Chapter 10

Days Go By

When the President offers you an award, saying you’re too busy to accept it apparently isn’t okay. I tried. The government flew my family and I out to DC for the award ceremony. They told Tee a time and place for where they would pick him up and then never showed, so he hired a private jet with my credit card, and after when we had dinner with the President, he called her by her first name. It was as awkward as it was funny.

They held the award ceremony where they did the inauguration. I expected a reasonably sized turnout, but seventeen million people showed up, making it the largest crowd in human history. People didn’t just come from out of state; they came from other countries and by the hundreds of thousands. Leaders from all around the world, which I and everyone else didn’t recognize, because they were almost all new, came to offer me their nation’s highest honors. I was knighted, dukedafied, showered in medals, and made an honorary citizen of basically every nation on the planet. I was given so many awards I had no clue what I received by the end of it.

The experience was surreal and overwhelming.

And I was happy never to repeat it.

The only good thing to come from it was DC was where the station design team was, so I got to talk to them in person. My new station master knowledge from gaining special clearance for all the expansion quests had opened my eyes and we needed to talk.

“Look, you are not listening to me,” I said, glancing around the room at the design team leaders. “A template design doesn’t work. Stations have to be tailored to the factions around them. If those factions change, then the station has to change with them. It’s a constantly shifting battlefield that you have to keep adapting to, so don’t think about long-term effectiveness. Think about what will work now, and will continue to work six months from now.”

The twelve heads of the design project for the stations looked at me with confusion and awe. In their defense, I’d gone from a clueless station master to the most informed station master on the planet in the space of a day. Everyone who could go for the special clearance was now going for it.

They needed to.

The advantage was too great to pass up.

With the new knowledge, I finally understood how badly we were doing. We were so far behind the curve. Tee was right, our local systems should have been feeding our stations as many resources and credits as they possibly could, but only a few had received a single shipment. It was a disaster.

Harriet came to their rescue, when she realised no one was going to reply. “How are they supposed to help the station masters design their stations then?”

The new knowledge I’d gained from the quest answered that question perfectly. “Efficiency. You were right that the bigger stations get the more delay time there is.” I grabbed someone’s briefing notes, flipped them over to the blank side, and drew a three-by-three square grid. “Imagine, the center box is the station, and these other eight around it are the area that the station expands into. First, we need to know if the central station can adequately supply this area. If it can, then there is nothing to worry about.”

I added another sixteen boxes around the outside, making a five-by-five grid.

“Now, when the station expands again, we need to know if the station can still supply all of these new sections’ needs. If it can, but there is a time delay, we need to know if it’s more efficient to leave this area functioning at 80% or build systems to support it.” I added another 24 boxes around the outside, making it a seven by seven grid. “It might be that at this stage, the loss of efficiency is too much and that it becomes more cost-effective to add new subsystems in to help. But we don’t know. That’s what we need to find out.”

“We can’t do that,” said Randle, the head designer. “That’s mathematicians' work.”

“Then get mathematicians. Every station is going to have different efficiency problems. Those problems come first. Once we know when the problems will occur and where, you can design a station that will work for each of us, but until we know where these problems will occur, we’re going to make no ground.”

“Sir, it is incredibly time-consuming to do it this way. A template is simpler.”

“A template is how we will lose. You’ve got it in your heads that we are all fighting on similar battlefields against different enemies. But the enemies aren’t just the enemy; they are the battlefield. Because our enemies are different, our battlefields are different.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

I tried not to roll my eyes, them being clueless wasn’t their fault. “Okay, let me try to explain it another way. You are trying to build a tank. But this tank might be going to war against ground troops, other tanks, bombers, fighters, or naval vessels. Depending on which one of those threats you are fighting, you should design your tank differently.”

“I think I understand. But the thing is, we can design a tank to fight all those opponents.”

“You can, but it’s not efficient. And that lack of efficiency is what will make us lose. If you are putting in something to counter a submarine that doesn’t exist, you are removing something that could take out a bomber. These factions have been playing this game for hundreds of thousands of years. We are not going to win. But we can last long enough to snatch all the opportunities and Tokens that we can from our sectors. In a few centuries, we can come back and actually have a chance, but right now, our only chance is to take everything that’s not nailed down and survive long enough to do it.”

Randle gave me what I’m sure he thought was a reassuring smile. “You don’t need to worry about that, Sir. We’ve got this well in hand. The army has organized and reformed. Our admirals are building our fleet and our people are training to learn how to operate them. We are doing better than you think.”

They were deluded. In their defense, they didn’t have all the knowledge I did. “Answer these questions for me, please. Is my station the most advanced humanity has?”

“Yes.”

“Is it the most advanced by a long shot?”

“Well, yes.”

