Brisk raised the gun and opened fire. Bolts of yellow light spewed from the barrel, splashing across the metal interior of the cargo bay as he turned the weapon to track Torg's motion across the room. Every shot was missing by inches, but Brisk was quickly correcting for Torg's unexpected burst of speed.
Torg bounded across the ground with a gait that was more like a charging bull than a giant bug, bounding on all eight legs as he zig-zagged towards where Brisk stood.
One of Brisk’s shots came close, and Torg changed direction suddenly, trying to break his aim. The move had the opposite effect, inadvertently moving him directly into Brisk’s line of fire. One of the bolts hit him, scoring a deep furrow across his shell, and he chittered in fury.
No longer satisfied with a strafing approach, Torg launched himself directly at Brisk, but the muscular Hurc rotated out of the way at the last second, sweeping the mace he held in his other hand in a low strike across Torg's legs.
The giant crustacean went down with a crash, rolling forward once before collapsing into a heap.
Brisk paused, looking around the room cautiously.
Brisk was normally the ship's engineer, but he wasn't dressed like an engineer right then. Typically he went around bare-chested, with a pair of rough pants and a low-slung tool belt. Now, he was wearing a pair of sleek scaled pants that had the look of fish scales. Over his torso, he wore a breastplate made of a material that looked like milky glass, translucent, but clearly some kind of armor. There was a star fracture in the plate, just over the stomach. From what Miles now knew of Hurc biology, it looked like someone had tried to shoot him in the heart.
Satisfied, Brisk lowered the gun and slipped it back into a holster on his side.
Out of nowhere, Trin appeared behind him, hopping up and boxing the back of his head with a flurry of paw strikes.
Brisk ignored the punches, casually grabbing Trin out of the air and tossing him across the room. The Eppan landed gracefully, rolling into a crouch and staring back at him.
Miles stood at the back of the room, awkwardly.
Awkward, confused, and irritated.
"Good," Brisk said, pointing at Torg. "But don't commit to evading if you can't keep it up, and don't lose your temper."
He continued, pointing at Trin. "Awful. You're not a close-range fighter. If you don't have a ranged weapon, distract and disrupt."
Finally, he turned his attention to Miles. "And you. You didn't even try."
"Why are we doing this?" Miles countered, heat in his voice.
"Because the spiral is a dangerous place, and you won't always have muscle standing between you and the threat."
That's such an evasive answer.
"You're lying," Miles said. "I didn't find out I'd need a Healer's accreditation until the day before I had to take the test. We didn't find out we were docking at Delatariel Station until an hour before we arrived. Now the captain has us doing combat drills, and nobody will tell us why. What are you trying to prepare us for?"
Brisk’s eyes diverged for a second, pupils pointing in different directions, before he stopped, as if he’d thought of something. His lips parted and he smiled.
He flashed his incisors as he said, "If you can get me on the ground, I'll tell you."
Miles stared at him for a second, trying to work out if he was serious, then kicked off in a dead sprint straight at him.
Miles’ hand came to his chest as he ran, and he cast Temporary Enhancement, focusing on his strength.
In myself, I am complete. In a harmonious world, everything is complete. I am that which I am.
His magical core whirred and the magic flooded through him, somehow hotter than usual.
The words that the magic recalled, at first nonsense to him, now rang with a special truth. He wasn't at the point of fully understanding them, but they were no longer meaningless.
An image flashed through his mind as the spell latched on, a vision of himself standing alone, his complete potential realized, a physical form as strong as any physical form might ever be. It was an image that the magic didn't measure up to, not yet, maybe not ever, but it was the direction it strived towards.
Brisk's eyes widened slightly in surprise, but he wasn’t surprised enough that he didn’t react. He pivoted to catch Miles, grabbing him by the shirt and casually tossing him, turning the sprint into an uncontrolled tumble.
Miles rolled through the air, sure that he'd missed his chance, but then a pair of strong pincers caught him, stopping the fall and gently bringing him to the ground. He looked up to see Torg, who'd picked himself off the floor.
Miles pivoted and ran back at Brisk. Torg was beside him this time. Apparently, the lancer was as curious about this as him, and was willing to help him at a moment's notice.
When they were just feet away from their target, Torg grabbed Miles at the shoulder and hip and threw him at the waiting Hurc. Trin appeared in the same instant, crouching on the ground behind Brisk.
Miles collided with Brisk, who tried to step backward and tripped over the crouching Eppan instead. Miles caught a flash of open-mouth surprise as the Hurc went down under him.
Not wanting to miss the chance and not willing to let there be any ambiguity about the result, Miles grabbed Brisk’s wrists, pinning him to the ground. Brisk struggled for a second, his breath hot on Miles’ face, then gave up with an exhaled laugh.
