Great…not only am I now a cannon fodder in a dystopian galaxy, and not only am I trapped on an inhospitable planet with only enough water and food for a few hours, but I also have schizophrenia! Athena's first reaction to the odd mechanical sound was a scoff. It was as if she didn't have enough issues to worry about!
The next second, the world in Athena's vision suddenly blurred, and the young woman was no longer looking in the forest of Morgo IV. Instead, she now found herself staring at a layer of electronic screen. A part of her was rather startled, but even as she frowned at the sudden and unexpected change, her eyes landed on the screen and quickly noticed it was quite familiar.
"It's…a Starcraft game."
Starcraft was a popular RTS, or real-time strategy, game back on Earth. As a teenager who loved video games, Athena has been a fan of Starcraft for years. She might be one of the few female players of Starcraft. She was never good at it competitively, but the game mechanics and the lore had always fascinated her. Starcraft was one of the many reasons she did terribly in high school. Did she have regrets? Sure. Did she often find herself going back to the game and playing a few rounds on the ladder? Absolutely. It was simply a much-needed distraction that kept her sane in an otherwise infuriating life.
If she were back home, sitting in front of her old laptop and queuing up a game of Starcraft, then all would be well. Yet…yet she was in a galaxy 1700 years into the future. So where the hell did this game of Starcraft come from? And the screen showing the game…was it inside her head? Either she was delusional beyond hope, or there could be something else going on here that could be rather good for her.
Something told her this game wasn't just there so she could play a final match on the ladder before she died of thirst. Perhaps, just perhaps, this game could be her best chance of survival in this fucked up galaxy.
The screen displayed a new game of Starcraft with plenty of differences that an experienced player like Athena immediately noticed. Sitting in the middle of the display were three structures instead of only one: a Terran command center, a Zerg hatchery, and a Protoss nexus. Judging from the color of the structures and units from the three races, they were all under Athena's command.
On the top right corner of the screen were a number of counters.
Resource: 34
Terran Supply: 0 / 20
Zerg Supply: 0 / 50
Protoss Supply: 0 / 20
Like the buildings, these stats were a little off. In a normal Starcraft game, there were two types of resources: minerals and vespene gas. Here, the two seemed to have been combined. There was one supply count for each of the three races, but…why did the Zerg have 30 more supplies? Wait…the notification!
"The voice said I unlocked the Zerg spawning pool. Maybe that's why I have 30 more supplies for the Zerg than the other races? Maybe to increase the number of units I can have, I need to unlock new buildings instead of simply building different supply structures or units." Athena's brain quickly started turning as she tried to understand the situation.
In Starcraft, every unit, with few exceptions, had a supply count attached to the unit. If there were no free supplies available, the unit couldn't be built. It was likely the same case here.
Athena looked up at the Resource count once again. 34. Odd. Unless the game just decided to randomly give her 34 units of resources to start the game, it was likely she gained the units…somehow. Maybe it was tied to the local wildlife she just gunned down?
She shifted her attention back to the three main structures from the three races. Much to her surprise, there weren't any workers that she started the game with. Another difference between a normal Starcraft game and whatever this was.
The thought of not having a mouse to work with had yet to cross Athena's mind before a solution presented itself. As soon as she wanted to click on the Protoss nexus, the act was done and the command card associated with the nexus appeared at the bottom of the screen.
"That's convenient." Athena raised her eyebrows. Without a moment of delay, she quickly clicked through the three buildings, hoping to find anything that could help her with her current predicament. As much as all of this fascinated her, she didn't forget the fact that she was trapped in a jungle full of carnivorous beasts. Once again, it would be quite embarrassing if she had such an odd experience, only to end up as the dinner of some local beast.
The first building she clicked on was the Protoss nexus. As one of the three races in Starcraft, Protoss was the psychic race that focused on quality over quantity. Protoss units were expensive, yet they were often much more powerful than the corresponding units from the other two races. Most Protoss warriors were hundreds of years old. It wasn't uncommon for single Protoss warriors, like the high templars, to singlehandedly lay waste to entire armies with their psychic powers.
The Protoss nexus served as the center of Protoss bases. They could produce probes, which were the workers of the Protoss race. Probes could warp in structures and collect resources. A nexus also had various support abilities. In addition, with the proper structures, a nexus could warp into a mothership, the ultimate Protoss warship.
Athena wasn't even dreaming of producing a mothership as of now. All she wanted was a probe or two. While probes were workers, they were still capable of combat. Their particle beams could cut through flesh and armor as well as minerals. Even just one of them could help distract whatever beast Athena would run into.
Yet Athena was quickly disappointed. When she tried to produce a probe, she received a message telling her that she had insufficient minerals. Probes needed 50 resources to be produced.
The next was the Zerg hatchery. The Zerg were the polar opposite of the Protoss. While the Protoss focused on their psychic powers, the Zerg usually used combat units enhanced with physical evolutions. While the Protoss fought with energy blades and particle disruptors, the Zerg had their claws and acids. While the Protoss believed in quality over quantity, the Zerg's strategy involved overwhelming the enemy forces with sheer numbers and ferocity. It didn't matter if one Zerg army was destroyed because, by the time it was done, one several times the size would have been produced.
