Emergency Alert! Emergency Alert!

Cam woke up to the blaring alarms. He blinked and sat up. The bunk across the way was empty. He stared for a moment, not entirely sure what to do. The heads up display in his vision said that it was two hours before he had expected to wake up, almost four hours before Will had said there would be any action. He stood up and got dressed. It didn’t take too long to get ready, even though he stumbled through it. He took a small cube of folded material from his shelf on the back wall and held it against his chest. It took a second for him to get the positioning right at the center. Once there the cube unfurled, and covered him in a dark uniform. It was supposedly a graphene mesh, which was strong but still allowed full flexibility. He pulled out his combat pistol stored in a cubby besides the shelf. He held it next to his right leg, like he had been shown and had practiced. He had to adjusted its position twice before a holster springed seemingly from the pistol itself and attach itself to his leg and around his waist. His pilot and survival gear were also cube shaped, which he stowed in a small pouch on his belt. He picked up one last cube, which was only a few centimeters across edgewise. It had a metallic glint to it, but felt lighter than metal should be. He put that in his pouch as well. It could hold far more than it looked.

“Ship, where’s William?” he asked out loud to the room.

“William Quinest is currently located at the bridge,” a female voice responded.

Cam frowned. He had been on the bridge before, but only with an escort. He wasn’t sure where he should go. William would know, but Cam had to ask him. He walked out of the quarters and headed towards the bridge. He had access to the ship schematics, so a path appeared in the corner of his vision, showing him the way to the bridge. The heads up display he had access to had many options, but he was still familiarizing himself with it all. Even as he thought about it an option menu to configure his settings opened up, but he closed it. He didn’t have time to meddle through it right now.

He followed the path the the bridge amidst the flashing lights. The sound of the alarms were only in quarters, where people would need to be woken up, but the lights flashed everywhere. Anyone in the white corridors would know what was happening. Twice though, an alarm did blair through the air. Each time Cam tucked himself into an alcove in the wall that contained cushioning for this purpose. The alarm signaled evasive maneuvers about to take place that were strong enough the inertial dampeners couldn’t deal with it entirely. The cushioning wrapped itself around him holding him in place during the maneuvers. The second maneuver the cushioning couldn’t hold him and he got banged against the far side of the alcove. Luckily against more padding, but he still felt a bit bruised. He wondered what was happening out there that would require that powerful maneuvers. Nothing good he supposed. A notification popped up in the side of his vision showing him where the bruises were. A health bar appeared, showing he had lost two out of his hundred health.

It was a good reminder that this was just a game. The most realistic game he had encountered—at least as far as how it felt. It was a sci-fi game, so obvious liberties were taken with physics and how the game-world worked. He was new to the game, even though it had been running for over a year now. It was called Celestial Void, and was promised to be the most immersive game ever. It had come out suddenly with almost no warning, but quickly took over the market. Cam had been playing another game at the time, which also used virtual reality, called simply called New Space. New Space had been one of the front runners of VR technology, but it wasn’t fully immersive. When it first came out it used old style pods where the players entered in, but were still awake and interacted through haptic gloves and other equipment. Cam had played the game for years growing up and had never upgraded his pod to some of the more high tech immersive pods. When Celestial Void came out it required a full immersion pod, which put the player into an unconscious state where they could experience the game as if they were living in it. Cam had bought such a pod immediately, but couldn’t get it to work. After weeks of troubleshooting with techs and developers from Numean, the company who developed Celestial Void, they determined that Cam’s brain waves were unusual, and that he needed an even more advanced pod to be able to pay. Unfortunately those were on back order and it had taken a full year for Cam to finally get one. That was just a few days ago. William, Cam’s long time friend, had been playing from the beginning and had helped Cam get into his guild. This was supposed to be a good mission to help Cam catch up a bit in game and get his feet wet. That said, it had taken more than a day in game to fly out here. He hoped it would be worth it.

