Chapter 513 - Far Future Ch 223 – Movements in the Dark and the Light (1/2)
In less than one day, fifty-seven Assassins scattered across the Empire vanished with their kill teams. White smears were all that were found of most of them.
The next day, a hundred and six more vanished. Very quietly, Assassin teams on active missions across many, many worlds began to go dark. The fact their mission details had been decoded at the Mountain might have had something to do with that, and the Ranthas had been urgently getting Riftcutting coordinates for more and more worlds, adding new ones every day in ever-increasing numbers as the number of Alias-class ships continued to increase, and Ranthas and Briggs slowly dispersed across the Empire.
Retrieval teams could reach ever more worlds faster and faster, starting with the Seat worlds and moving out from there according to population.
On a quieter note, the absences of over five hundred different V&V recovery teams was not missed at all. Given the number of planets in the Empire, it was unsurprising. There were well over a million more inhabited worlds, after all, what was .05% going silent? Just no children of interest getting born, was all...
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Ronnie Rantha, 'The Fantastic Rantha', threw the switch symbolically.
She ran over the calculations and components one final time, and sisters actually smarter than she was double-checked all the math, just to be sure.
Power hummed, subdued, yet strong.
Building a planet-wide Ward to keep out the Warp was a hideously expensive and demanding process that probably wouldn't be viable until they could do full-on suntaps and use that level of energy in the construction process. Really, you'd need TL 20 fabbers to make it viable.
But... the best way to lock out the Warp was to strengthen the Veil. The best tool to strengthen the Veil was vivic energy feeding into the land. The best thing to feed vivic energy with was death... death energy.
The death energy collected by the Tekrons. The death energy that powered Dead Walking Events.
By consuming the energy that started the one Event, they could also stop the other.
The necroic siphons had been installed in every existing mega-city and kiloplex on the planet, harnessing the constant flow of negative energy from people dying from deaths natural and otherwise. The Tekrons used it to defy time and power their systems. She... was using it to build massive efficient vivic torches pumping that energy directly into the Veil, radiating out slowly and constantly from the vivic torches.
She couldn't really tell if it was taking effect, as Nulls are only sensitive to breaches in the Veil, not to it getting stronger. However, Mindring Egil Rosenblaum, My Queen, and Shadowknife Terse were on hand to provide their opinion of the effectiveness of what was going on.
Helices up, the men short and tall felt the Veil of Reality separating the planet from threats high and low. Transparent crystalline helices and liquid grey-silver reached out and felt, feeling the Veil flowing through and around them.
”I'll defer to my Senior Brother, but by my estimation, the strength of the Veil has already doubled in this area, and it is expanding slowly,” My Queen attested in his normal flat voice.
The hyn slowly nodded. ”The Prime Plane is not my expertise, but that seems reasonable. How fast is it expanding?”
”We believe about a foot for every person dying in range, below about the hundred an hour required to maintain it. If we manage to saturate the planet, the maintenance rate should plummet to half that rate or less,” Ronnie sighed.
That was indeed a lot of people dying. Fortunately or otherwise, it wasn't a hard number to meet for even the smaller kiloplexes. The megacities had no difficulties doing so whatsoever.
”Based on calculations, how long will it take for the planet to be Shrouded?”
”Three or four weeks, unless there's a mass genocide event to spur things along.”
”That should reach the Warp Zone very quickly then...”
”No.” Ronnie shook her head, a faraway look in her eyes. ”The Warp Zone is coming down within three days.”
”Oh.” Egil naturally had seen the Celestial Tribute, so he knew about the great ship, and the delays that had been taken before it would take off. The Warp Zone had been termed cleared months ago, and a trooper named Kalek Hash had been credited with the last demon kill within it, and was promptly dubbed 'The Final Nail.'
”Because I just hit Fifteen, and I just figured out the next stage of the Tachyon Drive.”
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Ronnie's achievement rippled across Markspace, igniting a nerd frenzy. Countless Ranthas and Briggs bemoaned and celebrated her Achievement as she took over first place on the Leveling Leaderboards.
As the NPC Expert Class.
NPC Classes required half the Karma to advance that a PC class did, and a twelfth or less of what advancing the Rantha racial Class did. Just not having to pay full price for breaking the Ceiling at Ten ensured that she'd catch up to the Ranthas who had made Eleven, and would blow right on by them... which she had, in dramatic fashion.