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.

Freedom

Knowing now what I had been longing to know brought no relief. I was never meant to be naturally and so I felt I had no real place in the universe, but that didn't mean I would give it up after working so hard for it. Each blast of energy was stronger than the last, I actually destroyed a few of the objects and managed to cause some brief structural damage to the walls, but even my rage fueled attacks could not set me free. The alien continued trying to talk me out of my current actions and it wasn't until it threatened force that I finally stopped attacking the cube. Though I couldn't unleash my rage anymore I still allowed it to fuel my energies. I built up as much wormhole energy as I could, I knew it would be my last attempt at escape and so I needed to gather all that I could. As my powers reached a climax I felt something.

I had no idea she had learned to produce a wormhole, she had gathered up as much energy as she could and was trying to create a wormhole to me but she wasn't strong enough to penetrate the barrier completely either. So, with her trying to break through I used my energy as well. I felt a bond form between us as our energies reached out and connected, something different was happening and together we created the wormhole. As the alien entity and cube screamed at me to stop I stepped through the wormhole and was back on the ship. With my last ounce of energy I told Nasero and Evan to unleash all that we had on the cube, I wanted to ensure it did not have a second chance at getting me.

We had both passed out from creating the wormhole, but when I woke up I was very aware of her presence, I could sense her, feel her weariness and pain from utilizing all that energy. She sat up and looked at me, she could feel the bond as well. Our energies now seemed permanently entwined. Before we could begin discussing this Evan came in and informed us that we were fleeing from another ship, the cube had been successfully destroyed with all weapons firing on it at once, however once it was gone the ship came and had broadcast a message before Nasero had jumped. They played the message for me and I saw it was the same alien entity that had been talking to me, telling me about who I was. It was angry and demanding that I be returned to it as I was its property. I explained to all of them what it meant and where I had come from. Evan I think understood best having been the only other one who belonged to them, though he only had a fragment of their programming left in him. Each of us had evolved beyond what we were intended for and so we both felt that we deserved to live and be free from their proclaimed ownership. They currently only had a desire for me, but I was sure that if they had me they would go after Evan next.

Project Shrang

It wasn't until the chair appeared that I started to get an idea of what might be going on. I asked the cube why it needed an interface chair and its response was that it would need to be able to get access to all the information that was available so far. Basically, it wanted what I knew and I had no idea why. I did my best to try to find a way to escape, somehow it knew how to block my translocation and wormhole attempts. The walls resisted everything I threw at them, this thing had been upgraded far beyond the first one I had encountered. The cube asked me to calm down and stop trying to escape, it gave me all the assurance it was capable of that the process would be painless. To this I responded by asking it how it would feel to lose its individuality by having its knowledge sucked out, to be left an empty, pointless shell. I didn't really have much hope of a response to this, it was a machine after all, however it seemed to have some sympathy as it retracted the chair and projected an image of an alien being.

It turned out the alien being was a member of the race that constructed the cubes, they were in direct contact with this particular station due to my presence. They were fully aware of my past experiences with the chair that I had seen and my aversion to losing my memories again. It was the word again that troubled me in the statement. I had no alien knowledge, nothing that I felt didn't really belong to me, what I had was my personal experiences and so I inquired what it meant when it said again. It at first tried to dismiss it, saying it must have been a fluke of translation however I persisted in the question and eventually it began to relate some things that I wasn't supposed to know. Apparently I was part of a project, dubbed Shrang, which has meaning in their native language but there is no way to fully translate it in a way that I would understand. I was basically a manufactured being, which would explain my amnesia when I first arrived at Calypso, they had made a basic shell for me by putting together some DNA and then infusing it with some knowledge, they then deposited it among the wreckage of some of the ships that had been destroyed in the wars. It took some time for it to be discovered and reconstituted but when it did the project began. What the project was it refused to say, it did however say that so far it has been a huge success and the lives of its people might very well improve because of the success, it, however, needed to take the information back in order to complete the project, which is why it needed the contents of my head. This still didn't quite explain the again part and so I pressed further. That was when I learned that I wasn't completely manufactured, I was old, ancient, I had been taken long before by these beings to be studied and they had emptied my head of knowledge when they were creating the shell for me to inhabit. Basically, there was no way for me to know who I really was, my old self had been destroyed so that they could give a soul to their experiment. I was nothing more than a lab rat to them, a thing to study and learn from and they wanted to start the process over again to continue learning more. They were expecting me to understand given all that I had done so far, sacrificing many for the greater good, trying to create life to learn from it, to use it to my own ends. Manipulating what I didn't create so that I could survive. They were right, I was very similar to them in my actions, but I didn't enjoy the things I had done and this made us very different.

Almost Deja Vu

In the morning Evan and Nasero still were not having any luck with the new cube, it simply would not let them in or communicate with them. They asked me to take a look at it before we went back down to the planet to enjoy what it offered and so after eating some of the fruit we had brought back I joined them in the section of the ship that had been constructed to dock with the cube. This cube looked like the other two I had seen, it was smooth, metallic and black. As I reached out to touch the surface of it the cube suddenly opened, I felt something grab hold of me and pull me forward and then everything was dark. The light from the projected screen of the wrist computer was all I had, it was like before. The cube was empty, nothing was inside, I wasn't even sure how something pulled me in. None of the technology we had developed could penetrate the walls of this cube and so I was alone. I searched all the walls but knew I would find nothing. I remembered the days when this had all started, how I felt like I had been captured and was being held prisoner. I didn't want to spend a lot of time doing this all over again and so I hoped that perhaps if I put a sensor against the wall the cube would integrate with it. It took some doing, I didn't want to break the only device I had to get the cube to be able to see me but it was the only sensor I had. It had to be modified a bit to make it a visual sensor but eventually I got it working.

I felt like I had been standing with my hand against the wall for hours, there was no sound and holding the sensor as I was doing didn't allow me to direct a projection where it would be most useful for producing light and so I was in the dark as well. Eventually I felt the device beneath my hand shift, the cube had pulled in the connectors and after I pulled my hand away I saw a little light being produced by the sensor. I then used my wrist computer to start showing it things, schematics and words to teach it how to communicate. To my surprise the cube quickly made a speaker and started to talk to me. It informed me that it already had basic knowledge of me, communications that had come from the first two cubes. It took a few more minutes for the cube to create the microphone so I could speak to it, but once it was done I asked it why it had brought me in and not the others. Its response to this was that they were not the ones authorized to be in this particular station.

