Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) (4 page)

If you refuse to be resurrected by your Planetary Spirit, you get the option of choosing any planet in the empire to respawn on, but for a fee. In this case, all your items and equipment remain where you died and your character respawns with nothing but the money he had at the time of death (which, presumably, was stored in some bank account somewhere all along).

As for the items dropped upon death, your enemy (or anyone else who comes along) can take these or destroy them. The only limitation is how much their ship can carry in her holds. Players who specialize in piracy plan their ship’s future development very carefully—especially when it comes to cargo capacity. Pirates always need to make sure that they have enough space for their loot. According to the rules, a spaceship can be stolen, captured (in which case the defeated player is resurrected without anything) or destroyed. If she is destroyed, the ship’s wreckage remains floating at the site of her destruction and another player may use it as material for repairs or may salvage it into a universal repair kit. This is why the first thing that fledgling ship-owners do is buy themselves a self-destruct device: It’s better for your ship to be one class weaker, but still be your ship, than have to start all over again in an F-class tub.

Imperial Rapport…Leveling (which, it turned out, didn’t exist for characters)…There was a lot of information, but I wasn’t about to enter the game until I finished going through it all. My job was to find out everything about the game instead of running headlong into the fray hoping that everything would simply work out. I never did like players like that…

“Master, you have an incoming video-call from the leader of the Black Lightning guild. According to current rankings, this is the fourth-ranked Qualian guild. Would you like to accept the call?”

“Come on, throw it up on the screen.”

“Hello!” a bearded face appeared on the screen. “Are you the one looking for information about
Galagon
?”

“
Galactogon
.”

“Could be
Pygmalion
for all I care. What’s your character name?”

“Surgeon.”

“Hmm,” the leader of the Black Lightning frowned, looking somewhere off-camera. “There are about fifteen hundred Surgeons out there…Which one are you?”

“Fifteen hundred?” I asked surprised. “How’d you find that out?”

As I already figured out, a character name in
Galactogon
wasn’t unique, so it was impossible to identify any player for certain. Mail as a category didn’t even exist: If you wanted to communicate with other players, you had to acquire a communicator. And when I tried to look up how many Surgeons were running around just like I was, the system politely instructed me to consult the help menu—which told me that the number of players online was not subject to disclosure.

“Doesn’t matter. What planet are you on? Our guide changes from planet to planet. And forgive me, I’m not about to give you all our guides for fifty thou.”

“I haven’t been assigned a homeworld yet,” I replied honestly, since concealing this fact would have been pointless. After a little thought, I added, “I’ve started a new character. I haven’t even entered the allocation center yet. Like I said in the email, I need information about leveling up without putting in real money.”

“You started a new one? Why delete the old one? Why didn’t you just go through retraining and become a commander without wasting an extra month?”

“It didn’t work out with my old one,” I shrugged my shoulders vaguely, happy that I hadn’t actually lied about anything. Let the bearded guild leader think that I already had some experience with the game and simply wanted to prove something to someone. At least then he wouldn’t try to sell me any nonsense…Then again, he could still offer me something worthless and watch my reaction to see if I was just a fish that needed to be reeled in for all its money. You could sell anything to a newbie like that—from the “secret” number of the various ships in the game, to the location of a “simply unbelievable” planet brimming with Raq (which was like gold) or Elos (the game’s universal energy resource).

“Whatever—your problem, your headache. If you want to relive training, that’s your God-given right. In that case, for the sum you mentioned, I have a guide detailing non-standard events and how to find them in the Qualian Training Sector. What do you say?”

“For fifty thousand? You having a laugh?” I raised an eyebrow in surprise. “That’s way too little to be worth fifty thousand.”

“You asked for it,” the beard instantly grew defensive. “You seem like a shrewd guy, so think about it: Why would I be offering you anything if I didn’t know anything?”

“No, that’s no good for me. I’m offering fifty thousand for information that’s unique. The Training Sector isn’t so big that I need to pay such a crazy amount of money for it. Like I told you, I’m interested in leveling a ship’s captain. Do you have anything like that or not?”

“You know, Surgeon,” the guild leader said after a little thought, “I could just as easily refuse. We sell guides quite frequently so customers aren’t exactly hard to come by. But it’s a funny coincidence. Just today, a highly respected player, who also decided to restart from scratch for whatever reason, contacted every clan in the game, including mine. He is offering to pay us one hundred thousand dollars if we keep our leveling guides secret for three months. What’s more is that he wants us to let him know if a player comes looking for that kind of thing—and furnish him with that player’s contact info. I’m guessing you sent your requests not just to us, but to all the other Qualian guilds as well—so you may be sure that Sergei Smolyanov is already well aware of your vidphone number and email. That bit of info is free by the way. If he weren’t such a jerk—and from an enemy empire besides—I would absolutely be on board with his whole secrecy thing. A hundred thousand dollars is a very big sum, after all…Luckily for you, Serge smashed up my fleet last year, so…I’m not about to give you anything for free and I’d agree that the starting sector isn’t quite the place to look for hidden goodies. Heck, I’d even say that there aren’t goodies there at all—so the best I can do is give you our own in-house guide for how to level up your ship from F-class to C-class as quickly as possible. My goons use it all the time. Anything higher than C-class, you’ll have to do yourself. What do you say?”

“The starting sector plus ship leveling?” I clarified, understanding perfectly well that this was better than nothing. The forums were bursting with a plethora of guides for leveling up, but the more I read, the less I believed that I would find anything acceptable. Even never having played
Galactogon
, I understood that they were a waste of time.

