Clara was laying on her bed as she wriggled about, knowing she had to get up but not wanting to pull the warm covers off her. She just didn’t want to face everything today. Kenna had been taken by that enemy ship, and it had left before they could get everyone on a shuttle to fly over to it like they had been ordered to. They had returned to their own ship and soon found the life support systems was not running without the engine, it had taken them a long time to carefully pull the engine back into the ship, and she had only just managed to get it bolted back in place and turned on when the oxygen in their suits hit critical. She ordered everyone to hide in the shuttles, using its limited life support systems to breathe.

  She rolled over and groaned as she remembered how everyone had come together and given her all the oxygen they had so she could stay outside the shuttle and continue working on getting the life support systems back online and fill the ship with breathable air. She had made sure to funnel air into the shuttle bay so they would know when it was safe to exit the shuttle. Her oxygen gauge must have broken at some point because she didn’t remember it warning her about the lack of remaining oxygen and had at some point lost consciousness. She had woken up in the medical room and felt shame at having needed to be rescued like that.

  The crew had quickly come to understand that without Kenna to fly the ship, it wasn’t going anywhere, so after a meeting they had all decided to start building the station for the mining H.Q. Right where they were.

  The ship sending the pilots for the mining barges had shown up on time and soon began to help build the station, Clara had used the onboard dry dock to construct two of her mining truck designs for them to collect more resources, and it soon had snowballed into more trucks and the station getting built faster with more hands to help.

  Once the dry dock had been built, a few of the pilots had come aboard Kenna's ship and managed to move it into the dry dock for repairs and storage. Clara was glad to have her office on a station back, and quickly got to work repairing the Lost Hawk.

  She had just finished putting it back together last night before crashing into this bed and knew once she got out of it she was going to have to face the fact that she needed to put the lost hawk into storage mode while they waited for Kenna to return. There were some rumours floating around that Kenna wouldn’t return, but Clara held firmly to her belief that Kenna was fighting her way back! She just needed to wait and send Kenna all her prayers and hopes for a speedy and safe return.

  *******

  Megan Wilson was sitting on her couch with her mouth hanging open in shock as she watched the news report the amazing feat of a car exploding in the middle of rush hour traffic on some highway somewhere near Washington D.C.

  Some guy with the name Washington was apparently inside the vehicle when it had exploded, the man somehow was alright and had calmly stepped out of the wreck without a scratch on him. His clothes were gone, burnt to ash in the raging fire, making Megan blush as she looked over his muscles and naked body.

  The cameraman, who was clearly there to film traffic for some high school documentary or something. Megan had based that theory on how much the camera was shaking. Had made sure not to get the guy's junk on camera so it could be aired on the news, but the guy's chest and arms were enough for Megan.

  As she watched the man approach the camera and looked into the lens, he had a big smile on his face, and Megan thought he was about to announce this was all staged and everyone on the highway was in on it. Though she seriously doubted that, after she considered how much effort and money it would take to get a major highway closed down for such a stunt that didn’t seem to have anything to do with a movie.

  “My fellow citizens, I survive and stand before you now because this was some sort of elaborate stunt where I was never in any danger.”

  Megan let out a sigh of breath as she relaxed. She hadn’t expected him to confess like that, but she was glad no one was in any danger. However, her relief was instantly shattered by what the guy said next.

  At least, I would like to say that. However, the unfortunate truth is someone attempted to kill me, unfortunately for you assholes, and I will track you down, the nanites the system provides has made me a little resistant to bombs. Now be a good kid and send that to all the news outlets, don’t worry, I will make sure they run it on tonight’s news.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The video ended there, and the anchor lady came back on and started talking about some sort of video game system that used nanites in the body to allow you to see a screen and interact with it. She went on to explain how you could join clans and guilds and what the difference was.

  Megan slowly sat back in her chair as she looked around at her friends who were all gamers and played MMO’s together as she slowly grinned.

  ”Alright, the first task is to find out how to get our hands on this system, the second task is to form a clan together and have our families and other friends join it. Third task, start a guild and then dominate!” She declared as she tried to rally her friends to follow her lead. From the excited grins on their faces, she knew she had.

  *******

  Milo Adams was sitting outside a coffee shop in the residential district of the Blossoming Terranova Orbital Space Station. He had managed to get a job in the Adams company, which was led by his cousin, Jack Adam’s. Milo was a recon marine. His cousin Jack had managed to start an independent company when the Blossoming Terranova guild had reached level 4.

