Tethered Worlds: Blue Star Setting

by Gregory Faccone

  Stopping against the far wall, he thought it briefly vibrated. He peeked around the next corner but saw nothing. It seemed to get even quieter. Looking up, the lavender gray sky felt close. It hung over him like a sound-dampening blanket. This whole encounter was positively ancient. No espies or high-tech aid whatsoever. Just because he liked venerable mystic technology didn't mean he was retro.

  Preparing to take the next section, he pushed off the wall. His father had told him once that projectiles do all kinds of crazy things, including following along a plane. Best to keep away from it. He edged out, slicing the pie again, and gaining vision of the next room one small wedge at a time. Leading with his eye, trying to expose as little as possible, the third slice made his heart skip a beat.

  "Whoa!" He actually spoke the word aloud, and recriminated himself for the outburst.

  Even though he expected trouble, it was still shocking to see the edge of a black shape where only empty, snow-filled air should be. He had no time for shock, and retreating would cede the initiative to his enemy. His training kicked in, prompting an aggressive full step in. An angular dark torso came half into view, along with a raising pistol. But Jordahk was already on target and placed a shot right on the chest.

  The black shape spun in an orange cloud. Jordahk controlled the big grister's recoil, but by the time he pulled back down on target, his opponent was gone. He took the next room aggressively, trying to control his heartbeat. Pursuit was tempting but dangerous. Unless for some reason time was of the essence, his best bet was to continue slicing the pie through the chunky wood maze.

  "Help!" a female voice shouted.

  Great. There's no way I can make a methodical approach now. I must pursue.

  He pushed through the next room quickly. Despite swiveling through all the checks, it was still reckless. Ahead lay the open center of the complex, and the cabin.

  A female voice, muffled now, sounded from within the simple structure.

  He knew the score and what had to be done. He continued toward the cabin with small, even steps. Grister at the high ready, his eyes scanned back and forth between the door and window facing him. The two doors and two windows were opposite each other on the cabin's four sides. The windows were just open squares, and the doors simple hinged things.

  How to approach? There was little time and few options. He ducked low past one of the windows and readied to kick in the back door. Hopefully, his opponent wouldn't know which entrance he was using, and he would have a second of initiative. There was no lock. He put a treader to the heavy door and kicked it open, grister raised.

  His opponent had a hostage. Solia was being used as a shield. Jordahk saw her face as he aimed past it. She wore the pained expression of a woman who knew something would come to a violent end.

  "Please," she said, her voice desperate.

  Solia was wearing spring armor. The thick material was hardened for combat, and her joints were enhanced for strength and stability. Its color was set to a very civilian-looking light green. She was clutched across the chest and neck of her slim form by a metal arm. It was supranameled black, and moved her as effortlessly as if she weighed nothing. To a modern combat bot, the mass of her lean body was insignificant.

  With its other arm, the machine held a grister to the girl's field helmet near the temple. Its angular head was partially eclipsed by her armor. Jordahk tried to point in on the exposed half. It was a small target, and bot swayed purposely to make aiming difficult.

  "The female will die if you shoot." The machine's deep timbre vibrated the air in the room.

  Most people had never been personally addressed by a combat bot, nor even heard one speak outside of a cineVAD. They were intentionally sinister, designed to elicit fear. Solia's fair skin shone brightly from beneath her hard air helmet. Her eyes were wide, her complexion pinkish from exertion.

  It was amazing how much of the combat bot could be hidden behind the girl's slender frame. The portion of exposed machine head made a scant, moving target. Jordahk tried to keep the reticule squarely upon it, but the shot was too low-percentage, and he couldn't get the image of Solia being jerked around out of his head. He looked her in the eye, willing her to help in some way.

  Suddenly, fear left her eyes and she gave him a knowing look. One corner of her mouth inched up. He felt his heart beat a little faster, knowing the situation was about to come to a head.

