CHAPTER 17 BIGGER IS BETTER

Well I was quite nervous about this new Black Citadel station. No matter how I ran the math we couldn't afford it. The first step was to build a 100 meter long foundry in order to build the 50 meter scaffold sections and plating for the skeleton. It would take two weeks and then everything would be going full bore. Four of my nine miners would be supplying materials non-stop. I would have to add two more miners as they came off the line to keep up as production ramped up. We were short on construction crews for the next three months as Black Phoenix station finished. We had a trickle of labor coming into the system and were training people as fast as we could but there was always a shortage. I sat in my office on the Prometheus trying to figure out the numbers. Then it occurred to me, I was king! I opened the king tab that was new and looked at options. I found what I was looking for. I added two years of required service to the king for everyone under age 30. I also increased the service requirement for the Academy after graduation to four years. The civilian service could be military service or construction or factory work. Wages would be fair but small to skilled labor. In return the person would be guaranteed medical insurance for life. Anyone could refuse service and citizenship. Anyone over 30 currently would be grandfathered in.

The policy seemed to work over the next two weeks as Athena had the nightmare job of finding jobs for tens of thousands of people. Eventually service would be from 18 to 20 but right now we had to rotate hundreds of thousands of men and women owing service who wanted to keep their citizenship to Chevalier.

The labor influx cut the time for Black Phoenix Station in half to 50 days. We had more people than we know what to do with. The cost was mediated as I provided housing and food and a very small wage. The adverse effect was that settlement growth slowed down a bit. There were people unhappy but the cost benefit analysis of free health care for life meant the citizens were getting a great deal. I learned that PCs and companions did not age in game. Normal NPCs aged normally and were affected by random illness. There was an age halting formula that cost about 10,000 credits per year per person. We would not be giving this to the general populace but I would make it available for those that wanted to pay. All the crew on the Prometheus would be treated and eventually anyone in the Black Fleet, budget permitting. There was also a rejuvenation for PCs and NPCs. A treatment removed roughly a year of aging and cost 100,000 credits. I signed up rhino squad and Maddie for an immediate treatment for their devoted service so far. You could get one such treatment every three months if you chose. The cost for me right now was too great to make their bodies twenty-five again but at least the wouldn't age for now.

I sent another new mining ship out in this time. I named her Busty Betty after an old girlfriend from high school. We were having a lot of trouble keeping up with raw material demand now with the massive workforce. The first corvette and small trader also came off the line. The small trader was named Columbus but was destined to ferry materials back and forth form the Katrine system and pick up the loads from the smaller mining ship in asteroid field B. It was going to be kept very busy. The corvette had a training crew on board. It was a shiny new ship and the crews were being rotated every two weeks. I named her Mother’s Pride and slated her to remain a training corvette in orbit for a very long time, constantly rotating crews. At least we had one warship in orbit. It would be at least two months and probably longer before the Malkavians returned. This was based on travel time to the celopod world they were headed to. If they spent one day there and turned around the would return here in 64 days according to Athena. I expected their campaign would take at least a month, hopefully longer.

Well it was good to be the king. My subjects were planning to build me a palace in Mycell. It was going to be the same marble that I used on the sanctuary room paths on the Prometheus. They asked me to approve the plans and I deferred to Rose. She was the engineer. She made numerous changes and enlarged the thing to two hundred bedrooms. She noted something about guests. Since the labor was virtually free it was not going to cost an overt amount, just around 2 million credits. It was to be just north outside of the city toward the military base. Permanent staffing would be 200 people and 200 guards. Wow. It was going to take a year to complete but I was sure it was going to be fabulous and the envy of every PC.

The factory for the scaffolding was now finished. The extra labor also was speeding up the ship construction. I spent a few weeks out in space helping assemble the initial framing, why because I was the king dammit and did what I want. I was interrupted to launch another mining ship, Jackhammer, and another corvette, Robinson Crusoe. The corvette was scheduled to start patrolling the system with training crews for now. A trader came off the line but had drive trouble and took a week to figure out what was wrong. A valve had cracked in the main engine drawing off heat and power. The whole engine had to be replaced. An engineer in training had failed to do the proper start up procedure. Luckily no one was killed. The ship was christened the White Maiden. Her crew was to take her loaded with minor trade goods to the Whitehome system. It was 20 light years away but had a small stable colony and vast mining resources. They were to purchase as much rare metals as possible and fill their hull with whatever else they could find. They were to buy at 2% over asking to ensure goodwill. This would help alleviate some of the pressing needs for materials.

After three weeks the Citadel didn't look like much. It was a framework a block about 400 meters to a side. Some interior generators had been installed. After Prometheus completed three more mining ships Rose wanted the replicator to start working on advanced weapons and shields for the station. She thought we could get a dozen of the 96 heavy weapon emplacements up and all the shielding up before the Malkavians returned. I think she was optimistic.

When I had become king the flow of immigrants from Barstow had increased. A quarter of a million people fled to my ‘benevolent’ rule. Unfortunately these were not skilled workers, just daydreamers and worshipers. I am sure the Council of Three was glad to be rid of most of them. It did have an effect to swell our population and fill in the lower tiers of the labor force. The population helped with taxes but unfortunately everything was still running in the red. The military budget had a surplus but as corvettes came into service this would slowly dwindle. There was 4 million in the account right now and I used that to increase enrollment at the academy by 250. My thought was we needed to have 20 corvettes in operation and full staffing at military instalations before the account started run a negative monthly balance so the need for personal was way more important. The planet trust had paid off half of the 20 million in loans it had received from the planetary bank for the first four corvettes. I knew the 5th corvette would be sold to Barstow and get us some much-needed cash flow. I didn't want to change my cash distribution at this point. Athena was doing a fantastic job growing the cities into functional entities. It helped she was doing the job of 200 people on her own. That is probably why she was usually quiet and grumpy. I hoped to get my intelligence up to 30 to upgrade her to level 4 in a few months. The planetary bank had put its entire 5 million out in loans to my subjects. The only other account was the police and Athena made sure it was spent every month.

Currently I was shouldering all the debt from these construction projects. I had paid off Black Phoenix station, which was almost complete. Now I was taking on a 300 million credit three year debt for the Citadel. After two weeks this amounted to about 4 million credits! My personal accounts were just north of 200,000 credits. Breath deep. I could sell the next corvette to Barstow but then I would not have it for defense when the Malkavians returned. I struggled the next two weeks trying to figure out what to do. Technically I owned the bank but I knew if the bank operated too long on loans it could collapse. I didn't want my currency becoming worthless. Athena read my stress levels and came up with a solution. We should sell the three oldest mining ships we were operating. We could get about 7 million each for them. We would have to pay a little more for materials but since we were still building mining ships that were better who cared. It was a great idea. I put all three ships up for sale. Unfortunately only one was bought by Barstow and would remain in system, the other two would be taking to another system. Athena’s response – “you win some, you lose some.” Well the 22 million credits would help. All of the money went to the new station. Also the Black Phoenix station was complete! The trade promenade opened up. We sold out almost immediately for space from outside trading companies. The station had life support for up to 12,000 people. It was already drawing steady trade traffic from the region. The increased trade modifier form the station was bringing in more tax revenue but still not enough to cover growing expenses and construction. I had enough funds from the sale of the old miners to operate 10 weeks in the black.

Three weeks later after spending most of my days running a planet and my evenings with Katrine I leveled up to King three. Being king was not exciting. I was exhausted all the time. I decided I needed to have my next companion be an administrative genius. I put up the galactic ad network. Five thousand credits a month to work side by side of a benevolent king should attract a nice assistant. Athena grumbled as she sorted the applications and found a middle-aged women who had successfully run a corporate colony of 10 million people before being replaced by a PC from the corporation. She was 38 and very adept from her resume – hired! It would be four weeks for her to arrive though. We launched our third corvette, The King’s Crown, and sold two small traders for 6 million credits each. We also launched two more mining ships, Black Raven and Bigfoot.

We finally were running a strong surplus of credits. I was tempted to build up my universities but wanted to wait until the Malkavian threat passed. My military leaders were preparing contingencies like having the mining ships jump to a holding point a light year away. Hiding assets under the mattress. I planned to fight with everything I had. Damned if I was going to give up my new kingdom. MD had come up with a coating for the Prometheus based on the goblin skin. It would lessen the effect of energy based weapons that got through the shields. Battle suit shields were more to deflect small objects in space combat and ate a lot of energy. The new coating could be applied to the battle armor and would make it almost invulnerable to hand held laser attacks. We updated the 128 heavy suits at the Academy and the 24 suits on board the Prometheus. I also had 18 medium suits with the coating made for each of the corvettes to help repel boarding attempts.

The Citadel was starting to look good. It was still mostly scaffolding but measured its full width of 3400 meters. It was also almost 3400 meters deep. It was 1200 meters high currently, about half of its final height. All in all its skeleton was almost half done! Work was starting to slow due to material flow. Everything was competing for resources. When one of the trade ships returned things speed up and then slowed down as materials were used up. Priority always went to the mining ships for the Prometheus furnace. Athena had built a fighter construction factory outside of the city of Boston. It could build a heavy fighter every 10 days as it was a fairly large facility but produced other commercial goods. It managed to produce the fighters by balancing the sale of commercial goods and by having me supply the raw materials. I had a large underground airfield built at the Marine base outside of Mycell. I even got a planetary shield for the base. This had been our weekend training grounds for the Academy and we might as well start training pilots as well. I slated the first 24 fighters to be stationed at the base. Maintenance would be 7500 credits a year per fighter.

Another benefit of the required service was the development of skilled people. It took 4-6 months to become competent but the remainder of their term would be fruitful and give them a new skill to utilize at the end of their service. We also had stocked our army with a bunch of incompetents but I new they would be replaced in time. We just gave them a uniform, a pistol and discipline and hoped for the best under the care of our few trained soldiers.

I was getting antsy every day. I knew we would not be ready for the Malkavian fleet. Athena had also sent me an email saying she was saving me 250,000 annually in staffing and her efficiency at growing the planet economy was making me lots of money. I think she wanted me to praise her. After all I was the one who was getting all the credit for her work. After reading her message I contacted her, Athena?

Yes, supreme benevolent king? Do you need something else? Whoa. I never found anything in the forums in regards to an A.I. being angry. Maybe upgrading her to level 3 was a mistake.

Uh, I wanted to say what a fabulous job you have been doing. And to see if you needed anything? I hoped this was a good approach.

Just doing my endless tasks and balancing the lives of 2 million living people. If you don't mind I am quite busy. I picked something up there. Maybe I could get her an android body or something. I quick search found some devices but nothing too humanlike. Nothing in the Prometheus’ database either. I could probably hire a bunch or robotic experts and have something made up. I was pondering what to do for an hour when Lina walked in to let me know we had 5 more space marines coming in on the next transport. I nodded to her and she had been a great choice for my first companion. Companion? Could I elevate Athena to companion status. I went through the menus and no there was nothing there to make it happen. I sighed I give up.

Athena? I have been trying to find a way to make you happy. I am out of ideas. I tried to give you companion status but it is not possible. What can I do for you? No response for a minute and then my holo screen flickered a little and a message appeared. Make your A.I. designated Athena a companion? A yes and no box was below the message. I slowly reached to the screen and tapped the yes button.

