Chapter 322 - George, Head of Maintenance

Author's note: This chapter is a big one. Nearly three normal chapters long. Took a lot of editing, and still only feels like I got it mostly right.

Also, I'll be at LitRPG con July 10th to 12th, if you happen to be in the Denver area. I have been told I will have books to sign, if you're interested.

Anyway, onto the chapter

...Magelord...

He felt like the station shoulda been shaking, the amount of damage it was taking. It would’ve made sense.

Those in the outer wards, likely were. They didn't benefit from the new techniques that drew on the altered universe. Or magic, as most laymen were calling it lately. A better and truer understanding of the universe. That’s what it really was.

But what do I know, I’m just maintenance,” George grumbled as he charged up the hallway towards the command bridge.

Maintenance. While there was a lot more under that umbrella than he’d prefer, naming things wasn’t one of them. Not yet.

Things kept changing the way they’d been going, wouldn’t be long until there wasn’t any council at all. Already they were down to eight.

Picking up more duties wouldn’t just mean more duties, it’d mean more schooling. After a fifty year apprenticeship, he wasn’t in a hurry to go back. Didn’t matter that it’d been over five hundred years since he’d graduated, the principle still applied. At least it hadn’t been education for education's sake. It was very little he'd learned throughout his fifty-year apprenticeship he didn't put into practice at least once a year.

“Eve,” George said calmly, not a trace of his haste present as he strode into the command center of the station. Couldn’t have the Head of Maintenance out of sorts when on deck. “Things ain't going well, I take it?”

“Your talent for understatement continues to improve, old friend,” Eve flashed him a grin from her command chair. “Now if only you could do the same with our shields.”

“Did all I could before we were under attack. Not like I can send my people out there with all this going on.” George gestured to the sky. It was bad.

Worst war in recorded history bad.

And considering how much history they’d piled up since they’d escaped Earth some thirty-thousand years ago, that was saying something, in his opinion.

Their junior officer held back a snort from her cradle at the front of the cabin. She was young, barely three-hundred years old. But she was from the latest species to join the Star Union, so that was to be expected.

The dragons, despite their innate power and arrogance, had taken one look at the fleets of the Star Union and petitioned for membership. Made sense to George. By then they’d already allied with the Myriad and uplifted the raptors. The latter had been a proper mess, from what he’d read.

Gene clipping, labor camps, terraforming crews…

A blight on humanity’s record.

That it had galvanized the formation of the Star Union, a government who had members within it who’d lived in those days… well, George had always found that part aspirational.

Too bad his aspirations couldn’t hold a candle to this latest species. “What even are these things?" George asked, leaning over the counter, staring at the dispaly as if it’d flash up and give him a readout.

“Command’s calling them gamma aliens. The troops who've had the misfortune of running into them on the ground are calling them Terrorgaunts.”

“Certainly ugly enough. Doesn't really answer the question of what they are, though. Or where they came from.”

“They come from beyond the galactic rim,” Bahama mumbled.

At the same time Eve said, “We don't know yet.” Eve turned to their junior officer. “Something to share, Bahama?”

“No ma’am. Just old ghost stories is all.”

“Right. Command’s telling us their origin point is on the far side of the galactic core. Could be you’re right.”

“You'd think with all of our technology we wouldn't be able to be surprised by things anymore,” George grumbled even as he looked over the readouts. He knew the shields were holding, though they had a few casualties in the outer wards. No deaths not yet. When he got the chance, he’d extend those shields. Might mean more work for his crews, but they had the hands.

Then he frowned.

“Are they eating the MAT-shield?” George asked, not expecting an answer as he zoomed in on part of the picture. Then he realized it was the other way around. The shield was somehow tearing the creatures apart. They were trying to climb in through one of the feeder vents that sucked in stellar debris.

Instead, they were being ripped apart and fed into their storage.

“Not the smartest buggers are they?”

“According to command they're as smart as a bacterial infection,” Eve said, leaning back. “But only until one of their queens show up.”

“Queens, huh? They just as ugly?”

“Of course they are,” Eve said, waving a hand at him. “More importantly they're as big as our station and their mobile?”

“How does something that big slip through the seventh dimension?”

