by Aer-ki Jyr
“This isn’t sleeping,” Kara clarified. “You have to lockdown in order for it to initiate and then you have to keep focused on it throughout. You doze off and it’ll end. Besides, I already checked you. You don’t have the brain tissue for it.”
“How does brain tissue affect that?”
“It’s not new tissue so much as a reconfiguration of what you’ve already got, so no growths that will show up on a typical scan. You’re just lacking a bit of processing power, same thing with the Rensiek.”
“What about me?” David asked.
“Wasn’t there either,” Kara said apologetically.
“I could have sworn I was doing that,” he said, not quite believing her.
“Me too,” Jason added.
“Ensek,” Kara continued, “is an ability to function as an Ikrid relay, even if you don’t have strong Ikrid skills. It is a special growth and let’s a telepathic message from a distant individual reflect off of you and transmit on to another. By reflect I mean the power level is nearly identical to the incoming signal, even though you’re producing it. The power of the signal is absorbed and released, losing some in the process. It can be enhanced with your own Ikrid power, but it will let an Era’tran relay a message over multiple miles to another command unit by positioning Zen’zat in a chain across the gap.”
“They can view some of the transmission, but if it’s above their Ikrid ability they won’t understand it. It’ll just get copied and retransmitted reflexively. This is a straight line ability…the more you use it the better it gets, but it’s essentially complete at the outset.”
“Are you finished eating?” Morgan asked when she paused.
Tyr glanced at her. “Want to find that machine?”
“Yes,” she said emphatically. “So long as it won’t interfere with my Jumat?”
“I would guess not,” Kara said, standing up. “But this is uncharted territory. Yeah, I’m done eating…mostly,” she said, telekinetically pulling a cookie off of Riona’s tray.
“Hey,” she mildly complained.
“Let’s go,” Morgan said…then another cookie floated up into the air and into Jason’s hand.
“Guys…not cool,” Riona said, grabbing the last three before they could wander off as the group of Archons broke up.
4
“Did they let Ter’nat in here,” Jason asked Kara as they walked up through the Zen’zat levels of the pyramid one stair/ramp at a time, “or just Zen’zat?”
“Depends on the planet. If there’s a local Ter’nat colony these levels would have a lot of them, call them ‘possibles’ that are being evaluated or liaisons from the colonies, because the rest of the V’kit’no’sat don’t go there. Even the Zen’zat stay away unless there’s a problem. The Ter’nat are beneath the rest of them, so facilities like this serve as an embassy for them as well.”
“Hence the restricted sections,” Jason added.
“Not just to keep the Ter’nat out, but the smaller V’kit’no’sat races as well. Those are Zen’zat only areas, while these,” she said, referring to what they were walking through, “are more communal. The Rit’ko’sor used these passages to get to the higher exits, which they shared with the Zen’zat and others, while the larger races used the lower ones.”
“To get to the pyramid surface?”
“Landing pads,” Kara clarified, turning a corner and heading for the lower entrance into the restricted section of the Zen’zat zone. “Each ring is reserved for specific types of ships, and the smaller races tend to have smaller ships, so they use the upper ones mostly.”
“Who got the top?”
Kara glanced back at Jason, who was following off her left shoulder along with a handful of other Archons behind her. “You do know there are weapons in there, right?”
“So not a landing pad then?”
“In a pinch, sure, but you don’t want to make a habit of parking over top of the big gun…besides, there are no entrances up there.”
“How much tech in here is new, compared to your memories?” Jason asked, continuing to ply her with questions.
“Very little. These structures are built to last…forever, pretty much. I don’t know when this one was built, but it could have been before the purge. The structural materials don’t weather, so unless they’re damaged they’re going to be shiny new for a long, long, long time. Some of the equipment has been upgraded, but I haven’t seen anything brand new yet. Then again I just got here too, and I never had the chance to visit before.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Yep.”
“How?”
“Standard design. When the V’kit’no’sat have something that works they don’t mess with it. They do tech research as needed, but they’ve advanced so far their knowledge is more dogma than experimentation. Show them a hole in their defenses, though, and they’ll cover it quickly. They’re counterpunchers, and they’ve had so much combat experience their tech tree and battle tactics are quite refined.”
“You’re saying they’re stagnant?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but as of 850,000 years ago they weren’t in a hurry. Militarily they don’t have a lot of challenges outside of the Hadarak, but they’re formidable enough that when they make a push they’ve got their hands full. As for their techs, each race does its own research and shares the results. That, really, is the reason they’re not advancing by leaps and bounds anymore. They don’t need to, and they don’t want to be doing the hard work while the others sit back and reap the rewards. If a need arises they’ll get very industrious, so even if we could theoretically match them technologically they’re sure to make a pushback there.”
“They’re so dominate they’re just coasting forward now?”
“Coasting…yeah, good word.”
“On that note, gonna need you to teach our techs some new words.”
Kara sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“You’re the only one with the full vocab,” Jason reminded her.
