Chapter 5

The space elevator loomed in the distance, advertisements occasionally flickering as a car traveled by them. The streets of Prescott flowed by, with only occasional diversions to avoid patrolling guards, and I made my way toward the city’s Central Plaza.

It was a giant roundabout, with a sheltered garden at its center, filled with towering bronze statues.

I waited for the light traffic to clear and crossed in a crosswalk. Flying would have been easier, but I wanted to avoid attracting any attention from the city’s many guard patrols.

The first statue I encountered was of Tollya. I stopped and stared at the likeness, then raised a hand to my mouth when I saw the date of her death. She had died less than a year after I had vanished. Her statue showed her wearing classic BlueCleave armor with a chem-rail rifle in her hands, and her typical cocky smile on her face.

Its plaque read; ‘Tollya, second general of BlueCleave armed forces. Fallen in battle, protecting Silken Sands people. Gone, but never forgotten.’

I scowled and frowned at the vague plaque. It told me nothing about how she had died, aside from ‘in battle.’ Having known the hobb woman, that was an easy assumption. But I wanted more than that.

Moving through the small garden, I avoided the notice of a guard patrol by stepping around to the backside of a hedge and allowing them to pass. Their heavy, armored footfalls were getting familiar, I could hear them coming before I could see them.

The next statue in the row was for Rayna, and my clenched chest eased a bit while I read its plaque. She looked so old, her long braids and wrinkled smile still familiar, but far removed from the woman I had known.

‘First general of BlueCleave forces. An honorable foundation was laid by her hand.’

Again, infuriatingly vague praise. Nothing substantive to tell me what had happened to her.

At least Rayna was old, the date of death on her plaque was nearly seventy years after we had fought together against the Church.

The next statue I didn’t recognize at all. It was a Knowle, but not one I had been familiar with. Their dates of service were after my time, they had been somehow instrumental once I was gone. The vague platitude on their plaque made mention of clever accounting ability, and again a simple ‘lost in battle.’

Admiral Omen stared down at me as I rounded the next hedge, his crisp uniform evident even in bronze. ‘Focus, determination, wisdom,’ was all his plaque read, aside from his name and final rank of high admiral. After glancing around to ensure I was alone, I summoned a breaker gauntlet and scratched the word ‘betrayal’ into the blank stone pedestal.

No alarms went off, and no guards rushed toward me when I was finished, so in spite of the creeping feeling that I was being watched I moved on to the center of the garden. The pathway opened into a rounded area with benches and an extra tall statue.

It was me. The statue featured my reflective helmet, bare chest, and heavily armored pants. Silver ran through the bronze to represent the starfish suit on my chest and arms. My gleaming hands were clenched into fists at my sides, breaker gauntlets covering them as my statue faced down a non-existent foe.

After staring at the obscene representation for a long moment, I swallowed hard and read the plaque.

‘Freedom for Nu-Earth, freedom from the oppression of the Church, freedom for all of BuyMort. Tyson Dawes, founder of Silken Sands, gave his life saving Nu-Earth and all of BuyMort from the Thread of Fate.’

The date that followed coincided with my betrayal and ‘death’ in the Sleem system.

Without thought, my hands clenched and the breaker gauntlets sprang into place from their dimensional gates. I rose into the air, ignoring the shout of a nearby guard before I slammed both hands into the statute. A flash of blue light erupted from my fists and the statue shattered, blowing backward through the empty garden and shredding several expensive topiaries and hedges.

The guard shouted again, this time much more intense. “Stop!” he yelled, first in hobb, then again in near-perfect English.

I ignored it. My suit, full of charge from the statue, helped me skim along just above ground level, and I darted through the garden and out of Central Plaza. Once across the street I returned to the ground and started jogging away from the scene of my crime.

If these guards were anything like the soldiers on Phyllis’ ship, I figured I was in trouble. But I also didn’t want to be seen flying above the city streets. So I hovered and jogged. I did what I could to dodge the patrols, but they kept finding me and raising the alarm.

After a frustrating chase that led me to fly much higher and faster than I wanted to, I summoned my anti-magic helmet and told it to cast fairy fire on any surveillance equipment in my area. The city beneath me came alive with small glittering outlines. Cameras were hidden in the buildings, street signs, even the yarsp vendor carts.

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I sighed and veered out over the city toward the north, into the desert where Molls' family had lived. It was built up with roads and residences, and a smattering of businesses. Mostly spider ranches. But the surveillance was lessened out there. Not missing entirely; I still had to avoid intersections and any building over two stories.

Beneath a bridge spanning a dry creek bed, I found a nice broad, flat area to hide out. I also felt certain no one had seen me land and enter the area beneath the bridge. But I stopped dead when I saw the mural painted onto its underside.

It was huge, painted across the entire underside of the concrete structure, and featured multiple vibrant colors. The mural also clearly featured my mate, Molls.

She was depicted bare of her armor but holding her hard light bow, posing sternly with the starfish suit lines running between her scales. Most of them were blue, emanating from the base of purple I had established with her in our earliest days together. Toward the top of her scales, the color changed to red, and stayed that way until they were all complete with permanent color. In her tail she gripped a BlueCleave hobb, their power armor being crushed by her raw strength.

