alexanderwales
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Thresholder, ch 139, Queensman
🕑 Added 2024-07-28 09:07:29 +0000 UTCHey, sorry for the delays, it's the depression. I've been having some ups and downs, and mostly downs. I think part of it is that the depression makes it so it's hard to take joy from anything, and that includes writing, which makes it doubly hard because I'm at an emotional distance and have to evaluate the text I'm writing like a robot. I'm taking as many steps as I can to turn the corner, but results have so far been poor and it mostly feels like I'm hoping for a regression to the mean.
Have I mentioned that I have a tumblr now? Mostly to mirror and augment my blog.
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Perry watched the site from above. Third Fervor had been asleep for an hour, as near as they could tell from her pulse and breathing. She was on the main island of Berus, having commandeered an old lighthouse at the island’s northern tip. It was very nearly a fortified structure, but had been built with storms in mind, not invading men in power armor. Perry thought the trick was to do the whole thing quietly and end her cleanly. Prognostics was, in the near term, optimistic, though less than he might have hoped: he had a thirty percent chance of immediately ending her life in the rapidfire test runs, and a greater than sixty percent chance of capturing the queen.
It was not, in any sense, honorable. He would be killing her while she was defenseless. He didn’t know why that bothered him: it was sensible, the path of least resistance, the thing that was dictated by every pragmatic consideration. If he succeeded though, there would be no fight, nothing proven, just an abstract death. The only thing it would prove was that Third Fervor didn’t have the right set of powers, and that Perry was willing to do what it took.
On reflection, it felt like cheating. Perry was no stranger to competitions, and especially with trivia nights, there was always the specter of cheating over the whole thing — a smartphone could reduce a battle of knowledge to a battle of who was the best at getting good search results. Perry had flirted with cheating before, though never at trivia: he’d had a girlfriend he’d played online Scrabble with, and used a solver once when he just wasn’t up for playing. It had left a sour, curdled feeling in his stomach. It hadn’t made him feel good or smart, and after that there was only the feeling that he was a terrible person. It had felt worse than if he’d cheated on her, actually, and he’d felt like it was some kind of karma when she ended up cheating on him.
This was not, of course, a game. It was, in some sense, a matter of the course of nations, and in another sense, the fate of the world, depending on how the math shook out — though the math was now unclear, argued over by the scientists, the engineers, and the AI. There was no conflict between Perry and Third Fervor except as it existed in his head and was assumed by the Grand Spell, and the fact that Marchand had shot the king in his head. Wringing his hands over fairness and the authenticity of a victory was worse than pointless, it was some nonsense conjured by his brain. What mattered was the victory, not how it was achieved.
He descended slowly. They had eyes on the entire area. It was only Third Fervor and the queen, in a bed together, pressed against each other. Perry would spare the queen, if he could, but then he would also have to remove her from the lighthouse to spare her a long and potentially dangerous walk back to civilization. There were no proper roads, only ruts in the dirt. If Third Fervor escaped, which was a strong possibility, Perry would grab the queen and hold her hostage.
Perry landed on top of the lighthouse and went to the door, stepping lightly, using the sword to float, lightening his steps. When he got to the door, he used a tool procured from the Farfinder, a nano-width shim that cut straight through the padlock on the other side like it wasn’t even there. Perry opened the door slowly and grabbed the lock before it could fall and clink to the ground. He stopped for a moment and looked down at the wooden stairwell, which caused Marchand to display the sonic mapping of the entire building — just a tower with a set of rooms at the base, that was it. There were dozens of these abandoned lighthouses, which were mostly relics of the past and most had been built to the same design.
Perry went down. It would have been better to do it with a bomb, maybe even a nuclear weapon if they’d been able to build one in time. That was certainly overkill though, and might attract Fenilor’s attention. The best option would be to kill Third Fervor and then camp out near the portal until it vanished, and since Fenilor wasn’t anywhere nearby, in theory he wouldn’t show up.
The bed didn’t fit the lighthouse. It had been brought in from elsewhere, a four-poster that Third Fervor had spent time putting together for the two of them, overly regal for a wind-battered place like this. It would have taken a lot of work to get the lighthouse up to the royal standards, and to do that would have required bringing in workers, and that would defeat the entire purpose of hiding out of sight. The queen hadn’t balked, to her credit.
