Chapter 11

  Apparently, I needed to be a little more detailed about what I meant, because Isea just stood there nonplussed..

  “I’m a mechanic by trade,” I said which still elicited no reaction. “You know… Metal stuff? Hit things with a wrench until they work again?”

  “I know what a mechanic is,” Isea replied.

  I cleared my throat. “Oh, good. Had me worried there.”

  Isea finally blinked and gave me something to work with. “Sorry. Yeah. Of course I know about mechanics. It’s just.” He hesitated briefly and adjusted his glasses. “It’s just so… I don’t know. Normal? And you’re a uh-”

  “Exotic.”

  “Shhh!” Isea shushed me and lunged forward like he was about to physically stop me from saying anything more. I felt more eyes find their way over to the back of my head, and I shot Isea a look.

  “There’s a whole damned Academy of them here. We can’t be that rare,” I whispered incredulously.

  “In Brightside, not here,” Isea mumbled through clenched teeth. “It’s not that it’s illegal for you to be down here with us, but not everyone’s going to be happy about it. For mine and Doc’s sake, keep it to yourself, okay?”

  “Okay. Fine,” I said. “I still want to help, though.”

  Isea sighed, switching gears back to work. He took a look around until his gaze settled on my wrecked cot, all bent aluminum legs and ripped fabric. “Let’s clean this up.”

  I bent down and scooped the thing up before he could do it himself, holding it up high so as not to get it hung up on any other equipment in the room. Isea’s frustrated glare told me I couldn’t even do that right, but the damage was done. I didn’t see any other way to get it out of the room safely anyway.

  So, Isea led me through the sliding double doors on the far side of the room as the other patients just stared. I guessed hospital life wasn’t particularly entertaining, and we were the best show running. I tried a couple friendly smiles and nods, mostly to alleviate the unwelcome feeling I was getting, but it didn’t change anyone’s behavior in the slightest.

  Beyond the double doors was a reception area with a waist high desk glowing with two separate holo displays. No one sat behind the desk, but, at the same time, no one sat in the metal chairs in the waiting area beyond either.

  “Kind of dead around here,” I observed.

  “Yeah. The last wave of casualties were primarily from the Twelfth, so they went to their own clinics. Don’t worry, though. Things will pick up later tonight, I’m sure, not that we’ll be helping with that,” Isea replied sourly as he opened a sliding door off to the side of the waiting room.

  The room beyond was small, no larger than my childhood bedroom back on Proxis, just big enough to walk in, take a couple steps in any direction, turn around, and walk out again, but that was only because of how full it was. Massive stacks of junk were piled against the walls. Sagging plastic bins of varying sizes sat atop one another in an uneven pyramid that looked one wayward sneeze from coming down. Only one of the sinks was open and available for use, as the other one was full of junk. Broken cots like mine took up the left wall, stacked precariously to the point I thought I saw them wobble as Isea and I disturbed the still air in the room.

  I whistled as Isea grabbed a wobbly stool and sat down to rub his face with his good hand. Then he gestured at all the assorted junk that dominated the rest of the room.

  “Welcome to my office. It’s humble, but you’re never lacking for something to do. The machinist comes by every month or so and takes some stuff to fix, but we break things often enough that it’s always like this,” Isea said.

  “He not taking large orders or something?” I asked.

  “She,” Isea corrected. “And no. Sort of. I mean, she could probably do it all if she had the parts for the more complicated stuff and the time, but she doesn’t. Life in space, ya know? Make do with what you have.”

  I spun in a slow circle, eyeing the worst of it in an effort at triage.

  Space. They're running out of space.

  The thing that took up the most space in the room was the broken cots, and they were all made of aluminum. I could do something with that.

  With that in mind, I sat on the floor and crossed my legs.

  “What are you doing?” Isea asked.

  “Making magic,” I replied. To punctuate things, I summoned a branch of mendau wood and Consumed it. The bright orange sparks burst into the air before being sucked into the palm of my metal hand. Immediately after, I felt like I was on the edge of Mana Overflow, the feeling not quite as bad, since I knew it was going to be short lived.

