cathfach
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Unbound Soul Side Story: Earth's Lawlessness
🕑 Added 2022-09-07 05:43:46 +0000 UTCThis is the last of the chapter drop. Next Unbound Soul chapter will be 23rd September. (Unborn Hero will continue as normal on Mondays.)
Cara sat in the on-site monitoring room, watching her display. Radiation levels both inside and outside the shell were normal, but that was expected. She'd be very worried if they started spiking before they hit the on switch. Things may be have got weird recently, but at least causes and effects had remained the correct way around. Even the block of tempulite the fantasy world had gifted them hadn't managed to upend causality in the few seconds before it decayed back to what every instrument and measurement told them was perfectly ordinary steel.
"All capacitors and batteries are fully charged," called out Calvin, one of her fellow workmates. The on-site staff had been cut down to the minimum, and aside from the diplomatic team, didn't include anyone who wasn't already infected by the alien System. "We're ready to go."
"No, the equipment is ready to go," muttered someone. Cara didn't hear who, but she understood the sentiment. The risks of this operation were immense.
So, too, were the potential rewards. A single monster core could output a hundred megawatts for years. A dozen of them could replace a large power station. And in this other world, they were apparently just... there. Lying around for anyone to take, in practically unlimited quantities.
Cara looked at the larger display at the front of the room. Half of it was showing the off-site monitoring room, set up to solve the conflicting desires of their new international partners to be a part of proceedings while also not wanting to be infected with whatever the System was. It was physically based a thousand miles away.
The other half showed a sterile chamber of stainless steel. In the centre, a shell of metal rested, far larger than the small shield they'd used back at home. It would, if their calculations were correct, contain the initial blast of radiation emitted by the equipment as they opened the wormhole. If their calculations weren't correct, the group of thirty hazmat-suited individuals waiting behind a secondary barrier in that room were going to have a very bad time. No way would Cara have been down there without a test run first, but given the risks, it had been decided that minimising the count and durations of the wormholes was more important than avoiding accidents.
Another line of thought suggested they were already having a bad time. Their protective equipment had not been designed with comfort in mind. She'd had great fun needling Harry over that fact as he'd shuffled around uncomfortably earlier, his extraction tubes making their presence known.
Yet another line of thought pointed out that those thirty were about to set foot on an alien planet, with unknown dangers. Heck, even with unknown physics. The drones they'd sent through in previous contacts had picked up a perfectly sensible atmosphere that was pleasantly warm and had an almost normal nitrogen-oxygen composition, with nothing poisonous they could detect. Nor had it picked up any dangerous levels of radiation. Even sunburn wouldn't be a problem, given the low levels of UV it detected.
And then a dragon—which, given its size, had no business whatsoever being able to hover in the air like that—had spoilt it all not only by its mere existence, but also by waving a claw and encasing the drone in a block of ice. It had only transmitted for a few seconds after that, the thermometer reporting minus ten Celsius at the point contact was lost.
Besides, Cara had seen the pictures of the pigs they'd implanted with samples of the microbes isolated from the original hand. They had been messy; she'd never realised a single animal could generate that much pus. She'd been assured that highly competent people were hard at work on treatments and vaccines, but she'd have felt a lot safer if they simply kept the vicious things well away from Earth. Especially since that was just whatever was living benignly on the hand. What would actual pathogens do?
"Wormhole activation in T minus ten seconds," shouted someone, at which Cara permitted herself a small smile. How people could shout that sort of thing with a straight face was beyond her, and she was glad it wasn't her job.
A number of displays showed the decreasing countdown in the corner. Nine... Eight... Seven... Cara's stomach was fast becoming a complicated knot, despite the way they'd been through this so many times before. Nothing unexpected was likely to happen with the wormhole opening. No, the unexpected would come later.
Assuming it opened successfully, they'd need to work out where it had opened, and then provide the diplomatic squad with an appropriate vehicle. Several drones were lined up in front of the shell, behind them an inflatable life-raft in case they came out over water and a parachuted contraption in case of air. There was even an inflatable shelter in the case of desert. And then the group would have to walk through, trusting in the people on the other side to send them back home.
Three... Two... One...
