Rude Awakening

By Dana Crotts

Advanced technology and magic empower the civilizations built upon the planet Cloudfyre. Massive mechs capable of altering their robotic forms into skyfighters battle in the space between Cloudfyre and Gloomseed.

During a collision with a magic orb an elf who is an expert mech pilot named Stonna Bense wakes up to the possibility that he may be God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dana Crotts
• Release date: May 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781513660448

Book preview

Prologue

A mech pilot trainee comes from a lift within the mech’s massive vibrosteel leg to inspect the cockpit. The machine is thirty meters tall in robot mode, although it could compact itself to a mere twenty meters in skyfighter mode. This is the trainee’s first training module inside a mech, but he has piloted mechs in three-dimensional holosimulation units many times. The exhilaration he feels from sitting in an actual mech surprises him as he feels its bulk wrap around him like armor.

The mech’s navicomputer senses the trainee’s unique energy impulses and identifies him as Crett Bune, an elf from Dek. The navicomputer turns on and displays:

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Hello, sir. I am your navicomputer. I am here to help you learn to pilot the Alter-Tech Sable Prayer. Ask me any questions you wish.

The female voice emanates from the Sable’s computer as the trainee pilot surveys the mech’s control center. He listens to the navicomputer’s voice while he inspects the many holocomputer control panels around the cockpit until he feels familiar with the control grid, then he toys with the thick, heavy harness meant to lock him into the pilot’s chair.

The voice continues. You will see the heads-up display, or HUD, in front of you. This is where I will display your mech’s statistics, including armor integrity and energy supply. You will be able to control the Sable’s many systems with a finger command, though you may simply instruct me to do the same if you are in a tight spot. I see that you have found the pilot’s harness. This will give you the ability to precisely control the Sable’s limbs.

Crett straps himself in, making sure the waist belt encircles his hips and the chest straps fit snugly against his body.

The navicomputer goes on. An energy field will keep you centered at all times, with the Sable fitting your body like a glove. Your body will always be situated as if the Sable is a suit of armor, with it matching your position at all times. If the Sable falls to the ground and lands on its right side, you will find yourself lying on your right side. You will see five balance plates around you; these represent the ground, wherever it may be.

Five transparent, three-by-three-meter energy plates lock Crett in the control box, giving him the ability to stand his mech up if it falls. His movements are reflected in the mech’s movements, thus giving him maximum mobility. A gravitational energy field suspends him in the control box to keep him upright. Crett pushes on the plate at his right to test its solidity, and the mech mimics his move with its right arm.

The navicomputer plays a holovideo from a mech battle to help Crett understand the mech’s controls. The view comes from a pilot in a cockpit who is fighting another mech when he is hit with a punch and smashes into the ground. A massive boom rattles the holovideo when the mech hits the dirt, its pilot looking at his navicomputer’s three-dimensional HUD holodisplay. The pilot can see his mech lying on its side with the ground rising vertically.

The pilot pushes himself up from the control plate on his right, and the mech stands as it imitates his movements. He returns to the battle.

You will notice that the pilot suit you are wearing has many colored circles at your joints. These are control points. When you move your limbs, these control points send data to me, which I use to tell the mech to do as you do. If you move your arm, the Sable will move its arm in precisely the same way.

Crett swings his right arm up and around and the mech responds instantly to make the same motion. He lifts his foot and the leg’s response is just as snappy.

What about guns? he asks. He rotates his hand and watches the three-dimensional mech projection from the HUD make the same movement.

The Sable is equipped with an eight-three straud rifle. It is behind you. Simply put your hand on your back to grasp it. In addition, you can instruct me to arm the mech and I will put the gun in its grip. I can also autopilot, if you wish. Simply tell me what to do and I will comply, the navicomputer answers.

A control holoscreen blinks with too many control grids to handle, though the cockpit is surprisingly simple in design. Crett commands, Arm me, computer! Within moments he finds a long rifle in his mech’s hands. He lifts his arm to aim the rifle and stares into the craggy valley that the Sable Prayer stands in. He watches the rifle scope in his navicomputer’s HUD display as he zooms in on a target and picks a tree.

