Connection
Psionics were maddeningly flexible.
From the moment Daniel and I had first tried figuring out what exactly they were, one thing had been clear. They could interact with both subjective and objective information. That alone was enough to give me headaches if I thought about it too much.
But that odd quality was exactly the thing that made them valuable.
I needed that flexibility. I needed my brain to clinch a new possibility, now.
With just a prod, the superconnector roared to life in my mind.
Connect, I demanded it. Connect!
It wouldn’t just connect to nothing. I needed a foothold, to find even the tiniest purchase for my masterpiece to build from.
Flashing back to our psionic workshop, and the Fiansisi Casti who’d gotten upset…
Psionics wrestled with very broad questions: did free will exist? Is consciousness more than just electrical signals bouncing around our brains? What did it mean to be self-aware? What exactly is sapience?
It was these questions I had to contend with, figuring out Coalescence.
I’d learned a lot from psionics, and even if I had no answers to all those questions, there was one thing I’d become certain of.
There was a physical basis for consciousness, psionics, sapience, the soul, and maybe many more things.
Each of those thoughts was a separate bag of cats, but it was the first two that I’d thought most about. It helped that ‘basis’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘source’.
Nora had found a way to get physical molecules to react to psionic signals. That had been quite the breakthrough. But it was obvious in retrospect.
I could partially override my senses with psionic false inputs. If it had only been adding new sensations, then it could be argued that nothing physical was happening at all. The illusion of a new sensation was being added directly to intangible consciousness without anything physical involved.
But I’d numbed pain before. Blocked otherwise physical signals. Not only that, I’d given myself very real, tangible, blood pressure-measurable headaches from using psionics.
Somewhere in those chains of interaction, there must have been something physical responding to psionic influence.
From the very beginning.
That narrowed my search way down.
Maybe the question shouldn’t be ‘why can’t I connect to people who aren’t Nai?’
I should be asking what was different about her?
It wasn’t that she was Adept. Well, it could have been. But non-Adepts could connect to psionics too, and if I couldn’t Coalesce with the two non-Adepts in front of me now, we were dead anyway.
So it wasn’t a thread worth following.
Then why could I connect with Nai? What was different? Was there something we’d done that hadn’t been repeated?
Nai had the mirror in her head for months…but so had everyone else now, and more. Maybe when I’d cascaded her brain trying to find the problem?
Without explaining myself, I put my hand on Nerin’s forehead and tried to cascade her brain. The liquid content of her body and the constant surge of equilibrium chemistry reacting back and forth completely muddied anything beneath her skull.
Simultaneously, I threw the superconnector at the fuzzy sensation. Maybe it could find a pattern that I failed to notice.
Part of me was banking on the fact that the superconnector was capable of connecting to Nai, and therefore would be more familiar with a Farnata brain than Tasser’s Casti one.
It…wouldn’t be enough. I needed more.
Gritting my teeth, I realized I would have to take a leap on an untested, barely founded theory.
The Beacons had made the abstract-yet-mechanistic scraps that I’d built psionics from. But before psionics, even those scraps must have had some physical connection.
There were two possibilities for that physical connection, I thought.
It would either be some certain type of cell, or it would be something even smaller than cells. Anything bigger, like an extra organ, would have been noticed in the century-and-a-half of spacefaring that Beacon travel had enabled.
I gambled on the latter.
Casti bioscience was good. I gambled on the fact that they probably would have noticed new cells crop up the brains of spacefarers.
But something smaller?
A sub-organelle, or even an exotic intraneural molecule? Those were all real words, right? I was just labeling the approximation of what I expected to find.
My superconnector bucked at the reins, threatening to pull away from my grasp.
That had a reaction. Was I on the right track?
Exotic molecules in the brain, even smaller than meta-microbes, created by Beacons so they could interact with the minds of organisms travelling through them…
They could even be given certain characteristics, like dematerializing if the brain they’re in dies...that would explain why they were impossible to discover in autopsy. And no exotic material detector would be precise enough to detect just a few million atoms amidst a still active, living brain.
