Age of Space

Ronin had tried for over half an hour before he finally managed to get some sleep. The cacophony outside had gotten so bad, he’d feared the poisonous animals would break down the wall. Somehow, in spite of the bombarding noise, he’d been so tired that, even a horde of ruddles couldn’t keep him awake. He checked his implant. He’d slept for over 3 hours and there were still ruddles running outside the building. What remained of the horde now, was, well, not a horde. Just a bunch of ruddles frolicking about. He could deal with that.

Fortunately, his shelter survived.

If the wall broke down while I was sleeping and thousands of those veiny, poisonous rodents swarmed me… Ronin inwardly shuddered.

He had to leave sooner or later, his injuries, which still had not healed despite his alien improved regeneration, was proof of that.

Still, last time, when he did the stances from the gate he'd opened in his mind palace, his body had healed much faster. Perhaps he could use that? He began organizing everything he knew of the alien legacy:

I've already opened one gate which gave me the stances and the Near-Death-Sight. Let's see how many gates there are, Ronin thought as he closed his eyes and began walking around inside his mindscape.

As he began counting, he also started organizing the gates into various sizes. None of them looked the same, but some of them were gigantic compared to the others. He'd only managed to open the smallest gate, so he reasoned that those bigger gates, probably had more knowledge. He opened his eyes, accessed his implant and created a table:

Name Ronin Maximus

Paradigm Potentia Panorama

Gates Great gates (0/9), Major gates (0/2187), Minor gates (1/17487)

Body techniques Stances: Kalvrakian Embrace vol.1 (3.5/108)

Combat techniques Near-Death-Sight (??/??), enhanced instincts

Ronin had no clue on how much progress he'd made, nor could make with the Near-Death-Sight technique. He also had no clue how his improved combat instincts really worked. Could they even be trained?

The stances however, had a very clear progression path. A few days ago, after completing the 3'rd stance, even the burn wound, piercing several centimeters into his stomach had mostly healed. He was halfway done with the 4th stance, if he completed it now, perhaps...

Ronin lowered his legs into a deep stance, harmonized his breathing, closed his eyes and imagined the energy flowing through him. Halfway through the first stance, deep pain flamed up from his left shoulder almost breaking his concentration. By the time he started on the second stance, his entire body hurt, he was nauseous, dizzy and every single injury he had, screamed. His concentration broke.

I can't do it, he sighed, plumping down to the floor. He was too injured.

He shelved the idea of resting more, then trying again.

They’re still out there, hunting… hunting me. I can’t assume they didn’t follow me into this place. Getting to the planetary guard station should take first priority. He could think of healing his injuries later. Still dizzy he rose to his feet and began moving towards the door.

Opening the door, he shook himself, kicked a ruddle out of the way, dodged a surprise tongue lash from yet another ruddle, then jumped onto a not-so-rusty steel beam. He began moving towards the silo complex in the distance. Past it, if he could find his way back into the sewers again, he’d be right under the guard station.

Garnic furrowed his eyebrows as he looked over the display. 62 members had ended up either dying or getting injured to the point of having to remain behind. The horde had taken them by surprise and the result… Devastating. The pale skinned rodents had not only poisoned the majority of his team, but the wide range of diseases and parasites they carried would probably leave the survivors with months of medical attention after this was done.

One of the many orange and red dots now denoting his teams began blinking, he switched on comms.

[This is team 9, Over.]

[Copy that, Go ahead.] Garnic responded.

[We’ve got eyes on the target.]

Garnic was stunned. Had they finally gotten a break for once? He had to make sure.

[What's its heading? Can you transmit over a spectral image?]

He waited the agonizingly long seconds for the image capture and the following transfer to happen before a ping finally signaled a successful delivery. And there it was, in all its glory. The target.

[He’s heading towards what looks like a silo complex, do you want our team to intercept?]

[Negative.] Garnic wanted to make sure this time. He broadcast the next message to everyone:

[All teams form up. We will all be intercepting the target this time.]

