Upgrades

With the current threat outside of the galaxy we got to work trying to figure out how exactly the device that made the shield worked, we also were very busy learning all the new technology we suddenly had access to. The weapons were very nice to have, the upgrades went pretty smoothly, the technology wasn't terribly different but with the differences we realized major upgrades in weapon capability. The boost to shields was nice as well, we utilized a multi-layer shield approach, meaning the frequency flaws in their shields would be covered by our shields and any potential flaws in our shields would be covered by their's. As we had suspected, the destruction of the ship and the energy blast had come from their power and gravity drives, which meant we could not get the gravity drive functions again, not that it mattered, I think our way of moving around was much more effective. The absolute best thing we were able to get from the wreckage was their communication system, it was completely different than what the cubes had been using. With this we were going to be able to intercept a few of their communications and be able to know what their plans were, at least until they figured it out and changed their system. There were only a handful of survivors and they were moments from death when we found them, luckily our healing technology was enough to revive them. We had no desire to speak with them and so once they were all rounded up, healed and had provisions to survive we left them in the new station that had been constructed, our hope was to return them to their people when we figured out how the shield worked.

The probe we had attached to the device integrated with it more and more with each passing moment, learning more about the system and how it functioned. The device had first drawn power from the probe when it attached, but once it hit the star and shield protecting it also drew its power from the star itself. Given enough time, billions upon billions of years, it might actually draw enough power from the star to make a difference in the output of heat or light. The more information it gave us the more our technology changed, with the information we were getting we might actually be able to construct bases that could survive being inside a star, though the light might be a little much to handle. The second shield that it was projecting out was based upon the amount of available power in the star itself. It wasn't the device that produced the shield, but rather the star itself did once you put the right mixture of signals and power fluctuations in it. Slowly we figured out how they made the shield allow certain things through and which direction they could go, with this information and a few more resources shot into the sun to allow for some upgrades we were able to develop a very sophisticated monitoring system for this star and all the surrounding planets, this would ensure the safety of Ambri's home world and the race of aliens that lived on one of the neighboring planets for as long as the star survived. With this problem solved we stripped our technolgies from the prisoners station and pushed it out to the ships on the other side of the shield. Of course while we did this they tried to destroy us, but the star shield held fast against anything they could throw at it. Once they had their prisoners we returned to our research, hoping to find a way to travel outside of this system without them being able to monitor us.

Defending the System

Stopping the first device the aliens launched wasn't easy. We didn't have any offensive forces in the right position and so shooting it down was pure luck. We used an overcharged energy blast to take it down, though the blast almost destroyed the probe that created it. Of course this meant that the aliens knew some of our technology was in the area and so they sent another device shooting towards the star, this time we had several probes near the star, they easily took the device out. The more they sent the easier it got for the probes to be positioned correctly, we even started getting some scans on the devices before they were destroyed. Once we arrived Nasero already had plenty of information on the device, but not a way to deactivate the ones that had made it into the stars already. The ship had also detected our arrival, and on top of sending additional devices towards the star it also began maneuvering to engage us. I had Nasero focus on figuring out if there was a frequency we could use to penetrate the shield on the device they were sending and while he worked on that I went over the schematics we had pulled together from our scans of the device.

Evan was being kept busy trying to distract the enemy from our true intentions, he strategically fired on some of the devices and the ship itself. The ship, of course, returned fire and as strong as their weapons were they could not break our shields any more than we could their's. Once Nasero had found a frequency I had him hold off on exploiting it, instead I needed him to build a probe which would launch a mini-probe at the device using the frequency he had found, it should actually be quite easy to do considering the heavy energy that the mini-probe would be in, it wasn't going to be organic at all. Once that was done we had to releash the probe with as much stealth as possible so that the ship wouldn't shoot it down before we could accomplish our task. This was going to be risky but it would be the only way we could ensure the safety of this system. Once the probe was in position we allowed the next device that was releashed to get past our offensive attacks and our probe shot the mini-probe at it. We only had moments to find out if it worked, otherwise we needed to destroy that device as well. When we received the signal that the device had been infected with our technology we allowed it to enter the star.

