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Alex found a new use for his temporary Stress-Tolerance Awareness skill.
Mainly, it showed him exactly where he should be bruising, and which of his joints weren’t meant to bend as they had.
He wouldn’t bruise of course—his healing was far too quick for that—but he knew where he should bruise.
It had been quickly determined that Juba was the best match for Alex, given Alex’s more widely applicable combat skills, and the Assault Officer had been joyful in showing Alex just how far he still had to go in order to truly incorporate and advance his skills.
From body-blows, jointlocks, and throws, through magically-blunted strikes from the man’s shortsword, and on to ruthless exploitation of highly refined spell and skillcraft, Alex had been utterly taken apart.
It had been interesting to understand what the magics were going to do to him before it happened, but only the first half-dozen times.
As to what Alex had done well?
Well, he was tiring the other man out, that was for certain.
I may be a punching bag, but at least I’m not a cheap one that falls apart before you’re done hitting it…
Alex’s regeneration and ability to precisely direct his own healing meant that he could just keep coming at the dark-skinned man, trying new ways of integrating his skills each time with little success.
Juba, for his part, loved Alex as a sparring partner, as, in his words, “It is wonderful to be able to use full force in a spar without fear for my partner. I like you.”
He liked to think that he’d have done better with his own weapon, but that was still broken, so he used what was available.
Alex groaned as his practice dadao was blocked once more, sent just barely off course so Juba could spin low to cut at his middle.
Alex was familiar with the tactic, and instinctively fired off his back leg, launching it upward even as he clumsily finished a Shaped Force Burst.
Still, this was hardly the first time he’d tried something similar.
This time, however, it worked.
The spell fired, catching Juba’s extended blade in a downward vector, driving it further toward Alex and the floor, forcing Juba’s body into an unsupported extension.
It was done properly—finally—and Alex’s knee caught the man straight in the chest, lifting him from the ground and eliciting a grunt of pain along with the exhale meant to help soften the blow on Juba’s side. Alex had let out a more powerful sound, meant to help his body give more in the hit.
He didn’t content himself with the knee, however, and Alex’s entire body contracted, bringing the dadao around and down in an overhead chop.
Juba wasn’t about to take such a blow without retaliation, however, whether he could actually see it coming or not. He was simply too experienced a combatant.
He lunged forward, chasing the withdrawing knee even as air gathered above him to slow Alex’s strike, the magic whispering to Alex about viscosity and surface tension and a drawing together.
It didn’t stop the full-power chop, but it did delay it just enough so that everything hit at once.
The dadao would have taken the man’s trailing leg just above the knee were it sharp, but Alex paid for that hit as the big man took out both of Alex’s own knees, driving them both to the floor in a tangle.
Alex’s Stress-Tolerance Awareness did not like the forces exerted on his soft-tissue and joints, but his bones were, once more, all but unaffected by the impacts.
Unfortunately, Alex wasn’t able to right himself before Juba once more came out on top, a magically-dulled knife seeming to appear in his hand as he held it to Alex’s throat.
Alex flopped backward, dropping his weapon and groaning, keeping power from his throat. “Well done.”
Juba laughed, the knife vanishing as he slapped Alex’s shoulder. “You too!”
He stood, offering Alex a hand.
“That was a wondrous hit.” Juba winced as he helped Alex stand. “I think you broke a few bones.”
Alex winced in sympathy. “Sorry about that.”
Juba gave him a confused look. “Why? Are we not training for war? Should you give me such a false sense of ability that I die to those who don’t treat me so lightly?”
Alex… had no response for that. “Fair enough, I guess.”
Juba slapped his shoulder again before heading over toward where Bev waited, calling over his shoulder. “I’ve more work to do, but we should spar again.”
Alex only hesitated for a moment. “Definitely.”
“Post jump? After we’ve dealt with whatever that throws our way?”
He grinned. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Alex almost went to Bev for the next stage of his enhancements and clean-up, but honestly? He felt physically wrung out.
He was in perfect health, but his stamina was down to about half, and there was only a few hours until they needed to jump, and he suspected that things wouldn’t be as calm once they left this ‘starter’ star system.
As such, he headed toward his quarters to grab a couple of hours’ sleep.
His hair was entirely soaked, and even though it had been cut short while he was in—
He stutter-stepped, barely catching himself and shunting his mind away from the dangerous subject.
Regardless, his short hair was drenched. His face was likewise sweaty, but his body under the coverall—and his clothes over it—were entirely clean and fresh.
