R and R on Khumulo
Captains log — 2
— The following Data excerpt was salvaged from a large cluster of floating debris and damaged satellites in the outer reaches of the unmapped and unruly High Risk Zone. In accordance with MUD Governance Code #32334, this information is highly classified. –
Log ID: 260192
Captains Log: 002
Enlisted Days: 11
ATLAS payload: 764.643
Ship: VZUS Opod
Captains log: After a large meal in the mess-hall, where the absolute silence was cut only by the clatter of cutlery and the constant hum of the Shinobi, the crew retired to their quarters with a palpable air of exhaustion and elation. Even Dr. Valster, ever clear-eyed, looked a little haggard, overfed and dazed. I grinned, but couldn’t help feel somewhat responsible for the crews drunken, half-way state.
Two days ago, the crew and I agreed that a brief respite and refuel in Khumulo would give us a chance to catch our breath before our long journey to the MRZ. Data Running was as treacherous as it was arduous, and I figured the recruits could use at least twenty four hours of captain-less freedom before the painful but necessary realities of deep space voyage set in.
Khumulo pulsed like glowing coal as the Shinobi’s observation deck brought the large planet into view. It was cast in deep black, with flashing, yellow-tinged veins that ran across its surface in perfect geometric sections, marking its countless cities, skyways, ship-ports and factories. A constant stream of ships hurtled toward and out of Khumulo, their every movement carefully tracked and recorded by thousands of tiny MUD Governance drones which flittered along the planet’s exosphere.
Corporal Cort stood aghast next to me at the observation deck. It was plain she had never seen anything like Khumulo, and she whistled approvingly. A brief glance at the foreman saw him grinning hungrily at the city-planet. Derranis had a… minor penchant for gambling, and Khumulo’s casinos had a certain charm to them. I wasn’t sure if I should keep an eye on him as I have seen gambling addictions get the better of even the most disciplined crew. His ATLAS was his own, but I preferred to keep the ship debtless on all accounts.
Lermnis Nader winked at the doctor, then patted Cort on her shoulder and said,
‘Twenty four hours, rookies. Make the most of it.’
After entering the atmosphere and docking, and bleeding out the considerable amount of ATLAS it cost to do so, the crew and I met in the lobby of The Cannoneer. The not-to-shabby city inn went for an old-Earth tavern atmosphere, and I quite liked it. The walls were littered with medieval-era tabards and banners, chequered in red, blue and green and stretched out to reveal intricate embroideries of wolves, dragons, bears and castles. A collection of Sphinx Tigu furs-covered armchairs sat in a corner facing a fireplace, woodfire crackling pleasantly.
I could feel the weight of space faring responsibility, self-imposed or otherwise, gather itself in heavy knots around my neck and shoulders. The weight of keeping secrets lay heavy there, too. I supposed I wouldn’t be venturing too far from the inn during my stay.
The sly grin Cort wore told me she felt otherwise, as she and the foreman counted their ATLAS in preparation for a night at Khumulo’s premier casino, The White Light. To my relief, Dr. Valster would be joining them, indulging her own particular habit for expensive cocktails and people-watching. I quietly asked her if she wouldn’t mind people-watching in the direction of over-eager crewmates, and she smiled knowingly and nodded. She has the sensibility of a captain, that one.
Lermnis tried to recruit me to accompany him to a trade show taking place at the nearby Tolleralis Convention Hangar. Though a gargantuan hangar containing state-of-the-art Calico Medtechs sounded fascinating beyond all comprehension, I decided to take my respite rather seriously.
Nader was busy listing off the Medtech’s components and when he got to describing its oversized medbay he noticed my gaze drift toward the fireplace. He smiled and said ‘suit yourself, cap’, before slapping me on the shoulder and exiting the inn with the rest of the crew.
Finally, I moved to nestle into one of the armchairs by the fire, where sleep found me faster than a Fimbul Airbike with a modified power supply.
I was somewhere warm and light, half-knowing and detached. Dreaming, some small corner of my mind suggested, but it felt more natural to ignore the little voice.
I was gliding, gull-like above an ocean. My half-embodied hands stretched outwards and my vision was fixed on the vast blue below. Some unseen sun beamed great shafts of silver light across the sea, so bright that I should have shut my eyes for fear of blindness, but my eyes didn’t feel like mine to shut. The sea’s gradient just rolled on gently from blue to white, the brightness of the white burning somehow without intensity, but rather simple, present clarity.
Then, all at once, the sea paled to total white, and the bright sun reflected evenly across its whole surface creating a never-ending, glowing mirror. I saw only astonishing white, and the tiny dark speck of my flying reflection at its center.
Very gradually, so slowly that I doubted seeing it at first, images began to fill the vast white expanse. They hovered alongside me, reflected in the enormous mirror-sea. My head rolled to face the figures, finally averted from the shining ocean below, as they materialised into forms more familiar.