Perry watched their sleeping forms. Third Fervor looked striking, if not necessarily pretty. This was the only time she looked peaceful. The queen was more classically beautiful, and though she wasn’t too much younger than Perry, there was something about her that made her seem too young, like he might be moments away from killing a teenager.
Perry pulled out the laser rifle and aimed it squarely at where Third Fervor was sitting. The shoulder-mounted gun rose up from its housing at the same time, silent in the night, though that wasn’t entirely a concern given that the window was open — it had to be in order for Third Fervor to escape. The sounds of the ocean were coming through, waves crashing against the rocks.
The prognostics had not made it clear how or why he’d failed. It wasn’t plausible that she’d gotten lucky, since there was no amount of luck that would get you out of being killed in your sleep. She had no armor on, but all she needed to do to escape if she wasn’t killed immediately was to roll off the bed and down into a portal. But Perry wasn’t sure how he might ever fail to kill her, and looking over videos extracted from prognostics hadn’t actually helped. It had looked like she could wake up on a hair trigger, which, sure, he could buy, but the bullets failing to pierce her skull was harder to make sense of. Those very same bullets had gone through her armor and broken her jaw the last time they’d met. There was a chance this would work though, and no risk to him, with the upside being that he would have the queen.
Had Fenilor given her something to help her? It certainly wasn’t clear from the prognostics. Their ability to resolve fine details was somewhat limited, at least when it came to looking into the future. If Fenilor had given her something, it was small, possibly swallowed, or a spell cast upon her.
Perry fired the laser rifle. Marchand fired the shoulder gun.
Third Fervor was almost immediately in motion, rolling sideways off the bed as the bullets struck her. She fell to the ground and stayed there for only a fraction of a second before she dropped through a portal she’d made there, and as soon as she was gone, the portal snapped shut. The armor had been in pieces below her, and had fallen with her. She’d been sleeping with the spear, and now that was gone too.
Perry stalked forward and grabbed the queen, who was only just getting up and seeing what happened, woken by the crack of gunfire. The bed was burned beside her, the laser rifle having scorched a line through it. Pieces were still on fire, though not threatening to catch. The queen thrashed around and started screaming, but from what Perry had seen, Third Fervor was going somewhere else to lick her wounds. Even with the escape, this still seemed strategically correct.
The queen screamed some more, a painful wail that was partially muted by the armor. On the HUD, the location of Third Fervor had been updated: she was on the other end of the island, in the city, having a doctor see to her wounds. The tracking that the Farfinder used wasn’t instant, and it sometimes could take as much as ten minutes to find her when she used a portal, but it had been fast this time, because they knew where to look.
Perry kept his grip on the queen’s arm, which was tight enough that she had no way of escaping but not so tight as to hurt her. He could easily have snapped her wrist.
He looked at the HUD again, double-checking there were more than thirty miles of distance, then stepped into the shelf space, dragging the queen in with him.
“You’re our prisoner now,” said Perry. “You will be given food and water. I don’t want to hurt you. When this is over, you will be returned to your kingdom.” He was less sure about that, but it wasn’t quite a lie.
“Murderer!” she shouted. She slapped hard against the metal armor with her free hand, and maybe hard enough to hurt herself, so Perry grabbed her other wrist and held her in place. She was a small, young woman, and he wouldn’t have had trouble overpowering her even before all the thresholding. With his power, she was essentially immobilized, though she did still try to kick at him.
“You’re going to be fine,” said Perry. “I could shoot you, if you’d rather end things.”
Her face was defiant, but she didn’t ask him to. He wouldn’t have killed her, not now, even if she demanded it. He had gotten assurance from Marchand that there wouldn’t be any ‘accidents’ or ‘miscommunications’.
Perry was on a timer now. Third Fervor would be back. The shelf space had been cleared, with most of its items transferred to the Farfinder, leaving behind a living area for ‘guests’, which did include a heavy-duty manacle that Perry felt slightly queasy about. He’d hoped to not have to chain anyone up, and chaining up a woman felt worse, especially if she was just in a simple shift. This was how he’d found Marjut, and part of the reason he’d almost immediately freed her was because he’d simply found it distasteful.
