Xyra
She still was shocked by what she saw, a fist-sized spider of metal that came into the atrium where they fought along with some Granfi.
She knew them, the Granfi, and didn’t like their presence, not one bit.
Born scavengers, their technological prowess a mirror of an advanced vessel that crashed on their planet and of the subsequent stalking of ancient battlefields for usable tech.
Still, none spoke, they acted with silent mechanical precision to help secure the prisoners and the fallen.
Were they puppets to the machine like all others?
She didn’t have the time to ponder the question throughout.
Lemela had her move by one of the bodies and she saw it, the big metallic spiders incising the veil of the skin and plunging within the body.
It was a gruesome and revolting spectacle, still, it was less bloody than she expected, maybe because the body had already died?
She assumed to be the witness to that body’s skin ripples and expansions, but all she got was a series of twitches from the body itself.
The wound where the spider entered was no longer present on the skin like it had never been opened; like the body somehow healed.
Healing was for those that still partake in the hunt in this world, at least that she knew for certain.
Still, those were dead and still walked, still hunted.
Was she to abandon all her logic behind?
Lemela told her to move along the body, and she obliged still terrified and shaken by what she saw.
The underbelly's mechanical hallways extended before her as a maze of forgotten technological devices and despair.
The structure clearly showed time's relentless grasp and the damage of the ancient forgotten war.
The walls showed signs of corrosion and the flickering lights created ghostly shadows upon damaged support beams where and when the space opened up.
Her footsteps echoed, along with those of the others accompanying her in that delve into the depths, reverberating through the metallic catacombs.
The passage led them near crumbled areas, debris strewn like the remnants of a forgotten world.
Jagged edges protruded from some of the collapsed passages like skeletal fingers, the remnants of a forgotten era clawing for escape.
Maybe that was her imagination racing, all she knew after all was what Vexx had told her, the ancient machine that had awoken in the depths.
A machine not happy that somebody was using the ancient facilities built by the beings that created the artificial planet they inhabited.
The metallic walls seemed to breathe, their whispers of forgotten memories seeping into her mind along with her doubts and fears.
Humans had fought in the ancient past on this world, how it would see the presence of humans now?
How it would see the presence of others who were not its former masters?
An unsettling scent clung to the air as she descended further, down into a hatch the metallic leading the way to an unexpected path – a metallic sewer.
The foul odor of decay mingled with the acrid tang of metal, assaulting her senses as she navigated the dimly lit channel.
While the machines were unaffected, many among the group of pirates were hardly managing to not retch.
Xyra herself found it hard as she felt sickly liquids trickling beneath her clawed feet, their origins better left shrouded in mystery.
She could hold only because she hardly ate at all, for once she was glad for the general lack of food that affected the lower layers of the once-great city 29.
Emerging from the metallic sewer, she was separated from the prisoners and led with the dead.
So the machine had heard her plea? Was she to be treated as one of the fallen?
Other corridors and atria, a ruined staircase and she was in what appeared to be a mysterious lab.
She was confused by the many turns she took and could not understand precisely where she was, but she had descended about ten levels, and risen three so she was almost sure to be less deep than she anticipated.
The lab sprawled before her, a sanctuary of experimentation frozen in time; dim, flickering lights revealed a simple structure of about four or five rooms.
There was a weird room with metallic cylinders, the consoles were less dusty than she expected and some of the monitors were still working.
Shadows danced like malevolent spirits summoned by the feeble illumination, her gaze was drawn to where otherworldly contraption loomed.
It was a big, bulky, and metal-clad weird distortion of a Granfi.
Two hands, two feet, almost a human-like appearance with an abomination of a head.
What had the bottom-feeders done?
As she stepped closer, the air seemed to thicken, tendrils of trepidation wrapping around her heart.
Had the Granfi awoken something in the depths with their tinkering and mingling while seeking out scavengeable tech?
Still, it had a left arm in particular that gave the impression of being still of flesh and bones, it gave the impression of belonging to an actual human.
-Welcome Xyra-
It said, showing it knew her name, even as she had not spoken a word.
-I am the ancient machine Vexx surely informed you about.-
A shiver ran down her spine; if the creature had been here, she would have remembered such a strange combination. It was as Vexx had always suspected. The machines could hear what they were saying.
-I heard you say you want to become like Lemela. I want you to see what it implies. How your body will be modified.-
The machine spoke with a calm and collected tone, clearly thinking each word before spelling it. The way it spoke confirmed all of her fears and her companion's suspicions.
-I will talk to you later to see if you are still up for it.-
That was all it said and Xyra was escorted into a room where she saw the body lying down on a surgical bed, various metal and pieces of its flesh placed upon it.
She experienced with horror and awe how the things were slowly consumed.
How the body gradually healed itself.
How the missing parts of it regrew, now mechanical in nature and function.
Ethan
This had to be a sneak and peek, and turned out a mess, of course.
Just my luck? Hell… I'm all out of it apparently.
I leave Xyra to her own devices, she will have to spend several hours watching a corpse being brought back to life as a drone under Virgil's control.
Well, my control as well, I still struggle with the concept.
