First Line of Defence: Chapter 18 (Patreon)

Chapter 18

My Friend Nick.

The lid of the regeneration chamber finished opening, and I went to the locker to get dressed for work. When my armour was on, I started flying for the command room.

“How’s the dungeon raid going, Tee?”

“Your little explosion took out the one it was attached to, the two next to it, and the shield emitter. The turrets immediately took out another and your immortal soldiers are in the process of killing the last. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this seems like a death squad. They aren’t giving as much experience as I expected. I suspect their nests are made up of level 1 Clack. You received a whole lot less experience than you should’ve received. It’s about a tenth of a level, which is just shy of what you need to reach level 11. Diego on the other hand leveled a lot.”

“Not bad for five minutes of work, but I’m guessing we’re going to have to worry about them in the future.”

“Looks like it. Clack death squads are trained to take stations. On the bright side, their equipment was top of the line. The bounty for them to get it back is 18,000,000 credits. If they don’t want it, they’re still worth over a million credits by themselves, and the additional blueprints will allow you to add new weapon systems to the dungeon.”

The blast doors opened, and I entered the command room, landing in my chair. “What did I miss?”

The 3D map showed the front of the drone swarm was about to reach the halfway point to the station. The D2s were shooting as quickly as they could, but there were literally millions of targets. It didn’t matter that every shot took out one. Their numbers made it a joke.

“The good news is they’re rushing. The entire swarm will be through the ring by the time they reach the three-quarter mark.”

I pulled up the specs for the R2s. I hadn’t looked at them since the upgrade.

Name: R2Designation: Point Defence RailgunDamage: 20-30Rate of fire: 240 rounds per second Range: 10 unitAccuracy: 10 units Ammunition:

Payload:-Armor Piercing: Max (Light Armor)

Casing:Stealth: Max

“That range and accuracy is still atrocious. What’s the bad news?”

“You know how I said the biggest thing you would have to face was a corvette. Well, it’s not. They’ve built a mobile artillery platform. It’s coming through last.”

“What the hell is a mobile artillery platform?”

“It’s exactly what the name implies. It’s a big, slow mobile fortress that is barely small enough to pass through the ring. Once it gets here, it will proceed to bombard you from a distance. It's why we aren’t seeing anything bigger than a corvette. They spent their credits on buying a later stage weapon.”

“Can you hack it?”

“They use drone fleets. Firewalls are kind of what their faction excels at. The best I’ll be able to do is get into their system and skim information.”

“Will the corrosive rounds work on it?”

“Eventually, except we probably don’t have that much time.”

“After today, we need to talk about your intelligence-gathering capabilities. You haven’t been right once this Cycle. Have the maintenance drones start building the D2s. Screw fighting their whole swarm. Hopefully, they call off the rest of their attack.”

“I started the moment I realized it was there. They haven’t called it off despite the sudden increase.”

I’d underestimated them, because of bad intel. This wasn’t good.

“Launch the fighters. They’re going through the middle of the swarm and were supplying cover fire to get them through. We’re going to use them as a distraction for the Predator missiles.”

“You’ve got 450 Predators. That seems like a lot, but they don’t hit that hard.”

I opened my specialization path interface to see if I could increase the number of missiles, not just the missile batteries. I couldn’t. The only thing I could do was increase the number of missile batteries.

“Will having more make a difference?”

“If it’s as many as I think you're thinking, yes.”

I bought nine upgrades spending another ninety path points. It turned the 15 missile batteries I had into 240 and the number of Predator missiles I had into 11,520. I was going to need to upgrade my missile batteries after this.

“What sort of damage will the Predators do after the D2s hit the artillery with corrosive rounds?”

“Significantly more, but it might not be enough. The Predators don’t have a high yield. You probably need a better plan.”

“This is our best shot. The fact you can’t see that is disturbing. Remind me to introduce you to video games when we get back to Earth. You really need to start training.”

“Would you like to grow a neckbeard too?”

