Building Things of Beauty

Spending so much time at the beach made things much easier for us to pass the time while the Tirtris were revived. We had been making this virtual world more of a home and Niracina had finally started to settle in on the seasons, so we had a better idea of where we wanted to be each day. When we entered we still were in the field, but we had constructed a translocation pad in several of our favorite locations to get us from there to where we wanted to be. Today, it was the beach, we were busy constructing a massive sandcastle, it would be big enough to walk through and with a little work we would make it a permanent feature. We also planned to recreate the igloo in a permanently cold location as well, this would give us different places to hang out depending on our moods. The castle was coming along nicely, but because we wanted to build it ourselves it took quite a bit of time to get any section done. The first part was nearly complete, and that would be the main entrance to the courtyard. Most of the moving of the sand was done by me and as I finished each section Niracina and Ambri spent hours decorating it with stones and shells, making it look like the richest palace you had ever seen. As the sun set and I finished up my work for the day I sat down on the beach with them and enjoyed the view. It was nice here, she had done a wonderful job creating this world and it just kept improving as she continued to experience things.

Back on the ship her desire for beautiful things was starting to show as well, though the outside of the ship didn't change the inside was becoming quite a bit more interesting. As she matured she began growing different colored crystals in various locations that enhanced it all, making it look elegant and intriguing. They weren't all just for show either, they also gave a different kind of control of the ship, some of the crystals were used to access certain sections of her memory, others served as ways to project images while some were just for control. The ship would be a little less automated with these changes, but it seemed to be the way she wanted things to be. Her mindforce powers were also increasing as well, making the chairs slightly less necessary for us to connect with her, though we still needed them to enter the virtual world. She had also made a formal translocation chamber so that arrivals and departures would always be from there, this would give us some added security as she would block translocation in all other parts of the ship. The colors along her walls also changed, each room producing a little different feel to it and some non-practical features showed up as well, mostly aesthetic curves to the walls but a few things that served little to no purpose such as little curtain looking things that shifted as you walked by them. All in all she was becoming quite a lovely ship.

Survivors

The atmosphere on the planet wasn't in great condition, but it was good enough for me to be able to walk around on it. The scene that you saw when you stood upon it was similar to what you would see in old apocalypse movies, it was just wasteland all around you. The probe had continued doing its scans and I wandered about for a while, hoping to find some remnant of the life that was once here. It appeared however, from what I saw and the images the probe sent back that there was nothing left, the planet was dead. I took a small sample of the soil to keep as a reminder of what happened here, I imagined I would eventually put it on display with the information I had of the aliens, however as I was about to leave the probe reported a strange reading. I quickly translocated to its position and saw a small cave opening, from inside of it were energy readings as if there were something being powered down there. I knew it was unlikely that anything important would be there due to the amount of time that had passed since this planet last had life, but I had to check it out.

The cave was deep, Ambri had sent a drone to go with me and keep me safe. Both her and Niracina stayed in contact with me, both because they were curious what it looked like and they wanted to make sure I was doing alright. As we made our way deeper I heard the distict sounds that only come from technology that is running, I knew there must be something left after all. When we finally reached what seemed to be the base level of the cave I noticed there was some light through one of the passages, we made our way towards it and the sounds got louder. Once in the chamber we could see everything clearly, the lights weren't very bright but in such a dark cave they may as well have been the sun itself. The chamber was filled with all sorts of monitors, controls and pods. It appeared to be a cryogenic system. I took scans of everything before we got to work seeing if we could figure it all out. The controls were easy enough, very basic, I don't think the Tirtris had planned on making it complicated technology. The screens showed that the inhabitants of the pods were still alive but in a very deep sleep. Using the drone for parts I created a link between the technology down here and Niracina, after a few minutes she was able to get control over the entire system and figure out how it worked and to see how you woke up the inhabitants of the pods.

The process would be very slow in reviving them, the state that they were in was very deep and had kept them alive for an unknown amount of time, but we knew it would have been more lifetimes than one would like to imagine. I left the parts in place that Niracina needed to maintain control of the system and then dismantled the drone, creating a translocation platform so that I could travel to and from this location back to the ship, I didn't need to stick around for so many days and really didn't feel like climbing back through the cave. Niracina was also still gathering information about what all the pods contained and I wanted to see what she found. As I looked over the information she was analyzing I realized at about the same time she did that not only did these pods contain survivors, but there were other pod locations deeper in the planet that contained preserved specimens of the life that had lived on this planet with the Tirtris. This meant that with some effort we might actually be able to help this race come back from the brink of extinction. With this realization it would make the next few days difficult, they would just seem so long, but it, along with the survival of the other aliens, put hope in us that we would be able to find many alien races that the Klatvix had attempted to destroy and fix the wrong that was done to them. We just hoped that the aliens we encountered wouldn't be so traumatized by the experience that they instantly hated all other species.

Snow Day

My breath made small puffs in the cold air, the snow on the ground had been a bit unexpected, however I hadn't been in here for a couple days due to my studying of Klatvix history. I remember explaining at one time to them what exactly an igloo was, but I didn't expect them to actually make one. They had spent the better part of a day in mounding up the snow just so they could carve it out into a place to sit in and stay warm, it would have, of course, been easier for Niracina just to choose a warmer season for this world but she wanted to experience this and Ambri had agreed to it, being curious enough about it to give it a try. As I crawled through the opening I could feel the warmth that the structure was holding in, I knew they had some sort of device in there giving them more heat than what their bodies were producing. Once inside I was warmly greeted by two smiling faces, they were both dressed warmly and seemed to be enjoying the experience. They were both drinking some tea and as I sat down they offered some to me. As I took my first sip I considered how I would relate what I had learned to them, Niracina had not taken any interest in the historical information and had kept it isolated from her main database which meant she had no idea what I had learned. As I felt the warm tea make its way down through my body I took a breath and started from the beginning.

I knew it was difficult information for them to take in, but it gave them a desire to go and see the planet as well. We changed our course so that we could see what became of the Tirtris world, it would be much closer than the next cube anyway. The rest of the time in the virtual world was spent talking to them, figuring out what they had been up to without me. It turned out I didn't miss too much, they had been discussing this snow substance and the igloo and how comfortable it actually was once you finished it, however they would soon be ready for some warmer weather again, they both preferred the sun a lot more. Before I let Niracina do that, however, I wanted to show them some other features of snow, things I hadn't explained to them yet. So we spent about an hour outside the igloo playing, making snow angels, or at least that's what they finally called them once I explained what an angel was and pointed out the shape we made in the snow. We also created snowcreatures, mine was the most traditional looking. Then there was the snowball fight, I have to say that Niracina was a pretty good shot, hardly ever missing her target. When that was done and we were worn out Ambri and I left the world so that Niracina could change the season, being in there when it was changed was just a strange experience, so it was always best for us to leave.

Back in the ship was a much different feeling, we found more and more that we enjoyed actually being able to talk with Niracina face to face instead of through the interfaces she had constructed. She did her best to make it more like the virtual world, even going to far as to modify and grow Nasero's holographic projection, but it just wasn't quite the same. We knew it was hard on her too, she much preferred being able to touch and feel things and interact on a more personal level, but she knew that we had to live outside of her world as well. We were nearing the planet and would soon see what had become of it, our systems were much faster than theirs were back when this all began. As the planet came into view, with its lifeless, dull look, I had Niracina deploy a probe to scan the planet and explore its surface, if possible I would actually step onto the planet and explore it first hand.

First Contact, the Tirtris

The technology that went into the communications cube was the first they had been able to attain. The cubes didn't come about for quite some time afterwards but this was one of the first alien technologies the Klatvix acquired. It was through their dabbling with technology that they picked up a signal being transmitted, it was an open, unencrypted signal looking for alien life, much like what humans used to do in hopes of finding another alien species, however this one actually did what it was trying to do. When they picked up the signal they used the information provided in it, which included instructions for making a transmitter to send a message back, to further their development. It was probably around this time when they had this major boost to their technology that they grew hungry for more. When the aliens who sent the original message received the reply they had advanced quite a bit since that message was sent and so they actually traveled to meet with the Klatvix. Before their departure they sent another message informating them that they would be coming to visit, the message arrived in days instead of years but the ship would take much longer to arrive. The updated information sent with the second message advanced the Klatvix even farther, they could now communicate with these aliens with only days of delay instead of having to teach the next generation to wait for the message, they used this to their advantage and inquired of what they could construct in anticipation for their arrival. The aliens, being so excited about making contact, didn't think much of the request and quickly sent back some specs for a space station for the ship to dock at, the ship would be far too large to actually touch down on the planet and if there were a space station they wouldn't have any problems in their visit. They also figured that having it done would save them some years before they could properly interact with this new, advancing race. The Klatvix began designing their station using the information they were given, but they had no ships to perform the work, so once again they expressed their interest in helping and explained that they didn't have ships capable of doing this. Once again the aliens sent them the information they needed, after that all was quiet for the years it took to make the trip. It was this race of aliens that had started the Klatvix's ability to travel among their own solar system and gave them the information they needed to prepare for conquering them.

