Camp

Despite taking Ramshackle's key structures, neither Nai nor Tasser relaxed.

Nai had taken the direct route through the tents. Despite the scale of the fiery tornadoes, she actually hadn't destroyed much of the camp.

But that meant there would be plenty of Vorak left behind in the scramble to evacuate.

<Caleb,> Nai sent, <if I got you to this building, could you modulate your radar and help me sweep the camp? I don't want lurking Vorak cutting our people's throats when we sleep tonight.>

<Yeah, I could help. I'm guessing you don't want us to just drive in?>

<Dira, no,> Nai agreed. <Could you imagine how bad it would be if one of them got lucky and shot you? Tasser, go figure out a way to get Caleb here safely.>

<Acknowledged,> he replied.

<You know, given how much I've been shot at,> I mused. <I'm a little surprised I haven't actually been hit.>

<We've been doing such a good job keeping you out of the firing line,> Tasser bragged. <This First Contact stuff isn't so hard.>

<That's a very low bar,> I pointed out.

<And yet without us, your face would have walked right into it,> he said, injecting smugness into the mental connection better than Nai or I could.

<Just get me where I need to be, you [maniac],> I told him.

·····

Nemuleki was the one to wind up picking us up.

She took two spare soldiers and drove three of our vehicles into the hills where my chaperones had been keeping Itun at gunpoint.

Nai had been correct. He was a cooperative prisoner.

The soldiers split up between the two other cars and I hopped in the front seat next to Nemuleki.

She was dead quiet while we waited on the other cars to get ready and throw Itun in the trunk. Her hands seemed like they were trying to wring the last drop of moisture out of the vehicle's steering joystick.

"You know, if you're trying to choke the car, you might have better luck if you plugged the tailpipe first," I said.

"What are you dira saying?" she asked.

"You look like you're trying to strangle the joystick there," I said. "What's on your mind?"

"Leave it," she dismissed. "It's nothing."

"…Okay," I told her. "But I do have a unique perspective on…well, everything."

"I'm frustrated, all right?" she snapped. "I was supposed to be leading my half of the attack, and I faltered."

"You lost me," I told her.

"…The plan was to use Nai's fires to cover our approach to the structure right? I choked up when she brought up the flames. I forgot to hold my breath, and I almost passed out. The only reason no one died is because Tasser was ready and took over."

Ah. That made sense. Nai's fiery tornadoes would not have left much air inside to breathe.

"Are you upset with him?"

"I'm upset with me," she said.

"Oh, where have I heard that before?"

"It's not the same," Nemuleki said. "You never asked for any of this. You were never responsible for Letrin's safety. But I signed up. I enlisted. I accepted the responsibility."

"…[Nah.] Sorry, I'm not letting you get away with that," I said, "Less than a day ago you were stinging my ears that I can't blame myself for Letrin's death. You made a mistake. [Suck it up, buttercup.] 'You shoot guns', remember?"

"I was in command," she spat. "Only, I wasn't. And I should have been."

"Nemuleki, I can confidently tell you, no one alive isn't afraid of Nai's fire. That stuff is terrifying."

"I was the only one who froze," she complained.

"I doubt it," I told her. "I was a mile away and I still got shivers watching her summon that much vorpal fire."

"…It scared me the first time I saw it too," she admitted. "It was just her and she brought down that whole tunnel all on her own. I thought I was over it by now."

"I tried to shoot her the first time I saw her," I admitted back.

Nemuleki snorted reluctantly.

"How'd that work out for you?"

"Pretty well, actually," I said easily. "I'll admit, I had to take some chances, but I wound up in some good company."

"She didn't just kill you?"

"Obviously not," I snorted. "You were there for the second half. I ran into Tasser, gave up the gun, and that got Nai to at least hold off."

"You're trying to distract me."

"I am. I get it, and you know I do."

She gave a click for 'yes', and at least seemed a little less on edge as we drove into Ramshackle.

"Alright, get up to the roof," Nemuleki told me. "Nai's waiting on you."

I gave her a thumbs up before she drove off to reunite with the Casti who would be sweeping the tents alongside Nai.

