Chapter 23

  I started with the new turret. What was I on now, Mark III? Four? That was a boring name, considering this was the culmination of many different designs. I could do better. Pillar Turret? Nah. Mr. Blasty? A bit childish. If Mr. Grippy didn’t already like his name, I would have changed it too, but you can’t argue with a metal hand without looking crazy. The Tin Can? It kind of looked like a tin can, but it didn’t have any tin in it. Tin cans were known for how flimsy they were too. This thing was anything but.

  Still. Hmmm. It shot things. It looked like a can. Pop Can? Why not?

  The base of the Pop Can came out first which I Shape welded to the truck’s side to remove one of the failure points of the design, namely: tipping. Best to counter that when I could. This truck was on its side for good without an act of God, so it was as stable a base as I could fathom.

  With that out of the way, out came the Shaping chambers, hollow, football-sized conical constructs that fit together tightly in a staggered configuration. I stacked them precisely inside their housing, up, down, up, down, and so on. A little manual Shaping to get the connections between smart cards buzzing, and that was good to go. The loader came next, the chassis after that, slipping over the frame to tuck everything in all nice and tight. The only openings were on bottom where the bullet ants and drones would enter and the hole at the top where the magazine connected with the rest.

  “When you said you wanted to take up some space, I didn’t think you were actually moving in,” Hall, one of my new diver companions said. He never took his eyes off his firing lane for long, but he was casting lots glances my way, his broad face and wide set eyes regarding me curiously from beneath his helmet.

  I summoned the magazine and placed it inside the bucket chassis then connected the barrels. A quick flip and twist followed by a pulse of mana, and the turret went through its pre-operational checks… which consisted of just waggling its head back and forth to show me it was getting power. I didn’t really have a way for my constructs to send me “data” yet that wasn’t a physical gesture.

  Add one to the mental checklist. That and a way to anchor the base to rock.

  The first can of bullet ants was in my hand when I remembered Hall was still trying to strike up a conversation.

  “Oh, I plan to stay for as long as you’ll have me. In spirit, at least,” I said.

  I tipped the bullet ants into the loading hopper, and listened to the ammo conveyer inside the pearlescent white shell quietly whir to life, followed swiftly by the rapid clicks of the sorting arms pushing rounds through the alignment chute and into the magazine.

  “What is that thing- uh, Exotic Kotes?” Hall’s partner asked. This guy wasn’t afraid to openly stare. He looked both fascinated by what I was doing but also a little afraid to talk about it.

  Also, Exotic sounded terrible as a title. No way was I letting that stick.

  “This, my friend, is a turret,” I answered. “And it’s just Kotes or Ryan if you want to get familiar. I prefer Ryan.”

  Both men’s eyes went wide at the word ‘turret,’ and their mouths dropped open in unison. They shied away from me like they were a little too close to a raging bonfire.

  The yet unnamed diver looked like he wanted to swallow his own tongue. “A-Are you insane? AI? Down here?”

  He clutched at his chest where one of those little half circle/star symbols dangled. I really needed to ask about those someday. They weren’t part of my research and the gap in my knowledge might lead me into some awkward cultural pitfalls.

  I tried to reassure them, leaning on the Pop Can casually and smiling. “Relax, guys. It’s magic not tech,” I declared confidently before drawing up short. “Well, I guess that’s not true. It’s magic and tech. It’s magitech.”

  “Bots go rogue down here,” Hall gulped. “The live monsters are bad enough without us bringing metal ones down here ourselves.”

  “Woah. Woah,” I said. “It’s not AI. I wouldn’t even know how to make an AI. Listen, I know this is my first dive, and you guys are the experts here. But this isn’t my first scourge rodeo. I spent months on a- uh…”

  What did Nett call it again?

  “-a category three rift event. The scourge practically rubbed their faces on my machines during that, and I never had a problem.”

  “Months!?” Hall gaped.

  “Would it make you feel any better if I told you the computation and decision making took place up here?” I asked, pointing at my temple.

  The two exchanged very relieved looks at that, and the air lightened significantly.

  “So, you’re controlling it?” Hall asked.

  “What if I told you I was?” I wasn’t… controlling it, I mean, but if it helped me not make any enemies down here, I wouldn’t mind them believing a little untruth.