  The machine held Solia on her tippy toes, so there was little purchase from which to struggle. But hostage and bot were close to the wall, and her eyes darted toward it on the machine's next sway. With a casual flexibility she always seemed to have, her torso bent and both legs lifted to slam hard into the side of the wooden structure. The armor-enhanced push was enough to overcome the bot's unprepared stance. It staggered a step and a half to regain equilibrium. Solia shifted away from its grister barrel and exposed more of the machine's faceless head.

  Jordahk tried to not tense up, and failed. Still, he had to make the shot to the best of his ability. It seemed to be playing out slower in his perception. The combat bot, realizing what was happening, switched aim toward the threat, the barrel of its grister coming up. Jordahk willed his hand to relax and took the shot.

  In an instant, the machine switched to dodging, spinning the girl away. The shot caught it in the shoulder, pushing it only slightly while most of the orange splattered on the back wall.

  "Ingots!" Jordahk exclaimed. Another non-lethal blow.

  With inhuman accuracy, the machine tumbled across the room and dove out the window.

  Solia smiled, and her armor material softened back into something cloth-like. It contracted across her limbs and flat abdomen. She moved to touch his shoulder.

  "Jordahk, you saved me," she said quietly, in only slightly dramatic cineVAD fashion.

  He gave her a nod and half smile, but didn't stop. Leaving her in the safety of the cabin, he kept moving past the robot's exit window and out the far door. Diligently scanning the entrance to the final portion of the timber structure, he tried to keep growing annoyance from turning into frustration. The urge to put a shot on that machine's head was great. It put a fire in his pursuit that he knew was imprudent.

  Putting a shoulder to the remaining section entrance, he breathed deep and pushed into the first room with what could not even generously be called slicing the pie. He rested on the next wall and felt that vibration again. His eyes scanned from side to side with a robotic intensity approaching tunnel vision. Head and grister swiveling, he charged into the next room determined to get the next shot off first.

  The room was empty. Neither conifer needle nor wisp of snow seemed disturbed.

  He smirked, knowing the angle on the last room was to his advantage. He practically ran to its threshold when he felt the crushing impact of a shot in the back. He stumbled into an ungraceful turn, wrenching his body to acquire any kind of desperate shot. On top of the wall, like a gargoyle with a gun, was the crouching form of the black combat bot. They both fired at the same time. Jordahk felt an impact in his groin, and his entire body spasmed in shock.

  His securewear undergarment hardened in an expanding, circular ripple pattern. It distributed the force of the shot, but not the pain. At least it prevented serious physical harm. His pride on the other hand...

  "Ouch! Smelting slag." He never had much reason to use the common pejorative for combat bots, until now.

  The last he saw of the machine was it tumbling off the timbers within an explosion of orange.

  "On top of the wall?" Jordahk called over the structure. "Really?"

  Only the tinkle of ice crystals answered. The blockhouse was finished, and he had to keep moving.

  He extended a hand onto the chunky, weathered wood near the exit. It was comforting in a natural way, and he took a second to center his mind in his forehead, letting the pain, irritation, and stinging pride pass. The exercise, learned years ago on Patram, was all too handy. He exited the wooden structure with renewed caution,
not knowing what to expect.

  Ahead was a gently sloping hill with woods on either side. Snipe screens and other cheaper, hard air shields were placed intermittently along its upgrade. All were activated, blue-tinted hard air rising two meters from the ground. He was already calculating how he might take that hill, running from screen to screen for maximum cover.

  Atop the distant apex was a temporary structure a little larger than their old family fanicle. The vehicle had been destroyed during the Egress Incident and had yet to be replaced. His father stood raised behind two snipe screens and a makeshift turret.

  "Congratulations," Kord Wilkrest said. The words, transmitted from his compy ring to Jordahk's compy bracelet, sounded as if the two were standing next to each other. "A couple of minor mishaps. And you were probably killed in the blockhouse. But you did save Solia."

  Jordahk shook his head. "Two poppers buried right next to each other? So inefficient. No one would ever do that. Especially someone like you who knows what they're doing."

