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It is said that for every story we make, a Universe exists where it is real.

Chapter One: Eternal Universe

**Welcome Back to Eternal Frontiers, Alexander Smith.

Choose Your Character. Aquila Phoenix|Argus Wanderer|Nota Prettypony**

I smile at the list of names. Aquila Phoenix is my main character and is sitting at max level. Argus is my lion alt, a tough looking guy that is up to level 30. I had made him to see what the game was like when playing a character that isn't from the 'bad guy' faction. Finally, there's Nota Prettypony, my horse alt. I created her to see what a female herbivore would be like, but I quickly got bored with her and haven't played her in several months. Today I'm here to kick some ass on my main, first time back on him from the Beta Branch. I move my hand up, pushing Aquila Phoenix. A month away from the main servers with the character and I'm allowed to bring the ship I tested out back with me.

**Aquila Phoenix

Race: Dragon

Level: 90**

Log In as this Character? Yes|No

After I push on 'Yes', the login screen fades and the logo of the game I'm joining in to play pops up with a bar underneath, the good old loading screen. Bane of every FD Gamer's existence since we can no longer use the load screen as a time to go get a drink, chow down on a snack, or anything else. Still just as necessary though. With a smile, I close my eyes and just wait. I find it easier this way to load into the game.

The game I'm hopping on, Eternal Frontiers, is a space based, open world sci fi MMO inspired by Eve Online and made by the company Westwind Entertainment. It's a full dive system, meaning that the VR rig connects to your brain and puts you to sleep, allowing you to control the game avatar as if it were your own body. When you log out, you 'wake up' and continue on. The best part is, no SAO events. If your headset is removed while you are like this, you simply fade from the game and wake up. If your biometrics get dangerous, your own body wakes you up and the game disconnects and turns off as you regain consciousness. This means if the game detects that you're hungry, getting dehydrated, or that you really should use the bathroom before you piss yourself or worse, it boots you out and tells you to take care of your body as it does.

Westwind took the free form, sandbox galaxy idea common in all sorts of major space simulation games, removed some of the more frustrating things that took a lot of time to do, bought the rights to some copyrighted ship designs to get some 'star power' behind their game, and integrated in a more traditional MMO progression system for players to dictate power and ship type unlocks. The rights to use the ships from several popular sci-fi shows proved to be the right call as players from many various sci-fi series flocked to the game to be able to game in their favorite ships. The ships themselves weren't default to the game and instead required purchases using premium currency, which you bought using real world money. It was a big success, and the early days of the game had Star Trek and Star Wars fanboys kicking the absolute crap out of each other in their respective ships. The "Fanboy Wars" raged for a good year and a half before the parent companies realized how much of a market there was for this. After the licenses expired at the two-year mark, they collaborated to create a MMO that played on just that concept, and a good tenth of the player base left with the licensed ships. That being said, there are still millions of players worldwide.

The primary reason for all of them sticking around is the game's gimmick that gives the player the advantage over your average NPC: Magic. In the lore, Chosen have magical capabilities that the rest of the population do not have. Beyond the regular 'able to respawn' mechanics, we players also have abilities that we can use to buff our ships and the formations around them. A great combination of fantasy magic with sci-fi technology. No other sci-fi game to date had taken magic and put it in game as a way to make the player special. It was always just the clichéd 'rose through the ranks' crap, with a few notable exceptions. Everyone's main talk right now, three years after the game's launch, is the new patch coming up that'll deliver on the oldest promise the devs made in the game's roadmap.

See, Westwind has another game called Eternal Horizons, which took the old MMO hangout games, combined it with city management, farm simulation, and whatever other boring, micromanaging, non-explosion filled kind of game you like, then made it popular. The Chosen on those worlds would start businesses, make communities, manage cities, all depending on their levels...though from what I saw after making my own character there, a lot of them just got on to hang out at clubs and get their virtual rocks off. Eternal Horizons focused a lot on nailing a 'realistic feel' in the game, so your in-game body feels just as real as your body outside of it. They nailed it and now there's normally a server population globally of about twenty million at any given point. Since it also used Full Dive technology, a person with a disability...like me...people who are morbidly obese, people bedridden in the hospital or who are just sick with the flu could log in and be in a perfectly healthy body. It got really popular with the elderly, who could log in and be in the prime of youth, able to do all the things that their bodies can't handle them doing in reality. I've seen images of nursing homes where the elderly are all sitting in chairs with their headgear on, and nurses are just roaming among them to make sure their vitals are stable and to help those who need to use the bathroom to get to them.

With that came opportunities for Hollywood and the like. In the digital modern times, everything is streamed anyway. The devs ended up making a deal to allow for streaming services inside their game. Soon enough that evolved into being able to buy and import things like movies, music, and even other, non-full dive games into the game itself, resulting in people spending even more time in it.

To further sell it (as if that were even necessary) they ambitiously said that eventually Eternal Horizons and Eternal Frontiers would combine to create a game called Eternal Universe. If you had a character in either game, your appearance would roll over into the new supergame. If you have one in both, you'd get to choose which to keep. A while back, they integrated their economies...kinda...so that you could use money from one game in the other. It wasn't too popular with the Horizons players.

Well, understatement, it almost crashed the Horizons economy. The prospect of having millionaires who fly spaceships all over coming into their worlds and buying whatever they pleased, dumping millions of credits into the economy...Inflation didn't even begin to cover it. There was a panic until the devs realized their mistake and announced that the Frontiers players would only be able to bring a set amount of their money with them. That settled things down. Even now, years later, there's a fund for use in my ships and a fund for personal use in Horizons, with the two linked together.

Now, after spending the last month with my friend beta testing the Universe patch in the Beta Branch at the invite of the devs, we're getting back onto the main server for a day. The patch releases tomorrow, so the devs let us even bring along the new ships we were testing out. There were only thirty players in total who were testing out the new ships to see how they felt, along with a few streamers from Horizons to get the hype up and several prominent business owners, and one dude who owned the largest populated planet to make sure the economies worked. The devs nailed it though, so all we ended up doing was a month-long hangout and some stuff to show off the new capabilities and help keep the hype train rolling down the track. I learned about Horizons, namely that the Chosen in the game there have magical abilities but don't really use them for fighting so much as for practical things. I ended up meeting and chatting with this streamer named Elsa Bright, a glacial looking dragoness with light blue scales and a white belly. Man, she'd been fun to hang around with. Even got her on my friends list. She had streamed spacediving from my ship's fighter bay down onto a planet and the city Horizons players had made there to show how the games had integrated.

A chime sounds and I open my eyes. I'm inside my ship, on my bed in my personal cabin. I can hear the ship in operation around me, but I can't feel the warmth of the blankets nor can I feel the softness of the bed. There's no smell to the air either. I stand up from the bed, go to my inventory screen with a quick mental command. Inside it, I am treated to a view of my body, that of an anthropomorphic gold dragon. I stand about seven feet tall, medium size for a dragon. The primary color on my body is the gold anyone would associate with a bar of gold. However, on my neck, shoulders, elbows, knees, and the base of my tail are armored scales, a throwback to actual dragons. These fade into a golden red and then rapidly to crimson. Giving myself a once over as I usually do, I then bring my shipsuit out of my inventory and equip it in place of the sleeping attire the game normally has you in when you log in.

With a flash, it appears on my body. I close the inventory screen, give myself a quick once over, then turn and head for the door. The suit itself is rather plain, essentially a black bodysuit with crimson markings. The only part left uncovered is my head, but that's absolutely fine. Turning, I head out to the hallway and on to the command deck. Once there, I see a large, egg-shaped capsule in the middle of the room with a spherical internal space that has a visor sitting on a stand right next to the entrance. Walking to it, I take the visor and slide it over my eyes as I walk into the pod. The visor quickly expands out into a helmet that covers my head and seals with my bodysuit. I don't even notice as the pod closes behind me.

Capsule sealed. Filling with containment fluid

I close my eyes, waiting as I hear the ship itself spool up. I don't think the ship would actually give a sound given I'm in a pod that is filling with a gel, not nearby the main reactor, but the devs had to do something while you're standing here in absolute darkness. I focus on the whirring sound like a jet engine spooling up. Soon enough, a bit of text pops up on my HUD.

**Containment fluid at 100%

Establishing Pilot Link with Ship Central Core

Link Established

Routing Sensor Feed and Establishing Pilot Control**

In a flash, I see the ship I fly from the outside in third person. I smile as I see my ship. I'm in what's known as a Special Operations Ship, a Neptune Spear class. I'm straight up proud of this ship. It took me forever and a day to grind up to it, and another period of time like it to save up enough to afford the ship itself in game. It is, however, worth every single credit.

