001 – Prologue

***

I’d been flying for two weeks straight.

Had the airship flown straight to my destination, the trip would have lasted three days. We could have zipped straight from the metropolis to the southern coast. But instead the cargo vessel zigzagged to a dozen different outposts, stopping at each one to deliver essential supplies and pick up mail. Transporting passengers was an afterthought. The ship had no luxuries and few comforts for those on board. My narrow cabin barely squeezed a bunk between a bulkhead and the outer hull. A porthole to the outside provided my only entertainment.

An oppressively green landscape slipped beneath the ship. The wilderness rolled on forever. Sometimes the forests were broken up by craggy mountaintops, river valleys, lakes, or open plains, but the green never abated. As long as my flight had taken, it could have been worse. I could have been down in that mess with all the mud and bugs.

This was the last day of my journey. Just after the midday gloam, the airship’s coils began to vibrate and hum as it dropped in altitude. Outside through the porthole, a structure flashed on the horizon and then swept out of view as the ship angled toward it. I packed up my belongings into travel bags in anticipation of our arrival. I was finally here.

The ship floated down to the station’s steel docking tower and locked itself in place. The crew lowered a retractable gangway to the sky platform. I had witnessed this routine several times before, but now I disembarked and saw it from solid ground. Crewmen used levitation rods to haul bulky cargo crates from the hold and deposit them in the tower.

The director waited for me at the sky platform. The man had a stocky figure and white hair. He wore a cobalt blue jumpsuit covered in holes and patches, the standard uniform of a power technician. A silver button on his collar distinguished him as the one in charge of this power station.

“Ariman?”

“That’s me,” I answered. It had to be. I was the only passenger getting off the ship.

“Glad to meet you. I’m Lonz, director of Power Station Thirteen.” We shook hands, and the director helped me with my bags.

“Are we headed straight to the station?”

“There’s nowhere else to head. The nearest mining outpost is over a hundred kilometers away.”

The docking tower rose a hundred meters from the top of a massive structure at the summit of the mountain. I had thought the cargo ship austere, but this slab of mergestone had a purely functional architecture with no attempt at beauty. It impressed only with its size and remoteness.

The director led me to the docking tower’s exit.

“What? What is this?” I asked, unable to conceal my horror.

“This is the tower elevator.” He banged his hand on the giant contraption, a metal frame mounted to the top of a rugged steel platform. “Don’t worry. It’s as safe as it is slow.”

“You don’t have a freelift?”

“Mana fluctuations at this site can disrupt aetheric arrays. You wouldn’t want the lift to give out while using it. This mechanical beast is the safer option. You could take the stairs if you like, but that’s an awful long climb.”

“I see.”

I hesitantly gripped the safety rails and stepped on. Lonz pulled a switch, and the entire elevator car began to descend on a set of thick steel cables unwound by an electric motor at the top of the tower. The scratched up contraption looked as if it climbed up and down this tower countless times in the past, which eased my worries as to its reliability.

From this high point, I could see down on the top of the station. The central structure roughly took the shape of a cone truncated at the very top where it met the docking tower. The sides sloped downward at steep angles, sometimes interrupted by terraces, steps, ledges, and projecting rooftops. No signs of civilization disturbed the surrounding terrain. A river snaked around the base of the mountain and lesser peaks emerged from the forest canopy. The vista might have impressed had I not spent two weeks staring at leaves.

“So, how old are you, Ariman?” Lonz asked. He could have looked it up himself. All my details had been forwarded to the station. I dreaded this was some attempt to make small talk.

“Twenty five.”

“Really? That’s quite young to finish a daemonics program. Is this your first time out of the metropolis?”

“No. I once visited the western islands on a sailing trip with my family. But this is my first time at one of the continental outposts.”

“Well, you’ll find it to be dull compared to the city. No music or restaurants. People tend to go a little stir crazy out in the woods, which is why the techs rotate out after two years.”

“I hope it doesn’t take me that long to finish my work.”

