The Escape
17:46 Ship Time

“Me?”

“You,” she nodded. “I was expecting you to log back in sooner, but it is understandable with how time works in-game. Please, come in.”

She turned and led us to what looked like her office. She bid us to sit and then she walked around the very nice wooden desk and sat down herself.

“Thauro said that you had an opportunity for Retsas, and if Olnain is here then it must be important.”

“One of my friends saw the notice that Olnain was looking for brass to make shell casings. We were making over to the foundry when we… stumbled over a large amount of brass ingots.”

“Twelve and a quarter tons, to be precise,” Olnain said.

Araku’s eyebrows rose briefly, before falling back down. “You coming to me means that you need transportation, which, in turn, means that you’re here to negotiate.”

Nodding, I turned to look at Olnain. “How many casings do you get out of a pound of brass?”

“It depends on the caliber of the bullet. For smaller rounds, like the ones for your pistol, about one hundred or so. For higher caliber rounds, like the ones used in the fixed guns up on the wall, only thirty.”

“Alright, so we’ll average that out to about sixty-five shell casings per pound of brass,” I said, getting a nod out of Olnain before turning back to Araku. We’ll give you all eighteen hundred brass bars we found, which would be how many rounds, Ben?”

“Roughly one million seven hundred fifty thousand, give or take a few thousand.”

“And in return?” Araku asked.

“I’m sure Olnain can determine how much that much brass would be worth. We want thirty percent of the total value in credits and another thirty percent of the total value in barter tokens, both to be delivered back to our base before we give you the location.”

“Say I agree to your terms, what is stopping you from taking the credits and tokens and not following through?”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it?” Ben said. “Just kill the two of us and then position some snipers so they can see the entrance to our base. We’d be stuck there, forced to either wait it out or delete our characters and restart. Our friends would still be out there, but they wouldn’t be able to come back to Retsas or go back to the base. That would give you time to scour the area looking for the ingots. You’d find them, eventually.”

“True,” she nodded. “Alright, I accept. On two conditions. The first is that after receiving payment you lead a few of my men, along with a radio, to the location of the brass bars. If this isn’t some elaborate ruse, then they will radio back and we’ll mobilize.”

“Fair enough. And the second condition?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“You explain to me how you, as humans, have access to The Escape when your planet isn’t technologically advanced enough to travel through your own system yet.”

“If you know that we’re humans then that tells me you did your research and have the answer already. What’s your interest, anyways?”

“I’m just a curious person,” she replied, though I couldn’t tell if that was the truth or a lie. “So it’s true. Scyftans are on Earth and at least some of the population knows about them. Interesting. Okay, you have a deal. Olnain, do you have the numbers yet so we can get this thing started?”

He nodded. “Nine credits per pound of brass ends up being around seventy three thousand credits. As for the barter tokens, last time I checked we were valuing them at around fifty-seven credits each. Dividing seventy-three thousand by fifty-seven should be somewhere around twelve hundred seventy.”

“Twelve hundred eighty,” Ben corrected.

“Twelve hundred eighty, then,” Olnain said.

“I’m assuming that you’ve got flare guns?” I asked, looking at Olnain. “We’ll need two of those as well.”

“For?” Araku asked.

“We don’t have a radio, so we can’t contact our friends to let them know that you’ve accepted. If a convoy of vehicles approaches without us letting them know, they’re likely to start shooting as soon as they’re able. We need to fire one off here, and then another one later on.”

“Olnain, go grab a flare gun, and get geared up. You’ll be going with them to verify that it is eighteen hundred ingots of brass and not some other metal,” Araku said before turning to Zagred. “Tell Zejat to get the Draxogo ready to move. You two come with me. We’ll need to head to the bank to get that much credits and barter tokens. There is nowhere else in town that carries that much of either at once.”

The bank was one of those small-time banks you might see in a rural town, being a relatively small building, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t protected. There were steel bars over all of the windows, and there were also a couple of heavily-armed guards inside. It was a little bit weird that we didn’t have to hand over our weapons, but we had much less firepower than Araku and her guards did.

Araku just walked up to the counter, which was separated by what looked like bullet-proof glass, and had the teller gather the credits and barter tokens. There were no questions asked whatsoever, the teller just nodded and turned to get them. While she was gone, Araku turned to Ben and I.