“Command's not sure,” Eve growled, smacking the console in front of her. “Command's not sure about anything.”

“That's always how it is when it’s important, isn't it?” George asked, frowning as he swept the sensor. Not liking the result, he cast a spell unifying his senses with those of the station. He squinted in a way that made the arrays of enchantments flare brighter for a moment. It had the side effect of incinerating every one of the attacking creatures within a hundred miles of the station.

Which barely put a dent in them, which was fine. What it did was let him see where they were coming from.

“Is that a wound in space?” George asked, flicking what he'd spotted up on one of Eve's screens.

“It's pulsating,” Eve said, tilting her head to the side. “Almost like it's...”

“Almost as if it’s alive,” Bahama muttered, the young dragon’s voice quavering.

“Don’t you worry. We’re far from in the thick of it,” George said, stepping over to the dragon. “Eve, what do you say we call Chris? ‘Bout time the Head of Defense did his damn job, don’t you think?”

Eve let out a long sigh. “Was hoping to avoid that. You know how he gets.”

“Yep. Not worth anyone dying over, though.”

“No… no, you’re right.”

George nodded as Eve cast the spell, contacting her brother.

A second later, a ball of fire burst out the side of the ship, headed in the direction of the rip in space.

“Huh. Guess he decided to take care of it personally,” George mumbled.

“He’s going to be unbearable for the next year, at least.”

…Mage Lord…

Eve had been right. Chris had been insufferable.

Luckily, George only saw the man during emergencies or the rare council meetings where he bothered to show up.

While the latter were more rare than a sober pirate, the former were getting far too common.

“What is it this time?” he grumbled while channeling a spell that would let him detect fractures as they formed. “Buggers never hit this hard.”

As he knelt down, attempting to use one of the new spells that promised to restore atoms to their position from several minutes ago, he decided he didn’t want an answer.

If the buggers or terrorgaunts (or whatever they were calling them these days) hadn't been bad enough, they weren’t alone.

Something was hunting them. Not that they’d stuck to the terrorgaunts.

In great ships that pulled stars out of position when they drew near, the bastards had deleted entire star systems when they first showed up.

A somewhat understandable position when those star systems were full of the buggers.

Less so when there wasn’t a bugger within a hundred lightyears.

On the plus side, there weren’t many of them. Twelve of their giant ships in total. Easy to track too. Which meant that unless you were an idiot that went looking for them, you could avoid them.

The other plus side, one that the Star Union had recently launched a mission to confirm, was that they weren’t capable of directly manipulating the higher dimernsions. Which meant no magic.

Not that it mattered when they had technology that could focus the entire power of a star through a small portal.

George knew that last bit from personal experience. Very recent personal experience.

“Yep, I’m an idiot. Why the hell did I think it was a good idea to join this expedition?" George muttered as he ducked underneath a glowing console, where an enchanted support beam, was phasing in and out of reality to offset the energy overload.

“George, still alive down there?” Eve's voice came through from somewhere above him. “Getting a lot of interference.”

“Yep, you'll get a lot of interference when half the ship is phasing out of reality to offload energy so we don't turn this trinary system into a quadrary.”

“I'll just let you work. Let me know if there’s anything you need from...”

“Coffee, a lot of coffee.”

“On it.”

Bless her overpowered ass, she followed through in less than ten seconds.

“One for me, one for you,” George mumbled, taking a sip of the coffee before swinging some of the enchanted bean juice onto the support beam. Combined with his spell, the Earth Affinity did its job. “Just needed a bit of a nudge, is all.”

The energy they’d been shunting was redirected into repairs, solving at least six problems at once. Which was important when your problems bred like rabbits.

“Yep that's gonna do it,” George said as he stepped away from the support beam. Honestly such simple repairs were below his pay grade. Unfortunately, everyone who normally worked in the Shield Chamber had got an early start on their Phoenix Ascension.

“That’s what the kids are calling it these days, right? An early start on Phoenix Ascension?” George asked as the ship recovered. Out the window, he saw the familiar burn of Chris streaking across the sky.

“They have no respect for how terrible it is,” Eve said, shaking her head.

“I mean… at least they won’t stay dead. And it’ll make it easier once they’re ready to take that step.”

