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Another burst of his guns blew through the structure underneath, and vaporized the pilot inside. The pirate fighter spun recklessly for a couple moments before it exploded into a million glowing pieces.

“You’re gettin’ better, kid,” said Jackson Stone.

The old man’s character appeared in Mack’s comms display. It was just like Jackson himself, but half as young and easily twice as virile.

But it wasn’t just his avatar – Mack had noticed that the game had a huge impact on Jackson. It was as though it breathed life into him, made him younger. At least while he was inside his pod.

“But don’t get cocky,” Jackson continued. “We’re still in the middle of a swarm! Stay in tight formation, and follow my lead.”

Mack swung his fighter over to Jackson’s, and covered his six as the old man drew the attention of multiple enemy pirate fighters. He did his best to tear into them, even as they tried to rip Jackson apart with their guns.

Although Jackson was peppered with all sorts of gunfire, he evaded them with amazing style and grace. It gave Mack more than enough time to gun down the pirates one by one.

As a dozen pirates swarmed around them, huge cruisers and powerful frigates traded blows nearby. Their cannons pounded on each other with both relentless persistence and reckless abandon.

.....

Fighters zipped around everywhere in between the giant ships, and fought off as many of their opponents as they could. A squadron of pirates blasted at one of the isolated Federation frigates, and ran strafing runs across it over and over. Their guns ripped into the frigate’s armor, and shredded them further with every ship that passed.

In response, the frigate aimed its anti fighter cannons at the pirates, and fired shell after shell of explosive flak at them. Each one exploded into black clouds of razor-sharp shrapnel, and tore into the fighters with devastating ease.

Some blew apart as they were perforated with dozens of razor-sharp slivers from the flak.

“Let’s take a page from the pirates’ tactics,” asked Jackson. “How ’bout we make a run on one of those pirate cruisers in exchange?”

“You sure? Can we even crack its armor with what we’ve got?” countered Mack.

“Hmph. Only an idiot goes after an enemy’s strengths. Follow me.”

Jackson disengaged from the pirate fighters, and left them to other Federation pilots to deal with. Then he and Mack zipped their way over to the main pirate cruiser. Although its defensive turrets shot at the both of them during their approach, they kept their distance and evaded their blasts easily.

“Alright kid,” said Jackson, “stay a thousand meters behind me, and follow a similar flight path. Just make sure you fire at the same exact target markers that I do, you hear?”

Mack gave him the affirmative as his main MFD lit up with Jackson’s shared targets. They all pointed out a number of weak points in the cruiser’s armor plating, specifically in the gaps between the plates.

Then, Jackson sped off in an evasive strafing pattern, and fired down the cruiser’s length with relentless chaingun fire. Mack watched for a moment, then quickly sped in after him. He too zipped into position while flying defensively, but leveled out as he tore into the unprotected sections of the cruiser.

The cruiser’s anti fighter guns did their best to bear down on the two of them, but their erratic and evasive maneuvers kept them all but untouchable.

Mack and Jackson’s combined attack ripped into the ship’s structure and tore into multiple components inside. Some passed through layers of electronics and insulation into nearby passageways, which caused atmospheric breaches in the hull.

Klaxons blared as pirates ran up to patch up the holes with their repair torches. Although the interior damage seemed slight, they treated every breach with absolute urgency.

And on the outside, the damage was clear as day. The spaces where they had shot were marred and blackened by their barrage. Small shards that had broken off from the cruiser’s structure and components flew out the scars they left.

Mack cheered in his VR pod as he ended his attack run and sped off to safety.

“We did some serious damage to that bigass beast!” he yelled.

Jackson chuckled softly to himself.

“Like I had mentioned,” he said, “go for the weak points, not the armor. And sure we did some damage, but it was far from serious. Look at the underlying components – tertiary navigation, secondary life support, one of the dozens of cooling units...”

“Alright, so we only scratched it,” said Mack. “All we gotta do is do it again, right? I mean, makes sense that we just keep doing that until it doesn’t have any components left, yeah?”

“Something like that. How ’bout you lead a strafing run this time? Mark off some prime targets, and I’ll follow up behind you. If you’ve got good targets, at least.”

Mack scanned the cruiser and reviewed dozens of potential targets all around the cruiser’s body. His eyes went wide when he saw where some of the juiciest targets were, and immediately highlighted them.

“You sure about going for the bridge?” said Jackson. “Those aren’t exactly as easy as your targeting computer thinks.”

“It’ll be fine,” countered Mack. “Just look at how weak the armor plating is there – if we perforate it, it’ll depressurize the entire bridge! If we can knock out the officers, then we’ve pretty much won this fight!”

Without waiting another moment, Mack spun his fighter around and set himself up for a strafing run across the front of the cruiser. His targeting computer optimized his flight path and firing sequence, then displayed it on his main MFD.

