin felt a chill at the words. His eyes were drawn to the man’s hand. It bore a large gold ring that covered both his middle and ring finger. It was crowned with a lion’s head, the eyes so realistic he could swear they were looking right into him.

“What is he doing?” Ronin wondered, “He knows who I am, he led the community in the caves when I was a boy. Hell, he got crystallized with my parents.”

“I’m sorry… father.” He said at last, not sure what game the man was playing. Just like when he was a child, he couldn’t deny the man. Nobody from the caves had been able to deny him.

“Good, Alex, good” he said with another fake smile. “Now, unfortunately we seem to have a bit of a problem. Do you know what that problem is, Alex?” He asked kindly.

“I… why don’t you tell me si… father.” He said, still thrown by this man from his past, his connection to the dead Alexander, and the awful day he’d had since returning to the cave with that crystal seed.

“Of course, son,” he said. “You see, the first problem, is that you spent all the credits I asked you to bring me when you crystallized. Now that, though unfortunate, can be worked around. But the second problem.” At this point he raised his other hand. A glass of red wine appearing out of nowhere. Ronin noticed this hand also bore a large lion headed ring. He took a slow sip before continuing.

“The second problem is that we have an appointment in twenty-four hours. An appointment that we cannot miss or be late to. Don’t you remember son? The reason I order… asked you to crystallize yesterday? It’s almost time for the father-son event in the shared tutorial world. And I know you remember just how much we have riding on that competition.”

The veneer of calm cracked, ever so slightly at the word much, and the wine glass in his hand trembled. Opening his hand, the glass dissolved into the air, taking the evidence of his agitation with it.

“Now, I know we talked about this competition before, but… due to your… condition, you might have forgotten about it. I can forgive that; I can forgive the credits you spent… I can even forget about the unfortunate… circumstances… that resulted in your current situation. However,” Leo stood up and walked over to stand over Ronin.

“This competition requires that a ship registered father son pair compete together. Now, I am confident in my ability to win this alone, or I wouldn’t have bothered calling such a useless fool as my dear Alexander. The rules, however, do not allow for that. So… be ready twenty-four hours from now. I will gather you from your room, hell, I’ll even give you one million credits of the prize money once we win… do that for me… son… and we can let bygones be bygones. Besides, I think you will find yourself needing the money soon… do we have an understanding?”

Looking deeply into Leo Dawson’s slate gray eyes, Ronin nodded his head. He couldn’t help but feel some lingering childhood fear for this man, and, one million credits, just to be a tag along? How could he resist; besides, he would need the money since he’d firmly decided not to enter that hellish pocket world again.

“I’m glad we understand one another.” He said with another fake smile, “here is an overview of the competition. Not that I expect you to contribute much of worth, just be here in twenty-four hours… I don’t have to say ‘or else’ do I?” having said everything he wanted to; Leo Dawson winked out of existence. It was like he had never been there at all.

Finally sitting up with a deep sigh, Ronin leaned his back against the wall. “What is going on? What is it about this competition that would cause him to not care about his own son?” Not that Ronin’s own father had cared all that much about him either. They’d left him behind just as soon as they’d scraped the credits together to leave.

Looking at the pamphlet Leo had handed him, Ronin read it over. It looked like it amounted to a survival game with a crystalline theme. There was a million-credit entry fee, per person. A one hundred million credit grand prize, as well as a special personal tutorial globe item… a giant octopus ship with a clear body that housed an entire city. The blip under the picture read,

“Show off to your peers with this luxury under sea cruse city”

“That couldn’t be the reason, could it?” he said aloud in consternation. “An underwater ship, really?” he was about to roll over and go back to sleep, when he got another call. Groaning, he raised his hand to swat the screen away… before thinking better of it and reading the message.

The screen read “incoming call from Markus Ball.” Sitting straight up with a start, Ronin hit the acceptance button. Markus didn’t appear in his room like Leo had. This time, a screen appeared in front of him, which held Markus’s home cave. His unconscious body lay on the bare stone, covered by a thin grimy blanket. His wife sat next to him, holding his hand and looking through the screen at Ronin.

“Penny! What’s going on, is Markus, ok? I didn’t…”

“Hello Robert” she said, talking right over him. “I called in a favor from one of Markus’s old friends to make this recording.” She said, pausing to wipe a tear from her eye. “Mark… isn’t doing well. His friend has a medical scanner, he’s only got at most two days to live Robert.” She was the only one who still called him Robert, the only one who he didn’t get mad at for it anyway. He waited while she blew her nose before she continued.

“Mark’s friend runs the crystallization pad nearby and said he can pull some strings for Mark to jump the line… the problem is the teleportation fee… and the crystallization fee.” Her voice got quieter and quieter as she said the last two lines. “The teleport is twenty thousand credits, and crystallization costs one million.” she was practically whispering at this point.