  Hall didn’t look entirely convinced, but the knife-edge tension and budding horror was gone.

  “It’s moving on its own. You’re not looking at it,” Diver 2 observed.

  “Well yeah. Wouldn’t be much of a turret if I had to hold its hand,” I countered. I reached down and slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t dwell on it too much. It’s magic. Now that that’s done. I’ve got other engagements this evening.”

  With a wave, I hopped down from the truck, landing with a thump on the pavement down below, technically outside the perimeter but not in anyone’s direct line of fire. I chose an overturned vehicle to call base camp, some kind of six wheeled passenger rover thing with lots of reinforcement in the roll cage that had kept it from collapsing all these years.

  A casting bowl appeared under my outstretched hand with a flash, only this bowl was larger than my previous models, about the size of the bigger cooking pots I’d ever seen. Then came the drones, two of them equipped with the mining pincers on their noses and tiny cannons on their backs. Immediately, they set off on their own without even a wiggle of acknowledgement for me. They were preprogrammed with a prime directive. Get me all the metal. Shoot anything scourgy that gets in your way.

  The metal they would deliver to this bowl would be my primary haul of the day.

  To give the system a little kick start, I used Devouring Grasp to snap off a piece of vehicle frame that had rusted through on one end then placed it into the bowl. That was worth at least two or three drones, I figured.

  The initial two drones were gone now, having disappeared behind the next cluster of rusted hulks. That was a handy safety feature I’d thought of. My drones wouldn’t mine within 200 feet of any of my constructs anymore. I’d thought of it back on the station when I pictured how this process would work. I’d imagined the big hole my drones had supposedly chewed in a whole station deck before they’d reached their thirty yard leash and how inconvenient that would be if I’d set up in a building or in an actual mine sometime where just chipping away at the walls would be a terrible idea. These guys were going to look for their objective a little farther away than that. It added a bit of travel time, but I’d take a little inconvenience over future problems.

  Things were quiet, still. No one had even fired a shot yet, as far as I knew. So, I had time to get another experiment going.

  While I was waiting for my initial pair of drones to come back, I set up the next node of experimentation: four funnel type hoppers with tiny holes in the bottom welded to a receiving bowl that provided them with a stable base. Paired with each happier was a drone, the kind that had the flower scoops on the front, only I’d added a “stem” to these, essentially a robotic arm and rotator joint for more flexible use. Again, they hit the ground running.

  These drones didn’t have the proximity safety feature like the others. They didn’t need it. Once they touched ground, they were already putting their grabby hands to work, scooping up loose rocks, bits of debris, chunks of pavement and concrete, rust covered bits of unrecognizeable machinery that came from who knew what…. Whatever fit inside their scoops really. Overlooked things. Garbage.

  My little buddies went about their work with gusto, snapping up whatever wasn’t nailed down, greedily filling up their scoops with the junk they found before returning to their base of operations, then shoved said junk into the hoppers.

  Hall’s voice called down to me from on top of the truck. “Listen, uh… Mr. Kotes I mean- Ryan. I hate to ask but- Is this a good time?”

  “You want to know what I’m doing,” I guessed.

  “Sure. That. But Ferrel and I were wondering. Why are you here?”

  I turned away from my experiment and peered up at the lip of the overturned truck. The top of Hall’s head was peaking over along with the tip of his rifle’s barrel.

  “Why am I here?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I mean- we mean here, like on the dive. Usually, you guys come down to fight the scourge, but you’re not- let’s see… You don’t seem very concerned with fighting. Outriders take the majority of the contact out there.”

  “Maybe you and I have been fighting different scourge” I chuckled darkly. Oh, I knew my old friends would come for me before the day was done. They’d not failed me in that regard yet.

  Hall was right, though. Killing scourge wasn’t at the front of my mind just now. I knew it was going to happen, that it happened on every dive, but it wasn’t necessarily why I was here. It was a factor but not my primary goal.

  He probably deserved a little explanation. “I did a little research, Hall. From what I gather, you guys stay down here until the scourge force you to take off. Take what you can and get away while you can. But when the time comes, everyone ends up right here, right?”

  The diver bobbed his head in affirmation.

  “I happen to specialize in not letting the scourge force me to go anywhere. I figured you and I could help each other out better if we dug in together,” I said.

