The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha 332 Far Future, Chapter 42 – Saint Piedro Did Ya Call Me, I Can Go...

Now, Null Psions didn't regain PP like Powered did. Powered just Meditated or went to sleep, got all their PP back without issues as Renewal pa.s.sed and did its transcendent thing. Null Psions (and Null Casters) instead had to take ability score damage, sacrificing physical life force and converting it into PP to rebuild a Reserve. In other words, we generated our own power internally 100%, unlike Powered. Thus, getting the Furnace of Life Feat, which allowed us to heal a number of points of ability damage equal to our Con bonus + 1 per day, was a thing.

Thus, with a Con of 52, I could generate 21 PP per point of Con I sacrificed, and I could heal 22 points of Con a day. Of course, I was limited by my total Reserve, and couldn't refill the 'same PP' between Renewals, just like Powered, but it did mean I was more vulnerable if I had to fill my PP, if only for the eight hours I needed to do it before Renewal.

So, not something I did lightly.
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All of which came down to the fact that Chalice could cast a Teleport at up to Fifteen, which was a 150-mile base range, direct point to point. If she was following a lived-line, which I basically always was, that range was doubled. If she was going to a Teleport Focus, that range was doubled, and if she was going from a Teleport Focus, that range was doubled.

So, as long as I had Teleport Foci to use that I had visited, my range between them was a minimum of 720 miles for 9 PP, and 1,200 miles for 15 PP.

There were restrictions, especially underground. Teleporting range through solid matter was reduced by a factor of 100, to a maximum of ten miles. So, flitting around Underspire was very limited, relatively. Interdiction zones were common, as n.o.body wanted random Warp portals opening up and dumping demons on sensitive areas.

But it largely didn't matter. The simple fact that I could flit around the city now, without having to walk all the places in between, was just awesome. It meant a lot of my 'thinking time', i.e. when all those overeager thought-streams of mine sat down and cogitated on what I was going to do, I was out running through the city, painting more and more areas into my lived-line.

Ja.n.u.s Prime was a megcity, and so it sprawled for hundreds of miles, even in this crazy hostile environment. It had stopped expanding atop old mine sites, which had formed the foundations for the current Underspire, and so the population remained fairly static. Thus, there were lots of places to go, and lots of lived-line miles to put on, and this being multiplied by Underspire's many levels, meant it would take a lifetime to even travel all the major roads, downways, and skypaths.

But... getting within a mile of most locations was actually doable, at the speed I could move.

This was my first trip outside the city, and to get the range bonus, I actually had to travel overland, anchoring my position to the planet. Using a vehicle wouldn't give a person the necessary positional fix on their lived-line, due to geomantic principles. I didn't want to have to rely on using a Focus to jump in and out of here, or worse doing it Free, so a Lived-line it was.

It was also why I wasn't taking a Tube or Flitter to where I needed to go. Once I got there, sure, I could do that... or I could take a different way back, expanding my lived-line to a greater area.

I was going to be hunting outside the Shield Walls a lot, lot more. Better Karma, great loot. I also needed to be able to get back inside and Tat new recruits up with Marks. One reason I was doing this was to get some cash together to help take care of that particular problem...

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Piedro Choken had been East Fill Supervisor for nearly five years, after the mines here petered out, were judged not worth pursuing further, and cycled over for refill.

A Fill Supervisor was naturally a step below a Mine supervisor, but just one more step on the ladder of advancement, and not a bad jump. Continuous sprays of crushed ore spilled endlessly from feeder belts and great booms dangling from the arching supports that crossed the miles-wide canyons and miles-deep canyons that crisscrossed the sector, slowly filling in what had been excavated from elsewhere. Down at the bottom of those canyons, other feeder belts and tubes sprayed the crushed ore into the excavated mines, not letting the excess volume to go waste, and slowly but surely, the hundreds of cubic miles of this section of the mines would be filled up, while the mines expanded in a new direction.

When each canyon was full and mostly settled down, the area would be abandoned, the Shield Walls would be moved, and the area would be left open to do whatever. Naturally, the sand wurms would move into the new zone, churning it up and slowly making it settle even further, even as the endless dust from the salt deserts blew into every nook and c.h.i.n.k and turned it all into a slurry of sand and crushed rock to be worn down over the ages.

It was a job about maintenance and continual flow of the tailings, not to be interrupted or the mining would have to slow down while unwanted raw materials were diverted elsewhere, or had to be heaped up and disposed of by very inefficient hauling. Given the level of corrosive materials around, this meant constant repair and replacement, so it was not a job to be sitting around on.

Having a sand wurm loose in the place before its time meant none of the lower tunnels could be filled, which was millions of cubic yards of s.p.a.ce unused, leading to early fill, more frequent Shield Wall movements, and so forth and so on, all of which involved numbers of credits he was paid well not to let happen.

Piedro was a bit irked, as the Termite he'd called for had arrived at the mines, but seemed to be taking her sweet time getting to the East Fill. He'd looked up the woman's location; she had barely covered a hundred kliks in an hour, and wasn't on any of the normal tracks and rails erected around the place. She seemed to be sticking to surface roads or pedestrian tunnels on her way here, instead of taking more efficient transportation.

