Sliding Reality: Chapter 1 Part 1 of 1 (Patreon)

Chapter 1:

1/04/2242

Dana Huang zoomed in on Sanctorium, the home of the Legion hidden out among the sixth planet’s asteroid belt and moons. The asteroid eater and shipyard complex remained in stationary orbit over the moon base.

She zoomed in on the asteroid eater, down deep in the factory runs that snaked through the hollowed-out rock and selected an empty bot, ‘jumping’ into it.

Her vision cleared to show a workshop several factories on standby to churn out parts.

"Wormhole projectors, oh sweet, delicious Wormhole projectors," Minnie’s voice came from an identical bot, strictly utilitarian in shape, her gamer tag floating above her head as she stroked a large box device with what looked like a handle on top of it.

"You know they're not edible right?" Fin’s voice came from another bot beside her. "And you're looking at the image of that ship again."

A terminal had been expanded and shared to the public, showing the luxury yacht that had docked with Sphere World yesterday.

"Bah! Such graceful curves, I ran it through a search engine, it's one of those high-end yachts. People are saying its an advertising stunt, but Orion’s Belt aren’t saying anything. You know their stock rose fifty percent after that court case. Then right afterwards Sphere World has access to Wormhole projectors, it nearly doubled?"

"Doesn't really sound like Stu-Sphere World's execs would be the kind of people to use that kind of ad." Fin chewed on his words.

"So, how long to outfit the ships?" Dana cut in, making the two jump.

“Dammit Dana, sneaking up on us like that!” Minnie patted her chest with her hand-held terminal. “Guess you’re here for your Frigate?”

“Well, that and to see if we can retrofit the wormhole projectors to our Corvettes? And how much time it will add to the new corvettes being built."

“Well if we can set up the factory runs right, it should only add a few minutes, my people are getting really good at putting things together before they even reach the shipyard. Adding projectors to the already built ships is going to take about an hour for each projector, need to open up the hull, but then it is pretty much plug and play.” Minnie shrugged, raising her pads.

“Retrofit the old corvettes as soon as possible, then the new ones and freighter. I want all of our ships outfitted with projectors.”

Minnie ‘hmm’d’ fixing her terminal to the air to use both hands.

Dana looked upwards and went silent.

"I can hear the gears turning over," Minnie muttered.

"We're in vacuum," Fin pointed out.

Minnie snorted. “Jackass.”

Dana felt Fin’s smile distantly, her face slack, her eyes unseeing as her mind turned scenarios.

"Okay, we’ll have the first two projector outfitted corvettes jump to a new system as a test. Thankfully the star systems here are based off of the ones in the real, so we can use that information to plot out an oort-region wormhole. This could be the advantage that we are looking for against the guilds and give the free players an edge over them." Dana nodded to herself.

"There are a few million more players, I don't think that the players need much more of a reason to join the game, have you been paying attention to the feeds?" Fin asked.

"No…?" Dana trailed off.

"Not much for caring about what the media would say, just the after action reports this one Minnie said.

"With Sphere World's legal problems over there are more people joining the game everyday. The guilds have made a lot of headway, but they're a minority of the entire game. There are several fights happening out on Vallhalla and in the different space regions. Things have changed a lot since we started out." Fin said. “We might be one of the larger clans because we own warships and a couple of bases, but there are bands of free players and clans that are carving out their own sections of Sphere World. A few have even started to fight it out on Ares.”

"Hopefully it gives the guilds something else to worry about," Minnie muttered.

“How are sales, are we getting the guilds off of our asses?” Dana asked.

“Ramirez was supposed to seal some deals with different groups. I haven’t been able to reach him in days, but Luke has been covering for him and there are some other traders among the Legionnaires ranks that are taking up the slack.” Fin shuffled his feet.

“Where did he go, he just got the job,” Minnie couldn’t hide the annoyance in her voice.

“Dunno I asked Luke and he didn’t know either. Though we are selling bots and gear to people all across Sphere World, if we can offer to sell them ships and gear in new system then they’re going to go nuts. Which brings me to another question. A lot of them are asking if it would be possible for us to build them jump capable ships?”

“We could fit it in to the hellcats,” Say give them a basic loadout, missile racks, light machine guns ammunition. Then the wormhole.” Minnie grunted. “Take a look.”

She waved a layout screen up into the air.

[Hellcat fighter]

[Primary Weapon: Missile Rack]

[Secondary Weapon: Light machine gun x2]

[Upgrades : Wormhole Projector]

[Cost: 315914 Platinum/158 Credit(s)]

“You think that people are going to want to use a hellcat to go to another system?” Fin reared back.

“No, they’re not really built to jump to other systems. Though it gives them the option to, the Turtle dropships can’t use the wormhole projectors. Next step up are the corvettes. Though really our best bet is making small freighters with projectors.” Minnie flicked out another screen.

[Freighter- Small]

[Upgrades: Wormhole Projector]

[Storage: 5,000,000m3]

[Cost: 1351277 Platinum/676 Credit(s)]

“You’ve got a lot more capacity, you could take several hellcats in containers, or miners and other gear.”

“You’re thinking of outposts?” Dana asked.