“I know,” she took a deep breath and looked straight through the screen and into Ronin’s soul. “It’s a lot to ask, but you got all the stuff Alexander and his friends took from us. If there is enough, could you use some to save my husband’s life?” she was on the verge of tears, but held out just long enough to say, “If you can, within the next two days… send the money to Mark’s friend. I’ve included his contact information.” The screen dissolved as she lost her composure completely.

Ronin was alone in his room again. He stared into the air that had just occupied the only friend and the closest thing to parents he’d had on earth. Rage at the injustice of it all, welled up inside his chest. Throwing back his head, he screamed at the ceiling until his voice broke from the strain.

“Why,” he said. Voice coming out in a croak. “Why did I spend all that money, I knew he was hurt. I knew it, but I just spent it all anyway. For a world full of ‘adventure,’ ha what a sick joke.” The croak in his voice cleared away before he’d even finished speaking. Healed good as new by the ship, denying him even the pain of his grief.

Getting out of bed he paced the room, berating himself the whole time. At just under twenty-five feet long, it didn’t allow him for very long strides. Looking up at the door, he contemplated going out for a walk. He hadn’t even looked out the window yet, and he’d heard his whole life that the crystalline city in the ship was the most beautiful thing in existence. Reaching out his hand to the knob, he froze. Leo’s face entered his mind, and he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Turning back around, he resumed his pacing.

Intellectually he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered. Thinking of Leo just now had reminded him of that fact. If he hadn’t spent all that money, Alexander’s dad would have just taken it from him… Wait, Alexander’s dad had offered him a million credits for his participation in the father son event tomorrow. Did he know? Excitement lifted his heart, before he remembered the teleportation fee, and it came crashing down again.

“No, there’s a chance. There has to be…but how can I make that much money?” his pacing took him back towards the window, back towards the globe slowly spinning above his desk. “No,” he said turning around again. On his next lap, he slowed down a little when he turned around at the desk. “No, there is no way. Besides, I’ve only got one day. There’s no way I can make twenty thousand credits in one day. By the fifth lap, he remembered the time dilation feature and was forced to stop his pacing.

“Might as well check it out.” he said with a shrug, not having thought of any other ideas. Opening the menu, he was shocked to see that he could indeed manipulate the flow of time in his pocket world. Right now, it was set to mimic ship time, or real-world time, but he could slow it down to a dead stop if he wanted too. Handy, if he was going to spend millions of years crossing the stars. When he checked if he could speed things up, however, he found a problem. He could speed things up, but it cost credits.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

It looked like he could turn a day outside into a month in his pocket world for one thousand credits. It cost an additional thousand credits for every extra month added into that day. It got exponentially cheaper if he wanted to add years or whole decades instead of months, but that kind of money was a distant dream to Ronin.

“Damn it… Why? I don’t even ha…” he trailed off as he checked his credit balance. He actually did have some credits, four thousand, one hundred eighty-eight of them to be exact. “Where did these come from?” digging a little deeper he found a receipt with a breakdown of how each credit had been earned. Confused by everything he saw, he wished with frustration that it was easier to understand. No sooner had he wished that, then the complicated tables disappeared and were replaced with a short bullet list.

* goblin = killed / captured = 1 credit (8)

* Kaldarr = killed / captured 50 credits (1800)

* Goblin = restored to full health = 10 credits (60)

* Goblin restored / enhanced = 1000 credits (1,000)

* Obtained Kaldarr space craft = 500 credits (1,250) (half points for partially damaged vessel)

* Improved the living conditions of goblins = 10 credits per (70)

There was a lot more information available, but this gave him the highlights and he was glad for it. In his current mental state, he didn’t think anything more complicated would sink in. having read the list, he started pacing again. To the door, then back to the desk where he read the list. It took him time, but eventually two things became clear to him.

The first thing was that life was considered more valuable to the pocket world than death was. He could tell that in the number of credits offered. He had gotten one credit for killing that poor goblin woman. Yet he had gotten ten credits for restoring them to health, and another ten for improving their living conditions. That was twenty times the credits for just killing them.

The second thing was that he could actually do this. If he spent the four thousand credits to turn his one day into four months, and he used that whole time to build a community of goblins… he could make it happen. Having made his decision, he moved over to the time dilation tab. Sliding it over to four months he hit enter, watching as the credits he’d just earned drained away. He thought about Owl three and Owl four then. Of Steady Aim and Grush. This wouldn’t have been possible without them.

Having made his choice, Ronin stood up. It hadn’t been an entire night since he resolved not to go back into that place. Yet, here he was preparing to spend the next four months there. He went to the bathroom; he wanted another shower first.