Trying to extract more information from the cube was difficult, apparently I was authorized for access to this cube but I could not find out who gave the access and for what purpose. I could, however, get the cube to modify itself so that I could be more comfortable. I didn't go as crazy as before, just a chair and table, some food, drink and light. The cube continued to expand its capabilities, producing some of the technologies we had made before, it took some time however due to a lack of proper resources. When I asked about my friends and the ship that had docked with it the cube said they were still in the solar system however they were not currently docked as the cube was moving around gathering the materials it needed to grow. I continued trying to get more information out of it but it mearly stated that it wasn't quite time yet, it needed to finish its modifications before revealing its purpose. It did however ask that I send a message to my friends asking them to stop trying to hinder the progress of the cube, this I did and the cube cut off the rest of my communication attempts, apparently it was important that I remained isolated during this process.

A Little Rest

Ambri had been quiet since we left her former home. She spent much of her time in the habitat wandering and staring at the plants and animals that lived there. Evan was in his lab going over the data he had pulled from their system before destroying it. The race of aliens that had created the beast had done some cross breeding mixed with exposure to different radioactive elements to create them and he was fascinated by the information. I reminded him of our last attempt at creating things and after gleaning the good information from it that he could he erased all of it, ensuring that there was no way to recreate the exact beasts that had been so destructive. Nasero was busy growing, seeing other ships had given him some ideas to his own design and function and so he wished to adapt. We gave him free reign to do so, we really had no right to tell him that he could not grow into what he desired to.

Eventually the probes that were mapping the galaxy returned some interesting information. They had found another black cube floating in space right next to a planet that looked like a tropical resort. We wasted little time going there, Nasero and Evan wanted to learn about this cube and I wanted to spend some time relaxing on the planet with Ambri, I figured she needed to escape for a bit to help her move on from what she had gone through. The planet was fantastic, there were so many new types of fruit that were all very sweet and delicious and the planet was so green and vibrant with life. The waters along the beeches were warm and clear and so we enjoyed quite a bit of time out in the sun. She gathered many things to make a new trinket and when the sun started to set I created a fire and we sat and talked for most of the evening before returning to the ship. She had definitely enjoyed our time on the planet and the trinket she had made while we talked she gave to me. She promised to show me how to see her memories in it soon. Before turning in I spoke with Nasero and Evan, they were still gathering information about this cube and had been unable to communicate with it or get inside of it so far, it was very likely we would have another day to spend on the planet while they continued their efforts.

Restoring Peace

The ones that had been on the escape pod were mostly slaves, the ships had belonged to their greedy government. As Nasero learned more about them we found out that their government was the one who had been breeding this death beast in order to destroy the other factions on the planet. The government was completely heartless when it came to acquiring more power, which meant that sacrificing the life on another planet was acceptable if that meant they would have more power over their own world. They weren't heavy space travelers either, their planet was actually in the same solar system, so in essence they murdered their neighbors for their own gains. I was actually kind of glad we had done what we did, most of their government had been on those ships and only a handful of slaves were ever with them. The creatures they bred had been created in a lab on their planet, there were none left, however the information was still there. As he continued learning about them we returned to their planet to find out what other defenses or forces we might have to deal with to destroy that information.

A war was in progress on the surface of the planet, because of the way they monitored things the people had witnessed the destruction of their government's forces and had revolted against what remained. The other nations of the planet had witnessed the revolt and joined in, however the people did not want them as their ruler either. A small squad of drones sent down to the planet quickly caused all fighting to stop, they all just stared at them and wondered if their time had now come as well. Evan used one of the probes to go down to the planet personally to ensure the data was deleted from their systems while Nasero projected his image to the planet surface to work out a peace among the people. A small ship was constructed from the escape pods during all of this that would return the aliens to their planet. I spent this time talking to Ambri, she would be the only one who had any right to say anything against these beings.

I understood the effect of all that we had done with this planet. We had effectively decimated their former type of government through a display of power, they no longer had any hope in their thoughts of superiority and so none of them felt safe any longer. We had shown that there are more beings that existed outside of their solar system and that they were more than capable of going where they pleased and doing what they wanted to do. We did our best to assure them that at least we meant them no harm, which was a bit difficult given the way we had destroyed their only ships capable of space travel. We explained to them why we had done what we did and once they understood what their government had done they wished to apologize. We informed them that from that planet there was only one being left, when they heard this there was much lamenting. They asked to see Ambri, to which she agreed and when she arrived they all knelt down and asked for her forgiveness. Through her tears she forgave them and then returned to the ship despite them offering her a home among them. Her response to this had been that she already had a home and a family to live with on this ship. We informed them that we would be leaving, they would be forming a new government based on our suggestions and informed them that we would be monitoring their progress to ensure that nothing like what had happened to Ambri's planet ever happened again because of them. We left some stealthed probes behind to ensure that we knew what was going on with the planet and left the system. We didn't have a target at the moment but we needed to get out of this system of death and bad memories as quickly as we could.

A One Sided Fight

I'm pretty sure the ship belonged to whatever beings put the creatures on the planet because as soon as they were within range they opened fire on us, however our shields held up very well against their attacks. Nasero worked on trying to communicate with them however they didn't seem to want to try to talk at all. Eventually more ships were detected and we realized that we would either need to fight back or retreat. We were about ready to retreat when Ambri asked us what would happen to the seeds she had just planted down there and we realized that they might be destroyed by these aliens, just like everything else on the planet had been by their works. We fired at the first ship, the effects of our weapons were devastating, we hadn't realized how advanced we had made them, we never had much reason to fire them or test them out. After two shots the ship was severly crippled. The first shot had taken out whatever shielding they had and the second shot had destroyed a significant portion of the ship. The rest of the ships ceased firing when the first was so badly damaged. Nasero noted that the weapons had only been powered up about ten percent. We then began getting responses to Nasero's communication attempts.

It took awhile for Nasero to be able to decipher what they were saying. When he finally started to be able to understand them he confirmed that they were very pissed at what we had done and they had indeed been the ones who put the creatures on the planet. I had him send a message back asking them for a good reason not to destroy them all right now for doing what they did to this planet. I then had Nasero begin charging the weapons, if they couldn't come up with a good reason we were going to have to make sure all the ships were destroyed or risk having yet another thing pursuing us. Their response was that they needed these creatures to multiply and to do that required that they had plenty of things to destroy, the creatures were a military weapon and they were their people's hope of conquering their enemies. It didn't take but a moment for all the weapons that fired to hit their targets.

Everything had been crippled or destroyed in just one shot, their technology was clearly very poor when it came to defenses. We had the probes gather up any valuable resources from the wreckage, they also found a few escape pods with some of the beings still alive. We had Nasero construct a chamber to hold them in so that we could get some better information about these death beasts and where they came from and why these aliens were so heartless as to destroy an entire civilization of beings in order to breed their weapons. As their pods were docked and they were unloaded into the chamber Nasero began work on further developing his ability to communicate with them. The ones that were left from our attacks seemed more than willing to speak to him this time and without any mention of how wrong we were to do what we did. I believe they realized now that they had first declared war on us by their actions.