“My AI tells me I am in the top 5% percent for station combat power when currently compared to all the other factions. There are over a million stations in the Great Game. That means 50,000 stations are in a better position than I am right now, and I am the best humanity has to offer, by a long shot. Most of our stations are in the bottom 10%. The races that know how to use them correctly are all eyeing them up to take over because we are noobs and it will be easy. I don’t care if what I’m suggesting is time-consuming. Pick the sectors with the best stations and only work on those stations. We are going to lose sectors within the first year, so those stations are our best chance of keeping hold of something.”

Randle swallowed. “You can’t be serious. You also don’t have the authority to make us do that.”

“I am serious. The knowledge I got from clearing my quest says I’ve got a 50% chance of losing my station this year and an 80% chance of losing it next year if nothing changes.”

The heads of the design teams glanced at each other nervously.

Randle looked ill. “I can’t implement what you suggested without approval from the joint chiefs, but I can do it for your station if you like, sir. I’ve been ordered to assist you in any way my team or I am capable.”

“Then do it.”

***

I was staying in a hotel because the media and my new cult couldn’t be trusted. They’d broken into my apartment nine times while I was away, even with the cops watching the place. The hotel didn’t allow pets, but they waved that rule when they realized who I was. It had cost me a couple of selfies, but that was a small price to pay to have Buster with me.

I’d never wanted to be famous. Being mobbed when you were going to the store to get milk looked like it sucked. I was considering getting reconstructive surgery. The attention was so aggressive that my Dad and brothers had to move out. They were in the neighboring suites. We had the whole top floor of the hotel.

“I’ve successfully cleared my fifth quest,” The Librarian said. “I’ve got a good feeling about this next one. The Folmio are a faction of builders. They don’t commit violence of any sort. They're allied with several other factions to work as engineers, so this will be less violent than the last.”

The Librarian had gone from being old and frail to a handsome young man in his prime. Somehow, he still managed to look like he was ready to shush you at any second, though. And that much tweed on a young man looked weird, but he refused to change his style. At least without his glasses, his eyes were the right size for his face.

“Daniel, how are your quests going?” Alex asked sweetly. She’d taken to treating him like a kid brother who needed help with everything.

He hated it.

“I’m done,” Daniel said, sticking his tongue out at her. His mother had caught him swearing at Alex previously. Since he wasn’t paraplegic anymore, he’d received an earful about talking respectfully to people. We'd all had to listen and pretend like we agreed. “I screwed up the third quest, so decided to throw in the towel and went full murder hobo on the rest. I think I’m going to buy the blueprints for the R7s and spam them. Their range isn’t as good as the R8s, but they have significantly more rounds per minute. There is an upgrade path that will let them shoot twice a second, which makes them more lethal so long as the enemy is in range.”

“Daniel, we talked about this,” Alex said. “You know you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Actually, he should have,” I said, coming to his defense.

Alex scowled at me.

It was a pretty scowl. Everything she did was pretty. I hadn’t dated in a while, and the solitary confinement was making me antsy. She was getting hotter every time I saw her. I had this weird hate attraction thing going on, and I didn’t like it.

“Don’t encourage him.”

“I will when he makes the right decision. He’s good at tower defense games, and smart, but he’s still twelve. Cultural information isn’t helpful if he doesn’t know how to implement it, and none of his factions will give him a liaison. Without the ability to get the station master education package, trying to clear his quests for the additional rewards is a waste of time. He made the right choice.”

“Did you think beyond the game, Morgan? Having cultural knowledge of a species has real-world applications. He could get all sorts of work with that knowledge.”

I paused. She had a point. “Okay, you’re right. I didn’t think beyond the game, but that doesn’t change anything. He needed control of his station. Now that he has it, he’s built a communication array, and Tee has given him information on his neighbors.”

“Yeah, one of them is preparing to attack me,” Daniel said. “They’re going to be in for a big surprise when they meet my R7s.”

“You’re about to be attacked,” Alex said, concerned.

Daniel nodded. “Not tomorrow but the day after. The government already agreed to divert resources to my station.”

“That’s not good,” Alex said. “Harriet said that the first estimate for an attack on your station was the 18th cycle. Mine’s 21st.”

“I keep telling you they don’t have a clue what they are talking about. They are following their AI’s information too much. They aren’t thinking like gamers which is good in most cases, but bad in this one. We are noobs, so what do you do to noobs?”

Alex frowned. “You destroy them early because they’re a waste of your time. And you take risks you wouldn’t normally take.”

“Yeah, or you toy with them,” I said. “Don’t forget the faction that attacked my station intentionally fed it so that they could take over a more powerful station. There are going to be all kinds of strategies at play here. That’s what makes it fun.”

“You and I have different definitions of fun,” Alex said.

“Actually, I think we have the same definition since we are ranked number 1 and 2 in most of the same games. If our personalities matched even a little, I’d ask you out.”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you honestly think you have a chance?”