Flying closest was Lermnis Nader, but he was young, scruffy and squat — the ten-year-old version of the pilot, exactly as I had met him as a boy. He stared at me with his earnest, intense gaze, brown eyes shadowed by a concerned frown. The ocean’s mirror glimmered in his eyes and I felt a sudden and terrible pang of guilt, deep in my chest. Lermnis smiled at me knowingly, and hovering gracefully with his off-hand, pointed to something behind me. I felt the wind move me like a leaf to turn and face where Nader pointed.
Gliding only a few strides away, a younger version of myself looked skeptically back at me. He wore a black duster with wide sewn-on shoulder pads and a double holster with two pistols, a heavy belt with plasma charges, a matte, reinforced nanomaterial vest — the uniform of a Forvik mercenary. There was a hunger in his eyes, in my eyes, much keener in its youth, led by greed and solipsism. The monstrous pang of guilt returned and I suddenly dipped from the stable hover I had held all this time, plummeting past the floating figures and toward the endless white below. I cried out, or thought I did, before a hand plucked me from the air, foot-first, like a baby from a cradle.
I arched my head to see a shadowy figure clutching me, its curled blonde hair spilling in great curtains from a dark hood that billowed as the figure soared skyward. Strangely, I felt the fear seep out of me as we ascended. The voluminous hood began to fall back, and I almost caught sight of a face when a tremendous vibration shook my vision. I shook my head to clear it, when another great shudder rattled my eyes closed. When I blinked them open, I was staring at the inn’s ceiling, my personal transponder vibrating angrily in my lap.
A message from Dr. Valster blinked in urgent red on the transponder’s screen. It read:
Trouble at The White Light. Hurry, expect danger.
I immediately flagged Lermnis on his transponder to no avail. Something was terribly amiss, Nader always answered his transponder. I hurried to the luggage hold and rustled through the crew’s lockbox, snatching the spare plasma pistol and my captain’s licence before rushing for the inn’s exit.
The Tolleralis Convention Hangar was only a block away, and The White Light half a block further than that. I could barely take in the flurry of colours, lights and people that made up the Khumulo pedestrian thoroughfare as I sprinted toward the hangar.
I skidded to a halt before a looming doorman and whipped out my captain’s licence. Breathlessly, I demanded the hulking guard scan the facility manifest for one Lermnis Nader. Whatever was happening at The White Light, it wouldn’t pay to arrive alone.
I tapped my transponder to the doorman’s, allotting him enough ATLAS to make the scan happen with haste.
While the doorman browsed through his manifest tablet, I tried Dr. Valfris on the transponder. No answer, and then a moment later, another text:
Hurry, no time. Showroom Floor.
I was about to scramble away before the doorman looked up with a cocked eyebrow.
‘Was here’, he said, ‘but he left two hours ago…’. I turned on my heel and tore toward the casino.
In another state of mind, I may have appreciated The White Light’s proclivity for complexity — with its winding entryway leading to countless dimly lit private gambling-nooks, sound-proof booths made for secret meetings, and every manner of sports tavern, each filled to the brim with hooting and betting patrons, diverse as the cosmos. But my thoughts were rapid and unfocused as I weaved through scores of casino clientele, searching pedantically for the showroom floor. I scrambled toward an usher, a short Oni with tilted, deep-set yellow eyes and brilliant purple skin. She seemed to know something I didn’t, smiled and winked at me before pointing to a pair of large double doors down a darkly-lit foyer. Showroom Floor was lit up in revolving pink letters above the entrance.
I burst into the large room, right hand lingering just above the holstered pistol. The showroom floor was pitch black, save for a bright spotlight pointed at long velvet curtains on a wide showroom stage. I could make out muffled conversations, muttering, crowd-noise, but apart from the empty stage I could see no one or nothing.
I was about to call out to the doctor, Cort, Derranis… anyone, when the spotlight turned sharply and caught me between the eyes. Blinded, I raised my pistol and was about to flick the safety off when I heard a theatrical gasp from some corner of the vast showroom. Squinting through the spotlight, I lowered my pistol and stared dumbly as the rest of the large space was finally lit up by orange lamps that lined the walls. A crowd of hundreds sat on benches, each head now craned in my direction. Laughter filled the room.
Before I could piece anything together, I heard cackling from the front row and shielded my eyes to catch sight of Lermnis Nader holding his stomach and wheezing with uncontrollable laughter. He was flanked by the rest of the crew, excited and red-faced. I started to move toward them, furious, flustered and ready for revenge when a deep, theatrical voice boomed from a speaker above,
‘Annnndd your final nominee for the annual Captain’s Courage Award, sponsored by Opal Vessels and the brand new Opal Bitboat… Captain Uther Eric Beaumond!’
