Subvector didn’t drag me in by my ear, thankfully. She did look at the clock, look at my outfit, and give me a reproachful look, but I wasn’t technically late, even though I cut it close, with only five minutes to spare. I know, I know, on time is late, but after my unfortunately delayed wake-up, I did the best I could.
The conference room was… a conference room. If you have ever seen a movie with a conference room in it, it looked exactly like that, only with very nice windows that showed off the Empire City skyline across the bay, the Southern Sea Wall, and what used to be Ellis Island before a kaiju decided the big bronze statue made a decent toothpick. Or maybe a hero used it for batting practice, but in short, most of what used to surround the harbor became scrap until the Sea Wall from Staten to Brooklyn was built, cutting off the harbor from the open ocean decades ago and creating the basis for Empire City.
Considering that no one was stupid or crazy enough to try and transit the ocean in big, vulnerable ships anymore, The Southern Sea Wall, with its giant cage structure over the tideflows cutting off traffic was not really a hardship anymore. If you wanted to transit, you had to fly at supersonic speeds, hopefully with an alpha escort or three, or find a hugely expensive teleporter that could take you overseas.
There was still a brisk trade with the remaining nations in small, valuable items, specialty electronics, and luxuries, but bulk Oceanic cargo had long ago gone the way of the buggy whip and steam locomotive. I know a few old warships were stationed around the harbor, specifically as tourist attractions and emergency munitions… you never knew when an old Battleship’s gigantic guns might be what’s needed to drop a nasty kaiju.
Sitting at the conference table was a man. Well, most of a man, anyway. He looked to be in his early forties, and in a custom-tailored uniform, but his right side was...mangled. He had both a cyberprosthetic arm, and leg, and on the right side of his face, the cold lense of old-fashioned optics peered out at me from a partial metal faceplate. A quick scan told me that it was fairly recent, like building a Model T Ford in a new hovertrans plant.
“Gees… what the hell happened to you?”
The distinguished, save for his cheap cyber, man looked me up and down, a slight hum from his optics as the iris visibly retracted. “I assume you mean the bionics?” At my nod, he smiled or half-smiled anyway. “Fenris infestation out of KC. The Alpha was a class five. We got him, though, but not before he took out twenty-six men and me.”
I shook my head, “Not that, I mean what kind of a chainsaw surgeon lawnmower man fucked up your cyber? No offense intended, but they made you look like an extra from a William Gibson straight-to-video. Unless that’s the effect you are hoping for? Shock the kiddies like they are signing up for the mobile infantry?”
He looked surprised, “Are you kidding? This is state-of-the-art straight from California. The corps takes good care of its people.”
I shook my head and sighed, grabbing a chair and sitting down. “State of the art for Jules Verne maybe. Go ahead and let me have it, whatever the damage is, and maybe afterward you will be happy or sad enough to let me fix… that.” I waved towards his face, where he was starting to scowl.
Okay, I admit I was overacting. Whatever he had probably WAS state-of-the-art, but from what I could tell, that current state was not particularly impressive. I was also acting intentionally aggressive and insulting, for the same reason I was wearing a RUSH T-shirt.
He glanced at Mindy, who was doing a pretty good job of looking stern, and then sighed heavily. “That’s your sponsor?”
Mindy nodded, “I prefer the term Patron, but yes.”
He shrugged, “Smart move. So let’s cut the dog-and-pony show and get straight to the meat. What will it take for me to get what I want?”
Mindy smiled a little, “That depends on what you want, now doesn’t it?”
He shrugged, “My superior sent me down here to look intimidating, threaten you with this.” he pulled an old fashioned manila folder out of a briefcase by his side and dropped it on the table in front of him, “And then offer to make it all go away if you enlisted as special service personnel.”
I looked at the folder and then looked at him in confusion. “Why would I care about a folder full of blank paper with the names of BSA’s most wanted printed on the first page?”
