Star Conqueror: An Epic Space Adventure Read online

  Power Cost: 7% of maximum

  Cooldown: 3 minutes

  * * *

  All in all, it wasn’t that good of an upgrade since being outnumbered by more than a couple guys usually meant death, and there were way better abilities in other trees that weren’t active. That wasn’t the point though, because taking Dragon’s Revolt opened up the Claws of Virtue ability.

  * * *

  Claws of Virtue

  Cost: 25 power credits

  When activated, this ability allows the user to increase offensive attacks when protecting an ally during combat. For every enemy combatant actively engaged against the ally, all abilities will be augmented by 1% for 1 minute.

  Power Cost: 8% of maximum

  Cooldown: 3 minutes

  * * *

  Again, not the world’s best ability since there were better options in other trees, but this one scaled with the size of my party. Not that it really mattered since the main reason I’d taken Claws of Virtue and Dragon’s Revolt was to open the next two upgrades.

  * * *

  Recompense

  Cost: 35 power credits

  When activated, this ability allows the user to absorb forty percent of any damage taken and reflect it back on the following attack.

  Power Cost: 12% of maximum

  Cooldown: 1 minute

  * * *

  Scaled Victor

  Cost: 35 power credits

  When activated, this skill allows the user to ignore forty-five percent of any damage taken from the next attack.

  Power Cost: 12% of maximum

  Cooldown: 1 minute

  * * *

  While I didn’t particularly want either of those upgrades since they both relied on getting hit, I could see how they could be fairly useful when used together, which was sort of the whole point of the tree because taking them opened up the tree’s ultimate skill.

  I smiled as I read it.

  * * *

  Ascension

  Cost: 50 power credits

  This skill turns all active abilities within this tree into passive effects. In addition, the effect of all such passives is doubled when Dragon Form is active.

  Passive Upgrade

  * * *

  I smiled. That right there was the whole point of the tree. By turning every one of those active abilities into passives, I made myself a walking tank that could ignore half of incoming damage and return it back. And, you know, I was also immune to fire. Let’s not talk about the incredible power when going dragon form. I’d be nigh-indestructible then.

  As I selected it, I let out a long “Yes!” and pumped my arm. I had enough points to get it. Sure, it’d reduce my overall power credits to zero, but I didn’t care. I was going to have an Ascension build.

  “What?” Tulip asked, looking at me as I finalized my selections, causing a golden glow to radiate from the suit for a moment before fading away.

  “Oh, I just got one of the best builds in the game.” I smacked my chest. “On account of all the power credits I get for being awesome.”

  6

  “Well, I’m glad your build is awesome. Hopefully it works as well as it did in the game,” Tulip said as she pulled off her top and dropped it on the ground before moving to slide her shorts down. The whole thing happened so fast, I could barely do more than gawk at her as she kicked her shorts off one foot.

  “Um, what are you doing?” I asked, trying and failing to not stare at her, but come on. She was wearing the same golden bra and panties her in-game version had worn during her Metroid shtick and they were so small, they left little to the imagination.

  “Getting my suit on, obviously. Why?” She took her own power suit in hand and studied it for a moment before turning her eyes on me and giving me that Cheshire cat smile of hers. “I don’t mind you looking, if that’s the issue.” She slid her right foot into the suit and the tight fabric seemed to hug her leg, somehow accentuating each muscle. “I’d actually be offended if you didn’t. After all, I was looking at you. It’s only fair.”

  “You were?” I asked, and Tulip laughed.

  “Of course. If you didn’t want me to look, you’d have gone somewhere private, no?” She winked at me before pulling on the rest of her light grey power suit. Even the undersuit was thinner than mine, and its armored mode wasn’t nearly as bulky. The plates were thinner, and I imagined it had increased mobility over my model. Game Tulip had relied on her superior cat-like agility to avoid enemy fire entirely, and the suit’s energy shields to absorb what few hits she took.

  It was hard to take my eyes off her as she walked right past me, every curve and motion accentuated by her suit. She kept on going and she was just as great to see leaving as she was coming. After a moment, she stopped at a door opposite the one we’d entered.

  “Come on,” she said, smiling at me as she pushed a button next to the door and stood back.

  It opened to reveal a deep closet. Two racks in that closer slid out for easy access, loaded with a bevy of lasers, blasters, slugthrowers, and flamers in an assortment of sizes and configurations.

  “What’s your favorite weapon type?” Tulip asked as she began to pick through the weapons herself.

  There wasn’t much question of what gun I wanted. It was on the far-right hand side, a rifle longer than my arm and as big around as my leg. It had a smaller barrel on top with a larger one underneath. While it wasn’t my end-game Reaver Double, it was similar enough to it that I was drawn to it.

  I picked it up, and as I touched it, my HUD displayed its values.

  * * *

  Arclight Double Rifle

  Type: Blast Rifle

  Item Level: 19

  Durability: 74,000/74,000

  Damage: 120

  Accuracy: 35

  Enchantments: none

  Ability: Over-under. A second larger barrel for a single shot with 3X damage multiplier. This will expend all the energy in the gun and it cannot be fired again for three seconds after.

