Chapter 31

..[ MATIVO ]..

“No! Absolutely not!”

“It is for your own good,” I tried to plead my case.

“Never!”

But Mondhe was having none of it.

“It won’t be for long. Only a Month and you will have them back.”

“That’s forever in my timescale,” she said as she paced in the front of the conference room. “Why are you punishing me so?”

“It is not a punishment.”

“What did I do wrong?” she asked me, with tears in her eyes. Either she was faking it, or it was hurting her more than I thought it would.

“I just told you, this is not a punishment,” I said in a calm voice.

She settled back down on her seat, looking defeated. She turned to the rest of the table and asked, “Why is he doing this?”

Jacy didn’t so much as even give away her feelings on that. All she did was look at her then me and back again. But said nothing. Mondhe turned her attention to the last remaining person in the room, Sylvia. The others had quietly left when the topic was brought. Maybe they had known how she would react better than I had.

“Sweetie, I… he…” Sylvia herself was out of words too. I didn’t even want to know where that term of endearment had come from. It was the first time I was hearing it. Mondhe didn’t seem to mind, either it was an established thing or she didn’t care.

“He promised you would have them back. Have you known him to break his promises to you?” Sylvia said after gathering herself.

“I know. It’s just that this feels like… mutilation. I’m losing a part of myself I’ve had for so long,” Mondhe conceded.

“Three Years.” I couldn’t help myself.

“That’s double forever to me,” she threw back at me, anger clear in her voice.

“Of course it is. And what would you call your whole life?” I said under my breath. But from the look she gave me she had heard it.

“The nanobots will be waiting for you when the Month is over. Think of this as a training session,” Jacy spoke up for the first time.

“But it is a training session. I want her to learn to listen to her body better without relying on the nanobots or the chip.”

“You are taking out the chip too?” Mondhe asked. That had clearly caught her off guard. Her raised voice, and hackles, were a clear sign.

“No. But it will be permanently disabled until the Month is over.”

“But why?” she asked. “There is no need to take them out. You can just leave them deactivated. I promise, I would use them. I just want to know that they are there.”

“And that is why I want them out. You are using them as a security clutch. I want you knowing that all that you can rely on is you and only you,” I said. I sighed as I continued, “You know what happened—”

“And it would happen again. I will be careful,” she pleaded. The tears had already disappeared; either she had shed them or they just got reabsorbed back.

“That’s the thing. I want it happen again. And again. I want you to be able to do that, without collapsing,” I told her. But she didn’t appear convinced at all.

“Look Mondhe, don’t you want to be able to do that too?” Jacy asked. And she nodded. “Then you need to train for it. You can’t rely on the chip and nanobots then. They will only hold you back. You need to train your own muscles, your own nerves, to do that. And as long as the nanobots are in your system, part of you, they will always help.”

“It’s like you said, you have always had them. Your body is used to having them. But you don’t need them for this,” Sylvia added to Jacy’s statement. They had a way with words that I didn’t. Maybe it was because I had spent most of my growing Years avoiding interaction with other people. I ended up never developing the skill to fully express myself.

It took the combined effort of all three of us, and hours of back and forth, to convince her to let me take them out and disable her chip. And the first thing she said was,

“I feel empty inside.” Followed by, “And now my one Month in hell begins.”

“Don’t think of it like that,” I told her, but I was sure she would see it no other way. She quickly left the recovery room, with Sylvia on her heel. I turned to Jacy and asked, “I’m doing the right thing, right?”

“Are you asking me that?” Jacy threw back at me.

“You are no help, you know that?”

“The question isn’t whether it was the right thing to do or not. It was necessary,” Jacy said as she followed me to the simulation room. I still had other things I wanted to work on, and Jacy had bouts to work through.

“But was that the right way to go about it?”

“Do you care?” she asked me.

After a while I replied, “I should.”

Jacy went and began her bouts, and I began my attempts at breaking up a piece of rock, pebble really. It was only a centimeter across. I had been at it for years and I still got nothing to show for it. Every single time I felt the energy move out of me, but I got no feedback. I was already pouring enough energy into the rock to pulverize it had I been using any of the attacks I was more proficient in. Sometimes it was so demoralizing that I would stop working on it for Weeks before I got back to it. I had tried analyzing the rock itself and tried messing up with the individual atoms and molecules making up the rock, but it bore no fruit.

