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The Stargazer's War - Chapter 3.16
🕑 Added 2025-06-09 16:32:01 +0000 UTCChapter 3.16: Incident Report
The airlock we wound up at was a small shuttle dock, whatever vessel it served conveniently absent. The no-at didnât fit, so Bill had to leave it secured outside as we maneuvered inside.
A medicâand, thankfully, nobody elseâwas waiting for us. âI had a call about a vac exposure? Whereâs the patient?â
I pulled off my helmet. âThatâd be me.â
She placed a hand on her hip. âIs this some kind of prank? Vac exposures donât talk. Depressurization vaporizes all the moisture in the mouth and throat. You definitely shouldnât be standing.â
âI have a strong constitution.â
She glared at me.
âHeâs a cultivator,â Bill explained.
The medic blinked, then let out a tired breath. âIâm not qualified for this. Iâm calling in aââ
âNo need,â I interrupted, hopping up onto her gurney. âI just need you to patch up my arm.â
One look at my vac suitâs tattered sleeve was enough to spur her into action, pulling apart the fabric to peer at the wound beneath. âWhy arenât you bleeding?â
âStrong constitution,â I replied, rather than explain the vastly reduced circulation my heart and blood meridians caused. I felt her hand on my wrist. Her eyes shot wide.
âShit, thereâs no pulse. I need toââ
I caught her arm. âI just need you to patch up my arm,â I restated. âIf youâd prefer I bleed all over the place, I can do that.â
Why that of all things spurred her to reach into her tool bag and get to work, I couldnât say, but soon enough the remnants of my sleeve had been cut away and sheâd started cleaning the wound. I waved away her offer of local anesthesia, my spine meridian more than sufficient to dull the pain.
It took nearly an hour to get everything cleaned, bound, and sealed. I walked away with a cooler full of stem gel and a three week treatment plan to regrow the half-inch diameter cylinder of muscle and tendon the debris had torn through. The chip itâd taken out of my bone hadnât actually left my body, so the medic had simply reattached it.
Only once she was finished and cleaning up her tools did I take the time to fully strip off the remains of my vac suit. Billâs assistance helped make up for my useless right hand.
For approximately eight seconds I envied Charlotteâs nanites, which couldâve recovered from such an injury in under a minute, but then I remembered that Charlotte wouldâve fallen unconscious within seconds of the vac suit losing power. My own iron body wasnât without its advantages.
It thankfully didnât take much convincing to get the medic to report the incident as just a debris-inflicted puncture wound, both because that was technically my only injury and because sheâd long learned the same lesson all mortals eventually do: itâs usually best to just give cultivators what they want.
Bill wasnât so easy. âIâll have to file an incident report for this, Cal. You almost died. Youâre not clear of blame because you started fucking walking instead of staying put like you shouldâve, but the departmentâs liable too. This wouldnât have gone half as sideways if theyâd given us no-ats that actually fucking worked. If thatâd been anyone but you out there Foreman Louâd be on the hook for wrongful death. Youâre due compensation, and the rest of us are owed functional gear.â
I sighed. He had a point. I really, really didnât want to let on that I could survive in a vacuum, and if Bill filed this incident report, the sect would absolutely realize something more was going on here. Itâd mean more scrutiny. Itâd make it harder to stay separate from sect politics.
Itâd also probably save lives. We griped, all of us, about how unreliable the no-ats were, how much time and effort they ate in constant repairs. If ours had worked properly, Bill couldâve come picked me up the moment the debris hit me. The ultimate truth of the matter was that incidents like this happened, and sooner or later they would happen to someone else.
I could handle a bit more sect attention if it meant a safer environment for my coworkers.
