by Aer-ki Jyr
“Archon.”
“What is it, Captain?” Trey answered the comm call.
“We’ve currently got our sensors focused on your location and have discovered an anomaly. Approximately two miles to the northwest there are deep residue of what appears to be structures. Not much left, but they stretch for miles.”
“How deep?”
“A little over 4 miles.”
Trey frowned. “I didn’t pack a shovel that big.”
“No. We’d need a proper digging team to get down there. I just wanted to confirm that there was more than mud huts here in the past.”
“Thank you…is it all sand that deep?”
“One moment,” he said, followed by a long pause. “Difficult to tell, but our best guess is yes.”
“That’s a lot of city destroyed.”
“Adding in surface features.”
“You reading anything more than foundations?”
“Impossible to say without a closer scan.”
“I need to know. Bring her in low.”
“How low?”
“Close enough for me to toss pebbles at.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“The ship’s designed to do it.”
“But…”
“But what? Afraid the natives are going to shoot arrows at you?”
“They have arrows?”
“No clue yet, there are none around here.”
“If we squash you, don’t blame me.”
“No promises,” Trey said, cutting the comm and standing up. A lot of naval officers didn’t like bringing starships into atmosphere but Paul had proven long ago that it wasn’t a big deal. The gravity at the surface was almost identical to that in orbit, and unless you had hurricane-caliber winds or tried to descend too fast you weren’t going to have trouble as long as you had a veteran pilot. Atmosphere did cause random movements for a ship no matter how large where vacuum didn’t, but it was more a fear thing than a real danger. Technically a seda could come down and hover a meter off the ground if it wanted to, and a Ma’kri was much more nimble than that.
What it did do was burn fuel at a constant rate. Not a lot, but gravity drives were typically used in large bursts with lots of rest time in between. Hover rates weren’t bad, but not knowing how long they’d be in position left the crews unable to calculate fuel expenditure beforehand. The Ma’kri had more than enough to accomplish this little shore visit, and getting the sensors a bit closer to their target would enhance the accuracy, hopefully enough to know whether or not a return trip with a digging crew was warranted.
“Archon,” one of the analysis team said, stepping up beside him holding a satchel of equipment that was dragging on her shoulder heavily. “The sand is partially organic in origin, but there are significant traces of technological residue within it.”
“There also appears to be some foundations left buried deep under the sand, according to orbital sensors.”
“Salvageable?”
“Don’t know yet. I’m having them take a closer look. Anything on the weaponry used?”
“The damage is ancient, so we can only extrapolate, but it appears to be similar to a vertron inhibitor.”
“Based on?”
“The crystallization patterns. There are defects that time hasn’t completely washed away yet. This entire desert may have once been lush forest, given the organic traces still present, but the more recent ones concern me.”
“Oh?”
“There is non-crystalized organic traces, minute, but probably from lifeforms inhabiting here after the planetary damage.”
“What kind?”
“The burrowing kind,” she said with a cringe, looking up at his opaque golden faceplate.
He remained silent for a moment, then a head twitch brought his vision back on her. “There’s nothing in the immediate area.”
“The compaction rates are all wrong. This sand has been churned over the years, I’m almost sure of it.”
“So a lot of burrowers?”
“Or environment turbulence. We’ll have to compare to bedrock scans to be sure.”
“How much more time do you need here?”
“Another hour should do. We want to be thorough.”
“Alright. Take your time and I’ll watch out for worm sign.”
“What?”
“Never mind. How you doing with the gravity?”
“Getting my workout in for the day. That’s another thing, the gravity should be compacting the sand more than it is.”
“Add another mystery to the list.”
“We might be able to figure this one out,” she said, spinning a circle in the sand with her heel as she turned around and walked back towards one of the sample sites spread around a quarter mile perimeter from the dropships.
Trey held position, watching with both his eyes and his psionics to make sure his unarmored team came to no harm. They were literally in the middle of nowhere with only some short dunes on the horizon around them. The nearest village was over a hundred miles away on the outskirts of the desert, leaving them alone on a cloudy day that would probably keep the Ma’kri invisible despite its size.
Trey waited for it to come down, watching the battlemap and his team for the moment when the clouds pushed down above them like a wall of cotton candy headed for the ground. They never got there, with the hull plates of the dark grey Ma’kri forcing the white puffs aside as the 6 kilometer long warship appeared to pancake the ground nearby them to the immediate west with almost all of his team physically jerking as the sudden arrival spooked them.
When they were finished collecting their samples the Ma’kri had already returned to orbit, having confirmed at least a few levels of infrastructure buried deep beneath the sands. What condition it was in was unknown, but Trey hated to leave without finding out what it was. Coming back on a second trip just for this might be a huge waste of time or a vital discovery, he couldn’t be sure, but digging down to that level by hand wasn’t going to happen either.
