..[ JACY ]..

“Fuck!” Jacy cursed the thousandth time. As far as she could remember, it might have been more than that. Her pulse gun was blinking red, showing that she was low on power. And it was her backup battery to boot.

She weaved left and then right, jumping over a protruding root on the forest floor. Though it was more swamp than forest if she were being factual. She was running at the edge of it, where the swamp and the forest met.

Behind her, she could hear the split splat of her groups’ footsteps as they ran after her. And behind them was the cause of their sprint, a colossal ten-meter thing with a moist green skin which Jacy suspected to be mold and not the creature’s true skin color. She might have seen patches of brown somewhere. Then again, it could have been mud. In this habitat, it could have been anything really.

Their only saving grace was the fact that it was running on six legs; instead of the faster four, or the moderately fast two. Whatever freak of nature that had allowed the evolution on the planet to favor six legs, she was glad for it.

There had been ten of them when the chase started, but they had quickly whittled down that number to four before they had gone into their backup batteries for the pulse guns. The shuttle was over an Hour away from their current location, helping another group in a much worse situation than they were in. Supposedly.

At first, the creatures had seemed docile enough. Letting them get close enough, close to touch even. But then something had clicked, and they had become feral. Even after having their numbers whittled down, they didn’t give up the pursuit. They were just too stubborn.

That had been over twenty minutes ago. The muddy waters, their heavy equipment and higher gravity meant that they had soon run out of energy, and the creatures had steadily gained on them. That was where the backup batteries had been used up on. Keeping them at bay. They were lucky no one had died yet, but if there was a group in a worse situation than they were, then someone somewhere might already be dead.

And given the state of their weapons, they were far from safe yet. Aside from their pulse guns, they had two retractable swords strapped at their backs, on each side of the Suit Control Unit. Unretracted, they were around half a meter long. Fully retracted, some could be more than a meter but the standard was slightly less than a meter. But given the size of their pursuers, those would be nothing more than pins to the creatures. If Mativo was with them, things would have been different; but he was more than three hundred light-Years away, safe in the main ship. She had been training for over a decade for scenarios such as this, and she was still useless. All she could do was run away, and if she ran out of energy then she was dead. This needed to stop. She angrily shot back at the creature with her pulse gun. And cursed herself again when it did nothing more than make it more frantic. Her pulse gun on the other hand powered down. All she had left were the swords at her back.

The planet had been promising enough on their scanners; habitable, breathable nitrogen-oxygen air, and mildly uncomfortable gravity. Getting closer had made it all the more interesting. They had enjoyed a welcoming planet for the first four Days, if one ignored all the swamps that covered more than fifty percent of the planet’s surface. But things had changed on the fifth Day. Group after group had reported the so called amphibians getting aggressive. Soon enough, the whole planet was engulfed in a fighting frenzy. They had seen other organisms engaged in fights of their own. Jacy was just glad that they were too busy with each other to add to their problems.

She huffed and puffed, as her boots quenched the mud beneath her feet. Every centimeter of her lower legs was covered in mud, turning it from the sky blue of their combat suit to the brown-black mud of the swamp. The mud itself was heavy enough to prevent them from sinking. Otherwise, running would have been all but impossible.

“We are five minutes to your location.” The Exploratory Commander announced over the Comms. She hoped he meant theirs and not another group’s. She could feel her legs muscle straining with every stride she took. Her lungs were stinging, making it hard to draw a full breath. She chanced a look back and was surprised to find that they had increased the distance to their pursuer. I guess all that weight must still weigh it down. But the group had also started dividing, she was way ahead of the next person. And the trailing person was dangerously close to the creature.

She slowed down a little as she saw the white of the shuttle peeking through the gaps in the tree canopy. The trees in the swamp were short gangly things. They looked like diseased plants, with the few branches and leaves that clung to them. That was to be expected, swamps were the breeding grounds of everything nasty. The shuttle finally came into view, quickly firing two pulse shots at the pursuing creature.

Jacy came to a stop then, allowing herself to catch her breath as the others caught up with her. The shuttle landing a minute later. The creature was still writhing on the swamp, it had been hurt but was far from being dead. As they piled up into the shuttle, the creature finally got back to its feet and started making its way to the shuttle. Albeit slower than before. It was limping on one or two of its legs. It really was hard to tell for a creature with six legs.

It took them close to thirty minutes before all the groups on the planet were collected by the shuttle. Luckily, there had been no deaths, but several people had lost a limb or two. Jacy didn’t feel bad that she couldn’t even remember their names. With a working crew of over twelve thousand individuals, and a total crew of over twenty thousand, it was expected that most of them were only ever going to be just familiar faces.

The severed limbs would either be reattached or regrown anew when they made it back to the main ship. The medical facility in the shuttle was good, but it wasn’t that good. Maybe the next iterations might have all those facilities. But then they would essentially turn into mini ships in their own right. As it was, they would help keep the casualties from succumbing to their injuries. Mostly.

