“Would you please shut up?” I said, sensing the first hints of annoyance rise inside me. “I don’t give a shit about her past. She’s on my team now. She’s my friend, and I’m gonna pull her through.”
“You’re completely off your head, Enchanter,” Kai said with a crooked smile. “Don’t tell me you also sleep with her! No?”
That’s when I couldn’t hold it any longer. I took a hearty swing and punched his jaw so hard that his head jerked to one side and he momentarily lost his balance. A lightning-fast blow like that would have knocked out a regular man, but not a Blizzard team member who must have undergone quite a few physical upgrades. Kai staggered but remained standing, so I had to get serious and top it up with an elbow, knocking him off his feet.
“Which part of ‘shut up’ don’t you understand?” I wheezed, towering over the defeated opponent.
He winced. “Fuck, that hurts.”
He felt his jaw and licked off the few drops of blood left on his finger. A happy grin lit up his face. “I can feel it! I can feel the pain! Mind throwing another one? Make it real hard, eh?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s your game, anyway?”
“What’s my game?” I sensed an angry grimace twist my face. “I just want to help Alice. I want to help people. Like those stuck in Fort Angelo. I have Gnarl to take care of. Then I need to find out who the hell I am. And why I had to come back here.”
“I’m with you,” Kai said unexpectedly. He looked up at me and extended his arm. “Can I join your team?”
I helped him back to his feet. “Why would you need that?”
“Why?” his transparent icy eyes focused on me. “I wanna fight. I wanna feel the wind in my face. I wanna taste blood. I need to forget. I have nothing left. Otherwise, I’ll just go looking for my team, I know I will. And I’ll just stay there with them.”
He paused. “I know how you managed to tame her. You’ve got this burning inside. You set others on fire. And we’re just a bunch of old embers. We’re ashes. Dead cinders. We’re burnt out. Have been for a long time. Dead souls. Know what I mean? Mortido, Thanatos, Animus... The death of a soul. It’s hard to explain... you need to feel it, really. Try now. You’re an Enchanter, after all.”
Warily I touched his mind.
Then I knew what he meant. It had nothing to do with words. It was the feeling: the discordant buzz of misery and frustration vibrating within him. He was empty like a long-cold fire; he had neither meaning nor purpose left, nothing but bitter memories.
The Incarnators’ longevity had played a bad joke on them. Human nature doesn’t embrace immortality, so gradually they’d begun to burn out, losing interest, energy and the very will to live. Old men in young bodies, they’d kept living with only one dreary goal in mind: the expectation of their own demise. It might have been a common problem across all of them, actually, and one of the main reasons why they’d gradually become extinct, having exhausted their potential and readily accepting their deaths.
“We’re all dead, Grey. On the inside as well as the outside. We just don’t have the fire anymore. We don’t want anything. We don’t have any life left in us, only a rotting void. Those who burned stronger than most, they all stayed up there,” he pointed a nonchalant finger, implying the Black Moon. “All the others are dead ashes. Cinders. It’s a good job you’re back. You might restart the fire, you never know...
“Never mind!” he shook himself free from thought and averted his eyes. “It’s no good me moping about. Could you give me Gerda’s cryptor back, please? I wanna show you something.”
Chapter 24
I HANDED HIM Gerda’s possessions. To open her DNA-coded artifacts, you had to be either a Technomancer or a fellow team member, anyway. Just as I’d thought, Kai had no problem checking them.
“Good. Nothing’s missing,” he chuckled, still kneading his jaw. “You didn’t answer my question. Can I join your team? Listen Grey, the world isn’t the same anymore. Everybody I used to know, they’re all dead now. I really have nowhere to go.”
His request had taken me unawares. A seasoned old-school Incarnator like him would be a great addition to our team. Never mind his body was still new. The three of us could become a power to be reckoned with.
But what was he up to? Also, he gave me the impression of someone badly broken on the inside. There was no knowing what he might do next. Plus, his relationship with Alice hadn’t gotten off to a good start.
“If you’re not sure, just let me join for a short while,” he added, misunderstanding my silence. “I just want to repay you for rescuing me. Here, take a look.”
He reached inside Gerda’s cryptor and produced a weird item, small enough to sit in the palm of his hand. At first I thought it was some kind of serrated ring but once I’d taken a closer look, I realized what it was.
A miniature crown, carved from a piece of greenish-black bone. It looked rather scary, its needle-sharp points reminiscent of a shark’s jaws.
“The crown of Hades. We shrank it, of course. Normally, it’s ten feet in diameter. Holy shit, you should have seen it. Got it for closing the Blue Alert. And you need commendations, don’t you, to clear your lady friend. How about this as my entry fee?”
“Say yes, Incarnator, please! This is a unique opportunity!”