The top tier of the Special Operations capital ship tier, the class is named for the special operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the most high-profile special ops mission of the last few decades. All of the ships of the commando branch of the Special Operations Tier are named after special operations missions. I can see open space all around me but I'm not worried one single bit. Though I had logged off out in space, the SpecOps ship line is unique in that it goes into a powered down stealth mode that makes it utterly undetectable when a player is offline.

The ship itself has three main sections: A bulged out forward hull that thins down to a central hull section, attached flight pods sticking out to the sides of the ship attached by near solid armor to the main hull, and the engine section.

The front of the ship looks much like a flat head screwdriver, with a few antennae and sensor probes sticking out. As the hull grows and slopes away, the smooth armor appears to be divided into segments, hiding the missile launchers the ship has. Between each segment is where the shield arrays and point defense weapons are hidden. The front section merges into the central section, where the main dorsal guns are located. Ten in total along the top of the ship, these large guns stand ready to hurl some massive firepower downrange. Flanking them on the outside edge of the hull are the secondary guns meant to engage medium sized vessels. There are twenty along the top with those ten primaries, two for each main turret, and flanked by smaller tertiary guns. Along the sides of the front hull, there are two coaxial guns, one on either side of the ship. These would be the same as the spinal mounts on a Superdreadnaught, two tiers down from this ship, encased in armored housings with small spurs sticking out from them. Usually, a ship of the line can only have one spinal mounted gun. These ships have two of lesser power, resulting in a DPS similar to a Juggernaut's spinal weapon, which is the previous tier's ship of the line. On those spinal weapon spurs there are a pair of secondary turrets, two on top and two on the bottom.

Along the bottom of the forward hull are another four primary mounts, flanked by secondaries and tertiaries like on top. The forward hull slopes rapidly down to the central hull area on the bottom, the underside of the central hull comprised primarily of a cargo bay. Normally closed behind armored doors, the area is meant to launch small craft that can mine resources from nearby asteroids to bring back to the ship to turn into munitions, fighters, or fuel in the ship's production facilities. While not as good at it as specialized civilian ships, it's good enough for a military ship meant to operate behind enemy lines. This is also the location that any new fighters would be taken from and transferred to the flight pods after construction.

Going farther back from the spinal mounts are the flight sections, oversized flight pods that are up armored and heavily armed, attach to the main hull using a single, thick connection section that is essentially an extension of the internal turtleback armor on top and bottom, the two armored slabs linking up on the flight pods after angling them down and out from the main hull, far enough that if one of the pods was critically hit and detonated, the ship wouldn't have a major detonation right next to the primary hull. This is actually a risk, given that all the munitions for the fighters, all of their fuel, everything is stored in those flight pods. A penetrating shot that gets through the shields and armor could detonate the magazines in those areas. If that were to happen, the ship would be able to avoid serious damage and then jettison the crippled flight pod if need be. These connecting spurs are large, taking up about a quarter of the area of the primary hull's central zone, seamlessly meshing down from the hull to the flight pods. A single primary cannon on each one linked to the primary hull through the armor, right over the name plate for the ship, the Whispering Death. The spurs themselves are almost entirely armor, with only thin tubes going through them for fuel, munitions, and personnel transfer.

On top of the flight pods themselves are six secondary guns, with point defense weapons on the fronts of these sections. The inside of these pods is relatively small, big enough for fighters to rapidly land but not much else. The insides of these pods are full of elevators to take landed fighters down into the thick central area, which is the hangar zone for the small craft. These hangars not only store all the fighters, which are in fact drones that are remotely controlled by pilots in the ship itself, but also act as outfitting areas, using automated systems to equip each fighter or bomber before launch. They then position each fighter or bomber in the launch tubes in preparation for launch out of the sides of each pod. With forty on each pod, my ship can launch an impressive 80 fighters at once. Finally, on the bottom side of the flight pods are three primary weapons turrets with secondaries like on the dorsal mount zone. On the edges of the flight pods are, just like on top, point defense weapons. The bottom half of the flight pods are dedicated to these guns, their internal systems and munitions. Another thing that can go boom, but the armor on the bottom hull of the flight pods is heavy.

Finally, at the rear of the ship and arranged in staggered chevrons, are the engines. While the entire ship has various thrusters to allow the ship to turn, the main engines are 4 oversized engines, with four normal sized engines on top of and inside of the diagonal arranged main engines. These four smaller engines, while providing some additional thrust, are actually the FTL engines that give the additional oomph needed to use the system jump points that allow for travel between star systems. This chevron shaped, overly powerful engine plant is part of what gives this ship its capabilities, allowing a ship of this massive size to move at an impressive rate of about 1 kilometer per second, or an impressive 2,236.9 miles per hour. That makes it the fastest top tier capital ship in the game. The tradeoff is that this rear section is not as heavily armored as the rest of the ship. While there are point defense emplacements on the engines, facing both up, out, and down, the ship is meant to engage facing its targets or broadside to them. A target in behind it at close range is not a good situation, with only a few guns able to engage.

That said, at range the entire ship has full sphere coverage, with primary, secondary, and tertiary weapons able to engage from all angles. It's also more maneuverable than other capital ships, allowing it to reposition faster.

Then there's the bit of player customization: The paint job! The hull's primary color is gunmetal gray, with crimson fringe. Hey, it's a small thing, but it makes the ship mine in a way. Maybe Universe will let me further customize the paint job.

**Pilot Control Established

Switching Main Reactor from Standby Mode to Active**

This means that the Matter/Antimatter reactor that I have stored deep inside that rear section, among those large engines, is starting to go into full power generation, giving the energy I'll need to power everything on the ship. My M/AM reactor is a great thing. I got it from a mission that guaranteed it as a drop and nothing else. Deemed to not be worth it by the main factions, I went on it because the mission's primary 'drop' was an ungodly amount of lore about the game's backstory, with the M/AM reactor being available, but not able to be used until you got to top tier. A big investment in the future of my gameplay that paid off massively. Even with all the guns on my ship, I still have energy to spare. About a year ago, when it came out exactly how much energy these M/AM reactors put out, I had a lot of high tier people offering me hundreds of millions of credits for it. Too bad I had already gotten into the position to use the thing...well, too bad for them anyway.

**Main Reactor Registers Full Power Output

Powering Up Engines**

I quickly flip the camera view to look at the back of the ship as the engine pods all kick on, light blue light emanating from the ends of the engines, showing they are online and ready to provide thrust.

**Engines Online

Switching Weapons and Defenses to Active**

A shimmering blue starts mapping the ship's hull as the shields activate. They quickly form into an oval as the shimmering energy field pushes out to its normal position as a large oval surrounding the ship, then vanishes entirely. With that, my ship is fully operational and ready to go.

While the ship does have point defense, the flak and chainguns are only really good for intercepting missiles and fighters. For kinetics and plasma fire, there's the shields. Normal mode is the iconic oval shape, where the shields extend out and around the ship. However, when getting into medium range fights, the shields can be focused to defend a specific direction, increasing the protection at that angle. When in knife fighting range, the shields usually either drop to map the hull. There are some out there who just skip all this shield management and have their shields reinforce their armor. It leads to a kind of Star Wars-y effect, where rounds impact on the hull and detonate, damaging the armor a bit but not as much as it normally would because the armor and shields combine to make the armor more resistant, with a lot more HP, enough to match the effective hit points of shields at full oval. The down side to that is it's not as effective a defense as altering it up over the various distances.

Special Operations ships have a gimmick all their own that adds to this. They have hull alloys that absorb sensor scans, giving them a much smaller scanner resolution. It makes it a harder target to track and hit at longer ranges, mitigating some of the disadvantage the ship class has when engaging carriers or ships of the line at range. This alloy also makes it so when the ship is at minimum power, it cloaks, disappearing from visual scans and absorbing all scan energy. It won't stop someone from, say, running into you or spamming out fire in your direction if they saw you cloak. Add to it the fighter squadrons the ship can put out and it's actually more heavily armed at medium and close range than a ship of the line, with better protection as well. While it doesn't have as many fighters as a carrier, it has enough to be able to give a carrier some pause in a fighter engagement.

I can hear you now: But Alex, this sounds like the worse ship balancing ever! Well, you'd be on to something there if it wasn't for one thing: The Ships of the Line and the Carriers, the two other capital ship lines, have much larger numbers of escorts than SpecOps ships are allowed to have. Anywhere from two to eight escorts of their tier, with four to ten battleships, and dozens of cruisers and other smaller, non-capital level ships. In Eternal Frontiers, the player ships are meant to form the center of task forces, playing into one of the main draws of the game: Massive battles at any tier of gameplay. SpecOps ships on missions behind enemy lines tend to go alone or with their SpecOps Capital escorts. In a straight fight against same-tier opponents, a SpecOps ship is at a disadvantage in raw taskforce firepower. That's where tactics come into play.

