Domel Arcturus

When George screamed in agony, the first thing I did was turn and run towards him. He was holding his head and while screaming in pain. I ran to him, followed by the others. He fell to his knees, looking catatonic and out of sorts. Blood came out of his nose and he looked like he was shocked. I immediately knew we fell into a trap and was ambushed. That painful experience George felt was a telltale sign of a psychic attack. Of the four of us, George was the most vulnerable to that kind of attack, while Sel, being a Felinian, was the most resistant. Zarya was also incapacitated by the attack, but she had experienced psychic attacks before, so she was partially immune to it. As a soldier, I was trained to combat low-level psychic attacks. However, it soon became apparent that this was not a low-level psychic attack, especially since George described it as a 'high-pitched scream', which I also heard.

I took care of Zarya while Sel took George with her. We quickly reached the other room to get away from the attack. I could confirm that the force field was not a malfunctioning system but was in fact erected by someone who clearly did not want us to proceed further.

Sel, who was completely immune of the attack, quickly drew her rifle and looked around. Aside from being immune, she could also pinpoint the source of the attack. She, however, was more worried than us all.

"Please don't be Nuoevans," she said under her breath.

"What is a Nuoevan?" I asked.

"Danger," she said. "They feed off people's suffering to fuel their psychic power. And, when I say people, I also mean their own people. They don't outright kill their targets."

"Are you telling me they are torturing someone to attack us?" I said, disgusted. "That's the sickest thing I've ever heard."

"Welcome to the future, old Vyrnian," said Sel while powering up her gun.

We could not go out there, guns blazing. Of course, as Sel had warned, suffering powered their psychic attacks, so the only way to keep their powers at bay was to either kill them as quickly as possible or knock them out. That was easier said than done. The Nuoevans knew this weakness and had made themselves that hard to find, especially since they were wearing stealth suits that could blend with the environment.

Stealth suits were, of course, rather useless if the environment was brightly lit. It would cause the refraction to appear like shimmers in the air. If your eyes were good enough, you'd find them easily. Then, aside from psychic attacks, they also had those long sharp claws that were sharp enough to pierce a Vyrnian scale.

We knew that we were assuming they were Nuoevans, as we had not seen anything yet. Even if they were wearing a stealth suit and becoming invisible, it was still not an indication that they were Nuoevans. Whatever the case, we could not move due to the psychic attacks and the need to defend both Zarya and George. I was trained to combat psychic attacks, but only against Orians and fellow Vyrnians. The Nuoevans were of a different level.

Then Sel got an idea. Have you ever heard the phrase 'from desperation comes inspiration'? Well, that's what the Felinian had in mind when she pulled out George's sword. She snatched it from him when he passed out.

"What are you doing?!" I exclaimed.

"Spreading the light," she said while tuning the knob on the side of the sword to the extreme end. "Atmell's modification to this sword makes it versatile enough to turn it into a flash grenade."

"You'll need an explanation later when the human found out what you did to his beloved sword," I said.

"I know the value of a custom-made sword, tommy. It won't break, but it'll be out of charge when we got through this. Close your eyes!"

Another thing that the Nuoevans had that made them that easy to beat was their photosensitivity. I read about it later after this confrontation. They could not stand bright lights and resorted the use of darkened lens to help reduce light whenever possible. However, the colony was already dark, and they did not need that kind of lenses if it was that dark. Thus, we used it to our advantage. Sel pointed the sword upward as broad and bright light burst out of the sword and bathed the area with light.

As she suspected, there were shrieks of pain as our assailants dropped on the floor. Their stealth suit failed and revealed a group of the Nuoevans. They looked rather alien compared to anything I had seen on Earth. Unlike Felinians and Vyrnians, there were no counterparts to Nuoevans on Earth, especially not with their high pointy canine ears, black, ebony-colored skin, oval-shaped head with a prominent underbite and tusks, and especially, their four eyes. Also, it was worth mentioning that their flesh-rending claws looked a lot like an eagle's talons: sharp, scaly, and looked deadly (I looked that up too). Good thing their photosensitivity made it easy to defeat them, provided you could bypass their psychic attack first. I think they'd be the true 'monster' on Earth, given their anatomy and general appearance being more suited as a horror villain. The fact that they were rather thin and moved slowly and creepily (when idle or relaxed. They are deadly when they fight) also increased their horror factor.

Sel took a glance to one of them and said, "They'll live. Still, this puts us in a pickle."

"Why?" I asked.

"We did not kill them, and their burst of agony fueled the others," said Sel. "We must get Zarya and Atmell to safety."

"How do you know how to counter a Nuoevan? I never even heard about them before."

"If you're mingling with pirates, you're bound to meet aliens. Nuoevans are one of them. They're rather notorious for being the galaxy's born sadists."

"At least I know there are still weird things out there," I said. "And to be honest, your kind's one of them, too."

"How is my kind weird?"

"It's not really confirmed, but I heard Felinians have nine lives."

