MGiS 6 - Proportional Response - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Take out pride and this is just a numbers game.

Seriously, remove pride from the equation, whether personal or national, and it's all about bank balances. The powers that be are terrified about how this could affect the bottom lines of their corporate sponsors. How do I know this? Because it scares the hell out of me too.

Politics has lived on the shoulders of the lobbyists for so long that it’s become ingrained. There were precepts and plans for just about anything. War in Europe? Got it. Another nuclear catastrophe in Japan? There was a plan.

No one planned for a goddamn galactic empire showing up on our doorstep and making all these powerful people feel small and insignificant.

But what people are forgetting is the numbers game. They are scrambling so hard to protect what they have, that they can’t even see what waits on the other side. I’ve been trying to get people to see it, and that has resulted in becoming a political pariah because the lobbyists can’t see past their potential losses to recognize the guaranteed ones.

Yet.

~Senator Gideon Russel, taken from the minutes of a Senate planning meeting.

The shuttle bounced and juddered under Desmond as he studied the tiny fragment of crystal in his hand. It was small, barely three times the size of a grain of rice, but it shimmered a brilliant green so bright that it was astonishing it didn’t glow in the dark.

Mana is such a strange phenomenon, Desmond thought as he turned over the sliver of mana crystal in his gauntleted hand. Innately chaotic in nature, yet still able to form a crystalline lattice and take a physical form. Those two concepts should be at odds with each other, shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t mana’s inherently chaotic nature tear at the crystal and prevent it from forming?

Desmond danced the small crystal fragment over his fingers even as the shuttle bounced under his feet again. They’d just finished suppressing another Rift and the Rift Core was securely locked in his armored cargo pod. He’d found the fragment lodged in his gauntlet after settling into the shuttle, and was taking a moment to finally study the little bit of solidified mana in his hand.

“Do you have to play with that?” Chloe asked teasingly. “You know what they say if you play with it too much, right?”

“Play with what?” Raegan asked tiredly, the Uth’ra woman leaning heavily back into her seat and staring at the ceiling. “Is the Little Boss stripping for us? That’d be nice…”

The surprised squeak from Audra made Desmond smother a laugh as he flipped the bit of crystal into the air before snatching it and tucking it into his dump pouch. He doubted the tiny fragment was exuding enough mana to harm anyone, but better to be safe now that his tired mind was catching up with reason.

“No such luck,” Lila said while laughing quietly. “Okay, so piloting out I can do, but definitely not going to take the chance of piloting back… that one wore me out.”

“A sound decision,” said the other adept on the shuttle from her spot directly across from Desmond. “Especially as you are still one below a full complement of guards.”

“Not rushing it, Mia,” Desmond grunted, making the vulpine Taari woman wave a hand tiredly in dismissal.

“Wasn’t urging you to. Males have it harder in general as adepts, so being smart about who joins you is good. I’m actually kind of glad that whats-her-name? Faye? Yeah, that Faye isn’t with you anymore. Something about her just felt off to me, like she was plotting something.”

“That’s normal for Va’Aelfa,” grumbled one of Mia’s guards, another vulpine Taari like Mia, before wincing and shooting Lila an apologetic look. “Sorry, Lila. Didn’t mean it that way.”

“It’s fine, Jane. The nobles tend to give my people a bad rep, but I appreciate you realizing it,” Lila dismissed with a smile and a sigh.

“Faye moved on to other opportunities,” Desmond said, wanting to divert the conversation away from the quester and her time undercover on his team. “I’d gotten lucky so far with guards that I assumed. Just glad I was able to talk my way out of that one.”

“It wasn’t that bad, though,” Mia said pointedly, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her pointed fox ears sticking upright while a smile creased her muzzle. “You got Audra out of that mess and she’s fitting in like a dream.”

Another surprised squeak from Audra made Desmond smile and he pointedly did not look in the way of the Nagat that he knew was blushing furiously. He could see the end of her armored tail coiling back and forth on the deck out of the corner of his eye, a behavior that he’d learned meant nervousness.

“That is very true,” he agreed without hesitation before diverting the conversation to a safer subject. “You think we are going to be on this extended duty for much longer? I’m not arguing with the extra income in credits, but damn am I tired.”

Mia let out another long and exhausted sigh, shaking her head slowly and making her ears flop back and forth.

“Sun and Stars, I hope not. Windracer was a dumb bitch for pulling the shit she did, and I hate her a bit more for leaving us short-handed like this. It’s been what, six weeks?”

