CHAPTER 33 - REVIVAL

DATE POINT: MAY 9th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD AAV “CONTACT ONE”

CAPTAIN HENRY O’TOOLE

Henry disembarked from the shuttle in a black mood. Lance and team two were waiting for him at the base of the gangplank.

“Where is the Commandant?” Henry growled.

“Not sure, Captain. I was under the impression that he was already going to be here when you arrived. Lor Ix’Alderos led us up here through the maze but wouldn’t tell me much more than the Commandant had important matters to attend to and would join us shortly." Lance replied.

“You know, this is hardly the way to act with a potential diplomatic incident on their hands. They get one of our people badly injured then act like its nothing, then refuse to send her back to us for treatment. It’s not…”

“Not what? How one would expect a human to react?” Lor Ix’Alderos cut in. “Perhaps the venerable Captain O’Toole might be well served to remember that we are not human. Your race is young, emotional, inexperienced, a consequence of your biology combined with your short history and even shorter lifespans. We have a different perspective on what constitutes an emergency and what demands the attention of the commanding officer of an important fleet of warships. Perhaps that seems detached, unemotional, even callous to you in light of the minor injury your crewmate sustained. Perhaps you should take a cue from a more experienced commanding officer and of a more advanced and emotionally stable species.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed as he fought to bottle his fury. He’s trying to bait me… Not gonna give this asshole the satisfaction.

Henry took a deliberate deep breath in his helmet before he replied.

“That may be so, we are a younger race, one who does feel things strongly and through the lens of a shorter life. That also means we value our own deeply, and we do not throw our lives away so casually. You would be wise to remember this fact, as your race seems intent upon using us as expendable soldiers in this war. No matter how superior you may feel, your diplomatic skills are severely lacking. Perhaps you really should have made sure the Commandant was here for this, he does not share this central failing. Now tell me, where is my crewmate?”

“I am the right hand of the conduit of consensus on board this ship. I assure you; I am plenty capable of handling your misplaced displeasure and directing you to the medical wing. Follow me, primate.” Lor Ix’Alderos replied with the alien equivalent of a scoff before he turned and marched down the hallway.

Henry flexed his fist a few times before setting into motion behind him.

Self-righteous prick. Henry thought as he fought the urge to imagine what it would feel like to throttle him.

“Do keep up, please. The halls of this ship can be quite confusing to the inexperienced.”

Henry felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Lance looking at him with a look of concern in his eyes, visible through the slots in his helmet.

DON’T LET HIM GET TO YOU, HE TAKES PLEASURE IN GETTING UNDER YOUR SKIN. – LCDR BLACKFORD SO I’VE GATHERED, SEEMS TO BE A BIGOT AND A HYPOCRITE ALL WRAPPED INTO ONE DELIGHTFUL PACKAGE. – CPT O’TOOLE

Lance snickered quietly after reading Henry’s reply message. They followed behind in silence around multiple corridors that seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, Lor Ix’Alderos stopped and gestured to an open doorway.

“The medical wing waiting room is through this door. Lieutenant Karst and his team have been in there overnight. Corporal Salazar is being brought out of the temporal acceleration field now and will be brought back to consciousness afterwards. Our medical staff can explain the rest. I must return to the meeting in the war council room.”

“Thank you, Lor Ix’Alderos. Is something amiss? I was curious as to the reason why Commandant Roh Thaad’at hadn’t joined us as he usually does.” Henry asked.

“Yes. The forces of Apophis have begun simultaneous strikes in three border systems with heavy casualties reported. They began the invasion with multiple relativistic kinetic kill vehicle strikes on key population centers before we were aware of any danger or before we could evacuate our civilians. We might need to redeploy one or more of our Interdictors to join the assembling Third Retaliatory Fleet.”

Henry’s blood ran cold for a moment while he struggled to find the words to a worthy reply.

“That’s monstrous…. My condolences for the loss of your people on such a scale.... Don’t let us keep you. We can take care of the rest from here. Thank you.”

“I need neither your thanks nor your pity. I will take my leave now to rejoin the war council. Good luck sorting out your crewmate’s injury.” With that last jab, he disappeared in a flash of light.

“How in the world did he spin that around to make us seem like the assholes?” Lucas asked.

