“That was…” Shirl eyed her. “Interesting.”
“Well-” the alarm on Ros’ watch went off. “Three o’clock. Just in time. I’ve got a karate class to go to, anyone want to join?”
“Yeah.” Axel said from the door to the bedroom.
“We usually only fight in the morning anyway.” Del said. “When we’re well rested.”
“Funny how you usually have to go looking for a fight if you want one.” Shirl said.
“Cool. A gi is just five coins in the replicator, and I bought a training field, so nobody has to hold back.”
“A training field? Those are like twenty million coins.” Doug said.
“Not the gym version. Just a little box that plugs into the wall. Turns the gym into a proper abilities training area. Come on, grab a gi and let’s all get changed. It will be fun.”
Ten minutes later all five of them were in the central lift that led to the gyms, arcades and restaurants. All the gyms were off the same lift. You could take it straight to the red gym and just fight the six dogs you really needed to clear the solo instance.
The teacher and the same three students were in the area, not quite started yet.
Ros casually walked up to the decorative looking half pillar along the wall, beside the mirrors, which matched three other pillars in the room and marked off the dojo padded area. She pushed on a barely visible catch which popped the four inch square access door open. She slid the little round fuse looking contraption into the hole and set the dial for training. Duel and Punishment were the other two settings. She had never set one of these dials to punishment and she thought it said really odd shit about the builders that punishment was a standard option.
Ros started her stretches, the same stretches she’d done before breakfast and again on the way to face the knock dogs.
After half a beat her new team joined her, all behind her, looking at the glass. Ros started her Qui circulation during her warmup and kept it active all throughout the class.
Ros stopped, bowed and knelt on the mat when Setsuko walked into the square training area. She stopped and looked up, clearly reading the message.
Training Field Activated
All Damage Simulated
We Train to Hunt
We Hunt to Live
Viva Imperator
Ros didn’t see it now, but she’d seen it countless times before. She looked up at Setsuko. She smiled slightly and nodded even less.
“Class, we have a Training Field. We will all spar today.” The small Japanese woman said in her quiet way. “Stand. We begin.”
They all stood and the three regular students looked intimidated as they stood in the front line. Class began, stretches, movements, pair technique training, finally sparring.
Ros followed along with the class’s motions, concentrating on using Qui to power her movements. It was almost time to use it in battle, empowering every motion.
“Don’t hold back.” Setsuko said as she faced Ros for her sparring match. “I’ve read about training fields. You can’t really hurt me, no matter how much you hurt me.”
Ros nodded and bowed. Setsuko had been holding back in their previous match. Ros still trounced her up one side and down the other. Then she watched Setsuko fight each of the students in turn, without even seeming winded.
The class lasted longer than the day before and didn’t break up until a jazzercise class came to set up. Ros left the training field active. She would slowly activate all the fields in the station. The activation fuses were only 10,000 coins, and that’s what they were called, Activation Fuse. They also started up the lunar rovers that were available at the open end of the mine area; at the far end of the chasm from the train.
“Ros.” Setsuko touched her arm. “If you don’t know, there is a message board accessible from every desk with a terminal. Read the messages from Moira the Seer. There is very important information there, and more is arriving.”
“Yes, thank you for telling me. I had seen them.” She looked at her new team. “This is Shirl, the guys are Del, Axel, and Doug. They’re all Third Wave. I hope you don’t mind that I brought them.”
“I’m hoping more will join. Actually I wish we had the gym for training all day, but some of the aerobics and dancing classes have a lot more interested people.”
“If you all clear the red gym it can become your all day dojo.” Axel said. “It’s what we use it for, although I never saw anyone activate a training field before.”
“What are we doing?” Shirl asked. “More dog hunting?”
“I think I want a long weight workout.” Ros said. “I can meet up with you all at seven or eight for dinner in the lounge or wherever you usually work out?”
“I can trade reps with you if you want a partner.” Del offered.
“You are totally trying to get in her pants.” Doug teased.
“Don’t be an ass.” Ros said. “There’s hundreds of chicks looking to bond in bed with someone who can protect them. I hate to say it, but I don’t do well with formal relationships. My long term lovers tend to die gruesome deaths.”
