The qubit zirconium, p.1
The Qubit Zirconium, page 1
part #2 of KeyForge Series
KeyForge
In the center of the universe hangs the Crucible, an artificial world built from the pieces of countless planets. Over millions of years of new environments and societies being added to the world, cultures have expanded, exploring the possibilities of their interconnected, slowly merging alien biomes: adventuring, surviving – even thriving.
Filled with mysterious devices, lost civilizations, hyper-advanced cities and an incredible array of species, it’s a place where fantastical science blends with arcane powers – all made possible by the unique substance known as æmber.
Meanwhile, godlike Archons enlist the other inhabitants to compete in battle and decipher the secrets of the Crucible, gathering the æmber required to forge mystical keys which will unlock the vaults hidden by the planet’s legendary creators: the Architects.
First published by Aconyte Books in 2021
ISBN 978 1 83908 066 1
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 067 8
Copyright © 2021 Fantasy Flight Games
All rights reserved. Aconyte and the Aconyte icon are registered trademarks of Asmodee Group SA. KeyForge and the FFG logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fantasy Flight Games.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover art by Natalie Russo
Back cover art by Viko Menezes
Distributed in North America by Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, USA
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Chapter One
Pplimz Climbs a Tree
Wibble hovered cantankerously in the corner, her right flipper grazing the ceiling. She watched as Champion Anaphiel teetered precariously, then fell. Her football-shaped body pulsed with a bioluminescence, the color ranging from lilac to deep royal purple, but otherwise she was completely still. She was quite clearly annoyed.
“Wibble,” a patient voice called from the other side of the office. It had only the slightest hint of a mechanical twang. “It’s just a game. No, I take that back. It’s not even a proper game; no one is keeping score.”
“How many have you missed?”
“Well,” the voice paused. “None. But that’s not the point…”
“I rest my case.” She turned slightly, aiming her lower flipper toward the ground. A small, colorful rectangle of cardstock was balanced precariously in three force fingers – extruded sections of her flipper – and she made a couple of tentative flicks toward the ground before flinging the card in earnest. It arced gracefully through the air, sailing toward the upturned felt fedora lying on the floor. Just as it was about to overshoot, the card caught an eddy of breeze and seemed to stop midair, then dropped into the hat where it joined the card emblazoned with the image of Champion Anaphiel and half a deck of its brethren.
“So there!” Wibble shouted in triumph, her body flushing through a pastel rainbow before settling on a smug deep rose as she waggled her tail to descend toward the hat. “I told you I could make that shot!”
“Indeed you did,” Pplimz said, extending a mechanical arm to collect their hat. As their arm retracted to where they were seated at a large wooden desk, the rectangular screen that displayed the face they were currently wearing looked mildly amused. They dumped the cards onto the desk and said, “I am deeply unconvinced that tossing cards into a hat is a sensible or enjoyable activity to pass the time.”
“You’re only saying that because I won,” Wibble said.
“There are no rules, and therefore no method of determining a winner,” Pplimz argued, neatly collecting the cards with three appendages extruded from their sleek, dark body, ordering the cards with blinding speed, then placing them back in the box.
“I’d like to see you make that shot.”
“When I learn how to float,” Pplimz said, drily, “I will attempt it.”
“You should learn to float,” Wibble said, hovering over the desk directly in front of Pplimz’s screen head. “It’s delightful!” She bobbed up and down as a demonstration.
“Wibble,” Pplimz said, exasperation plain in their voice. “Will you please get off the desk?”
“Why?” Wibble said, although she slowly flowed off to the side. “There is absolutely nothing whatsoever going on right now.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” Pplimz said, their limbs reconfiguring to a more humanoid appearance – two matching arms, one on each side of their thin torso. “We’re getting a call.”
The desktop illuminated and a shimmering screen popped into view. A jerky video feed appeared, an out-of-focus face more or less centered in the frame.
“Oh dear,” Pplimz said, recognizing the caller.
“Ooh, goody!” Wibble exclaimed as she floated over to Pplimz’s side. “This doesn’t look boring at all!”
Pplimz sighed and flicked open the communicator.
“Tailor the Taupe?” Pplimz said. “Is that you?”
The video feed was of extremely poor quality and there was a distinctive lag. He must be calling from a cave or tunnel. Every type of terrain imaginable was found on the enormous planet, so that didn’t exactly narrow down his location.
“I always thought it was Taupe the Tailor,” Wibble said in a whisper.
“Be quiet, Wibble! Tailor? Are you there?”
The video resolved, and a pale blue face with luminously glowing eyes appeared. And it seemed particularly worried.
“I don’t have long,” the elf said, glancing behind himself nervously. “I’m in trouble.”
“Again,” Pplimz said, not entirely unkindly.
“Yes, again,” Tailor admitted. “But it’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong, but no one wants to hear what I have to say. I’ve had to make a run for it and I’d better not stay in one place too long.” His amber eyes widened as he stared into the camera. “If I send you coordinates will you meet me?”