âYouâre right,â I finally said. âFile it. One of these days those no-ats are going to get somebody killed. Iâll have a chat with Harold about replacing them.â
Bill laughed. âSure, just waltz up to the head of exterior for the entire fucking station and make demands.â He paused. âYouâre serious, aren't you? Of course you are. Itâll probably work, too. Must be nice to be a cultivator.â
âMostly itâs dick-waving and people trying to kill me, but it has its perks.â
That earned me a chuckle. âIâll bet it does.â His eyes flitted down to my bandaged arm. âIâve gotta take the no-at back and write up my report. You good to get home okay?â
I nodded. âGot a shuttle dock right here. I think Iâll manage. What should I-ah⊠do with the suit?â
Bill thought for a moment. âIâll take it. Maybe theyâll want to repair it, maybe not.â He pointed at the sleeve the medic had cut off. âAny luck the sight of that should get the bean countersâ attention.â
âThanks, Bill.â I put my good hand on his shoulder. âYou saved my life out there. I wonât forget that.â
Bill huffed. âDonât see why you couldnât have used that trick to go straight to an airlock.â He stooped over to pick up my suit. âAt least some goodâll come of this.â
I nodded. âIâll make sure of it.â
He replaced his helmet and stepped back into the airlock. As the door sealed behind him, I pulled up my holopad. I had a number of calls to make, a number of people who deserved to be informed of the dayâs events. My new techniqueâI hadnât settled on a name yet, but was leaning towards Warpâprobably justified its own karaoke night.
That would come later. I had two whole weeks of medical leave ahead of me for everything from celebration to research to practice, and I intended to make full use of it. The first call I made, however, wasnât to Xavier or Micaiah or Lucy, but to Jeremy.
He got a shuttle to my position in under five minutes.
I messaged the others one by one to let them know thereâd been an accident, Iâd been injured but would be okay, and that I had some exciting news, but the rest would have to wait until we could meet aboard Lucy. I didnât trust the stationâs comms network to not be monitoring us in some way and lacked the technical knowledge to better secure it.
For similar reasons, I had to fight off the urge to input the sigil for the technique into my holopad to start running analysis on it. It seemed downright likely the shuttle Jeremyâd sent me had a camera or two hidden in it, and every bit of information I could deny the sect felt like a win to me.
That was my first action item after Iâd made it home, told Lucy the whole story, assured her I was fine six times, and eaten the bowl of soup she put in front of me. It took a handful of hours to map the complex qi flows into the software, but once I did, I finally had a point of comparison to my other technique.
The problem with the chunk of the Death sigil I remembered was that it was only a tiny fraction of an enormous whole, and I hadnât the slightest idea what that tiny fraction actually did. I knew what my Vac Suit did. I had an idea what Warp did. Itâd take some experimentation to learn the ins and outs of the technique, but in the meantime I could get the AI to start looking for shared motifs between the two techniques. If I could find commonalities, I could start decoding the purpose of individual pieces, the first step to deciphering the building blocks of dark qi techniques.
In the meantime, I had a more annoying problem.
My meridians were strained.
The damage was minor enough that I hadnât noticed until Iâd made it to Lucy and started channeling my Vac Suit to continue building up the ambient light qi within her soulspace, but it was there. Warp had taken such a monumental quantity of qi that I was certain somebody had noticed the burst of light qi itâd generated from seemingly nowhere. With any luck theyâd assume it was the full payload of a light qi technique Iâd kept hidden the same way I âhidâ my core rather than the conversion loss of a dark technique a hundred times the strength.
I hoped Bill wouldnât run his mouth too much. Warp was exactly the type of thing needed to be kept under wraps.
Only after the others arrived did I realize how true that was.
âYou did what?!â
I exhaled at Micaiahâs outburst. âI bent space. I reached across two thousand feet as if it were two.â
We sat around the dining table in Lucyâs soulspace, Ariel comfortably perched on my shoulder as I fed them chicharrones. Every once in a while, Xavierâs hand snuck its way into the bag.
âThatâs impossible,â Micaiah said outright.
âBut I did it.â
âMaybe you changed your velocity with your qi, or maybe you sped Bill up towards you. Maybe he was closer than you thought. Thereâs plenty of waysââ
âI believe him,â Xavier cut her off. âCaliban isnât prone to that kind of error, not while his brain meridian is running. Dangerously distractible, yes, but outright wrong about something? Never.â
I blinked. âI-ah⊠wouldnât go that far.â
âSpace is inviolable,â Micaiah argued. âItâs one of the handful of fundamental laws weâve definitively proven. Cal, youâve taken a long haul freighter. Do you think trade would move at that pace if an iron could bend space? Even celestial cultivators have to exit reality entirely to travel along the threads.â
âDark qi canât interact with most of the things light qi can,â I said, well used to how frustrating it was that my qiâplentiful as it wasâdidnât seem to do much. âIt stands to reason there are things it can interact with that light qi canât.â
Charlotte, whoâd thus far spent the entire conversation in stunned silence, quietly uttered what mightâve been the most horrifying series of words Iâd yet heard.
