Cosmosis

Ramshackle

It was a full day of driving before we laid eyes on ‘Ramshackle’.

The roads cutting across wild reaches of the planet were intensely reminiscent of highways back in the US. Simple two-lane roads rolling, seemingly forever, in nearly straight lines. The only difference was the lack of fences and overhead wires. The road on its own wound up looking quite naturally occurring rather than built.

Tasser and I spent the time with more psionic testing, most of it tedious in the extreme. But that was a familiar routine for the two of us.

When we finally stopped in the hills a few miles from the spaceport, I had the opportunity to compare notes with Nai too.

Chief among our discoveries was a time limit: psionics wouldn’t last forever.

“They must decay,” Nai said. “Like momentary creations. It explains why Tasser can’t make any new pages like you.”

The three of us were circled around a small campfire—one that I was pretty sure Nai had materialized in its entirety. We were a few meters away from our circle of vehicles, nominally keeping watch while the others tried to get some sleep soon.

“You can’t make pages either,” I pointed out.

“I think that’s more aptitude than capability,” Nai insisted. “Tasser isn’t Adept. I think that intuitively extends to creating new psionics—he can’t make them, only utilize them.”

“Until very recently you could only utilize them too,” I pointed out.

“Believe me Caleb, no one’s more disappointed about it than I am,” Tasser said. “But I figured this would be the case when Nai first managed it.”

“There must be some way to enable him to make his own pages…” I said.

“Not as long as he’s not Adept,” Nai countered.

“No, no…come at this from another angle. What if instead of putting a page in his head, I could put something like a printer? A construct capable of making its own pages?”

“Following that metaphor, printers need to be supplied with blank pages to work, ink too,” Nai said. “You would probably need to establish a preexisting stock, but you’d also have to give him tools to define what he wanted to print on the page.”

“Psionic pens maybe…” I wondered. “Or maybe something that could link into your sight and capture images you saw, and record the image on a blank page…”

Optimizing Tasser’s transceiver had helped clarify the finer details of how psionic signals carried and transmitted sounds, surely images couldn’t be too much harder?

In fact, given that I could share pages, it seemed I already had.

One of the notes Daniel had left me was attached to one of our first psionic forays. The two of us had tried to draw one of the Vorak guarding me on Korbanok. I’d given the journal a few facelifts since then. It was better at recording what I saw with my eyes, becoming more and more like a photograph.

I tried to make one now.

The page in my mind was… off, but in an oddly perfect way. If I hadn’t spent the last week and a half elbow deep in psionics, I would have thought it was exactly what I wanted: a perfectly accurate image.

“Here,” I said to both of them. “Try to send this back to me exactly as you receive it.”

I added.

they both returned.

“I got it…” Nai said slowly. “Is this supposed to be us?”

I nodded. “Tried to capture the image exactly as I was seeing it now.”

“It’s terrible,” Tasser said honestly. “Believe me, Casti eyes can tell.”

“Well send it back, and let me see if I can start making progress. There has to be some way to compensate for the differences between our eyes.”

he replied.

<…Got it.>

Nai shoved back her copy of my snapshot too. Both copies were smudged, warped, each in different ways. Each image was degraded twice, once from me sending it to them and again when they returned the pictures.

Tasser’s images were blurrier, but the outlines of Ramshackle looming in the background were clearer. Nai’s had more clarity to them, but only a tiny bit. Shapes were heavily distorted, bending around the outside of the image. Her pictures kept colors consistent too.

I would need time to examine the images more. Audio was a relatively simple thing to account for. Relative differences in perception were limited to how complex sounds could be interpreted to be. And since we all spoke aural languages…

Images would be harder. A steady series of them even moreso…

It could wait.

“If psionics do decay,” I said, “and that’s a big ‘if’, why haven’t mine? I’ve been working with them for months, and the journal pages I made the first few days are still whole.”

“Could be a couple things,” Nai said.

“You included a preservation tool in what you gave me,” Tasser said. “Nai too.”

“But I didn’t make those tools until I’d already been using my psionics for months. It’s faint, but both of your psionics are showing degradation. I mean, I think they’ll still last a while—at least a month or two—but not forever,” I said.