Death to Death and Back to Life

Rage is a powerful emotion, it can draw something from deep inside almost anyone, a power that is much stronger than they could imagine. Her rage was drawing forth more energy that I think she could handle and we were going to have to give her something to direct it towards, much like what I had to do when I was learning to harness the power of ice. The probe had, before it was destroyed, returned images of what was still living on the planet. The death beast was the only thing left and there were many of them. I had one of the weapons aimed at the planet and configured some energy conduits to take her energy when she unleashed it and fire it through this weapon. The attack would probably destroy the creatures, which none of us had regrets about considering what these creatures did. As she finally unleashed all her raging energy through the device we felt the chilling blast of it and the room was covered in a thin layer or frost. The conduit did as expected and sent the energy, amplified by the technology to the planet. A few of the probes close enough to see it showed us the image of ice forming over the planet and we saw the glittering light from millions of barbs exploding from the freezing of the poisons inside. We waited for about an hour before sending down some probes equipped with fire weapons to ensure the bodies were destroyed and there were none of the creatures left.

I don't think she realized at all what happened, she had fainted after unleashing all that power and when she woke up she seemed confused. I was glad she could remain ignorant of her part in destroying the creatures, I wasn't sure she ever really wanted to hurt anything. I did inform her that the only thing that had been left on her planet were the creatures and we were ensuring they were all destroyed. Despite her devastation at knowing her people were dead and she was the last of her kind she seemed relieved that the creatures were to be no more. After mourning the loss of her people in solitude she joined us once more in the control room, she was carrying a small pouch with her. Her request was simple, she wanted us to plant the seeds that she had on her planet, these seeds were all that was left of the lush plant life that had covered the planet just months before. We had the probes do as she requested and all of them confirmed with various scans that there was no other life on the planet. We constructed a few basic drones to care for the plants while they grew and to ensure their seeds spread to cover the planet once again. As we prepared to leave Nasero informed us of the approach of another ship, one that we had not encountered before.

Coming Home...

While the maps were being created and compared to the information we already had Nasero and I went over the data that was collected from the other ship. We were able to pull from the data the unique energy patterns of the ship and also figure out a way to track it if it came in range of our sensors. The heavy energy in a jump made it very easy to track as the signature of it was very unique when compared to all other things we had encountered. Scans of the ship showed that, aside from structural changes, nothing much had happened with the technology, which meant that the thief had little imagination in regards to improving it. This gave us hope of being able to overcome the technology at some point and disable the ship, unfortunately without having the knowledge anymore it would end up being trial and error. Nasero also used the data to upgrade the drives and his shielding so that we wouldn't encounter a problem like that again where something could interfere with our travels.

Our analysis of the information came to a halt when we heard a little squeal of delight. Ambri had been going over the new information coming in from the probes and had seen something she recognized. She informed us that she knew the constellation she had pulled up and so we had some of the probes redirect their current search to find possible planets that would have this particular grouping of stars. After about an hour they finally reported a habitable planet that was nearly devoid of life that could see this constellation. When we had the probe send us an image Ambri jumped in delight, it was her home planet. We immediately set course for the planet and within a few minutes we were there. We began by scanning the surface for signs of life, the probe had reported little life, so there must be something. Ambri wasn't watching the scans, she was staring at her home instead. The surface of the planet was brown and uninteresting, this troubled her as she knew her planet to be a very green and vibrant place. The scans confirmed what we feared, there was no plant life left on the planet and only one form of life seemed to be left. We sent a probe to the planet to confirm what the life was, though I knew already what it would be.

We Ended Up Where?

With the crystals being in most of the technology we had created recently it allowed for easy access to boosting the effects through non-technical means. I took Ambri with me to the closest shield generator and informed Evan of my plan. He quickly returned to the control room to take advantage of the extra energy we were about to have and hopefully be able to pull us free of the gravitational forces. We poured our ice forces into the shield, allowing the shield to temporary work as a temperature regulator and Evan redirected the energy from the regulators to the engines. Even at twice the power it still wasn't enough. There was one more hope though to get free: the translocation drive. I knew that with the engines alone it still wouldn't be able to pull us free but if Evan could keep the ship cool and I could go to the drives I might be able to give them a little bit of a boost.

With Evan and Ambri pouring their powers into the shield the ship was slowly continuing to heat up. Nasero prepared to put everything he could into the jump and as I arrived at the drive we got another communication from the other ship. With all the energy pouring into the shield he was able to tell who we were and began threatening us, thinking that we had been the ones to put him in this situation. Nasero calmly informed him that this wasn't the case and we were in as much danger as he was, with that he filtered out the frequency and I began charging up a massive amount of energy. The other ship then fired at us and in a different frequency he laughed and said if he were going to perish we would too. As the projectile closed in on us Nasero fired up the drives and I poured all I could into them. I heard a lot of noise coming through the different communication channels, they sounded like screams or laughter or possible both but there were so many voices that I couldn't tell which one was doing what.

When I came to Ambri was there, she smiled at me when I opened my eyes and told me I had done it, I had once again saved her life and the lives of everything on the ship. My body told me otherwise, it told me we had died, it felt like it was going to just fall apart. This hero business was going to be the death of me, I really just need to give it up. As I slowly got up and found out what happened I learned that the shot the other ship had taken against us had missed, we had jumped before it reached us. The stars that we hadn't been aware of were not where we were heading, the impact with the heavy energy had actually thrown us way off course and then to top that off the jump had been far too powerful to control and so we had ended up in another random, though safer, location. Ambri was a little sad at how lost we were but was happy to have survived the ordeal. Nasero had constructed and deployed probes with our technologies to start mapping out the current galaxy we were in, which could be the same one but we had no idea as nothing was familiar. I inquired about the noises I heard when I had blacked out and was told that one of the screams was Ambri, the laughter was the creature on the other ship, Evan and Nasero had been cheering as the ship started to move, which then changed the laughter to screaming threats. All in all, I was probably glad I missed most of it. I now knew however that we were going to be hunted if he were able to escape the forces of those stars.

Heat Problem

It's hard to say how far we had gone, the galaxy we were in was being well mapped with each passing moment and we had yet to find any sign of Ambri's home or the old ship or really anything of any real interest at all. The systems were continuing to improve and we were developing faster scanners so that we could get details on these celestial bodies without sending a probe or having to stop, though I was sure we would eventually create probes to help map more systems as one ship even as fast as our's would take more than a lifetime to do alone. Ambri seemed depressed as she continued going through the mapped system looking for familiar constellations and glancing at the habitable planets. I did my best to help her but without having seen the planet I could do very little.