Of course, the first thing the aliens did was turn on the device. We had no way of getting out of the system at the moment and we began to pick up signals of other ships approaching. We turned up the power on all the weapons and did our best to take out the first ship. With our numerous probes assisting we were making some progress against them and as our weapons began to weaken their shields the infected device reported that communications had been severed and the device was now under our control. We didn't hesitate a moment to change the shielding the device was sending out, blocking all inbound and outbound travel in this system. Nasero informed us that it had worked, the other ships were stuck outside of the bubble the device had created around this solar system. We now had nearly complete control over this system and once this ship was destroyed we would complete that control. It took about another half an hour to destroy the ship, it had started to retreat when it lost communication with the rest of the fleet, but since it couldn't leave we had to make sure it was destroyed. The blast from the ship's destruction caused a slight power loss in our systems, which made us realize that we would be vulnerable for a moment every time we destroyed one of them. It probably was a combination of their power supply and their gravity drive, when they were destroyed it produces a field of energy that disrupted other energy around it, we would have to see if there was a solution, but for now we had a perfect opportunity to get some more materials and learn about their technology. We deployed numerous probes to gather up everything they could and had them construct a separate station to hold any potential survivors.

Absolute System Control

Absolute control. I mean, how would we be able to fight against something that could have absolute control over a solar system? Other probes confirmed it, the aliens were shooting one of these devices into every star they came across. The star provided nearly infinite power to the device that generated the shield, and they could activate it wherever they found us, which meant we would be unable to leave. Trying to find the device in the star was a challenge in itself, but trying to find a way to destroy it would be much harder, the star provided its own protection to it, but the fact that the device could survive being in there meant that fire and heat were not an issue to their technology. It is possible we could just try to destroy the star, however doing so would mean we eliminate any current or future life that could be in that particular system. Our lives weren't worth that and we all agreed that we wouldn't be destroying any more stars. This just left us with having to come up with a way of destroying, disabling, or advancing beyond the device. We had little hope of doing this quickly. We sent some more probes to the system that had one of these devices active, they all stopped short of the shield and began scanning and reporting on it. We had one of the probes attempt to enter, which it could, however once it was in there was no leaving. This meant it could be set up as a trap and so we needed to make sure we could detect when one of these things was active.

Dead space, that was probably the safest place for us right now. We parked ourselves right in the middle of nothing, we had nothing to hide behind and no stars to trap us. It appeared the power needed to activate one of the devices had to come from a star. The bigger and more energy the star had the bigger the field it could generate, which meant a few of the activated systems still had planets outside of the barrier. Their ships could pass through without problem through this shield, they either tuned the shield to allow their type of travel through or, more likely, they had a device on their ships that allowed them to tune their shields to allow passage through. Our attempts to do likewise with the probe were unsuccessful, we had not found out their frequencies and as suspected, their shields had been modified and we could not find a flaw to perform scans again. Trying these tests also drew attention to the probes and a few of them had to be destroyed, luckily our technology wasn't resistant to stars and so by having them jump into the system's star we prevented them from learning about our technology. This, however, was not going to be a good practice, we were already low on resources and each destroyed probe represented a loss of potential technological advantage.

The probes on the outside of the shield were making little progress, the shield put off little energy signature and so it would be nearly impossible to detect, at least in a timely enough fashion to avoid it. The only way we would be able to successfully navigate a galaxy would be to send probes out to constantly check the path we were taking, however it would only work so long as they couldn't detect where we were in traveling. Considering the fact that they had found a way to block us probably meant they would soon have a way to sense our movements as well as we sensed their's. To prevent them from figuring this out too soon we decided to have any probe that was trapped try to remain hidden and if discovered to destroy itself, the rest we had return to the ship. We were going to try to find another galaxy to conduct our advancement in, at least, that was going to be the plan until we got a message from our small remote station telling us that it had detected a ship with a gravity drive entering the system. This meant they were about to take control of Ambri's home world, we could not let this happen. When she had heard the message I felt her pain, she cared deeply for the life that she had placed on her planet and desperately wanted it to be safe. We had the closest probes return to the system to try to prevent the star from being impregnated with their technology and then took off to join them and fight the ship.

