Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

It lifted! We’d misjudged the exact axis of the half-sphere’s pivot, and so we only managed a small gap before slipping off, but a second attempt soon fixed that, and a third taught us to climb the revolving bubble like a reverse hamster wheel until the edge reached a vertical point and we could leap madly down onto the inky surface, to see if it would eat us.

While the bubble slid gently back into position, the surface we stood on quivered, but only with reaction to our tense anticipation. Upholstery after all.

There was a scent that I don’t think came from the slightly yielding substance, but instead belonged to whatever usually sat in here. An old scent, faint, and it did not immediately set off Food or Threat in Cat-me, which I guess meant it was altogether unfamiliar. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be much larger than a biggish dog. A human adult certainly wouldn’t fit in the bubble.

Farmhouse Grey, ever businesslike, was poking buttons, producing chirping noises, and then blackness. Lights out—no, lights on! The whole of the domed room had gone dark, and then filled with glimmering motes. A star map!

Awestruck, I gazed around, immediately recognising familiar constellations. All so crisp and clear, more detailed then I’d ever seen sky-watching. A projection unmarred by atmospheric distortion.

Enchantment was brief-lived, as Farmhouse Grey’s continued attempts with the buttons wiped the vista away, and replaced it with alarms.

The bubble opened of its own accord, along with the room’s sole door. Farmhouse Grey and I pelted for the open vent, and dove through it, scrabbling for footing before sliding off the curving engine housing below, dropping to the floor.

The alarm was just as loud down below, painful to my sensitive hearing. The door was open too, and we raced through it, but then slowed at the exit out to the corridor.

Creeping up the ramp, I saw boxes, but not people. Just one foot, projecting from behind a box. A body. Both of the people we’d seen shifting boxes had dropped to the corridor floor. Nervously, I started cautiously toward them, but Farmhouse Grey raced past me, not stopping until she was standing on one man’s chest, peering down into his face.

Since there was no reaction to this, I trotted up to examine the woman lying face-down. Easy to see she was still breathing, but no sign of what had made her fall down. I poked experimentally at the silver disk on her temple, but other than feeling weirdly velvety and being firmly fixed in place, it offered no clues.

Farmhouse Grey hooked claws beneath the rim of the man’s disk, and tore it off. The man immediately began convulsing, sending Farmhouse Grey and I into a hasty retreat behind one of the boxes. The man didn’t wake up, or die, but groaned in an awful way I’d rather not hear again, and then lay still.

After a short pictorial debate with Farmhouse Grey, I removed the woman’s disk and we watched her convulse in turn, and produce a small puddle, then also lapse into apparently deeper unconsciousness.

For all we knew, we could have been doing the equivalent of removing an in-built smartphone. Or put them into a vegetative state. Even so, we raced back to that examining room, to give it a try on one of the captives, but once again our size, and inconvenient container doors, defeated us. After some futile scrabbling, we instead removed the disk of the woman who had been processing the captives, and then went in search of more.

The exit door of the ship was still open, giving us a good view of the consequences of button-mashing. The escapees had evidently been recaptured, and were again cargo making a return trip, when someone had knocked the sled drivers unconscious. One sled had rammed a rock about twenty metres away, and the other had ploughed into the side of the ship, just next to the entrance ramp.

They mustn’t have been travelling too fast, since the sleds had only acquired dints, rather than transforming into a crumpled tangle of metal and flesh. With two quick leaps, Farmhouse Grey reached the chest of one of the captives, and briskly bit the man on his ear. This produced a jerk, but no immediate return to consciousness, so I busied myself removing silver disks from the spaceship crew scattered in the vicinity, and then went on a hunt for others within the ship.

This was easy enough with all the doors open, and fun for the exploration aspect alone, though I shied away from thinking too hard about how much damage I might be doing to my victims.

Everything in the lower half of the ship was sealed machinery. The upper half of each polyhedron served a different purpose, and I explored crew quarters, and then a kitchen, dining, and hydroponic farm section, before returning to science and captives.

I was considering the older man in his clear-doored box when a woman staggered into the room. I skittishly leaped behind the examining table, but I don’t think the woman would have cared about me anyway. She dashed straight for the boxed people and pulled the young boy out onto the floor, immediately tearing the disk off his temple. More of the escapees showed up, and helped her get the older man out of his box and de-disk him.

Farmhouse Grey, arriving in the second group’s wake, watched critically for a moment, and then sat down beside me. An image popped into my head of a GAME OVER graphic, along with a questioning feeling.

I failed, once again, to shrug. Cats just aren’t built for it. But I thought Farmhouse Grey was right, and was proved correct when the last of the silver disks came off the last of the boxed people, and a system message popped up.

Primary Goal Achieved.

You may exit at

any time.

I hung around for quite a while, though: long after Farmhouse Grey, having realised that she could send pictures of words, made her goodbyes and faded away. I wanted to see what these people would do, or whether the story would just stop once the rescuing was done.

Mostly they argued, then dragged everyone out of the ship. Captives in one group, and the crew members in a second, tied up in a row with some brightly coloured rope fetched from the farm.

I was relieved the former captives hadn’t immediately bludgeoned the crew into pulp, and waited out various revival attempts. Finally, a dousing of water brought one woman to sputtering consciousness. She jerked upright, stared about her, tried to raise her bound hands toward her face, and then burst into tears.

Of joy, I think.

Another round of arguments followed, growing more complicated as other de-disked people woke, but almost all of the crew seemed unspeakably happy to be captured. The two who responded badly were separated out into a third group and bound more tightly.

Time Limit reached.

Automatic exit in

5

4

3

2

1

The mint-chill of Soup hit me, and I gasped. Then I stepped forward, blinking at my return to the futuristic city of Vessa, and a brief appearance of the full overlay of my HUD, before it reduced to an unobtrusive graphic, followed by system messages.

Gauntlet Successful.

Gauntlet Success Rate: 1/1 100%

Challenge Success Rate: 1/1 100%

Lux Points Earned: 5

Total Lux Points: 5

Challenge Reward:

[Tier 1 Apparel Pattern]

[Tier 1 Consumable Pattern]

I activated [Tier 1 Consumable Pattern], and was treated to a dizzying array of menus full of food and drink. After hours of gameplay, I was hungry and thirsty, but not painfully so, and put off any hasty decisions when I remembered I already had a few entries in my [Consumables] menu.

Looking around, I spotted a parklike area in the middle of all the Challenge entrances, and wandered over in search of a seat. Decorative planting concealed nooks filled by tables and chairs, some occupied by people eating. No sign of any food vendors.