Lemela has chosen to be by her side to support her and, well, to see for herself what was done to her.
I fully know how … unsettling and uncanny that process is, I hope it will be enough to quench Xyra’s boiling ambitions.
I could always enroll her into a BUD/S and make her a sugar cookie afterward, but I lack the sand at the moment…
As for Lemela, I guess that having seen my memories is not enough, or I am guessing wrong about her intentions.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The idea I have of commanding the dead is still…
“Ethan= wrong. Drones not dead.”
Maybe, but they don’t have a soul or a mind of their own, do they Virgil?
No, don’t worry I see their use, still need them, and speaking of more pressing matters we have an issue.
The prisoners are distributed through the various areas I can use as cells, and I am realizing I don’t have enough.
Hell, I am pretty sure I don’t have enough drones to move about, guard the base, watch them, and still hunt effectively.
Still, I will have to do with what I have.
Yeah, I will have to make a choice and the extra hand of Xyra could help lessen the burden so to speak.
“Xyra = willing. Query: Begin assimilation in the collective”
I guess this is what you call a difference in core concepts, Virgil, as I explained already.
Speaking of such conflicts...
When I lived through Lemela’s life, I understood there’s a pretty steep gap in our conception of things.
For me, and most humans apparently, receiving a mechanical implant like an arm or a leg is quite within the norm.
For her, that is akin to being blaspheme to God above.
I mean, the Versel believe in a wheel of reincarnation stuff, I heard of it from an operator in a body snatch in India.
They have nine heavens and nine hells, but your body needs to be pure to go on through, to not have been compromised by machinery.
I don’t get it. I mean, I do because I lived it… but still someplace within my mind find this concept all too surreal.
Well better get to the next issue rather than break my mind on this.
Another such thing was cryogenic sleep.
For her, cryogenic sleep, or cryosleep for short, is laying in a very big bed, receiving a lot of injections and transfusions, and then gradually falling asleep.
This big bed then dry freezes you and thaws you out when it decides it is time for you to be up.
It was an ancient tech used to travel in space before they figured out how to travel way faster than light.
A dangerous tech because it would fail and had limitations on how much you could remain safely within that bed.
When I asked to be put in cryosleep, I asked to die.
I asked for the machines that were allowing me to live after the accident to be switched off.
I asked for a merciful release.
You see, you couldn't be put in cryosleep while alive since none was successfully thawed out of it alive back in my day.
It was more for my family than for myself, a way to give them hope, a way to give them something to hold on to.
I wasn’t under the impression I would wake up, ever.
So when I woke up, two things didn’t click, the first of course being I woke up at all.
I mean, I was convinced that wasn’t an option in the first place.
I was glad of course to be alive and well, but then came the second issue: I wasn’t on Earth.
I had some issues with that, I mean I was under the impression of having chosen a serious place for my body to be kept.
Something had happened to Earth, of that I was sure.
Still, humans like me existed, Virgil's data and then Lemela’s memories cemented this hope of mine, the stories she heard, the fear and awe she had for my fellow humans…
Meeting one in the flesh was behind any hope of mine, still, I got to technically see and hear one, encased in a war machine.
Chief Petty Officer Thorne; Garrett for family and friends alike.
One such friend we share, and we share an opinion or maybe two about him.
Military, he reacted to Lemela’s salute as she was under human service all along; thank god military traditions didn’t change apparently.
Better they became more inclusive since now we recruit willing aliens apparently, so we get to have more points of view.
A thing this collective is sort of trying to emulate.
“Query: You still think we were made for war.”
Yes, I do Virgil. I hope to be wrong, but most technological advancements in human history are derived from the struggles of war.
That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to, as you say, assimilate somebody just because he or she asks for it.
“We don’t have such data within our memory.”
The fact that you don’t doesn’t mean a thing, Virgil, if anything it makes me suspect it more.
“Ethan= Paranoid”
Yeah, maybe. Better paranoid than unprepared Virgil.
Thorne seemed to get my lingo too, so I guess I can try and interact with military code if needed.
I feared mine would be too outdated by now, but I am very happy to be wrong about it.
There is another issue I need to consider that I took for granted.
Can a normal human being breathe this air?
“Current air composition of Taboo as measured here: O2: 20%, N2: 62%, CO2: 2%, Ar: 2%, Ne: 2%, He: 1.5%, H2: 1.5%. Trace amounts of other gasses in concentrations at or below 0.4% make up for the remaining 9% of the atmosphere. Confronting data. Human survival: possible, but challenging without support. Need acclimating. Can be uncomfortable in the acclimating phase. “
-Wait, as measured here? You mean you didn’t measure them on the surface?-
I reply out loud snapping out of my internal monologue.
“Processing request. Current air composition of Taboo as measured by the drones on the surface: O2: 21%, N2: 65%, CO2: 1%, Ar: 2%, Ne: 1%, He: 0.5%, H2: 0.5%. Trace amounts of other gasses in concentrations at or below 0.4% make up for the remaining 8% of the atmosphere.”
-Any chance your sensors are broken?-
I ask, I don’t fully get the details but the numbers I hear are different, I mean this is an alien planet, not Earth.
