“Father,” I stared at the three dimensional skeleton of his vitals. The entire left arm, almost to his shoulder blade, had been cut clean off. The vitals unhelpfully stated permanent damage but showed the skin was cleanly cauterized. “What happened to your arm?”

He shrugged, as if it were nothing. “I told you already, boy. It's broken."

"No. Winterscar shows me it's outright missing. You're lying to me."

That gave him pause. He muttered something about the armor, then sighed. "Fine. If you need to know, I had to deal with machines while you were unconscious. One of these encounters didn't end in my favor. A drake cut through the relic armor and my arm with it. The armor could be repaired eventually. There wasn't anything I could do for my actual arm.”

The explanation made sense, but given his track record of avoidance, I couldn’t be sure that was the real truth. I didn't understand why he was keeping so many things from me. What was he gaining from doing that? Regardless, however he lost his arm, it was missing and cauterized. That fact was indisputable.

I didn’t need to guess at the rest of the issues he faced. The sheer amount of warning and internal injuries Journey pointed out on Father’s vitals told the rest of the story. Skull fractures, broken ribs, muscle contusions, subconjunctival hemorrhage on the left eye - it went on and on. The relic armor was even predicting time until total organ failure, down to a matter of days, neatly written in a counting timer on the side.

Stimulants, painkillers and Winterscar itself were the only things keeping him walking and lucid right now. “We’ve got to get you back on the surface, maybe we can still… fix some of this,” I stuttered out, waving vaguely at… well, everything.

He shook his head slowly at that. “No Keith... This will be my last mission as a relic knight, and the last time I wear my armor. WhenI return to the surface, I’ll be an invalid for the rest of my days with a crutch if I'm lucky. A wheelchair is more likely. Journey has already summed this up for you, hasn't it?”

Shock flooded through me, realizing the gravity of the situation. Journey was indeed already writing out a detailed report over the heads up screen, pointing out where the long term damage would come from. “But, what.. what’ll happen to you?”

It was a stupid question in hindsight.

“I’ll retire.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t bother him. “Kidra will inherit Winterscar and I’ll find another way to serve the clan. I can mentor trainees, help the next generation learn to survive. I’m... more than my combat expertise. I still have something to offer. I’m not yet worthless.” He looked to the side as he spoke and a feeling of loss dug down in my guts.

Still, he shook me out of it with his next words.

“We need to survive first before we can worry about what happens after.” He said. “Do you understand, boy? Survival first. Everything else can come later. Put these thoughts aside for now and focus. I need to get you up to speed on how to make use of the relic armor while I still can.”

I nodded, my swollen calf felt like such a minor wound in comparison now.

A few steady breaths and I put everything I could into the back of my mind. There’s a plan here, I just need to do my part in this. Father's condition - we can consider it once we're closer to the surface, when it's possible to even start tackling it.

“All right, what are the first drills I should do to get myself familiar with relic armor?”

His voice seemed almost thankful I had dropped the subject. “First, we’ll have you test the range of motion in your arms and legs. Watch how I move...”

Father talked me through a set of katas and drills meant to showcase the full range of mobility. We went through the abridged version without issue in an hour.

While I couldn’t land all the physical moves the armor was capable of, I was doing much better with the suit’s more technical abilities. Navigating through the options menus, settings and other administration was second nature to me, which apparently hadn’t been the case for anyone else Father had trained before, including himself.

He went quiet after I’d started exploring deeper into the suit’s interface, letting me find out more. Testing how it moved with different settings.

“You… seem relaxed about this.” I said, in-between the silence.

He’d been sitting down, cleaning off the ancient longsword the imperial crusader had once owned. We’d already agreed that it would serve best in his hands while I took on the rifle. Father was an expert with multiple fighting styles, and while the Ki-alor longsword and dagger combo wasn’t feasible right now, he was certainly no slouch with the more straightforward Hijar-alef one handed style.Frankly I don’t think there was a combat style he wasn’t an expert with. Father just understood instinctively how to fight.

“Relaxed about?” He asked.

“Your situation.”

There was a pause as he likely considered his words. “I’ve been prepared for something like this for some time now, Keith. I only needed to make sure you learned how to take care of yourself first. I wouldn’t be able to face your mother if I didn’t, I knew that deep down in my gut. Now that you have relic armor of your own… things have changed.”

