Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 155 of 365. Sol standard year]

  Days after of Crash landing/ 4

  Uninhabited Island / Clearing of Escape Capsule # 405

  Galactic Standard Time / After 1620

  Bradford.

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  Bradford looked at the Ancient and felt his mind almost crack as he looked at him. When one awakened the Power, this Aether, it didn’t give abilities? Then how was he able to contact his people once he gained it?! This was the worst kind of thing, something had been done to him that he didn’t know. He had killed more than one person that had done that to him, and he always made it personal.

  “It doesn’t? But that’s the only way that Terra saved us! She just knew how to do that thing she did with the Ice!” Qiana exclaimed, shock and horror in her voice.

  Bradford looked at her and recorded that little fact. If there were more people among the deckhands that could use Aether, then he needed to know. The board was changing, and he had to change with it.

  “I truly don’t know what to tell you. Only in the video games of my kind are such things possible,” Dam’ien rumbled slowly and everyone looked at him.

  “The Ancients have video games!?” Dalila asked, shock and surprise in her voice.

  Dam’ien only shrugged as he looked at them. “Well, yes. The Last Legend is on its 50th game last I saw the commercials. I stopped playing after the game 30 myself.”

  For a moment it was all Bradford could do to keep his mouth up and then he shook his head. Then he got the idea of sending commercials of the games that the Federation made to the Ancients. Then it was destroyed as this was not the time for that kind of thing.

  “Wonderful, so of the Ancients are Gamers. But back on track, you have no idea why this is happening? Nothing?” Duncan asked and Dam’ien shock his head.

  “No, I’m sorry. Well, wait,” Dam’ien said as he looked around, his posture different. “There is something, and old poem. It has a line now that I think about it, ‘Given Strength’, could this be what it meant?”

  “How old is this poem?” Leonator asked, a strange tone in his voice as he looked at Dam’ien.

  Bradford looked at the man, confused why he was asking that right now. He almost opened his mouth to say something but then he stopped and looked at Leonator, really looked at him. There was something about the way Leonator was looking at Dam’ien that unnerved Bradford. He stayed quiet as Dam’ien looked at Leonator for a few moments.

  “It is one of the oldest of the old, a piece of my people’s history that we have but scraps of. Times so old that there is no word in any of your tongues that have a name for it,” Dam’ien said and Leonator nodded.

  “Then the world that this was made on, was there a Ruin?” Leonator asked and Da1 went still as Leonator continued. “Or was this your homeworld that this poem was made on?”

  For a long few moments, Dalila only looked at Leonator with such force. Bradford swallowed as he thought he was at ground zero for an execution. Out of the corner of Bradford’s eyes, he saw Duncan start to move his hands to a club. As Bradford felt he was at the edge of a battle, the Ancient spoke.

  “It was on the first world my people colonized, I think. And it had a Ruin, it is dead. We still study the remains,” Dam’ien said softly.

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  Leonator

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  Leonator looked at the Ancient and nodded, his mind racing as he tried to understand this. The answer was here before him and it made sense. The one variable that could make this whole thing. “Then we must concur that this happened in your people’s past. That these ‘granting’ of abilities was a result of the Ruin, something it did. And there must be a Ruin of the same type in range of us. That is the only thing that makes sense from everything that we know.”

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  Leonator watched as Dam’ien took a step back, and the being’s whole body seemed to go still.

  “That….. sounds right. There are laws that all Ruins are to be destroyed before colonies can be built. And all research on Ruins must have orbital the world and there can be no civilian living on same world. I always wondered that,” Dam’ien muttered. He started to walk around the outside of the group, trying seemingly to be deep in thought. “Yes! That would make sense! That law is so old that we have forgotten why we have it! This explains everything!”

  “A way to keep power from those who would misuses it. To keep records of who has what powers,” Bradford said with a strange tone of voice.

  Leonator looked at Bradford and wondered how many times that he had been forced to make those choices. And the way he sounded, it was unlike anything he had heard before. For a few seconds he looked at Bradford, and tried to think what the Senator could be thinking.

  “No, not really. What Techniques one trains to learn is a private affair. If one has two Techs and commits crime with one, they are only charged for the one. It works,” Dalila said as he looked around at the others.

  “On that subject, I don’t know if you have a way to stop someone from having powers? We need something to handle that one,” Duncan said with a snarl as he gestured to the floating human.

  Leonator winced, he had heard about that one and what he had done. To think that such a person was in the camp was concerning. That they wouldn’t be able to safely hold them, that was something that he was worried about.

  “If I had my full kit, yes. There are devices that people who have proven to not deserve Aether are condemned to. But I don’t have my whole kit,” Dam’ien said with a hard glare.

  “Why not?” Qiana asked softly.

  Dam’ien was about to say something when suddenly.

  A cry from the pit caused them to all turn to look. “THERE ARE MORE OF THOSE BIG ROBOTS!”

