Nineteen
 
The rain stopped a day later and Alice resumed Kon’s training. She hadn’t been waiting for the rain to subside but more for Kon’s legs to heal. He hadn’t torn anything but the strain of running for as long as he had had left him with a bad case of noodle legs. Alice had tried to train him the morning after, but Kon’s impression of a newborn had made her laugh too hard to be constructive.
He spent a few hours trying to land a hit on the elusive Knight. The day of laying on the ground had allowed him to think of a few extra tricks that he tried to no effect. Alice gave him compliments for trying new styles or strategies, but she then proceeded to elude every single one of them.
“You’re getting better. Your foundation is shit, but you’re creative. Once I regrow my arm we can work on the more technical side of things,” Alice told him as he lay on the ground and panted. Yellowed curved ribs could be made out if one squinted through the glimmering metallic leaves.
“Why haven’t you regrown your arm yet?” Kon asked, the question had been nagging at him. She had repeatedly healed him with only slight issues, why couldn’t she heal herself yet?
“It takes a lot of energy. And I do mean a lot. I can’t eat these cores like you do, the E-Grade will weaken my own cores with how thin the energy is. So I have to rely on anchors or my own slower cultivation method. I got those D-Grade cores earlier which helped, but I’m still not topped up. Can’t protect and train you when I’m drained of energy, can I?”
“You haven’t healed yourself because you’ve been healing me?” Kon asked as he realized the implication.
“Yeah. Well, not entirely. I’ve been putting off healing myself because I need to keep my energy reserves up. I can lead us around most real threats, but if something strong can get close, I don’t want to be drained. It’ll take another week or two, barring any mishaps, for me to passively gather enough energy to force the full regrowth.”
“How long do you think we’ll be here before a ship comes to rescue us? Like realistically?”
“Could be months before a ship comes out this way. Matters what else the Chapterhouse has going on. They’ll figure out we’re missing in the next few days when we miss our checkup. They’ll wait a few more days just in case we come limping in then they’ll start searching. We filed out flight plans between systems and if they have ships available, they’ll start on both ends and work their way to each other. A few days travel per jump, a day in system scanning and plotting the next jump, so on and so forth. That’s if they have available ships in the region. Our Chapterhouse is small and if this wasn’t a random encounter, then the Chapter could be under attack.”
“You think it wasn’t just coincidence?”
“Paranoia isn’t paranoia if they really are out to get you. Listen, I don’t say this to scare you but, humanity isn’t exactly united, ya know? Lots and lots of petty warlords and small Chapterhouses vying for power and attention from the Worldships and the Orders. That doesn’t even include the Captain’s Council for the fleets. It’s very complicated and messy and none of it matters to us little grunts. But, if our Chapterhouse is under attack, rescue could be a very, very long time away.”
“Who would benefit from our Chapterhouse falling?” Kon asked, genuinely interested. Afterall, if it had been a deliberate attack, they’d tried to kill him.
“How much do you know about the structure of Chapterhouses?” Alice shot back at him. Dread had begun to creep into her voice as their conversation had started to veer into politics and history and away from killing monsters.
“Nothing. Colonist remember? I thought all Knights served the Worldships before I joined up.”
“We do. First and foremost when you earn your armor and become a Knight, your first vow is to serve the Worldships. They are all what’s left of Old Earth. They have the seed banks and genetic pools left to repopulate her once we take her back from the monsters. This vow is above any and all others.” Alice looked deadly serious as she said this.
“Now, after that we have our vow to the Orders, if we are in one. The Orders are all based out of the Worldships and they are the true powerhouses. Think of them as super Chapterhouses. There’s noble families among them, descendants of the original founders of the Orders. They have their own fleets, admirals, and most of the High Admiralty, the guys who run the World Ships, are from an Order. Now, Orders aren’t just Knights. There’s mages, soldiers, engineers, fleet captains, they are kinda everything. A Chapterhouse is mostly composed of Knights and support staff.”
Alice paused and waited for Kon to make a remark. This was the most information he had ever dragged out of her at one time and he wasn’t going to slow her down as she seemed to be on a roll. When he didn’t speak, she continued her lesson.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“Orders oftentimes have direct Chapterhouses under their command. You can be a member of both at the same time obviously. The Order of the Dragon is one of the younger Orders and all it’s Chapterhouses have a dragon motif.”
“Like the Dragon’s Maw?” Kon couldn’t resist.
“Yes. That was basically our Chatperhouse screaming, please please look at me and consider me to join. Now, to be clear, we were not associated or sponsored by the Order of the Dragon. We wanted to be. All it takes to establish a Chapterhouse is five Knights, D-Grade or higher, and a single ship. That means lots and lots of little runty Chapterhouses.”