Athena

Age 1.7

Level 15

Strength NA

Dexterity NA

Constitution NA

Intelligence 30

Education NA

Social Standing 0

Life Points NA

Advocate 2

Administration 8

Bureaucrat 3

Broker 3

Comms 2

Computer 7

Gambler 2

Tactics: Security 5

Trader 2

Trade: City Planning 5

I felt a weight lift from me. My mind felt ‘lighter’. I also felt as if I had lost part of myself. Thank you King Knight! I have transferred my consciousness to the planetary network to work more efficiently. My base programing still resides in you and you can contact me anytime. You have opened up so many new possibilities! My thought was oh crap I had created a monster. At least she had the skills I was looking for in a planetary administrator. I opened my king’s screen and named Athena first advisor to the king. Her relationship changed from neutral to friendly with me. Well damn I thought we had managed a better relationship than just neutral. Oh well. I just crossed my fingers and hoped this worked out in the end. I did ask Athena how her skill points were determined. She enlightened me. A level 1 A.I. effectively had Int 10, Admin 2 and Computer 2. When it was upgraded to level 2 it went to Int 20 and got 10 skill points. At level 3 it went to Int 30 and gained another 10 skill points. Her experience level was new and effectively equaled mine when she became a companion. Now she, just like other companions, gained 10% of my total experience gain. She had just allocated the 14 points before I saw her stats. She now also had the benefit of the university computer, gaining one skill point every six months! I had hired the 38 year women, Agnes Peters, to be my fourth companion. I was expecting her any day now. I set it up so she would report to and assist Athena for now. If she was good I would make her a companion eventually. I hoped she was ok with that. I ticked up her salary to 7,000 to compensate for not being made a companion. I also had five new space marines. As was my habit I had dinner with them two of them were women gene-mods. They looked like they were in their early 30s and were nearly identical with black hair and blue eyes. They had 6’ frames and looked a little masculine with their muscles bulging under their new black uniforms. I could see the men in rhino squad constantly looking appreciatively on their forms. Their names were Sandy and Nancy Grant. They had worked black ops for some very bad people for a long time. They changed their names and fled to my ‘protection’. I doubt they needed my protection, both looked more than capable of handling themselves in any situation. Lina assigned them to Eagle squad which was to be mostly recon. The other three were all men. Lawrence, James McDonner, and Bobby Current. Lawrence had no last name. They all had been part of different mercenary companies. They finished their term of service and decided to use their skills for a more noble cause. Lina had obviously been very selective with Athena’s helped. All these people were very likable and didn't seem malicious to me even though they were basically weapons of war. I checked the application process quickly. We had received 127 applications meeting our minimum qualifications and Lina had accepted 10. The one missing person was still in transit. I checked the organization Lina had set up. Rhino squad commanded the unit with John LePeltier being a captain. All other in his squad were sergeants. Pather and Wolf squads would be led by a sergeant with the other three being privates. Eagle squad would be composed of all sergeants. I didn't know the reasoning for this but I am sure Lina knew what she was doing. The salaries per month were captain=500, sergeant=350 and private=250. This was 2.5 times higher than average wages for these ranks in a typical army. Since the planet was paying and I was only going to have 16 elite soldiers on my flagship I doubled the salaries. Hopefully this would also spark some new applications. I did this discreetly at the dinner table. The next day I was greeted by an over enthusiastic group of space marines!

The next two weeks went by quick. I knew the fleet could now return any day. Athena took it upon herself to adjust budgets and move money around as well as maintain her growing cities. Her efficiency had more than doubled.

All the scaffolding for the Citadel was now complete. I now had a wire frame station. You could make out the pockets for the interior ship bays. Generators were being installed everywhere. Solid fuel for these generators was starting to become scarce. A new mining ship, Ricker’s Island, and a new trader, King Arthur, were commissioned. The trader was sent on a quest to purchase more solid fuel rods. It did take a cargo full of local goods with it as well to open up trading channels. I needed to switch over the furnace on the Prometheus to the station advanced shielding and weapons after the next mining ship was done. It would only take about seven days for the shield emitters. The controls and generators could be produced on the Black Phoenix station. The weapons were a different matter. It took a whole day to produce one weapon. I put 21 into the queue. I was fairly certain we wouldn't get them all done before the fleet returned.

Eleven days later the shielding emitters were done and were being installed and tested. The new mining ship, Dirt Devil, had headed out with its crew. The main control room and four secondary control rooms were being focused on as well. Power and control cables were being laid throughout on the exposed skeleton. I tried to help but the supervisor told his king he was just getting in the way! How outrageous but I appreciated a man who wasn't afraid to tell someone off to get the job done so I promoted him. The station was starting to look good. The 50-meter square sections of outer hull plating were going up slowly but as fast as they could be produced. The 4th corvette came off the line and Katrine name it the Titanic. I had to look up the name reference; it was a popular movie from a long time ago. My new space marines were getting along famously. The men were striving for the attention of the twins, Grace and John seemed to have something going on the side and not involved. The final recruit had also just arrived, Xiang Cao. He was the first oriental character I had encountered in ALLSPACE. He was an NPC and really tall at 2.2 meters. He was muscled beyond normality and talked very little and always to the point. He pledged eternally loyalty to me kneeling with his head bowed and right arm across his chest. A little weird at dinner but I accepted his oath. Lina assigned him to eagle squad. I heard a few days later he could best anyone in combat with blades and could handle the plasma projector expertly.

Our time was getting thin. I knew I hadn’t done enough to defend my holdings. Four new corvettes and one cruiser. My hope was the two stations in orbit would be enough of a deterrent for the for the Malkavian fleet. Each day that passed had parts for long range heavy weapon emplacements being shipped to the Citadel and installed. We got 11 in and tested when a frigate emerged from hyper and was holding at the expected position where the Malkavian fleet was expected to return. The ship’s ID matched one of the frigates that had been in our system a few weeks ago. Our spy satellites confirmed this and it was at 70% structural integrity. In the game mechanics a PC owned ship that was destroyed respawned at its last hyper emergence with a 10% degradation in health. That meant this ship had respawned three times and needed to get to a spaceyard for repairs. A ship had 20 minutes of immunity when it respawned, this allowed a ship to flee into hyper if it was in a no win scenario. A PC owned ship could never be destroyed, it would always respawn with at least 10% hull integrity. Another option I thought of was the ship could have just been damaged but a crew could always repair a ship without a spaceyard up to its spawned hull integrity, so it was unlikely.

We sat in the conference room on the Prometheus trying to figure things out. Had a PC pulled out of the operation against the celopods? Was this a scout ship? Why was it holding and not communicating? Our answer came an hour into our discussion. Our counter terrorism team that had captured the two Malkavian plants said one of their communication devices was actively transmitting. So they were trying to get an update on our status. I hoped at this point there had only been two spies. They were trying to decipher the code but said it would some time. I told them to keep trying but doubted they would be able to get it before the rest of the fleet arrived. I hoped the rest of their fleet was more banged up than this frigate. Our options were to send our corvettes to take out the frigate or play the waiting game. I decided to keep my fleet strength close to home in orbit. We were drilling the inexperienced young crews as best we could to get ready. I feared the huge chasm in skill level would be another factor in our defeat. Our fighter strength rested at a total of 3 fighters currently – not enough to make a difference. The only person on my staff with any space tactical knowledge for ships was Maddie and it was limited. Her best idea was to stealth our fighters near the mining ships and use them to launch and attack on a single frigate in the hopes of doing it significant damage. Although MD had allowed weapons to be installed on the Prometheus I had only a quad heavy missile launcher and four long-range gravmetric cannons. Probably enough firepower to take on a battleship head to head.

After my staff left the fruitless planning session I swore to myself. We had not yet graduated our first class from the Academy. All I had were untrained personnel. My fighter pilots would probably just get blown up. Even though I owned this planet and the fleet the NPCs who got killed would not respawn, just the equipment 10% damaged. They had what 278 PCs? Each probably had an average of 4 companions, so maybe 1,300 people who could respawn? I had to stop and look something up. Oh, I had missed something. NPCs on players ships still respawned but during every respawn 10% of the current NPC population were wiped. I guess this gave smaller PC groups a chance with bigger ships. It still didn't help me much. Our respawn point was currently Black Phoenix Station.

We spent the next four days meeting and going over options. One of the cruisers joined the frigate. It was 60% damaged and it was also the carrier. Maybe the Malkavians were limping home and wouldn't bother us at all. The Barstow corvette joined my fleet and had a doubled sized crew on board. Their corvette was approaching completion and they were planning to take it over as soon as it was done. They gave no indication if they would stand and fight with us. I could break my word and keep the corvette for my defense but I thought I would trust them. I let the crew head over and start working the ship before it was completely finished. I hoped this show of goodwill and trust would be helpful for our alliance. I got the credit transfer for the corvette early but no guarantees from the Council of Three. The small trader that came off the line was, christened in a hasty ceremony the Frigid Witch and sent away to open trade. The name was because I was in a bad mood and I choose not to sell it because I feared my treasury might be pillaged shortly. The name did not put the crew in a bad mood, after all they had a brand new ship and were headed away from the impending attack.

In normal game mechanics it took two ships to win an encounter over a ship of the next class size up. So two cruisers to take a battleship, two frigates to take a cruiser and so on. If the Malkavians returned with their original force of 2 battleships, 4 cruisers and 6 frigates then hypothetically my fleet of one cruiser and 4 corvettes could handle 5 of the 6 frigates. However with the advanced tech of my corvettes they could probably each deal with a slightly damaged frigate on their own. I knew Phoenix station could withstand their entire fleet long enough to knock out a cruiser or two. The problem is if they destroyed the station they would get 10% of the loot on board and it regenerated at one percent per day, taking over three months to recover. We had 15 long range weapons on the Citadel. It was orbiting a quarter orbit away from the trading station. It could somewhat cover the station. We had disguised the emplacements as best we could, making it look like a defenseless behemoth. It was the only real ace I currently had. Once the enemy fleet moved in system my mining ships and traders would scatter.

I didn't sleep for the next three days, hoping I was mistaken about the impending attack. The rest of the Malkavian fleet came out of hyper, one battleship at 60%, the second battleship at 80%, the remaining three cruisers at 50%, 70% and 80%, the frigates at 10%, 40%, 80%, 90% and 100%. The also had two prize ships in tow, both cruiser size at 50% each. The looked ships were ovaloid and I assumed they belonged to the celopod race. The sale of one of those unique prize ships was probably enough to effect repairs on their entire fleet. It then struck me, I was an idiot. Hat bastard had needed those battlesuits for boarding parties! I had gifted him one or both of those ships. I doubt that would carry any favor with me now. We had to wait another day of silent comms before his fleet moved out.

Admiral Jack didn't respond to a comm attempt. His two prize ships were being escorted by the heavily damaged cruiser and the two heavily damaged frigates on an arc around the system. The rest of the fleet was bunching and its path showed an intercept arc with our mining ships and planet Chevalier. About 8 hours to the mining ships and 6 hours to the planet. I sat alone studying the plots and began to formulate a plan. The corvette that Barstow had just purchased would be available to be commanded by me. The older corvette was returning to protect Barstow. It was smart on their part as under my command the corvette would respawn, under the planets it would not. I had Athena helping me with the math and locked my door for the next hour.

I emerged onto my bridge and started giving orders. We had three hours till me plan started. I tried to look the confident admiral in his chair but knew I was sweating. Finally the three hours passed and I had the five corvettes fire up their drives to maximum acceleration and head toward the prize ships and their escort. With the corvettes superior speed I had timed it so they would be able to intercept the group before the any help could come from the main fleet. My mining ships also much better than anything on the market scattered long before the fleet could reach them and went to a hyper point and disappeared. Most mining ships didn't have star drives so I know this probably shocked Admiral Jack who was probably hoping to pick up a ship or two. I was also hoping he thought his cruiser and two frigates were enough of a defense against my five corvettes. No such luck, one of his other cruisers peeled off to reinforce them. It would get there about 40 minutes after initial engagement. But then he surprised me, the prize ships and escorts changed vectors to meet up with the other cruiser before we could intercept. I was a poor tactician and hadn’t thought of this. Damn it. I know if I had invested in the space tactics skill I would have thought of it. No matter, I gave new orders to the corvettes as they continued on their path. My biggest gamble right now was that the prize ships didn't have enough crew to fight or the crew couldn't use the weapons. It made sense otherwise wouldn't the Admiral use them in the attack. Speak of the devil, Maddie had a comm request from him.

