Antor diligently absorbed the knowledge of Human-Network Technology within the Engineer module.
The more he took in, the more his entire bearing shifted.
But the Federation’s knowledge base was still far too deep for someone who had spent his whole life at the bottom of a mine.
Even with ready-made formulas and schematics in front of him, he was only scratching the surface of the fundamentals.
He studied and recorded at the same time, noting things down on his personal terminal as he went.
Both Antor and Annie had their own personal terminals as Federation engineers.
The devices supported recording, documentation, and a range of other assistance functions.
Aldric was also in the engineering section, watching Antor work with quiet satisfaction.
Antor lifted a pale grey object from the workbench.
It looked like a tooth.
“Commander, this is a rock-borer mouthpart.
I’ve been calling it a tooth.
I’m not sure why, but when stimulated by kinetic force or a strong electrical current, a rock-borer tooth cuts through rock or steel far more easily than it should.”
“The higher the current, the better the cutting efficiency.
Though repeated high-intensity activation eventually destroys the tooth itself.”
Aldric took the tooth from Antor’s hand.
He could feel the psionic signature in it immediately.
“A dense composite of bone and iron mineral.
Not enough on its own to damage high-strength steel.”
“I had been wondering how a cave-dwelling organism managed to move through iron-rich ore deposits.
The answer is that it already possesses a basic psionic organ.”
That was it exactly.
The rock-borer had a psionic organ.
“The sudden enhancement of the rock-borer’s tooth is a psionic reaction.
Kinetic force or electrical current stimulates the psionic energy within, allowing it to cut through material it normally couldn’t touch.”
“Psionic energy?” Antor looked completely blank.
He had never heard the term before.
“It is a form of psychic energy.
Or, if you prefer, supernatural energy.”
“Do you remember when I pushed that rock back into the dome?”
Antor thought back to the moment Aldric had moved the stone with nothing but will.
To Antor, Annie, and many of the miners, that had been a genuine miracle.
It was still being passed between them quietly, a story that steadied people when nothing else could.
“That was psionic energy at work.”
“Psionic energy.
Psychic force.
I think, therefore I am.”
(t/n: I fink, therefore I krump)
“Different psionic energies have their own forms of expression.
Fire, water, earth, wind.
Matter reconstruction.
Theoretically, anything you can conceive of can be accomplished through psionic energy.”
Aldric extended a finger and demonstrated.
A small flame appeared at his fingertip from nothing.
Then lightning.
Then flowing water.
Then a lattice of metal.
Each one contained, no larger than a fingertip.
This world had something unusual about it.
The disaster, the rock-borers, the strange pulses running through the underground, all of it had a psionic fingerprint.
Aldric wasn’t going to hide that from Antor.
He told him directly.
Given that psionic elements were already present in their environment, leaving Antor without an explanation would cause problems later.
He might stumble into psionic territory without protection or the right equipment to manage it safely.
Antor thought back to the day he had bowed his head and felt his forehead float before it reached the floor.
This power that belonged to gods.
“Antor, psionic energy is not something an ordinary person can simply take hold of.”
“You can study the practical application of psionic materials.
In time, you and your sister could channel psionic materials into other research directions.
Weapons.
Power systems.”
“But do not attempt to control psionic energy directly.”
“You are not at the level where that is safe.”
“Regardless of whether you have any natural sensitivity to it.”
“In the Federation, ordinary people who work with psionic energy do so through dedicated psionic equipment.
We do not have that equipment here.”
“For an apprentice engineer, psionic energy is far beyond your reach right now.
For civilizations at your level, it is an absolute forbidden zone.”
Aldric had gone against his own habits to demonstrate psionic energy directly, showing its power and its strangeness together.
Antor’s thinking before this conversation had been heading somewhere dangerous.
Aldric was worried he would become too reverent toward the ability itself, and start worshipping Aldric as a divine figure because of it.
The earlier comment about him being a god had genuinely unsettled Aldric.
He wanted to cut the seed of that faith before it took root.
Because once divine faith occurs, changing it won’t be so simple.
An ordinary person can’t do this?
Indeed, the Commander is the incarnation of God…
“If you want to learn psionic control in the future, I will help you do it safely.
