Felix and Meredith ran to the engine room and saw Chase face-down on the floor. Blood was trickling down the side of his head.
"Shit."
Meredith rolled Chase over and shook him a bit.
"Chase. Chase. Can you hear me?"
No response.
She checked his pulse and felt it faintly.
"He's still alive. Let's get him to the medbay."
Meredith went to his legs and began to pick them up.
"Felix. Get his other side."
He nodded and managed to help her bring Chase to the medbay. Chase was a lot heavier than he expected. Felix redirected some power to the medbay and immediately a light green mist sprayed from the machine into the room. Chase's eyes fluttered open.
"Hmm? How'd I end up here?"
He stood up and looked at his hand, the blood helping him remember.
"You all right, man? For a moment there we thought you might have…"
"I'm fine. In fact… wow, it doesn't even hurt anymore."
Chase rubbed the place where his bleeding wound used to be. There was still some wet blood, but there was no pain.
"At least I've confirmed that this machine works! Ta da!" Chase announced.
"All part of your plan, right?"
"Yeah, totally. I'm not going to lie, though. That impact really hurt."
"Sorry about that. I can't really control what I roll," Felix said.
"You mind telling me about this 'rolling' you keep talking about?"
"Well, you know how your screen is a typing game, right? Mine is just a dice-rolling game. I think the lower I roll, the better the ship dodges.I rolled an 100 once and the ship barely dodged at all."
"Oh, I see… and there's no way to rig the rolls?"
"Not as far as I can tell."
"Can it roll the dice by itself? My machine seemed to type the words by itself, after all."
"Nope. The one time I didn't hit the button, a laser nearly hit me square in the face."
Chase nodded and rubbed his chin.
"Meredith, what's your screen like? Another game?"
"Yeah… the HUD looks exactly like FTL, but only including the stuff having to do with the weapons system. It's actually great for me this way."
They could see a background of stars spilled across the darkness of space with a prominent sun not too far away. A huge aura of light surrounded it, resembling a circle of mist.
"Hey, do you guys think we should name the ship?" Felix asked, breaking the momentary silence.
"Sure, why not?" Chase replied. "Any suggestions?"
The three of them thought for a minute.
"The default name for this ship is the Kestrel. There's some merit in just naming it that," Meredith stated.
"What's a kestrel?"
"Some kind of animal, I think."
"I was thinking we call it the Normandy," Chase suggested with a grin.
"You want to name it after a place?"
"No, it's the name of your main ship in Mass Effect!"
"We can't come up with something more original?" Felix complained.
"Actually, you can't change the official name of your ship after you've started the game. Let's just stick with the Kestrel," Meredith said.
"That's dumb. You should be able to change the name whenever you want. Also, where does it say on this ship that it's called the Kestrel? Is it painted on the outside of the ship?"
"It should say the ship name on the SHIP menu."
They went to the piloting room to check the SHIP menu, but only Felix and Chase were able to fit into the room. Felix hit the SHIP button. "The Kestrel" was displayed in its full glory on the top of the window.
"There it is. That's our name for the ship then!"
"You guys can call it the Kestrel if you want. I'm calling it the Normandy."
"Fine by me. It's not really that big of a deal."
"Exactly."
After settling on that, the Kestrel took off to the next beacon.
You recognize the ship as a well-known slave trader. He hails you and offers you "laborers" for cheap.
1. Buy one slave and free them to join your crew. Scrap -31: 'Giles'
2. Attack the slaver scum.
3. Ignore the slaver and continue on your way.
Class: Pirate Rigger
Relationship: Neutral
"Slavers? Sounds evil enough for us to kill, right Felix?" Chase teased.
"Wait, but blowing them up would also kill everyone on board, including the slaves."
"Hey, those are just casualties of war. Besides, killing them now means no more people will be enslaved by them."
"I don't think thinking about this morally is the best course of action here," Meredith interrupted. "We have to think of this purely in game terms. What option would put us the farthest ahead?"
"Don't ask me, I never played this game."
Meredith cracked her knuckles.
"The worst would be option three. Taking it means that we wasted fuel jumping here and missed out on an opportunity for another beacon event. I think the second option is the best choice."
"Can we take them on?"
"They have two laser guns. We'll probably take some hits, but it'll cost us less than 31 scrap to repair the damage. Most likely."
"So buying the slave is a bad idea?"