He paused, then glanced up, away from the sword. I couldn’t tell what expression he made under that helmet, not even Journey’s sensors would show that. “You know what, boy? I think I’ll try to learn something else. Something other than fighting.” A dark chuckle came from him, the first time I’d heard him laugh. “Perhaps I’ll learn how to scribble numbers in the dirt. You seem fond of it. I only need one hand to hold a stick after all.”

“Are you serious about that? Or just kicking the ice ‘till it melts?”

“Serious.” He grunted out. “I have time, more time than I will know what to do with. I’ll need distractions. Man is not built to continue without a purpose.”

“...I’d be happy to teach you.”

“I know you would be, boy. I know you would be.” He stayed quiet again, inspecting the blade further. Then, he looked up sharply, as if he’d remembered something. “Your boot has a knife. Draw it out. You've probably already memorized the suit interface. It’s time I taught you some quick techniques with the occult weapons. You’ll need to know how to use these weapons. And this will be the last time I can teach you by example.”

The crusader didn’t just have a longsword, she’d also had a knife. Strapped right to her boot, same as Father's. “How rich was she?” I muttered, extending the weapon out of its sheath.

“Reserve knives are almost always paired with armors. They come up in combat as often as rifles are used. Too many enemies are immune to conventional bullet fire, especially in the lower levels. This crusader, Cathida, she likely kept it in reserve, in case her longsword was indisposed. Our situation is different, you’ll need to be able to use that weapon standalone. Now draw it out.”

Kidra had let me investigate her knife before. I'd learned precious little I hadn't already heard stories about. I'd confirmed myself that these weapons had electricity that ran through them, working as a trigger to activate the blade. It didn’t need much, so we theorized the current acted more like a real on-off switch than an actual power source.

The actual blade was basically just a chunk of metal, enchanted by a warlock, where the knife edge would glow when triggered. That part was up to anyone’s guess because it certainly made no sense to me, and I'd tried quite a lot of tests to figure out what its secrets were.

It was all futile of course, I knew that from the start. If I could find out the secrets to creating occult weapons, the warlocks would have been out of business a long time ago.

For this knife, it must have been centuries since it was last used. Could it light up again? Or would the power source inside have dried up? The armor needed a refuel to work, I wasn’t sure if the knife needed some maintenance of its own. With a shrug, I clicked the trigger.

The blade lit up with the traditional blue glow I’d come to associate with the occult. “Can’t believe it still works…”

Except, I could if I thought about it more.

Backup generators could be preserved indefinitely. The only drawback was inefficiency. The blade itself didn’t need a strong source of power, so it makes sense if the hilt had been built with that style of power storage, there was no need for efficiency here. All occult weapons were probably made like this.

“Fighting with occult weapons as a relic knight is different.” Father said from the side, standing back up. “These weapons can cut through anything except another occult weapon or a shield. Power isn’t a requirement, speed is. You want to leverage the relic armor’s legs and arms to strike as quickly as you can. If you do it right, the armor itself will carry through the rest. Start with a standard Hijar stance. I’ll show you why the Alef variant is used exclusively by relic knights...”

Following his orders, I performed a series of training katas and lunges with the dagger. It felt like I could go faster than possible with my actual body, but I couldn’t tell exactly how to pull out that extra bit of speed, even with his coaching.

The Alef variant made more use of the body as a whole to shield against attacks. It made more sense now that I was in my own armor - the entire suit was shielded. Using a hand to block an incoming attack wasn’t asking to get your hand mangled, but perfectly viable defense.

I continued through the motions, many of the strikes being used more to drill down the range of motion my armor could have. Most of the work in training had already been done a few years ago, the variants were easy enough to incorporate.

“Feels just like old times.” I had done… average I suppose. Kidra had learned like a sponge, her skills with knives and longswords were more in the league that Father was. Mine, not so much.

“I regret not having been a better teacher.” Father said. “Each training session, I was failing you further.”

“Don’t think it’s you that did the failing. I just don’t have that natural talent you and Kidra have. I wasn't bad..." I said, thoughts of past fights with some of my peers proved I had at least picked up enough to hold my ground. "Just not great. I give myself even odds of fighting off a pipe weasel, so long as it's smaller than my hand and doesn't look at me funny."

“You misunderstand.” He stood, drawing out his own knife and walked to my side. I mirrored his stance. He struck forward a quick lunge and I followed it. We moved together for the next set of movements, familiar to me though drills and practice.

“I know I'm not much of a father. And don't insult me by denying that, boy." He cut me off quickly before I could say anything. "The only thing within my skills that I could do for you and Kidra, was to teach you how to fight. At least that one thing, I thought I could do. It's all I was ever good at.”

