by Aer-ki Jyr
It wasn’t his body doing it, and Azoro hadn’t been too clear on what produced the energy field in the first place, but this was real regardless and Paul was quite content to pause his training for a few hours each day and just explore…though the tendrils connecting Earth to the other planets in the Solar System were far too weak for him to even register, though he could feel a little sucking action where they existed.
For when you had ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ you would have flow between them. The Saiolum energy wanted to cling to something rather than evaporate and float out into nowhere, so if there was even the slightest tendril connecting to a single lifeform further out and the host sphere was too large to contain all the energy being produced, you would have a current flowing to the ‘low’ that would quickly fill up its sphere and push beyond it, with the excess ‘evaporating.’ This should have then created an equilibrium and stopped the flow, but it didn’t, for the flow had momentum and continued to hit the ‘low,’ causing a surge that would knock off more than the sphere could hold in sort of a tidal wave effect, thus creating more room afterwards to absorb more flow…which would then hit and overload again, creating a constant river of Saiolum from the larger spheres to the smaller ones.
And on these rivers Azoro could travel from one place to another without effort if he wished, or he could actively ‘swim’ through them, up or downstream, but the mist beyond the spheres he could not exist within, where that line was around each sphere was his boundary, but not the end of his vision. He’d told Paul that he could sense the incoming mist from distant places and get a sense of where it had come from, and from what. Including across the gaps between galaxies.
Death also created a ripple just before the body stopped producing energy. New life did as well, along with growth. So everywhere in Earth’s forests where the trees and plants were growing Paul could feel little ripples coming off them as the amount of energy they created increased.
But where people were involved it was much more dramatic, and his fellow trailblazers in training produced the most vivid ripples he had encountered. He wasn’t sure why yet, and was waiting for the next time Azoro contacted him to ask, but their physical movement adjusted the position of their ‘highs,’ thus creating ripples, but there was more to it than he’d seen elsewhere, and it was always when they were in combat mode. Running or swimming did a little more, but sparring or fighting against drones always created…
“They’re called Ni’vo’tu,” Azoro said, appearing in his mind in the same familiar Zen’zat armor as if he was standing in the same room in front of Paul. “The Saiolum is about harmony, and combat disrupts this like you dragging your hand from the air into the water, with bubbles being dragged along. Those bubbles create disruptions that alter the density of the Saiolum, and when it rebalances you additional ripples.”
“Can it be used to shake tendrils?” Paul suspected.
“Your curiosity serves you well. Yes it can, but the greatest strength of the Saiolum is knowledge and connection. Wisdom rather than firepower. It is what binds the galaxies together, and the more life there is there is more Saiolum. Death is its enemy, not a counterbalance. This is why my race did not like warfare, though sometimes it is necessary to fight and kill to prevent mass death as a result of inaction.”
“Kill one to save a million?”
“In some cases, though I know you do not agree with this.”
“If the Life Springs will just create more, what is your obsession with maximizing life production?”
The Zen’zat visibly shrugged. “Habit. Culture. Ritual. We were taught to grow the Saiolum whenever we could, and after a while you stop thinking and just do. Perhaps that is one weakness we had that Star Force does not, but we do not apologize for protecting life.”
“Nor do I apologize for not betraying an individual to save others. Better to have a thousand die to an enemy than one die to a friend.”
“A source of your unity, perhaps, though not mathematically wise.”
“Sacrifice is at the heart of the darkside, Azoro. And it seems to run counter to the Saiolum as well.”
“It does, but we are not of it…well, aside from the Ju’en’xa…but we are so few that it does not speak accurately of our race. We would walk in the dark places to protect the light, and in some cases do unsavory things to protect others. You have a different methodology, and one that appears to be naïve, yet it has served you well. I hope it continues to.”
“Did yours?”
“Ultimately no, but I cannot see how adopting your methodology would have saved us.”
“You gotta give me something. You know my mind is strategic. How did they take you down?”
The Zen’zat knelt, standing on his tiptoes as his knees rose almost to his chest and he placed one hand on the floor and spun his extended fingers in a circle…with Paul’s head immediately starting to hurt, but the image of a cloud with dots in it was of more interest to him, for this was the first time Azoro had shown him something he hadn’t seen before.
“The others do not matter for now, but you are facing the Hadarak. Within the Saiolum they are strong, though they do not know it. We could see everywhere in their domain when we got past their front lines to their heavily populated worlds, and we learned much even before I was marooned and went in search of more answers. But the Ni’vo’tu that you have recently discovered also acts as white noise and hides vision unless you know where to look or are very strong. With distance our strength in the Saiolum diminishes, so we could not see what we needed to see then, and it allowed them to gain an advantage on us that others exploited, especially in the latter days.”
“Which was?”
The dots in the cloud moved, as did the pain in Paul’s head, but he didn’t see any particular pattern he recognized.
