Chapter 74 - Operation: Baise
I barely slept. I’ve been in barracks in poorer companies, the beds pressed together with ten or twelve bodies to a room, but it is nothing like the stacked beds of the residential trailer. I could almost feel the breath of the person in the bunk below on the back of my neck, the curtain across the opening doing little for privacy.
There was a buzz in the air in the trailer after we ate and Wesley took that vote, an expectation of work to come that hovered unspoken in the way they checked equipment, packed bags, double checked again. Familiar anticipation, with a restless energy.
Davidson’s warnings about rain linger in my mind. I’ve only seen it from the train through the window. I’ve never lived anywhere close enough to the dome edge to see the weather or the changing seasons outside. As I pull my environmental suit up to my waist, I wonder what it might feel to have it patter against the rubberized surface? I wonder if it smells?
In Pooka’s memories, I can almost taste the petrichor - musk and dirt, and metallic ozone. He senses the lightning burning the atmosphere above him. He feels the clouds come rolling in with his very being. His awareness of the world around him is so vast compared to my small fleshy human one. I can feel him outside watching it now, sense the building energy of the haze and moisture in the clouds, static building to charges unimaginable to humans and symbionts alike.
Real lightning is coming, carried by the pelting rain. We can sense it.
I look at my belongings; there’s nowhere to unpack anything, it’s all just stacked inside my bag. Like an odd lucky charm, I bounce the lighter once in my palm, then tuck it into my pocket and draw my suit up around my torso. The central zip goes up the center of the front, then all the buckles at my wrists and ankles to seal the suit. I hope I remembered all the steps.
“Mask check me, please?” I ask an older man standing next to me. He takes my request seriously, double-checking the clips that pull the buckles tight around my wrists, bending to inspect my boots and the cuffs around my ankles too. Finally, he runs his fingers around the rim of my mask and face shield. I wait patiently.
“Good work,” he grunts, giving me a thumbs up when he is done.
“What happens now?” I ask as I follow them into the airlock, the roller doors to the rest of the trailer slamming shut behind us. They briefed me; it feels just like a mission at Aquila, with none of the calm organization Adrian brings to his work. There is something more desperate about it, something closer to life and death for these workers. Adrian was never on the front line.
“Be prepared to run if we cannot beat the rain. We’ll be relying on you as our forward scout,” says the same man who checked my mask for me.
For once I miss the lock in procedure that begins every mission at Aquila, something about the routine focused me. I can almost hear Adrian’s voice in my ear if I shut my eyes. It’s been so long since I’ve not had him close by, I almost miss him.
I wonder if he was okay after…
We are not making a paycheck for some corporate jockey far above us on the administrative ladder. Today, we are making a paycheck to make sure we eat tomorrow. It never felt so close to home at Aquila.
Maybe it was closer than I realized there. Aster’s sighs as he worked through invoices, or Mia’s complaints at Nessa’s unusual requests for ingredients seem a little more important than I remember them being. I miss my apartment and a bed of my own.
I shouldn’t have thought of Nessa.
When I step out of the residential trailer, there is a darkened color to the sky I did not expect. Everyone streams into practised positions, climbing one-handed to hang from the front of the steering cabins mounted above symbionts restlessly pawing. Some have ropes and climbing gear slung over their shoulders, others are perched, hanging off the trailers with binoculars close at hand. The whole convoy waits in anticipation.
Pooka trots up to me, bareback and gleaming black. His neck is arched, his red eyes gleaming. He cups one forefoot, and I use it to step onto his back.
“Bubbler! Where’s your equipment?” calls Wesley with an unmistakable tone of reprimand. He is standing in the driver's seat of one of the smaller cabins, his Cervus hart twitching within the harness below.
“I said I prefer bareback. This is better if I have to go fast,” I reply as we canter towards him, Pooka halting calmly within an easy talking distance from Wesley. He’s always at his most agreeable when we are riding, I never fear his effortless power from his back.
“You sure?” Wesley asks skeptically. I know it's too late for him to order me otherwise, I didn’t want to sleep leaving Pooka in the harness. I lean off Pooka’s back to grab the tablet Wesley is offering me with my map. I turn the screen to orient myself and scan what I'm doing, desperately recalling the standard markings Davidson talked me through. It’s so familiar, I bet I can guess why Aquila might have been a choice for a rental, even if Moreau didn’t know Regina.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Any questions?” asks Wesley. He’s dead serious, his jaunty cap turned backwards on his head over his face shield, and hands tense as he holds the reins.
“No, I’m good.”
Good thing I don’t have questions. Next thing I know, a loud whistle pierces the air and Wesley gives a ‘Hiyyah’ as he flicks the reins. His Cervus puts its head down, shoulders bunching forward, and leans into a gallop that sends the trailer rattling after him.
Pooka dances in place a moment, I watch the other trailers kick off ahead of us - white and brown dust billowing off their wheels - then - just as it seems as if we could be left behind, Pooka’s back legs kick and he surges forward.
Between the back trailers we weave, easily twice as fast as the steady pace of the convoy. I grip Pooka’s mane as we overtake the slowest and come up between the bigger residential habitats with teams of Rangifer at the fore. Leaning into Pooka’s shoulders, I hold tight. The seams between our flesh feel insignificant.
Go faster.
We will be as the wind, my love.
