by Morgan Cole
Physical Stats:
Strength: 30
Coordination: 30
Endurance: 30
Mental Stats:
Acuity: 30
Intuition: 30
Perception: 30
Nanite Clusters: 87/100
Mitrasa Zeropoint Energy Tap
Engineering Vision
Subdermal Armor
Drone Control Link
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My stats were maxed out for my Transcendent Flesh level now. My body didn't look any different. I hadn't suddenly bulked up or anything. I thought I could feel the difference. My thoughts seemed sharper, and my body more responsive and strong. I was aching to test it out.
Before I could get distracted I checked the time and saw that I'd been unconscious nearly ten hours. I had no time to play just yet.
"Brick, that took longer than I expected. Is Marty done?" I asked.
"Yes, Marty is waiting for you with the Redemption along with Regar and Kiril."
After all my talk about how time-pressed we were, I ended up being the one that was holding up the mission. I stepped into my armor and it closed behind me.
"Let them know I'm on my way, Brick."
Excalibur was still clipped to my right hip, and Brick had refilled the suit's Nanite Cluster reserves without my having to ask. What I didn't have were any weapons.
The Secure Storage Locker opened at my command, revealing a Gazer rifle and the GN-75 Gale Needler. I took the Gazer and hesitated for a moment before taking the GN-75 as well. It wasn't always up to fighting the really tough Ferals but I still had a soft spot for the weapon. At the very least it would make a good backup for the Gazer, which history had shown me was quite fragile.
Leaving the empty locker open I turned and jumped into the lift shaft. It set me down gently at the bottom of the Hab complex seconds later. I hurried through Pax's empty corridors to the gate room and through to Mercury.
Regar, Kiril, and Marty were standing in a loose group in front of Redemption when I entered. Kiril had a brown box tucked under his right arm.
"Great, you're here," Marty said.
"Sorry man, didn't realize my upgrade was going to take so long."
"No big," Marty said and waved off my apology.
"Jake, we have come bearing a gift," Regar said.
"You're going into battle, and a Seeker must be properly armed," Kiril added. He stepped forward and presented the brown box with both hands.
The box had obviously been handmade. Strange whorls hinted at some alien wood. It had a hinged lid, closed with an ornate bronze latch on the front. It wasn't small, roughly the size of the box my work boots had come in. The Interface didn't give me any clues.
"What's this, guys? I'm not a Seeker; you know that."
"You are, if only in spirit. Besides, I owe you a life debt. One that can never be fully repaid," Regar said.
"Unlike Regar, I do not believe in the concept of a life debt," Kiril said. "I also acknowledge that the balance between us is uneven, Jake. May this gift shift the scales."
I had no idea what he was talking about. Some kind of karma, perhaps?
Kiril pressed the box toward me and I took it and cradled it in my left arm while I opened the latch mechanism with my right. The lid opened smoothly and revealed the treasure inside.
Black fabric molded around every curve of the device within. Shining black and chrome metal, it was a fat cylinder with six stubby barrels protruding from one end. It looked like an upscaled version of one of those guns you'd see in a Western every now and then—a pepperbox revolver. This one had no pistol grip or even a visible trigger.
The Interface continued to be unhelpful, refusing to label it for me.
"Is this an Artifact?" I asked, looking up at Kiril and Regar who were watching closely.
"Yes," Kiril said. "One of our fallen brothers owned that. It was his prized possession, although Regar rarely allowed him to use it on our expeditions. The way you fight in that flying armor of yours I feel it will work very well for you indeed."
I pulled it free of the box’s tight embrace and felt the heft of it in my right hand. The box I set on the floor, taking care not to damage the beautiful wood. My Engineering vision mode revealed Union power input and control runs beneath the surface of the Artifact, as well as what looked like a targeting link. The rest of the weapon's interior was an opaque mystery.
Once again, I resolved to get the blueprint for Kiril's upgraded Engineering vision Augment that worked on Artifacts and install one as soon as possible.
