The Powers That Be

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Bren tapped on the device he wore on his chest. “Not anymore, and we’ll get better equipment with time.”

  “There’s no guarantee of that.”

  “No…but it’ll happen. I’ll wager you a planet on it.”

  The lingering terror in Davis’s mind melted away in an instant as he was suddenly analyzing this from the opposite side, now that his opposition was in the position of hope and Davis had to analyze his chances of success as a threat against him…and that’s when he realized that, while there was no guarantee, the odds were not terrible. In fact, he wasn’t willing to take that bet because he suspected he might lose.

  “No bet,” he said, punching Bren in the side of his massive leg. “Get back in there and make this work. I’ve got something else to do.”

  “When do you not have something else to do?” Bren asked, patting the smaller man on the head as he walked away.

  Davis considered that, wondering when the last time was that he had a real vacation…then he realized it was before the discovery of the pyramid, for every day since then he’d been working on something related to saving Earth, or now the galaxy.

  “Workaholic,” he scolded himself, then walked off to go do some more.

  9

  May 13, 128888

  Happhetima Nebula (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Gamma Tricumbda Temple

  Kara hovered in midair amongst a series of floating target drones, each a white orb adorned with gold trim and specifically crafted to collect Essence in its raw form…and what little they could from damaging attacks, but Kara wasn’t trying to destroy them, rather practice her accuracy and coordination with flinging Essence beyond her body.

  Many Essence skills she’d learned from Strovok didn’t leave the body, like the Hard Light weapons that formed as an extension of their body and locked to their Essence…which in turn was locked to their Core. Those two things coexisted within her body, but when she created an Essence Rush it forced the energy to disconnect from her Core. She could then craft weapons out of it that extended off her Core…which occupied every piece of her body, not just her brain.

  Kara could feel it now, not from a physical sense, but in a way that was hard to articulate. She could feel herself everywhere in her body, and when she disconnected from her physical senses Kara was like a blonde statue floating in the darkness, with her light defining the shape of her body.

  That light could then clasp to it and extend into swords, hammers, or anything else she practiced enough to get used to forging. If the Hard Light was broken, the Essence would be beyond her control and it would vaporize into nothingness…which happened every time hers collided with Strovok’s, for his was more dense, more powerful, or more something. She didn’t know for sure, but he so outclassed her, every time they sparred she just wanted to do a little more damage than last time, knowing she wasn’t going to win.

  But not all her training was sparring, and right now this was a solo exercise that she was not yet starting. Whenever she felt an opening she went passive and peered inside deeper, as she was doing now.

  The Essence stuck to her Core, but squeeze it like a sponge and some of it would become liquid and she could direct it where she wanted with difficulty. The mechanism for the movement wasn’t physical, but rather an aspect of her Core…which couldn’t be measured by technology. Strovok said he could see inside her, but she couldn’t see into him…though she was beginning to naturally gain the ability to look inside herself.

  Kara didn’t know how she was improving, rather fumbling around in the dark for the most part, but her ability to move Essence around without having to rely on her Siphon was improving…and while Hard Light was an important ability to learn, it was for melee combat, and if she was going to fight other Essence users alongside Strovok, she needed to let him handle the melee as she assisted him with ranged attacks.

  But to shoot ranged Essence meant it had to leave contact with your Core…unless you used long chains or whips to connect to whatever you had crafted. That wouldn’t work for firing blasts, so she had to take the loosened Essence within her and change its form into something that would hold up beyond her body long enough to hit the target drones.

  She wasn’t even trying to work on crafting it into certain abilities today. She just wanted to work on her launch mechanism, cadence, and accuracy. The trouble was, she could launch Essence from any part of her body with or without a physical trigger. Looking inward now, she could create many effects pulling from her center, but in combat she wouldn’t get many breaks to do so, and that meant she had to react fast…and that meant adding a physical action to help her mind automatically reach into her Core for a well-practiced action that she could do instinctively rather than using large amounts of mental focus.

  Final Spark had her focusing from her abdomen, but she needed to shoot more than what was just in front of her, so her hands were the natural choice…with Kara pulling Essence out of her arms and having the rest of it in her body flow to replace the drain and even out as the oversurge in her palms was focused into two of her fingers clasped together like a gun muzzle.

  Kara pointed at one of the targets and shot a stream of Essence into it at a range of 10 meters, filling it up to saturation only to have it fly off with its valuable cargo as another drifted up from below to take its place.

  Her left hand tilted down and to the side, firing another stream into another, and she repeated one arm after another until her body’s Essence level dropped below half…then she opened her Siphon and began replacing it while using it, firing one stream after another with faster and faster succession as the targets raced to keep up with her.

  It was hard for her to maintain her focus, for the Essence was sticky and didn’t want to flow without a lot of pushing on her part. Too little and it wouldn’t condense into a stream, just splatting off her fingers like a misfire, but each day she worked on this it loosened up a little bit more, though not much. Kara knew she had to grind this type of training, but it still seemed to be moving too slow for what she was expecting.

