Psi Warrior
By 3DD
Chapter 2: Dead is good
Tril stood still, hoping the approaching spacecraft would somehow miss seeing her if she didn’t move. ‘I hope they don’t have death-rays, like they have in fiction books.’ She thought to herself. ‘Ugh, I need to stop thinking - they may detect my thoughts!’
Tril immediately started meditating, immersing herself into the swaying flowers, and darting snickers which surrounded her in a flock, flying after insects disturbed by her presence. Flowing waters, simple needs for catching insects, warm sun and nature’s scents. She was fully engaged with her surroundings, with no thoughts of her own.
<“Very nice try.”> came the ship’s thought, <“A pity the weapon discharges have left behind residual energies.”>
Tril’s heart sank. She was left with little choice, stay still and hope they didn’t do anything to her; run away; or jump into the lake to try to hide.
<“Sorry, it is time to die.”> the ship’s thought pinged around Tril’s skull, gaining no traction on the reasoning section of her brain.
<“What! I thought you were on my side!”>
Panicking, Tril tried to start running but her body became unresponsive. Her legs folded causing her to flop to the ground. Unfortunately she landed on some rocks jutting from the grassy meadow. Her head and chest collided painfully with the rocks. Unable to even cry out in pain, she only had time to rue not laying down and playing dead as the ship had said, before blackness descend onto her mind. Her last coherent thoughts were ‘Ouch! I hope my breasts don’t get damaged. They had only just reached the perfect size, or so her girl friends had told her; not that she had any boy friends; and her very last thought was of her family - would she see them again?
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The Sram ship’s captain eyed the initial scan results of the valley, noting the residual energies of a Sram neural disrupter and a Galactic Psi Agent’s vapourisor. The detection of the energies was expected as his scout had comm’ed in prior to advancing into the valley. His unexpected and truly worrying information of discovering the Psi Agent by the lake had panicked the captain at first as he wasn’t ready to take on the Agency until his reinforcements arrived.
What was unexpected was the disappearance of both individuals including their weapons. The Psi Agent’s weapon was designed to self destruct on the death of its Psi Agent. He surmised his scout’s weapon was vaporised along with his scout. ‘Simultaneous destruction from the backlash of conflicting energies?’ He wondered.
<“Do a full scan of the valley and the surroundings.”> the captain ordered his second officer. <“Make sure the Psi Agent didn’t survive! We can’t have the Psi Agency investigating and uncovering our operation on this planet.”>
His second officer quickly and efficiently completed the scan, making the captain proud. He had put a lot of effort into recruiting the best available personnel for this operation and spared no expense on training and equipment.
The potential rewards were worth it. The planet’s population’s ability to use this ‘magic’ ability was immeasurably important. Nothing like it had been seen before. The almost unlimited potential for new weapons from research into this undetectable magic energy source was incalculable.
The captain rubbed his hands together in glee. His future importance in Sram social, political and military arenas was assured!
As a bonus, wealth beyond his wildest dreams was there for the taking - a huge supply of rare minerals easily mined due to the breathable atmosphere and the local non-psi primitive inhabitants who could be mind-coerced into working for the Sram hegemony; Glactic Psi Agents be damned!
Finishing the scan, his second officer turned to the captain, <“No living intelligent life-forms detected. Scattered remnants of two life-forms consistent with our scout and the agent, and with them having been vaporised. One recently deceased local human. Looks like she was caught in the backlash. Do you want me to dispose of her?”>
The captain thought carefully, the Psi Agents had very sophisticated and advanced sensors and were used to investigating multiple types of situations. Making a decision he then replied , <“We don’t want to leave any more residual energies than already exist for any investigating agents. These already existing energies should fully disperse in less than a day to undetectable levels.
We have no indication of more agents. This looks like a normal scouting visit to check on the native’s technological and social advances.
We urgently need to find the agent’s ship and destroy it. The ship will most likely have been set to return to the nearest Galactic Psi Agency if it doesn’t receive a signal from its agent after a set amount of time.
First officer, contact our contingency team and inform them it is code purple. We may have to take out the local agency as well. Notify our other scout in the area to watch this valley.