"It's, uh...well, that's weird."

Her tone suggested that she was hesitating. Back then, I shrugged it off, thinking that it wasn't relevant.

As we talked, we took Zarya and George to a relatively safe room. Due to our dealings with the Nuoevans, Zarya recovered from the psychic assault. She quickly checked on George.

"The psychic attack knocked him out," said Zarya. "He'll survive, but I need to stay with him to heal his brain, in case of trauma."

"Please," I said.

"You can count on me. Go get them, Arcturus, Sel."

We both nodded and walked out of the safe room. I took a glance back to see Zarya's hands started to glow as she healed George's brain. She was quite reliable when it came to first aid. From the look of it, she also knew how to defend herself. Just not against psychic attacks. However, I told her about the Nuoevans and she nodded, apparently knowing how to deal with them. We did not have a flash grenade and the only one with a similar function was George's heavily modified gun-sword, which at this moment only vaguely resembled its original form back from Earth: given that the engineer back in Zarya's colony modified it so that it was essentially powered by battery packs instead of mana crystals (George still had the crystal in case he needed it), it resembled an energy weapon more than it resembled a gun-sword. I guess that old Vyrnian's modification made the distinction rather vague.

However, as it was made with universality in mind, Felinians like Sel could wield it without any problem, but only as an energy rifle. Apparently, only George could use the sword part because it was made with only him in mind, to make the weapon rather unique. Of course, with the wielder knocked unconscious, that potential would only be shown later.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

We then asked Zarya on how she would defend herself. With a smile, she showed me her healing wave hand, which slowly glow brighter and brighter until it reached the intensity of a bright lamp.

"Got the inspiration from you," she said to me. "It's time for me to show you how I can also use my ability in different ways."

I smiled to her. Guess she learned quicker than I thought. I did not want her to be involved with all this, but even then, I remembered what my father used to say.

"You can grow in many ways. Either in combat, or when the need arises for survival. When a Vyrnian is pushed to his limits, he would become a warrior he never knew he was."

It worked, so it's proven.

Sel and I decided that we needed to clear a path to our ship. While the ship was outside the force field area, there were no reason that the Nuoevans would not use a personal shield to go out and guard the area. We did manage to clear our way to the ship, but as we suspected, the ship was gone. Either the Nuoevans destroyed it to prevent our escape or they had simply moved it. Both were not the case. The ship was still intact and located on the same area we left it in. I later found out that Zarya's ship had a defense mechanism to prevent unauthorized intruders to take control of it, and to prove that point, we found a dead Nuoevan near the ship, electrocuted to death.

We had no choice but to fight our way inside, using only George's sword to protect us from the psychic attack, Sel's close combat expertise, and my own ability. Two against a whole colony was not a good odd.

But it really did not matter. It quickly became apparent that after we had found the way to fight back and protect ourselves, the Nuoevans either lost their will to fight or retreating to find a new strategy. I assumed the latter, but Sel chuckled and said, "They are helpless when they are brought into the light."

Of course, that did not mean the Nuoevans simply gave up. They started attacking us again, but this time changing their strategy so that it involved guns and stealth attacks. They had a decent aim that targeted our heads and heart, but they simply could not find where our shield generator was. We hid it under our clothes for a very good and obvious reason.

We sometimes fought back and took cover when the attacks became too intensive. Luckily for us, some of the rooms in the colony had more than two doors, and we used it to our advantage.

Of course, like most adventures, it would not be interesting without a little twist in the story, especially regarding the way Nuoevan culture worked and how my past was not as lost as I thought it would be at first.

The first start of everything started when we reached the main database room, the only area where it was safe due to it being kept naturally cold. The Nuoevans had used this place as a freezer given the coldness, but they did not damage the database towers. Both me and Sel, already insulated by our portable shield generator, could take cover in this place as long as we wanted to. We immediately lock the room to prevent intruders. We knew we were pressed by time, so we immediately went to work.

The humming sound of the database tower was somehow soothing. They were naturally big because they were Vyrnian-sized. Still, it did not help the fact that the Nuoevans used the room as a freezer, so rations and meat, presumably from their own hunts, were stacked in one corner of the room and somewhere between the tower.

The database room was clearly not the same database room from my time. The technology looked rather low and the humming noise was loud. Still, our purpose here was to try and extract as many information we could from the database station, or at least find the useful ones. However, when I turned on the computer in that room and try to find the things I needed, I accidentally found something interesting.

It seemed that the computer in the database room was also connected with several other rooms, including some rooms that were once used as the older database station, dating back to around 500 years ago. What I found, however, was surprising.

"Sel...take a look at this," I said, drawing the Felinian's attention to me.

"What is it?" she asked.

"There is something peculiar here," I said. "One of the rooms had no data storage in it."

"Maybe it wasn't finished yet," said Sel.

"If that's the case, then why it's listed as an active room?"

"You got a point there."

"Wanna take a look?"

