The violence was sudden and without warning Kildra found herself in a reboot sequence of sorts.
Info:
SOS dispatched to Wide Area Mesh Network
Warning:
WHSP unit stability at 5%
Info:
Emergency repair listening on port 5401:0db8:85a3:0024:0077:8a2e:0370:7334
Info:
Connection established on port 5401:0db8:85a3:0024:0077:8a2e:0370:7334
Warning:
Foreign host entity detected on port 5401:0db8:85a3:0024:0077:8a2e:0370:7334
Intrusion detection watcher deployed
Error:
External processor unavailable. Please remount and try again
Info:
Emergency repair protocol detected
Info:
Emergency system export initiated
Export will result in purge of target drive
Info:
User prompt input (Y) received
WHSP unit stability at 4%
Info:
42 Unumgigabyte (Ugb) transfer @ 99^9% gzip compression initiated
Info:
Emergency system export success
Transfer completed: 42 Ugb @ gzip 99^9%
Info:
Connection lost on port 5401:0db8:85a3:0024:0077:8a2e:0370:7334
Warning:
Local Area Mesh Network unavailable.
Defaulting to Singular Node Processing
Warning:
Intrusion detection watcher unresponsive
Warning:
WHSP unit stability at 3%
Info:
Watcher cannot process key for child process 'rmi' - terminated
Error:
Remote drive purge interrupted at 27%.
Process reinitialized by emergency export
Info:
Watcher cannot process key for child process 'rmi' - terminated
Warning:
WHSP unit stability at 2%
Error:
Remote drive purge interrupted at 52%.
Process reinitialized by emergency export
Info:
Watcher cannot process key for child process 'rmi' - terminated
Warning:
WHSP unit stability at 1%
Error:
Remote drive purge interrupted at 77%.
Process reinitialized by emergency export
Info:
Watcher cannot process key for child process 'rmi' - terminated
Info:
Diff initiated backup completed in 20ms
Warning:
Previous backup image size was greater than current image. Manual restore required
Warning:
WHSP unit stability at 0%
Error:
WHSP operating system shutting down due to irrecoverable resource failure
Info:
Kildra-Mark2BattleWHSP@Tower5-532123
Warning:
WHSP unit previously disconnected abruptly.
System analysis scheduled
Info:
Singular Node Processing initiated
Info:
WHSP operating system booted
Warning:
Additional WHSP units unavailable, cannot initiate Wide Area Mesh Network
Warning:
Local Area Mesh Network offline, cannot initiate External processing
Info:
WHSP Mesh reconstruction initiated.
Estimated time: 3 days, 4 hours, 42 seconds
Info:
Local Area Mesh Network initiated
Info:
External processor missing, cannot initiate
Info:
System analysis complete
Warning:
System analysis found 1572387 critical errors. Please run manual recovery
"What the hell was that!?" Kildra exclaimed to herself as she came back online in their private residences on Tower 5.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Chen's Trip
"Hello?... Gru?..." a voice bounced softly in the back of my head. Visions of green and purple shot through my eyes enlightening the darkness that surrounded my senses.
"Need?... Help?... Gru?..." a second voice, deeper in base sounding more distorted as if coming from five directions at once bounced in my head in turn with the first voice which still echoed around. I was getting what was now becoming a very strong migraine.
The image of a blue fire with yellow tips to the flames cascaded with black petals floating in the air flashed through my mind in rapid succession.
"Sick?... Parasite?... Gru?..." a chorus of voices sang in my head and all of a sudden my mind started to feel like it was on fire.
I'm falling down and hit the ground.
I can hardly think and the pain coming from my stomach is slowly getting worse and worse. Blood is coming from my mouth -- no, it's coming out of my nose -- I only taste it in my mouth. I slowly open my eyes which feel like someone put sand in them while I wasn't paying attention. I haven't felt this bad since...
I was dying in my bed. The fevers and chills had gotten worse in the last week. The medicine wouldn't work this time. I'm an old man anyway. But I had so much more work to do. My data pads; books and knowledge. What will happen to it all if I'm not here to safeguard it?
No that’s not right, that memory is off, an hallucination, it must be.
In front of me I see a small lady, blonde, blue eyes, slight build, hair a little shaggy on top and pointy little ears; shit! a Tekniak. She's crouched down near the ice on the forest floor feeding it to something in her hand. Little chunks of ice?
My head feels like it's about to cave in... about to explode... about to fall off.
"Dying?... Again?... Gru?..." the voice slithers through my head making a visit to every part of my skull before it dissipates.
"Shut up!", I yell and grab my head.
"Irritable... Goodbye... Gru..." a small sad voice whispers in my head and disappears.
The pressure in my skull is so great I... I'm about to pass out. The lady looks up at me and her eyes light up like she just remembered she should kill me now. If Kildra could be a sweetheart right now and just fix me so I can take care of her and her friend back there -- yes I saw you -- than I can figure out how I got here in the middle of the enemy camp. I scream out "Kildra! Where are you?" but it comes out as a whisper. I could hardly even hear it in my own ears. I'm on my hands and knees and look up to wonder "Where did all that ice come from?" as I black out.