He did not like the feeling, but blessedly, it was rather trivial to find the option on his bracelets to activate a pulse of cleaning to radiate up over his head and hair.
It took a bit more power than the ongoing effect that was constantly at work on the material itself and the skin underneath it, but only just.
Still can’t make this always active. That was too bad. Even so, he locked in the command for easier activation in the future.
There was no reason to let things get so bad going forward.
It also explained how Juba had looked fresh despite his obvious exertion.
Muscles for endurance might be a worthy upgrade… He bit his lip in thought as he opened his quarter’s door.
Such was his exhaustion that he didn’t even remember falling onto his bed before unconsciousness took him.
Just more than two hours later, Alex’s eyes popped open, a refreshed feeling filling him as he sat up.
“That’s the real magic, a refreshing night’s sleep.” He chuckled at his own humor. After all, no one else was likely to.
His voice sent trembles through the air, but he didn’t bother to put it in check. After all, the ship’s magics were advanced enough that they barely reacted to his low-level attribute.
Still, there was some reaction, and that gave him an idea.
He had done his best to suppress and ignore his dissonant voice since he’d somewhat recklessly accepted it. Now? He dove in and tried to focus on it.
The forms in his throat written in the language of power spoke to him of disharmony, of disruption, of discomfort on a fundamental level.
It was more an ‘uncanny valley’ sort of effect at the moment, where it felt worse to experience than it actually was in a ‘damage’ sense.
Still, it was power, and it was dissonance.
He narrowed his gaze to a small part of the wall in front of him, across from his bed.
First, he wished for a mirror, activating those magics in the hope that it might be glass, but as it formed, he realized that it was simply highly polished metal.
Still, it would work well enough as a test surface.
He read through the magics before him—the parts that he was able to see—looking for those responsible for strengthening the metal in a small location. “Break.”
The sound radiated out, the word meaningless noise from the perspective of magic.
That was simple to fix. He knew how to communicate ‘break’ in the language of power… but that was a written language, not a spoken one, and there was no way that he knew of to speak it.
There were apparently a lot of spells that could take the native language of the caster and effectively translate it, in order to improve or subtly alter the effects, but that wasn’t the same thing.
He grimaced, then shrugged. He did have something he could try.
He imagined the needed lines and forms within his throat. He tried to picture them being carried out as he breathed.
He opened his mouth and simply exhaled, intending to let it make a sound to trigger his attribute.
The same dissonance as before pulsed outward.
He sighed. “Well, I shouldn’t expect radical progress in my first attempts.” He smiled at that, and at the ripples that bounced around his room from his self-talk. That gave him an idea. “I’ll just have to start talking to myself more to use this attribute and try to learn about it.”
That decided, he pulled out his tri-ring and dove into mana manipulation practice.
There was no breakthrough, no moment of clarity like he’d had before. Instead, it was just a diligent slog, applying his new methodology.
He was getting rather tired of the bzzt upon each failure.
But he wouldn’t let a sound—no matter how irritating—distract him. He used his ‘sense’ and understanding of the language of power to get a picture of the whole puzzle, then he strove to ‘fill in’ the negative space with the proper communication, with strands of mana refined and minimized by the puzzle itself.
The difference was subtle—like the change from phonetic reading to picking up sight words—but he believed that it would reap dividends in the future.
He muttered under his breath, vocalizing his thinking throughout, trying to observe how his attribute interacted with the other tasks he was performing.
When there was only an hour left before the jump was primed, he put the tri-rings away and headed toward the mess area, locking power away from his throat on the way.
He wasn’t the only one with the idea of getting a last meal before the jump, so he was able to sit with most of the rest of the crew and chat over surprisingly tasty meal-bars.
They weren’t the same as a well-cooked spread, but they were satisfying and filling.
Good enough.
With that, it was time for them all to report to their duty stations.
It was jump-time.
…At least it would be, once they chose where to jump to.
Alex slid into bridge mode and was instantly reminded of something else that should have come to mind earlier.
Juba was outlining the twenty survival pods that he’d found and that he’d been able to reclaim and move to their lower cargo-hold. All twenty had Imperium citizens within, making their recovery a reward-worthy occurrence, even if not too significantly so.
Audry followed the grinning, powerful man with good news of her own.
She’d been able to finish stripping the richest vein on the large asteroid, as well as emptying the station’s cargoholds, garnering nearly three tons of prime ore of various types.
Again, this would be a good boost to their mission’s valuation when they arrived, but it wouldn’t swing the needle too much on its own.
