After treating Mopul’rii’sfun’ge, Hudson and Cor returned to their routine, and another ten days passed. While Hudson had a lot to consider as he meditated on his “path” and its implicit impact on his body and on his mindscape… Cor wasn’t one to sit still.
The old soldier and newly minted cultivator extraordinaire leveraged the goodwill with Tor’le’su and the high esteem of Xith’le’so to schmooze, cajole and barter his way around the reef, making contacts and trades, all for the purpose of upgrading their weapons.
It was tough going at first; the Lurill’shan engineers on the reef initially rebuffed Cor. They did not want to help an outsider, especially one linked to the Disciples. There was a lot of bad blood there, as the followers of the Disciples usually took without asking (if they could get away with it), and in general behaved as if the natives were beneath them.
Once Cor convinced them he was willing to pay, and that he wanted to share Earth’s technology as well with them, the doors opened up. Firearms that used a chemical – e.g. gunpowder – to ignite a controlled explosion both terrified the engineers and excited them with new possibilities.
The Lurill’shan had portable versions of the defense cannons on the reef, but they were based on hydraulic-pressure technology combined with cultivator technology. Similar in concept to air guns, taken to a higher level of force.
Hudson had zoned out when Cor tried to explain the amount of force on impact for different types and sizes of projectiles, and the pros and cons of each weapon system. When Cor left with the queen silverine’s giant claw and promised that he’d get something better back, he’d barely grunted his acknowledgement…. But he paid attention when Cor finally brought back the results of his efforts.
During the second duty cycle of the day, Hudson and Cor were required to stand a watch on guard against attack. Since they had been eager to fight the silicates before, they couldn’t complain too much. The military leader on the council – a woman whose name started with Vish, and then continued for many syllables after that – had met them very briefly and told them to follow orders or else, in just as many words.
“Do you think I’ll get to test these new swords out today?” a very bored Hudson asked Cor. The two were manning the center of a guard platform on the prow of the reef. A Lurill’shan officer stood to the side, watching them like a hawk.
Cor’s head was on a swivel, always watching and looking out into the deep, black ocean waters.
“Don’t say crap like that, you’ll jinx us,” Cor said absently.
Hudson was wielding his two new “swords,” each one approximately three feet long and fashioned from half of the giant silverine claw. Rough handles had been secured inside the shells of each claw, rather than sticking down below like a regular sword. His wrists and hands would be protected by the chitin, and if he ramped up his cultivation technique, all of the qi escaping from his damaged meridians was sucked into the swords.
The Lurill’shan engineers had done their job well, and each sword vibrated like a chainsaw waiting to be let loose. They also coated the chitin on each with a hydrophobic substance, so that they moved more easily through the water.
“I’m kinda sad I didn’t get to use the big claw more. It was kinda fun.”
“I hear ya… but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Big Momma died so that AC and DC could live.”
“What are you talking about? AC and DC? Oh,” Hudson said. “You’re giving them names again. Stop it. I am not calling them that.”
“Okay. Then how about ‘Thun’ and ‘Der’?”
“No,” Hudson said. “That’s stupid. They don’t need names. They just need to work. Rip and shred the silicates to bits.”
“Rip and Shred it is then,” Cor said. “Not bad, if a little basic.”
A deep gong directly behind them sounded the alarm to battle stations.
“Good job, buddy, you totally jinxed us,” Cor said, with a grin on his face. Additional troops poured onto the platform, supplementing the standing guard force already in position. This was only the third time in the past week where they had seen action, but it was the first after Cor had secured his new weapons.
“Enemy spotted starboard, down sixty degrees,” the officer on their platform informed the crew. “We have orders to hold fire until visual confirmation. Cultivator Cor’le, that includes you as well.”
“Copy that, hold until we see the whites of their eyes,” Cor replied, hefting a giant rifle in his hands. He’d called this one his Long Gun, and had told Hudson it was for “when I’m having a bad day, and want to share it with others.”
It carried the biggest payload Cor could get without ripping one of the permanent gun placements off the side of the reeft. It was breech-loading with two barrels, so only two shots before reloading, and used some kind of railgun-like cultivator tech that ran off of qi batteries.
