by R H Nolan
“You’re just telling me I have to do a lot of target practice, aren’t you?” Max smirked, and it surprised him when Zryk hissed quickly in response.
“In essence.”
“Can’t I just go up to the surface and shoot a bunch of rocks?”
“You could, but the gains would be very small. For maximum improvement, you need to fire at moving targets that include a threat of danger. Because of the difficulty, your implant will calibrate better to targeting in the future. Because of the stress hormones you produce during dangerous situations, the implant will give higher priority to the targeting, sensing that it is a matter of life-and-death urgency.
“However, I must caution you as to the diminishing returns of improving Accuracy. You may train with your abilities for an hour and increase Accuracy to fifty percent. An additional hour, though, may only bring that to sixty percent, and yet another hour may only raise them to sixty-five. Trying to increase Accuracy to anything over seventy-five percent is extremely difficult and may become a frustrating pursuit.”
“So settle for above average,” Max said with a nod. “Got it.”
“Many other lifeforms also provide Soul Points. Do you know these?”
Zryk tapped again at the computer, and the Sandwalker in the holographic display was replaced by two different shapes. One was a long, cable-like creature with hundreds of tiny insect legs. The other was a pulpy mass of long, waving arms.
“The long one is a megapede, I think. The other one is a sand squid.”
He’d never actually seen either of them in the flesh, but he’d heard them talked about by the old-timers, men who had roamed the desert before the Peacewind settlement was built. Apparently, many horrors besides the Sandwalkers inhabited the Wastelands.
“Yes. The Soul Points of a megapede vary, dependent upon the creature’s size. I have collected data in the range of five to thirty. These… sand squids? These offer closer to forty soul points. If it suits you, Max, I will perform further studies on the other lifeforms available to you in this desert.”
“Sure… yeah, okay…”
He was still having a bit of a hard time wrapping his head around all this—not just the numbers, but the fact that he had abilities at all, through forced evolution, and that he could go out on a hunting spree just to practice with all the things he never dreamed he could do. But at least this way, he wouldn’t have to hunt people.
“Well, I guess I better go get started on that target practice, then.”
“Not quite yet, Max. There is no need to squander a perfectly good opportunity.”
Max stopped and turned slowly around, hoping there wasn’t some other disconcerting piece of information the Bug chose to deliver last-minute—like with the Soul Points.
“An opportunity for what?”
“Do you see this?”
Max blinked, and then the vision of his augmented reality filled with a graphed, highly detailed map of what the key said was a thirty-mile radius around the Qirinian starship. He easily pinpointed Neo Angeles to the west.
“You mean the map? Yeah, I can… how’d you do that?”
“It is simply a matter of connecting your implant to my ship’s navigational capabilities. If you will look closely, the yellow lights are fallen starships. Human and Qirinian.”
Zryk rubbed his hands together, looking particularly excited now—or as excited as a Bug could ever look.
“The brightest of them all is an Earth ship with a small power core I would like you to recover for me.”
“You want a small power core from a human ship?” Max asked, raising an eyebrow.
That seemed odd. Bug technology was much more advanced than anything Earth had created on its own before the Interstellar War.
“‘Want’ is a… strong word. I WANT Qirinian parts. But I am still searching for those rare items available to us here. An Earth power core will do for now. You will find a much more detailed layout of the particular ship when you arrive.”
“That’s helpful,” Max said.
It took him a minute to figure out how to clear the map from his vision, but when it disappeared, he could look around the stasis chamber without seeing graphs and topography on top of everything else.
“And I have this for you as well.”
Zryk walked around the computer in the center of the chamber and lifted a huge black shell of something that looked like it had been ripped from the wall of the starship and painted. When he returned, he extended his arms and held the item out.
When Max took it, it was solid, cool to the touch, and a lot lighter than it looked.
“You’re gonna have to tell me what this is,” he said, confused.
“Himirini. I told you I would craft you himirini armor, Max. I do not currently have sufficient materials to build all of it, but that will change. With your assistance, of course.”
“You keep saying ‘himirini’—what’s ‘himirini’?”
“Ah, my apologies. That is the word for the properties of the armor, which will work with your powers.”
“How?” Max asked, turning the armor over in his hands and trying to figure out where it went.
“It will withstand your disintegration powers, so you cannot use it as an energy source unintentionally. With a certain level of practice, it will channel your energy blasts. And obviously it will protect against a certain measure of damage. I would say a seventy-percent reduction in blunt force trauma is an accurate estimation.”
“Where does it go?”
“On your thorax,” Zryk said, and touched his own chest with one hand.
“How do I put it on?”
There were no straps, no clips, no way to set it over his chest and stomach and keep it from falling right off.
“It will bind to the training armor you currently wear.”
Max looked up at him. “You gave me training armor?”
The Bug hissed a little and bobbed his head. “It is not himirini.”