“It will increase your click rate, so yes. Also, start targeting their corvettes. They’re annoying me with the fact they aren’t destroyed yet.”

“I am.”

“The counter says there are over 90,000 of them.”

“There were more. They’ll be gone by the time they reach their weapons firing range. The fighter’s sensors can’t see your rounds, so they can’t get in the way. But let this be a lesson. Never underestimate what a sector of a fully united faction is capable of. The more group orientated, the more dangerous. Unless they’re pacifists, pacifists don’t do too well in the Game.”

“Launch all the Hammerhead missiles once you’ve fired the Predators. Send them after the Predators, but make it look like they’re there to protect the fighters. I want to thin the ranks, so we aren’t dealing with as many at once.”

“The effect will be marginal.”

“Marginal is better than nothing.”

“If marginal is better than nothing, you could upgrade the D2s damage output to level 3 with the credits you made from the Clack raid. It would increase their damage by 50%.”

“And slow down their firing rate without the other systems to compensate. But good idea, buy the upgrade for the new D2s and load them with the special ammunition. I was them ready the moment the platform comes through the ring. I’m assuming we have the RP and credits?”

“We do.”

“Good. I’m going to get a drink.”

I walked over to the replicator. “Whiskey, full glass, brand Johnny Walker Blue Label, room temperature, with three drops of mineral water. Cigar medium, brand Cohiba.”

The door opened up, with my request inside. I made my way back to my chair and lit the cigar with the tip of my armoured finger.

“You smoke cigars?”

“With my dad on his birthday, love the taste. Hate the cancer risk and the price, mostly the price.”

I got the cigar going and then started on my drink. I only ever drank Blue Label after winning tournaments, and there was no way in hell I was going to lose this. It wasn’t an option.

A few minutes ticked by as I tried to relax.

Our fighters were approaching the front of the swarm, flanked by a horde of missiles. The swarm looked like a massive cloud of sand flies on the 3D map, and my fleet looked like a baseball about to go through them. For the first time, the swarm drew together, bunching to engage the small fleet and disproportionately large amount of missile support. The entire swarm from the front to the back condensed.

“Are they close enough to hit multiple targets?”

“They are.”

“Ignore the corvettes for a minute. Focus on the kamikaze fighters around our ships.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think they have pilots controlling the drones remotely.”

“So?”

“So, they’re dumb. I want to see how dumb.”

“Why?”

“Because it will tell me how quickly their commander responds to small threats. My gut is starting to tell me there is something off about this attack.”

The swarm continued to condense to engage my fighters. The D2s started taking out a handful with every shot, by timing the explosion of the rounds. It took 20 seconds for their commander to take notice and disperse the concentration, but that was more time than I thought it would take.

I took a sip of whiskey and frowned. “Octorin have slow reactions to change, but not that slow.”

“Maybe the commander wasn’t paying attention.”

“It doesn’t fit with what I know of their culture. All their greatest stories focus on well-thought-out plans from rich oligarchs that take time to implement and provide flawless victory. None involve improvising, except by the young and impetuous members of their species which now makes me wonder why they’re attacking. It’s out of character for a seasoned leader. They should have waited until the 20th Cycle despite my station’s condition. Tee, have you tried to hack into their systems?”

“No, I didn’t see the point.”

“Which of these vessels would take the longest to produce in this number?”

“The corvettes.”

“That platform is expensive, right? The kind of expensive that means you’ve got to invest heavily early on.”

“Yeah.”

“This fleet was probably designed to only be ready on the date that they planned to attack.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Software and small changes in hardware is the last thing Octorin will invest in since it can be replaced at the last minute, but the platform is too valuable to cheapen out on. If I was trying to cut corners, where would I do it? Tee, try to hack into a corvette near the front of the swarm.”

Tee confirmed my suspicions.

“I’m in the one I’ve targeted. It’s only got a basic firewall system. I can take complete control.”

I started to grin. They thought I was a noob, so they’d been willing to take a larger risk.

Idiots.

“How many can you take control of?”