“You could open up an account here, if you wanted. It would greatly reduce the risk of carrying a large amount of credits or barter tokens around.”

It would definitely be very nice.

“What’s that entail?”

“Well, since there is a high risk of dying when you’re outside of the town, there is only one practical way to keep money secure. Whenever an account is open, we take a picture and assign the account a password. Only someone who provides the correct password and matches the photo we have on record would be able to access the account.”

“What do you think? Fifteen, twenty?” I asked, looking at Ben.

“With Mason?” he scoffed. “Double it, at minimum.”

“You’re right,” I chuckled and turned back to Araku. “We’ll do that.”

As soon as the teller got back with everything, Araku had the woman open an account for us. All five of us would be able to access the account, thankfully, but Mason and the girls would need to come back to have their pictures taken and so they could have their own password assigned. The process was relatively quick. After leading us into a side room, the Kobaloi woman, named Melni, had us stand up against the wall one at a time and snapped a quick picture of us both and made sure everything was set up on the computer.

After two minutes or so, she grabbed two small pieces of paper and wrote down our respective passwords. She handed them to us, suggesting that we memorize them and then burn the pieces of paper, before leading us back out to the front where Araku, Qish and Zagred were waiting. The latter of which was back from the tasks Araku had given him and carried an extra radio.

We ended up depositing thirty percent of both the credits and the barter tokens before putting the rest into two separate metal cases. With everything squared away Araku led us back outside.

Both Ben and I stopped upon seeing what was waiting on the street. It was a massive armored vehicle, though it didn’t look like it started out that way. In fact, it looked like a box truck, though a heavily modified one at that.

It was hard to tell how many wheels it had since there was metal skirting that stopped only a few inches off the ground, but it seemed like there were three wheels per side. Everything was armored on it, including the windshield which was little more than slats of steel affixed at an angle, which would deflect the vast majority of weapons fire from the front. There was also a cowcatcher attached to the front, similar to one you would find on a train. Just in case there was something that needed to be driven through.

It certainly seemed like it was built to punch through roadblocks or even buildings if the situation demanded it, having a pretty hefty ram bar affixed to the front of it as well. The back of the truck was retangular, like a box truck, but one that had a heavy machine gun affixed to the top, similar to something you would see on a humvee or lightly armored vehicle.

The backdoors were open and, because the vehicle was so tall, there was actually a ramp that extended down to the ground. At the base of that ramp, Olnain, Thauro and another man were waiting. This man was clearly a Saurian, sporting a long tail, not dissimilar to that of a crocodile, while also having a long maw and some very deadly-looking teeth. He also had a scar that ran diagonally across his left eye, though whatever had caused it didn’t seem to have hit the eye itself.

“What’d you call it? The Draxago?” I asked.

“That’s right,” she replied. “We named it after an animal native to the Ork homeworld. It is a big, heavy four-legged animal that has an incredibly well armored skull. One can go through walls or knock down trees with ease.”

“It definitely looks like it can do that.”

“That it can,” she nodded before walking to the rear of the vehicle.

“This is Horr,” Araku said, gesturing to the Saurian. “He’s the leader of the team that will be accompanying you. He and his team will make sure that you get back to your base safely and will make sure that the location where the ingots are is secure before the rest of us arrive. John, you’ll ride in the front so you can give Zejat directions both to your base and to the brass. Everyone else will ride in the back.”

I nodded and turned to Onlain. “Do you have something for me?”

He handed over the flare gun and two flares. I quickly loaded one of the flares, aimed straight up and fired it.

“Alright, good to go,” I said, loading in the second flare but not firing it quite yet.

Araku didn’t have anything else to say, so she let us climb in and get underway. The driver, as it turned out, was another one of those cyclops-looking guys, though I had no idea how he was seeing where he was going. Because of the angle of the slats and the height we were at there was some visibility, but that extended maybe twenty feet. If that.

“How are you able to tell where you’re going, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“You don’t know?” he asked in return as we exited the southern entrance. “Eye this big isn’t just for show. Kukawu have ability to see through material. For me, there no impediment.”

“Oh. So that’s why Thauro looked me up and down a few times?”

“Make sure you not have any bombs. Araku enemies try kill her many times. None get past the Kukaku,” he said, puffing his chest out a little bit.

