My hand wasn’t fully healed when I woke up. The hole was gone, but scar tissue lingered across my palm, and my dexterity was a bit limited. It’d take a bit more time to heal all of that back. It was usable as long as I was okay with being a bit slow.
I finished off my last touches on the gauntlet for my Nightshade armor, and pulled back to look over the set. It had come along nicely since I started up work on it once more. Aside from its power cell, which I was still cooking up to better absorb my ambient bioelectricity, it was done and ready to go.
Weakness Wrangler, my newest Perk, activated with a thought. A pulse of purplish light flowed around me, and radiated across the set of armor. A moment later, the light settled and concentrated on the back of the armor’s plates near the thermal vent. The entire back section glowed with a faint purplish light.
I crossed my arms, and eyed the weakest link. Was it something I could even fix? The thermal vents needed to be relatively unguarded. Covering it up too much would drop the efficiency of the armor drastically…
If it was an issue for my set, it must’ve been an even bigger weakness for Mira’s power armor. Next time she dropped by, I’d have to work on that. How, though? Some kind of projected barrier, maybe?
I pulled one of the many notebooks I’d filled up off an overloaded shelf near my primary worktable, and flicked through it. Back when I was thinking about new products for Cold Moon Solutions, I’d sketched down some theories to use gravitic to create a projected bubble barrier. In theory, it’d vastly outperformed a similar design using magnetics that I came up with about a month ago.
A combat shield would, ‘course, sell incredibly well. Some kind of projected barrier like what I wanted would vastly outperform almost all other methods of personnel protection. The current methodology for most groups was just to make stronger armor, but durability wouldn’t matter if a projectile couldn’t hit in the first place.
I’d side lined the project since it’d require way too much time and energy to work properly. If I could make just a small panel of the gravitic shielding, though, it’d cover up the thermal vent without causing any overheat. The power draw would naturally be higher, but power wasn’t that big of an issue for me at the moment.
A warning alarm blared from off behind me. I rolled away from my table, and checked on my Foundries. The control screen flared with a bright red light. The revamped IndustryFriend prints I’d thrown in there had a small hitch with the fabrication process.
I fixed the issue and cleared out the malformed parts while thinking about how I’d get the gravitic shield to work. The biggest issue wasn’t getting gravity strong enough to reject projectiles. It was controlling said gravity. At the output I’d need, it’d be like strapping a singularity to my back and hoping for the best—suicide basically.
I rolled back away, and worked the problem over in my head again and again. No matter how I thought of it, I couldn’t think of a way to realistically get it to work. I lacked experience with gravitic outside of using it for reducing weight.
I could try to experiment for who knew how long to get the knowledge required… or I could cheat. Cheating was always an option. I leaned back in my chair and pulled up the EF Shop with a thought.
| Owl’s Repository of Knowledge - 50 EF
-Grants access to Owl’s Nest for a single subject. |
As far as I could tell, it was the same thing as the Knowledge Token he’d given me a while back. The thing I used to understand and perfect my Aether Jumping tech. Without, I probably would’ve never figured out how it all worked. To create something technically complex, knowledge of the fundamentals was the very first basis.
I checked the time just before hitting purchase, and promptly shut the interface down. As much as I would like to go now and sate my curiosity, I didn’t have time to lose a couple days.
I threw on my jacket, and headed for the way back up. Flashes of light and molten rock fell from above in small specks from where my auto miners diligently worked on expanding and cleaning up the tunnel down. I’d already checked the structural integrity with Weakness Wrangler and adjusted their parameters. It was coming along nicely.
The ascender spat me out back in the Speakeasy a few moments later. I activated Illusive, and slipped out of the apartment building as silent as a shadow.
— — —
My foot tapped idly against the ground, discharging several sparks of electricity from my overloaded internal capacitors. I check the time again—did I just get here too early?
”Haah.” A heavy sigh escaped me, and I sat back on my Roughrider. The meeting point was atop a tall building in the Corporate Quarter. One of Sentinel’s, probably. I had a splendid view of the eastern half of the city and the AEZ from up here.
My eyes snagged on the world tree standing in the middle of the the walled off section. It was looking more and more vibrant by the day. A subtle connection filled my head, almost akin to a yearning. Not mine, though. Never mine when it came to plants. It felt like it was from the tree itself.
I rubbed my head. Really, Shiro? Yearning from a tree? Maybe I was starting to lose it... I discharged another spark of electricity from my rapidly bobbing leg. I hadn’t been back to that place since I took down Corvin. It wouldn't be a terrible idea to go check on things.
A soft hum filled the air, and a flyer dropped toward the roof. All stray thoughts vanished, and I focused on the sleek back vehicle. It dropped into a low hover just over the building, and then set down onto a pair of landing gear.
The door to the flyer popped open, and a familiar woman stepped out. Brunhilde took a moment to appreciate the scenery, and then nodded to me. “Shiro.”
”Brunhilde.” I crossed my arms, and glared at the Valkyrie. I couldn’t help it. Something about her just made me uncomfortable. Probably the power disparity. “I half expected this to be a trap. What’s with the meeting point in the middle of nowhere?”
