“Is it safe for us to go there?”
“No, it is not safe. Nothing in the Unity is. But neither is anything in the natural realm. All of life is fragile. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will treat everything like it’s sacred.”
Piper seemed to consider Awen’s words.
“Do you still want to go?”
Piper raised her chin. “I do.”
“Good. You can let go with your left hand,” Awen said, releasing her grip. “But hold tight with your right.”
Piper nodded.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go.”
Piper nodded again, her eyes growing wide.
“Here we go…”
* * *
Within the Unity, Awen and Piper dove toward the ocean like a pair of silvershore falcons hunting for fish. Awen felt her hair flail against the back of her power suit, whipped by the wind. The noise in her ears rose to a roar as she and Piper streaked through the morning sky and plummeted the remaining distance to the ocean’s surface.
Piper gave out a scream as the deep-purple water raced up to meet them. Then, in an explosion of sound and color, the two mystics penetrated the surface and plunged into the ocean. They raced through the depths, their speed increasing with every fathom they covered. Finally, the pair shot from the bottom of the translucent ocean into open air—into another realm.
From horizon to horizon, Awen reviewed the mountainous woodland expanse she’d visited before. The vista was breathtaking, one rivaled by nothing else she’d ever seen in the natural realm.
“It’s beautiful…” Piper said in a respectful tone that felt much older than her nine years of age allowed.
“Yes,” Awen said. “It certainly is.”
Piper extended an index finger.
“Yes, doma?”
“What is this place?”
“It is the Foundation of the Unity. The beginning of created things.”
“I like it,” Piper said.
“As do I, doma. As do I.” Awen paused, and then pointed to the woodland floor far below them. “And beneath the forest you’ll find the Nexus.”
To the general observer, the ground looked impenetrable, as old as time itself and just as unchangeable. It was, in fact, nearly so—even for something in the Unity. The first two visits Awen had made to this location resulted in unsuccessful attempts to pass through the grass in the meadows. So complete were her failures that she wondered if the Gladio Umbra’s findings of the Foundation and the Nexus weren’t either hyperbole—which she doubted—or merely outdated, as if the Foundation had solidified over a millennium of lying dormant. It was only by sheer determination that Awen had finally succeeded in passing through the great barrier and into the Nexus.
Piper held up her finger again, and Awen inclined her head for the girl to speak. “Can we go down? Into the Nexus?”
“Not today,” Awen said. “Next time.”
Piper scrunched her nose in disappointment.
That’s good. At least she’s not bored. But then again, how could she be in a place such as this? It was, Awen surmised, the most beautiful place in the universes.
* * *
“Awen, are you there?” TO-96 said from the earpiece lying beside Awen on the boulder. As soon as she opened her eyes, she and Piper were in their natural minds, sitting atop the boulders.
“Whoa,” Piper said, blinking wildly. “That’s so cool.”
Awen nodded in agreement and reached for the comms device. She placed it in her ear. “Go ahead, Ninety-Six.”
“I thought you might like to know that Rohoar and Abimbola have returned.”
“Wonderful,” Awen replied. “Thank you, Ninety-Six.” Just then, Awen remembered something that she’d been meaning to ask the bot for some time. “While I’ve got you, Ninety-Six, I have a question.”
“How may I be of service?”
Awen extended her legs and slipped off the boulder. It felt good to walk. She looked up at Piper. “You can run around if you want. Just not too far.”
Piper nodded, slid down the rock, and then bolted away.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” TO-96 said. “You would like me to run around the ship? And what, precisely, is ‘too far’?”
“Not you, Ninety-Six,” Awen said with a laugh. “I was speaking to Piper.”
“Ah. My apologies.”
Awen stretched her back, arching under the warm sun. “Okay, so, listen. We’ve been talking about the Novia Minoosh now for almost three months.”
“That is almost accurate, yes.”
“But in all this time, neither you nor Azelon has told me what they looked like. I mean, I can’t recall ever seeing a single holo-image, painting, cave drawing—nothing. We never found a trace of them in Itheliana, and now that I think of it, neither of you bots has included a description in any conversation or data dump.”
There was a long pause after Awen finished speaking… long enough that she became incredibly suspicious. Something was going on here. And worse, she felt a fool for not putting this together sooner. With all the data that Azelon had on the Novia Minoosh, wasn’t it absurd—obscene even—for there not to be a single image of the most advanced civilization Awen had ever heard of? Either the Novia didn’t want to be known in their biological form, or…
Or someone’s keeping it from me.
“Ninety-Six?”
“Yes?”
“You’re being awfully quiet.”
“More than usual, yes.”
“And?”
“And what, miss?”
“Well? Why haven’t any of us seen what the Novia Minoosh looked like? What haven’t you told me?”
“Because, Awen, I do not believe that is my story to tell.”
Story? Awen put her hands on her hips. “Then whose is it?”
26
Magnus felt confident that everything was in place at base camp to receive the remaining team members coming in from Oorajee. TO-96 expected them back any day but said his calculations weren’t entirely accurate. Once they arrived, Magnus would give them a day to rest, and then they’d begin training. Magnus knew they had a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time.
