Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Seven: Here Comes the Wolf (Patreon)

QUEST COMPLETED: ARMS DEALER.

FOR EQUIPPING A BRIGADE’S WORTH OF TROOPS WITH ADVANCED ARMOURS, YOU HAVE GAINED +1,000,000 XP.

FOR EQUIPPING A REGIMENT’S WORTH OF TROOPS WITH LEVEL 1 POWERED ARMOUR, YOU HAVE GAINED +250,000 BONUS XP.

FOR SUPPLYING 1,000 SUITS OF BOAR CLASS COMBAT ARMOUR TO YOUR ALLIES, YOU HAVE GAINED +5,000,000 XP.

LEVEL UP X 3!

YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 54. AVAILABLE ATTRIBUTE BOOSTS: 3.

My XP meter read 162,977 / 2,800,000. It seemed I’d just made it over the threshold to a new level, thanks to the extra bonus from outfitting the Boar Armours. Who knew?

<Nanocloud>: Dad just got Major-General Heath to sign off saying the armours are accepted. The payment’s supposed to hit company coffers in two weeks.

<Belessar>: I know. I got the XP notification.

<Nanocloud>: Oh, cool! Level up to what now?

<Belessar>: Fifty-four. And I’m putting the three attribute points in Dexterity.

<Nanocloud>: That’s an unusual choice. For you.

<Belessar>: Honestly I want to know what the perk for 50 dexterity is. Plus I could always use the AP.

<Nanocloud>: Your body, your points. Just don’t grow another foot. It’s becoming hard to explain your giant-sized frame.

<Belessar>: Wait till you see me in the Wolf Armour.

<Nanocloud>: Talk, talk, talk. I’ll believe in the power of your amazing new armour once you’ve built it.

Easier said than done, unfortunately.

The part I’d left out in my massive infodump to Agni was that the Wolf Armour would be the single most complex item I’d ever assembled.

Each major element - helmet, bodyplate, greaves, bracers, gauntlets and boots - had at least four major subassemblies. Some of those assemblies had multiple components. In effect, the entire suit had more than two hundred independent parts which needed to be planned, assembled, and of course since any part could fail in combat I needed spares.

The whole thing, when assembled, would weigh 2,500 kilos. Ten times the Greyhound’s mass, for fifty times the protection.

If I were to use Fullersteel to make it, the weight would have climbed up to twelve tons.

That was why I needed the Carnotaur hide. The unique chemistry of what was essentially alien skin and nails allowed me to weave it into a superstrong material in itself.

Tauralloy.

Windsor was as good as his word, and the outer skin of Ehu-tu-Vettorak was delivered to BAE-Dragonfly in the dead of night by a convoy of grim-looking troopers.

Watching what had once been the outer shell of my opponent dissolve into a vat of molten alloy was disturbing. Even as the process spun out a sleek, greenish-grey metal, it didn’t escape my notice that I was essentially harvesting my foe’s body to create a weapon.

What did that say about me as a person? Had I slipped into the darkness some time ago, without realizing it?

I had a body count, dozens of humans and hundreds of thousands of aliens.

Well… my Ethics meter hadn’t budged. So apparently my power didn’t care. Or, whatever force gave me my powers felt it was okay to harvest the bodies of your foes for power….

Disturbing.

Then again, in a world populated by the kind of people that had forced a fifteen-year-old girl’s hand, who was to say what was right and what was wrong?

Perhaps we were all stumbling through the darkness in our own way.

“Belessar,” Paul’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, why’d you ask?”

“Because it’s two in the morning, and you’re staring at that vat of molten metal like it’s hypnotized you.”

I sighed. “Just … thinking. About Agni.”

“She never talked about Rawalpindi with you?”

“I knew some of it… but not everything. Not about Hifara, or what she saw in the camp, or the rest.”

“Do you want to talk to her about it?”

“What would I say? She’s the one who has to bear the guilt of it, every day.”

“She’s strong. She’ll get through it, with your help. Just be there for her.”

“I’ll try. I don’t know what this is going to do to her, though. I’m trying to keep her distracted.”

“You info-dumped about the Wolf Armour on your date?”

“... How’d you guess?”

“Parent here. We know things. Did it work?”

“A little. We haven’t really talked about how hard it was for her to open up… and live on national TV, too.”

“Well, it certainly worked wonders for your PR, and hers. The interview’s gone viral.”

“I’m sure not everyone agrees with what she said.”

“You got that right. It’s devolved into a massive internet fight at the moment, and the press are finding and interviewing survivors from the camp who’ve decided to speak out.”

“.... They found them this fast?”

“Oh, absolutely. Some of those women saw Agni on TV and realized the ‘mysterious flame from heaven’ who rescued them was. They’re ten years older now, and the ones who are speaking up are very clear - they’re only a small fraction of the total victims. Right now, they want to speak up for the woman who helped them.”

“That’s brave of them. And tough.”

“People can be a lot braver than we think. Although there are opposition groups. There’s a group called Pakistanis For Justice who’re trying to get the women’s testimonies suppressed on the grounds of defamation, for starters….”

“Do I need to do something about them?”

“Don’t bother. Logan Michaels’ lawyers are already on the case. He’s decided to make himself a champion of Agni’s cause now.”

“That’s quite a change of heart…”

“Well, she did give him one of the biggest interviews in network news.”

“It would be good if they cleared her name before she gets called to Skyguard.”

“Does that bother you? That she’s probably going to go up there soon?”

“It’s likely I won’t be far behind.”

Paul smiled bitterly. “Is it selfish of me that I don’t want you to go?”

“Someone has to. At least it won’t be Anne. I worry about your safety, though.”

“That should be the least of your worries. Families of Skyguard heroes get Secret Service protection.”

“… wait, seriously?”

“Yes. Same as former Presidents – the Secret Service protects the families of any Skyguard personnel for life.”

“What about heroes from other countries?”

“Same protection as their country’s former heads of state or government. In the UK, it’s Protection Command.”

“Well, that’s a load off my mind.”

“So, do you want to go?”

“If not me, then who? For all that we’ve held the line on Earth, the real fight is up there. If Skyguard falls, it won’t just be a few raiding ships hitting us.”

“You told me. Just the Raptors alone could field ten million troops, if they got their armies together.”

“And that’s not considering the Xeranai, or the Archons, or even the Puppetmasters. We have to hold the line at Skyguard, and we have to tech up here.” I glanced at the liquid alloy flowing into the molds. “Today, the best I can make is this … Tauralloy. It’s harvested from the bodies of our foes, it costs thousands of lives to gather, and it’s a non-renewable resource. But it’s not the toughest material there is, nor is it what I hope to eventually give our soldiers.”

“What are you hoping for?”

“I don’t know. I just know that Tauralloy isn’t the end of the path… there’s a lot further we have to go. Nor is the Wolf Armour my final form. I’ll need to make more powerful suits - something that actually takes the fight to the Archons. And I have no idea how to get there.”

“You’ll figure it out. You always do.”