On the Run Again

The new ship was nearly ready when Evan returned, something had changed about him but we didn't have time to stop to figure out what he had done. He helped us finish everything and once it was ready Ambri, Nira and I boarded and took it for a quick test run. The drives seemed to be fine, though we would know how well they worked only when we performed our next jump. We double checked our food supply and virtual world garden, which would hopefully grow quickly and provide us with more food during our flight. We knew it was dangerous, but we desperately needed to reach the planet this thing had come from and try to determine how to stop it. Once we had finished Nasero informed us that within 10 minutes the ship would break through our star shield, which meant that the power supplies were going to go critical and could cause the star to explode if we didn't relieve the strain on them. So with no more delays we left the system, purposely approaching the ship before changing course and jumping. It took only a moment for the ship to stop its assault and pursue us, it knew we were the ones it wanted to overtake. Lucky for us our drives seemed to have improved enough, we felt no gravitational pressure on the ship which meant we were staying far enough ahead. Nasero reported that the power supplies were now cooling down and the shield was still strong enough to protect the system, Evan would go to the star base and work on improving the output of the system.

Once everything was repaired Evan then had time to report his findings to us. I was very anxious to hear what he had discovered. As it turned out we did have the cube that was the one that contained all the research on the cubes themselves. It had been the cube that Evan came from, the original one and we had it ever since capturing the planet ship, we just needed to extract it from the rest of the stored mass. Evan had taken the time to have the cube restore itself with all its information and then rejoin with it, though not to become the cube again but instead to get all the technology and ability he had before but now in his humanoid form. It changed his density but the wonder of the cube technology had made it possible for him to retain his shape. He was still going through all the information, for it was a tremendous amount to absorb all at once within the smaller frame he had constructed for himself, but he was quickly figuring out a way to use the technology that the entity had used to create its ship against it. The cubes all had a basic programming and signal that they would respond to, no matter who gave the signal. The programming had been overcome in him when he was no longer a part of the cube, and after rejoining with the cube he was able to disable this particular function, making him immune to the same manipulations. The signals would allow someone to change the shape of the cube to suit them, which meant we didn't need to adapt to the cubes to dock but instead they could adapt to us. This also meant that with the right changes we could disable the ship that was chasing us, at least for a time. The only problem would be detecting the ship long enough to be able to send the signal, but first we would want to see if we could disguise the signal and encrypt it so that it wouldn't figure out where or what we were doing to cause the problems it would have.

Swapping Horses

It was really quite fascinating to watch, I had no idea she was capable of ever doing something like this. The ship detached the sections that were infected, removing the virus' chance of getting to anything vital. This made the ship look quite bare and unworthy of space travel, but she didn't stop it there. The genetics of the ship contained all our technological advances and needed to be protected, so instead of the ship growing back the sections it lost it instead reverted to its original shape and size, a simple seed. This she picked up and tucked away in her garments until she could find a better place to keep it. It was brilliant what she did, and once we had some time to discuss it we understood why it had to be done. With the threat of such a virus that could quickly disable the most important ship we had we needed to keep it safe. We could easily create another ship with all the technology we needed that wouldn't be susceptible to such an infection, but we couldn't recreate this ship without a lot of work, and it could possibly be that the technology couldn't be recreated. It had all been done with a series of self induced evolutions which made the ship remarkably unique, to evolve in a single generation instead of multiple. I know Nasero was capable of some changes, but I wasn't sure he could accomplish the same task that Nira had in this ship. Not to mention that if the genetic changes didn't occur in the proper sequence the living ship would simply die due to its own instability. With that done we got to work constructing our next ship, the design would implement as much of the technology that we had before as it could, including a virtual world where our food would grow, however we wouldn't be living in this one, we would simply use it as a way to get what organic resources we needed. The plan was to keep the ship small enough to accomodate us and allow us to live quite comfortably despite the lack of spaces. We would also work on developing some new drives that would allow us faster travel once we left the shielded system, I just hoped that we would have enough time before the massive ship came and started trying to find its way in, I wasn't sure that our shields would be able to hold it back for long.

