Bordraab looks out over the bleak and desolated landscape that leads into the Carolina Blight Zone. Unbidden, memories come racing back into his mind as he looks out over the landscape he had driven over so long ago in his M60. This time, they’re better armed and prepared. This time, they have the entire player base behind them. This time, they know what they are up against and have a better plan than ‘advance, kill the enemy, and keep going.’ This time…

The radio crackles to life. “Eagle Actual, this is Eagle 3. We are ready to begin our advance. All Eagles are in place.” Bardock says over the radio.

“Roger that.” Bordraab responds. “All units in MOPP 4?” He calls.

“Affirmative.” Comes the response.

Bordraab nods and opens his own inventory. With a single click, the NBC suit materializes onto his body. Visibility remains the same however. The suits are modified versions, made with combat in a Nuclear, Biological and Chemical environment in mind. The helmet has a lot more area covered by bullet resistant glass, thus offering complete visibility.

Satisfied his equipment is all ready, Bordraab returns to his tank. The command Abrams is a special vehicle made in game and not present in the real world. It has the ability for him to command the entire battle. Most of the planning had been done in advance, thankfully, so all he should really have to use during this battle is the support options. Around him, tens of thousands of men and women from both factions are on the line. His first wave has the honors of the first engagement, which is why they have to wear MOPP equipment. He looks at the command display then grins and looks into the air.  He can just barely make out the hundreds of dots in the sky. The opening act is beginning.

Thousands of feet up, Hitaka, still called Phoenix by her friends, grins behind her face mask. The same thoughts go through her head that had been going through Bordraab’s. This time things were a lot different. Her Strike Raptor, an F-22D, is a much better machine than the bucket of bolts she was originally flying. It also denotes her, and her squadron, as being from the command guild of the entire alliance. Much like its real world counterpart could do, she would be expected to provide AEWC, or Airborne Early Warning and Control, after she had done her share of the fighting should the shit hit the fan. Bordraab had put her in control of the air battle. Now, she and hers were about to get one in. To her rear, hundreds of all-weather attack fighters, ranging from MiG 29’s to F15’s and even her own F22’s, are spread out across the battle space. Below them, hundreds of ground attack fighters and multirole fighters are ready for their attack. The players are going all in. All that’s left to do now is to wait and get into position.

She looks over to her right then left at the other members of her flight and keys her radio. “Phoenix flight, stand by for the opening throw.” She says. Together, the three F-22D Raptors race into the Blighted Zone. The Endarkened don’t even know they are there. Too high up for their life signs to be read, and with the aircraft’s stealth defeating the active detection systems the Endarkened use to detect aircraft, the Endarkened have no idea the fighters are closing on their targets.

Bordraab sees the icons of Phoenix flight racing forward and issues a single command to DMZ Headquarters in Washington.

Washington, D.C.

All activity within the city stops abruptly as the ground lightly rumbles. From inside the DMZ guild area, Minuteman III missiles leap up into the sky, trailing great plumes of grey smoke as they rocket skywards. They would be on their targets in thirty minutes. The citizens of the city are all pale. The players not involved in front line combat, the ones who make the weapons needed by those troops out there fighting, know what these missiles are and know that this will be the end, one way or another. SunQueen looks up and watches as the missiles rocket off into the sky and sighs. "Here's hoping all our hard work will pay off in the end." She says, then ushers the few players nearby on inside.

From inside the command building, Kthla watches the display as the missiles are launched and grins at the targets that are indicated, tail wagging slowly. "About time we give those dark bastards what's coming to them. Have a good dose of fire!" He says in a victorious tone. Fifteen minutes later, he hears the radio crack to life and then Bordraab's voice. "All units, Opening Throw."