If the molecules I was hunting for really existed, then they would need to interact with psionic signals in some way.
“Why?” she asked, complying.
“Because I want to see if there’s anything else in your brain that might react…” I said. I dumped as many different psionic signals through her skull as I knew how, trying all sorts of different abstract forms. Resonant signals, numerical signals, random garbage…nothing.
If these intraneural molecules existed…they would have virtually zero register. It would be so slight, so imperceptible, that it would be impossible to detect without some way of amplifying whatever feedback they did give off.
Like a speaker aimed at a microphone…yeah, that could work.
I materialized a cloud of the psionic blocking gas Nora had used months ago, insulating Nerin’s brain from any outside interference, and ran through my various psionic signals again, preparing to feed whatever I sensed back into the signal source.
A psionic feedback loop quickly filled the space, making Tasser and I flinch.
That elicited another tug forward from the superconnector. It had something in Nerin’s mind, the source of the feedback. And detecting it once was enough to detect it again, in someone else.
I put a hand out on Tasser’s head too.
This cascade gave more information. I understood more about what I was looking for. My superconnector knew more about what it was looking for. Yes…there…and there too.
I couldn’t sense any of these molecules; they were too small. I couldn’t even sense cells or chains of neurons.
But as I aimed the superconnector with my cascade, different parts of the brain stood out, and I could feel the superconnector linger on the spots for longer.
The pirates’ footsteps were drawing closer. My and Nerin’s heartbeats picked up. Tasser’s did too, but much less.
Just a little further…
A grin went across my face and I withdrew my hands from their heads, holding up fists to both of them. It wasn’t necessary, but it’s how I’d gotten used to it.
“The first time is pretty intense,” I warned.
Neither of them hesitated to bump my fist.
The action was symbolic, almost perfunctory. But it was also a neat way to synchronize ourselves to a certain shared physical sensation, like a clapperboard signaling how to align audio and video tracks in editing…
The bridges between our minds appeared in a burst of lightning, and ‘I’ was suddenly ‘we’.
Every corner of Tasser and Nerin’s minds lit up, and I knew they saw mine in the same way.
Nerin was a brilliant nervous wreck. Dreading the moment something went wrong that she could prevent. With no Adeptry to call her own, she devoured knowledge like it was water. Too many of her waking moments were reserved for learning the latest obscure medical theories. She knew that about herself. And now she knew we knew it.
Tasser was angry. I’d know that about him, but experiencing it firsthand caught me off guard. He was so laid back ordinarily. But that came from a helplessness that had clung to him so long, he treated it like a yolk he’d gotten too used to carrying. No one could choose how other people saw you. He knew that about himself too. And now he knew we knew it.
They saw me too.
I was scared. So scared, neither of them believed it at first. But my fears were a mountain, casting an inescapable shadow and darkening every decision I made. The mountain wasn’t one fear, but dozens and hundreds of little ‘what-if’s piled up together, jolting me awake in the middle of the night. Abductions, never seeing my family back home, illness, loneliness, they all ganged up into a perfect phantom, always standing in my way.
These glimpses into each other should have been embarrassing. We all knew what we were seeing. We all should have known people were seeing some of our most intimately kept secrets.
…But no one was embarrassed to be themselves to themselves. Sure, showing parts of yourself to others was nerve-wracking. But showing yourself to yourself? It was too…constant. And we were seeing each other see each other as we saw ourselves.
So it caught me by surprise when I realized Tasser and Nerin giving off awe.
And I knew why.
They saw the mountain of fears I’d built up for myself, but they also saw my focus on the peak: the one-in-a-million shot that I could beat it all. The odds were crushing, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter the obstacles.
They saw I’d keep going where they would have given up.
…I hadn’t really known that about myself until seeing it through someone else’s eyes.
I wanted to cry when I realized that seeing me for who I was made them want to persevere too.