  Isea sniffed at the air and waved his hands at where the sparks used to be, but I didn’t let him distract me.

  Cots. Can’t do much with the fabric, but the metal I can fix. They look old. Lots of patches. Same shape, though. Good.

  I reached out and felt the diameter of the metal on one of the cots, shooting a little mana inside to confirm my assumptions as well.

  Looks manufactured or close to it. Uniform diameter on the supports. Some patches. Corrosion. I can work with this.

  But I wasn’t about to just fix a broken bed. I was a problem solver. The problem wasn’t broken beds, per se. It was the inability to fix them. It was the space they took. The time they would take to refurbish. I needed to solve those problems, or Doc would be right back at square one a few months from now.

  And who knew? Maybe they’d knock a little off my bill for doing a good job.

  The first thing I did was summon a chunk of brass from my Spatial Storage and saturate it, feeling it out, weaving between the molecules, then letting the mana settle and discover its purpose. I smoothed the brass out, flattened it, removed the tarnish, then gave the surface a bit of a bend.

  I liked that. The bend seemed right. I kept bending it until the end formed a hook, one that could hang comfortably from a number of round things. Next I added Triggers, Automated the inner part of the hook to allow for binary “Yes/No” detection.

  Then, I summoned a separate piece of metal, deep lead from Ralqir, wafer thin like the ones I’d used in my turrets since their inception. This would be the brain of my new tool.

  Concentrating, I formed a picture of a functioning and whole cot in my mind, minus the fabric of course.

  When you are activated, Shape all metal currently in contact with the inner edge of your attachment hook until it is like this. If the metal in contact with the inner edge is already-

  As the instructions went on, my mana absolutely poured out of me, first in a stream, then a rushing river, even faster than than Engine was capable of refreshing. Back on Ralqir I’d taken an upgrade for Automate that made simple instructions much more affordable while making the complex stuff less so. I supposed I could mitigate the whole thing by giving my new thingamabob multiple ‘brains’ for handling different stuff, but for that I needed more time and space for planning.

  Ten minutes later, I was done, 200 MP poorer (not counting what Engine had been feeding me this whole time), but I’d gotten results. The finished product was a dull hook welded to a ball that was just big enough to fit in my hand comfortably.

  You have created: Automated Repair Tool: Cot.

  The System was on board with what I was doing, at least. No experience, not that I’d been expecting any. However…

  I reached over and slipped the hook around one of the legs of my wrecked bed.

  While I’d been working, Isea had been doing the same. At some point, he’d slipped on a cut resistant glove and begun washing instruments in the sink. When he heard me stir, he glanced behind him, looking from me to the metal doohicky dangling next to me.

  He didn’t do a good job of hiding his disappointment.

  “That an uh- Made that did you? What is it?” He said, pointing at my new construct with his chin.

  “Prototype. Your cots were too big for a casting bowl, so I’m trying something new.” I grinned tiredly. My mana just topped itself off before the burning feeling from Crystalized Channels could get debilitating, but the pain still took it out of me.

  Isea’s eyebrows furrowed. I could tell he wanted to ask, but he didn’t.

  “So, what else you got?” I asked.

  “If you think you’re -uh… done over there,” Isea grumbled, obviously not impressed with my work so far.

  I wobbled my head from side to side. “It’s a process.”

  He pointed to a machine with which I was actually familiar: a grinder though smaller scale than I usually worked with. Then he handed me a tray of instruments.

  “Gotta sharpen all these- holy shit!” He stood, knocking over his stool, practically climbing onto the counter to get away from what he was seeing. His eyes were the size of dinner plates behind his glasses, and his mouth was open in disbelief.

  “Oh. Nice,” I laughed. “It’s working.”

  Indeed, my repair tool was working. It was working fast too, faster than I’d seen any of my machines work before. I’d juiced it hard, but I’d had longevity in mind when I did so, not this. As we watched, the creases in the bent metal frame were smoothing themselves out, straightening lines and repairing cracks. The metal was shinier, smoother. No blemishes could be seen on its surface, all of the foreign materials and corrosion being drawn toward the center of the frame and deposited on the inside of the tubes where it could be flushed out chemically.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  All that, and it was happening fast enough to be visible with the naked eye. Hot damn.