“I know, I know. It’s just boring. I want to be out fighting the lizards or Nestafar, not handholding a bunch of techs,” she said as they came to a sealed door. Kara touched it with her bare fingers and the stone-like material verified that she was Zen’zat, splitting apart to give them access to the restricted sections.
“Why was this door shut?” Morgan asked.
“I guess it’s not used much,” Jason said, glancing around and confirming that they hadn’t walked into some new area. “The techs come down from above.”
“Still, I thought we’d opened all the doors,” Morgan added, following them in.
“Me too,” Jason said, raising an eyebrow at Kara.
“Don’t look at me. It’s just a door,” she said, making a right turn shortly after passing through. “Here we are.”
“A closet?” Morgan asked, seeing the small room she was opening.
“What? No. Why do you say that?” she asked as the door split in half and revealed an empty room about 10 meters wide and ovoid with the door being on the longer axis.
Morgan waved a hand at the empty room.
“Seriously?” Kara asked with a look of disbelief, then she glanced at Jason. “Please tell me you know.”
“Know what?”
“There are hidden components,” a tech said from the back of the group of Archons, one that they’d grabbed in the cafeteria, and a few others curious ones had followed along. “Some are accessible by control panel, but some rooms don’t have them.”
“Some rooms are more important than others,” Kara said, closing her eyes for a moment…then the floor opened up and a host of machinery began to rise up a la transformers and assemble around a central pedestal. “Some of the doors and equipment function off of genetic identification through tactile contact…others, like this ‘closet,’” Kara emphasized, glancing at Morgan, “have a telepathic trigger. Call it a mental ‘on’ switch.”
“You knew thi
s?” Morgan asked the tech.
“We knew the dinosaur chambers had components that responded to mental command, but we’d assumed a physical link or sensor was required. These chambers have no sensors or interface pads, so we assumed they were just for storage purposes or extra rooms to be configured at a later date.”
“The room doesn’t have a sensor,” Kara explained, “in so much as it scans your mind, but it does have a sensor right there,” she said, pointing at the center of the ceiling. “I have to use my Ikrid to link with it, because it’s little more than a switch.”
“How do you know where it is?” Jason asked.
“I can see it. It has a telepathic presence, just like all of your minds.”
“Kara, is this the device?” Tyr asked, taking a few steps forward and past her.
“This is a medical station where genetic alterations are made. It’s one of the more impressive pieces in the V’kit’no’sat collection, and if misused could cause all manner of trouble.”
“Like what?” Morgan asked.
“Well, if you’re wanting to live you’d better not alter the wrong bit of genetics, otherwise you’ll grow a third arm or your heart will shrink down to the size of a quarter. Bad stuff like that they didn’t really care about, because the idiot using the machine would just kill themselves. What they needed to make sure didn’t happen was one of the races physically advancing themselves beyond the others. Any upgrades had to be approved by the collective, otherwise you could customize your body like you do your armor and create all kinds of abilities.”
“Like the Hjar’at,” Morgan pointed out.
“Their Saroto’kanse’vam were sanctioned, but their medtech is so advanced they could literally create super-monsters if they wanted. Think Godzilla and you’ll get the idea on the small end. Problem is, that sort of tampering with the genetic code has unanticipated consequences, so any sanctioned upgrades are heavily tested before general implementation.”
“This machine,” she continued, “has only one setting, which is basic Zen’zat. We can’t use it to open up powers like Morgan has, that would have been cheating as far as the V’kit’no’sat are concerned, so all we can do is trigger the transformation and then dig out the powers through training.”
“With core access to the pyramid, shouldn’t we be able to override that?” Tyr asked.
“If you’re insane, sure,” Kara scoffed. “Even the V’kit’no’sat techs don’t fully understand genetics. There’s an element of the core interaction with them that can’t be predicted. It’s a symbiosis effect, and they have nothing that can touch the core, gratefully. You don’t want to go messing around with this stuff, trust me.”
“By core, you mean life force?” Jason asked for clarification.
“Yes.”
“What about bioweapons?” Morgan asked.
“They can make them, if desperate, but they prefer not to.”
“Can we make them?”
Kara glared at her. “What exactly did you have in mind?” she asked with a bit of venom.
“Easy youngling…I wasn’t suggesting anything grotesque, but if we could create something to interfere with their powers, or even render them unconscious it could be useful.”
“Possibly…but not with this machine. It’s set up for Ter’nat biology.”
“You look like you don’t think that would be a good idea,” Jason commented.
“They’re counterpunchers,” Kara reminded him. “If you want to fight that kind of war they’ll reciprocate. And the potential they have, considering they know our biology intimately, is downright scary.”
“Can we use the technology to develop immunities?” Tyr suggested.
“That’s something worth looking into,” Kara agreed, “but it’s way over our heads right now, and my knowledge doesn’t extend into tech areas very much.”
“So what can we use it for?” Jason asked.
“Tyr, step inside,” Kara prodded.
“Uh, what for?” he asked skittishly.
“Just a scan,” she promised.
“Don’t go making any changes,” he said as he walked onto the pedestal with the various arms of the equipment forming a loose cage around him.