“Pre-planning right. The guilds know where we are now, we can’t be too careful.”

“And you’re talking about?” Fin looked between them.

“We send in the scouts to check out systems, then we send in freighters with miners, shuttles and factories to build up secondary bases to carve us up resources, creating caches, or manufacturing facilities away from our enemies eyes.” Dana said.

“Each freighter could go out loaded with enough gar to start another base.”

“Well we’d need some factories, and then we’d also need minables.” Minnie said.

“Have to be placed near a lagrange point, then our ships can jump in if they need a quick resupply, or we can jump out ships that are waiting there.” Dana picked up after her.

“How many factories of what grade to start and how would we set up the miners?” Fin asked.

“Damn administrators,” Minnie grumbled, looking up into the air already trying to figure out the answers. “We’re going to need Mitch.”

Dana cleared her throat, feeling that they were on the edge of an hours long conversation that she didn’t need to be there for. “Okay, so two corvettes out of our five converted by the end of tomorrow, what about the others?”

“Should be the day afterwards.” Minnie said. “This place is full of components, for us to use, Mitch is fitting the miners that we brought with us to the asteroid eater to get it up to full functionality. My people are racing to get the factory lines fixed from the fighting, because once the eater is running our bottle neck is going to be processing and building for a while.”

“The shipyards?”

“The second medium ship yard will be up and running in two days and the two small shipyards we captured will be ready at the same time, we’re fixing damage and looking for traps. Our shipyards have been unpacked and are working.” Minnie said.

“And the remaining medium shipyard under construction?” Dana asked.

“That should be done in about a week each shipyard is going to be working on one type of ship to build them faster, the five small shipyards on corvettes and the first two medium shipyards on Frigates. The third one will be working on Destroyers. The first Large shipyard is being laid down.”

“Ten percent of resources and production have been turned over to building more automated miners and factories to keep increasing our output. Thirty percent towards shipyards, fifteen to new warships, five percent towards ammunition, another five to Mitch’s defense system. Five to hellcats and dropships, ten to new bots Another ten percent to component replacements, if we have too many then we can just build something new, otherwise they can fix up gear we loot, or our stuff after a fight. The remaining ten percent is for salable goods.”

“Sounds like you’re worried.”

“We’re running low on liquid funds of platinum and credits. If people were to leave the clan we’d be in trouble. Our policy before this has always to take payment in materials.”

“How low?”

“Low enough that if Mitch or you left the clan, we would have to sell warships.”

Dana tensed her jaw.

“If we were to sell half of our gear for platinum or credits then we could slowly rebuild our treasury.”

“Check with Foster and Ichika before you do anything but you have my agreement.” Dana said.

“Anything else?” Minnie looked between the two of them.

Fin shook his head.

“Good! Then come on, we have a new Frigate for you to check out! You coming Fin?”

“I have some numbers to run and messages to send. I’ll see you later.”

“See you later!” Minnie guided Dana out of the Command Post, fused waste stone blocks and turrets created a series of funnels and defenses.

“I swear the engineers keep on getting a new defensive idea as they go. We just call it the super bunker cause its all linked together. Here we are.” Minnie growled, leading them through several confusing passages, using the walls, floor and jets to get through the micro-gravity. She clamped to a metal flooring fused into the floor, covering a spawn point with several dormant bots.

Minnie stood on an X and jumped out of her bot, its lights dimmed, entering sleep mode.

Dana followed, the spawn point dissolved into a star map of Orion’s system, she pulled up Minnie’s information she chose to join her, the map swirled and zoomed in on the medium shipyard holding the newest addition to the Legion’s fleet and one of several bot filled spawn points.

Dana jumped into a bot.

“There she is,” Minnie pointed up.

Dana followed her finger to the ship cradled in the shipyard.

Angled explosive deflecting armor sprouting weapon systems across its hull. “Damn.”

“Three times the energy output of a base Corvette, four times the amount of frame, she can take one hell of a pounding on her hull, five times the amount of processing output and twice the size in nearly every direction with the same acceleration profile. Three gravities of constant acceleration, up to thirty under full acceleration and periods of emergency acceleration of sixty gravities.” Minnie recited the information off memory and sent a data read out to her terminal. “Fully outfitted as you spec’d.”

[Frigate]

[Weapon A: Rail Cannon x4]

[Weapon B:Missile Rack x8]

[Weapon C: Close In weapon system x5]

[Weapon D: Plasma Cannon x2]

[Upgrades: Wormhole Projector x2]

[Storage: 1x Turtle, Medium Missiles-Nuclear x16, Heavy Ship ammunition x12]

[Cost: 24114761 Platinum/ 12057 Credit(s)]

“Missile build?” Minnie asked as Dana read.

“We only have so much processing and the rail cannon rounds are easier to be seen and travel slower. Spread as many missiles as fast as possible into their teeth, defend against like attacks. Close in to use our rail cannons to open them up and plasma at knife-fighting range.” Dana looked up from the stats to the Frigate that hung above them. Her stomach crawled up into her chest.

“So, what should I get stencilled on her hull?” Minnie asked.

“Lets call her Hoplite. Shielding her allies and supporting them from arm’s reach.”

“A good name.”