Still, he found himself marching her over to where the manacles had been attached to a three hundred pound weight, large enough that she wouldn’t be able to move it, not that she’d be able to escape if she did. It was a large hunk of metal acquired from one of the Dirk Gibbons, who had asked no questions.
“Lock yourself in,” said Perry. “One on each leg.” He released her, waiting to see whether she would make a run for it, which would be fruitless given the space.
“She’ll kill you,” said the queen. Her fists were clenched. “She’ll tear you limb from limb.”
“She’s not doing so well right now,” said Perry. “There’s a chance she’s dying.”
“She’ll win, in the end, and do you know why?” asked the queen.
“No,” said Perry. He was hoping that the queen was dumb enough to reveal something.
“She believes in something,” said the queen.
“Put the manacles on,” said Perry. He kept his voice flat, not betraying anger.
“I refuse,” replied the queen.
“Are you going to make me do it?” asked Perry.
“I will struggle the entire time,” the queen said, holding her head high.
Perry supposed she was saying that to sound regal rather than like a petulant child, but he didn’t entirely know. Maybe the difference between ‘regal’ and ‘petulant child’ wasn’t all that large.
Finally, she picked up the manacles, but rather than putting them on, she snapped them shut, locking them. When she was done she dropped them to the floor with a defiant look.
Perry sighed. He didn’t want to deal with this. He could force her, certainly, and he had the key in one of the armor’s compartments, but there wasn’t actually a point in locking the queen up. He could start hurting her as a way to get her compliance, but he didn’t have the stomach for that. The longer he waited, the better a chance that Third Fervor would come back, and if she was in range, she would sense the shelf opening up.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
He stalked to the opening and let out a breath. She was at his back, and he half expected an attack from her, in spite of how incredibly outmatched she was. He had killed her father, at least from her perspective.
Perry opened the shelf space for a tenth of a second, shifting his position in the overlap between worlds more than actually stepping out. He’d been practicing it, hoping that if he went quickly Third Fervor wouldn’t be able to open up one of her portals inside of it.
The lighthouse was still empty. Marchand had reconnected with the Farfinder as soon as they were out of the shelf space, and the HUD now showed Third Fervor’s position, still in the city, still with doctors touching her face. She wore the armor now, and held her spear, battle-ready. Her face was a mess where the armor had been peeled back. She’d been hit at least twice, once in the nose, which was mangled and bleeding, and once in the chest, marking a puckered wound on the underside of her left tit. She was breathing heavily but otherwise seemed fine. She should have been dead. Fenilor had helped her somehow, because Marchand had aimed true. The bullet that gave her a nose wound should have opened her head like an ax to a watermelon.
Still, Perry had the queen, and that was something.
He flew up out of the lighthouse and toward the city. He’d come in after she’d been asleep for an hour, which meant that she would start with some fatigue even if the damage was cosmetic. All he would need to do was to harry her and grind her down. He assumed that her planned attack was now totally nixed, given the loss of the queen. The kingdom couldn’t survive without a ruler, and while there was another princess who could be elevated to the position of ruler, that might as well be a death knell for Thirlwell. It wasn’t the transition that anyone wanted, but it was what might happen.
Perry dropped down to the ground and ran, using up stored power in the armor rather than from the spear. He had too much shit on him, frankly, between the laser gun, the spear, and the sword, but he hadn’t wanted to keep any of it in the shelf space where the queen could have gotten her hands on them. The sword was sheathed, the laser gun was strapped in place on his back, and he was holding the spear in his hand. In a combat scenario, which he was going to be facing soon, it was all probably going to be a liability.
Still, the preparations hadn’t been for nothing, and he ran across Thirlwell, down country roads that hadn’t been designed for cars, let alone power armor. It was still the dead of night, and no one was out, which was good, because if he collided with anyone, he would certainly kill them.
“Why hasn’t she gone back?” asked Perry as he watched the nearly-live feed of Third Fervor. “It’s her queen.”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Marchand.
