The First Technomancer

by G Aliaksei C

  I stared into the cloud with Coefficient-filled eyes, as if trying to match the vast glow of my opponent, trying to penetrate the aftershock of the RAM-Ds. The colorful cloud expanded, losing its light and roar.

  Through the settling smoke appeared the Specter. No damage was visible on the skeletal, glowing creature. Seemingly unbothered by the attack it continued its gliding journey.

  “Jim. Load the spare Gems into the forward RAM-Ds and fire.”

  “Executing, Mr. Frost. Here’s to hoping.”

  In two minutes the primary power cores were removed from the three forward-most cannons, replaced by my modified Gems. I had to trust Jim’s word that the work was done - the dust from previous barrages obscured my view.

  That dust was cleared when three cannons fired a second salvo. Unlike the first shots, the surge of power forced more air into the system than intended, and what was meant as a single burst turned into continuous beams of compressed matter engulfed in fire, lancing out across the valley at the Specter. In only three seconds the barrels and firing mechanism of the RAM-Ds turned to slag, and the weapons shut down.

  Strangely enough the build of each RAM-D was perfectly suited for such overloads. If I were rich I could have replaced the Gems with high-Class variants for an identical effect, without any modification to the weapon. That meant that these cannons were designed with the overload in mind, a strange, overengineered approach to weapons construction.

  An unreasonable but accurate example would be a toaster designed to be plugged directly into a nuclear reactor, and capable of generating several thousand-degree temperatures. Overkill for bread, and fatal to the toaster in the long term.

  I could not change the programing in the Gems to raise their Class, but I could rewire them to burn out having produced a multiple of their normal output. Even without reading the section of the manual that talked about RAM-D overloads my gamble partially worked - the guns lasted long enough to fire a good salvo before giving in. Barrels turned red, expanded, and blew apart. The resulting explosions threw me off the roof. I rolled for a time, finally coming to a stop on the dirt, and despite the feeling of being run over by a washing machine tried to get up.

  “Mr. Frost, don’t move.” Jim’s voice was full of terror, an alien and unpleasant emotion to my ear.

  I froze, mid-pushup, and directed my eyes at the sky. A white limb of light washed over me, moving on without pause, revealing the source of the glow.

  The White Specter hovered directly over the Monument, bathing the base in light, illuminating the darkness created by its own aura. The three ruined RAM-Ds were cut in two, and I knew that damage had definitely not been caused by the overloaded Gems. The neat, smooth slice that divided each molten weapon into neat chunks spoke of vast cutting power that few particle beams possessed.

  I slowly reached for the back of my belt, where my axe was mounted.

  A beep in my mind alerted me to a call. My Menu, recognizing the combat situation, switched to mental commands, the incoming call routing into my head. Willing the call to be accepted, I added a visual component to the connection.

  “Drake, did you… oh…” Inna and an unknown man leaned into the frame, eyes wide, seeing what my eyes were pointed at. The scary-looking guy in the black-blue overalls spoke in the corner of my vision.

  “Add Jim to the call.” He waited as I manipulated the Menu in my mind, connecting to the mechanoid. The new interface came as easily as the external variant but was somewhat distracting to the eye. “Jim, contract override, authority of Ice Wall Command. I hereby order you to use one of your bodies to assault the Specter. Make sure the one you use is within Mr. Frost’s visual zone.”

  “Yes Lieutenant.”

  Through the smoke I saw one of the war-machines uncloak, the texture of its armor returning to smooth steel, raising a rifle up at the sky. The pulse laser fired exactly once. The large frame of the mech was sliced down the middle, the Specter shifting slightly to execute the invisible attack.

  The next few minutes proved rather boring, if stressful. The White Specter levitated overhead, humming in the smoke. I noticed that the sunlight barely reached through the thing’s black aura, the base turning cool as if at night. I tried not to look at the creature, sure that a visual contact would cost me my life.

  Worst of all, I was certain it was alive and thinking. Was this an artificial life form created specifically for the Rings, or some sort of alien creature, forced here by some amazing power?