“I can think of two possibilities based on what you’ve told us,” Nai said. “The first is that your original psionic construct has some repair function. If this is all metaphor, what’s to say psionics can’t repair psionics?”

“Could be,” I said. It did fit what little information we had. “The second?”

“The second is that psionics follow the same kind of non-conscious upkeep that augmentations do.”

“Elaborate please?”

“Remind Caleb what the three categories of Adept creation are?” Nai asked Tasser.

“Acute creation: stuff that doesn’t stick around. It fades virtually immediately. Momentary creations do stick around. They stay stable for a finite amount of time, and then they decompose into nothing. Indelible creations stick around indefinitely,” he said.

Nai turned to me, never missing a chance to educate me. “So, which of those do augmentations fit under?”

“…This is a trick question,” I guessed. “They’re not momentary, because they don’t just vanish from your body…but…”

“But they’re not indelible either because…?” she prompted.

“…because they can’t stick around forever either…because cells are constantly dividing and dying. You have to make new augmentations for your body’s new cells?”

“More or less correct,” she said. “Augmentations are generally thought of as somewhere between momentary and indelible creations. Your body automatically shores up any part of your augmentations that fade. I think your psionics might renew themselves similarly.”

“If that’s the case,” I pointed out, “won’t it be virtually impossible to see if my psionics are being upkept by the original mega-construct or by my subconscious doing Adept maintenance?”

“For you, yes,” she said. “But I don’t have the ‘mega-construct’. We can just see how my psionics degrade compared to Tasser’s.”

“Bah,” I said. “I hate experiments that take time.”

“And here you’re so patient when working with me,” Tasser chided.

“That’s because I can be confident the answer is a matter of asking the right question in the moment, not asking the right question and finding out four weeks from now.”

“Speaking of asking the right question now, as opposed to later,” Corphica interrupted, venturing over, “Rahi Nemuleki said she wanted to be proactive? How are we going to get Caleb a spacesuit?”

“I’m getting a spacesuit?” That was exciting!

“You think we’re going to knock over a spaceport, shoot you into orbit, and not make sure you’re in an airtight suit with as many redundancies as we can stuff it with?” Nai asked.

“Well I dropped onto this planet wearing a [hoodie] and [sweatpants] so, I really wasn’t sure.”

“It’s late, Mi,” Nai said. “We’ll go over the plan tomorrow morning. Get some rest, we’ll keep an eye out.”

I hadn’t known Corphica’s first name before now and was quite surprised to hear Nai using a first name.

Tasser was too.

He gave her some grief about it, and we laughed while the sun set. Some of the other soldiers wandered over instead of sleeping immediately. That drew out some more jibes and friendly antagonism about missing rest.

It was good fun.

It wasn’t strictly necessary on my part, but I stayed up with Tasser and Nai while they kept watch. Once it was too dark for a fire to stay hidden, Nai dematerialized it and picked out a vantage point at the top of the hill we were camping out on the side of.

Almost a mile from the road, and at least that many miles from the spaceport, there was no chance we’d be seen.

But our view of Ramshackle space port was clear.

It was exactly as horrifying as it sounded, because it was not a high-tech operation.

There was only one real structure, surrounded by dozens, maybe even hundreds, of tents. It was dark now, but in the daylight there had been heavy tubes running between tents—though that feature had only been visible through very strong binoculars. The structure itself was a three-story drab concrete building attached to a single paved road that branched into a spiderweb of dirt roads spreading out across the tent-city-turned-spaceport.

The only other feature of note was a stilt-tower with a small room built atop it, presumably some kind of watchtower or possibly air-traffic control.

It was the oddest collection of structures I’d ever laid eyes on, given that, when combined, they would be capable of launching us into orbit.

Tomorrow would be interesting at least.

·····

Early the next morning, I had the privilege of being allowed to hear the planning for our assault. The timeframe surprised me though. If things went well, we would control the spaceport by the end of the day, and a still unclear number of us would liftoff within the next three days.

“It’s definitely Prowlers in control,” Nemuleki observed. “Who would’ve thought they’d stick around this long?”

“Even a crappy spaceport is still a spaceport. It’s worth holding on to,” Nai replied. “Wurshken, what’s the headcount?”

