by Aer-ki Jyr
“That’s something,” she said, looking down at her achilles tendon and prodding the patch covering the injury, noting that they’d applied an extra heavy version. It was stinging, even though it shouldn’t have been, given the numbing medication within the pads.
“Is something wrong?” the female medic asked, then corrected herself. “Something with the patch, I mean?”
Morgan closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to unblock her senses. Normally whenever she was in pain she held it in check and focused her mind around it, and doing the reverse was unusual enough that she was having some difficulty. After a few seconds and several muscle clenches/releases trying to reset her balance, she confirmed that she could feel at least a little bit of pain from all her cuts.
“I’m not totally sure, but I think whatever I did bled off the numbing effect, because I’m feeling the cuts again.”
The female medic sighed, then reached up to peel the top one off but Morgan gently caught her hand. “Leave them, I can barely feel it.”
“Do you want these now?” the medic in the back asked, still holding her fresh set of patient clothes.
“Wait till she washes off first,” the female medic suggested. “Or she’ll get those bloody too.”
Morgan eyed the man. “Tired of seeing me naked?”
“Honestly, I could stare at you all day without blinking, but I’d feel guilty if I didn’t at least offer you clothes.”
Morgan rolled her eyes and sighed. “Look all you want. When you get past 100 years old you won’t be so skittish about nudity. Everyone’s naked underneath their clothes anyway.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he said, glancing her up and down appreciatively.
“Pain overrides pleasure,” she said, offering a bit of advice while the other two males were busy analyzing the sensor readings and the inoperable device. “And like it or not, most pleasure turns out to be an illusion. When you can wrap your mind around that you can turn it off at will. And you definitely shouldn’t be feeling guilt over anything sexual. Count this as your lucky day and enjoy it…so long as you can still see to your duties.”
He seemed to bristle at that. “I’ll admit you’re hot, but you’re not that hot.”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed, and she could tell he was faking. “Liar,” she said with a smirk as she turned back around. “Alright, you’ve had 30 seconds. What’s your prognosis?”
“You fried it,” the medic on her left said. “But maybe if you get a mechanical tech to analyze the damage they’ll be able to tell you what kind of discharge your body produced…though my guess would be other than electrical.”
The other medic frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“Concussion,” Morgan answered. “Electricity won’t move nonmagnetic objects.”
“True, but there could be a combined effect, so I wouldn’t rule out electrical damage to the device.”
“A fair point,” Morgan conceded, “but my gut agrees with him. This is something…new. Can you make anything out of the data we got before I fried the sensor?”
“Well, there was a considerable amount of activity in your brain at various points just before your overload. I suppose those could be significant, if we knew more about what was actually happening.”
“What points…and what do they control?”
“Physical attributes,” the medic on the left answered, studying them closely. “None are the pure mental processors. It’s like whatever this was lit up multiple functions with an abundance of control signals.”
“Or return signals,” the other countered. “There’s no way of telling which way the stimuli were flowing.”
“Odd word choice,” Morgan noted.
The medic on the right shook his head. “Not really. Stimuli can be sensory signals flowing to the brain, or they can be control signals ‘stimulating’ the organs to function. Action and reaction, regardless of the direction through the nervous system.”
Morgan raised an eyebrow. “I stand corrected. So best guess, are these spikes my brain creating the effect or responding to the production of it.”
“Hold on a moment,” the female medic said, pointing up at the screen from behind Morgan. “Take a look at her optical fibers on that pass.”
Morgan’s head came up a hair higher at hearing that, looking for the part of the scan she was referring to as it was rewound.
“Increased activity there,” the medic on the left said, running backwards and forwards as the scope-like vision of her head moved about, “but not the auditory.”
“Pigment change, huh?” Morgan asked, turning around to face the man holding her clothes…and the one who had diagnosed her eye color change to be cosmetic only.
“Did your vision alter?” the man on her right asked.
“No, it didn’t,” Morgan confessed, confused.
“Let’s try another scan…hopefully you won’t burn this one out,” he said, taking the other device from the female medic as she passed it over Morgan’s shoulder to him as the Archon stretched back out on the padded table. This one was neither wand nor nub, but looked for all the world like a sonic screwdriver and emitted a red tracking laser that stretched about a foot in length. The medic moved the glowing line up and down her body, covering every part as another diagram began to form on the screen from the tissue scan.
“What the hell?” both men said in sync, glancing at each other for a moment, then back at the screen.
“Clue me in please,” Morgan said, sitting up and looking at another computer-generated diagram of her body, zoomed in on a portion of her back.
“Do you see these dots?” the medic on the left asked, circling an area.
“Yes. What are they?”
“They’re not supposed to be there,” the other medic said. “They’re tiny…growths, for lack of a better word.”