Studying the Enemy

To my relief the scans didn't return anything that would suggest we needed her blood or anything equally creepy to make these crystals, however the scans didn't show anything that told us what catalyzed the formation of them. We ran test after test on them, scanning their energies, their structure, their makeup, but nothing turned up. We went from the lab to the cave and back multiple times trying to figure out how she could have caused this kind of reaction in fragments but the solution eluded us completely. Eventually we had to give up on the task due to the probes returning information about gravity fluctuations. We sent a few probes to the different locations and discovered an entire fleet of alien ships looking for us, there was still no sign of the creature we had created that had taken our ship, though we weren't sure we'd want that ship back anymore given the information it had leaked to the aliens that had created the cubes. It was clear from observing these ships that the first one had been older than some of the others, they were quick and it took quite a bit of effort for the probes to avoid being detected. Their technology was advanced and we needed to know more about it.

We carefully had the probes make quick scans on any ship it could. They had shielding technology, that was clear. The first few scans could not get through, though the information from the shield revealed some frequencies that would be able to penetrate them. Once these settings were implemented we were able to gather a lot more information. They had implemented and improved a lot of the technologies we had developed, which meant they had better scanners than we did, however we had improved our own technology in between, though we would still need to continue making modifications to avoid them. Several of the probes were nearly detected during the scans, this meant that our scans had to stop shortly after as they realized we were monitoring them and they were beginning active scans. Their shields, though they had a flaw, were very strong. I was sure the flaw would be fixed by the time we could try scanning them again. Their weapons were far superior to our own, though I think our shields could stand up against them. Luckily our power supply had a greater output, so if it came to an endurance battle we might be able to win, though I wasn't sure how many we could go against. Their ships were made from the wonderful metal that the power supplies used, which meant that ice and electricity probably wouldn't work well against it as they were using the refined form of it. This probably also meant the shields were designed to defend against heat as that would be the primary weakness. Other scans showed that their atmosphere was much like ours and that there were numerous lifeforms inside the ship.

Most of the probes we recalled from the areas of the ships made it back, however a few of the last ones we recalled started to run into problems. Communications with them were slow, something was interfering, when we were finally able to decipher what was being reported we learned that a barrier had been activated around the entirety of the solar system they were leaving. The barrier prevented the probes from leaving, they had developed a system to stop our travels just like we had stopped theirs. The probes that were trapped had gone into hiding as the ships searched for them. We desperately wanted to go and explore this shield firsthand, however we could not risk getting stuck in one solar system just to learn about it. Instead we tried to get modification instructions sent to the probes that were trapped to try to improve our communications first. When we finally had some success we instructed the modified probes to find the source of this shield, we were pretty sure it wasn't going to be on the ship itself. While they did this we continued to modify the ones we could communicate with and had them continue hiding. The good thing about all of this was that we were going to have to improve our systems greatly which would continue to help us have an advantage over them.

Limitations

Designing the base was quite easy. Most of it was functional and served a purpose, however to make it a more pleasing experience Ambri contributed some design ideas. We ended up with a massive floating palace of sorts. The main complex had high towers that produced the shield and held the weapons and also mini matching towers on the underside as well to do the same thing. The walkways were open to the visible sky and the shields held in the atmosphere, in between the walkways would be the native plants that we wanted to keep. In order to maintain the system we would construct habitats for the creatures that lived on the planets that we were replicating below the main complex, this would allow us to try to preserve the native life in case of catastrophe as well as have a natural place to go to and conduct some non-obtrusive studies. It all looked perfect, at least in planning. The unfortunate thing we ran into was that the crystals were not growing back as large anymore. It appeared that our technology was going to be very limited until we could figure out how to create our own crystals or how to replenish the resources they needed in order to grow. I took Evan to the location where the crystals came from, he began immediately trying to figure out how they grew and how we could get them to be replenished and larger. All of our technology in the bases was going to rely on adequate power and to do that we were going to need plenty of crystals to work with.

Unfortunately the numerous probes could find no trace of these crystals growing anywhere else in the universe. They seemed to be completely unique to our habitat. There didn't seem to be any particular material that contributed to their growth, they just seemed to be. Scans showed plenty of fragments being produced in the habitat, they simply had stopped forming into these crystals. We performed deep scans to see if there were more deposits, however nothing turned up. It wasn't until we started asking Ambri about them since she found them first that we started getting an idea of where they came from.

When she had arrived and found the cave there were no crystals, she had used her own forces to produce a little light from the crystals on her body in order to explore but there was nothing of interest. She had slept in the chamber where the crystals came from and after a few days they started to appear, glowing with the same light she had been producing naturally. Something from her had mixed with the fragments to make them stabilize into a crystal form. We weren't about to start doing studies on her however, I remembered all too well what the alien had said about how we weren't that different and I wanted that to change. So instead we began studying the crystals to figure out what exactly triggered them to appear. We at least now had an idea of what to be looking for.