  When Kara finally ran out of targets, with them all floating off across the landscape in a scattered convoy to the Elcee outpost miles away, she dropped to the ground and felt her bare feet sink into the wet soil, for a rainstorm had passed through a few hours ago, with another one approaching from the ‘south.’

  She wore spandex short shorts and a training bra, which was her normal attire nowadays. The Elcee kept any potential threats away from her training area, so she didn’t need armor, and when she wasn’t sleeping she was training, so no other clothes than training clothes were needed, except she did have a pile of them with tears, sweat, and blood stains on them. She didn’t want to use her armor except as a last resort, and Strovok had suggested she didn’t, because she needed to learn to fight and protect herself using Essence alone.

  It didn’t always work out so well, so her wardrobe was being refurbished as often as the target drones, but right now what she wore was intact, though sweaty. Using Essence took a toll on the body, and Kara was always dripping at the end of a long workout.

  It was getting better though, for somehow she was developing an immunity to some of it. Wherever the Essence flowed freely there was little strain…but where it was sticky her body had to work hard to move it, even though it wasn’t her body doing it.

  Kara couldn’t explain it to herself, she just had to wing it and hope to figure stuff out as she went along…which was different than having the Vorch’nas, for it came with instructions and knowledge. Her Essence abilities had no such luxury, and even with the Responders and Strovok to help, there was a lot she was having to clumsily figure out by trial and error.

  But it wasn’t just her Essence that needed training, so as she waited for the targets to empty out and return she started dancing on the soggy ground, moving from one combat pose to another with rapidity as she began to work up a sweat the conventional way. From dancing she morphed into shadow boxing, getting her
feet and ankles covered in mud and splashing up little drops all over the rest of her.

  Kara didn’t care. Her clothes would be washed easy enough. And since she couldn’t become a Saiyan, she needed to goose her natural speed as much as she could. Power was one thing, but power without speed was limited, and she’d always prided herself on her limb speed…though compared to Saiyans she was painfully slow now.

  Kara was convinced that to defeat Essence users more powerful than her she was going to have to use a combination of Essence, Psionic, and Commando abilities, so the Archon wasn’t making the mistake of only training for Essence…though for the first time in her life she had abandoned the other four Archon disciplines. It felt freeing in a way, but also lazy. Archons were multi-taskers that needed to be sharp in all areas, but Kara was once again a special case, and she had to adapt to that.

  She could work on her Aquatics, Mech, Aerial, and Naval skills again later…much later. So she wasn’t giving them up entirely, though Kara hated to think how much they were already beginning to atrophy.

  Didn’t matter now. She had to become a living weapon because the other Archons and the Empire needed her to be…but it was still weird to have her internal warnings flashing constantly telling her she was forgetting to do the other training. It had become so ingrained in her that even after a few decades off she still had her previous habits nagging at her.

  But on the upside, her Commando skills were improving at a faster rate, especially when she was able to add a little Essence to them, and as Kara’s shadow boxing escalated she started experimenting once again with what she could and couldn’t upgrade by throwing raw Essence at it.

  Her punches sped up, hit harder, went askew, added fire, ice, wind…a lot of weird things were possible, but all started off random and out of control. So far though, she’d been focusing and succeeding on adding momentum to her strikes…and had her bones not been enhanced by Mebvat, some of her heavier punches would have torn her arms off at the elbow when she didn’t have a target to slow them down.

  She could use Hard Light to take the blow when she did land one, but Kara had been working on sort of an Essence band over the front of her hands when she punched…or kicked…that would keep her from damaging herself. It was sort of like an invisible version of brass knuckles, except that it was defensive only and took away her knuckle strikes entirely, replacing it with a solid, malleable object that spread out the impact damage to her entire hand.

  When she didn’t get it right her hands would rip the skin off…which hurt like hell, but her Vorch’nas would fix them within a few seconds. She was grateful for that, but it only underscored how dangerous Essence was to be experimenting with. Keli-172 had died from such experimentation, and Kara wondered how many others had before the Founders created the Temples and a very precise path of advancement to follow.

  And if one followed that path they were more or less safe…but it was also the Founder’s path, and perhaps it steered clear of abilities they didn’t want you to discover or craft. Regardless, Kara had to go another way, and her training in the Black Shield was still in its infancy. She could create the basic barrier, but it was no better than other types of Essence shield. Still, Strovok said it was an incredible breakthrough to be able to generate the foundational matrix for what the ability would be built upon, but as far as a defense it wasn’t worth much right now…and she couldn’t practice it without him, for the stupid Responders wouldn’t recognize her for use of the more advanced training stations lightly scattered across the Temple, some of which had some nifty machines to help tune and practice multiple shielding techniques.

  Kara was having to do it raw, out in the field, with nothing but Strovok and her Archon training instincts to work with…but she was already lightyears ahead of every other Archon and going far beyond it with every year that passed.

  Still so slow, a voice said into her mind, and it wasn’t Strovok’s.

  Kara was in mid punch when the telepathic contact hit, and she stumbled forward, tripping on her toes as they sank into the mud, and nearly went face down in the muck until she activated her Yen’mer and stopped herself by hovering a few inches away.