“Is there a chance there’s already a king?” asked Perry. “Some secret ceremony that transferred power?”
“No, sir,” said Marchand. “Not unless it happened during the gap in coverage.”
Perry pondered that. He thought that he had Third Fervor pegged, and had also thought that she wouldn’t have fallen for Fenilor’s tricks, but it was also possible that Fenilor had come to her in disguise. That wouldn’t have been hard, given his extensive wardrobe and the fact that they hadn’t shown each other their faces when they’d fought. There was no clue as to what happened during that missing time.
“Any chance we can get a message to her?” asked Perry.
“No, sir,” said Marchand. “She has shaken the nanites and is not in a room where we have coverage. Even if we had the room dusted, getting an audible signal to her would be nearly impossible. Do you really want to speak with her?”
“There’s something I’m missing,” said Perry. “This is all Fenilor’s doing, it has to be, he’s given her something to protect her, he’s talked to her, he’s set things in motion. I just don’t know why.”
“I don’t either, sir,” said Marchand. “If that’s any consolation.”
It was not.
“Do you have any analysis on the bullets?” asked Perry. “Insight into why they didn’t work?”
“No, sir,” said Marchand. “To all appearances, she was simply lucky, on top of sleeping very lightly and having extraordinary reflexes.”
Perry grit his teeth. He couldn’t accept that. But if there wasn’t some evidence of magic, he didn’t know what it could be, and if felt like he really needed to know, given that he was going to be firing on her again in the very near future. Their ability to go into detail was better in the present and slightly less good in the past, which meant they would have more angles for analysis. Still, it wasn’t a good outcome.
The medical room was in the bowels of the castle, deep enough that Perry didn’t have a good way in without breaking through a window and then killing dozens of guards. When he approached, she would either portal out or fight him. He did wonder whether he could trap her and neutralize the portals, but if she was smart, she’d have left enough open doors and windows that she could be thirty miles away in an instant.
He watched her on the picture-in-picture. The best time to go after her was when she was trying to get some more sleep. If she wanted to, it was possible for her to go down into a cave with a small enough opening that she could portal out but he couldn’t enter, but that he might be able to plug up.
He ended up waiting a long time. The bullets had hit her, they had done damage, and the stitch job the doctors were doing on short notice didn’t seem to be all that good. The bullet that hit her nose had grazed a line across her forehead that was bleeding something awful. The one that had hit her chest was dug out as she bit down on a strop of leather. Her eyes were watering but clear.
“Do we have new prognostics?” asked Perry.
“Prognostics are not available while we’re getting updates from the Farfinder, sir,” said Marchand.
Perry sighed. In theory, either of the prognostics engine or the remote viewing engine could be moved outside of the Farfinder, but it was apparently a rat’s nest of work to disentangle everything, especially because the prognostics engine had been installed by some previous crewmember who was no longer with them, and no one had the domain expertise or the books necessary.
“Contact them,” said Perry. “I want to know why she’s not in flight.”
“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “Communication will be facilitated at a delay.”
Moments later, Hella was on-screen.
“Not the ideal outcome,” she said.
“We were rolling dice,” said Perry. “She’s pinned. The queen is mine. I think she’d lay down her neck to save the queen’s life. If she’s still planning the attack … I don’t know. We’re missing something. Any whiff of Fenilor?”
“No,” said Hella after a brief delay. “But trying to pinpoint a moving target, especially a small one —”
“I know, I know,” said Perry. He let out a frustrated sigh. “Then I think we do the persistence hunter thing, try to wear her down. Why would he do this?”
“Do what?” asked Hella.
“Help her,” said Perry. “He’s an anti-monarchist. She’s their biggest champion. He’s been slicing his way through royalty for the last however many years.”
“He fears you,” said Hella. She had her arms folded across her chest. “He’s setting you against her, forcing the issue.”
“I’m going to chase her now,” said Perry. “If she goes to ground, we’ll plan for you to go dark, get some prognostics, and scout out the cave. If we can block her in … she still has the teleport.” One of these days, Perry would be up against someone who couldn’t run from him, and he would crush them like bugs.