Del looked surprised, and as if he was trying to decide if that was a warning or a challenge.
“Hey, sweaty ass.” Shirl said, poking Doug. “You can shower at my place if you want.”
“What?” Doug looked shocked, turned on and disbelieving. “Are you… do you mean what I think you mean?”
“I mean the gods cancelled my marriage when they brought me here. Coming?”
“Oh, not yet, but you will be.” Doug said enthusiastically as he followed her out of the gym.
“That was a long damned time coming.” Axel said. “See you.” He followed the couple out.
Ros looked at Del.
“Just a hookup after a nice, long workout, ma’am.” He said, crossing his heart the schoolyard way.
Ros smiled and nodded. She could get used to this life.
Unsurprisingly, the incredibly muscular Del knew what he was doing in a weightlifting gym. Ros kept the minor heals coming between sets. She got four points of strength, one at a time, during their two hour workout. They went down to his room, which was directly across the hall from Doug’s room, to shower and fuck before they went down to the lounge to eat their dinners.
Doug looked smug. He hung on Shirl’s every breath. Obviously he’d picked a partner and it wasn’t Ros. The two of them sat at a booth for two, heads together, ignoring the world.
“So.” Axel said as he set his dinner down on the table beside Ros, across from Del. “Any chance you’re interested in me in a sexual sort of way?”
Ros shrugged. “I like to keep my options open. Don’t expect much. I’m not a relationship sort of girl.”
He grinned. “That is not a problem. I won’t try to get in the middle, you just let me know when you want me.”
Ros chuckled. “I will. So, how is the social dynamic around here?”
The guys looked around. “Fluctuating.” Del said with a frown. “The newcomers are discovering this place. It’s not a bad thing, but…” he shrugged. “Might head to the city, honestly.”
“You need 1,111 Moon Wurm spikes and you can’t get any of them in the city.”
“Yeah. Good point. Do you think there might be some kind of second hunting ground somewhere? Aren’t the Moon Wurms supposed to be all through the entire planet lit side of the moon? Where do we get that lore, anyway? I mean Franklin told us that and you have said it.”
Ros closed her eyes. She thought about it. “The Wurm quest giver.”
“Oh. Duh. Obviously.”
“But yes, you’re right. It does explicitly say that the Wurms inhabit the entire nearside. I bet we do find more specific- guys, does penultimate mean last?”
Axel cleared his throat. “No, actually. It means second to last, why?”
“It’s in the phrasing the quest giver uses. There’s a reason the Wurm zone stays cleared for 45 days and it’s not all about the poop. There’s another Wurm. An ultimate Wurm. Not a word about it, though. I will need to see what I can get out of the quest giver. That’s how it works sometimes. I get a premonition that something should work a certain way and I have to dig a little to figure it out. I found the fuse box and went looking for the fuse, now we have a training field. I’ll get fuses for the other gyms too. It’s important to have a place people can go to beat the everliving shit out of people so they can make up and live with each other.”
“Yeah. Would have been nice over the last year.” Del said wryly. “Cannot always afford Virginia.”
Axel shook his head. “Not every day, not even every month. I wonder how she’s going to adapt.”
“She’ll be the madam and run the brothel.” Ros said with the sincere confidence of memory. Ginny and DeadEye had hated each other with a fiery passion. She shook that off.
A burly dude in denim overalls sat down across from Ros suddenly, looking straight at Del. “Dude, have you heard? Someone jacked a party of Fourth Wave Newbies down on yellow. Human. Stabbed them all, stripped them naked and posed them with their hands on each other’s junk. Obscenely.”
“What does Franklin say?” Del demanded.
“500,000 to anyone who can prove who did it and bring them to him, dead or alive.”
Ros closed her eyes. She hadn’t prevented the massacre. She had eliminated a person who focused retribution for this heinous crime, and presumably a further set of crimes which spurred the privateers into lashing out.
“I need a regular replicator terminal. Let’s go.” Ros said. “Do you know exactly where it happened?”
“Sure. I know the place. Brandon and Martin are guarding it, just in case anyone has a tracking ability.”
“Thats why I need a terminal.” Ros said tensely. She knew exactly the ability she wanted and thankfully it was within her budget right now.
