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  Star Exile

  Singularity

  Star Exile Book One

  Drew Cordell

  Copyright © 2019 Drew Cordell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover art by Will Cordell.

  Text dividers: Jose Ochoa

  Edited by Celestian Rince

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published in The United States of America.

  To Allen Breor, for being the best friend I don’t always deserve.

  1

  A blaster bolt surged past my head, so close I had to close my eyes as a torrid heatwave flashed over my face. I grimaced, cursing as I ducked behind the alloyed bulkhead I was using as cover. One shot to the head and it would be lights out.

  A quick check of my AIVO (Artificial Intelligence Vision Overlay) connected me to the neural chip network implanted in my character’s brain. My blaster pistol’s charge pack was still at 65%, but I considered changing it out since I wouldn’t be able to move from my position until Brandon could provide cover fire.

  I constantly had to remind myself that Eternity Online wasn’t real—that I was technically sleeping right now. The adrenaline I was feeling now felt as real as anything else. I craved it, and let it fuel my actions, even if this situation was less than ideal.

  “Can I get a little help here, Brandon?” I growled, pressing my body as close as I could to the bulkhead in front of me. A barrage of enemy blaster fire that would chew through my armor surged forward, blurring my vision as the plasma bolts slammed into my cover with reverberating impacts.

  “Working on it,” Brandon shouted from somewhere behind me, his deep voice filling the square hall around us. He was pinned down too, and until we could create an opening, the situation wasn't going to improve.

  I still had all of my mana ready to spend on shielding the two of us, but I couldn't maintain it for long. One well-aimed blaster bolt to either of our extravehicular activity (EVA) suits would make this mission a lot more difficult if we had to pass through the vacuum of space again during our exit.

  The clock was counting down to my alarm, the one that would pull me into the responsibilities of my real life, and this wasn’t where we wanted to be when that went off.

  Shouting in the strange, slurping Virodesh language echoed out in front of us from our enemies. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but the message was probably simple enough.

  One quick glance from my cover told me that this freighter had a lot more goons to fight than we had expected. We had intended for this to be a typical repossession job without bloodshed: infiltrate a Virodeshian freighter, retrieve the warp drive, and leave the ship in the void to crawl to the nearest station. Since there weren’t supposed to be any actual players on board, we didn’t feel bad about executing the morally gray contract.

  The plan wasn't panning out for us, and now we had moved to Plan B: kill anything and everything that looked like it wanted to kill us first.

  The Virodeshians were squid-like alien creatures controlled by the AI Overlords running the Eternity Online game engine. As far as I was aware, their race wasn’t playable by normal players. They were tall and slender, green, and had scaly skin and tentacles all over their bulbous faces. Of all the monsters and aliens I’d seen in my first two weeks of playing Eternity Online, these were among the ugliest.

  “Pop pod out!” Brandon shouted, knowing I hated his coined term for the small impact-triggered tactical grenade. The device would explode with a bright flash of phosphorescent light then subsequently implode, creating a pressure differential and disorienting anyone or anything within a few meters of the detonation.

  Assisted by Exowurm’s AI and a link to Brandon’s tactical feed, my AIVO highlighted the grenade canister as it sailed past me in a lazy arc, detonating several meters away.

  Brandon made his move, emerging from whatever cover he was hiding behind and firing off his heavy shotgun. As a colossus, he stood almost two and a half meters tall and looked comical in the cramped hallways of the grimy freighter. His massive weapon thundered in the enclosed space, sending aching waves of pain splitting through my skull, leaving my ears with a lingering, numbed pain.

  I considered materializing the armored helmet of my EVA suit, but it would restrict my field of view so I powered through the painful noise. I emerged from my cover, hoping not to take one of the massive shotgun slugs as friendly fire. Even at 25% pain threshold conversion, it wouldn’t feel good to disintegrate into a cloud of blood.

  Just as I emerged, one of Brandon’s slugs demolished the chest of one of the squid-like Virodeshians, splattering gooey green gore all over its comrades as it collapsed to the floor in a slithering heap. It wouldn’t be getting up.

  Brandon’s slugthrowing weapon was primitive compared to the tech in Eternity Online, but Newtonian laws dictated that a large piece of metal accelerated to nearly four times the speed of sound was going to do a lot of damage when it struck something.

  More enemy reinforcements arrived, rushing down the featureless metal hallway and taking up defensive positions with the others as they communicated and slurped out commands. With bolstered numbers, the Virodeshians responded with an attack of their own, firing automatic pulse rifles and blasters at us as the flow of battle shifted against us. I concentrated, activating my Mana Shield ability and channeling it on both Brandon and myself at fourth rank, one below my current maximum.

  Our EVA suits, specially designed and fabricated to soak up some damage would probably have prevented a good portion of the damage from the retaliation, as would a first or second-rank Mana Shield, but I was trying to minimize our risk as much as possible. We were already in this deep enough and I had no idea what else would go wrong since our intel on this repo contract was clearly misinformed at best.

