Connection Unknown: Chapter 4 Part 2 of 4 (Patreon)

Joey shrugged and waved it off with a spork ladled with food. “I know it’s not for everyone. Been where you’ve been, though. Mom and Dad are just looking out for you.”

“I’ve only been out of high school for a month.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got the hours you need for an apprentice position. Another year and you’ll have Journeyman-level quals. You can go to any freighter, merchant liner, or ship and get a berth.”

“You’ve got Journeyman but you didn’t leave,” Luke pointed out.

“I’ve got technical school. Want to get an engineer’s slot—not just a wrench turner. With the hours I put in on here, I’ll be ahead of everyone else my age who didn’t live on a freighter their entire lives. Fast track to chief engineer.”

“I don’t want to be an engineer, or an accountant, or a trader, or a pilot.” Luke turned his hands outward. A spacer’s every movement was dialed down so they wouldn’t make a wild gesture and send themselves cartwheeling through space.

“Look, they’re giving you rent and responsibilities. They just want you to think about your future.”

“A safe, secure, boring future.”

Joey’s face fell.

“I didn’t mean it that way, its just, its not me, you know?” Luke said hurriedly.

“They’re not saying to do it forever. Mom and Dad have put out feelers to Uncle Raffi and others that have connections with yards because they know I want to build ships not just maintain them. You can learn a lot of skills in a short time, get certified and write your own ticket. You can make good credits on a freighter share.”

“I know and I get all of that, but I—” Luke raised his hands and his shoulders sagged.

Joey nodded and shrugged.

“I’m going to jump on the net.”

“Alright, catch you later.”

“Try not to burn your tongue off.”

“I’m doing my best!”

Luke finished off his bar on the way to the net room.

A net-suits was walking in mid-air.

Mom must be visiting friends.

Luke checked another suit, and powered it up, getting inside and logging into Sphere World. Instead of the lobby, a map of the Sphere World system popped up. He checked his friends list, Fin and Jynx were offline.

I made half a month’s rent with one game, The Guilds might not have him, but if he could earn credits from playing games then it could be enough to pay for his rent and get the time he needed to figure out his future.

Luke picked a rack near an armory on Sphere World itself and jumped in.

He joined the rush of bots entering the armory pulling up a terminal, a floating screen in his view.

[2,136,339 Platinum/1068 Credit(s)]

[Jynx is online]

[Fin is online]

He invited them both to a party chat.

“Okay, so what you want to do—another rush?” Luke asked.

“Sure, we can trade guns, see how they are, play around a bit,” Fin said.

“Sounds good to me. Your sniper and the machine gun looked like a lot of fun,” Luke said.

“They are, trust me,” Jynx said, almost in giddy glee.

“Guess you’re going gunner again?”

“Hell to the fuck, yeah.”

“You sniping, Fin?” Luke asked.

“Was thinking going shotgun and submachine gun with some armor.”

“Okay. Aim for around hanger seventeen?” Luke said.

“See you there,” Jynx said.

Luke followed the other bots and used a loadout screen inputting his choices.

[Proceed to Armory 3 bay 4]

“Fin aren’t you supposed to be working today?”

“Yeah, I’m working from home. I’ve got most stuff automated, so it’ll send me an alert if I need to deal with something quickly.”

Luke knew that Fin was capable of more, but getting away from his parents just wanted to work a bit, play his games, and live his life in peace. Luke understood that only too well.

Luke reached his port. A box of gear was waiting for him, same as before; ammunition belt, rifle, and he’d added grenades, coming with one breaching charge, two frags and two smoke.

He loaded his rifle and moved to the hallway beyond. “I’m all done.”

“Nearly,” Jynx said.

Luke spotted Jynx walk out of an armory further down, and Fin behind her.

“Damn, we look badass,” Fin said.

“Nice camo,” Luke said. Jynx wore a brushed bronze and gray hex camo, while Fin was all whites, grays, and blacks—a snow camo.

“You ever going to put camo on? Just all nekkid gray,” Jynx said.

“I think it looks cool. How do you add camo?” Luke asked in a lowered voice.

“You can get it when you’re coming out of the rack.” Jynx laughed as they walked into the hangar deck.

“Let’s find a dropship.”

“Heading down—need four gunners!” the pilot yelled as he walked up the ramp.

“I’m up for it!” someone yelled on local.

“Been gunner three times, haven’t died once!”