“Oh my gosh,” the female said, and Morgan finally caught on to what they were looking at.
“They’re spread over my entire body, aren’t they?”
The man on the left nodded. “Not just below the surface either, they’re in the deep tissue, your bones, organs…but nowhere critical,” he noted, spinning the diagram around and around, zooming in and out at different angles to get a better lay of the thousands of tiny specs, each less than a tenth of a millimeter in width. “They don’t appear to be connected to anything.”
“Power generators?” the Archon guessed.
“I have no idea. You said this began after we used the alien device to repair your body?”
“Yes…well, wait. I might have had one incidence in the high gravity, but my senses were so screwed up I can’t be sure. I was feeling all kind of strange things, but before that nothing like this has ever happened, even remotely.”
“Have you used one of these regenerators before?”
“Yes.”
“Then maybe the alterations were made a long time ago and your system just got boosted by the wide scale damage and repair the gravity caused. Do you know anything about the source of the healing device?”
“A great deal, actually. It’s never been known to change a person, and they’ve been used thousands of times.”
“When was the last time she was scanned?” the medic on her right asked, glancing at the others.
“Last file is over 100 years old,” the one in the back answered. “I checked when she came in earlier.”
“That’s something, at least. Let’s run a comparison and see if we can narrow down some variables,” he said, finally looked back down at Morgan. “How about you hop in the shower next door, then let us run you through every scan we can manage before you go back to duty. Hopefully without frying the rest of our equipment. We’ll get a team analyzing it, but I have a feeling you’re going to need higher grade medtechs with a lot more toys to get to the bottom of this.”
“Alright,” Morgan said, sliding off the table. “Find out what you can, and copy the scans to my files. I want to have a look in my
spare time. Bring those,” she said, pointing to the stack of clothes as she walked across the room a bandaged, bloody, nude mess, feeling a bit tipsy from either the loss of blood or low ambrosia…maybe even a bit of both.
7
March 25, 2405
Brokal System
Sri’ka
Morgan studied her medical sensor data for several hours the next day, but neither her nor the medics could make anything of the tiny growths, the surge in her nervous system, or the change in her eye color…let alone the energy fields she was producing. The cuts on her back, butt, and legs had healed over within 24 hours, leaving her with just the nasty gash on her achilles tendon, but even that was fading quickly with the combination of a healing patch and the ambrosia coursing through her system.
That was one discovery she’d made that Morgan had kept to herself. Ever since she started having these episodes her body started craving more ambrosia, as if the creation of the energy was being fueled by it…or, probably more accurately, it was a new type of workout for her body that it was painfully inefficient at. Her dosage level had increased 40% and she was keeping it just nipping at headache threshold, the Archon version of a full dose, as she got half a day’s workout in.
There were no incidents during her training, and only a couple of little tingles afterward that she managed to suppress…proud that she was making a least some progress in being able to control whatever this was. She would have preferred to stay in the sanctum, away from everyone else and focus on centering herself and flushing out these instabilities…as well as seeing if she could harness them to her advantage. If it came from the Zen’zat then it had to have combat applications, and those interested her greatly.
But time wasn’t on her side. The Kvash representative had finally arrived at Sri’ka, meaning it was time for her to head down to the surface for their little summit meeting to discuss strategy in the wake of what looked to be a major Nestafar offensive, so she found herself stuffed into a generic set of ranger armor, with the size adjustments calibrated as closely to her body shape as possible. It felt like wearing a bag of rocks compared to her custom armor that fit like a glove, but it was either this or wear one of her damaged sets.
She was riding down to the planet with no pack, only a rifle and pistol on her rack and a small ammo pouch attached above the small of her back and just below a stun stick she’d thrown in for good measure…light armament as far as she was used to carrying. Her escort sat across the personnel bay in the dropship in full white Knight armor, carrying a long stun sword and huge shield with him, though both warriors had their helmets off and lying on the seats beside them, waiting for the ship to land at the Calavari capitol city of Helmshirr.
The Nestafar hadn’t been so bold to even send a single fighter its way yet, preferring to engage the Calavari over smaller targets. Morgan had studied the defensive arrangements for the city previously, but as they approached she was getting some good visuals via the datapad relay of the defense towers ringing the perimeter. Originally designed to defend against lizard cruisers, they held naval-grade plasma cannons and had an individual power station attached to each one, along with individual shield generators making each a mini fort, complete with subsurface levels that held ground troops and fighters.
Inside that impressive defensive perimeter were buildings even more massive. Some were residential while others were shield generators…huge shield generators, capable of catching a starship falling from orbit. They didn’t extend all the way to the ground, rather they formed a massive umbrella high above the city that covered everything out to the defense towers, doubling up on their protection and making orbital bombardment or kamikaze runs difficult for an enemy to execute.
