"I’d be complaining that Ames’s men are making us meet them on their turf if it weren't for the fact that the restaurant is not exactly a quiet place to meet right now," I complained as Grandpa and I trudged through the streets of Threshold. "But they could at least have offered to meet somewhere in between."

The location was just about on the opposite side of Threshold from us. If we were down by 7 o'clock, they were up around 2, and on the far outskirts of the town, the outer ring facing the portals.

I hadn't ventured through this side of Threshold very much. Most of the other miners I saw were South Asian or African. There were dozens of different coalition symbols painted on walls or floating above doors. I didn't recognize any of them except for the Glorious Morning of the New Dawn faction. They were, as far as I knew, one of the largest player factions. While they didn't particularly like cooperating with the rest of us, they listened to advice from the remnants of the Chinese military here on Threshold.

Since we at least had communication open with the Chinese military, I felt like we had an understanding with the Glorious Dawn. Of course, the understanding was basically, "You steer clear of us, we'll steer clear of you." Now Grandpa and I were walking through their turf.

We stopped in front of a nondescript small building. It looked like it had been built out of a cargo container with a tarpaulin awning over the open door. I didn't know how anyone would have managed to bring a cargo container into the reality engine with them. That had to weigh a lot more than any ordinary human's weight limit. All of the stuff from Earth had come in through the initiation chamber, whatever people had the presence of mind to grab. At the time, nobody had had class buffs to strength yet. So a cargo container was weird.

Grandpa stood outside and called, "I'm Louis Twofeather. Somebody here ask to see me?"

We got an immediate reply. "Come on in, both of you."

Grandpa stooped and ducked into the cargo container. I followed. "Close the door," the same voice said. I couldn't see anything in the gloom.

Grandpa closed the door and immediately light flooded the room.

Five men sat on top of metal crates at the edges of the room. They wore Army camo uniforms, modern ones, not relics or surplus store castoffs. One of the men was cleaning an M4. They had removed their rank markings and name tags. I didn't know if I ought to salute or not, but Grandpa didn't, so I followed his lead.

Grandpa sauntered over and took the single metal folding chair in the tiny room, leaving me to stand awkwardly. "So," he said, looking them over, "I'm guessing you came in with Amess."

One of them nodded. "We did."

"I'm also guessing you're snake eaters."

The man cleaning an M4 looked up sharply. There was a tense feeling in the air, like a fight was about to break out, but I wasn't sure why. I tried to guess what made Grandpa think these men were special forces. Was it because they didn't salute? Or maybe he'd just met enough in his time to have developed a sense for them. I had run into one or two special forces during my time as active duty, but they don't tend to hang out and fraternize with a logistics corporal.

I felt suddenly tongue-tied, like they were going to measure me up and find me wanting.

"Does it matter?"

"Not really," Grandpa said. "Just figured if we're going to be working together, we oughta know each others’ competencies."

One of the men stood up from his crate. He laced his hands behind his back and began talking. "We're going to be working alongside each other. That doesn't necessarily mean together. We've got a common goal, I believe."

He shot us a challenging glance. Grandpa nodded. "Take and hold an outpost in phase two. Reasons why are a little unclear, but it's for the good of humankind."

"Reasons are because it's our orders," the man cleaning an M4 shot back.

"Now then, Lieutenant, we can look for more reason than that in a situation like this," Grandpa said. The man's eyes narrowed. Grandpa laughed. "Or did you get a field promotion too? I should have said, 'Captain’?"

"No need for rank here,'" the one on his feet said. I guessed that meant that he was their highest ranking officer and that he wasn't a major like Grandpa. My brain was busy telling me that this was worse than secret agent shit. This was going to be more military brass bullshit.

"How many missions does your team have under their belt?" Grandpa asked. "I don't mean back home, I mean here."

The men looked at each other. "We've run several."

"Well, my granddaughter has over two dozen under her belt. She's level five. None of you are higher than level three. That's the only rank that really matters here. I'm sure you've all seen some shit. You've made a difference. You've got experiences you can't tell us about. Back home, that's fine, but we're not back home anymore. The only experience that matters is with this reality engine. That's why the colonel put me and my boy here in charge of this project. So, are you in or are you out?" Grandpa asked.

The men exchanged a glance. The one I was pretty sure was their commander said, "I wouldn't take that insolence from anyone, not even a superior officer, if I didn't know your record a bit, sir." The "sir" sounded a bit forced. "But you've seen some things, too. If we're all agreed on the objective, then we'll work with you."

"We're agreed on the first objective," Grandpa said. He held up his finger. "We take and hold a viable outpost in phase two that will let us have a bid accepted for phase three. We're still learning what exactly that is, and I'm not sure that even your colonel knows that for sure. So, to hedge our bets, I've got a couple more objectives." He held up two more fingers. "Keep our current sponsor in the game. She's willing to play ball. She even stuck her neck out for me and mine, and if we can do her a solid, I think she'll prove to be an asset."

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"It's humans first," the other man said coldly.

"Humans first, last, and always," Grandpa agreed. "But that doesn't mean only. How about you boys? You got any kind of sponsor we should know about?"

They shook their heads. "We're on the basic system contract. Colonel didn't want us to get entangled up with any aliens."

"Good, though sounds like he's got some behind-the-scenes diplomatic thing going. We'll leave that be for now. All right, and the third objective is we take care of my people. Got a coalition of good sorts, mostly peaceful folk, crafters and the like."

"We’re not interested in dead weight," the man cleaning the gun stated.

Grandpa’s eyes narrowed. "You ever fast rope, son?"

"I don’t see what-"

"Have you ever jumped out of a fucking bird?" he snapped.

