Consequences

(Starspeak)

“[Aaron, I know you’re mad—]” I snapped my mouth shut and ducked instead of finishing the sentence.

Metal paneling whipped through the air where my head had been a second earlier. The improvised projectile tore through concrete as it careened to a halt. It would have easily taken my head off.

Come on, man. Work with me!

“[I’m not letting them take her!]” Aaron shouted. His mechanical puppets tightened their formation, bristling threateningly between us and them.

“[She shot someone!]” I shouted back. “[They aren’t taking her anywhere; I am!]”

Aaron muttered something, but we were too far away to catch it. But it was written all over his face. He wasn’t going to give up.

Nai observed.

Simultaneously, Madeline chimed in.

I should. I knew I should. But I wasn’t going to give up on anyone, and my whole crew knew it. Still, they were right. Even ignoring the other abductees helping him, Aaron on his own was threatening widespread collateral damage.

I didn’t like how densely his automatons’ psionics were packed. My first move would have obliterate his psionic connection to them, but they were, well, autonomous . The connection didn’t really matter. There wasn’t anything of importance to cut off. Even if Aaron were out cold, they’d stay active and threatening to hurl more debris.

It was dangerous to let this drag out. Someone was going to get hurt.

…But as long as that someone was me, I was still set on a peaceful resolution, however long a shot it may be.

I threw my hands up. A pretty pointless gesture as far Adeptry went, but it was the thought that counted. Hopefully.

I said. Using psionics left nothing to chance; I didn’t want anything I said to be muffled by distance.

When thrown scrap metal didn’t take off my hands, I took it as a good sign.

I checked with Madeline.

she said.

And that would have to be good enough.

I said, rising from the concrete planter I’d ducked behind, <[you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. She shot someone; that’s not something the Vorak can just forget. And if this keeps on going, someone could end up dead. I know you don’t want that on your conscience.]>

“[Shut up,]” Aaron growled. I could hear him better as I drew closer. “[The Vorak was trespassing, and now so are you.]”

I asked.

“[We still live here! This is all just ‘cause one alien asshole got twitchy and didn’t give us a chance to explain.]”

What a coincidence, this situation was feeling similar.

I said, only a few meters from his automatons now. His jaw was so tight he might have cracked his own teeth. “[But this—? ]” I gestured to his automatons and the wreckage that spread out from his group’s A-ships, “[—it’s my job to clean up now. You gotta turn her over, man.]”

I’d made a mistake ending with that point. I’d looped back to reiterate the bottom line too quickly. It was obvious three different ways, his face contorted more, falling back into angry lines, a psionic ripple went out as his automatons followed his emotional example, and an alarmed cry came from overhead.

I didn’t hesitate to fire my jets on full blast. Pressurized air sprang into existence in a thin layer across my body, instantly depressurizing and shoving me backward.

The nearest two automatons swung telescoping whip-like arms at me, but my maneuvering prosthesis hummed warmly on the back of my neck, calculating thrust and leverage independent of me, smoothing out the rough edges of my jet-propulsion. Both automatons missed by more than a foot, cracking the concrete where they speared into the ground.

Nai asked me.

I said bitterly.

she agreed.

she said.

Nai agreed.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but we didn’t need much more of one. There wasn’t any doubt how this ended. It was just a question of how little harm we did in the process.

Aaron was an impressive Adept.

It was obvious at a glance. We’d counted eleven automatons total before actually approaching the human quarter of the colony, but there might still be a few lurking. Even if not, he’d still put in a ton of work on them.

Each one was seven feet tall, strong enough to lift a car, and responsive enough to be a real threat in a fight.

Low range, so if he wanted to replace ones we trashed he’d have to recreate them one at a time and very near himself, but still…He was blessed with high precision and a mass limit and he was leveraging both to the hilt.

After all this was done, I wanted to look at the control psionics he’d engraved them with. In circumstances like this they were too opaque to analyze remotely on the fly. Maybe if I got closer and stripped away the obfuscating elements—

Nai mentally flicked me.