  I guessed having my mana channels turned to glass had some benefits after all.

  You have created Aluminum Cot Frame.

  Experience rate: 20/min

  It stopped changing entirely after another five minutes. Afterward, I collected my Automated Repair Module and gave it a once over with Shape.

  Hmmm. Pretty much out of juice. That might be a problem.

  “Is it… safe?” Isea asked quietly. He was still backed up against the counter and staring at the now intact bed.

  “To what? Lay on it? I don’t know, dude. The fabric’s seen better days.”

  “To touch,” Isea clarified. “There’s no.. magic or anything?”

  I blinked, readjusting my assumptions again. “Oh. Yeah. Totally safe. It won’t bite you or anything.”

  He reached out and put a hand on the repaired cot and gave it a jiggle. Then he picked up the end and checked underneath.

  “Wow. It looks new, like fresh from the fabricator. Mindi would have it in her shop for a week and not have it looking like this,” he said, smiling and nodding with satisfaction. “Doc’s going to be impressed. So, you’re like a magic artisan or something? I thought you got banged up fighting.”

  “Story of my life,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I’m really not a Combat Ex-” Isea almost shot me a look, but I remembered not to use the E word before he could get bent out of shape. “Uh. Not a fighter. That fact doesn’t seem to matter to the rest of the multiverse, though.”

  Isea winced sympathetically. “I hear that.”

  He wiggled the frame again, his look of wonder slowly morphing into bafflement.

  “Uh. Mr. Smith- Sir. Question: Isn’t it supposed to fold? Like, if we want to get it through a door?”

  Something heavy plopped down in my stomach like I’d swallowed a ball of lead. Then I sighed and did my own inspection of the cot. Yep, I was looking down at the strongest, most pristine, yet useless cot in existence. It was, indeed, all one piece. No hinges, no joints, just one solid mess of aluminum, just how I’d pictured it.

  Oh, balls.

  —--------------------------------------------------

  I closed my eyes and let my mana flow into the metal like a glacial stream until the material could take no more. My mana, those strange blue-gray blobs that I’d become more and more familiar with, especially after my ordeal as a demon, obeyed my will without the slightest hesitation. They wove around the molecules, infused them, became them. My control was nearly absolute, more extensions of myself than an external force I’d just now begun to see.

  A good thing too, since this was such a departure from how I normally used them.

  There was some degradation in at least two of the connections, and another of the tiny lines appeared to terminate prematurely in a frayed end. About two centimeters from the first row of capacitors, someone had accidentally soldered a short into the circuit. There were some signs of heat damage and oxidation too.

  This was the second circuit board I’d dragged out and put my hands on. Circuit boards were fine work, and by that, I meant very small. Any circuit board of sufficient complexity was a mess of tiny, tiny lines and connections that you needed a magnifying glass and a very steady hand to even have a chance at repairing. In my previous life, I wouldn’t have even tried. I wasn’t that kind of mechanic. Boards could be sent to the pros while I put my hands on the stuff that spun or pumped. Shape, however, turned out to be the perfect tool to mess with such delicate work. It took almost zero mana to saturate a whole section of the board, and the perfect knowledge the Ability granted me told me exactly what was good and what was busted. That was the theory, at least. So far, I’d only gotten up the courage to observe and report, not “fix.”

  This particular board wasn’t particularly complicated, at least, just a power regulator, something that monitored and redirected power as the rest of the machine needed. I really hoped this was the source of the problem as opposed to the big rack of boards and chips I would need to check next. I really wasn’t looking forward to poking around in a chip with my mana. The mere thought gave me a headache.

  “Isea, how old is this thing?” I asked, curious.

