When he logged into the game again, his naked character was in his Captain’s bed. He looked around at the room. His walls were adorned with “I love me” plaques. Awards for marksmanship, commanding fleet vehicles, battle tactics, and citations for bravery and heroism were everywhere. It made him feel hollow to look at a wall of trophies that he didn’t deserve.
Did Luciana visit him in the night? He didn’t know. Even though he was logged out, his avatar still acted normally. The more he played and the more the game imprinted his memories into it, the more indistinguishable his avatar would be from when he was in the game. At the higher level, certain players imprinted themselves so fully that if their real World body died, they would still continue to exist in the game as a RPC, Reborn Player Character.
He idly went over to his smart locker and selected his default captain suit. He dressed himself and almost stepped out the door, when he realized he was being an idiot. They were going to be meeting up with the crews that they were “kidnapping”. Even though he didn’t think anything would happen, he should at least prepare himself somewhat. He went back to his smart locker.
Captain’s Wardrobe
Hello Captain Thomas! Your default gear has already been preselected, but you can modify it.
Civilian dress:
- [X] Captain’s shirt, (blue).
- [X] Captain’s jacket, (blue).
- [X] Captain’s pants, (blue with yellow stripe).
Military dress:
- [] Padded under-weave. Used to stop knife attacks. +10 resistance to stabbing attacks.
- [] Mesh under-weave. Spreads out the damage from a projectile attack. +20 resistance against the first attack, +10 against the second attack, and functionally useless after that.
- [] Laser Reflective trench coat (Black). While it doesn’t stop a laser attack, this does help to reflect and spread out some of the damage from a laser blast. +10 resistance to lasers. -.5 movement speed while wearing. Note: coats protection is decreased if it is damaged during encounter.
He selected all of the military gear and pressed yes to accept his new load out. The only iffy piece of equipment was the trench coat. If he wore it, it indicated that he thought there was a chance for violence. That might put the party he boarded on edge. But he figured that it would be less threatening than opting for a full military load-bearing equipment dress.
He walked out from his room into the common area. His personnel were milling about, with a wide range of equipment worn. Some chose traditional automatic shotguns, some had laser rifles, some submachine gun pistoles. Some were wearing light armor, some were in civilian attire, and some were in heavy armor. One of the high-speed soldiers yelled out, “Group! Attention!”
Some of the soldiers snapped to attention, others merely went through the motions. Despite his epic bullshit story to the Lieutenant yesterday, he would have to start culling some of the rank and instilling more discipline into his men and women. He also knew that this was partially an effect of his numerous disadvantages that the game’s AI had placed upon him, but he had no idea how to remove them.
“At ease”, he called out crisply. They resumed their previous activities and he took the elevator down. He called up EVE and counted his personnel. His crew consisted of eleven personnel for the bridge crew: himself, the Lieutenant, two navigators, two sensor operators, four missile gunners that also acted as sensor operators, a chief engineer, and an assistant engineer. His support crew consisted of a chief medic and assistant, four turret gunners, and four technicians. His boarding marines consisted of two squadrons with ten people in each squadron. He rotated them into A, B, and C shifts, with A shift having half the personnel, and B and C shift being assigned a quarter each. For this operation, he had all-hands on deck.
He made his way through all the corridors to the ship’s helm. The helm of the ship consisted of a row of monitors with a pilot and copilot seat, a row of seats on each side for the navigators, sensor operators, and missile gunners. A large, segmented series of glass panes allowed space to be seen, but most crew used their screens to actually navigate, unless they just wanted to star gaze.
As he expected, Lieutenant Smith was the first person to arrive to the bridge. “Sir”, she said, saluting him crisply, “Lieutenant Smith reporting for duty. Permission to speak freely?”
His stomach knotted a little. As part of the training protocol, the game implanted some memories into him.
While it wasn’t the memories of a hot-shot badass elite commander, it was enough to answer questions about his military career, what military college was like and what classes he took, knowledge of military structure and command, and so forth. He knew from some of his readings about this game’s original role that it was also used to test the effects of PTSD and mental stress.
Thus his implanted memories told him one thing. When a junior officer walks up and says, “Permission to speak freely”, you’re about to be told to go fuck yourself.
“Permission granted”, he said, returning the salute. They both dropped their salutes at the same time.
“Sir”, she said, “It’s about the outfits of the personnel. They are not using the same weapons or gear. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to what the marine squadron is wearing.” She paused and looked at him expectantly.