During another round of planet searches the ship suddenly shook very violently and we dropped back into normal space. The process of course no longer produced a blindness itself however when we stopped we were blinded by light. The ship turned away from this light so we could see and we found ourselves perched precariously between three stars, the gravitational forces made it impossible for us to move. It was strange that we hadn't seen these stars coming. I asked Nasero if he knew what happened to which he replied as I expected, he had no idea but he was working on figuring it out. It didn't take long for the heat from the stars to start affecting the inside of the ship. We did our best to boost the output of the temperature regulators however they simply could not keep up. Evan worked on performing some upgrades but our time was going to be very limited.

It didn't take long for Nasero to inform us of what happened. It wasn't a gravitational force that had caused the ship to have to return to normal space, it was a heavy mass of energy that caused it. He was working on finding the source. Meanwhile I worked on boosting the shield output to help block some of the heat from reaching us. Our systems were being strained to maintain any semblance of habitability in the ship. As the shields reached the maximum I could push them to I felt something familiar. Nasero at this point found the source of the energy mass and I knew exactly what he was about to show me.

The old ship was stuck with us between these stars, though it had undergone quite a few changes, and neither of us were able to move. The energy we had run into was this ship, because of the nature of the heavy energy when the ship jumped it had been able to interfere with our own travels and both of us failed to stay in our particular layers of space. I felt his presence in the ship and as he hailed us to request assistance I realized he could not recognize the ship or the energy signatures inside of it. Unfortunately with us trying to just survive in this situation we had no way of taking him down, however when I told Nasero that he was our target he made sure to keep the data he had gathered regarding the interference. We allowed Nasero to respond to him, telling him that we were stuck as well and would not be able to render assistance unless we were able to escape. I was tempted by the thought of using a translocation jump or a wormhole to get to the ship and take him out, though I realized that I still may not be strong enough to fight him and my assistance was needed to keep my friends alive. As I struggled with this I saw Ambri out of the corner of my eye, she was not faring well in the increased heat and the sight of her brought me back to my senses. I realized vengeance wasn't near as important as these beings were to me and with my senses restored I had an idea.

What Limitations?

When Evan informed us that the engines had not fired up completely we weren't quite sure what he meant, it looked like we were traveling pretty fast. He then fired up the remaining engines and the colors increased in intensity and the dot moved much faster across the virtual universe. Evan at this point took control of the steering of the ship while Nasero continued to modify his systems as he gathered more data. It seemed the longer we were going at these speeds the more information that we were getting. We wove in and out of star systems, trying to allow Nasero all the time he needed to learn about being in this layer of space. It still wasn't as fast as a gravity jump, but it was much faster than the previous method we had been using to maintain time in travel between stars. When Nasero had all the information and had made the modifications he needed to, Evan powered the engines up further.

I couldn't believe what was happening, these two had made enough modifications to the designs in less than a day to make space travel seem like a thing of ease. It only took seconds to travel between star systems now and I wasn't even convinced that we had reached the limit of the engines. Nasero once again took the time he needed to gather more information and to make modifications. The major factor that played a role in our ability to navigate seemed to be the lack of friction in this layer of space, we could push things farther and farther. I was sure with just a little more time these two could exceed the gravity drives' abilities and we would have no problem pursuing the old ship. It was amazing to think of what was possible with this hybrid of force energy and technology, it seemed as if we no longer had any limits.

As the day wore on things continued to change, the colors that were being shown were slowly filtered out through the upgrades and we could start to see what was actually there, the speed of the ship could be easily adjusted if anything of interest were in the area and we could investigate a location in space before we commited to stopping. We decided that it would be good to start our search for the other ship, it would take quite a bit of time to find it and what better time to look for it than when we were testing and improving the system we would use to locate it in the first place. Our star maps continued to improve, at first it was just the stars and then we added the planets and their individual moons, we worked on mapping where asteroids would be and developed the system to predict where things would be and at what point events would happen. As we passed hospitable worlds I wondered what kind of life we might find when we were able to explore them. As I daydreamed about what could be in the future with this technology Ambri was busy looking over the maps we were generating, I knew she was looking for her home planet but we simply had not passed it yet, though I was sure we would find it eventually.

Navigation

Nasero and Evan took some time analyzing the design. They marvelled at the simplicity and effectiveness of the device. When they asked how I had thought of it I simply told them of my dream, a concept neither of them understood. It took awhile to explain to them what a dream was and how it worked and how for humans at least it can be a wonderful source of inspiration. They understood my words but the depth of the understanding wasn't much, they decided to simply accept my strange visions story and go back to work.

Nasero spent a good deal of time analyzing the data and upgrading his systems to compensate for the increased speeds. The colors that we saw had nothing to do with stars, it was more the effect of breaking through that barrier to achieve the speeds we did. He would be able to detect where we were going and how close to our destination we were by sensing the gravitational forces that he could feel while in this state of momentum. The funny thing about it, as he explained, was that he could feel the forces were in existence but they had absolutely no impact on him, there was no drag and no pull in the direction of the force, it was just there. Meanwhile Evan was off working on understanding the drive better and trying to find a way to improve it, particularly the accoustics that were formed when it was used as those really made stealth impossible.

As interesting as the data was that he was digging through we quickly were bored of all the science, both Ambri and I felt that our desires were to better understand our forces and so we went off to work on them a bit more. I remembered the creature that had first shown us the inadequacy of our sensors, it had been completely stealthed against technology and to the naked eye. I hadn't seen the creature much since our encounter with it though I knew it still existed somewhere in the habitat, I had been able to sense it just not find it again. I told Ambri about it and how much that one encounter had taught me about learning to use my mind more. The short story made her smile and she said that on her planet that was how one learned about their powers was from observing the things around them and that most of their abilities had been learned first by the creatures she grew up around. I knew this was how humans had also learned some things, though we never really admit to it because of our egos. I pondered this thought while we trained.

When we were informed that Evan had upgraded all the ships drives using some of the data Nasero had provided him we went back to the control room to witness the test. As the drive powered up Ambri put her hands over her ears and I prepared for the typical blast of sound, however the ship slipped silently through the barrier and we once again saw the brilliant colors. I was surprised by this and it must have shown on my face because Evan started laughing at the two of us. He said the accoustics problem was easy to solve, the major problem he had been working on was getting the engines to all work together to improve the speed of the ship. Nasero had also designed a star map that would show where we currently were, this was a very nice feature to have. They then surprised us further by demonstrating that they had also found a way to change direction while performing this jump which meant we were no longer limited to a single destination. All of these changes were wonderful, but the best part was yet to come.

