Universe Online - Enter the Game: Complete Edition (13 page)

I pop open its rear airlock manually and climb in, ready to check out the rest of the insides.

The bottom floor of the tug is basically the living area.  A bunk bed, washing closet, even a small kitchen with related storage.  Well, it’s more like a galley you'd find on a small warship or the like, but it works.  It even has several holo-monitors and a terminal connected to the on board computer.

With the size of the various tanks and the storage compartment, which is accessible from both the inside and the outside, it’s cramped but definitely livable.  There's also a hatch in the ceiling near the back, close to the airlock with a step ladder leading up.  I head up there and find the space to be even more cramped.

All that's on the top though is the cockpit and mining controls.  The rest of the space is taken up by the engines and storage.  Eight tons of compressed storage.  Also the ship computer.  Sadly, this one was taken apart, either for parts or for repair.

But I do start up the control console in the cockpit, and am quite happy to say that it does have power, and the readouts still work on the monitor.  Hm.  No fuel, but its battery is 50% charged.  Oooh!  It seems that the tug can operate solely on battery power.  Damn, it must be another Bub.

I turn it off and make my way back down to the first floor, and start looting through the storage there.  Hm.  A couple of frozen bottles of water, more ration packs, air tanks.  Even a space suit probably used by the old crew.  An E-Cred stick and a data pad.

I grab everything, and as soon as the credit stick is in my inventory it registers.  500 EC.  Nice.  Now I actually have some money on hand.

The data pad really catches my interest though.  In my hand, it connects to my suits power and flickers on.

I read the message, and blink away the sudden moisture that's welled up in my eyes.  The message was never sent, still loaded into the out-going data queue.  But it is dated.  I have to pull up my HUD to check the current date.

GDY 5450.

Galactic Date Year 5450.

The message in the data pad was at GDY 4909.  Over five hundred years ago.

Five hundred years ago this single message was left behind by a Tug driver who never got to send it or receive a reply.  It’s likely that the fighting broke out almost as soon as he tried to send it.

And like everyone else on the station, he died without even being able to send word to his love.

It’s a rather sad tale.

*DING*

To say that I'm surprised at the messages that pop up before my eyes would be a lie.  I expected something like it ever since I got done reading the message left behind.

So the station was being geared up for a fight with the Drex.

I'm not sure if saying that it was foolish or not is right.  It’s obvious that the station lost the fight, and yet it’s still mostly intact and the Drex were never able to raid it.

Maybe the station got reinforcements but was still forced to be abandoned?

I simply have no way to know right now.

Well, no matter.  I turn off the pad and store it in my inventory, which has a special baggage compartment for 'Data Materials', including Data Pads, Data Crystals and other such things that I don't have access to right now.  It basically allows me to read anything stored there through my HUD.  It also doesn't have a weight limit.

Getting back to business, I do another quick search through the Tug before exiting back out through the airlock, and head to the other one.

The second Tug looks to be in much better condition than the first one, and with all of its parts intact.  There are still signs of hasty maintenance though, so it was likely just finished up before everything went to hell in the Station.

I do a quick check of its exterior before going through the airlock manually. What I find does surprise me though.

There's atmosphere here, at a pressure high enough to breath in.

Or rather, there's air, but no oxygen.  It’s all CO2 and other mixed gases.

It seems that the air wasn't pumped down before the Tug was powered down, so it maintained its pressure over time.  It just wasn't breathable at the moment.

But still, free air!  Heh.  I won't have to worry about finding enough to fill it up to use it.

Just like the other Tug, the bottom floor of this one is used as a living space, while the upper floor has the equipment and controls and computer.  I make sure to do another search of the living area, but I don't find any personal belongings.  Only more rations, water and two space suits.  I stuff all of it into my inventory before going up.

Ah!  Pristine!  A computer that actually still works!  Hehehe.

I activate the console and check the fuel tanks and other readouts, and am happy to note that there's about half a tank of fuel.  Nice.  But the battery is almost dead.  Damn.  But there's still enough power to turn on the ship's computer, and I do so.