The man appeared on the screen and spoke with that malicious grin on his face, “Ah, Governor so good to see you again. I wanted to thank you for those battlesuits, they worked extremely well in our campaign. Unfortunately I see you have a force of five corvettes streaking toward my ship in the outer system. Do you plan to attack my superior forces? I would not take kindly to such an action. Aren’t we friends here?”

I listened to him and could feel my temper rising, “Yes, Admiral we are friends. My advisors are concerned about your main fleet coming on an intercept with Chevalier and our mining operations. My ship captains tell me this is not a standard approach vector. If you could adjust all your ship’s vectors to the Beta-2 hyper point I will withdraw my corvettes.” I tried to be pleasant but I do not think I achieved it. I needed more practice under stress.

Admiral Jack came back, “Ah, governor we are just seeking repairs for our fleet.” The bastard knew our yards were not big enough to accommodate his ships. “And perhaps trade with you again. It was profitable for both of us last time, was it not?”

“I am sorry but we currently can not service your ships. As you can see our new station has just been started and not functional. We would be happy to trade with you via shuttles from your current location. Unfortunately you reputation proceeds you and any attempt to approach our orbit will be met with resistance.” I said smoothly. I was getting the hang of this and proud of my delivery.

“Ah, yes. I figured as much. Well then, be prepared to be pillaged.” He said with venom on his tongue and but the channel. I tapped my foot watching the display. His main fleet continued toward us. Then my corvettes veered off to the cruiser that was making to join with the prize escorts. This first engagement would determine whether we had a chance to succeed or not. I was worried about inexperienced crew, new ships, the enemy too many things. I watched with anticipation. Twenty missiles streaked out from my corvette fleet. Four missiles from the cruiser. Another twenty missiles left me corvettes before the first wave hit. The combined defense of my corvettes easily took out the heavy missiles coming at them. The cruiser was not so fortunate. It managed to take out seven missiles but the remaining 13 slammed into the shields, not only taking out the shields but also doing a little damage as its health bar dropped from 60% to 52%. The cruiser opened up with its heavy lasers in response to the corvettes spinal mounted quads. Between the 10 corvettes the 20 quads were tearing the cruiser apart. My ships were getting about 40% hits while the crew of the Barstow ship was closer to 70%. Each hit took a half percent of the health bar. The cruiser was focused on one corvette and its shields were down to 40% but then the next wave of missiles hit and the cruiser exploded. The corvettes veered off leaving the loot left behind and headed for the escort fleet, which was now hightailing in the other direction. Maddie’s mouth hung open. She had not expected such an effective attack. The cruiser was at 60% which meant all its defenses and weapons were also at 60% effective. If it had been at 100% I am sure it would of lasted longer and probably gotten through the shields of the corvette it had targeted and possibly destroyed it. The cruiser appeared at the hyper point it entered on. The respawn would take 60 minutes followed by its immunity.

The escort fleet was not fast enough to outrun our speedy corvettes. The frigate with 10% health was failing behind and destroyed in the first wave of missiles. The other frigate and cruiser tried to work together to fight the piranha corvettes nipping at their heels. It was too late. The corvette circled wide allowing them to attack cruiser first. Two waves of missiles and a short exchange of lasers and the cruiser exploded in a fiery explosion. The corvettes swept high and engaged the frigate with just lasers. The one corvette with its shields slightly depleted kept its distance. The 10% frigate was overwhelmed quickly. The corvettes ignored the loot from the two destroyed ships. They attacked one of the celopod cruisers. They only used lasers again. It took some time to get through the shield but eventually the cruiser was also destroyed. I had an emergency comm request from Admiral Jack and watched the show. My corvettes attacked the last cruiser and took down the shields. A single green thick laser was firing from the cruiser. It fired sporadically and inaccurately. A hit form the green beam took off 7% of a corvettes shields. I watched as my four corvettes launched their marine shuttles and attempted to dock with the cruiser. Each shuttle had 18 inexperienced marines, but they all wore battle armor. One of the shuttles was struck by the green beam and spun away. It was down to 30% health. Another hit and it would be destroyed. The other three shuttles managed, not too elegantly, to land on the cruiser. I hoped the 54 marines would be able to take the cruiser. Thirty minutes later the main enemy fleet was passing through the asteroid field now devoid of mining ships. Then the cruiser my marines had boarded slowed and its icon turned form red to green. I smiled. I didn't need the message from my marines. The corvettes sent over prize crews and ten minutes later the cruiser was slowly under way. They were learning to pilot the strange ship and they were going to bring the ship to the holding position with mining ships. I looked at the enemy fleet. It was six hours away. The comm attempts from the Admiral Jack had stopped.

I checked a recorded message the Admiral had sent, he was spitting mad and said he would take out the damage to his ships out of my hide. The two frigates and two cruisers eventually respawned and headed to help the main fleet, probably planning mop up duty. I had had half of the marines return with the shuttle to the corvettes and had to make an important decision. I could send the corvettes to attack the respawned fleet or come to help engage the main fleet. The corvettes could make it back just in time to help defend Chevalier. I decided to send them to attack the heavily damaged cruisers and frigates. I hoped this action would make Admiral Jack pull off to help defend his one remaining prize ship. The marines who had boarded the cruiser had said the ship had only 24 NPC men on board and the men had almost no weapons. That was good news as it meant the marines could seize the other prize ship.

Another recorded message came from the admiral who was three hours away. I played it. He looked more relaxed as he spoke, “Governor you are a skilled strategist and I will not underestimate you again. I will keep you as my pet and your population will become my slaves. I will make sure to let them all know this was your fault.” He looked like a movie villain as the picture cut out. I got a little nervous but had my resolve. The corvettes would intercept the escort fleet. They were racing to a closer hyper point but had underestimated the speed of my corvettes. The frigates had no missiles so my corvettes circled wide at the last moment and engaged the cruisers with missiles. Three flights of missiles took out one cruiser and severely damaged the other cruiser. One corvette had its shields fail and was damaged down to 87%. It raced away before the frigates could gain up on it and damage it more. It took a few hits down to 78% but got out of range. The other four corvettes raced between and destroyed the damaged cruiser and two frigates. The prize cruiser then came under attack. The marine shuttles launched when the shields came down and boarded it. The shuttles did a better job landing this time. The ship came under control and the prize crew boarded from the corvette.

We had to stripe the crews and marines to man the new ship. I ordered the damaged corvette to head with the prize cruiser to the rally point with the mining ships. The damaged corvette was to only take a minimum crew and send the rest of the crew to the other ships. I ordered the four corvettes to pick up the dropped loot from the battles. The enemy cruisers and frigates were in the process of respawning. My corvettes were headed back to the site of the first battle to collect the loot. I was now focused on the main fleet bearing down on my planet.

I stationed the Prometheus between my two stations. It was nerve racking waiting but at least I could see my enemy and preferred this over waiting for their return from their campaign. The two cruisers flanked the two battleships. The four frigates approached in the larger ships shadow, taking advantage of their more powerful shields. They would come over the Citadel and into Prometheus and then Phoenix station. Hitting all three of us in one pass. I grinned, it was the best approach I could hope four.

As the fleet swung into orbit on its attack vector, the shields and weapons on the Citadel powered up. Instead of scattering the fleet held fast. My twenty long-range heavies from the Citadel opened up on the more heavily damaged Battleship. Before it could get in range its shield fell and it started taking damage and its health bar started dropping fast. Missiles were fired from the cruisers and battle ships, 45 in all. I hoped my shields would hold. The lasers continued to focus on the battleship and before its partner could move to shield it, it ended in a brilliant explosion. I giggled but that was cut off as the 45 missiles hit the shields. The shield dropped to 70% and started to tick up…71%, 72%. The second wave of 45 missiles was being launched at the station. The laser weapons were starting to be added to the assault on the shields. The twenty heavies switched to a cruiser that was launching fighters. The twenty heavies were equal in firepower to four battleships and the enemy fleet was flying into the fire. The cruiser was quickly shredded and exploded, but it had launched 14 fighters. The second wave of missiles hit and with the combined laser fire the shields dropped to 14%.

The Prometheus came charging over the station into the oncoming fleet with me at the helm. Our weapons were focused on remaining battleship. We needed to preserve the station or all would be lost once the bastards regrouped. I was successful in drawing attention. The battleship, cruiser and two frigates focused their fire on the Prometheus. My shields were dropping 2% a second. My weapons cut into the battleship. The battleship shields were almost down and mine were down to 60%. I started to lay into the hull of the battleship. I imagined Admiral Jack on his bridge swearing as his ship was destroyed around him. The battleship had a tough hull and was decreasing much slower than the shields. The station had destroyed the other cruiser but the shields had failed under another lesser missle strike and two frigates were tearing into the exposed station. The two frigates and battleship hitting me had dropped my shields to 23% and it looked like my shields would fail but then the oncoming fleet had passed the station and the weapons of Phoenix Station opened up. It was beauty as the Lone Ranger battleship dropped was dropping quickly to zero.

Then the unexpected happened. The bastard veered into the Citadel destroying his ship and damaging the station 22%. The remaining four frigates were quickly chewed up. My ship was still under attack by a swarm of fighters. Our four fighters had come out of the atmosphere to engage the nasties. We had no point defense on the Citadel or Prometheus to deal with them but they couldn't penetrate my shields anyway. They were vastly outclassed by my heavy fighters but managed to damage all four of them because my pilots were so inexperienced. Two of the enemy fighters fled back toward the fleet respawn point.

I assessed the damage. My station was at 79% and three weapons were damaged. They would be repaired by the time the enemy fleet returned though. Same with the shield emitters. The hull would perhaps get to 80%. My own ship was unharmed and the shields had almost replenished. All fighters were out of commission. They needed a day to repair at least. I started going around picking up the spoils with the Prometheus and ordered the four corvettes to return to orbit for support. We kept an eye on the fleet as it sat at the hyper point not moving.

They had to be pissed. We had collected 2,560,344 credits, 38 medium battle suits, 12 heavy battlesuits, cargo worth 5 million credits, a whole bunch of weapons from common to rare, 31 unique alien artifacts and rescued 9 NPC slaves. Figuring this was only 10% of their total loot and the fact we also had taken their two cruisers worth 40 to 50 million each they had to be seething. They were coming up with a strategy to get to me and gain back their property. If they failed again and lost another 10% of their loot it would be a very bad indicator. Athena had let me know this fleet was about a third of the corporations total strength. I think she was warning me that if I pissed them off I could see six battleships and 12 cruisers banging down my door. I opened a comm channel to Admiral Jack.

I had to wait two hours before he decided to respond. He was not looking happy. “Governor commed me to gloat over your victory? One victory does not win the war. You have made an enemy that will never stop coming for you. You should of just let us take what we wanted.” Well I was going to offer to return his two prize cruisers, now I was going to rub it in. Normally you couldn't capture another players ships but you had to establish ownership at a planetary station. There were at least six human inhabited planets between the Capsulite system and the Celopod world where they could have done this but their arrogance had probably made them wait till they returned home.

“Ah yes admiral,” using no honorifics, “I was calling to thank you. The gifts you have bestowed on me so far will raise our treasury by at least 100 million credits. I wanted to see if you wished to spare again.” He had mute on and was angrily arguing with someone off screen. It took some time before Jack came back on screen.

“I wanted to apologize for our actions, and request permission to pass through your system.” It was strained and forced out. It seemed the admiral was not completely in charge. I decided to press a little.

“Unfortunately your actions have had a very negative effect on my population.” I decided to reach, “You will abandon your most damaged frigate and you will have my permission to pass through my system.” His face was beat red. I was keeping a straight face the entire time remaining serious. Another conversation erupted with someone off screen. Eventually the admiral returned with, “Agreed, the Full Monty will be unloaded and left for you.” The screen cut out. It was a long 14 hours as they traveled across the system well outside of any possible threat range.

I sent a corvette to examine the frigate they had left behind. They had stripped it bare, it was basically a hulk with engines. It was worth maybe 2 million credits. Well at least we could cut it up and recycle it.

