“To start with, these are the Crimson Pirates,” The man said, his voice severe as if I was supposed to shake in my boots from the mere mention of them as I leaned against the Skimmer watching him. “They are like a scourge to this part of the Galaxy and control most if not all the Black markets that matter. They have Star ships in the thousands, and I even heard a rumor once that they have a dreadnought that they fully man.” I looked at him unimpressed, and he pressed on. “Inside that Datapad, I stole the technical blueprints of brand new technologies and how to make the tools. Did they tell you the reason you are hunting me?” He asked.

I simply shook his head, and he turned serious, “Of course, they want me dead,” he said, his scar making him look intimidating to someone who cared and perceived stereotypes. “I was a member of the Engineering team working on the Servers at their Research and development testing base here on the planet. I scalped the data stream and downloaded all the information on a fresh stream of data from off-world. The plans on it are serious business and worth a ton of Credits to other manufacturing companies. We could be rich if we sell them on the black market!” He exclaimed, and I stared at him.

“Is that it?” I asked, unimpressed but happy that I didn't bring Richard with me.

“Well, Yeah,” He said, and I got up, looking at the dimensions of the Skimmer, wishing I could move it inside the cave. I had options here, and I wondered if I wanted to exit the tutorial as soon as possible. I knew that some Chinese games went with a style that threw many for a loop if they thought tutorials were unimportant. It is a growing trend these days, and I couldn't help but think that Gaben Corporation might follow the trend.

The motto was Life wasn't fair. Why should mass multiplayer games be fair too? You needed to set up a fair way through to make it slightly unfair in a way that doesn't break the game. I leaned back as the guy looked at me, “Why do you sound so unimpressed?!” He exclaimed, “This is a huge opportunity!” he exclaimed, and I ignored him, uncaring of his words as I thought about if this might also be a choice between being a pirate or a bounty hunter when I entered the main game instead of the tutorial.

I frowned and thought about it as the Traits seemed to be important in the game, and I couldn't help but wonder about them. Some seemed easy to get, but others were not. I wanted to headshot a person from a distance as well, as it might give me a new trait. I also think that being a pirate to start off would be a bad choice. I barely knew that much about the game world, and it may be really bad to be a pirate and better to be above board. Also, I could change to a pirate later if I wanted, but I couldn't easily decriminalize myself.

It was an obvious choice not to go Pirate to start, and I wasn't one to second guess myself too much. I wasn't perfect, and I would sometimes, and maybe I might regret my choice. But it was my choice, and I hated others picking for me as this guy was strongly trying to insinuate that I should become a Pirate. Now I picked up the Datapad and opened it up since it had no security on it, and I started to take a look through it.

—-

Datapad (Quest Item)

Filled with information and technology with the latest research results, blueprints, and experimental technology of the Ualtor company.

—

I looked at it and started to scroll through it and found that I couldn't quite understand it. It was like something was stopping me from understanding it. I felt even though they looked like blueprints, the same as those I had seen before, It frustrated me, but since it was a quest item, it must be stopping me from learning the information. I frowned as I had never heard of a game doing it this way instead of just not giving you access to it because of a password or something.

Instead of brooding about that, I needed to start planning what I would do. My brain turned active, and I looked up to the sky with a smile on my face. There was no way I would leave a spaceship's potential capture alone. With a decision made, I needed to take note of what I had. I moved with purpose, and I grabbed the bound man behind me as I got a large smile on my face.

Fail or not, there would be a real battle on my hands with that spaceship crew. I started off by dragging my captive back into the cave and depositing him in a spot with light before heading back and taking better inventory of what I had and tearing apart the crates in the hope of some ammunition so that I could practice some shooting before all of this went down. I wanted to find parts to make more claw traps and, if I was lucky, at least one explosive trap, but I could live without it. The Claw Traps would become essential, and I was doing this in a sketchy way.

I would have no idea how many crew they would be sending or the size of the transport if they came down in the right direction. There were so many variables, so I needed two things to happen. I needed them to think they were being ambushed only by a single person. I needed them to run towards the cliff, and I would need to transmit that I had the datapad with me.

Pirates tend to be a greedy bunch and but they fear the strong. I would have to bait them into thinking I was a novice. I froze at that thought, and a wicked grin appeared on my face. I was a novice, and I wanted them to come to hunt me down. The best way to appear that I am a novice is to start target practice with them and start from there in the fires and set up some traps where the skimmer was.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I quickly set to work and grinned as I shifted through all the parts learning that I had enough parts for three more small claw traps and two large claw traps. With enough for two handgun traps, I would have more than enough to weed some of their forces before they got into the cave. Then I would have some traps set up for them in the waiting, ready to meet them when they run towards me.

