Ravens of Eternity

140 The Flow of Coin, Pt Lacroseth City was typically serene at night, especially when the skies were nice and the dome was open. This wasn’t such a night. The clouds blotted out the stars, and rain pattered all over the dome.

Many portions of the city itself had gone dark, save for those closest to the center – those districts truly never stopped working. Up in the air between the buildings, much of the city’s traffic had become rather subdued, at least from regular gondolas. Multiple commercial transport vehicles had instead taken over the skylanes.

Down on the ground, and in the buildings, millions of Drogar toiled on through the night. They kept the city safe, and warm, and most importantly, running. Guards and engineers and emergency personnel. Those sorts.

Some simply liked to keep watch.

Inside one of the many hab highrises along the outer edges, a young Drogar looked out his window. Through sleepy, drooping eyes, he saw the city below, and the seas beyond. He liked to doze off while watching the city. He imagined all the lives he could live down there, and liked to start his dreams off with those kinds of thoughts.

Out of nowhere, a blur of movement dashed past his window. The boy sat up with a start, rubbed his eyes, then glanced upwards through the window. He tried to look for the blur, but couldn’t. Whatever it was, was long gone.

The blurry shadow climbed up the building with a quick and steady pace. It seemed to leap from ledge to ledge with efficiency and precision, almost like a machine. When it reached the top, it simply flipped over the edge and slipped into a shadow.

After sitting there for a few moments, the blur began to pixelate, then individual pixels turned black and shut off. Once the chameleon suit had completely powered down, its wearer pulled off its stiff fabric mask.

Free of all impediments, Colviss breathed in the crisp night air, then exhaled slowly. The climb had tired her greatly, and the mask most certainly impeded her breathing. She found great relief from removing it.

.....

She smelled the brine of the ocean, along with the freshness of the rain.

After a moment, she walked back over to the edge and peered down below. It was hundreds of meters to the bottom. Certain death for anyone, Reborn or not. So she stepped back and slung her chameleon pack off her shoulders.

Colviss knelt down as she laid her pack gracefully on the ground. She slid open a compartment on the side, which revealed a small touch panel with blank keys on it. With deftness, she tapped on a number of keys in a very specific order and unlocked the pack itself.

It split open down the middle and peeled back until the contents inside were revealed. There were a number of hand-held devices, dozens of dangerous-looking sabot projectiles, and parts of a disassembled rifle.

Colviss pulled out a completely smooth tube, powered it on with a tap, then peered through it. Though the scope was thin, it was incredibly powerful. She played with its focus until she was able to zoom right into a Drogar family’s main room from over a kilometer away.

She brought her view right up to their plates and took a good look at the stew they were digging into.

“Drogar still eat that?” she mused. “There’s a whole galaxy filled with food, people. Try something different.”

As her eye wandered into other apartment homes across the city, an alert came up on her DI.

Incoming Communication, Encryption Status IR5, it said.

Senator Savoth’s face accompanied the notification, so she had no choice but to answer. Not that she particularly wanted to.

She opened the call and Savoth’s face animated in her mind.

“Senator,” she said.

“Colviss,” he responded. “I’ve been hearing a few interesting reports about you. Disturbing, to be perfectly honest.”

Colviss didn’t respond and simply continued peering through her scope. Most of what he said simply wasn’t of much concern to her in the first place.

“Some of the more responsible members have informed me,” he continued, “that they don’t think you believe in my cause. That you actively denigrate my ideas. Why is that?”

“Because I told them,” she answered.

He was slightly disconcerted by her honesty. But quickly shook it off in annoyance.

“Listen,” he said. “I don’t honestly care if you’re behind me or not. I don’t even care what your actual opinions are. But I can’t have my people holding doubts. It’s not conducive to business, you understand?”

“So then hire someone else to train your little private army,” she replied. “I’m sure there’s plenty of Reborn with my special skillset. But with more dishonesty to suit your particular needs and tastes.”

Savoth grit his teeth as she taunted him.

“Oh, that’s right! You can’t!” she continued. “There’s no-one else like me. Not on this planet, anyway. If you want what you want, you’re gonna have to deal with my opinions of you, too.”

“We don’t have to like each other,” said Savoth. “But we don’t have to give away each others’ secrets. It causes discontent among the masses to let them loose, do you understand? It undermines the things we’re all working towards. For example, you don’t see me telling the people about who the Reborn really are, right? Doing so would be a serious setback for all of you.”

Colviss harrumphed at Savoth’s threat. Only idiots believed anything he said, so she had little to worry about any secrets getting spilled.

“If you’re so worried about discretion,” she said, “maybe you should’ve included it in our contract to begin with.”

Irritation immediately swept through Savoth, but he quickly forced himself to calm down. Colviss clearly knew her value, and extracted every bit of coin she could out of him.

“I’ll send an amended version in the morning,” he said. “With extra incentives to ease any frictions between us, as well. I need you instructing my people, keep them working, busy, strong. Just please keep doubts out of their heads.”

