The Stars Have Eyes - Chapter 12: Equity

Chapter 12: Equity

Having ended their last match earlier than expected, team Triple Misfire found themselves with a good deal of free time on their hands. They decided to spend that half hour or so watching the other teams duke it out from the main lobby. However, they weren’t doing that for fun. They were in the top sixteen of mega-city Dave-156 now, and could no longer afford to go into matches blind and with zero awareness of their opponent. That first round against Galactic Murder Power proved that such ignorance could be a severe handicap.

This was, of course, common sense when dealing with any sort of competition, but Maggie, Joe, and his friends were all quite new to the tournament scene. They had a lot to learn, but that wouldn’t stop them from giving it their all. If anything, that only served to motivate a particular member even more. That was why they were spending the rare reprieve from nearly back-to-back matches studying their next potential opponents. It was the diligent and responsible thing to do, though none of them particularly liked what they saw.

Triple Misfire’s next opponent turned out to be Quantum Crusaders, and those guys were the real deal. They were an up and coming professional Un-Yo-Bee team, which showed in their performance. They were organized, efficient, and clearly outside of the amateurs’ league. They had serious skills and finely calibrated teamwork that could have obliterated their opponents even quicker than Triple Misfire had won their last match. However, Quantum Crusaders had opted for a safe and agonizing approach that mercilessly cornered and ground their opponents into dust without giving them a single opportunity to turn things around. As one might expect from a bunch of pros, they took no chances.

Joe’s group were quite disheartened at the prospect of facing those guys. Quantum Crusaders were so far out of their league it wasn’t even funny. They might have stood a fair chance if all of them were graceful crack-shots like Maggie, but that obviously wasn’t the case. Their odds of making it into the top eight seemed abysmal. Even Joe grasped the apparent hopelessness of their situation, though he didn’t seem at all bothered by it.

“Oh well, what can you do?” he shrugged. “Bit of bad luck having to face blokes like those already.”

“Tell me about it, mate. The pros really should just have their own tourney, y’know?” Benny grumbled.

“They do. It’s called Blastopia, and we’re in it,” Huey bluntly stated.

“… Right.”

They all knew what they were signing up for, that was why they aimed for the top eight to begin with. In a manner of speaking, this upcoming match might as well have been their championship finals.

“Arrg! Hope ye scallywags are willin’ to go out fightin’!” Cullen was immersed in his chronologically confused pirate persona. “I ain’t part a’ no crew of lily-livered cowards!”

“Damn right!” Huey nodded vigorously. “We can give them a black eye, at least!”

“In what way would presenting them with an ocular organ benefit us?”

Whatever tension had been building up was instantly shattered by Maggie’s painfully honest and somewhat worrying question.

“Turn of phrase, Maggie,” Joe jumped in as per usual. “Means we won’t give up without a fight.”

“I comprehend. I also look forward to partaking in this curious pastime.”

“What pastime would that be, Mags?” Benny asked with a bemused smirk.

“Humanity’s tendency to struggle relentlessly regardless of the futility of their actions.”

“O-oh…”

Those words did little to lift the crew’s spirits, to say the least.

“What she means is she’s going to give this match her all, and so should we,” Joe attempted to salvage the statement. “No half-assing allowed, right Maggie?”

“Indeed,” the girl nodded. “I do not subscribe to the concept of ‘half-assing.’ If an endeavor is worth pursuing, apply the whole ass. If it is not, use no ass.”

“Ha! Noice,” Cullen chortled, breaking character.

“That… has no right to make as much sense as it does,” Huey just shook his head.

“To be fair, I don’t think Mags has ever been wrong about anything,” Benny shrugged.

It wasn’t what one would consider a traditional pep talk, but her words certainly served to motivate the others. It wasn’t as if they believed they’d win all of a sudden. The most they could do was put forth their utmost effort and go out with style. After all, they were ultimately playing a game, which had the unique trait of making even losses enjoyable. In short, the team had silently changed their objective from ‘win the match’ to ‘let’s have some fun,’ which had been the underlying purpose of this whole endeavor to begin with.

And so, team Triple Misfire went into their first round against Quantum Crusaders raring to give those pros a run for their money. The virtual stage for this bout was a dense asteroid field full of randomly drifting mini-mountains. Visibility was poor, space was limited, and the heavy metals inside the rock interfered with the ships’ instruments. It was the sort of environment that made it difficult for players to locate the opposing team and made ambushes a very real threat, though the opposite was also true.

