Only now does Fientak recognise the fury smouldering behind the soft face. “This is not acceptable. I need to find… Dou…” Stubby hands rub over bald scalp once more. “Katerenin. She was awakened. That is sure. Then, the trip. Retrieval was a success, and the…” The fury breaks, replaced by an emptiness worse a perfect vacuum. “She asked me not to warp.”
Her wandering thoughts are frozen by his sudden stare. “Fienak, was it? Would chewing on someone's soul be recompense for involuntary disembodiment?”
“Sir?”
“Let’s say I’d de-lid you right here, without your consent. Slice open that pretty head of yours, take out your brain and put you in charge of a remote body. But then, as a form of repayment, you’d chew on my soul for a bit, muddling and messing with the core of my being. Exploding all that I know, and am, and was, and ever will be to the void, letting each part of myself drift and scatter. Also, I raised her and taught her, but that is of such small value compared to soul-chewing and brain removing, that it doesn’t count. So, are both actions comparable, or is one of us still in debt?”
Fienak observes the sheer confusion going through her slave soldier personality with a wry form of amusement. It’s a feeling every single one of her personalities is very familiar with, after all. Each new scenario that was spun up around her made her feel the exact same way the first few years. Then the patterns and habits of a new life grew too familiar to allow that kind of useless emotions, and all was well again until the end of the current simulation.
“You wouldn’t know, right? Keeping quiet is the only correct answer here. Even I, Solan Tomat Peezes…” Bewildered eyes look around in a sweaty and very clammy panic for a second before a much bigger force takes hold of the fat face again. “Yes, that is who I am. I am Solan Tomat Peezes…” A few more seconds of tense silence, the only movement of the pilot a steadily twitching tick of his left eye. “Even I don’t know if those two actions cancel each other out.”
“Sir.”
“So how would you, mercenary number five trillion something-something, sent to die on a planet with half a century of Histaff entrenchment just so the ones you are supposed to feel loyalty to will get a smidge of data, how could you possibly know this?”
Fienak is nearly giggling now. Not having a clear goal, mission, task, or high-score to work towards is allowing her clear mind to wander into all forms of odd directions. She hasn’t needed to wield the scalpel of humour for a few lifetimes, so why does it bubble up now?
“You wouldn’t! Great, another mystery of the universe answered.” The second pilot - Fienak chides herself that she should start calling him Solan - steps over Haknu’s cooling corpse with a heavy waddle. His beady stare lingers on the dark web surrounding the bird-beaked mercenary’s head for a few seconds, before casting a glance at the dark filigree encasing Fienak’s own brainpan. “Warp chains. That is not good. Might explain me, though. Hey, look at me, discovering answers to questions everyone has stopped worrying about eons ago, even after death.”
He stops at the cockpit’s threshold for a single moment. “I should stop talking to myself. I will need a long working period to get myself back to normal, I think. Another body, that's a first, though. I might actually need some therapy now.”
Fienak follows after the muttering man. She doesn’t bother picking up her pack, leaving the molten gun and probably damaged assault rifle where they lie on the floor. Her slave soldier self had wanted to pick them up, but Fienak had gently told that portion of herself to leave the items lying there.
“That will come later, I think. Priorities, Solan. First we need to save the universe. No, that’s impossible. That is known since forever. First, we need to save the galaxy.”
Looking past the now abandoned personnel bay, she sees the ropes that previously held the military grav-bikes swaying in the sparse wind. She sees red rocks, grey mountains, and green sky beyond the dancing strands, and it is the most beautiful sight she has ever seen. A part of herself refuses to be distracted by the view, keeping half an eye and ear on Solan. Then the fat pilot grabs her by the jaw, pulling her face to his. Tiny, manic eyes stare into her soul for a bit, adding extra weight to the words spewing from his thin lips.
“First, I need to kill Douglas.”
