‘Okay, guys!’ L0rdM1LFL0v3r, our PC - Platoon Commander shouted. ‘It’s a quick in and out. We breach the walls, loot the base and leave. The OutbackKillas are an Australian Corp so they should be all asleep.’

‘Unless we have a rat,’ Tortulfan69 grumbled.

That was a very good point. Spies were a constant problem in Eschadrion, a new MMOFPS that seemed to want to appeal to the same player base as EVE Online - hardcore gamers unafraid of risking their progress for potential profit.

After seeing the initial meteoric rise, Eschadrion quickly lost a lot of its player base, as most gamers couldn't cope with permanently losing all of their equipment and some experience points upon death. Me… as a veteran space pirate with over thirteen hundred kills, a paltry amount in comparison to some of the veterans and most of them in fleets, decided to give it a shot. I burnt myself out in EVE during the pandemic, but I often felt that itch to return, so when Eschadrion’s Open Beta dropped out of nowhere the previous November, I gave it a shot and quickly became hooked.

The problem was… the game devs were copying EVE a tad too much, as, like in the space game, you weren't limited by the amount of toons and accounts, though you weren't allowed to multi-box. I imagined this was mostly there to prevent botting as playing an FPS on multiple accounts at the same time was far more difficult than Spreadsheets Online, but in this particular player base, someone WOULD figure it out; I had very little doubt about that.

In fact, there were anecdotes, likely urban legends, about people trying to figure that out and going insane in the process, but I imagined this would make the actual fucking news and wouldn't be limited to vague forum posts about workmate’s uncle’s sister’s neighbour’s cousin’s drug dealer’s son suffering from that.

This was not an issue for me, as I was always a single toon player, but the usual problem of alts quickly arose, leading to the Eschadrion corps having more complicated hiring procedures than the fucking CIA.

‘We sent out a ping about this op ten minutes beforehand and did not advertise it anywhere,’ the PC stressed. ‘Even if there is a spy, waking the Killas at five in the morning will be hard.’

I rarely took part in flashforms, especially on weekdays, but I was at the HQ at the time and had half an hour to kill, so here I was, sitting on our dropship listening to L0rdM1LFL0v3r’s droning about the tactical details of our operations. I hated it whenever L0rdM1LFL0v3r ran ops. He talked too fucking much. It was just a bloody smash-and-grab on an isolated outpost at the edge of their Sov… not a siege of the Killas HQ. Given it was the middle of the night in AUTZ, chances there would be more than two or three players there were negligible. Normally, we wouldn't even bother striking at such an insignificant target, but we had projects of our own to build, and stealing the resources from the Killas was a more fun way of getting those.

Not really paying attention to L0rdM1LFL0v3r, I looked at our platoon comp. It was a true hodgepodge. A Paladin, Two Warriors, only one Medic - a techie and not a magic user, which made it even less optimal for an op like this, a Gunner, a Scout and me - a Witch.

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It will have to do.

Eschadrion was a weird mix of fantasy and science fiction set in a post-apocalyptic world. You had futuristic tech like the dropship; it cost us a pretty penny, by the way, and at the same time, you could have L0rdM1LFL0v3r - a warrior in ornate plate armour riding on it. Guns were a fairly limited resource, so the services of PhoenixWing - our Gunner- were in high demand. He and his heavy machine gun would be our trump card. Being a Witch, my job was easy - nuke or disrupt whatever the PC told me to, so tactical deets had little use for me since, for the duration, I was L0rdM1LFL0v3r’s little bitch anyway.

Suddenly, I heard the quiet chirp of an incoming message. Happy for a distraction, I muted the voice chat and opened it. It was from HellSynth666, also known as Lydia, my IRL friend, who got me into Eschadrion to begin with.

Mana,

I know you are on an op, so I will keep it brief. Check the game announcement board. It is finally happening.

L.

My heart started pounding harder. “It” could only mean one thing. The full release of Eschadrion. I have been waiting for weeks for that. The Open Beta had all sorts of stupid limitations, so I was hyped to see what manner of crazy spells I would be getting now.

The message on the board was a simple countdown.

Five minutes until release? What?

That was both par for the course and insanely weird. Eschatology Entertainment, the devs, usually dropped updates out of the blue, giving only a short warning in advance on the global chat. This time around… this didn't happen. That was super weird. The op wouldn't be happening if we knew this was happening.

I unmuted the chat to let the platoon know about the update, only to hear Wade - PhoenixWing already doing so. Lydia must have sent him a heads-up too, as he was the third and final member of our small gang of people who knew each other IRL. We worked in the same office and often went to dinner or drinks together. Sometimes, we even had Eschadrion sleepover game nights, which by all accounts shouldn't have been possible since only one instance of the games could be run from the same IP. But… when different players did that… It worked fine. It wasn't just us - other people reported that too. The devs were silent on the matter, and this worked for people living under the same roof too. There were dozens of theories about how exactly that worked, from AI scraping to some sort of biometric identification. Most of that would be a violation of GDPR, but I didn't think anybody would report “Hey… the game is letting me and my wife play at the same time” to the Personal Data Protection Inspectorate.

The voice chat filled with excitement about the game’s impending release.

‘Okay, guys,’ L0rsM1LFL0v3r began. ‘We’ll l-’

Suddenly, the power went out.

NO! Did the Killas hire someone to cut off electricity?

I looked through my window. The whole city was dark. There was no usual glow of light pollution on the horizon. Just… the starry sky. It was beautiful.

How long had it been since I had seen it like that? Not since… that visit to the countryside… twelve years ago. Time sure flies.

I looked back at my screen.

Yeah. Perhaps it is for the best. Could use a break and do some stargazing.

A message suddenly appeared on it in white block letters.

SYSTEM INITIATED

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING THE BETA VERSION OF ESCHADRION.

ROLLING OUT A FULL VERSION NOW

LEVEL CAP HAS BEEN REMOVED

TOTAL NUMBER OF BETA PLAYERS: 15 734 087

TOTAL NUMBER OF BETA PLAYERS WHO REACHED LEVEL CAP: 53 224

SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: AS A BETA HAS BEEN AVAILABLE FOR MORE THAN 30 DAYS

TUTORIAL HAS BEEN DISABLED

HAVE FUN!