When the aliens finally arrived the station had been finished for quite a few months and the Klatvix ships had evolved a bit beyond the original specs sent, which pleased the aliens. Upon arrival they introduced themselves as the Tirtris and expressed their joy at having found an alien species advanced enough to receive and understand their message. The first couple of months with the Klatvix was a pleasure, they were treated to the finest things that they had to offer and talked freely of their technology and their sciences. The Klatvix learned quickly, taking note of everything in books and drawings and collecting samples when they were available. They learned much of the universe from the Tirtris and began advancing their technology farther. It wasn't until the Klatvix asked about defenses and weapons that the Tirtris quickly learned that this race wasn't quite as advanced as they had hoped. The Tirtris had long ago evolved beyond conflict and used their technology for bettering the lives of their people, but with a simple question about defenses and weapons they figured out that the Klatvix were still suffering from the desire for war and conquest, they talked to them about this, trying to help them understand that there was a better way, but when the Klatvix learned that they were not going to get any additional advantages from these aliens they wasted little time in deploying the ships they had kept hidden, the Tirtris didn't have time to respond to any of it and their ship was quickly destroyed and the visitors taken as slaves to help the Klatvix advance. Unfortunately the Klatvix knew now where their home world was as well and worked diligently to prepare some ships to make the trip there and destroy it, fearing that there would be more Tirtris coming to take revenge for what they had done, but the Tirtris had no idea what was coming.

When the Klatvis ships arrived they found a world that was disarmed, there were no defenses and no weapons and so they took it, enslaving the people and forcing them to mine the planet dry. After years of working in these conditions the Tirtris were dying off and their planet with them, all life had been destroyed so that the Klatvix would be able to continue developing their ships and technology. It was towards the end of this world's life that they received a response to the Tirtris signal from another alien race, and realizing they could once again conquer a world and take its resources they responded, posing as the Tirtris. So it was, that with one group of aliens, not realizing the damage they could cause, had advanced another alien race to the point where they could go out and begin their conquest of other races and worlds. After reading over all the history this cube contained about the origins of its technology I made note of where the Tirtris world was, I didn't anticipate finding any survivors, but I had to see what had become of the planet when the Klatvix abandoned it.

The First of Many

Being able to interact with Niracina in the virtual world made our bond with her much stronger. We could experience things together that simply were not possible when she was a ship, and watching her learn new things through her virtual body was wonderful as well. She was like a child with her interactions, though she had created this world she had no idea what it would be like. Some of the sensations that she felt were only possible after we helped her get them configured properly. Her favorite though was feeling the sun upon her skin, the warmth of it was much better than what she felt through her hull. We had been spending quite a bit of time in this virtual world, watching it grow and expand and change seasons. She hadn't quite figured out how fast she wanted seasons to pass and how she wanted the seasons to act so we had a different experience every day. She could have made it different every moment, but for our sake she slowed it down so we could enjoy it with her. The girls definitely grew closer together in this virtual world, they would often leave me to my explorations so that they could spend some time together talking. It was wonderful, but unfortunately we had to leave it at the end of each day and that was difficult. She understood why we had to leave but wished that we could stay or that she could leave with us, but we simply didn't have that kind of technology on her yet. It would be possible in the future when she could grow the technology for us to enter it as heavy energy, but it would put a heavy strain on her at this time.

When we finally arrived at the first cube we wasted little time in docking with it, the technology that Niracina had evolved worked perfectly and we had instant access to the cube. Interactions with it didn't work at first, however, it recognized me and it still wasn't authorized to give me any information, however we were able to upload the new programming and once it had permeated the system it became quite a bit more accomodating to us. We were able to extract all the information it had about all the other cubes as well as get the information we needed to evolve our systems to become the center of all cube communications, this would allow us to have greater control over them when we arrived as well as being able to track them with quite a bit more accuracy. This of course would take some time, so we first determined the location of the next cube, once this was done and all the plans were made we left the cube and had it compact itself, there would be no need for a chamber inside of it now and we would be able to store it safely until we could offload it at one of the stations. Once this business was done Ambri wasted little time in going back to visit with Niracina, I however spent some time going over the information we had gathered and learning about this cube and the next one we were going to visit.

A Simple Picnic

We always ended up here when we came to this world, a field of tall grasses and flowers. The sweet smell of it all filled the air, that was always the first thing I noticed, it was fresh and clean and sweet. The next thing I always noticed was the warm wind playing with the plants, making them wave and bow. After appreciating these things for a moment I heard the sound of something moving through the field which made me turn. My eyes fixed upon what had made it, Ambri was moving her hands through the grass, the seeded heads felt slightly tacky this time of year and soon the seeds would be done maturing and the field would go dormant until the next generation started growing. When she had finished her exploration of the grass she moved to my side and slipped her arm through mine, she was wearing a long, sleeveless, deep blue dress. On her feet were some simple sandals, which was not a normal accessory for her but she was learning to like them, at least when she walked through the field. She had put her hair up today, I could just imagine the chore that had been, but she did it because she knew it had a tendancy to get tangled with everything here and she wanted to avoid having anything stuck in it while we were enjoying our time together. At her side was a basket of food, I could smell the scent of the fresh bread and the sweet fruit that she had brought along. Today we had decided it would be good to enjoy the warm weather and have a picnic. We had a spot we liked next to a small stream, it would take a little while to walk there but we didn't mind, it was nice to have the time to talk and enjoy the fresh air a little longer. It wouldn't just be the two of us this time, which was okay, we enjoyed her company as well, it just always took her a moment to catch up to us, she did so much love lying in the field for awhile. As we made our way to the edge of the grass I heard her coming, we both turned to watch her approach. The first thing that always stood out was the dark, deep forest green hair, it was nearly black it was so dark and in a field of gold it stood out. Her hair was long and straight and so it waved in the breeze and bounced about with each step. As she came closer the you could see the greenish tint to her skin, it had been getting darker with the extra exposure to the sun. She was amazing to watch, such a thin, tall figure with fluid movements. Her body didn't have very many curves to it, even her face lacked any deep features, her nose being thin and nearly flush with her face and her lips being but a thin line between her cheeks, but her eyes were brilliant and full of life, though it was hard sometimes to look at those deep crimson pools. The iris took up most of the eye, leaving little white to show. As I took it all in she smiled, it was a sweet smile and warmed my heart to see it, she knew I was once again taking in all the features she had designed this body with. It was still strange to see Niracina this way, but it was nice to be able to interact with her as a being instead of just as a ship. She looked at me as a daughter would look at her father, she had worked hard to make a form that I would approve of, and though it had been a very simple design she had done a fine job with it. We were a strange looking bunch I imagined, but together we were a family. We quickly continued on to our spot by the stream and had our picnic, when we were done it took only a few moments for the surroundings to fade and for us to find ourselves back on the ship.

It has been a very fascinating experience making your primary home in an organic, intelligent ship. The fact that she can control her own evolution is an amazing thing to witness. All the potential upgrades we had come up with for her systems were nearly done, including the non-lethal weapons that would allow her to transport a potential enemy to a virtual world. One of the more interesting things she was growing though was her own virtual world. She had developed it in two ways, the first being a world in which she herself was living and which we often used to enjoyed some time together and the other where she could store prisoners. Both were quite lovely, but in the prison one there was no communications with her, she could monitor it all she wanted but you were not aware of anything but the world. In the one she lived in she could still monitor everything and you could do the same too if you focused on it, it was a strange feeling actually, in her world when you focused on the outside you could feel the things that she felt, all the parts of the ship, the different forces of the universe, I actually could know what it felt like to be a ship. The more amazing thing about it though was the immense detail she put into it, the sights, the smells, the tastes, she was making sure to include all the details to an even deeper level than we had accomplished in our original simulations, which of course meant that Evan was working to keep up with her. Niracina's imagination was a lot more developed than we had originally thought, I knew she wasn't designed with it but the fact that she had it made her a very amazing ship.

A Time of Peace

It was nice to have no need to rush, we didn't feel pressured to reach the cubes, they were mostly non-functional without commands to follow. I hadn't imagined there were so many, but when we had sent out the query for location the responses had been amazing. There were so many cubes, many of which that had not seen or heard from their creators in quite a long time. Some of them had been equipped with drives to allow for faster travel while others had been placed in systems and had never really moved. Each one had a unique purpose, though we would only be able to figure out these purposes when we picked them up. The first cube we decided to go after was one we had seen before, it had been moved since then but we found its location pretty quickly. It was the cube that maintained communications with the other cubes, it was the only one we could receive a signal from directly, but once we had it that would all change.

