A star ship was landing. The ship’s thrusters spewed jets of fire as it descended. As the ship got closer to the ground, the amount of thrust, and fire jet, slowly eased. There was no landing pad, the ship was landing in a field. Around the landing ship smoke and steam bellowed. Organic grasses either burned or flashed to steam. Any moisture in the ground evaporated as the thrusters baked the ground. The engines cut out when the ship touched down. The smoke and steam dissipated slightly. Enough that a landing ramp descended.

A hatch cycled open and S’Li walked down the ramp. He was a Gray, it wasn’t juts a color but a race. S’Li, a level 15 explorer, had his race’s customary gray skin, an oversized oval head and very big eyes. His body was thin and he had spindly arms and fingers. “Planet Hamster,” he said. “What a stupid name for a planet.”

Forty sectors to the Galactic North, on Planet DL5, a ship was getting ready to launch. It was going to launch in a hurry. It was going to launch out of a war zone. The ship’s captain kept his thrusters burning. It was burning fuel, but this contract was a disaster and any second he would pour on the throttle and get the hell out of Dodge.

Right now, the landing ramp was down and Reptilian troopers of the Bagnosh Mercenary Regiment were running up the ramp in a hurry. The regiment’s rear guard was firing slug throwers at feathered humanoids who were chasing them. Laser shots flashed towards the ship. The handheld lasers couldn’t hurt the ship, but those lasers could kill the individual Reptilian soldiers. The lasers were killing Reptilians. The Regiment had lost this war. Contract or no, it was time to go.

A large, a seriously large, laser bolt hit the ship. The pilot wasn’t ready to die on this stupid rock. No respawn for me – if I die, I lose my ship. He punched the thrusters. Even though the landing ramp was down and the regiment wasn’t all on board yet, it was time to go.

Reptilians yelled as the ship started to ascend. The landing ramp was slowly coming up. One Reptilian fell off the ramp, another clung for life as his comrades tried to pull him up. On the ground, the thunderous firey blast from the full throttle thrusters cooked both Reptilians and humanoids.

On Star Station 67Tex, traders were negotiating the price of foodstuffs and weapons and other goods. The price for accelerator rifles was relatively low for the basic models. Orion Spiced Shrimp were outrageously expensive. The AI NPC running the trading booth was giving Captain Sybla a hard time.

Sybla hoped her trading skill would lower the price for the shrimp she wanted to buy and raise the price for the rifles she wanted to sell. She need to make a profit on this run. Earn enough credits and Sybla could convert some credits to real-world money and help her husband pay the rent this month. She just needed to convince the Artificial Intelligence that was driving the merchant to budge a couple of credits on the prices. Blood from a computerized stone.

With a million or more players logged in world wide, the Space Opera Universe was a busy place.

In one corner of the world, one building, the Space Opera Universe was totally shut off. This one building was the site of Space Opera VR Systems Challenge. Competing graduate students would show off the Virtual Reality hardware they had created specifically for the Space Opera Universe.

With a million or more players logged in world wide, soon the entire Space Opera Universe would be a busier place.