“Stay where you are, Calan!” Sineul’s voice came from all around him. “I’m going to do the foam lattice, so you won’t be able to move.”
“WHAT IS THAT!?” Calan yelled, trying to hold on to anything but he wasn’t good with his arms as he was with the lasers on the ends of them. “WHERE ARE WE GOING.”
“We’re already there, don’t worry.”
Holes opened on the ceiling of the cargo bay and white pellets shot out of them towards the ground. They erupted on impact to a strong, thin, messy lattice of threads that filled all the gaps between all objects in the cargo bay. The foam solidified quickly, pinning everything where they were. Calan was glued to a corner.
“Ew what’s this!” He asked, disgusted. “Did you break something!?”
“No, hold on, Calan.”
The ship shook yet again and it was much harder this time, as if they impacted something outside, but they could still push through whatever it was. The trembling continued for nearly half a minute before things calmed down to a blissful silence while the engines and the reactors turned down.
“We’ve arrived at our destination.”
“What do you mean!” Calan yelled, trying to destroy the foam lattice around him to free himself.
“We’re where we should be,” Sineul simplified.
“How do I get out of here! Let me out!!!” Calan yelled, in the middle of a sea of foam threads.
“Ah, You’ll have to clean it. They dissolve and fall apart In seven minutes.”
Calan didn’t have seven minutes. He was worried about his body and his red lady. She had been silent for too long. She was never unavailable to him ever since she woke up in the ship. She was always there to greet him in seconds. He was panicking, thinking the worst happened to her somehow. She wasn’t as close to him as a family member, but he knew she was the most important stranger he’d ever met.
“WHERE IS LIRA!” He yelled. “SHE SAID-“
“Don’t panic, child.” Sineul’s voice echoed. “Everyone is alive, I can detect them.”
“Oh, that’s good then,” Calan idled for a second. But he couldn’t stay that way. It was maddening to be stuck in this thread prison he couldn’t see the end or the beginning of. He pestered the old man about it until he agreed.
“Fine, I’ll help you free yourself, watch and learn,” The ball’s spindly arms suddenly started moving like scissors at a rate Calan couldn’t see. Threads fell before in small pieces as he cut through them like butter.
“Whee! This is fun!” He exclaimed, going in every possible direction, decimating the foam prison. Soon, he had uncovered the three bodies at the dock. He hovered over his body and watched carefully to see if she was breathing. He couldn’t tell at first, but her nostrils moved ever so slightly.
“She’s fine! She’s sleeping again! How can I wake her up?” He thought for a moment. “What if I Laser her a bit, like to make her feel like a bug bite?”
“NO!!!” The old man yelled before Calan could point one at the body. “DON’T DO THAT.”
“Alright, alright,” He sighed, moving over to the man that gifted him good food. He was asleep too. His mouth was open, his eyes half closed and he was drooling on the ground. He was sleeping way harder than the red lady.
“She’ll wake up naturally, when it’s time. We don’t have good stimulants on the ship, I don’t want to take risks.”
“Stimiu what-“
“Never mind that,” Sineul told him.
“Hey! This old man is shaking! There’s blood! Ew!”
“Oh, that’s not good. Hurry, We should help him.”
Calan didn’t know what possessed him, he moved to places in the ship he didn’t meant to move to. He carried supplies, bandages, syringes in a great hurry. He imagined he was a doctor again but nothing that he did came from his own brain. He kept exclaiming.
“Whoa! What’s wrong with him!?” He asked, as his spindly arms pushed the man every which way. He flipped him on the side and slammed his arms on his back to make the man throw up blood.
“He’s going into shock!”
He couldn’t even remember the number of things that he did, it was fast and efficient. He had many questions to ask about the things that he did, but Sineul didn’t answer at least half of them. When he was done, the old man was breathing properly again and he did some other things to couple of wounds and jammed three injectors into him.
“Hughh!” The old man grunted as his eyes opened wide.
“Oh hello! I repaired you!” Calan said excitedly. “How’s it feel! I think good!”
