Moments before Lee Joon-ho had been attacked, he was enjoying the feeling of unfettered flight kilometers above the surface of Proxima Centauri b. He had done it before, of course—at least in the simulation and on Earth—but there was something different, something special about doing it on an honest-to-god alien planet. And having been stuck in the research base without being able to fly on his own had been like sandpaper rubbing against his desire to exercise his superpower.Before he’d been blessed by mana, he had been lost. As restrictive as the Kim regime had been, at least he knew he had a place. He was a cog. A small cog, but a cog nonetheless, and cogs ALWAYS fit somewhere. But then China stuck its fingers in the North Korean pie and triggered an attack on South Korea, the retaliation for which had completely wiped out the dictatorship that ruled the northern half of the divided country.And his place had been wiped out with it.So he lost himself. He lost himself in food, in l
“Divert the lander and pick him up,” Ayaka ordered moments after watching the recovered video.“Apologies, Commander. Orders from the fleet are that we’re to immediately proceed to rendezvous with the Khopesh. They’re non-discretionary, I’m afraid,” the lander pilot replied. The lander continued rocketing straight up with over 20 subjective gravities of acceleration pushing its passengers into their acceleration seats and crash harnesses. The pilot would have gone faster, but his passengers were no ARES troopers or fleet sailors that had been trained to tolerate that kind of force; they were scientists, and scientists were by and large a sedentary lot.Lasers from the Khopesh’s drones began firing, the ionization in the air from the storm making them visible as flashes of dim blue beams as they burned through root after root. The empire’s drones were designed to increase the strategic missile defense depth of the TSF, so handling relatively slow-moving roots was an easy task that cou
Ayaka was still standing on the bridge of the Khopesh when the last evacuation flight passed Proxima Centauri b’s Karman Line and rocketed toward the TFS Escapade, the heavy cruiser it was assigned to.She had—barely—been able to keep herself from pacing back and forth behind the drone wing commanders, but a thrill passed up and down her spine when she heard that the last lander had safely made it off the surface and she was unable to keep herself from practically vibrating in place. Only two decades of comportment and etiquette training, courtesy of her father’s expectations, kept her from showing how anxious she was.She turned to Captain Chang, who shot her an empathetic glance as he began, “Don’t worry, we’ve already prepared the rescue mission. Wing three, prepare to—”Before he could finish his sentence, the holotank in the center of the bridge turned red and an abort signal flashed, accompanied by a message: “All surface missions are suspended until further notice.”The message
Joon-ho was floating in a warm darkness, his knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. ‘Is this what it feels like to be dead?’ he thought. ‘Just floating in... nothingness? Man, a whole lot of people are gonna be really disappointed when they die. No angels with trumpets, no pearly gates, no mythical beings or buddhas... and apparently no hot goddesses offering perks to be born on planets they’re responsible for.’ He sighed, or at least attempted to.Suddenly he heard a muffled thud-THUD and two other noises that reminded him of conversation. One was a low-pitched murmur—a man, he thought—and there was another, higher-pitched sound. If the first was a man, then the second should be a woman.‘Why does this seem so... familiar?’ he mused.He drifted in the endless dark, listening to the murmuring and rhythmic thud-THUD. ‘Well, if this is what the afterlife is like, then I guess it could be worse,’ he thought as he floated in the warm, welcoming nothing that surrounded h
Joon-ho felt a thrill pass through him at the question. It was a question he had been waiting for, seemingly for his entire life. He didn’t know many people from the task force, having spent the entire journey out either practicing his mana manipulation skills or in his private VR space, but he firmly believed that he was the leading expert in the Proxima Centauri system on all things fantasy, sci-fi, and anime.He began lecturing the trees on all things elven, all the way from the mythological alfar and dokkalfar to present, including the races’ representation in novels, video games, and movies. He provided every detail he could think of, and as he spoke, he saw them in his memories, including his emotions and thoughts as he first discovered the rich body of entertainment through humanity’s history. He recalled heroes and villains, epic tales of adventures, and the struggles and challenges that each individual went through in each story he recounted to the trees.As he spoke, the tre
A month passed and the red mana shield around Proxima Centauri b was still present, just as strong as it had been when it was first raised, if not stronger. The TFS Proxima had been in a high polar orbit practically the entire time, and it seemed like the shield had detected her sensors and strengthened itself as a result.But if they had been able to see through the obscuring shield, the members of Task Force Proxima would likely have been rather surprised. Who wouldn’t be surprised if they saw continents springing up seemingly out of nowhere?That said, the continents hadn’t been created out of nothing. Rather, it was more like the roots occupying the ocean floor had mostly withdrawn, lowering the water level and exposing continents that had already been there, but flooded by the water.And following the law of unintended consequences, the withdrawn roots had taken most of the mana with them from the water. But as energy, including mana, could neither be created nor destroyed—barrin
Three months later.Ayaka and Captain Marinakis were in the captain’s ready room on the Farsight, attending a virtual meeting with the task force’s leadership. Things had settled into a routine, and the meetings had gone from daily, to weekly, and now this was the second monthly meeting they were holding. Nothing of any note had yet been accomplished; the situation remained unchanged.“We’re still functioning on skeleton crews to reduce resource consumption. Even though we have the replicators, our problem with the algae in the feedstock tanks remains unsolved, but we’re still working on it and should have a solution soon,” the fleet’s head of logistics reported.For the past six weeks, the crews of the ships had been rotating in and out of VR training simulations, with only skeleton crews maintaining the ships in reality. The initial mission planning had called for restocking their algae tanks and supplementing them with organic compounds from asteroids in Proxima Centauri and on the
“Oh. My. God,” Ayaka murmured. Her murmur was caught by everyone else in the meeting, as they had all been stunned into silence by the hologram the AI had generated in the middle of the conference table. All of them couldn’t help but agree, as the visual of Proxima Centauri b was starkly different than when they had first laid eyes on it.“Proxima, generate a comparison hologram,” Admiral Bianchi said once he recovered his voice.{Comparison generated, Admiral,} the AI said as a hologram of the planet as it was appeared next to the current one.The two planets looked completely different. When they had first arrived, there was only one continent on it and some scattered islands. But now, one, two, three.... “Five continents,” Dr. Standing Bear said, her tone filled with shock. “Great Coyote, that should have taken millennia, not just months.”She wasn’t wrong, either. Change on a geological scale took time that was better measured in eons, not months! Earth had once been a pangea as w