Chapter 15

  Tonight was not turning out to be my night.

  I’d started out with a desire to get some intelligence on where I needed to go and who I could talk to, maybe get the lay of the land and a feel for the people. I was going to take things slowly, do the cautious thing. However, the multiverse insisted on putting me in situations where “cautious” wasn’t an option.

  Once again, I’d been put in the unenviable position of having to balance speed with stealth, and those were both things I was terrible at. At least I’d avoided a full police crackdown on Brightside, for now.

  I touched the edge of the sliding door where we’d stashed the unconscious guards and saturated the appropriate parts. Then I gave it a good Shape weld until the door would be almost impossible to open without a blow torch or heavy machinery. Engine was keeping me topped off well enough, not quite keeping up with my output but quickly getting my MP back up to maximum before Crystalized Channels could really become a problem again, which was good because I was still recovering from the last time.

  “That’ll do for now,” I said, taking my hand away and checking on my not so silent partner.

  My lookout was busy peering around the corridor, straining his eyes for the barest hint of company, a task I knew he was incapable of doing. We really should have stopped to get Isea’s glasses before we left the Devil’s Due.

  “What will do?” Isea asked.

  I slapped the jammed door. “That should hold them for a little bit.”

  “You sure? They’re Exotics right? Can’t they just break out?”

  I shrugged. That was a distinct possibility. I had no idea what their stats were, and I’d not let them use any Abilities before it was lights out time. Not much I could do about it, though.

  We still had a crossroads in front of us, and the way I wanted to go, I couldn’t let Isea follow.

  “I think it’s time we went our separate ways,” I declared.

  “Yeah. Yeah,” Isea replied, nodding a little too vigorously for my taste.

  I squinted at him suspiciously. “Not like that, Isea. I mean we need to split up. The Marshals want me, and I’m afraid you’ll get hurt if you stick around.”

  “Oh,” he said, blinking rapidly as he jumped from one track to another. “Yeah that makes sense. Sorry. I’m not a coward, I promise. I just thought it would be better to get out while they’re still… you know. They’re gonna be upset when they wake up, and they aren’t above finishing what Mel started or worse. Bunch of corrupt scum.”

  “You’re still sore about them keeping the coin,” I admonished.

  “That was my coin,” he whined.

  “It really wasn’t.”

  “Yeah. I know that, but they didn’t know that. Still feels like they stole from me.” He let out a long, remorseful sigh.

  “And I doubt it’ll ever get reported,” I said. “It’s kind of a blessing in disguise, actually. It makes you our most important piece on the board.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Isea asked incredulously. “How? I’m not one of you, and I can barely even see. Not to mention, they’re gonna review the footage from the checkpoint and have my face and your face together soon enough.”

  “Yeah. I figured that. Whatever happens tonight, they’re going to link us together. They’re going to know you helped me and that we know each other.”

  “So, why aren’t we disappearing back into the Bottoms and starting a new life with your vast sums of wealth?” Isea asked.

  “Because whatever consequences come from tonight, it’s going to be later… for you, at least. Right now, you are the most ignored man on this half of the station. Hell, they might have even deleted your footage from the holos by now.”

  Isea scratched the top of his head. “Because they stole from me. They took it and maybe don’t want other people to know what they did?”

  I nodded. I also hoped against hope that I wasn’t just speculating here.

  “So, what good does that do me? Us?” Isea added as an afterthought after a slight pause.

  With a little flex of will, the canister of liquid phase medium appeared in my hand. The contents inside sloshed as I shifted the thing’s weight and gently set it down on the ground.

  “You’re going to deliver a message,” I said. “One that will get us both out of this.”

  Isea’s frown was dubious. “A message? And what are you going to do?”

  “Deliver a different message.”

  —-------------------------

  Half an hour later, after I’d given Isea a nice head start, I found myself, once again stepping into the open on the bottom deck of Brightside. The great, green tube that went up into infinity far above my head along with the daylight tinted illumination they used here gave me the impression of being outside. Functionally, it might have even been the same. The deck lighting probably even contained some mild U.V. light to keep the live plants happy and give everyone a bit of vitamin D.

