A signal flashed for just a moment, picked up by his instruments. He had been sitting in his cockpit for a good forty-five minutes. He had logged in ten minutes early, not wanting to be late, but then time dilation kicked in. Ten minutes early in the real world was thirty here, and the time Will had given was just the time to log in, not necessarily when the signal would be sent. Cam had shunted the minimum power to his sensors to be ready for the signal.

Even while logged off, his ship kept its momentum. It had been flying at over a thousand meters per second for the last twelve hours in a random direction away from the planet. The speed was plenty enough to escape the planet’s gravity, as they had been so far from the surface during the battle. Still, he had only traveled a fraction of a light-second away from the station. Conventional sensors could pick up weak radio signals at that distance, if one knew what frequency and direction to look, but it was a risk they needed to take. A signal had to be sent in game in order for the NPCs to get the message.

Someone would have to be looking almost directly at Will’s ship when he sent the signal to detect it. He had given his trajectory to the players out of game and his estimated location when the signal would be sent out. The NPCs had been told to log that information themselves when Will cut his reactor so they also knew where to look. The only way Aluvius could locate the signal would be if there was a spy in the group--but if that was the case, the mission was doomed anyways. And these were Will’s hand picked pilots. Cam doubted there was a spy here.

Still, spies are made, not born, as they say. All it takes is a loyal person’s discontent for them to think that feeding the enemy information is actually better than what their guild has turned into. Take Steve’s actions earlier. Cam hoped the man’s loyalty to Will and Caelestis was stronger than being upset because Cam joined the wing over one of his friends and losing time with his girlfriend. It was just a game after all, but people played games to enjoy time with friends. Cam wasn’t worried about it, though. He didn’t know the man well enough, and basically all the pilots in the wing saw the man’s tantrum about Cam. If someone thought it would be an issue they’d tell Will.

He hoped at least. Maybe he should tell Will himself, just to be sure.

Cam had kept himself busy while he waited for the signal. He had looked through his combat log and character stats. He only got about fifteen kills in the last battle, and of course, none of them solo. Some were from his drones tagging fighters other groups were killing and some were from the dog fights with him, Tophet, and Effifteen. Since the kills were all fighter-sized, he didn’t gain much experience. In the end, he gained ten levels. Not bad for a short battle, but nothing great compared to earlier.

He had debated tagging the station itself, but according to Will stationary, lightly-armed targets did not give much experience. Most stations that size had their defense in orbiting gun platforms and the ships docked there. The station’s own defenses were light in comparison. Tagging those defense platforms would have been a good idea, but they--and the station itself--were all well out of his drone control range during the entire fight. It would have been suicide to try to get close enough.

As much as he would have loved those levels, no use crying over spilt xp. A hundred levels wasn’t worth not being out here.

He did get a skill from the battle, but it was only Drone Command II, which reduced the amount of psi power needed for drones by one percent more. Nothing to write home about, but it was something.

Cam was still significantly under leveled for what he was doing out here. No use crying over spilt xp, yes, but he still needed to find a way to catch up just a bit more to his wing. From now on there wasn’t the Engra to fall back to for safety, or reinforcements to jump in and help them out. The wing was on their own.

Fighting was risky at the moment, since a death would still send him packing back to a far away base. PvE fighting would be less risky, but still had its challenges. Their small ships would limit what kinds of neutral NPCs they could take on, and if they lost a ship they could not replace it. Will had mentioned he had done some PvE farming from time to time, so he might have ideas, but time was also limited. They had Will’s mission to accomplish, after all, and Cam was sure there was a deadline for it. What other sources of experience were out there? Cam needed to find one he was capable of doing to keep growing his abilities.

The signal flashed through while he was still trying to think through ideas. The signal gave a notice for most fighters to wait. Only two pilots received the signal to go. Those two, Efffour, an NPC, and a player named Mohler, started the long, slow process of powering up their reactor. It took two full minutes. Once it was done, both ships went dark again.

Mohler was the wing’s lead scout and Efffour was his assistant. Their ships were designed to avoid detection. They were still vulnerable during power up and their stealth capabilities were limited. They could cloak completely for about a half hour. Their ships were tougher to detect even when uncloaked, but they were still detectable. The cloak took almost as much time to recharge as it lasted. The cloak also couldn’t be activated if they were already close to anything and they couldn’t use weapons or active modules while cloaked.

Cam waited while Mohler and Effour warped around the system, looking for threats or high energy sensors that could detect an uncloaked small fighter in the depths of space. If all went right, the system should be all but abandoned--but they were not taking any unnecessary chances.