The sensors on the inside of the protective shell went wild as levels of gamma radiation sufficient to kill in seconds flooded the space. The image feed stuttered and whited out, the sensor failing to cope with the EM surge. So far, so normal.
This was nothing like their other recent wormholes, though. No longer were they attempting to optimise energy expenditure, trying to extract more energy from the rift than it took to create. Instead, they were enlarging and stabilising it. It needed to be traversable. It needed to be traversable safely. Not by hardened machines, but by people.
She watched as the readings declined. Even the video feed re-established itself, showing an expanding black disk, the edges brushing against the containment ring. Passing into it. The bulk of the radiation came from the edge, so hiding it away should ensure safety. By the time radiation levels ceased their decline, she was staring at a black disk neatly contained within a metal ring.
"Wormhole is stable!" shouted someone.
"Radiation levels twice background," shouted Cara in answer. "Conditions green."
"Retract the shell," ordered the supervisor, and the spherical enclosure started rotating as one half shifted behind the other, revealing the wormhole to the waiting audience.
Cara heard a few beeps coming from the console two to her right, which was responsible for monitoring the vital signs of their away team. That wasn't the wormhole, at least directly; it was pure nerves raising their heart rates to levels the equipment considered anomalous. After all, they were people more used to sitting in fancy restaurants drinking expensive wine than setting foot on alien planets.
Someone else launched a drone, flying it into the black void. The video feed was projected into the corner of the control room's main display, showing utter darkness for a few seconds, followed by a burst of light and a perfectly normal looking meadow of green grass under a blue sky.
Admittedly, the grass was further away than was desirable. They'd have to use the parachutes.
"Atmosphere, gravity, radiation all safe," declared whoever's job it was to say that out loud. Everyone had been watching the main display, after all, and the blocks of green were clearly visible in the corner. Cara hadn't missed the radiation one flipping to amber while travelling, though; radiation levels in the wormhole interior were at least ten times normal. Thankfully, they wouldn't be in there for long. It would be no worse than getting a full-body x-ray.
"Diplomatic squad to the glider," spoke the supervisor into the microphone.
The squad of thirty strapped themselves in. Not particularly efficiently, but they weren't trained for this sort of thing, and their bulky outfits didn't make things any easier. Nevertheless, they were soon off, the contraption being pushed through the wormhole.
"We've landed safely," came the voice of Doctor Harry Withermark over the loudspeaker, a long held breath later. "We're all fine... so far..."
"Did you really need to add that last part?" mumbled Cara to herself as the wormhole snapped shut. "Please come back safely..."
There were post-operation checks to perform, but they drifted past in a blur. How long until the team returned? When should she start worrying about things having gone wrong on the other side? She was fairly sure something would go wrong. Everyone on the squad had seemed nice enough, but being able to fool people into thinking they were friendly was a job requirement for a diplomat. Given the international tensions this project had caused, she didn't doubt the group would end up fighting. She wouldn't put it past some of them to start threatening the other side if they didn't get what they wanted, even if the other side were dragons.
Perhaps the offending parties would end up getting eaten by dragons. That would be nice.
Her work for the day complete, Cara tucked herself into bed in her quarters in the island facility, hoping that by the time she awoke, the diplomatic squad would have safely returned.
She awoke not to their return, but to the sound of a blaring fire-alarm, and barely had time to wonder what it was before an ear-splitting explosion rang out. Flakes of concrete fell from the ceiling and cracks criss-crossed one wall. Cara very quickly decided she would prefer to be outdoors. Grabbing a pair of shoes but not stopping to change, she fled her room, heading for the closest emergency exit. All the while, she wondered what was happening. Had their equipment detonated? Had the other side launched an assault against Earth?
She hadn't considered what the dragons would do after eating the offending parties. Perhaps she should have...
The emergency exit came into sight, already open, with a half-dozen others on their way through it. Cara got within three metres before another explosion threw her from the feet. The abused construction failed, a block of concrete the size of an apple falling and cracking her on the head, sending her sprawling to the floor, unconscious.
When she awoke, things were... wrong. Her body felt lethargic and weak. She struggled to sit up, her muscles not being quite as responsive as she remembered.
