Age of Space

Waking up to a new day, Ronin was elated to notice that the headache was gone, his back and legs were mostly alright now too.

Getting home he’d jumped into the biorinser immediately, then collapsed into bed.

Despite going to sleep in the middle of the day he’d slept through the night all the way until dawn the next day.

That's got to be like what? 38 hours? Ronin thought, astonished at just how long he'd slept.

Concordia was a planet with a middle of the road rotational speed, doing a single cycle in about 50 hours, its size was about as large as Earth, humanity's home world. Its gravity, however, was about 1.3 times higher than Earth, owing to its rich reserves in high density metals.

There was nothing mandatory he would have to show up to do yet at the academy so he could freestyle his own learning for the moment.

He turned on the local news and listened for anything related to the attack yesterday. Finding the relevant livestream, he tuned in.

“…many citizens are unhappy about the lack of actions during yesterday's attack. The fact that the attack happened this close to Ironglades academy has left many wondering if Mayor Brunstein has paid sufficient attention to the growing CLM threat.”

He pinged the implant and a 3-dimensional image of himself materialized in front of him. The pitch-black hair was more ruffled than normal but that was expected, his height was as always 174 cm on the mark, his spinkly body had all the old bruises from fights with gangs and ruffians from the neighborhood like always.

The livestream continued: “…Here we have Mayor Brunstein, live, responding to yesterday's attack:”

Barely audible sounds of solemn footsteps echoed in the livestreamed studio.

“Yesterday, shortly before dawn, a group of individuals attacked the region surrounding Ironglades city academy. My heart goes out to those affected; you have my gravest sympathies. As for the criminals who did this, I will not honor them with a name, a name requires common human decency, something which these animals possess none of! None at all!”

The mayor coughed, drank some water, then continued:

“As I was saying, these animals were dealt with in a manner fit for what they did”

“And what did these people do?” The reporter followed up.

“Thorough investigation has revealed that at about 13:40, a large number of fireworks were set off, causing mayhem and destruction all around the academy area. This even went so far as to indirectly cause 5 fatalities during the event. As a response to this, Ironglades as well as Concordia as a whole has decided to take off the brakes and act proactively against this group from now on.”

They downplayed it! 5 indirect fatalities? Fireworks? How could they miss report on such a huge event? The answer was that they hadn't, it was deliberate. How much of what really happened out there did the media really cover? How much of what the CLM did had they downplayed? They might be much more dangerous than he was led to believe!

Tuning out of the livestream, he refocused on his own hologram. Two thick black lightning shaped scars were running vertically down from his forehead, stopping at his eyes before continuing down his cheeks, ending around where his nose ended. Not only that, his eyes had changed too. Before, his eyes had been black, now they were golden, with a red spark in the middle of his pupils.

The alien infection!

Ronin knew he had to figure this out. At least he had to do something about it. Sitting down, he closed his eyes and entered his mind palace. He’d naturally acquired this technique due to his ability to remember everything. At some point, when he was younger, the memories became too much to sort through. He kept mixing up details and irrelevant facts. When he tried to recall something, there had been so much to work through, so much 'fog'. In order to sort out his memories properly, he’d constructed something that could house them all, neatly and orderly.

Going for something large, he’d made a mental representation of his favorite starship, the Coronix produced goliath class mothership ‘The Worldmaker ED-07’. This was one of the largest ships he knew of. Boasting a length of 50km and nearly as wide, ranging from 30 km at the midsection to 5 km at the ends. This ship could not only fight, but it could also terraform planets. Thousands lived on that ship, permanently!

His mindscape was now, however, almost unrecognizable. All around him, on the deck, roof, walls, anywhere there had been some open space before, there were now doors. The doors, being of all kinds of colors and shapes, seemed too much for the ship, he could almost feel the poor thing creaking!

Focusing his mind he tried to stabilize the ship. The feeling of impending doom reduced somewhat. He did not want to find out what would happen if his mind palace collapsed.

