TS6 - Chapter Two

Kat’s knife cut through the metal bar with ease, shaving off a sliver of glittering steel.  She set her weapon down and picked up the circle of metal, probing its sides with her index finger.

Completely smooth.  One clean cut without any hitches or sawing.

“No fair,”  Emma said with a grumble.  “I’m in the Tower of Somnus just as often as the rest of you and I can’t cut through solid steel.”

“All I can do is hit it with my batons a half dozen times until it bends or breaks,” she sulked.  “When do I get to learn how to do all of the cool stuff?”

“Level eighteen,” Kat replied dryly.  “I unlocked Knife 3 in a silver tier dungeon.  All you have to do is climb a dozen or so levels and put together a team that can handle the more challenging dungeons and then I’m sure you’ll grab an ability like this.”

Emma rolled her eyes as she sank back into her chair.

“That was a rhetorical question Kat,” she responded, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.  “I’m rich and pretty, people are just supposed to give me things.  I’m slowly working my way up through the tower but it’s difficult and dangerous. How am I supposed to enjoy instant gratification if I have to bludgeon giant beetles to death first?  It’s just not the same.”

“Maybe I should talk to the scientists about inventing an incredibly weak alloy that looks like steel so that you can cut it apart without having to step up your dungeon raid schedule?”  Kat asked, chuckling quietly at the other woman’s antics.

“See!” Emma said with a happy clap of her hands.  “You get it perfectly!  I’m fine with hard work, but it’s incredibly overrated.  This way I can enjoy some impressive party tricks while I slowly work my way up through the tower.  It’s flawless really.”

Kat couldn’t help but smile.  Emma, Whip and Heather sat around the conference room table with her, the usual participants for their daily meetings.  Near the wall, a trio of men in suits shuffled uncomfortably.  One of them was an accountant, another was an engineer, and Kat had no idea about the third.  Probably a lawyer?  Whenever something new came across her desk, lawyers seemed to pop up out of nowhere like mushrooms in the forest after a rainstorm.

“What level have you made it to anyway?”  She asked.  “I don’t think I’ve checked in with you on your progress in the last couple of months.  If I can help in any way-”

“Level five,” Emma replied, “and Dorrik’s friends have already helped me out plenty.  I still have an all human delving team, I don’t think anyone but Whippoorwill and some of the newbies are actually adventuring with aliens directly, but members of Clan Ahn have given me hands on training and the ability to buy gear that has made the process a lot smoother.”

“I’m level five,” Whippoorwill remarked, stirring from her half asleep state.  “Just made the climb past the floor boss two days ago.”

“Actually,” Kat replied, “if both of you have three person teams, this might be ideal.  We only have a couple of climbers around your levels, and I worry about the two of you pushing on your own.  Six person teams will make the dungeons a little harder, but if all of you work on teamwork as you push through level five, you might be able to start challenging iron-tier dungeons once you hit six.”

Whippoorwill hesitated, but Emma didn’t.  She lunged forward excitedly toward Whip, a giant grin on her face and grabbed the pink-haired woman’s hands.

“That would be so much fun, Whip!”  Emma gushed.  “I’m not sure how confident I am at being able to finish off an iron-tier dungeon on my own, but with your help and the lokkel that you’re working with, it should be a breeze.  Plus, that way we can gossip about Kat without anyone here knowing any better.”

Whippoorwill opened her mouth to reply, but rather than words all that came out was a strangled croke as she blushed deeply.

“Anyway,” Kat said, shaking her head at Emma’s antics, “we should probably get on to the personal shielding presentation.  I know Dan and Sam are getting a little antsy at us wasting time, but one of the perks of being the boss is that no one can point out that I’m inconveniencing them.”

Heather nodded to the trio of men standing near the wall, and the engineer stepped forward.  In his arms he held a gauntlet made of some sort of alloy that Kat couldn’t quite recognize and covered a thin layer of polymer that resembled stronger and more resilient plastic.

“Hello esteemed shareholder,” he said, trying vainly to put gravitas beyond his words despite the massive bags under his eyes.  It was clear that he’d been focusing more on his work than sleep.

“As you might know, my name is Daniel Sheinbern, and I’m the project lead on one of your development teams working on practical applications for the energized crystal lattices that we’ve been able to isolate from the repurposed stellesp wreckage.”

“May I say,” he continued, shuffling forward as he clutched the gauntlet tightly, “it’s an honor to work for you ma’am.  Everyone has heard stories about what you’ve done to capture the wreck and keep control of it.  Honestly, if I could get an autograph after the meeting, I would-”

The lawyer standing at his side coughed loudly and pointedly, interrupting the engineer’s gushing monologue.

“Maybe after,” Kat said, smiling at the man.  “Until then, please just call me Kat.  I have to use titles when I’m around other shareholders and it’s absolutely exhausting.  When we’re in a small group like this, I prefer to use my actual name.  It just seems more natural.”