“Yup. And as a bonus, I won’t be telling anyone that I sold anything to anyone. Especially what that second anyone may look like in real life. My friendly advice to you is, if you talk to other guild leaders, use an image scrambler.”

“Give me your account info.” I had had enough time to make up my mind. I can’t say that I was much swayed by the beard’s words, but when there are a billion pounds on the line…Well, that’s a reason to give it a shot.

“Already sent. As soon as I get the money, I’ll send you the guide you wanted. I’ve already got it ready. And—good luck to you! Who knows—maybe our paths will cross. Let me know as soon as you get a D-class ship. I’ll send you an invite to my guild. No entrance exams or anything.”

“Why such largess?” I asked surprised. As I had already managed to find out, guilds in
Galactogon
meant everything—home, family, money, resources, etc. The guild leaders and their officers were very careful when welcoming newcomers to their banners, seeking to weed out leeches and those who liked to dig around in others’ coffers. A player gave quite a bit to his guild, but the guild itself did plenty for him in return too.

“Anyone who manages to get a ship to D-class without investing a single coin, even with the help of our guide, is already worth a closer look,” smirked the beard. “When you get the Workaholic Achievement—that’s the one that’ll show you’ve made it—I’ll be happy to see you among my ranks. Until then, excuse me but I have to run… End call.”

“Stan—panic mode,” I uttered the code phrase that forced my smart home into emergency overdrive. Panic mode entailed the deletion of any online information that could lead someone back to my physical self. My name, my address, my description…I used to laugh about stuff like that, but then one day as I was coming home, I was rudely ambushed by a gang of imbeciles whom I had crossed in
Runlustia
. It seemed that they hadn’t liked the leading role I had played in a raid on their castle. I paid for that with fractured arms, legs, ribs and—as a result—having to relocate to a new apartment. That was when I set up the panic mode command. Better safe than sorry. If the beard was right, a billion pounds was a large enough sum of money to justify a visit to a competitor in real life. A visit during which you would make sure that your competitor wouldn’t want (or be able) to sign into the game for the next several years.

Two hours later, I had refused two incoming video calls—truthfully pointing out that I was taking a bath. Like I had figured after my conversation with the leader of the Black Lightning, the representatives calling from the top two Qualian guilds quickly lost an interest in talking to me without having the opportunity to see (or record) what I looked like. Constantly citing internal guild regulations, they kept asking me when would be a better time to call me back and whether we could maybe simply meet in real life and talk about my proposal like grown adults. They even offered to buy me dinner! Well, no wonder—for a hundred thousand dollars, I’d buy myself dinner too. Having received the information I needed from the Black Lightning, I ordered Stan to delete my vidphone number and mail account. Maybe I was being too careful, but it was better than getting bitten a second time.

When I finally delved into the beard’s leveling guide, I couldn’t help but crack a smile over having quit the game right away, before entering the allocation center. For, precisely in this lay the pivotal move that would give me a special reputation among the Training Sector’s instructors—and not a very good reputation at that.

“What’s the holdup?” yelled the local motivational speaker and kicked the air where my body had just been. Except of course I was already gone…The scenario hinged on being able to control your body and wanting to beat the bully, earning thereby a trip to jail even before you got into allocation. Fighting earned the player a bad reputation, allowing him to access an underground tournament that was held every few weeks. The specifics of the tournament (there were actually three tournaments altogether) varied each time. One would involve dueling, another item gathering and the third mining. Even if the player lost, he would still get pretty good money for someone just starting out. In my situation, this was a blessing from on high. According to the game manual, the only way to get money in the training sector was by investing real money.

Well…If I have to brawl a little, why not? Brawling can be fun…

“Feisty one, eh?” the bozo exclaimed and, scurrying faster than I expected, went for me with his giant arms akimbo. The ship behind me prevented any retreat and a jump to the side would land me in the embrace of the onrushing rhino. So I decided to do the one thing that the NPC’s barebones AI would not anticipate—stepping back, I kicked off the ship’s fuselage and launched myself into the bozo. Let’s see who gets whom…

What’s there to say about
Galactogon
’s physics engine? It’s almost perfect. What happens when a six-foot monster with a full head of steam meets an ordinary body? Jumping forward, I assumed that I’d at least stop him in his tracks. However, he didn’t even seem to realize that I was trying to hit him and simply tossed me a dozen or so feet aside—right onto the pavement.

“What’s this?” came the smug laugh. “Tough as a rock, but light as a feather, eh?”

The ground shook as the giant bozo vaulted from the gangway down to me. Strange, I wondered, where are the security guards? According to the guide, they should have already appeared to break us up and arrested me for fighting.

“Who dares mock Drill?”

Well, well, it turned out that this Frankenstein’s monster had a name! Though, I couldn’t figure out exactly when I had managed to mock him, but we could put that down to an oversight in the AI’s scripting.

“Enjoy your stay in the medbay!” rhymed Drill, impressively managing to sound a little sinister. Raising his foot, he stomped it on the very place where my head had just been. Had he struck it, I would’ve lost a critical amount of health—maybe even been forced into resurrection. So I did something that the beard’s guide never mentioned—I responded.

Rolling out of the way of the bozo’s boot (stuffed to its seams with his trunk of a leg), I aimed a sweep at his supporting leg. It felt like I had kicked a pole buried deep in the ground. My health fell again. I whimpered something about how I couldn’t care less about someone as insignificant as him—but my counterstrike had had its intended effect. Bellowing savagely the bozo began to keel over.

Ignoring the pain in my leg, I continued my roll, springing to my feet through inertia and then jumping—my intention being to land on Drill. Pointing my elbow in front of me and aiming it at his head, I managed to hear the welcome phrase “Halt immediately!” just as…