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THE FIRST TARGET I selected was hangar 7-226 in the seventh maneuver tunnel. It was where we’d manipulated the registration service terminal into jamming the two pirate interceptors in together. The station services had yet to uncover our meddling and Ayukh and San-Doon were back on the frigate using the thousands of security cameras to keep tabs on the station. The Navigator had just sent me a message that our opponent was concentrating forces in hangar 7-226 – both the pirates who respawned after the last unsuccessful attack and the other members of the pride of the Bushy Shadow. There were more than forty armed players, including some with heavy weaponry, which the old Navigator said included mobile rocket launchers and plasma cannons.
Our march down the corridors of the space station with two gigantic Immolators in tow did not go unnoticed and the pirates were well prepared to resist the dangerous heavy robots. I don’t know whether our opponents were planning another attack or about to hunker down and go on defense, but I decided not to squander the opportunity and attack while all my foes were concentrated in one place instead of dispersed throughout the gigantic station.
I placed the rattling several-ton Immolators at the tail of the procession, and sent the flying drone out in front, then led my armed squadron down the corridors of the station. The Miyelonians we saw on the way pressed themselves against the walls in fear, many taking out cameras and filming our march. By all appearances, this was an unusual sight for the residents of Kasti-Utsh III. That was when I realized that I had never seen huge combat robots here on the station before. That gave rise to a few vague suspicions and I called up the orange Translator to figure them out:
“Ayni, as a former station employee, is it allowed to use heavy military vehicles in an official war inside a station?”
“No, of course not,” the Miyelonian said without a second’s doubt. “It is not allowed to use powerful gravity or thermonuclear charges either. That kind of weaponry could blow up a whole hangar and damage other parts of the space station as well.”
The fluffy kitty winced in pain as an Immolator tried to fit into a gap that was too narrow and low for it, taking down a billboard hanging above and leaving a sizeable dent in the plastic wall. Hrm... You could definitely track our procession by the wake of destruction. And the Immolators had yet to even fire up their cannons!
“Then why hasn’t anyone stopped us?” I asked, hoping for clarity.
Gerd Ayni bared her teeth happily, tousling her whiskers and showing her flawlessly white sharp little teeth:
“I was wracking my brains over that myself before our reunion with the rest of the team. But then I realized that the rule against using such weapons in narrow corridors on the station seemed so obvious that they never actually bothered to come up with a punishment for violating it. No one ever thought someone would actually break it! I opened the rules for Kasti-Utsh III visitors to make sure and it actually doesn’t contain any penalties for using heavy or excessively destructive weaponry. I suspect they will add one later today. But for now I say go for it, captain!”
Gerd Ayni was obviously cheered up by the bureaucratic oversight. And it really was funny. But that Miyelonian administrator’s cock-up was only to our advantage. Just then, Uline Tar walked up closer to me and quietly said that she had completed my mission and secured the rights to the platinum mine. But the Trader hadn’t told me the concrete details just yet because financial agreements between the starship’s co-owners were supposed to be kept between us.
“Captain! The pirates are carrying tanks of gas into hangar 7-226!” the old Navigator’s alarmed voice rang out in my headphones. “I can’t tell what exactly they contain. It could be toxic. The Jarg also guesses poison gas. And another thing, captain. The Journalist who was interviewing the guy from the Pride of the Bushy Shadow before is there. It looks like she convinced him to take her with so she could report live from the scene.”
Poison gas? An outsider in the combat zone? I stopped short and turned to my companions. At the very best half of my players had spacesuits so, if the pirates released toxic gas, it could mean out serious trouble, taking out half my crew in one fell swoop.
“Uline, our newcomers urgently need gas masks at the very least, preferably space suits. Look around for somewhere nearby where we can quick buy what we need.”
The Trader took my request completely in stride and, turning on her palmtop, started examining offers. At the same time, I turned to my business partner for a consultation – did we stand to land ourselves in hot water if we accidentally harmed or even killed a member of a pride that was not involved in the official war?
