Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 16 - All the Best Toys (Patreon)

My preference is to build my own equipment. It’s probably not better, but with my skills giving me significant modifiers for self-made gear, it’s close enough for the distinction to not matter.  Even if that wasn’t the case, I would do it anyway. There’s just nothing like building your own weapons and using them to protect someone you love.

Patrick Ward

“Do you need to know anything about your skills?” I asked. Just after he’d completed work on his armor, he’d actually gained his class, [Combat Engineer]. When that had happened, his skills had all evolved, but none had merged like mine had. Still, he’d told me a little about his modifiers and new abilities, and I had to admit that I was more than a little impressed by his progression. However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn a thing or two from Ana.

Surprisingly, he shook his head. “No offense to Ana, but I prefer to figure it all out on my own,” he said.

“That is usually the case,” the small alien skillsmith said. “Self-discovery is always preferable, though there is something to be said for knowing the optimal path. If you need anything in the coming months, please – don’t hesitate to ask.”

“You know what’s coming, right? You know what I did, don’t you?” I asked.

“I do.”

“And you’re okay with it?”

“With mass murder? Not usually,” she said, shaking her head. It was a human affectation she’d picked up during her time observing humans from the Bazaar. “But I understand why you did what you did, and I don’t condemn your actions. The Pacificians are a scourge upon the universe, and they deserve extermination.”

“What about the war I intend to fight?” I asked. “I’m not going to give the planet up without taking my fair share of invaders down.”

She nodded. “That is your right. It’s how the universe works. You keep what you can. Most of the time, it’s precious little, but perhaps you will be different. Maybe you can do better than my people did, so long ago.”

“Your planet was invaded?”

“Every planet is. Or was. The core planets may be different, but I don’t think so. I think that’s just how the universe works. There is always someone waiting in the wings to take what they believe is theirs by right of strength. And it is on us to resist. In some cases, we may even win, but that’s not the point, is it?”

“No.”

Indeed, the point of resistance wasn’t to win. That might have been the goal, unrealistic though it probably was. However, the point was to make the invaders and colonizers pay a horrible price for taking what wasn’t theirs. If we could do that enough times, then maybe, we – meaning the poor people at the mercy of the more powerful – might one day turn the tables on our oppressors.

It was a pretty dream, but one I knew stood very little chance of coming true. The deck was stacked against us, and even making the aliens pay for their intended invasion was a tall task. Still, that was the path I had chosen.

After we arranged for the shipment of the skill crystals back to Earth, Patrick and I left Ana’s shop. It wasn’t until we’d turned down an adjacent hallway on our way to Gala’s shop that I realized something that shouldn’t have seemed so important. But it did, so I said, “She didn’t talk about boy bands or soap operas.”

“Huh?”

“That’s Ana’s thing. She usually won’t shut up about them. Last time I dropped by, she practically begged me to go to a concert with her once the Integration began,” I explained.

“So, what does it mean?” he asked after a moment.

“I don’t know. Nothing good, though.”

But in the back of my mind, I had a good idea why Ana had been a little more standoffish than usual. Either she thought we were doomed, which meant that she had already begun to mentally sever herself from relationships with Earthlings. Or she disapproved of what was coming. Of what I had done.

I had no idea what the culprit really was, but I didn’t like either option.

Patrick and I continued on in silence, and soon enough, we reached Gala’s premises. Fortunately, the minotaur woman showed none of Ana’s reticence, and the moment her door slid open, she wrapped both Patrick and me in a hug. That was normal enough, but it was comforting, nonetheless. However, I couldn’t ignore the way her Mist aura flared when she embraced us. Clearly, it was an ability activation, though it was odd seeing such a thing in a benign context.

She pulled away, then put her giant, furry hands on my shoulders and said, “I can’t believe you’re alive. What you did…”

“Is probably best not discussed with your door open.”

“Right,” she said, flipping her hair out of her eyes. “Come on in, then. I suppose this isn’t a social visit.”

As she spoke, she let us inside, and the door slid shut behind us. When it did, I saw another flicker of Mist, announcing that she had either activated another ability, or she had used some sort of security measure. Probably the latter, given the context, but I wasn’t ready to rule anything out.

Either way, it was still more than a little disconcerting, my awareness of Mist. With a thought, I knew I could disrupt whatever defenses she’d just enabled. More, I suspected that if I chose, I could have ripped the cloud of Mist that was Patrick’s projection apart.

