Chương 115: Chapter 114 – The Age of Enlightenment

Therza's warband looted the remains of the automatons with almost clinical efficiency. Collecting not just the LF loot, but stacking armor panels, collecting hydraulic fluids, siphoning LF residue, and pulling cables, circuitry, and wiring. It all went onto the back of a pair of utility trucks brought in from across a makeshift bridge while the warrior woman kept an eye on Cole and his team.

True to her words of assumed loyalty to flesh over steel, her questions seemed based more in curiosity than suspicion—except for Alexa's clockwork familiar. The woman also acted as something of a buffer, keeping the more curious of her own crew away while Cole's team policed up their own loot and the LF residue from the automatons they'd taken down on the flank of the engagement.

"That piece there looks like it fits the shape of your vest," said Therza, pointing to a pearlescent armor panel the shape of an MSV insert. Cole leaned down and picked it up, touching it to his analyzer.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It tells me what the loot does," said Cole. He glanced down at the screen. <LF Item detected. Analyzing Average cold-forged ballistic plate of grounding Reduces damage from electricity-based attacks Reduces buildup of thermal radiation> Better than the wooden insert from Curahee, surely. He began to doff his armor to swap out the insert.

"Can I see it?" asked Therza. Cole raised an eyebrow.

"Your hand computer," she said, holding her palm up. Cole shrugged and handed the analyzer over.

"Knock yourself out." Therza turned it over, looking at it from all angles.

"Where are the controls?" Howie moved up beside her.

"The screen. Use your fingers. The screen senses capacitance between your skin and receptors built into the display." Therza's jaw dropped as she navigated through the analyzer under Howie's direction.

"If anyone doubted you guys really were aliens, this clinches it. Your gear I could see being secret police issue. This screen alone… this is decades ahead of anything in Hexighast. Maybe even a century or more." She fiddled further, enraptured by the device. Howie beamed with a smug smile as though he'd invented the analyzer himself.

"Our briefing put your tech at about sixty to seventy years behind Earth's."" Earth," said Therza, feeling out the word.

"My kids would have loved this."

"Your kids?" asked Cole.

"You've got children?" Therza met his eyes.

"Not mine, exactly. I was a teacher here in the city before I found my second calling in the Activation. Math and robotics, if you can believe it." She laughed bitterly.

"We were so excited for Hextant. Counting down the days 'til it came online to protect us from the monsters." She shook her head.

"If only we'd known. Now those kids grow crops in urban gardens instead of building robots." One of the utility trucks laid on its horn. Therza glanced back and waved, handing the device back to Cole. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"Looks like it's time to go. Want a lift?" she asked.

"We don't have your kid, but I bet I know who might. There are remnant factions all over the city. I can show you better back at the tower. Least we can do after," Therza gestured to the downed walker.

"Sure," said Cole. Unlike Guall, he didn't feel an ounce of malice coming off the former schoolteacher. She reminded him more of the survivors at Last Fall Hold on Curahee, doing whatever they could to hang on just a little longer. And slowly failing. Cole glanced at the pair of bodies covered in canvas sheets being lifted up into the bed of a vehicle. Therza led them over to a pair of four-door vehicles. One was a curvy sedan that looked like a concept car from the seventies.

The other was a light truck with a bench seat, with a manufacturer stamp beneath the window that read Bilte-Starr Motor-Carriages. Therza's warband had stacked the bed with scrap from the automatons. Besson and Alexa both ushered their familiars up into the truck bed before sliding into the bench seat along-side the driver. The rest squeezed into the—luckily spacious—sedan along with Therza. She shrank her hammer down to the size of a mallet and dropped it in the center console before firing up the engine.

"You're not worried about another attack on the way back to your base?" asked Cole.

"Hextant isn't subtle. We've got shielded acoustic sensors along the major approaches, so we know about the waves ahead of time. The flyers aren't quiet, either." Therza glanced over.

"First few times we saw one of your flyers, we thought he'd come up with something new. They're fixed-wing, right? How do you land those things out on that platform without a runway?"

"I'm not really a drone guy," said Cole. He looked back.

"Howie?"

"Catapults and nets," he said. Roxy elbowed him across Nona, who was squished in the middle.

"Aren't you supposed to know the smart stuff like that?"

"What, you want a fancy technical term for throw it really hard and catch it?" Therza laughed. Cole looked back up at her.

"What is it?"

"Sorry. I guess I just… didn't know what to expect from the people capable of traveling to other dimensions. The fact that you squabble like my eighth-years is…"

"Alarming?" asked Howie.

"Embarrassing?" asked Roxy." Comforting," said Therza. She pulled into the convoy of vehicles heading back into the city.

"It's very human. No one really knew what to expect when you started transmitting. A lot of people thought it was a new trick by Hextant. But he's not that subtle. Or that you'd be worse than the automatons." Cole looked out over the city as the convoy rolled across old, raised highways that now were only a few meters above the waterline. Improvised bridges had been placed connecting several of them to allow vehicles to move freely in order to avoid flooded sections or areas still jammed with derelict alien cars.

One area went straight through a collapsed skyscraper that had crushed the road beneath it. This city was at least the size of Atlanta, though not quite as built-up. Given their development, Cole had to imagine this had been their equivalent of New York City or Washington.

"Seeing a modern city in ruins like this hits a lot closer to home," said Roxy, as though reading Cole's thoughts.

"It's like… still alien. But not having castles or forts or underground ruins. You could see this happening to Seattle or Portland." Nona cleared her throat.

"When we came through the portal, I thought we might still be on Earth," she said.

"If it weren't for the Lewis Field, I wouldn't have known the difference." Therza pulled the vehicle onto a scrap bridge.

"Lewis Field. I'm guessing that's what you guys call the Hodges-Bridger Layer."

"You can take the teacher out of the classroom," chuckled Cole. Therza grinned over.

"But not the class out of the teacher," she said.

"Is yours that different from ours?"

"Earth doesn't have one," said Cole.

"You're kidding. How do you use your abilities or get loot drops? How do your soldiers fight monsters without them?"

"No monsters, no magic, no abilities or loot drops. No psychopathic computers. Our enhancements only manifest when we visit another world."

"Sounds like a paradise." Cole shifted.

"We've got our own issues. Otherworlds grabbing our people, for one. I don't really get how it works, but for some reason the few Earth folks that get nabbed are super-strong in a Lewis Field. Makes them attractive as a Hail-Mary play for dying—for worlds like this." Therza was quiet as she pulled up outside a massive tower hanging with sectioned gardens and waited for a bridge to be lowered.

"Desperate people do desperate things," she said.

"That doesn't make it right. I can't imagine what I'd do if one of my kids was abducted by aliens and forced to fight." She met Cole's eyes.

"I sincerely hope that you get them back."

"Thanks," said Cole.

"That's… not an attitude we're used to hearing when we make the trip." Roxy reached up and squeezed his arm.

"Not everyone in the multiverse is a psychopath, babe." Sometimes it was easy to forget that. Therza glanced down at Roxy's hand with a hint of surprise that, if it weren't for Cole's enhanced Acuity, he probably would have missed. He glanced back at Roxy, who was looking at the woman driving, rather than him. Ah, well, there were some things the corpsman was more attuned to, after all. The convoy finally pulled up to a set of marked areas, where Therza parked and cut the engines.

She swung open the doors and gestured to the parking deck.

"Welcome to Tern Tower," she said.