Infield Fly

I successfully stayed away from fighting for the next two hours.

Nai went on the offensive and Tasser got me in direct contact with the Coalition garrison. We wound up holding a position less than a quarter-mile from the colony’s center. From here, it let Nai and I achieve maximum radar coverage.

Tracking your enemies positions in real time was useful, but tracking your allies in real time was equally important.

Four different times, Tasser and I radioed warnings to the local commander that their units wouldn’t make it to a choke point quick enough, or that the Vorak were making quick progress.

It let them cut their losses without actually exchanging fire. They got to retreat from lost battles without actually suffering them, pick better defensive grounds, ensure that it was the invading Vorak who had to push into unfavorable circumstances.

I’d shot an Adept after beating them to a bloody pulp, but I still wasn’t sure if they’d died or not. But was sure I’d killed far more Vorak with a walkie-talkie today than I had with a gun.

The thought made me shiver like a piece of ice sliding down my back.

But we had to hold out longer than two hours, and it was after that long that the Vorak wised up.

“” I said, putting a hand to the ground to confirm. It had been a slight buzz underfoot, so faint it could have been my imagination.

“” Tasser asked.

“” I admitted. “”

“” Tasser asked.

“<…Unsure. It wasn’t a strong cascade,>” I said. “”

Nai warned.

“” Tasser said.

“” I suggested, dropping a marker on our psionic map. “”

“” Tasser agreed. “”

Keeping our distance from the ordinary Vorak forces was a lot easier than dodging their Adepts. They were mostly confined to the streets, so putting distance between us and them was as simple as jumping to another rooftop.

It helped that our unit consisted of just Tasser and me. We could help each other move a lot more easily than twenty Vorak soldiers. Honestly, it was me helping Tasser move more than the other way around, but hey, that’s Adeptry for you.

The dozen or so Vorak moving toward our position got jumpy.

No doubt they would have preferred to surround our position before trying to shoot it out, but one of them caught sight of me jumping rooftops.

I couldn’t have been in their sight for more than a half second, but they still shot me in the shoulder. The impact caught me mid-air and I landed off my feet.

“” Tasser shouted.

I picked myself up, not quite successful in shaking it off.

Nai’s invisible armor had caught the round, and wasn’t so invisible any more. You could make out the shape of the pauldron now, a few cracks spiderwebbing outward from where it caught the bullet.

“<[Holy crap…]>” I muttered. “”

Before we ran out of range, I materialized a rocket knife over the edge pointed down. It probably wouldn’t stab anyone, but the attempt made me feel better about being hit.

“” Tasser said. “”

“” I asked. “”

“” Tasser shook his head. “”

I squeezed my radio, maybe about to kill some more rak. “Hey commander, more position updates. We’ve got thirteen enemies moving north east away from…the library, right?”

“The library,” Tasser confirmed.

“I think it’s the same group from earlier. We’ll keep you informed,” I said.

Releasing the button returned only static though. No response.

Serralinitus said.

he said.

He was rightfully concerned. I’d formally become a diplomat to get away from the fighting, and here I was not quite in the thick of it.

I shared.

Serral ordered.

Tasser asked.

he said.

Tasser guessed.

“That’s only like five people,” I muttered.

He had a point though. Everyone besides those two were battle-hardened soldiers assisting in rocket science while we two ambassadors were playing hide-and-go-seek with alien otters armed literally to the teeth.

Serral said. He was struggling to keep the stress out of his voice.

It occurred to me these were the kind of events that would be met with scrutiny from every angle for a long time after the battle had ended. Most of that would come down on Serral.

The thought of that was unexpectedly motivating. Saving my own skin already had me pretty invested, but a little extra didn’t hurt either.

Tasser asked Nai.

she said.

Tasser and I both replied.

It wasn’t the first time we’d done something similar today. The first time, it had confused me a little.

Nai was practically invincible against ordinary soldiers. The advantages she held couldn’t be matched by non-Adept opponents, no matter the number.

But I grasped the truth better now.

