Pax Galactica - A Space Opera

Chapter 9 - The Land Beyond The North Winds (I)

Decker and the Lodge Mistress stood in the Star Bay of the Sic Temper Tyrannis. Directly behind them was a giant wall-sized selectively permeable transparent force field leading out into empty space. The field was indistinguishable from being nothing at all. This was always the room that made people new to space travel the most sick.

Decker was preparing to get into the one-person dropship that would take him down to the orbital. He wanted to be displaced again but was told that took too much coordination to do on the fly.

The Lodge Mistress held a small dragon-shaped black stone between her thumb and forefinger. She gestured at Decker with it.

"This is an aspirant's deathward. It is in the shape of the emblem of the Neutronium Dragons. That means you represent us while wearing it," she leaned in close and spoke as tersely as Decker had ever heard her. "Do not. Disgrace. This symbol."

She handed him the deathward.

"It's so light," said Decker, feeling the weight of it.

"It's not computronium," said the Lodge Mistress. "It's computerized neutronium."

"How is it possible that I'm holding it then?" asked Decker.

"It has a hyperspatially tethered microscopic AG module that gives it a constant weight of 5 grams."

"Hyperspatially tethered?"

"If the unit existed down here in the lower dimensions it would be vulnerable to AG jamming," explained the Lodge Mistress. "This way we can't get at it to deactivate it or change the settings, but nobody else can get at it either to jam the thing."

"That's a lot of effort to go to when you could have just used regular computronium," said Decker.

"That might be sufficient for a civilian deathward, but in combat scenarios computronium is too vulnerable. The thing you hold in your hand is as close to indestructible as it is physically possible for a material object to be. Don't worry, the only way to take out that thing's AG is with at least 5th dimensional weapons and if you're being hit by something like that you won't be alive enough to be worrying about the weight of your deathward."

"Thanks," said Decker, pinning the deathward over his heart, "that's very reassuring."

"If you die down on Hyperborea," the Lodge Mistress explained, "that deathward will capture your mind-state and we'll revive you in a fresh body with none of the military enhancements we've just given you. You will have failed your trial. That will be it. You get one shot. Above everything else the Corps needs survivors."

"I understand," said Decker, nodding.

"All you have to do to pass is survive for two months. We will come and collect you when the time is up; we can trace the location of the deathward."

Decker nodded again.

"This is your final opportunity to back out with your honor intact," said the Lodge Mistress.

"Oh no," said Decker, "you better believe I'm doing this."

He couldn't remember the last time he was this excited. His heart was racing.

"Then I'll see you in two months. Good hunting, Aspirant Decker."

* * *

The pill-shaped dropship came down with a crash, embedding itself ever-so-slightly in the ground. It's concentric layers of fields dissolved away, one-by-one, until finally the pressurized door slid open with a hiss.

Decker tentatively stepped out and had a look around.

His surroundings resembled a cross between a forest and a brightly colored coral reef. Many-branching growths shaped like mutated hands rose up from the ground like trees. A sensory overload of other multicolored plants, packed so tightly they were growing on one another, grew anywhere and everywhere. Some of them appeared semi-mobile.