“It’s an uncommon crop, but one of the grains that the Agrarian Guild grows,” Thorn offered. He didn’t even need to query his System for that information.
“Ah, that makes sense,” Gammon said. “It’s a name. Specifically, Lief’s ex-wife number two, or ‘the one that got away.’”
Thorn stared at Gammon for a few seconds. “How do you know so much about his ex-wife? or ex-wives, rather?”
“I ask him,” Gammon replied. “And I listen to his god-awful stories with the patience of a saint so that he shares his booze.”
Thorn wasn’t sure how to take that information. He squinted heavily at Gammon.
“What? He makes really good moonshine,” Gammon said.
“How positively scandalous!” Beatrice interjected. “Was this drone Lief Warden’s drone, then? I know him! I just knew it, when I first took a gander at that man. He had that shifty look to him, the one that says he has trouble with women, and not the good kind.”
“Right," Gammon said, laughing at Beatrice. “I had to leave the room after I made the introduction, the two of you were flirting so much. I was hearing things that made ME blush.”
“So tell me… how bad was the break-up?” Beatrice asked Gammon, completely ignoring her previous comment. “Did the old ball and chain put out a hit on him? I wonder…”
“That’s… an interesting theory, but quite unlikely,” Gammon said, interrupting Beatrice’s monologue. “The last Lief saw of her was hopping on a ship off-world with half his quints and a younger man on her arm.”
“Let’s set that aside for now,” Thorn said, trying to get them back on track. “Was there anything else on the drone?”
“Awakened beast blood,” Beatrice replied, checking the results of her centrifuge’s analysis. “Some kind of contaminant though… would need to run more tests.”
That would likely be glitter. Was that from their fight with the snake, or did Lief get into another fight with an awakened beast hopped up on glitter?
“Can you tell where the drone flew from?” Thorn asked.
“Why yes I can.” Beatrice concentrated for a second,and Thorn received a data packet. “The data’s not precise, not exactly. Some of the first few instructions were visual landmarks and not global position coordinates.”
“Is there anything else in the drone?” Thorn asked. “Another payload?”
Beatrice picked up the drone and looked inside the tiny compartment. “No, just a bit of dirt and grease. Maybe some flecks of blood, hard to tell. What are you looking for?”
It was a long shot, but Thorn was thinking of Lief’s key for his WFG security box.
“What’s Lief got himself into?” Gammon asked Thorn. “There’s something going on here.”
Thorn grimaced. He didn’t want to lie to Gammon, but he wasn’t sure if he should tell her.
“I have a good idea of what it is,” he finally said. “While hunting south of Aba last weekend, Lief and I stumbled upon two awakened beasts battling it out. One of them had blood with visible flecks of gold, which according to Lief, was evidence of a–”
“Glitter farm,” Gammon finished for him. She gave Beatrice a knowing look. “No need to say more.
Gammon blew out a breath. “I’d give him fifty-fifty chances of still being alive.”
“Sixty-forty,” Beatrice said.
“No one asked you,” Gammon replied. “He could be injured and unconscious, and sent out his drone for help. Or he might have stumbled onto the source of the glitter, and got stuck in a jamming field set up by the owners of the farm, and he sent the drone out of the signal range for help.”
“Or he could have fallen in one of the deep crevices in the region and can’t get out,” Beatrice said. “But none of those options explain him telling us that his attempted murderer was his ex-wife.”
“Can you get off the ex-wife track? This isn’t one of your holodramas. We don’t know what the message was supposed to be, but it could be a coincidence. ‘Amaranth’ could be someone else, and based on the provenance of the name, it’s likely it would be someone in the Agrarian Guild. They all have those weird plant names. No offense, Thorn.”
“None taken,” Thorn said.
“Let me look into this more while you sit tight and not create any more problems for yourself.”
She gestured at the bruises on his face knowingly.
“So is our business completed then?” Beatrice asked.
It hadn’t been close to an hour yet, so technically, Thorn could ask her for a bit more “maintenance.” And while Gammon meant well, and certainly gave good advice… he had his own ideas.
“Actually, I have a few ideas I want to run by you. I’m not sure if this is possible, but I’ve heard the Crows are the best…”
…
Half an hour later and a thousand or so quints poorer, Thorn had what he wanted: a way to operate Lief’s drone, and a half-decent way to camouflage himself in the wilds. He’d had to pay out of pocket for additional materials, since his System didn’t support the level of machine integration necessary to operate a drone on its own, much less have any specialized software for running it, or any encryption for keeping it secure.
But Thorn could now charge Lief’s drone with his own quints and control it clumsily with an external comm booster. It was a box that he wore like a glove, and it gave him a flight range of up to a kilometer, as well as a splitting migraine whenever he used it. It was janky, unsophisticated, and crude, but that was how Thorn had lived most of his life. And until he overwrote his current System and levelled a new one, he would always be living this way.
It had been rough at first, but he had learned to zig when others zagged. To double down and hustle harder to make up for his disadvantages. To figure out small hacks, and ways around how things were normally done.