He laughed, “Hyperperception, of course. That explains a lot. Well, we know all about Strategic special simulations and your role in it. I told them we should just use simple files, but I think my boss is a stickler for tradition. He told me to use every trick in the book including threats.”
Mindy smirked, “Are you talking about the threat list those idiots at the BSA put up? You know that list is based on perceived threats, not legally actionable intelligence, right? Three-S is a fully bonded practical effects company, and every property in question was a declared destruction site except for two of them, which were attempted insurance fraud and immediately reported to the proper authorities, BY MY SPONSORED.”
I raised my eyebrow at Mindy, and she smiled, shrugging, like “I do my homework too.”
“He might be talking about the most dangerous game list,” I added.
She nodded, “Yeah, but that list was created by hobbyists, and even less valid than the BSA list. And enlisting is way, way off the list of possible concessions. My sponsored assistant has already made it clear that he’s changed his track to the Kaiju Special Containment and Control Unit, and while he hasn’t signed a bid contract yet, They are well aware of his interest.”
I glanced at Mindy, “Is that really the term? Sponsored assistant? Not sponsoree or something like that? I think I preferred sidekick, but I could do Minion, as long as I got to call you mistress and get petted in your lap occasionally. Be careful though, I bite! And the tummy rub is always a trap.”
Mindy probably was trying not to grin, since she wasn’t actually blushing much, but she was still doing a great job acting stern, mostly. She put her hand to her mouth and gave a quick cough, probably to hide a laugh.
Colonel Moore sighed, “Look. I am not a TV stereotype. This is the part where I am supposed to get angry, yell, and threaten you, and then you tell me to take a hike and storm out. Then Subvector either drags you back or calms you down, and I make my secondary offers, either medical units or preferably R&D.”
“I thought we were avoiding the song and dance? Look, I gotta be honest with you. Aside from that little boo-boo where you launched Q-bombs that are destroying the world, I actually LIKE the military. You guys are fighting the good fight in the most punishing job imaginable. You are facing off against foes that are a million times more powerful than you are, throwing your living bodies at the bad guys even without the relative safety and security that having alpha abilities offers. I have a huge amount of respect for you, but I won’t let myself be strongarmed into becoming your bitch, respect or no respect. I take it that you, like so many others, managed to get another chunk of my Mark two crap?”
He raised an eyebrow, “Mark two?”
I nodded, “The armor that everyone seems to have a piece of.”
He nodded back, “Darpa might have… a few. Mark two?”
I smiled, “Yeah, my second primitive attempt. I am on mark four right now, working on mark five, which makes that junk look like… well… junk. So let’s be straight. How about I tell you what I am willing to do for my respected military heroes, tell you my price, and then we negotiate and dicker around until both of us are unhappy and convinced we were taken for a ride? That’s what I would consider fair.”
He nodded, relaxing a little in his chair and tucking the folder away. “Shoot.”
Good, this was going more the way I hoped and less the way I dreaded. Maybe I watched too many movies, but I expected an idiot Warhawk or corrupt martinet. “Okay, first, I am going to tell you what I know that I can do, and what I absolutely won’t do. Development is a process, not a destination, and that list might expand later on.”
“First off, I can provide light armor for up to ten people a month. I am not a factory, every single piece of armor has to be hand-crafted, and it has to be snug… that means each suit has to be custom-fitted, or it loses half of its protective value. Appearance-wise I can be flexible, if you want it to look like traditional camouflage or something, I can mostly do it.”
“Secondly, I already have plans in the works for field communications modules. That means a single transfer station you can mount or carry, and up to one hundred earpieces like mine.” I tapped my earpiece. “Which will tie into the armor, or you can get it designed differently if you need it to adapt to existing tech. That being said, however, the Monster hunters and emergency services will also be getting modules, so I can’t guarantee delivery, and both items can be delayed if it’s finals or I get kidnapped… again… or something.”
Mindy was looking at me curiously, I guess she hadn’t expected me to be so cooperative.
