Dalia Taj 1watched the combat video capture of a small squad in the rural lands of Teru Province. The guild team fighting the invading ghost wraiths was fast. They moved with electric speed, but her attention was fixated on a guardian who preferred to fight with a longsword. The others reloaded their weapons often, preferring long-range combat. Yet this guardian chose to get close. Real close. He faced the ghost wraiths with a frightening determination, a madness caught on the cusp of insanity, and a readiness to face down the lightning beasts.
Watching him take down ghost wraiths made her shiver. She closed her eyes when the video paused on a moment where the ghost wraith’s sharp teeth were inches from his neck. His helmet and bodysuit looked dislodged, so close to a tragic outcome.
“He’s reckless,” Dalia said, scowling at the obvious vulnerability in the armor she was improving. “He was too close. The others don’t get that close.”
“This is the reality of close combat with a ghost wraith,” Hansa, her longtime mentor, said. “I watch his videos because he moves differently. He’s fast and finds the most efficient way to make his armor work for him. The close call with a ghost wraith’s punishing jaws may seem reckless, but…” Hansa moved closer to the tech table and used his index finger to rotate the perspective, changing the angle of the video. “Look.” Hansa pointed to the guild protector’s hands.
Dalia gasped when she saw the combat sword sunk deep into the right side of the ghost wraith’s chest, where the heart of the animal was situated. The Guardian’s Hyper Comp Pistol 2muzzle was pointed at the wraith’s lower head, the flash of the shot clear. It was shocking that he was able to use both at the same time.
“He incapacitated the wraith, risking the bite to get what he wanted,” Hansa said, pride coloring his voice. “He trusts the armor to withstand the stress of the attack; he tilts his head back to avoid the fatal scrape of the ghost wraith’s teeth.”
“He is still reckless,” Dalia said, then reached for a drawing tablet. She spent a few minutes drawing a safety feature on the seam of the helmet and the body armor at the neck. She sent it to Hansa, who stamped it as very urgent, and then forwarded the upgraded design to the Santi Corp armor team.
Dalia placed the drawing tablet aside.
“Our industrious guild guardian aside, have you noticed the ghost wraiths they’re fighting are getting younger?” Dalia asked, shifting the focus away from the guardian to the ghost wraiths. Their jaws were underdeveloped, their sizes smaller. She checked their hind legs and tails and marked the immature size of their tails and hindquarters. “Are there too many in their nests?”
“Maybe,” Hansa said, studying the video again, his focus back on the guardian with the reckless combat skills. “You know, this one is a great candidate for the bioweapon you’re developing. I’ve read all the papers you’ve submitted to your thesis panel, and for six months, they still haven’t scheduled your presentation. As much as you believe in the project, if you can’t make it work, you’ll fail, Dalia. The nanites you created need a direct delivery system. The guardian needs to be reckless enough to be close enough to these gho-wra, and precise enough to deliver it under the dermis during combat. The use of the silver sword is ideal. He can prove your thesis.”
Dalia glanced at the silver tubes resting on the worktable closest to her. She had been working on them for years, ever since she got the code from the Pink Piggy. She had created tiny anti-ghost wraith nanites that broke down the ghost wraith’s bio composition on contact. The problem was that the anti-gho-wra nanites needed to be introduced directly into the beast’s blood, but the skin of the ghost wraith was too corrosive. The nanites failed on contact.
So she had tried to find a way to integrate the nanites with Santi Corp’s Hyper Comp Pistol. The failure in this path had left her depressed for the better part of the last six months. It didn’t help that the Pink Piggy had not answered her messages for ages. She had hoped he would have a way, but he’d gone dark. She wondered every day what had happened to him.
“I’ve been trying to make the nanites work with the Hyper Comp Pistol silver bullets,” Dalia said, bringing up her frustrating reality. “I’ve tried every way to house them in the silver liquid, but I can’t find a way to keep them active through the firing process. Every time the liquid steel breaks into a ghost wraith, the nanites end up dead by the time they land in the gho-wra. It has to be the electricity they emit when they growl, or on contact with the skin. I’m sure I can figure it out.”
“You’ve been at it for six months.” Hansa glanced at her, his expression serious. “We need you to graduate from the program so that you can join the Strato research team. If you succeed, we are one step closer to stopping the problem. The Wildlands cannot be contained forever, and we both know that Santi Corp is becoming more reckless.”
Dalia stared at her professor for a minute longer, then let out a long sigh and reached for the tubes housing her nanites.
“And how do you propose we recruit a Theria Guild Guardian to work with us?” Dalia asked.
“Oh, that’s simple,” Hansa said, pulling up the details of the guardian in the video. “He’s still in the training center. I don’t have his name, but I have his instructor. He’s in the Swala Force, which is run by the Sokwe Recon team. They are near Teru. He has one more combat mission to survive before he qualifies to join a force of his own choosing.”