Zerg hatcheries could spawn almost every single Zerg unit when the corresponding structures have been built. By default, they could spawn drones, which could harvest resources and morph into Zerg buildings. Like the probes, drones cost 50 resources, more than what Athena currently had.
Athena still remembered the mechanical voice telling her she had unlocked the Zerg spawning pool. This meant it was likely she had to unlock specific structures before she could build them. What were the criteria for these unlocks? For the Zerg, it seemed to be biological essence. Maybe she had to be close to the essence to unlock them. What were the criteria for Protoss and Terran buildings then?
These were questions she could try to figure out later when she was in a relatively safe situation.
Finally, there was the Terran command center. Terran was the humans in the Korpulu Sector. They didn't have the individual prowess of the Protoss or the numbers of the Zerg, but what they did have was effective combined arms tactics. Terran forces often included cheap, versatile infantry units supported by heavy mech and air power.
The Terrans were also quite talented when it came to adapting to new situations. In the lore, mere decades after encountering the two advanced alien races, Terran researchers were able to experiment on both Zerg and Protoss samples, developing their own technologies that effectively rivaled the Protoss and the Zerg.
Terran command centers fulfilled more or less the same purpose as nexi and hatcheries. It shouldn't be too surprising then that Terran SCVs, the workers and builders of the Terran race, also required 50 resources.
The entire process was, to say to least, quite confusing for Athena. What was going on here? As strange as this was, none of this felt like part of a hallucination. This game, regardless of where it came from, felt real.
The question now was…what could she do with this game in her head? If her hypothesis was right and the units of resources were gained via what she did in the real world outside the game, then could it be that it was also possible for what was inside the game to impact the real world in reverse?
How would that even work? Maybe she could produce units in the game and summon them to the outside world? Perhaps she could get various evolutions and psychic powers through the game? The only thing Athena knew was that she needed to experiment with the game and see what it was capable of. If the game was ultimately useless, then so be it. However, if the three races in the game could somehow help her…the potential there would be endless.
As far as Athena knew, while technologies in this galaxy did progress a lot in the last 1,700 years, they were still vastly inferior to what the three races had to offer. As a quick example, the common, expendable cannon fodders of the Terran armies, the marines, were equipped with gauss rifles much more impressive than the automatic rifles of the Imperial Army. If Athena was lucky enough to gain a sizeable combined army of the three races, she could do quite well in this galaxy.
Of course, the key part of that was the 'if'. If she died before then, it would all be meaningless.
Her first step was to find out how to get resources and produce at least a handful of units from any of the three races. Hopefully, that would allow her to get a grasp on what the game could do for her and plan accordingly.
"Let's see…how can I exit the game," Athena whispered to herself before the electronic screen in front of her eyes suddenly disappeared. It seemed like the game could read her thoughts and understand exactly what she wanted to do.
Now once again back in the jungle, Athena looked down on the corpses of the two Morgo - 23 instances. The bullets from her Defender rifle tore these two animals to shreds. Her thoughts quickly jumped to the information she and her company were given about the local animals.
Most of the local animals were, obviously, quite vulnerable to firearms. Fair enough. Not all creatures could take on bullets and bombs with their physical bodies in the same way the Zerg could. The issue was that these local animals could somehow survive in the atmosphere of Morgo IV while exposure could lead to a guaranteed slow and painful death for any human being. Many troops in the 432nd Company guessed that this resistance to toxins was what Doctor Payton was trying to understand and potentially replicate.
This meant that often the local animals didn't have to kill the Imperial troops themselves. All they had to do was create a significant breach in the troops' power armor before their death, and then the toxins in the air would do the rest. This was what claimed the lives of so many men from the 432nd.
Athena bit her lips as she turned her attention back to the path she was taking before she was interrupted by the game notification. It was likely she would run into more threats on the way back, but she had no choice in this matter. It wasn't like there was somewhere safe for her to hide. She had to keep moving. Once she had enough resources to produce Starcraft units, her life would be a lot easier. And if she was downed before that or if the game failed to help her, well…luckily for her, she still had a few grenades in the ammo compartment of her power armor. If things came down to it, they could give her a quick way out.
As she scanned the surroundings, Athena had to admit she was a little surprised by how cold her own thoughts were. Blowing herself up with a grenade? Then again, if she was hopeless in escaping and she was about to meet a slow and painful end, why should she deny herself an easier alternative? This was a simple conclusion reached by the mind of a veteran soldier who had seen so many of her comrades fall.
Once again, Athena scoffed at the old Athena's absolute loyalty to her empire and her willingness to die for the so-called Leviathan, but at the same time she was more than grateful for the experience and battle instincts the old Athena offered. Without any of these, she would have no chance of lasting long enough to notice the game in her head and experiment with what it could do for her.