I waited around in the lounge of the rented suite Veda had hired for us, fingering the tight collar of my brand-new dress uniform. I had to give Veda credit; it looked exactly right. I had taken my shiny new captain’s bars from the shirt I usually wore under my duster and moved them over to the uniform. I gave them a little polish, too, while Grandpa wasn’t around to see.

Grandpa was taking a long time to come out of his room. At last, the door opened, and I turned to look. I had been expecting him to wear a uniform to match mine. Instead, it was a style 50 years old from the Vietnam era, and he was wearing his old dress jacket, the one he brought from home. It had been cleaned up and ironed. He saw me looking and shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. "I asked Veda to have an iron on hand for me," he said.

"Looks good," I said.

"Seems she got our measurements right," Grandpa replied, looking me up and down.

The third door opened, and I turned to greet Juana but forgot what I was saying as I got a look at her. She was wearing a pale blue gown with narrow shoulder straps. It fell in flowing curves to her ankles. Her hair was up, pinned in a mass of intricate curls with tiny gleaming sapphires attached to each of the pins. I was no expert in women's hairstyles, but I was certain that hadn't been a quick fix.

"Do I look alright?" she asked, giving a little twirl to show off how the dress swirled and revealing silver shoes and bare calves underneath.

"You look great," I said. "Did Veda arrange for the hair too?"

"An all-in-one hair and makeup bot," she said, grinning.

Grandpa poked me in the ribs. "Stop staring at her and offer her your arm," he said. "We're supposed to meet Veda in 10 minutes at the lounge area."

I managed to get my mouth closed. Feeling ridiculous, I walked over and offered Juana my arm. "I'm hurt that Major Twofeather didn't offer to escort me.”

Grandpa snorted. "I may have been rejuvenated, but I'm still much too old to be going around with a young gal like you," he said. "Let's get a move on."

Streams of elegantly dressed aliens moved through the Hub, converging on the lounge where Veda had said to meet her. I enjoyed looking at everyone's formal wear. The elves wore long tunics that fell to just above their knees with tight leggings underneath and a variety of oddly shaped tiaras on their heads. Most of the orcs I saw were wearing stylized armor with enormous shoulder pads and various animal motifs emblazoned on the breasts. I saw a lizard folk woman in a princess dress and a couple of almost human-looking aliens who had a bluish cast to their skin wearing kimonos. Both of them were male. Other fashions I couldn't begin to describe.

The lounge was an enormous barn-sized room with a ceiling that disappeared overhead into a cloud of stars. It was lit in blues and purples. There was a faint trickling water sound. Round tables dotted the room about chest height offering drinks and those little snacks that come on toothpicks.

Veda was waiting for us. She wore a dress similar in cut to Juana’s but in flame orange. I had rarely actually seen Veda in person. Most of her interactions with us had been by hologram. Now she offered her hand, and we all shook.

"Sorry to drag you up here. I understand you feel like your time would be better spent preparing, but it's a command performance, and they're supposed to be releasing more information about the challenges anyway.”

“Like the team rules?” Juana asked eagerly. “I feel like we’re way behind here. Everyone else probably already has allies and we’re outsiders. Or have you made contacts for us yet?”

“No, the team ruleset is weird,” Veda said. “Nobody knows what’s up with that. The System seems to have tricks up its sleeve this time. I’m a little worried. You guys aren’t the most popular. On the other hand, a bunch of the orcs and lizardfolk love you. Maybe we can find some groups that aren’t tied too tightly to Proxima or Alabaster Sky.”

“What's our objective here?" Grandpa asked. He scowled. "And how come I can't access any of my menus?"

"System interfaces are turned off in this space," she said. "No chatting or access to inventories. It's considered a form of cheating. There will be data packets available afterward that have the information presented here."

"Fine.”

“Objective is to mingle with the other players, those who will be going up against us, sponsors, and potential backers. There's fewer than a thousand Phase Three teams this time. That leaves a lot of people who usually have a look-in sitting on the sidelines. Some of them may be willing to throw in their backing to you if there's a benefit for them. So since you're the only Earth humans invited here, you'll probably be approached by people looking to make contact with your crafters."