“Alright, ladies! Let’s see if we can’t catch those bastards with their pants down.”

Huey, as the team captain, started giving out orders as soon as the match had started.

“Benny, try and plot a course towards their starting position. Joe, Cullen, and I are gonna cover him. Mags, we’re counting on you to scout ahead and report back the instant you detect any of their ships. Not too far, though. Max five hundred meters.”

“Acknowledged. Commencing short-range scouting maneuvers.”

Roamers like Maggie were crucial in this sort of matchup. Usually her job was to harass the enemy’s flank and apply pressure on their support vessel while also fighting off the enemy roamer. That was still true to an extent, but her number one priority was to locate the enemy and direct her allies to an advantageous position from which to engage. Mobility and stealth were more important than firepower, which was why she wasn’t flying her usual ship.

The arrowhead shaped FR-501 ‘Scalewing’ had been shelved in favor of a R4-94 ‘Bumblebee.’ This craft had a short, thick, and rounded body that vaguely resembled its namesake. A total of twelve small boosters were evenly spread out across its hull, allowing for quick turns and omnidirectional movement. The downside of this engine setup was that its cruise speed was significantly lower than something like the Scalewing, although that didn’t matter in these narrow spaces.

Maggie had, as per usual, picked the perfect vessel to fit the situation. It was no simple task given the hundreds of available options. The choice was further complicated by the dozens of available armaments and modules that each ship could be outfitted with. Selecting the optimal setup from those seemingly endless possibilities was a trifling matter for a mind capable of counting atoms. Similarly, piloting an omnidirectional craft effectively was absolutely no challenge for Maggie even though it was widely considered a difficult skill to master.

Indeed, the way her Bumblebee darted between chunks of rock with ease and grace was a sight to behold. That was why the match’s broadcast was focused on her craft at that moment. These ‘hide and seek’ games could sometimes drag on for ten to fifteen minutes before the first shot was fired, so the organizers were using her masterful piloting as filler entertainment. They even showed a feed of her virtual self inside the cockpit, which was its own spectacle. There was something immensely satisfying about the way she rapidly adjusted levers, flicked switches, and pressed buttons in order to make her vessel dance to her tune.

Each player on the enemy team also received similar treatment, of course. Quantum Crusaders were hopeful professionals with their own following, so it was only natural that people would want to see them. That said, they were a bunch of dudes in logo-stamped flight suits and face-obscuring visors. The cute girl with the eldritch eye-adorned hair-tentacles was far more interesting and appealing from a purely visual standpoint. Therefore, at that moment in time, the majority of viewers following the match were focused on Maggie. She seemed to sense this, given how she occasionally glanced towards the virtual camera on her dashboard.

About eight tense minutes into the match, the girl’s focus instantly sharpened to a razor’s edge.

“Reporting possible engine trail emissions,” she informed her allies of her discovery.

“Roger,” Huey confirmed. “Going cold.”

With the enemy potentially in the vicinity, the entire team dropped their engine output to reduce the risk of detection. Except for Maggie, of course. She had replaced her ship’s force field emitter with an internal heat sink that would mask her ship’s energy signature even while it ran on full power. She assumed the enemy craft were doing something similar, given how her onboard computer failed to detect any traces of heat. With the metal-rich asteroids messing up radar systems, it meant she had to rely on visual contact in near total darkness. Thankfully she was the Observer, so it took a lot more than the absence of light to hinder her eyesight. Alternatively she could have used her techno-wizardry – as Joe called it – to instantly pinpoint the enemy team right at the start. However, such blatantly unfair methods were against the rules and, more importantly, would ruin her fun.

Yet despite her intention to play as fair as possible, Maggie couldn’t help but react with superhuman speed when her console blared with an incoming projectiles warning. She coaxed her ship into an abrupt ninety degree turn so that it was facing the two inbound missiles head-on. Her front-mounted high-intensity lasers flashed with a blinding red color as they detonated the munitions scant seconds before they made impact. The explosion itself was silent, but the shrapnel bouncing off of the unshielded hull of her Bumblebee made audible scraping and clanging noises.

“Enemy contact,” she calmly reported. “Two fighter-class roamers at my position.”

“Two?!” Huey shouted despite himself. “Blast! They got us!”

