“It appears we are under attack, captain. What are your orders?”
“My orders? I thought you owned me. Why am I giving orders?”
A few lights flashed in a quick pattern on the console before Annie’s voice returned.
“You are my captain. Whom I need to give me orders. I can’t be expected to provide my own direction. It’s improper.”
“Fine. Fine.” Nick peered out the windows. There were a few small white dots quickly becoming larger as they closed the distance between the wreckage of the dome and the ship. “Can we outrun them?”
“For a time. I am already moving away from the threat as quickly as my engines will allow. Any more is unlikely, unless you have a ship navigation skill that will allow me to go faster. Do you have that?”
“No. Not that I know of, at least.”
“Darn.”
“Then open fire.” Nick leaned back in the chair and pointed at the dots. “With all guns.”
“I am already doing that.” Annie said.
“But I don’t see any fire… you don’t have any guns.” Nick tried not to bang his head on the console. “What kind of mercenary ship has no guns?”
“The kind bound to a captain who is only at level one.”
“Right. So I don’t know what else to do. If you can’t fight and you can’t run, what else is there?”
“Analysis. You could ask me to analyze the situation and present you options.”
“You said you can’t give orders.”
Some lights flashed on the console in what Nick suspected was an exasperated pattern.
“I can’t. I can give <i>options</i> that you decide on. <i>Captain.</i>”
“Then do that. Please.”
Nick expected the analysis to take a bit of time. It didn’t. Annie, apparently, had known what to do the entire time. He also expected to have to do the whole get-Annie-to-tell-him-what-to-do song and dance a bit longer, but that wasn’t true either. He got his first on-the-job insight about his class instead as a screen popped open in front of his eyes.
<table><tbody><tr><td>
<b>Strategic Analysis</b>
The Anvil is fleeing from a threat with superior combat abilities and capable of a greater top speed than the Anvil can reach. With evasion and ship-to-ship combat both promising little but death, other options must be considered.
Currently, the loadout and resources of the Anvil are as follow:
<b>Armaments</b>
None.
<b>Rations</b>
Whaltey’s Sausage Meal (1 Bag)
<b>Explosives (Conventional, Improvised, or Potentially Createable) </b>
None.
<b>Energy Manufacturer Stock</b>
100 points</td></tr></tbody></table>
“I could chuck the sausage meal at them. It just might burn through the metal.”
“Captain, I should stress that the time remaining until our destruction becomes sure is rapidly dwindling.”
“I know. Just trying to lighten the mood. So what can you manufacture with this?”
The energy manufacturers at the Astramart had been fairly simple, handling just a few very simple materials needed for some of their pre-prepared food on top of the simple, nearly tasteless slop Nick had lived off of. The one in the wall looked a little better, if smaller. It was about the size of a medicine cabinet, if a medicine cabinet came equipped with blinking lights and a glowing white interior.
“We can currently manufacture a number of simple food items, several types of toiletries, and some basic decorations for the ship. Most relevant to our situation, the amount of energy preloaded into the system is just enough to create two basic weapon kits relevant to your class.”
“Quite the coincidence.”
“Or else my previous captain invested some wealth towards it. Although the cost would have been high. Enough to buy the store from which we escaped.”
“For how long?”
Some lights blinked for a moment.
“Forever. Outright. Indefinitely. Please give me an order to replicate the weapons, sir. Before we are blown to bits.”
Nick gave the approval, and two small boxes blinked into existence in the manufacturer. It was always disappointing to him how quickly the machines worked. The first time he watched one work, he expected glowing lights and a slow, dramatic transition from pure energy to matter. Instead, stuff was just there, disappointingly quickly and with no fanfare at all.
He grabbed the boxes and activated them, scanning the system window attached to each as he did.
<table><tbody><tr><td>
Basic Weapon Construction Kit (2x)
Each of these weapon kits contains the basic components necessary to assemble a class-appropriate weapon. The weapon assembled will be random, unless you already own a superior weapon of the same type, in which case that weapon type will be ruled out as a possibility.
The basic level of this kit creates the lowest-possible grade weapon, on par with the first and most easily discovered weapons available to a class holder during their tutorial.</td></tr></tbody></table>
“I’m getting to work on these. Do I just open the door and shoot once they are done?”
