Bender of Worlds

by Isaac Hooke

  Someday Tane would have to look into building a ship that contained both Darcanium and Chrysalium in its hull, with the proper Essence vents for both. A ship like that would be unstoppable, capable of taking on entire fleets of enemies, and perhaps the armies of all aliens throughout the galaxy. That would be something he’d definitely have to build if he ever truly became the Bender of Worlds, and attained the unlimited resources that he imagined came with the title.

  Perhaps he’d even look at incorporating elements capable of handling Essence from other universes as well, if he could discover them. It would be quite the imposing ship, an invincible craft capable of calling upon the powers of the entire Multiverse itself. If the TSN ever sent a fleet against such a ship, they’d be in for an unpleasant surprise. As would any dwellers. Yes, all galactic species would rue the day they dared attack the Bender of Worlds.

  Tane shook his head. The thoughts a man would have while drifting for an eternity through the starless void. The illusions of grandeur.

  He didn’t even want to be the Bender of Worlds.

  “I think I understand now,” Tane said. “What it felt like for you, growing up on a Xandar slave farm. The fantasies you must have concocted in your mind to pass the time must have been amazing. Turning that wheel day in and day out, without VR, or any other form of digital augmentation, having nothing but your imagination to set you free...”

  “Those fantasies were my only escape,” Jed agreed. “Especially the fantasies about killing my captors. I imagine you’re having similar thoughts about the TSN? Or the dwellers?”

  “Not at all,” Tane said. “Okay, maybe a little bit. I was imagining building a ship, one so powerful that no one would ever bother me again. The TSN, the dwellers, I’d finally be free of them all. I’d travel to some faraway system, away from all humans and all aliens, and set up an impenetrable outpost.”

  “And yet by doing so you’d only be running from your destiny,” Jed said.

  “How do you know that’s not my destiny?” Tane said. “Maybe that’s how I bring peace to the galaxy, by holing up in a system far away from everyone else.” He paused. “Though I guess, if I really wanted to, I could use my super powerful ship to run around the galaxy and police everyone. Either way it’s my choice to make, isn’t it? The prophecy doesn’t tell you how I’m going to save the galaxy, does it? What were Lyra’s words? That I’d either tear the universe apart, or bind it?”

  “Tear it apart, or bring about everlasting peace,” Jed said. “And yes, the prophecy doesn’t tell us precisely what you will do.”

  “I somehow doubt there’s such a thing as everlasting peace,” Tane said. “Humanity will always war among itself, and with other aliens. It’s our nature. I used to think that war was always about resources. That with infinite resources, there could be no war. And yet we’re essentially at the infinite resources stage now. War these days is all about revenge. The dwellers are pissed that we destroyed their homeworld. And want to prevent us from ever doing such a thing again.”

  “I’m sure there are other reasons,” Jed said. “Though whether our human minds can guess them is another question entirely.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, let me know when your oxygen tank runs low. We’ll have to initiate a transfer.”

  “Should be easy,” Tane said. “These tanks are hot swappable, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Jed said. “It should go smoothly. As long as the crillia don’t interfere.”

  Tane sighed. The crillia again. He’d almost forgotten them.

  He continued revolving in place, scanning the regions of space around him. For a moment he considered just tuning out this universe and logging into his local VR, but that would mean relying entirely on Jed’s LIDAR. It didn’t seem like the best idea. What if the tech failed, or had been damaged in some way by the crillia? Sure, Jed’s armor was self-healing, but what about the LIDAR component?

  Tane decided he had to remain vigilant. He forced himself to stare out into the darkness, waiting for the next attack. He did play some of his favorite music, however. It helped pass the time.

  He hoped he had scared those crillia away for good.

  But somehow, he doubted it.

  4

  Sinive blinked her eyes and sat up.

  She was in a holding cell of some kind, about as small as her chambers aboard the Red Grizzly. It was just big enough to fit a bunk, toilet and sink. She could walk its length in two paces. If she extended both arms while she did so, her fingers would easily touch either wall. Other than the previously mentioned fixtures, there was only a drain in the center of the floor and that was it. She couldn’t see any obvious signs of a door in the walls, which, like the ceiling, were made of metal polished to such a burnish that she could see a dull reflection.

  Her spacesuit had been stripped away, as had her white dress underneath, replaced by a prison jumpsuit.

  The last she remembered, military-grade Scepter combat robots had boarded the shuttle. When their laser cutters finished boring through the shuttle ramp, Lyra had held the carved-out plug in place using what Sinive guessed was a mixture of Air Current and Telekinesis, based on her limited knowledge of the Essence.

  When at last Lyra could resist no longer, and the ramp cutout fell in, Sinive and Lyra raised their hands in surrender. The two of them had purposely kept their shield generators offline to demonstrate submission.

  A pair of the faceless combat robots had restrained her, while another two took Lyra. Sinive hadn’t offered much resistance—her earlier Siphoning of that massive amount of Essence through the Chrysalium armband on Remus had drained her almost as badly as any jump.