I felt my knees buckle a fraction and I hastily holstered my pistol as the spotlight slowly drifted toward the stage, motioning me to follow it. I began to mouth the words ‘what’, when the announcer rumbled,
‘Congratulations to our six savvy crews, who have accomplished this evening’s first challenge, Summon The Captain! If any nominees wish to back out now, they are entitled to do so, though it may be at the risk of mutiny…’
The crowd roared with laughter, approval and applause, and corporal Cort even stood up and did a small bow, before grinning ruefully in my direction. Those sneaky, sons-of…
The velvet curtains raised to show five more baffled looking captains, standing shoulder-to-shoulder and facing the crowd.
I walked stiffly up a small flight of stairs to the stage, egged on by some strange compulsion to stand in solidarity with the other suckered captains. Nearest to me, a captain waved uncomfortably at a crew in the crowd, before shooting a ‘help-me’ stare in my direction as I lined up next to her. Before I could enquire as to what the hell was happening, the announcer cut in,
‘Tonight’s prizes, for your esteemed Captain aaaaand your crew, sponsored by Opal Vessels and the brand new Opal Bitboat, is a hefty, handsome…dare I say heroic sum of 2,000 POLIS! But that’s not all, for a richer crew should be a drunker one too — the winner and their spacemates will also be granted entry (and a generous bartab) to the annual Freefaction Politik Ball aboard, you guessed it, the all new Opal Bitboat!’
The crowd cheered and hooted, and I heard Cort’s piercing whistle cut through the upheaval. Dr. Valster smiled wider than I had ever seen before, and felt myself simmer down a little. I shook my head with embarrassment but didn’t fight hard enough to stiffen my own half-grin. Nader continued to laugh and wheeze, looking slightly drunk and wholly recuperated.
The second challenge came down to technical prowess. Each captain was ushered into a personal simulator booth, and each booth led a camera-feed to a large monitor above the stage. The entertainment here, or comedy rather, was that the audience watched the captain’s face alone, rather than any indication of their actual progress in the simulation. In other words, those who piloted through the fabricated battlefield most impressively amidst a hail of laughter and taunting from their crew and others, would proceed to the final round.
For my part, I rather enjoy flight simulation, and this led to a favourable performance despite the jeering from the crowd and hollering from my crew, which distracted me in equal measure. The simulation was no mere dogfight either — the software was military grade and the difficulty did measure a captain’s worth, at least in some capacity.
Three of us remained for the final challenge — the captain I stood nearest to when I arrived, and a tall, somber-looking Oni who seemed completely composed and unbothered by the audience. The stage rattled as the announcer’s voice boomed from the speakers again,
‘Your final challenge speaks to something a touch more…rudimentary. We know these captains can fly, but good ladies and gentlemen of the metaverse, can these captains shoot?’
Without warning, the stage rumbled and raised, extending on unseen pillars to shift up and above the crowd. Alongside the other captains, I crouched reflexively as the floor continued to rise. Finally, it shuddered to a halt, twenty feet high.
Parallel to our new perch, across the showroom floor, hinges and metal creaked again as an opening split in the wall furthest from the stage. The false wall opened to reveal a long, narrow corridor lit by a tiny blue light that hovered in complete darkness.
‘That little blue light, captains, is your target. It stands two hundred feet from your mark, by no means an easy shot. I should mention too — the light may be bright but the target itself is thimble-sized. You will be given standard-issue MUD plasma pistols, charged enough to expend one round. If no one has hit the target before each round has been expended, we will shoot round for round, til sudden death.’
A drone equipped with a weapon-rack flew on stage and waited for each of us to take a pistol before it meandered off somewhere below. The spotlight narrowed on the Oni’s position, indicating he would have the first shot.
The crowd drew silent. The Oni captain’s pistol cracked and a red bolt whizzed across the stage, above the audience, only to ping somewhere in the darkness alongside the phantom blue light on the far side of the hall.
Relief could be heard from some crews, loud frustration from others.
The friendly captain was next, her playful eyes growing serious as the spotlight shrunk around her. She took a two-handed stance on the pistol and pulled the trigger.
A miss, followed by a heave of disappointment from her crew below. The rest of the crowd clapped good-naturedly.
The bright spotlight beamed on my face, which was now slick with sweat. The theatrics of all this…revelry had caught up with me some, though I still couldn’t quite believe I had been conned into this contest in the first place.
I closed my eyes, let the breath fall as it may for a few moments. The crowd noise became like empty space. Even the spotlight seemed to fade, its yellow impression growing dull behind my eyelids. I opened my right eye to a tiny slit, enough only to see the tiny blue light in the far distance. I held the pistol with my right hand, sighed out long and slow, and squeezed the trigger.
A whizz across the room followed by a loud clunk, and the small blue light changed to a pulsing green. The cheering, hooting sounds of my crew slowly washed back into focus, and I opened my other eye to see them standing on their seats below, waving up at me.
‘Goddamn captain!’ Nader yelled out, appraisingly.
I smiled triumphantly.