Aside from needing more lessons on how to program in the ESCE’s creation architecture—and how to use holo-projected hard light without killing anyone—what Magnus really required now was weapons. Lots of weapons.
He’d already seen what Azelon could do with the ship’s onboard three-dimensional printers. They were, by far, the most advanced versions of the tech Magnus had ever seen. When he was setting up base camp, if Azelon didn’t have some supply that Magnus needed in the ship’s manifest, she printed it—easy as that. The printers were able to work in any medium at any scale because, she claimed, the Novia’s printers worked at an atomic level—something unheard-of by Repub standards.
Magnus still didn’t know what Kane was after, but he decided that Azelon’s 3-D printers could revolutionize any fighting force’s capacity to wage war on its enemies. Hell, Azelon didn’t even need raw materials for her printers—the tech was fed an infinite amount of atomic particles from the Unity. As long as the link remained established, the printers could work around the clock, producing literally anything Magnus could think up, given enough time—and providing that the matter was stable. Volatile or highly unstable compounds, for example, needed special printers with containment fields.
To Magnus’s chagrin, Azelon didn’t have any of those style printers aboard the Spire. Apparently, the risks were too high to keep such a printer on a starship. Instead, they were saved for highly protected ground-based facilities. So no nuclear or binary bombs, Adonis, Magnus reminded himself. In the end, however, he didn’t see that as a problem, since he could still manufacture grenades and heavy weapons that used stable chemical reactions to detonate.
Magnus stood with his arms crossed inside the engineering lab’s control room on deck six, section three. He looked through a full window int
o a room nearly twelve meters high and twice as wide and deep. The floor had a pristine mirror finish that reflected the soft glow of blue lights in the ceiling and walls. Long multijointed arms sprouted from each of the room’s four corners, terminating in a cluster of tools Magnus couldn’t even begin to name. The arms were folded and still as if waiting for his input commands.
“Good morning, Magnus,” the computer’s voice said. Well, it was Azelon’s voice, but he still had a hard time with the fact that Azelon could speak to him both from her physical body and through the ship’s communications system at the same time.
“Morning, Azelon.”
“What would you like to create today?”
Magnus massaged one hand with his thumb, smiling. He always felt a peculiar delight coming into the engineering lab. To have almost complete unfettered creative control was… well, it was intoxicating. But today was especially exciting. He felt like a kid—he was so happy he could skip around the room.
“Today, I need weapons, and I need armor.”
“Requests acknowledged.” After a minute, Azelon asked, “Shall we start with a base platform?”
“Why don’t we, yes.”
“Novian or protoverse?”
Magnus paused. For whatever reason, he hadn’t even considered that the Novia Minoosh had weaponry. Which was stupid, he realized. Of course they did. They must have had enemies like everyone else. But as interested as he was in seeing the aliens’ tech, Magnus also understood that the weapons needed to work in his universe too. Meaning, it was necessary to service and refit them with tools he’d have access to anywhere in the Republic. They’d also need to be compatible with standard-issue Republic energy magazines.
Still, his curiosity got the best of him.
“Let’s see what you’ve got, Azie.”
“Azie?”
“Yeah,” Magnus replied with a smirk. “I figure if we’re gonna keep working together like this, you need a nickname. Everyone gets a nickname.”
“But you don’t have a nickname for Awen.”
Magnus felt his face get warm. “She doesn’t need a nickname.”
“Why not? You said that everyone—”
“I know what I said. Just stick to the point. Your nickname is Azie, and we’re building weapons and armor today.”
“What’s your nickname, sir?”
“Magnus.”
“But you said—”
“Dammit, Azie. I know what I said. Focus.”
“Understood.” The lights faded, and the print room went black. Suddenly, a row of what Magnus could only describe as highly advanced firearms appeared in a long line, about twenty across, projected in translucent blue light. The weapons hovered side by side with names, descriptions, and specifications listed beneath them. It was like being at a fancy weapons bazaar on some back-world planet.
“What am I looking at?” Magnus asked.
“This is bank one of the Novian assault-blaster catalog.”
“Bank one?”
“Affirmative.”
“How many banks of assault blasters do you have?” Magnus asked.
“Please define a period.”
“Define a what?”
“Period: a specific time frame denoted by exact years or distinguishable features relating to cultural advancements or—”
“Got it. How about all periods,” Magnus said.
“For Novian assault blasters for all periods, I have one hundred eighty-six banks.”
Twenty times one hundred eighty-six… Magnus couldn’t do the exact math in his head, but he knew it was at least a couple thousand. “And, Azie, how many weapons categories do you have?”
“I currently have records for fifteen categories and twenty-nine subcategories for handheld military-grade ordnance. This does not include handheld explosives, missiles, or quantum weaponry.”
Magnus let out a whistle. Maybe this was what Kane was looking for. For the first time since boarding her, Magnus realized Azelon wasn’t just a starship—she was a war-manufacturing machine. Whoever the Novia Minoosh were, and whatever they were known for in this galaxy, Magnus knew one thing about them—they were bona fide badasses.