“You know a single death doesn’t make the ascension easier.”

“All it took for me,” George said, patting his chest.

Eve rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes. Aren’t you special. Isn’t there a cascading energy overload you need to deal with or something?”

George snorted. Then he sighed. She wasn’t wrong.

Damn kids. He bet they got themselves killed just so they could take a couple years off.

Well, the joke was on them. George loved his job.

…Mage Lord…

George loved his job, but sometimes he really hated Central. That feeling had been growing stronger and stronger over the last thousand years.

At first, the war had been fun. Invigorating, even.

After all, they were just losing ships and planets. Wasn’t like anyone was dying. Not permanently.

Turned out for some people, dying wasn’t something they could handle very well.

“Just how many different things did they poke?” George grumbled as the Dominus retreated back into the 7th dimension, skipping away from yet another hostile alien race. “We sure they didn’t make this one?”

“No sir,” Bahama replied. She wasn’t nearly as insecure as she’d been the first time out with them. Her death at the hands of the boneheads (or techno-liches as the less interesting people had started calling the star-killers) had stiffened her backbone. “Considering we haven’t heard from Central in nearly a hundred years, they might’ve created their own doom.”

“Should’ve at least made their doom prettier,” George said while climbing into the harness around the dragon. One of the ugly green warriors had snuck their way onto the bridge. It’d been dealt with easily enough, but their guts had a tendancy to muck up the enchantments. Worse, if he didn’t get all of it, it could feed off the lines and produce new greenlings.

“It’s central’s fault we couldn’t make peace with the Ecronid,” Eve said as she threw up pictures on the vid. Disections of the latest threat.

“Still can’t believe how poorly they reacted to a few feathered raptors,” George grumbled while grabbing a bucket and cloth. But only after he’d tied his beard up. Didn’t want to risk getting it in greenling. Unfortunately, he was stuck doing it by hand. Using the higher dimensions to clean the mess only made things harder.

Bahama’s voice set her harness quivering as she said, “It’s believed they have an ancestral fear of raptors.”

“Pretty silly not to tweak that out, considering how they’re mostly machine.”

“They kept it for the horrorgaunts,” Eve said from somewhere above him. “But that’s why I’m saying Central flubbed it. Heard the Ecronid offered to continue negotiations, so long as the raptors weren’t at the table.”

“Like, figuratively or literally?”

“Literally. They had no problem with someone else standing in for them. They just refused to weaken themselves until the prime enemy had been eradicated.”

“Seems a silly thing to stay at war for.”

“Better than that attempt at a beard,” Eve grumbled.

“Hey, this beard is a magnificent creation,” George objected.

“How do you know these things, sir?” Bahama asked, shifting her head slightly in Eve’s direction.

“Head of Research. We get all sorts of information.”

“More like head gossip,” George grumbled, barely catching a clump of greenling before it fell onto the dragon’s scales. “Hold still Bahama, less you want me tearing off half your scales. These things don’t come out easy.”

A shudder started moving through the dragon at his words, but she fought it down before it reached him. “I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

George chuckled. “Understandable. So miss head of Research, what are these ones? Some sort of mutant slime?”

“They’re closer to fungus, though they feed on energy from the higher dimensions as much as rotting corpses.”

“Why’re they so green? The do photosynthesis too?”

“Because someone at Central really likes green.”

George couldn’t help it. He let out a belly laugh at that. And sloshed the last of the green muck over one of the high flow lines. “Uh. Oops.”

“Oops?” Bahama asked, twisting her head. “What do you mean, oh Union no!”

Before George could point out that dragon-fire wasn’t particularly effective against the greenlings, Bahama proved him wrong. The flames scoured everything in the harness clean.

Including him. And more importantly… his beard.

“Damnit, I just got it perfect,” George said, slapping his face. Alas, it was too late. It’d gone the way of the greenling. As had half the control harnass.

“Oops?” Bahama said, ducking her head slightly.

…Mage Lord…

George missed his beard.

But attempting to grow it back with greenlings around was a fools errand. If the damn things didn’t get it, the fires they used to purge them would.