âIf you can manipulate space, you can manipulate time.â
Nobody spoke as Charlotteâs statement hung heavy in the air.
âUgh,â I groaned in an attempt to ease the tension. âIâm going to have to study relativity, arenât I?â
âLetâs not get ahead of ourselves,â Lucy said. âWe have enough to worry about without getting into what other techniques might be possible.â
âImagine the possibilities!â Xavier perked up. âIf you could Warp the space between your blade and your opponent, you could strike from range. If you can do more than shorten the distance between two points, all sorts of options open up. You could lengthen the space between your enemyâs strike and you to block attacks, or reposition their weapon to create an opening!â
Micaiah gave him a sideways glance. âOf course Cal figures out a way to break a fundamental metaphysical law and your first thought is how to use it in the dueling arena. We need to scale this up. If we can figure out a way to automate this technique as an enchantment or even just apply it to something Lucyâs size, we could implement true faster-than-light travel. Trade, government, warfare, every single societal system in the galaxy is built around the fact that interstellar travel is only feasible with a high tier cultivator involved. If thatâs no longer trueâŠâ
âWeâre still getting ahead of ourselves,â I echoed Lucyâs sentiment. âI overstressed my meridians using it once. Itâs possible with smaller distances it needs less qi, but I wonât be able to safely test that until Iâve had at least a day to recover.â I looked to Xavier. âIâll need a lot of practice before it becomes combat viable, and thatâs not going to happen if I can only use it a few times a day.â
I answered Micaiah next. âWarping myself a thousand feet took more than enough qi to push you to iron. Warping a ship lightyears might take more than exists in the galaxy. The light qi that would generate alone would be tantamount to a bomb.â
Finally, I turned to Charlotte. âThis is too important not to start working on, and it seems right now my meridians arenât up to channeling as much qi as they need to be. Thereâs an easy solution to that. Tomorrow, once Iâm recovered, Iâm going to start pushing you the rest of the way through iron. Then we can have a conversation about which mental crucibles your family has access to.â
Charlotteâs brows shot up. âCal, Iâm barely halfway to titanium. If I just show up one day ready to advance, itâll cause an uproar.â
I gestured with an upturned palm. âIâm sure you can find a way explain it. Say it was a gift from Lucy. Maybe we can even ask for an iron crucible in return, ostensibly for me but actually for Micaiah. Besides, itâs not like it would be overnight. Iâm not burning out again for this. Weâll take it slowâa few days at least.â
Charlotte balked. âIf people get the idea that Lucy is handing out qi in those quantitiesâŠâ
âI can handle a bit of pestering,â Lucy said.
âExactly,â I followed up. âIf thereâs anyone above sect politics, itâs Lucy. What are they going to do, attack her? Sheâd tear them to shreds. As long as they think she gave you qi in exchange for the materials to push me to iron, worst case they start trying to offer her deals. Hells, some of them might even be worth taking.â
Micaiah scowled. âCal, you canât just give her qi. Thereâs a reason high tier cultivators donât just force their kids up the stages. The foreign qi will kill her.â
âI thought I explained this. Charlotte canât even use my qi, but the percent or so of the spill-off from my techniques converts to light qi. In practice Iâm not directly giving her qi, Iâm generating a cloud of ambient qi for her to cultivate.â
Micaiah exhaled. âThatâs not what I meant. Thereâs no feasible way for Lucy to have given that qi to Charlotte. Your whole cover story falls apart.â
âLucyâs older than their entire sect,â I countered. âTheyâll assume she knows things they donât.â
Charlotte nodded. âIt doesnât strictly matter whether or not they believe it. Their only recourse is to confront Lucy, and we all know how thatâd turn out.â
âThey know Lucy cares about Cal,â Micaiah warned.
