BuyMort: 30,000 Leagues: How I Merged to Become Nu-Earth Affiliated
Author: Damien Hanson; Joseph Phelps
Date: 2023-03-14 16:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Fiction; General; Media Tie-In; Science Fiction; Space Opera; GameLit; HaremLit
Description: With Arizona united under the corporate auspices of Silken Sands, Dearth Local is in retreat — and Tyson has earned himself some nice R and R. Or so he thought. But now, just a month after Day 1, mysterious beasts are plaguing his land. A powerful armada tears through the sea. An angry Beholder threatens his workers . . . And a powerful tsunami has signaled the arrival of an even more powerful affiliate. A singular monster that assimilates its workers into the ever-growing hivemind that is its corporate structure, Kraken threatens to not just end Tyson and his fledgling affiliate. It threatens
Publisher: LitForge Press

BuyMort: 30,000 Leagues

A BuyMort Novel

Joseph Phelps

Damien Hanson

A Sconnie Books Production

Copyright © 2023 Joseph Phelps, Damien Hanson

All rights reserved.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

For more information, address: https://damienleehanson.substack.com

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We want to thank every arbitrary fee, every overcharge, every fine print item, advertising algorithm, and predatory firm in existence for the production of this story.

We couldn’t have done it without you!

I want to dedicate this book to all of our fans at Royal Road. Without you, this story would not be what it is today.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 (Prologue - Arizona United)

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5 – Whalehunter Salvage

Chapter 6

Chapter 7 – Whalehunter Salvage

Chapter 8

Chapter 9 – Whalehunter Salvage

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15 – Whalehunter Salvage

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26 – Whalehunter Salvage

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51 – Whalehunter Salvage

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Epilogue

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Damien Hanson

Joseph Phelps

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Chapter 1
(Prologue - Arizona United)

It’d been a month since the defeat of Dearth in Arizona. The Silken Sands Nu-Earth Campaign, they called it right up there on the multiversal TV.

They say everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. If so, that was it there. Glamorized video and images of me punching tanks, exploding slimes, and even one of me freaking out and running hard, bleeding and gasping, while a gigantic, tentacle-waving cockroach chased after me down the hill.

Phyllis loved that clip. She even found a way to get her suit to save it so she could play it back whenever she needed a chuckle.

And there was the montage of me punching out the windows on Mr. Sada’s truck. He’d uploaded them from his MortMobile device, to a church-run social media app.

RIP, the poor bastard, his shit immortalized across the for-profit news networks and information affiliates that proliferated through the BuyMort multiverse.

I was apparently quite the star. A plucky doomed go-getter, Tracy Mills from NewsCom Multiversal Incorporated called me. But most of the rest called me The Windowpuncher, Warlord of Arizona.

There was even a song about me. Done in “Nu-Earth Style” or so the artist said. Sounded like garbage to me.

But like it or not, my mirrored helmet and I were all over the media and, to be honest, it helped out Silken Sands a lot.

We’d gone to war with Dearth, their remaining local branch anyway, escalating to real war after my seizure of their space elevator. Bad thing was that they had a lot of money. Good thing was that the many pay grades worth of bureaucrats above them didn’t give a damn.

I was fighting with a local chapter, not the whole multiversal corporation.

And on my side were the hobbs, tens of thousands of them swarming to my cause from Storage, proficient with every weapon we could give them.

Nu-Earth humans too. From all over the continent, those who could, did. I made a point of looking for survivors to rehome, and by that point I was the only Nu-Earth native affiliate with balls left in the game as far as I could tell.

Everyone started setting up more communities, adding their own bits of production to the affiliate. Helping out the war cause too. Prescott became more than just a space port, it became a Nu-Earth trade capital. A hub of humanity, and hobbs.

BuyMort even leveled me up. Got a bunch of company perks, a minor portaling license and personal access to set up a firm in Storage itself.

Every major affiliate needed one eventually.

And The Church of BuyMort, well, they tried to send me a new church representative after all the dust had settled. But we stuck by Molls and let them know that we were well represented already. Our contract designated her as their representative, and Silken Sands was unable to process any church requests through any other agent.

It meant exactly as little as their contract with us had meant, which meant nobody dared recognize that fact. We had ourselves a cultural stalemate, controlling the narrative among their own population to reflect our relationship in a positive light.

Axle had a good laugh about that. That’d been a good time. We’d been drinking some, hanging out around a card table, playing on an other-dimensional VR system called Realer-than-life, 750,000 morties, 4.9 star.

He’d said he’d never seen anyone get so cheeky with the church and even made a bet that she’d be reinstated within two months.

He was right. The morties mattered more than any other motivator, especially once they were coming from a slice of the space elevator and port. She was back in standing with them in no time.

But those good times were over. Now here I was, surrounded by blasts of metal and flame, my hovercraft quaking like one of those insert-a-dollar shake beds in a Las Vegas brothel.

At the time, with the flak going off all around us, it seemed scary. And I was shit-my-pants scared. My brain was telling me that we were going down and I couldn't stop it from howling at me to break some windows and get ready for action.

After all, that'd worked so well in the past.

But it was fine. Just my ape brain not having any understanding of the physics involved in the choppy, halting flight.

You see, Jada, in her capacity as my military intelligence specialist, had employed good strategy, a modified Wild Weasel. It was something she’d picked up from Axle’s library, after Lee had submitted some content.

We purchased small flicker-shields, Sphere Shield Mini-lights by BangPae Volts and Light. Small budget, small craft, but need big protection. That’s easy! Slap on some Sphere Shield Mini-lights and away you go! 300,000 morties apiece and 4.7 stars, to cover the hovercraft’s engine compartments. Then we just layered the bellies and cockpits, anything critical really, with physical armor and let the flak shred the rest of it. Easy and cheap repairs back home, with our stolen Dearth hangar facilities.

Plus the onboard computer mapped the enemy antiaircraft fire, where it originated from, and sent the coordinates back to Silken Sands for relay to the assault wave hobbs, for use in taking the wall.

When the flicker-shields engaged, a metal hatch slammed closed across the engine to protect it from flak, opening and closing dozens of times per second. Made for a hell of a bumpy ride.

The city itself was a sprawling disaster zone. Fires and dream storms had run unchecked for weeks as Dearth established a foothold in the only area of the city that mattered to them.

Long Beach.

There were roads, very similar to my own, covered in armor and protections that coursed through the ruins, but by and large the sprawling city of Los Angeles had been left to rot.

While the fleet of hovercraft that comprised my side of the LA assault wave flew over the rest of the city, I saw BuyMort bugs and Sleem roaming the streets freely. There were also clear survivor outposts, some fallen, some seemingly still intact.

I used my anti-magic helmet to take photographs of them for later confirmation.

The helmet was a pretty stock-standard nano-tech device, in spite of its ‘magic’ theatrics. It lived underneath my skin, which dramatically increased my pore health. When deployed, a shining chrome helmet would form around my head, protecting me from all but the most serious direct attacks.

Its specialty was negating other so-called magical effects, through malicious programming. Axle had run me through the specifics, but like any other item that called itself magic, it was just really high tech.

So when I took pictures, it stored them as ‘memory magic’ in an ethereal floating spell-book that only I could see. But it was a photo album, like any other electronic, data-based device could craft for me.

It just had a magic theme.

I had gotten so used to it that I no longer even noticed the theme, I just cared about the functions. Those photos could be shared over MortMobile, the psychic phone network that connected the BuyMort universe vocally, and via text.

I’d give them to Rayna and have some squads assigned anti-Sleem gear to come search for survivors. The more Nu-Earth humans I could save, the better. In the first few days of BuyMort, our numbers had dropped from nearly eight billion to just under nine-hundred million.

In the weeks since then, it had fallen even further. Less than half a billion of us remained, and just over a million of those were already in my state and under my care.

I wanted the rest.

My photography was interrupted as we approached Long Beach, and Dearth’s emplaced weapons opened up on us. Primarily it was flak cannons, as we used their stolen hovercraft, which they expected to be vulnerable to flak.

Thanks to Jada’s sound advice, Axle’s buying ability, and our hobb army’s work ethic, our entire fleet was equipped to surprise the enemy.

The Dearth Conglomerate had built another fortress of black plastic construction blocks, walling in the entire Long Beach area. All they cared about were the docks, everything else was underdeveloped, and appeared focused around dock worker’s needs. Gigantic ocean-faring ships that dwarfed the Jahre Viking dotted the coastline, lined up to deliver cargo.

My ships hovered over the defensive wall, six of the middle group of hovercraft deploying shielded hobbs on cables. They spread out to cover all of the Long Beach wall, and within seconds, the flak in the air was gone, replaced with heavy fighting all across the defensive structures.

The forward tip of our fleet, which was my ship and two others, went straight for the Dearth tower at the heart of their operation. These guys were predictable, just like the Sleem, and they always built a tower just like the one I had taken in Prescott to run their operations out of.

A penthouse with a meeting room on the top floor was what I was expecting, so the hovercraft moved into place high above the tower’s roof. I leaned out and leapt from the door of the craft, more than forty floors in the air.

Doofus, my giant malamute, leapt out at my side in perfect synchronization and plunged into a dive.

His bright orange hard light wings deployed, erupting from his battle harness with a shower of orange sparks. They caught the air and he glided faster toward the top floor. With a single bark, amplified by his sonic weapon, Doofus blasted out the floor to ceiling window that protected the penthouse just before I slammed into the roof with my atomic breaker gauntlets.

A huge chunk of the top floor vaporized in an explosion of blue light, and I slammed through the ceiling into the penthouse boardroom, cracking the tile with my landing. Doofus landed at the window and slid across the floor, his own personal shield protecting him from the fast moving glass shards that accompanied his arrival.

My starfish suit deployed thin metal tendrils, repairing any damage that crashing through the roof of a building had done to me, but I wasn’t worried about that anymore. In the month of time I’d had growing my crystalline colonies in relative peace, my body had become much stronger.

Axle rated my strength on the BuyMort standard stat shot system. Most wealthy people within BuyMort were able to purchase stat shots, nanorobotic body enhancements. The problem with them was that in order to grow stronger, or replace lost nanobots, one would have to purchase another stat shot, and they each cost billions.

Axle told me that there was even a rating system for those who were able to afford the shots. It all started at humanoid common which was 1 and represented a basic human, hobb, elf, or orc’s level of strength within natural variations.

I, with my exotic crystalline body enhancement, was ranked a five. My crystalline colonies were another relic from the Teslak Cooperative.

The source of my biggest personal strengths.

The microscopic crystalline entities not only improved my muscle tissue, eventually hardening it as well. It was more difficult to cut me, or break my bones, now that I had been enhanced for so long.

Nowadays, most of the wounds my starfish suit repaired were superficial.

But the board room was empty. At the far end, a BuyMort portal still stood open. The other side showed the space station overhead, a room up there filled with aliens and uniformed humans staring back at us, while stars twinkled through a massive viewscreen.

The owner of Los Angeles had run away, rather than face me and lose everything.

Chapter 2

The Wizard was there, glaring at me from behind Rova, another Nah’gh woman. I found myself glad to see that she’d survived our encounter. A Nah’gh woman was the first person I’d ever killed, and I felt a twinge of guilt at the prospect of killing them.

Molls was never far from my mind.

The last remaining board member of the Dearth Southern West Coast Board, a tall, male humanoid with blue, ridged horns extending from his forehead, stared back at me with wide open eyes, and one hand raised to his mouth. I’d clearly surprised him by smashing through his roof.

I nodded as they stared. “Smart,” was all I said, watching the word send chills through the lot of them.

Then the portal snapped shut, and I was alone in the penthouse with Doofus. Another victory, though the battle still raged below. Without MortBlock coverage, it would be more difficult for me to claim the area, but it wasn’t a huge inconvenience.

Just meant more tedium.

The way MortBlocks worked ensured that possession was still nine-tenths of what you needed. While I held the area militarily, the MortBlock owner would be unable to refresh it, as they were too far away physically. Soon enough, with the damage being caused by fighting, my MortBlock coverage would sweep in further and further. After that, coordinated tagging teams would fill in the gaps.

My hobbs had brought me two other MortBlocks before we even launched against LA, extending my official reach into Baja and parts of Mexico. My target had been the southern Californian coast, a major trading port, and hub of Dearth’s activity in the area.

Even driving across turf with deep enough treads on a heavy enough vehicle was all it took to alter land enough to claim. The process of flipping the territory would be a hassle, but the military strikes and consistent damage inside the LA area were helping me fill in the blocks already.

MortBlocks were a little ridiculous in certain cases. Because I had broken through structural supports on the roof, the entire building we stood in was considered damaged enough to be a different structure and was therefore available for my MortBlock to claim.

So the fighting in the streets affected entire neighborhoods, and as my regimented hobb forces routed the rag-tag Dearth remnants, I was given more and more of the port city that I needed. Taking Los Angeles was the key to the entire west coast of the continent.

There were other ports, but none as easy to access for ships the size of what Dearth had been using.

I was happy to see several of the massive cargo vessels come into my grasp as my teams continued their assault throughout the morning. Each of the massive cargo vessels was owned by a captain, and each captain was forced to surrender their MortBlock, as my fleet grew and grew.

The other board members had been offered something similar, by my hobbs. They refused and were killed for their blocks. Only the alien with blue horns had survived. By the end of the morning, six monstrous cargo freighters were mine, all sitting peacefully in the bay.

My own hobbs had rappelled down from the hovercraft to my position, seen that I didn’t need their help, and went to go take the rest of the tower. These Dearth towers held nice treasure too, I was sure to make a small fortune from the confines of its vault, armory, and whatever personal effects were left behind by the ultra-wealthy former owner as he rushed to escape the mirror-helmed warlord of Arizona.

And I was going to enjoy digging through its more unique items, once everything was settled and sorted.

But for now I had to be content to stand in the tower and coordinate the battle from above.

Rayna and Tollya both were deployed, both wearing basic versions of the starfish suit relic. I’d managed to get a handful more of them, dealing with my Afflqwst app, which connected me to the Teslak Cooperative’s storefront.

Since taking over Arizona, Axle and I had visited it a small handful of times, trading in Afflqwst coupons for a growing collection of base-level starfish suits. I’d collected over forty since that first eventful week.

Rayna, Tollya, Ordo, and Jada all asked for one, and received them. After that, the relics were assigned to any trusted members of the affiliate, all within the original BlueCleave tribe.

The rest of my front-line combat teams all got personal shields, Multiphasic Buckler Shielding from Amazon Incorporated to be exact. Amazon promised Top Quality forged Round Metal Steel constructed using plasma forges for the purest of alloys, miniaturized to fit any arm, and chipped to project an energy field that encompassed the body of the wearer. Biometrics enabled for an additional fee. 699,000 morties each, 4.3 stars.

That was an expensive investment but worth every mortie. Our teams had low mortality rates and ever-increasing levels of combat experience. The shields also helped with morale, most hobbs were not used to being equipped with one.

As my extremely difficult-to-kill troops cleaned out Long Beach, the ports, and the bay, Rayna and I directed their movements from above. Our troops established a forward base at the tower, since I MortBlock-owned it, and we dominated the meager Dearth troops from the heart of their own operation all morning.

Axle explained that while the Southern West Coast Board had sent for reinforcements, their request had to be addressed by their greater Sol Board, since no other Nu-Earth governing boards were willing to spare their own troops.

The delay had meant the fall of their territory.

It was a lot of open land, desert, and ruined cities to cover, with nothing but a handful of ports down the coast to justify the expenditure, but I was more than happy with it. And just knowing about Dearth’s tremendous bureaucratic weakness put a big ole smile right over my face.

It was something I’d be able to exploit again and again so long as my actions here never got bigger than their profit concerns elsewhere.

I wanted the land for the population, primarily. In any clustered formerly-civilized area, there were always survivors. A lot of them had already come to me in Prescott, for safe haven, but I knew there were more out there. Trapped, or living hand to mouth on what morties they could scrounge, just barely staying ahead of death, or Storage.

The stories my survivors had when they reached my gates, or my squads picked them up, were never nice, or uplifting. But I never stopped trying to find them. It didn’t seem like anyone else was looking.

We had launched our attack at dawn, following the spy’s flight. By noon, everything but a few pockets of hardened resistance on the docks of Long Beach was mine, and fleets of hobbs and human volunteers were already driving vehicles across the open land to the north and east of Los Angeles.

Vehicles were one thing we had plenty of, thanks to Rova. The Nah’gh vice chair had run a sizable security force out of Prescott for Dearth, with the goal of securing and protecting the space elevator and surrounding port that I had stolen.

Now the large fleet of admittedly cheap vehicles was mine too, under the care and custody of tribe BlueCleave. Dearth’s ground based rollers had their strong suits, but they were more fragile than I cared for.

BlueCleave engineers, at Tollya’s suggestion, stripped most of the fleet for city-runners, making them as light as possible by removing sections of plating and weapon emplacements.

The vehicles were modular, which was an amazing benefit. Axle told me to think of it in terms of sleds and parts. We had taken nine-hundred and ninety-four quad wheel roller sleds, down six from encounters with me prior to our takeover.

By removing the primary armor plating from six hundred, we were able to lighten those considerably for general transport of people and goods throughout the city and star port.

That armor plating then went onto the remaining four hundred, in varying amounts, to create armored personnel carriers for my military. We had triple plated vehicles for dangerous missions and quick, lightly armored scout craft.

Also worthy of note, Tollya kept adding new stuff to the fleet that she liked, usually for specialty roles. It all came out of their ten percent, so I wasn’t complaining, but there were some oddball vehicles in BlueCleave’s hangars.

The fliers were more limited, we only had one hundred of them. I had a handful of employees that needed them for transport, like Lee. He commuted to Prescott every day.

The star port spread out around the elevator, in a broad U-shape, so we needed aerial police to control that. Plus I needed a fleet of rapid response troopers and engineers for the elevator itself, and with several docking stations built into the massive structure, our hovercraft was a natural fit for them too

Beyond that, I had known Dearth would need another ass-kicking soon, so every flier we could spare went into my ever-expanding military.

The entire fleet was electric, so range was a massive limiter outside of Prescott. We’d carried Cube with us on the invasion, he seemed to enjoy going on trips, often shouting for pilots to fly faster, or make sharper turns.

Since he’d grown a step in his development, he’d become a lot more involved in day-to-day life.

Prescott had a big old honkin’ nuclear reactor courtesy of the Dearth Conglomerate, so it wasn’t difficult to run power from that to Silken Sands, and free up Cube to do things he wanted to do.

And, it turned out, he primarily wanted to eat new and interesting people. So he joined our military.

Seemed like the best place to keep both entities happy.

Cube was often used to power the entire military fleet on long engagements, via remote transmitters installed in his heavily armored flier. Tollya regularly flew command from that vessel and communed with the sentient metal box.

She even fed him his desired victims.

All dead, of course. She shuddered to think of feeding him a live one, or so she said, anyway. I had my worries, though. She was an indulgent hobb.

Our fleet was something we were quite fond of, quite protective over. We’d only lost a single vessel in the battle for Los Angeles. So when my heads up display showed the entirety of my ground fleet as disabled, spread out across multiple states and areas, I gaped at the readout.

Then the tower began to shake. The penthouse waved and swayed, as the building's earthquake protections rolled to absorb the motion and energy.

A massive earthquake was rattling the coast.

Chapter 3

Rayna was in the tower with me, and lunged for the elevator doorway, planting herself firmly in it. I looked around as the massive, teak meeting desk slid out the window, taking most of the expensive office chairs with it.

“Oh damn it. BuyMort, I wanna sell all that furniture, right now!” I shouted.

A BuyMort pod popped into existence with the now familiar fart smell of Tower’s rotting flesh. Most of the pods came from a fruition center, and all the fruition centers had a vat of Tower.

I’d visited three different ones in the month since I met the first version, without much more to report on the creature. It appeared to be the same mind in each vat that I visited and remembered me quite clearly from those visits.

We were becoming friends, I think.

The pod began warping away furniture as it rolled out the window, before zipping away and rapidly diving to go catch the falling bits. The sale wouldn’t be as clean, but it was better than losing it entirely. Every mortie counted.

I grabbed onto the corner of the wall as the building shook. My helmet told me the earthquake was a 4.7 on the Richter scale. It brought up that information on a scroll and pestered me with text about the scale’s name being what its ‘magic’ sensed of my knowledge.

Bullshit.

It listened when people talked and had access to Axle’s online library, which was essentially the internet. Fucking lying nanotech.

I grabbed at my MortBlock and began chain refreshing it. Since I was connected to all the land it now covered, anything the earthquake changed or shook loose was covered as mine.

It was a habit to refresh it regularly anyway, no less than once an hour when awake.

But as the earthquake settled and it became apparent that the building would withstand it, I decided to refresh mine a bit more often for the near future.

In spite of the structural damage I had done to the roof, the penthouse remained secure. Nobody faulted Dearth products, after all.

Just their cutthroat business tactics.

Still, it had been funny to watch them turn tail and run. Plus, the earthquake gave me a timely opportunity to secure my claim on all of the new land in my territories.

I watched, as the MortBlocks around my territory resettled on the map. There had been some pushing and pulling at the borders, and aside from a single outpost now technically in enemy territory near the Grand Canyon, there wasn’t anything major to respond to.

I called Axle anyway. Being a Nu-Earth native, I knew something was coming that we needed to respond to. He was in Prescott, managing the day to day business with the elevator, so I told him to take a portal to my position.

Our affiliate had access to a few short-range portals from BuyMort, one of an assortment of perks I’d chosen after we leveled up.

We were level ten, but I suspected we’d get ranked up again after our recent expansion. Assuming I could save the port from the tsunami I knew had to be headed our way.

The earthquake had been centered in Asia, halfway around the world. It was a 4.7 by the time it got to us, all the way around the crust. But over there, it was a solid eleven on the Richter Scale. The entire west coast was probably about to get wiped out.

Axle stepped out of a BuyMort pod’s rainbow beam, and immediately moved to the penthouse suite’s master control unit. It gave him access to the building’s features and controls, which were still tied into Dearth’s satellite network. It was a critical security failure on their part, but I was happy to not let them know. Each and every Dearth tower was hard code encrypted to their satellite access.

It was one of the best weapons I had against them. I had access to all their intel, and they were too dumb to realize it. The Nu-Earth board, I mean. The Sol Board was taking a strangely hands off approach to the conflict, but I suspected they could tell I was in their networks.

Well, my people were anyway. Axle had a guy, someone he knew from before he and Jada fled Dearth. Axle had come up in the company from Storage but suffered no loyalty to them. To me, on the other hand, I saw plenty of indications of loyalty. He still scoffed at my greater plan to kill BuyMort, but he was my right hand advisor in everything the affiliate did, and one of very few people I considered a friend.

Axle connected the Los Angeles tower to the Prescott tower, and his guy connected us both to the satellite network. Then he navigated out to a point in the Pacific Ocean, where an obscene bulge in the ocean confirmed my fears. The lens didn’t even have to zoom in far to find it.

It was visible from space, the local news hounds were gleefully covering it, from the safety of various orbital platforms. Some were on ships, others on newly installed space stations of various sizes and purposes.

The wave had already destroyed the Hawaiian Islands and was rapidly bearing down on the western coast of North and South America. According to all accounts, it would hit us within the hour. It was expected to top five hundred meters when it came ashore. Axle quickly compiled a comparison with our two-hundred-meter-tall tower for me to understand exactly how tall this thing was.

“Okay, that seems terrible. What can you do?” I asked the tall Knowle.

He licked his nose and scowled.

“Off the top of my head? Detonate shaped explosives underwater of sufficient size to counter the incoming wave. It’s not perfect, but we might save portions of the immediate area, this city in particular.”

His friend on the monitor was another Knowle, with dark black stripes across his muzzle. He chuckled and chimed in, “You know, that’s not impossible. We have some shaped nuclear explosives in storage, and several portal uses left.”

“That mean nobody portal out if bombs fail,” Rayna chimed in. I valued her input, but she had a way of bringing down the mood when it came to managing disasters.

Not that I felt this one was being managed particularly well.

“Okay, someone tell me why we have shaped nuclear bombs, and how any of this is even possible?” I asked.

“Tollya,” Rayna grunted. “Said was good deal. Nukes always useful.”

I chuckled dryly and nodded. “Every time she buys us something, it makes me want to allocate her more funding. But that can’t possibly work, can it? Just nuke the tsunami? I don’t wanna be mean, but c’mon. That sounds dumb to me.”

Axle swiped at the air in front of himself, reading the specifications on the bombs. He had a limited version of Afflqwst that provided him with a glossary of information on my quests. The app was predatory to the BuyMort programming, and carved out cheats. Like compiling all information needed to accomplish an Afflqwst quest.

The quest I had been ignoring since it popped up. The impending tsunami was far more relevant.

Quest – Preserve new territory from effects of incoming natural disaster.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Activate countermeasures to neutralize incoming tsunami.

PROBABLE OUTCOME – Affiliate territory destroyed. (78%).

POSSIBLE OUTCOME – Affiliate territory protected. (6%).

REWARD – Item coupon.

Of course. And another Item coupon too, which made perfect sense. The last forty of these I had done had been item coupons. Each and every stinking one of ‘em worth fifty-five thousand morties, the price of a first stage starfish suit.

Axle shook his head. “Afflqwst underestimates us,” he hissed.

“Does it?” I hissed back. None of the hobb guards in the room aside from Rayna were cleared to know about our Afflqwst app. Only my most trusted lieutenants knew about that advantage.

I looked up at her and continued in a normal volume, “You guys are talking about shaped charge nuclear bombs as if that won’t destroy the coastline we’re trying to save.”

Rayna shook her head. “Not perfect. Less damage than wave. What we have.”

I sighed and shook my head, before siphoning a large amount of morties from the affiliate account into my own. The remainder of our bounty from Dearth, five billion. Our operation turned over billions in trade daily, but Axle was smart and spent the vast majority of it on upkeep and improvement, along with my various rescue projects.

Our flex account for emergencies would need refilling after this.

We kept large amounts of morties out of my account normally, so I didn’t accidentally spend them all on a really expensive Nah’gh sex worker or summon an armada of Sleem with one of my nightmares. My dreams were very much either or since BuyMort. No middle ground, no peaceful serenity. Just one extreme or the other.

With five billion morties in my account, I asked BuyMort for help. Something to stop the tsunami from destroying our entire shoreline, specifically. The storefront tossed a series of ads at me once I entered my request. I swiped through them, looking for one in particular. It showed up anytime I did high enough priced searches for pretty much anything, which told me they were operating locally.

TWO GUYS AND A TRANSDIMENSIONAL PULSE ION CANNON – Ever seen a bad guy and thought Kaboom? These are your guys. They’ll portal in and give you one shot at a special discounted rate! You’ll have to pay full price for each shot after. Good for assassinations and vaporizing assholes. We can kill ANYthing.

That was the one. I mentally clicked it and opened a MortMobile call with the provider.

Chapter 4

A tall, heavily bearded human peered down his nose at me on the phone, one eyebrow raised. Before he addressed me, he leaned back and spoke with a faintly Spanish accent to someone else in the room with him. “His helmet is mirrored, come see,” he quickly muttered, before turning to me with a big smile. “Hello! What can the brothers Delvago do for you, my good sir?”

I frowned, a facial expression thankfully covered by my mask. “Can you kill a tsunami?” I asked.

The first man in the frame scowled deeply, a comical expression with his oversized beard. The motion brought some of the jeweled beads in the man’s lower beard into frame. “A what now?”

“That be a wave, Dario, a big wave. What size are we talkin’ bout, specifically?” A thinner man with similar eyes moved into frame. His face was covered in stubble, he wore thick, stained, simple linen clothing, and was wiping dark grease from his hands with a rag as he entered the frame.

“So it’s possible, get here. Now,” I said. “The wave is currently slated to come ashore at roughly five hundred meters high.”

“What does he mean, Izan?” Dario asked. “He orders us?” His accented voice rose slightly in pitch.

“No Dario,” Izan answered, again off frame. “There is no time. Come, let us go, hurry! BuyMort!” Izan started shouting an order to BuyMort but was cut off by the phone disconnecting. A billion morties left my account, paying for the contract.

The psychic deity in the phone stared at me for a long moment. “Good luck,” he whispered in my mind.

“Boss!” Rayna grunted from my side. “Hovercraft in ready position. Need to deploy bombs, now.”

“Could you stop? We’re not nuking the coast, tell Tollya we’ll find another way to use her bombs. I have a specialist team coming in, they’ll handle this,” I told her.

The hobb saluted, turned, and started talking rapidly into her own comm unit. We had repurposed a bunch of Dearth communications tech. It was essentially radio, but tied into the central vehicle in our unit, where Cube lived, and allowed us to communicate home, without the giant MortMobile bill. Having all our hobbs on it that first week without paying attention had led to one hell of a phone bill.

Given the sizable increase in our recruitment since then, I couldn’t imagine running my affiliate successfully using MortMobile. That was for emergencies or high level secure communications. Or TV. The psychic creature that hosted the multiverse spanning network was held in check by tight BuyMort controls but seemed potentially friendly to our affiliate and its continued survival.

A BuyMort pod warped in at our side and shined its beam over an empty area. Two swarthy humans stepped out. The first, Dario, was rotund and with a glossy black beard that reached nearly to his belt. He smiled massively at me, from behind his gem studded beard.

“My friend! My friend, thank you for choosing our service, this wave will trouble you no longer,” he jabbered, gesturing wildly with one hand. The other held a heavy looking pack in place on his back, squashing one shoulder of his crimson admiralty coat.

The second man, Izan, stepped from the portal carrying a large, round object encased in a cloth bag. He nodded at me and knelt to begin working his device out of the bag.

Dario groaned and heaved his own bag around to his front, setting it on the floor next to the ceiling rubble with a heavy thud. He looked around and frowned. “Grandmother in the grave, what happened to this expensive Dearth office?”

“I did,” I said, stepping forward and offering him my hand. I mentally commanded my helmet to recede, and it did, nanites slipping inside my pores in streams of silver liquid. Dario’s eyes widened as he watched. “Tyson Dawes, Silken Sands,” I said, the transformation complete.

Dario’s eyes lit up, even as Izan shook his head and sighed. “I tell you, Izan, I tell you! It is him! Wowa! What a day, to meet Tyson Dawes, bane of the Dearth Conglomerate.” Dario grabbed my hand with both of his and smiled warmly as he shook it vigorously.

Izan nodded at me when I looked his way, and I nodded back. He was busy, easing a large round object with smooth sides from his bag.

Dario finally let go of my hand and jumped. “Oh! Big wave, right. We never killed a soo-nah-me before, this I must record for posterity. The Delvago legend grows, brother!” One of the gems in his beard, woven into his chin’s hair, flashed as it began recording.

I stepped back and reactivated my helmet. I’m sure recordings of my face were out there, but everyone knew me as the silvery reflective mask thanks to some recent media appearances, and I wanted to keep it that way as long as I could.

“The Delvago legend always grows, brother,” Izan sighed. “It does not need your help to do that, I wish you would stop.” He got the orb out of the bag, and I stared at it.

The transdimensional pulse ion cannon was a large, dark ball, with a series of shallows that lead deep into the center dug into one side, giving it a layered, tunneled appearance on the business end. The darkness of the orb was not simply coloration, or pigment. It was dark.

The cannon seemed to leech the light from the air around it and was simply covered in gloom at all times.

Dario whipped his part out of the bag and flung it across the floor with a flourish.

A railed track clicked and clanked out to form itself, connecting into a solid object that led from the window-sill back to nearly the elevator doors. It deployed spiked feet, digging into the building’s structural supports, deep beneath the marble flooring.

“Ah good, it fits. You see that throw, Izan? I’m getting better at that,” Dario said with another smile.

Below us, screams sounded from the city, especially along the coast line. The sound was faint, tinny, but audible. Masses of people, aliens, animals, and whatever else was crawling around down in Long Beach were all screaming, and as I watched, I saw why.

From my vantage point, I could see the sheer speed with which the ocean withdrew, and the shocking volume of water that fled across the ocean floor. All up and down the coast, the wind shifted as the ocean was sucked away, drained. Miles of wet sand and gasping fish were visible from the tower, and millions of seabirds fled east, flying as high as they could. My new cargo vessels all sunk down into the mud, settling in the bay as the water fled from beneath them.

In the distance, just at the horizon, the ocean swelled. Izan stopped adjusting the ion cannon to watch for a few seconds, as a wall of water rose to cover most of the sky. The stubbled man smiled, only from one corner of his mouth.

“Simple program this time, just needs a LOT of power to shunt the kinetic energy in the wave. Take more than one charge, Dario,” he said to his brother.

Dario nodded and turned to face me. “So sorry, Mr. Dawes. I hate to be rude, but we have business to discuss.”

“Hit me,” I said, still staring out the window at the encroaching tsunami.

“Your buy-in only good for one charge of the cannon. This take two,” he said, raising fat fingers covered in rings.

“Three,” Izan corrected him.

“Three charges? Wow, okay, three. So sorry, Mr. Dawes. I am a big fan of your work, but I must charge you commensurate rates. Only the first charge is included,” he finished, sweeping his over coat tails back with a bow.

“How much?” I asked.

“Two billion. Per charge,” Dario answered immediately. His face twisted up in sympathy after the amount was announced.

“Dario,” I growled. “That wasn’t our deal.”

“Ooo,” he giggled, excited. “I think he's going to threaten us brother! This is so exciting, please, give me your best. You must terrify the Dearth lackies, no?”

“We all die if that wave hits,” I said, pointing out the window. “And you want to haggle?”

Izan set the cannon onto the track. Small portions of it folded down to encompass the track, gripping around it tightly. He slid the cannon directly up to the window and then knelt at its side. The man slid his fingers into the darkness of the orb and began manipulating something inside of it.

“I do not wish to be prick, you must understand. Big fan, I watch all your appearances on CTV,” Dario answered, his hands raised defensively. CTV was the church's primary network, it played their news on various networks throughout the multiverse.

“I am a little sad that you did not threaten us. But,” Dario said, a small smile returning as he raised one bejeweled finger. “You have no understanding of this weapon, what it is, what it can do, or, most importantly, what it costs to recharge.” He raised his eyebrows at me, as if wondering if I would lash out, and when I did not, he continued.

“The cannon has internal charges, but to recharge them costs many morties, you understand? Not as simple as plugging it into the wall here in the office, no. No, this is a relic!” Dario said, enunciating the word.

Izan sighed again. “Stop telling everyone that, Dario. You'll get us killed someday!”

“Bah!” Dario waved his hand at Izan, and for the first time I noticed the faint shimmer of his personal shield. It was extremely high quality, to have been absent during the handshake, much more expensive than what our hobbs used. “Mother always said you worry too much.”

“And mother was killed by the church for finding this relic,” Izan suddenly snapped, looking up from his cannon. “You, the fool that she always told you are, brag about it to every customer.”

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I nodded, the ad page well-chastening my attitude.

“Stop fighting, please. I’ll pay,” I said, interrupting the brothers. “Four billion, agreed. Just kill that wave.” My hand pointed out the window to the growing tsunami. It was becoming audible, even from such a distance, the roar of moving water carrying easily across the open air. Time was running out. I swiped the morties over to Dario, and he smiled widely as they came in.

“You worry too much, little Izy-weezy,” Dario teased his brother. “Shoot the wave for the man, he paid his morties.”

Dario stepped back, turned, and took three very large steps away from the cannon. Izan pressed his hand deep into the cannon’s surface, twisted it, and leapt away. “Back,” he shooed us, waving both hands at our group. “Back, away.”

We moved back.

The wave was close now, and we couldn’t hear the screams rising from the city anymore, over the sheer sound of it roaring toward us. A new sound grew, as light began to emanate from inside the cannon. Its layers and intricate internal mechanisms became visible as the light grew, and suddenly I was grateful for the darkening effect of the object's skin.

It grew white hot on its tracks, as a hollow thrum filled first my ears, then my bones, and finally the relic metal attached to them. The first three internal rings glowed brighter than the rest. Then the transdimensional pulse ion cannon fired.

The western facing side of the building erupted in broken glass, as the windows ten floors below us all blew out. A ball of writhing light erupted from the end of the cannon and hurtled across the empty bay over the Pacific Ocean.

The cannon itself screamed back on the rail tracks, sparks flying from its own internal brakes.

The shot sailed straight toward the wave and connected with a brief flare of light and an eruption in the water. Across the entire tsunami, for miles in either direction up and down the coast, light washed through the massive wall of water, as quick as the blink of an eye. Then the tsunami blasted away from shore, falling heavily back onto the sea bed.

The sea rushed back in, flooding into the Los Angeles River and crushing the immediate shoreline with a brief slosh of shallow water. Most of it appeared to have simply fallen back into the ocean, though terrible, violent waves roiled up and down the coast. My new cargo vessels bounced and heaved, as rescue operations to remove the crews began. One had sunk too deeply into the bay, and didn’t rise when the water came back in.

I took a long breath, pleased to have kept any shudders out of it, and turned to face the Delvago brothers. “What the hell was that?” I asked. My Knowle operations manager eagerly nodded, reinforcing my question.

“Ahh, you see, but do not know,” Dario teased.

“Oh, this you keep secret,” Izan muttered. He moved to the cannon and rested his hand on its surface, already cooled. “Ignore him, the cannon is transdimensional.”

I nodded at him to continue. Axle started taking notes.

“It is a big gun, no doubt. But so much more,” Izan said, reverently. “This item can pulse ions across quantum entangled realities, gaining access to any connected universe. It can determine what atoms have what energy, moving in whichever direction we chose, in different universes at the same time. What we did to the wave is simple, really. We programmed the cannon to reverse eighty percent of all kinetic energy in your wave. Send the rest to the next closest Earth. So wave fall down instead of coming ashore. Barely splash your . . .” He looked out the window at the smoldering ruins around us. “Your very lovely city.”

“What about the other Earth, now they have a tsunami to deal with? Twenty percent of that is still massive, that wasn’t the job,” I said. “Why not just reverse one hundred percent?”

“No. Other Earth . . . gone,” Izan said. He looked at me strangely, shook his head, and began packing up the cannon again, stretching the bag’s mouth to fit over it. “Kinetic energy from wave go into rubble. Disrupt dust in space. Is fine, is nothing. Cannot reverse all kinetic energy in something, or you destroy all atoms entangled with it. Like pressure outlet, it must go to another universe or cause a very bad explosion in this one. Really quite important to read the instructions on this item, energy control through cannon shot is tricky.”

Axle nodded at my side, licking his nose. His ears were flat against his skull.

“Oh,” I said. I knew other Earths existed within BuyMort. At least two, I had met humans from. The nearest Earth to us was where Dr. Miles came from, it had become part of the BuyMort system in the early 1800’s, by our calendar. The other, from what I had been told, was absorbed around 600 BC, so a pretty wild swing in time difference between our three worlds. Still, it was a blow to hear one of them had been destroyed outright.

“Call us again, Mr. Dawes, anytime. It has been my honor to meet you.” Dario flourished into a bow, leaning one foot forward. He had gems braided into his hair as well, I noticed, near the scalp. The big-bellied man leaned down and gripped one end of the track, which had dragged a furrow into the floor, as it softened the cannon’s recoil.

The track flipped up and arranged itself into a portable square formation, which Dario hurriedly tucked into his pack and shouldered.

“Again, a pleasure,” he said, saluting me with a fingertip to his forehead and a smile. Then their pod beamed the brothers Delvago away and left us looking out over the Pacific Ocean as it calmed from our recent activities.

I sighed and looked around at the destroyed office, hands on my hips. “I better go take a shower. CTV will expect an interview.”

Chapter 5 – Whalehunter Salvage

Several hours later, Captain Jeonjo “Omen” stalked the halls of his submarine, hidden in the depths of the East China Sea. Most of his fleet was still making their way from the small islands off the southern coast of Japan, where they had been sheltering and gathering supplies from the abandoned Japanese villages and towns along the coast.

The earthquake and subsequent tsunami had claimed thirty-one of the souls under his protection. A tragedy, but thankfully no vessels had been lost.

All the vessels in his fleet were submersible craft and they had hidden from the violent waves in deep water. Some were forced to leave crew members behind in order to escape in time, but all fifty-seven vessels had survived.

Once the floating city was lined up and protected on all sides, they would begin carefully moving over the Marianas trench, toward the open Pacific Ocean.

The captain still wore a uniform, though he had removed the insignia that had once adorned it. North Korea and his diesel submarine were a memory, nothing more. He’d been a disloyal captain anyway, using his submarine to smuggle people out, whenever possible.

Now his uniform identified him as the captain of the WHS Seoul, callsign: Whalehunter. His warship was the most impressive in their fleet, but the Whalehunter Salvage affiliate boasted a dozen ships that were combat capable.

All under his command.

Most of the fleet ships were dedicated to primary needs. Food, fuel, medicine. Every ship in the fleet was capable of desalinating ocean water for drinking now, but at the start, their desalination ship had been the biggest target in their fleet.

Captain Omen still remembered the thirst after it had been lost. Days of it, as crew members from the various ships filtered aboard the Seoul for their meager rations.

Everybody took the hit, especially the captain.

It fosters loyalty during times of hardship to see the highest among you suffering equally, after all. When their rations had been cut in half, his had been reduced to a third.

The various aliens his ship and fleet had picked up had all proven trustworthy, but Captain Omen had preferred to use humans from Earth whenever possible. He refused to call it ‘Nu-Earth,’ and bristled anytime one of his crew used the moniker. It was disrespectful, a very American way to refer to the planet, in his opinion.

The fleet had gathered, piece by piece, over the five weeks since BuyMort’s arrival. Captain Omen had upgraded from his former vessel the very first day, abandoning the North Korean government.

He was no simple enlisted man, filled with propaganda and crystal meth.

Captain Omen knew what North Korea would become, and what its immediate neighbors would become.

So many of those people he’d saved, in the years since he’d begun the enormous task of smuggling humans out of the oppressive dictatorship, died when war between the Korea’s wiped-out Seoul and its suburbs, in a rapid, desperate war.

He doubted Pyongyang fared any better. The initial nuclear blasts were followed by an immediate, and angry extermination of all remaining North Korean military. Hiding at the bottom of the sea in the dark with all his engines shut down, pretending to be a stone, is all that saved him in those first desperate hours. There was nothing of any worth he could do, his fellow soldiers were hopelessly outdated. Their gear and training wholly substandard, a mockery of proper military service.

At the orders of a madman, they’d killed half of South Korea, and South Korea killed them whole-sale in return. The peninsula became a ruin.

Instead of despair, Jeonjo had felt resolution. Those lives, his life, had all been practice. Expertise for a time of greater need for all mankind. He scavenged the shattered remains of both Koreas, selling everything he could find that hadn’t been claimed by a MortBlock, and used the funds to buy a new submarine. With it, the WHS Seoul, he had set off in search of survivors.

The new submarine was an impressive machine. Its design originated on another version of earth, one where the seas were much harsher. It came equipped with an aqua-compressive shield that could be used to divert incoming projectiles, dissuade large animal attacks, and even protect the vessel against explosives by hardening the molecular structure of the water around it to form temporary armor.

Captain Omen placed a hand against the bulkhead and listened to the sea, and the ship. The intermingling of the two, now familiar vibrational patterns that could be used to gauge general states.

It felt so different from his diesel.

With the water shield around the vessel, Captain Omen had initially expected the ocean to be silent, but instead it sang through the bulkheads clearer than ever. Almost as if the two were one. The diesel had been a foreign object in the water. This submarine, a natural ally.

All was well.

The seas around the world were still angry, but they had begun to calm already. The danger of the earthquakes was past, for the moment. His ship, and his fleet, were ready for what lay ahead. Ready for the test, now forced on them, of crossing the Pacific, hopefully sneaking past their great foe in the Marianas Trench system.

The man smiled softly, before removing his hand and resuming his stern glare. The mess hall was his next stop, and it was always good for the crew to see the captain judging them. To remind each of them exactly how serious their mission was.

Fourteen thousand souls floated along behind the Whalehunter, in various vessels. Each had the ability to submerge, or move at speed on the surface, but few enough were armed. Certainly none were armed as well as the Whalehunter.

Captain Omen halted at the door to the mess, stiffening his already rail straight backbone before the door scanned him and slid open. He was not used to having so much room to move on board a submarine, and instinctively raised his feet higher than needed to cross the threshold.

The television was on, blaring church news to his crew. Captain Omen slid unnoticed to the back of the gathered crowd and sat down at an empty booth. All eyes were glued to the psychic television, as they were anytime the man in the mirrored helmet made an appearance.

The unkillable Tyson Dawes. Window-puncher, they called him. Captain Omen scoffed silently, eyes narrowed. What such a buffoon was doing running a nation-state was beyond him. But the man sat among a panel of high-level representatives from the various major players involved in the latest Nu-Earth scandal. He was powerful, and he played games with dangerous opponents.

“I hired a specialist team. As part of my responsibility to the church, and to Dearth’s investments in the area, which I have had to take over operation of,” Tyson said. He was seated, shirtless, a cybernetic device shining from his chest. He sat in a chair at a round table in front of a large screen, with three other representatives. One for the church, one for Dearth, and a host from the network.

An extraordinarily beautiful female Nah’gh had begun hosting round table conversations around the time this chrome-headed fool had taken Arizona away from Dearth. Captain Omen had dealt with Dearth before, first in self-defense, then begrudgingly in trade.

He could not fault the man for taking their elevator away from them. But he never wore a shirt, displaying that obscene metal starfish to the entire multiverse like a holstered sidearm.

“Brash,” Captain Omen thought, crossing his arms. “Arrogant.”

“Another artful dodge, warlord,” the Nah’gh host flirted. Her face was enhanced with makeup, causing her dark green scales to sparkle in the studio lighting when she smiled. “But you didn’t answer the question. How, specifically, did you stop the tsunami?”

“I can’t answer the question, because I don’t know exactly how my specialist team did their job and stopped the tsunami. They came with a high enough price-tag, I can tell you that,” Tyson replied.

Canned laughter filled the studio and Tyson rolled his eyes before sitting back down.

Another woman, an orc in church robes shook her hooded head. Gilded lower tusks glinted as she sat forward to speak. “Of course, if we were to ask about this specialist team that can stop a five-hundred-meter tsunami dead in its tracks, you would suddenly be forthcoming with details, I’m sure,” she scoffed.

“Who sharpened your tusks?” Tyson asked casually.

The church representative bristled.

“No, seriously, I love detailed work like that. It’s excellent, I can see the razor’s edge from here. Tell me each and every detail about your specialist, please. Right here on multiversal television for all to see.”

The chrome plated human spread his arms, a movement that belayed both real-talk and a sense of animated belligerence.

“You make strange demands of honest affiliate owners, Drel’vaga, I’ve told you that before. We should get together sometime, have a cup of mush-bug tea, and figure out why we don’t get along, I just cannot understand it. Silken Sands and the church of BuyMort are friends, we should be too.”

“This is not helping any of us understand why Silken Sands has violently invaded, and taken, Dearth Conglomerate property, yet again,” a stiff-necked dark elf wearing a narrow-waisted, pinstriped suit interrupted. He wore spectacles over his red eyes and straightened his thin, black tie.

“The story here is not about Silken Sands rescuing the Pacific west coast from the result of an attack on us all, it is about the open aggression this affiliate displays against its neighbors, in direct contradiction with public statements from you and your spokespeople.”

“I’ve told you before, The Dearth Conglomerate is a valued trading partner for Silken Sands. Check with your finance department if you don’t believe me. Our trade volume has increased by over a million morties this last month alone. We do not act in aggression against our trading partners. That would interfere with aforementioned trade, and the smooth operation of the elevator we all rely on to move cargo off-world. Every mortie saved by using that elevator instead of BuyMort’s transport costs is profit for every single affiliate that uses it. That’s the entire Nu-Earth market we’re talking about here. What you accuse us of is overt nonsense,” Tyson said.

He shook his chromed mask and sat back. “The question of competence and corruption for certain Nu-Earth boards is a serious one, however. Just look at what happened here.”

The human sat forward, leaning on the glass table they all gathered around. “Dearth forces, strictly from the former Southern West Coast Board, attacked a church facility on Silken Sands property. Silken Sands’ response may have upset some folk at Dearth, but I have to wonder how upset the church is going to be, given the close relationship between all our affiliates. Kidnapping attempts on honored church personnel are a serious matter.”

Tyson sat back again, turning his mirrored head to the beautiful Nah’gh host. “Shalla? Would you play the footage Silken Sands has provided?”

She flicked her tongue out and back in, smiling. “Of course.”

The screen behind them lit up, camera footage showed a palatial estate on the bank of a lake. BlueCleave hobbs had black-armored Dearth forces on their knees outside the main gate, in zip-ties. Behind them, a smoldering hovercraft burned in the desert.

“Now, this is Fumble-Bee footage, am I correct in saying that?” Shalla asked.

“Yes of course.” The chrome helmet bobbed in agreement.

“Which means it hasn’t been altered in any way, for the fans at home,” the host said, turning in her chair to face the screen.

“What you doing here?” grunted a BlueCleave hobb.

One of the prisoners, a human male, blinked and sighed. “We had orders to extract Garthirst.”

The footage blinked off and the Dearth representative opened his mouth with a chiding click of his tongue. “Such specific footage, lacking context. There is no way to ascertain who was behind the orders he speaks of, or even if this man was pressured into repeating a captor's lie.”

“Garthirst, son of Garthrust, whom you killed,” said Drel’vaga.

“Now, hold on. Garthrust betrayed the church, and Dearth. He drugged a priest of BuyMort and ordered her death. My operations manager has already provided the BuyMortMercMart receipts, we know for a fact that Garthrust hired mercenaries to kill Molls Shevelanth, Silken Sands’ church representative. I tried to stop him without resorting to such violence, but he forced my hand. Twice, I might add. I showed restraint, out of respect for the church and all Orkreshi,” Tyson said, one hand to his chest.

“He corrupted two members of a Nu-Earth board and put the elevator at risk with his actions, which means he put everyone’s affiliates at risk, if you’re part of the Nu-Earth market. Taking Garthrust’s life was unfortunate, and necessary, to prevent any further damage to both the church, and Dearth. He also happened to have been trying to take my own life at the time. I deeply regret that it came to blood, and hope to one day help you see that, Drel’vaga,” Tyson finished. He nodded slowly as he sat back, in sync with the flirtatious Nah’gh host.

“Now Dearth is attacking his son’s compound, which I took as an attack on the church itself,” Tyson finished.

“The church does not own the MortBlock for that territory,” Drel’vaga protested.

“Silken Sands has had to keep most of that, out of security concerns, I’ve explained that before. It is a temporary situation, which I am operating at great personal expense in order to provide a young Orkreshi the time he needs to properly grieve his father,” Tyson answered, hands raised defensively.

“He refuses to leave the world his father died on and is in no shape to manage his own defenses, let alone make public appearances. Arizona is still a dangerous place, and this is the way we respect his personal wishes for privacy while ensuring he has the safety required to heal, and one day reclaim his father’s lost honor. The boy has expressed a keen interest in that task to me personally. Garthirst himself has an entire building’s worth of MortBlock coverage, of course, but I cannot tolerate the risk to his person that wide-spread external MortBlock ownership would represent at this point. It’s the same with the MortMobile coverage blackout and the no-fly zone, they’re all in place for Garthirst’s and the church’s protection,” Tyson finished with a sigh.

The Dearth Conglomerate delf shook his head. “Distraction and deception, Garthrust’s actions are not under debate here. And honestly, neither is Silken Sands. The Kraken Corporation has a great deal to answer for in the Nu-Earth market. They are the primary cause behind the earthquakes, the tsunamis, and the disruption to everyone’s affiliates.”

“I don’t know,” the host, Shalla said. “Seems to fit the pattern Silken Sands has been laying out for us all the last month. This conflict between affiliates does not seem as simple as Dearth might like it to sound.”

She spun to face the camera, scaled breasts pressed upward from her suit jacket to face the camera. “More on the Kraken Corporation’s response to these allegations shortly. We’ll return after these messages.”

Chapter 6

I honestly kinda hated the church TV interviews. The latest had gone fine until the first break. I had fended off Dearth’s accusations and made them look like incompetent whiners again, and the church representative appeared cowed into submission.

But then the host had brought out the Kraken Corporation representative to answer Dearth’s accusations of planetary theft, whatever that meant. They were escorted on set by a handler in headphones.

I became quiet the moment I saw her, a blonde human woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. She wore a pin-striped business suit, as was the current fashion in BuyMort for those who wished to appear important. Her hair was held up in a bun with a set of metal chopsticks, she wore cat-eye glasses, and appeared to have a long, thin tentacle sticking out of the back of her neck.

The tentacle vanished into a BuyMort portal beam, which had been set to private so no one could see the other side. It was an option, once you got into using portals as a service. Cost extra, of course, but Kraken Corp was able to afford the extravagance, being the ninth ranked affiliate in the BuyMort system.

“Hello,” she said. “This one’s name is Rebecca Montaigne, and she’ll be representing Kraken Corp tonight. It is so good to meet everyone.”

The strange woman went to each seat at the table and offered to shake hands. Everyone but me responded with a hand shake. When she approached me, I simply stared at first her extended hand, and then her face. The tentacle at her neck pulsed and her expression flickered.

It was momentary, but one of her eyes drooped, along with the musculature on that side of her face, before jerking back into position.

“Ah well, can’t win everyone’s hearts, this one supposes,” Rebecca said. “Not that it matters.” She sat in her seat at my side, and I turned to stare at the tentacle, taking several photos for Axle and Lee. Rebecca turned her head to smile at me, and her expression went from one of mock sorrow to one of coy flirtation instantly.

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled. “You can just ask, you don’t have to stare,” she said.

“What are you?” I asked to the amusement of the gathered representatives. The Dearth delf in particular enjoyed a hearty chuckle at my expense.

“This one is a Nu-Earth human, recently employed by Kraken Corp to represent us in public matters on the Nu-Earth market,” she said. Her left eye started to droop again but caught itself part way down and she smiled wide and blinked rapidly.

Studio staff got our attention and started counting down as the studio’s feed came back from break. The Nah’Gh host, Shalla, picked up a stack of papers and began leveling them against the glass desk as we came back. She smiled vapidly at me and turned in her seat to the camera, jutting her modest cleavage at our audience. The papers were all blank.

“Welcome back, smart shoppers. Joining us now to answer accusations of planetary theft is the number nine affiliate in all of BuyMort, Kraken Corp! Their representative, Mrs. Rebecca Montaigne, is of Nu-Earth origin and chose employment with Kraken Corp only recently, is that right?”

“Ah, ha-ha, yes, you got us. She’s a new hire, specialist, of course. We needed someone who Nu-Earthers would relate to; really feel comfortable talking to. And it’s Ms,” Ms. Montaigne replied, coyly glancing my way.

Rebecca, Kraken, whatever it was sitting in that chair with a tentacle jutting from the back of her neck, smiled and blushed before continuing.

“Mr. Montaigne unfortunately decided against taking Kraken Corps generous offer of employment, and we had to end their marriage in order to move forward with our own union. On the plus side, we’re all very excited to start dating as a Nu-Earth human,” she said.

I shuddered, visibly, and Ms. Montaigne’s plastic smile faltered momentarily.

“Anyway,” she said. “We refute the claims of planetary ownership from the Dearth Conglomerate, of course. Owning a planet is not so simple as Dearth claims, and the methodology employed by Kraken Corp has a proven track record of market dominance.”

She put out her hand and jerkily inspected a nail. It was horrific to watch. The motion was a natural one, yet the way it was carried out suggested attempted non-compliance on the part of the woman.

“How do you think we rose to rank nine so quickly? We at Kraken Corp would love to help educate Dearth on what owning a planet actually entails, but the first step is a uniform MortBlock, as I’m sure we all know. Did our activities disrupt a uniform MortBlock for Nu-Earth? No, so calling what we did theft is just a little ridiculous, in our humble opinion.”

Shalla fanned at her neckline and sat back in her seat. “Ooh, this studio is heating up,” she joked.

“All from a little continental land-grab? Top tens, am I right?” The Nah’Gh woman asked, sticking out her arms wide, palms up, smiling ridiculously wide at the camera.

I slammed a fist on the table, cracking it. “What the hell are we talking about here? Uniform MortBlocks? Nu-Earth has people on it. How many died in the earthquakes and tsunamis your affiliate unleashed?”

I was angry. It had finally clicked. This thing had somehow caused the massive earthquakes and tsunamis that had recently devastated the planet.

For a land grab.

“We don’t even know the death toll, the devastation is so wide-spread,” I said, calmer.

“How many people died in your little adventure to take Prescott?” Rebecca asked calmly. She crossed her legs and swiveled to face me. “Or because of your affiliate’s activities in Storage? Is the council here even aware that Silken Sands was built primarily using goblin slave labor? I’ll take my ethics advice from warlords with a grain of salt, as we Nu-Earthers say.”

I was grateful for the helmet. It hid my face and gave me an extra moment to respond.

“It was the former owner who opened that contract, before I assumed management,” I carefully lied.

“Yes, and let’s take a look at that, shall we? The one military failure your hobbs display is to lose their own leader to a simple dream storm? Suspicious at best, I think the audience at home would agree,” the thing wearing Rebecca said.

Dearth’s representative merely smiled, his red eyes shining as he watched me for any hint of reaction.

“Why don’t you break some more of the studio’s equipment? Show us all just how violent you can be, Tyson Dawes.”

Kraken’s scathing rebuttal complete, the tentacle twitched again, and Rebecca suddenly straightened her back.

“Besides, that entire continent was undeveloped. All Dearth had done was plant a few flags, there was no work put in. No liquidity lost.”

My fists clenched, but I didn’t break anything else.

Undeveloped she said. A whole pasta-damned continent. With cities chock full of people. Axle had been scouting the areas for rescue ops, using Earth's satellite network. I knew there were still millions of people on those land masses.

I mean, yeah, sure, some of them probably qualified as dick-head brutes, oppressing those around them for morties. But even they deserved to be recognized as what they were. Thinking, living beings.

I cleared my mind. This was just a trick, an attempt to get me to show my feelings. She, it, whatever this thing wearing a woman in front of me was, it had me dead to rights. Playing my game the same way I played it, ignoring my own faults and twisting the facts about my opponents. And that last little bit, that was just a match meant to light my fuse.

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3.5 STARS, 900 MORTIES.

I knew enough to flick away the ad without moving. Any movement at that moment would have looked like a nervous reaction on my part, and a side-eye glimpse at the Dearth representative showed me that he’d done something to get an ad sent to me at that moment.

It was all a part of the fucking BuyMort rat race.

I collected my thoughts. I had to assume Kraken Corporation didn’t know that I had personally killed Mr. Sada. It was just a barb designed to put me off balance. It had to be. I took a breath and let it out, as Shalla, our host, stared at me for a response.

“You insult BlueCleave at your own risk, Ms. Montaigne. They have quite the following in BuyMort these days. The dream storm you so casually reference crushed my friend’s home. Not as simple as you may like to make it sound. Mr. Sada was a complicated man, haunted even. He caused his own death,” I said, sitting back, and tapping his bull’s head ring on the cracked table’s edge.

“Suspect that all you like.”

The segment moved forward without any further outbursts from me, and I slipped away the moment I was able to.

Dearth hosted the church’s little tv show on their station in high orbit over Nu-Earth. It was in synchronous orbit, connected to the other end of my space elevator. I was not allowed anywhere but the church studio, so when my time on the segment was over, I walked off set and through a BuyMort beam home to Silken Sands.

Chapter 7 – Whalehunter Salvage

The spell in the mess hall broke, as if someone had turned the lights on at the end of a movie. All of the men, hobbs, and orcs gathered in the mess began talking over one another. The only member of his crew who noticed the captain's presence was his executive officer, Beauregard Thresher.

The taller man nodded silently at his captain, but did not call attention to him, instead getting into the rising argument among the men. They disagreed about their enemies, Kraken Corporation and The Dearth Conglomerate. Specifically, about which of them Tyson the unkillable would destroy for them first.

Captain Omen had not gotten the impression that Tyson Dawes was even aware of Kraken Corporation, much less what they were capable of. He was impressed with his Orkreshi crew members, many of whom expressed mistrust of the human with the chromed helmet. He suspected their motivations were more about racial unity than any critical analysis of the situation between Tyson and Garthrust.

Famous orc-killers were rarely good for other orcs.

He grew weary of his crew’s behavior and stood. Executive Officer Thresher snapped to attention and shouted, “Captain on deck!” in lightly accented English. Everyone spoke the cursed language, Captain Omen could feel his mother tongue already slipping away.

His crew jumped to their feet and turned to face him, each firing off salutes from their chests. A common physical symbol of fealty in BuyMort, Captain Omen had discovered, was a quick strike to the chest and a lowered gaze.

“Prepare for the fleet’s arrival,” the captain said.

“We make for Fiji. I want every sailor ready. To stations!” he snapped.

His crew burst into motion, each running to leave the mess and get to their duty stations. The XO fell into step at his side as Captain Omen headed for the exit.

“Good to see you among the men, Captain. They always work harder after you sneak up on them.” Thresher smiled lopsidedly. “You have people skills, you know that captain?”

“And you talk too much, Beau, you know that?” Captain Omen sighed. “What is the ship’s status?”

“Ready and raring to go, Captain. Able in a fight.” The officer hesitated, then spoke again. “We’re not ready to move on Kraken, but should we really be running off to the eastern bank of Australia right now?” Thresher asked.

“I think I see a way to get ready, XO,” Captain Omen shifted in the name he used, as a junior officer approached the pair at a run. “We run toward, not away, from our great foe.” The young orc delivered a sheet of paper on a clipboard to Thresher and snapped both officers a salute before running off the way he had come.

Thresher’s eyes flickered over the paper, and he nodded. “The casualty list, sir,” he said, handing over the clipboard. “As requested.”

Thirty-one names occupied the paper, separated by which ship they had served on. Most non-military vessels had lost at least one person, but the losses were particularly heavy from their scavenging vessel, the Bone-Picker. They’d had the highest presence on-shore at the time of the quake. One of their teams had been underground when it hit.

“Order extra moonshine rations sent to the Bone-Picker, Beau,” Captain Omen said. He flipped the paper over and tucked the clipboard under his armpit, standing before the door to the command deck. It hissed and slid open.

“Aye, Captain,” Thresher said. “They’re in mourning tonight, it’ll be appreciated.”

The sea opened up to him, as Captain Omen approached his chair in front of massive, wrap-around view-screens. The command deck compartment was forward, just above the weapons compartment. Both compartments were tucked behind the primary forward bulkhead, for additional protection in combat.

Several large view screens took up the forward portion of the egg-shaped command room, set up directly in front of the centrally-placed captain’s chair. Below and in front of his seat were the forward command consoles, where various officers could issue direct commands to their compartments and crews.

Each station was manned already, the watch officers for weapons, shields, and mobility were all present, as was their civilian fleet representative. A quiet hobb man who sat at the back of the room and observed, reporting his observations to the fleet during downtime. He had served Captain Omen well thus far, and kept his fleet apprised of new situations.

The fleet already clung to their military like heroes, and being told of each new threat they faced via the rumor mill ensured they never questioned his decisions. Especially when he had the ability to shape the head-spring of those rumors, before then directly addressing them himself.

He never interfered with the civilian representative on board his ship, but Captain Omen was not above helping shape the eventual gossip with a well-placed word here or there.

With their screens showing the open ocean ahead of them, artificially illuminated and pulsing with visual sonar representations, the ocean all around was alive.

Empty, but alive.

The ship’s various scanners built topographical imagery of the sea floor and kept a live map of their surroundings ready to be used. The captain, or his crew, were able to call up various overlays to cover the over-sized screen.

Captain Omen did so, pulling up a ship’s readiness screen. A map of the submarine dominated the primary viewscreen, the ocean around them still visible from behind the new item. All decks; all ready positions showed green. The Whalehunter was ready for anything the oceans of earth could throw at them.

“Fleet reporting in, Captain,” Thresher barked from immediately behind him. It was the kind of report that was meant for the entire command deck crew, not just Captain Omen.

“Understood, XO. Set a course for Fiji that avoids the Marianas Trench system and inform the fleet. We move ahead at submerged-three-quarters.”

“Aye Captain!” his executive officer shouted. Orders began being relayed throughout the fleet, first to the smattering of other military vessels, then to the civilian craft. ‘Submerged-three-quarters’ meant three quarters the speed of the fleet’s slowest boat, a speed that with their fleet clocked in at just eight knots. Each vessel could move while submerged, and some of them were quite speedy, but others were definitely not.

At Captain Omen’s orders, they connected their drives and moved ahead at the same speed, ensuring none were lost or picked off by any of their powerful foes.

The slowest ship in the fleet was the Arboretum, a heavy grow-house boat. The vessel had begun life as an oil tanker before BuyMort, but the rag-tag group of survivors who had claimed it as their home had made significant upgrades and customizations to the vessel over the five weeks since everything changed. Now the vessel was a translucent-aluminum topped floating forest, with massive bays of artificial lights to feed and illuminate the various plants they relied upon for food even while submerged.

It was the beating heart of the fleet, every other ship was in formation to protect the Arboretum, especially the Whalehunter. At the lead, but lower than any other vessel, Whalehunter led its fleet like a flock of birds on a string.

The Arboretum showed on screen, to the north, a great, oversized firefly in the depths. They had shielding, to block out the light if needed, but they used the glow as a beacon for the other ships. Not all were as well equipped as the Whalehunter, and movement in the depths could be dangerous.

Captain Omen’s ship took its place at the head of the underwater convoy and began the journey out of the East China Sea.

“Now is the time to hit Kraken, Captain,” Thresher whispered in his ear. “Will you tell me why we flee instead?”

The stern Captain nodded slowly. “Now is not the only time,” he whispered back. “And this journey is worth the risk of waiting.”

Captain Jeonjo glanced behind them at the hobb civilian representative and raised his voice just enough to be overheard. “The man in the chrome helmet is our best chance against both our enemies. A better time will come, soon.”

Chapter 8

Home was technically in Prescott now. Most nights I slept in a heated penthouse with Molls at my side. At that moment, though, I couldn’t be with her. I needed to talk to Axle.

Over the past month, he’d proven to be an exceptional operations manager. I’d also placed him in charge of the Prescott space elevator, which he ran through a series of proxies, employees, and managers. Axle himself stayed out of Prescott as often as he could, running everything from his open-for-business Knowle Library in Silken Sands.

His library had grown substantially over the single month since it had first been built. And, to my absolute approval, but to the utter amazement of BlueCleave, he ran it for free. Knowledge, he said, was free to all workers of the affiliate and its subsidiaries.

It was stuff like that which kept us in the multiversal news. Well, that and our squad of starfish troopers, which were considered unkillable by most opposing military forces.

Thinking of our troopers reminded me of the Afflqwst quest we had finished in Long Beach. I swiped it up again, as I had a few times since it had completed.

Quest – Preserve new territory from effects of incoming natural disaster.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Activate countermeasures to neutralize incoming tsunami.

PROBABLE OUTCOME – Affiliate territory destroyed. (78%).

POSSIBLE OUTCOME – Affiliate territory protected. (6%).

Quest Complete! REWARD – Item coupon.

Every quest we had completed since shortly before we took Arizona had given us a base level starfish suit as the reward, worth exactly fifty-five thousand morties. This item coupon was significantly more expensive, in the hundreds of millions of morties range.

I’d hesitated to go turn it in just yet, primarily out of busyness, but also a mild fear of change. So much had already changed, a new item from Teslak couldn’t help but change everything even further.

Nothing in Silken Sands was the same as that first week. It had become a jewel in the desert, massively expanded. Mudcrete walls still formed up the primary surrounding defensive structure, but like a castle of old, we had multiple walls.

BlueCleave had turned the place into a fortress, complete with towering mudcrete apartment complexes to house some of the families of our military. Most of the humans who had lived at the camp moved on to Prescott, once it was safe for them. The city felt more like Earth had, before it became Nu-Earth.

Lee and Suzanna had stayed, and they had expanded their farm to new levels. Where Mr. Sada’s mansion once stood was an orchard, covered by a thick shell of translucent steel, Mr. Sada’s memorial statue guarding the entrance in. It let in all the sunlight our tropical rainforest required, and allowed for good defenses as well.

I had beamed in atop Axle’s library tower. It was a small room at the highest point of the library that offered an amazing view of Silken Sands, and I felt compelled to take it in whenever I visited. Below me swept the concrete and steel of Axle’s library, all fourteen wings of it.

What had started as a single acre had rapidly grown into the largest repository of knowledge on Nu-Earth, covering five full acres, and rising several stories in the air. We’d had to move the main road to make room for its growth. Axle and Jada insisted on staying at their two-percent cut of the affiliate, but that alone had made them wealthier than any Knowle in our neck of the BuyMort multiverse.

They both loved the library like a child, and spent most of their free time within its walls. Axle in particular was there regularly, talking on his phone with Prescott to manage the elevator. His primary passion appeared to be the gathering and securing of knowledge. Any books, films, records, or especially news clips he gathered as if they were precious minerals.

I’d never seen him more excited than when one of our roaming rescue squads found a stash of old television news from Nu-Earth. It was merely one large cardboard box full, but the tapes were each like gold to him. He carefully recorded them into his kiosk system, and then spent days watching through each one of them.

The reason he liked our news shows more than anything else was the sheer amount of knowledge he was able to glean from them. He told me it wasn’t just the subject matter, though most of it he admitted was fascinating. It was the people. The way they told the stories. How they presented information, and how that presentation changed over time.

News, he explained, was how those in power spoke to those they held power over. Each message represented an opportunity to understand something important, if only the proper perspective could be known.

Axle’s obsession with news programming extended to the church TV and aided us in manipulating the message spread about us. I was glad he knew more about it than I did.

Axle was learning about our people as much as he could, and his ever-growing library helped in that cause immensely. He asked Nu-Earth humans plenty of questions too. Nearly anytime he interacted with a new rescue, or refugee, he was asking weird questions. But that was firsthand knowledge, which he explained was simply not as valuable as objective knowledge.

Most of his interviews were available in the library too, but were categorized in the ‘unreliable’ section, as chemical memory was simply never the same as hard copy.

Other Knowles had begun making pilgrimages to Nu-Earth, specifically to visit the famous Knowle library. They would trade with Axle, bringing him records from other portions of the multiverse, and exchanging them for everything he had gleaned about Nu-Earth. Everything except the information he kept in the restricted section, and any information about our resident beholder, Quadrum.

The extra-dimensional being still inhabited the lowest part of our underground facility, just above the Sleem farm. They studied the gelatinous creatures, and their ability to breed, but we had been unable to determine much more than that. Axle told me at one point he suspected one of the rare and complex machines we had seen in Quadrum’s underground lair was a trans-dimensional probe, capable of scanning multiple parallel universes simultaneously.

Beyond that, the powerful creature kept to itself and made few demands, which Axle and I always saw to personally.

The small apartment buildings we’d installed had also grown, each now twelve stories in height and filled with thriving hobb families. A new BlueCleave baby had been born, the first born outside Storage in generations, so a rather large party had been thrown. Banners and hobb decorations still festooned the area, and Morbin Time, our local bar, still had customers staggering out at midday.

Life was good, even with the earthquake. We were far enough from it that not much in the way of structural damage had occurred, and our industrious hobb workforce was already making repairs to those areas. Thanks to our expensive action against the tsunami, our land, lives, and affiliate were all intact.

The spider ranch, which was also experiencing a meteoric rise in fame, had expanded significantly. Drusk, our mordren rancher, had taken to the role far better than I’d expected. His arrival at our compound had been unpleasant, and I’d ended up rather severely injuring him, but the giant dragon-man had proven to be good with the spiders. He even seemed to enjoy the work.

Together with Dro’erja, a dark elf slave I’d freed and kept hidden, Drusk was becoming well known for producing some of the highest quality raw spider silk available on the Nu-Earth market. Our best, most profitable market was underwear. Wealthy people from all over the multiverse wanted Nu-Earth panties, boxers, and bras, made from the strangest silk available.

Our black widows were particularly prized, as they were rare on Nu-Earth after BuyMort arrived. A more aggressive strain of the spider, called the brown widow, had pushed the black widows out of most of their breeding areas before BuyMort, so we had one of the last remaining healthy clusters of them on the planet.

The ranch itself had been expanded physically as well. While the Joshua Trees were good for the spiders, we did eventually replace them with fully artificial trees that had been shaped for spiders to weave webs on. At regular intervals, we had installed thin fencing, not for any security purposes, but to give our spiders something to hunt from.

They lived on different webs than they hunted on, and selling their hunting webs caused the population few, if any problems when done right. A series of installed ponds doubled as play places for Shela, a giant Swamp Spinner spider that was Dro’erja’s ward, and insect breeding pools to feed our ever-growing clutter. Shela’s presence was of particular importance, as her silk pheromones caused breeding booms among our other spiders, as well as selling for a premium on the open market.

Her webbing was financially viable for an affiliate of our size even though she was a single spider, as she produced it en masse now that she was living her best life. A single well-fed swamp spinner living in an environment that made her feel safe could produce upwards of two tons of raw silk per month. With her breeding pheromones attached, the stuff was more valuable than gold.

Only trouble was moving it without creating records that got back to us, which Axle handled through a network of smugglers. We slipped it out right under Dearth’s nose, using their own stolen elevator.

Installed privacy screening systems ensured that Dro’erja could walk about the ranch as he pleased, but his presence was still a secret to most of our staff. Drusk was trustworthy, he and Dro’erja had become master and apprentice. Other than him, and a few of my closest advisors, we kept Dro’erja’s existence a secret.

Dark elf internal politics and social norms seemed to be focused around hierarchies, and the House of None was not allowed to be successful by dark elf cultural decree. Most dark elves were part of the House of None, and the higher houses used them as slave labor. Hiding Dro’erja at my affiliate not only helped me feel better about slaughtering the minor house that had held him and his spider captive, it provided us with a massively profitable spider ranch.

It was nothing compared to the elevator, but that was just me being a parasite on Dearth, which I enjoyed. They wanted to avoid the expensive BuyMort transport costs, and so established a firm shipping network. I was happily taking that shipping network away from them by force, one piece at a time, and then charging them a percentage to use it. As long as my cost was lower than a BuyMort beam off-world, I got paid, and they didn’t attack for risk of damaging their own profit pipeline.

Thinking of our finances got me back to the present. I loved looking out over Silken Sands from Axle’s tower, but there was work to do. It was time to go find my giant hyena-man friend and partner. I stepped back from the tower’s edge, my mind calmed from the encounter with Kraken Corp’s representative, and headed down the stairs to find Axle.

He was bound to be in the library somewhere.

Chapter 9 – Whalehunter Salvage

Hours later, approaching the passage between Papua New Guinea and the southern tip of the Marianas Trench system, Captain Omen ordered the Arboretum to close its shields. The fleet was too large to go unnoticed if anyone was looking hard enough, but a giant lantern was asking for trouble close to the trenches.

“Enemy sighted captain!” an ensign near the bottom of the chamber called. He swiped at his small section of the main screen and tossed it up, where the captain caught it with an imperceptible motion of his hand. The tiny video file responded to his command and played, first in a small window only for him, then larger once he approved it, for the entire command crew to see.

It was footage from their long range drones, which circled the fleet and sent footage of any potential threats ahead.

A great dark bulge extended from the trench, spreading out across the sea floor. Something bulbous was jammed inside the trench as far as the eye could see on either side. The footage from the drones explained the recent earthquakes.

The Kraken was shoving itself into the earth’s crust, along a major fault line. The bulbous bulge jammed in their portion of the now extended Marianas Trench was the massive creature that had been hunting them for the past three weeks, since Thresher arrived on board. The Kraken, rank 9 affiliate in all of BuyMort, here to end their world and destroy all life on their planet.

Tresher had arrived from the last planet the Kraken had destroyed, the previous earth. He had been a military man before, serving the Dearth Conglomerate on their naval vessels. Now Captain Omen heard the bones in his hand creak as he reflexively crushed them into fists at the sight of his enemy.

Kraken, a massive creature that traveled in an even bigger ship. To the monster inside, it was more akin to a suit, Thresher had told him. Its body was modular, shifting and flexing massive amounts of cartilage and muscle depending on its needs. The ship was similar.

“Whale-Bugs, Captain!”

Captain Omen’s head jerked up from the spectacle on the main screen. A smaller video channel showed a pod of oversized isopods, on approach from directly below the fleet. They had the rough appearance of a pill-bug but came equipped with diamond hard claws to rip apart their ships, and ravenous appetites for the fresh water stores on each vessel. Each was the size of a mature blue whale.

“Come around, tell the fleet to keep moving and inform them of the threat,” Thresher barked. “Deploy short range drones.”

“Weapons, report.” Captain Omen snapped.

“Aye Captain! Weapons ready!” his officer replied.

Captain Omen pointed at one of his officers. “Open a channel to the fleet,” he ordered.

The young man at the station obeyed, giving the captain a thumbs-up when it was open.

“Fleet, this is Whalehunter. We have whale-bugs on approach and are within the outside range of Kraken’s defensive tentacles. Follow your escort vessels and continue moving south. No matter what happens, we must leave Kraken’s range with all speed,” he said. “Orders are going out now.”

The comms officer nodded and killed the channel. Captain Omen quickly cut the military fleet into two, the escort and assault ships. Each knew their roles already and were moving into position before the final formation orders were even sent.

Their smaller destroyers were faster than the whale-bugs at full tilt, which was important for how they engaged the creatures. The ocean boiled as the massive BuyMort bugs approached, churning the water with their lobster-like tail flaps.

“Destroyers, engage,” Thresher said, calmly. “Distract and harry, standard operation.”

Several commanders on the destroyers acknowledged his orders and began quickly distributing targets. The largest of the whale-bugs was left for Captain Omen, but the rest began twitching as high-intensity, short-range laser fire filled the water with boiling trails of bubbles. Cigar-shaped submarines rolled and dove, peeling off individual whale-bugs from the pod and distracting them.

The lasers were not enough to penetrate the bug's armor, but it could be devastating if it got into the delicate undersides, and most of his destroyers wanted those targets. They all had running kill count competitions and were primarily jockeying each other for the lead.

“Helm, full speed ahead. The big one is ours, eh Captain?” Thresher asked.

“Aye,” Captain Omen answered. He stared at the various screens around him, watching the whale bugs separate and chase his smaller vessels. “Ram the matron bug. Shields, prepare the spear.”

“Aye Captain!” Shields replied. “Spear formation readied. Deploy on your command.” The woman at that station held a hand out over a red button on her console. Beside it, a living representation of their water shield around the ship glowed.

“Weapons,” Thresher said. “Prepare the fresh-water-bombs.”

“Belay that,” Captain Omen said. “We cannot risk Kraken’s attention, this fight must stay quiet.”

“Aye Captain,” Thresher snapped. “Weapons, prepare hunter-killer torpedoes.”

Captain Omen nodded slowly, paying attention to the insects' formation. His short range drones were in position and feeding them a constant stream of data, and Captain Omen wanted to predict the insect’s movements.

The whale-bugs had shown up in numbers about two days after BuyMort had arrived and had been regular threats against his fleet since its earliest days. Captain Omen was used to fighting these foes, but this fight was going to be different.

Whale-bugs primarily nested around fresh water sources in the ocean depths, making them particularly dangerous around island chains, as they clustered near several fresh water runoffs and would swarm if approached.

Dearth, in their infinite wisdom, had set up self-installing desalination stations on the sea-floor in hundreds of locations within the first week. Since then, they had scaled back their Nu-Earth project and abandoned the majority of the stations. Which made for perfect whale-bug pod nesting locations.

Captain Omen had been mapping them out, but there were so many their fleet just didn’t know about yet. Roughly two dozen whale-bugs threatened his fleet, which indicated the right size for a pod of the creatures from a ruined Dearth desalination point.

They had been built for ships to dock with and had great storage bladders. Those were the first things the whale-bugs split open once finding a desalination point. But the plant itself was dug deep underground and fed the rest of the station from a pipe. So the whale-bugs typically tore everything but the pipe out and used it to feed from.

Two dozen was about all a naked pipe could support. One large pod leader, followed by its most fortunate children. The usual course of action was for Whalehunter to punch through the leader, and sprinkle a few large depth charges, each with a fresh water lure. The smaller whale-bugs would often grab the bombs and curl around them before detonation.

“Now!” Captain Omen snapped.

His shields officer slapped the button and activated the ship’s water shield. Great surges of energy ran along the outer hull and permeated the water around them, gathering it and forming blocks of shaped ice as strong as steel.

Several rigid blades formed around the edges of Whalehunter’s prow, which gathered a razor sharp tip of gleaming metallic ice as its speed increased dramatically. The lead whale-bug grew larger and larger on the monitor.

“All hands,” Captain Omen snapped. “Impact in two.”

They burst through the first giant isopod, cutting it in half easily. Their water shield let go and the metallic water sloughed away, the blades falling free and sinking, covered in whale-bug gore.

“Hunter-killers ready, XO!” The weapons officer barked.

“Deploy,” Thresher replied.

Three individual capacity miniature subs deployed from Whalehunter, launching from the nose cone in a stream of bubbles. Each carried an eager combat pilot, and a miniaturized version of the water shield on board their mother vessel.

They wheeled and spun around Whalehunter, ready to punch through any whale-bugs that engaged the large craft.

Whalehunter diverted and dove again, in an attempt to avoid the fleet. The whale-bugs were intent on the vibrations of that many engines in the water and were ignoring any destroyers that were not engaged with them directly. Captain Omen’s ships were outnumbered

“How many broadhead torpedoes do we have XO?” Captain Omen asked.

“Thirteen, sir,” Thresher replied.

“Deploy them.”

“Aye, Captain. Weapons! Prepare broadhead magazines!”

Some of the whale-bugs broke off and responded to attacks, but the primary surge was after the Arboretum. Unsurprising, it was a hot ship with a big engine. Whale-bugs liked vibrations and heat, along with fresh water and meat. Really, any organic material was feed for them, but the Arboretum was bait they didn’t seem able to easily resist.

Several whale-bugs latched onto the outer hull of the massive submarine and calls for help began to come through on coms.

“Fire broadheads!” Captain Omen ordered.

Weapons obeyed, and trails of bubbles streaked from the front of the Whalehunter. The broadhead torpedoes acted like self-seeking arrows. A non-explosive tip deployed large blades on impact, punching through the target without causing collateral damage to his fleet. They had limited fuel sources and often got stuck in the hard armor plating of the whale-bugs, but normally after a fight they could be recollected.

Escort ships engaged, moving in to grapple the bugs off the Arboretum. Each came with heavy nose-mounted claw-hooks. The goal of each ship was to jam their nose-blade into a bug and peel it off the larger ship. Most succeeded, but one failed. The bug shifted at the last moment, and the change in position ruined the strike.

The nose-blade glanced off the whale-bug’s armor and the smaller ship spun into the depths, trying to right its diverted trajectory. Sparks erupted from the Arboretum and a burst of bubbles indicated a hull breach. The whale-bug’s rear end wiggled as it crammed its sharp mandibles further into the wounded vessel.

Captain Omen pointed at the screen. “Someone get that bug off that ship!”

The Bone-Picker suddenly lurched on-screen, far out of formation. The flat-topped boat was covered in submersible salvaging equipment, and a singular madman was on deck in a diving suit. Thresher noticed and blew up that portion of the screen, sending it to Captain Omen with a wave of his hand.

Tiny on the screen in-spite of the blown up image, the person struggled and fought against the currents on the flat top of the ships deck. They gripped at lines and climbed aboard a deck-mounted harpoon launcher. It was for hooking shipwrecks and pulling them off reefs or out of sunken crevices, but Captain Omen saw the madman’s intention at once.

The broad blades on the harpoon would not only punch through the armored plating on a whale-bug, but its heavy anchoring chain would also hold and pull the creature away.

“Bone-Picker, this is Whalehunter command. Divert course to adjust for the angle of the Arboretum’s port side dive,” Captain Omen said. Coms relayed his message and the ship on screen suddenly jerked as it moved to match the larger ship.

“Do it,” he whispered in his native tongue to the madman on the Bone-Pickers deck. “Do it!”

The tiny figure struggled up the final steps to the harpoon launcher and pried open the door to climb inside. A few seconds later, a great hooked blade fired, trailing a heavy chain through the water.

It connected, and the whale-bug jerked as it sustained a massive injury. The harpoon deployed wide, dull blades, and the Bone-Picker suddenly dove hard. The harpoon launcher twisted, bending the ship's frame as it pried the whale-bug free in a stream of bubbles.

“Full speed ahead!” Captain Omen shouted, pointing at the freely sinking bug. “Shields!”

“Aye, Captain! Spear formation ready!” His shields officer was smiling, her hand already in place over the console.

The sub under their feet rumbled and moaned as they pushed it further, faster, streaming bubbles as the water shield formed blades and a wickedly sharp tip around its nose again.

“All hands! Impact in two,” Thresher shouted into the ship-wide coms. The bottom of the massive Arboretum sailed by overhead as they punched through the whale-bug, sending it spiraling to the bottom in pieces.

His other ships began reporting success in their own battles, and their final broad-head torpedo found its target, punching the last of the whale-bugs out of the water with a critical strike before it could reach any of the vulnerable ships.

“Whalehunter, this is Arboretum. Thanks for the save, we’ve sealed bulk-heads and are good to continue at half submerged speed.” His comms officer played the message for everyone to hear, and the small room burst out in a light smatter of cheers.

“Thank the Bone-Picker, Arboretum. Glad you’re okay, repair drones from Whalehunter are already en route. All ships, ahead at submerged-half. We avoided the notice of our primary enemy, let us not waste our luck further,” Captain Omen said. He took a full breath and let it out.

Fiji was next, and then, the open Pacific, toward the former south-western United States. Hope for his people had arrived earlier that day in the form of a direct bounty request, for the live capture of one Molls Shevelanth.

Tyson Dawes’ girlfriend.

Chapter 10

I found Axle in his office, the room directly at the bottom of my favorite library tower. He was hunched over his personal library console, a more advanced version of the myriad consoles below. The Knowle was editing the church newsreel I had just participated in, cutting the advertisements, and getting it ready for a physical copy on a crystalline disk. Physical storage took up a great deal of the library.

Nothing in physical storage was available to take from the library, but anyone with access was able to browse and request copies of any item in the public sections. As long as Axle had funding for console slurry, he happily handed copies out.

“That was a disaster,” he said as I entered, not bothering to look up.

“Agreed, she played me like a fiddle,” I sighed back.

“Kraken Corp is not exactly new, but this aggressive style of business from them is,” Axle said, finally looking up at me. “I’m glad you kept the helmet on, that’s a wise course. Still,” he said, pointing at the screen. “You tensed when that Dearth delf kicked an ad your way. You’ll want to mind that.”

I nodded, and said, “Thank you Axle, I promise to suck at public relations less someday.”

My friend and partner chuckled. “Honestly, it wasn’t all bad. You got us some good, up-close shots of that tentacle, better than what’s available on the open market. It’s also good to know the church is staying hands off until our paperwork fiasco is resolved.”

Axle licked his nose, took a deep breath, and swiveled his chair to face me. “We have more immediate problems than Kraken Corp,” he said.

“Is Dearth fighting us on the leases?” I asked.

We had sent the Dearth Conglomerate Nu-Earth board a series of leases to continue using their own cargo ships. All we required was three percent.

“No, it’s not that,” Axle said. He licked his nose again and cocked his head. “Well, it is that too, but not the biggest thing I need to talk to you about.”

“Bigger than losing the Dearth morties? What the hell are we going to do with those ships now?” I muttered.

“There has been a killing in Prescott,” Axle said carefully, watching my expression.

I scowled. “Okay, anyone we know?”

He shook his head. “No, nothing like that, but this is . . . different. Beyond the scope of our local enforcers. Tollya has asked you to take a look personally.”

“Tollya? Who was murdered?” I finally asked.

“Killed. And it was one of our newest starfish troopers,” Axle said. “They were in the barracks at the time, so we’ve secured the area. There is video,” he offered the last quietly.

I stared at my friend, ice running through my chest at his words. “Someone managed to kill one of our starfish troopers? The hobbs who wear these, right?” I thumped my own more advanced suit.

He nodded, slowly. “Something did, yes.”

“Well, you were right, that’s more important than the ship leases,” I muttered. “Hey, what happened with those, anyway?”

Axle shrugged. “Nothing. Dearth said no interest and condemned the theft. I expected an attack shortly after, but all scans are steady. The Sol Board is staying hands off, and the Nu-Earth board is still licking their wounds. I keep intercepting messages for equipment and troops, but only long form response denials come back on any channels we can monitor.”

“So they’re up to something,” I said.

Axle stood and stretched, nodding. “Almost certainly, but nothing overt. If Dearth begins evacuating their remaining forces in the North America market, we should watch for asteroid strikes. The Sol Board has a large force in the belt.”

I shook my head. “That’s not like them, they protect profits at any cost, they’d never just shell the planet without trying to take it back. Most of their ships are full of lithium, gold, silver, industrial quality diamonds, and fish, for some odd reason. They’re still trying to run business as usual by all external signs.”

“I hate these brainstorming sessions,” Axle admitted, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “Guessing our enemy’s moves at scale gives me a headache.”

I nodded. “Yeah, me too brother. Let’s go watch one of our troopers get killed instead, I guess.”

Axle nodded, and we walked down through the library. The building was simple, but warm. He’d used classic Nu-Earth construction materials for most of it, once funding had become available. Concrete and steel formed the foundation and walls, with simple glass windows dotting the exterior. Mudcrete walls filled the interior, to create separate areas for different information storage and access rooms.

The good stuff was hidden in the basement, under heavy lock and key. Mostly it was just our illicit records, Shela’s silk sales and the like. But if the Dark Elf high houses discovered our smuggling, they would discover our refugee from the House of None. Through Dro’erja, they would know we had wiped out the House of Shireen.