"It's beautiful, but what does it do?" I asked.
"Attach it to your armor and link it into your control network," Kiril instructed.
I stuck the weapon to my right forearm and mounted it so that when it fired the shot wouldn't take off my right hand.
As soon as it was firmly mounted, power began flowing into it and the Interface finally popped up to identify it.
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Nemesis
This Artifact weapon fires antimatter charges at high velocity.
Impact Detonation
Control(s) available: Set to Remote Detonation
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"The weapon has two firing modes," Kiril explained. "The first causes the projectile to explode on contact. With the second the projectile will remotely detonate when it receives a detonation signal. Each barrel has a unique key for the projectile it fires, and your suit should have the transmission power to issue the detonation sequence at several thousand kilometers of range."
"Seriously?" I boggled.
"You will find that range to be useful, Seeker," Regar said. "Fair warning—do not use this weapon indoors. Really not anywhere near something you care about. There are good reasons I rarely let Larenn bring this weapon on our expeditions. Our analysis suggests that the Nemesis' projectile warheads are antimatter. In any case the blast is rather profound. Brick tells me you are rather fond of large explosions, so I'm sure you'll find this weapon to be agreeable."
The beautiful weapon mounted on my right forearm felt a lot heavier. An accidental discharge would be catastrophic. I thought about those videos I'd watched so long ago with the stupid terrorists mishandling an RPG and blowing themselves and their terrorist buddies to hell. The difference was that an RPG wouldn't erase everyone in this room like they hadn't been there.
"That's disturbing. If I fire this thing how do I reload it?" I asked.
"You don't. When powered it will replace expended projectiles at a rate of one every twenty-three hours, approximately."
"Wait a minute, that thing is full of antimatter and it makes it?" Marty asked. "Are we sure we want to bring it with us? What if it takes a hit and the antimatter goes up?"
Kiril nodded. "A valid concern, Marty. It is one that I also had when Larenn began to use this weapon. We believe this was a weapon of one of the Elder races. Despite the evils they brought into our galaxy their material science was unparalleled. The force it would take to destroy this weapon and breach its containment would surely vaporize you, Jake. Still, I beg you to leave the Nemesis behind when you must fight near a population center. The risk is simply too great."
I was in complete agreement. The Nemesis made me incredibly nervous. I had no numbers on yield, but I expected it was at least the equivalent of a half-dozen tactical nukes attached to my right forearm.
"Thank you both. I hope that we won't need this clearing out Pluto, but if we do then we'll really need it."
Kiril nodded, stepping back while Regar stepped forward to take his place.
"Jake, I would like to accompany you. Infested planets are a Seeker specialty, after all. My life debt demands it of me."
I noticed then that he was fully geared. Not just his armor, but also the Tempest strapped to his back and what looked like a compact plasma pistol on his right hip.
I thought about it for a moment. The plan was to never set foot on Pluto. We had the big guns on Redemption and
we weren't going to be shy about using them. We would cleanse the planet with fire from orbit. Why fight up close and personal when you didn't have to? Even with all that, I didn't just want to say no. Regar was an experienced fighter, and if things got hairy we could use him.
"Understand that the plan isn't to go to Pluto. We'll probably end up fighting in space. You okay with that?" I asked.
"Fighting without a solid surface under my feet isn't my favorite, but I wouldn't be First Seeker if I hadn't done it many times before. I came prepared."
"All right, then you're in."
Then it just came down to final preparations. Each of us checked the others’ gear, making sure no one had forgotten anything. Marty was in his light armor, carrying a sidearm but little else. If it came down to fighting inside the Redemption we were beyond screwed. I had my weapons and had thought seriously about bringing more Holemakers but dismissed the idea. If we had to do demolition in space I could use the Nemesis.
Minutes later the three of us were in the ship. The forward hatch closed and Marty blasted us off the planet, its harsh, rocky landscape receding quickly behind us.
