by Aer-ki Jyr
She checked the battlemap and compared it to their heading, seeing that a Lacvamat ship was coming down from orbit nearby. They were probably cycling out at the end of a patrol, with the ship coming low into the atmosphere for them to fly into. They didn’t use traditional dropships, rather these considerably larger transports with dorsal entry. They rarely landed on the surface of a planet, but when they did they usually were laden up with cargo with too small a workforce to empty it quickly, otherwise they’d just hover over the ground and let the Lacvamat workers fly in the top, scoop up the supplies, and fly them out to wherever they needed them.
As she was taking a moment to watch them and snoop out what else was happening around the planet via battlemap, a section of the Lacvamat flock broke off and dove down towards the surface. Jaina frowned and zoomed in on that section, seeing sporadic enemy signatures popping up. There was nothing but grassland there, but somehow there were lizards out in the open where there had been none previously.
With a quick check of her surroundings to make sure she was safe, Jaina walked over to a chunk of lizard wall and started inputting commands, getting a sensor highlight on that region from orbit that allowed her to zoom in to the surface and see what was happening in real time.
Not surprisingly, the Lacvamat were dive bombing lizard infantry and making a mess of the little green guys, but she was more interested in seeing where the lizards were coming from. It wasn’t until one of the Lacvamat swung low and actually landed did she find what she was looking for. He pulled away a grass mat to expose a hole in the ground, dirt walled, that led down deeper than was visible. Jaina was now pulling visuals directly from the Lacvamat’s armor, looking down inside and seeing the little claw marks where the lizards had pulled themselves out through the dirt.
The Archon was about to pull up an intense sensor focus but someone else beat her to it, for the sensor map enhanced immediately and was growing in detail as a drone descended from orbit. By the time it got near the ground Jaina could make out the slight sensor distortion in the faked subsurface structure that indicated a lizard sensor blind, meaning the lizards had some sort of bunker there, and it was far away from any of their nearest outposts.
Jaina adjusted her comm, about to call in and offer to send some of her Protovic over with Rammus digging equipment to start tearing out that bunker when she got an incoming comm.
“I’ve found them,” Madi said, though her voice was a bit more tense than it should be. Jaina noticed that it was a multiple comm message, with all the mages in the Protovic fleet being included. “And I think they’re freaking out.”
“Define freaking out,” Arron said.
“They’re below ground, and from the visuals I’m pulling from their minds there’s water down there. Sensors aren’t showing it, so it must be some type of blind, but they’re down there, and I can feel a few of them freaking out. I think it’s spreading to all of them.”
“Did they see you?” Jaina asked.
“No…” Madi said hesitantly. “They felt me.”
“Meaning?” Trevor asked.
“I didn’t pet them,” Madi said snippily.
“They’re telepathic?” Arron asked.
“Yeah. They tried to get inside my head in response to me snooping in theirs and hit my Ikrid block…and now they’re freaking out. I get the feeling they’ve hid from the lizards by playing Jedi mind tricks on them. Now I’m here, with telepathic powers too, and they can’t affect me. Hence, they’re freaking out.”
“And doing what?”
“Moving around inside. I can’t sense too many of them, so I think they’re dug in deep, but I am pulling as much information as I can from the few up top…and they’re really not liking that either.”
“Have you found an entrance?”
“Not yet.”
“What are they?” Jaina asked.
“Turtles.”
“Turtles?” Arron asked.
“Flippers and all. They couldn’t fight a lizard hand to hand even if they had 100 to 1 odds. I get the feeling they do everything with telepathy and tech, and this hidden city is evading our sensors too. All I’m picking up now is a flat panel a few dozen meters below the surface. Everything else beyond that is blocked.”
“I can understand why they’re freaking,” Trevor agreed. “They’ve got no defense against us and we just blew their cover.”
“Can you try and calm them down?” Arron asked.
“Trying but failing. They’re just getting more and more worked up.”
“Can you take control of one?” Jaina asked.
“Not at this range.”
“We need to find a door.”
“I’m on it. But I get the feeling that there are a whole lot of them down there…and by down there I mean inside the planet. More than the lizards I’d guess, and I think I just ticked them all off.”
9
April 14, 3201
Ivataru (lizard territory)
Planet 4
Jaina sat crosslegged on the grass in her aquatics armor next to Madi, both of the Archons linked in battlemeld and projecting their extended range telepathy downward into another portion of the ‘turtles’ hidden civilization. They sat on what they’d discovered to be a concealed hangar bay, patiently trying to reach those beneath them and confer upon them the reason they were here and that they were no threat.
It wasn’t going well. They’d been at it two days, taking breaks for workouts and sleep, but otherwise they were here, using their linked abilities to probe as deeply as they could. They didn’t want to break in and force their way underground and were hoping that they could come to an understanding via telepathy, but so far there were only a few beneath them within range…yet they could sense that those were there specifically to received their ‘manipulations.’