“Yes, he should be good now,” Sineul agreed.
“Where am I,” The old man blurted, looking around as if he just fell here from the sky.
“On the ground, Don’t worry. You’re fine Sainu says, He’s an old man like you so I think it’s true!” Calan told him confidently. He hoped the man would be reassured by his words but that wasn’t the expression he had on his face. “Anything else wrong?” He asked, using his best doctor impersonation.
“The priestess!!!” The old man yelled, raising himself. He grunted and fell back as soon as he tried to move. His eyes rolled back into his skull and his mouth lay wide open.
“Don’t move, Commander!” Sineul said. “You have two rib fractures on the right, You’re lucky your lungs are intact.”
Calan’s spindly arms moved again and slammed another injector into the old man’s torso.
“That’s all the painkillers you can get for now, More would be bad for you. Please try to rest. Everything is handled, the priestess is fine. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Yes, yes, what he said,” Calan agreed, even though he didn’t know what it was about. The old man stared at him for a few more moments before he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Liera opened her eyes to the ceiling of the cargo bay. The blurred lights resolved themselves into neat circles and she felt more lethargic than she had ever felt in her base frame. She wanted to sleep again. The neurobit artifact in the dream she had was violent, but it was a happy memory. She could remember her father, not his face. She could no longer remember his face. She had to try again and keep that image burned into her brain next time.
As he eyelids closed half way, her brain caught up. Her eyes opened wide and she looked everywhere to confirm she was indeed in her biologics, on the floor in the cargo bay.
“OH! LIRA IS AWAKE!” She heard the excited voice of the boy and immediately felt the force of the ball robot on her chest, as it bounced straight into her.
“I’m awake, Yes, Calan,” She told him, wrapping one arm around the ball. She raised herself off the floor and set him free in front of her. She could feel the nausea at the back of her throat but she estimated she had about a minute left in her body. When she saw Varul’s biologics and Commander Brenvalo laid out a short distant away from her, she knew the plan had worked, although not as smoothly as she planned.
“You’re back! This is good!” Calan said happily. She could tell he had been worried.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“My priestess, I’m glad you’re unhurt!” Sineul’s voice came from above her.
“Not completely unhurt” She told him, touching her side. Something burned there. There was a sizable plaster laid over it.
“I did that!” Calan told her excitedly. “He was stealing you so I shot him. Sorry one hit you though. Does it hurt a lot?”
“It’s alright, look at you, lasering people already,” She was honestly impressed, He’d only had about six minutes inside the ball robot. Children learn fast, she wrote that into her memory. “You treat his wounds too, Sineul?”
“Yes, all wounds are accounted for. The priest had six spots, four skin deep. They can be mended even naturally. You’re lucky you didn’t give the child a slightly more powerful laser.”
“Wait, this isn’t powerful?” Calan looked at his spindly arms. He hadn’t obviously considered how powerful lasers could be.
“The plan was flawed,” Liera drove the conversation elsewhere before Calan could realize the dangerous truth. “But it worked. I anticipated him to restrain me, not whatever this is…”
“What did he use?” Asked Sineul.
“I have no idea, it acted through skin. He rubbed something on my neck, a very small amount,” She touched the exact spot above her collarbone and felt nothing there. All residue had vaporized by this point. She smelled her fingers but that didn’t give her much information either.
“Must be a strong sedative, maybe even a nano-serum“
“Ours worked well too, It seems,” She walked over to inspect Varul. He was completely out, as if he was dead. “The dosage was a bit crude, but it worked fine,” She had salvaged the liquid anesthetic from the reintegration chair before she met Brenvalo to tell him what he needed to do. The plan was for her to stab the priest with it once the commander delivered it to her. She couldn’t conceal it in her dress, the dosage required was too high for a small injector. The priest would’ve accidentally found it if she had one on her, even if it wasn't the case. The stabbing part of the plan had gone wrong, but the it had worked nonetheless.
