by Aer-ki Jyr
This was a common routine now post-mission. The way she’d been fighting the Nestafar was run and gun, don’t stop to blink let alone think…and now her mind was catching up on events as she stumbled her way into a walking coma moving through the Red Ranger’s decks.
By the time she got back to her quarters and entered the keypad entry code she was working on an idea for a new agility training challenge when one of the unarmored Knights walked by, staring down at her battle-scarred armor.
“You know,” he said casually as he paused behind her, “we’re more than eager to take the fight to the enemy rather than sitting around on the ship all day. If you brought a couple of us along next time you might not end up with so much armor damage.”
Morgan stopped halfway in and glanced back at him. “I assume you’re still training while ‘sitting around?’”
The Knight frowned. “Of course.”
“And how are you rated for fighting an enemy out of arms’ reach? The Nestafar mostly fly high and fire down on you, avoiding melee.”
“My point was, a few of us could cover for you while you mowed them down. Archons have a habit of hiding behind Knight shields quite well.”
“Not this one. You guys are too slow to keep up with me, and I shake off far more shots through agility than I’d gain from your mobile cover.”
He crossed his bulky arms, each the thickness of her neck, over his chest, frowning. “There has to be some way we can be of use to you…aside from guarding dropships.”
“Until we get back with the rest of the fleet I don’t see how…besides, I’m out of fresh armor, so I’m not going back out, but if you’d like a field trip I can take an escort to an Alliance summit meeting in a day or so.”
“I’ll take you up on that. How many do you want?”
“Just you will do.”
“Armor or casual?”
Morgan chewed on her lower lip as she considered. “I’m not sure where it is, and I’d hate to be caught off guard without armor, so full gear unless I tell you otherwise.”
The Knight nodded and walked on. “I’ll be ready when you call.”
Morgan let him get a step past then moved inside her quarters and shut the door, then she began peeling off her armor piece by piece and dropping it on the floor on her way to the restroom. Another chance encounter with a mirror freaked her out, again, at seeing her unnatural eyes, and she eventually found her way over to the computer terminal and sat down, pulling off her casual shoes and socks that she’d been wearing underneath her armor for the past 2 days. On impulse she smelled one of the socks, wrinkling her nose and tossing it aside as she crossed her ankles underneath the chair and flexed her little toes a few times, glad to let her feet breathe.
Morgan ignored the faint scent of perspiration coming from her white with green stripe Archon uniform that had been sweated in and dried so many times that it now felt like a second, smelly skin while she accessed the external sensors to see what the Hycre had brought to the party. Having them here made her feel better, given how they were much more navally dominant than Star Force and she was having mixed feelings about leaving the system, and Sri’ka in particular, after having pried the enemy loose from orbit.
When the image of their jumpship came onscreen she felt an immediate sense of pride at having them for allies. The Carrier-class jumpship was larger than any Star Force had even dreamed of building, resembling a hollowed out whale some 52 kilometers in length with a fat midsection. Inside it was a multitude of empty racks, now that the warships it had carried were spread out in a defensive halo around the precious starship.
She noted from the attached analysis logs that several groups of two and three ships each had already departed for other planets in the system to assist with operations there…and hopefully to hunt down stray Nestafar warships, given that the Hycre were especially good at hunter/killer deployments…far better than her fleet was, anyway.
Still, as she took into account all the various groups and added them to the defensive halo she found Wilkinson’s remark about a ‘small’ warfleet to have been accurate. There was less than a third of the number of ships the massive carrier was capable of carrying…a testimony to the ongoing war and the lack of available warships to meet every threat. Which was probably why the Hycre had asked her to dispatch some of her ships to the system. The fact that they’d scrapped together a fleet to bring here after the fact was not a good sign as for things to come from the Nestafar.
Morgan knew the system was important, but if there was an even larger confrontation coming this way she’d prefer to be on the outskirts of it, picking at the enemy’s weak flank than squarely in the middle…which Sri’ka was likely to become.
The Hycre obviously figured they had a few days at least, so Morgan knew their presence nearby would prevent anything other than a suicidal assault by the Nestafar coming into low orbit and she could put the puzzle of the Brokal System aside for the moment, so she got up out of the chair and pulled off her stinky uniform, tossing it alongside her busted up armor and weapons as she headed for the shower tube.
Sinking into the perpetually prepared warm, soapy water she felt the burn on her right arm sting, eliciting a reflexive jerk of her elbow that sent her entire arm tingling with energy.
The next thing she knew a blast of water shot up into her face, as well as out the still open shower top and into her quarters. She froze up, blinking away the water in her eyes as she tried to mentally track down where that had come from.
“What the hell?” she asked, leaning back against the curved glass and feeling a wad of hair smash behind her head. She reached back and pulled out the ponytail tie she’d forgotten and tossed it up and out of the shower tube distractedly as she was staring down at her right arm, trying to playback in mind’s eye what had just happened.
“The phantom tingle strikes again,” she said, looking at the water rivulets running down the side of the clear window and into the shoulder-height waterline. “That’s a hell of a lot more powerful…and definitely not airbending.”
