Carnage by Aer-ki Jyr (the chimp paradox .TXT) 📕

Atlantis with nothing but herself and a pillar in front of her. It was made of blue crystal like the Responders in the Temples, but this was of Star Force design and operated a bit differently. She pointed her bare hand at it, with her first two fingers locked together like a gun barrel, and with a gentle squeeze of the muscles in her hand she triggered an Essence attack to fire a little orb of light towards it.

It hit…a little lower than she’d intended…and Taryn adjusted her aim, knowing the attack was more about how she released it from her fingers than where her fingers were pointed. The Essence pooled in her fingers again, gripping the air molecules around it and condensing them into a river of closely packed molecules, essentially squeezing the extra energy out of them and causing them to turn into plasma as she bound them up in Essence and launched them across the 8 meter gap to her target.

The Binder technique was one of many the Neofan had taught Star Force. It allowed for molecular locking, compression, and expansion on will. A more gruesome use of it was to enwrap a target and crush them down into a tenth of their normal size…or to expand them, essentially blowing them up as you pulled apart their molecules further than they could go while still locked together in the form of your body.

But a civilized use of it allowed you to do a lot of management actions…in this case keeping the plasma together long enough to hit the target, as well as the compression done beforehand to squeeze out the energy so that it could be delivered to the target.

Some of the Essence would be absorbed by the blue pillar on hit, and it would be transported down into a collection system that fed into the city’s central reservoir. It was a Magicite technology, but one linked into the planet’s defense grid. The reservoir was one of 194 on the planet that was filled by tankers coming from the Uriti, as well as small donations by the Essence users on Earth…and that Essence is what would fuel the planetary defenses, so every bit of practice Taryn got in here contributed a little more to the stored amounts.

Waste not, want not…so all the training equipment designed for Essence abilities was also equipped with collection technology, but you never got the same amount as you used to craft the weapon. Taryn estimated about 20%-25% was being recovered, and that was due to her sloppiness. The better one got with crafting Essence weapons, the less uncrafted energy remained.

But the pillar wasn’t just collecting uncrafted Essence that she was accidentally sending along with the weaponized part. It was also capable of taking crafted Essence and de-crafting it…but that required Essence use by the pillar itself, so there was no point in that when the amount collected would be less than what was used…except when you wanted to practice very damaging techniques. When the ‘safety’ setting was activated on the pillar, it would absorb all those attacks and not be destroyed itself…or the walls and the rooms beyond them.

Taryn’s little light show wasn’t anywhere near that damaging, and the blue crystal was too tough for a little plasma to mess with it, so she was just doing some target practice to work on her aim when Wes-049 melted the door behind her to expose the hallway through the otherwise smooth-walled egg-shaped room as he walked in.

“You forgot to knock,” Taryn said, ignoring him as she continued to shoot very slowly and methodically.

“We already have bioplasma that is far more accurate. What are you trying to achieve?”

“Just a little skill work. What’s up?”

“Paul just conquered a star system on his vacation with Cal-com.”

Taryn blinked and turned around. “What? Where?”

“A system called Ha’ven Nu’meori.”

“Never heard of it.”

“We had an embassy there. Primitive world, didn’t care for us much, and was apparently following the rules. Paul walked into an assassination attempt, did some telepathic searching, and found out the bastards were making a habit of it. All nicely off the books so no executions were recorded.”

“And Paul’s called for an invasion?”

“Already done it. Duke Corrington is there now and Paul and Cal-com are off to somewhere else.”

“So Sean is right. We’ve got a problem hiding in obscurity under our collective noses.”

“So it would seem, unless this was an anomaly.”

“Fat chance of that. We’re going to need a surveillance push into all of these non-Star Force systems before we even think about going into the frontier en mass.”

“Yeah,” Wes agreed. “Looks like.”

“Did Sean say so?”

“Not yet. But it’s getting painfully clear we’ve let too much slide locally in the name of sovereignty. It seems we can’t catch a break.”

“Wrong. The Zak’de’ron leaving is a huge break.”

“So why doesn’t that lower our workload any?”

“Because the galaxy is too damn big when you’re trying to be responsible for all of it,” Taryn said, turning around and firing again…this time missing her mark by twice the previous amount.

“You pulled your right elbow too much,” Wes noted. “Why don’t you just point and release?”

“That’s not as fun,” Taryn said, pulling up both hands and firing three shots from each rapid fire into the pillar in what looked like a shotgun pattern rather than a sharpshooter’s work.

“If you say so,” Wes said, looking at her shoddy targeting. “Did you have any more thoughts on last night?”

“Yeah. I have no idea what Wilson is talking about.”

“Me neither. I can’t find any disadvantage to using Essence…other than by overdrawing. But he seemed damn certain about it.”

“I know. But all he has is a gut instinct, and I can’t confirm it. Though I do like real guns better…except these have unlimited ammo,” Taryn said, holding up her paired fingers as if they