The nature of war with firearms was defense through offense. Even when you were defending a position, it didn’t usually involve making that position indestructible. It meant arming that location to the gills, so it could counterattack and obliterate anyone that tried to take it.

Guns and bombs were just too damaging for anything to be invincible.

Adeptry made bulletproof armor just a thought away, which did wonders for making Adepts hard to kill. But I was wearing a cracked piece of armor right now, and I didn’t feel that hard to kill.

Nai seemed overly cautious, still resorting to ambush against just a dozen non-Adept Vorak. But the truth was, armor had gaps. And when you squandered your advantages, the odds had consistent way of catching up with you.

I tracked her on radar while she pulled up behind half the group pursuing us. The column of thirteen otters split in two to go around a building, and Nai took advantage of that.

She took out the first three gently.

I didn’t notice how she attached the charges to her targets, but without warning all three were yanked off the ground by Nai’s opposing charge. She dissolved the magnetic materials mid-air, dropping the three Vorak on the rooftop before materializing spikes through their legs and wrists.

The otters yowled in pain, not even having gotten a shot off. They wouldn’t be walking or clutching anything for months.

Crucifixion-like wounds were still gentle in context though.

Now alerted to the fact they were under attack, the remaining three turned to open fire. But without ever once exposing herself to their line of sight, Nai killed them simultaneously.

It was the Vorak’s own preferred trick: ground spikes. A pincushion the size of a garbage truck had speared them from behind. Each one of them was impaled in no fewer than four places.

The sight shocked me. Not just for its violence, but also because seeing through my link with her, I’d grown accustomed to following her thought process from a distance. I didn’t get the details, but my superconnector kept me aware of the broadest strokes.

But since I hadn’t seen this sight coming, maybe the connection was weakening in some way.

We had been sustaining it like this for almost three hours now.

I warned.

It was an effort to loosen the connection, like the switch had gotten stiff. Or…maybe since the link had a ‘flow’ of information, it was more like levering closed a valve on a high-pressure pipe. The moment the flow ceased; I lost radar perception of the minds around us.

There was still the other half of the group pursuing us to worry about though.

Without the radar to keep track of their positions, fear tightened around my heart.

“[Oh… fuck, that’s terrifying,]” I choked out.

“” Tasser asked. “”

“” I said. “”

He and I leapt to a new rooftop, then another quickly after.

The sounds of Nai fighting behind us were far more terrifying without knowing any details.

“” he asked.

“” I said, resisting the urge to pull off my invisible helmet. I really wanted to massage my temples or press on my forehead. But that would be tempting a bullet. “”

“” Tasser ventured, keeping his eyes on our opponents’ last positions.

“”

“” he said. “”

“” I told him. But a drink did appeal to me.

A few mouthfuls nicely dulled the pounding in my skull.

Nai rose up to our rooftop without a sound, slinking over to where we were crouched down.

“Taken care of,” she reported. No additional details. “You alright?” she asked me.

I nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.

I asked.

“Still not using your best tricks,” I commented to Nai. “Our cover’s already blown.”

“It might be,” she corrected. “No need to make sure for them. Besides, using Vorpal fire means burning through my reserves. Once I’m spent, we lose a lot of options.”

The Vorak had brought a force a few hundred strong here. Nai had just taken out…a single digit percentage of them, and it was the most successful engagement I knew of today.

The Casti garrison only had forty or so soldiers, and they would get exhausted sooner or later too. The Vorak were regrouping too, fortifying a beachhead near their entry into the colony. Their Adepts were rearranging themselves to adapt to our strategy.

How did people even begin to try battles like this without radar like mine? It was too much!

The worst part was that it didn’t feel hopeless. No, it felt like there were real miracles within reach, and that the right choice could see us win. But that only made our choices feel worse.

One wrong move, and it was lives snuffed out.

Have to keep going though.

I was about to climb back to my feet before Tasser put a hand on my shoulder.

“Nai, check the radar,” he said, watching the northwest edge of the colony. “It looks like they’re retreating.”

“Huh. They are,” she confirmed. “Back to the ships?”