Drat. She was right; I was dragging my feet only avoiding the automatons.

These automatons weren’t a real obstacle to me. They were responsive, but nearly enough to catch me with my jets throttled to full.

I didn’t want to fight Aaron—or Marika or Willy if they got dragged into it. Even trying out best to subdue them without inflicting lasting damage, even placing as much of the risk on our own lives than our opponents…

There was a still a roll of the dice that could leave humans dead.

That was the thought that finally got me in gear. The longer this dragged, the more likely that roll became. My best chance was to overwhelm Aaron before he could make any adjustments.

I jetted for him, direct . His three bodyguards were all two beats too slow to react as I blew past. I landed in a skid, winding up like I was going to sock him.

Aaron wasn’t stupid though and he was ready to block the blow…but not for the flashbang I loosed with my other hand. Flaring my pressure jets again, I whirled overhead, coming down behind him to try getting him in a chokehold.

Madeline warned.

I trusted her call and aborted, jetting the side instead.

A twelfth automaton speared an arm into the ground just a few inches behind Aaron—no, not a twelfth. The eleventh. Nai had obliterated the first one to meet her and Aaron had reformed it almost immediately on his position.

I said.

Nai agreed.

I backpedaled away from the now four automatons surrounding Aaron. Even with just one exchange behind us, he was already adapting their positioning and strategy. Or was he? They might be autonomous enough to arrange themselves.

My gut said it was a subconscious mix of the two, but whatever the mechanism they learned by, it was clearly quick enough to pose a problem.

I asked.

Far overhead, the rotors of Madelin’s flight pack went silent. I waited a few moments, pacing around Aaron and his throng of automatons…just long enough…

Now.

I shifted to high gear again, drawing an immediate reaction from Aaron and the bots. But the same moment they moved, Madeline crashed down from above. She landed fist first, crushing the first automaton beneath a mechanical gauntlet the size of a refrigerator. Smooth as butter the two closer automatons switched targets while the third stayed trained on me, but it was the wrong move.

From her other arm, Madeline materialized a second mecha-gauntlet, snatched one of her new opponents and flung them far and wide.

she warned our perimeter.

Johnny said. The bot sailed through the air only to be split in half by a metal blade materializing from the ground right in its path.

I always to force myself to ignore thinking too hard about the cartoon physics that Madeline’s weaponry seemed to follow, instead focusing on Aaron.

Being attacked from above had put him off balance again, but the last automaton was still ready to keep me from taking advantage of the moment.

It skewered a telescoping limb forward, following it up immediately with another trying to catch the moment I tried to dodge. It was the kind of tactic that might have worked on a planet with proper gravity.

But on a moon like this? Madeline wasn’t the only one who could fly .

Once again, I went up and over to chase Aaron. I broke off almost immediately though. He snapped his fingers and the two automatons Madeline had destroyed dissolved, reforming shoulder to shoulder before him.

No— three!

I saw one of the garbled psionic pings disappear from where Madeline was fighting behind me, and it was the only warning I got. One of the two reformed bots lurched its torso, pointing a telescoping arm at me, and lancing toward me like a laser beam.

If I hadn’t seen the signal disappear on radar, I would have been shish-kebab. I flared my jets again, taking more distance.

Take stock.

Had to keep calm. Preserve my energy…especially seeing how Aaron was burning at both ends. It was a powerful move, to dissolve and reform his automatons on himself. It was a little like teleporting an ally to your side whenever you needed help out of a jam.

But he couldn’t recoup his entire mass limit in seconds like I could. Rapidly dissolving and reforming multiple iterations of bot should either drain him or…

Madeline observed. Her psionic words might be calm, but she was panting like I was.

I said.

Madeline pointed out.

I wondered if she might actually know better than me.

In a certain sense, Madeline and Aaron had very similar styles. Both of their mechanical creations required psionic control surfaces for them to move properly. Normally mechanically complex creations needed to be materialized slowly, making sure that each piece stayed within tolerances so the whole device could operate as intended. But Madeline designed her creations in the psionic equivalent of CAD software, blueprinting each piece in excruciating detail ahead of time so they could consistently be materialized at a moment’s notice.

