Dark Matter Ascension-Chapter 27B3 - : Terraforming a frozen world

Jace climbed for days: ignoring sleep as he really didn’t have a choice thanks to the situation. Ollie was gone for most of the time; on standby as he did stuff with The Cosmic System, but still manifested. And Jace was able to think on his past and the experiences with his mentor…the man he was pretty sure was his father.

The memories flooded through him, and the rote climbing of the ladder was meditative, in a way, and Jace could focus on his memories. The times when his men- his father taught him how to get around without being seen. How to blend into the undercurrent of civilization to stay safe. How to pick locks of both the mundane and electronic variety.

And the man who built up Jace’s distrust of those in powerful organizations and the upper crust elites. Who convinced Jace that he was going to be indoctrinated into the corporations if he had not left the corpo-daycare that Jace considered an orphanage. As Jace pondered this and thought on it further, he came to a realization.

He sort of indoctrinated me, also. But he was taking care of me. He taught me about the horrible things that the megacorps did because he was victim to that system. And…if he knew I was his kid…he was just trying to rescue me from a similar fate. I wonder if he knew mom was alive? It seemed like he did not know. Maybe he never knew. Maybe she did know, but did not reconnect because then she would have to pay back the death benefits or something.

Jace sighed and this brought Ollie out of his standby mode, “You doing okay?” Ollie asked.

“How much farther up?” Jace asked in return.

“Approximately two days.”

Jace shook his head, “Any chance that someone can send me a Common (Equipment) Boon so that I can get a line ascender? I saw corpo helo crews use those before to get to and from helos and flying convoys: a weird device that clipped onto ropes and pulled them up.”

Ollie nodded, “I will look. Keep up the good work!”

Jace nodded and kept clambering up.

Dee was sitting in Priam’s study. She wasn’t really sitting, as her chitinous form was empty, and she was just congealed into her goop mass on the floor near the fireplace. Priam was reading a book, and she was messing around with a new type of art she had wanted to try given the desert homeland Priam loved: sand art. She was pushing around the various sections of colored sand inside a wooden container, trying to make a starburst pattern.

Xera’s voice came over the comms: directed just to Dee: “Mind if I warp you here to talk?”

Dee glanced over at Priam who was still absorbed in his book, sipping a little bit of tea here and there. “Yeah, I can talk,” she replied. “Let me get my chitin.” Shuffling her goop over to the chitinous shell, she stood up, leaned over, gave Priam a little hug, and then left the apartment. “Warp me.”

Dee saw the world shift around her and was standing in Xera’s apartment. The woman was sitting on a couch wearing a fine evening gown, and holding a steaming mug. “I wanted to talk about your past with the Nebula Alliance,” she stated.

Dee frowned and sat on the couch opposite Xera, “I thought you knew everything.”

“Humor me.”

Dee’s goop bubbled but she nodded, “Well, you know I was: am: a thief. Stole a lot of valuable stuff from a lot of different places. Same with my sister. Both of us stole stuff for the thrill of it. Well, we stole from the wrong person, and they called on their relations with the Nebula Alliance. I volunteered to work for them instead of having my sister and I punished. So…they let me join up. Dumb move on their part! Once I got there-”

“Deckard’s home world, Teresii, yes?”

“Yeah! Anyways, I got in there and stole a ton of stuff, including from his personal collection. Well, that pissed them off, and they sold me off to that Earth megacorp to harvest my goop for medical research. I was…what’s the word…on loan? They paid the Nebula Alliance for me to stay on Earth for their research and experiments.”

Xera took a sip of the hot liquid and grimaced, “A plight for any Plorp that I would not wish upon my worst foe; having your very being stripped away piece by piece.”

Dee nodded, “Then your Signers saved me. And well you know the rest since I’ve been in your faction since!”

Xera crossed her legs and one pair of her arms reached for a small tablet, sliding it along the couch to Dee. “Quinn is putting together a dossier on Teresii, but the information is maddeningly difficult to get. I can only do so much as the tech support, and without direct admin permissions, I cannot get some information. Namely, the layout of the world. I want you to review my notes on that tablet, then make revisions if necessary, and when you’re done hit the “complete” button so that it will send over to Quinn.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Dee grinned, “We’re going to hit his home world? I get revenge on Deckard?!”

Xera smiled and nodded, “The Star Council is allying with us for the endeavor. They will cause a ruckus on all manner of Nebula Alliance worlds to draw away their forces, which will enable the Dark Between Stars to infiltrate and assassinate Deckard. I’ve got an in with the next person who would most likely take over: a man named Tyul.”

Dee frowned, “You’d trust him?”

Xera frowned as well, “I do not inherently trust anyone…well, with the exception of Wayfinders and one Aspirant. I have put a little whisper in his ear, so to speak, that something may happen to Deckard soon: retirement, removal, lots of options. But, he’s much easier to work with because he does not have the traits of Deckard’s species that enables such rapid thought processes.”

“Gah. He bragged about that a lot! How he could process, what, quintillions of calculations and scenarios in seconds? Such an arrogant prick!”

“True. But I want him eliminated because he is the person who put the bounty on all of your heads. He dies, the bounty vanishes. And I do not think this Tyul wants to get on X’s bad side.”

