…[ MATIVO ]…

A black cloud came out of my hand, slowly dissipating before settling on the floor of the pristine new lab on the ship. Leaving small black specks on the otherwise clean floor. They were made more obvious by the fact that the floor was white.

No. I hadn’t been trying to conjure fire from my hand. I had already done that a long time ago. Perfected it even. No. I had been trying conjure up something much more different. Diamond. It was one of the hardest things known to humans, so I thought that if I need something to pierce armor, it had to be tough. And of all the other tough things out there, I understood diamond the most. I had thought that it would be easier to conjure up. I had been wrong. Clearly I could only manage coal. And that was useless unless I wanted something to burn. Then again, I could conjure fire for that.

The way the whole thing with the chip and the nanobots worked, or how I understood it, is that I imbued intentions to energy, that was then expressed visibly when it left my body. A bit more technically, I created an intent in my mind. Say, when I punch forward with my right fist, I create the intent of fire sprouting from my fist as it reached its peak. That intent is translated by the chip in my brain into energy. The energy is relayed through the hybrid nano-nervous system that I had. As that energy left my fist, it turned into fire. Now, where the fire came from, I had no idea. At first, I had thought, with air and water, that I was merely influencing what was already there. But when we got fire, we realized something entirely different was happening. There had been the hypothesis that I was merely releasing a flammable element which consequently got ignited. But analysis of my bio readings after such an event showed no signs of such a thing having happened. Only energy enough for moving the intent had been used, same as when working with water and air. No additional energy deficiencies to account for my body creating the flammable element. I had joked that I was interacting with dark energy and dark matter. But Andrew had been appalled by that idea. And that is what had led me to try and create diamond. But I was far from achieving that goal.

On other news, I had become quite competent in the use of air, fire and water as extensions of my body. I could easily create air and water blades capable of slicing a human’s head clean off their body. Fire projectiles capable of igniting anything that could burn in the presence of oxygen. I was finally able to impart movement in those elements. The era of me having to wield icicles as knives was gone. I was yet to accelerate anything to the speed of sound, and my effective range was ten meters. After that they easily dissipated.

The chip was showing me that my energy reserves were approaching were they nanobots would stop responding, so I decided to call it a day. Most of the issues had been tweaked as we spend time in the Jupiter System. It could have been the fact that we were conducting tests everyday instead of the once a week we had had back on Earth. Or maybe, they had had a breakthrough. There were still pains when the nanobots were initialized, and as the test dragged on. Especially nearing the end of particularly long tests.

Shutdown.

As I made it to the door, Park walked in carrying sample packs. He had been collecting anything I produced that stayed long enough for analysis. That’s how I knew that the black cloud was small specks of coal. I quickly took a shower and joined the others in the observation room. The nanobots had become a constant feature in my body. The only time I would be removing them was if they became defective or the group came up with a superior version. They were already working on one such versions, but it was months away.

My rejuvenation juice was already waiting for me on one of the tables. “Thanks.” I told Jacy as I took one of the seats and brought it near the monitors. “Why am I having so much trouble with the diamond?”

“We don’t know yet. It is hard to come up with a hypothesis when we have only recently accepted that you are actually creating things from nothing.” Mbithe stated.

“I wouldn’t say from nothing.” Dominic argued. “Only that we have no idea where.”

“I just wish I could at least lump it together. If I managed that, then I would know that I was heading in the right direction.”

“Maybe you are not thinking it right? You should go back and read up on how diamond is made and actually looks like.”

I turned to Jacy with a hurt expression, “You couldn’t have said it in a much nicer way?”

“We both know you don’t have feelings to be hurt by such statements.”

“I have feelings enough.”

“I want you to start wearing this.” She placed a sizable rectanguloid container in front of me. It was a sleek black thing. I didn’t understand why she could have gone through the trouble of making it look so. It had straps on it and I didn’t bother looking for the pins I knew were there.

“I said I don’t want to wear an external energy reserve.”

“Are you seriously not going to give it a chance?” Dominic asked, looking like I had done something taboo.

“Yeah. Why?”

Dominic just flapped his mouth uselessly, but Mbithe came to his rescue. “It contains around ten thousand calories, enough to sustain an average working human for four to five days.”

“Wow!” She really had outdone herself.