  I’d made a few preparations. For one, I now sported one of the downed guards’ breastplates and arm guards, stripped of functioning electronics and whatever enchantments my metal palm could find. The helmet, however, was a no-go. The visor didn’t activate for me when I put it on, and it was ridiculously tinted so that I couldn’t see a damned thing when I tried to peer through. My sword that I’d made on Ralqir was on my hip, and I’d also taken the time to replace the barrel on my machine pistol in case things got really bad. The gun I kept tucked away in my Spatial Storage. I wanted attention, not a laser through the eye.

  Just as Isea had said, in the center of Brightside’s cylindrical design was a column of eight glass tubes. They were the main lift system that took folks from down where we were to the top and back, mostly for cargo. These would be the most surveilled part of the station.

  As I approached, one of the spacious cars at the bottom of the tube slid its doors open with a soft chime. *Ding*

  I didn’t get on the lift. I wasn’t stupid. No way was I getting in a glass box that could deliver me, gift wrapped, to the Marshals if they were paying attention. What I did, instead, was wave to one of the tens of cameras above the doors.

  “Hi, there,” I said. “I hope this thing has audio, because I’m gonna look stupid if I’m just talking to a straight holo feed. Maybe you have lip readers up there or something, or the System helps us lip read with the right skills… I don’t know. Seems like something a security contractor would have covered. Anyway, to you guys that are watching this, the Marshals: My name is Ryan Kotes. I’m going to the Academy. I know you don’t want me there, and that’s why you’re looking for me. I’m going anyway. What I don’t want is for any of you to get hurt. Don’t try to stop me. This will be your only warning.”

  With that, I drew my sword, flexed my mana, and stabbed the camera directly in its lens, using Willing Edge to make sure the point went through the hard, protective shell.

  A little dramatic, but who says drama can’t be useful?

  Then it was time to haul ass back through the winding path between the planters, stalls, and abstract sculptures the architects had stuck everywhere on this deck. Then, back inside the maintenance tunnels again, I ran down the long hallway that wrapped around the entire deck. There were multiple ways up to other decks from here, not foot traffic routes but small hatches that led into the bulkheads, vents, plumbing, and conduit spaces for the decks above.

  Detect Iron showed me a short range picture of how things were put together. As far as I could tell, the place with the most space available for a lone Exotic to crawl through were the ventilation ducts with a close second being the gaps in the floors left for conduits and cabling. Those would be a trickier climb, given how much larger in the shoulders I was now, but it was still an option.

  For now, though, I chose the ductwork. I’d already Shaped the vent grate off before I went and gave my ultimatum to the Marshals, and all I had to do was walk in. I reattached the grate behind me.

  After that, it was time to get moving. My duct traveled horizontally for about ten feet before making a right angle and shooting straight up into the dark.

  Time for the moment of truth.

  With a quick breath, I bent my legs and jumped, aiming for the T junction a few feet above my head. Once my metal fingers touched the ledge, my Climbing skill went into action, sending an immediate and intense wave of queasiness through my stomach. I’d been ready for it, but it still wasn’t my favorite sensation. Thankfully, I hadn’t eaten in a while.

  I checked my Engine buff again. Two minutes left.

  “Okay. Here we go,” I said to no one. This was going to suck.

  I took hold of the lip of the vent with two hands, brought my legs up as far as they’d go, then kicked off, aiming up to the next T junction. The 30% effective decrease in weight from Anchor helped, but it wasn’t quite enough to get me to the next deck. I just didn’t have the leverage to jump properly to my full capacity.

  I’d seen this coming, though. That’s why I was ready to deploy the second part of this trick.