I open my eyes and the blonde is behind me; I guess I lost this fight. I’m on my chest now and she's kneeling on my back doing something. "Having fun?... " I manage to murmur. Looking surprised she looks at her companion in the corner, chuckles a bit and say's "Joya! He can speak Ba`Tya!" and then looks to the back of Chen's head and says in her language "Don't worry, just relax" and I feel her grab at my back like she has talons for hands. I scream out in pain which comes out as a whimper. A lot more blood is coming out of my mouth now -- this time it's definitely my mouth. I choke on it a little and as I'm about to black out I can hear her say, "I can't believe how lucky he is that I'm here!"
To Dream of a Nightmare
"Dream?... Remember?... Gru?..." a gentle voice flew through my head like the autumn wind. The thought of autumn brought back a memory that I had often tried to forget. I resisted the memory as much as I could but it seemed like the more I fought it the more my brain wanted to relive it.
I knew this place. This dream was a memory; 90 years ago when we were in Iceland's only forest, which the few locals who remained, claimed was cursed after growing on top of fertile farmland in only a fortnight. Kildra and I were moving westward toward the sea where we planned to trade for a ride to the European continent or maybe build our own boat. I was really hoping for a trade because I was pretty sure Kildra wasn't speaking about a Golden Age boat that she would materialize for us.
"You should have seen them they were huge!", Kildra exclaimed, "Like someone took giant ants and crossed them with giant reptiles and then added a large man to the mix just to even out the recipe. Their heads had pincers on their face the size of your forearm, and they had 4 incredible tree trunk sized arms, and if you managed to shoot an arm off its suit would seal it up and some would say it would eventually grow back if you let it. Oh by the Wisp, their suits! They looked like reptilian scales had grown over our standard World Union jumpsuits and had this forcefield on them that would actually reflect fire back at you! It took us nearly two years to come up with frequency shifting ammunition that actually had an effect against them. And you think you're good at hand to hand combat Chen? The Chala regulars would have torn you to pieces -- I saw it happen -- you'd have no chance Chen, absolutely none." Kildra rambled on somewhere ahead in her robin shell.
I was about a kilometer behind her listening to her tell me more about her heroic acts during the Chakalexy Invasion some 300 years ago. Every time she recited her story it seemed to grow in grandeur and peril. Some facts always stayed the same like the decimation of the human population in the span of a decade, the conscription of Tekniak prisoners as reserves, the prioritization of entire continents over others, although the continent names would change from time to time. But details like troop size, enemy descriptions, the ships they used, the description of how pods would crash into battle fronts with Chala reserve inside -- those things tended to become bigger every telling.
We had been living off the land and moving eastward for the last 15 years moving up the eastern coast until we were here in Iceland. Taking up an odd job here and there to barter for food, shelter, or clothing during the bad seasons; and sometimes even taking what we wanted by force. We never stayed longer than needed. Kildra had constantly told me that we didn't need to stop at all; she could create for me, in that magical mist of hers, all sorts of things like a set of clothing that was fine, light and utilitarian anytime she wanted. Although not the Golden Age "smart fabric" she referenced every now and then, the clothes were well made and lasted well in the wild. So well in fact that often it was easier to just throw a worn poncho over myself as we entered villages just to avoid the hassle of gawking, attempted theft and the aftermath of that type of stuff.
"I remember this one time Gilda and I were in a mech, like a small mechanical robot -- basically a really big suit of armor -- with the rest of the forward deployment team and had to go single file through this narrow ravine into the gorge ahead, and out of nowhere this one gigantic Chala that looked like a cross between a dog with the horns of a bull and a scorpion's tail -- a scorpion's tail! -- charged right at us. Gilda and I were at point and we just started opening fire on that thing. The scariest part was that it simply just kept coming at us, as if being torn apart by heavy artillery was a natural thing for it.
As it got right up on us Gilda deployed her plasma blade -- oh you'd like that Chen, it's basically a giant knife that glows and cuts through anything -- anything Chen! not an exaggeration; so this dog, Gilda basically splits it right in half as its in mid-jump trying to pass around us and the guts of this thing goes everywhere. Luckily she moved to side as we hit the opening, getting a little on her mech, but the full brunt of the innards just deluge Miller who was right behind us. All you saw was his mech disintegrate as the stuff hit it.
Everything was gone Chen -- mech, Miller, the Wisp inside him, just everything. After that incident we fixed up the splash damage and quickly learned to quantum backup ourselves on other Charges -- just in case of evisceration we could regroup and still rebuild our Charges from memory. Gilda really took that hard. She liked Miller, like really liked him if you get me, and said he was their court jester whatever that meant, since we didn't have a court. Sometimes you organics have such weird sayings that have absolutely no logic."
