Planet Broker Book 2, page 4
“How the hell did you manage that?” Akela demanded, but I could hear an edge of laughter to her voice.
“With astonishingly grand intelligence and lightning-fast reflexes,” I bragged, and when the mechanic didn’t respond, and when I couldn’t take the judging silence anymore, I added, “And Omni crashed a drone into it.”
“Wait, one of my drones?” Akela asked, and by her tone, I knew I was in trouble.
“I needed it to save the city?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I could practically see the mechanic roll her eyes.
“Who’s going to build this shield that I spent all day designing if you destroy all the drones?” she asked, and I imagined her standing with her hands on her hips.
“It was only one,” I protested.
“Yeah, only one high-tech, very expensive, finely calibrated drone,” Akela grumbled. “Are there at least any salvageable parts?”
I looked back toward the smoldering crash site a kilometer away. “I don’t think so, but I can go check,” I offered to placate the mechanic.
“Thank you,” the silver-haired womanly replied. “Try not to hurt yourself, alright? And hurry back already. Neka and I are getting hungry.”
“Yes ma’am,” I responded, and then the transmission cut out.
I turned back to Chief U’eh and his son, who still looked stunned.
“Do you mind taking a quick detour out there before we head back?” I asked casually as if a huge hunk of space rock didn’t almost obliterate the city.
Chief U’eh finally nodded, and Cy’lass could only blink at me.
When we arrived at the crash site, I quickly realized two things. One, Akela wasn’t getting much back in the way of working parts, but there was still some salvageable metal material. Two, there was a lot more metal in the debris then there should have been for the small drone.
Most of the fires from the explosion had already burned out, but the metal pieces still smoldered, so I was careful as I kicked a great metallic sheet over.
“Son of a bitch,” I hissed out.
Right there on the metal piece was a corner of Terra-Nebula’s logo, a logo I knew for a fact I no longer had on my drones. I took a few steps back and surveyed the wreckage. There was a fair bit of molten rock strewn about, so Omni had been right saying the projectile was a meteor. However, then I thought about how the AI said it had entered the atmosphere from low orbit.
“This was Warrick,” I said with a disgusted shake of my head.
Chief U’eh turned to me with a scowl. “I thought you said it was merely a rock from the stars,” he said.
“It technically was, which is the sinister, genius part,” I muttered. “Warrick must have collected one from somewhere in the star system and then brought it back here. He strapped a rocket to it and somehow was able to lock on to my location. If he had succeeded, he would have taken me out, and it would have looked like an unfortunate accident, a rock that happened to fall from the sky.”
“Will he try again?” Chief U’eh asked as his eyes flicked up to the stars.
I shook my head. “Maybe,” I replied. “But I don't think he’s stupid enough to make the same mistake twice. Besides, now I know two things.”
“And what are those?” the Almort prince asked as he stepped up beside me.
I held up a finger. “One,” I said, “I need to talk to Akela about adjusting our shield to account for physical objects, on the off-chance Warrick does try something like this again. Most modern energy fields only stop energy, not matter, from crossing them.”
“And the second thing?” Chief U’eh hissed.
I felt a smile cross my face. “Warrick’s getting desperate, and desperation breeds mistakes.”
And I was going to take advantage of every single one.
Chapter 4
Three days after Warrick’s broadcast, and two after the thinly disguised assassination attempt, I was rudely awakened by a sharp pounding on the front door of our guest pod. I shot up into a seated position and blearily glanced around. Neka’s orange head popped up from the silver cushions beside me.
“What’s happenin’?” she yawned as she rubbed her eyes. She looked as exhausted as I felt. I don’t know what time we stumbled in the front door last night or was it this morning, but we had been so dead-tired we didn’t even make it to the bedroom. We just collapsed on the cushions that surrounded the small pond that took up the center of the living room and gone straight to sleep.
The loud pounding echoed throughout the room again.
“It sounds like someone’s knocking on the front door,” I muttered as I scrubbed a hand over my face.