While we were busy working on our next new ship Evan had returned to the base orbiting the Tirtris world, he had some sort of revelation that he wanted to follow up on after his encounter with the energy entity and needed to gleen some information from the technology that the Klatvix had. I wasn't sure what he was thinking would be relevant to what was currently going on, but I knew he wasn't one to pursue wild fancies. Still, I was curious about how quickly he left after the incident. After some time I checked in with him, he was still busy with his research, however he said he was making progress into the study of the technology. He also mentioned that his study should help us in overcoming the power of the ship it had constructed, the base of that ship being in the Klatvix technology, namely the cube. Though I wasn't sure how he would be getting more information about the cube technology as we hadn't found the research station containing that yet. Still, any advantage would be a good advantage for us. We were just finishing the basics of our ship when the presence of the war ship was felt, it had increased its mass even more and was starting to try to take down our shield, luckily we had made enough progress in our power research to upgrade the generators on it to keep it strong for at least a little while longer. Nasero kept us up-to-date on the status of the shield so that we would know when we had to leave, ship finished or not. So while Nira constructed what we absolutely needed to get going, Ambri gathered up the food we would need and the small plants that we would be growing as well as the materials that they would need to feed on. I, however, wanted to ensure we could build the rest of our ship while we led the behemoth away from this system and so I got to work on the construction system and designing a few technology upgrades to assist us in using it.

Getting to Safety

Despite the fact that we couldn't detect or see the ship that was chasing us, it was quickly apparent to us that it was there. Gravitational forces, despite our technological improvements, were affecting the ship. Something was forcefully trying to make us stop. I was amazed that whatever this thing was could modify a gravity drive so quickly in order to be able to keep up with us and still be able to perform other gravity functions from the same drives. Each tiny modification we did made it a little easier to continue fleeing this thing. It was clear to me that we would not be able to outrun this ship with our current drive, however, I figured we might buy ourselves some time if we could use a wormhole gate and so I changed our course from the area we believed it came from to one of the stars we controlled. I notified Nasero that we would need a gate built very quickly to accomodate the ship at the system we were heading towards. He informed us that it shouldn't be a problem as there were plenty of resources available as well as a small army of drones and probes to get it constructed for us. We continued on and just hoped we would be able to make it through and close the connection again before this thing could make its way through as well. We also had to hope that the drones and probes could pull the gate back into the star once we were through to prevent this thing from learning our technology to perform such a task.

As we closed in Nasero opened up the wormhole, we would only have a few precious moments to get through before it closed and we had to leave our jump to do it, so our timing had to be perfect. What made it easier was that the feel of a wormhole was something unique and we could sense how close we were to it. Once we were about to hit it we left our jump and went into it, however we hadn't quite made it through when we sensed the massive ship leave its jump and fire upon us. Somehow in its pursuit the thing that was controlling that ship had absorbed a lot of mass and constructed a battle class ship. We made it through safely and the gate closed, the probes even reported that they got it safely into the star and were pulling the technology through the smaller gate as it was disassembled, they would only have a few moments to get everything done and then they would need to activate the self destruct sequence, which was simply the command to turn off the shields in the base, to ensure that the entity couldn't get to any of the remnant technologies.

Things seemed to be going well, the ship didn't make an attempt to enter the star after any of the technology and so we had only minor resource loss when we allowed the sun to consume the star shield base. With that taken care of the only problem we had to deal with was figuring out what we were hit with and how bad the damage was. From the feel of it there wasn't a lot of damage, but I know we had been hit by something. Nasero had brought us to our first base, the one near Ambri's home world. We landed in one of the docking bays and sealed it off from the rest of the complex then disembarked and checked out what had hit us. From the looks of it the blast hadn't been to destroy us, but mearly to disable or possibly attach something to us, but it was hard to tell. The section that had been hit was charred and there were some holes from where the heat of the blast had melted through. It was surprising that our shields had done nothing against it, I had thought we were pretty thorough in testing our defenses. There didn't appear to be any fragments of anything, though I knew that didn't tell me everything. Back on board the ship I started checking all the diagnostics information and quickly learned that the ship was dying. Whatever hit us had contained a virus and it was consuming the ship, it hadn't hit any major systems as of yet but we needed to do something quickly. When Nira heard what was going on she quickly kicked me out of the captain's pod and went to work isolating the problem. When she had finished what she was doing she quickly hurried all of us off the ship. I wasn't sure what she had done but I figured it would save the ship in the long run.