They left the planet soon after and began the eight Week journey back to the main ship. They had collected a lot of data about the planet, and a lot of genetic material, but Jacy didn’t think any of those species would be used a base species for a hybrid. The planet might get colonized though, but she would prefer it be done after what caused the fighting frenzy was determined. It wouldn’t do to have colonists turn into berserkers and maul each other to death every once in a while. That would be a big put off for any future luxury trip to the planet. It could be used for combat training though, and maybe even mental fortitude training if the cause affected the brain.

…

“What?” they both asked at the same time.

“You both know that I have been working on bioaugmentics for the last thirteen Years. How is this news to you?” Jacy asked her best friend and girlfriend. She might have expected the surprise from Kacy, but Frea was a surprise. They had been friends long before she even started working on bioaugmentics.

“Working on something is one thing, using it on yourself is a whole different matter,” Frea argued back.

“It was the whole point of my research. People have been using my technology successfully for the last five Years.”

“Yes. Disabled people,” Kacy said. She seemed the most aghast with the news Jacy had told them.

“No. Bioaugmentation fanatics. Disabled people are going for the regeneration programs,” Jacy told her. She was surprised that Kacy didn’t know that. The two programs had rolled out at about the same time.

“What are you talking about?” Frea asked her. And Jacy was confused. “Very few people can actually afford going through the regeneration program. Bioaugmentation is way cheaper. At least the normal ones.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that those high-end ones that give you super powers are as bad as the regeneration programs,” Kacy added, confusing Jacy even more.

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Was it possible she had lost touch with reality somewhere along the way? She didn’t think so; the so called super powers were nothing compared to what Mativo could do on a normal day. Oh, right. Mativo’s work was top secret. No one really knew anything about it; other than the six of them. Mativo had even stopped updating his family a long time ago. Long before they got the first expressions of intent.

It meant that her two closest of friends had no idea what she was really after. And she couldn’t tell them either. It made arguing her points all the more difficult.

“Just how much do the different options cost?” Jacy asked, just to get a clear picture of how out of touch she was.

“It’s your technology and you don’t know how much it costs?” Frea asked in astonishment.

“I came up with the technology, Mativo is the one who offers it to the people.”

“So he gets all the money?”

“No. I get my share as the inventor. Besides, most of the money goes to the acquisition of materials and paying the people actually installing the bioaugments.”

“Just out of curiosity, between you and Mativo, who gets more money per patient served?”

“We are getting off topic here.” Jacy tried steering the conversation back to where it had been. She turned to Kacy who had been silent for a while, “What do you think?”

“Huh?” She sat upright on the sofa, looking first at Frea to her right before turning to Jacy, “About what?”

“You know, me getting bioaugments.”

“I don’t know…” she looked at Frea again as if asking for help; Frea just stared back. “It’s…” she dropped her gaze to her hands, running them up and down her thighs, bulging up her floral dress in the process. “I don’t know.”

Jacy turned to Frea for her opinion. Who tried to avoid answering by gazing at the television, but she had turned it off when she decided to bring up the discussion. No distractions, it was a huge decision after all, and she needed to know her friends were with her on it. So far, it wasn’t looking so good. Had she not done enough to prepare them for the eventuality? Mativo’s family didn’t seem to have any issues with him having nanobots running all over in his body. Very few people would be okay with that, no matter how much nanotechnology had developed.

After a few minutes of silence, Frea gave up trying to avoid answering the question. “What do you want us to say? You will be cutting off a perfectly healthy piece of your body to replace it with a mechanical—”

“bioaugment,” she corrected her.

“— one you made up in the lab. Only crazy people do that.”

That wasn’t exactly true. Mativo was a tad bit crazy and even he had strongly expressed his displeasure in going through with the procedure. But he was perfectly okay with her going through with it. But Jacy didn’t think pointing that out would help her case at all.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow, Jacy.” Kacy finally found something to say. “Especially when we know you are dead set on going through with it no matter what we say here.”

She wished she could tell them everything, even though she knew it wouldn’t change their stand on the matter.

“But I need this. I really do,” she pleaded. But it was to deaf ears, that much she could tell. They had already made up their minds, just as she had already made up hers.

..[ SYLVIA ]..

The Years on Canary had been pretty rewarding for her financially. Back on Earth, she was richer than the rest of her family combined ten times over. On Ũsumbĩ, she was just as rich. If she had started the journey for the financial benefit, she already had enough to retire for millennia. Unless she was a complete idiot, she would never want for anything she could think of currently. In the future, things might change. But she was ready for that too.

But money was not what had brought her on this expedition. It was a part of it, but not the main reason. She just wanted to meet new people, well aliens, but still people. She was what people called a people-person, like a people people-person. And she was proud of it. There was a time when she wished she wasn’t, but that time was long gone. And she had matured even more.

On the ship, she had three main jobs: archivist, diplomat and linguist. She also had minor science-based jobs that she was called upon once in a while. She also had a journalist accreditation. One of the only three that had been allowed for the expedition.