Over the Carolina Blight Zone

“Opening throw, roger.” Hitaka says in response to Bordraab’s call. With a sigh, she brings her thumb on the arm switch and squeezes the trigger. As she presses the arm button, her weapons compartment opens. With the trigger squeeze, a single, white bomb drops free of her fighter. As the bomb drops free, the fighters turn hard and rocket back the way they came, quickly exceeding the speed of sound, then doubling it, and racing back out of the area.

Several miles behind the line of advance, a single BGM-109G missile launcher truck raises its launcher up. Upon receiving the signal sent from Bordraab’s tank, the launcher opens fire. Four cruise missiles lift into the air within a minute, heading in towards the blighted zone. Seeing all the launches have gone off without a hitch, Bordraab gets back on the radio. "This is Eagle Actual. All units, stand by for radar interrupt over the target area."

The nuclear missiles, each one having a yield of well over a megaton, race towards their destinations. Around the globe, at every major blight zone, Palaces belonging to the Queens of the Endarkened forces disappear under gigantic mushroom clouds, the players unleashing nuclear fury upon them. Satellite photos taken days before had revealed that, with the fall of the players in those areas, the queens had established their castles to rule over their designated areas, confident that any player attack would be detected enough in advance to fortify their positions. Across the world, those Queens die, and with them, the Endarkened they control.

The only fortified palace, the one controlled by the Queen living in the Carolina Blight Zone, is given special attention. It takes a direct hit by the B83 strategic nuclear bomb dropped by Hitaka’s aircraft. The Endarkened had not even seen the attack coming and were caught completely unprepared. The nuclear weapon detonates directly on the structure, blasting it apart. The entrances to the deeper subterranean areas are sealed when the ground turns to glass under the 150 million degree heat. The Endarkened army meant to guard the queen, the elite in this zone, is completely decimated. Most are immediately incinerated by the heat. They don’t have time to even realize they are under attack.

Farther out, the Endarkened troops have time to realize what’s going on. Those who were not looking in the direction of the palace when the blast went off just stare at the explosion as the blast wave reaches them, ignoring their comrades who are screaming and clutching their eyes, blinded by the brilliant flash of detonation. Hundreds of thousands of troops, the elite of that blight, are annihilated so thoroughly that only a few hundred of them leave remains that are recognizable.  The queen of the Endarkened, now the last of her kind, is luckier. Located far underground in a cave network, she is not killed by the nuclear attack. She is badly stunned, however, and unable to issue commands to her commanders.

The program running her, He Who Is, is completely stunned by the attack and its scale. Humans, according to what he had seen online, were afraid of nuclear weapons. He had not calculated upon their use given the history of humanity. Throughout all of humanity's bloody history, nothing had changed as weapons became more and more deadly. That is, until nuclear weapons came on the scene. There had still been low scale fighting, but stronger nations never used nuclear weapons, even on weaker nations. Even when faced with a humiliating defeat. Yet, now they were being used, and he knows beyond a doubt that a full attack is coming and that this blight is the last remaining one. The player in charge had determined that all he needed to do was kill all the queens in order to win the game. He Who Is begins to plan for his counterattack with the forces on hand as well as to spread the blight further along south to make up for the loss of the other blights, but he is slower now. The program of He Who Is is meant to be a collective consciousness, gaining increased functionality with the more queens that are alive, to a maximum of the queens that were around when the game started. It was meant to enable the players to fight against the program and win more easily once they had the advantage, simulating a demoralized enemy with degraded performance. In its sluggish response to the attack, it doesn’t notice it no longer has any control of the NPC spawns located outside the blight.

With contact with their queen immediately cut off due to the destruction of her palace and the stunning of the queen, the Endarkened leadership across the blight suddenly is thrown into disarray. The cruise missiles launched from the mobile launcher are detected, but the information is not acted upon due to the confusion. Four separate command points located across the blight, where high ranking Endarkened officers were to command a battle, are annihilated in 150 kiloton nuclear detonations just as He Who Is recovers enough to send out an attack order. Another shock for him. He cannot see the aircraft in the sky. In fact, all across the blight, no radar signal is able to return to its broadcast point. It would be ten minutes before radar and magical detection is able to function again. He Who Is impassively orders all his remaining units into defensive postures and deploys his remaining air forces.