Chapter Eleven – A Marrow Escape
”…where the isotopes come in. You see, water isn’t just H2O, as everyone knows. And not all hydrogen is the same. The main atomic characteristics are determined by the number of protons in their nucleus. The secondary traits are determined by the number of neutrons they…”
Douglas is torn. He is rather enjoying this new stream of information that Evot is providing him. He seems to have hit a nerve with the small mana-filled practical demonstration he showed her. She hasn’t shut up more than a single minute after starting to talk.
Douglas enjoys finding out new stuff, expanding his horizons and just seeing more of this universe. He has always tried to apply this new information and has not regretted it a single time so far. That has changed, though.
Trying to combine his own magical spellcasting and the new way of looking at the universe has proven entirely unsuccessful. All his spells are built upon the concepts of calx and phlogiston. Douglas just can’t see a way to combine this simple method with the ever so more complex outlook named the periodic table of elements.
“…around atomic number two hundred. Building those nuclei by hand or machine is really energy intensive, or so we outer-rimmers are told anyway, and thus combining atoms with the proper weight is a lot cheaper in terms of cost and energy. This is why some elements are in high demand. Their proton and neutron counts are ideal for creating some of the special materials that makes Centrally made items so expensive and durable. This is also why they mined this planet so much. Promethium has sixty-one protons, and that’s a prime number, after all. This is…”
[ Mathematics III lvl 16 ]
[ Science lvl 2 ]
Mentally commanding the blue screens away, Douglas casts another appreciative glance towards his chattering companion. Just keeping half an ear on the woman has been helping him level his skills, even gaining him the that Science one. The information has continued to be completely useless to him in all aspects other than levelling his skills, though. Not a single tidbit of information has been about new ways to use bone, magically animate items, or how to get food.
Somewhere in the deep and dark recesses of his mind, Douglas expected a planet to contain things to eat. At the very least, more food than a space station. This has turned out to be completely false, as Douglas has yet to come across anything that doesn’t taste of sand, stone - which tastes suspiciously like sand, and metal. The hundred-kilometre wide valley that is blocking his path forwards also doesn’t seem to contain any form of food, from what Douglas can see.
“…more than a few hundred. Neutron stars are technically a single nucleus, but they aren’t really useful except for refueling purposes for super-capital ships. Wow. Another new skill? Wow, that’s a lot of rewards. Thank you blue box thing. Back to the topic at hand though, this is all we outer-rimmers get to know about, off course. There might be multi-thousand atomic weight materials inside the few proper Central items we have on-”
[ New skill learned; Chemistry lvl 1 ]
This time, instead of half zoning out the woman and thus letting the noise fade into the background, she just slows her dry rant until she is no longer speaking. Slightly startled at the sudden lack of new information, Douglas stops and turns to look at the halted woman. The fact that she is staring ahead with open mouth, her expression into a grimace of shock and disbelief does not prevent the skeleton from shouting a very impatient “What?” at her.
Startled from her stunned state, all she manages to do is stammer and point forwards. “T-the… The…”
“The what?”
“The lake is gone.”
“What lake is gone?”
“Harvest-Star Lake is gone!”
&n
bsp; “And?”
“It’s not supposed to be gone!”
“It’s there.” Evot looks between the pointing skeleton and the massive trench in front of her multiple times. Douglas looks at the obstacle ahead again. The cracked ground had started sloping downwards a few hundred meters ago, but only now is the sizable gulley coming into view. The haze in the air is a clear hint that the ridged banks on the opposite side of the steep depression is very far away indeed.
Douglas just starts walking again, leaving the spluttering and gasping woman behind. He is sure he heard the word ‘lake’ before, but it still doesn’t make much sense to him. Water is something he has only come across in limited quantities. Otherwise, he could have made a dephlogistonate spell that could level cities. The wind gust he should be able to create from an endless supply of the moist stuff boggles his mind. A large area like the slowly sloping canyon he finds himself walking down filled with water is just stupid. Surely, there isn’t that much water on the entire planet. Once again, a deep part of himself protests at these slapdash conclusions, but once again, Douglas fails to care.
