General Rallemnon marched through a concrete hallway. His mechanical feet clattered on the ground, stoutsteel talons scraping on the rough surface like a fingernail on stone. His armour plating shuddered with each step, rattling in place on his iron femurs. His lungs, one of the last remnants of his human body, shuddered and wheezed within a cage of wires.

Each inhalation was like breathing caustic fumes. Each exhale was like coughing up crushed glass.

He ducked under a low hanging tube, then swatted away a clump of wires. Soldiers marched in the opposite direction, wearing plain gray overcoats and ornamental spiked helmets. Their plasma rifles hung off their shoulders, swaying and clattering behind them.

He tasted the air. His mind, still mostly flesh-and-blood, told him that blood filled his mouth, but it was just this crude, rusting form. Behind his sharp teeth, mechanical sensors told him that he was tasting the carbon monoxide and starcoal smoke mix common enough in Praxony.

The Praxon Empire. A minor member of the Alliance, and often overlooked by its more major members, like Koedor-Terginia or Phélae, but nonetheless critical to the war effort. The Ironband Dwarves—located well within their controlled systems—built incredible stealth warships capable of consistently harassing Starrealm shipping lanes, and their manufacturing capabilities were quickly outpacing the rest of the Eastern Alliance.

It all worked perfectly under his command. Like a perfect machine, as he aspired to, not an abhorred kyborg-human blend.

But the Generous Hand was about to give him a new assignment.

He reached the end of the hallway. The door slid open with a puff of steam, revealing a dark, circular chamber with a hologram projector in the center.

Rallemnon marched into the center of the room and knelt before the projector, then tapped a button at its base and activated it. It sparked, then coughed out a glowing white projection of a man. He only appeared the size of a halfling, and Rallemnon could still look down on him from this angle.

He’d only seen the Generous Hand in person once, and in actuality, the man was much taller than he appeared in holograms.

“Greetings, Hand,” said Rallemnon. Even after decades of inhabiting this form, his mechanical voice was foreign to his own ears. It didn’t help that his ears were also mechanical, and the combination made an unholy whirring, buzzing, and screeching ring.

“Rallemnon,” the Hand acknowledged. His glowing white form shifted, robes swaying and embroidered cowl fluttering. “Have the Praxons reached their production targets?” He spoke with a completely foreign accent. Rallemnon hadn’t heard every accent in the galaxy, but he’d heard many, and his cognitive implants provided him with libraries worth of content. Nothing matched in any of the galaxy’s records.

“Yes, my lord,” said Rallemnon, speaking quickly and dutifully. “And their High Stars Fleet will be fully operational within a quarter-year.”

“Very good. And your level rating?”

Had Rallemnon been a regular Wielder, checking his level rating instantly would have been impossible, and most didn’t carry around Readers, but Rallmenon had implanted one in his mind—he could access it whenever he needed. “Forty-seven.”

“Excellent progress. You’d rival the crimson table.”

“Would you have me destroy what remains of them?”

“I have grander plans,” said the Hand. “I require your abilities on Ifskar. Travel quickly. I will arrange for a competent manager of the Praxons in your absence. When you arrive on Ifskar, I will require you to delve to the depths of the dungeon and acquire the Halcyon Spear.”

“The Halcyon spear?” Rallemnon clarified. “You are certain it is there?”

“By all accounts, it appears to be the correct dungeon. Bring the spear to me.”

“Yes, my lord. It will be done.”

The hologram deactivated.

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_796dc4ba52ca470e87e727995bf487fb~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_400,h_332,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/hyperh%20logo.png]

Jace laid on the bottom bunk, letting the swaying of the Wrath relax him. He wasn’t tired enough to sleep, but he needed to calm himself after escaping the Watchmen. Lessa and Kinfild were in the cockpit, talking softly, and he could barely hear them over the whir of the thrusters and the rattling hull.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

But he relaxed better if he was on his own, anyway.

After a few minutes, though, he realized he couldn’t just lay around and do nothing. He reached into his backpack and pulled out an accumulator node, then held it up to the light. Something about them was strange—the way they had pushed and pulled on his core, perhaps, or maybe it was just their appearance.

Still, he needed their power.

He ran his thumb down the orb’s side and focussed intently on it. It resisted his gaze for a moment, as if it wanted to make him look away, but he held his gaze tight, until finally, a tag appeared above it: [Accumulator Node – Foundation 2 Strength].

