Pei’s avatar looked at her. The Agent that was Lana Wilson was overlaid with the personality of none other than an emperor’s daughter. The princess had lobbied hard for the position, and several of her competitors from within her nation’s own populace had mysteriously disappeared during her campaign to secure the prestigious role. She sought glory and fame, and eventually she sought her father’s throne, and having her personality selected as one of the eight was as glorious a first step as she could envision.

In short, she was a pretty serious bitch.

But the strict parameters of the Treaty of Conquest, which all the world leaders of Mobilius had signed, dictated that while she was on this mission, she was one of the eight. Equal among her fellow Agents. At home, Pei Leong-Lam represented three much smaller empires, whose combined influence amounted to far less than the power of Lana’s mighty Balachai Dynasty, and Pei would have been no match for her, but here, the treaty Lana’s own father had signed made them all equals. He smiled at his condescending but temporarily impotent fellow Agent. He need stomach no shit from her here.

“Thank you for your concern,” said Pei, his avatar more than adequately delivering all of the thick sarcasm he had layered the words with, “but my assignment to the Hong Kong Intelligence Division puts me well on-track for promotion to Missile Command within our schedule. In a few years I will have access to significant proportions of the Chinese nuclear arsenal. It is, I believe, only in America and Russia that control of the nuclear arsenal is spread over all three branches of the military. Maybe I should be giving you some tips on how to handle your little country, Lana?”

John let them bicker. All the better. He assumed that Lana had some reservations about him as the only Agent nominated by the Nomadi clans. It was just her snobbery as a royal princess. Luckily though, she was just as patronizing to her other cohorts as she was to him and that suited John just fine.

It had been less than half a second of real-time since Shahim had last spoken, but the equivalent of nearly five minutes in the meeting of the machine-based minds when Shahim’s signal returned to guide the response of his avatar once more.

“I know the safeguards that the Pakistanis have put in place to guard against infiltration, but if I were to help them to defeat the insurgents once and for all then I would be a national hero. Surely an exception might be made for me at that point and I may be promoted early?”

The group thought about this. John hoped they would agree with Shahim, if only because John himself thought the idea was inherently flawed. But unfortunately they were not idiots, and one by one their avatars started shaking their heads.