By the time my guards got back to escort me off Phyllis’ ship, I was asleep. The hum and crackle of the energy bars had lulled me into unconsciousness, accompanied by the throbbing in my head.

Fortunately, when I awoke, the pain and pressure had reduced somewhat. The lights above my cell were no longer so blinding.

“Up, prisoner,” grunted a nearby hobb in broken English.

“I’m moving, calm down,” I groaned back in perfect hobb. At least my language center was still working. I guess having your head blown off has some lasting effects, even while wearing a starfish suit.

The hobbs deactivated my cell once I was on my feet, and I stretched as I stepped down from the gel pad. “That is surprisingly comfortable. Where can I get one?” I asked the confused hobb guard.

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I snorted and waved away the ad. The hobb stared at me, then shook his head, his helmet bobbing as he did. “No talk,” he finally said. “Move.”

“Yeah yeah,” I groaned. “I’m moving. Where we goin?”

“No questions!” my guard replied.

“Ooo, no questions,” I mocked, arms raised. “No questions says the big bad hobb, everyone!”

“Stop talking!” he yelled.

“No!” I yelled back. “I don’t shut up, ever. What are you gonna do about it?” I teased, moving toward the door.

The hobb rammed his linear rifle butt into my stomach and I simply absorbed the blow. I glanced down at my stomach, and then up to the guard’s helmet.

“Well that was rude. Ineffective, but rude. Wanna try again? I’m not gonna shut up because you give me a little love tap,” I jabbered, still moving toward the door.

He whacked me in the small of my back with his rifle that time, and it was as effective as the first blow.

“Careful,” I chided. “Felt like something might have come loose in that gun. You keep hitting me with it, you’re gonna get in trouble for breaking it. They can’t be cheap.”

The guard growled but refrained from hitting me again. I followed the rest of the guard troop back down the hallways to the shuttle bay I had entered the ship from. The shuttle was waiting and ready, with Phyllis standing beside it, holding a large metal harness.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m behaving, but I’m not putting that on.”

Her face hardened. “Orders,” she growled.

“Well, go ahead and try,” I warned her, arms out at my sides.

Behind the shuttle the shielded hangar bay opening displayed a beautiful sight. Nu-Earth floated massive, filling the bay door. I could see Africa below us.

Phyllis’ face hardened, and she took a step toward me with the harness.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll just take the easy way down. Nice to see you Phyll. Hope you lose the stick up your ass before we meet again.”

I bent down and slammed a fist into the deck, smashing the metal bulkhead and gaining a healthy amount of charge for my suit. I grinned at Phyllis, then hurtled out of the force field and toward the planet.

The ship’s gravity beam latched onto me, and I turned to glare at the weapon spire, snarling. It held me back from heading toward the planet and my suit’s charge plummeted. I decided to go on the offense and flew at the spire instead of away from it. The weapon system wasn’t prepared for that, and I blasted through the thick needle, regaining the charge it had stolen from me and utterly destroying it.

On my way back past the hangar bay, I waved cheerfully. They were scrambling to arm up and board the shuttle, and as I flew past the other bulges on the ship they started cracking open. Further down the ship’s bulk, small, needle-nosed fighters began launching in my path.

I dipped low to avoid them, then activated a short-range gravity haul. The far end of Nu-Earth’s gravity well caught me and I started falling over what used to be South America.

Once the reentry plasma cleared, I could see the continent below me. It was filled with life. Cities lit up the night sky with thousands of points of light, even from deep within the lush, overgrown Amazon forest. They’d built a city right into the forest, allowing it to grow and thrive in and around the many tall buildings.

Sandcaster fire distracted me as it splattered against my armor and broke pieces off, knocking me lower in the sky. Phyllis’ fighter ships had caught up to me. I dipped, changed direction, and increased my speed, activating another small gravity haul.

In-atmosphere, that was a bad move. The plasma my flight generated burned a streak through the sky, letting everyone know exactly where I was going while it made my armor glow with heat.