Trouble I didn’t need but prepared for. The dark elf great houses were reported to be wealthy, connected within the church, and vengeful.

Axle and I exited the library and turned toward my former home, now a parking lot. It had been my call to pave it over for use as Axle’s hovercraft parking lot, but Molls had been sad to see it go. I had more bad memories there than good, but our new place was a giant upgrade anyway, sitting atop Dearth’s former tower in front of the space elevator.

We walked to Axle’s personal hovercraft, squatting on the tarmac with its wings extending overhead. He kept it clean inside, in case he needed to pick up a shipment of books or whatever else our teams found. Once in the air, it was a quick trip over the mountain to Prescott.

The city had taken on a new sense of life since I opened it up for humanity. People from all over the world who had been displaced or driven out of their lands had come to find a way to make it as part of the greater Silken Sands community.

The walls surrounding the city were intact and manned by hobbs who had joined BlueCleave in order to join Silken Sands. We had multiple apartment complexes, which housed a mixed population.

Rayna suggested I place the newer hobbs and their families in housing with the rest of our people, and she was right. Neighboring with the security forces led to a primarily peaceful city, filled with people living lives as normal as BuyMort would allow them to. The hobbs were all eager to prove themselves worthy of the BlueCleave name, with its storied history.

Honestly, having the standard troops living with the civilians had been lifesaving on multiple occasions, just defending against dream storms, let alone everything else that came with BuyMort.

BuyMort could and would happily transport away anything you wanted to sell through it, for a percentage-based fee. If you wanted to maximize profits on large scale sales or extractions, you ran your own shipping network, using BuyMort as little as possible. And Dearth had set one up for us to take advantage of.

We had a thriving ecosystem of alien trade coming through Prescott. Everyone wanted to avoid the transport fees required to get off-world, or save on fuel entering or exiting the atmosphere, and the elevator was the ticket for each and every one of them.

The morties rolled in, and our people were primarily happy and safe. Any trouble too large for our regular forces brought out the starfish troopers, which Tollya herself trained and led.

We hovered over the great blocks of black plastic and newer mudcrete additions, coming in for a landing near Tower’s warehouse, a BuyMort fruition center. The primary military compound, where the bulk of our vehicles, arms, and explosives were stored, surrounded Tower's warehouse.

It was the biggest target in Prescott, since any successful suicide attack would summon BuyMort bugs to wreak havoc, and Dearth had already proven they were not above such tactics. Dearth had begun the fortifications themselves, back when Prescott was theirs.

All we’d done was improve upon everything they so graciously left us.

All the pods for the local area flew in and out of it, but they used predictable flight paths, so we rarely had any issues with near collisions.

Which was a good thing because the last thing we needed was the automatic defensive portaling in of extraplanar monsters to wreck us, all because the dumbass algorithm thought its pods were under attack.

Annoying, but easily avoided with good logistics.

Tollya awaited us on the tarmac, holding a large rifle in her arms and wearing one of their new war picks on her back. Her starfish suit was bulky, and obvious, sticking out from the jacket she wore. She nodded at me through the windshield as the hovercraft settled into place. The war picks were capped with hardened titanium tips, and each came equipped with a momentum-aid internal ballast system for extra hard strikes.

Looking over them activated an ad in my brain, and I stifled a smile reading through the proud yet broken English of the Nu-Earth hobbs.

NOW BUY SKULL-CRACKER FROM BLUECLEAVE. MANY STRONG! YOU BE HERO OF TRIBE. WINNER POWER RELEASE! NU-EARTH CROM-HARDENED TITANIUM TIPS. THIS WAR PICK YOU WAR PICK. 5000 MORTIES, 3.9 STARS.

A young hobb wearing BlueCleave fatigues rushed over, holding onto his cap as he brought a charging cable to plug into the hovercraft. Axle thanked him while I approached Tollya.

She stiffly saluted me, and then grinned. “You good boss. Tell that Kraken bitch BlueCleave not to be fuck with,” she said. Tollya had been happily working on her Nu-Earth swear lexicon.

“It’s ‘fucked with,’ in that context, but thank you. I happen to believe what I said, by the way. Kraken Corp looks like it may be another threat we have to face, so I’m glad you don’t like them already.”

“Kraken Corp destroy Victorian-Earth. Many hobbs worked there. Dug coal, worked factories. Living lives, like us. BlueCleave ready,” Tollya said.

Her eyes were hard as she spoke, and she liked buying shaped nuclear charges on sale just in case we needed them. I believed her.

“Good. Show me what we’re dealing with here,” I said. She motioned for me to follow her, and I fell in line behind the hobb, Axle following.

Chapter 11

We headed across the open area toward a nearby bungalow.

As we approached the building, obvious damage in the tarmac began to appear. Pockmarks of laser burns coupled with gray-blood-stained paw prints.

Tollya opened the door with one hand, showing a crew of human and hobb workers cleaning up a massive amount of gray blood. The room was a bunkhouse for new starfish recruits, who lived on base until it was clear they had mastered their suit and could be reliably deployed.

It was all trashed, beds and lockers knocked over, weapon scarring in the walls and floor, and an obscene amount of gray blood splattered across everything. A hole was even torn in the far end of the room, like a giant can opener just split the steel sides.

Tollya jerked her chin in the doorway. “Killed in here. Beast opened door. Like person.”

“You know what did this?” I asked her. There was no body, but the sheer amount of gray blood in the room indicated our starfish trooper had, at the very least, put up a fight.

Tollya shook her head. “No.” She jerked her head toward the command center, a short walk across the compound past a few other barracks. “Video footage in there, with suit.”

I nodded and followed her, and soon, Axle was studying the starfish suit on a nearby medical bench while Tollya had her technician bring up the footage. We’d installed security cameras in most areas of the city we considered critical infrastructure, and the base housed the largest population of surveillance tech in Prescott aside from the elevator.

The view was fixed, in the ceiling over the door. A single male hobb in track pants and a bulky first-stage starfish suit lounged on a bed in the room, arms behind his head as he watched a video on a personal device. It appeared to be a Nah’Gh woman dancing seductively, but the hobbs' focus was quickly diverted as the door swung wide and something entered the building.

A large, blue-black mastiff walking on six legs entered, showing iridescent black teeth with a snarl. Something shimmered on camera, near the creature’s head and shoulders. I couldn’t tell if it was a glitch in the camera, or something that had happened.

The beast moved on its rear four legs, which were powerfully muscled, and raised its front two as it rushed the starfish trooper.

To the hobbs’ credit, he was up and moving before the creature lunged, and he dodged the initial rush. The large hound slammed into the space the hobb had just occupied, camera pixels around its head wavering as it attacked. His bed frame lifted and spun, flipping through the air to crash against a wall. The beast stood still and lifted two thickly muscled tendrils that ended in scythe heads from its body, waving them in the air like vipers.

The hobb roared and smacked his own chest, daring the beast to attack, but it stalked in a slow semi-circle around him instead, as the hobb fumbled for a weapon in one of the nearby lockers. His hand retracted with a hobb war pick, and he turned back to face the creature.

“Pay attention boss, this part important. Not know how, but something wrong,” Tollya whispered.

The hobb on screen roared and raised his war pick, rushing to the left of the creature and striking heavily at a bed, while the beast stared at him, scythe tentacles waving. It turned and glowing green eyes flashed on the screen before it struck.

The creature grabbed the hobb with its front arms and tore into his back with its fangs, both tentacles ripping into him so fast the camera couldn’t properly track the movement. Great gouts of gray blood sprayed, and the beast leapt free with a snarl as the trooper’s base-level suit deployed tendrils.

Body parts were replaced, flesh foam sprayed into wounds, and the hobb was given a dose of painkiller. He slumped against the bed, breathing heavily as thick grey blood dripped down his hands, before his eyes went wide with anger. The hobb roared again and stood, turning to face the circling creature, war pick in one hand.

Once more, he rushed and slammed his weapon down into empty air to the side of the beast with glowing eyes, before it slashed him anew with the scythes from its position of relative safety. This repeated, with the hobb flailing at the open air to either side of the creature, missing, and getting slashed up by the scythe tentacles.

At one point in the drawn out conflict, the hobb paused to crush a bed-frame for charge.

Tollya shook her head. “Too new. Not used to painkiller.”

He did stagger on the screen, but so consistently attacked the wrong area that the creature was never in any danger from him. It took its time, kept its distance from the suit tendrils, and tore him apart over and over with the scythes on its tentacles. Each attack came with a mild distortion of the camera image, around the head and shoulders of the hound.

After it noticed him break something, it started focusing on his arms and legs, slicing through tendons, and then slashing his vital organs over and over. The beast prevented him from breaking anything else and tore at him repeatedly. It almost appeared to be draining the suit’s charge intentionally.

The hound circled and licked at the tacky blood after the starfish trooper finally stilled.

A squad of hobbs kicked open the door, and the beast snarled, before blasting into movement. It slashed an opening with its tentacles while the squad fired at nothing on the floor to its side.

“What the hell is happening? Why can’t they attack it?” I hissed.

Tollya merely shook her head. She nudged her technician, and the screen flicked over to another camera angle. The creature pried apart the thin steel walls of the barracks and leapt out onto the tarmac.

A wall guard shouted and began firing the laser turret atop the wall. Asphalt and Dearth industrial plasticrete smoked and seared, in a line at the beast’s side while it ran. It leapt high, slamming its scythe tentacles into the wall, and then hauled itself over, to vanish into Prescott.

“That thing is still loose?” I nearly yelled.

Tollya nodded. “Seemed like it was leaving city, but troopers lost it before then. Something wrong with looking at it. It do things to their mind. But no reports from city. Have lots of troopers out looking now. Starfish troopers all fuckin’ pissed. That hobb was new to unit, but he was BlueCleave. Grass to grey, BlueCleave. Good kid, from Storage.”

Her usually happy features were grim. She took the starfish suits seriously, training and leading the special squad that wore them. Each was hand-picked by her and Rayna, from their original tribe’s warriors. She even used a recording of her own adaptation with the suit for training, since she had handled it like a champion.

I realized as I looked at the tape that I recognized the hobb who had been killed.

He was the young male Scollya, Tollya’s sister had been flirting with when she gave me a tour of their ancestral lands in Storage.

“Does Scollya know?” I whispered.

Tollya nodded. “She’s going to kill it, she find it. They not mates, but she liked him.”

I nodded slowly. “I know. I’m sorry Tollya.”

“Be sorry for it, not me,” she replied, raising her chin at the monitor.

Axle spoke up from behind us. “If you’re finished over there, I believe I could use your expertise with the suit’s remains.”

I turned to the table and walked over. The starfish suit was there, along with the remnants of the hobb who’d been wearing it. It was nothing but strips of grey flesh attached to the long tendrils, nothing left to rebuild him from.

“The suit appears non-reactive now. I think it died when the wearer did,” Axle said. He pointed to a few shards of glass on the table. “I used the suit’s knuckle strips to crush those, and there was no reaction. Of course, I can’t scan it with anything to be certain, but it hasn’t reverted to its original shape either, the deployment arms are still extended.” The Knowle pointed down the length of the table.

Once boxy and compact, the starfish suit had spread out to cover the young hobb’s body, reaching metal strands and plates down each limb, as well as surrounding the head, and covering the groin.

I lifted one arm of the suit and let it clang back down on the table, with a shake of my head. “I hate to break it to you, Axle, but you know more about these things than I do at this point. If you can’t figure it out, I’m not gonna be able to help you.”

My Knowle friend licked his nose and nodded. “I had to ask, it’s too valuable an asset to sit on,” he said.

“Well, that’s what we’re doing. Pack it up, put it in the secure wing of the library, or wherever you think it’s safest,” I said.

He nodded and motioned for a nearby hobb to approach.

I turned back to Tollya. “How the hell did it even get in here? Is the tower secure?”

She nodded emphatically. “Molls safe, don’t worry. The tower most secure place in Prescott.” The tall hobb hesitated. “We not know for sure how it get in. Walls secure, no sign of climbing. Checking tapes for any gate entrance, but nothing yet.”

“Is it possible someone smuggled it in?” I asked.

She shook her head but frowned. “BlueCleave stake them out for spiders if so.”

“We don’t have spiders big enough for that here, thank Pasta,” I muttered. There was no point grilling her any more, Tollya had been up front with me. If anything, she wanted it dead more than I did, and I was wasting her time with my dumb questions.

I faced her and she snapped to attention. “Find that thing. When you do, I want to portal in and face it myself. My suit can take more than yours. Cameras seem to be able to see it properly, so get your teams equipped with cameras on their helmets,” I said.

“Yes, boss!” she barked, snapping a salute from her chest.

I returned the gesture and turned to leave with Axle. I was thinking about Molls, in the tower. About my people in Prescott, with that thing among them. I felt confident in the tower, it was filled with automated defenses to protect Molls.

There was nothing we could do until it struck again.

“Keep a portal free for me, Axle,” I finally said, seated in the hovercraft at his side.

He nodded and punched the panels, kicking the vehicle into gear.

Chapter 12

We lifted from the security platform and turned to fly back over the mountain to Silken Sands, a defunct starfish suit secured in a transport crate in the back.

“Don’t worry, I already allocated an emergency portal that only you can use. I heard your talk with Tollya,” he said. The Knowle leaned forward to look down as we flew over the wall, watching the hobbs on patrol. He glanced over at me and licked his nose.

“Just ask, Axle,” I sighed. “I can tell you want to ask something.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing, I just . . . did you know what that beast was?”

I sighed and looked down at my hands. A memory pushed up and intruded again. The first time I went into the Sleem dungeon beneath the campground, before we took it over and started housing people down there.

“No, but I have a bad feeling about it,” I said. “Can you find out who bought something if I sold it directly through BuyMort?”

My operations manager and friend scowled and glanced over at me again. “No, I’m afraid not. I can make an educated guess based on the markets where it ended up if you tell me what it was though.”

I sighed. “An egg. Something my people created before BuyMort, a long time before BuyMort. BuyMort classified it as a bio-weapon. The Reaper Hound.”

Axles eye’s widened. “Dearth, almost certainly. They always search for weapons on new planets.”

“We don’t know for sure if this is them, but dammit that dog-thing had scythes coming off its back,” I said, frowning. “Sounds like a reaper hound to me.”

Axle nodded grimly. “I’ll make some inquiries. Would you like me to loop in Lee?” he asked.

I blinked. Our retired intelligence operative wanted nothing more than to grow healthy food for reasonable prices and enjoy the sunsets through the dome with his gentle wife Suzanne.

“Not yet. I’d like to see what you come up with. Let’s leave him in peace for the time being,” I sighed. “Precious little of that around.”

We banked in for a landing as my friend nodded grimly.

He hefted the crate to carry it into the library after we were landed and secure. Before leaving, he turned and licked his nose. “I’ll get some camera equipment for the security teams. We have another affiliate problem to discuss, but it can wait. Get some rest.”

“Thank you, Axle,” I said, hands on my hips. “I will try.”

I should have gone back to Prescott, but instead my feet carried me out of the parking lot toward the residential areas. Darclau, my raven friend, hopped out of his fancy home and cawed enthusiastically at me.

The hobb who stood guard at their gates jumped, not used to the birds' unexpected noises yet. Raucous raven amusement sounds poured from the doorway of their abode. The former office structure had been improved upon dramatically, upgraded to a small, raven sized mansion of metal and wood.

About the size of a tiny house, the sides had multiple doors that could be pushed through for easy access, and several small machines whining or humming on the outside that provided comfort and fun of some sort for the birds. I didn’t actually know what, I never got a good look inside.

Darclau had a good laugh at the guard’s expense, and fluttered over to my upraised arm, where he perched using the starfish suit’s metal lines for leverage. He burbled at me in excitement, telling me something he had enjoyed about his day.

“We made big sale, big sale!” his translator said. He’d eventually purchased it once communication became too difficult for us. Sheena, his former translator, had helped him acquire the device, and his vast mortie horde paid for it.

The birds ran a salvage operation for us out of their land in the campground. Once we could communicate with them easily, they’d even gotten their own sub-MortBlock to operate.

My MortBlock coverage was filled with multiple sub-MortBlock owners. When I flashed my refresh button, I had it set to save each of their territories for them as well, but they were able to refresh it themselves as desired. The system required trust. Or competent military enforcement. We had both.

“What did you sell?” I asked. He wore his translator around his neck, and it burbled my question up at him in his own language.

Darclau took a few careful steps down my arm and lightly pecked the back of my hand. The raven turned and held his mouth open, waiting for my reaction.

I shook my head and chuckled. “Yeah I love you too buddy. Now tell me what you sold, you little goblin.”

His pendant burbled and cawed, and Darclau’s mouth dropped open again. His eyes squeezed closed, and he started laughing. I had to set him down so he could roll around on the padded lounging platform at the top of their fence.

Eventually, he calmed and hopped closer to me. He chattered and burbled, taking a break to laugh more than once.

“Sell land. Big land, many dirts,” his necklace translated. “Many close, many dirts, ravens still richer than Tyson. Tyson the goblin now!”

Darclau enjoyed his joke. He didn’t understand my finances, and that was okay. Hell, I barely understood my finances, and I had Axle to help.

My good friend and occasional bully Darclau had accidentally taken our campground over by force, in the earliest days of BuyMort. He’d asked the system for help with a list of tasks, and it sent him a mercenary force capable of taking our humble forces without any blood spilt. Since then, he’d thought he was rich, and I was poor.

Ravens.

“Okay then, smart-ass rich bird. Show me this many close dirts of yours,” I said.

Darclau stiffened and nodded. He cawed once and hopped off his platform to glide into the air.

I followed and walked past Phyliss’ place, my ninety-four year old bodyguard in a mech. She’d celebrated a birthday in the suit, but she seemed to be getting younger instead of older.

Since she’d melted, the suit healed her slowly back to someone that looked to be in her mid-seventies, instead of late nineties. She even had streaks of faded red appearing in her hair again. The old lady raised a cup of tea I was sure had LSD in it and smiled from her porch.

She had a porch to lounge on, and a drydock system to work on her mech, which she did continuously. But that was about it, she was very low maintenance. Just spent her free time off doing who-knows-what with Doofus, and upgrading her mech. Seniors need hobbies too.

I waved, and she raised a giant metal hand to wave back, teacup held daintily in the other. Thankfully, I hadn’t had much need of her bodyguarding services since our army became sizable and equipped. Still, the hulking shapes beneath tarps near her dry dock told me she was likely ready, if needed.

Darclau cawed at me from the nearby guard tower.

“Here! See here!” his translator shouted.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I muttered. The wall was easy enough to climb, with a simple mudcrete staircase at the guard tower. Hobbs patrolled day and night, keeping an eye on the compound as much as the areas outside of it.

Our security dealt with more dream storms than anything else at Silken Sands those days. Dro’erja in particular had some bad nightmares. We’d looped in Molls, since I couldn’t keep anything a secret from her anyway, and the delf was getting therapy that really seemed to help. Still. We had extra guards on the ranch anytime he was asleep.

I followed Darclau to a gathering of hobb guards near the southern edge of the wall. They were grouped up and staring into the distance, occasionally passing a pair of binoculars between them. I stepped up to the group, returning a series of salutes, and accepted the binoculars they handed over.

In the distance, a light cloud of dust hung over a chunk of missing desert.

My helmet flooded from my pores at a thought, and I pulled up its ‘magic’ connection to the Fumble-Bee network of advanced drones. The video came from a crystal ball with swirling flame in its depths, but it was just a video link.

We had a major sinkhole just a few miles to our south. Segmented layers of sunken earth showed the hard edges and descended lower at each stage. The ravens must have sold the earth as it was sinking, freeing itself from my MortBlock Coverage.

I sighed and refreshed it again.

“You are a goblin, you little thief. That was my dirt!” I grunted.

Darclau pecked my hand again, harder this time.

“It not have your name on it. Free sales, big sales. Many dirt. Ravens not goblins!” The bird burbled at me frantically, before walking closer and leaning against my hand on the railing.

I immediately succumbed and ran a finger down the back of his neck the way he liked. “Ravens not goblins, you’re right. It’s okay, Darclau, I’m not mad.”

The ravens took BuyMort very literally sometimes, and if something ‘had my name on it,’ they’d never have sold it.

“Good good!” he cawed, before flapping his wings and flying off to check on the sinkhole again.

“Just another thing I have to deal with,” I sighed, turning to look over the Silken Sands compound.

I called Axle. He picked up on the first ring, as always.

“Yeah?” he said. The Knowle was seated at a large metal desk, and appeared to be working on the defunct starfish suit.

“Was the other problem the sinkhole down south?” I asked, a weary sigh in my voice.

Axle hesitated, looking at me over the psychic phone connection. “Yes,” he finally said. “The earthquake must have damaged our aquifer, it’s now draining rapidly. We have to find a new source of water for Prescott, and the new Los Angeles desalination plant won’t nearly cover our needs.”

I nearly crumpled. Any affiliate that couldn’t provide clean drinking water to its people was essentially a failed state. Just a disaster waiting to happen.

“Don’t take this on too, Tyson,” Axle said. “I’ve already ordered a shipment of water that will buy us some time, and I’m working over some plans. You need some rest, some relaxation. Go get a drink or something.”

I nodded and thanked him, before we hung up. Another problem for another day.

Evening was just starting to fall, and I could hear the crowd at Morbin’s bar, Morbin time, getting started for the night.

“I need a drink, you around buddy?” I whispered to the air.

A heavy flapping sound filled the air, and my small bat-like alien friend Morbin descended from his bat-box apartment. It was attached to the side of the apartment complex now, four stories in the air.

He landed at my side and raised both long arms overhead. “Morbin time?!”

“Yeah buddy, Morbin time,” I said with a faint smile.

“Put your silver skin away, you scare the locals like that,” he chided. I refreshed my MortBlock again, to frustrate Darclau’s thieving, and compelled the helmet to recede, while we climbed down the wall to head to the bar.

Chapter 13

It wasn’t a far walk, and the upgrades Axle had ordered really made the place something special. It was in classic Nu-Earth style, which meant expensive wooden walls and furniture. The whole vibe was off, ever so slightly, as everything had been crafted by hobbs, and based on what they thought a Nu-Earth bar should look like.

So we got a bar that looked the way they perceived classic Nu-Earth American bars, mostly gleaned from our media. Morbin Time was an odd amalgamation of dive bar, seedy speakeasy, and Wild West saloon.

The bat-wing doors swung in to show a group of hobbs playing snooker, to the side of a long teak bar with two floors. Pool and billiards were available as well, but the hobbs preferred snooker, to near exclusivity. The bartender was able to travel up and down a flight of spiral stairs, to reach the second floor level of the bar as needed. Usually, we just had two bartenders working.

The windows were all paper, balsa wood, and sugar-glass, so our patrons could all throw one another through them as desired. Our hobb forces often visited from Prescott, and they watched a lot of movies.

Morbin dodged a heavy foot fall as we entered, from one of the pool players.

“Hey, watch your feet! Morbin walkin’ here!” he exclaimed.

The hobb turned and looked down, his bleary drunken eyes taking a moment to recognize the little bat creature. “Morbin? Morbin time?” He asked.

“Yes, Morbin time. Don’t step on Morbin though,” my little friend replied.

The hobb struck his chest with the pool cue, somber and serious. “Yes, Morbin time,” he grumbled.

I pulled out a wooden stool and mounted it, leaning forward on the bar. “You guys have weird traditions in this bar.”

“Bar not weird, you weird. Morbin time mean everything good, everything happy. No trouble,” he explained as he climbed into place.

The bartender poured us a pair of tequila shooters. We made our own, bottled, and sold it. It was the only thing hobbs in BuyMort wanted to drink anymore. BlueCleave agave tequila, so fine they come with a preserved Nu-Earth yarsp larva.

BLUECLEAVE NEW RECIPE AGAVE TEQUILA - WE NO INVENT IT, WE JUST MAKE BEST.

YARSP LARVA EVERY BOTTLE. YUM-CRUNCH GUARANTEE. 41000 morties, 4.8 stars.

I shook my head again at the proud English. It was really heart-warming the way they had adopted this world and its language as their own. But, maybe, before paying for ads, they should have let someone native edit them first? I swirled the liquid, watching light filter through it.

I still preferred gold, but the blue stuff we made was genuinely delicious. Morbin claimed the just-laid yarsp larva was much tastier than whatever beetle larva we’d used before too. I can’t confirm or deny that. I always let him eat it once we finished a bottle.

“It is weird, cause the whole bar shouts ‘Morbin time’ anytime someone gets thrown through a window,” I replied. “If it's about having a good time, why are the brawls started with a shout of ‘Morbin time?’” I asked, gulping my shot. “Guess I answered my own question, never mind.”

The burn in my throat helped. The reaper hound, Kraken Corp, even the sinkhole and my thieving ravens all washed away with that first gulp, and my smile became more natural. Less forced. It was hard to tell when I was faking a smile anymore, but I felt better, just sitting down with my friend for a drink.

A few hours, more drinks than we should have had, some hasty excuses to Molls, and a change of seating later, Morbin asked the real question.

“What happened when they brought up the old manager? What was his name? Sadist?” he slurred.

“No, no, no,” I said, waving my hands. “It’s Morbin time! No questions about Mr. Sada during Morbin time. It was Sada, by the way, not sadist.”

The jukebox started playing some Nietzsche Wasn’t Read, and Morbin fixed me an unimpressed stare. “Morbin time means honesty above all else.” He reached across the table and poked me in the chest with a claw. “Nobody can have good time if they’re not honest with themselves.”

“Your hearing is too good,” I muttered, before taking another swallow of tequila. After extensive testing, I had discovered that the suit would not repair me until I was impaired enough for it to affect my ability to perform in combat, which meant my ability to stand on my own power. Sadly, if I got too drunk, it scooped out my brains and stomach in addition to my liver, which made for a disorienting walk home.

Since that particularly disgusting evening, I’d learned to avoid my limit. Morbin had no such compunctions, and as one of my closest friends, he got rawer with me the more he drank.

“Blame my eyes, human, not my ears. Morbin know when friend is upset, and even saying that man’s name wrong clearly upset you,” he said. “Come, tell your friend about your burden, and you may find it lighter.”

I looked at the little bat creature for a long moment before shaking my head. “I killed him,” I finally said.

Morbin blinked up at me, then reached for the bottle in between us on the table.

“He forced me to, I tried so hard . . . it doesn’t matter. I was always going to have to kill him, it just took me a few days to figure it out,” I muttered.

“Well, Morbin never know you to kill someone who not deserve it. You even let some live you really shouldn’t, like that Wizard guy. He’s rich and pissed,” Morbin said.

“What does ‘deserve’ have to do with anything?” I asked, sarcastically. “Deserve isn’t how the multiverse works.”

The little bat-creature opposite me nodded slowly. “True. Morbin not deserve five million morties a week, but you give it anyway.” He glanced around before leaning in closer. “BlueCleave not deserve ten percent of affiliates morties either, but you no tell them Morbin said that.”

I had to stare at my friend for a few seconds, before I could form the question I wanted to ask. “What do you mean you don’t deserve your pay?”

Morbin waved a claw. “Ah. You hire me for high risk defense job, but now I never work,” he said. “All I do is warn Lee if anyone spying. Happen like twice, is hardly worth weekly pay. Morbin feel guilty,” he said with a shrug.

“Would it make you feel better if I cut your pay?” I asked, staring at him in confusion.

He spluttered in his shot glass. “No!” His shoulders raised above his head in a shrug. “Need the morties, just feel bad. Sometimes,” he finished.

“Oh, only sometimes, that’s good,” I said, smiling as I tipped the bottle to pour myself another. It felt like I could take a few more shots before the suit got involved.

“Look, you kill boss because you have to, right? Morbin work for morties because Morbin have to as well,” Morbin said. He shrugged again and shook his head. “No choice.”

I scowled and cocked my head to the side. “I killed Mr. Sada because he had become a threat to every life in this campground. None of this would have been possible with him around. He was greedy and self-destructive,” I said. “You are not. The service you provide is unique and has saved us from some pretty serious shit more than once, my friend. You’re worth every mortie, never doubt it again.”

Morbin’s eyes lit up and he smiled at me. “You good friend Tyson. Morbin not care you kill your old friend.”

“He wasn’t . . .” the words died before I could get them out. Mr. Sada hadn’t exactly been my friend, but he’d been important. I could still feel the way the bones in his neck had first broken, and then crushed when I squeezed. I could still hear his last words, fear and confusion lacing every choked syllable as he begged for what was left of his life.

I imagine he died never knowing why I, of all people, had killed him.

Tears threatened to form, burning the bottoms of my eyes. Then something twisted in my chest, and the tears receded. I blinked a few times and drank my shot.

“Hey, why do you need the morties?” I asked. Morbin’s apartment was still sparse, I’d seen it recently. He had a bed for sleeping, a small table to eat at, and a MortMobile device he used as both phone and TV. Beyond that, I never saw any creature comforts around the alien bat.

He waved a claw at me dismissively. “Eh. Morbin have big family. They need morties,” he said, with a shrug.

It clicked. Even in my drunken stupor, it clicked. Morbin’s casual disregard of personal safety, his excess with intoxicants, even his desire for friendship, and the near constant parties he threw at the bar. He’d never expected to survive this job, he’d merely hoped to earn enough to provide for his family.

“Where are they? Storage?” I asked.

“Psh, no,” he replied. “Nothing so cheap. Morbin’s family with the church, on home-world. Is good life, if you can afford it.”

I poured us each one more from the bottle, and stood, raising my glass. Morbin happily hopped on the table.

“To a good life!” I shouted. The hobbs and odd occasional humans in the rest of the bar erupted in cheers and raised their glasses. Turning back to Morbin, I added quietly, for his ears only, “if you can afford it.”

My little bat creature friend grinned and raised his glass to clink against my own, before throwing it back with a satisfied gulp.

Chapter 14

Three days later, I was happily watching Molls sunbathe in her bikini, on the coast just south of San Antonio, Baja Mexico. The situation in Los Angeles had stabilized after my successful distraction thanks to church TV. Dearth hadn’t signed onto our plan to ransom them back their equipment, ports, and secure roads, but they hadn’t attacked us over the theft either.

The most I got was some stern speech from their representative on CTV, while not present, of course. That delf never talked his biggest game when I was in the same room as he was. At least he had better survival instincts than the last group of delves I’d had to deal with.

My troops were able to clear up or chase out the remaining Dearth presence in Baja and establish several forward bases, which were expanding rapidly under Tollya’s creative eye. Axle had the elevator and spaceport under control with a business-as-usual mandate, and morties were still flowing into the affiliate rapidly and steadily. The aquifer had dropped significantly, but hadn’t run out just yet. Our water shipment was also en route from the inner Kuiper belt, and was due to arrive well before our supply ran out.

Axle had also been hard at work getting a Dearth desalination plant up and running. We could use the already established roads to ship fresh water to Prescott. It wouldn’t be enough for our needs at Prescott, even running at full capacity, but it was a damn sight better than paying for water for an entire city.

The reaper hound, or creature I was convinced was the reaper hound, hadn’t made another appearance. We had specialist squads roaming the city, and our rapid response teams had all been equipped with cameras in their helmets.

The thing to worry about down in Baja was Cartel remnants that acted as a sort of roaming bandit force. Dearth had apparently been at war with the cartels, which were no longer in any shape to face my BlueCleave hobbs.

The Dearth Conglomerate South Western Board had spent a lot of resources fighting them for control of the peninsula, and both sides had spent the majority of their forces on each other. Made it easy for me to step in and clean up afterwards.

An unseasonable warm snap hit the Baja coast and we decided to head down with a small detachment for a long promised vacation. Molls had subtle, and not so subtle ways of reminding me that I had promised her three uninterrupted days of ‘us-time’ as she called it, and I wanted any excuse to get her out of Prescott while the creature I had decided to call a reaper hound was still at large.

Three days of alone time with Molls was a promise I was eager to make good on, now that the affiliate was back to running smoothly, and I’d gotten my head screwed on straight again by Morbin.

Life was good, if you could afford it. And I could afford it.

I was rehydrating while Molls sunned herself on the rocky beach, which was quickly becoming our routine between bouts of physical affection. She loved looking over the water and told me her world didn’t have oceans like mine. Just large, hot swamps.

We had a nice tent set up on the beach, away from the water, and filled it with soft pillows and blankets. Molls had even sprung for a tiny sand-hunting drone to ensure a clean interior. It was quite luxurious, and the blue juice Molls kept buying for me was delicious.

She had also paid for my boxer shorts, from a company in orbit that was buying up earth textiles and making fashionable items for the entire BuyMort system. We sold them spider webs, and they turned it into high-end luxury underwear to sell to rich morons who’d never been to Nu-Earth. They say it makes them feel dangerous, and even use the now-famous aggression of Nu-Earth humans in their ads. Whatever.

I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about work. The affiliate, and all its various machinations, could survive without me for a few days while I tended to my budding relationship with an alien snake-woman. So of course I was thinking about work.

The video footage on my device replayed the reaper hound attack on my hobb. I watched him getting torn up again and wondered at the strange effect the camera caught. The light shimmered around its shoulders and head, appearing to flex slightly.

I heard Molls slithering up to the tent in the sand and quickly killed the video, before trying to stuff my device under a nearby pillow.

Before I could put the device away fully, Molls entered the tent and caught me.

“Tyson!” she exclaimed, scales flushed red. “You promised!”

“I’m sorry babe, I really am. I just . . . I can’t get it out of my head,” I said. “I’m not working, I swear.”

“No, you’re just obsessing about work,” the busty reptilian woman sighed. She slumped down on the comfortable blanket beside me, drawing in her tail as she crossed her arms. “Big difference in how your attention is split. You promised time for us.”

“You were sunning yourself!” I raised my hands. “Look, Molls, I just can’t stop thinking about the reaper hound. This thing is super dangerous.”

I sighed and ran my hand over my face, before continuing, “or the sinkhole. We’re running out of water, the aquifer is almost dry. Plus this new Kraken Corp, the whole planet feels like work right now, except for you.”

My Nah’Gh girlfriend narrowed her eyes and met my gaze. Her scales softened in color, the red seeping out of them and being replaced with a light green. Impatience, or more likely frustration, given how much red stayed. I’d gotten better at translating her scale colors over the past month.

“Perhaps we should take my mother’s invitation after all,” she said, after a moment of silent contemplation.

“You should,” I said at once. “It’s not safe on Nu-Earth right now, and I want you safe.”

“But you’re not leaving,” she said. Her tail began to rattle softly from underneath her coils, so I reached out and grasped her hand.

“You know I can’t, Molls.” I met her eyes and squeezed lightly on her hand.

She sighed and her tail stopped rattling. Purple color seeped up her arm from our physical contact, chasing away the remaining green and red. “I know,” she finally whispered. “I fell in love with a leader, and you have to lead.”

The beautiful, scantily clad Nah’gh woman smiled at me gently and slid a few of her coils across the tent to rest on my torso and legs. I welcomed the pressure and heat.

“But I still have you for two more days, you promised,” she said, moving her tail just right and making me squirm.

I grinned up at her, grabbed her hips, and pulled her closer. She smiled softly and pressed down on top of me, bringing our faces close together again. “Did you drink your juice?” she asked in my ear, softly.

Holding up the half-full bottle, I shook it back and forth. “Nope,” I said, smile firmly in place on my lips.

Molls shrugged and turned back to close the tent flap, before unhooking the catch on her bikini top. “Ah well, you had your chance,” she said, her smile growing wider.

Before her gyrations could undress me, something tore through the tent, wrapped around her arms and chest, and yanked her back out onto the sand.

“Molls!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. The atomic breakers appeared on my hands, deploying from their extra-dimensional hangars embedded in my body, and I charged outside.

Something splashed from the water off the coast, and a small, dark shape headed my direction. I summoned the helmet an instant before the incoming projectile deployed sword-arm wings and slammed into me.

The bladed missile hit me so hard it drove my body down into the sand. The blade caught on part of my suit, and the rest of me just went along for the ride. My suit deployed tendrils and got to work, immediately sawing through the weapon, and repairing me as I hauled my way back up out of the sand.

Molls was limp, in the clutches of a large metal arm on a cable that was dragging itself back to the gaping mouth of a craft at the edge of the water. Its rear engines were already engaged and hauling it backwards as it swallowed Molls and the edges closed behind the tip of her long tail. Frogmen in black diving suits followed, long-barreled rifles facing back behind me.

On the ridge at our backs, a line of my hobbs lay in the sand, unmoving. Our escort had been taken out as they tried to respond to my initial shout.

The silver, cigar-shaped craft reversed faster as I ran toward it, just in time to get another sword-missile to the chest. There were no explosives in the weapon, just a massive, heavy hit that put me down hard enough, and long enough, for them to escape.

I climbed my way back up from the sand, choking and gasping as my guts were torn out and replaced for the second time in as many minutes, and watched the last of the diving suited enemies vanish into the water.

My first thought was to panic, but the same cold twist in my chest that wouldn’t let me cry anymore shut that down quickly. I ran forward, splashed into the water, and dove beneath the waves.

Several small submarines were fleeing away from the coast, out toward the open pacific. My helmet targeted each of them with a faintly glowing outline, something it called ‘fairy fire.’ It also filtered oxygen and nitrogen from the water so I could breathe.

It just called that water-breathing, but I know it meant a magic spell, and it annoyed me anyway.

My strokes slowed as I realized my chase was hopeless. There was no way I could catch them. Instead, I went into ad space and pulled up my item reward coupon from Teslak. The words it input in my BuyMort search bar to find the affiliate again confirmed my suspicions.

“Primary Starfish, second upgrade, destroy BuyMort.”

The ad space took my mind and cast it through the BuyMort system. I landed in Specter’s storefront, hidden in the accretion disk of a black hole. Time ran differently in ad-space, but I’d never gotten a clear picture of exactly how differently, so I ran up to the counter and engaged the hologram.

“Welcome to the Teslak-” he started.

“Yeah, tell me what I got!” I shouted.

The hologram flickered. “Very well. The Starfish extreme environment suit has three main upgrades available, and I see you already have the first tier for advanced charging. Would you like to choose-”

“Mobility!” I shouted, cutting him off again.

“Very well, the starfish gravity harness will ensure freedom of movement in any environment, and charges exactly the same as the base suit,” Specter said. He turned and waved a hand as the upgrade materialized. A large, squat starfish shaped chunk of metal appeared and spun slowly behind him.

Each arm was heavily plated, but the center was a smooth chunk of metal with a gleaming black surface in the center of it. The underside of the starfish was covered in small arms that would hook onto my already present suit.

“Yeah, I want that, ring it up!” A moment of guilt flashed through me for yelling at the hologram, but then I remembered he was likely dead ages ago. I was being impatient with a clever recording.

Specter flashed to his other side, a beaten and bloody version of himself wearing charred and torn attire. “This one is easy. Just focus hard enough on something, will yourself to it, and the gravity drive will do the rest,” he said. “Works exactly the same in gas, liquid, and vacuum. Just don’t try it through anything solid. The drive can fall through anything, by force. You, presumably, cannot.”

The projection flicked back to spotless Specter, who smiled and rang me up. My coupon drained of morties, and I bailed on the ad space.

“BuyMort!” I shouted, treading water. “I need that delivery RIGHT NOW!”

A pod flashed in at my side and dropped a cardboard box into the water. I ripped into it with my bare hands, grabbing the new piece to my suit as it started to sink. Without bothering to really look at it, I swung the starfish over my head onto my back, where it instantly grasped the suit.

I ducked back under the waves and stared into the inky darkness ahead. My helmet painted a trail of fairy fire, where the subs had gone. I growled and focused on the trails, hard.

Something changed, and I plummeted forward, following the trail of fairy fire in my helmet down into the inky depths of the pacific.

Chapter 15 – Whalehunter Salvage

WHS Whalehunter floated a few dozen meters below the surface, moon pool bay doors open. Captain Omen was in the room, with his XO Thresher at his side, and a squad of his best Orkreshi marines at his back.

Each wore heavy armor and carried both ranged and melee weapons. They’d been briefed and stood ready to protect the officer core.

The moon pool was a large room, pressurized to keep the water at bay, but allowed access for vehicles in and out of the oversized submarine. Two of the three extraction vessels Captain Omen had sent out had returned, and he watched the careful retrieval of their target.

Molls, the Nah’Gh priestess of BuyMort and cardinal over Silken Sands, was their prisoner.

At present she was both their prisoner, and unconscious.

The grappling arm had been painted with a neurotoxin that knocked out the victim but did not harm them in any way.

Nah’Gh were sensitive creatures, Captain Omen had discovered during his research, and he had carefully chosen the agent to be used.

The deployment sub carefully deposited her on deck with its mechanical arm, and a medical team rushed forward to cover her nudity and remove her from the room. Each of his teams had their orders, and Captain Omen nodded to see them perform well.

The third sub was on scopes, and due to arrive any second. Something had struck it from behind, damaging its propulsion systems. Whatever it was, the sub reported it was still latched onto the rear of the vehicle.

Bubbles roared from the deep as the craft clumsily surfaced. A man wearing wet silk boxer shorts and a gleaming chrome helmet stood and released the rear end of the vessel. He’d crammed one arm into the rear rotor-guard to hold on, which explained the damage to the submersible. Its propellers had been damaged on the man’s metal covered hands, which he raised defensively over his torso before his booming voice rang out across the moon pool room.

“Give her back or everyone on board dies,” Tyson said. The warlord of Arizona had arrived, sending a chill down Captain Omen’s spine.

Captain Omen’s marines all marched in front of him and XO Thresher, lifting guns and pointing them at the threat.

The man with the metal fists lurched suddenly and appeared to fall across the room toward them. He came to an ungraceful landing in the midst of the Orkreshi marines, sending them tumbling as if hit by a truck.

They rolled, bounced against the walls, and splashed into the nearby moon pool. Each of his marines got up, or laid in position, training their weapons on the warlord. Tyson clenched his metal plated fists.

“Stand down!” Captain Omen shouted. Thresher had a heavy revolver in his hands and was staring at the chrome-plated man. As he watched, short, pointed horns rose from the metal.

“Everyone stand down!” Captain Omen said again, with more force. He stepped forward and put a hand on the American’s broad chest, palm flat. “I said stand down,” he said, directly to the chrome face mask.

Tyson took another step forward, pushing Captain Omen back. “You bark orders like you think you’re in charge,” he growled.

Thresher stepped forward, but Captain Omen glared at him. The big man narrowed his eyes but stopped.

“I am Captain Jeonjo, of the WHS Whalehunter. Head of the Whale Hunter Salvage affiliate. You are Tyson Dawes, warlord of Arizona,” said Captain Omen.

Tyson’s metal head turned, following the medical team through nearby portals. They were wheeling Molls’ still form away, covered partially with a sheet. Two technicians followed behind, carrying portions of her long tail.

“Tell them to stop,” Tyson growled.

Captain Omen reached for his radio. “Medical team, halt!”

They did instantly, holding their position in the hallway.

Tyson turned back to stare at Captain Omen, the horns on his helmet gleaming in the overhead lights.

“She has not been harmed,” Captain Omen said. “Her mother, Maer Shevalanth, requested her daughter’s retrieval, from the grasp of a desperate and dangerous criminal. My crew was merely following my orders. Don’t hurt anyone, please,” he said.

The smaller man’s face was hard, inscrutable. Tyson nodded, and the moment of tension eased. Thresher holstered his revolver and the orc marines at their sides eased their stances.

“You kidnapped her on behalf of her mother?” Tyson asked.

“Yes, I can show you the bounty receipt if you like,” Captain Omen replied.

The man in silk boxers and a chrome helmet took a long, slow look around the moon pool room.

“No alarms,” he growled. “No troopers rushing in. No automated weapons.” Tyson reached a hand out to Captain Omen’s neck, lightly resting it on the man’s shoulder. “You’re expecting me, but you’re expecting me to behave.”

Thresher stepped up, but Captain Omen raised a hand and stopped the man dead in his tracks. Still, he glowered at Tyson, lip curled in anticipation of violence.

The shining, chrome horns turned to face him.

“No one but this Riker-wanna-be is taking me seriously,” Tyson said. “You should listen to him. I don’t like being threatened.”

“I do not threaten,” Captain Omen snapped. He still had his hand raised to stop Thresher and showed no change in expression in spite of the metal covered hand at his throat. “My ship and crew are not a threat to you.”

“I’m starting to get that picture, yes. Usually there’s more gunfire from threats,” Tyson said. He raised his chin at Thresher. “Even Beardo the Magnificent here hasn’t pulled a trigger yet, and you can tell he really wants to.”

“In fact, I pulled the trigger on you twice already,” Thresher said.

“XO,” Captain Omen said, staring blankly at his subordinate.

Thresher nodded and holstered his revolver, before clasping his hands behind himself and standing at attention.

Tyson removed his hand from Captain Omens neck, and his chrome helmet siphoned into his pores to reveal a cold smile.

Thresher bristled but said nothing.

“Her mother described her situation to us. Alone, unemployed, in the company of a warlord that danger consistently finds,” Captain Omen explained.

Tyson chuckled, the metal embedded in his chest glinting with the movement. “Sounds about right.”

“Before I took the contract, I researched you. Your affiliate. You are our primary competitor in the global food market. You make it very hard to turn a profit,” Captain Omen said. “And you rescue as many people from this world as you can, every time the possibility presents itself. Your restraint is not as famous as your violence, but it is undeniably part of your profile.”

“So you thought you could snatch away someone I cared about, and face no consequences because you became non-violent when I caught you?” Tyson asked.

“No,” Captain Omen immediately replied. “I have abandoned the mission upon its failure. Your hobbs were not harmed, merely rendered unconscious with sleeping darts, the same as Molls. I, of course, will provide both of you immediate transport back to land, in exchange for your word not to harm anyone or destroy anything while you are aboard.”

Tyson narrowed his eyes. “Just like that? Usually my enemies don’t give up so easily,” he growled.

“We are not your enemy,” Captain Omen said. “We are a military and civilian organization, and our military performs missions for morties. The risk to all involved seemed minimal, but the entirety of our plan was undone when you proved able to move unrestricted through water. That was not part of our intelligence, you were reported to be locked into traditional methods of transport, with no substantive naval capabilities.”

“Yeah. That’s new,” Tyson replied.

The man stood with a straight back and looked Tyson in the eye without flinching as he spoke. “We are aware of your combat capabilities and have no wish to engage you directly. The mission is off. She is yours, without threat or bargain,” Captain Omen said, gesturing to a nearby door.

His medical team had returned, and Molls lay unconscious on their wheeled cart. One of them had covered her with a heated blanket, which steamed lightly in the cool room.

“We’ve done as you asked,” Captain Omen said. “I’m giving her back. Immediately. Without any conflict or question. In exchange only for the safety of my people.”

Tyson stared at him for a long moment. Eventually, he said, “Okay. Show us our ride home.”

“You are in no danger. I will drive you myself, as a show of good faith, and hostage against potential retaliation from my fleet,” Captain Omen replied. He snapped his head around to the medical team and said, “Load her up, carefully.”

The submersible nearest them leaned back, opened its front end like the petals of a flower, and extended a ramp to the edge of the moon pool. Captain Omen stepped in first, followed closely by Tyson, and finally the medical team. They carefully wheeled Molls up the ramp and deposited her in a secure seat in the front compartment, wrapped in the warm blanket.

Her head lolled down to her chest, and she snored lightly.

Tyson followed Captain Omen closely, stepping past the grappling equipment the ship had used to capture Molls. Beyond it, a short ladder led up to the controls, with two seats beside one another. Tyson sat down casually beside Captain Omen, as the smaller man flicked switches and got the submersible started again. The front doors sealed, and they began to descend. Thresher stood watching them, at the edge of the moon pool, vanishing from view as the water covered their portals.

The moon pool dropped them out into the open ocean, with the entire Whale Hunter Salvage fleet positioned between them and the shore. Tyson watched as they slid past the hulls of the various ships, particularly interested in the giant glowing forest.

Captain Omen sensed an opportunity when Tyson’s head craned to follow the large vessel. “The Arboretum. Our primary source of food, along with the whale-bugs.”

Tyson turned back to look at him. “I didn’t ask,” he said.

“Your interest is obvious,” Captain Omen replied, steering the craft closer to another large, submerged vessel. “Our fleet is fully self-sustaining, with a population of roughly fourteen thousand.”

“And a military capable of taking someone very important away from me,” Tyson replied. “Supposedly without using lethal force.”

“Against anyone but you personally, yes,” Captain Omen answered. “The mission required live capture, and I would rather not make enemies of someone so powerful by killing their people.”

“Maybe I hold a grudge for the missiles,” Tyson said.

An ad popped and he immediately shunted it to the corner of his vision, eyeing it even as he held dialog with the man. It honestly felt like a useful item to have in his increasingly growing arsenal.

Nu-Earth Military Surplus presents the AGM-114 Hellfire. Made by the toughest Nu-Earth military on the planet before BuyMort Ascension, these Air to Ground Missiles are 45kg of utter precision death without the collateral boom.

Designed as an anti-armor weapon, it efficiently doubles as a safe and effective way to assassinate individuals. By deploying a series of ultra-sharp sword blades right before impact, the AGM-114 Hellfire shreds organic targets, and disassembles hard targets, with ease.

The AGM-114 Hellfire. So damn safe even your kids can use it.

1,500,000 morties, 4.6 stars.

“Perhaps. A calculated risk, but one that was necessary to incapacitate you without harming anyone else,” Captain Omen explained. “Ah, here is our desalination ship.”

Their submarine drove by the larger craft, and Captain Omen tilted the floodlights to illuminate it. Heavy armor plating covered most of the vessel’s bulk. Some of it showed deep scoring, both from weapon hits and what appeared to be claws. The worst damage had been patched or filled in.

“Seems like it’s a target,” Tyson said.

“Yes. Whale-bugs are attracted to fresh water. You’ll need to be careful with your Los Angeles plant, now that Dearth forces are not present to keep them at bay,” Captain Omen replied.

Tyson scowled at the man, then returned to looking out the view ports. The gathered fleet was fascinating, and they were traveling through the bulk of it, as if the armada of submersibles was on display.

“You gathered all these people?” Tyson finally asked.

“Yes,” Captain Omen replied. “As many as I can, for as long as I can.”

Tyson gazed, his face blankly thoughtful.

They passed the last of the ships, a strange, flat-topped vessel filled with strapped down equipment and a bent grappling hook launcher. Dappled light began to break through the gloom and illuminate the sandy sea floor. Within a few minutes, the ride was over, and Captain Omen opened the front of the vessel on the beach.

Tyson clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the ride, cap-e-tan.”

“Wait,” Captain Omen ordered. “You stopped the Pacific coast tsunami, correct?”

Tyson sighed heavily. “I don’t know how my team did it,” he said. “Don’t ask.”

“I don’t care how you did it. I care what caused it in the first place,” Captain Omen said. His eyes were hard and locked onto Tyson’s.

“Kraken?” Tyson asked, eyes narrowed.

“Yes, Kraken. The single largest threat you and I both face,” Captain Omen replied.

“Are you suggesting an alliance?” Tyson asked. He raised one eyebrow.

“A temporary alliance. First was the Marianas trench. That is how Kraken took most of Asia. Next is the Tonga trench, then Peru-Chili. You sit just north of the Middle America trench, your time will come soon. Kraken will kill your people and take your MortBlock by force,” Captain Omen explained.

“And you think I can kill this Kraken,” Tyson said. His expression was neutral, flat. “Well, Captain. It’s been nice knowing you, but you kidnapped my girlfriend. You’re lucky I’m letting you live.”

“You do not want that kind of death on your soul, Tyson Dawes. My people would die without me, as yours would die without you,” Captain Omen replied. He met the cold stare equally. “What will you do, when Kraken sets off an earthquake in your backyard?”

“Probably kill it,” Tyson immediately replied.

“Then help me kill it before it does that. This creature destroyed Victorian-Earth, and it is going to destroy this Earth as well,” Captain Omen said. “My fleet alone is not enough, the creature is too powerful. I need a specialist.”

Tyson nodded, thought for a long moment, then smiled. “Sorry, captain. You can’t afford me.” He tromped down the stairs, gathered Molls’ limp form in his arms, and exited the craft.

Captain Omen waited, staring at the man while he carried his serpentine girlfriend away across the Baja sands. As they crested a nearby hill, he grabbed the radio’s microphone and clicked it to external. “Call me when the whale bugs get too bad.”

Tyson stopped and looked back, but didn’t react, so Captain Omen closed the hatch and backed his submarine off the beach, to return to his fleet.

When the vehicle returned to the moon pool aboard the WHS Whalehunter, Thresher was the only officer waiting to debrief his captain.

“Well? Did he go for it?” the big man asked, hands on his hips.

Captain Omen stepped from the boarding hatch and nodded. “He will. The man is stubborn, and suspicious. We must be of use to him before he will tolerate being of use to us.”

“At least the intel on his restraint was valid,” Thresher said. “I’d have hated to clear out your cabin.”

Captain Omen scoffed. “Your disgusting taste in rugs would clash with my walls.”

Thresher offered him a hand up from the moon pool, a large smile on his face. “Your disgusting taste in wallpaper would clash with my beautiful rugs.”

Chapter 16

I breathed out the tension. Nearly losing Molls had twisted something in my chest, and it didn’t untwist until that man and his submarine were gone from sight. Still, I couldn’t just ignore the way he had pulled it off. Or the way he backed down the instant I caught up to them.

Everything he had said made sense. Especially now that I could fly. Specter had promised ease of movement in air as well as water, and the thought that I could fly kept repeating itself in my mind until I was bursting with the desire to attempt the act.

I willfully focused on the sky above me, and the starfish on my back just yanked my body up into the air. It didn’t feel like flying though.

It felt like falling.

The faster I went, the more I had to fight my instincts screaming at me that I was about to die.

There was no control, no flight like all those heroes I had grown up on. I didn’t point my fingers and angle my feet back for aerodynamics. I just fell. Up, into the sky.

Here’s a quick thing to keep in mind. There is no such thing as an irrational fear of heights. That’s not a phobia. That’s a perfectly natural instinct that your reptile brain has never lost, because if you fall off tall enough things, you don’t get to keep being alive.

So when I looked down at the beach and noticed it was already a speck in the distance, I realized that a fear of heights was perfectly rational. What’s irrational is being in a tall place and not being afraid of falling.

The newest addition to my suit just made me fall everywhere. I had fallen in the ocean, to catch that submarine. Moving sideways and not down, sure, but the way your gut feels when you’re plummeting to your doom is exactly how my gut felt chasing that submarine.

When I stopped trying to fly, I started falling for real. The ground got big again really fast, and I squeezed my eyes shut before impact. The suit automatically slowed me, until I landed gently on both feet. Then the larger starfish shape on my back retracted into the dimensional storage that formed a thicker line across my upper back and shoulders.

Molls stirred at my landing, blinking her large eyes against the sunlight.

I rushed to her side and gripped the scaled hand she raised. “Are you alright?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, I must have fallen asleep,” she slurred. “I’m still very tired. Whose blanket is this?”

“It’s okay, Molls. I’ve got you, just go back to sleep,” I said, reaching down to lift her in my arms.

She sighed and draped her neck over my shoulder, before loosely wrapping her tail around my torso so I could carry her. I thought back to our first dream-storm, and how she had carried me to safety. My pace was significantly slower, but the memory made me smile while I carried her back to our front lines.

I passed by the row of unconscious hobbs on the ridge above our tent and checked to see that their chests were rising and falling in rhythmic motions. A small dart was visible protruding from the nearest hobb’s throat, an expert shot at range, especially given that my hobbs all wore shields. The dart would have had to be traveling slow enough to avoid triggering the shields, which my opponent under the water had apparently known.

His frogmen had been almost on the water’s edge, and they’d each hit my hobbs with synchronized shots as they crested the ridge.

The way BlueCleave ran their hobb recruits, it felt very much like an army. They built as many roads and bridges as they fought battles, and the hobbs always had busy work if there was no combat.

By contrast, the soldiers we’d gone up against had been special forces. Goal oriented, hyper-focused, and result motivated. The Orkreshi marines I had briefly tangled with on board the Whalehunter had also surprised me, by ignoring my attack against them and following their commander’s orders of restraint.

This naval power was something I did not want to tangle with, I suspected they wouldn’t be like the Dearth forces my hobbs were used to fighting. I certainly wasn’t going to wait around on the beach with them floating off-shore.

Before I’d had to walk long, I saw a BlueCleave patrol buggy racing across the desert toward me. Our unit must have missed their check in. Ordo was at the driver's seat and stepped out once the vehicle had slid to a stop at our side.

“Boss! You good?” he asked. His unit, another three heavily armed and armored hobbs, piled out of the buggy and formed a protective shield around us with their bodies. Each looked in their direction for threats, cradling the laser rifles that were quickly becoming standard issue in our ranks.

“We’re fine, but I need to talk to Rayna,” I answered. “Our unit is down, but unharmed. Sleeping darts.”

“Shit,” he grumbled. “I warn them that possible. Darts can be dialed to fly slow enough that shields not stop them.”

“Who did you warn?” I asked.

“Tollya’s quartermaster,” he grumbled. “They say not possible to ward against all attacks, that shields better than we used to. Shouldn’t complain.”

“You weren’t complaining, though,” I said.

Ordo shook his head. “Warning. Hobbs need to know vulnerabilities. Darts can be lethal too.”

“Yeah, I’ll have a word with that quartermaster. You report directly to Tollya from now on,” I said.

Ordo raised his eyebrows. “Quartermaster not like that. Higher rank than me.”

“Quartermaster fucked up. I don’t care what they like, and I outrank everyone,” I said.

Ordo chuckled and nodded. “Yeah boss.” He reached back into the buggy and produced a radio speaker on a cord. “Get Rayna. Priority one request,” he grunted into the mic.

A hobb voice on the other end sounded in the affirmative, and a series of clicks began as the radio call was connected through our network back to Prescott.

Rayna’s voice came through, “boss, what you need?” She sounded concerned.

“We’re okay Rayna, but we were just attacked. A new force, Whale Hunter Salvage. They’ve got a flotilla of submersible vessels. I was given the impression that they have a sizable and competent military force, but I don’t know how big it is exactly,” I said into the radio. “They took out our hobbs with sleeping darts, and kidnapped Molls from me directly. I couldn’t stop them, they used fuckin’ sword-missiles to slow me down long enough to get away. I got her back though.”

Molls stirred against my back and yawned. The sound of her name brought her out of it, and she blinked as she looked around.

“Understood,” Rayna grunted. “What you want us do?”

“Pull all of our non-essential forces on the coastline back, reinforce our coastal forts, and keep an eye on the pacific. I’m on my way to Prescott with Molls, I’ll tell you more in person,” I replied, before handing the radio’s mic back to Ordo, who was rummaging around in the cargo compartment.

He grunted a few words to Rayna, got a reply, and hung up the radio. He glanced at his unit before turning back to me, a pair of combat fatigue pants in his hands. “We go get sleeping hobbs, boss. You want a ride back to base? Got a hovercraft ready for you there,” he said to me.

“No thank you, Ordo. I can fly,” I replied with a small smile. “Thanks for the pants though. Pack up our gear too, please, and have it sent back to Prescott.”

The hobb shrugged and nodded, as if all of that was normal. Molls, on the other hand, pulled her long neck around from my back to stare at my face.

“You can fly?” she asked. “Since when?”

“Since you were kidnapped by a paramilitary organization while we were trying to have a relaxing vacation on the beach. So like . . . half an hour ago?” I replied.

She smiled down at me, still a little loopy from the drug. “Can you fly me?” she asked. “Wait, what?”

I smiled at her and shrugged. “Of course I’ll fly you.”

“No, what did you say about me being kidnapped?” she replied.

“Yeah, your mother hired a local mercenary team to get you home,” I said. “Sorry, I guess she’s getting serious about that request.”

Molls turned red. She spluttered, but then calmed and took a few calming deep breaths before saying, “I suppose I’ll need to have words with her about interrupting our vacation.”

I hid my chuckle and smiled up at her helplessly. “Still want me to fly you?” I asked.

She nodded vigorously, and the red began slipping from her scales.

“Watch your tail, my drive is about to emerge,” I said, steadying my grip.

Molls loosened her coils, and the starfish drive protruded from dimensional storage, covering most of my upper back. “Oh it's cold to the touch,” she exclaimed, further shifting her coils to avoid it.

It didn’t feel cold to me, but she was far more sensitive to temperatures than I was, so I just shrugged again.

“Hold on, babe,” I said. “This might feel like falling.”

Her coils tightened and she smiled at me, showing a hint of the rows of fangs behind her lips. I looked up and willed the suit to fly again.

We sailed directly up, and Molls gasped. Her tail squeezed gently, and I chuckled as she blinked rapidly against the wind. I thought of the Prescott tower, and the suit yanked us north.

Molls whooped at the change of direction, before ducking her head down against my chest and screaming in delight. “We’re not falling! We’re flying!” she shouted excitedly in my ear.

It felt like falling to me. Even when we were traveling in a straight line. My guts were getting used to the feeling, and I was able to exert a lot more control over our speed and direction, but it always felt like falling to me.

Molls wrapped the blanket around herself tighter, drawing it up to cover her face from the wind. After a few minutes of flight, she was shivering, and I set us down in the Mexico desert.

Chapter 17

We rested a little, holding each other close and warming her up, before I called up a portal to bring her home.

Our portals were limited by our affiliate level. They would only allow the passage of one metric ton of material, one sapient, or twenty non-sapients. The range was also limited to ‘short,’ which meant the immediate solar system, in BuyMort language. ‘Medium’ was anything outside your solar system, but inside your universe. ‘Long’ distance was classed as anything outside your current universe, even if it was a universe right next door to your own.

Just because BuyMort could do a thing, did not mean it would do that thing for free. The fees and service changes we ended up paying weren’t gigantic, but it added up if you weren’t careful.

Molls happily accepted a portal to our apartment at the top of the Prescott tower, and I watched as she dropped the blanket once on the other side. She turned back and smiled softly at me, before the portal closed and the pod zipped away with a happy whistle.

With Molls safe at home, I turned my attention to the departing pod. With a quick burst of focus, I took off, falling through the air behind it. I wanted to know where the local fruition center was, and the pod didn’t seem to notice or care that I was following it, falling at rapid speed directly behind.

The fruition center I was looking for was situated in Mexicali. I was overdue for a visit with Tower anyway, and the surrounding area looked clear of life. An old Dearth fence still stood around the fruition center, weapon scarring and hand-cut holes riddling it.

Scattered human remains surrounded the giant warehouse, where BuyMort had summoned bugs to deal with trespassers. In this desert, any structure was a shelter, or a chance at food and water. These people had been my people, and it hurt to see the cold way they had been dealt with as I flew overhead.

The pod swung in low and slowed its speed as it approached a small doorway. I saw it cycle open and pushed the gravitic drive harder, trying to follow the pod inside.

My biggest problem with visiting Tower was breaking in. The Yarsps had dug up from below ground, and not many of the other fruition centers had the ability to easily dig into, in spite of having no flooring. I tried. There was a buttressing wall that delved deeper than I had expected, and any attempt to breach the walls of a fruition center resulted in a BuyMort bug. Usually a kaiju-worm, if I was the cause of the damage.

So when I tried to slip in behind the pod, and its door slammed shut immediately in front of me, I had just enough time to raise my hands as cover before I slammed into it. The pod hatch crumpled but didn’t break open.

I bounced, hard and fell for real as my focus on flying was disrupted, plummeting right down into the desert hardpack. My drive vanished into my metal lines, and I fell for real. The hard ground knocked the wind out of me, and hurt, but I wasn’t damaged enough for the suit to activate, which I took as a boon. That cartoon starfish made fewer appearances the less I needed instruction from it.

With a groan, I picked myself up out of the dirt and brushed off my pants. A different pod door opened, and a pod emerged to warp in my giant worm.

Over the few visits I had managed to get in with Tower, the punishment for breaking into the warehouses kept getting bigger. It was like BuyMort knew this creature could kill me, if only it could find one big enough to get the job done.

For the first few, I had simply let Tower have a crunchy treat, he loved the chitinous armor plating the kaiju worms all came with. However, the last one had almost been too big for the warehouse, and Tower had a tougher time than usual getting it into his gaping maw.

The kaiju worm BuyMort summoned on me this time was taller than the warehouse and was easily the biggest one yet. It also sported massive, gossamer wings. I fell sideways, activating my gravitic drive and hurtling across the sand as the worm tried to crush me with a slap of its tail.

I flopped into the dirt as the drive deactivated. Keeping concentration on moving with it was difficult.

I rolled over just in time for the worm to loom over the top of me again, great jaws hanging open. I activated the drive and shot backwards across the ground once more, avoiding its lunging bite by inches.

The worm rose again, towering over me and dropping chunks of torn earth from its jaws. It trumpeted a roar and gave chase, undulating across the ground. My initial surprise wore off and I fell straight up in the air.

Not to lose its prey, the kaiju worm stretched out as far as it could, reaching up into the sky after me and clicking its jaws at my heels, wings thrumming as it struggled to keep up. I tumbled and righted myself, still falling up and away from the worm. It receded quickly as I plummeted into the sky.

I summoned my atomic breaker gauntlets and helmet, before focusing on the worm far below and redirecting my drive. Gravity kicked back in, and I started falling toward the ground and worm. A weak flier, it had returned to land. It reared back and lunged up at me, and I closed my eyes.

The landing was squishy, and hot. I slammed into the kaiju worm's guts and activated the breaker gauntlet. I burst out of the back of its neck, in a flash of blue light and gore.

So much for the pants Ordo gave me. I gave them a good long look. They were wholly covered in slime.

After landing in a stumbling run, I turned to see the kaiju worm sway unsteadily before toppling onto the fruition center. Metal screamed and tore, as glass shattered and the ceiling collapsed, taking a huge part of the wall with it.

Roughly a third of it collapsed with the worm, torn down as a gash was torn in the ceiling.

I gasped, drawing a hand up to my helmet-covered mouth as I waited for BuyMort to respond.

But nothing happened.

No pods, no more bugs, not even one of those pathetic little laser pods that liked to shoot me up when I visited Tower. Just me, the desert, and the smashed up fruition center.

Before long, the kaiju worm began to move again. Its tail lifted and was dragged inside the ruined warehouse, while loud crunching sounds began.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I fell up and through the gaping hole in the ceiling. I directed my fall to avoid the bustling robots, but it was an easy task, as the massive fruition center was nearly empty.

Only a small handful of pods and shipping robots were in the warehouse, along with the customary vat of Tower. This time, he looked different. Pale, sickly, gray in pallor.

Tower still had the same pudgy features and fists, but the mound of meat he formed his face out of was significantly lower. A chubby meat hand waved limply at me.

“Hi Tyson!” Tower exclaimed. “Thanks for bringing me something to eat! You’re a good friend.”

I took a few steps away from the rear wall, which was where BuyMort was still doing business, albeit at a reduced rate. The portals in the ceiling and floor where the worm had crushed were simply not active, and the few remaining BuyMort machines operated around the wreckage in the room.

“Hey! It’s good to see you again,” I shouted up to the creature. He liked my shiny head, and I never quite trusted him not to eat me, so I kept the helmet in place.

I looked around again, before facing the giant flesh creature while he ate his jumbo sized worm. He wasn’t savoring it, like he usually did, he was just inhaling it as quickly as he could. As I watched, some color began to restore in his meat, shifting slowly from gray back to pink.

“Are you okay, buddy?” I finally asked.

Tower finished chewing his mouthful and swallowed hard. The mass of worm meat and armor plating visibly distended his mound as it passed through.

“I’m hungry. BuyMort decided this center wasn’t worth keeping anymore,” he said. A pudgy hand of meat stretched up to flick his large rubber feeding tube, which was attached to the ceiling. “No more food for me.”

“Wait, BuyMort just lets you starve if it doesn’t need your flesh-tape anymore?” I asked, hands on my hips.

“That’s part of the deal,” he rumbled from above me. “Besides, not like I’m the only me around.”

Tower closed his watery, bloodshot eyes and pressed his giant lips together in concentration. “I can sense . . . three more close, and another . . . this many on this landmass,” he said, raising all his pudgy fingers on one hand. He looked at the hand, and another group of fingers protruded from the meat bulk.

The number of Towers on the landmass was undetermined. He seemed to struggle with counting beyond anything he could do on his fingers. With the extra fingers protruding and retracting seemingly at random, he gave up and focused on his meal.

“How long since you’ve had anything to eat, buddy?” I gently asked. My concern for the well-being of a friend was false, I wanted to know this thing’s vulnerabilities.

“Oh I dunno,” he mumbled. “A while.”

There was a significant problem surrounding my conversations with Tower. He was innocent and child-like until you started saying his name repeatedly. Clarity was not his strongest suit, until that crown of heated bone rose, and his features changed to look like a skull. Then he managed to find clarity, but with it came some rather unsettling aggression.

The meat creature hadn’t tried to harm me yet, but the way our conversations had been going, I imagined it was only a matter of time. I’d ask the wrong question, and he’d smush or eat me.

“Well, maybe I can help bring you food. How much do you need a day?” I asked.

His eyes wavered and wobbled, and he rolled them up in thought. I wondered briefly where his brain was, and if he had one. The meat in the vat formed his face seemingly at will, though he did avoid areas that were frequently shaved for BuyMort packing purposes.

“I dunno. Lots,” he finally said. The kaiju worm had been the biggest BuyMort had sent against me yet, by an order of magnitude. The rest had fit inside the fruition centers. This one would not have, evidenced by the giant mess it made of the place when it fell on the thing.

“Hey, so BuyMort won’t come fix up the place?” I asked, gesturing around.

Normally, when I broke a window or wall portion to get in, BuyMort would get to work on fixing it, and I’d have to deal with a second kaiju worm on my way out. Tower would eat the first one, but the second usually got warped-in outside, which meant it was BlueCleave’s job to kill the thing. They liked the meat, but it hardly seemed worth the heavy ordinance required to bring one down.

All of these disparate BuyMort-tainted pains in my ass were the reason I didn’t visit Tower as often as either of us would like. I appeared to be his only friend, but he was my only lead on BuyMort. On how it operated, and how I could beat it. But it was hard having a conversation with him. Until that fruition center in the middle of the Calexico desert.

“Naw, BuyMort not gonna fix it. No point. Once it shut down fully, pods warp away what left, including poor Tower,” he said. At the sound of his own name, he blinked. His eyes stopped watering and wobbling, fixating on me below. “Why are you asking?” he said.

I thought for a long moment, staring up at my towering ‘friend.’

“Maybe I can bring BuyMort back. Get you more food, keep this place going,” I carefully answered. “I don’t like knowing my friends are suffering, and you’re starving to death.”

Tower rumbled and shook as he laughed. “I cannot be killed,” he said. “Not truly.”

That sent a shiver down my spine, but I decided to press my luck. The knowledge that I could just fall away through the open roof emboldened me.

“Hey, cool!” I exclaimed. “Me either!”

Tower stared down at me, steam beginning to rise from around his head. “But you are just you,” he eventually said. “How can you remain alive once killed?”

“How can you?” I asked.

Tower frowned. “I told you, I am everywhere. Everywhere BuyMort is, anyway. I grow strong with its spread.” Bones began to appear from his meaty pulp, rising to slowly form a skull shape over his face.

“Right, but that doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand what you mean when you say that,” I clarified. He was starting to become coherent, which meant my time was getting short. Once he awoke more fully from his child-like form, he changed. I felt as though his answers were cagey, and his questions became probing.

“Tell me how you cannot be killed,” he rumbled. “I don’t believe you.”

I stared up at him, watching as the pink spread through his meat more fully, and more patches of steam began to emerge.

“Fine. My body repairs, if damaged,” I said.

“Oh ho ho!” Tower bellowed. “That is not unkillable, tiny human. That is how flesh exists across the multiverse.” A gout of steam billowed from his skull mask as his eyes hardened on me. “I could kill you now.”

I slowly shook my head. “Don’t kill your friends, Tower.”

The flesh beast raised an arm, and I watched as it formed into a sizable fist. Lengths of bone emerged and formed into a massive cutting blade, extending from his wrist back to his elbow.

“Friends,” he mumbled. “Don’t kill your friends . . . are you my friend, tiny human?”

When speaking to the child-like version of Tower, my responses had been kindly, and encouraging. When his skull mask came out, that kind of interaction seemed to upset him, so I decided to change course.

“I’m the closest thing to one you have, as far as I can tell,” I answered. “Why would you want to kill me anyway?”

“You ask too many questions, human,” he said, staring at his arm blade as if trying to remember something. “I’m not supposed to answer questions.”

Suddenly, the arm lashed down, palm extended. I activated my drive and fell up to the ceiling. He struck the ground with a resonating thud, and the tip of his bone blade sunk deep into the desert sand. As I clung to the rafters, Tower lifted his palm and looked beneath it.

He looked around, side to side, sweeping the ground with his sight. “Where have you gone, human!” he roared, trembling the damaged rafters.

“I got you a worm to eat too, Tower,” I said from the ceiling. “Is this how you treat a friend?”

His gaze whipped up to see me attached to the roof and a great billow of steam arose from his flesh. Around his head, flames began to crackle and lick at his meat, charring it as more layers of bone arose from within. The flesh beast lunged at the ceiling, and I dropped, falling directly toward his hand.

I activated my power blow ability and slammed both feet into his palm as I dropped. The meat and bone he was composed of splashed apart as I punched through his palm. Tower roared in pain, retracting the blasted stump into his body.

After landing among the scattered slop of his flesh and bone shards, I turned to stare up at him. Horns grew from my silvery helmet, and I prepared to attack him again.

But the flesh beast seemed actually hurt. His bones slid away under the skin again, and the flames crackling across his body snuffed. The charred meat sunk away underneath, replaced by fresh pink meat.

I watched Tower for a long moment, as he began to softly weep. His eyes were watery and wobbling when he finally looked at me again, and he raised a reformed pudgy hand to point at me.

“Why?” Tower cried. “I thought we were friends, Tyson!”

The pain had reverted him to his child-like state.

“I’m sorry, but you attacked me,” I replied.

Tower sniffled and stopped crying. “I did? I’m sorry, Tyson! I’m so sorry! Please don’t stop being my friend!” he wailed, waterworks starting up again fully.

I hesitated, and Tower continued crying, tears forming and flowing down into his own body mass.

“It’s okay, I’m still your friend,” I finally said.

Tower stopped crying at once, his pudgy hands lowering from in front of his eyes. “You mean it?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “Friends fight sometimes, just try not to attack me again.”

Tower waved the hand I had destroyed, now made of fresher, pinker meat. “You hurt, Tyson! Big hurt! I don’t wanna attack you anyway,” he said, with a short giggle.

“You could have hurt me too, big buy. Don’t forget about your worm.”

He’d dropped the rear half of the kaiju worm corpse when he converted, but upon my advice, he gasped in realization and snatched it up off the floor. After taking a massive, crunching bite, he nodded gratefully at me.

“So hungry. Thank you for the crunchy treat, Tyson-friend!” Tower said. “What was it you wanted to know?” he squinted, heavy meat eyelids bunching up over his watery eyes.

I thought about that question before answering. Tower was my best tactical information source about BuyMort. Based on his response to pointed questions about the system, however, I felt like I needed to be careful. As a child-like mind, he was nearly useless. But at least he wasn’t attacking me.

“I was asking what kind of stuff you need to eat. Maybe I can feed you, since BuyMort stopped,” I offered.

“Water,” he said without hesitation. “I’m very thirsty.” Tower munched on his worm for a few minutes. “I like these worm treats too. Need more though, if you feeding me now.”

“How many each day?” I asked.

In my helmet, a distracting icon rose from the fog of my crystal ball. It was my MortMobile account, with an incoming call. Axle was on the other side; I could feel the psychic deity that operated the multiversal phone system projecting his angst into my mind.

I pushed it aside, concentrating on my desire to call him right back, and then focused back on Tower.

“Maybe four? No, five!” he said.

“Okay buddy, I can’t promise anything, but I am gonna try,” I said. I readied my drive and waved a hand up at Tower. “I have to go. My affiliate needs me!” I told him. “But I’m going to try and get you another worm before I go.”

He nodded eagerly and took another massive bite of the kaiju worm. Looking around, I found a nearby BuyMort loader robot and fell toward it through the air.

I landed on the hovering machine and used my enhanced strength to rip off both its loader arms. It cried out an electronic warning as red lights flashed across what was left of the warehouse. One of the few pods in the building warped in another winged kaiju worm, this one just big enough to fit inside the building.

BuyMort appeared to have rules, when it came to bug summons around its own equipment.

“There you go buddy, all yours!” I gripped the metal arms and fell toward the hole in the ceiling. The kaiju worm lunged to snap at me in the same instant Tower lunged to grab it. Tower caught the worm by surprise and shoved its midsection into his gaping maw.

It squealed as I plummeted out of the gaping hole in the ceiling, before a loud crunch cut off the sound.

My fall diverted to the side as I focused on an image of the Prescott tower in my mind, and the starfish gravitic drive diverted my gravity.

I focused on the little glowing crystal ball icon in my helmet’s HUD and brought up the psychic phone. A gray, bald head appeared in the ball and looked around at his surroundings, before rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m with you. I hate the helmet too. Function over form though, connect me with Axle please?” I asked.

The psychic entity nodded, turned his head, and became a tunnel of gray fog, with Axle at the other end. “Where are you?” my friend and partner immediately asked.

“Uhhh, somewhere in Southern California?” I answered. “Why, what’s going on?”

“A dream storm has manifested and is approaching. Should be in Prescott within the next six hours. Molls informed me you have some experience with this particular kind,” he said.

Chapter 18

I sighed and asked, “Clay tentacle monsters spouting inky black fog?”

Axle nodded. “Rayna is already rallying our starfish troopers. Molls told me all we have to do is keep people above eight feet?”

“That’s how it worked last time, yeah. I wouldn’t count on it though. It's based off a fuckin’ dream. Not like those are exactly stable,” I said.

“Your dreams are unstable, that doesn’t mean everyone’s dreams are unstable,” Axle absently reminded me. “But you’re right, we shouldn’t count on it being exactly the same, even from a recurring dream.”

He typed a few lines on his machine before turning back to face me fully.

“We need to release a report to the people of Prescott, ASAP. Church TV is already all over this, using Dearth satellites to track the storm in real time. We have panic in the streets already, thanks to CTV showing footage of what happened to Prescott last time,” he said.

I cursed the broadcast channel which, like Storage, was technically free. But you paid for it by having to sift through a lot of disingenuous truths and outright frauds.

And it was available to anyone with any sort of MortMobile psychic reception device.

I sighed and focused my gravitic drive on falling faster. My speed increased somewhat, but the land below was still moving too slowly.

An ad popped up in the corner of my vision, out of the way so that I could still see, but with enough presence to be highly annoying.

AxalionMax — Blockbuster Movies, Epic Originals, Addictive On The Spot TV . . . Made to your tastes! 4.9 stars, 50000 morties per month. Conditions apply.

Thankfully the damn thing was visual or audio. Or maybe BuyMort was just sheltering me from certain doom by keeping all of that on pause for the moment. In any event, I twitched it away and closed it.

Despite how intriguing ‘On-The-Spot TV’ sounded, the idea of making up your own TV programs wasn’t something I had time to play with now. I would definitely revisit that later.

“Alright,” I said. “Tell ‘em BlueCleave is responding, and that all they have to do to be safe is go upstairs. A closed door wouldn’t hurt, but the primary thing is getting everyone above eight feet in the air. That’s all we did last time, and they left us alone.”

“Alright, I’ll get on that. It would be better coming from you,” Axle said.

“I’m on route. Not sure how long I’ll be though, you better just get Rayna or Lee. Maybe Tollya? She’s well-liked,” I said, scowling in thought.

“No, I don’t think Tollya sends a message of calm the way we need. I’ll just ask Jada. How are you en route, exactly?” he asked.

“Oh, shit, I forgot. I can fly now,” I answered.

Axle’s eyes widened at that, and he turned to face his device more fully. “You can fly now? The suit?”

I nodded. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to grab you for our usual visit to Teslak.”

“That’s alright, I’ll pick your brain about it later. For now, just get here, please,” Axle said.

I nodded again and he disconnected our call.

It was time to focus on my flying. Well, falling. I wasn’t really sure, as it still felt like falling to me.

I focused on the tower in Prescott, and then, while trying to hold that image in my mind, focused on increasing my rate of speed. This new power was certainly impressive, but using it was awkward. I would need to practice with it a lot. At present I felt like a toddler taking his first thousand steps

My cartoon starfish appeared, swimming in the air beside me. “User, are you sure? There isn’t enough charge to do what you’re asking! Break something and we’ll see!”

And there was that. Of course.

I groaned and nodded, before focusing on the nearby ground to land. After landing gently on the sands of Southern California, I searched around for things to break. The area around me was barren. Nothing but sand and scrub, as far as the eye could see.

It made me yearn for the simpler days of Sada’s windows. A small wave of sadness swept over me.

Our portal perk started sounding better, but we only had the one available for the week, having used up all our other freebees. That one was in case another reaper hound appeared, and I didn’t want to miss my chance at killing one of those.

BlueCleave morale required it of me. I’d become a living legend in the time since BlueCleave’s meteoric rise from Storage. The hobbs believed that getting a suit would make them like me, invincible, and they all strived to be worthy of one. It was great for recruitment, and loyalty.

But I was far from invincible, I was just aggressive and destructive enough to keep my suit charged. For that to work, I needed things around me to break.

I dropped to my knees, shoving my atomic breaker gauntlets into the sand, and digging. Huge clumps of dry earth flew free, and my suit began to charge slowly, simply from crushing sand against the gauntlets. After a couple of minutes, I found a sizable stone in the hard-pack and crushed it between both hands.

My cartoon starfish danced at my side. “More user, more charge! Your upgrade has increased my charge capacity significantly, you’ll have to find something better to break than that!”

I sighed, marveling at how weak I could be when left in a place like, well, this. I concentrated on the Prescott tower again, engaging my gravitic drive. It hauled me sideways across the ground, lifting me slowly into the air as I fell. Another burst of concentration had me flying much higher, and I started looking at the ground for any kind of structure, or even a road.

I had just passed over what was left of the ruins of Calexico Mexicali, but I didn’t want to go back, with Prescott in the other direction. Nor did I particularly want to deal with the ramifications of destroying a survivor's outpost in my search for charge.

Plenty of structures, infrastructure, and even roads had been torn out and sold, leaving me very little to break. Those areas that hadn’t been scavenged for everything they were worth seemed to be fortified, and possibly lived in. The vast majority of both border cities had been reduced to desert hardpack and gaping holes in the ground.

Instead of risking any conflict with local survivors who might still be hunkered down, I decided to simply fall to the border with Arizona. MortBlock changes over time would lead me to firmer ideas of where they were.

I had BlueCleave outposts set up all over the border, and several were saved in my helmet’s ‘magical’ map. The only difference was that it had a papyrus scroll background.

One of my newest outposts was nearby, and I pinged my helmet’s map to lock it in, concentrating on falling toward it. BlueCleave had developed a fantastic system for charging the starfish trooper’s suits, and I fell in from above to make use of it.

A scattering of hobbs were startled by my sudden appearance from the sky, but quickly got over it and cheered at my arrival. A handful saluted, or stood at attention, and the outpost’s commander came trotting from his building to greet me.

BlueCleave hobbs, and those who joined them in our armed forces, adhered to military-style ranking systems quite naturally. A base commander was the rough equivalent of an Army lieutenant. The young hobb was in charge of the outpost, and troops that staffed it.

Our outposts were repurposed Dearth fortifications. They came complete with reinforced plasticrete walls, and a small handful of necessary buildings. A secure armory, vehicle hangar, mess hall, officer’s quarters, barracks, water tower, and Mo-gas generator. Some of it we stole from Dearth, some of it we brought in ourselves. All of it got put to good use.

Once the commander of the outpost came out and got reassurances that nothing was about to attack, he became jovial.

Looking at the hobb’s ecstatic face, I realized I should visit my troops more often. It was still sometimes hard to remember the position I’d carved out in post-BuyMort life. BlueCleave in particular loved the one-on-one with me, they really enjoyed it. And guard duty on a conquered border was dull.

Fortunately, dull did not mean poorly prepared. Each of our outposts were stocked, with vehicles, weaponry, shields, ammunition, and helpful little glass orbs for charging the starfish troopers suits if they were ever needed.

“Take me to your PRDs, please,” I asked the base commander.

He nodded and started marching toward the armory, gesturing for me to follow.

PRD stood for Prince Rupert’s Drop, also known as a Dutch Tear. It was a unique formation of glass, similar to a droplet of water or a tadpole. Because our suits were charged by us breaking things, a PRD was perfect for charging them.

Axle explained it to me once, at Morbin Time over drinks. Our hobbs started making them from their local forge, by smelting sifted desert sand. They were cheap to the point of being free, and absurdly easy to make. Once a hobb had basic forge safety down, all they had to do was get a sizable drop of molten glass on the end of a pole, and let it drip down into a bucket of cold water.

He told me the outside of the drop was in extremely high compressive stress, while the inside was in extremely high tensile stress.

The result was a tadpole of glass that was absurdly hard, and fully recharged even my suit when broken. You had to snip or crush the tail to break it, and once you did, the entire thing exploded in a million tiny shards of glass.

Thankfully, we kept them encased in foam, with only the tip of their tails exposed.

There were even safety goggles attached to the inside of the lid.

The technology that went into the storage cases we used on these things was much higher than the PRDs themselves. As soon as the base commander showed me to their crate, I used my atomic breaker gauntlets to crush the tail on one, and my suit’s charge shot straight up to full, while the foam contained most of the explosion of glass shards.

They also had a tendency to prompt BuyMort into sending me the most peculiar ad I’d ever experienced in this Shopocalypse.

Are you the Windowpuncher? Do you gain power from punching windows? Then have we got the deal for you. Portable ‘Tyson Dawes’ Windowpuncher-Brand Windows. Simply cock back that beautiful fist and let fly at the Dearth logo painted in its center.

And please please please do it in a way that makes it to Church Television! 3.2 stars, 400 morties.

The ad was accompanied by audio of me screaming profanities during one of my many man-on-monster matches, and behind the text fluttered a flag with my helmeted face at its center.

And the name of the affiliate paying for the ad was The Tyson Dawes ‘Windowpuncher’ Fan Club.

It was so targeted, and so hopeful. I’d gained a cult following in the multiverse among the youth of a thousand worlds, and this was the result.

I had to admit, it was kinda cute.

And the mix of good and bad reviews were hilarious.

“DAMN WINDOWS DON’T INSTALL WELL IN BUILDINGS. IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY WANT TO BREAK.” 1 STAR

“GO TYSON! MY BUDS AND I LOVE THESE THINGS. THEY’RE CHEAP AND WE BUY THEM THEN SMASH THEM UP WITH ROCKS AND STUFF. DEARTH CONGLOMERATE CAN SUCK IT.”

And even, “TYSON DAWES WILL DIE, AND ALL THAT HE HAS CHERISHED SHALL BE DROWNED IN FLAME.”

That one might have been my favorite, because it explained the billion plus reviews the item had received. I was apparently a polarizing issue.

I thanked the base commander for his help, stepped back out into the sunlight, and activated my gravitic drive. The hobbs all cheered when they saw me soar up into the air, angling my fall toward Prescott. No doubt they would be talking about my new ability.

Chapter 19

With the recent developments on Nu-Earth it was a good time for the multiverse to be afraid of me again, of what I could do. My new and upgraded abilities would help push my reputation.

Maybe even raise my credit score.

With some manipulation of my ‘magic’ helmet, I found I was able to get a real time speed out of it, in a language I could understand, miles per hour.

I quickly reached terminal velocity, just over one-hundred-and-twenty-four miles per hour. The reason I knew this was terminal velocity is because I couldn’t get myself to go any faster. I turned, angled my limbs, and flattened my body in the direction I was going.

Nothing helped.

So I concentrated hard. I focused on the Prescott tower, I focused on home. I thought of Molls, probably in her hot room, taking a sand bath in preparation for leaving Nu-Earth. Of my desire to get back to her.

The wind, uncomfortable before, became suddenly painful, and I looked up to see the Prescott tower looming. I swerved in a failed attempt to avoid it, bounced off the hardened upper floor window, and plunged face-first toward the pavement below.

The gravitic drive attempted to compensate as I landed, and I ended up bouncing once in a belly flop, before landing a second time unsteadily on my feet.

A gaping crowd of people formed around me, complete with flashing phones. My cartoon starfish appeared in the midst of them and started snapping pictures of its own.

“Sorry user, but you can only accelerate and decelerate so fast. Don’t worry! You’ll get better at using the drive!”

Tendrils deployed to take care of the road rash I’d gotten in my belly flop, and I shook my mirrored head. I thought of the top of the tower, and jumped, launching up to it in a single leap.

My starfish appeared again, landing in a mocking super hero pose. “See! Good work user, you’re getting the hang of it already! Gravitic control is hard!”

The suit was sensing my intention and manipulating my personal gravity in an attempt to give me what I wanted. Flying felt like falling but functioned like flying because the suit knew that was what I wanted.

An important detail to remember when controlling this thing.

The roof door slammed open and a hobb in heavy armor with an active shield stepped out, raising a laser rifle at me. He realized who I was and lowered the weapon, before saluting me, and speaking into a shoulder mounted radio.

The exclusive Statron Tactical Shoulder-Mounted Comms System. By Spacer Communications. We give you the first 1000 morties you spend at our affiliate, free!

Our Statron Tactical Systems are hard and strong, encased in a thin personal shielding device designed to keep it dry and operational. Chat with anyone anywhere on the planet with paired Statron Tactical Comm Devices.