Navigator, set course for the moon. The agent most likely hid their ship there.”>
The officers efficiently began carrying out his orders. The ship engaged stealth mode and rapidly ascended into the sky.
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Soon after the Sram ship disappeared a gasp of inhaled air sounded out, disturbing the flock of snickers who had strayed close to the motionless body laying beside the mountain lake. Tril shuddered as her lungs inflated with cool crisp air. Nothing had ever felt as good. Opening her eyes she tried turning her head but felt a great lassitude.
<“You should not move for a few minutes. I’m still bringing you back from the dead. It will take me some time to fully heal the damage caused by oxygen starvation and toxic waste build up.”> said the ship to her, without any sign of concern.
<“You could give a girl a bit more warning, and an explanation you would revive me before you killed me!”> exclaimed Tril with some feeling.
<“My apologies, I’m not used to interacting with such a primitive being - though you do show potential.”> came the ship’s insulting yet complimentary reply.
<“Thanks, I think.”> Tril accepted the ship’s apology doubtfully. Did it really care about her? What was she getting into by interacting with this hyper-advanced being? Was she but an animal on the level of a snicker to it, or maybe a mere microbe?
<“Of course I care about you. Do you know how hard it is to find a compatible mind I can permanently link to until your death? You get healing, knowledge, a reliable companion, access to the stars,,, I could go on. Oh, and a bit more than a microbe.”> the ship’s emotionless reply came to her unspoken thoughts.
“What!” Tril exclaimed out loud, shocked by the realisation the ship could read her mind and she would have no privacy in her mind ever again. Plus the thought of being permanently linked to the ship, being healed,,, all the revelations caused her brain to feel as though it was going to explode!
“Wait! A bit more than a microbe?”
<“I am always honest with what I say to you.”> came the ship’s disturbing yet reassuring reply.
“Can’t you at least be a bit nicer in how you express yourself? Don’t you know you are quite insulting in what you say?”
<“My apologies. I am still learning what you like and how your mind works. Your body is complicated to heal as you have this unknown magic energy running around your body, interfering with my healing energies. I’m starting to suspect your planet is not from this universe. All the animals and plants also have this magic energy. Oh, that’s right, you don’t know what galaxies and universes are.”>
Suddenly a flood of information flowed into her mind, overwhelming her ability to think. “Stop! I can’t handle so much information at once!” Yelled Tril in desperation, struggling to regain some sanity amidst the stupendous flow information invading her mind.
The flow stopped abruptly. Tril would have sagged to the ground in relief if she hadn’t already been laying down. That’s right, she was being healed! She carefully felt her head then looked at her hands - no blood or residual pain or even tenderness.
She felt her breasts, then suddenly became self-conscious. She felt herself blushing. At least the ship was a she.
Trying to distract herself from her embarrassment she asked, <“Where did the weapon go?”> She also had the thought she had better get used to speaking telepathically with the ship, otherwise people would think she was crazy talking to herself!
<“I brought it onboard. You can store and retrieve almost anything you want onboard. I have almost infinite capacity.”
<“Even the planet?”>
<“Yes, easily.”>
Tril looked in wonder at the pendant nestled between her breasts. Life certainly was going to be interesting from now on!
Tril sat up without thinking, as she worried her family might become concerned if she was late home. <“How long was I dead?”> she asked, looking up at the sun to gauge the time.
<“Only 9 minutes and 23.4 seconds. I revived you as soon as possible once the Sram ship moved outside their sensor range. You will be fully healed in twenty more seconds. I also still have to finish fully enhancing your body to battle-ready state.”
<“Battle-ready state?”> she asked worriedly.
<“Yes, you are a Galactic Psi Agent now - Psi Warrior class.”>
“How did that happen?” Tril was so flustered she momentarily forgot to use telepathy. A psi warrior? Something about it appealed to her. She could stop evil aliens such as the Sram from hurting her family and friends.
<“I have made a preliminary assessment of your potential psi abilities and power. With me teaching you, you will progress rapidly. You should only take a few thousand of your years to reach your full potential.”>
“A few thousand years!” Tril was stunned. She would now live that long?
