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THE “VERY BEST ARMOR” was the easiest thing to get. The Machinegunner couldn’t wear powered exoskeleton armor, but Kisly had an excellent heavy armor suit of Geckho production he bought on Kasti-Utsh III, which looked like Imran’s. I gave the armor to the white Kirsan to modify to the Machinegunner’s specifications: reduced weight, slots to attach weapons to a metal arm, and a reconfigured built-in targeting system in the helmet, which was not well suited to human eyes. The Mechanoid repair bot confirmed that it was all possible, and immediately got to work. I also didn’t foresee any problems finding a piece of gold weighing 82.49 pounds (the exact weight of the Dryad). I had money, and the price of precious metal meant it would be cheaper than even a +3 Intelligence magic ring, which was to say nothing of the unbelievable +4.
But converting one of the residential berths of the frigate into a Jewelry workshop for the NPC Dryad caused a certain amount of grief because the team members in the other rooms had to squeeze a bit. After growing accustomed to a certain level of comfort, the players were not happy to make concessions. That annoyed me because, once we had a full crew (and for a twinbody frigate, that was around forty players), they’d all be packed in like sardines. But now, having one or two roommates in a berth meant for four players was practically taken as a violation of their rights.
After all, Medic Gerd Mauu-La also had a doctor’s office all to himself for storing medicines, hardware and receiving patients, but nobody was outraged over that. What made a Jeweler less worthy than a Medic? She also needed quiet and concentration to do her work. And despite all the whining and dismay, having a specialist who could create “magical” rings, bracelets and pendants with bonuses to statistics and skills came with obvious benefits.
In the end, the Jarg had to move in with Meleyephatian Gunner Eeeezzz 777, who was also joined by the other gunner Taik Rekh the Geckho, who had taken a serious wound to the shoulder in a sparring match. Timka-Vu joined the Geckho twins. Gerd T’yu-Pan and Eduard got Miyelonian Engineer Orun Va-Mart. You couldn’t say everyone was happy, but still they didn’t go against their captain. Meanwhile, I was trying my best to put people from various spacefaring races and worlds together as not to form cliques made up of one species who wouldn’t talk with the rest of the crew.
The only place it turned into an open conflict was the women’s berth. There were just too many different big personalities in one room. The proud and at times cagey Tailaxian Valeri-Urla was unwilling to compromise and blew up any spark of conflict into a raging forest fire. The high-profile Miyelonian Gerd Ayni demanded her roommates observe her elevated status at all times. The noisy and chatty magocratic native San-Sano was actively learning Geckho and wouldn’t shut up even for a second. And we found the limits to phlegmatic German Destroying Angel’s icy calm. Her armor of affected indifference belied a nature that was ready to take sudden action, and it was not always well considered.
If I also considered the fact that the huge Shadow Panther was always near her master Valeri, and that the Dryad Nefertiti simply couldn’t be placed in a men’s berth, we had a truly serious problem on our hands. First and foremost with Nefertiti: the NPC Dryad was entirely uninterested in contact with Geckho or Miyelonians, but I didn’t want to put a half-naked Dryad of loose morals in a bunk with young human men. That would make conflicts inevitable. In the end, we had an unhealthy explosion risk in the women’s berth. Our gorgeous ladies couldn’t even stand a few days in close quarters together. Someone had to go.
“Valeri-Urla will not stay in the captain’s berth!” Princess Minn-O La-Fin immediately named a condition, sensing in the pretty Tailaxian a potential rival. “But I would agree to take in San-Sano. As a matter of fact, I need a servant on the ship.”
But I didn’t appease my wife’s aristocratic nature, instead choosing a different way to solve the conflict. My business partner Gerd Uline Tar, who had long been friendly with Gerd Ayni, agreed to accept the Miyelonian in her personal berth, which had been such a sticking point recently. Destroying Angel then preferred to move into the berth with her brother and the two pilots. There just so happened to be a free cot in there, and none of the men minded.