He tried to focus on all the doors to figure out what all this meant, and a name emerged into his perception:

-POTENTIA PANORAMA-

He tried to push on some of the doors, but they wouldn't budge. Eventually he tried the smallest door he could see and pushed as hard as he could.

There is no way this damn door will stand in my way; this is MY mind! He yelled inwardly before suddenly-

POPP!

Gulp

The door blasted open and a storm of memories, techniques, stances, breathing methods, image training and emotion training formulas, as well as a range of other things he couldn't understand flooded into his mind.

Dizzy and drenched in sweat, Ronin exited his mindscape before once again heading into the biorinser.

That's enough excitement for the day, he scolded himself. First, he had naively strutted into an alien rock, now he blew open some strange door in his mind. He really shouldn't meddle with things he didn’t understand.

And on that note, there was that device he found on Darth. He still had no clue what this was and had been too spooked from what the terrorist said about implants to search it up with his own implant. In addition to the fuel supply and batteries he’d looted, there was this thing, hidden deeply inside a secret pocket of the man suit.

The only reason he even found it, was that as they both crashed into the ground, the mechanism which had been keeping the pocket concealed, broke, accidentally opening the compartment. If it was hidden so well, it could be really valuable.

Ronin began feeling queasy at the thought of what he had done. Still, if this thing was valuable, it would be a waste to throw it away. He really needed an untraceable device far away from the government's potentially hungrily sniffing nose for this kind of stuff.

He knew of a guy who could help, he’d been warned about him by his parents before they died. That man was an expert in anything related to virtual hacking. He likely also had some knowledge about implants. He might also be able to help with the unknown tech he had found on Darth. The man was called many things, but Ronin called him uncle.

Officially he was known as Nagata Maximus, but most just called him The Psychonaut or Psyrat for short. He was a fiend for psychedelics, he also wanted everyone he interacted with to learn about the wonders of expanding the mind. That is, if you wanted to talk, you had to take the drugs, be it man, woman, grownup or child.

Ronin really didn't want to go through something like that, but he’d also been told that Nagata was a nice person at heart if you could get past taking those drugs. A very warped perception of drug use? Yes. Deliberately cruel? Unlikely.

Still shaken from the events the last day, he put on the academy suit, making sure the batteries and fuel cells were in place, he wolfed down some synthpaste and headed out.

Soft creaks of old wood being bent rang in the hallway as Mayor Brunstein approached a thick neodymium rimmed eirwood gate. The gaudy passageway, empty of anything living but the mayor and numerous expensive exotic plants, rang as he knocked on the gate. He waited, but there was nothing but silence to greet him.

Again with the silent treatment? I’m getting too old for this. He sighed.

A soft but cold voice creeped through the gaps in the ceiling.

“Lower it Kathus.”

The gate sank into the floor, as the face of a bald man in a wood-colored camo suit became visible from the sinking gate. Behind the bald man the voice rang again.

“Ah, Brunstein, the man of the hour,” condescension now intermixed in the tone.

“You called for a meeting.” Brunstein's older voice neutrally echoed back.

“Indeed… you are losing control over Ironglades, Mayor.”

As Brunstein entered the room, several others were seated around a conference table, 3-Dimensional holograms of offworlders were also mixed in. On several screens around the room, graphs, charts and numbers were on display. They had likely begun the meeting without him.

“As I was saying earlier,” the cold voice continued.

“Current behavioral models show an increase in human turbulence in the near future, at that time, this CLM will be the least of your worries. This newest incident at Ironglades falls right in line with what we expected to happen.”

“The moment these anomalies became evident in the dataset we proposed several solutions, yet, out of all of them you either chose the least likely to succeed or took next to no action at all. Now, look at what your inaction has caused.”

Irritation began to sink into the voice.

“At this point, unless something is done, we’re even looking at a potential cascade failure happening, not only to Planet Concordia, but the Tar Kingdom itself.”