“Oh.” Dalia moved closer to the tech table and watched as Hansa pulled up the details of the training officers at Swala Force. “We can try a soft launch on a small training team to see what happens. It won’t interfere with missions so much that Demus3 and his people will notice.”
“Now you understand,” Hansa said with a grin. “You’re in luck. I know Instructor Kitonyi. He helped my son change classes from Protector to Science. He’s a guy we can talk to.”
“How much will it cost me?” Dahlia asked with a small laugh.
“Enough to buy him lunch at a great restaurant and a set of the upgraded armor we just sent to the Santi Corp team.”
“That is daylight robbery,” Dahlia exclaimed, shaking her head. “Come on, Hansa.”
“You can afford it. Don’t forget, I know what you make from your Santi Corp commission every time you upgrade their armor. Think of it as protecting the reckless guardian’s head as he tries to prove your thesis with the silver sword,” Hansa said, pulling up a messaging application on the tech table. “So, are we doing this?”
Dalia stared at Hansa for a minute, then her gaze shifted to the nanite carriers she had obsessed over for the better part of her training at KISTech. She needed this to graduate into a real research team with actual impact. She met Hansa’s gaze and nodded with a small smile.
“How do you want to do the transfer?” Hansa asked as he started writing a message to his friend.
Dalia moved away from Hansa and started packing all the gear she used to create her nanites and their housing units.
“In person. We’re going to Teru Province,” Dalia said. “I can get us there by tomorrow morning. We’ll just need to find discreet accommodations.”
“Yes,” Hansa said, standing from his stool. “I love road trips. I’ve been meaning to discover what rural Teru Province looks like.”
“Ha-ha,” Dalia said, shaking her head. She understood that Hansa was using her project to propel himself into the official Strato Varsity Research Team. They worked directly with the special force run by Demus Kiima and Kiel Iram from the Theria Guild Guardian.
Hansa wanted out of KISTech, but it took a real contribution.
Dahlia needed his credentials to pull it off, too, so they were now in a highly sensitive symbiotic relationship. She let out a soft sigh as she closed up the black cases with her technology.
“Dr. Hansa,” Dalia said, looking at her mentor. “We can’t tell anyone else what we’re doing out there. Do you agree?”
Hansa finished writing his message to Kitonyi and faced her with a knowing look. “I know.”
“Then,” Dalia said, smiling at him as she reached for her watch, pressed a button, and the one person she trusted with her life—ever since she started living as the Elderon’s daughter—walked in, surprising Hansa.
Lulu Dek was fast, using a pressurized pen to shoot Hansa in the neck with a tranquilizer. Hansa hissed and reached up to touch his neck. Lulu hurried to catch him as he started falling.
“Forgive me for this,” Dalia said, moving to help Lulu place him on a couch in the corner. “I’ll make sure you’re okay. See you in Teru.”
Hansa started to protest, but the tranquilizer took effect, and he was out.
“Are they watching me today?” Dalia asked Lulu.
“No,” Lulu said. “There is a meeting at the Registarion. Most of their attention is on your father’s push for more transparency on Santi Corp’s research projects.”
“Okay,” Dalia said. Registarion meetings ran two to three days. It was enough time to disappear from the city and return unnoticed, hopefully. “We need low-key transportation to Teru Province. We’re going to Swala Force.”
“I’ll arrange it.” Lulu left the laboratory to make arrangements, and Dalia perched on the stool Hansa had been using, a smile spreading on her face when she turned and saw a reply from Hansa’s friend, Kitonyi.
“Nice to hear from you, H. Come visit me. We can catch up.”
Yes! She deleted the messages between Hansa and Kitonyi, as well as the video. Her movements were being watched, and she did not need anyone to discover why she would travel to Teru. She needed an opportunity to prove her thesis without interruption, then she could finally face off with the cronies around her father.
KISTech had done everything it could to suppress her research for six months, whether because she was the Elderon’s daughter or because she had stumbled into a radical idea, she still didn’t know, and she would not allow it anymore.
Thanks to Hansa, she would make use of the reckless guardian and hope he survived long enough to get her into the Strato Varsity Research Team.
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- Dalia Taj (known in Luna VR as Dahlian) is a high-achieving KISTech Science-and-Technology student researcher—and the closely watched daughter of Izra Taj, the Tech Class leader later elected Elderon. Driven to end the ghost wraith threat, she designs biotech weaponry by analyzing ghost wraith DNA and, to accelerate her work, secures proprietary code from “Pink Piggy” (Zev Mablevi) in the Luna VR marketplace before he leaves tech to join the Theria Guild. ↩︎
- Santi Corp Hyper-Comp Pistols: These modified pistols feature a compact black slide and silver barrels. They are typically worn in dual holsters on the thighs. ↩︎
- Demus Kiima is the Commander of the Theria Guild, stationed at the Guild Command in Afrotheria’s capital city, Kirit. He is a high-ranking military leader responsible for the empire’s defense against the “ghost wraith” menace, overseeing various tactical teams such as the Simba and Sokwe Recon squads, among others. ↩︎
Stories and Book Talk 