He eventually found his way to the bridge with no more evasive maneuvers to throw him about. The hallways looked more foreboding as he approached. The white hallways were replaced with darker fortifications. Two guards barred his way. They stood in full combat gear, complete with helmets with tinted visors that protected their faces. There armor was padded with a tungsten carbide alloy contained within a graphene mesh. The material could withstand the impact of a pistol bullet at point blank range, and even reduce the effectiveness of power based attacks, although it would slowly degrade with each impact. They had submachine guns clipped to the chest piece of their armor, a pistol in a holster at one side and a knife and baton that could be set to deliver an electric charge on impact. One held out his gloved hand as Cam approached, causing Cam to stop in his tracks. He stood there while they scanned him. The other guard growled once the scan was complete. Cam jumped from the sound, afraid they were going to attack him for even approaching the bridge, but after another moment they stepped aside and motioned him through.

He walked past the guards and up an incline that widened at the top. The blast door to the bridge was wide enough for five men to stand shoulder to shoulder. Anyone trying to gain unauthorized access would be putting themselves through a funnel that could be filled with suppressing fire. As the massive door slid open he took a hesitant step inside. The middle of the large white circular room was filled with a holographic display. He stared at it for a moment trying to figure out what was on it. It was the display of what was going on outside the ship. In the center was the Engra--a Ursus class battleship and the ship Cam was currently flying on. It looked small in the vastness of space. He could make out other ships around it, some close, others far away. He recognized the Tyker class destroyers that littered the space near the Engra. They were one of the mainstays of the Aluvius guild, whose space they were currently near. His own heads up display activated as he tried to recognize the other ships, and filled him in with the data. Wan’xen class cruisers were scattered on one side of the Engra and were firing at the battleship. One ship was larger than the rest, but still less than half the size of the Engra, a Ichen class battlecruiser. Cam remembered that class of ship as basically a cannon strapped to some engines. He bet that was the evasive maneuvers had been to avoid its shots. It was designed to punch holes in whatever it faced, whether that was smaller ships, larger ships, or even small asteroids. The holographic display noted two other ships in the distance that had similar profiles and were eighty three percent likely to also be Ichen class battlecruisers.

Cam pulled his eyes from the display to look around him. The floor sloped downward from the door to the main area. On the floor below were three officers, two men and one woman, talking and studying the display. They were moving around, but slowly as if something was limiting their movement. Probably a device that allowed them to be standing when the large evasive maneuvers happened. More than a dozen terminals ringed around the display, each with a person seated in front of them. They were faced to see the holographic display as well, but more importantly they were faced towards the officers in the middle and were ready to relay orders to all the areas of the ship. Cam saw Will standing next to one terminal. He was holding a cup of coffee in his hand, casually talking to the petty officer sitting at the terminal. Cam walked down towards his friend. No one paid him mind. If anyone could get past the guards and the blast doors without raising a fuss then they were authorized to be here.

The officers were talking and occasionally shouting orders at the men and women at the terminals. Even in the few seconds it took Cam to walk down, he could see two enemy ships disappear as fire from the Engra hit them from a point blank distance. The Engra’s shields were only slightly dropping, still at a comfortable eighty seven percent.

“It’s a rich blend,” Will was saying as Cam walked up. “Tough to get just right, but if you know how to describe it to the computer, it can make it for you.”

“It tastes delicious,” the petty officer said, holding an identical cup of coffee in his own hands. He took another sip, clearing savouring the taste. Restraints in his chair strapped him down so that he would be safe in the case of heavy maneuvers.

Cam had to smile at how casual a conversation Will could have with the commotion from the officers. It was still a game after all. Some people enjoyed it in different ways. Will was all about who he played with. He loved going out and blasting enemies or finding cool ways to use game mechanics, but he would spend just as much time getting to know those on his team.

“So they make good coffee here?” Cam asked as he stepped behind Will.

