The first thing his Master had said was “Finally… Perfect.” The second thing was, “follow.”
He followed his Master. They came across small furtive things. First his Master cut them down. Then his Master had him do the same. They ate the flesh of these familiar creatures, called “Man.” The powerful blue disk let them into many places. Small places where his Master took items. Different things.
They came across a pod of crabs, they chittered and squabbled amongst each other. His Master slammed its blade-like claw through the largest, most aggressive one. Master held it up, in front of the rest of the swarm, then reached up with its two Man-arms and cracked open a leg. His Master sucked out the meat and then threw the corpse into the middle of the swarm. The crabs cleared a circle around the corpse for a long second then swarmed it. In another second, this one quicker and filled with the crunch of chitin. The crabs flowed to the sides of the hallway as one. His Master walked the calm and measured pace they had been traveling in so far. He followed and the disorganized mass of crabs followed in their wake.
They continued this over and over. Eventually crabs joined of their own volition. Momentum begat momentum. This took time. He tasted the vibrations of the screams of Man. Corridor after corridor, hallways, from narrow passages to eye-popping halls could scarcely be believed to have existed. The scattered crabs spread out through the grandest room yet. Just inside the room his Master inserted the disk into a strange-looking screen and placed a hand onto a hand shaped Pad that glowed in soft-blue light. His Master looked at him. He did the same and touched the HandPad as his Master had done.
The room was unlike the rest. The harsh blue-white light of the halls and corridors, it was red and dim. It was large and circular with a massive hole in the center. Around it were hundreds of Cryo-Pods, some like his, others were different. The devastation extended well beyond the hole in the floor. Dozens of the Pods, more even, were destroyed, whole swathes of cleared, tiered-floor with wrecked Pods in great piles against the back of the room.
“Master?”
“Patience. You’ve done well so far but we have our own objectives beyond here. I will explain all, in time.”
He nodded. His Master clearly knew what to do.
He watched as his Master went from Pod to Pod and inserted the strange blue disk in Pod after Pod.
He tried to tell the difference in which Cryo-Pods his Master chose but he couldn’t see the pattern, if there even was one.
His Master stopped at a particular Pod that contained a Man. He was young, like him. His body was severely damaged. Somebody had gone beyond trying to hurt him. He could tell that the creature that had done this had done it for pleasure.
“Master, did a Man do this to him?”
“Yes. They are cruel, malignant creatures.”
“What will you do with him Master?”
In response to his question his Master inserted the disk into the Pod and a large slot opened in the side of it.
His Master beckoned over crabs. They skittered close and his Master killed one and threw it into the slot. The remaining crabs backed off. His Master beckoned again and they cautiously crawled closer. He repeated the process. This time the crabs wouldn’t come back.
“Four.”
The crabs turned left and right to take in their neighbors. Chittering conversation went between the group before it came to a chittering conclusion. Four crabs were set upon by the group and dragged toward his Master. The four slain crabs were held up and he grabbed the four and handed them to his Master. They joined their brethren in the Pod’s slot. His Master withdrew the blue disk. They continued moving along the remaining Pods.
He didn’t know how long it took, his conception of time was a nascent, ephemeral thing.
They finally finished this task, it took long enough that even the great mass of subdued crabs grew restless. His Master had to stop the process several times to kill a few of the more insubordinate crabs before the mass would settle again.
They finally approached a small, out of the way door. Above it, “Waste Disposal.”
----------------------------------------
The three walked together, flanked by Clan and Tule’s people.
“That was quite tense.”
Yuma nodded in agreement, Korl was keeping his mouth shut.
“At least it worked out and we didn’t need to fight the SI.”
“Thanks to the Clan Head, Korl. You almost blew it.”
Korl furrowed his brow, “Well you weren’t able to register. So if anything, I saved the day.” He looked over to the Clan Head, “with the Clan Head’s help of course.”
The Clan Head nodded sagely, “Yes, I believe all our parts were essential.”
A few questions had been building for a while in Yuma’s head. The first was obvious, someone was around in Security. This raised more questions for her, questions that took time to gestate. Why had they let the ship get like… this?
The other question surfaced in her mind, it’s more immediate nature took precedence. It had taken a while to percolate, slower than it would have appeared in the top of Jack’s mind.
“How did you know where the Cargo Bay is?”
The Clan Head’s walking stuck tap tap tapped as they continued away from the Administrator Section’s AI Core.
“An ancient Clan has ancient resources and ancient knowledge.”
A question Jack had once asked her emerged unbidden to her conscious awareness, “How long has the ship been traveling?”
“Ah, heheh. A controversial question.”