“You need to start getting used to the extra energy being injected into your system.” Jacy stated.

“How does it work?”

“It communicates with your chip. When your energy reserves are below a certain limit, it injects the energy dense fluid until it depletes or your energy reserves rise above that limit.” She explained.

“Can I think about it?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She said as if she had expected that I would ask that. “But remember, energy could be your limiting factor.”

..[]..

After I had had an hour of rest after the tests, I slowly made my way to the Gun Range room in the Gym Deck. During the early days of design, the room had been located in the Entertainment and Recreational Deck. But it later moved after it proved that it was more of a workout than a fun activity.

And I had been working my body as much as it would let me ever since the schedule had settled. The kidnapping incident had been a wakeup call. A reminder that I needed to able to keep me alive on my own. One could blame me for escaping my security officers, but the fact remained that they had taken me down way too easily. If they had done much worse than just kidnapping, that would have been the end for me.

I had employed the help of several crew members to enact situations such as the kidnapping, and others were I might find myself at a disadvantage. To at least help improve my body’s reaction. I had had a three-hour focus group with some of the security officers, asking for their input on how I could have gotten out alive. It was there that some of the scenarios for the safety simulations I was going through had come from.

The Gun Range was a forty by twenty meter room. It was filled with physical objects to create a rugged terrain that could be used for hiding and sneaking up on someone. The guns used were electronic with simulated recoil kickback. So when you fired the gun, it actually felt like you were firing an actual gun. There were no guns or bullets onboard the ship.

Target simulation was made by Robin. One wore AR goggles inside the Gun Range to locate the targets. Robin had over ten thousand simulations to ensure that each situation felt different, forcing the brain to learn to adapt. The physical objects in the room were movable and adjustable, allowing them to fit the currently running simulation.

I call them physical objects but in reality it was much more complex than that. When the Range was completely off, it defaulted to a clear room with nothing inside. The working behind the creation of the obstacles to fit the simulations was way too technical for me. What I understood about it was that the Range’s was made up tiny filaments that could be raised and lowered as the simulation called for. They were so fine and closely packed that when you touched a surface, it could feel as smooth as skin if the simulation was designed that way. The things the human mind could think of astonishing when given the room to run amok.

As good as it was as a combat training environment, most of the crew still used it as a recreational room.

I chose a moderately hard simulation. It was in a city scape. Two roads, two tall buildings and a connecting road. There were cars strewn all over the place. The people were a combination of civilians, armed opponents and hostages.

In terms of arms, there were three options; a shotgun, a handgun and a pulse gun. The pulse gun was a new technology currently in development. It worked by using electricity to create an electromagnetic pulse of energy powerful enough to physically harm a living thing. When we left Earth, the best of them could only stun someone. And even then, not enough to immobilize them. Maybe they would be better by the time we returned, but I highly doubted that.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I chose the handgun. And took the offered four magazines of ammo. They really did nothing, just placebo to help simulate the loading and unloading of the handgun. I wore the AR goggles and started the simulation.

And got killed in less than two seconds.

I had started the simulation right next to one of the armed opponents and they had wasted no time taking me down. I studied the environment presented to me and moved to a more secure location. Then started the simulation again.

I peeked over the car I was hiding behind. I saw one of the armed opponents standing unprotected near the adjoining road. I took aim and fired. And nothing happened, except he had noticed me. I was forced to duck to escape his return fire. Looking at my gun, I realized that I hadn’t loaded a magazine yet. That two-second death must have rumbled my brain. It was things like that that I needed to train out of. I loaded the handgun; eighteen bullets and three magazines left, and waited for the armed opponent to stop shooting.

The running of the civilians made it easier to spot the rest of the six armed opponents on this road. The bad thing was that they had all taken to hiding spots. Even the one who had been shooting at me had taken shelter behind the corner of the building, inside the adjoining road. There were four others on the other road, but I would have to cross through the adjoining road to get to them. Or they could come for me here.

The reflection on the windows of one of the buildings on the side of the road I was on showed that two of them were hiding behind a car that had been left in the middle of the road. It was only starting to turn towards where I was from the road joining the two roads. It gave them a good hiding spot; they would be able to spot me any direction I tried to use to get to the joining road. The civilians had already cleared the roads. I had thought that they would keep running the whole time.

