-BEN-

  Of all the planets Ben Wilson had been to, Rector 9 was the one he disliked the most. He knew that certain places had strange mana which affected the atmosphere, but he had never felt anything like Rector 9.

  The planet had an atmosphere that clung to the skin. It felt moist and sticky. Ben sensed it as soon as he stepped off his starship. His mission brief had stated that the planet was friendly to human physiology.

  ‘I guess the criteria for friendliness doesn't include comfort,’ Ben thought to himself.

  The place he had landed in was devoid of civilization. It was just an expanse of rolling hills covered with small rocks, and dotted with occasional plant life. From what he understood, the entire planet's surface was like this. There was no intelligent species in the known universe which called Rector 9 home. There were no mages.

  Not anymore, at least.

  The mission brief had stated the planet had once been home to a species of humans called the Naveen. The Naveen had been known to produce powerful mages, and that had been one of the reasons they were targeted in the second intergalactic war. The Naveen were wiped out using a powerful weapon known as a Karestes Bomb. The weapon was named after the mage who invented it.

  The devastation of the bomb likely contributed to the way the mana on the planet behaved now. It also contributed to the banning of the Karestes Bomb, and the assassination of its maker. Now, the Naveen lived on through memory mages like Ben's partner, Blazecorra (Blaze) Kuto.

  Ben wondered if Blaze himself might one day have the ability to access Naveen genes. He hoped not. Intelligent gene memories were very difficult to deal with. At the moment, Blaze was out of commission, recovering on Terra. That was why Ben was here, alone.

  The two of them worked for the Stellar Authority, a semi-private peacekeeping force that had jurisdiction in a quarter of the galaxy. Ben was dressed in typical Stellar Authority tactical gear: black fatigues with black boots. He wore a rifle strapped to his back, and hated that he had to have it. He much preferred using his magic, but that was limited at the moment. His mana was fine. He could feel it flowing through him, yearning to be released in combat. The problem was in its application.

  Maybe today would be the day. Maybe he would find something that allowed him to finally overcome the curse that was limiting him.

  Ben had with him a small holographic projector that could display a map of the planet. He turned it on. The map had several icons, but the most important one was a small yellow star which indicated his target. It was a few miles away.

  He stepped away from his ship and turned to face it. It was a StarHawk T700, the usual starship assigned to agents in the Stellar Authority, though Ben's ship was slightly different.

  His partner, Blaze, while not being a technology enthusiast himself, had many friends who were. And over the course of their time working together, many of these friends had "volunteered" modifications to the ship. These unregulated additions had resulted in their ship being faster, more agile, and several times deadlier than the average StarHawk T700.

  Ben had grown fond of the ship. A spray of graffiti decorated the side nearest to him: the unfinished work of one of Blaze's more eccentric friends. It was supposed to be a painting of a thunderstorm on the surface of Loneria, Blaze's homeworld. Ben had been to Loneria. He had witnessed a few Lonerian thunderstorms. He did not see the resemblance.

  He had a watch strapped to his wrist that allowed him remote control over the ship. He tapped the watch and there was a loud beep. The staircase he had descended retracted with a sound of shifting metal. It folded itself beneath the open door, which itself slid shut. Then the ship hummed to life. Ben watched as it took off, piloted by the ship's AI. It disappeared into the clouds above, and would stay there, following him, until he sent it another command.

  He turned towards his target. Ten miles. It would not take too long for him to get there. Hopefully there wouldn't be much resistance, and he wouldn't have to kill too many people. He secured his rifle with a sling around his shoulder and began to walk.

  -BREAK-

  Rector 9 was like Earth in that it had a lone sun. That sun had been high in the sky when Ben had first arrived. Now it hung low. Sunset was rapidly approaching. Another agent would have landed closer to the target and avoided the long trek. But Ben had reasons for landing as far as he did.

  For one thing, he thought it wise to get used to the local climate before getting involved in a fight. And it worked. He had long gotten used to the filmy air and the heat by the time he was nearing the target. His feet understood the terrain, and his body the gravity.

  Another reason was that it gave him time to think. As usual, his thoughts started with magic. He wondered what kinds the Naveen had used. He had read they mostly used spatial magic. Now that was a very interesting magic. Ben wished he had gotten the chance to see what Naveen spatial magic looked like. His thoughts drifted to all the interesting types of magic he had seen in his life. Unsurprisingly, this led him to think of Fen. He thought about how he had failed her and Blaze, and how he was the reason Blaze was in a RegenTank, and Fen was dead.

  The last person he thought about was Silver. Here, he began to fantasize. Ben fantasized about how he would kill Silver. He imagined all the ways he could draw it out, and make his enemy suffer. In order to do most of what he thought, he would need to get his magic back. And thinking about his lost magic made him miserable, so Ben stopped thinking.

