A Game With No Rules (Perimeter Defense Book #4) LitRPG Series Read online

  A Game with No Rules

  by Michael Atamanov

  Perimeter Defense

  Book#4

  Magic Dome Books

  Perimeter Defense

  Book # 4: A Game with No Rules

  Copyright © Michael Atamanov 2017

  Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2017

  English translation copyright © Andrew Schmitt 2017

  Editor: Zach Lewis

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2017

  ISBN: 978-80-88231-37-0

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction.

  Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

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  ALSO BY MICHAEL ATAMANOV

  Perimeter Defense LitRPG Series:

  Sector Eight (Perimeter Defense: Book #1)

  Beyond Death (Perimeter Defense Book #2)

  New Contract (Perimeter Defense Book #3)

  The Dark Herbalist LitRPG Series:

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  Table of Contents:

  Balance of Power

  Mother's Side

  Emergency Landing

  Bloodthirsty Avenger

  Third Power

  House of Cards

  The Black Cloud Disperses

  Shades of Blue

  Unknown Fleet

  Rat in a Trap

  Two Minutes

  Unbeatable Armada

  Dark Paths

  Enemy of the Empire

  A Breather Before a Jump

  A Search for Answers

  Final Boss

  Epilogue

  Balance of Power

  "HOW IS SHE?" I asked Miya as she entered the small dining hall. I was sure that the Truth Seeker would be able to guess who I was asking about but, if she didn't, she could always read it from my thoughts.

  I noticed that my wife was looking remarkably poorly rested today. Even the expensive cosmetics and clothing she wore were unable to distract from the black circles under her eyes, drooping in exhaustion. Might that have been her age showing? Obviously, it was difficult to maintain the appearance of a young woman at her... how many years had Miya racked up at this point? One hundred thirty? One hundred fifty? Two hundred?

  "Alright, alright, Georg. That's enough!" the beautiful redhead rushed to intervene, giving yet another confirmation that she read my mind all the time without a second thought. "I get the message. I'll make sure I don’t come to breakfast again, without getting myself together first. It's just that I really am tired. I’ve never had an easy time talking with the Dark Mother, and our last conversation just sucked all the lifeforce out of me."

  "How is she?" I asked, repeating my initial question.

  "The Dark Mother is slowly fading, Georg. Her decrepit body, wracked with diseases of old age, is just giving up. She is bedridden, and no longer even tries to stand. But she remains the strongest Truth Seeker in the galaxy, and could still use her mind to crush the skull of any person like a soft-boiled egg. After her feud with the Emperor, the Dark Mother lost her source of power and is now living on reserves. Whether they will last long is something neither I nor she knows. I'll admit, I still haven't figured out why the Dark Mother wanted to talk with me long distance. We didn't talk about what happened to her, nor did we discuss the Emperor. We didn't even get close to touching on political issues. It was simply a conversation with a frail old lady, mortally exhausted after a very long life. However, after that half-hour conversation, I feel like a squeezed lemon. I have the sensation that I just took an important exam and it looks very much like I failed."

  Miya went silent, giving me the chance to think over her words. I pointed my spouse to her usual seat at the dining table, but Miya didn't sit down, instead heading towa
rd a large mirror on the wall. It looked like the thoughts she'd overheard about her age showing had stung, and she now wanted to make sure they weren't true. But I was still thinking seriously over Miya's words. The Dark Mother had never been inclined to idle chatter. In fact, the most powerful of the Truth Seekers was known to speak quite rarely. But before, each of her words were akin to a command, because everyone understood that the ruler of the Empire spoke through her lips.

  That all changed three months ago. I was one of the few who knew the true facts of the conflict between the Emperor and the Dark Mother. For the rest of the Empire, what happened was a real shock. It all started with a video clip depicting the Emperor's guard ruthlessly shooting down my bodyguards and cousin, Duchess Katerina ton Unatari, while the normally tranquil Dark Mother screamed rabidly for my head.