A shot from where the third one had hidden behind the corner but closer revealed where the rest could be. There were two cars and a van on that side of the road. They were the closest to me. I creeped to the back of my car and around it. There was a road separating me from the two cars and the van. I braced myself and fired three quick shots at the two cars.

I quickly crossed the road on a crouch firing continuously at the car in the middle of the road to keep them pinned. When one of them tried peeking, I directed two of the eight shots at them and got my first kill. When I made it to the back of the van, I quickly peeked over with my gun aimed. I was in time to catch the guy hiding behind the corner peeking as well. I fired a shot that got a hit but not a kill, before turning to the ones crouching behind the two cars. They were already reacting to my presence but I still managed to shoot four times before ducking back. Two more kills made that I had got them.

But I still hadn’t figured out where the sixth guy had gone. I moved around the van only to get shot on the leg. I reacted quickly by firing my remaining bullet into the guy’s head. And quickly unloading and loading a new magazine, as I had seen the one behind the car in the middle of the road moving towards the back of the car. Probably planning to catch me as I moved for the corner. But he got a shot to the head the moment his head cleared the car’s body.

With five kills, and no more shots sounding, I moved to the corner. Peeking over showed the one that had been there lying unmoving on the ground, but I was forced to hide back barely avoiding a shot to the head. It bounced off near where my head was. The difficulty level was starting to show.

When I made to peek again, a shot rang off again. That one had clearly missed, or I would have died. It also meant that my opponent was constantly watching, waiting for me to move. It was bad, if I didn’t do anything, we could stay at a stalemate like that until I ran out of time. It felt like I was starting to sweat already. But when I tried wiping off the sweat, my hand came back bloody. That scared me so much I paused the simulation. Taking off the AR goggles showed no blood on my hands. That meant it was in-simulation blood. It also meant that the second shot had not missed as much as I thought it had. I put on the AR goggles and resumed the simulation.

If I could trust my math, I estimated based on where the two shots had hit, the possible location of the shooter to within a meter. I merely pointed my gun at the location and fired two shots. Then waited. No return shots. After ten seconds, I repeated the process again. Still no return shots. I decided to risk peeking the third time and only got the simulation failed message.

I did the simulation for thirty more minutes, and every single one I did, ended with me dead.

…[ JACY ]…

Jacy was depressed? She didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that all that novelty and excitement of coming on this expedition, had been almost certainly washed away during their volley at Callisto. Ooh Callisto! Your surface so old, and oh so cratered. They should have known. Callisto had not hidden anything from anyone. She said it all, I’m done.

Callisto’s surface was covered completely with craters formed from impacts by anything that found its way to her. She didn’t show anything happening beneath her surface. Neither tectonic nor volcanic. Absolutely nothing. The only process that seemed to be working at all was erosion. The ridges from the impact craters had been reduced down to knobs over the millions of years.

At first, Jacy had been in good spirits. Their first exploration had gone off without any itch at all. It had set the crew up, showing them that they were ready. Everything that they had had to do to get here was going to be worthy it. They would gather data, conduct experiments, and learn new things about the Solar System. Everywhere they would go, they would be doing something for the very first time. At least for humans.

Callisto had been one of the moons suspected to have a subsurface salty ocean. Which would have meant a high likelihood of life, any kind of life, having emerged and evolved there. They had gone to its surface hopeful, and full of merry. After all, they would be the first humans to land on the Galilean moons. Jacy was scheduled for the fourth Exploratory Team for Callisto, 005.

The crew of 002 had gotten off the shuttle, took a picture, then placed their instruments on Callisto’s surface to search for the subsurface ocean. The results had been disappointing. They had rechecked, double checked again. And still nothing changed. They had moved to a different location, but the readings remained the same. Then tried the age-old adage, switching off and switching the system back on again. And the results still remained the same.

The rest of the Callisto’s Exploratory Team’s, all the way to 007, had descended to their landing sites and done the same measurements. And got the same results. The whole crew was stumped. There was supposed to be an ocean. How else would one explain the way Jupiter’s magnetosphere interacted with Callisto? More in depth analysis of the data gathered would be carried out as the expedition progressed. The drilling crews were reduced to sample collectors around asteroid impact craters. Which proved to be a much less time consuming task compared to the one they had trained for. With the extra time in their hands, they had been reduced farther into mere tourists.

