With a deep exhale I push out into space.
The first thing I realize, I have no idea how to use the maneuvering jets on the suit.
I flail my arms about like a drowning chicken. I feel sweat beading up on my forehead, I am envisioning myself flying off into space forever adrift.
“Hahahaha” I hear crackle into my helmet. “What are you doing nub?”
Shikra gracefully floats into view, in smooth controlled movements.
“For nubs like you there is a controller in the suit pocket.” She points at her leg emphasizing her words.
I look down at my legs noticing the suit has a pocket on each leg. Reaching into my left pocket I feel a little rod and remove it. It has a control knob on the top a knub on the side, and a slider. It reminds me of the flight stick a bit, the top control rolls me around my axes, the knob does side to side and up/down and the slider is forward and back.
“What do you mean nubs like me?”
“Later, nub focus on using your suit.”
I flick the knobs around getting the feel for the movements. It’s pretty simple to get used to, flick and fwoosh. Flick and scoot its actually kind of fun.
“Ahem, you done fucken about nub? We have loot to abscond with.” Shikra says over the radio. “Uh sorry, it’s kind of fun you know?”
“Right, use your newfound toy and follow me over to the wrecks.”
I orient to her and follow behind. The wrecks are not too far off in only a few minutes we are upon them.
“Okey nub, this is one of the fighters in order to loot it place your hand on the wreck and wait 5 seconds. You will see a prompt to loot.”
Would you like to loot this wreck YES/NO
I think “Yes”.
Looting wreck please wait 10 seconds….5…3…1
Looting success!
You have obtained scrap metal
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained a firearm
You have obtained a flight suit
You have obtained 6,000 credits
I small box pops into existence right before me. The loot? “Grab that box, it has whatever loot you just found in it. There are no inventories that hold limitless crap. You must carry everything manually. That’s why I brought you out here.”
“So, I’m what cheap labor?”
“No, I wouldn’t say your cheap, I’m not paying you after all.” She pauses for a second, I look over at her and she’s tapping her chin with her finger in thought. “Well, I suppose I am teaching you, that’s kind of a payment. You’re welcome!”
“What are these blueprints, it doesn’t even say what they are for.” I ask
“You can take them to an engineering terminal, or someone with the right skills to get identified. Then you can have whatever it is crafted. You can get them when the item would have dropped but it was destroyed instead.” Shikra explains.
I tuck the box under my arm and float over to the second wreck and start the process again.
Would you like to loot this wreck YES/NO
I think “Yes”.
Looting wreck please wait 10 seconds….5…3…1
Looting success!
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained a flight suit
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained 8,000 credits
You have gained the skill Salvage basic 1
Oh nice! When Sol said that my class was only a pathway, I guess this is what she meant. If doing things, I don’t have a skill for, and one exists I can earn that skill by attempting to perform the skill. I just need to try and do everything to gain more skills!
Let’s see what it does. I think about the skill and sure enough a description appears.
Salvage basic 1:
Allows you to salvage anything that was on, part of, or in the ship. The higher your skill the better chances of success. The higher the tier of wreck you try to salvage the more likely you are to fail and destroy the wreck or its contents.
Nice! Looks like I need to loot everything I can get my hands on. But wait, how is looting like this profitable? It seems exceptionally slow and dangerous if there was a huge battle looting could take ages.
“Shikra, is there a better way to salvage all these wrecks? This seems insanely slow, just floating from wreck to wreck in this suit is time consuming.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“There sure is a better way, but I don’t have the skills or right ship for the job. My ship.” She points over her shoulder at it. “Is for blowing shit up, not looting that’s grunt work.”
I let out a sigh, of course it is. I’m getting the impression she’s a shoot first and never bother with the questions type of girl.
I eventually float up to the big destroyer wreck. I did not realize it before, but this thing is huge! It must have a large crew. I have no real way to gauge its size but maybe four or five hundred feet long.
I let go of my two boxes, so I can reach my hand out to the destroyer wreck.
Would you like to loot this wreck YES/NO
I think “Yes”.
Looting wreck please wait 10 seconds….5…3…1
Looting success!
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained 3 suits
You have obtained 7 firearms
You have obtained 14,500 rounds
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained 75,282 credits
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained an implant
You have obtained 6 cargo crates
You have obtained 2 sets of gloves
You have obtained 3 sets of boots
You have obtained a blueprint
You have obtained illicit goods
You have obtained 561 units of fuel
17 items failed to loot and were destroyed
Your skill Salvage basic 1 has increased to Salvage basic 3
That was a lot of salvage, and I got a skill up for it too which is nice.
With a lot of salvage though comes a giant ass loot box.
Infront of me spawns a huge crate about the size of Shikra’s ship.
“Uh..Shikra how are we getting this out of here?” I ask skeptically.
“Obviously we don’t, I’m going to tag it and send a message to our corp office. They will send a proper salvage team out here to grab it.”
“Wait, hold on, a salvage team? You made me do all this flying around looting, and we didn’t have too?”
“We sure do, but hey I’m sure you learned something yes? We also get to take the smaller boxes without having to split the loot. Salvage crews will inventory everything else, send us a list and we will have to select about 10% to pay them for their services.”