That’s how the turtles saw them. The rest of their population was out of range but were able to sense through those exposed. Had Jaina been down there she wouldn’t have liked to have been the one to draw the short straw, but either these few had or they’d volunteered. Regardless, they were still very much afraid and continually vexed having had their secret entrance to their secret civilization located. The lizards were far from here and the Protovic and Lacvamat were keeping them away, leaving only the two Archons to politely keep knocking on the telepathic door. How long they’d keep doing that though, was a matter of question.
They could just leave them alone, rid the planet of the lizards then leave them be. However, they really didn’t want to do that given how few races actually possessed telepathy, even if it was an inferior form. It was becoming obvious to Jaina that the V’kit’no’sat telepathy was the premium variety, with far more depth and intricacy than was standard. She’d never fully understood that, just thinking that the Protovic telepathy was limited. Now that she’d gotten inside a turtle’s head it was becoming clear that the Zen’zat had gotten the Super Saiyan variety standard.
Not only was her telepathy raw power higher than the turtles’, there was so much she could do with it that they couldn’t. There were blind spots where she could go in their minds that even they could not. For example, they could transmit and receive while locating other minds, but they couldn’t pinpoint locate anyone. Not alone anyway. They needed several of them working together to lock down a person’s location. On their own they could sense the general area and transmit to it, but they couldn’t correlate that with their physical senses well at all.
She was also realizing they made up for a lot of things by using the group. They didn’t have battlemeld or anything like it, they just collaborated their telepathic insights as if using multiple sensors to look at the same target then sharing data. It didn’t raise their raw power any, and she was pretty sure two-way communication was locked out from multi-transmission, but these were genuine telepaths and she was wondering if they were hiding for the same reasons the Protovic Pinks had been. Were these guys hunted down too because they could get inside people’
s heads?
“I’m getting sick of this,” Madi suddenly said out loud, though she didn’t need to having been linked with Jaina, for the Archon could sense the words even as she said them. “They’re not going to let us in. They’re playing ‘turtle,’ pun intended.”
“We can give it a while more.”
“Or…”
Jaina sighed. “That’ll really tick them off.”
“Well I’m tired of waiting, and we’re doing them the favor of kicking out the lizards so…they can tolerate it.”
“Fair enough,” Jaina agreed. “I’m tired of sitting here too.”
The pair didn’t say anymore, instead focusing their telepathy on those individuals below. They’d pulled a lot of information from their minds already regarding the layout below, including the controls to open the concealed bay doors. Picking one of the turtles below, they focused on him with their combined power and barely managed to take control of his mind. They held him steady at first, cementing their hold, then had him swim closer to the surface. They also made sure to look out for the others in case they tried to stop him, but the Archons were pretty sure the turtles had no idea anyone could do this.
They had their little guy find his way to the bay door controls and hit the release, then released him from their control but knocked him unconscious, along with anyone else that was in range so they couldn’t contest their entry.
The ground they sat on jolted, then slowly rose up with them sitting on what was basically a giant plate of dirt and grass. It raised up above ground level then rotated around a fixed point on one edge, moving the plate clear of the circular opening as the Archons stood up and walked towards the pivot point.
Looking down they saw an empty room big enough to accommodate ship traffic, but with nothing in sight. They knew the bay was much wider than the opening, so Madi casually jumped off the edge and slowly fell on the end of a Bataf conduit from Jaina, with the invisible rope disconnecting a meter above the floor. The Archon dropped the rest of the way and landed gracefully in a partial crouch, seeing several ships around the perimeter of the mostly empty bay. This was obviously a receiving area, and from their mind raids they knew that other races they somewhat trusted as intermediaries would fly their ships in here and have the hatch sealed while they conducted business.
Madi extended a Bataf conduit up like a pole and Jaina rode down on it, joining her on the bay floor. They left the entrance open, not worried about the lizards while they had their troops on the surface keeping them well away from the vulnerable turtles.
“Time to get wet,” Jaina said, gesturing to the hatch to the south.
“Yep. Let’s take it slow so we don’t look like we’re chasing any of them.”
“They’re already freaking out,” she said, sensing them more easily now that they were closer and resisting the urge to knock them out too now that there were more in range.
“Let’s go say hi and get this over then,” Madi said, getting a telekinetic grip on the light hatch and pulling it open without needing the hydraulics. Just below the rim of the rectangular cutout was the water, and it immediately struck both Archons as being foul.
“I guess they have something more than water in it,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Looks clear though.”
“Probably their version of air freshener. Just be glad we didn’t bring any Elarioni. They’d probably gag on it,” Madi said, sitting down on the edge and sliding in feet first with Jaina following a few seconds later.
When they got in the water their helmets automatically shut out the air and switched over to internal oxygen. Whereas their normal armor had a short backup air supply, the aquatics armor had far more stuffed inside the bulkier construct and could be augmented for days with additional backpacks. Also, if there was oxygen in the water their armor could draw it out directly, allowing them unlimited time underneath the water. If there wasn’t they could even slowly add oxygen to their reserves through hydrolysis, but that wouldn’t be enough for them to stay active. If that was all they had left they’d have to stop moving and get their breathing very, very low…but that was far better than dying.