“…No, just to their stronghold. Could they be settling in? That certainly works to our favor,” Tasser said.

“Take a proper breather,” Nai told me. “I’m watching the radar. We’re safe here for now.”

I nodded gratefully.

“What’s it looking like?” I asked. I hadn’t been cut off from the radar two minutes and the insecurity was already getting to me.

“They still haven’t got the big curtain up,” Tasser reported, looking northwest. “You really trashed that first group, huh Nai?”

“Mostly the equipment,” she admitted. “Blackout curtains make for too good traps to let them set up many. The only way I can look inside is with my cascade. Psionic radar is a game changer though. Maybe it would be worth softening up those points.”

Opaque black spheres dotted the northwest edge of the colony, covering the access to their ships, parked just outside the colony. The Vorak had set up blackout curtains like these at Cirinsko. I was told they were one of the more significant asymmetries between Coalition and Assembly forces.

“The colony has its own curtain to block out radiation, right?” I asked. “It’s just set to allow longer wavelengths through, like visible and radio?”

“Right. But if the Vorak take it, could they, I don’t know, retune it to cut off the whole colony?” I asked.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Certainly possible,” Tasser said.

“But they wouldn’t,” Nai added.

“Why?”

“Think about it. Who’s talking with forces outside this colony right now? Us or them? Fact is, this is a very small colony with a very small base that Laranta and Serral really didn’t think would catch any part of the first wave.”

“Then…couldn’t we retune the colony curtain?” I asked. “Cut the Vorak off from their ships in orbit?”

“Maybe,” Nai said. “But it wouldn’t be quick, and it would definitely get Vorak in orbit to scrutinize us more.”

“What’s so special about us?” I mocked. “Today makes three Vorak who have had something primitive resembling psionics. Tispas is practically raving about how dangerous my psionics might be to Beacons when he’s got Adepts in his own fleet carrying things only one, maybe two steps removed! I hope Nora gets to learn all about them…”

“I noticed the arrow-tracker too,” Nai said. “It doesn’t strike me as a coincidence that Sendin Marfek had something like it.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Sendin Marfek was renowned for being an expert in various forms of Adept senses. Remember how tactile cascading isn’t the only one?”

“Yeah, you mentioned something about electroreception…or was it heat-something-or-other…” I said.

“Well, some senses come from augmentations,” she explained. “Exotic organs or cells being added to your body and brain to accommodate a new sense. But others are less…biologically rooted. Like how there’s no organ associated with cascading. Adepts just kinda…do it. No one’s sure how. It’s a distant second place, but the next most common Adept sense after tactile cascading is gravimetric sensitivity. Essentially, being able to detect change in mass or gravity around you. That sense doesn’t have any organs tied to it either, exotic or otherwise.”

“Then these these primitive psionics could just be another form of Adept sense,” I said. “Or even proper psionics themselves could be too.”

“You’re a Human—a new unknown. You might have taken an otherwise uncommon, but ordinary Adept sense, and developed it into something unimaginable for anyone else.”

“Maybe…” I said, unconvinced. “I don’t think so though. There’s real Adeptry involved with psionics. We actually create them, consciously. It’s an interactive process that has steps, and refinement. It doesn’t feel like a ‘sense’.”

“Who says it can’t be both?” Tasser asked. “What if you’re creating something new, utilizing a new sense that no one has developed before now?”

“Begs the question how psionics work in non-Adept minds,” I said. “Because you can’t possibly have a previously undiscovered Adept sense.”

“[Touche,]” Tasser mused.

“A fun idea,” Nai said. “But academic discussion doesn’t explain what’s here and now. I know the arrow-marker has been picking me up . I can feel it when it gets closer. But that information isn’t being reflected in their Adept tactics.”

“Tasser and I could have taken out whichever one was actually capable of tracking us,” I pointed out.

“Maybe,” Nai said. “But there’s still been some Adepts who have almost been able to track me today. With the radar, I’ve been able to see any time enemies near me suddenly start coming my way, even when the arrow-marker is out of range. Some other kind of tracking is at work, but it’s not consistent. Like the Adept doesn’t know how to get a reliable reading.”