The furry Geckho lady tore herself from the screen of her palmtop, rolled her eyes back thoughtfully, fell silent for five seconds, then honestly admitted that she had a poor understanding of Miyelonian tradition. Instead, Miyelonian Medic Gerd Mauu-La Mya-Ssa gave an answer:
“Attacking outsiders and especially killing them is categorically forbidden. That would be a very serious crime! And war with another pride does not serve as justification!”
“Yes, that is true, Leng Gnat,” Gerd Ayni Uri-Miayuu cut into the conversation. “I suspect that the pirates took the Journalist specifically to use as cover. That will not only turn law enforcement against us, it will make the Pride of the Sweet Voice demand compensation or even join the war on the pirates’ side.”
Okay then, I see. I’d have to take the outsider into account. I ordered my crew not to harm the Journalist under any circumstances. Beyond that, I mentally told the Immolators and Small Relict Guard Drone to immediately cease fire if there was a risk of hitting any neutral character. I was not at all sure that such a complex order would be properly understood by the robots, but it ended up working.
Machine Control skill increased to level ninety-nine!
Mental Fortitude skill increased to level one hundred!
The system messages were nice but nothing special. Briefly glancing at them, I was planning to get back to the conversation, but... before my eyes appeared a new message, which was blinking to draw attention:
ATTENTION! You may now choose your first specialization in the Mental Fortitude skill.
What? I have to admit, I was baffled and even somewhat taken aback. I’d been in the game that bends reality for almost a month and a half at this point, but this was the first I was hearing about skills having specializations! If I told someone that, they’d laugh at me. But how was I supposed to know? Most players thought me something of an expert, asked me for advice and followed my example. Although... here I was reminded that my wife’s ghoulish grandfather Gerd Avir-Syn La-Pirez once uttered the phrase: “Just wait ‘til you find out what happens to skills at level one hundred fifty.” To be honest, I didn’t give that the proper attention at the time. So seemingly, another specialization would become available at level one hundred fifty, given this was my “first.”
So, how does one go about choosing a specialization, and what kind of choices are there? I opened the game menu and started flipping through tabs. There it is! The information was located in the skills tab, and I started examining the text closely. Okay then, plenty of intriguing options:
I suspected that choosing the last one would completely break Morphians’ ability to read pleasing forms from my mind to adapt themselves to. Well, it would be hard on any race that orients itself on emotions or images in other peoples’ brains rather than thoughts. Without that kind of feedback it would be extremely hard, if at all possible, for them to appease someone. It would be an obvious choice in a universe teeming with Morphians. But given that the dangerous predators had practically been driven extinct, the perk was practically useless. Although who could say? There might have been other races out there with similar abilities.
In any case, I didn’t choose that specialization. I also skipped over the second to last one. With my 33 Intelligence points (38 even, with the rings) encountering a creature with high enough Intelligence to trip that perk would be a vanishingly rare occurrence. And saving Magic Points was also irrelevant to me. With my high Intelligence, I was doing just fine for mana. But I did spend some time mulling over the first three options in the list. I felt like I needed all of them. Defending myself from mental attacks, increasing my mental range, and controlling several targets simultaneously. Finally, I made my choice:
Specialization chosen for Mental Fortitude: Control more than one creature’s mind at the same time.
Great! And it took effect at once. Now I didn’t have to change between my robots to give them orders. That would be a big time-saver in crisis situations!
That lit a fire in my belly and I decided not to just stop and rest on my laurels. I had a whole two other skills (Psionic and Machine Control) that were just about to one hundred as well. And I was sitting on six free skill points, which I could use to get them there. I say go for it!
Psionic skill increased to level ninety-seven!
...
Psionic skill increased to level one hundred!
Machine Control skill increased to level one hundred!
ATTENTION! You may choose your first specialization in the Psionic skill.
ATTENTION! You may choose your first specialization in the Machine Control skill.