Spacer Communications. Your friends in Global Tactical Planning and Execution. 9500 morties. 4.3 stars.

Rayna tried to get me to carry one of those around, but I kept breaking equipment. And while Silken Sands profit was always expanding, its population was expanding as well. All decisions had to be made at a sensical and strategic level, and my tendency to ‘Tyson Smash’, as Tollya called it, had to be accounted for.

Eventually she put a stop to it, by saying the bill for MortMobile was cheaper than replacing my gear.

The hobb guard escorted me down to my penthouse, but hesitated to enter, instead saluting me again at the door.

Molls was dressed in a light, pink dress that I’d never seen her wear before. She was in the middle of packing, and had stopped to cry, coiled on our oversized bed surrounded by luggage.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. My helmet siphoned away into my pores.

Her scales flushed pink to match her dress, and she turned her head to wipe her eyes. “It’s nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes and rising from the bed to hug and kiss me. “Hi.”

I scowled and returned the kiss. “Hi yourself,” I replied. “I still want to know why you were crying.”

Molls’ scales filled with a light green, pushing the pink color out. “My mother, of course,” she huffed. “She’s been messaging me since Baja.” Another burst of pink color swirled into the green and she grabbed a nearby towel to catch another oversized tear.

“We should still be in Baja. I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, I get it. You have your wars to run, and I have to go deal with my family. Reassure them that I haven’t lost my way, fallen in with bad actors, or become a raging drug addict,” she said, turning away and collapsing in a heap on the bed.

“That Tyson Dawes, we’ve been watching him on the programs and news. He isn’t good. He is NoMart,” she said in a mocking high-pitched tone. I struggled not to smile, knowing that her cute humor was serious in context. “And I can’t even pack. All the commotion in the city is so distracting.”

“Are you taking a portal?” I asked.

She nodded, writhing her tail on the bed and shoving luggage out of the way. “Of course. Mother insists. They’re paying for it, so I can’t really complain. About that part, anyway.”

“Can you afford to get a portal back?” I asked, sitting down on the bed beside her.

She frowned. “Over that distance, it would take most of my personal account, without a deposit and significant wait time.”

I reached a hand out and grasped hers, and she squirmed around until she was leaning in my lap. “Well, why don’t you place a ticket for one as soon as you get there? That way, it’ll be cheaper by the time you’re ready to leave,” I offered.

“Yes, I’ll do that,” Molls grumped. “Still, I doubt my mother is going to imprison me or something. She’s not that bad.”

I took a deep breath and stared out the window at my city. Prescott was in full retreat, BlueCleave hobbs everywhere ushering residents and business people up to the second floors of nearby buildings, and setting up roadblocks to funnel the dream storm, if it got that far.

“I’m sorry to ask, but are you sure about that?” I finally asked.

Molls blinked up at me and started slowly turning red. After a long moment, she sighed and said, “no.”

I patted her tail, our signal for her to let me up, and she uncoiled from my waist. I walked to our personal vault, another stolen Dearth convenience. Axle had wiped it for me and set it up for my own personal use. The room was essentially a panic room, coded to the DNA of a select few people. Molls, Rayna, Tollya, Lee, Axle, Jada, and myself.

Inside were stored the treasures we’d taken from the Wizard, and the other Dearth board members I’d usurped. Any loot from the board members that my hobbs had taken out got divided up between them, with only a small, honorary percentage being sent to me after they were sold. But the Wizard’s gear I had kept.

Magic, while not at all real, was powerful in the BuyMort system.

There was a strange mythos around magic items in BuyMort, I quickly noticed. After my battle with the Wizard, he’d gone on a media blitz, showing off his mangled thumbs and denouncing me as ‘magically perverse,’ whatever that meant.

I walked in the secure room and opened a wall safe at the back, retrieving a bag of magic rings. The Wizard had whined about them on air, so I wore them on church TV for a few weeks before the back and forth got old. Axle had done some digging and identified most of them for me.

Molls was still flopped out on our bed when I returned and tossed the bag of rings down next to her. She scowled and reached for it, drawing the strings open.

“Babe! These are your magic rings!” she exclaimed. “Why are you giving them to me?”

I sat back down on the bed and raised one of the rings up, showing her the pink jewel encased in its gold filigree cage. “This one is a mega-shield. Wear it please, it’ll keep you safe from attacks. It’s not like our hobbs shields, it’ll stop a slow attack too.”

I raised a finger and willed the item’s ad into the air before us. There were trumpets, and a sparkling tune, the sort of psychic hotline bullshit that was designed to make people feel mystified.

ARCANUM INDUSTRIES - AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN THE WORLD OF MAGIC. CAST ASIDE YOUR DELUSIONS, YOUR SCIENCE, AND FEAST YOUR EYES UPON THE MAGNIFICENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL REALM, INCARNATED INTO ITEMS OF POWER.

BEHOLD THE RING OF PROTECTION, MARK 3. THIS SPIRIT FOCUS WILL BOTH ENLIGHTEN YOUR MIND AND PROTECT YOU FROM THE BEINGS OF THE PHYSICAL PLANE.

BE SAFE. BE SMART. PURCHASE A RING OF PROTECTION TODAY!

18,000,000 morties. 4.9 stars.

Molls’s eyes sparkled, quite wide, as she took in all of the theatrics.

“It’s an energy shield. A mega-energy shield. There’s no such thing as magic,” I said, waving my hand to dismiss the hocus pocus. “But damn is it a fine item. There is a lot of power in these rings. They’re very high quality.”

I filtered around in the bag some more and found one with a thick band of green crystal running its length. “This one does acid splash, with very little recharge, and it’ll protect you against Sleem immersion.”

“Of course there’s such a thing as magic, don’t be silly. Flick the ad, Tyson. I enjoy them,” Molls said, smiling.

I chuckled and let it loose.

ENTERING INTO A DANGEROUS AND DARK PLACE? HAVE NO FEAR, ADVENTURER, FOR ARCANUM INDUSTRIES HATH ARRIVED!

I was impressed. This one seemed to have gone even further in. A voice actor was crying out the words as if he were some archmage atop a mountain in the midst of magical maelstrom.

THE DANGERS ARE MANY. FORSOOTH, HAVE YE NOT WORN THE RING OF ACID PROTECTION?

FLY, ADVENTURERS. MAKE HASTE! ARCANUM INDUSTRIES IS OPEN AND READY TO SERVE. ACID PROTECTION OF THE FINEST QUALITY. 1,800,000 morties. 4.7 stars

The ad faded away and Molls took the ring, sliding it onto a dainty, scaled finger. “I love it,” she said, kissing me.

We found a few others, enough for her to carry and wear while she was out of my protection. The thought of her being a few universes away suddenly scared me, though I was also afraid of what could happen to her if she stayed on Nu-Earth.

“If you can’t get home, just sell as many of those as you need to get a portal. Head straight for Silken Sands, Lee or Axle will take care of you,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “Or just ask Morbin for help when you arrive, he’ll get the hobbs if you need them.”

Molls met my eyes and smiled. “You worry too much, my love,” she said, reaching to embrace me.

I happily buried myself in her scales, hugging her tight as her tail gently wrapped around me. “I really like your outfit,” I replied, trying to distract her. She’d told me she loved me a few times already, and began referring to me as her love, which I enjoyed, but struggled to reciprocate.

It wasn’t that I didn’t feel that way about her. There was just something that held me back from expressing it. Anytime I tried, that cold thing in my chest twisted again and I shut down. It felt like fear, but I didn’t feel fear the same anymore, since the suit. The entire situation made me highly uncomfortable.

She plucked at it and grimaced. “Mother prefers me in a dress, or my priest robes. Can’t wear those around her until I’m officially reinstated, so dress it is.”

I scowled and shook my head. “So wear whatever you like,” I answered.

Molls rolled her oversized green eyes, and said, “And deal with her griping about my outfit all night? No thank you. Trust me babe, she’s much easier to deal with when placated.”

Her scales flushed green and orange, and she sarcastically sighed.

“I’m a good-girl for mommy.”

“But not for me?” I said, wry smile on my lips.

Molls scales began shifting to purple and she shook her head with a smile of her own. “What do you have to complain about, exactly?” she asked, while pressing her breasts down on top of me and undulating her tail across my body.

“Not a thing,” I whispered, drawing her closer.

Chapter 20

Two hours, and several missed calls from my partners in the affiliate later, a security hobb knocked hesitantly on the bedroom door. Molls sighed and slid her coils off from me.

“I know, you have to go. Save your city,” she said.

I nodded, running my hands along her tail. “Our city, but yeah. I’m already overdue. Rayna’s probably gonna gut me, I better report in.”

She gently nodded as I stood, covering her nudity with our Florida king-sized blanket. I grabbed my bug gut-stained pants, held them in front of myself, and cracked the door.

The hobb attempted to avoid looking into the room, or down at my groin, but it was well known what Molls and I got up to when neither of us could be reached, so he was embarrassed simply to be in proximity.

“Rayna need you boss. Dream storm coming,” he grunted. As soon as I nodded in acknowledgement, he turned on a heel to report back.

I shut the door with a chuckle, turned back to Molls, and dropped the stained pants. Normally she smiled and gawked, happy to objectify me. That day, however, I saw a quick flush of royal blue pass across her scales, and she blinked, looking away.

“Are you okay, Molls?” I asked.

She smiled then, for my benefit. “I was just thinking of the first time this dream storm happened,” she said.

I returned to the bed and sat back down beside her, reaching a hand out for hers. She grasped it lightly, her claws trailing against my wrist and tickling.

“There were a lot less of us back then,” I said.

She nodded. “I knew then that I would fall in love with you.” Molls’ voice was barely more than a whisper, and the yellow creeping into her scales betrayed her growing fear. “I saw a moment of who you are. Your kindness, your gentle heart.”

I shook my head and raised a hand to stop her. “It’s the word, Molls. That’s all it is, I struggle with that word.”

The rising yellow was joined by a flush of green, and she blinked in confusion at me.

I sighed and continued, “It doesn’t mean to me what it’s meant to those I’ve said it to before. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that, I just get scared and shut down when you say it to me. I don’t know what it means to you, or if I’m giving that feeling back the way you expect or need. If I say it, and then fail to live up to it, what happens to us?”

Her hand squeezed mine, and she smiled. Purple began to push into her scales, and she told me, “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it back, not until you’re ready. I just wanted to know your mind. Thank you for sharing that with me. It proves my feelings for you right.”

“I’m sorry, Molls. You’ve said it like half a dozen times, I should have just explained right away,” I replied, the words falling out in a rush.

She raised a finger to my lips. “I know better than to expect that from you, my darling. You’re not that easy,” Molls said, smile widening. “But worth the effort.”

I grinned back and leaned in to kiss her. “Thank you.”

Molls happily returned the kiss but pulled her face back early and scowled in confusion. “For what?”

“For being you,” I said, staring into her giant, green eyes.

She smiled gently and pressed herself into my arms. “Your oasis?”

I nodded and squeezed her close. The big word itself I struggled with, but I knew how I felt about her, even then, when it was all still so young. “My oasis.”

Molls pulled back and looked me in the eyes. “Are you going to be okay without me?” she asked.

I instantly shook my head with a grin. “Nope, and I’m gonna make it everyone else’s problem.”

She scoffed a laugh and narrowed her beautiful eyes at me. “I’m sure you will.”

The elevator in our lobby dinged again and I sighed in exasperation as I turned to yell at a hobb.

Molls stopped me with a hand on my wrist and a soft smile. “I’ll be gone when you get done, mother is expecting me soon, and I don’t want her to hire any more mercenaries because I was late.” She rolled her eyes. “Be safe, and kick some ass.”

I kissed her, felt the smile against my lips, and kissed her harder before breaking it off. “I’ll probably own Nu-Earth by the time you get back,” I said, before becoming serious for a moment. “You be safe, Molls. I don’t like you being so far away.”

She nodded and pushed at my chest. “I will. Now go, get dressed before they break down our bedroom door.”

I grabbed a pair of jeans from our shared closet and struggled into them as Molls slithered nude into the oversized closet. With a pair of socks and standard BlueCleave issue boots in hand, I slipped out of the bedroom and faced Rayna in my foyer.

She looked pissed.

“Tyson, we need you!” my chief of security grunted.

I raised a finger and shushed her, nodding toward the elevator.

“You guys are freaking out over nothing,” I said, once we were ensconced in the small room. “This dream storm is easy, just empty the streets for a few hours and it’ll go away on its own.”

Rayna shook her head with a low growl. “No, it not that easy. Axle sent you video. You need to answer phone.”

I sighed and nodded. “I know, and I’m sorry. Molls is leaving,” I said. “Our trip was cut short, and now she’s going home. I wanted to spend time with her.”

I summoned my shining helmet, pulling up the phone app to watch Axles' video message.

It showed a remote Dearth facility up north, on the Idaho Utah border, as the dream storm roiled down on it. A rolling black cloud formed the primary body of the dream storm, with flashes of lightning sparking through at random intervals. The facility appeared to have been farmland at one point but had been abandoned as Dearth began scaling back their operation.

Squatters had settled there, I know because I kept trying to get them to relocate to Prescott. Some of them had, but there was very little trust left in a lot of my species’ hearts. Most had stayed, and told my squads ‘no,’ at gunpoint, so we stopped asking.

They had a ten-mile area, walled in with black plasticrete blocks, and worked some of the land themselves. As I watched, the dream storm crashed into their wall and stopped.

It wouldn’t spread out beyond its five mile range. This particular dream storm had rules, and it appeared to be a recurring nightmare for the person who had summoned it. No matter what else it did, the rolling bank of fog was unable to divert from its four-point-five mile wide path.

It was composed of thousands of individual tentacle balls, all made at the bizarre and highly customizable CloneMort facilities, part of BuyMort’s dream service. It could produce clay clones of just about anything anyone could dream up.

These were writhing balls of hardened ceramic tentacles. Each could puff black smoke into the air to keep them enshrouded, and each was lethal with its whip-armed tentacles. I myself had briefly lost a forearm to them, the first time around.

Thankfully my suit put me back together.

As I watched the video, the tentacle balls all lined up and began whacking at the wall with their arms, sending snaps of electrical current flashing, as if tiny lightning strikes. Some broke, but simply used other arms. If a ball became unable to continue attacking the wall, it rolled back and allowed another to take its place.

Within seconds the wall crumbled, and the dream storm poured in through the breach. A similar scene occurred on the other side of the facility, and the storm kept moving, straight for Prescott.

I shrugged and turned to Rayna. “So? We’re not behind a wall.”

The elevator stopped and Rayna started walking me to the armory.

“No, we just behind expensive space elevator,” she grunted.

My heart dropped.

The elevator at that level was composed of a thick carbon ring that had been sunk into the ground. Behind that wall sat delicate and varied mechanical systems, necessary for elevator operation. Those I wasn’t worried about, the carbon ring had been engineered to survive entry in multiple planetary atmospheres.

Our giant donut cargo vessel, on the other hand, was not hardened against attack, and was staffed by several necessary workers. That thing did the heaviest lifting in terms of cargo movement and was directly in the path of the oncoming dream storm. It was more than wide enough to block passage, and without any ability to climb, the ceramic tentacle monsters would bash at my multi-trillion mortie elevator car until it was destroyed.

“Shit, I see your point. Why hasn’t the donut been raised?” I asked. The armory attendant brought over a set of clothing for me, replete with heavy armored plating. I passed over the jacket but changed my pants and boots in front of the hobbs.

Both of my swords went on my hips, and I slung a brand new Highwater blaster on my back, loaded with twelve-gauge laser slugs. I grinned at it stupidly. It was like seeing an old friend once again after such a long time of absence.

Its ad popped up and I stared at it, remembering back when things were desperate and these items made all the difference between whether I’d be sleeping in bed that night - or strung out dead on the ground under a pile of vicious Sleem.

HELL IS HERE - AND SO IS HIGHWATER BLAST SHOCK!

CERAMIC-HELIUM ALLOY, RAD-POLYMER GRIPS, THIS COMBAT SHOTGUN TAKES THE BEST OF TERRAN DESIGN AND BUYMORT MATERIALS, MAKING A WEAPON SO DAMN POWERFUL CHARLTON HESTON JUST DROPPED HIS GUN FROM HIS COLD DEAD HANDS.

CAN FIRE ALL SORTS OF EXOTIC AMMUNITION INCLUDING PLASMA AND LASER BURSTS. 1,300,000 morties, 4.9 stars.

It was a bit old fashioned, compared to most of our arsenal, but I liked it for the versatility. My standard loadout combined laser slugs with high-explosive MIRV shells. The armory attendant handed me a bandoleer of extra shells, which I slipped into as Rayna started walking again.

“Can’t. Top-side relay not responding,” Rayna grunted. She picked up her pace, and we were jogging.

“Starfish troopers all ready. Pulled in fifteen hovercraft. Ground vehicles useless, they just get swarmed,” she barked. I hurried to keep up.

“Need you on front line. Especially now you can fly,” she said, turning to fix me with a glare. “When you get ability to fly?”

I shook my head and sighed. “Very recently, Rayna. It’s been kind of a bad morning. Dearth is fucking us on the donut, I assume?”

Our donut ship only operated if both bottom and top of the elevator allowed it to, and Dearth still had control over that portion. Normally it worked like any other business day, they saw the paycheck and pressed the required button.

That day, it looked like hurting their enemy was more important than preserving an economic asset.

“Well, we knew they’d be pissed about Los Angeles,” I said, running behind Rayna.

We exited the tower and entered a city in retreat. BlueCleave hobbs were helping those without transport, and hundreds of people on foot and in vehicles were all heading in one direction, away from the elevator.

Rayna and I boarded a hovercraft, and the vessel took off. It banked sharply as it rose, and we got our first view of the incoming dream storm. Just like I had remembered it, the cloud of sparking black fog roiled as it encroached, a four-and-a-half-mile wide strip of death and dismemberment.

The greatest loss of life on that day had been in Prescott, when it ripped through the city and killed any in its path. I steeled myself to prevent that from happening to our prized donut.

Our hovercraft was quickly joined by several others, and we banked as a group out around the towering space elevator. The craft set down in the desert directly north and operation ‘no touch the donut’ began in earnest.

Axle and Jada were present, which improved my mood dramatically until I saw the disapproving look on my friend's snout. He licked his nose at my approach and turned away with a grimace. I’d forgotten to shower and was suddenly embarrassed more for Molls than myself. I didn’t like it when I failed to protect her privacy.

Jada was better about hiding her reactions and seemed to genuinely care less when I smelled like sex. She approached to brief me as Axle kept working on his own handheld device.

“Tyson. Good, they found you,” she said. Her own starfish suit poked out from her vest, lengths of metal running down her muscled arms. The heavy club she preferred in combat dangled from her waist.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, shrugging. “Molls is leaving for a while, and I thought this was an easy fix.”

“It will be,” Jada replied. “This is our first wide-scale deployment, but our troopers are ready. They’ve been training, we’ve got a heavily shielded rear line, and our hovercraft will provide cover from above.”

“They’d better be ready,” Axle shouted. “Los Angeles is proving to be a drain on our morties, we don’t have a flex account if things go bad.”

I waved. “We’re good Axle, don’t worry,” I yelled back. Tollya’s craft hovered in low nearby and she hopped out, before jogging over to us.

“Are we good, Tollya?” I asked as she ran up.

Her lips split in a wide, toothy grin. “Course, boss! You couldn’t pay any trooper to sit this out,” she replied, cracking her knuckles.

“Glad to hear it,” I said.

Chapter 21

An electric threshing sound echoed to me from across the desert, and I took a few steps forward to look.

Black fog rolled across the desert toward us, sparking and threshing the air.

I turned to see the various squads of gathered hobbs watching me. Hundreds of eager BlueCleave recruits stood ready, equipped with heavy armor, physical shields, war picks, and plenty of our best laser rifles.

Then was the smaller line of starfish troopers, my elite. Each starfish trooper wore helmets with camera lenses that would fold down to cover one eye. Other than that, they wore or wielded what they thought best for the battle. Most preferred the BlueCleave war picks and our new laser rifles.

All of them seemed to be either watching me, or staring at the oncoming threat, so I pointed in the distance at the encroaching black fog.

“This dream storm threatens our home, BlueCleave!” I shouted.

In unison, my hobbs all roared defiance.

“They’re faster than you!” I shouted. “But not stronger. Never stronger! They’ll tear your bodies apart if you let them! Are you going to let them?!”

The wordless roar that returned felt like it was close enough to a no for me, so I turned back and faced the encroaching cloud of black fog, roaring, “Then kill them first!”

The small army of gathered hobbs roared their approval again as an Afflqwst notification pinged in my helmet.

Quest – Defend critical affiliate infrastructure from dream storm attack.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Destroy 4,475/4,500 dream storm components. (incomplete)

2. Prevent damage to critical infrastructure. (incomplete)

3. (Optional) Avoid personnel losses. (incomplete)

PROBABLE OUTCOME – Affiliate infrastructure defense success. (89%).

POSSIBLE OUTCOME – Critical affiliate infrastructure destroyed. (11%).

REWARD – Item coupon.

The starfish troopers began piling into hovercraft as Jada stepped up behind me. I glanced back at Axle to confirm that he had gotten a ping from Afflqwst too. He nodded grimly and licked his nose.

“You’re on the line, Jada. I’m mobile this time, I’ll be all over the place,” I told the hulking Knowle. She licked her nose and nodded, reaching to activate her own personal shield.

It seemed like a good idea, the ceramic balls coming for us relied on whip-crack fast strikes, the shields would be of at least some help defending against them.

One of the hovercraft swept in low beside us, as I heard familiar cackling. Phyllis hung from the open door, one mechanical arm clamped onto the hull as she leaned out and waved at me. I was glad she would be in the coming battle. Afflqwst gave us excellent odds, but I couldn’t shake the bad feeling I’d had the first time I encountered this particular dream storm.

My guts were clenched as the sound of electric threshing grew. Anything that brought memories of those early days did that. I almost remembered what life was like before BuyMort when I thought of those days.

A call from Rayna came in and distracted me as I answered it. All the starfish troopers were connected, and Rayna shouted her customary “Boss on the call!” notifier. Each of the troopers grunted or saluted, then went quiet.

“Hovercraft setting lines now. Will provide air cover,” Rayna grunted. “Any dream storm clones get past fields of fire, we smash em!”

I looked at the spreading line of troopers. Forty-four of them, including Rayna, Tollya, and Jada, to cover four and a half miles of territory. They were backed up by hundreds of regular troops, and hovercraft for relocation. The regular portions of our hobb army were in place with guns, as our primary firing line. If the electric thresher tentacle balls got in on top of them, we’d suffer major casualties.

Our brawlers were good, and hard to put down permanently, but we were spread thin.

Too thin.

The sound grew in all our ears, altered only by Phyllis firing randomly into the swarm from overhead. Faintly, I could hear her laughter.

“Right. Listen up, BlueCleave,” I said.

They didn’t respond, but went silent, waiting for my next words.

“I’m gonna handle as much of this as I can. Protect our rear lines, they’re vulnerable,” I said. Then I drew both swords and focused on the incoming swarm, activating my gravitic drive.

I fell, hard, into the dream storm, smashing through a tentacle ball with a quick ignition of my plasma falchion. It split apart easily enough, and I plunged to the right at another target, lighting up the black fog with another burst of red plasma. The fog was cold, I hadn’t expected that, and it lightly wet my skin with inky droplets.

Phyllis switched to her plasma caster weapon arm, and scorched a section of the storm, burning away clay clones and black fog alike. Her pilot banked sharply, and the craft spun away from the huge heat bloom. I saw her cackling as they swept by overhead, alarms blaring as the hobb pilot cursed and attempted to get the craft under control.

Piloting for our mechanically enhanced elder was considered an honor, among BlueCleave hobbs. They often joked that it would be an honorable death, though she hadn’t gotten any of them killed yet. Her weaponized mech suit made their jobs significantly more difficult and dangerous, and only the best of our pilots tried out for the position.

In my distraction, a dream storm clone got me, with a simple tentacle strike. I plummeted to the ground, limbs stiffening at the electric shock, while blood poured from a gaping wound in my side. The ball of hardened ceramic tentacles had torn my bottom two ribs on the left side, and I gasped as the suit’s painkiller flooded my veins.

My cartoon starfish popped into view and looked around at dozens of encroaching lethal tumbleweeds and shook its head. “Damage detected user. Better get away from those things, engage your drive!”

Too late. The dream storm creatures were upon me.

They snapped away any flesh they could that was uncovered by my limited armor. I hunched, covering my chest with both gloves as the cartoon starfish repeated its request.

I did as it asked and fell sideways across the desert sand, dragging for a few dozen feet before lifting out of it to avoid further damage. My suit sprouted tendrils of its own, replacing lost bone material with synthetic versions, and spraying flesh foam into place to patch me up.

Sunlight flooded back into my eyes as I careened out of the cloud, then shifted direction with a thought, soaring up for a birds eye view. Phyllis was doing much more work than I was.

I frowned, readied both swords, and plunged back into the fog. Falcor, my atomically sharp sword led the way, rending the tentacle balls with ease, while I swept across the front line of the storm. I ignited the plasma falchion as needed, preserving its limited charge while I destroyed dozens of the tentacle balls.

BlueCleave entered the battle at a shouted order from Rayna, roaring and firing laser rifles in-between the disparate starfish troopers. A few beams struck me and burned away parts of my body and clothing, but I didn’t take it personally. They knew I could withstand a little friendly fire. To BlueCleave, I was Tyson Dawes, the unkillable warlord they gleefully served.

To the CloneMort constructs, I was just part of their programming, and more of the irritating monsters snapped bits of me away. I should have worn a shield. My front line hobbs were doing fine, smashing their opponents while their shields took the brunt of the incoming attacks. It also helped light them up so our back lines could see them easier, and adjust fire as needed.

I focused on my movement, sweeping across the lines with the gravitic drive. Where clusters of balls ganged up on my hobbs, I plunged in with both swords, evening the matches and bolstering the front line.

Carefully aimed shots from the rear lines streaked past us with flashes of burnt fog. When the incoming damage began to overwhelm my ability to cause damage myself, I rose above the fog and used my shotgun while the suit did its repairs.

My second upgrade appeared to have significantly enhanced my suit's energy storage capacity, but I simply smashed through the ceramic tentacle balls with my gauntlets when I needed a charge.

The BlueCleave hobbs had designed their specialty war-picks with Axle, and as a result of the collaboration, anything they smashed with a pick increased their suit’s charge. If the tentacles got through their shields, their suits patched them up immediately.

My fearless warriors, granted immortality in combat by their leader, devastated the front line of the dream storm. I heard laughter as I landed to help them, and we smashed the clones together, by combat bound.

Dearth had loyalty issues. Silken Sands did not.

Then came the first screams. Only one starfish trooper, but they were terrified. I heard ripping, and a thick gurgle in the coms, and then a hobb voice rasped, “Reaper!”

I immediately fell up, out of the cloud of black fog and tentacle monsters and searched the line. Rayna’s hovercraft swept in at my side, matching my speed as the door was hauled open and a hobb waved at me to follow them.

“This way!” Rayna called in my ear. I followed and slammed into the ground beside a mangled starfish trooper.

The reaper hound was gone, but it was clearly what had caused the damage to my trooper. Their suit worked hurriedly to fix their limbs as I set about destroying any clay clones that threatened. The trooper struggled to their knees, raising their pick in a salute while their tendrils lasered at their throat.

“Cameras, not work!” the hobb rasped. Then the warrior hauled themselves up and rushed back into battle.

I fell up, back out of the cloud, and another hobb screamed.

Axle sounded in my ear. “This one’s on the far side. I have a visual. Multiple hounds, I’m sending your portal.”

“Do it!” I yelled.

A BuyMort pod flashed into existence at my side and projected a rainbow beam in front of me. I fell headfirst into it and saw three reaper hounds attacking one of my downed troopers.

Chapter 22

I streaked toward them, metal fists clenched, and slammed through where the nearest hound should have been. I saw it there, aimed directly for it, and then punched nothing but ground. With a quick roll, I was back on my feet, searching for the threat.

The reaper hounds circled me, each of them flashing sharp teeth as I glanced between them. The one closest to me raised up on its hind legs, and I fixated on it.

It casually reached a tentacle around my throat and cut through my windpipe with a careful, slow attack from behind. The hound in front of me vanished as my neck split open. I wheezed, sputtering blood from the center of my neck, and searching desperately for my attacker. A reaper hound leapt in out of the fog, snarled, and stalked in a slow circle.

The trooper on the ground wasn’t moving anymore, and the hounds were all focused on me, weaving in and out of the fog, impossible to track. I clamped a hand over my throat to seal it and gasped, “Send Phyllis!” into my radio.

Black fog rolled over us, and another reaper hound at my side sliced through the back of my right leg. I collapsed onto one knee and swung my swords in a quick arc, hitting nothing but air. My suit erupted in tendrils, rapidly sealing my wounds, and returning function to my leg.

The attack wasn’t coming from where I could see glimpses of the creatures through the fog. Their scythe tentacles reached around, sought my back, and tore free critical ligatures with almost every hit. I became disoriented and lashed out wildly with both swords, until one clattered from my gauntlet to the ground.

My elbow was slashed through, and I stared at it. The painkiller fuzzed through my mind, and the black fog surrounding me twinkled and sparkled with a fresh geyser of vibrant red blood.

I went down again as my other leg suffered a slash across my Achilles tendon, toppling forward uncontrollably. The Highwater blaster was in my hands before I hit, and I rolled over to fire at a tentacle ball as it rolled toward me.

The hardened ceramic superheated, slagged, and evaporated, dropping the ball in a sustained beam of weaponized light. I racked the empty shell out and primed a new one, turning to respond as my throat was cut again.

Jada roared out of the encroaching fog at my side, her shield sparking pink as tentacles bounced off its surface. She veered her attack at the last instant, and connected with the heavy club, sending the suddenly visible reaper hound attacking me bouncing away into the fog.

This time, I swept the weapon as I fired, and the two-second burst of light caught the retreating reaper hound. It materialized just to the side of where I had seen it just a second prior, as the illusion vanished in a piercing howl of pain.

“Their scent is wrong!” Jada shouted, hefting her blood-streaked mace. “They’re not where they should be!”

“I know! Even my helmet isn’t showing them right!” I replied, struggling to a knee and staring at the wounded reaper hound. I growled into my radio, “All BlueCleave, be advised, cameras do not work to reveal the reaper hounds.”

One of its six limbs was cut off entirely, burned away by the laser. The reaper hound slashed out at me with both tentacles, slammed into my back and tearing at my lungs and ribs. I ignored the damage, racked the shotgun again, and swept another beam of laser in its direction.

My legs were torn into, and this time, the armored plating in my pants caught on the scythe blade. I instantly grabbed at the tentacle and hauled on it, hearing another yowl as the reaper hound was launched toward me.

I slammed a gauntlet into it as it sailed toward me with claws extended. I’d seen it coming out of the fog, and despite my helmet's anti-magic capabilities, it was not where it should be. Focusing on the direction it should have come from saved me, and ended its life in a crash of broken bones.

More ceramic tentacle balls rolled in on top of me, and a series of sharp snaps and electrical shocks laid me out on the ground. I felt the final hound’s scythe tear into me as I grabbed Jada’s arm, activated my gravitic drive, and we fell up into the sky.

Her eyes went wide, and her tail tucked between her legs, but Jada held on tight. Her claws screamed and scraped against my gauntlets as we flew clear of the cluster of tentacle balls. As soon as we were clear, an entire squad of BlueCleave regulars opened fire, saturating the area with laser fire.

The fog burned away, and tentacle balls dropped, slagged and shattered by the heavy fire.

Once clear of the immediate area, I dropped Jada, and she rolled as she landed, before immediately lashing out with her mace. The ball of sparking tentacles the Knowle attacked blasted apart in a shower of ceramic shards.

She ran back into the fog, seeking another dream storm monster. Veering back up, I dodged an incoming hovercraft and searched the sparse fog below for the final reaper hound, circling back to where I had last seen it.

Phyllis’ hovercraft arrived and she swept over the area in a passing burn, plasma caster roaring. The pilot had figured out how to ride her heat blooms, and the craft swept by at a high speed. I fell further up, trying to figure out how to hover while my suit repaired the damage done to my body.

Her sweep cleared out the black fog, and a lone reaper hound became visible. It was scorched but intact, and sprinting through the black fog clouds toward the nearest starfish trooper. I fell after it, reloading my high tech shotgun with MIRV shells. My hands gripped the familiar weapon and I began slam-firing the MIRV shells, carpet bombing the immediate area.

The hound howled piercingly loud as my explosive barrage consumed it, and I sighed in relief. My throat was repaired again, and I spoke into our shared commlink.

“I got three of them, I think. Starfish troopers!” I shouted. “Reaper hounds are hunting you specifically. Cameras won’t work, use sweeping attacks. Try to close distance while your tendrils are active and guard your legs. If more than one attacks, get to your hovercraft as fast as you can.”

“Yes boss!” came the uniform shout.

Axle sounded off in my ear. “I’m watching from above for them. Focus on the storm, I’ll redirect you as needed.”

I nodded, reloaded my shotgun again, and reversed my fall. I fired the shotgun as I swept over the front line of the black fog, veering when I met Phyllis’ hovercraft again. She was happily roasting the area behind them with her plasma caster, causing far more damage than I ever could.

Once I ran out of MIRV shells, I drew my swords and began falling through their ranks just above ground level, slashing and burning them in lines. Our starfish troopers fought the smattering that got beyond Phyllis and I, and the remaining hovercraft focused their fire on any gaps in our lines.

The dream storm spent its fury against the BlueCleave army, and only one hobb died in the battle. Murdered by an expensive biological weapon. As the cloud of black fog and ceramic tentacle balls began to finally dissipate, the giant donut ship behind us clunked heavily as it engaged its engines and began crawling upward.

“Stop that ship!” I yelled into my coms. “I want the entire thing searched. This was coordinated, I think Dearth released the hounds from the donut!”

Chapter 23

“Yes, that was my first instinct as well,” Axle agreed in my ear. “If these reaper hounds are indeed coming from Dearth, it is possible they secreted them aboard the last shipment down, then refused the recall order knowing we would be engaged with the dream storm.”

“We’re spending too much time together, Axle. That was exactly what I guessed happened. BlueCleave! Secure the donut! And watch your backs, there’s still one of those reaper hounds out here somewhere,” I shouted, falling through the sky toward the fallen starfish trooper.

“I want every starfish trooper equipped with explosives, and heavy armor. The cameras don’t work, but wide area attacks do,” I told Tollya over coms. Rayna had assigned her the task of sweeping the donut. I wanted all of them to come back alive, and we had no more portals for me to use in case of attack. “Be careful above all else, you get me?”

“Yes boss!” came the standard shouted reply.

Dead on the ground in front of us was a hobb I didn’t recognize. Male, older than the last one had been. But torn asunder the same. Ligaments and vital organs were the primary areas of attack. Three reaper hounds had gotten him while he fought the dream storm monsters, and between the two threats, they’d overwhelmed the suit even more quickly than I’d thought would be possible.

Missing loved ones? Wish you could see them and hold them just one more time? Try out ReBody Galactic, the counterfeit people maker!

I growled, swiping the damn thing away.

Axle was in the process of retrieving the body, with a small unit from our BlueCleave regulars. Rayna helped load the body personally. Each of the starfish troopers came from her original tribe in the grasslands of Storage. She did not weep but she treated the corpse with the utmost respect.

Once our single fallen soldier was loaded, Axle and I turned to the reaper hounds themselves. The area around us was scattered with scorch marks from Phyllis, ruined hulls of dream storm tentacle monsters, and thick, gray blood from the hobb.

Axle poked around at one of the reaper hound bodies, jumping back when one of its scythe arms twitched. He took a steadying breath and chuckled, untucking his tail. “These are terrifying. I cannot imagine facing one in combat,” Axle said.

“Not exactly fun, no,” I replied. “They’re nearly impossible to see, but Jada followed her nose and got one off of me.”

“There were four confirmed sightings. You only killed three, but no other hobbs were attacked during the battle,” Axle mused. “That indicates some level of intelligence. These animals are clearly BuyMort capable.”

He peered skyward for a long moment before nodding. “We should get these remains somewhere secure, preferably under BlueCleave guard.”

I glanced back at our escort, a full squad of fifteen regular hobbs and a starfish trooper. Axle must have meant heavier guard than that. I nodded to our troopers, and they began picking up the pieces.

One of the reaper hounds I had crushed as it leapt at me, and its skull was shattered. The other’s torso and limbs had been carved up by my high-intensity twelve-gauge laser beam, but its head was mostly intact. The third we retrieved had died in my carpet bombing and came in several sealed plastic bags.

Axle seemed to think we could learn something from them, and the corpses might become valuable evidence for me to use against Dearth.

Somehow.

Once everything was loaded in the APC, we piled into our seats and headed back to the city. The BlueCleave mobilization that had taken place largely without me was wrapping up. Spent energy cells gathered, weapons and soldiers retrieved to their regular posts, vehicles packed up neat and orderly, traveling in lines into Prescott, or to secure the donut.

Traffic, in other words.

Axle and I conversed lightly about the reaper hounds, a subject we weren’t worried about being overheard. He suggested we go over the footage, and I pulled up a recording from my helmets ‘magic memory.’

A small fee to MortMobile later, and Axle was able to see the video too. After he perused and manipulated the footage to rewatch certain parts of it, he turned to me and asked, “your helmet is capable of providing you with attack-direction indicators, yes?”

I scowled and nodded. “It's supposed to. But now that you mention it, nothing like that happened with the reaper hound attacks.” My fingers traced a line at my throat, where my sun-tanned skin was replaced with more pale flesh.

Makeup would be fun for my next CTV studio visit.

Axle rubbed his chin and licked his nose. “They must be capable of manipulating light, somehow. If they’re capable of fooling even your helmet, I doubt we’ll have much luck with simple cameras. Even worse, if it is light manipulation, it's possible they can even hide from thermal cameras, though I do think those are our best bet right now.”

“There’s already a network of security cameras in Prescott, Dearth remnants,” I said. “We could use some of those, maybe help find these things, how they move around unrestricted.”

I leaned forward in my seat. “They got around our primary force and went straight for the starfish troopers.”

Axle nodded, his fur bristling. “That is a troubling detail, but it gives us insight as well. The mind behind this is clearly targeting anyone in a starfish suit,” he said, before looking across the seats at me. “Thank you for pulling Jada out of that fight.”

“Of course, Axle,” I replied.

The APC rumbled as it engaged the brakes. There was a crowd in front of the donut’s primary entrance doors. The doors were massive, several stories high each, and sealed shut. BlueCleave hobbs stood at the entry ramp, brandishing guns.

Now that the threat was passed, some of the citizenry had apparently taken offense to the way the military handled the donut.

It was back on the ground, with every entrance and exit sealed and under heavy guard. None of the staff working on board were allowed to stay and had been detained for questioning. There were a few hundred of them, and it appeared our actions had worried families and employers alike.

D’lon Stanche stood at the front of a mob, arms crossed as I stood to exit the APC.

I stepped out into the late afternoon sun and walked over to the cordon. “What is this?” I asked a hobb guard.

D’lon himself stepped forward and raised a detached megaphone palm mic. “This is an unreasonable seizure of affiliate property!” His voice echoed from somewhere behind him in the crowd, filling the square. Loud cheers and roars of protest followed his proclamation. “First the water rationing, now this?”

I sighed, deeply, as the hobb shrugged and turned away.

“Helmet,” I whispered. “Cast booming voice.”

My anti-magic helmet had a series of helpful features, so long as I could figure out the proper spell-words to access the programming. Booming voice amplified my own voice so I could shout over the crowd.

“The donut belongs to Silken Sands and is being swept by security for all of our protection. Standard operation, you guys have nothing to worry about. It’ll be back to business as usual as soon as security is satisfied,” I said, my voice echoing over the square and gathered protesters.

The crowd quieted again, until D’lon raised his mic. “The donut may belong to you,” he said, “but the cargo on board belongs to us! What assurances do we have that your BlueCleave hobbs will not disturb our cargo?”

More shouts of assent came from the crowd, but they were significantly quieter than the first time. I took a moment to wonder how they had formed so quickly but fixated on D’lon as their source and ringleader. He had been hounding me for discounts for weeks, and now that his Siberian complex had been destroyed by Kraken Corp, I had the bad feeling I would be seeing a lot more of the formerly wealthy business owner.

D’lon Stanche was the kind of guy who would have hired me, convinced me to work for him for years with minimal pay increases that absolutely did not keep up with the cost of living, and then fired me the instant it became convenient for him to do so. My patience with him was limited, so I stepped forward and deactivated my helmet’s booming voice feature.

“None at all, D’lon. If security finds something of import, they will investigate it fully,” I said. “And the next time you form a mob against me, your rates to use my donut go up.”

D’lon narrowed his eyes and stared at himself in my chrome helmet. He adjusted a lick of curled hair across his forehead and turned back to the crowd, raising his palm mic.

“Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither!” he shouted to the gathered crowd.

“Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither!” D’lon chanted, turning back to face me as his mob took up the call.

Axle grabbed my elbow, and I took a deep breath. I turned to face my friend and advisor. He shook his head at me, slowly, with wide eyes.

I patted his shoulder and nodded reassuringly, before I turned back to the crowd and waited for their chant to die down. They noticed I wanted to say something, and the crowd’s interest outweighed their manufactured outrage.

With booming voice active again, I turned to them and spoke calmly.

“Business will resume as soon as BlueCleave gives us the ‘all clear.’ Make no mistake, what we just faced out there,” I paused, pointing at the still-smoldering battlefield in the distance, before repeating myself for emphasis.

“What we just faced out there would have killed anyone who came into contact with it. BlueCleave is this city’s backbone! They support us, and we should support them. Everyone is free to waste their afternoon however they like, just clear the road so we can get business taken care of.”

I turned away as the crowd looked to D’lon for a response. He stammered for a moment, before getting them started on another round of their chanting.

Axle and I ignored them and walked up the ramp to the donut’s primary entrance.

Chapter 24

“He’s been asking for another private meeting, you know,” Axle said, once the noisy crowd was far enough behind us.

“Give it to him. I’d love to talk to him one on one. Alone,” I replied. “I’ll work my schedule around whipping that guy’s ass.”

Axle snorted but grabbed his tablet and started swiping at it. “Please don’t murder him, he’s becoming a rather public figure in Prescott. Has been ever since he moved in a few days ago,” he muttered.

“I promise nothing. He and his sub-letters belong in the Siberian wastes,” I muttered back.

“Well, the Siberian wastes are gone,” Axle replied. “And your policy is to let in anyone from this planet who needs or asks for shelter.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect a bunch of pampered trust fund idiots to set up shop and start making demands,” I said.

“You could consider relocating them,” Axle offered.

The ‘them’ under discussion was little more than D’lon’s coattails. A small group of formerly wealthy Nu-Earthers who rented out rooms in the building I was renting D’lon since his facility in Siberia was destroyed by Kraken Corp’s manufactured earthquake.

They had become immediately disruptive, making demands of BlueCleave hobbs as if they were servants, and one of them had trashed their room during a domestic argument, throwing furniture out of the windows and injuring one of my other citizens.

We were still trying to figure out exactly what to do about that, aside from a stern warning not to let it happen again.

I had BlueCleave keeping an eye on the building, but I greatly desired to remove these people. To treat them like the problems they were. However, I’d made a rather public proclamation about Nu-Earthers being welcome in Prescott, and it would hurt the affiliate if I went back on my word so quickly.

Tollya called and distracted me, as the donut’s primary doors slid open wide enough to let Axle and I through. He took and equipped a shield from the local hobbs, and I didn’t bother telling him it wouldn’t be effective if we encountered a reaper hound. It was more for his nerves than actual protection.

“Boss!” Tollya started. “Jada find something you should see.”

“On our way,” I replied.

The interior of the donut was essentially just a series of oversized cargo areas wrapped around a solid mechanical climbing engine. Under Dearth, they’d had the cargo elevator under tight wraps, and only Dearth personnel could use it for Dearth cargo needs. When Silken Sands took over management, we opened it to the public, and anyone on Nu-Earth could rent space to cheaply escape our gravity well.

Dearth was making more morties off the elevator in my possession than they ever had under their own, and all from a small percentage I paid to keep them at bay. Profit margins are powerful motivation, to some.

My personal favorite customer had been a small pod of blue whales, who used our donut to escape Nu-Earth’s gravity well before rendezvous with a ship equipped to carry them to the stars. Smart shoppers, they got out while the getting was good, and morties seemed like they were of no concern to them at all.

I often stayed awake at night, wondering what those whales did to make the king's ransom in morties they were capable of shifting at whim.

I shook my head clear of the memory and followed Axle to the small tram that circled the donut. Walking everywhere would have taken hours. The tram car accelerated and decelerated like an amusement park ride, and we were at Tollya’s position within a minute.

She was in the rear of the primary cargo compartment facing north. It had been sectioned off with collapsible partitions, and behind one at the back, stood a series of stacked kennels.

I did a quick count, as Jada and Tollya approached. Twenty-five cages, all in stacks of five.

“It’s them,” Jada said.

“I can smell them too, it’s definitely their point of ingress,” Axle confirmed. The Knowle stepped closer, leaning in to inspect one of the cages.

The kennels could be opened from the inside and were each large enough to fit a single reaper hound. The partitions covering the hidden area were free of markings, but the rest in the compartment were all designated for the Dearth Conglomerate.

I growled low in the back of my throat. Axle looked up to see what I was staring at and nodded.

“We suspected it was them. This is merely confirmation,” he said.

“No, this is confirmation that someone in the city is working with them. I need the camera footage for this area. If this is any of my people . . .”

I left the threat unspoken.

Everyone in Silken Sands knew; loyalty was a requirement, and went both ways. They all knew, each and every one of them, that we were at war with the entire multiverse.

Turning on me meant undermining that war effort and putting the entire affiliate at risk. And this infiltrator, whoever they were, was killing my starfish troopers. Morale would take a huge hit when our regular forces got word that the starfish troopers weren’t immortal.

Hobbs took their gossip a little literally sometimes, and I certainly didn’t set a great example, being ripped apart and put back together publicly so often.

“Tollya!” I shouted, as I turned to walk away.

She fell into step at my side, leaning in for her instructions.

“Get this cleaned up please. I need to meet with the starfish troopers and Jada in secret, anyone with a suit,” I muttered as I walked.

“Yeah boss, Rayna already got that planned. Was supposed to get YOU to attend. It’s tonight. Midnight, in the barracks,” she grunted back.

“Good, I’ll be there. Thank you, Tollya,” I said. She grinned and saluted, then jogged off back to the kennels.

Axle walked toward me and the tram I plopped into, conversing quietly with Jada. When they parted, he deactivated his shield long enough to lean in and hug her, followed by a quick, toothy kiss.

When they parted, she nodded, and he jogged to the tram car.

Once it had been directed to the donut's security office, we braced for the sudden speed, and jetted off around the curve of the massive structure, heading up on the system of tracks.

A hobb in BlueCleave armor manned the station and stood stiff at attention when we entered the small, cramped room. It was in the rafters along the ceiling, along with the other operational offices and steerage for the donut. Not that it needed steering, its two options were ‘up,’ and ‘down.’

He helped us with our inquiries, pulling up all relevant video footage. The partitions hiding the kennels fell away, as if on their own at one point, and the kennel doors all opened and swung in the air. No hounds were visible in any frame at any point, and the cameras across the rest of the ship saw nothing.

Axle took over at the controls and started working, switching the cameras first to low-light, then thermal vision. Still nothing.

“Why can’t we see them?” I hissed. “We could see the last one on camera.”

Axle shook his head. “The only thing I can think of is that they can control it, somehow. They control when they are seen,” he suggested.

“That would mean the first one wanted to be on camera,” I muttered.

Axle and I both shared a look, and the hobb guard shivered at the sight of it.

Finally, Axle accessed an unusual element of our donut security system, which we called the sniffers.

Sniffers were basically bomb sniffers. They were programmable, and could be used to seek out virtually any form of contraband, thanks to Dearth’s poorly-implemented paranoia.

Axle tuned the devices, explaining, “If we use the sniffers records of any animal scents, we should be able to follow their pathway through the donut, if not determine exact numbers.”

He ran the device, and showed our assumption of one hound per kennel was correct.

“Twenty-two left,” I growled.

“Twenty-three,” he replied. “At least. The first was likely not part of this shipment. And there could be more we haven’t discovered yet.”

“Fuck,” I whispered. Axles ears twitched anyway.

He found the path they had taken, all of the reaper hounds had exited the craft in broad daylight, some right in front of hobb and human workers. Axle pulled up a map of the donut and overlaid the pathways for us to look at.

Only four had gone toward the battlefield. The rest had headed directly into Prescott.

I sighed and shook my head. “We need Lee,” I said.

Axle took a copy of his map to his tablet, then updated the security device with a new scent profile and handed it back to the terrified hobb guard.

I stood and held the door open for Axle, before closing it after him and turning to face the hobb.

His grey skin paled even further, and the poor hobb short circuited. He just gave me another salute and stood at attention.

“Hey, what’s your name?” I asked.

He stared at himself in my helmet for a long moment, jaw working as no sound came out. Finally, something clicked behind his eyes, and he barked, “Gahlyn, boss!”

“Well, Gahlyn, I want you to keep an eye on the sniffers. They’re tuned to the smell of the reaper hounds now,” I told him, in a low voice.

He nodded rapidly, then frowned. “Wait, boss. What I do if they come back?”

“Try to secure them in a compartment away from everyone else and lock the whole donut down. Then you call Tollya, or Rayna directly. Our regular teams would just get killed. It’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen, you got it?” I asked.

“I got you boss!” Gahlyn shouted back, back stiff. He thumped me another salute as I turned to leave.

As I was slowly closing the door behind myself, I stopped before it could click closed, and waited until a count of five. Then I swung the door open again and watched as the guard fell out of his chair and scrambled back to attention.

“And Gahlyn,” I said.

“Yes boss?” he asked, as his chair lightly swiveled.

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” I said, closing the door with a loud click.

I could just hear his whispered “Yes boss,” before the door clicked shut.

Axle and I rode the tram back down to the front entrance and started walking back to the APC. The hovercraft were all in use, as usual, so I directed our driver to head to the tower.

My Knowle friend shook his head and chuckled. “What about when that hobb’s shift is over?”

I shook my head. “Oh, we loop in the next one, obviously. Probably the whole security staff for the donut. Just makin’ an impression,” I said.

Axle nodded and shrugged. “You can be quite intimidating when you want to be. Very authoritative”

“Yeah, about that. This is going to hurt your feelings, Axle, but I need you to stay in the tower for a few days,” I told him as we rode in the APC.

“You think they’re targeting your command structure?” he asked, licking his nose. “Your inner circle?”

I shook my head. “Not yet, but these things are a massive threat, and your library isn’t as secure as the tower. You should bring Jada with you, if she’ll go. She’s a target for sure, wearing a starfish suit.”

The hulking hyena man at my side nodded and licked his nose again. His claws shook slightly as he used his tablet to call Jada and discuss the situation with her. She surprised me by agreeing to live in the tower for the time being.

Her voice came through the psychic device, directly into my mind, since I was part of the call. MortMobile had been giving us little upgrades like that without being asked, I noticed.

I’d check the bill later, to be sure, but it felt like I couldn’t overhear a call normally.

“Yes, I agree,” Jada said. “All the starfish troopers should move into the tower, it has the space. I want to assemble a rapid response team, there’s going to be more attacks. We can operate it out of the tower, it’s our most secure location.”

“Shit, that’s a good idea,” I sighed.

Axle’s eyes widened at me, but he didn’t argue.

“I can’t handle that many of them at a time, Axle. We can figure out a way to lure and trap them, and I’ll happily be bait, but right now Jada is right. We need a team to respond to the next attack,” I explained.

“She’ll stay at the tower, but Jada is one of our best military assets. I need her help too, I’m sorry.”

“I get it,” he snapped. Axle sighed and took a long, shaky breath. “I understand the situation and our roles in addressing it, I really do. I just don’t like the idea of Jada in danger.”

I nodded and rested a hand on his shoulder briefly.

“Jada, you know this only works if I’m on the team,” I said.

“When you can be, yes. But the affiliate needs you in more places than just here,” she replied.

“What does that mean?” I said.

Axle sighed and shook his head. “Los Angeles is providing what little drinking water we have right now, and we’re having a hard time keeping the desalination facility safe. BlueCleave is regularly fighting off large, oceanic bugs, and their numbers are becoming a problem.”

I nodded, and muttered, “Whale bugs. They’re attracted to the freshwater.”

“How did you know that?” Axle asked, staring at me.

“Captain Jeonjo Omen, of the WHS Whalehunter, is how I know that,” I told him.

“They captured Molls but gave her up the instant I threatened them. Claimed it was a simple military operation for morties, nothing personally, that her mother was a reputable client, all that. We’re not exactly the good guys, in the eyes of everyone else.”

Axle nodded. “Molls must have a wealthy family,” he said.

“That is my impression of the situation, yes,” I agreed. “At any rate, Captain Omen told me to contact him when the whale bugs became too much of a problem for us. His crew has experience fighting them.”

I shook my head and sighed as the APC rumbled into the underground parking lot of the Prescott tower.

Chapter 25

Dearth security measures, repurposed and reinforced by BlueCleave specialists, made the Prescott tower the safest place in the city during an attack, especially against the reaper hounds. The building was equipped with sniffers.

Axle immediately took us to security, and turned on the sniffer system, feeding it the scent profile we were looking for. It came back with no hits, and I sighed in relief. A reaper-hound free environment. Exactly what I needed in order to do business.

And, thinking of business, I nearly groaned as I realized what I needed to do next.

“Axle, can you get one of the hobbs to bring D’lon Stanche in for a meeting? He’s a pain in my ass. I'd rather get his whining proposal behind me, and I have some time before my next important meeting,” I asked.

Axle nodded but scowled up at me from his seat. “Are you sure you don’t want to get some rest?”

“No rest for the wicked, Axle. Old Nu-Earth saying,” I quipped.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he replied, with a frown.

“Yeah, us Nu-Earthers often don’t, I’m discovering. I gotta ask Dr. Miles about that, he sent me an email like two weeks ago saying he figured out what’s wrong with us. Maybe that’ll explain our nonsense,” I said, waving a hand.

Half an hour later, I sat in an empty office near the top floor of the tower, waiting for my most annoying renter, D’lon Stanche, to arrive for our meeting. He’d been thrilled to hear I was available and promised to rush right over. After sending the mob he’d formed at the donut home, I hoped.

The door swung open, and an armed hobb entered, with D’lon following at a distance. I had my helmet in place, there was no reason to give my business opponent any edges.

The hobb saluted with a fist to his chest and grunted, “Boss, Mr. Stench here to see you.”

The World’s Most Popular Odor Destroyer. It’s Stench Stealer, by Wiffnite Affiliated. Simply spritz the offending object with our patented nano-purifying spray and presto! Stench be gone! 1000 morties, 4.3 stars.

I chuckled at the ad, staring at D’lon as he came in.

“Thank you, you can go,” I told him, returning the salute.

D’lon bristled and straightened his pin-striped suit. “It’s Stanche,” he corrected.

The hobb’s eyes widened and he nodded his head. “Right, sorry Mr. Stenchy.”

The wealthy businessman’s scowl deepened, and he sat down across the desk from me.

“What can I help you with, D’lon?” I asked, letting enough annoyance into my voice to carry.

“Well, for starters, turn our water back on,” he said, as he straightened his suit jacket.

“The entire city is on rations, until we can secure a new source of clean water, D’lon. The building you are renting from me is included,” I replied. I leaned back in my chair.

“What is the issue here anyway? The rations are more than enough for the hobbs, and most of the rest living here in Prescott. What makes your building so needy, exactly?”

“Need is a strong word, perhaps,” he said. “My clientele expect a certain amount of luxury, when it comes to their accommodations.”

D’lon waved a hand dismissively.

“I’ve been fielding complaints from my tenants, so I’ve brought them to our landlord, so to speak.”

I nodded, chrome helmet bobbing as I leaned back in my chair and templed my fingers. “Is that why you brought a mob against BlueCleave at the donut?”

“A mob?” he gasped. “That was a gathering of concerned business-people, not a mob.”

“It was a mob,” I corrected him.

“Oh be reasonable,” D’lon scoffed, crossing his legs. “Was there any property damage? Did we burn and loot? Please, a mob. It was a protest at most, and we have valid reasons to protest your draconian military, you know that.”

“Draconian? We don’t have any mordren on team,” I replied.

D’lon blinked a few times, frowning. “No, I meant -” he started.

“I know what you meant,” I cut him off. “And I know what you were doing with the mob. Now that you have my attention, how are you going to identify yourself as non-threatening to my affiliate?”

His mouth gaped, perfectly manicured beard pointed down. “I . . .”

“Exactly. That feeling is the one you want to work hard to avoid. Doing business is one thing. Threats are another. Would you prefer we deescalate at this point, or shall we continue as is?” I asked.

Silver horns slowly grew on my chrome helmet, and D’lon’s eyes followed them closely.

He blinked when they stopped and glanced back down at his own face in my mirrored helmet.

“De-escalation sounds lovely. I just wanted to talk about the water rations.”

I stared at him for a long moment before nodding. The horns melted away and I sat back. “We have a handful of extra water rations to throw around, yes.”

The businessman perked up.

“And no, your residential block is not considered a high enough priority to warrant those extras,” I said, cutting him off before he could speak.

His face fell again, and he straightened his shoulders. “Can I at least ask why not?” he finally said.

I thought about it for a moment, allowing him to stare at his own reflection.

“We’re using them elsewhere, primarily on the grow houses that feed the city, and storage for emergencies. I’m not sure you understand how dire the situation on this planet is, D’lon,” I said. “We’re all in this together.”

He scowled and shook his head. “I can offer a significant sum of morties, of course. It’s not as though I would ask for extra water for nothing, I can pay.”

“Why don’t you pay for water imports, then?” I asked. “Even if just enough for your own building, your tenants. I could take you off the grid then, use that water elsewhere. The whole city has needs.”

D’lon sniffed and cleared his throat. “As soon as I receive assurances the elevator will be accessible.”

“It’s accessible now. My affiliate is effective and efficient,” I said. “If that were in doubt. The donut is a valuable asset, it requires security inspections at times, especially when under attack.”

“Very well,” he said. “Take us off your grid and I’ll pay for the water, for a discount on the rent.”

I nodded. There it was. Cheap bastard.

“You’re paying five-hundred thousand a week for the unit, and that includes utilities. Very well. Pro-rated water will drop you fifty k,” I offered.

D’lon tsked, “Haven’t you any idea how expensive water imports are? Knock off at least two-hundred k for the first week, it’ll lower with each shipment. That’s how the importers work,” he said.

“Nope,” I shook my head. “Not my problem. You wanted off our grid,” I informed him.

He scowled again, eyes darting about as he tried to remember. “Wait, no, I simply asked you for more water rations. From you, from your affiliate.”

“Did you?” I asked. “Not how I remember it.” I stood and leaned on the corner of the desk. “I remember you forming a mob to get my attention, and then pissing yourself once you had it. You’re whining, and I don’t have time for it. Everyone is feeling the hurt from rationing, but nobody else is acting like they deserve more just because they want it.”

He leaned back away from me as I pushed on the desk corner enough to crack the heavy wood. “So you’re off our water grid, and your rent is pro-rated down fifty-k a week for the inconvenience. Don’t get my attention again, Mr. Stench.”

“It’s Stanche,” he said, standing to leave. He turned and buttoned his suit jacket, shaking his head at me. “No way to do business.”

“It’s a free market, D’lon. Find someplace else for your needs, if I’m not fulfilling them to your satisfaction,” I said. My hobb guard stepped in to escort my guest away, and I waited until he was gone, before heading up the elevator to my penthouse apartment.

I had to meet with Rayna, and the rest of my people with a starfish suit at midnight and wanted to rest until then. I’d forgotten what it was like, getting torn up and dealing with predatory businessmen. Primarily, it was tiring.

I grabbed a snack of yarsp jerky, smoked to perfection by our hobb artisans, and crashed into the empty bed.

Molls had left plenty of her stuff behind, which I appreciated. It felt like she was coming back, and the entire bed still smelled like her. It was very comforting. I was asleep before I’d even finished my jerky stick.

Chapter 26 – Whalehunter Salvage

Captain Omen raised his head from his bunk, as a shrill whistle sounded from his doorway. He checked his wrist, and the pressure-proof time-keeper showed him he’d had a little more than an hour of sleep. Not terrible, all things considered.

He smoothed out the front of his uniform and stepped to the door, before pressing the button to slide it open.

Thresher removed his duty hat and stepped in, nodding at his captain. “More of 'em, captain. Coming down from the north, as ye predicted. Time to make a decision.”

Captain Omen turned to the small sink in his kitchen unit and carefully tucked a hand towel into his uniform’s neck before splashing two small handfuls of water in his own face. He raised the towel to clean up his features, and pressed his short, black hair back with the residual moisture.

“Lead the way, Beau,” he said, gesturing to the door.

The big man nodded and snugged his hat back in place before stepping through the doorway. Captain Omen fell in beside him, hand clasped lightly at his back.

“The northern scouts have reported back on schedule. A whale bug surge is migrating down from the Pacific Northwest. The warmer waters and dwindling freshwater supplies up north are creating exactly the population surge you predicted,” Thresher explained.

“And you mock me for staring at ocean charts and BuyMort figures,” Captain Omen said, wryly smiling from the corner of his lip.

“Mock is such a harsh word, captain,” Thresher replied. “I like to think of it as bonding.”

“Of course,” Captain Omen said. “Has the southern scout reported in yet?”

“Not yet, captain, but they’ve just been picked up on long range scopes. They’re burning at full speed toward us, and should be in communications range in just a few minutes,” Thresher said.

“Good.” They turned and entered the bridge.

“Captain on deck!” the officer of the watch shouted, standing at attention from Captain Omen’s chair.

“Take the communications station, please chief,” Captain Omen said.

Thresher sat in position behind him, as the watch officer scrambled to the communications station with a quick ‘yes-sir!’

“Sir!” one of his other officers yelled from below. “Southern scouts are being chased. I count two, no three bogies on their tail, much larger. Nearly matching speed too, captain!”

“Scramble interceptor craft, have the fleet reduce depth and seal all external portals,” Captain Omen replied. “Let’s bring that scout in!”

Both moon pools, one on either side of the Whalehunter’s belly, opened and deposited small craft into the water. Each of the cigar-shaped vehicles sped in a grid toward the south, equipped with torpedoes and point defense cannons.

“Captain,” Thresher whispered in his ear. “What should we do about the bugs?”

“Nothing, XO,” Captain Omen answered. “I want the fleet protected, while we retrieve our scouts. Dawes will call for us. The bugs will ensure it.”

“Whalehunter actual, this is scout-craft Nar, reporting heavy assault submersibles incoming from the south. They’ve chased me since Guatemala,” crackled through on their radio, static bursts interrupting the words.

“Scout craft Nar, you have backup incoming from Whalehunter actual, maintain current heading and speed,” Captain Omen replied. “Helm, bring us around, follow the interceptor’s heading.”

“Aye, captain!” came the shout.

The radio crackled again, and the voice from the Nar said, “Captain, it's Dearth.”

Thresher sucked air between his teeth, but Captain Omen merely nodded.

“How many in pursuit, Nar?” he asked.

“Three, sir! They split off the main fleet as soon as I came within range.” came the response. “I barely got a preliminary scan completed before they were on me.”

“Forward assault team, most likely,” Thresher muttered, under his breath.

“Then we must intercept them,” Captain Omen said. “All ahead full, set shields to glide. Escort craft, alpha formation. Form the current!”

The helm and shields officer both shouted their assent, and the crew was pressed back into their chairs momentarily as the submarine increased speed.

On the outside of the vessel, the water manipulation shield formed long strips of shaped metallic water across the vessel, increasing its hydrodynamics and smoothing the water around them for increased speed, while more formations appeared and began swirling at her nose.

Soon, the Whalehunter had caught up to its own interceptors, and the small, deadly armada bore down on the scout vessel and the pursuing Dearth heavy assault subs.

The ship’s multi-channel impellers coupled with the shield’s water manipulation to create a current at the nose of the submarine. Whalehunter rode at the tip of the current, sluicing through the southern pacific at breakneck speeds.

Her support craft rode the wake, ready to deploy into attack formation with weapons hot. The larger vessel signaled de-acceleration with a radio burst, and the interceptors veered out of the current, forming into six points around the central craft.

“Disable their weapons and propellers!” All craft, engage!” Captain Omen shouted.

The hobb representative behind them clasped his hands in his lap and began vocalizing deep in his throat, something he did when they were about to take hobb lives.

Whalehunter’s water manipulation shield ejected the spinning formations at the nose of the craft, sending it hurtling through the water at the front of the vessel. It dissolved as it passed beyond the shield’s manipulation range, reverting to liquid water and sluicing away.

The Dearth ships were boxy at the front, their classic cigar shape tainted with extra weapon pods stacked on the nose. They unleashed a swarm of torpedoes as soon as Whalehunter slowed, and the weapons streaked through the ocean toward them.

Whalehunter’s interceptors swung in, their speed much higher than the larger craft. Three of the six split formation and streaked toward the Dearth attack vessels, while their sister craft lunged low across the line of fire.

Their PDCs engaged and the water erupted in a chain of explosions. Once the first wave of torpedoes were dealt with, they engaged their engines again. The interceptors swung toward the undersides of the Dearth subs, following their higher counterparts in a pincer attack.

Whalehunter formed a broad, flat shield of metallic water at the prow of the vessel and launched it with a quick burst from the nose-cone’s impellers. The ship followed in the wake of the water-shield, using it to intercept torpedoes and detonate them prematurely.

Metallic water spun and shifted, controlled from the shields console. Where holes were blasted out of it, the shield spun to present a fresh plate of hardened water for the next missile. Whalehunter followed at speed, while long-bladed fins slowly formed along its spine.

The Dearth vessels fired another salvo, their concentrated firepower their only real advantage.

Whalehunter’s shield finally shattered, too much structural damage sending the shards of metallic water spinning away, to dissipate once out of the ship’s energy field.

“Weapons, engage long range PDCs,” Captain Omen calmly ordered. “Give the shield some breathing room.”

On screen the grinding blast and whir of automatic defense turrets kicked it, rounds sluicing through the water to pound against incoming projectiles. Whalehunter was a top-of-the-line queen of the under-ocean, and she would not be found helpless despite the collapse of the main defenses.

Incoming torpedoes exploded in a line of furious detonations.

“Deploy scutters, mark 180, mark 90, mark 45. Full throttle. Home a single scutter to an enemy sub. Your choice, Lieutenant.”

His shields officer wiped at her forehead and thanked the captain with a quick nod, concentrating on her manipulation of the shields console and deploying the extraordinary holographic and audio intensive decoy scutters. The remaining torpedoes homed in on them, drawing away from the craft.

“You’ve got time, Lieutenant. Get those shields back online, as much as you are able. Priority to the fore.”

She punched in a preformed design at the nose of the ship, and the water shield drew in ocean molecules, hardening and compressing them, forming another shield.

As she did so, they watched a single scutter make a kamikaze run on one of the enemy submarines. It panicked, just barely destroying its own incoming torpedoes with  countermeasures of its own.

Time was out as the new line of torpedo strikes rained in on top of them. The ship’s physical armor began absorbing more of the blasts.

The ship rocked and jostled with every strike, until the shields officer grunted in exaltation and forced out the newly formed shield.

Hobb throat-singing filled the bridge, a low, deep resonance to the blasts and rattles of the explosives outside.

“Helm!” Captain Omen shouted above it. “Take us in, forty meters aft. I want this surgical, you understand?”

Captain Omen tapped at his console, sending the helm his targeting data.

“Aye captain!” the officer replied. Captain Omen could hear the smile in his voice.

Their interceptors opened fire with a strafing run of their PDCs. Each Dearth vessel suffered damage to their weapons systems and primary propellers from the coordinated attack.

A series of large, sharp fins shaped from metallic water rose higher on Whalehunter’s spine. The ship accelerated up toward the central Dearth submarine, and their helmsman expertly piloted the shield blades across the bottom of the enemy ship in a scream of tearing metal and shattering blades.

Bubbles erupted from the ship, as great gouts of air rushed from their ruptured ballast tank. Whalehunter slid through the ocean on the other side, pushing free so the Dearth sub could sink in its wake.

“Communications, open a broad-band channel,” Captain Omen said.

He glanced at the hobb representative, who immediately silenced his throat singing. The interceptors began reporting successful attack runs, and the hail of torpedoes stopped.

“Dearth submarines!” Captain Omen barked. “This is Whalehunter. Stand down or be destroyed. Respond at once.”

They did not, of course, but the order increased the tension on the other vessels. The sinking submarine replied first.

“We surrender. Cease hostilities,” came a desperate sounding voice through the static.

“Whalehunter, this is Dearth AS-3, standing down.”

“Dearth AS-2 standing down,” came the final crackling voice over the radio.

Thresher nodded.

“The enemy fleet is yours captain,” he said.

“Very good,” Captain Omen replied. “Get me one of their captains, have one of the interceptors bring them aboard,” he ordered.

“Aye Captain,” Thresher said.

Captain Omen stood and straightened his uniform. “Well done,” he said to his bridge officers.

He stepped out of Thresher's way as the big man took his chair to assume command over the battlefield.

“You don’t care which captain?” Thresher asked.

“The right captain for the job will present themselves at the invitation, XO,” Captain Omen replied. He glanced at their hobb fleet representative before locking eyes with his second in command. “The ship is yours, I’ll await our guest in the starboard moon pool.”

The door to the bridge slid shut behind him and Captain Omen took a deep breath, letting it out before shaking his head and turning on one heel. “Too late to stop now,” he muttered, walking through the halls toward the moon pool.

A squad of his orc marines formed up around him as he walked past the armory, and together they marched to the moon pool.

Within minutes, the interceptors returned. From the front compartment, a Nah’Gh slithered out, wearing a Dearth Conglomerate uniform. The serpent-man rose up and met Captain Omen’s gaze.

“I appreciate your restraint, Captain,” the Nah’Gh said. “I am Captain Verdal.”

“Then you appreciate your own imaginings, Verdal.” Captain Omen snapped. “I did not spare you for restraint’s sake. I would prefer the morties from your corpse.”

Captain Verdal blinked, hesitantly looking around the room at the marines. “Then . . . why bring me aboard?”

“Because I have something the Dearth Conglomerate wants, and, once you’ve finished effecting repairs and collecting your sunken comrades, you’re going to bring them my offer,” Captain Omen replied.

Captain Verdal narrowed his eyes but nodded slowly. “Very well, Captain Omen. Let us speak of your offer.”

Chapter 27

At midnight, I stepped into an underground room, hidden beneath BlueCleave’s primary military base, in Prescott.

Rayna had led the way, unsealing a hatch, and walking down a staircase before shouting for us to follow. The room we clambered down into was like a plastic brick-laced box, carpeted in old BuyMort cardboard boxes. A small cargo elevator sat against the far wall and appeared to have seen recent use.

Large crates of PRDs and melee weapons were stacked against the walls, waiting for us.

Once everyone had come down into the oversized storage area, Tollya closed the door behind us, sealing it with the turn of a wheel. Fresh, night air flowed in to us from surrounding vents, none large enough to admit a reaper hound.

Rayna had chosen our arena well.

She and Tollya had briefed me on the plan for the meeting. The idea was to display our suit’s primary weakness, in a way no hobb wearing one could ignore. Then we trained them on how to fight while cut to ribbons, a skill they would all soon need.

I was no longer looking forward to it, and I was super glad I’d gotten some rest.

The troopers lined up against the walls, and Jada stood at the rear, near the ladder. Rayna stood with Tollya near the old cargo elevator and opened one of the stacked crates. I stood in the center of the room, where everyone could see me, and stripped off my shirt.

I wore a pair of basketball shorts, and my helmet. Taking in the looks on the hobbs around me, I started the meeting off.

“Tonight,” I said, my voice bouncing off the walls. “Tonight we teach you all something important about the suits. Something we should have taught you before you put them on. Something our enemies already know.”

Some muttered grumbling resonated in the chamber, and Rayna stepped forward. She handed Tollya a machete and raised her voice to the crowd. “You all hear true! No suit makes you immortal! Tollya show you.”

I gestured at Tollya and braced myself. The hobb woman charged, raising her blade. I summoned my breaker gauntlets and readied my defense.

She got past it, as I had expected, and lightly clipped the back of my knee in passing. I went down, and Tolly nimbly hopped back into range, slicing through my armpit.

“Look,” Rayna said. My warriors looked. “Tollya take right arm and cause major bleed. This what reaper hounds do. How they killed our tribe. Piece by piece. This how they mean to kill you!”

I raised my left arm and blocked the next blow, meant for my throat. Tollya’s machete came in too close, and I shrugged the tendril swarm in my right armpit toward her.

She dropped the handle of the machete as my tendrils enveloped it. My starfish suit shredded the weapon, letting the disparate pieces fall to the floor.

“See what suit does? Suit will help defend you, not just heal. But only if attacker inside range of tendrils,” Rayna shouted. “Listen to cartoon! It annoying, but it tell you what you need to stay alive. To stay in the fight.”

My own cartoon starfish appeared to drive home her point. It insisted I be careful and told me I would want to find some charge soon if this kind of damage kept up. I ignored it.

Tollya trotted back to Rayna’s side and grabbed another weapon from the crate. Our BlueCleave blacksmiths must have been busy, as she grabbed four machetes. The first two she tossed to me, the second pair she kept for herself.

I sighed and picked up the weapons. At a nod from me, Tollya charged.

I caught one of her blades with a counter, but she was simply better than me and got a blade through my midsection while avoiding my other blade entirely.

“Reaper hounds distract,” Rayna said. “You think they attack one way, but they attack behind it.”

Tollya turned and rushed me again. I readied my blades but fell for her obvious feint. Once both my arms were overextended, she stepped in behind me and clipped both armpits. My blades clattered to the floor.

“They disarm,” Rayna called.

Tollya didn’t let up this time, she sunk her machetes into the back of both my knees, and I toppled, strings cut.

“Make you helpless,” Rayna added.

My suit deployed tendrils and started on repairs, and once I could stand again, I retrieved my blades.

This time, when Tollya jogged toward me, I managed to catch both blades and divert them with my own. She kicked at the side of my foot in passing, and I slipped on the soggy, crimson-stained cardboard.

“They use your footing against you, use your suit against you,” Rayna called. “They know suit heal you! They work to waste it’s charge, not to hurt you. They work to kill, even if you wear starfish! Because you wear starfish!”

The fog of painkiller overwhelmed me, and I roared at Tollya as I stood again, tendrils swirling.

Behind me, through it all, I heard Rayna add, “They smart. BuyMort-smart, use your rage against you.”

Tollya neatly skipped past my lunging blow, before dragging her blade across my wrist and disarming me again.

The suit deployed more tendrils, and I roared again. I swept my remaining blade wide, with a furious blow that caught Tollya across her thighs.

Her armored pants sparked as she was thrown back. I lurched into the air above her and slammed downward, blade extended. Tollya grinned and shoved back hard, scooting free as I landed. My blade snapped as it dug into the plasticrete floor, and I cast it aside, blood pounding in my temples.

“Don’t lose control,” Rayna said, as Tollya neatly cut my throat while rolling away. “Reaper hounds won’t.”

Tollya didn’t let up there. She slashed at my armpits, then across the back of my thighs. Finally, she pinned me to the floor with her blades, before skipping away to the crates.

I gurgled, spraying more blood in the air as I snapped both blades and rolled over. Tollya returned with two machetes, and I focused on my gravitic drive. As her blades plunged down, I fell across the floor to avoid them.

My tendrils repaired the ligaments in my legs, and I rose to my feet, arms dangling limply at my sides and painkiller clouding my mind.

“You are BlueCleave!” Rayna roared, as I activated my drive and plunged toward Tollya. “Not mindless animals! You can cheat!”

I slammed into Tollya, accepting both blades through my midsection as I grabbed her by the shoulders and swung us around, before throwing her at the wall.

Her body cracked audibly as she struck, and I floated in the middle of the air. I couldn’t hover intentionally, but when caught up in a moment of violence, my mind simply knew how to control the drive.

“Use BuyMort! Use your brains!” Rayna roared. “Cheat! Do not fight on their terms, fight on yours!”

My suit sawed the machetes apart and dragged them out of my torso, spaying flesh foam and lasering the wounds, while I hovered above the blood-spattered floor.

Tollya laughed, picked herself up, and rushed me. She went to her knees and slid under me, dragging her hand through my blood.

When I turned, she flicked it into my face, covering a portion of my helmet, and blocking my view.

“Reapers make you bleed, so use it against them! Find them with it. Make them step through it, whatever you can do!” Rayna called.

I wiped the blood off my faceplate and growled. The sound echoed off the walls.

“Reaper hounds distort light!” Rayna shouted. “Don’t trust your eyes.”

Tollya smiled, pressed something at the center of her vest, and vanished.

“Hear them!” Rayna called. “Feel them!”

I landed on the ground, suddenly aware that I had been hovering. The awareness seemed to knock me out of the ability, and Tollya took advantage. Her blades were invisible, and she cut me from the front and back at the same time.

My cartoon appeared again. “Okay user! This is too much, I’ll need a recharge. Break something user, break something!”

I raised a lip and waited. The instant I felt the next attack, I lunged, and caught Tollya by the arm.

Invisible, she whirled and took a wild slash at my elbow. I hauled back and her blade bounced harmlessly off my gauntlet.

“They have blades on long arms,” Rayna informed the gathered group. “Catch them, you catch the hound.”

I whirled and tossed Tollya at a nearby wall. Her invisibility cut out as she impacted and I leapt at her, driving my knee into her ribcage hard enough to crack the wall behind her.

She coughed and dropped, wheezing as her suit got to work repairing her torso.

Scollya, Tollya’s sister, stepped forward, but a harsh look from Rayna stopped her.

“Don’t let up, if you get one,” the tribe leader said, looking me in the eyes.

I slammed an elbow into Tollya’s throat, and her eyes bulged. With a lazy right, I dislocated her knee, and the hobb woman went down.

“Maim, cripple, hurt them however you can,” Rayna said.

My painkiller receded, and I dismissed the gauntlets. Tollya gasped on the floor as her MK-1 suit popped a new larynx in.

“And most important part of reaper hound fighting!” Rayna shouted, getting the rooms attention again. “Never forget your charge!” She swept open the lid to the PRD case, exposing the little glinting glass tails to light.

“Break anything to charge. With your hands, feet, or head, break their bones if nothing else!” she shouted. “Reaper hounds rely on wearing down your charge, so don’t let them!”

I slowly walked over to the case and crushed a PRD’s tail in my hand. My cartoon starfish gasped and started gyrating beside Rayna. “Thank you user! All charged up!”

The hobbs in the room were all staring at me, so I dismissed my helmet and showed them my face. “These enemies are here for us, specifically. They will draw us out, pick us off, and destroy our reputation across the multiverse. Reaper hounds can control who and what sees them, at will. They were sent here as a message, from our enemies in Dearth. They mean to kill us all. Don’t let them kill you.”

My message delivered, I sat down on an unused crate and sighed. The example was dramatic enough that our troopers wouldn’t be thinking of much else until the reaper hound threat was neutralized.

That had been our goal, and why I’d agreed to getting my ass kicked.

I hadn’t expected to be schooled so completely. I’d seen Rayna and Tollya sparring before too, if they’d both attacked me at once, I’d have stood no chance at all.

Tollya walked over next and crushed a PRD tail, giggling lightly at the soft explosion in the containment foam. She sat down on the crate beside me and rubbed at the back of her head, which was now hairless. It clashed with her usual undercut but would only take a few days to grow back.

“Skull fracture cheating,” she quipped.

“Hey, you chose not to wear a helmet. And besides, we agreed ‘no holds barred,’” I replied.

Tollya snorted and nodded. “Think it work,” she whispered. “Hobbs love a good fight.”

I looked in their eyes and saw the truth of it. The shine in their eyes and exposed teeth coupled with the heavy breathing in the room, and the looks of awe cast at Tollya and me. My hobbs were all drunk on the blood in the air and ready to cut each other up for fun.

Chapter 28

Rayna was getting the rest of our troopers paired up for a long session of sparring, with sharp blades and plenty of PRDs to recharge. They were raring to go, grinning and baring teeth at one another in anticipation of the upcoming violence.

Tollya and I had just been the opening act, our troopers were going to spend a good chunk of the night tearing one another apart, just to get used to the sensation, and learn what it took to fight through it the way Tollya and I could.

They’d need it.

Jada got my attention from the other side of the room with a wave, and I stood to join her, walking through a crowd of eager starfish troopers.

“Axle says we have a problem, Tyson,” she said, once I had arrived. I nodded and started climbing the stairs up. Jada followed and sealed the door behind us. A hobb was guarding the entrance, regardless of how deep in the military portion of Prescott we were. That encouraged me to see.

BlueCleave never failed to take our problems seriously.

“What’s goin’ on,” I asked when we were clear.

Jada pointed to a nearby hovercraft that was coming in for a landing. “Something’s wrong with the desalination plant. It’s stopped working entirely.”

The few hours of sleep I’d gotten looked to be all I was going to get, and I sighed. “Shit. Of course.”

Axle was on board, swiping through his tablet nervously licking his nose every few seconds.

“The plant isn’t the only problem we face.” He glanced over at me and blinked in surprise. I was covered in drying blood and dressed in the torn rags of my basketball shorts.

“Uhh,” Axle said. “We can find you some clothes on the way.” He blinked and licked his nose again, turning back to his tablet.

“On the way where?” I asked.

“Home,” Axle said. He gave me a significant look and said, “Check your Afflqwst.”

I sighed and did as he instructed. The app sprang to life in my vision and displayed our newest quest.

Quest – Calm the irritation of your beholder guest, before it turns to wrath, and they harm your affiliate.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. (Optional) Negotiate with beholder. Chance of success is high.

2. (Optional) Kill the beholder. Chance of success is very low.

REWARD – Item coupon.

The item coupon price was higher than a simple starfish suit, but less expensive than my last upgrade. It made me hope for a second tier suit upgrade. We’d need it if we could somehow talk our way out of whatever trouble we were in with Quadrum.

Jada found me a pair of the hobbs combat fatigues and boots, which I put on without any complaint. I’d gotten used to wearing their clothes.

Our pilot lifted off without any commentary, and we made the short trip to Silken Sands in silence.

Once we’d landed at my old site, Axle gestured with his chin, and we started walking. Past Phyllis and the sleepy ravens, between the residential blocks, and past Morbin Time, we stopped at the elevator.

It had seen some upgrades since we’d first installed it, and a mid-sized cargo elevator platform stood over the entrance. The hobbs used it daily, for both foot traffic and goods. They’d even installed a staircase alongside it, to avoid having to walk the long way around. Jada, Axle, and I took the elevator down to the bottom floor, which required a key to enter.

The rest of the underground area had been renovated rather dramatically by the hobbs. It was still a part of BlueCleave’s primary housing facility, but it had been converted for use as physical storage and maintenance. The oversized boiler that provided hot water, the primary air conditioning fans, etc. Buildings that size required infrastructure, we had basement to spare.

Rayna and I agreed that the more floors between our Beholder and the people it could potentially harm, the better.

For Quadrum’s part, they had kept their end of the bargain. No one had been disturbed, and we benefited from the radiation they emitted, good for both our Sleem farm and the strange power-supplying entity we all called Cube.

Axle had sound proofed the lower level, so once we were past the security door, we could speak openly without fear of Morbin’s powerful ears overhearing us. Jada stood at the heavy door, as Axle and I headed for the entrance to Quadrum’s lair.

“What the hell is their problem now?” I muttered.

“I may have an idea, but I don’t want to color your expectations. Best we go in, speak with them, and find out what is wrong,” Axle said. His ears were flat back, and his tail was tucked.

As we approached the far end of the long hallway, a portion of the wall melted away and a booming voice sounded from below.

“BE NOT AFRAID!” shouted Quadrum. It was never particularly convincing.

The way the walls shimmered and shook as we approached certainly didn’t help.

Axle and I walked down a set of stairs that protruded from the wall itself. Quadrum’s lair was composed of a monstrously thick layer of nanobots, as best we could tell. Hundreds of quintillions of the microscopic robots formed the walls, floor, and any hatches, doors, or pools the beholder required for its work.

The room was uncharacteristically empty, the otherworldly science equipment all pushed back up against the far wall. In the center of the room, above the gaping hole down to the Sleem cavern, hung Quadrum.

The beholder resembled a living star, wrapped in mobile metal rings. Each ring was capable of deploying sensory and manipulation tentacles, to use as its hands and eyes. Quadrum’s own great eye of lidded flame blinked as we approached, a lid of red flame washing over the yellowish orb.

“BEHOLD! WHERE ARE MY SLEEM?!” Quadrum demanded.

I hesitated on the last step and stared at the beholder.

“How the hell would I know?” I muttered. Axle drew in a sharp breath and shook his head at me.

“The farm’s production has been down for a few days, but I assumed it was just the aquifer lowering. I should have realized . . .” he said.

“Great Quadrum!” Axle shouted, stepping forward with his arms wide. “We have only now become aware of the Sleem’s absence, and we will do everything in our power to find them for you!”

The beholder’s primary eye swiveled toward Axle for a long moment before it turned back to me. “WHERE ARE MY SLEEM?” they rumbled.

“Have you checked the basement?” I asked.

The flames composing Quadrum’s primary body flickered and swelled, pressing against the constraints of his rotating rings before deflating again.

Axle grabbed my elbow and hissed, “do not be sarcastic. Beholders react very poorly to sarcasm.”

“SLEEM ARE GONE FROM BELOW! WHERE ARE MY SLEEM? FIND MY SLEEM AT ONCE!” Quadrum rumbled into our heads.

“Yep,” I quipped, smiling, and nodding my head. “Will do, Quadrum ol’ buddy ol’ pal. I’m on it.”

“BOTH SERVANTS!” The beholder roared. “BOTH SERVANTS GO, FIND MY SLEEM!”

Axle eyed the gaping hole in the ground and licked his nose as his tail crawled up between his legs.

“I’ve got you, Axle,” I whispered. “It’ll be okay.”

The Knowle looked over to me and nodded, but his tail remained tucked, and his ears were plastered to his head.

“We’re going, now, Quadrum. Can you move, please? We need to use the tunnel,” I said to the floating ball of sapient flame.

Axle once told me they were living energy but was unable to tell me how they lived in such a state. Just that the rings and tentacles were thought to be a kind of prosthesis, though some had clearly organic versions. With beholders, nothing was certain.

The ball of flame and spinning eyeball rings retreated, allowing us to access the gaping hole in the floor. Without their flames burning up the toxic odor of raw sewage and Sleem, Axle gagged and retched. I was tempted myself, but instead summoned my helmet.

Quadrum blinked when they saw it form but did not move or say anything else.

I stepped up behind Axle and carefully pressed my hands into his armpits. In spite of being much larger than me, I was able to lift him easily before dropping us both into the hole.

He whined deep in the back of his throat and closed his eyes tightly. The gravitic drive seemed like it was made for exactly what I was doing with it. The fall gentled, and I was able to easily change its direction to match the slope of the old tunnel.

My helmet showed me the area around us, while Quadrum’s light receded from above. Axle was plunged into stinking darkness. We passed by the specialty sewer pipe, with its locking ejection mechanism. It ensured that all the waste our many residents produced went straight to feed our population of Sleem.

The Sleem themselves were gone, however. We’d had a massive population in the cavern below, populated by an oversized red birthing block. It had ensured our Sleem farm remained profitable, absorbing the radiation from not only Quadrum, but a stash of old radioactive ingots in the cave.

I floated us over the bottom of the concrete ramp, and away from the lake of sewage that had formed in the few days since our Sleem left. My shoes smoked a little as I landed, but most of the remnant Sleem slime was dried out, and non-harmful. Axle, being barefoot, set his paws down gingerly on a dry patch of smooth stone.

Once his footing was secure, he retched again, and then explosively vomited.

I pulled up my BuyMort app and did a quick search for Knowle friendly breathing masks.

Knowle’s Knowle Market Emporium. No one knows Knowles like Knowles do.

An affiliate specializing in Knowles. Perfect. I went ahead and let the advertisement lead me to the affiliate site. Many times these things ended up being virtual construction yards or warehouses.

But in the case of Knowle’s Knowle Market Emporium, it was a vast art gallery, walls with framed pictures of the merchandise with in. Whole galleries and wings labeled in ornate brass and bronze with the category of their goods.

DINNERWARE read one such gallery. Old World Electronics read another.

Spinning 180 degrees, I glanced through them, looking for my category. The way these things worked was by tags, I knew. So if I could find a category that Knowle’s would tag a mask into, I’d be golden.

And there I saw it. Masks and Faceplates the gallery sign read.

Was straight forward enough. I jumped in, scanning the portraits that spread out over a wall a thousand times my height and a million times as wide.

These shopping trips got, well, trippy at times. Luckily they seemed to be time-compressed. So my hours in here would be minutes in the real world.

Or so it had seemed thus far.

I scanned high and low, and the only thing that immediately stuck out to me as something up to our needs was a full-face mask. I plunged my hand into the picture and it glooped through as if liquid. Something seized it and I was yanked through to a dark room, the mask sitting on a white marble pillar and illuminated by a spotlight.

Knowle’s Air Poison Prevention and Security Mask — Don’t let carelessness be your undoing. 140,000 morties, 4.3 stars.

After all of that lead up, the advertising was so simple and basic. So clean and pure.

I decided that, when things settled and cleared, I really needed to visit the worlds of the Knowles and learn what it was that made them tick. They were such an amazing and direct people in so many ways.