Cloudfyre’s many city-states have independent skyforces that train at military compounds around the planet. Crett will soon be enlisting in Dek’s skyforce. In a moment, he will switch his Sable Prayer to skyfighter mode and fly into the sky, with the navicomputer’s guiding hand always available.

Crett aims his straud rifle and fires. The recoil from the rifle jerks the mech’s arm up high. The energy round impacts the tree and smashes it into dust.

Dust to dust, Crett remarks.

Do you have any questions? the navicomputer asks. I am programmed to test you on the knowledge you have gained from the training module.

A test?

Yes. Approximately what is the Sable Prayer mech’s pressing strength?

One eighty three metric tons.

Good. What is the Sable Prayer’s top speed?

In skyfighter mode, mach thirty-seven in the atmosphere. In space, seven hundred thousand kilometers per hour.

Superb. Do you have any questions?

Crett pauses for a moment. Um…sure, he responds.

Yes?

Are you married?

Of course not. My job is to help the pilot control the Sable Prayer. Why do you ask?

Will you marry me?

I am not authorized to answer that.

That’s too bad. I think I love you, Crett says, knowing that his life will depend on the navicomputer’s observations in battle. The pilot and the navicomputer are like star-crossed lovers. If one dies the other does as well. You are my wife and I am your husband. We are Romeo and Juliet. It is time we elope.

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Chapter One

In 8341 an Alter-Tech Crusader pilot named Stonna Bense watched a holovideo projection from the occulens he had pointed at the busy avenue under his tower flat. He had stayed up all night in the hope he would see a particular woman, an elf like him, walking along the foot of the tower he called home. He could see many skytowers stabbing at Procember’s skyline like a bed of nails, though Procember was not a completely evil city – at least not yet.

Today, Stonna watched the woman from high above Procember, from his loft inside the GaleWix tower. Many new skytowers had sprung up in the city to give the population room to grow, and with modern technology this construction had become much simpler. Human beings were living for almost a century apiece, and disease had all but been eradicated (though viruses of magical nature were still present). Elves, dwarves, and gnomes lived among humans in the many city-states, and their lives also benefited from the powerful, magic-infused technologies.

Stonna Bense was a mutagent, an individual born with a unique ability. In Stonna’s case he could become pure energy at will. Mutagents were being born in higher numbers than at any time in history, and many ascribed it to the modern magic users having found new ways to manipulate the vast magical resources that came from the Cryptos. Mutagents were still rare, however, and made up just a fraction’s fraction of the population.

Stonna sat next to a wide windowpane but could not see the woman with his unaided eye from so high up. Clothes, napkins, and scattered devices cluttered the simple, sparse furniture in his flat. The stuff was there only to help him keep himself together while he watched her, and if it got in the way it would be trashed. He spoke aloud to a sheet of self-writing paper on the only table. The talking paper converted the sound waves to handwriting. He intended to give the woman this note…on second thought, that would probably frighten her. The pilot pressed his fingers to his wrist; his pulse thumped faster when he saw her.

I am a drug addict. I am not sure if it is because the drug makes me feel high or because the drug allows me to function at all. It may be both. I need to figure this out because, well… I don’t know why. Maybe I can only handle my life when I’m sky high — for me there is no middle ground.

---

I’m either sky high or I’m riddled with death inside, this terrible, haunting feeling from knowing that you are not mine. Even if it came to be that you were, I would still be afraid that you would go. I would feel sick, though if you might ever be close to me…well…even if you were close to me you would scare me.

---

I can’t explain why you make me feel high when I do nothing but worry about you being away from me. This psychotic ride up and down feels like a ride in my skyfighter. My name is Stonna Bense and I am staring at you. You are the only thought in my mind, and you are the only thing I want. I worry about you being away from me when you are not even mine. We have never met, but an hour back I stalked you in a crowd and brushed your coat with a lint brush. Luckily, I got a strand of hair.

Stonna loaded a needle prick’s worth of the toturiminosine concoction he had derived from the woman’s hair into an atom syringe. A screen on the syringe lit up: .07 milliliters. He turned his eyes back to the window.