“…What if it’s involuntary? Unconscious?” I asked.

“Hmm?” Nai asked.

“If these primitive psionics are related to Adept senses, it doesn’t seem guaranteed someone would be consciously aware of it. That could explain the enemy’s inconsistency,” I suggested.

“Speaking from personal experience with proper psionics,” Tasser said, “It might be that unless you really understood the information and how it was coming to you, you might think you were imagining things. Or reacting to hunches or instincts you couldn’t grasp.”

“Vather seemed genuinely surprised when I implied something like that,” I recalled. “Maybe they were just messing with me, but I don’t think so.”

“We can put it to the test, carefully,” Nai suggested. “It could be worth trying to track down the whichever Adept has Sendin’s Arrow. Further diminishing their ability to track our movements will help us better analyze theirs.”

“Could be worth talking to local forces to set up some more formations,” Tasser suggested. “Those first battles would have gone a lot worse without Caleb’s intel.”

“If the Vorak stay cooped up north for a few hours, it might be moot,” I said. “If they’re pulling back, I won’t hesitate to take the reprieve.”

And we did. Half-an-hour went by without anymore gunfire in the colony, and we decided to relocate. If our deadline came and went, we wanted to be in position to rush north out of the colony to Coskit base.

The sooner we were all airborne, the better.

Half-an-hour turned into a full one, and the six-hour timeframe for the Jack’s retrofits didn’t feel impossible.

Marshal Tispas dashed our hopes with ninety minutes to go.

Nai, Tasser, and I were discussing the idea of ducking north out of the colony slightly early, when Serral broadcast a warning to everyone, over psionics and radio.

he said.

“Reinforcements,” Tasser sighed. It wasn’t unexpected, but he sounded so resigned to the idea already. He didn’t seem worried though.

“How much reinforcement can come with one shuttle?” I asked.

“I can be delivered with one shuttle,” Nai reminded me darkly.

“I know, why do you think I was asking?”

“I see it,” Tasser said, binoculars pointed up. “Coming in from the west…wait…”

The shuttle was hard to make out, because it bore no glowing drive plume, but it flew all the same.

In fact…it flew close.

It looked a lot like a helicopter sized drone, but instead of spinning propellers on its arms, it just had three motionless discs.

The craft hovered above the center of the colony before a blast suddenly shattered a hole in the canopy beneath it.

At first it seemed like someone on the ground had fired ordinance at the shuttle, but nothing had come from local Casti forces.

Through the hole in the colony canopy, three figures—unmistakably Vorak, even from this distance—dropped out of the ship. It hung above them for only a few moments before flying north. The moment before three Vorak landed, a flickering black substance precipitated beneath them.

No sound came from their landing point, but it was near the center of the colony. Right by the substation infrastructure we needed to protect.

“So much for Vorak not taking falls well,” I muttered. “Lunar gravity is such a racket.”

“If that’s who I think it is, they’re capable of some very unintuitive materials,” Nai said. “Kinetic asymmetry being the most significant.”

“Explain?” I asked.

“I’ve heard of some Vorak who can create materials which appear to defy the law of equal and opposite reactions,” she warned. “The visual effect makes me think this is one of those Adepts.”

“Any chance you know the other two as well?” I asked.

“Knowing the Marshal? I’ve definitely run into another of them before. The best Adept in the Red Sails has a specialty in complex exotic magnets. They’re capable of building…I don’t know what the Starspeak word is. It’s a kind of projectile weapon. Very dangerous.”

“Speropi,” I suggested.

“They can create a railgun,” she said, uttering the last word in her native tongue. “Among other things.”

“Okay…” I said. “That’s bad. You can beat one, but what about both? Plus the third…”

“Four,” Tasser corrected.

He pointed to the north end of the colony.

The shuttle had one more delivery to make, and a lone Vorak hopped out of the ship toward the ground.

“On their own?” Nai asked.

As if to answer her question, a white flash suddenly detonated at the fourth Vorak’s position. Like a small sun, it continued to shine while a rumbling filled the air.

