Bender of Worlds

by Isaac Hooke

  “Story of my life,” Sinive said.

  16

  Finally Tane and the others reached the large septic tanks underneath the pumping station. There were no walkways here, so they had to “swim” across. Tane deactivated his shield generator and, since he had no swimming skills, he hung on to Jed’s back as the Volur took him to the far side of the first septic tank. There, the rungs of a ladder led up the tall wall. Tane climbed after Jed, followed by Sinive and G’allanthamas.

  The dweller was able to scale the relatively tiny ladder surprisingly well in that bulky environmental suit, albeit slowly. He crimped his long legs underneath, sort of like a dead bug, so that they overlapped one another before touching the ladder. Only the bottom four legs touched the rungs in any sort of capacity, while G’allanthamas kept the top four pressed firmly against his underside. The tentacles at the front of the carapace, which were tipped with fingers, served as an anchor for the upper half of the body: G’allanthamas would lodge his lower feet on the bottom rungs, extend his tentacles to the next section of the ladder above, grasp it with his fingers, then pull himself upward and secure his feet onto the next higher rung. In that way he gradually climbed after the others.

  “Come on, slowpoke,” Sinive taunted the alien.

  G’allanthamas didn’t answer.

  “Where did you learn to climb anyway?” Sinive asked.

  “As I told you all, I lived among humans for two hundred years,” G’allanthamas answered.

  “I guess that would do it,” Sinive agreed.

  At the top of the ladder Jed paused underneath a hatch.

  “Looks like the locking wheel is on the top side,” the Volur warrior said.

  “Do you need me up there?” Tane asked.

  “I got this one,” Jed said. He removed his Chrysalium sword. It glowed a bright blue as he fed it with Essence and slammed it into the metal. Then he carved a large circular hole. The heavy plug fell inward, and Jed bashed it aside so that it wouldn’t hit Tane and the others on the way down, and instead it splashed into the sludge below.

  “If you could do that, why did you need me to cut the bars back there?” Tane said. “Or the double doors leading out of Durahepte?”

  “I didn’t,” Jed said. “I admit, I was feeling lazy.”

  “Ah,” Tane said.

  Light spilled from beyond the circular hole, and from where he hung Tane could make out a small metal chamber.

  The dim light also illuminated Jed, who appeared to be surrounded by a partially translucent sphere of darkness: the dweller’s blurring effect. Tane glanced downward and saw that Sinive and G’allanthamas were also surrounded by black spheres: the dweller’s was bigger, of course. Tane had a sphere enveloping him as well, though it seemed more translucent than the others—probably a feature of the Essencework, meant to prevent his vision from becoming overly clouded.

  “I can see why you said we’d still have to avoid patrols,” Sinive commented. “If those passages are lighted, we’ll look like big black balls.”

  “But you like big balls, don’t you?” Tane quipped.

  “Har,” Sinive said.

  “Careful, Engineer,” Jed said. “Hers are just as big as yours.”

  “I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or an insult,” Sinive said.

  “Probably a little of both.” Jed pulled himself through and waited for the others.

  “Yup, Volur are a-holes,” Sinive said.

  “Hey, I feel left out...” Tane said.

  “You are too, obviously,” Sinive said.

  “Well thank you,” Tane said. “Now I feel complete.”

  “Just climb, Outrimmer,” Sinive said.

  Tane continued up toward the chamber.

  “Uh,” G’allanthamas said. “I won’t be able to fit through that.”

  “I’ll enlarge it for you,” Tane said.

  Just underneath the plug, he cautiously retrieved his beam hilt—now wouldn’t be the best time to drop it, as he doubted he’d be able to find it if it hit that sludge. Then he ignited the blade and held onto the ladder with one arm as he carved away a larger section. He pulled himself close to the rungs as the pieces fell around him.

  “Hey, watch it!” Sinive said as a fragment struck her.

  “Sorry,” Tane said. He cut away a few more sections. “That should do.” He deactivated the hilt and secured it to his belt.

  “Yes, but barely,” G’allanthamas complained.