Oh See the Pretty Colors

I suppose it was because of the excitement that I forgot to mention it. The first jump was very short with the new drive. I set a start and end to it and when we fired it up we heard a loud bang and then almost immediately another as we entered and left the accelerated state of momentum. When I had asked Nasero if he was able to see or sense anything he said the jump was far too quick and had been expecting something different. That's when I realized that I hadn't explained the modification I had to make to the process to ensure that the technology could actually work accurately for us. I had designed the drive to only start and stop the jump process, which meant we broke the barrier we needed to and stayed there until we told it to leave again, this meant we didn't have to have a knowledge of where we were going but instead could just go where we pleased, though in order to turn we would have to stop and make the maneuver as the technology could only go in straight lines. The first jump at least told us that the technology was properly functioning, that we could enter and leave as we needed to. The next test was to run it longer to see what Nasero could see or sense and so after calculating just how far we went in that brief jump we took aim at an empty area in space and fired up the drive again.

It was brilliant, we heard the noise and as soon as the we recovered from this jolt we finally had the time to see. It was amazing what things looked like when you were in this state, I had never been in it for more than a moment and never realized that you could actually see anything. Colors flashed by, we assumed they were stars. It took a couple of minutes for Nasero to test all his sensors to try to verify what some of the things were that caused these colors but he quickly started to get the hang of it. We didn't want to go too far and so once he had a feel for this he gathered some data and we stopped, in all our jump lasted about five minutes. When we stopped we were again briefly blinded and when we could see clearly we saw that we were exactly where we aimed, in the middle of nowhere. The closest system was still the one we had just left, however not by much. It appeared this system would work wonderfully for moving around. For Ambri the new system was marvelous, she didn't much care for technology but this new stuff was more mystical than technical and she was enjoying every moment of it. I had to admit, I was enjoying it more than the technological advances the previous ship had as well.

The Loud Way

After sharing her story with them they felt better. It was amazing how much emotions could affect two things that didn't know them previously. I spent the rest of the day helping them work on some ideas for the next drive to propel the ship through space, unfortunately there weren't a lot of safe, reliable options to work with. A jump drive using the translocation ability wouldn't be accurate enough and we could end up jumping into the middle of a star and there was still the same problem with wormholes of maintaining one that was long enough to be useful. After awhile I had to give up on trying to figure this problem out, I simply did not have the energy to keep going and so I turned in for the remainder of the night.

Dreams of the past, that's what I was having. My mind was remembering the technology that was on the planet, both before and after the crash. I remembered how things looked when you used the old technology for mindforce, before it had to be resynced with the planets shifting energy. My mind brought images one after the other of things that I had seen, I simply sat there and watched, not thinking much, when suddenly I heard the familiar sound of someone breaking the sound barrier in a translocation. I looked in the direction it came from and saw one person leave and then another come back, their image trailing behind them in marvelous colors. We didn't used to just jump, but we ran at high speeds and broke a barrier to achieve this feat. It had a danger to it because you had to be sure to break through the barrier before you hit something else and you had to hope when you stopped it wasn't too near something that you wouldn't be able to stop before hitting it. The main problem with the technology was that you couldn't see where you were going once you left the location you had been in. At this point I was hit with another thought and woke up, I had an idea.

It probably took half the morning to finally feel the old method of translocating again. I was so used to just appearing that my body wanted to reject the movement part, however I was determined. Once I had made a few successful jumps and had startled everyone a few times with the noise I made I believed I had enough of a feel for it to put it into some technology. I quickly got to work on the design of it, though I still didn't know how to overcome completely the blindness of the jump I knew this would be the most likely method for developing a new drive for the ship. When I had finished the design and started the construction process I finally noticed that everyone was standing behind me watching what I was doing, they all seemed a bit nervous and finally I broke the silence by asking them why they were all so stunned. It took another moment for one of them to respond, it was Evan who finally found words. He asked what I had been doing this morning that created such a noise and visual display and then wondered what the heck it was I was building. I explained to him my past with older mindforce technology and how we had improved it before I met him. It took quite a while to explain, I then told him that the technology I was building was to implement this old force into a new drive. I then explained to him the problem we faced of being able to see where we were going. This was when Nasero jumped in and explained that he had been improving his sensors and optics much farther than what we had already done. He was able to keep track of a lot of things around him and in different ways, he was sure that at least one of his improvements would still function in this accelerated state. We then got to work putting the new drive in place to take it for its first test flight.

A Happy Story

Among her people a village was a family. They didn't really formally recognize parentage, instead the elders were the parents and all the younger ones were your brothers and sisters. Her village wasn't one of the biggest, but it was a good size. She would spend her days mostly with her sisters going about the forests looking for fruits and spending a good portion of the evening along the beautiful beaches collecting smoothed stones and shells to turn into trinkets. These trinkets played an important part of their society, every member of a village would contribute to creating a trinket to celebrate a particular event, such as the birth of another villager or their death, the coming of age or learning to harness their abilities. These trinkets would hold some of the collective memory of the villagers who built it and by harnessing the proper energy one could actually see their individual memories of the event. Often life stories would be shared simply by letting another individual hold these trinkets and see the events in their life. When an individual passed away their old trinkets were viewed and then taken apart to create their death trinket which would be kept on their place of burial, this way their life would be what was remembered instead of their passing. Often these trinkets were the ones filled with the most joy because of the memories that were brought up before its construction.

As she told me her stories I noticed her hands were absently reaching and picking up objects that sat near her, by habit she was constructing a new trinket while she recollected her life. I felt energy flowing from her and into these objects, she was imprinting these things with her memories and feelings. I learned more about her and her people. The tattoos on her were natural, they were much like palmistry is to us, they can tell the tale of a person's life if one knows how to read them. Often the lines and swirls were ignored among her people, they often didn't care about their future, but her people had noticed hers. They were so intricate and much more complex than normal ones. They showed a complex life filled with many things, too many to be understood. Her people saw joy in the lines and sorrow, though most of them didn't understand sorrow as these lines told. She was viewed as an individual of importance in her village and was being trained to be the next priestess, to interpret the lines, however her training never got very far in this as things changed shortly after it was determined. This is where she stopped in her story, she said the rest would be the same story as what she had already told me. As she took note once more of her surroundings she saw that she had constructed a very large trinket, much larger than any she had before. She hadn't even realized she was doing it. She marveled at it and smiled, it was a trinket of immense joy. I helped her hang the trinket on the wall above her bed, she wanted to keep it there so that when she slept its good memories might fill her head and help her sleep. She had exerted a lot of energy in its construction, and so she asked me to leave so that she could rest. I gladly did this, letting her get some much needed sleep. Filled with the joy that she had poured into her trinket I went back to Evan and Nasero to tell them her story.