“It took me a tenth of a second to get in, so a lot. I’ll get faster as I go.”

That was fast. It gave me a rather nasty idea.

“Start taking control of the corvettes at the front of the swarm. Can you keep them moving forward and make it, so the Octorin don’t know you have control?”

“I can keep them unaware until I make them do something their controller doesn’t want them to do or stop them from doing something they want them to.”

“Perfect. Take control of as many as you can? We’re going to send a fleet against the Hordes system the Kilocksin just raided.”

Tee laughed, evilly. “I’m on it.”

I put my cigar in the corner of my mouth. “I love it when a plan comes together.”

“Do you want me to try to hack the platform?”

“My guess is the young oligarch spent all their credits on rushing the platform since it’s their biggest weapon. The fighters would have been cheap to upgrade, but the corvettes would have cost them more, so that’s where the money came from. I bet if you try to hack the ones furthest back, you’ll find them upgraded, so stay away from them. The ones at the front were meant to be destroyed first because their cannon fodder, so lack the extra investment.”

The swarm continued to try to take out the fighters, but because Tee was now diverting fire away from the corvettes, they weren’t having success. Our little fleet of fighters had actually managed to make some headway. The Hammerheads were doing a lot to thin the number of kamikaze fighter drones.

Another thirty seconds passed, and the oligarch panicked. The drones began to cluster again. The number heading to engage the missiles increased significantly, thinning the density of the approaching swarm, making it even easier to counter the first wave of the approach when it finally reached us.

The drones in the centre bunched. Thousands changed directions moving in such numbers that the D2s slow firing rate couldn’t keep up. They couldn’t keep up, but they destroyed so many drones in thirty seconds that it bought us another two minutes where we didn’t have to worry. The front ranks were now so thin they wouldn’t be any trouble.

The fighters and missiles went down in a hail of drone laser bursts. The Predator missiles remained unnoticed, passing through the swarm unchallenged.

“I’m making a path for the Predators through the corvettes,” Tee said. “I’ve worked out which have the upgrades, and which don’t. I can leave a gap in their sensors that will look natural.”

“Good work.”

“We’ve got three minutes before the platform arrives, and the last of the swarm is through.”

I took the cigar out of my mouth, blew a smoke ring, and enjoyed my drink. Johnny Walker Blue Label was like drinking a cloud. The flavour made you float. Drinking it with a cigar was kind of sacrilege, because the cigar overpowered the flavour, but since I didn’t have to pay for it, I didn’t care that the flavour wasn’t as clean as it could be.

The swarm continued to approach the three-quarter mark. The number of corvettes Tee had taken over appeared above the map, increasing at breakneck speeds. By the time they reached the three-quarter line, it was over 20,000.

We weren’t done.

The Predators were happily making their way through the back of the swarm as the artillery platform finished passing through the transit ring.

It was huge. It dwarfed everything I’d seen on the battlefield. It was larger than the station was when I first received it. It was going to be worth a lot of RP.

“I’ve upgraded the damage output on the new D2s, and the first wave of corrosive rounds is on its way to the platform. We can fire four, maybe five rounds of fire before it deploys.”

“Let’s hope that’s enough. Try to get into their system.”

“Doing that will stop me from being able to take over corvettes. You’re grinning again.”

“You said you can see what they see, but you won’t be able to affect anything, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it seems to me like if we knew what they were shooting at, we could put something in the way. Something like a corvette, perhaps.”

Tee chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The swarm continued to gain ground. They were about four minutes from reaching the R2’s range. The artillery platform began to turn. Armoured plates retracted, exposing a massive array of heavy weapons.

“What am I looking at, Tee?”

“I’m still not in their systems, but if I had to guess. Ion cannons. 210 of them. They will turn this station into Swiss cheese.”

A wave of D2 corrosive rounds slammed into the artillery platform and began eating through the armour surrounding the ion cannons.

The Predator missiles were still 30 seconds out, and the next two waves of D2 rounds would hit it before they did. Hopefully, it would be enough to thin the number of cannons pointed towards the station.