“So how far can you see through things?”

“Not far, only few feet. Not through all material, either. Some block vision.”

I nodded and we made the rest of the first leg of the trip in relative silence. I only told him where to turn and where to stop, but otherwise he didn’t speak much. It was rather comical seeing a car go flying through the air at one point. Rather than go around it, Zejat just went right through it.

Once we arrived, Horr and his team got out and secured the area. That only took a moment, and then Ben and I were allowed out of the vehicle. It didn’t take long to store the credits and the barter tokens. We weren’t worried about someone entering our base and stealing them, because that was quite literally impossible. After setting them in the chest that our gear was in when we started playing, we exited and climbed back into the truck.

Before closing the door, I pulled out the other flare gun and fired it into the air. It was something that Mason thought up while I was switching to my old gear. The first flare would signify that we had made it safe and Araku agreed to our terms, while the second would signify that we had dropped off the credits and barter tokens at our base and were enroute to the factory.

Zejat knew the area pretty well, so I didn’t have to give him too many directions. I did suggest that he drive through the field and knock down the wall for easier access, but he said that that would just make everyone more susceptible to sniper fire. He drove through the industrial center without a care in the world, knocking cars all over the place before stopping at the building I had pointed out to him.

Horr and his team got out once again, making sure that no one was in the area before letting the rest of us out of the truck. They waited inside the entrance while Ben and I got Mason and the girls, just so there wouldn’t be any misunderstandings, before following us further into the building. Horr ended up following us, but the rest of the five men he brought with him into the building spread out, making sure it was clear.

Onlain gave the first two crates a cursory glance before he turned to look inside of the third. Whistling, he walked over and actually tried to move the crate before examining the ingots. When he was satisfied he turned to Thauro.

“It’s brass alright,” he said. “Enough to keep us well stocked for quite a while.”

Thauro walked over to the crate and bent down, looking pretty funny just looking at the outside of the wooden crate. A moment later, he stood back up.

“Completely full too. No bombs.”

Horr immediately used his radio to report back to Araku, who ended up responding herself. After Horr gave the coordinates to our location, Araku immediately burst into laughter.

“How in the twelve hells did no one find those sooner?” she asked over the radio, still chuckling.

“We have no idea,” I replied. “The only reason we found it is that one of my friends spotted a guy on the roof of the building. We found the crates as we were clearing it.”

“Did you say crates? I thought there was only one.”

“Of brass, there is. The other two contain some sort of equipment parts, either for machines here or whatever was being manufactured.”

“Ah, likely junk then. Either way, when the team gets there have them load one of those parts onto the vehicle and then close them back up, Onlain. Someone might know what they’re for. Who knows, they could be something useful.”

We were only a few minutes away, so it didn’t take long at all for the convoy to show up. It contained two vehicles almost identical to the Draxago, as well as a truck with a trailer in the middle. Horr immediately went out and had the men in each of the trucks move to the adjacent buildings, just to secure the area further.

At the same time, a small team of men ran inside of the building and began ferrying the ingots back to the truck. The crate was way too far into the building, so the four man team brought in two stretcher-like apparatuses and loaded as many ingots as they could carry at a time. With two groups of two, they were able to carry about thirty ingots at a time. It wouldn’t take long at all to load the ingots.

“So how’d you do?” Mason asked while we all stood and watched them work.

“Seventy-three thousand credits and twelve hundred eighty barter tokens,” I answered. “We deposited thirty percent of both at the bank. You three will need to go there to get your photo taken and have your password assigned so you can have access to everything. The other seventy percent of each is back at the base.”

“That doesn’t sound like much at all, but maybe that’s because of how many credits we’ve been making on our mining runs in Battlestate,” Sonja said.

“It’s definitely a lot,” Mason replied. “Remember how cheap the bullets and armor were? We could spend like two hundred credits a piece on armor and weapons and the difference would be insane.”

“How much is it for one of those thermal scopes you were all talking about?” Anja asked.

“On the list it was something like forty pounds of brass for one of the lower-end thermal scopes, double that for a high end scope. I don’t know how much credits or barter tokens we would need.”

“Six tokens or three hundred sixty credits for the lower end one, and thirteen tokens or seven hundred twenty credits for a high end one,” Ben answered.