Beneath the primary shield there were smaller ones covering select sections of the city or individual buildings, but they were low to the cityscape, leaving an open air corridor between the two layers for their trademark fighters to be able to engage the enemy within. The entire design almost enticed the enemy to assault them with fighters, given that even a Nestafar ground assault would be laughable with the defense towers online. One of them could fry a super dragon with a few shots of its medium batteries.
Gone were the tulip-shaped buildings, replaced by much larger artworks…or at least that’s the best as Morgan could describe them. They had wide bases that narrowed to a thin waist, then bulged back out again numerous times up until they capped off with a ridged rooftop that held multiple landing pads, parks, and whatnot. She did notice that all of the bulges were aligned between the buildings, meaning there were levels where there was little building and a lot of airspace…which she guessed was also built for their fighters to zip around within.
As they came closer Morgan saw that it wasn’t just fighters moving around through those gaps, but enough flying vehicles to make Coruscant blush. They were jam packed into the various levels in a chaotic formation that saw curving lines of traffic going this way and that on a flat plain. She couldn’t pinpoint the flow patterns in the brief glimpse she got, but it was far more intricate than the typical grid layout of most Star Force cities.
Their dropship was met well beyond the city boundaries by a flight of Valeries and given priority clearance to land, allowing it to bypass the traffic flows of the higher levels and move straight through the ‘military’ airspace between cityscape and the primary shield. The Calavari fighters led the dropship to one of seven of the largest buildings in the city, each of which sat on the edge of a circle around the largest shield generator of them all, blocking all but a few access corridors into it with their bulk and representing with their design how important they knew the shield was to the survival of the city and their defense plans.
Paul would consider this a challenge, Morgan thought, given his penchant for orbital bombardment, as the dropship set down and she stowed the datapad away. Picking up her helmet she walked aft and caught the ramp as it just began to lower. The Knight took two large steps and caught up with her, hovering off her right shoulder as both came down into the planet’s atmosphere with their helmets on and alert for trouble, though expecting none in the Calavari stronghold.
An honor guard, some twenty men strong, was waiting for them bearing rifles and wearing red/gold garb, but no shield generators. They eyed the two Humans while holding positions, wanting to see the green legend in person, but also shocked by the size of the Knight. He stood as tall as the shorter Calavari and, though he only had two arms, looked stalky enough to have considerable strength beneath his armor. His shield was also equally impressive and large, standing as tall as Morgan and more than three times as wide with the Star Force emblem etched in gold on the otherwise pristine white shield.
“Welcome, Archon Morgan,” a differently dressed Calavari said that didn’t appear to be a soldier. He was also a few inches shorter than the Knight. “We are grateful you could join us.”
“I have duties to attend to, so this had better be important,” she said as he led the pair forward, with the honor guard pacing them on either side.
“I have heard stories of your recent ‘duties’ and the invaluable aid you have been providing us. Trust me when I say we do not wish to misuse your abilities, but there are grave concerns that all fleet commanders need to confer over.”
“We could have conferred over comms…why the face to face?”
“An emissary arrived with the Hycre, and they did not want to risk exposing them over comms.”
“Emissary from whom?”
“I will let them inform you of the details. I am not permitted to speak of it outside of council chambers.”
“Very well,” Morgan said as they entered a rooftop lift big enough to carry a couple of Valeries. Actually, that probably was what it was for.
“I can tell you that the meeting will take place in one and a half hours. There is an issue with the Kvash’s accommodations that we need to rectify first. You can either wait in quarters or in the summit chamber?”
“C
hamber,” Morgan said without hesitation as the elevator bottomed out on a huge internal hangar with row upon row of Valeries, some of which the Archon spotted as the variants Mark had proposed them building.
The Calavari ambassador nodded approvingly, and led them along the wall to a smaller lift where all but two of the honor guard departed them. The five remaining individuals stuffed themselves into the transport chamber and were whisked down through the building to a restricted administration level.
Morgan noted that the Calavari walking around the halls were a mixture of males and females, with her Knight escort able to look down on almost all of them. She guessed the largest Calavari were more valuable as soldiers while the weaker took on support roles, unless there were also some size enhancements involved.
After a considerable amount of walking they entered a large room…and large was an understatement. There was a holoprojector in the center with a galaxy filling most of the airspace around which there were dozens of chambers that Morgan recognized as used for the races that couldn’t breathe the Calavari air. Three of them appeared to be in use, while two tables with chairs were set up on the floor, one of which was full of Calavari, all of whom stood when the Humans entered.
“Welcome, Star Force,” one of them said, standing far taller than the rest. “If it has not already been said, I offer our thanks for your assistance in the battles here. Your fleet has been invaluable in breaking the blockade of Sri’ka. I also thank you for the possession of the three jumpships. I promise we will make use of them, one way or another.”
