Panic! at the Starstone

Chapter 3 - Unfriendly Visits With Friends

Karadite opened her eyes exactly 8 hours after having closed them. Nothing had interrupted her sleep cycle. Feeling refreshed, she sat up and appraised her apartment with a critical eye. Her normally tidy space was in total disarray.

No one had broken in, though such an occasion was by no means out of the ordinary in her neighborhood. Rather, the Starstone incident had unleashed a pulse of just over 2 gravities, tilted 30 degrees from the vertical, which had knocked down shelves, broken her cheap furniture, and terrorized her gray tabby cat.

Poor Fuzzy was curled up on Karadite's feet. She'd been looked after in Karadite's absence by their neighbor, Alyssa, a friendly human who, aside from being fond of cats, also appreciated the opportunity to be owed a favor by someone with Karadite's unique skills.

Fuzzy gave a soft meow of protest as Karadite left the bed before she was done enjoying the android's warmth.

Karadite started gathering up her fallen possessions, separating them into piles based on which were undamaged, fixable, and broken beyond repair. The last category, sadly, included her custom-built VR rig.

Most people would look at her setup and assume it was for games, and it was true that there were a couple she'd been known to play. But what she mostly used it for was combat and agility training.

As an android, she could fully immerse herself in the virtual environments she designed, and the ultra high-powered processors she'd installed ensured those environments were indistinguishable from reality. Anything she taught herself in there worked just as well outside.

But the gravity pulse had knocked the base station on its side, breaking the EM shielding, just as a pulse of EM radiation bathed the apartment and fried her rig.

There was no help for it. Aside from some cables and a few components she'd been able to salvage, it was almost a complete loss. She'd take it with the other scrap down to the recycling centers. It would get broken down to its component elements and used as raw material for something else. It would earn her a few credits, but nothing close to what she'd spent on it.

She set it aside and continued cleaning.

She didn't own much and she was efficient with her efforts, so it only took 30 minutes to have the apartment returned to her standards. One box by the door held her trash, and another held the items she planned to get fixed. She'd deal with both later.

The broken bookshelf and small table could be sold as raw material, or she could pay a few credits to have them reformed at a printing shop. She hadn't yet decided, so they sat off to the side, out of the way until she was ready to deal with them.

Fuzzy had followed her progress with an aloof interest only cats can manage, but now she bounded over to Karadite's leg and began purring.

"Miss me, little quadruped?" she asked in an affectionate tone, as she reached down to scratch between her ears. "You and I both had an adventure, didn't we?"

Fuzzy meowed in agreement.

"That's right, we did. And now I'm going to hunt down and kill everyone responsible for it. Isn't that right?" Karadite cooed. "Yes it is. Oh yes it is."

Fuzzy meowed again happily.

*******

The streets were emptier than usual for this time of day. A few hover scooters zipped passed on their way to somewhere else. The attack hadn't destroyed this neighborhood the way it had the ones nearer the Starstone itself, but the damage was plainly visible everywhere Karadite looked.

Most stores were closed. Some shopkeepers were busy cleaning broken glass and straightening shelves. Cracks were visible in the faces of buildings she passed, and some light fixtures were dark, giving the streets a gloomy look. Karadite didn't mind that, of course. It simply meant more shadows to stay out of sight in.