With the pods hooked into their ship’s grids, and the ore in hypercompressed, inertially isolated storage, they were good to jump.
The rest of the crew did a quick rundown of their own systems, giving the greenlight for a jump.
Finally, everyone looked to Alex, expectantly.
He sighed. “This is wonderful and all, but where are we jumping to?”
That got some baffled looks, and John actually facepalmed.
Natasha chuckled before her eyes unfocused for a moment. When she returned to them a moment later, she brought with her a projection. “I did some research into that very question, actually.”
The image had been flattened and simplified, but the result was content that was quite easy to parse.
It was a star map with many branching paths, each one looking to be between twenty to fifty jumps long. They all, of course, converged on a single point, helpfully labeled ‘Dorgon.’
The Russian spoke into the continued silence. “From what I could pull from the records and our own long range scans, these are the viable jump paths available to us. If we take the most expedient route and jump as often as we can, we’ll arrive in just under eight days’ time.”
She let that sink in before she continued.
“There are, however, various systems on the way with information of note about them. Some are requests for aid of one kind or other. Some have notations of resources either lost in the area or potentially available. Some contain suspected pockets of hostile forces or known brigand hunting grounds.” She gestured, and one spot near the mid-point of one of the longest, most round-about possibilities glowed a bit brighter. “This place is of particular note as an ‘elevation artifact’. All I could determine was that it contains some sort of magical construct that… improves whoever uses it?”
Bev cleared her throat. “I’m aware of that historical site. It is quick to use, but Natasha is right to note how far out of the way it is. As to what it does? Effectively, it compresses your levels to match your current rarity.”
That got a lot of confused looks, causing her to elaborate.
“In essence, if you spent ten levels with a common race and class, then advanced to uncommon, you could go to this place, and it would remove five levels from you, while maintaining stats.” She lifted a hand and waggled it back and forth. “This is a gross oversimplification, and there are costs. It also cannot be repeated, so most people die while waiting for one more rarity improvement before utilizing it.” After a momentary hesitation, she added. “That ‘one time use’ is generally considered so for all relics of this type. You cannot simply find a different one to use later. There are other means of compression or restarting, but that is obviously not what this is about.”
That got grunts and mutters.
Finally, Pilar sighed. “So, it would be helpful, but not actually exceedingly so.”
That got more mutters of agreement.
Alex cleared his throat. “First off, I vote that we prioritize picking our next jump as soon as possible after this one. We’re just burning time right now.”
That got more agreement, and it prompted Natasha to highlight another system, this time within their current range. “Here, this is noted as mineral rich, and with Audry on our team, I think taking an ‘easy’ win to bolster our mission score would be wise.”
Alex glanced to Audry and found the woman grinning. She clearly appreciated the opportunity to ply her trade.
Alex shrugged. “Sounds good to me. I admit that I have no better idea at the moment, and at least one of us took the time to make a plan. I still say we pick the next one within a few hours of arriving…”
Soon enough, it was agreed. They would go to the mineral rich star system.
As a final act before the jump, Juba had a talk with Grant, as apparently it was somewhat common to insert boarders as a ship jumped into a system, if it could be managed, and the man wanted to know if Grant could use assistance monitoring for such hostile insertions.
Grant paled just slightly, then gratefully agreed, clearly intending to learn all he could from the assistance.
That could have been… bad. But disaster averted, I suppose. With the destination decided, Alex entered flight mode, taking a moment to revel in the feeling of being the ship once more.
He could feel the charged jumpdrive, like a nervous energy, spurring him to go.
He pointed it at the chosen system and felt a bit of irritation.
He had no doubt that they’d arrive near the selected star, but that was just about all he could guarantee.
He notified the others and was grateful to feel Lenka pull up a shield around the ship.
That’s probably wise standard procedure either way, honestly.
With the others ready, he triggered the jump.
It felt a bit like he momentarily became light, then that light looked around and realized just how slow it was.
That would not do at all.
So, the light somehow tapped into magic in a way that was equivalent to Alex taking an encyclopedia to the face, and they moved.
In a sequence that utterly destroyed Alex’s understanding of cause and effect, they arrived at their destination exactly 1.8 seconds before they left their previous location. Because why not tell physics to suck eggs in as many ways as possible?
He also had no idea how he knew that they’d arrived before they left.
Unfortunately, that was among the least pressing of his current concerns. For, it seemed that his imprecise jump had landed them smack dab in the middle of an asteroid shower, their shields flaring to stark prominence alongside myriad ship-board alarms.
Knotted string-theory.