* * *

Ronin heard the depressurizing hiss of his pod opening, before he opened his eyes. The shower had felt so good that he had lingered far longer than he should have, eating away one of his few remaining hours. Blinking his eyes open reluctantly, he gave a start at what greeted his eyes.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” He asked in a panic, reaching for his rifle.

“Nothing out here is wrong sir,” Owl two said, laying a hand over his rifle, at the same time Owl five laid her hand on his arm. The pair of them had been crowded so close around his pod it looked like they were trying to crawl inside with him. “We were simply worried. I anticipated you would be out for perhaps six hours while you healed, however, you have been unresponsive for roughly six days… sir.”

“Six… six days?” Ronin yelped. “But that’s imposs…” he trailed off as he thought back to when he’d first awoke in his hotel room. The pop up had asked him if he wanted to pause the flow of time in his pocket world, but he’d just blindly waved it away… just like he’d done with the call to Leo. Still, it had barely been a whole night before he came back so how… oh, he’d sped up the flow of time before taking an hour’s long shower.

He sighed, waving them back. Doing the mental math with the help of his cybernetics enhanced brain told him the truth. That one hour in the shower had translated to about five days, added to his half a day of sleep and… six days.

“Ok guys, false alarm, everything is fine.” He said, waving them away. “I put myself down on purpose to run some calculations, I never dreamed it would take this long.” He continued, not exactly lying; he had been making calculations, and it had taken way longer than he had planned. “Now that I’m back, you can get me up to speed and…”

“Sir,” Owl two interrupted, in what was quickly becoming his trademark move. “I am sorry to interrupt, however,” Ronin didn’t think he sounded very sorry. “The mayor has sent word over the com unit I gave him… there’s a problem at the outer wall, and he is requesting your aid.”

“What? The mayor survived? What problem?” allowing his surviving team members to pull him out of his pod, Ronin looked around in astonishment. The one-hundred-yard diameter half dome shaped cave had been transformed entirely. The pod sat in the middle of the dome, affording Ronin a good view of the whole cave. He spun a circle in shock, taking in all the changes.

In the section farthest away from the two tunnels leading into the valley, was a neatly laid out scrap heap. It took Ronin a moment to recognize the twisted hulks of the two drop ships Owl five had shot with rockets. They took up a large section of the cave, and were in pieces; and it looked like someone had been taking them apart and making neat piles of component parts. “They must have been lowered down here in pieces through the hole, by the working drop ships,” he thought. Since the intact ships were far too big to fit down here.

A little separated from the ship debris, another pile of metal lay heaped on the floor. A passing glance showed this to be the armored suits the Kaldarr had been wearing. On the other side of the cave, stood what looked like a smaller version of the local town. The houses were smaller in scale, but they were all constructed of dinosaur hide, stretched tight over wood frames. Ronin counted four of them, with one being taller than the others by a few feet. Two small fires had been laid out on the cave floor, a pile of rocks around each to contain them.

The closest fire held a large pot, suspended over the low burning flames. Tending to the pot was an absolute giant. A giant by goblin standards at least; he had to top five feet by four inches, and his frame was densely packed with lean muscle. His flame red hair was perhaps two inches long and stuck out wildly in all directions. The outfit he wore was a near replica of what Peters and Gibbs had worn when they first met them, dinosaur hide pants and shirt, with the vital areas covered with thick bone like plates. Ronin now recognized those plates as having come from an ankylosaur.

An unfamiliar human woman stood beside the large goblin. She was of a height with her green counterpart, with pale skin and light brown hair cropped short to her head. It looked like she was coaching him through the process of making soup. Pointing to various vegetables or fruits, and pieces of meat, none of which Ronin recognized, and murmuring to him as her finger came to rest on each one.

The second fire was occupied by a pair of goblin females, and an unfamiliar human male with close cropped blonde hair. These goblins were the normal four-foot height, though they weren’t the stick figures Ronin had met a few days ago in the caves. They were fully fleshed out, and even had some feminine curves showing up through their clothing. The pair were dressed in local children’s clothes. The unfamiliar human man and woman were also dressed in the local civilian garb. The three of them stood over a second steaming pot, while the human taught the goblins how to wash clothes.

“It seems like I missed out on a lot over the last week,” Ronin said after taking in a full circle. His eyes coming to rest on four Kaldarr warriors, stripped to their undershorts and chained to the wall. thick course hair covered their slate grey bodies that rippled with muscle. Their small beady black eyes glared at him over extended lower jaws that held thumb sized tusks. Each had a large, uncomfortable looking, metal collar around their thick necks. “What’s up with those guys?” he asked, a spike of anger running through him at the sight of his teammate’s killers.