“No, captain. Small arms fire is disallowed during space flight. We will have to land. I’ve identified several suitable asteroids nearby. We can land there to give you room to fight.”
“Won’t I suffocate?”
“I can generate a small amount of atmosphere within several steps of the ship. It will be sufficient to keep you conscious for a few minutes.”
“Then do that.”
Nick broke open the first kit, finding what appeared to be a steel knife blade, a pommel, a crossguard, and some handle components. By now, his hands were shaking enough that what should have been a simple task of sliding pieces into place and screwing down fasteners took the better part of two minutes to complete. As soon as it was done, he shoved it to the side without bothering to check the class description and broke open the second box.
The contents of the new kit were a nightmare. There were springs, little curved pieces of metal, pins, and dozens of small parts he couldn’t identify at all. He felt panic clutching at his throat a few seconds before he noticed his hands were moving by themselves, sorting the parts out into the rough shape of what was clearly a revolver-style pistol.
“How am I doing this?”
“Unless you are a skilled gunsmith, it’s likely one of your class proficiencies at work.”
“Like <i>Tinker?</i>”
“Likely so. Let it guide your hands. Later, as you learn more, it will be worthwhile to take more active control of the process. For now, you just need something that can deal damage as quickly as possible.”
Nick obeyed and gave his hands free reign to do their work. The gun slowly took shape, but the process slowed up some as the scattered fire from the drones became more and more accurate.
“Are we in trouble?”
“We should still make it to the asteroid, captain. You’ll have to get into action right away once we do if we are to stand a chance.”
Nick watched as his hands kept working on the gun. As the process continued, he started to understand more and more of what was going on, but as each realization came to him his hands were already onto the next step. There was no assistance he could give besides keeping out of the way of his own class and trying to keep his body as stable as he could.
As the ship took more and more frequently, the last piece of the gun finally clicked into place. A moment after, the ship bumped into something solid, lurching to a hard stop.
“I’m opening the doors, captain. Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Nick held his new knife and gun in his right and left respectively, hoping his class could help him use them right off the cuff. “I’ll do my best.”
As the door hissed open, Nick had just a few seconds to peruse the descriptions for his weapons. They were pretty barebones.
<table><tbody><tr><td>
<i></i>Mercenary Revolving Blaster (Growth)
This weapon is a part of your standard equipment loadout. It is a basic revolver that can be fired without loading, or with enhanced performance when ammunition is added.
By swapping parts, the Mercenary Revolving Blaster can be incrementally upgraded. Barrel and chamber upgrades have the largest overall effects, but each smaller component has its own unique effect on the gun’s function.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tbody><tr><td>
Single-Edged Mercenary Blade (Growth)
This weapon is a part of your standard equipment loadout. It is more effective in combat than a mundane, class-agnostic knife, but only just.
By upgrading components of the knife, The Single-Edged Mercenary Blade can be incrementally upgraded. Only upgrades to the blade have an effect on damage output, while other component upgrades increase various functions related to handling.</td></tr></tbody></table>
As soon as the door opened, Nick sprang out. The drones were nowhere in sight. He ran around the ship before he finally saw them, hovering through the lack of air before hitting the synthetic atmosphere of the ship and dropping like round, disk shaped rocks.
“You have to be kidding me.” The gun sat uselessly in Nick''s hand as he gaped at the robots. “You absolutely have to be shitting me.”
They were vacuum cleaners. Out of all the objects at the store, they had been some of the most familiar. On Earth, they had small, flat, disk-shaped automatic vacuums just like them. These could do a little more, but they were one of the few familiar objects he had to anchor him in his new home. He had never known they had laser guns, and he would have never guessed he would eventually have to kill them.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
He would have never named them if he had. It took a near-miss bolt of laser fire from one of the robots that singed his side and left a black mark on his clothes for him to snap out of it and begin firing the gun. The vacuum cleaners scattered, whirring as they spread out to make for a less compact bundle of targets.
The gun made a pleasing little <i>Bloo! Bloo! </i>sound as it fired, not entirely unlike what he expected from a sci-fi blaster pistol. The first two shots went wide as reddish flashes of light slammed into the surface of the asteroid and blew off a hail of rock chips and water vapor. The next one hit, flipping the room cleaning robot end over end. It landed and whirred one last time before all the lights on its casing went out for the last time.
