Dr. Miles smiled and nodded his head, playing with his other device. “Right, right. Good timing too, another couple of days and that torn ligature would start bonding outside of the socket, and then it’s a real nightmare to get cleaned up.”

He spoke dismissively, as he worked at the device. Then, with a smile, he set it down and turned to face us.

“Right. One shuttle coming in on your location with the next orbital window. Should be there within an hour. Don’t be late or wander off, they’ll want you to authorize charges. This is all through Dearth, so its payment up front or no services provided.”

“Woah, woah. Woah, Dearth? As in, the Dearth Conglomerate?” I asked.

Dr. Miles didn’t even look up. “Yes.”

“We may have some issues with them, they’re actually the company that sent Drusk to attack us.” I shrugged when he looked at me, over the top of his reading glasses.

“And? Different department entirely. The folks who will be doing the repair work on him won’t know anything about the attack. Nor would they care if they did. You have to realize, Dearth is a top-ten affiliate. They’re fully multiversal. Nu-Earth is merely one of thousands of affiliate related actions the company is taking on any given day, and the only thing that matters in the end is the morties.”

Dr. Miles went back to his device, speaking dismissively for the rest of his point. “Even if you were experiencing a full scale war from Dearth’s security branch, the surgical department of their research vessel supporting the efforts on a new planet would still be happy to take your morties. At their level of BuyMort operation, the affiliate departments become so detached that minor grievances simply do not matter when there are morties on the line. Probably won’t even be noticed, definitely won’t be acted upon.”

He glanced at me once more, hovering his finger over the disconnect button. “Any further questions?”

I shook my head and the doctor hung up. Drusk grunted and turned back to his shack, moving slowly and gingerly protecting his arm from movement.

I leaned in the doorway as he sat back down. “Thank you for agreeing to this.”

The mordren sighed and shook his head. “It’s a good deal. I can stay on the path with this if you don’t die. If you do, I go to Storage and negotiate a better deal with the breeders.”

“Dearth may just stomp us all, you know.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Doubt it. That Arizona Board is cheap, each of them greedy and eager to beat out their fellows. They barely pay attention to places like this. I’ve seen the construction and fortification. Once they realize you’re a threat, you’ll be too expensive to easily deal with.”

Drusk fixed me with a stare. “If you take advantage of that, you might even beat them.”

I stared at him for a moment before I nodded and turned to leave. The hobb on guard duty returned to his post as I left. Rayna was in the kitchen waiting for me. She raised her chin at me as soon as I entered.

“Check security tab. Need affiliate to pay for purchase,” she grunted.

“Right, just a second,” I responded as I moved to the fridge.

I swung it open to sneak another one of Mr. Sada’s waters, but that side of the fridge had a new locking compartment attached to it.

Of course, he wasn’t giving me new keys those days, so I sighed and closed the door.

A faint tearing sound from outside distracted me, and I leaned to see out the glass doors. The sound grew louder, and I stepped outside. I shielded my eyes and looked up to the sky to see a shining dot in the sky begin burning.

It streaked down, trailing just a hint of flame as it navigated our atmosphere. When it dropped in overhead, it switched to a different mode, and a series of engines on its underside began to manipulate the air.

A visible churn of air movement could be seen as the small craft maneuvered in for a landing in the backyard, directly over the pool.

Water splashed against the underside as landing limbs extended and settled the craft in a straddle over the swimming pool. Several hobbs arrived at a jog, but relaxed when they saw Rayna and I.

Still, Rayna had brought her gun, so they all kept a good grip on theirs. A ramp extended from an oversized airlock and a hiss sounded in the air as the doors opened.

A female mordren walked down the ramp, dressed in hospital scrubs. She wore a set of filtration plugs in her nostrils, and holographic projectors implanted onto either side of her eyes. As soon as she stepped off the ramp, she looked us up and down, and then walked past to Drusk in his shed.

Two humans and a nah’gh exited next, wearing similar scrubs. The humans moved to assist the mordren, and the nah’gh approached Rayna and myself.

“Good afternoon, you must be Tyson.” He smiled and nodded in greeting, slithering to a stop before us and turning to Rayna. “And you must be Rayna. We’re here on behalf of the Dearth Conglomerate’s medical research division, to collect Drusk for a couple of surgeries.”