He knew, from his inserted memories, that this was a bad idea. A typical squad carried the same weapons, with minor variants for specific roles like machine gunner. If one member ran dry on ammo, another could easily hand over their gear. But if each member had completely different ammunition, they wouldn’t be able to swap out easily. Additionally, a mixed unit wouldn’t work as effectively together, as they may interfere with each other unintentionally. If they trained as a mixed unit, this wouldn’t be a challenge, but he knew that training had been neglected during his time as officer of the ship.
He put on a brave face, like he knew exactly what he was doing. He could have admitted that he had glaringly ignored something a professional captain of his stature should know. But unfortunately, he also didn’t have the skills necessary to determine what the best equipment should be for a boarding party. He summoned EVE and had her quickly go through his memories in enhanced time. The “best” load out, so far as she could determine shifting through his implanted memories, would be sub-machine gun lasers with heavy armor. But heavy armor for laser attacks or projectile?
Natural projectiles tended to be very messy. Pirates liked this as a psychological fear tactic, laser burns cauterized and didn’t leave the viscera all over the place. Larger rifles didn’t do as well within the confines of a space vessel, and damaging the ship could have catastrophic consequences.
He could simply defer the uniform and equipment to her, but she was already suspicious of his lack of skills, and didn’t want to further confirm to her that he wasn’t who he was pretending to be.
The game called him a “grifter”, and it’s psychoanalytic skills were at least on point there. He knew how to bullshit.
“Lieutenant, we are pretending to be space pirates. A staff of trained military boarding a vessel will give away our cover when the captured personnel report to their next way station.”
“Yes”, she said dubiously, “But several pirates do use military tactics and training. There’s nothing inherently suspicious about it.”
“Maybe”, he conceded, quickly thinking up a new point, “But the teams are wearing the equipment they think is best for the situation. Forcing them to use armor and weapons they aren’t familiar with will likely hurt unit cohesion more than letting them choose their own equipment. The squad sergeants are responsible for their teams equipment, not officers.”
“As you say Captain”, her face betraying that she was not completely convinced. Still, he was the superior officer, and if that was his orders, that’s what they were.
She sat down in her chair and began calling up the coordinates. The rest of the bridge crew walked in, each greeting the Captain and Lieutenant before taking their assigned positions. Since there was a full crew, there were two people per screen.
The crew’s tension eased up considerably by the time the fourth drop had been made. The procedure was simple. They hid next to an asteroid at a new location each setup point, then set their scanner teams to check while they sent over coordinates meant to move the ships around. Since only skeleton crews were aboard these ships, and not necessarily the best, it took a while for them to move their ships across space to all the different locations.
Once satisfied that there was no surprise ambush lurking, the team would go to a coordinate, board the ship, transfer over the supplies, and send it on its way. The formerly anxious atmosphere took on a relaxed, if alert, atmosphere. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Until it wasn’t.
“Captain”, Staff Sergeant Montanari hailed, “We have activity in the outer perimeter.”
He brought up the sensors report. What he saw made his heart start pounding. He prayed he was wrong about it.
His ship was a battle-class frigate. It was a top of the line frigate, 4000 tons of nano composite armor, eight 32-cm missile cannons, three 1-GigaJoule UV Laser turrets, and a rapid fire anti-missile defense system. Against any ship of the same size, it would absolutely decimate them.
The problem was, the ship sensors weren’t picking up another frigate sized vehicle. They were picking up a victory-class space cruiser. 10,000 tons of nano composite armor, a 3 GigaJoule particle beam, ten 300-Million Joule lasers, and ten 32cm missile launchers, EVE fed him all this information and each revelation roiled him like a blow to the stomach.
He held some small hope that the ship didn’t see his, but that hope vanished as quickly as it appeared. Space is vast, near infinite. The odds of randomly arriving at the exact same coordinates as another ship was in the trillions. No, they had to be tracking them somehow, which meant any attempt at evasion wouldn’t work. A SOS signal wouldn’t do them any good either, if he punched it through to the IIO, the nearest ship would be days to hours out, by which time it would be too late.
How’d they tracked him? EVE replayed his military training in his head. During a mission, convalescent leave was strictly prohibited. Anyone requesting leave would have to make sure they followed strict protocols. He had granted full leave to his entire crew. He’d been treating it like a vacation instead of a mission. Any of them could have gotten drunk and blabbed about their ship, or could have been tailed and followed back. A new notification popped up in his window.
New Disadvantage Gained
Derelict Leader. You failed to follow military protocol, running a Task Force Smith Ship. Morale on any ship you command is -10.
“Great, another permanent debuff,” he thought, as he pressed his control panel. He went through the menus to find the button. Then he realized his mutant hack could do it better. “Eve,” he thought in his head, “guide me to where to send out the alert that we’re going to battle.”
