NOVEL NEXT Book 1 – Lesson 31: “Chose your path wisely.”
Alpha had to confess… he may have panicked a little. Sure, for a child, Snowball had shown herself to be highly competent and able to care for herself. But she was still a child. Besides, with her ever-growing self-awareness, and the general respect the humans showed for the small whale-puppy, Alpha was fairly certain her species was sapient at this point. A few Federation species didn’t become fully sapient until later-in-life as well, so that wasn’t much of a surprise.
No, the biggest issue was that Alpha could be fined!
As a sapient child, technically under his care, Alpha was legally obligated as a soldier under Federation law to ensure their safety until they could be passed on to proper caregivers. Failure to do so came with stiff penalties and heavy fines! General Haldorðr was particularly strict about this rule. Willful neglect could see a soldier cleaning carrier ships by hand, and some of those were legally classified as small planetoids!
Neglect, such as firing a class-5 kinetic warhead within 200 meters of said child.
Ok, maybe Alpha was a little worried about the bloodthirsty goofball too. She reminded him of him!
The anomaly with the Railjack had only scrambled his sensors for a short while, but as anyone with a child could tell you, that’s all it takes for them to get into some new trouble. Even the tracking beacon he’d tagged her with wasn’t sending a signal, which was strange. It should have been working fine, even if she was buried under a mile of rubble. So then, what was blocking it? It took two hours to clear all the rubble in the main building with the help of Ulagan and Ganbaatar, but even they couldn’t find hide nor hair of her.
What they had found was a torn, bloody cloak none of them recognized. Kallik had examined the cloak, plucked at several burned-out symbols woven into the fabric, then used a word Alpha didn’t have a record of yet. A quick analysis of the blood showed it was human, though not belonging to any of the humans present.
It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots, and soon the group was discussing their next course of action. Thankfully, Alpha’s lexicon was at a point he could understand most of it. One of the humans Alpha didn’t have a name for yet, had been running Alpha through what he assumed was grammar for children during the hours before the attack, presumably, at the request of Kallik.
Much of it was still educated guesswork, but it was enough to at least communicate.
Kallik, Ganbaatar, Ulagan, and Zolzaya, the only humans able to move, gathered in a small circle near Alpha to speak. Ganbaatar was the first to ask.
“So, what do we do now?”
Kallik sighed and shook her head.
“The only thing we can do. What we -originally planned-. We head to the -Earth Shrine- and report to the {$*$@#%}.”
Ulagan frowned and asked.
“Is that wise? Should we not look for the child? The {$*$@#%} are not known for their -forgiveness-. If they learn we -abandoned- one of their children to an -unknown- fate, the -consequences- could be… extreme.”
Alpha filed the new word, Akh’lut, away. He was unsure if that was the name of Snowball’s species, tribe, or family, but any information could be important later. It also confirmed, or at least suggested, that Snowball’s people had some measure of influence among the humans of this area. Otherwise, why would they be so fearful of retaliation?
All the more reason to continue the search. The ore he’d taken from the crates would go a long way toward his recovery, but he only had time to refine a small amount before the penguins showed up. So an “in” with an established power would make Alpha’s job far easier both in the short and long term.
Alpha said as much too,
“I agree.”
It was only two simple words, but most of the group jumped, turning to look at Alpha with wide eyes. Only Kallik showed no reaction other than a slight smile. She turned to Alpha and bowed, placing her fist in a cupped hand as she spoke.
“Lord Protector—”
Alpha still got a kick out of their title for him. He’d decided not to correct them just yet.
“—I understand you’re worried for the child, but I must beg for your understanding. We have people that need -immediate treatment- and have no way of telling who has taken the child or where.”
She then raised the bloody cloak and continued.
“The -Akh’lut-, the child’s family, may have {&%&$#@%} or {*$#@%} that could help to track her. Or her -kidnapper-
. If we searched for her ourselves, we could waste valuable time. Our best option to ensure the child returns home is to inform their family of what has happened.”{Hmmmm…}
Alpha considered the older woman’s words. She wasn’t wrong. With his tracker being blocked by something, they didn’t really have a way of finding where the child had been taken. He could do a fanning search with [Wasps], but without knowing which direction they had gone, that would be a time-consuming process. Besides, whoever it was had somehow slipped past his [Wasps] once; who was to say they couldn’t do so again?
Conversely, Kallik seemed confident that the child’s family could find her through some means. Likely some more magical bullcrap.
The TAWP’s optical sensor plate twirled as he spoke, making the group twitch.
“Understood.”
phew, being the mysterious man of few words was exhausting.
Kallik let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding before giving the AI a nervous smile and responding.
“Thank you for understanding.”
Zolzaya was the next to speak.
“Do we even know where we are? I’ve never heard of an abandoned temple like this. The only Earth Temple I was even aware of was in the Heart.”
OH! Alpha knew that one!
His optical sensors flashed, and a holographic map of the surrounding area and their previous route appeared in the middle of the group. Once more, the group jumped, and if anyone asked if Alpha was doing it on purpose at this point, he would adamantly… agree.
Kallik’s eyes flickered to Alpha before turning to the 3D light map. She circled it, examining it from every direction as if looking for something. After a moment, she stopped and spoke.
“There! I recognize this stretch—”
She jerked back as her finger brushed a map section, leaving a small red dot. She stared at her finger for a moment before continuing.
“—This is part of a disputed foraging site between the {*%*@#%*} village and our own. If this map is accurate, we should only be roughly 70 {!@#$} away from the -Slatewalker- trail if we head in this direction….”
From the red dot, Kallik drew a line heading northeast.