Around me, two new ships decloak and take up station around my ship. These ships are my escorts. I focus in on one of them, grinning at the design. A long oval shaped top hull when viewed from above with the same alligator hull to allow for missile launchers, and underneath another long, flat oval when viewed from the bottom. This ship only has five extra-large gun turrets on top and bottom, times two for secondary guns. It's too far away to see the point defense guns, but I know from my time commanding the ship class that it has full coverage. Its flight pods are directly attached to the hull, with no pylons and no openings in the back, only an over and under arrangement to recover fighters.

Viewed from the side, these ships look small for something that is a capital ship. Two oversized engines on top, with a single jump engine on the bottom of the engineering section. I also know that, in the center of that valley between the 'jaws' of the alligator hull, running along the center of the ship and emerging from the front end is a single, Superdreadnaught sized spinal gun. These are Nimrod class Force Recon ships, named after the daring operation in the American Revolution that seized Fort Nimrod without a shot being fired.

Farther along, I see another Neptune Spear decloak and soon after, four other Nimrods. That would be Orion, my best online friend and, in this game, brother by backstory. He had chosen the name because he wanted to put out a 'warrior vibe'. I chose mine because I liked the idea of a bird constellation to go with the last name of Phoenix.

"Orion, you ready to go?" I call out to him.

"Hell yeah." He sends back, and I can see his character's face and upper torso in the top left of my screen as he talks, a grin on his face. He too is a dragon, with red scales. His scales fade towards black in terms of coloration. He gives me a big, fat grin. "It's gonna be good to play with Arya again. She's already sent me a group request." He says.

I nod, seeing a notification pop up on my HUD as well. A group invite from Arya. I join up into the group and grin when I see Arya's video screen pop up. A pink dragoness with blonde hair, her scales fade to the same blonde as her hair. I don't know why the females have hair when the males don't but I'm not going to complain about it either. She gives us all a smile, her blue eyes sparkling. "Glad to have you both on here! I see I'm not too far from you both, I'll be there in a few minutes." She says.

"No problem, we'll wait." Orion says, causing me to grin a bit at this. I take a look at my scanners. We're currently in the Arborea star system, a triple star system that has all the worlds that will, once the patch hits, house all the Horizons players. We had told her before roughly where the star system is at. Turns out it's on the other side of the fringe from the various empires, going towards space that, for some reason, doesn't have any jump links to other star systems. She had made her way here, our group having free passage through the various faction territories thanks to our well-known status as mercenaries.

About three minutes later, her ship drops out of warp right on top of us, care of her being in our group. She is level 62 and is riding around in an Apache class Covert Operations ship. It's at level 60, that leveling up starts to get more difficult. She would have an even harder time of leveling up herself were she not with us. Her ship itself is essentially a cannon. The core of the ship is nothing but armor, two turtleshell style armor zones wrapping around top and bottom with the crew spaces inside, linking to small flight pods that house a much more meager flight wing than what is even in the commando ship of her tier, the Entebbe class. On the outside of the armored shell are her main guns, two on top and two on the bottom. Again, there are double the amount of secondaries and point defenses. Stretching out from the front of the armored shell, an inverted prism of armor, contains a spinal cannon sized for a Juggernaut, just like ours. The tube is covered in shield emitters and secondary batteries. Sticking out from the rear of her armored core are two oversized engines flanked on their sides by two regular FTL engines.

If you hadn't guessed it by now, she is in the Sniper specialization tree, as players have come to call these ships. The definition of a glass cannon, she packs a major punch, but if you get in close to her she'll be in trouble.

"So, what now?" She asks.

"There's plenty of orc spawns around here. Why don't we do a bit of NPC hunting?" Arya says. Few things get my teammates going, especially Arya, like hunting down those bastards. After all, lore of the game says they pillage, rape, and murder their way through society whenever they can. We'd done a few missions in game where you rescue people from orc or goblin camps and got a full read on the backstory there. Goblinslayer on steroids, Orion had called it. The orcs are the brains of the operation and use goblins as cannon fodder. The goblin race itself reproduces by forcing themselves on women from the various races. Whoever they can get their hands on. Orcs breed them like livestock and disperse them out to their people so they can constantly raid.

"So that's what you've been doing these last few weeks." Orion says, sounding a little more serious. "I was wondering why you weren't complaining anymore."

I nod. When she had read that part of the lore she had first gotten completely upset with the devs. When we pointed out that painting them as inherently evil was the point and this did a great job of it, she had shifted her anger to wiping them and the orcs out wherever she found them. I also couldn't fault her, I have the same reaction whenever I play a Fallout game to any Super Mutants I may find, and find myself shooting them all until they're dead and gone.

Grinning, I reach out to the throttle control on my HUD and put some power into the engines, watching as they flare to life once more. The ship doesn't rocket forward so much as begin to accelerate away slowly and majestically. "Let's find us a lair, see who we can rescue, and then blow it the fuck up." I say.

We don't have to look far. Twenty minutes later we stumble across orc signals in the system's oort cloud. Following them to their source is easy for a SpecOps ship. It's one of the mission types, after all. "Looks like an asteroid base. I'm not seeing any coming or going ships." I say to the group.

"Scans show nothing but orcs and goblins." Orion says. "What do you think? Forward operating base?"

Arya is already maneuvering for a clear shot. "In a few minutes, it will be nothing but assorted junk." She says. Indeed, a single shot from her spinal weapon will be enough to shatter the base. With no dragons, wolves, lions, herbs, or elves in there, we can just shatter the whole thing rather than worry about sending landing forces, which for us are underpowered bots with rudimentary AI. They take no casualties in the sense of lives lost but are much less efficient than actual troops.

"Firing." She says. I watch as energy blooms from the front of her ship, a solid penetrator projectile flying downrange towards the asteroid base. The orcs don't even have time to respond. The round hits the structure on the surface of the asteroid and penetrates deep into the hull. It actually overpenetrates, coming out the other side of the structure and detonating against the asteroid itself. The end result is the same though, just instead of the base blowing outwards, the explosion from the penetrating round is focused back by the solid rock the base is built on, shattering the structure and sending its remains out into the asteroid field.

"Good shot." Orion says to his girlfriend. Before I can say anything though, three red icons in the shape of small pluses appear on my HUD. "Enemy reinforcements are here." I call out, activating my main guns and designating the targets for destruction to the group. As my guns orient, I take a moment to evaluate the ships. Three battlecruisers. This will be over quick. While battlecruisers are technically the first capital ship tier, compared to the ships we're in, they may as well be regular cruisers.

Aligned properly, my main dorsal guns fire, plasma bolts racing out towards the orc battlecruiser I am targeting. Orion's ship fires a split second later, his plasma rounds heading for the second ship. Even Arya gets in on the closer range combat, her main guns opening up on the third target. The rounds slam into the battlecruisers, dropping the shields of the two battlecruisers Orion and I are targeting. Follow up shots tear the ships apart as the shields on the third ship drop. Finally, return fire comes our way, splashing harmlessly against Orion's shields, since he was the closest. Before the shield vanishes again, shots from Arya slam into the orc battlecruiser, dropping its shields and tearing into its hull. As my guns finish orienting on the target, a final volley from Arya's Deadeye race out and slam into the ship, ripping it open and spilling its mechanical guts out into the void. As it tumbles through space I look back at Arya's ship. Sure enough, a single missile leaves the tubes on the center of her ship, popping out from inside of her turtle shell and racing to the sticken orc ship. Nothing stops it from hitting the remaining two thirds of the orc ship and shattering it into a million pieces.

"They had to have come from somewhere." I say to my group. "Let's clear the battle zone and then go full stealth. When they show up, we'll launch a strike package to follow them back to base." I say to my group, who both nod.

The next morning, I wake up late. I had stayed up way too late with my friends, blowing up the orc infestation that turned out to be in the Arborea system. There had been a force sent to discover what happened to that forward base and its response force. A battleship and attendant battlecruisers. They weren't able to detect us in full stealth due to our distance from the battlezone. They had scanned around the area for a few minutes, then after a bit had turned tail and headed back to their main base. We followed them there and, after about an hour more, we found all the other bases in the system. Using the fighters aboard our ships, Orion and I prepared a massive single strike against the main station. The fighters disabled the station's defenses, allowing us to sending boarding groups onto the station and seize it. We found a couple hundred women of various races onboard, held as breeding slaves. We pulled them off the station, then our drone forces, and set the core to overload, destroying it. With that done, we systematically eliminated the remaining orc bases in the system. After that, we returned the abducted women to a starbase a few jumps away. Midnight and we were done, with a bounty payout for the women that we rescued in addition to the bounty for the destruction of the orc base and its forward outposts. After that, I logged out.

