“So you’re pretty close to your tier 1 boost?” Melissa asks as she wipes the blood off her knife.
“Yeah. Another month in this endless blasted forest would get me there for sure, but I am DYING to have more tech to play with. Baby, I love you. But unless we find a waterfall in the next day or two, I’m teleporting us back to the farm.”
Jokes on me, because we find a small waterfall two days later, and Melissa and I end up disrobing, cleaning and sexing in the damned thing. Well, we had sex in the musty damp cave behind it, anyway.
“You know, this is the first time I’ve seen you fully naked.” I smile into her messy hair.
“No way. That can’t be true. You had me in the shower . . . no, I had my tank and undies on. Huh. Anything I should worry about?” she pokes my ribs.
“What? No! I mean, my hands have seen most of you, I’ve just never had the privilege to enjoy the whole picture is all.” I run my finger down her spine and she arks into me.
“Penny,” she whispers, “Hey, no.”
I pout but it is unsuccessful. She pushes my arm down, but continues to snuggle. I accept the compromise and rest my hand on her butt.
A dozen more minutes or so pass with us under our hide blanket before my mind switches back to work. “Mel, have you been keeping a map?”
“I’ve been having my AI note our relative position to the beacon, but it’s not the same.”
Tessa?
I have been maintaining a rudimentary topography map with terrain type since we arrived on planet. Would you like me to mark “Lusty Falls” on the map?
I snort some of Melissa’s hair, coughing and sputtering.
“Tessa say something funny?”
“Apparently my sassy ride-along marked this spot ‘Lusty Falls’”
“Bahahaha, I like it. So Tessa has developed a personality then?”
“Yeah, when she pseudo-merged with my symbiote, she’s been right on the edge of being her own person. I think when I get to 16, she’ll make the transition.”
“Did I know about a symbiote? You actually have an alien inside you?”
“I . . . don’t know?” I shrug, “and yes, Tessa is a combo of Tech and Symbiote Amalgam. She okay’d the name and here we are. I was offered a choice of Swarm or Symbiote and I asked why not both?”
“Of course you did,”
I nod at her interrogative, “And because of my progenitor status, I was allowed to onboard both. It’s a slightly more complicated advancement track, but I can combine tech and aether with much less effort. My track is ‘Artificer’ like in the old table-top RPG.”
“Mine is cyber psionics.”
“That sounds terrifying. Meli, are you going full-on mind fuckery?”
“What? No. Maybe. Kind of.” She sighs, “I’m getting really good at skimming surface thoughts within five meters. There are some techniques I can’t use without some magitech components, just like the ansible, and it’s frustrating.”
“I’m an enchanter babe. And so what if you can’t advance purely solo? You’ve basically committed to being my life-partner, so why not rely on me too?” She smiled, flushed, and buried her face in my chest.
“It’s really hot when you’re supportive.”
I grab her butt with both hands, “I’m helping!”
We both chuckle at that and enjoy the rest of our evening blanketed in mist and the roar of a waterfall.
***
“I don’t care how many of those bacon-flavored murder chickens you bribe me with, it’s time to go back.”
“You just want to go back because you found that nest and saved the eggs. You want Francesca to raise them don’t you?” She frowns hard when she mentions the Botanist. Its as though she doesn’t believe my claims of being a monogamist.
“Kinda, yeah. They taste like bacon.”
“Murder Chickens”
“These won’t be aether warped!”
“Ugh, fine! We can go back. But if that spindly red-head makes goo goo eyes at you again, she’s getting a room full of fang toads.” The mischief in her eyes wasn’t enough to distract me from my suspicions.
“I knew you saved some of those eggs.”
“We have a pond at the farm, and they eat the Napalm Cicadas.”
“Possibly the worst thing about my planet.” I shutter. Their body fluids burn like acid and catch fire just after contact with human flesh.
“Hehe, you claimed a planet. How crazy is that?”
“It was very odd when I got a notice about the system honoring species customs and system customs.” I pull her in close, “My official title is Planetary Custodian.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“That is much more humble than Empress. Though I reserve the right to call you Queen or Empress in the future.” Melissa purrs low at the last two titles. My girl is turned on by a lot of things. Annoyed at a lot of things too.
“Yes ma’am. Well, Meli. Hold onto my butt, I’m teleporting to my favorite spot nearby the farm.” She dutifully grabs two handfuls and I form a bubble of aether around us both and blip us back to civilization.
“That shield makes that much easier on the belly and the brain.” She smiles up at me and pecks me an appreciation kiss.
“Right? It’s way better than getting Aether sickness every time I teleport.”
“Oh! We’re at the pond.” Meli cheers, pulls out a spent ampule full of frog larva and tosses it into the pond. “Now let’s go see the others and make a menace of ourselves.”
The walk back is only ten minutes. With work on my mind, and Melissa by my side, I completely forgot why I teleported away in the first place. All of the plants in the field are aether-warped.
I see Katie and Francesca looking at a display on the fabricator, Katie wearing a lot of clothing for the heat and an enormous hat. The botanist seemed to be a light shade of green?
“Penny, be careful, the prevailing mood of our four compatriots is angry.” I nod at her and carry my spear and saber at the ready.
“Hey ladies. Sorry it took us so long.” I shout.
Both of them stiffen, but Katie turns with relief in her eyes—her blood-red eyes. She rushes over and wraps me in a hug, taking a long, creepy sniff at my neck. I push her to arms length and grab her face to study it.
Katie is sheet pale, red eyes, and . . .I reach to touch her lips and she smiles. Her canines are longer and sharper. “Holy shit Katie, you’re a vampire now!”