They were over 40 people. They knew his location, where he was headed, and they were faster. There would be no more miraculous escapes this time. This day Ronin would die!

As Ronin was making his way towards the silo complex, his suit began beeping. No... it was not low on energy. Instead of the softer quieter type of alarm, hard, loud, continuous beeps blasted his ears.

A radiation warning!? Startled, Ronin immediately pulled up his suit's radiation menu.

The academy suit was designed for lab work and radiation detection was naturally one of its primary functions. There were horror stories aplenty of instances where people got sick, died early or mutated, unaware they were being irradiated daily every time they went to work.

Eizenshaft radiation… This is the radiation Roneus Ravent spoke of just earlier today.

There was no point in a memory palace technique for this scenario. Ronin knew exactly what this radiation did. Rated as one of the more dangerous types, this exogeneous energy was virtually unstoppable, passed through almost everything and acted swiftly. In contrast to most normal forms of radiation however, no textbook explained where this energy came from. The textbooks were, however, all very clear on one thing. If you got exposed to it, leave immediately, and if you can't, inform your superior officer.

Mutation…

This energy was swift acting and mutated the body in all kinds of ways. Hair loss commonly happened first. Beyond that, the textbooks got oddly vague on the specifics. Hair loss could happen from hours to minutes. It all depended on the strength of the radiation.

Ronin looked at the values rising as he closed in on the silo complex… At this rate he wouldn’t even make it across before his hair was gone and that was only the beginning of what could happen.

A detour it is then, he thought as he scanned his surroundings. As he began scouting ahead, he got an eerie feeling of being watched.

Did they find me? Wait, if they already know where I am and haven't attacked yet... could it be that they're planning an ambush? If so... Perhaps if he moved close enough to the silo complex, his pursuers would use it as an ambush site. It did look like a good place for such a thing after all. Lots of cover, tall structures with a wide field of vision. Also, radiation detection was a specialized addon designed for lab suits. What were the chances they had something like that?

This might actually work.

He altered his path. He had to be very precise on how he did this....

Garnic and his teams were in position. Although the kid, for some inexplicable reason, suddenly decided to move around the silo complex, he was still more than close enough for their sniper rifles. All they had to do now was wait for him to enter their kill zone and this miserable job would end. There would be no mistake nor coincidence saving his life this time. They had tried to station some men directly in front of him after he changed directions, but despite the injuries, the boy moved fast. They had a team shadowing him from behind as well, just in case.

Unbeknown to Garnic and anyone else in his crew, as he tilted his head to the side for a more comfortable position, an inconspicuous strand of hair silently detached, then quietly fell off his left eyebrow.

Ronin had spotted his would-be attackers early, but what could he do? He was already moving as fast as he could. He could seek cover and hunker down, but he would only end up surrounded. These men were not like the CLM goons he’d encountered on his first day at school. They had more than enough sensory equipment to pinpoint his location despite the pitch-black darkness.

Fortunately, the hunters had taken the bait. The silo complex. He didn’t know how long it would take for them to be affected, but there was ALOT of radiation there. Just taking a few steps closer had caused his suits alarm to go haywire. A single step had doubled the radiation levels to well above safety limits hundreds of meters away from the complex. He could only imagine how high the values were at its core.

5 men were stalking him from behind, ahead many more lay in wait. He did have a path through though. After careful scouting, he'd chosen a long trench between two rails. Not deep enough to be noticed, but deep enough to shield him. Even further ahead, rusted remnants of haphazardly abandoned vehicles covered the landscape. It was a viable path, too close to the source of the Eizenshaft radiation, but he wanted his hunters deep inside the heart of mutation.

As he got closer and closer to the trench, the agonizing act of pretending not to be smack dab in the middle of several sniper scopes, became harder and harder. When would they begin the ambush? Was it after his next step, or 8 steps after that? Maybe they knew of the trench and that he was aiming for it. Was him reaching the trench, never an option to begin with?