“In addition, I was planning to expand into prosthetics, or in cases like yours, either special utility prosthetics or full restorations. But that depends on availability and will carry a separate price tag. Not because I am trying to deprive anyone, or because I am greedy, but because each and every restoration costs me energy. The energy I could be using to help kill Kaiju or save someone. A full restoration costs me as much energy as three armor sets, and more importantly, it costs me time. The time I will be taking away from my education, fighting, and maybe making more protective gear.”
Moore nodded, “So that’s your starting list, not your ending list, right?”
I nodded, “Yeah. I have some really cool ideas, but if I try to set up an assembly line, I lose the time I need for development, personal advancement, personal relationships, and education. I am willing to put up with flexible quotas, but if some bright boy decides that the government or military would be better served by trying to manage my time, well, I call that slavery and the deal is off… I could be in Japan in a week, selling them giant battle mechs that they would adore even if they aren’t exactly the best war machine designs around.”
“Wait, you can make battle mechs? Like... Giant robots like in the old miniature games? I grew up on those, and some of us at the strategy center still play them occasionally. they are a good strategic exercise, like warmonger 40k, even if they are not particularly realistic... it's better than chess.”
I nodded, “I could, but I would rather not… it would take a while to make a decent mark one mech, and I just don’t have enough resources available to do a good job yet.”
“But… battle mechs! I mean, I know that they are useless in modern warfare, but against Kaiju?”
Huh. I hadn’t thought about that. Kali had been incredibly effective, even as a class five against a class seven Kaiju mostly because she was a lot closer to his height. Yeah, battle mechs were damned near useless in a modern firefight, but Kaiju combat was not exactly a modern firefight, and with quantum-linked nerve impulses to keep them fast, SERIOUS weapons that only that size could carry and a variety to deal with different Kaiju classifications…
“Mister Doyle?”
“Shh…” I heard Mindy say. “He’s in thinking mode. If you disturb him he might lose his thought and walk around naked for a while carrying a bag of supercomputers that look like matches. You don’t want that on your conscience, and you don’t want that in your memory. I've seen it... I wish I hadn't, but I have, and I promise you don't want to. It will be scarred into your soul.”
I needed metal. And an isolating semiconductive filter. The neural net in my armor would be more than capable of transmitting movement instructions from a human spinal column which meant the cockpit wouldn’t have to be very big, no bigger than a standard fighter cockpit.
Because the role would be fighting Kaiju instead of nutballs with powers, I wouldn’t have to worry too much about cyberkinetics, which completely opened up the concept of using fully powered regenerative synthetic myofibers for strength and maneuverability without worrying about temperamental servos… the signals would transfer right from the neural net receivers to the individual myofiber groups, just like they were piloting their own body, but at a slight distance, so the pilots would need training.
I leaned forward and opened Moore’s briefcase, yanking out the folder and starting to spread out the papers on the table so I could sketch out the idea. Not that I needed them for memorizing, but a visual representation of each needed connection and specialty structure would help me design them later for blueprinting, and if I could produce each part to blueprint now, it would be even better. I stood up and walked to the window, and then said, “Metal, I need metal. Copper or iron. Fifty pounds. One hundred pounds of tungsten, that’s close enough.” I took down the window, letting in a refreshing breeze as I set it down on the table, and the table would be fine for my carbon needs, carbon, and silicon.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
***
“Whew,” I said, sitting on the floor amidst a scene of devastation that looked a bit like the disposal pit I usually worked, only with more air. The table, chairs, and glass were gone, as was a good chunk of the concrete and fibril wall, and I was surrounded by the last parts I would need of a particular composition that I hadn’t recycled into new parts to blueprint. Half the floor was covered by a long plate of woven carbonized tungsten and silicon hybrid armor, meant for the front of a leg plate, and my shirt was gone, tossed into a corner when I started getting sweaty while custom-fitting pieces to make sure that the blueprints were accurate.