“At least thirty so far,” the Casti said. “That’s just who’s in sight now. It’s almost guaranteed that we’re facing three times that number.”

Nai nodded. “What’s your recommended approach?”

Wurshken’s face twitched, and he hesitated to respond. “Would that be factoring you into our battle plan?”

“Yes,” Nai said, faintly amused.

“Then I have no recommendation. I can give you a plan for conventional assault, but I don’t know enough about you or Adepts in general to account for the differences.”

Nai nodded approvingly. She respected if you could admit ignorance. “The conventional assault then.”

“A swift attack,,” Wurshken replied. “The roads are unlikely to be trapped because of the site’s infrastructure and lack thereof. The roads that let them utilize a disorganized site also leave them vulnerable.”

“So if you were a Vorak in charge of defending this place, what would be your most critical measure?”

“Long range scouting,” he said without hesitation, only to realize why immediately after. “Which…is why we ventured offroad this much. We aren’t attacking via the roads?”

“Not the paved one,” Nai confirmed. “We’ll have a decoy approach that way, but we’re going to roll the vehicles right into their camp and use them as a beachhead.”

“We’ll be shredded—” Wurshken began, only to cut himself off. It was fascinating to watch the soldiers adapt their thinking. He was smart enough to know that Nai was smart enough to have already thought of that. Therefore she must have an answer. “Your Adept powers will make us cover?”

“Some,” Nai agreed. “But this assault is going to rely on momentum. Even with me defending the attacking group, we’ll need to move fast so we can take control of the power supply. Victory or defeat will come down to whether they can scuttle the launch infrastructure before we take control of it.”

“I don’t get how fast this is happening,” I confessed. “We’re just going to take over a spaceport in a morning?”

“No, not the whole thing,” Nai said. “But we are going to take the spot that will make it impossible for them to defend it further. They’ll try to launch a counter assault on the building once we take it, but it won’t work.”

“We’ll take inventory of what they leave behind tonight, put together a launch craft, and jet at least the four of us into orbit,” Tasser said.

“We’re going to ‘put together’ a launch craft?” I asked. “We’ll just build a spaceship? Ourselves?"

“It’s hardly that complex,” he scoffed.

“Space travel isn’t that complex? Forget the ship, isn’t there preparation or training for going into ‘the void’?”

“I get the feeling you’re overestimating what might be required from you in the coming days,” he said.

“Well, it’s just, back on Earth, going into space is a bit more involved than just deciding to take a day trip into orbit.”

“It really isn’t that complicated,” Tasser remarked. “We don’t need you to be able to operate a craft alone, or at all. The only thing you need to worry about is the weightlessness, isn’t it?”

“…Are you actually asking me?”

“…Yes,” Tasser said. “What’s the big deal? You’ve been in space before—for a whole month even.”

“I was abducted! I had no clue what I was doing!” I said. “I’m not an [astronaut], I don’t know the first thing about traveling into space.”

“Well…” Nai interrupted, wearing a guilty expression.

I gave her my best exasperated stare.

“Well, technically,” she said slowly, “you are your race’s foremost expert on aliens and interstellar travel. You know, just by firsthand knowledge.”

Tasser exploded laughing. Nemuleki and Wurshken looked like they might follow suit. Even ten miles away from Ramshackle, I thought the Vorak might have heard the uproar.

I opened my mouth to joke about the rarity that was Nai making her own joke, but wound up thinking better of it. If she was anything like me, she probably hated people making fun of her own sense of humor.

Behind my mask, no one saw that I had been about to speak either, which was a small bonus.

“Remember the strategy you used when first communicating with Tasser, Caleb?” Nai asked. “One thing at a time. We’ll cover getting you off-world, but for now taking the spaceport takes priority.”

“Caleb, can you hand out the assignments?” Nemuleki asked.

“Double-check I have the right documents,” I told her, materializing the copied sheets. “I don’t exactly like you using me as a printer for your briefing.”

Nemuleki was shameless as she perused the sheets she’d had me fill out in my mind and materialize. She had been listening in on most of my psionic experiments with Tasser. And while she wasn’t eager to try out psionics for herself, she was more than willing to use tools available to her.