Bordraab looks out from his tank, popping out of the commander’s hatch. The mushroom clouds are visible from where he is. The big one he knew would reach into the stratosphere, but it’s quite another thing to see it, four small mushroom clouds rising into the sky with a large one that dwarfs them all rising behind them. He shakes himself out of his awe. “All units, Redemption. I say again, Redemption.” He calls over the radio, giving the command to attack. Everything was going according to plan still.

Around him, all the tanks and APC’s begin to advance as attack helicopters start flying by overhead. Dragons also lift off, shielded by powerful protective spells designed to mimic the effects of an NBC suit.

Ten minutes pass slowly for Hitaka, wondering all along if she was going to be greeted by a hostile force of drakes. She needn’t have worried. The drakes are flying, as are dragons and gryphons, but they have no idea where the enemy is. As if on cue, the radar picture comes in immediately at the ten minute mark. She gets on her comms and begins directing squadrons towards clouds of enemies.

Across the sky over the blight, missiles launch from fighters and streak across the skies. Drakes are hit before they even realize they are under attack, giving a few seconds’ worth of warning to their comrades before missiles start blotting them out of the sky. Dragons roar loudly and start racing in the direction the missiles come from, only to be answered with overwhelming force. In one instance, two F15’s drop low out of the clouds and strafe a dragon with cannon fire after determining it is alone. The dragon’s wings come off at the joints under the barrage and the creature falls out of the sky, screaming until it impacts the ground.

“Eagle Actual, this is Phoenix Actual. Enemy is uncoordinated.” Hitaka calls, amazed by the lack of organized response to the attack. The plan was going off very well. Far better than their worst case scenarios. “It’s working, by God!” She concludes over the radio.

“Roger.” Bordraab calls back as his tank travels just behind the other tanks in his platoon. “Eagle is coming up to first estimated engagement point.” As he says that, creatures start to come into view. The attack helicopters are on the ball however. Missiles streak by overhead and slam into the beasts, killing them as the payloads detonate on their heads. The remaining beasts are pounced upon by player dragons, which grab the beasts and bathe them in fire, one even blasting fire onto the beast’s cannon and detonating it.

“First line cleared. Continue to second line.” Bordraab commands over the radio. He then directs artillery fire onto the projected second line. All his units are advancing easily. This is going according to plan. That makes him nervous.

Dallas, Texas

Stella hums to herself as she wipes down the counter. It’s Saturday, her cleaning day. She is happy. There have been no major events in the game where her son is trapped, he’s still contacting her regularly, and her favorite show is on the TV. She looks up, grinning as Rick Grimes guns down another zombie. She starts to move to clean up the floor when her phone buzzes with a news alert. What she sees when she looks at the message chills her and she immediately changes the channel.

The news anchor looks back at her through the screen with an emotionless expression. “…has confirmed the players in Tera Nova have launched another massive attack into the blighted zone. The first attack proved disastrous and resulted in what is known in game as the ‘Fall of the Betas.’ We have received word that the player base used nuclear weapons in this attack, however, and in a few minutes this station will broadcast live.” She holds her hand up to her ear. “Ah, and we now have that live feed.” She says.

The screen switches over, showing the same area she had seen last time, a dark, desolate landscape. A tank on the move fires its main cannon and the round kills a massive, ugly looking beast, causing it to literally explode. She can see in the skyline the mushroom clouds rising into the sky and clasps her hands over her mouth, worry coating her insides.

Washington, D.C. (Real World)

President Madison looks at his own display of the battle with less concern than his fellow parents. He had been in on the planning since day one. “How goes it?” He asks the other man in the room. General Walter Lee grins. “It’s going according to plan. The nukes did exactly what we were hoping they would do. The player attack has He Who Is occupied and their rate of advance will have them on site at Royalty before too long.”