Hm.  Login information?  Damn.

It’s asking for user identification.  I don't have anything like that though.  I do a quick combination of Protis and Marish, but it comes up as no good.

Fuck.  I'm going to have to hack it.  Which is actually something I haven't done before.  Hm.  I hesitate for a moment, and then pull up my Aspect Web and rearrange the Aspects connected to the Software Aptitude.  I add in several of the boosting Aspects and the the efficiency/maximization Aspects, as well as the Fast Aspect.

Part of it comes out looking something like this: Reading ← Efficiency ← Fast ← Processing ← Fast ← Understanding ← Learning ← Capacity ← Efficiency ← Boost Aspects.

I click them into place with the Reading and Writing Aspects hooked up to the Software Aptitude, along with another two links for Understanding and Learning Aspects linked directly as well.  I'm forced to expand the Software Aptitude to Size 4 on the Innate Control Aptitude, but it should work just like that for now.

Being able to learn and understand what you're doing is part of growing, after all.  Simply going through the motions is wasted effort.

I step back up to the computer terminal and bring it back up.

With my boosted Software Aptitude, I quickly bring up the console menu and get to work.  Bypassing the login screen turns out to be fairly easy, but getting around the embedded security measures beneath it is a much harder challenge.  Hard, but not impossible.

Just rather time consuming.  And I'm racing against the clock after the computer detected my intrusion.

I am by no means a legit hacker, so I don't have any countermeasures against the computer's security traces or its shut-out programs.  But I can not lose this chance!

I basically end up using brute force and my surprisingly fast learning-as-I-go ability to redirect the security attacks away and then bottle the security programs up before finding a way to shut them down.

It takes an hour, with me standing there doing nothing else but staring at the scrolling code going by on the holo-monitor before BAM!  It is done.  The computer restarts, and then boots up without requesting a login!

Yes!

Too bad I'm in a place where I cannot wipe my brow.  I must have been sweating buckets while doing this, and the salt stings my eyes with every drop of sweat that drips below my eyebrows.  Ugh.  Annoying.

I shake my head inside the helmet to do away with it, and grin to myself as I pull up the menu.  Data Logs, Orders, Maintenance Schedule, and more flash up in front of me.

*DING*

Oh, another one!  I blink my eyes in surprise, then pull up the information on the Hacking Aptitude.  It’s a tier 1 Aptitude, but it’s already level 5!  Holy shit.

I also gained Intellect and three new Aspects from that, too.  Hm.  That's a nifty thing to keep in mind.  If I do something and succeed, then the system converts the effort into bonuses and boosts the starting gains.  I probably only got level 4 in Hacking, but its level went up by one from my racial trait.

It’s still nice, and makes me happy that I did it.

Hm.  The Learning Aptitude and all the Learning and Understanding Aspects I had assigned to it seemed to have helped in that regard, too.

But I go ahead and add it under the Software Aptitude, which I shrink back down and then re-connect.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the taken slots used to connect the higher Aptitudes don't disappear.  You add their size total taken up to the size of the Aptitude below and allow an equal number of connections.  So the new Software slots are still there, along with the two Hacking slots.  And the two slots from Innate Control, which I haven't done anything with.  None of my current Aspects connect to the Innate Control Aptitude anyway.

Probably because it’s a Special class Aptitude.

It’s only after checking all of that do I realize that my Psi was completely empty, and my stamina was almost gone too!  What?!

No wonder I'm sweating up a storm and my brain feels sluggish.

I sit down right there in front of the computer on the floor and wait for them to regenerate.  Woo...  Hacking took a serious toll on my Psi, even though I didn't realize it.  That's probably why I got the Concentration Aspect.  I didn't even notice the icons in my HUD, I was so engrossed in the attempt.

I sip a bit of water and eat another meal to fill up my meters and wait about ten minutes for everything to finish up.  Only when my mind finally clears do I realize that I'd also leveled up.  I totally missed it!