  “Huh,” Hall grunted, his expression falling into a contemplative frown.

  “What?”

  “You’re not like the others.”

  “Other Exotics?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You meet a lot of those?”

  “No. Never.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Sounds a little paradoxical.”

  “Mr. Hall is referring to an old but sadly, often accurate stereotype,” a familiar rough baritone called from out of sight. Hall’s head disappeared, and there was a bunch of shuffling on top of the truck before another head leaned into view.

  “Captain Jerim Reed,” my old buddy from the docking bay said.

  I waved. “Ryan Kotes. Nice to meet you… again.”

  The Captain crouched down, running his gloved fingers along the rusted metal frame of the truck, his face contemplative.

  “The thing to which Mr. Hall refers is the tendency of young Exotics to treat our excursions as an opportunity for thrill seeking and personal advancement instead of like the essential duty that they are. We don’t see them often anymore, but when we do they are unpredictable at best, unhelpful to a dangerous degree. The fact that Mr. Hall, or I for that matter, don’t get that impression from you is a compliment of the highest order.”

  “Thanks, I guess. For the explanation, I mean. I was starting to think the cold reception was a me thing.”

  Captain Reed smiled. “They’ll warm up to you if you stay true, but this…” He gestured to where I’d set up the Pop Can and down where my bots were gathering debris around me. “This will make it harder. I’m assuming you know how Sabium fell.”

  “I do. It was the early days when we didn’t know much about the multiverse or the System. The intelligent machines were the first casualty of the war.”

  “Not just casualties,” Reed corrected, shaking his head sadly. “The first soldiers on the enemy’s side. They took most of our economy and industry with them too. None of us were around for it, but we remember.”

  I considered this. Another cultural taboo to work around or break through if I wanted to be accepted.

  “My machines aren’t like that,” I said. “They’re magic, and they don’t really think.”

  “I believe you, and I’m glad to have you with us even if Major Goethe isn’t,” the Captain replied. “Just make sure you don’t become too comfortable down here. When it’s time to leave, we leave. Too much baggage slows a man down, gets him dead, his friends dead. We can’t afford any more dead heroes. Get me?”

  I nodded. Yeah. I got him.

  —---------------

  Under one of my arrayed science projects, the first one to fill to the brim with debris, I summoned a digital scale I’d borrowed from Tilly’s shop.

  “10.71113 kg,” I muttered to myself to help remember the number.

  Meanwhile, the second pair of drones were almost fully Shaped in the original drone casting bowl, and the originals hadn’t returned yet. I frowned, wondering if I’d proportioned the safe zone a little too timidly. 200 feet there and back was kind of a long way for little spider dudes. How could I mitigate that without changing the programming right now?

  Well, I could eliminate some travel time by…

  I waited until one of the drones in the bowl started to twitch and get to its feet. Then I snapped it up and chucked it, sidearm style, as hard as I could. It sailed over the rusted cars and debris for maybe fifty yards before bouncing and rolling along the pavement.

  “Uh. Everything okay down there?” Hall’s voice called.

  I sighed, disappointed in myself and my lack of imagination. Throwing. What was I, a caveman? There had to be a more sophisticated way…

  Drone cannon. Drone cannon. Drooooooooone cannonnnnnn.

  My internal monologue chanted it inside my skull. I had visions of casting bowls connected to chutes where drones slid down into a big metal tube. Would they even survive such a thing? I guessed I could make it air powered like my…

  I cast a speculative glance down at my arm cannon.

  Yep. We’re making drone ammo for you soon. Miner munitions.

  *plink*

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  You have created Ball Bearing.

  You receive 1 experience.

  Something fell from the chute of the junk shaping hopper followed swiftly by a tiny flash of light. It was so fast, one could be accused of just imagining things if they’d not been watching for just such an occurrence. A quick probe with my senses into my Spatial Storage told me what I wanted to know, and I summoned the new arrival into my palm. A tiny ball bearing of the palest gray stared back at me.

  “Hello, beautiful,” I said to it. I recognized cobalt when I saw it. It was incredibly pure too, just as the copper cubes had been back on the station. The matter converters were working.

  I carefully placed the little ball back in the top of the hopper and checked the scale.