“Alright,” said Hella. “You’re within her range, we can’t pull you out without risk. Be careful. We’ll watch.”
The communication cut out.
Perry took a breath and lowered himself to an open balcony. The door was locked, but it was made of relatively thin wood, not something that had been built to survive 21st century power armor. Perry hesitated with his fist clenched.
“Marchand, we’re going to encounter resistance,” said Perry. “If there’s trouble, open fire. We have ammunition now. Headshots on the guards.”
“Yes, sir,” said Marchand.
“You have no problem with that?” asked Perry.
“No, sir,” said Marchand.
“Only if they seem like they’re going to attack,” said Perry. “Not if they’re surrendering, or quaking in their boots, or running away.”
“Very well, sir,” said Marchand. “I shall endeavor to use my best judgment.”
Perry pushed on the door until it gave way and stepped into the castle. He was a fair distance from where Third Fervor was, and he suspected that she would duck out as soon as he got to her, unless she wanted to discuss the kidnapped queen. He swapped the spear for the laser rifle, aiming it down the hallways. He wasn’t nearly as familiar with it, but it worked at a distance, and would be good against men wearing masks.
Perry followed the lines that Marchand was painting, the best path to get down to the room where Third Fervor was being treated. Marchand was running off a digest from the Farfinder and their remote viewing, which meant that Perry could effectively see through walls, though with red outlines where people were rather than actual images. It was some video game bullshit.
The guards didn’t come across Perry: he came across them. The first two were patrolling down a corridor in the darkness with a lantern raised to guide their way, not walking with the casual stroll of people doing their tenth lap of the night, but with the purpose of guards who are very aware someone has returned from the front bleeding heavily.
They raised their weapons and Perry raised the laser gun. There was no way they understood what it was or what it could do, but they came for him, and he opened fire on them.
It was his first time using the laser gun in combat, and he was surprised by just how effective it was. The guard’s shirt caught on fire as soon as he was hit, and he began screaming as he tried to swat away the flames. His insides were cooking much more than he was actually being burned, and as two seconds passed he collapsed to the ground, writhing. Perry turned the laser gun on the other man and held down the trigger. The effect was mostly the same, with the clothes bursting into flame where the laser hit. The beam was invisible, but Perry’s HUD was showing a line, and the flame of the man’s clothing lit the hallway brighter than the hooded lantern they’d been carrying. The guard moved, turning to run, and Perry let up on the trigger once the beam was aimed at the man’s back. He collapsed though, probably feeling the burn working its way through his body. The laser was powerful enough to flash-vaporize water.
Perry moved past them, picking up the pace. The shouts had been noticed, and people were alert. The next guard Perry saw would probably be coming for him, though he expected that Third Fervor would show up soon. He glanced at the HUD and saw her still with the doctors, though her eyes had gone to the door. The doctors were working faster, cleaning her wounds, bandaging her, and her armor seemed ready to snap shut at a moment’s notice.
The main question was whether she would pick flight or fight.
The laser gun made short work of the guards he came across. He only fired on them if they looked like they were going to stop him, or if he would need to get too close to pass them. In spite of the fact that he was holding a scifi weapon, they seemed to register that this was a thing that could easily hurt them. Some ran, and the few that stayed were probably just seriously wounded. He didn’t think he’d killed anyone, though it was difficult to be sure. It might have been different if they were wearing metal, but the castle guards went without armor. Even then, the laser gun was powerful enough to punch through metal, it would just take longer.
When Perry reached the floor where Third Fervor was, she opened a portal and left.
“Fucking bitch,” said Perry.
The HUD took a moment to update, and while it was doing that, another of the guards came around the corner. Perry would have given a warning pulse, which would have meant burnt clothes and second-degree burns rather than actual damage, but the man was wearing a mask. He screamed and fell to the ground before Perry could find out what the mask did, though the design was unusual.
The picture-in-picture gave an estimation for when it would have a location, which was updated to add on more seconds right when it seemed like they’d have a lock.
“Rapid movement?” asked Perry.
“I cannot say, sir,” said Marchand after a moment.
“This is information from the Farfinder, right?” asked Perry. “How can they not locate her? Once you have the person, you can just find their location, right?”
