THE MOON, SOUTH POLE-AITKEN BASIN, 5322 BCE
Cerise sighed again, taking a step forward and reaching a hand toward August’s face. She stopped herself before she touched him, and he wondered what other bad news she had planned for him today. He had a suspicion. “I’m saying, August, that we cannot return home and we cannot regain the tensa energy we spend.”
August felt his muscles turn to jelly and he almost lost his concentration on the destructive nexus. He felt the Herald’s voice intrude in his head again. So, you see, August Vasilias, what I realized the moment you brought me here. In this place, where there is no tensa energy for you to refill when you spend it on your grafts, where your power will fade never to return, you will free me yourself just to get the barest sip of power again.
Cerise shook her head and stared down at the Vuoita Carserai for a long minute before shaking herself and looking back at August. He hadn’t moved. “Come on. We still have work to do. Once we’re done here, we’ll at least be able to make a gateway to the planet. It’s got to be more habitable than this dusty rock.”
August nodded absently, his mind turning over the news Cerise had hammered into him. Unconsciously, he tried to bring up his personal status HUD from the System and flinched when nothing happened. No matter how many times the System screens failed to appear, he couldn’t get used to it. It felt like he was missing a part of his brain. How much tensa did he have left in his tensa pool? It was hard to tell without checking his status but… He thought he remembered the trick of it from back when he was learning basic combat meditation.
After a moment of concentration, he shaped his anima into a gentle probing net which he wrapped around that shining core in himself, right near his heart. It looked like a pulsing, shining, amorphous drop of liquid light that was brighter than any sun. August sunk his anima into the drop and sucked in a quick breath through his teeth.
It felt like he had half of his tensa pool available. He probed the jeweled dragon pin on his pristine white jacket—empty. Nothing left. That was supposed to hold 1.8 gigsparks. He checked the jewels in his silvered helm. Each one—all ten of them holding five hundred megasparks each—was completely drained. The twelve batteries he had in his belt were dead. The nineteen diamonds on the ring; his twin ebony daggers; the batteries in his Systablo; everything was completely drained.
“How much do we need to turn on the Vuoita Carserai?” He asked quietly. Almost too quietly to be heard, but he knew Cerise would hear him.
“Twenty terasparks.”
August grimaced. They had maybe twenty-one terasparks contained in the batteries that were left on the moon. Cerise’s calculations had been impressively precise. “And how many redundancies did you build into the system?”
“Eleven.”
August nodded. Of course. “Perhaps—”
“No.”
“But—”
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“No.”
Cerise’s unfurled anima battered him again, threatening to smother him. But he was no Stone-rank redheart, quaking at every anima display. He was August Vasilias, High Seat of House Vasilias. He firmed his resolve and weathered the gathering storm of Cerise’s anima. Of course, she felt his will marshaling. The pressure increased for another few long seconds, her anima rubbing like sandpaper against his before she stopped. Any more and she’d have started hurting him. She wasn’t quite ready to do that.
He let a little of the anger he felt bubbling below his control tighten his voice, “Eleven redundancies, Cerise?”
“You know why, August—no don’t look at me like that!” She shimmered, then disappeared from where she stood on the Vuoita Carserai and appeared in front of him, one finger poking into his chest, “This thing cannot escape, August Vasilias of House Vasilias! Do you think me overcautious?”
“Do you have any idea how long eternity is, Cerise?!” he shouted.
“As permanent as death, August,” she replied calmly, “and besides, we can’t redesign it now. It’s done.”
“As permanent as death…” August’s voice trailed off as he stared at nothing, his eyes full of a future he could barely comprehend. Suddenly, his back straightened. He was August Vasilias, the High Seat of a Great House, after all. “We will simply have to husband our resources. Once we reach the surface of the planet, we won’t use our grafts.”
Cerise nodded, “Of course.” She bent and touched a few runes on the surface of the Vuoita Carserai and a control panel soundlessly slid up. She pressed a few keys on the panel and the Vuoita Carserai shifted, reconfiguring itself to expose the final battery bay, the sockets waiting for the last few batteries. “Now come on, help me put the batteries in.”
August flew over to her, stopping just behind her, looming above her. He narrowed his eyes at the tiny woman, her back turned to him—so trusting. Twenty-one terasparks. That was probably enough to build the gateway back home. If he knew where it was. He felt his hands clench into fists. She held a hand out to him, still not looking at him, just expecting him to put one of the batteries in it.
He opened the BOTI (Bigger On The Inside) bag and he pulled out one of the batteries. He placed the battery in Cerise’s waiting hand, and she smoothly slotted it into one of the waiting sockets. She had to be wrong. It was impossible for there to be no tensa energy on a planet with life. Everyone knew that life generates tensa. The whole solar system—hell most of this galaxy was devoid of life. That’s why it was so bereft of tensa. But that planet down there was crawling with life. The energy was most likely in a different wavelength. Something they couldn’t detect.
He would figure it out. He had time. He kept handing Cerise the batteries, wincing as she deftly placed each one in its socket. Once the last battery was in place, she stepped back and typed out another series of commands on the control panel while the Vuoita Carserai reconfigured itself, reverting to its normal form, its rune-traced facets seeming entirely solid once more.
Cerise continued entering commands on the control panel and August felt the surface of the Vuoita Carserai ripple. The runes lit up with bright green light that grew brighter and brighter as layer after layer of enchantments activated. The power-up process took an hour. Halfway through the sequence, August and Cerise had to leave or even they would become blinded. They monitored the chamber with their animas, keen for any fluctuation in tensa. Once the power sequence had been completed, they were able to move back into the Vuoita Carserai’s chamber.
The entire Vuoita Carserai had shrunk to the size of a marble and was spinning so quickly it resembled a tiny hole in the middle of the chamber. It no longer glowed; instead, it seemed to suck light into it. August felt the dead zone in the room, focused as it was through an arcane lens that added the pressure of the moon’s core to it.
“It’s active,” August said, his voice flat.
“August,” Cerise said, her voice hesitant. “There’s one more thing…”