"Wing Commander!" Joe's head snapped around in surprise, then he belatedly returned the salute he was getting from the man that shouted. It was still weird getting saluted by people in real life. Barely three weeks ago they were starting to seriously build up their merc company in Starfall, and now he was standing on the deck of an actual starship in deep space. Well, deep space for humanity at least. The transition point they were guarding was just past Pluto's furthest possible position.

He still didn't understand how it worked, despite his wife trying to explain the basics to him. All he knew was that certain parts of space were thinner or something and that allowed the slipstream drives to twist the ship into a sub dimension of sorts. What he found confusing was the seemingly arbitrary points in space that worked for it. He was told that the transition points had a gravitational presence, which is why some of them were stationary, like the one they were close to at the moment, and others orbited the star. That had explained why the points didn't get left behind as the solar system passed through space, but it did nothing to explain why an empty expanse of space had a strange gravity presence at all, nor why they could only transition at these specific points.

He ultimately just decided to think of them like invisible wormholes, since they had specific entrance and exit points, and left it at that. Go to this spot, enter subspace, exit that spot. Want to go back? Go to that spot and exit at this one. It was much simpler that way. Sure he wouldn't be able to build an engine that would do it, but it also wasn't his job to build one. His job now that he had joined an actual real-life space navy was to pilot things and eliminate threats.

That particular train of thought reminded him that he needed to speak with his wife about the augments and job he had been offered. He could become a real-life super soldier, and the only downside, if you could even call it a downside when you were an adrenaline junkie, was that you would be sent on the truly dangerous missions. The missions where it was do or die time, with the odds slanted heavily towards die. He got a taste of that sort of thing in Shard when he became the game's most famous assassin and he liked it. He liked it more than a little bit.

When he reached their quarters he paused outside to collect his thoughts and plan out his argument. He eventually took a deep breath and went inside. "You're home early! I was just trying to decide what to have for dinner, anything you want?" Jen started speaking the moment he entered.

"I, uh, pizza?" He stammered out, his nerves getting to him. He pushed through though, figuring that the sooner they talked about it the easier it would be to have the conversation. "So, they offered me a special ops slot." He started. Taking a seat at their dinner table.

"That's nice dear, are you going to take it?" Jen responded distractedly, punching commands into the bio printer. "Whoever figured out how to use one of these to make food was a genius, so far everything I've tried has been perfect."

"I want to take the job." Joe was beginning to suspect she wasn't listening to him.

She spun around and plopped a plate with a steaming slice of pizza on it on the table in front of him. She came around the table and threw her arm around him. "If that's what you want to do hon, I won't stop you. Just promise me you'll be careful."

"Now I know it's going to be dang-- wait, what?" Joe was utterly dumbfounded by her ready acceptance of his choice. He had always been under the impression that girlfriends and wives were typically against their significant other throwing themselves into danger.

She giggled. "You are so easy to read. Why would you think I was going to say no? Before Shard and Starfall you were always looking for the next adrenaline high, rock climbing, skateboarding, surfing, skydiving, I don't think I can even begin to name all the dangerous things you've tried to do. Since the Archangel games came out though, you've thrown yourself into the craziest messes you could find, and now that you can do it for real? It was only a matter of time before you asked. Besides, you're good at it. Who am I to stand between you and the job you were meant for? Just don't be reckless, and always come back to me." She kissed him, then went back to the printer to get her own food.

Joe felt a weight lift from his shoulders as a warmth filled his heart. He would have turned it down if she really wanted him to, if he hadn't been able to convince her, but he never expected her to simply accept it. "Besides, this way you aren't allowed to complain when I tell you I'm taking a chief engineer slot on one of the new ships."

"You're what!"

"Ah, ah, ah, you can't complain, remember? Besides, I knew you would want to get all the super soldier mods the moment I learned about them so I requested to be the engineer on one of their ships so we could be stationed together still. Raziel doesn't need me, I'm basically an intern learning how to do the job 'in the real' here. The only reason I'm here at all and not already on my own ship is because Lisa didn't want to separate us and your piloting skills were needed here.

"Believe it or not, rubbing elbows with Kinzie and talking with Lisa all the time has its perks. For instance, I spent an entire day listening to Kinzie grumble about how much of a pain in her rear Jason's newest ship is being. How strike teams need too many things in too little space and every time they present a finalized version the military guys ask for something else. Well, the first one is rolling out soon, and it is going to be mine. Well, as far as engineering goes, I won't be captain or anything like that, and you're one of the pilots."