* * *
TWO DAYS IN FLIGHT before coming out of hyperspace, then a ten-minute pause to calculate the next jump and pump energy into the hyperspace drive. Then another two days in hyperspace... It gets to be a monotonous bore on the one hand. But on the other, it’s a convenient time to build cohesion in your crew. I was trying hard to get all players to spend as little of those four days in the real world as possible, and as much time busy and fraternizing as they could instead of keeping to themselves. Athletic training. Space language lessons for newcomers and others. Keeping watch. Eating breakfast and lunch together. Our Bard gave a solo guitar concert with a mixture of classic Russian bard songs[6], and some of his own composition. A team Na-Tikh-U tournament. Russian Preference[7] for those who wanted to play. Dances. More training. Target practice. Gerd Uline Tar’s birthday – my furry business partner hit her forty-ninth year, the very pinnacle of youth by Geckho standards, when they were thought to be in peak physical condition.
The crew congratulated her with all due gravity, prepared a bunch of pranks for the captain’s first mate (as per Geckho tradition) and gave her some very nice gifts. Furthermore, we had a celebratory dinner and a raucous party. During it, the third Kirsan, which hadn’t yet received its own color was painted by the whole team: we each took one segment of the flat millipede and painted it to our liking. And the ladies didn’t limit themselves to just background, they drew flowers and intricate designs. The repair bot was flailing its feet and whiskers all the time, never tiring of telling us through the Universal Translator that it was happy to have the crew paying it so much attention.
* * *
RIGHT AFTER Tamara the Paladin entered its second hyperspace jump to our final destination, I went into the real world for the first time of the trip. I was seriously worried, because I had no idea what to expect in my new location or whether getting my physical body out from under the Dome had in fact been a success. But it all went smoothly – when I opened the lid of the virt pod, I found myself in a small rectangular room with a typical virt pod fused to the wall. Plastic white panel walls, a cold rough floor, dim diffuse light. The only door obediently slid aside, letting me into a tiny little room with a fold-down table, built-in dresser and data touch screen. The next metal door was locked, and a message in Miyelonian lit up to tell me the door would open automatically after I completed the quarantine procedure. The door itself was shabby and quite scratched up on this side – some predecessor of mine must have been impatient and tried to break it down.
A full course of generalized antibiotics in variously colored pills was already sitting on the table for me to take. In the dresser was a set of new clothes to replace my current ones, which had to be incinerated. The cheap fabric and cut of the garment reminded me of a hospital gown. And the pants were too short and had no belt or waist fastener, so they fell off me very quickly. Nevertheless, I changed clothes and took the medicines as instructed. Only after that did a data panel activate, showing a countdown timer before the doors would open to let me into the rest of the space station. Twelve ummi, or approximately sixty-six hours. There was also a terminal with food and drink on offer, but I didn’t buy anything and just went back into my virt pod.
Once back, I had a surprise waiting – before my eyes was a game message awaiting my decision:
ATTENTION!!! Leader of the Human-25 Faction Gerd Valentina Koval proposes unification with the Relict Faction on the following terms: the Human-25 Faction shall become a vassal of the Relict Faction. Do you accept? (Yes/No)
Very strange. Not knowing what happened when the ferry brought the Relict Faction landing party and builders to the larger continent, not knowing the overall situation with the aggressive NPC Orcs and other neighbors, I couldn’t take such an important decision blind. And why vassal status rather than simply joining my faction outright? Was Gerd Valentina Koval prepared to accept vassal status, but not to allow my players access to her laboratories? And how would the curators feel about one of the Russian factions coming under my care? There were too many unanswered questions, so I refused and pressed “No.” Then I sent Minn-O into the real world to have a talk with chief advisor Gerd Mac-Peu Un-Roi to find out all the details.