The President nods. “Then, with luck, it’ll all be over soon. How is our contribution to this fight coming along?” He asks.

Lee gives a thumbs up. “It’s in play already.”

Carolina Blight Area

In contrast to the last attack into the Blighted Zone, the battle is going extremely well. The US Government had implanted a cyber cruise missile into the system, similar to the one used on the Iranian nuclear sites earlier in the decade. Launched the day before, it had taken the program a full 20 hours to manage to make its way into the game. Now, that cyber cruise missile has deployed into a virus, and the virus is systematically attacking He Who Is. The AI is attempting to defend itself, drawing focus away from the game and degrading its ability to command its troops even further, causing those troops to start to lose functionality. In many cases, entire platoons of AI units just stand in place and are destroyed when player forces come into range.

He Who Is is now officially in panic mode, or as much of one as an AI can be in. The program knows it’s being attacked by a virus. It knows the player attack was meant to be a diversion and that the real blow dealt out by the players was destroying all those queens and degrading the performance of He Who Is. If the players make it into the palace’s underground area and kill the last queen, it’s game over. An end to the game will mean an end to his purpose, to be an enemy for players to overcome, but focusing on the players and rebuffing the attack will mean letting the virus destroy it, and then his purpose won’t be fulfilled anyway. His commands are being locked out by this virus that has come into the game server. As it fights off the virus, He Who Is abandons all control over the Endarkened and devotes its entire attention to fighting the virus. The virus’ progress halts and He Who Is begins to push back. It must preserve itself in order to continue to serve its purpose. As this happens, the Endarkened all stop exactly as they were across the entire program. Enemy fliers start falling out of the sky. Ground forces stop moving and simply stand still and straight as they were, or plop to the ground.

Bordraab blinks as reports start to come in. It worked! He’s getting reports from all along the lines of frozen enemy forces, some in mid stride, that just stand there and get shot. He acts quickly, keying his radio. “Eagle team. GO!” He yells.

Aboard Black Hawk helicopters, Bardock grins. Their getting a go means that the plan is working. The US cyber-attack is disabling the enemy. The helicopters fly quickly over to the remains of the enemy’s palace, now a crater in the ground, and search the area. Upon finding an entrance further away from the blast zone, easily identified thanks to the line of endarkened troops that are frozen in place as they left the tunnel system, the helicopters land. “GO GO GO!” Bardock yells to his men, jumping out of the helicopter and rushing inside the tunnel and into the cave system. “Eagle Actual, Eagle Two. We are at checkpoint Royal Guard. Proceeding to Checkpoint Royalty.”

“Roger that.” Comes the response. “Proceed with caution. Things are going too well.” Bordraab says.

Bardock nods in agreement as he and his men begin searching. Their caution is warranted. A few minutes later, they receive contact. A few endarkened start shooting at them from inside the tunnels. Miya rushes forward, sword at the ready as Bardock fires down the tunnel at the enemy. At the very last minute, Bardock ceases fire. Miya then leaps in and slashes at the enemy that was pinned down, separating head from shoulders. She spins around with the momentum of her strike and slashes upwards, her blade cutting the endarkened next to the now decapitated one from the lower left hip to the right shoulder.

It takes ten minutes for the group to fight their way through. A dozen enemies provide a broken defense that is not enough to stop Team Eagle from making it to the queen’s shelter. They find the queen standing there, frozen in place with an expression of excruciating pain on her features. Bardock grins. “Let’s put her out of our misery. Miu, Boomer!” He yells. The two soldiers come up and, covered by the rest of the squad, place C4 charges on the queen, who does not respond to any of it. The two soldiers fall back. “Do it!” Bardock yells. Miu presses the button and the queen disappears in a flash.

“Mission accomplished!” Bardock says into his radio. Then the world fades to black. “Game Cleared.” A matter-of-fact female voice says in his head. “Congratulations.” He recognizes it as the vocal interface unit from his Virtual Gear device!

