Alissa was awakened by being hurled to the ground, no not hurled but ejected. Made no difference in the end, no one likes waking up by banging their face into hard rock. This was her first sign that not only was today going to be one of “those” days, but that something was very wrong.
Imperial Princesses do not wake up by faceplanting into hard rock, contrary to some uninformed opinions. Usually in a case like this she would wake up to being caught by a bodyguard or hit a still unyielding but at least carpeted floor.
Disoriented and annoyed but unhurt, she looked around to try and figure out what was going on and where she was. It didn’t help or make her feel more comfortable that the “room” she was in was a dark damp cavern and the only reason she could see at all were the modifications and natural ability to “see” things differently, a racial trait that all her kind had. Behind her position near the wall of the cavern a few steps away, the object that so rudely ejected her was dissolving, its purpose fulfilled. It was an emergency stasis pod preforming its final function after being unable to continue.
That was bad, you didn’t use an emergency anything unless it was an emergency, and the reasons you used stasis pods for were never good. Seeing one break down into the mandatory survival kit, something that it would only do automatically if it no longer had the ability to continue stasis-ing. Well, that was the stuff of nightmares, and bad holo-vids. When it came to survival putting it bluntly, it basically meant that you were completely screwed, not a little screwed, but totally screwed.
The rest of the cavern was relatively ordinary if you discounted a small faintly luminous crystal near the wall, just behind the pods remains and what looked like the violently torn apart remains of starship quarters embedded in the various places. A large underground cavern with the remains of what she supposed was a part of her ship buried in the rock and her stasis pod on top of a ledge.
A smallish underground river flowing from a passage on the right side of the cave when looking from the ledge she was on to a pool next to the ledge. The pool seemed to have an outflow somewhere underneath her as the amount of water flowing in would have flooded the room otherwise. Flowing pillars connected the ceiling to the floor while a number of stalagmites hung above reaching to stalactites on the ground around the cavern. A number of narrow passages and more naturally formed cracks in the surroundings were dotted around at various points. A second large passage was sitting directly opposite where she now sat taking in her surroundings. To her left there was a deep empty concave “bulge” in the cavern big enough to fit a small two maybe three-story warehouse in, and behind her on to the left was another smaller bulge large enough to fit a decent sized house.
The longer she sat there the more distress she felt, she should not be here, she had never seen this place before, she didn’t know where she was, and perhaps the most terrifying thing she was alone. That had never happened before, she always had people with her at least her bodyguards and usually servants. Before panic totally set in, she felt a deep click and a low throbbing hum in her head, yet not. It was her AI activating and coming online from the dormant state stasis had put it in.
Her AI companion, named Nova quickly came online ran its mandatory diagnostics and scans first on her then the room.
“Well, this looks bad.” Came a somewhat sarcastic opening statement that was quickly followed by “Good morning, it appears we are in a bit of a situation.”
The only reply Alissa was capable of was “No shit.” At least she had calmed down probably why Nova had spoken the way she did. To break her out of her coming funk, but reality called, while the brief conversation was happening her sensors, scanners, natural senses, and her enhancements confirmed a rather important piece on information.
This was most definitively real, not a hallucination or delusion, not a virtual space, and not one of those creepy dimensions that you perceive but aren’t a part of. This room existed in the same reality she did and was not artificial in any way, none of the marks of being manufactured, the lines flowed naturally, weathering and erosion were consistent no unusual shapes or lines. Even the places containing the ship parts looked totally natural in how they flowed around these parts. Point in fact only those ship parts, which she did recognize as the remains of her cabin, had any sign of being unnatural.
“Nova, status report please.”
“Of course. Ally, our status is… Unknown. Location: unknown. Time: unknown. Date: unknown. Threat Level: unknown. Situation: Stranded. Communications: Unavailable. Power levels: Unknown… Honestly, I cannot make an accurate assessment of our current status beyond your current health and available supplies.”
That did not make Alissa feel any better she was hoping Nova knew something she didn’t, but there was nothing for it she had to move on. So sighing deeply she got to her feet and walked over to the neatly arranged supplies left by the stasis pod. They consisted of one Advanced Nano-swarm base station, one matter to energy converter, one energy to matter converter, a nutrient paste dispenser, two memory metal multi-tools, one for general purposes and the other for defense, and two dimensional containers capable of holding far more than their size should allow. After a brief check to ensure they where functional she began attaching them to the convenient points on her bodysuit. Each item was designed to be small and portable even if it degraded their capabilities and when combined should allow a person to survive anywhere, that is if the situation was survivable at all.
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Unfortunately for Alissa that was unlikely, she was a special type of her people and that made it harder for her to survive in certain situations, much like the one she found herself in.
“Nova, can you give me an assessment of my survival chances if I remain here?” she asked. She had no need to “talk” as Nova could “hear” her thoughts, the cavern was eerily quiet aside from the quiet slow-moving river, and it made her feel better to speak aloud. She knew what the likely answer was going to be.