  Tane pulled himself through and Sinive came after him. He found himself in some kind of maintenance room with conduits running into a circular console near the floor.

  Jed, Sinive and Tane grabbed onto the tentacles of the dweller’s environmental suit as G’allanthamas shoved his way through, and they helped drag the alien inside. The translucent spheres that surrounded them overlapped without any issues.

  When all of them were in the room, Tane activated his shield generator, as did the others.

  The entire pumping station was equipped with automatic lights, and the motion sensors still worked in the Umbra, so as the party members made their way through the different rooms and passageways, the overhead panels lit up in turn, allowing Tane to dismiss the LIDAR feed.

  While G’allanthamas fit the main passageways well enough, any doorways the party encountered were a challenge—the alien had to turn himself sideways and pull in his legs, using the walls on either side for purchase. The translucent dome at the top of his carapace always scraped against the door frame, and after three doors was already fairly scratched.

  “I can see why you weren’t all that eager to join us at first,” Tane said.

  “Yes,” G’allanthamas said. “It’s not easy being a dweller in the tiny world of humans.”

  The illumination also allowed Tane to see the dark threads leading from his body. They pointed into the walls of the pumping station, toward the lens that was waiting for him out there. The lens that would eventually take him and his intrepid group back to their own universe.

  The basement eventually opened into a concourse area that was connected with the pedway system. Tane had Jed lead the way, scouting twenty meters ahead of the party. Since Tane kept his broadcast range limited to five meters, as did Jed, if the Volur ever spotted anything he’d have to come running back to the main party. Or increase his broadcast range. When Jed activated his invisibility, the black globe that surrounded him vanished as well.

  “What happened?” Tane asked G’allanthamas.

  “The work faded, as I can’t track him when he’s invisible,” the dweller said. “But he doesn’t need my blurring when he’s like that, anyway. It was probably a waste for me to apply it.”

  The concourse funneled them into the smaller pedway system, and soon the party was making good time to the necessary grav tram station. G’allanthamas fit the passageway with a little room to spare, however he still grumbled something about “humans and their claustrophobic architectural designs.”

  Tane spotted the occasional security camera, and was glad for the blurring effect of the dark spheres. He was careful not to get too close to those cameras. He kept an eye out for TSN patrols, and kraals.

  The pedway led through two other concourses beneath buildings along the way. Past the third, which was apparently some sort of commercial district, the pedway began to be lined with various shops and kiosks. Most of them had no inventory, with 3D printers in the back ready to print up a copy from the virtual catalog for snap purchasers who preferred not to pay for drone delivery. If he was in his own universe, at this point Tane would have had to dismiss a profusion of 3D advertisements intruding on his vision, courtesy of his chip. Either that, or disable augmented reality interactions entirely. But in the Umbra, there were no such intrusions.

  Some of the shops were stocked with items that couldn’t readily be 3D printed, mostly because of local laws and regulations. Weapons and armor seemed to fall into that category on this particular moon, and Tane couldn’t help but pause
outside one particular shop, which was fully-stocked with the latest and greatest battle armor.

  “I’m going to make a quick stop,” Tane told Sinive.

  “Well I’m obviously going to make a stop, too,” Sinive said. Inside her dark bubble, her spacesuit was oriented toward the shop, no doubt to eye those armor sets just as greedily as he was doing.

  Tane glanced ahead at Jed, who was now twenty-five meters away, but the Volur continued his advancement. He hadn’t yet noticed that Tane had stopped. That would change soon enough.

  “When Jed comes back, tell him we’ll only be a minute,” Tane instructed the dweller.

  “We shouldn’t delay...” G’allanthamas said.

  “One minute,” Tane said. “That’s all I ask.”

  At this time of night the shop was closed, so a security grille had been lowered over the entrance. Sinive was already standing beside the grille, no doubt putting her hacking skills to use.

  “Will your skills work here?” Tane asked her.

  In answer, she knelt and opened the grille.

  Tane and Sinive hurried inside. Overhead lights activated when they entered, fully illuminating the place.

