“Pictures, video, records, serial numbers. I need to know what kind of Iron Ogre we’re dealing with,” Zanma demanded.

  “What kind? An Iron Ogre is an Iron Ogre,” Baikal grumbled, but called up the requested information nonetheless. Specifically, first-person combat footage, from Baikal’s own point of view in fact.

  It didn’t take long to discern exactly what he needed to know. The model, the tonnage, the operational parameters, and, indeed, even the fact that he could afford to just walk across their metaphorical bridge.

  “This model… That’s an OSIO-6D. The second oldest variant of Iron Ogre. They’re still churning them out in Axis Fulcrum. “A mobile automech with sufficient armor and firepower to destroy or severely damage any other automech of the same rating and weight class,” he quoted from memory. “Weight class, one ton. Operational rating, Grade 1-B. Orgun recommends to deploy them in operational theatres involving evolvers no stronger than First Phase Class 2.”

  Baikal measured Zanma with a look that betrayed the fact he understood what was being said in parts, but not as a whole, that he didn’t understand where the puppetmaster was going with it. A faint smirk took hold of the redhead’s face as he looked to his guide. “The pattern of behavior you described, it’s a built-in operational preset. They’re running on asymmetrical warfare precepts, that is to say, due to the unavailability of maintenance, they try to only engage targets that are not likely to cause serious damage. Do Becomers tend to “count for more” when it comes to making a force undesirable as a target?”

  “Er- Yes, they do,” Baikal blurted out. He paused, his camera-like ocular replacements turning in place, his version of furrowing his brow. “The ogres are still fighting, then? The war? Is that what you think?”

  Zanma shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know that they’re running on guerilla warfare precepts, either. But it’s an educated guess, and I can outrun a 6D if it comes down to it. Well, the White Serpent can,” he nodded towards the giant puppet. “You needn’t hire on any additional personnel, it will be best if we travel light. It’ll also be cheaper, for me. Speaking of, we haven’t discussed your payment. Any type of technical work, I can perform. If there is, for instance, someplace riddled with anomalies that you wish to raid, I can facilitate it. Name your price.”

  That simple statement seemed to give the hardened stalker pause, as if he had expected to have to carry out this job just to “pay off” the crime of having offended Zanma.

  “How about your gun? I can look over your gun, and if there are improvements to be made, I will make them. How does that sound for a down-payment?”

  “I did not bring-”

  “Please,” Zanma interrupted, again. “You came in full hardsuit, and you didn’t bring a gun? Spare me. Go on, show me.”

  Visibly irritated by being put on the spot in this way, the stalker’s suit emitted a series of clicks and hisses, and an enormous cannon unfolded and emerged from his back, swinging out to his side waiting to be grasped. Indeed a full half of the suit’s bulky “life support backpack” was just that gun and its support arm. Zanma’s face lit up at the sight, not because it was exceptional, but because it was… Well, quaint. The weapon was something of a lower technological standard that had been gradually improved and rebuilt by the hands of someone who didn’t see it as something replaceable. It was a heavy-duty and overbuilt weapon with no distinct barrel, but rather two rails in its place, like the prongs of a tuning fork, and a large box, with a belt of glimmering-silver darts leading from it into the firing mechanism. It was not a particle accelerator, nor a particle smasher, nor a conventional c-prop firearm. No, it was something between a c-prop gun and an accelerator: A Mass Driver. These weapons, “drivers,” originally predated accelerators, but in the contemporary era, in the year four billion, their role was that of an intermediate weapons technology. Their construction benefitted to a great extent from the manufacturing technology and skills used to produce c-prop firearms, lowering the barrier of entry. They also didn’t require miniaturized accelerator modules, further easing their production. All this, while retaining firepower similar to accelerators, and even having some advantages — mass drivers, due to flinging heavier projectiles at lower velocities, actually had far superior range to low-tier accelerators, giving them a certain niche in places such as the Zone. Their main flaw was their gluttonous power consumption, requiring large power source units, such as Baikal’s suit, which housed the PSU in the backpack.