The woman walked along the street, winding gracefully through the packed intersections amongst a multitude of city-goers. She was not like them—her bright blonde hair shone almost silver in the sun, the lengths around her feline-like jawline almost white. Her eyebrows were just as light and her skin perfect, not one blemish. The people around her rushed along like scurrying rats. This woman stepped softly and without a hint of anxiety on her brow.

The woman’s blonde hair contrasted Stonna’s own fire-red hair, and her bright dress clung to her hips like a snake. He had never seen such a stunning being, but her eyes did not bring joy to the pilot. They brought death…a permanent death. Her eyes shine grey like a cadaver’s skin, the pilot mused, as his mind warped his rampant desire to have her like gravity warping light. The unmet desires fueled terrible visions. If he could not have her, if he could not keep her always, if he could not… Stonna paused in his apocalyptic ruminations as the toturiminosine in his perspiration grabbed his spirit.

Judging by her purposeful steps and confident gaze, Stonna sensed that she could love him unconditionally, as if she were a machine. Maybe this was why he longed for her, why the synapses in his brain soaked up the sight of her on the street like the Pom Poss the wayward used to escape into pure mental bliss. This woman was logical, and she could love him as a matter of choice. She could focus on him and him alone. Maybe he was so attracted to her because she was the foil to his emotional instability, his impulsivity; a mountain to his storm.

Stonna could only pick her from the crowd because he had programmed the occulens to pick this woman from the thousands that shuffled into its view ever since he’d first seen her months ago, and the device scanned the streets at all hours of the day and the night.. His obsession had taken over his waking hours. No one but he knew that he felt this way. Even his best friends were unaware that he watched this woman all day every day, or of the toturiminosine that he relied on to medicate the pain of his unmet desires.

Stonna had added the DNA from the woman’s hair into a toturiminosine concoction that caused him to hallucinate, to have visions of her every nanosecond that he was high. Toturiminosine alone would cause euphoric hallucinations in the imbiber as if they had traveled to an alien planet to find fascinating, mind-altering plants and animals that existed nowhere else. But mixed with a specific person’s DNA, the toturiminosine would cause three-hour hallucinations that would involve that person, and the imbiber would see them continuously as if they stood but a meter away.

The toturiminosine rushed into his blood to trick his brain into experiencing her smell, her face, and her touch. It was as if she lived with him, inside him, all the time. While he was on the drug, she never left Stonna’s side, and the pilot wallowed in joy, pain, and every other emotion attached to desire.

The moment he first saw her, the obsession, the addiction, had come about. But he could not risk talking to her, no. She would reject him. The braided length of hair that lay on her bosom was a sign that she was bound to another. He could watch her for just three days at a time, but then he would be forced to find her in the crowd, to gather her DNA again

City people walked around the woman as if royalty walked with them, stepping aside to make way. Millions lived in Procember’s vicinity: elves, humans, dwarves, keg gnomes, and artificial life forms working in the busy manufacturing centers. Srembucks and dodomes came to life in the RAIN corporations—Radical Artificial Industrial Novostech—as the massive firms imbued the machines with magic in order to predict the demands of the city people and convert resources to their most productive purposes. Suitcase-sized PK drones—called privacy-keepers—came equipped with mind-scanning Novostech that was used to patrol the city-states, ostensibly to protect the citizens from criminals.

As a result of this technology, millions had been freed from the rigors of manual work. Humanity’s innovative powers brought forth myriad new inventions, including the technological wonders dotting Procember’s skyline. People now spent their time inventing, exploring, sporting, and designing, and the city rivaled the most idyllic mountain landscapes. Many buildings within Procember absorbed certain light wavelengths and projected them as advertisements, while other projectors played three-dimensional action films for the enjoyment of street patrons.

Three PKs flitted up the GaleWix tower while others patrolled every last city block and building, violating the people’s privacy in a wide arc with their RAIN-boosted surveilling powers. These three shot up the tower, having sensed a major disturbance within a being high above. They came to Stonna’s flat and peered through the window at him with red, projecting eyes, no doubt scanning his mind. But he did not worry. The skyfighter pilot had faithfully served Procember’s military, having finished three tours in the ongoing conflict between Cloudfyre, his planet, and the inhabitants of its neighbor Gloomseed.

