The battery… was something. Jonah had needed to use several of Jack’s Magno-Tubes. Jack didn’t like giving those up but the potential for a battery was too tempting. Without a consistent source of electricity he would eventually be forced into a situation where he could either heal himself or use electricity.
That didn’t even take into account that if he was drained dry he would be in serious trouble, Jack knew he had to be ready for anything. As he figured it, he had two major drawbacks.
The first being his abysmal electrical generation rate. While he had a good amount of capacity and the ability to regenerate himself, without an external electrical source, like Yuma or the Zappa, he was nearly always going to be running on half-power, at best. The second problem was learning how to split his charge between healing himself and boosting his Mods and attacks. The third problem, well, now that he was thinking about it, he had many more problems than just three.
These problems were the most pertinent to his odds of surviving all of this, at least at the moment. As he was thinking on it he added a third immediate problem. Even though the Zappa’s efficacy had been rapidly falling behind his storage capacity he still needed a consistent source of electricity. He bumped it up to first on the list.
Voices started to nibble at the edge of his mind as he was unable to charge the battery. Unable to send electricity outside of himself meant he had no way of getting electricity into the battery to charge it.
“I can’t charge it Jonah.”
“Hmmm, give it back.” Jonah worked and fiddled, Jack focused on manipulating his internal Nano. Practicing controlling and moving the electricity. He would occasionally slice small lines into his arms and chest and focus on stopping his internal current from discharging and healing himself. It seemed that shortly after taking his attention away it would heal regardless of his prior effort. He was still able to fractionally extend the time before he automatically healed. Small progress but still, progress.
When Jonah was finished, the resolution gave something to be desired.
Jack stabbed the end of the input cable into his chest. The metal prongs separated the flesh easily enough. He felt his heart skip a beat as it drew electricity from his body, maybe stabbing them directly into his heart was a bad idea. He withdrew the prongs and felt precious electricity drain to heal the wound.
“How much were you able to charge it?”
Jack looked, “says it’s at 8%.” That cost him much more than 8% of his internal total.
He plugged the prong into his bicep this time. It charged slower than from his chest but hopefully it would cost him less current than stabbing himself directly in the heart.
“Moving higher, 12… 15… 25% now.” It had taken a while.
Jack removed the prong from his arm and willed the Nano and electricity to not heal the wound. He hadn’t figured out if it was willing his Nano or using his Affinity that was responsible for halting the automatic healing. Regardless, that was another thing for him to try and figure out after the battery situation was solved. It still took active focus, but hopefully, with practice, he could change that at some point. He swiped a bit of Medjel over and inside the wound.
He looked to Jonah, “It’s good, but uh. How am I supposed to get the electricity out of it?”
Jonah grabbed another cord extension from the device and stabbed the prong into Jack’s other arm.
Jack flinched back then sighed in relief as the electricity flowed into him. The prongs popped out.
He redistributed the remaining new electricity as he looked at the prong then stabbed it back into himself. The electricity flowed into him and the prong popped out, again.
He pulled a decent bit of electricity before it forced the wound closed and kicked out the foreign prong.
“It’s at 1% charge. It’s not a lot of electricity and the device is kind of difficult to charge.” Still, Jack already saw an application for it even if it didn’t strike him as super-efficient.
He’d charge the battery and when he took an injury he’d stop his body’s current from propagating cellular mitosis, or healing him, until he could jam in a prong and take the electricity back from it. Heal with the battery, attack with his own electricity.
So he’d be running with half charge and have the battery as another source to pull from. His effective generation rate would functionally be higher because he’d be offloading the healing to the battery. Less draw from his own stores was a good thing he figured.
It wasn’t a perfect solution but it was better than nothing, much better than nothing. Now recharging the battery again, through his Affinity he could see the storage of the current inside it. It was his electricity after all.
Suddenly, it made sense. There was a correlation between electricity he was familiar with and his ability to manipulate it. He lifted his sense from the battery to the three others. He could faintly perceive their electrical signatures, the low level and unfamiliarity of its… frequency? He wasn’t sure, but because of the ‘cold’ environment they were in he could make them out fairly clearly. The battery’s glow in his Affinity threatened to wash out their electrical signatures altogether.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Jonah’s finger was easy to make out even after he adjusted it. He thought he probably would still be able to connect with it if he really pulled at it. He didn’t pull because he didn’t want to accidentally shatter it. Again.
It was an electrical generation source and by Jack’s poor EQ estimation he had one or two more forced draws from Jonah’s finger. He would save them for an emergency.
“Thanks Jonah, I think it’ll work alright.”
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Jack was practicing with the battery, getting used to the intricacies. The internal layout and movement of the charge was logical and well-built, for something scrapped together from a crab’s insides. Otherwise, the overly logical pathways for the current had some inefficiencies. Intuitive stuff that he could only tell through his Affinity and the fact that it was his electricity flowing through it. He gently tweaked small pathways in the battery.
Tule was in meditation. The color of Tule’s face had gotten better. His skin had grown darker as well, much darker. Well, at least he wasn’t hacking and coughing years off his life anymore. The copious quantities of Medjel used to cover and patch his wounds left his movements awkward. He was deep in meditation.