Neka moaned and flopped back down, pulling a pillow over her face. “I swear we’ve slept less than an hour,” the cat-girl grumbled into the cushion.
“You’re being a little generous,” I chuckled dryly as I pulled myself to my feet. Every joint in my body cracked, and I let out a groan.
The last three days had been pretty hectic, to put it mildly. Between the fiasco with the meteor, getting Omni set up in the refinery, figuring out the specifics of the city’s shield, and meeting with U’eh to plan out the month we had before Terra-Nebula got here, I hadn’t been getting much sleep. None of us were, really, and Akela even less.
I shuddered as I remembered trying to pry the mechanic from her lab back at the refinery last night when I begged her to rest for a few hours. The silver-haired woman had slowly turned to me with bloodshot eyes, grease smeared on her cheeks, and a tool that I couldn’t identify but that looked rather sharp clenched in her fist. She didn’t even have to say a word. I knew when I was beat, and Neka and I had retreated to the guest pod.
As I limped toward the front door and rubbed at a kink in my lower back, whoever was outside began their incessant knocking again.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I called and slapped my hand on the keypad beside the door.
The panel slid back, and Sef’sla’s grinning face greeted me.
“Good morning,” the Almort princess hissed as she dipped her chin. “I have brought you and your tribe breakfast.”
Sef’sla extended her arm between us, laden with three plates of what looked like pickled fish, fresh bread, and bright purple fruit, sliced into quarters.
I blinked at the princess's offering, my brain still struggling to wake up.
“T-thank you,” I finally stuttered. I reached out and took the plates from her and, not wanting to be rude, stepped to the side. “Come in. Neka and I were just waking up.”
“Oh,” Sef'sla gasped as her brow furrowed. “I did not mean to wake you.”
I waved off her concern as we crossed the threshold into the living room. “It's fine,” I reassured her. “We probably needed to get up, anyway.”
“I could have done with a little more sleep,” Neka pouted as she sat back up in her nest of cushions. Her hair was in a wild, adorable disarray around her head, and I had a strong urge to kiss her.
So, I did.
“Would some breakfast help?” I teased as I leaned down, set the plate in her lap, and smacked a kiss against her cheek.
Neka tried to keep pouting, but her twitching tail and ears gave her away. “Maybe,” she added, with her face turned away. I pretended I was going to take the plate back, and the cat-girl whirled around. “No! Mine.” She snatched up the plate, curled over it protectively, and bared her cute little fangs.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, you win,” I chuckled and reached down to ruffle her hair.
I looked back to Sef'sla. “Please excuse my assistant. She can be a little testy when tired and hungry,” I said with a grin.
Sef'sla smiled back before she turned to Neka. “It sounds like we are very similar,” the Almort princess hissed as she chittered her own laugh.
Neka had already taken a bite out of everything on her plate, and she looked up with her cheeks full and her eyes bright. “This tastes amazing!” she mumbled around a full mouth. Her eyes crinkled with happiness. “Thanks, Sef'sla!”
“You are quite welcome,” the princess replied, but then she glanced around with a confused expression. “Is your machine-healer not yet awake? I have brought food for her as well.”
“She's still at the refinery,” I said with a wince. “Akela can get a little… passionate about her work. Sleep and food kind of take a backseat when she gets in the zone. I was planning on checking up on her soon if you'd like to accompany us.”
Sef'sla nodded, her eyes bright with anticipation and eagerness. “Yes,” she hissed. “I am interested to see how much progress has been made. When my brother and I visited the refinery yesterday, we almost did not recognize it.”
“That’s Akela for you,” I said with a chuckle. “You should have seen what she did on her home station, Theron. It was like she rebuilt the place from the ground up.”
“I do not doubt it,” Sef’sla replied with a grin, “but don’t let me keep you. Sit. Eat.” She gestured to the cushions that Neka reclined on, only to pause in shock when she saw that the cat-girl’s plate was already picked clean.