It was another sobering though to realize that he couldn’t even find the controls on his own ship without help. Eve highlighted each of the successive menus he needed to hit, then she told him that he could have said the command out loud and she’d have done it.
“Why didn’t you start off with that?” he grumbled.
“Because you didn’t ask,” was her curt reply. He realized that this was one of the downsides to dealing with computers, they did what you told them and not what you meant to tell them. The frustration of computer programmers the World over.
The red lights began to pulse and he could hear the warning sirens inside the other bays starting to go off. Quick-release tethering straps dropped down from the ceiling. In the event that the hull was breached, the straps would keep you held in place onto the shuttle until the pressure equalized. If the strap section flew off, the quick release allowed you to easily drop it. Brian really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
A quest dialogue box appeared in his HUD.
New Quest: Pirate attack
You are going to be attacked. Evade, destroy, or overthrow the pirate ship to complete the quest. No experience will be gained from destroying the ship or evading it. If you choose to overthrow and capture it, experience will be rewarded based on performance.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Then he asked Eve to go through most likely combat scenarios while everyone geared up and put their helmets on. The 3GJ particle beam could hit his ship at about a 50% rate at 10,000 miles. He’d be in range at 20,000 miles, even though shooting at that range would be wasted, so it’d be a warning shot if they did that.
His own effective range was sobering. He’d be able to fire a shot from his laser at 3,000 miles, and would be able to deal damage at 1,500 miles for half damage. EVE did show him one thing that gave him an advantage, his only ace in the hole. Standard missiles had a maximum velocity of 10 mps, giving the other ship sixteen and a half minutes to fry him. Military missiles, closely guarded and regulated, had a maximum acceleration of 500 mps. From ten thousand miles out, he could reach the target in half a minute. His ship could accelerate up to 50mps, so the ploy for the other ship was to use missiles to box him in from multiple angles.
He switched his helmet comm to talk to Lieutenant Smith only. “I’m thinking of using the missiles when we’re at range, hitting the laser cannon and taking it out. Far out, we’re toast. But if we can knock out their primary weapon, our odds go up tremendously.”
He couldn’t see her facial expressions through her visored helmet, so he didn’t know if he sounded smart or not, but her reply indicated she didn’t like his plan.
“Negative. We could send our men to get the extra missiles from cargo, but we’d need to turn off gravity for them to be able to move the cargo around. If gravity is off and we try to move, we’ll kill anyone who isn’t strapped in. We only have enough for two salvos before we’re done. We need to be close enough so that their laser turrets don’t shoot our missiles out of the sky.”
Eve calculated the odds. He stood a 3% chance of winning a confrontation. Not good. The most likely scenario that EVE calculated is that the other ship would blast them from far out, taking out their bridge. Either the bridge or the underbelly of the ship would be the target. Taking out the top portion of the ship would lose the cargo, taking out the back of the ship might set off the fusion reactor and blow everything up, also losing the cargo.
Taking out the bridge would leave the rest of the crew leaderless and the ship would be unable to be steered. Taking out the underside would damage the integrity of the rocket propulsion system.
Conversely, their strategy would be much more painful. They’d have to avoid blasts from the particle beam at distance, then avoid fire from the laser cannons, fire off their rocket salvo while the laser’s recharged, avoid the counterattacking rockets from their ship, which would be sending them off in waves, then fire three of their UV laser turrets in a concentrated blast to pierce their hull and give them access. Super easy. Only thirty-threes ways it can go wrong for every one way it can go right.
He thought about his real World life. If he died, he doubted the game would let him scam in again. He’d be stuck as a low-level nobody, having to earn his rank. Since the game allowed you to earn crypto coins for completing tasks, some people really did log in and do menial tasks for people. This was not exactly his idea of a good time.
He’d likely lose his position with the Reapers. Mr. Grim wasn’t impressed with him and dying in his first major conflict certainly wouldn’t change that.
More than any of that, he realized, he liked who he was in this game. Sure, he’d been a lazy cod this entire time, but he liked being Captain. He looked at his Lieutenant. If he was really honest, he liked the people here.
He didn’t have any real friends in the outer World. He had business contacts, but his friends on the force had disappeared once he was out. These were his friends. The realization startled him. Like many things, you only miss it once it’s gone.
He was glad they were wearing helmet visors. Otherwise the crew could see the hot, angry tears boiling up around his eyes. The helmet couldn’t hide his fist, tightening into a ball. A series of self-recriminations flooded his head, damning him for acting like he was taking a vacation instead of leading a prestigious ship.
“I can help,” EVE told him.
“Even with your help, my skills aren’t enough to do anything with the information. By the time you’d tell me what to do, it’d be too late.”