“I’m like the most famous and loved person on the planet. I’m beating Tom Hanks and Grumpy Cat. I’ve got a chance.”

“You’re not my type.”

“And you’re not mine, except for the whole being super hot. But that doesn’t mean what it used to. That’s not a dig at you, by the way. I just mean anyone can change their face and body if they’ve got the Tokens, so being super hot is more common. My cousin managed to clear a weird quest that gave him 10,000 Tokens. He went from looking like a potato to Brad Pitt in the space of a day.”

Alex sighed. “I get that. Natalia hasn’t had a single modeling job since this all happened. No one is hiring models when you can have an AI make a lifelike image for a couple of Tokens. All the major brands are now switching to copyrighted fake models.”

“I feel like we are getting off-topic,” The Librarian said. “But it is good to know that the communication array is as vital as we thought. And it is troubling to know that we need to prepare for attack sooner than anticipated. My station is not where it needs to be to weather this storm.”

***

“Whacha,” Simon shouted.

My hand snapped out, deflecting the karate chop aimed for my neck. I instinctively grabbed his wrist and flipped him. Simon went over my shoulder and slammed into the ground. I only just managed to stop myself shattering his arm and delivering a blow that would have killed him instantly.

“Will you stop doing that!” I shouted at him, terrified for his safety. “I nearly killed you.”

Simon groaned, cradling his arm to his chest.

Peter chuckled from the other side of the hotel room. “He’s trying to win back his number two spot. I said I’d give it back if he could hit you when you weren’t paying attention.”

“You have no idea how dangerous that is. I can literally kick both of your asses with one hand tied behind my back while blindfolded.”

Peter snorted. “I call bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit! He was in actual danger.”

“You willing to bet on it?”

That caught my attention, and I had to fight the urge to grin. I was concerned for Simon, but family love wasn’t as strong as sibling rivalry. “What are we betting?”

Simon groaned again.

Peter laughed. “Your choice.”

I smiled. “If I win, I get the number one spot, and you have two have to answer to bitch Peter and bitch Simon. If I lose, I take the fourth spot after Buster and have to answer to bitch Morgan.”

“For a month.”

“A year.”

Peter grinned. “Deal. Simon get up. We got a butt whooping to deliver.”

Fifteen minutes later, dad came back from walking Buster. He looked around the trashed hotel room at the mess we’d made. I probably should have stipulated they weren’t allowed to use weapons. It didn’t change anything, of course. It just made a much bigger mess and resulted in a lot of destroyed furniture.

I gave bitch Peter another ice pack.

“It hurts to breathe,” he said, looking at dad for sympathy. “It’s not supposed to hurt to breathe. I’m sure he broke something.”

“It’s just bruising,” I reassured him.

“Lots and lots of bruising,” bitch Simon groaned.

Dad shook his head and took Buster off his lead. “Your mother would have all our hides if she knew you were wrestling inside.”

Being the kind, considerate soul he is, Buster came over and licked my brothers mercilessly. When he realized they couldn’t move, his affection became more aggressive. He loved licking people’s faces.

They both groaned.

***

The design team hadn’t messed around. They’d taken everything I’d said onboard, and if they hadn’t done it for everyone, they had at least done it for me. That still took them several weeks to do, though. The new design was significantly bigger than the old version. The new inner ring was the size of the old outer ring for starters. And the two rings around the central station were much wider and taller. They had space for hangar bays and ammunition depots. The five arches above and below the outer ring were much bigger at the base, because the outer ring needed subsystems for efficiency. The central station could only supply the first ring.

“How much is this going to cost me?”

“That depends. Are you planning on building this gigantic monstrosity all at once or in stages?”

“Just tell me.”

“You can build the skeleton of the inner ring for the 550,000 RP, but it’s literally going to take the 20,000 structure slots you currently have, and it's going to be missing a bunch of the internal reinforcement. You will need to get the station to level 5 to complete it, and it's going to take 1,500,000 RP.”

Once I’d unlocked the station, my station level had been applied. The basic structure slots and defense slots increased by 10,000 and 5,000 each time the station leveled, but the subsystems slots only increased by one. The size of the station I could build was simply massive, and the rest of humanity was a long way away from being able to do this.

I pulled up the station's current information.

Station Name: The Crucible

Level: 2

Armor: 17

Energy Shield: 17,000/17,000

Damaged Systems: 0%

Resource Points: 900,885

Credits: 9,087,350

Station Systems

-L1 Station Reactor: 100E

-L1 Sensor Array: 1

-L1 Reprocessing Facility: 1

-L1 Railgun Fabricator: 1

-L1 Structural Fabricator: 1

-L1 Structural Fabricator: 1

Additional Systems: 1/11

-L1 Communication Array: 1

Structure Slots: 0/20,000

Defense Slot: 1,000/10,000 (Current Structure Max)

-L2 R5-M: 500

Station Tech Weapons:

-R1: 17

-R1: 17

-Missile Battery: 1

-R9: 1

Station Master Traits:

-L1 Secondary Reactor: 1700E

-L1 Particle Cannon

-L1 Missile Battery: 1

-L1 Hangar Bay: 1

It turned out the energy shield wasn’t as helpful as I thought it would be. Unlike armor, it did behave like health, and any fleet would take it out with their first volley. And without a decent reactor, it was tough to restore quickly.