Sunlight refracted through the PKs as they watched from hundreds of feet above the streets. They were just barely visible, despite their size, but could be spotted as they warped illumination much like a glass of water would, anything behind the PKs looking indistinct as the machine’s cloaking technology skewed the visible field around it.

The PKs hovered at Stonna’s window, stabbing their rajus-wave technology into his mind, but they did not find any sentiments that registered as antisocial, anti-State. The rajus-waves analyzed neuroconduction and memory data and thus could pick up emotions and musings within any organic being. Stonna’s mind only contained impulsive obsessions and compulsive desires. Good. If he were a drug addict, all the better. Drug addicts did not tend to challenge authority.

The seven city-state governments on Cloudfyre had become massive, independent ruling forces that dominated the highly populated cities, with ever-increasing laws and regulations designed to turn everyone into a criminal. This gave the city governments the right to control any citizen at any time; the individual had no doubt broken many laws and could be disciplined like a disobedient animal. Procember’s institutions still protected the people’s rights, but that was changing as the one-world government groups continued their slow but never-ending climb to dominate Cloudfyre’s people.

The people in Procember had not taken the encroaching government corruption lying down. Though Cloudfyre’s governments had recently merged into a body known as the United City States, many in Procember were still fighting the power consolidation. They had formed an underground resistance group, and thus Procember’s people maintained many rights that other city-state governments had stolen from their people.

Stonna had been too busy with his career to think about the revolts. His parents raised him to be a proud Procembrian and to fight to keep his people safe, and he believed that his liberties would always be protected. His natural gifts as a mech pilot won him many honors, such as the Spirit Valor Wings, awarded to pilots who displayed unusual bravery in battle. Stonna would never think of betraying his city. Why would he? He had never understood why anyone would ever think a traitorous thought. The PKs, the Kryptei, the Ephei, and all the watchers that kept Procember safe were always close by, and anyone who might wish to overthrow the establishment would only bring chaos. Bad thoughts might turn a person traitorous, and because good people had nothing to hide, he believed the PKs’ mind scans were a benefit to all. The constant raids by the Kryptei only helped keep them safe. The people ought to trust their betters, as their betters had provided them with security for centuries.

A century before, an unaffiliated clandestine hacker organization had infiltrated the vast computer networks that linked the city-states of Cloudfyre and had stolen every relevant detail of people’s lives. The hackers used the data to blackmail judges, businessmen, and other powerful individuals in an attempt to take over the governance of Procember from its elected representatives. A person’s beliefs and attitudes could be extrapolated from their daily activities, even when they claimed to feel another way entirely in public. Data itself was a most valuable asset to individuals who sought complete power.

Procember’s government ultimately thwarted the attack and rooted out the conspirators, but the crisis called for a new level of defense to prevent any such group from being able to commit such a crime in the future. Hence the PKs. The government claimed the mechanical watchers would only look into the thoughts of people under suspicion and would not violate the general public’s right to privacy. But the promise was never kept, and the government used the hackers’ attack to rationalize spying on the entire population. The people thanked the government for the additional protection the PKs guaranteed, but what the people didn’t know was that the government could not be trusted. As younger generations grew up considering the PK presence normal, they soon threw away wisdoms given to them by their forefathers, in particular the wisdom that people in power could never be trusted.

Many in Procember believed that the government itself had created the hacker organization in order to give the government the rationale to build a massive surveillance apparatus. The conspiracy would give the government the ability to play savior while simultaneously unveiling a vast security state. The theory was that they invented the problem that would need the solution they had waiting.

Stonna had never questioned Procember’s representatives. He himself had fought against invaders from the planet Gloomseed and would give his life to keep his people safe, and he believed the same of his government. But the pilot did not see the big picture, and why would he? The only things he could focus on were the woman and toturiminosine. Without the drug, he would not be able to function, to fly at all. He could command his Alter-Tech Crusader while high on toturiminosine and could best just about any mech pilot, but he did not perceive the political dangers on Cloudfyre.

