Sweat pooled inside Leigh’s suit as she and Torren dragged the building block behind them. They’d decided on a course of action, heading to the highest point in a 150km radius, and hoped that the others would think similarly. Every now and then they would send out low-frequency pings, hoping to run across one of the other Selects in their Tent. They’d already been walking for over six hours, but they were only about half way there. The lack of the propulsion device and floats were now severely hindering their progress.
The devices were meant into transform to on-land transportation as well, and without it they were struggling to bear the block’s significant weight. If it hadn’t been for their newly modified bodies and the fact that both of them, at least for a while, had focused on increasing their Internal Manipulation skills, they wouldn’t have been able to even lift it off the ground. The practice allowed them to focus the EMs particles to strengthen their bodies, like they had during their swim.
“Just forty-two more kilometers to go,” Torren said with sarcastic cheer.
“This is when it’s going to get hard,” Leigh said, noticing the definitive landscape changes.
So far, they’d been going over rocky and practically barren hills, with only a couple shrubs and dry grass here and there. Now though, the shrubs were giving way to larger vegetation. Unlike Earth’s plants, they had a slightly blue tinge to their leaves.
“Well,” said Torren, “maybe not.”
Leigh turned to watch as he laid down his side of the block and looked around. She did the same and caught on to his plan.
“Let’s do it,” Leigh said.
It was easier said than done. It took another hour and a half for the vegetation to become sturdy and big enough to bear the weight of the building block, but from then on they were able to fashion a travois. At first they took turns to rest their tired muscles, but eventually went back to carrying it together, each holding one arm of the frame as it dragged on the ground behind them.
From then on their trip was pretty uneventful. Unlike in the water, they did not come across any large predators; they didn’t come across anything at all. They were only 7km away from their destination when one of their low frequency pings finally got a response. A short exchange of coded pings later and they’d established a short-range communication channel with three of the other Selects.
“Thomas, Shi’Lanu and I got together early on,” Xavier informed them, “we landed pretty close together…”
“Unfortunately,” Shi’Lanu added, “Talia was eliminated on impact.”
“Her building block too,” Xavier added, “we tried to salvage what we could, but there was very little salvageable material left when we got to her.”
“It’s actually the reason we were able to meet so soon after the crash,” Thomas added.
“And then we heard some dumb-ass Select from our group shouting for help on all channels…” Shi’Lanu said.
“Well,” Xavier said, “if it doesn’t cause us trouble somehow, it’s actually helping the whole Tent get together quickly. There are three other equally high points in the region, this is just the closest one to the signal.”
“Still,” the girl insisted.
Torren didn’t say anything.
“How about we meet up at the top?” Leigh asked, changing the subject. “We’re about 7km out. We’ll be there in a little over an hour.”
“What? Why?” Shi’Lanu asked, “We’re like 8km away and we will still reach it before you.”
“We… ran into some complications,” Leigh said, “we are kind of short any propulsion system.”
“Wow,” Thomas said, “you guys have been lugging that all the way here?”
“Send me your coordinates,” Xavier said simply, cutting the other two squabblers off, “we’ll meet up with you guys as soon as possible. We can engineer a carrying system for the five blocks with the three of our carriers…”
“Four blocks,” Torren said quietly, “mine was also destroyed during landing.”
“How are you alive then?” Thomas asked.
“Not important,” Xavier said, “we can discuss this in person. Let’s limit clogging the frequencies as much as possible. It will only increase our chances of being detected.”
“Agreed,” Leigh said, and resumed their hike up the growingly steeper hill.
It wasn’t five minutes later that the three Selects reached them at a leisurely jog. Leigh hated them a little. Inside her suit, she was almost dying from the clamminess. After over seventeen hours of strenuous physical exercise, carrying the block alongside her, even the high-tech suit couldn’t completely annul the feeling of sticky exhaustion.
“Wow,” Thomas said with a whistle, “you weren’t kidding. This is basically stone age material right here. I don’t know how you guys are still—”
“What do you think,” Xavier asked Shi’Lanu, not paying Thomas any mind as the other boy kept talking, “can you do it?”
“Yeah… I think so,” Shi’Lanu said, “give me five minutes.”
Three minutes of Xavier’s stoic watchfulness, Thomas’ incessant questions and Shi’Lanu’s tinkering later, they had a functioning platform of sorts with the four same-sized blocks stacked on top of each other. Thomas took over pushing duty.
“Why me?” he asked petulantly as the other three set out ahead of him.