“That much, really?” Mason asked, blown away by the price.

“Nine credits per pound,” I nodded.

“Huh. They must be pretty rare if they’re that expensive.”

“What about you three? See anyone else while we were gone?”

“Saw, no. Heard, yes,” Mason replied. “There was some sustained fire coming from the north-west about twenty minutes or so ago. It went on for two minutes before stopping entirely. We didn’t hear anything else except that racket you made when you arrived.”

“North-west? You mean towards the foundry?”

“It could’ve been there, yeah. It’s likely, in fact.”

We continued chatting until the bars were loaded and Horr came back in to ask if we were coming back to the town or staying here. There wasn’t any reason to go to the foundry unless we were looking for a fight, so we elected to join them and shorten the trip. Just before we left, the four man team came back in with some hammers and nails and closed up the first two crates again.

“Now those are some trucks,” Mason said as we walked towards them.

“Sure are. The driver just drove through everything, rather than go around. It didn’t slow us down in the slightest, but it looks like the cowcatcher and the ram bar will need some repairing when we get back.”

“Cowcatcher?” Anja asked, stepping up beside us.

“That’s the name for the angled bit at the front of the trucks. Their proper name is a pilot, but they’re called cowcatchers, cattle catchers or cow plows as well. You used to see them all the time on old steam engines. Since they’re angled, it allows objects in front to be deflected to the sides, rather than impacting head on. On our way here, we plowed through a car without slowing down in the slightest. It went absolutely flying,” I finished with a chuckle.

Horr radioed the other teams to return to their vehicles before waving my friends and I into the Draxago. It was my first time inside of the back of the truck since I wasn’t needed in the cab to give directions anymore, and I was amazed by the amount of room inside. Two benches ran along either wall, with enough room to fit twenty or so men.

The roof was a little bit lower in the middle, directly where the gunner was, and there was also a ladder leading up to a hatch so the gunner could retreat into the armored truck if things got too hairy up top. It would also allow one of the guys in the bottom to climb up top and man the gun if the original gunner got taken out.

Aside from that, there were also eight gun ports, three on either side, as well as two that faced the rear on either side of the door. They weren’t as visible from the outside, but once they slid open they would allow eight of the men in the back to fire from the safety of the vehicle. If there was anyone following one of these trucks, they would have a very bad day.

Horr and his men, along with Onlain, climbed in the back with us before the door was closed and the truck started moving. Even with the fourteen of us in the back, there was still a lot of extra room.

“So, I guess we’re going to be staying at the inn again?” Mason asked.

“We can definitely afford it now,” I answered. “Can we pay for a certain amount of time in advance, or do we need to log in once a day to pay for the next?”

“Either or, I think. We should probably just pay for one day at a time because we might want to actually head back to our base at some point. We would just end up wasting credits if we headed back while we still had a few days left. I want to head back sooner or later though. We have the credits to grab a torch, so we could cut our way through the next part of our base and see what is on the other side of that seized door.”

“That’s true. What do you think is on the other side of that door?”

“No idea, honestly. The area that we started in is basically the entrance, so anything behind that door would be the actual base. I would imagine that it will be in better shape than the part we’re in, but we’ll need to crack it open and see. It will be pretty easy to get everything we need to cut through the door, assuming there are small enough oxygen and acetylene tanks available. Otherwise it will be a huge pain in the ass, not to mention incredibly dangerous, to bring back the tanks.”

“What about thermite?” Ben asked. “It should be hot enough to cut through to the other side.”

“Those doors are pretty thick. Thermite could eventually cut through to the other side, but it would require multiple burns and a specialized setup. The issue with thermite is that it burns quickly, so unless we could focus the cutting power, it would only cut through slightly before losing power. A shaped charge could be a better option, but could damage whatever is on the other side.”

“We could always ask someone what the best way to do it would be. In fact, the best person to ask is here with us,” I said, looking over to Olnain.

I called him over, and then explained our dilemma.

“Thermite? I don’t know what you are referring to. The translator must be having problems with the word.”

“A translator? I didn’t realize there was one,” Ben said.

“A very sophisticated one,” Olnain nodded. “I’m speaking Orkish right now, and you’re speaking your own language. I don’t know the details, but a machine inside of each pod is able to determine what each word is and then translate it for people inside of the game who don’t understand the language.”