The memory of the previous night and the fun we had going through my head gets me all the way through a morning shower and dressing. It's a bit hard to do one handed, but I can manage. When I was five, I was involved in a car accident while riding with a friend's family back from getting some fast food. The vehicle got totaled and my hand was completely crushed. Luckily, the company my father worked for, a big-name oil company named Excite Oil, found out about what had happened to the child of one of their workers. They sprang for the hospital bill and a prosthetic for me, even sprang to get new models as I got older. My father is still working for them to this day, giving his full measure and loyalty. He rose into management because of this new commitment. I had long enough to get used to my new reality of being single handed that it barely bothers me anymore. I can use the prosthetic almost as well as a real hand, and given how much of society now runs with augmented reality and virtual reality systems, thanks to full dive tech, it's not a big deal.

I come outside, ready for work and heading for my car. A 2003 model Mustang, refitted with a new engine. As I come to the car, I notice a reflection of green light and look up. The aurora, a feature usually saved for the far north. Now it's all over the globe for some reason. With a satisfied sigh I hop into my vehicle. Large amounts of solar activity is what we were told by the government. There's a million and one conspiracy theories about the actual cause of it all, but for now, it's simply pretty to look at and doesn't impact our day to day really. My focus is more on my car. This is my pride and joy. The smell of the interior, the feel of the seat. The steering wheel. God, I love this car. When I turn the ignition over and the engine roars to life, I can't help but break into a broad smile.

The drive to work is uneventful and, once there, I park my car and head inside the large call center. "Morning everyone." I say to my team as I come to my seat. Mary just stares at me. "Cutting it close, Mr. Smith?" She says. I look at the clock on my workstation and grin at her. "Yeah, I'll be in on time though." I say to her. She nods and watches me as I load up everything. When that's done, with a minute to spare, I get into the Virtual Workspace. A full dive virtual work environment meant to allow us to work through information and help our customers quickly.

Dad may work for an oil company, but I'm just a shmuck working a call center. My job is that of a Special Matter Expert, meaning I have all the responsibilities of helping my team lead with none of the increased pay to go along with it. I should be glad, it's as low on the management table as you can get, but it's still on it. Once in, I start monitoring for assistance in special case calls and to answer questions. I also have to come down on people who are late from their breaks. I hate doing that, it makes me seem like the bad guy, but Mary does it too so it's not like on some other teams, where the team lead lets the SME be the bad guy while the TL themself is loved by the team.

After a minute, Mary pops in next to me. "Alright." She says, looking a lot more relaxed now that we're in the virtual workspace. "Glad you made it in on time, though you did cut it close." She says, giving me a smile, something she would never do outside the workspace. "You have been chosen from our team to take a special role that'll get you out of regular rotation. You're going to be working with special calls from people who are flagged on their accounts." My expression sours and she quickly puts in, "For a good thing, I promise."

Thirty minutes later and I'm in specialty training. Turns out these people are eligible for a special reward, getting to choose between money off their bills going forward or a reward card giveout immediately. So yeah, good calls during the day. A welcome change from the more vitriolic calls people in billing support usually get. Three hours later, I'm at lunch in the real world again. I head into the cafeteria, noting Mary is right behind me, since I was the last to get out of the VW. A step up to the counter to make my order from the gut truck people that got permission to set up in the call center's cafeteria, then blink. Literally, a single blink and everything changes. One second, I was in front of the lady, getting ready to make my order. The next, I'm not there anymore and she's gone, along with the alluring scent of ground beef seasoned for tacos. Wait...Is this my ship?!

I spin around, looking for other people but no one is there. No Mary, no lunch eaters relaxing and complaining about the hell they've gone through on the phones. No laughter due to stories about particularly "excited" callers screaming inventive insults at agents, or comparisons of reasons why their callers had not paid their bills in so long.

"What the hell?" I say out loud, then look around some more. That's when my mind clicks back to all the various animes I watch at home involving the main character ending up in another world. With a sneaking suspicion I decide to test it out, see if this is what's happened. "Valkyrie, status report." I say out loud to confirm that this is indeed my ship.

"Whispering Death is fully functional. Reactor is on standby and the ship is completely cloaked and undetectable." The AI says right back to me.

With a blink I bring up my menu. As easy and instinctive as I would were I in my full dive set. I see my character name at the top, my level, race, specialization...Everything is good though the Guild button is grayed out. I'm not in a guild so that makes sense. The one thing missing is the logout button.

"FUCK YEAH!" I shout out in sheer joy and exhilaration as the realization of what's happened hits me. What? I'm a nerd. Don't think I've read my fair share of stories like this? I dance around a bit, hands up to my chest, head bobbing, hips swaying. A professional-grade Shepard Shuffle, right in the light of an alien sun, over an alien planet.

I can't dance. Shut up.

Still, that doesn't stop me from doing it! I spin around and clap my hands. No more work! I get to spend my time living among the stars! It doesn't matter if I'm simply stuck in a game or if I live in an alternate dimension now. I'm a freakin dragon! With both of my hands! That stops me dead. I poke my left hand with a clawed finger from the right hand and...feel it! Even though I poked hard enough that it hurt a little, a tear springs to my eye. "Holy crap...I have my hand back." I say to myself. Oh, happy day! Words can't express just how much having my hand back means at that moment. Whole. That's a good descriptor. I felt whole again, after so long of not feeling that way that I had gotten used to it and not even felt the lack anymore.

After a few minutes of happily clenching and unclenching my fist just to feel the tendons flex and the feeling of my hands going into a fist then back out to normal, I clear my throat and straighten up. Right...Time to get to it. New hand, new body, new life. A life where I have both hands and don't work a stressful call center position with people only ever expressing anger or cold dismissal towards me. As I leave my quarters, I can't help but smile at this. I walk through the small hallway and to the lift. As I'm about to tap the command for the bridge, a thought occurs to me. What if this is like in the Log Horizon story, where the food tastes bland and flavorless unless you do it yourself? I wince at that. The ship supposedly has food replicators for any crew I may get in the future. I click for the crew deck and the lift goes down, taking me straight on down to the crew deck, located in the bowels of the forward section of the ship. Once there, it's a quick walk over to the cafeteria. It's empty right now, my robotic crew does not need food after all. I grab myself a steak from the replicator. After it finishes forming up, I can certainly smell it! More so than normal in fact, and it makes my mouth water. That's always a good sign.

As I take the steak over to a nearby table to eat, my mind races. It would be a damn shame if this food turned out to be tasteless, given the smell. Even so, it wouldn't be an insurmountable thing. People like having good food and if replicated food tastes horrible, it only means that food that is grown, butchered, and manually prepared tastes good. It would mean that ships would need to take on stores, though I doubt it. There is an entire section of the ship attached to the crew deck devoted to biomass for the replicators. There's a nagging feeling in the back of my head though. I remember all too well that ships with a chef onboard operating the cafeteria will have a morale boost modifier. It makes me think there's something to my fears.

Taking my fork and knife I start to work, cutting a piece free and putting it in my mouth. Relief floods through me as I bite into a tender, juicy bite. It's a steak! It tastes like the real deal! YES! I was not looking forward to it tasting like warmed over cardboard. It still tastes like an unseasoned steak, which makes sense. A replicator will only replicate the thing you tell it to, not season it. It can have it be at a specific temperature, but not tenderness. So the steak is unseasoned and not very tender like a steak that has been cooked by hand, but it still is a steak and not cardboard shaped like a steak! "Alright! Time to dig in!"

As I eat the steak, I remember some of my favorite cuts, then remember my home of El Paso, Texas. I remember times I stood out by the grill, cooking up my own steaks. I can grill up a steak to my exact tastes without burning it, one of the few things I can actually cook well. That, of course, brings to my mind the memories of my father teaching me how to grill, how to get the grill to the proper temperature, how to eyeball the steak to tell how cooked it is. How to season it beforehand. I stop eating then and slowly lower my fork, with its steak, to the plate, and slowly close my mouth. I'll never see mom and dad again. I say to myself in the privacy of my own mind, forgetting I have no crew. I'll never see the city lights from the mountain again...Hell, I'll never see the star on the mountain again. I'll never go to Koze Grill and enjoy the cooking there. The chefs I know there, the owner, all the good friends there...out of my life. I'll never see the Wells Fargo building light up in colors for whatever holiday is close by. I'll never attend another Miner's game...well that's probably for the best. Their football team sucks and Glory Road is about as glorious as their basketball team is gonna get these days... The thought about the team going downhill rapidly was an attempt at cheering myself up. I know the direction my mind is going but even with that attempt, there's no way to stop the train from going down the track.