A Sad Story

Once she had gathered her composure again Ambri ran up and hugged me, thanking me for saving her from that beast. I could just imagine what that day had been like, trying to escape from the thing you knew would kill you and having no way of doing so. To be fatigued and yet still having to strive forward or risk losing your life. She had seen many of her people die by this creature and none of them could help those that were caught. Their powers simply were not strong enough to fend off the creatures and if they used their powers they were quickly discovered and not one, but many of the creatures came running. I could just imagine the devestation when a group of these things were together. They could have easily wiped out an entire village in just minutes, and from her accounts of them they did just that. The planet she came from had been thriving, there had been so many creatures and plants and her people were numerous. They lived their lives without much care, their needs were provided for abundantly by the plant life of the planet. Then one day everything changed, these creatures started to appear from seemingly nowhere and started decimating all life on the planet. They started with animals and her people, killing anything that moved. But as the number of creatures started to dwindle they started to destroy the plants as well. The beasts seemed to hate living things in general and would destroy first the things that could defend themselves at all and then the things that were left after those were gone. After relating her story to me she quietly excused herself and went to her room. Her grief made my heart sorrowful and I could do no more training for the day, instead I went to go help Evan and Nasero continue their work on the next drives for the ship.

When I arrived in Evan's research lab I saw him standing there, staring at the projection in front of him but without any movements as if he were actually working on it. When I approached him and asked if everything was alright he simply looked at me and said how sad he felt after hearing about her story. Apparently Nasero had allowed him to hear the conversation and he had been moved as well. When I tried to verify this Evan simply sat there in his depressed state and Nasero didn't respond at first either. After a few attempts I finally got their attention and they responded that they indeed had heard the whole conversation and had been saddened by it. Knowing that both of them were not emotional beings meant that this was hard for them to handle and so I knew there wasn't going to be much point in trying to get them to move on. Slightly amused by the fact that they were affected this way but also a bit annoyed that they had listened in on the conversation I went back down to the apartment area to see if I could talk some more with Ambri.

I heard the sound of things being moved around after rapping lightly on the door. A few moments after the sounds stopped the door opened slowly and a teary eyed Ambri looked out at me. She did her best to smile, but I could see that she was filled with sorrow. She invited me in and asked what she could do for me. To this I simply told her how her story had affected Evan and Nasero to which she quickly began apologizing which I quickly stopped and said was unnecessary, instead I wanted to hear more of her story, except this time to hear about some of her happy moments in life, hopefully happy enough to change the mood in the ship.

Ambri's Arrival

She simply was a wonderful cook, she could take any of the plain fruits and vegetables and make a magnificent feast from them. The food that Ambri prepared was delicious, filling and restoring. Almost everything gave you this boost of energy. After having such a wonderful meal I felt it was time to try again to make a wormhole. I started off just feeling the flow of the energy, not trying to force it but more to harmonize with it. Once I had a good feel for it I tried gathering a bit of it. Everything seemed to be going well, as the energy built up I could feel its potential, it was nearly ready when Ambri appeared in the room. I nearly lost my concentration due to this, I simply was not used to people just appearing without a sound where I was, however I maintained most of the gathered energy and continued collecting it. As the ability to manifest the wormhole came closer to reality Ambri seemed a little uneasy but she watched intently as I worked on shaping the first non-technological wormhole I'd ever seen.

That thing drained me faster than anything I'd ever tried before, the wormhole lasted all of a few seconds before I could no longer maintain it. Ambri's jaw had dropped open when it first appeared and had remained that way for as long as it took me to get back to my feet after losing all my power. I looked at her and asked her why she was so shocked about the wormhole, I had described it to her before. My voice brought back her wits and she suddenly started talking quite rapidly. I understood a little bit of what she said, something about not realizing what I had described before and having seen a wormhole once on her planet. I did my best to get her to slow down and add a few more details to what she was saying but it was no use, luckily Nasero happened to be listening to this and was able to distinguish quite a few more words than I could and let me know what she was saying. Apparently she had seen a wormhole before on her planet, when she had been fleeing the creature I killed. This wormhole had appeared before her and she had stumbled into it and the creature after her. When she had come to the other side she was in the habitat and had taken advantage of the moments she had to hide herself from the creature. When the creature arrived shortly after she did the wormhole collapsed and the creature ran off to hide from the sunlight. As I listened to this translation of the story I realized what must have happened. When we were developing the drives to travel between layers of space we must have made a complete wormhole or activated a natural one that had gone from the habitat to her home planet. This meant that once again her life had been saved by my actions. Had the wormhole not appeared the creature would have killed her.

Full Power

The beautiful thing about the technology we made with the crystals is that no matter what it was it had full force power regardless of how strong our own energies actually were. It absorbed a tiny amount and then boosted its own output to maximum. This made creating a shield technology very easy, we made sure to make multiple points on the ship where it was generated, this way we wouldn't have a single point of failure in our defenses. The wonderful thing about the shield force was that it was good against all types of attacks, we tested everything we could come up with against it. The power attached to it made the shield very strong, constantly replenishing what was being used by blocking things from getting through. The next technology we started to develop was stealth. Ambri had been able to supress her powers which made her very difficult if not impossible to detect if you didn't know she was there. It took some time but she was a good teacher and eventually all of us knew how to do this. The problem was then trying to find a way to implement it in technology so that we could use our powers while remaining hidden.

After some more testing on this we came to realize that this was another type of mindforce, the power to disguise yourself. It was a very subtle power, hard to detect at all which made sense given what it was doing. Once I had sensed it I found a way to implement it into the shield force, meaning we could be protected and stealthed at the same time. Upgrading the shields was easy at this point and we soon were able to send out some probes that had a hard time detecting us, though they could easily see us given our size, but visually spotting a ship in space is a difficult task when you don't know where to look. Once all of this was done Ambri and I returned to our training, we both desired to be able to defend ourselves apart from technology.

Sensing the output from the technology had made us realize just how weak we still were in our powers and so we both pushed ourselves to the limit. She worked on her control over the offensive powers while I worked on my defensive ones. As each of us grew stronger in these powers we noticed that our energy reserves were increasing, making it easier to train longer. We also noticed that the better we got at it the less energy it took to create the same effect, which gave me hope in eventually being able to create wormholes without completely depleting my energy. At one point our individual powers had increased to the point that we wanted to test them and so we began sparring a bit. Her blasts of energy would nearly deplete my shield every time, however I would be able to replenish it before the next attack came. It was fascinating watching her use each of these powers. The crystals on her face and body would glow with the color of the force she was using, which we realized could be a hinderance if she were in a fight against something that had enough intelligence to notice this as it would allow the thing to see what was coming and defend itself accordingly. She continued to work on her control, trying to find a way to use the energies without showing which one she was about to unleash and eventually found a way to start tricking me in which energy was about to come. She initially charged up one type, creating the appropriate glow, and then right before she cast it forth she would change the gathered energy into a different force, giving you only moments to compensate for the change. This eventually lead to her mixing the colors that were coming out so that you never knew what to expect. Despite the crystals not always telling you what was coming it was still beautiful to watch, they shimmered with the light of her energies and made her tattoos look like they were swirling. She was definitely a very interesting species.

