GoodGame (Unfrozen Book #3): LitRPG Series Read online

  We entered Ellie’s apartment and practically collapsed in each other’s arms, kind of like a couple of lovebirds, ignoring the cloud of holographic butterflies that immediately surrounded us. My legs simply cramped up and gave way. According to the time, we had three minutes left before the start. We were exhausted, of course, but all we could do was down a few light energy drinks from the fridge, and get ready to upload.

  Ellie helped me out of my wet coat and stashed it somewhere. She wasn’t in any hurry to head for her room, though, and hovered around my capsule as if she wanted to ask me something.

  “I’m not going to strip down for you,” I said, reclining on the loading platform. “So what is it? Do you want me to tell you we did the right thing? I can’t tell you one way or the other. That’s for sure. As far as the authorities are concerned, you and I are criminals who belong behind bars. But we had no other way out. That’s just logic. It was you or her.”

  “I know, I understand,” Ellie said, head bowed. “It's just ... Why did she say that I wasn’t her daughter?”

  “Say what?!?” I asked, sitting up from surprise. “She said a lot of crazy stuff at the end. Why does that bother you so much? She called you a prostitute, for example, and a crazy psychopath.”

  “I know.”

  “She was just trying to defend herself,” I said dismissively. “It helped her to see you as a foundling, like Julia — two outsiders who threatened her children from her second marriage. Don't overthink it. I took one look at Julia and saw that you were sisters. No need for a DNA test.”

  And I clumsily ran my forefinger down her Rassokhina nose, lightly tapping the end of it.

  “You’re daddy’s little girl. He’d be proud of you. Of course, he should’ve been firmer with you, but anyway...”

  Ellie smiled then, and the look of doubt on her face vanished.

  “Don’t pay any attention to that nonsense at the end,” I said, winding up my little lecture on family matters. “Think of that as another order, by the way.”

  “Yessir, commander!” she said, giving me a little half-salute, and then she rushed up the stairs, discarding her clothing along the way.

  “What a child...”

  I shook my head and gave the order to upload. If only I could solve all problems in a single night with just a hacksaw and some resourcefulness! Like back in good ole’ 2007…

  Although, yes, in that case I wouldn’t be unfrozen now.

  Chapter 47

  (Continued from Book Two)

  EVERYTHING WAS JUST as we left it back at the wheelhouse. Diadfl5fgkg, otherwise known as Diana, was still at the helm. She was looking sexy, but rather bored, in her tight jumpsuit, as she tested system readiness before we exited into regular space. Our dusky beauty from the Mediterranean basin had also recently returned to the game, sending her stand-in off to catch some rest. Now, she was totally immersed in idleness.

  Another member of the crew also headed off to real life along with the co-pilot. This was a low-level warrior who shared the same shift. That wasn’t a big loss for our crew. What made me uneasy was the fact I was going into battle without my faithful partner. Shandine had taken family time off via a voice message in which she expressed great frustration. My “Amazon” was dying to fight, but one of her kids had fallen ill, and so that was that. I assured her that there were many battles to come, and she’d always be able to add frags to her collection. Of course, she was crazy with longing, just the same.

  And so by the time we exited subspace, we only had 11 crew members on board: three engineers, Sven, the artilleryman, Makha, our medical expert, our pilot, Diana, and also five warriors. I’m a blademaster, myself, by the name of Cooldown, Ellie is my apprentice who opted for the same rare specialty as mine, the reptilian defender by the name of Kroc, his buddy, a foot-soldier named Happenstance, and Criman, a shooter. A human, according to his passport, he was, in fact, was a GMO - a genetically modified human being.

  People who owned costly premium accounts were allowed one such enhancement, but any others had to be earned through game play. Being a shooter, Criman, who hailed from the border of Germany and Austria, had opted to improve his vision.

  Shandine, too, had undergone genetic modifications. Since she was a scout, she selected extra speed, which made her as fast as a fleet-footed Rallec. Players from other planets could also undergo genetic modification, but only up to three times. And depending on their race, some areas open to genetic tinkering were off-limits. Only human beings were able to transform into whatever they wanted. We were as malleable as a lump of clay under the hands of a sculptor.

  Yet again, this showed how adaptable we are as a species.

  Having assessed our readiness as a crew, I assigned everyone to their posts in the various compartments. Being essential personnel, the engineers were stationed in the engine, shield and energy core. I put Makha in the central cargo compartment, so that she could swiftly come to the rescue of anyone who didn’t end up heading for rebirth right away. I put the artilleryman in charge of the laser beam, and divided the warriors between the second armory, which is where the missiles were housed, and the drone control center. Once the players were all in place, most of the corvette's parameters immediately shot up from the usual two and a half percent to ten percent. Awesome! Yo’ Grandmother was ready now to incinerate the opposition.

  All I needed now was to sit down in the co-pilot's seat and order combat readiness. Our long leap across the span of this sector was coming to an end.