"31 scrap is a steep price compared to the low price of free! Usually these slavers will offer one of their slaves for free if we bring their hull integrity low enough," she explained.
"It's decided then?"
"Yeah. Let's punish those slaver scum."
"Unpause!"
Two drones began to orbit the pirate ship: one defense drone and another unfamiliar drone. Felix hit the pause button.
"Meredith, what does that other drone do?"
"Hmm… let's see. Felix, can you hover over it?"
Felix looked on his screen. The drone was mostly light grey, but it had a bright sky blue light shining in the center. Hovering over it displayed this message:
Enemy Anti-Combat Drone: Shoots to stun and possibly destroy your combat drones. Can be shut down by damaging the enemy ship's drone system.
Felix read this description out loud to the rest of the crew.
"That's useless for them because we aren't using any combat drones."
"So we can't deploy our drone parts then?"
"We can only use drone parts after getting a drone schematic and a drone control system."
"Sounds like something we don't have."
"Yeah, it can be hard to get the parts, but being able to use drones is really useful. They can shoot down enemy missiles, attack the enemy ship, generate shields for us, and other stuff."
"It's a shame we can't take their drone system and install it on our ship."
"Anyways… let's get this over with. Unpause!"
The enemy shot first. The first laser broke their shield and the other one destroyed the doors subsystem. This time, the laser impact was closer to Felix and he could feel the ship shake. The Kestrel returned fire and connected with two shots to the enemy weapons system. After another one of Meredith's vollies, their shield system was taken down as well.
"Hey, does this mean we can't use the doors?" Chase yelled as he typed "elaborate" and "defenestration."
"No, it just means we can't lock the doors or open them remotely!"
Fortunately, the enemy ship couldn't repair fast enough to get their weapons online. After another volley against the useless pirate ship, things paused and they sent a message:
We surrender! Take one of our slaves as tribute; if you destroy us they'll all die anyway!
1. Accept their offer. Magmar
2. Surrender is not an option.
Next to Magmar was a sprite of what seemed to be some sort of mantis.
"Magmar definitely isn't a human. And he definitely looks more like a Scyther than a Magmar," Felix said.
"Will it speak English? What if it speaks some sort of weird alien language?" Chase asked.
"I honestly have no idea. He'll be part of our crew though, so I'm assuming there'll be some way to communicate with him."
"That's hopeful. What if it kills us all?"
"The game has been exactly like FTL so far. He's not going to be hostile. I'm not expecting it to deviate from the game."
"What if we agree and then the pirate ship starts firing on us again when we least expect it? I think it's safer just to blow them all up. That way we'll get more scrap, right, Meredith?"
"That's true, but getting another crew member is essential for us right now. We need someone manning the shields system as soon as possible."
"What does having someone man the shields do? Does it make them stronger?"
"No, it decreases the recharge time of the shields. We don't want to keep taking hits to our hull while our shields are still recharging. You felt it yourself, Chase."
Chase felt himself raising his hand to rub his head, but he caught himself.
"Fine. Do you want to tell us more about mantises?"
"It's pretty simple. They move fast, excel at combat, and suck at repairing. Just like what you'd expect a real-life mantis to be."
"How does a tiny little insect excel at combat?"
"Mantises are almost as tall as you are, even on its six legs."
Chase recoiled at the thought of a giant killer mantis scuttling around the ship.
"I… don't know if this is safe."
"Don't worry, if something goes wrong, we can just use these blasters in our holsters," Felix pointed out.
Chase looked down and, for the first time, noticed he was wearing a holster with a gun in it.
"Where the hell did this come from?"
"I don't know. It just appeared when we started talking about combat."
"That's fuckin' weird. Makes it clear that we're in a video game."
"Yeah, but it's strange how we see the ship with our eyes as if it were real. On the screen, the ship is displayed with crappy game graphics."
"How did we get into this game in the first place? That's what I'm wondering."
"We can think about this later. We still need to decide whether we're going to take Magmar or not," Meredith said.
"You said that it was better that we take him. You haven't been wrong yet, so I'm going with your decision," Felix stated.
"Fine, I'll go along with you two. But I'm not happy about it."
"We accept your offer," Felix said while holding down option one.
Almost instantly, things unpaused and Felix saw something huge and green materialize from the corner of his eye. He looked at the larger-than-life mantis, and it looked back at him with its bulbous eyes and small pupils.
It screamed like a chalkboard banshee and raised its forelegs menacingly, darting towards Felix faster than he could have ever expected.