He probably should’ve been more concerned with not getting his face smashed in at the moment, but that had an easy fix. Quick rebirth and he’d be good as new. His beard though? That took years to get right. “You know this is why we're supposed to have security,” George said as he dodged underneath a massive green fist. Damn thing was nearly the size of his chest. “I only did the minimum combat training for a reason.”

“Quit your belly aching,” Eve yelled back, her hair flowing around her as she channeled fire hot enough to incinerate the green beasts that had invaded the ship. She’d taken to it quickly after discovering how to replicate Bahama’s version. “You're barely keeping up.”

“I'm maintenance, Eve, maintenance," George called back, even as he pulled his wrench back, adjusting its settings. The Clamp slammed shut, smushing one of the big greenlings. Orcs as Eve had so creatively coined them. “At no point should I be keeping count of my kills. That's not what maintenance does.”

“It's not research's job either,” Eve called back. “You don't see me complaining about it.”

“That’s just because it gives you an excuse to let your hair down,” George pointed out while dashing further towards the main console. “How is it they keep getting in anyways? Don't we have wards for this sort of thing?”

“You're the one in maintenance,” Eve snapped. “Shouldn't you know?”

“That’s what I’m saying! We have wards for these things. How’d they get through? Did they adapt? Pretty sure that makes it research’s department.”

“I'll show you research's department,” Eve said, flashing him the middle finger even as she swept the chamber with another wave of fire.

She wasn't particularly careful about it and left George's lower half a smoking ruin, not that he could feel it. He’d dampened his pain centers the second the orcs made it inside their ship. He hated feeling pain. And every time the greenlings made it in, he got injured.

“I've got you,” Eve said before George could mutter a word of complaint about the state of his legs. She kneeled down, her healing magic washing over him. It was scary how good she was getting at using it without tools.

They stood up and looked around the scorched room before turning to the pods where the less fortunate crew members were regenerating. At least, where they had been regenerating. Half those pods had been smashed by the invaders, forcing the others into the vault.

“They're adapting,” Eve said, her voice low as she pulled open a nearby cupboard, firing up the coffee maker. They kept them all over the ship. Turned out the greenlings didn’t like coffee anymore than they liked fire.

“Yep,” George agreed, accepting the cup of coffee she handed him, taking a long sip.

“We're losing this war, George.”

“Yep,” George agreed again, this time with a long sigh. “I think it might be time we did something different.”

“Oh?”

“We're not fighters, Eve.”

“The evidence suggests otherwise.” Eve gestured around the chamber full of orcs that had been reduced to ash. “We’re good at this.”

George gestured to the side, where they could see the depths of space through a rend in the ship. Chris flashed past in a blaze of light, incinerating thousands if not millions of greenlings as he went. He knew Bahama was out there somewhere too.

“They’re good. We’re barely passable. I think it’s time we played to our strengths.”

“Right,” Eve said, staring out into empty space for several seconds before turning to him. “You have an idea.”

“I have an idea.”

…Mage Lord…

“We’re running away,” Eve said, several centuries later as their shuttle carried them through the deadly fluctuations of super-charged mana towards the ark-station.

“If I squint, I can see how you’d put it that way,” George said, hand firmly clasped to the support as their shuttle took them in an arc over the framework below. The last of the planet sized engines nearing completion, its last continent sized plate drifting into place. “I like to think of it more as preserving our culture.”

“By building a worldship that’ll drift between galaxies. It’s running away with extra steps.”

“I’d like to point out you had years to come up with a better idea.”

“Oh, I think it’s the right idea. I just wanted to be clear that’s what we’re doing.”

“Awfully strange time to bring it up,” George said as they cleared the transparent barrier, the discus shape that was the ark-station coming into sight as the mana was left behind.

“Just thinking about the video.”

George scowled as the shuttle shook, passing into the station’s mana-generated gravity. “Damn buggers making propaganda is unnatural.”

“I found their attempt amusing.”

“Disgusting. You know they weren’t using props. Those were real people.”

Eve nodded. “I’m well aware. Yet it’s the effect it had I find amusing. People are standing up, fighting back in record numbers. The anti-war party’s lost a lot of support. Chris wants to stay.”

George had been about to step out of the shuttle, but he hesitated at that, meeting his old friend’s gaze. “What’ll we do? Hard to replace our Head of Defense.”