“Lath Wurshken, Lath Grami, refer to these summaries and brief the rest. We need team recommendations in the next hour,” she said.

Wurshken had held up to Nai’s scrutiny, so he was relatively relaxed. But Grami seemed to be tighter wound. If I was understanding Nai and Nemuleki’s leadership style, they would have his turn in the hot seat soon too. Whenever possible, they liked to put their subordinates to the test.

Given that Grami and Wurshken were higher ranked than most of the other Casti assembled, I wondered if they too posed their own micro-quizzes to the rest.

“As for you…” Nemuleki said, turning to me.

“Yeah, I know the drill,” I said. “Stay with Tasser.”

“No,” Nai said bluntly. “Tasser’s too skilled not to use in the assault.”

“You’re going to be hanging back here with four Loths,” Nemuleki said. “We need to put as much as we can spare into the attack, which is going to leave you here: watching Itun.”

I gave both of them hard looks, searching for another joke.

“…I…am watching the extremely dangerous Adept prisoner we have?”

“The extremely injured prisoner,” Nemuleki countered. “And no, you aren’t strictly watching the prisoner, that’s what the four trained guns we’re leaving with you are for.”

“The only thing we need you to do is psionically alert me or Tasser if something happens,” Nai added. “And if something does, you just stay calm, keep your distance, and wait until someone shoots Itun.”

“Just how injured is he?” I asked. “Because it seems like bone fractures wouldn’t be enough to slow down someone augmented.”

“Bone injuries are especially harsh for Vorak,” Nai explained. “Their bones are tough but when they do fracture, they often splinter, painfully. He probably can’t move any part of his body without some significant pain—much less the fractured bones themselves. Don’t worry about him, my shackles on him aren’t going anywhere. He won’t see or hear anything we don’t want him to for the next two days. Even if I somehow die, I tied off the creations, so they won’t fade before then.”

“The way you describe it almost makes me feel bad for him,” I said. “Almost.”

“You’ll ride closer with all of us,” Nai said. “One mile out, the back two vehicles will stop and get in a position to observe—that’s where you’ll be until we either lose, or signal the all clear. Just sit tight and keep your head down.”

“What if the attack goes badly?” I asked.

“Then you wait for Tasser, Nemuleki, or me. One of us will collect you and we’ll regroup.”

“What if none of you make it?”

The question occurred to me too quickly to really think about it ahead of time. It was not a pleasant thought.

“We’ll be fine,” Nai insisted. “As far as we can tell, they have an advanced fabricator somewhere. That means they probably don’t have any Adepts right now.”

I ignored the temptation to ask if she was sure.

Calm down, Caleb. This was routine for them.

Tasser made sure to stick around until the last minute. I was unexpectedly antsy at the idea of being a mile away from the aliens I knew best. It was just a mile. And I was going to be staying in psionic contact with them.

“Nervous?” Tasser asked.

“Yes,” I said honestly. “I had more than enough excitement back at the Green Complex. And given that I got lucky enough against those Vorak, I can’t help but worry about some Vorak getting lucky.”

“It’s true,” Tasser mused, “even ordinary soldiers can get lucky and kill a fully realized L3 Adept. But Nai knows what she’s doing.”

“…I’m worried about you more,” I forced myself to say out loud. “You’re the best friend I’ve got out here and I’m going to be [screwed] if you get killed.”

“Caleb, despite your esteem for Nai’s skills, you haven’t seen her really go,” Tasser said. “Pay close attention, because affairs like today’s are the reason everyone knows the Warlock’s name. Besides, you gave her a shiny new trick to try.”

·····

A few hours later, all six of our vehicles were moving into position.

Ramshackle was located in the middle of some grassy hills with a few loose copses of trees scattered in every direction.

When we’d taken the cars offroad last night to make camp, I’d been surprised. But it made sense at the time.

Now, five of the alien cars were chewing through the offroad grass like it was nothing. Roads were only suggestions to Casti.

One thing that quickly caught my attention was that there were no watchtowers or any kind of Vorak presence on the hilltops surrounding the spaceport.

