Isoko spoke softly, quietly. Soon, she was saying small words in Japanese that Mark didn’t understand, but he understood as wrapping it up due to the unmistakable repetition of small words—

  And then she clicked off her phone.

  “Bad news,” Isoko said, as she lowered her phone. “Officially, Crystal Tower wants nothing to do with protecting a second gateway between the Two Worlds. They think it is irresponsible and one portal is enough. Their portal is enough.” Isoko frowned. “But that’s what Crystal Tower says. The truth is that Tokyo is the real power behind the Tower, and they’re the ones who fund all of Crystal Tower’s enterprises, and they enjoy their near monopoly on gates between the Two Worlds. Privately, Crystal Tower might want to help, but only because they are actual heroes. Tokyo is telling them ‘no’, and is planning on restrictive funding and possibly firing everyone who breaks the no-compete line, who chooses to help with the gate here.” Isoko looked to Eliot’s room, saying, “Whatever Eliot heard in the meeting was not the full truth.”

  Mark asked, “Sooo… That means what?” knowing full well what most of it meant.

  Sally’s heart beat hard, her face falling with worry as she said, “No help from Crystal Tower at all.”

  Isoko nodded. “Grandma isn’t coming either, and she told me that I need to escape if the place is coming down on us. She thinks that someone is going to try and sabotage the whole thing, too.”

  Mark found himself unsurprised at the prospect of sabotage.

  None of this was that surprising, really. Sure, it sucked that the heroes of the world were going to let whatever happened, happen, but on the other hand…

  Mark said, “We have to be able to do this ourselves, otherwise it won’t work anyway.”

  Sally had a moment of worry that shifted to clarity. She stood strong once again.

  Isoko said, “That’s what grandma said, too.”

  Mark made an educated guess on a few other things that might have been said during Isoko’s conversation with Wandering Sage, asking, “Did she say anything about the Aluatha Empire not wanting Aurora to have this? They still want the gate, of course. But they don’t want Aurora and House Valen to have the win.”

  Sally blinked. “What?”

  “It’s a theory, yes,” Isoko said.

  “No wait wait,” Sally said, “What do you mean about Aurora and House Valen and the Empire not backing them?”

  “There’s some background stuff that we never really heard about, but I’m inferring…” Mark gathered his thoughts then said, “Elaria and House Valen don’t have any guards, and the one guard they do have always looks on the verge of committing great violence against anyone anywhere near Elaria, because… I’m not sure it’s my secret to say, but when the Imperial Family took over Aluatha in the wake of the Reveal, the Valens were ousted. They probably would have been killed, but their bloodlines are tied to a lot of strong enchantments in the Empire, or something like that. And now Elaria has two kids and one of them is the world’s greatest dragonhunter and the other one is just as accomplished at kaiju killing, but they have no real power, and Aurora is always worried about quotas and shipments and valuables getting back to the Empire. So she’s not secure in her position of power at all. I’m sure there’s more to it, but I don’t think the Empire likes any of them.”

  “It’s complicated in ways we don’t even know,” Isoko said.

  Sally looked between both of them.

  Mark asked Isoko, “You think they want Aurora to fail the first time and take over from her?”

  “Probably,” Isoko said. “So we need to make decisions about our own futures, now, so we’re all on the same page when shit goes sideways.”

  Ah.

  Yeah.

  That was the next big question, wasn’t it.

  Mark’s decision was easy, though. “I’m staying no matter—”

  “When Aluatha sends their mythical Sentinels to fuck up this whole operation, Mark,” Isoko said, clarifying. “That is what I mean when I say ‘goes sideways’. It means someone is going to sabotage this whole thing, and it will not be pretty at all, and all of the responsibility for everything will fall on House Valen. It’s possible that the Empire only gave them this so that they would fail how they wanted them to fail.”