The concrete building Nai wanted me in loomed, and I was tempted to climb straight up the wall, just for fun. But given that there might be the odd Vorak still lurking, it probably wasn't a good idea to be visibly exposed like that.

·····

From the moment Daniel had shown me how to get under its hood, the psionic radar and its range had demanded a number of questions.

Even before that, I'd figured I could deform its shape. Instead of sensing in every direction equally, I could bias the focus. It let me stretch the radar further in one direction at the expense of being blind in every other direction.

Configurations for the radar went well beyond just shaping the sensory area. But there were so many variables, it was incredibly difficult to figure out just how different configurations affected different elements of the radar.

But I was confirming more and more that twisting the radar into an irregular shape came at the cost of clarity.

To get the radar to expand far enough to reach the edge of Ramshackle's tent city, I'd made the sensory area a very long and narrow ellipse. That confirmed something else too, the accuracy was further hampered if I wasn't at the center of it.

But for our purposes today, low accuracy would be enough. I didn't need to detect minds' locations down to the inch, to point out where Nai should look.

Eight Vorak were too slow to evacuate. The Prowlers' documents had listed ninety-one soldiers and engineers temporarily stationed here. Last month there had been twice that number, but they'd been moved elsewhere in the region.

The unfortunate eight did a better job defending Ramshackle than everyone else combined too.

One of them stole into the throngs of tents with a radio jammer. If Nai and I hadn't cracked telepathy, we would have been in real trouble.

But we could afford to take our time sweeping my deformed radar field across the base.

Nai even had an inspiration to repurpose her mirror.

<Try again,> Nai told me. <I can almost make it out.>

If the radar picked up on the proverbial passive infrared glow of minds, and our psionic telepathy worked on a bit more active emission of signals, then what Nai was trying now was akin to a psionic x-ray, from much further up the spectrum.

I aimed one of the radar's sub constructs at her own mental mirror. The signal scattered away in the direction she aimed it.

None of the return scatter reached me, but I watched Nai's eyes widen a bit.

<You get anything from that?> I asked.

<…>

<Nai?>

<Yes, sorry,> she said, snapping out of it. <Tasser, there's one more. They're twenty meters in front of me, looks like they're in the scaffolding of one of the vehicle tents.>

<Got them,> Tasser said.

Thankfully there were no gunshots. The Vorak came quietly.

<You all right?> I asked.

<Yes,> she reassured. <It was just the feedback I got from the reflected signal. I felt like I… grasped some of this psionic stuff a bit more.>

<I'm rather interested in what psionics someone else comes up with,> I admitted.

<Do…do you have an idea of just what might be possible with this?>

<I have truly no idea,> I told her.

·····

A few hours later, I wasn't really needed.

Tasser and Nemuleki were busy taking inventory of the many things the Vorak had left behind. Generators, vehicles, communications equipment, rockets, and apparently an 'unrestricted' fabricator, which was apparently a huge deal.

But I was surprised where they'd assigned me a bunk.

Instead of putting me inside the extremely fortified concrete building, I was in one of the tents.

Admittedly, it was an elegant hiding spot. Instead of using the tent's entrance, I'd taken a tunnel that branched out from the basement of Ramshackle's launch control building. It led to a ladder that delivered me into a tent that, until very recently, had been reserved as an access point to the maze of small tunnels and power conduits that were buried around Ramshackle.

I was busy trying to devise a way to copy and disassemble my radar for sharing. It was a gargantuan problem, but I was taking it one bite at a time.

An interruption came in the form of a collapsible cot springing up from the ladder in the ground only to fall awkwardly and tumble partially back into the hole. Another toss, not quite forceful enough to clear the hole.

"A little help?" Nai asked. "I don't want to throw it through the roof."

I took a breath, ducking outside of the air bubble I'd set up by my own cot, and took hold of Nai's cargo while she climbed the ladder.

"What brings you here?" I asked. "I thought Tasser and I were the only ones crashing here."

There was a vehicle waiting in the adjacent tent in case I needed to be elsewhere in a hurry.

"I just want to breathe tonight," Nai said. "And yours is the only intact air bubble in the whole camp."

"Really?"