Korl hopped in, slightly annoyed at the non-answers they were getting, “Why’s it controversial, old-m-”
A naked blade jutted gently into his lower spine, with a hitch he corrected, “respected Clan-Head.” Cura removed her warning blade. Ship-damn it, without Tule around Cura was giving him extra attention. He hated her attention. As if he needed more reasons to try and find Tule.
“Yosef?”
“Ah yes? Clan Head?”
“How long have we been on the ship?”
“The… uh short answer is we don’t know. Not exactly.”
Yuma took her cue from the Clan head who looked in no rush to follow up his original question. Korl’s face scrunched up, his mouth moment’s from an indignant reply. Before he could, Yosef continued, “That said…” He looked to the Clan Head who returned a slight nod in return. For permission, Yuma noticed.
Yosef continued, “There is some consternation. A comfortable consensus regarding our Official Histories places it near 10,000 years.
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Before the magnitude of the number had time to settle in and resonate with the two, Yosef continued, “My estimation is plus or minus 2,000 years on that.”
Someone audibly cleared their throat from off to Yosef’s side. Yum heard the Clan member mumble ‘at least 25,000’, Yuma raised an eyebrow at Yosef.
“As the Clan Head mentioned, it’s a controversial question.” He looked to the Clan Head again, permission, again.
He paused, considering his words, “Throughout the Clan’s History there has been several times when there has been no… direct successors.”
That didn’t make sense to Yuma, “So how…”
Korl had fresh experience with this, “They all died.”
“Quite,” the singular response from the Clan Head.
“So how… how is the Clan still around?”
Another look, another nod.
“They left Sacred Heritages. Answers, technology, portables, weapons, Histories. They left these, passing their legacies onwards, keeping the spirit of the Kintu Clan alive even when they were not.”
He continued, “That’s why some,” he glared at the Monitor that had interrupted him before, “that advocate such ludicrous numbers as 50,000. Some even higher than that.”
The eavesdropping Monitor who had interjected before was now in a hushed argument with a man carrying a shield. Each Monitor was accompanied by a Guardian to protect them.
“25,000? You’re heading in the right direction but are you just going to ignore the ‘Pre-Devastation Era’? The bones ashed like those in the offices around us. Biological iron was also recorded to be found when they reinvestigated the space where they had discovered the 7th Heritage’s location! On a ship? In the Cryo-Labs? That’s easily thousands of years for just that Heritage alone. At least.”
“Is it possible for a man to be such a fool? You would honestly postulate that a Sacred Heritage would lay undisturbed for that long in what Honored Jones recorded as ‘seems to be a ‘maintenance closet?’ Honestly.”
“As Yakamura reported in his Later Musings and Observations extraordinary events could cause the sealing or opening of different sections of the Labs, Monitor. You can’t imagine ANYTHING that could have happened in the ship-damned Labs to cause something like that to occur? I would have thought being a Monitor would have required more in-depth study of the Histories.”
“Well then! What’s your highly-researched and regarded opinion then?”
“At least 65,000. More likely to be closer to 80,000.”
“Madness! Sheer madness! Have you gone Cryo-sick??”
The Clan Head turned his head slightly towards Yuma and Korl, then, with a small grin, “As I said, controversial.”
----------------------------------------
What do we do with his body?”
Tule gave Leanne, and her words, a reproachful look, “He is not dead Leanne.” He rolled Jack onto his back. “At least, not yet.”
She did feel slightly shamed for her assumption. The way her brain worked she couldn’t get the “80% chance of goo” out of her mind. And that was to exposure, not consuming or absorbing the damn thing.
Jonah had an idea, “That’s easy, just plug his battery into him. Electricity heals him, right?”
Jonah had Tule roll Jack onto his side. “Oh dammit, can this boy stop destroying things for one ship-damned cycle?”
The three concluded that perhaps the AI disk could help him.
Jonah grunted, “he’s heavier than he looks.”
Leanne agreed, “It’s ridiculous.”
Even Tule gave a slight grunt in assent.
They decided to try the Door Terminal. They were all suffering from varying degrees of being wounded and the Terminal that Jonah had fought the Psy-User over was significantly closer than being forced to drag him back down the entire hallway.
Jonah plugged in the AI disk into the slot and verbalized, “Uh, hum, AI? Can you heal him?”
After a pause,
Biological Rejuvenation Impossible at Door Terminal
Jonah teased out more details, wary but endlessly curious about the AI.
The Terminal the room around the Primordial Virus was incapable of doing so either. Between the Primordial and the mycelial corruption as well as the dirty hack the AI was forced to perform that Terminal was out of the question. The three turned away from the screen and Jack’s limp form that hung still attached to the HandPad.
