Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 43 - A Pattern of Behavior (Patreon)

Contrary to popular belief, the system was not built to encourage violence. It is molded by our nature, and as such, it has become a tool of death, oppression, and destruction.

Galatira Iamaxis

“I can’t believe you did that,” said Patrick, looking up at the sky. “There has to be some sort of repercussions for it, right? It’s part of the system.”

I didn’t bother following his gaze. There was nothing to see up there, after all. I’d seen to that myself when I’d planted more than a hundred bombs throughout the Bazaar and detonated them during our escape. I had no idea how many people I had killed, and if I was entirely honest, I wasn’t truly concerned with that, either. Still, I didn’t like not being rewarded with at least a couple of levels.

According to Gala, my potential had still grown, but because my Nexus Implant had been absorbed into a pseudo-core, I no longer had an interface. I had to monitor things by feel, which meant that I was a bit lost. Certainly, since we’d gotten back, I had regained feeling throughout my body, and the few tests I’d run told me that I was roughly half-again stronger than I’d been before going to the Bazaar, but I still wasn’t entirely certain what it all meant.

Hopefully, Freddy could advise me.

I’d gotten in contact with him upon landing, and he’d told me that he was on his way. Yet, I had no idea how quickly he could cover ground, so I wasn’t sure when he would make good on his promise to discuss the changes I’d undergone.

Gala was a little help, but beyond our initial conversation, she’d had frustratingly little to offer. So, even as we marched ever closer to the end of the quarantine – it would fall in less than two more days – I felt like I was stuck in limbo.

Fortunately, I still had access to my abilities, though some of the lesser used ones were a little clunky to activate. The ones I relied most on, though, were just as smooth as ever. I reasoned that was due to simple habit. I’d gone through those motions so often that my body and mind remembered them like instincts.

But I felt sure that those were limiting my potential somehow. As Gala had told me, the Nexus Implant was meant to constrain the usage of Mist. Because of that, I was almost positive that I was hamstringing my own abilities. Sure, Empowered Shot said it could only increase my damage by a couple hundred percent, but who was to say that was a hard limit? I felt like if I focused hard enough – or knew how – I could augment that damage even more.

The same went for all my other abilities. Modifiers, too.

The loss of my Nexus Implant had been jarring, but I was almost certain that it would be a good thing. With it, I had the benefit of exact numbers telling me my limits. But without it? There didn’t appear to be any.

I was probably wrong. Something constrained the power of the mystics I’d fought. I just didn’t know what, precisely, that was. Hopefully, Freddy could shed some light on the subject. But in the meantime, I needed to come to terms with my new parameters.

“I don’t think it matters that much,” I said. “It’s not really part of the system. I mean, it’s connected, but there’s no rule saying you can’t blow it up. It’s just that most people wouldn’t dream of doing that because then they’d be cut off from a lot of things that make people’s lives easier. I mean, can you imagine if people had to survive without Mist shields? They’d have died out a couple of years after the Mist enveloped Earth.”

“That’s still mostly true,” he remarked.

“People are better equipped to fend for themselves, now. Plus, we’re at war. Things were always going to go this way,” I said.

“I still can’t believe you went through with it,” he mumbled.

I could understand that sentiment, but from my perspective, it would have been stupid not to. Clearly, the enemy had infiltrated the Bazaar to the point that it was functionally useless to us. More, it provided an easy platform from which they could persuade people to betray their kind. I had simply removed that from the equation.

Sure, it was a drastic step. I understood that. But our situation was desperate, and I had never been good at half-measures anyway. Even so, I could see why Patrick struggled with it. The Bazaar had always been there, to the point it was just one of those unassailable facets of life. Yet, the reality of it was that it was just one more mechanism by which the aliens controlled us. That he couldn’t see that was disappointing, but it was anything but surprising. For better or worse, Patrick was stuck in a pattern of thinking that refused to adapt to the changing times. I couldn’t afford to let myself do the same.

“What do you think is the next step?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, leaning forward, with my hands on my knees as I looked out at the horizon. Before me spread a sea of grass as far as I could see. Behind me, I could feel the Leviathan as well as the temporary base the Dingyts had erected. The moment we’d landed, Alistaris had gone to work reestablishing communications with his varied assets. The gnome had an admirable work ethic, and what’s more, I’d gotten a glimpse of his power. To say I was impressed with the way he killed that mystic was an understatement.

But the same could be said for all of my allies. Both Patrick and Gala had proven their worth in the brief battle. Without everyone’s help, I likely wouldn’t have survived. That was the benefit of friends, I supposed.

