Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) (24 page)

“Sorry—I must have missed something,” I said, flabbergasted. “What marine are you talking about?”

“Why this one,” the butterfly replied and pointed at the cryptosaur. “The ship that you are interested in requires a crew of four, and each crew member must be on board for the ship to fly. You became the captain and you’ve managed to convince the marine that you are a worthy leader. That leaves the gunner and the engineer. If you want my ship, you’ll have to convince them…”

“The rhino is a marine?” I blurted out.

“He is not a rhino. He is a cryptosaur,” Yalrock corrected me. “A cutting-edge combat droid—the last of a series built by our scientists. Typically, he wouldn’t even notice a physical attack, since his defensive systems are top notch, but the designers did not account for a boulder pounding him for several minutes. Taken by surprise, his systems suffered a temporary fault. He’s better now and sees you as a leader who is capable of making extraordinary decisions. If you manage to get the ship, in this cryptosaur you will have a unique warrior. And I should point out that his armor is much better than the marine armor on board your ship at the moment. You can’t even compare the two—they’re like day and night.”

I didn’t need an Uldan fortune teller to tell me that I had received a mission—and one that I would never mention to anyone. Otherwise, even today, hundreds of cruisers would show up over this planet and start pouring fire all over the place. Even though I’d be happy to return to the main part of the galaxy, it wouldn’t be a good idea to pass up on a ship whose owner referred to my
Space Cucumber
as a tub. And considering that I also had the opportunity to pick up three robots along the way too…

“Where should I look for them? And, listen, you don’t have any food by any chance, do you? I won’t be able to hang around here for long otherwise…”

The jungle of Blood Island sped past me as rapidly as trees flashing past a bullet train. Even though the cryptosaur was looking out for my safety, this only meant avoiding collisions with the larger flora. He seemed to consider everything else to be a minor and insignificant obstacle and bulldozed his way directly through it. What I liked most about the marine was that in addition to his main role, he was also a high-speed heavy tank. I had had some doubts when Yalrock told me where I could find the gunner and suggested I ride the rhino to get there faster. I figured my chances of remaining on the back of this monster were not great—I’ve never been much for cowboys and whatnot. However, after the cryptosaur finished his transformation—restructuring his upper back to create a seat and then generating a force field canopy around it—I could not say no to taking a ride in such a machine. I would be very sorry indeed to part with this epic beast—a marine-tank would come in handy on any planet that required a space-borne assault.

According to Yalrock the gunner was in the neighboring forest. I never understood how you could delimit the boundaries of different forests in one giant jungle, but my tank seemed to understand perfectly well where he was and where he was going.

Eventually the cryptosaur slowed down and began to make circles, trampling a clearing in the morass of vines and vegetation. Once he had made it, he raised his head and bellowed a piercing roar. In response came a no less savage scream, letting me know that the gunner too was some kind of zoomorphic robot. When I had asked Yalrock what he looked like, the butterfly simply shrugged his shoulders and asserted philosophically that I’d know him when I saw him. I’ve got nothing against riddles and multipart missions, but I’ve had the habit of preparing for my missions meticulously since my time in
Runlustia
and, at the moment, everything was coming down to chance—which was beginning to irritate me.

With surprising grace, the cryptosaur deposited me gingerly on the ground and stepped aside. I shook my head in astonishment—it had all happened too quickly: First I was sitting on his neck and then suddenly I was standing on the ground and, though but a moment elapsed between these two events, my consciousness could not catch up to it. There was no way in hell that I could pass up a chance to have this rhino on my team!

The scream came from the forest again, reminding me why I had been brought here. I took out my pacifier and dragged the nearest boulder toward me. This one was a crumb compared to the one I had used to pacify the marine, but I simply hadn’t bothered to load extra inventory onto the cryptosaur, assuming that there would be enough rocks on site. It turned out now that that had been a poor assumption to make.

The scream sounded a third time. The bushes on the other side of the clearing parted and the gunner came walking toward us.