“Sounds about right, I think,” Desmond replied after a moment of thought. “At least since we pushed back from the station. They’ve kept us busy since then.”

“Just gotta survive long enough to enjoy the fat paycheck,” said another of Mia’s guards, but Desmond couldn’t remember her name as the exhaustion of a low mana cache dogged his bones. “Thanks again for patching us up, Adept.”

“No worries, can’t have you running a girl down and losing another adept,” Desmond replied with a nod and a smile.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Mia said after another minute of silence while the tired adepts and guards oozed weariness into the shuttle hold.

“Do what?” Desmond asked, blinking to get his eyes to focus.

“You run a guard down, and come out the other side with so few injuries that you can worry about another adept’s team,” Mia said, her sharp eyes studying Desmond. “I’m not ungrateful for you helping my girls out, never think that. But you have got to be burning through supplements to have that much to spare. I suppose it makes sense since you are relatively fresh from the academy.”

“Supplements?” Desmond asked dumbly, his tired mind trying to piece together what Mia was saying.

“Yeah, supplements. Like the mana-gas inhalers and the like. That’s why you are hanging onto that little crystal, right?” Mia asked, her tired gaze sharpening as she studied Desmond more intensely now. “We don’t have a mana range to practice on, so I unload in Rifts myself to keep sharp. You do the same, don’t you?”

“Uh… sure,” Desmond replied with a shrug.

“Mia, he’s an Enhancement adept, he doesn’t need the range to practice,” reminded one of her guards, this one a Hyreh. “I’m sure he’s fine and gets plenty of practice in the Rifts, since there’s a good reason to unload with the dangerous and offensive stuff.”

“Yeah, sorry. Just not firing on all my mental cylinders right now. Brain has already punched out for the day,” Desmond agreed with a wave of his hand.

“Be that as it may,” Mia continued, watching Desmond sharply. “You’d better not put yourself into mana debt just to patch up a scratch my girls can get treated in Medical. None of us want you getting hurt to prevent a bit of scarring. Not to mention the write-up that would come from a regular getting an adept hurt, even indirectly.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about that. I always make sure I’ve got enough,” Desmond reassured her and Mia nodded slowly.

“Okay, just make sure not to overuse the supplements. Medical can tell you what your cache will be able to handle safely, if you didn’t already know that. I know being young makes you feel laser-proof, but take it from an elder who uses far too many already. You will regret it later.”

“Uh…” Desmond hesitated to ask the question that came to his mind, but since he’d already started speaking, Mia gestured with one gauntleted hand for him to continue.

Glancing at his girls, Desmond found the five of them watching tiredly, so he just shrugged and asked the question.

“How many do you use, anyway? I try my best not to use them since they are expensive—”

“No, full stop,” Mia barked, the exhaustion falling away from her entirely as the senior adept’s stern side came forward. “You don’t penny pinch on your supplements. You don’t hoard them for a rainy day or try to stretch supplies out. Every single one of the Hegemony’s capital ships has facilities to refine and prepare inhalers at the very least. Sure, they are a cost, but they should be treated like the ammunition in your rifle: they exist to be used.”

“But you just said—” Desmond began to protest, his irritation at being talked down to rising despite the fact Mia was his senior.

“I was talking about overusing the supplements needlessly. I’ve used four myself this trip alone and I’m nearly tapped out. My max is six. How many have you used?”

Desmond didn’t answer, but his grimace was enough that Mia’s face twisted in a snarl.

“Damn it, McLaughlin! You haven’t used any, have you?”

“I haven’t needed to,” Desmond said defensively. “I’m an Enhancement specialist. My spells are very efficient.”

“Except Hydra,” Chloe murmured under her breath. She shrugged when Desmond shot her a sharp look. “What, it is true.”

“Not the point, Chloe,” Desmond grunted before stuffing his irritation down. His low cache was making him grouchy and he refused to take that out on his girls.

Chloe wouldn’t do anything to harm or frustrate me without a damn good reason, Desmond reminded himself silently, and that thought put out the growing fire of his irritation like someone had dumped sand all over it.

“How many supplements have you used on today’s run, McLaughlin?”

“One,” Desmond lied, not wanting to get yelled at by Mia.

Apparently, ‘one’ wasn’t nearly enough as the vulpine Taari adept’s face twisted in anger before she physically pulled back on it herself and spoke in a clipped tone.

“McLaughlin, either you are not using enough of your magic to supplement your team or you are hoarding your resources too tightly. Either way, it can result in you getting hurt or your team getting hurt. You need to break that habit. Void knows we are getting paid enough that you can afford a couple of inhalers a run.”