“Based on the Lord Protector’s previous speed, we should be able to reach the village by nightfall. Once there, we can drop off the wounded and make our way to the Earth Shrine to give our report.”
It took only a few more moments to complete the plan, and the group broke off to do their part.
Of which Alpha’s involved standing around doing nothing.
Instead, he wandered off to do something he’d wanted to for a while now, but never had the time.
========
Finding a chunk of the strange, growing copper still intact enough for Alpha’s purposes took almost an hour. Despite an entire forest of the stuff having grown from seemingly nothing, the Railjack had turned most of it into useless slag. Theoretically, he could have refined most of it, but he had little use for so much copper, and the time it would take made it unfeasible, as they would leave the area soon.
What little wasn’t slag had been contaminated by penguin… bits. Alpha made a note to ask Kallik about the strange entity that had used the young man, -Yutu-, to perform such an act. If he could learn the principle behind it and apply it to other materials, it could solve his resource problems.
Nothing good ever came easy, however, and the small amount of untainted, viable copper sample he’d been able to collect proved to be… disappointing. Basic scans showed that the substance wasn’t really copper. Instead, it was some kind of biometallic compound. Its properties were remarkably similar, though, sharing the same conductivity, malleability, ductility, and even density as mundane copper.
Unfortunately, heat tests showed it wouldn’t melt in the same way. Instead, it seemed to burn up and crumble under extreme heat, though it took significantly higher temperatures to do that than it would to melt mundane copper. Alpha even found a few pieces would start to “regrow” back into their original shape when damaged in such a way.
What were they even “feeding” on? If he just left this here and came back in six months, would he find a mountain of tumorous copper? Or was there a natural limit in scope or time?
Part of him imagined raining down copper bullets on an advancing army, but quickly dismissed the idea. The copper had taken quite a while to spread through Yutu in that fashion; the wound would probably kill an enemy long before the copper itself did. True, the entity had created the copper forest in a flash, but something told Alpha was more of the entity’s doing rather than some intrinsic nature of the bio-copper.
Hmmm, maybe he could turn it into an ammo printer? If he figured out exactly how it was generating mass, and he could replicate or speed up the process safely, it could replace the MCDs. Not to mention the other areas where self-repairing metals could be useful.
With that in mind, Alpha collected several of the best samples at shoved them into a stasis container.
As Alpha headed back to what remained of the temple building, he couldn’t help but daydream about what else he might find in this strange place.
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Juatan stood atop the tower cart and looked over the multicolored prairies. The structure swayed with the carts, a trait needed when building such a tall structure on a moving platform. Some Guardians never got used to the motion, but Juatan enjoyed it. It reminded him of his other home, far to the north, where the city boats traveled the icy seas.
His new home was a different kind of sea, but it was no less beautiful to him. Juatan had traveled to this land seeking his history. It was said the clans of the Radiant Sea and his homeland shared some connection, though from a time so long ago that no living person knew what. What he had found was a people of strange ways in a place that he had no proper words for.
Nonetheless, he’d fallen in love with the Radiant Sea and its strange people. One person in particular had captured his heart, though she could be… abrasive, sometimes, he would freely admit. He’d come searching for answers to questions that plagued him and instead found a peace he never thought he would have or even deserved. He’d built a home, and a family, from the ashes of the past, and he’d never regretted a moment of it.
A loud snore broke him from his contemplations, and he turned to see the young man beside him, asleep on his feet, leaning dangerously on his spear. Juatan frowned and flicked the bottom of his own spear into the young Guardian’s shine. The boy jumped, gripping his spear a little too tightly as he nervously looked around. Seeing nothing but the older man frowning at him, the young Guardian humphed and turned away.
Juatan sighed. Of course, the boy thought he could laze around with “Juatan the Simple” when on guard duty. But then again, that was possibly why the Captain had paired the boy with him, to begin with. These wet-behind-the-ears Guardians, fresh from their graduation exam, soon learned that Juatan wasn’t as lenient as the rumors made him out to be.
Juatan had seen too many young Guardians and villagers killed because someone decided they could nap on duty.
This last batch was even worse. Half of them shouldn’t have ever passed; most of the examination groups had returned almost a week early because of the ruckus surrounding the Fallen Star. The examiners rightly chose to head home rather than deal with whatever trouble was stirred up by the once-in-a-decade event.
The increased security concerns saw the elders handing out blanket passes just to fill in the needed numbers.
Well… most of them had. Even days after the last group had returned, one group was still missing.
Juatan turned his eyes back to the vast open expanse before him, desperately searching for any sign of an approaching caravan. His wife had shut herself in their cart for days, refusing to eat and barely speaking. Juatan still had hope, though, that he would see the grass part and the final group return, whole and well at any moment. Some part of him knew that was foolish, but he couldn’t let that spark die, not yet. He’d volunteer for tower duty for the entire month if he had to.
Movement from behind drew his attention from the horizon, and Juatan turned to find his junior partner staring, wide-eyed, toward the west. Juatan turned that way and froze.
Smoke rose from the grasses far into the distance.
Not just any smoke, though, purple smoke mixed with red.
The signal of a returning party… and a request for help.
Juatan barely heard the young man’s voice as he leaped the full 30 meters from the top of the top to the ground below. He hit the ground and rolled, springing into a run that threw up a cloud of dust in his wake. As he weaved between the carts, quickly leaving the village behind, he barely noticed the three other Guardians who fell into step beside him.
With the kind of speed only achievable with mid-stage [Silver Spirit]
cultivation, the small group quickly closed on the smoke signal.In his heart, Juatan prayed to the Sister above that what they found wasn’t too bad.