  And then, it was gone. The air shook and sang as the white frame rotated, accelerating sideways, away from the ruined base. The sense of pressure lifted, slowly, as the Specter distanced itself from us. The initial explosions had peaked my Fall Coefficient, the golden glow within me resisting shock or emotion, and among the changed I failed to notice the incredible mental pressure applied by the black aura. I ran a diagnostic and realized that my brain had been under constant electromagnetic assault, so powerful that it jammed much of my higher functions to a halt. As the Specter moved away I felt my capacity returning to full, the brain allocating more resources to analysis outside the moment I was trying to survive through.

  “Jim, save that recording for analysis. I want that for myself.”

  I squinted into the back of the now distant Specter, a thought slowly making its way to the top of my shaken mind. I approximated headings and vectors, then mentally plotted it on the map. Opening the Menu, I called Inna. She accepted, quickly adding Carter and the Ice Wall officer to the channel.

  “Is it taboo to destroy Gates?”

  “Only if they are part of the original, public network.”

  “What about your Gate, is it public?”

  “It’s privately funded and installed, so no…”

  “Rig the Gate to blow.”

  “What?!” The choir of responses told me they had not thought of it yet. “Those cost a fortune!”

  “The White Specter is not just headed through the town, it’s headed directly towards it. After moving to attack me, it resumed course but under a different angle, correcting to still directly intercept your location. You need to rig the Gate and destroy it before the Specter enters teleporting range, which it has just now proven is at least seven kilometers.”

  “Mr. Drake, you really think it wants to use the Gate?” Carter seemed genuinely concerned, which mixed strangely with his permanently-angry tone.

  “Well, let’s see. Inna, do you have secret, ancient technology over there that a high-Class Beast would want?”

  “I… no? But…”

  “Do you have anything, at all, of interest to a Beast like this?”

  “No…”

  “Then rig the fucking Gate!” I closed the call, angrily swiping the Menu aside. “Jim!”

  “Yes Mr. Frost?”

  “I am out of money. There will be no new RAM-Ds, and we can’t afford to fix the broken ones. Rebuild a base and move one of the remaining five to close the hole. Then take the broken RAM-Ds apart and sort the parts.”

  “Yes Mr. Frost.”

  Three of my eight unearned cannons lay in waste. I looked around, hateful of the Specter which let my home burn ablaze all around me.

  Not a winning day.

  The peace lasted until evening. I found myself on the wall along with one of the Jims, sitting in an armchair under an armored umbrella with a coffee mug in my hands, watching the distant hills through the fog of the atmosphere. A massive shade-plate overhead slowly turned day to night.

  A single flash marked the opening of the battle. At this angle the curve of the Ring was non-existent, the kilometers of atmosphere separating my base and the Gate town easily penetrated by the light. Competing with the brightest fireworks I had ever seen, the show lasted for twenty minutes. I was impressed - unlike me and mine, these defenders and defenses lasted more than ten seconds. Occasionally shockwaves would tickle my ears, adding scale to the distant fight.

  And then, it was over. The flashes died down, and night re
turned to darkness. I called Inna, to no response. Checking the Menu map, I saw their Waypoint node was gone.

  I stood to take my leave from the wall when something much closer caught my attention. On the edge of the flickering spotlights, Shadows swarmed, forming a wall a distance away from the foam-concrete.

  “Jim!”

  “Already in position.”

  As if hearing us, the Shadows backed up, disappearing into the night. We were surrounded, just not under siege yet. I glanced at the ruined half of the base, making sure the RAM-D I had moved was being installed on schedule.

  “When morning comes, I want a line of some sort drawn or dug, one kilometer from the wall. Everything up until that needs to be illuminated at night. Thicken the walls. Make them taller.”

  “Will do, Mr. Frost.”

  “I need a break. Good night, Jim.”

  “Good night, Mr. Frost.”