The information that was being delivered to us from the station was invaluable, each cube had a common system to allow access and would respond once Niracina finished evolving her equivalent to it. We also found the code we would need to give the cubes to make them recognize us as their new masters. But the most exciting thing we found was that each cube not only served a single purpose, but they also represented a piece of technology from another alien race, and if we identified the cube we may be able to find out where the alien race's home world was and try to make peace with them, I was sure the fact that we had captured the Klatvix would help us in that endeavor, at least if the aliens had survived the encounter. We had hopes that some of them had survived, we knew of at least the one for now, but if there were others we would be happy to make friends with them or help them out if their home were destroyed as well.

As for homes, Nasero reported that his planet was now without dome, the atmosphere had been converted to a point where it would finish itself without assistance, this allowed him to use the dome's resources to construct a research station and manufacturing facility. It would be run by the drones he constructed and he would maintain full control over them. He also reported that the creatures that had lived in his biodome were now multiplying on the planet, each area of it being picked up by a different set of critters. This made Ambri happy, as she loved seeing the cute, gentle ones and knew that more space would mean more safety for a lot of them. With all this good news from him I knew that this meant he would be able to focus more of his attention on the triple star system stations, I knew he was anxious to come up with better power sources, even more so now that we had need of the excess power to increase our simulation capacity. Overall, things were looking up, there were no conflicts we needed to address, the planets were being terraformed as we had hoped and we were on an easy mission to bring in the last of the Klatvix technology.

Removing Control

With the Klatvix fleet captured and scans of their planets revealing no signs of life we had finished our task. We quickly deconstructed the technologies we had put in place and had the drones and probes return to the station to be decommissioned. We didn't want that many machines to be at our disposal and the resources would be invaluable in improving our current technologies. Once we had finished cleaning up the war zone we deployed the probes with the necessary technology upgrades to remove the star shields from the systems we didn't need to maintain control over, which was most of them. Once that was done I began making plans for our next task. We had successfully captured both of the hostile alien races we needed to at this time, but we had not finished making sure their control outside of the virtual universe was gone. There were still the black cubes floating around and we would need to gather them all up. I didn't anticipate many problems in this task, it would just take some time. We already had the communication system we needed to find them, and the stations would respond without question, they were very accomodating when they weren't in use. When I had finished making the necessary plans I went to see if Ambri and Niracina would want to go on this mission or if they had other desires.

Ambri wanted to join me, she still wanted to see more of the universe and Niracina was also ready to go as well. She had no desire to do anything different than to travel around with me, she did request however that we remove the technology we had installed before going, it felt foreign to her still and she didn't like it. This we quickly did and she assured us that she was already growing the new technology herself. She had learned quite a bit during the battle and had many plans for improving her systems, but she wanted to make sure they were grown and evolved and not manufactured and grafted to her. I then went to see how the Klatvix simulation was doing, we would be leaving soon and I wanted to make sure it was working out as planned.

Progress in their virtual war was faster than I imagined, they wasted little time in destroying the rest of the ships that were on our side and forcing us to retreat. They attempted to pursue us but the shield we had planned activated and they were trapped. They tried a few things to get through it or disable it, but knowing what it was they quickly returned to their home system and finished off any remaining drones or probes. This of course gave them some new technology to work with, but it was nothing we feared they would gain an advantage from. The ships then departed again to learn the constraints of their system and to see if they could find a way out. Not finding one they returned to their system and continued as they had been when the war started, I assumed they were still researching technology to try to overcome our shields. Once I was satisfied with the progress I asked Evan if he would be willing to continue developing their virtual universe, we knew eventually they would find some technology that should be able to overcome our shields and we would need to have something else for them to do in there. He of course was more than willing to do this, it would give him access to more of their information and allow him to learn more about those who created his original form. With everything in order we left the station and the planet in the capable hands of Evan and the aliens and began our mission to find the remaining cubes.

Finishing the Battle

The thought that they could hack a living computer was almost laughable. I know they had smart computers too, but one that was completely free to think independently was something new to them. They were trying to hack into Niracina while we were hacking into them, which made us realize we had an easier way in. We had Niracina feign hackability and once they thought they were in we used this link to infect their computers with a small virus that would give us absolute control when the right transmission was received. We then realized we did have a problem, once they were in the system we had opened up to them they began trying to take control which meant Niracina had to fight a bit more to maintain herself. They would never gain full control over her but they could distract her from some of the systems she wanted to be maintaining. In particular they were attempting to shut down our shields, both the ones on her and the shields surrounding the system. This was a logical maneuver but not one they would be able to accomplish. The area they had been able to get in to actually was for maintaining the garden area of the ship and had no available connection to the other systems due to the limitations she had put in place when she opened it up in the first place. It was like gently massaging someone's foot and hoping that they would spill all their secrets from the pain of the experience. It just wasn't going to happen. I did, however, have to go and manually turn off some of the systems in there as we didn't need them destroying our source of food. Once the systems were turned off they began to realize their limitations and tried again to hack a different system.

We allowed them to keep trying, we had already done what we needed to, they believed they would actually make some progress doing this and so we just continued to wait for the virus to make it to the other ships. It was a slow process, there were many systems to infect and it had to avoid detection long enough to propagate. While this was going on we began focusing our actual hacking on gaining information on their technology, we wanted to complete our knowledge of them while the systems were in use by beings that actually knew what to do with them. This gave us quite a bit of information, including ways of extracting the probes from the stars that were infected, it would just require an upgrade to their drives to get them out with all the technology still intact. We also found within their technology ways to improve our drives, defenses, simulations and teleportation technology. It appeared they had a very large repository of technological information from various alien races but they didn't know yet how to use it all. Some of the most valuable data we got was the tests they had run on this information which would help us utilize it a lot faster. Things were going well in our hacks, though they never lasted long, but this didn't matter, we were likely going to be able to gather the information later from the ships when we had captured them all anyway, however there was one bit of information I saw that I desperately desired but was pulled from my grasp.

I had run into the files concerning project Shrang and was about to pull them when they disappeared. From what we could get of the logs the files had been uploaded to a device that looked very familiar. They had taken the information and put it into an implant chip, which meant they were going to hide it inside one of them, I would be unable to get it without actually figuring out which one had it. I tried to find a backup of the data somewhere, but it was wiped clean, they knew we were stealing information and wanted to make sure they kept something that would give them leaverage against me. When I realized I wasn't going to get it I checked the progress of the virus, it had made it to all the ships and we could capture the rest. As they sent a mocking message to me about having hidden the information on my life I smiled, it didn't matter that much to know the details of the experiment, all that mattered was the single command I sent. They had but a moment to respond, the image of their faces with such a look will forever be in my mind, entertaining me, that simple puzzled look when they didn't understand what I said and why I said it with such confidence. The ships were all gone, each one finally captured and the data being sent to the virtual world we had constructed for them. In that world they were winning, they would think they were about to overcome our defenses and suddenly a much larger shield would activate, trapping them in a small part of the universe.

Filling the Prison

I knew she would eventually be capable of it, but I hadn't expected it here and now and without stabilizers, but there it was, clearly showing on the sensors. A perfectly stable wormhole leading from here to our desired battleground, a quick jump took us right through it and away from the ships, though not for long as we detected their gravity jumps being activated, the bonus this time however was that we knew they were coming. I would hazard a guess that the first capture caught about half of their fleet, more than enough for us to be able to now have the advantage. Once they were in the system we activated the new star web which would prevent them from communicating or escaping. Once it was active a few tried to jump anyway, only to be captured by our technology. The next phase of our plan then began and we hijacked their communication system to get more of their ships to start jumping here to assist. They were given the picture of a massive war going on at this system, many ships like Niracina were presented to them and so they sent the rest of their fleet. Once again we couldn't capture all of them but it was enough to allow us to fight what remained. Our purpose would now be to break down their defenses and hack into their ships' computers to force them to jump. While we worked on that the probes began their invasion.

I'm sure to the Klatvix that lived on the planets it looked like the end of the world, a massive army of machines coming and instantly disintegrating everyone you knew with their weapons, at least that's what it looked like. Some of the drones were taken down with their hand weapons, this was to be expected, but we had planned for this and had sent a very substantial army on this mission. The probes, after dropping off the drones would then start scanning the planets, going deeper and deeper and sending the information to the simulation which was then updated to incorporate the new data. The beings that were then captured in this simulation would see that the gun did something different than disintegrate, to them it looked like an energy shift, pushing them to another dimension where the robots could still attack them but their weapons were disabled. It took only moments for a few of them to modify their virtual weapons and they were quickly fighting back, experiencing victory instead of defeat in this world. From the reports I could get while fighting it seemed to be going well, a few of them even modifying the virtual drone weapons to put them back into their correct dimension, which, of course, was planned for. As they ensured their victory in the virtual world we cleared them out of the actual worlds, the forces were simply overwhelming and it didn't take long before we were no longer warring on the worlds but instead hunting the remaining aliens down. It was so sinister when you thought of what we were doing, but at least we weren't killing them, just moving them.