  Mark grinned, finding himself pleased with a clear problem, even if the vectors of attack weren’t visible right now. “I’m staying no matter what, and if shit goes sideways then that’s fine. We should be able to solve those problems, because all three of us here are either aiming for Inquisitor power, or similar.”

  At the mention of Inquisitors, Sally straightened up.

  Yeah.

  She hated nobles lording power, so this was fine with her… Drakarok was all about murdering nobles who perpetuated horrors, after all, and Sally was right there with her God of War and Murder.

  Isoko was close behind.

  And then Isoko looked to Eliot’s room, where he was still working. She turned back toward Mark and Sally, saying, “They want to take him to Earth to set up the gatehouse over there, and he has to do that. I think that means that they want to waylay him on Earth and prevent his return to Daihoon. That’s how I would do it, anyway. Which means we might be waylaid and unable to come back, too. There’s probably tens of little plots like that to strip this place of people so it fails small before it can fail big.”

  Sally said, “If they send in some big transports, or ask all the civilians to leave on Grey Whale before they open the big gate, then that will be absolute proof that they want Aurora to fail, and fail badly. They wouldn’t want the civilian population and all these noble families angry with the Empire, right?”

  “Probably, yes,” Isoko said. “So that means that most people won’t be here to begin with. It’ll make it real easy for this place to fail.”

  Both Sally and Isoko were spiraling downward.

  But Mark said, “We can manage this.”

  They weren’t fully convinced.

  Mark explained, “Okay, well look at it this way: I have a lot to personally lose if stuff here goes sideways. I don’t want to be in some cage somewhere making metal, but they’d do that. There’s something happening over in Okuana— I’ll start at the beginning. So the price of adamantium went up to 67 million per kilo a few days ago, and today…” Mark pulled out Quark. “Quark. What’s the price of adamantium today?”

  Quark was fully alive and he did not just answer. Instead, he said, “I have taken the liberty of extrapolating your conversation into a threat assessment of the local environs. General Aurora is in a meeting with Colonel Kandon and several other interested parties, all of them discussing what to do in case of planned failure from their superiors. The Empire has called for the civilian population to be evacuated on Grey Whale in 3 days. So, would you like to be involved in the planning of the defense of the land? I can hook you into that conversation rather easily. Also, the current price of adamantium is 72 million per kilo. You are quite rich, sir!” Quark added, “Also, I have taken the liberty of corralling your bank accounts and signing the paperwork to get your money from your Orange City accounts. City AI Orange was very helpful, Sir!”

  So that was a lot, all at once.

  For a moment, Mark didn’t know what to say.

  Sally whispered, “Fuck. They called for an evacuation.”

  “Yup,” Isoko said.

  Mark said, “Thank you, Quark. I will be… letting…” Mark recalibrated. Mark said, “Send Aurora a message that we’re here to stay…” Mark looked to Isoko and Sally, who were both staring at the floating eyestalks and rectangular body of Quark, both of them unsure. Strongly, adamantly, Mark said, “We’re here to stay.”

  Sally blinked, then easily said, “Yup. If you’re here I’m here. Ride or die.”

  Isoko nodded, saying, “Same.”

  Quark happily and professionally, said, “I have sent the message to General Aurora, Sir— Oh! She is calling back. I will put her on.”

  Aurora’s voice came out of Quark’s body, “Mark. What the fuck are you doing with your AI spying on private conversations?”

  She seemed pissed.

  Mark brushed past that, stating, “We want to ensure the continued working of the settlement, as it is, with you in charge and nothing changing. I would much prefer for myself not to be put under the auspices of someone else who I do not know and have no reason to trust, especially since they’ll be involved in the destruction of what we’ve already built. For that reason and more, when they call for Eliot to go to Earth to build the gate, we will get back to this side to support the opening, for real.”

  For a moment, Aurora was silent.

  Mark waited.