Given how quickly Aaron was reforming the automatons, he was likely doing something similar. But even if the design of each creation was prearranged, an Adept could only make so much mass so quickly. Madeline and Aaron both favored high-mass, high-intricacy creations that they used disposably. They faced the risks of accumulation sickness more than any other type of Adept.

Madeline proposed.

That had merit. Attacking so many targets over such a wide range was something suited to Nai’s specialty, but it was probably even better suited for Jordan.

I said.

Jordan and Shinshay both silently pinged confirmation of their readiness.

Could we just blast the whole area immediately? Maybe. It would depend on how vulnerable the automatons were compared to the dozens of abductees sheltering inside the A-ship Aaron was defending. Could we afford to spare bystanders?

…Yes, I decided. But it would require a slightly more tailored approach. We needed a better look at the automatons psionic defenses. Madeline and I could probably wrestle a bot into submission for a peek at its software…but there was a much quicker and reliable method.

I prompted.

Nai asked.

I agreed.

Aaron sent out his automatons again, and Madeline interposed herself between me and them. Simultaneously, Nai was corralling bots alongside Donnie and Johnny, and extending her tactile cascade underfoot.

Even having honed my Adept fundamentals for years now, my cascade didn’t reach more than a few meters, and that was even after I narrowed it. I had to stretch it thinner and thinner just to meet hers halfway the slightest bit faster.

But as soon as the cascades reached each other, I flicked the switch in my mind and the superconnector roared to life.

We’d both been paying close attention to each others’ predicaments already, so the process was relatively seamless, but we both grimaced at the harsh feedback that came with building the connection remotely.

There was a reason we stuck to the ritual of fist bumping or high-fiving to initiate Coalescence.

I took more of the load than Nai— I? Right? Yeah. Me, Caleb, took the brunt —and I took a knee. It was more important that Nai be able to move. Madeline switched from her gauntlets to her net gun, trying to tie the automatons down rather than just break them.

We pinned one of the bots down with Donnie’s help, and we pressed a hand to its chest. With our cascade providing feedback on the physical structure of the machine and the matter housing what we really wanted a look at.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The psionics.

They were well designed. Aaron’s talents lay beyond just Adeptry it seemed—or more likely, he’d collaborated with dozens of other skilled abductees and refined the design over the last couple years.

But there was a glaring flaw. They weren’t hardened enough to withstand damage. No—they weren’t hardened at all. They relied entirely on external shielding to protect vulnerable intricacies inside. Maybe we could keep going as we were, utilizing more offensive psionics on the ground…but our comprehensive option had just been confirmed. An attack intense enough to breach their outer defenses would fry anything inside too.

Redundancies, backups, and safety systems had saved our bacon dozens of times. Today? Not having them was going to seal Aaron’s defeat, and guarantee us a victory worth having.

we told Madeline.

she replied cockily. I raised an eyebrow at her, but she punctuated the sentence by tearing another automaton in half with her mechanized gauntlets.

“[You’re still a Puppy,]” I warned under my breath, certainly too quiet to actually hear.

But to our relief and her credit, she knew what I’d said anyway. The expression on her face was all business while I got to work.

Agenteers were one of the rarest styles or archetypes of Adept. The ability to create things capable of even basic motion was not common. The ability to make creatures, agents, or—in Aaron’s case—machines capable of independent action was truly rare.

Being able to make your own reinforcements was a huge advantage that could turn an overwhelmingly disadvantageous situation into a mere stalemate at worst.

But a stalemate was just fine for Madeline.

Shouldering her net-bazooka, she blasted the next automaton. We’d been hit by one of those nets. Each one weighed a ton; it was like getting shot by an airbag. Even after being caught, the net’s thick cords actually tightened themselves on anchors, pinning the target in place. Three shots and she’d immobilized all but the last automaton staying close to Aaron as a guard.