All these reactions flickered through our minds in a matter heartbeats though. And there were still many pirates on their way here to kill us.
“[…What just happened?]” Jordan asked.
Oh. That was odd.
I knew she was speaking English. But Tasser and Nerin could understand the words while connected to me.
Oh! That was odder.
I was still me! Or…Caleb was still him? No, that wasn’t quite right. Unlike Coalescing with Nai, differentiating between our selves wasn’t nearly as hard.
That seemed counterintuitive. Why would more minds make it easier to keep track of our individual identities while they were blending together?
Ideas popped into all our heads a few at a time. Three people had more brainpower than just two. Each of us had more contrast now: two people to compare our own minds to. Or maybe it was a quirk of the specific individuals being Coalesced.
That last one stuck out to me.
Seeing myself from Tasser and Nerin’s perspectives made me realize just how similar Nai and I could seem, even without factoring in Coalescence.
“No, seriously, what just happened?” Jordan asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just making a breakthrough.”
“One of these days we’re going to stop having to rely on those,” Tasser chuckled.
“That’s not an answer,” Jordan said, frowning at Tasser’s Starspeak. She turned to Nerin hopefully. But Nerin’s expression was mostly blank while she processed what it was like to be Coalesced.
Just like we could sense her mind, she could sense that Tasser and I knew exactly how we were going to get out of this.
“Come with me,” I said. “We’re going this way.”
I didn’t give Nerin any instructions. She just fell in behind Jordan and Elaine while the four of us moved back toward the elevator shaft.
Tasser stayed and moved toward the pirates arriving in our long hallway any second. He flexed his hand experimentally. This was really going to throw them for a loop…
In his hand, millions of glittering pinpricks sprang to life, forming a structure. In the blink of an eye he held a transparent bulletproof riot shield.
He grinned.
Adeptry and Coalescence were so cool.
One more surprise too. We could feel my Adeptry being shared between us. We felt my mass limit more sharply than ever with all three of us ready to reach for it…but not as sharply as we should.
Ordinarily, my mass limit was around fourteen or fifteen kilograms. But creating the shield just now, we felt a bit more at our fingertips. Eighteen? Twenty?
It wasn’t a big difference, but it was certainly there.
Tasser and Nerin weren’t Adept, but could they be contributing something anyway? Maybe I was always capable of this much mass, but with three minds linked we were eliminating some inefficiency somewhere? Optimizing some part of the process to give us a bit more mass?
Whatever the reason, it would only help us.
With one hand, Tasser hefted the shield and kept his pistol ready in the other hand.
The process of Coalescing had destabilized the radars both he and I had ignited. Inconvenient, but not a true problem. With the three of us linked, we could all serve as an origin point for the radar in any one of our minds.
Nerin flared the first of her candle-radars and the same sense of awareness bloomed out from Tasser too.
The first pirate came into Tasser’s view right as Nerin and I got out of sight at the very far end of the long hall. Tasser didn’t hesitate to start shooting.
His gun hand was the only part of himself exposed past the shield. We could have taken the time to materialize a new gun, with specialized ammunition to not interact with his own shield…he could fire right through it without exposing any part of himself.
But he was already shooting with a real gun. Risk was minimal. Better to devote our attention to a different advantage…
His first two shots missed, but in the time it took to notice, our combined minds spent a few fractions of a second materializing a new piece of psionics. Tasser could be more of a threat if he could aim better around the edge of his own shield.
The spatial processing construct was perfect for this…some quick modifications…and plugging it into Tasser’s eyesight, lines and trajectories sprang up in his vision. Red lines flickered into existence where his eyes recognized enemy gun barrels, displaying their firing trajectories.
A blue line went out from his own gun, showing exactly where his bullets would fly, all without having to aim down its sight.
It was like having a laser guide that you could stay aware of even with your eyes shut.