Pplimz turned their screen face toward Wibble, arching a pixelated eyebrow. Wibble wiggled midair, her tail undulating excitedly.
“Please? Come on, Pplimz, just hear me out.”
“Send us the coordinates,” Wibble said.
“Thank you, Wibble!” Tailor said, relief flooding his face. “I knew I could count on you.”
“We haven’t agreed to anything,” Pplimz reminded him. “But we’ll think about it.”
“That’s the best I can hope for, I guess,” Tailor said, then startled at a sound behind him. “Got to go,” he whispered. “I’ll be in touch.” The video blacked out and Pplimz turned to Wibble.
“You’ll say yes to anything, won’t you?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Well, probably not, anyway. Besides, it’s this or more games of toss the card into the hat, and we all know you don’t want to lose another round.”
Pplimz said nothing, shaking their screen head in disbelief. A tiny smile played on their simulated lips, though. They picked up the dark charcoal hat and placed it gingerly atop their head. Defying all laws of gravity, and most senses of aesthetics, it stayed put. They shrugged on a muted gray and black plaid double-breasted suit coat, which matched the slim cuffed trousers that hid their lower appendages. Their nimble carbon-fiber fingers buttoned up the coat and they gracefully waved an arm toward the frosted smartglass door of the office. The glass displayed several glyphs rendered by a system which automatically detected a visitor’s species, then displayed in the languages they might be expected to read: Wibble and Pplimz, Investigators for Hire.
“After you.”
• • •
“Honestly, Wibble,” Pplimz said, settling into a plush armchair in the passengers’ section down below on the ship, “could you have possibly found a more conspicuous form of conveyance on the entire Crucible?”
Wibble jiggled thoughtfully. “I’m sure I could have. And I’ll have you know that this ship is very stealthy for a night voyage.” Indeed, with its pitch-black hull made of a lightabsorbing polymer, in the dark it would have been near undetectable. Not a soul would have seen its two protruding articulated tentacles thrusting from the bow, its enormous batwing rudder extending from the underside of the hull, or its eleven-legged cephalopod captain scuttling across the decks.
“Too bad it’s the middle of a bright summer afternoon, then,” Pplimz said, as the ship’s rudderwing swung back and forth, propelling it forward and up into the air from the landing pad at the Hub City transport terminal. They rose over the gleaming spirescrapers of the central metropolis, joining traffic bound for all corners of the impossible world of the Crucible. They passed over the city’s Central Stadium, where a team of mec h-assisted giants trained for an upcoming spikeball tournament, then over the Martian Enclave, with its heavily fortified green-tinted saucer-shaped structures.
“There’s no reason to sneak around,” Wibble said. “Lots of beings are heading off for a holiday in the Plains. No reason we can’t be two of them. After all, there’s nothing more suspicious than looking suspicious.”
“Thank you for that profound insight,” Pplimz said, but they knew Wibble was right. They were among several passengers on this flight to Floating Pines Resort, which wasn’t far from the coordinates Tailor the Taupe had sent them. It was a perfectly good cover story. Not to mention that the resort had an excellent mechanic on staff. Pplimz secretly hoped that they might get a quick spa treatment in before they had to return home. The actuator on their fifth upper manipulator had been stiff for a while.
“Besides,” Wibble said, interrupting Pplimz’s train of thought, “Captain Flurrbitz owed me a favor.”
At the sound of her name, the skipper of the vessel undulated down the companionway into the passenger compartment. Her shiny skin was as black as the ship’s hull, only two pale yellow eyes marring the complete darkness of her body. Her tentacles writhed incessantly as she slithered toward the passengers, and didn’t stop wriggling even once she’d reached them.
“Welcome aboard the Black Star.” A kindly voice came from the captain as she addressed the passengers. “I know you have many transportation options, and I’m pleased you chose to travel with us. If there is anything we can do to make your voyage more comfortable, please don’t hesitate to input your request to the serving bots.” She raised a tentacle to indicate the glowing terminals embedded in the ornately carved bulkheads. “Refreshments are now served at the galley port. Please help yourselves, and we’ll have you to Floating Pines in no time.”
A few of the other passengers rose and headed toward the snacks, and the captain slithered toward Wibble.
“Thanks for the last-minute berths,” Wibble said.
“Black Star Tours is always happy to help,” the captain said, cheerfully. Then quietly added, “If there’s anything else you need…”
“Well–”
“No, thank you,” Pplimz interrupted, glaring at Wibble. “Whatever debt you think you owe us is fully repaid. We deeply appreciate your help.”
A slight crimson tone flashed briefly across the captain’s body, then she returned to her natural hue. “As I said, I’m always happy to help. Please, enjoy the hospitality on your way to the resort.” She wriggled up the companionway ladder and disappeared onto the deck.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Wibble said.