Understanding and the Future

As I learned to see her trinket memories I began to understand how this bond could have formed. Her people shared everything together, they always knew each other so well that their energies were all tied together. It was this type of care for one another that led to our bond, but because we are so different the bond changed. Her desire to rescue me from the danger she thought I faced displayed her care for me, being as I was her hero in multiple ways magnified her desires and I was the one she saw as being her new family now that her people were gone. All of this coupled with my desires to get out of my situation and then her being my life line, it wasn't just her energy I had reached out for, but to once again be reunited with her. I cared for her deeply and because of this our energies intertwined in such a way as to form this fantastically strong bond. I shared with her all that I learned, to her it made complete sense. We discussed it for quite awhile and in the end determined that even if given a chance to break it we probably wouldn't, it actually provided some comfort to both of us, knowing that nearby was someone who cared for us. The surprising thing out of all the learning was when we figured out how to send present memories to one another. Using a very similar energy to the one that created and read the trinkets we actually had a form of telepathy, we could communicate using it. When we were done we joined the other two again, we needed to start formulating a plan for remaining hidden and safe.

The first step was to upgrade all of the probes that we had. Each one of them needed to be able to stealth themselves. We also modified the communications system using the new force power we had learned, though the odd thing about it was that Ambri and I could only use it with each other and Evan and Nasero could use it with all the technology that was created to use it. With this new system in place our chances of being found were much slimmer, the energy made no traceable signal, it was more like a hive mind with them. Once the probes were all upgraded with defenses, offensive weapons, upgraded stealth and communications they were redeployed. They were given instructions to develop stations to monitor any cubes they found and to gather any valuable resources they came across. Our goal was to know where our enemies were and to try to stay ahead of them. The next logical step we decided on was to create different bases and a way to get between them. We had found several planets that had a variety of plants and animals, we deployed modified probes to those to gather information on them and to check what kind of resources were available. Wormholes would be the fastest way to get from one base to another, and so we began working on trying to develop wormhole gates that would connect to one another and we worked on making sure that they could be stabilized and be able to handle the distance and time that they would need to be open.

Hiding

Their gravity drive was far superior to that of the previous ship. Everywhere we went Nasero could sense them coming and gaining on us until we changed direction. We had no idea how we were going to escape from their pursuit and so we just kept fleeing. Eventually Nasero sensed another, weaker gravity drive being used. He recognized it as the original ship, the one that had been trapped between the stars. This reminded us of how we had ended up in that situation and so Evan and I began developing a device that could produce the type of energy that could interfere with the gravity drive. It took a couple of hours, but luckily we had the superior power between the three ships and so we were able to continue without problem. Once the device was finished and in place we powered it up, it caused a bit of a slowdown, however this was going to be needed anyway and as the alien ship got closer we released the energy from the device. As we had hoped, the ship went far off course with the boost in energy and we were free to hide somewhere else. Luckily the old cube ship couldn't detect us very well and so we slipped away from him as well.

Once we were settled into what seemed a safe part of the universe we put ourselves into stealthed mode and waited, hoping we had escaped from those that pursued us. Evan spent some time analyzing his system, making sure none of the old code that was left would lead them to us. Nasero worked on modifying the new defense we had against gravity drives, he knew that it would have to be adjusted each time as the aliens would likely modify their systems to prevent the same thing from happening again. While they worked on those things Ambri and I sat down and began discussing what had happened and what we felt.

The bond didn't seem to weaken, in fact, it seemed to be getting stronger every moment. We tested out how strong it was and no matter where we were in the ship we could feel each others presence as if we were only a few feet from one another. It was strange to have such a connection, but in a way it was very comforting. For me it gave me something that made me feel like I belonged and for her it was just having someone special, like having one of her people alive again to share in each others joys, sorrows or anything else they might go through. It was actually a stronger bond than she was used to, among her people you couldn't feel their actual being, just their energies. She described it as witnessing the strongest memory from a trinket, but not just seeing it as they did, but experiencing it in their bodies. I didn't completely understand and so she began showing me how to see the memories contained in a trinket.