“Because we have to put up with your yappin’,” Xavier said in a dry tone.
Leigh’s eyes widened. Xavier had reminded her of Arthur a little in his get-down-to-business attitude, she hadn’t expected him to even acknowledge Thomas’ behavior unless it actively got in the way of their objective. Then again, they had landed over seventeen hours ago. Leigh’d only been with the new group for a couple of minutes, but she could see how one might grow tired of Thomas’ talkative nature.
“Oh,” Thomas said dramatically, “how you wound me, Sir.”
Surprisingly though, he didn’t offer any further objections after that. Instead, he went back to filling their ears with questions and comments about what they’d seen. Leigh listened with half a ear, some of what he said about the landscape they’d encountered could be useful later on, but most of her attention was directed at Xavier. She was relieved to see that both of the new male additions didn’t show any immediate outward disapproval toward her. The girl was a different story. Instead of actively attacking Leigh though, she thankfully chose quiet indifference.
And so, Xavier and Leigh led the pack, both exchanging all of the knowledge they’d come across so far. As they spoke, Leigh was finally able to re-direct most of her attention to practicing her EMs manipulation. She continuously moved them around her body, tracing them until she was aware of every single particle at all times. She’d repeat each given exercise until she could do it without effort with all of the EMs available to her. By forcing herself, she was able to then increase the speed at which she manipulated. It also allowed her to increase the number of different manipulations she could perform at once. At first, it had been hard to even form a single simple chain-link, the simplest way to increase her body’s physical defense, but now she could do those without much thought throughout her body. She’d set up a permanent defensive EMs link using the least amount of particles as she could. The rest she kept using to further her IP progress.
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With practice came ease and she was soon performing two, three and then five types of manipulations all at once. Each one allowed her to change a certain aspect of her physical body. She could make it stronger, smaller, bigger, stretchier, she could change the texture, and as the number of manipulations increased, the manipulation possibilities seemed endless. Her completion rate skyrocketed to 0.98% and she was finally about to break the one percent mark; she expected to do it before reaching the top of the hill. Her rate of growth had increased exponentially after the first swim. It was a turning point for her. She’d been trying to grasp the particles scientifically, but the more she’d tried that avenue, the worse she’d done. Instead, she’d finally been able to develop the ‘feel’ for it. It came slowly over time after the swim, and only after she’d managed to completely manipulate and track every single particle in her body was she confident about it. It had been a foreign concept to Leigh, more magic than science, but she was growing more accustomed to it.
“We’ve been lucky not to have run into any alien lifeform,” Xavier said, probably also working on his IP simultaneously “we came from the same direction as you guys. It was pretty much the same rocky barrenness.”
“I wonder if the others have been as lucky,” Torren said, somewhat abjectedly; his block loss was still weighing on him.
“One can hope,” Leigh said, “as for alien life forms though… Torren. Show him.”
Torren shared his finding about the EMs arrow with the rest of the group. Thomas and Shi’Lanu were both surprised, but Xavier merely nodded. He didn’t seem surprised.
“Did you already know about it?” Leigh asked, wondering if he had any additional footage or information on the event.
“I wasn’t sure…” he said, “but I had my suspicions.”
Leigh nodded, and they were pinged by another of the Selects, Bon-Hwa Kim.
Bon was already waiting at the top of the hill, hidden in a roughly constructed fort. It was made of small black stones, the same kind that had become increasingly predominant up the last five kilometers of the hill. He had two blocks with him, and seemed relieved to not be alone anymore.
“I wasn’t sure if I’d gone to the right hill,” he said, “Unita said it was this one though, so it’s where I’ve been waiting for the last ten hours.”
“I presume this… fort is your construct then?” Leigh asked.
“Yes,” he said proudly, “I’ve been playing around with the EMs particles and thought I might as well put it to use on something productive.”
Leigh couldn’t exactly see what he meant, but there were more important things to discuss first.
“You said Jade Unita sent you here?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Bon said, “she found me about two hours after the crash and pawned off her block, telling me to come wait at this hill. After the broadcast, it’s where we thought the rest of you would come.”
Leigh patted Torren’s back, the guy was still reeling from his failure. At first she hadn’t understood why he was being so affected by the mistakes that had led them to where they were, but after almost an entire day’s worth of hours in the boy’s company, she realized that he just wasn’t used to failure of any kind. He didn’t know how to deal with it. And being surrounded by a bunch of geniuses who were completely aware of how stupid a move he’d pulled, wasn’t helping his state of mind either. She felt a little bad, but in the back of her mind she also saw it as an opportunity to use him as her pawn; she continued to reassure him.