People applied, and the pilot picked them out. Others were just looking for a ride.

Luke’s squad gained some attention and they thumped up the ramp. They were some of the last to board the dropship.

The twenty-person hold filled up quickly as everyone got settled in.

“Closing ramp,” the pilot said.

A few seconds later, nothing happened.

“Got to power up first, boss.” A gunners coughed.

“Right, right.”

“I feel safe already,” Luke muttered as the dropship’s main power came online. The ramp closed as the pilot fiddled through the controls, taking them up a bit too fast and then shooting forward out the doors, nearly clipping the top of the bay doors.

“Slow and steady,” a gunners said.

“I got it,” the pilot growled.

Luke shook his head. “In the case of emergency, kindly place your hands over the back of your head, and put your head between your legs to kiss your ass good-bye.”

“Wonder if there is some way…” Fin scrolled through his terminal as Luke sat back in his harness.

“So, I sent some messages to some people and they’re interested with what we can come up with. I was thinking we do it as a role cast, that way you don’t have to talk through your strategies, you just game the best you can and I’ll cut it down to show the best highlights.”

“What?”

“The video, to try and get the guilds interested?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. So do I need to do anything?”

“You recording?”

“No?”

“Might want to do that. I’m recording too. I’ll take the footage and cut it into something cool. Maybe we can use it to create a stream, do it with a delay so the enemy can’t watch you and know what’s going on.”

“Okay,” Luke said, hitting the record option. “Anything else?”

“Win, or you do some cool stuff that helps. Something different attracts the guilds.”

“Right, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Don’t overthink it, just do your best and game.” Jynx laughed.

“I can do that. Thanks again.”

“Don’t mention it, I get a test subject and it gives me something to do before school starts.”

“Don’t you know most of the stuff to be game developer?”

“I know some of it, but I need a piece of paper to assure others and the big part is the co-op opportunities. Get to try working at different places on different projects, see what’s interesting…” Jynx trailed off.

At odd moments she’d do that, leaving Luke to wonder what she was thinking about. It started when her Baba had passed away.

She hid it well, using exuberance to cover it over. Luke didn’t press; this was all their time to decompress.

“Well, you’re getting good experience with all the games you’ve played.”

“Yeah! I’m excited,” she said with a little more enthusiasm, as if covering up for her wandering thoughts. “It’s nice that I would get to work on something that I love and I’m interested in! What about you? You decide anything yet? Did you read that there are gold miners jumping into the game, looking for ways to make credits.”

“Yeah, they’re looking into the mining. Take a bunch of miners, or a mining ship, carve it out and sell it to Sphere World.” Fin said.

“Can you earn money like that?”

“If you do it properly. The goldminers are just in it to get as much money in as short a period as possible. Worse than Guild slaves.” Jynx said.

“Though if we started mining materials, we could use a factory to refine them, build them into components and build our own bots.” Fin said.

“Huh?” Luke said.

“Crafting, my dude. Basically, mine it and shove it into a factory.”

They shuddered as they entered atmosphere.

“Damn it, this kid never piloted before?” Luke complained, feeling better, but also trying to cover up any awkwardness.

They dropped and then rose, and then repeated it.

“Shit, man! Need your space stabilizers!” someone yelled on local.

No such thing existed—they were a spacer’s equivalent to a left-handed torque wrench.

“So, if we think we’re going to crash, we can call out an emergency release vote and we get ejected from the ship,” Fin said.

“I think we’re going to need it,” Jynx said.

They cleared the upper atmosphere and the pilot leveled out, heading for a node on a straight line.

Fin displayed what he’d said to Luke and Jynx as text above his bot. Others raised their thumbs. Luke repeated it, getting thumbs on his side of the divide.

“Nothing pulls players together than a mutual enemy.” Fin sighed in pride.

“Dunno if that’s good or bad,” Jynx said.

Luke looked at the node laid out on the plateau, it was filled with miners and factories, working even as the defenders and attackers exchanged fire, linked by tracers across the barren and cratered landscape.

“He’s heading straight for the drop zone,” Luke said, looking through the cameras.

“Problem?”

“It goes right over the damn node!” Luke went to local. “Hey, pilot, we going around the node? Else they’ll rip us up.”

“Hey! I’m the one flying, so shut up!” the kid yelled, his voice cracking as he increased the thrust and changed his point of aim at the node.

[Vote to Eject]