After a few hours, they had gotten bored and returned to the ship. After that, the first of ten Ganymede Exploratory Teams had been sent out. Closely followed by the second. In terms of morale for going in to new places, they still had a lot to go on. But, Callisto had been a huge let-down. She had set a sad precedence for the icy moons. But at least Europa and Enceladus were guaranteed to have liquid water under their surfaces.

Callisto had been suggested by several studies as the most likely candidate for a possible human base on the Jupiter system. A surface base would be able to turn the easily accessible water-ice into hydrogen and oxygen gases, rocket propellants that could be used for further exploration of the Outer System. It was faraway enough from Jupiter that it didn’t suffer from radiation bombardment like the rest of the Galilean moons. Her geological stability was also another huge point in her favor.

But all those, and other reasons, meant nothing to them. They still had chemical engines on their ship, but were rarely used, if ever. They had been installed as a backup for when the Light-speed core and engines failed. They had enough resources onboard the ship to repair most of the damage that could be suffered by those engines. And if by some chance they did suffer damage they were not prepared to deal with, it would mean they were all dead anyway.

All these meant that Callisto would offer nothing to them as a base. It could come in handy as a research center though.

On some piece of good news, Riba had proved a goldmine. Literally. There were other precious elements such as platinum on the small piece of rock, but the gold concentration on it had proved to be among some of the highest in the Solar system.

An exploratory team had been assembled for a return mission to it before they ventured deeper into the Jupiter System. They were tasked with collecting more samples and performing a more in depth analysis of Riba. They would also leave a transponder on it, for easier location in the future. And also to join the menagerie of transponders that they would be leaving throughout the Solar System. They would help make navigation a whole lot easier.

The Exploratory Team was scheduled to depart in a few days. Their mission was slated to last longer than Jacy’s, more than double.

But so far, the most unsettling news was what was happening in Europa. All their proposed landing sites had rovers and probes approaching them, and their backups too. Jacy didn’t understand what they were trying to achieve by doing that, Europa was huge, they could easily choose a new location. They had been prepared to dig through more than hundred kilometers, Europa’s crust was flimsy compared to that.

“What do they think this is going to achieve?” Park asked, reclining on the sole sofa in the conference room. His legs were resting on Dominic’s thigh. “Make us run away with our tails between our legs?”

They were all taking a rest after a long grueling discussion and analysis of the data gathered from the most recent tests. Not all of them, Andrew and Mbithe were still talking things over. It wasn’t as hard for them to meet up together like they had originally feared. Somehow, their Exploratory schedules had been arranged around their lab work time, no one had yet been unavailable for work. Tired, yes. But not unavailable. And unless something changed, they would be able to maintain a full team meet each day.

“Mativo would never do that.” Dominic sounded so sure, like he understood Mativo’s thought process. The architect behind it.

“Yeah. They will have another thing coming if they keep doing this.” Park was still high on his anger with the situation they seemed to be headed towards.

“What do they think their rovers would be able to do? We are here, and they are not. We could easily kick them away from the landing sites and get on with our work.” Dominic kept on fueling Park’s anger. They were all in a sour mood really. And they desperately needed a win, and Europa was the likely candidate to offer them that.

“They could be hoping to broadcast such behavior to all human colonies. That would be bad.” Mbithe proved to still be paying attention to what the duo was talking about.

“How bad? We could also broadcast our own.” Park was quick to counter argue. “Wait, do we have something on them we could broadcast?”

“No we don’t. At least, not to my knowledge.” Jacy answered him when no one else seemed to know the answer.

“Mativo still relies on the general public for almost half of his revenue each year. Any bad press would be crippling. And we do need that money.” Andrew threw in his two cents.

“Crippling, not fatal. Besides, there is no such thing as bad press, any press is good press. All their broadcast is going to achieve is prove without doubt that we are actually here. I call that a win.”

“Have you ever taken a course, any course, on business at all?” Andrew asked him. Blinking was all Park did. “I didn’t think so.”

“Still, Mativo is more likely to bulldoze through.” Dominic came to his rescue.

“Yeah.” And they all knew that.