They went to Del’s room. It was close. She looked up and bought a B ranked ability called Vital Echo. Grimly she applied it to herself and submitted herself to the ubiquitous tutorial, even though she knew the ability rather well. Hank had it and Hank had been on her team for twenty years.
She ignored the quiet whispers behind her in the room while Del, Axel and the new guy, Merle, discussed the fact that yes she just bought a 29 million coin ability on a whim.
“I’m ready. Take me to where the bodies were found.”
The guys didn’t even say anything. They just led the way to the main lift.
Merle took the lead. None of them spoke.
“Brandon. This Newbie has a tracking skill.”
“Christine?” Martin asked, blinking at her face.
“Roslyn.” She corrected. “Christine was an alias. I have an artifact that lets me change my hair color. I was neighborhood shopping. B is a little too dystopian, dictatorial style for me. The influx made them immediately try to keep everyone safe by controlling them and charging them for their food and lodging.”
“Yeah. We’ve heard. You’re not the only one to flee the Ibsen Group. How does your tracking ability work?”
“Like this.” Ros raised her hands and said the cantrip, which was a long series of otherwise meaningless syllables. The Echoes of Brandon and Martin appeared, close to where they were standing. She dialed time backwards until a the two men arrived and three others who were waiting there left. Since time was still moving backwards, they watched the three men as they were left by two girls who ran to get help. Then the team who found the bodies arrived. Another hour went backwards as the empty corridor waited.
“No bodies?” Brandon asked.
“It only tracks living or at least animated things.” Ros said tightly. Her mind was starting to feel the strain.
Suddenly the backs of three men in masks with hoods and black cloth, ninja-looking, suits appeared, in one of the hallways and walked backwards to the scene. Thirty minutes earlier the dead team was fighting them.
Ros paused the scene and played it forward. They saw the dead team blink out one by one and watched the thieves strip them of their belongings.
“One of you go tell Franklin we’re tracking them.” Brandon said.
The guys paused and Merle left.
Ros got to where the perpetrators were walking away and started following them. She took a mental stamina potion, which made her feel rested and alert. She really wished she already had her resilience stat unlocked. Grinding the first levels of the quests could not come fast enough.
The black clothed thieves ducked into a room, changed their clothes and congratulated each other with fist bumps and laughter. Ros was glad she couldn’t hear what they said.
They left the room and walked casually north into G section. They went down one level into the orange section and stopped at another room, a four bedroom suite.
The door was blocked from the inside. Ros Blinked inside without warning anyone and unbarred the door. She let the guys in and barred the door behind them.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The ghostly echoes of the perpetrators made a bunch of fist bumps and separated into three of the four bedrooms. Ros cut the spell just before they entered their rooms. She made silent gestures for two of the men to check the last room. Brandon gave her an odd look as he signed ‘all clear’ for that room. She nodded and assigned two of them to take two of the doors and indicated she would take the third. Brandon crossed his arms and gave her a ‘no way’ look.
She assigned Martin one, Axel and Del the other and told Brandon to back her up. He nodded. They no knocked all three doors at the same time.
The dweeb in the room Ros entered was jerking off in his bed. Naked and alone. She went from empty handed to stunning the guy with a stun rifle in less time than it took for him to take his hand off his dick. She got the stunner earlier that day in the big loot rolling extravaganza.
There was a thud and another whine of a stunner behind them.
“Stunner?” Brandon asked, surprised.
She shrugged. “We didn’t discuss level of force or rules of engagement.”
“The fourth room was uninhabited. What were you? Swat? Special Forces?” Brandon demanded.
She blinked slowly and pursed her lips. “Virtual Reality Games.” She lied flatly.
Brandon shook his head like he didn’t believe her. Martin peeked in.
“Well. I guess we take them to Franklin?” Martin had a knocked out body over his shoulder.
“We caught them red handed, jacking people in our section. Franklin will ask why we didn’t kill them.” Brandon said dryly. “Del and Axel used a stunner too, didn’t they?”
“Think so.” Martin shrugged.
“This is why.” Ros tore the bed sheet into strips, which she used to tie the one she’d stunned to the shower curtain rod in the lav, directing Brandon to hold his arms to the bar. His toes were just barely on the floor.