  “Hm,” Isea pondered that one for a moment. The smooth humming of the blade sharpener he was running barely audible above the sound of the ventilation anymore. That machine was the second thing I’d fixed, which had brought Isea fully on board with allowing a magical craftsman to mess with his junk. When it had come time to sharpen, he’d come in our little room with a pair of protective headphones for the two of us, but when I’d fixed the noise problem in addition to several (actually collapsable now) cots, he’d lost a lot of his misgivings about me and what I could do.

  Once I’d made my casting bowl for sharpening the tinier blades, he was fully on board with magic in the workplace.

  You have created: Scalpel Blade.

  You have created: Scalpel Blade.

  Experience rate: 31/min.

  After a long moment of contented sharpening, Isea finally ventured a guess. “Older than me, I’d say. The machine, I mean. Kind of a Ship of Thesius situation, though. No idea which parts came from the factory and which are recycled. Why?”

  I blinked, leaning back to get another good look at the whole thing. It was essentially a steel filing cabinet with various electronic bits in the drawers instead of paper. There were lots of dents and stains and patches of fresh paint that told a story of years of use and abuse. Lots of repairs too.

  “No reason, I guess. Just that there’s several problems here, and I doubt they all happened at once,” I explained.

  “Oh, for sure. Everything’s old around here. That imager’s got bits inside from all over Sabium, some of them straight from the surface, I’d reckon. Doc always says everything around here has a story to tell. People. Things. Especially the broken ones.”

  “From the surface. Like, from Sabium proper.”

  “Right.”

  “That means it’s probably from before the… uh-”

  “Collapse.”

  The Collapse was the local name for when their planet fell to the scourge. Apparently, Sabium had once been home to a thriving civilization much older than ours on Proxis, since they’d already made landfall while our people were still in cryo. In fact, they were awake for when the System chose its first Exotics. It was this fact that led to their troubles. Misuse of their jump point and careless reliance on A.I. in those early days led to the scourge gaining a foothold on their planet.

  Now, the planet itself was entirely scourge, and there was no hope of ever retaking it.

  Inspector Nett had called Sabium the lion’s den, said I’d turn as soon as I entered the system. I wondered if he’d be relieved to see I was doing just fine, or if he’d just find another reason to be suspicious. Probably the latter.

  “So, this thing is a hundred years old. I’d say it’s holding up well, considering. Probably a testament to your craftsmen.” I said. Most of Sabium’s electronics were scavenged and refurbished things. Folks that lived in space tended to be that way. No waste.

  “One hundred and thirty, but I imagine it was made some time before the Collapse. That would add a few years. Then it might have sat on the surface collecting dust for however long before some lucky diver brought it into orbit. So, you think you can do something for it with your magic superpowers?”

  “If this is the only failure point, probably.” I shrugged. I could repair the damage with a thought. The problem would be understanding exactly how the board worked and making damned sure I wasn’t ‘reconnecting’ things that should have never been connected in the first place. “I generally don’t work with delicate circuitry. Also, they’re not superpowers.”

  “Okay, Magneto.”

  “He was a mutant. Not a wizard. Promise my thing is one hundred percent magic, as weird as that is.” I sighed. “Actually, I had the chance to become Magneto, but I chose to make metal caterpillars instead.”

  Isea blew an amused raspberry through his lips. “Really? If I were a metal magician, I’d be all over that superhero thing.”

  “Magneto wasn’t a hero either.”

  “Metal bugs are still lame.”

  “You’re lame.”

  “Because of you,” he argued, raising his cast so that we could both see.

  Touche, Isea.

  As I mentioned, Isea got a lot more talkative after I started doing what I did, first with the cots, then the sharpener. Once I’d made a sizeable dent in the clinic’s junk closet, the guy’s animosity was almost entirely gone. He didn’t even mind being around my System juju anymore. I guessed even long held prejudices could be put aside in the face of free labor.

  Isea seemed to almost be excited about how things were going. He was breezing through the scalpels and… knives? He was sharpening all sorts of blades that I was sure were used in surgery or something, but I didn’t know the proper names for them. He was going so fast, I wasn’t sure if he was even doing it properly. I put a probing finger on one of the smaller blades to confirm my suspicion.