I asked Tasser. He was in a different car, and I was trying to distract myself from looks I was getting from my Casti infantry babysitters.

he chastised.

Nai added.

I said,

Tasser pointed out.

Nai agreed.

And with an affirmation of universal fallibility, Nai and Tasser’s vehicles both crested the hill and accelerated down to start the battle.

My ride stopped just shy of the hill’s crest. Itun was in the back with two guns pointed at him.

“I’m going to observe,” I told the soldiers.

To my surprise, they didn’t say anything to stop me from hopping out of the vehicle and crawling to the top of the hill.

Lying down at the very top, there was no chance any Vorak defending Ramshackle would see me.

I materialized the same pair of binoculars I’d devised the day before and watched the battle unfold.

Only five of our vehicles had stolen their way through the hills to attack. The sixth had approached conventionally from the road with just two Casti in it.

Nai and Nemuleki’s strategy was simple. They wanted the cars appearing from the hills to be seen first, only for another, seemingly much less threatening, vehicle to start careening toward the spaceport’s tents via the road.

The first group of vehicles, coming from an oblique direction, would look like a decoy to cover the lone vehicle on the road.

But in fact, the opposite was the truth.

I’d been very tempted to say it sounded like military strategy by Benny Hill, but watching it unfold was uniquely fascinating.

Nai told Tasser.

That was Nai and Tasser’s psionics still being picked up from almost a mile away. I really needed to properly test the range soon.

I peered through the binoculars and watched the four vehicles crash into the tents surrounding Ramshackle.

I’d vastly underestimated the size of, not just some of the tents, but the extent of the tent-city itself. Watching the Coalition heavy vehicles barrel through the camp put things in perspective. Some tents weren’t a single story, but actually closer to heavy scaffolding with canvas coverings. The building at the center was taller than I’d first guessed, and the sporadic tents around it extended for several hundred meters in every direction.

Vorak dove out of the way while four alien SUVs barreled through the camp, not quite avoiding a few of the tents. They made it almost halfway to the building before gunshots rang out from multiple directions.

Instantly, I got to see what Tasser had meant.

The moment the four cars were fired on, they slid to a halt in a rough formation and a curtain of teal fire erupted around them. It was massive, more fire than I’d seen Nai conjure up. Ever. My mind went back to the agility exercise she’d done with me in the gymnasium. She could have filled that entire volume with fire, and had more to spare. The flaming cylinder she’d created around the vehicles had to be at least twenty meters in diameter, likely more. It looked at least a meter thick too. The air wobbled and bent from the raw heat the curtain was giving off.

Just how much matter could she create? And how much energy did she have to put into all of it to achieve those flames?

The blazing ring climbed higher than any of the surrounding tents and I realized why Nai and company weren’t firing back yet: there was no point. They couldn’t shoot anyone, nor be shot as long as the fire was between them and their targets.

Nai’s fire wasn’t ordinary flame. It didn’t just melt things. I had my suspicions about exactly how, but it could reduce even bullets in flight to harmless powder—if even that would be left over.

It was surreal watching the curtain lurch forward, parting as it advanced to leave the vehicles behind.

I hadn’t been able to see past the flames, but if I’d been overhead, I could have watched all eleven soldiers pile out of the vehicles in just a few seconds and follow Nai’s lead.

The Warlock defied my estimation again when she summoned up even more vorpal fire. Several smaller cylinders of flame broke away from the first, going off in different directions. Even the smaller ones looked ten meters in diameter and were even a little taller than the first.

The first, and largest, flame continued forward at a jog’s pace, utterly consuming tents in its path. Shouts went up from the Vorak to get out of the way as the flames carved through the camp.

I knew her flames could move faster than that. Was she trying to limit casualties for non-combatants? Even if the Prowlers held it, it was a spaceport. Most of these Rak were engineers, probably. It could have also been to sow chaos. The more disorganized the response, the better chance they stood of reaching the main building in time.

Nai sent Tasser.

he repeated.

Tasser said.

Nai remained in the largest cylinder, while the eleven soldiers in the assault actually split off, ducking inside one of the smaller cylinders while it veered away. I imagined him boldly stepping into a gap in the flames as Nai opened it.