He was proud of how he’d scraped and pinched until he could buy a derelict truck, then ripped out a bunch of the complicated, higher tier System integrations, and paid a journeyman machinist to jury-rig manual operating mechanisms and a few custom-fitted panels to enclose the bed when he wanted. Everyone else relied on their System to help them, but Thorn had never learned that. He’d learned that if he wanted something, he needed to figure out how to do it himself.
So when Gammon suggested he wait until she had gathered more information on their mutual friend, he appreciated that she would look into the “Amaranth” clue that Lief left for them, but he couldn’t imagine putzing around Aba, “staying low.”
Gammon was strong, wise, and well-connected. Thorn always respected and appreciated her help, but deep down, he feared asking too much of her. If he was more trouble than whatever future potential he was worth… well, then he was just one more of the many low-levelled migrants bouncing around Aba, and she would cut him loose.
Like throwing a fish back in the pond.
He pointed his truck out of town, heading due south to Lief’s last known whereabouts.
He gave a rueful chuckle. He was almost certainly heading in the direction of the most serious danger, but he couldn’t imagine doing otherwise. Part of it was avoiding Grif; if he stayed in town, he would certainly get another beating. If he left… who knew? If Lief was injured hunting awakened beasts, or fell into one of the many deep ravines in the area, maybe he could help rescue him. Maybe even take down a few more beasts in the process and harvest their cores.
It was risky, but none of his options were safe.
If the situation were reversed, he knew in his bones that Lief wouldn’t hesitate to come find him. If he didn’t go try and find Lief himself, then he would prove that he was what he had always been afraid of being: dead weight. Not good enough. A loser. A waste of resources. A glitch.
A familiar determination warmed his heart as he set his mind to task. First up: finding Lief and kicking his butt.
The kilometers melted away and before, he knew it, Thorn was back on the hunt.
The majestic conifers rose hundreds of meters above him, insects chirped and small animals scurried through the brush all around him, and a dark, dense atmosphere weighed heavily on his shoulders.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The forest felt familiar, yet wildly different. He had been on hunting trips almost every other weekend for the past six months, but he’d always gone with Lief.
He was alone now, but he still followed the same ritual. He drove far south, further than he normally did on a hunting trip, following the flight path of the drone back to its source. After the terrain grew impassible, he found a secluded spot and parked the truck, covering it with branches and leaves to hide it from casual inspection.
He set out his gear and inspected each piece, being particularly careful to examine his portable shielding device (recharged to full) and his rifle. He took everything out of his pack, examined each piece of gear, and eliminated any weight he might not need, before repacking it carefully.
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, Lief had always said. On the drive up, he came to the decision that if Lief was dead, hurrying wouldn’t help; and if he was alive, then he was most likely stable and not bleeding out in the woods. Rushing into a situation dead-tired was a recipe for failure.
So he went slow, and before he knew it, he was done. Except, of course, for making Lief’s cup of pre-hunt caf. Thorn felt a strange pang of anxiety over skipping that part of the routine, even though it was completely unnecessary. He wasn’t drinking that swill, and left it in the truck.
Finally, he was ready to set out. He went over his plan one last time and pinged his System to organize all of the thoughts he’d fed it on the drive out of Aba.
- Primary Goals:
- Find Lief.
- Don’t die.
- Secondary Goals:
- Assist Lief with hunting any awakened beasts in the area.
- Avoid using expensive countermeasures.
- Return to Aba within six days in order to pay Grif off before the deadline.
- Methods:
- Utilize scout drone for advance reconnaissance.
- Move slowly, following path back to last known whereabouts of target.
- Move during the day, camp at night.
- Utilize shield and camouflage protection while stationary.
- Dangers:
- Normal wildlife — aggressive humpers, predators, venomous snakes.
- Geographical features — falling into deep ravines. Dead zones.
- Awakened beasts — formed from potential glitter farm in the area.
- Humans — other hunters or the owners and operators of possible glitter farm.
That last item was what worried Thorn the most. He thought he understood the dangers in these woods fairly well. It was other System users that could be unpredictable, aggressive, and possessing far more power than he did. On a whim, he decided to ask his System for its input as well.
The CES itself is an active threat to my life and well-being, Thorn thought. The System’s response, while useless, did jog a few more thoughts through his mind. If he were a true believer in the apotheosis of the machine god, what would he do?
He’d bring along a few cultist buddies. But did he have any other friends who could help? His down-and-out coworkers at the diner? Acquaintances from his time working down at the docks? There was no one else he could trust, much less anyone with any helpful skills. A better idea would be attempting to recruit Lief’s friends, but the man was a bit of a loner himself, and Thorn didn’t know any of them besides their mutual acquaintance, Gammon.
Or, if he was like the local branch leader of the CES, he’d try to stiff his friend as quickly as possible and run off with the quints. That was a cold, dark thought, but if Lief was dead… well, he wasn’t going to need whatever he’d squirreled away in that WFG lockbox anymore.
Satisfied that his plan was as good as it was going to get, Thorn shouldered his pack and rifle and pulled his poncho over his pack. The poncho was the second new piece of equipment he’d procured at the Crows Guild.