No, that was backwards. They were exactly as responsive as she remembered. Before. Before the alien System had seen fit to boost her strength and dexterity. 'Status', she thought to herself, but there came no response. So the diplomatic squad had succeeded in one of their goals, at least; they'd freed Earth from that.
"Oh, good. You're awake," said someone, causing Cara to look around and take stock of her location. It looked like some sort of spartan hospital, but there had been no medical facilities on the island beyond an occasional first aid pack locked away in an emergency cabinet. Had she been taken home? No, now that she concentrated, she felt the gentle rocking of waves. She was on board a ship. Several countries had stationed naval forces around the island for 'protection'. Perhaps some of them were legitimately there for that reason, but all of them had hung back outside the exclusion zone, not wanting to risk System infection. Cara found it hard to place this one; the speaker had no obvious accent, nor was he wearing any sort of uniform she recognised.
"What happened?" she asked on general principles.
"It seems our diplomatic squad angered their hosts. They launched an invasion of the island. I'm sorry to say that by the time we arrived, there were few survivors left. You're one of the few we evacuated. We were only fortunate that they seemed to have no way of crossing the sea."
Cara snapped to attention, eyes wide. "Harry? What about Harry?"
"I'm sorry. We haven't seen anyone by that name."
Cara flopped down as her energy left her. They hadn't just been her colleagues. They'd been her friends.
"And I'm sorry to say this so soon after your loss, but we need your help. Even if the invaders can't cross the sea, they could still open another wormhole elsewhere at any time. We need to stop them."
"I have no idea how to block wormholes. No-one does."
"We know, which is why we need to take the fight to them. If we build a new wormhole generator, we can threaten them with nuclear destruction."
Cara shuddered. "That's horrible... but... we can't let them... Why did they even attack? I thought things were going well."
"Please stay calm. We don't know, and maybe we never will. We just need to do something about it."
"But I can't rebuild the wormhole generator from scratch! There are decades of research that went into it!"
"It's okay. You aren't on your own, and we were able to recover some of the data from the island before we were chased off. I assume you know the passwords to decrypt it?"
Had Cara not been suffering a mild concussion and then had bad news layered on top, she would have found the story suspicious. Alas, she was too distraught to give it the scrutiny it required, and so she reached out for the hand offered to her, helping her out of bed.
Fortunately, luck had not completely abandoned her. The friendly young man frowned, coming to a sudden halt on his way to the door of the medical bay.
"What's wrong?" asked Cara.
"... Nothing," he replied. "I was just thinking we should get you checked over before we start working, however much of a hurry we're in. It wouldn't do us any good if you collapsed part way through, after all. Why don't you sit back down for a moment and I'll find a doctor."
Despite her befuddled state, Cara didn't miss the slight hesitation, and the seeds of doubt started to sprout. She was recovering quickly from the blow to her head, and once she'd spotted the first crack, others swiftly followed. The facility on the island had an alert for the other side opening a portal, but the siren she'd heard prior to the explosion had been the generic fire alarm. How had the other side invaded without the alarm going off?
She stared at the man, who had failed to even introduce himself, or say where he was from. Obviously not home, or he wouldn't need her to decrypt the research. And why was he alone with her, waiting for her to wake up? He was staring off at nothing. Was that an earpiece he was wearing? Someone was talking to him? Something had just happened that made him want to confine her to this room?
She looked around, her eyes falling on a tray of medical supplies. With a sudden desire for a means of self-defence, a syringe and a couple of scalpels found their way from the tray to her pocket, moments before the man turned back to her. She had no idea what was in the syringe, but even if it was pure water, she was prepared to bet it would do some good damage if stabbed into an eye.
She knew her decision had been correct the moment she saw his face. "Sorry, but it will take the doctor a few minutes to get here. Why don't you lay back down while you wait?" he suggested, his eyes not at all matching the friendly tone of his voice.
Cara clamped down on her panic. She had no idea where she was, and was rapidly coming to suspect a kidnapping. She knew several members of the international negotiating team would kill to get their hands on the wormhole technology. Literally.
Her best guess was that she'd been taken while unconscious and they'd tried to fake her death, but had been called out on it. If this was a military vessel, it was unlikely others would invade it to rescue her. They'd just box it in and demand they return her. Had the rescue party turned up minutes earlier, perhaps they would have. But now they'd revealed they had an encrypted copy of the research data and were after a means to decrypt it. They wouldn't want that information leaking. It was likely the blow to her head would retrospectively turn out to have been fatal, and they would turn over a suitably doctored corpse.
