Time to do the impossible.
Just another encounter.
“Wind, target the one in front. Assume a least time intercept on the hauler’s engine core. Don’t worry about shields, he’ll be busy by the time you get to him.”
“Got it.”
She jets off, beginning her long-distance attack run.
“Slend, I’m gonna micro hop. How far are they?”
“Thirty-seven kay clicks, two mid. Closing at five hundred clicks per. You sure?”
I do some quick math in my head. Doable.
“Yup. All power to sensors. Be ready to give me updates. Steve. You still with us?”
“Y-yeah. I’m here.”
“Good. You know how to switch friendly fire off?”
“Um, yeah. Why?”
“When I tell you to, I want you to launch a full salvo at the back fighter. After I wipe the middle one, I want you to launch a full salvo at me.”
“At… you?”
“Yes, Steve. At me. Don’t worry, I’m not going to report you for griefing.”
“O-okay. How are you going to kill the middle one?”
“You’ll see. Launch your torps.”
I hope Steve doesn’t freeze, and turn my ship to line up with the incoming fighters. There’s no way to train for what I’m about to try to do, just instincts and luck. My thumb hits the button for tunneldrive.
In CCP, players use tunneldrive to travel between star systems, crossing trillions of kilometers in seconds from one fixed point to another, and for ninety-nine point nine percent of them, that’s all they’ll ever know. Tunneling out of a system through anything other than an established route vaporizes a ship—devs not wanting to waste resources rendering literally everything. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the restriction only applies to travel outside of a system.
As long as I stay within the bounds of the local star, the Game won’t murder my ship. Of course, to stay within the bounds of the local star, I have to get this exactly right. Too soon, and the drive won’t spin up enough, dumping me right back where I started. Too late, and I’ll find myself a million clicks away from the enemy ships, entirely too far away to accomplish anything more than a temper tantrum, something that would also be highly embarrassing from a streaming perspective. My margin of error is less than razor thin.
Impossible to be the best playing it safe.
Starlight streaks form around me, and just as quickly, I hit the button again, dropping myself back into realspace, Slend’s voice immediately sounding over my comms.
“Eight high relative. Ten clicks back. Four gees to close at max.”
Nailed it.
I roll my control yoke over, Slend’s terse words letting me know I’m above and behind the left side of the last three ships, and that catching them is gonna hurt a bit. I shunt half the power from my weapons to engines and crank the throttle. Four gravities’ worth of force punch me in the everywhere, nothing but blank space and scrambled sensors in front.
“Steve. Talk.”
Speaking’s not fun, but it’s necessary.
“Uh, wow. That… uh…”
“Did. Torps. Hit.”
Two red brackets appear in front of me, one slightly behind the other. I adjust to center the rearmost in my aiming reticule.
“Y-yes! I got one!”
“Good. Launch. At. Me.”
“Oh yeah, sorry, forgot. Firing!”
I tap a code to access the tertiary power panels, part of the ship hardly anyone uses, because hardly anyone wants to play at that level of fidelity in their hapsphere, deal with the pain it potentially brings. Another couple of taps and all power drops from life support, shunted into weapons. Bitter cold quickly envelops me. Groaning, I squeeze the firing trigger. An overcharged spurt of eradicating light turns my vision purple, ripping through the blackness like an earthquake, doubling the range at which my lasers can normally strike. Red bracket turns to black space.
A new voice sounds on the public comms, the last pilot. I recognize his guild seal, one of the feeder guilds funneling into IonSeal. One popular with the boardshits.
“So, you’re Ashura? You’re good. Real fucking good. I thought those other losers were gonna be enough to wipe this cakewalk. ’Specially twenty vee five.”
“Wiped. Your. Asses. Like. Toilet. Paper. You’re. Next.”
He laughs, an unpleasant sound, like a hyena.
“Yeah, you got the trash, but it doesn’t matter. I’m still gonna win. You can’t stop my torps, not from there. Especially not if I overcharge.”
Slend’s voice sounds again.
“Ultra launch. Engine core. Six vamps inbound.”
The pressure on my face doesn’t let me smile, as much as I want to, and my toes feel like they’re encased in blocks of ice. Perfect. He got scared, and launched them all at once.
I shunt all power to engines. I’m not aiming at anything visible, just a combination of guesswork and hope. Six more gees join the weight on my chest, eyesight narrowing down to a thin tube, more frost enveloping my limbs. Warnings sound all over the cockpit, the Game’s way of telling me I’m nearing the limits of what they’ll allow, but I don’t care. It’s just me and the encounter. The timing on this is going to be thinner than a molyblade. I blow past the hostile bracket in a blur, its stunned handler unable to handle his weapons in time to catch me.
Something in my stomach tightens. I slam all power into the shields of my horrendously overstressed fighter, blowing out every circuit to create a momentarily impenetrable barrier, acceleration dropping to zero. The weight on my chest turns from a steady pressure to nothing to a heaving ocean of kinetic force, buffeting me from every possible angle, Steve’s torpedoes detonating their massive payloads, seeking to crush my life from existence, but in doing so massacring the six torpedoes not half a click away in an orgy of mutual destruction, their sensors fixated on the hauler. Life support slowly rumbles back online, abacus beads prolonging my existence a few slides more.
“No fucking way!”
“Vamps down.”
Slend’s voice arrives nearly simultaneously with the other pilot’s. I’m too tired to grin. My ship tumbles helplessly, everything used up in my insane burst of speed to catch up with the torpedoes, then survive the impact of Steve’s salvo. I open a link to the public comm. I’m helpless, but I still need a couple more seconds. Luckily, this jackass probably sucks at psych-sec.
“Gee gee, well played, better luck next time. Torps are vulnerable to fratricide. You should’ve ripple fired. You only needed to get two through. You’ll never make IonSeal with that level of scrubness.”
“Ggrraaaaghhhhh! You stupid… you stupid bitch! You fucking cheated!”
“Losers make excuses. Winners fuck the prom king. Not my fault you played like shit. Get good.”
“Oh that’s fucking it. That’s fucking IT! I don’t give a fuck who you are, I’ve still got lasers, and I’m gonna blow your cun—”
“SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, YOU REJECTED SPERM SAMPLE.”
Wind’s blasts cut his angry ranting short, her ship screaming in from below, bare to even the slightest of return fire, and this time I quirk the corner of my mouth up. My stream goes wild.
“Good timing.”
“Nice psych-sec. Thought for sure he was going to see me coming in.”
“Nah. Tunnel vision. Takes a long time to break that, and his tag shows less than a thousand in endgame. Gee gee, Slend.”
“Yup.”
“Good job, Steve. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
“That. Was. Fucking. AWESOME! SunJewel rocks!”
“You got it, Steve.”
My ship stops spinning, perspective shifting to the “Mission Accomplished!” screen. Heat rushes back into my body, the hapsphere readjusting, and with the tingling return of sensation I realize just how close I pushed the safety limits. Another couple seconds and the Game would’ve booted me back to login, biomonitor signs hitting hardcoded thresholds. No one tries to hack the threshold limits, not unless they have a death wish. Hapspheres do everything they’re told.