“I will request clarification, sir,” said Marchand.
There was a long pause while Perry stood awkwardly in the hallway of a hostile castle.
“It appears she left Thirlwell and headed more than a hundred miles away through a series of portals, to one of the outlying islands,” said Marchand. “Once there, we lost track of her.”
“What happened to the tracking?” asked Perry. “We have tracking.”
“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “Elements aboard the Farfinder have come to the conclusion that she’s either using the portals very rapidly to evade detection, or that she has some method of avoiding our ability to see her.”
“Fenilor,” said Perry with a hiss. “Why?”
“I cannot say, sir,” said Marchand. “Though he does endeavor to kill us.”
“Right,” said Perry. “Get me a door out of here.”
“Given we do not know where Third Fervor is at the moment, sir,” Marchand began.
“Fine,” said Perry. “I’ll take the long way.”
Perry found a window to shatter and leapt out it, letting the sword at his hip pull him up. He had too much equipment and wasn’t able to tuck it away when worried that Third Fervor would portal right into the inner sanctum.
He rose slowly, using the sword, which was faster on the vertical than the spear was. There were spotters, he knew, men with masks who might see him, but they didn’t have the reporting infrastructure to get the information where it needed to be in time, and it was all pretty useless without Third Fervor to portal in and attack him. He wished that she would attack him, because then they might be able to end this part of things.
When Perry had gone high enough — which took almost an hour — he went into the shelf space.
The queen was laying on the bed, looking sullen, and while she had snapped to look at him when he came in, she turned away and looked at the wall as though she didn’t care that he’d come.
“I have no clothes here,” she said.
“I can get you clothes,” said Perry.
“Are you going to force me into the manacles?” asked the queen.
“No,” said Perry.
She turned to face him. “She fled, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Perry.
“She didn’t so much as make an attempt at saving me,” said the queen. She spat on the floor, which Perry thought was quite rude.
“In her defense, I had shot her in the face,” said Perry.
“Something you make a habit of then,” said the queen.
“She’s unfortunately fine,” said Perry. From what he knew of her healing, there would be scarring, and she’d never be the same, but it was impossible to know what all Fenilor had given her. “Which means I need to keep you here.” He hesitated, then removed his helmet. “I don’t have any enmity toward you. I don’t think monarchy is a particularly good form of governance, but I think it would be better if you handed off power to the people, or if they took power from you, rather than having an outsider from another world come in to force the change. I’ll do my best to treat you with the respect that all people deserve.”
“Murderer,” she spat.
“I’ll get you clothes, food, water, and a place to do your business,” said Perry. “I was hoping not to have to hold onto you, but Third Fervor is gone, and I’m not going to be able to find her again.”
“How did you find her the first time?” asked the queen. “How did you know where we were?”
Perry pursed his lips. “You have to be aware that I can’t tell you that.”
“Who am I going to tell?” asked the queen. “You’re not letting me out of here until she’s dead, if you let me out at all.”
“Fair,” said Perry with a shrug. “And given what’s gone on … well. We have a way to track people, and it’s apparent that she knows that, because she’s blocking us now. I’m not sure why she wasn’t blocking us two hours ago, if she could always do that, but that definitely seems to be the case.”
He was hoping to build rapport. He was probably the wrong person to do it though. He could get one of the Mets. They hadn’t killed her father, and for all the queen knew, maybe Mette could be a prisoner too. That might work better.
But the queen started laughing, and Perry paused his thoughts.
“You haven’t figured it out?” she asked. “Third Fervor was testing you.” She laughed again, a bitter bark. “And now she understands your powers.”
Perry stared at the queen. “This was a play that took her most valuable piece off the board?”
The queen went tight-lipped.
It made no sense. Maybe Third Fervor had been laying in wait, ready for the attack against her, willing to take a bullet just to get information on what Perry knew. Maybe Fenilor had convinced her that she’d be safe rather than maimed. But leaving the queen behind? Putting the queen’s life at risk? Third Fervor wouldn’t do that. The queen was too valuable, and even if there’d been a secret marriage in that small gap of time, a transfer of power to someone unknown, that still wouldn’t have made sense. The only way that Third Fervor would just abandon the monarch was —
Perry stared at the queen.
