Here is new chapter. There is little more action in it. Hope you'll enjoy it.

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Two weeks of sweat and hard work on my ship were interrupted by Eleanora.

“Leya we came into system with Directors ship. We had some problems so it took longer than normal but we’re finally there.” She said to me.

“What problems and why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked her while wrapping up my work on engine. Everything should be operational, maybe some glitches but nothing serious.

“Sometimes journey through wormhole can be affected by gravity storms. Then you have to take manoeuvres to avoid it. It’s all standard procedure and you didn’t ask anything after it took more time than normal. I thought that you knew about it.” She said confused by my question.

“How would I know it I never travelled by wormhole before?” I said to her.

“I know, but I mean that you can look up information about game from here. Now that I’m here and there at same time I can transfer updates on situation any time I want.” She explained to me.

“That’s handy and it should have occur to me that now it would be possible.” I signed, “Sorry for doubting you. It’s just too much work without sleep. I’m going to ley and log into game now that we’re at his base.”

I transferred most of my things to ship now that it was almost functioning. Last thing before I go I have to jump start power source. For that I would use my old power source and some unique elements I dig out in scrapyard. If I could start it, I would have then enough energy to function till I fuel it somewhere else.

Now it’ll be time to see if I made it right or if there are problems.

“Eleanora start anti-matter gathering in power source.” I commanded to her.

“Anti-matter gathering initiated. Insertion of matter in 30 seconds.” She told me calmly.

As it went she was sometime commenting, “Slight problem in generating anti-matter. Insufficient power. Rerouting. Power sufficient.”

I was sweating whole 30 seconds and praying that It wouldn’t blow up. But when nothing exploded I heard Eleanor say, “Anti-matter power source jump start successful. We are now working on 30% capacity.”

I laughed and jumped from joy, “Hahaha, now I’m going to log into game. Let our old power source power it while I’m in game.” I said and went to log into game with big smile on my face.

• • •

Everyone was already logged into game when I came. They greeted me and Rock even hugged me. We didn’t see ourselves for some time so it was normal. Only Anna was little sad.

“What happened Anna? You look sad.” I asked her.

She looked at me with tears almost in eyes, “It’s nothing just some bad news in real life.”

I hugged her and said to her kindly, “You know you can always tell me anything. When you’re ready I’m here to listen to it.”

At this she started to cry, “Ok when I’m ready I’ll tell you. Now can we move to that rocky planet?”

“Of course we can. That’s what we’re here for.” I said to her and hold till she stopped crying, then we went to bridge.

“Eleanor status report.” I said to her as I came to bridge.

“Signal comes from rocky satellite orbiting third planet from star. It’s inhabitable so base is probably made underground or on surface covered by dome. I can still receive signal from it so it means ship I marked isn’t underground.” Concluded Eleanor.

“There is possibility it’s a trap.” I said.

“Why would you say that?” asked John.

“It’s possible that they found our transmitter and used it to make trap for us. It would be better to prepare for both situation.” I said to them.

“Another thing is that there are probably players along NPCs. This complicates situation as they bring unpredictability into our operation.” I continued.

“Yes you’re right we should prepare. I would first send probe to find us some entrance which we can use.” Said John.

“Yes we should go there carefully. We don’t want to end up dead because of some stupid mistake.” Agreed Lee.

“Eleanor could you send probe to scan for entrance and defences?” I asked Eleanora.

“Probe away. I’ll call information as they come.” She said.

After short while she exclaimed, “There it is. It’s dome with at least six no make that seven plasma cannons. From how it’s made I would say it’s probably self-sealing so it would be possible to enter with dive module. Also there are two entrances but they are guarded.”

“So we have two options. Either we go fast and count on surprise or we can try and sneak through one of entrances.” I let them absorb it then continued, “We’ll vote on it. Whoever wants to go with surprise attack rise your right hand or If you want to go with stealth rise your left hand.” I presented to them.

I looked at them and their decision. John and Anna wanted to go with stealth and Rock and Lee wanted to go with Surprise attack. So decision stayed with me. Stealth had best chance to succeed but only if they don’t know about us. In that case it would be suicide. I raised my right hand. Better to go with plan which is overall better then count on them not knowing about us.

“Why do you want to go with surprise? It’s dead sentence obviously.” Said John at same time as Rock said, “Finally we can go with more action plan.”

“I think it has better chance to success then the other one. That’s all. We should prepare for launch as decision was made.” I ended debate.

We moved to emergency escape pod. We would use it to penetrate dome and enter their base. I put on my armor and checked weapons.