Aaron was, once again, not slow, and he manually dissolved and recreated the trapped bots. Immobilizing them was functionally the same as destroying them.

“Tch,” Madeline frowned. As always, she wanted to aim for a win, but Aaron was a bit too sharp for that strategy to be enough.

The first automaton to be reformed blitzed toward her, but instead of shooting it again, she lashed out with the net gun itself. Even though she hoisted it with one arm, the muzzle bashed into the bot with the weight of several hundred pounds.

Fighting agenteers was trickier than normal Adepts though, because attacks could come one after another with no break.

But Aaron wasn’t the toughest agenteer the Flotilla’s Adepts had tested ourselves against; Tiv was the best of the best and had visited our Flotilla last year. Madeline clearly still remembered the highly educational experience fighting the Century offered.

While we fiddled with the finishing touches on my psionic solution, she dissolved her net gun and opted for her flight pack. Instead of launching into the sky though, she improvised some heavy metalwork into existence, bolting her legs to the moon’s surface. She turned the flight pack’s rotors laterally and blasted the rest of the approaching automatons with hurricane force winds.

We knew her flight pack ordinarily utilized some limited anti-gravity elements, but those wouldn’t help her push other targets. This was pure wind power and thrust, so to achieve force like this, she’d be burning through her battery quickly.

And the batteries were how she powered all of her mechanical creations; they were energy dense, so she could only make so many so quickly.

But it was the right move.

We’d told her I needed thirty seconds, and even turned up to the max, her rotors wouldn’t burn through a whole batter in just thirty seconds. Better still? It handled the threat in such a way that it was pointless for Aaron to rematerialize them. She was just blowing them backwards after all.

Points for you, Mads, we thought. He wouldn’t stroke out if he didn’t have to keep materializing matter.

We finished just in time to watch Willy reveal himself. He was silently leaning out of the uppermost hatch on the A-ship Aaron was defending. In his arms he cradled a compound bow. No arrow nocked, but that was meaningless with Adeptry at his fingertips.

Still combined with Nai’s, my brain worked a million miles an hour to puzzle out exactly what he was thinking.

I acknowledged.

he admitted.

I offered.

I countered.

Willy asked.

we lied. It was a small lie. We were almost certain. Ninety-nine point five percent. But he was proving more agreeable than we’d expected, and this wasn’t a moment to quibble over odds.

he said.

I said, throwing a copy of the construct we’d built.

he asked, snatching it out of the air.

Instead of answering him, we let out a shrill psionic whistle, flinging another copy of the shield directly at Aaron.

I said. <[Or every single construct in your head is going to be toast.]>

Aaron met my gaze, and he hesitated. He caught the shield and was trying to analyze it, trying to find whatever trap we’d left in it.

There wasn’t one, of course. But we’d made the shield with one thing prominently obvious: it had to be activated intentionally. The automatons weren’t alive. They weren’t truly aware, and Aaron couldn’t deploy shields for them.

And he knew it.

she sent us, and more than a hundred miles above us, she fired up the Jack’s integrated psionics array.

I called.

I told Jordan after hearing four confirmations. I took a running start, gauging when exactly the attack would arrive.

The beam itself was invisible to the naked eye. But to anyone equipped with even rudimentary psionic senses, a blinding scream fell across the yard. Every unprotected psionic construct melted, and all eleven automatons instantly collapsed, exactly like puppets with cut strings.

Aaron resolved his hesitation and layered the shield into his firewall just in time for his own psionics to survive Jordan’s attack. Credit to his decisiveness under pressure, he saw his automatons collapse and started recreating them immediately.

But it didn’t matter.

Each new one that solidified just crumpled before it could take a single step. Their psionics were getting cooked faster than Aaron could create or reinforce them.

Aaron’s stony expression finally faltered when he saw me barreling toward him again. I didn’t bother with a fake out this time. I sank a quick jab into his stomach before grabbing his leg and dragging us both to the ground.