<“Barring accidents, you will live for as long as you like. Deeja was over 100,000 of your years old when she was killed.”>
<“Hey, how come you didn’t heal her?”>
<“The Sram were in detectable sensor range. I am in need of a suitably sized black hole to replenish my energy supplies. I can’t fight at this time. One of the reasons Deeja and I were wandering the galaxy was to find a 100,000 sun mass black hole from the time of the universe’s creation. Even a micro-black-hole would help.”>
<“Okaaay… if you say so.”> Would she ever understand more than half of what the ship said to her? So no fighting at the moment. We have to sneak around until we find the hole thingy.
<“If we were in the nearest and larger galaxy then it would not be a problem as they have also harnessed the power of black holes as my civilisation had done due to the relative abundance of micro-black-holes remaining after the big-bang at that time.”>
“Big bang?” Tril mumbled to herself. She was trying hard to keep up with what the ship was saying to her. She could only take the basic gist of what the ship was saying and run with that.
<“But they may not be friendly so it is probably good we are not situated there. You need to keep all knowledge of the Sram, the galactic civilisation and me secret from your family and friends. If the Sram have mind-controlled spies in place then they may find out about us.”>
<“I will need to stay my usual amount of time here before returning home.”>
Tril’s stomach rumbled. It had decided to remind Tril she had not had her breakfast as yet. She got to her feet and made her way to the lake shore. Sitting on her favourite rock, she took out some honey-grain biscuit to munch on while taking the occasional sip of water from her magic water-bag. She was proud of the bag. It was her first intermediate spell. Her grandmother had taught her the spell just before Tril’s grandparents left.
Finishing her breakfast, she disrobed and dove into the lake. Surfacing she started swimming laps of the lake. She felt more powerful than usual and cut through the water effortlessly. Was this a result of the ship’s enhancements? She was beginning to understand how the ship was going to affect every aspect of her life. Worrying, but damn it felt great!
Finishing her planned ten laps significantly faster than normal, Tril came ashore and lay naked on her favourite rock to warm up in the sun and dry out before donning her clothes for the return hike to her village. With the sun being so unseasonably warm today, she didn’t need to use her drying spell.
“Well, well. What do we have here?” Came the squeaky voice of a dreaded Sram!
Fighting the conflicting emotions of wanting to laugh at the ridiculous voice and alarm at the sudden danger, Tril jumped to her feet. A different but equally large humanoid was staring at her naked body with a look hunger. Surprising herself that she didn’t feel embarrassed by her lack of clothes she readied herself to fight. <“Where is that weapon? Can I have it quickly?”> she asked the ship.
<“No need. I can easily capture him as the Sram ship is out of range, but there is no need for me to act.”>
<“You don’t mean you expect me to handle him with my bare hands?”> and bare everything else, she thought to herself.
<“No, just wait a moment. You will see.”>
Tril watched as the Sram scout walked towards her. She recalled how quickly the first scout had reacted and his insanely fast movement speed. As the man came closer she noticed the snickers starting to agitatedly fly around, getting closer to the Sram and her.
Tril felt her blood run cold! The snickers were initiating a swarm attack! Did they remember the mind attack from the previous Sram?
Tril trembled in fear. A person could usually survive the bite of one of the flying snakes, and rarely two, but never a swarm!
The snickers flew faster and faster, quickly becoming blurs of colour. A few hundred had massed together for their attack!
The Sram’s steps faltered as he began to realise something unusual was happening. As the Sram halted, the snickers began their attacks. The Sram reacted quickly, drawing his weapon, but before he could discharge his weapon, a few snickers had bitten him on the back of the neck. He jerked in surprise at the sudden excruciating pain, Swiftly spinning to engage the sneak attacking snickers.
Tril just froze. She knew she could not escape if she tried to run. Her only hope was they would ignore her!
Feeling a sudden blossoming of pain from her ankles and neck, she felt her faint hope be destroyed. Too many snickers had already bitten her.
She was going to die…
again.