  "You were expecting proper placements. This is about more than just tactics. Your annoyance almost got you electrocuted."

  He was right. Thirty-five years of life, the end of long adolescence, and Jordahk had yet to master the "roll with it" attitude his parents, especially his mother, demonstrated so often.

  A dark shape moved in his peripheral vision and he turned with a start.

  "Goldy!" If he didn't know better, he would have thought the combat bot took pride in surprising him. As if their final encounter in the blockhouse wasn't enough. "Must you stealth approach like that?" It was so easy to become reliant on an AI for early detection.

  "Expanding your awareness is one of the purposes of this exercise," the deep, slightly metallic voice said.

  "We're not in the exercise at the moment."

  "My instructions and experience indicate," the faceless, faceted head rotated atop its armored torso, scanning the area, "understanding is gained through the active and nonactive portions of this experience."

  It sounded like something his mother would say. She was always concerned about his inner development. Losing his temper at the poppers, and these pride issues, showed he had a long way to go. He could almost see an understanding acknowledgment on his father's face, though it was too far for details without zoomies.

  "And what's up with Goldy?" Jordahk asked. He cast a disdainful glare upon the bot. "Why'd you shoot me in the groin?"

  "It's a legitimate target within our training ammunition safety parameters and your current armor load-out," the bot said a little too matter-of-factly.

  In the last few months—the beginning of Goldy's second life, really—the former Perigeum combat bot had developed, if not a lot of personality, at least a personality. They had spent a good chunk of coin repairing, restoring, and reconfiguring the machine since his mother defeated it in the woods not far from here.

  The efforts wouldn't have borne fruit with a front-line combat bot, but Goldy was a command model with significantly more flexibility and capacity for expansion. And he was older, with an AI quadnapse structure grown naturally through no small amount of experience. Jordahk noticed the worn stripes and gold trim along the bot's matte black, faceted form. A symbol of elevation for millennia, and the genesis for his rather uninspired nickname.

  "That shot was designed to shock and provoke you," Goldy continued. "It succeeded, and also served to reinforce the value of armored undergarments."

  The bot seemed to tremble for a moment, giving off a deep hum that Jordahk felt as much as heard. Three orange splotches on its torso and leg, marking Jordahk's hits, flaked off and turned to dust.

  It was surprising how well Goldy had taken to his new role as a teaching assistant in their family business. Instructing seemed embedded in his core command AI structure. His father recognized that early on and had opened up, as wide as possible, its oppressively narrowed personality initiative.

  The strange result was a combat bot that seemed to enjoy being shot at in training scenarios where sound tactical thinking was being inculcated. Not only had Jordahk experienced that back in the blockhouse, he also saw it at the few training seminars they ran with the machine on Adams Rush. As an added benefit, you could shoot Goldy all day with training ammo, and to him it was less than a nuisance. For that matter, even regular ammo from common gristers would do little more than chip his supranamel coating.

  Being designed for tactical command made him a great fit for their business. Having him around as an anselbot, a bodyguard, was also a welcome plus. Combat bots were expensive and uncommon. They were usually fielded by governments, corporations, or citizens' groups like colony associations. Goldy's high-end military specs exceeded those of most anselbots.

  "Don't blame Goldy, Jordahk," Kord said. "All right, come on up and get me."

  Jordahk moved behind the first barrier and took a knee. He checked the heavy hunting grister's training ammo count. It was a good enough pistol, but it felt like nothing more than a tool in his hand. At times in the past, his old, lost autobuss felt like an extension of his will. Squinting through the blue-tinted hard air, he spied a fist-wide gap between the snipe screens shielding his father at the turret. It would be a hard shot on the run without technical aids.

  "Stay on the hill," Kord said, "and good luck."

  The tone made Jordahk suspicious. From experience, it didn't portend good things. He was just planning which shield to run to next when the one he was kneeling behind tinted red. A surprised question was still forming in his mind when the red shield shut down. Suddenly, he was exposed. He darted to the nearest active shield.