Dan beamed at her.  Another cough from the attorney caused him to take a step forward and put the gauntlet on.

“Thank you Sh-Kat,” he said, embarrassment dying his cheeks red.  He took a deep breath before continuing.  “Since we’ve started to study the crashed spaceship, military technology has taken huge leaps forward.  Our guns shoot faster and further, our tanks can fly, and our armor can take more hits.  That said, most of our advances are focused on dealing more damage.  Soldiers can take a couple of shots before going down from conventional weapons, but against well prepared opponents or tower climbers, there aren’t any promises.  Given the amount of time and money the company invests in our corporate security, I thought that a new line of products that will help keep them alive would be a good idea.”

“And as someone that gets shot at a lot, I appreciate it,” Kat chimed in.  Dan stopped for a second, flustered and lost after her interruption.

Mentally, Kat kicked herself.  She was trying to put the engineer at ease, but rather than disarming the tension in the room, she’d left the man stumbling and unsure.

Despite everything, Kat still wasn’t used to the weight of her fame.  A year and change of extreme wealth should’ve been enough for her to start feeling like a corporate executive, but it still hadn’t really sunk in.  She enjoyed the benefits of her position, a private living and training space in a heavily armed compound was hard to turn down, but it wasn’t like her friends treated her any differently.  Even Heather had come around to acting like she was a regular human being rather than a precious little baby to be swaddled and protected from all harm real or imaginary.

Maybe that was why she didn’t interact much with people outside of her inner circle.  Jasper, Belle, Nina, Baker, Emma, Heather, and of course Whippoorwill.  Around all of them she could relax and let her titles fall away.  It was only when she started to interact with her employees did the reality of her position assert itself.

“Anyway,” Dan said, shaking slightly as he scrambled to find his thoughts.  “My team was inspecting some of the decoded stallesp records and it sounds like most alien races use force fields during their battles.  They didn’t have any schematics or designs that we could use, but once we figured out what was possible my team and I have spent the last six months working on a way to make that a reality.”

“If the sha- Kat,” he caught himself.  “If Kat could grab a weapon, I’d like to demonstrate how effective our prototype is.”

Kat raised an eyebrow, glancing at the rest of the table.  Heather, her security chief, shrugged, the bare metal of her cybernetic limbs whirring quietly.

“I have no idea what he’s planning either,” Heather said.  “The itinerary for the meeting said live product testing, but it didn’t have any real details written down.  What do you want, a pistol?  A submachine gun?  I could send a guard to go and pick something up from a weapons locker.”

“I’ll be good with a knife,” Kat replied, standing up and palming her weapon.  Dan looked nervous for a second before he began pushing some buttons on the underside of his gauntlet.  Then, with a crackle followed by an audible whine, he activated the device.

Kat cocked her head to the side.  She could feel the shield through her domain.  It wasn’t gravity exactly, but something very much like it folded in on itself a thousand times to form a bubble around the engineer’s hand and arm.  Whatever energy the device was generating, it felt like it was tickling the back of her brain.  Not enough to actually distract her, but a mild annoyance like the buzzing of a mosquito in a dark room when she was trying to sleep.

“Now,” Dan continued, holding his arm out.  “If you could try to stab my arm.”

She looked at him dubiously and then back at the knife in her hand.  The engineer nodded enthusiastically, stretching his arm and the gauntlet toward her so that she could have easy access.

With a shrug, Kat slashed casually with her knife.  A couple handspan from Dan’s arm, she met resistance.  It wasn’t like stabbing a person or a target, rather, it was like hitting sand.  Her weapon sank in slightly before rapidly slowing to a halt as the energy generated by the device grabbed hold of her.

“Again but harder,” Dan said, taking a step forward so that Kat would have easier access.  “So far the device has its limits, but-”

Kat stabbed.  She didn’t use any skills beyond Knife 3, but she put her full effort into the attack beyond that.  Her left arm came up instinctively, ready to defend her face and chest as her body rotated, muscles pushing and pulling against each other in perfect harmony as she thrust her knife and hand through the invisible barrier, stabbing the side of the gauntlet.

With a flash of sparks and a puff of ozone, the device shorted out.  Daniel stared at her dumbfounded as oily smoke began to pour out of his gauntlet.

“H-how,” he muttered, hastily taking the shield off his arms as the delicate machinery began to spew out thick oily smoke.  “We’ve tested the gauntlets against fifty caliber rifles.  They can’t take more than two or three shots before overloading, but they hold up-”

The accountant, Kat vaguely remembered him being introduced as Sam, approached with a fire extinguisher, hastily spraying down his companion before the smoke could set off the room’s overhead sprinklers.