Fleeing the Thing

Back on the ship my first task was to lock out the tranlocation system, we didn't need anything finding its way onto the ship with us. I then entered the main control pod and started running scans to find the mass of technology that was heading towards us, this took only a moment but it was clear the mass was changing its shape and very quickly. Ambri and Nira, once they had gathered their wits, entered the two support pods and started asking what was going on. I showed them the mass that was moving towards us and informed them that it was the cube and power supply we had found, though I was now sure the power unit had been more of a prison for something else. As the mass closed in it was clear that all the technology was being converted into a type of ship I had never seen before, it was small but it had some technology forming in it that was likely very superior to our own. I tried to use the energy web on it, but the ship seemed to absorb the energy and then proceeded towards us at a much faster pace. I didn't take any more time to try to disable the ship, instead, I activated our jump drive and got away from it as quickly as possible.

Moments later Nasero was letting us know that Evan was waking up and the ship was in pursuit of us, though he could not track it once it had gone into its jump. We did our best to try to find it, but nothing showed up, it was like the thing had cloaked itself beyond our scanning technology. We turned on all of our defenses and hoped it would do something against this thing. I tried my best to be brave, but Ambri knew better, though at least Nira was buying it for now. We had to work quickly, there were upgrades we had ready to perform on the ship to improve our chances but it was risky to be fleeing from something and modifying the technology, though I felt we didn't have much choice. When Evan finally was able to talk to us he informed us that there was indeed something inside that power device we had found, the thing wasn't flesh and blood like us but seemed to be composed of the very energy it contained, which would probably explain why it didn't want to be tapped as a power source and why it was so potent. I wasn't sure what to make of it all yet, but I figured our best bet would be to find the place it came from and look for some answers.

The Vacation is Over

Every day she seemed to be getting stronger, she was getting used to having a body like ours. We went out exploring the beeches, rivers and seas today and she loved every minute of it. It wasn't very much different than what was simulated, but there was still something that wasn't quite right. I spent some time teaching her to swim, but not much as it was a difficult task using those muscles, but she did well enough. I was sure she would spend more time learning to do it later, but probably in the virtual world. Ambri had decided to join us today, though not right away, but she arrived just in time to see us leaving the water. She teased us about not waiting for her and Nira was about ready to jump in again when I suggested we take a break first, get some food and enjoy the sun before going back in. At this suggestion she realized that she was quite hungry and so we found some fruit nearby and sat down on some rocks to enjoy it.

We knew we needed to get going soon, but we were really enjoying the planet. If it weren't for the sudden blast we heard coming from the direction of the research facility we probably would have continued our swimming, but once we heard it we all rushed back. We could have used the transporters, but if we had we could end up in a bad situation. As we raced towards the buildings we could see smoke rising, something had definitely taken some damage. It was hard making our way through the forested area that surrounded the complex, there hadn't been a path made yet, mostly because the flying vehicles made that unnecessary. Once we finally did make it through I could see clearly that the blast had taken out a good portion of the roof that had been over the cube that contained the power source. It didn't look like something attacked us, but rather something escaped. The debris was scattered about in such a way that it appeared something had blasted its way out instead of trying to blast a way in. I quickly went inside while the girls stared at all the smoldering debris.

Inside I found Evan against one of the walls, he appeared to be relatively unharmed but he was knocked out. I tried to see if Nasero was responding and to my relief he was. His projected image quickly appeared and I asked him what happened. He informed me that I was overlooking one thing, and a quick glace around told me he was right. I asked him where the cube had gone to which he said they had removed it from the power source, which made me ask where that was. To this he replied that they had been successful in unlocking the device, however once they did it some energy burst forth from it creating the hole in the ceiling and then it seemed to attract the pieces of the cube to it, once it had those pieces it used the gravity drive technology and lifted itself out. Currently the mass was heading towards our ship. I wasted little time for additional information and instead ran out and pressed the buttons on the girls' wrist computers that would send them to the ship and then transported myself.

Planet Nasero

The trip to and arrival at the planet was nothing spectacular. We didn't notice anything at least, we had been busy in the virtual world. It hadn't seemed like that much time had passed, and yet here we were. The planet was gorgeous, Nasero had done a wonderful job designing the different areas and the fruits were in season and the animals had many offspring now. Ambri immediately went out upon arrival, riding around safely in a flying vehicle that Nasero had designed and looking at all the cute critters. Nira of course was going crazy trying to experience everything, and tasting real fruits for the first time was much better than what we had synthesized for her. The virtual fruits didn't even compare to the wonderful things she was having on this planet. She made plans to gather up some seeds so we could have more of these fruits when we left. I knew it would take quite a bit of time for them to grow, but we would soon enjoy the ones we had in the virtual world, just a couple more days and they should be done. Evan wasted little time getting the cube ready, it would use its own drives to descend to the research facility that Nasero had ready for us. Though he was anxious to continue that research, he also desperately wanted to work on the energy converting technology we had used, though he wouldn't have much luck with that as we had to get back to our mission once everything was set.

