Freezing Shadows, Book 3 Epilogue

Epilogue: Elsewhere

(MetaTech Virtual Headquarters, Shadowmen Control Room)

Demi Turner frowned as one of the priority alerts began going off. “What happened, Sally? We didn’t have anything on the schedule, and none of the normal suspects have blown anything up, lately.”

Sally Navarro, one of her shift leads, moved to check the virtual command consoles. “Looks like someone tripped a ‘dragon alert’? Haven’t seen that since about two months into the beta. Pretty much everyone learned fast that dragons weren’t to be trifled with.”

Demi groaned. “I know we wanted dragons to be in the setting as a definite ‘you can’t just shoot everything’ button, but you would think the damn players would know better all the same. Pull up the logs, so we can see who died, and how much damage they caused.”

Sally frowned as she started going through the logs. “All right, we have the dragon in question. Roaki, feathered serpent variety, normal dragon, not a Great, has a job as a high-level executive with Mixsanto, part of the deeper lore plotlines with that megacorp. Logs indicate an internal hit placed by a rival. The idea was to hire a team through a mid-level cutout that could be removed at the same time the team was eliminated.”

 “Fuck!” Demi cursed. “I know we unlocked the betrayal missions now that people have had some time to get used to things, but for one of the first ones to involve a dragon? That’s some awful luck. Which server did this happen on?”

“Looks like a mix of the Seattle and Vancouver servers. Team based on the Seattle server crossed into Vancouver server territory for the job, it seems. Dragon battle took place at a corporate mansion out away from people. Then, it looks like things continued back into the Seattle server.”

“Wait, things continued after the dragon battle? I haven’t seen any reports of a dragon rampage.”

“Let me check,” Sally said, scrolling through the system logs. “OK, so, looks like Roaki and a summoned Force 8 water spirit were both taken down at the corporate mansion. The team went to the meet, and there was an ambush, but they countered it, and wiped out the corporate kill team.”

“Seriously? They were still good after tangling with a dragon and a Force 8 spirit, and they were able to take down one of the kill teams? How many people did they lose?”

“None.”

“No, seriously, how many got sent for a reroll? I mean, they couldn’t have gotten out without trouble. Don’t tell me the dragon was bugged!”

“No, really. And it doesn’t look like a bug, either. I’m looking at the logs, here. The team used some high-end medkits after the dragon fight, and there was healing magic being used. Same after the kill team. They healed themselves up. No deaths on their side.”

“What the hell kind of load-out did they have that let them get past a dragon and a spirit without taking a couple deaths?”

“Looks like they had a lot of anti-armor ammunition. That APDS stuff, that is designed to break through armor. Also see heavy weapons, sniper rifles, and a weapon focus in the mix.”

“Huh. All right, heavy weapons with the APDS would do it, sure. But that shit’s too expensive, and too hard to get in bulk for them to be just running around with it.”

“Log says that there was a negotiated cash advance, in Mixsanto corporate script, and a token to allow them temporary access to purchase restricted gear. They spent a lot of nucred, not just the corp script, on weapons, ammo, even vehicles.”

“Which team is this?”

“The Mysterious Seattle Man’s,” Sally said with a grin. “If I had to guess, I’d say that he smelled a rat from the start, and decided to prepare for the sky falling. Probably didn’t expect a dragon, but they were definitely prepared for the kill team. And it looks like their hacker was a busy little bee.”

“All right, I can accept that much. He was one of our Beta testers, so he ran afoul of a couple betrayal runs before. And his team is soaking up the wisdom, and making good use of it. Makes sense. But I want to focus in on that dragon fight. Even if they were loaded with heavy weapons and armor-piercing weapons, that shouldn’t have been an easy fight.”

“Right,” she said, and brought the logs of the fight itself up on a virtual screen for them to look through. “All right, here’s Roaki’s AI code just before the fight. Looks like the mansion was being treated as one of his lairs, so the invasion, killing the guards, and so on angered him. Personality flags indicate he is more the ‘claws and teeth’ type, than the ‘breath weapon’ or ‘sit back and toss spells’ type.”

“Against a normal group, that was probably fine. What happened?”

“Dragon went after Mysterious Seattle Man, who parried claws with his sword. Spirit blasted their adept, probably because they were the two ones with magic. Roaki ate full auto with an LMG using APDS rounds, followed by semi-auto on a battle rifle with APDS rounds, which put him out. Spirit took down the heavy gunner, before MSM and battle rifle girl took down the spirit. And then they ran.”

“They didn’t take trophies or anything?”

“No, doesn’t look like it.”

“All right, that’s fine. The dragon AIs are set to be a bit vengeful if people start harvesting their kin for parts. If they didn’t take trophies, we shouldn’t have to worry about dragon revenge plots anytime soon. I know someone will get stupid, eventually, but Iceblade and his team are one of the rising star teams in the game, so it would suck to see them taken down too early.”

“Oh, I’m looking at the Roaki code, now. AI is adjusting. Dragon stabilized, as all ‘high value’ individuals are programmed to do if they aren’t killed outright. The AI decided that this is going to be a learning experience for the dragon. Reminder not to get cocky.”

“Fine, that will also make any future encounters with him more challenging. Check the logs to see what led to the dragon being the target, see if there was a miscommunication there. What about the in-game fallout?”

“Too soon to say, boss. I’ll flag it so someone is keeping watch on the situation, though.”