“You have my word, Senator,” she replied. “Pending approval.”

Colviss then shut off her comms and went back to scanning the city.

She pointed at the darkest spots of the city right at the edge of it, and cycled through its multiple vision modes. There, she found a human female tirelessly running around the compound. Her pace was fast, even, and steady.

Her DI scanned the human’s silhouette and determined with a 73% certainty as to who it was.

“Ra’ventrii,” muttered Colviss. “I could end you right now.”

She kept her view on her steadily for some time, but abandoned her as she passed a building.

But not just any building.

Through her scope, the building was completely void of heat. While everything around was some scale of grey – Eva being a very light grey – the building was beyond black. No other buildings reported the same, not even ones that were shut down.

Colviss scanned through all of her vision settings and discovered that they all reported that building, that space, as nonexistent. When she peered at it with normal eyesight, she could just barely make out its outline in the darkness.

It was there, but invisible. Clearly, something incredibly dangerous was in there, and she shivered at the thought of what it could be.

~

Deep inside the giant warehouse, hundreds of Federation engineers, mechanics, and researchers worked with dozens of Drogar machinesmiths as they put together the Admiral’s temporary lab.

Some teams put together simple workbenches, built up storage racks, and hung secure shelving. Others assembled various material printers, design terminals, and mechanical arms.

All while they built up the inside, others were organizing and stowing their tools in various lockers scattered all around.

And as things progressed, one of the teams also went around and tested out the different production lines. Or at least, the ones that were completed. Designers at the terminals created simple mechanisms, and sent them to the engineers to print out. Then the mechanics would test the mechanisms to ensure their quality.

Once they were happy with the results, they gave that specific production line the green light.

The Drogar were there simply to help the humans acclimate to their equipment and systems. The Federation engineers could have brought down their own equipment within the asteroid, of course. But that would have led to more questions than anyone was comfortable with.

There were certainly a few hiccups – some machines printed out the wrong parts, or were given incorrect machine scaling. But ultimately, they all worked together to work out all the bugs and the kinks.

Well, to a workable degree anyway.

At the very center of the space was a platform with a closed-off space on top of it. The windows all around it allowed whoever was inside to look out to any part of the warehouse floor and easily see what was going on.

Otherwise, it was a large open area with a circular holographic table in the center. The Admiral, Szereth, and Miko stood around the table and discussed the various designs that were being displayed above the holographic projector.

Among the designs were thick armor plating, armor reinforced barriers, handheld shields, and more.

The three adjusted each of the designs as they talked with each other. They easily made their edits through each of their personal datapads. Although Miko was able to control it through her wand instead.

All three of them talked, discussed, and argued all throughout the rest of the cycle, and refined their ideas down as best they could.

“Are we sure this is the design we wish to proceed with?” asked Miko.

Hovering on the table was the framework of what looked like a hand-held shield. It was long, ovular, and convex. It reminded Miko of old tribal shields back in Earth’s ancient history. While those were made of leather and wood, these were made of far more resilient materials – omnitronium, carbon, titanium, molybdenum, and so on.

Her job was simply to advise the Admiral on her designs. Everyone, the Admiral especially, knew that Miko’s ideas were often a little strange, but incredibly effective. Everyone involved made sure that she had input on the project.

The Admiral herself was tasked with the simple job of designing the needed equipment. Well, although her goals were simple, she technically held the hardest job. She had to make a shield that would keep her people alive.

And she couldn’t keep it.

“Just the first iteration,” the Admiral replied. “We’ll make a few test versions here, iterate revisions constantly, then send it off to Szereth here.”

Szereth nodded. He happily accepted the contract that Swarmfather Retholis had put together. In it, he was to provide mass production capabilities. The Admiral’s lab could print their own shields, but it was a far cry from being able to produce them by the hundreds.

So Szereth was the money. Not only did he help produce the finalized shields, he also was supposed to provide the raw materials. And his own expertise as a military armorer.

In exchange, he would get the exclusive rights to the technology. Even though it was actually Admiral Chase and Miko’s design, he would have the ability to do with the shield designs as he wished.

“I’m having some of my older manufacturing plants refitted for this,” said Szereth. “We should have the ability to print out a few hundred of them in a single cycle. And, heavens willing, produce them en masse at some point down the line.”

“Which’ll no doubt be used against the Federation in some battleground somewhere,” said the Admiral.

“Well at least you know how to defeat your own work, yeah? Plus you’ll be earning from the sales regardless.”

“I can’t believe I’m arming my own nation’s enemy. For profit.”

The Admiral frowned as she realized her own position. She felt as though she was betraying the Federation. But Szereth was quick to prop her back up.

“And for the safety of your people,” he said. “It might leave a bad taste in your mouth, but at least you’re doing good by those who work for you. I have to commend you for that. Not many Drogar would even think to do that for their own workers.”