As far as the actual war, we were losing a few of our ships and it was difficult to wear down the defenses of so many ships. Eventually we were able to get access to the computers of one of them, but then we had to fight against the Klatvix who were manning the controls, they were quick to put a stop to our hacking attempts, but we had multiple minds working on it as well. With our defenses adequately protecting us Ambri was able to handle the weapon systems to disable the ships while Evan, Niracina, Nasero and I worked on hacking their computers. Once we found what we were looking for in their systems the ship we were hacking quickly performed a jump and vanished. We continued doing this as best we could, but each success made the next harder, they were sharing information on what we were doing, though they didn't understand completely what it meant when they were forced to jump, from what we could determine from the communications we were listening to they thought we were thinning them out so that we could destroy them one by one, this, of course, made them fight that much harder to keep us from getting into their systems. Based on this information we decided it would be best to stop hacking them one by one and get the rest all at once.

Defending the Star

I would have thought our shielding against gravity would have been enough, but from what little information I could get from Niracina before I had to focus on something else indicated that they had blasted us with something non-lethal to further break down our shields, we wouldn't be able to sacrifice them for additional speed anymore. The more immediate problem was that part of the gravitational force had been their jump, they had performed the very thing we needed them to but it had been so fast that we had been unable to capture it. Niracina transmitted this data to Evan, we hoped it reached him because shortly after it was sent our systems started to experience interference from the arrival of more Klatvix ships. They were still broadcasting interferences and so we were unable to jump, however we could navigate well enough and headed towards the closest star. They of course began firing at us, but as we were no longer draining energy from our shields we were able to withstand the attacks, though it was clearly putting some strain on Niracina. We were close enough to the star to start absorbing the ambient energy being emitted from it to boost our output, however with more ships on the way we wouldn't have very much chance to survive if we didn't reach the star first.

It was difficult to make upgrades to systems that were in use, and with only seconds to spend on each modification there was a lot of room for error. I was trying to redo our equations that allowed us to filter out gravity interference but if I modified the wrong part I would end up making us completely vulnerable. A lot of their attacks now were gravity based, they had been studying the black hole long enough to know much more about it than we did and each blast was like getting hit with a microscopic black hole, it wouldn't have been too bad but it sucked away energy from us each time. Luckily I was able to find something, not quite what I needed but it restored a bit of our communications and I had Evan's help in modifying the rest of the equation. Once that was active we were able to move a bit faster and actually reach the star, we didn't slow down but plunged into it, forcing them to stop attacking or risk destroying the star and all of them with it, this also gave us a massive energy boost. With this amount of energy available to us we were able to boost all of our systems and determine how many ships we were facing and where else they were going and coming from. We also were able to see that they were beginning to deploy some of the probes that created system shields, which we had to ensure didn't get through as our scans also showed that they had been modified.

With so many ships it was difficult to stop the probes, but with Ambri there helping the two of us managed. Evan was on his way on one of the other ships, we were going to have to change our tactic and hope that he could survive the attacks. It was clear that the Klatvix could detect his approach because a couple ships moved in his direction to intercept. With just the loss of those two it was easier to fight against their probes, it was unbelievable how many they had, wave after wave of them kept coming. A few more ships departed from our target area to come assist, we were hoping at least to get a few more distractions. Niracina was busy trying to overcome their systems and eventually had improved our shields enough to protect us from their normal attacks again, so when we left the star we would be in a much better position. Once that was done she began charging an energy blast, I wanted to ask what it was but she was distracted and I couldn't lose my focus on protecting the star. It wasn't until the blast was released that I realized what it was.

The Battle Begins

It was time, I wasn't completely ready, but I didn't think I ever would be. As I boarded Niracina I noticed that Ambri was following, I told her it would be too dangerous but she retorted that she was coming with me through our connection anyway, she might as well actually be there to offer some assistance. I didn't argue with her, it would actually be nice having her there, her presence brought me comfort and that afforded me some additional clarity to what I was doing. Several of the alien ships that had been fixed up would be joining us as well, they had already departed and would meet us at the rendezvous, they would mostly be there to give additional targets and shields for the Klatvix to fight against, we were pretty sure not all of them would commit to a gravity jump and so we needed to be prepared to actually fight. Niracina had been equipped with some of the new technology we had developed, she didn't much care for it but it would take quite a bit of time for her to grow the equivalent of it and we needed to act sooner rather than later. We already knew they were going to come after us again, it was just a question of when. As we left the station Ambri began crafting a new trinket, I was sure it contained memories of the children, she didn't want to think about what was going to happen next until she had to, I couldn't blame her.

As we came up to the rest of the fleet to give final instructions I felt the dread of going to war, I never looked forward to it when they announced the robots coming either and so I usually went to where they wouldn't be and continued my mining, this time however there would be no escaping it, I needed to be here in case things didn't go as well as we were hoping. The probes carrying the drones were prepped and ready at the border of the Klatvix controlled space, all they needed was the signal and they would begin their invasion. We double checked that the power systems in the capture devices were running at peak performance, Evan was on board this structure to make sure they didn't fail. The other ships had only one hope against the forces we were facing, and that was their shield technology, I figured it would be adequate, but I had no idea what to expect, there could have been major technological advances in the time they've had so far, I just hoped our own advances would outdo theirs. Once the fleet was ready we took off towards the system, we would be the bait.

Our plan was to stay stealthed as long as possible, however once we were a ways past where the probes had been left Niracina informed us that some sort of scan had just detected her, it was something new to her. Our sensors indicated a lot of gravitational fluctuation coming from the system and we knew they were already coming after us. We turned off the stealth, there was no need for it, and turned around to lead them where we wanted them to be. It didn't take long for some of them to start catching up, they had been able to increase the potency of their drives. As one of them got close enough we tried to redirect them, however we found that they had improved their shields against our disruptors. All we could do was push Niracina and go faster, it made our shields weaker but they were too close for comfort, it seemed to be enough and we maintained our distance ahead of them, or at least that's what it seemed until we felt the gravitational force fly past us and suddenly pull us out of our jumped state. They had found another way to stop us.

Ready for War, Hoping for Peace

With the battle simulation programmed and in the virtual world and the real robot army we had constructed completed we were nearly ready. The devices that would perform the transfer were done and we had finished replicating their communication technology and deciphering the changes they had made. We would be able to monitor their communications and send the messages that we needed to. We had tested the weapons to make sure they worked and then extracted the targets we had put into the virtual world. Everything had seemed very real to them, they didn't anticipate any problems in convincing the Klatvix that nothing had really changed, at least so long as they were already in the fight to begin with. I had come up with several ways to stop the fighting, but it wouldn't stop the war, I was sure we would have plenty of work to do in the long run, but at least we had something realistic to work with for now. Once I had verified all the systems I went back to our first virtual prison, I had to check with the creature how things were going.

It hadn't taken long for things to start improving in this virtual world for them. They had been taught to construct their own homes without destroying the environment further than it needed to be and quite a few of them had settled in to a domesticated life, this wasn't terribly surprising considering some of them had just been slaves and now were able to escape from their conditions. I found the original creature in his own home, he had spent quite a bit of time already in its construction and was still at work making a very elaborate place for himself. When I asked him how things were going it took a moment for him to realize it was me and he related to me how wonderful this virtual life was. He was the only one of his kind who knew it wasn't real and he didn't care at all, in this world he was free and knew that it was the best option for his people. Slowly the hierarchy was being torn down, the battle arena helped that a lot, especially when a "lower class" creature defeated an "upper class" one, that really changed their perspective on what they were doing. I also asked the creature what had changed about it, why it no longer sought to destroy me or steal the information I had. To that it replied that it had a lot of time to consider the situation and where it was leading, the creature, when it was created, had not known what was going on, it only knew that it suddenly had consciousness and wanted to survive and thrive, the malicious intend had most likely come from the excessive mutation that happened due to the fragments. It seemed that once a life form was able to cope with the rapid evolution it was capable of being less aggressive. This also made me realize why most of the life on Calypso had been so hostile towards us, always attacking if it felt we got too close, it wasn't protecting its territory, it actually was more aggressive due to the rapid evolution on the planet, though it wasn't quite as pronounced as it was in these creatures, but I was guessing that was due to the concentration of fragments. This brought us to the next potential solution for them, slowly working out the fragment energies from their digitized bodies, the fragments were already spread thinner among them, but if we could get them removed they would reach a more peaceful existence sooner rather than later. It would be difficult, but I was sure we could isolate these fragments and begin the process of removing them.

After leaving this world I went to see how the aliens were doing on the station. They were happy with the progress we had made with the first set of hostile aliens and held hope that this kind of process would be able to be used on future ones as well if it needed to be. They were anxious to see us begin the process with the Klatvix, but knew it was dangerous as well for us to start this war. They had been interacting with the creatures and had found that they were mostly a confused species, they had a lot of aggression and needed to learn to find peace, though some of them seemed to be on their way towards a peaceful life already. They held hope that eventually we would be able to bring them out of this virtual world and into a real existence where they could do good with their lives. As for their kind, they were slowly bringing the children out of stasis, they had to make sure they could handle more before releasing each group. The dome down on the planet was now able to function as a habitat, supporting some of them while the rest of the planet continued to be converted. The atmosphere outside the dome was still too toxic for them, but it would just be a matter of time before the dome could be deconstructed and their race would have free reign over the whole planet. We realized that not only would we have to terraform this planet for them, but if we held any hope for freeing the creatures or, if we were successful in capturing the Klatvix, freeing them to live outside of a virtual universe, we would need additional planets. This meant that we were very likely going to convert the rest of the planets that we could in this system, constructing them to be beautiful, peaceful worlds to live in.