“Cameron!” said Will, turning around. He was obviously happy to see him, but also a bit confused. “What are you doing here?”

Will had a similar uniform to Cam. Dark colors, and sleek to not hinder movement. An emblem of stars coming up out of a book was embroidered on his left breast, along with a commander patch on his shoulder. The patch had a blue colored book on it, not found on most such patches. William was actually one of the officers of the guild he and Cam were in, Codiem Caelestis. On the field William prefered flying out in smaller ships rather than sitting in a big one, so his technical rank was lower than the captain’s, but no one would blink an eye if Will overroad one of the captain’s orders--not that he would ever do that without good cause. He was good with people and even Cam knew such orders could erode the captain’s authority if Will did them too often.

“I didn’t know where to go,” Cam said. “I don’t even know what’s going on. I mean obviously we’re under attack with what’s on the display.”

“Oh yeah, yeah. No problem,” William replied, almost casually. “That’s my fault. I was so excited to bring you out on this mission with me you didn’t even get through all of the standard training. Glad I decided to give you full access to the ship or else you wouldn’t have found me here. Head down to the fighter hangar. Get your ship prepped. We’re going to go have some fun.”

“Out in this?” Cam asked, looking up at the holographic display. There was over a dozen wrecks out there of enemy ships, but the Engra’s shields were down to sixty-six percent, and the two ships in the distance were closing into their projected firing range.

“We got a plan,” William said. “They were here when we jumped in. We’re not going out in this exactly, but we will be flying and helping you farm some experience. Go get ready. I’ll be there in a sec.”

Before Cam could head out the evasive maneuver alarms sounded again. William moved almost instantly towards the sloped wall behind the officer’s terminal. Against the sloped wall were straps. William pulled a pair over his shoulders, and they automatically tightened down around him. Cam dove next to him and grabbed two straps himself. He was just a moment too slow and they were still tightening down when the maneuver happened. He was looking up, over the terminal to the display when it happened. He could see the nearby battlecruiser ready to fire. Next thing he knew he felt his body get pulled upward and his shoulder was wrenched from the strap not being fully tight.

The pain was muted, though. A safety aspect of the game Cam knew. Numean didn’t want to traumatize anyone, but some pain was a good way of giving feedback to players about how they are doing in a situation. After all there is a reason why bodies use pain to let people know they’re in danger. Players could adjust the pain settings in game, but there was a lower cap to it. There were several reasons for it. One, the company wanted there to be some reason for self preservation beyond penalties for death; two, the less a machine messes with the brain usually the better, and completely eliminating pain was far more drastic than dulling it; and three, it helped with learning. At least that’s what Numean claimed. Higher pain settings allowed players to learn certain skills faster. Cam wasn’t too sure how keen he was on that last one, and no one ever recommended raising the pain threshold higher than about seventy percent.

When the maneuver was over Cam sat there a moment, rubbing his shoulder. He had lost three more health points. He wasn’t worried about it, since ninety-five health points was fine for him. He wasn’t expecting to be in physical combat anyways. Most of the action out here would be ship to ship. He saw William stand up and followed suit.

The officers in the middle were still standing. Cam couldn’t see what had kept them safe, but they were still talking and giving orders as if nothing had happened. The shot from the battlecruiser had still grazed the shields, which according to the information on the display were down to forty nine percent. It was low enough to start to worry, but Cam saw that the Engra’s guns had started targeting the battlecruiser, which had drifted too close in trying to take its shot.

“Hold up here, Cam,” William said as he moved towards the officers in the center of the room. He had undone the straps the moment the maneuver ended. “I’ll head out with you, just give me a minute.”

There was a few moments of commotion. Cam extradited himself from his straps and stood up. The display change for a few moments to a navigation mode, zooming far out from the current battle, and a new jump point was set in a different star system. William was speaking.

“Set the jump point in the second asteroid belt,” he said. “Do it precisely at these coordinates.”

“Yes sir,” the captain replied.