âAnd theyâll know the best way to get what they want is to stay on Lucyâs good side. Sheâs not exactly going to give away qi to someone whoâs antagonizing her.â
Charlotte sighed. âItâs not that simple. Thereâs a real chance someone is stupid enough to try and hold you hostage. If youâre set on tipping our hand like this, we should consider countermeasures.â
âHow are they going to hold him?â Xavier asked. âHe can teleport!â
âI can bend space,â I corrected. âI donât think that extends to traveling through solid walls.â
âLet them delay,â Charlotte suggested. âAsk for an iron crucible and imply thereâs no rush. If they think youâre still bronze when youâre secretly titanium, anyone who comes after you will be in for a nasty surprise. Thereâre only so many titanium cultivators in the sect, almost all of whom are tied to people smart enough not to antagonize a soulship. Most likely a few irons come after you, you show them whatâs what, and then we can extract concessions from the sect for the attempt.â
âI donât like it,â Lucy stepped in. âItâs a lot of risk just to accelerate your advancement by a few months.â
âWhat actually happens if they do kidnap me?â I asked. âKilling me wouldnât get them what they wanted, and all itâd take would be a holopad call for the entire sect to know they could earn Lucyâs favor by returning me safe and sound. It probably wouldnât be pleasant, but Iâd be fine, and thatâs if they succeed in the first place.â
There was a pause before Lucy finally agreed. âYouâll need to keep Shiver with you. I wonât have you looking like an easy target.â
I nodded, instantly moving to grab the blade. âRight Iâll justâŠâ I trailed off. âItâs in my cubby back at exterior maintenance.â I pulled up my holopad. âIâll have Jeremy send someone to fetch it.â
Charlotte placed both palms on the dining table and pushed herself to her feet. âSounds like we have a plan, then? Iâll go petition my father for a list of potential crucibles. Itâs not unheard of to select one far in advance to tailor oneâs meditations in the leading months.â
âI think weâve covered everything,â I said.
I walked the others back out of Lucyâs soulspace, exchanging goodbyes and smiling proudly at their repeated congratulations on my revelation.
Micaiah lingered. âAre you sure youâre okay? You had a close call today.â
âNot my first and definitely not my last. Iâll be fine.â I held up my bandaged arm. âHells, I even get two weeks paid vacation. Far as Iâm concerned this is an absolute win.â
She sprung up onto her toes to kiss me. âBe more careful. This place, itâs⊠I donât think I could handle it without you.â
âPlease, itâll take more than some space debris or a few greedy secties to take me down. Iâll die when I mouth off to a cultivator at least three stages above me and not a day sooner.â
She smirked at me. âIâll just have to keep that mouth of yours busy, wonât I?â
I stepped closer to her. âOh, is that so?â
âWith that hand of yours out of commission, somethingâs gotta take up the slack.â
I chuckled and kissed her again. âSee you tomorrow?â
âTomorrow.â
I stood on the gangway alone as I watched her cross the hangar and disappear into the lobby. I took a breath.
I spun on my heel and sped back inside. So much had happened, and the adrenaline from my near death experience and the startling implications of my newest technique yet coursed through my veins. I wanted to practice; I wanted to experiment, but I couldnât yet, not until my meridians recovered.
In the meantime, I had an AI to program.
ââ
Harold OâConner gripped the edge of his desk with white knuckles. His jaw clenched tight. Sweat beaded on his brow. His heart pounded in his chest as he reread the incident report in front of him.
The cultivator that had signed on as one of his vac welders last year had nearly died after being struck by a piece of space debris.
That alone was enough to send Harold into despair. Heâd known the fatality rate of his position before heâd taken the job. As the chief mortal in charge of maintaining the enchantments that delivered the cultivators their precious qi, the head of exterior maintenance was both easily replaced and a clear target for any sect member frustrated with their progress. Two of his last three predecessors had suffered death by angry cultivator. When heâd first arrived, itâd taken Harold two weeks to clean the blood out of the carpet.
He forced himself to exhale slowly. Hyperventilating would get him nowhere. He scanned through the incident report, searching desperately for something, anything that would get him out of this. It wasnât good.
The cultivator, Caliban, had broken safety protocol. Maybe, maybe that could prove Haroldâs saving grace.
It didnât seem likely. Understaffing had left him isolated out there, and a malfunctioning no-at had prevented swift rescue. Both issues, while products of insufficient budget, would land squarely in Haroldâs lap. It didnât matter if the man had broken protocol. Never in his life had Harold seen a cultivator take responsibility for their own actions when someone beneath them could justifiably be at fault.