Not wanting to argue with Mia, Desmond just nodded and rubbed at his eyes.

“Got it, Mia. I guess I’m just too used to hoarding my consumables for emergencies from gaming. I use inhalers when I need to, but Throneblood taught us not to draw our cache down too far during training as that could hurt us.”

“During training,” Mia insisted firmly, her eyes flashing. “Your cache is still forming and growing. It’s less dangerous once you have time and experience under your…”

The vulpine Taari paused, staring at Desmond for a long moment before snapping her fingers sharply. The clicking noise made several of the guards flinch in surprise, it came so suddenly, but everyone was paying attention when she continued with a question.

“They didn’t tell you, did they?”

“Tell me what?” Desmond asked, doing his best to keep the sparks of irritation from reigniting.

“You graduated early, so you probably missed out on a few classes. I bet that it slipped the instructor’s minds, or they expected it to be handled on your first duty rotation. Void damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have expected you to be a perfect prodigy,” Mia grumbled before slumping into her chair. “This is as much my fault as it is yours.”

“Can you please just explain it already, Adept Rowett?” Chloe asked, her tone sharp enough that Desmond could tell she was getting irritated on his behalf now.

“Look, it’s been years since I had the final class myself or had a brand new adept to walk through it. But the long story shortened is that your cache is far more resilient now,” Mia began, rubbing at her eyes tiredly. “You can use the supplements more freely now. Medical can test you to see just how many you can use before you are over-stressing your cache and dynamo. The inhalers and other supplements are refined to make it easier for your dynamo to quickly process, but they aren’t ordered mana like you need for spells. Do not try to consume crystals directly.”

Mia glared pointedly at Desmond’s thigh where the crystal he’d been playing with earlier hid inside a dump pouch.

“The concentrated nature can strain your dynamo, it’s not built to grind pieces off of that.” She flicked her fingers at Desmond’s dump pouch pointedly before continuing. “But yeah, treat your dynamo and cache like a muscle still. Sure, they are more durable now so you can put them through more workouts, but you can still harm them. Keep within tolerances and flexible. Never drain yourself dry. That’ll do real damage.”

“And what about using a supplement when you don’t need one?” Desmond asked, his mind dipping back in time to the two incidents that he’d used Charybdis and overstuffed his cache.

“Don’t do that either,” Mia said sharply. “Mana is toxic, even to adepts. We just have a way to filter it out, but too much can still kill you if you are dumb. Weren’t you listening when I mentioned not using crystallized mana?”

“Not what I was meaning,” Desmond countered with a wave of his hand. “I was just remembering a while back, during my first year. I was issued a couple of inhalers for emergencies if another cadet-adept got hurt and needed to be healed. You talking about overfilling it got me thinking about how they knew what to issue me.”

“They likely didn’t,” Mia grunted. “The Armory stocks them in standardized doses. It’s one reason why the gas inhalers are preferred, you can just exhale the gas that your body doesn’t use and your suits filter can scrub it. But I recommend you get the info from Medical to have them tune the dosage for you. How is your dynamo doing right now?”

Closing his eyes, Desmond felt the sensation of pressure in his chest, feeling out his mana cache before he answered.

“Probably about thirty percent right now. I’m doing fine—” Desmond cut off when Mia tossed something through the air at him. He caught it and studied the quarter-sized brown tablet that she’d tossed his way.

“Eat that,” Mia grumbled. “As thanks for fixing my girls up. You shouldn’t be offering help like that if you are under fifty percent.”

“Is it safe?” Desmond asked, darting a glance towards Sasha. The Hyreh-Taari girl produced her mana scanner and began to adjust it. Desmond knew that the unit had the ability to scan for toxins that might be dangerous to him, so he waited while Mia answered his question.

“Yes. That would push me up by about forty percent of my cache. There’s no way it’ll overdraw you. It’s just a combination nutrient biscuit and mana to give you a bit of an energy pick-up.”

“No issues, Chief,” Sasha said a moment later, and Desmond popped the tablet into his mouth.

The little supplement tasted vaguely of brown sugar, and Desmond felt a brief burst of energy roll through his body followed by the boost of mana.

I would have had to check my cuff, but I’m pretty sure that only boosted me up to around fifty percent… Desmond thought while sucking on his tongue. Mia would have hit the roof if I told her that I normally don’t use any supplements. Not like I need them with how large my cache is… but she does have a point that I should get used to having and using them in case I have a need.