A Caelestis attack had been organized a few systems over, just close enough to warrant mustering any ships that had been left here in the destruction of the station. The attack was made to look like it was meant to take advantage of the destruction of the station here, and in many ways it was. It just also happened to be a good smokescreen for the wing.

After what felt like an eternity, the next message came. Staggered power up. Passive sensors only. Meet at given coordinates.

Aluvius ships were still in the system, but they were mostly salvagers. Their sensors could pick up active pingings from a ship, but would most likely not register a powered up fighter as long as the ship didn’t use active sensors and was far enough away. The wing staggered their power up sequence just to be sure: two ships powering up, warping away, another two ships following suit. They would warp off in random directions to the edges of the system, and bounce around a couple times before going to the given location.

Eventually Cam’s turn came. He hit the control to start powering up the reactor. The two minutes it took felt like an hour. He was far enough away from the ruins of the base that the salvagers there should only be able to detect him if they were looking right at him. Once there was enough power in his reactor, he started his engines. Sublight and warp engines were tied together, so both came online at the same time. He activated I-flight and took his time forming the warp bubble, grudging every moment spent waiting. Using only passive sensors might help hide him, but it made him feel blind.

His warp engaged and his ship bypassed lightspeed, moving undetectably across space. His warp bubble--the entry point into warp--would still be detectable for a few more moments, but the slow enter into warp would help hide it and cause it to dissipate quicker. Someone watching might get a ping, but he was already gone and the bubble would collapse before anyone could arrive and figure out where it headed. A single ping might be written off, but multiple in just a few minutes would be a warning sign to Aluvius that something was amiss behind their front lines. They just had to hope none of the salvagers was looking too closely in their direction.

The warp took just a few moments. He traveled through hyperspace, invisible to the rest of the system. His warp tunnel hid the system from him as well. He popped out just on the far side of a planet. Too far from the planet and the exit signature would be detectable, too close and some other passerby might notice him, but that wasn’t a huge concern. The only known inhabited location had been the station itself. Mohler and Effour had reported no other inhabited places during their reconnaissance either. The system was strategic for its location, not its resources.Still, every movement contained some risk right now. They were behind enemy lines after all.

He warped to two other planets, near their moons, both on the far side of the system from the station’s wreck. Then he waited, making a slow burn to the moon to look like it was his destination. If anyone had picked up on his trail he was a liability. Five minutes later when no one showed up, he reoriented himself and warped to the final location. This was at a planetoid, orbiting well outside the main system, just large enough to cover warp signatures from small craft, if you could arrive close enough.

Cam did. In fact he almost arrived too close. Exiting warp he had forgotten to take into account the planetoid’s orbit speed. Even in a slow orbit this far away from the star, the planetoid was moving at three kilometers a second. In the game, the reference for “rest” in the physics sense was delegated by the speed of the closest celestial body if you were within its gravitational reach. Cam had landed at rest compared to the local star, not the planetoid.

He felt a lurch as his old reference frame suddenly was replaced by this new one. He was about forty kilometers away from the planetoid and his ship went from reading it was at rest to that it was traveling three thousand meters per second towards the planetoid.

It was the problem with maximum speed implemented in a game. Maximum relative to what? Planets and moons moved much faster relative to the star than even a fighter’s maximum speed so it had to change depending on what the ship was around.

He engaged his engines and burned away from the planet. His speed wasn’t slowing down fast enough and he engaged his afterburner. If anyone was nearby he had just given away his and the squad’s position, but they were so far away from the star that the odds of that were almost nothing. His speed dropped to his maximum and then dipped even lower. He was just three kilometers away from the planetoid when he came to a full stop. One second later of a reaction by him and he would be dusting its surface.

He sheepishly burned to the orbit the other ships were in, about twenty kilometers away from the planetoid. He figured he hadn’t experienced the reference adjustment in his other warps probably because he had landed much farther away from the planets and moons. He would have to keep an eye out for that in his other jumps. It seemed easy to fix--the exit speed of a warp was adjustable.

There were still half a dozen ships to arrive after Cam. No one spoke while they waited. He was sure if radio silence hadn’t been in effect he would have heard an ear full of laughter at his landing. Lant would have loved the chance to crack a joke.

Once everyone was there, a signal came from Will’s ship. Twenty-four ships had survived. They had lost seven in the fight. Three podies and four NPCs. They were all sitting close enough to each other that the weak signal would get through, but would dissipate to undetectable levels before it got close to anyone who might notice it.