Juana nodded. "I can handle that. I'll pass their information along. Dwight and Arjun are setting up a clearinghouse to make sure that all of us humans know who to work with and who to stay away from."

“And tell ‘em if they want our crafters, they’ll have to be willing to work with the rest of us,” I said.

"It's a good start," Veda agreed. "This isn't like Phase Two where people had their own individual reasons for being there. Everyone who is in Phase Three is in this because they think they have a serious chance at coming away with a share of the prize."

"Yeah, and how does that work?" I asked as we moved deeper into the room. We were getting a few side-long looks from some of the aliens there. I wondered if they recognized us as Earth humans. If they were also cut off from their system interfaces, then they couldn't be getting information about us that way. I wasn't convinced that the more powerful among them were limited like we were.

"There's 800 some teams, and we're competing over shares of the reality engine. Part of the way the Reality Engine Exploitation Committee prevents war is by breaking up control of the reality engine into smaller pieces. In this case, 10,000 shares. Each represents one ten-thousandth of the tamed engine's power, storage, and output. No one individual entity is permitted more than a thousand shares of any given reality engine. But that means each share is worth fortunes. More money than you can possibly imagine."

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

"Try it," Grandpa said grimly. "We've got eight billion people back on Earth. How much would it cost to buy each and every one of them a slot in this here reality engine once it's been turned into condos or whatever it is you people do with it?"

"A single share would be more than sufficient," Veda said flatly. "You just have no idea. The upper limit on how many individual beings can exist inside a reality engine is in the trillions. A single share is enough to start a shipyard producing the kind of pods and pod carriers people like me use to go between stars."

I whistled. "Okay, so even one share is enough to make our day. How do we get our hands on one?"

"That's what we're all here to find out," Veda said. "This is a rule set I haven't seen in play before. I understand the basic concept. There'll be various challenges you have to meet, probably special fights like that last one you had in Phase Two against a particularly powerful enemy who can outthink you all. I'm hoping we get more details here in a minute. The thing is, even if you humans manage to grab a piece of the action, you won't know what to do with it."

"So that's where you're going to help us, right?"

Veda laughed. "What makes you think I know? My family has been a phase two outfit for generations. We've never even stuck around to watch Phase Three. We're not talking twice as complicated or twice as dangerous. We're talking orders of magnitude more. I would be out of here on my way back home right now if we hadn't gotten that concession from the big guys at the end of Phase Two not to interfere with you or anyone to do with you. The system will hold them to it, so I'm not worried about assassins showing up in the middle of the night or a convenient accident happening to my pod." She smiled, like a shark, and I wondered if that sort of assassination was common in galactic business deals. "Besides, my family's in the trouble we're in because my father lost his shirt in a bunch of poor business decisions that were more like gambling, I guess. They take after him after all."

“Ok, but that’s afterward. Right now we need to focus on Phase Three,” I said. “So what are we doing here?”

"I suggest we split up," Grandpa said. "Veda, why don't you take me and introduce me to people you think I should meet? Shad? Juana? You two mingle. I expect if I leave you alone, somebody'll think you two are easy marks and come try to take advantage of you. Just don't promise them anything and try to listen more than you talk." He offered Veda his arm. Our sponsor looked surprised, then shrugged and set her hand on his elbow. They pushed off deeper into the room.

I looked at Juana, feeling unaccountably nervous. "So he's just leaving us here for the wolves.”

“Come on, Shad." She shrugged on my sleeve. "Let's go find someone to talk to."

We mingled. By which I mean, Juana and I inched through the room, me trying not to make eye contact with or bump into any of the aliens there. Juana nodded pleasantly to those she passed. We were about a quarter of the way around the enormous circular room. The dominant color of the light had changed from green to purple.

Then I edged us around a clump of odd polka-dotted humanoids with too many fingers and almost ran into someone I actually knew. Chief Theram’Goss, who I had defeated in a one-on-one duel early on in Phase Two, thereby saving his life, stood talking intently with a tall, pale, bald alien of a species I had not previously met. They reminded me a lot of the gray aliens of Area 51 fame.

The Chief spotted me and waved me over. I glanced at Juana, who gave me a "I guess" kind of look, and we joined them. "Patron, this is the human I spoke to you of some time ago," Theram’Goss said. "Shad Williams and his associate.”