“I know,” she repeated, “and I can help. Just let me.”
A prompt flashed in front of his eyes.
New Quest: Meld the Mind
Your mutant hack, EVE, would like access to your mind, giving her an unknown amount of control over your mind and body. Since this has never occurred before, Eternity Online accepts no liability for damage or disability resulting from using a hack. Proceed? Yes / no.
“An unknown amount of control?”, he asked EVE.
“Yes, but it won’t be as much as you are imagining. I can simply merge our thoughts together for very short periods of time, although you will still retain full consciousness and control.”
Quest update: Meld the Mind
Your mutant hack, EVE, pinky swears that it will not take over your mind and cause you to become an uncontrollable monster. Do you gullibly accept this offer?
Yes / no
The unknown possibilities were frightening to Mark, but he also realized that he needed to put on his big-boy pants. If he didn’t do this, his whole ship was as good as dead. If there were any side effects, he’d deal with them if and when they occurred.
He hit the yes button and the screen and immediately fell forward. Since he was strapped to his seat, he just hung there limply. The game started retconning his memories.
In the original version of his origin, he’d been a lazy punk whose military Dad had sent him off to military school to teach him discipline. In the retconned version, his Dad had been a military diehard, but also a paranoid genius who invented the scientific field of Sapientology. He thought that space exploration would lead to contact with civilizations that would destroy humans.
He’d implanted Mark with augmentations designed to boost human capabilities, which then lead to Mark’s career and academic boost. Unfortunately, whatever Mark’s Dad, John Thomas, had been classified and Mark didn’t have the clearance to find him.
Quest Complete: Meld the Mind
Congratulations! You have now melded your mind with a mutant hack artificial intelligence. From years of reading sci-fi, you can believe this will have no negative repercussions.
New Species Gained:
Metahuman. You are now more than human, but what exactly has yet to be determined.
New Advantage Gained:
Compartmentalized mind. Your conscious mind can focus on one task while your AI runs other operations in the background.
New Skills Gained:
Modular Abilities, Level 1. At level 1, your AI can be used to consult at each stage of an operation, augmenting your skills at any task equivalent to what the AI knows. Further progression is not possible without finding your Dad or his research and unlocking the powers of a metahuman.
Warning: Attempting to exceed your level in any skill with Modular Abilities may have harmful effects.
Limited Interface, Level 1. You have access to some sensory data from machines without having to directly look at the screen. Further progression is not possible without finding your Dad or his research and unlocking the powers of a metahuman.
New Disadvantage gained: Minority status. Governments have banned certain forms of artificial intelligence because they’ve proven too dangerous. You have gained KoS status for certain government organizations that find out about your unique past. Others may attempt to kill you to remove your new implant. Others may kill you just because you’re different. Different planets may have different rules, consult your
New Quest: Daddy’s Boy
Find the whereabouts of your father and his research.
Rewards: Unlocks progression of your metahuman class.
Mark could suddenly feel things he never had before. The ship no longer seemed like a lifeless hunk of steel. It was now a living organism to him. He could feel the pings generated by echolocation system, the sensors that were attuned to heat and movement, and the laser sensors that bounced off line of sight objects. These feelings were dull, a bit like wearing a wool glove and holding it in your hand, but he now felt a connection with the ship he hadn’t thought possible. He felt like he was really the Captain.
He pulled himself out of his slumped position and found himself easily able to track the other ship’s movements, even without his technicians. He now *knew* how to operate the equipment. There was a small delay, as each time there was a gap between what he consciously knew, which wasn’t much, against what his AI knew, there was a pause while it supplied the information. Mark knew he’d have to find his father and level up this skill to make himself more powerful, but that could wait until the current situation resolved itself.
He switched his comms over to the bridge channel.
“On my mark,” he said, “We’re going to make a run at the ship. Primary objective is to take out the main particle beam. Secondary objectives are to take out the laser turrets. Engineers, man the anti-missiles for our descent in. EVE, assist with anti-missile aiming. I’m taking us in.”
Mark strove to project an aura of leadership and confidence into his words. With his new abilities, they might stand a chance, but the odds were still long.
“Captain”, Arabella Scott, his chief communications officer said, “They are trying to hail us.”
“Ignore it.” He said flatly. “It’ll be ‘blah blah’ surrender, ‘blah blah’ face destruction. They know the penalty for attacking this ship, so it’ll either be enslavement or execution if they capture us.”
He had to think through his approach carefully. Going to fast in one direction would make changing course more difficult. But he couldn’t simply let the other ship back out and take pot shots at him while he made his way in. He plotted his course as a series of points that allowed him to shoot from his broadside, then port side, at approximately the same location he figured the other ship would be at.
