Chapter 73

I took a moment to grab a snack from the galley and then headed to my room, eating as I went. By the time I arrived, the only thing remaining was a small piece of quillbeast, which was tossed in the air. There was an almost instantaneous popping sound and the piece of meat disappeared into Vixa’s mouth. It was a lazy day for her, content to just sleep the day away rather than play with the kids and other phenidae onboard.

Looking over to the bed, I couldn’t help but laugh at the mess of blankets and pillows. When I had left in the morning the bed was still a mess, but not to the extent that it was now. The comforter was pulled to the middle of the bed with the pillows haphazardly placed on top in a sort of circle, creating a nice little nest, the perfect size for a small phenidae like her.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” I asked, looking down at her as she licked the fur on one of her front paws. I received a happy little yip, but she didn’t stop what she was doing. “Well, how about some more fun? We’re going somewhere today that is unlike anywhere you have ever been.”

She stopped her cleaning and looked up at me, as if she was bidding me to continue.

“We’re going to another planet. Well a moon, actually. You’ll be able to play with all your friends, as long as you don’t go too far, alright? This time you don’t even have to wear the suit that you wore on Yrranth.”

She gave a loud, excited bark before I even stopped and then popped over to the door. Putting her front paws on it, she looked back at me with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. It still amazed me just how dog-like she was in many of her actions.

“Hold on!” I chuckled. “I didn’t just come up here to get you, I still need to get ready myself!”

Walking to the closet, I grabbed a pair of long thermal underwear, a thermal shirt, as well as a pair of thick socks and the coat I would be wearing. After depositing all that on the corner of the bed, I stripped down and began putting on the thermal layer, but not before changing to my human form. While we would be hitting up the slopes first and then try to teach the locals some hockey, neither of those were things that I wanted to do in a form I wasn’t completely used to.

We already knew exactly where we were going, with Zaszi having already dispatched a team to scout out the area and dig in, and with Kiri going personally to examine all the angles. By now, there were half a dozen sniper pairs set up with extremely powerful gauss sniper rifles, which would allow them to cover the entire area. It was kinda funny, but people don’t really think of gauss rifles as something that can be stealthy.

With a conventional firearm that uses gunpowder to propel a projectile, some of the sound that is heard is caused by the explosion and gases escaping the barrel, while the projectile surpassing supersonic speeds creates a sound--a sonic boom--of its own. Suppressors do a good job of containing the sound of the explosion and the resulting gases, but they do nothing to stop the sonic boom. To be truly silent, or as quiet as you can be, you need to both use a suppressor and fire subsonic projectiles. The issue with that, especially from longer ranges, is that because the projectile is traveling through the air so slowly, it makes it much harder to hit a target. Especially one that is moving.

The beauty of gauss sniper rifles, or gauss guns in general, is the ability to change how much power is channeled through the coils along the length of the barrel. The more power, the faster the round travels. While the power being channeled through the weapon can easily be heard if you’re within a few meters, it’s completely inaudible if you’re more than seven or eight meters away. With the power lowered enough so the projectile is accelerated just below the speed of sound, you can fire off shots without anyone being the wiser.

With the technology available to the Watchdogs, having a shooter-spotter pair wasn’t necessary, so both pairs would be shooters. The magnification on their scopes was vastly more powerful than anything on Earth, and since they were entirely digital, they could display all the information a sniper might need. That was things like wind speed and direction and humidity, but also other things like the precise gravity and rotation of a planet, and the exact temperature. Those were all things of extreme importance, because while snipers only have to learn how to work with the rotation once on Earth, every planet is a little bit different and not everyone can recall all that information on the fly.

Though knowing the rotation and gravity of Alade were important aspects for firing at long distance, the temperature was just as important, at least when trying not to draw attention. This is because the speed of sound changes as the temperature does. In most cases that difference would be minimal, but because Alade is an arctic planet that rarely gets above minus 20 degrees Celsius, the difference is significant. For instance, the speed of sound at minus 20 degrees Celsius is a little under 319 meters per second, while it’s a little over 343 meters per second at 20 degrees Celsius.

Even with changing the power setting so that a round would never exceed 319 meters per second, each of the sniper teams had spent the morning on the various mountainsides practicing. They fired round after round getting a feel for how long it took for a round to arrive on target, even going so far as to take shots at the Watchdogs who were posing as tourists. They had plenty of notice so they could put up Mana Shield, of course, so any round that did hit bounced off harmlessly.

Hitting a stationary target was easy enough, but hitting a moving target, especially when that target was something the size of someone’s head, was significantly harder. With the rounds traveling so slowly, it would take well over three seconds for it to actually hit someone a kilometer away. If not enough lead was given or the target moved erratically, then it would be impossible to take that target down. In comparison, a round propelled by a gauss sniper rifle at full power would cross the same distance in less time than it takes to blink, while also being a hell of a lot more powerful.

That’s why hitting a target in the head was needed with such a slow-moving, if heavy, round. While a gauss rifle at full power could easily punch through someone’s chest, killing them instantly if they weren’t wearing heavy armor, a slow-moving round wouldn’t do much at all. At least not to a high level person. A hit to the head on the other hand, will knock someone out leaving them with a concussion at the very least, but would also have a good chance at killing even a high level person.

While the sniper squads were practicing, the rest of the Watchdogs were settling in. Some were participating in activities that Alade was known for, while others were dug in, using specialized equipment to make it seem like they weren’t even there. Any heat signatures would be easily detectable, so each sniper lay within a small dome that they had set up when they first reached their positions. After excavating some snow and setting it up, they just needed to cover it with snow, use a wind spell to make it seem like the snow hadn’t been disturbed, and then climb inside from the back. They wouldn’t have a full 360 degree line of sight around them, but they would be able to cover their designated areas.