“So that’s who you are,” I let slip once I saw what I was dealing with. The gunner was a gigantic, four-armed orangutan, bearing the no-less grand in-game title of “Strabosaur.” If it weren’t for his extra pair of arms, his seven foot tall stature and the pair of holstered blasters which the strabosaur wore like a cowboy, I would have had great difficulty telling this creature apart from the primates I’d seen in the zoo: He had the same orange fur, pronounced lips and general bodily proportions. It seemed that whoever designed this creature hadn’t seen the need in thinking about it too much—why put in too much effort designing a one-off mission?

“Oooh-ooh-aah!” yelled the strabosaur, stopping at the edge of the jungle. Bending his knees and spreading his arms, the orangutan bore such a resemblance to a cowboy preparing to draw his revolvers that I couldn’t help but crack up. What was the deal here anyway? Was I supposed to duel this distant cousin (far removed) of mine in order to convince him to join my crew? Alright! Sounds awesome! Especially since I didn’t have anything aside from a pacifier.

The cryptosaur stood to the side and as soon as I adopted the proper posture, mirroring the orangutan, began to pound on the trunk of an uprooted tree.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Pause.

Boom! Boom! Pause.

Boom! Shoot!

To be honest, I was completely unprepared for such lovely entertainment. No need to do your homework—reading forums and whatnot—simply show up, see the monkey, shoot the monkey. I realized that I didn’t stand much of a chance against four blasters, so as soon as the cryptosaur gave the signal (I never figured out why he decided to be our second to begin with), I took a giant leap to the side and rolled toward the jungle. I knew I’d be no match for the strabosaur in open terrain.

Knowing that I was in a game in which the locals would react to my improvisation, I varied my speed as I rolled along the ground, trying my best to keep the trees that the rhino had felled between me and the orangutan. The singed wood chips and pieces of plant matter that burst all around me from the gunner’s fire reassured me that I had chosen the correct strategy. Even more reassuring was that I was still alive a whole ten seconds after the duel had begun. The important thing now was to keep moving and do so at a varying pace—otherwise the dumb program would be able to predict my motion and send me to my Planetary Spirit. Considering how long it took us to get to this clearing, I’d have a time of it walking here on foot again.

“Oooh-ooh-aah!” Ooh-ooh-ooh!” came the disappointed chatter as soon as I dived into the jungle. I went on rolling, ignoring the orangutan’s complaint, until I reached a large tree. In a second I shimmied up it, realizing even as I did so that it would offer no cover against a blaster. But at least I wouldn’t be found here instantly.

“Grrraaa!” bellowed the marine who, like the orangutan, seemed displeased with my turning tail. It seems that he had really wanted to see an epic firefight and my tactical retreat had foiled his expectations. Excuse me, but no! Since I wasn’t given any time to consider the situation before the duel started, no one was going to make me budge an inch until I’d finished thinking everything through…at my leisure.

Carefully parting the branches between the clearing and myself, I appraised the situation one more time. The cryptosaur, who had begun digging the earth with his horn, was clearly not my ally—judging by his unhappy growling, he was unhappy with me. Until I managed to deal with the gunner, the marine was not to rely on. It was too bad.

The orangutan was still standing in his initial place, looking in my direction. Shivers ran down my spine. For a second, I thought that the gunner could see me. I forced myself to remain still and after a moment, the gunner’s gaze dulled: From that distance it was hard to tell, but I definitely felt that my current position was no longer under the strabosaur’s close scrutiny.

And so! What paths to victory were there, considering that all I had was a pacifier? Right away, the tried and true move suggested itself. I could find a boulder and fling it at the primate. However, several obstacles stood in the way of this plan. I’d have to get up close to the strabosaur, reveal myself by raising the rock and then manage to manipulate the rock while being shot at from four blasters. If I had had my marine armor on, I’d at least risk this maneuver, but…The gunner was right at the tree line. If I could sneak up behind him and…

As if he’d read my mind, the orangutan took several steps forward and froze right in the center of the ninety-foot-wide clearing. The only upside to the current situation was that he stopped looking in my direction and instead seemed to expand his angle of observation. The AI had calculated my maximum speed in stealth mode and begun to monitor the probable directions I could attack from. I guess the strabosaur’s defense-AI wasn’t as primitive as I’d thought.