“I hope you all enjoyed the light show from the station because now is the time we get to work,” Will said over the comms. “Our first goal is to get to a safe place. Caelestis has a few operatives in this part of space that can help us. We’re not going to burn any that are directly involved with Aluvius but we have many on the fringes that would rather see us win than them. Once we get there I’ll brief us all on more details. We’re going to have to set up shop and build some toys. We have another target to hit, and not long to do it. A month at most or else this won’t end up being worth it anymore.

“Mohler will lead, scout out each system and then we’ll move in. Keep your profiles low and no active sensors unless instructed. We’re hopefully going to pass through some quiet space and get to our destination without incident, but we might need to power down again if we get stuck. I’ll hate that just as much as you guys, so keep your eyes peeled. Any questions?”

A click sounded over the comms.

“Yeah, what’s for lunch?” Lant asked. Cam shook his head. Of course Lant would make a joke at a time like this. Well, why not? Cam supposed. They were in a high risk situation, but again, this was just a game. Might as well enjoy it.

“Not sure, but now you’re cooking it,” Will said.

“Oh please don’t punish the wing for his joke,” someone else chimed in. It was another voice Cam didn’t recognize. There were still almost a dozen pilots he had not caught their names or talked to.

A few chuckles went over the comms before Will brought everyone back in.

“Focus people. Let’s take our time and do this right. If we get caught we won’t get a second chance.”

With a round of affirmations they started on their way.

The procession started slowly. Mohler and Effour warped in stealth to the stargate they hoped to use and jumped through to scout the other side.

Stargates connected systems as a way to bypass the need for jump drives as not every ship had one. A player could get from one end of the Void to the other through stargates. Even ships with jump drives could use them, and overall the stargates were faster than jump drives most of the time. Jump drives added convenience, not speed, and allowed for more security and surprise. Not only could you jump from anywhere in a system, if you knew the coordinates, you could jump to anywhere in any system within range. It helped with many surprise attacks as well as avoiding squads of enemies camping at a gate for juicy targets to fight.

Stargates could be built by players as well, but they were expensive and there were plenty of stargates pre-seeded into the world. However, Cam knew game economies always had inflation, especially as more people joined and played. Maybe one day building stargates would be trivial. Cam remembered some of the largest motherships in New Space were originally thought to be unbuildable due to their huge material cost, but eventually were common enough that even small guilds had at least one, and the largest guilds had a small fleet of them. It took years for that to happen, but it did. Cam could imagine a lot of strategies he could do with building stargates. Still, most his ideas were defensive ones, since even if they became easy to build they would still take some time to complete and they had a maximum range. Tough to go offensive like that, but a few strategically build ones could help solidify the defense of an area.

“How’s the damage on your ship?” Tophet’s voice came over the comms, shaking him from his thoughts. Her voice sounded slightly off, distorted and scratchy, but definitely hers. The squad had a few minutes to chat while they waited, but were using as weak a signal as possible, even in this small space.

“Not too bad,” he said. “The armor is almost blasted off, but very little hull damage. A small hit to my targeting systems and shield power, but hopefully we’ll dock before we fight again.”

“Don’t forget you can repair it with some nanites.”

He had totally forgotten about that. Will had given him some nanites to use in battle, but he had forgotten in the heat of it and still hadn’t remembered about it even after logging in.

“Not a bad idea,” he said, activating them. The nanites came alive and moved into his hull, searching for damage to repair.

“They can’t fix armor, though,” Tophet said. “But you never want to fly with damaged systems if you can help it.”

“How was the rest of the battle? I watched what I could, but there was so much going on.”

“Not too bad. I finally hit another level, so that’s exciting. I love small craft fighting, but unless we’re hitting above our weight the experience is slow now. The station’s explosion was exciting. The Engra’s too, but it was sad to see it go.”

Cam grunted in affermation. He had thought the same thing. Apparently everyone loved large explosions.

The nanites had found some of the damaged systems by now. He felt an odd itching sensation and then relief as they fixed the damage. I-flight was still an odd sensation with how the ship felt to him. The nanites used themselves as material as they fixed the broken pieces, so they were limited in how much they could repair. Still, he had a lot, and any unused nanites would be ready for next time.

“What level are you?” Cam asked.

“Oh, getting personal now are you?” Tophet teased. She sounded a bit more relaxed than he was used to hearing from her. He wondered if it was the real world time she spent, or the fact that they had made it behind enemy lines.

“I hope that’s not nearly as bad as asking for your age or irl location or anything.”

“Naw, I’m joking,” she said. “I hit eleven hundred and eighteen.”

“Nice. I am just under a thousand levels below you,” he said. “I guess I still have a bit to go.”

“Still not bad for only being in two fights. You’ll make it. I’m glad I didn’t bet against Quint that you’ll make elite status in two months. You’re on track for that so far.”