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  Dam’ien

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  He didn’t wait, he just moved, jumping over the others and running once he hit the ground. He held his arms out and two large axes formed in his open hands. The axes were two feet long, with blades half a foot tall and long. He had learned his lesson last time, this time no honor, just savage fury.

  He landed near the slope down and roared out a command. “Anything but me, destroy it!”

  As he thundered down, he finally saw the robots. Two of the same model robot as he had fought alone, each one armed with an axe. They looked at him and moved backwards, it seems they knew he had taken their model mate.

  As one of the fired a bolt of Aether at him, Dam’ien crossed his two axes and an Aether shield formed and absorbed the bolt. Looking at the walls of the room beyond, he saw stilled legged robots aiming their heads at him. As they started to fire, his mask gave him a report that stunned him.

  He dropped the shield as he reached the bipeds and slammed his axe down as the robots fired at him. The needles they shot bounced off his armor, and he felt a grin form as the other biped stared at him.

  “Not so easy to fight when someone has impact proof Aether-made armor, is it!? Face me!” Dam’ien roared as he slashed out again. The robot he was fighting blocks the blows and Dam’ien two starts strike out with both axes in a whirlwind of blows. The second robot tries to intervene but a reflected needle from one of the Dam’ien's armor hits it in its sensor unit.

  He laughs and feeds Aether to his weapons, and then he roars and slashes it down the middle, cutting it in two. As the robot falls, he looks at the other one and grins as he sees the hole behind it. With a roar, he drops his weapons and they disappear as he tackles the robot backwards into the hole.

  Before he falls a foot, he pushes the robot down and then he ‘Air Dashed’ backwards into the air four feet into the air. He looks around and two high tech crossbows appear in his hands. He fires Aether needles at the robots on the wall as he falls. But just as the other robots were about to fire at him, he ‘Air Dashed’ back to the hole. He flipped back upright as he keeps fires at the robots.

  He laughs as he sees the robots look around for him, but he just keeps firing. He saw that he hadn’t even used a hundredth of the energy in his weapons, and that scares him. He knows how long that would take, and he didn’t think his weapons could handle that kind of charge. And that means he needs to think about a lot of things when he had time to.

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  Dalila

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  As the Ancient went to town, it was all Dalila could do from swallowing in awe. She had seen a lot of things, and had heard a lot of things about the Ancients. But seeing was believing. Here she watched him handle the robots that had almost overwhelmed them all before. It actually took her breath away. Suddenly, she knew why Vivian wanted to use Dam’ien. If this was what the Federation faced in the war, then keeping him away from the civilians? That suddenly sounded like a perfectly smart thing to do.

  “Get the Shield Emitter,” Duncan was finally able to rasp out.

  Everyone looked at him and he glared back at everyone. “Get the Shield Emitter now! While he’s giving us a window! And somebody turn on the Null Gravity field!”

  As soon as she realized what he meant, Dalila ran towards the shield emitter as more of the deckhands ran to help her. As the rest covered the hole, Dalila and her assistants moved as one towards the slope. As soon as they reached the Null gravity field, they moved down quickly. Looking up at the hole, she saw Dam’ien firing at into the hole and laughing.

  “Oh, are you all doing something!?” Dam’ien called over his shoulder.

  Dalila nodded and then cursed at herself. He couldn’t see anything, she had to speak. “Yeah, just give us a few minutes! That’s all we need! Just hold on!”

  “Keep calm, I’ve got enough Aether to keep doing this for weeks!” Dam’ien called out with a laugh.

  Dalila started to work and then she looked at the top of the slope. As she started to hook up the wires and cables, she went still. Something, every bit of experience that she had told her that the robots were going to get worse. She couldn’t say why, but she knew it was going to come, and they needed to be ready.

  Looking up at the slope, she caught Duncan’s eye with Qiana standing by her. “Somebody, get the console ready! We’ll almost ready for this, but we need to move fast!”

  As she turned to hook the power cable to the emitter, she realized this needed to be hooked to the power grid. Looking around she saw one of the deckhands and thrust the cable at one of them. “You, go and hook up the solar battery! We need this now!”

  As the deckhand moves to do that, Dalila looks at the hole. The one thing that she figure out was the strange ball of fire that was building within her. It was strange, but she had that strange feeling that they were running out of time! As Dam’ien laughed, she looked at the emitter and saw that everything was ready, and that all they need to do was to hook it up. But would they have time for it? That feeling was slowly getting worse as she kept growing more and more scared for some reason. Suddenly she felt sweat fall into her right eye and she tried to blink away the sting. As she tried to get see everything clearly, she heard a hum as the power was feed into the emitter. Looking at it, she grinned and felt her hope rise.

  “Console ready! Get the cable over here!” Duncan bellowed from above.

  Just as she was about to move, Dalila went still. That feeling was back, and this time it was even worse. She actually felt that she was about to throw up as she looked towards the hole.