Waterstrider

Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS

After several minutes worth of negotiations, me and the Leader of the Heirs of Ottrien had come to a preliminary agreement. Still, I did not find myself entirely convinced about his intentions. There simply was not sufficient basis for trust between the two of us. Not under the present circumstances.

It was a problem which faced both ways, restricting our cooperation. But there was no overcoming it of course, I thought. We simply had conflicting interests.

“By the way,” he told me, as our discussions finally reached their conclusion. “I’ll give you some advice. You should leave the area. What they’re giving you is not worth the cost.”

With that, his holographic image faded, leaving me standing alone in the cramped office. I sighed, draping a hand through my hair and ensuring it was still properly tied.

“We can consider accepting his offer later. For now, how has the situation developed?” I asked.

“The Reth are handling the situation at our headquarters. The clan is slowly pushing past the defenders, and the mercenaries are about to reach the nearby entrance,” said Rachel. “Should be here in less than five minutes.” The tone she was reporting in was unusually dry for her, I thought. She seemed slightly stressed for some reason.

“And Jihan?” I asked.

“He’s met with some further resistance, but has so far been able to handle it.”

I nodded approvingly. Acquiring the services of Jihan and his men was one of the greatest investments I had made since entering Tseludia.

“I suppose I’ll have to meet with the mercenaries myself.”

I left the office, moving into the hallway, and immediately turning to make my way towards this level’s entrance.

While the Heirs’ administrative headquarters was a multi-level building, it was not so massive as to take up the width of an entire stack. Instead, it took up a large corner, and thus had two proper entrances per level, and took up a total of 3 levels altogether.

When I arrived, Orion was waiting by the entrance.

“Did any of the soldiers find anything?” I asked.

Orion shook his head.

“There don’t seem to be any Celans around here, except for the ones defending against the mercenaries outside. It’s really making me wonder what they even intend to defend, at this point.”

I found myself thinking something similar. I would have expected more internal defenses. Why was Jihan encountering resistance, but we had not found any? The Celan Leader’s ominous final words resounded in my head. He had warned me, but I couldn’t be sure whether he simply wished to make the task of the defenders easier, or whether he was actually trying to offer me a favor. Perhaps it was neither, I thought. It could simply be that he wished to distract me and weaken my resolve on this matter.

“We’ll wait for the mercenaries to enter. We might be able to send them into the ambushes instead of ourselves.”

Orion nodded, and we simply waited, watching the entrance portal in silence.

It took a couple minutes for the distant sounds of combat to fade. From the sound alone I could tell that it was a diverse group. There were sounds of blades impacting armor, and firearms of different types. I even heard the distinct sound of an energy weapon being used, which to me was quite a surprise.

“I wouldn’t have expected mercenaries to have the funds for one of those,” noted Rachel, her voice sounding impressed. Her words were loud enough that both I and Orion could hear.

“What are they using?” he asked, apparently curious.

“It’s an Indichian plasma catapult. This model comes from an Osine client race. They’re from quite far away, so you don’t see their tech in the Pantheonic Territory very often. Very expensive, too. Beyond the means of a normal mercenary.”

“Not bad,” he said.

I grunted. I had little interest in alien weaponry, as it would never be as good as my own sword. I suspected that Orion’s own interest was purely academic, for similar reasons. Only the weakest Seiyal would use such alien weaponry, in my estimation. A martial artist’s advantages lay in martial arts.

Before long, the entrance opened, revealing a number of Celan corpses lying on the ground, right past the entry hatch. Stepping over the corpses were a group that was clearly mercenary in nature. If it wasn’t for the guns and ammunition, I would still have found it easy to guess their profession simply based upon the eclectic nature of its members. The force was mostly Staiven and Seiyal, but had a number of Tovus and Telaretians as well.

The apparent leader of the mercenary group seemed to be a Staiven woman. She was bald, her yellowed skin even flakier than most of her people, and a large, inch-wide flake fell off the side of her head as I watched. She was wearing a set of high-end body armor, one which I knew by experience would restrain the blades of weaker martial practitioners. Her eyes were a deep, sanguine red. As she entered, her attention turned to myself and Jihan, clearly unsurprised by our presence. As expected of a Staiven’s senses.

One of her aides, a very muscular Telaretian woman, leaned in to whisper into her ear, presumably informing her of what the color of my robes implied. I noticed a slight change in her demeanor as she clearly started to regard me with greater interest. The two spoke quietly for a moment, before the Staiven returned her attention to me and spoke.