I guess that makes sense, I can see why people would not want to pay if they can loot or salvage themselves. At the same time big wrecks like this, or high quantity of wrecks would be too much to carry. That would mean either leaving them for good, or multiple trips.
I grab the two boxes that have drifted off from me and head back to Shikra’s ship.
We get back to the ship after a few minutes of scooting through space.
“You pick this space stuff up pretty quick Nub. What did you do before becoming a brain in a jar? Most people take weeks or months of playing before they handle space flight as well as you.”
I push the boxes into the ship in front of me, and float in after them.
“I was a student pilot; I was on my first solo flight when I had an accident” I swallow hard saying that last part. It’s still hard to think that I’m not in the real world anymore, that I am just, as Shikra said a brain in a jar.
“Other than that, I worked at a casino as a dealer, and trust me it’s not as interesting as movies portray it as. It’s a lot of smoke and drunk people being stupid.” I say to her.
“That would do it, most of the try hards that fly in here are super space nerds, aviation enthusiasts who can’t cut it IRL, or wannabe clowns who think they are hot shit, like these guys here who are now turning into human space pops.”
While we are talking, Shikra straps the two containers down into the cargo hold area, and we both strap back into our seats on the flight deck.
“Were they really that bad?” I ask
She barks out with a laugh.
“Oh yah, they were a complete joke. They were baiting the transition point out of the tutorial area trying to get easy kills. By the way it’s totally frowned upon, bad business poaching new players. If you harass the new players and they quit, less players in the game, and the more players the more money to be made!” She says almost with a squeal.
The ship comes back to life quickly under her deft hands, and we are back into FTL, off to Shikra’s employer, boss, corporation? Whatever.
“Speaking of death, how does that work? I ask, watching the stars zip past.
“Simple really, when-” She emphasizes “-not if you die. Everything you were carrying is lootable if it wasn’t destroyed when you died. If your dirtside and your ship is not destroyed, and you were smart enough to lock it, the ship has to be stolen. If it has a med bay of a certain quality it can act as a respawn point, otherwise you respawn 15 minutes later at your home point. Usually, your personal space on a station, or a corp med bay or whatever there are a lot of options.”
That’s interesting to learn, that means that gear and stuff are most likely cheaper if they are expected to be lost frequently. Also, note to self, only wear, or use gear I am prepared to lose.
“But don’t worry too much, yah? If you own a BP you can just make new gear, or ship, or you know whatever. You better get used to death because it happens a lot.” Shikra says.
“Does that mean even you die a lot?”
“Hah, no way but I’m the exception everyone else is a scrub.”
Of course, she would be like that.
“Right, anyway what’s this corp about? You have not said much about it, is it all supposed to be a surprise?”
“Guess, I can give a little away, corps name is “Periodic Elements Inc”. They get into everything, and I do mean everything. That’s one reason they send me out looking for people like you. Sus out where they would fit, and bring them in. It doesn’t matter what sort of game play they are into though, because we have a need somewhere for it.”
“So, wait the corp is called PEI? How does no one make fun of that? Couldn’t they have picked literally anything else?” I ask.
“Well nub-nub, they are one of the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful corps in the game, so yes everyone basically just calls them PIE anyway. Like I said like the elements being the basic blocks of everything…so is PIE a good portion of anything in production that is top of the line is made by us.”
“So.” I ask.
“Is there any sort of basic info or whatever I missed by not completing the tutorial? I don’t want to get out into the game and make stupid mistakes and mess up my character or whatever you know?”
“I think I said already that it’s not a big deal yeah? Besides you will be most likely getting some far more in-depth hard-core training provided by PIE.” Shikra says.
“What if I don’t want to join PIE?”
“You will, don’t worry the perks are too good.” She says confidently. “You will quickly become one at the very least mid-tier in whatever you want to do in the game. If you turn out to be good at it, top tier soon after.”
“Yeah, so what if I turn out to suck horribly at this game? I have only been playing for all of, I’m not even sure how long, hours?”
“I can tell you’re a bit of a nervous nelly Alex, chill. Trust me it’s not the end of the world yeah? You can quit and leave any time, or hell remake a new character from scratch.”
I mulled that over for a few minutes. So far all I’m hearing is positive things for joining PIE, specially if I can just leave any time I want. However, that does sound a bit too good, everything has a cost and being indebted to someone let alone a huge mega corp? Eh…I’m not so sure. Guess I will find out soon enough, and Shikra is right I suppose I could just make a new character and start all over.
A few moments later the FTL tunnel collapses and we are ejected into normal space.
Looming above us is a massive planet. It has several enormous rings circling around it in huge bands like Saturn. They are multicolored and sparkle in the sunlight like trillions of gems. The planet itself is covered in wispy white clouds, and several land masses speckle the deep blue oceans. I could also see a few moons, and countless stations, platforms, and holy crap the ships. Every type of ship I could think of was zipping around on whatever business they had.
“Welcome to Maranda IV, home of PIE’s headquarters and our largest industrial, training, and overall hub for the Corp.”
“Holy…what have I gotten myself into.”