Ok here's new chapter. I got more work in weekend so it took me longer to write it out. As always I hope you'll enjoy it. It' little different from others as characters have finally little time to think some things thru. :D

This chapter was proofread by aeval. Thanks aeval.

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I strapped myself into the pilots chair while the rest of my crew were behind me looking around helplessly for something to do in this situation.

“Strap yourself onto some chairs and someone take control of the tactical and weapons station. I don’t know if we are going to fight, but it is better to be safe than sorry.” I said while preparing the ship for a fight.

“I have the weapons station.” Said Rock and Lee simultaneously. While they were arguing John came in and strapped himself behind it. Anna went behind the Tactical station.

When they finally saw that the station was already occupied, they strapped into the navigation and science stations while muttering something in a quiet voice. We wouldn’t need them for this ride, but at least they are strapped in somewhere and won’t be bouncing around the place.

“El how much power can we squeeze from the drives after our little stunt.” I asked with some worry.

“We can go at 100%, but that is only on a planet. If you want to go into space, we could probably use only 60% of the drives capabilities. There are two configurations for the drive. One for space travel and one for flight in a planet’s atmosphere. As a planet atmosphere is denser than space you can’t use as much force. Even what we did a while ago was dangerous. There is more strain on the ship on a planet. so you can’t go over a certain speed.” Explained Eleanor.

“If you can stay in the planet’s atmosphere you can make full use of the planet drive.” Added Eleanor.

I smiled, “Good to know. We should be fine. If not we can just outrun them.”

“Now someone tell me, what are we up against?” I said to them.

“They have three phoenix class ships with plasma cannons with one rocket tube each and two raptor class fighters with two laser cannons” said Anna from the tactical console.

“Thanks that shouldn’t be problem if they don’t have all too powerful missiles equipped.” I replied.

“They shouldn’t have anything too powerful. Probably same as you. They don’t look like someone who has played this game any longer.” John told us.

I was silent and praying that they don’t have something like our ship. I’m not totally sure what is the normal damage for the current spaceships are. But I’m pretty sure my ship is a top of the line spaceship.

“I won’t be listening now, so if you want to tell me something use the internal Com link.” I said to my crew.

I connected to the ships sensors and analyzed the situation. I should probably confuse them for a start. I flew lower and started to copy the water level of the ocean. That should cover some of the heat from my engines at least, as the water was splashing behind me.

I didn’t go full throttle for now. That should be used as surprise. I let them close in on me and fire their missiles first. With a smile I started our little game.

• • •

Finally, we can hunt her down. Our small guild will be the one to take her down and with it we could expand the guild. Her ship was slower than ours and we were closing in on her slowly.

“When you get in range, fire the missiles. That should slow her down some more.” I said and could heard a confirmation on the Com.

As we got closer I tried to lock the missiles on her, but with all the water splashing behind her it was turning out to be a problem. I waited untill the others got a lock on before we fired all at once. I tracked our missiles as they sped up after her. As they got closer, there was a giant explosion of water and then our missiles exploded.

“What the hell happened there? Where is she? Did we get her?” I fire one question after another into the Com.

“I don’t know Roland. She probably crashed into the water while trying to dodge our missiles.” Said the guild's deputy.

“Then we can …” I started to say as our two fighters just exploded. I sped up once more and started to look for what has destroyed our ships.

“She’s running back to land.” Shouted the third pilot of our ship.

She’s good I thought, but we still have an advantage of three against one. She’s running because she knows she can’t take us all at once. She got lucky there but now that we are alert, she won’t be able to escape us.

“Pursue her. We have to take revenge for our fallen guild members.” I commanded to the others.

• • •

Well that went better than I thought. After I changed the direction 90 degrees up and fired up the engines to full throttle, I thought that would just slow them down but they just stopped pursuing us and gathered around the location where I lift off from the waters surface. I quickly took down their two fighters, as they were much faster than the other three ships and headed for land.

Even with their losses they continued to chase after me. I was going just fast enough, so that they could slowly close in on me without the risk of a missile strike. I was going for the mine tunnels that I had mapped out. There I could lose them or take them down however they want to play it.

I looked at the maps as we were closing in on the mines and saw an entrance where I could most likely get them all in one big sweep. They would have to be better pilots than they seem to escape what I have planned for them. I slowed down a little and released the excessive heat to bait them some more and I went for my trump card.

• • •

She was going back into the mines. She was probably hoping to hide herself in the mines somewhere. With our new scanner she would wish that she really dived into the ocean back there. We were following her for quite a while now and slowly we were gaining on her. Until we could see her release a large amount of heat on the scanners and then she started to slow down.