  After disarming her and taking away the storage pouch at her belt, one Scepter tore away the exterior fabric of her spacesuit glove, revealing the mechanical innards. The robot applied a telescoping finger inside the unit and rotated some dial just inside the glove. The Scepter then removed a small glass container, reinserted a vial of some liquid into the open chamber, and when Sinive asked what the robot was doing, in reply she felt a sting at the top of her hand as the sonic injector in the glove activated. Her vision turned black and she lost consciousness.

  And now here she was.

  She felt groggy, but not nearly as tired as she had felt before her capture.

  Her HUD was still active, overlaying her vision. The clock in the lower right of her vision told her eight hours had passed since her capture. Assuming the time was correct.

  She had no connection to the GalNet. She pulled up the connection preferences window and saw a few local mixnets with names like “Brig 0001A” and “Brig0001B,” but none were public: they all required biometric passwords.

  She checked her contacts list. Everyone was offline, including Lyra. If the Volur had been within chip range, Sinive would have been able to at least ping her comm, and potentially form an adhoc mixnet. But her captors had obviously placed them in cells that were well apart. Or maybe the cells were simply shielded with pass-throughs that allowed only certain networks through. That was the more likely explanation.

  She stood up off the bunk and phosphenes momentarily marred her vision, but she blinked them away. Her hair brushed the low ceiling.

  Well the place is certainly roomy.

  She flexed her stiff muscles and began running her fingers across the walls, searching for signs of a door or hatch. There were no seams, not anywhere.

  With a sigh, she went to the sink and washed her face. There was no mirror.

  Probably a good thing. I must look terrible.

  She shifted her face so that the sonic dryer positioned behind the faucet would kick in. Didn’t work. She knelt slightly, bringing her face closer to the metal bar of the device, and finally she heard the characteristic hum. The range on the thing was smaller than usual: no doubt it was made from the cheapest components available.

  I’m in the lap of luxury right here.

  In seconds her face was dry and she pulled away.

  She g
azed into the burnished metal wall above the sink and squinted, trying to discern her features in the dull reflection the surface provided, but it was no use. Oh well.

  Doing her best to fix the tight braid she wore by touch, she took a seat on the bed and stared at the wall opposite her, waiting.

  “I’m hungry,” she said aloud.

  Nothing.

  “I have to pee,” she said.

  Well, there wasn’t much sense in telling her captors that. She could just use the provided toilet, after all.

  She went to that steel contraption and regarded the rim in disgust. She wondered how many prisoners had relieved themselves there. It was an unpleasant thought.

  She positioned three separate swaths of toilet paper over the rim so that the seat was somewhat safe to sit on. Then she glanced around and quickly lowered the pants portion of her jumpsuit and squatted on the toilet. She felt a portion of the steel rim touching the back of her thigh past the edge of the toilet paper she’d placed, and grimaced. She reminded herself that she’d squatted on far worse toilets during her time in the military.

  Glancing upward, she said: “Shut off those cameras!”

  There was no answer, of course. She stretched the top portion of her jumpsuit down over her hips, hoping to keep as much of herself covered as possible.

  When she was done with that rather uncomfortable session, she returned to the bed once again.

  “I’m still hungry,” she said.

  Nothing.

  She sighed. “I’d like to talk to my legal representative.”

  No answer.

  She threw up her arms, and was about to lie down again when a prompt overlaid her vision.

  You have been granted biometric logon privileges to mixnet Brig 0001A. Connect? Y/N

  For a moment she worried that the TSN was trying to install some sort of virus in her chip. But then she realized they would have had ample opportunity to do that while she was unconscious.

  She chose the big Y with a shrug.

  The signal strength indicator appeared in the upper right of her HUD, indicating a successful log in.

  The hologram of a man appeared before her. His face was all hard angles, the skin so weathered that it was almost leathery. This was a man who didn’t believe in rejuvenetics. His nose was bumpy, as if it had been broken in several places. His grizzled hair was cropped extremely short, highlighting the round shape of his skull in perfect counterpoint to his square jawline. A thick brow line protruded at his temples, making his eyes seem more sunken than they were. Those eyes were dark, glinting with open contempt.

  His fatigues were patterned in blue and grey digital. She was well familiar with that particular aesthetic from her own tenure in the navy. There were no chevrons or anything of the sort on the uniform to indicate the man’s rank and rating. Nor any decorations—the TSN was averse to such public displays of what they considered vanity. Normally the holographic feed would have provided access to that data, but the identification information was oddly absent. The only other way to get that information was via the public profile, but since the man wasn’t present in person, she couldn’t access that either. Even so, she could guess his rating. Likely he was an Intelligence Specialist of some kind.

  “Are you my lawyer?” she joked.

  No smile lit that cruel face. “My name is Nelson Gates. I’m your judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one.”

  “I see,” Sinive said. “So I take it I’m not going to get legal counsel.”

  “You are not,” Nelson said. “You are at the court’s mercy. My mercy.”

  “Why am I being held?” Sinive asked. “What crime am I being charged with?”

  “The crime of aiding and abetting a known fugitive and terrorist,” Nelson said.

