[CYA] Chapter 170: Venom Station (2) (Patreon)

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nMeKc0PyoOWPFtzYVchEV0UzCg6Phon3spPApVLjpcc/edit?usp=sharing

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<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Air-Lock>

The five cubes in the airlock with Alex rippled, taking on the shape of oblong discs. Two of them grew foot-plates and two more formed handles, and Alex chuckled.

He sent a quick message to Juba, thanking the man and asking him to connect the drones with him after he’d gotten a bit of a chance to actually spacewalk.

When he got an agreement, Alex smiled. “Ready for decompression.”

The room flashed with red light, strobing on and off.

The ring on his finger began to tingle as the magic within it quickly noticed less than ideal breathing conditions.

Still, even as it began pulling mana from him, that pull remained far below his previous test, when he’d breathed under the fall of water in the shower.

From within the books of magic spinning around and off of him, his Speed Reading let him pull the gist, and he started laughing.

Even creating air in a hard vacuum for him to breathe was trivial, taking even less power than his Create Water spell for somewhat obvious reasons of density, etc. The real difficulty was if his airways were filled, blocked, or if the ring had to work to keep them from becoming so to allow for proper breathing.

In the activation of the magic, he even sensed that having an only marginally functional respiratory system wouldn’t be a hard stop for the magics, it would just make the functionality incredibly expensive.

Though, if he were in a state to need that portion of the magic, he doubted that he’d be counting the cost too closely.

The red, slow strobing came to a stop, and was replaced with a solid green glow. Then, the center of the far wall cracked open, and the two halves began to retract into the sides. The crack was already glowing a vibrant green, but that was from the external light, rather than the internal.

A smile grew across Alex’s face in proportion to the revealed opening. I’m really doing this. I’m really about to go on a space walk!

He’d been floating in space in the flight mode of his duty station for days now, but it wasn’t the same. At a deep level, he knew that the space he experienced while flying the Innominate was just simulated.

This? This was real.

…He pointedly did not think about what his teacher had said on that subject and his current circumstances.

The assault drones stuck close to him as he moved forward, the gravity of the ship keeping his feet on the deck for the moment.

He knew from his training that the entire outside of the ship could impose downward gravity on those who were supposed to be there, and could even reverse it, making it so the hull would be ‘up’ for any who were trying to gain access and shouldn’t have it.

He, of course, was allowed on the ship, and therefore he would be safe.

Even so, he leaned out of the airlock, looking around at the effectively infinite fall in every direction.

Alex swallowed reflexively, feeling a moment of vertigo.

He took several deep breaths, calming his nerves, then looked up and saw the drone hovering in easy reach, a hand hold already in place.

Alex quirked a smile, speaking to himself. “Thanks, Juba.”

The air puffed out with the words, but there was no sound in space.

He reached out and grabbed it, using the hold to pull himself forward.

As soon as he committed, he felt the change in orientation, and almost fell right back through the open hatch. Thankfully, with quite prodigious physical power, he was able to muscle himself to a standing position beside what was now an open hole behind him.

The hull of the Innominate stretched out below him, curving slightly, giving the impression that it went farther than it really did.

The exterior was currently a matte black as they were in hostile approach mode, but it was somehow visible to him regardless, due to his position as crew of this ship. The exterior worked against magical and technological senses as well.

Alex spun in a circle, seeing the stars all around, the green star off to his left, unable to overwhelm the other stellar bodies without an atmosphere to disperse and spread its light.

He started laughing, throwing his arms wide and tilting his head back, basking in the novelty.

He felt the magics in his coat, cover-all, and shoes working along with that of his Ring of Breathing. As a result, he felt basically the same as he had inside, even if he could feel an odd buzzing of magic where his coat and coverall were negating the pressure issues around his exposed head and neck.

He was in space!

Alex laughed again—to equally silent results—looking around for constellations that he might recognize before remembering that he wasn’t anywhere near Earth. Even if he was able to find stars that he could see from Earth as well, the perspective would be entirely different.

Then, to his surprise, he did see things he recognized, patterns in the stars, and he remembered.

Urania.

She wrote her magic through the stars themselves.

His mind refused to even try to grasp what was written in the constellations of the heavens, but he knew it was there.

He trembled.

This was taking days to climb a mountain, then turning and seeing a summit that towered infinitely higher than he’d managed to achieve.

This was struggling to pay off a debt of tens of thousands of dollars, then being told that someone else had just protected him for a penalty in the millions.

This was whining about a cold before getting a clean cancer diagnosis.

The monumental nature of what he didn’t have was overwhelming down to his very soul.

Almost absently, he used his spherical sense and speed reading to dig through his cover-all’s magics until he found the section for heat. With the clumsiness of the truly shaken, he added just a bit of his own mana to that section, and he felt a bit of heat radiate from the garment in a pulse, momentarily fighting back the chill which had nothing to do with temperature.

After a long moment, he felt a drone bump into him, and he jerked, looking to the little device for answers. Instead, the motion let him catch a view of his bracelets in his peripheral vision, and it was blinking manically.