  The video of the utterly unprovoked attack on Crown Prince Georg royl Inoky ton Mesfelle — the hero of the war with the Aliens, ruler of the Unatari State, loyal subject of the Empire and one of the most popular military commanders — caused a real stir, rattling society’s faith in the Emperor's infallibility. Many leading aristocrats and politicians expressed a negative opinion of that event, including the heads of the Blue, Purple, and Green Great Houses, as well as representatives of the Imperial Joint Chiefs of Staff. So, the harsh ultimatum I issued in response was perceived by the majority of Imperial citizens as justified.

  But what happened after that was thought by many to be impossible, and caught even me quite by surprise. Emperor August royl Toll ton Akad backpedaled, and begged an official apology for the attack on the Unatari embassy, agreeing to also pay me five billion in compensation for the murder of my diplomats and destruction of my yacht Queen of Sin. The Emperor claimed the Dark Mother had been the impetus for the bloodbath in the Silver Palace, explaining that her treachery was rooted in a very old panicked dread of nonhuman races, which gave her an incorrect view of the situation. August claimed to have been an unwilling victim, blindly following the Dark Mother's reasoning, which he'd grown accustomed to trusting over their three long centuries together. In his address to the people, the Emperor announced that he had dismissed the Dark Mother with honors, while his new Truth Seeker would be Krista, who had worked until that point for the ruler of the Blue House, Duchess Ovella royl Stok ton Miro*.

  *these events were described in the short story From the Life of Crown Princesses, which was released in a separate collection of short LitRPG stories.

  To be honest, I had never believed in the sincerity of the Emperor's regret, not three months ago, and certainly not now. It was just that August royl Akad was not expecting to come up against such a severe reaction from society, and had certainly not foreseen that I would manage to avoid arrest and slip away from the Silver Palace. Confronted with a difficult dilemma: either have at least the Unatari State and Green House leave the Empire, or admit guilt, August chose a third option: try to cordon himself off by using the Dark Mother as a scapegoat.

  For a time, that really did dampen the anger in the Empire, though the Great Houses’ trust in the Throne World never returned to its former level. For my part, I was immediately suspicious when I asked to be compensated in ships and parts instead of money, and the Throne World refused. I even made another offer, which wouldn't have cost the Throne World a single credit, but would have affirmed the course to reconciliation: I asked to have my son Georg Junior named an official Imperial Crown Prince but, once again, the Emperor said no.

  Then, when my specialists tried to order heavy laser cannons and warp drives from manufacturing facilities in the Imperial Core for the new battleships and assault cruisers, they were refused everywhere without explanation. That all spoke to a restriction on selling high-tech military equipment to the Unatari State that, while not officially declared, did still exist de facto. Of course, such moves by the Throne World did nothing to ease tensions. Obviously, given that, there could be no discussion of sending my daughter Likanna back to her preparatory school on the Throne World. So, both Crown Princess Likanna royl Georg ton Unatari and her closest friend Crown Princess Natalie royl Cruz ton Unatari had remained in Unatari space.

  By the way, as for Likanna, my daughter had come to breakfast wearing a set of warm pajamas, adorned with silly cartoon characters and a pair of huge fluffy slippers on her bare feet. I wanted to note to the young Princess that girls of her age were supposed to get dressed for the day before coming to breakfast. But the words got stuck in my throat, because Princess Astra came into the small dining hall right after Lika in a near identical getup — poufy white pajamas with pink frogs and little gray donkeys, plush slippers gaping up with huge googly eyes and a hood on her head with long bunny ears.

  "Hi, dad!" said Lika, giving me a quick peck on the cheek and sitting cross-legged on a high chair. "Have you heard the news? Astra is now owner of the studio that produces the cartoon Jeanne the Star Traveler! Remember a year and a half ago when we invested the money she got from her painting The Last Day of Veyerde into making a new season of the adventures of Jeanne the space frog? Well, it was actually enough for a whole ten new seasons, and they're amazing! The money we made from that was enough to buy a controlling share in the studio!"