“Ally… {sigh} you have a 3% chance of survival if you remain in place there is not enough organic matter here to meet your needs past a few days, based on my initial analysis, and there is a low chance of that changing. You will deplete what is here and it will not replenish in our current environment. You do not have the time or resources with only a stasis pods survival kit to build sufficient facilities fast enough to make a difference. We a going to have to leave and hope we are near the surface, which my scanners say is unlikely as I am only detecting rock and a little organic matter. Or hope we find a cavern with the biomass to buy time to settle.” Came the expected and apologetic reply, Nova knew that the situation sucked but would not sugar coat the truth.
“It's alright, about what I expected really. Too bad this river doesn’t have what I need.” Was her only reply as she tossed the container she was going to use for water into the river holding onto the magnetic tether and letting it do its thing. The device would purify the water and even use some of it to create the necessary minerals required.
There were two technologies and racial ability that put her people ahead of everyone they encountered, and it was the combination that made them so dominant in her home galaxy. First was the technology to freely create both matter and energy, if they had enough energy they could create matter, and if they had enough matter, they could create energy. This when taken to the extreme allowed them to do things once thought impossible, splitting atoms wasn’t unique to them but being able to combine the elementary particles to create new elements or change hydrogen into iron by adding proton, neutrons, and electrons to the hydrogen atoms at will deliberately and in containers the size of your palm charged with a few volts equaled a big advantage. Her people redefined what they considered rare resources after that.
The second, was living metal, something of a misnomer as they could create “living” in any material, take an application of the first tech and apply it to steel and the steel would “grow”, “heal”, and move at their will. The true key was that it cost them nothing to get it to do this the energy present in the environment would power the operations. The only thing that changed was how fast it was done.
The final thing was a racial ability, Alissa’s people could directly manipulate energy in all its forms. At first, they thought it was simply psionics and this was how it appeared to manifest. It had taken a lot of research and meeting others who were true psionics for them to notice the difference.
How the container did what it did was impressive splitting altering existing materials in the water to be suitable, but what it did was mundane it stored vast quantities of clean drinking water in a 1Kg container the size of a water bottle and did so using anything that contained water molecules regardless of how contaminated the source may be only drinkable water would be stored.
While she waited for the container to fill Alissa was looking at her reflection in the water, the only light in the cavern was provided by the Crystal but to her eyes it may as well have been a brightly lit room. Color was provided by reflection of ambient light, the various energies present heat, motion, and herself, unless she consciously hid her power, she looked like a barely contained star. Usually, she didn’t feel the need to contain her power beyond the minimum letting some show but not all, letting her energy radiate out like body heat without creating either a furnace or a void of energy around her.
The reflection in the pool showed a young, slender female about one and a half meters tall with luminous silver hair and pretty face, pointed ears, a slender body in a form-fitting black bodysuit that had tracings of color ranging from red to blue with metallic highlights and small crystalline structures in certain areas. The most distinctive thing about her though was her eyes impossibly rare even among her race the black sclera containing an electric blue iris that gave off a faint glow, slightly resembling feline eyes, and if you looked closely in the pupil you could almost see a field of stars within.
After this brief appraisal of herself she did one final check of her gear before considering her options. The tunnel the river was flowing from became submerged after about a kilometer upstream after it entered the cavern, and almost all the others were too small for too far. She discounted those she couldn’t fit through as options, more because she didn’t have the time or energy to waste than because they were real obstacles.
As good as her internal senses were, both mechanical and biological none of the passages opened up within at least half a kilometer, and with no knowledge of if the tunnels would widen. The possibility of getting stuck with no way to turn around and having to at best to crawl backwards was not a good option in her mind. She considered her only real option and that was the main artery that led to this cavern an opening roughly thirty meters wide and nearly as tall that seemed to shrink to a more corridor size after 200 meters and remained relatively uniform after that for as far as her senses could detect.
She wanted to have as much water as she could carry because she didn’t know if she would come across morel. But with little choice she started to move towards the opening at a leisurely pace. The massive cavern she woke up in was about a kilometer and a half from “front to back” and about three fourths of a kilometer wide if you discount the bulges. So she walked slowly observing her surroundings and conserving her energy, while engaged in a light conversation with Nova.
About 200 meters from the door Alissa came to a sudden stop every sense screaming danger.
“Ally, what’s wrong?” said Nova “Ally … ALLY!!!” more and more desperate Nova tried to get a response as she noticed her companion first stop, no freeze is a better word for the action. She hadn’t come to a stop she froze. Then her vitals started spiking like she was scared and the settled into what was normal for a combat situation. Nova saw no reason for this the AI couldn’t detect the faintest signs of danger, or any explanation for what was going on.
Alissa swallowed her immediate panic and responded to the nearly frantic AI. “I don’t think I can leave. It feels like if I take another step something bad will happen.” After a few seconds of giving what was in front of her she saw what she thought was the reason and could only utter the words “Well shit.” as the pieces seemed to click together.