Strike, block, turn, strike. I followed the kata, trying to move as quickly and precisely as I could. Even with relic armor, I could tell my Father was still moving only half as fast as he could, slowing himself down for my sake. Normally, there would start to be anger at this point. But instead, he continued to talk. It wasn’t anger in his voice, it was something different. More like melancholy.

“Each lesson that I failed to teach you… it made me feel like the one thing that I could do right, the one thing I'm supposed to be able to do right, I couldn’t. I grew angry, frustrated at myself, and then I’d take it out on you.”

We struck out with one last strike, twisting around an imaginary hit and lunging forward to complete the kata. I stayed quiet, not wanting to interrupt him.

“You weren’t the one failing, Keith. The more I gave it thought, the more I realized Kidra is like me. She simply understood. I didn’t need to explain anything to her, I only needed to show by example. I was blaming you for something you couldn’t possibly overcome.”

He turned to watch me. “You don't learn like she does. Showing you isn’t enough. You need to understand through answers, isn’t that right? Through words and experiments. Trial and error. You never take anything for granted until you can put it personally to the test. I can’t explain to you why stance is important, or why you need to strike at certain angles. Cadence, tempo, spacing, instinct. It’s all too complicated and I’m no scholar with sharp enough words for the task.”

“You might be overthinking it, Father." I said. "Occam’s razor, it's a proverb that's often quoted among the Reachers: Sometimes the simplest answers are the real ones - I’m just not good at fighting." I said. "I don’t think I could be any better than I am right now.”

At that he shook his head. “No, you can be. You could do so much more than I can. I know that in my gut. I can't explain it to you why, or understand it myself. But I know you could be a great warrior. If you applied that intellect and combined it with... I should have learned how to teach first. And now look at you - you believe you can’t fight well. I’ve crippled you, boy.”

He reset his stance, and I followed. We continued with another set of strikes, no words between us.

He only spoke at the end of the form. “I suppose I won't have a choice but to learn how to teach a different way once we're back on the surface. Perhaps there is still some good to come out of all this." He gave another chuckle, this time it held more life to it. "I’ll need to be able to explain with words. The Reachers were able to teach you. They could talk to you in ways you could understand. If I learned from them, I could try to teach you again. And succeed this time.”

He motioned me to lift up my knife again, then took a different stance to my side. Once more I stood nearby and mimicked the position.

“I could... introduce you to some of the engineers I know.” I said, Anarii and Teed coming to mind right away. “You might think they’re low caste, but they can all be charming. I’m sure they’ll grow on you.”

“I never thought they were beneath me, Keith.” He paused. “You need to understand - I see them as fragile, in need of shelter. I’ve lived a life where I’ve been tasked to protect people like them. And I needed you to be the opposite of fragile.”

Then he shook his head, “It doesn’t matter anymore now that you have armor. Let’s get back to the drills. This much, I can do right.”

I believed him.

The training brought an interesting discovery - The suit wasn’t just powering my movements or moving like a second skin - it was actively predicting how and where I wanted to move through some sort of connection with my brain or predictive data. Or something in that nature.

When I’d asked my armor, it had simply said it was generating solutions through predictive modeling based on a massive data set of previous human motions. I don't think it understood how it functioned, only that it did.

This wasn’t actually a suit of combat armor, it was a vehicle, tailored to fit the human frame. And I was controlling it all with my mind more or less.

Which made me curious about Father’s particular circumstances. Relic armor was so intelligent, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could practically move on it’s own if needed.

Which brought on one glaring question: “Journey, why isn’t Father’s armor moving his left hand for him?”

“Hardwired security measures prevent autonomous locomotion.” It said.

“What? Why is that a security issue?”

“Hostile force may attack the combat suit cybernetically and override the unit’s locomotion. All features that require autonomous locomotion are locked, requiring both physical user confirmation and administrator permission. Local administrator permissions are waived only if no local users are active.”

I couldn’t even fathom what sort of weapon could hijack relic armor, but I suppose it could exist out there. The thought of being trapped in your own armor was pretty claustrophobic.

Father stood up from his seated position. We’d been taking a breather in the meantime. “What are you asking about, boy?”

“Relic armor is too smart.” I said. “It moves itself and is constantly predicting your motions. If it can do that, then what’s stopping your armor from moving your left hand for you?”

“My arm is missing,” He scoffed. “Winterscar wouldn’t be able to tell how I wanted to move a missing arm.”

