The Space Rodeo

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 18

SHAD POV

"What's wrong?" Alpha asked as I stared at the head. Amber had raced along the branch and severed another five.

"Nothing," I said before forcing myself to pick it up and put it in my inventory. Sure enough, it showed up there as a soul token for Major Devin Waters, Proxima Corporation Contractee.

I focused on my task and ran to pick up the next couple of heads. Maybe Veda wouldn't notice if I was one short. Maybe I could say there'd been no sign ...

License to Cultivate Chapter 19

Sorry - somehow my posting schedule got messed up. This chapter was supposed to come between Chapter 18 and Chapter 20 (which got labelled as 19). I want to have this one before we switch POVs for a week so you get double chapters today!

Chang-li had been stripped, scrubbed, dressed in a plain linen tunic and leggings, then measured and fitted by a wizened tailor, abandoned to his own devices for a while, given a pot of tea and no food, dragged around to t...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 20

 I messed up posting order - Chapter 19 got skipped, I will be posting it here shortly. So there's two chapters today! Chapter 19 doesn't have to be read first as it's different locations but I did want it to come next in the story, before I swapped back to Joshi

Joshi assembled with the other Young Masters and their disciples just inside the entrance to the tower, the same clearing where he and the others had fought a giant bird not a week ago. In fro...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 17

The gamer squad were fairly ungrateful, considering I had gotten them out of purgatory.

"I want a rematch against those turncoats," Rose grumbled. "They ganged up on us, four to one. It wasn't fair."

"Colin would have found some way to turn it around," Sam said.

Rose whirled on him. "I thought you were supposed to be Mr. Ideas Guy. I didn't hear you throwing out any suggestions in the middle of battle."

"I told you I'm not good at thinking on ...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 18

The last hour and a half had been the worst of Min's life. Fai-lan City guards, under the command of a man dressed in black robes with the Gem Court icon around his neck, had dragged her and Chang-li from the inn. She'd thought of calling out for help in the common room, but her people stood silent, watching her in horror, and there were more guards standing by.

At least they'd let her pull her robe around herself. Chang-li was hustled out without even being allowed to fasten his robe. ...

Space Rodeo Book 5 Ch 16

SHAD POV

Veda stood there watching me, a half-smile on her face. She hadn't changed much in the last few years, still giving off the impression of being a snow queen—tall, slender, white-haired, wrapped in a pale blue dress. It was more obvious, surrounded by the elves, that she was a different species than them, closer to human, though her long fingers were triple-jointed. I felt a quick rush of familiarity, followed by a stab of anger. "You're who we're here to negotiate with...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 17

Chang-li had been expecting quite a bill, but the total staggered him.  “One thousand, two hundred and fifty kwan?" he demanded. That was three months' wage for him.

“Do you have the coin or not?" the official droned. There was no sign of Inspector Ji’in, for which Chang-li was grateful. He sighed and dug out his purse. That would put a large dent in Min's money.

He handed it over, and the scribe disappeared. He came back a moment later with two others, sta...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 15

Veda stood there watching me, a half-smile on her face. She hadn't changed much in the last few years, still giving off the impression of being a snow queen—tall, slender, white-haired, wrapped in a pale blue dress. It was more obvious, surrounded by the elves, that she was a different species than them, closer to human, though her long fingers were triple-jointed. I felt a quick rush of familiarity, followed by a stab of anger. "You're who we're here to negotiate with?"

"I am," she s...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 16

Min watched Chang-li disappear up the stairs before turning to the clerk at the desk. "Now then," she said, "I require some information here."

"Of course, lady," the scribe said, bowing. "How may I serve you?"

Min strolled away from the desk deliberately, letting her fingers trail along its edge before stepping out of reach. The clerk's eyes followed her.

"You see," Min said, formulating a plan in her mind, "I have recently become betrothed to a young master fro...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 14

Sage, Rok'gar, and I assembled with our group of volunteer personalities in the center of our camp. Our little outpost hummed with activity as our units went about their patrols. I felt unaccountably nervous.  Gambler was right. We were running out of time.

"Are we ready for this?" I asked my team.

Sage and Rok'gar nodded.