Dee was practically shaking with excitement as she began to look through the datapad, “I’ll get right on it! I’ve got a good memory for breaking and entering into places!”

Xera smiled, “I’ll warp you back then.”

Reality shifted around Dee, and she was standing where she had left, the hallway right outside of Priam’s room. Rushing to the elevator and going upstairs, she knocked on Quinn’s door, and practically pushed past the woman to enter. “Come on! Let’s plan a break-in!”

Quinn frowned and closed the door, “It’s called a gig. And if we are going to plan that…I need snacks.”

Ollie came back online and frowned, “Does not look like I can have someone send you a Common Boon at this time. Sorry.”

Jace shook his head, “Damn. Going to be climbing here for a while.”

“You could use Dark Energy Mine and launch yourself up using the grapple.”

“No. I don’t want to risk using up energy when something could happen. I want to keep my energy reserves just in case.”

Priam’s voice came over the comms, “Hey! How you doing?”

“Still climbing,” Jace replied.

“Oh. Not fun. Well, I wanted to fill you in on our next thing since the Astral Incursions seem to have stopped!”

“Go for it,” Jace replied.

“Xera is planning a heist of Deckard’s home world! We’re going to go eliminate him and get these bounties removed.”

Jace frowned, “But if you all are seen then they might place a new bounty on you all.”

“She said don’t worry about that. How are you doing though? Feel any different with the increased soul energy coefficient?”

“Not really,” Jace replied.

“How’d that happen?”

“Shoved my sword into a crystal, got zapped to death. Well, body death. My brain was good, so I came back.”

Priam was silent for a few moments before responding with a timid voice, “You died?”

“I’ve died twice since I got here,” Jace replied. “Flicker died, my code name is Wraith now. As far as anyone is concerned, Flicker is dead.”

“Oh yeah! Xera mentioned something about that. Well…I’m happy you’re not dead-dead.”

“Same here,” Jace replied as he braced himself to pass through the black barrier that was some layer of Poltor Six. “I’m going to disconnect from comms as I go through something. I’ll reach out later.”

“Bye!”

Jace entered the black morass and the cold chilled him to the bone. Climbing as quickly as he could, he still took a few hours to get through the blackness and the NICIF was running on overdrive to keep him warm: even with the (Snowguard) Reaper Armor. His teeth chattering, he finally got through the substance and rapidly warmed up once more.

The skies above were visible, the stars racing overhead as the world hurtled through space. Jace clambered his way up and reached the top. Taking several breaths to recover, he walked over to the edge of the hole and looked down. “Ollie…I have an idea to warm up the world. I want to use this Archmage’s Admixture to…this sounds so outlandish…make an artificial sun.”

Ollie’s jaw dropped, “I…I do not even know…Let me run some calculations…” his eyes went black and there were several minutes of tense silence as Jace began setting up the tent so he could eat: his stomach absolutely gurgling from lack of sustenance. As he clambered inside and sealed up the space, Ollie flew through the flaps. “Not strong enough. You would need a lot stronger spell-turned-Skill. This world is way bigger than Nihilethelea.”

“Damn.” Jace began pulling survival meals out of his TPSB and shoveled the goop down his throat as he washed it back from the canteen. “What options do I have with what I’ve got?”

“Well…you could stabilize the atmosphere further. That’s within the realm of possibility.” 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

“Let’s do that. I just…think it, and then use the Skill, right?”

“Yup! Want to do it outside, though.”

Jace set his meal and canteen down. Getting out of the tent he looked up at the skies, seeing the swirling stars overhead. “Alright…magic Skill thing…I want to stabilize the atmosphere. Archmage’s Anathema.”

There was an enormous shockwave that emanated from Jace’s body and caused the tent to flutter as it was buffeted by the invisible force. Snow and ice, likewise, was pulsed away from him. And above him, in the skies, the darkness began to become more dull grey. The temperature rose a few degrees according to his HUD’s display.

“Good job!” Ollie stated as he flew about in happy little circles above Jace’s head. “Atmosphere has been stabilized and thickened. A few days of doing that, along with clearing out the remaining Complexes, and you’ll have helped increase the habitability and sped up terraforming by a ton.”

Jace went back to the tent to eat his food. “Happy to help,” he said in between gulping down the food and water.

Xera’s voice came over the comms, “Now that you’ve identified that the Complex at the core was not useful, I’ll work on shipping in the planetary engine that we can use to steer the world towards a habitable star system, and then I’ll set it into orbit. Thanks to your efforts, in a few hundred years, the Guatch will have their world back.”

Jace looked at the map and all the Complexes that were left. “Five more of those Glitch locations which might have the Class Reset Crystals, and then…what…fifty research facilities?”

“From that security depot,” Ollie replied, “Most of the research facilities are relatively minor. The types of Boons from System-generated Quests are relatively minor.”

“I was planning on sending the rest of the team to help clean those up,” Xera replied. “Get you on the big five Glitch locations, and send them to mop up the rest. But get some sleep. You’ve been climbing for three days.”

Jace finished off his food, nodded, and lay down. “Alright. A bit longer…and then we can get rid of the bounty on the rest of them.”