“But that’s the thing! Your arm is muscles and nerves - how you choose to move the arm comes from your head, not your arms. So I need to find out if the suit really does have sensors all over to detect muscle movements, or if it’s all in the helmet. Or if it really is just predicting things within nano seconds.”

And the first step to finding that out is to figure out this safety lock. “Journey, is Father the current administrator of his armor?”

“Negative.”

Ah. That’d have been too easy. “Okay, who is?”

“No data found.”

I could understand Father not being an administrator, but no way to find out who was?

“Why can’t you find anything about the administrator? Another security measure?”

“No administrator set.”

“So… what, you’re still running factory settings?”

“Affirmative.”

Well. Worth a shot. “I’d like to upgrade my permissions to an administrator account, please.”

“Administrator override required. Please log into an administrator account with required permissions for this action.”

No free meals for the hungry. The old chicken and egg situation where to become an administrator you needed an already existing administrator to confirm. Which begs the question - who’s the first administrator?

I’d seen this problem explained exactly once in my life, from my source of all things interesting: books I’d bought.

One of these traders had shown up with a pilgrimage and brought with him a bundle of books on wifi and old third era tech. I bought the whole set thinking I’d crack the puzzle. No prize for guessing how that ended.

Those books weren't exactly light reading, and also not quite all engineering books either. One of them wasn’t even a book, but an instruction manual for a router. And I’d found out the last section of the bundle had been a legal document - some thirty pages dedicated to ownership of a single bit of wifi software. People from the past eras were nutcases with too much free time on their hands. The vendor had padded the books out with that in hopes gullible people like me didn't have the time to spot it before buying. It had worked, but in my defense I was still a tiny kid back then.

Nonetheless, these books had been mostly worthless. There was a reason a random trader had those for sale, and back then I hadn’t understood that real information wouldn’t be for sale in the first place.

But... I did find out something interesting about security. Right now the common tech is mechanical so there’s little need for administrators or permission shenanigans. My old environmental suit and pistol don’t have any users or passwords to deal with for example. But apparently in the late third era, almost everything could talk to one another which led to… issues. So how do you set the first administrator account if you need an administrator account to confirm the permissions?

Ironically, it was that instruction booklet for routers that mentioned the answer.

Everything made had a default administrator account and password burned inside the hardware. One that was supposed to be accessed by it’s first user and changed immediately after. The password was usually the same as the username and very short. The booklet had made it seem like this was just common practice that everyone knew about.

I’d get no better guesses, so it's time to put obscure trivia to the test. “Journey, I’d like to login. Username, Admin. Password, admin.”

“Incorrect login. Two attempts remaining.” Journey replied immediately. The tone remained completely colorless, yet I could swear it almost felt patronizing anyhow. As if the armor had figuratively rolled its eyes at me.

Welp. Here I thought I’d been so clever. Only two more chances to get it right.

The third era was a few centuries before the godly lost tech era of these armors, but everything was built on top of everything else. So my theory is that somewhere buried deep are the building blocks that the third era left behind - if the way to handle administrator default settings had worked without issues back then, I don’t see why they’d change that up later. How often were these things updated anyhow?

Still, better be sure I wasn’t going to mess something up. “Journey, what happens if I fail the last two attempts?”

“User will be locked out of login attempts for the next twenty four hours.”

Okay, not that bad.

If I survived all this of course. I’d be able to spend time back home, and go through all the books I had to make a more educated guess at this.

"Got a user manual by chance?" If Journey had one, I might be able to find the keys to the kingdom. Would be a cheeky win if it worked. This whole plan did come from a wifi manual after all.

"Data not found."

I tutted, annoyed but not suprised. I’ll burn through the low hanging fruits right now just in case one works. Better to have tried. If I find out I’d been sitting on the right answer the whole time and not used it out of misguided fear, I think I'd die of shame. ‘Admin-Admin’ was the one that the router manual had pointed out, but there were mentions on others.

I gave them a shot. “Root, root.”

“Incorrect login. One attempt remaining.”

“User, password.”

“Incorrect login. System locked.”

Ratshit. They had changed it up since the third era. No great loss, I hadn’t seriously expected that to work. I didn’t have any other clues on hand with what I had here. I metaphorically shrugged my shoulders and grabbed my knife, preparing for the next set of training drills.

This can be revisited later. “Well. Can’t blame me for tryin--”

“Root administrator remote override accepted. Guest user: Winterscar, Keith - upgraded to administrator account.”

Next chapter - Predictive Modeling