"We're only going to have one shot at this," Gambler said. "I won't have the ethereum and willpower to boost you up a second time. This will leave me...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 15

Chang-li found himself in a vast room. The sky above was lost in fog. He could feel the chamber stretched out all around him, but the haze grew thick about ten paces or so from where he stood. Yet it had the feeling of being a vast enclosure, like the way he had never been able to forget he was inside of a tower, even on the broadest of its floors.

The mist was slightly tinged gold, and he could hear creatures or people moving in it. Whispers, the shuffle of fe...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 13

I had a very hard time telling the passage of time in this place. We didn't need to eat. We rarely slept. Occasionally, we'd get a message from Gambler that one or more of us were at a limit for cognitive power and needed to enter a recuperative coma. The coma was absolutely nothing like sleep. We didn't dream, and whoever was in the coma would just curl up in a corner, ramrod straight, eyes glazed and unseeing for a while before emerging as good as new.

But that didn't mean we didn't s...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 14

Somewhat to his surprise, Chang-li found Min waiting for him the next morning, just outside the Hall of Records. The doors were closed, but already there was a line ten people deep. He and Min joined the end. She was wearing her noblewoman's robes with the red stripe, her hair pinned back, and she kept her chin elevated as she looked around.

"You don't think you're drawing too much attention to yourself?" he hissed.

She gestured to his cultivator's robes. “We’re a...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 12

I had a very hard time telling the passage of time in this place. We didn't need to eat. We rarely slept. Occasionally, we'd get a message from Gambler that one or more of us were at a limit for cognitive power and needed to enter a recuperative coma. The coma was absolutely nothing like sleep. We didn't dream, and whoever was in the coma would just curl up in a corner, ramrod straight, eyes glazed and unseeing for a while before emerging as good as new.

But that didn't mean we didn't s...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 13

For the second time in the day, Chang-li froze in a doorway. Min was sitting in the crowded common room of the inn, a mug in front of her at an otherwise empty table. Since the other booths and tables were packed, he guessed that she had used her position in the Brotherhood to keep her table open.

Her eyes fixed on him, and she crooked a finger. She had been waiting for him.

For an instant, Chang-li considered going back out into the street and leaving, spending the night in an al...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 11

I was standing in the antechamber of an ancient progenitor structure with Patriarch Kvaltash and his team of archaeologists, arguing about whether I'd provided them adequate security, when the call came in. It was from Juana.

Shad, you need it back here ASAP. Problems with Proxima.

Understood, I replied, then turned back to the Patriarch and...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 12

Min found the familiar bustle of the Mayor's Palace comforting. She had never visited the Mayor's residence here in Fai-Lan City but had spent enough of her life in the company of her grandfather Guo, the Governor of Riceflower Province, to be at ease in the chaos.

There were many similarities between her governor grandfather's court and the Brotherhood seat of her other grandfather. Both men were powerful, attended by servants, cronie...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 10

I was to meet with my civilian expert squads in Assembly Bay 14. On the way I passed by a bunch more Assembly Bays where ETF soldiers were getting ready to receive their orders.

The ETF uniform was solid green, harkening back to the look of the old US Army World War I style. In a reality engine, there was no point in camouflage patterns, and so we'd gone back to some of the old classics. They stood in neat rows—men and women—with oval-shaped caps on their heads, faces shining, the b...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 11

Chang-li arrived in Fai-Lan City at dusk, and then spent a good hour going from inn to inn, only to find most of them full thanks to the governor's tax tour of the province. Finally, with nowhere else to turn, he had tried the Royal Peacock as Min suggested. The bouncer at the door, the woman behind the bar, and the girls waiting tables all wore the brown-and-gray rosette of the Oaken Band Brotherhood on their tunics.

The woman at the bar told him sharply, "We ...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 9

The ground rumbled beneath our feet.

"We're under attack," Gambler warned, as though I couldn't tell. I ordered our units back to the base as Sage prepared for war and Rok'gar started pulling gear out of his inventory and distributing it to our units. He was able to equip all of the spearmen with leather cuirasses and gave the archers quivers.

"That should increase the number of shots before they have to reload by 50%," he told me.

“I’m on it,” Sage said, ordering the ...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 10

Chang-li sat cross-legged on his pallet, watching the other scribes as they snored and turned over in their sleep. When he was certain they were all gone, he focused on Scribe Wulan's pen case, thinking hard of the ghost of the dead scribe, urging him to come out.

