“How long do these things last for?” a crewman groaned as he slid out from under a wall panel along the corridor Aera was passing through.
“Up to 24 hours,” she said over her shoulder. The answering sigh caused her to purse her lips. An emergency was when the crew needed to be at their most disciplined. They’d been working hard, nonstop, and they were tired. She understood that. She was tired too. But it was moments like these when you could honour the person you want to be.
Are you going to complain in the face of a challenge, or are you going to rise to face it?
This wasn’t the first challenge that Skyhold had presented them — and it wasn’t even the most dangerous. The shield withstood the beastwave, which they assumed their crash-landing triggered. Thankfully, they’d had enough forewarning to pull back some teams they’d sent out to scout the surroundings. She had wanted to be out with them, searching for signs of Hunter, but Trey had demanded she stay within the confines of the ship, and she had no desire to be outside of it if the shield failed.
Despair washed over Aera as the search for her foster brother yielded nothing, a terrifying thought settling in her heart that they might never find him. But no matter the situation with Hunter, she had to keep her mind on the present. She would have time to worry later, after the beastwave, and maybe after repairs were underway.
She suppressed her grief as she waded through a river of grey Oberon uniforms shifting in and out of sight as they tasked each crewman with dozens of individual jobs, the most gruesome of which they finished early. They gathered the few fatalities they’d found and placed them in a storage room filled with constructs designed to keep the room near freezing, preserving the bodies for later burial.
Medics treated most of the minor casualties, and everyone fit enough to work already received their assignments—assignments Aera helped Commander Striker organize.
“Bridge to Aera,” she heard her hip radio announce. “You are requested at a command meeting.”
She pivoted on her heel and started heading back in the direction she’d come from. She preferred to be walking the around the ship, helping where she could. However, she couldn’t avoid some things, including command meetings. Especially at a time like this. She was like a relay between the crew and their captain — she needed to know what the captain knew. Effective communication was at an all-time-high.
The bridge was in a state of chaos. Some of the equipment had malfunctioned during the crash and engineers had pulled panels out of the floors, walls, and ceiling in order to do their repairs. Flashes of light from welders, the grinding of saws, and the general hubbub of the command team, the bridge crew, and the engineers all trying to do their jobs. It was an assault on the senses which Aera preferred not to be around for too long. Luckily, there was a private room just off of the bridge intended to be used for meetings just like this one.
She opened the door to the room and received a round of greetings from the assembled command officers. She nodded to her father first and then to everyone else. Aera took her seat beside Guard Captain Niklaus and shook her head at the offer for coffee.
“Hardly worth the effort of drinking it, anyway,” the Guard Captain said, chugging back whatever was in his cup and grimacing.
“For once, I agree with you,” Trey sighed.
“I’ve called you all here for two reasons. The first is to get everyone up to date on our current status, and the second is to decide on our path forward,” Captain Gregor said, “Commander?”
The first officer cleared his throat and stood. Aera smiled, happy that he maintained his composure despite his fatigue.
“In the 18 hours since we crashed, we’ve repaired most of our damaged systems. Life support, artificial gravity, etheric channels and electric power supply are intact. A faulty generator room repair caused our weapons to malfunction, and we will fix it within the hour. Since we’re grounded, we have elected to keep the artificial gravity off for the sake of routing more power towards the shield.”
“What about the mess hall?” Guard Captain Niklaus asked, his tone polite but with an edge of insistence to it. Aera’s stomach made a noise.
None of them had time to eat since they crashed.
“Operational as of an hour ago. I have crews cycling through in 30-minute intervals, and if my timing is right…”
There was a knock at the door. Aera stood and opened it, and crewmen wearing kitchen uniforms walked in with a rolling tray filled with food.
“I had them set some food aside for us, otherwise we’d be waiting another few hours for the rest of the crew to finish their breaks,” the Commander said.
Aera resisted the urge to fill a plate, letting Trey and the Captain go first. She was about to let the Guard Captain get his food before her, but he waved her forward. After flashing him a greatful smile, she loaded her plate up with bacon, eggs, toast, and a small bowl of fruit. The breakfast of champions — in fact, she’d had similar meals mere hours before a few of her championship wins in the past.
Having been too busy to find any rations, her hunger dissipated after several more hours of work. After forgetting how hungry she’d become, the first bite had tasted heavenly. She wolfed the food down in a couple of minutes, much to the amusement of the assembled command staff. Her father shook his head.
“Who brought this animal to the meeting?” he asked. She was about to respond. The door to the meeting room opened. A crewman peeked his head through the opening.
“I’m sorry for interrupting, but something is happening. You should see this,” he said. The officers stood and walked out of the room. The sight beyond the bridge revealed not much out of the ordinary, save the trails of a strange purple and blue energy, dissolving into sparks as it fell to the forest floor.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
It seemed the beastwave had dissipated, but the remnant aggression kept the crew confined to the ship. The assembled creatures wouldn’t disperse for another few hours.
At least, that’s what she’d been expecting based on the reports they’d gathered before coming here. Not once had the outpost reported a case of strange energy appearing, and causing the fauna to pacify and retreat into the forest.
“What the hell am I seeing?” she asked. Captain Gregor was speaking to a crewman at the front of the bridge. She could barely make out the words’ etheric anomaly.
She wished Hunter was there with them. He’d be going crazy over this. He’d try to sneak outside the ship to investigate it.
“What do we think?” Trey asked as the Captain made his way back over to the group.
“We don’t know what to think,” Captain Gregor said. “Apparently there was a surge of etherium just prior to a bright flash of light, and an expanding wave of blue-purple energy.”
“And now the crazed fauna is acting a lot less crazed,” Trey said.