“Are you sane yet?” Subvector stuck her head in the doorframe that was, ironically, missing a door. It didn’t matter, though, because the plan was fully blueprinted, and it was… beautiful. Even just in my head. Fifty feet of polished armor. I had always been a fan of those old giant robot Japanese cartoons when I was a kid, and now I knew how to MAKE one. Of course, it was only a mark one, and fifty feet was a bit tiny compared to a greater Kaiju, but better versions would come in time.
“Coffee?” I asked, “And maybe a sandwich?” I was down almost two thousand points, but fully assembling the damned mech, now that it was blueprinted, would take less than a thousand points assuming I didn’t have to molecularly shift too much material. Creating it from scratch and air molecules would probably take over ten thousand points, there was no way I was going to be able to do that.
She nodded and came back in a few minutes carrying a sub sandwich and an entire pot of coffee, with a bottle of sweetened creamer and a mug under her arm. She carefully placed them on the floor in front of me, and I tore into them. Tuna was not my favorite, but at least the sandwich and the whole pot of coffee took the edge off of my hunger and thirst.
“Ugh. What time is it?”
She shrugged a little, “Eight fifteen,” she said, glancing out at the nighttime sky where the windows used to be.
I groaned. “Man, my whole Saturday wasted. Crap. Did the Cyclops take off?”
She shook her head, “He said he would come back tomorrow at nineteen hundred. That's Seven PM. It’s umm… eight fifteen TUESDAY.”
I facepalmed and then double-facepalmed. “Oh shit. Oh no. I missed my date with Abbey.”
She snorted, “Interesting priorities. Technically you didn’t. She called Mindy to ask about you, and then came in with a picnic basket and you two ate while you were working. She said she understood, but got a little weirded out when you asked her to take off her pants so you could see how her hip assembly was connected to prevent synthetic overextension.”
She snickered, “She said, and I quote, “I’ve been on worse dates, and we had a good meal, a good discussion about mecha hip assemblies, and then he asked me to get naked for him and was fine with taking no for an answer… Would definitely repeat. I would have preferred a kiss at the end rather than helping him assemble a cockpit HUD, though.”
I should just mount my hand permanently to my face. “Did I do anything else stupid?”
She nodded, “Lots. But Mindy explained that you were not responsible for what you did and said in a fugue. I was a little weirded out when you asked me to sit on your lap and give you a quickie, though.”
“I didn’t!”
She nodded, “You did, but I have to say I was tempted, and enormously flattered that you considered an old horse like me attractive enough to want a quickie. It was funny, though, when you were glad I was a personal kinetic so that you wouldn’t hurt me when you came.”
“Did I DO anything bad?”
She shook her head, “No, well not much except feeling Candace up and telling her that her dorsal plates were too soft to shrug off a claw attack when she brought you supper.”
I lowered my hand. “Oh, Candace? That’s fine then.”
“Why, are you two an item?”
I shook my head, “Not at all, but Candace has a weird sense of humor. I think she will joke about it forever, especially when she realizes I don’t even remember it. Kind of a shame, though, I bet she has a great set.”
She nodded, “Well, you kept turning material into… parts, in your hands, and then recycling them. We had to lock down the floor when you took off the door, though, or else no one would be able to pretend that they didn’t know your personal ID. Ahh… your notes, though.”
“What notes?”
“The pictures you drew of what you were designing? You crowded them out on both sides of all the papers and then filled up a bunch more, and Moore… took them.”
I sighed, I wanted to consider it an invasion of personal privacy, but I was too tired to care. “It’s fine. It will give Mindy an excuse to push for restitution. I was actually hoping to get him fixed up before he left.”
She laughed, “Oh, you fixed him up alright! You grabbed him and told him you needed his parts for materials, and I thought he was going to have a heart attack! Two seconds later you did that weird pop thing, and the man looked fifteen years younger, built like a linebacker, and all of his cybernetics were lying on the floor! He was crying and grinning at the same time when he gathered up the papers and said he’d be back.”
