What does one do when no challenges are left? I wonder about this question, sometimes. We see how many are taken by ennui, or lose touch with reality once they peak. I wonder what secrets the thirteen heroes use to avoid this? And more worrying… what if they have not?

  – Tensor Windam, Longevity Studies

  Apex had yet to figure out a way to disguise his entry into normal space from Etherspace. Every time, he watched how the Etherglide Drive sent mana through itself, observed the various convoluted patterns it pushed through. Every time, he learned a little more, but understood more and more how complex it truly was. He suspected even those who constructed them did not know every detail of how they worked.

  Sallus had kept this in mind, along with the sparse information they had on this system, and brought him into the system some distance from the habitable zone. It would make their investigation take longer, but a few weeks was likely to be safe, with the hornet’s nest they’d kicked up in the other worlds.

  Despite this distance, Apex didn’t want to explore the system without going into stealth. He knew he’d been detected somehow, so his technique of ‘smearing’ his heat and mana signature wasn’t good enough for something sensitive. That left him trying to figure out a better way to hide himself. If he was going to be a stealth and ambush predator, he was going to be the best ambush predator he could be.

  “I’m going to try something different for masking our signature. Prepare for a short high burn, then we’ll drop to about 2G for cruising,” Apex announced to the crew. His strategies had become much easier to communicate once he learned the terminology, and the crew dutifully strapped in.

  “What are you up to, Apex? You should discuss any changes, first.” Sallus complained, naturally, but not too fiercely. Apex suspected that she knew as well as he did that the earlier versions of his cloak weren’t going to be useful for much longer.

  Apex started the high-G burn before answering, pushing the very limit of the compensators. He was right on the edge of fifteen Gs of acceleration, and couldn’t hold it indefinitely. An hour should be fine, and they were still a healthy distance from any installation even at that speed.

  “I’ve been using magic to ‘smear’ the heat I’m putting out, making it hard to recognize me.” The dragon only spoke in a distracted tone, while he was constructing the spell formula now that he was in real space again. “I am going to try something else that should almost completely eliminate our heat and magic signatures, but it has limitations.”

  “If you can do that, then you’ll be almost unstoppable.” Naven whistled as he said that, and Apex was sure the man was thinking up ways to fight back. He was amiable enough right now, but it was unlikely he’d stay on if he had a chance to escape back.

  So Apex merely grunted back. He did not name the weaknesses of what he was about to do, he merely let the crew settle in for the hour-long burn. Even if the compensators could handle it, this was a rate that had them wavering in their duties regularly, making it dangerous to walk or stand.

  “Looks like we have a mining station of some sort, right at the edge of the green belt.” Sallus was spending the hour long wait in her seat analyzing the sensor readings, and just as she’d predicted an installation and settlement to support it was just at the edge of the habitable zone. “I’m also picking up another heat trace on the fifth planet, too. Looks pretty minor but might be something. Probably not what we’re looking for, but should we check it out?”

  It didn’t matter to Apex, as he already knew that his objective was not in this system. As soon as he jumped in, he could feel it… the teasing, yearning presence of his missing Essence, closer than ever before. Closer, yet still so far away. Distant as it was, he could finally get a rough direction, and it was away from the system’s star. Both anomalous heat signatures were toward the dwarf star.

  Still… his time here had only been a few weeks now. He could stand to learn a lot, especially if there was little risk involved. He’d known that the world was round and that the atmosphere thinned as he flew higher, and his kind had long ago conjectured that the stars were simply other suns, masses of eternal fire. In the time he’d been dead, these people had learned all that and more. Much as his pride demanded he look down upon the Lesser Folk, his caution reminded him not to underestimate them again.

  “We will fly past on our way out,” he replied at last. He wasn’t sure he wanted Sallus to know he could detect the thirteen heroes if he got close enough. It was tempting to just turn around and go, but this was one place where he felt he had to have patience. Rushing in against an opponent that had his own magic would be unwise, and he knew it.

  Besides, for the time being he still needed Sallus to put in coordinates for the Etherglide Drive. He was getting closer to puzzling out that system, but it was very complex. The penalty for getting it wrong would likely get him lost forever, so he’d very much like to be certain.

  After an hour of flight, he cut off the thrusters, then experimentally attempted his new ‘cloaking’ spell. This put a lot more stress on the aging, imperfect mana circuits, but he’d been studying them more and could manage it. Immediately, the heat signature of his frame vanished from external sensors as he guided all the radiated heat into a contained, single point in his neck, storing it in the magically-cooled cylinder that had originally been meant to serve as a secondary fuel source for his plasma lance.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “We will now be burning at two gravities, inertial compensators should be able to keep you comfortable for the trip.” Naven had warned him that it was best to give updates when he was changing things. It trained the crew to listen to his voice. Though somehow he still had that gravelly and deep rumble of a voice module. One of these days he would get that fixed…

  He ramped up the thrust slowly, just in case. Managing the heat for this cloak required some of his attention, and he had yet to practice the technique in actual travel. He also had no idea yet how much heat he could store in his enchanted container before it became dangerous and needed to be vented.

  “It looks like we have about 24 hours until turnaround. I’m going to get some sleep.” Sallus announced that more to the rest of the bridge than to Apex, but it was interesting.

  Now that he thought about it, he’d only seen her actually sleep a few times over the last few weeks. He knew elves had a reduced need for sleep, but that seemed off to him… especially because he was pretty sure the other elves on the crew slept every night, if only for a few hours.

  Another mystery to unravel.

  “What could possibly be valuable enough to mine out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Apex could see the mining installation was quite large. In fact, calling it ‘a mining installation’ was a bit of a misnomer, as he counted at least six distinct mines on the small planet during his flyby.