I rolled my eyes good-naturedly at my assistant’s insatiable hunger. “Don’t think you’re getting any of mine,” I teased with a wag of my finger at her.
Neka crossed her arms and pouted again, but the effect was ruined by the deep belch that exploded out of her small frame. Her eyes went wide, and she clapped her hands over her mouth.
“Oops,” she giggled. “Excuse me.”
Sef’sla threw back her head and laughed again. Neka echoed her, and Warmth bloomed throughout my chest at the beautiful harmony they created.
Fifteen minutes later, fed and freshly dressed, I followed Neka and Sef’sla out of our guest pod and headed off to the refinery. The two females walked side by side, chatting quietly amongst themselves. Neka, as always, was a wealth of questions.
“What is that building?” she asked excitedly, pointing at yet another single story structure. Before Sef’sla could even answer, the cat-girl’s attention had darted away. “Ooh! Where does that road go? I think I smell food down that way!”
Sef’sla did not seem to mind the endless barrage of questions. She even seemed to welcome them, explaining the sights of her city in endless detail, pride and happiness shining brightly in her eyes. I was content to simply stroll behind them and listen in.
Around us, Ka’le seemed to run and bustle as usual. Almort walked to and fro, headed to the marketplace, or to the school, or to a hundred other places to complete a hundred other tasks I had not yet witnessed. A sort of whimsical mood filled me as I watched these people slip past me, some with curious glances, some with shy smiles, some who didn’t even see me, absorbed in their own daily life. It was an emotion I had become quite familiar with though not until I left Proto behind and began to explore the vast and endless reaches of space. The feeling had nagged me for so long that I had even mentioned it to Omni, not long after I had made the AI into what he was today. Of course, the omniscient machine had an answer for me right off the bat.
The emotion that I found myself struck with every time I landed on a new planet was called ‘sonder,’ which is the overwhelming realization that each random passerby had a life of their own, as vivid and complex as mine, filled with ambitions and tragedies, worries and joys, an epic story that I only barely brush past.
Sonder was always humbling, but I had never felt it as strongly as I did now, here, in Ka’le. The Almort were a grand and noble civilization and, as individuals, they were intelligent, honorable, strong, funny, and kind. They had history and traditions and a culture I was only now getting the privilege to delve into. As I walked through their capital city, following their princess and my assistant, I was struck by how much I wanted to preserve their way of life, how strongly I wanted to protect them.
As I was ruminating on this, Neka’s gasp pulled me from my thoughts. I glanced up to find that she and Sef’sla had stopped a few meters ahead of me, both their heads craned back to look up into the sky. My heart skipped a beat for a moment before I realized it was awe in their faces, not fear. I followed their gaze and spotted one of Omni’s winged worker drones skating low the rooftops to our right. The small, agile, wasp-shaped machine bobbed through the air under the weight of its cargo, which was a metallic satellite dish about three meters wide. We watched the drone fly off to the west until we lost sight of it behind one of the buildings.
Sef’sla clicked her tongue and shook her head, making her hair slide across her shoulders. “I am still not used to seeing the flying-machines,” she hissed with a slightly embarrassed smile. “They surprise me every time.”
“Wait until the shield actually comes online,” I chuckled in response. “It’ll make the drones seem like toys.”
The Almort princess looked off in the direction that the drone had disappeared and her brow furrowed. “I… still don’t quite understand how this shield will work,” she admitted. Her eyes flicked back to mine hesitantly. “Could you explain it to me again?”
We started walking again, albeit a little slower and all abreast, with me in the middle. “I’m not an engineering expert,” I said with a small shrug. “I really only know the basics. Omni and Akela worked out the specifics.”
“That is fine,” Sef’sla hissed with a smile. “I do not think I would be able to understand your machine-healer’s specificssss.”
“Welcome to the club,” I laughed as we came to an intersection in the road and turned left. We were close to the refinery now, so close we could see its rooftop, billowing smoke. However, something else arrested our attention.
