332 Far Future, Chapter 42 – Saint Piedro did ya Call Me, I Can Go... (1/2)

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 passed 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 nobody 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.

Janus Prime was a mega-city, 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 chink 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 space 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.