He jerked, showing his true strength as he tossed Miles away.
Miles rolled on the ground to avoid hitting his head, and by the time he looked up, Brisk was already on his feet.
"Fine, I'll tell you,” he said. He unstrapped his chest-plate and hung it over a metal beam. "That fight felt like you'd been training together for a month, not just three days. Yeah, I'll tell you. Get cleaned up and meet me in the observation dome. Left side, one hour."
Brisk left the cargo bay via the ladder, climbing up to the catwalk and then taking the door that led to the main body of the ship.
Miles, Trin, and Torg were left staring at each other.
"I don't believe it. You were right," Trin said.
Click-click. “Secrets”, Torg added.
Miles wasn't surprised he was right, only that Brisk had turned out to have a secret cache of fairness hidden away in his character.
***
The Starlit Kipper did turn out to have a shower, of sorts.
The wetroom was a bare metal chamber with nozzles along the walls, hot air vents, and a recycling drain built into the floor. It seemed that a lot of spiral species liked to clean themselves with liquid solvents, and when they did it they liked to clean their entire body at once. The main difference seemed to be their particular solvent of choice.
Torg liked to shower in a nitric acid solution, while Trin bathed in a kind of honey-scented liquid Miles didn't know the makeup of. The shower unit was set up to allow a choice of fluids, and Miles had settled for a 99% water-sodium stearate mix — soap and water. After Trin had found out that Miles' soap was produced from stearic acid, he'd started to call both Miles and Torg 'acid bathers'.
The shower unit was big enough for multiple people to use at once, but after Miles had explained his culture's nudity taboo to Trin — overselling it, slightly — the Eppan had been willing to let him have the unit to himself.
Neither of them were keen to shower with Torg, as Nitric acid steam wasn't something either wanted to deal with.
Miles stepped out of the chamber clean and dry, wearing a fresh sweater and clean cargo pants.
Trin was already waiting outside. The Eppan’s fur was smudged in places with grease and he was giving off a smell Miles had learned to associate with physical activity. As Miles came to a stop, Trin was holding one of his head flaps up, peering at the furless underside.
“Dirty,” Trin said, sadly.
Miles gestured at the shower unit. “All yours.”
Trin dropped his flap and swept into the shower, hitting the switch to close the door behind him.
Miles started down the corridor. He was just trying to remember which hatch opened on the ladder to the observation domes when the tone of an incoming call started playing from his communicator.
He stopped and checked the screen.
The captain. Great.
He answered the call.
“Report to the bridge,” the captain’s voice commanded over the unit.
Miles briefly flirted with the idea of replying, ‘I’m already busy’, but managed to restrain himself. This was the job.
He changed directions, heading up the corridor towards the front of the ship.
The Starlit Kipper was about thirty meters long from nose to tail. As a naval ship, it would be about the size of a fishing trawler on old Earth, but in the open space of the weave, it was fairly small as ships went. It was designed for a crew of eight, with eight crew berths and two guest quarters. The biggest open space was the cargo bay, filling the ship’s belly and running almost its entire length. Miles had been on the ship for a week, and he’d never seen any actual cargo in the cargo bay.
It was only a short walk to the bridge, and when he tapped the switch for access, the door slid open almost immediately.
Inside, the captain was actually sitting down in their chair, the orb of their body resting gently on the padded seat. It didn’t look like their body could completely support its own weight fully when it wasn’t supported by the levitation unit. Normally a sphere, the captain’s body was now squashed slightly as it weighed on the seat cushion, making them look more like a rounded pumpkin.
“I’m here,” Miles said to the room, not willing to subject himself to another one of the captain’s ambiguous silences.
“Come in,” the captain said.
Miles stepped further into the room, closer to the chair. An invitation to come in seemed unusually polite for the captain. They normally just got to the point.
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Sellen was there on the bridge, sitting at the pilot’s station. Miles still hadn’t spoken to her, and she ignored his entrance.
The viewport was showing a different view from the last time Miles was in there. Before it had been a view of a large section of spiral, one edge as seen from the other. Now it was showing a thick band of stars and worlds, with no curve. It was one segment of the spiral, seen from much closer up. They must have made it most of the way across the core void, approaching whatever their destination.
The holographic display nearby was still showing a planet, and after a quick inspection, Miles realized it was the same one as before. Ialis. A forest-green sphere with only a handful of city-settlements on its surface. Maybe that was their destination.
“I am in pain,” the captain said after a minute of silence. “Treat me.”
That’s more like the captain I know.
Miles took a moment to be surprised that he’d been called on to treat a medical issue. He wasn’t a doctor, or even a medic, but on reflection, he realized that he was probably just the most qualified person on board to help. If the captain hadn’t been putting him through combat drills, he might believe this was even the kind of thing he’d been hired for.
