by Z D Dean
“You’re absolutely right. I should let you deal with this,” he responded privately.
“Thank you. We will be fine. These people don’t even have any weapons to defend themselves with.”
“Stay in contact. You’re part of the crew. If you go missing, I will harvest this entire planet as punishment,” he said as he sheathed his knife. He continued out loud for the sake of the two present who did not have access to the comms channel. “You’re right. I am still on edge from the fight. I think it is best if I head back to my ship to recuperate a bit.”
As he walked back to the ship, he ordered Samix to stay fully clad in her armor and to record anything of interest. He didn’t think he could pick up anything she missed, but in the event of a fight, he wanted to have intel on his potential allies. As for the armor, the Baast didn’t know what either of them looked like, and he figured there was no reason to clue them in on the squishy organic being hidden beneath the impenetrable black armor.
If the Baast were as helpless as they were leading on, nothing on the planet could injure his pilot; however, even after securing the ship and taking a hot shower to wash away the filth of battle, he couldn’t relax enough to sleep. Instead of continuing to fight for sleep, he left his quarters and headed to the forge room, where he hoped to find more information on the forger specialty.
Ann couldn’t provide any more information than she already had. If he wanted to make the change anytime soon, he would have to go off of the specialty description. After reading through the description dozens of times, he couldn’t see a downside to the skills. He had been successful on the XES01 precisely because of the things he had created like the combat multipliers. The Groz version would allow him to create again, but provided him a medium unused for millennia.
After seeing what he could gain from the new specialty, he spent some time looking at what he would lose by getting rid of the warrior specialty. It appeared that the specialties were based on what armor improvements could integrate with the protocols in the helmet unit. Certain improvements, such as his shields, were general and could be used by specialty. The basic specialties, such as warrior, medic, and engineer, had a few specific upgrades but allowed the wearer to be well balanced. Specific specialties such as pilot and forger had a multitude of specific improvements but few general enhancements.
After quizzing Ann on the specialty system, he found that it was all the about processing capacity of the helmet unit. There was a limited amount of space in the helmet, meaning there was a limited number of armor improvements it could interface with and control. A good pilot needed to integrate with the ship and know the capacity of the vessel they were controlling. Therefore, their improvements were all based on ship integration, input processing, and reflexes. There would be very little benefit in having a pilot that could reverse the trajectory of energy pulses to send them back at the origin. Likewise, there would be little benefit in having a ground pounder that got real-time feeds on main engine readouts.
As the Groz got stronger they could spend Rua improving the capacity of their helmets, thus allowing them to obtain the capacity to have a second specialty, making them hybrids. With the new information on specialties, he got an idea of how he would want his crew to fill out. Ideally, he would like to have a crew of hybrids with one ship specialty and one ground. He knew he was putting off making the change for himself and finally committed. After setting his helmet on the forge, he waited and watched as it changed.
He picked up the new helmet, hoping he had improved it, and began putting it on when Ann spoke up.
“I think you may have to pair with it again. Although there were a few times when the Groz changed their specialty, it was rare enough to be unheard of.”
∆∆∆
“I’m sorry about that unpleasantness. You must forgive my friend. He is a great warrior, but a people person, he is not. I don’t believe we caught your name,” Samix said as she watched Zade head back to the ship.
“I am Roy, head of the miner’s union. Who might you be?”
“I am Samix and that gentleman headed back to the ship is Zade. We were refueling our ship when we heard the distress beacon. The ship is secured, but I am sorry, we could only find Mara on board.”
“Come on,” the man said as he motioned everyone towards his office. “With the stress from the pirate attacks and the corporations, I have almost forgotten my manners.”
Samix followed him into his office, taking in the scenery along the way. With two stars, one producing primarily blue light, the flora on the planet was extremely vibrant. The union building seemed out of place amongst the lush greenery. It looked like a cross between an industrial metal building and an old stone building. The yard of the two-story structure was perfectly manicured with shrubbery so green it almost appeared to be blue.
The interior of the main floor had a utilitarian aesthetic, consisting mostly of one open space. Roy led the group to an elevator towards the back of the building and pressed the button for the second floor. As she rode the elevator, Zade contacted her on the comms and let her know to be safe. His threat to harvest the planet both comforted and worried her. On one hand, she was happy he cared about her safety. On the other, she had never expected he would cleanse an entire civilization as retribution. The second story of the building couldn’t have been more different from the first. Consisting of offices, the upper floor was garishly decorated in an attempt to project the air of class.
As expected, the head of the union had the largest and most elegantly appointed office on the floor. Both she and Mara took the wooden guest chairs proffered to them, while Roy waddled around his massive wooden desk and plopped down in his overstuffed office chair. Samix gracefully waited for their host to continue the conversation. The desk was neatly organized, but Roy took a second to straighten it up before he continued.
“Your friend seems to have a bit of a temper.”