  3 : Of Knowledge

  Day 14

  “Good morning, Jim. How are we doing?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Frost. Fine weather of twenty Celsius with no precipitation. Three roaming Beasts destroyed. Unmanned transports arrived from the Gate Town, carrying salvaged property.”

  Every area of the universe comes with its own weather patterns, and with that weather comes a particular style of clothing. The harsher the weather, the more uniform the clothes. Example?

  Winter/north: warm coats, boots, hats, often fur. Exclusions: drunk people, frozen people.

  Space: space suits. Show me a living Human floating in empty space without a space suit, and I’ll show you a slowly asphyxiating, soon-to-be corpse.

  War: Uniforms, armor, weapons. Exclusions? Plenty, but mostly dead people.

  Earth: Powered armor. Radiation shielding. EM-deflectors. Heavy weapons. Black, radar-absorbing paint to hide in the eternal right. Exclusions: dead people.

  There’s a definite pattern - the exclusions end up dead.

  Of course the Waste Ring had its own weather, and its own ‘uniform’. Weather was one of the defining features of life here, and I had to struggle every day against it, just as I had to fight the Wolves and Crawlers.

  Simply accounting for weather put me in an impressive suit. A jumpsuit providing protection against fire, cold and cuts. A thin undercoat, some form of temperature-controlled Kevlar that protected the torso and kept me at survivable temperatures. Pants and coat made of a material very similar to my camping tarp - fireproof, waterproof, bulletproof. Boots, heavy, armored, heated and cooled, allowing me to walk on burning ash and sharp ice, with light gravity clamps that, on command, grounded me against the wind. A helmet, life-saving metal that guarded my most precious assets. A belt, engulfing me in a deflector field that protected against larger impacts.

  What elsewhere could be considered heavy military gear was, on the Hades Ring, a bare minimum for survival. The items were cheap and widely available. Leaving without any of them could, and likely would, be fatal.

  The weather was still in ‘cool springtime’ mode. I liked this particular ‘season’. Somehow, the heat from the fireball above seemed dimmer than usual, the air calmer than what this hellscape made me suffer through before.

  Here the pleasantries ended. I felt my hair rise, and I realized I was about to become a lightning rod. My outer coat, pants and boots proved their worth, internal lines responding to danger, polarizing, and shifting incredible voltage into the ground. The following lightning strike set my outer clothes afire for moment, the inner suit and helmet protecting me from death, if not the mental shakedown.

  I slowly looked up at the sky, deaf and dazzled, and flipped it off. Above and all around lighting strikes, like a web of shifting light, raged on, attempting to destroy anything and everything susceptible to its wrath. The constant, deafening roar returned with my hearing.

  Otherwise, the scene in the base was a definite improvement from yesterday. The RAM-D had been moved and installed. The wall was mostly repaired.

  I needed to get myself a dome, I decided.

  In a moment of mental clarity, something ticked in the side of my mind. Not the back, but specifically in the side, just over my right ear. The sensation was a curious one, and I spent a second investigating the cause. Realization struck, and I snapped into combat mode, adrenaline filling my system, nanites supercharging in preparation for battle. Old programming reactivated without warning, driving me into a state of smooth, deadly intent. Excitement from being struck by lightning disappeared, forgotten as irrelevant.

  Part of the preparation that I underwent during my time in the Corporation was awareness training. A particular level of this skill allowed control over ‘hunches’. I was taught to catch the hunch, examine it, and determine what subconscious reasoning had caused it to appear.

  First was the convoy of armored vehicles parked in the distance. I had not recognized their presence, but my eyes had seen them, and my mind had noted them. Second was the slight howling of the wind somewhere close, to my right and slightly behind me. I knew from memory that there was nothing but empty space there, and the anomaly stood out, creating the ‘hunch’ in my mind. Combining the two observations, I remembered the slight indentations in the dirt, matching the location of the anomalous wind howl.

  All objectives and thoughts were replaced with but a single goal:

  Kill.