Indeed, given the importance of the role, Quantum Crusaders had opted to deploy an extra scout. Triple Misfire considered doing that as well, but frankly, their members weren’t flexible enough to reshuffle their team on the fly like that. The pros, on the other hand, had clearly trained to be at least competent in every position. As for their goal, they were clearly aiming to eliminate the enemy roamer in order to give themselves an early lead. They had even anticipated that their target would have gone for a heat sink over a shield emitter, and had equipped their craft accordingly.

“Hold on, Mags! We’re on our way!”

Maggie was therefore forced to dodge a volley of incoming vulcan cannon fire that would shred right through her armored hull. Her Bumblebee abruptly jetted left, avoiding the deluge of high-caliber munitions that chewed up the boulder next to her. Her opponents immediately gave chase, but their R4-31 ‘Hornet’ model spacecrafts had a conventional engine setup that couldn’t keep up with her omnidirectional mobility. She was difficult to pin down, too. The way that clunky-looking thing bobbed and weaved through their fire was something right out of a ridiculous action movie.

The Bumblebee made a run for it and momentarily lost its pursuers, but in doing so stumbled right into a trap. The two roamers’ hail of bullets failed to so much as scratch Maggie’s ship, but at the same time guided her right into a corridor of rock that had been generously decorated with automated turrets. She instantly deduced they had been placed there by the enemy support vessel, which meant that it had most likely sacrificed some other core function in favor of deployable weaponry. She reported this to her teammates while her ship’s lasers swept through and destroyed most of the guns before they had the chance to open fire. The few remaining sentries started peppering her hull, but their relatively small caliber and unguided aim were of no real concern.

“Wait… There!” Huey yelled through the comms. “Enemy sighted! Heading five-oh-seven! All ships – engage! Mags, keep those two busy while we handle these three!”

“But, uh, feel free to turn them into dust if you can,” Joe chimed in.

“Yeah, no need to wait up on our account,” Benny did the same.

“Give ‘em ‘ell, Mags!” Cullen cheered.

“Acknowledged. Commencing search and destroy.”

The crowd watching the dogfight exploded with excitement as the girl pulled back on both flight sticks with an exaggerated motion. Her ship blasted off upwards, the light of its engines drawing a perfect semi-circle as the craft positioned itself to take on the two inbound fighters. Within seconds she was back to dodging gunfire and missiles from the enemy Hornets, but this time around the Bumblebee was even faster. Since stealth was no longer a factor, Maggie had turned off her ship’s heat sink and diverted that power to engines and weapons.

Speaking of which, the girl figured it was about time to return fire. Her ship turned around without altering its course and unleashed its twin lasers on the closest enemy. The streams of energy connected, of course, but were deflected by its force field. The pilot tried to maneuver out of the way. The agility with which he navigated that tight space was superb considering his craft wasn’t suited to that sort of cramped environment, but it couldn’t hope to match Maggie’s. Her Bumblebee moved in a way that made it seem as if its rotation and its flight path were completely unrelated. It was surreal, like a turret gliding on an invisible rail. This allowed her lasers to keep burning through her target’s shields despite his best efforts, all while she evaded the other guy’s attempts at covering fire.

Thankfully for the Quantum Crusaders, Maggie’s ‘sting’ wasn’t able to breach the fighter’s shields before her twin lasers shut themselves off to prevent overheating. Figuring this was a chance to go on the offensive, the nearly-cooked fighter swung around and took aim with his front-mounted vulcan cannons. Or at least that had been his intent, but he had momentarily lost sight of his target. His teammate shouted a warning to look out below, but it was too little too late.

The Bumblebee’s bulbous behind barreled into the Hornet’s sleek underside. The latter’s shields were calibrated to deflect kinetic weapons rather than massive objects, and were thus unable to prevent the hull-on-hull collision. Maggie engaged her thrusters on full at the point of impact, pushing the two vessels apart with a burst of force. The ‘one-two punch’ was enough to send the Hornet spinning out of control. It slammed into the side of a nearby asteroid despite the pilot’s best efforts. This left the ship heavily battered and barely functional. One of its four primary engines was completely mangled, severely limiting its speed and mobility. Rather than finish off the crippled craft, Maggie spun around and engaged the other one. Her own ship had, of course, suffered a good deal of damage from that ramming maneuver. Its mobility was negatively impacted, but she was able to compensate for it with a bit of extra effort. She kept doing dizzying circles around the poor sap for several seconds while her lasers finished cooling off, at which point she started roasting him.