  He looked at the map. He was 500 metres away from his target.

  He crested a hill, and found himself looking down into a shallow valley. It was a graveyard. A graveyard for robots; and in the center of the robot carcasses stood a small wooden shack.

  Ben descended the hill and entered the graveyard.

  He was not alone.

  In front of the wooden shack stood a tall man. He was dressed in a faded blue workman’s jumpsuit and had on a circular hat, presumably to block out the sun’s rays. He stood behind a long workbench on which lay the carcass of a robot. The man was busy fiddling with the carcass. The hat hid the man’s face from Ben, but Ben knew what he was: A Dreglin; one of the worst species of humans in history.

  Ben walked towards the Dreglin.

  As he walked, he eyed the metal carcasses scattered around. They all had the same design: An oval head with tiny dots for eyes and narrow slots for a mouth. It was a minimalist design. The Dreglin called it Dreha. They worshipped Dreha. The entire species dreamt of a day when they could transfer their consciousness into one of these robots and become part of the Dreha collective. That was Dreglin magic. It was some sort of telepathic magic that Ben didn’t quite understand.

  The Dreha collective had once come close to taking over a tenth of the galaxy. That was when the Stellar Authority showed up, and wiped out most of their society. There were very few Dreglin alive now, and even fewer who knew how to transfer their minds to the Dreha collective.

  They hated all other humans, particularly humans like Ben, who bore the form the human race had originally taken. They called people like Ben defaults. Ben didn’t care. Defaults ruled the galaxy.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Ben focused on the Dreglin as he drew closer. The man lifted up his head to look at him. He was a very old man with crusty, scaly skin, that seemed to be made of interlocking ridges.

  As Dreglin grew older, some of the ridges fused into larger unified entities. If not kept trimmed, the ridges grew long and drooped. The old man had several unified drooping ridges. He looked at Ben with a sad expression.

  "I hoped you would be older," the man said.

  Ben stopped. He could sense six mana signals close to him. There was the old Dreglin standing in front of him. Then there were two similar mana signals in the wooden shack. One more signal came from underneath a pile of robots to Ben’s right, and another in a pile to his left.

  So they had attempted to set an ambush. Ben had hoped they would just surrender. The final signal also came from the shack, but this one felt different. That must have been the hostage.

  Ben looked at the old Dreglin.

  "Hand over the girl," Ben said.

  The old Dreglin looked at him.

  "My name is Edaho," he said.

  Ben fought the urge to say I don't care.

  The Dreglin continued speaking. "Before we hand over the girl, I want you to give me some assurances."

  Ben frowned.

  "You are an agent of the Stellar Authority," the old man said. "I can see it from your uniform. Your people are well known for your honesty."

  ‘Well, that's a load of nonsense.’ Ben thought to himself. The Stellar Authority thrived on lies and secrecy.

  Edaho continued, "I want you to promise that you will not harm my sons or myself. Then we will hand over the girl."

  Ben eyed the man. He knew where this was going, but he decided to play along.

  "I promise," Ben said.

  Edaho smiled and nodded slowly. Then he turned and began to walk towards the shack. He spoke as he walked.

  "It is not the fault of my sons, you know. It's their young Dreglin mana. It runs hot. Excuse me to say you might not understand it since you’re… default. My sons let their mana overwhelm them. It was why I hoped you would be older. An older person might have understood the pressures of dealing with young hot-blooded people." Edaho laughed.

  "But we have done no harm to the girl," he said. "See for yourself."

  He rapped sharply on the door of the shack and waited. There was no response. He turned to Ben and laughed again. "I don't know what's taking so long," he said nervously. He rapped again, the rhythm was different this time.

  Again there was no response.

  "Why don't you try going in?" Ben asked dryly.

  Edaho shook his head. "Oh no. They'll be out soon. It’s just a slight delay."

  ‘These are amateurs.’ Ben realised. An old man, and four people who had never seen a proper battle.

  Their tactics, if they could be called that, were painfully obvious. They should have known Ben could sense mana. He could sense the flares in the mana of the two Dreglin in the shack. Flares they didn’t bother hiding. Or maybe they didn’t know how. He could tell they were moving some sort of weapon into position. It was a weapon that used mana to create projectiles, likely a cannon. Ben could sense mana being built up inside it.

  Edaho rapped on the door again, another different rhythm, a different code, directing them on where to aim. They turned the weapon towards him and fired. A blast of blue light tore through the wooden shack.

  Ben deftly sidestepped it and watched as it bore a shallow hole into the hillside.

  He turned to Edaho. The elderly Dreglin looked shocked that Ben was not a charred mass of flesh.