"Ahem, sorry to interrupt, but I heard my name." Lisa cut in unexpectedly. "I'm afraid you are mistaken, Jen. Space is at a premium on those ships and you were selected specifically because you have both command and engineering experience, allowing us to assign additional combat personnel to it. We're still unsure how effective our combat teams will be against the gnarlath, so for at least the first few missions we are going with strength in numbers."

Joe and Jen looked at each other, surprised expressions on both of their faces. They were still not entirely accustomed to Lisa listening in on everything. Joe finally let out a wry chuckle. "Well then, what are your orders Captain Jen Ten-thousand?"

Jen burst out laughing. "Gods, do you remember the first time she did that?"

"As if I'll ever forget it!" Joe retorted, laughing as well.

*****

"Come on! We gotta finish this before we hit the playtime limit! There's no way the automated systems can handle this on their own!" Jen roared through the coms.

"You think I don't know that!" Joe shouted back as he spun his formation of fighter drones on three different axes simultaneously, applying variable amounts of thrust to each one at any given moment. He was also flying their freighter-carrier hybrid that Jen had designed, and keeping track of everything was pushing him well beyond his limits. Fortunately their attackers were nowhere near as good as he was, but unfortunately there were more of them than there were of him.

"Damned bounty hunters! I told you we shouldn't have stolen that guy's shipment!" Joe yelled.

"The shipment was kids! Are you really telling me we should have dropped a bunch of kids off at a damned penal colony?!"

"No, but once we're done here I'm going to go back and kill him!"

"Then hurry up! Our drives won't last much longer under this kind of strain!"

Joe grunted as another railgun round skipped off their hull, rattling them and leaving a nasty scar in their armor. A few more hits like that and they would be in trouble. "Screw this, gimme all you got! I'm pulling an Icarus!"

"What?! No! We aren't even close to a star anyway!"

"A star isn't the only source of high heat!" The ship groaned as he disabled the last few safeties and pushed it well beyond the stated limits. This would definitely break something, possibly all of the somethings, but it did what he wanted it to do before it broke. He managed to get the ponderously large ship spun 180 degrees in a heartbeat, and punched the sublight engines to nearly two hundred percent of their normal operating limits. Moments later he did it all again.

The first flip and burn had drastically slowed their pace, and the bounty hunters had hit the brakes thinking they were going to have to turn to catch them, and the second flip and burn had planted him just behind their formation. Now, instead of running from the trio of bounty hunter vessels, he was blazing towards their tails and unleashing as much hell as he could on them from his four remaining railguns. They were spreading out from their, now aborted, turn, and he scored several direct hits on the drive section of one.

It blew apart in a spectacular, but briefly lived, fireball. "Whooo! Scratch one tango!" He disengaged his wing of fighters from the hunters' drones and sent them at the rear of the faster turning ship, peppering it with a barrage of smaller rounds and a few ship-busters. He still hated that they couldn't just use a full load of ship-buster rounds on the fighters anymore. Once the value of the drones was realized new iterations were made that were specifically designed to eliminate enemy drones, and now most of them were built to combat other drones and only carried a few rounds for the larger cannon that could hurt capital ships.

It didn't matter that he didn't have many busters though, as the ship blew apart in a blast nearly as spectacular as the first. He lost two of his five drones to shrapnel though, which made this their most costly battle yet. The last ship decided it had enough and instead of finishing its turn it just boosted away as fast as it could. "Oh no, buddy! You ain't just flying away from this!" Joe shouted as he punched his engines back into the red. He started swearing almost immediately as the ship jolted and sputtered instead of accelerating.

"You killed her! We've had this ship for less than a week and you killed her!" Jen wailed. "Stop killing my ships!"

"He's getting away! I'm gonna use it! Firing the photon torpedo!" Joe yelled.

"It's not a photon torpedo you lunatic! Don't fire it! It's beyond overkill and bloody expensive!" The ship jolted backwards.

"Too late!"

"I hate you!"

The torpedo zipped away at an insane rate of acceleration, and Joe watched eagerly as it caught the fleeing ship in less than a second. Then he went blind. "Aaargh!!" The shockwave rocked the ship, and he heard several alerts chime, informing him that not only were they now dead in the water, but he also no longer had any fighter-drones left at all.

[You have reached your daily play limit and will be automatically logged out in thirty seconds]

Joe logged out and took off his helmet, looking over at Jen as she was doing the same. "So, uh, good news and bad news. We got them all, and the torpedo worked. Bad news is Bessie is dead in space and we don't have any drones left."

Jen scowled at him. "I told you not to use that damned torpedo! It was meant for punching a hole in battleship armor! Now I have to start building another one from scratch!"

"How would you like to build it in real life?" A sweet sounding female voice came from the speakers in their headsets loud enough for them to hear.