Step after step, he did his best to walk like someone unaware of the ambush, but by the time the furrow was but 10 meters away, the nerves got to him. He couldn’t take it anymore. He found a solid groove in the ground, pretended to fall, crouched his legs, then, just as his nose was about to touch the ground, he activated his jetpack and kicked off with everything he had!

At the edge of his vision, brilliant red lines of light flashed. New pain compounded upon his old, he’d been hit, and it was more than once. Crashing back down onto the ground, he gasped for breath. He was in the trench now... and he was alive. Trying to ignore the new injuries, he crawled ahead.

"Did we get him!?" He heard one man shout.

"I nicked him! I nicked him good!" A gruff voice broke out in excitement.

Amidst the laser fire, a commanding voice broke through the noise. "Team 21 and 10 with me! He jumped into a channel of some kind. Come on boys, lets confirm the kill!" It was the man who'd told him about his bounty. The man from the sewers. The Whistler.

As Ronin continued crawling, burning rays broke through the cover, both behind and in front. As he climbed around the sludge the onslaught left behind, he noticed how the flashes of light grew sparser.

Are they letting up for the Whistler to come and confirm the kill?

Then he heard it. Among the shouts coming from the silo complex, there was now something else as well. Discordant screams of sheer panic began intermixing with the noise. The atmosphere had changed.

As he exited the trench, he quickly pushed ahead in between the cover of two rusted vehicles. Surprisingly, the visual spectacle had ended. They'd stopped shooting but there was now something else mixed in with the screams and shouts coming from the complex.

ROAR!

Behind him, he could see his 5 pursuers entering the trench, about to follow him, but his improved sight could see that something had changed. Their eyes were now filled with confusion and fear, no longer the eyes of hunters. Taking swift glances over the embankment, they slowed down, stopped, turned, then began running away.

Ronin snuck another glance towards the silo complex as well. What he saw horrified him. His ambushers were in complete chaos. He noticed one man with an inhumanly large mouth, bite through the leg off another. One man looked like an extreme version of a hunchback and had claws growing out, replacing his fingers. Another man had mutated to the point that he must have been half his original height. His head moved around so fast, he seemed to be moving through time differently. As the twitching head locked onto a new target, the short mutants entire body began shaking with excitement as with inhuman speed, he ran, attacking another team member with abandon. At this point, the only commonality shared by his ambushers were their lack of hair.

It had all happened so fast. Before he jumped into the trench everything seemed normal.

Now I understand why the textbooks only said you should inform your superior officer if you can't leave the radiation zone... It's so they can remove the threat before you mutate. Ronin shuddered at the realization.

No use thinking about it now, he had to get out of here. The warning signal still ringing from his suit promised an ominous fate should he linger. He was still being affected by the same thing that turned those men into monsters.

“...”

Ronin kept moving towards where he’d estimated the planetary guard station would be. He'd found an intact skyscraper and climbed up the stairs.

How long has it been since the ambush? 30 minutes? An hour?

Regardless of how much time had passed, he was out of the radiation zone. He could still hear roars and shrieks behind him, meaning whatever happened back there, was still very much... well, happening. He was close now. The guard station was just above. All he really needed now was an access point, a weak point, whatever… He needed to get back up into the sewers which meant another door he could pry open somehow.

Spotting an irregularity about 40 meters up, he began moving. The faster he got out of here, the better. His hunters had seemed completely unaware of what was happening to them, right up until they suddenly mutated. The radiation scanner showed he was safe, but this whole section of the city had been closed off for a reason and Ronin was pretty sure that this radiation had something to do with it.

He brought his left hand up and began ruffling his hair, he noticed hair falling off, but it wasn't much. The normal amount then? Or was it a little bit more than normal?

I'll go crazy if I keep thinking about this. Get to the guard station first

With the help of his jetpack Ronin reached the irregularity. Taking a closer look, he gently stroked his fingers across the edges of the slightly different material. This confirmed it, he could feel the weld.

“Jackpot!” He couldn't help but exclaim in excitement. Immediately regretting it as the pain from his injuries flared up.