At the same time, he registered that his spherical sense had been telling him that the bracelet was pulsing with magic for a little while now.

He looked down at the set and noticed messages from his companions, checking on him and verifying that he was alright. They’d have his telemetry from his cover-all, but he’d apparently been standing utterly still for nearly ten minutes.

Alex swallowed, grimaced, created water, and swallowed again.

He sent back messages, assuring them that he was okay, and specifically did not look for constellations in the sky.

As his gaze swept around him, he still felt the wonder of being ‘out there’, but a bit of the polish had been knocked off.

A step to the side, a shaking of his whole body, and he felt ready to move forward. Where are you…?

Directly above him was the planet, he’d essentially ignored it before, but now it dominated his vision as he stared upward. The station they were coming to the aid of was in closer to a lunar orbit than a geo-stationary one, so the planet was still only about the size of his hand, but it was right there.

It was another life-bearing planet. According to the data he had access to, the surface area was nearly twice that of Earth, but it had ‘standard’ gravity… because magic.

Only about a hundred million people lived on it as it was a colony world rather than an integrated one, and the world spirit had yet to fully wake, which was apparently one of the definitions of a ‘frontier’ world?

That last part… he wasn’t sure he was ready to dig into what that was all about.

Regardless, his eyes quickly found the station barely a few miles from their ship. He nodded to himself and let out a long breath before silently speaking into the void. “Okay. Okay. I can do this.”

The gravity on the Innominate’s hull was closely connected to his suit, so he had no doubt it would release him at the right time. Even so, he felt a bit  nervous as he crouched down.

He checked that the drones were still nearby and smiled. He wouldn’t go spinning off into space. Heck, he had Shaped Force Burst to create little controlled bursts of force at need. He could steer himself if he required such. There wouldn’t be an issue at all.

“One small leap for Alex…” He snorted at his own ridiculousness and jumped.

His legs had become powerful, such that even with his increased weight—both from advancing and the work he’d done to his skeleton—he could likely do some truly stunning gymnastic manuvers… if he practiced. As such, the leap was a strong one, and when the Innominate released gravity’s hold on him exactly when he stopped putting force into his jump, he left the hull like a shot.

He almost started flailing when he suddenly lost the feel of ‘down’ but remembered that such action would send him tumbling, and so, he was able to keep his reactions contained, guided by his skills.

His gaze was locked on the station, and it looked like he had a reasonable angle on it. If his guess on speed was anywhere close to accurate, he’d reach the station in less than ten minutes.

Not bad, Johnson. He grinned, for some reason hearing his high school P.E. teacher’s voice in his head for a moment. Man… I haven’t thought about Coach in years… I wonder how he made it through all this? Alex snorted a laugh. He probably went on a nice twelve mile run this morning, monsters and initiation irrelevant.

Alex put that from his mind and looked around, just absorbing the sensation of being in effectively zero gravity.

His advanced kinesthetics skill was guiding him, keeping his movements small and balanced even as he looked around.

He detected the drones moving alongside him, and reluctantly stepped out onto the foot-plates, and they clicked around his shoes. He then grabbed the handles, the fifth and final drone shifted to float in front of him protectively.

Juba took over Alex’s flight path, shifting his angle likely to approach the airlock they’d picked for his initial entry. They hadn’t gotten any response from their attempts to contact the people on the station, and the planet had informed them that it had been more than five hours since they’d gotten the last message.

He was going into a potentially no-survivor situation, despite them detecting larger life forms in several of the sealed off sections.

Bev would be available to help with the medical and magical healing side of things, but nothing would be coming from the station back to the Innominate until he’d completed the mission.

Speaking of which…

Individual Quest [Venomous Invaders]:Your chosen path is that of known danger and… purposefully receiving bites? This seems… ill advised.

…

Regardless, this mission is a sufficient diversion from the overall imperative to allow an Individual quest. Aren’t we both lucky?

Clear the station of the unknown threat and save as many as you can along the way. Also, apparently, you want to get bitten to train your Attribute… Try not to get bitten so much that Attribute is overwhelmed.

Good luck with that.

Reward:Based upon results achievedExperience

Survivors Recovered 0/??Venomous Bites 0/??Creatures Slain 0/??Queens Slain 0/??Egg Sacs 0/??

Alex rolled his eyes at the System’s continued antics.

This is fine. 

He was going to help people and become stronger doing it. It’s not like he was going in without a plan.

He was going to train his resistance to venom and…

He blinked a few times.

Huh…

Pilar would likely have been a better fit for destroying things that had a queen and egg sacs… Fire was rather useful in such endeavors.

He blinked a few more times.

Did he even have a way to address a threat like the one he might be walking into?

Alex closed his eyes and grimaced. “Did I really choose into this in order to get bitten? Without thinking beyond that?” He let the statement hang around him as he streaked through space. “Oh, by the fourth stooge. John was right. I’m not thinking clearly, am I?”

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