Tasser’s next bullets were fired more carefully, and much more accurately. Crouching behind his shield, he was safe from the enemy fire. The pirates dropped into kneels, letting their allies behind them fire as well, but it didn’t matter.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Bullets buried themselves into the shield, obscuring part of the view. But Tasser just pulled the trigger slowly and carefully.
Each bullet tore into a Casti head or heart, and the bodies of the fallen pirates began slowing down the advance of the ones behind them.
Eventually, one of them had the idea to use heavier ordnance, and a grenade soared through the air toward Tasser.
Our minds picked it out of the air like it was nothing, and a tiny kinetic bomb materialized in its path. The pressure of that blast blew the grenade back toward the throng of pirates trying to push their way down the long hallway.
The blast sent shrapnel ripping down the hall’s length, quadrupling the amount of dust and smoke being kicked up in the confined space. The agonized cries of Casti pirates were the only signs any of them had survived.
But a low rumble bode poorly for them.
The explosion had destabilized something, and one of the walls buckled. A few tons of earth and stone squeezed through the paneling like it wasn’t there, quickly filling the space.
That finally threatened Tasser enough to move.
He didn’t bother picking the shield back up, instead just having us dissolve it while he hightailed it toward our position at the elevator.
<[What was that?]> Jordan asked.
<[Tasser just took care of the ones behind us,]> I reported. <[Or at least forced them to find another way around.]>
That was a disturbing possibility. We didn’t know the underground layout, or even what these tangled hallways were for.
It was a safe bet they’d find a way around the new cave-in. But Tasser didn’t need to delay them long. Nerin and I just needed a few seconds to sort out how we would get ourselves up the elevator shaft.
A few heartbeats were all the time it took for the three of us to trade a dozen ideas. Tasser’s tactical experience, my Adeptry, Nerin’s physiological knowledge…we needed to get five bodies up a six-story elevator shaft with hostiles raining down bullets or grenades.
Ugh, having Coalesced with Nai, I felt spoiled for her options. Her mass limit was a thousand times mine. She’d told me long ago that raw magnitude was the most useful thing for an Adept to have, and I’d somewhat brushed her off.
But faced with the current problem, I understood why unsophisticated mass was most helpful on average.
Fine. Whatever.
I—no— we had our own strengths.
Coalescence had let me borrow Nai’s almost sixty-meter range last time, but now I was limited to my much less impressive ten meters.
Tasser and Nerin pushed back on that thought. I was using a bit of a double standard, thinking in terms of my effective range and Nai with, not all but, most of her maximum range.
I shouldn’t be needlessly harsh on myself.
But that was only because I was much more limited to the range I could create precisely in. Sure, I could create nonspecific spurts of matter as far as thirty meters—thirty-five on a good day. But if I wanted to have careful control of what I made, it had to be a lot closer to me. Specifically, within ten meters. Nai’s creations didn’t need to be so precise, so she didn’t need to limit herself to the most precise portions of her range.
The secret to Vorpal fire wasn’t intricacy, nor did it need to be. It wasn’t a delicate weapon.
No, Nai was a hammer and I was stuck being a scalpel.
That metaphor resonated particularly well with Nerin, surgical whiz that she was.
Ten-meter range limit, twenty-kilogram maximum, narrow confines, urgent time limit…
Could we do something with the cable? Drag me up the distance quickly enough, launch an overwhelming attack to drive the pirates at the top back and cover everyone else’s ascent?
No. The earlier bombs had surely damaged the mechanism.
Poking my head around the corner gave me a quick glance at the shaft. Sure enough, the platform’s counterweights were at the bottom already.
But…
I’d estimated the distance going down at six stories. My rough estimate said roughly fourteen feet per story, but that was for human architecture. Tasser and Nerin in my brain reminded me that Casti were just a bit shorter than humans, and it showed in their buildings. Floors were thinner.
So maybe my thirty-meter maximum would actually put me barely in reach of the factory’s ground floor…
Adeptry didn’t give feedback like that, so if we tried creating something, we’d be aiming blind, unless we wanted to stick my head directly into the shaft and eyeball the distance.