  At fourth rank, my spell would protect both of us for 110% of our maximum health for the duration, but it was going to eat four mana every second while I channeled it since I had two instances of the spell active. It was an expensive spell, considering I only had 35 total mana points in my reserve. My AIVO tracked my mana bar as I waited for the opportune time to drop the shields. Enemy fire dissipated mere inches away from our bodies, evaporating as harmless mist. I didn't hesitate to act while the spell protected us, pulling up the targeting sight of my light blaster pistol.

  One of the enemy combatants was still exposed from the bulkhead it was hiding behind, firing at my mana shield with a wild spray of plasma bolts as the barrel of its blaster glowed red hot. The goons were chipping down our shields at a dangerous rate, but we didn’t need much time to shift the tide of battle—especially since these seemed to be fairly low-level opponents.

  I lined up the compact red dot sight of my pistol with a writhing, tentacled head, squeezing the trigger firmly and feeling the weapon kick back in my hand. The blue blaster bolt turned half of the alien’s head into a fine green mist and it toppled forward tentacles-first, nearly tripping a couple of its friends that were attempting a bold push forward to get to the next nearest bulkheads along the hallway to use as cover.

  The other enemies took grim notice of the kill—and maybe my use of Strexian magic, laying off their onslaught of weapon fire and trying to take cover further back, but it was already too late for them to pivot their strategy. Deciding the situation was turning in our favor, I stopped channeling Mana Shield.

  I decimated four more aliens with my blaster before the remainder could hide. With their numbers dropping, Brandon and I re
emerged from our cover, rushing forward and killing the rest of the enemies. I checked my reserve to see I only had 11 points of mana remaining. We had cut it a little close with our gambit, but it had paid off and the only thing down was ammo count and my mana reserves.

  My mana would automatically regenerate by itself as soon as my reserve dropped below my maximum, and that rate of recovery would improve further if I didn’t cast any spells for at least 30 seconds. In less than two minutes my reserve would be fully recharged. As I continued to improve my Mind attribute, that recharge rate would increase.

  With the fight finished and both of us reasonably certain more reinforcements weren't coming, I pulled up the combat summary. My AIVO displayed the summary of the encounter in accordance with the preferences I had set.

  End of Combat Summary:

  Enemies killed: 9

  XP gained: 38

  Net major reputation changes: N/A

  Personal Estimated Cost of Combat: 4 credits (74% of 1x standard light blaster pistol charge cell.)

  Skill Progression:

  - Mana Shield Level 2 + 2%

  - Light Blaster Pistols Level 3 + <1%

  Overall Personal Performance Rating: S+

  “Nice job,” Brandon said, walking up from his position behind me and clapping a massive hand on my shoulder. His voice sounded distant, and there was a painful ringing in my ears from the firefight. If he was discomforted by the encounter and the unholy decibels of his shotgun, he wasn’t showing it.

  “Yeah, you too,” I said, ejecting the mostly-depleted charge pack from my blaster and depositing it into my normal inventory with a quick mental command. I grabbed one of the fresh packs clipped onto my utility belt, clicking it into place in the grip of my blaster and flipping the weapon needlessly in my hand before sliding it home into its holster.

  As a colossus, Brandon had almost double my maximum carry weight as a human, making him our designated cargo hauler in most situations. In Eternity Online, the inventory system gave players a base weight capacity and volume limit for their inventory, with ways to modify both stats. Since Brandon’s EVA suit was both heavier and larger, its storage module could store a lot more than mine given the simple volume/weight calculations Eternity Online used to decide if a player was over-encumbered.

  As we closed in on the alien corpses, the smell of rotting, half-cooked fish mixed with the sour odor of spent gunpowder and the aftermath of blaster fire was overpowering. Apparently, the Virodeshians smelled worse on the inside than out. This time, I deployed my helmet, feeling the nanotech materialize and seal me in. The external odors were replaced by a clean, sterile scent as the air jets in my helmet kicked into action, filtering and pumping the outside air into my suit with a sharp, pressurized hiss.

  “Yeah, that’s bad,” Brandon complained, wrinkling his nose as we trundled through the ichor-like green blood coating most of the floor to get to the other bodies.

  “So a fish smell bothers you, but you can fire a cannon without ear protection and not feel any pain?” I asked, surprised to see him react to something. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hear as well as me, his race just had ears that were less sensitive to intense decibel ranges.

  Brandon shrugged and activated his helmet, causing it to pixelate and appear on his head. “It smells bad. I’m pretty sure your blaster bolts half-cooked most of these guys. Can’t even market ‘em as sushi at this point.”

  I laughed at that, searching the corpse of the single elite enemy first, not expecting to find much worth taking after seeing the massive gooey hole through its chest. “Blaster bolts might cook them, but your gun liquifies them and ruins perfectly good loot.”

  Virodeshian Goon (Elite) - Dead

  Level 2 Humanoid

  Allegiance: Neutral

  Obtainable loot listed below.

  eCr (Eternity Credits): 17

  Virodeshian Mechanic Vest (Critical Condition) - Uncommon

  Light Armor. Basic.

  - Armor: 5 0. (provides no protection while in critical condition.)