I pulled out of the ads, back to real life, and I glanced over at Axle. The guy was miserably puking his guts up. So I ordered it, and got him a pair of Sleem-Stomper boots as well.

“Sorry Axle,” I said, closing my app as a pod ripped into the air beside us. “I got you some things to help though.”

He looked up, eyes bleary with tears, before retching again.

Unable to do anything else, I opened the BuyMort box while waiting for Axle to stop vomiting. He went on for a while, long after his stomach was empty he was still dry heaving. I glanced over at the small lake of sewage and nodded, hands on my hips. That made sense.

After a few minutes of heavy retching and more than a few whimpers of discomfort, Axle reached out a hand from his kneeling position and snatched the mask. He struggled into it, stretching it over his nose and taking a large breath through it. The Knowle slumped and sighed in relief, swallowing the next gag reflex that threatened him.

“You alright?” I asked, handing him the boots next.

He nodded and took them. “I am now. That was unpleasant,” he said, partially muffled by the mask. The Knowle slipped on the Sleem Stomper boots, before bending to secure their straps. He stood again and nodded at me.

“Thank you Tyson. Now all I need is a light,” he said, peering around the oversized cavern.

I activated my helmet’s light function, a ‘spell’ that caused my entire head to glow lightly, while projecting a beam of light from the faceplate. It automatically dimmed whenever I looked at Axle’s face, but otherwise lit up the entire area. The cavern radiated the soft light back at us from its still-glistening walls

All of the stone was smooth, as if eroded. The stalagmites and stalactites scattered throughout the cave were all smaller than I remembered too.

The only thing missing appeared to be my oversized puddle of Sleem.

Chapter 29

“Have they been eating the cave?” I asked Axle.

He nodded, the silhouette of his mask wobbling at my side. “They do that, slowly but surely. What I want to know is how we’ve been harvesting Sleem still.” He pointed in the general direction of our Sleem pipe. I followed his extended claw, and my spot light illuminated the wall.

Our Sleem-friendly access pipe was jutting from the wall a few feet up, melted and reformed stone around it creating an effective seal. They could slime their way up the pipe but couldn’t get around it and escape. A thin trickle of green slime hung down from the pipe and snaked across the floor. It was a few inches thick and shined vibrant green in the light.

Axle cocked his head as he carefully approached, looking closely at the dollop of Sleem. “It's much wider once in the pipe,” he called back. “They must be . . . intentionally feeding this pipe. Why would escaping Sleem do that?”

“They didn’t want us to know they were gone,” I said with a sigh.

Axle turned back to me with a small nod. “Sleem farms often attempt escape, and I must admit, I have been complacent with this one,” he said. “I apologize, my friend. You rely on me for this part of our affiliate, and I let you down. The sales had slowed, but I didn’t think to put that element together with the earthquake and realize what it meant.”

“You and Jada both have taken on way more than we agreed when you started with us, this is not your fault. We just have to find them, that’s all. How do we do that?” I asked him.

Axle nodded, looking around the cavern again. “Wasn’t there radioactive material in here?” he suddenly asked.

I nodded and swept the room. The small bundle of ingots was not where I had last seen it, on the Fumble-Bee footage. I swept the room with concern, but the small chunks of metal were nowhere, unless they were buried in the sewage lake.

Concern of a trap crossed my mind, but I doubted our missing Sleem were that clever. The bastards had tricked Mr. Sada into letting them stay when they first arrived, but Mr. Sada had been, as gently as I can put this, too stupid to live.

Still, given enough time, and the right set of circumstances, our Sleem had pulled one over on Axle, me, and everyone who worked with the freezers directly. All indications were a healthy, compliant Sleem farm. Just down there happily eating our sewage and making baby Sleem for us to brutally freeze to death and sell.

The BuyMort family way.

“We can follow this trail,” Axle informed me. “When Sleem do something like this, the sentience in the strand is questionable at best. If we do not directly disturb it, it’s unlikely the birthing block will be made aware of our presence.”

I nodded and we started carefully winding our way through the cavern, following a thick line of living acid snot. It pulsed with movement beneath the surface, feeding its young into our collection pipe for no reason other than to keep us compliant.

“I’d also love it if we could keep the income source intact,” I whispered. “Things are getting a little expensive these days.”

Axle nodded vigorously. “Agreed, though I do have some ideas on that front. What are you planning to do about the water situation?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing I can do, I’m going to call Captain Omen. See if he can clear out the bugs so our people can get the plant working again.”

The Knowle at my side shrugged. “If you think that’s what’s best.”

I sighed and nodded. “No choice. He has the military and experience to do what we need. I can’t afford to outfit BlueCleave with a bunch of aquatic vehicles and weapons. Not right now.”

“And we need that water right now,” Axle agreed. “Makes sense.”

We approached a black hole in the cavern wall, where my light was simply absorbed into the gloom behind it.

The wall was thick, at least a few feet of solid stone, and the snaking, pulsing line of Sleem slime led straight through the hole. I carefully straddled the thick, snotty line and crouched to see inside, gripping the edge.

Still nothing, no visible return of light. The edges of the hole in the wall were slick and appeared to be dripping water. I leaned back and whispered, “Looks like the aquifer. Did we shut down the main pipe?”

The masked Knowle slowly shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter if we did, Sleem could get through that water system. It's not built to defend against them.”

“How the hell did they cut a hole through this wall?” I asked him, stepping carefully back over the line of pulsating slime.

“The drone,” he replied with a hiss.

“Surely not?” I swept the cave with my lights, searching for the small drone we had lost when first drilling the pipe. “How would they power it?”

“No need. They simply chipped away at the stone with it.” He sighed, deeply and crouched on his haunches. “I should have known this would happen, sooner rather than later. Nothing about your Sleem infestation has been normative, I don’t know why I thought their escapism would be.”

I stepped over to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, friend. We’d never have gotten this far without you, all we have to do is figure out how to get 'em back. Get this hole sealed up, maybe increase the strength of their walls.” I trailed off as my friend shook his head.

“I feel like the affiliate is falling apart around us,” he said. “No water, our income sources are drying up, and someone is playing games with us, using those blasted hounds.”

I chuckled and nodded. “I’ve felt that way since day one, but I met a bunch of awesome people who have helped me, and it hasn’t fallen apart yet,” I said, offering him my hand. “It’s just another problem to solve, we’re good at that. C’mon, no time for despair.”

Axle snorted, a sound muffled by his mask, and took my hand. I hauled him up and he looked around the room. “Our bigger problem is Quadrum. I don’t think it would be wise to go back without something solid to offer them on where their Sleem went.”

“Right, I always manage to forget about that creature. Pushy thing,” I muttered.

Axle raised a finger to quiet me. “You must curb your disrespect. Quadrum could destroy this entire affiliate.”

I shrugged. “So could I. Hell, so could you, given the right time and resources. Destructive capability is not a valid reason to show respect,” I fired back.

“It’s not about that, it’s about survival,” Axle immediately replied. “One day, Quadrum will be satisfied with their research, and if we’re very lucky, they’ll just vanish. Never bother us again, and possibly leave behind all of that insanely expensive technology. Until that day, they’re an ax over our heads, and you need to keep that in mind.”

I pulled up Afflqwst again and looked at the current quest. ‘Calm the irritation of your beholder guest,’ it said. But it gave me the option of killing the beholder too, with a very low chance of success. In that moment, I had to wonder what a shot from a transdimensional pulse cannon would do to a beholder. I looked at Axle, but kept the thought to myself, for when I was certain the dangerous being was not listening in.

The legend of the brothers Delvago might need to be put to the test.

Not that I could afford them at that moment. Our flex account had stayed brutally empty since Los Angeles. We were hemorrhaging morties, trying to keep the water flowing. And without the nice, convenient aquifer under our feet, that task continued to grow in expense. Turns out, aquifers go empty, and take a really long time to refill. Who’da thunk?

That was a problem I shared with my species, a narrowing of foresight. Unless something directly affected me in a negative way, I was loath to do anything about it.

But then, with the weight of my affiliate above my head, I felt the cost of that inaction.

It was time that I altered our course.

Chapter 30

I patted Axle on the shoulder again and pulled up my psychic phone app. The gray head in the device stared at me blankly and I thought a compulsive apology at him.

“Why?” the psychic deity whispered in my head. “Why are you always sorry when you see me?”

I shrugged and replied, “I feel like I owe you something.” A quick deluge of memories flooded through my mind, little more than a series of images and moments where I felt this creature had helped me.

His eyes widened for an instant, before the practiced serenity came back over him. “Nonsense, your bill is always paid promptly. Who can I connect you with?” he asked, voice stiff. I needed his help against BuyMort, but it was difficult and dangerous to even communicate that with him.

“Then think it,” he whispered in my mind. “I’ll know, and not respond, until a path can be found to actualize your communicative desire.”

A chill flushed through my chest. The tiny hope I’d been fostering was real, he could and would help me in my fight against BuyMort. As soon as I could figure out how. His formulaic reply, even when resonating in my skull, had felt cautious. It was a keen reminder that even this creature, as powerful as he clearly was, had been imprisoned and enslaved by BuyMort.

Freeing him from that enslavement would be the first step in acquiring his aid. But for the moment, I needed aid of a different sort.

“Connect me to Captain Omen, please,” I asked MortMobile.

He nodded and turned away, forming a gray tunnel that connected me with a stern looking Korean man.

“Yes,” he snapped.

I blinked and shook my head. “Uh, hey. Captain Omen,” I stammered, suddenly unsure of how to ask for what I needed.

“Yes,” he snapped again. Clearly he was a man who valued frank speech, so I shrugged and decided to try it.

“We have a problem. Lots of large, aquatic bugs are attacking our desalination plant in Los Angeles,” I told him.

“Yes?” Captain Omen asked.

“Well, you told me to call when they got bad, I assume you know how to deal with them,” I said. “Would you deal with them? For me?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “For a price, of course. I have a fleet standing by, equipped and ready to clear them out. My ships and people can also aid in your repairs, as well as convert those Dearth cargo vessels you’re sitting on into more desalination plants.”

I nodded, blinking rapidly. “That’s exactly what I need. What’s it going to cost me?”

“Nothing, aside from your direct aid in killing our shared enemy. My people are already in motion, all I need is your word, that you will help me rid our world of this evil,” he said, staring at my mask in the phone.

Other people saw their own faces and changed their expressions. They became uncomfortable, most even feeling threatened if they weren’t used to dealing with me. But Captain Omen seemed able to ignore it and stared at where my eyes should be. I couldn’t escape his gaze, and he almost never blinked.

“You have it, Captain. I’ll kill your giant squid,” I told him.

“Very well. Inform your people to pull back and hold fire. My ships are in position, the attack will commence immediately. My people will clear out the whale bugs. Your plant will be yours again within the hour,” he informed me, before cutting off our call unexpectedly.

“Well, that’s the desalination plant taken care of,” I muttered as I swiped away the phone app. “Now to find us a way out of this cave.”

Axle pulled out his own and started making a series of calls to the Los Angeles port, preparing our staff there for Captain Omen’s help.

I turned to face the wall and thought about how to get through it. When my friend and partner put his phone away and looked over, I was ready with a proposal.

“Why don’t I just break through this? We know it's thin now, I can just smash it,” I offered.

Axle nodded, and I saw his mask bulge at the nose for a moment while he tried to compulsively lick his nose. “We do not know where the Sleem tendril is, beyond that wall. Any fragments that fell on it would be enough to warn the main body.”

I nodded. “I thought you might say something like that. My backup plan is to pull off pieces of the wall slowly and carefully, from the hole they cut. Widen it enough for us to get inside?”

Axle pointed at the hole again, and I cast my light over to it.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe, if you are slow and careful enough, that could work. Try not to drop any particles on the Sleem thread.”

I got to work. My advanced strength and metallic breaker gauntlets made the job easier, and soon I had a decent rhythm going. The hardest part was breaking off the chunks of stone so that they didn’t drop any pebbles on the Sleem, and we had a couple of mildly close calls before it was done.

Once our new door was built in the wall, I leaned out into the chasm beyond it and shined my light onto the walls around us. Smooth limestone as far as the eye could see, with no visible ceiling or floor. The line of Sleem traveled down, so I stepped back inside and shrugged, before getting to work on the wall again.

More pieces needed to be broken off so that I could help lower Axle down with me. I certainly didn’t want to leave him behind, out of concern of the Sleem pipe. So long as we didn’t get noticed, it stayed relatively full of newly birthed green oozes, who happily crawled up the pipe to their dooms.

For multiple reasons, we didn’t want to alter or change that dynamic, especially not while we were anywhere near it.

Once the extra stone had been broken away, and a doorway built in the wall, Axle carefully stepped up to it, and I lifted him from his armpits again. I stepped forward and we plunged over the edge of the chasm.

I held Axle without any trouble, and though his tail was plastered between his legs, the hyena-man maintained his composure and didn’t cause us any problems while falling. Aiming how to land became difficult when we quickly found the remnants of the aquifer.

My own light reflected back at me from the water, and I diverted our controlled fall to a nearby shelf of stone at the lip of the underground lake.

The ceiling lost in darkness above us, and the remnants of an underground lake casting reflections all around, we continued following the thin line of Sleem. The footing was slippery, and the trail cut across shallow sections of standing water.

“They are well hydrated, at the least,” Axle muttered, while investigating one such area.

We walked carefully for longer than I thought we would before Axle stopped and checked his tablet. He peered up, and I followed. The light was still swallowed up by the cavernous ceilings overhead.

“Well, Prescott’s main water intake should be directly above us somewhere,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t think the Sleem used that to escape, the trail keeps going in this direction. They’d have had to climb the wall here to reach it.”

“Be right back, I should check to make sure,” I replied, before activating my gravitic drive.

I fell up away from Axle, into the darkness of the cave. My light focused on the wall to my side, and when I got high enough, I found the intake, jutting from the stone.

The pipe was large, just big enough for me to crawl inside, if not for the screen of mesh surrounding it. Grabbing the wet mesh, I inspected it for any trace of the Sleem, finding only a Dearth Conglomerate label instead. With a shrug, I dropped back to the stone below, at Axle’s side.

“Nothing, no trace of them on the pipes,” I told him.

“Well, that’s good,” he said, as his ears went flat against his skull.

“Doesn’t sound good,” I replied.

“I simply do not know where they could have gone,” he said. “It scares me a great deal to think we could be walking into a giant nest of Sleem down here.

“Oh don’t worry about that, Axle,” I said. “If we find them, I can just fly us out of here. Just be ready for me to grab you, I guess.”

My friend nodded, but his tail was tucked, and his ears stayed flat. Without any other option, we followed the trail of Sleem through the dark.

After only a few more minutes of walking, we found where the pulsing snail-trail led. Directly into a solitary yarsp tunnel. Our hive had been expanding beyond our ability to easily control, and now it had a Sleem infestation as well.

Chapter 31

“Oh shit,” Axle whispered.

My light shined into the tunnel, glinting back against the trail of Sleem and occasional yarsp excretion. The light bobbed as I agreed with Axle.

“Oh shit is right,” I said. “They’re in the pasta-damned yarsp hive?”

My friend and partner simply nodded, staring into the dark tunnel ahead of us. It was undeniably dug by the yarsps. We knew they were deep, but the aquifer was supposed to be safe from them, as they wouldn’t knowingly compromise the structure of their hive by letting large amounts of water into it. The species was evolved for digging and had a series of instinctual drives that pushed them to notice and avoid excess moisture when tunneling.

None of us had counted on the aquifer draining so quickly, and it was clearly becoming a larger problem than we’d expected.

“Contact the hive crew, we have to warn them,” I said.

Axle immediately pulled out his phone and got to work. His tail was tucked and his ears were plastered flat against his head. He ran so much of the affiliate for me that I often failed to realize the strain all of this must have put on him.

While he made some phone calls, I activated my gravitic drive and floated into the tunnel. I kept my light active and explored only up to the first junction. It appeared as though the yarsps had dug down to our level but didn’t get the chance to expand before the Sleem arrived.

There was only a small handful of their excretions, which formed hard tile-like structures to pave their hive walls. The earth, stone, and clay were all recently dug as well, still glistening with moisture, and occasionally slime from the passage of dangerous caustic monsters.

Great, my meat production was going to drop too.

It’s not as though the excess yarsp meat my hobbs produced was worth a ton of morties, but the hive kept Prescott fed.

Losing food along with water would be a deathblow to the affiliate.

I realized while I floated back to Axle through the tunnel that my entire future was in the hands of Captain Omen and his crew.

If they couldn’t get water production back up and running soon, we’d face a mass exodus. Or worse.

I collected myself before arriving back at Axle’s side. We needed to fix this, not crumble because of it. Axle wrapped up his call and shut off the tablet as I arrived.

“What’s the word?” I asked as I landed at his side.

He cocked his head to indicate I should follow him and started walking back the way we had come. “A multi-level quarantine and Fumble-Bee sweep is now in progress. They’ll find and contain the Sleem, but that may drive them back to us.”

My Knowle friend glanced back at me and gestured for me to follow. “We should leave. Now.”

I nodded and increased my pace to keep up.

“Thanks. What are you thinking for an escape route?” I asked.

“I was hoping you would blast us out through the sinkhole,” Axle replied. “It should be connected to all of this somehow.”

We walked at a brisk pace, following the Sleem trail back to the edge of the aquifer remnant. On the way back, a detour around a particularly muddy patch of terrain exposed the hidden crack in the stone most of our fresh water had disappeared into. It snaked off into the darkness, and I thought of the monster that had caused it.

Kraken corp.

I didn’t care for the idea of being a hired gun, but honestly, the scale of that creature and what it was capable of made me the best choice for killing it. Captain Omen was right. I was the right tool for the job, and the thing had already attacked me.

As Axle and I stood at the edge of the lake, contemplating the next step, I resolved to request another segment on CTV. Kraken’s human puppet would tell me more about the creature, one way or another.

“So, yeah,” Axle said, pulling out his tablet for a light source. “Go ahead and fly.”

I chuckled and activated my gravitic drive, plunging up into the air. My helmet cast a glowing reflection in the smooth water of the underground lake, and I took in the beauty of it for a moment while I flew up to the ceiling.

My cartoon starfish joined me in flight, distracting me with a demand. “Using the gravitic drive like this is taxing, user! Don’t forget to break something for some charge!”

I concentrated on my destination and landed on the ceiling with both feet. My first task was a quick exploration of the cavern’s roof, so I hopped off the ceiling and started a long series of loping moon-jumps. The gravitic drive made it feel like I was hopping lightly, and traversing the cave’s roof sent a thrill through me with each leaping step.

My mobility had been significantly enhanced with this upgrade, and I felt good about learning to use it more effectively.

All it took was some practice.

Most of the cave was solid stone, but toward the back wall of the aquifer remnant I encountered a massive patch of wet clay. A ramp of loose earth and clay led directly up, making it all look like a fresh cave in.

I skipped over it and took a kick at the material, looking back to see the effect. A patch of the clay shook loose and fell, sending with it a cascade of loose earth. But then more clay filled in the fallen patch and the tumble of falling earth ceased.

With a few leaps and bounds across the ceiling, I managed to get turned around and come back for another attempt, but the result was very much the same. On an impulse, I concentrated on changing my direction and started falling for real, down toward the lake.

An instant of severe disorientation addled me, but I got control over the fall before I hit the water, and rocketed back up to the roof of the cave, atomic breaker gauntlets extended. With a sharp thought, I activated the gauntlets and smacked into the wet clay with a burst of bright blue light.

Hard earth and wet clay surrounded and crushed me from all sides, suspending me within the cave’s wounded ceiling for an instant before the entire thing began to plunge toward the lake, tumbling down the landslide hill. My helmet protected my face from the deluge, but it was enough like being buried alive that I nearly panicked anyway.

Instead, I thrashed loose of the earth and clay cork, sending a cascade of large and small particles down the ramp into the lake. I diverted my own course the instant I could tell which way was up and flew toward the nearby shore, as the minor landslide continued behind me.

Axle’s light drew me in, and he shielded himself as I arrived, more dirt and wet earth flying from my body. I was dripping in the stuff and took a moment to sling mud off my arms and wipe it from my torso before addressing my Knowle friend.

He looked me up and down, shaking his head while laughter bubbled up from behind his mask. “I am sorry, my friend,” he said between laughs. “Did it work, at least?”

I shook large globs of mud free from my boots, being careful to avoid the Sleem trail. “I don’t even know yet. Gimme a minute, I’ll go back up and check.”

Axle nodded and turned off his tablet again. “Well, since I have you, we could discuss a new income idea, if you like.”

I nodded, mud dripping from my chromed helmet. “Yeah, hit me.”

My friend nodded back. “I found another tape,” he started.

I chuckled and sat down on the edge of the lake, avoiding the icy cold water with my already wet boots. Axle loved watching old vhs tapes found on runs. DVDs and blu-rays too, but he was fascinated by the stuff out of the VHS era.

“This one was something I think we could easily emulate, producing it ourselves very inexpensively, and selling it to the CTV network. They’re interested in Nu-Earth content featuring Nu-Earthers in a variety of scenarios,” he rambled.

“I was thinking we could place a camera crew with some of our BlueCleave patrols, we have a small handful of humans working the security sector who may jump at the chance for the extra morties,” Axle explained.

“They regularly respond to interesting small-scale dream storms, and now with the reaper hounds and Sleem likely to be in Prescott soon, there’ll be plenty of content. You would likely even make semi-regular appearances that could boost our overall presence and income streams.”

“Everyone would want to wear my underwear if I’m on TV, you told me,” I reminded him.

He laughed and nodded. “Yes, even more so with the new show. I was thinking we could call it H.O.B.B.S,” Axle told me, explaining the specific spelling after.

I barked an echoing laugh, before nearly slapping a hand over my helmet, where my mouth should be. The Sleem trail didn’t respond, though, and a quick shush from Axle had me lightly chuckling again.

“I know exactly where you got that name from. It’s great, let’s do it,” I said, getting up and brushing off my mud-soaked pants again. “I’m gonna go check the hole. Back in a few.”

He pulled out his tablet again and nodded. “I’ll get it in motion. Should be minimal setup costs.”

I zipped away, flying in the general direction of the hole I’d punched. The sound of things lightly avalanching into the water had never really gone away, but it had slowed to the point I was concerned before I even saw the abject failure.

More heavy earth had filled in the hole, and while loose earth still rained from it, there was no way I would be able to drag Axle through that without killing him. It felt like I was going to suffocate just from the weight of the ground boxing me in.  Instead of making another run at it, I sighed and turned around to fall back to Axle at the shore once more.

“Looks like I’m going to have to do this a few hundred thousand times to get us up and out. It’s just going to keep filling itself in,” I told him.

“Then never mind, we don’t want to spend that kind of time,” he replied immediately.

“What about a portal?” I asked him.

He swiped up something on his tablet and shook his head. “I don’t recommend that. We’re out of free portals until later today around noon, and the charge is exorbitant for that service without the perk freebies.” Axle looked back at me. “We should really upgrade that perk when we have the affiliate levels. We seem to use the portal allotment too often for comfort.”

“Well, how much we talkin’ here?” I asked with a shrug. “You said we shouldn’t go back to Quadrum empty-handed.”

Axle nodded, and I saw an attempt at licking his nose through the mask again. “I believe we are not empty-handed any longer. We have a location and are in the initial processes of retrieving the Sleem. In the meantime, as you said, we will reinforce their prison walls.”

He nodded again, rapidly this time. “I think that will set Quadrum’s concerns to rest.”

“Alright, if you say so,” I told him. We got into position, my hands under his armpits again, and I flew Axle up to our hole in the wall above. I could feel his elevated heart rate through my hands.

My heart was beating quickly as well.

Chapter 32

We entered the Sleem cavern and jetted up the elevator shaft toward Quadrum’s lair. The beholder’s glow grew as we neared the top, and they were on us the instant I set Axle down.

“BEHOLD!” Quadrum roared, flitting from us to the hole in his floor. “BEHOLD! WHERE ARE MY SLEEM!”

The beholder plunged out of sight down the tunnel.

“Quadrum, wait!” Axle shouted.

“BEHOLD!” Quadrum’s voice echoed as they receded down the tunnel. “BEHOLD! NO SLEEM!”

The voice roared from below, and a harsh light began to grow in the tunnel as Quadrum returned.

Axle pulled off his mask, as the blazing beholder emerged in the room with us again. “BEHOLD!” they roared. “BAD SERVANTS!”

The light from the creature flared so bright my eyes simply went out. My helmet blasted away in a cloud of dead nanobots, and I felt a moment of intense burning from my eyes, then nothing but numb cold and the sudden onset of my painkiller.

I fell over backwards and heard Axle howl in agony. My suit deployed tendrils and hurriedly removed both of my eyes, before replacements were sent up. Internal tendrils welded my new nerves to the ones Quadrum had just burned out, and my vision returned as the fresh eyeball was being slid into place.

The sensation of the tendrils sliding out of my brain was indescribable.

“BE NOT AFRAID, BAD SERVANTS!” Quadrum roared, never less believable. “FAILED SERVANTS!”

I knew a little about what this creature did to its servants, having been the hand that wiped out their last group. At the beholder’s direct behest.

“Quadrum, no!” Axle shouted, his voice ragged with pain. “We found your Sleem! They are in our yarsp hive, we’re having them contained for retrieval now, all will be well soon.” He rolled over with a groan, on the floor at my side.

I looked, and his eyes were burned husks. He whined deep in the back of his throat and raised a hand to gingerly scrape at the scorched flesh around his eyes. I contained the urge to fly at the monster hovering in the room with us. My helmet wasn’t responding, and for all I knew, the next tantrum Quadrum had would be the last thing my friend ever experienced.

Axle contained his pain well, for a long moment while I held my breath. We awaited the beholder's judgment.

“GOOD,” Quadrum roared. “ACCEPTABLE!”

The beholder turned away immediately, and extended manipulator tentacles to begin interacting with a piece of its stored equipment. The machine lit up, and I heard the door at the top of the room slide open.

“Help me?” Axle whispered, his voice shaking. “Please?”

I didn’t answer him, just slipped an arm around him, and helped him gently to his feet. Then I turned my friend in the right direction and started helping him walk. The oversized Knowle leaned heavily on me, and his breathing was ragged with pained whines.

We stumbled and staggered up the stairs, and out into the hallway where Jada was waiting. Her eyes shot wide as she saw us, and I yelled down the hallway at her, “Call Dr. Miles! Wake him up! Axle’s hurt bad!”

Jada snarled in anger, but the wall behind us slid closed with a snap. She pulled out her own phone and rushed to help me carry Axle.

He sighed as he felt her arm slip in around his back. “I’m okay, Jada. It’s just my eyes. I just can’t see, I’m alright,” he slurred.

“Hey,” he exclaimed drunkenly. We paused bundling him into the elevator, but he languidly swiped at the air in front of himself and smiled. “We finished our Afflqwst.”

Jada and I both grunted in exasperation and moved him carefully into place. I pressed the button for the top floor and then pulled up my own Afflqwst to check. He was right.

Quest – Calm the irritation of your beholder guest, before it turns to wrath, and they harm your affiliate.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. (Complete) Negotiate with beholder. Chance of success is high.

2. (Optional) Kill the beholder. Chance of success is very low.

Quest complete. Your affiliate’s beholder guest is temporarily calmed. REWARD – Item coupon. Be aware this quest may repeat.

Axle passed out in the elevator, and we dragged him to the hovercraft. Jada slammed the door and turned to shine a light at her mate’s scorched eyes, while I went to get the pilot moving. Her nose crinkled and she grimaced.

Within a few short minutes, we were landing on the roof of the building Dr. Miles worked from, in downtown Prescott. A squad of hobbs was waiting for us, with an oversized stretcher for Axle.

They piled into the elevator while Jada and I rushed down the stairs, meeting them a few floors down, on Dr. Miles’ level.

He was up, wearing tussled clothing and a fresh lab coat. Axle woke up as we carefully pushed his stretcher into the room.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t really know.”

A quick moment of thinking, and I had a lie ready. Flimsy, but better than telling him and a squad of our hobbs the truth.

“We were exploring underground. Found some other affiliate’s trap, I guess. Just a giant bright light, it burned out both of our eyes,” I told him.

He glanced at my fresh replacements and nodded. “Axle, I need to run some tests before we can put you under, are you ready?”

The Knowle whimpered and licked his nose but nodded.

“I can give you something for the pain now,” Dr. Miles said. “Don’t worry. The tests will be quick.”

He moved around the table they set Axle on, gathering a syringe and small bottle.

As soon as the needle was in his arm and the plunger depressed, Axle released a giant sigh and lolled his head. Jada caught him, holding his head between her hands.

“Doctor!” she said.

“It’s fine. He should be lucid, just relaxed,” Dr. Miles replied. He rifled through a nearby drawer before producing a small, handheld scanner.

“Axle, I’m going to flash something in your eyes. You tell me if you can see or feel anything at all, okay?” he said.

Axle’s tongue lolled out the side of his mouth, and his tail finally relaxed, rolling out from between his legs.

Jada held his head, and Dr. Miles began scanning his eyes. They were scorched, the skin and hair all burnt on either side of his face.

Dr. Miles shook his head. “Complete retinal damage. Looks like it goes up the nerve a ways too. We’re gonna have to get you into an MRI, Axle, are you ready to do that now?”

“Sure thing, doc,” Axle drawled. Jada breathed rapidly and looked up at me, her mouth hanging open as she stress-panted.

“I’ll wait, Jada,” I told her. She clicked her teeth shut and nodded, before helping Axle to his feet. I held the door open for everyone, and Dr. Miles led the procession out of the room.

They all hustled down a hallway, and I went to the waiting room, to collapse into a chair.

I tried to pull up my anti-magic helmet. A thin line of silver formed on my neck, but nothing further. No heads up display full of magic themed nonsense, no nanotech protections against ‘magic.’ But it was healing. I breathed out my nerves and stared across the doctor's waiting area.

A framed picture of a desert rose across from me reflected my face back at me, and I stared at it, alone in the small lobby. Axle had been burned down to the bone, on either side of his eyes. It looked like the same thing had happened to me. The starfish suit had repaired my skin into a raccoon’s mask.

I rubbed a touch of residual soot away and realized I had lost my affiliate’s right hand. Axle did so much around the affiliate for me that I genuinely worried about its ability to operate without him, for even a short period of time.

Quadrum had casually blinded my friend, just by being angry.

I pulled up our affiliate screen, to look at our accounts and get a general sense of where everything was at. We had limited finances, due mostly to operating the city. We’d been drained after taking Los Angeles, the expansion proving more expensive than intended. I’d eaten up all of our savings, and to take a city that wasn’t even financially solvent.

Axle had already scaled back my search and rescue operations, instead reassigning the hobbs to BlueCleave regular rotations. Rayna kept the troops fed and watered from their end of the budget, but the various staff that worked in the city and elevator were all on Silken Sand payroll directly.

Wages cost us most of our income, and our income had taken a significant dip in several key areas. After Kraken took out most of Eurasia with its manufactured earthquake, I lost a good chunk of the clientele running cargo through my elevator. Business there was slow and would slow further as I had security scrutinize each and every shipment from above for reaper hounds.

Food production had slowed to just over sustainable levels, due to the water shortage. That meant our ability to sell food off-world had dried up with no extra crop yield, so our income stream from that was almost nil.

The Sleem farm had also slowed. I could easily tell what Axle had been talking about, just by looking at a trend chart of several days of sales together. The day of the earthquake, there had been a sharp drop in freezer turn-over, and it hadn’t climbed back up since. We’d not disturbed the trail, thankfully, so that was still producing some morties for us, if dramatically reduced.

A handful of affiliates ran small businesses out of Prescott, and I got a direct slice of every mortie they each made. But, like our rental properties, most of them were subsistence living. We made enough off it to keep the properties intact, and well maintained. Some mild income from that entire section could still be counted on, but it followed Prescotts’s financial well-being.

When business was booming for Silken Sands, our subcontractor affiliates made us a lot more than they did when we were slow.

Beyond that, our spider ranch was the one shining beacon of prosperity. Since Dro’erja had helped Drusk win a galaxy-wide competition, our brand recognition had shot through the roof. We couldn’t produce fast enough to meet direct demand, and orders began to stretch out into the coming months and years. Some of our best clients were dark elf noble houses, we specialized in silk for panties that doubled as a garrote.

A very popular gift item among the upper class.

We had a few million extra to work with, and a handful of needs it could go to. We’d been buying water from the Kuiper belt for the past few days, to supplement our own, unreliable production of freshwater from Los Angeles. I decided to spend a million on another shipment. The plant was down entirely, and the more you ordered from these guys, the less they charged you for the shipment.

Their affiliate did things like resupply and enjoy recreation in Prescott, so they knocked off morties when we knocked off morties on BlueCleave tequila and fresh produce for their comet mining crews. It was starting to become quite the symbiotic business relationship. The million I spent would buy us enough water for a day. Maybe.

A notification for Axle chimed through on the app, and I got a view of it before it logged itself to his account. The television crew wanted a meeting.

I sighed, unable to turn them down. For Axle’s sake, I hoped a phone conference would work.

Chapter 33

I closed the app as I heard the MRI room door open. Axle walked with Jada’s help, leaning against her heavily. His eyes were both covered in a thick, white bandage. Dr. Miles split off from them as one of his staff helped Jada to a nearby patient room.

“Well, it’s not a great prognosis,” he said, handing me Axle’s chart. “Both of his eyes are burned out, along with the retinal nerve about halfway into his brain, it’s a miracle he didn’t suffer any secondary damage. Or whatever did this to him was highly specialized. The scarring is permanent, he won’t see again without considerable surgical effort.”

“Can you perform it?” I asked, not looking up from the chart. The MRI sheets showed tiny, darkened lines running through Axle’s brain.

Dr. Miles nodded, hands in his lab coat pockets. “Yes, with the right assistant. I’ll need to bring in a specialist, he’s asking for mechanical replacements. I’m no engineer.”

“What’s the price tag for everything?” I asked.

“Fourteen million, for a high-middle shelf optic. It’s what’s nearby, and I can get my hands on both the tech and the specialist at the same place,” Dr. Miles replied. He shrugged. “Three days from now, he can have his sight back. Best I can do, under the circumstances.”

I looked up at him and tried my best to smile. “Thank you doc. I appreciate it, I really do. Get it moving. I’ll get you the morties.”

“Ah, yeah, about that. I can’t really get it moving without them,” he said. “So that complicates matters a bit.”

Quenching the anger that rose, I nodded. “I understand. I’ll get it together, fast.”

Dr. Miles nodded back, hands in his pockets and lower lip stuck out sympathetically.

I scowled, a sudden memory claiming my attention.

“Hey, doc,” I asked. “Whatever happened with that research into Nu-Earth humans you were doing?”

He snorted, in the back of his throat.

“Nothing of value, if that’s what you’re wondering. The extra aggression is from lead poisoning, primarily. Some other pollution damage, excess radiation, and a planetary epidemic of mental health crises, but mostly it’s the lead.”

I blinked and my scowl deepened. “What do you mean?”

“Your whole world has lead poisoning,” Dr. Miles said, casually. “Some event in the recent past flooded your atmosphere with an extraordinary amount of lead and lasted for decades before it was fully stopped. Leaded gasoline in motor vehicles, I think it was? So now all life on Nu Earth has a degree of lead poisoning. You were likely born with it, from your parents' exposure.”

The man adjusted his lab coat and sat down beside me.

“Hell, I’m getting a dose just living on this planet. But yeah, that’s the primary reason your people are so much more aggressive than humans from Victorian Earths or Caveman Earths.”

“Lead poisoning makes people aggressive,” I repeated, numb. “And there’s no way to profit from this information?”

“Not immediately, with the local market in shambles as it is. You’d need some kind of cleanse, likely nanoscopic, to remove the excess lead particles for Nu-Earth humans, and there’s just not enough of a market to even sell the disease, as we say,” he said, sighing at the finish. “Shame too. I have quite the compilation of data on the subject. Even found some charts to use, Antarctic ice core research. Tracks the rise and fall of both your Greek, and Roman empires, in the lead from their smelting. Then the big spike event; leaded gasoline, and the levels have just never dropped to normal since.”

“Great. So we’re all lead poisoned radioactive mutants, and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it,” I sighed back.

“Oh now, I didn’t say that,” Dr. Miles frowned. “There’s just no market for the cure, so we can’t sell the concept to any affiliate that could make one.”

I narrowed my eyes and stared at the man. “Thank you for that clarification,” I said, through gritted teeth.

“Well, happy to help where I can,” he got up, immediately taking a few steps away from me before turning back. “Should I expect extra security while Axle is in my care?”

I nodded. “BlueCleave regulars at the least, yes. I plan to have some extra security installed too, so probably a tech,” I told him. When he frowned, I raised my hands. “I’ll tell them to try and stay out of your way.”

“Thank you, boss,” Dr. Miles said. He turned and left, walking into Axle’s room.

I sighed and stood to speak with the BlueCleave officer that had been assigned to us. She was a sergeant, by the patch on her armor.

“Sergeant, good,” I started.

The young hobb snapped to attention and saluted me.

“Hey, cool it with that stuff. I don’t want anyone to know there’s officers here,” I told her. “Call for reinforcements, I want a full team on this building at all times from here on out. Tell them to bring a sniffer, and someone to install it too.”

The hobb turned away to do as I ordered, and Jada stepped up behind me.

“He’s asking for you,” she growled.

I turned and looked up into her face and nodded.

“I’m sorry Jada. I couldn’t protect him. Never should have brought him down there with me.”

She took a long breath and sighed. “I’ll never forget that smell . . . if only we could convince him to wear a suit,” she hissed under her breath.

I shook my head. “He’s scared to death of the suits, there’s no way.”

“I know,” she growled. “Anytime I bring it up he starts talking about quantum entanglement and dimensional boundaries. He can be quite stubborn at times.”

I chuckled lightly. “Doc says it's just a matter of morties to get him patched up. Which means it's just a matter of time.”

“He told us, yes. I’ve sent you four million, it’s all we’ve saved,” the hulking Knowle said. “And Axle insists he has an idea to make the rest, quickly. That’s what he wants to talk to you about.”

I nodded and followed her back through the lobby, toward Axle’s room.

“Hey,” Jada whispered over her shoulder. “What happened?”

I growled in the back of my throat. “Quadrum got impatient with us. Punished us for being bad servants,” I ground out.

She glanced back at me, but only nodded. “I’m glad to see you’re pissed off about that,” she said.

“Already working the problem,” I said back.

Jada held the door open, and I entered to see Dr. Miles at Axle’s bedside, hands in his lab coat pockets.

“Well, I’ll be back to check on your pain levels in about an hour. I can still put you out anytime, if needed. You let my staff know if you need anything else, and we’ll be keeping an eye on your vitals in case of any after-effects,” Dr. Miles said.

“Thank you doctor,” Axle slurred. His head waved from side to side as he sniffed the air. “Tyson!”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said, approaching his bedside.

Dr. Miles smiled and nodded, then left and closed the door behind himself.

“Tyson, you mustn’t take any action against Quadrum,” Axle whispered.

I glanced around, before taking his hand.

“It’s just us in here, it’s alright,” I told him.

My friend squeezed my hand and let go, reaching under his covers and producing his tablet. “I’m still going to help, Tyson,” he said. “Most of what I do is phone calls, talking to people. I can still work.”

Jada growled in the back of her throat, and I shook my head. “You need to focus on healing, buddy. Plus, you’re stoned right now. Probably feel like you could take on the world.”

Axle snorted. “No, just the Dearth Conglomerate. This reaper hounds thing, I think I know what to do,” he said. The Knowle rubbed lightly at the side of his bandage, before Jada gently grabbed his hand to stop him. “That radioactive material in the Sleem cavern,” he said.

“What about it?” I asked.

“You once told me that you suspected the cavern you found it in was their origination point. If it was, it is possible those hounds still carry a residual amount of that specific radiation,” he said, his head rolling on the pillow.

“We could use that to track them?” I asked.

“Possibly, yes. It’s a lead. I’ll need help going over the original Fumble-Bee footage, those should have records of the material we seek,” Axle said, before giggling.

“It’s funny,” he said. “Quadrum may have ended up saving us all.”

Jada shushed him with a gentle but heavy hand across his snout and looked at me sharply.

“I should go,” I said. I stood up to leave, but Axle shoved his mate’s paw off his snout and grabbed my arm.

“Tyson, wait! The income stream,” he gasped, before leaning back in the bed again. “Oh, these drugs are strong. I agree, I need to rest, just one more thing first.”

I nodded, before realizing he couldn’t see me. “Go ahead,” I said.

Jada narrowed her eyes but listened as Axle spoke.

“We want the camera crews focused on the current hive-clearing operation, but I intend to gain and edit some footage of our hobbs hunting the reaper hounds as well. We’ll find them eventually, and the footage might be of some use,” Axle rambled.

“What is he talking about?” Jada asked.

“He wants to pitch a show to the CTV crew in orbit,” I told her.

“Axle, honey, you need to rest,” she whispered gently.

“No!” he insisted. “Time sensitive, we have to make some calls. I’ll rest once this is in motion.”

I raised my hands and started slowly backing toward the door. Jada glanced over and nodded at me, so I kept going.

As I was about to close the door, I said to Axle, “I’m sorry brother, we’ll get you some new eyes fast.”

He grinned from the bed, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. “That’s what the show is for!” he said with a drunken giggle. I closed the door gently and left them alone.

Chapter 34

My security team stayed behind at Dr. Miles office until Axle could be moved to a secure room at the Tower, and I walked down the sidewalk in Prescott, aimlessly. Trapped in my own thoughts.

The city was still alive but had grown quiet after the water shortage started. Axle had warned me that we would see a dramatic drop in activity, and potentially lose some of the sub-affiliates too. Life couldn’t run without water, much less business.

Evidence of Axle’s importance, and the crumbling nature of my affiliate surrounded me as I walked, until all I wanted was to bury my face in Molls comforting scales and forget about all of it.

Instead, I used the phone my hobbs had leant me to call her. Within a few seconds, her face filled my screen, and a smile came to my lips unbidden.

She yawned, letting her mouth open wide before remembering to place a hand over it. Not that her delicate hands would cover her mouth, she could swallow a roasted pig whole if she wanted to, and each of her fanged teeth were larger than her hands anyway.

“Oh hi Tyson,” she said sleepily.

“Sorry, I woke you,” I replied.

Molls became more awake immediately. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

She knew me too well, even my compulsive apologies were tell-tale signs to her.

“Axle is hurt. Bad. He’s been blinded,” I told her.

Molls sat up, and I saw a window behind her, with heavy foliage and trees directly outside. “Oh no,” she said, scales flushing a mild yellow color. “Is he going to be okay? Are you?”

I nodded halfheartedly. “He’s going to be fine, I’m gonna make sure of it.”

Molls smiled softly and shifted her head to the side. “Are you going to be okay? I know you’re very close with Axle, and I know you blame yourself for everything that happens around you.” Her scales softened in color, and some of the purple I usually saw started to come through again.

“This might actually be my fault. I can’t talk much about the specifics openly, but I may have antagonized someone I shouldn’t have,” I said, shaking my head.

She nodded and shrugged. “You’re doing much better on that lately, though.”

“No, Molls, I’m really not. Turns out I’m just less prickly when things are going smooth,” I sighed.

“And things aren’t going smoothly, I infer?” she asked. Molls leaned back in her bed and I lost the view out her window.

“No,” I chuckled. “Not smoothly at all.” In the silence that followed, I sighed again and told her, “I miss you. Badly.”

Molls scales filled with purple color, and she briefly kissed her phone. “I miss you too, Tyson. More than I can express.”

I smiled at her. “Family visit not going well?”

“Oh, no. It’s fine now that I’ve explained everything. Mother is just being mother, of course. She can’t resist herself, and I’m very concerned I’m going to end up leaving here with a green or even red ring in my scales,” she said.

Because of her albinism, Molls scales slowly gained pigment from her emotional responses, with only the strongest emotions and situations becoming permanent.

“Well, at least make sure it's red if that happens. You’ve got plenty of purple to offset it now anyway,” I said with a wry smile.

“Oh shut up,” she replied, smiling coquettishly. “That’s not all your doing, don’t go getting a big head.”

“Too late,” I said, with a grin. “Way too late.”

“Ugh, I know,” she sighed back, playfully returning my smile.

We were quiet for a long moment before she spoke again. “Tyson, I know you’re hurting right now, and I’m pleased you reached out to me for comfort. I love few things more than being your oasis, you know that.”

“But?” I said.

“But I’m worried about you. I should come home, be there with you,” she whispered. “I could help.”

“Don’t worry Molls, I’m not going to do anything unusually stupid,” I said. “Besides, I need you someplace safe, and right now that is not Nu-Earth, let alone Prescott. Stay there, make your mom happy, and come home in a week or two.”

I thought briefly of Captain Omen and our arrangement.

“It’ll be safe by then,” I said.

Molls stared at me on the phone for a moment before nodding. “Okay. I trust you,” she said. “But I’m coming home as soon as I can. You’ll just have to make it safe before then.” Molls finished her statement with a smile and a quick mimed kiss at the phone.

“Hey, when are you thinking that’ll be?” I asked.

“Ugh,” Molls moaned. She threw an arm behind her head and smirked in annoyance. “I dunno, soon? At least a few days though. I’m pushing to keep this a short visit, but of course mother keeps making more and more plans.”

I frowned. “Sounds manipulative.”

Molls nodded emphatically. “Yes. Yes it really does. Feels that way too,” she sighed.

“I bet she’s trying to set you up with someone too,” I chuckled.

Molls raised an eyebrow. “Jealous?”

“Not even a little,” I said, smiling. “Just sounds like something she would try.”

“Ha!” Molls laughed, and flushed pink. “No chance. All of that effort goes to my brother, he didn’t get the conda gene, so he’s not a source of public shame for the family. He’s the pretty one.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

Molls shook her head and smiled again. “I’ve never felt more beautiful than I feel when you look at me,” she said, her eyes locked on mine. “Never. You have nothing to apologize for.”

She paused there, and her eyes drifted up and to the left. “Well, maybe for waking me up in the middle of the night, but I don’t really mind that either,” she said. “I’ll have pleasant dreams when I go back to bed.”

“Oh, crap,” I said. “Of course I called in the middle of the night.” I frowned. “Wait, how do multiversal time differences even work?”

Molls chuckled and shook her head. “They don’t, most of the time. I don’t mind babe, really. I was just teasing you.”

I nodded and smiled. “I still feel a little guilty.”

“Oh stop it,” she scolded. “You needed me, and I’m happy to be here for you. Tell Axle and Jada I send my love.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Will do.”

Axle and Jada didn’t much care for Molls, and while the three were polite in shared company, I wouldn’t be likely to bring up her well-wishes. Molls could be a little naïve about people sometimes, which I adored about her. She defaulted to expecting the best in everyone she met, even in the BuyMort system.

I stared into the phone as she yawned again, this one longer and accompanied by a stretch.

“I should let you get back to sleep,” I finally said.

She smiled at me and shook her head. “I’m not even tired,” she said, yawning again at the end of the statement. “Really.” Her massive, green eyes blinked at me repeatedly and I burst out laughing.

“You’re the best, Molls,” I said. “Get some rest, call me when you have some free time.”

“Okay, Tyson. I’ll probably call later today, there’s this luncheon I’m supposed to attend, I’m sure it will be excruciating. You don’t have to say this back, but I want you to know, I love you,” she said.

I smiled, and before I could say anything back, she reached up and cut our connection. The MortMobile deity stared at me from the screen, before blinking a few times and shaking his head.

“Oh shut up,” I griped.

“You want advice, yes? Help? Direction, even?” his voice whispered in my mind. “He who fights enemies he cannot defeat, wants to be told what to do.”

My eyes shot wide as I heard him in my mind.

“Then tell her how you feel,” he said. “Before you lose the chance. And get to work, if you want this affiliate to survive.”

My phone went black, and I felt his absence in my head. But not the absence of his words. I needed to get to work.

I needed to get to the desalination plant in Los Angeles. If I wasn’t there, they were vulnerable to attack by the very affiliate I hoped would save us, WhaleHunter Salvage. And if WhaleHunter came through, they’d likely want me to fulfill my end of the bargain soon after.

With a thought, I tried to bring up my anti-magic helmet again. A thicker line of silver formed on my neck, roughly the size of a choker. I sighed and dismissed it again. At least it was healing, albeit slowly.

Willing myself off the ground, I flew up into the sky and veered toward the city’s primary military outpost. I needed a new helmet, preferably one that could let me travel underwater without drowning.

When I landed, several hobbs jumped to attention, first pointing weapons, then snapping off salutes. I nodded and returned the gestures as I walked toward the armory.

The building stood central on the compound, tall and jutting against the massive BuyMort warehouse in the background. A young hobb woman in BlueCleave fatigues and a helmet stepped forward to challenge me but flushed deeper gray when she saw who I was.

“Boss!” she barked, “What you doing here?”

“Need a helmet,” I told her. “You my guide?”

She blinked her oversized eyes rapidly, blushing deeper gray as she looked between me and the tall armory building. It was a three story barn structure, with a large cargo door on each level. An oversized cargo grappler sat in the parking lot nearby and was used to load and unload cargo from each level as needed.

“Yes, boss!” the hobb woman finally barked. “Name Tilsa. Old quartermaster reassigned, this my first day.” She saluted me again.

I narrowed my eyes and nodded. “You’re okay, I’m not actually here for you. Lead the way,” I told her.

Tilsa turned and moved to open the front door. “Tollya say this might happen. Know just what to do,” the hobb grunted.

Following behind her as we entered the armory, I scowled. Tollya was good at predicting things from me. A little too good, given our recent sparring session.

The armory opened up in front us, racks of weapons and armor on both walls rising up past catwalks to the top floor. I saw BlueCleave war picks in one section, alongside a smattering of other, lesser used melee weapons. Words swarmed over me and into my vision.

BlueCleave Arms and Armor - A Subsidiary of Silken Sands

Hobb weapon homemade. Soldier put together, Soldier agree very good.

Enter affiliate subsidiary sales page? Y/N

I selected no, shaking my head but feeling rather warm inside. BlueCleave had helped us so much, and seeing them grow into a more independent mercantile brand made me feel like I really was paying them back for the favor.

I came back to reality and swung my eyes about, looking at it all in wonder.

Hung in separated sections were conventional arms, slag rifles for Sleem or BuyMort bugs, heavier laser or plasma based weaponry, and an entire locked-off room for explosives.

I wondered briefly if Tollya’s nukes were in that secure section but shrugged it off as my guide walked down the center aisle. Tilsa glanced behind herself, then gestured. “This way, boss!”

We entered a smaller room on the ground floor, filled with deployable privacy curtains for changing. Armor of various sorts hung on metal versions of pegboard racks in the room, and the young hobb showed me to their assortment of helmets.

There were plenty of basic helmets like the one Tilsa wore, little more than a hardened cap with a strap and some minimal padding, but we had a selection of other items as well. Some that appeared to be part of a larger outfit meant to combat the Sleem, with a thick, jellied exterior. Others that looked like fire-fighter helmets, with a heavy drape to cover the back of the neck and a thick breathing apparatus.

My eye was drawn to the combat model, with a heavy, reflective faceplate, and layered armor. That one immediately caught my eye.

“Take whichever,” my guide told me. “We got lots more downstairs.”

I nodded at her and reached for a heavy combat model, blinking as the sales information came pouring in to me.

Rakshi Ropar Power - Innovative Battle Protection Combined with Extra-sensory input makes our soldiers self-coordinated fighting machines. 50,000 morties, 4.9 stars

BlueCleave didn’t have any helmets that would let me breathe underwater, that were also unattached from a suit designed for the same task. I realized my needs were somewhat more unique and hoped again that my anti-magic helmet would repair itself.

That or I’d have to make a bunch of morties in a hurry to get another one. I didn’t like my chances against a foe like the Wizard without it.

I tried on the helmet and was pleased to see a heads up display load onto the faceplate. I’d gotten spoiled by my high end version, though. The map and various notifiers felt clunky, by comparison.

At least I wouldn’t have to remember a bunch of spell words for this one.

With my helmet need sorted out, I nodded at the young hobb and we left the armory. Once I was out, she made a show of securing the door behind us, then went back to her guard position. I saluted the hobb, and then fell away up into the sky with my gravitic drive.

The trip to Los Angeles, and our desalination plant, was going to take me a few hours.

Chapter 35

I could fly faster than my terminal velocity, but too much over that natural limit hurt. If I pushed the suit’s drive further, I could really move, but that felt like I was being torn apart.

Start Spreading the News! With Aalan Body Enhancers, you can build muscle mass, strengthen atomic cohesion, and harden your skin in no time. Just swallow a capsule for breakfast, another for lunch, and feast on raw sentient flesh for dinner.

Salon Body Enhancers — Durability Guaranteed, or your morties backs. 3.9 stars, 45,000 morties.

I internally sighed. Even with my advanced strength, and crystalline colonies keeping me in one piece, BuyMort was angling in for the upsell. An upsell that looked like junk science, and demanded cannibalism of other sentients as well.

Hard pass.

Instead of trying too hard and getting myself hurt, or worse, I just flew at a mostly-comfortable speed, just north of 200 miles per hour. It made the trip about an hour and a half long, but I was cold, and wind burnt by the time I swept in over Los Angeles for a landing.

BlueCleave had set up shop directly next to the desalination plant, establishing the city’s military base within the Long Beach walls. The base was little more than a series of tents and a handful of mudcrete buildings that BlueCleave had installed in the shadows of larger, black-blocked constructions.

The desalination plant was far more impressive. Built from the same black plastic-based material Dearth used to build everything, the plant consisted of an oversized warehouse built over one of the primary docking platforms.

Massive pipes ran up from the ocean into the underside of the structure, which converted to a standard cargo deployment warehouse where it stretched over land. The facility housed pipes that led to everywhere Dearth had built a presence in Los Angeles, but we’d had to use armored convoys to ship it to Prescott.

The old Dearth armored roads served us well in that regard, and we had plenty of BlueCleave recruits to drive escort for the water trucks.

Flying above the structure, I could easily see the primary problem. Massive pill-bugs were crawling on the pipes, attempting to get into the building, and being stopped by the frame. Most of the far end of the building had been shredded, and a large aquatic insect was busily attempting to force its broad mouth past the structural support beams in the roof.

Got pest problems? Mice and bugs in the grain? Well no more. Kaput Industries Presents KAPUT EXTREME! Kaput the whole goddamn granary with one easy to seed energy bomb. Simply select the pests you want to kaput from the patented pest database, click select, and watch them obliterate from existence.

It’s as easy as a click. It’s KAPUT EXTREME!

WARNING: Does not work on sentient species or any varieties of Sleem. Use as directed.

I dismissed the ad. As far as I was concerned we would kaput the bastards just fine without BuyMort’s involvement.

As I watched, the bay churned and bubbled.

I concentrated, changing my angle of approach, and flying directly into the creature with both fists extended. In my disoriented state from the flight, I forgot to activate my power blow ability, and slammed into the building-sized bug’s armor.

My arms went numb from the impact, and I careened off into the water on the other side of the dock. The helmet immediately began filling with water, but I couldn’t see much of anything down there anyway.

Too much silt was churned up by the battle. I saw only glimpses of small submarines, mostly stationary, raining hell on the swarming whale bugs with deployed laser cannons. The devastating, short-range weapons glinted red in the warm water.

I concentrated and activated the gravitic drive, floating up out of the bay. My helmet immediately drained, and I watched as a hobb in BlueCleave fatigues positioned a heavy turret on six mechanical legs, inside the ruins of the desalination plant’s back half.

The hobb fiddled with a control as the whale bug above him grunted and squealed with effort, trying desperately to push itself between the building’s heavy frame pieces.

The bug gave up and shifted its position to begin chewing on the thick material, just before the hobb opened fire. The oversized turret burped and whined, sending a series of laser pulses at the whale bug.

The smell of fresh-roast lobster filled the area with a hot steam cloud as the whale bug fell over backwards, a great section of its vulnerable underbelly charred and blackened.

Inside the desalination plant, my hobb waved cheerfully. “Hi boss!” I didn’t recognize them, but slowly waved back in my confusion.

“What was that?” I shouted. I couldn’t quite hover yet but drifting slowly up and down worked just as well.

“Oh this?” the hobb patted the robotic contraption at his side. “Whalehunter provide them, mobile defense turrets!”

The Dalek Defense Mobility Platform Mk II by Xanathax Defense Industries Affiliated. Exterminate hostile invaders, pests, or other nuisances and show them that the land is your land, and that Trespassers will be Shot on Sight. 3,500,000 morties, 4.9 stars.

The machine appeared to be a basic robotic mobility sled, using six mechanical legs to position and secure itself before firing the oversized laser turrets on its upper platform. Looking deeper into the torn up facility, I could see more of them covering all rips and rends in the black plasteel siding.

I floated down gently to land in the desalination plant. A good chunk of the facility's internal machinery looked intact. It appeared to be mostly piping and water-cycling storage bays along the back, where I was.

Some had been damaged or torn out completely, but the facility still operated. A loud hum was audible, even above the frothing activity of the bay behind me.

I had arrived near the end of the battle, and the few whale bugs remaining scrambled to either escape the bay, or make a mad, desperate attempt to gain entry to my desalination plant. Scorching laser fire ended all attempts.

Sustained beams for short-range underwater conflicts, and harder hitting pulses for dry land. I found myself impressed by the tech WhaleHunter Salvage had loaned our forces.

A large, black vehicle surfaced off-shore, just outside the entrance to the bay. With a small fan-fare of warning alarms, the top deck slid open to reveal an aircraft rising from the interior.

It was akin to our hovercraft, but significantly larger. Its engines folded down into place and spun up, sending small waves of chop to join the froth in our bay as the vehicle took off.

It swung in low, over the bay and landed near the entrance of the desalination plant. I joined my BlueCleave hobbs as they exited the building, several of the robotic emplacements following.

A human and an orc, both wearing jumpsuits and heavy-looking ear protection, got out of the aircraft from the rear cargo hold. The hobbs holding control devices for the robots approached, happily handing the devices to the techs. Once the tech had input a command, and the corresponding robot began its slow march aboard the aircraft, the control consoles were packed away in over-sized suitcases with foam padding.

The robots filled the rear of the aircraft, and the Orkreshi tech walked over to address me.

“You the boss?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Once the platforms are all secure, we’ll send over our team. Initial assessment of the damage looks good, we should have the place up and running again soon,” the orc informed me.

I blinked. “Uh, okay. Great,” I said. The orc turned to leave with a quick nod, grabbing his hat as the VTOL’s engines fired up.

The aircraft returned to the large sub that hosted it, and folded its wings before the deck lowered. While I waited for them to return, I looked at the desalination plant.

It looked like a mishmash of machinery to me, I couldn’t tell much apart. The rear of the building, closest to the water, had suffered the most damage by far. Most of that portion of the building appeared to be pipes drawing in seawater, pumps to run them, and tanks to cycle the water through during various stages of desalination.

Thankfully, as with most things Dearth left behind, the structure was quite modular. BlueCleave hobbs were already doing most of the work needed to dissemble the damaged pumps and piping.

I inspected the structure, and for the first time in a while I opened up my affiliate screen, marveling at how far things had come.

There was something bittersweet about it all, thinking about those early days where I had been barely hanging on. Things had been more personal back then, despite the danger and death all around. Now I kinda felt like one of those business suits from the old world. Constantly deciding things from afar.

I heard the VTOL come back in to land out front, the sound of it clearing my head. Within seconds, teams of engineers were walking through the building, and being led by BlueCleave techs to the necessary areas.

I stepped back out into the noonday sun. My bay was full of submarines, I could see them moving below the surface. BuyMort pods floated in and out of the water at random.

WhaleHunter Salvage must have been getting a paycheck out of the whale bug corpses. I couldn’t blame them either, I’d failed to properly negotiate a split on those.

And despite what had happened earlier, a BuyMort reputation check had shown good reviews. 4.7 stars. Trustworthy. Nothing wrong with being a smart shopper.

It was just that, somehow, it felt like I was owed part of those bugs, simply because they had been attacking me.

The thought vanished as Captain Omen and his XO Thresher stepped out of the VTOL.

“Captain,” I said.

“Mr. Dawes,” he replied. “I would like to officially introduce you to my first officer, Lieutenant Beauregard Thresher. He will be your liaison and handler for our mission.”

I stared at the taller man through my helmet for a long moment. He returned my stare, in spite of the darkened face-plate, before taking a sharp breath in through his nose.

“Well, that helmet won’t do. Doesn’t even seal,” he said, nearly sighing. “We’ll get you properly equipped, don’t fret.”

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I bristled, but merely nodded. Turning back to Captain Omen, I asked, “when are we doing this?”

Captain Omen ignored me, watching his techs run around my desalination plant with his hands clasped behind his back.

Thresher shifted a step, coming back into my line of sight. “Fourteen hundred,” he answered.

I blinked and held still as I tried to translate that in my head, but Thresher beat me to it anyway. “That’s two-o-clock, for deployment. We still have to get you geared and the ship in position.” The large, bearded man held out a hand, politely motioning to the VTOL. “Shall we?”

I nodded and started walking with him but stopped short of climbing aboard. When Thresher looked back at me I held up a hand. “One moment, please. I need to call my people,” I said.

The officer simply nodded and turned away. I stepped around to the other side of the VTOL and started walking a short distance away, as I pulled out my phone. The psychic creature in the screen narrowed his eyes at me.

“Can I call Rayna, please?” I asked him.

His eyes narrowed further, and he turned sideways to begin forming his tunnel. As he did, I heard his voice whisper in my mind, “You’re far more polite with me when you’re nervous.”

I rolled my eyes and ignored it, and Rayna’s dour face filled my screen.

“Boss, good. Where are you?” she asked.

“Los Angeles port, securing the desalination plant. Looks like it’ll be back up and running again soon,” I told her.

“Okay, that good news. With Axle down, I was worried you went to do something stupid,” the hobb woman told me.

I chuckled and took a moment to pull off my helmet. “Funny you say that Rayna,” I told her. “I was calling to ask your advice, before I do something stupid.”

Rayna nodded and looked off camera. “How stupid?” she asked, calmly.

“Uh,” I said. “WhaleHunter Salvage is giving me a ride to a nearby ocean trench, where I’m supposed to assassinate the creature behind the ninth ranked affiliate in all of BuyMort.”

She frowned. “Nobody like Kraken, that not stupid. Means more attention, though. Closer this time.” My hobb head of security shook her head. “Secrets hard to keep from the church, if they really care.”

“Will killing the Kraken make the church care about me?” I asked.

“Church already care, but from a distance. Interested, but not concerned, not threatened,” Rayna said. “BlueCleave work under church control for a long time, boss. Only thing made them give it up was you. BlueCleave trust you.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “That does help.”

The sound of bells pealed through my ears and an ad wavered into existence in front of me. Behind it, Rayna gave me understanding eyes and waited while I investigated it.

The Church of BuyMort Welcomes You. Do You Welcome It? Clean your soul and let BuyMort into your heart with BuyMort Indulgences! State your sin, pay its price, and let the Church absolve you!

There was no price, and there were no stars. I nodded, understanding. It was essential a blood price. I’d talk to them, pay them morties, and reset our relations or maybe even make them good for a change.

It was something I would have to consider.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Please, keep going.”

“Is stupid to let them control means of transit,” she said, thoughtfully. Rayna scratched her chin and continued, “Just means you vulnerable to them on way there, when they have use for you, and on way back, when they don’t.”

I froze, thinking about it that way.

“Means you relying on other captain’s honor. How much you trust him?” Rayna asked.

I thought about her question seriously for a moment. “He seems to say what he means,” I finally answered. And my rep check with BuyMort gave him 4.7 stars.

"RepCheck easy to fake."

Rayna looked at me thoughtfully as I answered. “Non-lethal with my hobbs,” she said. “This may be dumb, cause he from Nu-Earth and not know this, but non-lethal is a big respect move. A lot of mercenaries know other mercenaries just doing job, not care to hurt them. But lethal is easier, safer for the mission. To use non-lethal means something, boss. My impression is that he is honorable, at least.”

I nodded as she finished. “Yeah, that’s encouraging. Okay, I’m going silent for a while. You’re in charge, but help Axle if you can, he’s got some ideas to make us morties, and we really need those. Hey, how’s the Sleem retrieval process going?”

Rayna shrugged. “Going. Mostly working on positions. Have to clear out tunnels and secure as we go, and hive is large. Keeping yarsps distracted and secured, but safety first.”

“Agreed. This is a high risk job, thank you for handling it. I’ll let you get back to it, and I’ll hopefully contact you again in a few hours.”

Rayna nodded.

I hesitated, and added, “watch out for reaper hounds.”

Rayna nodded again, her lips a grim line, and I disconnected the call.

Chapter 36

Thresher was standing behind me, leaning in on the hull of the VTOL. “Fuel on these costs fourteen morties per minute,” he shouted. “But you take your time.”

I shook my head and chuckled. “No free champagne?” He rolled his eyes as I walked by and climbed aboard.

“Oh of course,” Thresher mocked. “How could we forget, so unprofessional of us.” He punctuated his statement by slamming the vehicle's door. It immediately lifted off.

Thresher sat directly across from me, and I became aware of my slouch. I groaned and slumped deeper, and the man across from me grunted a laugh.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “I’m growing on you. I do that, watch out.”

“Like mold, I’ve no doubt,” Thresher said. “As your liaison while aboard, it’s my job to be your very best friend.”

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I swiped it away.

“Ah, kinda spoils the fun,” I admitted.

“That statement amplifies my fun, so thank you,” he said, small smile creasing his beard.

I chuckled and sat up straight. “This is a weird job.”

Thresher nodded. “I agree, but the captain is rarely wrong about people.”

“And he says I’m the man for the job, does he?” I asked.

“He does,” Thresher answered.

I sat in silence as the VTOL clanked to a landing. Machinery began to whir and clank, the wings folding in. After a moment, I felt the tell-tale clunk of an elevator, and we were swallowed up by the ship.

“He won’t be joining us?” I asked.

Thresher stooped to slide open the door, before gesturing for me to follow him. We exited the VTOL into a small hangar that looked like it took up most of the upper decks. There were five more VTOL craft, with various weaponry or cargo addons, tucked up on the sides of the cavernous room.

As I watched, the craft we had come in on was slid to the side, to fit into its own parking space while a crew from their military’s motor pool came over to service it.

“Captain Omen? No, he will lead the assault formation onboard Whalehunter. This is The Hornet’s Nest, a support craft. We’ll be near the rear of the battle formation."

He smiled fondly, evidently thinking about the future.

While our fleet engages with Dearth’s main protectory fleet, you’ll be deployed to strike at Kraken directly,” Thresher told me. “I’ll brief you further, if you’ll come with me.”

The XO again politely gestured for me to follow him, so I did. We walked at a brisk pace past the flight deck crew, each busily preparing or maintaining the various VTOL craft. Thresher led me to a narrow staircase, and we descended.

The Hornets’ Nest was a logistics, repair, and general support craft for WhaleHunter Salvage’s primary military fleet. Once surfaced, it was capable of deploying up to six VTOL cargo, personnel, or weaponized craft, but it could also deploy dozens of repair-specialty drones from its underslung drone bay.

Each bay contained only a single drone, but each drone was equipped with manipulator arms and tools to effect emergency hull repairs. The Hornet’s Nest could affect emergency repairs on each of the other combat vessels in the assault fleet, at the same time.

Thresher led me to a cramped briefing room. He and I were the only occupants, but it wouldn’t have housed more than ten people. I sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs and looked out a nearby portal.

We were moving out from the Los Angeles Bay into deeper, open water. Several other vessels traveled in close formation with our ship.

“We’re going now?” I asked.

“Yep,” Thresher said. “Time critical mission and all. Only part left is getting you up to speed, so tell me. How much do you know about Kraken Corp?”

I looked away from the portal back to Thresher for a moment before answering. “Treat me as though I know nothing,” I said.

“That’ll be easy then,” Thresher answered with a laugh. He grabbed a small remote off the desk behind him and hit a button on it. The wall behind him lit up, and a still image was displayed on it.

The Kraken Corp affiliate logo, a series of people walking on tentacle shaped roads in different directions from a glowing pyramid. Some were business-men with briefcases, others were scientists in lab coats, yet more were soldiers, or construction workers.

All of the most common BuyMort species were represented.

“Kraken Corp refers to the entity known only as Kraken. It is one creature. The entire affiliate, one entity,” Thresher said. “Any questions so far?”

“Yeah, what’s the deal with the people who work for it?” I asked. “Since you insisted it’s just one creature.”

“I consider them to be dead, but there’s no way to know for sure. That’s one of Kraken’s most closely guarded secrets. Everybody who knows the answer to your question is already part of the affiliate, and the creature itself. Any disconnection of the attached tentacle results in immediate death,” Thresher said.

“So these people are just gone?” I asked, one eyebrow raised. “One of them was flirting with me.”

“The memories and mannerisms of those taken by tentacles remain. However, each individual acts only with regard to the primary entity. You’ll have to see them in combat to understand, but they’ve simply not retained enough of themselves to be considered ‘themselves,’” Thresher replied. “Trust me when I tell ye-”

“It’s not about trust, Thresher,” I cut him off. “I just want to know what I’m killing.”

Thresher narrowed his eyes and stared at me for a moment. “Do you ken zombies?” he finally asked.

“My name isn’t Ken, but yeah I know what zombies are,” I replied.

The officer shook his head, rolled his eyes, and took a deep breath. “Think of em as zombies, then. Not alive themselves anymore, just still up and walking around.”

“Well, zombies are certainly easy to kill, ethically speaking,” I muttered.

“You should also be made aware,” Thresher added. “Kraken’s ability to enslave creatures to its will through tentacular adhesion is not limited to humanoids.”

I scowled. “That’s . . . unfortunate.”

“It really is,” he said. Thresher clicked his remote and the image on the wall behind him changed.

An underwater photograph of the Kraken monster itself, a massive black bulge wedged into a rift in the sea floor. Two massive, armored beasts with gaping jaws were pictured swimming out of two BuyMort portals above Kraken.

“These are two of its more common deployments. Rock,” he pointed to one of the beasts.

“And Hardplace.”

His hand moved to the other. “They are why we won’t be able to bring direct aid with the use of our subs. Either of those beasts can crush a sub like this one with a single bite, don’t let the scale there fool you.”

“They look quite large,” I commented, tilting my head sideways.

“They are,” Thresher confirmed.

“Fortunately,” he continued. “They’ve a short range, as do all creatures attached to Kraken via portal. Twenty-five meters, then they need to slow so their deployment pods can keep up. That’s why you need to always be on alert for BuyMort pods, they’ll let you know when something nasty is on the way. Kraken’s tentacles are also highly sensitive, and you can cause the primary beast a pain reaction if you harm one of them.”

I nodded.

The creatures looked terrifying, like massive sharks that had evolved granite shelves for armored scales.

“Your job on this mission is simple,” Thresher said. He clicked the remote again and the picture changed.

It showed a technical diagram of the Kraken creature’s suit. The massive construction covered the entirety of Kraken in a protective layer but acted as a ship for the people and creatures who served Kraken directly.

“Our scans have been unable to penetrate much of the ship’s outer layer, but we suspect these areas here,” he circled a series of bulges on the outside of the suit ship. “Contain life support systems. If you take out enough of them, you might be able to kill the creature itself.”

He clicked his remote, and the picture zoomed in. “These bulges are thought to be transport tunnels between ship sections. This creature is FTL capable, and we don’t yet understand how. Nobody unattached has even been granted access, obviously.”

“Sounds like I’m walking into a lot of unknowns,” I interjected.

“Aye, you are,” Thresher immediately replied. “Some idiot said you couldn’t be killed.”

I chuckled and looked at my hands in my lap. “Yeah, who could that’ve been?” I said softly.

Thresher stared at me for another long moment before he shifted his position on the desk and yawned into one hand.

“Apologies. Long hours getting this prepared. Captain Omen expressed a great deal of faith in the possibility that you would reach out to make this deal, so we’ve been preparing since you were last aboard.”

I nodded and met his gaze. “Must really want this thing dead. Or me dead.” I said.

“Nay, if we wanted you dead we’d use conventional means. Hit you with enough high ordinance repeatedly until your suit there loses charge,” Thresher said.

“Lot more work and risk to our fleet doing it this way, we’re genuinely hoping for a successful outcome with this operation.”

I thought for a long moment, in silence, while XO Thresher stared at me. Finally, I frowned as I recalled something he had said.

“Did you say ‘Dearth protectory fleet?’” I asked.

“Ah, you did notice that, good. Yes. The local Dearth branch and Kraken appear to have joined forces against us. Specifically WhaleHunter Salvage, but if they’re helping Kraken, they’re against everyone on the planet, you can count on that,” he said.

I nodded slowly. “Makes sense. They’re already calling this planet a failed operation because of me.”

“They’ve mobilized what’s left of their naval power and run a direct blockade to the Kraken’s new home, the Peru-Chile trench off the coast of South America,” Thresher added. “But they’re our problem. You’re not to get involved with the naval battle. Kraken is your only target.”

He clicked the remote again, changing the picture to an image of the Kraken creature with its tentacles hanging free in the water. None were small, but two, dangling from either side of the bulbous body, were massive.

“Those are its primary defensive tentacles. Much longer range than the rest, and incredibly fast. You’re small enough you should be able to avoid them,” Thresher said. He pointed at the other six large tentacles, each thick and powerful looking, even from a distance.

“These are the manipulator arms, mostly they’re doing the work of drilling down to the tectonic fractures beneath the trench, and then displacing them. That’s what’ll tear your world apart, piece by piece, if we don’t stop em.”

We both sat quietly at his words for a long moment before he took a sharp breath and continued.

“Focus up, cause it appears you’ve become Kraken’s target as well. Their original plan, based on what they did to my world, was to work on the Asian continent first. The sudden shift to the Peru-Chile trench suggests two things; that Kraken is concerned enough about you to not only attack, but do so from a safe distance,” Thresher lectured. “Placing Dearth between you and it, like pawns.”

“Your world?” I asked. “What can you tell me about it?”

Thresher sniffed and narrowed his eyes. “Too much to be useful, but I’ll keep it short and to the point. The earthquakes and great waves are just the first part. Once it has a solid MortBlock on the entire planet, most life on its surface will be dead. Some survives, in the oceans. Not much, or for long. Their next step is to sell all water on earth. Followed by all non-sapient biodiversity, and whatever bodies remain.”

“Step three is a great, shitting belt on the equator that slings cargo into space,” he continued. “A multi-point acceleration band catapult that sits round the entire world. Kraken will hunch over the ruins of your world and hurl it piece by piece through the Jupiter gate. I’ve seen it happen.”

“Cargo?” I asked.

“Kraken does business direct with BuyMort, in the form of large scale iron and carbon sales. It’s an aggressive model, reliant on massive amounts of material being sold over a short period of time,” Thresher said.

He clicked through a series of images. The Kraken monster went from floating in an ocean, to floating in the air over a desolate, dry world. Great cracks ran through the ground, and lava flowed freely.

The remote clicked, and the Kraken floated in space over a ruined husk of a world, massive amounts of solid and liquid material flowing into BuyMort portals.

“I get it, the stakes are the world, and all life on it,” I said, waving away the last picture. “Enough. Just tell me what the plan is. Please.”

Thresher nodded. “Alright. The plan is simple. We attack the Dearth naval forces protecting Kraken as a distraction, keep our distance so the beastie itself doesn’t get involved, and you go out a drone bay door to do your business. How you do it is up to you, but we’ve some gear for you to take if you so choose. I see you came aboard with nothing but the mud in your hair.”

I nodded. “It's been a busy morning. I figured you guys would be good for some weapons, at the least.”

“Oh aye, that we are,” he said. Thresher stood and clicked his remote one more time. The pictures behind him went dead. “We’ll do you one better than weapons. You’ll need something to breathe with, I assume.”

“It would certainly make things simpler, yes,” I told him.

The officer looked me over again. “Let’s get you equipped with a full wetsuit, shall we?”

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I decided to pass half way through the ad. The idea of forming ice on what would almost certainly be a limited charge would have been enticing in the beginning, but as I continued on in this world I really got to experience the powerful array of weapons and items available.

Rock hard ice was for rookies.

He hesitated at the door, perhaps noticing my distraction. “Do you need to charge your little starfish dealie?”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry about that.”

Thresher smiled. “Can’t fault a man for trying.”

“I can, have, and will continue to do so,” I replied. “I was just starting to like you too, Riker. Gotta ruin it by fishing for information like a Dearth priest.”

Thresher opened the door and stepped through it. “I was trained by Dearth, to be fair. Never felt the calling for priesthood though, are they that bad?”

I sighed, puffing out my cheeks. “Well, the priest for Dearth I ended up tormenting into attacking me, at which point I killed him. The one for Silken Sands I ended up sleeping with. She lives with me now. So, pretty different ends of the response spectrum, I don’t really know what to think of the priesthood.”

We began walking down the thin, metal lined hallways, me behind Thresher.

“Shame,” he said. “It’s unlikely they share that lack of clarity about you.”

“You watch too much TV,” I told him. “Stuff’ll rot your brains.”

“Aye, that it will,” he said, leading me into another armory.

Chapter 37

I was starting to like armories, but at the same time associating them with impending violence. My heart thudded heavily in my ears, as excitement and dread mixed.

Thresher led me to a series of lockers at the back of the room. “Get dressed, I’ll grab your kit,” he said, pointing at one of the lockers.

Inside I found a wetsuit, including moccasins. The instruction sheet included in the package stated it was for high pressure, low depth dives. It was filled with some kind of insulating gel and felt very soft to the touch.

When I slid on the pants, I was impressed at how warm they were. The ship was chilly.

“All hands, brace for acceleration. Entering slip-stream in five. Four. Three.” I frowned and grabbed at the nearby, open, locker door.

The ship shuddered and I felt my center of gravity pushed against. I activated the gravitic drive with a thought, and the sensation suddenly decreased.

Thresher reappeared, a cluster of gear in his arms. “Don’t mind that, we’re just underway. Should be there soon, as well. Within the hour.”

I stood and walked to a nearby portal. The view outside was too dark to see anything but the sheer movement of the water rushing past. The close-by water was vibrant, alight as it was with energy manipulation.

“Aye, the Whalehunter be a special boat, but she shares the wealth with her fleet,” Thresher said, taking in the view with me.

“How are we moving so fast?” I asked.

“Whalehunter can shape the water around the boats, once we’re all linked up with the water shield system. Creates a tunnel of fast moving water all her linked ships can use. All we have to do is be careful coming out of it on the other side,” he said, staring out the dark portal.

“Our regular hull speed is about 25 knots, but we can do in excess of four hundred with the water shield involved.”

Thresher stood up straight and pushed his armload of gear at me. “There. Now I’ve shared limited, tactical information with you. Sign of trust, if you’re amenable to it.”

He stepped away and sat down on a dressing bench to wait.

I finished putting on the wet suit first. The bottom portion rolled up to my neck, where it met the diving helmet I would be wearing. It was roughly the size of a motorcycle helmet, with a rebreather system attached to the back, covering the back of my neck, and making it appear bulbous.

The screen lit up with a HUD I could easily use, and the breathing apparatus began humming quietly. It was more of a subtle vibration at the base of my neck than a sound I could hear, but being so close to my spine, the sensations blurred significantly.

The air it produced was fresh and clean tasting, so I didn’t complain.

“There’s other weapons, if you prefer,” Thresher told me, gesturing to the bag at my feet. “These were based on your profile, chose ‘em meself.”

I looked in the bag and saw a plain-handled machete, and a bullpup shotgun. The shotgun appeared to have some advanced technology, in the form of an addon emanating soft blue light at the double-barrel’s mouths.

“No sword?” I asked, feigning disappointment.

“Our records show you do better with a uh . . . more structurally-sound melee weapon,” Thresher said.

I chuckled. “I’ll learn how to use one someday, I swear.”

“The blade and tang are high carbon steel, with a nice sandalwood grip. Should hold up to a decent amount of abuse, but I don’t expect it back at the end of this little endeavor,” Thresher told me.

I hefted the shotgun. It was surprisingly heavy, I needed my enhanced strength to hold it up to my shoulder. “What’s this one’s trick?” I asked, nodding to the enhancement at the barrel.

“An ion saturator. You're loaded with twenty-five rounds of titanium tipped steel flechettes in one magazine,” Thresher said, pointing to the oversized, boxy double magazine jutting from the rear of the shotgun. “And twelve-gauge laser slugs in the other. The ion saturator will enhance both and has charge enough for ten shots. Use it wisely.”

I popped out the magazine and nodded at the shells inside. Half of them were familiar. “You guys really did your homework.”

“There’s a stunning amount of footage of you in combat, so far. I’d recommend being cagier with my abilities if I were you, but the unconventional approach is occasionally advantageous as well,” Thresher said.

“Yeah, yeah. Believe me if I told you I’m making all this up as I go?” I gloomily asked.

“Absolutely,” Thresher said, without hesitation. He clapped his feet and stood. “But you’re in the shit now.”

I racked the shotgun and shouldered into its sling. “No way out but through,” I said.

“Aye, that’s little comfort though innit,” he replied.

“Is it comfort we seek?” I asked.

Thresher chuckled, deep in his chest. His shoulders shook with mirth. “No, it surely is not.”

The officer glanced over his shoulder and nodded. “You look ready, follow me.”

He grabbed a nearby shoulder bag and walked through the door.

I followed him, and Thresher led me through the ship down to the very bottom.

The room we entered was more akin to a long catwalk, surrounded on both sides by cranes, and dozens of heavy looking doors just below the catwalk’s level. One of the doors at the far end was open, and a large, dripping machine dangled from the crane. Thresher nodded toward it and walked down the catwalk.

“How’s this work, exactly?” I asked.

“C’mon, time’s gettin’ short,” Thresher replied. “You’ll be taking the place of one of our drones here and deploy with the rest of them once we arrive and engage. We’ll have no direct communication until it's done, then pick you up and redeploy the fleet to Los Angeles.”

We stopped by the drone, and I stared into its pod. Just a large metal room with a heavy door on either end, filled with cold sea water.

The drone itself was interesting, shaped like a large, hump-backed dolphin, with a dozen tiny manipulator arms tucked into its belly. It looked like weapon barrels protruding from its back, but Thresher distracted me.

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4.8 stars, 15,000,000 morties.

I nodded my approval at the device.

“Now listen, this is important. If you abort mission for any reason, let us know. A MortMobile call to our people in Los Angeles will do it, you won’t be able to reach us. We’ve set up a relay system within our own secure network. Just have one of your people tell one of our people working on the plant, and we’ll get the message directly after,” Thresher explained.

“I’m allowed to abort?” I asked.

Thresher laughed again. “I don’t recommend it if you want the captain on your good side, but we’re not unreasonable either. If the job is too much for you, we’ll come at it another direction, using your aid another way.”

I nodded. He stepped back from the entry-way and I stepped into it, taking another look at the water in the room below me. I gripped my shotgun strap and stepped in, instinctually holding my breath.

When I surfaced, Thresher looked down, holding the hatch above me with one hand.

“Once we drop out of the slipstream, deployment will happen fast. The entire chamber is pressurized to flood out once that hatch opens, so that’ll be your signal. Your HUD will show you the location of Kraken, and the rest will be up to you.”

Thresher tossed his shoulder bag down into the water with me. I grabbed it and pulled the flap open to see several large canister grenades.

“Thermite bombs,” Thresher said. “You’ll want to be well clear of those when they go off, they’ll spread long-burning thermite over about a hundred yards, give or take.”

I nodded, and slipped into the bag. It felt familiar, and made me think of that first time I plunged into the Sleem dungeon below Silken Sands. I’d felt the same anticipatory nerves then too.

He stared down at me for a long moment. “Are you good?” Thresher finally asked.

I shook my head. “Not even a little. But go ahead, close the door.”

Thresher chuckled, shook his head, and closed the door.

Chapter 38

The wait was far worse than actually being flushed out into the ocean. What made it so unpleasant was the multiple false starts. First the chamber’s volume of liquid sloshed me violently when we exited the slipstream effect caused by Whalehunter’s shield.

Then again as The Hornets’ Nest maneuvered hard, getting into formation so the other ships wouldn’t violently ram into us as they also exited Whalehunter’s slipstream.

Finally, the doors clunked into an unlocked position with a blaring alarm.

By the time the bottom door opened, and my chamber violently dumped me out into the ocean depths, it was a relief just to be out of the ship’s belly. All around me, vaguely dolphin shaped drones spun into motion, streaking off in different directions in a trail of bubbles.

I started moving. The drones were my smoke-screen, but I would get noticed if I didn’t take advantage of them.

The HUD in my helmet pinged a direction, down and toward the front of our ship. I focused and started flying through the water toward it. Weak sunlight dappled the area, but visibility was still low. I could see hulking shapes above and in front of me, all moving aggressively in formation.

Flashes of light erupted, torpedoes detonating on countermeasures, and lasers boiling the water around the hulking dark shapes in the distance. Thresher had told me to avoid the primary battle, but my course would have taken me directly through the enemy fleet.

I dove. The ocean floor rushed up to meet me, and I halted my momentum toward it before impact. The gravity harness hauled me through the water without issue, as promised, and I hoped my specialty suit was up to the pressures.

The water darkened, and I felt the cold seeping through even my advanced wetsuit. In the distance, above and behind me, explosions rocked across both sides of the battle. I couldn’t make out anything specific, but it looked like most of the explosions were happening on the Dearth side, so I hugged the sandy bottom and streaked toward my HUD indicator.

I fell into an almost soothing flow, rushing through the water with the shape of the land. All I had to do was focus on keeping myself a hand-breadth from the bottom while moving forward, and the gravitic drive did all the rest.

The sounds of battle and explosions drifted further and further behind me, until it was nearly out of mind. Like fireworks in the distance.

As soon as I began to relax and enjoy the experience, the ground beneath me vanished, and I veered down a cliff face toward a shapeless, undulating mass.

MortMobile appeared in my headset, gave me a grim look, and said, “You are entering a MortMobile blackout area.”

I hauled back instinctually, stopping the gravitic drive from plunging me straight down. My HUD blinked light at me, drawing a frame around my diving mask, and informing me I had arrived at my destination. Shapes moved in the depths below my feet, and I tried to get a sense of scale.

The HUD helped me out, by drawing the shape of Kraken’s bulbous body with a thin orange line of light on the diving mask.

I had come in over the lip of the trench, and Kraken was laid out before me on the shelves. A light cloud of silt obscured its lower portions, including the tentacles, as it dug deep into the earth, dragging more and more of its body into the trench’s bottom, and then deeper.

A large, oblong sack of its body rested across miles of sea-floor, spread out and sighing with soft motion. As I floated and looked, the HUD drew broad circles on the surface of the creature below, indicating bulged areas of its suit that likely housed critical systems. Lines spread out between the bulges, drawing themselves as I watched.

Movement flashed out from the silt cloud below, and two gargantuan tentacles flashed toward me from the murk. They rose in unison, the water they displaced shoving me back up against the cliffside, as the massive, flaring tentacles rushed to cover my entire frame of vision.

I lurched into movement, jetting out of the way before the first suited tentacle slammed into the cliff-side and crushed it. A wave of force and displaced water shoved me further, faster, and I swerved down to avoid the next blow.

Both tentacles were in motion, and my HUD provided flashing warnings telling me which direction the attacks were coming from. The entire thing blared from every direction, while a tentacle the size of a skyscraper rushed past.

I tumbled, the violent waters more than I could handle. Each attack gave me just enough time to see the next one coming and get out of its way, and silt from the nearby cliff-face began to further obstruct my limited vision.

One of the massive, unending tentacles swung up, curling on itself as it wound up and snapped me tumbling with the sheer force of the water. The other swept across the ocean directly above my trajectory, and I was wrenched in multiple directions at the same time.

I couldn’t tell which way was up. Light and shadows spun all around me, and the HUD flashed a constant ‘near threat’ alert at all corners of my vision. My mind went to Molls. How she twisted and pulled at my body in her passions, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Bubbles erupted from my faceplate, and showed me which way was up. I concentrated on my gravitic drive and started plunging down at nearly one-hundred knots. Water swirled and bubbled up in a vortex above me as I raced down through the waters toward Kraken.

The oversized tentacles swiped, and missed, and I swept through their wakes in my dive. Down near the surface of Kraken’s suit, two rainbow beams sparkled wide, outlining a massive square in two separate places.

Kraken’s suit lit up, in sweeping rows of lights that illuminated the trench all around me as bright as daylight.

Rock, and Hardplace, Kraken’s oversized guardian sharks, swam from their dazzling beams into my path. My diving helmet placed a small name tag above each, and the huge creatures both surged toward me. I diverted course, trying to avoid the oncoming collision. The sharks diverted with me, both focused on my form with intense, dead-eyed stares.

With a powerful surge of its rear tail, the nearest monster shark lunged up at me. It was Rock. Where Kraken’s tentacles had felt like large buildings being swung at me, the oversized maw, bristling with teeth, felt very much like I was about to get swallowed by one.

I focused on the suit, and made a sudden course change again, sweeping lower, and faster to dodge the angry mouth clapping shut above me like two mountains crashing together. I tumbled and swirled, still focused on falling down as fast as possible, but the second shark caught me.

With a twist of its thick neck, Hardplace snatched me out of the water. My body was wrenched as a giant tooth sawed down through my hips and spine, before catching on the starfish suit with a series of sparks. I suffered the brief, disorienting experience of being bitten in half. My upper body was crammed deep into Hardplace’s gums by the motion.

Then the starfish suit got involved. My cartoon arrived to gasp at me, in a diving suit of its own. The animated creature glanced around and shook its head. “User, this is a lot of repair work. Better break something.”

