บท 4: Hacking And Ship Class

Thankfully, I found the SC tucked away beside the pilot's seat which takes the form of a wristband that you can wear. When activated, a holographic screen would be projected that I can interact with by touch.

I tried to explore the functions of the SC a little and found that aside from the usual game menu settings that were missing, pretty much all the other functions were still there.

Good enough for me.

I strapped it to my wrist and went back to the pirate ship, plugging the device into their terminal to download their map data.

Then I realised that I actually needed to hack into their systems and disable their security to access that data.

Oh shit… If this means I need to know programming, I'm fucked.

But it seems like luck was still smiling down on me as I realised the screen on my Codex has changed to resemble the hacking minigame that I was familiar with in the game.

On the screen were several words and numbers scattered across the screen and the required word and number was displayed at the very top. To clear the minigame, I just needed to search for the word and number within the mess and I will be able to unlock it.

[Data Download Successful]

The SC chirped, prompting me to unplug the cable from the pirate ship's terminal.

Didn't even take me a minute. Easy~

I then opened up the map display and a star system was projected up into the air in front of me.

It seems like the pirates only have a map of the local system which shows a single star with four planets orbiting around it.

All four planets seemed to be uninhabitable but there was a station orbiting the second planet from the star with a note that read 'Keyes Orbital Mining Station.

Near the fourth planet was an asteroid field and there was a similar marking there that read 'Home Base'. I'm guessing that must be the pirate hideout.

Of course, there's no way I'm going to assault it myself, but this information might be useful later so I just kept a note of it for now.

Currently, I'm more interested in the location labelled Keyes Orbital Mining Station.

An Orbital Mining Station meant there were people and people that aren't pirates is a source of information for me to get my bearings. Perhaps I can find a more complete map that would tell me if I was still in the game's universe since I don't remember such a station being in the game.

This only reinforces the possibility that I'm most likely not in the game but another universe instead.

Well, no use speculating right now so might as well just head towards the station first.

I tapped on my SC and linked the controls of the pirate ship's with my own ship, effectively making it into a single 'ship' as long as it was tethered to mine.

This was one of the ways that you could transport a ship to another location which is especially used in cases where one of the ships has broken down and needed towing. Though of course, this is used in the cases of small sized ships like the current ones.

Although for me, I mostly use this mechanic to tow disabled enemy ships back to a station to sell it for a quick profit.

And yes, that was what I was intending to do right now with this pirate ship.

Since I seemed to have been dropped here without money as well, this should be hopefully a convenient solution to my monetary problems.

I'm not sure if this place follows the same classification but in the game, the ships are grouped according to sizes starting from A Class all the way to F Class with A Class being the smallest.

There's more sub-classification in between like A1, A2 or A3 Classes if you wanted to be more specific, but generally these classes denote how much space the ship requires to land.

My current ship is actually a B Class Heavy Fighter and the pirate ship should also be a B Class though I wasn't sure on what type of ship it was.

I sat down at my cockpit and made use of the new map data I got from the pirates to set a course for the habitat station.

The engines for the ships powered up before it propelled me towards the direction of the station, the stars turning into streaks of light around me.

I waited until we reached the required speed before engaging the engines to boost our speed to sub-light speeds. But even at this speed, it will still take us an hour to reach there.

That was fine since it gave me time to clean up the dead bodies while also looting the pirate ship clean.

I kept the bodies in one of the rooms just in case they had a bounty since I figured that I would need to get the security at the station to check them and pay me if there was any, which was unlike the game where you get the bounty immediately after killing the target.

As for the rest of the ship… I found food inside their kitchen area but… Well… I guess there's no way to say it except for the food tasting bland.

It feels like the food was just there for sustenance and not for taste, or maybe it was just a matter of my taste buds being screwed while in space or something, I dunno.

Putting that aside, I tried to find if there was any money on board and I was surprised to see that they were using the same currency as the game was.

I picked up a rectangular shaped device that looked like one of those old school thumb drives you might find in my world in the past. It even has one of those ports sticking out that you can use to plug it into something.