“Interesting,” Ben replied.

“So what is this thermite?” Olnain asked.

“Metal powder, that when ignited, produces an incredible amount of heat and is able to weld or cut through things. On our planet, aluminium and iron oxide is the most common composition, I believe,” Mason answered.

“Ah, I know of it. You are probably right that it wouldn’t cut through a base door quickly or easily. Using a torch does work, and I do have small, easily moveable tanks, but that is incredibly dangerous, as you said. There is another option though. If you give me a few days, I can engineer a device that you can simply fix onto the door and ignite. It would work similar to a shaped charge, though where those usually produce holes directly through materials, this one will create a perfect cut all the way around. Within a few seconds of ignition, the door should fall right into the room you want to access.”

“That would be great! How much are we talking?” I asked.

“On the house,” Olnain replied. “You were more than generous with the brass, effectively giving us forty percent of the total amount for free. That brass, along with anymore that people bring in to trade, will keep us stocked until the end of this wipe. We’ll run out of gunpowder before then, but that is an issue for another day.”

We chatted with Olnain for the remainder of the trip, which was only a few minutes, before heading over to the bank to get everything sorted for Mason and the twin. We withdrew one hundred credits and split it up amongst ourselves, before moving over to the inn, paying for our rooms, and logging out.

We didn’t fulfill our objective when we logged into the game, but we did progress quite a bit in the few hours we had been in-game. Just a bit less than an hour had passed in real-time, but that was enough for the day. Thus far, I had spent a big chunk of the trip playing video games, sleeping, or practicing martial arts. That didn’t leave much time to keep Precognition active to slow down the rate at which Abi was accumulating mana to initiate another growth.

Abi had written a quick program to keep track of the amount of mana she had accumulated, as well as the precise moment she would have enough to initiate another growth. I installed it on my phone so it would only take me a few seconds to check her current status, and two days into the trip I had only increased that by one hour thirty-three minutes and twenty-six seconds.

That needed to be increased to at least seventy-two hours before we arrived in the Mezotis system, otherwise some bad things would happen. Abi wouldn’t explode, but there was a flaw in her kind’s design. They didn’t have a way to disperse mana if they had accumulated too much, so uncontrollable jets of pure mana would be fired off until they no longer had more than they could safely contain. Since it was impossible to predict where the mana would be ejected from, there was a high chance that some of the crew could be killed from one of these ejections.

There was an easy way to slow down the rate at which she accumulated mana, but it was too late to do anything about it, now. My Seotross form carries with it a zero-point-one modifier to my intellect. It would have reduced my mana regeneration by ninety percent, if not for the Legendary Mana Regeneration perk.

It would reduce my mana regeneration by one hundred seventy-two, to three hundred five mana per second, which would have easily done the job just by sleeping in that form. If I stayed in my Seotross form for the entire trip it would have gone from her having enough mana on September 2, to having enough mana on September 8.

The problem was that there was simply no space for me to sleep in that form. Well, there was, but the only two rooms that I could lie comfortably in were the mess and the matted room that we used for practice in the morning. I couldn’t use my room because my bed was quite literally fused to the floor, preventing me from moving it over to the side. That was true for every piece of furniture so nothing would move around if we experienced any turbulence.

Abi could have unfused my bed so it could be moved, but that would require her to take us out of hyperspace. It also required that she was willing to make adjustments to the ship while so many people were aboard. One simple miscalculation could injure or kill someone, so she preferred to make those adjustments when she didn’t have to worry about hurting someone.

The reason I couldn’t use part of the mess or the matted room was because both those rooms were high traffic areas. Aboard a ship people were up at all hours, so people were in and out often. If it was a more pressing issue then I would probably sleep in the matted room. I didn’t want to disrupt anyone’s routines, however, so Precognition leveling would have to do.

---

Somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy, enroute to the Mezotis System
Jonuth Kidravia’s Ship - Abi
16:32 Ship Time
August 28, 2019

“Listen up!” our primary weapons instructor, Ryx, said. “We’ve seen some pretty damn good improvements over the past three days. While Mason has been slacking off, the rest of you have gotten a hell of a lot better. I’ve got today's scores for you, along with some homework, due tomorrow.”