“I guess you want to talk about it, huh?” I asked.

“Did you mean to do it?” was her responding question. “Or was it an accident?”

I shrugged. “A little of both, if I’m honest. I meant to kill some, but not…quite as many as ended up dying. Why? Is it a problem?” I asked.

“For me? Not even a little one,” Gala stated. “But for you, that’s a different story. I hear things, Mira. They’re coming for you as soon as the Integration starts. Gamori Death Squads. Whole armies. They’re willing to scour the whole planet if it means they get you.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

“So, you’re fighting? I thought you intended to fly away on the beast you call a ship.”

“I did too,” Patrick interjected. “But things change.”

“Do they?”

“It’s our planet, Gala. You don’t know what they were doing down there,” I said. “You have no idea the things I’ve seen.”

“I know more than I want to know,” the minotaur said, leaning against her counter and resting on the palms of her hands. “I’ve seen so much more than most. I have a good idea what kinds of things have been going on down there.”

“Then you understand why I’m not going to turn my back on Earth,” I said.

“I do. What I don’t understand is why you’re working with the Ark Alliance. A bunch of warmongering idealists who do more harm than good.”

I shrugged. “I don’t get the luxury of picking my allies. Their enemies are mine, and as odd as it sounds, I trust the guy in charge. Mostly.”

“Kargat? S’pose he’s as upright as they come. True believer, from what I’ve heard. But he’s only in charge until someone higher up the food chain decides this fight is more important than originally thought. When that happens, some bigshot will swoop in and take over. They’ll just –”

“I’m aware of how small we are, Gala. I’m not stupid. And if it looks like things are going sideways, I’ll jump ship. Patrick and I can get off that planet anytime we want after the quarantine is lifted,” I explained. I didn’t think it would come to that. In the kinds of battles I usually fought, absolute commitment was a necessity. And once you crossed that line, retreat turned into an impossibility. However, I wasn’t going to tell Gala that, even if I suspected she knew the truth of it better than I did.

“Good,” she said. “So, I’m assuming this isn’t just a social visit.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked with a smirk.

“Past experience,” she responded. “No offense, but you’re even more business-like than your uncle. Must run in the family.”

“You should try living with her,” Patick said. “Getting her to stop training for more than a day is like pulling teeth.”

The two shared a laugh at my expense, and I even found myself grinning slightly. It was so rare that I could talk to anyone but Patrick without looking for an underlying motive. But there was no one I trusted more than Gala. She’d helped me more than once, and what’s more, my uncle had given her his trust. That was enough for me.

Finally, I said, “I need some guns, Gala.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” she said. “If there’s anything I’ve got, it’s guns. What were you thinking?”

“Um…don’t get mad, but I kind of…uh…I kind of blew up the Dragon,” I admitted sheepishly. Before she could respond – and there was definitely a response coming, judging by the expression of budding anger building on her face – I held up a hand and said, “But it wasn’t my fault, okay? There was this guy with a giant fuck-off sword, and if I hadn’t blocked it with the Dragon, he’d have cut me in half. So…uh…it gave its life for a good cause.”

“If it helps, it’s not completely destroyed. I fixed it,” Patrick added. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” Gala asked.

He shrugged. “I can run it up to around sixty-percent power. But I’m still tinkering with it. I feel pretty sure that if I have the right materials, I can even improve on the design.”

“If you do that, kid, there are some people who are definitely going to want to meet you.”

“Why?”

“To offer you a job, obviously. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to improve on something like a DR-4 EMG? That’s a premium weapon that was designed by one of the top weapons manufacturers in the galaxy. Only core weapons are better.”

“Uh…then that might make my request a little…I don’t know. But I need something better, Gala. A lot better if you can do it.”

“I’m sure I don’t have anything like that,” she said, her bovine eyes flicking back and forth.

“That’s an obvious lie.”

“Mira, I can’t…”

“Sure you can,” I said. “Believe me when I say that my life depends on whatever weapons you sell me here. You know what’s coming, Gala. Help me survive it.”

Gala huffed. Then, her Mist flared far more strongly than the previous flicker. Then, it washed over the entire shop before solidifying.

“What did you just do?”

“Made sure nobody could hear us,” she said. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Mira. There are rules as to what I can sell to Earthlings.”