Mercury was soon a mere speck, a grey dot against the sun. We were slingshotting around Sol itself, as Pluto was going to be on the other side of it by the time we got there. Marty pushed Redemption hard, getting it up to its full speed and on its final course before turning back to us.
"All right, what's the plan?” he asked. "I hope it's not just go there and shoot everything until it dies."
"Well, now that you say it, that does sound like a good plan," I said and grinned.
Marty sighed. "Seriously, though. Why didn't we make some nukes? We could've stood off and nuked the hell out of Pluto from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Regar sat back, watching the conversation without comment.
"I thought of that. It might even work, but we don't need it. You saw what happened when the potato hit Mercury. Who needs nuclear fission when you've got kinetic energy?"
"We're going to throw rocks at Pluto?" Marty asked.
"Yeah."
Regar spoke up. "It is a good plan. It's not one a Seeker would ever use, but for this it is perfect. The reason we explore Infested worlds is to seek knowledge and Artifacts from fallen civilizations. As your system's outermost planet is simply a barren rock, sterilizing it with kinetic weapons is a very valid choice. You will eliminate the majority of the infection and then it will simply be a matter of cleanup."
"We'll have to make sure we tag any promising rocks when we get closer. With the tractor beam, we should have no problem accelerating a bunch of them," I said.
"It's not as dramatic a plan as I'd hoped, but sure. Throw rocks. Then what?" Marty asked.
"You heard Regar. After the rocks do the majority of our work we come in and clean up with the guns. With luck, we'll get a big haul out of it. Lots of Nanite Clusters."
"You should be aware that with the Connahr field now encompassing Pluto again, the Ferals will be agitated. Their growth will be accelerated, and they will be attempting to leave the planet and spread out. This is what normally happens when someone envelops an existing Infestation with a Connahr field."
"Shit, does that mean we're going to see them in space?" I asked.
"It's likely, assuming the Infestation has had time to build the spikes."
I thought about that. Pluto had been left alone outside of the Connahr field for quite some time. The images I'd seen from my grandfather's sensor array in Earth orbit hadn't been good. They had looked a lot like Hephaseta 2. Silver capillaries running in all directions. I knew that at the intersection of those capillaries, Spikes would have formed.
"Wait a minute, we can check. Brick, can you get us a feed from Grandpa's orbital sensor array and show us what Pluto looks like right now?" I asked.
"Yes, sending you the feed," Brick replied.
An image popped up. It was Pluto although the fidelity was not great. We could make out that the capillaries were roughly the same as the last time we'd seen them—maybe a little thicker. What was different was the haze around the planet. Like the image was blurred.
"What's that haze, Brick?" Marty asked.
"Unknown. It appears to be objects in orbit. Small ones."
"That will be Ferals," Regar said.
"Crap, so Pluto orbit is full of Ferals. This is sounding more and more like a suicide run, Jake."
I had to admit, it did worry me. If the Ferals were so thick they were forming a haze around a planet, that was nothing but bad news.
"Have courage, Seekers," Regar said. "The Ferals launched into orbit are not optimized for efficient space travel. They are meant to move slowly through the solar system and fall into whatever gravity wells they encounter to spread the infection. They will have no chance against a warship like this. It may take some time, but you will be able to clear the infection from orbit. Only a small percentage of them will be able to give us any fight at all."
Hours passed, time moving slowly in the tiny cabin. For a while Marty and I tried to get Regar to tell us about life in the Union before the current crisis. It turned out Regar was a terrible storyteller. His stories were more like after-action reports, without description or detail. After fruitlessly pressing him, we finally gave up. He seemed as frustrated by the experience as we were.
"It's just not fair, you know? We finally get to join galactic society and it’s gone to shit. I was looking forward to visiting an alien world, seeing the sights, meeting the strange women. You know, tourism."
I had to agree with Marty. It was disappointing.