All of that meant that the Archons were perfectly comfortable sealed up inside their armor as they went underwater. Both of them immediately began transmitting calming telepathic waves but including a bit of annoyance, making it clear they didn’t like waiting outside. They wanted to talk to the turtles and they made that known, but did so trying to make it clear that they weren’t the lizards and weren’t going to hurt any of them.
“Little bastards,” Jaina said, seeing ahead with her Pefbar.
“No kidding,” Madi said, referencing the defense turrets popping out of the walls. “Let’s make it clear who they’re trying to shoot.”
Both of the Archons swam forward using the jets in their arms and legs for propulsion as they reached out and telekinetically grabbed the little minnow-like darts being fired towards them. Freezing them in mid swim they held them there, knowing that the turtles would be watching on vid screens or whatever else they used.
Once the Archons got close enough they used their telekinesis to reach inside the turrets and break or bend what was needed to disable them. One by one they went offline as the Archons casually swam by the interior defenses continually mentally transmitting their ‘we come in peace’ vibe, but apparently these guys had seen Mars Attacks and weren’t buying it, so the pair swam to find the nearest one that they’d rendered unconscious.
When they saw it they were surprised by the glow coming off him. He was floating in the water just off the floor, suggesting these guys were a bit on the sinker side, and was covered in a more rounded shell than a typical turtle, but he had four flipper-like legs, no tail, and a stubby head that had small tentacles on it that doubled as hands. It looked gross, but it appeared they just head-butted their controls and made alterations from inches away.
This guy had four short, almost tiny arms bracketing his two eyes and mouth, but it was his shell that was glowing deep red on vein-like lines. The rest of his body didn’t glow, but neither Archon had expected that for none of the visuals they’d taken from their minds had shown it.
“They can’t see it?” Madi wondered.
“I guess not,” she said, noticing that the interior was dark. They’d been using their Pefbar and hadn’t noticed, but the lights around the rim of the hallways were dim. Jaina did a check on the light sources with her HUD, seeing that they only slightly bled over into the visible light spectrum for Humans. Most of it was ultraviolet, with her guessing that the red end was out of their ability to see. Odd that they’d be producing it, but then again Humans glowed in infrared and couldn’t see it, though not in only specific areas. On the turtles it almost seemed like decorative trim.
“Alright, let’s wake this guy up,” Madi said. Jaina held him steady, pulling him up off the floor so his flippers couldn’t hit anything but water and keeping him there with her invisible grip while the other mage slowly brought him back to consciousness. As she did so she started working on him, dosing him up heavily with calming and soothing emotions while letting him get minimally aware of their presence.
But eventually a point was reached when he realized they were not his kin and he started freaking out, but neither Archon would relent. He spent several minutes spasming, trying to swim but unable to, and with far worse things occurring inside his mind.
The mages didn’t move, merely staying still and calm and talking to him using emotions and senses given that they didn’t know their language. They kept bombarding him with the notion of ‘friend’ until he finally settled down, though it was more from exhaustion than acceptance. Knowing the razor’s edge they were walking, both of the Archons proceeded slowly, not moving, and working on him telepathically as they gradually released the physical restrictions.
When they did fully release him he bolted, getting across a few meters far faster than he looked capable of, but Jaina gently slowed him down to a stop
and came swimming up beside him.
You’re not going anywhere buddy, so just chill.
“Heads up, his friends are coming.”
“Good,” Jaina said, sensing the other turtles on approach. “Let’s speed this up.”
“They’re armed.”
“So?”
“Right,” Madi agreed. “Hang onto our friend. I’ll deal with them,” she said, swimming off a few meters.
Jaina stayed put, looking through Madi’s eyes but otherwise not paying attention to what was going on behind her. She kept trying to soften up this one’s mind but years of paranoia and ignorance were layered into its mind and hard to get through. By not harming it some of those layers were peeling off in calculation, and she knew if she so much as stubbed its toe that bit of progress would be undone, so she just held him still as Madi stopped more of the little missiles that were being fired from backpacks on the other turtles.
Jaina grabbed a handful of them from where Madi had them floating and pulled them over in front of her little guy’s face. She grabbed them in her hand, held them for a moment, then pushed them down from the floor and away from both of them.
She heavily insisted that there was ‘no need’ for those weapons, and finally she felt something click in this one. Taking a guess, she slowly released her hold on him. His emotions spiked again, feeling the ability to run, but he checked himself and just stared at her hard, unmoving body, then she felt him say something to the others and they all stopped moving, just looking at the two intruders.
“Progress,” Jaina noted.
“Keep it up.”
“Working on it,” she said, bringing an image of the lizards to both of their minds and sending it the feelings of hate and revulsion, trying to make it understand that they were an enemy. When she felt understanding she added a vision of the galaxy, then zoomed down to the stars the lizards held, seeing them as little green dots, then showed them winking out in bunches coming up to this star.