As the things that I've actually lost come slamming home on me, I can't help but feel a few tears come to my eyes. I had friends there. Actual, true friends I had grown up with. Sure, I had escaped the snide comments, the stressful work environment of the call centers, and my disabling migraines, but was it worth it? Looking back now I realize just how much I got caught up in all the hurtful things in my life and didn't focus on the good things I had going on.

'Bro, you gotta let that stuff go and just relax.' My best friend, Victor Zamarippa, had told me that. I can see him in my mind's eye, the memory as clear as if it had happened yesterday. The two of us, sitting on a scenic stopping point on Transmountain, looking down at the northeast side of the city. My God, what a view that was...It had been a nice spring day, temperature in the 70's and surprisingly no wind but a light breeze. I could see the shadows of clouds as they moved along the ground and visibility was all the way to the horizon. So, we had decided not to waste such a beautiful day and gone out to the outdoor range just down the highway from where we were sitting to do some skeet shooting. He turned to me and smiled, strong white teeth showing, 'Don't worry about it. Leave work at work. Don't worry about things you can't do anything about.' I had just told him about the latest bullshit that had happened at work and how it bothered me that a coworker had been callously racist towards me just for wanting to ask her a question during a call. Some people say you can't be racist to white people. I can tell you, being called a 'cracker' is very hurtful.

Remembering my best friend, a few more tears come to my eyes. Dude was rock solid. Devoted boyfriend to his girl, clean living, solid friend to lean on when you needed help and stand with when you didn't. He'd drink sometimes but not enough to get drunk, except for the first time we drank while we were kids. I'd never heard him cuss, not once. Always supportive of his friends and always ready to jump into a fight to defend them. Speaking of his girl, she had been smart enough to realize she had a keeper back when they first hooked up in high school! They had gotten married last year and his wife, another friend of mine named Jasmine, had been about to give birth. Now I'll never see their kid. I'll never be the godfather to that kid. Hell, I didn't even know if it was a boy or a girl!

Then there's Brad, our hot-headed friend. Always has an opinion on everything, especially about sports. He loves his football and basketball. Had it where it counted though. Jackass with a heart of gold. Always willing to help out, to listen and give an honest opinion and help you to see it through. Never got into drinking much himself though. He had the first time, got puking drunk, and swore off alcohol. Unlike with Victor, Brad never got himself a steady girlfriend. Instead, he got a string of bad girlfriends who invariably dumped him after they finished their rebound or cheated on him.

Memories of watching the game with the two of them, of playing on the Xbox and Playstation late into the night when we should have been sleeping for school the next day. Our first job, where all three of us had gone to work together at a local McDonald's. Bowling, hiking, skeet shooting, go-kart races, our first vehicles. Heartbreaks and cheer up sessions. Victor's wedding and standing as his Best Man, with Brad on my left as we stood beside Victor, watching Jasmine come down the aisle. Flowing white dress, eyes all for Victor, and a teary-eyed mother watching her father give her away. All these memories come flooding into my mind with a deep, shocking feeling of loss.

Fuck.

My mind immediately shifts over to my parents, remembering them in pictures that I took of them, times I spent with them. Sage advice from my father and advice about how to interview and act in the workplace from mom. Times out to eat with them, family trips, Christmases spent together, time spent in the yard next to the pool in the hot El Paso summer, listening to 80's music and swimming, having a good time with those same friends.

I feel on the edge, like the dam is about to break and I won't be able to stop myself. The realization hits me then that I'm all alone. I'm on my ship. It's a Chosen ship, there is no crew, only automated systems. No one to judge. No one to care. 'That's the problem.' Crosses my mind without me even thinking about thinking it.

The plate clatters down to the floor, spilling the remains of the steak out as sobs echo around the room. I had just lost my strength to resist and collapsed down to the table and lost it. Uncontrollable, gut-wrenching sobs rip through me as I wailed out my grief at what I had lost to the universe at large. I lose myself in it, not noticing the passage of time as my grief consumes me. Goodbye mother, father...dear friends who are like family to me. Goodbye to the life I knew. No matter how much I may want it back, it will not come back.

Ping

What the hell was that? I sit up slowly, wiping my eyes, ashamed that I had been reduced to tears. I had been weeping now for about ten minutes. My throat aches a bit from it. Seeing my drink right in front of me, I reach out and take it, then chug a bit.

Ping

I recognize it now! Incoming message! I go over to the communications console at the side of the room and tap on it, seeing who's calling. It's Orion! So he's stuck in here too... I think, a bit sad about it. Hitting accept, a hologram pops up, life sized and looking nice. More than that, I can see he has on the special made SpecOps armor I had given to him after I got done beta testing three days ago. The angle of the camera feed indicates I'm on his wrist-mounted multitool rather than on a ship-to-ship communicator.

In this communications type, I can see more of him. Namely, I can see The Family Resemblance. 'What is that?' you may ask. The feathered wings of course! We had designed our characters to have feathered wings rather than scaled ones, and had chosen the last name of 'Phoenix', for a reason. Our headcanon had our characters descended from a union between dragon and phoenix! "Aquila...Dude! I'm on Solath Space Dock. Arya is here. Can ya come meet up with us? We're kind-of freaking." I draw in a breath. His girlfriend from real life, on here with him. Well, at least he has that! Course she's probably in just as bad of place as I just was. Hell, Orion probably is, too! "I'll be there. Where at on the station?" I ask.

"We'll be in the central market area. I'll save you a seat." He responds back.

"I'll be there, let me get something decent on."

With a nod, Orion gets off the call. Shit, a young couple brought into the game together. They have each other for sure, but their families and friends are all gone. "Alright Bordraab. Time to get strong." I say to myself as I head for my quarters. "Valkyrie, please get a shuttle ready to take me to the dock." I say out loud.

"It will be ready." The ship's AI says, a chipper tone completely at odds with the mood I am feeling right now. Well, I can do something about that! Once in the elevator, I bring up my hud and click on Misc Commands. Underneath it is Calculator, Notepad2, Sim Launcher, there it is! Music Controls. I put on a song that I feel like can cheer me up some then turn to my equipment storage. As I scroll through it, I sing along with the song. As the guitar starts up and "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" starts playing, I find myself singing along, even dancing a little bit. All the way up until I have to try figuring out how to get the armor on. I had always just clicked it on but now, I can actually pick it up and figure out how to put it on. "Ok...ok...how the hell do I do this?" I say to myself, then look at it. I feel my wings twitch a bit on my back as I think about it and, like I've done hundreds of times I the game, I just think 'retract wings'. What I was not prepared for was the feel of it. They itch as they shrink down magically and hide inside my back. Non-chosen dragons can't retract their wings like this, leaving them out and exposed when in armor and in fighting. I huff a bit as I think about that, a little smoke puffing out. Right, dragon. We can breathe fire. Anywho, back to the armor.

Ok, undersuit first. I slip into an undersuit that looks remarkably plain. Padded black, an almost leather substance in feel but soft and supple like fleece. As I get into it, thoughts about the armor and how it would feel without the undersuit on go through my brain and I grin. If anything could make a dragon chafe, that armor without the undersuit probably would do it. At least when it's on.

I pick up the chest piece and look at it. "How the hell..." Remembering that things in Mass Effect like to shrink when in storage and then expand when you grab them, I look it over. Maybe this stuff is the same? Sure enough, the back stuff is folded in on the front plate, with what appear to be straps holding the two together. I pull on the back while holding the front steady and it expands out. Nodding, I pull it up over my draconic head and settle it onto my shoulders. It expands out, just like that, covering my chest and torso. I hit my balled fist against it and, while I feel the impacts, there's no force behind them. That's pretty damn cool! And my hand is still working right!

Grabbing the boots and grinning like a fool, I step into them. The armor expands out from inside the boots, covering my legs up to my knees and leaving an opening. I pull out pieces that look like they'd go over my thighs and push them down, the armor expanding to wrap around my leg and down. Upon contacting my calf pieces, they seal to them and create a knee pad. As that's going on, it expands upwards, contacting and sealing with the torso piece. As it does this, it just feels like I'm wearing a tailored pair of jeans.