First, though, I checked how much time I had in the pod and was surprised to see even after spending hours in the pod, it had only been one or two hours. That meant that the game world, or at least the tutorial world, was running at four-to-one speed. The game said that you couldn't sleep in the game world while you played, and so that was equivalent to two days in the game world if that happened. That sounded insane, especially if you popped off to go out with friends. Every four hours would be a game day that you missed out on.

I shook my head of that and guessed that it was probably a tutorial thing or that the power it would take to run the servers with potentially millions would be astronomical. Instead of worrying about real life, I would settle down and get to working on my tools to kill the pirates.

I grinned as I set to work making new traps and thinking about what I should do with them as I made them. I didn't need them to do anything fancy, but I also needed them to be really hard to open back up. They were pressure plated, too, so there were many ways I could use them.

It took me over an hour to build the traps and have them ready to go, and I made the two handgun traps with handguns I took from my captive, who seemed to be sleeping at this point. It was smart and would help keep his strength for anything to come. Too bad all I had planned for him was a cell and receiving a bounty.to help fuel me into the Galaxy’s worlds.

After my traps, though, I had to set up the landing pad in the proper place, and so I took the create and set up my captive with a trap that I wouldn't tell him about with the handgun trap wire in a really good place to shoot his cock off if he tried to move too much. I made sure to wake him up and show him the light in the cave. His expression was one of horror, and I grinned, looking at it. “You understand,” I said, “That is fantastic; please have a cock still when I come back,” I told him and took the create for the landing pad out.

Honestly, the landing pad was a straightforward design I set it up in minutes, and it covered a couple of hundred square feet in a fold-out style. It wasn't about giving the spaceship a solid place to land, more like covering the sand to it wouldn't sink into the sand. It was basic as hell, and I headed back to the cave and set up the transmitter and signal booster making sure I had them both complete before getting to work on my traps for these Pirates. I started to set them up in the sand, but I mostly set them up in the cave. I had to disarm the handgun trap pointed at my captives cock, and I took it in an attempt to bolster my other traps; combining them with everything set, I walked with the lone lantern, eating some dried crackers and some good that I had no idea what it was. Tasted a little like chicken, though, and I chugged some water down to help with the aftertaste.

I made some last-minute preparations, and then I sent the prerecorded signal. I got into position at the mouth of the cave and had myself ready to fire as I waited.

And waited.

And Waited.

I grew bored quickly, but still, I was a patient woman, and I watched and waited. I felt like I had waited a lot longer than I actually heard a ship slightly larger than the landing pad start to come down from orbit. A sharp whistle hit the air, and I prepped myself, looking down the scope, not knowing where the pirates were going to come from in the ship.

Soon they touched down on the rough landing pad and landing gears hissed, and slowly, a ramp came down, and a Six-legged thing came out of the It turned to another six-legged thing, and a human came down, and one spoke. “Where is the guy?” He asked, “The man told us over the comms before he headed out in the desert and got caught that he would be here to pick us up. Look at that skimmer over there. He said he wasn't moving on foot,” one of the six-legged things pointed out with small arms I hadn't noticed before. Through my scope, I could see the human's eyes narrow, and I took a shot. My ears flattened just before I pulled the trigger.

Bang!

My rifle shot, and a large caliber bullet sent straight toward the three aliens and the human. It then smacked against the ramp leaving a deep gash on the human man's face, and he turned to look up. “AMBUSH!” he yelled, and only slightly to my surprise, they pulled out metallic gun-looking things and started to hunt for cover instead of going into their ship.

A blue-skinned good looking woman started to run down the ramp with a large round-looking weapon. That looked dangerous, and she became my first target now. She ran down the ramp, her head moving with a snarl of yellow teeth and breasts that were swinging all over the place as she ran. She stopped, and I compensated a little this time, and I fired another shot of my sniper rifle just as I heard a rapid series of returning gunfire.

The woman I had shot at this time no longer had her left breast, and that dangerous-looking weapon fell down with her suddenly; it shot up into the air as she fell, shooting her weapon in death.

A sharp whistle went up into the air, with fuel shooting out of the rocket-propelled grenade before it fell back to the sand a distance away from the fight.

My eyes swiveled, no longer paying attention to it as it was no longer a threat, and I found one of the six-legged things shooting at me as they ran to the skimmer. The fact it had six legs made things difficult, and I tried to angle my sniper as they ran towards the cave mouth just as I envisioned.

The skimmer was a dead giveaway where I was, and I wanted them coming in the right direction. I had a little bit of time, so I looked at the ship again, but no one came out. I growled, and with a smile, I got up to take on the intruders inside my cave. I ran inside with a smile on my face.

It was time to have some fun!