New Energies

If all you wanted to know was how to defend yourself and keep yourself alive Ambri would be your ideal teacher. The energies her people used all dealt with defensive and healing techniques, though the defensive side wasn't very strong due to the nature of her home planet. Nothing there was very violent and so they only needed to be able to create a force shield when one of them happened to stumble or fall off of something. Still, once I learned to harness this energy I felt much more capable of keeping myself safe and alive. The energy she had used on me during my fight had been one that purifies and restores your body, a kind of modified healing. As I learned this one it seemed to integrate into my body, making me stronger, I felt I had a much larger reserve of energy to use once I had learned this force. For her, however, learning was not easy, her mind was not used to harnessing any violent energy at all and when we finally did have some success it was just enough to cook the fruit I had been enjoying at the time. I encouraged her to keep trying and not to give up and so she kept practicing until she could consistently create a small static spark. Once she had used up most of her energy I took some time to continue striving for more abilities. I knew the translocation ability was increasing but I needed to make sure that if I escaped anyone with me could as well, and so I began trying to harness the energy to create wormholes.

Luckily I had a lot of energy to work with from the new abilities I had already learned because even attempting to harness the right energy is completely draining. This definitely wouldn't be a desperate escape type of force, it would need to be deliberate or always plan to keep the energy you need to use it. I could at least feel the energy I needed, but drawing on it was difficult, it put a strain on your body where keeping your concentration was difficult, it made me realize why we had been relying so much on chips to harness our powers, it was just easier that way and the chips could keep us from harnessing too much. There were quite a few occassions in my attempts where I nearly collapsed from the strain of trying to gather this energy, fortunately Ambri was there to keep me from hurting myself. After a couple of hours and only a few attempts we called it a day, there would be much more time to work on this, but I knew I didn't want to wait too long to learn this particular force.

Moving Around the Ship

The hard part had been linking locations together, the technology had been quite easy given all the pieces had already been created and tried. The materials that had been gathered for the tube system were no longer necessary with this technology. Using a number of crystals we could now translocate to the different locations on the ship and using different sensors we could tell exactly who was using which crystal and either allow or deny access to different areas. This allowed us to further close off the area we were living in from the habitat and allowed us additional safety from the labs and training facility. Once I had finished installing the last translocation terminal I went to see how Evan was doing.

He had more than accomplished his task using these crystals. He had exceeded the power output of his former power supply so much that the technology now seemed obsolete. Not wanting to waste resources with inferior technology we upgraded all deviced that had power supplies attached to them, which meant redoing everything I had just done, but it was worth it. The efficiency was much better and the technology could be made smaller, meaning we could make more of it given the limitation we still had in the resources the technology was using. Evan then implemented the new technology I had made into his systems as well, giving him additional abilities and boosting them much farther than they had been. With all this technology it made knowing how to use the different aspects of mindforce almost unnecessary, however I remembered the folly of relying too much on technology for your abilities. I left Evan and Nasero to their workings and went to the training room, I needed to continue my studies into the abilities of my mind.

I was surprised when Ambri came to join me, she said she needed to learn some of the forces I knew, the ones that could be destructive. This surprised me given her attitude towards the weapons earlier, however I understood her feelings in this, she didn't want to be helpless again if another creature were to come after her. I agreed to teach her what I could and in turn asked her to teach me her unique force powers.

Increasing Power

The new power sources that Evan created were indeed very small, small enough to fit in a standard sized weapon cell with room to spare. He had also, with Nasero's help, increased the output to nearly the same level as the original. With a little bit more research and work he might be able to go much farther in generating power. I used his design to create a few modified power sources which I took with me to use in my own experiments. Intrigued by my modifications Evan and Ambri followed me back to the lab where I was conducting my research.

The first few attempts were complete failures, I actually blew up the refined crystals. After some adjustments however I found a crystal shape that was better suited to the energy coming from the power supply. Once I had them connected without an explosion I then worked on getting the frequencies right to allow the energy to actually do something to the crystal. The crystal constantly refused to go above a certain power level which was based on its size, however once I had everything adjusted properly the crystal recharged itself from the power source every time you used its energies. As an added bonus, the extra power boosted the output of the crystal and the charge type in the crystal didn't deteriorate with use. In effect with the combined technologies we had infinite elemental type weapons, though there was a necessary cooldown time on them based upon the size of the crystal, the materials that made up the rest of it had to be given a chance to maintain their stability. By adding on some heat syncs and putting in some coolant you could increase the rate of firing but not eliminate the need for delay in shots. When Evan saw what was possible with these crystals he asked for a few which I handed over to him and ran off to his test lab to continue developing the power systems that the ship would be utilizing. Once he was gone Ambri asked if there was any other use than weapons for these crystals.

It had been a simple question but it had still caught me off guard. It hadn't dawned on me that I was only using these crystals to find a way to defeat the creature and nothing more. There were probably many other uses for this, some more practical than destruction. I assured her that I was done developing weapons with these now and would instead focus my attention on doing good things with them. I sent the schematics to Nasero so that he could work on defenses for the ship and I got to work trying out different forces in technology. The first one I created was a healing device, it was simple enough to construct and the size of the crystal didn't have to be very large to greatly exceed our needs. Once I was sure I had a good concept of what was necessary to make the most of this technology I upgraded our wrist computers with it. This would give us the ability to heal ourselves or one another when our force energy was low. I then got to work on the next most useful technology that we could hope to get from these crystals.

Playing with Crystals

The third generation power supply was phenomenal. A single unit supplied enough power to keep Nasero going without solar panels, however we kept them in place as a backup anyway. With multiple units we would have enough power to work on the next generation of engines, hopefully coming up with some that allowed for faster travel and would let us leave the current system and begin pursuing the original ship, though we would have to have some very good engines to keep up with it. Evan didn't stop his work on the power supply, he insisted on continuing until he had reached the output of the original or exceeded it. Nasero had done a wonderful job constructing the new forward control room and apartments, the security on them was much better than the complex that could be surrounded. Ambri quickly got to work customizing her apartment and I spent some time getting furnishings constructed for mine. Nasero worked on deconstructing the old facility as well as moving other buildings from the ground to the ceiling of the habitat, an area that would be inaccessible to most creatures but far enough away from the apartments to prevent any experiments from threatening our living quarters. In between the apartments, at the suggestion of Ambri, there was constructed a couryard with plants and an area to have the garden, making it so that we didn't need to go out into the main habitat for food or recreation. I also had an extra room constructed for the purpose of training, it would be much safer to control the environment we trained our various forces in, this room was also constructed away from the main rooms but not too near to the research labs. In order to allow us to move quickly between the areas in the ship a transport system was designed, it would take some more resources to complete but the planet we were orbiting was rich in what we needed, the system consisted of tubes and pods to run through them, each pod would be able to seat all three of us if it needed to but there would be enough constructed for each of us to go alone anywhere we needed.