The thought of 'how?' briefly flashes through my mind but I shake that aside. How doesn't matter. It'll be some technical mumbo-jumbo anyway, not something I needed to know to survive in this new universe.

"Fucking sweet." I say to myself as I grab the gauntlets and slide them on. As I flex my hand and curl my fingers, the gauntlet extends up to my elbow. I take the shoulder pauldrons and put them on, feeling them seal into place as well, armor sliding down to contact the gauntlets and seal in place, making an elbow pad. The whole thing feels like I'm wearing a tailored suit! Well, it should! The thing essentially is tailored armor. I take a look in the mirror and nod. It looks good, the black armor gleaming slightly. Specialized SpecOps armor. You get your specialized armor once you choose a CapClass, or Capital Ship Class. There are rank lines on each arm, starting at the beginning of the shoulder pauldrons and going down the arm and to the wrist. Mine are three part, crimson on the inside with white on the outside edge. The marks of a squadron leader SpecOps. Normally, they'd only be on when a group is actually formed or you're in a guild with established roles. However, since I am leading Orion and Arya into battle so often, I went ahead and made the marks permanent.

Take notes, kiddos, I'm only going to say this a million times. On males in darconic society, crimson is for SpecOps, dark green is for Ships of the Line, and navy blue is for Carriers. For females, it's pink for SpecOps, teal for Ships of the Line, and aqua for Carriers. It's done this way because females tend to have a lighter coloration than males. For both, if you see white on the outside of the stripes denoting specialization, it's a formation commander, the ones put in charge of a group of other capital ships. If you see gold between the white and the color, it's a flag officer.

Fully dressed, I smile. I then bring up my hand and push a button on my collar. The helmet expands from the collar and wraps around my head. My view briefly blanks out as the helmet covers my face entirely, then the internal displays kick on and it's like I'm not wearing a helmet at all. Another push of the button and the display turns off, and the helmet retracts back into the suit. As I walk for the door, the urge to grab my wallet, phone, and keys hits me. It's enough to make me stop. I don't even have those here, yet the thought is enough to bring memories back to me, crystal clear as if I had made them yesterday.

My car is...was...a 2003 model Ford Mustang. An unusual choice for someone living in the 2050's. For a while there, I drove a...blech...little cube car. The standard, electric powered commuter cars. Cheap to buy, but not much horsepower. My dream car had always been a 2003 Mustang though. The shape, the grill, the tone of the vehicle just got me to like it. On my 30thbirthday, my parents had surprised me with a 2003 Ford Mustang, completely modernized with a fuel-efficient engine, complete with electric backup. More horsepower than an electric vehicle, excellent fuel mileage, and a satisfying rumble when it starts. Some things are just better old school, and it's definitely worth it to pay for the gasoline and the added 'carbon emission tax' per gallon of gas. Ten dollars per gallon, but it could go on a full tank for a month before needing to refuel. It had been the best present I had ever gotten and definitely the most expensive thing I've ever owned. While I have a copy of it here to use planetside, it was the real deal. I sigh, not wanting to start crying again but feeling it. I know I can't though. People are counting on me to keep my shit in order. Steeling myself, I justify it to myself that my parents will have the Mustang to remember me with. Maybe when they think of me, they'll go for a ride in it and remember the good times we had together. I certainly had named for them to get it in my will and, if I outlived them, Victor to get it. "Nope, come on Bordraab...don't think that way." I say to myself, consciously using my in-game name like I always did online. Like it or not, I am no longer Don Davies.

I turn to my arms locker. Boardings don't usually happen on Chosen ships. In addition to the normal difficulty of boarding a hostile ship, a Chosen commander can set the ship to blow and abandon ship, letting it detonate right after their escape pod is clear. No need to evacuate the crew unless they paid a premium to hire on an organic crew.

Still, small arms are carried by Chosen when they go out and about. I grab the pistol and rifle, grinning. Yesterday I was grabbing wallet and keys, today I'm grabbing pistol and rifle. Funny how life can change. I head on out the door and to the lift, keying it to take me to the hangar bay.

I step out of it about five minutes later and walk into the flight pod. Looking to the left, I can see that the air lock shield is in place. I can see out into space, but there's a barely noticeable blue tinge over it all.. Androids are walking along inside the flight pod hangar, moving from place to place like a crew to accomplish their tasks. I could hire actual crew and, when they gain experience, they would be more effective than the bots. However, the problem is that they require a wage for one, and for two, it's better to hire mercenaries on the fringes than to hire crew from a faction's space. Much easier to get loyalty with the crew. A disloyal crew may disobey orders, and a crew with a higher loyalty to a faction than to me may refuse orders to fire upon an enemy from that faction. Supposedly, the ability to make player nations, as opposed to the guilds and collections of guilds known as factions, is supposed to come into the game with the Universe patch but no time for that now. I have friends to meet up with. I head over to the shuttle, a sort of aerodynamic looking thing, a central hull that would match any transport helicopter you'd care to name, with large thrusters on wings sticking out from the top and a single large engine on the rear to power the craft in flight. I get myself in through the cargo ramp that is open on the rear and head over to the pilot's seat.

As soon as I take a seat, my view shifts to an external view provided by the sensors. I can see it as if I were in Ace Combat or something like that. As I've done hundreds of times, I ease it up off the deck and out the ship, heading over towards the station. It's not a long flight, considering my ship is docked inside the shipyard. Just a quick flight to the main starbase module.

"Control, this is WD Actual, requesting landing berth." I radio out.

"WD Actual, this is Solath control. Docking permission granted at bay 4."

I nod and spot the proper bay, moving over that way and lining up, then landing. The landing bay retracts and slides backwards, slotting me into a docking port. Simple and effective way of making sure no one leaves without permission. I get out of the pilot's seat and make my way inside the station, heading to a transportation tube that rockets me through the station at breakneck speed, depositing me in the central hub of the station. Much faster than an elevator, even one as fast as the one on my ship, but only practical on a station as if it were on a ship, losing power would cause whoever was inside to fall to their deaths, while a starbase has so many sensors and layers of defense that it is expected anyone in the tubes will have plenty of time to get out of them if any hostile is detected.

As I walk in, I notice that there are Chosen who are sitting there looking shocked and despondent. Several people are trying to cheer some of them up, wondering just what the hell is going on here. It only confirms to me that this is an isekai event rather than us being sucked into a game. If we were sucked into a game, these would still be programmed characters and wouldn't act outside their programming. I continue walking through the area, looking around, taking in what I'm seeing as dragons try to comfort the draconic Chosen in the area. One guy, grinning like an idiot, is being led away by two dragonesses who have one of his arms each, pulling him towards a more private area to do a very 'thorough' job of cheering him up.

Of course, I also notice there's a lot more people than before. And that there's a large disproportion between females and males. It's just under four to one female to male. That makes sense. If I remember the lore correctly, there are four female dragons to every male one. As a result of that, the government and society are matriarchal even if it's a meritocracy.

A few dragonesses look my way, as well as a few Chosen who recognize my name, but no one moves towards me as I keep walking through the area, heading into the food court area where Orion and Arya are waiting for me. As I come in, it doesn't take long to locate them. They're at a corner table and sitting there with looks of unease on their faces. That there's a red and pink draconic pair sitting together doesn't cause them to stand out. Red is a common male color and pink is a common female color, the equivalent of each other. What causes them to stand out is that, like me, they are wearing black SpecOps armor. Not too many Chosen choose to go into SpecOps. SpecOps requires a lot of thought to go into playing them. It's not among the standard RPG classes of tank, damage dealer, and healer.

It's widely known that Ships of the Line are better at straight up fights and Carriers are better at support and have larger fighter swarms. They are the tank and healer, respectively, while both being able to damage deal roughly equal to each other. The SpecOps seems like it would be a damage dealer, but when you factor formations into the equation, it's really not. Very few people actually figured out what the SpecOps class is all about, and my little group is among the few who did.

"Dude!" Orion almost shouts, grinning as he springs up upon seeing me near the table. "I'm so glad to see you!" He stands up and wraps me a bear hug. He's a big guy! I smile and hug him back. I feel another arm around me as Arya steps into the hug, both me and Orion pulling an arm away to hug her too, making a spectacle of ourselves.

Not that we care. For once, SpecOps being the 'weird class' can play to our advantage.

Arya wipes a tear away from her eye and smiles. "Of course you'd get dragged in here too, Aquila." She says, smiling a sad smile to me. "I would have been happier if you weren't stuck here with us, but since you are, we can rely on each other to get through things."