  “Well, let’s get out of this shithole, what say?” Diana said, flashing a Hollywood smile.

  “Bring on the tunes!”

  And she turned on some kind of alien rock music just as we emerged into open space not far from the outpost. We found ourselves surrounded by multicolored flashes of lights and gun and missile fire, not to mention debris from starships engaged in battle, all to the thumping beat of a bass guitar. The monitor displaying tactical action blinked as if in shock, and then revealed ever more opponents. The battle station monitors were much faster, quickly displaying the list of defenders, including Yo’ Grandmother. It seemed that there were less and less of the latter with every minute.

  There were three units of Union border guards, mostly represented by heavy frigates. Of them, there was only one currently in action. There were ships belonging to clan member players, and also allies, not far away, but I had no idea how many of them were ready to help in the defense.

  Most of the defenders were concentrated around Talvro-19, with a few units circling outside the zone under attack, which housed the outpost's defense systems. These consisted of either nimble reconnaissance cutters, or heavily protected corvettes with thick hulls, not unlike our ship.

  While the attackers looked better than the now-defunct St. Permadeath, they were comprised primarily of cutters and frigates in varying states of decrepitude. There were no more than five serious threats out there. You could count them on one hand, that is. Chief among them was a massive breakthrough cruiser. It was just a copy, but it could still wipe out a slew of ships with a single salvo. Still, it didn't look like it was in any hurry to join the fray. There were also two long-endurance battle destroyers that were busier than their flagship.

  The opposition was falling apart more due to the shape it was in than from our fire power, but they outnumbered us ten to one. With an advantage like that, they didn't need a strategic advantage. Their satellites simply swarmed us by rushing into battle to certain death, samurai style. They fell even before they had time to unload all of their ammo, shooting off half of their load or so.

  As for our radius of combat operations, the ship’s computer swiftly counted some 89 objects. Meanwhile, we were merely on the outskirts of this interstellar mess, which meant that the density of the enemy’s starships was only going to increase further on. I saw no reason to rush headlong into the thick of it, so I focused on the low-hanging fruit. I also activated broadcast mode. I had to stay in step with the tim
es, right? That’s why I made sure to capture everything on video.

  I wasn’t about to go viral with this kind of thing — space battles weren't anything new. I simply felt instinctively that a solid alibi wouldn’t hurt. I’m talking about the fact that just about now, a fire would be breaking out in a certain hanger back in the real world.

  The counter immediately highlighted a couple of dozen spectators. I wondered what they were doing as they watched. Were they eating? On the road? Working? I could hardly believe how some people spent all their time sitting behind a screen. Lots of times, during long subspace jumps there wasn’t anything at all going on.

  I hoped we weren't going to be a disappointment to our small, better-than-nothing fan base. Meanwhile, I was about to see what I’d picked up by poring so long over space combat tutorials. Amway had provided most of them, but some of them I’d found on my own. I’d needed to work on some professional developed for some time now because of my rather lackluster stats. But the huge sea of opponents out there suggested I wouldn’t make much headway with them today.

  Most ships out there didn't seem to even notice our sudden appearance. It wasn't that they were ignoring us, it’s just that they themselves were forced to be myopic, too. And yet the ship’s on-board computer issued a warning that an enemy scan had been initiated. Who was this curious assailant?

  Interestingly, two combat frigates and a corvette such as ours and in no way our inferior were probing us in an attempt to discern any vulnerabilities. The catalog suggested that the prototype for this ship was a 4th generation unit from Ra reptilian production. It was a solid ship indeed, and would be something we could use in our fleet. Sadly, though, this wasn’t the best scenario for launching an assault party.

  “How about we break the ice by politely greeting them,” I said. “Fire the laser!”

  Our "annihilator" immediately launched a beam of charged particles at the enemy starship. Wowza. It shone brighter than the local sputtering star. The pilot of the poor ship, whose shields weren’t up to par anymore, only had time to say his last prayers. I did this for him. Amen to you, buddy. Take a bow.

  The blast hit the reactor compartment head on, and the ship didn’t stand a chance. It swelled up like a fiery balloon, in the process reducing the capacity of the three satellite ships to zero, and seriously lowered the charge in a dozen or so other ships. This was our ultimate weapon, so yeah, you can’t argue with that.

  The drawback was that it was out for the next ten minutes. And it could be worse if we didn’t have an artilleryman in the weapon compartment and an engineer next to the Core. In that case, the beam would take even longer to reload. Probably we’d be able to use it before the battle was over, and that’s about it.

  Now we could turn to easier targets. Our conventional missiles would suffice. They were slow to reach the target, and were thus rather archaic in the era of interstellar travel, but they shouldn’t be underestimated in terms of their deadliness. First, they have great homing systems, which makes them highly accurate, and secondly, energy shields aren’t effective against them because they hit a wide section of the hull. We were able to create a far more explosive material for them once the station’s weapon module had been upgraded. Now, with just two or three successful hits, we could destroy any of the enemy’s cutters.