  “Isea?”

  “Yes, Mr. Smith?”

  “Are we in a hurry?” I held up a finished blade and ran my thumb along it, lingering on the chip that had been left on the edge. A little Shape mojo evened it out.

  Isea suddenly found the floor very interesting. “Ah. Well, maybe. I mean, if my hand’s out of commission and things are getting done around here so fast, I just figured there was no need to… you know.”

  “Hey, buddy. I’m not judging. I’m just curious,” I said, hands raised.

  He shrugged, finally finding the courage to meet my eyes. “I figured if we got things done around here in time, I might hit the holos” He trailed off, ashamedly looking at the floor again.

  “What? Like a show or something?” I asked.

  My work buddy shrugged.

  I tilted my head, disbelieving. “What kind of Net doesn’t record that stuff for playback?”

  “It’s a live broadcast,” Isea mumbled.

  “For what?”

  The man sucked in air through his teeth then seemed to summon his courage. “It’s… Fights… Exotic… fights.”

  My mouth opened and closed a couple times as my brain fired on all cylinders.

  The words started to spill out of him like a dam had burst. “Brightside is having some big to do right now. The Academy is putting all their Exotics through the wringer, like challenges, tournaments, and the like for some reason and broadcasting it for everyone to see. It’s insane. First round of big fights are tonight from some of the senior students. It’s pretty much all people are talking about outside of work.”

  “Uh. Isea?”

  “Yes?” Isea winced.

  “Why would I care if you like watching Exotics fight?”

  “I don’t know. Those are your people, right? I figured you’d, like, not be okay with how we… I don’t know. We’re not like Brightside.”

  That was interesting. Brightside, I’d learned through context, was the local name for the other half of the station, the nice half where the Exotics did their thing in their Academy. So, there was some big thing happening over there, and fights were involved. The security guard in the hangar bay had mentioned some kind of audit the Academy was going through too. Was this related?

  Whatever the reason, I wanted to know. I needed to know. The Academy was the solution to a bunch of my immediate problems. Once I got in, no one was taking me back to my cell, and I could at least pretend to be safe for a while.

  Isea took my silence as something it wasn’t.

  “Okay. Fine. There’s a girl too,” he admitted like I’d dragged it out of him. “Her shift should start soon.”

  Well, that was just too much. The man wanted to go see his girlfriend? I was fully on board now.

  “What are we waiting for then?” I asked, rising from my chair and reinserting the circuit board into the imager. I flipped the power switch on the back and listened intently to the machine whine as it powered up. The terminal blinked, the screen stable and waiting for commands, and I tried not to let my relief show. Thank Constance I hadn’t broken it further.

  “You’re not serious,” Isea gasped. “You can’t go out there. They’re looking for you. Security, I mean.”

  “Doc says nobody’s cooperating with them.”

  “Sure, but it’s one thing to be hidden away and no one is going out of their way to find you. It’s another if you’re just out there wandering around where anyone can get a couple credits for an anonymous tip.”

  I waggled my eyebrows at him. “I can be very sneaky.”

  Isea looked me up and down, letting his disbelieving gaze linger on my metal arm.

  “I’ll wear sleeves,” I declared. “Get me somewhere I can see the holos, and I’ll get lost long enough for you to shoot your shot with the girl.”

  With that, Isea’s youthful impulsiveness went to war with his better sense, while I watched. If he decided to sit this one out, I’d still probably go on my own, but I would much rather have had a guide that I knew.

  “Mmmm. Okay,” he relented finally. “But you need to keep a low profile. You get caught and we don’t know each other. And you need pants.”

  “Is the ‘scorched and bloody’ look not trendy here?”

  “You missed that one by a few decades.”

  Hey. Thanks for giving In my Defense a chance. New chapters will be posted Tuesdays and Thursdays, eventually ramping up depending on the amount of interest we can generate here.

  As of right now, Patreon is about 30k words ahead of Royal Road. Additionally, patrons have the dubious honor of access to my audio tracks where I do silly voices and pretend to know what I’m doing.