CHAPTER SIX

  How do I get back through?

  Yue floated outside the barrier, staring at the thin shimmering layer stretching endlessly in both directions.

  Last time he'd used a rock caught halfway through. Simple enough when he had nothing to carry. But now he had seven mana cores in a bag and if even one of them touched the barrier directly — if it triggered whatever detection system was woven into this thing — he had no interest in finding out what responded.

  Think. Fast.

  He drifted along the edge, scanning the debris field around him. Rocks of every size floated lazily in clusters — the same ones he'd passed on the way in.

  Wait.

  He stopped.

  Last time I observed the barrier carefully I noticed something. It only reacts to the surface of whatever passes through it. Not the interior.

  He started searching specifically — moving through the debris field with purpose now, checking each rock he passed.

  If I can find one with a large enough hollow interior I can put the bag inside and pass through without the cores ever touching the barrier directly.

  Everything has limits. Everything has loopholes. Something this vast — a barrier covering an entire planet and three moons across days of travel — had to have dozens of them built in simply by virtue of its scale. Nobody could account for everything.

  He found what he was looking for after twenty minutes of searching. A rock with a natural hollow cavity just large enough.

  He carefully positioned the bag of cores inside and repeated exactly what he'd done before — slow, patient, debris speed, no sudden movements.

  The barrier registered nothing unusual.

  He was through.

  Every problem has a solution, he thought, accelerating back toward open space. You just have to be willing to look for it carefully enough.

  He flew without stopping until the familiar region of space where he'd left the ship came into view.

  Then slowed down.

  Where is it?

  He turned in a slow circle. The star formations matched. The asteroid clusters were right. But the ship —

  He searched for several minutes before finally spotting it — tilted completely upright, listing at an odd angle it definitely hadn't been at before.

  An asteroid must have nudged it while I was gone.

  He approached quickly — faster than was probably dignified — the way someone moves when they've been away from home longer than expected and just want to be back. He passed through the hull and into the cockpit.

  Nue was floating in zero gravity, dormant, exactly where he'd left him.

  Yue located the small chip mounted in the panel and focused.

  What was the startup command.

  ...Right.

  "11223344."

  A pause. Then the soft sounds of a system coming back online — quiet mechanical hums, status lights flickering on one by one, the faint vibration of something waking up after a long sleep.

  Nue's eyes opened.

  "Yo Nue. Sleep well?"

  "Sir. You're back."

  "I am. And I brought something. Can you activate gravity first though? Watching you float around like that is making it hard to take this seriously."

  Nue nodded and engaged the ship's gravity system. Everything that had been drifting settled immediately. The lights shifted from emergency low power to standard running mode — still dim but noticeably warmer.

  "Better. Now — " Yue held up the bag. "I need you to check if any of this can work as fuel. Take your time with it."

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Nue took the bag without comment and headed toward the research room.

  Yue followed out of curiosity — and stopped in the doorway.

  Huh.

  He'd never properly looked at this room before. During his first hours on the ship he'd gone straight for the cockpit and hadn't thought much about anything else. But the research room was enormous — easily large enough to be a small house on its own, lined with equipment and tools he didn't have names for yet, all of it clearly high grade despite the ship's otherwise unremarkable exterior.

  Pirates with a proper research facility, he thought. Interesting.

  He drifted through the space slowly while Nue set up at the examination station and began working. Neither of them spoke. Nue ran his analysis methodically and Yue explored the room, opening drawers and examining equipment with the quiet curiosity of someone who finally had time to look properly.

  After a while Nue looked up.

  "Sir."

  "Yes. What did you find?"

  "It will work." A brief pause. "Conversion efficiency is approximately 340% higher than conventional fuel. I will need time to modify the intake systems. I have no existing data on this energy type and cannot fully classify it yet."

  Yue went very still.

  340%.

  He stared at Nue for a moment.

  If I had a body right now I would absolutely hug this android and I would feel no shame about it whatsoever.

  "Take all the time you need," he said instead, keeping his voice completely level. "And for your reference — that energy is called mana. It operates on completely different principles from conventional current or fuel. You'll find it doesn't behave like anything in your existing database."

  Nue processed this.

  "That would explain several anomalies in the readings."