The elevator car jerked to a stop. The director swung open the gate and stepped out to the receiving dock. The interior of the building was drab and spacious. Because the entire facility used electricity, incandescent bulbs illuminated the place with a harsh glow. Cables, pipes, and air ducts ran along the ceilings similar to a mechanical factory.

Two women awaited us in the receiving dock: a middle aged woman with graying hair and younger one with a long ponytail. Both of them wore the same style blue uniform as Lonz but with fewer patches and rips.

“Ariman, this is my partner Zvala, who serves as station engineer. And this is Keta our mana specialist.”

“What? Is this the whole crew?” I asked.

“Yes. Once the place is set up, it takes very few people to monitor it.”

“Then why is the building so massive?”

“Ah. That’s because most of the station is in the mountain,” Zvala said. “After mining out the underground areas, all the leftover rubble was merged into this giant superstructure instead of dumping it down the mountainside.”

I shook hands with the two technicians.

“Well, you probably want to get settled after your long trip. Keta will show you to your quarters. After that, we can give you a tour of the place and discuss your project.” The director tossed my bags over to Keta. He and his partner departed together.

Keta guided me through the station’s utility tunnels. I could see what the engineer had meant about the site’s construction. The building was basically a stone slab with a few passageways winding through it. The solid mergestone measured tens of meters thick. We walked from the solid core to the facilities at the edge of the structure. The exterior had a number of sub-buildings adhered to the side of the monolithic slab, like towers built on the side of a volcano. These exterior buildings had windows to the outside and better ventilation. Even though they only made up a small part of the station’s total volume, they still provided more space than necessary.

Keta showed me to my quarters, a large suite of rooms. In the metropolis, where space was at a premium, a building this size would house three or four families. A row of bay windows let sunlight into extravagantly wide rooms with vaulted ceilings. The suite had its own kitchen and modern furnishings. This was a drastic change from my cramped cabin on the airship.

I flicked a switch by the door that connected to a set of light bulbs overhead.

“Is it safe having electricity in here?”

“Absolutely. So long as you don’t stick your finger in the socket,” she said. The young technician had an overly intense stare. I flicked the lights off and on. She didn’t even blink.

We entered the suite and tossed my luggage on counter. I took out my rune tablet, a daemon cell, and several other measuring instruments. I had brought a number of my own tools with me for the job.

“How long will your project take?” Keta asked. She sat down on one of the couches and bounced up and down a little, as if testing the springs.

“It depends on the state of the equipment. It’s hard to say with older stations. Maybe a few weeks or up to a quarter of a year.”

“The cargo ships only come every three weeks. You might find yourself with some extra waiting time,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been here almost two whole years now. My contract is almost up. Maybe we can take the same flight back to the metropolis.”

Perhaps the director had been hinting at something when he mentioned the technicians going stir crazy. I had let a dangerous woman in my room.

“Well, there’s no reason to waste time unpacking. Ha ha. Let’s head back for that tour of the station,” I said nervously.

“Sure thing. If you need any help later on, just let me know. My quarters are right next door.” Keta gave me a wide smile.

***

My tour started at the very heart of the station: the power transmitter. The machine occupied the base of a tall silo that reached from the ground floor to the roof, like a giant chimney. A tall monolith of quartz crystal flashed with rainbow light that played across the walls. The ambient mana levels measured a hundred times higher here than normal. This transmitter sent the station’s mana out to an invisible network with other stations. The energy flowed like water into canals, eventually reaching all the way back to the metropolis. Large airships also traveled on those lines to help power their lev coils and engines along the way. Mana kept civilization running.

“In these remote locations, all the crystals have to be grown on site,” Keta said. “That means each one is unique with its own little quirks. They have to be calibrated by hand.”

I said, “Someday daemonics could do all of this. This whole site could be automated.”

“I wouldn’t trust daemons with such precise work.”

“Each generation is a little smarter than the last. You might be surprised what they can do with the proper instructions.”

“Then maybe you can upgrade my golems,” Zvala said. “The old models have first generation daemons installed and are almost as dumb as the rocks they’re made from.”