This was a Credit Chip, which basically also functions like a thumb drive but it stores money inside it.

I don't really know the in-game reason as to why these Credit Chips are used by everyone but yourself since you would store all your money digitally on your SC. There was no reason for me to question if before after all…

Maybe I might go and look up the history behind this when I get the chance, especially when I'm not sure if the Spacer Codex is something unique to me which might raise questions in the future.

I plugged the Credit Chip into my SC and then tapped on the screen to transfer the credits from the chip into my SC itself.

Seeing that it worked, I continued to search for more Credit Chips that might have been left around the ship and plugged them into my SC to take all the credits in them.

I also decided to keep the empty Credit Chips, since I'm not that sure what other use they have aside from storing the credits. But better to have a few of them in case I need them than not have them.

After searching through the entire ship, I had collected a whopping total of two thousand credits!

…

Which is dirt poor actually, especially when you have a ship to maintain and resupply… I should be able to at least refuel and rearm my ship but I'm pretty sure that would cost all of the money I have just to do that.

Ugh, whatever… If I'm able to sell off this pirate ship, I could at least get some money off its sale which should cover the expenses.

Now that I've looted the room, I was left with one place I have yet to check… Their cargo storage.

I missed it the first time since the entrance was a hatch half hidden under a pile of discarded clothes in one corner of the dining room. I only spotted it by accident when I tripped over the clothes pile and kicked at it in irritation to reveal the hatch.

Armed with my blaster and a rifle once more, I prepared to open the hatch that led to the cargo storage in case there were more pirates hidden there.

I yanked open the hatch and peeked over the edge with my blaster at the ready, only to see a rather clean room below that had several crates and boxes pushed to the corners of the room.

Breathing out a sigh when I saw the room had no other signs of life, I descended the ladder to check what was stored down here.

The boxes weren't locked so it was a simple thing of just opening them up to see what was stored in them.

A few backup energy cells for the engines… Some extra ammunition for guns… A crate of food… Meh.

These might sell for a couple hundred credits at least I guess, which was better than nothing considering my current financial situation.

I was hoping that being pirates, they might have already robbed someone and had some valuable loot stored here but my luck wasn't that good it seems.

I relocated some of the food, ammunition and energy cells to my ship for storage while intending to sell the rest.

Now that everything was prepared, there was nothing left for me to do except to wait until my ship arrived at the mining station.

That gave me the time to check out the thing that saved my life.

I held up the rectangular box to the light, which I now know for sure was some kind of personal shield device.

This wasn't something present in the game, which I suppose wasn't really needed since the game had health bars and you could take a rocket launcher to the face as long as you had enough health to tank it.

But here… A well placed bullet in between the eyes is enough to kill you. You don't have health bars to tank damage here which is why there's personal shield devices here I guess.

I'm also guessing these are quite expensive since only one guy out of the five pirates had this and I'm willing to bet he was the leader too. Or maybe since they were pirates, they don't have access to the conventional market to get these kinds of things and he stole it off from someone? Who knows?

The shield managed to withstand about half of a full mag fired from a ballistic assault rifle, which I suppose was not that bad but it also meant you can't just stand there and tank hits all day.

Now I wonder if it protects you against melee attacks? Does a punch get through the shields or does it also stop the punch from hitting you?

Well, I'm not going to punch myself to find out either way… I'll just search it up later if I remember to do so.

I was just in the midst of attaching the shield device back on my belt when the console in front of me started beeping, signalling our imminent arrival at the orbital mining station.

Wait… Are they even open to having visitors? Do I even have identification on me?

Crap…

Perhaps I should start a ship's log so that I can record down things that happened to appear more legitimate… Is it too late now? Fuck it, let's just do it.

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Draekai

Captain's Log:

Had to stop to fix some problems with the ship but encountered some pirates. Managed to get the jump on them and take over their ship. Unfortunately it seems like all my map data is lost so I'll have to rely on the pirates' map data. Heading towards Keyes Orbital Mining Station.

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