At that same time, the rest of Maggie’s team was engaging Quantum Crusaders’ remaining ships in a four-on-three fight. One had to hand it to the pros, they put up an intense fight even though they were outnumbered. However, their support vessel had to dump its cyberwarfare suite in order to bring those deployable sentries. This allowed Benny’s ship to hack into its onboard computers and trigger a power surge, which disabled its shields and engines for several precious seconds. Triple Misfire’s interceptors – namely Joe and Huey – made an aggressive push past the other two enemy ships and shot up the easy target. They focused on and annihilated its cargo hold, destroying its stockpile of supplies, drones, and other goodies.

This left Quantum Crusaders in a precarious position. One of their roamers was crippled, the second one was hopelessly outmatched against Maggie, and their support vessel had been reduced to a glorified space truck. Under the circumstances, they decided to just bite the bullet and forfeit the round in the interest of saving time and conserving their energy. They would also need to revise their strategy. The team had their coach scout out the competition in their stead while they were fighting their last match, and the man had identified Maggie as the most troublesome member of Triple Misfire. They had therefore attempted to corner and eliminate her in order to secure victory.

Needless to say, this plan had backfired immensely. Maggie hadn’t gotten a chance to display her incredible piloting skills yet, so Quantum Crusaders had underestimated her. They had similarly misjudged the rest of the girl’s teammates. Though they looked like pushovers when compared to Mags, Joe and the gang were actually quite proficient at Un-Yo-Bee. They certainly weren’t at the pro level, but had enough of a solid foundation to not lose with a numerical advantage on their side. Their game sense was also on point, given how they were able to spot Quantum Crusaders’ main force without any help from their roamer. The pros therefore figured it was perhaps better to focus on them first and deal with the ace pilot last.

However, for better or for worse, they would never get the chance to test this theory out.

“Disqualified?!” Huey screamed at the top of his lungs. “What do you mean disqualified?!”

A Blastopia official had shown up in Triple Misfire’s staging area during the intermission between rounds, and the news he brought were most distressing.

“Exactly what it sounds like, Mr. Peterson,” the guy firmly stated.

“What for?!”

“Suspected use of performance-enhancing third party software and/or virtual pod modifications.”

The official didn’t say anything more, but the way he looked at Maggie made it clear what he meant. Her literally superhuman display of reflexes and piloting ability had led Blastopia organizers to believe she was using the stated methods to artificially bolster her skills. It was the virtual reality equivalent of doping, and obviously not allowed in a serious competitive environment.

“But that’s only suspected, not confirmed!” Huey argued. “You can’t boot us off for that!”

Indeed, the organizers weren’t a hundred percent certain of their accusation. The various tools and means they used for cheat detection had failed to pick up anything concrete regarding Maggie. That meant one of two things – that she was genuinely that ridiculous, or that she was using some hitherto unknown means of cheating. One of those was significantly more likely than the other. Not to mention that she was logged in as an anonymous guest of Joe Mulligan. That wasn’t against the rules of the tournament per se, but it definitely made her even more suspicious.

Therefore, Blastopia officials opted to err on the side of caution and put a stop to whatever was going on, though they had to make sure they did so without causing a ruckus.

“Look, Mr. Peterson. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. The easy way is you drop out of the competition of your own volition and we all keep this thing quiet. The hard way is we put the match on hold while we have police conduct an in-depth investigation into your team’s activities, backgrounds, and hardware. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling they’ll find something to get one or all of you in trouble.”

Huey stared daggers at the man while the other guys shared concerned looks. Their team captain wasn’t aware of Maggie’s ‘custom modifications’ to Joe’s pod, but the rest of them were. They knew full well that the girl completely abhorred things like lying and cheating, and that she would never engage in such activities. However, just like the official said, the authorities would definitely raise a fuss over that pod.

As for Huey, he just took one glance at his team’s unease and decided this wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Fine,” he relented. “We’ll forfeit the match.”

“Your cooperation is appreciated,” the official said dryly.

“Can we at least watch the rest of the tournament?”

“Of course.”

“And what about next year? Can we compete then?”

The man paused to think about that, then sighed before answering.

“Technically yes. Since your disqualification is unofficial, we are incapable of banning you from participating in future. Just be warned – we won’t be so lenient if something like this happens again.”

“That’s… fair, I suppose.”

“Now, are there any more questions before I leave?”

The man looked over the rest of the team and saw the chief suspect raising her arm.

“Yes, miss?”