“A victim of piracy himself, I fear. I imagine he took issue with your concern about the ship instead of the crew. Thank you for letting me defuse the situation without the inclusion of other parties.”
“As you might guess, I am a very well-traveled man. I’ve been to places you could only imagine in your wildest dreams, and I’ve never come across your species before. What do you call yourselves?”
The question caught her by surprise, and it took her a second to respond with a plausible explanation.
“We…are called humans. We are envoys, headed to the core planets to petition for inclusion in the Unity.”
“Bah, you’re better off without the Unity. They were supposed to provide system-wide security for the mining operations and corporations on the planet. They only show up when shipments of metal are late. They don’t care about anything but their precious core planets.”
“One of our exploration vessels came across one of the core planets years ago. They had met with a diplomat who explained how member species of the Unity become part of a collective security plan and share technology to drastically improve the quality of life of all species,” Samix lied, a hint of real concern in her voice.
Roy began laughing so hard he almost fell out of his chair.
“A deceitful sales pitch. The Unity only cares about the well-being of the core. Everyone else is an expendable source of resources so they can maintain their comfortable living conditions. Let me explain something to you. Unity space is broken into three areas: the core, tier two planets, and the outer rim. The core is the only place where that pitch would be true. Tier two planets get some interaction with Unity forces, but only if Unity interests are being disrupted. The outer rim is the most dangerous. Core species send the undesirables of their populations out there to profit from the untapped resources, but they don’t care about the viability of colonies. The outer rim settlers are on their own.”
As a citizen of a core planet, she had only ever been fed Unity propaganda. Her idea of the Unity was exactly what she said the diplomat had pitched to
the humans. Before her father’s treatment of Zade, she would have called the man sitting before her a liar. After seeing how he had acted, she wasn’t so sure.
“So, you are left to deal with the pirates on your own.”
“Correct,” he stated simply. “Before you ask, the Baast home world is extremely close to becoming a core planet. Our government established the mining operations in this system in an attempt to increase our influence within the Unity. The Baast corporations tasked with running the operation are profit-driven. We chose to spend the minimum capital necessary on security and the rest on mining operations. Early on, the armed ships in the system never returned to the surface; we presumed all six of them destroyed by the pirates.”
“So, you’re just waiting for replacement security to deal with the pirates?”
“Security is expensive. The miners are just conscripted poor from the home world. The companies have determined that replacing the miners is more profitable than hiring and retaining security,” he said, notes of frustration and sadness lacing the statement.
“That’s horrible.”
“I know. I try my best to look after the miners, but with the corporations breathing down my neck, I don’t have any choice other than to just send new miners out to try their luck.”
“How can we help get rid of the threat?” she asked, a genuine sense of concern in her voice.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but you are only two. What do you think two individuals can do against a whole group of pirates?”
“That’s a pretty bold underestimation of the people who stopped a pirate attack and rescued a ship, and using only one person, I may add. Zade did that by himself. To be fair, you don’t know what we are. For all you know we could be gods compared to the Baast. You don’t have any options. Why not give us the information you have gathered on the pirates, and let us decide if we can take them on,” she responded harshly. She could understand his melancholy, but she didn’t have to encourage it.
She watched anger flair in the man’s eyes at her impropriety before he calmed himself and led her back down to the first floor. One of the smaller rooms on the first floor was set up as an operations center, complete with a system map that showed where all of the past attacks had happened. The first thing she noticed was that the attacks centered on the portion of the asteroid belt between the planet and what she suspected was the pirate stronghold. Roy’s voice pulled her away from her inspection of the map.
“If you ladies don’t need anything else from me, I have to put together a crew to recover the mining ship. Feel free to take any information you need to decide whether or not you can take on the pirates. When you come to a decision come see me.”
Samix nodded to the man in acknowledgment before he retreated to his office. She had completely forgotten about Mara, who had been sitting quietly through the entire conversation.
“There’s no need to hang around for my sake. Don’t you have a family to get back to?”
At her question, Mara broke down into uncontrollable sobs. Samix quickly closed the door to the operations center before she wrapped the poor woman in a comforting hug. Minutes went by before the woman had calmed herself enough to speak.
“I used to. I came out here with my brother who was hired as security for this system. We weren’t conscripted poor. He was lost months ago during one of the first pirate attacks. His ship must have been destroyed because there were no survivors. After his death, the corporation that hired him stopped paying his salary, which we used for housing. I had to take up working on the ships but still couldn’t make enough money to keep the companies from repossessing the house. I took the job on the mining ships just to have food and a bed to sleep in.”
She was wracked with new sobs when she finished her explanation.
“I have nothing here. I don’t even have enough money to get back to Baast to live with my family.”
Samix knew all too well what the woman was going through. She had the same sense of hopelessness when she was locked abord the slaving ship. She had been nothing more than a commodity to be traded. Now was her chance to be like the troopers who had rescued her, her chance to give someone else hope and the prospect of a better future.