“Good idea. I’ll do the other one.” Martin left the room.
She Examined the prisoner.
Rory Jacobs
Physique- Human(base)
HP-293
MP-679
“Not Fourth Wave.” She said. “He’s too strong.” She injected him with a stimulant from the mess of pharmaceuticals that came with her necklace.
Rory jerked awake and moaned. “Shit. What just happened?”
“Well, why don’t you tell me why you killed five people and posed them obscenely.” Ros purred, touching the man’s chest and abdomen.
“Huh?” Rory looked at her. “I didn’t do that.” He seemed confident. “Just a little lower sweetheart.”
“We traced you directly from the scene, you changed clothes and came directly back here.” Brandon said.
“You couldn’t have. I’ve got anti tracking shoes.” The idiot said. “You couldn’t track me if you tried.”
Ros glanced at Brandon and signed that she was taking point. He crossed arms and leaned against the wall.
Ros activated her Butterfly Sense and imagined letting the man go. She instantly knew he would kill again. Tensions would rise between groups. The war would be inevitable. Worse, the group had been searching for women to steal. They would rape and kidnap.
“What’s that?” Rory demanded. “What kind of spell is that?”
“Chaos spell. It helps me know what to believe.” Ros let her hand range lower, teasing around his groin. “You killed those boys, but they weren’t even who you were looking for. Why did you kill them?”
“We didn’t.” He said. “Please just touch me. I’ll be quick. I promise. I’ll tell you the truth, anything you want to know.”
Ros asked her butterflies what he’d do if she touched his cock. Tell her everything she wanted to know was the immediate answer. So she palmed his shaft.
Brandon growled in disgust behind her.
“The coins. Humans are worth more coins. Are you going to kill me for the coins?”
“No. If I end up killing you, the coins will go to the community of the men you killed. Don’t worry about dying. Tell me. Are you working with anyone else. There were three of you.”
“No.” He groaned. “Nobody else. We don’t want that secret to get out among the Fourth Wave: how much coin humans drop. The Second Wavers were killing us off for the coin until we third wave banded together and stopped them.”
Ros looked at Brandon and he nodded. That was true.
“So you decided to do the same thing to the new newbies?”
“Yeah. No!” He jerked back. “We weren’t planning to kill anyone. They got aggressive saying we were kill stealing and we turned them into a circle jerk because they were being such jerkoffs. We were just looking for some girls to… to… oh please, please, I just want to cum.”
She squeezed. “Why not just find some of your own Fourth Wave girls?”
“The jerks are hogging them all. They said we couldn’t stay. They just want all the girls for themselves.”
Ros used her butterflies to ask the probable outcome of torturing this guy until he confessed to collaborating or being sent to kill the newbies. Innocent people would invariably die. She asked the butterflies what would happen if she just killed him right now. Nothing. If all three murderers died, the killings would stop.
She renewed her skilled handling of his body. Then, as he was getting into it she stopped. “Tell me about the jerks. How are they hiding the women?”
“Just getting between us and them. Please. I’m so close.”
She resumed slowly, “Have you observed anyone keeping people hostage or prisoner?”
“Naw. That bitch just complained that Nedri was bothering her and they kicked us all out.”
“Thank you, Rory.” Ros stroked him gently. “Anything else I should know?”
“Please let me cum. I’ll be your willing slave forever. I’ll be so loyal. Don’t kill me.”
Ros asked the butterflies if he had anything else to tell her and her senses shrugged a big old no. She stunned him with her stun rifle again.
“You didn’t let him cum.” Brandon said.
Ros turned and washed her hands at the sink. “He’s a pathetic incel. I hope we’re killing them.”
“Oh yeah. Martin already killed the one he went after. They thought we couldn’t track him?”
“My tracking spell is B grade. Without a spell tracking their life force instead of their movements we wouldn’t have found them. Do you want to speak to the other one?”
“Martin already is.” Brandon stepped forward and stuck a knife through Rory’s heart. “I hate doing that.”
“You should have let me if you’re squeamish. I was serious about giving the coin to the community.”
Brandon shook his head. “Couldn’t put that on you. Christine, Roslyn, whatever you’re calling yourself now.”
Ros cut the body down. “We’re putting him in the recycle. If they had recycled their kills we still wouldn’t know the group they killed was dead.”