  “Is that what you’re calling him now?” Sinive said. “He saved your army. And probably all the humans in this sector.”

  “Even so, he is considered a grave threat to the security of the TSN and its network of planets,” Nelson said. “Capturing him is the top priority of all ships in the fleet.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Sinive said. “He only wants to be left alone.”

  “Given his current predicament, I highly doubt that,” Nelson said. “You see, we know your Volur secreted him away inside her storage device. We also know he broke the containment fields and escaped into the Umbra. We’ve sent several small probes inside to look for him, but so far the search has turned up nothing.

  “The specs on that particular storage device have been wiped, so we don’t know the exact Umbral coordinates the device opened into. And Lyra hasn’t been the most forthcoming with the information. So… we’ve instructed the probes to focus on identifying the system. Because of the nature of the Umbra, with distant light masked and blue-shifted, the probes have to rely on gravity waves alone. As such, it could take anywhere from a week to a month to map out the locations of the gravity wells and properly identify the system.

  “When that’s done, we’ll have to enter an Umbral rift with our warships, jump to the system, and do a more thorough scan for him. Altogether, it could take up to three months or more to track him down. By then your precious World Bender will be long dead, his oxygen tanks expired. If he’s wearing a spacesuit similar to the one you were captured in, then his O2 supply will be gone in two days. While you’re incarcerated here, he will die out there, waiting in vain for friends who have seemingly abandoned him. It behooves you to help me. Assuming you want him to survive.”

  “Of course I want him to survive,” Sinive said softly.

  Nelson gazed at her critically. “We know the Volur has given him a beacon stone. It’s the only way the plan would have made any sense. We need you to help us convince her to give us the location of the system. We can save him before he suffocates. Tell her to lead us to him so we can retrieve him from the Umbra and save his life. Allowing him to die won’t benefit anyone, least of all those of you who call him your friend.”

  “I…” Sinive said. “I can’t help you.”

  “If you can convince Lyra to help us, I’ll be able to secure your release in a couple of weeks, tops,” Nelson said. “And if you won’t even try, I’ll be forced to take more drastic measures, and afterwards you’ll likely rot here for the rest of your life, which will be short, once my team is through with you.”

  “Like I told you, can’t help you,” Sinive said.

  “Very well.” The hologram clicked out.

  Sinive waited for the chamber to fill with an incapacitating agent. Or for a door to appear in the far wall, and robot troops to dash inside and seize her.

  But none came.

  The minutes ticked passed.

  She wondered if she had made a mistake. The TSN officer had a point: she couldn’t save Tane if she was stuck here in prison.

  Her stomach growled, and she was reminded of how hungry she was.

  She tried to access the VR interface of her chip, but all she got was a VR disabled message. So they wouldn’t allow her even that escape. She had heard it was illegal to block a person from accessing their own VR, but apparently that didn’t apply to makeshift military prisons.

  She stared at the clock in the upper right of her vision, and watched in mind-numbing boredom as a standard hour crawled past.

  And then the hologram of Nelson Gates appeared again.

  “So, I have some good news,” the hologram said. “Though perhaps not so good for you. You see, the Volur has agreed to reveal the system, and to lead us to the beacon stone. She’s also agreed to testify against you. Too bad. You should have taken the deal I offered you earlier.”

  Sinive slumped against the bunk.

  “But there is still a chance to reduce the charges we’ll lay against you,” Nelson said. “All you have to do is tell me everything you know about him. How you met. His tastes, interests. What kind of person he is. In exchange, I can probably have you released in a few weeks.”

  Sinive looked up at the navy
officer. “You’ve looked through my entire TSN record, I’m sure. You probably noticed that I took one of your interrogation courses. So I know exactly what you’re trying to do. You’re lying. The Volur hasn’t agreed to a thing. Even if you tortured her to an inch of her life, she wouldn’t do it.”

  “Ah, but that’s where you are wrong,” Nelson said with a knowing grin. “She has agreed to help. And she will testify against you. She understands that the World Bender must live, no matter the cost. Even if she has to give him up. Now then, are you willing to cooperate? Will you answer my questions?”

  Sinive stared at her feet despondently.

  I can’t betray him.

  But what did it matter? The official was only asking about his tastes and interests, and how they met. She didn’t see the harm in revealing any of that, especially considering Nelson had probably worked out the latter.

  She looked up defiantly. “You want to know what kind of person he is? The World Bender is the kind of man who would break into a high security prison or the brig of a starship to rescue his friends. He’d kill anyone who stood in his way until he saved them. That’s the kind of person he is.”

  “A man who values his friends,” Nelson said. “This is good. What else?”

  “There isn’t much else,” Sinive said. “I met him when he paid for passage aboard the Red Grizzly, where I serve as a jump specialist. He likes playing piano, and chopping off the heads of aliens and prying TSN officials. Anything else?”

  “No, I think we’re good.” Nelson smiled scornfully. “I went ahead and scheduled you for a deep dive session, three standard hours from now. We’ll extract all of your memories and have the AIs sort through them to collect what we need.”