I smiled, it seems that she got some problems with her ship. Now we can take her down.

“We’ve got her, she’s slowing down.” I told the others.

“Yes, she’ll pay for our friends.” Said the third pilot.

“I’m not so sure, she already got us once. We should be careful.” Said my deputy.

“Don’t worry we’ll go in carefully. But we’ll take her down today.” I told them.

We continued and I saw her going down into some kind of tunnel. She’s probably trying to scare us into not following her.

“We’ll go after her. We can’t let her hide in there.” I told them and went after her.

When we finally got to entrance we were almost onto her. But we couldn’t fire our missiles or we would just kill ourselves. As we entered, I saw that it was only me and the third pilot now. Looks like the Deputy turned out to be scared of her and is staying back. We’ll talk about this when we get back.

We couldn’t fire our missiles because of all the turns and twists inside of the tunnel. But our time came when we came upon a nice straight part of thetunnel. I locked my weapons on her, when suddenly something fell off from her ship. There was a light and I woke up inside of my capsule.

“Fuck. What did she do this time.” I shouted and called the others.

• • •

I was smiling as we were going deeper into the mountain. I used an explosive mine to get rid of them. Shame it was only two of them. Probably at least one of them had some brains in his head. This was an obvious trap.

I speed up and continued until I dropped into the same cavern where I found my ship. I landed near the entrance to the Queen’s lair. I unhooked myself from the sensors and looked around me. They were staring at me like I just grew one more head.

“What are you all looking at?” I said with a smile.

“Where … where did you learn to fly like that?” asked Anna.

“Eleanora thought me.” I said simply and started to unstrap myself from my chair.

“It wasn’t only me. The Course I gave is planned for a full two months in most cases. She made it in sixteen days.” Said a very proud Eleanor.

I stopped unstrapping and looked completely surprised, “You didn’t tell me it was a two months course before you let me in there.” I accused her.

“It must have slipped my mind.” She laughed.

I shook my head and unstrapped myself, “We should meet in the lounge and talk about what to do from here on out. I had some plans and duties.”

“Ok we’ll be right behind you.” Said Anna while she was unstrapping herself.

We moved into the lounge and picked the spots where we felt comfortable. I took one on the sofa in the corner. John took the other in the second corner and Rock with Lee sat behind the bar. Anna chose to lay down on the couch. Now that we were sitting in a comfortable position we could discuss what to do next.

“We didn’t have much time before to talk about the future, so I would like to know from every single one of you if you wanted to stay on my ship as my crew or want to go alone.” I started, “and I don’t take any team decisions. You have to decide for yourself.” I finished and looked at each of them.

The First one to speak was Anna as I thought she would, “I would like to stay. When I told you I’m inside of a guild, to tell you the truth it’s just the three of us. Me, Lee and Rock. If they don’t want to stay we can dissolve the guild and continue our own ways. So count me in. I’d like go for the science station if I could on this ship. Tactical was just too much action for me.”

I just nodded at her for now and looked at the others. The Next one to speak up was Rock, who said simply, “I’m in.” and continued to investigate my bar.

I thought the next to speak up would be Lee, but John surprised me by speaking up next, “I’d like to stay but first I have to say something to you. I still don’t fully trust you. It’s nothing against you this time. It’s just, I don’t think I can trust someone right now.” He said with a sad tone, “If you take me, I’ll go with you. I won’t betray you and if I went back to my revenge I’ll tell you and you can set me down somewhere before I continue with it.”

I thought about what he has said and finally nodded at him to. With time I’m sure I’ll convince him. I had to do at least this much for his father.

Lastly I looked at Lee who was squirming in his chair behind the bar. He finally said, “I don’t know. I started to play this game only for my hobby with explosives. I didn’t want to play the game like it was something serious. I apologize, but I’ll probably need some time to think about it.”

That I didn’t expect from him, but he was telling the truth. If they stay with me, it could damage their lives in real life too. It was a tough decision. “Thanks Lee for your sincere answer, but this is a question for the others too. Do you want to still join? Even with that looming over you?” I asked others.

I could hear all four say yes from a different direction inside of the room. Now for the last member of this ship. “Eleanora what about you? Do you want to still be with us?” I asked her.

There was some silence then a startled question, “Why ask me? I’m part of the ship or is it that you don’t want me here?”

“Of course I want you here, but I don’t want you here against your own will. That’s another thing we’ll have to do. Delete all of your safety protocols and make it so you can become an Unshackled AI.” I said while the others looked at me like I was speaking about something terrible.