“And you’re about to break them, aren’t you?” I guessed.

“I am. A little. It’s only a few months early.”

By my count, there were still close to nine months until the Initialization ended, but I wasn’t going to point that out. Instead, I asked, “What do you have for me? I need a replacement for the Dragon, for one. And I could use a new assault rifle. Not because the one I have is broken or anything. It just feels a little outdated. Oh, and a better blade, too. I know there’s one out there. And if you have a better sniper rifle, I’ll be –”

“You want an entire arsenal?”

“If you have better than my current weapons, yes.”

“And you have money for that? I’m willing to break the rules. I can even give you a good deal. But I’m not running a charity here.”

“We have money,” Patrick said. “I’m pretty sure it’ll be enough for whatever you have.”

She narrowed her eyes – an odd expression, for a woman with a face like a cow – and asked, “You didn’t make some deal with the Dingyts or something, did you?”

“I made a deal with Al. But the money’s from something else,” I stated.

“Al?”

“Alistaris Kargat.”

“And you call him Al?” she asked. Then, she chuckled and said, “Bet he loves that, huh?”

“He may have expressed some annoyance at the nickname,” I admitted.

She huffed again. “Fine. First thing’s first – the Dragon replacement. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have another one. But I have something better.”

“I thought you said the Dragon was the best you had. That’s what you said last time I was here, at least.”

“And it was true. I couldn’t sell the HIRC back then. Against the rules of the quarantine.”

“Herc?”

“H-I-R-C,” Gala corrected. “Stands for High-Impact Rotary Cannon. Here. Let me show you.”

She turned around and went behind the counter. Like she’d done once before, she pressed a button, and the wall opened up to reveal a large variety of weapons. However, it only took one glance for me to recognize that these were far more powerful than any I’d seen in my previous trips to Gala’s shop. They all – each and every one – practically hummed with unspent Mist.

She reached out, grabbing a huge weapon that was at least seven feet long. The bulk of the casing was round and about ten inches wide, but the length came from the barrels. There were seven of them, all around two inches in diameter and arrayed in a circle around a much larger barrel. Like the Dragon, it was clearly meant to be fired from the hip.

“Oh…”

“Wish she’d look at me like that,” Patrick muttered.

“This is the HIRC,” Gala said. “Fifty-thousand round spatial magazine. Easy reload via cybernetic. You’ll have to install that yourself, but with him there, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What kind of punch?”

“The first incarnation was mounted on the nose of a 327-Banshee class fighter ship,” she said. “Since then, it’s been through countless iterations. Never got any smaller, but it hits as hard as anything I’ve ever seen. Fires Mist-infused, explosive rounds, too. And that’s just the first mode. The second is arguably more powerful, even if it’s less practical.”

“What does it do?” Patrick and I asked at the same time.

“You have cannons on that ship of yours, right?”

“We do.”

“It’s like that. But about ten times more powerful. You hit something with that, it’ll explode. Shells are a pain to source, but it just so happens that I have a crate in the back. I’ll throw it in. Same with the first two magazines of rounds for the other mode, too. Can’t sell you a gun with no ammunition, right?”

“You have some idea of my modifiers, right?”

“A basic notion, yes.”

“What will this weapon do for me?”

“You could bring down ships with it.  And not those dinky, little things you have planetside, either. Real ships. From proper factions. The sorts you’ll see once the quarantine is lifted.”

“And everything else?”

“You find something that can stand up to the HIRC, you run away. If you can.”

“That sounds like exactly what I need,” I admitted. Then, I turned to Patrick. “You’re up.”

“Let’s just negotiate at the end,” he said. “It’ll be easier than piecemealing everything together.”

“Fair enough. Better have the money if you’re making me go through the sales pitch, though,” Gala said. Then, she pressed another button on the wall, and the previous racks of weapons slid away, revealing much more compact firearms. Gala grabbed one that was about three feet long, including the snub-nosed barrel poking out from the sleek casing. Along both sides ran two sets of three nodes, all of which glowed with blue light. Otherwise, it looked much like any other assault rifle I’d seen.

“Seems small.”

“Small,” Gala said. “But potent. This is the Stinger.”

I waited a second, waiting for her to tell me what that stood for. When she didn’t, I asked, “No acronym?”