“After I finish here, why don’t you come back to the ship with me? We have extra quarters and plenty of supplies for an additional person.”
At first, the girl politely declined, not wanting to impose. After some reassurances from Samix, she eventually relented and left to grab the few belongings she had left in her locker before the mission. While she was collecting her things, Samix began sifting through and recording as much of the information on the attacks as she could. She was disappointed to find that the corporations had little information on the composition of the threat. The information they did have was just of suspected locations of attacks based on mining sites of the ships that had been lost. They didn’t even know if the ships had been attacked on the way to their respective asteroids.
With the info collected, she kicked her feet up and reached out to Zade on the comms while she waited for Mara to return.
“Zade, I’m bringing Mara back to the ship. She doesn’t have any place to stay on the planet.”
“Zade is resting,” Ann responded. “I will have a room ready for her upon your return. She will have the same restrictions as you had when you first got on the ship. Quarter and galley access only.”
“That seems fair.”
∆∆∆
The pairing with his new subclass went much faster than the first time he had to pair with his helmet. During his sleep, he was exposed to theories about Rua and techniques for using the Rua that had no direct correlation with his previous life back on Earth. Instead of the back and forth between memories, this rest was like sitting through hundreds of lectures.
Upon waking, Ann informed him that Mara would be staying on the ship until they came to a resolution about the pirates. He was a bit irritated that the decision had been made without him, but he would not have done anything differently given the circumstances. Before leaving his quarters, he excitedly explored his helmet’s new abilities. He was surprised to find that he could see the flow of Rua laced in every creation of the forge. Simple constructs had very little Rua running through them, whereas more complicated ones, such as Ann’s projection, were almost too bright to look at for very long.
The forge could provide any items that he could think of, so he had to pick a specialty within his new class. He decided to focus on modifying and improving existing items. He spent hours in his quarters, examining every piece of his armor to understand how his shielding modification worked. From what he could tell, Rua was stored in capacitors towards the surface of the armor. When something of high enough velocity tripped a tiny proximity sensor, the capacitors opened creating a shield of Rua to protect the wearer. The system looked flawless at first glance, but he could tell it wasn’t made to be efficient. He jotted down some notes about what he would like to try and change in the system. The first major change would be to increase efficiency.
Once he began to feel the mental strain of his endeavor, he stowed his equipment and took a shower. Freshly showered and in a clean under suit, he left his room. Before heading to the forge to try and implement his improvements, he hit the galley for some food and sloop. When he arrived at the galley, Mara and Samix were chatting at the dining table conspiratorially. Once they noticed him, their conversation stopped, and Mara quickly retreated to her quarters without even acknowledging him.
“Did you girls figure out who you’re inviting to the big dance?” he quipped as he made a pot of the lifegiving black brew.
“Jokes aside, what happened inside that ship?” Samix asked him. “Mara said you were terrifying. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to come back aboard.”
“I killed a bunch of guys who had it coming. How the hell did she watch? The door was closed?”
“She watched on a video screen inside the room.”
�
��Well, you saw the aftermath. Did anything look wrong?” he asked rhetorically.
“Moving on,” Samix said, rolling her eyes at him. “We need to review the information I got on the pirates, but there’s not much to work with. We are going to need to do some recon before we make a plan.”
His desire to tinker with his gear were overruled by his sense of duty as the captain. He grabbed the finished pot of sloop and a couple of cups before sitting down across from his pilot. When he was seated and fresh brew filled their cups, Samix called Ann.
“Can you project the information I gathered for us to review?”
In response, a map of the system appeared in the center of the table, projected from the ceiling of the room. Without information on the composition of the enemy, all that could be shown was a time-lapse of attacks. His conclusion was much the same as Samix’s had been. The pirates had to be held up on the large planetoid in the belt, with attacks radiating outward from it. He watched the projection a few more times as he spun the map, examining it from every angle.
“Ann, how much would we have to improve your sensors to be able to observe these pirates without being seen?”
“My current sensor suite should be sufficient for observation without being seen.”
“I agree that we don’t have enough to mount an attack. We need to observe the pirates and mining operations to get a better picture of what we are going up against,” he said addressing his pilot. “Why don’t you drop Mara off and fill Roy in on what we are planning. We’ll take off and observe while staying hidden in the deeper part of the belt.”
“Sounds like a plan. We can hit targets as they present themselves, given the opportunity,” Samix said as she drained her cup and stood to find Mara. “What do you have planned while I’m gone?”
“I changed the second specialty on my helmet while you were dealing with that dickhead planet side. I think I found a loophole in the Groz technology. I changed my warrior specialty to forger, but I still retained all the information the former class imparted to me. As a forger, I will be able to make and change things using the Rua. It will ultimately make us stronger, but I need to figure out what I can do.”
