Frozen Soul, and other works: Epilogue

(Virtual Room in NERV HQ)

Isaac looked around his control room with pride. The place was a madhouse of activity, but it was only chaos to the untrained eye. Everyone knew their jobs, and was working like parts of a well-oiled machine.

Next to him, Morgan shook her head slightly as she viewed reports on her virtual tablet. “Well, most of the complaints from the Chaos Brigade’s actions at the megadungeon have cooled off. We confirmed no hacks or game infractions were committed, and the sneaky bastard in charge actually negotiated with the local government for a ‘timed exclusive’, and rights to enforce it, so they are clear on that front, too. We’ve put a forum post up explaining the situation, so while people aren’t happy, they’ve turned to bitching about the Chaos brigade throwing their weight around, rather than saying they were cheating somehow.”

Isaac nodded. “That isn’t going to be viable in the long term, of course. The AI have any suggestions on how to discourage that behavior in the future?”

“Well, it depends on the system. That system’s governor was already incredibly corrupt, so it was easy to trade a bribe for his writ letting Chaos Brigade do what it wanted. The AI has already twigged a member of one of the oversight groups in the Empire’s bureaucracy, causing a complaint that had originally been quashed by the local government to ‘accidentally’ get routed to higher authority instead, and the ball has been started rolling on getting that official out of his job. Less corrupt officials might not let things get to that point, of course.”

“Fine, that will work. I’ll have a developer post put up on the forums so people will quit bitching as much. Make it be a part of the ‘living world’, and let them know that if they aren’t getting traction there are other ways to do things.”

Morgan nodded. “Of course, the bitching about Star’s Reach has already begun. First with the Black Stars claiming a whole system, including the Gateway, as well as a dungeon. But one of the exploration and production guilds from the Gauz side of things has issued formal complaints about what Mollen’s been doing.”

Isaac looked over at her. “Really? What did he do this time? I haven’t been keeping up with his stuff, what with everything going on towards Coldana Prime.”

“Well, it seems that this small guild decided to take offense that they weren’t being allowed to claim land on Black Star’s planet for an independent settlement without dealing with the official taxes and everything. They then proceeded to get belligerent with the people running his licensing bureau, which caused Mollen to get involved. He informed the guild that, as the supreme authority within Star’s Reach, their whole guild was banished from Star’s Reach, and they had an hour to get to their ships and another hour to be out of the system. And he wouldn’t let them use the Gateway to leave. If they weren’t gone by the time limit, or they returned after the limit was up, they’d be enslaved or killed.”

Isaac nodded. “Harsh, but not completely out of line, and certainly within the realms of what he is allowed to do.”

Morgan grinned like a cat who caught the canary. “Then, he got in touch with the leader of the Chaos Brigade, since the guild was on the planet to run the dungeon, and their warship was in orbit. Unlike the Gauz, the Chaos Brigade did just as they were told, so they’ve had no problems with the locals, and they’ve been on the forums talking up Star’s Reach. Well, it seems Mollen told the leader of the Brigade that he would allow their warship to break orbit, and follow the Gauz out of the system, and that anything which happened outside of Star’s Reach space to unaffiliated parties was not his problem or concern unless someone was paying him to care.”

“Oh, he didn’t!”

“He did. So the Eternity of Pain catches up with the freighters the Gauz were using, and takes them out. Two-thirds of the guild was killed in the attack, with the remainder being captured and enslaved by the Chaos Brigade. That third is likely going to be going to the cash shop to get New Character Tokens instead of waiting for the reroll period to come up. The Chaos Brigade is apparently roleplaying crazy people.”

“It is a 40K thing. I’ll explain it to you later. So what about the ones who died?”

“Well, their ships were all destroyed, so they respawned at the medical center of the last planet they visited, Star’s Reach. And they were promptly enslaved one by one as they respawned, being charged with trespassing, and judicially enslaved for twelve in-game months.”

Isaac winced. “Brutal. And the full scope of what Mollen did should come up on the stream, right? Yeah, I can see all kinds of people getting their panties in a wad over that. Seems to be a definite ‘play by the rules, or suffer’ theme going on there.” He shook his head as he sighed. “Still, it could be worse. It isn’t like those Nomads will be dealing with the Coldana Prime situation.”

Morgan perked at that. “So, what is happening at Coldana Prime?”

Isaac sighed. “The X’thari are moving. There seem to be different factions with different goals, but the AI tells me they’re all basically looking for the source of the tech that defeated them at Nuevo Edo. We have three main groups so far. The first two are doing commerce raiding and reconnaissance efforts in the Terran Empire and the border between the Confederation and the Alliance. They’re mostly small ships in groups of three, six, or nine, scouting areas for the mystery tech. They don’t know what they’re looking for, but they know humans were on Nuevo Edo, so they’re looking at places with a bunch of humans.”

“What about the third group? What are they doing?”

“That’s where things get tricky. The initial scout at Nuevo Edo took on a Gauz freighter just before they got discovered and destroyed, so the third group is following that lead back to the Gauz Consortium. Unfortunately, the leader behind that group is more hawkish than the others to begin with, so he has turned this into a full assault. There’s two systems his ships looked to be aiming at, Coldana and Shadowgate.”

He paused, and then said, “They tried to move on Shadowgate, but somehow they blocked the Anchor drive from allowing them to drop in on the system, or anywhere within a week’s travel from Shadowgate. That’s some major tech, there.”

“I’ll say! Is this related to how they keep ships from going through the Gateway?”

“Apparently, yes. So the X’thari decided that wasn’t a nut they wanted to try cracking at this time, and they turned their attention to Coldana. Unfortunately for the Consortium, Coldana is nothing like Shadowgate. There’s been a couple small skirmishes, and the locals are frantically calling for reinforcement. Long range scans showed they brought a Harvester.”

“Well, Coldana’s fucked, then.”

“Yeah, seems like. But expect whining players to be sending complaints when it goes down.”

Morgan laughed. “When aren’t players whining about something? At least this is something that matters, in game, instead of complaining about drop rates in dungeons.”

“True, true.”

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Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB

Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4

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