  Morgan? she asked, not sensing anyone nearby as she floated back up to her feet.

  Peekaboo, the other Archon said, popping out of nowhere and hitting Kara across the jaw.

  Kara half spun to the ground, but stayed on her feet and twirled around throwing a Jumat blast back towards the now visible trailblazer…who negated it with a bigger one of her own, which rocked Kara back on her heels as she took the excess.

  “Nice hair,” Morgan scoffed, turning her own gold and zipping forward so fast Kara had trouble even seeing it coming…then she had her hands up in a defensive position as she swiped at the blur the Saiyan had become, throwing up bioshields to help as they got battered down quickly by hit after hit as Morgan literally danced around Kara, attacking her from all sides and throwing up so much mud and water in the process it looked like there was a curtain of it around both of them.

  Kara was getting pummeled so much she used her Ubven on reflex, stopping the Saiyan for the briefest of moments, then Morgan’s Rentar melted her a path through it and the blur returned to pummeling her…but not before she was able to get a little better positioning and released a spherical Jumat blast that knocked Morgan back a meter, only to have her come in again.

  The trailblazer’s Commando abilities were too damn good, and her Saiyan upgrade made her unstoppable…so Kara had to go into Essence mode and created a vortex around her, not knowing exactly where Morgan was even when feeling for her Core. She was moving too fast and flickering all over the place, so an area of effect attack was what was needed.

  She spun the Momentum Essence around her, vortexing it outward so to push Morgan back, but somehow she fought through it, and Kara felt a foreign Essence mixing with hers right up to…

  Suddenly Kara got hit in the jaw so violently it rung her bell and she lost focus for a moment…then was hit in the gut, the back, and 10 other places before she knew what was happening…

  Reflexive rage filled her and she just pushed outward…everywhere, blowing Morgan down and into the mud as trees around them toppled and Kara’s clothing got obliterated off her body along with the blood coming from her nose that her Vorch’nas hadn’t gotten to fixing just yet.

  When the punches stopped coming Kara calmed down, shut down her Siphon which had somehow turned on full blast without her realizing it, and saw Morgan’s legs sticking up out of the mud as her head and upper body had been driven down into it like a tent spike.

  “Whoops,” she said, reaching out telekinetically to help pull her out, but Morgan didn’t need assistance, and when the torrent stopped she flew backwards into the air enough to get clear and flipped over to land on the ground, her head completely covered with mud as she spat and coughed it up, then telekinetically squeezed some out of her nose.

  “That’s what you get for not saying ‘hi’ first,” Kara commented with an awkward frown on her face. “What are you doing here?”

  “Taking a break from Dino training. They’ve started to figure it out, and I wanted to see this super-power of yours myself. I didn’t expect to land more than a couple of punches at best. Why’d you let me beat you up?”

  “I could barely see you,” Kara protested. “I’m glad you think I’m such a badass you can jump at will and not get the drop on…but I’m not. You hit too damn hard,” she said as the broken nose Morgan had given her audibly snapped back into alignment and sealed up.

  “Training not going that well?” the trailblazer said apologetically.

  “Yes and no. How did you sneak up on me?”

  “Kgat and a little Essence hiding technique Wilson has been working on. Did it work?”

  “I don’t know if I was just distracted or not, but I didn’t have any idea you were nearby, and even after you said something I couldn’t pinpoint you…though I didn’t try to look for your Essence
. I was just happy to hear your voice.”

  “That lonely out here?”

  “I’m back to being the wonder girl that nobody else can keep up with.”

  “Now that you know I’m here, can you keep me from hitting you again?”

  Kara reached out a hand towards Morgan, but the woman didn’t move. Instead she let Kara get an Essence grip on her, which she solidified into a Hard Light body cast…which somehow Morgan broke with her own Essence until she quickly enhanced it with a Siphon flow. The second attempt pinned Morgan hard, and Kara slowly walked up to within a few inches of her face cautiously smiling.

  “Stuck?”

  “Afraid so. How much Essence are you having to use to hold me?”

  “More than I expected. Somehow your skills are still better than mine, you just lack my power.”

  “How much of your training is going into offense and defense?”

  “Most of it is offense, but I’m working on the Black Shield I mentioned earlier. It’s the key, Morgan, and I’m not doing so good at it.”

  “What about body form defenses?”

  Kara shrugged. “Is that what you used?”

  “Cut your extra power and I’ll show you in slow mo.”

  “Alright,” Kara said, reducing her shackles to only what her body could produce, though the amount already there Morgan had to work through over time. She was somehow melting it like ice, and once she got enough movement to wiggle the whole thing cracked and fell apart.

  “Did you see?”

  “Yeah, and I can’t do that.”

  “That’s because almost all my Essence training goes into movement enablers. I’m not going to be able to win an Essence war, but if I can keep my mobility a few seconds I should be able to close to melee range. I figure that will give me a chance if I move quick enough,” Morgan said as her hair went back to her normal red/black that matched her Ninja Monkey Clan colors.