Accidental Freedom Fighter

Jin blinks slowly. He can see the glistening scratches curving evenly along the inside of the gun barrel - "rifling" is the Cheldrun word for that method of scoring the barrel. To impart a rotational force on the round when it is expelled, helping it maintain its trajectory for more of its swift parabolic arc. In the darkness, deep in that barrel, he knows there is a bullet, surrounded by a casing, seated on top of a charge of explosive powder. They make the powder in it from charcoal and urine, if such a thing can be believed. The barrel is shaking slightly, making it hard to see more of the mechanisms clearly. How are old casings expelled to make way for new ones? Perhaps the explosion itself provides the motive force...

"Just...stand right fucking there and don't fucking move!" The Stardown Technology and Research security soldier holding the weapon is already sweating, though the ambient temperature and humidity inside this building are carefully controlled. The machines are called "compressors" and Jin is anxious to see one in action. The soldier speaks into a box on his shoulder. "Captain, captain...we've got a...a fucking lizard up here, and...what the fuck? No one's supposed to be in here!"

"I am not a lizard, I am an Anakarix, which any reasonably educated -"

"Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Lizard." With the last explosive phonemes he jabs the end of the weapon into Jin's chest. He doesn't even ask how I can speak Cheldrun. I suppose only their leaders are ingenious, and use ones like this for menial tasks.

The Cheldrun grunt continues to mumble into the box on his shoulder - doubtless a distance-communicator of some sort - and Jin has time to reflect. He'd wished that his first close-up view of a gun would be at a time of more leisure.

***

When it came down to it, Jin was unable to convince the Griolsa to mar their sacred Blade, so it became necessary to travel up and over the roots of Ben Hamor to the ancient site where a star had fallen to earth long ago. The contours of a telltale impact crater were clearly visible, and using a lodestone floating in a bowl of water, Jin was able to locate a fragment of the superheated star-metal which had been used to forge the Blade. Taking this back to the village, Sloan had successfully, under Jin's direction, forged a sort of chisel, which was then mounted on a sturdy hardwood haft and reinforced with steel.

"This should suffice." The edge, laboriously sharpened to a brilliant keen line, caught the afternoon sun. Jin couldn't even lift the thing, but it was like a training-rod in Sloan's meaty fist.

"How d'you know?"

Jin pursed his lips and said "Heuristics of course." Which settled nothing, but the longer explanation helped not a whit.

***

When they encountered their fist logging camp, still many days from Stardown, Jin insisted on going to speak with them and see if they could find a way to negotiate safe passage. He was immediately accosted and tackled to the ground, then wrapped in a net by two impolite Mechified guards who handled him like a bundle of twigs - until a bloom of thick arterial blood blossomed in one of their throats, the shaft of Varissa's arrow buried almost to the fletching.

The second died similarly. That night, Varissa dined on all the raw Cheldrun she could eat, while Sloan and Jin exchanged queasy looks and shared the last of Sloan's mashed oats.

Jin never asked how many she killed, but she smiled for days.

***

It was surprisingly easy to enter Stardown. The city had descended into chaos as various groups attempted to resist the grip of Goshi. When challenged by a particular group - the Stardown Freedom League - Varissa was able to produce a pair of severed Hei-Shi heads, communicators still in their ears, wearing almost comical looks of surprise. One was missing an eye because she had replaced it with an arrow. Jin could still see the image of her languorously licking it clean after she removed it.

Predictably, the various resistance groups failed and were forced underground, or in less fortunate cases executed on closed-circuit viewing screens mounted throughout the city. Otherwise, the screens showed flashing Goshi commercials and news of Goshi victories as city after city was forced to surrender, either by the teleporting Hei-Shi or by Washi San mecha.

The message: The age of corrupt politics is at an end. Commercialism is the new world order, and the market shall rule forever after.

Roving death-squads made people view the claims of meritocracy with more than a little skepticism.

But none of this concerned Jin. He was busy reading - every leaflet, every scrolling news story, every broadsheet, ever official document, street signs, trade-'zines, everything. Sloan made the mistake of asking.

"The heuristic process begins with information-saturation. From this information is derived the salient question, and from it variables are also inferred. We then move to the algorithmic stage wherein mathematico-logical processes are utilized to eradicate the erroneous terms, leaving only the ontological relationship expressed in its most elegant form. This form, a system of mathematical relation, is then applied through the governing model, in this case a modified, shall we say nona-iterational -" he took a moment to savor the invented word, then continued "heliophilic formal logic, essentially nine-trees formal logic squared, differentiated and then reintegrated. The resulting schema will give you the two foci. The second focus is the mathematical representation of that which you have found. The answer."

After that, Jin found he had all the alone-time he needed to run the numbers. Once complete, the answer was clear. Obvious, really.

***

Stardown Technology and Research had been working on a final prototype of a revolutionary inertial dampner, a kind of fail-safe security system which would immobilize everyone within its field of effect, sapping the ambient kinetic energy away from them. Given enough time, it would in fact freeze them, but this would be sufficient to stop any kind of violence, incursion, and so on. The head of the project, an Allskin genius (Jin didn't use the term lightly) named Sousauryoku, was widely considered certifiably insane. He was famous for having invented an incredibly inefficient weapon which fired metal projectiles using only electromagnetic force, claiming it was based on lost First Mind technology.

What wasn't widely known was that he did in fact have a First Mind artifact, and had discerned how to activate and, to a degree, control it. It was designed to manipulate forces at a distance - hence the idea for the revolutionary defense system.

***

Which brings us to Jin, standing near a security door in the Stardown Technology and Research facility, staring down the barrel of an automatic rifle. (Sousauryoku's electromagnetic gun design was far too expensive to actually use to equip mere security personnel.) Until now, security had been quite light. The real difficulty was in finding the installation, deep beneath the city proper, built in an abandoned underground train-tunnel purchased from the government years ago. And of course, once the necessary conclusion became clear, Jin realized there was only one place it could be.

Suddenly, Jin throws his arms in front of his face (they can't stop bullets!) and collapses to the ground, just as the soldier's knees buckle and he collapses bonelessly to the concrete floor. Sloan is standing behind him, hefting a rifle he's using as a bludgeon for a second strike.

"I think" Jin says, standing slowly, "that will be sufficient. Just smash open that last security door, and we'll be there." Jin's clawed hand unconsciously slips down to rest on the thick, padded pouch hanging from one shoulder. It is thoroughly reinforced to resist impact and insulated against heat and cold, but it is a gesture of habit. Sloan drops the rifle and hefts the heavy chisel forged from the star-metal.

The first blow hammers deep into the metal of the door like an axe to balsa wood.

Jin wonders when Varissa will be finished and will rejoin them. If ever. In a few minutes, it will hardly matter.