That was obvious, but the black Qirinian bodysuit had kept Max from getting a blade through the back. If it was only meant for training, Max couldn’t even imagine how much better the himirini would be, especially when he had more than just a chest plate.
He lifted the thing to his chest and placed it against the black bodysuit armor. When he slowly lowered his hands—feeling ridiculous just because he expected the thing to drop to the ground—the chest piece clung to the black suit about as well as Max imagined a few straps would have kept it there. Maybe even more securely. It weighed as much as a heavy blanket placed over his chest, which wouldn’t keep him from moving the way he needed when he set out to get the power core.
“Thanks,” he said and nodded at Zryk. “I guess I’ll go get the power core now. That, and blast a few Sandwalkers.”
He glanced at the top of the computer where the remaining fruits and vegetables rested on the tray.
“But I need you to do one more thing for me first.”
12
Max shot across the desert on his skates as he headed toward the blinking yellow light on Zryk’s augmented reality map. He only realized he’d been grinning when a gust of wind kicked up the sand in front of him and he had to wipe it from his teeth.
He’d never seen his mother so happy. Not since that brief few minutes between Kier’s birth and the healers taking him away to insert his implant. That was probably the last time her eyes had shimmered like that with joy and pride, despite her exhaustion—until today.
Whatever Qirinian tech Zryk had used to organically replicate the fruit and vegetables, it did its job faster than Max could have imagined. He had raced across the Wastelands using his jacket as a sack, stuffed full with food for his mom and Kier.
The look on their faces when they saw the feast he’d brought for them… it was something Max would treasure for the rest of his life.
He was already making plans for bringing back food for he entire tribe. But until he got to that point, his first priority was ma
king sure his mother and brother had enough to survive.
His mom never questioned the exact details of where he went or how he got their food. Max figured she didn’t really want to know, which worked well for him. The fewer questions, the better.
He’d had to leave quickly after that, grabbing his threadbare pack from the corner of their hut just as his mom and Kier had started digging into the food. They called out to him to join them, but he told them he’d be back—as always, before it rained.
Now he was heading southwest from the Peacewind settlement, kicking up sand behind him and grateful that he still had a bit of time between now and the hottest part of the day with the sun at its peak. Maybe he’d spend enough time in the fallen Earth ship to miss the worst of the heat completely.
There really wasn’t much at all out here. According to Zryk’s map, this specific crash site was pretty remote compared to the scattered gatherings around Neo Angeles. The closest thing was another ship two miles to the west.
At least there wasn’t any reason at all for him to come across anything but Sandwalkers—maybe a mutated Wasteland beast or two.
When he reached the ship, only the rear thrusters and the cargo bay door jutted up out of the sand. It had landed at a less severe angle than the ship that had led him to Zryk, but the desert had swallowed most of it over the last half-century.
Max slowed down his approach a hundred feet away, which was a smart move on his part. On hearing him, three Sandwalkers emerged from behind the exposed ship parts.
They moved slowly at first, most likely in curiosity. Then the first hissed when it saw Max standing there. It tried to blink its bulging eyes against the glare of the sun, but those eyes didn’t quite close all the way. Then all three starting shambling towards him, their arms outraised to tear him to pieces, shrieking in inhuman screeches as they came.
Time to train, increase his Accuracy, rack up a few Soul Points, and grab the energy core.
Max bent to press his hands against the sand and disintegrated to his full capability. His hands crackled with yellow light as the three Sandwalkers got within forty feet.
Max glanced at each of their Health stats picked up by his implant—81%, 52%, and 67%. He decided to take the weakest one first.
Max moved slowly forward and let off the first energy blast. It struck the second Sandwalker just inside its left shoulder. The thing dropped, and a sphere of muted gray light darted quickly toward him.
His Soul Points counter increased from 50 to 55, and Max started to think this was going to be a lot easier than the raid.
The other two Sandwalkers didn’t seem to notice the dead one, but now they rushed Max, shuffling and limping grotesquely toward him, thick yellow drool flying from their mouths and spattering their naked bodies.
Max let off the other energy blast, but it went wide and hit the hull of the ship instead. With a grunt, he dropped to the ground, disintegrated again, and let off the rapidfire energy blast at the closest Sandwalker. He thought that would at least give him a chance to aim better, if he could see where the first few rapidfire attacks went and then adjust accordingly.
The first two shots went absolutely nowhere near the Sandwalker, which was now fifteen feet away—but the last three tore through the creature’s belly and chest.
The Sandwalker staggered backward under the force, then snarled and pressed on. It was within ten feet now—what had to be point-blank range.
Max let off the other full energy blast, ripping a much wider hole where the thing’s navel had been, and that finally did the job. The Sandwalker crumpled, tripping up the third one coming full speed right behind it.
Max’s skates moved him backward, and he circled in a wide arc around the wrecked ship just so he could disintegrate some of the hull and repurpose it.