"..."

A lot of hard work, troubleshooting and erratic shouts of profanities later, he was out. Finally.

Still, there were the 5 men who'd shadowed him before. They'd been exposed to the same concentration of radiation as him and though they’d ran when their comrades began to mutate, that did not mean they wouldn't follow him. There was also the whistler, he, along with two teams had left the complex before the mutation truly took hold.

Ronin looked himself over. It was bad, one laser had barely grazed him, but the right side of his left thigh was toast. Psyching himself up, he stuck a finger into the wound, gritting his teeth as he felt how deep he'd been burned. Not good, the wound reached almost halfway through to the other side.

The thought of resting inside the disease infested sewerage was struck from his mind immediately.

Screw it. He sent Nagata a message, informing him of his situation, then began looking for an exit.

“...”

Having unintentionally stumbled around like a drug ridden hermadvorf, he’d eventually found a pothole, climbed out, and continued on towards the guard station. Receiving looks of weariness and caution along the way, he could only imagine how bad he looked as he stumbled along. This had gone beyond just looking injured. People actively avoided him.

Finally reaching the station, he reached out to the nearest officer.

“Uaghhhrrr….”

That did not come out like he planned. The government worker looked over at him with skepticism, likely wondering what kind of presence had dragged its way over this time.

"There's no food here, begone." The man shouted with disgust.

Focusing, Ronin tried again:

“Whualp…COUGH! Help…” He managed to get out.

To make it clear he was not some lost, bewildered drug fiend, Ronin accessed his implant, pinged the man and added an information package with his details as well as a short explanation of the attack on his apartment.

As the officer was about to try to shoo him away again, his face lit up in surprise as he looked over the information package.

“You… were involved with the attack on district 91?”

“Attacked…Cough!... I was attacked yes” Ronin managed to say back.

The officer froze, likely communicating with his superiors, nodded, then gestured for Ronin to follow him in.

Entering the station, there was a strange atmosphere in the room. Too focused on his own injuries and the possible mutations he might have gotten from the Eizenshaft radiation, Ronin didn’t notice.

Following the officer, he eventually entered a cramped room. Seeing the bolted down chair and handcuffs on the table, alarm finally began rising within him.

“Sit, you will be questioned later.” The officer ordered.

“Sir, I was attacked, my home was blown up, I'm injured.” Ronin restated more clearly this time.

The officers face became strict as his tone turned commanding. “Are you resisting arrest?”

Looking quickly over his shoulder, Ronin noticed two more officers behind him. They began reaching for their weapons.

“No no no, I just don’t see why I’m being treated like this when I am the victim?” He said as he quickly sat down. Still in shock, he watched as the officer cuffed him to the table. Not answering, the officers simply left the room, leaving Ronin alone.

It took hours, not a soul came to visit, nobody called, in fact, all forms of transmission had been blocked. Some kind of dampener field or something, he hadn’t seen or felt anyone tampering with his implant, so it wasn’t that. Maybe the cuffs contained some kind of interference technology?

As his thoughts kept wandering, the door finally opened. A professional looking man came in.

"Ronin, where were you today?" the man asked.

This was all wrong…

"I came to seek protection, I was attacked! You can’t do this!" he answered. This was not how it was supposed to go at all!

"Ronin… over 100 people are dead... let me remind you of your rights. You don’t have any, no right to legal counsel, no right to remain silent, we can lock you up for as long as we want. It shouldn’t be THAT surprising right? Considering what you did."

"I didn’t do it! Thats why I came here, I'm running from the ones who did!" Ronin began, trying to defend himself.

"And where are these people chasing you now?" the man asked him, leaning forward.

"I escaped into the sewerage but got surrounded. I had to break through an old door, welded shut, into a dark abandoned part of the city." Ronin knew the moment he said it. There was no way they’d believe that.

"So… Let me get this straight. You were not only hunted by multiple people, but you also discovered an ancient and forgotten city!?" The man paused, his eyes piercing into Ronin's.