Great! I impatiently got to studying the available perks. For starters, I looked at what I could do with Psionic:
ATTENTION!!! All parties in the mental link must have this Psionic-skill specialization.
If similar Mental Fortitude skill specialization is chosen, negative Intelligence difference is no longer penalized at all.
ATTENTION!!! Negative Intelligence difference cannot be higher than 10.
An interesting selection, but a few of the perks looked fairly useless to me. For example, the last one. Were there really enough NPC’s and players with Intelligence between 28 to 31 for it to be worth wasting a whole perk just to make psionic attacks against them a sure thing?! And the negative Intelligence difference perk also seemed questionable: were there really any titans of the mind out there with enough Intelligence to top my outrageous 38? Perhaps the Truth Seekers of the Miyelonian race if anyone. Maybe some real egg-head scientists, engineers or prominent mages as well. In any case, they were sure to be pretty rare birds, so using a perk on them felt wasteful.
So what then? Increase the intensity of my mental attacks? Or gain the ability to form a mental bond with other mages? I suspect that’s what they were using on me down in the La-Fin Faction underground prison. I was not able to withstand a joint attack from all three of them. But in my circle there was only one player with psionic abilities.
“Valeri-Urla, what is your Psionic skill level?”
The space girl took the mental question in stride and answered without turning in my direction, all the while conversing with Denni Marko:
“One hundred thirty-four. Progress is going very slow. In the last year, the skill has only gone up four levels.”
“So what did you take as your first perk?”
“Ah, that’s why you’re asking, Leng Gnat. Did you just hit Psionic one hundred? You’re wondering if we can form a mental link? I also considered that specialization. But who did I Have to join forces with then? I took the reduced penalty for psionic actions with negative Intelligence difference. You try living in a society enslaved by Meleyephatian psionics, then you’ll understand why. It was the only way to make sure I had the right to my own opinion. So captain, does that mean your Psionic level is just one hundred? Weird that I lost our mental duel then. I’ll have to give it another go. And let me remind you that you promised to talk with me in a private setting about politics and many other kinds of things my prison keepers will be interested in. You shouldn’t keep them waiting. The Prelates of the Church of Survival are already upset that the espionage devices I installed have stopped working.”
I promised not to have that talk soon and let her go. So, the mental link perk is out – I don’t have any mages to partner with. Too bad. Okay then, this was a pretty easy choice:
Specialization chosen for Psionic: Increase power of psionic attacks by 30%.
It was also fairly simple to choose a specialization for Machine Control. Again my options were reducing Magic Point expenditure and increasing range or duration of control. I was also offered +1 drone slot. But that just made me give a sad chuckle because I knew that there were no other Relict drones left in this area of the Universe. And I saw no reason to take something less deadly – a slight boost to my character’s damage dealing ability was did practically nothing compared to my murderous drone. So I took a different one:
Specialization chosen for Machine Control: Chance of taking control of a machine or making it inoperable increased by 3%.
ATTENTION!!! Specialization active only if success chance is already nonzero.
An extra three percent... Not all that much at first glance. You might think there isn’t much difference between 75% and 78%. And overall, in every case when the chance of success was fairly high, it wasn’t obvious this perk had any use at all. But the situation started to look far different with an extremely difficult task. For example, if the probability of opening a critically important door was just 0.000001%. That’s vastly different from 3.000001%. The former is practically impossible. But the latter just means setting aside an hour or two of time to regenerate Magic Points until the task is complete!
There was also another reason for choosing that exact perk. I still had that mysterious starship on the brain. The one that spent millennia in a spatial pocket under siege by attacking Symbiotes. The ship of the Relict hierarch. What would happen if we could fly up close to the ship and establish contact with the starship’s systems? I understood the Relict language more or less, so most likely I would be able to communicate with it. And you never know. Maybe we’d be able to study the security systems and take down its defenses? I suspect it will not be easy. But it was exactly what I had in mind when I was thinking of 0.000001% versus 3.000001%.
