Felothi stepped through the doorway and into the small, dingy hab. The door slid shut behind him with a SWISH.
He carefully slung the rifle off from his shoulder, then stepped in a wide alcove set into the wall to the right of the door. He set the rifle down and leaned it into the corner, then began to undo the various cords that held his robe tight.
Once they were loose, he pulled his beltknife away and hung it on some pegs inside the alcove. He placed it alongside three others - one taller and a little more stylish than his, while the other two were smaller and child-sized.
Just off beside that were a number of modest robes hanging from a handful of hooks. Similar to the beltknives, there were robes of various height here, with two of them clearly shorter than the others.
Today’s chapter might be a bit too real for some of us, I think.
Lacroseth City was typically serene at night, especially when the skies were nice and the dome was open. This wasn’t such a night. The clouds blotted out the stars, and rain pattered all over the dome.Many portions of the city itself had gone dark, save for those closest to the center - those districts truly never stopped working. Up in the air between the buildings, much of the city’s traffic had become rather subdued, at least from regular gondolas. Multiple commercial transport vehicles had instead taken over the skylanes.Down on the ground, and in the buildings, millions of Drogar toiled on through the night. They kept the city safe, and warm, and most importantly, running. Guards and engineers and emergency personnel. Those sorts.Some simply liked to keep watch.
Retholis watched the Taloren sun sink down into the horizon. The sliver of bright yellow disappeared as sharp reds faded into a rich purple. High above, stars began to hint at their existence as night crept forward.Below the horizon, all over the city, lights began to turn brighter. The traffic in the skies subdued, and the streets began to clear.As he looked out across the city, a voice that spoke in Drogar spoke out in his office. Although the speech was acceptable, there was a clear lack in the typical melodic lilt most Drogar had.“You’re absolutely sure this is secure?” asked the voice.Retholis spun around and smiled with a short nod. He looked at the holographic image of the man in front of him. Or, rather, across his desk, opposite him.
Admiral Chase’s secret prison lab was brimming with activity, though anyone who looked at it would never have been able to tell. On the outside, it looked just like any other large warehouse - boring.People sometimes walked in and out with various sealed crates, but that was pretty much it.The inside was a completely different story.Numerous Federation engineers were busy all over the manufacturing floor as their printers cranked out shield after shield after shield. Each one was just slightly different in one way or another, be it shape, size, weight, materials, or overall cost.After the shields were completed and set aside, various drones would carry bundles of them over to the fully enclosed shooting range on the other side of the lab. There, mor
Duelist Ra’ventrii’s fight card was splashed up on the screens above the arena. An image of her armored form rotated as her statistics were laid out next to it.---Rank: 4th Tier, Top SeedWin Streak: 14Odds: 37:1KO Bonus: +7---Next to her fight card was her opponent’s - duelist Ledoss, a Reborn Anew. Unlike many others, his armor was sleek and light. It clearly provided an amazing amount of flexibility, similar to the Ra’ventrii armor.Unlike it, however, its outer plates were scales rather than feathers, and were colored an offwhite with gold accents. It
The stars glittered brightly up in the sky as dark waves lapped up against the dome’s edge. And just inside that edge, in a dark area of Lacroseth City, was a nondescript Red Zone.All in all, the Zone was unassuming. It consisted of a few low buildings with relatively simple designs and with muted colors. In fact, anyone who glanced in its direction wouldn’t have been able to tell much difference from the rest of the city around it.Otherwise, everything else inside was practically invisible to the untrained eye - the central security and communications tower, the multiple disguised guardstations, the discreet plain-robed guards patrolling the zone, the popup autoturrets embedded in the ground everywhere.All of them looked relatively normal. Or at least, they were disguised to look no
Colviss stood in the middle of the gathering hall she had called home for the past few months. She watched with stoic silence as the Drogar all around her packed everything up and got ready to move out.The many racks of weapons and armor all around their temporary base had some of their contents packed into crates and cases. But the majority of them went directly to their deployment kits, and were being equipped right on the spot.Among them was Felothi, who was wearing a loose slash-resistant combat suit. He attached a number of blood red armor plates over it, and adjusted their fit using reinforced mesh straps.He slung one of the many standard rifles over a shoulder, slid a MedGun in his thigh holster, sheathed his blade on his waist, then filled his armor’s container slots with all of the ammunition and m
Eva and Szereth stood in his lab and pored over the Ra’ventrii armor as it hung suspended in midair. Hanging next to it was a highly translucent holographic readout of all of its statistics and settings.Though Szereth was deep in the weeds and explaining every stat, Eva found herself unable to concentrate. Part of that was her trait, of course.But most of it was because of Ledoss. More specifically, his words.“I think I gotta stop dueling,” she said.Szereth stopped in mid-explanation, turned to her with a quizzical look on his face, and opened his mouth to protest. But just as he was about to speak, he came to a realization.Every fight she had with a Reborn had been tough, and it was only go
The Admiral’s temporary lab was in the midst of yet another highly productive cycle. Load bearing antigrav drones flew in every direction as they brought their cargo from sector to sector. Recycled and raw materials to shield frames to fully-completed antigrav shields.Off in the corner, the testing range was still in full swing, blasting antigrav shields in a real-world stress-test. The shields almost always worked perfectly and captured the vast majority of the bullets fired at them.They only failed when they held more than they could handle and the whole thing short-circuited. There were also the rare cases where the frame itself was struck, and caused the antigrav field to fail or weaken.In another corner, they were scanned for defects and other flaws. A vast majority were fine, though some held a