Battle Plans

Knowing that amnesia wouldn't be inducible in the virtual world I would have to settle for reconstructing a good portion of the known universe around them. It was easy enough with all the data the probes had been able to gather, the more difficult section being where they were, but given our stealth we were able to get some good scans and would get more quickly if we were able to trap them in this virtual world. In order to contain them I came up with a plausible technology, though in actuality it didn't work due to the limits we had reached so far. The faked technology was furthering their star shields, we made it seem like we had found a way to overcome the limited power, likely by boosting it with a new type of power source, and linked multiple stars that surrounded their system and creating a very large bubble in which they would be unable to escape. To prevent them from seeing beyond this bubble we would make it look like we combined the net shield technology as well, which they would be aware of but did not have themselves. With these virtual combinations we would be able to make it plausible that we had trapped them, we just then had to have as much accuracy as possible in the things contained within the bubble, this of course would only be able to be completed once we had captured all of them. We then implemented some ships in the universe that would allow us to interact with them, they were programmed with our technology but rendered unscannable and with shields that their current technology would not be able to penetrate. Once that was done I began working on a plan that would get them all to jump at once, I knew this time we wouldn't be able to store them, that had nearly been a disaster with the last capture, so we needed to set this up near some stars with gates in them, that way we could capture and transmit right away. We also worked out a way to have the system automatically redirect the non-living energy to a different storage location so that we wouldn't have to strain our systems while filtering through it all manually.

Unfortunately there would be no simple one time capture of them all, there were simply too many and they wouldn't all be on the ships. We could come up with some weapons that would capture and transmit individually, but we would be discovered quickly if we tried to do this from the beginning. We would have to create a full war plan with different waves of attacks as well as some other tactics to make the rest of them commit to the battle as well. We could make numerous drones and probes to attack the planet, we had plenty of resources now with the captured planet ship and we wouldn't need any crystals because we had the first set of technology, we just hoped they didn't anticipate any offensive use of this and create some defenses already. Seeing the construction of so many machines made me uneasy, I pictured the robots that we had been fighting against on Calypso and just hoped we weren't going too far. The last problem we had to overcome was making sure Niracina had enough power to stay alive and use her redirection weapon to make sure the jumps took each ship to where it needed to be, we just hoped the additional power generators would be enough for the entirety of the mission. This of course also meant I had to change the simulation a bit, instead of suddenly finding themselves back around their planet I would have to continue the war on the inside until they were all captured and we could simulate a conclusion, this would be difficult to fake, but we could probably continue a war indefinitely inside there if we needed to, but I hoped they would be able to eventually find peace in there.

The Virtual Arena

Once I had rested I went to check on how the virtual prison was doing. To my surprise almost all of the creatures had been transferred into it and they were all accepting the story. Some of them, the slaves in particular were loving the new world so much that it was clear that if they were given the opportunity to leave they wouldn't, choosing instead to live free on this non-violent planet. As for the rest, our ally was doing his best to convince them that this was a good place for them and that they didn't need to continue their pursuit of conquering or destroying other life, it was clear that it would take a long time to fully convince them, but then again, they wouldn't have much choice. Once he had a moment I talked to our ally to figure out what he would need next in order to make this a more permanent home for them, to this he replied that removing violence from them would take quite a bit of time, but if there were a place they could go and fight against each other in a non-lethal way it might relieve the tension. For this I had an idea and I explained to him how gladiator battles were done back on our original home planet, the arena sounded like a good idea and so we got to work designing one of the virtual moons to have this feature for them, in order to get to it we would use a teleport system, that would limit them to traveling between the planet and the moon and not give them hope for escaping completely from this planet.

Setting up the rules probably took the most time, we also added features to keep track of the winner and who was the strongest among them based upon their victories. We added a pad where the loser would be reconstituted, that way there would be no death and an explanation for why none of them could die in this place. We made the rest of the moon simple and without any valuable resource, it would be explained that the aliens long ago stripped it of all these resources when they were developing their technology, however after realizing the destruction they were bringing upon their own planet they had abandoned their quest for further advancement and had used their ships instead to make a satellite station from which they monitored the stars around them, hoping to find other alien races and assist them in not destroying their own world and its resources as well. The structure on the moon would then be explained as an abandoned mining station, but seeing the need for something more than what the planet offered they prepared it for use by the creatures in order that they may not have to give up all they are but have a way to express themselves in the way that they seemed to do it best. Hopefully the ability to fight would be enough to make them believe anything they heard and they would just take it at face value. Once it was ready we opened it up and it was explained to them how it came about, some didn't even wait long enough for the explanation to finish and soon there were plenty of scores on the leader boards and much violent merriment on the moon. Having seen how well the prison could work I left the reality and got to work designing a more sophisticated virtual world for the next prison, this one would take a lot more work to make it convincing to its inhabitants.

Populating the World

When we made it to the location where we had set up the net and temporary storage system we found that it had worked, the ship and all its inhabitants were safely stored, however the system's power wasn't going to last very long. The data was much larger than anticipated and we were straining the power supply. We quickly transferred the data from the temporary system to Niracina, who then flew towards the nearest star. Her power systems wouldn't be adequate enough to store all this data for very long either, however with the solar energy from the star and the ability to absorb the ambient heat energy coming from it she would be able to hold onto it for quite awhile. Once we were in a position where we weren't going to lose all our power we calculated how much time we could hold onto the energy once we moved from where we were. Unfortunately the farther we got from a star the faster she would be drained, however if we created a gate in this star we wouldn't have to be any distance from any star. It took awhile for the probes to be deployed from Nasero, he had to recover a few resources before they could be construced. These probes then had to go to the bases to gather the necessary resources to make a gate and a heavy energy broadcast system. Once they did make it to our location it didn't take long for the gate to be made, then all we had to do was use the broadcast system to send the data from our location to the base where the prison was set up, however we would have to work quickly as once the data hit that location we would have to seperate the living from the non-living energy signatures so that we could extract what wasn't needed in the virtual world and be able to power the system for more than a couple of hours.

The probes that made the gate for us then went and deconstructed the capturing device and the two temporary gates, we didn't want some other aliens to find it and learn of our abilities, particularly if those aliens were the Klatvix. We then went back to the base and got to work extracting all the non-living life from the heavy energy, this ended up boosting our supply of materials quite a bit and the energy being stored in the proper system didn't have the same kind of drain. We then got to work identifying each of the individual life signatures that was stored in this data, I wanted to find the signature of the creature we had created first, he would be the first to be reconstituted in the virtual world which would allow us to get some feedback and make some changes before starting to transfer the rest of them into the system. To fully locate him I had to go into the virtual world and be allowed to feel the different energies, eventually finding the one that felt so familiar. His energy pattern still made me shudder a bit, but once we found it I left the virtual world and used the interfaces to be represented by my avatar instead of actually being there. Once I was ready we transferred his energy from the mass into the system, his body was reconstituted apart from what he had become, allowing him to move freely about. Once he was oriented he moved towards me and inquired why there appeared to be a fog in his mind, this made me realize that the amnesia wasn't going to work fully. I explained this to him and he gave me a better idea.

Once the changes were made I modified my avatar's look to be like the aliens who were on this station with us, it would be important to maintain that there were only two types of aliens now in this virtual world, at least for now. We then brought in the first few creatures, they were greeted by the aliens and the first creature who we brought in and it was explained to them that something happened in the planet ship jump that nearly destroyed them all, however these advanced aliens were able to save the living creatures from the disaster and bring them to this planet. They of course realized they were vulnerable and attempted to attack, however we had changed the programming in this world to prevent them from actually being able to cause any harm, confused about this it was then explained that these aliens had a way of preventing violence while on this planet, which also meant any violence towards the planet itself, meaning they would be unable to mine, limiting them to very basic technology and unable to leave the planet for now, however the aliens would do their best to assist them in finding a new home if that was their desire. This they accepted for now and we continued to follow these same steps for the rest of the creatures. After the first few were introduced and everything seemed to be going as planned I left the virtual world and got some rest, I was completely exhausted from all that had been going on.