  Tane ran quick IDs on the armor displayed near the front, and quickly moved on to the cases situated deeper inside the shop. He was searching for the best. He finally found a couple of pairs that he couldn’t ID, and knew he’d found something that might interest him.

  One was a complete set of armor—legs, chest, arms, boots, gloves, helmet—similar to what Jed wore, though not as thick, and it didn’t glow, meaning it wasn’t Essence imbued. Meanwhile beside it was a single piece armored robe with interlocking metal plates, similar to the battle dress Lyra wore. And, come to think of it, also like the armored robe of the Volur he had met while a captive. What was his name? Xescartes. That particular piece of armor didn’t glow, either.

  “Sinive, can you ID these pieces for me?” Tane asked her.

  She had broken through a glass display case, and was busy purloining the items inside. She glanced up. “Just a sec.”

  She finished stuffing the armor pieces into her pouch and then hurried to his side. “Okay, here you go.”

  Tane received the sharing request and accepted.

  “By the way, what’s the difference between the power armor, and the armored robe?” Tane said. “I mean, why does it seem like more Volur's prefer the latter, while Jed likes the former?”

  “Probably a better question for him,” Sinive said. “But from what I know from my days in the military, you have to have a certain baseline Strength and Dexterity to function in power armor, because even with electroactuators the suits have a certain heft. They’re not like spacesuits: all those bulky ballistic plates aren’t light, even when compressed. You can get exoskeleton attachments to reduce or eliminate those requirements entirely, at the cost of increasing the bulk. Big time. And unlike the armor itself, which can be reduced in size with a mental command, the exoskeletons always stay the same size. You also have to have Battle Armor skill just to equip it; inject yourself with that skill, and the nanotech construct hardpoints just underneath your skin in the joint regions, facilitating the mind-suit connection.”

  “Ah,” Tane said.

  “And since most Volur choose to devote very little nanotech to Strength and Dexterity, let alone a skill like Battle Armor, the robe is the obvious choice,” Sinive continued. “There are still baseline Strength and Dexterity requirements, but they’re not nearly as high. The downside is you can’t usually get the same protection, unless you’re willing to pay the big bucks to get it Essence imbued.”

  Tane examined the ID information Sinive had sent him. She was right. Altogether, the armor rating of the battle suit was about twice that of the robe, but the Strength and Dexterity requirements were also a lot higher. He reviewed the robe’s details a second time.

  Armor: Armored Robe I.

  Model: Zebra II-5 Rev a.

  Item type: Rare.

  Weight: 20 kg.

  Armor rating: 20.

  Armor effects: Moderate protection against weaker plasma and laser impacts. No protection against Essence attacks. Not void capable—please upgrade to the heavier Zebra IV line, which includes the oxygen tanks and retractable hood necessary to enable Enclosure Mode.

  Armored Robe specific:

  Extra features: Armor is resizable thanks to several layers of memory metals, allowing it to fit inside a spacesuit. When shrunk to its most compact size, armor rating decreases to 5 (but when layered inside a spacesuit or other battle armor, that number still counts toward total overall rating).

  Required to equip:

  - Strength: 10

  - Dexterity: 12

  It was fifteen kilograms lighter than his spacesuit, but had double the armor rating at twenty. Well, five when worn underneath his existing spacesuit, which would give him a total rating of fifteen. Not too shabby. He wouldn’t be able to equip it yet, since his Strength fell just short, but he could remedy that the next time he leveled up. Still, he thought it a bit odd that although it weighed less than his spacesuit, it required more Strength to equip. He realized that was probably because electroactuators had been removed to make room for the armored sections.

  The Enclosure Mode upgrade sounded like a good idea, but he had a feeling the Strength and Dexterity requirements would be higher—the description did say the Zebra IV line was “heavier.” That would explain why Lyra didn’t own an Enclosure Mode robe, and relied on a spacesuit for void protection. Or maybe Lyra just liked the idea of layering her armor inside a spacesuit to get a higher rating.

  Tane disabled his shield generator and then slammed the bottom of his beam hilt into the glass, but it didn’t break.