When I first came to scout out the building, I’d circled it for nearly twenty minutes trying to figure out what was up. The entire roof was warded, and triggered Aetherial Perception fiercely. Usually that wasn’t a big deal since most buildings had magic to manipulate wind these days. The wards here were quite different, though.
”I thought it’d be a nice chance to reminisce over old times.” She approached the edge of the building, and turned away from me. The way she stood was like a silent invitation.
I hopped off my bike, and slowly moved over to her. Technically, we should be allies now. That didn’t make my guard drop in the slightest. “What’s there to reminisce about? I hardly know you.”
”… fair.” She broke into light laughter. The sound was soft and pleasant like a ringing wind chime. “Doesn’t this remind you of back then in the slightest, though?”
“No—“ Something fast caught my attention, and my gaze flicked to the dark night sky. Tonight was one of the few nights it wasn’t raining, though cloud coverage still blotted out the stars.
A flash of light pierced the clouds. The dark masses split like they’d been hit with an incredibly fierce impact, and the entire section of the sky opened up far to the east of Aythryn City.
BOOM!
A fireball erupted into the sky. A moment later, a concussive force tore across the city. The building underneath us trembled fiercely like it’d been struck by an overwhelming earthquake. The wards all around the building flashed, and negated the majority of the force.
By the time the fireball started to fade, an entire mountain in the distance had disappeared. Brunhilde turned back to me with an excited grin on her face. “What about now?”
“The hell was that?” My chrome eye zoomed in on the distant mountain, but the air was so clogged with debris I couldn’t make anything concrete out.
“The result of our little collaboration.” She shrugged, and tucked her hands behind her back. “Tornado was naughty, and operated a massive Dark Net farm and AI lab just outside of the city. We’d long been wondering how an upstart company progressed so quickly. Dorrin had been all too happy to tell us about it.”
That level of destruction—was that an OP shot? The city still trembled below us with aftershocks. They really turned the lab in instead of hitting it themselves? No—maybe they didn’t. BosSpace had eyes everywhere, so it might’ve been inadvertently revealed.
“BosSpace?” A sick feeling wormed in my gut. Chek, chek it did remind me of something. I superstiously checked the building below us.
“This one won’t fall out from beneath us.” Brunhilde tapped her foot on the roof as if to reassure me. “They were all too happy to whip out the big guns. I heard authorization came from Loriel itself.”
Loriel was the fourth planet from the sun. The colony there was also the main base of BosSpace. Once more, I felt the gap between me and the true titans of the world. I was happy to just live well in Aythryn City, and they were out there conquering the entire solar system. “Just for that?”
”There was a whole lot of political maneuvering too.” She turned away from the devastated mountain. “You know how it is. Make an example of the ant to scare the elephant.”
The way she said that—it didn’t quite feel like a threat. More like a warning? And not a very subtle one at that. The nail that stuck out got hammered down. I didn’t have an AI lab, but it didn’t matter. If Cold Moon made too much noise without any backers, my fate would be the same as Tornado.
I shuffled back over to one of my saddlebags, and pulled out a briefcase. It was the main reason I agreed to the deal. “Here. It’s all signed.”
She popped open the case, and checked its contents. A bolt of irritation flowed through me. I was really handing over my pride and joy, the Roughriders, just like that? As much as I didn’t want to… my options were limited at the moment. My only real backers were the eidolons, and even then not really.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew full well the megacorp didn’t care about me. If I actually ran into some trouble, they wouldn’t go out of their way to protect me unless I offered something of extreme value. Under Sentinel’s banner, though, a lot of things would be a lot easier and corps would be more wary to try anything. Nobody wanted to be the ant.
“Blueprints?” Brunhilde closed it, and waved toward the flyer. A security guard came out and retrieved the case.
”On the chip in there…” I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I removed most of my anti-tampering tech.”
”Good, good. I heard some of the lab guys were nearly electrocuted by one of your bikes,” she said casually.
Did she really just openly admit to trying to reverse engineer my tech? That… I guess it meant the countermeasures were partially successful then. If I said no to the deal, it wouldn’t surprise me if Sentinel came out with their own hover bikes. Then again, I didn’t have much room to say anything considering a lot of my tech was based on their research.
I glanced back out toward the devastated mountain. “Can I go?”
“You make it sound like I’m keeping you hostage.” She pressed her hand to her chest like she was offended. “We’re allies now, CEO Tsukuyomi.”
“Allies… right.” I’d have to get used to that. I didn’t think the day would ever come that I’d cooperate with Sentinel like this.
”Don’t look so glum! This is the start to a great partnership, I assure you.” She reached out to pat my shoulder, then seemed to think better of it. “Oh, I was supposed to extend an invitation to a celebration party tonight.”
”I have some work I need to catch up on.” And I think I’d rather stick my hand in a blender than go to something like that.
“I figured it wasn’t quite your scene.” My HUD lit up with a text from her. “If you change your mind, you’d be the guest of honor.”
And she somehow made me not want to go even more. Impressive. The last thing I wanted was for my face to be well known. I backed away, and straddled my bike. “This was… something.”
”Indeed.” The Valkyries eyes twinkled with amusement. “I’ll see you around, Shiro.”
”Not if I can help it,” I muttered, and took off away from the building.