  * * *

  “Is it working?” Tulip asked, looking at the weapon over my shoulder.

  “Yeah. Well, the stats thing works, anyway.” I hefted the gun in my hands and was surprised at how light it felt. The stats weren’t bad for its item level, plus the extra fire mode matched the Reaver Double’s. I turned over the boxy gun and looked at the larger barrel underneath. Shooting that would be an extra kick to the nuts for whoever was on the receiving end.

  As I examined it, the lead wire from the gun extended out automatically and connected to my suit. The gun lit up with a few purple lights on the side. That was when I noticed the power stat on my suit. It dropped from one hundred percent to ninety five percent. The gun took energy from the suit, just like in game. Good, I knew how this all worked, and I couldn’t wait to fire this bad boy for real.

  Tulip nodded. “We figured you might choose that one, based on the in-game data we received from your victory.”

  She pulled a pair of Starshot handguns off the wall, spinning them once each on her fingers with amazing grace before placing them on the hips of her power suit. Standard-issue magnetic clamps locked on to the slugthrowers, locking them in place better than a holster could. They were an excellent combination of fire rate, accuracy, and stopping power, well, for pistols at any rate.

  With smaller weapons and a lighter suit, she’d have a lot more mobility than I would. Still, I’d never liked the light armor builds. Sure, you were quick, but you were also a thousand times more likely to get one shot by some camper with a sniper rifle.

  That said, with her speed and my bulk, we’d complement each other well in combat.

  “You want to give it a whirl?” she asked as she closed the gun alcove up again.

  “Are you kidding?” I lifted the gun up. “Yes!”

  Tulip smiled as she leaned against the wall next to the weapons locker. “All the weapons are in training mode as long as they are in here, so you can’t hurt anyone or be hurt by anyone too much.�
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  “What? What does too much mean?” I scanned the menu for pain suppression, something else intrinsic to Star Conqueror and most neural-link VR games, but there wasn’t any option for that.

  Tulip walked to the other side of the room. The way her suit clung to her as she moved was a work of art, and I’d have to personally thank Dr. Eldridge when we met. “It means that when I kill you, your suit just freezes up instead of you dying.” Tulip held her hand over the screen mounted in the wall. “You ready?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  She pressed her hand against a screen. The room changed into a jungle with a huge canopy of trees overhead and green foliage projected up and out from the walls in three dimensions.

  “That’s badass,” I said, after taking the scene in. “It was awesome in the game, but this is even more amazing in real life!”

  “I’m glad you like it. As you can see, this is a Projected Reality deck. When you move, it moves with you. When you shoot, it will look real. Go ahead, give it a try. Everything is simulated in here so you won’t damage the ship.”

  I had already picked out about ten things in the room I wanted to shoot. First up was a giant mushroom-looking thing not far from Tulip. Might as well go for broke. I switched the Arclight Double to the larger, lower barrel and pulled the trigger.

  A large ball of charged particles shot across the room in a red streak before slamming into the mushroom and blowing it into a million chunks of mushroom goop. The barrel kicked like a son of a bitch, but it wasn’t as bad as it should have been. Probably some kind of recoil compensators. Strange. Even though I knew this was real life and not virtual reality, the weapon handled pretty much like the one in game.

  “Incredible,” I said, looking down at my gun.

  “Is it? Because that looks like a goddamned peashooter to me,” Turner called out from, well, somewhere outside of the Projected Reality field. A moment later, the edge of the jungle seemed to shimmer and the big Bolderian stepped into view.

  Sometime between the last time I’d seen him and now, he had put on his own Kelly green power suit. It fit his large frame snugly, and like in the game, the reinforced plates of the suit were larger and thicker than mine. Combined with the color, it made Turner look like a literal walking tank.

  Still, he moved with ease as he slicked back his hair and gripped his tablet. Another similarity to the game was the demo pack on his back, a reinforced case almost a meter square that made him look even bulkier. It was the same green as the rest of his suit, and if it was like the one he’d used in game, was loaded with a mix of explosives, tools, and spare weapons. His helmet retracted so I could see the smirk on his face as he pulled out what looked like a fucking chainsaw mounted to a missile launcher.

  “You have an Annihilator?” I asked, my eyes widening at the sight of it. “There’s no way you can possibly fire that thing inside a ship and expect to live.”

  “It’s on training mode.” He smacked the side of it before leveling it at me. “Turns out the hyper drive is fine. Hell, everything is fine, more or less, so I figured I’d come down here to see how you two were doing.” He grinned, showing his huge teeth. “Good thing too, because it seems like you need to try out that gun on someone.” His grin somehow widened. “Well, I’m your huckleberry.”

  “Oh, is that so?” I said, trying to staunch my laugh. It still amused me to no end that Turner was such a movie fan that he was quoting Tombstone now. I failed to keep the laughs down. Miserably, which caused him to frown.

  “You didn’t say your line.” He sighed. “Whatever.” He dropped the bag to the floor and reached in, pulling out a second Annihilator. “I’ve got two guns. One for each of you.”

  I stood there, blinking at him for a minute. “How the fuck are you gonna dual-wield Annihilators?”

