Worst space assassin ever

Well, my first play of Space Assassin was brief.

The assassin’s guild that I work for must not have taken the mission briefing seriously. You would think that “doomsday weapon” and “the whole planet faces extermination” would convince them to send their best 12/24/12 with all the gear necessary. After all, if our unnamed home planet is destroyed who’s gonna hire assassins? Nobody, that’s who! If everybody’s already dead, nobody needs anyone killed! Armageddon is seriously bad competition for the assassination business!

But they didn’t send their best, they sent me, with these stats: Skill 7 / Stamina 11 / Luck 11 / Armor 8

And for starting equipment I was allocated 2 money, which got me a handgun and extra armor Yeah, I figure with a skill of 2 I better get all the armor I can afford.

Clearly they’re not really taking this seriously, and they’re using the opportunity to remove some of the less competent trainees from their ranks. I check my life insurance policy, sigh, and turn to page 1.

In the prologue I secret myself in a cargo container, then sneak onto the Vandervecken via an airlock. First off, I am confronted by a big, solid security door, because the Vandervecken has reasonably good security. Then I see the two unlocked and very spacious maintenance ducts that seem to bypass the door, because the Vandervecken’s security is a joke.

Oh there’s also an alien corpse outside the door, and wired up to it is what looks like a “dead man’s switch” detonation rig. Let’s not touch that.

I pick one of the Jefferies tubes and start crawling. At the next vent, I find a small jail with two cells and a guard robot. I figure that a prisoner could give me some advice, the whole “enemy of my enemy” thing. So the guard robot kicks my ass, because those assault blasters to 1d6 damage on a hit! The brutal bot gets me down to 4 stamina and 4 armor before I trash it.And I get to keep its gun. “Ho ho ho, now I have an assault blaster. Yippee cay-yay…”

Anyway turns out that the prisoner wasn’t really that useful, just told me that if a robot asks about feelings, I shouldn’t answer. Disappointed that I got wrecked for nothing, I crawl back into the vent and pop some of my perfectly legal, and therefore ethical and safe, healing pills so I don’t bleed out before reaching the next room.

The next vent has two scientists, who fortunately don’t give me any trouble. I tie them up and move on. I then run right into another security checkpoint, and the security bot beats me down some more. It’s not as one-sided as that first fight, but I really stink at fighting and my armor is worn out.

At the end of the hallway beyond the security checkpoint… are two mysterious buttons, and no way forward. Great.

I push some buttons, and find myself loaded into a sim: standing on a plain, with hills and forest in the distance. They don’t say it’s a sim, but I know what a loading screen feels like, and the graphics are honestly kind of poor. I shout “computer, end program” a few times, then give up and start walking because I know how 1980s-1990s VR goes — I’ll have to walk to the logout point.

I wander at random for some time, before I find a chasm, and a lake in the chasm. And a submarine in the lake! And Cthulhu guarding the lake and submarine. Aw crud.

Yeah, it was a brief fight and I was not the victor. And being 80s-90s VR, if I die in the sim I die in reality. My adventure ends there. Eaten by Cthulhu in a lake in a sim.