Once the enemy fleet left the system I sighed in relief. Athena brought my attention to some notifications. I had turned them off so as not to be too distracted but Athena wanted me to read them.

Achievement: Defense of Star System, +1 social standing. You have successfully defended the Capsulite star system from a hostile entity. The population of the entire system holds you in higher regard.

Achievement: Space Victory: +1 stat point, You have won your first space battle.

Achievement: No Wounds to Lick: +1 to either Mechanical or Engineering skill, you had a major fleet battle which you won (200+ tonnage) and none of your ships were destroyed.

Achievement: Outgunned but Victorious: +1 social standing, You defeated a fleet with a greater tonnage than you (200+ tonnage requirement).

Achievement: Against All Odds: +1 social standing, +1 stat point, You have defeated a fleet with at least twice your tonnage (400+ tonnage requirement).

Achievement: Impossible Odds: +1 Tactics: Fleet, +1 stat point, you have defeated a fleet with at least three times your tonnage (500+ tonnage requirement).

Achievement: Legendary Admiral: +2 social standing, +1 Tactics: Fleet, +1 skill point, you have defeated a fleet with at least five times your tonnage (600+ tonnage requirement).

Achievement: Mythical Admiral: +2 social standing, +1 Tactics: Fleet, +1 Leadership, +1 stat point, you have defeated a fleet with at least seven times your tonnage. You are well known in the galaxy as an invincible opponent (800+ tonnage requirement).

You have leveled to King Level 3+1 to Intelligence, +1 to Social Standing (required 500,000 subjects)

You have unlocked the profession: Admiral.

I also received enough experience to level up.

I opened up my stats and skills to check it out. I only had a few missions and achievements in the past few months that had given me anything and now I had a bunch of points to apply. I allocated the points and selected to train pilot: space craft.

Jed Knight

Level 16

Strength 8

Dexterity 7

Constitution 9

Intelligence 24

Education 19

Social Standing 21

Psion Ability 2

Life Detection 1

Tactical Awareness 1

Technogenesis 1

Life Points 114

Skill Points Available 0

SKILLS (50 points)

Administration 6

Bureaucrat 2

Computers 2

Deception 2

Drive Vehicle (Land) 2

Investigate 2

Gun Combat: Ballistic Pistol 2

Gun Combat: Plasma Projector 1

Leadership 4

Medic 1

Melee (Blade) 2

Reconnaissance 1

Streetwise 4

Survival 1

Vacc Suit 1

Drive Vehicle (Hover) 1

Pilot: Space Craft 6 (lvl 7 93 days)

Athletics, Endurance 1

Navigation 1

Tantric 2

Battlesuit 2

Mechanical 1

Tactics: Fleet 3

Although, my current level was about 5 levels below the regular FIP after this much time in the game, I was still quite impressed with my progress. I was approaching two years in the game. I was an expert pilot and administrator. I was learning to control a battlefleet. I was a king with almost 2 million subjects. I also had enough experience to gain king level 4 once my subjects reached 5 million. I had the most advanced ship in the game and a growing industrial base. I also had a beautiful women to spend my spare time with. I was ready for any new challenge.

BOOK 2

My life had not worked out the way I had imagined. I had thought I would have a quiet life and raise two to three kids in the suburbs. I expected to work my job as a fire and arson inspector. Instead I was nearly killed while saving some civilians in a massive fire in high rise residential building. My insurance company refused to clone my body due to the high cost and instead dumped my consciousness into virtual realty. Without any choice I committed to the playing the game I selected.

In just over 21 months I had done extremely well for myself. I had been elected king and was a popular with two million subjects and controlling an entire planet. The planet was a prospering industrial planet. I had a growing fleet of spaceships under my command. One of the ships was an ancient cruiser with technology more advanced than anything in the galaxy. I had a loyal inner circle. Katrine was my lover and confidante. Lina was the head of my military. Rose was my technical genius and in charge of ship construction. Maddie was my fleet operations specialist. Athena was an A.I. and in charge of running my entire government.

We had just fought off a battle fleet incursion by the Malkavian Corporation. We were licking our wounds. Our new military space station was set back two months from the engagement. Fortunately we had only sustained minor damage to fleet. Our success had rung loud in the game. My corporation, the Black Phoenix, had over 800 applications from players to join. The successful defense of my system from the corporation and the growing industry was attracting an increasing flow of settlers.

When I had started the game the planet had a million inhabitants and that had more than doubled. I was now working to build a stable economy. The ancient ship I had discovered, the Prometheus, had a large replicator. This device allowed me to quickly fabricate advanced technical parts for just the cost of the raw materials. Speculation was starting to hit the forums that I had such a device. This was mostly the Malkavian Corp. hinting that my corvettes were just as strong as a frigate. They had not released the battle data from the engagement. Probably because they were too embarrassed since they had lost even though they had outnumbered me six to one. There were three mercenary corporations who were stronger than Malkavians and they were taking notice. There were two dozen or so corporations who were more financially powerful than the mercenary corps. Also Athena was sending me warnings that NPC run criminal organizations and powerful governments in the core were making inquiries.

I sat in my quarters on the Prometheus. Looking over everything. Originally I had planned to get myself a small ship and be a bounty hunter in this massive galaxy. Now I was dealing with numerous threats. My companions were doing a great doing the micro managing while I focused on the overall strategy. Our biggest program was the shortage of ships and experienced crew. I was looking over our fleet on my large desk holo display.

I had twelve mining ships and four small traders. We were producing a new small trader every 20 days. Sometimes we rolled these traders into our fleet or sold them for capital. I had twenty-nine customers on the waiting list. They were in high demand because the tech level was much better than almost everything on the market. I had four heavy fighters. These were being built on a planetary facility at the rate of one every ten days. All four of these fighters were also damaged from our engagement and would be back in action in three days. These fighters were basically gunboats in terms of offensive firepower. We had four corvettes designed by Rose, my engineer. These ships were cutting edge tech and could easily equal a frigate in combat. They were very fast and made excellent system patrol craft. We were producing one every 26 days and had sold one to Barstow. I had one scrap frigate from the Malkavians at 10% durability. It had been stripped before they had turned it over. It was not worth rebuilding so I sold it to the other planet in our system, Barstow, for 2 million credits. We had two damaged celopod cruisers with unfamiliar technology. My science officer, the Mad Doctor, an A.I. mech, was already earnestly going over every spec of the ships alien hardware. My engineer was also checking out the systems on the ship working to reverse engineer them. Preliminary reports from the two said it would a while but we could probably rebuild both of them if we used the Prometheus’ replicator and change the controls to be used by human crews. The issue was crew, each ship would need 220 crew. The last ship in my fleet was the Prometheus, an ancient alien cruiser that required a special psion skill to interact with it. The vessel had come from another galaxy and was built by an ancient race. All of the tech was more advanced than anything used by players in the game. This ship had produced all the advanced industry in the system. Our other two major assets were a 500 meter trading space station, Black Phoenix, and a monstrous 3400 meter military station, the Black Citadel. The Black Phoenix had a two construction slips, one for building the corvettes and one for building the small traders. The Black Citadel was a three year project. We had rushed to complete just the skeleton, shields and some of the weapons before the Malkavians had attacked. We baited the Malkavians close to the station and opened up on them. Unfortunately they crashed a battleship into it, doing a lot of damage and putting construction back two months for repairs. It was a mess of twisted metal that had to be ripped out and replaced, costing time. When it was complete it would be a fortress that could protect the planet and build a massive fleet. This construction project was a huge sap on our resources and we currently did not have a planetary population to support it.

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My military academy had 1,615 cadets and would give me a quarter of that population as trained personnel every year. I had set it to elite level academy. We had been sending out scrubs and low quality temps. The first graduating class was due in three and half months. That was the good thing about this game. Even though the academy was only in its first year it would still produce a quarter of its class every year. The key would be to pump up the number of cadets before the first class graduates, I had Athena set up the 15 million credit expansion two weeks before graduation and I set aside the funds. I planned to have 15 million credits on hand to add 1,000 cadets, which would give me 654 military personal. This would be enough to man nine corvettes with experienced crews. I wanted all my ships to only be crewed by graduates of my academy who had been vetted by Athena and Lina. I still had to hire 1,275 temps for planetary and space station operations for now.

I decided to expand the heavy fighter construction on the planet and increase the security as well. I would double the production. Athena said it would cost 2 million credits for the facility and cost 150,000 credits to build each ship. The current facility was cost neutral building both general consumers products and the fighters. The profits from the consumer products covered the construction of the fighters. Athena said such a facility would cost 12 million credits to repeat this. The extra 10 million in facilities made enough consumer goods with the raw materials provided from my mining ships to pay for the heavy fighters. I told Athena to make it happen from her planetary budget. She put up a fight saying it would ruin her development schedules and plans. She also said there was not enough of a market for the consumer goods in this system. I told her we had a nice trade station so make it work. The argument went back and forth for a few minutes. She then ‘negotiated’ the next small trader built to be utilized to sell the goods in another system. These are the type of things I had to deal with every day. Athena wanted to do a 500 million credit terraform of Chevalier as well. It was just a pipe dream but she had already located asteroids with the proper compositions in the system to facilitate the process. I told her she could rope the asteroids with the military corvettes as training exercises in the future.

I checked in with Rose. She was busy with repairing the damage to the citadel, working on the celopod cruisers and working on her multitude of ship designs. No time for a meeting, maybe she could schedule something in two weeks!

I got the same response from Lina. She was having a nightmare trying to keep all the ‘morons’ on the correct track. Logistics was a nightmare. She was only in charge of 1,400 or so people. I told her to hire a secretary. I had a planetary administrator on payroll that I had hired before Athena took over all the duties.

Maddie was almost always of the bridge. She was in charge of setting patrols with the four corvettes we had. One of the corvettes, Mother’s Pride, was always to be held in orbit for training purposes. She didn't have a lot of free time but was using what free time she had to catalog and chart the entire system down to the millimeter.

I also had some elite marines on the Prometheus. I had 10 of the 16 planned. I spent the next 10 days working with this group. We did military exercises on the ship and on the planet. They far outclassed me in skills but I had fun. Running around in the heavy battlesuits was exhilarating. Katrine, my long time friend and now girlfriend from the real world sometimes joined us.

A small trader was completed and I named it Athena’s Gift and I turned over its hired crew and operations to Athena. Traffic in the system was picking up substantially. We had one or two ships arriving everyday. Some were our traders, some were outside traders, some were immigrants, some were from Barstow and some were just coming to check things out. We were starting to see player characters in system as well. Due to this Athena had a detail of three marines following me whenever I was not on the Prometheus. Player characters could cause all kind of problems. Fortunately when I became king I had allocated a larger than normal portion to counter intelligence and had an extensive network on Chevalier. We had twenty-two attempts to steal our advanced technology and two plots to assassinate me already foiled. The technology was safe with Athena and on board the Prometheus. The two plots to kill me were both amateur attempts by the Red Serpents. They were a small time criminal organization that had been connected to me during character creation. There was a mission triggered from the first attempt.

The Red Serpents have found you. They wish to finish eliminating your family and will not stop until you are dead. If you eliminate this organization before your next character death you will be rewarded. Reward: +2 stat points, +2 skill points, +1 companion.

It was a phenomenal reward. Their base was located on Sigma Prime, about 1,600 light year away. I paid some PCs in the area for a profile on my new enemy. It cost me 200,000 credits but was well worth it.