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  “It runs off your suit’s power cell?” he asked.

  A nod.

  “And how does it hold up? Does the power draw reduce the suit’s strength enhancement?”

  Another nod.

  “There’s your first improvement. I’ll add some hypercapacitors, it should give the suit more wiggle room. How about the cyclic rate? Too fast, slow, just right?”

  “Adjustable,” Baikal said.

  “And stability? I don’t see a spin-stabilizer coil. If I had to guess, I would say those darts start tumbling within two hundred meters at best.”

  Another nod, and a begrudging admission. “Two-fifty.”

  “Well? What are you waiting for? Unplug it and give it over. You may watch me work, but keep quiet.”

  Baikal’s hesitation was understandable, but he eventually handed over his cherished weapon. It floated from his grasp, already seeming to disassemble itself as it flew. Though Zanma kept a stone face, inwardly, he was marvelling at the subdued elegance of its design, noting down elements to take for himself and implement in other designs later. Just the fact he could field-strip it without any real examination, just that spoke volumes.

  Two ribbons of light tan, off-white paper or perhaps fabric fluttered from the mass driver’s side, until now having been out of sight from where Zanma sat. He turned the weapon over to get a better look, noticing that they were held to the gun with ceremonial wax seals of a sort, each imprinted with a different design, and similarly, each ribbon described different things. One spoke of overcharging the weapon to punch through an enemy’s hardsuit, while the other boasted of repelling several dozen charging mutants.

  “What are these?” he asked. The seals both flared with an ever-so-faint resonance as Zanma’s threads brushed within their vicinity. He half-recognized it, as if a psychometric imprint, only not quite. To his senses it seemed as if the reverse of a psychometric imprint, a “hollow impression,” embedded in bioenergy, or rather a stable solid saturated with bioenergy. How the materials of these seals could hold such a thing was entirely beyond him. A sense of excitement rose in him. This was new. Even Tridacna Pearl Resin had been covered in his education, but this was a case where he would have to apply what he knew independently and research the matter himself.

  “These are, er… What was the word, Engram Seals. We record great feats or battles with them. Some say it’s just an expensive superstition but I know my gun, and I know that those seals work,” Baikal explained.

  “I presume the creation of these seals is the matter of some ritual?” Zanma continued his questioning.

  “You take a piece of something like solid mutant bone and carve it while thinking about the whatever it’s supposed to record the whole time. Same thing for the ribbon. Then when the right mood strikes, you get your wax and stamp the seal. All the components are harvested from a special kind of cross-tree that grows in certain places in the zone. It’s hard to explain in words, but once you try to do it yourself everything makes sense.”

  Something about that process seemed to be difficult to just think about for Baikal. He wasn’t sure if there was some sort of mental block there, or something to do with the process itself — he was well aware that many psionic techniques were difficult to comprehend and remember for non-psionics, so perhaps this was a lesser version of that phenomenon. Or perhaps Baikal just hadn’t expected to be put on the spot about it, that was more likely. “Overthinking, overthinking,” Zanma mentally scolded himself.

  Something in particular stood out in Baikal’s description, the name “cross-tree.” Cruciforma oleum. An antediluvian, engineered “tree” that was in fact a lichen, capable of producing a wide variety of hydrocarbons, oils, greases, and so on, all depending on the local varietal, intended to support colonies in any sort of environment. There were also highly desired varieties that predated on all sorts of dangerous beasts but didn’t harm humans, intended as living fortifications. The original strains were known to have been created and spread by ancient missionaries of a now-extinct religion — extinct in the sense that its ideals had dispersed so widely and its mythology had transformed so much that nobody who now lived could conceive of what that religion’s original form might have looked like all those billions of years ago. The only image that persisted was the image of the Cruciforma, which tended to grow into shapes resembling a crucified figure. The idea of such a self-sacrificing embodiment of virtue, a bringer of sustenance and protector from evil, had embedded itself into countless offshoot faiths.

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