Incursion Protocol

Why fight anyone hand-to-hand, or even weird sci-fi laser rifle to unarmored space suit, when you can point your ship's battery at them and make them go boom?

A very appealing thought, which would be much more appealing if I actually had any kind of weaponry attached to my ship. It didn’t help that, while I understood a lot of the engineering concepts, I was still mostly just a jockey who pointed big rockets in a direction and pushed the throttle until told otherwise.

I leaned over the pilot’s seat and flicked the console on. I just wanted a peek. I knew I had other status menus to check and corpses to deal with, but the ship was my lifeline. The next vessel that came along might not bother trying to board me; they might just turn my cozy, slightly blood-tinged atmosphere into vacuum with a few pulls of a trigger.

Ship Status:

The Strommäsk Test Vehicle

Level 1

Light Spacecraft

Weaponry/Armor/Hull:

0/0/1

Status:

Nominal

Inherent Skills:

None

Additional Modules:

Strommäsk Injection Engine (DEPRECIATED)

I quickly skimmed the annotated status screen. Everything seemed normal. Weaponry and armor were non-existent, and the hull strength was as low as it could possibly be without actually dipping into zero. The “depreciated” tag next to the Strommäsk Engine caught my eye. I moved the cursor down and clicked for more info.

Strommäsk Injection Engine:

Condition: Nominal

This is a test flight engine designed and created by Strommäsk Propulsion Labs. Originally intended as a prototype FTL drive, unintended errors in production, design, or pilot error have caused the engine to traverse across dimensional space. No further information on operations or repeatability of dimensional traversal due to a sample size of: 1.

Added Tags:

This component has been deemed DEPRECIATED by The System.

Specific to DEPRECIATED engines: May be used as propulsion, if used within the realm of operating physics in the current dimension. Any other functions outside of standard propulsion have been deactivated.

I leaned back from the status screen, mildly irritated. First of all, the dig at "pilot error" was just plain rude. Secondly, The System had completely disabled any chance of using the Strommäsk Engine to get back home. I wasn’t particularly surprised by this; even though the Construct hadn’t explicitly said I couldn’t just turn around and leave, it had been pretty heavily implied. I was going to have to lie in my figurative zero-g sleep sack and deal with this mess.

As I stepped away, the computer chimed at me, pulling me back to the console. A notification blinked on the screen.

Analyze commandeered vessel for salvage and/or usable modules?

Yes, please! I clicked yes as fast as I could. A timer appeared and began to spin down, estimating the analysis would take about an hour. That gave me plenty of time to handle a few crescent-shaped loose ends.

I dragged the second Dulox alien, the one who still had a piece of my spacesuit crammed in its maw, next to its buddy, stacking them like firewood in one of their tiny crew cabins. Handling their bodies was… weird. You ever slap a spider with a flip-flop at 2 AM and watch it curl up? Yeah, the Dulox were like that, but completely opposite. Instead of curling, their bodies went stiff as boards. Arms and legs shot out, straight and rigid, like oversized, petrified starfish. It made maneuvering them through the ship awkward as hell, but I finally managed to cram them into one of the cabins.

I checked their weapons, hoping for something useful, but no luck. Their arms didn’t end in hands, exactly. Instead, they split into two parts at the wrist, like someone took a crab claw and said, “Alright, Mother Nature, evolve this into something with human dexterity, but don’t lose that crabby charm.” The result was… interesting, but it made the rifles impossible for me to operate. I couldn’t even figure out where the trigger was.

I poked and prodded at them for a bit, but I didn’t feel like accidentally burning a hole through either ship’s hull, so I tossed the rifles onto one of my work benches and decided to forget about them for now.

While the timer ticked down, I wandered through their undersized ship, poking around, trying to make sense of all the alien components. It was a strange affair, some of it looked familiar, while other bits were just… odd. Either mutated far enough away from anything a human would recognize or so inherently alien that I couldn’t tell if I was looking at a trash can or their ship’s reactor.

A welcome, if confusing, discovery came when I finally reached the cockpit. Luckily, it was easy to find, what with the large glass viewports, pilot seats, and the crabby controls. And even stranger, I instantly recognized certain things. Right there, the attitude controls and reaction control system, knobs and protrusions that made no sense visually, but somehow I knew if I twisted or poked them just right, they’d handle movement in all axes.

It didn’t make any sense. I had no business knowing that. Yet there it was, sitting in the back of my brain like it had always been there.

The answer came soon enough when I scrolled through my status menus, pulling in everything useful and lining it up into a neat, readable format.

Status:

“Crash”

Public Title:

~~INVADER~~

50% increase to all damage received from denizens of the current dimension.

Level:

1

Overall Condition:

Slightly Singed

Outstanding Conditions:

Burnt torso, chomped forearm (LEFT)

Level Progress:

19% to Level 2

Relevant Skills:

Pre-Incursion Test Pilot - Assorted Benefits

Active Perks:

Fighting in a Phone Booth!

+10% melee damage aboard spaceships

I had mostly done away with the hard numbers, thanks to the overly customizable UX. Once again, annoyed at the Construct for how well it was designed. The numbers were all there if I needed them, neatly nested in their respective places, but at the moment, I didn’t find them that useful.

