Chapter 102: Major Caz to Ground Control (Patreon)

I hadn’t run out of ingredients first. I’d run out of bottles. 

Bottles were quite annoying to carry around, especially so in bags. I’d only one bag, and I couldn’t bring an exceptional amount. I’d have to be sure to tell people to recycle. I hadn’t cared about recycling when I was on Earth, mostly because it didn’t benefit me in any way. Now, though, I’d wear a bright green sign with a circle of arrows on it if it’d get me some more bottles. 

With no alchemy to perform, I sat in my room and talked with Zinuetet. I had my veins filled to the brim with Primordial Energy, so that at the very least I was doing something. My attributes wouldn’t raise much, though. I hadn’t checked them in a very long time, mostly because I found them to be useless. 

Name: Casimir Zajac 

Aliases: Cazzy, Chad, Zajmaster, Cazac4401, Daddy

Race: Weak Two-Armed Bipedal, Light Fur 

Traits: Eloquently Charismatic, Stoppable Narcissism, Potential Psychopath, Boundless Ambition, Amaranthine Body

Primordial Energy: 2721/2814 (Grade G)

Strength: 34.2 -> 50.2

Dexterity: 15.9 -> 26.2

Constitution: 34.4 -> 56.6

Intelligence: 42.2 -> 49.9

Willpower: 178 -> 261

Personality: 488 -> 499

Abilities: Advanced Primordial Shaping, Advanced Body Shaping, Attack Ability: Dhee Raneth Method (Electric), Movement Ability: Shadowlands, Passive Ability: Metabolic Healing

Assessment: Welcome back, Citizen! Have you been in a coma? It’s been ten months since your last physical examination! 

Strength has increased significantly. Dexterity has increased. Constitution has increased significantly. Intelligence has increased. Willpower has increased. Personality has increased. Citizen has learned many new abilities. 

NOTE: Citizen is missing left hand. Seek medical treatment. 

NOTE: Citizen is missing right arm. Seek medical treatment. 

My personality is still going up, huh? Now, it’s a value that a salesman would offer in attempts to scam people that something was cheaper than it was. 499 sounds better than 500, at least if you’re trying to buy. No matter. 

I didn’t pay the stats much heed. The Citizenship Chip was a useful tool, but definitely not a good assessment of character. I had asked Kuregar in the distant past if he agreed with me, and in a rare circumstance, he had. Even still, he’d refused to tell me his own status.

I sighed and leaned back, falling off the top of the sleeping pod and landing on my back. Another virtue of being super-human—you could do dumb things and be fine. Small falls, even onto metal, were little danger. Hell, if I tried hard enough, everything was a bouncy castle. Not that I had tried, of course.

Zinuetet peered over the top of the sleeping pod, looking down at my fallen figure. “Why do you do that?”

I blew a wisp of black hair off my face. “You say that like I do it a lot.”

“You’ve done it three times here alone.”

“That’s a few. We went over this. A couple is two, a few is more than three but not more than seven, several is more than seven but less than twelve, so on and so forth…” I had begun my lecture demonstrating with the fingers on my mechanical hand, but once it reached seven, I ran out of fingers. 

“I miss my books,” Zinuetet said in lament, changing the subject. “The library wouldn’t let me take them off-planet.

I raised my head from the ground. “Maybe I cou—“

I was interrupted by a loud buzzing noise, and a bright light from the small mechanism that controlled the door’s lock. I came to my feet as quickly as I could from my awkward position, and walked over to the source of the noise. When I arrived, the buzzing ceased, and was shortly replaced by Ruel’s voice. 

“All Pikes, report to the main deck. I repeat—ah, fuck this. Come to the main deck, guys.”

I frowned. “Space invaders? Spice pirates? Slavers? Or, worse yet, the IRS?”

Zinuetet grabbed the baton that could transform into her spear and held it tightly. “I think we’re here.”

“What?” I scratched my head. “It’s been two days already? Is that truly possible? Well, time just passes so fast when I’m spending time with you, dear sister.” I, myself, didn’t know if the words were sarcasm. 

I put my things into my bag and zipped it close. I hung it over my shoulder by the strap. The only thing Zinuetet had brought with her was her spear. She was a minimalist in that way. Or maybe she just didn’t know what to bring.

We left the hall together, being some of the last people to arrive in the main deck. We hadn’t been told what the ‘main deck’ was, exactly, but it was quite easy to guess. When we arrived, everyone was standing and looking out the window besides us. We walked up quietly and came to stand beside Ruel. 

He looked around once we’d arrived, his eyes flitting from person to person. “I think everyone’s here, otherwise I don’t know how to count. Look down there. That’s the planet.”

If the Earth had been a green blue jewel in space, this one was a big hunk of lead in space. There weren’t any clouds or other such natural formations to obstruct our view, and though I’d perhaps imagined it, my vision had gotten much better as time continued. 

The planet was a big desert. Miles and miles of sand, all of it as black as pencil lead. I didn’t see a speck of water anywhere. Earth had been, what, 70% water? I’d be surprised if this planet reached double-digit percents of water. I could feel my throat drying up just looking from afar. 

The planet was a hive of movement in places. Great black whirlwinds of sands moved across the endless desert. It was like a tornado of dark storm clouds, though it wasn’t clouds—it was just sand picked up from the desert and bunched into a beautiful natural catastrophe. 

Huh. So this is where all the snowbird Canadians and Alaskans go when winter comes ‘round in Canuckland. 

It was the Archduchy’s good fortune that we were located on a planet abundant with greenery. They were like two opposites—Doliny, the home of the Archduke, was ever-barraged with rain, while this planet probably had residents who’d never seen a drop of water hit the ground. 

There were cities present, very obvious from our perch in space. There were three that I could see—they rather resembled honeycombs, placed directly adjacent to each other, though their shape was imperfect, and so the image was not perfect. We weren’t especially far, and it was possible to see small vehicles flying to and fro. Flying cars, straight out of Bladerunner. Why can’t we have those in the Archduchy? 

“Fortunately, we won’t be staying here long,” Ruel continued, pulling me out of my thoughts. He took a swig from his flask, and then grimaced. “Two days, at most. Planet’s called Sector 114; not all places are fortunate enough to have a name, like our baby Doliny. The planet hasn’t been colonized like a primitive planet… but as you can see, it’s been stripped clean of all natural resources. They’re reliant on the outside world for everything—food, water, you name it.”

I put my fingers to the window, not worried about dirtying the glass on account of my fingers being mechanical. “And you said there were bandits in the wild? How the hell…?”

“It’s more along the lines of bandits in slums outside of town. Overall, a very shitty place to exist. Even worse place to live. It is one of many of the beautiful resort locations of the Richt Empire.” Ruel stretched his arms out wide like he was doing a sales pitch. 

“Reminds me of home,” commented Day. “We had more water, though. Heh.”

“So, now, Rigser contacts our little outpost we’ve got set up here. We land. We putz around for two days for the appointed time. And then, we assault the mansion, making a big enough distraction for our client to do his little rescue mission.”

Looking at how shitty this place is… is there even a mansion around? I cast a glance at Vast, and it seemed he was having the same thoughts I was.