“I’m trying. I would love to be just a little higher level with a few more good skills.’

“Don’t we all,” she said, laughing. A moment later he could almost hear herself go into battle mode. “Head’s up. We’re on.”

Mohler and Effour had returned to give their scouting report. The first two systems they checked out had enemy players sitting in ships near the stargates. The battle Caelestis staged apparently was only partially doing its job. And the twelve hour wait as well--the idea being that after twelve hours, any scouts would have grown bored, and any cloaked ships would have to have recloaked several times, so they might have decided watching wasn’t worth it. Will had hoped it wouldn’t be worth the time for what hopefully Aluvius thought was just a few stragglers, but there were a few still willing to sit and watch, doing nothing in the game for hours.

The wing ended up having to take a route that was the long way around. Mohler found a stargate with no one on the other side, but it headed in the wrong direction. It would take several extra gate jumps to bypass the systems where enemies currently were.

Everyone warped to the stargate in question. No enemies were there, just as Mohler had scouted it out. Effour jumped through first, and when he didn’t report back immediately they began the process of jumping through. Mohler’s ship had a hacking module on it. It took a good thirty seconds of him sitting there--not something feasible mid-combat--but once he hacked the stargate it wouldn’t record the jumps for the next two minutes or so. They filed through the gate quickly. Activating the gate opened a path between it and its partner in the other system.

When Cam’s turn came, his autopilot took over and began a warp down the path. Space itself seemed to compress between the stargates to allow the warp to pass light years in a few moments. As amazing as the light show of the experience was, its effects on Cam felt very lackluster. It felt just like any other warp--which was to say, not that different at all.

After landing in the other system, Cam followed the wing to a far off planetoid while waiting for the all clear in the next system.

That process continued over and over again. Mohler and Effour worked in tandem, allowing the scouting to go faster than just one alone. Any anomalies reported by Effour were looked at by Mohler just to be sure.

They made their way through about a dozen systems without incident, slowly making their way around and in the direction they originally wanted to go. They had passed deeper into Aluvius territory by then, and had encountered very little so far. The most common were player and NPC miners and their respective mining colonies. But those were fairly easily evaded.

Then Mohler came back with some more bad news.

“There’s a corvette just sitting at the other side of the gate,” he told the gathered wing as they waited in a starsystem. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s not moving and it doesn’t look like he’s about to anytime soon.”

“This deep in their territory?” Will mused. “I wonder what he’s looking for.”

“Well, here’s the thing. It’s not Aluvius. The markings make it a Zephyr ship.”

“Zephyr? What are they doing here?”

“Who’s Zephyr?” Cam asked.

“Pirate guild,” Lant answered, as if that explained everything.

Tophet spoke up to fill in the gaps for Cam. “Small groups of players that try to keep mobile. Often live in the open space other guilds surround but don’t have enough manpower to control. Systems other guilds don’t want, but are inside its territory.”

“Don’t they cause Aluvius problems sitting here?” Cam asked.

“Not as many as it would take to root them out and keep them away,” Will answered. “Aluvius basically rents this part of space out to smaller guilds anyways, and says the pirates are their problem to deal with. We’re actually trying to meet up with a contact in one of those smaller guilds.”

“So do we attack or go around?” Zelou asked.

“The thing is, this stargate is one of the few connections going the way we want,” said Will. “Going around would add another dozen jumps, which could potentially have its own problems, as the next shortest route has a similar bottleneck. Going through is the best option, but we need to be quick. We don’t want the scout to alert his friends. There’s sure to be a group of them doing some sort of operation a few jumps down. How good is the ship?”

“Seems pretty standard,” Mohler said. “Nothing visible looked amazing, but I can’t see all its modules without active sensors. Four fighters could probably take it down without a loss. Three maybe, but there’s more risk.”

“Alright, I need four volunteers,” Will said to the wing. “Three will jump through and ambush the corvette, the fourth will be backup. You’ll have to jump through while the gate is unhacked or else the corvette might get alerted early.”

Half the wing volunteered. Cam would have, but he knew they needed solidly skilled pilots to pull this off without incident. He would be a liability as much as a help. They needed to keep their visible presence down to a minimum. If Mohler couldn’t hack the gate before they went through, then only a few ships should jump through. These areas weren’t as frequented by Aluvius core members so a few fighters might escape notice, but half a dozen or more would definitely draw some attention. Even so, if someone did check the stargate they would still see three or four fighters jump from one system to another, but no jumps entering this system. Just another thing they had to hope fell through the cracks.