  A distant pop echoed. Behind him, a half-meter hemisphere of high-visibility orange foam blossomed in a muffled explosion. Within seconds it contracted and hardened.

  "A foamer? A foamer turret?" he said incredulously.

  "Yeah, borrowed it from some police buddies on the riot squad," Kord's voice sounded closely. "And some militia guys who helped me out last year while you were away lent me a hauler load of these security shields. Aren't you lucky!"

  A pop was followed by another foam explosion just a couple meters away. Jordahk didn't feel very lucky, highlighted by his current shield also beginning to flicker red.

  "I'm sighting manually over the barrel," Kord said, "you may be able to squeeze a shot through the gap and get me. And the foamer's also set to one-second recharge."

  Insight dawned within Jordahk. So the stratagem that had come to mind during the poppers was appropriate after all. Timing was a key focus in the day's exercises. The point was validated as red and blue shields oscillated all the way up the hill. It was a pattern too complex to grasp.

  With a thud, an orange explosion expanded on his soon-to-deactivate shield. He rolled backwards, losing ground to get to the nearest active barrier. Looking through it, he took the entire hill in, and a strange feeling came over him. Suddenly, the oscillating shield pattern made sense, and the one-second recharge between foamer shots seemed to lengthen in his perception. He saw a path that could get him at least halfway up the hill.

  He wanted to dart out immediately but resisted the urge. If he couldn't learn timing by getting hit over the head with this lesson, what would it take? After a few seconds, when the pattern was right, he dashed out, firing a hastily aimed grister shot just to throw his father off. A foamer pellet whizzed by him and exploded midair. The splash back was minimal, and Jordahk used the one-second recharge to tear off toward the next shield.

  The confidence of a sound plan and the belief his physical skills could execute it surged through him. It was proven out by his steady progress. He passed the one-quarter mark and began to lay more shots on his father's protective screens. While none made it through the gap, a number were close, splattering orange training pigment inward.

  At the halfway point, the pattern stopped making sense. He stared at it, breathing heavily and willing more insight, when all of the shields except the one he was behind turned off.


  "Now what?" Kord challenged.

  He could hear the smirk in his father's voice. Jordahk's destiny had become complicated over the last year, possibly leading to the crazy or fantastic. But undoubtedly, tactically sound, flexible thinking would aid him greatly wherever destiny led him. His father took the responsibility of teaching such things seriously, but that didn't preclude getting some enjoyment from it.

  "I don't know," Jordahk said, "why don't you tell me?"

  "Okay. You're not going to be able to advance anymore just using the pattern. I've added a mystic controller to the foamer. You're going to need to reach out and shut it off."

  Well, there it is.

  Just about everything they were using from the clunky hunting grister he held to Goldy was made of conventional scientum technology. It made Solia's spring armor work and comprised the tiny brains in those annoying poppers.

  Mystic technology was once a rival to scientum. That was long ago in the century before the war, a conflict stalemated now for some two centuries. Mystic reordered the construction of component materials. It tailored them to the specific purpose of their application.

  Jordahk was not the expert on mystic his grandfather was, but he knew a lot more than he ever realistically expected. It culminated with that altering experience in orbit. Where others only speculated about the unusual aspects of mystic, he knew truth. Too much truth, if judged by his feelings. Traipsing mentally into advanced mystic technology wasn't something with which he was comfortable. Doing so made him feel like a newbie, a child in a land of giants.

  The Sojourners were those giants. Not defeated militarily, but stretched by the vastness of an epic war front, and burdened by mighty powers accessible only to them through mystic. They withdrew from known space after their stalemate with the Perigeum. He had learned a lot more about them, and the story had become quite personal.

  Jordahk looked up the hill, trying to sense the mystic controller. That's what his father meant by "reach out." The quantum fields generated by the brain, dubbed "spirit fields" by the Sojourners, could resonate with the quantum structures built into mystic technology. But the price for delving too deeply into this dimensional "foundation space" was harm, madness, or worse.