Hoping for a Better Future

Day 16, Month 12, 415 RVY

The air of nervousness weighed on Hannah’s students like hot air today. It was starting to impress itself upon her, too, but it was unlikely to be for the same reasons. For Hannah, she was hearing too much about the movements of Daira and its resistance. Smuggling was rampant, probably even through the aether tunnel in Agahia. Supposedly, the leaders of Daira were getting more and more aggressive towards Entelan diplomats. A few Entelan officials had gone missing in Daira, and while that meant nothing without further evidence, it seemed likely to be the resistance’s doing.

And to top it all off, the words the resistance was built on were hers. Her own words, “here’s hoping the future is better,” was spread through the Dairan resistance and was plastered across every surface that Entelans might see on Daira. And the resistance even had valid complaints, ones she had tried her best to help with. When Entela met them, they knew how to make boats, but they were limited by their technology. Entela tried to help them, to teach them how to use aether and to make industries. And then Entela’s agreements with planes that aren’t Daira told them they had to stop.

What this left Daira with is a bunch of technology that barely worked and Entelans that couldn’t legally teach them more. They had ways of making aether for power, but the ways they made aether were dirty, damaging their environment and making people sick. They had machines that used aether, but they were loud, and they barely worked. Those machines could work as engines, meaning they could help make food, or clothes, or ships… but they couldn’t be as good as communications or computers, not in the state they were in. It would be so easy to just teach them how to use transceivers, to teach them how to make them. And yet, the agreements say that Entelans aren’t allowed to do that, so they have to have bad aether generation and no computation.

Her students were working on a resonance reactor for the first time. Most of them were graduating from the Academy’s Core Engineering program, and would be set for reactor work after today. They were technically in charge of the energy for the entire city — the size of which was much bigger than it had any right to be given that it didn’t exist 20 years ago. A combination of magic and insane pressure from the Entelan government for anyone not afraid of moving to a frontier town meant that that ‘town’ exploded to a size almost rivalling Entela itself. It was situated around a major lake, downstream of a place that was now flagged as a historical site: the first place Hannah and Karina lived here. It was even big enough that another city, Oriel, had come into existence only half a day’s travel downstream from the lake. While much smaller, it also had a ton of people migrating into it.

Either way, whether the students knew it or not, there was enough of a buffer built up from the absurd output of the resonance reactor that even if the reactor had to be turned off, there would still be a couple days with power before it needed to be turned back on. They didn’t have much to worry about. She had faith in them, and even if they failed, the consequences were very minor.

“Alright, students,” Hannah called out. “We’ve been practicing on models, now it’s time to work on an actual reactor.” The reactor here wasn’t nearly as large as the one in mainland Entela. It didn’t need to be. It was a cylinder that took up almost two and a half of the three meters of height this room had to offer, normally glowing with a brilliant silvery color that contained another, less-visible bright blue color. The remainder of the height was taken up by the bottom of the reactor, a mess of dark circuitry that housed the fuel input, energy output, and a number of safety valves. Around it, various displays on floating blue screens of magic recited various facts about the reactor, including its current aether output, the amount of energy currently in the reactor, the ‘resonant state’ of the reactor, and any energy that might be leaking through containment as time passes. This information was also all available on her transceiver, the fancy watch containing a computer that all Entelans and students of the Academy for Interplanar Youth had.

Her students — of which there were four ready to prove they knew how to handle a reactor — were all looking at her, waiting for some kind of command. Two of them came from Entela, and like her, had grown up their whole life thinking core engineering like this was the coolest thing ever. Which wasn't incorrect. One of them was from one of the cities Daira, apparently getting around those interplanar agreements by… taking classes at the Academy where people from everywhere could go? And one was from a plane called Nivyl, where some parts of various aethertech devices were made. In addition, there was another fully-trained researcher, a bioaetherist from Agahia, to make sure no health problems occurred. Everyone was wearing a blue lab coat, meant to protect them from the same health problems the bioaetherist was watching for.