I grimaced, tried to ignore the sensation of my missing lower half, and slammed a metal-covered fist into the tooth bed, even as my tendrils emerged to saw at the bone and flesh entrapping me. Lasers fired, and silver flashed as the suit got to work fixing my body at the same time as it carved Hardplace a new hole in his mouth.

A deep rumble from the beast's belly washed past me, and I was ejected from its jaws in a rush of bloody saltwater, as Hardplace roared in frustration.

Without waiting for my suit to finish repairs, I focused on the nearest dome on Kraken’s suit and dove straight for it.

“User! Stop pushing the drive so hard, I’m using that charge to repair you!” my starfish announced.

I ignored it and pushed harder, focused on more speed. Rock dove in behind me, following me directly, with his mouth open wide. The BuyMort pod and its rainbow beam chased behind.

My new spine piece popped into place, and I could feel my legs again. I pushed the gravitic drive for more speed, and bubbles began to swirl up into Rock’s open mouth. My dive boiled the water behind me as I increased in speed further.

I shot both hands forward, atomic breaker gauntlets primed and ready, and slammed into the bulge in Kraken’s suit.

A flash of blue light erupted as I smashed through the exterior of Kraken’s suit. The top of the dome burst, and I plunged through into a bubble of air, with a residential neighborhood below me.

I gaped as I took it in. A cookie-cutter residential area, filled with people, houses, shops, and even a park spread out below me beneath the dome. An entire town.

Debris, a huge spray of ocean, and an oversized, stone-armored shark blasted down into the dome from the ceiling.

Rock roared as we plunged toward the town below, and I swung out of his path entirely. The massive, granite covered shark fell rapidly past me, followed by its pod and rainbow beam, still set to privacy mode. A thin, gray tentacle whipped in the wind, connecting the shark and beam as they fell to the ground below.

The shark roared all the way up until it struck the ground in an explosion of force, followed by a few million gallons of seawater. An entire neighborhood was destroyed in an instant, dozens of houses blasted from the surface as metal and black, rubbery composite material were exposed below the ground.

Rock died with his face smashed against Kraken’s inner suit lining, exposed beneath the blacktop and concrete. The water that had rushed in with us splashed violently and swirled as it drained into the Kraken’s suit lining.

Chapter 39

I glanced up at the hole in the ceiling, suddenly confused by the lack of ocean water. An energy shield hummed and flickered across the ceiling of the dome, covering the hole I had blasted into Krakens suit.

Metal ran across the ceiling like bones, and black, rubbery-looking webbing stretched between them to form the walls. As I watched, more metal and webbing protruded from the largest ‘bones,’ attempting to heal the hole in the roof.

Hardplace swam slowly by the hole, one massive eye fixated on me.

I turned away and slowly floated down to the ruins of Rock, jammed face-first into the unexpected town at the bottom of the dome. Houses of various construction styles were scattered about in rows, and roundabouts. Further in toward the center of the dome, more industrious buildings were scattered around in blocks.

What looked like a vibrant, open-air market near the center had been crushed by Rock’s landing, and various bits of the flooring around it were smashed, revealing the rubbery gray flesh of Kraken beneath. Without much of a direction for this strange scenario, I flew in close to where Rock had landed and started rifling around in my bag for a thermite bomb.

A human, one arm crushed and mangled, stepped out from behind the massive, dead shark and shook his head at me.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed.

I blinked and looked up, ready to take off again, but the man didn’t appear to want to attack me. He was leaning on Rock’s stony scales for balance, and I saw that his leg on that side had been injured as well, it was twisted to an angle that looked wrong.

“What the hell?” he asked again, more insistent. “You show up uninvited and kill one of our favorite pets, crushing or drowning thirty-four of our other pets in the process?”

I raised my shotgun and flicked the selector switch to the flechettes, before shouldering the weapon and firing at him. The man went down with a grunt and a splash of vibrant blood.

A young delf woman appeared next, still carrying a dripping jute bag filled with various fruits and vegetables. “That was rude,” she said. I raised the shotgun again but held my fire as she walked a little closer. The BuyMort pod holding her tentacle appeared from behind Rock’s destroyed head.

“What, you’re not going to shoot this one too?” she asked. “Her bag of groceries not threatening enough for you?”

I lowered my shotgun. “Rock killed himself. I think you’ll find that most things that attack me end up dead, Kraken.”

“Oh, psh,” she waved a hand dismissively. “You’ve got weaknesses, and we’ll find ‘em. Don’t you worry about that, sugar.”

The delf gently and carefully set her bag down, before running a hand affectionately against Rock’s stony scales.

“To be perfectly honest, we’ve a much more pressing concern in mind, when it comes to your relationship with us,” the delf said, speaking in a soft voice. I leaned in to hear her better, and something struck the back of my neck, blasting through the breathing apparatus and destroying it.

My teeth clicked shut and I groaned in agony, as something burned and burrowed its way into my spinal cord. For an instant, my mind touched the Krakens, and I saw myself through its eyes. I was nothing to it but an object of terrible desire.

It was wrapped in other minds, each filled in by Kraken, inhabited. But at the core of the creature itself, I found nothing. Only desire. The creature’s over-sized hunger and lust for power flashed through me before my starfish suit got to work and separated us.

Lasers carved out a section of my spine and I blacked out an instant later when they went higher, removing my brain stem as well. Fortunate timing. I didn’t want to be trapped within the centuries of foreign memories I had been experiencing.

I awoke to the delf leaning over me, trying to inspect the starfish suit attached to my chest. Without warning, I heaved upright and punched her in the temple, not bothering to hold back my strength.

The delf’s head caved in, and her neck snapped sideways, sending her light body tumbling away from me and the dead shark. A group of dripping, tentacled onlookers encroached, and I scrambled for my shotgun. The delf had kicked it away when I went down, and I found it near the discarded bits of my neck and skull, along with a sickly gray tentacle still attached, pulsing as tiny tendrils weaved through my old body parts like worms.

I gagged but picked up the shotgun and selected the laser slugs. Without warning, I turned and swept the crowd with a blast, cutting a dozen Kraken affiliate members in half with the intense beam. The rest scattered, running for cover with their BuyMort pods following them like a balloon on a string.

Beneath my feet, the ground rumbled and shook, so I focused and hovered up into the air. The tentacled people were all running, and I slung the shotgun to focus on my thermite bombs.

Each was a forearm-length metal pipe with a magnetic and chemical adhesive patch. They were thankfully idiot-proof, and only required a simple toggle-press once a plastic safety had been lifted. I flicked it open, pressed the toggle, and tossed the bomb down into the crushed floor-space beneath Rock’s corpse.

Kraken’s suit was already repairing itself. Long metal bones stretched further, trying to bridge the gap as rubbery-looking webbing crawled between them. It would be fixed within minutes if I left it alone, the gap in the roof was already covered most of the way.

My thermite bomb waited a solid five seconds before it went off, and I jetted back away from the plume. It was significantly stronger than I had expected it to be, and the wave of force blowing out from it sent me tumbling through the air.

The fireball reached half-way to the hole in the roof, and the shield protecting us from the ocean’s depths flickered and sparked. From the central mushroom-shaped blast, chunks of rocky shark blasted everywhere, spattering against my wetsuit, and slathering the dome in gore.

Fire rained from the sky and stuck to everything it touched.

Screams and shouts of rage and pain filled the streets below me, as the residential blocks swarmed with BuyMort pods and running tentacle people. Humans, delves, orcs, Nah’gh, Knowle, and mordren ran in the hundreds, forming into rivulets and rows, all heading for a broad, sphincter-shaped doorway on one wall.

I focused and veered toward it. A trumpeting blast sounded behind me in the center of the dome, as the room bucked, and I turned to see the rear half of the dome packed with gossamer-winged kaiju worms.

Suddenly, all I could think about was poor Tower, starving to death on the old US Mexico border.

Most of the worms were the usual size, but one nearly scraped the roof of the dome when it raised its head back and roared. I’d caused a lot of pods a lot of damage when I set off that thermite bomb. A quick count showed their numbers to be way too much for me to handle, and I turned away as the shield in the roof flicked off.

Ocean water blasted into the dome, smashing into the largest worm as jet black ink bubbled and boiled from the thermite pit in the center. Kraken roared in pain, and the entire world shook with its voice.

I dove for the massive doors, following the handful of people still running. Power to the entire dome clicked off, and the gigantic hallway ahead of us flashed with red emergency lighting. The people running all screamed in one voice, burning in agony.

The sphincter doors cycled closed alarmingly fast, and I made it only by putting on a panicked instant of unbearably fast speed. The gravitic drive cut out as I cleared the closing doors, and my cartoon starfish appeared to fall along-side me, holding a sign that read, “you should have charged your suit.”

I slammed into a crowd of evacuating survivors, rolling, and smashing through them with a fresh series of shouts. My arms and legs were grabbed from several different directions, and a mob of angry tentacle people tried to hold me down.

With a snarl, I flexed, dragging bodies into one another as I started smashing. I grabbed limbs, crushed, tore, and flailed my way out of the mob. In the flashing dark red light, I saw tentacles rising from gaps in the flooring, and took off into the sky again.

Kraken wanted to try taking me over again, and I was not going to let it. If it got me while the suit was out of charge, I would be in trouble.

The hallway we were in could have been a super-highway tunnel. The ceiling was high overhead, and curved, forming an oblong tube that seemed to travel indefinitely into the distance. The flooring and walls were made up of that same metal-boned second-skin material Kraken used as a spacesuit.

“More charge, user! More!” the starfish demanded. I veered to the side and slammed my fist into the nearest wall, smashing it open to reveal rubbery gray flesh beneath. Another shield projected from the damaged material, and more metal bones and rubbery-looking sealant started working to close the wound I had put in the Kraken’s suit.

I dove again, slamming into another group of tentacle people. One of them raised a weapon, and I pushed the drive, flying straight into him with a solid step kick. The man’s chest caved in, and he flew back into the wall, even as more tentacle people surrounded me in the blinking red light.

“Asshole!” A mordren woman shouted. Her tentacle was scarred and burned. “That actually hurt!”

“Good!” I roared. “I’m trying to kill you!”

“I hadn’t noticed!” several nearby voices roared in harmony. All around me, dozens of people charged. I whipped out the machete and went to work. The mordren lost her head first, and then I turned to ravage any others who approached me.

They were armed with various household goods. Suitcases, coat-hangers, the occasional rake or trowel. An entire neighborhood of angry, be-tentacled strangers, intent on my blood. I fell back into my instincts, and let my animal desire to cause harm guide my hands.

Through my mask, it was all a blur of violence as dozens of people came and went before my eyes, bodies broken and crushed in my wake. My only point of caution was to avoid harming the BuyMort pods they all had floating behind them like balloons on strings. The tunnel began to darken even further, as the pods winked out their beams and jetted off into the distance.

I got a second to breathe in the melee and dropped my machete with a clatter. The shotgun was up and to my shoulder, and before any more of them could enter my immediate area, I activated the ion saturator and selected the option for double barreled fire.

The twin laser beams burned a swath in the area in front of me as I swept the barrel. I tried to limit the sweep, but my beam scorched a blistering hole in the wall at my side anyway. Boiling ink gushed from the wound, flooding toward me across the ground.

Kraken roared in pain again, shaking my surroundings and nearly knocking me off my feet.

I snatched up my machete and took to the air, falling down the tunnel. Ink followed me, jetting from the wall to my side in a long gash of the material. People lay below me in the jet-black liquid, sliced in half and still burning. I gave up trying to count how many as I flew by over their heads.

Far away from the sealed doors and ruined residential area, I set back down in the tunnel. Most of the bodies were behind me, and I’d stopped to check the last one in the line. It was a human male, still attached to his tentacle and clutching at his cauterized thighs.

When I landed nearby, he began laughing, with ragged, pained breaths between harsh, barking laughs. “We can – haha -we can do this forever!” he shouted, grimacing with the words.

I stepped forward and dropped the machete through his tentacle. It snapped like a wet paper straw, and the man went limp with a sigh of release. He was dead before his head hit the floor. The severed tentacle withdrew into the pod’s beam, which shut down in a blink. With a happy whistle, the BuyMort pod turned and floated away down the reaching tunnels.

Something rattled and clanked toward me, and I slammed my fists into the floor in preparation. The structure cracked beneath me, and my cartoon starfish thanked me for the charge. I leapt into the air and plummeted down the tunnel toward the sound.

Several large, trundling mechanical bodies occupied the tunnels ahead of me. As soon as they came into view, the front row slammed their forelimbs into the floor, bracing their bodies as wide, metal covered flaps extended and rattled from the sides of their heads. They looked like animals, modified with mechanical enhancements, like bus-sized, armored porcupines with glaring red eyes and tentacles trailing into the walls.

These tentacles were thicker, longer, but still that sickly gray color, lodged into the base of the poor beast's skulls.

I shook my head, growling, and mentally prepared myself for a whole lot of pain.

Chapter 40

The air filled with hissing, organic quills. One pinned the bomb bag to my midsection, and I tore it out with a gasp. Blood gushed from the gaping wound. The quill felt like rough, splintered wood, and bore several large, bladed barbs.

Several more punctured my body as I hung, inspecting the object. The painkiller ramped up intensely. I groaned and concentrated on getting away. As I went to fly overhead, the quill-throwers focused their fire on me with nearly impeccable aim.

I plummeted to the floor just on the other side of their formation, unable to breathe or move my limbs. The starfish suit spun into action, yanking and cutting portions of my body away as my consciousness slid in and out.

More quills flashed my way, thrown from gaps in the armor, and from great, flat tails. The suit's tendrils began to spark, diverting or destroying incoming quills until enough damage was repaired for me to raise my armored gauntlets in front of my body.

The diving suit was ruined, but the helmet stayed mostly intact. My HUD cracked as a quill struck the faceplate directly. I got to my knees and reached in the punctured bomb bag for a tube of thermite, trying to cover behind one hand as well as I could. As I fumbled through it, I activated a toggle with a broken safety switch and immediately lost it in the bag.

I held my breath for a full second as quills filled the air, my legs, and the bag of bombs.

Then I shrugged, tore the bag free from my body, and tossed the entire thing in the middle of the quill-thrower beasts. I held my armored hands in front of me and concentrated on getting away as fast as I could.  The suit worked on repairing my damage and keeping my vital systems running, while I pushed it for more speed.

I was a torn-apart pincushion, flying through the air in bleeding tatters.

My cartoon showed up to keep me company, sending a severe glare my way. “You’re going to run out of charge in flight again, and it’ll be the end of you one of these days, user!” it squawked.

The thermite bombs all went off in a chain of explosions. Kraken immediately roared in pain, and I heard the hiss of boiling ink and seawater both rushing into the tunnel.

Then the situation changed entirely. The walls around me clicked audibly, a heavy, metallic snap that echoed up and down the giant halls. Then they flexed inward, the ceiling rushing down toward me.

I pushed the suit harder, focused on a tiny dot in the distance, another sphincter-door. My arms reached out in front of me, and I willed the atomic breaker gauntlets to become active as I mentally pushed the gravitic drive to move me as fast as it could.

The remnants of the suit below my waist and my boots ripped free in an instant of dizzying, tearing velocity. The walls and floors bent in, as I rushed through the air to slam into the door, a shockwave tearing through the tunnel behind me.

The sphincter blasted apart in an explosion of blue light and fragments, and I tumbled into the new area, another dome. I craned my neck around to see behind me. The tunnel clamped down and sealed flat against the curve of Kraken’s body.

I slammed into an oversized metal and rubber tube, cratered it, and ricocheted to the side, tumbling to a stop on the floor.

This dome was different, it wasn’t full of residential neighborhoods or parks. Just tubes, and somewhere in the mess of them, the bone-thrumming sound of heavy machinery.

A raptorial alien descended from above on black feathered wings. She reminded me of Darclau’s favorite translator, Sheena. It wasn’t her, but they were the same species. This one was wearing heavily stained coveralls, complete with toolbelt.

“Wait!” she yelled. Her tentacle followed via pod, and she flew gently to allow it to keep up easily as she landed nearby, hands raised.

I groaned and hauled myself to one knee, yanking the shotgun’s heavy strap out of the meat of my shoulder before the suit could cut it free. I raised it and racked a flechette into the right hand barrel, then shot her.

The bird-woman fell, a bloody hole punched into her chest. She gasped and gave a weak cry, before straightening out with a terrible, visibly agonized effort and looked me in the eyes. “We can make a deal, there’s no need to keep-”

I shot her again, in the head this time, before she could keep talking. The flechettes tore out the tentacle, which receded into the rainbow beam while Kraken rumbled.

The painkiller in my system faded a bit as the repairs ceased. The ground around me was covered in sawed up quill parts, and my wetsuit was gone from the nipples down. Resurfacing was going to be a challenge, I suspected.

I flew around the room, trying to get a sense for what it could be. The walls, floors, and everything else was made from the same material as the tunnel had been, a mixture of metallic bones, and whatever that hardened rubber-looking stuff was. It seemed to solidify as hard as iron when it was dried.

Various pipes made of the stuff led from each corner of the dome to the center, where they all convened at a single tower that appeared to plunge down into the Kraken’s body.

I hung in the air momentarily before shrugging and racking the shotgun. I selected another two of the laser slugs and activated the ion saturator on the barrel. When I fired both barrels, I swept the beam in an arc, trying to cut a circle through the hardened material.

Kraken roared and roiled, its entire body shuddering with the movement. The piping collapsed, spilling jet-black ink across the dome’s floor in a rush as machinery on the interior of the piping cluster erupted. A fireball rose to light the dome, and the center of the machinery collapsed into the flames.

The ground surged, and the walls of the dome screamed as they bent to accommodate the Kraken’s movements. The gigantic beast flailed in pain. I’d dived deeper in the trench, following the tunnel down the slope of Kraken’s trunk toward the tentacles. If it was built anything like earth octopi or squids, I was getting closer to its brain.

With a scream of shattering metal and tearing hull material, the external dome smashed into the cliffs of the trench outside, and the ocean screamed in from all angles. I dove, flying down into the ruined machinery and billowing flames. When I slammed into its lowest available surface, fists first, I activated both my power blow and breaker gauntlet abilities.

The material blasted away in an explosion of blue light, and I plunged into surging ink. I took a quick, deep breath before it filled my mask, through the broken breathing apparatus at the back of my neck.

I raised the machete as soon as I felt flesh, falling as straight as the strong current of ink would allow me to. I’d entered an underground river and felt the liquid sucking me further into the Kraken’s body. With one hand, I dug my fist into the soft tissue, dragging a furrow until I stopped. Then I hacked down on the wall, tearing a slit into it.

The shotgun tore free with the movement, and immediately vanished into the river of fast-moving ink.

As I crammed myself into the rent flesh, machete first, the current of the ink suddenly reversed and increased in pressure dramatically. It was trying to flush me out.

I hacked and stabbed, using the gravitic drive to push myself further into the rubbery, torn flesh. The machete opened up a path inside the giant creature’s body. The shearing force of the ink flood behind me eased the deeper I went, but my lungs were already screaming for air.

The deeper I burrowed, the more frenzied Kraken’s movements became, and the deeper the screams of pain. I slashed and hacked, forcing myself further and further in, chased by surges of ink.

Within moments, I couldn’t hold my breath any more, and started choking it out in tiny gasps, before inhaling a great glob of ink.

It burned and froze all the way down into my chest, and I immediately coughed hard, drawing in a great, panicked breath of pure liquid. My attempts to get further in Krakens tissues slowed, then stopped entirely as I retched and choked on noxious, vile ink. It filled my nostrils, mouth, and lungs wholly, and the world went dark with excruciating slowness.

I awoke with a gasp, as ink soaked lung tissue ground its way out of my chest turbine. The air was filled with the stench of fried squid, but I could breathe it. The starfish suit had carved and cauterized a sphere around me, I could just barely stand inside of it without crouching.

Gray walls of charred flesh surrounded me on all sides. I slid and fell backwards on my bare ass, sliding down the still-warm squid-flesh. Lifting my mask, I spewed vomit from the stench. It eased after that, and I firmed up my grip on the machete. I’d never dropped it, even when drowning in ink.

The shotgun and thermite bombs, however, were gone.

There was a great, pulsing slit behind me, where the starfish suit had sealed my rend in Kraken’s flesh, so I faced the opposite side. I raised my machete and looked at the task ahead of me, before sighing and getting to work.

I hacked at the rubbery flesh, heading away from the scar behind me. With proper application of force, I was able to slice myself a makeshift doorway through the beast’s body. Kraken reacted occasionally, but the reactions were slight, compared to their previous roars and flailing.

My HUD still functioned, in spite of some small cracking in the goggles. Its map feature showed that just behind me was a channel filled with ink that seemed to run along the surface of Kraken’s body, beneath the skin. In the direction I was heading, another wall of organic metal and composite material buttressed the beast’s flesh from inside.

Beyond it was a void, something the mapping software in my loaner helmet wasn’t capable of seeing.

With some effort, I hacked apart a pathway through the monster, hauling great slabs of rubbery squid flesh back into the chamber my suit had carved until I reached the next wall. My machete bit into it with a hard enough swing, and I forced the blade through the material, cutting out a hole big enough for me to slip through.

When I pushed my way through, I instantly started to fall, and shot out one arm to catch the bottom of the doorway I had made. There I dangled, taking in my surroundings.

The room I entered was cavernous with a low ceiling that hung in either direction, curving gently into the distance. A ring of organic metal and composite material formed the walls of the room, sloping in the vague shape of a massive donut. The roof of the room was made from that same organic material, and stretched off into the distance overhead, lit by the organ beneath it.

Kraken’s brain thrummed with power, electrical surges flickering between slippery looking coils. The entire area surged from left to right, cycling dim light around the curve of the ring. In the distance, the shape of small robotic drones could be seen, hovering like flies over a corpse.

They ignored me, even when one came close enough for me to nearly touch it. Each insectile drone seemed only interested in attending to the brain matter beneath them. Fine sprays of mist emitted from the drones, and they occasionally reached a heavy proboscis down to manipulate some portion of the ring-shaped brain.

I gripped the machete and slid down the side of the wall, to the bottom of the ring. More drones buzzed around the brain matter down there too. I clung to the wall and shook my head. This thing was like me, in specific, but substantive ways.

Its brain was full of machines too, and I had to wonder how much choice this monster had in what it had become. As I raised my machete, I wondered what I would become before someone figured out how to put me down for good.

A thought pulled up my BuyMort panel, and I began searching for bombs to purchase. While I doubted a regular BuyMort pod could reach me, if I bought a bomb big enough to kill this creature, I felt confident I would get free instant shipping. Something that size was likely to be expensive.

But, the interface wouldn’t allow me to make any purchases. When I tried, I got a simple message. “Due to customer location, BuyMort purchase and sale services are not available.”

I read the message and snorted. Of course. Because I was inside another customer, I couldn’t violate their autonomy with my commerce. BuyMort and its slavish adherence to its own rules.

Well, if I couldn't buy or sell anything, I could still try and get the work done the old fashioned way. My hand tightened on the grip of my machete and I stared up into my target’s brains.

I slashed into the brain matter and was instantly blasted back against the metal wall. I was unconscious before impact. When I awoke a few seconds later, it was to my cartoon starfish peering at me.

“Careful user! Electrical sources like that can be dangerous, even to someone like you,” it said. “Now get up and find something to break, that took a lot of juice to repair!”

I glanced at my hands. They were brand new all the way up to the elbow, and I could see the charred remnants of my old arms, discarded, and left to rot in the middle of Kraken’s brain cavity. My heart also felt new, like the old one had burst and been replaced. The cut in the beast’s brain was minimal, and I could see electrical activity still jumping through the torn material.

A nearby drone diverted course and approached with a small, red light flashing. The insectile creature deployed legs as it arrived, and I hurriedly scooted further away. It braced itself against the wall and started prodding the rent brain matter with a shielded proboscis, guiding the disparate ends of torn material back together with gentle pokes.

My machete was nearby, partially slagged. Its blade in particular melted to the point of uselessness, and it was stuck to the floor.

Before I could think much further, my phone rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Urgent call from Rayna,” MortMobile informed me, in the cracked goggles of my diving mask.

Before I even accepted the call, I realized what it meant. Kraken had turned off its own MortMobile block, specifically so I could take Rayna’s call. It wanted me to answer the phone.

“Boss!” she said, out of breath. “Reaper hounds!”

“How bad?” I said, watching for the nearby drones.

“They attacking tower. First report say multiple hounds,” Rayne said. “Ground floor employees all dead.”

I nodded and flicked up my own BuyMort affiliate tab. “Rayna,” I said. “I need you to send word to our people in Los Angeles. Tell them to tell Whalehunter I had to retreat.”

“Yes boss!” Rayna shouted. She was in a vehicle, and it slid to a stop as she opened a door, flooding sunlight across her camera.

“I’m on my way,” I said. I activated one of our newly recharged free portals, and ran to grab my old, burnt arms. No reason to leave them for Kraken to use against me somehow. The pod arrived in a cloud of burnt ozone that actually improved the smell in Kraken’s brain momentarily, and then projected a rainbow beam for me.

It opened onto the Prescott tower’s lobby. Through it, I could see Rayna, Tollya, and a squad of starfish troopers entering the lobby through the front doors.

Chapter 41

I dove through the portal and stumbled to a stop in the lobby of the Prescott tower. Once I ripped off my diving mask and threw the ink-covered thing away, I felt better. The stuff was dried all over my body, crusted in my hair and beard, draining from my sinuses, and churning in my belly.

I guess ingesting Kraken’s ink wasn’t harmful, or my suit would have taken care of business, but it was still fucking gross.

Tollya tossed me a pair of pants and boots, so I hurriedly pulled them on.

“What’s the situation?” I asked.

“At least five reaper hounds,” Rayna said. “They showed up out of nowhere, attacked tower outright. Lost communication with lobby almost immediately. Looks like they methodically kill everyone on ground floor, then vanish. No other floors report attacks, most employees in hiding now, in secure rooms. Sniffers say hounds in stairwell, moving up.”

Behind her, out front, a cordon of BlueCleave soldiers with flashing blue lights signified a major mobilization of our security apparatus. I could see hovercraft through the windows. Starfish troopers spread out across the lobby, in ready positions.

“Secure the lobby, nobody goes anywhere alone,” I ordered. “Where’s Jada?”

“We move Axle to top floor two hours ago,” Tollya answered. “Jada with him.”

“That’s where I’m heading. Portal me in if you get in trouble,” I said. Without waiting for an answer, I leapt into the air and flew outside, skidding to a stop at the BlueCleave barricades before rocketing up to the top floor.

I cracked the stairwell door carefully and peeked inside. Nothing, as I had expected. I shrugged and kicked the door open, letting it bang against the wall as I rushed in. There was only one floor to go, so I jumped into the air and used my gravitic drive to swing down onto the right landing.

As I opened the door to the penthouse suite, I heard the panic room door slide open before sliding closed again. Jada ran around the corner, gripping her club in one hand and a heavy armored combat helmet in the other.

I grinned, and she tossed me the helmet. “He’ll be safe in there,” she said. “Let’s hunt.”

With a nod, I held the door for Jada, and she ran past me into the stairwell. Her own helmet was bespoke, with small slits for the eye holes, but a wide grid of reinforced mesh over her nose. The helmet’s armor plating extended down to cover her neck and shoulders, with a strip of hanging metal covering part of her backbone.

I liked my rare times alone with Jada, she and I had a special friendship. Something I saw as absolutely necessary in the BuyMort family. She engaged in wholesale slaughter with me. As she started running down the square-shaped stairwell, I fell into place behind her.

“Lead the way,” I told her. Her nose would provide the guidance for our hunt, and help us find our targets.

The hounds had been unleashed by Dearth, on behalf of Kraken. That much I couldn’t ignore. It meant they had a mole, or a series of moles in my city. BlueCleave loyalty wasn’t in question, but there were hundreds of regular Silken Sands employees I didn’t necessarily trust. Most of them were just working for morties, living off what my larger affiliate could offer as benefits.

Safety, food, water, housing, power, mental healthcare, the basics. Made it easy for provocateurs to slip in among the crowd, unnoticed. My paranoia spun wild as Jada and I started jogging down the stairwell.

Jada stopped me with a raised fist. Her helmet echoed with the sounds of her sniffing the air. “They’re close,” she whispered. Figuring out who specifically housed the reaper hounds would have to wait. As I suspected, they’d been coming for Axle and were in the open stairwell with us. The goal was to distract me from my assault on Kraken, and it had worked.

The soft, muted thumps of incoming paws on concrete alerted us to their proximity before the attack. They were completely invisible one moment, and then leaping at our throats and faces the next.

Jada snarled and leapt across the open, square stairwell. She landed on something and one of the reaper hounds leaping at me vanished. I gritted my teeth, braced, and hid behind my breaker gauntlets, waiting for the attack.

As soon as I felt a scythe dig into me, I lashed out and caught it with one arm. The reaper hound roared and leapt onto me, raking with multiple claws while it sunk its teeth into my neck. I ignored the damage and crushed it with a bear hug, then let it drop so my tendrils could work.

Jada slammed her mace into the plasticrete stairs, and I heard one of the hounds yelp its last. I waited for the next attack, but the invisible creature seemed to hesitate.

“They’re running!” Jada shouted. She leapt down a floor, bounced from the railing and slammed into an invisible hound, crushing it against the wall before braining it with her mace.

I shook my head and stepped over the edge of the staircase. Before I hit the bottom, I concentrated and slowed down my landing. Within a few seconds, I heard the paw pads running and braced myself against the door-frame on the lobby level.

The reaper hound slammed into me, limbs, and scythes flailing. Its teeth dragged sparks from metal as it tried to clamp down on my helmet. I slammed both arms together and crushed its ribcage, rolling to try and catch the final hound.

It dragged both scythes through my back, effectively cutting the strings to my entire body. I roared in pain and frustration as I saw the light shimmer around its head before it bolted off toward the lobby.

“Rayna you have incoming! One hound!” I shouted from my puddle on the floor.

Jada panted down the steps behind me, carrying the reaper hound she’d knocked out over one shoulder. She stepped clear as my tendrils went to work and started repairing all the damage done to me. My cartoon starfish scolded me, but I ignored it.

As soon as I could stand, I was up and running to the lobby. A BlueCleave regular was bleeding on the floor in front of the open lobby doors, with Rayna attending to the wound. The final reaper hound was nearby, dead. Slashed with a laser blast, the wall behind the dead beast was still on fire.

Rayna pressed a bandage to the hobbs thigh, glancing up to see us coming.

“Who’s got containment?” Jada shouted as she entered the lobby, carrying the limp hound over her shoulder. “I don’t know how long this thing will stay down!”

“More coming?” grunted Rayna.

I blew out my breath and shook my head. “No, these were sent here to distract me. To make sure I stopped my assault. Dearth and Kraken are working together,” I said.

The hobb nodded. A medic ran from an office block attached to the lobby, already speckled in gray blood. He dropped to Rayna’s side and took over for her, getting to work on the injured hobb.

They were tough, those who had lived would be back in fighting shape in a matter of days, if not hours.

Rayna joined Jada and I, leading us down to the basement. She led the way to a series of familiar holding cells before motioning to one in particular.

“In there. Look like it need a doctor,” she said as Jada carried the limp reaper hound into the cell.

When it comes to your life, health should never be an issue. Let all of us at Hollow Hopkins Medical help with our Stasis Cocoon Enhancer.

Our newest Innovation and medical technology, the stasis cocoon envelops patients in need of immediate medical care, immobilizing and then treating them underneath the soft and comfortable warmness of a pink jellied shell.

SCE. 456,000 morties, 4.1 stars.

“Too dangerous for anyone not wearing a starfish suit,” I said. “But if you want to try, I’ll come in with you.”

Rayna thought for a short moment, and then nodded. She gripped her medic pouch and approached the hound, on its bed in the cell. Its chest was still rising and falling, but its many various limbs were all limp. I pulled its scythe tentacles back out of the way and held them both in one hand while Rayna got to work.

The blades on the ends were hardened bone, thin and pointed at the tip.

She checked the beast's eyes, ears, and nostrils with a flashlight before shaking her head. “Skull fracture. Nothing I can do anyway.”

I nodded and held the beast’s tentacles as she moved toward the door, then dropped them and exited myself.

“Cell,” I said to the air. The tower’s overriding computer system had been reprogrammed to answer to our affiliate’s leadership instead of Dearth’s. “Secure the prisoner and provide them with some drinking water.”

A section of the wall jutted out near the floor, with a bowl-shaped concavity in the metal. As I watched, it filled with a small amount of clear water. The reaper hound did not react, or move at all, aside from the occasional shallow breath.

Rayna stared at the reaper hound for a long moment before she turned to me. “What happen?”

I nodded toward a nearby security office. Once we were inside and the door was closed behind us, I pressed a button near the door and turned on the soundproofing for the room.

“I tried to kill Kraken, and when I got close, Dearth unleashed the reaper hounds to distract me, by going after Axle. Kraken even deactivated their MortMobile blocker so I could get your call. They knew I’d respond by portalling out, but they didn’t know I couldn’t have killed Kraken anyway. I was out of weapons, and its brain was full of energy that very effectively deterred my attacks.”

“Whalehunter be mad?” she asked. Concern for her troops was clear on her face. The lobby was still a bloodbath, and it was clear she didn’t want to lose any more hobbs.

“Probably not so mad they attack us over it. I got some valuable intel, they’ll want that from me at the least, if not another attempt,” I told her. After a moment’s hesitation I added, “send some more units to the LA facility though, just in case.”

We returned to the lobby after posting a heavily armed and armored starfish trooper guard over the unconscious reaper hound. BlueCleave was in the process of policing the bodies, and directly outside the cordon outside was a camera crew.

I blinked in confusion at the sight. A muscular Orkreshi in heavily layered armor carried a bulky, shoulder-mounted camera. To his side, a lanky hobb held a directional microphone, as a human and hobb in BlueCleave uniforms argued with a starfish trooper. The trooper appeared to be denying them access to the scene.

“Oh,” Rayna grunted. “Them.” She shook her head.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Axle’s new project. Camera crews embedded with response teams. Figured you not want them here,” she told me.

I squinted, thought about my situation for a moment, and shook my head. “Naw, let em in. I’ll even give em an up close with the capture.”

Rayna and a few other nearby hobbs looked up at me. “Not want keep reaper hounds secret?” Rayna asked.

“Look at the city, Rayna. Everybody who was going to run has run. The dream storm felt far too much like a direct attack and coupled with the threat that Kraken represents to the entire planet, we’re nearly empty already,” I told her. “These guys’ll need content if we’re gonna sell the program to church tv.”

Rayna nodded. “Still have BlueCleave, and sizable support network,” she told me. “Not empty-empty.”

“I know, I was making a point. A lot of people have already left, I doubt the knowledge of these attacks can stay quiet after this anyway. This lobby,” I said, gesturing to the corpses and bits of corpses all around us.

“This lobby was meant to be an announcement. We’ll never cover up this many deaths, and I don’t much feel like trying. These people have families, loved ones who deserve to know what happened, and that we’re doing what we can to stop it. Whatever this campaign with the reaper hounds is, it’s going to get worse, quickly. Secrecy doesn’t mean much to me anymore. Monetization does.”

Rayna nodded. She looked around and gestured to the working hobbs. “Stop. Leave bodies. Just cover faces.”

I clapped her on the shoulder and smiled grimly. “Now you’re getting it. Let’s put on a show for em!”

Chapter 42

On my way out of the lobby, I passed a wall mirror behind the front desk. In-between the blood spatters, I saw my own reflection. What wasn’t soaked in ink was splattered with blood, and my armored helmet bore scarring from the reaper’s scythe blades. Stripes of new flesh interspersed the ink-stained parts of my body, creating a tapestry of fresh scars.

I grinned behind my helmet and pushed open the lobby doors. “Trooper!” I shouted.

The starfish trooper arguing with the tv crew raised a closed fist to them and looked over their shoulder at me.

“Let em in!” I shouted with a wave of my hand.

The hobb nodded immediately and stepped aside. The H.O.B.B.S. crew approached, and I held the door open for them.

The human wore a mustache, mirrored shades, and an over-sized magnum revolver. The hobb wore similar mirrored glasses but was clean-shaven and had a standard issue BlueCleave laser pistol sidearm. Both the cameraman and microphone hobb were wearing layers of protective armor.

“Let me guess,” I said, pointing at the human. “You’re new here.”

He grinned, staring at my helmet. “Now that is unusual, innit?” he said, his British accent immediately clear. “You really always wear a helmet, just like they said. Wild shit, mate.”

The man suddenly stuck his hand out, shaking his head. “Rawlins, Nu-Earth, Leicestershire, UK. Cheers for this, mate.”

“Lestershure?” I mangled the word as I shook his hand. “How’d you end up all the way out here?”

“You takin the piss?” Rawlins said. He gaped at me. “I answered your call, mate. The window-puncher, warlord of Arizona, all that, says ‘come out to me city, it’s nice and safe,’ so here I am.”

Music swirled through my head and images of my land rolled with it. I saw myself and my people producing, creating, selling, and fighting.

"BuyMort is here forever. But that doesn't mean we have to sit on our asses and take what its Affiliates want to hand us."

Animated footage of some of the battles we had fought with Dearth filled my mind. Then I appeared.

"Tyson Dawes here, Warlord of Arizona. The window puncher. The world has turned into a really shit place, in case you haven't noticed. But it doesn't have to be. Out here at Silken Sands we are hiring all Nu-Earth people, and if you work with us we will work for you. It's the safest damn place on the planet, so what are you waiting for? Come on over and join up with us today."

I was pretty stunned at the production value on that ad. I remembered giving the speech, but all of the rest of that, well, that was Axle's work.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I did say that, didn't I?”

“Does it regularly surprise you when people respond to that call of safe haven?” Rawlins asked.

I nodded eagerly. “It does. Glad to have you, Rawlins, even though you . . . accuse people of stealing urine,” I said, before turning to his hobb partner.

“Reck,” the hobb grunted. He saluted me, and then Rayna, before nudging Rawlins. The human thumped his chest in salute, but it was so lacking in proper form that Rayna stiffened and pointed at him. She took the man aside and dressed him down as the rest of us watched, the camera crew in particular.

I took their attention from the spectacle by clapping my hands. “Look, sorry to interrupt. We have a situation here, as you can plainly see.”

The Orkreshi cameraman nodded, sweeping the lobby. He focused on the corpses and blood-spatters on the walls.

Reck rested his hand on his laser pistol sidearm. “This scene secure?”

I shook my head slowly, and the hobb stiffened. “Not in the proper sense of the word,” I clarified. “We have an ongoing threat, I wanted to fold your show in on it. If nothing else, it’ll help inform the city.”

The cameraman stepped forward, zooming in on my helmet as I spoke.

“Why don’t I just show you what’s happened?” I said.

I turned and swept the lobby, filled with dead bodies. Hobbs and humans, mostly, but an orc woman was in multiple pieces nearby as well.

Our receptionist, I believe.

“We have been attacked. Quite randomly, with no warning or reason given.”

Reck nodded, a notepad and pen in his hands. “Any idea what do this?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said. “We have a few of em dead and one in custody. Once Rawlins is done getting his ass chewed on, I’ll show to you it.”

We waited until Rayna was done with the new guy, then I led the H.O.B.B.S. crew into the holding area. Axle had given me a quick rundown of the facility’s functions, and I commanded the entire secure area to opaque themselves.

With a quick surge of power, all of the windows became impossible to see through.

Jail House Industries. Matter coagulating features for the prison on the fly . . . at tremendous value. 24,600,000 morties, 3.7 stars.

When we approached the correct cell, I ordered its windows translucent, and the reaper hound was visible.

It was awake and shimmered when it saw us. The hound vanished momentarily, before appearing again and slumping in pain and exhaustion. The area around its head shimmered, but it didn’t vanish again.

“Bloody fuckin hell,” whispered Rawlins. “What is that?”

The cameraman panned over to me, and I shook my heavily armored helmet.

“That is a reaper hound. There are as many as twenty of them currently somewhere in the city. BlueCleave and Silken Sands management are seeking information leading to the capture or death of all of these creatures. They should be considered extremely dangerous, so people should avoid them if at all possible."

I paused and looked directly into his camera.

"But Silken Sands is offering ten thousand morties to anyone who provides us viable information on the whereabouts of any reaper hound.”

Rawlins nodded and turned back to stare at the hound. “Aside from this one, I assume?”

Reck sighed and shook his head, arms crossed.

“Yes, aside from this one,” I said, staring at Rawlins. “They can manipulate light, somehow, so anyone who sees one should be aware it almost certainly is not where you can see it, and they’re unlikely to be alone. Contacts should be made through BlueCleave security forces, but a starfish trooper or myself will respond.”

“Ooo, Bossman ‘imself, responding to an animal control scenario?” Rawlins said, staring through the glass. “Must be serious indeed.”

“You could say that. I take any threat to my affiliate seriously,” I replied, arms crossed. “Anyway, that’s all we have. You guys go get some good content.”

Reck nodded and saluted me, and the rest of the H.O.B.B.S. crew turned to leave. I watched the reaper hound in its cell and waited as the camera crew left. There were two starfish troopers assigned to the cell, and I looked them over. Patches of newer, lighter grey skin covered their bodies, evidence of their recent training.

“If this thing moves wrong, I want it dead. Otherwise, monitor and report its behavior,” I ordered them.

Both hobbs nodded grimly. They were heavily armed and armored. Our BlueCleave armorers had been busy since the first attack, and I was seeing more and more of the hobbs bodies covered by heavy metal arrangements. Some of it was nothing more than scrap steel, but every bit of physical armor helped.

“Yes boss!” one of them snapped, and they turned to observe the reaper hound as I left.

Rayna was in the lobby still, briefing Rawlins and Reck while the camera-man circled them. I interrupted to ask where Jada went, and my security chief pointed up.

I nodded and jogged into the stairwell.

With a crouch, I was able to leap to the top of the open stairwell, using my gravitic drive. I walked into the penthouse suit and then up to the panic room door. After a brief pause, it slid aside and revealed the comfortable, but close, room.

Axle was in a borrowed trauma bed from our basement infirmary. He wore thick, white bandages over both eyes, but raised his nose toward me as I entered.

“Told you,” Jada whispered from his side.

“You smell awful, friend. Like toxic seafood,” Axle said with a grimace.

“That’d be the ink,” I said as the door slid shut behind me. Jada had a laptop set up on a counter, with a BlueCleave communications set beside it. “I went for a swim in it.”

Axle’s nose crinkled. “Perhaps a shower would help,” he muttered.

“Yeah, shortly. I just wanted to check in with you first, see how you’re doing,” I told him.

Axle nodded. “I am well. Medicated, tended to, and awaiting a conference call later tonight with CTV about H.O.B.B.S,” he said. “They seemed eager in response to the pitch.”

“Good. I just let your crew record the reaper hound Jada captured. The rest are dead, but they tried to run as soon as we responded” I said.

“Jada told me. I am sorry, they used me as bait to prevent you from accomplishing something important,” Axle replied. His ears drooped. “I did not consider becoming a target for them.”

“You’re one of the five most important people in Silken Sands. When it comes to the operation of this affiliate, it's no secret that I rely on you” I replied. “And you’re a close friend.”

I hesitated, my hand on the door. “I couldn’t have killed Kraken anyway, I lost my weapons, though I did find my way to its brain. Massive amount of energy surging through that thing.”

Axle nodded. “Makes sense. Kraken is capable of dimensional leaps, following BuyMort’s pathways. I have long suspected it was more machine than organic.”

I frowned and nodded. “Well. At least we can tell Tollya I found a use for her nukes. That’ll cheer her up.”

“How many dead, Tyson?” Axle asked, suddenly.

I hesitated and took a deep breath. “Fourteen, Axle. They killed everyone in the lobby to make sure they had our attention.”

His ears went flat, and he licked his nose, but did not respond.

“I’m gonna go grab that shower,” I said, as Jada gripped Axles' paw in her own. She nodded at me, and I stepped out.

Chapter 43

The shower in the penthouse was top notch, and luxurious as they came. It was massive, made with black slate tile with silver inlay, and used an overhead rain shower style head. I stood beneath it and happily washed the crusted ink out of my hair, and off my body.

Some of it had stained my skin, teeth, even the whites of my eyes, but it was a thin amount. I expected it would fade quickly enough. While standing beneath the rushing water, I thought about the events of the day. How many of my enemies and allies I had pissed off with my actions.

With a sigh and a shake of my head, I tried to summon my anti-magic helmet again. This time, the silver coverage formed up around my nose and mouth, covering my throat and neck, but not going much further up my head.

I dismissed it again. At least it was healing.

Got something needs fixing? Go to Verve’s Repair and Replace! Whatever it is and wherever it came from, Verve’s will find a way to make that ticker go tock all over again. Costs vary. We are a 4.5 star service.

I dismissed the ad as well. Sounded like something worth checking in on later, but there was so much more important stuff going on now. I didn’t need to have another thing clogging up my brain space.

When I finished with my shower, I dressed and checked in with Axle again. We had affiliate stuff to talk about.

“Tyson, good. You smell much better,” Axle said, nose raised. Jada sighed and rolled her eyes, focused on her laptop.

“You’ve mentioned a couple of times that we need to do some affiliate work?” I asked. “Feeling up to that conversation now?”

“Of course!” he cheerfully said.

“Half hour, tops. Then I kick your friend out and make you take a nap,” Jada growled.

Axle chuckled and shook his head. “She acts like that’s a threat, but you don’t know how she gets me to sleep,” he said.

Jada grinned at him over her shoulder, before turning to face me. “He’s lucid but needs to be resting.”

“Don’t worry, my love. I’d be worse if you didn’t let me work,” Axle interjected.

“I know,” Jada retorted, rolling her eyes again.

“Well, I’ve got a plan for the reaper hounds thing,” I said. “Maybe that’s a good place to start.”

Axle’s eyebrows raised, in spite of his eyes being burnt husks. “Do tell,” he said.

“We have an upgrade coupon for Teslak,” I started. “It seems like it's giving those out in some kind of order. Anyway, we upgrade somebody, I hire Doofus to find the reapers for us, Phyllis to help us wipe em out, and then we wipe em out.”

“That’s not a plan, it’s an idea,” Jada said dismissively.

“A bad one, in some ways,” Axle added. “In particular, I would like to dissuade the use of Phyllis’ services anywhere within the city. Just as a matter of public safety.”

I frowned but nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably smart. Dammit, there goes our best fighter.”

“Doofus is available for hire?” Axle asked.

I nodded again, forgetting he couldn’t see it. “Has been for some time, he works as an independent security contractor with BlueCleave. Not part of their ranks exactly, but closely allied and usually available. I figured he could help us follow the hounds trail through the city.”

“Nu-Earth dogs do have a considerable olfactory capability,” Axle muttered, as he lazily swiped the air in front of him. Being blinded hadn’t stopped him from being able to use BuyMort, of course, so I assumed he was glancing through Doofus’ employment record with us.

“Best in BuyMort to date,” Jada added. “By a lot. But you realize who the best person for the upgrade is, right?”

I glanced at her and nodded. “You. I hesitate to ask, but . . .”

“No, I understand,” she said. “I’ll be happy to do it, I’m the natural pick anyway.”

Axle nodded and continued swiping at the air in front of himself. “The upgrade will make her harder to kill, and it's not like I could talk her out of joining you in this hunt anyway. I’m all for it. What we need to talk about is the local market,” he said.

“What about it?” I asked.

Axle mucked around with the air a moment, looking all the world like a sorcerer conjuring up some mythical beast, and then our affiliate screen appeared with all of the latest information to date.

“Well, our weapons and tequila are moving in their usual amounts, but that’s nothing to build an economy on. They’re novelties at this point,” Axle explained. “Our primary export was fresh-frozen Sleem, and that market has fallen through. Even when we get our Sleem back in place, and production back up to normative levels, the competition is too strong. There are too many other farms, especially in this solar system.”

“Sol has an infestation problem,” Jada added. “Anybody and everybody with the capability is setting up farms. We’re still the biggest, but there’s an operation on Hygeia that puts our production time to shame. They don’t need refrigerant, or power to produce cold, they simply expose their units to space.”

“Hygeia?” I asked.

Jada glanced at me and shrugged. “Hauler-crawler landed on it for mining, ended up with an infestation that wiped out most of the crew, so the survivors set up a farm in the crawler. They funnel the Sleem into hangar bays and then allow the external temperature to freeze them.”

“They’re setting up a chem-drive on that rock,” Axle said. “I’ve been following their operation, it looks like they’re going to put it in the BuyMort gate’s forward anchor.”

“Anchor?” I asked.

“Your people called them Lagrange points,” Axle clarified. “Positions of relative stability within the orbital paths of other, greater bodies in space.”

“In this case, it means a prime parking space next to the only BuyMort gate in Sol system. That’s not a small get. They must have major church direction,” Jada added.

Axle nodded. “The church has already struck ground for a small station on the asteroid. Rumor says it’s going to be their primary operations hub for Sol.”

“So our Sleem farm sucks now, is what I’m hearing,” I interrupted.

“Well, that may be a bit harsh. We already have the infrastructure in place, and it paid for itself. It’s just that the revenue stream it produces has turned into a trickle, and we need to get creative to widen it again,” Axle explained. “Once we’ve recaptured them, of course.”

“Okay, that sounds great, any ideas?” I asked.

“The recapture is under way. It’s good timing, we needed to downsize the yarsp colony anyway, so a full purge is happening as we speak. The current food market can bear some of the fresh meat, give us a nice little boost, and we can cure and store the rest of it for use and sale later on,” Axle explained, waving through his BuyMort screens.

“The Sleem, when encountered, are being driven downward with Fumble-Bees. They’re definitely all in there, and they’ve definitely killed a lot of our yarsp, but we have the queen’s chamber secure, so the rest is just a matter of time,” he said.

“Oh, and I’ve added the new guys from H.O.B.B.S. to the roster, the Sleem retrieval is a multi-day project, so shifts are being swapped in and out anyway. It’ll make for good television,” Axle finished.

“Glad to know it's being handled. Should I report this to . . . you know who?” I asked.

Axle shuddered. “I don’t think it would be wise, unless they ask,” he said.

I fidgeted, clenching, and unclenching my hands. “Yeah. Sorry,” I said. Then, after a pause, added, “I am deeply sorry for getting you hurt.”

Jada’s ears flattened, pressed against her skull, but Axle shook his head. “I don’t blame you. These creatures are famous for being fickle and ill-tempered,” he said. “In honesty, I should have explained as soon as we encountered Quad-” he paused, hesitating to say the name out loud. “When we first encountered them. At any rate, it is behind us, and I look forward to my new eyes. They will allow me a great deal of freedom in operating the affiliate.”

I nodded again, flinching when I remembered he couldn’t see the motion. “Okay. Still feel kinda guilty, but I appreciate you letting me off the hook, brother.”

Jada scoffed, but Axle nodded solemnly.

“Anyway, we were talking about our Sleem product,” Axle said, snapping his claws in remembrance.

“Yeah, we have too much, which makes it worth less to sell as a raw product,” I said.

“Under our current infrastructure and market circumstances, yes. The affiliate on Hygeia is much better situated. Cheaper production costs, and nearly no transit cost. We ship up to the top of the elevator, and often wait for a ship heading through the Sol gate with enough cargo space, if I can source the buyer for a good contract,” he said. “The Hygeian affiliate needs only throw their cargo and then time their bid for the Sol gate. I’m honestly jealous of their set up, they really turned a mostly lethal ship crash into lemonade.”

“So if we could get it to this gate, it would be much cheaper?” I asked.

“Oh yes, very much so. Most business takes place at the various system gates, they’re all part of the BuyMort network. BuyMort still charges a transport fee, but with the system gates it's dramatically less expensive than direct transport from a planet’s surface,” he rambled. The drugs were making him looser-lipped than he generally was.

“The nuance in portal fee structures is . . .” Axle stopped there to sigh. “Maddening.” He raised a claw to scratch under his bandage, but Jada’s ears perked, and she gently stopped him with her own claw.

“It seems like now is a rather poor time to be investing in a shipping network across Sol, so instead I suggest we open a research and development division,” Axle said, finally getting to his main point.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Oh I get it, like finding some way to use the Sleem ourselves, make a product, and sell it instead of the raw Sleem.”

“Yes, exactly. Our library has attracted a handful of interesting candidates for an R&D chief, I’m going over some of their records now,” Axle said. “It won’t be much to start off, but as our affiliate grows, we may wish to invest in it further. Especially with some of the more interesting items we tend to get access to in this affiliate.”

I frowned, thinking about the potential there. “Yeah, sure thing. Right now we need to find some creative uses for Sleem, but will this department work affiliate-wide too?”

Axle nodded. “Of course. The priority will be to find suitable use for current affiliate productions, so I’ll look for someone who has experience with Sleem. Preferably spider silk as well. Since so many affiliates and people have fled Prescott in the last few days, we have building space available.”

“There’s also a water shipment already en route from Los Angeles,” Jada added, staring at her screen.

“Oh yes, whatever deal you made worked in our favor immensely. Water production is up, and the first ship is already being converted,” Axle added.

“Yeaaaah, shit,” I muttered. Both Knowles in the room heard me anyway. “I kinda bailed on my end of that.”

“Reach out to them as soon as you can, then,” Axle said. “I assume you’ll be attempting this task again.”

“Yeah, we have to kill this thing. I just can’t see a way with all our other problems. Dearth wants to keep me corralled in Prescott, and they’re accomplishing it with their reaper hounds. Over a dozen dead before I could even respond. I’d need to be in multiple places at the same time,” I said, exasperated.

“Well. If we push the affiliate to shine in this downturn, that’s not outside the realm of possibility,” Axle teased. When he realized he couldn’t see our eager faces waiting for his next words, he sighed and said them anyway. “If we push hard enough, we can level up the affiliate and get a bonus to portal usage. Choosing portals will preclude our other level-up options, but it sounds like portals are what we need anyway.”

“There’s plenty of ships surrounding the Sol gate, taking church queue-tickets and offloading portalled in cargo for a small slice,” Jada interjected. “Any portals we don’t use by having you come save the day, we can use to sell off Sleem and silk for a better price.”

I nodded. “That makes sense, go for it. How do we level up the affiliate while we’re in an economic slump again?”

Axle chuckled. “By shifting our business model to match demand. Right now there isn’t much demand for the elevator, but there’s a huge demand for conflict-based television content from Nu-Earth, starring Nu-Earthlings. Adding in a BlueCleave patrolman pretty much guarantees the hobb market at this point, I can’t imagine the church won’t bite once we get a few episodes produced.”

“Plus whatever new stuff our R&D department comes up with, I guess?” I added.

“Exactly. Don’t worry, Tyson,” Axle said, comfortingly. “You go figure out the reaper hound situation, I’ll keep Silken Sands profitable.”

I clapped my hands on my knees and stood up. “Can do. Let me know if you guys need anything.”

Chapter 44

Instead of heading back down through our abattoir of a lobby, I went to the roof and pulled out my phone to call Whalehunter.

The psychic deity in my phone blinked at my request, then narrowed his eyes. “The entire affiliate?”

I blinked and shook my head. “No, get me Captain Omen please.”

He turned, formed a tunnel, and Captain Omen’s grim features appeared before me.

“Yes?” he asked.

“What have you got planned for round two, Captain?” I replied.

“That depends on how round one went,” he said. “I would like to debrief you, are you available now?”

I blinked a few times, and then nodded. “May as well.”

A BuyMort pod ripped into the air beside me in the penthouse and formed a square of warning lights on the floor.

A rainbow beam dazzled me, and Captain Omen stepped out. He pressed his hands together behind his back and slowly took in the penthouse. Molls was very tidy, so the place wasn’t a mess at least. But it looked lived in, and I was suddenly embarrassed about the Florida king-sized blanket that had been cast lazily over the back of the nearby couch.

“Are we secure?” Captain Omen asked.

I nodded. “As secure as we get around here. My operations manager is likely linked into my penthouse cameras right now, but he’s trustworthy, and I need him on anything logistical anyway,” I told him.

The captain nodded. “Best to keep him looped in then. This mission isn’t what I would describe as secretive.”

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “No it certainly is not.”

Captain Omen turned to find someplace to sit down. I had converted the conference room portion of the penthouse into a lounge and bar, since my battle with the Wizard had damaged it so badly anyway. Morbin flew over sometimes to hang out, if Molls wasn’t around.

“Drink?” I offered. My staff kept the bar stocked, which I appreciated. Hope none of them had been killed by reaper hounds.

“Please,” he replied. The captain swept his hat off and ran a hand through his dark black, short hair. “This is as close to a break as I will get today, and my men often speak of your tequila with high regard.”

I nodded and stepped in behind the bar, as Captain Omen sat down on a stool.

As I poured our bluest tequila into a small, chilled glass for the captain, a thought ran through my mind.

“How did you know to portal in here?” I asked, as I turned and set down the glass for him.

Captain Omen looked me in the eye. “If you are connected via MortMobile, you can give BuyMort the command to portal you through to your connection’s direct location. You should be careful who you speak to with this service.”

I frowned and poured a glass of tequila for myself as well. “Good to know, thank you.”

“You are wildly unprepared for this kind of conflict,” Captain Omen said. He sipped his drink and immediately grimaced.

“Tequila for children,” he spat. “So sweet.”

I chuckled and grabbed a new glass for him. Hidden underneath the sink in the bar was a bottle of Don Julio, something I had managed to stash for nostalgia’s sake. I poured a splash of it into the new glass and slid it to him.

Captain Omen raised an eyebrow but sniffed the glass. With a quick frown, he took a swallow and nodded. “Better.”

“Much,” I agreed. “Our stuff is swill, but it sells.”

“Swill is often well-loved,” Captain Omen said. He took a deep inhale of his glass and then threw the volume back in a hearty swallow.

He looked me up and down again. “Well. You made it inside our target, it would seem.”

I glanced at my ink-stained skin. “Yeah, that I did. Deep, actually. If I had managed to keep hold of my bombs, we would be toasting victory instead of defeat.”

“That is why I did not toast anything at all. Tell me what happened,” Captain Omen ordered.

So I did. For about an hour, I explained the approach, the weird little town I had found in one of the bubbles on Kraken’s suit, the armored quill-throwing beasts, and the creature’s brain chamber. Captain Omen had a thousand questions, but he never asked about the same thing twice.

“A worthy effort. I certainly did not expect you to reach the creature’s brain. This is highly encouraging.” He pushed back from the bar and stood, straightening his uniform. “I appreciate your candor, Mr. Dawes.”

“Is that it?” I asked, eyebrows furrowed.

“For now, yes,” Captain Omen told me. “I have a great deal of new information to process before we speak again.”

He swiped at the air in front of himself and I saw one of the pods out the window divert for our ceiling portal. All buildings were built with ways in and out for BuyMort pods, they went pretty much anywhere they could fit.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Run your affiliate, protect your people. I will be in touch soon, we must make another attack against Kraken before they complete their push into the Peru-Chili trench. If they are able to affect the tectonic plates beneath it, I doubt your affiliate will survive. But we have time,” he said.

“How much time?” I asked.

“A few days. Perhaps more if you injured Kraken badly enough,” Captain Omen answered. “I will be in touch again soon.”

His pod swept in from the portal in the roof and projected a warning area on the floor. Captain Omen stepped aside, and the pod dazzled us with its rainbow beam.

“Thank you for the drink,” Captain Omen said with a short bow. Then he turned on his heel and walked into the beam, leaving me alone with my bottles of tequila.

I sighed and stashed the good stuff back under the sink. Morbin would never admit this, but he preferred old Earth tequila to our new BlueCleave special too. He also wasn’t above stealing my good hooch when he was drunk enough.

My thoughts and craving for companionship turned to Molls again. A few hours talking and having vigorous, deeply satisfying sex with her would set my mind right. Calm my nerves the way I needed in order to see straight. To find us a way out of this mess.

But I knew I couldn’t see Molls or spend time drinking with Morbin. There was too much work to be done, and our affiliate wasn’t safe. My first priority was to find and massacre those reaper hounds. Dearth would no doubt send more but getting rid of the infestation we already had was critical.

My thoughts led me up to the roof, where I checked the door behind myself to make sure it was locked before I stepped up to the edge of the rooftop and stared down at my city. The space elevator rose massive behind me, and Prescott spread out across the valley in front of me. Just over the mountain in the distance, I could see Silken Sands, where I needed to go.

With a sigh, I leapt off into the air, heading in the direction of home. I needed to talk to a giant malamute about our reaper hound problem.

Doofus was a surprisingly good listener. Since he’d gotten his voice-pad, the buttons he used to speak with us in English, I’d been forced to realize exactly how much he understood. Not only was he BuyMort-capable, he was thriving within the system in a way I found myself jealous of.

The dog was usually found hanging around Phyllis’ set up. She didn’t need a home, living in her mech the way she did, so she’d set up a workshop over time instead. Doofus seemed to like the proximity, and the shade all of her equipment cast.

When I landed on the dirt road out front of Phyllis’ workshop, the big dog woofed happily at me and got up to plod over. He had been lounging in the shade of something bulky near the front of Phyllis’ workshop, which she had covered with a heavy tarp.

“Hey buddy!” I said, a smile appearing on my lips. “Good to see you! How you been doing?”

His collar projected a series of buttons on the ground in front of him and he took his time staring at them before choosing one. “Bored!”

Doofus quickly stepped on another button. “Happy!” his board exclaimed. Then the big dog pressed both buttons in rapid order. “Bored, but happy!” the board filled in for me.

“Well, bored is good,” I said. “I might have a job for you, certainly wouldn’t be boring. Need your help again, Doof, and this time it’s really dangerous.”

Chapter 45

Doofus cocked his head at me.

I frowned and thought about what to say for a long moment. “There are some bad dogs hunting me,” I started.

The malamute’s ears flattened, and he approached to start sniffing me. He wandered in a tight circle, sniffing my clothes and hands in particular. Then he sat down and cocked his head at me again.

“There are a lot of them,” I said, flashing both hands at him twice. “A large pack.”

Doofus started panting but didn’t summon his board of buttons to speak with me yet.

“I need your help to find them, to hunt them,” I said. I started miming the motion of sniffing the air, and Doofus cocked his head even further, before he play-bowed and woofed at me.

His board appeared on the ground, and he pressed three buttons rapidly with his paw. “Doofus good hunter!” his board proclaimed.

I nodded, taken aback by how much he understood. It made me think back to all those late nights with Mrs. Sada screaming at him about how worthless he was, how much she hated him, how she wished he would run away. I’m surprised to this day that he never did.

“Yeah, Doof. You’re a great hunter, I bet. Good, handsome, smart boy,” I told him, scrubbing his ears just the way he liked. The oversized, shaggy dog licked my arm as I pet him, leaning into the affection.

“We have to be careful though, Doof. These bad dogs are very dangerous,” I said, leaning back.

Doofus’ ears perked again, and he looked at the ground in front of him expectantly as his word board sprang to life. The dog grunted and huffed air out of his nose, and the board rearranged itself. He stepped up to it carefully and pressed a series of buttons, the most I had seen him use.

“We hunt a large pack of very bad dogs?” his board asked me.

I nodded. “Very bad dogs, yes.”

He stepped on another series of buttons and sat back.

“I’ll go get my hunting pack! Wait here!” the board said.

Doofus got up, wandered in a circle while wagging his tail, and then took off running. Once he got enough speed, he leapt in the air, and his hard light wings erupted from his harness. A small thruster between them ignited, and Doofus soared off over the wall, tongue lolling.

“Like, right here?” I muttered to myself. There were definitely things I should be doing instead of waiting for the dog to return. I didn’t even know where the hell he was going, or how long he would be gone.

I thought of the farm, and Lee. It would be smart to loop him into the Dearth, Kraken, Whalehunter thing I was doing, but I also struggled to think how his presence and influence would assist me. In the process, I thought of several ways I could get him killed by involving him and started pacing the dirt in front of Phyllis’ workshop.

Doofus-For-Hire. Service Contractor Affiliate. Doofus Good Dog. Have big pack. Strong. Give morties, we fight. Good jobs only. No bad job. No bad people.

Rate negotiable. Contact Doofus-For-Hire for details. 4.9 stars.

What in the burnt spaghetti hells was all of that? My dog started a new Affiliate? I didn’t know whether to feel shocked, concerned, proud, or betrayed. And I narrowed my eyes. If Doofus was doing this, he probably got the idea from another proud figure of his council.

A certain mechanical grandmother without any shits to give.

She poked her head around the corner, her new blonde, cropped haircut drawing my eye. The mech she was in appeared to be de-aging her. In the month she’d been bolted into it, she’d lost about twenty-five years in appearance, and started getting some of her original hair color back.

“The hell do you want?” she asked, around the joint in her lips. There was some kind of engine grease on her forehead, and her mech held an over-sized tool that vaguely resembled a wrench.

I balked, shoving down the idea to address her about this affiliate business ‘til a later date.

“Just talking to Doof, Phill. Nothing major,” I lied. Axle was right, there was no way I was unleashing her inside Prescott unless the city was already in ruins.

“Try not to get him killed,” Phyllis sighed. “Lord knows there isn’t much good conversation around here without him.” She went back around the corner of her workshop, a cloud of fragrant marijuana smoke in her wake.

After a moment of chewing on my lip and thinking of various chores around the affiliate that needed tending, I took a deep breath and let it out. “Fuck this, I’m going to Morbin Time.”

�� Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got ��

A theme song started in my head, one that was very familiar. It put a smirk on my face when I realized that Morbin had gotten his own ad jingle as well. Everyone around me was taking off on new financial adventures, and knowing that felt less like a betrayal and more like an accomplishment.

Rock on Silken Sands, I thought, whistling the tune on my way over, letting the details of the ad wash over me. It seemed that it was happy hour at the moment, and that the infamous Windowpuncher frequented the place, so even if you didn’t drink it was worth a visit.

Was just like Morbin to name drop.

It was early evening by the time I walked through the doors to our local bar, and the place was packed. A hearty cheer rose as I entered, and I begrudgingly smiled and saluted the hobbs as a collective.

One of the things I very quickly learned about hobbs as a people, is that they enjoyed their intoxicants. Most of the BlueCleave army lived to drink at our bar. They drank and smoked at plenty of other places too, but Morbin Time was legendary.

They even had it in their recruitment pamphlets.

Rayna had pretty tight controls on what was tolerated from her soldiers, but they were allowed a great deal of freedom in their off-time.

It was a critical part of devoting their lives to our affiliate. They had to have lives to live. As long as it didn’t cause problems on shift, Rayna was tolerant of most intoxicants her people enjoyed. Including the recent influx of chewing-grass from Storage.

Tribe RedTeeth, who had taken over for BlueCleave once they left, happily harvested their grasslands for profit. The blades of grass were sharp tasting, and after a pickling in mild alcohol, provided a hearty buzz when chewed or sucked on. Similar to a strong cup of espresso with an alcohol content of around eleven percent, the grass clippings were a popular item among BlueCleave regulars on their days off.

RedTeeth marketed it as BlueCleave Greens, and sold it to our troopers directly, as well as the growing fan-base we had in the rest of the system. BlueCleave’s elders and leadership caste expressed disgust with RedTeeth for the haphazard way they clear-cut the grass for crops. It had more uses than just an intoxicant, but cultural tradition was about more than dirt and grass, and the grumbles were minor.

And the ad they had up and running was hilariously akin to something from our own Earth back in the 90s.

It was a visual of a bunch of hobbs, lying around, bored with nothing to do. Then an excited hobb soldier busts in holding buckets of grass twists and yells, “Did somebody say BlueCleave Greens?”

Then the scene shifts to this awesome party where they’re all dancing and snorting and horking while boozing it up. And it finishes with a text-based:

BlueCleave Greens — Be the Life of the Party! 4500 morties, 3.7 stars.

So when a bucket of chewed grass clippings was knocked over and splashed across Morbin as he walked to greet me, arms outstretched, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. He had wanted an authentic Nu-Earth bar, after all.

Morbin froze, as the slimy cud dripped from his wings and small body. He carefully wiped the sludge away from his eyes and glared up at the hobb who had carelessly kicked the spittoon over.

The small bat creature acted gruff, but he had a clear soft spot for the hobbs. With their advanced healing capabilities, hangovers were really not a problem for them, so Morbin always had drinking buddies, even if they occasionally humiliated or nearly crushed him.

“No more Morbin time!” he roared, surprisingly loud. The activity around the bar stopped, and at several tables, heads craned to see what had happened.

“Until someone gets Morbin a towel!” he finished. Roars of laughter and cheers filled the room, and they returned to their levity.

I leaned over the bar and motioned at a stack of their cleaner hand towels. I also grabbed the water dispenser from the bar and dragged its long, snake-like hose back around to face Morbin. When I showed him the hose, he stiffened, but then relented with a small nod and closed his eyes.

With careful hose-work, I sprayed my small friend clean of the spittoon leavings and then tossed him the largest towel in the bunch.

He gratefully accepted it and shook his head clear of water, flinging small droplets across the bar to the dismay of several patrons.

“Oh that inconvenience you? So sorry, very not Morbin Time of Morbin. Drown Morbin in your chaw, but gasp in dismay when Morbin flick you with a light misting of water droplets you infants!” Morbin ranted as he stalked through the bar.

“I keep telling you, you don’t gotta come greet me, I’ll come to you,” I said to Morbin as we looked for a place to sit. People had been coming in while I hosed off my friend, and the room was even more packed than before.

I chose a spot to sit down at the end of the bar, where a hobb happily gave up his seat for me with a salute and a clap on the back. He grabbed another drink from the bar and simply moved to stand with his friends, laughing and talking in their own language.

Learning hobb was high on my to-do list, and if I was being honest about that goal, my rounds at Morbin Time were as close as I came to doing anything about it. So far I had learned the words for drink, smoke, and party, as well as what they called our tequila, something similar to ‘cactus-burn,’ conceptually.

The language wasn’t particularly difficult to learn when immersed in it constantly.

The bartender hauled out an extra-tall stool and swung it around the bar to perch on the end beside me. It was bar tradition to allow me the end-stool so I could drink with Morbin, if I was ever around. I tried not to make use of it, because it felt bougie, but some days I just needed to sit and drink.

I ordered a round of our BlueCleave special, and the bartender poured two radioactively blue drinks in water glasses for us. When Morbin raised his glass with a grin, I tried my best to smile back and clinked my own against his, before throwing the entire thing back.

The bartender noticed and nodded. He wiped off a mostly-full bottle of the stuff and pried the pour-top out of it, before leaving the bottle in front of us on the bar. I thanked him and poured myself another measure, raising it to my lips slowly, to sip.

“What is the problem, my friend?” Morbin asked. “You know it is against Morbin Time rules to be sad-sack-of-crap.”

I chuckled and shook my head, waiting for the buzz to come on. Captain Omen had gotten me in the mood for a drink with his debriefing, and my conversation with Axle and Jada still hung heavy on my mind.

“That is not the phrase,” I replied into my glass, going back for another gulp.

Morbin waved a claw at me and sniffed. “I know, Morbin’s way is better. If you sad-sack around happy people; you sack of crap. Sad-sack-of-crap. Make perfect sense.”

“I don’t think it works that way buddy, and besides, I’m not sad,” I retorted, a scowl wrinkling my forehead. “I’m brooding.”

“Ohh, brooding, yes, Morbin see it now,” Morbin scoffed. “Mysterious perhaps even, if the lighting a little darker.”

He burst out laughing the same time I did.

“Shut up, you jackass,” I laughed.

“See! Happy times, Morbin time!” he said. My little friend stood on his stool and turned to face the rest of the bar. “Morbin time!” he shouted to them. The call was returned, and several glasses were raised. I started to suspect the phrase meant less and less the more they used it.

“I dunno, Morbin, I still feel like brooding,” I admitted.

“Eh, more tequila,” he replied. “Fix most of that.”

“Need more than I can drink, really, to fix this,” I replied.

“Morbin hear the talk, friend. How many die this time?” Morbin asked, shifting from jovial to serious with the comfortable ease of a functional drunk.

“Fourteen,” I said. “Plus, I got Axle hurt pretty bad.”

Morbin nodded. “Morbin wondered why you rushed out of here earlier, after ascending from the pit of silence.”

“It’s not some conspiracy, you ding-dong,” I chided him. “We had to go underground to check on the Sleem farm, they got loose.”

“Oh no, no conspiracy, you’re right. Morbin forget, extremely normal to have single room in basement over Sleem cave that is perfectly sound-proofed,” he said, grinning when I scowled at him.

“Room is like a cork for sound from below that wants to reach Morbin’s ears. You have no idea how unnatural it feels. Would be less secretive to let Morbin hear what’s inside, promise.”

“Morbin,” I whispered. “Trust me, you’re better off not knowing.” I stared down into my vibrant blue drink and sighed. “I already nearly got Axle killed. Just please, don’t push on this.”

“Someday, then,” Morbin said. “How you get Axle hurt, if Morbin may ask?”

I shrugged. “Lipped off to the wrong person. Didn’t take a threat seriously enough.” I stopped and shook my head. “I dunno, maybe I let the wrong things slide around here.”

“Morbin not like the sound of that,” my little friend said.

I frowned as I took a sip. “Wait, what about Lee’s sound-proofed office? What’s that feel like?”

Morbin shrugged and waved a claw. “Well, it not sound-proofed as well as humans might like to think, but Morbin not able to hear words. Just able to hear that speech is happening, and usually make out who is talking.”

“You ever go hang out in that forest of theirs?” I asked, wistfully.

“Racist pig, not all bats hang,” Morbin spat. When I glanced up at him, he grinned back and laughed. “You should see your face,” he chuckled. “Of course Morbin hang out there. It's nice. Warm and cozy all the time, many comfortable places to nap.”

“I’m not positive,” I started, as the alcohol hit. “But I think I might be envious of your life.”

“What?!” Morbin asked, incredulous. “You, who sleep with giant snake lady, envy Morbin? Psh.” He snorted into his drink.

“Yeah alright, that part is pretty great. I just hate stressing out over all this crazy shit going on, I want to go take a nap in Lee’s fruit tree forest instead,” I confessed.

Morbin nodded sagely, as if I had said something wise. Then he poured more blue tequila in my glass.

The evening progressed apace. Morbin and I got drunk together while I waited for Doofus to turn up. He never did, which meant I kept drinking.

It was the perfect excuse.

Chapter 46

By the time the gentle nudge of an orthopedic sandal awakened me, the sun was already directly overhead. I blearily looked up at it through the tinted surface of the fruit-tree forest’s dome, and promptly rolled over to vomit. A helpful hand thrust a bucket into my face, and I aimed before letting the twist in my guts relieve itself.

Vibrant blue bile splashed into the bucket as I heaved. After it was over, I pushed the container aside and happily accepted a small hand-towel for my face, from the same helpful hands as before.

Once I felt vaguely human again, I glanced up to Suzanne staring down at me. “Hi honey, you feelin’ better?” she crooned.

I breathed and nodded, before pulling up BuyMort.

HANGOVER BE GONE! (This wonderful elixir instantly rehydrates and rids your body of nasty toxins. Be strong. Use Hangover Be Gone. 250 morties, 4.9 stars).

It had gotten more expensive since the last time I’d seen the ad, but it was still dirt-cheap. I wondered what about our local market made it such an easy purchase. Then I decided I didn’t have the mental capacity to care and I ordered a small dose of Hang-Over-Be-Gone!

“Thank you, Suzanne,” I croaked. “A little.”

“Well, we can’t push back the harvesters any longer, and your section is next,” the kindly older woman replied. “So if you’re feeling good enough to move,” she said, finishing her statement with a small giggle.

I swung around to see several Sundew Valley affiliate workers, in various forms of light gardening apparel, waiting and watching me. They had long poles and oversized baskets with them.

“Oh, crap,” I slurred. I jumped up and swayed.

Suzanne helped steady me, and I staggered out of the forest of fruit trees. It ran in a circle around the old compound, which had been expanded to allow more growing space.

Near the center was the embedded entrance into the grocery wing of our underground facility. It had once been hidden away in the basement of Mr. Sada’s McMansion, but since Lee and Sundew Valley foods had taken over the area, the entrance had changed significantly.

Lee had widened it, dug out more space underground where the former escape tunnel had been, and turned it into a full sized loading bay. Material like soil, fertilizer, various insects, and assorted chemicals regularly flowed through Prescott via the elevator, all the way out to our little hole in the desert.

The doorway was a darkened gash in the ground, with a concrete ramp running down to it, connecting with the only road in or out. Lee wanted as much room for growing food as possible, so the road stretched from the gate to the underground doorway in a light curve, with green surrounding it on all sides.

As I watched, a BuyMort pod was admitted through the front gate, and zipped toward me. Lee approached from the other side, the underground tunnel’s entrance.

“Hello there, Tyson!” Lee shouted.

I winced at the sound and waved, turning back to the arriving pod.

It deposited a small box on the ground with a rainbow flash, then whistled its transaction-complete tune as it floated away. I summoned one breaker gauntlet and used the hard-edged finger to break through the flesh tape in my way.

“Sorry, Lee,” I croaked as I opened the box. A small bottle was inside, with garish paintings depicting the powers of the product.

I cracked the lid and gulped the contents. To my surprise, the liquid inside was extraordinarily pleasant tasting. It cut through the bile and residual alcohol on my tongue and coating my throat instantly, replacing it with a soft, dusty, pleasantly sweet flavor. A glance at the bottle confirmed it was Drumu flavored. Like a strawberry, if it was naturally vanilla-flavored.

Bizarre, but not bad.

Eating insects didn’t bother me anymore, but every time I consumed Drumu moth wing dust flavoring, I thought back to those early days, when everyone teased me for being squeamish about the bugs. I chuckled and tipped the bottle back again, claiming the last drops as it began to work.

My stomach unclenched, as soothing coolness spread from the point of my swallow. By the time my stomach felt better, I noticed the pressure and pain receding from my head. The light became bearable, and the sound of Lee’s approaching boot-steps on the blacktop stopped echoing in my skull.

By the time he arrived, I was feeling like I hadn’t drunk an entire bottle of our bluest tequila with an alcoholic bat.

“Lee, I apologize,” I started.

“Ohh, don’t fret on it,” the old man said. He stuck his hands in his jean pockets and shrugged. “Don’t make it a habit or nothing though.”

“Ah, yeah. I dunno what to say. Got really drunk and talked about napping under your fruit trees, cause your forest here is so beautiful,” I said.

Lee stared at me while his mustache twitched. “Well, flattery’ll buy you some forgiveness, I suppose. What can I do for you, Tyson?”

“Yeah, we should talk,” I said, nodding my head.

He stared at me again, then nodded and slowly turned to walk away. “Thank you for tending to him, Suzanna, my love,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll take it from here.”

She waved a hand and snorted dismissively, before hefting my puke bucket to carry away. They had a recycler below, and I’m sure they’d be pouring my barf into it with every other bit of natural waste or compost the place produced. Right in there next to the mush-bug pens, for the sponge-covered roly-poly bugs to muck in.

The liquid they exuded in their morning squeezings was a multi-use food item, a staple the multiverse over. As such, it was a very stable market, and one of our steadiest earners at the time.

A handful of hobbs and a quiet, elderly elven woman had come to be part of Sundew Valley foods since they’d started up, and they brought some new ideas with them. She had even higher ears than the delves, and her skin was faintly yellow in tone. I tried not to stare as we walked by her, tending to a wall filled with grow-racks.

Lee and I entered the extended concrete area underground through a large cargo door system. The doors slid closed from either side as needed, but most of the time they were kept open. I smiled as I walked past a mural that Mel, our resident artist, had painted on the entrance tunnel wall. It depicted lanky hobbs working alongside chubby humans and little green men to plant a garden.

Never understood her fascination with goblins, but since the goblin attack in the first week of BuyMort, she seemed to add them to her paintings. Always as good, cooperative members of our community too. It made me think, but I didn’t understand it.

As we walked through the processing and loading bay, I saw pallets of grown foodstuffs ready to be portalled or shipped out. Stacked against one wall were similar pallets, filled with bags of soil. Both the bags and the pallets would get reused, Lee was incredible about recycling his goods and minimizing overhead.

He used it to pay his people more.

“This way,” he said, gesturing over one shoulder as we left the bay and entered a series of more familiar tunnels.

I ducked my head to avoid the leafy foliage dangling from overhead grow plots. The tunnels were quite literally lined with them, and leafy greens grew from every direction, even the floors. An installed water basin at the bottom of each rounded pathway housed a type of lily pad that produced nutritious pollen. Very popular salad topping.

I marveled at how effective Lee had used the space I’d provided him as we walked on the metal grating above the pads.

After a short trek through the tightly controlled jungle that Lee operated for me, we entered his sound-proofed office, and he locked the door behind us. After sitting down in his large, comfortable chair at the other side of his desk, Lee motioned for me to sit across from him.

Somehow, even after a month and a half, he still managed to control our conversations with ease.

“Alrighty then. What can I do for you?” Lee asked again.

“Well, I wanted to loop you into some of the stuff I’m doing, and I was hoping you could help me with a pretty major affiliate issue,” I started. “We’ve been having these attacks in Prescott.”

“Ayep. Reaper hounds, you’re calling em, I believe?” Lee answered. His fingers templed together as he leaned forward. “How can I be of assistance?”

“Oh, you knew. Of course you knew,” I said. “Well, I have a plan to find and eradicate them, but I could really use your help figuring out how they were smuggled into my city in the first place.”

“A mole-hunt then,” Lee said, nodding. “Yeah, I could do that for you, but I’d need access to Axle, and plenty of your other staff too. That something you can swing?”

I nodded. “I can tell BlueCleave leadership about it, they’re all trustworthy. That’ll give you access to the rest.”

Lee nodded, but his mustache twitched.

“What?” I asked. “I’m doing something wrong here, what is it?”

“Bah, just your trust of your military command structure. Always has bothered me,” Lee answered. He sighed and sat back with a shrug.

“I know. You had some problems with your hobbs, and it got some of your people killed,” I replied. “But that wasn’t BlueCleave.”

“You’ve got more than just BlueCleave running around Prescott now though. Lot of hobbs on your payroll these days.” Lee cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “The way I see it, if you know there’s a mole, it’s a good chance that mole is part of your own security system. That’s where I’d start.”

“Think you can do that with Rayna?” I asked. “Or is she on your list of suspects?”

Lee chuckled dryly. “I can work with your hobbs while I investigate the situation, don’t worry.”

I shrugged. “Alright, I’ll let em know you’re coming.”

“Your other concern?” Lee asked, looking at me over his eyeglasses.

“Ah, less of a concern, more just wanting to keep you looped in,” I started. “My deal with WhaleHunter Salvage, specifically.”

“Yep, I’m aware. You’re trying to kill that big squid thing. Want me to advise on it?” Lee asked.

I nodded, blinking at the man. “How do you keep so well informed?”

Lee snorted and shook his head. He silently reached for a remote control and turned on the flat-screen tv mounted to a wall at our sides.

“It’s all the news, Tyson,” Lee said.

Chapter 47

A headline filled chiron scrolled past, as video footage of my attack on Kraken’s residential neighborhood played behind the attractive female Nah’gh host. She pressed one hand to her ear and nodded, before turning to face the camera.

“We’re receiving confirmation that Kraken Corporation will be sending a representative for us to interview later in the hour. Right now, we’re just going over the footage of this heinous attack. Our reporters have reached out to Silken Sands for a statement, but their representative declined to comment,” she swept her blank papers up from her desk and straightened the stack. “More on this developing situation on Nu-Earth soon.”

The news network cut to an ad, and Lee turned off the tv. “Been like that on repeat all morning,” he said. “So tell me, what happened?”

I sighed and laid it out for him. The deal with Captain Omen, the desalination plant, the failed assault on Kraken, and the reaper hound attack on the Prescott tower. I told him how we suspected they were after Axle, and he nodded.

“That makes sense. Go after you through your necessary staff. They’ll likely offer bribes as well, at some point, if they haven’t already. This new level of Dearth is not as stupid as the last one was, that’s for sure,” Lee explained. “But I’m not all that sure they’re exactly bright, either.”

I nodded. A thought occurred and I reached for my phone. Nothing happened, it wouldn’t activate.

“Hey, Lee,” I said. “You guys don’t happen to have a MortMobile blocker running, do you?”

The other man nodded, his mustaches swaying with the movement. “Sure do. Your hobbs know where you are, don’t worry. Our gate-keeper informed Tollya, as is policy when one of them sees you stagger off somewhere, drunk. Or high.” He stared me in the eyes as he delivered the words.

I flinched but turned it into a shrug. “Yeah, good policy. I’ll work on the binging.”

Lee nodded slowly. “You ought to. Planning on going on that news show again?” he asked.

“Yes. Not sure what I’ll say,” I answered.

“Perhaps I can help. I’ve done a little digging on Kraken Corp already. Might have something for you to use against them,” Lee said. “Something in your style, actually, think you’ll dig it.” He smiled, his mustaches lifting.

“Yeah?” I said, eyebrows raised.

“Kraken is not church affiliated. They bought out their affiliation when they ranked into ninth place on the big BuyMort chart,” he said.

“Bought out?” I asked.

“Yep, they bought their own business back from the church. Since we all technically work for the church, it's rare to find a non-affiliated business entity. Or entity at all, I’m gathering. Walk careful with them,” Lee explained.

“The story is not exactly clear, but I suspect the church at least partially fears Kraken. There was some talk of early integration, and several church officials became Kraken officials. The way that beast takes its victims, doesn’t seem like there’s much left to report home in any serious way. Church got wise, there was some conflict, and eventually a buyout. Tense but steady peace since then.”

I sat and listened, thinking about what that meant. My whole shtick on CTV was that I was working for the church. For the greater glory of BuyMort, by ensuring some level of steady business out of Nu-Earth. All while pointing the finger at Dearth for bungling their roll-out so badly that I’d been forced to take it over and run their necessary business elements for them, again on behalf of the church.

If Kraken wasn’t on church payroll like the rest of us, then I didn’t have to pretend to play nice with them. That freed my mind a great deal.

“Thank you Lee, I think I see the value in that tidbit,” I said.

“Happy to be of assistance. Think you could spare us a few more guards around here, just in case?” he asked.

I stared at him for a long moment before nodding. “Yeah, you’re a target now, shit. I am sorry, I should have left you to your farming.”

“I’m still farming. I’d like to continue farming, and I only just fixed all the cracks in my walls from the last earthquake. I’d like to encourage you to find a solution before the next one,” Lee said, keeping eye contact.

I shook my head. “I did try, for the record. Got a hell of a lot further than I had any right to, really. I’ll kill it next time.”

“I’m sure you will. Now, if there’s nothing else, I think your hobbs would like a word with you,” Lee said with a smile. He swiveled out a small tablet from below his desk, on a small mechanical arm. It showed security footage of Tollya at the gate, standing with hands on her hips.

I stood and turned to leave. As I left the office, I thought of my impending visit to CTV and tried to summon my anti-magic helmet. It covered my entire face, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I did not want to lose that advantage.

Finding my way out of Lee’s underground maze was easy enough, since Mel had also painted signage everywhere, indicating which way to go, and what sections were where. Any blank bit of concrete in the foliage was intentional, and covered with art.

Once Tollya escorted me through the primary gate, and was beyond Sundew Valley’s dome, my phone lit up with several messages. Rayna, Tollya, Axle, and Jada had all expressed concern about the footage, and a desire to plan my next visit to the television network. I focused on the tower, in Prescott, and fell up into the sky toward it.

There was time for a shower first.

Chapter 48

A few hours later, I was on my way up in the elevator. I rode in our executive pod, which climbed and fell much faster than the other internal craft and had its own dedicated track. I wore BlueCleave armored fatigues, heavy combat boots, and an armored vest. The message Rayna and Jada wanted me to send was clear.

Axle had also pushed me in that direction, but for a different reason. He wanted me to hype the new show, which was having its first episode air later that day.

The meeting with CTV had gone swimmingly, and after the sample footage we’d provided them, they’d thrown morties at us for production. Twenty-five million just as a signing bonus, with a contract for three million morties per episode, if the ratings held. We’d immediately ordered Axle’s new eyes, and the surgical team was en route from the Sol gate.

Under Axle’s marketing guidance, I was ready for my close up.

The elevator doors slid open to an empty hallway. It led directly to my green room, which had another door leading on set. The station had been rearranged in order to accommodate my presence without posing a giant security risk.

But CTV never turned me down when I asked to come spin my yarns, I was too big a draw for their ratings. Axle told me that in the sixty seconds after I had broken their table during my last visit, CTV saw their biggest ratings spike in recent network memory.

I was good for ad revenue.

It all went in my mind, cataloged as one more way I was making the church richer with my antics. Everything I did seemed to make them morties, one way or another. The more I thought about it, the more I recognized the reasons they did business the way they did.

And why their priorities would allow me great advantage over them, someday.

I pushed through the door to my green room and nodded to my assigned stage-hand. It was always someone different, and that day a very nervous human woman had drawn the short straw. I’d never seen her before.

“Oo!” she exclaimed, when I entered the room. “You’re here, good. Dressed a little aggressive, do we have time for wardrobe, I wonder?”

“We don’t,” I growled.

“Okay then, let's just take a look at you under the light,” she started, ushering me toward a chair in front of a mirror topped by a bank of lights. She saw the segmented ink stains on my body and grimaced. “Definitely have time for some makeup.”

“No,” I grunted. “I’m going on like this.”

The woman sputtered for a moment, before throwing up her hands. “Fine. Of course,” she said, clearly exasperated. “Right. Well, you’ll be going on shortly, with Kraken’s representative. Hope you’re ready for a rowdy debate!”

I stared at the young woman from behind my mirrored helmet until her plastic smile faltered, and she turned to leave.

Kraken Corp was in for a surprise.

