The Saviors of Mankind

Chapter 30

The factory owner looked surprised when Cliff and the STS gang busted through the front door.

"PLAYERTECH FOR EVERYONE!" the crowd shouted, "PLAYERTECH FOR EVERYONE!"

"Excuse me for just a sec, Halmoni," Cliff said. Hyuna's grandmother kept going on about how Webb was a good school and everything, and Cliff's businesses achievements were impressive, but it was still buhaoyisi to have your granddaughter hanging around with the Global Scapegoat.

"Are you the owner?" Cliff said, yelling over the shouting crowd.

She was.

Cliff explained that he valued private property rights and was sorry about the intrusion, and in any event would be compensating her for the broken doors. But would she comply with his plan for a few days, and let him compensate her for lost profits plus ten percent?

"I can't guarantee the Playertech, guys," he shouted at the crowd. "Yes... yes... I know, Halmoni, I know. I promise you we'll turn this situation around... oh, you think the new Gamemaster is handsome? Please hang on...

He kept rotating between conversations until Halmoni agreed to call back in a few days, and Yong-Kun and the crowd agreed to a modified chant:

"What do we want?"

"Playertech!"

"When do we want it?"

"As soon as is reasonably feasible after a gradual rollout of Player competition to all Koreans!"

But the rhythm was off, so they stopped chanting after a couple of repetitions.

And the owner agreed to Cliff's plan. She knew she had him over a barrel, so she held fast to her demand for five percent of Cliff's equity in the Sea-Lords. It would have been three, she said, if not for all the bad PR in recent weeks. But Cliff looked at his fellow humans and thought the sacrifice was worth it.

The owner led them to the inner sanctum where Luxury Cosmetics stored its Extra-Special Trade-Secret 24-Hour-Perishable Super-Duper ZZ Cream — the only skin-care product of choice for the world's creme de la Cream.

Including the new Gamemaster.

This was war.

The SS Yingluck Shinawatra was an autonomous Malacca-max containership. It was passing Okinawa, heading south.

Hyuna blasted another salvo of drones in Pyongyang and then focused on Gamespace. She grabbed some resources from Survival. Half a dozen gunflyers were near the Yingluck and dormant. So was a White Tiger passenger drone. She steered all of them toward the ship.

When she'd finished blasting the defense drones, she brought all the flyers closer to the ship and made their cameras focus on the deck. Rows and rows of bright metal containers, blue and rust-colored, piled high along its surface. A heat sensor pinpointed the rust-colored one with a human captive inside.

Hyuna braced herself, bit her lower lip, and sent one of the flyers through the unlocked door, grateful that she didn't have to blast her way in.

The Gamemaster was lying on a wooden pallet. Hyuna scanned her and verified that she was still breathing, and apparently in OK condition.

"Gamemaster!" she called, through one of the flyers. Gamemaster! But Bae Sumi didn't respond, either by voice or Mental transmission.

Hyuna had to shift between realspace in Pyongyang — where she was still defending Cliff and the STS protestors — and Gamespace, where she was rescuing the GM. How to wake her up?