“I’m in.” Tee chuckled. “Yeah, they’ve lost. It’s just a matter of time. I’m going to take control of more corvettes.”

The second and third waves of rounds quickly slammed into the ion cannons, followed by a hail of Predator missiles that damaged three-quarters of the weapons so heavily they couldn’t function. The Octorin must have thought they had me then, but the moment their ion cannons fired, their corvettes moved in to take the hits for me.

“Wololo bitches!” I shouted gleefully.

More rounds bombarded their artillery platform taking out a few more cannons and bringing the rest closer to being inoperable. The oligarch tried to find out which corvettes we controlled by moving them. Tee let them. They must have asked someone for advice because a half a minute later, the corvettes tried to leave the formation entirely. That we couldn’t accept. The jig was up, but by then, Tee had control of a third of the corvettes.

War broke out. The fighters had to join because Tee started targeting the corvettes, he couldn’t take over with the spare D2s. Every second brought more of their corvettes onto our side. And the second wave of fire was only as effective as the first.

It was chaos and violence on an unimaginable scale. Millions of spaceships, against thousands of weapons, causing unholy hell levels of destruction and carnage.

It was glorious.

I was grinning like a madman.

This was my purpose.

This was where I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

The front of the swarm eventually reached the station, expecting to finally have their revenge. I opened my D2 upgrade path fifteen seconds before they reached range. Thousands of R2s appeared out of the tops of D2s, where seconds ago, there had only been 260.

“Surprise motherfuckers!”

The R2D2s were finally complete.

Another barrage of D2 fire slammed into the artillery platform, taking out more cannons and doing serious damage this time. At this point, some of the D2s were shutting down due to internal damage from the higher-level rounds, but they had done their job, and there were hundreds of them and more joining every second as the maintenance drones completed quests.

The battlefield quickly changed. If the Octorin could have left, it would have been a full route, but they had committed to this, so it was an all-or-nothing scenario. And they got nothing.

The R2s shredded the weakened front line. The D2s shredded everything else. Corvettes fell by the hundreds, and the artillery platform succumbed to corrosive rounds and the piercing rounds.

I’d done it.

“Tee, give additional cover fire to the corvettes. I need them functioning so I can attack the Horde.”

“That’s not going to be a problem. At this point, I’m gaining corvettes faster than I’m losing them.”

Within a few minutes, Tee had control of the remainder of the Octorin corvettes. There were 42,874 in total. They were the only large vessels on the board. They moved through the swarm, taking out vast swaths of fighters for fifteen minutes before only the dredges of the once massive swarm remained.

“Tee, it’s time to go demand tribute.”

A moderator has been contacted. An AI investigation has been launched. Please standby for disconnect from the scenario while the investigation is underway.

“What the hell! Not again? I’m playing by the fucking rules.”

Tee chuckled. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

“No. Not this time. I followed the rules. They’re not an AI faction. They’re players. They did this themselves. You can’t take this from me. Tee, attack the fucking Horde!”

The station faded as I was shouting instructions, and I found myself sitting in the same office as the first time I’d been moderated. The same tired looking old man sat behind his desk in a cardigan. And the same ceiling fan was spinning a little too slowly to do its job. Somehow the smell of scotch had grown stronger.

“Case number 002 for human faction,” he said, using the same stupid slow droll, with the accent I couldn’t place. “Investigation of station master acquisition of substantial corvette drone fleet with intent to destroy crippled Horde faction’s systems. Station master will kill 145 billion Horde players due to crippled defences from Kilocksin's invasion in the first system alone, resulting in extreme credit and experience acquisition. Individual created possibility by befriending Kilocksin faction and surviving three substantial faction assaults back-to-back. Rules were adhered to. Certain actions were against an AI faction whose reaction was proportionate to sapient races, but the AI’s actions caused a ripple effect resulting in the end scenario. Scenario was legitimate. Chance of occurrence 1.626%. Investigator suggests partial course correction. Station current trajectory flagged as indestructible.”