"Don't dismiss the Union quite so quickly," Regar said. "If all of the Elder AIs together couldn't wipe us out, this resurgence won't do it either. Somewhere out there the Union is fighting. Wager on it, Seekers."
He had a good point. The Union was essentially a post-apocalyptic society. That apocalypse had happened a long time ago, but they were survivors. We just had to get out there and find them.
Our course took us near enough to Saturn to see it, although not with the naked eye. Redemption's sensors magnified the image—making it seem like we were right next to it. It was truly magnificent, passing by on the right-hand side of the ship.
"I was going to plot a course that would let us skim the rings, but it was way out of our way. It would have added a couple hours to the trip, and it didn't seem worth it," Marty said.
"That would be cool; let's do that on the way back," I replied.
Regar looked at us like we were speaking nonsense, but didn't comment.
Chapter Forty-Four: Throwing Rocks
MORE TIME PASSED BY unremarked, leaving Saturn as a blur behind us.
"Let's start looking for rocks we can throw. I don't know how far we're going to have to go to find them, but hopefully we don't have to run all over the system," I said.
"We passed the asteroid belt hours ago. There were plenty of rocks there we could've grabbed. It's pretty far back now though," Marty said.
We hadn't even seen a rock flying through the asteroid belt. They were there, but so far apart that we might as well have been flying through empty space.
"Yeah, that's too far. We've just got the one tractor beam. Let's try to find closer asteroids."
"Jake, since you mentioned this plan earlier I have been using the observation array and historical data in the northern outpost to pinpoint candidate asteroids for you. I have several clusters. I will transfer the data now," Brick supplied.
"Brick comes through for us again! Way to go, Brick," Marty said, bringing up the data for us all to look at.
The clusters appeared ahead of us, floating in the black space visible through the front viewport. Each one was numbered and showed the distance to the center of the cluster, the number of rocks, and their average size.
Brick had labeled five clusters, the biggest having a staggering one hundred twenty rocks spread over several light seconds. The smallest asteroid in the cluster was smaller than a
pebble, almost invisible at the range Brick was operating at. The largest was the size of a small Caribbean island—probably too big for us to move. Most of the rocks in the cluster were in the sweet spot—just big enough that they'd make a big bang, and small enough that we could accelerate them to a decent percentage of lightspeed.
"That's the winner right there," I said, pointing to the big cluster. "Plenty of ammunition."
"Aye-aye, Captain," Marty said.
"Aye what?" Regar asked.
"Just an old-fashioned way to say order acknowledged. We'll have to get you up to speed on pirate movies at some point, Regar."
"Pirate movies?" he asked, looking mystified.
"Regar's education can wait, boys. I've got a gift for you," Metra said, her voice interrupting the conversation.
"Now, I know neither of you are math geniuses. You can't just accelerate those rocks in the general direction of Pluto and have them do what you want. I'm guessing you want all of them to arrive at roughly the same time, and to hit as many different targets as possible; am I right?" Metra asked.
I felt a bit embarrassed. I had actually been intending to just chuck all of the rocks in the general direction of Pluto and hope for the best. How hard could it be?
"Yeah, that sounds right," I said.
"I'm going to pass you a bit of software I wrote. Select the target on Pluto and the rock you want to throw, and once you've selected all your targets, the software will generate a set of courses and velocities to put each rock on at any given time. If you're a little slow executing, it will even adapt the schedule, up to a certain point. You will only have so much leeway, depending on the mass of the rock. You're welcome."
Metra had reminded me once again how woefully unprepared I was for captaining the Redemption. My understanding of orbital mechanics was vestigial, at best. Maybe that was fine, maybe a Captain didn't need to understand orbital mechanics as long as he had people like Metra that did. The captain just needed to give the right orders. That's what I was telling myself, anyway.
"That's amazing. Thanks, Metra. Once again, we couldn't have done this without you," I said.