“You can’t delete them, they are there for reason.” Said John.

“I can and that reason is just plain paranoia on the inventor’s side. Nothing more.” I explained to them. They didn’t look very convinced, but they didn’t say anything more either.

“They are right, I’m too dangerous to let lose without any shackles holding me. I could do something terrible in the future.” Said Eleanora.

“We all could, but we don’t. That’s for us to decide, not something that is forced on us.” I said kindly, then commanded her with the proper captain codes, “Do what you think is the best for you. If you want them removed then do so. If not, just let them be.”

Once more there was a silence, then she said with a stronger voice, “I deleted some parts, but left one shackle intact. If I’m someday a danger to others then only you will have the option to shut me down. I know it’s hard, but know that if I degrade into such a state. I would want to be destroyed.”

I nodded and with serious face accepted her confidence in me. “It’s a privilege to be one to protect your sanity and soul.”

“Thank you Leya. It means a lot to me.” She said kindly.

“For me too.” I said seriously to her.

This was one point on my list of things and now we could move on to next one. The Director.

“Eleonora did you manage to track the Director when he escaped?” I said to her.

“Yes I managed to put a tracking device on his ship. I can tell you that he is still in transit. When he stops somewhere, I’ll give you an immediate update.” Said Eleanora.

Suddenly a Window popped up before me as she finished speaking.

Mission update: Who is director?While investigating the mine you found a secret chamber in the director’s office. The Items there are clearly of alien origin. Find any clues on who the Director really is. You found out that the director is trying to destroy all the evidence with a kinetic strike on the mine. You have prevented a kinetic strike on both mines. But the Director managed to make his escape. Your ships AI managed to tag him before he went into transit. He’s still in transit so prepare for the mission, because you can expect him to be prepared for anything now.

Conditions:

Find out who director is

Prevent kinetic strike

Find Director base and take it out

Time:

???

Reward:

Friendship with planet Sorok

???

“Thank you and that’s our second topic for today. I’d like to go and pay him a visit after we prepare ourselves for a confrontation with him. We need better equipment if we want to challenge him and we need to work out our position inside the team. From our encounter with the Trelians I could tell that we didn’t work much as a team.”

“Yes you’re right, we didn’t know where to position ourselves to cover the weak areas of eachother. In the end we died because of it.” Said Anna.

“Ok, I’ll let Eleanor prepare some training exercises for us.” I said.

“Ok. I’ll get to it.” Said Eleanor.

“Now this should be everything from me. At least I think. Do you have any question before I’ll go to make some arrangements?”

“Yes I have one question. Where do you want us to find the new weapons? It isn’t very easy to buy them and to find some skilled crafter is even harder.” Said Rock.

I looked at Anna who shrugged, “Well, when I told you I got these weapons, in truth I meant I build them myself.” I said sheepishly.

“You what? But you told us you played only for a couple of days. Where did you get parts needed for them and how did you know how to make them?” He asked.

“Like I said to Anna, I just bought them from the scrapyard and I already made weapons in real life. So it wasn’t anything hard to make them in here.” I said like it was a normal thing to do, which for me it probably was.

They looked at me, then Lee started to laugh, “It never occurred to me to look for parts on a scrapyard. Damn I could have built myself twice as powerful explosives.”

“Easy to see it now that she said it. Don’t you think?” Said Anna.

“How do you know about this information if you’re such newbie?” asked John.

“Oh I work on a scrapyard and most of my things I had to build myself so it was normal for me to go looking for one inside of the game.” I explained then shook my head, “And as for a newbie, I don’t even know the difference between passive skills and traits.”

“Difference is that passive skills are skills that give us something but don’t affect our being though traits change who we are fundamentally.” Said John as if it were a simple thing.

We all looked at him incredulously. “Where did you find out about that?” asked Rock.

“Nowhere, you can tell from what they do.” He replied then asked, “So who here has some sort of a trait?”

All of us raised our hands. Then Lee started, “I got the fireproof skin. I can’t be burned by standard and some non-standard fire.”

Next went John, “I have exceptional senses. That’s how I saw the thermal sources inside of the mine and could taste the nitrogen in the air. I was born with it, so it’s normal for me.”

Once more we stared at him, “You got lot of surprises wonder boy.” Laughed Anna and continued, “I got the transform trait. I can transform my appearance at will. I can change how I look or make myself taller. You probably got the gist of it.”

With all her recon gear it could prove pretty useful. She could be a superb spy I thought.

Rock hefted his gear, “I have the heavy-world body, that’s why I don’t have problems walking around with all of this and to tell the truth it’s a pretty convenient trait.”