“You’re not the queen,” he said.
She remained silent, but it wasn’t the stoic silence of a woman who was firm in her resolve.”
“You’re a clone,” said Perry.
She had no response to that, but she didn’t need to have one.
Like that, any advantage Perry might have had from the assault had evaporated.
He stepped out of the shelf space without another word and contacted the Farfinder.
“There are other machines,” said Perry. “Fenilor grabbed one. He cloned her. I don’t know the specifics, but if he’s got access to a machine like that, we’ve got problems, especially since he has so much in the way of armaments.”
“We’re on it,” said Hella. “If we look into the past, and narrow down the search space, we might be able to find out when and where it happened.”
“This is a huge problem,” said Perry. “How’d he even find out?”
“Unclear,” said Hella. “But it might become more clear in the future. Are you ready for pickup?”
“Yes,” said Perry. “We need to get to the bottom of this. If they’re working together, for whatever reason, if this was a test we failed, probing at our weaknesses and powers —”
“It would be bad,” said Hella. “Understood.”
Perry stepped back aboard the Farfinder half an hour later, not using one of their doors, but an exterior airlock, as they had physically moved the ship to grab him from the sky. He went straight to the bridge, where everyone was waiting, save for the contingents of clones.
But the next few hours illuminated nothing. They didn’t have eyes on all the cloning machines, and they were significantly harder to find than people were. They were running prognostics, but Third Fervor had gone dark, which was going to make it incredibly difficult to find out where she was. The original queen was somewhere, obviously, but she could have been stashed in almost any corner of the globe, especially given how lax the culture was about having people around.
It was three hours later, as the sun was coming up over the islands of Berus and Thirlwell, that they found something in the prognostics worth the time and effort they’d spent. Unfortunately, it was bad news.
The attack on the Berusian leadership was still on.
Comments
Alex Pshenichnikov
Hey, my first comment here! As a mildly bipolar person who gets the short end of the stick (depression) nine times out of ten, I can really relate. As someone mentioned above, nothing can change my deep appreciation for your work. While the updates here have become infrequent, I started re-reading WtC. I will stay subscribed to your Patreon no matter the frequency of the new chapters. I think you deserve it.
cartognifer
Be well Alex, take your time. At this point I have endless appreciation for you and your many works, Zero judgement from me (*us I bet...) as a reader
Daniel
Contiguous space yeah. 3f needs something like a square meter tunnel of air from point A to B
Pariah
Hope things move forward in a positive direction for you. Depression affects everyone differently, but I personally struggled with it for a few years myself and depression in any of its forms fucking sucks
Pariah
I agreea, bullets weren't guarenteed but a spear or something physical ensures she can't escape without with. You can still use bullets, but now you can pin her down while shooting over and over again. Theres no worries about noise and a quick extraction either. All in all this chapter is interesting in how its ramping yhings up
Clarity Amaranthine
> but if she was smart, she’d have left enough open doors and windows that she could be thirty miles away in an instant. Hm? I thought the Farfinder's portals worked through doors, but 3F's were just anywhere. Or is it space contiguously connected to her location?
aart saa
It's a bit weird, that they still haven't given Perry the hivemind fungus from the last world.
patreonizing
Puzzlement: why would 3F take ballistic damage from a couple of Masterwork bullets, but not the laser rifle? Which is quickly demonstrated to be Super Effective vs unarmoured targets, and I assume at that close range Perry wouldn't have aimed so badly as to completely miss. (For that matter, why bother using bullets at all on a stealth assault? Range is a thing, but Perry does have a spear now...) Wording implies it's only the queen that was cloned, but if Fenilor has access to the tech, I don't see why he wouldn't use it on 3F and/or himself as well. Lots of gambits you can pull with cheap body doubles and a personal armoury + Tablets of Nondetection. This is also Very Bad News for The Culture, since The Last Monarchy now "knows" they use cloning, and anyone can connect the dots if that secret gets out. (Not really clear on how the knowledge-sharing between clones works, but at any rate, Fake Queen is now a knows-too-much liability.)
