Milo approved of the after-party, even if too many people were nearby. He'd almost turned and run when a small mob came over to congratulate his team but was held back by Minerva hugging him. "Awesome plan, Almost-Big-Brother-Milo; the boom at the end was cool!" Belinda turned her head as she said that, and Butch smiled and whispered to her, "Minerva is a little upset that I might be going to work in the pods when I turn 18. Mama is worried about Ghost. His dad hasn't been around in years, and he roams on his own too much. She's put in paperwork to adopt him, and little Min is pretty happy about that."

"Milo? That's his real name?"

"Yeah, he got nick-named Ghost early on when he started hanging with our gang at swap meets. He's nervous around people and takes off suddenly. Stays away for a day or a week, then shows back up to hang around for a bit."

Belinda looked at the overjoyed Min and the nervous Ghost. Min was taller than him by an inch. You'd assume he was younger until he started talking. She had another question to ask Butch, but it got lost as the other two teams overwhelmed them with enthusiastic greetings. By common consent, they moved to where the food was and pushed several tables together. Soon everyone was eating and talking about the game. Butch's gang was in awe of how much SC6 lore the older players knew.

"You should have seen it back in the day. Thousands of ships were online, fighting for control over resources and carving out little empires. The basic game was modified on private servers back in the old internet days. The best ones had expanded economics, mining, and politics. You could do a lot more than blow stuff up."

"Yeah, you could fix your ship when it got blown up. Scavenge parts when you blew someone else up and threaten to blow up people unless they agreed to help you blow up someone else."

"You forgot to mention drinking at a seedy bar after getting blown up."

"Ah, the best part of SC6: The Bar mod. Julius was a genius when he came up with that."

Belinda had never heard of a Bar mod. "What was that? I didn't see it mentioned when I was getting the programming for the machines."

Captain Joe explained. "It wasn't in the basic programming, but everyone running a server added it to their galaxy. Every planet, asteroid mine, or space station had a bar you could go to after you docked. They were filled with hard-bitten NPCs that would try to drink you under the table, start fights with you, or hire you for illegal missions. They were awesome. Some people barely played the game; they just used the bars as places to hang out and talk. It was old style, no VR, but it feels real when you remember it."

Seedy bars and secret missions sounded great to Butch. "Can you still do that? Log into a server and hit a bar."

"Naw, long gone. Lots of problems with how things turned out after all the corporate teams took over the game. There was a bullshit lawsuit against Julius claiming that by letting people have private galaxies, he was diminishing the competition in the main galaxy they had paid money to play in. It was crap, but he wasn't a rich guy, just a programmer making games. He had to shut down the support to the private servers. Many people quit the game after that, and then the problems with keeping the machines running started killing him. Parts were getting expensive, and the machines crashed hard whenever the Wildfire virus swept through. He went bankrupt and had to give up."

"He was really excited about this event, though. He wanted to come, but he's living in Japan and didn't have the money for the trip."

Belinda noticed Ghost had pulled a datapad from his pack and was tapping away. He looked up after a moment. "Dr. Julius Shepherd? He has a small company called Adastra Ltd."

Joe nodded, and Belinda recalled that Francis had mentioned emailing him twice when he was refurbishing the SC6 machines. She tapped on her own datapad built into the arm of her chair. She found the emails going back and forth between them. Dr. Julius had offered to come work on the machines for free if they paid his travel costs. John had turned down the request from Francis.

That made her sad in an odd way. "I should have argued harder for bringing him here. I'm sure he would have loved to see his game being played again."

The other teams were all in agreement about that. "He'd have loved to be here. But he still gets to see his game featured at a big event. I bet he's staring at the footage right now and trying to figure out why we used such crazy builds."

Joe turned to Belinda. "Any chance of another event in the future? We'd all pitch in to bring Julius out for it."

She sat, drumming her left hand on the armrest of her chair. She turned 18 years old in a few months and would have access to her trust funds and more control over voting her stock. That was leverage to use on John. Or maybe she could do it herself without him? "Make sure I have all of your contact information before you leave for the day. Who knows what might happen."

Ghost slid back farther in his chair, thinking.