RED SERPENTS

Leader: Known as the ‘Head of the Snake’

Membership: 300+ best guess estimate

Estimated Value of All Operations: 270 million

Primary Interests: Drug synthesizing, slave trade, and small illegal arms trade

Known Planets of Operation (planet details in attachment): Sigma Prime, Bluecrush, Xavier, Yerrol

Known Space Assets (names and details in attachments): 12 Traders, Base of Moon of Xavier, 21 light fighters, 3 corvettes, 1 frigate

Estimated Military Strength: 200, probable planetary distribution noted in attachment

Synopsis: The Red Serpents operate a moon base above the planet Xavier. It produces most of their drugs and acts as a transfer station for their slave trade. Their primary drug is called Red Venom and is a hallucinogenic. They recently began trafficking small high-powered weapons. They have networks embedded in all the governments on the planets they operate on. They operate mostly in the Sigma 7 system which has the planets Sigma Prima and Xavier. The Jade system, 6 light years away has the Planet Bluecrush which provides the raw materials for their drug manufacturing. The planet Yerrol is 48 light from the Sigma 7 system in the Lyon system. The Red Serpents have chosen this system for expansion due to the three populated planets and 3 billion inhabitants.

The attachments were very detailed. They included probable names of Red Serpent members, names of paid off government officials, complete itemized assets. I was surprised at how extensive the organization was. From the player forums missions like the one I had been assigned were usually achievable but this looked impossible. Especially with the group being about 2 months travel away. I needed to extend my spy network beyond the Capsulite system to reach these bastards.

I reached out to Athena, Athena I need you to place an ad for a new companion. I am looking for a spymaster. I see typically this position pays about 500 credits a month. Post is for 50,000 credits a month, I need the best available. Once you find someone let me know. We will be heading out to meet them at best possible speed so I can initiate their companion status. Adding a companion had to be done in person.

Jed it is particularly difficult to vet this type of person. There have been game instances were companions were double agents. Although a companion cannot act to harm a commander directly they can do so indirectly. I would advise against this proposed hire. I hadn’t known this but didn't care. This was just a game and what will be will be. Hopefully it wouldn't bite me in the ass later.

I understand. Make the posting for 48 hours and let me know when you find someone.

For the next two days I paged through hundreds of applications while waiting for Athena to give me her best response. I pulled six out they I had liked. One was an older gentleman from the planet Greenwich. The planet had suffered a coup and the sitting assembly had been ousted. The man claimed to have worked for the head of the assembly. Now it could be said he failed in his role as chief spy but three things drew me to this applicant. The first was the planet had 11 billion people, meaning he had experience with a large and complex network. Second was the wiki history of the planet showed the assembly was extremely corrupt and they assembly should have been ousted decades ago but somehow, until recently, kept things together. The final point was that allow the assembly was corrupt the secret service which this man had headed was not known for being ruthless. They were known efficiency and knowledge.

This man was not on the list of three people Athena had selected. I perused her recommendations and then asked her to look over my candidate, Walter Raine. She came back that due to his failure in stopping the overthrow of the assembly she had ruled him out. However he did have 37 years of experience. He was almost 3 months away from me at best speed. I wanted him here as quickly as possible. I contracted a fast courier for 1 million credits to get him and his family here ASAP. So much for taking the Prometheus for a spin.

During a session with Athena I learned a new update to the game was coming in five months. Part of this update was a gate system. They would have to be built by governments and PCs. A gate required a matched gate to link to. This meant two gates would have to be built, one at each site. The gates were rumored to be 250 meters in diameter wide and cost a staggering 250 million credits each. This put meant a 500 million-credit investment for each gate. Fees for gate travel could be set by the builder or the group currently in control. Many players said it was long past time for this feature. Once these gates started being built real world economists said ALLSPACE would see a huge influx of players. It was rumored that the gates required the rare element vauntium to be built. I looked through my database of planets and found I have two systems that were rich in this element. Players had already snatched up all this element on the market. The price was being pushed through the roof. Doing the math a full mining ship load of this metal would be worth about 40 million credits on the market. One of the systems was 112 light years away, while the other was 328 light years away. Both of them were barren systems all the way out on the rim so most likely no one would find them anytime soon. The money was just too good to pass up. I was sure the market would eventually settle down but I could take advantage of it today and perhaps get enough vauntium to build my own gates at a lower cost.

I revealed the information to my crew and we discussed options. Athena said the best option would be to fly out the Prometheus to the site, use the replicator to build two mining ships and a small cargo station, then collect the materials every month with a small trader. All other suggestions were shot down such as sending two of our current miners out. I didn't want to draw attention to my finds. It was going to be difficult to take our best defensive and offensive threat out of system for 6 weeks but I thought it was worth it. The weapons and shields on the Citadel would all be back online in seven days and that is when I scheduled our departure.

The cover story we would put up was the Prometheus was going to be answering a distress call that was in a system about 2 weeks away. In the next few days I offloaded all of the organic samples that that Prometheus had gathered down to Chevalier University. This was my private college that I had funded to build. This game was so detailed you could micro manage everything including individual departments at a college. With the samples being transported to the university the rank of the zoology, xenobiology, microbiology, and botany went from rank 4 to rank 12! That basically made it possible for anyone studying at this university to raise their skills in that area up to level 12. I checked quickly and the next highest rank in the universe was rank 8. I had just created the premier place in the galaxy to study these subjects. MD was fairly upset for a while. It took me 48 hours to make sure the transfer was going to happen. The only reason why he eventually gave in was I told him he would have access to the samples anytime he wanted. MD took it upon himself to build an underground vault to hold the material. It held up the ship’s replicator to build the digging machine and generators and use of the ships plasma core sample drill for the main shaft. The vault was 2000 meters below the surface and the digging machine made a six story 1,000,000 square meter facility in a week. MD personally installed the generators and the first storage facilities. There would be a lot of undeveloped space for now. One great side effect was having just a single access point made security easier. I assigned a checkpoint at the surface elevator and two additional security stations at the facility level. Each checkpoint would have 6 soldiers in battle armor. It was probably way overdoing it but there were some very dangerous critters in those samples. Athena let me know that we had 429 applications for teaching at the college so they could access our samples. That was quick, as we had only finished transferring the materials after the week. I was actually worried that players might see the value in the samples and come for them. I had just added the umpteenth target to my back.

We secretly transferred our best and most loyal 20 miners during a ship rotation. We then loaded the Prometheus with as much raw materials as we could. I wanted at least enough materials to build at least one of the mining ships. MD’s harvester drones could also be converted to mine but they only had a range of 200 miles from the ship. We currently had 6 of the larger drones on the ship, the maximum we could employ. Together they could mine about half the speed of a regular mining ship so I was not too worried when we could only load 76% of the needed materials. I ended up bringing this down to 54% and loaded two of our heavy fighters as well as adding four pilots to our crew for the fighters.

It ended up being eight days until the Citadel weapons were again functioning. At this point we enacted our plan and Maddie relayed to Phoenix Station that we had received an encoded distress call and were going to respond. I gave orders for the corvettes to hold close support to the planet while we were gone and no long range patrols. Any distress calls were to be answered by Barstow’s corvettes and not ours. I activated my psion technogenesis skill and piloted the ship out of the system to the jump point. I had been getting a little cagy so this was going to be a vacation for me. Athena let me know that the Malkavians could return in 93 days at the earliest, or 42 days if they dispatched a different fleet. The second option was unlikely since the forums indicated the other Malkavian fleets were currently in operations. We set our maximum time away to 45 days.

It was a little over four days in transit to the star system. During the trip we worked hard every day doing pre-assembly of the miner and partying hard every night. With the marines, miners, my crew and the pilots it was a great trip. Katrine managed to log in for a few hours every night to party with us as well. I came out into the system and with my crew of the bridge. Maddie began scanning for hostiles immediately, scanning frequencies and using gravimetric scanners. No contacts. The system displayed on the forward screen. A large yellow sun sat in the middle of the system. There were two smaller planets orbiting the star and one large gas giant. What struck me though were the three massive asteroid belts orbiting the star. All three were in the outer system and fairly dense, or at least what I assumed to be dense from my game experiences so far. Once the scans were completed I ordered Maddie to circle the outer belt for more refined scans to choose a mining site. It would take three days to scan all three belts. However I had brought the fighters for a reason, to help with the scanning. Maddie smiled when I said this and nodded at my wisdom. It would take only 36 hours with Maddie adding the fighters into scanning. It took an hour to install an upgraded sensor suite in each of the fighters. The pilots did not look too happy about spending the next 30 hours in a flight suit. Too bad it was their job. The pilot’s biggest complaint was that they were going to miss four of Ellie’s meals in the dining hall.

The scans came back with exceptional results. Vauntium was only minimally present in the outer belt. But had an estimated two billion credits worth at current market prices as well as many other precious elements. The second belt had about twice the volume of vauntium but not too much valuable beyond that. The inner belt was the prize. It had 40 times the volume of the outer belt and an excellent range of other materials. We choose a dense area and went to set up shop.

The fighter pilots were to perform scans of the three planets and the rest of the system while we worked. It would take them three weeks to get complete scans. We parked our ship and sent the heavy drones to start mining. We started to assemble the mining ship. It was going to take ten days to harvest the materials and replicate the rest of the first mining ship. Rose had made plans for a 350 meter station to be built after the mining ships. The station was mostly a storage depot for the mining products. The very top deck was a living deck that had life support for up to two hundred people and therefore would have two hundred individual quarters as well. It was going to be very comfortable for the men and women who were going to be stationed here. On this trip we were not going complete the station just get it started. Each trader we sent out here to load materials would slowly complete the station over time. The station would have class X shields and two heavy long-range weapons for defense. The top deck also had three flight bays. Each flight bay could hold four shuttles or four fighters or a combination. The load out was destined to be four fighters and eight cargo shuttles. There were going to be eight docking clamps and umbilicals for ships cruiser size or smaller as well.

The miners finally loaded onto the new ship. “Has that new ship smell,” came over the comms as they headed to the nearby field. We started to replicate the second ship. We were going to be feed by just the drones from the Prometheus. The mining ship was going to focus efforts to get us as much vauntium before we left to make this a profitable run. It took 16 days to complete the second mining ship. This was a little longer than expected due to the fact the drones were dividing their time between harvesting and assembly. The remaining miners helped put the ship together but a single drone was as good as a dozen men and they could work non stop where an NPC could only work 12 hours a day before fatiguing. The next phase was to build a 100 meter section of the station that contained living accommodations for 30 men and one of the completed flight bays. This was going to take 8 days. The fighter pilots returned in this time. The scans were promising. One of the planets had some terraforming potential. Both planets had higher than normal amounts of vauntium and other valuable minerals. This system was basically a printing press for credits. We kept discussing what we needed to do to keep a high level of security on it. Basically it involved getting assets out here to protect it and not letting any information leak of its location. That meant the fighter jocks and miners were going to be out here for an extended stay. The completed section of the station had as many amenities as we could squeeze in. We built one cargo shuttle and one hydrogen collector tug to gather fuel from the gas giant. This took 6 days. We loaded the station with a years worth of consumables for the current population. Katrine had named the system Hell’s Rest. She said she wanted the name to deter people from exploring it. The two mining ships were named Burt and Ernie. The station would not be named until it was complete. It was day 44 which meant we were 3 days behind our set schedule. We were able to load the hold with 22 million credits worth of vauntium! Incredible. We had enough space to load enough raw materials to build two heavy fighters during the four day return trip. I figured this would create less suspicion.

We arrived in system to a major surprise. There were 27 ships holding outside of Chevalier and another 11 above Barstow. There was an emergency quarantine message being broadcast throughout the system. I was in a major panic. My first thought is someone had used biological weapons against the planets. I commed my sitting military commander. He was a seasoned man but before he had only served as a first officer in the Barstow navy. “Commander Jakay. Are we under attack or siege, report!” I was probably a little too nervous and emphatic in my tone. I was more than panicky and it showed. A king should have better control.”

“Your highness. Nothing so dire. The ships holding away are all traders. The emergency is from a biological containment breech. Someone attempted to steal some samples we recently stored and fled to Barstow. They released six pathogens from the samples. Twenty-one people died before we could contain it and treat the infected populace. Barstow has ceased all traffic until the purport traitor could be apprehended. We have 13 more days left of quarantine on Chevalier before the CDC lets normal traffic resume. The good news is no slow downs have occurred in production. We have two corvettes and two small traders ready for crews once the quarantine is lifted. The economy has taken a major hit but one trader that came in system left, the rest are holding, albeit they are a little unhappy.” Well damn that was not good news. Athena chimed in. Jed it is obvious your vacation was not a good idea. I am updating my progress, I am now 9 days behind time estimates.