“We can afford to pay for passage,” Pplimz said. “There’s no need to extort favors from anyone.”
“It was not extortion!” Wibble said, indignantly. “I offered to pay for this trip but she wouldn’t hear of it. Flurrbitz comes from a people with a strong belief in the balance of the universe. I helped her out with a minor miscommunication with a dry dock when the Black Star needed a refit, and ever since then she won’t stop asking to repay me. She feels beholden, and I fear that a couple of free tickets isn’t going to be sufficient.”
“I see,” Pplimz said, ashamed to have assumed the worst of their partner. “Well, I wish you’d told me that before.”
“Hmm,” Wibble said, her body flashing a pale blue. “So do I.” She rolled over lazily, then said, “It is a beautiful ship, isn’t it?”
Pplimz looked around at the ornately carved compartments, the velvety seating, all in various shades of black.
“Not exactly your style, is it?” they asked, eyeing Wibble’s pastel-hued body, emitting a low bioluminescence.
“I appreciate many aesthetics,” she said quietly, rolling away from Pplimz’s view. They caught a glimpse of themself in the refection of a porthole, their own noir-toned body and clothes blending in perfectly with the ship’s decor.
“Right. Well, uh, why don’t we go see about those refreshments?” Pplimz changed the subject abruptly, then stood, carefully balancing on their two lower limbs in time to the ship’s roll.
“Since when do you eat food?” Wibble asked.
“Who said anything about eating?” Pplimz countered, and gingerly picked their way to the galley window.
The ship docked at the Floating Pines Resort and Spa precisely on time, and they disembarked with the other passengers. As the majority of the guests turned left toward the reception area of the resort, Pplimz and Wibble slipped away from the group and veered right, toward a poorly lit path among the eponymous floating pines. The forest appeared to be composed of perfectly ordinary pine trees, save for the fact that their roots grew into the air instead of soil, and ended no less than four inches above the ground.
“Aren’t these trees lovely?” Wibble said, bobbing up and down to investigate a rather large pine from bottom to top.
“I’m sure they are,” Pplimz said, rapidly extending two of their upper appendages to help them navigate in the severely reduced gravity. “I’d rather not investigate them quite so closely,” they added, as they tripped and narrowly avoided crashing into a ball of roots.
“Let me help you,” Wibble said, coming down to hover next to Pplimz and offering them a flipper. They took it gratefully and let Wibble steady them as they half walked, half hopped along the forest path. While the trees’ branches were still in full bush, the path was blanketed by many-colored needles – most were some shade of green, but there were yellows, blues, and purples liberally strewn among the litter. As they followed the path, needles dropped slowly and steadily from the branches, like multi-colored falling rain.
“It really is lovely in here,” Pplimz said, finally getting the hang of moving through the lighter gravity that was endemic to the area. The engineered world of the Crucible contained habitats of wildly varied types, suitable for life of all forms – some places suitable to no life at all. Pplimz had visited several locations with unusual environments, but it always took them a little time to adapt.
“Well, don’t get too enraptured with the view,” Wibble said. “We need to start looking for those coordinates.”
“I’m on it,” Pplimz said, and they were. Part of their mechanical augmentation was multiple sensory systems, which allowed them to see the forest both in its natural beauty, and separately as a map with the trail to the coordinates Tailor the Taupe had sent them. “We should take a left after that rock.”
There was nothing obvious to see on the other side of the rock, but a few yards in, one of the taller trees had a well-disguised rope dangling among its roots.
“After you,” Pplimz said, transforming their hands into climbing cams to better grip the rope.
“See you there,” Wibble said, and began to float up toward the canopy. Pplimz fed the rope through their new ascenders and began to pull themself up the tree. The lighter gravity made it easy and they quickly caught up to Wibble, who was taking her time.
“Any chance we’re walking into a trap?” Wibble asked, gleefully. “That would be exciting!”
“No one is walking into anything,” Pplimz said, then paused for a beat before gesturing at their feet dangling into empty space.
“Very funny,” Wibble said. “You knew what I meant.”
“We are rather a good distance from any pockets of what I’d call civilization,” Pplimz said, continuing to hand-to-hand their way up the rope. “If I were looking for a good spot for an ambush, this would do rather nicely.”
“Shall I scoot up and do a little reconnaissance?” Wibble suggested, her body losing its characteristic coloration and taking on a decidedly translucent appearance.
“No,” Pplimz said. “I’d rather we stuck together. It’s not as if Tailor the Taupe doesn’t know what you’re capable of.”
Wibble sniffed. “I don’t think even you know everything I’m capable of.”
“Perhaps not,” Pplimz said, “but even if you can be nearly invisible, neither of us has been exactly inaudible. I don’t think we’re sneaking up on anyone right now.”
With that, they were vindicated, as a voice from above called down, “Wibble. Pplimz. Am I ever glad to see the two of you!”