On the other hand, the state of affairs in Procember did not seem right to Stonna at a deep level, and in his subconscious mind the pilot felt unsettled. History books detailed Procember’s proud history in battles for independence from Vytunia, its mother city-state, and in struggles for sovereignty. Brilliant political men such as Jovus Ishington had maneuvered massive troop units to win lopsided battles against Vytunia’s superior military forces. Vytunia had survived for millennia, but now it had been erased from history beyond its role in birthing Procember. There was no account of why not a single rivet of that city-state remained. No ruins of the historical empire could be found anywhere on Cloudfyre; it was as if it had simply vanished. Stonna didn’t know much about Procember’s politics, but his gut instincts and his spirit itself could sense a sour note under it all.

Amidst so many thoughts and memories, the drug-crazed pilot watched the PKs hover at the windowsill. He felt a certain comfort from their visit, as if they were a caring family checking up on their son. The government had built 7830 privacy-keepers, to pay tribute to the year Procember declared its independence from Vytunia. They took every pain to make people understand that the privacy-keepers should be viewed as instruments of liberty, and not contraptions devoted to spying on the people. Stonna, at least, complied.

Stonna watched a brilliant display come about at twilight, when the multitude of city structures shone like a thousand prisms. Far below him, in a street otherwise crawling with high-tech vehicles, a dwarven family rode in a horse and buggy. The dwarven father driving the buggy wore a wide-brimmed hat in the traditional style, and his boys and girls were dressed in bonnets and hand-woven suits handed down to them by their grandfathers and grandmothers.

Though the PKs still pushed into the pilot’s thoughts, Stonna focused on the woman. The crowds wound along the avenues like huge schools of fish swimming in straight lines. The shops along the avenue called to patrons with vibrant holograph projections. The woman wove through them carelessly on her way to wherever she went. She was an elf, as he was, but her graceful disposition seemed to be the foil to the pilot’s radical moods. He swung constantly from pessimism and worry to joy and pain. What he felt did not make sense, but the emotions converged inside him like colliding neutron stars giving birth to a brilliant explosion in the night sky. He would need another dose of toturiminosine if he were to stay conscious, and he would need to find a way to distort his feelings long enough for the concoction to take effect.

Stonna slid the atom syringe along his arm until he found the first letter I in the tattoo on his right arm that asserted an ancient wisdom: Familiarity Breeds Affection. The tattoo began at his right elbow and wound around the pilot’s shoulder until it came to another tattoo that continued on to his left arm: Presence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.

He pressed a button and the syringe pushed into his veins with needles not much bigger than individual atoms. There was no pain. His arteries drank the toturiminosine. His blood craved the drug, his flesh starved for the woman, even if it was only a chemical substitute for her. His blood cells surrounded the compound and rushed it up his arm and into his neck, where it worked itself into the synapses in his brain.

He could smell her, touch her, feel the warmth from her body. Stonna grabbed her hand and gripped her thigh and pulled her close. Despite his drug-addled senses, he knew the hallucination could not be her, and this called the mortal worry from his mind’s depths like a bugle calling its army.

What am I without her?

The Arazi empire and the Procembrian skyforce clashed in the space between the planets Gloomseed and Cloudfyre. Stonna cursed inside his Alter-Tech skyfighter as the long-winged craft’s slender body pushed through the space above Gloomseed. He could not find his atom syringe.

The Arazi ruled Gloomseed from the capital city of Collecs and dominated the people by permanent government rule. The Arazi ruled with dictates and infinite laws that could not be questioned if the people wished to remain alive. Cloudfyre had been at war with the Arazi for centuries, and Stonna had fought them many times. They forever attempted to expand within the solar system and repeatedly attacked Cloudfyre’s city-state colonies as they fought to become the dominant empire. The endless war had been written about in a thousand tomes. The latest period of the war saw the Arazi build an armada of ships that had so far won every battle they’d fought, due to advancements in armor and shielding technology.