"…One of the tents I torched had some of the atmospheric equipment. And it would take too long to fabricate my own."

"[Ouch,]" I said, trying not to laugh.

"I just don't want to sleep with a mask on," she said. "It's been a long day, and if you and Tasser are sleeping here, can't I too?"

I moved the air bubble generator to a spot that would envelop both head-ends of the cots. The sphere it produced could go as large as two meters, it was more than enough for two heads.

"Your berth was next to mine in our room at the Green Complex," I recalled. "Was that on purpose?"

"No idea what you're talking about," she lied, lying down.

"It's a bit early to turn in isn't it?" I asked. It was only late afternoon.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Soldiers never miss a chance to rest when they need it," she responded sagely.

I had been taking advantage of the solitude to do further psionic experiments to share more complex constructs. But Nai napping a few feet away made me self-conscious about how motionless I was, wrapped up in my own head.

Self-conscious perhaps, but not actually uncomfortable. Tasser and I had spent endless hours fighting off silence, but there had been just as many hours where we hadn't said a thing. I was surprised I'd almost forgotten, but there's nothing wrong with a little quiet.

Nai was right. It definitely beat getting shot at.

She made me frown though. It seemed like she'd fallen asleep in seconds, but unless I mistook my extra senses…

I touched a foot to the floor of the tent and cascaded the ground. Nai's cascade conspicuously lacked its usual blatantness, but even as quiet as it was, the cascade was still spreading in every direction.

"Is that on purpose?" I asked.

"Mmm," she grunted. "A little. Old habit."

"You are so stock still it looks like you're asleep, or maybe dead."

"It was…a busy day," she breathed, doing her best to hide the exhaustion at the edge of her voice.

It occurred to me that I might be one of the few people to have truly seen the Warlock spent. This is only a hint of the weariness she'd shown immediately after Korbanok.

"Why keep the cascade up then?"

"I'm not trying to sleep, Caleb," she sighed. "Just resting. Cascading is easy. Relaxing, even."

"Can I pick your brain then?"

"…Sure. What about?"

"I've just been thinking a lot about Adeptry, and seeing you today…and now like this? There's a price to your power after all." I guessed. "The last time I saw you like this we were on the run."

<Unlike then, I didn't go over my limit today,> she said, apparently too tired to move her mouth. <But I came a lot closer than I meant to. This is the first time I really burned something since Korbanok.>

<What exactly is your limit?> I asked, noting her phrasing. She hadn't said 'mass' limit. <Because you just made enough fire to ash an army if you shaped it differently.>

<…Time,> she admitted. <I can make just about as much matter as I want. But for the high energy stuff? Creating more fire doesn't really change the overhead that much. It's only a little harder to double the amount of fire I have, but to make it last twice as long is quite taxing. Quantity isn't my limit, it's duration.>

<And you went into overtime on Korbanok?> I guessed.

<Way over,> she confirmed. <If you think this was big, you should have seen what I did then. If I'm doing fires bigger than I am, I generally think of my limit as nearabout ten minutes. Fires smaller than that and I can go a lot longer, but there's a clock if I want to do any really impressive burns.>

<So Vather isn't your natural enemy,> I realized. <It's an Adept who can stay in the fight longer than you can fuel the vorpal fire.>

<And guess who the Red Sails had on Korbanok?>

<Some Rak immune to your flames?>

<The biggest scrape I've ever seen,> she confirmed. <There's some Vorak who turn augmentations into an artform. Instead of just improving the existing structures, they add new ones, big and small.>

<Like extra limbs or something?>

<Sometimes,> she nodded. <Building weapons out of their body, creating redundant organs, new cell structures, I've even heard of someone who figured out how to change the shape of their skeleton to look like other species.>

<Mirsus Bandee,> I recalled. <You thought I was that shapeshifter.>

<It seemed a more feasible idea at the time,> she pouted.

