Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

"Juice." I made a little face when they all looked at me. "I keep thinking The Wreck looks like an orange that someone’s put their thumb into."

"I’m guessing it was a ship collision. Something relatively slow that was pulled away afterward—see the warped metal here, but also here?" Silent pointed at the annotated image. "A consequence of this is a loss of access to cross-passages in the upper levels—if there’re any present, they’re hidden by debris, or pinched shut, so to speak. The next several levels down look to be more promising, with dozens, even hundreds, of rooms and corridors exposed. Plenty of side-passages to try, at least. From the look of the contents, I’d guess these levels to be systems levels: engineering, processing, and perhaps warehousing. No living quarters appear to be exposed, except possibly in the small section visible at the deepest point of the impact crater, where we can see what’s been dubbed the dentist chair ."

"Flight couch," I murmured.

"That is just as likely," Silent agreed. "It’s the only item we can make out distinctly at that level, which is nearly half a kilometre down."

"And it’s where half these teams are going to aim for," Nina said. "I was thinking the shafts are the best option for avoiding the debris." She indicated the numerous green circles on the publicly annotated map, marking anything that could be an exposed tube, shaft or other vertical passage.

"Same," Silent agreed. "Though I’ve excluded what I suspect are liquid channels rather than transport corridors. The same problem holds with any of these entry points, however: any sensibly designed ship is going to have interior bulkheads to manage hull breach. Entering the ruptured area is only going to bring us up against a barrier."

"Wouldn’t those sensibly designed ships also have some method of dealing with getting between damaged and undamaged areas?" I asked.

"A few internal airlocks would be logical," Silent agreed. "I’ve some guesswork on probable locations for them, but that’s going to take some trial-and-error exploration, which is the third-best option. I want our first objective to be this."

He highlighted two of the many vertical lines partially visible through the damage. "Of all the conduits, these appear to be the most likely to form part of a transport system. See this ridging? Think of it in terms of rails."

"We’re definitely not going to be the only people heading into them," Nina said.

"No—and it’s very likely going to be sealed as well. But what I want is to investigate upward, not down. A transport corridor leading to the skin of the ship is likely to point directly to an airlock. If we can identify any airlock entrance over this damaged point, we can shift to looking for other external airlocks, using the distance between the two visible transport corridors to extrapolate the location of a third."

"Allowing us into the proper ship," Arlen said, delightedly.

"We will be watched," Imoenne murmured.

"Definitely," Silent said. "And Nina’s presence in our party will bring extra attention. But most everyone will be racing downward, and we won’t become really interesting until we’re inside the second airlock. And then, well, we could leave the inner door open, which should prevent the outer door we’ve used from being operated."

Nina brought up magnifications of the twisted edge of the ship where we’d be searching first. "It’s a gamble," she said. "We need external airlocks to be identifiable in a way the groups searching randomly missed. We also need them to be active. And then we need to succeed in opening one." She smiled at Silent. "But it’s a smart play, keeping us out of the debris zone during the initial rush, and, ideally, separates us from rival groups."

"We’ll have to keep our mouths shut once our stream starts," I said. "The other groups will have people feeding back to them on rival groups."

Silent nodded. "I’ve arranged for Amelia to coordinate our guild in monitoring the competition. We can probably manage a bit of misdirection—make it appear we’re just hanging back, searching randomly while we wait for it to be safer to head into the impact crater."

As the others debated code phrases over strict text communication, I thought again of Dio’s suggestion. Could we really win this? And would that lead to actual answers, to the truth about Dream Speed ? Or the Starfighter Invitation ?

Did I even want that?

[[[[Welcome to the System Challenge.]]]]

"Thanks, dude."

"Poggers!"

"This is gonna be so sick!"

Our carefully laid plans had not factored in two other groups also hanging back until the main rush had departed. Ten people crowded ahead of us, blotting out the spectacular view of The Wreck, and I couldn’t decide whether the more excitable of our immediate set of rivals were as young and brash as they seemed.

[[[[Do you wish for further explanation before commencing the Challenge?]]]]

"Nah, man, we’re good," said the tallest of the loud team’s players. "Heard it all already."

[[[[Then your sleds are available in Bay Three. Remember to set the follow distance for your Renba.]]]]

A timely reminder that the stakes in this game involved more than just losing a Challenge in a very public manner. That all this, the virtual stars, could be taken away.

" Wish me luck, Dio ."

[[Good luck.]] Dio’s voice held a faint note of sympathy, as if te could readily guess my thoughts. Te probably could.

Before Bay Three came a line of doors opening into a massive vat of Soup. Having an EVA suit pattern was a prerequisite for the System Challenge, and I was glad not to have to put mine on manually, since along with little stores of water and nutrient broth, the thing came with a catheter. There were times I wished the main quest line skipped all this realism.

Like the majority of the other groups, we’d obeyed some heavy-handed hints from our Cycogs and chosen matching cosmetic overlays to make it easier to identify us as a team. We’d briefly flirted with homages to Star Trek , or perhaps an N7 uniform—and I’d privately thought of my Core Unit logo—but had ended up in dark blue with clusters of white stars down one side, from helmet to boots.

" We look like a bobsled team ," Silent said, over our party voice channel.

" We are magnifique, " Arlen said, leading our way into Bay Three—a low-roofed airlock with twenty sleds lined up all along one wall, all facing a currently closed hatch. " But what do these others mean for our arrangements? " he added, with a bob of his helmet toward a tangle of people suited up in black and red geometrics, or white with the outline of blue angel wings on the back.

" Go slow, adjust as necessary ," Nina said. " And hope we get down before anyone—"

All ten opposing party members stopped selecting sleds and pivoted to stare at us.

" Too late ," I said.

"One of you is really Nina Stella?" asked one of the excitable group in red and black. "I don’t know whether to sledge or ask for an autograph."

That made Silent laugh. "Just get to the Core before we do, man," he said, even though we’d planned on holding our tongues. "Good luck all."

"But which one is she?" the guy—ExtinctionPlus—said.

He’d spoken more to his team than us, so it wasn’t too awkward to ignore the question and go to select our sleds—which were nothing more than a rack of spare air packs attached to an impeller, with handlebar controls, and adjustable footrests. The footrests didn’t make much sense to me until I realised that riders could brace against them, and prevent the end of the sled from flailing free.