And that wasn’t the only thing I was having issues with. After Jacy had pointed out that I had performed a pull instead of the more usual push that was common in Energy use, I had not managed to consciously reproduce it. Most of the time I assumed that Jacy had just seen things. But she always insisted that she had seen me do it. We had argued about it so much that we had gone through the footage of her camera during that exploration mission just to proof whether it had happened. It had.

So I was stuck with trying to figure out how I had subconsciously performed it. But so far, nothing was working at all. Even after explaining the whole thing to Mondhe, she had been unable to do anything either. I had even given up on the secrecy, at least for the pull, and asked the whole ship to try and achieve it. No one had. And there were a considerably number of Energy users on the ship. Even with a lax system of training to foster ingenuity, we all seemed to gravitate towards a push based system of using the Energy.

Maybe there was someone out there in The Empire who already figured it out. But it would take Years for those news to spread all over The Empire. Even with our progress in travel speed, our communication speed was still lagging behind. Way behind. I had seen Mondhe dribbling things that she claimed were related to a communication network for The Empire, but she hadn’t explained anything to anyone. And she never seemed to spent a lot of time on them. The shuttle was still a top priority.

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..[ ANDREW ]..

They had finally broken the forty thousand light-Year boundary. For all intents and purposes, they could finally turn around and head back. Even the second round of Explorer Class ships and the Colonial Class ships won’t make it past the thirty-five thousand light-Year mark before they have to head back to Ũsumbĩ IV, the Capital.

But they still had several months left before they reached their halfway point in time for the expedition. And Mativo had said they keep pushing forward. They had the time, why not do with it what it was intended for; exploring. That’s how they found themselves in their current situation.

The news of a possible Class One civilization had delayed their group from dispersing all over the net. Their scheduled one Month tenure serving in the net had arrived and Andrew had been looking forward to it. It would be their last, if not second last, before they had to go back. On arrival at the five planet system, the hopefulness had fast vanished. Even from millions of kilometers away, they could tell it wasn’t a Class One civilization. Some held out hope that maybe it was a late Class Two. But Andrew was doubtful of that too.

So, Andrew had been understandably surprised when the first ship had gone past them faster than light. Andrew was in one of the view rooms located on most decks. Like lots of other people, he had come to watch the planet approach. It was the second planet from the sun, and they had only passed the fifth planet on their way to it. All the others were on the other side of the star. In the opposite direction of their approach.

Everything about the planet was displayed on the Display. Slightly smaller than Earth, it was estimated to be Venus sized with a gravity of 0.966G. It had a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere with a composition of seventy-three to twenty-six. There was a multitude of gases that made up for the remaining percent. Surprisingly, its water only covered twenty percent of its surface, leaving a large dry landmass that was more than half desert. It had a multitude of satellites orbiting it; two natural ones and a lot of the artificial kind.

They were travelling at Light 1 as they approached the planet, the rest of the shuttles were circling outside the stellar system. Waiting to be called on if they were needed. Only the main ship was making the approach. Mativo had wanted to only send a shuttle or two. But the Senior Officers had convinced him otherwise. Andrew thought a shuttle might have been the more prudent option. Then again, if a battle broke out, the Swift was the more obvious option. The shuttles were battle capable, but they couldn’t be compared with the main ship.

They hadn’t exactly seen it, but the ships sensors had picked up its trail and displayed it on the Display. It was headed towards the inhabited planet. The ship didn’t pick up speed. Only maintained its steady course. And finally made it to a distance of around five hundred thousand kilometers from the planet, half an hour later. They had passed the outer moon at around a million kilometers. The inner moon was slightly to their side, and to Andrew it appeared to be orbiting at just around where they had stopped. It was a grey desolate thing filled with craters and a few colonies. It was roughly half the size of Luna, Earth’s moon.

But that wasn’t what made them stop at their current distance. No, that was the mismatch-colored ships between them and the planet. Nineteen of them. And all facing them. They would have been intimidating if Andrew didn’t know that they could field shuttles five times their number, and all larger than them. Yes, they were smaller than the net shuttles.

Around half of them were egg shaped with the rest taking several shapes; triangular, cuboid, spherical, saucer-shaped. But they all had the same engine configurations; three to six engines, all arranged radially around the ships. Some were connected with individual pylons while others had the engines joined together in a polygonal ring that then had two pylons connecting it to the ship.

Then a window opened up on the Display, showing a half body of a person wearing what appeared to be a black shirt. Andrew was hard pressed to describe them. They appeared to have a light brown skin. Unless that was a tint added by a poor quality camera. They had a rectangular face with wide set eyes that were so striking it was hard not to notice them. With their yellow sclera and white iris surrounding a black pupil, they looked completely unnatural to him. There was no hair on their head that Andrew could see. The nose was flat against the face with side facing nostrils and a thin pinkish mouth.