  "Bad plan," Ben said. He aimed his rifle at the old Dreglin and fired. A blue plasma bolt lanced into the Dreglin's left shoulder. The man screamed as he fell backwards.

  The graveyard erupted with activity. The Dreglin hiding in the robot pile to Ben’s left charged out of his hiding place and leapt at Ben. He screamed as he ran.

  ‘No magic,’ Ben thought. So he wasn’t likely to be a mage.

  The man held a gun in his hand but had seemingly thought it better to leap out, and shout before firing.

  "Amateurs," Ben said as he sidestepped the Dreglin's heavily telegraphed shots. He took a deep breath, and mana flowed through his body, reinforcing it. He stepped towards the attacker, and rammed a mana-reinforced fist into the man’s abdomen. The man gasped and doubled over. Ben grabbed him about the head and twisted. There was a snap and the Dreglin fell to the ground. His body spasmed a bit, then he stopped moving.

  Ben scanned the dead body. He wasn’t interested in the rifle, but the man had a blade strapped to his side.

  ‘Yes, that might do.’ Ben bent and withdrew it from its sheath. It was a long knife, crafted from some sort of golden metal. Ben had heard of a special alloy the Dreglin used for their most important weapons and robots. If this was that alloy, then Ben had struck gold.

  The Dreglin hidden in the other pile had not moved yet, but Ben could tell from the flow of the man’s mana that he was getting ready to attack.

  Ben whipped his hand out, flinging the blade with reinforced strength into the pile of robots. There was an audible gasp and then nothing. The mana signal vanished as the Dreglin died.

  Only the two in the shed remained now. Apparently, they were eager to die. They leapt through the hole their weapon had made and faced Ben. They were taller than the foolish one who had attacked Ben, probably older too. They both held outdated blasters in their arms. Ben considered disarming them, and engaging in hand-to-hand combat. He considered using his reflector shield, but he quickly dismissed those ideas.

  Shooting them might be quicker. He squeezed the trigger on the rifle. A blue bolt shot out, and a charred hole appeared in the forehead of one of the Dreglin.

  "Oh," he said, then fell dead.

  His brother stared at his body for a full three seconds. Then he turned to Ben, his expression a mixture of rage and fear.

  "I’m going to kill you!" the Dreglin screamed. "Defaults! Scum of the ground! I'll kill all of you!" He grabbed his rifle and aimed. Ben squeezed his trigger three times. The last Dreglin fell atop his brother, unmoving.

  Ben sighed. "Job finish—"

  A rattling sound filled the air. Ben looked and saw the robot carcass Edaho had been working on pushing itself up by its arms. Ben glanced at the old man’s body. He had felt the mana leave Edaho’s body and assumed it was death. Indeed, the body lay behind the workbench, lifeless, but there was no doubt that the mana signal he felt from the reanimated robot carcass was similar to Edaho’s

  It seemed Edaho had managed to transfer himself into the robot. The robot's dotted eyes lit up with a reddish hue.

  "Death to all defaults," it said, voice like metal clanging.

  Ben swore. The robot erupted in a massive explosion that tore the landscape apart. Ben activated his reflector shield. It was a mana technique designed to redirect blaster bolts, but had some efficacy against regular explosions. Ben was still knocked back by the concussive force.

  He slammed onto the ground, dazed. Stars swam in his vision and when he finally blinked them away, he was greeted with chaos. The explosion had torn the wooden shack to shreds, and scattered the robot and Dreglin carcasses. The floor was charred with marks that radiated out of the explosion epicenter. Ben grunted as he stood to his feet. He had not considered the possibility of a bomb. Dreglin tended to opt for self-preservation. This move came as a shock.

  Ben caught a glimpse of the golden knife a few feet away from him. It was still lodged in the corpse of the second Dreglin he had killed. He walked towards the knife, knelt and touched it.

  "Assimilate," he whispered.

  The golden knife shimmered then disappeared. A broad smile broke across Ben’s face. This his first successful assimilation since recovering from his injuries. His alchemy magic would go through the process of assimilating the blade and extracting components from it. Once that was done, Ben might be able to recombine it with some of his existing components. He was hoping the Dreglin metal would be compatible with one component in particular: The Vector Force. It was his only remnant of Fen. And he was determined to use it in his revenge mission.

  The Vector Force was highly volatile and couldn’t be restrained by normal materials. Nix metal was the best. But there was virtually none of that left in the galaxy. Hopefully the Dreglin metal would do.

  Ben scanned again, this time looking for the hostage. Thankfully, that signal was still present. She was alive. He walked towards the signal, and had to clear away some debris until he finally saw her: a human girl, arms crossed over her chest, eyes closed, covered head to toe with the shimmering barrier that had kept her alive.

  "Job finished," Ben said. He reached down to wake up one of the most wanted women in the galaxy.