Adeptry didn’t give feedback like that. But psionics did!
Candle-radars didn’t have the same insane range as the original, but they reached a hell of a lot further than thirty meters.
A plan finished forming in our minds and Nerin was only just now coming to a halt where I’d paused to confirm the elevator’s condition.
Three heads are faster than one, I grinned to myself as I stormed forward toward the dusty shaft.
<[What are you—]> Jordan began, but Nerin was ready to clue her into the plan.
<[Caleb is going up first to cover us while we climb,]> Nerin said, thinking in English. Her mouth couldn’t make the sounds that well, but that’s Coalescence for you.
The tricky part came next. Smoke would be more than enough to force them to reposition. I paused right at the entrance to the elevator shaft. If they chose this moment to drop another grenade down the shaft, I’d be in trouble. But it’d been quiet for a minute now.
My target area would have to be exactly above me, thirty meters. At the very edge of my range, I created a burst of dense smoke.
The Casti on radar didn’t move. But one of them…looked upward? It was hard to tell exactly their brain’s orientation. Had I actually overshot?
I tried again at five-sixths my max range, and this time the reaction was immediate. They scattered, messily stepping back from the elevator shaft.
With no time to waste, I darted into the shaft and jumped straight up.
Cammo-Caddo’s gravity was several times more intense than Draylend’s or even Sidar’s, so my maneuvering jet trick wouldn’t be as effective without Nai to supply more energy. But I still managed to jet myself three stories up, magnetizing a handhold to the wall.
Instead of magnetizing my body directly, I elected to materialize simple phone-pole spikes to use. They’d take more mass, but I needed everyone to be able to climb. Two spikes in the shaft’s corner gave me decent footing while I materialized a new gun and aimed it up at our destination.
Any pirate with the initiative to stick their head through the orange smoke was going to earn themselves a bullet for their trouble.
Nerin needed no signal to help Jordan and Elaine start climbing.
“I can’t climb that,” Elaine said, tugging Nerin’s sleeve. Her Starspeak was immaculate.
she replied, anxiously looking up the shaft.
“
“” Tasser volunteered.
Elaine shrunk back.
“
“[…Shut your eyes,]” Jordan said, picking up Elaine. She hefted Elaine, and the girl wrapped her arms around Tasser.
“
Seeing the Adeptry, Jordan’s eyes widened.
“[What?]”
“
“
Between my and Nerin’s guns and the smoke, we were eating through quite a bit of my mass limit already. It left Tasser just barely enough mass to make the hand and footholds he needed to follow me up.
He made good time despite the tight resources. Tasser might not have known the first thing about climbing or Adeptry, but I’d made it a bit of a hobby at this point.
Jordan followed him, moving much more cautiously up the handles we materialized on the shaft wall. I’d learned climbing was tricky because your arms still lost strength just holding you in place, even if you weren’t ascending. So there was a paradoxical risk that being too careful or going too slowly would guarantee that you fall.
Luckily, Adeptry was suited to mitigate those risks.
When Tasser reached the level where I was holding position, he materialized a bar across the adjacent corner of the elevator shaft. He got his feet on the bar just right so that he could stand, leaning into the corner of the shaft and resting his arms while Jordan climbed toward me.
Tasser’s gun replaced mine, staying trained on the doorway above us.
I grabbed what remained of the mangled elevator cable, making room for Jordan. Far below me, Nerin was ready for her own ascent.
Words were unnecessary when I dissolved all the handholds save for the ones Tasser and Jordan were resting on. I needed the mass to create almost a hundred feet of climbing rope and a pulley to fuse into the last sturdy section of elevator cable.
Threading the rope through the pulley, I gripped one end and tossed the other down to Nerin. She didn’t have my hand augmentations, so she wrapped the rope around her boot and leg, before taking hold with both hands.