In the background of the mural a war raged. BlueCleave hobbs were depicted crushing a ragtag force of Nah’gh, delf, and gobb fighters. Only Molls was successfully fighting back, eyes narrowed and fangs fully bared.

I slumped against the wall, and slid down into a sitting position, staring at the mural. For the next few hours, I simply stared up at the hidden work of art. At first, I just wallowed in my feelings, seeing her again. I struggled to imagine she was still alive, if she was being immortalized in a secret mural underneath a bridge on the outskirts of the city.

Then I started analyzing the details of the mural and thinking about what it meant. Molls, fighting against BlueCleave. The implications made my stomach turn, and I started wondering what on Nu-Earth had become of my affiliate.

While I sat and thought, my cognitive ability began to return, along with some minor enhanced vision. I was better able to zoom in on areas of the mural than I had been when I first awakened, but my abilities were still a far cry from what they had been before Omen had done his work and blown my head off.

The man was effective, I had to admit that much. While the rest of the multiverse worried and fretted trying to find a way to kill me, he simply did it.

The BlueCleave forces on the mural looked homogenous, all wearing heavy power armor and carrying Highwater Blasters. They advanced as a unit, armored masks expressionless as they gunned down the renegade forces.

Conversely, those forces were depicted as poorly equipped peasant fighters. Most were equipped with farming tools for weapons, and all of them but Molls seemed to be trying to escape the onslaught they were subject to. In the background was a simple agricultural community, featuring rickety, hand-crafted mush-bug pens, and rice paddies.

After three hours, I finally saw the tiny “m” scratched in a corner of the painting. Mel, the teenage artist I had known back in the earliest days of BuyMort, was still around. I silently hoped to find her, even as I knew it would be impossible.

Mel had always had an eye for the truth at the core of each of us. She would have been invaluable in that moment, explaining the century of history I was trying to piece together. But once I’d lost track of her in those first early days, I had never seen her in person again.

After a century of my absence, and the likely stat shot improvements needed for her to survive that long, I doubted she was the same person at all. But I didn’t doubt her eye for the truth.

While I stared at the mural, exhaustion from my long, hunger-filled day began to set in. Eventually, I nodded off.

I awoke to the sound of a heavy metal harness clapping itself over my chest, coupled with the now-familiar feeling of a pulsed ion shot hitting me and draining my suit. When I sat forward in surprise, the harness automatically wrapped itself around my back and folded both of my arms into my opposing armpits, effectively neutralizing my breaker gauntlets. I couldn’t activate them without blasting away most of my own torso.

A glance around told me my situation. While I had slept, dawn crept over the horizon and the city’s guard patrols had caught me. There were four hover tanks floating silently nearby, two on either side of the bridge, accompanied by dozens of heavily armed guards.

They carried linear rifles and monowire weapons, reminiscent of the Church’s final troops. All that was different was the paint job, marking them as part of the city guard.

I flexed against the harness and felt it begin to give. Then I stopped, looking around me at the gathered hobbs. Descendants of my people, all holding lives that I valued.

The odds were good that I could break free and escape without hurting any of them, but then none of my questions would get answered. Their method of restraint told me they were prepared for a stat shot enhanced target, but that they likely didn’t know about my crystalline colonies.

If I spent some time in their custody, I would learn a lot more than I could by simply running from them, so I held still and allowed them to approach. My new harness was on a length of stiff, thick wire attached to one of the hover tanks. Its silver armor had a darkened gap at the front where the cable protruded, showing a recess clearly designed to hold a prisoner of my caliber.

As I glared at it, the tank’s winch started winding me in. I lurched up, off the ground, and snorted a laugh when the guards all raised their weapons at me. The tank hauled me in, and I turned around in time to sit down in a reinforced cubby before the plating slid shut in front of me.

While I watched, I saw another contingent of guards armed with spray cans and paint rollers. They attacked the mural, seemingly angry at it. Their fervor and experience with the paint suggest to me that these murals were becoming a common nuisance in Prescott. I narrowed my eyes. That act told me something important, but I didn’t have enough context to put the whole picture together yet.

A short, smooth ride later the armor plating slid open again and I was looking at the garage of the Prescott tower. The same building we had taken away from Dearth at the beginning of the BuyMort wars. The garage was primarily unchanged. It was full of hover tanks and APCs for the city guard.

Hobbs wearing full body coverage armor hauled me ungently from the tank, and I fell out in a heap. While I groaned on the ground, a pair of them used my cable to lift me onto my feet and started me marching through the structure.

As I went, I saw a single Knowle near the double-wide doors leading out to the street. Her dark eyes glared at me, and she wore a tight-fitting suit with the same color scheme I’d been seeing since I arrived: red and white stripes over a black base.

“To the elevator!” she barked.

The hobbs responded only with movement, dragging me along behind as they marched toward a familiar elevator. Inside, it was filled with aged, but still decadent décor. Ivory and gold adorned the interior, with mirrored surfaces on each marble wall.

The doors slid shut with an ominous clank, and I could feel the elevator begin its ascent.