“I never had strong sea-legs, you know?” asks the man, staring out towards the distance.

I turn my head to follow his gaze, trying to see what it is that he is looking at. But I can not see anything in particular.

“But after that light hit the water, after the waves came and the ships rose and people flew from left to right, many of them into the drink, something changed in my body.”

He stares off with vacant eyes for a while. I wait.

“When it was all said and done, I just… I don’t know. I spent the rest of my life aboard ships. Twenty years after that incident and since that day, I never shook once on any boat, in any storm, in any fight ever again. It’s just… It’s just that after that, after what I saw, after I felt the heat of that pressure-wave, there was nothing left in the ocean that could frighten me.”

I stare.

I realize that the retired sailor isn’t looking at anything on the surface of the world. His eyes are locked towards the sky, back there, where it meets the horizon.

“— But the sky?” he asks. “It terrifies me. You can’t see what’s hiding down in the ocean, in the dark. So you can just pretend nothing is there. But the sky? I saw it. I know what’s up there.

I saw it.

I still see it, every time I close my eyes.

It’s so bright.”

I realize that he hasn’t blinked yet.

~Interview with a retired seaman, fifty years afterwards.

[Battle complete]

(Gottlieb) has killed:

(Gottlieb) has killed (Deepsea-Garuda{LVL 26})(Deepsea-Garuda{LVL 22})(Deepsea-Garuda{LVL 30})(Deepsea-Garuda{LVL 26})(Deepsea-Garuda{LVL 28})(Deepsea-Garuda Swarm Matriarch{LVL 35})(Deepsea-Leviathan{65})(Seagull{LVL 03})(Seagull{LVL 03})(Seagull{LVL 01})(Seagull{LVL 03})(Seagull{LVL 02})…

Many various status-windows appear before Gottlieb. He nods, content with a day’s work, despite everything, and swipes them away. He’ll take a look at his choice of abilities later on. But first and most importantly…

You got [1250/1250] EXP ! *+~- [LEVEL UP!] -~+* You are now level 11! You got [1650/1650] EXP ! *+~- [LEVEL UP!] -~+* You are now level 12! You got [2150/2150] EXP ! *+~- [LEVEL UP!] -~+* You are now level 13! You got [1332/2750] EXP ! [You have {3} attribute points to apply] [You have {2} ability points to apply] GOTTLIEB Level: 13 Experience: 1332/2750 Class: Orbital Gunner Sub-class: None Race: Human Home: The orbital-weapons platform [Currently moving to continent {6}] STRENGTH: 15 [+] DEXTERITY: 7 [+] INTELLIGENCE: 8 [+] WISDOM: 5 [+] LOVE: 6 [+] LUCK: 9 [+] [Raised STRENGTH +3](To 18) {0 Attribute Points remaining}

— Gottlieb raises his ‘strength’ stat further, investing all of his free attribute points into it, just as god had intended for him to do.

His already tight shirt bulges, the upper button popping a thread.

“Check it out, Kai!” says Gottlieb, looking at the blue-light above his head.

Kai does not respond.

Gottlieb rolls his eyes and makes an effort of assuming various flexing poses, if only to establish his dominance over the orbital station’s artificial intelligence. Kai needs to learn its place in the food-chain.

Still.

It would be more fun if Kai wouldn’t be giving him the cold shoulder.

Gottlieb turns to the goblin, who has stopped chewing on the combined nutri-bar and wrapper, unable to distinguish the ‘food’ from the ‘wrapper’. Although, in Gottlieb’s eyes, this is perfectly understandable, as they do taste exactly the same.

Actually, the wrapper might even taste better. He’s never tried, but it’s definitely an experiment worth looking into.

“What do you think?” asks Gottlieb.

The captive goblin stares at him in wide-eyed terror, not daring to move a muscle.

“Sheesh,” replies Gottlieb, rolling his eyes. “Everyone is so tense around here.” He sits back down on his chair and rolls it back along the rail, looking at the two of them, Kai and the Goblin. Gottlieb claps his hands together. “Let’s loosen up a little, people. How about it?” he asks.

Kai does not respond.

The half-chewed food bar drops out of the goblins mouth, down to the floor. She snarls, biting down after it, to little avail, as she is still bound to her chair.

Gottlieb shakes his head.

“Kai, what are the odds that this thing is going to try to eat me if I untie her?” he asks, pointing at the goblin.

[Answer]

- Orbital Station Artificial Intelligence Unit holds the probability of the goblin assuming control over the orbital weapon’s platform to be a reasonable development.

Suggestion: Removal of orbital gunner Gottlieb from the facility will allow the goblin to be promoted to ranking officer.

“Yeah, very cute,” replies Gottlieb. “Look, Kai. First off, how the hell did she get here?”

“BLARGHA!” barks the goblin, pulling against the ropes. Gottlieb lifts an eyebrow, smirking at the odd noises she’s making.

[Answer]

- Unknown. The goblin is broadly under-qualified to be aboard the orbital weapons platform.

“Yeah, no shit,” says Gottlieb, surprised that Kai didn’t give him some snark about that being the case for him too.

[Addendum]

- As is the case for Orbital Gunner Gottlieb.

“Saw that one coming a mile off, Kai,” replies Gottlieb, waving Kai off. Something really has been up with Kai ever since the shift. The artificial intelligence unit has been becoming much more verbose over time. Or maybe it’s just the opposite for himself? He wonders if he used to be better with… words, and stuff.