“Well, that’s a good a place to start as any,” I said as I gestured to the brand-new structure that pierced the skyline directly ahead of us, one of twenty identical structures that now encircled the Ka’le.
“The towers,” Sef’sla clarified with a dip of her chin. “Yes, what exactly is their function?”
“They’re technically called pylons,” I corrected her gently. “Their job is to conduct the power for the electromagnetic field that makes up the shield.”
Sef’sla’s eyes narrowed, and I realized I had lost her, so I backtracked a little.
“Okay,” I started again. “Think about how electricity works. It’s a stream of power that has to be harnessed, directed, and conducted, right? That’s what the shield is, a wall of powerful charge and electricity. The pylons, or towers, are being erected all around the city using our worker drones.”
We had drawn close enough to the pylon in front of us that we could see the small swarm of worker drones that buzzed around its peak and scurried around its base. The pylons were made of X’ebril, which apparently was a fantastic electromagnetic conductor. Each one of them stretched at least fifteen meters into the sky and were a handsome matte gray, streaked with burnished silver.
“Once construction is completed,” I continued as I gestured at the drones, “Omni, using a power cell from our ship that he’s running through the refinery, will stream energy to each of the pylons, which will conduct the power upward and outward through the satellite dishes affixed on top. I think there’s a little calibration involved, to get all electrical currents from each pylon to line up, but when they intersect, the shield will form over the city, like a bubble.”
Sef’sla’s brow was furrowed in concentration, but she nodded along in understanding. “And this shield will protect Ka’le?” she asked, her tone serious. It was fun to witness all the construction and improvements until we remembered exactly what they were for.
“Yes.” I nodded firmly. “The energy cell from our ship is state-of-the-art. The shield it will produce will be powerful. Powerful enough to disrupt and disperse any energy weapon, save a direct hit from a military class battle cruiser, fired from orbit but, again, Terra-Nebula won’t be using such destructive measures. They want to keep this planet as intact as possible. The shield will also stop any physical objects, like ships or troops, from entering the city, so you don’t have to worry about Warrick landing in the plaza again or hurtling rocks, or anything else for that matter, at us from space. That actually took a little finagling, too, since most shield systems used nowadays aren’t even calibrated to deflect physical objects anymore.”
“My father will be pleased to hear that,” Sef’sla hissed. Her dark blue eyes went flat and angry as she thought of the other broker.
“That makes two of us,” I muttered but then shook my head, banishing all thoughts of that blond prick. “Anyway, that’s as much as I know about the shielding. For anything more detailed, you’ll have to ask Akela, which you can do in a few moments.”
We had barely arrived at the refinery where dozens of Almort and drones bustled back and forth, their arms laden with carts of X’ebril.
Sef’sla stepped out of the way of a pair of Almort males, who inclined their heads to her as they passed. “I think I understand now,” the princess said in reply to me and then added with a small smile, “mostly.”
“It’ll make more sense when it comes online and you can see it,” I reassured her.
“I look forward to it.” Sef’sla grinned.
“Me too,” Neka piped up beside us, “but can we get inside and see Akela now? If we wait any longer, I might accidentally eat her breakfast.”
I turned to my assistant to see her frowning down at the plate of food she had been diligently carrying for our mechanic. I chuckled and reached out to scratch behind her ears.
“You’ve been so good,” I cajoled her. “Only a few minutes more.”
Neka nodded sadly and wrapped her tail around my wrist as we followed Sef’sla into the refinery.
We found Akela right where we had left her. She was hunched over a lab table, scribbling furiously on a data pad. Wires, circuits, spare drone parts, and shavings of X’ebril were scattered in disarray around the mechanic who didn’t seem to notice us at first, even though the door had hissed when we’d entered. I cleared my throat when the silver-haired woman began to mutter and curse under her breath.
“Good morning,” I called out brightly if a bit hesitantly. I glanced around our immediate vicinity to make sure nothing sharp was in arms reach. “We brought you breakfast.”
