So apparently I have no perspective on time and I let a long time lapse between my last update to Third's Ransom and now. It' s not that I don't write much, it's that I wind up forgetting to work on particular projects when I have too many irons in the fire. You can find the first part here.
Typhon is sometimes referred to as a paradise world, but it isn't really a world at all. It was one of the old Empire's experiments, an attempt to build a planet without a planet. Beautiful as it is, it's a place with a whole lot of skeletons in the closets. That's why the Archons don't like people there.
At least, not most people. They like me, because I'm a sucker who can't say no to a job attached to a pretty face, and because any creepy ancient mojo rolls right off me because of the Korsakov circuit implanted along my spine.
So when Kaja showed up rambling on in her Språka-infused lilt, I knew the Archons had a job for me.
You see, the Archons are the last vestige of the old Empire, watchers they set to keep an eye on the place while they were gone. In school they tell us that the Empire was destroyed in a cataclysm, but a lot of people think they just left–the Successor Empire likes pretending they rebuilt the galaxy, handily ignoring the fact that they don't really have evidence to support their theories.
The Archons don't bother with pretense. They know that a lot of the ancient sites are dangerous, but they also know they don't have a whole lot of political clout.
On Typhon, an enterprising soul beat them to the punch, setting up a chain of resorts across the planet. They made a profit off of tourism, showing off the gravesite of the Immortal Empire and marketing the magical phenomena of the world as a curative.
The Archons were furious, but what could they do?
They set up a quarantine zone around all the sites that were known to lead into the planetary substructures, labyrinthine corridors of omnistruct and metal leading down to God-knows-what.
And when people don't respect the zone, they kick them out, usually violently.
That's where I come in. Kaja explained to me, pausing a couple times for me to nod, that there was an unregistered spacecraft that had touched down in the quarantine zone.
"You'll handle the trisoi spacecraft, while local security sweeps the ruins."
"When do I go?"
Two hours later I found myself seated across from a planetary defense captain and a handful of glorified militia dressed up in cop outfits. I've spent enough time in the urban core worlds to see ex-gangsters, and I had a sneaking suspicion that these guys were kicked out of wherever they came from.
Hell, I'd have been willing to bet that they were into more sleazy back-alley deals than the smugglers we were supposed to be investigating. They didn't look like good fighters, though. Nasty in a brawl, especially if you're not equipped to fight back, but they didn't keep their weapons out.
I'm not a mage, and I've never claimed to be an expert on the acane arts, but one upside of having to lug all your stuff instead of conjuring it is that you've got it in-hand.
That's why when the surface-to-air missile hit, they all were screaming and shouting, and I kept my head. Shrapnel had gotten one guy, and he freaked out, calling his gun to his hand but pointing it at our guys instead of out the gaping hole that had appeared in the shuttle. I lunged toward him, the chemical alterations in my brain causing everything around me to freeze so I could take it in. I could see my drones begin to deploy, preparing to give me the whole scene.
My Korsakov circuit loops through my left hand, so I reached out with that, watching my fingers hurl out into the void of the cabin in the way early humans watched their spacecraft pierce the sky above our homeworld. The joker waving his gun around like he had good sense fired aimlessly into the cabin, sending a shockwave of dull fire into my ear canals before the filters kicked in and numbed the pain, but before it could materialize a second bullet I made connection with the chamber, and I saw the flash of an arcane construct biting the dust.
The gold and blue portrait out the window replaced itself with the red fractures of an integrity field, but the shuttle continued to lose altitude. My mind let time accelerate, the stress dying down a little as realization took hold. If a second missile hit us, it wouldn't matter whether or not it would seem like the distance between now and the heat death of the universe or passed in a flash.