  Before my body could fully succumb to gravity, I activated Tension Step. We were in a strange relationship, Tension Step and me. I’d only used it once or twice before, once when I was just trying it out back on Ralqir, again when I was trying to save my own and Trix’s life from a rampaging roid-buffalo. Both times were just the worst, instantly bottoming me out on MP and sending a mana migraine crashing down on my head immediately after. After that, I’d filed the Ability under the ‘dud’ category and tried to forget it existed, lest it tempt me to do something stupid.

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  However, this time, it was going to be different, I was climbing and lighter than I had any right to be thanks to Anchor, and I was more experienced now… right?

  As before, I got that familiar feeling that the air congealed under my feet, but only just, like I was sticking my feet in gelatine. It didn’t give me much to work with, but at this point, I was committed. Mana rushed out of me in a torrent so fast it felt like being punched in the gut. The System was making me pay an exorbitant cost for using the Ability this way.

  It got me some height, though. It got me just enough height to get my metal fingers onto the lip of the next deck’s T junction.

  Immediately, I felt fire in my gut, the beginnings of another Crystalized Channels episode, and a quick check of my MP told me the tank was half-empty. That wasn’t so bad.

  So, I hung there, panting, while Engine got me topped off. My limbs shook with overstimulation and overexertion, while my prosthetic did the lion’s share of the work keeping me on the ledge.

  Hoo boy. I didn’t enjoy that.

  The experiment was a success, though. In theory, I could probably monkey up the vents even further. Not now, though. I needed a minute for some prep.

  A quick crawl through the vent, and I came out in some kind of office full of desks equipped with deactivated holos and multiple racks of data pads lined up between. Detect Copper told me there was wiring in the room for a camera or a motion sensor on the ceiling, but they didn’t have the buzzing, twitchy quality of active current.

  Good. I didn’t trip any kind of alarm… probably.

  I folded my legs and got into a comfortable position, bringing out my big, frankenstein casting bowl I’d cobbled together near the end of my time on Ralqir, and I set about reprogramming it for a new purpose. The rough carpet on the floor paid the MP cost for me.

  Knowledge gained: Synthweave x 33/50

  Status gained: Engine [3 MP/sec for 30 seconds]

  Using all available materials in the bowl, create a drone with these instructions. The drone will be shaped with a round body, eight legs, two pincers with twenty segments each. Triggers for movement will go here, connected to….

  Essentially, I was doing the drone thing again, only this time they would serve two purposes in their lives. First, they would munch as much metal as possible in a thirty foot radius and dump the contents into the original casting bowl. Once they’d gathered enough material to make another two of themselves, they would then report to the second casting bowl for reprogramming.

  Once you receive a full charge, come to me then loop the following instructions: Fire your cannon at any armored Exotic’s legs within thirty feet of me. Retrieve your ammunition. Return to me.

  Oh, yes. Did I mention I gave them cannons? Just little ones, just a little bigger than my middle finger. The ammunition wasn’t sophisticated either, just a ball that was Shaped inside the barrel when the drone was initially ‘born,’ but with the Volatility batteries I gave the drones and the generous mass I was giving the bullets, they’d go through flesh and bone like butter, maybe even puncture armor with a straight shot.

  I didn’t give them instructions to return to the bowl and recharge themselves once they went into bullet spider mode. I really didn’t want to have a self-perpetuating metal spider problem once this was all done. If no one bothered to check this little office before it was all turned into ouchie machines, there could, theoretically, be hundreds of the little guys running around being a jerk to anyone with System access. No, I just wanted an escort for tonight’s activities, and either I was going to get where I was going, or the people that stopped me were going to be sorry.

  Once my little mini-factory was ready, I gave the first bowl a kick start with a heaping helping of scrap steel I tore off of one of the desks. Already, I could see the metal losing its original shape and melting into bulbous lumps, the nubs of the legs appearing before my eyes shortly after.

  My new flavor of mana was something else. Creating a drone back on Ralqir would have taken ten times as long.

  You have created Spider Cannon Drone.

  You receive 100 experience points.

  Experience/min: 100

  Ooh, yeah. That’s the good stuff.