"Of course. So?"

"Was the crew chief dead weight?"

I thought I saw where Grandpa was going but I enjoyed seeing this side of him. The gun cleaner looked taken aback. "What?"

"Was the man that tied your fucking rope to the fucking helicopter dead fucking weight? Was the crew that fueled the bird dead weight?"

"I—"

"Shut your filthy mouth, boot, and don’t speak while the adults are talking." Grandpa turned to the one who seemed like he was in charge. "Now, you boys on board, or not?"

The soldier considered. He looked my grandfather over, then me. At last he nodded. "Colonel knows what he’s doing. We’re in."

"Good, then let’s get down to business. Shad, you've had a little time to look over that information. What are you thinking about the initial strike force? We need to get a proposal to our sponsor here in the next few hours."

"Uh, right," I said. "We have a team of five. Plus you five. Ten. We’ll "be looking for more likely recruits to fill out that third squad.

They shook their heads. "Don't need it. We're a match for a dozen."

"I’m sure you are," I said. "But we’re putting together a whole party. No discount for going undermanned. We," I indicated Grandpa and me, "will review those new applications and see who looks like they're worth a risk."

"Might be better to go with ten we can trust, rather than bring in more possible traitors. We heard what Waters did to you."

I had to admit the unnamed captain had a point there. I turned to Grandpa, deferring to him.

"We need all the bodies we can get," Grandpa said. "Our sponsor’s digging into their backgrounds."

"And the rest of your people? The… non-combatants?"

I stepped back into the conversation. "Once we've gotten through the initial setup stage, that's when we're gonna need a lot of grunts. The farm teams will come in handy then. They'll help us set up defenses and start using what we find there."

"Let's worry about stage one first," Grandpa said. "So we need another five, for the third team, then we submit the list of names for our bid. Right." He rose from his char. "Time for you all to join up."

They looked at each other. "What do you mean?"

"Shad, toss 'em an invite." He stared them down, and one of the snake eaters was the first to look away. "You're gonna be joining our coalition."

They looked like they were about to object. But Grandpa held up a hand. "Nope. No lone warriors. We've gotta be able to work together. Anyway, it’s not so bad. You’ll get a 20% discount at the restaurant."

* * *

"This is ambitious," Veda said.

We had just sent her our bid proposal, and she had surprised us by initiating a request for a video conference. Previously, she’d said those were far too expensive, and that if we needed to speak to her in person, we'd have to make the trip up to the hub.

That wasn't too onerous. We had to visit the hub every week to ten days to be looked over by the alien proctologists and shrinks to make sure we were handling our transition to the reality engine. I still didn't know what they were watching for. Were they worried we were going to grow tentacles?

Now we sat in one of the small rooms in the upstairs of Mama Grace's restaurant. Bunk beds lined the walls, but we had found an empty chamber and shut the door so we could have some privacy.

Sage sat cross-legged on the floor studying her entertainment system. I was a little concerned how much time she had spent watching videos on it since Veda had given it to her, but I knew she wouldn't let it distract her once we got to work again.

"You want eight different sorts of auto-turrets. Six self-targeting mods. Three different base wall upgrades—" She looked up from the list, shaking her head. "This is way overkill for hold a gamma node."

"No, it's not," I contradicted. "It's exactly what we need. We’re going in with almost no backing. We’ll look like easy prey to any of these galactic consortiums you've been telling us about. We've got to be prepared for them to hit us hard and fast. Our only chance is to get solid defenses set up."

"You might be right, but I can't possibly afford this. I've already indentured my future. I've got mortgages on top of my mortgages. My family is in Storage because I can't even afford the basic upkeep fees for the reality engine where they live. I'm tapped out."

"I know. You've been a good partner for us," Grandpa said. "And so we're willing to come to the table with you. Our coalition has funds. You know that. You've been taxing our income, you know we’re doing ok. Well, we want to buy in on this bid." He sent her a figure.

Veda's eyes went wide. "That's got to be everything you've made in the last two months."

"Pretty close. But Mama Grace picked up a catering contract, and it looks like we're going to be clearing a nice profit there," I said. "We believe in this, Veda. It's our best shot out of the mess we're in."

I still felt bad lying to her. The money had come courtesy of our new team members, who had joined up and then disappeared, promising to be ready on opening day.

They had given us names so generic I felt sure they were fake. Like with Ames, they must have found a way to convince the System to display false information because there was no way that they were really named Smith, Jones, Brown, Black, and Smith. Grandpa had assigned them all to one squad and called it Team Mongoose. Because, he had said, when I asked him if he was crazy, "Mongeese very famously eat snakes."

I left it at that and decided to make sure if they asked that I told them just who had come up with that idea.

We had added Bill and Bob back to our team. Nobody was thrilled about that situation, but the brothers had agreed they were willing to give Phase 2 a try, especially since death wasn't permanent. Then we had grouped our five new recruits into a single squad. Grandpa and I were willing to shake things up and have them moved around between teams if we decided it was necessary.

"We can afford it," Grandpa said persuasively. "The party we’ve put together can take a node, and with this materiel, we can hold it."

"I suppose so," Veda said. "This says that you want to rank one of the Capture the Flag rule sets highest."

"We do," I said. "Based on your projections, those are the most similar to games we have experience with. Tower defense games, base builders, that sort of thing." It was also the most common variant and the one that our beginners guide to building phase 2 outposts briefing covered in the most depth.

"Then I'll submit the build," Veda said. "I just hope you know what you're doing." She ended the connection abruptly.

"So do I," Grandpa said to the air. "So do I." He stood up. "We'd better get a good night's sleep. It's going to be a big day tomorrow."