 Nothing happened. All of the other times Scribe Wulan had appeared had been the ghost's doing, but Chang-li didn't want to wait until Wulan decided to show up.

He cycled his lux through his channels in a simple cir...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 8

The shattered fragment was in a den carved into one of the enormous violet hexagonal pillars. The pillar itself stretched up over our heads until it blurred into the purple background. I was getting a little tired already of this Protoss hell and hoped we'd get some different landscapes soon. What sort of good strategy game only has one kind of map, after all?

We stopped outside the hole. "What's in there?" Sage asked. "I'm not going in after it. This is where we need my br...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 9

As his mouth dried, Chang-li was ushered into the reception room by one of Moon Whispers’s functionaries. He was wearing his best set of robes, though that wasn't saying much. The robes were badly in need of replacement. The black had faded to gray in places, and there were a couple of rips he'd had to sew up himself. Considering he had destroyed one set of robes on his last venture into the tower and had been forced to turn over all of his wages to Scribe Jun lately, it would have to do. 2024-09-03 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 7

We were in a vast, glowing purple-blue cavern. It felt as though the chamber stretched on for kilometers in every direction. I peered up and could make out the ceiling far overhead. Hexagonal stalactites hung down, their edges glistening faintly. We stood atop another hexagonal platform about three meters on a side. Below us, the cavern fell away into darkness. I could see points of light every so often and make out other platforms like ours where pale figures stood. It was a lit...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 8

"I like the feel of your body now," the querulous voice of Scribe Wulan said.

Chang-li jolted awake. He stared up in horror to find the ghost of the dead scribe hovering over him, sitting cross-legged in thin air.

The room was dark and quiet, the other scribes sleeping on their pallets. Chang-li managed to stifle a gasp at Wulan's appearance. The ghost seemed more substantial now, somehow, with traces of color in his face and robes. Chang-li sat up and edged backward.

The gh...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 6

I stared at the wall of my silent quarters. Pictures of Sage lit up the display in front of me—a couple of our salvaged pictures from back home of Sage and me when we first came to live with Grandpa and Abuela. Me, a scowling dark-haired boy of 12. Sage, a chubby toddler with pigtails. A bunch of shots of Sage after we'd reached the reality engine. The perky preteen in action: Sage fighting zombies, Sage fighting orcs, Sage fighting enormous acid-spitting dinosaurs.

Then the most rece...

License to Cultivate Bk 2 Ch 7

Chang-li spent the next few days feeling as though he was poised on the edge of a precipice. One push, one wrong step, and he would fall to his death. There had been no word from down the mountain, either from Min's people or the messenger that Magistrate Bao had sent to speak with Inspector Ji'in. He hadn't seen Joshi, either, no doubt because the escaped slave was lying low. He hoped Min had gotten a message to him that help was coming.

Even more cultivators ...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 5

The Ad Astra's briefing room could be configured to accommodate whatever we needed. Right now, we had a long slate-gray conference table down the middle with swiveling chairs set around it and walls of screens on all sides. Grandpa seated himself at the head of the table with me and Major Armstrong on his left.

On the right-hand side were our new ETF officers: Colonel Marona and his aides, Captains Grant and Kim. Colonel Marona was a middle-aged man with a bald head and heavy e...

License to Cultivate Book 2 Ch 6

Min sent Chang-li off with three members of the Oaken Band Brotherhood who were particularly good at letting themselves into places they weren't supposed to be and then back out again without getting caught. The young scribe looked miserable. That was all right. By tomorrow or the next day, when he'd had time to reflect on what had happened, he'd come around.

She was still amused at how quickly the scribe, who had claimed he would never get involved with forgery, ha...

Space Rodeo Bk 5 Ch 4

It had been a really long day and a half in our shared cargo pod, with Rok'gar glaring daggers at me every time Sage had her back turned, and Sage expressing an overly-intense interest in everything I was doing. Admittedly, when I shared some of my thoughts about initial strategies on the rogue engine, they had valuable inputs. Sage, having just spent a year and a half studying the history of reality engine exploits, had a good grasp on what could be going wrong. Wit...