The sides of the barrels were carved with sigils and inlaid with maseki, and were a work of art – a combination of Disciple-based technology with Lurill’shan craftsmanship. He’d traded his M16 and all of his remaining ammunition, as well as promises of future joint weapon development with Earth engineers, to the R&D-types on the reef for it.
Hudson reflexively renewed his Mind Gate technique and kept his breathing technique at the lowest intensity possible. He stuck his hands into his new swords, unclipping them from their sheathes. The cutting edge extended out a foot and a half past his hands and all the way down to his elbows.
The massive reef angled down through the water and began to accelerate. Hudson idly wondered if he and Cor had pulled the most forward position on the reef because they were the most expendable people on the reef, and were crazy enough not to complain about it.
Previously, the silicates had been the aggressors, attacking the reef in swarms, but it seemed like this time was different. The reef was on the attack.
The glowing lights on the reef dimmed, and they dove faster, continuing to accelerate. The reef rolled, and what was “up” before was now “down.” Hudson pulled his tether tighter, keeping his feet firmly planted on the platform.
This Lurillshan reef had the majority of the gun placements on its top side. Rolling over allowed the reef to bring more firepower against an enemy below them.
Hudson could feel the water pressure increasing steadily, and he increased the tempo of his breathing technique to compensate.
“Expected time to contact: less than one minute,” the officer relayed. “They will know we’re coming; we can’t completely hide our qi signature, no matter how hard we try. But we will get as close as possible before attacking, in order to surprise them.”
The roar of rushing water and the creaking of the massive reef behind them filled Hudson’s ears. He let go of his extraneous thoughts and focused solely on the ocean in front of him.
In between breaths, the darkness in front of them changed to a dim, jade glow. It started as a small streak of green-gray in the black, before accelerating rapidly to fill his vision. Gray, writhing blobs spread on the floor of the ocean as far forward as Hudson could see.
“Wait,” the officer said, and the reef groaned behind them as it began to pull out of its sharp dive to the ocean floor. The distance to the mass of silicates feasting on the open vein of maseki on the ocean floor decreased from a thousand feet, to five hundred feet, and finally to an impossibly close one hundred feet.
“All guns, all weapons free,” the officer said and raised her arm in the visual signal for fire. A few trigger-happy platforms further back on the reef began to fire. “Throw everything you got in the water!”
The responding noise was deafening, and the shock waves from all of the guns going off, coupled with the crushing water pressure, made Hudson’s ears bleed. Swarms of silicates poofed into gray clouds. The reef pushed forward over the feeding silicates, strafing the enemy forces laid out on the bottom of the ocean.
There wasn’t much for Hudson to do except watch the awe-inspiring sight of powerful guns decimating the silicate forces up close and personal, but Cor was busy. He fired the two rounds he’d loaded into his Long Gun, then switched to another ranged weapon closer in form to a shotgun, except it fired needle-like flechettes instead of bullets.
The big guns were pounding away at the sea floor, so Cor was aiming ahead of the reef, at the wave of silicates rising off of the sea floor ahead of them. The reef was beginning to rise as well, but it would be close. He fired in a wide pattern, filling the ocean water in front of them with a wave of cavitating flechettes.
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The Lurill’shan soldiers who were not manning fixed gun placements did the same as Cor. Massive waves of flechettes, visible in the water from the cavitating air bubbles at their tips, flew towards the silicate swarm.
Hudson hadn’t wondered how they were using guns underwater, since he wasn’t familiar with the physics of underwater warfare, but Cor had felt burdened to explain it to him.
Standard firearms do not work well under water due to the greater friction. A bullet that might travel three hundred yards in air, might only go three feet under water. They solved that by using ammunition – like the flechettes – that was engineered to super-cavitate, or form air bubbles, giving the projectiles pockets of less friction to travel through.
Cor knew of similar tech back on Earth, but swore the Lurill’shan were lightyears ahead. He wanted to bring the gun he was currently using back to Earth and dub it the “L1.” It had a high rate of fire, was very effective against silicates, and could be used in air as well as water.
As far as naming conventions, that was the best name he’d heard out of Cor, in the entire time he’d known him.