In the end, Tophet and Lant joined two other pilots named Gauss and Varchant in the attack. The wing warped to a moon where they wouldn’t be spotted immediately, but could still view any ships near the gate. Mohler and Effour took a couple minutes to scout a few jumps ahead, since the wing was going to rush through that system after the scout was taken down. Even if the scout was destroyed quickly, he would still be able to tell his guild he was attacked, out of game if necessary. The wing had to move on quickly so that their trail was cold by the time someone could check it out.

In the end, all four pilots making up the attack squad jumped through together. Leaving the fourth for backup was decided against since they would have to use the gate comms to contact from one system to another, and that would only add to the amount of information they would leave behind for Aluvius to find. It only took a minute before Varchant jumped back through. Cam frowned when the other three didn’t follow, but he saw why a moment later. The next gate activity was the corvette. It followed Varchant through, but to run, not to fight. Varchant didn’t give him the opportunity. He quickly engaged it, preventing it from warping away while the other three followed through the stargate.

The corvette was a boxy looking ship. It looked as much taped together as built. Perhaps it was a prefered style, or perhaps it was all the pirate could afford. It targeted Varchant’s fighter, trying to shake him off so it could create a warp signature unhindered. From the wing’s position Cam couldn’t make out the stats on Varchant’s shields, but he saw their glow collapse as Tophet and Lant closed in on the corvette. Varchant had to pull away, but the corvette’s shields were already down. As Gauss engaged a moment later, the corvette quickly dropped before it could do any more significant damage.

Will gave the signal to move out. Mohler hacked the gate before anyone jumped, and Gauss went close enough to the enemy wreck to loot it for any modules or scrap that survived. They jumped two more systems before slowing down and resuming their normal procedure for system jumping.

* * *

Cam had lost count of how many jumps they went through. The whole jump, hide, wait, jump, hide, wait of it all wore on him. He could feel his exhaustion as they made the final jump. Even in I-Flight he felt weary. I-Flight was an amazing feature and allowed players to feel even more part of the action and the world around them, but it didn’t prevent fatigue from accruing. Just because his ship felt like his body--and therefore his body felt more like a machine than muscle--didn’t mean his time spent flying didn’t tax him.

The ship responded sluggishly to his controls now, and his mind itself felt worn down. His character screen showed his fatigue was up to fifty six percent, well in the range that it affected his abilities, although supposedly not too much of a hindrance. He wondered what a score in the seventies or eighties would make him feel like.

“There it is, boys and girls,” came Will’s voice over the comms, after they made their final warp to their destination.

A small station sat in their view. It was tucked into some asteroids in the middle of nowhere. It looked like a rust colored tin box with a few antanas and other sensors poking out at odd angles. Very utilitarian. Cam just hoped it was functional enough for what they needed. It didn’t look very kept up.

The main hangar door took up more than half of one side. It was currently partially open, just enough for the fighters to fly through. If the hangar ran the full length of the station, Cam guessed it could maybe hold one or two battlecruisers, however he doubted the station was designed for anything so large. Destroyer class ships were probably the largest it could provide services to. It should easily be able to house a couple dozen fighters.

“That’s our home?” came a grumbling Lant.

“Just to start,” Will said. “I have a contact here. We’ll find out the best place to set up shop. For now they’ll put us up. No one from Aluvius even frequents this area anymore, now that they’re renting it out.”

Cam didn’t care if it was a rock, as long as it had a place to stretch. They pulled their fighters into the half open bay. There were several platforms for smaller ships to land on, which together took up about a fifth of the available space. The wing landed on one platform together, with plenty of space for the odd assortment of fighters to park. Docking berths for medium sized ships filled most of the hangar bay. As Cam had suspected most were for destroyer sized ships, but one or two looked large enough to tether a cruiser. Only about a fourth of the berths were filled. Some with industrial looking ships, either designed for harvesting valuable minerals from asteroids or gas clouds in space, or for the transportation of goods from one location to another. A few were filled with combat ships.

It was definitely on the smaller side for a station. It couldn’t service larger ships and only a couple medium sized ships at a time. It was probably just an outpost for gathering and processing materials. Its size meant it had to rely on assistance from elsewhere in the event of an attack. Destroyer-sized ships were the largest in the bay, and they couldn’t stand up against a heavy assault. He didn’t have the energy to wonder how far away the nearest station was that could rush to the defense here. It could be anywhere. Cruisers could jump in quickly, even if they had to wait for their jump drives to charge back up to jump again. They could be here in minutes of getting notified of an attack.

Or of getting notified that members of Caelestis had survived the battle and were hiding here.

Will seemed to always know what he was doing. If it wasn’t true now...well, this would be a really short trip.