It couldn’t have had any pillars, but it was only an equivalent. Like a miniature core. He needed to draw out its power.

He focussed on his own core cloud. Drawing all his Aes in, he brought his attention directly upon it. It swayed, pushing and pulling. Apparently, most Wielders’ cores had fluctuations, though when Jace reached out with his senses, trying to feel the rudimentary Kinfilds’ applied, he felt nothing of the sort.

Either his senses weren’t refined to a high enough degree, or Kinfild’s core just wasn’t fluctuating as quickly.

Jace tried for a few more seconds, but he felt nothing. Not even a glimmer of change. If he could sense it in his own core, he’d have to be able to sense it in Kinfild’s. So there had to be a difference.

Perhaps it was a consequence of his own core. Of taking in a hypercore.

On an impulse, he stood up and walked back to the engine room. Err-Seventeen chittered in acknowledgement, and Jace nodded back at the kyborg, then walked to a panel beside the boiler’s opening. He pulled it open, then gripped a handle beneath and drew out a glass tube.

Within the tube was the Wrath’s hypercore. In a containment field, with a triggering technique card, it was stable. At least, it didn’t decay. Jace stared at it for a few seconds. It throbbed and pulsed.

With each expansion and compression, it vented blue energy and golden sparks—pure Aes—into the area a few centimeters from its surface, then drew it back in.

With the hypercore, the ebb and flow was stable. It drew in exactly how much it vented, and what it didn’t lose, the Wrath’s own systems replenished.

He slid the tube back into the wall, then shut the panel and left the engine room.

His own core was venting more energy than it was gaining. When it vented too much, he’d fade away.

Once more, he turned to the Accumulator Nodes and said, “I’ll crack you guys. Mark my—”

“Jace!” Lessa called from the Wrath’s cockpit. “We’re almost at Braka! You might want to strap down!”

He zipped his backpack shut, then ran back to the cockpit and dropped down in the copilot’s seat, then pulled on his crash harness. All his possessions were in the bag, his Whistling Blade at his hip, and his assorted armour and clothes equipped—including his vambraces, in case he exited hyperspace too close to an object and couldn’t stop in time.

The Wrath shuddered and lurched, and Lessa yelped, then jumped into the radioman’s seat and strapped herself in. Kinfild was already sitting in the pilot’s seat, but he tugged on his harness.

“Dropping out in three, two…” The Wielder reached up and gripped the silver handle on the console. “...one, now.”

He pulled back. The Wrath shook, and Jace pressed his feet into the floor to brace himself. Pouring off the viewscreen, the golden light whisked aside like curtains, revealing a pale lavender gas giant with streaks of red cloud. Bolts of lightning seethed in the cyclones, giving the planet’s clouds unspeakable volume. A vast natural ring orbited it, almost as wide as the pictures Jace had seen of Saturn.

The system’s star blazed as bright as the sun—a single sun—but there were thousands of other stars behind it, forming a thick curtain. They’d travelled closer to the galaxy’s core, and almost everywhere Jace looked, there was a band of white, yellow, and magenta specks in the void.

“This is Braka?” he asked.

“The scavengers’ haven itself,” said Lessa. “Ohhh, it’s pretty. Well, alright, the gas giant isn’t actually Braka. It’s called…uh…”

Kinfild provided, “Neris.”

“Yeah, Neris. The moon we’re looking for is called Braka.”

They shot over the ring at a safe distance. The lavender clouds of Neris filled the entire righthand side of the viewscreen, along with three moons. Jace checked the scanner. They had numbers and obscure, ancient names, but not Braka. And they were all much too small to host life.

When Jace saw Braka, he didn’t need the scanners to confirm it. The moon was much larger than the others, and it emerged around the side of the gas giant like a child peeking around a doorframe. Its surface was rusty gray, with streaks of beige around its equator and red clouds circling it. A cloud of junk circled the moon, forming its own miniature steel ring.

The closer they drew to the planet-sized moon, the more starships appeared. Some dropped out of hyperspace much closer, sloughing off clouds of golden dust and chugging out smoke. They descended to the surface without order.

“I guess they won’t notice us approaching,” Jace said. “Or won’t care.”

“Scavengers come from all over the galaxy to peddle their wares in Braka’s markets,” Kinfild said. “In fact, we might uncover something useful here.”

“But we’re not here to collect trinkets,” Jace said. “Where would we find the technique cards for breaking through the torpedo nets?”

“For that, we’ll aim for the guild headquarters.”