They spend a whole five minutes spewing gibberish at them. They paused on occasion, as if waiting for a reply. From the frustration that was clear in their face, either they didn’t understand a word the Bridge said to them or the Bridge flat out didn’t say anything in return. Knowing Mativo, it was most definitely the latter.

The ship was put into yellow alert, asking for all combat personnel to attend their battle stations. If it had been an orange alert all crew would have had to move to their battle locations. For some, that meant hiding as best as they could. As it was, only the combat personnel moved. A small fraction of the crew aboard the Swift. Andrew wasn’t part of them. He was combat certified, as was all the crew with at least a Grade Three. A few minutes later, a Class Four shuttle was shown on the Display approaching what appeared to be the lead ship. One of the egg-shaped ones, with six engines. The shuttle was considerably smaller compared to it, nearly half the ship’s size. Andrew could have guessed at least three people on that shuttle, and Mativo wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a fun of first contacts.

Soon, another window joined the despaired alien on the Display. It showed Sylvia on it, doing her magic with words and gestures. It lasted for close to half an hour before the shuttle was allowed near the other ship. Four figures then floated from the shuttle to an opening on the side of the ship and disappeared inside.

The feed from Sylvia’s window shifted to the inside of the ship. It showed them being guided through the ship’s corridor’s by three of the natives. The corridors were somewhat clean, but it was easy to tell that they had seen better Days. From Sylvia’s vantage point he knew the identities of the other three crew on the ship. They were led into a room where they spent around fifteen minutes before the figure they had seen on the window first joined them, with four other natives. Andrew left the view room after that. Other than Sylvia, the other three were experienced augments and could take care of themselves, and Sylvia if it came to it. He had been to a lot of first contacts, what would follow was a long session of establishing basic communication between them. He decided to start preparing for a landing. Peacefully or not, he knew they would be landing.

A few hours later, the ships had dispersed leaving seven in close range of the main ship. Ten Class Four shuttles were then allowed to land on the planet. Andrew had somehow ended up being one of the few unlucky crew picked for the mission. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to visit the planet, but he had the feeling that things would go wrong somehow. And he was proved right when their shuttle lost communication with the other shuttles and the main ship on their way down. Just his luck.

Things on the ground were much worse than he had thought. More than half of the cities and towns they saw on their way down had been reduced to ruins. And the still standing ones weren’t faring any better. They had lost their sparkling new quality a long time ago, being left as half-ruined dust-covered buildings. There were a few exceptions were the cities were well maintained and there were signs of efforts made in cultivating the neighboring lands. Stretches of land covered in rowed crops completely alien to Andrew, and countless structures that he could only assume were greenhouses. They were large half-cylinder shaped structures covered in a highly translucent white material. Inside where green and purple colored shapes that took most of the space.

They landed at a large paved area next to a huge building that had half of one of its walls open to the outside to reveal a hangar. Inside where several more of those egg-shaped ships they had seen.

“All come,” the translator-device they had been given said as they disembarked.

Three of the natives were standing on the shuttle door with their hands on their weapons. One of them had said something. Funny enough, the translator-devices didn’t translate everything the natives said. Just some of it, only those statements directly at them.

From what Andrew understood, the natives had developed an AI that could be fed most of a language’s words and their meanings, and the basic rules governing that language and it would be able to roughly translate. The natives had refused their nanobots translators, obviously. And it somehow seemed like their technology were primitive compared to the natives. At least where translation was involved. Unlike their translator nanobots, the translator-device could be programmed in a way that worked to the natives’ favor. Like it was doing.

“We have to leave a security detachment for the shuttle,” Shiyong, their commander informed them.

“We look after the ship,” the translator-device said after one of the natives spoke. Either they didn’t have a word for shuttle, or there had been translator mishap.

“I see,” was all the commander said. And Andrew understood it too. Combined with the loss of communication with the Swift, it was plain to all what was happening.

They were quietly guided into the hangar. And there were countless of well-armed natives waiting for them. Andrew estimated them to be in the hundreds. If they did anything, they would definitely end up dead. Even their shuttle might not be able help them had they been inside. There was no telling what their weapons could do. And if they had faster-than-light technology, it was safe to assume that they had weapons nearly, or even more, powerful than their pulse guns. It might not appear like they were a Class One civilization, but they had the technology for it. Andrew wanted to figure out what went wrong.