The third Sandwalker staggered to its feet and came toward him. It made sense to wait now until the thing was close enough that Max couldn’t possibly miss. Both energy blasts hurtled from his hands at once, catching the thing in the neck and the top of its chest. The creature went down in a heap, blood and saliva splattering the ship’s hull.
Max stepped back with a grimace, then took a look at his stats.
ENHANCEMENTS: Level 3
Energy Blast
Intensity: 3000
Base Range: 40 feet
Accuracy: 27%
Rapidfire
Intensity: 5 rounds of 600
Accuracy: 26%
Lightwave
Intensity: 300
Focus: 20
Electrical Current
Intensity: 300 volts
Base Range: 2 feet
Accuracy: 50%
SOUL POINTS: 70
Not much change… but then again, he hadn’t expected anything to increase much in the beginning. Not just by killing three Sandwalkers.
Max walked back around to the open airlock door, which was really just a gaping hole now. The door had been ripped off a long time ago, either in the crash or by something or someone who thought they had a use for it. Most likely, the rest of the ship had been picked clean already, too. Except for the power core, which seemed a little odd.
He climbed up through the slanting doorway and dropped down onto the sloping floor. If he shifted his weight backward just far enough, his skates kept him from sliding, though the incline wasn’t that bad. He just hoped it wouldn’t be any harder to climb back up again when he was finished.
After one tentative step, something clanked around in the airlock to his left, and he turned. Two more Sandwalkers stepped toward him, at 47% and 19% Health.
He squatted and quickly disintegrated a small part of the floor. One energy blast took the first Sandwalker down, and the first two rounds of a rapidfire burst knocked the almost-dead one aside.
The rest of the rapidfire bursts lit up the left side of the airlock and three more Sandwalkers in the shadows.
The farthest one tried to scramble over the others as they jerked toward him. Max stepped backwards to place his hands against the wall and disintegrate.
It took two energy blasts each to take out the first three, then another weak one fell under a single hit.
The last Sandwalker kept moving toward him even after two full energy blasts.
Max cursed and moved along the wall. The mutant was just a few feet away when his hands glowed yellow again.
The thing’s Health was at 11% now, but just for good measure, Max sent both blasts into the last Sandwalker. Finally it dropped, sliding with a low hush down the slight incline of the carbo hold floor.
Once the grayish orbs had all centered themselves through the chest plate and into Max, he took a minute to catch his breath. Maybe it wasn’t as easy as he thought to just keep blasting away, especially when he really had no way to tell how many shots it would take to bring these things down. That last one took three, which seemed like a lot. Then again, these things were all kinds of messed up.
Then he noticed his stats.
Energy Blast
Intensity: 3000
Energy Reserves: 0/3000
Base Range: 40 feet
Accuracy: 30%
Rapidfire
Intensity: 5 rounds of 600
Energy Reserves: 0/3000
Accuracy: 28%
SOUL POINTS: 125
So ten of these things down in the last ten minutes, maybe, and he’d gotten a 5% increase in Accuracy on Energy Blast, and slightly less on Rapidfire.
Not bad…
Max pulled up the map of the ship’s interior, which appeared in his vision as a soft yellow overlay. He could still see the airlock—or at least what was still illuminated by the sunlight through the door.
The ship was a whole lot bigger than the size of the airlock suggested. The blinking yellow light in the airlock itself had to be him, and this one room went only about a fifth of the way through the ship’s lowest level.
The power generator sat almost dead-center in the ship, on the middle deck, which
was still one level above him. The green light blinking in the generator room was almost all the way up—or down, the way the ship was buried—that it might as well have been the engineering room at the ship’s bow. So Max had a whole ship to move through, back to front, and a level to climb. That would be interesting.
A yellow symbol he didn’t recognize flashed in the top right corner of the map, and Max only had to think about it before an entirely new layout appeared in his augmented reality. The entire airlock lit up as if he’d cracked two huge glowsticks at the same time. Everything was still overlaid with the same graphs and measurements as the map across the Wastelands, only now the map fit exactly what he was looking at with his own vision. Meaning he could see regularly, with a little extra help from Zryk’s overlays.
Another yellow light flashed on the interior airlock door. It reminded Max of the blinking lights that had led him through Zryk’s Bug starship the first time he returned.
The indicator light wasn’t really necessary in this case—obviously, the airlock was the only way into the ship from where he stood—but he could foresee that the glowing lights directing him would be a lot more helpful once he was inside the ship and presented with potentially dozens of directions in which to go.
The map and Zryk’s link with his implant were going to make this training-recovery mission a whole lot easier than he’d expected—at least when it came to navigating his way around.
Now that he could clearly see the airlock was empty, Max leaned forward a little. His skates gently tilted him down the slope of the floor, and he stopped himself with outstretched arms against the airlock door with a soft thump.
He waited for any more shuffling or noise coming from the other side, but it all seemed fairly quiet. So he stepped around the sliding door and moved into the next small corridor.