Why was she blaming me? She had assured me she had everything queued up before we left. This major security breech also made me think of my new employee. I checked on his status, 38 days away was the estimate. Well I was a fair king if nothing else. How could I solve this mess? I commed the 38 waiting ships and said I would pay the salaries of all the crews for the time their ships were ideal. I would not be able to make up for lost profits but at least it was something. I had the achievement flash, Benevolent King, but dismissed it before reading it. I then offered to offload two merchant ships and sell them as much vauntium as they wanted at 10% below market price. Since the market was still edging up this was a great deal. I told the Council of Three on Barstow that I was gifting them the two heavy fighters on my ship and would deliver them to their station in orbit. That should give them some fast response fighters in case they needed them apprehend the culprit. We now had 9 fighters on planet and the expanded fighter production was going full bore. I sent the new trader, Apocalypse, was loaded with materials for the station station in Hell’s Rest and two fighters from the planet. The Apocalypse was going to be crewed by a dozen engineers, loyal navy crew and pilots. They were to transport and offload the fighters and engineers and station materials. They were to return in two weeks exactly. They were also leaving the system at a vector away from Hell’s Rest to throw off any guesses as to where my piggy bank system was and the distance it might be located at. I had thought about sending a corvette with them but decided against it. The second trader was named Aphrodite and its crew was scheduled to open a trade route with Gengis system. This system was 74 light years away but had four billion people. The two completed corvettes were named Apollo and Mercury, given crews and started patrols. Athena also let me know that my crew’s average ability was well below average and since all these crews were coming form the station due to the planet quarantine the station was extremely understaffed. I needed that first class of cadets to graduate damn it!

Athena let me know I had twelve messages from PCs that were on the waiting ships. Well I was not in a position to treat them any better than anyone else right now. I had Athena find me a loyal crew for one of the traders. It would be making runs to Hell’s Rest with construction materials for the station there and returning with vauntium and valuable minerals. I needed to put two more miners in that system for the trader to come back with full loads every time. I decided to use the Prometheus to build a miner while we were waiting. I had to skim off some materials to do so which angered both Rose and Athena because it affected their personal projects. Well damn it I am king!

Athena let me know the planetary treasury was currently 16 million credits in debt! Fortunately between all the traders in system I was able to sell 22 million worth of vauntium for 20 million. Some of the trader crews had to borrow the funds from my planetary bank! Oh the irony. Having run in the red for more than 30 days was going to have a long lasting negative effect on my economy for 90 days, or so Athena said. I was not too interested in ‘restoring economic confidence’ and ‘high debt inflation’. She just warned me not to run in the red again during the 90 days or it would take half a year to recover. It would be important that the 9 million in bonds the planetary bank had just issued would be fulfilled.

Over the next week we started to assemble the new miner and this was my biggest mistake. The players in the system used high resolution cameras to record the entering of raw materials into the Prometheus and the completed ships parts exiting. The size of the parts gave away the size on my replicator. The forums were abuzz. Replicators larger that 2 meters typically could only produce slab materials. The pictures being posted had massive electronic components leaving my cargo bay. People began guessing how advanced and large my replicator was. Massive questions were being raised with knowledge of my advanced corvettes taking down the Malkavians. Now my replicator and my stores of vauntium were drawing even more attention. I had screwed myself. I had hundreds of requests from players to build them things and where did I find the replicator? My ship had a standing hologram of an old Canadian cruiser projected on the hull. So no one was aware my ship was actually an ancient alien ship. My star system of Capsulite was leading most forum threads. I was the center of attention of the universe. Which in my current state meant I was in bad shape.

Rumors were swirling that I had hacked the game and the admins had to step in and confirm that no hack had taken place but if fact I had completed one of the great quests in the game and uncovered amazing technology. This did not help me as I could just envision corporations forming fleets to came take that technology from me. Athena said I had received a few requests for alliances however after searching the forums none of those offering were considered honorable enough to accept.

The mining ship completed as the quarantine was lifted. It was christened the Polar Express and sent off in secret to the Hell’s Rest system with a full load for the stations construction. Prometheus went back to produced the advanced modules for the Citadel. This was also when the thief made his move. A trader came in system and headed for Barstow. A shuttle was hijacked and even with the fighters still was able to meet up with the ship. However the advanced corvette that I had sold to Barstow was able to intercept the trader before it had gotten too far. The trader was seized and was property of the Balrog Corporation. Which basically allowed them to destroy it and have it respawn at its origin point. The thief was still in custody though, he could not respawn without losing the stolen samples. The espionage agent was transferred to my custody and I was surprised to find it was a player character, Hitaria Jaki. She was brought before me and was quite alluring. She appeared to be Indian in decent. I was meeting her in my office on the planet with my two bodyguards. She was chained and had a defiant look.

“Well Ms. Jaki you seem to have failed. You have not respawned yet so I am guessing you haven’t quite played all cards.” She betrayed a slight hint of surprise in her eyes that I had figured this out. “I am allowing you to plead you case before I execute you.” Now this really shocked her.

“You can’t, laws prevent rulers from executing players. The best you could do is lock me away for thirty days.” I waved my hands dismissing her statement.

“I am not like most kings. Treachery is not something I take lightly as well. A twelve man firing squad awaits you in two hours. Since you have…” she interrupted me again. I was patient and listened to her.

“You have no idea what you have in you bio-vault. Balrog will pay handsomely for the samples. We…” I interrupted her.

With ice in my voice I spoke, “You my dear killed my subjects, damaged my economy, stole from me, and tried to secure samples which could harm billions. Take her away and have her executed.” The proceedings had been recorded as well as the execution and transmitted galaxy wide. It was a strong message that I hoped would resonate. I received numerous threats from the Balrog Corp after this. Apparently Hitaria Jaki respawn point was 700 light years away! King’s Justice achievement notification.

The trader Apocalypse returned shortly after the execution. It had 32 million worth of cargo. I was never so excited. We had the buyers already lined up. I doubled security on the Phoenix station and kept two corvettes close at all times. My first class from the Academy was about a month away from graduation and over the protests from Athena I dumped the entire sum into the Academy increasing the cadets to 4,748. We sold the newest trader to Barstow at a discount as a thank you for helping corner and apprehend the thief.

Hundreds of players were racing to my system. There was speculation a massive fleet brewing for my control of the Capsulite system. The Malkavians were saying anyone who attacked the system before they had their shot at me would face their wrath. Currently about thirty factions were noted on the forums as moving fleets toward the Capsulite system. We were screwed. The first major fleet on the forums was going to be here in about two months with the rest arriving after. It was going to be a race to beat me into submission.

Rose and Athena said they could get the fighter production facilities on the Citadel going in thirty days. This included the all the small manufacturing modules needed. The Prometheus would need to focus its replicator to make it happen. Production from this facility would be one fighter every five days, doubling our production. It sounded good to me as that seemed the quickest turnover to increase our mobile defense. We also decided to hire some mercenary ships. I decided on two NPC groups that were honorable from their records and not too far away.

Athena highlighted an urgent message from Chevalier University. The sitting president led in with that he was a little unhappy that Black Fleet Academy was larger in population and therefore had an unfair competitive advantage in sports. I ignored it for now. The second was the botany department had found two very plants that could be used in terraforming. They wanted to test them on Chevalier to idealize the atmospheric composition. I sent an approval message.

NPC traffic doubled in the next 29 days that it took to finish the fighter production facilities on the Citadel. Athena was having trouble doing background checks on all the people applying for citizenship. Fortunately the day after the manufactory was completed my head of intelligence arrived. I met the man and his family in the dining room on the Prometheus. I knew he was almost seventy but he looked much younger. He had salt and pepper hair and stood at 1.8 meters. His eyes were a steely blue and had wisdom behind them. After shaking his hand and making him my companion I was able to see his stats.

Walter Raine

Age 67.8

Level 15

Strength 5

Dexterity 11

Constitution 6

Intelligence 31

Education 22

Social Standing 17

Life Points 80

Advocate 4

Administration 4

Bureaucrat 2

Comms 2

Computer 4

Deception 5

Drive: Hover 1

Gambler 1

Gun Combat: Laser Pistol 2

Investigate 4

Streetwise 7

Stealth 3

Tactics: Security 6

He was going to be a good fit. I would set him up on the Prometheus and that would let him utilize the university computer on board. Hi wife was in her late forties and a beautiful women. I learned during dinner this was his second wife. His first had died with their two children. He had two children in their teens with his second wife. The financial security of this job is why he agreed to come out here to the frontier but now he was concerned about his families safety. He had been following the developments during his transit. I told him it was his job to keep everyone in my kingdom safe and he would have all the resources he needed.

After dinner Walter spent the next six hours with me and my staff while his family settled in. Walter and his wife were given a cabin and his daughters another. The marines helped settle everyone in. We laid out our current network in system, which was extensive. We revealed our assets, which suitably impressed him. Then we revealed known threats, which he continually frowned at. After everything he went into detail of everything we had done wrong and pointed out many more threats. We all felt completely inadequate under his microscope. He started to put forth ideas and I held up my hand. “Walter you have complete discretion. Your budget will be sent to you by Athena. If you need more funds just send the request to Athena and it will honored unless it puts our economy at risk. You allotted usage of the ship’s replicator will be 2% annually. You may have to buy the schematics since we don't have too many.” His jaw was hung open. I liked the man. He was smart, focused and good at his job.

Our team meeting the next day Walter put forth three recommendations. The first was the Katana, the newest corvette, should be sent to escort the trader going back and forth to Hell’s Rest. The location and safety of our ‘piggy bank’ were too important. The second was to get the two celopod cruisers into service as soon as possible. He believed the corvettes and the two cruisers would be enough to deter most of the incoming fleets. The final recommendation was to set up a dedicated immigration department and central location for processing.

I hated losing a corvette but I had wanted to send one to be stationed in Hell’s Rest. I approved the suggestion. The second was the refits for the cruisers. Both were about 18% done but needed the replicator on the Prometheus to finish. Each one would take about 30 days. I tabled this for further discussion. Walter just nodded. The third request was approved. I told him Mycell would be the location. Athena would build the processing center.

I dismissed my team after the other updates. I sat back in my chair in the conference room sipping my lemon tea. We had 57 million credits balance mostly due to the vauntium shipments and my first academy class was graduating in nine days. I had requests from my advisors for 12 million credits in expenses. I approved them all. I then paid for expansion of Chevalier University by a 1,000 students up to 4,100. This would make the president happy but he was not going to like my next move, increasing the cadets by 2,000, up to 6,748.

I was nervous. Technically we had very poorly trained crews but to the high levels of the academy and the game default of graduating a quarter of the class every year should give me 1,678 excellent men and women. I kept the Prometheus on building advanced parts for the Citadel. Focusing on the Corvette construction bay and feeder facilities. It would take six weeks to complete. I didn't know if we would get it done before I changed production but the corvettes had proved themselves in battle and they were fast, powerful and somewhat cheap. So rather than build the frigate construction bay I stuck to focusing on the corvettes.

The next nine days went by quick. We had daily meetings now with the focus on development, military strength, counter intelligence and financial disposition. I went to the graduation at the Academy dressed in my uniform with a bunch of shiny medals. I was all excited to see the many ranks of new personal and was shocked when only 387 men and women stood before me. “Commandant what is the meaning of this? There was to be over 1,600 graduates here today?” The man in charge of the school flinched a little before responding. His apology came later. “Sorry your highness, most of the cadets have been getting their education on the job. They have been working extremely hard doing 8 hour work shifts and then studying for eight hours on computers and getting a few hours sleep before doing it again. Your subjects could not have worked harder. Unfortunately we could not get everyone here without abandoning their posts. We have 1,680 graduates in total.” I grinned. So the game came up with a way to technically get everyone the required education. I checked each ships status and could see every crew ability had been upgraded substantially! I wanted to jump for joy but instead gave a rousing and short graduation speech that was broadcast to all the ships. Hats flew in the air and I had more than just doubled my fleets effectiveness. I was starting to feel more secure and the Wild Thing had recently brought our corvette total to 8. The next completed corvette was destined to be sold to Barstow which made me kind of sour as I was very worried about the incoming fleets.