“No blood stuff, thank Andromeda, but the dangers of aether poisoning are more clear than ever.”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t think about the aether poisoning from this side until the last minute. I especially didn’t know it would be this bad.”
“Frannie and I got off pretty light, the boys had no assistance whatsoever.”
“Oh no! Did you guys inoculate them after to help them out?”
Katie shakes her head. “Francesca told me not to. With that aura voice you two have.” I understand that. It would have hurt her to fight against that command.
“By the time we recovered, our swarms would not have helped.” The botanist walks over. Her face has changed into a gaunt feature with heightened cheek bones. Her wood-colored eyes and rope and leaf like hair tell me a lot. She’s also barefoot.
“Dryad?” I ask about her mutations.
“Enhanced toughness and photosynthesis in my skin, but it’s hard for me to spend more than a couple of hours without some part of me touching Astoria.”
“Oof, that’s a doozie.”
She nods “Why didn’t you shield us?” Francesca narrows her eyes and accuses me.
“I couldn’t make a shield large enough to cover everyone.”
“Fuck them!” She dismisses my comment and the remaining crewmembers with a wave, “Why didn’t you shield the two of us?” She growls at me.
“I panicked. Sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry doesn’t fix THIS!” I don’t know what she’s commenting about, but I see the jagged teeth and claws lengthening as she approaches and I’m not having more of it.
I flick on my plasma saber. “That’s close enough with that anger, doctor.”
Off to my right I hear, “Shit that is so cool!” must be the boys.
“I have some mutations of my own doctor. But you already showed you only care about you and Katie. Take a few minutes to think about what that anger is going to buy you and maybe we can talk about more important things.”
“You two disappear for a month and you come back a Jedi? Did you meet yoda in that forest?” CE2 Meeker is nerding out on my plasma saber while I look at his feral features. Shifted ears, eyes, snout, and body hair. Slight changes to his musculature too. Very woodland predator.
“Bring back anything else interesting?” EM2 Beecham asks. He doesn’t seem worse for wear, save a bit of a drawn look.
Melissa takes this one. “Yes! A bird that tastes like bacon, fang frogs, and a sack full of different animal jerky!”
“I’m also pretty close to my first major advancement. So I wanted to talk to you both about bringing you into the System. On one side, you can get a swarm like the rest of us. Lots of direction you can go with that, but it’s all tech advancements. On the other side, I can give you a symbiote when I tier up that will give you Aether control, or magic. The symbiote also gives you more control of these kinds of mutations if they happen in the future.”
“Can we have both?” Meeker asks, and the Botanist also seems interested.
“As far as I’ve been told, you can’t have both under current circumstances. You can apparently swap up to your first tier upgrade, but you need enough aether and aether capacity to support the Symbiote and so that it’s concentration of your aether doesn’t kill you. I’m a special case, I was making small warps years before, and my body got used to it.”
“So I could be a Jedi?”
“Yeah, Meeker, I’ll even give you a quest to make your light saber body.”
Once an ansible is built, you can absolutely make quests.
“I chose magic then.”
“Me too.”
“Alright then. That’s settled. Your mindset and prior experience matter for what tracks you are offered. So Meeker, work on your sword skills. Beecham, decide what you want to be and start working on it. It might take me a month or two to cross the threshold, but I’ll get there, and so will you.”
“Does that mean you can help the others too?” Meeker asks.
“I thought there were supposed to be more. Bad mutations?” Everyone nods at that. “Well, if you still have contact with them, you can give them the talk for me? Just know that I don’t have the Magic or the Skill to fix what’s already been done.”
“We go on hunts as night gets closer, I’ll let them know then.” I thank the woodland predator.
“Do you have some big plan for the rest of us?” Beecham asks.
“Uh, should I? I have plans to help Katie connect the swarm folk re-connect with Andromeda, then I’m going to focus on getting that shuttle warp capable. Ostensibly, I have the tools, but testing with such dangerous tools will be a long process. But, with you guys and the good doctor, no one’s going to starve. And that means the biggest hurtles will be keeping ourselves comfortable and satisfied while we work. Figure out what that means to you.”
“Makes sense ma’am, thanks.” He lowers his head and nervously wanders over to Melissa.
“Uh, you said there was a variety of jerky?” OH, whew, I thought he was, like, interested in her or something. Just food. Sweet, I understand that. She seemed delighted to share.
I jump when I hear Katie’s voice less than arm’s reach from me. “You look happy with her.”
“Jeebus! Katie, what the hell.” I take a few breaths, “Yeah, though, I am.” It’s an awkward statement for me, but I reach out with an equally awkward question. “How’s it with Francesca.”
“She’s smart, which I like. But her behavior is less consistent than I prefer.” I nod at that, I too have noticed the hot and cold personality shifts. Seems based on . . . I really don’t know, nor do I want to put that kind of thought into it. “Now that my social obligation is satisfied, I heard you talking to Beecham about the ansible.”
That’s Katie to a “T”, more forthcoming than when I was with her, but consistent temperament. “Sure did. I like the idea of setting up a real outpost on Astoria. An ansible helps us and it helps get Humans closer to being a part of the Matrix proper.”
“It is unexpected to see you excited about an organization after expressing your distain for structure in the past. However, your goals align with mine so I’m happy to see it. Now I have some schematics to share with you, and some pieces that will need your attention.”
Hearing the detached emotion in her voice feels as though she’s trying to smooth over our interactions? Does she want to be friends again!? I can’t help but smile at that. Maybe this’ll be good for us and the colony.