I retracted it into my dimensional gateways and flew even lower, summoning my anti-magic helmet so that I could see. Australia spread out beneath me, its desert full of structures and artificial farmland. When I flew over the ocean spreading between it and the Solomon Islands, I saw the Great Barrier Reef, returned to full, flourishing life.

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Gentle orchestral music filled my mind, a symphony of strings and woodwinds weaving an uplifting melody.

"Witness the revival of a wonder. The Great Barrier Reef, reborn," a voiceover declared. It made me smile, knowing that things had turned out alright for the planet. A side window opened in my vision, a section of my eyes somehow zooming down through the crystal waves and plunging underwater, navigating through an intricate labyrinth of coral. Fish of every imaginable color darted between the branches, their scales glittering like jewels. A turtle glided past, its flippers brushing against the gentle currents, and the shadow of a whale shark loomed in the distance, majestic and dominating.

"Come! Explore the heart of the ocean, rejuvenated and flourishing like never before," the voice continued.

The side window shifted to show families equipped with snorkels and fins, laughing as they swam amongst the corals. Nearby, researchers in sleek suits monitored the health of the reef, their equipment humming softly, while the waves tour boats skimmed the surface, their passengers leaning over the sides in awe.

"Join us in the depths of Nu-Earth. Join us in the adventure of a lifetime!"

The fighters returned then, their arrival announced by a massive sonic boom and wave of plasmic heat. I sighed and looked over my shoulder as the sharp, angular fighter-craft converged on me.

I flew up, fast, breaking free of Nu-Earth’s atmosphere before I engaged another short gravity haul. My armor clanked back into place to protect me, thankfully cooled by its time in dimensional storage. This time I slowed my entry to avoid a streak of brilliant red plasma announcing my location to the entire planet and swung in over Eurasia.

The entire continent was slathered in civilization. From coast to coast it was structures and buildings, even in snow capped Siberia massive city domes hunkered in the snow and their people thrived. My suit’s charge was low, so I flew in to land in a massive, hollowed out quarry in what was left of the Gobi desert. Its mountains had been strip-mined and replaced with yet more civilization.

After I broke enough rock to recharge my suit fully, I redeployed my armor, took off into the air again, shifted direction, and flew further south. My path took me over a thriving Korean peninsula and Japan island chain before approaching the planet’s gravity sling. It was a giant belt that Kraken had installed on Nu-Earth’s equator, used to throw cargo into space. All alongside it were docked oversized cargo vessels, and spacecraft of various origin.

Some were waiting for their turn on the belt, using it to save fuel by being thrown into space instead of lifting off themselves. Escaping Nu-Earth’s gravity well was easy when the relic sling was involved.

While I stared at a busy port city built out onto the water using giant floating platforms, one of Phyllis’ fighters sneaked up on me and hit me in the back with a blast of pulsed ions. My suit emptied of charge and I plummeted down onto the gravity sling’s primary belt.

I bounced once, hard, and then was swept into rapid motion alongside several small spacecraft and cargo crates. The seaborn city flashed by, and I glared up at the small swarm of fighter craft following along above me.

Then I smashed through a building-sized box of alloyed girders, scattering them across the belt and instantly recharging my suit. The girders were swept along with me, accelerating at a rapid pace and I kicked one off the gravity sling an instant before it bashed into a small pleasure craft’s engines.

Dozens of girders bounced on the gravity sling’s belt, threatening several small craft in the immediate area. The sling didn’t differentiate between bodies on its belt, it just accelerated any mass present. I swerved and wove through the beams, throwing, kicking, and hurling as many as I could free.

When a fighter craft dipped low, I spun and whipped a girder up at their ship, causing them to divert and fall away. The rest scattered when an alloy beam slammed into a small passenger ship and blew out its back end in a series of small explosions. The ship’s back end dragged against the gravity sling, throwing up a cloud of sparks as it started to wobble dramatically.