A few minutes later, I exited my green room onto the CTV set. Lights seared from overhead, and a hushed camera crew all followed me with their eyes. I sat down at a freshly repaired desk and waited.

Shalla, the attractive Nah’gh host, was already seated at the table. Her eyes carefully followed me across the room to my seat, with just a hint of a smile on her lips.

Behind her, Rebecca Montaigne, Kraken Corp’s representative, entered the studio from her own green room. Her eyes and nostrils widened when she saw me, and the tentacle jutting from the back of her neck pulsed. Two heavily armed and armored mordren entered with her, one on either side. Both had tentacles leading BuyMort pods behind them too.

Rebecca sat down across from me, beside Shalla. The rest of the table was empty.

Music started and one of the stage hands began counting down from five. When he reached two, he pointed at the central camera. It lit up when his fingers showed one.

“As a special treat, we’ve managed to procure the Warlord of Arizona himself for a cross-table interview, to answer Kraken Corp’s accusation of assault,” Shalla announced.

The cameras turned toward me. I shrugged. “What was the accusation exactly?” I asked, hands flat on the table.

Rebecca huffed. “You attacked me. There’s footage,” she growled. “Fumble-Bee footage, as you like to use.”

I nodded. “I do like to use Fumble-Bee footage, it can’t be easily tampered with.”

“Let’s show a little bit of that footage again,” Shalla said, nodding to one of the techs behind the cameras.

The giant screen behind us all lit up, and my antics in the residential portion of Kraken’s suit-bubble began to play out. I nodded and watched quietly, hands folded.

A tiny figure that looked vaguely like me in a wetsuit flew around, destroyed a large portion of the town with a bomb, and then the scene ended with a horde of rampaging kaiju worms in the background. At the end of the section of film, an enlarged still shot was placed on the screen. It showed the metal lines of my starfish suit as I tumbled away from an explosion in the background.

I squinted at the screen, leaning forward, and raising my hand to pretend to shade my eyes. “Is that supposed to be me?”

Rebecca gasped audibly and raised a hand to cover her mouth. Both mordren behind her flexed and tensed, as Shalla grinned openly.

“Are you denying involvement?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, flat toned. “What else am I supposed to do? Admit to it?”

Rebecca gasped again. “You dare lie?” she demanded.

“What? It wasn’t me,” I said, with the same flat tone in place. “You show some blurry images of someone wearing silver lines on their body and expect everyone to accept that it was me? Why? Because you made an enemy you can’t handle?”

Both mordren guards snarled, the motion perfectly synchronized on both.

“You drowned in the black of my ink, human,” Rebecca snarled. Her face was twisted in a grimace as she fought to contain her anger. “It still stains your skin.”

I raised an arm and inspected it, before shrugging. “Industrial accident, I was helping with repairs at one of our factories earlier. It's just engine grease.”

The woman across from me screeched in rage, and both mordren raised their weapons at me, gun barrels smoking already from the contained plasma load. “Thousands died in your attack!” She yelled.

“Alleged attack,” I sneered. “You want to talk about how many died in your initial attack on Nu-Earth? You made a lot of enemies. Us Nu-Earthlings are notoriously violent and unpredictable. Just because I’m the only one you know personally, doesn’t mean I tried to kill you.”

“If I tried to kill you,” I growled. “You would know it.”

Rebecca’s teeth clenched so hard together one of them audibly cracked. “I do know it!” she screamed.

I turned to Shalla, ignoring the enraged woman across from me. “This is ridiculous, I’m busy running my affiliate. A job made significantly more difficult since this walking tantrum initiated their destructive, and dangerous business model. Nu-Earth,” I said, raising one finger to emphasize my point. “Is a dangerous planet. Doing business here takes a certain amount of guts, and I’m afraid Kraken Corp just isn’t up to the task.”

Shalla’s eyes widened, and she glanced at Kraken Corp’s representative.

“You should leave, Kraken,” I said quietly. “Before something terrible happens to you.”

“You d-dare!” Rebecca screeched. Blood seeped onto her lip from her broken tooth, but she appeared not to notice.

“You came here, to a planet filled with sapients, all equal under the eyes of BuyMort, and started interfering with church-affiliated projects. Have you any idea what you’ve done to the markets in this area? Your very presence sinks the value of any market you touch. Everywhere you go, morties rot and fade away. It's no wonder the church wanted you to buy out. They recognized what the rest of the civilized BuyMort system rapidly will; you are bad for business,” I hissed.

While the woman on a tentacle sputtered and fumed, I turned to Shalla and changed tracks. “We’ve had to overhaul our entire affiliate in recent days, just to make ends meet.”

“Of course,” she said, smiling. “You mentioned difficulties?”

“Yes, since the earthquakes, nothing has been the same. But, of course, change can also be an opportunity, and BlueCleave really stepped up to plate with some hot new television content for the audiences at home,” I said. “For anyone curious about life on Nu-Earth, H.O.B.B.S. will really deliver.”

The wording was straight out of the excited corporate email accepting our show. Repeating it drove home the point that Silken Sands and local church TV were in business together. Shalla nodded and turned to Kraken Corp’s representative.

“Would you like to follow up your allegations with anything more, Mrs. Montaigne?” she asked, stacking her blank papers again.

Rebecca sputtered and started a sentence a few times before Shella simply turned away in her seat, facing the central camera with a large smile. “There you have it folks, accused and rebuked. More on CTVs exciting new evening lineup, after this!”

The camera man shouted, “clear!” and we were no longer broadcasting.

Rebecca Montaigne snarled openly at me and stood to leave. A BuyMort pod silently floated in from backstage and projected a rainbow beam at the floor. Both mordren bodyguards walked through as Rebecca glared at Shalla and I.

“I did not come here to be mocked,” she growled.

“And yet, mocked is what you are,” I said, exasperated. “Get lost, before it happens again. You had your say, now I’ve had mine.” My words were chosen carefully. I knew the cameras were still on, after all. It’d be foolish to ever turn them off, with the kind of people that came through the room.

Kraken clearly knew it too, because its puppet grimaced and growled, but left. It was their best move, really.

Shalla turned and clasped her hands together. “Can I just say, Mr. Dawes, we are all so thrilled to be hosting your new show,” she gushed. The Nah’Gh woman leaned in and whispered, “between us, ratings slump anytime you’re not on the screen.” She finished her statement with a jovial, plastic laugh.

I nodded and turned to leave. “Glad to hear it,” I said over my shoulder in the same flat tone I had used on Kraken. “I live to serve the church.”

Chapter 49

The ride back down the elevator was peaceful. I breathed deep of the scrubbed air in my VIP elevator car and watched out my window as the darkness of space transitioned into the late afternoon sunlight of Arizona.

My performance would convince exactly nobody that I was innocent of the attack on Kraken. Quite the opposite. But it would serve nicely to keep eyeballs fixated on screens, and drive up the local CTV affiliates ratings, which drove their advertisement revenue.

Coupled with their purchase of our show H.O.B.B.S, CTV was firmly on my side of this disagreement. Kraken had gone and made friends with Dearth, so I felt it only fair to lean into my church connection a little harder.

I was distracted by a gaping hole in the desert along-side the Silken Sands compound. My sinkhole issue had grown.

Pasta-damned ravens.

Before the anger could grow into anything real, it dissipated. We were going to need to move construction material down there anyway, and it was going to be much easier once the ravens excavated enough dirt for us.

I sighed and pinged the area on my map, sending a notification to BlueCleave forces that the area needed supervision. We didn’t want Sleem or yarsps popping up right outside the walls. A ping came back on my device, notifying me that BlueCleave was already on top of it, and respecting my standing order to not hurt the birds.

I chuckled and stretched out as the car slid into place at the bottom of the elevator.

On my way out of the elevator’s base, I stopped by a food vendor. It was a hobb running a broiled yarsp cart. They sliced the yarsp meat thin, seared it over a charcoal grill, and then served it in charred flatbread. For toppings, pickled purple radish, chopped onion, and a heavy garlic aioli sauce. While my order cooked, I chatted with the hobb a bit.

Like most of them, he was startled and intimidated by me at first, but once I let my anti-magic helmet recede and we talked a bit, he warmed up enough to complain.

“Business no good no more. Since earth-shake, nobody use elevator,” he grunted, drizzling a smokey sauce onto the cooking yarsp flesh.

I nodded grimly. “Yeah, I know. It’s killing our bottom line, but just you wait. We’ve got something new coming, should drive revenue and tourism, according to logistics,” I told him.

The hobb looked impressed, frowning and nodding as he flipped the meat strips with a casual, practiced ease. “Tourism good for business. When that happen?”

“Tonight,” I said, happy to offer one of my people hope for a change. “The episode airs tonight, logistics says it will boost tourism almost immediately.”

“Thrill seekers,” grunted the hobb. “Come to dangerous planet for adventure.”

“Adventure, and yarsp wraps,” I added with a smile.

The hobb glanced up and barked laughter. His hands moved with nearly blurred speed as he built several of the wraps for me, bundling them into foil sheets and then a small jute bag. I transferred the morties to pay for the meal, plus a generous tip, and nodded to him over the delicious smelling stove.

“Hope I made up for a slow day,” I said. “But don’t worry, business will pick up soon.”

“Good meet you, boss!” the hobb shouted.

I smiled at him and activated my gravitic drive, falling up into the sky and heading toward the nearby Prescott tower. When I entered the penthouse suite, I heard Axle speak up from the lounge.

“Welcome Tyson! I told you he’d make it, Jada, he hates being on CTV,” he said.

The Knowle man was lounging on my couch, stretched out and comfy, with an IV stand next to him. Jada entered from the other room and sniffed the air.

“He brought food too,” she said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Wouldn’t miss this, it’s the debut of your new show!”

Axle shrugged and scratched at his arm where the IV connected. Heavy tape was covering his fur, with a shaved patch in the center.

“It’s just an idea to make some revenue for the affiliate. Gotta use what we have, after all,” Axle said.

I sat down on the couch as Jada returned to the kitchen to grab some dishes and napkins. Once she returned, I piled their plates with wraps and then made a pile for myself. The main TV was swanky. A large screen unrolled from the ceiling and a small projector kicked on, showing the final rerun of my visit to their news room before evening content began.

Our show led the evenings program, in a prime-time slot. It was introduced by flat text on the screen as a BlueCleave production, then our hastily edited program began.

A swell of dramatic horns and drums rose from the sound bar as an image of two heavily armed BlueCleave patrol officers filled the screen. A deep, baritone voice filled the room.

“Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised,” the voice said. A rousing song filtered its way through the swelling brass in the background, and another image of Rawlins and Reck flicked up on the screen.

“H.O.B.B.S. is filmed on-location with the men and women of BlueCleave security patrol. All material is shot on Nu-Earth,” the narrator added.

Rawlins and Reck lead the cast, starting off the show with a quick introduction. Between the two of them, they explained what their day as a member of BlueCleave security and protection forces was like.

“Aw mate, the only bit that stings is the early mornings,” Rawlins explained. The scene was in a BlueCleave locker room, and Rawlins was shirtless, loading individual shells into his gun belt. “But we get free brekkies, account of you lot being such early risers,” he said raising his chin at Reck.

The hobb was seated on a nearby bench, tying his boots. He sighed and shook his head. “First shift start pre-dawn cause of dream-storms. Need response patrols all over city for that,” he explained. “BlueCleave set up early barbeque to feed security troops. Just work when there is work, BlueCleave way.”

They proceeded to get geared up, dressing in a full BlueCleave uniform, and augmenting it with armor. I was impressed at the quality of the image, and the clarity of sound.

“BlueCleave standard issue las-pistol,” Reck informed the audience at home, holding the blocky-barreled weapon up to the camera. “Good for bugs, Sleem, people. Good all-around gun.”

They also carried Sleem sticks, an assortment of non-lethal grenades, and a pair of short-barreled, bullpup shotguns. The gear bag held anti-sleem protective gear and a small medical kit.

The crew slung the ad data to the camera, giving us sponsor discounts on our own purchase of their stock, including sales data for their primary vehicle. An advertisement that I’d never seen before, and watched open in my BuyMort headspace with tremendous interest.

A legion of Janissary warriors leveled rifles and fired, outside a walled city. The lament of the clearly-terrified people within carried over the walls of the battle. Over this gruesome cinematography came text.

TURKEY. LAND OF THE TURKS. HOME OF WARRIORS. FROM THE ROCKY SLOPES OF THE TAURUS MOUNTAINS TO THE ANATOLIAN CENTRAL PLAINS, THE TURKISH PEOPLE HAVE LIVED TO BATTLE AND CLAIM VICTORY IN WAR.

I cocked an eyebrow at that. Seemed like a lavish and overarching assertion. Maybe even a touch racist. But I let the ad continue, drawn in by the excitement of a close call with an ethical boundary.

When being advertised to, one assumes a certain level of dishonesty, of malintent. While I was reasonably certain the Turkish people had interests and pursuits other than war, I wanted to see where the salesman was going with all of this pizazz.

AND FROM THE MINDS OF WARRIORS, THE DEADLIEST OF NU-EARTH, COMES A VEHICLE SO POWERFUL, SO VERSATILE, THAT BUYING IT AT ANY PRICE IS GUARANTEED TO BE A STEAL.

PRESENTING THE OTOKAR COBRA. FEATURING A LOW PROFILE THAT ALLOWS FOR EASY TRANSPORTATION BY AIRPLANE, HELICOPTER, TRUCK, OR RAIL, THE COBRA’S HULL IS WELDED STEEL AND FEATURES WIDE, FULLY OPENING SIDE AND REAR DOORS FOR SPEEDY CREW EGRESS. A FULLY TRAVERSABLE LIGHT TURRET ON TOP CARRIES CUSTOMIZABLE ATTACHMENTS FOR ANY MEDIUM OR HEAVY WEAPON.

STRIKE HARD LIKE THE OTTOMANS. OTOKAR COBRA. SEE OUR AFFILIATE PAGE FOR DETAILS!

After a short introduction to their primary vehicle, a lightly armored patrol buggy, a call came in for multiple response teams to a dream-storm. Rawlins cheered, Reck sighed, and the entire team bundled into the buggy.

The show cut to their arrival, at a residential high-rise with several other BlueCleave patrols. Tollya herself was on scene, wearing a full set of combat plating and directing the different squads.

She saw them coming and pointed at Rawlins. “Why you wear stupid-gun?” she demanded. Reck and the rest of the film team stepped aside as Tollya and Rawlins took center stage.

“You can’t mean Lucy?” Rawlins whined. The camera momentarily zoomed in on his holstered weapon, a silver magnum revolver. Looked like a forty-four to me.

“Clay-deads soft target. Your wheel-gun over penetrate. Put my civilians at risk, not protect them. Where your las-gun?” Tollya demanded.

“Not really my style, you see?” Rawlins tried.

Tollya’s eyebrows clenched, and she bared her teeth. “Your what?!”

“My day!” Rawlins squealed. “Not really my day. I keep screwing up! Sorry boss, can I borrow one from somewhere, maybe? Promise I know how to use ‘em.”

Tollya glared at him for a long moment, before turning to look at the camera crew. The hobb commander shook her head. “Never-mind, movie star. We use shotguns today, anyway. Get yours.”

Rawlins returned, a sheepish expression on his face. Reck shook his head and opened the trunk of their roller. As he helped Rawlins get his shotgun loaded and strung around his neck, Tollya addressed the gathered squads.

“Hurry up! Come on!” Tollya called, waving her arms. “Brief and team assignments. This active dream-storm, no drill. Civvies on line.” I gave a thought to our ratings and pulled out my phone to text Axle.

Blind he may have been, but nothing can save you from BuyMort. He was watching along with us on his own internal screening platform.

I know because I quietly authorized his expense request for the luxury addons. Honestly, at that point in time I felt so guilty I would have helped him with whatever request he sent me, sight unseen. But it also made sense for our operations manager to have a better, more tuned-in BuyMort app then the average affiliate member.

Besides, he had earned us a neat stash of morties, even while severely injured.

The text he sent me back was both exciting and reassuring. He was plugged in and watching the ratings and advertiser bids in real time. Both were steadily climbing. Our first episode was already slated to make us over a million morties for our cut, and that was before our first ad-break.

Tollya commanded my attention again with a harsh barking shout. “Fall in!”

The surrounding BlueCleave all stood attentively. She had stopped their procession at a set of glass lobby doors. The building was a partially in-use apartment structure. Prescott was covered with sparsely populated residential structures. Some remnants of the old city, some built new with Dearth’s signature black plastic construction blocks.

Due to the nature of our leases, a lot of the recent departures had left buildings with only a handful of residents.

I couldn’t force them to move for our convenience, but we immediately began offering incentive packages that got us a lot of the relocations we desired anyway. The structure BlueCleave assembled in front of was one that had lost the vast majority of its tenants.

“Gorh, Bakar. Once lobby clear, you head to residence four-two-two. Secure hobb family, two adults, two adolescents, one elder,” Tollya barked. “Trupple, Vyal. Once lobby clear, you head to residence nine-three-nine. Secure human family, one elder, one child.”

A humanoid figure banged on the lobby doors, rattling the chain that secured them and shaking the glass. It emitted a clearly recorded groan, rattling the door harder as more figures joined it. Tollya turned toward the camera. “Rawlins, Reck. Once lobby clear, you head to roof. Secure storm-owner. Human, adolescent.”

“J Squad is running ammunition. Set up relay from the vehicles, we’ll need all of it. All other squads are to await further orders, once the lobby is clear,” Tollya said, staring at her squads. “Standard clay-dead storm. Roughly four-hundred in number, we get more specific as we clear. Slow moving variety, thankfully. Weapon class claws and teeth, all hardened ceramic spikes. Normal CloneMort zombies. Soft clay bodies, weak point is the head.”

She pointed at her own helmeted head.

“Where computer is.”

Rawlins scowled and turned to Reck. “What the hell am I hearing, mate?”

“Resident had zombie nightmare. Contained in this building, so we go in and clear it,” Reck said. He raised his shotgun and nodded with his chin. “We secure lobby. Let’s go!”

Of course, right as the action was about to start, they cut to commercials. Axle and Jada happily conversed about the ratings, and the ever-increasing advertiser bids. The bids in our region specifically were a little weak, but we were not the only market. On the church home-worlds, an insane bidding war among large-scale affiliates had begun, which Axle assured me was normal.

Those worlds had the best infrastructure and accumulation of wealth, so ads run there were typically very expensive. The bidding around Storage was another point of interest. Many affiliates wanted to sell items in Storage, it was a massive demographic. But because the church controlled the station, the bids had to run through them.

The influx of bids had quickly overwhelmed the church's staff operating them, and Axle was excitedly explaining what that would mean not only for our pocket-book, but for our recruitment as well. In less than two months’ time, we had gone from being a no-name, nothing dust ball of a planet, to being the single most requested location for those in Storage trying to make a new life.

Jada reminded Axle to eat, and he wolfed down a wrap in a single bite, before immediately returning to his statistics. His mate rolled her eyes at him, and the show came back on.

The teams spread out in front of the lobby door as Tollya approached with a set of bolt cutters. She snipped the chain and stepped back, hauling on one of the doors. A crowd of moaning, shambling clay zombies burst forth, smearing wet clay on the walls and windows.

BuyMort’s CloneMort facilities were versatile, but cheap. The zombies had pre-rendered faces carved into the softer clay of their heads, so each looked different. But the faces were barely recognizable as human. The machine that stamped them out provided a simple hinging jaw for bite power, and the rest of the ‘face’ was merely embedded in the clay.

They hadn’t even been painted, beyond a garish splash of red across their fronts.

The hollow boom of shotguns rang out and the clay zombies started to fall. The camera focused on Reck as the hobb aimed carefully, fired, racked the shotgun, and aimed again. His expression was nearly bored as he worked.

Rawlins on the other hand, whooped and hollered as he fired. “Yeah! Get some!” He turned to face the camera and added, “I love this job!”

The human stepped forward into the lobby, walking over the top of fallen clay clone zombies as the team pushed forward. Rawlins took point and waded into the horde of shambling clay with a heavy buttstock swing.

One of the zombies went down, its crushed clay head sparking and jerking. Several more moaned in from out of frame and dragged Rawlins down. He shrieked for aid as the other BlueCleave officers entered the lobby behind him, shotguns raised.

“Cover your face, Rawlins!” Reck yelled over the sounds of battle. The hobb waded into the pile up and grabbed his partner by an elbow, dragging the man back to his feet as the clay clones moaned and tried to claw him with jagged, hardened ceramic fingernails.

BlueCleave’s standard gambeson was constructed of multiple layers of treated cloth and soft chitin and offered good protection against the sharp ceramic. Rawlins lashed out with a roar, smashing another clay zombie as shotgun fire filled the air again. He was bleeding from a small cut on his cheek.

The camera turned to take in the rest of the lobby, crawling with clay robots programmed to act like movie zombies. Reck, Rawlins, and the rest of the BlueCleave patrolmen all formed up a semi-circle around the doors of the lobby and began systematically killing the clay dead.

Once the floor in the center of the lobby was covered in dead clay zombies, the fight became laughably simple. The clay dead were composed of very simple metal limbs, coated in fresh clay and then clothed. They were programmed to shuffle, shamble, and stalk. Not cover complex ground with bodies in the way.

So they fell, stumbled, and tripped. BlueCleave finished them off, taking the easy shots at grounded targets. While Rawlins reloaded his bullpup shotgun, Reck explained.

“Some clay-dead dream storms have fast zombies, those pretty different. Much more expensive, unusual to find them in this high a number. Those have much better equipment driving their limbs, so stronger. Cut through armor, harder to hit,” he said, shrugging before firing another shot. “Good thing these slow, no problem when they slow.”

The camera crew followed them as they cleared the lobby. Tollya stayed behind to make sales and get rid of the clay bodies in the lobby as her assigned teams went to secure their civilian wards. Reck and Rawlins bundled into the building’s primary elevator with the camera crew and headed up to the roof.

Smeared clay marked their way up the final set of stairs, and when they arrived on the roof, a human teen wearing pink, full-body pajamas waved at them from atop a tall air-conditioning unit. The air conditioner was surrounded by more clay dead, all moaning and reaching for her with their jagged ceramic nails.

Rawlins looked at Reck and lifted his shotgun with a smile. Baiting the clay clones away was easier in the open space, and they took down each zombie without any threat of harm to them or the civilian they’d been sent to rescue.

While they brought her back down in the elevator, Reck explained what would happen.

“Nobody get in trouble for bad dreams, just need take down name and information. Make sure it not something happens often. Give you info for therapist,” he said, with a shrug.

“In this case, they just ask you not watch zombie movies before bed. Watch fun shows instead, maybe cartoons? Worst case, if you become repeat dream storm offender, they make you deposit morties with BlueCleave overnight, or move out of city limits.”

“Yeah, not like we were going to execute you or anything,” Rawlins cheerfully added. Both Reck and the teenage girl they had just rescued glared at him.

Reck in annoyance, the girl in horror.

Tollya took the girl into her charge and left the group, as her troopers finished clearing the structure of clay zombies. The camera and microphone followed.

Tollya addressed the girl using a practiced monotone.

“While you are not held responsible for your dream storm, BlueCleave takes the sale of any remnant clay clones or debris. This is to help cover operational costs. Step over here, please. Need take your picture for confidential BlueCleave file, in case of repeat dream storm actions. Your photograph will not be used for anything else, and will become protected property of greater Silken Sands affiliate.”

The other tenants of the building were checked by BlueCleave medics and allowed to return about their days as Tollya grilled the girl responsible for it. Once all the reported clay zombies were accounted for and sold, BlueCleave left the area and returned to patrol routes.

Other dream storms had occurred across the city, but the clay zombie swarm had been the most urgent and required the most BlueCleave units to control.

Once the morning rush of dream storms were passed, and most of the city's population was awake, the patrol units got transferred to different shifts.

Chapter 50

Reck and Rawlins got transferred to yarsp hive duty, and the show’s next segment featured them both in Sleem-proof outfits, wielding Sleem-sticks and trekking through dark tunnels behind a wall of Fumble-Bee drones. They played shepherd to my way-ward sleem and helped push a sizable glop of them down a level. A group of Sleem is referred to as a ‘glop’ in the BuyMort system, by the way.

It was good for me to see what my crew was doing, as I likely had to plan for the final push to get the damned Sleem back in their wall. The process BlueCleave was using to flush the Sleem out of the yarsp hive was simple. They had secured the queen’s chamber, which was a hardened room. It had been reinforced with sealing doors and flame suppression systems in the tunnels leading up to it.

The tunnels leading up to the queen’s chambers were all filled with nozzles attached to a simple mogas reservoir buried in the mountaintop. Each nozzle was capped with a spark plug. It was meant to keep the queen’s yarsp off the room if needed, but it would work in a pinch for the Sleem as well. Our yarsp queen had never been in danger, however, as the Sleem were limited to the lower levels.

They had been slowly, but surely, making their way up the hive. Taking it level by level, floor by floor was exactly the Sleem’s style. Their population had soared, even while keeping a minimal level of production at the farm, stretched across miles of territory underground. Their assault on the yarsp hive had required a lot of soldiers, and the steady flood of aggressive insects was excellent fodder.

My poor yarsp, on the other hand, suffered a devastating loss in population as the Sleem advanced. With no natural ability to harm the gelatinous Sleem, my yarsps were consumed en masse, often literally throwing themselves into the ever-hungry maw of their enemies.

It was a steady push up the mountain.

Rawlins caught my attention on screen as he shined his light across a sparkling chunk of metal in the midst of residual tunnel slime. “Wuzzat?” he asked, making the camera zoom in.

The Sleem they pushed out had been on one of the lower levels and left behind a digging drone. The conical device had sealed itself shut when we lost it, way back during that hellish first week of BuyMort. Our recently trapped Sleem had decided they wanted to keep it, and pulled the damn thing down into their mass, eventually using it to chip through their wall and escape.

Thankfully, my team of crack BlueCleave tv stars recovered it, hauling the heavy drill shaped robot back in their tunnel-crawling vehicle.

Another commercial break provided Axle with an opportunity to exalt the show’s performance. Ripping off the style directly had been a good move, that on-the-scene presentation kept viewers glued to their devices. Drops in user retention during advertisement periods were lower on our show than most others, which drove the bidders into an even higher frenzy. We were raking in morties.

Not only did local CTV pay us a healthy advance for the show, Axle got us a handful of standard percentages on extraneous income. Anytime someone bought time on an ad-skip service to jump straight ahead in the action, our show got a modest slice. Anytime an ad company purchased the next available slot, we also got a slice of that.

CTV got a far larger slice, of course, but that was how it worked. Even though many of our income hits were under a single mortie in size, the sheer mind-boggling number of them added up.

“CTV wants to offer us a million per episode for reruns, with the standard extraneous rates, starting with their eleven pm local slot,” Axle suddenly announced.

I chuckled and shook my head as Jada looked lovingly at her mate.

“I’ll push em to one-point-two mill,” he said, pulling up another screen on his interface. “They’ll go for that.”

It was a conflicting thing, seeing my friend like that. Still laid up and blind, but happy, accomplished, fulfilled.

“One-point-three,” I suggested.

Jada laughed and shook her head. “Don’t encourage him, he’s already so cut-throat in those deals.”

When the show came back on, it wrapped up with a heavily edited clip of my encounter with the H.O.B.B.S crew earlier in the day. I was still encrusted with ink and splashed in blood as I gave them a hurried tour of the lobby and all our dead.

The culmination of the episode was the live reaper hound, and my request for information on them.

“That,” I said, grabbing a still-warm yarsp wrap. “Was some damn fine television.”

“I showed the original tapes to my film team,” Axle said. “From the hospital bed, of course, but the library is accessible with the upgrade package you got me.”

“The ad bids for the rerun have already started,” Jada added.

“Of course they are, a hit like this, the first rerun should net almost as much as the debut episode,” Axle explained.

“We should make more tv shows,” I muttered.

“Certainly,” Axle said. “It’ll be expected, frankly. CTV will likely offer us incentives if we don’t come to them with something else soon.”

“Well shit, now you got me thinking. What kind of show can we make next?” I muttered, finally taking a bite of yarsp wrap. It was delicious.

We talked through the night, considering new shows to pitch the network. When the show came back on a few hours later, we watched it again and monitored the ad bids and luxury buyouts. The affiliate made nearly seven million just from those first two airings.

Eventually, when the night sky twinkled with starlight and the reflection of the space station above us, and we’d all had more than enough to eat, Axle suggested we take Jada to see Teslak about an upgrade to her suit.

My eyes shot wide, and I sat forward. “Yeah, let’s go. Now. Shoulda done this already, I’m sorry.”

I input the most recent Afflqwst reward coupon, then added Axle and Jada to my permissions list, so we could all enter it together. Before engaging the page, we moved to the panic room, for safety’s sake. It would be just our luck to have a reaper hound attack while we were all helpless, sitting still with our minds transported across time and space.

Ad space floated up around us, and we all dove into the portions of our brains controlled by BuyMort.

When we loaded into the store hiding in a black hole, I did what I usually did and looked around. My last visit had been so panicked and rushed that I hadn’t bothered to look at the shop’s repairs any further. It had been a complete ruin when I first discovered it, after eons of neglect.

Since that time it had been repairing itself, slowly but surely. More of the cracks in the floors, walls, ceilings, and windows of the storefront were filled in. The shop was starting to look almost normal.

Aside from the swirling disk of atomized matter out the window.

Axle started talking to the projection of Specter, while I slowly walked the wall of the store and gazed out the windows at the black hole. I stopped, noticing something I hadn’t before. We were at the top of a sizable structure. The windows had been built to provide an unobstructed view, so the rest of the structure wasn’t immediately noticeable. Once I pressed my face to the window and looked down, I saw it for what it was.

We were inside a space station. By the hints of architectural curves and lines I could see, it was a large one too. At least as big as the one floating in orbit of Storage.

Great, curving arms of metal vanished into the reddish black haze below us, hinting at the expansive location. I wondered what the rest of it was for.

Jada joined in with Axle at the counter, speaking with Specter. I tuned in a little more, enough to hear that they were ready to wrap up. Jada had been briefed on the upgrade choices when she first took on the suit and knew exactly which upgrade to get in order to negate our most immediate problem.

“Any sustained application of heat or pressure remains a vulnerability, but protection from bladed weapons will be at an all-time high in your new upgrade. Thank you for your patronage,” Specter said, smiling politely at Jada.

“Went with the armor plating, huh?” I asked.

“There was no question,” replied Jada. “Not with the reaper hounds still a threat.”

I nodded and joined my friends as we left. Axle happily swiped his most recent recording of Specter and the Teslak affiliate storefront away into his libraries secure section, using MortMobile. We could eat any extra fees Axle needed for the foreseeable future. His show continued to make us richer.

Our minds arrived back in the panic room, and Jada immediately glanced over at the camera feed, specifically the sniffer addon.

“We’re clear,” she said.

Shortly after opening the doors and moving back into the living space, a BuyMort pod arrived, warping in a large box for Jada. She used my knife to tear the flesh tape from the box and opened it to reveal a tiny ball starfish sitting in the center of dozens of plates, all attached with thin metallic whip-arms to the core.

Jada lifted the small device from the box, smiling as its arms went limp to allow her access.

“Specter said to simply insert it into the reactor’s turbine. The suit will do the rest,” Jada said. She raised her hand and pressed the whip-armed ball to her turbine.

Jada’s pupils shot wide as the turbine wound up. She blinked and swayed on her feet, the rush of painkiller stronger than usual. Then the suit started the install.

Exactly as it had with my gauntlets, Jada’s suit welded and ground its metal into her muscle tissue and bones. Where my gauntlets had only been installed on my forearms, Jada’s install was full body. She gasped and fell to her knees, trying to grip the countertop and sliding down onto the tile on all fours, teeth bared and eyes bulging. Thin lines of steam rose from her body as a harsh grinding sound filled the air.

Axle winced and covered his ears. To her credit, Jada didn’t scream. She gritted her teeth and groaned in clear agony, while metal lines traced with blue light across her body. The glimmering ball-starfish at her core waved its many whip-arms, directing the installation as it melded with her primary suit.

As quickly as the upgrade began, it was over, and Jada flopped over onto her back. She licked her nose and raised a shaking hand to her face and head, where the final lines emblazoned themselves. After a few shaky breaths, she sat up.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Jada lied.

She slowly stood, flexing her arms and hands, as the painkiller left her system. She looked down, and with a flash of blue light, extended her armor plating with a heavy metallic clunk. It extended like my gauntlets, emanating from dimensional portals embedded in the lines of the suit.

“Mmm,” her voice growled from within. She dropped her stance into an easy sparring position and took a couple of quick jabs at the air. “Moves easy. Feels light.”

“What’s it protect you against?” I asked. “Everything, I hope?”

Jada made a V with her fingers and shoved the air towards me. An advertisement, glitched but legible, pushed into my mind and told me of the virtues of the product.

$PithSt#r Variant P0weR ##$ -

Immune to m0st forms of kinetic and therm-therma1 damage.

Spith can be overwhelmed, but takes a great deal of damage be-before failure. Immune to kinetic impacts of up to 3% the speed of light. Thermal testing indicates an ability to survive thermal damage consistent with most modern weaponry.

Repeated thermal strikes in the same area can pass on burn damage to the wearer within.

“That is a surprisingly dry read. Usually the BuyMort stuff is flashy and in your face,” I observed.

“Maybe that is one of the reasons this company lost to BuyMort?” Jada asked thoughtfully. “It has certainly felt more forthright and truthful. Very to the point.”

“Looks like most every form of weaponry is covered. Its defenses can be overwhelmed, and that line about ‘enough hits to the same spot with a plasma rifle’ bothers me,” Jada explained. “Sounds like something that our enemies will exploit.”

“But then, of course, we get healed by the suit,” I said.

Jada nodded. “Specter said it operates beneath the armor as needed but will be slower than if the armor is retracted,” Jada recited, from memory.

I checked in with the hobb standing watch at Phyllis’ place. He was waiting for Doofus to arrive with his hunting pack, and had nothing to report, aside from a brief, yet cranky encounter with Phyllis herself. I warned him to steer clear of her unless she invited him over and hung up and went to bed.

Axle and Jada went back into the panic room, as neither of them felt particularly like being anywhere the reaper hounds could sneak into. That left me to sleep in my own bed, where Molls scent had already begun to significantly fade. I spent a little time thinking about calling her too, once my other friends had gone to bed, but couldn’t end up completing the task

She was busy, and I was tired. Besides, I worried that I would embarrass her if I called at a bad time, like in the middle of a family dinner or something.

Chewing on the inside of my cheek and still wondering if I should call or not, I fell asleep.

Chapter 51 – Whalehunter Salvage

The ocean slid by Thresher’s portal, dark and silent. Filled with malice, with unseen tentacles. The primary military fleet of Whalehunter Salvage was stationed in the southern regions of the Middle America Trench, engines, and impellers still, all external lighting extinguished. Each submarine was tucked in close with the trench walls, magnetic anchors holding them in place.

Aboard each vessel, the crew went about their lives silently. Each ship had audio shielding, but it was only so effective, and Hardplace’s ears were uncommonly sharp. In the mess hall, there was no clattering of plates or exuberance. Just sailors mechanically eating in the dark, focused on keeping their movements silent.

Somewhere above them, the massive shark swam, seeking. Sweeping the ocean in a systematic search for their fleet. It had been in pursuit since the attack on Kraken. Hunting them. Sniffing for the boiling bubbles on their propellers, and then listening for the hollow thrum of their impellers after that.

Thresher had been hunted by Kraken before, and the feeling never left him. The memories either. He was second generation Dearth navy when Kraken first came to earth, ten years prior. Dearth’s navy had been easy enough work, simply guarding their aquaculture farms, underwater drilling operations, and deep sea strip-mines.

Local piracy had been an ever-present threat, as well as corporate espionage and sabotage. The occasional rogue whale; one of the surprises of the shopacolypse was that some whales had turned out to be surprisingly good at organized crime.

But nothing had prepared the navy for Kraken.

Rock and Hardplace had torn apart the fleet, destroying thirty-seven ships in the first hour of battle. Another hundred and fifteen in the following three months. Thousands of men died.

Any engagement with the sharks involved the use of BuyMort portals. The beasts could always out maneuver their ships, usually to devastating effect. Thresher had been part of the rear guard, holding ocean territory around the southern coast of Mexico.

Rock and Hardplace secured more and more of the Pacific Ocean, and Thresher watched it all from the sidelines, waiting for the day the titanic sharks would come for him. The reports, the names of the dead, the stories of horror from the survivors. All it saturated his fleet, his men, his very mind, and soul. Thresher lived the fear of imminent death for eight months as the Dearth Conglomerate’s grip on Victorian Earth slipped further and further.

Until one day it was his ship’s turn.

Hardplace had crushed his submarine within his mountainous jaws, severing the vessel and sending its parts drifting to the bottom. Thresher was trapped in the forward compartment, poorly sealed by a damaged bulkhead and taking on water.

He donned a thirty-minute bottle of emergency air and jammed himself into a torpedo tube, plasma cutter first. After cutting through the external hatch, Thresher made it to the surface on an empty bottle of air.

Three days later, he washed up on the coast of Guatemala and made his way north, eventually catching one of the last shuttles off-planet before Kraken claimed the whole of the world for itself.

In his darkened cabin, only a small strip of glow-moss providing any light to tell him where the bathroom was, Thresher was alone with his memories. He sat and waited, staring at the pale luminescence of the glow-moss.

“Not much longer,” he whispered, even that faint sound loud to his ears.

Within a minute of his words, the lights came up and the radio sounded. “All hands to stations, all hands to stations.”

“Time to run,” Thresher growled. He stood and brushed the wrinkles out of his uniform pants, before walking briskly out the door and heading toward the bridge. No doubt Captain Omen would be there already.

The small statured Captain had run Hardplace on a merry chase with his unconventional methods. The fleet would power up to full capacity for a running shift, providing Hardplace with their general location across the entire Central American sea bed.

By the time the massive shark had arrived, either by swimming or the use of a portal, Whalehunter’s fleet was in the high speed current. They moved far enough out of Hardplace’s range to make some course adjustments, then entered the high speed current again.

This process repeated as necessary, until Captain Omen would order the ships shut down for the next hiding shift. Hiding shifts were for rest, to allow the crew time to sleep. Running shifts were for work.

All the ships in fleet needed time with their engines running just to keep the air breathable, so their hiding shifts were limited accordingly. A passive scan run at low intensity kept them aware of Hardplace’s general location.

Their technique relied upon the cooperation and discipline of hundreds of troops. Eating and resting in complete silence. Sprinting to their duty stations, no matter their job, as soon as the lights came on. While they were on the move, the troops were exuberant and chatty.

In the dark, none of them even bumped into one another.

Thresher would have beamed with pride at the fleet, if the memories of Victorian Earth did not seize his mind so effectively. Kraken had destroyed it, as Thresher watched from orbit, in one of several refugee stations set up by Dearth. While he awaited a reassignment that never came, Thresher watched from the sky as the giant squid tore his planet apart, piece by piece.

One morning he’d woken up to a series of gasps and horrified screams, all of his fellow refugees pointing to the windows. His home; the oceans of his planet, were gone. Warped away by BuyMort in Kraken’s first large-scale sale.

Shortly after the water, all patches of green on the planet were gone. Sold or allowed to die, and then sold. Kraken’s second great sale was all remnant biomass on the planet. Third was the atmosphere.

By the time Kraken set up its massive belt around the equator and started slinging state-sized chunks of the planet toward the gate in deep orbit, Thresher had already fallen in with a band of desperate mercenaries, on a ship headed for the newest BuyMort planet.

Back on Nu-Earth, the tall, bearded man entered Whalehunter’s bridge, saluting his captain. The man had impressed him with how he’d lead them in handling Kraken, especially the days since the sham battle against Dearth, and the attack on Kraken. His orders had kept their fleet alive, and every sapient being on board his vessels knew it.

Captain Omen saluted him back. “XO, good. It is time we briefed the fleet. We are approaching Kraken’s area of operations, for a crucial recon. I need all boats in diamond defense formation, on Whalehunter’s wake.”

“Aye captain,” Thresher said. He hurriedly put together an announcement on the notepad at his duty station, then recited it into a microphone for the crew to hear.

They headed south, toward Kraken’s last position in the Peru-Chili trench. Each ship locked into Whalehunter’s shield and ran in a straight line behind them.

“Captain!” their helmsman shouted. “Massive energy signature ahead!”

“Exit the stream!” Captain Omen shouted. “Emergency abort formation!”

Whalehunter’s shield officer hurriedly input commands, initiating the shutdown. The ship's shield stopped manipulating the water and Whalehunter dove hard. Each ship moved in a different direction as the high-speed current dropped them, one by one. They deployed as drilled, and the ships formed a snowflake formation, each engaging their engines to avoid a massive BuyMort beam ahead of them, blocking their path.

The rainbow light flared and dazzled across the ocean depths, and when it was gone, a wall stood in their way.

Captain Omen stood and glared at the viewscreen.

“How far does it reach?” he asked quietly.

Three hundred meters ahead of them, a new mountain range had been dropped in the ocean, between them and their target.

“Unknown Captain,” the ops officer reported. “Connecting to Dearth satellite network now.” He paused for a moment, and then gaped at his panel.

“On the main screen, Lieutenant,” Captain Omen ordered.

A high orbit image filled the view screen, of a band of glittering steel wrapped around the world.

“It's on the equator, Sir!” ops reported. “Perfectly on the equator . . .”

Captain Omen glanced around the room and settled on Thresher's face. “What is it XO?”

Thresher shook his head. “It’s the gravity sling. Kraken had it warped in.” He stared at the screen, pale and breathing hard.

“Tell me what you know about it, man!” Captain Omen shouted.

Thresher shook out of it and nodded. “Over the ocean, it shouldn’t be below three hundred meters, but any ship attempting to pass beneath it will suffer greatly. It’s magnetically anchored to the core. Kraken will use it to throw large payloads of raw material through the Sol gate,” he rattled off.

“This is outside of its natural behavior. I know now why Hardplace hunts us so fiercely,” Captain Omen said. “Can it be destroyed by conventional arms?” he suddenly asked.

Thresher scowled. “There was an attack, a wing of Dearth bombers tried. I did not hear if they damaged it, but they were all destroyed by Kraken. The ring wasn’t damaged for long, if at all. Operated as normal nearly immediately afterward.”

Captain Omen nodded slowly, pursing his lips. “Let’s give them a volley,” he said, reaching for his own microphone. “All ships, ready arms! Fire all tubes at will, target dead ahead.”

Within seconds, dozens of bubble streams fizzled behind torpedoes. Whalehunter herself opened with a barrage of plasma warheads, striking near the surface and sending a purple fireball into the air.

“Damage minimal sir!” ops reported.

“Take us about, helm. Organize fleet movement dead north at once. Hardplace is coming,” Captain Omen said.

As the scattered submarines formed up to engage the water shield’s current, a dazzling rainbow beam lit up the massive wall at their backs. Hardplace swam out of it, slowly at first, as the massive beast swung its head around to find its prey.

With a surging undulation of his powerful tail, the shark propelled himself toward the formation of cigar-shaped vessels. It aimed for the lead ship and roared in frustration as the vessels were sucked away in a thin stream of rapidly moving ocean currents.

Hardplace felt the unnaturally fast movement and swerved with a harsh flick of his massive tail to avoid it. Captain Omen retreated north with his fleet intact.

Behind them, watched only on satellite imaging, Kraken in all its obscene glory arose dripping from the ocean. One distended bulb on its black external wrappings was crushed, along with one line of tunnels, but the rest was unafflicted. The beast lazily floated, a haze of distorted air and energy surrounding it.

As its bulbous body was exposed from the depths of the ocean, it became clear that a great mass of earth was gripped in its many tentacles.

“What is it doing, XO?” whispered Captain Omen.

“Loading the belt, sir,” Thresher said. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell you why.”

Kraken deposited its load of earth, and the tons of rubble blasted away along the line of the gravity sling. It was not hurtled into space, instead speeding along the equator, a moving mountain speeding across the horizon.

Captain Omen’s eyes narrowed, and then suddenly flared wide. “I know why. We’ve advanced their schedule again. Kraken is going to alter the Earth’s rotation and claim the world outright. We must rendezvous with the fleet at Los Angeles.”

He shook his head and sighed. “And contact the window-puncher.”

Thresher blinked and frowned. “Can we call on Dearth again?”

“No XO, that alliance is strictly transactional. Neither of us can afford a sham battle again, and I doubt Dearth’s naval commanders have the stomach for one even if we could,” Captain Omen said. “Best we not pull on that thread without something to offer.”

Chapter 52

When I awoke, it was to the sounds and smells of a cooking breakfast. Yarsp meat and maple syrup in particular. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stood with a groan, dropping the oversized blanket in a pile on my bed.

A transaction completed on my BuyMort app, and I pulled it open to check. As I had expected based on the price, it was Therrize again. The Nah’Gh prostitute had become an accidental regular for me, due to the nature of dreams Molls inspired in my mind.

We’d all become friends, of a sort.

I hurriedly threw on a pair of BlueCleave fatigue pants. I could see her pod approaching from the window.

Despite having tried to conceal the regular embarrassing dream purchase from Molls, she had rapidly discovered my secret, and saved me from feeling shame at my dreams.

It was one of the pivotal moments in our early relationship, actually.

And Therrize wasn’t a jerk about it. She kept the morties, mostly because she needed them.

Therrize lived on Storage, after all.

But really, I had discovered that dream storms were considered an act of nature. People didn’t generally fault one another for them, and typically accepted the costs that came along with them.

Something about the personal nature of having your dreams on display changed the way most people approached that particular aspect of commerce.

I shrugged open the bedroom door, struggling into my boots as I went. It was definitely yarsp cooking, the air in the entire penthouse was thick with it.

“What are you guys cooking?” I shouted, walking toward the kitchen.

My vision blurred a bit, and suddenly cartoon characters jumped out of the shadows at me. Two of them were hideous clowns in garish make-up, while the last one was a bearded crown-wearing king.

“Big deals on Bug Meat Bruh!” the king said. Above them all hovered a 3-dimensional gif that seemed torn directly from the 90s. I shook my head, wondering what sort of Nu-Earth research the hobbs had to put together this obviously expensive and quite entertaining advertisement.

Take on Yarsp Big Daddy Platter from Gragor Butcher King. Big meat, smoke good, crunchy mouth-feel if eat shell. 3500 morties.

I nudged the advertisement away, shaking my head in amazement. And from around the corner, I heard Axle chuckle.

Jada sighed as I entered.

“Nothing!” she said. “I just ordered the wrong thing.”

On the kitchen counter was an entire roasted yarsp abdomen. It filled nearly the entire countertop, but Jada had a plate squeezed in beside it, with a carving knife and a fork.

Axle was seated comfortably in a nearby lounge chair that had been turned from its reading nook to face the kitchen. Jada was hovering over the roast yarsp abdomen, trying to conceal her drooling desire for it.

I chuckled and shook my head. The pod door in our ceiling whooshed open, and my BuyMort pod arrived to deposit Therrize. She wore a light dress, which hung loosely from her scaled shoulders.

“Oh good morning Tyson. Nice to see you again. Is Molls around?” she asked lightly, glancing over my shoulder.

“Sorry, she’s visiting her family. It’s just me and my crew here,” I told her, gesturing to Axle and Jada. Jada covered her stuffed mouth with one hand and waved with the other.

Axle smiled in Therrize’s direction, then gestured with a paw toward the meat on the counter. “Breakfast? We have more than enough to share,” he said with a chuckle.

“Oh shut up!” Jada complained, around a mouthful of food. “Like you never ordered something dumb.”

Our Nah’Gh guest shivered and nodded, slithering up close to the hot food and holding her hands out to it, while repeatedly slipping her thin tongue in and out. I slipped away to grab Molls’ heated blanket as Jada began cutting Therrize a giant chunk of yarsp.

When I returned, she happily accepted the blanket and curled up in a nearby chair to devour her breakfast.

“Please, take some home with you,” I said. “Whatever’s left when we’re finished. All yours.”

Therrize blinked and nodded, swallowing a great chunk of the greasy meat. “Thank you, I will! Very generous.”

“Ah,” Axle exclaimed with a wave of his paw. “None of us are strangers to Storage here. Please, eat your fill.”

I nodded grimly and moved to get a plate of my own. As I moved past Jada I muttered, “what did you mean to order, anyway?”

Jada clanked her suit’s armor closed with a huff, and I laughed. Therrize stared at her with wide eyes but continued eating.

“A single portion, from the local barbeque. They warped in this,” Jada said, retracting her armor and pointing at the roasted abdomen.

“Oh, that is a portion,” I said. I went to that barbeque all the time, it was delicious. They fed half of BlueCleave, and the affiliates workers coming to shifts on the elevator.

“A portion of the yarsp. You wanted a serving. They’re pretty . . . uh, generous. Even a serving is like a heap of the stuff, sliced and sauced.”

“Mm,” Jada grumbled, chewing another portion.

Axle happily accepted a plate, and Therrize took thirds. We sat down to eat, and for a few moments, the clink of forks on plates was the only sound in the room.

Then Axle broke the silence with a happy grunt. “Oh, good news!” he said. “My surgery is pushed up, I’ll be going in later this afternoon. Lot of business in the area suddenly. Plenty of chartered ships with room to pick up passengers. My engineer caught an earlier ride.”

I swallowed hard and looked at him with eyes wide. “Is all that new traffic for us?” I asked.

Axle nodded. “There’s a tourism surge, already occurring. Our port is booked solid for the coming weekend, and we’ve had to call in suspended elevator workers because the cars are getting booked more and more. If this keeps up, we may need to use the donut.”

“Oh good!” I exclaimed. “That’ll keep BlueCleave happy too, they don’t like policing bored workers on leave.”

“It’ll keep the elevator workers happy is what it’ll do,” Jada added. “But don’t get too excited. The tourism boom is just edge-seekers.”

“What now?” I asked, expression blank.

“Wealthy young adults, mostly,” Axle said. “A big party crowd. They like to be the last people to experience doomed planets. Our splash with H.O.B.B.S last night has them coming out in force, but they’re here because of Kraken.”

Afflqwst pinged me with something, but I swiped it away as soon as I saw it didn’t deal with Quadrum. Anything else would just ruin my breakfast, and I saw that Axle was scanning it anyway.

Instead of allowing work to ruin my day, I focused on having breakfast with my friends.

Eventually, the chatting quieted, and our eating slowed and converted to satisfied groans.

I grabbed a knife and a series of heavy plastic bags from beneath the counters and got to work on the yarsp abdomen. It wasn’t hard to slice the thing into transportable sized chunks as Jada and Axle had a hushed conversation in the corner and Therrize watched me work with a small smile.

After doing that, I placed the bags of yarsp into a garbage bag and handed it to her with a smile. “Already gave you a five star, thanks for hanging out a bit!” I told her.

“Of course! Tell Molls I’m sorry I missed her,” Therrize said, taking the bag and slithering back to wait for her pod. She turned back and smiled at me. “Thanks again. Breakfast with you guys is always lovely.”

I nodded and waited until she was gone before turning to face Axle and Jada.

“Okay, what is it?” I asked with a sigh.

“A quest to stop Kraken,” Axle replied. “By any means necessary. An escalation has occurred. I’m seeing a written communication to you in the affiliate screen. From Whalehunter. I got one too.”

I sighed again and swiped it up to read.

Quest – Destroy Kraken before Kraken destroys Nu-Earth.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Kill the creature at the heart of Kraken Corp. (incomplete)

The planet of operation for your affiliate will be destroyed if this quest is failed.

REWARD – Item coupon.

Yeah, that seemed about right. At least it was nice and up front about things.

Axle paused for a long moment, reading the air in front of his face. “Turn on the TV!”

I immediately ran to obey, and the smaller kitchen wall television sprang to life. On its screen, a wide shot of the planet from orbit was visible, with a thick silver band running across it. The band vanished across either horizon.

CTV news was reporting that Kraken had taken the market by surprise when the creature warped in its gravity sling construct. A ring, twenty miles wide, that sat on the equator and allowed matter to flow freely along its surface.

“What does this mean, Axle?” I asked quietly.

“It means we should hurry and have our meeting. I suspect you will be needed elsewhere today,” he replied.

Jada whispered, “That squid is going to kill us all.”

Footage from high orbit seemed to show Kraken hovering up out of the water to deposit material on the belt. Earth and stone seemed to be the primary cargo for the belt, huge amounts of it, gripped in the monster's tentacles. Massive, mountain-sized chunks of earth and stone.

As soon as the material was deposited on the belt, a bubble of visible energy coated the objects and solidified its position on the belt. Then the entire bundle scooted away at high speed, vanishing over the ocean’s horizon.

“Third deposit made” read the chiron on screen. “Motivations still unknown.”

Axle took a shaky breath and shook his head. “Motivations unknown my tail. What Kraken is doing has shortened the time we have to take it out. The gravity sling will continue to advance the speed of the materials on it, until it increases Nu-Earth’s rotational speed, which will trigger a planet-wide mortblock separation. BuyMort won’t recognize anyone’s claims until it has computed the new rotational rate, at which point Kraken, being physically closest to the changes origination point, will have the fastest spreading claim.”

“We’ll lose the whole planet,” I said.

“Before Kraken claims it, even,” Axle continued. “The gravity sling is anchored to the core. Kraken will have to load the belt with a tremendous amount of material before it will destabilize enough to take the earth’s rotational rate with it. The damage that occurs before then will be more than enough to destroy all of our infrastructure.”

“How long?” I asked.

“I would have to know how long between deposits, to answer that,” Axle replied. “Hold on. I’m linking our hijacked satellite footage so we can watch it in real time. Days, though, at a maximum, you have days to stop this.”

The image on the TV cut out and was replaced a moment later by raw feed. Axle didn’t even need to zoom in, the satellite was already focused on Kraken’s activity.

He was also clearly watching it on his app extension, but he waved a paw and said, “we’re short on time, we should discuss some important changes for the business. My affiliate page is compiling some data, and I have a few actionable items to go over with you.”

I focused on him. “Okay, hit me.”

“We have a series of choices that need to be made. Upgrades the affiliate requires immediately, if any of what we’ve built is going to survive. The first is defenses against Krakens new weapon. It’ll be a major expenditure, but based on that income we already have, and what’s coming in over the next few hours, we should have more than enough to work with,” Axle started.

“Okay, how can we defend against that belt?” I asked. After a second’s thought, I continued, “How is that thing going to harm us?”

“Earthquakes and high tides. The first thing we need to do is get to work installing a sea wall. We can use the stockpile of Dearth plasticrete that got left behind, as well as something our research department has sent up to us,” Axle said.

“Woah, research department?” I said. “That’s up and running already?”

“Well, sort of,” Axle explained. “My hire has arrived and set up shop in the library. He’s been doing some very basic recon of our Sleem farm situation and wants to install a refinery, so we can render the Sleem ourselves and produce products with it. Namely, construction materials, which can be useful for our own projects or sold, depending on the local market.”

“That sounds amazing, yes. Can we afford to do that?” I asked, scowling in confusion.

“What, build a refinery? Yes, we can afford to do that, it’s not very expensive. The machinery is nothing special, and we have plenty of available buildings in Prescott where the workforce is. I don’t have a comprehensive list of costs yet, but early projections are under forty-five million,” Axle said.

I blinked and nodded. “Which we’ll have soon.”

“Much more than that, my friend. The spaceport fees are set to bring us fifty this morning alone,” Axle replied, smiling. “It is good to be back in business.”

“Even if it’s just morbid apocalypse tourism,” Jada quipped.

“Tourists spend morties, and we’re working to negate that apocalypse,” Axle replied. “Oh that reminds me, we need to install a series of earthquake defenses around our primary areas of operation.”

“Okay,” I shrugged. “I didn’t know anything could defend against earthquakes.”

Axle smiled. “Well, fortunately for us, it’s rather simple. Cheap too, with the current market in orbit.”

Jada snorted.

Axle’s tail thumped against the side of his chair, and he smiled. “Well, maybe not simple, but simple for us. All we have to do is hire a few ships in orbit with the right weaponry platform for a series of well-calculated high-energy strikes. Since we’re not asking for ammunition-based weapons, we won’t even have to pay much. Win for us, win for the bored crew in orbit. Whole thing should cost a million, tops. We’re paying for math and button-pushers, after all.”

I blinked and frowned. “I don’t get it. We can shoot an earthquake?”

Axle and Jada both laughed, and Axle shook his head. “Not exactly, no. We need a series of boreholes dug between our facilities, and the earthquake’s source. Plenty of open desert in both states to accommodate the project. If the holes are placed correctly, and dug to fairly exact specifications, which I am now gathering, the structural change in the earth’s crust will reflect and diffuse the surface waves from earthquakes emanating from Kraken’s belt and protect our expensive buildings from damage.”

I looked between Axle and Jada a couple of times before shrugging. “I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.”

“Allow me to explain,” Axle said, sitting forward. He opened his palm and drew a square shape into it with one nail. White lines remained beneath his skin, turning to a light red.

Around the square he etched several smaller scratches, just tiny lines on his palm. “If the large square is Prescott, for example,” he started. “These smaller bits represent the holes we need to cut.” He finished his formation, making a triple layered arc around the primary square.

“The boreholes we cut are measured to a specific depth, width, and are a specific distance from one another. All of those specifics are mathematically assigned, by the incoming earthquake’s strength and location. We’re talking about pressure waves here, measurable subjects. Since we know the source of the earthquakes, and once we finish with the satellite footage, the projected strength of them, we can mitigate the damage they cause our facilities simply by altering the structure of the land around us,” Axle explained.

“The surface level waves of force from any earthquakes will be reflected back upon themselves, negating the effect on our protected areas.” The Knowle nodded as he finished, seeming to sense my understanding.

“Okay, wow. Color me impressed,” I said. “That sounds deceptively simple, how’d you learn about this stuff?”

Axle waved a hand. “I read, and Dearth had a surprisingly decent online library.”

“Cost an arm and a leg to access,” snorted Jada.

“It was a benefit at the time, one of very few I had in Storage, and abroad.” Axle said. “Working for Dearth in Storage had many benefits, including a way out of Storage, eventually.”

Jada’s eyes went wider, and she nodded. “Oof. Yeah, spending my time reading in Storage would have been vastly preferable.”

Axle reached out a paw for Jada to squeeze.

He nodded and continued, “Any rate, it was from a Dearth facility on a planet with predictably unstable seismic activity. Their facilities were peppered with borehole fields. It’s exactly what we need to defend against Kraken’s attack.”

“Sounds great, you good to get it in motion?” I asked.

“Of course, I’m already searching for the right local ship with the right services package,” Axle said, raising a finger to caution me. “You should be aware, this is a temporary shield. The area we dig the boreholes in will become damaged over time, and we’ll have to dig more. It also will not protect us from anything large, say . . . over five-point-oh on your Richter scale?”

I nodded and drew in a long, cautious breath. “We shouldn’t need it for much longer. I’m going to kill Kraken.”

“You have the ‘how’ nailed down yet?” Axle asked.

I shrugged. “Sort of. I was thinking about flying one of Tollya’s nukes down its throat.”

“Hmm,” Axle grunted. “Raises its own set of problems, of course.”

“Yeah, not usually a wise business move to use nuclear weapons in-atmosphere,” Jada muttered.

“I know!” I said, throwing my hands up. “I’m working on it, but this thing is hard to kill.”

My last encounter had me literally inside the monster's brain, and all I could accomplish was a nick to the organ before it burned me out. If I had time, and my ‘magically’ sharp sword, maybe I could get the job done.

I was about to voice the thought when a call from BlueCleave came in on my phone.

Chapter 53

Doofus was back. And he’d brought friends.

I hurriedly informed Axle and Jada of my situation with the mercenary dog and stepped out onto the balcony. With a thought, I lifted off and hurtled toward Silken Sands, anti-magic helmet in place. I flew in low among the streets to get a look and be seen, cruising among the already present traffic of alien gawkers.

Giving them a show, even if it was just me flying without a shirt on, made them more likely to feel like their expenditure of morties was worthwhile. BlueCleave was out in force as well, making sure thieves and other, less savory tourists were not allowed free reign of the place.

I saluted the camera crew as I flew by overhead, chuckling at Rawlins’ excited whoop.

As I passed through town, I heard an announcement over Prescott’s interspersed speaker system. A handful of large screens throughout the city were also illuminated, showing Jada’s face.

“This is a Prescott public service announcement. If everyone will look to the south, you’ll see an orbital bombardment in just a few minutes. Nothing to be concerned with, it’s a Silken Sands construction project, so enjoy the show!”

Crowds of people cheered.

As I flew, a text from Axle came through my phone and pulled up on my helmet’s link. “Hospital floor-plans for my surgery,” his message said. “The rest of BlueCleave has this information already, just wanted to loop you in as well.”

I skimmed through the information, familiarizing myself with the technical layout of the building Axle would be in while his operation was performed. It was nice, I could do it while flying, as the helmet displayed the plans in a semi-transparent frame that I was able to move with a severe eye motion. Studying had never been easier.

A few minutes of flying later, I landed in front of Phyllis’ workshop. Doofus and two other large dogs were lounging in the shade of the doorway, wearing a variety of equipment.

The tallest dog in the group, an Irish Wolfhound, stood as I landed, head held low and ears back. Doofus turned his head and lolled his tongue out, wagging his tail. The third dog, a small-statured Shiba Inu, merely watched me from his position on the ground.

Doofus approached me and I reached to pat his head. His shield fuzzed the hair on the back of my arm, but otherwise didn’t bother me.

Doofus snorted and dipped his head around his side, pressing a blue gem in his harness. The sensation of the shield flicked off. I smiled and scratched him vigorously on the neck, the way he liked.

“Welcome back buddy!” I said. “I was starting to get worried.”

Doofus cocked his head at me, and his talk-board sprang to life. He quickly pressed a series of buttons.

“Had to help my hunting pack!” his board’s voice said. “Ready to hunt now!”

I nodded. “Good boy Doof. I’m glad you’re ready to hunt, cause time is running out. Who are your friends?”

Doofus looked at the tall, lanky Irish wolfhound and pressed a button. “Murphy!” his board exclaimed.

He looked at the fuzzy, orange Shiba Inu and pressed another button. “Soju!” his board said.

The Shiba Inu sighed and summoned his own talk-board of light buttons. “Don’t tell your monkey my name, Doofus!” his board said, after the smaller dog pressed a series of his own buttons. “Bad dog!”

Murphy growled at him, and Soju turned his head away with a huff, seemingly disinterested. The orange dog sneezed lightly and trotted away to sniff the raven’s enclosure.

“I guess he didn’t want to come,” I muttered. With a shake of my head, I turned to the Irish wolfhound. “Nice to meet you Murphy. You look . . . like a good boy.”

Murphy wagged his tail and approached, sniffing my hands and boots. He didn’t say anything though, and I glanced at his harness to note that he didn’t appear to have a talk-board of his own. He did have two tucked-in blade-tipped mechanical arms attached to his battle harness though.

It was the same brand that Doofus wore, and when I glanced over, I confirmed Soju was wearing one too. He was sporting three small turrets, one on his back, and one on either side. The harnesses seemed highly customizable. Thresher would later tell me that a Victorian Earth based affiliate had specialized in protective equipment for dogs, before Kraken destroyed the planet.

All three of the dogs wore shield gems in their harnesses, but Murphy had a few recent-looking wounds, all stitched and bandaged beneath his armor. Doofus appeared to have his own adventures going on, when I wasn’t watching him.

I nodded at Soju, but the dog merely narrowed his eyes and turned his head back to stare at the ravens. One of the birds hopped out of their building and was turning his head in various directions at the dog below.

“We hunt now?” asked Doofus’ board.

“Yeah, buddy. We need to find them, and kill them,” I told him. “Is your hunting pack ready?”

A deep, thrumming sound emanated from the desert suddenly, catching all of our attention. Giant beams of red energy bored into the planet one after another, punching holes in the clouds and uncovering the morning sun.

All three dogs perked their ears and turned their heads, as did several BlueCleave guards on the wall.

Pillars of crimson lanced repeatedly from the sky. Clouds of dust from the rapid digging flooded the desert south of us and added a red glittering effect to the horizon. The streaks of high powered weaponry continued bombarding the planet for a few more minutes, drawing every eye in the nearby region.

Soju and Doofus merely stared at the light show, but Murphy growled low in his throat. Phyllis exited her workshop, plasma cannon arm swirling into motion.

“Nothing to worry about Phill!” I shouted, waving at her.

She glared at her from her mech, before looking back at the light show along the south and east horizons. “That?” she asked, shouting to be heard above the cacophony of sound. “That’s nothing to worry about?”

“Earthquake defense project! It's under control, I swear!” I shouted back.

“Earthquake defense?!” Phyllis yelled. “That worries me!”

The sound lessened as the bombardment moved further east, carving a wide arc around our primary hub. In the far distant southwest I could just make out the flashes of a similar bombardment, securing our primary water supply and fledging operation in Los Angeles. Far to the north, another bombardment, this one in vibrant purple, scorched a smaller area around the Grand Canyon.

Other punches of energy lanced into the ground between Arizona and Baja, adding protection for our military bases and a handful of known survivor holdouts. Even our cargo routes had a shield of hole-punched earth to protect the roads. My operations manager was thorough, he thought of the vital water shipments along with everything else.

Axle had mentioned it wouldn’t be very expensive, which meant its greatest strength was how much we could use it.

The ravens all came out on their high-end perch to watch the light show, eyes and beaks wide. At least the end of the world was entertaining for those who survived.

Phyllis shook her head and noticed the dogs for the first time. “Oh Soju! Murphy! Good boys, come to granny!”

Murphy and Soju did as requested, both dogs galloping to the old woman’s side, tails wagging. Phyllis used the mech's hands with gentle, care-filled movements, petting and scratching both dogs as they crowded in around her for attention.

“Well, good. Everybody’s friends,” I said, scowling.

“Oh look at the jealous monkey, yes he is!” Phyllis exclaimed in Soju’s face. The little dog had agilely clambered up the kneeling mech to exuberantly lick Phyllis.

He summoned his talk-board against her mech and stamped a button, looking directly at me. “Jealous monkey!”

“Oh of course he is, look how handsome you are!” Phyllis baby voiced.

Soju wiggled and grinned, huffing at Phyllis before licking her chin one more time and hopping off the mech. He sauntered past me to watch the last of the bombardment, ignoring me entirely.

Murphey curled up in the shade of the garage’s doorway and slowly began licking at the inside of his armpit, beneath his harness. Phyllis smiled fondly at the dog.

“Phill,” I said. When she looked up at me, I continued, “how the hell do you know these dogs?”

She waved a great, metal hand at me and scoffed. I saw flame spark from inside her cockpit, and a wisp of fragrant smoke wafted. “We work together, sometimes. No big deal.”

I blinked, thinking about that for a moment before I shook my head. “Okay, skipping right past what that means, I may need your help again soon.”

Phyllis nodded. “Mmhmm. Big octopus, I know,” she said.

“Close enough, sure. Are you, by any chance, able to go underwater with that thing?” I asked.

Phyllis took a long drag from her joint and exhaled before responding. “Maybe.”

“Maybe,” I repeated. “What’s that mean?”

“It means yes, but not for long. I’m working on that, though, so by the time you need me to go underwater . . . maybe,” she answered. “Now you tell me what you’re doing with the boys.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Uhh. They’re gonna help me track down and murder a whole pack of those really super dangerous hound things,” I said. “Oh, and Rayna says you can’t come. Sorry.” I shrugged.

Phyllis stared at me for a long moment, smoking her joint, before she nodded. “Fair enough. Take care of him, Soju,” she called over my shoulder.

The little orange dog turned and stared at her, and then at me, before he sneezed and looked away.

“He’ll take care of you. Just stick with him, Soju is good in a pinch,” Phyllis said, turning back to her shop. “I’ve got work to do, try not to get yourselves killed, boys.”

I stared at the patch of discolored earth at the side of her workshop, where we had buried the body of a young man on the first day of BuyMort. After a long moment, I raised an arm and shouted, “glad you’re on my side, Phill!”

“Damn right you are,” she muttered back.

As I walked away from her garage, the hunting pack followed me. Murphy led, with Soju and Doofus at either side and behind him. Once we were in an open area, I turned to address the dogs.

“Can all of you fly?” I asked.

Doofus summoned his board. “Yes! Weapons and shields and wings!”

“Good hunting pack,” I replied. “Follow me!”

I leapt off the ground and floated away, turning back to watch the dogs. Each of them ran a short distance and took off on hard light wings, aided by a small thruster at the back of their harness. We flew in formation over the mountain ridge and back through the city to the base of the tower.

As we flew in for a landing, BlueCleave security forces scrambled to respond. They quickly relaxed when they saw my chrome helmet and turned to escort our group inside the fortified building.

In the lobby, a full squad of starfish troopers waited for us, with Rawlins, Reck, and their camera crew. Tollya and Jada were already there too, standing near the back of the group, chatting lightly.

“Quite the crowd we’ve drawn,” I said as I entered, three armored dogs walking in formation behind me.

The H.O.B.B.S camera crew jumped into motion, excited to get me on camera again. Tollya nodded her chin up at me, and Jada crossed her arms. The two approached me through the rest of the gathered people.

“No way you go without squad,” Tollya grunted. “We lose you, we lose Nu-Earth.” She glanced at the camera crew before nodding to Jada.

The Knowle nodded. “The more the better on this run, boss.”

I bit my lip inside the helmet but nodded. I pointed at the camera crew. “Somebody better get these guys some better armor. Specifically around the throat.”

The camera man swallowed and took a shaky step back.

“Armory in basement,” Tollya grunted. She raised her head and sought out a nearby guard, waving him over. “Show them to armory.”

“No chance. We stay with the windowpuncher,” said the hobb with the directional mic.

Tollya rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Whatever. Guard, get them armor for neck,” she told the incoming BlueCleave security guard.

I grabbed the camera and pulled it aside, facing my reflective helmet at the camera orc. “Are you getting the idea here, guys? You’re risking your necks on this one. I won’t be responsible for your deaths if you come.”

“You kidding me?” the orc asked. “Best footage of my life, no way we miss this take-down.”

“If that’s what it’s going to be,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Guess we’ll find out together. If shit gets heavy, try to get behind someone with a starfish suit.”

The orc nodded enthusiastically, and both men accepted the extra armor when it arrived. Tollya, Jada, and I held a quick conference with the starfish troopers and the dogs.

“Bad dog here?” Doofus asked, using his talk board. “Smell something funny.”

“Yeah Doof, the bad dog is here. We’re gonna need you guys to follow their trails and tell us where they are,” I explained. “Then we’ll, uh . . . kill em.”

“Good plan,” Jada grunted with a laugh. “Simple. Easy to remember. I like it.”

“Like all the best plans,” I said. “We work with what we have. Let’s go.”

I led the dogs and camera crew into the containment area but stopped in the doorway when I saw Lee at the far end of the opaque cells. With one hand on the camera, keeping it low, I pushed back and shook my head.

“Not yet. You stay here,” I growled at the camera crew. Doofus stepped in front of them and blocked their way, panting and showing his teeth. When the camera man tried to peek around the corner, Murphey stepped in his way and growled low in his throat.

As I walked toward Lee at the far end of the hall, I heard Soju’s talk-board activate. “Stay!”

Chapter 54

I nodded to Lee as I approached, and he tilted his head toward a nearby security office. Once we were both inside and the door was locked behind us, I lowered my helmet so we could talk.

“Okay, whatcha got Lee?” I asked.

“Not much. Followed the leads you guys set out for me, came to a lot of the same conclusions. The hounds were smuggled in via the elevator, from the Dearth station in orbit. I have a bit of a paper trail that points to a research vessel currently in orbit of Saturn, but that hardly seems relevant,” Lee explained.

I raised an eyebrow and frowned. “I dunno, I kind of want to know where they originated, so I can go break it.”

“Too late for that, the proverbial cat is out of the bag on that one. Dearth is multiversal, they’ve spread the genetic profile to their bio-weapons divisions in twelve universes by now,” Lee said, with a shrug. “You can go ‘break’ the research ship if you really want, but it won’t stop Dearth from making more reaper hounds whenever they like.”

“Well shit, there goes that plan,” I muttered.

“It’s not all bad news though. I don’t find any reason to think there have been more than two shipments. The donut has been in a lowered position since the dream storm, and all the other car’s shipments have come back clean,” Lee said, waving a hand. “So what you’ve got does appear to be all you’ve got. You flush em out, I think we’re set up to prevent another smuggler getting past us in the elevator. Your space port, I can’t speak to. Security looks good but looks can be deceiving and I ain't had a chance to do more than that yet.”

Automated Security Bots by Boston Dynamics. Heat sensors and silhouette recognition technology means no one will survive lockdown with ASB.

The ad contained the image of gatling turrets shredding everything in sight. I skipped it, refocusing on the present.

“Okay, thank you Lee,” I muttered, thinking about what he had said.

“Whoever’s done this had a lot of unrestricted access to the donut, and a sizable financial relationship with Dearth,” Lee said.

My mind went to a particular thorn in my side. Someone I had thought I was done with. D’lon Stanche, Mr. Stench himself, fit exactly the profile Lee just described.

“I may have a suspect, in that case,” I growled.

“I’m glad to hear that. Dug around your deal with Whalehunter a little bit, talked to some folk in LA. I established contact with someone I believe to be one of their intelligence operatives,” Lee told me.

I scowled. “Is that good or bad?” I asked.

“Mostly good, a little bad. The way this’un talks makes it seem like he’s just an affiliate rep, but I smell a cover story. He knows too much, too quickly. Can answer questions about high level military commands without a delay to request the information. A low-level civilian wouldn’t have that kind of info off-hand,’ he explained.

“What’s that mean for us?” I asked.

“Means I don’t have anything solid for you at the moment, but I suspect your new partners have a sophisticated intelligence operation. They recognized me, quickly, and sent their man to ward off my inquisitions. It means I can’t trust any of his answers without further context, and that I’m at the very beginning of what will either be a very short, or a very long relationship,” Lee explained, leaning on the door with his arms crossed. “We’ll learn more with your next foray against Kraken, which they are officially requesting.”

I sighed. “I can’t go fight Kraken until the reaper hounds situation is solved. I’ll be available immediately after. Tell him I’ll honor our deal.”

Lee nodded slowly. “I’ll get word to ‘em. Something else on the reaper hounds, your research department went over the preliminary scans and left this here.” He handed me a small folder, with the heading “reaper hounds” at the top.

“Oh, great, thank you,” I said, opening the file to skim through it.

The reaper hounds were primarily reptilian, in spite of their canid appearance. The file noted that the reaper hound we had was pregnant with an egg growing inside its reproductive organ. The rest of it was fairly basic information, talking about bone and muscle structure, detailing the anatomy of their scythe-armed tentacles, and indicating their potential for intelligence.

A final note pointed to an x-ray scan of the hound’s skull. A circle was drawn around a series of dark lines and bulbs with the note ‘likely communication device. If the other hounds all have this, it's likely they take their orders directly.”

What’s your plan with them dogs?” Lee asked, interrupting my reading. “Just curious.”

“I’m gonna let them follow the scent trail, if they can. The damn hounds are hiding in this city somewhere, I just need to find out where,” I said, closing the folder and setting it back down. It would be secure in the office.

“Well, that one across the hall is pretty active. Be careful with it,” he said.

“I will, Lee. Thank you,” I said, reaching across to shake his hand.

He returned the gesture and nodded at me. “Awful thin, far as operational intelligence goes.”

I nodded back. “Yeah, sure is. I’m on the line for most of it. It should be alright. I’m focused on keeping my people alive.”

Lee shook his head and blew out his cheeks. “Well, good luck. I’ll have more for you if you make it back.”

“Loving the confidence, Lee,” I said on my way past.

He shrugged. “I'm as confident as I can be. But you’re getting into the ring with an opponent who is visible with the naked eye, from space. I can’t lie, they’ve got you on weight.”

“Yeah, that’s not ideal,” I said, hand on the doorknob. “Fuckin weird too. It had a whole residential neighborhood in its suit. People walkin’ around livin’ lives and going grocery shopping and shit. Looked like something out of an American sitcom.”

Lee scowled at that. “You sure there’s nothing left of the people it’s attached to?”

I turned and leaned on the door, thinking. Thresher had said there was nothing left, but he was a man with an obvious grudge in addition to a mission. He might not have told me the truth. But then I remembered that terrifying flash of Kraken’s mind, looming over my own. It had felt like Rock, the titanic shark, an instant before he snapped me in half.

Just pure hunger.

“Pretty sure,” I finally answered.

“What you describe sounds like playing house,” Lee said, frowning at the floor.

I blinked. “Kind of depressing when you put it that way.”

Lee nodded at me again. “Yeah, best go put it down.”

“Right,” I said, grabbing the doorknob again. “Working on that.”

I summoned my helmet and slid out, keeping myself between Lee and the crack in the doorway, just in case the camera crew were being jerks. Thankfully, they were far too enraptured with the reaper hound across from my office. Lee slipped out behind me and vanished up a hallway, before they could notice him.

Our guest had regained much of its senses. The blow to the head Jada had provided it appeared to have caused permanent damage to its ability to control light, as it blinked around the room and yowled repeatedly.

Soju stood stiff at the door, hackles up and teeth bared. Doofus was staring from a distance, watching but not engaging, with Murphy at his side. Rawlins and Reck were also watching through the glass.

Tollya and Jada were in the room with it.

Jada was directly in front of the yowling beast, keeping it pinned in the corner with her presence. Its scythe-like appendages were both broken and bleeding, but the tentacles still wailed on Jada’s armor. The beast flashed from one portion of the room’s far side to another, before it stopped and vomited on the floor.

The room automatically collected the bile through a series of drains. It would be stored for testing and analysis later on.

Cross-eyed, and yowling from the effort, the reaper hound made another attack attempt on Jada, while Tollya held the door cracked open, and all three dogs eagerly sniffed the opened area. Soju was sniffing and growling in alternating breaths, his eyes riveted on the shifting beast.

Jada grunted and hauled the reaper hound back from an attempted leap, gripping it around the chest and pushing it back to the ground, almost gently. It was wholly unable to harm her, claws and teeth merely breaking on her segmented armor. The H.O.B.B.S. crew filmed every moment.

“Alright,” I said. “You guys have its scent, get out of there and leave that thing alone.”

Tollya and Jada moved to obey, Jada’s armor retracting as she stepped through the door. The reaper hound stopped trying to manipulate the light and panted in its corner. After a long moment, it sat down, keeping its eyes on us.

“Can you tell me where the rest of them are?” I asked Doofus.

He cocked his head at me while I spoke, then broke into a casual smile with his tongue lolling out. His talk-board sprang to life and said, “Good hunters!”

I took that as a yes and turned to gesture for the dogs to lead the way. Soju and Doofus both vigorously sniffed the floor and walls as they started jogging back toward the lobby. I followed, my entourage and camera crew in tow.

Rawlins even had his magnum revolver drawn and held in both hands, pointing in the air.

I stared at him from inside my reflective helmet for a long moment, before hissing, “Rawlins!”

He looked around, blinking rapidly, before meeting my gaze as the camera man zoomed in on us.

“Yeah boss?” Rawlins said.

“They’re not in the building with us,” I said. “Holster it, before you scare the civilians.”

The BlueCleave celebrity sheepishly obeyed, and we followed the dogs through the lobby. Soju circled to check the rear staircase, where we had last fought the reaper hounds, before running back to join Murphy and Doofus in guiding us toward the front doors.

Chapter 55

Once we were outside in the sunshine again, the dogs all faltered. Doofus approached and summoned his talk-board.

“Smell weak,” it said. “Many trails.” Doofus sniffed the air and circled. Murphy stood at the top of the stairwell to the lobby and sniffed at the air. Soju sneezed and walked off behind a nearby planter.

“It’s okay Doof. I know where we need to go,” I growled.

Tollya scowled. “What you know, boss?”

“Just a building we have to check. If it's what I think it is, it’ll save us all a bunch of time,” I answered. My hand curled into a fist.

Tollya spoke into her radio, and BlueCleave scrambled a small fleet from the garages below the tower. We piled into three rollers. The dogs got their own, with a nervous hobb driver who called each of them ‘sir,’ and insisted they wear seat belts.

After all, dogs need to wear seatbelts in the car too. Not like they’re immune to kinetic forces, or the shearing force a sudden stop can produce.

As we pulled away from the curb, I had to chuckle to see all three dogs hanging their heads out the windows, tongues happily waving.

The H.O.B.B.S. crew rode in their own vehicle, and I rode with Tollya and Jada, in the lead roller. Once the windows were sealed, and Tollya had the vehicle in gear, I turned to tell them where we were going.

“Take us to Stanche’s rental building, Tollya. He’s my suspect,” I said.

Tollya scowled and blinked. “Who?”

“Mr. Stench,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Oh! That guy? He seem too soft to betray us,” Tollya remarked.

Scientific Lie-Detector for Every Home! BuyMort announced. Tollya blinked and I imagined she must have just gotten the same thing.

“Worth it?” I asked.

“3 stars. Is not science,” Tollya returned.

Jada remarked from the back, “He’s openly scared of anyone in a starfish suit. I’ve watched his expressions.”

I shook my head. “Maybe he’s more scared of Dearth. Who knows, and I don’t care. I’m gonna wring his neck.” I leaned on the window and looked at the city. “Maybe literally.”

Tollya swiped the rollers built-in tablet up and asked BlueCleave control for directions. They sent us over a route, and we got moving through the city's busy streets. Prescott was out in force, our temporarily suspended workforce happy to be back in action and earning morties.

Much of the workers who lived in the city were forced to change jobs in order to accommodate the tourism rush, and so cargo loaders quickly became waiters or line cooks. The sanitation department was in overdrive, at Axle’s direct request. He’d said that it was imperative we put on a good face, with all the morties in town.

Keeping them comfortable while the world ended around them was the key. If it looked alright on the surface, clean streets and bustling commerce, it was easy to ignore the lurking threat beneath it all. Or treat it like a tourism attraction.

Before we’d gotten in the vehicles, I’d felt the tell-tale shimmy in the ground of an earthquake rolling through town. Axle was in surgery, but Jada used his satellite uplink to check our recently dug defenses, while en route. The earthquake had been a small one, three-point-five on the Richter scale.

Our defenses had softened it to something I’d barely felt, and there was no damage to any of our infrastructure yet.

Based on how the gravity sling was creating the earthquakes, we were expecting another within the hour. After each, we would have to check our defenses and possibly order more dug. Fortunately, the fleet of private vessels in orbit meant ease in that task, when it became necessary.

The global MortBlock map was concerning, it showed dwindling Dearth ownership being replaced by Kraken corp. Only my area remained, and I had been compulsively resetting my own since the tsunamis. Fortunately, Kraken’s repeated attempts to overtake my borders in BuyMort’s eyes had been stymied, for the moment.

I had to admit, I was nervous without Axle conscious and running things, but I was relieved his new eyes were getting installed. It felt like that mistake was being erased, even though I knew his life had been altered irrevocably.

We pulled into D’lon’s neighborhood, identified as Knob Hill, passing through a security checkpoint on the way in. His building was at the top of a rounded hill, surrounded by heavy fencing. The entire thing was off our MortBlock coverage, as per our rental contract. We could see the coverage delineations within the structure, but not make alterations to them without forfeiting rent for an entire month.

Tollya signaled to the final roller in our formation, and they pulled over to take the checkpoint for BlueCleave. We’d used his records to scout the private security D’lon had hired.

It was unclear whether or not his rental goons were part of the reaper hound smuggling ring, and their paperwork read like it was a normal building protection gig. In the interest of good business relations with local mercenary affiliates, our BlueCleave troops were under non-lethal orders.

The squad that rolled in behind us to claim the front gate checkpoint were all armed with beanbags, tasers, and mace. Just to be polite.

Our small convoy was greeted by a nervous looking Nah’gh doorman when we pulled up to park in front of the building’s entrance.

“Oh BuyMort above, it’s him,” the doorman mumbled, slithering out to greet me. “Hello, sir! Welcome! You and your guards are welcome here, obviously, but we do have a house rule about weapons in the common areas,” he said.

I gripped my Highwater blaster shotgun and rested one hand on my plasma falchion’s handle. “Stand aside,” I growled.

The Nah’gh slid to the side immediately, bowing lightly as he gestured for us to go past with one outstretched claw.

Before I entered the building’s lobby, I turned and nodded to see another half dozen rollers pulling up at the front gates, and a pair of hovercraft in the sky. BlueCleave was mobilizing for this push fully. I stopped in the doorway and held the heavy pane of reinforced glass open for the dogs.

They each came through one at a time, all vigorously sniffing the floor. Soju uttered a compulsive bark, before fixating on a nearby set of double doors as we entered.

The lobby was lavishly appointed, with two lounge areas built around a centralized fireplace. One side housed a bar with a few surly looking patrons, but the other was empty. All three dogs immediately spread out around the lobby, sniffing their way across the room in sharp zigzags.

I held up a hand and waited, watching the dogs. Soju’s ears perked up as he was sniffing, and the smaller dog emitted a growl at a stairwell door, before charging it. Murphy and Doofus both perked up their ears and turned to head back toward their teammate. Within a minute of having entered the lobby, all three dogs were growling, barking, or exhibiting a stiff posture toward the stairwell door.

I turned to Tollya at my back. “Secure this lobby. No one comes, no one goes. Until we find them, and find who is responsible for them, this place is locked down,” I told her.

“Got it boss!” Tollya barked, immediately turning and speaking into her shoulder-mounted radio. “Need unit to lobby, secure the building.” Her voice faded away as she turned to go meet her incoming hobbs and arrange the lockdown.

The wealthy people at the bar squawked in outrage when hobbs in BlueCleave uniforms prevented them from getting up or leaving. I overheard calm, bored sounding hobbs telling our renters that they were free to leave once the security action was complete, but that they needed to stay put for their own safety.

The usual lines.

Truth was, none of them were free to do a damned thing until I was satisfied they weren’t behind the reaper hounds in my city.

Soju barked and jumped against the stairwell door, scrabbling at the knob with his paws. He stopped and looked up at me, before sneezing and summoning his talk-board.

“Open!” his board demanded.

I nodded at the dog and raised a finger. “Wait,” I said. “Jada’s coming, with some more troopers.”

The orange dog huffed and laid down, staring at the door, with his feet sticking out behind him.

Jada had stopped in the doorway when we entered, waiting for more hobbs in starfish suits. A heavily armored contingent had been scrambled to our location and were part of the convoy that arrived just after us.

In her new full-coverage starfish suit armor, Jada was intimidating. Flanked by six of our best troopers in their base-tier suits, she was downright terrifying.

An oversized, anthropomorphic hyena wrapped in shining metal led six tall, gray humanoid aliens in heavy combat gear through the lobby. All the detained renters stopped whining and stared in silence with the rest of us.

Soju hopped to his feet and barked again as Jada stopped in front of us. I nodded at her, and she dipped her chin in reply, metal-clad fingers gripping her mace tight.

Once the door was swung open, the dogs immediately pushed through and into the stairwell. It was nice, with marble paneling to mask the concrete, and ornate silver-trimmed lighting sconces. Each floor in the side-by-side stairwell was marked with gold emblazoned numbers or letters.

The dogs ran ahead, but Murphy stopped on the landing below us, his hackles raising as he sniffed the air and growled. Doofus noticed and stopped on the landing below him, looking back for his friends. Soju ran further ahead, heedless of the other dogs.

I trotted down to Murphy, Jada and my squad of troopers at my back. When I patted the dog's side, being careful to avoid his bladed weapons, Murphy turned and wagged his tail at me once, before staring back down the stairwell, nose twitching.

The dog came with us, but only after I moved down the next few steps. I glanced back at Jada and frowned.

“How do you smell in that thing?” I asked.

She pointed at the tip of her nose, covered in segmented steel bridges that curved to fit her skull’s shape. “The suit breathes well, it encourages airflow between its gaps, especially around hotter portions of the body. If I sniff,” she said, pausing to demonstrate. “It opens to allow the function.”

Her suit did indeed flex its metal segments, opening at the front of her nostrils to allow her to actively sniff the air. I watched it for a long moment and saw what she had explained. Tiny ripples of movement flexed across her body, different segments of armor rippling open and closed.

Even the sections covering her jaw and mouth extended or retracted into the dimensional housing when she spoke. The movements of her mouth were completely unrestricted while the armor still provided full coverage.

“Once it senses attack,” she said, striking her own thigh lightly. “It seals up.” The armor plating visibly stiffened, and the faint blue light emanating from the extended ridges across her body flared brighter.

I nodded at her. “You and I take point. Everybody else behind us. If we engage reaper hounds, bunch up around the dogs and protect them. Rawlins, Reck, you two stay at the far back, protect your AV crew.”

My troopers behind me all grunted or saluted their recognition of my orders. The H.O.B.B.S. crew shuffled into position, the orc cameraman at the rear.

The six starfish troopers that had come with us were some of the most heavily armed and armored hobbs I’d ever seen. They wore thick gorgets on top of armor plated chest pieces with full limb coverage. Each hobb had on a heavy helmet with further neck and skull protection. My very own storm troopers.

They also carried a war pick, a machete, a laser pistol, and a laser rifle.

BlueCleave clearly adored having the funds to afford las-tech. While they were stocked with conventional arms, in case we lost charging capability, most of them preferred the energy weaponry. Too many bad experiences with Sleem, among other monsters.

Accompanied by the tromp of armored feet, I walked down the stairs past the first basement level. Beyond that was three levels of parking garages. The third was covered in darkness. My helmet illuminated the area for me and showed a neatly slashed silver light sconce. Whatever had destroyed it had cut into the concrete on either side of it, leaving a tidy, ominous scar in the wall.