“Sir, Mayor Emil requested assistance an hour ago. I will be happy to fill you in on the situation here, as we make our way to town.” The mechanical tone was polite, yet inflexible. Ronin knew that if he wanted answers, unless he wanted to start dropping orders, the best way would be to follow the robot.

“Alright then, lead the way.” He said, motioning Owl two to precede him. With a nod, the android began moving down the southern tunnel at a full-on sprint. Blinking his eyes at the speed his assistant was capable of, Ronin did his best to catch up.

Exiting the cave, Ronin took in the two captured drop ships as they rocketed passed them. The ships weren’t pretty by any one’s standards, looking like semi-truck sized cargo containers with engines mounted to the top and sides. The third ship looked worse of all. It was intact but would require major repairs to get it airborne again. Looking back at them over his shoulder as they ran by, Ronin noticed that Owl five wasn’t following.

“Why isn’t Owl five coming?” he asked as he caught up to Owl two at last.

“Apart from Owl five and myself,” Owl two said while he sprinted. “The only person in that cave who can be one hundred percent relied upon to be loyal is the goblin with the drone parasite. So, until we come up with a way to keep them all in line, one of us will have to stay at the base at all times.”

Ronin frowned at those words. He didn’t like splitting his already reduced team up even more but didn’t know what the alternative was. The plans he’d roughly sketched out in his hotel room would only compound the problem. Shaking his head, he turned back to Owl two.

“Ok, fine. Why don’t you give me the highlighted version of what I missed then?”

“Yes sir.” The android said before beginning his report. “We recovered all the wreckage we could from the Kaldarr drop ships. I had the captured human pilots drop it off inside the cave for more convenient processing. We have two functional ships and another that we could make work if we had the materials. Unfortunately, the ships aren’t compatible with the reactor in our own drop pod. Meaning we have no way to power them.

“I am attempting to make a work around, but the technology that was used to make the drop ships is just too different from our own pod. I might be able to do it, but it will take time. Current recommendation is to only use one ship and only when needed. Recharging it using the power cells from the remaining four ships.” Owl two paused for comments.

“Ok, understood,” Ronin said. “Though I can’t deny I’m disappointed.” As ugly as they were, having access to the skies all the time would have been great. He cursed himself again for choosing that drop pod over a more convenient drop ship, not that power wouldn’t have been just as much an issue then, but still. “What else?”

“We killed thirty-two and captured four Kaldarr slavers, and their pilot slaves. There was a total of fifty Kaldarr in the raiding force so that leaves fourteen unaccounted for. Once freed, the human slaves have been quite willing to work for us, but their loyalty has yet to be tested. For lack of anything better to do with them, I’ve had them teaching the goblins how to be useful. Oh, and speaking of goblins, when you didn’t wake up, I logged in to access the drone parasite, without the leaders cooperation we couldn’t get the rest to fall in line.”

Ronin took all of that in as they continued to run. He was a little unsettled that Owl two could ‘log in’ to his brain like that, but he was his assistant. As for the Kaldarr; Ronin had limited the number of troops any of the ships he had placed in orbit could land to fifty. He’d done that only to limit the cost of putting ships in orbit, turned out to be a good thing he did. Though, in hind sight it would have been better to avoid them entirely.

Kaldarr were a villainous race from a book he’d only read once. They were brutes who were bread for war, capturing slaves to do everything else for them. They couldn’t even pilot their own ships, let alone make the munitions they used. They’d once been a slave race to the humans of that world before they broke free and enslaved their former masters. They kept control using a heavy slave collar that shocked the wearer badly, whenever they disobeyed an order given to them by someone wearing a control bracelet.

Racking his brain, Ronin couldn’t think of much else about the Kaldarr. They were pretty one-dimensional people, inclined to war. With a, relatively, poor technological base. Unfortunately, the book never said how many drop ships one of their interstellar ships carried. So, Ronin had no way of knowing if they didn’t have the ability to invade again, or if they would soon be buried in Kaldarr warriors.

They had passed through the forest by this point, and were running through the grass lands. Setting aside his other questions for more immediate concerns, Ronin couldn’t help but marvel at his new body. He’d just covered ten miles in a dead sprint and was barely winded. Coming up to the wall, he began to slow his pace to climb the ladder. Owl two, however, only increased his speed. Reaching the base of the wall, he made a running leap, kicking off the wall to propel himself higher. Grabbing some of the ropes binding the wall together he pulled himself up again. Reaching the top of the twenty-foot wall in a few smooth movements.

Ronin, distracted by his assistant’s display, decided to give that method a try. He’d left it too late however, and when he made his own running leap, he found himself planted face first into the wall.