Kara stepped up to the device and a slew of holographic control icons appeared before her that she began tapping on, working her way through the control menu. “This will let us see what’s going on in far more detail than I can.”
A moment later a holographic version of Tyr manifested beside her at about half height. She zoomed in to his brain and highlighted the portions that were beginning to develop psionic growths.
“You,” she said, pointing to the medtech, “get over here. Follow along as best you can. I’m not going to do this thousands of times, so you guys are going to have to learn.”
“Do what?” Tyr asked.
“Nothing yet,” she promised, then began sifting through additional scans until she finally got to what she wanted, though she had to rely on the machine’s own diagnostic equipment to handle most of the work. “There.”
“There what?” Jason asked, standing behind her other shoulder.
“That’s the bit of genetics that has altered, along with several other pieces. The Zen’zat powers are there, lying dormant. If we can reconfigure the machine to only target those areas it’ll set them to defaults and trigger the growth of the new tissue like I did with you. This machine is also a regenerator, but on a level far beyond the other Kich’a’kat. It has nutrient stores…correction, it had nutrients stores so it wouldn’t have to cannibalize other parts of your body to grow tissue. We’ll have to replace those.”
“You’re saying we can turn on everyone’s powers by turning them into Zen’zat for a second time?” Morgan asked.
“Basically yes, but I wouldn’t do that. There’s a lot of other little genetic changes that occur over time, and if we use the default setting for the entire body we could lose some things we’ve gained or gain some things we’ve lost. Either way, it’s not something to go playing around with…and it’ll cost you your Jumat, because it’ll reset you to newb status.”
“No thanks,” Morgan whispered in a ‘over my rotting corpse’ tone.
“Which is why we need to target only specific sections of your genetic code, turning on what we want while leaving the rest alone. That will stop the developmental headaches you’ve been getting,” she said, glancing at Jason.
“But it’ll reset anyone who already has the abilities manifesting?”
“I can fix those personally, but there should be a way to reconfigure this machine to fix them the same way. I know how to use my regenerator because it’s a part of me, but it’ll take some time to learn how to use this bad boy.”
“Ok, so bottom line,” Tyr asked, still standing in the machine. “We can give everyone minimal skill levels in the 7 basic psionic powers, correct?”
“If you want to bring everyone down here, one by one, yes.”
“And we can fix those who are…having difficulties?”
“Once I, or we,” she said, glancing at the medtech, “figure out how to operate it properly, yes we can.”
“Not all of us,” Morgan said flatly.
“No,” Jason agreed, getting her point. “We’re keeping these powers for Archons only.”
“Really? Why?” one of the other techs asked from the back.
“Telekinesis would be advantageous for working with tiny parts,” Tyr pointed out. “The engineers could use that.”
“We might consider that later,” Morgan wavered, “but for now Archon only and…” she said, thinking out loud, “only rangers and high level acolytes have been developing them on their own, so I say we run them through the machine at acolyte level 1. The adepts have enough on their plate as it is to work on, we don’t need to throw this at them from the get go.”
Tyr nodded. “I like that. They get the upgrade when they become acolytes, and if an adept happens to break through on their own we can
deal with that individually.”
“We’re going to have to rework the level requirements,” Jason said, realizing how much this was going to change their ranking structure, “and develop new challenges for these skills.”
“Not to mention reworking the existing ones,” Morgan added. “Some will be pathetically easy to beat with telekinesis.”
“Everything adept stays the same,” Tyr reminded them. “So the younglings won’t be affected, but we are going to have to retool everything else.”
“Looks like we’ve got some homework then,” Morgan said, crossing her arms and glancing at Kara. “How long before you can get me and the other trailblazers opened up to all 7 skills? We can’t design challenges unless we can test them.”
“No promises,” Kara said, glancing at the medtech, “but if I can do it in my head, then it’s just a matter of figuring out how to do the same on this machine. Give me a couple of days and I should have something.”
Morgan nodded, satisfied. “Tyr, Jason…let’s go.”
“Go where?” David asked.
“Secret stuff,” Jason said with a wink as he passed him by and wove his way through the others back to the door.
“What we’re best at,” Tyr said as he came by last of the three. “Trailblazing.”
“Yep,” David said after they’d gone, “that feels more like it.”
“Always second gen, huh?” Kara asked with a knowing look.
“I get the feeling that I’m about to lose my level 77 status,” he said with a frown, though at the moment he didn’t really care so long as the headaches didn’t come back.
“And me my ranger,” she said, one eye closing half way in a suspicious look. “Makes me think they’re doing it on purpose just because I busted up their party.”
“Actually, it puts us all even for once,” Riona commented. “Except for you, Kara. You’re ahead of everyone else now.”
“She has a point,” David said, his mood improving considerably. “A lot of the trailblazers haven’t even developed an ability yet. They may be stronger and faster than us, but as far as these powers go we’re dead even. I kind of like the idea of a fresh start, now that you mention it,” he said, nodding his head towards Riona.