  And then Aurora said, “They wouldn’t harm you or yours, Mark. They’d oust the Valen family and put someone else here in charge and then hand out enough boons to make the transition as seamless as possible. You would be well taken care of by the Empire.”

  “I’d still prefer things to remain as they are, so we’re all here for the big fight, Aurora.”

  Sally said, “Reporting for duty, ma’am!”

  “Here to stay, ma’am!” Isoko said. “And I’m still learning magic, ma’am!”

  “Eliot would respond in the same way, but he’s currently busy working on plans for the improved gatehouse and all the rest,” Mark said, glancing over into Eliot's room. Mark added, “He’s working on big cannons right now, which seems like they will be needed if they’re sending the Grey Whale away.”

  There was a small huff on the other end of the line that could have been a sigh, or a small joy. For a moment, there was silence, and then Aurora’s voice came back softer, “Thank you. I’ll call Eliot with details for the rest of the build, which will be happening… soon. 4 hours. Let him know that.” And then her voice was fully strong, and normal, as she said, “You four should plan on a trip back to Earth in 36 hours, after Eliot is done building here. He already agreed to the trip back to Earth, so that is happening.”

  Mark said, “Yes, ma’am! Will they try to trap us over there, ma’am?”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “… Not physically.”

  Aurora hung up.

  And then Mark said, “I’m going to put together a better go-bag, pull Eliot out of his zone, tell him what’s happening, and then trying to sleep for a few hours and probably force him to sleep some, too. What are you going to do?”

  “Most of the same,” Sally said, already moving to her bedroom. “I need my hamper cleaned, though, if possible.”

  “I’ll do that,” Isoko said, following Sally into her room. “And then it’s right to bed for me; I’m already packed to leave in case of emergency.”

  Mark nodded and went to his own room.

  He didn’t have a dirty hamper. He cleaned his clothes as he cleaned himself every day, and then he put his clothes back on the hangars in the closet, or folded them into the drawers. But he could still fix up his go-bag. The go-bag sat under his bed, with the handle pointed out for easy access. Mark yanked it out into the open and rapidly went through it. He organized a few different things a few different ways, making some room. Mostly, he made sure his shaper manual from Addavein was in the bag, just in case the dragon ever showed up. He might get offended that Mark didn’t have his book with him and Mark wanted to avoid that. And then there was underwear, jeans, shirts, and socks.

  … What did he want to keep from the settlement?

  Aside from all of his magic trinkets he had bought, of course. He was wearing those and he would remain wearing those. Mark pulled out the spellbreaker from under his shirt to check on it. The trinket was glowing well, which meant that it had a full charge. It wouldn’t recharge on Earth, but at least it wouldn’t break…

  “Shit,” Mark said, looking at his ring of No-Wealth and his ring of Repair. “These will break on Earth.”

  … He’d take them off at the last moment.

  His Shaper-assister, hanging on the wall like a collection of belts that he used to make his adamantium helmet, would also remain here. That would break on Earth, too. Mark would use it to make a helmet before he left for Earth, though.

  He was coming back, of course, but he did not doubt the ability for Memphi or the Aluatha Empire to make a convincing case for them staying on Earth. The Empire wanted Aurora to fail. They wanted someone else in charge. They really didn’t like the Valen family.

  It was probably a dragonist versus imperialist thing.

  Soon, Mark was repacked and good to go, with real goldleaf money in the pockets of his go-bag and an extra pair of phones… But he didn’t need the phones, did he? Mark glanced over to the silver box that had been Quark’s main body, to the five phones stuck out of the top of it like pieces of toast. The whole thing had glowed gently before today, but now it was broken and dead, and all that was Quark was inside Mark’s new ‘phone’.

  Mark asked Quark, “Quark. Do you need your old body?”

  “I do not, but I would be willing to accept any sensory upgrades you might request from Mister Cybersong. Basic cameras are acceptable—” Quark said, with barely veiled sarcasm, “and the speakers and microphones are passable, but they could be better.”