  The company had been doing well for itself, and had made enough profit on its last deployment, that everyone had decided to buy some upgrades for their gear and was currently out getting the new equipment. Milo had decided to get an upgrade for his drone. It now sported a beautiful little sniper rifle barrel that was kept hidden inside its body. The drone's camera had also been upgraded to include a scope mode, so he could take the shot at long distances. He had considered a few other upgrades, but he had also just reached his goal of saving up enough credits for a drop-ship, he knew with one of those he could earn more money and hopefully one day, reach his dream of owning his own battleship.

  Milo let out a longing sigh before turning back to the catalogue of things he could buy and continued to peruse the list of drop-ships and their upgrades. He had selected the base model and was slowly building the shuttle with features he thought would bring him more versatility and money in his future jobs. He had heard the stories about the crazy drop-ship pilots, the one that had stuck with him was the one about a loony pilot who had dumped an entire squadron out the back without even landing. Apparently, she had done it so high up that the squadron had no chance of saving themselves with their armour suits safety landing features. It was a scary story, but he had looked into it and the story had been embellished a lot, plus one of those marines had threatened the pilot.

  Milo shook his head, feeling he had been distracted again and needed to focus on buying his drop-ship. He slowly worked through the list and came upon a feature that he immediately added to the shopping cart because of that story. It was the lockable cockpit door that came with tempered glass that could stop pointed explosives from breaking through. It was meant to be impenetrable.

  He was about to continue looking down the list of other things he could purchase, he was almost out of credits, but there were so many features he wanted in his drop-ship that he couldn’t stop. A young woman sat down next to him suddenly, causing him to glance over to see the girl he had a crush on sitting next to him smiling warmly. She had long chestnut hair and sparkling hazel eyes, she also had a Scottish accent to match her facial features that made his heart swoon. All thoughts of shopping were instantly forgotten.

  *******

  Ashley was running through a trench chasing after some local alien that had a huge bounty on his head, if she could just get a clean shot, then she would be filthy rich and able to buy the one ship that would get her mercenary company the hell out of these trenches permanently. However, the problem she was having was the little bugger kept ducking in and out of obstacles as well as innocent civilians, and if she shot one of them to get to him then her pay dropped drastically.

  Ten more dodges later and one miss fire that thunked into a barrel leaking alcohol all over the ground, and she was ready to blast the first civilian she saw if it meant she got him too. Luckily for the civilian that the bounty dove behind next, who was a young girl that looked no more than nineteen, she was saved from Ashley’s angry gun fire by a member of Ashley’s company tackling the target, knocking him to the ground.

  A few moments later, Ashley caught up and was pointing the gun at the bounty’s head as she remembered she was meant to be chasing the guy into the ambush and, in her mad haze of the hunt, had completely forgotten about the plan.

  The other four members from her company team slowly closed in, surrounding the target as they pointed their weapons at him. Stopping a few feet away as, they remained vigilant in case he had any surprises up his sleeve.

  ”So, I guess by the fact I am not currently riddled with bullet holes, I must be worth more alive.” He said arrogantly. The cheeky smile on his face was wiped off a moment later when Ashley replied.

  ”Dead. Alive. Doesn’t really matter to me, the only difference is if you're dead I get enough credits to finally buy a Corvette Class Ship for my team here, and we will be able to take on better contracts, more ship to ship, worth more. On the other hand, if you come in alive, then I can purchase the upgraded model that comes with a drop-ship bay, and six more uplink pods, allowing Stevie’s team to join ours. Then we will be able to take on bigger contracts that include a landing team. Personally, I don’t care if you're alive or dead, but Stevie might and well, he is a massive boy that is really into cute little boys such as yourself. So do you want to come willingly or do you want Stevie to bend you over his shoulder and grope your ass while he carries you in?” She asked smugly, knowing the alien wasn’t really going to get an option.

  ”I, uh, I’ll come quietly.” He stammered out as he slowly got to his feet, glancing between the males as he tried to figure out which one was Stevie. Made evidently by his slight shuffling towards the females of the team.

  ”Great, glad you saw it my way, now let's go hand you in, and you can get to your life of being pampered as someone pumps you for information, and we can go buy ourselves a new ship!”

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