I knew Sel could try and convince me to leave that curiosity behind, knowing that we were here not to explore. So, I was both surprised and glad that the Felinian said, "I suppose we could."

The only problem was that we needed to find a stair to the lower levels where the older station was in a station taken over by Nuoevans. We knew that this could be risky. The charge in George's gun-sword was almost out and doing this would trap us down there. Still, I felt that we needed to go down there and see the mystery for ourselves.

We were helped by the fact that the rooms were not just connected horizontally, but also vertically. We found a service hatch leading crawl-space corridors used for wiring maintenance. It was a crawlspace for me, but not for Sel, who only needed to bend a little given her smaller stature.

It did not take us long before we reached the next floor. We climbed down a stair into a different room. When I looked at it, it felt like I was back in time.

The database room was clearly made with retro architecture in mind. Well, it was contemporary for me. We had a trend of making things lime green-colored, either with paint or just lighting. That's what the database room was.

"It feels like home," I commented. My apartment also had the same color scheme, so it wasn't so out of place. Sel disagreed with my choice of color, though.

"Bad color choice, tommy. Really bad."

"Everyone has their own tastes, I guess," I said with a shrug. "Now come on. I think the peculiar room's this way."

It wasn't that far from where we came out. Along the way, we stumbled upon many other database rooms. However, the generators did not power them, and I did not think that this basement area was frozen like the active one on top. Maybe it's an archive, used when the memory was full and just kept for future reference, much like a book in a bookshelf.

But then, given how it was 500 years' worth of data, the basement would be massive. To my surprise, it wasn't. However, I did not ask about why it only need 15 rooms to keep that much data. Well, unless they never got backed up and stayed on Vyrn. Even an off-world database station would not be able to fit that much data, right?

Once we reached the place indicated by the system check, I was surprised. The reason why the room had no data storage in it was because it was not used as an archive. It was a fully operational underground cryogenic chamber, similar to the ones used during my time. I knew it because it was also the one that kept me suspended for 3500 years, essentially a form of one-way time travel if you look at it. Like the rest of the room, it glowed lime green.

I wanted to be sure that the cryosleep pods contained Vyrnians from that time period, so I checked a nearby computer. The generator in that room was a separate system from the one used by the Nuoevans, meaning that it was independent and thus could not be tampered with just by tampering the main system. Clearly, this place was intended for a long-term storage, as the generator was noticeably of a different design. It was also rather loud and noisy, much like the database towers upstairs.

I was lucky that the computer system was the same holographic projection system that I knew, so I simply tried to extract the information on who was inside. I might just open the pods and see for myself, but Sel, who somehow deduced what I was planning to do, said, "Don't just open it without confirmation that it's safe, Domel. What if we're releasing irredeemable criminals?"

Sel got a point there. Cryosleeps were used for many purposes. However, the most common use for them was for criminal incarceration. Vyrnians had abandoned capital punishment long before my time and resorted in rehabilitation of criminals. Cryosleep was used to prevent overcrowding, and was generally a successful venture, with a couple of controversies involved in its early days.

So, when she said that criminals could be in the pods, I was convinced. That was the reason why I checked the entry and who were in the pods. Of course, there was a small chance that they could be falsified, too, just like me. That's why it came with a surprise when I recognized one of the names: Domel Andrates.

"Pod 42," I murmured. There's no way dad's also put in cryogenic sleep like I did. There was no way. If that was the case, then did he abandon the cause? Did he simply run away while others were struggling?

No. That was not what my father was at all. He was a general who was as honest and as strict as he was, while also being a good father to me. There must be a specific reason why he was in the pod.

I checked the other names. Sure enough, more than a dozen of them were names that I recognized. They were the names of familiar figures. Much like my father, who was a general, the rest were important figures of Vyrnian history, at least in my time. Why were they here?

Knowing that standing around would not solve anything, I knew what I had to do. So, I put in the authorization procedure, in which a trivia was shown on the screen. It was rather easy, given that only those involved with the president of the world would know the answer. It was Anferos, the birthplace of the president I was guarding right before he was assassinated.

I wanted to push the button in front of me, though Sel saw what I did and stopped me.

"What did I tell you about being careful?" she said.

"I am being careful, Sel," I said. "I know those names. One of them is the name of my father."

"They can be false names."

"No, they are not. The system recognized their biodata. Trust me on this one, Sel. I know what I am doing."

"I hope you do. We don't want to add more fuel to the fire."

I knew she was trying to make me think about it to be completely sure. So, I satisfied her demands to check pod 42. It was rather translucent, and inside, I could see the face of my father. Now, I was completely sure, and was ready to release them.

It felt so surreal. I had given up on knowing that I was the only Vyrnian of my time in this world. I never even think that my father would be sleeping in cryopods in the database station in Lekan.

But then, it was not a dream. It was real, and once I pushed the button on the computer, I could hear the hissing sound, an indication that the revival process was happening.

They had been returned to the world of the waking, and I was their welcome host.