“Yea, okay, but why am I in a maintenance droid?”

  “Oh, well that's because a drop carrier doesn't have a pilot, what it does have is an onboard computer that controls the ship and uses maintenance droids to walk about and do loads of tasks on the ship including fix the ship when it gets shot up.”

  He grinned at me for a second before shrugging.

  “It's a job for those that have excellent flying skills and a bit of know how on repairing and maintaining a ship. They are only deployed towards planets with active weapons fire in space. Their job is to get the eight drop-ships onboard to the planets' atmosphere without being shot, they then have to deploy on the surface and act as a clone birthing hangar where anyone that dies is respawned. Players with those gold cards love it.”

  “Well, that seems a little boring, get shot at for a bit, then land and hibernate for frickity knows how long.”

  He opened Then Closed his mouth before letting out a soft chuckle as he shook his head slowly.

  “Aah Haha, yes, I suppose that would be boring. That would also be why the drop carrier pilot is allowed to spawn themselves into a clone body once planet side and participate In the gold cards tasks and games. This is also where the fun part comes in. Did you know they participate for ownership of land.”

  He stared at me for a bit, but all I could do was stare back, not sure what he was looking for.

  “Once, secured it becomes property of your clans' territory, but this is where it gets interesting. Because it is game won or void won in your case, you are required to operate it like you would your orbital station, and by that I mean build Shit on It and rent it out for profits. Ya know, get paid like all the big clans… Ya know, that's probably how they bring In the big creds.”

  “Uh huh, while that does sound good And fun, I can't help but notice you said secured, are you implying someone can take it?”

  “Well, yes we Would be fighting in an active combat zone so while you get quests to take a player from, who knows where else could get a quest to liberate it or something like that and take it for themselves.”

  “Are you saying I have to be wary of every single person?”

  “What? No! Okay I will simplify this, we are on the Terance let's call that Blue team in a week and a couple of days we will be arriving at a planet. About the same time the carrier Wilta does, we will call them red team, now you claim land from some quest or task and then someone on the red team will get a liberation and claim mission for that piece of land, and they complete it by taking the land from you. From there you might receive a mission to take it back or someone else on the blue team might receive a liberation and claim mission for it, allowing it to continually change hands.”

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  “Then how do you secure anything if it's always Changing hands?”

  “For you to secure land, your blue team would have to push the red team off the continent, allowing you to secure it for the blue team! That's when people start building defences and an architect comes in and starts creating cities and all sorts of stuff, and you get paid for your lands use in all that.”

  “Okay, so it's A toss up on how much land and individual can secure, while it's easier for a company to secure land because there are more members Working together.”

  “Yep, you got it now.”

  “What if the blue team gets pushed off?”

  “Well then you better hope the blue team manages to secure another continent because if they fail to secure any then they get nothing and have to try again on the next planet. And that will upset a lot of people. Oh, and your drop carrier is destroyed, so you're out of the game and back up here waiting for a new one to be constructed.”

  I winced slightly When his voice raised to the tone of someone that was getting annoyed. I slowly looked around the room wishing I could move my head before I looked back at him, having not noticed anything particularly interesting.

  “Okay that sounds fun I guess, my cousin said she was playing on the Terance So I could link up with her, and we could work together to get more land for our clans' territory.”

  “Yes you certainly could, I would also recommend she starts a company and asks your guild leader to fund it, if they manage to secure land the returns will outweigh the initial costs. And of course, have her invite more of your guild members to join her. I don't know what a level one company's member cap is, but it shouldn't be less than a couple of squads, or maybe it's a platoon… I don't remember, but it's not bigger than what a drop-ship can carry.”

  “Okay, and so my maybe platoon sized company is out there on its own trying to collect enough land to make it worth being out there, what about clone bodies and other stuff?”

  “Hmm, oh, players have to pay for their clone's body just like you do. That's why you don't see crazy people running out into the middle of the street and getting shot to shit before they can pull a dumb crazy stunt… Well, not often at least, some crazy newbies go broke fast or learn not to do it. As for the alone statement, well, you don't have to be alone. Company's have the ability to form alliances and agreements, just like guilds and clans.”

  “Wait, how do the players get paid to be able to afford bodies and equipment each time they die if the guild funding them is poor?”

  “Oh, uh, well there are shops and stuff around the starting locations and if a player was to loot enemy troops or capture Enemy assets like a skiff, skud or even a drop-ship then they could sell all that to the shops to earn credits to pay for upgrades or clone bodies. Now if you're done asking questions, I need to get back to work and will see you next week at your allotted log in time where we will run through familiarising you with your new body and no we can't do it now since it's still in pieces.”

  At that, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. After A bit of thought and testing, I managed to flick to a camera outside the ship and watched the hangar crew busying themselves with the contribution for a few minutes. Before I started thinking about Ashley and the company we needed to make. A few seconds after that, I started running through options on how to disconnect from the rig… log out Should Have been obvious, but for some reason I kept thinking it was some variation Of disconnect.

  I blinked rapidly as my eyes adjusted to the different light in the uplink rig, and it took me a few minutes before I stumbled out of the pod and turned to see Ashley's door still closed. I glanced around the huge hall with its eight floors and hallways leading off deeper into the place and decided I didn't want to know how many rigs there were. Instead, I walked over to Ashley's rig door and knocked, after a moment a window appeared in front of the door.

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