There were a few good-natured groans before he continued.

“Now, now, you’ll enjoy this homework,” he said with a smile. “Before we get to that, let's take a look at the scores. Mason is up first.”

The screen behind him changed to show a number of different stats, including Mason’s top speed through the course, his accuracy, and where he is messing up. In the top right there was also a number, showing his overall score; eighty-nine-point-four.

“You’ve improved, but I know you can do better,” Ryx said, looking right at Mason. “Your accuracy is getting a bit better, but your time has slowed down just a tad as a result. You’re taking too long to line up shots which could end up costing you in a real fight. Your fastest time was two-minutes and thirty-six seconds with an accuracy of ninety-one percent. Tomorrow I want to see your time at or below two minutes and thirty seconds, and your accuracy up to ninety-two percent. You do that, and you’ll finally break an overall score of ninety.”

Mason nodded and Ryx continued. Tapping on his tablet, the screen changed to show Sonja’s stats next. We all cheered when we saw today’s stats, but it would be up to her to continue that going forward.

“Nicely done, Sonja. You’ve had the biggest improvement so far. Keep it up! You were two seconds faster today, going from two minutes and forty-four seconds, to two minutes and forty-two seconds. Your accuracy has also risen by six-point-eight-nine percent, to eighty-eight-point-four percent.. Both are very good. It means that you’re getting more comfortable and are tracking targets better, giving you better accuracy without trading speed. Like Mason, I want to see another improvement tomorrow. Get that accuracy up to eighty-nine percent and your time down to two minutes and forty seconds, and that will get you an eighty-two.”

“I’ll do my best,” she nodded.

“Next up is Ben,” he said as he switched the screen again. “You’re still struggling a little bit, but I think today’s homework will help with that. Your accuracy has come up a couple of percent, from seventy-nine-point-two percent to eighty-two-point-nine percent, but at the expense of your speed. That dropped by six seconds, from two minutes and fifty-two seconds to two minutes and fifty-eight seconds. You’re doing the same thing that Mason is doing, and he has a whole lot more experience than you do. The accuracy and speed will come, don’t worry. Maintain your accuracy and increase your time up to two-minutes and fifty-five seconds and I’ll bump you up to a seventy. Increase your accuracy while also increasing your time will get you bumped up further.”

“Got it,” Ben nodded.

“Alright, on to Anja. You’re doing well, but you’re just a little bit behind your sister. Your speed increased by three seconds today, from two minutes and forty-eight seconds down to two minutes and forty-five seconds. Your accuracy has also increased by six percent, to eighty-six-point-eight percent. You aren’t hesitating as much, which is resulting in the increase of both. That’s good, and you’ll only get better as you get more experience. Raise your accuracy up to eighty-eight percent and your speed up to two minutes and forty-three seconds, and I’ll bump you up to eighty.”

“Will do,” she nodded with a smile.

“Finally, Jonathan. You had a decent increase today, but you’re just barely hanging onto third place on the rankings, with Sonja above you and Anja below you--”

“I’ve always wanted to be between a pair of twins,” I said with a grin, immediately receiving a punch to each shoulder by the twins in question.

Ryx chuckled before continuing. “Your speed increased by one and a half seconds while your accuracy increased by five-point-two percent. That’s up to two minutes and forty-four seconds and eighty-seven-point-nine percent, respectively. Like the twins, you’re hesitating less and that is giving you better numbers. Get your speed up to two minutes and forty-two seconds and your accuracy up to eighty-nine percent and you’ll get an eighty-one.”

I nodded and he set down his tablet before going over and picking up a weapon box that had been sitting in the corner of the room. It wasn’t there the previous two days and he hadn’t told us what was in it, but it seemed now we were going to get our answer.

“Now for your homework,” he said, setting the box down on the floor and opening it up.

Inside was a receiver for the exact pulse rifle we had been using since the previous week, though there were a whole host of additional parts inside. There was everything from barrels to hand grips to pistol grips and buttstocks, as well as other accessories like laser sights and optics.

“A box identical to this one has been delivered to each of your rooms, along with a list of rules you must follow. Your job is to build a pulse rifle that best fits you. Tomorrow, you will do three runs with the stock pulse rifle you have been using for the past few days, and then three more with your new pulse rifle. You can come back to the range as many times as you want to perfect things, but the cutoff for modification and testing is noon tomorrow. You will be expected to turn in each of your pulse rifles before that cutoff. Got it?”