“With astonishingly grand intelligence and lightning-fast reflexes,” I bragged, and when the mechanic didn’t respond, and when I couldn’t take the judging silence anymore, I added, “And Omni crashed a drone into it.”
“Wait, one of my drones?” Akela asked, and by her tone, I knew I was in trouble.
“I needed it to save the city?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I could practically see the mechanic roll her eyes.
“Who’s going to build this shield that I spent all day designing if you destroy all the drones?” she asked, and I imagined her standing with her hands on her hips.
“It was only one,” I protested.
“Yeah, only one high-tech, very expensive, finely calibrated drone,” Akela grumbled. “Are there at least any salvageable parts?”
I looked back toward the smoldering crash site a kilometer away. “I don’t think so, but I can go check,” I offered to placate the mechanic.
“Thank you,” the silver-haired womanly replied. “Try not to hurt yourself, alright? And hurry back already. Neka and I are getting hungry.”
“Yes ma’am,” I responded, and then the transmission cut out.
I turned back to Chief U’eh and his son, who still looked stunned.
“Do you mind taking a quick detour out there before we head back?” I asked casually as if a huge hunk of space rock didn’t almost obliterate the city.
Chief U’eh finally nodded, and Cy’lass could only blink at me.
When we arrived at the crash site, I quickly realized two things. One, Akela wasn’t getting much back in the way of working parts, but there was still some salvageable metal material. Two, there was a lot more metal in the debris then there should have been for the small drone.
Most of the fires from the explosion had already burned out, but the metal pieces still smoldered, so I was careful as I kicked a great metallic sheet over.
“Son of a bitch,” I hissed out.
Right there on the metal piece was a corner of Terra-Nebula’s logo, a logo I knew for a fact I no longer had on my drones. I took a few steps back and surveyed the wreckage. There was a fair bit of molten rock strewn about, so Omni had been right saying the projectile was a meteor. However, then I thought about how the AI said it had entered the atmosphere from low orbit.
“This was Warrick,” I said with a disgusted shake of my head.
Chief U’eh turned to me with a scowl. “I thought you said it was merely a rock from the stars,” he said.
“It technically was, which is the sinister, genius part,” I muttered. “Warrick must have collected one from somewhere in the star system and then brought it back here. He strapped a rocket to it and somehow was able to lock on to my location. If he had succeeded, he would have taken me out, and it would have looked like an unfortunate accident, a rock that happened to fall from the sky.”
“Will he try again?” Chief U’eh asked as his eyes flicked up to the stars.
I shook my head. “Maybe,” I replied. “But I don't think he’s stupid enough to make the same mistake twice. Besides, now I know two things.”
“And what are those?” the Almort prince asked as he stepped up beside me.
I held up a finger. “One,” I said, “I need to talk to Akela about adjusting our shield to account for physical objects, on the off-chance Warrick does try something like this again. Most modern energy fields only stop energy, not matter, from crossing them.”
“And the second thing?” Chief U’eh hissed.
I felt a smile cross my face. “Warrick’s getting desperate, and desperation breeds mistakes.”
And I was going to take advantage of every single one.
Chapter 4
Three days after Warrick’s broadcast, and two after the thinly disguised assassination attempt, I was rudely awakened by a sharp pounding on the front door of our guest pod. I shot up into a seated position and blearily glanced around. Neka’s orange head popped up from the silver cushions beside me.
“What’s happenin’?” she yawned as she rubbed her eyes. She looked as exhausted as I felt. I don’t know what time we stumbled in the front door last night or was it this morning, but we had been so dead-tired we didn’t even make it to the bedroom. We just collapsed on the cushions that surrounded the small pond that took up the center of the living room and gone straight to sleep.
The loud pounding echoed throughout the room again.
“It sounds like someone’s knocking on the front door,” I muttered as I scrubbed a hand over my face.