  “10.71109 kg”

  So, the mass of the stuff I converted stayed roughly the same. There was a 0.00004 kg loss, which translated into… less than a grain of rice? While it sounded negligible, insignificant, it set my brain to whirling. This broke a fundamental law of the universe if I really was deleting mass from the world. Unless it was being burned off as gas somehow… Also, I wasn’t using the most accurate of instruments to perform this experiment. Maybe that was it. Still… I wanted to know. That’s why I was down here.

  I lifted the cobalt conversion machine up and shifted Tilly’s scale over to the iron one. I had a far better affinity for iron, and it would be good to know if that affected things too. I made a note of the weight of this one.

  You have created Ball Bearing.

  You receive 1 experience.

  You have created Ball Bearing.

  You receive 1 experience.

  *plink*

  *plink*

  Again, as soon as the ball bearings were created, they disappeared from their receiver bowls into my Spatial Storage. I summoned them back and added them back into the hopper. Again, I checked the scale. I’d lost mass, not so much as the cobalt one, but it was gone.

  I decided to let that particular experiment sit for a while, and I’d come back to it when I could think of something else to try.

  With resource gathering sorted, I set about my next experiment. I summoned two more casting bowls, setting them about six feet apart then summoned a specialized, Automated plane of metal. Attached to said plane was a pair of robotic arms equipped with a singular elbow joint and three-fingered clamps. Carefully, I slipped the bowls into the frames I’d made for them on the sides of the plane and connected them to the whole.

  Alright, two bowls for tier one products with a big work table in the middle to put them together. Let’s start simple.

  I pulled my ‘brain box’ out of Spatial Storage and opened the lid, thumbing through the smart cards I’d pre-programmed back on the station. All of them were wafer thin and just big enough to fit in someone’s palm, labeled in black marker. I selected the two of them that would most easily suit the requirements of this particular experiment.

  The smart card labeled “Barrels” I inserted into the receptacle in the left casting bowl, while the right received the “Actions” card. Then I provided the two with some seed metal to get them started. Meanwhile, the robot arms’ brain housing received the “turret assembly” smart card. As soon as all the cards were inserted, the arms twitched as the magical circuit between the batteries, themselves, and the bowls closed.

  I watched the Shaping process take place in the two casting bowls, slowly turning the scrap I’d provided into something more useful.

  Meanwhile, three of my metal gathering drones returned as a group, plopping good sized chunks of grimy steel into their bowl before heading out again. The fourth was only a few minutes behind. A quick check of the bowl revealed that there was a significant dusting of rust at the bottom now as the Shaping process purified the metal and got rid of the useless bits. I’d need to refine the design and get some kind of cleaning program going.

  *THOOM* *THOOM*

  A pair of gut shaking cannon shots rang out from overhead, the world around me flashing neon purple and casting ghoulish shadows behind all of my machines.

  Scourge Swarm Drone takes 51 damage. (48 piercing, +3 knife in the dark)

  Scourge Swarm Drone is bleeding.

  Scourge Swarm Drone is cursed.

  Scourge Swarm Drone is marked.

  Critical Hit!

  Scourge Swarm Drone takes 112 damage. (109 piercing, +3 knife in the dark)

  You have defeated Scourge Swarm Drone.

  You receive 24 experience points. [30 base -24 non combat class, +10 level, +8 nemesis]

  Experience rate 140/min.

  Alarmed voices resounded from behind the truck. Hall was shouting into his comms while there was a flurry of activity from everywhere all at once.

  I sighed and craned my neck to see over my rusted car. Was it that time already? I felt like I’d just started with the science and the learning. It couldn’t be killing time yet.

  Whatever I’d killed was out there somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. Even a couple steps to the side and around my dead rover so that I could get a better look didn’t reveal anything. I’d given the turret a half-kilometer range, so that wasn’t particularly surprising.

  The furor of voices was getting closer, a tangled mess of curses, accusations, and argumentation. I heard my name a couple of times in there too.

  I gave my experiments one last glance before jumping up and pulling myself onto the top of the overturned truck. Both the Captains and the Major were all there at ground level, along with a retinue of others with tight grips on their weapons. All eyes were on me and the still smoking barrels of the Pop Can.

