The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha 326 Far Future, Chapter 36 – The Tech Tree, Part I

First of all, about six months ago, I went to a high-end restaurant, rented a room for my lads to see what it was like to eat there, and while they dined, a number of men and women came in, got Marked, and left quietly, ignoring and ignored by everyone else present.

Two of those men were Philius Marwengora and Sir Dorval. When I had first arrived in this place, I hadn't thought much of the two of them, until I found out there were a grand total of six actual Coronal Knights on the planet, and Umbral Inquisitors were similarly limited. As a matter of fact, there was only three of each in this city. They had their own teams, and there were plenty of juniors who got things a.s.signed to them... plenty meaning several dozen.

They mostly fobbed stuff off on the Juris, and used the Striker teams from the organization or the Cohorts they had built up themselves. Only when it concerned truly Tough Stuff, like psykers, the Warp, alien infestations, or outright war, did they tend to get involved personally. Most of their time was spent looking for stuff to get involved in, as it were... and naturally enough finding endless amounts of stuff for others to get involved in as they did so.

The system of email dead drops was proving inconvenient, and since I had an untraceable telepathic corridor that came with a Stat buff, why wouldn't I give it to these two Tens to make quiet use of? Simply them being able to talk to one another without others knowing was a very interesting option... and being able to make quiet use of my people in one fas.h.i.+on or another a new trick that couldn't be traced easily.
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I was also treating their Striker teams, as long as they had their cyberware removed. This was a big stretch for some of the men, but given they were some of the most elite warriors on the planet, it was something that could be done for the promise of psychic abilities, however limited. Being Awakened to a Null Psion and Forsaken status, and able to be a very viable threat to psi-users, was also remarkably attractive to these professionals laboring in the shadows of their Powered colleagues...

Naturally I was also the one introducing them to disciplines and abilities they could acquire, but they were elites, and we had /tellepathic links, so I didn't need to be physically present to instruct them.

Found one infiltrator in the Umbral Strikers, too, true memory sealed into a psychic virus to hide it from brain scans, whose cloaking was totally disrupted by the transpsionic presence of the Mark and its accompanying geas. That fellow went into the Dungeon, never to emerge again... or maybe his original memory was expunged, and he was turned into a double agent against the cult or faction employing him originally... who knows? Mentalists do kooky stuff to one another...

As for me, I could do this because I advanced to Ten in Rantha. A Ten Hit Die being running around wasn't all that unusual, there were tons of them in the crazy landscape outside the city walls. I was still a Six in Cla.s.s Levels, but with the power of my Rantha bloodline, being a Ten in Race was nearly as good as having my Cla.s.s Levels there. The additional Stats, defenses, and Health did a lot, and doing so also raised my cap on Ranks of Skills obtainable. I used the Intellect bonuses to keep my techno-knowledge advancing to ten Ranks, meaning I could finally understand how a lot of this s.h.i.+t actually worked, finally.

Knowing is half the battle. I could now put a lot more effort into guiding, and having six viable thoughtstreams with my Charisma and Wisdom both contributing their share of the load helped me manage my increasingly complex organization without much difficulty.

It also meant I was a Ten, and these Sevens couldn't look down on me, and Philius and Sir Dorval could see me as an equal, astonished as they were.

Still, it was a lot of slow, bit by bit improvement. Which was fine, I wasn't in a race. I had to bring down the four greatest G.o.ds of this universe, after all. Wasn't going to happen overnight.

I could totally help organize taking down a zwilnik boss first.

And it was for this reason that I saw the next move coming.

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They came into my micro-miniaturized vacuum tube production facility with great huff and guff, bulling their way right past the guards and office workers, shutting down the factory floor and starting a search of the facility within minutes. They seemed pretty c.o.c.ky as they headed for the office and began to confiscate things.

When the Juris Captain barged into my office, his gun drawn for good effect, I glanced over my shoulder at him, while giving him a full face view of my oversized holoscreen there, where a Mentat woman in the soft greys and whites of that organization's officers, along with golden braid showing she was Up There in rank, was talking with me, and the accountant at my side.

"- on further review of the anti-contaminant properties of the tube boards that you've forwarded to us, the results are uniformly positive to a 99.7% degree of conformity, with Warp Resistance nearly uniform to nearly ten times the current level of most of our current technological standards... Juris? Are you in need of something?" she asked coldly, as her eyes glowed for a second, looking over my shoulder.

He was looking at the woman in the techno-suit and visor-helm of a Juris attache standing next to me, and jumped at the Mentat's words. "Councilor... Gryms.h.i.+me? You are conversing with a wanted felon. I have a warrant issued for her arrest!" he stated, quite full of himself, and turning his attention on me. "Sama Rantha, you will submit yourself for arrest and detention. The charge is production and distribution of unlicensed technology-"

"Citizen Sama Rantha does not need a license to produce vacuum tube technology, Captain Hamrin," the Juris attache next to me immediately spoke up, her voice frosty. "Her blanket production permits have been reviewed by me personally and are in good order. Who signed that warrant?"

The Juris Captain hesitated at the very cold and uncompromising tone of the Juris woman, and her hard stare. "Inspector Amalee? I am executing a valid warrant and seizure of the property for one Sama Ranth"

"Captain, you will tell me who issued that warrant, or you will hand me your gun so I can shoot you with it."

There was a crackling moment of tension in the air as Inspector faced Captain and thoughts ran through everyone's heads. The Mentat on the screen raised her eyebrow in interest, clearly appreciating the scene. I just ignored everyone and waited for him to go away.

"District Commander Pazvokal issued the warrant, Inspector," he finally ground out, bringing up the E-warrant and flas.h.i.+ng it over to her.