After seeing the transmitter, they took me down to the underground sections of the station. A long series of ramps connected the lower levels and provided access for the golems and other construction equipment too large to fit in the elevators. Four golems stood silently in a storage bay like statues hewn from rock and cast with metal. These machines performed heavy duty tasks such as mining and emergency repair work. Older golems had little autonomy and thus required constant supervision by a trained engineer to guide their actions.

We moved past the storage bay to the deeper levels.

The underground complex had seven levels in total. The top three contained power equipment, including a mana-electric generator that hummed threateningly. Mana was safe to use and naturally abundant, so most machines ran on it. However some factories and research labs required electrical systems, as well as things like radio broadcast towers. Here, electricity provided backup power in the case of mana fluctuations. The generator filled banks of capacitors, all covered with brightly colored warning signs.

The lower four levels contained the collection arrays. A conduit ran straight down from the transmitter, and smaller power lines radiated outward from the center of the main building through long tunnels. The layout of a level looked like a spider’s web. At each intersection, a domed chamber housed a mana collector. These crystalline machines absorbed mana from the environment and routed it to the transmitter.

Power stations sat on top of natural upflows where the mana was three to five times higher than normal. Mana welled up naturally. The collectors pumped vast amounts of energy up from the planet’s core and distributed it freely across the network. Mana varied in cycles like the rhythm of a heartbeat. Sometime the pulses slowed down or sped up. Other times they went wild for a short time. But the combined output of multiple stations kept them more or less steady. When one reduced its output, another increased.

The Research Society wanted to better understand these cycles. To accomplish that they needed to make much more detailed records of local mana fluctuations. The oldest power stations did not monitor their total outputs, much less keep track of individual collectors.

My project for the Society was to upgrade the collectors at Power Station Thirteen with newer daemonics. The daemons did not have a lot of intelligence, it was true, but they excelled at certain types of repetitive tasks. They could check the collectors at constant intervals and keep precise records. Other techs like me were working to make these upgrades all across the power network.

***

With the tour concluded, the crew took me up to the dining hall for an evening meal. Zvala pushed out a cart with covered dishes and set them out on the table.

“After your long trip, we figured you might appreciate a home cooked meal,” she said.

“I don’t cook,” Lonz admitted. “In fact, they won’t even let me in the kitchen. But I did grow the vegetables. This far out, we have to supplement the food deliveries with our own gardens.”

“Let’s celebrate your arrival, Ariman,” Keta said as she sat down next to me. It concerned me that she found a visiting male technician cause for celebration. She produced three large bottles of enlivened wine. Before I could say anything, Keta uncorked the bottle and filled four glasses with dark red liquid.

Zvala served the food, heaping food on the plates and placing bowls of simmering soup. She was an excellent cook who had mastered the limited set of ingredients available at the outpost. It looked as if they had even gathered wild fruits from the forests down the mountain.

Lonz reached under the table and pulled out a package. “To welcome you to the crew, we shall now bestow upon you the honorary blue. Your very own jumpsuit.” He passed me a neatly folded cobalt blue uniform.

The dinner and conversation were normal enough. Lonz and Zvala sat across from us. The older couple had been at the power station for over a decade and seen many contract techs come and go. They were the senior caretakers of the place. Keta was something of a traveler. She frequently signed up to work at remote outposts. Unlike me, she enjoyed the wild outdoors. She spent her free time hiking up and down the side of the mountain and roaming the primordial forest. But after two years on contract, she missed her friends and family back home—and missed having a social life. She was ready to return to the city.

They asked me all about myself. Truthfully, I was a boring person. I had spent years studying at the Community of Scholars to complete their program in advanced aetherics and daemonics. After that, I joined the Research Society. Volunteering for fieldwork earned me credit with the Society which granted me more access to their limited research facilities. I hoped to work on the lunar conduit with identifying new types of daemons. Basically, my whole life had been dedicated to classes and books.

I also was not accustomed to drinking or being the center of attention in social situations. The wine made my head spin.

Without warning, the dining hall’s lumestones became incredibly bright. They flooded the room with a brilliant bluish light and then overheated. The stones fizzled out leaving a dull red glow at their centers.

