by Morgan Cole
I was relieved to have something to do after the deluge of bad news. Metra was right, I preferred simple solutions and this was about as simple as they got. Go back to Grandpa's house and pick up the materials. The question was, how to get there?
It took very little time to find the skill implant I wanted in the outpost's library.
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Piloting—Redemption: This skill grants all the necessary familiarity and skills required to pilot the custom Scout design designated Redemption
Skill Implant created by Mattias Monde.
Cost: 1 Nanite Cluster.
Implantation Time: 170 minutes
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I paid the cost and queued it up. I glanced through the rest of the listed skills and saw that I'd already implanted everything I wanted back on Pax.
"In a few hours when the pilot skill is done implanting, I'll fly Redemption down to Paradise Plains and bring it back here."
"That would not be advisable, Jake. The Redemption will not be able to evade radar and would likely be intercepted by the US military. Without its full suite of propulsion, it would not be able to outrun pursuit, and without weapons or active defenses it would be very vulnerable."
"I was thinking I'd just fly really low to avoid radar. Nap of the Earth, they call it."
"That would not—" Brick started to school me again, but Metra interrupted.
"Don't be stupid, Jake. She's too big and if their sensor tech is better than you think it is—and I can't imagine how it could be so terrible that they would miss her—then she'll be discovered and shot down."
"I can't risk taking the truck back across the border," I protested.
"Ferals, Jake. I built you flying armor. Use it. It's small enough that it might not be detected, and if it is, you can just swat their machines out of the air."
I didn't like the thought of "swatting" down fighter jets, but she was right that it would be a lot easier to evade detection and defend myself in the armor. Plus, it would be fun as hell. That by itself was a good enough reason for me.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Flying Back to Paradise Plains
IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG to gear up. A quick jaunt through the gate to step into my armor and grab my weapons. A Gazer, the GN-75, and Excalibur all went into their proper spots.
I had thought about taking some explosives or my drones, but that seemed like even more overkill than the weapons. There was no military tech on Earth that could hold up against even the GN-75, much less the Gazer. Excalibur didn't really have a role on this mission, but I felt a bit naked when it wasn't stuck on me or close to hand, so it was definitely coming along. I would have taken one of my duffel bags, but I didn't plan to take the metals, and the exotics and radioactives would easily fit into the Assault Armor's pockets.
I stepped up out of the outpost and into the deserted cabin above and then outside into the snowy woods. Snow crunched under my heavy steps and I looked up at the darkening sky. The sun set early that far north, which was good for me. People were less likely to notice a suit of flying power armor if it wasn't sparkling in the sunshine.
"I'll be back in a flash with some goodies," I said.
With a thought I arced upward and raced through the air southward, skimming the snow-laden tops of the trees below me. I knew from the speed indicator that I'd left a sonic boom behind but never heard the sound. There weren't many people that far north to hear it, and if they did they'd think it was one of the Canadian fighter jocks having some fun.
"Brick, can you plot a route for me? Keep me away from where people can see me."
"Of course, Jake," Brick replied. Immediately as he said that, the first marker appeared in my Interface-augmented vision. A simple blue dot with a distance in kilometers and the time until I reached it—two minutes and change.
Frozen rivers and lakes flashed by underneath me, most far too quickly to see. Only the truly massive stretches of frozen water or open plain were visible for more than a few seconds. In the distance I occasionally could see headlights or taillights, but they were specks of white or red light in the growing darkness and I was comfortable there was no way the drivers could see me.
The elation I'd felt while flying on the surface of Hephaseta 2 was still there, but more pronounced. I didn't have to worry about Regar dying, or monstrous flying Ferals eating me and I could simply enjoy the act of flying.
My only remaining worry fell away when I miscalculated slightly and hit the top of an extra-tall pine tree at full speed. There was an explosion of snow, pine needles, and chunks of shattered wood that sprayed away from me, but otherwise my flight was unaffected. If I hadn't been paying attention I might not have even noticed the impact.
The blue waypoint markers came one after another, and before I was ready for the experience to end, I recognized the roads and lights of Paradise Plains just ahead.
Brick's route was well done, keeping me from flying over the city itself. I came in from the edge of town, moving slower than before and weaving through trees as much as I could rather than flying above it all. Minutes later I set down gently in the deep snow in front of my grandpa's old house.
My Civic was still where I'd left it. The snow I'd cleared had all been replaced, and then some. It was more an oddly shaped hill of snow than a car. There were recent footprints in the snow. Deep, sweeping impressions of people wading through knee-high snow to get to and from my front door. For a moment I felt sorry for the postman.
The visibility from the road to my front door wasn't great, but I didn't want to be outside for long. It would be best to get inside, get the stuff, and be gone as quickly as possible. I hustled to the door.
I was annoyed when I saw the police tape, and even more annoyed when I saw that it was broken and my front door was slightly ajar. The jamb was splintered, the door clearly having been forced open.
"Damnit, Farnell," I muttered to myself.