“Sect Leader Riverfiend,” she said, her words in a thickly accented seiyin. “I have heard much about you.”

Hearing this, I took a step forward.

“Might I know to whom I speak?” I asked.

“I am Eitian, second commander of the Black Bullet PMC. This,” she said, motioning towards the Telaretian, “is Jhrask, my second. The Hadal Clan informed us of your presence in this engagement.”

I nodded respectfully to her in acknowledgement, but made no other move. To do so risked lowering my image as a powerful figure and the sect’s leader. Eitian did not seem surprised by this. Between her knowledge of seiyin and her force’s relationship with the Hadal Clan, I suspected she had built up a solid understanding of Seiyal culture over the years.

Wishing to skip further pleasantries, I decided to inform them of the situation.

“This area of the interior seems to be empty of Celans, but some of my forces have encountered resistance in other parts of the building. We don’t know what the distribution is or whether there’s anything they are guarding in particular. We suspect they just intend to cause as much damage as possible to our forces.”

Eitian nodded at this, and turned to quietly discuss something with Jhrask again. It almost made me feel like something was wrong, but perhaps the two were simply the sort who always liked to come to a consensus on a matter before acting.

According to Wei Hadal, they had discussed simply toppling the building, but due to the fact that the building crossed several floors, this was far too risky an endeavor. It risked toppling the entire stack, and not even the Hadal Clan wished to deal with the consequences of such an action.

With that option off the table, they would have to settle for rendering the place unusable, and defacing its exterior. I had not been informed about the clan’s specific plans for this matter, but I suspected they still involved explosions in some manner.

In war, few were the problems that could not be solved using explosives, in my opinion.

Regardless, we had been told to clear the building if we entered first, and that was still my intention, provided matters did not get out of hand.

There was a moment of quiet as they spoke, their words just quiet enough that I couldn’t hear. I almost wished that I had the abilities of a genesis practitioner, and could enhance my senses to listen in, but I knew Rachel would be listening in, and I trusted her to tell me if anything particularly important was said between the two.

“I feel we can both better achieve our aims if we take different paths through the building,” I said, once their discussion concluded.

Eitian frowned, seeming to be considering the matter.

“Do you have a map of the building’s layout?” asked Jhrask, who surprised me with even greater fluency than her superior.

“We acquired a blueprint and were inspecting that, but it seems the structure is different from what they claimed to the government.”

“I see,” she replied. “Which direction are you intending to take?”

From the entrance, the hall split into two directions. One led onward, to a direction Orion’s men had only light scouted, while the other led back to the territory we had already been through. I pointed in that direction. I did not mind the idea of returning to an area we had already passed, and going to assist Jihan and his group, and leaving the rest of the actual exploration to the mercenaries. It was better for my interests for others to take the risks.

“We will go that way, and you go the other,” I suggested.

I glanced back at them, awaiting a response. The two quickly conferred, and then Eitian gave me a sharp nod.

“This is acceptable,” she said.

I returned the nod, and gave Orion a look. He quickly caught on, and sent some messages to finish recalling his force. I then turned to glance back down the path we had come, mentally doing the math for how long it would take to reach Jihan’s general position. That moment of distraction was enough.

A mere instant after I had turned my back, the mercenaries made their move. Had I not been half-expecting such a turn of events, I would have been hit by the arcing beam of Jhrask’s plasma catapult. Instead, it passed inches from me, slightly singing the outer layer of my robe. I smiled as I turned to the Black Bullet troops, my smile growing and becoming more real.

“Was this what you were discussing so much? I’m curious,” I said. “Did the clan tell you to do this, or do you have another employer? I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

The rest of the mercenaries quickly redrew their weapons, while myself and Jihan drew our own. I’ve never fought such a diverse force, I thought. This could be interesting.

The smile on my face refused to fade.

Indeice: [Tall and slender creatures with six arms and five dark eyes, the Indichians are one of the many client races of the Osine. Despite their advanced technology, their reproductive capability is extremely limited, thus they never ran into the restrictions imposed by their Osine masters. A very insular race, they also have seemingly little interest in exploring the universe, merely focused on living comfortable lives in their own home system. Aside from trade with starfaring races within Osine territory such as the Telaretians, the Indichians interact extremely little with the outside world, and aliens are not even allowed to reside within their territory on a permanent basis.]