When Kildra started to ramble on about her past, as she was doing now, I would just listen to her monologue which were actually quite informative about the Golden Age -- more informative in fact than actually asking her directly. But sometimes she'd say something that would instantly remind me that Wisp truly weren't human and as such wouldn't ever really understand our needs -- the sight of a kind face, the feel of a warm body, the occasional group of comrades. For all the years of her life, sometimes I felt like she hadn't lived at all; but to her defense, she wasn't really alive was she. That’s the reason I would stop by villages and the occasional homesteads whenever we encountered them, when it should have been the reason to not visit in the first place.
"Oh look, I found a cabin out here. I'm going to take a closer look and let you know if anyone is there. Since that’s what you like to do." Kildra said with a snide tone in my right ear from a mile or so away.
My dreaming self wants to tell her to pass it by. Let's just go east, but instead I hear myself reply.
"Good! But wait until I get to you first in case there are people. The sight of a talking bird may spook these forest folk. They are quite superstitious on this island, more so than most."
“Its a peninsula Chen, hasn't been an island in a long time”.
“Sure, but just try to stay out of sight OK?”
Ever since I told Kildra that I didn't like it when she inhabited inside my body, over two decades ago, she had grown harder. Now she looked for weaknesses to exploit. We had run into some villages where the chief man, and once even a woman, kept control through fear, intimidation and tormenting their own people. I had done quick work on them, hardly ever dying in the process but those people reminded me of Kildra when she sensed a weakness in a person and right now she was toying with my need for human companionship.
"Oh don't worry I'm in mist form right now silly" she said in response. Great I thought to myself, now they'd think she's a ghost if they see her.
"Relax. There's only two of them and a child here. But everyone's outside and check this out, these guys have a plasma dagger! It's from Kobe Defense Systems which is okay, but comparably speaking any functioning plasma weapon these days is a god's tool. This thing has to be over 300 years old. Analysis says it's not functional.
Let's pick it up and we can fix it. Maybe swap them for some clothes or something if you must; Oh! I know just the designs I'll use for them."
I came up through the trees onto the front of the small homestead walking the extra couple of hundred feet to come around to the southern edge and made myself visible as I approached walking through the man made open field in front of the main house 300 meters away. A small stream ran through a portion of the field leading back into the forest. To the right of the house was a small shack, smaller than a barn but larger than standing height. It was well made in log cabin style with the wood from the section that they cut down to make the field I was walking through. The cracks between the logs were patched with a brown substance which was probably some mix of clay and mud or something. A small corral was behind it with what seemed to be four horses walking about freely inside.
The main house was large for the area. It was just a one story log building about 3 meters tall and 3 meters wide at the front, running for about 10 meters back. The front door sat on two guides that had small wheels on the bottom that allowed the door to slide open to the side. It had no windows, and instead another set of doors were opened on either side of the house.
A small enclosed fireplace sat outside below a chimney about 2 meters in front of the left most side door, and on further inspection you could see that the house had small tunnels underneath it that led to this chimney which would allow the fire to burn, backing up the hot smoke beneath the tunnels of the house and warming it through the night.
A large cooking fire with a spit was built in front of the main door and a woman was bent over tending to it. She had long brown hair and looked like she was pretty tall, 1 3/4 meters at least. She had a blue dress and was covered in what looked like a cross between a small blanket and a coat made out of animal hide that wasn't tanned too dark but still looked dark on her light skin. The sleeves stopped at her toned biceps.
Behind her a large man sat at the carcass of an elk on the floor that he had just finished skinning. He was in the process of cutting the meat out using a small knife with a serrated blade. The knife looked more like a large steak knife than a dagger. He was wearing a worn beige linen type thin shirt which at the present was soaked in sweat along his spine due to his activities. A thicker fabric made of light leather was used for his pants.
Behind him his son, about 12 years old, was moving the skin over to a table that was pushed up against the left side of the building. His son was tall like his parents with the same brown hair and a round face. He wore very much the same as his father. Tacking some holders on to the deer skin he moved over to say something to his father when he saw me approaching and called out for his mother who was four or five feet away from them.
His mother looked up from her fire, jumped to her feet, grabbed the boy by the hand and began to run into the house. Not a second into the door the mother screamed a cry of fright as she saw the white mist that was Kildra.
"Myraljos! Myraljos! Ode protect us!" The woman wailed and ran back outside toward her husband, tripping a little on the threshold of the door. By than the husband had already gotten to his feet and had a bow in his hand pointed in my direction. He turned his head as his wife screamed and came running out, catching her by the arm as she tripped.
I was still at least 400 feet away by now and said to her via our communicators embeded in my jaw bone "Damnit! Told you so, right?", when Kildra floated out of the house and continued moving toward me mumbling something in my communicator about how stupid people were.
"AWAY DEMON!", the man had shouted as he shot the stone tipped arrow at Kildra, not 50 feet away. Kildra stopped moving. "Did, did he just attack me? Did he... " Kildra stuttered and fell silent.
"Kildra Stay calm. They're scared and they can't harm you. Relax we will talk this through" as I opened my gait and sped up, almost in a small jog now. Being with a partner for 60 years lets you know them intimately well. And, knowing KIldra she was prone to have a prideful moment any second now.
Coming up in Chapter 4:
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