After Marty and I had left, he'd clearly come back here with a warrant and searched more thoroughly. The fact that the tape was broken told me that after he'd left, someone else had come in as well. That didn't surprise me. It was a poor area and vacant houses tended to get robbed if they were left empty long enough. I mentally bid goodbye to all my dad's power tools before I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The floor underneath me groaned and creaked alarmingly as the weight of my armored foot settled onto the dirty floormat just inside the door. I adjusted the grav plates in my feet to push back slightly against the gravity and reduced my weight to a small fraction of what it was. The floor stopped complaining and I fully entered my house, closing the door behind me.
I was surprised to find all of the tools were still there, although someone had removed the covers from the furniture. That had to be Farnell and his deputies while they were searching the place.
The chaotic pile of junk mail I'd left inside the front door was gone as well. I doubted my intruders—whoever they were—had stolen it. Since they also hadn't taken the tools, I began to worry. If they hadn't taken the tools why had they broken in? Just stupid kids wanting to look around?
I hurried down the stairs and into the basement. It was pitch dark and pretty much how I'd left it. The cooler that had once held my beer held a block of ice, a single bottle of water trapped inside. The paint-spattered ghetto blaster was silent.
On the far end of the basement, the hidden door in the wall was hanging open. Kicking broken pieces of drywall out of my way I hurried over and inside. The space past the door was the way I remembered it with one major exception: The walls were bare concrete and the space was empty.
"Shit, there's nothing here," I said.
"None of the gate materials are there?" Metra asked.
"No. Nothing at all. Maybe Farnell took them for some reason?" I mused. "I can fly over and take a look. Is Marty awake? He'll know where to look."
"Marty is still being Inducted," Brick reported.
I ran up the stairs and
out the front door. I didn't even bother to close it behind me. With no lock and a house full of tools it hardly mattered. The house would be emptied out soon enough. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the stuff still inside.
Multiple lights came on all at once. Red and blue lights spinning and a spotlight directly in my face. If I hadn't been in my armor the spotlight might have blinded me, but instead my visor neutralized it—turned it into a black point surrounded by a halo. Behind that I could clearly see the Paradise Plains sheriff's department cruiser and the figure of Sheriff Farnell pointing his revolver at me.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me. Again?"
"This is the sheriff! You there, in the suit. Drop your weapons to the ground in front of you!" Farnell ordered.
I was tempted just to fly off. There was literally nothing Farnell could to do stop me or even annoy me. That revolver was as much threat as a nerf bat in the hands of a two-year-old. I almost did just that when I realized that maybe I could get some answers.
"Sheriff, it's me, Jake. Sorry about your jail door. I couldn't stick around any longer," I said, and my armor projected the words into the air.
"Jake? What have you done with Marty? Disarm and take off whatever that is you are wearing and we can talk about this down at the station."
"So you believe it's me this time, Sheriff? That's great. Marty's fine. He went with me. I'll get him to call you when he can."
"I'm going to believe you on that, Jake. He always was an adventurous sort, so I can see him doing that. Let's put Marty aside for now. I need you to come back to the station with me. I've got lots of questions and I'm sure the Federal government will as well. I haven't told anyone yet, but I saw what you did to my cell door. What was that?"
"Nanotech, Sheriff. I'm not coming in to the station though. Unless you've got the material taken from my house there? I'll need that back."
Farnell's gun sagged a bit, and I could see that he looked confused. "What material? We didn't seize any evidence from your house."
"In the hidden room at the far end of the basement."
"Oh, that. We searched that pretty thoroughly. Nobody builds a hidden room with good intentions. We only found a bunch of metal pieces piled up along the walls, and we left them there. What was in there, Jake?"
"Shit. Nothing illegal, Sheriff. The police tape was broken when I got here. Any ideas who could have gotten in there and taken it?"
"You know how it is around here, Jake. Lots of potential suspects. What else did they take? And how did you get here, anyway? There's no car on the street."
"They didn't take anything else that I noticed," I replied.
"Then I don't have any answers for you, son," he said and lowered his pistol entirely, his right hand loose at his side.
"You know I'm not going to shoot you, but can I convince you to come and chat with me for a while? I've got so many questions. I'm an old man and I'm used to the world changing around me, but this is more than I was expecting to see. You turned into Adonis in two weeks and what did you do to the lock on that door? For Pete's sake. What's going on, son? Can you explain any of it to me?"
Farnell had been nothing but kind to me, and I really was tempted but there was just no way it was going to happen. I'd either have to get out of the armor and expose myself, or hang around for a while in the armor and hope no one called the Feds.
"I'd really like to, Sheriff. I will, but it's going to have to wait. I promise you we will have that conversation, but I have to go now. I'll get Marty to call you."
I turned slightly and was just about to disappear into the black night sky when he interrupted me.
"Hold on! Give your sister a call. She's worried sick. I called her after you and Marty left to see if she'd heard from you. I didn't give her the full details, but my call didn't help her mindset. Call her. Family is important, and I know you don't have as much of it left as you should."