  Mark said, “Sure,” as he walked out of his room and over to Eliot’s room.

  Eliot was still in the zone with his computer, the speedster-keyboard flickering below Eliot’s spread fingers like screen on the fritz.

  Mark spoke up, “Eliot.”

  Eliot remained in the zone.

  Mark poked Eliot with Union, helping to support his Power and to get his attention, as he said, “Eliot.”

  Eliot flinched back to reality. He blinked. “What what?”

  Mark explained the situation rapidly, but Eliot already knew most of it, though the news about the Grey Whale getting filled with all civilians in a few days was news to him. And then Mark offered sleep, because that’s what he was going to do.

  Eliot stared at his screen for a long moment, then he got up from the chair and went to bed, saying, “Going hard all day long and now this… So yeah. More sleep.” Eliot got under the covers, still wearing his clothes. “Ready!”

  Mark knocked him out.

  And then Mark went to his bed and set an alarm with Quark. By that time Sally asked for sleep as well. Soon, Mark was the only one still awake. Then he knocked himself out.

  Quark woke Mark up at 1:30 AM, which was actually several hours later, instead of just 3 short hours, as expected.

  The entire settlement was awake and working double time, with stone already piled on the grounds outside of the gatehouse, waiting for Eliot to put to use. More stone was being quarried and flown in by the hour, solving that problem. But there was another problem to solve. Metal. That problem had also been ‘solved’ while they were sleeping. It would need to be solved a few more times, but…

  “Enough to start!” Eliot said.

  A massive pile of trash metal had been pushed through a small gate to Earth and dumped in the middle of the gatehouse. It was twisted girders from old construction and rusted cars that were somewhat compacted into a big stack of them, and bits and bobs of plastics and paints and other non-metals strewn throughout. It was mostly steel, according to an electromagnet test. That was probably how they had gathered it all up and then dumped it; just picked it up with a big magnet, opened a hole in the veil, and dropped it through.

  Eliot saw the pile of metal and tried to work it, but it wasn’t happening for some reason.

  Eliot called for a pyro team to burn the metal. After most of the trash turned to thick black smoke that drifted into the sky, Eliot was able to work with the metal. The message came in that there would be no refill, though. This was all the metal Eliot was getting.

  Aurora said, “Don’t worry about building cannons, Eliot. Just do the gatehouse and the normal stuff.”

  Eliot was miffed, but he did what he could.

  As the sky flickered with blue auroras, Mark stood to the side of new construction, watching, helping with Union. Eliot had made a few glass greenhouses to help with Union, with sustenance and warmth and everything that the people here needed to continue functioning at high power, and Mark made judicious use of those greenhouses.

  Quark watched everything with about ten new cameras of various sizes and shapes, from little button-cameras that Eliot had tried to make into the most amazing small cameras that he could make, to one large camera that contained tens of different functions. Quark couldn’t keep the big camera with him like he could the small cameras, which had formed a collection of trinkets in Mark’s pocket, but he liked the big one the best. Quark sat on top of the big one, plugged into it with a silver tail of metal, recording everything he could in high-definition. The little guy had information storage capabilities measured in some really high computer-size-speak that Mark didn’t recall, but even so… he was taking a lot of video.

  Quark whipped the big camera around, stopping here and there to record, to see the world through the hundred kilo, 15-centimeter-wide-lens camera. And then he moved on, again and again.

  “Oh this is simply fantastic, sir!” Quark said. “Mister Cybersong’s Man-made Manipulation scouting control works very well with this one.”

  Mark glanced to Quark, sitting on top of the big camera, swiveling it around and looking at everything. He stopped here and there, at places that seemed… empty. That open space of field over there by the wall. The top of the wall over there. The sky under the auroras. And then he went back to looking at people, lingering on various guys and girls moving rocks around, and at the ships overhead as they moved supplies into the area.

  And then Quark went back to looking at nothing at all, here and there.