<How does that work?> I asked bewildered. <Adeptry is just creating, addition. How can you change the shape of existing matter like that?>

<Just because we can't wrap our heads around it doesn't mean they can't. The best Adepts understand their own tricks like no one else can,> she said. <The Adept I fought on Korbanok was as close to invulnerable as I've ever seen. I didn't just burn them for longer, I pushed it…well, 'hotter' than ever before too.>

<Was it not actually hotter flames?>

<Not really,> she said. <I messed with the specific heat…well it's complicated. Point is this rak didn't burn. I don't know how, but they just absorbed the energy right out of what I made and used it to grow bigger and bigger. They were just a massive monster.>

<That sounds even more ridiculous than the extra limbs.>

<I've run into Adepts who added to their size before,> she complained. <But that was the first one I've seen who could make their body just drink up energy like that.>

<How does that work then?> I asked. <If you understand what your fire does, then doesn't that mean you have to know how it reacts to anything?>

<That's why it's all the more important to know what you're making,> she replied. <Because some other Adept is going to make something you don't understand, and if you don't know what you're making either? It's a recipe for disaster enough with one half of the equation unknown, much less both.>

<So could you use what you know about your fire to figure out how the rak endured it?>

<Maybe,> she said. <You know I don't really make fire, right?>

<Sorta?> I said. <Try me with an explanation.>

She eyed me for a moment, and it seemed like some of her old suspicions were playing out between her ears.

But after a few moments she said nothing. Instead, making a dark grey orb about the side of a baseball, only to form a thick layer of glass overtop it.

<Watch closely,> she said, and the dark grey core to the orb decomposed under the glass.

A vacuum, I realized. Adept materials didn't decompose into gasses or any other matter. They just stopped existing. I hadn't even thought of displacing air that way. There probably weren't even a billion atoms inside her vacuum sphere.

A droplet of navy liquid wobbled into existence inside the empty clear sphere.

"What is that?"

<That is the 'vorpal' part of my fire,> she answered. <It took me years to figure out what exactly I was making, but it's an exotic fluid.>

<Very exotic,> I said. <Why is it floating?>

<Guess.>

<It doesn't interact much with gravity?>

<Correct,> she said. <I can't move the glass sphere though. The fluid will burn right through it if it touches.> She materialized a short thin rod like a chopstick. <It doesn't interact with the glass. You can push it right through and feed it to the 'vorpal'.>

Hesitantly, I did so. The stick passed right through the surface of the glass like it was just a suggestion. The tip of the stick brushed against the quivering bubble of dark liquid and teal sparks spat out, caught by the glass sphere.

I pressed more of the stick into the liquid, a proper teal flame bursting out of the dark liquid as it erased the portion of the stick that dipped into it.

Whatever touched the liquid was just gone.

I could even take the stick and brush the side of it against the sinister droplet a few times. After the teal sparks subsided, there were perfect semicircular divots burnt into the stick like bites out of a cob of corn.

<Whoa...> I grinned.

<You want to see something really crazy?> she asked.

<...Sure?> I asked.

Nai reached her hand toward the glass, and just like the chopstick, her finger poked right through toward the fluid.

"[Waitwait—]" I blurted out as I saw she was actually going to touch it.

But instead of burning her finger, she just poked the navy blob. It quivered in the middle of the glass sphere, but didn't spit out any sparks or teal flames.

<...Huh?> I asked. <I thought vorpal fire burned anything.>

<It can,> she said. <Took me years to figure out exactly how it worked, but I can decide what the fluid burns by altering its composition. The material has completely unintuitive heat capacity. Ordinary hot matter starts losing heat on contact, no matter what it touches. Vorpal fire retains its heat unless it's in contact with exactly the material I've configured it to burn.>

I materialized an ice cube and checked with Nai.

She gave a nod, and I dropped the cube through the glass where it didn't melt at all, just bouncing off the fluid to the ground.

Nai then created a small metal cube and did the same, only this time the cube turned to slag in the blink of an eye. She dematerialized the new molten slag before it could fall to the ground, but I was transfixed by the demonstration. My brain was bending like a contortionist.

How did that work?

<I could talk about subatomic carrier particles or atomic-scale heat transfer, but...>

My brain was trying to scrounge up everything it could on AP Physics. Or was this more chemistry? The questions suddenly made me miss going to school every morning.

<How?> I blubbered.