Approaching the captain, he looked the Orbellius over carefully. They weren’t wearing their usual belt, which explained why they were sitting down. Their spaghetti-thin tendrils were strong enough to move them around in a medium-gravity environment, but it was apparently tiring, and the captain relied on their levitation unit to have the same mobility as the rest of the crew.
“Where does it hurt?” Miles asked.
The captain used their tendrils to point at several places around their circumference. Miles was already starting to get an idea.
He concentrated on his Eyes of the Altruist, feeling the mental shift as his passive spells shifted to bring the diagnostic magic to the front.
Glowing shapes appeared over the captain and the pilot, hints at what was going on inside their bodies. Sellen was actually surprisingly devoid of internal structure. Their body was in the form of a wide, flat sheet of flesh, and there was almost nothing inside them that the diagnostic magic could identify as a separate structure.
The captain did have structure. This wasn’t Miles’ first time using this ability on an Orbellius, he’d been shown one during his healer accreditation test, but the captain had subtle differences to the simulation on Delatariel Station. There were more of those little subsurface nodules, for one, and instead of one internal compartment, the captain had six separate sacs, separated by thin membranes.
The captain said something, but Miles’ Eyes of the Emigre ability was incompatible with the diagnostic magic. He couldn’t use both at the same time, so whatever the captain said just sounded like an incomprehensible mess of whistling and wheezing.
“I can’t understand you right now, sorry,” Miles said, trusting that whatever translation tool the captain used was still working. “Just give me a minute.”
As he examined the areas the captain had pointed out, he noticed that there was a band of slightly different texture that circled the captain’s body in a ring. It was covered in faint striations, lines and creases drawn out in angry red.
Under almost any other circumstances, Miles wouldn’t know what it meant, but the line happened to line up exactly with where the captain usually wore his belt.
He let the Eyes of the Altruist fade, forcing his Eyes of the Emigre back to the forefront of his mind.
He thought he had a diagnosis, as simple and uneducated a guess as it was.
“Do you think your levitation unit could be giving you…” ball strain “—strain?” he asked.
The captain wore the belt every waking minute, if they even slept, and whatever their evolutionary origins, Miles didn’t think it was likely Orbellian physiology was optimized to support their weight on a strap stuck around their midsection.
The captain was silent for a few seconds, before admitting, “Yes.”
It was the first time Miles had heard any recognizable emotion in their voice. They sounded embarrassed.
“Give me an analgesic,” the captain ordered.
Miles didn’t have an analgesic. He didn’t really have any kind of stash of medicines.
“I want to try something else,” Miles said, instead. “I’ll need to touch you.”
“You have permission.”
Miles pulled out his index and placed a hand against the captain’s skin. He brought up his index to cast his Hasten Renewal spell, but briefly froze when he saw the screen.
Name: Miles Asher Traditions: Harmonizer Index Value: δ1,2#0##
Fundamental Properties:
Strength (0)
Durability (1)
Speed (0)
Reactions (0)
Will (0)
Authority (1)
Spells Close Wound (Tentative)
A weft of harmonizing energy brings together the free edges of a tear, sealing the join in materials which are co-bondable, such as cellular membranes, metal compounds, woven fabrics, and homogenous molecular surfaces.
Temporary Enhancement (Grasping)
A temporary matrix of harmonizing energy alters one of a being’s fundamental properties by an amount in accordance with the weaver’s authority.
Hasten Renewal (Tentative)
A weft of harmonizing energy spreads from the weaver to their target, greatly speeding the being’s natural recovery by an amount multiplicative with the weaver’s authority.
Core Effects
Eyes of the Emigre
Embeds a matrix of harmonizing energy within the being’s mind which will reveal to them the meaning of any plain text or spoken language.
Eyes of the Altruist
Embeds a matrix of harmonizing energy within the being’s mind which reveal to them the health and ailments of a witnessed being.
His ability with Temporary Enhancement had increased, from tentative to grasping. When did he get better at casting it?
The training with Brisk.
He’d enhanced his strength to try and knock the Hurc down. And he’d cast the spell without even touching his index.
Shock and elation briefly fought each other for Miles' attention, before he brushed both aside. He was still in the middle of something.
He focused on the captain and tapped his index to cast Hasten Renewal, and the litany of the spell bubbled into his body and his consciousness.
In themself, they are complete. In a harmonious world, everything is complete. They are that which they are.
Miles’ core spun, and an electric energy flowed to his hands, threading out through his skin to needle through the captain’s body. He could almost feel the magic working, pricking at the truth of the captain’s healthy form until their body started giving way to the new reality, straining in its own way to meet the ideal that the spell proposed.
When Miles had tried this in his healer accreditation, it had never completely healed a wound, but it always helped to some degree. He hoped that it would do a better job with a purely internal stress injury.