“We’re still going to try to hit the main target, but first we’ll need to make our stand there.”

“If it’s at all possible, we’ll get you there.”

“I’m sure you will, Drent,” William said, clasping a hand on the man’s shoulder.

It had happened in just moments, but Cam saw the loyalty and trust in the captain’s eyes. Will knew how to lead. He turned back to Cam and motioned him to follow as he headed toward the bridge doors. They were almost up the steps when another alarm happened. This was different than the evasive maneuver alarm.

“What is it?” Cam couldn’t help asking.

“Boarding pods,” Will replied, with a glance at the display. “Two of them made it through the guns. We might have to jump with some visitors on the ship. That won’t be good. Aluvius will know where we’ve jumped the second the boarders can broadcast it.

“Come on, we need to get moving,” he continued, turning back to the door. “One of the pods hit along the way to the hangars. Might as well help security out.”

“Wait, hand to hand combat?” Cam asked, moving to keep up with William. He was still new at the game, so he barely had skill points to spend. He had put most of them into helping him fly a basic ship better. Skills could also learned on the battlefield, but that was high risk. Dying meant losing most of the progress on the skills gained in action in the recent past, as well as a high fatigue level that could last hours or days. Fatigue affected combat effectiveness and skill learning rate. The period of time the fatigue lasted depended on a lot of factors, but by far the biggest were player level and amount of skills they know.

“No time like the present to get started,” William said with a grin. “Don’t take any risks if you don’t have to. We don’t want you sent back to base before you even get any experience.”

They hurried down the wide corridors. The Engra had plenty of space on its inside for comfortably wide corridors. The battleship was one of the largest ships in the game. Cam got lost in the twists and turns. He knew he could pull up the ship schematics in his heads up display again if needed, but he didn’t want to be distracted by it at the moment. Will slowly picked up speed as they moved.

“How’s your stamina?” he called after a few minutes.

“Thirty out of sixty,” Cam said. It had appeared in his vision when he had thought about it. It seemed handy as long as it didn’t block his vision at a vital moment. He had also noticed he had regenerated one health point. He hoped he didn’t need it in the fight ahead.

“And fatigue?”

“Four percent,” he said.

“Good. It doesn’t really start affecting you until about thirty, but it gets far worse the higher you go.”

Cam just nodded as they moved. He had heard it all before, but he wasn’t going to tell Will that. He would rather hear things two or three times than not at all. He was still new to the game, and the vast majority of the game’s population had been here for a year. Well more than a year in game. In game time went by faster than in the real world. Some sort of neural time dilation that let three days pass in game for every one in the real world. He was far behind and had a lot to learn.

“What combat skills do you have?” Will asked quietly, coming to a stop at a corner.

“Just the basic pistol skills,” Cam whispered back. “You said to focus on ship training for now. Oh, I did pick up the starting drone skill. I got a combat drone in my supplies.”

Will peaked carefully around the corner. They were close to the breach. Will motioned it was okay to keep going forward.

“A drone skill?” Will asked as he moved around the corner. “Why did you pick that up of all things?”

“You can use them in all sorts of things,” Cam answered, following his friend. “Ships can have drones, there are infantry combat drones, even drones to help with making and fix stuff. They seem pretty neat.”

“Yeah, but they require lots of attention. You have to control them directly. Have you used one yet?”

“Just in training. It wasn’t too bad.” Cam had used one. It was like splitting his attention between himself and another smaller self. The combat drone he had could fly, and while it didn’t do much damage, he could position it away from himself and set up a one man cross fire.

“Drones are really only good in numbers. Imagine that times ten. That’s what you’d need to even start being competitive with them. That takes a lot of skill investment too.”

“What about AI? I heard you can get those to help,” Cam asked. Either way he wasn’t too worried. It wasn’t like he had invested much into drones so far.

“Not as intelligent as people want. Too many options and not enough good ones to make them work. They’re too predictable in actual combat.”