Neka moaned and flopped back down, pulling a pillow over her face. “I swear we’ve slept less than an hour,” the cat-girl grumbled into the cushion.
“You’re being a little generous,” I chuckled dryly as I pulled myself to my feet. Every joint in my body cracked, and I let out a groan.
The last three days had been pretty hectic, to put it mildly. Between the fiasco with the meteor, getting Omni set up in the refinery, figuring out the specifics of the city’s shield, and meeting with U’eh to plan out the month we had before Terra-Nebula got here, I hadn’t been getting much sleep. None of us were, really, and Akela even less.
I shuddered as I remembered trying to pry the mechanic from her lab back at the refinery last night when I begged her to rest for a few hours. The silver-haired woman had slowly turned to me with bloodshot eyes, grease smeared on her cheeks, and a tool that I couldn’t identify but that looked rather sharp clenched in her fist. She didn’t even have to say a word. I knew when I was beat, and Neka and I had retreated to the guest pod.
As I limped toward the front door and rubbed at a kink in my lower back, whoever was outside began their incessant knocking again.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I called and slapped my hand on the keypad beside the door.
The panel slid back, and Sef’sla’s grinning face greeted me.
“Good morning,” the Almort princess hissed as she dipped her chin. “I have brought you and your tribe breakfast.”
Sef’sla extended her arm between us, laden with three plates of what looked like pickled fish, fresh bread, and bright purple fruit, sliced into quarters.
I blinked at the princess's offering, my brain still struggling to wake up.
“T-thank you,” I finally stuttered. I reached out and took the plates from her and, not wanting to be rude, stepped to the side. “Come in. Neka and I were just waking up.”
“Oh,” Sef'sla gasped as her brow furrowed. “I did not mean to wake you.”
I waved off her concern as we crossed the threshold into the living room. “It's fine,” I reassured her. “We probably needed to get up, anyway.”
“I could have done with a little more sleep,” Neka pouted as she sat back up in her nest of cushions. Her hair was in a wild, adorable disarray around her head, and I had a strong urge to kiss her.
So, I did.
“Would some breakfast help?” I teased as I leaned down, set the plate in her lap, and smacked a kiss against her cheek.
Neka tried to keep pouting, but her twitching tail and ears gave her away. “Maybe,” she added, with her face turned away. I pretended I was going to take the plate back, and the cat-girl whirled around. “No! Mine.” She snatched up the plate, curled over it protectively, and bared her cute little fangs.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, you win,” I chuckled and reached down to ruffle her hair.
I looked back to Sef'sla. “Please excuse my assistant. She can be a little testy when tired and hungry,” I said with a grin.
Sef'sla smiled back before she turned to Neka. “It sounds like we are very similar,” the Almort princess hissed as she chittered her own laugh.
Neka had already taken a bite out of everything on her plate, and she looked up with her cheeks full and her eyes bright. “This tastes amazing!” she mumbled around a full mouth. Her eyes crinkled with happiness. “Thanks, Sef'sla!”
“You are quite welcome,” the princess replied, but then she glanced around with a confused expression. “Is your machine-healer not yet awake? I have brought food for her as well.”
“She's still at the refinery,” I said with a wince. “Akela can get a little… passionate about her work. Sleep and food kind of take a backseat when she gets in the zone. I was planning on checking up on her soon if you'd like to accompany us.”
Sef'sla nodded, her eyes bright with anticipation and eagerness. “Yes,” she hissed. “I am interested to see how much progress has been made. When my brother and I visited the refinery yesterday, we almost did not recognize it.”
“That’s Akela for you,” I said with a chuckle. “You should have seen what she did on her home station, Theron. It was like she rebuilt the place from the ground up.”
“I do not doubt it,” Sef’sla replied with a grin, “but don’t let me keep you. Sit. Eat.” She gestured to the cushions that Neka reclined on, only to pause in shock when she saw that the cat-girl’s plate was already picked clean.