He tried to shake me by materializing a weapon, but I kicked it out of his hand, pinning the same hand to the ground with my shoe. Honestly, grappling was the weakest part of my game, and my leglock was sloppy. But I didn’t need it to hold for more than a moment…

My hand darted into my thigh pocket, snatching the cylinder syringe inside. I bit the plastic cap off before jamming the needle into Aaron’s thigh, right through his own pant leg. A small hiss and pressure on the needle told me it’d worked.

But I maintained my clumsy wrestling hold until Aaron’s body sagged a bit, and he let out a confused grunt.

we told Jordan, and her psionic onslaught ceased.

It was only then that we loosened our hold on Coalescence.

I was Caleb, and she was Nai once again.

Aaron wrenched himself free of my hold, and I let him spring to his feet. But he couldn’t get himself fully upright. His legs refused to behave like anything except limp noodles.

“[W-what’d you do…]” he slurred, half propping himself up.

“[Sedated you,]” I said, spitting out the plastic needle cap. “” I shouted, turning to the A-ship. “”

“Uhh, Caleb?” Madeline asked, touching down a few feet away. She pointed toward the A-ship. The shielded ship. Right. I’d just done that too.

Rather than take the time to unravel the improvised shield manually, I fished in my pocket again and withdrew my handbook.

I scrolled through the tangled knots that were my navigation presets and thumbed to my library of default psionic encryption, finding the one I’d secured the shield with, and copying the decompiling signal.

Clicking a button on the handbook signaled the shield to unravel like a cheap suit.

I tried again,

Sure enough, a few seconds later, the ship’s lowest exterior hatch hissed open. A girl maybe a year younger than Aaron poked her head out, Willy and two other older abductees in tow behind her.

“[So, let’s talk about what happens next,]” I said, gesturing for her to come closer.

Madeline, sharp as ever, materialized some crude metal cubes for us to sit on, Aaron still lying on the ground between us.

I sent direct to him.

He looked like some anger might cut through the sedative, but I cut him off.

<[It’ll help keep Marika safe and the rest of your crew, by the way.]>

he managed.

I nodded at him.

“[Okay, first things first: anyone tries to resort to force again, and I’m giving Aaron a second dose of sedative. Because I can’t keep an eye on him and deescalate with whoever wants to take a swing next. I shouldn’t need to tell you all why that’s a big deal, so all of you look me in the eye and tell me you understand why we want to rely on alien-sourced chemical sedatives as little as possible.]”

“[Ja, ja, we get it,]” one of the older abductees said dryly. Klaus, if I was reading my directory correctly. Yeah, Klaus. His ID was engraved on a few of his psionics.

“[Good. Next, I want to apologize. We were late getting here by a few hours, and things clearly spiraled very out of control. That said… what the hell? You guys have been here for two—almost three years without incident! What the hell went wrong so quickly that you started shooting at the locals?]”

“[We got threats,]” Marika said, her voice carrying the faintest accent. Something European. “[People in town said they overheard some rowdy Vorak saying they were going to roll through our lot.]”

“[I think I can piece together the rest,]” I said. “[Your local guy—Phels, right? They poke around the place during the moon’s dark cycles, while most of you are asleep, to help you keep an eye out, right?]”

“[We didn’t ask for his help,]” Klaus frowned.

“[Their help,]” I corrected, shaking my head. Etiquette. Not important right now. “[Never mind. Bottom line is this: Marika’s guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, because Phels wasn’t actually standing on your lot. Bloodstains put them four meters away from the dividing line. They crawled toward ya’ll for help afterwards.]”

Almost everyone was quiet at that. Marika looked like she might throw up. Even Willy raised his eyebrows.

“[…R’s more to it…than just that,]” Aaron mumbled, still on his back.

“[There’s always more to it,]” I said. “[Now shut up. Here’s the bad news: Marika was tried in absentia, and found guilty two days ago. Local law contacted the Flotilla because you guys are technically allowed here under temporary visas. That’s how we got involved. Aaron, I’m not too sorry to say, you’re going to be tried too now because local law made a formal request to me, so we don’t get to pretend like today’s spat didn’t happen. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to. You guys heard rumors thirdhand about some local idiots talking big, and you shot the only other person on the moon concerned enough to worry for you.]”