Her face didn't move as she read it inside her helm. "Interesting. DC Pazvokal seems to have somehow been certified as a Mechanist-certified reviewer of outlawed technology without it appearing in his personnel file. This warrant has been issued without a single instance of the technology involved being applicable to Citizen Rantha. I have formally Inspected and Ratified all technology being produced by this facility to confirm that it is in accordance with Mechanist and Legal Standards of Ja.n.u.s Prime and to Imperial Standard. How interesting that DC Pazvokal is claiming that my work is not in accordance with Ja.n.u.s law."

The captain didn't look too happy at her words. "I am just following orders, Inspector," he managed to ground out.

"Tell him to stay as long as he likes. I'm filing a 224b-47 'anti harra.s.sment' injunction, subject to Juris review. He can stay as long as he likes. By my estimation, I'm making 2200 credits for every minute he remains here. Perhaps he would like to hear more of how the Mentats are taking an interest in the vactronics I'm putting out here?" I asked over my shoulder.

The inspector looked at me, and frowned just slightly, before turning back to the captain. "Get out of here and return everything you and your idiots have confiscated, fool. IA will be looking into this." The hiss in her voice made the Juris captain swallow, salute sharply, and turn away, barking orders into his helm.

I waved at some side holos, watching his men suddenly freeze in place, put down everything they were carrying, leave their equipment that was downloading files in place, and remove themselves from the building as rapidly as possible.

I /tellepathically told everyone to clean everything up, logged the time they got off my property and drove away, all the video, and sent it to Inspector Amalee, who just looked at it with a quiet sigh, and approved it with her authority. Just like that, I collected double indemnity for wages lost for thirty-five hundred people, property damage, and a Black Mark on the captain and the DC's records.

"It seems even a DC can be suborned," she sniffed, already sending out the Internal Affairs investigation team, and monitoring the communications of the captain, who seemed to be in contact with someone right now. "Thank you for this alert, Citizen Rantha."

I waved it off. "Thank you for taking your time to review everything, Inspector. I heard someone was sniffing around our permits, and wanted to be sure everything I was making was still within approval range."

"I am more than psensitive enough to feel the workings of xenos technology. Given the performance specs of what you are making against those of Mechanist-approved circuitry, it is plain you are building to very different standards, not that you are employing illegal methodology."

I nodded at the Mentat Councilor. "My goal is making nigh-incorruptible vakker-boards, not the fastest, as well as being resistant to overload and high-performance problems, Inspector. My vakker tech isn't designed to replace ma.s.sive use of Mekker tech, it's designed to be employed in niche products."

"By all our tests, it seems to be succeeding, Miss Rantha," the Councilor replied at the soft lob. "Only the most actively reinforced psionically-s.h.i.+elded pcircuitry has the same level of resistance to Warp exposure as what you are producing. We are very impressed by the effect." And no doubt they had tried to replicate it, and were unable to.

I mean, it was circuitry, and printed only at Tech Level 7. Level 10 technology could duplicate it without a problem. They had probably attempted to do so, intending to rapidly take it to its next iteration so they wouldn't have to license it from us, and found it failing as they did so.

Heck, wouldn't put it past them to have been the ones behind the warrant. This kind of tech had all kinds of applications against resisting Warp influence or psychic infiltration. My market was pretty much guaranteed for people worried about their personal information security. After all, they could still layer psionic protection on top!

"Is the production schema of your facility still secure?" she inquired archly.

"They downloaded the schema, but those are virtually useless, as I'm sure you've realized." I waved it off, and if her eyes flickered, I said nothing. Certainly she had dissected the samples I'd sent her, looking for the secret, and found nothing. If she got her hands on the files the Juris had purloined while being so efficient, the same thing was going to happen. "On a brighter note, did the crystal capacitor I sent to you meet your standards for use on the Terrestrial Beacon?"

She pursed her lips, then nodded slowly. "The design was a bit unorthodox, with additional Runic support that exceeded requirements, but it will function as you promised. Adapting it to the Beacon is certainly possible, but why would they?"

"Well, I would like to recruit a large number of minor psions, and the Beacon is the easiest place to find them. If I can make a sufficient number of capacitors, I can essentially replace their sitting around in a Void tube for eight hours at a stretch powering the thing, reducing it to a few seconds pouring some psionic power into a capacitor, and having the rest of the day to do whatever they want to do. The Astropath Keepers could simply pay people by the amount of PP they expend, instead of having to pay everyone the same for remaining psi-focused for eight hours and leeching off minor amounts during that time. If you recall the numbers I sent you, eight hours in psi reserve only allows them to leech off about the equivalent of eight PP. Even a Two Psion can directly give that up.

"Since they can just pay by the PP, I estimate cost savings of about twenty percent over employing psis for eight-hour s.h.i.+fts at equal pay. After all, a Three is now equal to several Ones, and they can price their PP reimburs.e.m.e.nt accordingly."

"They may not like replacing humans with stored power," she replied, and I nodded to myself.

"I rather doubt it. There will always be a human element required to actually guide and monitor the Beacon, and certainly all the Void Tubes will be available in emergency situations. However, with sufficient purchases, the Astropaths will be able to power the Beacon for long periods of time even if substantial numbers of living psions are lost. Indeed, in an emergency situation, they could even ask the Mentats to help charge capacitors without materially affecting their work time.

"Of course, having corruption-resistant capacitors is key to the process, or you basically just have bombs waiting to happen." The Warp would swoop in on such concentrations of energy, and inevitably overcome the defenses, turning the Beacon into a potential psionic nuke, the detonation of which would mindfry a good chunk of the planet, no doubt.

But not my capacitors. Business opportunity arriving!