  - Overall Durability: 1/100

  - Weight: 5.00 Standard Kg.

  - Carry Capacity: +0.20 M3

  Mods

  - None.

  Attributes

  Artisan

  - Provides a 10% chance to generate additional bonus XP when performing Mechanical non-combat skills.

  Unlicensed Blaster Rifle (Battered) - Common

  Blaster Rifle. Crude.

  - Overall Durability: 19/100

  - Weight: 3.8 Standard Kg.

  - Range: Mid-range.

  - Damage: 5-11 plasma damage (-10% weapon damage, accuracy, and optimal range while battered.)

  Mods

  - Stub Barrel: -10% damage, cooling power, and optimal range. +25% accuracy in close quarters battle (CQB)-close range.

  - Hair-Trigger: +15% rate of fire. -10% accuracy and cooling power.

  - Cut-Rate Blaster Rifle Charge Cell: 65% charge remaining. Plasma Damage.

  - Iron Sights: +10% accuracy in CQB-close range. -10% accuracy in mid-long range.

  Attributes

  - None.

  Had Brandon’s shotgun not done so much damage to the elite’s mechanic vest, it would probably be worth a lot more. Now, we’d probably have to scrap it for crafting components to sell to non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. With the mods and cheap build, the blaster was beyond awful for anything other than close-range spraying.

  The remainder of the bodies, all level one generic NPCs with semi-randomized trash-tier loot, yielded a shoddy pulse rifle, a few pieces of bad armor, some charge cells, 31 eCr, and a few blaster pistols to scrap for crafting resources.

  “Come on, let’s finish up and get out of here, we have work in less than an hour. It’s time we have another word with the captain,” I said. Just as I’d said it, an alarm sounded in my helmet and alerts flashed across the visor of my helmet and in my AIVO. Another ship had just warped one kilometer away from the freighter and our ship, Exowurm. When I pulled up the visual feed from our ship’s external cameras, I knew this was about to get a lot more complicated.

  2

  “Dammit, Kyle! I thought you jammed the comms when we warped in,” Brandon complained, sweat dripping down his forehead while we jogged through the narrow hallway back toward the service elevator which would take us to the freighter’s engine room. A gnawing feeling of unease chewed at my gut. We were going about this the wrong way, and if there wasn’t actually a warp drive that needed to be repossessed, we would put ourselves in more danger while potentially walking right into the jaws of a vicious trap.

  There were two possible scenarios at play here: first, this had been a trap from the start, a scam to steal our ship and there never was an authentic contract. Second, the captain of this freighter had still tried to kill us, but the pirates warping in had nothing to do with that. We needed to get back to the bridge, but we also needed more information from our ship. If the signal jammer had failed, then it would make sense that this could still be a legit job and the captain had simply called out a couple of its buddies to try to kill us since its first attempt had failed.

  I checked the status feed from Exowurm, running a quick diagnostic on the active systems tab.

  Exowurm Active Systems Diagnostic Report

  Reactor Energy Consumption: 20/85 sMW (Standard Megawatts)

  Processing Power Usage: 24/100 PHz (Petahertz)

  Tiberius XII Organic AI. Interceptor AI – Mythic: Gen 8 Organic AI. Provides 100 base PHz of processing power. Supports all external crew within range of active Communications, Scanning, and Signals Array. 10/85 sMW energy consumption while active.

  Solid-State Electronics. Interceptor Support Module – Rare: Allows the user to enhance ship modules up to the limit of this Module (3/5 modules enhanced). Solid-State Electronics cannot enhance integrated ship AI or other Solid-State Electronics. Modules enhanced by Solid-State Electronics are 15% more effective but consume an additional 1
sMW while active.

  Light Signal Jamming Array. Interceptor Module - Uncommon: Actively jamming all communications from Vyshdihrfsish (Virodeshian Cargo Freighter). 08/85 sMW energy consumption while active. 06/100 PHz processing power usage while active. [Enhanced by Solid-State Electronics. +15% strength of signal jamming.]

  Standard Communications, Scanning, and Signals Array. Interceptor Module - Common: Maintaining and encrypting all communication potential for Exowurm and its crew. 02/85 sMW energy consumption while active. 04/100 PHz processing power usage while active. [Enhanced by Solid-State Electronics. +15% range and strength of encryption.]

  It didn’t make sense, but I reported the results to Brandon anyway. “They’re jammed. I think this is the last time we take such a sketchy contract in a backspace station.”

  “Okay. It’s nothing we did wrong. This was rigged from the start,” Brandon agreed. He seemed to calm down.

  The nine squid goons sent to ambush us in the hallway might have been enough to take out most people under a lot of circumstances, but it wasn’t enough to stop us. Now, since the captain’s buddies hadn’t heard from the freighter in some time, they had flown in to provide support and probably take a cut of the profits. I watched my AIVO feed as the pirate ship, not much bigger than ours, docked on one of the front starboard airlocks. At least they weren’t going right to Exowurm to try to disable it from the outside. It would be worth more money intact anyway, and they seemed to know we were flying it with a skeleton crew of two.