LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 16
I awoke to Terna’s entrance and the metal doors clunked heavily as they closed behind her. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up and took a deep breath. “Hi Terna,” I croaked.
“Good morning,” she replied. “Are you ready for your trip to Storage?”
I nodded groggily and stood to go into the kitchen. There was a bottle of blue juice in the fridge I really wanted after a night of drinking. My starfish suit would have fixed me up if I requested it, but that process was more brutal and traumatic than I wanted to deal with, and the hangover wasn’t that bad anyway.
Some breakfast and fluids would set me right.
The box of yarsp and jellyfish burritos was getting low, and I was bored with them anyway, so I pulled out some bread and other sandwich fixings. A bottle of Terna’s World mustard, some congealed mushbug squeezings that worked very much like mayonnaise, and a package of sliced yarsp.
The insect was even more popular since my time, which told me that Axle had taken my system and expanded upon it greatly, turning the yarsps into a staple meat supply for the solar system at least, if not further.
While I made my sandwich, Terna laid a garment bag across the couch's arm and turned back to sit at the bar. When I looked up at her, she slid across two small tags with covered buttons.
“These are your food and tools. Simply open the hatch and press the button, and a pre-paid pod will be dispatched to deliver the supplies. Fair warning, the crates are sizable, and the gobbs will likely need to break them up to move any of the supplies, so be careful about where you summon them,” Terna explained.
I nodded and picked up one of the tabs. It was roughly the size of a car fob from Earth in pre-BuyMort times. The single button on the tab was covered by a thin plastic shield that protected the button from being pressed accidentally.
“I also brought you some new clothing,” Terna said. “Figured you were sick of wearing prison fatigues.”
I plucked at the jumpsuit top and shrugged. “You know me. I don’t really care what I wear.”
“Yes, I do know that,” she replied. “Which is why I chose your outfit for you.” Terna pointed back at the couch and the garment bag. “These should help you remain unrecognized, if you do encounter civilization during your time on Storage.”
“Hey, thanks for all this,” I said, after I had finished my sandwich. “I’ll owe you a lot of morties when I get back.”
Terna shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t see it that way. Your aim is to help the less fortunate, and I still have access to sizable wealth, thanks to my position under Axle. Part of how he aims to control me, I suppose.”
“Yeah, less fortunate alright,” I repeated, before taking a large bite of my sandwich. The congealed mushbug squeezings were my favorite part, the flavor was so rich and delicious, especially when paired with the honey-baked yarsp slices. “What can you tell me about Storage these days?” I asked, mouth still full.
Terna’s eyes widened a bit and she sat back with a sigh. “Well, Storage has never been a particularly pleasant place, but since the shrinking of our universes, things have become more desperate than ever. Food and water is in shorter supply, so free rations have been cut to once a week instead of once a day, and this has driven organized crime surrounding the food shipments they receive in the supposedly civilized parts of Storage.”
I nodded and took another bite.
“Axle’s Knowle Leadership division does not seem to care much for how things are done on Storage, so the regular food shipments they pay for tend to go straight into the hands of local warlords, who keep the lion's share for themselves and use the rest to control the population,” Terna said with a shrug.
“What it was before then, but worse,” I said. “More desperate. What’s the population level like?”
Terna shook her head and blew out her cheeks. “Not great. Low, much lower than during your time.”
I paused and munched on my sandwich, thinking. “You know what? I actually don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t doubt that the human, hobb, orc, and Nah’gh populations have shrunk, but I’m guessing the gobb numbers have been experiencing a major rise.”
Terna scowled and cocked her head. “What do you base this on?”
I finished my last bite of sandwich and started looking for a coffee-maker in the kitchen shelves. “Well, think about it. Without the Sleem taking up so much of Storage, there’s plenty of real estate. I’m sure some gobbs are warlike and continue to harass cities, but from what I’ve seen, and what Mel always tried to tell us, I think most of them just want to live in peace.”
In the last cabinet I opened, I found a modified French press coffee-maker, and ground coffee beans, as well as mushbug tea packets. There was a simple electric kettle on the counter, so I filled it with water from the sink and set about making coffee.
“I think,” I started. “I think that most of them have gone deep. Hiding in the tunnels, hunting and scavenging to survive, and avoiding the bigger sapients in Storage. Who wants to be friends with the people hunting you, after all? And of course, nobody tracks gobb populations, cause nobody cares about them, aside from using them for slave labor and fearing them, of course.”
Terna continued scowling but nodded. “Would you seek to find evidence of this theory?” she asked.
“Well, not this trip. I have court in a little while here, and that kind of expedition would likely take months,” I replied, pouring the boiling water onto the coffee grinds. As I pushed the stem on the French press down, I nodded. “But yeah, I would like to go check that out. I should have listened to Mel a long time ago, but now is a good time to start making that right.”
“When you say ‘Mel,’” Terna said. “Are you referring to the artist?”