“This is Juana Lopez," I supplied.

"Shad, this is High Overlord Merak Tahahl. He holds Firebrand's contract."

I inclined my head, not sure what the polite galactic greeting would be. "Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“The Chief has been telling me much about you." The alien's voice was melodious, higher-pitched than I had somehow expected. The High Overlord was about four inches taller than me. He looked at me through overlarge orbs, and blinked, his eyelids crossing horizontally. “Theram’Goss says your people are not to be underestimated."

I shrugged. "Well, we made it this far.”

“Your team did," the High Overlord corrected. "Out of some seven million who passed the first phase of induction."

"Yes, well, I couldn't have done it alone," I glanced at Juana. "My coalition has a great number of crafters, and even more who are willing to work with us."

"Indeed, that is very interesting for an inducted species, especially one as savage and primitive as your own."

"Well, thank you," I said.

Theram’Goss smirked. The alien raised one hand in an odd gesture. "I see that you are not easily startled. A title you would prefer?"

Now, usually I'm an informal kind of guy. I prefer Shad over my full name by a long shot, but dressed up like this, representing Earth? “You can call me Captain Williams," I said.

“Captain. You have a place in your world's army, then."

"United States Army," I corrected him. "We hadn't got to a one-world government yet before you all appeared, no matter what some of my Grandpa's drinking buddies used to think."

"I see.” The High Lord eyed me. "Yes, we have done some of our best recruiting from new species such as your own, and I like that the warrior instinct has not gone out. In my people, we bred such baser behaviors out of ourselves many millennia ago. This has, unfortunately, meant we must rely on the services of groups such as Firebrand to help us achieve our earlier goals."

"Are you sponsoring one of the other Phase Three bids?" I asked.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. We are partner-subordinates to Alabaster Sky. If we are fortunate enough to stake a claim to one or more shares of this reality engine, they will have first rights to buy it off of us."

“I see.” Alabaster Sky had tried to screw us over through one of their subsidiary corporations at the end of Phase 2. But we'd played a reverse card on them and made them sign a deal that was a little more fair to humanity, so I wasn't holding any grudges.

"I believe it would be worth recruiting Shad Williams and his counterparts for a potential mercenary team such as Firebrand," Theram’Goss said. "They did extremely well in Phase Two for never having seen it before. And of course, all of their combat miners survived Phase One without much outside support."

"You do have a point," the High Overlord said. "Well, Captain, would you and your people be interested in a position helping open other reality engines?"

I took a minute to let that sink in. He was talking about leaving the solar system, going to other worlds, and doing to them what had been done to me and the other human miners. I was’t a fan of that. On the other hand, my family and I had been adapted by the reality engine. We couldn’t live on Earth any more, not without help. I hadn’t had time to think past the end of Phase Three, not really, but we were going to need something.

Plus, we were getting pretty good at this. It couldn’t hurt to keep our options open. And realistically, what else was I going to be doing with my life?

"Depends on the offer," I said. "A bunch of my people just want to earn enough soul coins to quit this exploit and settle down, but there are some of us who might appreciate a bit more of a challenge. We work as a team, though, so any offer has to be for more than just me and my family. Please do pass along my interest.”

“We will be observing you here in Phase Three.”

I tipped the hat that I wasn't wearing to them. Stupid, maybe, but I’d gotten so much in the habit of using my Tip buff on everyone I me. Juana and I moved off.

“I didn't like him," Juana said softly after we'd moved several clumps away. "He gave me a creepy feeling."

"Me too," I said. "I'm not ruling out going pro if we got the right offer, but not with him.”

“I should talk to Mama about it. I know she’s been worried about what happens to us next. Maybe — “ She clutched my arm a little tighter, turning to me, her eyes excited. “Maybe we could find a way to help the next system of people to get exploited! Like offer them advice instead of just exploiting them.”

I tried and failed to think of any time in earth history where the colonizers had made things better for the locals. Even groups that had good intentions, like missionaries or medical folk, often made things worse. “Maybe,” I said guardedly. “You should talk to Grandpa. Maybe he’ll have some ideas. Right now, let’s get back to the party.” I cut off the next thing I was going to say, because someone was coming toward us through the crowd, and they looked angry and well-armed.