Inside the blinding light, my eyes adjusted and picked out a figure forming at its source. It began as only a spine, but quickly lumps swelled to one side, curving the bones. Then ribs branched out, with muscles and veins following soon after.

As the light faded over several seconds, the Adept-made creature had swelled to the size of a building. Jesus, you could see its head peek over the rooftops.

“Shaper,” Tasser recognized. “We saw one of his monsters on Archo.”

“The asymmetry one,” I said. “They’re a headliner?”

“I haven’t fought them, but Tiv said they were a handful,” Nai said. “Makes me wonder who the fourth is.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m asking,” I said. “Because it sure seems like Marshal Tispas just sent the biggest baddest rak he has after us. All of them.”

“It’s my fault,” Nai admitted. “The last time he tried to outnumber me with Adepts who supposedly countered my abilities. They learned that didn’t work. Instead of trying to play to my weaknesses, these ones will play to their own strengths instead.”

They’d split up the forces, and not evenly.

Railgun, the asymmetry specialist, and this mystery third one were grouped together in the center of the colony while Shaper was off by their lonesome to the north end.

Their creature wasn’t idle either. It was violently tearing toward something underground. Rock and mangled steel was being thrown halfway to the colony canopy.

“Shaper is digging for the power conduits,” Tasser guessed. “They split up to force our hand.”

“You can’t attack both groups at once,” I realized. “And they only need one to succeed. Our only chance is to split up.”

“Which is no chance at all,” Tasser frowned.

“It’s even more clever,” Nai said. “Tispas is trying to bait Caleb into trying to fight Shaper alone.”

“What? Why would he think I would think I have a chance?”

“Because you would,” Nai said. “Shaper’s creatures are fearsome, but the bigger ones are slow and dumb, and the Adept themselves is unimpressive. It would be thin, but have a shot at taking out the real Shaper in time.”

“But if Tispas is trying to bait Caleb into taking that shot…” Tasser said.

“It’s definitely a trap,” Nai agreed. “There’s always more to Shaper’s creatures than meets the eye. I’ll bet this one was custom designed to capture you alive.”

“Meanwhile you have to contend against Railgun and their two [backup dancers.]”

Nai chuckled at that.

“Seems like it…I beat them last time we met, but that was alone. They’ll have learned from the defeat and this time they have help.”

“Whatever we do, we need to decide fast,” Tasser said. “

“They got us,” Nai said through gritted teeth. “There’s no option we have that doesn’t play into their plan.”

“[Then we’re screwed…]” I breathed.

“…Maybe not…We can play to our strengths too,” Nai said. “…Specifically yours. I’ve been thinking about your superconnector. It was the first thing you created, yes?”

“Took me a while to figure that out, but yeah.”

“Then what happened with your friend Daniel…” she said slowly. “Could he have become trapped in your mind because he died while you were connected?”

That…was so sickeningly possible, I didn’t doubt it for a second.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“And even as just an echo in your mind, he could tap into Adeptry that you could not,” she said. “His creations could crack reinforced glass with their force of emergence, but yours couldn’t pull apart a cheap lock.”

“…What are you suggesting?” I asked.

“I am speculating…” she said slowly. “You are much more skilled in managing the superconnector now than then. When it first linked you to Daniel, you could not have regulated the connection. It must have stayed wide open, with nothing held back from the exchange.”

“You’re suggesting some of his Adept skills made it across the connection with him? I can’t do any of what he did anymore. That possibility died with his ghost.”

“I’m suggesting some of mine could still,” she said. “Because unlike Daniel, I am still alive, and my mind still has these skills for you to connect to.”

That gave me pause.

It was hard to say just how much of Nai’s skills I’d actually picked up. I was definitely better in a fight now—and that seemed in no small part due to her mind’s influence on me. But skill in combat was more than just an instinct moving you. It was disciplined focus, and trained reactions.

Not an hour ago, I’d been distracted from my own wounded opponent.

…But that same opponent had been a trained soldier, and they hadn’t beaten me.