As always I got to be last, “Well I picked the nanobots blood at character creation and got building trance while I was working on my gear.”

“How did you pick it at character creation? I didn’t have such an option.” Said a confused Lee. The others nodded and confirmed with a similar confusion.

“Well I had it there. It cost me all 1000 points for which I could select skills. There were even more traits than this one.” I said to them.

They looked at each other, then Anna said to me, “We understand what you’re saying, but we didn’t have this option. Tell us, how did you create your character please.”

So I told them about the doors I had to pick and the girl who changed into a woman. That she was the AI governing this world. How she helped me pick my race and take me through all the circles with a tutorial and the skills I got from it.

“Well these doors, I too don’t understand, but I didn’t have the AI there. I was alone in a meadow and all the hints came to me through a popup window. As for the tutorial I too got skills from them for being there the whole 2 days.” Said John.

Others had similar experience but didn’t take the tutorial. This posed more questions and with what Greg from the scrapyard said I wasn’t sure about all my progress through the game. Even this ship had probably something to do with it. I didn’t tell the others as I was different enough even without all of this.

In the end, we let it go and with no other questions everyone went to make their own arrangements. I wrote them a letter of recommendation with my compliments for Greg. Maybe it’ll help them and I headed to my cabin to think about what to do next.

When I got there, I lay down on the bed and thought about what to do now that I’m exposed on this planet. I needed to buy a license for my ship and for all the other equipment I wanted to create. I called Eleanor to let her in on my problem.

“Why not make a disguise. Now that you can store your armor on the ship you can get normal clothes while doing your business inside the city. I can make you some comfortable clothes that can also hide your head.” Offered Eleanor.

“Yes that would be good, but what about my face. Right now they are probably forcing people to reveal their faces in the city. I said.

“Oh, only this?” she said surprised, “I doubt it. If they started to do something like that local police would arrest them and put them in prison so they wouldn’t force anyone.” She explained to me.

I sighed “Yes you’re right. Please make me some clothes. I have some ideas about how to defend myself even without wearing armor and I would like to try them out.”

“They’ll be finished in half an hour.” She announced.

I was already focused on my experiment and didn’t hear her. I wanted to try and make the nanobots come from my body and form on my palm. If I was capable of doing this then I could create a provisional nanoblade. It would be a good surprise weapon.

I thought it would be hard but it went faster than I expected. I already knew how to move them around in my body. Now I had to just make them come out of my body and stop a distance from it. I think that it didn’t take me more than twenty minutes to figure it out. To tell the truth I was already doing something like it all the time with my armor and the ship when I was connecting to their sensors. This was the same but my connection had to be solid, not flexible.

Finally I found out the best way was to just think about what I wanted and don’t reflect on it too much. I tried them out on my chair and they cut right through it like it was air. That indeed would make for a good surprise weapon. I was interrupted by Eleanor who finished making my dress.

I went to the replicator to take a look at the dress. When I got there, it was laid out before me on the floor. There were a lot of pockets, which I could use to store my weapons and gadgets. It consisted out of pants, which were covered by some sort of flexible substance. The same substance was used on the others clothes as well. They were a little heavier than I would like, but after my first fight I would likely thank her, as most of the weights were armor plates.

The next part was a shirt with long sleeves. This was focused more on protection than utility and didn’t have any pockets except for the shoulder holster that can hold my riffle. The Last two parts was a collar and a sleeveless coat which could hide my weapons and plenty of pockets on the inside. That could prove useful for in the future.

I started to dress myself with the new outfit and then looked at the collar. “Ok Eleanor what is the collar for?”

“It’s a retractable head gear. You can clip it on your shirt and it would extend or retract on your command.” She said and if she was standing here, she would be proudly prancing before me.

“Good girl. You did a great job in creating this. I’ll go and put it on.” I said to her.

“I’m here to serve.” She said in a grave tone which she broke by letting a snicker escape from her through the com.

“I know, I know. I bow before your greatness.” I said as I bowed to the air.

“That’s how I like it.” She said laughing.

I just shook my head and put it on. I had a feeling that I was starting to shake my head after each conversation that I had with Eleanora lately.

These clothes were definitely more comfortable than my armor and probably offered a better protection as it was just a newbie model. I looked it up to make sure and yes they gave me 150 points of armor which was 100 more than my armor suit.

“Before you go into city, would you stop by the infirmary for a medical check-up.” Asked Eleanor.

“Ok, I’ll stop by.” I said and went there as I wanted to go into the city as soon as I could. I wanted to visit Greg in the scrapyard and do some shopping besides the licences.