Condition Evolution 3: A LitRPG / Gamelit Adventure by Kevin Sinclair (early readers .TXT) 📗

Fystr swords. I levitated just in front of them as I always did, ricocheting the harmless training-lasers.

I told Havok not to help me with the lasers, I wanted to develop the skills myself. If anything ever happened to Havok and I didn’t have his abilities for some reason, I’d have to be able to defend myself. With an increased Mental Clarity, I did well. Although it was astronomically more tiring wielding the heavy axe with my own power, and I had no doubt my strength went up in those first few days. Obviously, with Havok’s muscle repair skills, those changes happened quickly.

We made sure all the other teams followed a similar drill to ours. After the first full week, when we felt like we were all working well together, we concentrated more on mass battle tactics. Gus was intrinsic here, as the main dilemma we had was to figure out how to use the Veiletians’ abilities without killing them. His solution was to devise a number of signals for set events that he would deliver.

By the time we arrived at the supply station, I was feeling rather proud of the work we had been doing. Watching the pure carnage each team could create was mind-blowing, and I hoped it would be enough to stand up to most situations. On land, anyway. In a space battle, maybe not so much. We could get by I supposed, but generally speaking, space warfare wasn't one of the Uprising's strong points.

C18

Supply and Demand

We arrived safely at the supply station, a day out from the planet we needed to reach in the Perseus system.

We were not in any danger: no one had threatened us or approached us in the past two weeks. We had come a hell of a long way across the galaxy, and I hoped that would be enough to throw off any pursuit. Elyek had changed the Uprising’s name and registration to some random selection of numbers and letters, and I was actually glad they hadn’t chosen a proper name – this way we weren’t really losing the Uprising’s identity, but the change meant we wouldn’t alert the Empire’s tracking systems. It would be interesting to see whether we attracted any unwanted attention before turning up at this big battle we’d been hired to fight in.

The biggest decision, as always, was whether to take all three ships down to the surface. Taking them all down would make loading much easier, but it was potentially risky. After much deliberation, we decided to keep a ship in orbit to provide cover and keep a lookout for incoming hostiles. Rufus volunteered to keep the Seshat in orbit, and he would swap places with the Uprising once we had loaded up. We hadn’t had any trouble since Arus, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Obviously, in hindsight, I made a huge shit-stain of a mistake. You see, it’s overlooking the finer details of any plan that will fuck you over. In this instance, it all began unraveling when I received a call from the Seshat.

“Shaun! There are two Fystr Hunter ships on our scanners!” Rufus told me.

“What?” I replied calmly, while my mind processed the information.

“Two Fystr Hunter ships, they’re around ten minutes out!” he continued to yell at his comm.

“Ten fucking minutes Rufus? How did they get that close before you identified them?” I practically screamed down the comm.

I was in the captain’s office, with the entire alpha team looking at me in horror. “Tell Astrid,” I mouthed to Ember, and she raised her comm, nodding.

“They jumped in close, and they’re moving fast,” Rufus replied at the same time.

“There’s no way we’ll make it into orbit in time, Rufus. Give me a sec,” I said, then turned to talk to the others. I know we can’t get up in time, so what do we do?”

“They won’t be able to attack from orbit, the supply station’s defenses will be too strong, and it would be an act of war on the Galactic Empire,” Elyek offered.

“That’s good to know Elyek, so they’d have to land and face us, which suits our strengths really. What about the Seshat?” I asked.

“Two Hunter ships will tear them apart,” Gus offered in his grumpy deadpan way. “They need to run, or get their asses down here.”

“Thanks, Gus. And they’re not fucking running, were going to need them down here,” I said, then jumped back on the comm. “Rufus, you’re going to need to get yourselves down here now.”

“A… are you sure that’s wise, Shaun?”

“Am I sure I don’t want to get the Seshat blown up? Or am I sure I want our full army in one place to deal with the threat, Rufus? Get your ass down here quick.”

“Okay Shaun, we’re coming down. I was just wondering if we had better options.”

“If we had more than eight fucking minutes, you could wonder all you like. See you soon Rufus,” I snapped, then closed the call. “Ok, where are we at?”

It was Gus who responded. “Astrid is rallying her crew, as are we. I’ve told everyone to line up into race at the front of the ships, and I’ve ordered the Veiletians to keep out of sight until after the first volley. Then they’re to stay low and take out people when it’s safe to do so.”

We made our way out to the docking bays, just in time to see the Seshat landing. “Gus, can you relay everything to Rufus?”

“Sure thing, Captain, I’ll get right on it,” he said, bringing the comm to his mouth.

Everyone was scrabbling from around the docking bay, leaving whatever supplies they were carrying. The station security guards started to look a bit on edge. Poor fuckers had no clue that hell was about to descend on them. Everything was a little chaotic, with the Seshat’s crew pouring down the loading ramp to join us.

The tension was vibrating in the air of that cold metal supply hanger, and it only got worse