Whatever I’d gleaned from Nai’s mind remained faint. She’d added to my mind, no doubt, but not through constant exposure. It would only be the small scraps that lingered after the connection ceased.

But what Nai was suggesting now would be the opposite. Unlimited exchange between our minds, whatever the superconnector could find in one of us, shared with the other for as long as we stayed connected.

Imagining it made me shudder.

Doing so might be irreversible. We’d done no tests. There were no safety nets. No guarantees.

“It would be temporary,” I guessed. “No way does it come without a price.”

“Temporary is all we need,” she said. “And I suspect the price will be paid in risk.”

“We might die, just from trying,” I said.

“We might die just from not,” she replied.

“If you’re correct, we’ve seen the consequences of dying while linked,” I said. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemies. Much less my friends.”

“Then we’d better not die,” Nai said.

She held her fist up.

“Hivivi,” she asked me. My brain tried to twist the Speropi into English, but I’d known this word before catching Nai’s native language. Trust.

“Always,” I answered without hesitating.

I bumped her fist and reforged our link.

This time I didn’t tighten my grip on the connection, and it flowed like fire. My superconnector roared to life, as if eager to finally be used to its full potential. The surge of images and sounds was overwhelming. It showed no sign of slowing down either.

The creation overwhelmed me, dragging my awareness under, and I forced myself to let it.

Hopefully I wouldn’t have to do theater with Nai again.

·····

This time I wasn’t on stage.

“Oh thank God…” I muttered.

There was a lot of grey metal as things came into focus. Consoles beeped at me, computer stations sat unmanned, and windows leaning away from me encircled half the room.

“It’s an aircraft carrier, just like you wanted last time,” Nai said. “Plus you’re dressed up like Starfleet.”

Looking down at myself, she was right. It was the military uniform though, grey and black with the only color being the undershirt, visible near the collar.

“I’m in a war uniform?” I asked.

“Remember what we’re trying to do right now? We have to go fight Headliner Adepts. But it seems like I’m in charge,” she said, pointing to the three gold pips on her matching uniform. Mine only had two.

“Then…it worked?” I asked.

“I think it’s about to,” she said, snatching up a radio. “Calling out to any other pieces of our brains. What’s the discussion looking like?”

“Talking Caleb through exotic heat capacity,” one ‘Nai’ voiced.

“We’re comparing notes on motion,” another Nai said. “When to dodge and when to block, I mean.”

“I’m trying to convince Nai it should be possible to fly,” my own voice told me.

The Nai in the room with me clicked off the radio.

“That’s about the gist of it,” she said. “You’ve got a better imagination than me. You push our boundaries of what’s possible, I help us know the limitations. Repeat that happen a bunch of times in parallel, and we should be able to do some interesting things.”

“We’re having more conversations,” I recognized. “Like before. Hundreds?”

“Thousands, for sure,” Nai said. “It’s kinda fun being the one in the know.”

“Why do you know more than me?” I asked.

“I don’t,” she said. “Or, the ‘real’ me doesn’t. I’m not all of Nai, just like you’re not all of Caleb. This is just how the exchange happens. I get to benefit from knowledge from both Caleb and Nai, and share it with you.”

“So other exchanges are happening where I have knowledge from both you and I? And…I share that back with you…even though some of it came from you…because some of your information now is coming from me…”

“The information is traded back and forth, over and over,” she agreed. “You want to see what it looks like in action?”

“Hell yes,” I grinned.

My awareness shifted again, reconnecting to real-time events. We weren’t the only ‘Nai and Caleb’ doing so either.

“Just watch…” she said.

·····

Staying conscious while the superconnector ran amok sucked. It felt like half my brain was fraying apart into a thousand different filaments, ready to connect to Nai in countless little conversations and exchanges that I wouldn’t possibly be able to remember.

Every reflex I had told me to clamp down on the connection, meter it to something more tolerable.

But desperate times…

So, I didn’t fight the disorientation. We needed those connections, even if it meant losing track of myself for a while.

I lost track of where I was standing…why I was here…what I wanted…

Even who I was.

And just like that, I stopped being Caleb Hane.