It took me a bit of time to understand. Of course. The perished Blizzard team had completed several system missions in the A-zone — but it had never reported them closed. Kai was the only survivor. If he joined Amnesia, he could close all of Blizzard’s missions, and my team would receive the rewards due. This was indeed a unique opportunity. For Alice, anyway.
I nodded. “Deal. Just please no more aggroing Alice. Is that clear?”
“Say no more, commander! You think I can’t see you have hots for her?” he gave me a wink. “Don’t worry, we’ll be friends. Agreed?” he proffered his hand.
We exchanged a firm handshake.
Incarnator Kai has been added to your combat group.
***
Blue Alert Update: Uprising of the Dead. Success! Alert eliminated!
Your group has received the following rewards:
Commendation (10)
Order of Merit: White Star.
Elimination of the Necros: Mission completed!
Your group has received the following rewards:
Commendation (3)
Hunt (5): Mission completed!
Your group has received the following reward:
Commendation (1)
It went on and on and on.
As Kai reported the completed missions, his face was focused and sort of sad. The line of Azure capacitors lined up in front of him kept growing, next to a heap of Arsenal items: some cartridges and high tech gadgets, a pulse gun and lots of other stuff which Stellar must have awarded him.
By the time he was finished, our team status sported 23 commendations and 2 Orders of Merit which looked like 3D star-shaped medals: one silver, the other blindingly blue.
“That’s it, man. You can use it as you see fit,” Kai said wearily. “It was Gerda’s dream to be promoted to Legate, but I don’t need them. The only way for me to get promoted is by getting three First Class Stars. I’ll take the Azure, if you don’t mind...” he touched the heap of items. “I have access to the Terminal so I might take a look and see if I can return or swap some of the stuff. I can see that we don’t have much in terms of team gear. I’ll think of something. I have a few ideas. This is yours, by the way.”
He lobbed me one of the glowing Azure capacitors. I caught it and stashed it away in my cryptor. 10,000 Azure, all correct. The guy seemed to have the habit of honoring his debts.
“Thanks,” I said, looking at the two stars glowing in my interface. “These Orders of Merit, what purpose do they serve?”
He gave me a blank stare. “What do you mean, what purpose? Oh yeah, you’re an Allarch, aren’t you? And you can’t remember anything... Okay, listen up.”
Apparently
, the Stellar rank system had three main chains: soldiers like myself, officers, and high command. And if commendations were all you needed in order to rise through the lower ranks, it wasn’t enough for an officer. That’s where “Orders of Merit” came in: the so-called “White Stars” which you could receive for completing especially difficult missions. The high command had “Blue Stars” which you could only get for eliminating an alert. Kai seemed to be stuck in the end of the officer chain and needed three major decorations to make it to the next rank. Which meant liquidating three major alerts – and considering there was only one Star awarded to a group, you can imagine how long and challenging the process could be. I was pretty sure that having to share all the loot, awards and commendations between team members had become the undoing of many an Incarnator.
Besides, according to Kai, the Arsenal also required Orders of Merit in order to apply for especially valuable gear and rare genomes. Just as I’d suspected earlier, the whole system was hinged on completing missions non-stop. If you wanted to improve, if you needed more advanced weapons, genomes or gear, you had to complete missions, rise through the ranks and receive Orders.
It just didn’t ring right. It wasn’t the first time I caught myself feeling that something was off here.
One after another, I distributed all the commendations to Alice. Now she was at minus six. The red flashing box of her status had changed color to a dirty yellow. The ‘Dead or Alive’ mark had disappeared.
“You don’t mess about, do you?” Kai remarked. “Now your Lady Fury can enter the Monolith if she so wishes. I already told Kate to add her to the vouchee list. With the two of us as her vouchers, of course.”
“Thanks a lot, man,” I said. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for her.”
“Ah, give it a break. I’ve been a Renegade myself, for crying out loud. You saved my back; it’s only normal that I help you. Do I understand it correctly that our Red Fox is a Warrior? Which means you need a Technomancer on the team. In that case, I’m ready.”
“I thought you were an Enchanter?”
“I was. But if you’re an Enchanter, why would you need another one? I’ve got a fresh host; I can level him any way I want. The Source type seems to fit. Not perfect but not too bad, either. It’s true that I’m a total dummy but not for very long,” smiling, he nodded at a dozen of Azure batteries he’d received from the System.
Well, yes, that way it might only take him twenty-four hours to catch up with me. Which was good. We did need a Technomancer: a team’s brain, an expert specializing in Intellect who could control hi tech equipment, communication networks, and Azure technologies. We were constantly short of gear, and our analytical and planning abilities left quite a bit to be desired.
“Kai? What’s with all the rigmarole? All those ranks, commendations, decorations?”
The future Technomancer shrugged, sorting through his trophies. “That’s just how Stellar system works.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just issue us some ammo and weapons so we could kill the monsters?” I finally asked the question which troubled me the most.