  That didn’t change his question, though. All six were on the same side of the barren planet, the atmosphere too thin to really hide the sprawling complexes. The vast warehouses they delivered to clustered around a single spaceport, but he wasn’t passing by at the right angle to get a good look at that. Someone wanted what they were mining very much.

  “From the look of the layouts, it’s probably mithril. Mined here and refined on-site, then sent to nearby worlds for use.” Sallus answered in an academic tone, as if she hadn’t really thought about it much. “Out here on the fringes, they don’t get much of it from the inner systems, so they source their own. Your mana circuits use a lot of it, so it’s a good thing, too.”

  Apex grunted, but didn’t pursue. He knew mithril, and it made sense that it would be precious enough to have a mine out here, with nothing else of value in the system. “That still leaves us with whatever the other one is. Another mine? An observation outpost?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  The mithril mines slid out of sight as Apex orbited the planet, using its gravity to swing him around into a new direction vector toward the second heat source. And as he thought of heat sources…

  “I’m dumping all the stored heat while we’re out of sight. I don’t think I could make the trip to our second target without venting.” The dragon rumbled, his voice turning into a complaint. “We should have known this wasn’t the place when we first arrived.”

  “Maybe, but we should be thorough. Resort system is next, and I expect it will be a bust, too. The industrial system really is the best place to hide in a lot of ways, but that would also be the easiest place to stumble onto it by accident.”

  Sallus wasn’t wrong… even Apex realized that. He’d have to think it over. He skimmed the top of the thin atmosphere and dumped all his stored heat out, venting it just below his neck and into the air. Even the barely-present atmosphere was a better heat sink than trying to jet a plume of it into the vacuum of space.

  “Calculate the coordinates for the resort system.” Apex grumbled in boredom as he kicked in the engines again and recloaked himself. On the far side of the planet, the mining installations would be none the wiser, though it was possible that this second objective might have caught a flare of the heat. It would be like an explosion, but with the sun behind him, Apex presumed it would be masked well enough.

  The planets weren’t in alignment, so the trip took the better part of a day before he started the turnaround to slow down. He was still almost an hour out when it happened.

  “What the hell?!” Naven yelled out, just as the overlay across Apex’s vision showed the heat and mana output of the ‘tiny outpost’ multiply several times in an instant.

  It also began to move. The small signal wasn’t a station on the surface or in orbit. Nothing like that at all.

  It was a ship.

  A very large ship.

  “Apex, get us out of here! That thing has to be the size of a cruiser, at least!”

  Naven’s panic was understandable, and Apex could understand it. He said nothing, trusting to his stealth, but he did adjust the heading subtly while keeping the heat bank active. Had they detected him? Could they see him somehow? Did they have visual?

  He felt the crawling tease of MADAR dancing over his body, and he understood it then. Quickly, he tried to befuddle the MADAR as well, much like he’d done when attacking Naven’s ship, but handling both this and the heat bank was putting a strain on his circuits. He knew he couldn’t do it for long.

  “They can’t see us yet, but they are guessing – correctly – that we’re in the area.” Apex informed the bridge of the situation with a growl, his mind split between the jamming and the heat suppression. “I think I have visual on them.”

  He magnified his vision, focusing on the area of high heat, and copied it to the bridge’s viewscreen.

  “Gristlemaw? He’s alive?” Sallus sputtered, losing her composure for once. “I’ve almost got our coordinates locked in! Jump as soon as you can!”

  Apex was briefly distracted staring at the new foe. Breaking from orbit, engines pulsing in silent thunder, a massive ship lurched its way toward him. It was long and cylindrical in shape, but had a ragged appearance, as if someone had welded multiple smaller ships to the huge hull to patch the obvious deterioration. Spires of metal – parts of other ships – jutted out at odd angles, and the total mass of it was even more than what the length would have implied. It had to be at least five times his size, and Apex knew he was not a small ship.

  The dragon did not know fear easily, but right at that moment, Apex felt some caution. This was not a foe he wanted to engage unprepared.

  The chime of coordinates locking in interrupted his thoughts, and the Draconis vessel made the jump, with a quick burst of magic left behind to baffle any tracking attempts. In a hazy shimmer of colors, Apex bolted toward the next system.

  Thus, he wasn’t there to see the mammoth cruiser ease away from the gravity well of the planet just a few minutes later… and waver into intangibility as it, too, jumped into Etherspace.

  Anticipation

  ? Featured Story ?

  by Steve Rock

  “A Pioneer’s Blood Waters the Tree of Civilization”

  The Galaxy has finally learned peace. The Akaadi Imperium and Libera Coalition have put down their blasters for now, turning to the Frontier to replenish their resources. But, they'll need Pioneers. Dropped into remote, inhospitable worlds, Pioneers must hunt for useful salvage. Valuable materials, lost technologies, and unique lifeforms are all pursued, at grave peril.

  Enter Daniel Hardgrave. The old man who raised Hardgrave had always told him, "Do what you want, Danny, but never become a Pioneer. Life's short enough. Don't become expendable". Hardgrave had listened, scratching out a living as a humble fry cook. Until he learned he had a little sister to care for. Wanting to fund her education and give her a better life, he enlisted as a Pioneer. And unknowingly threw himself into the maw of the Apocalypse. Old powers are gathering, threatening everything Hardgrave has ever known. For an ex-fry cook trying to provide for a genius little sister and cynical cat, it's an impossible threat. But his discovery of an ancient technology could change all of that…

  Inspired by series like Warhammer 40K and videogames like Helldivers 2 and Lethal Company, this is a tale of a man who faces danger where others will not go.

  What to expect

  Pulse-pounding action in exotic environments.LitRPG-like progression, with a sci-fi twist.Minor romantic and comedic elements

  Don't miss out on this incredible story!