Cara swore in the confines of her head; just when she wanted the boost to her strength from the System, she'd lost it. She could see the muscles under the shirt of her captor, and the assured way in which he walked. A straight fight wouldn't go her way.
"I don't suppose you have an aspirin or paracetamol? My head hurts."
Her captor's face flickered before settling on a gentle smile. "Of course," he said, extracting a white tablet apparently from nowhere and handing it to Cara. She brought it to her face, wondering what the pill actually was as she let it slip through her fingers, dropping to the floor.
"Careful," said the man, stooping to pick it up. Cara drove a scalpel through the back of his neck the moment her hands were out of his sight, sending him crashing to the floor, dead or paralysed.
She sat for a moment, hyperventilating. What if she was wrong? What if she'd just murdered someone who was trying to help her? Her fingers unconsciously reached for his ear, ripping out the device, which she held up to her own. A few seconds of agitated foreign language from it, which she wasn't able to translate, was enough to reassure her. As was the gun she found inside his shirt, and the knife on his ankle. She took both while wondering what to do next.
She was still trapped somewhere on a hostile ship. She'd taken one captor by surprise, while he was playing innocent, but that wasn't going to happen again. No-one else would believe she was still hoodwinked if they caught her outside. Heck, there were probably guards outside the door.
What resources did she have? A well-stocked naval medical bay. Cupboards of drugs, none of which she knew the purpose or effects of, and nothing labelled in English. Some small but very sharp knives. A bunch of equipment that wasn't really mobile and that could, at best, be used to bash someone over the head. Not a lot of use when what she wanted was communication. If there was a rescue party out there, getting the information to them would take away their reason for wanting to silence her.
Actually, she'd already sunk that option. She'd just killed someone. That was a perfect excuse for them to arrest her. No way would they just hand her back now.
The room had no windows, but even if she was on the deck or parameter, a military vessel was unlikely to deliberately add weak points like that. It would be unlikely for a medical bay to be out on deck, though. She needed to make her way up, or at least to the outside. Alas, it turned out that military vessels were also depressingly lacking in human-sized vents for her to climb up. They hadn't even had the courtesy to leave her a map. Still, this was the medical bay, not the brig. There had to be something.
Her panic spiked when she heard movement from the door. Of course, whoever had been yelling at the dead guy would have grown suspicious at the lack of response. The door opened and she found herself staring into the face of someone in naval uniform, an assault rifle in hand. His eyes flickered to the corpse and he started raising his weapon.
Cara was faster. She'd drawn and aimed her stolen gun the moment she'd heard the door, and the sound of its shot echoed through the medical bay and the corridor beyond.
There was no more time for planning. There was no way the gunshot had gone unnoticed. Cara trusted to luck and ran, sprinting down the metallic corridor and up the first staircase she found. Her luck held, and she burst out onto the deck, the night sky above her.
Quite a number of the vessel's crew were around, and all were armed and very surprised to see her. She didn't care; surprise was good. It meant they'd take a few seconds before they started shooting. She kept running, straight towards the edge of the ship, and she didn't stop when she reached it.
She impacted the water hard, knocking the air out of her. Moments later, she was blinded by searchlights. Never had she been so happy to not be able to see. She swam towards the light, ignoring the shock of the cold water, the pain of her impact with the sea, her clothes dragging her down, and her throbbing headache. She simply swam in a complete daze as her mind shut down and her body threatened to follow. She didn't remember the mouthfuls of water she took as she started to drown, or the arms reaching for her from the life raft as she was rescued.
She remembered nothing at all until she awoke back in a hospital ward. Had she failed to escape? Did she dream it? Her arm reached for the scalpel she'd hidden in her pocket, but found nothing. Worse than that; her clothes had been changed. No longer was she wearing her lab coat. And then, even worse than that, someone grabbed her questing arm.
"Cara, it's okay. You're safe. Take slow, deep breaths."