“That is somehow not reassuring.” He watched her easily carry the skinny man to the replicator in the bedroom. He helped her feed the body into the unit. He led the way in scouring the drawers and hidden places for any defining characteristics that would give away who had lived here.
Ros didn’t see the bloody mess Martin made of the third murderer, but she did see the blood in the bathroom. Thankfully it would dust out in less than a day. Blood and bodies didn’t last in the First Realm.
“They were working alone.” Martin said, emerging from the bathroom in the fourth bedroom, where he’d been showering off his bloody torture session. “They got kicked out of the main group for harassing the women. Apparently they were desperate incels.”
“That’s what we got too.” Brandon said. “The room is clean except for the bathroom. Whatever blood is left will be gone by morning. Let’s go.”
“What ridiculous, disgusting creeps.” Axel said. “If girls don’t like you, make a change, don’t go around killing people for your own character deficiencies. Sorry. Incels just make me that mad.”
Ros eyed the men. “If we hadn’t found them and they kept killing, how long do you think it would have been before our loosely associated group went attacking whoever we thought the most likely perpetrators were?”
“Fourth or fifth massacre scene?” Martin shrugged. “I would have guessed Ibsen first. If they’re building a nice little super controlling dictatorship over there.”
“Still benevolent for the time being.” Ros said. “But you’re right, potentially they are a problem.”
The group left the apartment and Ros led the way down a flight of stairs, through the orange section and into their home section.
“Why down not up?” Martin asked.
“I assumed you and Brandon had cleared orange and probably red too. Less chance of being seen at the crossing.” Not that the crossing was more than a six foot bridge for adjacent buildings.
“So what branch of the special forces were you?” Martin asked. “Or were you CIA or KGB?”
“None of the above.” Ros grinned. “Gamer chick.”
“Really…” Martin drawled. “What did you play.”
She eyed him. “I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you.”
“So definitely spy.” Brandon said. “Only a spy would think to torture someone by giving him a handjob.”
“Hey, he didn’t cum.” Ros said defensively. “And I washed my hands. I used that butterfly awareness spell to ask the universe what the best way to get him to talk would be and I followed that suggestion. He’d have lied if we hurt him.”
The men around her just shook their heads and glanced around nervously at each other. They all thought they’d tell her anything she wanted to know too.
Finally they made it to the center lift and went up the elevator to the casino VIP room where Franklin had a station map and a bunch of intelligence reports scattered around.
He looked a little frantic when the group walked in.
“Three third wave assholes working alone, exiled from G’s green zone.” Brandon reported in a no nonsense tone. “They were socially awkward, involuntarily celibate and looking for girls to rape. The situation is resolved. We weren’t seen.”
Franklin slumped. “Well. That’s a relief. Roslyn or Christine?”
“Both.” She admitted sheepishly. “I was scoping you out to see if the pirates needed culling.”
Franklin laughed. “Privateers.”
“Yeah. It’s just that groups who call themselves pirate names might suddenly go around raping and pillaging. Can’t be too careful. On the other hand, I did decide to live here. Do you mind if I take a look?” She indicated his mountain of papers and reports. “I have a chaos magic ability to predict how my actions will impact the world.”
“Are you asking to become an advisor?”
Ros activated the butterflies and contemplated various courses of action. “No.” She said finally. “And you don’t need advisors, because you are not a leader.”
She looked around and contemplated the Second Wave guys using both her memories and her ability. “Martin will organize the Third wave to each mentor up to four or five Fourth Wavers at a time. Build an informal, interconnected web of human relationships.”
Ros pulled out the notebook she kept tearing sheets out of. The sheets replaced themselves, this was a vestibule item. Sheets that had writing on them stayed as they were. She started drawing as she spoke:
“This is how it works best. No insignias, no group name. You’re at the top and you have ten or twenty people who you check in with every day. They go out with their newbies in the morning and their regular teams in the afternoon. The regular teams do the same thing. The group of four or five experienced people train four newbies each and keep in training with their trusted companions for half the day. None of the hunting zones are overnight treks.”
She was sketching the idea as a pyramid. “In a year, when ten thousand people enter through the observation deck in this section alone, the groups have another level. All of this years newbies train up a party too.”