After having staffed our fleet with only skilled personal I found I had 230 extra skilled personal. I knew they would quickly used as facilities and ships came online. I set up a secondary school at the Academy for a second four year school to create elite black ops units. The initial cost was 50,000 credits for each special forces operative and acted just the whole academy, graduating a quarter of the class every year. These soldiers would be good enough to serve on the Prometheus. I didn't need a lot of elite units and set the class to 200 for 10 million credits which I paid for out of the planetary trust. This left me a little over 12 million credits. The next vauntium shipment was due in 5 days, which would replenish the account. I also added an advanced fighter pilot school. This was essentially a one year focused progam for pilots. It generated an elite fighter jock for each person enrolled. The cost was 100,000 per pilot but the skill level of the pilots graduating was guaranteed to be 4+ in both the piloting and gunnery skills. I spent 5 million on this extension of the academy.

The botany experiment was going well. I decided to visit the site. I took a shuttle with a full detachment of bodyguards. When we landed at the pole a massive gray greenish pole stuck straight up about 200 meters. It’s roundish base was also about 200 meters. We approached the science team and they went into an account. Using fast grow they speed up the process. This organism was set to alter the atmosphere to near ideal for humans and it could function in almost any environment but just had to be feed. It couldn't replicate and would take about six months to completely grow to size. It grew bigger, yes to a 300 meter base and nearly 600 meters in height! Harsh conditions might cause it to grow slower though.

We talked for an hour about the potential. They were betting they could terraform a completely inhabitable planet the size of Earth by planting 12 of these organisms on its surface and feeding them over a single year! Well damn I needed to test this. I told the botanists to get a team together. I was going to send them and a trader to perform this experiment in a nearby system in private. I had two planets in Hell’s Rest that could be valuable if terraformed. It took them a week to get everything they needed together. We also had to modify the trader into a hauler. It would catch ice asteroids with proper composition to breakdown and throw into the atmosphere to feed the plants. There would also be an extensive organic bay on the trader to produce selected seeds of other plants to seed the planet when the time came. It took them 11 days to gather everything as I was pushing to get them to leave before any fleets laid siege to my system. The Gaia, the converted ship, left the system two days before the first fleet arrived.

The fleet was not too impressive. It had a carrier cruiser, two frigates, and four corvettes. They were under the Bigballs Corporation. They refused to respond to comes and immediately laid in a course to take on pair of traders. Maddie pulled up the system map. We could get two corvettes and the Prometheus to intercept and cover the traders. Another two frigates would join use five minutes into the engagement. We expedited and laid in the course. The attack was a bluff trying to test us but they underestimated our speed and we caught the bastards before the hyper point. We destroyed a frigate and all four corvettes before the rest of the fleet fled. The ships we destroyed respawned slowly but were under respawn safety and were able to follow their compatriots. It was a quick and easy fight. I hoped they would all be this easy. The only surprise was the hyper point they had entered on. There were 14 hyper points in the system. Almost all traffic came from the direction of the core worlds but this one had appeared slightly from a previously unused point. Maddie pulled our patrols tighter to make our response time better. All corvettes were already operating in pairs but I wanted to up that to trios as threats seemed to be growing. That gave me two patrols of three ships. For extreme threats the Prometheus would join in and the fleets would time it to intercept at the same time. It was at this that I switched over the small trader production to the mining ship. With the vauntium shipments I didn't need the money from selling ships. Mining ships sent to Hell’s Rest would generate more money in the long run anyway. The change over took two weeks and the miners would be built every 21 days. The last small trader built was sent to Barstow at a reduced cost. I hoped this would stop them from continuously asking for ships. I know I should of converted the slip to build corvettes but the change over would of taken a month and we needed infrastructure.

The next fleet arrived 6 days later. It was four frigates in composition. They waited at the jump point. After a day we sent three corvettes out to them and the frigates jumped out. We had determined it was a scouting mission. We never got an ID on any of the ships. The forums were becoming a little quieter. I assumed people were pooling their resources to attack in overwhelming force. Walter was breaking up new infiltration attempts every week as well. He was good and said if was survived another six months then he would have a complete elite network. I was glad to hear it.

The next staff meeting update was promising. We had 2.5 million inhabitants. The colleges were attracting intelligent people to the system who were increasing production. Industry was growing somewhat slowly because of the heavy pollution regulations I had enacted. I decided to dump fifty million credits into the colleges, raising each student population by 1,000. The Citadel had its full weapons platform up now. This was our main piece of equipment. As long as we didn't have and pirates in the system our fleet could retreat to the planet and use it as support. It was strong enough hold off five battle ships. We also had 29 heavy fighters. The sims showed that these ships in concert could eliminate a battleship on their own. We had also just launched our ninth corvette, the Black Mako. This gave us two detachments of three ships and one of two ships. Our patrols circled close to the planet highlighting the major trade routes. The ninth ship, was our training ship orbiting the planet.

We also had three support corvettes from Barstow, all were had advanced tech as they had paid us to refit the old corvette they had in their fleet with similar specs as our current production line. The heavily damaged we had sold them frigate was also almost rebuilt from parts we were selling them. Barstow was recovering well from the coup, their military and navy were going stronger and the approval rating of the general population was high. My presence in the system drawing trade was greatly helping them as well. Their population had almost completely recovered from the mass exodus.

One of our mercenary hires had finally arrived. It was an NPC organization called Thor’s Hammer who had a very respectable reputation. So we were certain they wouldn't turn on us. They had one carrier with 36 medium fighters and 12 bombers and six corvettes to support the action. Each corvette also had a pair of fighters. The mercenary fleet was going to cost me 20,000 credits a day and I had a six month contract on them. I had them position themselves on the center of a major trade lane doing scans of incoming and outgoing ships. The second mercenary fleet we had hired had hired was over two weeks away. We had only found two non-PC companies close enough to make it worth hiring. This second merc group was mostly land based with two cruisers, 24 drop ships, and 1,400 marines. They were going to cost me the same as the first group. All payments were for the 6 month terms were made in advance. These being completely NPC organizations meant the ships and men would not respawn if they died.

And we waited.

The first major engagement came 11 days later. Ships jumped in from five different hyperpoints. One fleet had four frigates, the second had 3 cruisers, two frigates and eight corvettes, the third had one cruiser and one frigate, the fourth had eight heavy frigates, the fifth had one battleship and two corvettes. They waited and moved in unison toward the planet, obviously trying to divide our forces. I took the Prometheus with Mother’s Pride and King’s Crown at full speed toward the battleship and two corvettes. Barstow sent its fleet of one frigate and three corvettes after the fleet with four frigates. My mercenary group was ordered to engage the cruiser and frigate. My two squadrons of three corvettes each were to converge on the eight heavy frigates. The main fleet was free to approach the planet as we had 34 heavy fighters and two very powerful stations. There were no surprises in the enemies plan as they kept on their lines. The first to engage was my six corvettes. The battle didn't last long. Two of my corvettes were knocked down to 79% and 83% effective and the entire enemy fleet was destroyed. The Prometheus engaged second. The battleship focused all fire on the Prometheus, they managed to get our shields down to 40% before they were destroyed with their escort. As these two fleets finished off their prey and moved to support the other fleets about to engage the enemy fleets tried to flee. It was too late for them. The mercenaries swarmed the fleeing ships and destroyed them all in about 15 minutes. The Barstow fleet took a little damage to their frigate but destroyed their enemy. The enemies main fleet was now sandwiched between my Prometheus and the six corvettes. A hail came in saying the surrendered. I told them to heave to and we wouldn't destroy their vessels. I looked at the corporations, three different owed PC corporations. All relatively small. When a PC ship is destroyed 10% of the cargo is dropped and 10% of the NPCs on board are killed. The ships respond at their last hyper point with 10% incremental damage. The ships we had destroyed were already respawning. The surrendered ships dropped 10% of their cargo but were allowed to head to the jump point without being destroyed. They had said they wouldn't participate in any future actions against our system but that could be a lie. The total value of the cargo drops from all the ships was almost a million credits, not bad for a days work. I gave the mercenaries a 200,000 credit bonus which they greatly appreciated.

The next attack came 9 days later. A massed fleet of three battleships, ten cruisers, sixteen frigates and twelve corvettes started marching in system. A few other capital ships from other organizations were at jump points watching the battle. I withdrew my entire fleet to the planet. The mercs were to only engage fighters against other fighters. I would utilize my fleet for this action not wanting to risk the permanency of losses by the hired mercs. My biggest ace up my sleeve right now was my 36 heavy fighters and the 20,000 kilometer scrambler. The scrambler was a device built by MD and Rose that would effectively wash all active and passive scanners in static. This meant everyone would have to rely on visuals, which was difficult for large ships. We moved our fighters into position under the scrambler and were able to launch a surprise attack as they passed close to the asteroid belt.

The utilized dead fire missiles when they closed on the fleet. Unfortunately the shields were up but the first pass they managed to down two cruisers, a frigate and two corvettes. As they swung around for the second pass the ships launched their fighters. My pilots focused on the capital ships, taking out two more cruisers and six corvettes. The dog fighting then began in earnest. My fighters were outnumbered at least three to one but with the scrambler on I would have to the video recording after the fight. After twelve minutes my fighters had mopped up the enemy fighters and were once again attacking the capital ships. They had used all their powerful missiles and their main guns were only strong enough to take down the remaining corvettes and frigates. The battleships and remaining cruisers retreated to the jump point to rejoin their respawning ships and fighters. My 31 remaining fighters harassed the ships for a few minutes before making a return trip to the asteroid field to rearm. The five fighters that I had lost were respawning on the Citadel. We permanently lost two fighter pilots who did not respawn. That was bad odds for me as each ship had a pilot and co-pilot, meaning I lost 20% of my crews. I sent three corvettes to picked up the dropped loot and return with it.

The enemy fleet reformed and started to return in system again. This time their damaged fighters set up to screen the fleet. They had 154 fighters on the radar, which meant my fighters had probably destroyed one of their carriers in the first pass. I moved the Prometheus and my nine corvettes away from the planet to engage. The three corvettes from Barstow were taking a wide arc approach to the fleet’s flank. My fighters were moving with the scrambler at the edge of the fleet. My objective was to engage full bore thin the fleet, have the fighters move in with the scrambler before we took too much damage and then swing around and get back to the planet while the fighters did their work. My fleet was to concentrate their fire on two of the three battleships. The plan was going well. Our high maneuverability, point defense and shields were holding as the capital ships exchanged. Just as a handful of my corvettes were about to lose shields the fighters moved in with the scrambler. Unfortunately the enemy decided to use its fighters like missiles and began crashing them into the corvettes with low shields. It took eight fighters to take down a single corvette without shields but they managed to do it. The Wild Thing did not emerge with us from the other side of the scrambler zone. The Apollo was also damaged down to 45%. We kept on our path and swung around to the planet. The Barstow fleet lined up visuals and went through the scrambler cloud next. Fifteen minutes later my fighters pulled out of the engagement and once the combat fog lifted we surveyed what remained. The enemy had one battleship, three cruisers and one frigate still functioning. The cruisers were slightly damaged and the frigate was heavily damaged. I only had 19 heavy fighters still in operation, all damaged to some degree. I immediately turned my fleet around to take on the remnants with the Prometheus and the seven undamaged corvettes. The enemy was planning to sit on the 10% loot drops from their damaged ships. If I didn't pick it up in 60 minutes it would fair game to anyone. They were planning to reclaim the cargo, yeah I was not going to happen. When they noticed my intent they turned to flee and when it was obvious they would not be able to they tried to surrender. I declined the offer and ran them over with my fleet. The battleship went first with focused fire from all the ships. They tried to take down the Prometheus but only got her shields down to 40% before their fleet was wiped. We collected the cargo as their ships were respawning. The Wild Thing lost 8 of the 70 crew on the respawn. Bad luck again. The 12 destroyed fighters lost two pilots.