  I looked at Astra, smiling happily with her snow-white teeth. Her light-colored wavy hair was still messy after waking up, and her eyes were sparkling in childlike wonder. Now, the Princess was happy and proud of herself, so I figured I shouldn’t make a comment about her appearance in this moment of triumph.

  Astra was basically a fully-grown lady. The doting mother of a strong and healthy boy of seven months, she had received an excellent education and knew all the subtleties of courtly etiquette. But, all the same, I just couldn't bring myself to treat her like an adult. Her personality had a bizarre combination of brilliance, naivete and simplicity. And the Princess was not acting or playing, either. She really did live in her own special little world where, if something was boring or didn’t concern her directly, it simply didn’t exist. I suspect that Astra didn't even know about my problems with the Emperor, because it was just political news, and didn't affect her, so she didn't care.

  Three months ago, in order to avoid potential issues with Astra holding the title of Princess which, after the destruction of Veyerde, was no longer strictly accurate, I had made Astra a Swarm Princess and assigned her a holding in the Uyakh system. And, instead of forming a group of economic, design and construction advisors, the first thing Astra did in her role as ruler was to... start learning the Iseyek language. Although the language of the insects was considered rather simple due to its low number of words and grammar rules, the human throat was not anatomically adapted to pronouncing a significant portion of the high-frequency sounds it employed. All the same, that didn't stop Astra, despite all the warnings.

  In principle, I didn't see anything wrong with the ruler of a star system wanting to understand her subjects directly without a translator, but Astra wanted more. Just a month later, considering her language proficiency adequate, the Princess headed out on her own to the intergalactic communications center on my flagship Joan the Fatty and demanded that the officers provide her a direct line to the Uyakh star system. At that time, I was in Sector Nine, busy with some major training exercises for my space fleet, so I didn't hear about my favorite's little adventure until the news came out...

  Bionica and Phobos, struggling with Princess Astra's horrifying accent, translated my favorite's speech for me. To be honest, I buried my face in my hands when I heard it, just incapable of listening to the drivel Astra was issuing from the podium. My favorite was suggesting the planet Uyakh-IV be turned into a heaven of comfort and also the very safest place in the whole Universe. She wanted to see parks and green everywhere. She suggested all the dirty factories be removed from the planet and that a great many museums of interplanetary art be erected in their place at once. And Astra also wanted the largest art academy in the whole Empire built on her planet, where they could host artists
from the whole galaxy and, with time, where her anointed son would learn to paint...

  And that was at the fact that the planet Uyakh-IV was one of the Swarm's main manufacturing centers, and the Princess's innovative ideas threatened to shutter thousands of factories and other facilities that made high-tech products necessary to the Swarm and the Unatari State as a whole. I was expecting dire consequences after Astra’s unpredictable speech and innovative ideas, but they never came. The fourteen billion inhabitants of the planet Uyakh-IV listened attentively to the speech of the new ruler of their star system, appreciated her care for them and noted it with a whirlwind of relationship improvements from all Swarm races. And that, essentially, was all that happened.

  As I later heard from Admiral Kheraisss Vej, himself a native of Uyakh-IV, the White Queen, as Princess Astra was known in the Swarm, had gained a firm reputation as a kind but eccentric and foolish companion of their ultimate ruler. Their job was to admire her, humor her idiosyncrasies, and protect her from her most foolhardy acts. Fulfilling her orders, though, was not even moderately necessary. So, the Iseyek were very skeptical of Princess Astra's announcements, and all the planet’s factories were still in operation. As my cousin Katerina put it somewhat rudely: "She tripped the idiot sensor." The Iseyek were much more reasonable than we feared, and simply ignored her strange orders.

  Yes, Astra was not a great fit for the role of a serious, respected politician. But at that, my favorite was madly adored by the denizens of Unatari, both insect and human. Everywhere she went, she was greeted with ovations and great bouquets of flowers. And that stood in sharp contrast to my legal spouse Miya — the Red Queen in Swarm terminology, who was more respected and perhaps feared, than loved.