Morgan tried to summon up the sensation again, but couldn’t get more than a few goose bumps that wouldn’t discharge…making her wonder if they were actually just goose bumps this time.
“That’s gotta be some type of concussive discharge,” she speculated before bending her knees and slowly dunking her head underneath the water. She stayed submerged and reached up to the shower controls, activating the jet-like scrubbers and relishing the mild massaging sensations running up and down her body, including her face, peeling off layers of sweat and sticky grime.
As the seconds ticked by, with Morgan holding her breath and staying submerged, the jets and the air bubbles they produced worked their way up the Archon’s nude form, tickling her skin and summoning up a light cascade of the tingles in multiple spots, tickling her almost into twitchiness, but she forced herself to hold still and relax, letting the sensation build so she could have another chance to probe it. Feeling like a magical, fizzy fountain inside of her that was flowing outward through her various extremities, some of which was bordering on erotic, Morgan gently nudged the sensation forward, letting it soak into her body.
Then something happened too fast for her to remember. The next thing she knew the glass cracked and the water she was suspended in dragged her out with it, tipping her over on her right side and landing on the floor of her quarters…with several shards of glass in between her and the carpet cutting through her skin in an instant.
“Ah!” she screamed reflexively, as much from surprise as the pain. She lifted her head up and looked down at her long, naked body from shoulders to feet that led back to the base of the broken shower tube as the last bits of water flowed out, leaving a few inches in the base where the glass rim remained.
The trailblazer blinked twice, breathing heavily from the shock, as well as feeling a massive wave of fatigue rush over her…as if she’d just run an insanely hard 10k, uphill against Jace. She was so unnerved and
vexed that a few tears broke loose, with the detached part of her mind almost laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.
She gave herself a few seconds to look around and calm down, then she winced as she rolled up onto her side and got her hand underneath her. Morgan raised her body up, balancing on hand and two feet, feeling the glass sticking to her skin…as well as several blood droplets forming. She spider-walked over to a clear spot of the carpeted floor, leaving a trail of dark red liquid behind her, then she stood up and began brushing off the sticky glass, having to pry out a few pieces that had gouged her fairly deep.
When she got it all out she just stood there, looking down at her arms and small breasts, down past her flat abs and thin, but muscular legs as bloody tendrils snaked their way down and around her ankles, mixing with the water ones streaming parallel from her long, drenched hair.
She didn’t say anything, still too shocked for even a pithy retort, and just stood there, bleeding, wondering what in the freaking galaxy was going on.
6
Morgan laid face down on the medical table, completely nude and not caring while the clothes she’d hastily thrown on for the walk down to the med bay lay in a bloody mess at the foot of the table as the medics applied more than a dozen healing patches to the lacerations covering her from shoulder blades down to a nasty one on her right achilles tendon.
“I’m sorry,” one of the medics apologized, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Neither do I,” Morgan countered dryly as she stared down into the aqua-colored padding that doubled as a pillow. “I want a full body scan, anything and everything you’ve got and look for anomalous readings.”
“You said something about an energy discharge? Wouldn’t that be a technical issue?”
“I blew up the freaking shower from the inside out! It’s biological, not tech.”
“Any clue what precipitated the…incident?”
“Yes. Now scan me for anomalies.”
“Start with a blood sample,” one of the two medics patching her up suggested, given that she was still leaking the deep red fluid from a number of cuts that they hadn’t gotten to covering yet.
“Alright,” the other relented, still thoroughly confused but willing to humor the Archon. He walked out of the patient room, leaving Morgan to wait impatiently as the others kept applying octagonal bandages coated with a thin layer of regeneration fluid that would spur on her skin’s regrowth as well as keep the affected areas sealed from the air. To Morgan it felt like they were decorating her with stickers.
“How’s your head feeling?” the female medic asked.
“Tolerable,” Morgan answered as one of them started working on the cuts on her butt.
“You’ve probably lost a lot of blood on the way over here…are you close to blacking out?” she asked, knowing that Archons were well experienced with such things.
“No, just a little wonky,” she said as one of the medics’ hands slipped between her legs and pried them apart a bit to get the edge of one of the patches sealed tight over a long cut. The medic’s fingers tickled her unexpectedly and the goose bumps returned at the spot, then spread up her spine before discharging even as Morgan tried to hold them in.
Half the healing patches on her torso and upper legs flew off, with the others loosening and hanging on by the edge.
“What the hell?!” the female medic said in surprise.
“That’s what happened in the shower, only bigger,” Morgan said, twisting her legs off the bed and sitting up, abandoning the idea of treatment until she got some answers as to what this was.
“Whatever it was,” the male medic said, rubbing his hand, “I felt it. Like static electricity.”
Seeing that they were no longer patching her up, a fourth medic walked up with a stack of fresh clothes but Morgan waved him off, not wanting to ruin another set. “Later…just get me under a scanner. I need some idea of what’s going on.”
“Where do we start?” the female medtech asked.