Two hours later, she was finally in the proper area, and he took the lift down from his office, high on a bluff carved out from miles of surrounding stone. The view of the Fill Towers and multi-hued canyons was vast and inspiring, a true showing of the power of humanity at work, and one of the best things about his job. He could easily monitor and give orders to the entire operation from anywhere with his implants, but he preferred to work from his lofty office and quarters and enjoy the rainbow hues of the various tailings spilling from their pipes, the filtered light off the rock strata, and the great depths of the Fill before him, waiting to be brought to surface height and finally moved along.

Naturally, this sand wurm infestation was in the low zone, where it had picked off a dozen workers mysteriously before they'd discovered what was going on. Given the time of its appearance, they figured there'd been a Warp rupture during a sandstorm that had played havoc with the shields, and a wurm had been sent into the scree during it, a not unknown occurrence. It had to be killed, and hopefully before it sp.a.w.ned a bunch of wurmlings that would make the low Fill impossible to maintain.

He was prepared to give her a piece of his mind for her tardiness when he saw her, especially at her age. And then he noticed what was floating behind her.

His condemnations died in his throat, and he blinked a couple of times to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"Um... h.e.l.lo, Miss Rantha?" he said cautiously, stepping forward, his a.s.sistant-bodyguard Diaz trailing behind, and also looking at what was stacked on that Disk carefully.

"Piedro Choken?" she replied, and he noted how smooth her voice was, how it seemed to tingle on his skin. He'd never heard quite that accent, but he found he wanted to hear a lot more of it, and it gave the impression of someone who was very well-educated. The blue eyes sparkled like jewels, and even the strange, broken branding over the left side of her face couldn't hide the fact that she was extremely attractive... or the nymphal ears that brought all sorts of other thoughts to mind.

On the other hand, her tight tunic and loose vest totally displayed the fact that she had no bust whatsoever, which pursed his lips at the dichotomy. Those hips and that waist were just the right size to put his hands around...

"High-g nymphal," she informed him before he could ask. "So, you're a ranking supervisor, you mind signing off on the bounty for these?"

His eyes drifted off her exposed skin, and the fact she wasn't wearing a mask to filter the dust and air, and not even real shoes, then back to the stuff on her Disk.

There were at least six severed sets of sand wurm jaws, a couple of them longer than he was tall, the right claw of a Shredder Scorp... and the severed head of a Burning Wyvern.

"Uh, certainly," he said reflexively, looking at the stacked trophies, doing the mental math. It was a good chunk of money. "If I may ask, where did you get them?" he asked softly.

"Ah, I killed them on the run here." He blinked slowly. "The wyvern came down to steal a lunch after I killed one of them, and the scorp came in to steal the wyvern after that. You can have the jaws, I understand you like to use them to plate some of your diggers, but I couldn't drag the wurms with me to give you the entire hide. The wyvern head should make a nice trophy if you want one, but I'm keeping the claw, as some psmiths use them for psi-active weaponry."

"Of course," he agreed, stepping over and making the counts. Seven sets of sand wurm jaws, two large, four medium, one small. The four-foot claws of a Shredder, so-named because its tail stinger could punch through steel to deliver its acidic poison, and its pincers could crump steel like a chopper-bot to get at any human goodies inside. The Burning Wyvern was the red-and-black variety, capable of breathing out a stream of radioactive plasma that could slag steel and reduce a human to ashes in a second. Seeing one was instant cause for launching heat-seekers and praying it would be driven away before it came swooping in to steal a couple workers for a snack, or idly torch a caravan of vehicles.

Wyverns were the biggest reason why people didn't like venturing outside the Shield Walls. And she had killed one?

He a.s.sessed them as scrupulously as he could, and paid out the bounties quickly. The remains, save for the pincers, were deposited on a work pallet nearby, where they'd be quickly sent elsewhere for use. The jaws would be sliced up thinly and plated onto vehicles, and the head would be mounted somewhere for vanity purposes, probably the prow of a landcrawler going out to scout for new minefields.

"Thanks!" she smiled at him, and instantly made his day. Nothing s.e.xual about it, just a sense of clean appreciation that made him blush despite himself. "Now, let's take care of your wurm problem. Where do we have to go?"

"Down in the Fill," he sighed, gesturing towards the canyon edge close by, and the ma.s.sive view of the excavated area with the spilling scree constantly rumbling down. "We believed it was warped in by one of the Freaker Storms coming off the high desert. It's medium in size, and wouldn't be a threat if it was in one of the isolated areas, but it's been picking on the men who are filling in the lower tunnels."

"And their Amulets, right." He flushed as she added that on, as it was the most important point from the view of the corp. Fillers were easy to replace, it was one of the simplest jobs in the mine. The Amulets, that took money. "Well, give me a guide to the right area. I shouldn't have a problem locating it and pulling it out. Are you a hundred percent positive there's only one?"

He hesitated, which was answer enough. "Right. They aren't pack hunters, but they are happy to steal one another's kills. If there's a second one or more, I get double pay for every one past the first." Hazard pay was a standard component of vermin contracts, so he nodded despite himself. While he didn't think there was more than one, he couldn't be certain, and there was little to differentiate between the attacks, which had all been quick s.n.a.t.c.h-and-grabs.

He was going to ask her about her luck with the teeth, seeing the jaws were all stripped of them, but figured they'd all been corroded and broken off so as to be less dangerous when handling them. If she was lucky she might have harvested a couple of them, but mostly likely they'd all been lost.

"Diaz, get her down to the right area, and help her get rid of the wurm." His aide nodded once, trying to keep a straight face.

There was no doubt in the minds of either of them that a woman who could pull up a tally like this could do the job.