Take health, for example. If I’m at 5/20 health, sure, that’s nice to know, but I’d feel like I was on death’s doorstep without needing a stat to tell me. Same with experience points. If I’m gaining static XP for every action, that’s one thing, but I could innately tell that two of the same enemies would grant different amounts of experience, fluctuating so much based on difficulty and context that knowing the exact number didn’t seem helpful. Plus, I could always pull them up if I needed precision later, like when I finally have some armor stat or need to know how many more hits my ship can take before I get vacuumed into space.

Curious, I clicked on Pre-Incursion Test Pilot to see what it was doing for me.

Pre-Incursion Test Pilot:

This user was a test pilot pre-incursion, honing their piloting skills on the cutting edge of technology and pushing their crafts to the limit and beyond. Only someone incredibly brave, or with a verifiable death wish, would volunteer to be a crash test dummy for someone watching safely miles away.

This skill grants boons to an assortment of corresponding post-incursion skills. Not limited to, but most affected are:

Spacecraft Pilot - Level 1:

This skill encompasses all spaceborne piloting. If it moves through space, you can point it in the right direction and apply thrust. As this skill increases, it will have a waterfall effect on other related skills like evasion, combat, and so on.

Light Spacecraft Pilot - Level 2:

This skill covers piloting actions taken within the class ‘light spacecraft.’ While not the deadliest vessels, light spacecraft are quick, nimble, and versatile, used for everything from personnel transport to reconnaissance.

General Spacecraft Knowledge - Level 2:

This skill allows you to recognize and even manipulate alien technology related to space flight. With a solid background in spacecraft, you can quickly identify standard controls and abilities of nearly any spaceborne craft.

It was weird, but I’d take it. It looked like almost every skill could be upgraded. Take General Spacecraft Knowledge, for example, leveling it up would make the abilities it granted even stronger. Meanwhile, with Light Spacecraft Pilot, not only would it increase the related skills like General Spacecraft Knowledge, but I could see upgrade paths branching out behind it. They were currently greyed out, but I figured they’d unlock as I leveled up.

The System was starting to make some kind of sense. Instead of just getting better at something the old-fashioned way, through study, practice, and experience, the protocol allowed you to strive toward new skills with clear-cut, definite upgrades. You could see exactly where you were heading. Like, I could spend years working on my evasion skills, coming up with new techniques and refining my abilities, but with the System? It mapped out possible routes for me to take, and once I hit a certain skill level, I wouldn’t just figure out new techniques, I’d instantly know them. Like downloading knowledge straight into my brain and seamlessly incorporating it.

It was like training on steroids. You didn’t just become better at something, you unlocked entire new tiers of ability, fast-tracking what would’ve taken years to develop naturally.

Made sense when you had an advanced civilization on its way to crush you into space dust.

A chime echoed from my ship, snapping me out of my musings on the grotesque controls and The System. I padded through the ship, the airlock now mercifully clear of any corpses, feeling oddly nimble in my flight suit. One press of a button and the console flared to life, showing me the results of its analysis.

Analysis Results:

Dulox Raiding Vessel

Salvage: 100 units

Compatible modules:

Dulox Laser HardPoint - Level 1:

A primitive and slightly underpowered laser battery delivering short bursts of focused energy. While it boasts quick recharge times, it's designed for fast in-and-out tactics but is hampered by a narrow targeting range and low damage output.

Salvage if scrapped: 80 units

Auto-install: No

Dulox Galley - Level 1:

A galley for Dulox-centered cuisine. Includes rock hammers, chisels, and polishing equipment for preparing meals that would make any Dulox’s beak water.

Auto-install: Yes

Salvage if scrapped: 10 units

Cinek Targeting System - Level 1:

A standard targeting system used by most Cinek fleets. It allows for relatively quick target acquisition and firing solution calculations. Though mass-produced and not outstanding in any specific way, its robustness makes it a staple in low-level fleets.

Auto-install: Yes

Salvage if scrapped: 0 units

Proceed to transfer free salvage? [100 units]

I clicked yes and turned my attention to the next prompt.

Install components tagged as Auto-install?

I immediately unchecked the galley, no need for rock hammer-prepared cuisine in my life, and routed it for scrapping. As appetizing as food prepared with hammers and chisels sounded, I’d stick to my freeze-dried meals that only made you wish you had a rock hammer, thank you very much. The targeting system, though? Absolutely. Offloading that kind of responsibility to the computer would be a godsend, especially in 3D space where I’d need to juggle evasion, range, and all the intricacies of dogfighting.

The laser battery sounded awesome too, despite its low power and short range. But my excitement was quickly tempered by the computer's little note about needing manual installation. I wasn’t one to shy away from grease monkey work, far from it, but the problems were stacking up. Namely, the fact that my EVA suit now had a few brand-new ventilation holes, courtesy of my Dulox friends. High speed, low drag. Gotta love it.

And then, of course, there was the matter of my airlock door. Destroying that? Yeah, that was just a dick move.