I held up a closed fist, stopping the humans, hobbs, and orcs behind me on the stairs.

Soju stood stiff at the third door, a faint, low growl emitting from his throat. When Doofus and Murphy arrived behind us, both dogs activated their suit’s weaponry. A faint light at Doofus’ throat indicated his sonic weapon was armed. He would be careful not to activate it with a bark unless needed.

Small, but sturdy looking metal arms rose from Murphy’s sides, extending fixed six-inch blades. The arms swiveled and pivoted easily, moving gracefully as they assumed a defensive posture.

Jada placed her armored hand lightly on my shoulder, and I nodded, as I reached for the doorknob.

It was locked, so I crushed it, cracks and pops of metal echoing in the dark staircase.

Soju made an indignant grunt and glared at me, summoning his talk-board. “Noisy monkey,” it said on his behalf.

I chuckled and lightly pushed the warped door out of the way. An alarm sounded, and the heavy, echoing clang of several metal doors opening at once filled the air. Soju glared up at me disapprovingly.

“I’m not stealthy,” I told him. “Never claimed I was.”

Soju snorted and ignored me, facing the darkened doorway. Doofus slipped past and illuminated the darkened, cavernous room.

We were in the bottom level of the parking structure, which was obvious from the painted lines and numbers on the asphalt under our feet. The familiarity stopped there, however, as the rest of the area had been significantly altered. A series of vats hummed and buzzed from the walls directly in front of us, their lights the only source of illumination.

In their depths floated reaper hound eggs, attached to the tank via small pipes and IVs. The tanks bubbled and flickered in the dark, as we moved forward into the garage more fully. My squad of troopers spread out at our backs, ready to step forward and shield the dogs with their bodies.

Beyond the vats, separated from us by a stretch of open blacktop, was a series of over-sized kennels. Each conformed to the parking space it sat in and hugged its neighbor. The kennels were made of steel crates with rollaway doors, all of which stood open.

The starfish troopers at our back spread out. Jada and I held our positions. I listened for movement, as Jada’s armor cracked open at the front to allow her sniffing. All three dogs froze, facing the open kennels.

Doofus suddenly barked, a blast of sonic force tearing through the center of the underground garage. Three reaper hounds appeared, tumbling and bouncing as they were blasted away from the central road.

Chapter 56

From there, everything happened so fast it was hard to keep track of. Jada and I charged forward, hoping to get the hound’s attention and allow our troops to protect the dogs. Our troopers moved, but nowhere near fast enough to stop the dogs.

Reaper hounds appeared everywhere, shimmering as they became visible. They were in the road in front of us, on top of the kennels, even in the utility piping that ran across the ceiling. Their eyes flashed, and rumbling snarls filled the air.

Murphy darted out ahead of Jada, and I saw the flash of his dual blades in my helmet’s light enhanced vision. A reaper hound squealed, both tentacles gushing blood as it scrambled backwards. Murphy lunged into the space it created with a snarl, and his blades plunged over his head, extending lightning fast in a lethal strike that pinned the reaper hound to the floor.

The beast yowled, Murphy’s blades flashed again, and the yowl was cut short.

Jada grunted and turned, raising her arm as a bladed tentacle wrapped around her throat, seeking access with its razor sharp tip. The armor at her throat lit up, solidified, and prevented the reaper hound from harming her.

She grabbed the tentacle and yanked back on it, stepping in close and bashing down at the empty air in front of us. Her mace connected and a reaper hound to our left yowled, before flickering out and reappearing on the floor at our feet. Blood seeped from its ears.

The starfish troopers at our rear opened fire with their laser rifles. The rifles were boxy, with long focusing chambers making up the majority of the weapon. They could be set for pulse, or sustained fire. In the cramped, dark underground parking lot, the hobbs had all chosen the pulse setting, as BlueCleave safety and operational guidelines specified for close quarters combat with gathered friendlies.

I loved my hobbs. Professional, every single one of em.

Pulsed laser fire started to heat the air around us, as chips of concrete and fragments of superheated metal blasted off from our surroundings. Most of their fire went into the ceiling and kennels in front of us, driving the reaper hounds to the ground in a sudden rush.

Wherever I noticed a reaper hound, I told my helmet to cast fairy fire, illuminating the beasts in an outline of shimmering color. The helmet followed their movements and hurriedly collated the data, providing me an approximation of where the beasts actually were.

I lunged at the colorful shapes, trying to ignore the confusing visual of the reaper hounds projections. My first few strikes missed, and scythe-bladed tentacles found me for quick strikes. Painkiller pumped into my veins, and the starfish suit went to work patching me up.

My system caught up with the movement of the reaper hound attacking me, and I drove the magically sharp blade through its torso, pinning it to the blacktop.

Soju yelped and stepped back as my suit sprouted tendrils. He sniffed at the metal arms and shook his head, before suddenly leaping out in front of me.

“Soju, no!” I shouted.

The dog glanced back at me as a reaper hound materialized in front of him. Soju was less than a quarter the size of the beast, and I started seeing visions of what Phyllis would do to me for letting the dog get killed.

But his combat vest surprised me, all three turrets pivoting to follow Soju’s line of sight. He fixated in front of an incoming reaper hound, and three small muzzle flashes lit up the garage around us. A reaper hound slid to Soju’s feet, dead with a trio of tiny, smoking holes in its forehead.

Another moved in to attack the small dog, scythes raised. Soju’s turrets pivoted, and two scythes fell to the ground. It raised a massive paw, claws extended, to swipe at the small dog. The turrets punched through its paw, before Soju fixated and put it down with another three shots to the forehead.

That’s right, Phyllis had told Soju to protect me. My bodyguard had trusted this little dog to do her job in her absence. She may be stoned all day every day, but she’d never once displayed a lack of ability when it came to character assessment.

I started to trust Soju and followed the dog into the growing fray.

Reaper hounds leapt from the kennel rooftops and the utility ducting in the ceiling, lunging toward our group. Murphy sliced another to ribbons as it attacked him, lunging in with his own jaws for the killing blow.

Doofus blasted one with a well-placed sonic blast, Jada caught another with her mace, and Soju pinpoint targeted another. Of our front line, I was doing the least work.

The starfish troopers at our backs formed up in a small, inverted wedge, protecting the doorway and still contributing to the battle in the garage. The H.O.B.B.S. crew was crammed in the stairwell behind them, the camera-orc doing his best to get good footage of the battle. Tollya led BlueCleave’s effort, shouting orders and setting the example with her own rifle. Las-fire filled the air, creating tiny pockets of heat for me to move through.

I tried to meet the reaper hounds push with my ‘magically’ sharp sword, but they seemed to avoid me, instead attacking Jada with all their fury. She was covered in blood and severed bits of their tentacles, her mace in particular dripping in the dim light.

The Knowle warrior stepped forward, out of the protection of the group, to meet the last few reaper hounds as they approached. She roared, the sound mechanically enhanced from inside her armor, and swung her weapon.

The first hound appeared as she slammed her mace into its shoulder, lifting the beast bodily and sending it slumped to the pavement with a yowl. Another darted in from the side, illuminating the garage with a series of fast strikes to her armor. Sparks flew and danced in the gloom, and Jada delivered a crushing downward blow to the beast.

It appeared as it died, directly under her heavy mace, while its projection blinked out. The rest of us froze as the final reaper hound appeared in front of Jada, just before it leapt. This last reaper hound abandoned its light altering ability and merely leapt on top of Jada, its front four limbs desperately seeking a gap in her armor with its claws.

She slid back a step, grunting with exertion as her mace clattered to the ground. Her hands clutched at the beast's ribs. Both combatants' powerful legs pushed against the blacktop. The beast's claws skidded and scraped across Jada’s metal covering.

Sparks shined, and the reaper hound yowled, an instant before Jada heaved and threw the beast off. Without hesitating, Soju fixated on the beast and sniped it, and another perfect trio of smoking holes appeared in its forehead as it slumped, dead.

I froze, sword raised and at the ready. After a long moment in the dark, I asked, “is that it? That all of em?”

The starfish troopers at our back laughed or cheered, jostling one another and taking up a looser formation. One of them stayed in the doorway, ensuring that if we missed a reaper hound, it would have to go through our trooper to escape that way.

I nodded at that trooper and turned back to Jada. She deactivated her armor, allowing it to recede into its dimensional storage docks in the starfish suit. The metal lines tracing her body were thicker than mine, and each of them extended up to deploy or retract the armored plating.

“Looks like all of em,” Jada said.

I nodded, sheathing Falcor. “Looks like that armor held up pretty good,” I said.

“Yes it did,” Jada said. She held a hand out and redeployed the armor plating for it. “Takes charge to maintain, so there’s a time limit.”

I shrugged. “Can always just break something though,” I added.

Jada smiled. “The charge even gathers through my mace, when the armor is deployed. Its connectivity is much better than the first stage starfish.”

“Can’t wait for my own,” I said, glancing down at my phone. It was getting hot in my pocket.

I pulled it out and saw Molls’ face, and my heart dropped.

Still, I swiped to answer it, and the psychic deity connected us.

“Molls, hey. I am so sorry, but it's not a good time,” I said.

She flushed a deep pink and adopted a forced smile. “Hi handsome!” she said. “My father was just talking to me about some show he saw last night, and now he’s insisting on talking to you.”

The fresh blood my suit had pumped into me drained from my face in a rush. I slowly shook my head and stared at her with wide eyes.

“Is . . . is he there right now? With you?” I asked in a quiet voice.

Molls lightly bit her lip, nodding rapidly.

“Ah hell,” I sighed. “Well, I truly am sorry. Both to you, Molls, and to your father. I can’t talk right now. We’re dealing with a major security issue.”

Molls continued nodding, but she looked off screen and her scales flushed with hints of yellow.

“I will call you back as soon as I can, I promise,” I said.

Molls forced a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and nodded one more time. She swiped the phone closed without another word and I groaned, putting the phone back in my pocket.

I looked around the parking garage, taking in all my people. “We done down here?”

Murphy had gone to investigate the kennels, with Doofus not far behind him. Tollya walked slowly down the row behind them, peering in each kennel as she went. The H.O.B.B.S. crew picked carefully through the carnage around us, filming everything.

“Bad dogs gone,” Soju’s board suddenly announced. I glanced down in surprise, and the little orange dog wandered off to pee against one of the nearby kennels.

Tollya turned back and shrugged. “Starfish unit secure garage. I do head-count myself,” she told me.

I nodded back at her. “Thank you Tollya. Let me know when you’re done.” I turned to face the Knowle warrior at my side. “Jada, I need you to stay down here. Protect them.”

She nodded, and I turned to leave. The hobb door guard stood aside for me, and I climbed the stairs back up to the lobby.

Chapter 57

When I arrived, I was pleased to see Rayna and a squad of starfish-suited hobbs in command of the room. Her hovercraft sat outside, in the valet area. It was the one with CUBE riding inside it, I could tell by the oversized plug ports on the side. If needed, the entire fleet of BlueCleave hovercraft could recharge by plugging into that beast.

“Boss!” Rayna barked. “All tenants secured.”

“Good work Rayna, thank you,” I replied as I approached. “The basement is clear. No casualties. I think we got ‘em all.”

Everyone paused as another earthquake rumbled the floor beneath our feet. I looked around as light fixtures jumped and swayed, and the occasional squeak of dismay was uttered by the wealthy detainees. Out of habit, I thumbed the reset on my MortBlock.

“Good lord man!” one rumbled. “At least let us go stand in the doorway.” He spoke to a stone-faced hobb holding a laser rifle. The hobb simply shook his head.

Within a few seconds, the rumbling had stopped. I shook my head and looked back to Rayna. “Where is D’lon Stanche?” I asked.

Rayna pointed, her face placid amidst the storm of unrest brewing around her. The wealthy guests of that particular rental were not used to being treated in any way un-gently, let alone held against their will.

“I said I’m leaving,” a woman shrieked, near the back of the pack. She strode purposefully forward, and a hobb gently stopped her with an outstretched arm. An explosion of angry shouting started at the center of the small crowd, and several of them stood.

My hobbs all tensed, but none of them shouldered their weaponry. The private security forces were all in a line, their weapons on the ground in front of them. None of them were stupid enough to present as a threat, but several of their clients still urged them to act. The crowd was agitated, and noisy, so I raised my plasma saber in the air and ignited it.

The sharp tear of burning air filled the room briefly, rolling over the crowd with a visual effect. Black smoke poured in a pillar to the ceiling, until I flicked the sword off.

“Shut up!” I roared. “Nobody goes anywhere, by order of the Warlord of Arizona; me,” I growled, my helmet enhancing my voice. The crowd was shocked into silence, and simply stared at me. The blood spatters on my clothing and body added to my intimidating presence, no doubt.

I looked around slowly, letting each of them stare into my mirrored helmet.

“There are monsters in your basement!” I finally shouted. “Or there were, anyway. I’m Tyson Dawes, your landlord, and I need to know why there were monsters in your basement, here at Knob Hill.” As I spoke, I swept the crowd, before stopping to stare at D’lon Stanche.

The well-dressed man turned slowly and pushed his way through the crowd to the bar.

“Everyone behave for a few minutes, and this will all be over,” I growled. Then I started walking to the bar. The crowd parted for me.

D’lon sat down in front of an abandoned cocktail and clutched the glass with shaking hands. As I approached from behind him, the man raised the glass and poured a measure of its contents in his lap, in an attempt to drink them. I leaned heavily on the bar at D’lon’s side and stared at him in silence while he blinked rapidly and dabbed at the liquid on his face and chest with a napkin.

“How many are there?” I finally asked.

D’lon shook his head and raised both shaking hands in the air, a clear sign of surrender. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear.”

I pressed down on the glossy wood of the bar, causing cracks to spread from my fist as I stood to loom over the other man. “Not a smart answer,” I growled.

“It’s the truth!” he squealed. D’lon put both hands on top of his head and pressed his face down onto the bar with a wail. “I don’t want your attention, I didn’t do whatever you think I did! Please don’t kill me!”

I frowned, glancing at the gathered crowd. I’d expected D’lon to break when confronted, but this was not what I had expected him to say. With a sigh, I leaned in and whispered loud enough for my helmet to transmit, “Then who, D’lon? Give me a name, if it’s not you.”

The man looked up at me, snot and tears both running. “I don’t know what ‘it’ even is!” he yelled.

It wasn’t the kind of yelling that came from anger, but from fear. I had heard it in Sada’s voice the instant before I crushed the life out of him, and it made me hesitate.

“Who has the third floor of the parking garage?” I asked.

“What?” D’lon said, blinking rapidly and frowning. “Parking garage?”

A head in the crowd turned our way, and I immediately fixated on it, whispering the command in my suit to illuminate the woman with fairy fire. The ‘spell’ did nothing but outline the person with a ring of multi-colored light in my HUD, but it would be useful for keeping an eye on them while I talked to D’lon.

“Someone uses the entire third floor of this building’s parking garage,” I repeated. “I need to know who that is.”

The man’s frown deepened, and he reached for another napkin. “I don’t understand. They just keep their car down there.”

“Who!?” I roared, slamming a fist down on the bar in front of him.

“Mrs. Pearson!” he yelled, turning and pointing at the woman I had outlined with fairy fire.

She had made her way to the far side of the crowd, unnoticed, and when D’lon shouted her name, the woman tried to make a break for it. The front doors of the lobby were close to her position.

Fortunately, so were several BlueCleave guards. The woman was seized before she made it five steps and lifted bodily from the ground to be carried back to me.

I stalked out of the crowd toward her, my boot falls thudding against the marble flooring and echoing against the suddenly silent walls.

“How many are left?” I asked the woman. She had short, dyed brown hair covering the natural gray in her temples, and wore an expensive-looking tracksuit, complete with sweat-band across her forehead.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, pointing over her shoulder toward the front door. “I just rent here, and I was about to go for my morning run. I’m really not sure why D’lon told you I have anything to do with this place.”

Her voice was different. Harsher than someone in retreat or hiding should be. She expected people to treat her as though they believed her, regardless of what else had transpired.

D’lon spoke up from the bar. “That’s not true! You work with me on the Dearth Conglomerate tickets.”

“How many?” I growled again, as my guards set her down in front of me.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” Mrs. Pearson sneered. “And unless you want to get rough with me, right in front of everyone else here —” she started.

I cut her off by grabbing her throat. “And what if I do?” I asked. I turned and pressed her to the brick and stone fireplace in the center of the lobby.

Mrs. Pearson gasped and gaped at me, eyes shot wide open.

“Why is it that your type is always surprised?” I asked, my voice low and dangerous. “You push and push, but it never fails to shock you when someone pushes back. Why is that?” I asked, lifting her bodily off the ground and squeezing her throat shut entirely.

Her eyes bulged and she managed a sharp, hoarse gasp before I released her, letting the woman slump to the floor.

“Five!” she croaked, hands at her own throat. Mrs. Pearson gasped in a ragged breath. “If you killed all the hounds in the basement, there are five more in the city,” she finally said, leaning back against the brick behind her heavily.

“I was directed to release them,” Mrs. Pearson gasped, still staring at me with wide eyes. “Just moments before you arrived.”

I nodded and straightened. “Where are they going?” I asked.

The woman cringed, flinching away from me. Her face screwed up in visible discomfort and, in a small voice, she said, “I really don’t know. They don’t tell me that. All I do is open the doors for them when I’m told to. Feed the damn things.”

I clenched and unclenched my fist, thinking about what to do with the woman. After a moment’s thought, I shrugged. “Take her,” I said.

Rayna stepped forward with another BlueCleave trooper. The trooper started securing Mrs. Pearson’s hands, and she began resisting again, until she saw me turn my chrome-plated head to face her.

“Kill her if she resists,” I growled.

The trooper holding the woman straightened. “Yes boss,” he grunted.

Rayna stepped in front of me. “What you need, boss?” she asked.

I shook my head, trying to think. Dearth was predictable, all I had to do was think like them and figure out where they had deployed the hounds.

In a flash, it came to me. My heart dropped and I started running. “Axle!” I shouted to Rayna. They’re going after Axle again!”

Chapter 58

Jada met me at the top of the stairs, all three dogs in tow. A hovercraft buzzed down to park in front of the building, as we ran for the front doors.

“I’m going directly to him. Catch up as you can,” I yelled.

“He’s in Dr. Miles’ office again!” Jada shouted. “They needed the equipment there. A squad of troopers is on site.”

I nodded and leapt into the sky. Jada and the dogs piled into the hovercraft with Rayna and our new prisoner. It lifted off shortly after I had vanished.

From my perspective in the sky, the city was a confusing tumble of tall and short buildings. I yelled at my helmet to put Dr. Miles’ office as my waypoint, and a small, red icon appeared on my HUD. Flying as fast as I could without completely draining the suit, I veered through the city and landed on the rooftop.

Dr. Miles operated out of a Dearth terrestrial-medical building. All of them were the same, I had seen the pre-build plans in Dearth’s database. Axle had shown them to me, in case he was attacked during his surgery.

The surgical wing was on the top floor, directly beneath the helipad. It had a locking elevator for patients, but I just took the stairs. The door knob crushed beneath my hand, and I broke it open, swinging the door wide and taking the stairs in a leap.

I was getting more and more used to using the gravitic drive in short bursts, to control take-offs or landings. It helped my mobility in more ways than one.

The surgical suite had two viewing areas. One classical suit offset and slightly above the suit, and a hallway with windows that connected to both the rooftop stairs, and the main elevator to the lobby. I slid to a stop in the hallway as Dr. Miles glared up at me.

His engineer was in the surgical suite with him, another Knowle. They were both wearing scrubs and surgical gloves, and the Knowle wore some headgear with an extendable optic device. There was also a nurse, a young-looking Nah’gh woman I hadn’t seen before.

Dr. Miles said a few words to her, and the nurse slithered across the room to the main door, thumbing an intercom at its side.

“Hello, can I help you?” she asked, her voice faint and tinny from the speaker.

I panted in relief and walked over to press the button. “No, it’s all good. I’m just here checking security, I’m gonna go check in with your team. Thank you!”

The Nah’gh nurse ducked her head in a nod, and turned back to speak with Dr. Miles, shrugging. Her facemask moved, but I couldn’t hear her speak. Dr. Miles shook his head and shrugged, before turning back to his work on the operating table.

Axle’s chest rose and fell rhythmically on the table, and the hallway seemed secure. I stopped and sniffed the air, just in case, but I couldn’t smell anything. The helmet transmitted smells through its surface, so long as nothing harmful was detected, but either there were no reaper hounds around to smell, or my nose just wasn’t powerful enough to smell them unless they were on top of me.

Either way, I went to go check in with the hobbs securing the hospital.

I found the first behind me, approaching from the surgical floor’s elevator lobby, holding a heavy laser rifle. When they saw it was me, the starfish trooper raised their chin once in greeting. When on duty, holding a weapon with both hands, they were not required to salute.

Priorities.

“Boss,” the hobb man said.

“Trooper, I’m glad to see this place secure. Where’s your team, we have incoming hounds,” I told him.

Behind his helmet, I saw the hobbs face crinkle in the tell-tale movement of an eager smile. “Really? Most of team downstairs. One in main stairwell, just in case.”

We walked down the hallway to the surgical suite’s lobby, and I moved to the main stairwell’s door. It was another four point stairwell, with an open center. Dearth pre-fabs liked using that design; it left room for a standard passenger elevator if desired.

“I’m going to head down and check. You stay up here, guard this suite. Nothing gets to our operations manager, understood?” I asked.

“Yes boss. Protect with life,” the hobb grunted.

I nodded at him and saluted, one fist to my chest. Then I stepped off the edge of the stairwell and plummeted the dozen floors to the ground. One my way by, I saw a surprised hobb in BlueCleave armor raise a laser rifle at me, then lean over the rail to watch me land.

The lobby crew was at their stations, two hobbs guarding each door. I breathed a sigh of relief as they challenged my entrance, slumping to breathe. I’d beaten the reaper hounds.

But only by seconds.

The doors to the street opened, seemingly by themselves.

“No!” I shouted, concentrating on the gap in the doors. It was across the building from me, and I could see the tell-tale shimmers of invisible reaper hounds.

The gravitic drive activated, and I tore through the building in a flash. Both sets of guarding hobbs were knocked off their feet with the shockwave, and I slammed into the crowd of reaper hounds as they were entering the building.

I flailed, feeling invisible limbs, tentacles, and claws. One hound grappled me, four of its limbs pinning me to the ground as it bit my shoulder and sunk its scythes deep into my chest. The rest of the hounds scrambled away, moving with terrible speed.

I dragged my plasma falchion off its docking holster and ignited it.

The reaper hound yowled, but I raised the blade and scorched us both. My opponent fell away in two pieces, but I merely boiled the skin on my stomach and chest.

I was up and running as the painkiller kicked in. Tendrils popped out to carve my flesh away and replace it, but I was fixated on the reaper hounds. One was tangling with the duo of starfish troopers at the end of the hall, by the stairwell. It had one hobb down, legs slashed to ribbons and gushing blood, the other pinned with the beast's claws and fangs buried in it.

The moment was clear, like a flash of insight. I saw my chance as the reaper hound reared to leap off the hobb. My gravitic drive engaged, and I slammed the hound through the wall in a shower of black plasti-crete rubble.

My cartoon starfish appeared, panting at my side, with its top limbs resting on its bottom limbs. “Careful user! You’re using charge as quickly as you’re generating it! Try to break more things directly, with the gauntlets!”

I ignored it.

The hound at my feet was dead, and the starfish troopers at my back were up and moving, coming to back us up. Above me in the stairwell, I heard the sounds of a hobb fighting a reaper hound and activated my gravitic drive.

From the center of the stairwell, I hovered up and ignited the hound with a thrust from my plasma falchion. The hobb trooper, torn up and gushing blood, nevertheless saluted me, before crumpling to allow his tendrils to repair his body.

I pushed the drive again and made it to the top floor, where the last two hounds raced down the hallway to Axle’s surgical suite. The floor guard caught the first as it exited the doors and the two of them tumbled violently into the opposite wall. I slashed the creature through the back with the falchion as I came through the doorway, then slapped the weapon back in its docking port.

With another burst of focused concentration, I fixated on the shimmer of the final hound and pushed the drive as hard as I could. It activated and the hallway became a blur. I plunged into the reaper hound as my cartoon appeared.

“Out of charge, user! Hurry and break something!”

The hound immediately rolled in my grip and raked my belly with its claws. The scythe tentacles reached down and cut deep into both armpits. My arms went limp, and hot, surging blood pumped from my torso.

“User, there is no charge for repairs! You spent it all on movement, I warned you about playing with the gravity harness,” my cartoon helpfully added.

I raised a knee to press against the beast, and its rear claw shredded my thigh as it pushed me away. With a final grunt of effort, I reared back to headbutt the snarling monster.

It gratefully took my invitation and plunged its teeth into my neck.

The hallway surged into and out of focus as the sheer agonizing pain of my injuries caught up to me. The suit was dead, and so was I.

A thundering roar sounded from the broken rooftop door. I flopped onto the ground, atop the suddenly still reaper hound and saw Rawlins standing in the doorway, a giant magnum revolver smoking in his hand.

Reck stared at him with respect, and Rawlins shrugged as he holstered his magnum. “All in a day’s work, boss.”

Before I blacked out, I reared back my bleeding head and smashed it into the reaper hounds ribcage.

“Good job user!” my cartoon starfish shrieked, standing in the center of my fading vision. “Now let’s get to work!”

Chapter 59

A few minutes later, I stood in the hallway watching Rawlins try to flirt with the Nah’gh nurse through the intercom. My suit had finished patching up all the damage I caused myself to get, attacking the reaper hounds full on.

But we had saved Axle, again.

I pulled out my psychic phone and pressed a button to activate it. When the bald-faced deity appeared, I sighed and said, “Molls please.”

His eyes widened, and he nodded, flicking up a picture of myself. I blinked and wiped at the blood smears on my face and head, flattening my hair with it. Whatever, I didn’t really mind looking like a mess when I was one. At least I wasn’t horrifying.

The camera crew had taken a break, at the insistence of Dr. Miles. For his patient’s sake, he didn’t want any recording of the surgery, and would probably have been after me for using my phone if he noticed. I turned away and leaned on the wall in the other direction, to avoid him seeing me.

Doofus rubbed against my side, having come over with the rest on the hovercraft. Now that the fight was done, I was happy to have him around. Being in his presence helped me feel better. Even little Soju appeared happy to see me when they arrived, though he turned his head away when I reached to pet him.

Molls answered the call. Her scales were a deep blue color, and it was clear she had been crying.

“Are you alright?” I immediately asked, concern lacing my voice. “What happened?”

She shrugged, her scaly shoulders rippling with pink and blue. I didn’t see blue on her very often, and never as deep as it was that night.

“Father was upset that you didn’t want to speak with him. He said some hurtful things,” Molls said, wiping her eyes with a large, soft cloth. “I hate being back home.”

“I’ll happily speak to him now. We had an emergency, Axle was in danger,” I said. “Surely he understands that affiliate needs come first.”

Molls blinked and peered at me closely for the first time. “Are you okay?” she finally asked.

I smirked from the corner of my mouth. “You know me. Nothing can keep me down for long.”

“Tyson, what happened?” Molls pressed. Her scales began to empty of color again. At least our conversation was helping what I suspected was depression, the blue.

“We got the reaper hounds. Prescott is safe again, kind of,” I said.

“But?” she asked, with a small, frustrated shake of her head.

“But I pushed too hard and almost died,” I said. There was no way to put it gently, but she wouldn’t have accepted anything less than honesty.

Molls was quiet for a long moment on the other end of the psychic connection. “How did it happen?” she finally asked.

“Ran out of charge before I tangled with one of the hounds,” I answered.

“You’re so reckless,” Molls whispered. I could see something else going through her mind as she looked at me.

“And?” I asked.

“And that gives my father all the excuse he needs to not like you, is all,” she sighed.

“Well, he’s pissed cause I couldn’t take his call, right? Tell him I’m free now,” I suggested.

“No, you don’t understand. He’s church aristocracy, old aristocracy, old family lines. There are protocols surrounding such insults,” she sighed again. Molls moved through her darkened room to the bed and laid down, providing me a titillating view of her shifting cleavage in the process.

“Would a visit maybe dull the sting?” I asked. “We’re making morties here again, that’s not outside the realm of possibilities.”

Molls flushed vibrant purple for an instant, and rolled over, holding her phone to look me in the eyes. “Don’t tease, that would fix everything.”

“I’ll even bring a gift from Nu-Earth. What kind of stuff does he like?” I asked, a small but genuine smile on my lips. “Your family doesn’t scare me. I’d love to come meet them.”

Molls eyes rolled and she snorted. “Don’t get too excited, love may be a strong word.”

I went stiff, and slowly took a deep breath. I couldn’t fail to say it anymore, I felt it welling up in me. After the reaper hound, and Rawlin’s save, when I thought about death I thought about Molls. In the instant before the gunshot, when I had realized I was done for, and the reaper hound was still tearing at me, I couldn’t think of anything but hurting Molls by failing to tell her how I felt.

“I love you, Molls,” I said, slowly and carefully pronouncing the words. “I have for a long time now, I’m sorry I couldn’t say it before.”

She stared at me on the phone, a breathless smile on her vibrant purple scales. “Don’t be,” she whispered. “I love you too.” Molls rolled over again, clutching her phone for a dizzying tumble. “I love you so much,” she repeated.

“Why don’t I come out and visit? For real, I mean it,” I said. “I should meet your family and bring gifts fitting their political or social standing. Whichever I’ve offended, really.”

Molls snorted a laugh and shook her head. “Ha! Father is easy. He likes collectables, rare alcohols, trophies, weapons, armor, typical guy stuff.” She waved a hand dismissively.

“Trophies? Like trophies of war?” I asked, brow furrowed. “What, hunting trophies?”

Molls blinked and nodded. “Either really.”

“Okay,” I said. “I can manage that. What about your mom?”

Molls rolled her eyes and frowned. “Booze,” she snarled.

“Seriously? BlueCleave is making tequila now, that would be a super easy gift,” I said.

“No, proper etiquette would be to bring something for the house, since she's the lady of the home. A gift for the house is a proper gift that recognizes her status,” Molls explained.

I froze, hunched up against the wall. “What?” I asked. “Like . . . curtains or something?”

Molls giggled, and another flash of purple filled her scales. “No, a nice bouquet of flowers would suffice.” She smiled at me for a moment before continuing, “are you really offering to visit?”

I nodded. “Absolutely. I have some things to finish up here, but I won’t be more than a couple of days. Then I’ll find a way out there and we can come home to Prescott together.” I finished by gently smiling at her.

She grinned back, her scales full of purple again. Molls mimed a kiss at the camera. “Thank you, my love. You’ve just made a bad night much better.”

“I’m just sorry I caused it to be bad in the first place,” I said.

“It’s not your fault, and I’m sure father's ire won’t last. It never does. He can just be very hurtful when he is upset,” she replied.

I nodded. “Lotta guys with that problem, seems like.”

Molls nodded. “Not you though, you just start apologizing for everything,” she said, with a wry smile.

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to resist laughing at myself.

Molls rolled her eyes. “Ugh! Stoppit!” she laughed.

I heard the unmistakable gait of Tollya’s boots on the linoleum behind me and turned my head to face her, a question on my features. She nodded and pointed over her shoulder, back at the mess of dead reaper hounds in the hallway.

“Molls, I gotta go again, work calls,” I told her with a soft smile.

She nodded, the purple in her scales still vibrant. “Okay, I’ll talk to you again soon. I love you,” she said, smiling hopefully.

I smiled back and nodded. “I love you too, Molls.”

Her smile and the purple in her scales rose in intensity as she reached to turn off her phone. Before I put mine back in my pocket, I saw the face of the trapped deity in the phone. He nodded gently at me and faded away.

Chapter 60

“What can I help you with, Tollya?” I asked, a tired smile on my lips.

“Sorry boss,” she started. Tollya paused and gestured over her shoulder again. “Dr. Miles say we need go. Wants us to take reaper hounds with.”

I nodded. “Fine, yeah. Let’s get em packed up, we need to store these bodies with the rest until research says they’re satisfied.” I paused, frowning as I thought. The hound nearest me was lopped cleanly in half. Both tentacles had been cut as well as the beast's torso.

“Tollya, do you know anyone who does taxidermy?” I asked.

She frowned but nodded. “If what I think is, Ordo do. You know Ordo,” she said.

“Yes I do,” I said. I pointed at the dead reaper hound and said, “have them bag that one up for me. I want Ordo to work his magic.”

Tollya scowled and shook her head. “Is no magic.”

“Turn of phrase, Tollya,” I said, stepping past her to the helipad staircase. “Turn of phrase.”

I left then, as Dr. Miles requested. Rayna, the dogs, and our prisoner were all in our hovercraft, waiting. Tucked away in the back of the vessel, on an energy containment and redirection platform, was Cube.

“TYSON!” Cube shouted. The little guy had imprinted on me, and while he didn’t seem to like me touching or lifting him, he was always happy to see me.

“Hey Cube, good to see you again,” I said, smiling at him. “Been a little while since I last saw you, how you doin’ buddy?”

“HUNGRY!” the box shouted.

“Well, I tell you, I am shocked to hear that,” I said, flatly. I turned and looked at Rayna. “Could you fly us to Silken Sands, please? I need to drop the dogs back off with Phyllis, or she’ll worry.”

She nodded and climbed into the cockpit while I slid the doors closed. Tollya was staying to secure the scene and keep security in place on Axle. We were confident that we had taken out the reaper hounds in the city, but nobody wanted to risk having missed one.

Besides, now that they were a threat, they would always be a threat. Dearth held the recipe, after all.

The ride home was quiet. Doofus leaned against my leg, and I petted him, but the other dogs merely curled up and slept. Our prisoner was gagged and silent, and Rayna didn’t talk as she flew me home.

All three dogs piled out of the hovercraft and headed for Phyllis, but Soju stopped and turned to look at me. He stared at me for a long moment, sneezed, and then trotted away to Phyllis’ waiting arms.

“Good boys!” I yelled, over the heavy whirr of the hovercraft's engines.

With a signal to Rayna, I closed the door and sat back down as we lifted off.

“Where going, boss?” Rayna grunted from the front cockpit.

I stared at the bound and gagged woman in her expensive tracksuit and snarled, “Southwest.”

The hovercraft took off, and we flew away, curving southeast toward Mexico. I was silent and unmoving until we started passing over the fields of earthquake protection. The great chasms in the earth distracted me from my dark thoughts and I stood to look out the window and see them better.

Dozens of massive holes were dug straight down, with layers of earth visible in the walls until shadow swallowed them up. The ground beneath us was pockmarked with extraordinarily deep, wide holes, spreading miles in either direction. Great fields of the holes vanished over the horizon in both directions.

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“Right here is good, Rayna,” I shouted.

She nodded and made some adjustments in the cockpit, flicking switches and changing the position of levers. The hovercraft came to a stop in the air above the earthquake protection fields. As I watched out the window, I saw the terrifying shimmy of the ground below us. Waves of force and momentum traveled up from the southeast, striking our demarcation in the ground, before rolling back on itself and petering out.

An earthquake's upper wave of kinetic energy was its most destructive, Axle had told me. As I watched our defenses work, I had to wonder what the rest of the world was experiencing. If we could afford more of these protective fields, I wanted to put them up around any known inhabited areas.

But first, we had a security issue to deal with. The reason I had taken us out into the middle of nowhere, with only my trusted military commander to accompany us. Well, her and a semi-organic box.

I summoned my anti-magic helmet and pulled the blindfold off Mrs. Pearson, before also removing her gag.

The woman glanced all around the cabin rapidly, eyes wide and nostrils flared. She took in Rayna behind us in the cockpit, the view out the window, and the creature inhabiting the rear compartment with us.

Cube was bigger than when I first got him. Much bigger.

Where before the little box would have fit easily in the palm of one hand, his secondary stage of life had seen him grow to the size of a large cardboard box. Since then, he’d undergone another life change.

Cube was roughly the size of a dumpster. His bulk filled the rear of the compartment, and I saw Mrs. Pearson eye him suspiciously. Her eyes shot wide when he cracked open his lid and rolled his grinders at her.

Cube didn’t like strangers.

“NO STARING!” he finally shouted, filling the cabin with his voice.

Mrs. Pearson paled but continued staring at the semi-sentient box.

“He has a point, Mrs. Pearson, it’s rude to stare,” I said.

She tore her eyes from Cube, and he immediately poured his body in the form of liquid metal, shaping himself into a flat surface against the walls. As he re-solidified, Cube altered the color of his exterior skin to look like the interior of the hovercraft.

Mrs. Pearson glanced back at the movement and was freshly shocked at Cube’s sudden absence.

I pushed into the seat across from her, taking her attention again and presenting my back to Cube. Not usually something I did, but he was shy around new people. Chances of him trying to grab me again were low, we’d had a long talk about it after he tried the first time.

Mrs. Pearson blinked and looked at her own reflection in my helmet. She became immediately uncomfortable and continued scanning the hovercraft again instead.

“You and I have a problem, Mrs. Pearson,” I said.

She blinked and scowled at me but didn’t say anything. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, as she breathed through widely flared nostrils.

“I need to know who your boss is, Mrs. Pearson. How you respond to my questions will mean a great deal for your future,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

I reached over and slid open the hovercraft’s door.

“Do you understand what I mean?” I shouted.

She blinked rapidly and stared out the open door at the field of massive holes below us. Then she turned her head and looked at herself in my helmet. “I’ll tell you what I know!”

I nodded and slid the door shut again. “That’s a good start.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Mrs. Pearson asked, her voice shaking.

“There are deaths because of your actions,” I replied, glancing up at Rayna. She stood, arms crossed in the short hallway to the cockpit, out of sight. “I’m responsible for the lives you took, so your best case scenario here is that I turn you over to BlueCleave to answer for the troopers you helped kill.”

She went quiet and started breathing heavily again.

“Giving us a name would go in your favor,” I added. “It would give me someone to hurt other than you. Right now, you're at the top of the ladder for blame. Give us someone else, and you move down a few rungs.”

Mrs. Pearson nodded, suddenly calming. “I see,” she muttered. A small smile crept onto her features.

I frowned. “I think you’re getting the wrong idea.”

“What idea? That you need something I have?” she asked, a hint of her former snideness creeping back in.

I sat back and said nothing. After a few seconds, I raised a hand and motioned for her to continue.

“I want safe passage through Prescott, and free use of one of your docking platforms. I’ll hire a ship, you just have to let me get on it,” she explained.

I nodded slowly as she spoke, then shrugged. “I could ransom you back to Dearth, they often pay for their employees if I make the price low enough.”

Rayna stiffened, but I shook my head to reassure her.

“No deal, I need the spaceport exit. You and your gray-skins treat me like royalty until I’m boarding, and I’ll give you the name of the individual ordering your people killed,” Mrs. Pearson said.

I sighed and reached for the door handle again. “That’s not how this works. You tell me what I want to know, or I kill you outright.”

My hand rested on the handle, and I looked at her questioningly.

Her eyes went wide again, and she took a deep, shaky breath.

“What’s to stop you from killing me once I’ve told you, then?” she asked. “I need some kind of assurance.”

I sat back down and faced her again. “My word.”

Mrs. Pearson scoffed, caught herself, and raised her manacled hands in surrender. “No offense, but you’re a warlord. What good is your word?”

“What, exactly, do you think you are, Mrs. Pearson?” I asked, as I sat back and laced my hands together behind my head.

She muttered something under her breath, but then looked up and smiled grimly at me. “Alive. Which again brings us back to what I have that you need, and how you need to operate in order to get it.”

“The thing I need most is justice for my people, Mrs. Pearson,” I corrected her. “How I get that justice is quite fluid, but we will not be letting you go. At the very least I will ransom you back to Dearth so my people can afford a nicer life after you took their family members away.”

Mrs. Pearson chuckled nervously. “Then you’ll have to do without that name you want,” she said.

I stood, grabbed her manacles, slid open the hovercraft door, and held her out the door at arm’s length. “I can live with that, I’ll get 'em eventually.” I shouted. The aircraft’s engines roared at our sides, a hollow whoosh that absorbed half the sound in the immediate area.

Mrs. Pearson screamed, dangling from her manacles. In her wild flailing to get back in the hovercraft, one shoe fell, plummeting and tumbling away into a light pink speck below.

“ROVA!” she screamed. “Rova!”

I hauled her back inside the craft and gently set her back in the chair across from me, before shutting the door. With a sigh, I moved to go into the cockpit. I stopped in the doorway and looked at the woman, in her pink tracksuit, still shaking from my threat.

Rova. The Nah’gh operations manager for Dearth who used to run my tower in Prescott. She had been the head of their military operations, and a fierce combatant in her own right. But I had maimed her, badly, and then handed her back to Dearth.

My ‘mercy’ was catching up with me again.

“She’s all yours Rayna,” I said.

The hobb slid past me and reached into her pocket. She produced a set of keys and unlocked the manacles on Mrs. Pearson’s hands. I watched, concerned by the look of cold fury my friend had in her eyes.

Mrs. Pearson sighed in relief and rubbed at her wrists. “Oh thank you,” she exhaled.

“Cube!” Rayna suddenly shouted. “You hungry?!”

Cube slid back into place, forming into a dumpster-sized rectangle again. His front opened and his long, liquid-metal tongue extended. “HUNGRY!” he reaffirmed.

Rayna grabbed Mrs. Pearson by the throat and lifted the woman off her feet, throwing her over the secondary seats and directly into Cube’s mouth.

His tongue flowed around her body and dragged the hapless woman into his grinders. She let out a brief scream, which was almost instantly cut short as Cube’s mouth closed. A harsh, wet grinding sound emitted from the rear cabin, and I turned away to sit in the co-pilot's seat of the cockpit, pale.

A moment later, Rayna approached, carefully making her way back into the pilot’s seat. “Sorry, boss,” she said. “Know you said you wanted ransom.”

“No, I wanted justice for BlueCleave, for Silken Sands,” I said. “That was justice. A little brutalist, perhaps.”

“DELICIOUS!” shouted Cube.

I winced. “Plus, now we can spread the rumor that we feed our enemies to our pet monsters. That’s classic warlord stuff.”

Rayna fiddled with a large screen in the middle of the console. “It recorded, can spread video. Much more effective than rumor.”

“Right on, if you want that. Leave me out of it, though. I thought you were gonna put her on trial or something,” I said.

“If we still in Storage, we stake her out for the spiders. Maybe even for the gobbs, if enough vote for that cruelty,” Rayna whispered. “Cube mercy. Cube fast.”

I thought about it for a moment. The woman had expressed mostly surprise, as she was consumed.

“Not my place to question it,” I finally said. “And I don’t really think I do anyway.”

“Good she gave up Dearth contact, least,” Rayna grunted. “You should have killed Rova last time.”

“I’ll kill her this time, Rayna,” I sighed. “And if it wasn’t her it would have been another one of them. The entire reaper hound fuckup is on me anyway, I sold the egg.”

Rayna paused and frowned for a few breaths, before saying, “You not know.”

“Well, I not know Rova kill so many of our people either,” I retorted. “But I won’t make that mistake again. Don’t worry, Rayna.”

My hand went to the door’s handle. “I’m gonna kill 'em all this time,” I said, before twisting the door open. “You go home! I’ve got some business to handle in Calexico, I’ll be back soon!” I shouted to be heard above the wind.

Rayna nodded, and I let go.

I tried to shut the door on my way out, but that didn’t work very well. The damn thing was hard to hold onto, and then I got caught in the downdraft from the hovercraft's wings. Once I stopped tumbling, and got my flight under control, I turned back to see Rayna’s arm reach over and close the door anyway, so I rolled and shot away to the south.

It felt like time to check in on my starving friend Tower.

Chapter 61

Before I went all the way down to him, I followed my helmet’s HUD to one of our forward operating bases and picked up a complete recharge from their PRD stash. Prince Rupert’s drops were surprisingly useful tricks of science.

By the time I flew in over the ruined warehouse I had left Tower in days before, it was getting dark. Nightfall colored the sky as another earthquake rumbled through.

Each time one of the massive, state-sized chunks of our planet that Kraken had piled up on its planet-wide conveyor belt went by, the sheer mass of them sent a ripple through the surface of the planet. I checked my MortBlock map and was dismayed to see that even my compulsive resets were barely keeping Kraken’s MortBlock at bay.

Dearth was completely removed from the planet, and no other MortBlocks had held. It was just me, and Kraken, and the beast was rapidly squeezing me into a corner of the Pacific Southwest. The earthquake’s strength was made evident to me as the abandoned BuyMort fruition center below heaved and groaned with violent movement.

Kraken was even avoiding BuyMort retaliation by using the planet as its weapon. Any BuyMort facilities or pods damaged by Krakens global assault would simply read as natural, but extreme, functions of the environment.

No BuyMort bugs for breaking their shit. Handy trick.

Tower was dead, a cold lump of gray flesh partially pouring out of his torn vat. I hovered in close to check, but there was no point.

He had starved to death, as I had known he would. As was his contracted deal with BuyMort.

I promised him food, but I never meant it. My only desire was to find out how long it took for the whole thing to fade away.

And it had taken only days. It was less than a week since I last saw him, which meant that any BuyMort fruition center that no longer had immediate business to attend to would be inactive within seven days of their last shipped package.

I silently thanked my friend Tower for helping me find out this important detail as I flew over his rapidly decomposing corpse. Without his essence within it, the mass of meat quickly began to gel, and liquify. A putrid stench of rapid decomposition filled the air directly above his corpse, so I flew a distance away to think.

On a nearby hilltop racked with broken stone and cracked earth, I landed and sat down to contemplate my problems. The ground beneath me still quivered and shook with the rippling earthquakes, and all I could feel was Kraken's massive tentacles squeezing my world.

With a sigh, I pulled out my psychic phone and called the Delvago brothers. Dario and Izan Delvago had helped me deal with Kraken’s first ‘hello’ and they were my first and best idea to finish the job.

Dario answered, his oversized, glittering beard filling my screen. “Ah! The window-puncher again! I am most pleased to accept your call, warlord. How may the brothers Delvago be of service?”

I chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, I have need of your services again, and this time, it’s not exactly the easy job it was last time.”

Izan sighed off-screen, and Dario lit up in an oversized smile. “I love difficult jobs, tell me everything!”

At that moment, I hesitated. Telling him could risk what little time we had left. But the shimmying ground beneath my feet was difficult to ignore. I let down my helmet and looked Dario in the eye.

“I need your help to kill Kraken Corp, the number nine affiliate in all of BuyMort,” I said.

Dario’s eyes lit up, and a small smile crept across his hairy features. Izan walked up and snatched the phone from him, creating a dizzying moment of vertigo.

“Kraken? Out of the question, thank you for asking,” he said, before hanging up the phone.

I blinked and frowned, sitting down on the still-trembling ground and pinching the bridge of my nose. My whole world was being shaken apart, and I was starting to feel like Tollya’s nukes were my only option.

Just as I was looking at my phone to call Rayna and ask a few questions about the bombs, Dario called me back. His big smiling face on my phone’s screen gave me a glimpse of hope, and I immediately answered it.

A fight was happening in the background, and Dario did not immediately address me.

“Dario no! It is a unique life-form, we agreed!” Izan shouted from behind his brother.

“You are being absurd, Kraken is not unique. Plenty of squid among the stars, brother,” Dario retorted. “Taking down top tens is what this affiliate is all about! You are just afraid to act against them! If left to you, mother would never be avenged.”

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I dismissed the ad. The damn thing was triggered by the conversation and there was no way this listed affiliate could take on something like Kraken.

“Is this a bad time?” I interjected.

“Bad time? No!” Dario replied, his jovial nature immediately returning. “My brother is being fussy about our clientele, ignore him!”

I shook my head and frowned. “I need to know you can do the job for sure. Even explaining what I need represents a risk.”

Dario adopted a serious expression, somehow out of place on his features. “My friend, I understand completely. How can I reassure you?”

“Aside from waiving your fee?” I asked, a hopeful smile on my lips.

“Aside from waiving our fee,” Dario agreed. “For Kraken though, only standard firing fee, no matter how many shots it takes.”

“And now you give away our product!” Izan yelled from off-screen.

“Repeat customers get a discount!” Dario shouted back. “Besides, Kraken destroyed the home of our ancestors. Our people were from Victorian Earth.”

“How many generations ago, Dario?” Izan asked. “Hmm? How many of our family were actually from that wretched mudball?”

“Shut up brother, you don’t understand our burden of duty,” Dario grumped, waving a hand. “Forgive us, Mr. Dawes. We are passionate about the use of our cannon.”

I shrugged. “As long as you’ll help me. I’m trying to save my planet, save my people.”

“You see, Izan?” Dario asked over his shoulder. “It destroys yet another world! You stand guard over a murderer.”

“Brother!” Izan began. “That is . . . you malign me.”

“No, I just tell you the truth. You say Kraken is unique, so we cannot shoot. Fine! We do this your way, and you allow another world to die, then,” Dario replied.

“I do not wish for the destruction of this world, that is unfair,” Izan complained.

“Fair!?” Dario snorted. “Fair?!” His voice rose an octave. “You think it’s fair to allow this thing to happen then? Fool!”

“Dario please,” Izan pleaded. “You agreed we would not render any life-form extinct, Kraken is the only one of its kind.”

“If I may, Izan?” I interjected.

Both men turned to stare at me on the phone, having apparently forgotten me again.

“I have touched minds with Kraken,” I carefully started. “It does worse than kill or destroy. It consumes. It tried to force its union on me, and in the instant before my own relic saved my life, I felt what that creature is, so I know it has to be killed.”

I paused for a long moment and sighed, looking out over my cracked and crumbling wasteland. “Kraken is nearly mindless itself,” I finally said.

I had to tell them. Everything, especially the parts I knew, but hadn’t dared to think about since my experience nearly being taken by Kraken's tentacles.

“It was bestial, all desire, hunger, lust. No . . . no thoughts of its own. No emotions it hasn’t stolen. It somehow feels and experiences the multiverse through its thralls. It injects itself into the minds it steals and pretends to be more than an empty beast through them.”

The instant I had touched minds with Kraken, I had been in contact with its memories.

I had lived its memories.

Hundreds of years, drifting from world to world, consuming and destroying. Growing its mind through its proxies. Pretending to be sapient. Playing house.

Taking, breaking, and remaking each mind in its own image, to serve its most base desires.

Kraken itself had been alone, floating endlessly in an ocean world at the start of its life. Barely sentient, Kraken had eaten, grown, and subsumed every other mind on its world, and became the eons-long result of an evolutionary dead-end.

An oversized squid that could force its way into minds.

When BuyMort had arrived on its world, it had found only one mind to infest. Kraken.

Introduction to the multiversal shopping system had been a life-raft for Kraken. A way to continue roaming, explore new oceans and take new minds.

The first wave of BuyMort aliens had been consumed by Kraken, nearly entirely. It evolved fast, once the first mind was connected. Reaching back in the beast's memories confirmed my worst fears about its origins; a human had been the mind that weaponized Kraken. One from the oldest human worlds in the BuyMort system, Neolithic Earth.

An innocent explorer had found the massive beast and tried to make contact, only to become its first proxy. Kraken’s mind changed after that. Its gnawing hunger and endless desire to consume minds had mixed with the man’s ambition, his avarice.

Within the first week, Kraken was once again the only life-form on the planet. But this time, the monstrous creature was full of other minds. Other ambitions. The squid’s own mind grew, changed from basic animalistic impulses, and sickened beyond caring for the lives of others as anything more than feed to be consumed.

It destroyed its own world first, bit by bit as it funded its suit’s initial construction. By the time the planet had no water, Kraken could fly. By the time it had no air, Kraken’s suit was providing it with all the oxygen it required.

Once its own world had been destroyed, Kraken began a slow, steady, and effective plan to climb the BuyMort ladder. It took time to build up its capabilities but working almost entirely with upgrades to its BuyMort portal perks, Kraken eventually reached a tipping point.

It began to destroy worlds faster than BuyMort could add new ones into the system.

In response, the church had cut ties, and claimed to have donated the morties they received from Kraken to Storage, to expand operations and welcome all the new refugees that Kraken created. Storage chewed up most of them, as it so frequently did.

I explained everything to the brothers Delvago, even having to pause and weather another earthquake in the middle. Izan paled, and I could tell I had convinced him by the time I finished. I could see on his face, he understood what my story meant.

Kraken would consume us all, if we let it.

“I agree to the use of the cannon, brother,” Izan quietly said when I finished. “You are right, this is an important target. The kind we agreed to hunt when all of this insanity began.”

Dario grinned and nodded, bobbing his glittering beard. “I also agree with this use of the cannon, of course,” he said. The bigger man stood and opened his arms to embrace Izan. While they hugged, he crooned, “it will be good to use the cannon as we first meant to, brother.”

Izan walked out of frame once they finished embracing, the slimmer man’s eyes red rimmed. Dario watched him leave with a sad smile, before he turned to face me again.

“One billion morties, my friend,” he said.

I nodded and stood, brushing off the ass of my pants. “I’ll be in touch. Soon.”

He nodded back, and we disconnected the call.

I hovered over the ruins of the BuyMort fruition center, coldly absorbing every detail my over-tired brain could manage. Tower’s corpse stunk, so I turned off the helmet’s smell feature and took several pictures and videos, for Axles archives.

Only once I felt like I could learn nothing else from the macabre scene, I headed for home, flying above the rhythmic earthquakes plaguing the continent.

Chapter 62

As I flew, passing through the earthquake protection fields, a fresh bombardment started. Axle had awakened from his surgery and checked our defenses, deciding they needed reinforcement. He’d warned me that we would need to perform repeated digs, using the weapons from freelance ships in orbit.

The repeated earthquakes had collapsed some of our giant divots, allowing more force from the surface waves to get through. So Axle started having them re-dug, blasting through the collapsed sections and adding another row of giant holes to protect Prescott.

I had the unfortunate timing of flying through the area as the digging was being performed. My first sense of warning was a tickle across the back of my body that quickly grew into a painful, burning itch. It was everywhere my skin was exposed, and very quickly I felt it through my pants too.

With a frown, I turned my head to look up, saw a glint of red in the far distant sky, and was hit with a full-body laser beam. What I had felt burning and itching before had been the laser warming up while initiating targeting. The ship-board weapon cycled up to partial power while targeting, with a much lighter saturation of its beam.

Once it was target-locked, however, the saturation level rose significantly. The itching burn suddenly slammed into my back and I pinwheeled out of the beam, plummeting to the ground and skidding to a stop between giant holes.

Heavy laser fire slammed into the ground over and over, all around me. When I tried to take a breath, I couldn’t. The back half of my body was blackened, charred, and blasted away. I shifted my neck to look back, and part of my back slumped into a scattering of ashen flakes.

Gaping like a fish on the ground, I lay surrounded on all sides by deafening laser blasts. The ships were using pulses, after that initial targeting blast that hit me. That meant sharp, heavy hitting, rapid fire laser blasts. As my new lungs popped into place and I took my first gasping breath to scream, I realized that I had been lucky.

If anything higher power than the targeting beam had hit me, I would have been reduced to ash.

Massive amounts of flesh foam sprayed into the burnt cavity that was my back, and new bits of spine started getting popped in next. My cartoon starfish arrived again, craning its neck to look up at the incoming weapons fire.

“That’s a lot of damage user, you should really find something to break soon,” it told me, before vanishing.

“Yeah, I bet,” I groaned, as another new spine bit crunched home. My arms suddenly had sensation and control again, so I propped myself up to my knees and elbows to better observe.

My helmet protected me from the majority of the sound, but it was still deafening being so close. I felt each pulse of the massive lasers from above, through my hands, in my teeth, and rattling my skull. A thin, fine dust filled the air around me, and the lasers vibrant light spilled out into the field around me.

I glowed with it, the desert sand glowed with it, the fine, glass sides of the surrounding pits glowed with brilliant red light. When I exhaled, brilliant, illuminated crimson dust swirled from my lips.

My body repaired from the massive damage a ship-borne weapon had caused, and I summoned a breaker gauntlet. I smashed my fist into the ground, activating the gauntlet’s ability. A blue orb of force blasted out of the ground at my side, and the cartoon starfish appeared to inspect a charge meter. It shrugged and pocketed the device, before vanishing again.

My skin was starting to burn, just being in proximity to that many high power laser blasts, so I took off flying again. I wove through the fields, dodging the holes in the ground, and navigating through glowing clouds of dust as my hearing was assailed by the bombardment.

Once on the other side of the fields, I put on some more speed and headed directly back to the BlueCleave forward operating base I had stopped at on my way in. Their quartermaster was wholly unsurprised to have to re-equip me in pants, boots, and with a fresh phone.

My MortBlock was fine, because it had been in my hand at the time of the bombardment, and apparently even paralysis due to a laser-charred spinal cord couldn’t loosen my death-grip on it.

I thanked the hobb and crushed another PRD, boosting my charge to maximum, before linking my new phone with my MortMobile account. With how many times I had to perform the process, I was glad it didn’t take very much. Just a quick check in with the deity on the new device, and I was back in the air flying for home.

When I approached, I noticed a small crowd of dark shapes hovering around the sinkhole on the outskirts of the area. After a moment’s confusion, I sighed and remembered. My friendly neighborhood ravens, stealing as much dirt from me as they could.

It was absurd, they were making almost no morties at all. I could extrapolate their amount, since the affiliate got a slice, and they were making squat. But they worked the sinkhole with exactly the same zeal as they had worked the wreckage of my various fights with Dearth in the area.

Whatever, they were inadvertently doing work for me. The affiliate was going to need to transport some construction material below, likely some scaffolding or something equivalent, to seal the hole in the Sleem’s basement. Might even be a good idea to buttress the bottom of the yarsp hive, get in there and lay down a solid bedrock they couldn’t dig through.

With a sigh at all the work I had ahead of me, I headed into Silken Sands for a landing, aiming for Phyllis’ workshop. I landed with a light stumble and started walking up her driveway.

“Phyllis! You home?” I yelled.

Loud clanking stomps sounded from around the corner in her workshop. I stopped walking forward, and Phyllis came around the corner.

Her mech was considerably taller and had to stoop to walk outside. It was also wearing massive, out of proportion boots. Hence the metallic clanking as she walked.

“Yes?” Phyllis asked.

“Oh,” I replied, staring at her mech’s new shoes.

Each leg was encased in vaguely cone-shaped additions, which narrowed as they rose. The broadest part of the addition was on the ground, with rounded abutments around the edges.

“What the hell is all that?” I asked.

Phyllis sighed and put her hands on her hips, towering above me. “Everyone is off fighting in the water or flying around like crazy people. All my closest friends fly now. How am I supposed to keep up otherwise?”

I stared at her mech’s massive boots and legs, blinking. “Are they rocket boots?” I finally asked, eyebrows etched with concern.

“No,” she snapped back. “Not that you’d recognize the difference. They function much the same.”

She framed her fingers in front of her and cast an advertisement at me.

The Most Distinguished Battle Flight in the Universe. Cast aside your primitive ideas, your rocket boots and jet packs, and glory in the presence of the Best. The AirChic3000 Aerial Folial Blue-Tint Fusion-Flame Propulsion Pack by Airtel. You’ve got the weapons, you’ve got the armor, now get the aerial supremacy with Airtel.

I cocked my head, unconvinced that they weren’t rocket boots.

“And how’s that?” I asked. I glanced behind her into the workshop. There were other, more concerning shapes back there.

“Oh move back and I’ll show you,” Phyllis grumped.

I did as she asked, rapidly. Once I had vacated the driveway, she ignited her boots.

A crackle of blue fire pushed her from the ground and scorched the blacktop. The old lady lifted off the ground a few feet and hovered in the air. Beneath her, I watched the old blacktop scorch and melt as it began to lightly glow.

“Works in the water too!” she shouted from above.

“It looks like it works in space!” I shouted back. “Like rocket boots would.”

Phyllis lowered down onto the slagged driveway and nodded. “Better than rocket boots. I got the Best. I got Airtel.”

I grimaced and she cackled. “Well I didn’t want to waste morties. The rate you’re going, we’ll have enemies up there soon enough too. 4.9 stars, everything guaranteed for a decade. Why wouldn’t I buy them?”

“Rate I’m going?” I asked, scowling. “What do you mean?”

The old lady in the oddly proportioned mech lifted one oversized foot and sighed at the sticky tar smeared across it. “I mean that you’re running around attacking entire navies and giant monsters from beyond the stars. You’re screwing around with some rogue military faction and allowing an idiot mega-corp to infiltrate your city,” Phyllis said.

She turned to stomp away, bending low to enter her workshop again. “You have no idea what’s coming.”

Chapter 63

I put my hands on my hips and scowled deeply at the old woman’s back. She stoop-walked around the corner and I heard another series of loud metal clanks.

After a couple of moments, I sighed and walked up the driveway to get chewed out. I avoided the puddle of cooling asphalt on my way in.

The workshop had a tall ceiling. Not tall enough for Phyllis in her fusion boosters, but tall enough for the regular mech to walk around comfortably, without risk of hitting anything. I peeked around the corner to see her mech lift the cumbersome booster and shove it back out of the walkway.

Phyllis had several TVs hung around the workshop, each with a different channel playing. At the rear of the shop was more of her recent upgrades. An enlarged robotic torso in one corner was dominated by a pair of heavy locking bars that ran across a channel carved through the side of one hip, as if it were meant to hold a large, heavy object braced against the body.

A complex armored dome that doubled as a helmet for the oversized contraption dominated an oversized workbench, surrounded by tools. Two heavy looking arms were leaned up against the rear wall as well, but it was the gun that dominated my attention.

A massive plasma cannon took up the center of the workroom, hanging from the ceiling by engine hoists. The rear of it looked like it was custom made to fit into the side of Phyllis’ mech that housed her own plasma weapon. It would hang out behind her back and extend in front of the robot like a lance. The front of it had looked like a hanging pipe, for all I could tell, but the thrumming reactor at the far end of the weapon belied a terrifying amount of firepower.

I scoped it with my hand, letting BuyMort send its advertising to my brain app.

By The Time You Know It is Coming, It Is Already Too Late. The Starfire Xcal 2 - The Best in Anti-Ship *Handheld Weaponry. *One size does not fit all.

I got an idea of what the entire thing would look like once put together, and it was delightfully close to some of my anime upbringing.

Once I was done gaping at the old woman’s workshop, I turned to face her again. She finished wiping the gritty asphalt from her booster and stood to reach for a package of joints on a nearby shelf.

“I have some idea,” I finally replied. “But I would value your wisdom, if you would offer it.”

Phyllis scoffed, a puff of purple smoke wafting to the rafters above us. “Don’t patronize me, I’m not a dotard.”

“I know,” I said. “A recent development, you have to admit.”

She barked a harsh laugh and nodded, before drawing on the joint and inhaling deeply. “You’re right, you know I didn’t know what was real at first?”

I squinted at my old friend and nodded, grimacing. “I got that impression, yes.”

She offered me the pack of joints, and I shook my head.

“Well, it was a lot of LSD, in part. But all of this,” she paused to gesture around us with the joint pinched delicately in her mech's fingers. “All of this is fucking insane. And it's clearly about to end, one way or another.”

I shrugged. “What should we do?” I asked.

“You should prepare for war, is what you should do,” Phyllis said. “Cause I know what happens when you poke a pissed off giant enough.” She shook her head and took another drag on her joint. It was already halfway gone. “You know how many resistance cells I was with? In the war, I mean?”

I shook my head. “I dunno, you only ever told me about it in general terms.”

“Three,” she said. “Each one of them tasted glory before getting crushed for it. You have taken something from a large enemy, with a large military, and they are going to use it on you sooner or later.” Phyllis waggled her joint at me, knocking ash from the end.

“BlueCleave is ready. I think,” I said.

“Well, I sure hope that’s true,” she replied. With a flick of her mech’s wrist, she tossed the joint’s burned out nub into a nearby trash can. It was directly beneath a framed photo of Bing Crosby she’d hung on the wall.

“I’m glad you’re ready, anyway,” I said, sweeping an arm at the surrounding mech parts. “What is all this for anyway?”

Phyllis scowled and pointed at the long weapon hanging from the ceiling. “I need it to run that thing. A series-two-one plasma lance. It’ll punch through starship armor like its paper and electrocute anyone in contact with the section it hits.” She spoke fondly, and lightly reached out to touch the massive weapon.

“Thank you, Phyllis. That’s . . . smart. We’re probably going to need that soon,” I mumbled. The sheer scale Phyllis was talking about scared me.

“We’re with the church, Phill,” I started. “We’re not going to be attacked out-right by Dearth.”

She got a far-off look in her eyes, and then snorted a harsh laugh. “My second group had French national backing. We were promised all the weapons, ammo, and rations we wanted, and protection from the bosches at any number of established safe houses.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Bosches?”

“German shit heels,” she clarified.

Phyllis paused to fish another joint out and light it up. “Of course, you must be wondering why I needed a third cell, if the second was so flush and safe.”

I nodded, remaining quiet as she took her first drag from the new joint. “The nationals gave us up. Turned collaborator. Our lives meant nothing to them.”

“And the church is the French, in this analogy,” I said, half to myself.

“Worse. The church never liked us to begin with, and you seem to keep forgetting that,” she said.

I frowned and looked down at my feet, as another earthquake rolled through the area and caused the massive gun dangling from the ceiling to wobble on its chains.

“I think I understand, Phill. Thank you,” I told her.

I thought in silence for a long moment. “Hey, would you like to be looped in more fully?” I finally asked. “I never know quite what to do with you, but your experience and capabilities are . . . formidable.”

Phyllis nodded. “That’s one way of putting it. But yes, loop me in, and I’ll be part of your loop.”

“Thanks Phill. I’m sorry I was patronizing, I’ve had an attitude problem lately,” I said.

“Lately?” she scoffed, snorting a puff of smoke.

I chuckled and stood to leave. She was settling in to watch tv, so I figured I was dismissed. Her words made me feel scrambly, and as I walked away from her workshop, I tried to think of what I could actually do about our situation.

Chapter 64

The first thing that crossed my mind was to check in with Lee again. See if he had any information that would help us choose a path forward and get him to go introduce himself to Phyllis. I wanted her to start taking a more active role in our military apparatus, and at the time, Lee seemed like the right way to start working her in.

The walk was pleasant, aside from the low rumbling of distant earthquakes passing us by. I waved cheerily at the hobbs guarding the gate, while wondering if they thought I was going to get us all killed.

Suzanne opened the gate for me, her foggy smile an instant mood brightener.

“Oh hi sweety, are you looking for Lee?” she asked. “C’mon in.”

“Yeah, thank you Suzanne. Just need to talk to him about a couple things before I head back to the city,” I told her.

She opened the gate for me and looped her arm through my own, to guide me down the only road in the dome. I smiled and nodded as she pointed out which trees were currently fruit-bearing, and which fields around the dome would grow which grains. It was so painfully normal in their dome, I could almost forget what was threatening to knock it down.

Once we arrived at the loading area, Suzanne left my side and walked over to Lee, kissing him on the cheek before moving to work with another member of their affiliate on a pallet of greens. It was the tall man with the wide straw hat, he appeared to be one of their foremen. They conversed easily while they worked.

Lee raised an eyebrow at me. “Do we need to remove to my office?” he asked.

I glanced around. A pair of affiliate members in coveralls was in the area, as well as Suzanne and their foreman. I shook my head at Lee. “I don’t think we need to,” I said.

“Very well, what have you got for-” Lee said, before a huge flash of light erupted from the middle of us all, dazing those in the loading bay.

Quadrum had arrived, and he was pissed.

I got a notification from Afflqwst that I didn't have to read to comprehend it. It probably said something along the lines of ‘save your affiliate from the wrath of your beholder guest,’ because our beholder guest was visibly enraged.

The orb of flame they were composed of had shifted color to a deep, angry crimson, and their eyestalks were waving in agitation.

“DELIVER MY SLEEM!” the being roared. “NO MORE WAITING! NO MORE WASTE!”

Quadrum turned away from us and focused on the people nearby.

“GIVE!” it screamed.

Green rays shot out and my heart lurched in my chest. Suzanne, looking over at Lee with a soft, sad smile, vanished. Thin flakes of white ash lazily floated in the air where she had stood.

“ME!” roared Quadrum, turning again. The foreman burst the instant the green rays touched him.

“MY!” Quadrum echoed, spinning. Another beam of green light extended from its many eyestalks. Both workers vanished in a puff of white ash.

“SLEEM!” the furious beholder turned to face Lee, eyestalks aflame with green light.

“STOP!” I screamed, throwing myself in front of Lee. “You’re killing my ability to serve you!”

The beholder hesitated, and I instantly continued.

“We have your Sleem!” I shouted at the ball of flame. “We have them! We were just getting the construction materials together to fix their enclosure, that’s all!”

After a long moment, I curled one lip and lowered my head toward the beholder. “Forgive us, Lord Quadrum. We are limited by our terrestrial bodies, and the Sleem are so many,” I said, through grit teeth.

Quadrum blinked at me, darker flames washing over his eyeball and retracting.

“We are working as fast as we can and will have your Sleem to you as quickly as we are able,” I said, straightening up, but still blocking Lee with my body. “You will only slow our delivery if you continue to kill my affiliate members.”

“DELIVER MY SLEEM!” Quadrum finally roared.

I flinched at the sound and nodded, hands raised. “Yes, right away! As fast as I can!”

The beholder blinked again, stared at me for a few long, terrifying seconds, and then vanished through a self-repairing tear in the fabric of spacetime.

I turned to look back at Lee. He was on the concrete floor, his clipboard and gardening gloves discarded carelessly beside him. The older man’s mustache moved occasionally, as he stared at the charred spot where Suzanne had been.

“Lee, I am so sorry,” I whispered, immediately aware of how insufficient my words were. I tried to reach a hand out to him but stopped half-way and shook my head.

Lee took in a shaking breath and suddenly screamed, “What the hell happened?!”

His voice broke into a keening whine, and his fists clenched against the concrete.

“It's an enemy, Lee,” I said, unable to look at the stricken man. “An enemy I couldn’t kill before. But one that I’m going to dedicate everything I am to wiping out as mercilessly as they took our people.”

Lee sputtered, started blinking rapidly, and then suddenly calmed. The visible tension left his shoulders, and he took a deep, steady breath. “An enemy . . .” he muttered under his breath. “Enemies.”

I hesitated again, my own face twisted in concern. “Lee, what do you need from me? What can I do?”

“Nothing, Tyson. Just go, please,” he said, in a low, dangerous voice. Both of his hands were balled into fists.

I raised my hands and backed away. “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled as I fled.

Back out in the sweltering heat of the dome, I walked as fast as I could away from the loading bay and the crushed man behind me.

Once I got into the hallway of road between our affiliates, I stopped and stared up at the open sky. “Morbin, where are you buddy?” I whispered.

Within seconds, I heard the distinct flutter of his wings, and shortly after he landed lightly in front of me, brow furrowed in concern.

“Morbin here, friend,” he said, in a low, quiet voice.

“You heard all of that, I assume,” I said.

The little bat folded his wings around himself and nodded uncomfortably.

“That’s the reason for the sound-cork. A beholder,” I whispered.

Morbin shook his head. “Morbin does not know much about beholders,” he said.

“Just don’t tell anyone. Keep it a secret, no matter what,” I told him.

Morbin nodded and shivered.

“I’m going to deal with it, Morbin,” I said. “I promise, I’m going to make this place safe.”

My little friend nodded again, more enthusiastically this time. “Morbin believe you,” he said. “Morbin trust you.”

“I’m sorry you got dragged into this, buddy. I wish it was all tequila and Morbin Time,” I lamented.

Morbin shook his head and raised a claw to stop me. “It's still a good life. A little scarier than before, but good life.”

I smiled, gently. “Thank you Morbin. You don’t have to hang out, I just needed to tell you how important it was to keep the beholder secret,” I whispered, barely audible in the night air.

“Morbin help,” he said. “Gather hobbs, come help Sundew affiliate.”

I nodded at him. “That would probably be a good idea, the hobbs know a lot about dealing with death in BuyMort.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Morbin walked over gingerly and wrapped his oversized arms around me in a hug. I stifled a sob and crouched down to hug him back.

“Thank you,” I said, tears brimming in my eyes. “For always being there.”

Morbin bared his teeth in a wide grin. “Hey, what you think friends for?” Then, more seriously, “anytime, my friend. Anytime.”

With that, he stepped back, flapped his wings to take off the ground, and vanished over the nearby walls.

Chapter 65

An earthquake rumbled through and reminded me of our dire situation. With a quick exhale, I pulled out my phone and called Axle, out of habit.

“Hello Tyson, I was just about to call you,” Axle said, in a cheery voice.

“I’m sorry, Axle,” I said, shaking my head. “I should have called Jada first.”

“Not at all, are you calling about our . . . unruly guest?” he asked. Axle was good at covering the nervousness in this voice, but I could tell he was worried.

“Yes and no. That’s handled for the moment, but four people are dead, and I don’t think Lee is going to be okay. We lost Suzanne,” I told him. “Quad-” I stopped myself with a sharp exhalation of frustration.

“It’s okay, I get it,” Axle said. “I saw the Affwlqwst notification, and then I saw you completed it. This quest seems like it won’t fully finish or reward us until the situation is fully dealt with, though, it’s merely updated itself again.”

“Don’t worry. I plan on dealing with it,” I growled.

Axle hesitated for a long moment. “We should talk in person soon, my friend. Certainly before any action is taken,” he said, choosing his words carefully.

“Agreed. You said you were about to call me? What’s going on?” I asked.

“Well, not to stress you out any further, but we have a bit of a situation,” Axle said. “Thought I should loop you into a new development. Five of Dearth’s heavy assault cruisers have broken from their primary fleet at the system portal and are en route to Nu-Earth. At current trajectory, they’ll arrive in just about twenty-four hours.”

“Oh good,” I grumbled. “Well, we need to re-house the Sleem first and foremost, how’s that whole thing going?” I asked.

“Oh that’s well underway,” Axle replied. “We’ve gotten the Sleem backed up into the caverns below Silken Sands, and our city-side crew is sealing up the bottom levels of the yarsp hive so the two won’t mix again. At this point, the easiest way to get the Sleem in place is a matter-arranger construction unit, which I have already ordered.”

I scoped it, grabbing its ad from BuyMort.

Constructive solutions require constructive answers. MACU-X4 answers. This cunning little device can fit into a variety of spaces and build on demand the blueprints of most any engineering design or blueprint fed into its memory access loop. Capable of creating its own printing solution from most readily available material, MACU-X4 sets up easy, refeeds easy, and does its job with almost no additional input, making it the most intelligent solution to all of your construction needs.

Ditch the D’jhzz. Get a MACU-4X.

“Whatever you think is best, Axle,” I said, flatly. “I have no idea what a matter-arranger construction unit is, of course, but you know that already.”

“I do,” he quipped. “But it’ll come in very handy, it's just an advanced construction robotics tool. Like a really fast 3-D printer. When we combine our BlueCleave forces, Cube, and our new construction tool, the Sleem will be back in place within the hour. Would you like to come watch? It’s all being set up now.”

“Oh. Well, yes, I would,” I said. “Where do I go to do that?”

“Head to the sinkhole,” Axle answered. “Your friend Darclau has really cleared that area out. It’s a pretty straight shot down at this point. We already lowered several oversized items through it.”

I lifted off and fell through the sky toward the pit beyond our walls, summoning my helmet and transferring the call to it. Annoyed, I swiped the crystal ball with my call with Axle to the side. As I approached, I saw the remains of the construction materials, several long cables that the parked hovercraft nearby had used to lower the things they needed down to the crew below.

On my way to the sinkhole, I passed through the cloud of ravens circling above. Various patches of loose earth below warped away, around an already gaping hole. I sighed at the birds, dodged an idle peck from one of them as he hovered above. Probably Darclau, fucking with me to amuse his friends.

Ignoring the bird, I dropped into the ground below.

As I entered the dark cavern below, I noticed several areas illuminated with floodlights. On the edge of the remaining underground lake, A quivering mass of Sleem was surrounded by starfish troopers in anti-Sleem suits, wearing electrostatic shields, and wielding arc-throwers. They tamed the giant conglomeration of differing Sleem with fat blue sparks from their weapons.

Behind them, a work crew of BlueCleave regulars set up our new matter-arranger construction unit. A great segmented egg of dusky gold rose from the stone floor on four spindle legs. It walked slowly, in the center of the BlueCleave technicians, until it reached the rear line of the starfish troopers.

There the machine stopped, its legs stiffening and solidifying into structural support beams. A thick, flexible pipe ran from the bottom of the egg-shape down to a series of mobile tanks BlueCleave was moving into position, and the first tank began to chug a mechanical beat.

As I watched, dust shimmered down the limbs and formed thicker, stronger legs at the tips of them. It looked for all the world like concrete when it was finished, a strange belltower in the center of the cavern.

Then the egg at the top of it deployed. Small, thin limbs of shining metal extended from the bell up to the ceiling. Once they were secured, the same process happened; dust flowed up the limbs to strengthen and solidify them. Once it was secure in the floor and ceiling, it built another set of supports that extended over the Sleem.

“Ahhh, that is satisfying to watch, isn’t it?” crooned Axle in my phone.

“Where are you?” I asked, looking around. There were no hulking anti-Sleem suits on anyone in the cavern that I could see.

“In bed, Jada won’t let me get up yet,” Axle replied. “I’m running things remotely.”

A small drone whirred up next to me, humming the air with its quad propellers. The drone rose and fell, giving me a good view of the camera suite on its undercarriage.

“With my new eyes, I can tap into pretty much any Silken Sands camera, so long as it's not privately operated,” my friend explained. “It’ll help a lot, I can ‘be’ at several job sites at the same time, while never leaving home if I don’t want to.”

I nodded, impressed. “I’m glad your injury is turning into something good, Axle.”

“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry that you blame yourself for all of this. I wish I could help you shift that perspective.”

I thought about that for a moment, hovering in place above the scurrying operation below. “What happened to Lee and Suzanne has helped with that, actually,” I told him. “I blame someone else a hell of a lot more than I blame myself, at the least.”

“That’s something,” Axle said. “Not exactly what I would hope for, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

“Well, I am a warlord,” I told him. “It’s how I see the worl-the multiverse, now.”

The machine deployed further, dozens of spindly arms extending from themselves to create a wide, cage-like arrangement of thin metal limbs. The core of it was exposed, a large cylinder at the center of the egg fed each of the robotic arms processed material in the form of a thick stream of dust.

With a sudden hiss, the arms all began to move at once. Several of them worked together in a hanging blinds formation, laying a thin line of concrete with movement too fast to properly see. As I watched, a wall began to form on the ground, cutting the Sleem off from everything else.

My starfish troopers advanced, coordinating their arc-thrower weapons fire to drive back the main bulk of the Sleem. Anywhere the matter-arranger construction unit touched it, the Sleem were also driven back by sparks from the very tip of the robotic appendages.

The entire endeavor was powered by Cube. Rayna had transported him to the yarsp hive and they’d lowered him all the way down to the bottom of the cave with all the rest of the construction material, and the huge vats of slurry.

“We’re using a mixture of rubble, raw mined copper, and our new Sleem plastic derivative,” Axle informed me. “Delivered and arranged via magnetic manipulation fields and the arranger’s appendages. It’s all very economically friendly, and the end product is conductive, so Cube can keep them penned in with an electric fence, from most anywhere we have him normally plugged in. The reactor can also handle that job, of course. We’ve already run the cabling. This entire endeavor is resource friendly, come to think of it.”

“Thank you, Axle,” I said, watching the scene unfold below me. “You’ve done an amazing job with this, and all while badly injured.”

The huge mass of Sleem retreated vertically, encroached upon by BlueCleave hobbs and the ever-whirring arms of the matter-arranger. The red Sleem block went first, and within moments of my arrival, the Sleem were shoving themselves back into Quadrum’s basement in a steady stream.

“I have to say, boss, thank you,” Axle replied. “Dearth trained me, provided me education and resources, then tied my hands and never let me act. Any project I managed to get approval for became a target, divvied up and portioned off for other people’s profits.”

I frowned, lowering myself to the cavern floor.

“You give me some pretty difficult tasks sometimes, but you use my expertise and let me work. It’s an incredibly freeing position, and lucrative enough that I’m actually doodling library expansions as we speak,” Axle said. “We’ve had a hell of a good weekend, and with refueling costs projected to cap our tourism surge as they all leave ahead of Dearth’s cruisers, we can easily afford this project.”

“I bet that a matter arranger will come in handy on all kinds of projects,” I mumbled, watching from the ground as the massive, spindly-armed robot did its work. Once all the Sleem had been forced back into their underground home by an electrical current, the matter-arranger unit began reinforcing the cavern wall, building reinforcing struts and additional sheets of stone.

Once it was done, it looked a little like the wall had gotten a plaster cast, for a broken arm.

“Very much so. It cost around four-hundred and fifty million, but we’ll make that back using it for construction in no time,” Axle said. “Assuming we deal with the incoming Dearth cruisers, of course. What is the plan for those?”

“Well,” I started. Then I hesitated and shook my head. “Phyllis is cooking up something to answer that, I think, but I don’t know if she can handle it all alone. We should talk to BlueCleave command, see what Rayna and Tollya have for us.”

“Agreed. They’re both at the base in Prescott,” Axle said. “I’d meet you there, but I don’t want to upset Jada.”

“It's alright buddy, you’re busy anyway. Let me know if the situation with the ships changes,” I answered.

With that he disconnected the call, and I pocketed the phone. I swiped up our affiliate page to check in on the weekend. The port had turned a tidy business, charging wealthy disaster tourists hundreds of millions of morties in fees, including fuel and security overages.

So many of them had incurred fees by either requiring extra security or requiring security to respond to them in some way, it was incredible the port had run so smoothly at all. Yet just over nine-hundred million morties worth of commerce had been done.

But that was nothing compared to the morties flowing in from the church, through their television network. H.O.B.B.S. was a runaway hit. The BuyMort system’s population welcomed the programming across the board, fascinated by our daily lives on the edge.

BuyMort be praised, we were billionaires again.

Two-point-three billion was in our available flex account, after all of Axles recent expenses, and our usual maintenance costs. I immediately swiped a billion morties out to a private account for Dario and Izan’s contract, and happily closed the screen. My job was killing stuff that threatened us, and I was happy enough to leave the operation of the affiliate to Axle.

I checked in on Cube, but was shouted away because he was, and I quote, “POOPING!” From Cube’s perspective, pushing out that much alternating current as waste was best described to us flesh and blood beings like pooping. I’m not positive he understood the dynamic he was referring to, but nobody wanted to correct him.

He generally didn’t like being disturbed while working, as he seemed to enjoy throwing himself into the task as fully as possible. The strange box was full of personality quirks.

Since I didn’t feel like I had much time to waste, with Dearth bringing warships to bear on us, I flew back up and out of the sinkhole, before jetting off over Silver Sands toward Prescott.

Chapter 66

The base was crawling with activity when I arrived, and a healthy stream of BuyMort pods still traveled from the warehouse at the center of it all.

Tollya was standing outside the command building, waiting for me. As I started to descend for a landing, she waved her arms at me. I diverted my course and landed lightly at her feet.

The tall hobb woman raised an eyebrow at me. “Getting good at that. Look forward to mine,” she grunted.

“Well, talk to Jada before you make any firm decisions. She got armor, you might want that instead,” I warned. “More upgrades are coming though, for all of us.”

“Good,” Tollya grunted, leading me inside the building.

It was depressingly similar to an office building. Most of the personnel who worked in the administration building primarily dealt in logistics. As that kind of worker, they required a desk and a tablet device of some sort that hooked into our affiliate pages. A great deal of our weekly MortMobile bill was attributable to BlueCleave’s military headquarters, an office building.

We walked past rows of offices, to a central staircase, and then up to a second floor meeting room. Rayna, Ordo, and a handful of other Hobbs I recognized from our first week were present.

“Ground troops ready, boss,” grunted Ordo as I entered. He was speaking to Rayna. “Had some trouble from Garthirst’s compound, but it secure now. Will need substantial reinforcements if that become target though.”

“Understood, will apply reinforcements as needed,” Rayna grunted back at him. She looked up and saluted me, causing all the rest of her subordinates to rise to their feet and do the same.

I stiffly returned the gesture, then crossed my arms and leaned against the wall. “Fill me in,” I said.

“Five heavy assault cruisers incoming. That mean one of two things. Orbital bombardment, or landing parties,” Rayna said. “Nothing we can do about one, so we prepare the army for the other.”

“Get in touch with Phyllis, she’s working on something that may be able to respond to both,” I said.

Rayna nodded. “You need get to LA, boss. Whalehunter asking for you. Dearth fleet attacking our new seawall, Whalehunter all that holding them off.”

“Right now?” I asked.

“Fast as you can,” she replied. “We preparing here.”

“Right, get me a crate of PRDs, and I’ll get moving,” I said.

Within a few minutes, I was on the tarmac again, holding a crate of PRDs with one hand while I tried to text my bodyguard Phyllis with the other. I told her where I was going, said that if she could keep up, she was welcome to join me, and then took off into the sky.

I staggered my flights. My first jump saw me fly from Prescott to the Arizona-California border. I’d picked that as my first stopping point because it was a nice thick line on the map, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking.

Plus, it was easy to follow our earthquake protection fields along the route our water trucks took from LA to Prescott every day. It looked like perforations in the desert from above.

The first leg of the trip took roughly five seconds, and I was disoriented as I landed. It passed quickly, and within a few seconds I was back to normal. Moving that fast took a lot of juice from the suit too, even with my advanced storage capacity, I nearly drained it with just that first jump. I set down in the desert long enough to crack open the case, crush a PRD to top up my charge, and then seal the case and secure it for another jump.

Then I was back in the air, pushing the suit as fast as I could. This time, it took me nearly seven seconds to arrive at our port operation. Nearby, I could see the hastily assembled sea wall. It looked like they had used the fleet of hovercraft to simply drop large quantities of rubble from Dearth buildings in the area, as well as a supply of their cached construction material.

The seawall was all sharp angles and rectangular protuberances, rising in a mound from the bay and stretching off into the distance in a thick arc. The general shape broke the frequently violent waves from the south and protected our harbor.

Which was critical, as we had several desalination plants up and running in the harbor, on converted cargo tankers. They were vulnerable to rough seas, and even the chop in the bay had me nervous. Still, their crews worked diligently to provide us all clean drinking water.

South of the seawall, more toward the open ocean, a jet of water sailed into the air with the echoing thrum of an explosion beneath the waves. Once I set down near the bay, my disorientation returned briefly.

Using the suit for sustained high speed flight drained its batteries, but also did something strange to me. Once I shook off the effect, I crushed another PRD from the crate and left it behind as I dove up and into the water.

It was a cold shock, but one that quickly passed. My system was becoming numb to shocks, and cold. I spent too much time topless — it was inevitable that I would get chilly.

My helmet cleared the water for me with a series of visual filters. With its aid, and the guise of a dumbass ‘clear sight’ spell on my HUD, I was able to see clearly for a great distance underwater. I also pulled up my map in another portion of my HUD, enlarging it to use in combat.

Already, large red dots formed up on the other side of the sea wall. As I prepared to join the fight, a call came in and I answered it in another window in my helmet. I pushed the suit to help me dive in a sweeping arc around the damaged sea wall, cutting through the rough seas as I got deeper the further we moved off the coast. In the distance, I could vaguely make out the shapes of an underwater battle. Another torpedo streaked past me, and I diverted course to try and catch it before it damaged my expensive seawall.

With a push of concentration, I drove the suit to a higher speed and used my helmet’s fairy fire ‘spell’ to target the torpedo. I activated my breaker gauntlet and caught the thing by its rear propeller. It yanked my hand to the side, but the propeller broke with a sharp crack and it was suddenly under my control. I giggled and dove again, dragging the missile with me.

My helmet marked the cloud of subs as I approached, with very helpful friend or foe indicators. Dearth’s submarines were generally larger than Whalehunters, and more covered with weaponry, but they were slower too.

Our side was outnumbered, surprise surprise. But Whalehunter was playing it smart, using their advanced defensive capabilities to shield the rest of their fleet, which at first appeared to be in retreat. Upon closer inspection I saw that the ships were fighting primarily to protect the seawall, smaller ships moving to intercept incoming torpedo fire, and larger submarines using their weapons in an attempt to distract the Dearth fleet.

The whole battle was a mess of blips on my map, and outlines in my HUD. I hesitated, the propeller shaft in my hand grinding uselessly, as I tried to take it all in.

Dearth’s smaller craft were no match for Whalehunter’s fleet, most had been sunk already. A smattering of wrecks dotted the ocean floor below. As I floated, trying to figure out how to work myself into the chaos, a call came through from Captain Omen himself.

I accepted the call, seeing Whalehunter’s bridge from Captain Omen’s console. “How can I help, Captain? I’ve come to honor our alliance.”

“You are in the area then?” Captain Omen asked. A small, wry smile cracked the corner of one lip, and he looked back at his XO, Thresher. “Whalehunter Actual will mark targets for you, warlord. If you would do us the gracious favor of destroying the targets we mark, our fleet would be most appreciative.”

An explosion rocked the ocean in the distance, as Whalehunter caught another torpedo on its hardened water shield, and the bridge rocked with the force of the blast.

“Understood, Whalehunter,” I growled. “Just give me a target.”

In the distance, the largest Dearth submarine was suddenly highlighted with a solid red outline on my HUD. I grinned and dragged my captured torpedo with me as I plunged into the midst of the battle.

My starfish suit's gravity harness helped stabilize me against the water currents as I increased my speed. A wake of boiling water formed at my back, streaming angry bubbles as I streaked toward my target. In the instant before I collided with them, I swung the torpedo around to my front and lowered my head, pushing it ahead of me.