  I really couldn’t wait to do this on a bigger scale… Soon.

  There was one final step that needed to be taken.

  To make the whole setup work, I had to release my aura. That was the magic ingredient that gave my semi-autonomous creations their eyes, ears, and brains. Without it, they had no capacity to understand the world or their purpose. WIth a deep breath and a prayer to Constance, I stopped circulating the mana through my channels and let my presence spread. If my message earlier didn’t get anyone’s attention, I was pretty sure this act would do the trick.

  Back into the vents I went, making sure to cut a big square of carpet from the floor to take with me before I left.

  Yummy.

  —------------------

  My fingers took hold of my twentieth ledge of the night, the metal screeching as they struggled for purchase on the dusty surface but holding fast as they always did.

  I was actually getting better at this. That one only took about 60 mana. I still felt like shit, but it was starting to become a familiar flavor of shit, one I could tolerate if only because it was temporary. Engine was humming along thanks to my affinity for synthweave ticking over into D territory, giving it a more efficient and long lasting burn, and I’d used that milestone to monkey up quite a few decks. I’d shown my face a few levels down, just a quick peek out of the door of a perfume shop I’d found myself in. I even forced the door open to trigger the alarm, just in case the Marshals weren’t watching the cameras closely.

  As it turned out, I shouldn’t have worried. I’d expected quick action from the Marshals but not the scale and ferocity at which it had happened.

  As soon as the alarm had started blaring, a security team in full riot gear just swooped down from the level above… like actually falling from the sky and landing with a little flex of their knees.

  That’s how I got shot for the second time in my life.

  It wasn’t bad, just a glancing burn on the chest plate, but I wasn’t about to stick around for more. I ducked back into the shop and dove headfirst into the ductwork. More las-fire peppered the walls of the vent as I scrambled to get some distance between us.

  Once I was safe and up a few levels, I ran my metal hand over the char mark on my breastplate and discovered something interesting.

  Consume: Tracking Shot? Y/N

  I’d been victim of the first spell of the night. A curse. I Consumed it and used the extra juice to push myself harder parkouring up the vents with Tension Step, which shot up to a whopping level of 4. Impressive considering how little I’d used it up till now. The curse had been on me for too long, though. They knew what I was doing, and my little breezy highway was about to lose its exclusivity.

  *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK*

  The three spider drones that had made it up to me so far skittered up the side of the vent a lot easier than I could, their hooked legs finding the grooves between bolts and gaps in the plated walls with ease.

  “What do you think, guys? Time to get out in the open?”

  The drones didn’t answer, they simply hung there, content to be next to their dad until he had enemies to perforate. More of them were still being made down below. This was a batch of four.

  …

  You have created Spider Cannon Drone.

  You receive 100 experience points.

  Experience/min: 300/min

  You have created Spider Cannon Drone.

  You receive 100 experience points.

  Experience/min: 400/min

  Several decks up, I slowly, carefully, crawled on my belly through the duct, which flattened out and split until it was a tight squeeze. Then I came upon the grate leading to a living area of some kind.

  I Shaped the grate off the vent and slipped into a little kitchen with a stove, cold storage, and the like. It was quiet, the gentle noise coming from the vent where I’d just come from and my spider drones clicking at my side the only sounds I could detect.

  Unfortunately, my luck didn’t last. Only three steps in and I immediately got a hit from Detect Iron of someone in the next room, sleeping. There was a wall between us, which made me feel safer but only a little. Better to slip out of here before I had any explaining to do to the room’s occupant.

  With Stealth foremost in my mind, I bent down and picked up the drones so that their legs wouldn’t make any more noise, putting the three of them in the crook of my arm so I had the other one free. Then I inched toward what I assumed was the front door, one of the sliding ones with a control panel on the side and a holo feed.