“I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m really sorry.”
Nick held back irrational tears as the hope that this might all turn out to be easy built up in his breast. A burst of laser fire focused straight at his chest shaved off three quarters of his health points in one go. He reeled back coughing blood and returned fire. There were four more of them that he could see. His next shot took another one out, and the shot after that missed by hitting the ground just in front of the next vacuum and blasted it out into the vacuum, alive but temporarily disabled as it vented air in an effort to stabilize itself.
The remaining two vacuums blazed laser fire at him as they closed into melee range. As far as Nick knew they didn’t have melee weapons, but that morning he would have told himself they didn’t have laser guns either. He shot at them repeatedly, missing again and again as they whirred towards his feet, rolled over them, and shredded the skin on the top of his foot with blades he hadn’t even guessed they possessed.
Breathless with agony, Nick dropped down and stabbed one through its back with his knife, then dropped his gun barrel to shoot the other at point blank range. Both were disabled, but Nick only had two hit points standing between him and death now. It was a universal law of this place. Zero hit points meant the end. There were skills that could keep you from zero longer, or could keep you functioning for a little while after you hit zero. But once you hit zero, your fate was sure. Sooner rather than later, you’d be dead.
Nick didn''t give the recovering vacuum out past the artificial atmosphere a chance to get its bearings. Holding his pistol aloft, he fired it as fast as the hammer would drop until he got lucky with one of the shots and put the last vacuum down.
“Annie, I think that’s it.”
“No, captain. Behind you.”
Nick instinctively jerked his body to the left, almost but not quite avoiding the next shot. It was the furthest one of the laser bolts could have been from his body while still affecting him. The splash of the bolt took him down to one health point as he spun to see the shiniest, best vacuum that had ever graced the Astramart.
“Carl. No.” Nick watched as his favorite of the cleaning bots hovered down to the surface of the asteroid. It was like being betrayed by his own son. “I can’t do this.”
Carl opened fire, and Nick found he actually could do this, and needed to immediately. Sidestepping the first few shots, Nick hit a lucky streak and pounded Carl with several shots in quick succession, all of which seemed to stun the robot for a fraction of a second after they hit. None of the, however, seemed to do any damage.
“Annie, what do I do?” Nick used up the last bit of the robot’s discombobulation to sprint around the front of the spaceship and kneel down. “I can’t hurt it with the guns, and there’s no way I can get close enough to stab it with the knife.”
“One moment.” Annie went silent while Nick tried to hug a corner of the ship as tightly as possible, hoping to get the robot stun-locked again when it came around the corner. “Do you have any skills, captain? Anything that would amplify your damage?
“Come to think of it, yeah.”
“Then use that. You are facing an issue of armoring. Overwhelming the armor, even a little, will result in the same effects the lesser robots exhibited.”
“Got it.”
Nick focused on his skill’s individual shots can either be strengthened language and willed it so. His gun made a pleasing little charge-up sound, and he felt his magic resources empty slightly as two MP slid into his next shot. That appeared to be the maximum he could dump for the moment, and the system interpreted his frustration at this fact by dumping the remaining eight MP into his next four shots, leaving him cold and shivering as his pool of magic points bottomed out.
When Carl finally whirred around the corner, Nick let him have it with all four shots. The first one was almost enough, knocking a big piece of armor plating loose and sending it out into the nothingness of space. The next three reduced it to a pile of gears, wires, and weird system devices Nick had no interest in identifying.
“Is that all?” Nick felt an HP point tick back into being, courtesy of his regeneration. It didn’t make him feel much better. “No more robots?”
“Not for now. Collect the salvage, Captain. Do so quickly. We must flee before more forces arrive.”
“That sounds a lot like an order.”
“Just consider it a very important option. Now move, captain.”
Nick picked up what parts of Carl and the other robots he could quickly scoop up and ran into the ship, barely staying off the ground when Annie immediately lurched forward back into space.
“It looks like that worked. Good.” Annie sounded smug. “They were a lesser class of computerized life. Barely worth mentioning. We should be clear of them now. They were… friends?”
“Kind of. I was alone on that asteroid. I guess I thought of them as pets. Now what do I do with their parts?”