He zipped into position after doing all manner of defensive maneuvers, lined up his guns, and squeezed the trigger.

But before he could get more than a dozen bullets out of his guns, he was met with cloud after cloud of explosive flak. They burst all around him as he sped across the ship’s nose.

Razor-sharp shrapnel tore through his ship like it was made of paper. Pieces of his fighter sheared off or splintered away violently. It was dismantled piece by piece by piece until it finally exploded in a ball of orange flame.

“Aw, dammit,” cried Mack.

His VR pod’s screen winked to black as the words ‘You Died’ appeared right in the center. Then he heard Jackson laugh at his demise.

“There’s no such thing as a magic winning shot in a battle, or a war,” he said. “Even if you had taken out the officers, more would’ve simply taken their place. And besides, it might look like the officers are the least protected, but that’s just not true. Obviously.”

Mack sat in the dark and absorbed Jackson’s words. His screen roused from the dark, and found himself in a regen pod. The game treated him to a cutscene where his character was helped out by a couple of medical technicians.

“If you wanna knock out something that big though,” Jackson continued, “you wanna start with Maintenance. If you kill its ability to repair first, then any damage you do afterward will cripple it no matter what.”

On Mack’s screen, his medical techs looked him over, shot him with adrenaline to wake him up all the way, then ushered him into an adjoining room. There, he regained control of his character and picked out his next ship’s loadout and issued a call for its repair.

But before he could rejoin the combat queue, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Oop, gotta a call,” he said. “Be right back.”

Mack’s VR pod opened up slowly, like it was some kind of technological flower. He climbed out, then hopped down to the ground beside it. Next to his pod were three more VR pods, which were occupied by Jackson and two other oldschool Bellum developers.

They were all hooked up to their development workstations, which were plugged directly into the many racks of servers behind it.

In those servers was the entirety of the Bellum Aeterna galaxy, Jackson’s only pride and joy. Back there were servers filled with code that was worth tens of millions of dollars. Maybe even hundreds of millions.

Mack quickly pulled his phone out of his pocket, and without even looking, answered it.

“Hey, Mack here.”

“Hey! It’s me, Beth. Um. Your nurse from forever ago, in case you forgot.”

“Oh! Hey, hi! How’ve you been? What’s up?”

“I’m good, I’m good. I’m, uh, just sorta checking in on you. Not officially or anything. I was just... thinking about you recently. And, well, wanted to see how you’re doing.”

Mack blushed slightly as she spoke. He hadn’t been used to getting attention from anyone, not in a while. He scratched the back of his head absentmindedly as he responded to her.

“Ah, I’m okay,” he said. “Nothing crazy, just, um, stuff’s been tough lately and whatnot.”

“Oh yeah?” said Beth. “Something stressing you out? Are you getting tempted to get high or swallow pills or drink a lot or something?”

“Oh, no, ha ha. Nothing like that. I just kinda died in a videogame. Again. It’s like, I keep trying to accomplish something with it, like I’m trying to change my life through it. But... it’s just... it isn’t going like how I planned. It’s like I keep dying over and over instead of finding the thing that I want.”

“Sooo, why are you still playing it?”

Mack paused after she asked. He hadn’t really thought about that. In the end, he was still chasing after something he couldn’t ever get, to escape to a place he could never go. To be with a person who was long gone.

Bellum was just another pill he was trying to swallow, another drug waiting to swallow him. He sighed in realization of that.

“No big reason,” he said. “But I am truthfully kinda helping out the guy who made the game. I feel like I owe it to him to play at times. I feel like I’m his last real player and... it’s like he gets a real kick out of it. He really enjoys it when I’m playing his game, too.”

“I think I get it,” she replied. “My grandpa’s ninety this year. He’s barely holding on, and we all think that it’s his last year. So I’ve been spending time with him more and more. We just play checkers and oldass board games from when he was a kid. I really enjoyed going sometimes.”

She sighed wistfully for a moment, then exhaled with a hint of exasperation right after.

“But other times,” she continued, “I feel like I’m there because I’m obligated. Like, the family says it’s my turn to spend time with granddad, so I go out of duty. And when it becomes like that, it stops being fun real quick.”

“Yeah, something like that,” he replied. “Almost like I keep doing this for no reason, except for some impossibly slim hope of winning. Yeah, it’s definitely a bummer playing this sometimes, especially today.”

“Know what helps me when I feel like that?”

“What’s that?”

“Coffee and ice cream.”

She giggled slightly as she gave her answer.

“I know it sounds stupid,” she continued. “But I promise it’s awesome. Like, super duper comfort food. I’ll even show you the best spots, or my favorite ones anyway. That sound good?”

Mack blushed again, especially when he realized just how bold she was.

“A-are you asking me out on a date?” he stammered.

“Uh, duhhh,” she replied playfully. “So. You wanna go out?”

“How could I say no to that?”