The submarines short range laser PDC’s immediately targeted me when I slowed, and I was punched into by searing fire. But the damaging weapons fire only lasted a fraction of a second. I had slowed, the torpedo I had been pushing had not.

The submarine’s front end erupted in a cloud of bubbles and angry, directed flame. Torpedo warheads are filled with shaped explosive. They don’t simply go boom, they go boom primarily in a specific direction. With the extra force I had shoved the torpedo into the Dearth submarine with, the blast punched a hole straight through its conical nose.

Blood clouded the water around me, and my suit’s tendrils rose to start plugging the holes in my body, and I floated into the cavity, drawing both swords. Slagged steel and ruptured plating quickly got in my way, so I cut them apart with my atomically sharpened sword, hacking and slashing at the ship’s wound from the inside.

I had punched into a ballast tank, and the detonation blew directly through the area, cutting support beams and collapsing the forward end of the submarine. Through the bulkheads, I could hear a wailing klaxon alarm, but the ship wasn’t sinking, and Whalehunter still had it painted as my primary target.

In the crumpled ballast, I gripped both my swords in deployed atomic breaker gauntlets and bared my teeth. Dearth, and every crony who dared to work for them, had it coming, and I was sick of trying to save lives.

I ignited the plasma falchion and plunged toward the top of the ship. With judicious slashes and careful use of the gravity drive, I cut a hole through the ship, at an angle, all the way through the top of the vessel.

From my perspective, it was all a blur of incoming metal to be slashed and stiffening my limbs to blast through the damaged portions once cut. Glimpses of rooms, some with people, some filling with explosions behind me. Then I was out the other side, boiling the water with my plasma sword as the massive Dearth submarine groaned and sunk, detonations rocking its front end.

“Next target,” I growled.

“Good kill, warlord. Next target being transferred now,” Captain Omen calmly replied.

I glanced behind me to see that many of his ships had retreated, and my helmet outlined swarms of repair drones on several. My tardiness had cost them, I just hoped none of Captain Omen’s people were on the bottom of the ocean floor with all the Dearth trash.

Another nearby submarine, this one filled with clusters of heavy torpedo launchers, was highlighted next. I bared my teeth and plunged through the water toward it, igniting my falchion again. This time, I sunk both blades into the ships hull, then pushed my drive and fell down the entire side of the vessel.

Again I was peppered by defensive laser fire, but again I ignored it, teeth bared. The submarine’s ballast all flooded out into the water in huge gouts of air, and the vessel immediately began to rapidly sink. As its nose dove into the rocky bottom, it erupted, ordinance destroying the entire submarine.

I clipped my plasma falchion to its charging dock and flexed my fingers, looking for the next target as my body healed.

“Hold position,” Captain Omen said. He stared at the main viewscreen ahead of the ship, and I saw his eyes widen. “Kraken is responding to your presence, warlord.”

A massive wall of rainbow light filled the water directly in front of me, a few hundred meters away. My heart started beating faster as a familiar, stony, tooth filled face emerged from it. Hardplace.

“Time to complete the set,” I said, gripping my sword.

Hardplace, the massive shark, swam almost lazily out of the BuyMort portal, swinging his head idly side to side. The creature fixated on me momentarily, and I could feel the weight of Kraken behind its black, expressionless eyes.

A monster from beyond the stars indeed.

Hardplace turned, faced Whalehunter’s fleet, and flicked his tail. The beast surged forward, sliding directly past me as it went. I was momentarily shocked by its speed, but quickly turned and gave chase.

The monster shark's tail waved back and forth in front of me, and I timed a surge of speed from the suit to slide past and sink my sword into his back. Hardplace roared, and spun in the water, tearing me loose in a surge of vibrant blood.

Then the shark resumed its original course, lunging into the midst of Whalehunter’s fleet and smashing a ship between its massive jaws. The vessel sparked and erupted, drifting to the bottom in three pieces.

“NO!” I shouted, surging forward in the water and driving my sword and myself hard into the shark's body.

Captain Omen flared his nostrils and ordered his remaining ships to open fire on the shark. When his XO questioned the order, a small smile crept across Captain Omen’s face.

“We have no choice now, my friend. There is no running from this fight,” he said. “Turn us into the Dearth fleet.”

Hardplace rolled again, and I pushed the suit’s drive to keep me lodged in its body. I wildly hacked with my arm, moving the sword anywhere it would move. Great gouts of blood blinded me, and vibrant pink shark flesh pressed me on all sides.

A weight closed in on me from top and bottom, followed by the tearing sensation of sudden motion. Then I was falling, without the aid of the suit, just falling. Sinking.

I activated the suit and tore my way backwards, slipping out of the chunk of shark meat I was embedded in. The flesh fell away and I looked up to see Hardplace swimming away, trailing blood from his back end. He had bitten me out of his own body, and I floated in the ocean, momentarily stunned.

Hardplace flicked his tail and went after Whalehunter herself.

Chapter 67

“Helm, now!” shouted Captain Omen, and the ship surged ahead suddenly, dodging the giant shark’s bite with the use of its water shield.

Torpedos rained in on the shark, fired from several of the nearby vessels, but the attacks did little more than distract the beast. Chunks of rocky armor fell away, but the shark was unwavering. It turned and surged after Whalehunter again.

A Dearth submarine suddenly lit up with alarm warning in my helmet, as it lurched into the fray, several compatriots behind it. The fleets mixed, and the fighting intensified. Drones, torpedoes, and laser fire filled the water, as I chased after Hardplace.

I was on an intercept course with the shark when I collided with a Whalehunter drone, hard. It smashed and its multiple arms deployed around me, entangling me as we both began to sink. I grunted in frustration and flexed, bending the already bent and broken drone legs out and off of me, but Hardplace was gone.

The huge shark was too big to represent on my map, and he moved fast enough to escape my fairy fire targeting, vanishing into a distant cloud of silt and blood. A nearby Dearth submarine hit me with a burst from its laser PDCs, and I grunted in pain.

My suit did its job, though, and my pain was quickly replaced with the fog of heavy drugs, and the thrumming heat of the battle around me. The Dearth ship did not fire on me again, distracted by a Whalehunter sub that engaged it with deployed drones and a series of rapid-fire, short range torpedoes.

The front end of the Dearth sub crumpled and burst, weapons compartments erupting in the exchange. Dearth’s ships were built to fight ships that couldn’t fight back, and in close combat, Whalehunter Salvage’s military had the advantage.

Still, too much damage was occurring. There were too many dead already. On my phone, I saw Whalehunter Actual rocked by several explosions. They dove and weaved between the other vessels, absorbing as much damage as they could with their advanced water manipulation shield.

Hardplace returned, surging through the submarines. The great shark snatched one out of the water and crushed it between his jaws. The ship ruptured, and Hardplace dropped it, to slowly sink, leaking fiery fluids in its wake.

I pushed the suit and slammed into a nearby Dearth sub with both fists, activating my breaker gauntlets. In a flash of blue light, the front of the submarine collapsed, and my suit got a chunk of much needed charge.

A gleaming steel girder was exposed by the breaker gauntlets, and on a whim I grabbed it. Locking my grip onto the beam with my advanced strength, I activated the suit’s drive and pulled. The submarine screamed in protest, then the girder tore free.

I heaved the oversized rod of hardened steel and aimed my suit in Hardplace’s direction. The shark chased another, smaller submarine as it was peppered with depth charges. An explosive went off in the massive shark’s mouth, and he turned away with a roar of pain, facing in my direction.

With a surge of concentration, I activated the suit and sailed at the shark’s open mouth with terrifying speed. Before Hardplace could finish roaring in pain, I sailed directly into his mouth, dragging the giant steel girder with me.

Another burst of concentration turned the metal rod and slammed me into the roof of the sharks mouth. He predictably bit down on the girder, ramming the structural support into the soft tissues at the top, and bottom of his own mouth.

Blood spurted into his mouth and swirled with the sharks rage. I clung to the embedded girder, as Hardplace began to thrash in panic. The girder penetrated deeper, and I began to hope the idiot shark would kill itself by accidentally driving the rod through its own brain.

With a jerk of violent motion, I lost my grip on the girder and was sucked back further into Hardplace’s gullet. I activated the suit again in a sheer panic and started trying to push back against the intake of water. Hardplace was swimming at full speed, with his mouth and gills wide open, likely hoping to dislodge the structural support I had crammed in his mouth.

Without warning, a brilliant beam of white and crimson flashed through the shark, from top to bottom. The water pressure stopped fighting me and I sailed out of the shark’s mouth, turning to watch the front half of Hardplace’s head, including his wedged open jaws, sink in a different direction from the rest of his body.

His BuyMort pod zipped past me on its way to the surface, drawing my gaze with it.

Above me in the water, a new shape was outlined by my helmet. A giant robot form holding a massive firearm.

“Captain Omen, tell your entire fleet to surface, now!” I shouted.

Captain Omen glared at my face on his screen for an instant, registered the sheer panic I showed, and barked the order.

“All fleet, emergency main ballast blow, immediately!” Captain Omen shouted. His own features lurched, and I saw Whalehunter’s fleet all suddenly start to rise out of the conflict zone.

I called Phyllis, swiping up another connection. Our MortMobile bill was going to be killer for that week.

When she answered, I wasted no time.

“Don’t kill the ships that are surfacing, Phyll! Everyone else is fair game,” I told her with a cold smile.

She returned it, and nodded, joint pressed between her lips and purple smoke filling her suit. “Ah hell,” the old lady said. “It’s about time someone kicked these assholes off our planet.”

The brilliant beam fired again, and Phyllis waved her weapon down, slicing through three more Dearth submarines. The water around her boiled and surged with bubbles, and the remaining Dearth submarines began to flee.

Phyllis didn’t let them. She opened fire with her massive fusion beam, causing explosions and death among the Dearth fleet. Her mech, enhanced by its own addons and extensions, boiled through the water in pursuit, her weapon firing white and red beams of pure destruction. Within minutes, there was nothing left, every Dearth submarine in their remnant fleet was destroyed.

Along with more Whalehunter ships than I wanted to see. I immediately dove toward the nearest wreckage, to begin a rescue effort. Captain Omen, once he confirmed that the battle was finished, sent ships to join me.

Most of his civilian fleet was in the Los Angeles port, behind our seawall. The military portion of his fleet had lost three ships, with most hands aboard lost. I didn’t end up having to rescue many people, as Captain Omen had invested in several hundred short range portals from BuyMort for just such an occasion. Many of the sailors on the submarines had been lost, the attack from Hardplace too violent to sustain without major loss of life.

But there were survivors too. A lot of them. Unlike the Dearth Conglomerate, Whalehunter Salvage cared about their people’s lives.

We didn’t get much time to waste. Captain Omen called me again, this time walking briskly down a hallway in his submarine.

“Mr. Dawes, good. Excellent work,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have another problem.”

“I’m sure we do,” I sighed. “What is it now?”

“Perhaps you would be willing to come aboard? It would be more secure to discuss it in person,” Captain Omen replied.

I nodded and set a waypoint on my map to his sub, pushing the suit to swim me that way. Within a few minutes, I was climbing out of Whalehunter’s moonpool.

A burly orc in a work-shirt and navy slacks nodded at me as I climbed out of the water, steaming towel draped over one arm. “Sir,” the orc barked, extending the towel to me.

I nodded and accepted it, draping the length of warm cloth over my shoulders. Without realizing it, I had become desensitized to the sheer coldness of the ocean. But with Hardplace and the Dearth fleet wiped out, I felt some degree of relaxation creeping back into my muscles. We could beat these guys.

A door slid open, and Captain Omen entered. He stood in the doorway and stared at me, arms behind his back. With a quick nod, he indicated I should join him, so I stepped away from the moonpools and followed the smaller man as he turned to walk away.

I fell into step beside him, still enjoying the hot towel.

“Thanks for the towel, Captain. Very hospitable,” I said, with a small smile on my lips.

Captain Omen turned and looked at me, scowling as he assessed my state.

“I had nothing to do with it, that was my moonpool crew,” he snapped.

I nodded slowly. “You set the culture on board,” I replied. “But pass on my thanks to them if you prefer.”

“I’ll do that,” Captain Omen said. “Our situation has become more dire.” He passed me a tablet, with a paused video already on it.

As we walked, I pressed play. Kraken, wrapped in its black suit, rose dripping from the ocean. Its body extended impossibly long as it rose, massive tentacles drooping below. With a heave, a surge of sudden movement, and a blast wave of ejected ink, the massive beast began flying.

A wake in the water followed Kraken as it headed north, pushing apart a cloud formation in its path.

“It’s trajectory is Prescott, Arizona. Kraken will arrive in approximately four hours, at current speed. The beast appears to have difficulty moving quickly in atmosphere. No hydrodynamics to manipulate,” Captain Omen explained.

He stopped and waved a hand at a nearby security door, causing it to slide open.

Inside was an armory, similar to the one I had visited on the Hornets’ Nest. I stepped inside and smiled at the weapons on the walls. “I assume this is for my next shot at Kraken,” I said, eyes wide as I took in the cache of weaponry on display.

Captain Omen stepped in behind me and turned, taking a weapon from the wall. It sported a large tank on the underside of the barrel, and I frowned as Captain Omen aimed it at me.

“Assumptions are unwise,” he said, and nodded to someone behind me.

I turned in time to see Thresher step up and jam a heavy taser into my exposed neck. It popped and sparked, and everything went black.

Chapter 68

“Captain, it’s repairing him already,” said Thresher. The big man dropped the taser and immediately started hauling a large, heavy-looking duffle bag from beneath a nearby bench. He dragged the zipper open and lifted a large metal tube from inside it. The tube had handles, which Thresher used to drag the object over in front of the warlord's unmoving body.

Captain Omen had caught the big man when he fell, setting him gently on the room’s dressing bench. He grabbed a handle on the heavy tube Thresher was hauling over and helped the other man get it set down in front of Tyson’s feet.

Then Thresher propped the other man up, holding him beneath his armpits to make him stand. “I hear it, Captain.”

“Yes,” Captain Omen answered. He picked up the blocky weapon and began spraying a thick, dark foam around Tyson’s feet and legs. As Captain Omen worked upward, the turbine on Tyson’s suit spun up. The smaller man moved aside and allowed the turbine to eject the ground up remnants of Tyson’s former heart.

Captain Omen focused on the hands next, as Thresher changed his grip to ensure the man’s hands were at his sides. Once Tyson’s hips and lower back were encased by the rapidly hardening foam, Thresher let go and the other man stood on his own, in spite of being unconscious. His head simply lolled to the side.

Thresher knelt and shoved the heavy metal tube until it pressed into the hardening foam at Tyson’s legs. The big officer then flipped open a small screen on the object and pressed a series of lit up buttons. The device activated, and the deck beneath Tyson’s feet suddenly groaned with extra weight.

Tyson jerked and took a breath, raising his head and blinking rapidly

“Excellent, you’re awake,” Captain Omen calmly said. “Take a deep breath for me, please.”

Tyson scowled but did as he was asked. Captain Omen quickly sprayed his chest and sides with foam, before stepping around to cover his back.

“Very good, thank you,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Tyson slurred, still coming around from the powerful electric shock. It had been powerful enough to rip apart his heart and should have caused significant brain damage as well. Captain Omen had set the device with the hopes of giving them enough time to complete their task.

“I’m encasing you in immobilization foam,” Captain Omen answered, meeting Tyson’s bleary eyes momentarily.

“Thresher, go ahead please,” he said next.

Thresher stood and plunged a needle into Tyson’s throat. The man, already partially encased in foam, blinked rapidly and then smiled as his eyelids relaxed.

“It looks good, Captain. The suit isn’t activating,” Thresher reported. “As you predicted.”

“Yes,” Captain Omen said, continuing to spray containment foam. “So long as the body is not disabled, and the effect is primarily euphoric, his device will consider it to be intoxication instead of poison.”

“That’s really smart,” Tyson slurred. “You been watchin’ me or somethin’?”

Captain Omen and Thresher both ignored the man. Thresher turned to leave the room. Captain Omen finished spraying his foam by wrapping a thick band around the back of Tyson’s neck and shoulders. He sprayed the foam part way up the back of the other man’s head, and jaw.

As it solidified, Tyson seemed to realize he couldn’t move. “Hey, what the heck?” he sighed, more exasperated than upset. “You guys are jerks.” Tyson jiggled and strained, but the foam held.

Once hardened, it was rigid enough to prevent his body from moving, and without the ability to gain momentum, his advanced strength was neutralized. Exactly as Captain Omen had planned.

The warlord had shown his abilities recklessly, without heed to who was paying attention, or for what potential purposes. He had also appeared eager to make good on their deal, after having failed to kill Kraken the first time.

Captain Omen shook his head and sighed. “Too late for half-measures,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at the warlord of Arizona, captive and in his grasp.

One final security measure was needed, and Captain Omen stepped forward to fit Tyson with his gag. A globe of expanding gel pushed from a single, large strap, filling Tyson’s mouth and preventing him from speaking or moving his jaw.

Thresher returned, with planks under his arm. He handed half of them to Captain Omen and the two of them began constructing a wooden box around Tyson. When it was complete, the front of the oversized crate read ‘high-explosive’ in red stencil.

They operated a two-man handcart, hauling the heavy crate through the halls back to Whalehunter’s moonpool, where a small cargo sub awaited them, main bay door open and ramp extended. The staff was minimal, just a single, loyal orc who guarded the door and the submarine.

Captain Omen nodded to the orc as they entered, and the orc grimly nodded back, before turning and marching out of the moonpool. Alone in the cavernous bay, Thresher and Captain Omen loaded the box containing Tyson into the small sub and hurriedly sealed its doors, before launching.

A short trip through the ocean to the Hornet’s Nest, and they began the process of hauling the box up to the VTOL bay. By the time they had it in position, alongside sixteen other large crates with identical labels, Thresher and Captain Omen were sweating, and breathing heavily.

“Let’s go,” Captain Omen said, not taking a moment to rest. He aided his crew in loading the weapons crates on three separate VTOLS. After that, a squad of his best shock troopers marched aboard each, wearing space suits and carrying sealed laser weapons.

The Hornet’s Nest had a good crew, and they timed their surfacing with the incoming waves, which had grown in intensity as the gravity sling around the equator did its work.

All three VTOLs launched, and the Hornets’ Nest slipped back below the waves as quickly as its doors could seal. None of the ships had stayed long on the surface, dealing with rogue waves every few hours made it not worth the risk.

Captain Omen rocked and swayed as the VTOL flew, holding onto a strap attached to his seat. Thresher was across from him, a grim set to his jaw. Within minutes, they were passing over the California desert on their way to Prescott.

A short while later, they entered Prescott airspace, and a challenge from BlueCleave air control came over their radio. The pilot glanced back at Captain Omen, and the man gave him a small nod.

“Yes BlueCleave control, this is Whalehunter A-One, flying in formation with Whalehunter A-Two, and Whalehunter A-Three. Patching you through to Captain Omen now,” the pilot said.

Captain Omen pressed a hand to his headset to hear more clearly over the sound of the engines.

“BlueCleave air control, please identify,” grunted a hobb.

“Captain Omen, Whalehunter Salvage. We’re allied and working under your affiliate head’s orders,” he replied.

The hobb paused a moment, and then said, “connecting you to BlueCleave command. Stay on line.”

A few clicks and a gruff voice spoke in his ear. “Who this?”

“Captain Omen,” he said.

“Ah. This Rayna, BlueCleave commander. You seen our boss?” the hobb asked.

“He was with us in the battle for Los Angeles Bay, but left after. He went to intercept Kraken,” Captain Omen lied. “With the old woman in the battle machine.”

A few seconds passed. “What you want?”

“I briefly discussed this with your boss,” Captain Omen started, “But we thought it might be best to get some weaponry up to the top of the elevator. We’ve brought sixteen heavy assault missile launcher platforms to ride up your elevator, if you agree. Tyson said to talk to you, that you were running Prescott’s defense.”

A few minutes passed while their VTOLs were joined by a force of BlueCleave hovercraft. Then Rayna’s voice clicked back into Captain Omen’s ears.

“Whalehunter ships, cleared for landing at elevator cargo platform twelve. Follow BlueCleave craft in.”

Captain Omen let out a breath and nodded at his pilot. All three VTOLs followed the BlueCleave hovercraft down to a landing platform beside the elevator. When the doors slid open, a hobb in BlueCleave armor was waiting for them.

The tall, lanky woman stepped up, her gray, pebbled skin illuminated by heavy floodlights. She carried a bulky laser rifle but didn’t point it at anyone. Captain Omen approached her as his crew worked on unloading the weapons crates.

The hobb woman stood between them and the entrance to the space elevator, with crossed arms.

“Hello,” Captain Omen started.

“Who you?” she grunted at him.

“Captain Jeonjo Omen, Whalehunter Salvage. We’re operating with your affiliate owner,” he answered.

“Tollya,” she grunted in reply. “Where you say you saw our boss?”

Captain Omen narrowed his eyes and tilted his head at her. “He helped us against the Dearth fleet in the Pacific, just off the coast of Southern California.”

The hobb woman nodded. “Right, we tracking him there. Not seen since though.”

Captain Omen nodded briskly. “Very well,” he said, as if asking what she wanted him to do about it.

Tollya stared at the other man for a long moment, and then nodded. “He not say anything?” she asked as she moved to help stabilize a crate that was being hauled up the walkway.

A line of Captain Omen’s men had formed behind him, ready to move their heavy equipment onto the elevator.

“He said he was heading to intercept Kraken,” Captain Omen replied, moving aside for his men to walk by. “No details though.”

Tollya sighed. “He probably making up as he goes. Does that sometimes,” she grunted, clearly not happy about the situation.

“Very well,” Captain Omen repeated. “Where shall we take these?”

Tollya scowled. “Missile launchers? They help against Dearth cruisers?”

Captain Omen tilted his head slightly, as close to a shrug as the man ever got.

Tollya stared at him for a long moment, and then shrugged. “Guess they help more up there than down here. Take cargo pod three, straight across. We send BlueCleave with you, starfish troopers. Help take lower cargo bay of station. Dearth not let this stuff up there without fight.”

The tall hobb woman stepped aside and gestured for Captain Omen’s troops to march past. Tollya followed them closely, quietly watching as the Whalehunter soldiers calmly off-loaded their cargo.

“Thank you,” Captain Omen said, offering his hand for Tollya to shake. “Allies are important at times like this.”

Tollya scowled down at his hand for a long moment before smiling and shaking it. Then she turned away to talk on her radio.

Loading the cargo didn’t take long. The BlueCleave hobbs helped get them all in place on the boxy internal cargo elevator car. After a quick consultation with BlueCleave, a joint assault force was assembled and split between three separate cars.

They were loaded and ready to go within minutes of the call going out, with nearly two dozen starfish troopers mixed in among the Whalehunter special forces. Tollya watched as Captain Omen personally oversaw the loading and arrangement of the missile launcher boxes, and joined him on the elevator car, hefting a laser rifle and wearing a BlueCleave warpick swinging from her belt.

The cargo box jolted into motion, beginning its crawl up the elevator. All the assembled warriors wore pressure suits, as the first defensive option the space station atop the elevator would opt for involved venting the cargo unloading zones as soon as they realized they were under attack. Captain Omen immediately set about prying open the box nearest to him, from the top of the rectangular container.

Once the front panel was loose, he shifted it to lean against a nearby wall. Tollya noticed and scowled.

“Crates not protect them from Dearth weapons fire anyway, good,” she grunted. “Don’t worry. BlueCleave shield your toys.”

Tollya stared coordinating with her troopers and communicating with the other cars. Captain Omen looked to Thresher and nodded.

The big man stepped forward, engaging with the briefing and asking clarifying questions. The BlueCleave hobbs were all fixated on their leader, and the bearded man asking her questions. Captain Omen stepped back, slipped out of sight behind a crate, and worked his way to the back of the elevator car. Then he cracked the crate Tyson was in.

Chapter 69

I struggled against the gag in my mouth, but no matter how hard I bit it, or how much strength I used to push it aside with my tongue, it reverted and blocked my ability to speak or make much noise. It was an effective muffle as well, I briefly wondered how much Captain Omen had to pay for such an annoying item.

Everybody wants to be a little naughty. Why not naughty it to the max with LoveDove Exotic Limited-AI mouth gags. Spice things up, wherever you go. 23,455 morties. 4.8 stars.

Once the BuyMort ad was closed, I did what I could to listen, as whatever they had injected me with faded. It got me good and high for about an hour, which was nice. I had to take some time to adjust to the containment foam, and my inability to move most of my body.

I’m not particularly claustrophobic, but that stuff brought on some panic. I couldn’t even move my toes inside my boots. My limbs, torso, and neck were all immobilized, and no matter how hard I strained against the material, I couldn’t break it from the inside.

Captain Omen had done his homework too. My helmet deployed when summoned, but it did nothing to help my situation. Without verbal commands, I was unable to call for help, or even access my messaging to text Axle. When I tried, I was confronted with a BuyMort premium addon screen that wanted to charge me.

I was partially aware for the VTOL ride, but Tollya’s voice in close proximity once we’d landed snapped me back to awareness. Stuck inside a wooden crate, covered in hardened containment foam that felt like steel trapping my limbs, I did my breathing exercises and listened.

With a muted gurgle, I tried to shout for her when she agreed to help Whalehunter with the elevator and station assault. That many starfish troopers gave me hope though, certainly they would be opening my crate soon, and my soldiers could overwhelm Whalehunters.

Then I was being moved on board the elevator, I could tell by the hollow, muted sound quality. Everything echoed off the cavernous metal walls, even though the donut was held partially suspended, to protect it from the earthquakes.

Once we were moving, I heard crates being opened and scowled in confusion. Until Captain Omen opened mine.

His pressure suit had a clear faceplate, so I could easily recognize the man when my crate opened and let the elevator car’s light in. He quickly raised a finger to shush me, before slipping open his faceplate and leaning in close.

The crate was only open partially, and I could see and hear Captain Omen through the wide crack he had made with his small pry bar.

“Shh,” he whispered. “I apologize for your treatment, but I couldn’t risk your affiliate leaking our plans to Dearth. If I remove your gag, will you allow me to explain?”

I narrowed my eyes but nodded.

Captain Omen carefully removed the gag, pressing something on the outside of it to retract the soft, resistant gel. I smacked my mouth and moved my tongue around as I gave some thought to shouting for Tollya.

But the smaller statured man in front of me held up a tiny, shining object and distracted me. It was a razor blade. Double-sided, one of those nice old ones for a stick-handled razor.

“You are to be delivered to Dearth security forces. Once we arrive, your crate and myself will remain, to raise the car one more floor, up to Dearth’s secure platform,” Captain Omen explained. I scowled. “At which point, you will use this,” he said, raising the razor blade again before continuing, “to free yourself.”

I scowled again but nodded. Captain Omen glanced behind my crate, before offering me the razor blade. “Open your mouth,” he said. I did as he asked, and he placed the razor blade gently on top of my tongue.

“When you are ready, swallow that,” he said, before replacing the gag. “I suggest waiting until VIP targets are in the room with us, there’s supposed to be at least one there to verify that I deliver you.”

Captain Omen raised the gag, checking behind my crate again. Then he looked me in the eyes, question obvious.

I nodded and he applied the gag. When its gel expanded in my mouth again, it simply slid over the razor blade. I moved my tongue a little, to see if I could move the blade, and it slid easily against the gel.

Captain Omen began hammering the crate closed again, before calling a member of his team over. Between the two of them, they hauled my crate into the corner of the elevator car.

Tollya’s voice sounded in the elevator car. “What wrong with that one?”

“No good, the interface doesn’t activate,” Captain Omen said immediately. “We purchased them in a hurry and didn’t check them before we left.”

“Eh. Good thing you check now,” Tollya grunted. “If we live, you should give them bad review.” She chuckled to herself, and I heard Thresher laughing behind her.

“Agreed!” the big man said. “Now we just have to live through this.”

“We will,” Captain Omen said, and the laughter ceased.

Within minutes, I felt the temperature drop, and the elevator car clanked to a stop. Gravity felt different. Not gone, just lighter, noticeably less effective at making me feel anchored to the floor. The same gravity I was used to during my church TV appearances.

The way Dearth operated their cargo platforms was efficient, but annoying. The very bottom of their space station, which locked into place with the elevator, was primarily dedicated to a series of loading and unloading platforms that connected to long, extendable docking arms.

As soon as the doors opened, I heard the sounds of weapon fire and the grunt of injured hobbs. My BlueCleave starfish troopers were wearing special pressure suits that re-sealed after being punctured, with a gel-pack container attached to the lower back that could be refilled.

The sounds of battle came to my ears from more directions, as the other cars joined in the fight. Starfish troopers and Whalehunter special forces fought Dearth troopers together, pushing out of the elevator cars and making room to offload their crates. During lulls in the firefight, typically when more Dearth soldiers were being ordered to their deaths, everyone worked to unload all the crates except mine.

A huge blast of escaping air roared through the area, and suddenly all sound stopped, replaced by a rush of freezing cold temperatures. I held the breath I had taken and hoped for the best, but the doors of the elevator car slid shut again and the hiss of air cycling into it was audible.

My body was primarily protected from freezing by the layer of hardened containment foam, but in the few seconds my container was exposed, I developed icicles and frost on my cheeks. My body involuntarily shivered, which was an interesting experience when I was unable to move most of it.

In that moment, with a razor blade ready to slide into my guts, and the near-miss with exposure to open space. Penned in, there wasn’t much I could do, but with BuyMort, I was able to open my pathway to the Teslak affiliate storefront.

Without a coupon, I would not be able to get a free item, but I was flush with morties.

Billions of them.

And I had an idea for an item I was afraid I was about to need.

BuyMort be praised, the affiliate let me into its storefront. My mind cast through the cosmos, and I found myself standing, unfettered in the Teslak storefront. Red light swirled in from the accretion disk out the portals nearby, but I ignored the view this time.

I had come to shop. My body was about to experience a lot of abuse, and I knew exactly which Teslak item I desired to counteract it. It was time to buy a stoneskin patch.

It was right where I expected it to be, in the aisle on the way to the counter. Most portions of the shelves on either side were empty, but I had access to basic starfish suits and all three varieties of Perk Patches. The price tag was a tidy two billion per patch, but I could afford it.

Draining a massive amount of morties from the primary account would at least let my team know I was alive, and I got the distinct feeling that I was going to need a little help to survive what I was about to walk into.

My mental image approached the counter and slapped the perk patch down in front of the projection of Specter. He no longer stammered or stuttered, but still changed between two versions. One pristine and healthy, the other half-dead. I needed the half-dead version.

“Specter, tell me about this perk patch,” I said.

The projection behind the counter smiled and nodded. “Perk Patch is the Teslak Cooperative’s answer the Stat Shot. Each patch is specially formulated to-”

“Stop,” I cut him off. “Tell me about the changes you made to them.”

The projection stared at me for a few seconds before it flickered and changed. Red light lit the background, clearly showing me Specters injuries. “Stoneskin,” he said. “Good choice. This patch will distribute quintillions of crystalline beings into your epidermis, exoskeleton, or any other form of external shell. They will eventually move into your major organ systems as well, but they start off with a rapid colonization of the surface.”

The wounded elf raised a hand, ignoring the droplet of blood that fell from beneath his sleeve. A projection of the crystalline creatures filled the air above his hand, showing the crystal mites scurrying about. Eventually, two of them locked limbs and lowered, pulling into one another and forming a solid protective screen with their bodies.

“Their life-spans are incredibly short, and when they expire, they help form a renewing layer of their own bodies, which will absorb into your own system to enhance its function while simultaneously increasing the physical durability.”

The projection in his hand changed, and an elfin warrior with long blond hair swung a glittering sword at another elf, who stood with hands wide, accepting the incoming blow. The blade shattered against the exposed skin on his shoulder, and the projection faded.

Specter lowered his hand. “I’ve made some changes. The first generation will live considerably longer, which will make the protectory effects more immediate, as they will lay a significantly stronger foundation before they join with it. The instinctual patterns of the creatures have been modified as well, to better adapt to changing needs.”

The Elf paused to cough and spit blood into a napkin before continuing, “They’ll breed much more rapidly when large portions of their populations are killed at once, regenerating coverage. If you’re half-way smart, you’re using this in conjunction with a starfish reactor. That means the reactor will recognize the crystalline mites as part of your body and replace the formations they create in your surface and internal organs. They’ll be stronger when replaced automatically. This upgrade should significantly increase your survivability.”

I smiled from the corner of my mouth and ordered the patch. With a nod at the bleeding projection of Specter, I closed out the storefront and returned to my prison in the weapons crate.

“Soon, now,” said Captain Omen, directly at my side. “Once the door opens, take your freedom when you feel it best.”

I would have nodded if I could. Somewhere out there, a BuyMort pod was speeding my way with an expensive upgrade in its hold for me.

A long moment passed with only the hushed grinding of the elevator car climbing beyond the primary cargo platform.

Then, in a small voice, Captain Omen added, “I would appreciate it, tremendously, if you protected my life during whatever follows next.”

I couldn’t nod or respond in any way, but I smiled faintly in my false prison, and lightly shifted the razor blade at the back of my mouth to ensure it was still there.

An alarm became evident as the elevator car came to a stop again, blaring in the distance, through bulkheads. The doors whooshed open, and the tromp of booted feet was audible.

“Right here,” said Captain Omen. “As we discussed.”

“Take him!” a gruff voice shouted. I heard the sound of a weapon stock strike something, and Captain Omen grunted.

“Pry it open!” the voice said again.

My crate was roughly handled, and the front panel torn free. A snarling orc in a black Dearth pressure suit tossed the crate’s panel aside and glanced behind me. “It’s him. Alive.”

I couldn’t see much, still being wedged in the corner of the elevator car, but that changed when the orc grabbed a hand cart and shoved it underneath my crate. I was wheeled around the corner and set down just outside the entrance of the elevator car.

Once I was settled, the orc turned back and locked down the door. Captain Omen had been the only one of us with clarity of foresight. He set this up as a way in, at a time where we were winning all our battles and most decidedly losing the war. Dearth had welcomed me into their secure facilities with open arms, again.

The area felt almost like an airport’s loading terminal. We were in a room with high ceilings, walls all in glossy Dearth black with silver utility trim. Our area was clearly meant for offloading of sensitive cargo, but it was filled with guards wearing Dearth pressure suits and holding laser rifles. Beyond them was a blast door, standing open to show a sleek-walled hallway beyond it, with portals showing open space and the swell of the planet below.

A new voice sounded that gave me pause. Rova.

“The agreement was dead, human,” she spat, slithering into sight from behind a group of armed Dearth guards. She was wearing another business suit, this one black against her reddish scales. The tip of her tail was up and over her shoulder again, but this time it gleamed in chromed steel. Her arm was also a high-end prosthetic, colored like her scales to match, but strangely smooth compared with her rough-scaled body.

“I apologize, ma’am,” Captain Omen said, bowing his head in contrition. “He proved too difficult to kill for my former affiliate. I lost many of my crew in the attempt, but in the end, containment was all we could achieve.”

“You should consider yourself lucky we do not kill you here and now,” Rova scolded. “Our troops are being wasted just one level down, in order to facilitate this deal. You have failed us too many times, human.”

I shifted the blade in my mouth again, tempted to swallow it already.

Captain Omen stopped me by stepping forward and raising his hand in a supplicative gesture, for the armed guard that followed him. “I think we both understand the value and use of troops, ma’am,” he said. He turned and gestured to me. “This prize is worth the expenditure.”

Rova’s eye’s narrowed and she smiled tightly at him. “Indeed. Kraken will pay for his corpse either way.”

I momentarily remembered the connection and shuddered. Kraken was obscenely wealthy. The number was too high for me to be able to properly name it.

“Your deal is null, human,” Rova spit. “But I appreciate your help anyway.”

Captain Omen said nothing, instead slamming his elbow into the guard behind him and snatched the stunned orc’s rifle, before smashing him into the ground with the buttstock.

I gulped the blade, as hard as I could. The blade got stuck almost immediately, and I forced my tongue back, shredding it as I gulped the blade harder.

“User!” My cartoon starfish appeared. Captain Omen fired three rounds through it, punching holes through the gathered Dearth guards before they could realize and return fire. “Better break something!”

It deployed a tendril that lasered the gel gag in my mouth, melting the substance partially before hauling the whole glob out of my mouth. Then it dove down my throat and removed the blade in a splash of hot blood.

The instant it was out of the way, I deployed my helmet.

My throat had been ripped apart on the metal, and I choked, convulsing and making the damage worse.

My teeth parted in a bloody grin as I used my tearing windpipes to scream “ROVA!”

The Nah’gh woman shuddered but did not retreat.

The guards started returning fire, their laser rifles scorching my crate and hardened containment foam as they sought Captain Omen behind me. The man was using me as cover, and while my tendrils began to erupt from the hardened foam to repair me, I realized I couldn’t blame him.

We were penned in by a cone of fire, most of it concentrated on me. The barrels flashed red as pulses of laser fire pounded against the hardened containment foam, bounced from my gleaming tendrils, and soaked into my anti-magic helmet.

“Fairy fire,” I croaked, outlining all the enemies in front of me in flickering outlines.

The containment foam at my waist cracked, and I blasted my arm free of it, sending a shower of hardened chips through the room. It blasted away the crate at my side and downed three of the Dearth grunts.

“ROVA!” I shouted again, my new vocal chords amplified by my helmet's booming voice ‘spell’ echoing across the room. My prison crumbled, the laser fire and my own fists finally tearing the shards off. I smashed down on the remnants, encasing my legs and stepped down from the crate.

My enhanced body was punctured and perforated by the laser fire, but the suit kept me up. The painkillers, synthetic blood, and pure rage kept me moving in spite of the pain.

Rova finally realized what was happening and fled, slithering silently out the blast doors and around the corner. My fairy fire still tracked her, and the Nah’gh woman quickly fled into a nearby doorway, moving up in the structure again before moving beyond my range.

Captain Omen leaned out from behind what was left of my crate and opened fire, in the distraction I caused. He expertly punched holes in three Dearth grunt’s faceplates before the handful left in the room noticed him.

By the time they tried to turn their guns, I was on them. I slammed into the first and shoved him into the wall hard enough to crush his skull, spine, and sternum all at once. Then I leapt onto the back of a burly orc and drove him into the deck. I stomped on his head without looking and lunged at the final guard. The human’s eyes were shot wide open as I knocked his head clean off his shoulders.

In the silence that followed the storm of destruction, a BuyMort pod slipped in from the hallway, beamed in a small package, whistled its happy tune, and slid silently away.

“Well,” Captain Omen said. “Thank you.”

I turned and glared at him, as sharp horns grew from the liquid metal of my nanite helmet.

“You. Go help our people,” I growled. “I’m gonna go cut the head off this snake.”

He nodded and stepped back to the elevator, opening the door with a command console. I stood in the doorway, gauntlets dripping in gore, and watched the doors slide shut on the man in his pressure suit.

Wasting no time, I grabbed the small box and ripped it open. Another tiny glass case was inside, an orange and yellow strip of cloth on it. With a few quick motions, I tore it out of its container and slapped it onto my chest.

A tickle spread, coursing around my ribs and down my belly. It crawled up my neck and onto my face, slipping in underneath the nanite helmet. I braced myself and gritted my teeth, as the feeling intensified. I burned, all over.

And then it was over. I pocketed the small container and stood, jogging out of the room.

Chapter 70

As I stepped into the hallway, claxons sounded, and the blast doors at my back began closing. I started running, following the trail Rova had left. The hallway was an external route between cargo elevators and the primary hub of the small space station. When I got to the next set of doors, they were cycling closed.

I caught the lip of the door and heaved, pressing all of my enhanced strength into the mechanism. Something broke, and I smiled as the door slid open again. They appeared to want to flush me out into space, or at least contain me and empty my area of breathable air. I intended to make it as difficult on them as possible.

The next area I entered was larger, with several hallways leading off a main hub. All of the doors were wide enough to drive a semi-truck through, and the ceilings were tall enough to admit a giraffe comfortably.

Dearth soldiers in pressure suits stormed into the room, all raising laser rifles at me. They formed up in front of a small, secondary elevator shaft. Rova watched me from the top of the elevator, in a glass car at the top, where the station became more luxury, and less industry.

I pushed off from the deck in a leap, putting all my strength into it and activating my gravity drive. The gathered soldiers fired, but I came at them head and fists first. Their fire bounced and ricocheted from my gauntlets and horned helmet, and I slammed into a group. They scattered like broken, screaming bowling pins.

Rova screamed something over her shoulder, and all the doors in the room started to cycle closed. I hurtled into the bottom of the rounded elevator shaft, ignoring the incoming laser fire. Where it hit me, it didn’t even hurt. Just burned a bit, like touching a hot stove momentarily. My stoneskin colonies were working already, as advertised.

This time I allowed the door to close behind me before I shot up the shaft, toward the bottom of the elevator platform. I activated my power blow ability as I struck the bottom of the platform and blasted it off its wall-mounted tracks.

“Breach,” a computerized voice blared. “Security, please report to cargo control. Repeat, security to cargo control.”

My metal covered fists clenched as I hovered into the room, landing gently in front of Rova. The Nah’gh woman lay on the floor, bleeding from a cut on her forehead.

Beyond her, a series of consoles and workspaces stretched out across the ceiling of the cargo hanger below, ending in another set of massive blast doors at the far side. Those doors slid open, showing two burly mordren, each holding different weapons.

One held what appeared to be an oversized shotgun, with a single massive open barrel, and an ammunition feed linked to a large container on his back. The other was carrying a two-handed axe, with an oversized, double-bladed head.

“Bulwark! Barricade!” Rova screamed, slither-crawling across the floor away from me.

“You let her name you? Like pets?!” I roared in challenge. Then I dove into the air and pushed the suit to drive me toward them.

Bulwark surprised me by lifting his cannon and firing a jet of intense flames at me. The fire washed over my body in flight and burned, and then Barricade slammed his axe into me with a thunderous spark, sending me flying into a nearby portal. The axe didn’t summon lightning, it just shocked the hell out of me on contact. I convulsed and bared my teeth as I slammed into the window, spiderwebbing cracks from the impact.

It wasn’t simple glass, but it was weaker than the reinforced material around it. I raised a metal clad fist to do what I did best, without regard for my own well-being, when Rova’s tail suddenly impaled my wrist.

I twisted my hand, catching the other end of the metal prosthesis and turning to glare at the Nah’gh woman. The metal spike in my body popped loose and she slithered away again as fast as she could. Barricade stepped into her place and raised the axe again.

With a jolt from the drive, I slammed into the lizard man around the waist as tendrils sprouted to repair my hardened body. He grunted, but caught me, and we slid back a few feet. Then he reared his head back and roared flame down onto my face. The helmet caught the worst of it, but my shoulders and upper body blackened and singed.

My crystalline colonies worked fast, as advertised, and the damage was minimal. I grinned and slammed my horned helmet up into the mordren’s mouth. He grunted in surprise, then slumped. I held up his weight as I turned and used the bigger body to shield myself from Bulwark.

The other mordren opened up on me with his painful weapon, the flame burning and sticking to my body where it struck. I used a gauntlet to swipe some of it off and recognized the material. It was slag ammunition.

I snarled and hurled the dead mordren at his friend, flying to the side in the same motion. His axe tumbled free and slammed into the bulwark with a fat blue spark. All the lights in the room cut out, and we were illuminated from the cargo bay below. Earth shined out one set of windows, and the glittering black of space in the other.

Bulwark turned and used his tail to bash Barricade’s dead body out of the way, then turned to track my movement, spraying molten slag in a trail behind me. I bounced from one wall, onto the ceiling, then back down to the floor to snatch Rova from behind and turn to face the mordren again.

He hauled up on the weapon, preventing the spray from hitting Rova. Then Barricade roared and threw aside the weapon. The angry mordren reached back and dislodged the oversized axe with a single easy movement, then turned and hurled it at me.

The massive axe flipped end over end in the lowered gravity, before striking me directly in the helmet, over Rova’s shoulder. Barricade’s aim was impressive. The axe sparked and spit, embedded in my nanite helmet. A thin trickle of blood crept down my cheek from the top of my head, where my hardened skin had helped stop the blade before it caused any serious damage.

Tendrils erupted from the suit, branching out from my neck and swarming in the air around my head. I yanked the axe out and dismissed the helmet. I didn’t want to see what happened if my helmet and my suit got in a fight.

Rova screamed and tried to run again, but I slammed the axe-head down into the back of her retreating tail, pinning the Nah’gh woman to the floor before Barricade slammed into me.

The mordren pushed me to the floor and pressed me down with one foot, pointing his slag-thrower in my face. I summoned the helmet again and raised both gauntlets to fend off the slag. I needn’t have worried, as the scalding liquid metal coursed off my body, leaving trails of bright burns behind.

But it was mild. It felt like stepping into a shower that was too hot, instead of the agonizing death I had expected. I grinned inside the helmet and slammed both fists into Barricade’s leg, crushing it between my breaker gauntlets.

The mordren howled and collapsed. I slung the remaining liquid metal from my chest and rose, looming over my wounded foe. He gripped his weapon and tried to turn it toward me, but I slapped it out of his hands. The slag thrower smashed against the bulkhead to our side and started leaking boiling metal.

My first blow was deflected, and Barricade extended his sharpened claws to try and slash my forearm, but they bounced off the hardened skin, leaving only a series of light scratches. Barricade’s eyes widened, and he looked up in time for me to slam my fist down, catching the heavy blow with his own, much larger hands.

I hauled my hand back out of his grip and slammed it down again. Again, he frustrated my attack by blocking. This time, I hit his open palms so hard, I dented the bulwark beneath him, and the broken slag rifle began leaking toward him.

With one more massive punch, I crumpled the floor beneath Barricade, and the pooling slag poured down on top of him. The mordren screamed, impossibly high-pitched as the liquid metal poured into his mouth, nostrils, and eyes.

Rova heaved against the axe in her tail, not far away, but slumped with a pained sob. I stalked over and clenched my bloody fists.

“I showed you mercy, Rova,” I growled. “And you killed my people for it.”

“Security!” the helpless Nah’gh woman screamed. I pushed away the sudden surge of pity I felt and focused on the incoming tromp of armored boots.

“Never again,” I muttered. I snatched the axe out of the flooring and slashed her in half with it, dragging the sparking blade through her head to be certain the Dearth executive would die.

Chapter 71

The blast doors slid open, and I entered another broad hallway, lined with doors leading off to other areas, and filled with angry Dearth security forces. They were armed with laser weapons, which I felt comfortable ignoring.

I activated the gravity drive and hurtled down the hallway toward the security troops, swinging the axe in a broad arc as I went through them. Regular forces were simply no match for me anymore, especially with the stoneskin colonies.

With a glance at my map, I decided to keep moving up the space station’s decks. I had to trust that my starfish troopers and Captain Omen’s men would be able to handle the lower decks. My priority was taking the station.

I followed the halls, ladders, and elevator shafts up through the structure until I reached the top level. Dearth troops came and went. Some I killed, any who ran I let go. Several sprinted for escape pod signs as soon as they saw me coming, and I simply let them go. I had my goals, and killing their grunts was tiresome. Instead, I pushed my way up until I couldn’t go any higher.

My map identified the room at the top of the station as the atrium, but the only doors to enter it from were sealed shut. They had blast doors on the outside of the regular doors that hadn’t been sealed yet, so I shrugged and forced my gauntlet’s fingers into the area between doors.

With a scream of tearing metal, I wrenched the doors open to see a familiar face.

“Wall of force!” the Wizard shouted. He stood at a pedestal, a new spell book open and glimmering in my helmet’s display. His suit had large, flared cuffs, and he wore a tall, pointy hat with a stylish slump. All in black with silver pin stripes of course, he wore his identity with such pride.

A large pink wall cut the room in half, with my entryway on one side, and the Wizard with his entourage on the other. On the far side of the room, a gleaming ship was attempting to dock, small white jets puffing at regular intervals as it approached.

The Nu-Earth board had fled, what appeared to be left over was a collection of Nu-Earth zone managers who’d been forced to flee. I saw an eclectic gathering of well-dressed and frightened looking people and aliens. Some wore weapons, but none looked happy to see me in the same room as them.

“I thought I told you, Wizard,” I said, walking toward his new wall spell. My helmet read it, trailing the lines of energy back to his spellbook. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

I traced a finger of the atomic breaker gauntlet along the pink wall cutting through the center of the room. “Like this,” I said. “Wall of force!” I waggled my fingers mockingly. “It’s a saturated magnetic resonance field. The only reason it’s colored like that is because they add a projection effect to make you think its magic.”

The Wizard glared at me. “Pervert! Monster!” he shrieked, before looking over his shoulder at the crowd of Dearth suits. “Retreat my allies, I shall cover your escape!” The man waved his flared cuffs as if projecting the force field himself.

I focused on the wall of force and ordered my anti-magic helmet to kill it. The helmet sent a pulse that struck the wall, and then rebounded as the Wizard’s spellbook sent another pulse. I tried again, and the same thing happened.

“My new spellbook has defeated the creature’s anti-magic aura!” The Wizard shrieked.

I slowly nodded and watched as the crowd behind him moved away, inching closer to the airlock on the other side of the room.

“Worth every mortie, I’m sure,” I said. Without slowing, I walked down the wall of force to the end of the atrium, where a massive viewport dominated my portion of the room. “You know the thing about magnetic resonance fields though, right?”

I turned back to look at the Wizard, who continued his bizarre play-acting at maintaining the spell-wall. When he didn’t answer me, just stared with wild eyes, I shrugged.

“They’re not airtight,” I said, lifting my right hand in front of my face and closing it into a fist.

With a small wind-up, I slammed my fist into the portal and activated the gauntlet’s breaker ability. In a flash of blue light, roaring wind, and instant, freezing cold, a hole blasted in the side of the space station. Translucent metal shattered, and bright alarm bells began to wail.

I was sucked from the station instantly but dove back inside using my gravitic drive. Icicles formed on my bare skin, which slowly darkened, turning red before shifting toward a deep purple color. On my way past the still-active wall of force, I turned my head to see the crowd of Dearth executives, all smashed up against it, crushing the Wizard beneath them.

My former foe gaped, ice forming on his eyes and lips. I turned away and flew through the blast doors before they fully sealed, landing on the floor and baring my teeth.

I gasped and choked, the air still thin in the hallway. Nearby vents whirred, and my starfish suit got to work. I pulled off my pants when I felt the tendrils moving beneath them. My cartoon starfish appeared and shook his head, before sighing and starting to dance provocatively. “That’s a lot of damage, user. Better sit down for this one.”

The suit proceeded to skin me, from the neck down. Metal tendrils worked with laser arms, pulling free strips of smoking, frost blackened skin. I winced as my toes were removed and replaced, one by one, as I watched the cartoon starfish dance. My system filled with so much painkiller that I swayed, and I finally understood why the cartoon arrived during times like that.

It was supposed to distract me. It clicked, as I stared, strips of my flesh pulling free and wetly slapping the floor. Captain Omen turned a corner up ahead, pointing a laser rifle at me, but quickly raising his hand. A taller man in a matching pressure suit stepped out with him, and immediately turned back, waving his hand at whoever followed to move up.

The only areas on my body that didn’t need replacing were on my head, hands, and groin. All areas the starfish suit or my anti-magic helmet had protected. The flesh foam that sprayed onto my nude, glistening musculature was different. Slower, thicker. It applied in strips, while lasers grafted and spun, welding my new skin into place.

As it sealed, I felt the tickle of crystalline creatures reinhabiting the epidermis and working to harden it again. By the time Captain Omen and Thresher reached me, I was mostly put back together. Thresher offered a gloved hand, and I nodded up at him as I took it. He hauled me up, looking around at the discarded strips of blackened, frozen flesh.

“I see your end of the assault is going well,” Thresher said.

“The cargo decks are ours. As is most of the rest of the station,” Captain Omen reported.

I scowled. “What’s not ours?”

“A small portion of the upper promenade has been sealed. When we attempted to breach the doors, we were informed via MortMobile that the church television staff was inside. They’ve elected to stay and keep recording. Apparently they’re not concerned about Dearth, or Silken Sands.”

“Yeah, don’t bug those guys, we’re in business. I need their morties to keep flowing,” I groaned, as the suit finished its fine tuning work, mostly focused around carving my bellybutton back to the way it had been with a laser. “They’re no threat to us, just keep them penned in.

Captain Omen nodded.

Tollya came around the distant corner and trotted over to me. “Boss!” she called. “Where you come from?”

I glared at Captain Omen for a long moment while I turned. Then I looked up at Tollya and shrugged.” I flew up the elevator shaft when I found out what you guys were doing.”

My phone had been going off in my pocket repeatedly, but the nice thing about MortMobile is that you can get really good at ignoring it. Plus, I paid extra for messages, both text and vid, so it was an easy bet that somebody had left me a message detailing the Whalehunter-BlueCleave assault.

“Need to help Phyllis, boss. She go to fight Kraken alone,” Tollya told me. Then she glanced at the discarded skin on the floor. “You survive naked space-walk . . . cool.”

I stood and moved to a nearby portal, looking down. On the surface, Kraken’s fuzzy, massive form was just visible, moving up through Northern Mexico. Lower, something raced across the silvery belt, sending a wave of water spraying up into the atmosphere.

“I have a team ready, I just don’t have a way to get them in range of the target. Kraken is too big, too well protected for a shot from outside. I need to get them in where I was,” I said, thinking out loud.

Tollya watched and waited, her face visible behind the clear faceplate of her pressure suit.

“Tollya,” I finally said. The hobb’s back straightened and she stared at me. “I need Axle up here. We need to own this station, which means disconnecting any Dearth controls before the Sol board decides to flush us all out the airlock.”

“Yes boss,” she said, turning away and speaking into her radio.

“Can you get your team up here?” asked Captain Omen.

When I looked at him in confusion, he repeated, “your team, man! The one you said you have ready to attack Kraken.

“Oh, yeah, they’re nearby,” I said. “In orbit I think. Why?”

“Follow me,” Captain Omen said. He turned on a heel and marched back the way we had all come. I hurriedly fell in with him. My skin itched and burned as we walked, the crystalline colonies working to rapidly reinforce and upgrade the structure of my epidermis.

It had been less than half an hour since I took the patch, but I could feel the difference already.

Within minutes, Captain Omen, Thresher, Tollya, and I arrived at a ring of escape pods wedged into the center of the cargo loading area. We marched through cold floors that had only recently had their life-support turned back on.

Dearth trooper bodies were scattered around the floor, with a small pile of our dead near the central elevator shaft.

The major docking hallways were all filled with missile launchers and Whalehunter forces working on setting them up. Around the loop of the station were other squads, setting up more missile launchers. Captain Omen was attempting to get firing lines primarily facing the incoming Dearth cruisers, but beyond that first salvo I wasn’t sure we could defend against them.

Especially if Dearth decided the station, and elevator, weren’t worth trying to keep any more. It didn’t seem likely, especially with the church crew on board. But there was no way of being certain they knew that, and I got the distinct impression that I had made Dearth unusually angry at me.

Chapter 72

Some of the escape pods in the cargo area had been taken, but a great deal remained. Captain Omen stepped up in front of one of them and began swiping at his BuyMort interface. After a moment, he tossed an ad my way.

The Dearth Conglomerate is proud to present the finest in low, medium, or high atmosphere insertion escape pods. Equipped with our proprietary design, each occupant will be secure against re-entry’s rugged requirements. Each pod contains three seats for average to large-sized occupants, complete with Dearth’s restraint gel. Combined with our ablative and reinforced hull designs, any landing is a safe landing. 43,000,000 morties per pod, 4.7 stars.

Taking a look at the attached design specs was interesting. Each pod was shaped like a sharp wedge. A series of ablative plates lined the front of the wedge, and a series of parachutes was secured on the flat edge.

I frowned.

“I’m surprised Dearth would pay that much for escape pods,” I said.

“You can use the pod, warlord,” said Captain Omen. “Drive it into the beast from above.”

“A harpoon from the heavens,” uttered Thresher. He shook his head and backed away, turning to walk over and interact with a squad of Whalehunter’s special forces.

I nodded and pulled out my phone. As I suspected, I had a lot of messages. Over three dozen. Ignoring them all, I asked the psychic deity to connect me with the brothers Delvago.

The conversation was short, I explained where I needed them to meet me, and that I had a method of gaining entrance to Kraken’s brain chamber. Dario’s broad, glittering beard wagged as he nodded eagerly. They were ready, he assured me, and waiting to come aboard.

While we waited for their BuyMort pod to arrive, I stared at the escape pod entrance. It had two doors, connected by a short hallway. The pods own door was on the rear of the wedge, nestled between the nest of deployable parachutes. Between the escape pod and the cargo bay’s airlock was about five feet to traverse.

Thresher showed me an image of the space station from the elevator, and the escape pods were all sticking out of the secondary cargo platform, like glittering fins pointing down to Nu-Earth. I was supposed to drive one of those into Kraken, from orbit.

I sighed and pulled up my map records. With a little playing around, I got the app to display an image of Kraken’s brain chamber superimposed on top of an image of it from above. It was imperfect, and I really didn’t know how well I was going to be able to steer, but it was something.

With a faint hiss, a BuyMort pod floated down from the ceiling. The station had airlocks for them all over the place, it had made life on board much easier for everyone. An instant later, the brothers were stepping out of a rainbow beam in front of us.

Dario smiled wide and threw both his arms open. “Embrace me, my friend!” he yelled. “Today is a joyous day!”

Izan carried the cannon, in its case. His shoulder slumped and his face was drawn.

I stepped forward into the hug and patted Dario on the back lightly. He grinned again. “So, my friend. Tell me where this beasty is, and we shall make it a memory for you.”

“Assuming you can get us inside its shell,” Izan added.

“About that,” I said. “You guys are probably not going to like this, but we have a way inside.” I stepped out of the way and gestured to the open escape pod.

Inside were three large tubes with doors on the front, like shower stalls. Each was secured in the craft by giant pistons that went into the floor and ceiling, and they took up most of the available space.

“What is this?” Dario asked, his personal shield sparking when he leaned on the doorframe to look inside.

I sighed and shook my head. “It’s an escape pod, designed to survive some pretty extreme re-entry requirements. You’ll both get inside, and I’ll guide it down into Kraken.”

Izan blinked at me, then looked at the escape pod. He shook his head. “Brother, this is insanity.”

Dario scowled. “How you mean guide? You will drive from inside the gel-chamber? I thought they immobilize you for safety?”

“No, Dario, I’m going to ride the back of the pod, and steer it by pushing,” I said with a sigh. I flexed my arms, feeling the enhanced strength again. “I can do it. I can fly, I’m stronger than I should be, and I can survive the reentry.”

Izan scowled and motioned for his brother. The two men stepped aside, and a heated argument quickly began between them. After a few moments of that, I sighed and shouted, “gentlemen! We do not have time for this. Kraken is shaking the entire planet apart, and my people are down there!”

Dario shoved his smaller brother lightly in the shoulder, and both men turned to come back. “We understand, thank you for your patience,” he said as he walked. When he realized his brother was not following him, he turned and snapped, “Izan! We do not wilt here!”

With a faint scowl, his brother hefted the transdimensional pulse cannon and followed his brother on board. They secured themselves in the gel tubes, each brother donning the provided breathing masks and sealing the doors behind themselves. I watched as each secured tube scanned its occupant, then filled rapidly from the bottom with a clear, faintly green tinted gel.

Probably another Sleem product.

Once the gel was in place, the external doors of the escape pod sealed.

Thresher returned then, holding an oversized suit. It had bulky arms and legs, a padded torso portion, and an oversized, bubble helmet.

“Reinforced, ablative suit, for working construction out-doors,” he said. “Best I could find on short notice, mate.”

I nodded at the man and took the suit. With some help from Thresher and Captain Omen, I managed to squeeze into the bulky thing, and got the helmet secured. On a whim, I tested my own anti-magic helmet, and it easily deployed inside the confines of the other helmet.

“Thank you, both,” I said, turning awkwardly. “Defend the station.”

Captain Omen stood straight, clicked the heels of his boots together, and saluted me in the BlueCleave fashion. Thresher noticed, scowled, and then followed suit.

“Good luck,” Captain Omen said. Then he turned and stood with one hand behind his back, and one hand on the manual escape pod release.

I pushed the gloves on my bulky suit into thick, industrial retrieval hook placements on either side of the door, then crammed the feet of the suit into a few more.

When it felt like they were good and forced in place, even bending the metal of the placements a little, I stopped and took a deep, calming breath. I closed my eyes and thought of Molls. Her beautiful smile, hovering above me on a cold Arizona morning. Being wrapped in our nest of twisted blankets, captured by her warm, purple tinged coils.

Then I nodded the suit’s helmet, once, hard.

Captain Omen pulled the lever, the door behind me slammed closed, and the escape pods docking latches released with a heavy clunk. The craft plunged suddenly, yanking my body back against the rear frame.

I twisted to look up, and realized the station was already vanishingly small, glittering in the far distance. A gathering roar built up, first in the air around me, and then through the space suit, as red sparks began to fly past.

The sparks quickly built into a wall of roaring flame, the reentry plasma shunting from the craft’s nose and washing along its sides. The construction suit began to rapidly heat up, the outside edges closest to the lip of the escape pod slagging and hurtling away with the wall of superheated plasma. My skin reacted, tingling as the crystalline colonies responded to my newest threat, readying my skin for intense heat.

I screamed as the suit burned away more fully, cracking and flying away in melting chunks when I moved. My instincts made me hunch in against the craft as my own body singed and crackled. I watched the construction suits knuckles start to burn away and summoned the breaker gauntlets in a panic, clamping down harder on the frame.

The suit blasted away fully, and I burned. Reentry isn’t hot because of too much friction. It's hot because air molecules can’t get out of the way of the object entering the atmosphere fast enough, and they compress. They compress so much, and so fast, that they become a wall of searing plasma.

I was surrounded on all sides by wakes of plasma, as the escape pod plunged lower and lower into the earth’s atmosphere. The suit filled me with painkillers, and I screamed in agony anyway, as flame washed over my section of the craft and coursed between my arms and legs. My clothing was burned away, my boots, everything but me, and my extreme environment starfish repair suit.

Then the heat vanished, and I was buffeted by cold, air and clouds ripping at me, trying to dislodge me from the outside of the craft. I hauled myself up to look over the lip of the plummeting escape pod, tearing a ragged breath as I saw we were falling off-course.

The parachutes deployed, blasting my grip loose, as the frame work tore free with a short scream. I tumbled and flipped through the air, fighting to stay conscious against the sheer g-forces. Then, in an instant of calm, my gravitic drive kicked in and righted me.

I smirked and plunged back down toward the falling craft, weaving to dive between the cluster of parachutes. It had slowed significantly when they deployed, so I knelt on the rear hatch and tore each bundle of parachutes out, letting them sail free.

Once they were gone and we were back up to speed, I pushed against the back of the pod and drove us to faster speeds again. A shockwave erupted from our front end as we passed the speed of sound again, Kraken getting bigger and bigger in my vision.

I saw Phyllis, engaging the flying beast with her heavy duty lance. In fact, I couldn’t see Phyllis or her flying mega-mech at all. I just saw the lances of brilliant red as they streaked into Kraken’s body from different angles.

The beast was waving its tentacles, in an attempt to swat Phyllis out of the air, but she dodged its clumsy attacks and kept firing.

With a glance at my map, I brought Kraken’s layout back up to the front. I hurriedly looked between the target in front of me, and the map, adjusting my course as best I could. The creature grew in size rapidly, and I pushed the gravitic drive into high gear for a final course adjustment before I ducked down and pushed.

Chapter 73

With a screaming thundercrack, the escape pod plunged directly into Kraken’s eye. Our shockwave followed us and tore apart a crater in the giant squid’s flesh, blasting away the ruined remains of the eyeball, as well as a gout of ink.

Kraken dropped like a stone, skidding to a stop in the Mexico desert. We punched through the beast’s brain chamber, esophagus, and into the other side of its donut-shaped brain. The escape pod finally stopped, wedged in the far side of the beast’s internal armoring system. It had cut a channel through the brain, which loomed above us, sparking and sputtering.

I stood from the rear of the pod, skin smoking and charred. In patches around my arms and shoulders, plasma sparks still smoldered. The cartoon starfish appeared to look around and shake its head. “Better break something, user,” it said.

I crushed the ruined escape pods door, yanking it off its hinges and crushing it between my hands. Dario looked up from his draining gel tube, eyes wide as he took in my ruined body.

“Here we go!” shouted my cartoon, as tendrils sprouted.

While Dario and Izan watched, the suit skinned me again, tearing strips loose and replacing them with thick flesh foam and lasers. I gritted my teeth behind my helmet and bore it while my starfish suit worked. It took less skin this time, which was somewhat less horrible to endure.

Full of painkiller, and exhaustion, I reached down to help Dario climb out, and then Izan behind him.

Dario looked around. “Well, we can certainly shoot Kraken from here, I would say.” He peered up, through the giant gash in the rubber flesh to the brain’s chamber above us.

Izan stumbled and I caught his forearm, steadying the man as he tried not to fall from the back of the escape pod. He scowled as he looked me up and down, before manipulating his BuyMort screen. A pod flashed into the air at our sides and warped in a small box. The smaller man gestured at me and then the box, as he started working to climb down the scorched side of the pod.

I cut open the box to find a pair of billowy silk pants and burst out laughing. As I hauled them on, I marveled at how soft and comfortable they were. I was so used to the heavy, armored cargo pants that BlueCleave kept giving me, with their tight-fitting belts. The silk, with its relaxed, elastic waistband, felt amazing.

Like wearing silk underwear, for my entire lower body. I hovered into the air and floated forward to land in front of Izan. The man was standing on scorched, torn squid flesh, as ink ran in rivulets down to the ground below our craft. A small river of the stinking stuff flowed right past us in the massive wound.

“Thank you, Izan,” I said.

The other man looked up at my reflective helmet and nodded. Then he pointed up, through the gaping wound to the sparking portion of exposed brain matter. “We can hit that, if you still want us to,” he said, gesturing helplessly around him. “I do not think the beast will survive such a wound.”

“It will,” I said. “Kraken is like me. Its machine keeps it alive.”

Dario picked his way down beside us, carefully stepping to avoid wet patches. When he arrived, he pointed up, to the sky above us. “What is that?” he asked.

Far above us, near the top of Kraken’s massive wound, floated a figure. A red streak of light lanced from the figure to the walls nearest her and I laughed. “That’s my bodyguard,” I said. “You guys go ahead, do your thing, I’ll go talk to her.”

With that, I flew up, through the wound my escape pod had driven through Kraken. On my way by the exposed brain matter, I could see that Kraken’s drones were already working on repairing it, and large sections of the brain still coursed with visible power, snapping arcs of electricity between them. I shook my head and flew higher, coming even with Phyllis inside Kraken’s ruined eyeball.

The walls of gelatin on either side of us rumbled and jiggled with movement as Phyllis burned another long arc into the beast with her mega-mech’s primary weapon. I used my helmet to access MortMobile and called her.

As I expected, her cabin was filled with weed smoke, but I could see her face through the fog of it. “Tyson? Where have you been, I had to take this beastie down by myself.”

I sighed and shook my head. “I dropped an escape pod on it from the space station overhead, Phyllis. But thank you for distracting it.”

She huffed, took a drag on her joint, and coughed lightly as she exhaled. “I guess I do enjoy being useful,” Phyllis said.

“Speaking of, can that thing go in space?” I asked, pointing at her suit.

“Better than yours, I imagine,” she said. “But yes, it’s sealed. I can do twenty, thirty minutes on my own air supply.”

“How long if you don’t smoke?” I asked.

Phyllis sputtered and choked indignantly. “How dare you! I’ve never tested it to find out.”

“Well, there’s five Dearth heavy assault cruisers en-route. They’re due in less than an hour, could you get up there and help BlueCleave and Whalehunter? They’re preparing our defenses.”

Her boots burning, Phyllis turned the oversized mech to face me and nodded. “And what will you be doing, while we’re up there having space battles?”

“I’m finishing off Kraken, then I’ll be joining you as soon as I can. Even if its just me, I can punch through their ships if it comes to that,” I said.

“Ha! Sounds like a good way to die, in spite of all that crap you have embedded in your body,” she scoffed.

I nodded grimly and hung up. As I began dropping lower into the wound again, Phyllis kicked her boots into higher gear and rocketed up into the sky. Floating down through the wound showed me how much progress Kraken’s ship-suit was making. It was working to weave the massive beast back together, in spite of how horrific the wound was.

As I landed beside the Delvago brothers, who were installing the cannon on the sloped side of the crashed escape pod. It wasn’t a perfect angle, but it face the orb’s opening upward, which Izan insisted was necessary.

While they worked, a BuyMort pod floated down from a ruptured portion of the beast’s armor and projected a dazzling rainbow beam in front of us, on the great slab of torn squid flesh. I summoned the atomic breaker gauntlets and growled.

Rebecca Montaigne dragged herself out of the beam, one arm and one leg weakly pushing her body forward, grey tentacle trailing back to the beam. “Stop!” she slurred. “Please!”

I turned to face the brothers Delvago. Izan had a look of abject horror on his face, but Dario was glaring angrily at the woman. “Izan!” he barked. “We have work to do.”

Rebecca dragged herself forward another few inches before flopping and rolling over to look up at me. Her face was an insane mask, eyes shot wide with fear as her lips tried to pretend to smile. “We can beeee-” she slurred off as her eyes focused and unfocused.

“Together,” she finally whispered.

I stepped forward and crouched down over the woman. “There is no we,” I whispered. “You’re not real, and you never were. There’s no mind at the core of that cluster you’ve wrapped around yourself, just an empty pit of hunger. You’re a dumb, dangerous animal, and you need to be put down.”

“No-no-no-no-no-” she started slurring, repeating the word rapidly, like a tic. “Everything is mine. Everything is me!”

I stood and looked over my shoulder. “Gentlemen!” I shouted. “I would like to kill this monster now.”

“We are ready! Just now, this very moment, we are ready!” Dario shouted back.

Izan shook his head, staring at the slumped woman on the rubbery flesh. “Brother, I do not know,” he started.

Dario pointed up, his heavy overcoat swinging with the movement. “Fire, Izan! Gather your courage and do what must be done, before the beast kills us all.”

Izan nodded, lowered his head, and slid his hand into the cannons darker-than black surface.

“Plea-plea-please,” panted Rebecca, at my feet.

The smaller man stepped back suddenly, as the orb began drawing in all light around it and glowing from inside. The pit at the bottom of the wound darkened, before a ball of light burst from its opening, sailing straight up into the brain matter above us. It arced and scorched the walls of flesh around it, before erupting in a series of electrical arcs on contact with the brain.

Rebecca went stiff, arms rigid and legs kicking as her eyes locked with her own reflection in my helmet. I shook my head down at her and said, “I’m sorry.”

The electrical storm above us suddenly winked out, and Rebecca went still with a long, drawn out breath. The tentacle did not detach, but the BuyMort pod simply cut its beam out, letting it flop wetly as the machine idly floated away. Its machinery ground to a halt as well, the regenerative suit blinking out with its host.

Kraken was dead.

I got a notification from my Afflqwst app, letting me know the quest was complete, but something else caught my eye. The MortBlock map was open. My little patch of land in the desert above us was visible, but everything else read as unclaimed.

“BuyMort, I need to buy a new MortBlock, immediately!” I shouted. A pod ripped its way into our world next to me and deposited a small box, which I tore open and hurriedly scrambled to establish the MortBlock.

Once it was hooked up to my account, I refreshed it and watched as my territory swept across the map, following the waves of the earthquakes still happening. It took a couple of minutes to complete, but when it was done, I was the proud new owner of Nu-Earth.

Chapter 74

Including any structures attached to it. My MortBlock covered not only Earth, but the elevator, and space station sitting atop it as well.

I panted to breathe as I thought about what I had to do next. The planet was mine, but Kraken’s gravity sling was still going to rip apart everything on the surface if I couldn’t shut it down.

Axle called, shaking me out of my stunned reverie. When I answered, he peered at my face, mechanical cameras in his eyes cycling in to see me better. “Tyson,” Axle finally said. “You look terrible.”

“Its been a rough couple days, my friend. What’s our next crisis?” I asked. Dario and Izan worked to put away their transdimensional pulse cannon in the background.

“Dearth’s cruisers are arriving in lunar orbit as we speak. I can’t imagine they’ll wait much longer to launch their assault,” Axle said. “There is also the issue of the gravity sling. The item is a relic, only Kraken knew how to operate it.”

“Can it be destroyed?” I asked.

“Captain Omen tells me his crew was able to damage it with their weaponry, but only minimally. Whatever it’s made of, it’s incredibly tough,” Axle replied. “But I need to talk to you about something else.”

When I scowled in confusion, Axle glanced around and nodded. “Have you checked the Afflqwst reward?” he asked.

When I shook my head, he widened his eyes significantly. “You should,” he said. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

I pulled up my afflqwst app and looked.

Quest – Destroy Kraken before Kraken destroys Nu-Earth.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Kill the creature at the heart
of Kraken Corp. (complete)

Congratulations. Your new planetary affiliate can now thrive.

REWARD – Item coupon.

The reward itself was an item coupon for the Teslak Cooperative. That by itself wasn’t terribly exciting, since we could use the storefront as normally, assuming we had the morties to pay.

But the coupon’s mortie value stood out.

“Hold on, what number is that?” I asked Axle, after failing to count all the zeros twice in a row.

“That is four-hundred and seventy-five trillion morties. Nearly half a quadrillion,” Axle explained. “Perhaps whatever that is for will help us, it cannot be something powerless, for that price tag.”

“I’ll check,” I said. I hesitated, but added, “Tell Tollya she gets to nuke something, finally.”

“The gravity sling?” Axle asked.

I nodded, and his lips became thin.

“I’ll start looking for radiation clean up services,” he said.

“Thank you, Axle. I couldn’t have done this without you. Now that we have the whole planet, things can be different,” I said.

“Yes, I expect the next few days will be very busy,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “Good luck with Teslak.”

We disconnected. I stared at the bald head in the phone for a long moment, as the psychic deity watched me back. After a few seconds, he mouthed the word “GO” at me, with wide eyes, and I closed my phone app.

“Gentlemen,” I said, turning to face Dario and Izan. They had their equipment packed up and were waiting for me, a BuyMort pod nearby and rainbow beam waiting to take them home.

Dario approached. “We have struck a mighty blow today, my friend. My brother in arms.”

“Someone or something else will take their place, Dario,” I replied, exhaustion lacing my voice.

“Hey! So what? We kill them too, maybe,” Dario replied. “Until the church is torn down around the multiverses ears for killing my mother, we will kill those on the top ten list.”

“Aside from me, I hope?” I asked.

“You make a good show of being for the church, but you cannot fool me. I see in your eyes you hate them, maybe more than I do,” the big man said. He shook his head, waggling his shining beard. “We will fight alongside one another again, I know it. Goodbye for now, my friend!”

Dario pulled me into an embrace, which I returned after a second, clapping him on the back. “We’ve done the impossible together. No reason to stop now,” I told him.

Izan cringed, but Dario beamed at me. He nodded and walked back to his brother, who fled into their waiting rainbow beam.

With a deep, calming breath, I pulled up the Teslak storefront and loaded into their ad space. When I approached the counter, Specter’s projection appeared, smiling in his clean clothing.

I placed the coupon on the counter, and the projection blinked, the small digital represented card appearing in Specters hands.

“Congratulations, this is an important milestone,” he said. “Purchasing your first ship is always an exciting day.”

My heart skipped a beat. A ship.

The floor beneath my feet rumbled and started to lower, Specter and his counter coming with me. We descended into a massive, empty hangar bay. Spaces were set out, delineations on the flooring that indicated where ships should go.

Some were large, but one stretched off into the distance, the ship that would eventually fill it massive.

My counter hovered on a small chunk of the floor from above, gently floating through the hangar until it stopped at the only parking space with something in it.

A ship, roughly starfish shaped, if a starfish had dozens of tubes running around its body like garden hoses, with dozens of tiny openings across the front. It was a deep black color, interspersed with orange trim. The coils that wrapped around the core of the ship hummed as our platform approached.

“The Teslak cooperative’s answer to all three-dimensional beings interstellar travel needs, I am proud to present the Sand Star. The Sand Star is a frigate-class vessel, with the capacity for a three-sapient crew, but the full capability to be piloted by oneself as well. If equipped with a Teslak Starfish extreme environment suit with the gravitic harness addon, the Teslak Sand Star can be fully operated by a single pilot, through neural interface.”

Specters speech drifted in as I stared at my new ship. A frigate that cost half a quadrillion morties, all for me.

“The Sand Star is equipped with a sand-caster system for both weapons and propulsion. A combination electro-static accelerator-reactor provides fusion-based propulsion for both sub-light travel, and offensive capabilities. Microscopic, tube-shaped projectiles are accelerated to up to one-quarter the speed of light, while the ship is in flight, and can be ‘cast’ at enemy ships or aggressive life-forms. Full details will be available once on-board, but I would be happy to run through them with you before your purchasing decision is made,” the projection informed me.

I remembered the Dearth cruisers in orbit and shook my head. “I want it. Now, ring me up.”

With a flash of light, the entire program reverted, and we were back in the shop. “Very well,” said Specter. “Congratulations on your purchase.”

The ad space blinked out and I was back inside Kraken’s stinking corpse. With a quick look around, I leapt up and launched myself into the sky, flying out of the giant dead squid. I floated over its body and landed in the desert beside it as a BuyMort pod floated toward me.

This time there was no box, no packaging to rip through. The mansion-sized starship warped in, sitting on the desert in front of me, landing struts extended. When I approached, it extended a door from its bottom, letting me climb on board.

The interior matched the exterior, black with dusky orange trim. The interior was close, with a small, ring-shaped central portion. Each arm of the starfish-shaped vessel had a door I could access. One was labeled ‘domestic,’ one ‘flight deck,’ one ‘medical,’ one ‘engineering,’ and the final door read ‘cargo.’

Without wasting time, I entered the flight deck. Three vaguely egg-shaped seats were in a triangle formation before a view screen that was already alive and showing me the desert. When I sat down in the front seat, a message blinked up on the screen.

“Starfish suit detected. Would you like to synch your suit to the vessel?”

“Yes!” I shouted.

The seat-back suddenly gripped me, pulling me back into it fully, as handles rose from the console in front of me. They both had triggers attached to the handles. I felt something slide into the suit from the chair, and suddenly I could feel the ship. Its thrusters were waiting to respond to my mental commands, in the same way my gravity harness did.

The weapons were full, and waiting my command, but I couldn’t fully understand them. The suit and ship relayed information based on my focus, my curiosity, and information was pulled up on-screen.

A plain tube was all it showed me, but then pulled the scale back to show me just how tiny the projectile was.

“Shaped carbon nanotubes are saturated with ions before discharge,” a tutorial program said. “Each nanotube is shaped to maximize charge to mass ratio, allowing 1.2 kilohertz discharge per second, per firing tube.”

I checked quickly, to find that the ship had nearly five hundred potential firing tubes, one hundred per limb. Each of the tubes wrapped around the limbs were electrostatic accelerators. We used to have a couple of those, before BuyMort came to earth. We buried one of them under a good chunk of Europe and used it to try and understand particle physics. Called it a particle accelerator, but the designs the ship’s tutorial showed me were too similar to ignore.

Simply much more advanced and scaled down to allow one hundred of them per arm of the ship.

“Each projectile, while not terribly effective on its own, represents an unusual threat to three-dimensional space faring vessels, when combined with the tens of thousands per projectile-load. Due to their tiny size, and extreme velocity, each nanotube is nearly impossible to shield against, using physical armor or energy shielding systems. Each can also be loaded with fissile material, at a command from the user, increasing their explosive force dramatically.”

A simulation showed on-screen, as a nanotube, labeled as ‘sand’ struck a starships armored plating. The tiny projectile created a crater too small to be seen with the naked eye. Then another landed directly in the center of the cratered armor and dug the wound deeper. The simulation sped up as projectiles began landing in and around the first crater, pulling the camera back to show a terrible wound drill into the vessel, before a final nanotube, filled with fissile material to create a microscopic nuclear bomb, sunk into the craft’s reactor, causing a devastating explosion that tore it to pieces.

“The sandcaster weapons system also makes for excellent point defense,” the simulation told me. It showed a series of incoming projectiles, all shot out of the sky by nanotube before they could close range with the ship.

“Even concentrated energy beams can be deflected using the sandcaster system,” it said. A beam of weaponized light flashed toward the starfish ship, and a cloud of microscopic, shaped sand rushed out to greet it, holding the beam at bay until the ship could move out of the way. It was a smooth maneuver, done before I even realized what I was fully watching.

Calls began to come in from Tollya, Captain Omen, Rayna, and Axle all at the same time, so I shut down the tutorial and concentrated. The Sand Star lifted off nimbly, bright blue jets of fire blasting from its arms and core. Before I pushed the ship to leave the area, I decided to test the weapons, leaning forward and focusing while squeezing the firing triggers in front of me.

A dingy cloud extended from two arms, striking Krakens body and drilling holes deep into it before I could let off the triggers. My screen had to show me an up-close view of the damage, but it made the point effectively.

I turned my focus to the sky and pushed. The Sand Star puffed blue flame and rocketed skyward. I felt the acceleration at first, but it quickly faded. My cartoon starfish appeared on screen and looked around appreciatively.

“Wow, user! Not bad! Watch your suit’s charge though, the gravity harness can only last so long keeping your vitals operating as normal.” It began a luxurious dance, calling a pole down from the ceiling of its projected environment.

I ignored it, focusing on the screen as my ship left Nu-Earth’s atmosphere and zipped toward the elevator’s space station.

In my view screen, a small battle outside was pulled up for me to review. A series of missile launchers had been destroyed, along with a docking arm that floated free, tumbling away from the station. A Dearth cruiser, oblong, dark green, vaguely hammer-head shaped, and bristling with weapon barrels and communication towers swung away from the destruction.

I focused on it and squeezed the triggers, projecting my anger into the machine. My screen painted my nanotube weapons fire, so I could visually adjust my target. A lance of dust reached lazily out from my vessel to the Dearth cruiser, and punched a hole through its front end, directly behind the weapons suite on its nose.

Flame ballooned out into space, the ships weapon’s barrels flared brightly, and then the entire ship erupted. Fragments sailed in all directions, and the rear end of the vessel began to fall toward Nu-Earth.

Phyllis appeared at my side suddenly, her mech burning bright to hold position beside me. I dipped the starfish’s arms, then spun it around toward the next ship. My helmet’s map feature had been reproduced on the screen, but it was a three-dimensional map, pulled way back to allow me to see where the targets attacking the space station were in real time.

My ship twirled and jetted gracefully around the structure, toward where I saw a series of missile streak from the station into a nearby Dearth cruiser. All the warheads splashed against the vessels shields, and while it pulled away from the area, it didn’t appear damaged.

I decided to fix that for them, squeezing the triggers as I spun the Sand Star along the cruisers spine. The sandcasters pumped out nanotubes, slashing into and ripping apart the ships armor, and then hull. Small detonations peppered the exposed interior decks as Dearth crew-members were blasted into space.

My sandcasters cut shielded warships apart as easily as I could think it. A quick glance showed my fuel supply, which was also my ammunition, still at high levels. There must have been quadrillions of the nanotubes cycling through my myriad particle accelerators.

My screen flashed with a warning, as a third cruiser veered up from beneath the station and locked onto me. I twitched the drive with my mind and the Sand Star spun sideways, flipping around and shooting tiny puffs of dust at the incoming missile fire.

Each missile detonated well away from my ship, and I continued the spin, arcing up over the space station and diving down its other side.

With a surge of concentration, I zipped beneath the station and came back up behind the cruiser, pouring sandcaster fire into its rear thrusters. The ship ignited from the rear, sailing off in an arc over the planet as it exploded in a string of bright lights.

Only two cruisers remained, and my screen guided me toward the nearest. It was on the far side of the station, engaged in a running battle with Phyllis. The old woman in her mega mech was tiny compared to the ship, but she chased it aggressively, dodging its return fire and striking its shields over and over with her plasma lance.

The missiles the ship fired at her curved back around, tracking her mech’s signature and streaking toward her from behind. I quick pulse of focus, and a squeeze of the triggers, and each missile burst from a tiny cloud of hyper-accelerated sand.

Like the ship was throwing daggers at daggers.

I streaked past Phyllis and held down the triggers, focusing on the space behind the weapons section again. When the ship didn’t immediately burst, I swept the sandcasters back and forth with quick bursts from the thrusters.

Phyllis raised her mech’s middle finger at my ship as I twirled and jetted back past her, on my way back to the space station. The final Dearth cruiser seemed to have gotten the hint and was trying to put the station between my ship and it, on a course to loop around Nu-Earth and slingshot back out into the solar system.

With another burst of concentration, I boosted the Sand Star’s thrusters and pushed it to even faster speeds. My cartoon starfish arrived back on screen to warn me I was draining my own gravity harness charge too fast, and I eased back on the mental throttle.

The Sand Star was brutally fast, much too fast for my body to withstand. Without the suit to normalize the gravity inside my body, I would stroke hard from the sheer Gs I was pulling with each maneuver.

But the Dearth cruiser was in front of me anyway, much too slow and bulky to get away from my nimble frigate. I thought back to who I had been before all of this happened. Even a week earlier, I would have let them go.

I opened up with all five hundred of the sandcaster barrels, brutally blasting away the rear of their ship. With the primary drive thrusters severed, the cruiser started veering into the atmosphere, fat red sparks of plasma already starting to streak against its hull.

The final threat to my planet burned and broke apart as it plummeted down over the Pacific Ocean. I leaned back and breathed, calming my racing heart. My cartoon starfish danced back into focus, holding a sign that reminded me to break something and charge my suit.

Below me, on the glittering band of metal wrapped around my new planet, a mushroom cloud blossomed. The mountains of material racing around the sling all sprayed forward, launching untold tons of earth skyward.

Some splashed down in the oceans, some pelted the ruined land, and some ejected into space, a shotgun-blast of deadly debris from the most dangerous planet in the BuyMort system. I smiled, watching the mushroom cloud for a long, strangely relaxing moment.

With an almost lazy push of focus, I sent the ship hurtling back toward the space station, and an intact docking platform. My mind naturally drifted to Molls, but I had work to do before I could even call her.

A lot of work to do.

Epilogue

I watched Suzanne’s funeral from the top of the library tower. Axle always let me hide in the library when I needed to escape the people everywhere who needed me. And I knew for certain I wouldn’t be welcome, because Lee had gone out of his way to tell me himself not to attend.

Said he couldn’t properly mourn his wife if I was there.

So I watched, as the workers interred what little was left of her in a memorial plot. The ashes could have fit in a matchbox, but her plot was the standard Nu-Earth human standard. Lee had gotten a silver plaque engraved with a picture of her smiling face and installed it on her headstone.

The other employees that Quadrum had killed received equal care, in their memorials. I was surprised, momentarily, before I remembered what kind of man Lee was. He’d paid for the entire thing, refusing my morties when offered. Our affiliates still did business, and his farm still fed us in a significant way, but Lee no longer ran it.

In the short period of time since the victory that claimed Nu-Earth for Silken sands, a lot had changed. Our credit rating, which acted as a sort of societal handshake in the upper crusts of BuyMort civil society, had shot up once we took the planet. BuyMort liked the way we did business, and the church told every sapient being in the multiversal flow that BuyMort and morties were indicators of good moral health.

Plus we’d gained another 5 affiliate levels, giving us a slew of upgrade options. At the prompting of Axle, we ended up going with another level to the Universal Marketing perk and opening a direct market to the Primodial Origining, considered in lore to be the universe that spawned BuyMort. He felt that having a secondary universe wouldn’t just allow sales to rise, but would also maybe give us an influx of new contacts by which to gain new information, goods and weaponry in our upcoming troubles.

We also took a level in CEO Advisory Shareholders Committee, allowing us to double the amount of affiliate stock we sold. Which given our new credit level sold at amazing high confidence and value.

So we thrived. Dearth faded, dropping a ranking to the Sleem, which made sense. The next world on the BuyMort roster was a Sleem world, which meant an upcoming infusion to their general numbers. Speculation had them climbing into the second slot if TranspoCo had any kind of crisis.

I was due to leave for Molls’ within a few days, but there was something urgent to take care of first. A threat I had let linger far too long.

A few hours after the funeral, I entered a meeting room in the library, where several of my senior staff awaited me. Axle and Jada were there, of course. Axle was projecting a schematic from his new eyes onto the wall and discussing it with Rayna and Tollya. The Delvago brothers were bickering at the far end of the room. Lee was seated by himself at the table, arms crossed, and red-rimmed eyes lowered.

And Cube was in the corner, watching everything and purring lightly to himself, content to be involved.

“Everyone,” I said, getting their attention. “Thank you for coming. I know this isn’t ideal timing, and I’ll be brief. I want everyone in this room’s help.”

Tollya shrugged. “Course boss, but help with what?”

I leaned forward on the table with my fists. “Murdering a beholder.”

The End (of Book 4)

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About the Authors

Damien Hanson

Damien is a writer, a gamer and an educator. He lives in Gimpo-Si, South Korea with his wife and son. He likes to meet up with friends and roll dice whenever the opportunity presents itself and has authored several stories.

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Joseph Phelps

In competitive or cooperative video games over thousands of logged hours, Joseph has always sought out unconventional gameplay and created his own fun.

He's the kind of gamer that ensures the ESRB cannot provide appropriate ratings for online games. It's this type of unusual and amusing gameplay that he brings to the LitRPG and GameLit genres, with wildly aggressive competitive and unconventional single player dynamics at the core of his storytelling. Join him and find out for yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Phelps/e/B07WZCJ39T/