“Load them into the replicator. In the meantime, I will try to find another asteroid cluster to hide in.”
Nick lifted the broken robots into the replicator, which sucked in the resources with the same unsatisfying quickness it used to create things. Sitting down with a thump, Nick brought up his system interface. If he wasn’t wrong, he had accomplished something out there. It was time to see what he got from it.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
Bounty Complete!
You have destroyed the threat to you and your ship and completed the first combat encounter since the acquisition of your new class. You destroyed:
Lesser Vacuum (5)
Slightly Lesser Vacuum (1)
For the killing of the non-system threat, you gain a minimal amount of accumulation. A greater amount of accumulation will be awarded for the completion of the bounty, and at your signal a small pack of beginner’s equipment will materialize near you.
Due to the relative ease of the encounter, non-equipment rewards will be minimized.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="border-collapse: collapse" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="width: 48.9991%">
Level 2 Starlight Mercenary
Accumulation: 130/1500
HP 50/50
MP: 10/10</td>
<td style="width: 48.9991%">
Proficiencies:
Gunslinger (Level 1)
Knife-fighter (Level 1)
Tinker (Level 1)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 48.9991%">
Stats: (4 unassigned)
Skill: 10
Toughness: 10
Quick: 10
Psyche: 10</td>
<td style="width: 48.9991%">
Traits:
| Stranger |
| Bound Captain |</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
The amount of unassigned points Nick was looking at could have been a lot or nothing much at all, depending on how much each of them were worth. There were enough of them to put one point into each stat, and he briefly considered doing just that so he’d have a working knowledge of the size of that effect for each of his characteristics. He quickly ruled that out. It seemed obvious where he had the most trouble in that last fight, and where he needed the most help from his new power.
“Annie. Can you look at my status page?”
“With your permission, yes. Why?”
“I wanted some advice, and I think you probably know more about the world than I do right now. Are there any downsides to giving you permission?”
“Not unless the thought of me seeing something so private makes you uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t. Take a look. I was thinking about putting two points into Skill, one into Toughness, and one into quick.”
“Hmm. I can see why. You were hurt, you failed to do enough damage, and a bit more speed is always good. May I make a suggestion?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“You may have noticed that your Gunfighter and Knifefighter skills each gained a level. Both of those levels will work towards enhancing your damage output. Were you considering this when you decided to double points into your Skill?”
“Not entirely.”
“Then in some ways, you likely already have the effect you expected from both stat points already. I still recommend you leave those stat points in, however. This is relevant mainly because I am going to advise you from putting a point in toughness.”
“What? That felt like a no brainer.”
“With a more usual warrior class, it would have been. You are different. At this time you have no regen or damage mitigation skills. Every point you put into toughness is one you get minimal value out of until that changes.”
“I must be very fragile, though.”
“You are. Which is why it’s imperative you find a way to avoid damage, rather than tolerate it.”
Nick thought about it for a moment. It made good enough sense. Having more points in skill would let him take down enemies faster, and having more in quick would amplify that effect while making it possible for him to dodge at least some things.
“Done.”
He nudged the stat points into place, placing two into both skill and speed. He shuddered as he became faster and better at things. It was something he could feel and know about just sitting there, an immediate change to who he was that he couldn’t have ignored if he wanted to. He sat still until the wave of quasi-euphoria passed, then let the system deliver his box of beginners gear.
The box hit the floor hard. It was bigger and heavier than he had thought it would be, a plain cardboard box about the size of a microwave oven. He took his knife and cut it open immediately.
“What is this stuff?”
“That’s a beginner’s gear box. Not every class has them. The more nonstandard the class, the more often they are found. It’s likely an effort by the system to compensate for the fact you will only rarely find relevant equipment on store shelves.”
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
Basic Outlaw Set
This basic set of clothing offers minor protection and only the most minimal levels of stat enhancement. Even so, it is durable, easy to move in, and will insulate your body from all but the most extreme forms of weather.
As is true of all forms of system clothing, it can be cut, torn or burned, but not destroyed. Once out of combat, equipped items will quickly regenerate in appropriate positioning on your body.