“Why not all the Third Wave?” Brandon crossed his arms.
“Because there’s no coercion, no strong arming the third wave. They won’t all want to do it. Until they realize how many of the quest chains have repeatable stages. I think within…” she used her butterflies for a few queries. “Three months every resident of H section will be on board, sharing information up the chain of a command they’re not actively aware of.”
“Why me. Why not Brandon or Franklin or both?”
Ros considered all sorts of things she could say, magical butterflies visibly fluttering all over the place.
“Because you have the temperament to pull it off without being an ass. Franklin gets frustrated and reacts to the situation around him. Brandon.” She looked at him a long moment. No butterflies. She didn’t need them. His temperament wasn’t as suited to leadership as Martin’s or even Franklin’s.
She sighed. “Is leading the people who aren’t participating in your organized training, the hotheads and I am his entire Newbie team. His new girlfriend maybe. Or however we decide to play it. Use the excuse of the dead team to convince the reluctant.”
She paused again. “Martin. Go to each solid team in the other sections quietly and ask them as a community service, to help you protect the squishy little newbies. The more people we have under Martin the more stable the entire station will be. We are private citizens choosing who to work with, not a group with a leader. That is our strength and our weakness. By the time the sixth wave comes, 100,000 new people per section, all at once, you’ll have their mentors all lined up.”
This was how her party had grown into a two hundred person raid. Albeit in a much slower and much more organic way.
“Well. I like it.” Franklin said. “Should I be supporting or opposing each of them”
Ros let her butterflies tease through the possibilities. “You reinforce the desire of anyone who seeks your advice. If they say they don’t want to mess with newbies tell them they don’t have to. If they seem like they want to, but are confused or reluctant, tell them it sounds like a good idea. If they’re doing it already, tell them to do two runs a day with two sets of newbies and still hunt with their main team for fun and to hunt bigger monsters.”
“I like it.” Brandon said suddenly. “One question. Why am I paired with you?”
Ros let the butterflies flutter a few times. “Because the three of you are having an ideological disagreement. It doesn’t have to be an angry argument. You’re still hunting together, unless it becomes out of character.” She fluttered the butterflies one more time. “And Franklin might head to the city for a while. He still needs to hunt Moon Wurms. We each need 1,111 Moon Wurm spikes.” One thousand, eleventy one.
“Are there so many Wurms in the whole world for everyone to get 1,111?”
“They’re monsters.” Ros said. “Monsters don’t breed. They spawn. The only monsters I know of that have sex organs are the Cerberus dogs and they’re all male. No. That’s the difference between the monsters of the station buildings and the beasts in the city. The beasts are breeding populations, mostly edible to humans.”
“Ros, you’re doing the seer thing again.”
Ros blew a breath out and made a face at Del.
“She can’t help it.” Axel said, arms crossed. “I think we should follow her plan and I think Doug and Shirl will help.”
“Seer?” Franklin asked suddenly. “As in Moira the?”
Ros rubbed her forehead. “Yeah. Sorry. I meant to keep it secret, but I can’t help blabbing premonitions like certainties. I need to get everything I know on the net and I need to get through the first set of quests as quickly as possible to get the quest information accurately portrayed.
“What I know about the quests has already changed just in the hell hounds quests. I didn’t know there was a place to grind Cerberus testicles until I asked the quest giver. I also really need people I can talk to so I say things I don’t know I knew. My prophetic knowledge is like the ghosts of memories I found in my dreams, like it’s all removed from the present by like thirty years.” She shrugged. “So a lot of the time if I don’t think about important details they’re just buried.”
“What is your goal?” Franklin asked.
“To have as many humans achieve their full potential as possible.” She paused. “Not the potential of what the best genius could ever attain, their personal best life, to the best of their mental and spiritual needs.”
“And that is why we’re following her plan.” Franklin said. “I’ll go to the city for the first wave meeting and be back at the next available train. While I’m gone, you two move the plan forward. In the meantime, Brandon and I will grind the quests with the seer. No one better to shield the squishy newcomer seer than the two or three of us. Martin, don’t miss a moment of time getting your people organized. Start now. Take those two. Get a meeting of the entire Third Wave if you can get them all to answer their comms. Who do I owe 500,000 coin?”