“Oh. That would explain the energy loss. I hope I did a good job.”
She nodded, “I think you did. We took turns watching over you while you worked. You might want to talk to Akyo, though, she was… kind of depressed when she realized that you couldn’t really hear her while you were working.”
“Umm… I guess I need to clean up?”
She shook her head, “Not really. We have folks that can do that way more effectively. Where do you want these parts to go?”
“My workshop!”
“Your what?”
I sighed deeply. “You know, I really need to rent a workshop or something. I can probably afford it now.”
She shrugged, “Do you know what every high-tech workshop in Kellar Island and Empire City have in common?”
I thought about it. “Oh. Right. High-value robbery targets. Good point. I guess I am going to have to dig my own lair.”
“Wait, you can do that?”
I laughed, “Did you see that video that apparently attracted the military?”
She nodded. “Oh, I guess if you can dig through a Kaiju, you can dig out a lair. Just be careful, there is a LOT of underground construction. You probably want to go below the arcology and infrastructure layers, so that will be pretty deep. You might want to keep using your hole for now.”
I sighed and shook my head, “That won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Fifty-foot tall mecha. There’s certainly enough room, but getting them out would be a bitch.”
She smiled a little, “Oh, that? Just tell Moore that it’s HIS problem. He’s a colonel. If he can’t get you a secure toybox for his new toys, then he doesn’t get to play with them.”
I grinned, and stood up, stretching out my back and trying not to smell myself. “Capital idea. And with my newfound wealth, I will be able to build a secure lair that the heroes will never ever be able to find or penetrate! Hahaha! Hahahah!” I glanced at Subvector, who was looking at me oddly, and said, “Too soon?”
She smirked a little, “Please tell me that was an act. I have seen tinkers go around the bend before.”
I nodded, “Just an act. If I don’t joke around a little I might go around the bend myself. And then you might have to hold me down and give me a quickie to bring me back to sanity.”
She made an odd face, “Would that work?”
I shrugged, “It might. Can’t hurt to try. Of course, if you do, I might force you to join my not-harem as the only member.” I winced, “Speaking of members, did I remember to pee?”
She nodded, “Yeah, but you sort of scattered junk between here and the restroom. No one wanted to move it in case you needed it later.”
I sighed and grabbed my tee shirt. “I need a shower and a bed, in that order.”
She smiled a little, “I will escort you.”
***
I came to in my own bed. I want to say I woke up, but considering it was now Wednesday morning, came to was a much better expression. To my pleased surprise, what brought me around was Abigail, sitting on the bed with one of her hands on my knee. Like last time, she was made up very prettily, only now she was wearing a sort of light brown jumper, with the words “Evil Twin” bedazzled on the bib front, over a fluffy silk pullover.
I smiled at her and sat up. At least this time I wasn’t sporting morning wood, but I noticed her face was… sort of neutral.
“Good morning, beautiful. Is something wrong? Am I late again?”
She shook her head, her loose hair tossing around her face. “I mean, yes, it’s late but you aren’t. Subvector got your classes excused for this week, but with your memory, that should be fine.”
I nodded, “Sorry about the date thing.”
She shook her head again, “It’s fine. My sister does that too, sometimes, when she gets involved in a serious snarl. I do have a question, though. How did you know?”
“How did I know what?”
She sighed. “Please don’t. You are normally incredibly hard to snag info from, but when you were wiped out and asleep, I snooped a little, hoping to find out what you wanted to cook for me. And yes, I would have loved Lasagne. And then I saw your notes.”
“Ah,” I said eloquently. I had this bad habit of taking notes on my pad when I was trying to figure out something, and then erasing them when I finished, and I forgot that actually seeing her name written down and circled with a question mark meant that it was a visual medium she could read. “I didn’t really think about it much. I mean, it doesn’t really change anything unless you decide to leave the school because of it. Once I figured out their motivation, I was fine with it, and I still want to see you without a shirt sometime. Unless the age thing is a problem?”