“Got it!” we all said.

“Alright, dismissed. See you all tomorrow.”

Mason practically ran to his quarters, and when we got there there was only one box in the room that he and Ben were sharing.

“Hey, stop that and go take a shower. I’m not sharing a room with someone stinking like that!” Ben said.

I laughed as I opened my door, scooping up Vixa and giving her some kisses before setting her down on the bed and then going back for the box. I set it at the foot of my bed and then headed to take a shower, making sure to activate Precognition as I walked.

I had made sure to use Precognition over the last few days as much as I possibly could, which had done the job of pushing back her next growth by thirty-one hours, the last time I’d checked. We still had about a week to go before we arrived in the Mezotis system, so there was more than enough time to get to the seventy-two hour mark. Precognition had also increased by a couple ranks as well, but was getting harder and harder to level, since the amount of time it needed to be active doubled with each use.

Once I was done cleaning off all the sweat from hours of workout out and practicing, I dried myself off and got dressed. Walking over to the crate, I opened it up. In the top was a small tablet, detailing the rules we had to abide by.

There honestly weren’t that many, and the ones listed were basically size restrictions. The pulse rifle we needed to build couldn’t be longer than thirty-six inches or shorter than twenty-four inches, and needed to weigh between four and six pounds. Once I read over them, I saw a button at the bottom that said ‘Build’.

Clicking on it, I was brought to a new screen that had the receiver of the rifle in the center, with a number of drop down menus at the top. Tapping on ‘Barrel’, I selected one and dragged it down to the gun. Off to the side it had the length and weight listed, so it seemed like I would be able to fiddle around with different parts and setups, before I even put one together, physically.

When I built something that looked promising on the tablet, I then took the components out of the chest and lay them down on my bed. I had taken apart and put together the stock pulse rifle so many times that I could probably do it in my sleep, and this wasn’t any more difficult, really.

There were only two parts that I didn’t look at virtually, one of which being the pistol grips, because I wanted to see how each of them felt in my hand. Picking them up one at a time, I closed my hand around them as I would when I was holding a rifle. Three of them proved too small for my hands, while another was just incredibly uncomfortable. That left one that felt pretty good, but it definitely wouldn’t be my first choice if there were more options.

Attaching it to the receiver, I moved onto the buttstock next. I wasn’t a fan of the stock buttstock, so I tried them one at a time, seeing which one felt the best when I put it up against my shoulder. There was very little recoil with pulse rifles, but having a buttstock pushed up against my shoulder would absolutely increase my accuracy.

I tossed one of the three away almost right away. It did not feel good and was also quite short. With it, my right hand would almost be right up against my chest. It was a toss-up between the remaining two. They were both quite light, being mostly hollow, and while both were much longer than the one I tossed, one was a little bit shorter than the other. I couldn’t choose between them without building the rest of the rifle, so I moved on, planning to revisit it later.

Next up was the eighteen inch barrel. There were a number of barrels, ranging from fourteen inches to twenty-two inches. The only differences between them, really, was how much they weighed and the very marginal accuracy difference. The shorter barrel had worse accuracy, while the longer barrel had the best. The eighteen inch barrel would be in the middle of the pack, and with it there would be no possibility of my rifle being either too short or too long. I just had to screw it in and then move on.

The hand grip was where things started to get fun. There were a total of eight hand grips, though not all of them would fit with the barrel I had chosen. I grabbed the one I had selected virtually and attached it to the gun, but didn’t stop there. There was both a bottom rail and a top rail on the handguard itself, which allowed me to add a foregrip.

A foregrip is a forward vertical grip that allows for greater control. If I was working on a conventional firearm used on Earth, a foregrip would play a big part in helping manage the recoil. You could absolutely go without a foregrip, but if you were on a range you would find that your bullet spread would be a little bit wider than it would be if you were using a foregrip.

Like I had with the pistol grips, I picked up each of the seven foregrips and checked how they felt in my hand. This would be harder to nail down in the handgrip, however, because I would need to actually use the weapon to determine which one was best for me. I attached the one that felt the best in my hand, but would probably test the rest over the remainder of the day.