“Request denied,” said the same nasally female voice from above. “Faction is new faction. Partial course correction is unacceptable. Achievement must be exchanged.”

The moderator looked like he wanted to swear at the other speaker but sucked it up and scowled instead. “Individual has already received an exchange.”

“Calculate chances of faction receiving additional exchange?”

“Fine, I’ll make a deal…again.” He glared at me. “What do you want this time?”

I glared back at him. “What am I losing?”

“You are about to attack a defenceless system with a fleet of more than 40,000 corvettes. You have the firepower to kill everything in that system and move on to the next, where you can repeat your performance several times before the Horde pulls together a large enough force to counter you. The kill count will be in the trillions. The credit count will be quadrillions. You will receive multiple first achievements. This can’t be allowed to happen unmoderated. A compromise must be reached.”

Because of Dad’s advice, I’d done a great deal of study into the moderators since the last time I’d been here. I’d discovered how badly I’d been screwed. I had a lot more leeway than I was led to believe.

It was time to get some payback.

“Here is what you are going to give me in-game. In exchange for the loss of experience from killing all those players, all my station and R2D2 rats now start max level, and if my R2D2 rats should evolve into something else and become new mobs, they start at the max too, so long as my station defences are adequate to take care of them. If they aren’t, then they start at a level where my defences can handle them and automatically level when my station becomes stronger. I assume removing the increased experience cost of leveling is off the table?

“It is.”

“Then that’s all I’m going to ask for there. Now, as compensation for the loss of credits, I want every upgrade for the human faction up to level 10. And I want you to give my station a fully upgraded lab that will level and receive all upgrades each time my station levels for the rest of the season.”

He frowned. “That is a little more than I was thinking.”

“I’m not finished. You screwed me last time; it’s not happening again. I get to keep the achievements. In exchange for any experience modifiers, you don’t want me to have I receive double the class points and path points but get to have the experience modifiers back when I reach level 100.”

“There are other modifiers you can’t have.”

“Then double my class points and path points every time you take something.”

He scowled. “This is barely acceptable.”

“Good. That’s in-game. Now we’re going to talk about out-of-the-game. You’re going to pay me one Token for every credit I would have earned in-game from this raid and ten Tokens for each level of every kill I make. And for taking my experience, you’re going to replace it with knowledge. I want everything you can give me on the Kilocksin, their way of life, their goals, and everything else. And I want to know how to run a successful planet. I want to know everything a great ruler should know, from how to negotiate a treaty to how to build a functioning economy in the Collective and treat those who don’t want to participate in the Game.”

“I can’t give you the last request. If you had that knowledge, you would be significantly more effective in the Game. It would unbalance everything else. However, outside of the game, I can give you an administrator with all these skills and undyingly loyal to you and your values. They will be given an organic body, so they’re not omnipresent. You’re welcome to learn from this administrator, but you cannot receive that much knowledge freely. This sort of entity is different from others, so it will take a few Cycles before you receive it.”

“That’s an acceptable compromise, so long as you give me everything else I asked for.”

“I would think so. It is at the very limit of what I can give you.”

“Good.”

“Request approved. Negotiations successful. Case closed. Now, this time, please don’t come back.”

“Hell no. I’m coming back as often as I can, Nick.”

He scowled at me. “My name isn’t Nick.”

“Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure you’re Santa Claus since every time I see you, it's Christmas.”

“Goodbye, Morgan.”

“See you around, Nick.”

The office began to fade, and I was back in my command chair. The last of the Octorin drones had been destroyed, and the fleet of corvettes were on their way to the Horde transit ring.

Challenge CompleteYou have destroyed the invaders.

Rewards:Tokens: 2,500,000Drone Fleet

A fiery grin spread across my face. “Buckle up, Tee. We have systems to conquer. Contact the Kilocksin. They’re welcome to the scraps we leave behind, but it’s going to cost them their cooperation in my new dungeon.”

“Negotiations went well, I see.”

“Less talking. More conquering!”