I rolled my eyes good-naturedly at my assistant’s insatiable hunger. “Don’t think you’re getting any of mine,” I teased with a wag of my finger at her.
Neka crossed her arms and pouted again, but the effect was ruined by the deep belch that exploded out of her small frame. Her eyes went wide, and she clapped her hands over her mouth.
“Oops,” she giggled. “Excuse me.”
Sef’sla threw back her head and laughed again. Neka echoed her, and Warmth bloomed throughout my chest at the beautiful harmony they created.
Fifteen minutes later, fed and freshly dressed, I followed Neka and Sef’sla out of our guest pod and headed off to the refinery. The two females walked side by side, chatting quietly amongst themselves. Neka, as always, was a wealth of questions.
“What is that building?” she asked excitedly, pointing at yet another single story structure. Before Sef’sla could even answer, the cat-girl’s attention had darted away. “Ooh! Where does that road go? I think I smell food down that way!”
Sef’sla did not seem to mind the endless barrage of questions. She even seemed to welcome them, explaining the sights of her city in endless detail, pride and happiness shining brightly in her eyes. I was content to simply stroll behind them and listen in.
Around us, Ka’le seemed to run and bustle as usual. Almort walked to and fro, headed to the marketplace, or to the school, or to a hundred other places to complete a hundred other tasks I had not yet witnessed. A sort of whimsical mood filled me as I watched these people slip past me, some with curious glances, some with shy smiles, some who didn’t even see me, absorbed in their own daily life. It was an emotion I had become quite familiar with though not until I left Proto behind and began to explore the vast and endless reaches of space. The feeling had nagged me for so long that I had even mentioned it to Omni, not long after I had made the AI into what he was today. Of course, the omniscient machine had an answer for me right off the bat.
The emotion that I found myself struck with every time I landed on a new planet was called ‘sonder,’ which is the overwhelming realization that each random passerby had a life of their own, as vivid and complex as mine, filled with ambitions and tragedies, worries and joys, an epic story that I only barely brush past.
Sonder was always humbling, but I had never felt it as strongly as I did now, here, in Ka’le. The Almort were a grand and noble civilization and, as individuals, they were intelligent, honorable, strong, funny, and kind. They had history and traditions and a culture I was only now getting the privilege to delve into. As I walked through their capital city, following their princess and my assistant, I was struck by how much I wanted to preserve their way of life, how strongly I wanted to protect them.
As I was ruminating on this, Neka’s gasp pulled me from my thoughts. I glanced up to find that she and Sef’sla had stopped a few meters ahead of me, both their heads craned back to look up into the sky. My heart skipped a beat for a moment before I realized it was awe in their faces, not fear. I followed their gaze and spotted one of Omni’s winged worker drones skating low the rooftops to our right. The small, agile, wasp-shaped machine bobbed through the air under the weight of its cargo, which was a metallic satellite dish about three meters wide. We watched the drone fly off to the west until we lost sight of it behind one of the buildings.
Sef’sla clicked her tongue and shook her head, making her hair slide across her shoulders. “I am still not used to seeing the flying-machines,” she hissed with a slightly embarrassed smile. “They surprise me every time.”
“Wait until the shield actually comes online,” I chuckled in response. “It’ll make the drones seem like toys.”
The Almort princess looked off in the direction that the drone had disappeared and her brow furrowed. “I… still don’t quite understand how this shield will work,” she admitted. Her eyes flicked back to mine hesitantly. “Could you explain it to me again?”
We started walking again, albeit a little slower and all abreast, with me in the middle. “I’m not an engineering expert,” I said with a small shrug. “I really only know the basics. Omni and Akela worked out the specifics.”
“That is fine,” Sef’sla hissed with a smile. “I do not think I would be able to understand your machine-healer’s specificssss.”
“Welcome to the club,” I laughed as we came to an intersection in the road and turned left. We were close to the refinery now, so close we could see its rooftop, billowing smoke. However, something else arrested our attention.