Set components
Outlaw Hat
Outlaw Shirt
Outlaw Pants
Outlaw Boots
Set Effects: System Durability, +1 Quick, +1 Skill</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table><tbody><tr><td>
Outlaw Duster
This coat represents your overwear, the equivalent of plate armor to a knight or cloth armor to a rogue. It provides much more substantial protection than your clothing set, and grants that protection to anything you might be wearing, or even your bare skin.
Unlike non-system coats, it does not consistently provide warmth, and often works in the other direction to help you self-regulate your temperature. As with your clothing, this coat cannot be destroyed while equipped.
Be aware that while sensitive or vulnerable areas such as your face and throat are now armored, they are still proportionally more vulnerable than other body parts.</td></tr></tbody></table>
“Annie, do you have any problems with me changing into these right here?”
“I am not sensitive to such things.”
“Good. I thought so.” It would have been a weird life if his ship had turned out to be shy. “Are we still all right? No pursuers?”
“We are fine.”
Nick slipped out of his Astramart ware, looked at it disdainfully for a moment, then hucked it into the replicator. The clothes had never been comfortable, and he had never been able to acquire an actual set of armor to augment his warrior class with. He suspected that however the clothes he had just obtained would feel on his skin, they’d be miles past the budget synthetic fabric his old job had provided.
He was right. The clothes felt great on his skin. They didn’t look too bad, either. He had been afraid the hat would look huge, or that he’d end up looking like a theme park cowboy. Instead, he looked more like what his class said he’d look like. He had a hat, but it was flat-brimmed and low. His coat was long and covered most of his body, and everything was colored in black and highlights of dull, rusty red.
It wasn’t the coolest thing he had ever seen, but it was cool enough. He looked more like a classer now than he ever had with his swordsman skill. The only problem was that his class was still at an insanely low level, lower than was even supposed to be possible in the outside world. He was armed and armored, but everything about him wasn’t up to snuff yet, even considering the new stats and stat buffs from his equipment.
“So what now?” Nick laced up his shoes and pulled them tight. They fit perfectly, like everything else. It was like they were tailored to fit his exact measurements, which he supposed after a moment was probably actually literally the case. “What’s my best move from here?”
“Best move? I’m not sure, captain. I suppose that depends on your objectives.”
“I get what you are saying. I really do. But if you want an order, it’s this. I don’t know how anything works. I’m not only new to this class. I’m new to this universe. I order you to treat me like I know absolutely nothing, okay? I’m just giving you a standing order to tell me what you think my most important objectives are, and what I should probably do about them. At least for a while.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Nick could tell he was only going to bang his head against the wall trying to get Annie to do what he wanted unless he tried something different. As soon as a change of tactics occurred to him, he ran with it.
“Okay. Then take us to the core worlds so I can find a bunch of bounties and complete them as fast as possible.” Nick didn’t know for sure that this was a bad idea, but the chances of it being a good, safe choice were probably low. “Take me to the biggest city that’s pretty close.”
“I have to advise you that this would take weeks in travel alone.”
“Would it?”
“Yes. And the likelihood of finding a truly low-level bounty in that area would be very low. They tend to reserve them for their own trainees. You’d have to…”
“So you are saying it’s a bad idea.”
Some lights flashed in apparent frustration.
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“That’s progress. What’s a better one?”
“I suppose… oh, to hell with it.” Annie’s demeanor changed on a dime. Nick was talking to an entirely different ship, all the sudden. “You want to know what to do? Don’t do stupid things like you just suggested. We are going to find a nice, calm planet. A tiny one. A planet that barely has the power to generate a threat to anyone at all. Once we are there, we are going to find the smallest, most boring town in it, and we are going to pray they have something for you to do to get a few levels that doesn’t get you killed.”
“Right. I guess I need to get back to level four.”
“Level… four. That’s it? That’s as far as you got?”
“I was working at an Astramart!”
“Nick, I know only what I’ve been able to download from the galactic net way out here in the sticks, and even I know that’s a children’s level. No wonder they came after you when your levels dropped. They must have thought you were running some kind of loophole scam.”
“Anyway.” If Nick didn’t get on top of this conversation, he had the feeling Annie would bag on him all day. “Where would we even find a planet like that?”
“You just fly along and smell for the dust. It’s special planets that are hard to find. Planets like we need are a dime a dozen.”