“The reactor’s off, so you need to start by turning it on,” Hannah instructed. “What’s the first thing to do?”

The girl from Nivyl immediately raised her hand. “Prime it with something reactive!”

“What’re we probably going to use for that?” Hannah asked.

A hand raised from the Dairan kid. “Aethersteel’s standard in resonance reactors,” they said. “Unless it was emptied, it’s also probably already primed.” The other students nodded in agreement.

“You’re right,” Hannah confirmed. “It was emptied, because sometimes you’ll need to start up a reactor that’s run out of fuel. Once we’ve primed it, what do we do?”

Silence. She knew everyone knew the answer, even if they didn’t know they knew it. A couple of them had the faces of people that knew the question was dumb, but were convincing themselves that they forgot something. “What happens when you push the power button when it’s primed?” She asked.

“It… turns on?” the Nivyl girl answered.

“There you go,” Hannah agreed. “Right, you’ve all got it. Get to work!”

The students scattered. During the model demonstrations, they had already worked out a plan — the Dairan kid went to get aethersteel from one of the storage drawers in the wall of the reactor’s building while the Nivyl girl was pulling open the reactor’s input port for priming. A girl from Entela was preparing the first resonant state of the reactor, and the boy was closing all the output lines so the reactor could properly start up.

The building housing the reactor had only a few rooms. The primary one — this one — had black walls, beginning to be illuminated by the startup sequence of the reactor but also illuminated by a soft glow from above. There were two levels to the room — the larger octagon upper floor, centered where the reactor directly joined with the ceiling, and another octagon rotated at a diagonal to the upper floor centered underneath it. The upper floor matched up with the outside, and its walls were mostly outside walls. Rather than windows, dark glass screens emulated heavily tinted windows. The bioaetherist stayed up here, sitting at a desk with a notebook and watching his transceiver. The lower floor, where Hannah and the students were standing right now, had all the displays the engineers needed. There was a bathroom, and a break room with a fridge, but little else connected to this reactor.

The startup procedure went off with no issues. Hannah knew they could do it. They should be reaching their first resonant state soon, based on how they were doing during the model planning. Now that they were working, most of the students had lost that initial sense of dread that came with wondering if you knew what you were doing or not. The Nivyl girl was talking about what resonant state they wanted to be at, with one of the Entelans reading something off his transceiver about ‘70% aethersteel tends to sit at a resonant frequency of 2.4’. It sounded like he was about to forget that the aethersteel he grabbed wasn't actually that 70% — this reactor had 85% fuel because it turned out refining it further gave more energy than the refinement cost. They were probably going to catch that when the resonance didn't make sense later.

Then Hannah got a message on her transceiver. It was discreet, with a yellow hue taking over her screen, but she could see that the yellow color also went to the bioaetherist. “Caution: Military personnel stationed on Agahia, move to the southeast. Standby for evacuation.” It came with a set of attachments, each dedicated to a different set of people. She silently read the sentence off to herself a couple of times before looking to see if she had an attachment.

She did. There was an attachment titled ‘Head Engineer’. That meant it was just her. The attachment contained a list dedicated to a few things: A briefing on the current situation, how to evacuate the students, what things needed to be done before she left, and where to go once she evacuated. And orders to be ready to describe these procedures in the event of a Warning. Apparently, a cluster of people of unknown size wielding weapons were detected towards Oriel, making the journey through the forest to Agahia. Their purpose was unknown, but they seemed more like guerillas rather than any kind of trained military. Presumably, the military moving to that direction were hoping to convince them to leave.

While she was reading over this document, she looked up occasionally to make sure the students were getting the reactor working alright. The start-up procedures took a while even on a good day, but they were getting there. And, in the meantime, Hannah had to make sure she could properly instruct the students how to leave a reactor running. Turning it off was her job as Entela’s Head Engineer. Getting them out was more important to this situation.

Just on time for them to finally stabilize the reactor to that frequency the Entelan boy was talking about — and, as she expected, get confused as to why it hadn't locked into that frequency — her transceiver came through with that dreaded message, and this time it came with a loud sound and it went to everyone. Red lights blinked onto everyone’s transceivers. “WARNING: Attack imminent. Follow evacuation protocols from your supervisor.”