I leaned back in my chair and grabbed a drink from the nearby chest, and as I opened it, I let out a sight. I knew everything was about to change. There was no stopping it. We had done what we could to avoid Earth’s destruction, but there was still a possibility that we’d missed something vital. On top of that, the blockade was still in play. That meant that, while we’d avoided the short term devastation of the planet, the threat was still just as pervasive as it had ever been.

“I think the first step is going to be to get into those satellites,” I said. The problem was that they were well-protected, and even if we managed to take out one or two, the system wouldn’t fall until every single one of them had been destroyed. The reality was that we had a long way to go before we could say that Earth was safe.

And even if we did manage to break the blockade, there remained the persistent threat that they would just come back and do it again. Alistaris kept saying that we’d eventually push it past the threshold where cost would exceed benefit, but I wasn’t so sure. From my perspective, it had probably already gone well past that point. Now, it felt like a personal vendetta on the part of the Gamori Confederation.

After a few minutes, Alistaris approached. When he arrived, though, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stood there for a few minutes that felt like much longer. Finally, he said, “This certainly is a beautiful planet.”

I glanced back at him and said, “I’m sure your planet was beautiful, too.”

“We like to think so. But where I was born, the entire planet had long since been settled,” he explained. “The only danger came from what we volunteered for. Or from one another, though that was kept mostly in check.”

“Sounds nice,” Patrick remarked.

“It does, doesn’t it? But it was a soulless place of towering palaces and decrepit slums,” he described. “Equality had long since been abandoned, and the rich believed themselves to be fundamentally better than everyone else. I know this because that was how I was raised. For a long time, I believed that those on the bottom echelons of society deserved their miserable lives.”

He sighed, looking away, “We could have fixed it. The inequality was self-imposed. We liked it that way. The stratification of our society by power and wealth was a part of the design. It made those people desperate, but with how strong we were, they couldn’t do anything but try to climb their way out of the muck. To their credit, some made it. A few were strong enough and lucky enough to survive to the summit. Yet, millions more failed. They spent their lives toiling at our behest, doing jobs that no one in their right mind would choose. And I just watched it from on high, judging them for their inability to win a broken game.”

“What changed?” I asked, assuming that something had to have altered his perception of the world in which he’d lived. After all, he’d since dedicated his life to helping the populations of frontier planets like Earth. That didn’t sound like something a spoiled, rich scion of a powerful family would do.

“Everything. I met a girl,” he admitted with a wisp of a smile. “She wasn’t rich. Nor was she powerful. But she was good, and in a way I’d never seen before. All she wanted to do was help people.”

He sighed, running a hand through his wild white hair. “They killed her,” he stated. “My own family had her taken from her clinic. She was tried and convicted of treason before I even knew she’d been arrested. They sent her to a penal colony, where she spent the next two weeks mining norcite on an asteroid at the edge of our territory.”

I could see the tears glistening in his eyes and hear the frustration in his voice as he said, “That’s how long she lasted. Two weeks before she gave out. Most last a little longer. That’s what mining norcite does to people. There are suits that prevent the effects, that shield people from having their Mist depowered. But they’re expensive, and we always had plenty of prisoners to choose from.”

“What did you do when you found out?” asked Patrick.

Alistaris shrugged. “What could I do? Even in my grief, I saw the rotten society for what it was. I knew I couldn’t change anything,” he answered with more than a little bitterness. “So, I did what I thought Beka would have done in my situation. I left home, enlisted with the Ark Alliance, and dedicated my life to helping people who couldn’t help themselves.

“I’m a laughingstock, you know,” he went on after a second. “My parents have all but disowned me. My old friends – people I’ve known for most of my life – won’t even speak to me anymore. I’m a pariah. The Dingyt who threw everything away to roll in the mud with his inferiors. That’s why I helped the princess in the first place. Stupid. They didn’t even acknowledge my efforts. But I’m grateful, because it brought you to my attention.”

“I thought you had been watching me all along,” I said.

“That’s true. But knowing who you were and what you represented was one thing. Seeing what you could do was something else altogether,” he stated. “In any case, I came out here to express my gratitude for what you did. You risked everything to save me, and that’s not something I will soon forget.”

I turned to him and grinned broadly. “Aww, Al. You’re making me blush.”

“Please don’t call me that,” he said, but I could tell his heart wasn’t really in the objection. I suspected that, deep down, he liked the nickname I had given him. After all, it had come from me. That probably counted for a lot.

“Sure thing, Al.”