Aside from the Watchdogs that would be on the ground, there would also be two full squads in Grasshoppers up above, along with Abi herself in geostationary orbit. It was very unlikely that any attack would occur after the last one failed so miserably, but no one was taking any chances.

Not wanting to overheat before we even arrived down on Alade, I stowed my coat and snow pants inside the Beacon and then made sure that I had everything. Skates and all of the other hockey equipment had been in Abi’s dimensional storage ever since we left Earth, as were a few other things that she had crafted for us since then. For example, we didn’t know that humans weren’t the only species that skied and snowboarded until we were on our way, even if it was a little different. It turns out that kids of many different species like to slide down big hills covered in snow. Who would’ve known?

It was interesting that both snowboards and skis were practically identical, even 65000 light years away from Earth. The materials used to make them were different and they came in many different sizes, but they were functionally the same. The main--if only real difference--was the way that they were fastened to one’s feet. Rather than step into a boot binding, one wore boots not dissimilar from those used on a spacewalk. Embedded in the core of each ski or snowboard was a thin layer of metal, allowing one’s feet to be secured via magnetism, rather than strapped or locked down.

Since none of us had brought any of our gear for anything other than hockey, we were happy to hear when Abi said that everything we needed could be purchased when we arrived on Alade. While there were hundreds of lodges all around the moon, what they carried depended on where they were located. The one that we were going to was situated in a valley surrounded by mountains on three sides with a large lake in the middle.

Ice skating wasn’t something that was done, but the lake was a big draw both for those who liked swimming in the frigid waters, and those who preferred fishing in them. While the temperatures rarely got warm enough for the ice covering the surface of the lakes to completely melt, enough heat was produced by the moon’s core to prevent lakes from freezing entirely. It also prevented all of the fish and some of the other animals that call the lakes home from dying, because while they could survive the cold waters, they couldn’t survive if they were trapped in a massive block of ice.

Confident that I had everything, I turned to the door, with Vixa sitting patiently in front of it. As soon as I looked at her, she excitedly got up and moved to the side, allowing me to open it.

“Alright, let’s go. We’ve got one stop to make first,” I said, closing the door behind us and then turning to head to the bridge. It didn’t take long at all to arrive, but I was surprised to see that each and every one of the stations was manned, and that we were already in orbit of Alade. I could see that the engines were still active as we moved into geostationary orbit, but they were cut a moment later. I didn’t even hear the ship power up or feel it lift up off the hangar floor.

“Ah, Jonathan! Good to see you!” Tich said, getting up from the captain’s seat and walking over, before bending down to pet Vixa. “And hello to you as well, Vixa.”

“Hey, Tich. Abi said you wanted to see me?”

He looked up and nodded. “I heard that you and your friends and sisters had a successful day yesterday.”

“Not as successful as the girls team, but not bad,” I chuckled. “I had to mentally block Mason for a little while because he kept going on and on and on about his new necklace, almost like it was a legendary or mythical item and not just an epic. We passed level 100 though, which was really nice. Why? What’s up?”

“I was a member of a team when I was young, you know. From the time we were kids, my friends and I playacted like we were mighty adventurers, long before we were actually able to do so for real. When we were finally able to, it was everything we imagined and more, and we spent the next thirty-two years delving into dungeons whenever we had the chance.”

“Unfortunately, as happens with most childhood friends, we slowly drifted apart as our interests diverged and other things became more important. Two of my friends ended up getting their spouses pregnant, so that took priority over the team. Another friend had wanted to explore dungeons professionally, but with two of us not having the time to dedicate to that sort of thing, he ended up leaving the team and forming another. That left me and my friend Irxa as the last two, but we knew immediately that it was the end of the team. A man had caught her eye, and, well, the navy caught mine.”

“The rest is history, you could say, but before my friends got on with their lives, they gave these to me, as the leader of the team,” he said as a rectangular box appeared in his hands. “It’s funny. We knew of a Dvergr blacksmith who specialized in magical weapons and jewelry, but it took us over twenty years to finally gather everything we needed. It took him a month to finally have time to make them, but less than three years later, we didn’t really have a use for them anymore.”

“They’re called Rings of Equalization,” he said as he opened up the box to reveal five rings lined up parallel to each other. Each of them was identical except they were all different colors; red, green, blue, gray-ish silver and finally brown.

They looked like signet rings, and as I leaned in to look at the image that was on the face of each ring, I saw that it was an exact copy of our team’s logo; a profile of a wolf howling with a full moon behind it.

“I sent them off to the man who created them the moment we arrived here,” he said when I looked back up at him in surprise. “I don’t know how he did it, but they’re exactly the same minus the logo on the face. He assured me that they are no less effective than they were way back when they were first created and I want you and your team to have them.”

“What do they do?”

“Pick one up. I believe the silver one would best suit you.”

Ring of Equalization: Constitution

+50 Strength

+50 Intellect

+300 Constitution

+50 Endurance

Equip: When activated, the wearers of the Rings of Equalization will have their attributes added together and then divided evenly amongst them for 5 minutes. This can only occur once every 60 minutes.

Requires level 100.

Crafted by: Thaldahr Dolkuhm.

“The five rings are linked to one another, and the color of each ring corresponds to the attribute that it primarily boosts; red for Strength, green for Agility, blue for Intellect, silver for Constitution, and brown for Endurance. It only takes one of you to activate the effect, and doing so will put the rings on cooldown for all of you. I’m sure you can already think of some ways to use them.”