I nodded. “Yes, you guys got here quick. I just arranged it with Dr. Miles.”

The nah’gh turned back to me and smiled. He clasped both hands and nodded. “Oh we love Dr. Miles. His affiliate and our division work so well together.” He turned and flashed another disarming smile at Rayna, while presenting me with a tablet device.

It detailed the surgery and recovery fees, as well as transport to and from our location. All said, it was a little higher than what Dr. Miles had said it would be, but not a huge amount. They definitely seemed to be ripping us off on transport fees, but then, I didn’t know what fuel for their shuttle, or wages for their staff cost. Plus, it felt like the kind of thing that was non-negotiable if we wanted the surgery, so I paid for it from the affiliated fund. As soon as I sent over the morties, the nah’gh accepted his tablet back and smiled at us both.

“Well, anyway. It was great to meet you both, can we drop him off right back here when we’re finished?”

I noticed they had set up some kind of hovering sled, and were already in the process of loading Drusk onto the shuttle. Both humans were guiding the sled as the female mordren who seemed to be leading them pushed it.

She twirled a manicured claw in the air and the nah’gh began to slither backwards.

“It was so nice to meet both of you, and thanks so much for trusting Dearth Medical with your mordren’s health and well being. We’ll take good care of him.”

With that, the nah’gh raised a hand to say goodbye, and slithered on board the shuttle behind his team.

Rayna turned and waved at her hobbs, and they began to leave as the shuttle began to take off. It gushed air and water in the pool as its engines kicked in again, and the craft wobbled into a steady hovering flight above the mansion, before it started to zoom away into the distance.

After it became small on the horizon, it shifted and a powerful energy well lit up behind it, to push it out of our gravity.

When I turned to follow Rayna inside, I saw she was waiting for me, arms crossed. Oh right, the purchase requests. Drusk and the spiders would have to wait.

I leaned on the counter and pulled up BuyMort again, selecting the affiliate and opening our security tab.

Rayna had been at work, there was a requested purchase list waiting for my approval.

Most of it was pretty simple stuff I had no problem approving. Ammunition, holsters, more mud-crete grenades, another flame-thrower, med kits, more Sleem Sticks, etc.

The only big ticket item on the list was massive. Twelve million morties by itself, and the only identification it offered was the name; Fumble-Bees.

Rayna insisted that was what we needed. A Fumble-Bees hive. I even made her say it twice, just to make sure I was hearing the right thing.

She was quiet and calm and very insistent. Twelve million morties was a lot of our operational fund, which I explained to her. She still said it was the right move to make, so I hit the button and approved the purchase.

When the shipment arrived, we were in the basement waiting for it. Rayna had ordered the prisoner moved, and poor Zach was picked up and carried upstairs to be babysat in the living room.

His ankle was badly broken, but Rayna had put him in a hand crafted brace that she insisted would see him through the heal if he was careful. She prided herself on timing human recoveries, said it was a point of pride for BuyMort medics who operated on multiple races.

Each of us healed at different speeds. Even two humans from different earths might have different cellular regeneration rates, or different average bone density.

Rayna grunted it all at me while we stood waiting, in the awkward silence that followed Zach screaming his head off at me about being sentenced for execution and how he was looking forward to carrying out justice upon me.

I ignored Zach, for the most part. Since I had already decided not to kill him, and he had taken himself out with a karmic justice flavored broken ankle, I just couldn’t take his threats seriously.

I was starting to realize that these militia clowns couldn’t do much to hurt me with conventional arms anymore.

And that was all they were sure to have, in great abundance. Conventional arms. Something my ever-growing force of hobbs was sure to need. The thought gave me an idea, but before I could even think it over, Afflqwst beeped in my brain and I opened it up.

Quest - You have the opportunity to cut costs and retrieve an armory of great size. Enough to outfit an army of your own. Seize the weapons cache and seize the day.

REQUIREMENTS:

Locate Militia Armory Loot the contents. (Optional) eliminate or recruit all hostile enemy forces (Optional) Seize Militia Mortblock.

OUTCOME - Outfit of hobb forces. Ability to bring in more hobb soldiers from Storage (100%).

PROBABLE OUTCOME - Militia threat neutralized (95%).