With nothing else to do I went into pod and strapped myself into pilot seat. I can’t fly it completely but I can correct route I would take into dome. I wanted to hit center of dome to get as much as we can to center of base. We can move from there according to additional information. My last command for Eleanora was to hide ship till we are finished.

Others too strapped and Eleanora started count down. “Ten, Nine, …… Three, Two, One, ….” I didn’t hear what she said as main engine on pod started. We were pushed into our seats as we were hurled at dome. Whole insertion took only fifteen seconds as we were moving at tremendous speed. Only pods special made cover saved us as we plummeted into dome and then into ground on base.

I was little disoriented by crash but shouted at others, “Move. We have to get away from pod.”

Others were too unstrapping and in no time we were already running across plaza were we crashed. I tried to tell them to look for cover but was interrupted by jammer. So I went with signals we thought in our training.

We looked across plaza and there were already people going for our pod. We were lucky no one was here. This too confirm my theory that knew about us. John send small probes to map our way and we moved to more defensible place. There we waited for probes to find us command center.

From readings I could make small map of base. At center was plaza and around it were build community buildings and living quarters. Two barracks were positioned behind two entrances. There were more buildings but I couldn’t tell their purpose from this quick scan.

From readings we agreed that best bet was to go to building with most power outage. Even if we can’t find Director we can find some clues. We moved fast in similar formation as in mines but now I was in from with Rock as we had best armors in terms of defence.

First people we encountered about five hundred meters before our target. They were two players who walked almost into us. From their instant reaction I could tell they weren’t newbie players. I took one on my side and used nanoblade to despatch him. He didn’t expect me to use blade and didn’t defend against it until it was too late. Second one was shot in head by John which upset his aim and his shot went wild. Second shot he didn’t get to fire as Rock fired short burst from his machine gun. There were suddenly more holes in him then is healthy.

It was laud encounter so they probably knew about our target. Our only advantage is that they were obviously elsewhere and we surprised them. If we move fast we could take them before they consolidated.

As we already gave away our position and there was no need for stealth we started to run to our target. When we came hundred meters before it we could finally see it. It was big building in circle shape. We redoubled our efforts to get there. We could already hear them moving behind us.

As we rounded last corner I used Adrenalin rush and jumped across at wall and with help of thrusters I started to run along it. As I run I could see trap they wanted to use at us. But now that I was up there I just lobbed there grenade and started to shot with Pat.

They started fire at me but my shields held. Panic came on them when Rock started to fire and Lee lobbed two more grenades into their midst. They exploded in same time as mine and took almost all of them out.

We finished rest of them quickly and I could already hear shooting from behind us. Anna and John took down first couple of them as they came but we had to hurry or we’re doomed. I started to run and entered building. We were in lobby and there was no one. They used probably most of them for this little ambush.

Anna and John went front to let their shields recharge and me with Rock took their place. We covered them while they looked for stairs. We took down three others before they found them. Lee took down Elevator with well-placed charge and we moved onto stairs.

We mined first floor and moved up. We could hear explosion as first players triggered mines. We would have to get on top probably for our objective. Our way up was without problems until three floors from top. There players and NPCs finally get to us and started to attack at us from one floor lower and one upper.

We entered our floor and looked for additional way up. We couldn’t find anything so for now we barricaded exit from stairs. We covered it and talked about our options.

“Now what to do. We can’t go up. Were stuck here.” Said Lee.

“Well not entirely. I and Anna could probably get up on top floor.” I said.

“So tell us.” They shouted when I didn’t continued.

“I can walk up on wall with my thrusters and Anna has Small jetpack on her beck. We could use them to get up but we’ll need distraction.” I said to others.

Lee said with laugh, “Oh we can make distraction. That shouldn’t be problem. We’ll blow into floor below us and pretend to run for it. They would start chasing us and you would have free time in finishing mission.”

“Yes that should give us enough time to get up on top floor.” I said and turned to Anna, “Can you make it?”

“Yes I can.” She said distracted.

So we opened door on elevator and waited for signal. It came after a while with explosion and shooting. We immediately started to climb up into top floor. There Anna forced open door and we moved into corridor with many paintings and statues along it. We moved forward until we were before only door in corridor. We flank it from both sides then Anna opened them and I run inside. I could see more statues, paintings and other art around room. Across it was standing man that I knew as Director.

I started to move forward when I felt muzzle of weapon on my back. “Don’t move.” Said Anna with sad voice.

“Welcome to my humble home. I didn’t expect you to get here. I thought that my trap at gates would get you, but no matter. You’re here and captured.” Said Director and took vine from nearby table.

“Here Anna proved to be pretty good at spying and told us all about your mission.” He said to me then continued while sipping vine, “If you thought that destroying this base would affect me you are wrong. I have more than one base like this. Even as we speak my ships are gathering before jump point to Sorok.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked him.