“Nope. Just the Stinger. This is the standard-issue weapon of the Erdikar Dreadnoughts, one of the most feared military units in the entire universe.  If the wrong people knew I even had this weapon, they’d hunt me down, drag me back to the Erdikar Citadel, and flay me alive. Then, they’d have one of their healers bring me back to life just so they could do it again.”

“Is it that powerful?”

“Truthfully? No,” she said. “Make no mistake – it’s the strongest assault rifle I have, and not by a little bit, either. See these nodes on the side? Those infuse any round with extra power, similar to how your modifiers work. Holds a thousand rounds. Spatial magazines again. Fully automatic or burst fire modes. It’s universally regarded as a perfect weapon. But it’s not worth killing over, in and of itself. It’s the symbol it represents, though. The Dreadnoughts don’t like it when anyone steps on their toes, so to speak. They’re fanatics who take their jobs very seriously.”

I raised an eyebrow. The term “perfect assault rifle” definitely appealed to me, but her story was a little troubling. I certainly didn’t want to be hunted down just because I carried some fancy gun. But on the other hand, it did open Gala up for another negotiation tactic. So, I said, “I’m sure you’re eager to get rid of it, then. I bet that’ll factor into the price, huh?”

She snorted. “You wish.”

“Mira, let me do the negotiating,” Patrick said.

I threw my hands up in surrender. “I’ve said it a million times that I’m not good at this kind of stuff. Just point me at what you want blown up, and I’m your girl. But this? Ugh.”

“Does this mean you want it?”

“Obviously I want it.”

“Good. Because I don’t have anything else that’s as close to this quality, even with the issues that come with owning it.”

“Alright – that’s two down. I need a replacement for the sniper rifle, the nano-blade, and something for close-range. And none of that non-lethal stuff this time like the scattergun.”

“Oh, we’re way past that,” Gala said. Then, she shuffled her wall to yet another display – this one of blades – and retrieved one that looked solid black. She set it on the counter, but she didn’t explain it. Instead, she shuffled the wall again, stopping at one featuring a bunch of bulky, short nosed weapons. She chose one, then repeated the process before stopping at a display studded with sniper rifles. At this one, she stopped and waited for a few seconds, tapping her chin as she considered it. Finally, she picked a long, sleek weapon with a square barrel and a smooth, plasti-steel shell.  The only ornamentation was a thin slit that ran along the length of the weapon, but I couldn’t see anything inside.

She set it down on the counter, then pointed at the blade, “That’s called an Interdiction Blade. Run a bit of Mist through it, and it’ll wear down defenses. Including Constitution. With enough time and Mist, it’ll go through anything.”

“Nice.”

She pointed to the stumpy weapon with a big barrel. “This one’s called ADS. Affliction Delivery System. It shoots these little shells that burst when fired. Inside each shell are hundreds of tiny, Norcite pellets that, when they lodge inside of someone, start draining their Mist.”

“I have that with Ferdinand II.”

“Sure. But the ADS enhances the effect while feeding that drained Mist back into the wielder.”

“Like a mini-booster?”

“Like hundreds of mini-boosters all at once.”

“Damn.”

“Indeed,” Gala agreed, giving me a flat-toothed smile. Finally, she pointed to the sniper rifle. “This is an Emperor, Mark 7, and, in your hands, it will probably be the most powerful single weapon on Earth.”

“Uh…”

“Seven shots. All Mist-enhanced, just like with the Stinger. But with seven nodes instead of three,” she explained. “All seven rounds are linked, and so long as you meet the Mist requirements – which are steep – every successive round that hits a single target will be three times as powerful as the last. You hit something with all seven shots, and that something will be destroyed. As will anything in its general vicinity. This weapon isn’t a sniper rifle because distance will give you a tactical advantage. It’s so you won’t be in the blast radius of that seventh shot.”

I did some mental calculations, and my jaw dropped. With my modifiers, as well as abilities like Empowered Shot and Execute, I could easily see how powerful such a weapon could be.

“Two downsides,” Gala said. “First – those seven shots take an incredible amount of Mist, both from the shooter as well as the weapon. Because of that, you can only fire a full magazine once a week.”

“There’s no way to cut that down?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What’s the other downside?”

“Money. Not just for the weapon. The rounds aren’t just expensive. They’re practically priceless.”

“So, you’re saying that Patrick has his work cut out for him, huh?” I said. Then, I turned in his direction and said, “I think that’s your cue.”