Setting the Trap

With the first prison constructed we had to test it out. The mechanics of it looked good and our interface with it showed us a beautiful world, one that would regenerate itself despite what the inhabitants did. But we still needed to test our capability of actually putting something in it. I volunteered myself, not wanting anyone else to get stuck in a virtual reality if we were unable to get them back out. The feeling was very similar to translocating, it tingled and made you a bit dizzy, but it worked as we had hoped. I found myself in the middle of a forest, the irony of it made me laugh. I remembered reading at one time about these role playing games people would play, pen and paper type stuff I guess. There were no graphics, just a person sitting there telling you what was happening to your character. I read how a lot of them started out in a forest, not really knowing where they were and having to figure out what to do after that. I quickly made the suggestion to modify the starting area to be an arrival zone, like you had just come from a ship traveling and had been dropped off, it would make it function more like a dream, you would end up starting in the middle of it. Being inside this virtual world made it a bit more real, I could feel and smell and taste everything. We worked on getting some of our alien friends to create virtual selves in this world so that they could interact with our prisoners and make it seem more real. We developed an economy and a city to live in. We even came up with jobs that they could take. If we made it as functional as possible we might be able to trick them into buying into it. We would, of course, have to give them a bit of amnesia so that they'd forget their original purpose, but I was pretty sure we could do that with the dream technology that was holding this all together. Once we were done with the test and getting things ready it was time to extract me from the world.

It had taken them about an hour to get the extractor to lock onto me, it turned out to be more difficult than imagined to lock on to a particular piece of heavy energy when it could move around among the other energy entities in the world, but once they had the lock it took mere moments for me to be out of the world and back where I belonged. It was a much stranger feeling leaving the virtual world, it really didn't take much time in it to start feeling like it was real. I understood a lot more now how people way back in our history could lose themselves to this, and they didn't even get to physically enter it. Once I related my experiences to the others there were quite a few who wanted to experience this themselves, we allowed any who wanted the ability to go in while we made our arrangements to capture the traveling planet ship. The biggest plus in this would be that we would have time to slowly bring the creatures into the dream, the heavy energy jump would put them into stasis so long as we kept it in tact.

With everything in place it was time to get the aliens into their world ship. It wouldn't take much, we knew their ships couldn't do a jump like the original and so to keep up with us they would have to return to the ship. We had a couple wormhole gates constructed, this would be how we would get them to believe they were about to overtake us by performing this jump, which would be the only reason they would do it, I just hoped the desire to destroy me was still somewhere in all of them, otherwise we might not get the commitment we were hoping for. As we approached the shielded system, completely uncloaked, we saw many of their ships start moving towards the barrier. They had weapons ready but no ability to fire them through the shield. Once I had their undivided attention I showed them who the shield owner was by passing through it, enduring their attacks and then passing through. When they tried to follow they were unable to. This aggravated them to no end and I saw the planet ship moving towards the barrier, as planned they would use their combined forces, by suggestion of their intelligent computer, to blow apart the shield. As the ships returned to the planet I saw all the pieces falling into place. I felt the collective energy of the creatures unleashing their wrath into a single attack together and saw the energy tear apart the shield, there was no turning back now, they were free and we had just one chance to capture them. Our ship was the faster and we were able to lead them to the gate, which opened for us but was poorly disguising our destination, as we had hoped they made their jump as we finished passing into the gate.

No Longer an Enemy, But an Ally

It was strange, being confronted with the very enemy you had wished to destroy and feeling pitty for their current situation. It looked pitiful just sitting there, attached as it was to the ship. The creature we had created had been betrayed by its own creation, it had been forcefully integrated into the planet ship, enhancing its capabilities and overseeing all its functions. In this state the creature was unable to use its full powers anymore, which meant that in this room I had all the power against it, they had purposely not installed any weapons in here for fear that it would try to destroy itself. When Evan joined me he was as shocked as I had been, seeing a living being forced to be the ship's computer and intelligence. Unfortunately it was no longer able to communicate in normal means, and so we can to get a console from the ship and attach it to the rest of the system in order for it to tell us what it desired to.

The race he had constructed at first were all like minded, they desired to increase in numbers and power and take over all that they could, in particular to take us out as we had left him behind in that triple star system. He understood now why we did that, having experienced his own evil come back to him, but at the time he had burned with anger. Shortly after creating so many creatures and making a fleet of ships the galaxy had a shield put around it and they were unable to leave. In their furious rage they created more creatures, ones that they allowed to evolve, and these creatures quickly figured out they were superior and took out the rest of the first generation, save for him. They knew that they had a lack of individual knowledge, but if they used him they would be able to make a ship that would be able to teach them everything they needed to know. After creating the start of this ship the second generation began working on other generations, creating servants, workers, scientists, etc. as they saw fit to do. The one thing they couldn't create, and they hadn't figured out why yet, was a class of super-intelligent creatures that would be able to overcome their inability to leave the system and take over the rest of the galaxy. The reason, as the creature explained, was that he still had some personal function left in the ship and he made them all go mad before they could realize their potential, however his powers were weakening and he needed to find a way to stop his own creation from doing what it intended to do. This was when he detected us, we had entered the system and approached the ship, he kept all the systems from alerting the others so that we could get on board and, hopefully, find a way to liberate him and destroy the rest.

We informed him that, unfortunately, we had no desire to destroy an entire race of beings, however evil they may be. We did intend to find a way to imprison another race though and the same method might work for this race as well. In order to capture them all, however, we would need some help from him. We could leave a way for him to destroy himself, however we had another idea for him if he could bear to suffer in this form for awhile, but we needed him to get all the ships to enter the planet ship and then use the heavy energy gravity drive to transport them all to a certain location before he decided if he wanted to destroy himself or listen to the idea when it was time. He informed us that this wouldn't be a problem. With that we made our plans and modifications that we needed to in order to give him more control over his planet ship, we then used the shaft to get as far back up the ship as possible before having to sneak our way quickly back to Niracina. It didn't take long to reach her, we had been able to bypass a lot of security by giving him more access, I just hoped that we made the right choice and would be able to go through with our plans. Once we were on board we waited for another ship to dock and slipped out again. It would only take a few hours to implement the technology and create our virtual prisons.

Detected

As we neared the doors I noticed the security surrounding it. There were numerous offensive devices all over it, most of them I recognized as my own design. The weapons were pointed at us, and the thing that made me feel horrible about the situation we were in was that they were following our movements. We should have been dead long before we even saw the weapons, their accuracy I knew of and their potency mixed with their numbers would have ripped us to shreds, yet they didn't. As I gazed back at the door before us I noticed it wasn't like the other doors. In fact, it looked like the aliens had attempted to make it like the others but the defenses shot the connections apart. There was a lone terminal attached to it, but it was completely isolated from the rest of the system. Evan walked up to it and as he was about to touch it the terminal came to life and the doors began to open. Something was expecting us and I wasn't sure I liked the thought of being expected. Once the doors were opened we knew we had little choice but to go through them, that was what whatever controlled this wanted us to do and the guns would make sure that if we didn't do what we were supposed to that we would do nothing more in our lives.

Once through the doors they began to close again, due to their size it wasn't quick and we could have escaped, but curiosity was getting the better of both of us at this point. Once the doors shut I was aware of a mindforce field surrounding us and realized that our translocation ability had just been blocked as well as any communications we were enjoying with Niracina. The only connection I could still feel, and it was faint for the first time ever, was with Ambri. I could sense her displeasure at what had just happened but I did my best to get the message to her that we were still okay. Before us was nothing but blackness, a long corridor from what I could tell, with no light. As we proceeded down the corridor the light came with us, following us along the wall. It was clear our stealth was not doing what we had hoped and so we turned it off. We also took some scans and found that the atmosphere here was suited to us and retracted our helmets. There was a thin layer of dust on the ground and our feet made tiny poofs rise up with every step. It was so very quiet down here and the passage seemed so long that I could not tell if we were going deeper into the planet ship or making our way back up, if it weren't for Evan being there with me I would have sworn I was dead and this was going to be my new eternity.

Eventually we came to the end of the passage, it opened into a very large chamber and as we stepped in the whole thing lit up. Inside was the ship, the first one that we had designed together. For me it was a memory, but for Evan it was a wonder, he knew that he had been a ship but hadn't fully realized how he had looked. He began instantly to scan it, learning about all its outer features. As we made our way around it the door to the ship opened and we were allowed inside. The terminals came to life the moment we approached them and Evan was able to start gathering all the data he desired on the old technology, including the ability to store living things as heavy energy. While he busied himself with this I made it my mission to find out why things were so easy at this point and why we were being accomodated, even beckoned to come do what we were doing. The ship proved to be empty, but once outside the ship again I noticed some connections running to another part of the chamber. As I made my way towards it I saw a door to another room, the door opened as I approached and when I entered I thought my eyes deceived me, what was on the other side was horrible, yet gave me a feeling of satisfaction coupled with pitty.