Cam nodded. Will came to a stop at another corner. He peaked out again. This time Cam heard a gunshot, and Will ducked back quickly. A plasma bolt flew past the corner and into the far wall. Sparks sizzled where it struck.

“Looks like we found them,” Will said with a grin. He pulled out a communicator. “Quint to ShipSec. We have contact with hostiles at 3-7-5. We’re forward of their position.”

“Roger, Quint,” came a male voice from the communicator. “Two squads are enroute. One two levels up and one two sectors port of you.”

Will gave an acknowledgement back. “I was hoping we’d find the hositles already engaged with security,” he said to Cam. “We have to pull back a bit.”

Already they could hear the enemy advancing. Cam was amazed by how real everything felt to him. He was used to game situations that got his heart racing, but none had felt like this. Part of the tutorial had the players experience death, so he already knew he could face that, but dying right now would be a setback. Will had brought him out here to help him get some experience. You can’t set your spawn on a ship, so if he died he would respawn back in Codiem Caelestis territory, and would have to travel for a day to get back out here assuming there was a ship to take him.

The two friends pulled back down the corridor. At the next junction they took a defensive position. Will put himself farther forward, where he would have better shots, but also most likely get shot at.

“Just try to tag them,” he told Cam. “The more damage you do the better you’ll skill up, but even just hitting them will get you experience. They’re going to be tough, so don’t be afraid to pull back more if you need to.”

Cam nodded and readied his pistol. He could hear the sounds of boots coming closer. He was the right side of the corridor so he had an awkward angle being right handed, but he did his best to only expose his arm as he aimed for the corner. He saw Will take a shot first. He had the better angle. Will fired twice more before returning fire started. Plasma shots hit the bulkheads, shooting sparks and leaving small indentations. He had to pull back to avoid the initial barrage. A moment later two of the Aluvius boarders marched around the corner under the cover fire. They wore a similar outfit to the two guards Cam had seen earlier at the bridge. The thick armor could absorb several shots before weakening. They held out powerful submachine guns, continuing their fire at Will’s position. Cam wondered what Will hoped to accomplish with this. Cam would have to get a lucky shot to even do any damage. Will’s pistol didn’t look like it would do much better.

Cam still lined up his shot. He squeezed off two rounds straight at the first boarder’s chest. The kick of his gun wasn’t much and even at his awkward angle he was able to keep it steady. The two shots hit in the chest but the only effect was momentarily slowing the guard down. He fired three more shots quickly, two more at the same enemy and one at the other one. They all hit but still had little effect. Cam hid as soon as he saw them swivel their guns towards him.

He heard the splash of the plasma bolts hit where he had been peeking out. Some hit the corridor behind him, but he was safe for the moment. Glancing over at the other side, he saw Will putting an attachment on his pistol. He had already put a stock on it, and now as putting some sort of new barriel. It looked more like an awkwardly designed rifle than a pistol like that. He raised it up to his shoulder, peeked around the corner, and fired five times. A set of three followed by a set of two. The return fire lessened and Cam saw a small icon appear in the bottom left corner of his vision. It flashed twice before fading. Notifications were turned off in combat by default, but he was curious what it said. He moved a hand where the icon was located in his vision and tapped it. He only read the first sentence before Will shouted at him, but it was a level up notice. He tapped the icon again and closed the windows.

“Tag the next two, come on!”

Will had pulled back behind the corner, and was looking over at Cam.

Cam gave a quick nod and leveled his gun around the edge. He didn’t have much time to aim this time and there were five guards in his field of view. He shot four times, trying to hit a different one each time. He realized too late he shouldn’t have taken the last shot. A plasma bolt hit the wall right next to his arm. The splatter from the wall hit his arm and seared his skin. The pain was more than he was expecting and he dropped his pistol out in the middle of the corridor. He pulled back behind the corner. His uniform had burned where the plasma had splattered and he had some nasty burns on his upper arm. The pain dulled rather quickly, but he still felt it. He knew it he couldn’t shoot as well with the wound. Not that he had a gun to use. Another icon had appeared, this time looking like a miniature body. He ignored it. It probably let him know how badly his arm was hurt, but he didn’t have time to read through it all. He saw that his health had dropped eight points. He wondered if a direct shot to his body would immediately kill him.