Cloudfyre and Gloomseed were the eighth and ninth planets in their solar system, the first seven being much closer to its large T-class star. The sun’s bluish light bathed the system to color the planets’ skies a variety of hues depending on their atmospheric contents. Cloudfyre’s blue provided a cool, calming energy to the otherwise productive planet.

Stonna circled the Procembrian battle station that stood between Cloudfyre and Gloomseed. Thousands of Procember’s skyfighter mechs moved around the battle station’s massive decks like ants, and many more were kept under the decks in vast hangar bays. The battle station could transform to battlecruiser form and move its fleet rapidly, but it mostly remained stationary to provide a defensive position from which the Procembrian battlecruisers and skyfighters could launch. Holy energy cannons lined the station flanks for defense, with holy priests supplying the cannons’ power via prayer.

Holy power and magic came from two very different sources. Magic users drew power from the Cryptos, which was a chaotic dimension where abstract magical principles and magical energies fluctuated rapidly. Casters would call power from the Cryptos to build their arcane spells via mysterious rites. Holy magic was granted by deities, many of whom were still unknown after many millennia as they preferred to stay hidden.

Procember’s skyfighter mechs could switch between mech form and craft form and thus battle both in the skies and on the ground. In mech form, they were towering robots wielding enormous chain energy guns that employed energy pulse technology to spray enemies with violent chain fire. The robots could run, jump, and climb much like humanoids—with the pilot controlling the robot, like God could control man.

In its current form, Stonna’s skyfighter had a sharp nose and a high rudder with two sharp wings, giving it the ability to maneuver both in space and in atmospheres. The bubble-like canopy of the cockpit, made from strong and light transparent polymers, was close to the front. If Stonna altered it to mech mode, the skyfighter’s wings would unhinge and draw back and up. The legs would detach at the back, rotating along what would be the mech’s hips. The body that only seconds before had been a single piece would become the arms, and the cockpit would rotate around to become the chest, the craft’s sharp nose flipping to lie on top. Stonna would be able to see in front of the mech from behind the canopy, securely encircled by a metal shield. Two antennae would beep at the top of the mech’s head. Going back to skyfighter mode would reverse the sequence.

Stonna flew beyond Procember’s battle station toward the myriad dogfights between Procember’s skyfighters and the Arazi armada. Many Arazi battlecarriers flew into a wide zone around the battle station with their fighters attacking in berserker fashion: no formations, just chaotic charges with unpredictable flight paths.

How many fighters have they got? Stonna shouted. The navicomputer emitted a gentle tone to indicate it heard him and began to calculate.

Approximately thirty-four thousand on seven battlecarriers, it responded.

The Arazi battlecarriers were massive ships, maroon in color with long interior decks that housed the fighters. The fighters would flood the battle zone until the BON destroyers that covered the Arazi carriers could move up and take control. BON destroyers resembled beds of nails, with thousands of turrets positioned around a rectangular hull. Arazi future-caster gypsies used their precognitive magic to empower and aim the destroyers’ energy cannon turrets.

Arazi skyfighters rained energy cannon fire upon the battle station, then wove loops to dodge incoming syriod cannon fire. The syriod cannons drew a field of powerful electromagnetic waves that could rip fighters to bits, pulling metal atoms out of a craft and thus causing cracks in its body. But the Arazi skyfighters could dodge the cannons by redirecting all their energy to a single vector engine, allowing them to move in abstract lines that made target fire difficult.

The Arazi battlecarriers lit up like precious gems as they crept through the black void, though the crafts’ deep purple hues could only be seen on computer HUDs from their eight million kilometers away. Three Ascending Mason battlecruisers, displaying their square-and-compass symbol on each of their wedge-shape sides, moved into position along with other Procembrian forces. Man could design and build his life like a mason designing and building a home, and the square-and-compass of the Mason reminded them all of mankind’s inherent ability to control the universe.

As Procember’s battle station fought off the attacking Arazi skyfighters, Stonna flew with a clandestine squad of highly trained pilots. The team was going to use the most powerful shadow cloak technology to tiptoe