He'd spent the next hour being checked in what passed for the medical bay after Vristae left, a group of Minad had rushed in and promptly dragged him off there. The Medical bay was almost criminally small and underused. Apparently when everybody with you was capable of rapid regeneration you didn't really need it often. Dust covered the place, and only a few parts were even in use. Only the Cybernetics bay saw actual regular use. This was at least in the more important section of the Hideout, as the lights weren't even flickering.
Eventually the sole person manning the bay had wandered over to him. Vreliaz Karsuar was one of the few Minad that looked drastically different from the others. They all looked different enough but most Minad seemed to have rather uniform features. Vreliaz was like the Ancients in that he differed from this. Long sharpened fangs and pointed ears were further contrasted by his eyes, glowing a brilliant white that he'd not yet seen among others. Not to mention the patch of fur growing around his neck. "Bad reaction to your M.I.U reactivating, to be expected considering your....history. We don't really know much about the Zero Incident because you wouldn't tell anyone so all we really have are the facts that you lost yourself to the Rage and managed to come back." He shook his head at Varis.
"Either way the few of us that saw you from then on noticed pretty easily you and your M.I.U worked quite a bit differently together then we did." As a holographic figure bloomed into being over Karsuar's shoulder, taking the form of some insectlike monstrosity, he continued on. "You worked together though. Now you're all different and messed up. You can control your gear at least now. Which means they'll be sending you out sooner or later. Meanin, that we need to get you a working arm. That left arm of yours will grow back eventually but not fast enough. We're gonna implant a prosthetic there."
Varis frowned as he clenched his fist and looked at the stump. It'd grown out a bit now, and was a quarter out from the shoulder. "Will you need to remove what's already grown to do so? I don't want to wait longer if I don't have to, and what was all that text about deactivating safety mechanisms? And hearing dampeners?"
The doctor stopped and turned with a sigh to examine him. "Right, as I'm sure you've figured out. Our hearing is sensitive, extremely. Our armor suits come with built in dampeners, this little safehouse of ours is lined with material to stop as much sound as possible. As are most Minad quarters in Imperium ships and military bases. It's not always enough and anyone who's done their research could possibly disable them, and then we'd have to hear everything within a mile or so. It's not ideal and while it's possible to train yourself to take it all in...those practices fell out of use after the Ancients War. The remaining adherents were killed by the Imperium."
Karsaur took a breath as he turned and pulled a Mechanical arm, clearly custom fitted to attach to his left stump off a rack. "So we have dampeners installed in our ears. We can activate them at will and they got integrated into the M.I.U's along with most of our implants. As for the various safeties and enhancements? The safeties were limiting you. Keeping you from using your body to it's fullest so you didn't harm yourself while you were healing. The Enhancements mostly have to do with your reflexes and ability to process things. There's a few here and there to address defects but those are rare in Minad. When the Makians designed us as one of the first twelve....they clearly didn't make us to our full potential biologically. Considering what they did after that caused the Ancients war? Not surprising." As the doctor spoke he'd maneuvered himself next to Varis and was in the process of fitting the arm, he cut open the stump of Varis arm with some sort of specialized laser cutter, cauterizing the skin around the nerves but not the nerves themselves and began to connect them with the prosthetic.
He gritted his teeth and hissed through the pain, before that last sentence caught his curiosity and he found he couldn't help himself. "What did they do?" His arm felt about a hundred times worse then he had when he'd first woken up but in this case, his curiosity got the better of the pain.
Vreliaz gave him a look before continuing. "They had a ceremony. Every hundred years or so they'd come down and pick out members of the Descendant races. The first twelve of them, along with all those that...fragmented and devolved. Like the Mauchinians, our wayward cousins that they are. Some of the races weren't compatible, and were told they had other services to provide. Like the Kalthuran, being sentient crystals. The rest of us? We were told that those who were chosen were going become greater. They'd artificially be evolved into Makians themselves. Ascension, they called it. Sometimes they'd come off schedule when a particularly promising candidate showed themselves too. The numbers varied per race. Some had a mere few hundred taken, others hundreds of thousands."
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Karsaur twisted the prosthetic and slammed it into the stump now, and ignoring his hiss of pain continued to speak. "It was a lie. Of those taken every hundred years, only one or two from each people would actually become a Makian. Special candidates they came down early for would always, but in the standard choosing sometimes nobody would ascend. The others were turned into living weapons. War Puppets they were called. Some preparation for a great threat they foresaw, potentially a few billion years from now. Somehow they'd fought them before and lost spectacularly.....Records are fragmented, so we don't know who discovered it or how but when it came out...the vast majority of us rose against them."
He stopped talking for a handful of seconds to flip open a panel near the wrist and slot in a few electronic chips, speaking once more as he watched a screen flash holographically into place, displaying a progress bar of some sort. "The records are so bad because the war was horrible. Of all the Descendant species at the time, only the most powerful members of the original twelve could hope to stand against a Makian on their own. They had better technology, better weapons. Some of them were so powerful in psionics that reality trembled when they used their power. The Delorn were too few to fight against their creators in number, they'd been made sterile and only a few hundred thousand still lived by then. Their handmade successors were pathetic."
As the progress bar finished, he nodded and pulled the chips out of the slots. Leaving the panel open as he wandered over to one of the cabinets in the room. "The Kalthuran were more mobile back then, but split down the middle. The clusters that aided and serves as weapons for the Makians stayed with them, and those with the Minad stayed with us. Only a handful of Descendants aligned fully with the Makians, the Nolian being the most notable. Blue bastards always worshipped them. Even with the Delorn and Kalthuran out, we fought. The Morians and Larians as well as the other seven originals. Along with all the lesser species."
Vreliaz pulled out another handful of electrical chips, as he walked back and slotted them in another bar showed up. "Gotta make sure the arm can keep up with you is all, back to the story. We got obliterated. From what we know we were losing on all fronts. The War Puppets were so numerous by then that our forces were being overwhelmed. A mere handful of Makians showing up could turn the tide of battle on an entire world in some cases. Don't misunderstand, from what survived we know that Makians were killed. Hundreds of thousands. War Puppets varied in strength but all were durable, immune to pain, disease, age, and followed Makian orders to the letter. They died in the billions throughout the war. The rebels....our side, were still pretty much fucked. We hadn't lost everything yet, we weren't even close, but we knew were fucked. Then the Makians vanished. Their worlds, their temples, the War Puppets, them, all gone like that. Apparently it started with them vanishing from the front lines and in less then a week.... they were all gone."
The bar finished, and this time he closed the panels with the chips inside. Then Karsaur turned back to the cabinet and began to pull things out of one of the drawers. As he did so Varis felt his new left arm come active, he could feel it like it was flesh in a way. As he twisted it and opened the hand to marvel, a tablet appeared in it, with Vreliaz standing over it. "That has a lot on it, stuff you've forgotten with your Amnesia. Read through it in your free time. Now get outta here and don't come back unless you need that arm replaced. Which you shouldn't unless you get it shot or blown up."
Within seconds Varis found himself pushed out of the tiny room and into the hallway staring at the tablet and at his new arm. "Informative. Drawn out though." He shrugged and started off towards his quarters. They'd call him when they needed him.