A Different Path

Trying to hack their systems proved to be tricky, Evan had to contribute to the effort as well, leaving me on my own in checking for another way through. Deeper scanning was out of the question, it would be unmaskable and surely give our presence away. There were many corridors to explore and most of them had creatures wandering around in them. I explored as much of this level of the planet-ship as I could, finding rooms where they were educating the newer spawns and a few rooms where they were caring for the young things as well. It appeared that they grew pretty quickly but they had an infancy just like anything else. I also noticed that they weren't actually all the same either, there were distinct changes in the different generations, though I wasn't sure each change was actually beneficial. Some of them seemed to be grown to be nothing more than a mindless military unit while others seemed to be grown with the intent of being overly intelligent, though these particular mutations didn't seem to be performing as they had hoped and had been locked away in their own part of the ship. The more I saw the more it seemed we had reached the bottom of the functional part of the ship, anything below us would be critical systems and things that were not to be seen. The strangest part though was that I could not sense at all that unique energy that belonged to the original creature. I knew it had to be here somewhere, it would be the one in control and would have stayed on the most important ship, most likely needing to be protected and maintain control over everything.

You almost felt pitty for some of these creatures, their living conditions were not all that great and some of them were treated as slaves to the others. They definitely had developed a hierarchy in their breeding, it was more evident down here in the bowels of the ship as opposed to when you first came in, I suppose that made sense, you wanted the slaves working the systems instead of manning the important things like gun ships or watching over the docks. The service rooms were mostly unused by the creatures, it was like these rooms would only be accessed when they had to be, the creatures had no idea how easy it was to get into their ship. This proved to be to our advantage however, but it was strange that they weren't overly paranoid considering the importance that this particular structure seemed to have. Though I didn't end up finding another way to the next level down I did find something interesting. There was a distict hollow or unused space sitting between a few of the service areas. Judging by the thickness of the walls that we had been able to observe it was just far too big, unless they really needed a huge support beam running up the whole of the ship here. I informed Evan of this and we decided to give the hacking a rest and make another hole in the ship to see what exactly was in this space.

It didn't take long to cut through, it was actually thinner than we would have expected. Once the hole had been cut we peered in to see what was there. It ended up being a massive conduit, containing a lot of system access points and it appeared to run down towards the center of the ship. The gravity in here was different, it must have access somewhere as you could walk comfortable around the whole of the thing, the ceiling being made to seem the empty space in the center of it all while all the walls were mearly floors that you walked around. After sealing up the hole we made, Evan took some time to construct a device to attach to the panels, it should allow him to start hacking into their systems without being detected, which meant we might be able to get the information we needed without having to find the device. While he did that I proceeded to move down this shaft towards the heart of the ship. I was surprised how unprotected this area was, though that was probably due to the location of it, you would have had to get pretty deep into the ship to get into it and they hadn't anticipated something being able to do that. The further down I got the stranger things became, the walls became more natural, more like what you would expect in a cave, but still covered with tons of technology and the gravity changes they had made were maintained throughout the tunnel. I also started to sense something up ahead, a type of energy that I don't recall encountering before. At this point Evan had caught up to me, he too picked up on the strange energy and noticed how the planet had not yet been completely converted into a ship, though it was still in process. We did hear near this tunnel the sound of mining, workers must be on the other side of these stone and metal walls still taking all the resources from the planet that they could, a more grotesque form of strip mining I thought. As we neared the center of the ship we came to a pair of very large doors, my guess is that these were what stood between us and the very thing we had come for.

Navigating the Passages

I guess I could say the easy part was getting into the ship, the hard part was activating our suit sensors and hoping that they didn't set off any alarms. The sensors, once activated, found nearby life sources and displayed them on our visors. It also provided a rough map of what was around us. With these sensors running our risk of being discovered increased, though we had done our best to disguise the signals. We used the display to figure out when the best moment was to open and close doors to the different passages. After all, it wasn't like we could follow the service area all the way to the heart of the ship. As it turned out, there were many service areas, they made things quite a bit easier for us, however they never went between levels, at least not by their original design. In order to remain hidden for as long as possible if not for the entirety of the mission we didn't cut any more holes to take shortcuts, instead having to hope that the direction we were going was the right one. Several times we had to stay hidden, either attached to the ceiling or hiding in the only corner available to us. It made my heart race to be so close to so many things that looked like the creature. From each one of them I could sense the potential power, though my own powers had increased there were still enough of them to give us many problems if we were found out. As we went deeper into the ship I felt Ambri sending me as many good thoughts as possible, it helped keep me calm which helped me stay alert to what was going on. Eventually we started to reach doors that had additional security to them.

Getting past the security doors was easy enough for now, though I anticipated it getting a lot harder. All we had to do was wait long enough for the door to open and we slipped through before or after the creature or creatures that were using it. At one point though we had to stop and observe what was going on, we just couldn't help ourselves. We had stumbled upon the room where they did their battle training, and they were a formidable force. Because they were all spawned from the same creature their energies intertwined with little effort on their part, individually they were powerful enough, but when they worked together it was simply unbelievable. I suddenly realized that they too would be a major threat soon, our shields were strong, but I imagined that with enough of them working together they would blast it with enough force to make it collapse or at least overcome its power to hold them back. We continued on after witnessing some of this potential, sobered by the fact that if they knew we were here we had no hope of escaping, they could destroy us in a moment.

They must have had a ranking system implemented because we started to encounter fewer of them. The doors didn't just open anymore, they had to get authorization to get through and some of them had been turned away. From what we could tell we were getting closer to our destination, though we had hit one particular door that was not being opened and our sensors showed that this was the path we needed to take. We were hesitant to hack into it and definitely didn't want to do so by brute force, many creatures passed by but none of them even looked towards it, though I was sure they would notice pretty quickly if a hole started to appear. We pondered the idea of using our translocation technology, but there would be no way of telling where we would land or if it would be safe. We ended up having to slip into a service space and work on figuring out another solution. We wouldn't be able to try to fake the authorization, it appeared that there were creatures monitoring that, we would need control over that entire system to be able to pull that off. We could try to get the area cleared out by staging an attack somewhere else in the solar system, though that may not work due to the fact that they had plenty of ships to go take care of that without having to empty every area of this ship. We didn't know enough of the safety systems to be able to fake an evacuation or some other disaster either. We would have to work on getting some control of their systems.

Belly of the Beast

In preparation for entering their planet ship we constructed some battle suits. The suits would allow us to remain in stealth in every way we had come up with so far. We didn't desire to fight so we made sure to make all our defenses as up-to-date as possible. We also created and installed some weapons, they would be potent enough to take out several creatures at a time if we needed to, but the goal was to not kill anything and just get the scans we needed. We modified our communications technology with some of the new telepathic technology we had learned from our new friends, this they gave to us for free so that we could accomplish our plan to stop the Klatvix, this would allow us to talk to one another without a sound. The suits were completely closed off from the atmosphere, maintaining their own systems instead. I knew the aliens had no need of a good atmosphere and so we needed to make sure we could survive in any of the conditions in the ship. When we were done designing it the building process took a little over an hour for both suits, mostly because the crystals had to be grown in the technology. The construction of the suits was done by Niracina, so they would have a link to her and be bio-mechanical, which could mean the suits ended up with a personality, though we had no idea if this would be or not. In the mean time we did our best to get as much information about the structure as possible, where the entrances and exits were, where the ships docked, possible ways for us to get in without being detected. As expected, the more our scans turned up the more we figured that what we were looking for would be at the heart of the ship, this would be a long and dangerous mission getting to it.

Once the suits were done being constructed we tested them out as best we could. We were able to walk around outside the ship and communicate perfectly. At one point we had Niracina drop us off on some space junk and try to run scans to find us. Had it not been for her link to the suits she would have been unable to detect our presence, which gave us a lot of hope in being able to pull this off. Once we had made sure everything we could test worked properly we began navigating towards this monstrous construction, avoiding any scans that we detected and for the most part trying to hide underneath one of the ships that was going towards the docks. Our plan was to move into the dock area before the ship and find a place to keep Niracina hidden, if things didn't go well she was ready to translocate to another location in the system and get out. We, of course, would try to translocate to get before she did this, but there were no guarantees that it would work inside this structure. We were sure her's would work because she wasn't deep in it, but we knew that the alien technology could interfere with our systems more and more as we delved deeper into the ship. It seemed like an eternity waiting for the ship to get close enough for the docks to open up, but once they did Niracina wasted little time slipping in before the ship closed the gap. Once inside we were relieved to find it very spacious, she was even able to find a spot that would provide some additional cover on the ceiling of the dock. This allowed us to further have her stealth by landing there and turning off more of her systems. In this state it would take a miracle for them to find her. Before departing into the ship we took some scans and readings of the materials and technology around us, for the most part the materials were pretty basic and we would encounter little problems if we had to cut through it. The area we landed happened to be a little thick, but above it showed that there should be some empty service space. We cut through the material and made our way into this chamber, once through we sealed up what we had cut, making sure to make it look like the rest of the floor as best we could. There was no turning back now, we had entered the belly of the beast.