Of her main jobs, she had only done the archiving, which had been fun at first, but the longer they stayed without meeting other intelligent enough species, the more boring it got. The absence of intelligent species also meant that she didn’t get to do her other jobs. But she was still hopeful. The expedition was slated for close to sixteen Years, they were only near half in with more than nine Years to go. And things were starting to get interesting.

Sylvia was sure that they would either meet a bipedal humanoid or an intelligent enough species within the next two Years. The two weren’t necessary mutually exclusive, but she liked to keep her net wide open.

She had been on ten exploratory teams already, and they had all gone without any issues. She suspected that had to do with the fact that none of her worlds had been inhabited. Or highly dangerous. They had all been rocky barren things with little to no atmospheres to speak off. She had pointed out that fact to Mativo who had quickly defended himself claiming that he wasn’t the one assigning exploratory teams. She had learnt that to be true from Jacy, the actual exploratory team assigner; and also the fact that Mativo had only gone on one exploratory mission since the expedition began. Apparently, he had come back stark, raving mad about how the whole thing had been a waste of time. He had claimed not to be put on any other exploratory team until intelligent species were found, or something needed to be killed.

Jacy’s explorations had been the complete opposite of hers. Twelve in total, all to inhabited worlds, all aggressive one way or another. Jacy had offered to place them in the same team for the next exploration, but Sylvia had declined. She might want a change in scenery, but aggressive worlds was not what she had in mind. She still brushed up on her fighting skills; when Jacy had an idea it was hard to get her out of it. Sylvia had learnt that fast enough.

“Mum, we are going to be late.” Kay, her seventeen-Year old son, brought her from her musings. She liked to think he was tall at one meter seventy-eight. And just like her, he looked nothing like a Sotiris were portrayed to look. In fact, he was a carbon copy of her. His father had left little of his on him.

“Okay. Okay,” she said as she got up from the sofa to join him on the hallway. “You are acting as if you have never been there.”

“I haven’t,” he said, without hesitation.

“Why not?” She was surprised he had never even gone there once. That was unfathomable.

“I always thought it was for the senior Senior Officers,” he replied, scratching the mop of hair on his head and slouching as if trying to appear smaller than her. She knew he was not a shy guy, that only meant that he was embarrassed of that opinion.

“There are no senior Senior Officers on this ship,” she told him, pressing on the elevator button, which opened almost immediately.

“What do you call Mativo then?”

“Mativo,” she said as she joined him on the elevator and pressed 12. “And I can tell you for a fact that Mativo goes nowhere near that Deck.”

“Why?”

“It isn’t his kind of place.”

“Then why did he have it installed?”

“For the crew. For people like you,” she answered him. She still couldn’t believe he had spent all those Years on the ship without ever visiting that Deck. “Didn’t you ask other people whether you could visit?”

“The ones I talked to told me that it wasn’t for everyone.”

The elevator stopped and opened at Deck 12, and they walked out. They slowly made their way to the check-in office. There wasn’t even a queue. The Deck Officer checked them in as he exchanged pleasantries with her. She knew a lot of people on the ship, but not all. Luckily, he was one of the many she knew.

They moved to the exchange lock, before finally going into the Park, or Nature Retreat.

The cool earthy air was always the first thing she noticed. Unlike the stale air of the ship, the air in Deck 12 was filled with pollen, dust particles, moisture and all the other smells that the vegetation growing there released. It was also filled with the sounds of birds and insects.

Near the entrance, the Deck was designed as a park. With sparsely spaced trees and mowed down grass. There were paved walkways and benches, and even dustbins. And small ponds with ducks in them. The park was small, only two hectares in size. The rest of the Deck had been allowed to go wild. As wild as it could get on a ship. There were still caretakers who made sure that things didn’t really get out of hand.

The Deck had been designed to allow trees to grow to a height of around five meters, with a two-meter clearance from the ceiling. She wasn’t sure if the height had been for the plants or the two waterfalls that could be found in the wild part of the Deck.

Every time she had felt the need for a retreat, she always came to the Park Deck. She had thought that she always came at unpopular hours, but now she knew why there had been little to no one before. She would have to report it to Kalũki, the Chief Operations Officer. She would figure out how to make the crew aware that they were supposed to be using the Deck. The only time she had found it filled with people, it had been the hybrids. At their current age, they could barely read or write anything. So they were spending their time in the Deck, enjoying life. They would soon start attending school. The ship had a complete education system, with the institutions for education.

“Disappointed?” she asked her son, who was blankly staring at the Deck. From left to the right, and slowly back again.

“What? No! Absolutely not.” He went back to staring, this time gaping. “This could make you forget that you are on a ship.”

“I don’t know,” she said as she absentmindedly swept her gaze across the park. “Looks pretty small to me.”

“Of course it does, you are used to it by now. This is my first time here. It will take a while before I get used to it.”

“Do it fast. I believe the next one will be a hell lot bigger than this one.”

“What?” he turned to her then. But she ignored him as she carried her luggage to one of the benches near the edge of the park. They had come prepared for an hours stay on the Deck. After getting over his dumbfoundedness, he carried his bags and joined her on the bench. It was his birthday after all. Technically, it was a week after.