They each thought in their own world until Leanne nearly shouted, “Remember when Jack touched the HandPad as we came in here? It shocked him!”
They turned toward the Terminal and saw on the screen:
Electrocution Possible. Manual Override Needed.
YES> NO>
Leanne slapped ‘Yes>’ then quickly stepped back. The three had been reaching for Yes at the same time. They shared a furtive look.
“You know, I mentioned that before the AI disk figured it out.” Another side effect of the pain limiter was that her brain was flushed with dopamine from the pain, it just intercepted pain signals from certain portions of her body. It did nothing for the sympathetic response to pain. As it was, she was feeling playful and wanted credit for figuring out how to save Jack.
The current ripped out and the lights faded and dimmed before returning to normal.
Jack stood up, “Huh, what happened? Sorry, I think I fell asleep there.”
He didn’t say but what Jack had just witnessed scared him. He had been inside himself, somewhere people weren’t supposed to see. Somewhere they weren’t supposed to go.
At the center of himself he saw a flickering scrap of himself, something incredibly precious, it was worth more than his body, his weapons, anyone he had or would meet. At least to him it was, it was the essence of who he was. It looked like someone had shaved the faintest shard of a wick and set it alight in the middle of a storm. There was a feeble shelled-cocoon of electricity that surrounded it, protecting it from the war raging around it. The green energy channeled endless regeneration, offense through indomitable defense. On the other side was hot red heat, pure viral offense. Insidious subjugation at any cost. Brutal aggression and alien cold-warped logic.
Jack knew they were warring over his body, no, the flickering candle wasn’t his body. Well, it was in a way. But that was no more than a tasty morsel to them, the body was a byproduct. It was his soul the two were after.
The influx of electricity had reinforced the flickering shield that was all that was holding his soul from being battered and consumed by the chaotic fight happening through his… soul space?
Regardless, the effects his body was suffering were not more than side effects of this larger, more important battle happening deep inside him. It was not a comforting thought.
Jack suddenly found himself caring very deeply about what his “Soul Core” was. He had perhaps been a little single-minded in his quick dismissal of “things that didn’t matter.”
It all mattered, maybe not now but this situation filled him with more fear and existential dread than a hundred Cryo-Core SI’s.
His substantial IQ and overtuned survival drive wouldn’t let him wallow in that though. If he had been worried about the “useless stuff,” would he have found himself stuck in Cryo, slowly worked down by the crabs’ attacks alongside the rest of the Lab-Natives?
The SI hadn’t wanted to fight. His actions had clearly forced the Cryo-SI to pre-emptively enact… whatever its plan had been. Jack hadn’t forgotten the tear through space, or reality. He wasn’t sure but he had seen it tear through towards the back of the ship.
Some sort of teleportation or portal. He wasn’t even sure if that was possible, but what did he know? Even an insane, crab-loving SI had been trying to get off the ship.
“I said, I don’t think you can count ‘passing out’ on your face as ‘falling asleep’.” Leanne had been repeating herself. A joke maybe?
“Leanne, as your superior let me give you some advice, if no one laughs the first time you tell the joke, it probably isn’t worth repeating.”
Leanne clamped her mouth shut and hardened her somewhat playful look into a glare. She quickly broke it and looked away. Perhaps that was a bit harsh but Jack had felt fear, real fear, and he wasn’t in the mood. In addition he really didn’t want to continue a conversation that might start to include a discussion about his besieged Soul Core or his ravaged body. He felt fragile.
“If you two young lovers are quite done bickering…”
“We’re not! Never!” Leanne jumped on that.
“Definitely not,” Jack’s small grin turned wicked, “Although, I have seen her naked…”
That seemed to catch even Tule off-guard.
“I didn’t consent to that!”
Jack shrugged, “Non-consensual surgery is kind of my thing.”
Tule’s shock helped the humor hit his Human side. A small grin inadvertently popped on his typically stoic visage.
“Yes. Okay. Jonah, did you say that there was a way to leave this place?”
“Ah yes,” he wandered off, away from the way they had entered the space.
Jack looked at the Terminal before pulling out the AI disk.
Commendable Efforts Jack. Ship-Chit Credit System Unlocked. Your job is not done. Place hand on HandPad.
Security Personnel Emergent Squad C Composition:
Squad Leader: Jack
Squad Second: Yuma
Technical Lead: Jonah
Squad Personnel: Leanne
Auxilia Personnel: Tule (unable to authorize; limited trust recommended)
Jack stared at the words as the others followed Jonah. He paused for a moment then recalled he had already had his hand connected to the HandPad just moments ago. He softly asked a question and received an answer. He said nothing else as placed his hand on the Pad, tapped the screen a few times, withdrew the disk, and followed after the others.