  “What the absolute fuck is that,” Major Goethe bellowed.

  I glanced at my turret and back. “Heavy fire support?”

  The Major’s mask hid his true expression, but his posture told me he was on edge.

  “It spotted something out there and took it out,” I explained calmly. “My logs say it’s a swarmer drone or some such thing.”

  You have created Rifled Turret Barrel.

  You gain 45 experience points. [35 base, +10 quality]

  Experience rate 155/min.

  You have created Auto-Turret Firing Chamber.

  You gain 70 experience points [55 base, +15 quality]

  Damnit, I was hoping to be present for that part. The assembler was working, and I wasn’t there to see it.

  Captain Reed gave me a little smile and looked ready to interject, but he seemed to think better of it and put his hand to his ear, mouthing a couple words. Shortly after, I heard the echoing whine of something fast as it zipped overhead. This time I got a good glimpse of it. Dev’s drone had the sleek, disk shape like other unmanned craft I knew, but this one used a pair of rotors to maneuver and the blue pulsating glow of a stilling field flashed underneath it.

  The Major turned to Hall and my other diver friend. “The two of you see anything? Speak up.”

  The two turned to one another and shook their heads. “Nothing so far, Major. Lots of places to hide out there.”

  Goethe pointed at me accusingly. “If you just gave away our position for no damned reason, I’m gonna-”

  “Thanks, Dev,” Captain Reed interrupted. “Eyes in the sky has the remains of something out there. Nothing recognizable but there’s black blood splattered over a quarter block. You don’t do anything half-ass do you, Kotes?” the Captain asked.

  Goethe rounded on the Captain, his mask snarling as a reflection of his tone. “And it might have passed us by too if not for the damned heavy artillery here, Reed. Why didn’t he say anything instead of popping off like an asshole?” The Major questioned.

  *FWAP* *FWAP* *FWAP*

  Scourge Swarm Drone takes 22 damage. (18 piercing, +3 knife in the dark)

  Scourge Swarm Drone takes 26 damage. (23 piercing, +3 knife in the dark)

  Scourge Swarm Drone takes 19 damage. (16 piercing, +3 knife in the dark)

  You have defeated Scourge Swarm Drone.

  You receive 36 experience points. [30 base -24 non combat class, +10 level, +8 nemesis, +2 chain, +10 group]

  Experience rate 171/min.

  At exactly the wrong time, my drones made another scourge’s acquaintance.

  I sucked air through my teeth and waited. Waited to see if- Oh. there it was. Four more damage notifications followed.

  “Something’s happening out there. Not one of ours,” the mohawked captain remarked.

  “Yeeeaahhh. They’re mine,” I said. “Two less scourge, though. Yay!” I raised my hands half in celebration, half in a plea for mercy.

  You have created Auto-Turret Head.

  You receive 120 experience points. [150 base, +20 quality, -50 superfluous experience]

  Experience rate 225/min.

  I had to practically force myself not to check over my shoulder where my little assembler array was supposed to be working. I really, really, reaaalllly wanted to know how it was doing.

  You have created Rifled Turret Barrel.

  You receive 45 experience points. [35 base, +10 quality]

  You have created Spider Cannon Drone.

  You receive 100 experience points.

  Experience rate 325/min.

  You have created Spider Cannon Drone.

  You receive 100 experience points.

  Experience rate 450/min.

  You have created Ball Bearing.

  You receive 1 experience point.

  You have created Ball Bearing x2.

  You receive 2 experience points.

  Production had reached a tipping point. Suddenly, my feed was a busy place, all while I was being interrogated by a man in a dog mask.

  Things were popping off. They were popping off, and I was missing it.

  “Hey! Are you listening to me, Kotes!” The Major growled. He was right in my face now.

  I blinked, coming back to the present situation. “Yes. One hundred percent,” I replied.

  “Drone’s not seeing anything out there,” Reed reported, his sharp eyes scanning the street from the far end of the truck. “Doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Wherever Kotes is killing ‘em, it’s not in the open.”

  Yet again, I consulted my mental notepad and added “drone tracking” as a possible future project.

  “Contact! Contact! Contact!” Everyone’s earpiece buzzed at once, the words garbled but clear enough for me to understand even without one.