Seeing Nasero's projected image was comforting, though he admitted it was, at this point, a very dated technology. He admired the work that Nira had done and pondered the idea of trying to get his own body at some point, though it would be difficult to maintain all that he had done with this planet without being directly connected to it at all times, still, the thought was there and I imagined some day we would have another being of flesh and blood that wasn't born that way. He also was quite interested in the power source, possibly slightly more than the other technology, apparently he had been making more progress on the translations and he believed that this device was much more than just a source of power, though he wouldn't specify what he meant until he could gather more data. He was working on parts of the information that should unlock what was inside of it, but it would still be a little bit before he could access it, they first had to get it out of the cube. While they worked on that I followed Nira around, she refused to play it safe and wanted to walk and so I went with her, mostly to protect her from some of the creatures, but also to see the changes this planet had gone through.

Wandering around showed that the plants were roughly familiar, though they had clearly adapted a bit when they were converting the atmosphere. Quite a few of them showed some new traits, such as some that clearly would eat creatures that ventured into it, but others seemed to remain the same. The creatures were quite a bit more timid now, with all this space it was much easier for them to avoid conflict. I recognized the general energy patterns of them, so it was clear that none of the creatures had any need to mutate to live on this planet. We continued our hike through the forests and plains, making our way to the volcanic, mountainous region that Nasero had designed. Nira had a strong desire to witness first hand the power of nature, even if the area it was in was designed by the one who she had been designed after. As we drew near the temperature rose, it was a very active area. She began sweating, which she thought was great and which I had to warn her was not always a good thing. We had brought some water with us so we stayed hydrated well enough. When we reached the summit, or at least as close as we could get to it, we saw the raging fires that spewed from the depths of the planet. It swirled this way and that as it made its way towards its escape. We could see a few drones were busy maintaining the flow, the area hadn't been completely finished yet and Nasero was also learning more about it. Though he had designed this area his job was only to manipulate, but if he could understand it he could potentially find a way to control it. It would be interesting if he ever mastered the planet that he was becoming, being a type of Gaia to the world and overseeing its well being. When we had enough of the heat we headed back, though it wouldn't be the end of our explorations it had been enough for today. Nira was still building strength within her body and this trek had tired her out. Luckily we only needed to activate the translocation system on the wrist computers we had been given and we found ourselves back in the comforts of the facility.

Traveling Together Again

As we poured over the information Nira had provided us with it became clear that the technology relied heavily on the advancements Nira had made to herself when she was first growing. It was a technology that could, at this time, only exist on the ship. We were still making our way back to Nasero, but we had slowed down along the way to help Evan tow the cube back with us. Evan was simply amazed when he saw Nira, he really had thought it unbelievable but here she was in flesh and blood, no longer a ship but something completely different. She enjoyed seeing the look on his face as she showed off the form she had created, she really was delighted in how carefully she had crafted every feature of her avatar that was now her body. Nasero still had his doubts about it despite Evan joining in with us, telling him how wonderful this technology was that could create a living body for Nira. We continued on our way, much faster now that we had two ships towing the cube. For now the technology that resided inside the cube would remain a mystery, there were too many new, fascinating things to consider and work on while we finished our trip to planet Nasero.

When Evan entered the virtual world with us he didn't quite know what to expect, he knew that we had come up with many things for him to work on with the other simulations but he hadn't expected what we came up with. Once inside he began to understand why we spent so much time here, it was amazing the level of detail she had done with the place and that it wasn't a drain to the ship's power systems. Nira and Ambri had been spending quite a bit of time here, apparently simulating the sensations with her avatar hadn't been anything like experiencing them in her new form. She was all giddy with excitement about every little thing and I was happy for her, but I knew she would experience much more once we reached a planet that she could walk around on. Though we had made it realistic, there was always something different between it and the real world, though I just couldn't place my finger on it. I hoped eventually to figure out what it was, but for now it was enough to be with my friends in this wonderful place while we made our way towards our destination.