“Why would you establish your own instead of being part of a bigger one?” Kon asked.
“Politics, taxes, prestige, better contracts. There’s a long list of pros and cons to being a small Chapterhouse. The pro list for being a Chatperhouse sponsored by an Order is very long. But, while Orders have deep pockets, they’re not inexhaustible. They don’t just pick Chapterhouses to sponsor. You have to earn it. Lots of completed contracts, lots of ships, and a lot of money needs to flow up before the Order will pay attention to you. We were in the middle of that process.” Alice stopped for a moment and looked outside of their pseudo-cave and frowned. She grabbed her axe, but after a moment she shook her head and went back into her lecture.
“Our Chapterhouse, Titan’s Resolve, is a fairly large independent Chapterhouse. Lots of ships, Knights, and cadets. We even have a few feeder Chapterhouses. Issue is we’re young and don’t have much depth.”
“Depth? You mean runes. Full runes.”
“Correct. Orders have entire libraries with full runes. It’s what makes them so powerful. Titan’s Resolve only has a handful and they don’t give them out easily. Means while we have numbers, most of us can’t make the jump from E-Grade to D-Grade.”
“You did though,” Kon reminded her. She smiled and a bit of arrogance showcased itself as she stood straight and proud.
“I did. But I had to earn that full third rune from a different Chapterhouse to do so. If we earned our way into the Order’s sphere of influence, we would have access to more Runes.”
“What about the runes the founders had? They had to be D-Grades right?”
“Correct, but oftentimes full runes have stringent clauses attached to them if you use them. Like not sharing them with others. We had a series of wars about it with each other that led to the destruction of the Order of the Tiger and the assasination of nearly a half-dozen admirals. Fighting broke out on the World-Ships themselves it got so bad. Now the rules are really strict. If you’re talented you can apply to go to a World-Ship and learn a rune to advance to D-Grade if your Chapterhouse doesn’t have the resources. But then you have to join the House Knights for a few years.”
“House Knights?”
“Knight in direct service to the World-Ships. There are strict rules regarding what you can learn and earn as a House Knight. It’s prestigious but leaves your pockets empty at the end of your term. Lots of Order Knights will start there as a sign of allegiance when they’re young. For them it’s extra training since they’re doing it as a teen or young adult. For us on the outside, we’re generally applying when we’ve hit a wall and need their resources.”
“Good if you’re young, bad if you’re old then?”
“Not bad, it’s just…there’s a stigma to it is all. Bunch of older Knights who have weak foundations and are trying to learn what these kids know. But they generally have lots of actual low-level fighting experience. House Knights take on small time contracts and do lots of security details for the Admiralty. Not being able to earn money is the big issue. When your armor gets damaged you can get it repaired, you have to get it repaired I should say, but without the wealthy backers, the poorer Knights have to take loans. Loans they can’t pay off while in the House Knights. Interest accrues and the next thing you know, they’re stuck working for the banks who gave them loans.”
“Who owns the banks?” Kon asked, already having a feeling he knew.
“It’s a mix of merchants and powerful noble families. All of them in an Order.”
“What happens to them?” Kon asked.
“They end up in an Order without the benefits. They work to pay their debt off and do a lot of the low-level dirty work so the Order Knights don’t have to. Shit system, but it works for the Orders.” Alice shrugged her one arm, but kept her eyes looking over the forest.
“I think we got off topic,” Kon muttered.
“You needed the background knowledge to understand what’s going on. Titan’s Resolve is trying to become associated with the Order of the Dragon. That would put us on one of the lowest tiers of being in an Order, but we’d be in an Order. We’re not the only ones competing for the slot though.”
“You think another Chapterhouse arranged for us to be shot down?”
“It could be them. Or another Order didn’t want the Dragon to bring in fresh ground troops to bolster their numbers. Or maybe some old Admiral is pulling strings for things I don’t know about and we got caught in the crossfire.”
“Then what does it matter?”
“It matters because if we were paid to killed then our killers might have followed us down to the planet to finish the job. Pirates would have tried to take the Dragon’s Maw whole and as unharmed as possible. Sell off the weapons, supplies, and the weaker cadets. Assasination means that this planet is a lot busier than it should be.”
“They’d have to come down in ships right?” Kon said, eyes widening.
“Yes. They wouldn’t have jump drives, but we’d be able to traverse the planet a lot easier. Find the rest of the survivors in only a day instead of weeks of travel.” Alice smiled and it sent a chill down his spine. It was a bloodthirsty look.
“Do you think they’re close?” Kon asked as he finally got to his feet.
“I don’t know. I doubt it’s the cultivators I felt, but if they have even a decent sized camp…” Alice trailed off.
“Then the assassins would have seen it from space as they landed,” Kon finished.
“Come on, we have some spying to do.”