I was too far to actually sense their positions, but I was making sense of the briefing now as I watched everything unfold.

Nai sent Tasser.

He didn’t respond aloud, but presumably yanked some Casti a bit closer to the center of the tornado.

The secret, I realized, was Nai’s cascade. Dollars to donuts, she was keeping track of everything nearby, outside the flames, via her cascade. It was likely how she was making sure to keep the walls of flame away from the Casti inside.

She’d caught me out in our spar by cascading my footfalls. Here she was doing the same thing but on a much larger scale.

She was burning straight through some tents and carefully avoiding others. On the fly, she was checking every spot her tactile cascade could reach, and using it to orient them as they marched right up to the structure at the heart of Ramshackle.

A large number of the Prowlers defending the base had been too slow investigating the vehicles Nai and company had left behind.

She’d been careful to leave the vehicles intact as the flames had advanced past them for precisely that reason.

The soldiers checked the interiors of the vehicles for any lingering Coalition troops before giving chase to the pillars of fire caving between the tents.

That slight delay was the difference between certain victory and the narrow possibility of defeat.

The Prowlers were too slow to arrive when Nai’s enormous pillar of fire deformed on the side closest to the central structure.

The cylinder with Tasser’s troops actually drew close enough to burn away at one of the adjacent sides of the same building.

The swirling pillar of flame vanished leaving Tasser and the rest of the soldiers a perfect hole burned through the wall to enter the building.

Nai extinguished her own titanic cylinder a few moments later.

I couldn’t keep track of their positions so well now without the giant flaming curtains, but the more violent half of the plan was in effect now.

The central building housed the most critical equipment and machinery that we wanted to use, so Nai couldn’t just burn it all away.

But she didn’t want any Vorak outside to have a chance to destroy it either. So once the flames were gone and all Coalition troops were inside, a thick layer of grey crystal grew to encase the structure.

It took almost a minute for it to cover the whole thing, but Nai’s creation grew implacably, sealing up not only the doors and windows, but even the freshly burnt hole Tasser’s group had gone through.

I knew firsthand that grey crystal was tough enough to stand up to gunfire and worse. The spaceport as a whole was impossible to defend, but Nai had forced everything into the building. No one outside would be able to break in soon enough.

It reduced the outcome of the battle to whoever could take control of the building faster.

Nai alone might not have been enough. She could have taken the building singlehanded, but after watching her in action here, I understood what had held her back in the Green Complex.

She was too destructive. The Warlock’s vorpal fire could have reduced the whole building to ash in a minute, but that would defeat the point of this attack.

Instead, once they were inside, Nai took on a supporting role.

Nai told Tasser.

They continued like that, Nai scouting the building with her cascade from the floor below and psionically relaying information to Tasser as he and his group cleared the building without burning it to the ground.

Tasser asked.

Nai replied.

Almost a mile away atop the hill, my grin crept wider and wider. The specifics were left to my imagination, but it was incredible hearing Tasser and Nai work.

They were seamless.

Tasser asked.

Nai said.

“” Tasser ordered. His spoken words bleeding into the psionic connection.

I couldn’t hear exactly how much gunfire was being exchanged as they cleared the building. I was a little grateful for that. This probably wouldn’t be as fascinating a spectacle if I could see the Vorak that refused to surrender.

But Ramshackle had to have at least a hundred Vorak manning it, and not all of them were willing to fight it out with the Warlock.

Once Nai encased the primary structure, the bustle in the tents shifted. Vorak vehicles started moving, emergency evacuations going into effect.

I told them, breaking radio silence.

Nai said.

I held my breath.

Twenty seconds later the battle was decided.

Nai said, both to me and Tasser.

I asked.

she affirmed.

he added.

Wait, really? I scanned my binoculars back to the decoy vehicle that had entered the camp via the road. They too were beyond my radar’s reach, but I did spy two, seemingly uninjured, Casti extricating themselves from the bullet-riddled car.

“[Holy crap,]” I breathed. It took a look back at my four chaperones to really confirm it for myself.

Twelve soldiers had taken a base a hundred strong all on their own, so quickly that the Prowlers stationed here hadn’t even the time to make it a pyrrhic victory for us.

How much wider could my grin get?