“He’s not about to abandon us,” Eve said, stepping forward while holding the elegant dress she’d chosen for the day up to keep it from catching. A strange affection for a woman who’d embraced direct manipulation of the upper dimensions as completely as she had.

Despite noting the action, it was barely a flit across his mind as he considered the implications. “We’ll need to keep him happy.”

“Precisely. Much as this war’s been wearing on the rest of us, Chris…”

George didn’t need her to finish. There were a few who’d taken to the war like fish to water. Chris was one. “Don’t think we should.”

“You don’t think we should keep him happy?” Eve glanced in his direction, an eyebrow raised. Even at a glance, she could read his thoughts. “Ah. You don’t think we should bring him.”

“He’ll do more good here.”

“Ha, he’s going to be shocked,” Eve said, shaking her head. “He was certain you’d never let him go.”

“Not like it’s my choice,” George grumbled. He was Head of Maintenance, not personnel.

“You know he wouldn’t have gone without your approval,” Eve chastised him even as she slipped her arm through his. “Now, enough about my brother. Let’s go convince them this miracle we’re building is proceeding as planned.”

George grunted, escorting her through the pomp of their landing. Enduring the politicians was a painful but necessary part of getting funding. Thankfully, Eve handled most of that. He was just there to prove he valued their time.

However, knowing this would be their last meeting, George had a hard time listening. Instead George’s attention repeatedly drifted to the display hovering over the main banquet table. A three-dimension representation of the star-engine that would soon take them out into the deep black.

Self-contained and renewable. Only one of a dozen such designs being built. The other species didn’t have the tolerance for crossing the void the Star Union races did. The why of it was Eve’s department. It was enough for George to know it was true.

The display wasn’t the up to date model. It was instead one of his old thought experiments, one that’d won awards back in its day. Easier to sell than the revised version.

Unfortunately the engine worlds weren’t nearly as verdant as the display indicated. They were barely habitable. Even the small support cities around the control centers were primitive compared to the City Worlds at the heart of the United Star Federation. Yet the video only proved they couldn’t wait. Information was leaking, even if the buggers didn’t know how to use it.

However, telling the representatives that the world-engines were ready… well, some would insist on every little luxury. The idea of setting out with little more than the basic necessities would lock them in place for the next few centuries. As if those basics weren’t work enough on their own. Most didn’t understand the hurdles of keeping heat, air, water and gravity within reasonable tolerances.

Even then, it had been easy, compared to their true feat.

A clamor rose as Eve drew his attention back. She stood, giving a short speech about their great destiny, the future, and the hopes of the Star Union. He’d heard hundreds of variants.

This one felt especially hollow, considering their plans for the next year. It was still met with the usual applause, and even a couple laughs at her reference to the video.

They felt safe to laugh here, so far from the front lines. Those lines weren't very solid, more holes than Andromedan cheese.

The representatives filtered out. Only after they’d left did George allow himself to return to his work.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Eve asked, squeezing his arm. After thousands of years working together, she didn’t wait for his response. “You’re relieved.”

“Course I am. There are people counting on us.” The implication was the representatives, though they both knew he meant the citizens, they’d be taking with them. The roughly ten billion sapients spread throughout the system. A tiny population, by the Star Union’s standards. Not even enough to grant a system a seat on the lower council.

“So, Chris… how are we going to tell him?”

“That we’re letting him off the leash?” George chuckled, looking out across the remains of the banquet. Then he looked up, in the direction of one of the world engines. Rotary Three. “By telling him it’s an important mission.”

“You want me to lie to my brother?”

“Hardly. It’ll be easier for us to slip away if he’s making waves on the front. No one’ll expect us to leave without him.”

“Sometimes, I think you pay more attention at these things than you like to admit.”

“Nah. Just know that our little star’ll be outshone by his.”

…Mage Lord…

The break had been clean. For a few thousand years, everything had been perfect. Then they’d made the mistake of drifting too close to a passing galaxy.

Turned out the war had spread faster than they’d run. Luckily only the buggers found them. And only a single queen at that.