I lunged forward and caught the ship by its smoldering, ruined engines. Once it was under my control, I pushed it off to the side, toward the seaward lip of the gravity sling where the ship could set down. As it skidded to a stop, I dove back into the sling’s acceleration and chased down another girder, slapping it into the ocean before it could wreck another ship.

My escort of fighter craft reengaged, peppering the gravity sling with pulsed ion cannon shots. Segments began to disengage, causing cargo crates to slam into the belt and skid to agonizing, dangerous stops. More ships, hurtling toward us, swerved and slammed into each other. I dove backward, pressing between two ships and preventing a collision.

I hurtled upward, through the rear end of one of the fighters. Its engines blew, and it started spiraling to the ocean below, as I punched toward another. They peppered me with sandcaster fire as I flew, and chips of my armor blew free. The suit worked fast, repairing entire segments as I flew in a chaotic zigzag between the ships.

I blew out the engines on another three craft before they pulled back and let me return to the gravity sling, where I went to work cleaning up the chaos and crashes the attacks had caused. Once I had saved another three floundering ships and cleaned up the last of the girders, I cracked a sonic boom and flew off toward North America.

To avoid the pursuit craft that remained, I dove beneath the waves and continued my journey. The gravity sling escapade had taken me past the coast of Africa, so I cut through the Atlantic Ocean on my way to the Americas.

As I slid through the deep water, I tracked my own progress on my anti-magic helmet. It automatically cast fairy fire on any life forms in my path, and I was surprised at how often I was forced to divert course to avoid pods of whales.

Humpbacks and sperm whales were common again, and when I scanned the water with an identify ‘spell,’ I was shocked at how clean it was. My world had seemingly recovered from the mass pollution that had occurred before BuyMort. Even my own terraforming efforts hadn’t been projected to accomplish that task in a single century.

When I entered the Gulf of Mexico by slipping past Cuba on the south end of the islands, I discovered another shock. A massive city existed beneath the waves, filling nearly the entire gulf. Towers and spires, filled with light, rose from the depths and shared space with clinging seaweed vine forests.

The city was busy, if not thriving. Some areas were dark, with leaking bubbles and overt cracks in the seals. But most of it was alive with movement and commerce. I saw dozens of BuyMort aqua-pods racing to and fro, entering airlocks and moon pools.

While I was tempted to take a closer look, my pursuers gave me pause. The kind of damage that could be caused in such a city was too great to risk until things with Phyllis had calmed down.

I rose above the surf near shore, remembering the last time I had spent time on the coast. Admiral Omen had taken Molls, using hellfire missiles with blade deployment to stop me from responding. Even then, he had known how to deal with me.

How to stop me.

As I flew over first Texas, then New Mexico, I saw exactly how effectively he had stopped me. Massive swathes of ranchland filled the states, accompanied by small supporting cities. The many BuyMort bugs they ranched were butchered, shipped to transport hubs, and then carted off on rail or ship to all points of the planet.

Great fields of alfalfa, oat, and fescue grass complimented the ranchlands, and spread across the southwest up to the Arizona border. Farmers shielded their eyes to watch me fly overhead, my armor glinting in the sunlight.

When I saw the Arizona border coming, I raised my elevation and found some cloud cover to hide in. It was militarized. Heavily.

Tall, thick fencing covered the border, and heavily armed hobbs manned weaponized checkpoints at every road. Tucson and Phoenix were both fully militarized cities, built up around oversized spaceports, hobb military bases, and the space elevator. Everywhere I saw needle-nosed fighter craft on tarmacs, ready to launch.

As I flew slowly, I was picked up by ground based tracking systems and nearly encountered one of those fighters up close and personally. I managed to duck behind a thick cloud bank before dropping out of the sky into the Skull Valley desert.

Immediately before landing, I pulled my speed back and avoided creating a crater in the ground, stomping down only hard enough to raise a swirl of silty soil at my feet. Looking around, I felt shock roll through my body. Silken Sands, the original location, was a completely changed place.