The three dropships stayed together rather than splitting up so Trey could keep an eye on everyone, which amounted to a 63 man team of techs and a couple of commandos. They could have babysat the other dropships but right now the Archon didn’t want to let anyone out of his sight until he got a feel for the planet. Primitive civilizations weren’t the same as being safe, and he didn’t want to risk harm to any of his team from unknown factors just yet. Once they got a feel for what the planet had in store for them they’d split up, but right now they needed eyes on the locals and at least one tissue grab.
To that end he had the dropships skim the surface behind a ridgeline all the way up to a nearby village where they were going to land out of sight and head in on foot.
“Wait,” he said before they’d gotten to their landing zone, a couple of kilometers out. “Full stop,” he ordered the pilots. “There’s someone below us. Hover here until I say otherwise and open the rear hatch,” he said, leaving the cockpit in a rush. Trey pushed by the others in the ship’s corridors then ran out the hatch before it was even fully open, dropping a dozen meters down into the treetops and letting the supple branches slow his fall. He hit one not so supple one and tipped head over heels as he was crashing through the leaves, but he managed to create a telekinetic ‘crash bag’ beneath him that cushioned his landing and let him twist over to land a knee on the moist ground, sinking in a couple of inches before he was gone in a flash, running through the forest in pursuit of the mental signature he’d detected.
It was also running, probably scared out of its mind, but Trey figured the first meet and greet would go better with a single individual than with a crowd whose paranoia could feed off of each other’s. Running in the high gravity slowed Trey a bit, but he was surprised at how fast this individual was moving. Terror-inspired adrenaline aside, they weren’t letting the Archon catch up as rapidly as he hoped, with him having to eventually use his Ikrid to get the person to slow down before t
hey made it all the way back to the village.
He’d hoped to just cause a sense of fatigue, but given the distance and his own physical effort apparently he doped the person up too much, for they fell down and didn’t get back up. That allowed him to catch up quickly, but it wasn’t what he intended.
When he did finally get to their position the person still wasn’t moving, and he began to sense pain before he got within Pefbar range and could see through the brush. The person was on the ground with their ankle wedged between two roots. Rather than burst through the leaves and freak them out even more, he put the person to sleep then walked up into view, pushing a branch aside and seeing a glowing orange/green Protovic female dressed in a short skirt and bandoleer top…with her ankle bent in an unnatural angle.
“Ah crap,” Trey said, walking over to her in his golden armor and using a combination of fingers and telekinesis to pull the roots apart and release her foot that was wrapped up in a sandal that was more straps than anything. Definitely not a running shoe, which made her speed even more impressive.
Trey disconnected his left glove, taking it off and making skin to skin contact with her ankle. Hacking into her nervous system he got a better feel for the injury and was able to confirm a broken bone. More of a crack than a clean break, but not good regardless. Feeling like a moron, he checked the perimeter and ensured that they were alone, then focused on a seldom used psionic that had been a pain in the butt to acquire called Haemra.
Kip had been the first one to achieve it, and it hadn’t been training related. The ascension prompt only triggered when one was trying to heal an injury, so whenever someone wanted to share the ability with another they had to give themselves at least a long, nasty knife blade cut on their arm or plasma burn. Then while healing it they had to get to the proper ascension prompt that would trigger the other person in the ‘share’ to ascend. And while that was bad enough, if you missed it the first time you had to repeat injuring yourself until they got it.
It was a Tier 2 ability and not that catastrophic with regards to cascade issues. Trey had got it on the first try and only missed a day of training. He made that choice rather than put Aaron through an extra injury to share it with him. Hurting yourself like that was basically against everything that Star Force operated off of, but since this was a cheat process they couldn’t blame the V’kit’no’sat for it. Sharing had never been intended, so the Archons made the gruesome choice to inflict the injuries in order to share the ability that was a much more powerful version of Sesspik.
Haemra could be used on yourself for rapid healing, as Aaron had done when he’d triggered Trey’s ascension, or it could be used on someone else to heal them in a lesser fashion. Skill work was huge with this one, and if you weren’t getting injured or helping with other people’s injuries you couldn’t train it. That said, it was extremely valuable to have and Trey was glad for it in this circumstance, otherwise he would have had to take this native all the way back up to the Ma’kri for several days to get this break healed up properly.
Using the physical contact, Trey took control of the Protovic’s body and essentially ordered it to start regrowing in the proper places. Since she wasn’t Human the control was less, because Trey was less familiar with their physiology, but they were among the closest to Humans out of all the races Star Force had and he was able to trigger the necessary grow process…which was incredibly painful at the rate he was pressing it. It was a form of flash tissue growth, like his own ascensions, though slower and in this case not much additional material was needed to reseal the break.
That said, it was preferable that she be unconscious during the process…else it’d feel like he was doing anything but fixing her ankle.