Since everything else was mostly done, I attached the longer buttstock but checked the virtual program to see how the finished rifle would weigh. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it would only weigh four-point-two pounds once I had the optic attached, so I went ahead and installed the buttstock before grabbing the optic to finish everything off. For this, I was just going for a two times scope. It wouldn’t be anything insane but would allow me to use the rifle in both short range and medium range.

There weren’t any power cells included, so I guess they didn’t want us carrying powered weapons around the ship. There was also a difference between a regular power cell and a training power cell, so that could have been a factor as well. With nothing else to add to the rifle, I headed down to the shooting range to see how it performed.

I got a laugh as I walked by the course which had what looked like yellow police tape blocking it as well as a sign that said ‘KEEP OUT’ in big blocky letters. Below it, in smaller text was ‘THAT MEANS YOU, MASON!’.

I heard weapons fire before I even opened up the door to the firing range, so I knew that Mason was already in there. He stopped firing and looked over when he saw the door open, quickly pulling out the power cell and placing both down in front of him before walking over.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be done so quickly,” he said.

I nodded, giving him the side profile of my rifle, allowing him to pick it up.

“Not bad,” he said, looking it over. Turning towards the range, he held it up and aimed down the sight, seeing how it felt. “Comfortable too.”

He handed it back and then led me over to his own rifle. Picking it up, he handed it to me. I set mine down so I could accept it, and began looking it over. He went a lot more in-depth than I did, selecting what looked like the twenty-two inch barrel and the shortest of the buttstocks, likely to keep it under the thirty-six inch limit.

The foregrip and the sight is where the two of us differed greatly. Or sights, I should say. He had two of them mounted onto his weapon. The first was a variable two to six times zoom scope, and there was a red dot further up. It was a canted sight for when he was engaging targets in close range . To use it, he would rotate the entirety of the gun about thirty degrees counter-clockwise and then aim down it. To make it easier, he also had a canted foregrip which was at a forty-five degree angle, angled towards his left.

Putting the weapon up to my shoulder, I looked down the scope for a moment and moved the gun from target to target, before switching to the canted sight and doing the same thing. When I was done, I handed it back to him.

“I kinda like it. Well, everything except for the buttstock. That one is kinda crappy.”

“Heavy too, but it was the only way that everything would be within the limits. It’s just over thirty-five inches and just below six pounds. I’m glad it doesn’t include the power cell, because that would put me way over.”

I nodded. The power cells weighed nearly three pounds, but they could keep the rifle powered for hundreds of full-power shots. It didn’t mean that we could fire on full auto until it ran out of power, because that would absolutely melt the barrel, but we could sustain fire for a very long time.

Probably the best part about energy weapons, or the part I liked the best, is that they aren’t a particularly loud weapon. You can definitely hear them from a short distance away, but in-doors they aren’t loud enough to require ear protection like conventional firearms are. I grabbed one of the practice power cells that was charging in a special dock and then aimed downrange.

The targets we were shooting at weren’t paper targets, they were actually specially designed panels that work when you’re firing practice rounds. With a regular power cell the energy pulses would go right through, but the pulses fired when you have a practice power cell installed are absorbed and used to partially recharge other power cells.

The power setting on the side didn’t matter when a practice power cell was installed, so I let it alone and set it to semi-automatic, so I could get a feel for it. It wasn’t a very wide firing range, only having three lanes, but it was at least long enough for me to get some mid-range shots and see how it performed.

When I was ready, I rapidly moved from target to target, firing off two shots as I moved to each one. After doing that three times, I looked down at the counter and brought up the images of the three targets. My shots were dead on, on all three targets, so I continued practicing, just getting a feel for it.

Going from a rested state to looking down the sights was much quicker than it was with the stock pulse rifle. Initially I wasn’t sure if that was because it was lighter or the fact that the buttstock was longer so it always rested in the crook of my arm. The more I thought about it the more I was sure that it was the latter. Both Mason and I can lift well over one thousand pounds now, so going from around seven pounds to nine pounds was nothing to either of us.

While I liked the weapon, I wasn’t ready to stop so soon. There was still plenty of testing to be done. Before that though, I flipped the fire mode from semi-automatic to fully-automatic and let it rip.