Cara had, in fact, stopped breathing entirely. That voice. Could it be? She did her best to focus her blurry vision, leaking a tear as the face of Harry Withermark appeared before her. Her panic swapping to a deep relief, she grabbed him with both arms, clinging to him as the tears flowed freely.
"It's okay. You're safe," he repeated.
She took in some more clues. The lack of the sea swaying beneath her. The wide window, showing a familiar city in full daylight. She was home.
Of course, things were never simple. Harry filled her in on events; how the island had been attacked by intercontinental missile and other countries had tried to take advantage to steal the wormhole technology. How many people had died in the result. How the diplomatic squad had been sent here instead of back to the island.
How a certain country was claiming that they'd done their best to rescue people from the attack, but that one of the researchers had paid them back by murdering two of her rescuers, and were now demanding extradition.
"So, now what?" she asked, staring wistfully out of the window, the island survivors and local members of the diplomatic squad having joined her. "You'd think they'd be satisfied getting access to a supply of monster cores, but no, the macho idiots aren't happy without waving their penises around and proving they're the biggest sharks in the pond."
"To be brutally honest, we're short of options," said Gregory Charles, who had been left with responsibility for sorting out the mess. "The international team has fallen apart. We have members arguing that those who took advantage of the missile attack should be kicked out. We can't be sure what those who did ransack the island actually got hold of, and not every missing staff member there has been accounted for. We were lucky enough to find CCTV of Cara's abduction, but a few others have just plain vanished. We can't be sure which of our 'partners' actually behaved themselves and which ones simply didn't get caught. And, of course, everyone is making the usual threats about what they'll do if they're denied trade positions, while claiming there was never any data theft or kidnapping, and we're punishing them for trying to help."
Harry swore.
"Yes, we share your opinion, but we have to be politer about it than that. Bloody politics."
"You can't possibly be considering capitulating. You aren't giving them Cara."
"Of course not. Our goals are, in no particular order, to warn our contacts on Erryn's world about the potential for hostile invasion, prevent the theft of wormhole technology, prevent the kidnap or assassination of anyone involved in the operation, and secure a supply of monster cores."
"We never should have been honest about the cause of the initial System infection."
"Everyone important would have found out about it soon enough, whether we tried to keep it hidden or not. You can bet the city population would have practically doubled with all the spies heading there."
"Yes, that's the problem," sighed Harry. "There's nowhere we can rebuild that will be safe... When even minor countries can launch missiles at targets halfway around the planet, what can we do? Rebuild in an underground bunker somewhere? And anyone with more than a passing knowledge of how the technology works has a target on their back. We're going to need to remain in hiding."
"Actually... there is somewhere they couldn't reach," said Cara. "We can't do anything about what has already been stolen, but we can probably clear off the rest of those objectives."
"And where might that convenient place be?"
"Erryn's world."
Cara suddenly found herself the subject of a lot of suspicious staring.
"You did watch the video of the pigs, right?"
"Yes, but... They have healing magic. Is there any harm in asking?"
"Perhaps not... But we'd have to be pretty desperate."
"We are pretty desperate," sighed Gregory. "Right, so we rebuild the wormhole generator in a nuclear bunker somewhere, then try to get you and everyone else with in-depth knowledge of the wormhole technology to the other side permanently. If we're going to do this, we should do what we can to improve the chances they say yes... It's often better to seek forgiveness than ask permission."
As she pondered how quickly they could rebuild, Cara found herself hoping they said yes. Given her experiences of the past day, she would give quite a lot to get away from Earth. She just hoped Erryn's world would prove more peaceful.
Comments
cathfach
Side stories are patreon exclusives, so they won't contain plot-relevent extra detail, alas. Nations are going deliberately unnamed, though. (Didn't I mention that in an earlier chapter? I thought I did.) We had the prologue for some general-population reaction to the System, but then it all got taken away from them again before anyone even had access to the skill shop, so not much happened. This island encampment was certainly not public. The general public might find some more interesting things to react to next volume, depending on what Harry tries to do.
Buzz1089
This chapter was interesting and I love seeing a perspective from earth. But I also don't feel like it gave us any new information. Kinda felt unnecessary. I had hoped a chapter on earth with this title would have provided more information about things on earth we don't already know about. Like general population reaction or which nations were involved. Still a fun chapter though! I'm super excited to see where this goes!