Unfortunately…

“It's too much. Without the ark-station…” George trailed off, rubbing his head while staring at the readouts. “We just can't keep everyone alive, not long enough to produce the parts we need.”

“You have an idea,” Eve said, hand on his shoulder.

George nodded. “You remember the boneheads, how they spend their time when there's no one to fight?

“Of course. I was the one who figured out how they induced… stasis. You want us to put people into stasis?”

“Everyone who’s not critical,” George confirmed, bringing up the displays, flashing the lights around the core control centers. “It’ll keep things secure. We bring everybody to the cities, lock them down.”

“Hmm. What if something goes wrong?”

“I mean… you know how hard it is to break the stasis from the outside. And it’s going to take centuries to grow everything we need.”

“Somebody should stay outside, watch over it,” Bahama said, her voice not nearly as loud as it had once been. She was smaller now, having improved her control of the upper dimensions. Twelve feet was still a bit tall to be comfortable in the common spaces and made the table she stood over appear a bit like a toy. It was better than most dragons could do, at least the ones George knew.

Bahama looked up from the table, the dragon blushing at their shared attention. Even after thousands of years, she still got embarrassed if they looked too long. George thought it was rather endearing. “You always say it’s better to have redundancy.”

“That’ll be us,” George confirmed. Most of their wards had failed to ascend. Without the support of the Star Union, the process was proving more difficult than expected.

“Us?” Bahama asked, looking between them. “Just the three of us…”

“No.” Eve said immediately. “We’ll need teams. Volunteers only.”

“Might want to set it up so we can rotate. Take turns…” he trailed off at Eve’s gentle shaking of her head. “No?”

“Each of us will need to watch over one of the worlds,” Eve said, gesturing at the display. “Now that we’ve lost the ark-station.”

“Once more, I apologize,” their Head of Defense replied. The rainbow-scaled lizard-folk, bowed her head in their direction. “I fear I am a poor replacement for your brother.”

Neither George or Eve could deny the point. She’d see right through it.

“It'll be hard to see each other,” Eve noted.

“Not impossible though. We’ll just need to be patient, a few hundred years and we’ll be able to start the repairs.”

“We’ll need more than one plan,” Eve said, shaking her head. “For when things go wrong.”

“Right,” George agreed.

Together the four of them set to work.

…Mage Lord…

George stared at their latest contingency, unsure how he felt about it.

The devil like creature stared back. It's permanent grin reeking of malice. Was a sign of how far they'd fallen that he was even considering binding these…creatures. Still, the lower dimensional beings weren’t have as clever as they thought they were. In truth, they had a hard time perceiving ascended beings like George. Like a mortal, they were only capable of thinking in four dimensions.

“Your magics will fail you like they failed the rest of your foolish little union,” the being said, tilting the wide horns as it chuckled.

“Did they have your name?” George asked, gesturing to the circle.

The devil looked down, the flame in its eyes flashing as it read the truth in the circle. “How did you…?”

“My friend’s pretty good at research,” George explained.

“It will fail,” the devil said, though it had a lost amusement in its voice.

“Lotta things fail,” George agreed, pacing around the circle. “Especially if you don't look after them. Most people don't appreciate that how much work goes into maintenance.”

Stepping back, he nodded to himself. The enchantments were solid. They'd take the creature's name, strip it away, then bind it with new purpose.

“And you're about to find out just how much effort goes into that maintenance.”

The Bone Devil thrashed as the enchantment took hold. It took years for the process to finish, decades. Only after it was finished, did George go back.

“Now… you said the Union had failed. Which means you’ve got news from back home. I think it’s time you answered some questions… wouldn’t you agree, Keeper?”

…Mage Lord…

“Hello stranger,” George said, staring into the reflective surface of one of the System's altars. It was his own face staring back. “If you're seeing these, it means everything went tits up. I'm most likely dead. The others too.”

“It's funny. Over 50,000 years and it still feels like I never had enough time. I remember back in the beginning. You know we used to think there'd be a thinning of the person left over. It feels like it's the other way around: like wine, people only get better with age.”