  That being said, I didn’t use up our extremely limited ammunition exclusively on destroying enemy units. What I did was aim each missile from the first cassette at a dedicated target, namely the weapon bays of enemy ships. The smaller starships each had a single weapon bay, you see. Our volley of missiles knocked out six of them at once - only one of them held hard and fast — two shells couldn’t put it out of action. Just the same, we managed to knock their modules into the red zone, greatly reducing their ability to strike back.

  And so these ships were out of the picture for quite awhile, and posed no threat to us until their crews put the pieces back together again. I wasn't going to let that happen, though, and so I sent a squad of combat drones their way armed with simple laser guns. Why not hit them while they’re down and out? The laser guns were all that we could afford given our budget, but they’d suffice, even though they weren’t lethal.

  Criman and Ellie, being the youngest, most ardent crew members, handled the rather mundane drones. It was okay if they screwed up, because these drones were put together right here in the corvette from scrap metal and commonly-found minerals, really prosaic stuff. And, moreover, despite her feigned indifference, Diana was quite industrious, and had assembled three entire drone squads en route to Pandora and back.

  Good for her, but, nevertheless, pretty soon I’d have to take a close look at our fearless pilot. Yes, she’d truly fallen into a hairy situation not long ago, but lots of her apparent bruises and wounds didn’t line up with what you’d expect from a normal brawl. I’d suspected our sultry beauty with the throaty voice had her own game going on, and now I was sure of it. All that I need now was to find out if she was working on our side, or on behalf of someone else.

  Meanwhile, our nimble, laser-equipped drones did their work on the damaged ships in the space of a minute, about the time it took to reload a new cartridge packed with missiles. By then, two more or less solid-looking frigates finished scanning us and commenced to open fire. The closest one trained a quad of rapid-fire cannons on Yo’ Grandmother, pelting us with cheap, kinetic projectiles. It was like shooting an elephant with a BB gun. Well, that’s what they had, then — good for taking out, say, lightly armored targets, like cutters, satellites or drones.

  The other frigate, however, used rather powerful laser weapons that alternately hit us at the same spot. Our shield held strong, but its capacity dropped by 30 percent. Our body also suffered damage, although not much. What sucked, though is that other adversaries decided to jump into the fray. Some were shelling us, while others were trying to take out our drones. We couldn’t count on regenerating our charge now, because whatever we gained was taken out by a hit.

  Diana snapped to action then, and started making a series of tight turns so that we weren’t such an easy target. This seemed to work for the small fry targeting us, but then other players in the siege started to drift into the action around us.

  I fired the next missiles in our arsenal at the frigate armed with lasers, and finally knocked out one installation. This helped, but we seriously lacked support, and needed some kind of cover in order to recharge.

  As if reading my mind, just then our talented clan leader got in touch.

  “Greetings, Streamer! Better late than never...”

  “We got here as fast as we could, but had to take some risky shortcuts through unexplored spaces where “no man has gone before.”

  “Good thinking. Otherwise, you’d have run into some of our leftovers out there. As you see, we’re being pounded out here, without so much as a “may I please?” No attempt at fun and games.”

  I identified the ill-fated frigate among the rest of the defenders, and entered it on the register of priority allies. It was long, like a spear, and looked like a giant canoe floating in space. This was one of the most common Orthorian designs, fifth range. It wasn't noted for its weaponry, but it had a worthy power plant that provided it with an excellent shield. It must be on our port side.

  But what was really strange is that the system showed that Bumtastic wasn't on board the ship, which was the Flugenheimen, rather, he was at the outpost.

  “So why aren't you on the front line?” I asked, surprised.

  “You won't believe it, but the station admins suggested I lead a cell of local militiamen comprised of players and NPC stuck down here.”

  “What the hell?!? What can you do from down there to help us?”

  “Well, nobody expects us to stop the freaks given the state of our forces,” replied Bumtastic cheerfully. “Lots of our guys fled as soon as they saw the number of opponents headed our way.” The system freaks were tanking on purpose but they were intercepted just befor
e the jump. Not many of them succeeded in leaving.”

  “So we came here for nothing?” I frowned. It wasn’t like we could simply exit this scene, that's for sure. So what the fuck were we doing here?

  “Don’t freak out. The Union promised to compensate everyone for the costs. Fully.”

  “So wait, you mean they’ll replace all of the lost ships?!”

  “Absolutely! Fully loaded!” he replied. “So man up and pick off as many assholes as you can before the cavalry rides in. If we make a good show of it, you might be able to write off your ill-gotten debts. And that includes any outstanding loans.”

  I was so blown away by this news that I almost missed the rocket system’s latest cooldown. It now longer made sense to attack a slew of opponents, so I directed all of our firepower at the battered frigate, practically ripping apart its hull. The ship tried to limp to the rear, but en route it ran smack into a shard of tracer wreckage that pierced it clean through. That was that — another one bites the dust.