Will leaned out and used his makeshift rifle again. He fired six times before having to duck again, which meant there were at least two boarders left, as well as any more that were still coming from around the corner.

“Do you have any way to tag more?” Will shouted across the way.

Cam could barely hear him over the noise of the enemy fire. He was about to shake his head no when he remembered his drone. He pulled the cube from his pouch. It was only a few centimeters big, easily held between his fingers. He activated it by pushing a button on one of its faces. Deploying it took some psi energy. Psi energy was the game’s form of mana. There were many types that he could unlock later on. Each was good at different types of mental or psychic tasks. He had fifteen points and as the small drone sprang to life three of them were used and reserved. He wouldn’t be able to regenerate those points until he stopped using the drone. Maintaining the drone also used psi energy, but this drone was so basic that his natural regeneration counteracted it.

The drone grew in size to larger than his fist and floated above his hand. It didn’t seem too threatening at a glance, but it did have a small energy weapon. It wouldn’t do even as much as his pistol, but it could tag enemies. He could also see everything its camera recorded. A video of his in-game avatar appeared, overlayed in part of his vision. It was a little disorienting to have it so suddenly appear, but he quickly recovered and took control of it. It was like having a mental joystick, it took some of his concentration to move it around. He backed up a step farther into the junction while at the same time sending his drone around the corner. He wasn’t sure if the enemy was closing in fast or not. He hoped Will’s gun was enough to deter them. He moved his drone near the roof, so that if the enemy was still aiming at body level they wouldn’t be pointing at it immediately. Unfortunately it was not fast so he had to be careful with it. He had to hope it was small enough to be hard to shoot.

As he moved it into the corridor he could see the boarders in the hallway, but they weren’t just standing in the middle of it anymore. They were being careful, moving up the sides. They had first seen Will as a lightly armed pilot, not expecting him to be able to put up any resistance, but now they knew better. There were eight of them now, all moving together and training their guns both sides where Will or Cam could peak out. They didn’t notice the drone yet and he was about to order it to fire at one of them when he saw one toss something towards the junction.

“Grenade!” he shouted, already running away from the junction. All he could think about was getting as much distance as possible from the grenade. He had sprinted half a dozen steps when the blast hit him from behind and sent him flying. He crashed into the side of the corridor and rolled on the floor. His back was on fire, and he could feel the bruises start up on his arms. A notification popped up that his health had dropped dangerously low. The blast from the grenade had hit him for forty-eight health points and the impact with the floor and walls had cost him another twenty-six. He was down to fourteen health. Several icons popped up, including the one shaped like a human body, and most were flashing red.

The initial pain was again overwhelming but quickly faded to a manageable level. Even at a seventy percent pain threshold the game wanted you to realize you were hurt and punish you just a bit for mistakes, but then didn’t want to over do it. Cam was fine with that. It was a game after all. No reason to be that realistic. He tried to sit up, but realized his body wasn’t responding the way he wanted it to. It took him two tries and he felt he was moving slower than normal. A small amount of pain shot through him as he settled against the wall and he saw himself lose another point of health. He grimaced. Probably some internal bleeding or a broken bone that jabbed itself somewhere. He was likely about to die and be sent back to Codiem Caelestis territory.

He looked up and saw three of the boarders walking to him. He was up against the wall with no place to hide. He couldn’t run. He could barely move. It seems even after the pain dulled the game still put limitations on your movement based upon wounds. One of the soldiers had their gun trained on him, but hadn’t fired yet. Cam wasn’t a threat to them and they knew it. He stared at the soldier, waiting for the inevitable.