"Yeah, no way would I stay on Earth anyway when I knew that I could be here." I say to them, putting on a grin. The show appears to work because Orion grins right back, but Arya just looks at me like I'm not fooling her. Still she moves on from it. Good, I don't want her to worry about me, she needs to worry about Orion!

"Do you have any idea what's going on?" She asks me. I go to answer then double take. She looks timid and uncertain. It's the first time I've ever seen her look like that! It causes me to actually pause for a second before speaking.

"I don't know for sure, but I'm relatively certain that this is an isekai thing." I say to them both, taking a seat at their table. "And I see it hasn't dulled your appetite." I say to Orion, pointing to the empty plate that has several spots of grease on it from a slab of meat he has apparently eaten.

Orion grins at me. "When I get upset, I want to eat. After I eat, I feel like working it out. When I get done working it out, I'm not upset anymore." He says. Ah yes, the Orion triangle of 'getting over it.'

"What kind of 'work out' are you going to do once we're done here?" I ask him. Orion grins and says, "Weight lifting. I've got a set on my private workout room on my ship."

I look over at Arya who is staring at me intently.

"What?" I ask, and she just averts her gaze.

"Nothing." She says, shaking her head and crossing her arms. "Stuck in a game though? Are you serious?"

"Yeah, what kind of crap is that?" Orion says, a little bit of anger in his voice. "What brought us here?"

"I don't know, but I do know we're not stuck in a game. We're in a universe either modelled on the game, or that the game was based upon." I say, looking at them. "Look at the NPC's. They don't act like they are programmed, they act like real people."

The pair of them look back out at the room. After a few minutes, though, Orion gets up. "I'm gonna get us some food. You two plan it out like ya always do, I'll follow your lead." He says, walking back towards a counter that I see has a rather cute looking white dragoness behind it in what is obviously a work uniform.

I lean back in my chair at that point and think about it, crossing my legs at the knee. Arya is leaning in her chair, head down, eyes closed, a posture I have come to know as her being deep in thought and shutting out anything else.

Ping

As I sit there thinking about what to do next, I hear the ping of an incoming voice chat from my left arm. I blink and bring it up, seeing a blinking dot on my wrist. Responding to the move, the multitool on my arm opens a bit, displaying a notification to me as Arya opens one eye and looks at me, then closes it again, back into thought.

**Incoming chat request from Elsa Bright.

Accept? Yes|No**

Hitting yes, I look down at the video image as it pops up, showing the glacial dragoness's face and neck. "Bordraab! Thank God, someone I know! You got to help me." She says, and from how she's breathing I can tell she's moving fast.

"What's up?" I ask her, looking a little concerned.

"I'm on T'Raven. I have my own property here but when I suddenly ended up here, I went to a house I'm in tight with to see about getting somewhere to stay while I sort myself out after this...this...whatever this is. They let me in but then the dragoness I usually talk to said that I should join her pride and be one of her husband's mates. What the fuck is going on?!"

I am surprised about this. From beside me, Arya stares at me. "What did she say?"

"Who's with you?" Elsa asks sharply.

Motioning to Arya to come over, I say, "Arya, Orion's girlfriend." I extend my arm some so the view picks her up. She waves, and then I bring it back to me. "Are you still at that house?" I ask.

"No. I got the hell out of there! The guy said that if I didn't, he'd capture me and take me as a slave! What the hell is wrong with these people? I tried to log out but there's no log out button! I'm heading to my own estate and hoping that my security is enough to hold them off, but I really need to get out of here! Please, can you help me?"

I think about that one. All player controlled houses have personal security there to fight any Chosen who want to try to destroy the place or seize it for their own. Houses in the Dragon Kingdom are like fiefdoms, each has their own military that follows the commands of the overall King, but is loyal to the House they belong to. Own enough property in the Kingdom, you get your own retainers and guards. It's just the way it is.

"Can you reach the transport gate?" I ask.

"I already tried and no! His guards are watching the gate and as I approached it, they yelled at me to halt. I ran away and called you up. You're the only one I know who has a space ship and can get me out of here!"

I look over at Arya, who looks at me with a stone-cold serious expression on her face. I know she's thinking what I'm thinking, that this needs to have an end put to it. I look back down at the video screen and see it jostling a bit as Elsa starts moving across some steps. She's going up some steps, I can see the view behind her changing a bit as she goes. I check the travel time. The system is two jumps away from here, but the moon T'Raven registers as property of the Drakkenhold clan. While they aren't a major house in the Kingdom, they're not exactly minor either.

"Bunker down, we'll be on our way soon, but you need to be ready to get the hell out of there when we get there. Do you have a shuttle?" I ask. Seeing her nod, I nod. "Good, be ready by it. If they start to assault your home before I'm there, you can always lift off in it and lead them on a chase. They won't shoot you down, not when their Lord wants you."

"Oh thank you. You have no idea what this means to me." She says, that relief I saw in her expression plain in her tone.

"No problem. It may be a fight to get you out of there, but afterwards I can drop you off wherever you want to go."

She gives me a dazzling smile. "I'm going to broadcast this, so all the Chosen know what's going on." She says, "And if you manage to pull me out of this, who says I'm going to want to go anywhere? I liked hanging out with you during the Beta, after all...and you're the only Frontiers friend I have."

I nod to her. "We'll be underway soon."

She nods and closes the message. I push a button on the multitool and close the window, then look at Arya...and Orion, as they sit there staring at me. Orion slides a plate of sausage, eggs, and a truly impressive amount of bacon over to me, along with a Pepsi.

"What was that all about?" Orion asks, eyebrow up. "And wait until you taste this food. The bacon somehow tastes more awesome than it used to taste!"

"A girl I met while I was doing the beta testing for Universe. She was a streamer, I think?" I say, a questioning tone as I don't feel sure that I'm accurate in that. Well, can always ask when she gets here. "Anyway, she was at a mansion and the dragoness in charge of it, the one who she knew as a socialite in Horizons, wanted her to marry her husband and join her pride. She refused and now the guy and gal are threatening to enslave her for her refusal."

"The fuck's a pride?" Arya asks, already seeming to not like the direction the conversation is going.

"According to the lore of the game, dragons are born with four dragonesses for every dragon. So, they form prides, like..." I drop my voice for this, "...like lions..." And then go back to normal, "...so that their numbers don't drop. If they went monogamous, numbers would drop to the point the race stopped."

"That would explain the women in the line. They were complimenting my armor, telling me I looked strong and fit. I swear one even tried to smack my butt, man." He says, stuffing some bacon in his mouth. Course this gets Arya glaring pure, venom coated daggers over at that line.

The dragonesses in line don't even bat an eye at it. They smile and waves over at us, and a few even blow kisses our way and take appealing poses as they do, one of them even showing off her cleavage as she blows a kiss right at me. Other dragonesses are quite obviously strutting to show their curves off. And there are more than a few dragons around with a dragoness on both arms, or with one or two at his table just enjoying a conversation as if it were nothing.

This is...odd. Culture shock doesn't even begin to describe moving from a monogamous species in general to a species that requires polygamy in order to keep its numbers healthy. Yet, I don't feel the same instinctive revulsion to it. I had never had women strut around me, or try to show themselves off for my benefit. I was always that guy that they ignored or made dares to each other to go and do something to. My only kisses in high school were from dares, and my girlfriends? My initial instinct was to call them all bad. Hell, the first girl that I fucked only fucked me because 'have sex with a virgin' was on her bucket list. A lot of people can't look past a physical disability. They think about the work they'll have to do and not the reward of being with the person.

Now though, things look like they could change. Suddenly, instead of being that nerd in the corner who you could ignore, or worse pity, I could make something of myself. I have a fit body here, no missing hand, and while I'm a nerd at heart, most people here are nerds at heart. That realization brings a smile to my face. It fades though as I think about Elsa and the situation she's in. I start getting up.

Arya has an entirely different reaction to the dragoness' antics. "Those bitches better keep their hands off my man or I'm going to beat them down." She says as she stands up too. "I may even give this pistol a workout." Snarling, she grabs Orion's arm, and pulls it to her as the two of us start walking out, showing all these others that Orion is HER man, HER territory. This only causes a few dragonesses to laugh a bit as they see this.

"What's going on? My food!" Orion protests as he is dragged along.

"No time for that." Both Arya and I say at the same time. "Mission time." I finish as Arya just focuses on pulling him along.

"Oh? What kind of mission? I didn't see a quest pop up for our group." Orion says, looking a bit confused. I shake my head.

"We're going to go and pull that streamer out of the situation she's in." I say. "Name's Elsa Bright. She'll be in one of two places, either holed up in her property on the moon, or she'll be in her shuttle trying not to be forced down by House...uhhhhhhh..." I check my multitool for information about who owns T'Raven. "Drakkenhold. House Drakkenhold." I nod as I close my multitool.