“Nervous system,” Morgan said without hesitation as the other medic came back in with his hands full of three different scanners and a myriad of other equipment. He passed them off to the others then stepped up to Morgan and reached past her to the display panel above the head of the bed and synched the scanner to it.
“Lie down please.”
Morgan laid down face up and tried to relax, but inside she was frantic. She did not like her body malfunctioning like this.
The medic took the long wand and ran it down her body, following an inch or so above her smooth skin methodically like he was painting a canvas.
“Spread your arms and legs.”
Morgan did as instructed and he moved up and down each one twice, continually adding data to the scan forming in 3D on the screen.
“Flip over.”
Frustrated but wanting to get some answers Morgan obliged and the medic repeated the scan, taking his time and letting the equipment’s narrow range get as much data as possible. He finished off by taking the rod vertical and sweeping it up and down her arms and legs, then very slowly moving it around her head and neck, ‘painting’ her tissue there multiple times.
“Alright, you can sit up,” he told the Archon, who as typical of their kind didn’t seem to blink an eye at being fully naked in front of three men.
Morgan snapped upright and pulled her legs up underneath her, sitting cross-legged and staring up at the screen while her cuts continued to seep tendrils of blood that she was ignoring. The female medic stepped up and began pulling off the loose patches from her back and replacing them, trying to stem the blood loss the Archon was racking up.
Morgan collected her wet hair into her left hand and pulled it forward around her neck to get it out of the medic’s way. “Highlight the nervous system,” she prompted.
“This scanner won’t help much there,” the man said, reaching up to adjust the controls in another fashion. “Respiratory system checks out, circulatory system is obviously running low on blood, but within acceptable levels. Lose much more and we’ll need to get some artificial plasma in you.”
He changed screens again, taking the computer-generated scan of her body and altering the highlighted regions along with scrolls of numerical data and graphs along the sides.
“Musculature looks good, organs are functioning normally. Aside from the cuts in your skin nothing jumps out as odd.”
The other male medic shook his head and commented from behind the others as he handed the women new patches as she needed them. “No, I felt her discharge some sort of static field. Something had to generate it.”
“Do you have a faster scanner?” Morgan asked.
“Faster how?”
“Realtime.”
“This one was recording in realtime. The computer took the disparate scans and compiled the mockup.”
“Fine,” Morgan said, trying to be patient. “Do you have one that can scan my entire body at one time?”
“Depends what you’re scanning for,” the medic half answered. “Between these three we hit everything, but there are some full body units downstairs for more selective scans.”
“Archon,” the female tech asked politely. “Your legs?”
“What…oh, sure,” she said, half standing up on the bed and then stretching out backwards like she was laying down for a day at the beach, save for the bloody splotches covering her body. “I think I can do it again, but I don’t have complete control.”
“Don’t,” the other male suggested, “not yet. At least not until we get all the data possible. Excuse me,” he told the other medic, stepping past and syncing the palm device he was holding to the unit.
“Do what you have to, just find the damn glitch,” Morgan said, releasing her elbows from underneath her and laying flat on her face while the man touched a soft, slick nub to her back and began to massage her spine starting at her neck and running all the way down to her pelvis and back up again. He did that three times t
hen pulled it off.
“Try not to flinch. I’m going to touch your leg again.”
“Alright,” she said, spreading them apart and trying to prepare herself so as not to get spooked. The nub appeared in mind’s eye just above her knee and then walked itself up and down her inner thigh. “What is that one scanning?”
“Nervous system through energy signatures. It also includes body heat.”
“What’s the range?”
“A handful of centimeters, but the scan is extremely sensitive,” he said, finishing with the leg. “I’m going to do the other now.”
Morgan waited through the gentle massage, then he proceeded to run the little device all over her skull. Halfway through her head started tingling and she felt another discharge coming on. She tried to spread it out through her body but it didn’t want to go below her neck. It just stayed there and built.
“Watch out,” she warned half a second before the medic’s hand jumped up in the air a few inches as an invisible forced gently knocked the device up and away from Morgan’s head.
“Son of a bitch,” the other medic said, not having seen the first incident with the patches. “Did she just do that?”
“I told you,” the trailblazer said, annoyed.
“It’s dead,” the other medic said, trying to turn the device back on without success. “Whatever you did, it’s got to be an energy discharge of some type.”
Morgan glanced at the other one, raising her eyebrows but not repeating the same words twice.
The female tech reached up to the topmost patches and made sure they were still secure with a quick pat down, then she pointed at the screen. “I think you’ve got your anomaly, Archon.”
Morgan pried her body up and sat back on her heels, looking at the screen and only understanding half of it, mostly related to a massive spike in biometrics.
“Translate please.”
“A black hole…medically speaking,” the other man said, putting a hand on her left shoulder and pointing to the screen with the other while tapping a finger on certain statistics. “Nervous system activity as a byproduct of some other activity, one that I’d guess we don’t have the equipment to analyze on this ship. Whatever it is, the electrical output increased to a level equivalent to a workout, meaning control signals going somewhere. You lying here doesn’t require much, so whatever just happened your brain definitely triggered it.”