I watch Moreau in the very front cabin, a team of men around him I’m beginning to recognize in his periphery. His Lupus is standing next to him, her ears turned in my direction and piercing blue eyes locked on me as I pass. The avian symbionts fly ahead of the convoy, keeping low to the ground. Even they could not compare to us. They can eat my fucking dust!
We are at the front now. The clear air fills our nostrils, Pooka’s breath carries no stink of silicone, unlike mine. I can see the ruined structures ahead that must be Baise, the coordinates for my scouting journey filling my mind's eye as I plot the shapes against the aerial view I’d studied before bed. Above us, the shadow of Rattakul’s gondola flies. I can see figures hanging from the sides, cables tied to their belts. I wonder if one of them is Rhett - I haven’t seen him since he separated to join her crew. Soon, we pass even that shadow and run alone.
The rattle of trailers and beating wings fades to nothing. All I hear is the wind rushing against my respirator and the sound of my breath. Clear of any symbionts or humans that we could be a danger to at these speeds, Pooka continues to accelerate - his symbiont body does not tire like my flesh and blood. We gallop across the flats at speeds we could never reach in the enclosed urban environments of the domes.
I could almost forget our mission if I shut my eyes. I could almost lose myself to the feeling of this… it is freedom, unlike anything I’ve ever felt. No hungry belly, no anxiety too tight to let me fill it. No objectives, no credits, no burdens, no mistakes. No confusing contradictions, no tension between what I want and what is. No fears, no anger, no implants in my back, no blisters on my knuckles, no bandages around my throat. Only open places that beckon us to cross them.
For several minutes, we just run. And I grin with more joy than I have ever felt.
As we draw close to the strange remains of Baise I regretfully pull myself back to our mission. Other than the odd darkness and heaviness to the air, I cannot see far enough through the haze to see the oncoming storm that was reported. We need to clear the ruins and pass to the other side to remain on watch for the storm, and if it starts to rain, our instructions are to double back and be the warning for the crews to get clear of the ruins before the rain reaches them as well.
The ruins are concrete and brick emerging from the ground. The dirt ground gives way to cracked asphalt. Felled power lines dot the empty world around us. The earth has slowly crept up the sides of these buildings, consuming them as time has passed since the world beyond the domes was abandoned. Instead now, streams of dirt carve trails from windows and doorways where the rain has passed through and unearthed new structures. Some doors are shut, maybe hiding new prizes for the scavengers within. Their prizes do not need to work, they don’t even need to be free of rust. Metal and plastics can be recycled if they can be recovered - sold as materials to companies that specialize in that sort of work. The most valuable supplies are always the rare earth elements found in complex circuits and batteries and other alloys that were mined out from the earth long ago.
Pooka slows, and we pass between the abandoned structures. I scan them slowly, curious to see such dilapidation. The domes are at least kept clean and functional, if not a little chaotic with company human life. Then we pass the first sign of life.
Grey, leaf-like lobes are bundled into a bud-like structure several times larger than the biggest trailer - maybe even larger than the Garuda. As we pass by one, it seems to have the texture of crumpled paper, a desiccated fleshiness to it and an unsettling grey hue like sick skin. White hyphae, as thick as my arm, spider from the central body of the giant holobiont and wrap around the brick structure it has fallen dormant against. It seems dead, but I have been told to be cautious. From its heart, several fruiting bodies have climbed taller than many of the buildings. Huge gilled structures release a stream of white powder into the air, and I subconsciously touch my respirator, feeling the edge of the seal.
The next is more like a layer of thick rubber, spilling onto the street, and its great fleshy body stretches back onto the alleys behind as we pass. It is the color of bruised oranges, and does not have the filamentous hyphae of the first, instead just an ambiguous dried edge.
Smaller bodies dot between the larger ones - some are almost plant-like in their coiled, shrub-like growth, others crusty and peeling, wrapped around buildings and windows where they have consumed anything organic revealed by the rains - scavengers like we are.
Pooka watches, just as curious as I am. Not a single one of them moves as we pass between their desiccated husks. Parasites growing on the skeleton of humanity, spreading their spores that prevent any other water-based lifeform from unseating their dominance. They are the majority lifeforms out here now, their symbiosis lets them live in a world we are no longer suited for. A world we probably destroyed.
REVENGE OF THE FATED MAGE
— A Progression Fantasy —
Richard Serdin died in the mud, a self-inflicted blade in his heart.
He was the only son of the legendary Archmage—Duke Voltair Serdin, and thus the only heir of Frostpeak. Upon ascending as Duke, Richard's inexperience cost him everything.
Betrayed by his own ministers and hunted by every crown in the continent of Zogria, Richard fled until he reached the world’s end: a southern sanctuary for the discarded.
In that town of outcasts, Richard was no longer a Duke. He was a man with a saw and a scarred past. He spent years as a lumberjack, trading his pride for the warmth of shared meals and companionship. He had found a home far from home.
Then, came the storm.
Returning from the forest on a rainy day, Richard found his sanctuary turned into a slaughterhouse. His neighbors, his friends, the people who had taught him how to be human—all lay butchered in front of him. There were no explanations.
Crushed by the carnage, the burden of being alive turned into unbearable torment. Unable to endure a world capable of such cruelty, Richard chose to die beneath the rain.
Yet, his story didn't end there.
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