As soon as I saw she was ready, I let go of the elevator cable, putting all my weight into the climbing rope. Our pulley yanked Nerin up four stories in just a few seconds.
Like Tasser before her, she materialized a quick foothold in the corner of the shaft before dematerializing the rope and pulley.
At the bottom of the shaft, I gathered up all the spare energy I could and pressure jetted myself into the air again. Not as far this time, but still a substantial amount of distance. We might not have had Nai’s power, but equally important back then had been the opportunity for two minds to coordinate the precise materialization of pressurized gasses to rocket someone around. And this time we had three people contributing.
Nerin and Tasser didn’t know squat about it, but I did. And Coalescence allowed all of us to simultaneously borrow and utilize the knowledge of any one of us. The fact that I was using the same expertise didn’t stop Tasser and Nerin from benefiting from the same knowledge.
So when I got a foothold under myself thirty feet up the shaft, I tried again. Leaping off the brand-new foothold, another series of rocket blasts slammed into my body, launching me up.
I couldn’t make just one blast beneath my feet. Too much of the energy would be lost in the flex of my ankles and knees. With Nai, I’d improvised a dozen different preset points on my body to receive the force.
That number more than doubled this time. When Tasser had seen this trick before, he’d remembered it. In his memories, I’d looked a bit like a porcupine, or a hot rod, with spikes of cold exhaust thrust pushing on my body. Now it looked less…natural. The plumes of plasma that marked where I was pressing on my body blurred together, and the force pushing me along looked more like a ghostly afterimage distorting the air a millisecond behind my body.
Jordan’s look of surprise was especially satisfying when I continued to launch myself up the shaft in short bursts. I blew past them.
I climbed back to the ground level first and went on the offensive.
Borrowing Tasser’s new bullet-tracer, I fired right through the smoke at the Casti I still sensed lingering further down the hall. Fresh cries of alarm rang out, and I dove forward.
Back in the elevator shaft, Tasser and Nerin split their attention between climbing and keeping one gun pointed down the shaft in case the pirates found their way around the rubble quicker than expected.
Jordan climbed with them, following the handholds they created. Her concentration was firmly on the sounds of me fighting above her. She didn’t get to see what I did, so her imagination had to fill in the gaps for her when all she could hear were gunshots, explosions, and the screams of Casti pirates.
The three of them plus Elaine all made it to the ground floor safely, and I dismissed the smoke.
Tasser wisely elected to carry Elaine past the several bodies I’d left strewn in the hallway.
<[Got it,]> she said, not lingering to look at the bodies.
Leaving the medicine behind wasn’t critical, but we’d officially made it through the riskiest part of the operation, and I could afford to make sure the meds left with us. While I darted up the stairs, Tasser led the way through the ground floor to a storage room with the window he’d first broken in through.
No sooner was he through that window before three pirates manning the factory exterior saw him. The one with a gun opened fire immediately, but not quick enough.
Another transparent shield materialized on his arm, catching the bullets in time for the pirate to gape at the seeming display of Casti Adeptry. Tasser launched a rocket knife at him in lieu of having his gun ready to aim, but the pirate was far enough away to see it coming.
The two much closer charged with machetes. Tasser threw his shield at the first one, knocking him off balance. Switching to the second, he dissolved the shield and formed armor on his forearms to deflect the blade.
Channeling me for a moment, Tasser taunted them.
“You’re out of your league,” he grinned.
Taking advantage of their shock, we created a blade in his hand mid-swipe. He cut into the first pirate’s torso in an orange spray before we extended the blade into something like a rapier. Tasser thrust the point clean through the second pirate’s torso before he could react.
With both of them dealt with, we dissolved the weapons and Tasser went back to his gun, keeping it trained on the original shooter’s position.
“
Inside the building, I’d blown through the scattered defenders inside and grabbed the medical case with significant—but not difficult—opposition. I was fast enough on my own, I could get through their disorganized numbers before they could think about stopping me.