Meredith again. I felt zero desire to put myself back in her zone of control. What Farnell said did sink in a bit, though. Other than one aunt and some cousins I hardly knew, she was the last family I had.
"Thanks, Sheriff. We'll talk soon," I said, and left a plume of snow hanging in the air a moment as I leapt free of the embrace of knee-high snow and streaked northward. I was unfortunately moving far too quickly to see the sheriff's expression as I left.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Searching for a Solution
I'D BEEN IN THE AIR less than a minute when a blue dot appeared to the northeast and Brick spoke.
"I've plotted your return route, Jake. Also, I have a request to make."
"Sure, what's that, Brick?"
"I may be able to determine who removed the stargate materials. I will need your permission to use my computing resources to penetrate various systems connected to the Internet. With luck, we can find evidence of the thieves from in-place surveillance such as security cameras or satellite."
"You mean, you want to go out on the Internet and be a leet haxor? Can you do that?"
"An elite hacker? No. I am an advanced machine intelligence with the ability to trivially break any encryption used on Earth. I will be far more effective than a leet haxor."
"Shit, I'm sold. Why'd you ask for permission?" I asked. It did seem odd. He was usually pretty proactive, only asking for explicit permission for some things.
"What I will do could be construed as a hostile action, or even an act of war. There is also a small element of risk. My Internet connection comes from local mobile phone towers as well as several data satellites. There is a remote possibility that my activity could be traced back to our general area, if not to our actual location."
I had a vision of the FBI showing up and searching hundreds of square miles of wolf-haunted northern Canadian bush for the hacker hiding there. I laughed out loud.
"Hah, don't worry about it, Brick. Try to keep a low profile but do what you need to do. Find us our materials. Hack away, buddy."
"Thank you, Jake. I will hack the planet."
I groaned. I really shouldn't have played Hackers for Metra and Brick.
Not long after, I landed at the cabin and entered the underground outpost. I stepped through the door and into the control center. Marty was up and spun to look at me, his eyes going wide as he took in the intimidating armor. He relaxed immediately once the Interface told him who I was.
"Jake! Cool armor, man! Wow, that's like something out of a comic book."
I willed the suit open and stepped out, leaving it standing there near the door with everything still attached.
"Yeah, it's pretty great. I'm glad you're okay, Marty. I was worried I wasn't going to get you here in time."
"I feel amazing. Better than I ever have in my life. My ribs are healed up too. What happened after I fell in?"
"I fished you out and gave you my parka. You were pretty messed up, completely hypothermic, so I used a couple of food heating pouches to try to keep you from freezing to death. Then I picked you up and ran my ass off to get here before you died."
"Shit, man, thanks. This is super cool, too!" he said, and gestured at empty air. He was pointing at a screen I couldn't see.
"I've got stats! Some dude named Ray welcomed me to the Union. The Interface said he was a tutorial construct, but I could swear he was here in the room with me."
"Ah yes, good old Ray. It didn't strike you odd he was dressed like he was from the 50s?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Jake, the Induction tutorial I ran for Marty is from this outpost's library. It was substantially newer than the one on the station, having been updated approximately ten years ago when this outpost still had a connection to the Union communications network."
"Well, that's cool. I guess he didn't answer any questions then?"
"He just said something about no connection and disappeared."
"The same thing happened during my Induction tutorial. I'll have Brick give you some Nanite Clusters for some upgrades. We're pretty flus
h now. Before that though, let me show you something cool. You'll love it."
I led him down the passageways of the station toward the hangar. He gawked, not having seen anything but the control room. To my eyes these bog-standard Union modules were far from exciting, but to him it was all new and cool.
"This is amazing. We're still on Earth, right?"
"Yeah, we're under my grandpa's cabin."
"I don't remember getting there. I remember the wolves and falling through the ice. It was so damn cold. Not much after that."
"Yeah, that was rough. Anyway, Induction fixes a lot of damage. I'm pretty sure you don't need those glasses anymore, for instance."
Marty took them off, then put them back on again. "Hey, you're right. How did I not notice that? I don't have much of a prescription, but now everything's sharp."
"We're here. Brick, you want to repeat your show for Marty?"
"Of course, Jake," he replied.
The door opened and we walked into darkness. Brick raised the lights, revealing Redemption.
Marty freaked out. "Holy shit! Is that a spaceship? A real spaceship? Can we fly it? Can I sit in it?"
"We can't fly it right now, and yes, you can sit in it."
The hatch under the nose opened with a touch and a wide ramp smoothly lowered. Marty scampered up and into the ship. I knew from experience there wasn't much to see in there—three chairs, some redundant control consoles, and a small cargo area. There wasn't even an engine room. It was more of a space car than a space ship, if you get my drift.
I followed Marty up the ramp. He was sitting in what I thought of as the pilot's chair, the one at the very nose of the ship. As far as I knew it didn't matter what chair you sat in to fly, but still.
"This is amazing. Seriously, Jake, I want to fly this thing. I'll do anything. Want a slave? You've got one. Just let me be the pilot."