“We do not like killing, but defending against the Hadarak requires much of it. Too much for our civilization to be good at, so we were always looking for weak points that we could strike to stem the flow, or cripple their ability to get to us. We were desperate for a way to fight them without having to resort to the same level of butchery that they employ, for we did not want to lose ourselves only to live on as drained corpses. Betrayal of life should only be done selectively, and rarely, not on an industrial scale.”
“Or not at all.”
“Preferably,” Azoro half agreed, “but the weak points in the Hadarak we never found, for they do not exist. At least, not as we were searching for. Do you see anything before you worth the pain I am inducing?”
“Nothing,” Paul admitted.
The Zen’zat nodded. “Now add in us,” he said, with a sprinkling of little specs of light amongst the dark dots.
“Us as in…?”
“The weak point in our civilization. The Sha’kier relied on the Ju’en’xa, who could not die, yet the Hadarak could kill us.”
The image of the cloud and the dots changed, with a swath of the dots winking out, and with it the cloud around them disappeared…followed shortly by the lights inside it.
“They have a self-death protocol, don’t they?” Paul asked, suddenly understanding.
“Yes they do, to diminish their numbers in the conquered systems in order to avoid drawing the Apocalypse Monsters…or so the Neofan told you. This isn’t entirely untrue, but the Hadarak did not only employ it in these areas. They also used it in the contested ones when they identified the position of one of us. If we were blockaded in a stronghold they could not easily take, they would take all the surrounding systems and mass produce population in them, creating an outflow of Saiolum, then they would grind the stronghold down until all were dead except them.”
“Then in unison they would all die,” Paul guessed.
“Not just in the one system, but all the surrounding ones. The death ripples would be so massive a Ju’en’xa like me could not even move, let alone flee through the strands connecting systems before it was too late. Without anchors to hold onto, all the Saiolum in thos
e areas would disintegrate in an outflow that we cannot live in, but I felt it from afar many times. Even across the galaxies. And those Ju’en’xa inside were not heard from again, presumed dead, but I still hope a few managed to see what was coming and leave before it was too late.”
“How did they know?”
“They should not have,” Azoro said, referencing the Hadarak. “They cannot perceive the Saiolum, and we did not make its secrets public knowledge beyond our race, and within it knowledge was restricted in tiers of accomplishment. It is possible the Hadarak took this knowledge from us, but I do not believe that is what happened.”
“Someone else told them?”
“No. I think the Hadarak were engineered specifically to counter us. Weaken us to the point others could take us down, and above all else, force us into death dealers in order to survive.”
“Which was the Natural Order they wished all to adhere to?”
“Exactly. How do you manage it? You have killed so many, yet you still cling to the idea that not a single individual can be sacrificed to save lives. I see it in your mind but I cannot comprehend.”
“You are mistaking the Saiolum for the lightside. They are not the same thing.”
“Both are life.”
“No. The Lightside protects life, but it is not life. It is…honor…more than anything.”
“Curious. You never thought that way before.”
“I don’t have to think it, I can feel it. I am it now, and always had an inkling for it in my early days.”
“The mind cannot reveal all. I will be more diligent in my observations. I apologize for the brevity, but I have exhausted you thoroughly.”
“I am glad I have advanced enough for you to do so.”
“A minor stepping stone, but all are significant and necessary in order to get you to where you need to go. Rest now. No more will I teach you today.”
Paul smiled as the Zen’zat disappeared. He rather liked it when he quoted Yoda.
A crick in his neck caused him to twist around oddly, which then elicited a wave of bad across his body. He really had gotten fried by that.
“Force vision session over,” he declared as he painfully climbed to his feet and headed out the hatch with a telepathic signal for the door to open. “Time for a nap.”
7
Master Trainer Wilson was in over his head. He’d personally outlined, and in some cases detailed, thousands of different races’ training programs ranging from general fitness, to injury recovery, to specific skill progression. He’d even figured out Essence training, though to date his biggest accomplishment was the first…the training of the Archons, and specifically the first class of trailblazers.
That should have made this easier, not harder, because he knew them better than anyone else…yet they were different now, though also the same, and he couldn’t get a handle on what they’d become after 10 months of working the problem.
They didn’t know that, for he was staying ahead of the curve and they had a lot of the usual base building rigors to go through. No, it was the higher end stuff that was eluding him, because he was missing something.
Wilson slammed a fist down on his desk and stood up, choosing to pace a bit rather than stare at holograms of familiar statistics. The trailblazers were progressing normally…which was not normal for them. They should have been taking off like a rocket with all the experience they had, but they weren’t, and that worried him. He was missing something. He knew it in his bones.
It could be an interdynamic, for he hadn’t let them do anything other than solo training…but each of them had developed different from the others. There were 13 noticeable augmentations that all 100 of them had, but on top that there were 183 other abilities that some shared and a few of those that were unique to certain people.