They were, I realized, not carrying any radios.
They’d gotten used to relying on psionics, and without them were in complete disarray.
I blasted my way through a second story window and leapt to the ground.
<[It’s me coming up behind you,]> I warned Jordan.
Moving even just a hundred feet from the wall ringing the factory was a shocking difference. We’d dove headfirst into an urban-jungle reclaimed by the genuine article.
We tore toward the flags Dyn had left us. Nerin and Tasser aggressively tore through undergrowth and found the strangely clear concrete sidewalk winding through the jungle.
“[…They’re not following,]” Jordan noted as we slowed to jog.
“[Not many of them saw where we went,]” I answered. “[It would be suicide for them to follow Adepts without a plan and numbers. Plus, their contact with our destination was totally cutoff, so they have no idea what’s happening elsewhere.]”
“They’ll probably get a group headed toward the dam about ten minutes behind us,” Tasser said. “But we’ll be a few miles into the sky by then.”
“The…what did you say, the dam?” Jordan asked.
“[That’s where this path leads,]” I said. “[And it’s where they were keeping the other kids. The rest of our crew has them.]”
“[Okay, that’s good. But we really need to pick a language and stick to it,]” she said. “[You and I keep switching.]”
“Starspeak then,” I said. “These two are the only ones who can speak any English at all, and even Tasser can barely speak it.”
“Starspeak,” she agreed. “You doing alright, Elaine?”
She nodded, sticking adorably close to Tasser now.
“Alright, let’s keep pace. Once we rendezvous with Dyn, we can drop Coalescence. I have a feeling the feedback with three people will be harsher than just two,” I said.
We did exactly that. A five-minute jog later, Dyn, Serral, and Fenno joined us.
Snapping out of Coalescence, all I wanted to do was lie down and nap for a few hours. Glancing at Tasser and Nerin confirmed they were feeling it too. But we weren’t out of the woods yet.
Literally.
The last stage of the plan was our evacuation. Bringing multiple human abductees through a town we didn’t know, with enemies on our tail? It would never fly.
No, we needed to bring the mountain to Mohammad, and the Jack to the abductees in this case. But landing options were limited considering both the dam and the auto-factory were encroached on all sides with jungle.
There were no suitable flat areas to land a spaceship.
Except for the dam’s reservoir.
We burst through the undergrowth and were greeted by the spectacle of a spaceship having landed on the surface of a lake.
Nai had gone to work, materializing a platform more than large enough for Weith to touchdown on. It extended across the water with dozens of poles stretching down under the water toward the nearest solid purchase.
Nai was the only one still on the platform itself, and a floating walkway materialized out from her platform. It extended all the way to shore, and we wasted no time.
It wasn’t anchored like the launch platform she made, and Tasser actually stumbled off it into the water, but there was no resistance at the dam to take advantage of our vulnerability.
As soon as we reached the platform, Nai materialized scaffolding underneath all our feet. She lifted us all up a story to the level of the Jack’s cargo bay entrance and we dove inside.
Four human kids not much older than Elaine awaited us inside. Their eyes immediately fell upon me especially, and…
“[Jordan?]” they all asked.
“[Sure am,]” she said, before pulling herself into a seat harness pointed out by Tasser.
“[Introductions in a minute,]” I said. “[You’re all harnessed up?]”
We got everyone strapped in, and Serral gave the order.
“
It was my second time launching with no gravitational assistance, and we all got to feel our bodies press into the seat-couches we’d rigged up in the cargo bay.
Psionically listening in on Weith in the cockpit, the local ground control was going ballistic over our very illegal ship repositioning and liftoff.
My joints were aching from more than just the Gs, but I wasn’t bleeding and neither were any other humans on our ship.
The Jackie Robinson stayed on Cammo-Caddo maybe twenty hours all told, and we left with six new humans in tow.
The roar of the engines totally drowned out my enthusiastic whoop and hollering.
Mission accomplished.