“See?” she said in a low voice only he could hear, “Your transmission actually turned out to be a good thing in the end…”
Torren pursed his lips in an unconvinced half-smile, but Leigh left it at that.
“That means we are still missing Vine and Lo’Korven,” Xavier said, counting off the two missing Selects.
“What about Fashenna?” Bon asked.
“Dead,” three of them responded in unison.
“D-dead?” Bon asked, “but what are we going to do about her block? Without it we won’t be able to complete the Communication Array… did the block make it or does that mean we’re disqualified?”
“Not… necessarily,” Leigh said, “I think I have a way for us to make it.”
Xavier looked at her suspiciously.
“Are you thinking about going after their blocks?” he asked.
“… Sorta,” Leigh said.
“What do you mean… sorta?”
“Let’s get everyone on the same page, and then I’ll tell you all at the same time.”
Bon gave her a sharp look, and Leigh almost thought he was going to ask why they should be listening to her of all people. The fact that Xavier and Torren were so obviously unaffected by her status kept him from voicing his opinions though. Even Shi’Lanu seemed less averse to her than she had half an hour ago. Leigh was fascinated by the domino effect that peer pressure could have even on these supposed Academy geniuses. She shook her head to clear it of those thoughts and started relaying to Bon all that she’d already shared with Xavier, who then proceeded to do the same. It took them five minutes to have all six of them on the same page.
“So there’s another Tent on this moon?” Bon asked, surprised.
“We believe so,” Xavier said.
“And that’s how I think we might still be able to complete the Array,” Leigh said.
Xavier frowned.
“Wait, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Thomas asked with excitement, he’d been the most annoyed about the other Tent’s behavior towards them, “Are we going to go steal their blocks? Hell, yes! It’s payback time! We’ll show them what happens when you mess with Tent Te—”
“Actually…” Leigh said, holding up a hand to cut him off, “No.”
“No?” Shi’Lanu asked.
Xavier crossed his arms, raised an expectant eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“Well,” Leigh explained, “if there’s one more Tent on the moon… What are the chances there are more?”
A moment of silence followed as everyone digested the information.
“Can any of you go back through your records, and see if you have anything that might indicate—”
Most of them nodded as they went through their CHIPs memories, looking through the time in question. Leigh had already looked through her own to no avail, but did so again, just in case. Ten minutes later, they had all shared their records with one another, each combing through everyone else’s data with a fine tooth comb… but nothing.
“Maybe there aren’t any other Tents on this moon,” Shi’Lanu offered, “maybe it’s like a two Tent per CIM deal.”
“That doesn’t really make sense,” Xavier said, “if it were a two per CIM thing, then it would be a combat-geared CIM. But I think what happened here was different. It was just another Tent getting greedy.”
“All the more reason we should give them some payback,” Thomas said gleefully, “Why don’t we just go after them? We already triangulated the location that arrow came from. Their base can’t be that far off.”
“If they have a working shuttle,” Leigh said, “it can. But that’s not the major issue.”
“What is it then?” Bon asked.
“The fact that they’re expecting us,” Jade Unita said, showing up out of nowhere, making all of them jump in surprise. How had they not sensed her arrival?
“So what if they’re expecting us?” Thomas asked.
Jade glanced at him, but didn’t respond.
“We lose the element of surprise,” Leigh said, “and going by the fact that we have no working shuttle with whatever supplies were on it, as well as one missing Tent member… we are at a serious disadvantage.”
“If we do not have the element of surprise. We will lose,” Jade said simply.
Xavier nodded, “How are we going to find another Tent, disable it, get the blocks we need, bring them back here and assemble the Array in the sixty one hours we have left. I assume you have a plan,” he said expectantly.
He was looking at Leigh, but it was Jade who answered.
“Here are the coordinates to the nearest Tent’s location,” she said simply before sharing both a set of coordinates and reconnaissance images of the location in question. It was a hill 202.3km away. Six heads turned to her in surprise, but she didn’t comment. Instead, she looked at Leigh expectantly.
Frowning in confusion Leigh said, “Er… I guess we should come up with some kind of strategy while we wait for the other two to show up?”
“If they show up,” Shi’Lanu said morbidly.
“They will be here in twenty-seven minutes,” Jade said, "they're bloody, but alive."
Six pairs of eyes turned to stare at the new arrival again. She had a distinct way of making everyone there feel quite incompetent by comparison.