With a quaking hand, Harold pulled open the drawer to the right side of his desk and withdrew a bottle of scotch and a single tumbler. He poured a glass.
He sipped as his fingers danced across his holopad, submitting orders for an upgraded non-atmosphered vehicle fleet and green lighting salaries for a dozen new hires. The sect was liable to come down on him for the overextension of his budget, but what did he care? Harold gave it even odds an angry cultivator would turn him to red paste at any moment for endangering one of their own. His best chance at survival was to put an honest effort towards addressing the issues, sect opinion be damned.
With any luck, their sect overlords would blame him for the overreach and not his replacement. At least some good would come of this whole fiasco.
Immediate tasks complete, Harold glanced over the annual reviews heâd been signing off on. He closed the document. He downed the rest of his whisky in a single gulp. He rose to his feet.
He called his husband. âHey, babe, could you run by the school and pick up the girls?â As he spoke, he tapped at his holopad, digging into his savings to purchase four tickets. âYes, everythingâs fine. Itâll be fine. Iâm taking the afternoon off, and I was just thinking⊠Sadieâs birthday is coming up, so why donât we surprise her? Weâve been meaning to check out that new amusement park that opened out in Rumford. I hear they have a zero-g restaurant the girlsâll loveâŠâ
ââ
âWhat can you tell me about the anomaly?â Sect Master Karina Sokolov of the Dragonâs Left Eye prompted her aide.
The steel cultivator didnât drop his salute as he spoke. âAt approximately eleven hundred hours circadian time, a bloom of qi roughly equivalent to the spend of a mid-iron technique appeared from seemingly nothing. The bloom occurred some thousand feet into the Right Eyeâs capture formation, well away from the station itself. At this time we have no indication of the qiâs source nor its intended purpose, only that the capture formation has taken it and delivered it to focus rooms like any ambient qi.â
Karina leaned in, her elbows on her desk. âAny hint of the technique itself? There has to be a reason theyâre testing it out in the open.â
âNo, maâam. As far as we can tell, there was no technique, just qi.â
Karina scoffed. âYou expect me to believe, what, that an iron cultivator went outside and just⊠jettisoned half their qi? Of course there was a technique.â
âYes, maâam.â
âFind out what theyâre doing,â she ordered. âThis is either a precursor to something larger, or a surprise theyâre planning for one of their newest generation. Barustraâs Cache will be here in a few years, and I wonât have our most promising sions blindsided by Right Eye trickery.â
âOf course, maâam.â
When he didnât leave, Karina raised an eyebrow. âIs there something else?â
âWell, maâam, each of our spies in the three houses have found evidence of investigation into the anomaly. Unless theyâre covering their tracks at a level weâve yet to see from them, it would seem the Right Eye know little more than we do.â
âThe soulshipâs behind it, then?â Karina let some surprise drip into her voice. âOr at least the houses would have us think the soulshipâs behind it. Just because we havenât caught them engaging in competent counterespionage doesnât mean they havenât done it. Either way, keep pressing. The only thing I like less than uncertainties are uncertainties in Right Eye space.â
âYes, maâam. Right away, maâam.â The aide finally dropped his salute as he spun on his heel and left the office. The door slid shut behind him.
Karina browsed through the report on the holoterminal built into her desk, unease finding its way through her. Qi appearing from nowhere was a harrowing portent. Either the soulship was up to something beyond them, or her rivals were preparing a nasty surprise.
Karina hated surprises.
Whatever it was, theyâd get to the bottom of it soon enough. Even if they couldnât negate whatever advantage the ancient had gifted the Right Eye in time for Barustraâs Cache, The Black Maw would have representatives at the intersect tournament. Then, at least, the Right Eye would have to play fair.
In the meantime, Karina sent a message to her secretary, requesting the Dragonâs Left Eyeâs most promising young masters convene for a special training session. Karina would lead it personally.
If the Right Eye was going to invest in their cache run, the Left would not be found wanting.
Comments
Kyan Perry
I feel sorry for Harold. Man's just trying to do his job.
Marlene Zoë Ruf
THX for the Chapter I loved the outside perspective