Even Aaron didn’t have anything to mumble about that.

I let the point settle, just to drive home just how much they’d screwed the pooch here.

“[Now here’s the good news,]” I continued. “[Phels testified on Marika’s behalf, and the judge was not unsympathetic to the whole mess—whoever among you helped those school teachers with educational psionics? The judge’s grandkid apparently did very well with those. So between your victim having a very big heart, and you guys otherwise being a positive force in the community, you’re going to serve twelve weeks in a minimum-security facility. Read between the lines here: you shot someone, and you’re only serving twelve weeks.]”

“[It’s a sweetheart deal,]” Marika said solemnly.

“[That’s right,]” I said. “[There’s going to be a shitton of pictures and press at your arraignment, and half the aliens in the system are going to hear about you two being marched into jail.]”

“[Isn’t that…a bad look?]” Aaron asked.

“[It would be,]” I nodded, “[if not for your friend Phels. Instead of foreign and untrustworthy humans acting like stereotypical criminal influences, your own victim speaking on your behalf is making sure you all get seen as misunderstood refugees who overreacted, are readily penitent, and eager to submit themselves to proper justice.]”

“[Look here, look here, see how the humans are willing to follow our laws and face our consequences,]” Willy pantomimed. “[If these are how bad humans act, how nice must the rest of them be?]”

“[…You’re devious,]” Marika said. Was she hurt by that? Impressed?

I couldn’t tell.

“[You shot someone,]” I emphasized. “[If the aliens start to think we can’t be reasoned with—even for a minute—then we’re all screwed.]”

·····

An hour later, the Jack had landed next to the A-ships on Aaron’s lot—the Clipper and the Leaking Tangerine, I’d learned — and we were ready to smooth out the last of the feathers. There was a little bit of a parade when we officially handed Marika and Aaron over. Peudra insisted it was the right image. ‘We could fight this if we wanted to, so look at how nice we’re being’. Nine Adepts, I wasn’t sure how many formally trained void soldiers, and half the Flotilla somewhere overhead? Yeah, we would put up one hell of a fight.

I frowned as my fellow abductees were marched toward the courthouse, looking toward Peudra.

I realized.

they replied serenely.

I shot toward the two prisoners.

Aaron replied, clearly confused at the question.

Marika also replied

I said.

Aaron assured me.

Marika managed to chuckle.

It would have to be good enough.

“Alright, you coming back to the Jack after this?” I asked Peudra.

“I will be speaking to the colony governor first,” she said. “Their end of our arrangement is still outstanding.

I eyed the Vorak doubtfully.

“They will deliver,” they promised. “I will ensure it.”

“I sure hope so,” I said wryly. “Do you have any idea how nervous half the crew is?”

“…On the Jack?”

“On the Siegfried,” I corrected. “We’ve got more than forty personnel on loan from the Coalition. You think they want to hang out in this system any longer than we have to?”

“Only extraplanetary militaries—or stronger—are capable of interfering with your Flotilla,” Peudra said. “And we have all taken great lengths to prove our trustworthiness. As long as the Flotilla’s Coalition-affiliated contingent refrains from any military action or espionage…”

“They aren’t,” I repeated.

“Then it’s simply a matter of holding the course,” Peudra said.

“So I loop back,” I said. “Are the local authorities actually going to share?”

“You’ll be the first person to know,” she said. “In the meantime, please do your best to keep everyone calm. Even if the system’s militaries are ‘playing nice’…best not to forget which system this is, yes?.”

“Yeah…we’re in no danger of forgetting that,” I grumbled.

I glanced up at the sky, picking out one of the particularly bright points in the sky.

We were standing on the second largest moon of Hashtin, the largest planet in the Margatha system. Margatha’s shorthand code was V1.

That little bright point in the sky was Kraknor. The Vorak homeworld.

And if everything proceeded according to expectations…some of us would be walking on that homeworld in no time at all.