“Well, that’s a good a place to start as any,” I said as I gestured to the brand-new structure that pierced the skyline directly ahead of us, one of twenty identical structures that now encircled the Ka’le.
“The towers,” Sef’sla clarified with a dip of her chin. “Yes, what exactly is their function?”
“They’re technically called pylons,” I corrected her gently. “Their job is to conduct the power for the electromagnetic field that makes up the shield.”
Sef’sla’s eyes narrowed, and I realized I had lost her, so I backtracked a little.
“Okay,” I started again. “Think about how electricity works. It’s a stream of power that has to be harnessed, directed, and conducted, right? That’s what the shield is, a wall of powerful charge and electricity. The pylons, or towers, are being erected all around the city using our worker drones.”
We had drawn close enough to the pylon in front of us that we could see the small swarm of worker drones that buzzed around its peak and scurried around its base. The pylons were made of X’ebril, which apparently was a fantastic electromagnetic conductor. Each one of them stretched at least fifteen meters into the sky and were a handsome matte gray, streaked with burnished silver.
“Once construction is completed,” I continued as I gestured at the drones, “Omni, using a power cell from our ship that he’s running through the refinery, will stream energy to each of the pylons, which will conduct the power upward and outward through the satellite dishes affixed on top. I think there’s a little calibration involved, to get all electrical currents from each pylon to line up, but when they intersect, the shield will form over the city, like a bubble.”
Sef’sla’s brow was furrowed in concentration, but she nodded along in understanding. “And this shield will protect Ka’le?” she asked, her tone serious. It was fun to witness all the construction and improvements until we remembered exactly what they were for.
“Yes.” I nodded firmly. “The energy cell from our ship is state-of-the-art. The shield it will produce will be powerful. Powerful enough to disrupt and disperse any energy weapon, save a direct hit from a military class battle cruiser, fired from orbit but, again, Terra-Nebula won’t be using such destructive measures. They want to keep this planet as intact as possible. The shield will also stop any physical objects, like ships or troops, from entering the city, so you don’t have to worry about Warrick landing in the plaza again or hurtling rocks, or anything else for that matter, at us from space. That actually took a little finagling, too, since most shield systems used nowadays aren’t even calibrated to deflect physical objects anymore.”
“My father will be pleased to hear that,” Sef’sla hissed. Her dark blue eyes went flat and angry as she thought of the other broker.
“That makes two of us,” I muttered but then shook my head, banishing all thoughts of that blond prick. “Anyway, that’s as much as I know about the shielding. For anything more detailed, you’ll have to ask Akela, which you can do in a few moments.”
We had barely arrived at the refinery where dozens of Almort and drones bustled back and forth, their arms laden with carts of X’ebril.
Sef’sla stepped out of the way of a pair of Almort males, who inclined their heads to her as they passed. “I think I understand now,” the princess said in reply to me and then added with a small smile, “mostly.”
“It’ll make more sense when it comes online and you can see it,” I reassured her.
“I look forward to it.” Sef’sla grinned.
“Me too,” Neka piped up beside us, “but can we get inside and see Akela now? If we wait any longer, I might accidentally eat her breakfast.”
I turned to my assistant to see her frowning down at the plate of food she had been diligently carrying for our mechanic. I chuckled and reached out to scratch behind her ears.
“You’ve been so good,” I cajoled her. “Only a few minutes more.”
Neka nodded sadly and wrapped her tail around my wrist as we followed Sef’sla into the refinery.
We found Akela right where we had left her. She was hunched over a lab table, scribbling furiously on a data pad. Wires, circuits, spare drone parts, and shavings of X’ebril were scattered in disarray around the mechanic who didn’t seem to notice us at first, even though the door had hissed when we’d entered. I cleared my throat when the silver-haired woman began to mutter and curse under her breath.
“Good morning,” I called out brightly if a bit hesitantly. I glanced around our immediate vicinity to make sure nothing sharp was in arms reach. “We brought you breakfast.”