Once my apartment was set up the way I desired I got to work refining a few of the crystals and testing their functionality in technology. I knew that unrefined they simply replicated and amplified the last force energy they encountered but I needed to know how it worked once it was in a more refined state. To start with I refined it into smaller pieces, each one faceted like any other gem would be. These gems when given a little bit of force energy and did like the larger one except not all of them changed at once, which meant that each gem could hold a different type of force. I powered one gem for each type of force I currently had access to, the trickiest being the one for translocation and placed them in controlled domes to prevent their effects from making research difficult. These I left as my controls, I needed to see how long they could hold a particular force and if it intensified or died off after time.

As the experiments progressed the refined crystals held their charge without change and I had refined a few circuits out of some of the remaining crystals. The circuits I integrated with a few different types of weapons, on their own these changes did nothing, but when force energy was put through the weapon in place of standard cells the weapons shot elemental damage at the target or took on the aspect of the element in the case of blades. I then tried a refined crystal in the place of the weapon cells, charged with the element force of fire. When I shot with that in the slot it fired just like it had when I sent force energy into it, however after a few shots the charge was depleted. I then tried to fill the crystal with more energy than the last time, however it only seemed to take the small amount each time and the rest was wasted energy. At this point I was joined by Ambri who was curious what I had been up to all day in this room. I showed her my progress with the crystals and how they could be used to make elemental type weapons. She then checked out the test crystals I had going and asked about the types of energy that changed them to the colors they were and I shared all that I knew so far about them. After she was satisfied she went to leave and mentioned that the next generation of power had been developed and that Evan had showed it to her, she mentioned it was much smaller than the last one. This gave me an idea for my next set of experiments and so I went with her to the control room.

Power Progress

The initial power supply they were able to construct was not nearly as good as the original, there were simply too many technological advances in the one that already existed for us to replicate with simple scans. However the scans were able to show us enough to start to learn the power producing properties of this material. They continued to work on learning more about these properties and increasing the output of the first generation one they constructed while I constructed a new vehicle using the current version of the power supply to get around the habitat, this was by far a much faster process. Ambri joined me to go back to the cave and gather some data on the crystals there, she now understood a little bit more about the forces we had power over and that potentially she could learn to use more of them. I also took the time we had to teach her to drive the vehicle, luckily I had used some good materials as there were a few times we didn't go quite where she was anticipating.

When we arrived at the cave we gathered up a few more samples of the crystals and ran some initial scans on them to determine how they interacted together and their range of connectedness. She also went into a few of the deeper tunnels I never got to explore and came back with a few more of her personal possessions, mostly things she had made while here to help her survive but also a few things that were clearly just trinkets she had made. When I asked her about these she just smiled and said they were things she made to help her remember. The scans of the crystals turned up some interesting results. It seemed the crystals were in fact a more stable form of fragments, and not just one but all of them working together to form this new substance. The crystal appeared to be very durable and nearly as hard as diamond, though I had no way of knowing for sure for lack of a good sample to test against. Adjusting the refiner to allow this substance to be manipulated was surprisingly easy, mostly due to the fact that the energy these crystals put out gave a lot of information about the substance itself, at least signals that technology could easily understand. As we prepared to leave with the additional samples I noticed that the spot I had removed the first crystal from seemed to be growing a new one, this gave me hope that this wouldn't end up being a very limited resource for us.

When we returned to the complex Evan and Nasero had constructed the second generation of power supplies, I upgraded the one in the vehicle and then found out that they were going to use the new one to power Evan and his would be removed for further study. I was a bit apprehensive about this plan but they assured me that the output of the new generation one would exceed the energy needed for him to function and that the future generations of this power supply would probably equal the original once they were able to get a closer look at it. The process was a bit more hands on and so Evan, once his power supply had been swapped, did most of the work for this, which allowed us to take advantage of Nasero's free time and have him start work on the new forward section of the ship to have a complete control room and apartments for each of us as well as some common rooms that we would share.

How the Fight was Won

The new refining room worked as we had hoped. The material responded to the cold and energy as hoped and we were able to refine it. Once refined the material could be worked like most any other material, though it was a lot stronger. We positioned the ship closer to the star in this system to increase our available power for the refining process. While this was going on we had Nasero grow another room that could do scans of larger things that couldn't be taken apart. This room we were going to use to get better scans of Evan's internal power supply, these scans would hopefully show us how to replicate the technology. During this time I got to work designing a new forward control room, I knew it would be easier to control the ship if we were to have a secure location where we wouldn't have a threat of a legion of angry creatures coming to destroy us. Along with the control room I also developed a few other rooms, individual rooms for Evan, Ambri and me. The materials we needed for Nasero to grow these rooms were lacking, and so they would have to wait until we got to the next good source of nutrients for him.

Once the material was completely refined all of Evan and Nasero's efforts went towards researching and replicating the power supply. I took manual control of the ship and began steering towards a planet that was rich in organic matter that could feed the ship's growth. During our trek to this planet I learned more about Ambri. She hadn't evolved on this ship as I had originally thought, though we had trouble figuring out how exactly she got here. The creature that I had killed with her help had also come from the planet she had lived on, though it had not originated there. The creatures had appeared one day, appearing to have been deposited there by some other race of aliens purposefully, though this was only speculation as they never witnessed how the creatures appeared there. When they showed up they began decimating the population of her people. There were only a handful left when the one I had killed had been pursuing her. The creatures were ruthless, they killed just to destroy other things, they never ate what they killed. Her people had no way of fighting, they were a peaceful race and knew nothing of the destructive forces of energy that the mind could deal with, which is what amazed her about me. She had been hiding from the creature when she saw me and had been following at a safe distance and trying to hide her energies to keep from being found. She witnessed my fiery wrath unleashed against an inanimate object which had at first frightened her but those fears abated when I had calmed down and had started wandering around like a more rational being. When the creature came after me she thought my life would be ended but she watched anyway, trying to learn how I had done what she saw earlier. When things looked bleak she had used some of her powers to help me, which would mean the creature would come after her next, having detected her energies. When her energy had turned things around she continued to use them subtly to help and the poisons effects had cleared enough for me to finish off the creature. As she saw the progress of the final bit of the fight she realized that I would die killing this thing because I had no time to get out of its way and so she had run and thrown herself into me to knock me out of the way, she had been hit a bit by the creature in the process but not enough to cause any life threatening injuries. She had then lied there awhile recovering and when she had recovered enough she moved me to the cave she had been staying in to keep me safe from the other creatures that lived in the habitat. As she finished telling me her story we had arrived at our destination and Nasero began deploying probes to bring back the resources he needed. He and Evan then got back to work trying to replicate the power supply and I thanked Ambri for saving my life, she in turn thanked me for saving hers by destroying that death beast.