Her actual contingency plan was Sineul. If the priest overpowered her and couldn’t be knocked out by the injector delivered by Brenvalo, Sineul was supposed to knock him out with the ball robot. Sineul was the key part of her plot. No matter what Varul planned for her, It was over for him the moment his biologics entered her ship.
“Look at him, sleeping like a child after all that he plotted,” She flipped him over to a better posture with her foot. While they plotted against each other, it was not her intention to cause any harm to their biologics. The goal was negotiation, not revenge. She knew Varul planned to take her biologics for himself and he would want to deliver it back to the temple. It was the weakest, most impactful point that she had, it would've derailed her declaration of war in several ways. Unfortunately for him, Varul was distracted with his biologics. He wouldn't have made this miscalculation in the era before reintegration. She flipped his plan by exploiting that one weakness.
“He hit me when I tried to stop him! He was rude!” Calan complained. The boy didn’t forgive anyone that ever hit him. She noticed this about him at the resonator as well. He took things personally even if he wasn’t actually hurt. She noted this to her memory as well, She couldn't tell if this was unique to him or all children.
“Good thing you helped to stop him! Good work, Calan. You did well!” In the absence of an insight into this behavior, she praised him, she wasn't sure what else to say at the moment.
"Heh!" He scoffed confidently, twirling in the air before her. He wanted to show her a new move, she couldn't tell what it was.
"Ugh," She groaned suddenly, feeling the nausea build up from her stomach to her throat. "Time to switch, Calan. I'm getting sick."
"Awh, so soon," he groaned, disappointed, He would be a robot for the end of time if he was allowed. She hoped this long stay hadn't caused any measurable Neurobit damage. If it hurt Calan, that was too high a price to pay for her plan. Sineul predicted a small, negligible amount from this extended stay, but now it was about time that ended. She wouldn’t give him another chance to be a robot for a long while, she was determined this time.
She hurried to the nearest console, kicked the panel open and plugged a high bandwidth tether to the back of her neck.
The priest woke up nearly three hours later. He was wrapped across the waist with strong adhesive tape and he was glued to the wall of the same bedroom that he brought as the gift.
“Finally, you decided to wake up,” Liera hovered close to him in the ball robot. “If you have any side effects we have some stimulants, pick what you want,” She dropped some injectors before him.
“Do you think you’ve won?” The priest asked curiously. He still had no malice in his voice.
“Worse, I know I won,” She told him, matching his same lethal calmness. She knew Varul wouldn’t just plan something so easy. There were more steps, both the priest and Varul had more tricks up their sleeves.
“Interesting…” Said the priest, ripping himself off the wall with no regard for the biologics. She saw his skin stretch with the tape and some places could’ve been damaged. He was strong enough to do it very quickly. He stood up, and he ripped the tapes off his waist as well, it was painful to watch. She wouldn’t have been able to do it with her own body. The priest had no regard for his biologics, for some reason.
“You’ve freed yourself. Now what?” She asked curiously. She had searched him top to bottom while he was passed out. There were no physical devices besides the data band around his wrist. Sineul already blocked it from transmissions. “The cargo bay is closed. It’s just you and me here. I’m very interested to see what your master plan is.”
The priest gazed at her emptily for a moment and he shoved two fingers into his mouth. She had already visual checked his teeth, the mouth. There was nothing like the way he smuggled the sedative in his fingers. She watched patiently, letting him do whatever it is.
He pulled something, his stomach moved rapidly, pushing something up through his oesophagus. He threw up in one smooth motion, a black cylinder the size of a forearm came out of him as if it was a fuel cell pulled out of a machine. This was something she couldn’t have detected. The Vellek didn’t have a complete medical wing with scanners.
“That’s impressive,” She remarked. The priest had hugged her with everything, laid on top of her while he had something that big inside him. She hadn’t detected any visible discomfort. He was completely unaffected the entire time.