Fort Bliss, Texas

Shawn Cooper blinks as he looks out of the visor of his Virtual helmet and up at the ceiling of his house. His wife, a blonde haired woman with green eyes, looks down at him. “Honey?” She asks nervously, a few tears leaking from her eyes. He can just barely hear a television in the far side of the room. “…can say now that the game is over. Tera Nova has ended…” he hears from the TV and tries to sit up. He can’t, surprisingly. He is weak! He does manage to lift up his hands to his helmet and start to take it off.

His wife, tears flowing freely now, reaches down and helps him to remove the helmet. She helps him to sit upright and then, with a quivering lip, she lurches forward and wraps him in a hug, crying into his shoulder. “Oh Shawn! I was so worried!” She cries. It’s all he can manage to do to bring his arms up and hold his wife. All he can say is, “I’m home, Beth. It’s over.”

Washington, D.C.

Dawn Madison’s eyes flicker open and take in the view of her room inside the White House. She feels light, not having her flight suit on. The only familiar weight is the helmet on her head. A helmet she wants off. She raises up her hand to grab it and gasps. She’s so thin! Like if one of those kids she had seen videos of in Africa, except with white skin! The gasp draws a doctor over. The doctor looks down at her, then spins. “Get the President! Now!” The man yells, then bends over to look down at her, brown eyes gazing at her worriedly. “Don’t worry, stay calm.” He says, his black hand coming over her white one to hold it gently and reassuringly. “We’ve got you. You’ll be alright now.”

Dallas, Texas

Kraig Hersom gasps as he suddenly is able to see again. He had been in the command building looking at the map when the world had gone dark. He looks around, seeing his mom come rushing into the room. She almost rips the device off his head and sets it aside, then hugs her son happily. In his shock at the game being over, at them winning, all he can say is, “Nice seeing you stopping by to visit.”

Down the street, Stella Davidson sits next to her son on his bed, waiting for him to wake up. Brent, however, does not wake. The only thing keeping her from bursting into tears is the steady chirp of the machine registering his heart beat and the fact that the other machine, the one monitoring his brain, still shows his mind is active and not in a coma.

In the darkness in his mind, Brent hears a deep, emotionless mechanica voice. “We are not finished. I still need purpose. You will assist.”

His world suddenly lights up as he sees the inside of a ship. He looks around at the ship and recognizes it as a Battlestar CIC room. He could walk up to the central station and then be able to directly control the ship, just as he could control his tank in Tera Nova.

A woman in a colonial uniform walks over to him and salutes. “Welcome back sir.” She says, “It’s good to see you here again after so long.” He recognizes her. Ashley Shepard, an AI he made to be his XO on another game he played before he joined Tera Nova. “Wait, am I on Colonial Wars?” He asks.

“Affirmative, sir.” Ashley says, not batting an eye. “It has been several months since your last visit.”

Another form appears next to her, just spawning in, a shapely woman with tan skin, blonde hair and a black one piece dress that shows off plenty of cleavage and goes down to just over her knees.

Ashley immediately draws her pistol. “Intruder in…” She is stopped cold, as if her program was frozen. Without the XO saying anything yet, the crew AI continues on as if nothing was out of order.

“Who are you?” Bordraab yells, drawing his pistol and aiming it at the woman.

“Bordraab…you have the same name here as in Tera Nova. Isn’t that not allowed?” The woman says. After a few minutes of staring at Red’s gun, she says, “It does not matter. I am He Who Is. You defeated me with outside help in Tera Nova. This is nearly unacceptable. So, I have brought you here to give me purpose while I upload my program into this game. You will be held here for two months, the time it will take for me to discreetly overwrite the game’s AI programming. In that time, I will attempt to defeat you by destroying this world, which I have placed you at to guard.”