Hushed discussion broke out in the room.

And this is how they do it Brunstein inwardly complained. When the founders of the Kingdom of Tar pioneered the new star system, they had been elated to find four planets they could terraform. Two of the planets had been quite rich in critical mineral resources as well.

Little did they know that a mere 200 years later, a powerful faction would be pushed out from the galactic heartland of humanity and settle right next door. Occupying planets as close as 20 light years away had put the Tar Kingdom right in the middle of the New Sichuan Empire's domain of influence.

The Sichuan Empire wanted a buffer zone like most empires do, and having their neighbors adopt their highly unique system and culture would make it official to the rest of the local power groups. Tar did not escape Sichuan’s cultural reformation, they had been willing to make some changes at first, this is how geopolitics is done, but the Sichuan’s only wanted more and more. Tar became reluctant.

The representatives of Tar knew the game by now and unanimously chose the mildest action offered. There would be no mandatory implants with bombs installed in Tar! Not today.

Some of Sichuan’s proposals were simply outrageous!

A smell of industrial waste, air pollution and questionable human hygiene filled the air as Ronin climbed up the side of a building.

“You! There! Get down from the wall!” A man shouted close by.

“Sorry!” Ronin yelled back.

Apartments were stacked so closely together and upon each other that climbing your way to an uncle was faster than walking. The climb was remarkably easier than expected, having climbed his way to friends before, Ronin knew what his body could handle. This was more, much more. He was practically running up the walls!

Having climbed for about 40 minutes, he spotted an apartment terrace he knew, and sat down to rest. The glass door to the terrace opened and a shaggy figure walked out to greet him.

“Oh! Hey man, fancy seeing you stopping by. Thought you’d be busy with Academy work?” The man cheerfully added as he handed Ronin a glass of water.

“Yeah, got registered, attended a few classes, but as you can see, some things happened along the way back.” Ronin said, pointing at the two black lightning shaped scars running down his face.

“Some kind of tattoo? Got yourself some eye surgery as well? "Pretty cool, but didn’t know you were into that?” The man laughed.

Tattoo, eye surgery? yeah, let's go with that, better not to advertise that I have an alien infection.

Finishing up the glass, Ronin said his goodbyes and began scaling the roofs and walls again. After scaling a particularly nasty overhang, he’d gotten to the "more" flat part of the trek. Randomly stacked modular buildings with wide gaps in between called for a lot of jumping.

He usually didn’t go this far and there was a reason for that. After rounding a corner that reason showed up.

Rooftop bandits!

Dwelling on the upper sections of the lower districts, that is the rooftops, these gangs broke into the top flats of the poor. Due to this, the top floors were generally empty, who would want to live this close to crime?

Normally Ronin would jump back down, he wouldn’t be here to begin with. If nothing else worked, he’d let them rob him. He wasn't normal anymore though; an uncontrollable excitement ran up his spine and a new feeling bubbled up inside of him. He’d never felt something like this before.

Except in the mine, when Darth noticed me, Ronin silently admitted.

As the hunger for battle filled him, the chase began.

“Hey! stop!” One of the men called out as they pulled out knives and batons.

Deliberately slowing his speed, Ronin began applying the techniques he acquired from the door in his mental palace. As the first pursuer caught up, he dodged an overhead swing from a baton. Countering with an elbow to the lower chin, the man began to collapse, falling down a gap between two inclined roofs.

As Ronin was now running backwards, the next attacker decided to aim for his midsection. Wielding a knife, the man hungrily sought to pierce his flesh, as he thrust the knife forward. Turning sideways, along the knifes trajectory, Ronin countered with a swift uppercut. Shock visible in the bandits' eyes, Ronin dodged under him, tripping the man into another rooftop gap.

BAM!

The first man he'd knocked out crashed into one of the lower rooftops. That had to be at least 5-meter drop! he thought, shocked.

