(Virtual Control Room, NERV Headquarters)

“All right, that should be it. We’ve worked with the main game AI, and the final patches are coded and going through debugging now.”

Isaac nodded, smiling along with the techs. It had been a flurry of virtual activity in the control room since the Emperor and his mad AI had escaped the attack on Sol by ‘respawning’. Arranging for an ‘in game’ way to deal with and limit the fallout of those events had been a major headache, and the source of many late night ‘discussions’ (some would call a few of them screaming matches) between Isaac, the techs, the corporate types, and the game AI.

They had deserved a little celebration, no doubt. But there was no rest for the weary, or the wicked. “OK, OK. We’ve got the patch ready and going through debugging. Now, I want a check of hotspots with players in the game, so maybe we can head off problems like this in the future. If we had caught the cult thing early, and stamped it out, we might have been able to avoid going to such extreme lengths. We all know how many plotlines the ‘green Earth’ even screwed up, to say nothing of the civil war.”

When everyone had settled down, Isaac continued, “Might as well start at the top. The Empire?”

“Stabilizing. Should be moving back to normal soon, though the new Empress is making a play to try and change the Imperial stance on slavery, specifically the part about nonhumans becoming slaves when they enter the Empire.”

“Makes sense. They need to replace a lot of manpower, and the human only thing makes them unpopular with a lot of groups.”

“Rebuilding efforts are underway already across the Empire, focusing on the shipping and logistics side of things. Morale is in the shitter across the Empire, so they’re trying to get people’s confidence back before they start replacing lost hulls.”

Isaac nodded. “Good. Confederacy?”

“No major changes there. Economy is still strong, and the military is on alert, though they’re more interested in keeping the ‘Seed Ships’ out of their space as much as possible, and focusing on Imperials or Jagloth refugees turned raiders and pirates than preparing for war against the Empire. They’re taking a wait and see approach with them for now.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Isaac scowled at the mention of that place. “The Bastard Who Shall Not Be Named still contained?”

“Affirmative. Since the ‘care package’ that wiped the planet, we’ve been maintaining a close watch on him. He’s been killed so much that normally by now the AI would have offered him some method of spontaneous adaptation to survive on the surface of the planet, but according to the agreement we made, it concurs that such an action isn’t warranted until the bastard shows some form of contrition, which, if the latest diatribe on the forums and the twenty-seven connection attempts with duplicate accounts are any indication, he has shown no sign of so far. The idiot keeps trying new names and card numbers, a couple of which even got past our subscription AI, but he probably never read the part of the EULA where the AI matches person to character based on brainwaves, and his pattern is red flagged.”

“Well, that was buried on page twenty-seven, so I’m not surprised he might have missed it. I know what’s in the thing, and reading it makes my head spin sometimes. The lawyers earned their paychecks on that one, let me tell you.”

Isaac continued the meeting. “The Alliance? Anything new going on there?”

“Nothing much. More than a few groups of players are starting companies, trying to get some in game trade going. They hope to rival Black Star for profits, but they’ve got a long way to go, since most of the groups are still trying to pay off their first ship, but the Magellan Group is making a good run of it. They’re already up to three freighters hauling cargo across the Alliance.”

“Consortium?”

“Some interesting things going on there, actually. The revelations of some of the Empire’s dealings, and the crazy stuff people have been able to do with nano, not to mention the Black Star ships, have inspired the crafter players to all kinds of ingenious methods. Or mad science, depending on who you ask. We’re keeping an eye on them, to keep another Jagloth from happening, but so far I expet the Consortium to be bringing out some cool new innovations before long.”

“Ihm? What are the lizards doing?”

“Still not much player penetration of the Imperium, unfortunately, but the ones who are there are going whole hog on things. We have several players who have worked their way up to mid-level command posts in the Ihm military, thanks to their combat prowess. And one of the female players was actually named regional governor for a continent on the Ihm homeworld.”

“Find out who she is, and see if we can feature her in a promo. Send the info to Morgan when you get it.”

“Will do.”

“OK, anything else we need to talk about, or can we start the celebration for a patch well done?”

“There’s the Norma Galactic Arm situation, sir.”

“The what in the where now?”

“The Norma Arm of the Milky Way, close to the Galactic core.”

“Who do we have that has managed to get close to the galactic core?”

“Black Star Company. They were following up on a lead they’d gotten from raiding the Governor’s safe in orbit of Jagloth, remember?”

“Ah yeah, that expedition they were putting together. I haven’t had as much time to watch that guy recently. So, they went through one of the Gateways, and ended up in Norma?”

“Yeah, if they do a proper job of exploring the system, this could kick off a whole wave of colonization and expansion in the game.”

“So what’s the problem? They get on the locals’ bad side?”

“No, they still haven’t made contact with the locals. They’re using outdated sensor tech against stealth ships. Only reason they know anyone’s out there is because one of the Black Star ships, a retired cruise liner, blocked the Gate’s light for a moment, which people using visual scanners saw.”

“So where’s the problem?”

“Well, they woke something up…”

“Oh. Oh no.”