The near infinite number of trajectories involved caused his vision to tunnel, and he felt pressure inside his head. Blood began running down his nose and into his throat, a faint coppery scent lingering in his nasal passage. “Sorry,” EVE said in his head, “I started calculating all the trajectories and your mind can’t handle that. I’m limiting it to the dozen most likely scenarios.”
“Please keep my merely mortal condition in mind while making any future calculations,” Mark thought to EVE. He set his communications channel to ALL.
“Everyone, we’re going to take these bastards out. Boarding team, stand ready to board, but stay buckled in until the command is given by me, the XO, or one of the other board staff. In the event that the deck is destroyed, follow down the chain of command. Out.”
He then began his run at the enemy ship, “Void Terror” now appearing as the name of it. “Subtle”, he thought to himself, as the Void Terror shot out its gigantic particle beam. As predicted, it didn’t come close, but it was a shot across the bow as a warning. He moved the ships speed up to 10mps, and the Void Terror unleashed its first barrage of missiles. Sixteen minutes to contact.
The Void Terror unleashed another particle beam at his ship, using the forward lag to estimate where it would be. EVE took control and he pushed the ship down quickly as the beam made an arcing swipe at his ship. Another salvo of missiles were unleashed. Twelve minutes to contact.
He pushed the ships speed up to 20mps, as the Void Terror began moving as well. It turned to position itself underneath the Calrussian, which was fine with Captain Smith. He needed to be above it to destroy its particle beam, they needed to be beneath him to ensure they didn’t damage the cargo.
Another wave of missiles flew out of the Void Terror, and Mark realized he’d been goaded into a trap. The first wave of missiles were on his right, the second wave were fast approaching on his left. If he tried to turn around or move, they’d box him in from both sides. If he tried to pull up, the particle beam would get him from underneath. He could feel his breath tightening, coupled with the G-forces being exerted on his body under such fast moving conditions.
His grip tightened on the ships controls as he began a sudden swerve to the right into the first set of missiles. He focused as time slowed down and his field of vision shrunk, aiming his UV lasers at the incoming missiles. With both groups moving at insanely fast speeds, he shouldn’t have been able to hit anything, but he could calculate the trajectories of the missiles as they moved to intercept him. He shot out the beams from the ship, taking out two of the incoming missiles. His team took out an additional six, but two of them made impact and rattled the ship.
He felt like he was a jellybean inside of a jar being shaken by an angry kid, but he tried to control his breathing and get himself under control. He didn’t have time to slow down as the particle beam tore out from the Void Terror, scoring another blow against his beleaguered ship. Chunks of metal tore off the sides and underbelly as the beam danced across it, and Thomas focused harder.
He could smell copper in the air, but couldn’t let that stop him. Another volley of missiles was being loosed, and he nosedived straight towards the Void Terror. He focused his laser beams at the particle beam, just as it geared up for another shot. He fired all three of his beams before jerking aside at maximum thrust. His ship took another blow, but he saw in satisfaction that the particle beam had ripped free from the Void Terror. At least that wouldn’t be a problem. Then ten 300 million joule beams began firing at him, making him jerk and toss about as he maneuvered the ship to avoid their fire.
The crew on the Void Terror knew what they were doing, using lead and lag to guess where he’d go. He yelled out to the crew through his helmet, “Missiles engage the lasers, take them out!” His people instantly complied, shooting off a salvo that took out four of the laser guns. Mark grimaced at the fact that his best weapons had taken out less than half of the other ships offensive capabilities, but he knew that even that was lucky with an inexperienced crew whose equilibriums were off from all the turning and sudden moves.
Mark kept track of all the missiles chasing after him while he turned, jerked, and flipped his ship for survival. Space suits fortunately quarantined any expelled waste or the crew of his ship would have face masks filled with vomit from the wrenching turns. Mark couldn’t see anything from his own eyes anymore, and he only heard a tinny, ringing noise in his ears. He used the ship sensors to see where he was relative to the Void Terror, and strafed the laser turrets with his own while he dodged them.
He had carefully allowed the trailing missiles to follow him in a uniformly line, some burning up as they were caught in the Void Terror’s laser fire. He slowed the pace of his ship down, allowing them to catch up within a few miles of his position. He gunned his ship and let it skip across the bow of the Void Terror like a skipping stone, without ever making contact. Two dozen missiles impacted the top of the Void Terror, ripping open a hole in the cargo bay of the Void Terror.
Mark wanted to celebrate, but felt weightless. He slumped forward in his pilot’s seat, unconscious.