Captain Gregor frowned and nodded.
“I could have a team sent out on a scout ship to investigate,” Guard Captain Niklaus said, “Just to make sure we don’t have something to worry about. For all we know, that was the source of the beast waves.”
Aera nodded. Trey seemed skeptical, but he considered the general assertion of his staff.
“Your call, Captain,” he said.
“Let’s do as the Guard Captain suggests,” Captain Gregor said. Niklaus nodded and spoke into his radio. A minute later, the shield lowered for a moment as a small ship left to scout the anomaly at its source.
----------------------------------------
Oberon would never survive here unless they developed some drastic advantages, and fast, Hunter thought.
How had the outpost not fallen under a combined assault from these monsters? In the beastwave's wake, and the nova-like release of miraculous energy from the anomalous, winged jellyfish-thing, the team had made good speed through the forest towards their next campsite. The pulse of energy had travelled further than they’d thought, as wherever they went, there wasn’t a single sign of hostility.
The power displayed by that creature was unfathomable to Hunter. It stretched the limits of what he thought etherium was — of what it could do. The mystery was more profound than he had ever imagined.
They could close the distance a bit, though. The healing tech Oberon had deployed at the hospital outside the Barnum campus had been quite miraculous as well, but no one understood how it operated. He wondered if a similar principle was at work here.
Unless they could master the mechanism which could induce passivity into fauna spread out over miles and miles, the hundreds of powerful creatures the team had come across while they trekked would prove too great of a challenge. Skyhold seemed to have an abundance of such creatures — and if they were natural, which he had no reason to suspect otherwise, then they would keep appearing. What would the outpost or fledgling colony be able to do against a beastwave full of these things? The beastwave would overrun them.
And now that he’d asked that question, another question arose: Why hadn’t that happened yet?
The common denominator here was etherium. Lacking a full series of spreadsheets accounting for the variables at play, he’d seen how etherium can empower these beasts to be like walking constructs, as if it were a natural phase in their development. He’d seen how etherium could have countered the aggression that arose in the beasts, an antidote to the underlying aggression mechanism.
If it was the antidote, maybe it wasn’t so much of a stretch to assume that it was also the cause.
But he didn’t know how long it would take him, or a research team, or a dozen research teams working in harmony, to replicate the effect that the creature in the lake had on its surroundings. In the meantime, how was Skyhold supposed to defend itself with conventional weaponry? They only had so the capacity the fauna was showing dwarfed many High-AR individuals. Either their technology needed to undergo a drastic leap in effectiveness, or humanity itself had to learn to evolve to match the challenge before them.
Unfortunately, without inducing a strong sensitivity to etherium, Hunter could think of no way to pass on the internal etheric arts which Gideon Koar had developed.
They need an advantage. They need more AR, more powerful constructs and technologies, and they needed them now.
Unable to pass on the internal arts, his only recourse was to triple or quadruple down on synergies: their research and proliferation. They would need to start with their defence technology. A total overhaul.
“Ground control to Hunter. You there, buddy?” Jeren asked, breaking Hunter out of his revery. Hunter blinked and cleared his throat.
“Yeah, sorry, just thinking,” he said.
“Credit for your thoughts?” Bella asked.
“I’m just thinking about the creatures we’ve seen along the way. Have you guys been noticing the same things I have? The mutations?”
“Yeah!” Jeren exclaimed, his voice echoing through the surrounding forest. Not a single animal seemed to react to the sudden outburst, “and the size of them.”
“I’m concerned about what etheric mutations might imply about our chances of establishing a long-term home here,” Hunter said. “I’m not sure that anyone on the Merciful Cloud is aware of what we could come up against. But I’m also wondering how we might mitigate the danger.”
“I wonder if it’s a problem at all,” Bella said, tapping her chin with a finger.
“What do you mean?” Hunter asked.
“Well, from what I’ve gathered — and maybe your own observations can verify this — but beasts using etherium have yet to appear in any beastwave so far.”
Hunter picked up on her train of thought.
“So you’re saying that etherium has the opposite effect of aggravating animals into a beastwave, and may in fact act more than a natural shield against the mechanism?” he said, his eyes widening as he spoke. It could make sense, but he realized they were still missing a critical piece of the puzzle.
“Then why are only some animals able to use etherium, and others aren’t?” he wondered out loud. “Why are some shielded, and not the rest?”
“Maybe it’s a matter of saturation,” Joe said. “Maybe a certain amount of etherium exposure is necessary for them to develop a natural defence against the beastwave mechanism?”
“So the age of the beast would correspond to its ‘saturation’ of etherium, which would have a beneficial effect on its gene expression?” Bella asked.
Joe shrugged.
“Again, I’m not a biology guy. You tell me,” he said.
She shrugged as well.
“It’s not like we don’t have a precedent,” Hunter said.
“Right, high-AR mutations. I was thinking the same thing,” Bella said.
“Indeed,” Jeren added in an erudite, accented tone, “well said, my fellow intellectual.”
“Increased longevity, fortified immune system, what if ‘etherium saturation’ was a natural consequence of a balanced exposure to etherium over time?” Hunter said, ignoring Jeren.
“If that’s the case, why aren’t all our octogenarians developing superpowers?” Lieutenant Pellar asked.
Hunter considered the question, but not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he wasn’t sure what he should tell them. He’d already revealed his sensitivity to Aera, Trey, and the Captain. It was only a matter of time before others realized he had an advantage that they didn’t, especially if he was going to be keeping company with other researchers.
He took a deep breath.
“I—” he started, but a loud droning sound interrupted him.
“I know that sound,” the lieutenant said, his entire posture changing as he watched the sky. Hunter recognized the sound, too.
The team burst into action.