Dan pulled up his mental walls to ward off the effects of Willot’s mana. Despite his efforts, Dan had to admit to himself that he was more than a little shaken. Whether it was the mana or the elf demanding his own death, he was more than a little off of his game. Luckily, Jennifer was mostly silent as they followed their guide to the station’s bridge. As much as he usually appreciated her banter, it just didn’t feel like the time.
“What’s your name, anyway?” Dan asked their guide to break the silence.
“Amelia.” The woman flinched slightly at the sound of Dan’s voice. They walked another ten or so feet in silence before she continued speaking. “Is it true? Can you fix our control runes?”
“Unless they’re terribly different from the ones used by the Tellask soldiers on Earth, yes,” Dan tried to reassure her. “I will still need sufficient materials, but so long as you have some properly-stored monster essence and gold dust, it should be enough.”
“What are you going to do with us?” She asked, her voice hushed and her eyes on the floor. “You aren’t an elf. I’ve never worked for a human before. I don’t even know how that would work.”
Amelia shook her head, clearly trying to center herself. “I mean, the brothers weren’t bad as far as elves went. It might seem strange to you, but a lot of us aren’t going to be happy to see them go. For many, pleasant but harsh employers are better than the unknown.”
“For the humans here?” Dan shrugged. “I’ll probably free you and then let you do whatever you want. I’ll offer most or all of you jobs. The only question is what I’ll use to pay you. That said, if you want to turn the jobs down, that’s your right. I’ve had enough of employment contracts you can’t refuse for one lifetime.
“Right now,” he continued, “my goal is to set myself up as an independent power. Pretty much everyone on Earth is spending all of their time and effort on petty power struggles. We’re literally getting invaded by aliens, and it’s all one big pissing match to them.
“Speaking of which… Where exactly is ‘here?’ I was able to tell that I was teleporting to a site in space, but not much more than that when we left the last ship. The ship’s owners were a bit upset at our presence.” He grinned at the woman, trying and failing to set her at ease. “We were in a bit of a hurry.”
“This is a standard resupply and teleport hub,” Amelia motioned to the vessel around them. “It only has one mana forge, no drive, and minimal weaponry. Really, all of the space is devoted to storage, farming, and scrying devices. We were dropped off in a low but stable orbit by a void ship, and I guess this is where we’ll stay until another one swings by to pick us up. In the meantime, we were supposed to help coordinate reinforcements and supply with the invasion dirtside.”
“Farming?” Dan raised an eyebrow. The station was metal, a series of narrow passageways crafted in an almost indecipherable tangle. He hadn’t even seen a proper wood surface in his entire time on board.
“Where do you think the air comes from?” She cracked the barest of a smile, still obviously nervous. “Wind mages can help but a posting like this doesn’t rate one full time. Half the time, a station like this is left to monitor a system for decades at a time. Most of the time, we’re just there to be a stopover for those using the teleportation network. We have to be self-sufficient. No one wants to waste a space mage on sending us periodic shipments of food and water.”
“You said this station does observation?” Jennifer interjected, startling Dan slightly. She’d been so quiet that he’d almost forgotten that Jennifer was there.
“Sure.” Amelia nodded agreeably. “We spend a lot of our time scrying and putting together reports about what’s happening on the planet’s surface. We have entire cabinets filled with meticulous reports on your world’s leaders and defensive capabilities. Sometimes the elves even read them.”
“What do you have on us?” Dan asked curiously.
Amelia hesitated a moment. “A fair amount. No one on your planet bothers to put up wards against scrying, so we’ve been able to see pretty much everything. Of course, there are so many of you that actually finding anything of importance is incredibly hard. We have the locations of a couple spots where important people come to eat meals and talk about the war. Those have yielded the most intelligence to date.”
“You’re spying on fancy restaurants?” Dan asked incredulously.
“Sometimes. Mostly, we end up watching the entertainment illusions that your people project into the squares on their walls,” Amelia responded, blushing slightly with embarrassment. “Sometimes, someone talks about the war, and we put that in our reports. The rest of the time, we just watch your programs. Most of the crew is very invested in your planet’s unscripted ‘reality’ illusions.”
Dan scowled. “Wait, are you saying that most of the crew just sits around up here farming and watching reality television?”
“Is…” Amelia fidgeted nervously. “Is that a problem? We just weren’t given much direction. The commanders didn’t even tell us where to look, and honestly, watching the news breaks in the entertainment programs taught us a lot more than randomly looking around the countryside. A trashy housewife ranting about tax rates is still more informative than looking at a field full of cows for the hundredth time. I’ve seen a lot of cows while trying to spy on the war effort,” Amelia muttered, refusing to meet Dan’s eyes.
“Can you bring us to the scrying station, Amelia?” The other woman calmed noticeably as Jennifer put a hand on her shoulder. “We can probably help you find a news channel or something. It will be good for us to catch up on what we missed while we were in the jungle.”
Dan shrugged and followed helplessly. Jennifer’s idea was a good one, but he still didn’t get why Amelia constantly acted nervous around him. He really would have to get better at dealing with people. There needed to be some middle ground between being imposing and an absolute pushover. Whatever it was, it could wait until after he bathed.
“Amelia?” Dan winced slightly as his voice made her jump a little yet again. “I know for a fact that I smell rancid. I was wondering if you could direct me to a bath of some sort. I’m sure you and Jennifer can handle finding a news channel on your own while I finish cleaning up.”
The two women kept chatting as they quickly led him to a bathroom, where they promptly abandoned him. Dan didn’t mind overly much. After the last couple weeks of constant tension, he needed some time to decompress.