“Will the Wargarg sensor scrambler cover the outer ring?” I asked.

“Not anymore. You will need three on the outer ring. Your secondary reactor trait produces enough energy to run them though.”

“Build the first ring, then build the sensor scramblers, three ammunition fabricators, and then spend 225,000 RP on building another 4500 R5-M. The first ring can hold 25,000 of them, so I want them spread out evenly. It’s time to start power leveling. I need to be level 30 for when the Kilocksin challenge my dungeon in a few days.”

“I’m going to assume that you want me to build this in stages. Otherwise, you could find the station overrun by the quest mobs. I shouldn’t have to remind you that the internal turrets weren’t strong enough to take out those weird brain creatures the communication array quest spawned.”

I paused. In my excitement, I may have forgotten that part. The brains hadn’t been all that powerful, but they had the annoying ability to control the mobs in their general area and debuff everything that tried to attack them. I’d been dizzy the whole fight.

Subsystem clearance quests were definitely more challenging than the weapons clearance quests. It was partly because their effect was more significant, but it was also to make up for the fact that they didn’t spawn mobs, only augment the ones you already had. Ever since I’d made the communication array, the station rats had been working in groups. They called out to each other constantly too. It made me wonder what other changes they would go through.

“Of course, we are doing it in waves,” I said. “I’d have to be an idiot to do it all at once.”

“Good, activating the structural expansion quest. It’s spawned 20,000 station rats and a Rat King.”

“Do you need-”

“Rat King is dead.”

“Okay then, tell me when you need me. Otherwise, I’m going to take a nap.”

***

The sensor scramblers turned out to be a problem. They spawned some sort of predator like mob. It was a natural hunter that was heavy on stealth and close-quarter combat. It was also huge.

“It took out the squad,” Tee shouted. “They’re in pieces. But they manage to tag it. Its cloaking system is gone. My turrets are also gone. But it’s coming towards you.”

An eleven-foot lion man charged around the corner at the other end of the corridor. It was bleeding from its side and carrying a pair of scimitars.

I shot it in the eye. The eyeball burst, but the shot didn’t kill it. It roared in pain and fury. So I shot the other eye. That didn’t kill it either, but it was blind. He kept running towards me.

I unloaded my particle pistol, trying to drill a hole through its skull. He raised his arm, taking the shots on the forearm. Minor flesh wounds appeared along the muscle.

I missed being a higher level. My particle pistol had been awesome. When I ran out of ammo, I holstered the pistol and charged. The lion man had a dagger on his waist that I could use to take him out.

The moment I started running, it noticed. It turned its head ever so slightly to hear my approach better. As the gap closed, I realized this guy might know how to fight.

Cool.

Fighting my brother blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back and winning had boosted my confidence. I was beginning to trust my gut when it said I could do something.

The moment I came within arm’s reach, lion man lashed out, bringing both scimitars forward in a wide double slash the covered the most area. It was an intelligent attack. Old Morgan would have been sliced and diced. Actually, Old Morgan would have run because there was no chance he could win this.

New Morgan stayed half an inch outside his range, and then flowed around the blades like he was a damn Chinese martial arts movie master, spinning past, drawing lion man’s dagger, and cutting the Achilles tendon all in one poetically beautiful motion, before stepping out of range again. New Morgan was a badass.

Without solid footing, I took the lion man apart in less than ten seconds, ending the fight by leaping off the corridor wall and bringing his stolen dagger down in the middle of his forehead.

“Damn,” Tee said. “That was a solid 5/7.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’ll have you know Buster thinks I’m hilarious.”

I yanked the dagger out of the mob's head, exposing the bloody electronics, and then picked up the swords. I could keep them. I couldn’t repair them, but until they broke, I could use them. The scimitars looked like oversized anime swords in my hands, but I had enough strength to fight with them effectively.

“Are there any more of those things onboard?”

I dropped the second scimitar and pivoted, swinging the other as hard as I could. The one sneaking up behind me found its upper body separated from its lower as it became visible. I side-stepped the dagger heading for me and gave its upper body a kick watching it tumble backward.

“Okay, that was better than the last kill. Also, I think they come in threes.”

Tee had been trying to get me killed. His last line came as the third one tried to cleave me in half. I was already moving, though. The third one went the way of the other two.

I started to grin. “Tee, load up the next two sensor scrambler quests at the same time. I want a challenge.”