Hannah raised her voice as much as she could to cut through what was likely to be panic soon. “Alright, everyone, lock your stations up, gather anything you brought, and stand by the door! Entelan military will be here momentarily to escort you away from the zone of conflict!”

She could already hear some of the students worrying. The one from Daira seemed especially concerned, and Hannah could not blame them for it. It was entirely possible this was a Dairan surprise attack.

“Heeead engineer,” the girl from Nivyl asked, “I need to go to the tunnel to get home.”

“Follow the military for now,” Hannah instructed. “They’ll make sure it’s safe for you to get to the tunnel. Top priority is making sure you’re safe.” Hannah started tapping her transceiver and looking at the core herself. Turning this thing off was going to be annoying, because even if she turned everything off, it was going to wind up more before it started to wind down.

“Military’s got what looks like the students and a professor,” Vin whispered to his squad, staring down the scope of a long rifle. A cluster of five people, escorted by four rifle-armed but unarmored soldiers, had just left the short building that represented the reactor’s housing, and were now walking further away from Vin’s team. The military was in uniform, with black to the floor and markings of gold scattered about. The students were all in their anti-aetheric lab coats, and were in a state of trying to tamp down their panic. They were mostly failing at that. One of them seemed to be doing super well at it, to the point that Vin almost couldn't tell they were awake. “Inra, you sure the Head Engineer’ll be there?”

“Admin just sent a message out telling ‘em to knock out the reactor,” she agreed. She had picked up a battle rifle and a transceiver about two minutes ago from some guard that didn’t seem to understand what ‘Warning’ meant. “Get in, get ‘em, get out, we’re off-plane before the main group gets here.” She nodded a head to Ora, who wasted no time in being the first to move up and cross the street to cover a different angle. Surely the Entelans had people watching their head engineer.

Arvy’s voice came through Vin’s transceiver, seemingly pushing itself into his mind. “Vin, surveillance across from the reactor. Need you to take it down.” Vin took a look, and sure enough, at the top of a four-story building was an Entelan with a rifle very similar to his own. No problem. The guy was even looking at Vin’s team and hadn’t noticed yet.

Vin took a deep breath, lined up his scope, and squeezed the trigger. A pulse of magic that seemed to draw light into it traveled in a perfectly straight line through the Entelan’s chest, and he fell backwards with seemingly no injuries. Vin and Inra pushed forwards. The reactor was really only a couple buildings away, even if it felt much further than that.

Ora rushed up to a little alcove in one of the buildings. She had one of the small Dairan pistols she loved so much, the ones that took seven hours to reload and couldn't really hit anything with reasonable armor. Vin desperately hoped she was also carrying a real weapon, but he didn't see one. She and Inra needed to push the furthest. Arvy was somewhere directly above Vin, two condo buildings and the road between them from the reactor. Hopefully, when the two women came back with their Head Engineer, they could dip without issues.

Ora sprayed a couple of shots out of Vin's vision. Even knowing what she was carrying, Vin was still surprised when he saw actual projectiles leave the weapon, and was more surprised that 'spray' was a term he could use for it. Maybe it was better than he thought. They'd come knowing those probably wouldn't work on such an advanced military, and then they were walking around with no body armor to speak of. Inra pushed up to the corner, peaked around, and lit up whatever was over there too. That was a couple pulses of colorful magic, and was much more like what he was expecting. Then they both crossed the road and ran past the next building. Ora crossed back over to meet up with Inra, and the two pinned themselves next to the door to the reactor. Vin’s transceiver — and again, the brain that seemed to be connected to it — picked up Ora’s voice. “Alright ‘Ra, it’s gonna be up to you to get what they say. Door’s gonna be locked, so I’ll get the door open, you grab ‘em, got it?”

Inra gave Ora a nod. Somewhere behind them, the Entelan soldiers were starting to walk back towards the group. Vin needed to give them more time. He picked one off, and the rest all panicked and ducked behind various forms of cover. So much for being trained military.