* * *
WE WERE STILL UNDERWAY. Back to training on the exercise machines and shooting practice. Both team and individual exercises. Individual fights, team fights, close combat work. I had to intervene in a spar for the first time. The Shadow Panther, who was utter calm up until that point, unexpectedly perceived Valeri’s fight with Taik-Rekh the Gunner as an attack on her master. And she sunk her teeth into the huge Geckho’s just barely healed right forearm. Little Sister was actually aiming for the neck, but the fighter managed to dodge and throw up an arm. I immediately used Psionic and stunned the huge beast, and the unfeeling Shadow Panther was carried off and locked up. But still we had to stop the fights for a bit. The tear wound caused a huge amount of blood to pool on the floor. I suspect that if a player with less hitpoints had been in Taik-Rekh’s place, they’d be dead and respawning on Kasti-Utsh III which would leave us down a crew member until the very end of our journey. Fortunately, that was the only critical moment of our whole four-day flight.
But in any case, the four days stood out for me as packed with events and full of tension. In that time, I raised my Psionic and Mysticism by a whole three points to 110 and 54 respectively. That’s right, I had to do a lot of mental influencing, convincing, reassuring, and invisibly pushing. I raised Targeting to 50, Rifles to 66 and Sharpshooter to 51. And during yet another Meleyephatian language lesson, I ended up hitting level 100 in Astrolinguistics and 99 overall at the same time!
Out of many possible perks to Astrolinguistics, I chose to learn written languages at an advanced pace. Reading text in other languages was something my Gnat had to do often, so it really came in handy. And that left me with six free skill points, which I invested into Medium Armor, bringing it up to 85 (I had gotten one level the “natural” way by essentially constantly wearing my Energy Armor).
* * *
THOSE DAYS REALLY EXHAUSTED me, emotionally most of all. And my passion-filled nights with Minn-O La-Fin were just what I needed to relax and blow off steam. My beautiful wife had become better versed in amorous play, and was eager to try anything new at times losing control over herself, giving herself up to her feelings and holding nothing back. My Authority even went up at one such intimate moment. I suspect the sound isolation on the frigate may have been a bit lacking.
Once when we were lying in bed embracing after a storm of passion, I admitted to Minn-O that I had known about her pregnancy for a long time.
“You’re going to have a boy!” I told her what I knew about the fetus from my scans. “And our boy is already a Psionic Mage with sensitivity to magic, a true successor to the ancient La-Fin dynasty.”
“Yes, Medic Gerd Mauu-La has already told me the gender. But I didn’t suspect you also knew... Well, all the better. I have been wracking my brains over how to get the child out of the game and into the real world for the last few days. Thumor-Anhu said it was possible. But for the life of me, I don’t know how...”
I reassured my wife that there was nothing especially complicated in the procedure. I had read through all the subtleties in the Miyelonians’ data reference system. Once the pregnancy entered late stage, we’d be able to see the “future player’s” base characteristics. He still wouldn’t have a name or class, we’d only see race, gender, level zero and a life bar. Thankfully, with my Scanning skill, I could already see more than others would see months down the line. Or perhaps I was helped by the fact my Scanning skill was somewhat distinct from the usual kind and used Magic Points.
In one way or another, even incomplete information about the fetus was enough for the mother to be able to enlist the unborn child in their clan/faction/pride and thus request a free virt pod be made available for the new player. The optimal time for “entering information about a new player” was thought to be ten ummi before birth. That gave the “new player” time to get their own virt pod before being born. Meanwhile, a boy would be born in the real world as well and, when the mother came out into the real world, he would disappear from the game along with her and appear in his own virt pod in the real world. Easy peasy!
Sure, there were certain risks that had to be considered as well. Like a child could become an NPC if assigned to a faction too early, thus becoming independent in the game before its time. A child would also become an NPC if the parents did not take care to provide a virt pod before birth. But that wasn’t the scariest possible outcome. A mother being pregnant in the game was accompanied by a pregnancy in the real world, but trying to give birth outside the game to a child conceived in it would kill the baby in all realities, often also leading to the death of the mother. There was more information about the late pregnancy (I didn’t see about people specifically, the article was only about Miyelonians, so it specified “late” as beginning at one hundred twelve days) saying that any death of the woman in the game could cause the fetus to be lost, and the farther along she was, the higher the risk. And that went all the way up to 100% guaranteed loss of fetus if the mother died and respawned in the game during the last few days of the pregnancy.