But not now.”
Aldric added that last part deliberately.
He wanted to give Antor something to look toward, enough to keep him from doing something impulsive and reaching for psionic manipulation prematurely.
Those parasitic entities in the Shroud were always looking for ways to bind humanity to something beyond their understanding.
What the Commander means is that ordinary people cannot, but he can.
And he can make it possible for me too.
Sure enough…
the power called faith continued to gather in Antor’s heart.
While Aldric was demonstrating the various forms of psionic energy for Antor, Annie was just outside the engineering section.
She had seen the shifting flames, the flowing water, the lightning, and the metal lattice forming and dissolving in Aldric’s hands.
And she had recorded all of it.
Annie watched the recording again and again.
In the video, the whole world seemed to fit inside Aldric’s fingertips.
“This is…
the angel…
out of thin air…?”
Annie kept feeling like something was missing.
Like she had been wandering along a path without knowing where it led.
She couldn’t describe it.
But she felt there were words for it somewhere, words she hadn’t found yet.
She longed for a belief she couldn’t articulate.
“Angel.”
Annie’s voice came from behind Aldric.
“Annie, you’re here too.”
“I just finished settling the workers down a little.”
Aldric nodded.
“Good.
The workers need that.
Something to ease the weight in their heads.”
Spreading the Federation’s principles, using their own visible transformation as proof of what the truth could offer, giving the miners something real to believe in and a reason to let go of the God-Emperor’s name.
It was a quiet campaign Aldric had been nudging forward.
“Septimus?” Neither of them had seen Septimus before, though they had both heard him mentioned.
“Antor, Annie, you can call on Septimus going forward when you need help with modifications.”
“Septimus?” Neither of them had seen the Septimus before, though they had both heard it mentioned.
They had simply never known who it referred to.
“Hello, Antor.”
A greeting appeared on the personal terminal.
“What?”
“Is there someone inside my terminal saying hello to me?”
“That is artificial intelligence.
An electronic life form.
If your engineering skill develops far enough, you will eventually be able to create one yourself.”
Antor and Annie looked at each other.
“Electronic…
life?
Create?”
Everything kept hitting them in waves, one impossible thing after another.
“I am the Commander’s dedicated artificial intelligence.
My computational capacity is substantial.
I can assist you in designing new equipment.”
…
With Septimus assisting, the pace of equipment development accelerated considerably.
Aldric had to admit what artificial intelligence could actually accomplish when pointed at the right problem.
Before, Antor and Annie had lacked the knowledge base to make use of an AI at all.
Now that they could design and modify equipment, the gap was their roughness in execution, and Septimus could fill exactly that gap.
With AI assistance, the siblings produced their first finished work in short order.
“This is a powered pick I modified using rock-borer mouthparts.”
Aldric picked it up and gave it a test swing.
A light tap sent kinetic force traveling through the shaft and into the rock-borer tooth at the head.
The force struck the tooth in rapid pulses, activating the psionic energy stored within.
It punched clean through a freshly cooled steel plate.
“Impressive.
With damage output like that, you could use this as a weapon.”
Against a greenskin, two good hits to the head would do the job.
“The efficiency is significantly higher than a pure steel head.
The wear rate is faster though.”
“We may be short on everything down here, but rock-borer teeth we have in abundance.”
“The powered pick modification is good work.”
Antor and Annie had already shed their original miner roles.
In just a few days, they could produce and modify powered tools from scratch.
That spoke to a level of engineering talent that wasn’t ordinary by any standard.
Aldric valued Antor highly.
The camp’s structural situation was still precarious.
The materials and energy the players were collecting barely covered the camp’s daily consumption.
Reaching the target reserve would take time, at minimum until after the shelter construction was complete and things had stabilized for a while.
Which meant the siblings had a more important role to play in the meantime.
Weapons modification.
Firearm modification.
Power equipment modification.
“What reward would you like?”
He couldn’t keep running them without acknowledgment.
These two had taken on the majority of the logistics work between them.
They didn’t do every task by hand, the workers handled the physical labor, but the direction and design came from them.
“Angel, I want a hug!” Annie’s face lit up with joy she made no effort to hide.