“What? A mana pulse? Now?” Keta shouted, sounding oddly frustrated.

“We better check to see if anything’s damaged. Come on, Ariman, you better get used to this routine,” Lonz said.

The friendly mood dissipated and everyone changed back to disciplined technicians in an instant. I grabbed my rune tablet and followed after them. There wasn’t time to change into my new uniform, but I was still part of the team. With so few people working here, everyone had to help out in emergencies.

We checked on the transmitter first. It flashed spasmodically. Using my rune tablet to scan it, I found the mana jumping from almost total quiescence to extreme levels that could not be properly measured. Off the charts. This was the equivalent of an earthquake. I could actually feel the pulsing mana hit my body.

“Wow. This one is bad. Real bad,” Keta said. “I’m glad that airship wasn’t docked when this happened. It could have damaged the lev coils.”

The three veteran techs agreed not to shut down the transmitter. Doing so might cause dangerous power buildups in the system. The best course of action was to disconnect the collectors from the array. With proper daemonics installed, a process like this could have kicked in automatically. But at this two hundred year old station, the workers had to do it manually. We ran to one of the elevators.

Strong vibrations passed through the floor. I felt glad that the station was so solid, because nothing could break it apart short of a volcanic eruption or asteroid impact. As the ground shuddered, even the electric lights began to flicker. Keta directed us to forgo the elevators as a precaution. We took the ramps down to the lower levels.

The detour increased the time to get below. The ramps slanted at shallow inclines for better vehicle access, and the complex was deep in the mountain. By the time we made it down to the storage bay, we were sweating and gasping for air, except Keta the avid hiker and outdoorsman.

The four golems had shifted locations during the event; two of the stone giants stood in different places, another had fallen onto its hands and knees, the fourth was missing entirely. The mana pulses must have affected their arrays. They would need new daemon cores after this was over.

“Okay. Everybody split up and take a section,” the director said. “Ariman. Go with Keta and watch how she handles the machines. Once you know how to do it, you can help her out.”

As he said that, a bank of lights exploded and sent out a shower of sparks. The wild fluctuations had even affected the electrical capacitors and blown circuits around the station. The director passed out flares. We held them up to navigate the web of dark tunnels by torch light.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Zvala muttered to herself.

At the collectors, Keta quickly demonstrated how to disengage the machines from the web of conduits running along the floor. First, she zeroed all the settings so that it would not send energy to the transmitter. Then she broke the physical connection to the web by unlatching the conduits joined to the base of the crystal monolith. I watched closely to memorize the proper order to follow. As we worked, the dull crystal flashed and left lingering images burned into my retinas.

Once I observed her take care of three collectors, I went off to do my own. The station had hundreds of these units. It could take hours to finish. Usually an individual collector would be taken offline for repairs or tests, not all of them at once. The collection web was not really designed for this unprecedented emergency.

I wondered if this event would reach nearby stations or affect power in the metropolis. I’d never heard of mana pulses hitting a wide geographic area, but I’d never heard of one this large before either. Power networks were not my specialty.

The first collector put up a real fight. None of the conduits wanted to let go of the machine. Keta had made it look too easy. I finally unhooked it. The next batch were more cooperative. The extreme waves of mana made concentrating difficult. Wild buzzing and humming noises echoed through the stone tunnels, and the collectors flashed like strobes. I heard one of the large crystals audibly crack before it went dark. It would take a long time to repair this place, and my hopes of finishing this project quickly also shattered.

After disconnecting the next collector, it glowed with a threatening red and purple light. I had gotten ahead of myself and neglected to clear the instruments first. Somehow the pulses had yet to destroy my rune tablet. It lit up as I stopped the machine from pumping from the planetary core.

The crystal flashed like a bolt of lightning. A resounding crack knocked me to the ground. My limbs went numb with thousands of pins and needles. I collapsed weakly to the stone floor. Through half lidded eyes and blurring vision, I saw my burning flare bounce along the ground. Its flame slowly died out as I fell unconscious.