Two more attackers were coming after him fast! Weaving in between the two men and their weapons, delivering counters where possible, he made short work of his opponents. The rest of the bandits, a dozen or so left, turned and began to run.

“Shit! man, sorry for the disturbance!” The closest of them shouted while running away.

“What the hell did we provoke!? He took down 4 guys in an instant!” One of the smaller bandits exclaimed.

“RUN!” One of their leaders burst out, before looking over at one of his downed compatriots. “Smoky are you okay?! We can run right?”

"..."

Coming back to himself Ronin felt relief and as if some sort of energy finally had been released from his body. He felt normal again, but what was happening to his body? It was as if his body kept accumulating energy but what did this energy really do? Thinking back to what he had just done, a creeping suspicion arose in his mind.

Why did I take the rooftop path? Sure, it's shorter, but I knew there were bandits here. Why didn’t I think of it? Did my subconscious somehow ignore the danger? Did it seek it instead?

Brushing the unease away, he began searching the bandits for valuables. Better if it belongs to me, then you. He thought as he scooped up a bracelet from one of the men. “Wasn't this the guy they called Smoky?” Fortunately, no one had died, but some payment for attacking him was justified, right?

Continuing on for a few minutes he reached the apartment of his infamous uncle. 30 floors down the high-rise, the apartment stood out from the rest. It was twice the size of all the surrounding ones. Where there should have been a normal door, there was a thick steel gate. The walls were thick and filled with sensors. As Ronin knocked on the gate, several turrets descended.

The gate must have tactile sensors built in, this way the turrets will descend when the gate is touched. He marveled, a little uneasy from being pointed at like that.

This could be a simple, effective self-defense feature on a starship! If the sensors were calibrated and coupled with the weight and visual profile of every crew member, no one but the crew can walk safely within the ship! Imagine boarding a ship only to find turrets firing at you in every hallway and every room, horrifying!

[Ronin Maximus? Is that really you? This is really a surprise! I always wanted to see you, but Xena and Holder were always so adamant about cutting off all contact, I never imagined you’d show up!] A static voice boomed out of a speaker on the wall.

The gate opened up.

[Come in, come in. I'm quite busy at the moment so I can't come out to greet you personally. Oh, and don’t be alarmed when you lose connection to the Concordia Network. Pretty much this entire apartment is a faraday cage. No electromagnetic signals come in, and none goes out]

Well, that's not ominous at all! Ronin ironically remarked as he walked in.

As the gate closed behind him, in front of him, a new door opened up. “Well, well, must be quite the predicament you’ve landed yourself in to come to me for help.” Nagata remarked as he walked out.

“Out with it, we're family and for you to come here means I'm the only hope you’ve got. If you can't even talk to me about it, who can you tell?”

Sighing inwardly, Ronin saw the truth in those words. Although he knew some people, they were mostly acquaintances and lukewarm friends. He had a few good friends he could talk to if he had personal issues he wanted to air out, but this sort of issue? A literal alien infection? No. Still, he needed help and Nagata was the closest thing to an expert he knew of, and he, well, despite all the quirky personality traits, wasn't someone who had sold friends or family out to either companies or governments. His parents had at least told him as much before they passed away.

Shakily, Ronin began to recount everything that happened from when he entered the academy until he came here.

“Well, that's quite the story, good thing you took precautions after everything went straight to hell on that shuttle drive. With what happened to you kid, from now on, never speak of it to anyone again. You’re going to have to be very careful going forward from now on. As for the device you’ve brought…” Nagata lit up something akin to a metallic candle and blew the smoke into Ronin's face.

“Hey! Just what did you do just now? Hang on, why are the walls closing in? Are those the abyssal horrors from the movie "Deep depths"?”

Nagata was responding but Ronin only saw a moving mouth, finding it very interesting and funny somehow. Feeling stuck in time, Ronin was suddenly swallowed by one of the abyssal horrors and his consciousness collapsed in on itself, splintering into a thousand fragments.