<You have a look on your face like you're about to throw up,> she said. <Or maybe suffocate.>

<Sorry, I'm just…this is a crazy enough topic on its own. But the last time I talked science like this was back on Earth. You reminded me of a classmate of mine.>

<I was actually having some fun explaining it,> she teased. <Next I was going to talk about how the fluid can actually induce nuclear alterations in atoms and convert their mass to helium to fuel the thermal reaction without actually—>

<[Omigosh,] stop,> I pleaded.

<You asked.>

<You've raised the price of the answer,> I pouted.

<…You kept coming to me for help with Adeptry,> she said. <Even before…>

<—we reached an understanding—> I suggested.

<Even before we reached an understanding,> she agreed. <What kept you taking a risk like that?>

<You thought it was weird that I was so upbeat,> I said. It wasn't a question. <I'm trying not to have any illusions about the situation I'm in. I want to get home. I'm determined and driven to make it back…>

<…But not hopeful,> she whispered, landing on my idea a heartbeat too quickly to be coincidence. <You're worried about everything you can't know is, or is going to be in your way.>

<Yes.> To both.

<First Sendin Marfek, now Vather and Itun,> she said. <You're not stupid. You've known from the start the Vorak are after you. You're trying to figure out how to be a better Adept than whoever they send after you.>

I nodded.

<I'm trying to learn what the advantages come down to,> I said. <Saying it out loud feels silly, but I want to know what makes some Adepts better than others.>

<Isn't it obvious?> she asked.

I gave her a blank stare. For every Adept power I'd seen, there seemed to be another that could completely trump it. It wasn't a transitive game.

<What is Adeptry?> she asked. <In the simplest terms?>

<We create things,> I said. <But we can't make just anything. There are limits. We can only create so much, so close, and so carefully,> I said, but Nai shook her head.

<Don't fixate on magnitude, reach, or precision. Those aren't what really matters for Adepts.>

She looked me in the eye.

"Great Adeptry comes from creativity, of course."

"That feels like a cheap answer…" I said.

She shrugged, lying back down and dissolving her example.

<Maybe it is. That doesn't make it any less true.>

<I've had to get pretty creative so far,> I pointed out. <But if I keep running into Vathers and [Chiefs] I'm going to strikeout eventually.>

No one batted a thousand.

<Do you understand why I gave Umtane that advice when he asked for Adept tips?>

<Tell me,> I asked.

<Because running away lets you try again,> she said. <Your strengths are in flexibility. There are virtues in practicing one trick and honing it to an artform. But not everyone understands that there's virtue in practicing a thousand tricks just well enough.>

<[Jack of all trades],> I said, <but master of none. You really think I can survive with just quantity over quality?>

<Quantity can be a quality all its own, Caleb. If psionics are even a tiny bit as versatile as I think they can be, you're going to be a monstrous Adept every bit as much as me, even if you're stuck at L1 for life.>

"…Thanks," I said. "I tried making Nemuleki feel better earlier. Seems like it was your turn now. I wonder if Tasser is going to give you a pep talk later…"

<Atthia,> she accused. Tasser used that phrase, a bit like saying 'smart-ass'. <You know, technically, we aren't friends. Our deal still stands.>

<Less and less, recently,> I mused.

<Not friends,> she chided.

<If you have to say it out loud, I think that undermines your point…>

"Say what out loud?" she asked innocently.

Hah.

·····

A knock on the frame of my tent stirred me awake. It was late. But I could hear a bustle out in the camp. I saw Nai and Tasser were both gone from their cots.

"You awake, human?"

I knew that voice.

"Dyn," I blurted out. "What are you doing here?"

"Ase Serralinitus brought me. You're going off-world," he said. "Someone had to make sure all your effects and belongings made it off the planet with you. It would have been a waste to leave all of it sitting in your supply closet back at Demon's Pit."

"Yeah? Do I get an itemized list? I left some pretty important stuff with you," I said.

"I'll say," the Farnata said, tossing me a phone.

I caught it, and my eyes widened.

Pushing my cascade into anything I was touching had quickly become a habit, and I'd done so the moment it touched my hand. Right now I could feel the internal workings of the phone—namely its battery.

And it was charged.

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