  “Allow me,” Sinive said.

  Before Tane could protest, she struck the stock of her pistol against the display case and shattered the glass.

  “See how it’s done?” Sinive said.

  Tane stowed the one-piece robe in his storage pouch, planning to save the equipment for when he could actually use it. He decided to grab the battle armor, too, if only for the resale value. There wasn’t time to bind it together with a cord, so he asked Sinive if she could carry some of the pieces for him.

  “I have spare room in a couple of nested pouches,” Sinive said. “But I charge a storage commission of five percent on any sale you make for items I store.”

  “Done,” Tane said, giving her the boots, gloves, and helmet. He figured those were the cheaper items, so he’d pay a lower commission.

  He’d have to upgrade to a bigger pouch sometime. Or do like Sinive and just nest multiple cheaper pouches.

  “What’s wrong, Engineer?” Jed’s voice came over the comm, startling Tane slightly.

  According to the map, Jed had come back within range by then—the Volur was slightly inside the shop, though he remained invisible.

  “Nothing,” Tane said. “I just figured we might as well gather a few items while we’re here.”

  “There’s no time for this,” Jed said. “We’re under a city in the Umbra, surrounded by TSN troops who are actively searching for us. Giant kraals could be anywhere, ready to attack when we make a wrong turn.”

  “Got it.” Tane started to leave, but then his eyes dropped to a display case that contained various shield systems. “Two secs.” He ID’d the shields at the same time, and spotted one he liked.

  Shield: A3 Personal Shield System

  Model: Aegis C-3 Rev b.

  Item type: Rare.

  Weight: 1.5 kg.

  Damage absorption: 15

  Shield effects: Protects against laser, plasma, energy, and melee weapons. Useless against Essence attacks. Can be worn over external gear such as spacesuits or powered armor.

  Shield specific:

  Effective radius: Fifty centimeters on all sides of the body. In standard mode, external surfaces other than those present during activation will interfere with the projection, causing the shield to t
ake damage. In autogating mode, the shield will automatically adjust to allow external surfaces to pass through, allowing one to take cover behind objects without damaging the shield. Be warned: with autogating active, while you’ll be protected against laser, plasma, and energy weapons, slower-moving weapons such as swords and blunt instruments will pass through. As such, autogating is not recommended for hand-to-hand combat.

  Current Charge: 100%

  Recharge rate from zero: 160 seconds.

  Battery level: *Warning* Extremely low. *Warning*

  That autogating mode sounded interesting. Plus it had a twenty second faster recharge rate from zero than his current shield system, and five more points of damage absorption.

  Sold!

  He took a step back, retrieved his beam hilt and activated the Essence ax this time to sliced open the case. He deactivated the hilt and took one of the A3 systems.

  Sinive rushed to his side and grabbed the remaining.

  “Why are the batteries always so low in these stores?” Sinive complained.

  “Dunno.” Tane transferred the battery pack from his existing shield system into the new one, and secured it to his waist. Sinive did likewise.

  Then he reactivated his shield. The battery seemed to take.

  “Are you done yet?” Jed asked.

  “All done,” Tane answered.

  G’allanthamas dashed inside. “TSN patrol!”

  Whoops.

  “Get to the back!” Jed said.

  Tane rushed behind the counters and into the back offices. The hallway was tight; he went to the door on the far side and slowly opened it. Peering past, he discovered a private passageway that ran behind all the other shops in that section of the pedway, with various back doors allowing access to the adjacent stores.

  “Can’t fit,” G’allanthamas said. The dweller had turned sideways, but couldn’t squeeze the bulky environmental suit into the tight hallway behind Tane. The counter just in front of the hallway didn’t help matters.

  G’allanthamas backed away from the counter and into the main area of the shop, and then lowered himself to the floor beside one of the cases beyond. He was evidently going to try to pretend he was part of the fixtures. It could almost work, considering that the glass dome on his head looked a little like a display case, and with his legs hidden underneath, his carapace could almost pass for a table. G’allanthamas angled himself away from the entrance so that he could hide his front-facing tentacles behind the counter.