I nodded. “Sure am. I knew her back at the original Silken Sands, the old campground. She was one of the refugees I took in, always used to be drawing our plights and struggles, but adding in gobbs at our sides as equals.”
“Cryptic,” Terna said.
While I poured two cups of coffee, I nodded. “Artists often are,” I said. “Coffee?”
Terna nodded. “Thank you, yes.”
I fished around in the cabinet again and found some drumu moth dust flavor packets, happily snatching two for myself, and another two to share. When I offered them to Terna, she shook her head and waved a hand to refuse.
“Black for me,” she said.
I shrugged and tossed the packets back on the counter, before ripping my own open and adding the dust to my cup of coffee. As I stirred it with a spoon, I asked, “so what’s the plan for this trial?”
Terna took a sip of her coffee and nodded. “I’ve spoken to a Terna’s World lawyer, one faithful to our true cause of freedom from Silken Sands, and she says the case sounds doable. She also warned of treachery from Axle’s team, it is unlikely that he will simply accept this case being held here and may institute sanctions to have you extradited. We shall need the right judge.”
“Stupid question,” I said, raising one hand. “How does your legal system work here? It sounds pretty similar to what I had back home on Earth, before BuyMort.”
“On the surface,” she answered. “But beneath that, it favors those with wealth and power heavily.”
“Oh, so just like my planet’s system then,” I scoffed.
The drumu dust was incredible, but my throat tightened as memories of Molls rushed through me at the flavor.
“Unfortunately, this means that the courts tend to operate based on affiliate legal structures, there is no other form of governance within BuyMort,” Terna said, shaking me out of my painful memories. “Essentially, we will have to satisfy Silken Sands' own rules around conduct and property damage, to Silken Sands.”
I scowled into my coffee before taking another sip. “What’s that mean?” I asked.
“Essentially, we must first prove that your initial incarceration was unfounded, and then that each of your destructive actions were actually caused by Silken Sands, following that unfounded incarceration,” Terna said.
“Huh,” I grunted. “I don’t really get us having a good chance here, sounds like I’m walking myself into prison.”
“You may be,” Terna answered. “You very well may be, but that is also part of the plan. We wish to introduce you to the multiverse, first and foremost. To remind them of who you were, and how you were instrumental in the founding of Silken Sands. To insinuate a debt of loyalty back into the people, and especially BlueCleave.”
“Oh, speaking of that,” I said. “Someone in Prescott recently told me that there are some hobbs from my time still around; BlueCleave that served under my command. They could be helpful to our cause here, if your people can find ‘em.”
“That is good to know,” Terna replied. “I’ll put some of my investigators on that once your presence here goes public.”
I nodded and took another gulp of my coffee. “I may have already announced my presence a couple times in Prescott,” I told her. “Just so you’re aware.”
“If you were as forthright as you were with the peacekeeping officer here,” she said with a sigh. “Then yes, I think word of your presence is likely already spreading.”
“Well, I hinted with a bartender, and flat out told a yarsp cart vendor. Then, I took his directions to the statues in Central Plaza,” I said.
“At which point you destroyed one of them,” Terna said. “Yes, I believe those encounters will spread. We must move quickly.”
“Yeah, that’ll spread like a disease,” I replied. “Slowly at first, but the more who hear of it, the more people who will talk about it.”
“If we come out with something soon, that will help our cause,” Terna added. “I’ll work harder on finding a publicist.”
“Yolara Brinks isn’t still around, is she?” I asked.
Terna shook her head. “She died under mysterious circumstances shortly after your disappearance. A spacecraft crashed on landing, though a popular conspiracy theory is that her ship was shot down just before landing. She was working on an expose on your death, actually, and her media partners all dropped the project immediately after hers.”
I sighed. Another of my followers who had met an untimely end because of me. “Yeah that particular conspiracy theory may have something to it,” I said.
“Well, either way, it's long in the past now,” Terna replied. “But I have a few candidates in mind, I’ll reach out and see which of them we can trust with an announcement of this size and potential danger.”
“Thank you Terna,” I said. “For everything. I was worried you would be unhappy with me, after what my affiliate has become, and done to your world ship.”
She shook her head and took another swig of her coffee. “Not your doing. You were dead. Besides, this is all a temporary setback on our path to defeating the BuyMort. Things were always going to get worse before they got better.”
“And you’re sure this will make them better?” I asked. “The trial and publicity, starting up a PR war again?”
Terna nodded. “We have long needed something to shake up the status quo. Your return will shake the very foundations of Axle’s machine. Make it vulnerable to takeover, finally.”
I took a deep breath and pushed away from the counter, gulping my last swallow of coffee. “If you say so. I’ll go along with it, I owe you at least that much. But for now, I’m off to feed some gobbs.”
Terna smiled and nodded, lifting the door. A few seconds later a pod arrived. I hurriedly got changed, into the sleek black slacks and boating shoes she had brought me, as well as a button down shirt and suit jacket. All in Silken Sands colors.