“Ros is the tracker.” Del said. “We just escorted.”
“If I cared about the money I would not have just spent 29 mil on a new tracking skill.” Ros said. “I’m good. It fits my apparent character as the seer if I can track criminals from crime scenes. Also, no offense, Franklin, but Brandon and I will be enough for my training. You and I should not be seen as close: I need to be on the outside of any group, tribe or nation. My actions need to be several levels removed from any leadership or there will be a war.”
“War?”
“Humans are inherently tribal. Any threat, any outsider. Take this recent murder. Imagine for a moment that the bandits were untraceable. Imagine they kept killing and they began stealing women. What would your community do?”
“Take the fight to them.”
“And if all the clues they left pointed to the innocent? To Ibsen or Dorset?”
“The Ibsen group is a bunch of crooked misers who are holding their Fourth Wave hostage.” Franklin said hotly. “The Dorset Battalion had an enforced polyandry starting at the beginning of the third wave. Their male to female ratio was as jacked as ours was. At least we didn’t force our women into six and seven man marriages.”
“Uh huh? And if you had a suspicion they were stealing your women too, would you go on a rampage, kill all their men and bring the women back to H where you would let them choose who they had sex with?”
Martin, Brandon and Franklin looked at each other. Franklin coughed in embarrassment, all anger fading from his face.
“Maybe.” Martin said cagily.
“I mean we were talking about it before the Fourth Wave arrived. Even the Dorsets are more gender balanced now.” Franklin said defensively.
Ros tried not to smile. “And if it looked like they were the cause of the deaths?”
“Yeah.” Brandon said, glancing at Franklin. “We’d have done it and felt good about it after.”
Ros nodded. “And to the outside world you would have been monstrous pirates just getting your own way, killing the men and keeping the women. You would begin to attract the worst sorts of people to your organization, and you would be irrevocably an organization with a hierarchy. That’s how wars work. And yet you would not be the worst villains around. Those would be the groups trying to emulate what they thought you were, and who would be locked in skirmishing wars with you for years.”
“By becoming pirates we inspire worse pirates.” Brandon nodded. “That’s what you were saying at the beginning, Franklin, before we decided what to do about the third wave. So. Ros, you want to both organize us and keep yourself out of the chain of command.”
“Yes. And keep a council at the top of the chain of command who can tell the leader, Martin, when he’s behaving like an ass. I’ll be advising that council from afar. You and Franklin and maybe a few of Franklin’s friends if he knows any strong people without organizational ties.”
Franklin pursed his lips. “I mean I could talk to some people.” He shrugged.
“The station quests are just the beginning.” Ros said. “The city has a whole mess of secrets to parse out. I think I should be leaving this room.”
“Here. I can print all of this again.” Franklin gathered up all the files, folders and reports. “I only print it all- replicate it, I mean- to make it look like I’m busy.” He got the papers in one pile and then added a pile of four file boxes. “And I usually don’t throw anything away. Keep in mind, it’s all biased. There’s at least one person in each station sending reports to the First Wave coalition. Some of them are single paragraphs, some are longer reports. Not that the whole network is First Wave, or that we’ve got the allegiance of even half of the remaining First wave, just that the network started all the way back when there were only ten people at each station and we mostly communicated in private messages and forum posts. Hey. Should we move most of our people to the city?”
“There aren’t any Moon Wurms at the city. Otherwise.” She shrugged.
“What do the butterflies say?”
Ros pursed her lips and activated the ability. She let it run through several scenarios. “Nothing currently indicates any truly negative outcomes.” She shrugged. “I do have one observation. The worst villains among humanity always seem to genuinely think they have everyone else’s best interests at heart. Therefore, don’t start relying on the seer to be infallible. There is every possibility that I end up the evil queen.”
Franklin grinned broadly. “Get some sleep. I’ll be here for breakfast and we can start your quests wherever you are.”
“And catch you up on any repeatable ones you haven’t finished.” She smiled ruefully. “A large percentage of humanity is poised to leave the First Realm in a few years without completely taking advantage of the boost in stats the stations are intended to provide.”
Franklin looked amused. “I think I’m going to like you.”