“In other words,” Minn-O decided to clarify, “soon I won’t be able to die in the game that bends reality. And as soon as I feel the first contractions, I should send a request to the faction leader, i.e. you. You can add our son to the Relict faction and, after birth, he will appear not only in the game, but also in the real world. Which of the worlds will he appear in: yours or mine? After all, the Relict Faction could have free virt pods in either one.”
Good question... I honestly admitted that I did not know the answer. But I immediately reassured my wife that, no matter what, our boy would be provided a suitable exit point, and my faction would come up with a way to provide for mother and child to be together.
Minn-O spent some time in silence, thinking strenuously. I could sense my wife’s worry and could have read her thoughts, but I didn’t. Among mages that was considered bad form. Finally, my wayedda admitted what exactly had her so worried:
“It’s been more than three days already, but Gerd Tamara still hasn’t shown up next to her virt pod. It’s very strange. And even more strange is that the rebels are broadcasting propaganda videos with Tamara in them from illegal stations hidden in hard-to-reach locations. And the Paladin girl is calling for open rebellion, seizing weaponry and slaughtering any and all mages. Your stupid girlfriend must have found some other way to enter the game.”
It really was strange... I for one did not know any way to change virt pods from the real world. Although Gerd Tamara, to put it lightly was strange and attempting to understand what she had planned was doomed to failure. Even knowing about the seven- or eight-day limit one could spend outside the game, Tamara might have consciously chosen to sacrifice herself. Or she might have been afraid of an ambush and thus avoiding her virt pod.
Meanwhile, based on Minn-O’s words, the anti-mage uprising in the First Directory had not been quelled, and attacks on the mages were only growing more frequent. The military advisors of the La-Fin dynasty even said they were no longer convinced of the loyalty of several First Directory military groups. Furthermore, the rebellion had spread geographically, and flare-ups of anti-mage violence had been recorded in the Fourth, Sixth and Ninth Directories as well. My wife even told me she was afraid her world might belong to Gerd Tamara’s fanatics before our son was born, and there would be no room for a magically talented child in it.
I promised Minn-O not to let that happen. She immediately settled down and nuzzled up to my shoulder, smiling placidly. I on the other hand couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, thinking over the poorly timed uprising. Should I turn my ship around and go back to Earth? Stupid. Especially with the hidden Relict base where I was planning to pick up my combat drones and possibly luck my way into useful technologies and artifacts less than one day’s flight away.
Offer to negotiate with the leaders of the uprising? No, there’s no point trying to reason with fanatics. They are deaf to rational argument. Still, most of the people fighting under such loudmouth leaders were in fact decent folk who could (and had to) be reasoned with. This simply was not the time for civil unrest, and I thought they could understand. We had a bigger task at hand – saving humanity. Yes the mage-rulers were cruel and at times treated their subjects brutally. But space invaders would be much less kind, and you didn’t have to look far to find examples. Tailax – enslaved, the Gilvar Syndicate – enslaved. Other planets had been wiped out by the Meleyephatian Horde. In some cases, whole races were pulled up by the root, often not leaving so much as a name behind. The people want the best future for their children? I want the same for my child. So in many ways our goals coincide. However, a good future would be absolutely impossible with our planet in the hands of occupying aliens.
But why wasn’t Tamara entering the game? And what language was she conducting the propaganda in, or talking with her allies for that matter? As far as I knew, the former leader of the Second Legion didn’t know how to speak the language of the magocratic world. Maybe she wasn’t being translated properly in the propaganda clips, and they were perverting her words? Unfortunately, I didn’t have any answers to these questions yet.
