Twelve
The weeks of travel turned into a brutal blur. The first day had been the easiest, Benny falling into a rhythm as ti went on. He worked on training them, finding their limits and pushing them every day. Kon could feel the differences as his node slowly devoured the energy his body cultivation had filled him with, reinforcing and strengthening his body as he grew in leaps and bounds.
In the morning they’d go over their aliases, working through detailed personal histories that could include, job history to companies that existed, extensive family trees, accents, academic backgrounds, all of it stretching his mind further and further. Benny taught him tricks to morize facts, helping him to efficiently learn.
Diur found the morization easier than Kon did, but he adapted better to the new techniques Benny was teaching them. Their spars were getting closer and closer, Diur continued to beat him, her strength and skill still superior to his. He was starting to land a few blows here and there though.
Benny’s only praise was a new combination that he’d teach or add another counter to the current combination they were learning. He beat the combinations into their muscles, burning them into muscle mory until they could both complete the newest set of attacks and counters in their sleep.
Near the end of their awake cycle Benny would treat Kon and Diur to weapons practice. He kept a simulation rig that could be used to run through simple situations with different weapons. Neither of them were particularly skilled with the weapons, but Benny had the patience of stone, never showing the slightest hint of frustration as they failed or were ineffective.
Kon found himself leaning more and more toward close quarter weapons. His ti on Crucible with Alice and the rifts they had run made the lee weapons a familiar, comfortable weight. Benny would have disparaging comnts for him when he ca out of the simulation after having used a heavy mace to quell a rift for the third ti in a row.
“The point of the simulation is to have you learn new weapons. Not reinforce your, admittedly decent, skill with others. To clarify, I ant your ability to whack braindead monsters with a heavy stick,” Benny said as Kon carefully pulled the helt off and handed it over to Diur.
Surprisingly even with all of her ti spent in sword training, she had taken a liking to distance weapons that the simulation had loaded into its database. Heavy ballistic rifles, mag rifles, and even used an anti-material rifle once. She had found a joy in inflicting widespread damage with each caress of the trigger.
“These are basic weapons that can be found throughout any armory in the galaxy. We’re not even getting to the exotic stuff or the higher level equipnt until you can show a basic level of understanding with these,” Benny continued. In front of them on a screen, the scene Diur was in appeared.
It was a burning world, tall skyscrapers wreathed in flas as rift monsters flew across the sky in hordes, backlit by the crackling flas. Benny and Kon both went silent as they watched the Ulmna woman showcase the weaponry she had chosen this ti. Benny cackled as a plasma caster began to send thousands of needle-like bolts across the sky.
“The girl gets it. Every situation has a weapon that is efficient. Sure you could probably fight this with a mace, warhamr, shotgun, or sothing like that. But why stretch your ability to et the situation when you can simply change your equipnt?” Benny asked. Kon stayed silent, a growth of resentnt and stubbornness in his chest as they watched the creatures explode as superheated plasma blew them apart.
“We’re arriving in two days. The situation will be tight quarters, differentiating levels of hull thickness between us and space, no clearly defined enemies, no uniforms, and everyone will have weapons and their own grudges. It’ll be a shit show. A precise low casualty weapon would be preferable in that environnt. Less likely to start a riot or blow out a bulkhead and send us all tumbling in space. I’m going to give you two the specs for the station the last ti I was there and I want you to write up a mission plan,” Benny said as they watched Diur cut through the swarm.
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“This is the issue with plasma weapons,” Benny said, looking up briefly to the white hot barrel. There was no real damage that could occur in the simulation, but the helt could help generate a feeling of pain, greatly muted, that sothing like that would generate. Diur tossed the heavy weapon to the ground and pulled out another weapon.
The long tube had to be held on her shoulder, tracking to the heart of the remaining swarm as they raced toward her. Smoke and fla filled the screen, disappearing an instant later. The rocket raced toward the group, detonating in an expanding ball of white fla.
“Phosphorous missile. Never use that if you don’t want everything to die,” Benny said. A second and third missile raced afterward, the huge tube being dropped afterward to the ground to join the partially lted plasma caster. The entire horizon was painted a glaring white as the rift monsters burned as they fell.
Diur picked up a heavy ballistic chain gun, a series of barrels slowly whirling until a river of brass began to be ejected, the Ulmna woman sweeping the weapon’s multiple barrels along a path of destruction as she put the burning monsters out of their misery.
“A gatling gun. Those are from old earth. Used to be point defense weapons on surface shuttles. There are so old dia we have in the archives that show they could have been used like this, by a singular person or team, but I think that may just be an exaggeration,” Benny said. Diur finished the simulation a minute later, a savage smile on her face as she took off the helt and placed it next to her.
“You’re having fun with this at least. I gave Kon your howork. Now, every weapon you have used in the simulator is a real weapon aboard the Puca. I have armor already picked out that will apply to your aliases, you have to figure out the weapons you want. There will be schematics of the station as well, so show so level of tactical planning,” Benny said. He rose up, giving Diur a pat on the shoulder and disappeared.
A mont later both of their holopads dinged with alerts and the two of them quickly pulled them out, setting them on the table and connecting with the projector mounted in the center. Within a few seconds they had a floating recreation of the data that Benny had given them.
“Looks like an old mining station,” Diur said as she fiddled with the controls, spinning the station around. Kon grunted, seeing the long shafts that penetrated into the small moon. There were plenty of icons and data attached to each of the shafts, but he focused on the streams of data that were pouring off of it.
“Quarter of a million beings on that? They have to be living stacked right on top of each other,” Kon said. Diur grunted and flipped the diagram showing how tall the structure was. It wasn’t big enough to be holding everyone that it said it was.
“How deep down do those shafts go?” Kon asked. Diur looked over the notes and frowned.
“Few hundred ters. And most of them are used for storage. Where is everyone staying at?” The two of them continued to work the diagram over until Kon noticed it.
“Diur, this cavern here,” Kon said, pointing to a small curved recess on the corner of the diagram. Diur clicked it and it suddenly expanded showing a much larger area that was filled with cheap bio-dos.
“Found everyone,” Diur said as she looked over the numbers.
“I don’t think this area matters as much. Look how far away it is from the station and landing pads. There’s a series of rails that connect it to the facility,” Diur said, pointing at thin lines that connected the cavern to the mining facility.
“Do you think Benny wants us to plan around it?” Kon asked. Diur shot him a dour look and Kon rolled his eyes and nodded.
“Of course he does. So here’s the landing pads we’ll be arriving on,” Kon said, stabbing his finger at a small field off to the side of the facility. The two of them began to develop a plan for landing, what weapons they should have equipped, ergency escape routes, contingency plans for when that failed, and everything else they could think of.
The hours drifted by and their docunt grew and grew and grew until both of them had decided together that was enough for now, retreating to their bedrooms. Kon flopped onto his bed and looked up at the ceiling, wondering about if everything they had done would be enough to appease Benny.
“Probably not, but I’m too tired to care right now,” Kon thought as his eyes closed on their own volition, sleep stealing upon him
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