  Staccato bursts of red light flashed from multiple positions around the park, teams of three or four divers opening up on foes not visible from where I was. To the north, dozens of las-bolts stippled scorch marks up the concrete face of a building catty corner to our park, sending chunks of it tumbling down to street level.

  A heartbeat later, as if it had been waiting to do so, the building itself gave birth to horrors. They poured out of the bottom floor, dark figures with naked humanoid torsos fused to horrifically bulbous carapaces and far too many spindly legs that clicked over the pavement. Other, smaller specimens, boiled out of the empty windows many floors up like termites emerging from a nest. Their two mouths (yes, there were two, a human mouth on top and a larger… worse… mouth near ground level) screeched terrible inhuman sounds as they leapt from up high, over the firing line and down into the center of our protective circle. Translucent wings unfurled from the monsters’ backs and blurred as they slowed their descent into our midst.

  The divers peppered the monsters with everything they had, red barrages of concentrated fire downing many foes on the ground while others sniped carefully at the scourge in the air.

  These were not like the scourge I’d faced before. I’d read about the typical monsters found on Sabium and the types reported by divers over the hundred years or so of conflict with them. There were dozens of different subspecies down here with countless variations on the base types encountered all the time.

  I knew, intellectually, that the scourge had taken Sabium’s population and… done things to them. Seeing them was different though. These were living things. You could see that in how they moved, how they breathed, and how they flinched with pain when pierced by las-fire.

  They were also very very wrong. Nothing about them was natural, the features on their faces too round, their arms too short, their hairless scalps crisscrossed with bulging veins too fat and pronounced for a human circulatory system, and their teeth were far too numerous and flat. It was like someone had taken the base design of a human being and brought it far out of the evolutionary chain that had led us here.

  They called them nesters, this particular variant, I remembered. They holed up in dark places and stripped areas of biomass. I didn’t remember exactly what was the best practice for taking them down, where to shoot or stab, but I guessed I didn’t have to. My machines were on the job.

  *THOOM*THOOM* *THOOM*THOOM* *THOOM*THOOM*

  As soon as the monsters started landing inside the perimeter, my turret got in on the action, turning 180 degrees and dispensing death in rhythmic pairs of beefy cannon blasts like they were beats of a massive heart.

  *THOOM*THOOM*

  The fat, high caliber rounds, 50 grams heavy, punched gaping holes in the monsters’ carapaces. Sprays of black blood fountained into the air and gore gushed from their bodies, fouling the ground. A pair of rounds was rarely insufficient to end a threat. The turret’s aim was perfect center mass, which didn’t generally hit the creatures in their human torsos but blasted through their insectile backs instead. As soon as the carapace was compromised, the legs seemed to lose power, stumbling and ultimately collapsing on themselves. The torsos still screamed their hatred at us, but without intact bodies, they had little they could do other than gnash and bite at whatever was nearby.

  You have defeated Scourge Nester.

  You gain 170 experience points. [200 base -160 non combat class, +20 level, +40 chain, +40 nemesis, +30 group]

  Experience rate 311/min.

  The Major, to his credit, was the first to turn and advance on the monsters inside the perimeter, unloading bolt after bolt into the carapaces of monsters dead and alive. The Captains and I followed swiftly after. I drew my sword but kept from summoning my pistol or using my arm cannon for fear of hitting a friendly with a carelessly placed round. My turret was much more precise and cognizant of that kind of thing, since it used my aura. That was fine. It was doing a bang-up job on its own.

  Outside the perimeter, monsters that got close enough, employed some kind of spitting attack from their huge under-mouth that soaked the area with gray-ish smoking liquid, but that was generally a last gasp from a dying scourge. They rarely got close enough to spit directly into the firing line, and the ones that got inside didn’t last long enough to do much of anything thanks to my turret and the rest of the divers’ careful shots.

  The encounter lasted maybe a minute, if that, before the entirety of the nest was expended, and dead scourge carpeted the ground. There was a collective cheer from all over as the last one died, while the Major, the two Captains, and I stood amid the ruin of the enemy, their black blood caking in the dust under our boots.