Douglas keeps thinking about the stupidity of such large masses of water as he trots on. As he keeps walking over cracked ground and hard dirt, he observes the trench some more. Instead of a simple channel in the ground, going straight the entire way, the large valley rises to his left while sloping downwards to his right. Further ahead, he sees a dip in the middle of the valley, a place where the ground looks odd. The channel that goes deeper seems really weird, somehow. He also sees the top of a mountain peeking over the rather complex shape the entire sloping depression ends up in.
Looking at the odd mountain with some more care, Douglas feels like he has seen something similar not long before. Then he hears a noise, and he snaps his attention to the source of the high-pitched whining. It’s not a normal noise, as muted as the ordinary air-shaking stuff registers on the skeleton, this is a bone-shaking vibration that seems to travel through something other than air.
White streaks burn overhead, a small group of bright lines painting a clear contrast against the bright green sky. Following the far away features with his burning eyes, the suddenly appearing trails shorten as they fly over his position. Then Douglas sees small black dots at the beginning of these lines, which slowly grow bigger.
“WE ARE OVER HERE!” Turning to the new source of noise, Douglas sees Evot dancing on her stumpy legs. Waving her arms like a mad-woman, she looks upwards at the approaching shapes, the deep and bone-piercing sound Douglas feels quickly growing louder. “YEEES! HERE! WE ARE HERE, PLEASE SAVE ME!”
Looking up, Douglas wonders what Evot needs to be saved from, as she seems to be doing pretty well for herself. She still has her fleshy bits, or at least is regrowing the parts that she is still missing, and seems to know a whole lot. The streaks come down with speed, rattling Douglas’s teeth in their sockets. It takes a few more seconds before he recognises what the black things are, and a small spark of desire appears in his empty chest. He has seen those things before, standing in the showroom of certain shops back on the space station. They didn’t have that many things stuck to them, and the weird shapes clinging to the tops of the vehicles were also missing, but he recognizes the hoverbikes nonetheless.
And although they might not even come close to a rideable bone Behemoth in sheer majesty, going that fast and that high just tickles his funny bone.
“PLEASE! HELP US! IT’S THE ANCHEEVI MILITARY, DOUGLAS! THAT’S THE ANCHEEVI LOGO! PLEASE HELP UP!”
Douglas wonders why Evot just changed her shouting from ‘me’ to ‘us’. Before the skeleton can make up his mind, a white blur meets the descending hover vehicles.
“THANK YOU SO MUCH-”
The dull crunch and hollow crack reach Douglas’s auditory sensors way too late, providing the entire scene with a comedic effect. The frontmost hoverbike hangs in midair for the few seconds it takes the sound to reach Douglas. Bits and pieces of the bike, along with viscous gouts of red goop, scatter from the slowly falling object, creating a bloom of debris and red spray.
The bikes screaming downwards alongside the now smoking front vehicle veer off, their condensation trails forming graceful curves. Then a storm of white and red projectiles rains hell upon them, two bikes going down spinning. Metal scraps, bits of bone, splashes of red goop and the suited riders go down hard. The ground below the bikes, a good way to Douglas’s left, is suddenly peppered with a rippling carpet of explosions. All the projectiles that missed the bikes hit the ground in spectacular blooms of brown, red, white shrapnel and dust.
The rest of the hovering vehicles try to avoid the lethal rain of attacks, but more and more get shot down. One of the largest ones holds out for a few seconds, a blue shield of shimmering power protecting the rider as a stream of projectiles hits it. The large bike is forced downwards under the continuous stream of attacks. It hits the ground at speed, the impact with the unyielding earth and even more projectiles turns out to be too much as the shield flickers and dies. The hoverbike blows up with force, a shockwave rushing outwards that sends the wind howling through Douglas’s empty ribcage. The rest of the black vehicles don’t fare any better, and the last sleek vehicle explodes as it tries to flee. A mere minute after seeing the things appear the last bits of metal bounce off the ground, leaving fading smoke trails dancing in the slight wind.
Turning around now that the show is over, the massive mountain at the lowest point of the so-called lake is changed. Instead of the same smooth and near featureless slopes it was before, it now sports an impressive array of tubes. Splatters of red goop the size of buildings run down the slowly moving cylinders as the entire mountain ripples.