Ora pulled a small aether circuit out of a vest. It took less than ten seconds from when she held it to the door for the door to slide itself open. And from inside, a voice came out that Vin recognized, being picked up by Ora’s transceiver. “Hang on, I’m not ready yet,” came in clear Volarian. That was their Head Engineer?

“Hang on, I’m not ready yet,” Hannah called to the door that opened. She couldn’t believe how fast their military was, even with all the shots being fired around the reactor. It was almost shut down. It just needed a few more inputs, a couple more minutes, and then she’d be good. The door shut, with the footsteps of two people behind her. They stopped not too far away from her. “Just another couple moments,” she said, poking everything on her transceiver she needed to.

And finally, just when the reactor finally seemed shut down, she felt some kind of rectangle pushed against her back, and the command in a very Dairan accent, “Raise your hands, don’t trigger your transceiver.” She thought for a single moment that maybe, just maybe, she could call for help and run. But that was so risky, and they clearly wanted her alive. Maybe if it were just herself, she would take that chance, but even if she lived, Karina would never forgive her for doing something so stupid. So she followed instructions. She raised her hands, assuming the thing planted to her back was a gun. Whoever wasn’t holding a gun forced her transceiver off her arm.

“Hate to do this to ya,” one of the Dairans said, in their language of Arghivi. And now Hannah knew who it was. She knew that voice.

“Green?!” She shouted, in the same language. Apparently, that was all it took for them to decide that leaving her with the ability to talk was a terrible idea, and another woman she recognized throw a hand over Hannah’s mouth. ‘Green’ grabbed Hannah’s hands and wrapped them in chains. Even without being able to see it, Hannah instantly knew it was made of platinum, because it was sapping all of her energy, and that’s something platinum did to Volarians.

“Yeah, we don’t want t’ hurt ya, so please don’t make us.” Green took her gun off Hannah’s back and moved to exit the building. Hannah couldn't tell when she got it, but she had Hannah's transceiver. The other person took Hannah's hands and started to lightly push her to the door. “Vin, what’s it look like?”

“Vin, what’s it look like?” Inra asked into Vin’s head.

“Should be good if you run,” Vin replied.

“Yeah, we’ve probably got the equivalent of a disobedient kid on us. Don’t think she’ll be running,” Inra sent back.

Vin started to think through a plan on his own, but Arvy sent word back instead. “We can move up. We’ll be together and gone before they can even try to catch us.” Arvy slid down the side of one of the tall buildings, landing with heavier feet than sounded even remotely healthy, and rushed across the street to their meeting point. Vin looked down his scope again, taking another pot-shot at the Entelan far at the end to keep them hiding. When Inra surfaced from the reactor housing, she did the same, unloading the rest of her rifle’s energy in the direction as she ran.

Ora surfaced, moving what looked like a 25-year-old Head Engineer. She had a blue lab coat and a golden necklace of Solari, just like when she and Vin first met. Inra was right, the girl wouldn’t be running, but at least she understood that she could get hurt if she didn’t walk. Vin rushed up to catch up to Arvy, and arrived just as Inra was.

Inra looked at Vin and held up the transceiver she got from Hannah. “Gotta toast it?” she asked.

“Don’t think so, just throw it somewhere,” Vin responded. “It won’t help her if it’s here.”

Just as Ora arrived with Hannah, Inra threw Hannah’s transceiver as far as it could reasonably go. Hannah glared up at Vin with the harshest look in her eyes that he had ever seen. Every previous time, it was curiosity, softness. Now, he could feel the anger, and betrayal, and hatred pierce him. He wanted to shrink away from her.

Arvy held a thick disk, around the size of a dinner plate. “Everyone make sure you’re touchin’ this. Got it?” He pushed the disk up against Hannah’s chest and then lifted it a bit, pushing the top edge of it to the bottom of her jaw. Everyone else touched it voluntarily, and then a moment passed, and the magic of a Tunnel took them away.