After five minutes of watching the gunner, I came up with a new, crueler plan. First, I assumed the worst: that this robot too has active resistance, which would melt my pacifier as soon as I’d point it at my target. I understand that this sounds a little daft, since the mission has us shooting each other, but given my history with these things, it just made sense to play it safe. In that case, I couldn’t point my pacifier at the orangutan—doing so would destroy the device. However! The blasters that this beastly ancestor of mine was holding had no such defense—unless of course some utter psycho designed said ancestor and his weapons. Accordingly, if I used the pacifier on the weapon then…Well, it was worth a shot.

I discarded the idea of pelting the orangutan with rocks after the first attempt. Having waited until the orangutan turned 90 degrees away from me, I lifted a tree trunk that was lying beside him and was just about to fling it at the gunner’s back—and I mean “was just about to”—because no sooner had the trunk moved than the strabosaur turned, drew all four blasters and reduced this once-proud tree to a few wisps of ash floating to the ground. I froze, afraid to move and only after a minute—once the gunner’s attention had faded—did I retake my seat on the branch. So much for that idea.

I decided to go with my other plan. Having waited until the strabosaur had almost turned his back to me, I aimed my pacifiers at the top two blasters, locked on and, sighing sadly, yanked the blasters in opposite directions. The idea was to keep the orangutan guessing about where I was, since he still had the bottom pair of blasters and arms—which is precisely what this orange gorilla used.

I hadn’t managed to yank the blasters away from him—the strabosaur grabbed onto them like a drowned man clutches at a straw, and all I managed to do was to splay his upper set of arms akimbo. I was immediately happy with myself for not waiting to attack when the ape had turned its back to me completely. The gunner had reckoned accurately that if his arms were being splayed in opposite directions then either I must have been in front of him or behind him. Bending his bottom pair of arms in an entirely unnatural manner—so that the top pair was pointing in one direction while the bottom pair was pointing perpendicularly—the orangutan began to pour fire into the jungle from all four blasters. The cryptosaur darted away from his companion, unwilling to fall victim to friendly fire, and seeing this, I decided to change my course of action. If the primate was unwilling to release his weapons, then, I wondered, how would he feel about flying with them?

The pacifiers’ effective range was only ninety feet or so, so I got to my feet (the noise from the burning and falling trees was so great that no one could hear my movements anymore anyway) and began to lift the blasters I’d captured higher and higher.

“Oooh-ooh-aah!” At first the strabosaur failed to notice that his feet had left the ground and went on shooting. However, as soon as I lifted him thirty feet up, he began to howl plaintively. Even though this was just a game, I was sweating bullets and my arms were all pins and needles, but I began to spread the weapons in different directions, using my thumb to increase the pacifiers’ range. When a message appeared telling me that the range had reached its maximum, I stopped pressing the button and simply sat back and enjoyed the sight. One pacifier could not have lifted such a monster. But working together, the two pacifiers managed the task admirably, dragging the orangutan to an unimaginable height of sixty or so feet. Considering that there weren’t any trees around the strabosaur which he could’ve latched onto or used to break his fall, the drop now facing my gunner was quite formidable.

“Oooh-ooh-aah!” Hints of fear surfaced in the strabosaur’s scream and, abruptly, the blasters in his paws ceased firing.

“Meet the crew” Mission Progress: 2 of 3 crew members recruited.

The notification that popped up was so unexpected that I almost dropped my gunner to his death. Two of three! That left the engineer—and I already had a decent plan for how I could recruit him: Lift him fifteen yards in the air and wait until he recognizes his glorious leader. Oh, how naïve I was…