It took him and his feeble skills more than half an hour to fix her up, during which he ordered the dropships to set down nearby wherever they could find a gap in the trees. One of the medtechs came out and took a tissue sample from the woman, several actually and Trey healed the not so small one on her arm. He glared at the tech who’d taken it, but didn’t say anything as she retreated back to the dropship. Another 8 minutes and that bloody spot was healed up and he brought her back to a semi-conscious state, attempting to get some information from her mind before waking her up entirely.
The rest of the analysis team was restricted to the dropships for this meet and greet, but Trey did have one commando with him watching his back while he did his mind meld thing. He wasn’t surprised to find that these natives didn’t speak any language that he was familiar with, so he was going to have to try and piece together some form of communication starting with mental assurances that he wasn’t an enemy.
He kept his hand on her wrist as he woke her up, then felt her jerk physically and mentally when she saw his gold helmet beside her. She tried to run but he held her firm, all the while sending the telepathic calming urges that did little to quiet her paranoia. After a few seconds of her flailing around and finding her vocal chords weren’t working, he went ahead and froze her body in place too, only allowing her head to operate under her own power while he had a lock on the rest of her.
“Viron, take your helmet off. I can’t calm her down.”
The commando took a step forward and knelt before where she was sitting on the ground, then he hit the release on his helmet that had it pull back from his face to a knot on the back of his neck, revealing his purple/green glowing Protovic face.
“I doubt anything I say will matter,” the commando said, looking straight at her and smiling, but talking to Trey.
“Just let her hear your voice. I can use that.”
“Alright then. Relax sweetheart, we’re not going to hurt you.”
“I didn’t say hit on her.”
“Why not if it’ll calm her down?” he answered dryly. “I hope you’re watching the surrounding area. I’m surprised she hasn’t screamed yet.”
“I’m stopping her from talking, and only somewhat watching. This is taking a lot of brain power.”
“You holding her body too?”
“Have to.”
“Release a bit if you want her to calm down,” he said, holding steady and just looking at her scared face as he talked.
“I’ll try to keep her to a whisper, but I’m not sure how well this is going to work,” Trey said, loosening her speaking ability enough that she began babbling rapidly, but quietly. Viron talked to her, though neither understood the other, but Trey began to pick up on a few connections that allowed him to send thoughts into her mind that she recognized. Concepts, not words, and after more than an hour she relaxed enough that he was able to release his hold on her.
That was a mistake, for when he did she saw his hand and freaked out again when she realized he was an alien. Trey mentally froze her and glanced at the commando. “This is going to take forever.”
“Not my fault you’re ugly,” he said with a smirk. “Can she still see and hear me?”
“Not right now, I’ve got her in popsicle mode.”
“Let her see me again…after you do a quick check of the perimeter.”
Trey pushed out his Ikrid while maintaining his hold on her, looking for other nearby minds.
“No one has left the village yet. I think I better keep my helmet on though,” he said, with the woman suddenly back awake and babbling like she’d never stopped.
Viron waved a hand in front of her in a calming gesture, then stood up and took a step back. His armor peeled apart and he walked out of it, knelt down again, and took her other hand in his own, raised it to his lips and kissed it.
“Oh brother,” Trey commented.
“Work with me on this,” Viron insisted, lowering her hand but maintaining a grip on it as her eyes flicked from him to the alien and back again rapidly. “Do you need to hold onto her?”
“It increases my ability.”
“Can you let go for a few minutes? And just keep her voice in a whisper, let go of everything else.”
“Alright, we’ll try it
your way. If I have to I can knock her out again remotely.”
“Do it,” Viron said, with the woman suddenly getting control of her body back as the alien released her. She scrambled away from him but Viron still had hold of her hand and pulled her over to him, dragging her onto her feet and away from the Human where he held her in a firm, but polite embrace.
“Relax little beauty, you’re among friends.”
Trey rolled his eyes but went along with it, for some reason it was working and starting to calm her down again.
4
November 11, 2969
System 39282
Planet 7 (Protovic Civilization)
Over the past month Viron had made quite the impression on the single village that the expedition team had made contact with. He couldn’t speak their language, and vice versa, but that didn’t diminish the effect his visage had on them. With the help of some linguists that Trey had brought with him, and a whole lot of psionic influence, they’d established some basic words but most communication occurred through the Archon in the form of thoughts and feelings. He was being used as a translator more than the translators as the villagers wondered who these magical visitors were and word spread to the nearby settlements, with pilgrimages being made by their neighbors to come see the rumored miracles.
The fear in the villagers was now gone, and that had taken some doing. It wasn’t brainwashing technically, but a lot of emotional correction on Trey’s part to get a few of these Protovic to the point of being comfortable around him and especially Viron. Like a snowball, once he got it rolling the sentiments spread and any new arrivals got an education from the others in that there was nothing to fear, especially when Trey was healing up a number of small injuries they had. Word of that was beginning to spread as well, with a few badly injured individuals being brought to him from surrounding villages in the hopes of him healing, or in some cases, saving their lives.