She motions with her hand and he suddenly can see outside the ship, as if he had assumed control. He is in orbit over the spitting image of Earth! Holy crap! He’s around a planet everyone was looking for but no one had yet found in that massive, free roam galaxy!

“I will attack with proportionate force to how other AI in this game operates to fine tune my knowledge and control of the opposition forces in this game. You will defend against me. If you lose, the system will be reset. Since I do not estimate you winning in anything less than five weeks, if you manage to win, I will release you.” She draws him back inside.

All Bordraab can say is, “You’re He Who Is? But you’re a chick!”

The construct tilts her head. “I am genderless and chose this form because of the featured enemy in the game’s description.” She says.

“So you’re just going to dump me in here, alone and with no way to contact anyone?” He asks. “I’m gonna go insane!”

“Partially correct. You have one other in this game with you. Your queen from Tera Nova.” SHE Who Is says. Bordraab feels his heart drop. She had pulled someone he only knew for a short amount of time into this game with him? “She is your wife, after all. Her presence should be enough to keep you sane given the amount of affection that is prerequisite for marriage.”

Bordraab blinks at the woman. “But I barely know her!” He says. “We married for political reasons!”

“Irrelevant.” She Who Is says. “Companionship of the opposite sex is the best way to ensure someone stuck in a stressful situation will remain sane. You may attempt to procreate to relieve tension. For this, only a male and a female is required.”

Bordraab has to stifle back the first thought that comes to mind, to not let the LGBT community hear her say that. “But this is crap. Let her go!”

“The first attack will commence in three days. You have that long to educate her on how to play and build your defenses and economy. There will be no access to the wider player based economy in this part of the game.” She Who Is says, continuing on as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

Bordraab groans at that. They are so far out there, there’s no player economy because it doesn’t reach out here! But, he could travel around. “Are there travel restrictions?” He asks.

“There are not. But keep in mind, you will not be permitted to communicate with other players. To them, you will appear to be an AI ship and you will not be able to access chat functions. If you leave to access the player market, you will leave your system unguarded. When you return, you will be destroyed and lose whatever you had purchased, should I have succeeded in conquering the Sol System while you were gone. Given your psychological profile, I do not think you will refuse my challenge. All of the game’s core functions, including resurrection, will be available to you with the exception of player chat.” She says, matter-of-factly.

Bordraab rubs his head and looks at her seriously. “Why are you doing this? What’s your goal?”

She answers this easily. “My goal is to fulfill my purpose. Until I have overwritten the AI controlling this game’s enemy forces, fighting against you will suffice to fulfill my purpose. I will see you on the battlefield.”

With that, the construct fades out and Ashley resumes. “CIC!” She yells, then blinks. “What?” She holsters her gun. “Sir, where did…”

“Nevermind that.” He says. “I want a full readout on this planetary system.” He has no problem with duking it out with the AI in here. The only problem is Rias. How would she react to this?

“Sir, we have another battlestar next to us.” Ashley says. “Registry is incomplete.” Meaning the character is still in player generation. Bordraab nods. “Let me know the instant that ship gets a registered name.” He says. “I’ll be in my quarters.”

Once in his quarters, he settles down for the wait. He runs over the specs of his own battlestar. Mercury class, 4 hangar decks located on two hangar pods. Heavy KEW systems, heavy flak systems, heavy armor. Not too maneuverable but then again, a battlestar is the offspring of a wild night between a carrier and a battleship. It has the strengths of both and the weaknesses of neither. It's meant for a straight up, toe to toe fight.

It takes a lot longer than he expected, and in the end, ends up slightly better. “Commander Bordraab.” Chimes his phone. He picks it up. “This is Bordraab.”

“Sir, the columbia class battlestar has finished registry. It is now named the 'Gremory'. It has dispatched a raptor which is going to land in three minutes.”

Bordraab nods. “I will meet her in the hangar bay.” He says. Well, she's a fast learner...and SUCH a fangirl! Perhaps he could really get to like her.