Still, I wouldn’t be able to tell the full difference.
“Processing self-check. Executing checks on drones systems. Result: No damage found. Reason for measured discrepancies: damaged or difficult air supply. Warning! If the damage is progressive no human life form could survive near the core of this planet.”
I raise a virtual eyebrow at Virgil’s declaration.
-Correct me verbally if I am wrong, but planet cores are usually made of hot melted stuff, right? I doubt any living thing could live near one.-
“Verbal response = inefficient”
-Yeah I get it you’d rather inject the knowledge into my brain or what’s left of it anyway… but please Virgil I just need the basics here, it’s not like I wanna become a planet encyclopedia.-
“Request acknowledged. Elaborating functional response. Your statement about a core composition is correct in 75,1% of surveyed rock-based planets, 88,41% of surveyed metal-based planets, 1,69% of surveyed gaseous planets, and 8,2% of surveyed ice planets according to the data we possess. Exotic planets are excluded from this statistic because of their uniqueness.”
So there are unique planets out there, including presumably metallic planets like this one; I have a feeling that's not what Virgil has in mind with metallic or exotic planets.
This is not exactly what I want to focus on at the moment, there’s a more pressing matter I have to clarify.
-Okay, but this planet has a molten core, right? And it’s used for power somehow. How?-
“Correct. This planet does have a molten core. The human term for the technology utilized to harvest its power is Nexus field.
A nexus field is usually utilized to contain matter-antimatter reactions within a spaceship core allowing it to produce enough energy to fold space and allow faster-than-light travels.
Nexus fields have been successfully deployed to contain neutron stars, quasars, and similar objects and harvest the energy they emit.
Warning! Attempting to harvest the power of any normal sequence star is considered a crime.
Warning! Nexus-field weapons can destroy small moons and planets upon massive deployment.
While creating nexus-based weaponry is considered a waste of resources human beings are reported to have the largest declared arsenal of this kind of weaponry.
Warning by the galactic council directed to all humans: please for the love of all creation, stop attempting to create a nexus field around a black hole!"
Why am I not surprised by this kind of statement?
If I had to believe all of Virgil’s data on humankind we would be cryptids. The galaxy’s boogeyman.
This kind of reputation can mean various things from earned to a PR stunt gone well or bad depending on the intentions behind it.
Anyway, I have more pressing matters rather than inquire about my people.
-Virgil, do you think this kind of discrepancy can mean the power is somehow failing or damaged?-
“Unknown. There is not enough data to determine that.”
I sigh at the cold statement of fact, I know this as well as Virgil does that we don’t have the intel to draw conclusions.
-I know, Virgil. But you have some data, and the processing power to analyze it. What I am asking is the following: How would you proceed to fix the atmosphere?-
I feel the heat in my head as Virgil’s core analyzes the various possibilities and then its mechanical voice comes back chirping.
“Analysis complete. Most likely scenario: the local atmosphere control room is damaged or its systems are otherwise compromised. Solution = attempt repair.”
Given I have no idea of where this room is supposed to be or even how I am supposed to repair it I’m off to a good start.
-Send all the available non-thinking drones that have no vital task to look for this local atmosphere control room. If we find meat along the way all the better. I will talk to Lemela about this task personally.-
I go back in my body, I watch the lab bristling with activity.
The damaged drones are being repaired, new drones are being prepared.
I watch my right metallic hand as one of the damaged cylinders that doesn’t provide the ability to charge slowly collapses into three carrier drones.
This process consumes about 30% of my energy reserves and lasts about an hour, that’s a task only I can do.
Privilege of being an overmind drone I suppose, or something like that; I look at the dashboard where Virgil displayed my status.
Status connected Collective connected Ethan, Lemela Remaining power 62,8% Damage none Drone limit 75/1200 Experiment run time (local time) 2 W 3 D 8 H 46 M
Workforce status 51 drones ready 6 drones being repaired, 6 carrier drones working 10 carrier drones ready Workforce distribution: 10 selected drones currently assisting Vexx’s shop, 16 drones on guard duty,3 drones assigned to water purification and meat processing duties 2 drones assigned to assist Zek’lor, 20 drones currently assigned to look for the area’s climate control room and hunt in the process. Resource status:
Food supply: 3 days 3 hours 8 minutes at current rate of consumption, Clean water supply: 2 days, 7 hours 9 minutes at current rate of production\consumption.
Reminder: Cleaning water is a useless endeavor for the collective. Drones can drink contaminated water without consequences.
Drone materials: sufficient for the creation or repairs of 234 drones or the creation of 58 carrier drones.
I scoff at the reminder shaking my head at Virgil's sense of humor. Of course cleaning water is a useful endeavor!
Come on we have guests now, I don’t intend to serve them sewer water anytime soon!
I also fear things will undoubtedly start moving faster, I still don’t know why Rixxen brought down his men here but I doubt it was to sit down and have a tea.
I mean, starting to shoot first and asking questions later isn’t the best presentation.
More will follow either to look for him and his men or his predecessors. I have to be prepared to be hunted down here, hopefully, Zek’lor will be able to create a believable cover for the core of my operations in time.