He assumed she wanted to dispute the accusation and waste his time, but that wasn’t the case. Maggie could not do that in good conscience since she did end up going too far in the heat of the moment. The organizers’ concerns were entirely valid and she was completely at fault. She wasn’t about to openly admit it, either, mostly out of concern that it would get Joe in trouble. Some would argue her silence was a lie of omission, but the stranger had given her a certain ‘out’ in that regard.

“I wish to confirm the terms of this agreement,” she flatly stated. “We are to not divulge the reason for our withdrawal from the tournament. In exchange, you will not pursue any legal action against us.”

“That is the gist of it, yes.”

“The pact is thus sealed.”

There was a very brief moment where her virtual self flickered. The official was a bit surprised, but just assumed it was either a glitch with her avatar or something to do with whatever cheats she was using. The way she said something about a pact was also super weird. In any event, he maintained his professional demeanor and, after confirming there were no more questions, excused himself from the digital hangar.

“What a total prick!” Huey immediately cursed. “I know what this is really about! It’s ‘cuz we whooped the so-called pros so bad that they got scared they’d lose to a bunch of nobodies like us! So they called up their sponsor and got them to put pressure on the organizers! And here we are, getting buggered up the bum ‘cuz of megacorps playing favorites!”

He then launched into a long-winded tirade that rapidly evolved into a full-blown conspiracy theory. He did this a lot, especially on certain message boards. The rest of the gang were familiar with this side of Huey and knew not to take him seriously, but their personal involvement made it difficult to not agree with what he was saying. It was easier for them to pin the blame for their misfortune on some faceless corporations than to confront the uncomfortable reality that Mags might be involved in some shady stuff.

The ‘prime suspect’ ended up leaving the hangar altogether. There was a staggering amount of baseless accusations, wild assumptions, and logical fallacies spewing out of Huey’s mouth, and she was in no mood to deal with them. Maggie was already quite conflicted about the whole affair. On one hand, she had gotten her team disqualified and ruined their aspirations, however minor. On the other, it was highly unlikely that they’d win the best of five even if they’d been allowed to continue. Perhaps, she mused, things were better this way. Humans – Joe in particular – felt better about their misfortune if they perceived its source as something beyond their control.

These were the sorts of inconsequential thoughts her vast mind dwelled on as she entered the tournament’s main lobby. She almost immediately found herself swarmed by spectators that congratulated her on that victory and complimented her incredible piloting skills. She didn’t usually care for the opinion of strangers, but it felt nice receiving a bit of recognition. Then the news about her team dropping out due to ‘private reasons’ started circulating, and the onlookers started asking her about it. Maggie had undertaken the obligation of keeping the details to herself, so she was both unwilling and unable to elaborate.

At the very least the crowd didn’t seem to harbor any ill intent over the sudden forfeit. There might have been some viewers that suspected something shady was going on, much like the organizers had. If there were any such spectators, however, they were either not in the lobby or kept their opinion to themselves. For the most part, the crowd were just disappointed they didn’t get to see more of Maggie’s spectacular moves and went back to whatever they were doing after saying their piece. A few even asked for autographs, but were instantly shot down. In their ignorance, they were unaware of the significance such an act held for a cosmic being from beyond the veil. Maggie was fine with them taking some selfies with her virtual avatar, though.

Once things began to calm down, the girl’s eyes were drawn to the main screen. It was showing a highlight reel of the matches so far, and she couldn’t help but notice she was on there. It would appear that, despite disqualifying her, the organizers had no qualms about featuring her exploits in their promotional material. In this particular instance, they were showing a dramatic replay of her Bumblebee drifting into the enemy Hornet’s blind spot and then ramming it into a wall of rock. As was the norm for such footage, there was a pilot cam in the corner of the video.

That was what had grabbed Maggie’s attention. What she saw on there was strange, bizarre, perhaps even surreal. Though it undoubtedly featured her virtual vessel masterfully controlling her spacecraft, it was the expression on her recorded self’s face that struck her as so thoroughly odd. Her eyes were peeled as wide as they would go and her eyebrows implied anger, yet her mouth hung open in a wide, toothy, almost savage grin. The sound of her voice did not accompany those images, but it definitely seemed like she was yelling something. Even the eyes adorning her tentacles were in on it, with how they seemed to be focusing on the same spot as her human pair. If one were to summarize that expression in a few words, it would be something along the lines of ‘triumphant aggression.’

It was a face Maggie had no recollection of making.