“NOOO!”
The moment Evot’s voice breaks the tense silence, Douglas sees many of the mountain’s tubes shift position. The faint puffs of smoke and the white streaks rising towards the heavens allow the skeleton to make several intuitive leaps at once. Not because of some instinct or anything like that. Douglas had simply thought of something like this before, the many gun advertisements he has been exposed to causing him to do some speculative and ponderous thinking. Surely the Histaff that has been giving the greatest skeleton in the universe, himself, so much trouble would be capable of making similar projectile weapons. So it takes very little for him to reach the conclusion that Evot and himself are currently under highly lethal fire.
Then Douglas activates the trick he has been holding on to until now. The fireball he had launched towards the mountainous Histaff Behemoth back at the fallen space elevator wasn’t done through his physical strength alone. All the time he had spent inscribing his deceased Histaff mount turned out to be far from useless. Douglas had, in a fit a bone-related rage, made a rather sloppy inscription on his throwing arm. It had been sloppy in the sense that he’d barely been able to control it. Instead of hitting his target, he had overshot it by a massive amount and ended up striking the mountain at the centre of the city instead. The long walk afterwards had allowed him to apply this new method, carefully preparing his body. With meticulous patience, he had channeled mana through his stone armor, laying a control framework in the red stone covering his body.
His leg bones shining with suddenly appearing geometric patterns and symbols, Douglas becomes speed itself. Leaving a dust cloud behind, the stone-covered skeleton speeds towards his target. Grabbing Evot by her waist with his one intact arm, Douglas steers his own animated frame into a large turn. His Mathematics skill working overtime, he barely manages to finish calculating his next needed steps before he makes them. Not daring to look back, he feels the ground shake behind him. A truly impressive stream of Histaff projectiles smashes into the ground Evot just stood on.
Douglas knows that all bone usage is correct bone usage, but something about this wasteful application of the good white stuff ticks him off. He turns around, incorporating a slight zig-zag pattern into his mad dash. One of the projectiles shot from the far away mountain smashes into the
ground just in front of Douglas, allowing him to catch a glimpse of the danger he is in. His anger firms, like soft clay under the heat of the oven. The Histaff Behemoth is shooting small Reworked at him. Each projectile is a long cylinder of bone featuring several movable fins encasing a core of red goop.
Evot keeps up an impressive scream as Douglas speeds off, hypersonic and self-steering ammunition exploding all around him. Hauling the relatively heavy woman over his shoulder, he bounds dozens of meters with each step. His mana pool empties at a proportionately fast rate, but that’s something that will be future Douglas’s responsibility. Clunkily jumping over a large rock in his path, it is only sheer luck that the projectile aimed at his landing point misses him. The white and red projectile speeds between his ribcage and pelvis bones, clipping Evot’s thighs.
Her screams increase in pitch, but Douglas ignores her. He simply can’t afford to spend any time thinking about her. He speeds on, reaching the lowest point of the channel rather fast, much faster than he would have by walking normally. Making large and powerful strides, Douglas does spare a few seconds on worrying about his feet. The stone covering his bony stompers is eroding at a pace he can feel. A few of his protruding foot bones are already exposed, wearing down fast before slowly regenerating, only speeding up his mana drain.
Bone-related worries clouding his mind for a few seconds, Douglas fails to notice that the lowest point of the valley bursts open. A thin and long dust cloud appears between him and the other side of the massive gorge. Instead of the sloping sides stretching on unimpeded, now his way forward is blocked by a dense hedge of bone spikes. Apparently buried under a thin layer of sand, the unfolded row of fine Histaff limbs runs all the way back to the Behemoth shooting at him.
Then Douglas sees another of those black vehicles fall from the sky, two shattered chunks of metal only connected through a ravaged middle frame section. The moment the wrecked bike hits the ground a couple of dozen meters in front of him is the moment the world goes white.
GalaxSec: A Sci-Fi LitRPG (Skeleton in Space Book 2) Page 13