He held the spell for as long as he dared, only breaking away when he started to feel weak and weirdly insubstantial. He swayed involuntarily as he stepped back, and took a second to collect himself.
“Is that better?” he asked the captain, when he’d managed to get past the stunned, drifting sensation.
“I have recovered,” the captain replied.
That was all. No thanks, no elaboration.
The captain began strapping their belt around their waist again. They clicked it into place, then activated the levitation unit, slowly rising off the chair.
“I’ll be going, then,” Miles said.
The captain gave silence as a reply, and he turned to go.
Miles checked his comm unit as he left, and saw messages from Trin time-stamped five minutes earlier.
> Trin > Miles
>
> Where are you Miles.
> Trin > Miles
>
> He is starting. Did you not want to hear this?
Miles dropped his comm into his pocket and ran for the observation deck.
***
When Miles scrambled up into the observation dome, Brisk, Trin, and Torg were all already there.
Brisk had been speaking, but stopped when Miles burst in, giving him a long stare.
The observation dome was a hemisphere of glassy material rising up out of the top of the ship, like an eye, or a blister. It wasn't that wide, maybe eight feet edge to edge, but the padded bench that circled it had room for several people.
Brisk and Trin were sitting on the bench, while Torg sat on the floor, his head barely fitting under the dome.
Past the glass, the dome gave them a view of the ship, and the cosmos beyond.
Looking up rewarded Miles with a view of the spiral. It ran around in rings, winding and cascading upwards, seemingly forever. In the extreme distance, the effect of perspective coiled the chain of stars down to a single point, which blurred and retreated into an indistinct haze beyond that.
Around the spiral, in the vast darkness that stretched infinitely away from it in every direction, was the empty void of the bare weave. There was nothing out there, and there never would be.
Miles felt goosebumps prickling on his skin.
“As I was telling your team, we’re heading towards a planet," Brisk said.
“Ialis,” Miles said. He spoke without thinking, but he was sure he was right.
“Ialis,” Brisk declared. He spoke as if Miles hadn’t said anything, but then he looked at him sharply. "Do you want to tell this?"
"Me? No. Go on."
"Right." Brisk looked around. He had everyone's attention. "Ialis had its bower break about a hundred iterations ago, Iteration twenty-six one-hundred. It crashed through from one of the highest energy universes the spiral's ever seen, but it didn't even make a ripple when it landed. That was just the start of the weirdness. When the Forward Fleet came by to investigate, they found it totally uninhabited. There were plants growing on the surface, but no sapients. Normally, you need sapients to cause a bower break, scratching at the bottom of their space for free energy is how most worlds get here, but Ialis didn't have anything smarter than a shrub on it. At least, not on the surface."
There were a few seconds of silence, then a sudden trilling noise started blaring from Brisk's pocket.
Brisk grunted and pulled out his communicator. Miles got a long enough look at the screen to make out that it was a call from the captain. Which Brisk canceled.
The Hurc slipped his comm back into his pocket before continuing, while Miles stared at him aghast.
"On scavenger crews, Ialis has another name," he said, looking around at them. "The dungeon planet."
Brisk's expression dared them to make light of it, but none of them did. Something in his tone made Miles think of a very specific kind of dungeon; the kind with chains, and darkness, that people went into and didn't come back out of.
"Twenty iterations after its bower, someone crashed a high-velocity asteroid into the surface. After the dust cleared, they saw it'd opened a hole. It turns out that the top eighty miles of Ialis is soil and rock, but below that, it's metal. Metal all the way down. The entire planet is a technological artifact. Layers and layers of floors and rooms, connected by vents and elevators."
"Why we going there?" Trin asked, sounding awed.
"Because it's full of rare materials and advanced technology," Brisk replied, plainly. He looked at Miles. "Your index is based on something a salvage team found there, and that's not the only Ialis recovery to go big. The corporation that controls it charges teams for entry, and they get right of first refusal on anything we pull out."
"This is what you do," Miles said. "You hire boarding teams, and then take them for raids on this planet."
"It's what a lot of salvage teams do, squirrit."
Something else occurred to him.
"When you docked at Ustiel you were four crew members down," he said. "Why did you need more people?"
Brisk spread his hands. "I told you; the spiral is a dangerous place."
"They're dead?"
Brisk's comm buzzed again, and this time he answered it, wearing a look of frustration.
"Yeah?" he answered.
"The drive is stuttering."
"On it."
Brisk closed the call and stood up. "I'm needed," he said, putting the comm unit away. He headed for the ladder, but paused on his way out, looking back at Miles. "You're right, squirrit. The captain has kept you in the dark, but now you know. You have a chance to prepare yourself. We'll be landing on Ialis next interval."
Tomorrow, Miles thought. Not exactly a lot of time to prepare.