“Possible. But our ancestors didn’t think so, apparently. The system they created is good indeed but it’s flawed like everything created by human hands.”
“Do you want to say that Stellar was built by humans?”
He cast me a surprised look. “Not Stellar itself, no. But it was the Utopian animaturgists who came up with the system, the settings and the interface. You really, really can’t remember?”
“No, I can’t. What’s Stellar, then?”
He laughed softly. “Holy shit, Grey. That’s a soul-searching question. What’s the meaning of life? The only people who can answer it are those who actually were inside the Nucleus and saw Stellar with their own eyes. But the access is restricted to Grand Legates, and there’ve only been three of them in our entire history. Common Incarnators like ourselves have to make do with the fact that it does exist and that we know how to use it.”
“Mind telling me about it?”
“You can find all the information in the Terminal, Commander. It’s all in About the Project tab.”
“It’s restricted access,” I insisted. “And I have a funny feeling you could tell me much more than what it says there.”
I wasn’t asking out of idle curiosity. These old-school Incarnators who’d shed a great many lives in their time were bound to know all the intricacies of the Stellar system inside out. Because judging by what Zac had told me and by Alice’s dark hints, all wasn’t as well and rosy as I’d initially thought.
Kai heaved a weary sigh. “Grey, let me explain a few simple things. What would be the point of all these rank-based clearance levels and restricted access if every Inca who rose through the ranks could start sharing classified information with all and sundry? The system has its ways of protecting its data.”
“How?”
“Here,” he tapped a crooked finger on his temple, “each of us has got a tiny little fish hook which nobody can pull out. I mean our cogitors. Holy shit, man, if I as much as open my mouth to tell you something confidential, I’ll get a reprimand straight away. If I persist, the system will block any further promotions. In all honesty, by now I don’t give a flying monkey – but you as the group commander will get your fair share too. You really need that? Not in our situation, I don’t think.”
“Miko? Is that true?”
My virtual assistant nodded, then added with the sour face of a stern school teacher,
“Yes, it is, Incarnator. Anyone who discloses classified information to a person without proper clearance, will be subjected to penalties. Let me warn you that you too might earn yourself a reprimand by trying to gain unauthorized access.”
A reprimand was indeed the last thing I needed right now. Six more commendations, only six – that was all we needed to get Alice out. But this new side to Stellar rules got me thinking. You could still bypass the restrictions if you really wanted to, even despite the invisible snitch sitting in your head. All you had to do was temporarily disable her. Having said that, in order to conceal the illegally gained confidential information, you’d have to forget it, which sort of defied the purpose. Still, there had to be some kind of solution...
Miko breathed a sad sigh and severed our mental link. That was her way of taking offense. As in, “you can do what the hell you want”.
“Don’t get so hung up about it,” Kai added with a grin. “Pointless. It’s not as if I can tell you anything ground-breaking about Stellar, anyway. And any excess knowledge does nothing but takes up space in your brain.”
Indeed, now I could see some new information added to the About the Project tab. Apart from the description of the Terminal translocation system I’d already seen last time, it now contained a brief history of Stellar. For the ancient Utopians, this must have been common knowledge, which was why they hadn’t bothered with detailed explanations. The description was curt and precise.
Apparently, many a century ago – in the early twenty-second century, to be precise – an alien object had arrived in the Solar System. It had materialized from a different dimension, which much later would be dubbed A-space, or the Edge. The ship’s unusual winged shape earned it its moniker among Terrans: Blue Bird.
In those days, people on Earth lived in anticipation of First Contact. Like an arrow homing in on its target, the alien craft beelined for the only inhabited planet in our system and entered its orbit.
Still, the research expedition that had gained access to the ship hadn’t discovered any organic life on board. All they’d found was an object which was christened “Project Stellar”.
The arrival of Stellar in our world had given rise to Utopia.
A classified research center was built around the item found on board Blue Bird. The information and technologies they’d managed to glean from it triggered a new technological revolution, dramatically advancing human science. Extradimensional space, limitless energy, gen
etic engineering, space exploration — but most importantly, they discovered the Edge and embarked on the first studies of Azure which was the energy substrate of human being. The first animaturgy centers mushroomed all around the planet, their network of terminals connecting them to their main “server”: Stellar’s central terminal, located at a classified facility which apparently had stood where the City was now standing.
This new information didn’t contain anything I needed to know about Stellar’s nature, its origins or purpose. The only thing I’d learned was the object’s extraterrestrial nature which I’d already suspected from my conversations with Alice.
The appearance of Kate 7 announcing Alice’s arrival interrupted our discussion.
The girl stood stock still in the black-and-white entry hall, casting slow wary glances around. When she saw me, she heaved a sigh of relief, apparently uncomfortable in the closed space surrounded by Stellar symbols.
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 29