Leo-072 was the best swimmer in the group, though not the highest rated in Aquatics. He spent far more time in the actual water than the others did, and his transformation had him developing a skin coating that looked like a tattoo of a net covering him in half inch-wide squares with subtle ridges. They pinched together at various points and expanded at others, but what they did was even more odd. They were interacting with the water and causing it to pull along his body as a form of propulsion, and neither Wilson nor the best Star Force medtechs understood the physics of it.
Like the ambrosia-production nodules in all of their bodies, Leo’s ‘web force’…as coined by Greg-073…was an advance beyond Star Force’s current knowledge, and while Wilson could train him to use it as simple as any other propulsion, there was something underlying it all that he was missing and it meant his training wasn’t having the effect it should.
A tone sounded from his door, and he telepathically sent the ‘open’ command rather than using the button, with it whisking open to reveal a Human larger than Wilson wearing the telltale black/gold uniform of a Golden Knight.
“There is something wrong with them,” he said, brushing past Wilson and going to one of the many data terminals in the Head Trainer’s lab, “and I think I have a lead on what.”
“I’m all ears,” he said, walking up beside one of the original Knights that had advanced so far that he now possessed Saiyan genetics, as did all of Vermaire’s personal unit. Wilson envied them that, for while he had been given the opportunity as well, he had declined. His training was not all day long, and a lot of his work was assisting others…something a Saiyan metabolism was not built for, though he did have Essence abilities whereas the Golden Knights did not so they could remain specialists in hand to hand combat.
“Look,” Jarod Menson said, bringing up a holo of a sparring session between Morgan-063 and 4 of the Golden Knights…with her not faring so well as they all went at it in full blonde mode. The sparring had to be slowed down to view it well, but there was something definitely off with the way Morgan moved.
“What am I looking at?”
“She’s not Morgan.”
Wilson looked at him deathly seriously. “Explain.”
“That’s not the Morgan I’ve fought before. She fell for several tricks I’ve used in the past. I thought she was going a bit slow so I tried again, expecting her to make me pay for it, but she didn’t see it coming. She also fell for several twice in a row, and Morgan would never do that. This isn’t the normal her.”
“Obviously.”
“No, this is not her mojo. She’s not acting like Morgan. She’s scared and defensive, not relishing a mismatch to learn from. I started pulling back a little to see if she just needed a break, but it didn’t change. And I’m noticing the same thing in the others in retrospect now that I know what to look for.”
“They grew 1-2 feet in a month,” Wilson said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps that rush has damaged them in a way we can’t see.”
“I’m telling you, it’s not her. Something has changed for the worse.”
In that moment something clicked in Wilson’s mind, and he kicked himself for not seeing it earlier.
“Thank you, Jarod. I’m going to get to the bottom of this now,” he said, heading for the door. “Follow me.”
Morgan was running on a Halo track when Wilson found her, meaning she was running on the walls in a giant circle that allowed her to go straight forever, for the artificial gravity was situated so that ‘down’ was towards the track at all times. When someone wanted to run with maximum speed, the halo track is where they went, but Morgan wasn’t going that fast. Instead she was going long and slow, currently clocked at 4 hours of what should have been a 3 hour run that he’d prescribed before her sleep cycle…but she was exceeding that and cringed the moment she ran past Wilson and saw him spot her.
She slowed to a stop and turned around, hands on her hips as she was breathing heavier than normal for such a run as she walked back towards him and Jarod.
“I know, I know. I just didn’t feel tired enough to sleep. I’m spending half my time staring at the ceiling before I nod off.”
“You look exhausted,” Wilson commented.
“I am, but I’m not sleepy. This new metabolism is so screwy. Did he tattle on me?” she asked, glancing at the Golden Knight.
“No, I needed to talk to you about something.”
“Shoot.”
“First, I need to scan your mind. A deep scan.”
Morgan winced. “I didn’t do that much more…”
Wilson frowned at her. “We can discuss that latter, but the problem is partially my fault for not having your training tuned as much as it should be.”
“We’re in brand new bodies, I don’t expect you to have it tuned yet.”
“Can you relax enough to let me in?”
Morgan knelt down on her knees and sat back on her ankles as she closed her eyes and got her head lower than his. “Go ahead, but my subconscious is bouncing all over the place, including puberty-like sexual fetishes that come out of nowhere. Don’t hold it against me if I suddenly start craving your dick.”
“It’s part of the reset,” he said dismissively as he put a hand on her forehead and held it there to bypass the Ikrid blocks that had been upgraded immensely in the transformation. Now the trailblazers had an automatic resistance to hacking even if one made physical contact and they were unconscious. They had to focus to allow someone to hack in.
“You should have told me sooner,” Wilson said, realizing that Morgan was a hot mess right now, but she had everything contained within mental boxes that wouldn’t have one thing spilling over into another. It was a defense mechanism they’d developed when dealing with a myriad of adverse situations in their past, and now she was pulling on it heavily to keep herself together enough to get through the day’s training assignments…but oddly, the lack of intensity was backfiring. For she needed it to help hold her together, and the additional ‘rest’ was allowing the instability to resist suppression.