  "I assumed it would."

  Nue went back to work.

  Meanwhile — somewhere on Aethoria

  The battle was loud even from this distance.

  Fen lowered his scope and looked sideways at Ashen, who hadn't moved in several minutes.

  "Why aren't we down there?"

  Ashen didn't answer. He kept his own scope trained on the far side of the battlefield, tracking something specific.

  Dara answered for him without looking up from her own position.

  "He has his reasons."

  "You always say that," Fen muttered. "You don't even know what his reasons are."

  "Doesn't matter. He hasn't been wrong yet."

  Bren and Sola exchanged a quiet look and said nothing. They'd both learned by now that arguing about Ashen's decisions during an active operation was a waste of energy that could be better spent watching their surroundings.

  Ashen tracked the movement on the far side of the field and said nothing.

  I agreed to scout. Not to fight. He kept his breathing steady. And that's exactly what I'm doing.

  There was something else too. Something he hadn't said out loud and wouldn't — not here, not now.

  I have someone waiting. Someone who would be genuinely terrible at handling it if I died. Which means I don't get to be careless anymore.

  One last job. Then I'm done.

  He kept watching.

  Back on the ship

  Yue was drifting through the research room, lost in thought, when Nue reappeared.

  "Sir. Modifications are complete. The ship can now accept mana as primary fuel and energy."

  "Already?"

  "The conversion was more straightforward than anticipated once I understood the underlying principles."

  Nue moved to a secured storage unit and removed two items — setting them carefully on the examination table.

  A suit. Lightweight, compact, the kind of thing that could be worn under ordinary clothing without anyone noticing. And beside it — a gun. Sleeker than anything currently available on Aethoria, with a design that managed to look almost ordinary if you didn't look too closely.

  "The custom equipment you requested," Nue said. "I made modifications. Since conventional power sources are unavailable here I redesigned both items to run on mana energy instead. The suit will require an initial mana charge from a compatible source but after that it maintains itself."

  Yue examined both items carefully.

  "Defense?"

  "Three modes, switchable on command. Standard protection, impact absorption, and a third mode that redistributes incoming force across the entire surface. Zero energy signature in standard mode — it reads as ordinary clothing to any detection system I'm currently aware of."

  "The gun?"

  "Three firing modes. Minimal power consumption relative to output — significantly better efficiency than anything I've seen in the ship's existing weapon cache. Zero recoil. The design accounts for the mana energy variance I observed in the cores you brought."

  Yue set the gun back down on the table.

  "Good work Nue."

  "...Good," Nue said simply. And went back to preparing the equipment.

  Yue watched him for a second longer than necessary.

  "Start the ship. Move us closer to the planet."

  "Yes sir."

  The engines came online — and then something happened that Yue did not expect at all.

  In the space of a single blink they were no longer where they had been.

  The planet filled the cockpit viewport ahead of them. Close. Immediate. Real.

  Yue stared.

  "...What was that?"

  "A micro hyperjump," Nue said from the pilot seat, completely calm. "I developed the system while you were away using the mana core data as a theoretical base. The energy properties of mana allow for a jump mechanism that conventional fuel could never support."

  "Explain."

  "Mana energy does not dissipate as heat the way conventional current does. It is self contained and regenerative under the right conditions. I built a system that channels the energy produced during a jump directly back into the mana cores — replenishing them in the process. Each jump effectively costs nothing."

  Yue stared at the planet ahead of them.

  "So you're telling me we have infinite fuel."

  "Effectively yes sir."

  "And a jump drive that bypasses the planetary barrier entirely."

  "The barrier operates on a detection principle. A micro hyperjump leaves no detectable signature. We passed through it without triggering any response."

  Yue was quiet for a very long time.

  I built this AI from stolen parts in two days while hiding from a security system.

  What have I created.

  "Nue," he said finally.

  "Sir?"

  "Well done."

  "Thank you sir."

  Yue looked at the planet below. Somewhere down there Ashen was sitting on a hillside watching a battle he'd agreed not to participate in, counting down the days until his last mercenary contract was finished.

  He had a suit waiting for him. A gun. And a ship that could now go anywhere in the universe for free.

  Time to go back.