The rising wave of silicates were hammered by the flechette fire, but not completely eliminated. Hudson braced for impact, expecting the defensive bone cages to spring into place.
The officer yelled over the din, but Hudson couldn’t make out what she was saying. Her arm continued to stay up. The officer was either making the decision not to go into defensive mode, or had been ordered not to.
Hudson ramped up his cultivation technique to the max. His reaction speed increased, and the world around him appeared to slow down. They were closing fast on the silicates that had escaped the initial attack. His orders were to protect the soldiers on the deck, without leaving the platform or breaking a line of fire.
Another breath and individual silicates were crashing into the reef. Unlike a regular swarm, these level ones were disorganized and attempting to flee. Cor’s flechettes tore through one before it could hit their platform directly, and a gray cloud of soot washed over them.
Unable to see clearly, Hudson trusted his instincts and struck out where he expected a second silicate to hit their platform. His new sword sliced through the cloudy water as it wasn’t there, cleanly eviscerating the body of the silicate.
He closed his eyes and focused on his qi sense. He’d practiced diving into his qi sense quickly, but the adrenaline and pressure of the battle pushed him even faster. He had to know where the silicates were right now; he demanded it of himself, and he responded.
The qi signatures of the soldiers around him blossomed into sight. A smear of qi blurred through his senses, smashing into the floor of the platform. Hudson’s right sword pierced it, the bubble of qi bursting apart violently.
The extra length from his swords helped Hudson reach the silicates quickly without moving from his tethered spot in the center of the platform. But when a silicate smashed into a gun placement, Hudson was too far away. He could see a long tentacle wrap around the dim qi channels of a soldier, and begin to suck the qi out of the soldier in pulses.
He couldn’t reach the soldier on the far end of the platform; his tether was too tight. If he cut his tether, he might have trouble getting back into position, or even worse, be swept off of the reef.
He watched the silicate continue to suck qi out of the soldier, growing increasingly frustrated. He sheathed his swords, and began to play more slack into his tether, when the silicate exploded in a wash of qi. Cor nodded at Hudson, having shot the silicate at close range.
He wasn’t alone on the platform – there were others backing him up. He stopped fiddling with his tether and pulled his swords free once more, ready for the next silicate to come within his reach.
Hudson locked into his job, focusing on eliminating any silicate threats to hit the platform as soon as he sensed them. He didn’t notice as the reef took two more passes on the silicates feasting on the open vein of maseki at the bottom of the ocean, destroying a vast number of the enemy in the process.
An “all clear” from the officer on the platform brought him out of the zone, and he opened his eyes once more. The husks of silicates littered their platform, bits of gray clouds idly floating in the water.
The reef had stopped over the vein of maseki. Their orders were to pick off any stragglers, clear wounded and infected, and be ready for immediate departure within twenty minutes.
The officer and Cor were restraining the soldier that had been hit by a silicate, securing her arms and legs. The look on Cor’s face could chip granite.
Hudson secured his swords, loosened his tether and swam over to the infected soldier. He reached over and grabbed the back of the soldier’s head tightly.
“Regulations are we wait for the rapid response team, Hudson’le,” the officer said, adding the honorific “le” for a body cultivator to the end of Hudson’s name.
“I’m a cultivator. Can you trust me?” Hudson replied.
The officer looked at the soldier, then back at Hudson and nodded grimly. She knew the likely outcome of any intervention from the response team; how could Hudson be any worse?
A quick reversal of his Mind Gate technique, and he was in his mindscape. The slugs were already pouring through a hole into his annex, and he dealt with them as easily as counting to ten.
Back in the physical world, only a few seconds had passed, but the soldier had immediately stopped struggling. Hudson nodded to Cor, and he released her legs.
The officer looked at Hudson with a mixture of incredulousness and gratitude. Any follow up conversation, however, was cut short by a shudder passing through the reef.
Something massive had struck the reef.
Alarm knells blared as the reef shook again, listing down and to starboard. Everyone on the platform was knocked off their feet as the reef began emergency maneuvers, shooting forward and up, rolling ponderously at the same time.