  I looked over my shoulder to see what kind of angle I was on to the bedroom door. Good. Whoever my roommate was, they wouldn’t be able to see the light from the front door if I opened it. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to take a peek outside before I committed. I resituated the drones once more then pressed the little button to activate the holo for the door, and a slightly distorted 3d model of the hall beyond flashed into existence. This door didn’t go right to the walkway overlooking the big cylinder like the businesses did. The living quarters were built a bit more like the rest of the station, short, close, with doors on either side of the hallway. The only exits I could see were far down the way.

  Peering into the flickering light, I used my fingers to manipulate its positioning and focus until I was at the very edge of its scope. There. Five security personnel, fully armored and carrying las-rifles, were forcefully knocking on doors. No. Two of them were knocking on the doors. Two others were watching either side of the hallway with their rifles up and ready. The fifth… I wasn’t sure what he was doing. His rifle was dangling on his chest rig while his hands seemed to move in strange patterns… like he was plucking invisible strings in the air. Then he slapped one of his partners on the back and pointed down the hall more toward where I was.

  Oh, I don’t like the look of that.

  I let my focus drift into that realm where I could see my mana floating in the world around me, blue with a touch of gray and white. Something was happening there. They were moving strangely in a-

  *WHAM*

  Something hit me in the back of the head, hard. My vision flashed white, and my face smacked right into the surface of the metal door.

  You take 10 damage (bludgeoning).

  Status gained: Stunned.

  *WHAM* *WHAM*

  The follow-up attacks weren’t much better. Very concussive. Very head focused. Brain all mushy.

  Someone screamed a high-pitched warcry, followed by another series of smacks to the top and sides of my head.

  *WHAM* *WHAM**WHAM* *WHAM*

  “Ow! Hey! Hey! Wait!” I protested between bouts of head trauma.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my place?!” A woman screamed before hitting me twice more with the club she was wielding. Detect Iron didn’t pick up on it, but from the sound it made, it was definitely some kind of dense wood… maybe cored with something heavier.

  “I don’t want any trouble, miss,” I said, holding up my hands, while my other arm had all my drones, who were in the process of spilling out and skittering across the floor.

  The angry woman really didn’t like that.

  “Who- What the hell are those?! Get out! Go away!”

  I shook my head and finally was able to get a look at my assailant with my actual eyes. She was small and wiry with just enough muscle to give her limbs an athletic shape, while her face was incongruously rounded. Her curly black hair was in absolute disarray, sticking out every which way while almost doubling her size with how voluminous it was. She was also… in a state of undress, just wearing a short, loose t-shirt and underwear that barely counted as clothing at all as little as they covered. What really got my attention, though, was the baseball bat clutched above her head and the wide, fearful look she was giving me and my robot buddies.

  My mouth was suddenly very dry. “Uh- Sorry- I-” I grunted. The last remaining spider drone in my arm plopped to the carpet and skittered away to get a respectful distance from the two of us.

  “Talk or walk, or the beatings will continue, creep!” the woman shouted.

  At exactly the wrong time, four more spider drones burst their way out of the ventilation system, slamming the grate down to the floor and clicking over to join us. The woman very, very much, didn’t like that.

  *WHAM*

  She hit me again. I took the blow partially on my forearm this time, but she was pretty good at making the hits land. If felt the skin above my eyebrow split open.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I yelled. “I was just-”

  “You were just what, weirdo!?”

  A closed fist pounded on the apartment door, vibrating the hanging pictures on the walls.

  The woman’s eyes darted to the door. “In here! In here!” She cried, giving me a swift kick with her bare foot.

  A distorted voice blared intrusively over the holo’s speaker.

  *Stand back, ma’am. We’re doing a manual override.*

  My eyes went from the woman with the bat, to the drones, to the door. My mouth dropped open in horror.

  “No, wait!”

  But I was too late. Behind me, the door slid open… the door I was currently leaning against. Suddenly having nothing holding my battered body upright, I spilled out into the hallway and into a forest of plastic armored legs. Above me, the Marshals seemed as surprised as I was, looking down at me with open mouthed shock and fumbling to point their weapons in the proper direction.

  Then, all hell broke loose.

  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.

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