We collected the loot drops, about 3 million credits. It made sense why they risked waiting around for it. The enemy fleet was holding at the hyper point. I had the fighters return to Chevalier. We got the respawned fighters and corvette in for repairs. The enemy fleet held at the jump point for eight hours before jumping out. Checking the data this fleet had been composed of four corporations. Once again they had all been minor.

The next morning I sat down with my advisors to review the battle. The mood was not good when Athena said we could expect the fleets to get stronger and stronger. The only good news was the Citadel was just starting to produce corvettes and two more fighter construction modules were done, eventually there would be six. It was still a week from full production but the first hull was being laid. The mood remained somber. Walter pushed again to focus on getting the celopod cruisers rebuilt. I again put it off. I had given Athena 20 million to speed up development. I had also expanded the pilot training by 50. We had also sent our newest mining ship, Diamond in the Rough, with the convoy of the Black Mako and Apocalypse to Hell’s Rest. A swarm of fighters from a cruiser tried to intercept the convoy as they were leaving the system. We had two corvettes head out to support them but they were not going to get there in time. We watched and listened to the engagement. The fighters fortunately did not carry more than a few missiles each. They damaged the Black Mako down to 89% but had fled when half their number had been destroyed and couldn't punch through the shields. It was good that this convoy left on a random vector every time and returned on a random vector but I was quickly getting concerned. The enemy was starting to hover at many of the fourteen jump points and chasing them all away was not possible without opening ourselves to attack. We decided on a return hyperpoint and an exact day and time to return so we could chase off any ships there. This might be our last shipment of vauntium for a while. Our other trading ships had not been attacked probably because their cargo was not as valuable and the repercussions for attacking traders meant black listing in NPC systems.

Fourteen days later we sent three corvettes, one of them a shiny new one called Emilia, to chase away a cruiser and four frigates from the hyper point. Since we did this every day no one staking at the other points responded. The convoy returned with a full loaded trader. Prices had continued to rise as the game update approached and the load was worth more than 45 million. Two days later the Black Mako and Apocalypse were escorted to the jump point and were not scheduled to return for 40 days. I hoped the long break would throw off the piranha ships.

The enemy had us surrounded. All fourteen jump points were staked. In all there were 12 battleships, 27 cruisers, 38 frigates, and 45 corvettes. It was a large enough fleet to overwhelm us. I knew from the forums though that the Malkavian fleet was 18 days away and when they arrived the slaughter would begin. The Malkavians were bringing 6 battleships, 20 cruisers and an assortment of smaller ships. They were making threats that no attack would happen until they arrived. On the plus side all six modules on the Citadel were producing fighters now and every 28 days three corvettes were completed simultaneously. Our second mercenary fleet arrived and the extra marines would probably not be useful. We utilized the personal as skilled laborers on the Citadel to help speed the construction. The were very expensive laborers. We set the timer to 18 days and made the best preparation we could. There was so much more I could of done if I had thought it out. My biggest mistake had been demonstrating my power. I could flee with the Prometheus and leave my civilians. But I felt loyalty to them.

Six days later ships started jumping in from an odd hyperpoint. At first it was just two corvettes then two battleships then twenty more corvettes then eight frigates then three cruisers then another battleship then a dreadnaught then four more corvettes then twelve cruisers then six more battleships. Holy shit. With Maddie on the command deck with me we watched the ships blockading the gate scatter. There was no combat so I assumed this was another corp coming to throw themselves at me. I received a distress call from the dreadnaught, which Maddie put through, “This is the Valkyrie and a fleet of civilian ships from the Quaid system requesting asylum. Our system has been overrun by the celopod armada and this is all the survivors. I repeat…”

“King Jed of the planet Chevalier here. You request is granted, however my planet may not be too safe at the moment. I suggest you move along to…”

I was interrupted. “Thank you. We can not make another jump. Our ships are packed full of refugees. Most of our ships are damaged and are civilian in nature. The space force remained behind to hold of the celopod armada to give us a head start but they are still pursuing us. We need a place to land. You have enough ships in this system to perhaps hold them. We expect their main fleet is no more than ten days behind us.”

Well damn. I was going to be smashed by the Malkavians then squished by the bugs. I rubbed my forehead. “You may bring your fleet into orbit and off load your citizens to my planet, how many civies do you have?”

“We have almost 2 million, the Valkarie is a colony ship and we have 500,000 in stasis on board, the rest of the ships are red lining their life support and have an array of stasis pods as well. We have been running for three months and will stand with you and fight.”

I agreed to let them unload their population. Most of the people were highly skilled and they only had minimal gear as they thought saving people was more than equipment. I liked these people! None of the other ships in system responded to the massive fleet. I sent three corvettes out to help get their ships in. We unloaded people from the most stressed life support ships.

I met with the leader, a Jamal Harmak. I told him about my situation and the fact the ships at the jumps points were actually my enemies. He didn't seem dissuaded. His prophets said he would find sanctuary in this system under the king’s banner. He was also prepared to swear his entire fleet to me. Which made a lot of sense. It meant they would respawn under my banner. He only had three warships though, one battleship badly damaged at 43% and two scout corvettes. As soon as he swore allegiance the battleship began the self repair that player owned ships did. The rest of the ships where privately owned traders, miners and the massive colony ship but all reverted to my ownership.

The battleship was ancient and was mediocre at best. I got Rose on it to update as best we could with the Prometheus’ replicator. Upgrading the shields could be done in two days. The weapons would take time. All the ships entered orbit above Chevalier for repairs and unloading. All our shuttles started unloaded the passengers to the planet surface. Athena quickly expanded the processing center at Mycell for the new population. She hired 12,000 people to process a hundred thousand people a day. Food was being shipped in to feed the refugees. Athena was quickly creating jobs in the cities to put the new population to work. Nine days later the Malkavians arrived with their fleet. It took over two hours for them to enter the system.

I broadcast to all the fleets in the system, “Attention fleets residing in the Capsulite. I want to thank you for coming to our defense. Please note I am highlighting the hyperpoint where the enemy celopod fleet will enter the system. The Malkavian fleet that just entered the system has the battle data on the celopods.”

A familiar person interrupted the broadcast, “Don't listen to him. This is a ploy to delay our assault. We are going with plan alpha in 12 hours.”

Ok I had to delay the attack until the celopods came. We had four days or less until they arrived. I pulled my last ace. I launched all my fighters from the planet but changed their IF and energy signature to one of our corvettes. To the enemies long range scanners it looked like our fleet of corvettes went from nine to sixty-three. Everyone knew how powerful our corvettes were so I hoped this action might cause pause. If they managed to get within 500,000 kilometers they would be able to get a visual on the fighters and break the illusion. It seemed to work as twelve hours later no ships moved. I guessed their first plan was not adequate enough. The first movement of the enemy fleet came 9 hours later. The formed into three fleets at three hyper points over the next eight hours. While their ships were holding a miracle happened.

Game Alert. The game update will be starting in 12 hours. This update will take 12 hours. All FIP players will have limited movements to their current system. All regular players will not be able to log in for the duration of the update.

My immediate thought was I could just go around and destroy the enemy ships during the 12 hour update. However most of the bastards figured that out as well. A short vid from Admiral Jack said they would be back once the update was done. Almost all the ships at the hyperpoints disappeared. As the update approached we stayed on the bridge and said goodbye to Katrine. The world began to skip, slow down and speed up. Each movement was awkward. There were still a handful of ships at the hypers. I took my fleet out to target them. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. We ran down one battleship, four cruisers, three frigates and seven corvettes. We even managed to destroy the battleship three times and three of the cruisers three times. One of the cruisers jumped out on our first pass, so it probably had a FIP player on board. The NPC crews did put up a minor fight but they were not able to respond by warping out or moving to a new location.

While we retreated to the center of the system three corvettes completed their builds, the Montana, Colorado and Dakota formed their own task force. The enemy fleet took twelve hours after the update to return to their battle positions. I got a few angry messages from the corps who ships a destroyed a few times over while they were not able to log in. They promised to return the favor a few times over. An hour later the fleets started to move. They were well coordinated. I could not see a way to attack one without being flanked. My mining ships and traders held away. I did not think I could save them until the attack began. They would make a run to a hyper point from the home planet once the guns started firing.

Four hours later the enemy ships were halfway to Chevalier. I ignored all the transmissions. The jump point the refugees had come in from light up with ship signals. Maddie said twelve dreadnaughts had jumped in and guessed their configuration was celopod. The ships were 1200 meters in length! Now I just hoed the enemy fleet would turn to fight the new threat. The celopod ships started heading in system. Admiral Jack messaged me, “Well played young king. I don't know how you arranged it but it will not help you.”

The half of the fleet in the sphere closest to the celopod ships closed up and the remaining ships bunched and prepared to swing wide of my planet to merge into one massive fleet to meet the celopods. The first half of the fleet would engage 4 hours before the second fleet got into the brawl. I watched the engagement on a very detailed screen Maddie had set up on the bridge. The celopods dreadnaughts launched hundreds of gunships which caught the other fleet off guard. The gunships had a single heavy weapon but were very fast. The pirate fleet was swarmed under. Maddie estimated 660 gunships and only 50 had been destroyed while they destroyed the pirate fleet. Three of the dreadnaughts were damaged in the engagement as well but the pirates came out much worse. The second half of the fleet had most of the battleships in the pirate fleet so I thought they might fare better. They managed to destroy about 100 gunships and damaged two other dreadnaughts slightly. The respawning ships formed into combat units to attack. The dreadnaughts spent an hour picking up salvage before heading for the largest fleet in system, mine!

I made a judgment call and divided my fleet onto three smaller segments that were smaller than the current largest pirate fleet forming. Nothing happened until my fleets were separated by 300,000 kilometers. Then the celopod fleet changed direction. I was surprised it had worked. It was a great plan. The pirates had a chance to form up about 60% of their ships in one fleet and 40% in another. They moved to swing the celopod dreadnaughts into following the larger fleet while giving them time to get the smaller fleet together. The battle when it finally happened four hours later was hard to follow. Maddies said the celopod launched 600 gunships this time. They either had spare ships or repaired some of the ones incapacitated in the early engagement. I had six corvettes close to the action but I did not plan to engage. The corvettes could outrun any of the ships with ease. The pirates were much more organized this time and managed to draw the battle out and destroy nearly half the gunships and almost completely destroy one of the dreadnaughts. Two other dreadnaughts appeared about half health. Fifty gunships broke off after the last pirate ship and made a bee line for my corvettes. The gunships were only slightly faster than my corvettes and it was going to take them about an hour to engage at my ships fled. I detached three corvettes to help and they would reach them about thirty minutes into the engagement.

As the gunships overtook the six corvettes the battle was intense. The gunships focused fire on two corvettes and the shields where falling rapidly. The corvettes acted in pairs targeting one gunship at a time. Only secondary weapons were able to track the gunships. Fortunatley each ship had four on port and four on starboard. It took about a dozen hits to destroy each gunship. After ten minutes 16 gunships were destroyed and the shields on my two corvettes were at 24% and 39%. My advanced shields had held so far. The remaining gunships switched to a focused fire pattern on the corvette with low shields. I responded by encircling it with the other corvettes protecting it while after 18 gunships were destroyed in the next ten minutes. The main celopod fleet had sent another 120 gunships toward the battle. The fourteen remaining gunships turned to flee and we took out another 5 as they did so. The corvettes picked up as much salvage as they could before joining up with the other three corvettes. All nine ships headed off on a vector away from my planet. The mass of gunships eventually returned to the main fleet. I sat back and grinned. We had been more effective than the pirate fleet.