She shook her head, “It’s kind of pointless for an alpha. And ten years isn’t that far apart, especially since we are both likely to live for centuries, you even longer, maybe. I still want to know how you figured it out, though.”
I chuckled, “Kali.”
“She told you?”
I shook my head, “No. You know when I blueprint something I record it down to the smallest molecule, right?”
She nodded.
“Well, apparently Kali and Pixie have been in close proximity for some time. She had pink hair on her, and guess what I found out when I blueprinted it?”
She sighed. “Dammit, That she’s my sister.”
I nodded, “Yeah, I blueprinted you almost as soon as I met you, as a safety feature in case you got hurt. I already knew your age, that’s pretty obvious, but I just thought it was amusing that you were acting like a teenager while you went to school. I mean, obviously, no one wants to appear to be a thirty-year-old when they are in college, right? I also knew that after people figured out what I could do, SOMEONE had to be inserted. That list of names? I was crossing them off because I figured out who sent them.”
“Wait, what?”
I grinned, “All three, you, Akyo, and Sabrina were put here as moles. Sabrina was obvious since the Maxwells still owned her family. Akyo was a little less obvious since she’s human and something else… I know that there were non-humans on Earth, but I am not sure exactly what kind she is… something with Earth affinity and shapeshifting or something like that. But there was no reason whatsoever a Japanese family would send their daughter to Kellar Academy unless they were immigrants, and the fact that she has to return to Japan when she graduates implies that they are not… she has to go back for some sort of cultural or magical reason.”
“That leaves you. It helps that, when you think about it, you and your sister have damned close to identical gifts. She has light control and data manipulation, you have visual reality control and information manipulation. You might both have different techniques, but I am pretty sure you have the same laws.”
“I don’t know what that means, but yeah. We also work together really well, twins. We used to look a lot more alike, but she decided she wanted to be more independent and started to change her look. Me, I just preferred wearing glasses.”
I smiled, “An affectation I heartily endorse. So do you have plans now? With… uhh…”
“The Jury,” she answered. “We aren’t here to judge humans, we are here to judge if the laws work. In the case of this place? Not so much, but we don’t do terrorist crap, mostly we try to find people who are compatible with our point of view, and try to minimize the amount of damage alphas cause to the world’s essence by teaching them more self-reliance and efficient forms of using their powers. Until you came along, most of us didn’t even know of a way to shift completely from using chaos essence to using environmental essence.”
I nodded, “I wondered about that. Is Kali the leader? It’s surprising to see a Serenoid here.”
Her eyes widened, “You know about that?”
I laughed, “That was WAY easier to figure out. Six arms, blue skin, and her energy signature almost precisely matched the diagrams in the Serenoid manual. Three gates in each hand is kind of a dead giveaway. Sure, she can cover it up, but it’s still pretty obvious to anyone who bothered to learn the story. Not to mention, her genetics are human, but show serious tampering. After reading more about them, I assume that Serenoids altered themselves to improve their cultivation, especially external energy use. I bet there are patterns, spells, and even formations that can only be used if you have six arms or eight limbs total, like changing your size to seventy-plus feet tall even if you are still mortal-tier.”
She sighed, “I honestly don’t know much about the cultivation stuff. Kali taught us how to minimize our energy signatures, but said that with our energy, anything else was beyond her reach. The Serenoids came here through a gateway that blocks all but the weakest levels to try and exploit a new realm that opened up, thinking it was some sort of treasure. When they got here they found chaos cultivators and tried to attack the monsters and escape, but a few survivors fled and escaped. There’s no one left here strong enough to re-open the portal to the Serene realms, and no one on the other side would ever unseal a portal to a chaos realm.”
I looked at her closely, “So… would you care to try to learn how to use your powers without tapping into chaos?”