  My vision went red, then crystal-gold as the Fall Coefficient flooded my brain and body, driving me to the edge of raging insanity. Nanites stirred, ready to go into overdrive.

  Relaxing the muscles in my right leg I began to fall sideways like a tree trunk. Halfway through the fall I flexed the leg, launching myself, swinging my left fist towards a spot directly over the hole in the grass. For the first time I looked directly at the target spot, trying to locate anything.

  Nothing. It was perfect stealth, much better than Jim’s. Air moved as something dodged sideways. My eyes darted down, noting a new pressure on the ground. I stabilized my charge and rolled, but before I could swing again, the pressure on the dirt disappeared. There was no additional push on the spot signifying another step or leap - the pressure simply disappeared.

  Teleportation. Advanced enough not to cause a collapse of atmosphere during transition.

  Another hunch, too slight to fully analyze. I was still moving, rotating, so I reached out with my right fist, aiming for the area directly behind me. This guessing attack committed me - if I missed, I would lose all balance for a fatal moment.

  The back of my fist struck cold metal. The sensation of steel-Durasteel alloy was familiar, and I even recognized the fraction - ten parts steel to one part Durasteel.

  Excellent ballistic armor.

  My left hand was already in my pocket, I noted, holding onto the pure Durasteel knife - my revival gift. I drew, using the bounce-back of my attack to spin the other way, rotating and snapping the blade into the extended position half a centimeter before the invisible target. The edge, one of the sharper non-powered edges I theorized could exist, struck the still-shifting head from the direction it was knocked toward by my last hit. With a flash that highlighted a smooth-plated helmet the blade bounced, just before an invisible, armored glove grabbed my offending wrist. Sensing the grip was powered and inescapable in the short term I yanked back my hand and released the knife, letting it fall. Twisting, I caught the handle with my right and stabbed again, driving the blade at what had to be the shoulder, before a second hand grabbed my other wrist. The stab, however, must have almost hit, because my left hand was suddenly free. I focused on it, slamming it into the helmet from the other side.

  Audible steps signified the enemy retreat. Following the grass movement, I charged, attempting to press my advantage. The stealthed figure was faster, gaining space from me before becoming visible. Both hands were raised in a surrendering gesture.

  Another switch. Part of my brain re-dedicated from the complex task of killing to a less intense task of thinking.

  I recognized the armor immedia
tely. She had been the target of the fanatics. I had taken the challenge aimed at her to satisfy my honor and died like an idiot, slaughtering the attackers while she stood by and watched.

  I felt pleasure. I almost landed a hit. Me, a Class 1, could touch a Class 9, as a fly could touch a bear - without effect, and with great risk.

  I felt concern. I had done research into this set of armor after my death and found little information aside from the general Class of 9. I knew now that it could become invisible and teleport, but a maximum-Class set would not limit itself to such mundane powers. My knife should have easily cut through the steel-Durasteel armor, yet was deflected by some sort of forcefield, one effective against melee.

  Stomping alerted me to Jim’s presence, just as the high-pitched screeching demonstrated the RAM-Ds rotating to point at the intruder. I straightened, taking a better grip on the knife, and assuming my favorite Corporate combat stance - straight and tall, shoulders spread, left side towards the enemy.

  The pause in combat allowed me to tune in words.

  “…a Corporate trooper!” said the intruder.

  “What’s that?” I felt better as all nineteen Jims formed a firing circle. Liquid rage drained out of my veins, making way for blood, and my vision slowly lost the highlighting, golden tint.

  “You are just like a picture from an honest-to-void history book!”

  I felt awkward for a moment, focusing on speaking without a growl. “We’ll get back to that thought, as interesting as it is. For now, who are you, and what do you want?”

  “It’s me, Inna!” The helmet disappeared, simply vanishing from existence, revealing the Innkeeper’s familiar, smiling face.

  Having driven a shift-stick car - in my case an armored truck - I knew how a gearbox sounded when attempting a switch from fifth to reverse. That exact sound was reverberating in my head now.