The bath chamber itself wasn’t impressive. It had a rack to hang his clothes on next to a pile of towels, a tub, and a bucket. The tub itself was small, barely big enough for Dan to fit in. He cranked the hot water spigot, pleasantly surprised to see steam rising from the water as it poured into the tub. After a second of thought, he turned the valve on the cold water pipe as well. Even if he had thermal resistance from his runes, that was no real reason to test it unnecessarily.
Dan took a pause from watching both of the faucets pour water into the tub to undress himself. With the help of the System, he had already healed the mess of scratches and abrasions that should have marred his skin. Still, it felt good to get out of the omnipresent chainmail. Even with constant healing, chafing had been a painful and recurring problem.
He sank into the water for a minute and closed his eyes. The heat of the water immediately made him drowsy as it began to work its way into his tense muscles. He really needed to book himself a vacation of some sort. His life had been in constant motion for almost two years straight, and the tension was really starting to wear on him.
With a sigh, he sat up in the tub and reached for a nearby chunk of pumice. Right now, he would have killed for some soap, but apparently it wasn’t considered essential for Tellask infantry. Dan began rubbing the rough stone across his skin. It worked after a fashion, removing days of grime, mud and filth. After almost ten minutes of scrubbing, he filled the bucket with water and poured it over his head, using his fingers to pull the dirt and knots out of his hair.
Finally, he reluctantly stepped out of the tub to dry and dress. It still didn’t feel right venturing out into the world without the artificial scent of shampoo or conditioner, but he supposed he’d just have to make do. Strapping his sword to his hip, Dan stepped out into the hallway where another guide was killing time by reading a crudely-printed paperback.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?” Dan asked after coughing to catch the man’s attention.
“Gregory, sir,” the guide responded, quickly slipping a strip of cloth into the book and turning to face Dan. “Where to? Amelia told me to take you wherever you need to go.”
“Teleportation chamber first,” Dan directed. Immediately Gregory started walking down the hallway with enough purpose that Dan assumed he knew what he was doing.
“What’s Amelia’s story, anyway?” Dan asked as he trailed the younger man. “Is she in charge here or something?”
“I think that’s you, sir,” Gregory chuckled briefly. “I suppose she’s probably who we would look to after you and your friend. Amelia’s the station administrator, in charge of maintenance, supply, discipline, and any other vitally-necessary day-to-day operations that an elf would think was beneath them.”
“Do you have any reason why she’s so nervous around me?” Dan queried as he tried his hardest to recognize some element of the passages they were walking through.
“Well, you did more or less casually kill two elves.” Gregory shrugged. “Even if the first one was caught off guard, Willot knew what was coming and couldn’t even come close to stopping you. This station isn’t really designed for military operations. If you wanted to go on a rampage, now that the elves are done, there really isn’t even anyone that could slow you down. ‘Course, it might have something to do with you threatening to murder Rebecca and needing your lady friend to talk you out of it. It’s hardly my place to speculate.”
“What about you?” Dan raised an eyebrow at Gregory’s back. “Are you afraid that I’ll go mana mad and murder you for no reason?”
“Hope not.” Gregory kept walking. “Course, if that’s what happens, there’s not much I can do to stop it. You’re kitted to the gills with enchanted gear, and you can cast spells. Even if this ship were chock full of marines, it’d probably just be a matter of time before you got us all if you really wanted to. Nah, I’m just hoping you don’t go mad. You don’t really seem like the type, but I’m not gonna worry about something I can’t change.”
“But maybe some action of yours would drive me over the edge into some sort of violent frenzy.” Dan smiled at the indolent tech. “You say that you aren’t going to worry about a situation that you can’t control, but you’re the only one with me right now. I can think of a hundred scenarios where you accidentally induce me to kill you based upon a misstatement or action.”
“That would be pretty annoying.” Gregory’s voice remained unchanged. “I mean, it would get me out of a lot of gambling debts, but killing me for no reason would be a major bummer.”
Dan shrugged, mentally admitting defeat to Gregory’s nihilism. Nothing he did was going to phase the man, so it didn’t make any sense to harass him further. They lapsed into silence for a while, but then Gregory grew bored and started narrating what went on in various areas of the station, pointing out the living, storage, and hydroponics areas. Dan appreciated the effort, but he was so completely turned around that there was almost no chance that he would remember any of the locations pointed out to him.
Finally, they arrived in the teleportation chamber. In the meantime, someone had pulled the body of the dead elf over into a corner. The two techs on duty froze as soon as they saw Gregory and Dan enter the room. They immediately became very interested in their hands, unwilling to make eye contact with either of them.
“We’re here, boss.” Gregory leaned up against the doorway to the room. “What’s next? Send us down to the planet and make us answer questions? Gonna pull some of your friends up from the planet?”
“The opposite, actually,” Dan replied as he traced his finger over the golden cable connecting the teleportation beacon to both the pad, and by proxy, the station’s mana forge. He pulled the cord from the side of the pad. “I’m a bit leery of most of the people down there at the moment. I’d prefer for us to get ourselves set up without having to worry about unwanted visitors from Earth or a Tellask staging ground. If I managed it on the fly and under fire, it’s only a matter of time before they manage it as well.”
He’d already disabled the runescripting, but it made sense to unplug the pad as well. Dan doubted that any of the humans on the satellite would betray him, and even if they wanted to, it was unlikely that they knew enough runescripting to spot what he’d done to the beacon, but if a little prudence now could save him from a dozen elves later, that seemed like a good deal to Dan.