“That’s good question. Why indeed? Of course it’s for money. You probably don’t know it but you can make a lot of money in this game. There are more than five millions of players and most of them bought at last one item for real money.”

“So all this killing is for money? But what would you do if I exposed you to others? Then no one would help you and most of them would even hunt you down.” I said to him calmly.

He calmly answered back, “Look girl you know they don’t like you so why are you defending them? That’s my first point. My second point is that no one would believe you as you are criminal in eyes of others. And lastly I jammed all communication so you can’t even send video to your home.”

He was pretty confident. It would be fun to watch his bubble pop but first I’m going to take as much information from him as I can.

“So this is your brilliant plan. Conquer one planet after another and then what? Force players to pay with real money for access to them?” I asked.

“Something like that but more. I would hunt them down if they wouldn’t pay their fines and in time I’ll buy politicians to make new laws to extract money from their debt in game. Pretty neat don’t you think?” he said proudly.

He was clearly insane. Now I had enough to take him down. At last I hope. I looked behind me at Anna.

“So you’re with him on this?” I asked her.

She said while sobbing, “Yes sorry but I can’t do anything else.”

I turned to her, “Don’t worry I believe you. Call me on my number when you woke up.” I said silently and send code for her armor. I knew she was spy for some time now. First was her equipment that used same technology as one I took from him. That was moment I started to suspect her and planted control module in her armor. Second was what she said on my ship rocky planet. We didn’t know it would be rocky planet. It could be water or even gas planet but she said it like she knew where we’re going.

I turned back to Director and started calmly walking to him.

He sighed, “You know, she told me you wouldn’t join us but I told her you would break. Sorry but I have to kill you now.” Then sit down in chair and started to eat, “Anna kill her please.”

He was sitting there full of himself that it took him while to notice there wasn’t any sound of shooting. When he finally got it I was already almost upon him. He tried to stand but I run to him and took him around neck.

“So you would like to kill me. Lucky me that I came prepared for it.” I said and went to stab him in hearth.

What I didn’t expect was that he would jump from me with kick in chest. He then equipped small pistol and started to fire at me. I whipped my laser rifle and returned fire.

His shots took down my shield in four shots but I too took down his. I had activated Adrenalin rush and we started to jump around room and hide behind statues to mitigate damage. We fought for almost two minutes before my plasma for thrusters reached bottom and I had to use Adrenalin rush sparingly.

I had last thousand health but at last he too didn’t look to be in top condition. I know I had to end it soon or he’ll kill me.

With nothing else to do I lobbed last grenade left of him and activated override on Fist and hold the trigger as I shot at him. I took him across stomach while he was running from grenade. It cut him into two halves but he still get one shot into me. Luckily he only grazed me in shoulder.

“If you think this changes something you’re wrong.” Were his last words before he died.

I looked for Anna who was knocked into corner by us while we were fighting and let her out from armor.

“Why did you let me go?” she immediately asked and turned from me.

I grabbed her and pointed her to me, “Listen first. I know you wouldn’t betray me for money and you don't believe in his plan so tell me what it is that he's using against you. I’ll help you as much as I can.”

“You don’t understand I have to take you in. He’ll kill them If I don’t do what he says.” She said crying.

“Kill who?” I asked silently. It started to make sense why she betrayed me.

“My two little girls. I’m working more than year for him. That thing with newbie players was my way of helping after all I’ve done for him.”

“Why didn’t you go to police?” I asked her.

“He would have killed them and then half the police are on his payroll. There is nothing I can do.” She explained.

“There may be way to save your children but you would have to trust me.” I said to her already working on plan.

She stood there looking at me, “If you promise me you’ll save them I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Ok write me address where they are keeping thtem and then log out. Tell them I killed you. Tomorrow at twelve o’clock at night come to my scrapyard. You’ll met your girls there and we’ll do something about this whole situation.”

“Ok but I hope you’re telling truth. I can’t lose them.” She said and told me where they took her daughters. Then she logged out from game.

Now came last part of our plan. I searched room for the evidence and stored it into my back pack. There wasn’t much left after our fight but it would have to do together with the video from our conversation. Now that I have Eleanora installed in my home I can override jamming like this for my video and a data feed.

While we were fighting we destroyed jamming console and it shut down. I called Rock, Lee and John but no one answered. I knew this would be one way trip but I wanted to let them know I would implement our last part of it.

“Eleanora activate pod.” I called over Com to her and send her proper codes for activation.

“Probe activated.” Came to me from Eleanor.

There was nothing at first then everything went white as pod where I placed four nuclear missiles exploded. That was last thing I saw before I woke up in my bed in real world.