  There was a subtle movement off to my left, and I turned to find one of the monsters’ twitching limbs still trying to drag itself forward. Our eyes met. It gasped, I wouldn’t say in surprise, but it was certainly sudden and forceful like surprise. I didn’t think the scourge could feel surprise like a person could. It opened its mouth to fill its lungs, but my sword took it before it could do that screaming thing they all did.

  Yeah. Yeah. I remember you too.

  The divers were breathing hard after the brief skirmish, but Reed made sure to catch my eye and gesture back at the turret with his chin.

  “Nice work,” he mouthed.

  I nodded and gave him a thumbs up. Oh, Constance, was it nice to be back in a universe with thumb gestures.

  The victorious moment shattered when something buzzed in the Major’s helmet. Goethe put his hand up to his ear. “Say again. Say again, Outrider. What- Affirmative. Light contact so far. Say again. Good. Good job. Proceed. We’ll be right there. Out.”

  He turned to us.

  “My boys have found a logistics hub two klicks from here. We’re moving.”

  Captain Reed shook his head, while the mohawk Captain seemed almost insulted.

  “We’ve got people out there, back that way,” Reed said. “We’d have to call them back and then leave a fortified position. The scourge know where we are now, too.”

  “Not to mention that we’d be moving for your company’s find,” mohawk lady sneered.

  I could almost feel the Major grinning behind his mask. “I figured as much. Might’ve shared with you all if you came along, but if that’s the spirit you bring to this endeavor, we’ll be fine on our own. Two Delta’s moving out in ten.”

  Mohawk’s mouth dropped open. “You’re leaving the LZ? We just took out a nester hive with no casualties, and you want to tear a hole in that?”

  The Major shrugged. “We’re here to get everything we can, if you haven’t forgotten, Wetz. No reason to leave such a big repository of high-value scrap just because you’re too timid to roll with the situation. You’ve got two companies here and a whole Exotic for defense. You’ll be fine.”

  Captain Reed stepped forward aggressively, and, for a moment, I thought he might punch the other man.

  The chain of command was breaking down in real time.

  “You’re leaving my people out to dry. I won’t forget this,” Reed hissed.

  “Careful, Reed,” Goethe drawled mockingly. “That almost sounds like a threat. Ain’t no law around here to keep me from making sure you can’t make good on it.”

  Reed and the Major stared each other down for several long heartbeats, but Reed was the first to flinch, shaking his head with disgust.

  Goethe turned his back on the rest of us and started walking away. “You’re a good man, Reed. That’s why you’ll never hit first and you’ll die poor. Two Delta! We are leaving! Pack your shit and rally on the west corner!”

  I sidled up to the Captains while the two of them watched Goethe leave and his men form up on him, packs slung on their backs. They sure were efficient and motivated.

  “I never liked him,” I offered.

  “Not many do,” Captain Reed said. He spit on the ground to punctuate the sentence.

  Mohawk shook her head and clenched her fist hard enough that I heard the joints popping. “Son of a bitch is gonna use us as bait and go get the lion’s share of this dive, and there’s nothing we can do. Why command keeps him around-”

  “He gets results,” Reed interrupted. “It’s what Command sees well enough to overlook his faults. The true cost Goethe and his kind incur doesn’t show up in their tallies.”

  “Snake. Wouldn’t be surprised if he knew there would be a hub out there and sent his outriders directly to it,” Mohawk grumbled. “Look at how ready they were to move out.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “So, am I to assume that scourge will be all over us pretty soon now that they’ve caught a whiff of human?” I asked. I also suspected that my personal history with the scourge in this universe might soon come into play here, but the results would be functionally the same. Swarm time. Lots of bodies getting thrown our way.

  Reed nodded. “Yeah. They’ll come in fits and starts. Bog us down. Harass. Then they’ll bring the heavy hitters and obliterate us. If we’re not out of here in 90 minutes, we won’t make it out of here at all.”

  Reed turned to Mohawk, and the two exchanged looks. “Give the signal?” Reed asked.

  Mohawk looked like she’d eaten something foul. “Give the outriders another ten minutes to wrap up then we call the dropships, or this LZ is going down. Damnit! We’ll be lucky to break even this way.”

  That was my cue if there ever was one. I cleared my throat loudly, bringing the commanders’ gazes into line with mine.

  “90 minutes isn’t a big window,” I began. “But with your help, maybe I can magic up a bigger one.”

  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.