He gets up, walking over to the goblin and leans down towards it. The monster leans back, pressing herself against the chair in fear.

He nods.

At least somebody around here has the right idea about the hierarchy of power on this station.

“If I untie you, are you gonna try and eat me?” he asks.

The goblin does not respond, pressing herself as far away from him as she can.

Good enough.

Gottlieb grabs the back of the jumble of bungee-cords and begins undoing the haphazard, shitty knots he had made. The goblin watches him suspiciously as he works.

A minute later, the ropes drop. Gottlieb dusts his hands and heads back to his seat. “If you cause me any trouble, I’m locking you in with Kai’s core,” says Gottlieb.

He looks around the room in thought. Now that he thinks about it, he’s never been to the lab where the AI-core is housed. He should check that out.

“Hey, Kai,” starts Gottlieb, looking at the blue-light. “- If I take a marker and draw a dick on your core, will it stop you from working?”

[Answer]

- This will be classifiable as inappropriate conduct and will result in disciplinary action being taken against Orbital Gunner Gottlieb.

“That sounds like fancy talk for someone who’s afraid of a little ink to me,” notes Gottlieb, leaning back on his chair. “Is the door to your core open, or is it locked off too?” he asks.

The view on the monitor shifts to a feed from a security camera aboard the station. There is a door visible there, nested away in a maintenance shaft. A crude ‘four’ is painted on its front.

Gottlieb sighs. Of course.

Well… he does have some ability points to spend. Maybe it would be worth it, just to finally end this feud with Kai, not with compromise or friendly discussion, but via a crushing moral victory.

He turns his head, looking at the other chair. The goblin is still sitting there, despite being untied. Her hands clamp the edge of the seat as she sits there in stiff, rigid terror, perhaps unsure what his untying her means.

He shrugs, looking back to the monitor. He doesn’t know either. But it seems kind of mean to tie her up the whole time, when she could be doing whatever it is that goblins do all day.

Gottlieb rubs his lip, thinking.

What exactly is it that goblins do all day?

“- Kai, zoom me into that weird forest again.”

~ [The Goblin-King] ~

I stand in the burnt forest.

Ash covers the land. Ash covers the trees and ash fills the sky, despite days having passed.

— Or perhaps that is just the storm.

Thunder roars.

The others cower, afraid that it is the voice of the sky-light, returned to punish us once more.

But I sit atop the throne of the goblin-king, unphased. It is just thunder. The sky-light had come to vanquish the old king and to set right the ways of our people.

Now, I am the goblin-king.

I look around at my subjects who toil.

They do so in fear. But it is not the fear of the king, that they had only days prior.

Now, they fear the wrath of the heavens.

— As they are right to do.

The sky-light is watching us. It had deemed our people unworthy and punished us severely for our lacking.

We have not lived up to the ways of our tribe.

We have grown slow and comfortable and fat with laze and weakness.

Hammers strike aloud, ringing out as the smiths and the craftsmen continue their work.

They do not make houses and shelters and stalls, as they would have in the days of the old king. No.

Those ways were wrong. The sky-light has told us so. It has shown us the error of our ways.

The sky-light demands that we return to the ways of our elders long past. The ways of war are the ways of our people. This is how it has always been, before we became docile.

The craftsmen and the smiths make weapons. They make swords and knives and pointy, clawed axes that are meant to fell people, not trees.

I sit upon the throne of the goblin-king, listening as my twelve advisers point out places on a map, burnt into the leather of a snake.

Villages. Towns. Settlements that belong to the creatures that stole our elder’s elder’s lands and the spirits of our generations.

I narrow my eyes.

Humans, elves and all of the others have had their time. They have lived in the age of their own.

My chief adviser approaches me, prostrating himself as he holds up a blackened, fire-scarred axe towards me. The blade is notched and warped from the heat of the blast and from many bones cut in older years.

— But now, the age of the goblin is here.

I take the axe.

~ [Orbital Gunner Gottlieb] ~

Gottlieb laughs, slapping his knee as he watches some of the little green creatures running around the forest.

“Those wacky goblins,” he says, shaking his head. “You guys sure are a fun bunch, huh?” he asks, looking towards Auxiliary Gunner Grunheide.

She points towards the monitors, towards the view from above of the goblins of a tribe running around. “…Blitargh,” she says meekly, her finger pointing at the entities.

Gottlieb snorts.

What a funny creature. He likes her made-up words.

He watches as they parade around the forest, performing some odd ceremonial dance.

[Firing Beacon] Launch a hand-held firing beacon to a ground asset. The asset can use this beacon to synchronize the station to their geo-spatial position. [Intracranial Resonance]

Discharges the gun’s resonant capacitors, thereby allowing extremely low fidelity communication through shooting short, low frequency bursts of sonic waves from the gun, targeted directly at the skull of a creature.

[Ranking {3}] Allows you to open all doors on the station that are marked with a clearance level of {3}. [Power Overdrive]

Drains the station's batteries, overloading the gun and firing an extremely destructive blast with 300% firing strength.

Incapacitates the station’s power grid until recharged.

[Strongman {2}] STRENGTH is your primary stat. All other stats will rise to always meet at least 35% of your current STRENGTH.