POSSIBLE OUTCOME - The beginning of a nation (55%)

REWARD - Payment of funds equivalent to a BuyMort Affiliate level-up

My eyebrow raised of its own accord. Payment of funds equivalent to a BuyMort Affiliate level-up. As I had suspected, my Afflqwst app was not a normal part of the BuyMort system. More like a guerilla force operating from within. And they didn’t want to be noticed.

Two items, both designed to aid me within this insane system. The suit kept me alive, from things that should have killed me on day one. Now the app was helping me climb the ladder to defeat more serious threats, like the militia.

Some of what it offered as a reward was worrisome. Beginning of a nation? What the hell did that mean? I suspected I knew, and I equally suspected that I might be the wrong guy for that sort of thing. The balance of power in Arizona was something that I was directly involved in. After a lifetime of avoiding responsibility, it felt like I suddenly had a mountain of it dropped in my lap.

But someone had to do it.

For now I’d just do the quest and worry about the rest of it later. I figured if I played this just right, stealing their guns would be a relatively easy quest.

I started hoping to use Zach to steal the guns, with the help of Darclau and his unkindness. Ignoring his threats was easy, when I saw the potential payday in feeding him back to the Dearth Conglomerate. That affiliate didn’t seem to know how to pay attention to more than one thing at a time.

A weakness to exploit.

Before I could mention the idea to Rayna, a pod arrived, swooping silently down the stairs to dazzle us with a rainbow beam. I moved over to peruse the new goodies, and Rayna followed. I picked through the smaller stuff while she got to work cracking open the largest, thickest box in the collection.

I cut flesh tape and moved smaller boxes aside, as Rayna slit the sides of the box and allowed it to fall open like a flower. In the center was a stack of bulbous rings about half my height. It was covered in a sunflower yellow paint job that lit up the otherwise grungy basement.

Each curved ring was covered with hundreds of tiny doors, little clear panes of glass in the metal surface. The top ring was smaller, and it only held ten doors. Atop it stood a series of small branches which jutted from the very top. They were all metal, and shaped strangely, so I assumed they were antennae of some sort, simply painted to match the aesthetic. I pulled up the product information to look at it a bit closer. Its ad was the first thing to present itself from the product page.

Presenting The Fumble-Bee Hive, from Pepaw Industries — Pepaw Industries knows who the backbone of BuyMort is. The farmers, ranchers, and hardworking everyman at the heart of our multiverse drive commerce and industry from the ground up. And Pepaw Industries salutes you, the true leaders within BuyMort. The Fumble-Bee Hive is the result of high-end micro-drone engineering, and good old fashioned hard work. With easy link to most any device, the toughest construction materials, a five-acre area of effect, and a wide range of utility, the Fumble-Bee hive is the ultimate in farming equipment.

Pepaw Industries; just making your life a little easier, farmland heroes. 12,000,000 morties, 4.9 stars.

Aside from the patronizing ad, it looked like a great piece of equipment. Impact, shock, oxidation, flame, and corrosion resistant, our new Fumble-Bee hive was guaranteed to stand up to anything most environments could throw at it.

It even specifically promised that Sleem acid would have no effect on the hive even if brought inside of it.

Internal cleaning mechanisms ensured that each Fumble-Bee was clean and maintained between deployment.

Honestly, it read just like a piece of farm equipment, to the point I began doubting its use as a security item. Livestock would be unable to damage the hive itself, the instructions claimed, and most Fumble-Bees were recoverable when damaged.

Other Fumble-Bees were always immediately dispatched to retrieve damaged units for repair, which was performed internally at the hive.

Mapping, pollination, security, clear-cutting, even shepherding. Rayna had convinced me to buy a bunch of tiny farm drones. They even looked like happy little bees, a smiling insect face painted over the cold, uncaring metal of each drone.

The entire hive contained just over ten thousand drones. Most were multi-purpose, but a small dedicated few were for emergency retrieval.

The hive itself acted as a secure base for the drone swarm, repair hub, recharge station, and general storage all wrapped up in one.

The best part was that its control system was attached to the affiliate page, so I could control who got what kind of access to it and link its control program with any other devices.

I immediately gave Rayna full access.

Next, I got it ported it to both my psychic cell phone, and my helmet. Rayna produced a scratched up plastic phone and began playing with the buttons on it. Hobbs filed in as she worked and began gearing up for the return to the Sleem dungeon beneath our feet.