Whether they used all this tech to harm other species remained to be seen. For all he knew, they’d been a peaceful civilization with a hefty armory acquired over thousands of years. But Magnus shuddered to think what Kane would do with something like this. In fact, he got chills just imagining what the Republic would do with even half this. Nothing good, he realized. Nothing good at all.
“Okay, then,” Magnus said, massaging his other hand. “We gotta narrow this down somehow, Azie.”
“Understood, sir. Perhaps you can assist me by outlining your objectives or desired outcomes.”
“Fair enough. At the end of the day, I want to walk away with one assault blaster and one sidearm for each warrior I’m going to train. Powerful and simple yet versatile enough to engage a wide array of enemy combatants in different armor configurations.” He thought for a second, rolling some ideas around. “They need to have interchangeable energy magazines, and ideally, they need to be able to use mags from the protoverse as well. Likewise, I need to be able to maintain them using tools from my galaxy should they need calibration or repair.”
“Anything else, sir?”
“Yeah. I’ll need two different sizes, I think. One for Jujari physiology and another for human.”
“That will not be a problem.”
“’Cause you just happen to have all our measurements in your system too?” Magnus said.
“Sir, I scanned and stored your measurements within nanoseconds of you boarding me for the first time.”
“Now you’re just talking dirty, Azie.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Never mind.”
“Is there anything else you would like, sir?”
“Sure is. We have these grenades, back in the protoverse, called VODs. Stands for variable—”
“Variable-output detonator. I see it here in TO-96’s archives. Yes, I understand the device in its entirety. Would you like to manufacture some of these?”
Magnus thought about it for a second. “Sure, but… you think you could spice them up a bit? Maybe make them—I don’t know—Novia style? ’Cause by the looks of those assault blasters, it seems to me like the Novia had some pretty sweet splick at their disposal.”
“Sweet splick, sir?”
“Eh, never mind the expletives. Just, can you modify them?”
“Of course, sir,” Azelon said.
“Sweet.”
“Anything else? Or shall we proceed?”
“We’re gonna need some armor too. But let’s start with the firearms. Copy?”
“Affirmative.”
The weapons in the print room disappeared. Magnus watched for something else to replace them, eager to see what Azelon might come up with, and she didn’t disappoint. Three new weapons appeared, each with its specs listed beneath it.
“Please consider the following,” Azelon said. “Note that I have translated all item names and specifications into Galactic common. Since many of the acronyms and terms are proprietary to the Novia Minoosh, I suspect a fair amount of mistranslation to be present. However, I have attempted to adopt your nomenclature standards wherever possible so as to make the logic and memorization of each device more conducive to your species.”
“Roger that, Azie. Waddya got here?”
“First is the DS1479-91A.” A stocky rectangular weapon expanded to fill about half the room. Magnus was shocked at just how big the projected weapon was—easily eight meters wide. He chuckled. Azelon sure knows how to put on a show.
“The DS1479-91A—lightweight and extremely portable—was developed as an all-purpose assault blaster for a wide range of deployment scenarios. It features a lattice-work stock, bio-linked operational access, dual inline mag ports, multidirectional sighting, and ultra-high-speed energy delivery.”
“Ultra wh
at?”
“Ultra-high-speed energy delivery. The DS1479-91A is capable of delivering one megajoule of energy in point-zero-two-second pulse intervals.”
“I’m embarrassed to say that you completely lost me,” Magnus said, holding up a hand.
“My apologies, sir. Perhaps a better way to say it—to put it in your terms—is that the DS1479-91A delivers ten times the energy of your MAR30 at a rate of three thousand blaster rounds per second.”
Magnus felt his jaw fall open. If any such weapon ever existed in the Marine arsenal, there was no telling what kind of hell the Republic could unleash. He wouldn’t entrust this sort of firepower to them. Splick, he hardly trusted himself with it. However, he also knew the type of enemy he was up against, so he’d take every advantage he could get.
“Would you care for a demonstration, sir?” Azelon asked.
“A demo? Of this? Now?”
“Affirmative.”
“Knock yourself out, Azie.”
There was a momentary pause. “I believe that means that I should proceed with a virtual demonstration?”
Magnus snickered. “Yup, that’s what it means.”
“Acknowledged.”
All text disappeared, and the DS1479-91A shrank to human size and appeared in the hands of a trooper who looked precisely like Magnus—same patchwork of Marauder armor, same beard, but all in translucent-blue outlines. Virtual Magnus loaded two energy magazines into the receiver, pressed what real Magnus assumed was a charge button on the side, and then tucked the firearm’s stock into his shoulder. With his feet shoulder width apart and in line with his target, virtual Magnus brought the DS1479-91A up and sighted in on something off-screen. The view rotated so that real Magnus looked downrange with virtual Magnus, eyeing three targets, each one hundred meters apart.
In a flash of light, virtual Magnus fired the weapon. A withering spray of blaster bolts erupted from the barrel, blowing the first target apart and spreading its remnants downrange.
Magnus—real Magnus—giggled like a schoolboy. He hadn’t been this giddy since… since his captain had handed him his first MAR30 on a demo day. This weapon was unlike anything Magnus had ever seen. Hell, it was unlike anything he’d ever imagined!
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 89