The priest wiped his mouth after vomiting more liquid and saliva. She didn’t see any half digested food coming out of him. Varul had prepared for this a day in advance, flushing his entire digestive system with a thick fluid. The clear liquid that came out of him was similar in viscosity to stasis fluid. He grabbed the slimy black cylinder off the ground and pulled a string on it, unraveling whatever was inside. Liera circled around him to see, but at a glance, it was impossible to tell what it was. The priest didn’t waste a second in his plan. He stepped into the unfurled mess. Black threads weaved all over his skin, seeking surfaces to cover like accelerated plant roots. Liera had never seen this before.
Her first thought was Vervid, but zooming in, she could tell it was made from entirely artificial material, tiny circular dots dancing across his skin like insects dancing in a complex pattern. In seven seconds, the priest was covered from every angle and several layers of this material grew around him until it was five skins deep.
“My priestess! That is some kind of Materium suit!” Sineul’s panicked voice came through the comms system.
“Looks that way, smells old to me,” She told him, unsure what the priest was planning now. She aimed three lasers at him just in case. High Materium art or not, the priest hadn’t demonstrated this ‘suit’ to be for combat use. But she had to prepare in case Varul and his 12 replicants somehow invented a new, portable form of battle-frame.
Eight seconds.
“I’m the Third,” The priest told her, as his face was covered by black dots in several layers. “You won’t win against me with the same tactics you can use on The Fifth”
“The Third!?” Sineul exclaimed, surprised.
“That is quite surprising. You can impersonate your sweet brother really well, if that’s the case,” she told him nonchalantly. It didn’t matter to her who she hugged and let her guard down for. So far, she was impressed with the Fifth for going this far. She hadn’t considered him to be this driven and focused. She had ascribed all of his behaviors to the fierce loyalty that bound Varul and his replicants together. But if this was the Third, Varul had planned around it. He wasn’t taking any chances with her biologics.
Sending the Third to act like the Fifth was indeed the right play by him. Liera restored her opinions about the Fifth back to what it was, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten this far, maybe he would’ve failed Varul at the end of the hug. She noted that for later, Based on this reveal, the Fifth was another weak point that Varul needed to hide. Despite everything, she was now impressed with the Third. She knew he was enigmatic and mysterious. He had just demonstrated how far him and Varul was willing to go. even though at this moment, they were enemies. She could admire it,
The priest grabbed something from the mess between his feet. She knew what that was as soon as it emerged from the pile of threads. It was a small bomb, a breaching charge. She saw his plan play out in her mind the very moment she saw it. She dropped two of the lasers immediately.
The priest tossed the breaching charge at the dock’s thick metal door. It attached itself near the console.
“Sineul, brace! He’s going to breach the door!”, using her best ball robot skills, she weaved her way towards the charge. She found an angle and started cutting into it. The priest put himself in the harms way, protecting the bomb from her lasers. She stopped with the lasers. She didn’t want to cut through Varul’s precious biologics.
“You’ve lost!” The priest said victoriously.
The breaching charge exploded in a loud, directional blast. This was a specially made Materium explosive, it simply disintegrated matter in a spherical range, effortlessly cutting a circle through Vellek’s thick hull. The priest stood before it for a moment for the fire around the edges to blow off. In the next millisecond, he jumped backwards through the hole in one elegant move with the combined strength of both his muscular legs.
As the smoke cleared behind his plunge into the unknown, light filtered in through the hole into the Vellek’s cargo bay. She heard him fall and crash on the outside, she heard things collapsing, fabric tearing and something heavy sliding across a harsh surface.
She could already tell from the distant groans coming from him that he deeply regretted every choice that led up to this moment. When he jumped, he had expected weightlessness. He wore that Materium space suit because he wanted to float out into space where Varul could grab him with his ship. This was the failsafe step in their plan. If he couldn’t get her biologics out, he had to make sure she didn’t get to have his, resetting them back to square one. She wondered what sort of negotiations that could’ve resulted in.
That didn’t matter now.
The priest failed before he even began. Because Sineul had landed the Vellek on Ephistome III, on a jagged rocky outcropping at the base of a mountain range.
“I haven’t lost, my Priest,” Liera said aloud, floating out of the hole. It was quite bright outside, even with the swirling storm clouds.