Victor was enjoying himself. He never argued with his underlings, which is why things got done the way he wanted. He also would never have allowed anyone to talk to him the way the representatives from the sponsoring corporations were talking to him. Who cares if they had paid money for the event? They got their advertising and chance to sponsor teams. Did they also expect to win all the prizes? Such weakness! And John was just as weak, letting them yell at him. He tried to soothe them when he should have been telling them to piss off.

"Ok, I know it wasn't the expected outcome, but we all had a great time today. We'll do the wrap-up for the event onstage, and each of you gets time to show off your products."

The Ubergear rep was livid, his face bright red. "You lying asshole. We pay you good money for sponsorship, and it was damned well understood by everyone that your job was to make my company look good. And then what happens? You let a fly-by-night group in as a sponsor and blame it on your daughter. Then your daughter teams up with them in the first competition to upstage us. Worse, our guys tried to compete too hard, pushing their gloves way beyond the recommended playtime and causing overheating problems. Something that the influencers and reviewers have noticed. Then you force us to accept her team in SC6, and somehow she wins. It stinks."

John looked pained. He really wanted everyone to like him, and it was so hard some days. "Manny, you know we didn't plan that. Right? Just bad luck. Your guys don't play the old games much, but I bet it's all the kids in the hab have to play. They've got shitty gear and shitty games, but they get good at it. Not much else for them to do. How about we get my daughter's team to sign on as sponsored M-1000 players? You can give them the gloves on stage, which turns around a lot of the bad publicity." John actually had no idea what kids in the habitats did. He had a vague idea that they went to school, played a lot of video games, and grew up to be people he could hire. But the narrative sounded good to him, so he tossed it out and started believing in it.

On the side of the room, Eric winced and turned to face a wall to hide his expression. John had told him to stay out of the conversation, so he was on his own.

Manny looked at John. "Your little bitch of a girl tossed the gloves I gave her back in my face claiming they hurt her. I let her little tantrum slide out of respect for our business relationship, John. I'd have sued anyone else. I doubt she will be all smiles and come over to our side after she orchestrated her little revenge."

"Excuse me, but that is my grand-niece you are talking about in a not-so-nice way."

Manny looked at the old man with the greying hair. The guy must be ninety and talked like he was from another century. "So what, Grandpa? She wants to play in the big leagues; she can learn to take it."

Victor chuckled. "The big leagues? This is not the big leagues. This is little piss-ant people in suits measuring dicks and yelling at each other. That is not how the 'Big Leagues' work. Yuseph? If this man speaks to me again, break his arm. Yegor? If anyone else talks, including John, bring them to Yuseph so he can break their arms."

Too late, Manny realized who the old man must be. He'd known John was connected to the Seimovich family, but thought it was a business deal. A family relationship made this situation much more dangerous. The old families took things very serious.

His two bodyguards walked to where everyone else was standing, smiling at them and flexing their hands.

"You lost. You even cheated first and then lost. Maybe bad luck? Maybe not. But what I think is that my little Belinda had a better team than you and beat you by skill. And you are upset that you look bad? Sad for you. Do better next time. No one said your money let you win. No one agreed to an easy victory where shitty gloves wouldn't work too hard. And really, I don't care. It is amusing to see you sit and argue with John, who lets you yell at him."

"But then you had to be rude. Here is what happens now. You all leave the room—no more talk. And you, Mr. Manny, will never say something about my little Belinda again. If you do, I will hear of it, and then I will break all of the bones in your body. Is this understood, Mr. Manny?"

Everyone in the room except Yseph and Yegor was sweating. Something in Victor's voice and eyes made them believe every threat. As soon as he nodded at the door, they started to leave. Yuseph had a large hand on both John and Manny's shoulders.

"Good, no one talked. Now, John? You take your friend Manny down to the stage and run your little dog-and-pony show, and then he will be leaving. Less chance of more problems. Mr. Manny? We will do this again soon. You may come and compete, and John will do his best to make your gloves look good. No cheating. No insults. We are businessmen and friends. Correct?"

Both John and Manny nodded nervously before heading for the door. Victor turned to Eric Kresthammer, the last person in the room. "You tried. I saw that, Eric. John should listen to you more. I thank you for trying and looking after my grand-niece. We'll talk more about your future with my family."

Eric relaxed and nodded.

Victor continued. "Maybe head down to the place with all the games and make sure no one bothers Belinda. She is having fun with friends. Don't let anyone take that away from her."

Eric left. Victor went to take a nap. Training the young ones to behave was always tiring.