"This is your evidence of not having done it? We already know you did it, not only did we discover that the explosion was triggered from your apartment, but we have also more than enough eyewitness testimony to put you away for life. The only thing I want to know is why? That's the only reason you are still here right now and not in a cage."

There was no way Ronin would admit to something he didn’t do. Should he break out? No. He might be strong and know how to fight now, but he’d learned a valuable lesson today. A big fist was not enough in this day and age.

Besides, he did have an alibi! The evidence for him not having done it was the fact that when his hunters placed the explosives, he’d been at the academy.

“Listen, the moment I arrived from the Ironglades Space-Force Academy, the explosives went off! They must have installed them after I went to class.” Ronin defended himself.

“We have multiple eyewitnesses claiming otherwise. I will let you in on a secret. I’ve been in this line of work for a long time, and I know a guilty person when I see them. Do you dislike the government? Many do. It’s understandable if you wanted to make a political statement. This is your chance, your moment; you can talk now. We’re all listening.”

The back-and-forth game continued. Ronin was told to say why he did it, the interrogator tried playing to his sense of justice, revenge, his empathy. He played the understanding and concerned friend, he even screamed at him once while showing images of the victims. Ronin stuck to his story.

At some point, the man left the room, new people came in and he had to do it all over again. The new duo even brought up his parents:

“Ronin, what would your parents think? Xena and Holder must be rolling in their graves at this point. Was this the son they brought up? Every time you deny what you did, you besmirch their name even more. End this before it's all ruined.”

Ronin noticed himself tearing up. The combination of it all was just too much.

I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it…I didn’t… Did I? He just wanted it to end.

Thankfully, they must have gotten tired, because the next thing he knew, he had a black bag over his head, was escorted out of the room and thrown inside a ship going who knows where.

In an office that was not quite an office, not a speck of dust could be seen, any and all natural dust particle that should have been in the air, was absent, sucked into a state-of-the-art ventilation system. This could have been a clean-lab, yet it was not. Precisely stacked and organized discs packed with perfectly ordered data lined each of the two painfully calibrated shelves. It was all symmetrical of course. The ideal spot in the room was occupied by an expensive looking wooden desk. The natural light hit the desk in just the right way, so that 2 hours a day, the projections displayed on it, looked almost lifelike. Roneus Ravent could have gained 15 more minutes of optimal light conditions, but he liked how the light partially blinded his visitors.

When students and coworkers entered his office, they inevitably left a mess. He didn't blame them, they didn’t know any better, but it did leave him with an untidy chaos he'd inevitably have to clean up again. He'd tried talking some sense into them years ago. It didn't work of course. Now, they had to deal with light blinding them every time they opened the door. He had fewer visitors now, only about 20% less, but it's not like he could install a gun turret in his office. He worked with what he had.

As a cleaning bot swept across the room, he did another analysis on the video. He’d watched it several times now. He had to be sure. If this kid had really solved the fusion engine repair exercise the way he claimed, this had to be reported to the higher ups.

Brute forcing the problem by analyzing and remembering every single dimension of every single component, then comparing them to the blueprint was such an outrageous way to solve the problem, he didn’t believe it at all at first. Now, having watched the footage, as well as having done several analyses on it, he honestly still couldn’t believe it.

It was simply too outrageous! Still… He looked over the latest analysis:

[Analysis complete.]

[Lie detection scan of statement: “I analyzed all the components and compared them to the blueprint values sir.” = TRUE]

Roneus Ravent scratched the back of his head.

He’d have to remember the parameters of over 10000 components

He’d already checked if the kid had some sort of implant that would allow him to do something like this. None of the scans showed even a hint of it.

“When you eliminate every single reasonable explanation, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” He mumbled.

This kid had done it all by himself. What an incredible mind he’d need to have to be able to do something like that. Compiling the data into an orderly report, he sent it to the board of education. It was up to them to deal with this now. ISFA may just have found themselves another monstrous genius.