He sighed. “Leave it to you to ruin a poignant moment,” he said, shaking his head. But I saw a slight smirk turn up the corners of his mouth, so I counted it as a win. “Regardless, we need to talk about what comes next.”

“Patrick and I were just discussing that.”

“And?”

“We’re kind of lost,” Patrick stated. “Mira thinks we need to hit the satellites, but I don’t know how we’re supposed to do that.”

“I have some ideas,” Alistaris said. “But none of them will work right now.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“They’ll be ready for whatever we do,” he answered. “I think it’s best to lay low. Only respond to threats to the planet’s safety. Once they let their guard down, we hit hard and fast.”

“What then?” asked Patrick.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, after we destroy the satellites and take down the blockade,” Patrick elaborated. “What’s to stop them from just doing it again? Or invading with ground troops? I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it. I’m just asking what we’re supposed to do with the ongoing threat, because I’m not sure they’re going to just leave us alone now.”

“It’s a good question,” I agreed. “Is this resistance ongoing? What’s our win condition?”

“Living another day.”

“What?”

“That’s what we have to focus on,” Alistaris stated. “We keep resisting. We keep costing them resources and credits. And eventually, they’ll give up. They’ll move on to easier targets. We do that on enough frontier planets, and we can slowly chip away at their influence until they have to cede ground. Make no mistake, this isn’t the sort of war that can be won by a single decisive strike. It’s a battle of attrition. A fight to see who can keep going. This is about endurance.”

“And you and yours are in it for the long haul?”

“Long enough,” he said. “They made a mistake when they tried to kidnap me. Now, I’ve got every reason to make this as difficult as it can be for them.”

After that, we all went silent, and as I stared out at the swaying grass, I wondered if Alistaris was really seeing the bigger picture. To me, it felt like we were missing something vitally important.

I just wasn’t smart enough to see it.

Eventually, Alistaris headed back to the compound. Patrick wasn’t far behind, though he ended up in the Leviathan. For my part, I remained in place, pondering the problem I couldn’t see a way to solve.

The Infinite Conquest was still up there, and it was probably the source of the soldiers we’d met so far. However, I didn’t think a frontal assault on the ship would do much good. We didn’t have enough people. Nor did we have enough ships. Challenging it was suicidal.

The satellites were far more vulnerable, and I expected that we could at least take out a few of them, but there were so many of them that I could see why Alistaris didn’t consider attacking them to be a viable option.

As I sat there, I realized the irony of the fact that I was more powerful than ever, and my limits were even more ephemeral than I could understand. And yet, I was still too weak to do what needed to be done. I couldn’t be everywhere at once, and even if I could, I was incapable of fighting everything arrayed against us. The reality was that I needed allies, and those were in short supply.

And that should not have been the case. We had an entire planet of people with a vested interest in keeping it from being destroyed. However, human nature meant that even if we could get in contact with everyone, the chances that they’d consent to work together were nil. It was a depressing comment on our species that even when we were facing a disaster of global proportions, the chances that we could meet the challenge with a unified front were so small that it wasn’t even worth trying.

With that on my mind, the idea of leaving was even more attractive than it had ever been before. I could understand why Alistaris wanted to leave. He was as committed to the cause as anyone could be, but he could also see the writing on the wall. He knew what was coming, and the moment he’d chosen to stay, he’d almost assuredly made peace with the fact that he’d chosen to go down with the proverbial ship.

Was I doing the same?

No. I wanted to believe we had a chance.

I wasn’t sure which was worse? The Dingyt who knew it was hopeless but chose to stay anyway? Or the girl who thought she had a chance in an unwinnable fight?

In the end, though, it didn’t really matter. If things kept going the way they were, we’d all end up just as dead as everyone else.

It was a depressing thought, especially after we’d experienced nothing but victory in the war against the Gamoris. I knew it was because we were balanced on the edge of a knife. One slip, and we’d come crashing down to a reality that was hellbent on keeping us oppressed and in line. It had almost happened in the system station when that goblinoid mystic had latched onto me. Then, it had nearly happened again when my body was driven out of commission by the absorption of my Nexus Implant.

The only reason I’d survived was due to my allies’ quick intervention. But what would happen next time? What if they weren’t there? I would die, and whatever resistance we’d managed so far would die with me.

It was a lot of pressure, and there was only one way I knew how to deal with that kind of situation. I needed to train. I needed to grow stronger, and to get a handle on whatever new abilities I had at my disposal. Because I knew there was more power on the horizon. I just needed to forge ahead and grab it.

That seemed as good a strategy as any other.