Technically it was an old piece of equipment. It had a fancy new coating though, made of an exotic alloy that Beatrice had sprayed on, that would reduce his thermal image and more importantly, help shield his quintessence signature. And it was still rain-proof.
Lastly, he pulled the boxy, glove-shaped object that allowed him to control Lief’s drone onto his left hand. He’d requested it be a glove, but due to his budget it had ended more like a boxy mitten. He could still hold and fire his rifle if need be, though, so it worked.
He activated the device by pressing a switch on the outer housing and winced slightly as the glove compressed tightly around his hand. The glove would now interpret the movement of the muscles in his hand into instructions for the drone, and send them out, up to a range of one kilometer. Using different hand gestures, he could tell the drone to fly up, down, left and right, to increase or decrease speed, or change altitude.
When he didn’t want his hand gestures to operate the drone, he could simply press the activation button again, and the drone would hover in place.
He spent a few minutes practicing moving the drone around the clearing he was in. Next, he activated the visual data that the drone was broadcasting. He was immediately overwhelmed with sensory information as a visual feed from the drone overlayed his own vision. He quickly shut his eyes as he felt a migraine coming on.
Thorn used his System to decrease the amount of information displayed until he felt like his head wasn’t going to burst. Because he lacked a true System integration with this drone, he would have to adjust the feed every time he used it.
He certainly couldn’t walk, talk, and use the drone at the same time either (not like Lief had done, and with three total drones to boot). Instead, he sat down, closed his eyes and quickly took the drone on a scouting trip around his immediate area.
The forest was quiet and still. Only a few small animals showed up on the infrared band, mostly small birds and ground squirrels. He saw no recent sign of predators in the area, no scat or markings on trees.
Less than a minute had passed and Thorn was already regretting his plan. The initial euphoria of using a drone, like someone with a real System, was gone and replaced with an icepick in his eye. His head was pounding, and he was nauseous and motion sick from looking through the drone’s visual feed.
Pushing down the nausea, he collected the drone. This wasn’t going to work out as he had imagined.
He had to use it, since better information was still his best bet at gaining an advantage. If he didn’t use the drone, it would be like searching for a specific needle in a haystack… while blind, and while other needles were out to get him.
The flight range was only one kilometer from his body, but the visual range of the drone could theoretically be much further than that. The cameras on it had fantastic zoom. And they could see in infrared, unlike him.
Why was he flying the thing around, as if he had bound a bunch of quintessence into levels upgrading his mind and proprioception?
After a bit of fiddling with his System HUD and filtering down what it was showing in his vision, he sent the drone out and parked it about half a kilometer away and a few hundred meters high in the air and as far up as it could go before piercing through the canopy. He could see the drone with his naked eyes, and it had good lines of sight on the path he needed to travel.
In the lower left corner of his vision, Thorn had a high contrast, low resolution feed from the drone based on its infrared sensors. Thorn could see his own body-heat signature on the map, as well as the tiny pinpricks of small animals in the distance.
Thorn stalked forward through the woods, eyes and ears peeled. If anything big tried to sneak up behind him, or was approaching from the front, they would show up as a red blotch on his drone feed. He couldn’t see any of the detail from the drone, but that’s what his own eyes were for.
This could work. Every kilometer or so, Thorn paused and repositioned the drone further ahead.
He wished he could give it more complex commands, such as staying a fixed distance ahead of him as he walked, or get his System to automatically ping him if it noticed anything coming in through the visual feed. But his System didn’t support that type of analysis, nor was it actually integrated with the drone in any way.
If Thorn hadn’t been on edge, the danger from the fight with the two awakened beasts clear in his memory, he would have found the walk through the forest boring. Enjoyable even. There was a serene, hallowed quality to an old forest like this. The trees and plants and insects and animals had all existed together in a continuous cycle for centuries, digging well-worn grooves into the space they occupied. Thorn was a silent shadow, moving softly across scattered leaves and rocky gulleys.
Thorn had been hiking for several hours now, and following the former path of the drone had taken him further south and deeper into the woods than he had ever travelled. The light was failing and the dense air was cooling off rapidly.
Thorn found a giant conifer next to a deep, wide ravine blocking his path south and nestled himself in a deep cranny in between two exposed roots. He set out his pumpkin shield and made a small pile of leaves to lie on, and broke open one of the preserved meal packs he had brought with him, drinking sips of filtered water.
Thorn double- and triple-checked his portable shield before covering himself with a thin, reflective blanket and his camouflaged poncho. The drone was hanging from another pylon driven into the side of a tree approximately twenty yards away. If he needed, the drone could provide him with a view of his surroundings without him poking his head out of his hidey hole.
The piled leaves didn’t quite make up for the rough ground, but even if he didn’t feel comfortable, he felt fairly secure. He lay down and listened to the sounds of the forest at night. There was a faint cawing in the distance, and Thorn wondered if that crow who had warned him of the awakened snake and then tried to steal his beast core after the hunt was somewhere out in the woods, stalking him.
He thought he’d have a difficult time falling asleep, but the exhaustion of the day caught up with him and he was asleep within minutes.