By the time Hudson pulled himself back to the platform with his tether, the reef had completed its roll and gun placements began to fire chaotically here and there across the reef. Large bone spears and colorful pieces of the reef’s outer shell floated in the water behind them, debris from the attacks they’d just received.
Behind and above them a massive ball of tentacles writhed, half the size of the reef itself. Guns on the reef fired, and a wave of firepower rushed out. Hudson watched as the giant silicate swiftly grew smaller, shrinking in size until it disappeared entirely, the projectiles shooting past.
A ripple of darkness opened closer to the reef, and a baleful eye the size of an elephant emerged. Its tentacles, sheathed in the same protective skin as the lower-leveled silicates on this planet, followed the eye, squirming out of the rift and phasing back into reality. They gathered together and slammed down towards the reef again in a concentrated attack.
The blow never hit the reef; it was met head on by a single cultivator, her hands held up over her head and moving in circles, guiding an enormous disc of swirling water. The tentacles slammed into the shield and rebounded.
“What is that thing?” Hudson asked.
“At least a level 5, maybe higher,” Cor answered grimly. “It was hiding, possibly lying in wait for us.”
“Is it opening rifts? It looked like it could teleport.”
Cor waited for a second – listening to Ix explain his observations – before responding. “It’s similar, slightly different. The silicate can… shift its mass through a micro dimension. I guess that’s why it looks like it’s disappearing through an invisible hole, as opposed to an opening.
The Lurill’shan body cultivator blocked another set of blows from the silicate. Two different sets of tentacles aimed for different parts of the reef. She split her concentration, and the disc of spinning water split into two discs.
The reef continued to surge forward and upwards, but there was no chance of getting away from this silicate. It easily kept pace, and when the powerful cultivator began to struggle to keep pace herself while blocking continuous attacks, the reef slowed its advance.
XIth’le’so swam out onto the platform, pulling herself through the waterlock leading into the interior of the reef.
“Who is that?” Hudson asked Xith’le’so before she could speak, pointing up at the cultivator single-handedly keeping the massive silicate at bay.
“That’s Vishpul’le’so’tcheng, the leader of our soldiers and one of the most powerful cultivators of the self on this reef. Listen–” she replied, before being interrupted.
“Cultivator of the self? But she must be using qi techniques – how is she moving all of that water around if she’s just a body cultivator?” Hudson asked.
“She’s inverted her inner world, extending her domain of authority. Far more powerful than your basic qi techniques,” Xith’le’so said brusquely. “Hudson – stop asking questions and let me talk to Cor. Vishpul’le’so’tcheng will keep the abomination at bay, but we may need Cor’s assistance.”
Hudson looked out at the massive enemy, tentacles hundreds of feet long smashing and whipping with blinding speed at the reef, all of them met by a relatively tiny cultivator wielding the ocean itself as her weapon.
“His help with what?” Hudson asked. He wasn’t sure how much of a help either of them could be in that fight.
“Help to keep it from fleeing,” Xith’le’so said. “This is not the first time we have run into this particular silicate, and whenever we draw close to defeating it, it flees. It is a never-ending source of sand in our gills.”
A few wheels turned in Cor’s head and something clicked.
“Ah,” he said. “This whole set-up was a trap, but it was a trap you sprung willingly,” he said. “Because we’re here.”
“We would have attacked with or without your presence on the reef. We must protect the natural resources of our world,” Xith’le’so said stiffly, but then relented. “The chances of this abomination laying in wait were at most one in five. But yes, it did cross the minds of our elders that if we ran into it, as we have before, and you have rift-making capabilities… then perhaps you can either prevent it from fleeing or lead a pursuit when it does.”
“Fine, you know what we’re gonna say. We’re always up for action when it comes to killing the silicates. We’re in, but it’s a tag-team effort,” Cor said. “Me and Hudson both. I want operational input as well. If I say it’s a no-go, it’s a no-go.”
Xith’le’so nodded, her gills rippling. “I thought you would have those concerns, and they have already been addressed and agreed to. If you will follow me then…”
Cor and Hudson followed her into the waterlock and down through the corridors of the reef to the command center. Hudson didn’t disagree with what they were going to help with, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit cornered, or outmaneuvered.