  “With style.” Then he pulled the triggers from three feet away.

  I was knocked backward as two miniature warheads hit my chest at the same time, sending me flying across the room. I landed hard of the ground, ripping a gouge across the jungle floor before I crashed into a tree that collapsed on top of me. The funny thing was, it didn’t really hurt. It did sting like the dickens, though, every impact like being on the receiving end of a rubber band gun.

  Talk about pain dampening. Even better, the attack had barely dropped my energy by twenty percent. That blow would have probably killed me outright if not for my superior armor and build. Still, now wasn’t the time to contemplate that. No. Now was the time to get Turner back for that sneak attack.

  A quick glance at my HUD’s proximity radar revealed Turner standing on the opposite side of the debris cloud. Perfect. Swinging my Arclight Double rifle around toward him, I took aim and pulled the trigger.

  The massive particle blast streaked across the room and hit Turner in the chest and exploded, or at least, it projected an explosion, flinging him backward.

  He hit the ground in a roll and came up in a crouch, the chainsaws on his Annihilators roaring to life. He revved them at me, and I knew I still had a couple seconds until my gun powered back up enough for me to fire the big blast again. I switched to the smaller barrel and as I brought it up, he dove to the side, effortlessly blending into the jungle foliage.

  I couldn’t stop smiling from all of it. My power suit had well over sixty percent of its power left, even after his attack and two mega blasts. That was more than enough to take him down.

  I scanned the ground before turning my gaze toward the massive, green trees. I spotted movement up in one and swung my gun up, firing a burst of rounds at him. Leaves rained down around me as the projectiles destroyed the surrounding forest. Turner tried to leap away, but I caught him mid-jump with a few rounds, knocking him from the air. He fell, landing hard on a grouping of ferns and smashing them flat.

  Sprinting forward, I fired a few more blasts, peppering him with shots as he tried to scramble away. While my shots were probably dealing damage, they must not have hurt him much because he changed tactics, whirling to come at me again.

  Letting my Arclight Double fall to my side, I sidestepped as he came up, swinging one of his Annihilators at me like he was attempting to split me from crotch to throat. Instead, the whirring blade went right by me, and as it did, my Marine training kicked in.

  My arm lashed out, catching him across the chest while I stepped in, knocking his knee with my own and putting him off balance. His arms went out, the Annihilator going flying as he struggled for balance and failed.

  His huge body hit the ground as I snatched the weapon from the air and shifted, dropping my knee onto his chest and bringing the chainsaw blade toward his face. Then I revved it for emphasis.

  “Yield?” I asked, and Turner grinned up at me.

  “Yeah,” he said, and as I helped him up, he grinned at me. “Nice moves, David. Took me completely by surprise.”

  “That’s because that in addition to completing Star Conqueror, he’s a trained soldier from his planet,” Tulip said as the room faded from the forest and back to the plain, white room it had been before.

  “Maybe I should have been an Earther soldier then.” Turner shrugged and rubbed his head, and as he did his tablet shrieked. His face fell as he grabbed it and looked at the screen. “Damn. I need to check this out.” Without waiting for a response, he darted past me, heading toward the exit.

  “Well, that was sudden.” I glanced at Tulip who just nodded, a faint frown of concern on her lips. “What now? Should we help?”

  “There’s probably not much we could do.” She gestured at where Turner had gone. “He’s the mechanic. We’d likely just be in the way, and I have complete faith in his ability.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true. I’m just a humble IT technician, and I seriously doubt that will be any use here.” I gestured at the ship. “I have no idea how the technical stuff in this thing works.”

  “If it isn’t computers, security systems, or basic ship operations, I’m as in the dark as you are.” Tulip shrugged
and smiled. “I suppose the best thing you can do is train some more. I’ll go set up some sims.”

  “What, you don’t want to spar with me?” I’d said it as a joke, but when she looked at me, she seemed to contemplate it.

  “No. I saw you take on Turner. Whatever you did with your suit, I wouldn’t be able to dent it with these.” She held up her handguns. “Maybe if you took it off …” she mused before flushing slightly. “Don’t do that though. You wouldn’t last more than a few seconds against me without your power suit.”

  “Oh really?” I said playfully, but when she nodded emphatically, I wondered if that was true. Only one way to find out.

  Before she could say anything else, I deactivated the power suit, causing it to go limp and pliable around my body. In a few seconds, I’d pulled it off and was down to my boxer shorts.

  “I’d like to try anyway, if you’re not too scared,” I said as I stepped out of my suit and onto the training room floor

  “Bring it, David.” She scrambled out of her own suit and dropped back into a fighting stance, wearing nothing but her gold-colored bra and panties.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said, grinning at her as I dropped into my own fighting stance.

  “This is going to end badly for you, dragon boy,” she said as she crouched down on all fours and launched herself at me, covering the distance between us in less than a second.

  Her feet struck me in the chest as she pounced, knocking me from my feet and pinning me to the floor. I felt her claws poking the edge of my shoulders, threatening to go in.

  She smiled at me, her mouth spread in a predatory grin. “Give up yet?”