George stared blankly into space for a time, letting his mind wander. Eventually, he continued, “This is supposed to be an emergency back-up, locked unless something happens to the head of maintenance. It’s supposed to be a temporary measure. So was putting them into stasis. But we didn’t expect betrayal. From the devils, yes. Not from one of our own. Never should’ve let Chris stay…”

George trailed off before shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. That’s in the past. What does matter are the people. The sabatoge meant we missed people, the sensors… There were millions we left behind. Hundreds of years on a nearly barren rock. They should’ve been dead. Somehow, they survived. If you’re hearing them, you’re probably one of them.”

“Tried contacting Eve and Bahama, to find out if this is happening on the other worlds. But the buggers have cut us off. One of them must’ve figured out how to use the ark-station. Should’ve known they’d keep adapting.”

“I'm sending copies of the most useful of my memories to all the planets. Hopefully it’ll give you the context you need. Redundancy is key. Two is one and one is none, as they taught us back in the army…” George ran his fingers along his collar where his pips had been so long ago. “God, haven't thought of those days in a long time. Haven't thought of Earth in a long time. Wonder if it's still out there, floating through the void. Probably best we stripped the coordinates of our home galaxy.”

“Anyway if you’re reviewing these, congratulations on your promotion, Head of Maintenance. It's a big job. You'll find most of what you need attached to these crystals. If they worked properly, you should’ve absorbed several decades’ worth of information: my studies, my time in the university, the threats we faced. If you're not ready for it, your system should release it in drips. I've set it to give you the most important stuff first. As long as your System’s working, you should be able to access bits at a time.”

“I'm hoping, that the process of ascendancy haven't been lost. Locals have been renaming it, using terms from ancient mythology, though the language has drifted so much it's not one I would’ve recognized.”

George leaned back, staring blankly. “The last couple thousand years have felt longer than the fifty before them. I think it might be the loneliness getting to me. The stasis was a mistake. Being apart was a mistake. If I could undo it… maybe there's a reason you're seeing these. Maybe I finally gave up, went off to find Eve and Bahama. If so I'm sorry.”

…Mage Lord…

When I came out of the vision, my head was splitting. My System had a log with over a thousand lines of aborted transfers.

Whatever minimum threshold he’d been hoping for, I was way below it.

Leaning over the desk, simply breathing, wondering why my insane Hydra-souled constitution wasn’t capable of making the headache go away. The most obvious answer was that it wasn’t my head. As I grasped the shard, looking around the library, I realized it was my aura that had been savaged.

Guess that was an important part of the whole living for 50,000 years thing. As if that wasn’t crazy enough, from what I could tell, he recorded the messages at least 20,000 years before the Magus Protectus and Domini ever existed.

At least, I picked up the language. Compared to some of the things he’d tried to share, a language was trivial.

A lot of cultural understanding had been bundled in too, though even when he’d put the people into stasis, George had been more than a little out of touch with the ‘average’ citizen.

I didn't get much time to process the new knowledge.

A pair of pair of folk in black and gold armor marched into the room, coming up and standing in front of me. They both snapped off a salute as if we were back on earth. Hand over the eyes.

“Head of Maintenance, Percival of Atheria?” the one on the right asked, their voice scratchy. Like it’d been recorded on a record, then played back a thousand times, slowly losing fidelity. Kinda like my mom’s favorite record.

When I didn’t immediately respond, their black visored face helmet shifting slightly towards me.

“Last time I checked,” I said rubbing at my head despite it doing nothing to help the ache in my aura.

“Her divinity Evelyn Dessar, Head of Research, would like to see you,” the guard said, still holding the salute. “If you're available, of course.”

I set the green shards back in their case. According to the log, they'd all been buffered into my System. There wasn't much more for me to get from those. “Yeah, let's find out what she wants.”

George’s memories had more packed away than the rest of the library combined. There wasn’t much left for me. And Evelyn Dessar. He hadn’t thought of her that way, but he had passed on the Head of Research’s full name.

Considering how long they lived, it was entirely possible it was the same woman. In which case, I very much didn’t want to brush her off. Would likely just come to bite us in the end. Besides if she was as powerful as I remembered it was possible she'd be able to wave a hand and get rid of all the monsters threatening us.

Of course, if she could do that, they never would’ve had to seal the cities in the first place.

Something told me this was yet another mess the Head of Maintenance was going to be cleaning up.