Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

The game did tell me one thing about our two French-speaking group members: they were both under eighteen, though I thought not much younger than that. Other than a greeting in guild chat, and some soft murmurs to her brother, I hadn’t heard Imoenne speak at all, and I could not decide if it was ruder to push her to talk, or seem to ignore her.

In the end I compromised by addressing a space between the two siblings and saying: "So, Arlen, Imoenne, do you both sing?"

"Oh, yes," Arlen answered, while Imoenne made a duck of the head that might be a nod. "Our family, it is the most musical, so it is fortunate that the path was to our liking. Voice is my primary instrument, while Imoenne is more versatile."

"Are you planning performance careers?"

Arlen raised an equivocal hand. "There are certain practicalities. It is one thing to perform, another to live and perform."

"I would like to know if there are stages on the Drowned Earth," Imoenne said, in barely audible voice, her French effortlessly translated by the system.

"Putting one before that big curve of Vessa Major would be spectacular," I said, trying not to look too surprised that she’d finally spoken.

"Does being on Mars affect your voice?" Silent asked.

"I hear a change, but I am told that it is caused by a slight difference in air pressure, rather than the gravity," Arlen said.

As the conversation ranged through gravity and performance, I explored a newly discovered group calendaring function, where we could schedule sessions while factoring in mandatory lock-outs.

"Anyone coming up on lock-out?" I asked.

"I am," Nova said. "I’ll easily manage one more stage, maybe two, but not more."

"Let’s schedule a big break after this run, then. Try to synchronise our logins so we hit a time where everyone’s free."

We worked on the calendar for a while, blocking out times with real-world commitments, and good breaks between lan sessions. I’d worried that we would hit some long unavailable patches, but Silent was the only one with inflexible appointments in the next few real-world hours, and they were short. Teleconferences, he explained.

Silent was an engineering consultant, always busy with multiple projects, and I was used to him fitting his work around guild events, knowing he could be trusted to show up when he said he would. Planning on trying the System Challenge with three strangers was something of a gamble, but I liked what I’d seen of Nova, Arlen and Imoenne. Focused on the task but relaxed. Nice people. Of course, we hadn’t hit any situations that might inspire a barrage of yelling.

The player who’d stabbed me in the back had seemed nice too.

The next Challenge description, Beneath the Stars , sounded too vague to be a useful guide to how to get through it, but when we entered a thoroughly gloomy cavern, we naturally headed towards the brightest glimmers of light: a dozen glowing circles arranged in an arch.

"Reminds me somehow of the gate to Moria," Silent said.

Before I could manage a joke about The Synergis word for friend , a familiar buzzing sound warned us that was the wrong solution. An arch of blaster ports.

Since it looked like they were guarding the only way out, we chose to triple shield and run at it, straight into an onslaught so intense that each shield went down in turn, and it was only speed that kept us whole.

Unfortunately, we weren’t handily already at the exit, but facing another gloomy cavern with an arch of lights.

"Five layers of shields," I suggested. "If your shield drops, try to put it straight back up."

"So many shields, and we will not fit through the exit," Arlen pointed out.

"One person with a full shield, the rest of us shielding at the front only."

The strategy worked, but we came out of a run of six of these caverns completely exhausted, most of us barely able to raise shields during the last barrage.

"I am finished," Arlen declared. "Let us have done."

"Good thing we have a long break scheduled," I agreed, surveying the rest area. Same layout, same mosaic—now featuring two more aliens—but a distinctly different feeling to the area. "It’s almost empty."

"There’s a reason no group has completed a gateway series so far," Silent said. "Just over halfway through this one, and I’m not sure we’ll manage the next stage."

"We’re not doing so bad," I said, as I found the nearest seat and fell into it. The last two stages had confirmed for me, if nothing else, that I was the weakest member of the team.

I lingered long after everyone else had left, thinking about ways to get stronger without breaking the terms of my bet. I didn’t like being carried. Without a reasonable way to gain ranks, could I contribute by being smarter?

"Dio, could we have put a full Pocket around that drone and floated it off into space?"

[[No. Thankfully. If you Bios could do that to each other, we’d never keep track of you.]]

"Why isn’t it possible?"

[[Your lan is a part of you—you can’t snip pieces of it off. Even if a Bio obligingly allowed you put them in a complete Pocket, the Pocket would still be connected to you.]]

"And they could damage the Pocket from the inside?"

[[Absolutely.]]

I heaved a dramatic sigh, then picked myself up and took the trolley back to the entrance, working out how to get a shuttle up to an orbital station, and how many lux points it would cost me. Good timing meant that I had only a short wait before entering a shuttle only big enough to fit a couple of dozen widely-space and cushiony seats, and with wonderfully large windows that meant I’d be able to thoroughly enjoy the view.

[[Planning on a return trip?]]

Complete disorientation. There was no view, and people were around me, getting up, moving past. Gravity had gone from light to Earth normal. I’d slept through the whole flight.

"You make for a complicated alarm clock, Dio."

[[One with no snooze button. Up with you, unless you want to spend more lux points.]]

Lux felt like the proper term for this wide-aisled vehicle, with its big windows, and cushiony seats. It took me the short trip to the exit to puzzle out why it felt doubly-strange, and it was only as I was stepping through the airlock-style hatch that I realised there was a complete lack of attendants. No-one collecting rubbish, or moving armrests, or hurrying us up as politely as possible.

"Who crews the shuttles?" I asked Dio.

[[Constructs. The planetary and station administrators hand off responsibility for the Constructs as they enter and leave their space, but it’s rare that any intervention is necessary.]]

"Is it ever required to, say, politely greet the local administrator when you enter their territory?"

[[Administrators would not usually greet Bios.]]

"No, not the Chocobos," I muttered, but without heat. We were thoroughly pampered transport, after all.

I’d chosen Red Planet Station, apparently the second-largest. The rules that popped up at the entrance weren’t anything surprising: no duelling allowed, no airing of genitals in public places, no projectiles or explosives.

"What’s the purpose of the space stations?" I asked, as I reviewed the local Challenge list. Then I stopped walking.

Red Planet Station clearly maintained an artificial gravity. It also featured a lot of promenade area with viewport ceilings. And above was Mars, with the grand rift of Valles Marineris blazing blue and green across the pink-cream surface. Enormous, gorgeous, overwhelming.

[[The view, mainly,]] Dio explained. [[Zero-G amusements. Scientific experimentation. Waypoints easier to maintain than anything possible on certain local planetary surfaces. Places to meet that do not involve dropping into a gravity well.]]