  Mark was worried about invisible goblins, but there were none of those out there. Mark had checked.

  So Mark asked him, “What are you looking at when you look at the empty spots?”

  Quark swiveled the big camera toward Mark, pointing the dark lens at Mark’s face. “I’m checking on threats, of course!”

  And then Quark flicked the camera back down and around, to look at the central gatehouse.

  Tartu and Kardi were by the central gate space, by the smaller arch at the center of the big one. A whole lot of mages were over there right now, but a few mages were up in the air, working on metal spikes that protruded from the gate frame toward the center of the gate space. Those spikes were several meters long and the cold was fucking everyone up, for Mark had seen tools fall from frozen fingers more than once and curses about the cold were heard far and wide, but everyone was still working.

  A lot of Freyalan paladins were out and about, helping to keep the people healthy and warm, and Mark was in a Union with them, but there was only so much he could do, and some people didn’t want his help. Tartu was one of those people.

  Tartu had glanced this way a few times and Mark could sense his hatred. Mark sensed that hatred even more when he tried to connect to the guy, to bring him into the Union that was supporting everyone out here tonight. But Tartu brushed him off.

  Mark had smirked at Tartu brushing him off, debated whether or not to pierce Tartu’s resistance, and then he decided against that. He connected to Tartu through the other paladins in the area, instead, which was even better. Ha! Take that warmth and power, sucker!

  But now Mark was looking at Tartu as a possible threat.

  Mark asked, “Do you think he’s a threat?”

  Quark said, “Possibly, and yet no. The larger threat is his friend, Kardi Shale. I believe she hates you quite a lot. What did you do to her? I cannot find any records of an incident.”

  Mark clicked his tongue how Isoko sometimes did. “More like failed to do to her. She had the hots for me, but I wasn’t reciprocating at all.”

  “Ahhh… Perhaps? Hmm...”

  Quark went silent as he pointed the camera at Kardi and zoomed in and out a few times.

  … Mark turned back toward Eliot, to watch him work, to focus on his own job of Unionizing warmth and power. The gatehouse and some adjoining structures were getting finished in 24 hours, at the latest. Right now the gate still looked like two very tall stone trees with steel-frame branches connecting overhead, but Eliot was adding more and more—

  “It is strange, sir,” Quark said, “That this settlement doesn’t have a more robust AI community. I am not a real person, and thus could not be a part of the community, but information processing is something that AIs do very well and humans struggle with… as far as I can tell. It is only right and proper to have an assortment of complementary Powers all working together, as per standard operating procedure, so where is the settlement AI?”

  “There are AIs here, helping out at the command center.”

  “Algorithms, sir. Not AIs. In fact, when General Valen applied for a settlement AI, and she got one, that AI and their three replacements failed to show up in the months of preparation before the sendoff, so Valen stopped trying.”

  “… Do you see something concerning? That a person wouldn’t see?”

  “A lot of minor plots that probably don’t mean anything to anyone but their inhabitants. Also, I might be hallucinating. I am still quite young… But may we get better cameras of different types from the command center? Maybe some surveillance logs, too? There seems to be a firewall in the command center against digital intrusion.”

  … Mark’s paranoia spiked.

  Mark was pretty sure that Quark wasn’t some sort of infiltrator AI, gifted to him by Orange in order to do… something. Get him killed in battle? Probably not. Get access to the entire network of power in the city center? More likely. Access to the command center wasn’t allowed by anyone’s AI tools (or rather, ‘algorithm tools’, if Quark’s assessment was to be believed), and people got written up when that happened.

  Mark said, “You’re young and you don’t need that and I’m not going to have my actions questioned right before this very large, very important event. We’ll ask Eliot for some logs, though, when he’s done.”

  Mark would ask Eliot about a lot, when he could.

  “Quite right, sir! Apologies, sir. I’ll keep working with what I have.”

  “… No worries, Quark.”