Jonah was fiddling, as usual.
Leanne was distraught over losing her portable and stash of Magno-Tubes. She looked deep in thought, pacing back and forth.
Jack, Tule, Jonah, and Leanne were all launched in the same direction.
From Leanne, “What was that, an attack?”
“No. No. Attack.” Tule was speaking in short words as he moved his head around. It has disturbed his meditations. No matter, he was as healed as he could be without a Terminal.
After bouncing a series of unanswerable questions off of each other they settled on gathering themselves to head toward the direction they had all fallen.
Jack turned towards Tule but he was already standing up.
Tule eyed him, “I can walk, no need to carry me.”
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The Cryo-Pod opened and released its passenger onto the floor. It’s two eyes cycled in its sockets for a second.
“Good.”
“Father?”
“No.”
“Mother?”
“Certainly not… ‘Master’ will do.”
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They descended the giant crab’s exterior. Jack paused at the top and looked down. He debated jumping down but with no external generation, only a battery reading ’76% charged’. It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. He held the Toothpick and stretched his arm to Tule. Tule’s eyebrow raised, “How will you get down then?”
Good question, he eyed Tule up and down, the man definitely needed the Toothpick’s help more than he did.
“Give me a knife.”
Tule wielded the Toothpick and deposited a fine-looking Damascus-patterned K-bar in its place.
It was absolute quality. Its edge, while not possessing the same ridiculous power of the Toothpick, was as sharp as obsidian and looked strong as steel. Jack reversed it in his grip and punched down into the chitin floor, it didn’t meet resistance for the first quarter of the blade and sunk halfway before stopping. Jack stood and smiled, “should work.”
Jack looked to how he would rearrange his remaining bladeclaw. It was in rough condition. It was going to be tough to put this anywhere.
“Is there a sheath?”
Tule looked over and walked away, after a bit he came back out of the gloom and handed Jack a torn up thigh Sheath. It was for the right thigh.
Jack flipped and struggled to tie it or secure it in some way. Impossible. eventually he decided to tie it to his belt. It wasn’t perfect but it would do.
Jonah had carved into the chitin with one of his fingers to which Leanne had attached a climbing rope to the edge, secured in the gap that Jonah carved. Jonah was now waiting patiently next to the Sentinel. Tule started climbing down, manipulating the Toothpick to easy cut hand and footholds.
Jack leaned over and stabbed in his knife. It sank in halfway, decent but still, carving out a handhold took a while. Tule was already fading out of sight in the dim light.
Jack swung down and stabbed his finger into his handhold and stabbed the knife into a spot, slightly lower. He pulled out his knife and started carving a handhold.
This was taking too long. He slammed the knife in three times to form a finger wedge then on the fourth he flicked the cored area.
Holding the knife ready in his other hand, Jack considered for a moment then released his finger, trailing his gauntlet’ed hand on the wall. The wind pressure grinded him against the crab and he felt it strip layers of flesh from his chest. Jack pushed off his with his gauntleted hand. Tule was a blur as he sped by. Still, he felt like he was falling slower than was normal.
The Gauntlet didn’t show any wear at all. He felt pain but it was much less than he had expected. Having temporarily stopped his chest from being flayed he moved his attention from stopping his flesh’s regeneration to his knife which he slammed into the wall of tendon. The added drag pulled things and parts of his body into less comfortable positions. He continued to drag, the knife threatening to rip from his hand, speed still too fast. Suddenly he felt the tendon soften even further and slammed his gloved finger into the wall.
The pain was blinding, a tearing ripping moment before the wall gave out and he started to trail down the wall blade and finger working to stop him.
He fell further than he thought and still hit the ground feet first and hard. He grit his teeth as he released the knife and managed to jack the output cable into him before his finger sucked out of the softened crab.
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It was a beach, Jack realized that as he lay in the sand, eyes closed and strategically attempting to control his generation and cellular replication.
His legs were worst, the impact not having shattered any bones but there were fractures. He saw damage to tendons and ligaments. Interesting enough, bones took the most electricity to repair, followed by tendons and ligaments, then muscle, then flesh, and finally, blood being the easiest. That seemed useful for a doctor to know. He finished up regenerating his legs. He used the remaining juice in the battery.
The others came down, Tule and Leanne nearly the same moment, Jonah shortly after.
“You’re… napping?”
Jack opened one eye, that was the Sentinel. He smiled inwardly, “Figured it was taking you guys long enough.”
She scowled then looked around, “its… its a beach.” Her face lit up and she took off her boots. She walked in a trance towards the water.
Tule was squinting, scanning the area. Jonah interacted with the sand and declared, “its granulated metal.”
Jack got up and pulled the output cable out of his side.
0% flashed softly at him.
Damn.
He looked around. The giant crab had washed up on this beach. Had the water’s current been that strong? He looked around, the red lights were high up now and much closer. He looked down each side of the beach and then through his Affinity.
If the battery wasn’t empty he wouldn’t have seen it. A small source of electricity was bouncing softly up and down. It looked like it was coming towards them.