“Wait,” Dan mumbled, glaring at the foam covered piece of destroyed machinery before snapping his gaze up to Kat.  “You didn’t overload the shield.  You managed to stab through it.  How did you do that?  It should be impossible.  The energy matrix is supposed to grow more rigid the more force you apply to it.  Unless you can-”

“Hold on,” Sam cut in, firing another blast from his fire extinguisher at the metal glove.  “The shareholder might’ve told you to act casual, but she’s still your boss, not an experimental subject.”

“Plus,” he said smugly, putting the fire extinguisher down, “I told you not to use shareholder Debs for your demonstration.  God knows what level she’s made it to in the tower.  At this point, she’s closer to a superhero from one of the entertainment vids than you or I.  It doesn’t matter what you tested the shield against, anything short of a tank shell probably isn’t enough against a player of her level.”

“If I use my spells I can outperform most tanks,” Kat agreed, nodding thoughtfully as she looked down at the gauntlet and her conference rooms ruined carpet.  “You said that this can stop a shot from a fifty caliber?”

Dan nodded as he picked up the destroyed gauntlet, turning it over thoughtfully in his hands.

“At least twice,” he mumbled, “sometimes three times if one of the shots is a glancing blow.”

“That’s pretty useful,” Kat replied, smiling at the despondent engineer.  “How much does each model cost, and how much energy do they use?  If it needs to be plugged into a wall every twenty minutes, I’m not sure how useful a portable generator is, but if it can maintain a charge for an entire day, that’s something that we can work with.”

“The charge lasts for a while,” Dan replied, tearing his attention away from the broken prototype.  “Technically it takes a week for the power cells to drain enough that it can’t create a shield, but the quality of the field weakens enough to be noticeable after a day.  Right now we recommend charging them nightly.”

“And they cost an absurd amount,” Sam interjected dryly.  “That’s why I was called into this meeting.  Accounting wanted me to rain on engineering’s parade.  Right now each one is almost as much as an APEX suit.  As I understand it, the power cells are the issue.  The shield itself is expensive, but not out of line for top end equipment.  Apparently, the research teams had to find a way to transform electricity into mana in order to charge the gauntlets, and the converters use an absurd number of high end isotopes in unstable configurations.  No matter how useful the shields are right now, fully equipping someone would cost almost as much as a hover tank.  It wouldn’t make sense to field them in large numbers.”

“-but they could help keep key personnel alive,” Dan blurted out.  “Plus, we just need a budget to keep researching them.  I swear, if you give us another couple of years the shields will be a top end product.  Every executive will want one for their own personal protection and you’ll be able to set your own price.  They’ll be worth a fortune!”

Kat waved a hand, silencing the two of them.  She furrowed her brow as her mind raced over everything she’d just seen and heard.

It didn’t really surprise her that the shield couldn’t stop her knife.  As strange as it was to think of the way that Sam had phrased it, she was closer to a superhero than to the average human at the moment.  Still, most of her followers weren’t anywhere near as robust as Kat was.  Being able to stop a burst of gunfire or one or two higher caliber rounds without the need for a bulky suit of armor would be incredibly useful.  After all, Kat might be a lot stronger and faster than the average person, but even with all of her magic, a gunshot she wasn’t expecting could be the end of her story.  A good samurai wouldn’t grow complacent, they would identify and rectify their weaknesses.

“How much of the gauntlet’s size is devoted to power conversion and storage?”  Kat asked, nodding at the foam covered machinery.  “Right now it’s simply too large to use for anything other than heavily armored guardians or defenders.”

“I could probably cut half of its weight if I dropped the conversion matrix and stripped most of the power crystals,” Dan mused before shaking his head, “but that would be useless.  The shield would only be able to absorb a single shot before losing cohesion.  I suppose that would stop a surprise attack, but there wouldn’t be any way to charge it without-”

“Without a proprietary charging station that GroCorp could sell at exorbitant prices,” Kat said with a quick wink.  “Nothing to say that we can’t change the charging stations slightly with each new edition of the shields so that we can force our customers to upgrade either.  This way, the shields are more affordable on a per unit basis.  It’ll encourage massive purchases as our clients try to make up for the ‘fixed costs’ of the charging stations.  So long as we keep our profit margins high enough on each unit, we’ll more than make up any losses on individual purchases by encouraging companies to buy in bulk.”

“The primary market is guards and executives trying to protect themselves from a sniper’s bullet,” Sam replied thoughtfully.  “I suspect that they won’t care a whole lot about follow up bullets so long as the shield can stop one shot.  It’ll take some modification and modeling on engineering’s part to see if we can make it work, but that might actually be a viable business model.”

“One other thing,” Kat said with a ready smile.  “Dan, look into making a version that can draw mana directly from the user.  I don’t think we’ll be selling those models, but if we can equip our mana using players with them, it would let our guards recharge their shields on the fly.”

“But how many people could even use something like that?”  Dan blurted out.  “Players are rare, and proper spellcasters are even rarer.”

Kat winked at him.

“Don’t worry too much.  If you can make it, I can find a market for it.”

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