Orion nods and grins. "You mean the one that was hanging all over you."

This gets Arya to raise an eyebrow and look at me. I simply shrug. I may even be blushing a bit, I certainly feel my cheeks heat a bit, as I hadn't noticed that she was always around when I logged in, always wanted to do stuff with me and Orion, even if it was just flying around and chatting.

"Sweet! Let's bust some heads." Orion says, no longer being pulled along. He is instead walking along normally, with Arya holding his arm and keeping herself close to him, occasionally giving the stink eye to girls nearby them. It doesn't take us long to get to the hangar bay and onto our individual shuttles.

Docking with my ship felt like returning home. Things are a lot easier, both to do and deal with, when I'm flying around and in familiar settings. I know that I need to get to the bridge and into my pod, but before I head that way, I stop by my cafeteria and grab a quick bite. Not a full meal, but a nutrition bar. Terrible in taste, but full of everything I'll need to keep going. Yeah, this is one of those things that really makes you realize this is not a game, it's real life. Games have a grind and that sucks. Life has things that genuinely suck that you have to just get on with.

I get to the bridge and run over to my pod, knowing that I'm already running a bit behind thanks to my little stop at the cafeteria. Thankfully I don't need to worry about stripping out of my armor. I get into the pod and push the helmet button on my suit. The helmet closes around me and integrates with the pod, which closes. I then feel it as it moves down into the floor, like an elevator going down. That's new.

Text starts scrolling down in front of my eyes. The familiar ship boot-up sequence when you undock from a shipyard or station.

Capsule sealed. Filling with containment fluid

I can feel it then, the slight pressure against me as the pod fills up entirely with the gel-like fluid. Soon enough I'm floating in the middle of it. The absolute darkness in the pod is something I don't really mind right now, my mind going over the route that we need to take to get to T'Raven and pull Elsa out of her situation. When we get done with it, at best, we'll have a minor standing decrease with House Drakkenhold. At worse, we'll have a bounty on our head from the house and a major standing loss. Still, if they are going to enslave people for saying they didn't want to join their pride, maybe that's a good thing.

**Containment fluid at 100%

Establishing Pilot Link with Ship Central Core

Link Established

Routing Sensor Feed and Establishing Pilot Control**

In a flash, the gel energizes and becomes a true fluid, then fades away to a view from the outside. My ship, seen exactly like I'm used to from the game. However, I can still feel my body. For a moment I wonder how to change my view. I look up and all that changes is that the view moves from a static point to look in the direction I'm looking, in this case, to the top of the shipyard's insides. I look back down and my ship comes back into view. I think about this as my ship continues its startup, wondering how to pan the camera around. In the old game, there were controls in the HUD, but those aren't here now.

**Pilot Control Established

Powering Up Main Reactor**

As I watch, lights across the hull of the ship start kicking on. The shipyard powers life support and gravity, nothing else. This fluid though, it's amazing! Yes, I have a problem with my mind wandering off, but it feels like I'm underwater in a pool! Memories of swimming in a pool surface in my mind, as well as dares to spin underwater over and over again until your dizzy then find your way to the surface. Yeah, those dares were a bit dangerous, but we always had someone...wait. I shift my balance and flick my arms, as if underwater and wanting to roll. Sure enough, as I roll, my camera rotates around the ship, moving down along it to view the ship from underneath as I roll onto my back. SCORE!

**Main Reactor online

Powering Up Engines**

I quickly flip the camera view to look at the back of the ship as the engine pods all kick on, flames kicking out from the nozzles for a brief moment before the engines go into idle, the flames dying back down. I had overshot a little bit, but I feel confident that I'll be controlling the camera like a pro in no time. I actually like this system more, it lets me use my body in controlling my ship more than I had thought possible! Continuing my tests of the camera controls then, I spin myself in place. Sure enough, the camera yaws the direction I spin in my tank. Sweet, full camera control. I call out to my team over our comm channel. "Hey, spinning or rolling your body is how you pivot your camera around."

"Thanks, I was worried I'd only be looking at my engines the entire time." Arya says back. No response from Orion, but I can see his ship is already leaving dock.

**Engines online

Switching weapons and defenses to standby mode

Detaching shipyard umbilical**

A few lines that stretched out to the ship's engine section pop free and slide back into the docks. I switch my view around my ship to see them retracting away, a few draconic shipyard crews, two for each line, coming out and taking hold of the lines, pulling them in and securing them to the shipyard. When they are secure, one of each pair waves to the ship, then heads back inside. That's a little detail that was not in the game. In the game, the lines just pulled back on their own.

Clear to leave dock

The thing that had surprised me about all of this was the noises. I could hear the noises you'd expect from all of these actions. No time to think about that now though, time to go and get this thing done. I think to myself as I apply throttle, my ship moving slowly out of dock as it starts to accelerate. I see that I'm the last one out but that's not a big surprise. "Alright, let's get clear of the docks and set course for the Svetland jump point." I say to my friends.

"Gotchya." Says Arya.

"Roger." Says Orion.

After a few minutes, we're up to speed and pulled away from the docks. With that, we align with the proper location and I get the group jump command. Reaching out and pushing it, there's a brief power up noise. On my left, there's a noise kind of like a boom. Before I can look, I see Arya's ship leap forward and stretch out as it goes to FTL speeds, another boom sounding out as I go_. Odd, I shouldn't hear that. No sound in space and all that._

As I think this, my AI says, "Activating warp drive." My ship jumps into warp. Again, sound! In this case, it's a dull boom as I enter FTL and the sound of engines with the sound of passing air, as if I were driving my Mustang with the windows down. With my ship in FTL, I have the time to ask about that.

"Valkyrie, why do I hear sounds?" I ask my ship's AI.

"Part of your command program. The system that allows you to command your ship was designed around your senses of sight, touch, hearing, and is controlled by body movements. You will hear various things that you would expect to hear from various events you have happening around you. In this way, you will notice when, for example, a ship drops from FTL behind your vision point and starts firing upon you. There will be visual cues in addition to you being able to hear what's going on. Studies done during initial developments of ship control systems also indicated that a control system with expected sounds reduced pilot mental instabilities."

Well, that's a thing. Lore behind why the system operates the way it does.

I look at the distance to my destination and see that I'm rapidly closing in on it. I settle back and wait for the ship to drop from FTL. As it does, I drop out right in formation with my team mates, and ahead of us is the jump point. Not so much a spatial thing, more a beacon. I double tap the beacon and it sends coordinates for the ISJ, or Interstellar Jump, to my nav system. "Ready to jump." I say to my team.

When they confirm they are ready, I count down from five. When I say 'Jump' at the end of it, we jump. I can see the stars moving a bit as we jump through the empty void towards the star system that is our destination. Something new is going on.

"Why aren't we there yet?" Orion says over our comms.

"I dunno." I say, looking around. I then notice on the top right of my field of view a timer. Twenty minutes and counting down. Next to it says 'ETA'. "Seems there's a bit of an ETA now on our ISJ's." I say to the group. "Good, I'm going to go get some food in me. Set your autopilots for T'Ber." I say, doing so, following the same HUD commands as I did when I was in the game. With the autopilot set, I toggle the command to leave the pod.

Shutting down pod. Set arrival notification? Yes|No

Another new thing! I push yes.

You will be notified when the ship is ten minutes from destination.

With that, the view fades to darkness and I can feel the gel starting to get more gel and less watery around me. Then the gel level starts to fall and my butt is soon touching the floor. I had been rotated to look upwards, so that makes sense. When the gel is completely drained, a good half a minute after I got onto the floor, there's a bit of light behind me, growing out from a line. I turn and see the pod is open and the bridge is waiting. I step out of the pod and head for the back of the bridge and the elevator. A few minutes later and I'm in the cafeteria, helmet off, and scarfing down some actual food.

It's a new universe we're in. As I race towards another freakin' star system, I know that I'm going to be a busy dragon. Best to get in some food while I can.

A/N Start to a brand new series! This one has been in the works for a while now, and as usual, comments and constructive criticism are welcome. Depending on how well received this story is, another story may be put out and a patreon opened so I can devote more time to writing. This story is a labor of love, wanting to get the story out there.

The ship classes in this story are mostly named after World War 2 ship classes, with the exception of the specops ships and the later carriers. This is because it seems that as we transition to a space navy, tactics and warfare in space will more resemble WW2 style naval engagements as opposed to modern ones. You'll see why as the story progresses.

Edits: Grammar changes