Preparing the Technology

I spent quite a bit of time creating a virtual world, it was actually quite easy with some help from Ambri and Niracina. When they had heard one of the possible solutions to our problem with the Klatvix they were excited to have a non-violent way to overcome them. The first part we made was just a basic, beautiful world that someone could live on. If it weren't for the fact that we weren't energy we would have been able to stay and live there, but our limitations made it so that we had to leave to get actual sustenance. The simulation was good and we created some interfaces for anyone to go and interact with it. The children seemed to enjoy it, being able to explore a world that had life and interesting things in it. I was sure they would enjoy the planet once it was finished, but this was a nice way for them to get some "outdoor" activity. We incorporated any suggestions the aliens had, they had a better understanding of what the home world should look like and we did our best to make it familiar. We didn't want to be cruel and put them in a place that was unfamiliar, not to mention that if we did it right they may forget that they are trapped within a few generations. As for the next problem, getting the technology to capture living beings in heavy energy, I needed to go on a mission.

For the most part the probes and drones would do the work, but if I had to I'd be ready to go through the shield as well. Scans showed that their numbers had increased dramatically, so if they detected us we would have to fight to get back out. It was clear that they had figured out they were trapped and had tried everything they could to escape, the piece making it the most clear was the moon that had shattered against the shield when it had been thrown at it, the remnants of which were floating all about the section that they had tried to take out. They had not figured out yet where the source of this shield was, which was good, they were leaving the star alone, not that they would have any luck against the star's shield, but it meant we had a second way of escaping if we needed to. Seeing all the ships was strange, I had spent so much time in making that ship function and to see it again, with all its outdated technology made me wonder what would have happened had it not been stolen from us. Our stealth was more than adequate for them right now, we were able to get quite a few good scans without being detected, though we were unable to find the drive that converted everything to heavy energy that Evan had constructed. My guess was we would have to find the original ship, they probably didn't have the right materials to make that drive on every ship they had constructed.

When the probes finally were able to get to the planet in the system, having to weave in and out of the things they had in the space around it, they showed us an image of a massive ship. The planet had been converted, all its resources used to make a much larger ship. The technology on the ship was slightly improved, obviously they used the best resources they could for this and then made a fleet of normal ships to protect it. Our scans showed that the original ship was probably incorporated into this giant planet ship, this meant we would have to get inside the ship if we had any hope of getting scans. I informed my friends of the problem, Evan quickly volunteered to help me in this mission and Ambri asked if there was another way. Sadly, without going against the Klatvix this was the only quick source of getting this technology again. At this I felt her sorrow, but she also held hope as well that we would be successful, it was the hope that I held on to from her. I did my best to suppress my feelings about the mission, not wanting her to fear for me, though I knew she felt a bit of it anyway.

More Technology Trading

There was definitely a desire for technological growth among these aliens. When they had finished creating their construction machines they were overjoyed with their new found abilities, however it was still a slow process having to refine the resources and load them in. They asked if there was a better way, knowing full well I had more information than what I had given them. This lead to a discussion about how our technology worked. I explained to them the nature of heavy energy and how we used it to quickly work with the materials we had. It was far easier and much less wasteful to work with things as energy instead of manually doing most of it. They were very intrigued about this concept and pressed for more information about it, namely the limitations on it. They, of course, provided more information about their technology and some of their research into new technologies, this time giving us information on how the dream induction device worked. I informed them of the limitations of it, how we did not know how to preserve living things in it, however I mentioned that we at one time had figured that out but the information had been taken from us. This led into another discussion about extracting knowledge, however we didn't go too far in this, once they had the concept of the idea down we went back to heavy energy. By the time we had finished the discussion they understood as much as I did how the heavy energy worked, it took Niracina to fill in the gaps and once we were done we began to work with their technology to see if it would be able to handle a heavy energy storage system.

As it turned out they had been well on their way to figure out this particular technology on their own, however the conflict had started before they could move from their energy web technology towards this particular thought. They had wanted to find ways to quickly transport materials, they had visions of being able to go from planet to planet visiting different alien species and doing business with them, but they wanted to make sure their ships were small and didn't use up all the precious resources they were going to purchase. As I had thought before, these aliens would have gone far had they not been deceived. Once we had their storage system in place, which was adequate but not quite as efficient, they began the process of playing with the energy they loaded into the system. It didn't take long for them to be able to purify and refine the resources into the forms that they needed. This, as I perceived, would eventually lead them towards teleportation and advanced mining techniques, which, if they could figure it all out, would probably open the door for us sharing more technology with each other and eventually giving them access to the other bases we had, so long as they could construct their own ways of getting there.

As I prepared to rest for the evening I kept thinking about the conversation we had about the heavy energy and its limitations along with what I had learned about the dream inducing device. It seemed to me that if we could once again overcome the inability to store living things as heavy energy we might be able to create a very unique virtual world for these stored being to live within. This very well could be a solution to our problem with the Klatvix if we were able to capture them in this energy form and store them in a created virtual world, though it would be difficult to get them all at once which would be required as once we had one of their ships the rest would understand what we were doing and retaliate making it nearly impossible to capture the rest. I wanted to play around with this idea and work out the problems, however my exhaustion would not allow it and I had to give it up for another day.

Technology Bartering

This was where things got a bit tricky. They were more than willing to teach me about their technology, so long as I had some technology I'd be willing to teach them. Of course I had plenty of technology that would be of benefit to them, however I had to be careful not to give them more than what they could handle. Clearly the power supply was out of the question as it would allow them to supercharge their ships and go on a suicide run against the Klatvix. However, we had already implemented a minor version of the construction system we used, so that technology should pose little threat and it would allow them to better use the resources they had. It took probably about half the day for the exchange of technical information to take place. Transferring the data was the easy part, it was translating it so that we fully understood it that took awhile. Once we had the information we uploaded it to our central repository where Evan poured over it, he had been looking for a new project. The aliens got to work building their construction terminals.

Ambri enjoyed having time with some other women, talking about more girly things. They didn't have everything in common but they had enough to chat through most of the previous day and evening and then again today. I finally interrupted her long enough to see how she was doing and what her thoughts were of this race of aliens. She assured me that she was doing wonderfully and that these aliens were probably the nicest ones she'd ever met and she didn't have any fear of them, she did however mention how much the aliens wanted to ensure the other race could no longer do as they had done to them. I had the same concern, but still no solutions as to how to contain them.

Their own technology that we had used against them would have been perfect, but without a star in the system we could not do it, the other option would be to utilize the new energy web technology, however I was not sure we could power something like that for very long without using up all available resources and even then it would be strained when they attacked it, which I had no doubt that they would be doing constantly, their power sources weren't that much weaker than ours. An all out attack might work if we constructed an army of fighter probes to do all the work for us, however that would make us little better than they were. There were plenty of ideas, each with their own problems and simply no solutions to any of them at this time.

Getting Some Help

With the help of the race that actually made the technology things were completed much quicker. We still had plenty of rooms and structures to finish up, but at least all the essential systems and some of the optional ones were working as well. The aliens also helped with where to place the different plant life to make the planet more like the home that they had known. Some of their ships were converted into permanent facilities on the planet, the first of which would be a space port to allow the ships to dock down on the planet. Some of the ships that were in good repair, including the one we had modified a bit, were fixed up some more and would be recommissioned for their use as they would be free to go to and from their planet and system. We updated the star maps in their database to include the zones that they should not enter, mostly because of the black hole but also because they would be unable to enter the system that we were protecting. We also marked the triple star system so that they wouldn't get caught in that gravitational mess as well. We stopped there however to keep them from knowing more about systems that were farther than they were aware and we did not tell them what was in some of the locations we marked off, instead we just told them that they would be unable to enter the system if they tried. We planned to eventually reveal to them more of what we had been up to, however we needed to make sure we could trust them.

When the time came the children were overjoyed to see some adults of their own species, they went over to them and jabbered on about all the things that they had seen and learned from us as well as showed them the various toys that had been constructed. The older aliens thanked us for taking care of them and trying to help them learn to survive as well as finding a place where all the children would be able to live, everything they saw that we did assured them that there were some races out there that could show compassion and could be trusted. The female adults desired to spend time with the children while the males were all business, wanting to finish the systems and make sure their race would be safe here on their new home. I left Ambri with the women and the children and returned to the work we were doing with the men, our next goal was to improve the shields so that they could maintain the safety of their new home.

We had done most of it correctly, they had some configurations to do to get the most out of the shields we were using as well as setting up a gate system that would allow ships in and out of the shielded area without having to bring down the whole system. It was helpful to be able to offload the sleeping children from the ships and then recommission them for creating the gate as well as fixing the ships that they intended to keep. The knowledge from the ship that was recommissioned was first downloaded into a database, a central repository of all their information so that any new information and data could be retained. Then the ship flew off to its location where we had a few drones take it apart and reassemble the parts to create the new structure. One of the ships kept its programming and took over the gate as it was built around it, which meant that they had an automated gate keeper. They would allow us to freely enter and leave their system, so long as it was safe on the other side of the gate. With all of this work started I decided to call it a day, but I planned to talk with them more about how their systems worked so that we could continue to advance our own technology as well as find ways to not get caught in an energy web like that again.