“He’s a master manipulator, that’s how. He withheld critical information about the invasion this whole time and waited to drop the bomb on us at the perfect moment. RKKV’s though… That’s right at the top of our worst nightmare scenarios list.” Lance said.

“Well, that certainly puts his earlier comments about our different perspectives in perspective.” Victor replied.

“Either way he’s an asshole.” Janessa replied. “Let’s not forget why we are here; checking up on Estefani.”

“Right. I’m with Staff Sergeant Bryant. Let’s see if we can find us a doctor to give us an update.” Henry replied as he led the way through the doorway.

Team two was on the other side of a fairly large room with actual plants, much to Henry’s surprise. It clashed with the sterile aesthetic of the rest of the ship as he had seen so far. It looked like Jenkins and Hamilton were asleep on benches that had apparently remodeled themselves into beds. Their armor and weapons had been deposited onto a set of makeshift stands that had seemingly grown from the walls. All of them were wearing their skintight undersuits.

“Captain!” Ariana shouted. She stood up and joined their group. Her eyes were red rimmed slightly and had bags under them.

Had she even slept at all? Better not point it out. Henry thought

“Ariana, Paul. Good to see you. How is she?” Henry asked,

“We got an update about twenty minutes ago that they were going to be pulling her from the temporal acceleration field soon. Apparently the surgery went off without a hitch and they were able to fuse both of her broken ribs as well as repair all internal damage. Also, they were able to fuse her titanium osteo cladding over her rib cage to prevent reinjury while her bones finalize their healing process. She should be fit and ready to rejoin our training sessions right away." Paul said.

"Good, I’m glad. Truth be told she would have been in for a long recovery otherwise. This ET tech is truly something else.” Henry replied.

“You can say that again. Say, did you and Chantal wind up actually getting yourselves augmented while we were in the training room?” Paul asked.

“Yeah, we did. Yesterday was our main recovery day. Aside from a few strange prompts and setup screens I don’t feel all that different, to be honest.” Henry said,

“Well, you just got the medical suite, the functional immortality, and the neural computer right?” Paul asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe to feel like I could think at a thousand thoughts a minute or something? Its been a little underwhelming.” Henry admitted.

“Give it time, it takes time to fully integrate itself into your neural pathways. You’ll notice the benefits more over the coming weeks. A lot of the processing power is devoted to running the various nanotech suites anyway and thus works in the background. They are really religious about protecting the integrity of your neural processes as much as possible, which means the effects are more conservative than one might expect based upon our preconceived notions of what having a computer in your brain would be like.” Paul replied.

“Right, the whole no wireless networks, preventing brain hacking and the like. I remember the briefing just fine. That is one thing that I can say has improved. I can remember everything. That’s pretty darn awesome by itself.” Henry said.

“Yeah, its not exactly that simple. It can send one way signals out and receive certain types from a limited number of systems back. I’ve been able to use it to communicate with our weapons and with the training UI, so there is clearly some kind of wireless communication allowed with trusted systems. There’s probably some kind of advanced IFF and firewall in there if I had to guess. We just can’t go full cyberpunk and hack things with our brain.” Paul replied sounding slightly disappointed.

“I don’t know why you sound so disappointed; you should be glad about such strict protections. Its bad enough getting a virus in your desktop, I cant even imagine how horrible it would be having a virus inside your brain linked computer.” Lucas replied.

On the other side of the room, the hardlight screen that separated them from the operating room shut off, drawing everyone’s attention. Estefani walked in somewhat shakily, flanked by a tall Alderei wearing some rather over the top wraparound goggles with a holographic display over the eyepieces.

“hellloooo everyone! Are you all here to see me?” Estefani asked with a slight slur to her speech. Ariana rushed over to steady her.

“The patient is still somewhat affected by the chemical compounds we used to keep her unconscious during the procedure. It should pass soon. Everything went well, including the redirection and subsequent fusion of her existing stockpile of titanium osteo cladding nanites. We had to move them from their other locations to accelerate coverage of her rib cage, so it may take some extra weeks to recover their numbers enough to fuse against her Tibia, Fibula, Radius, and Ulna. Do you have any other questions for me regarding her case?”

“No, I don’t believe so. Well, aside from one, is there any specific care instructions we need to follow?” Paul asked, taking the words out of Henry’s mouth.

“Only that I recommend you double up on her supplement pills for the next three weeks to help replenish her non-natural raw material stockpiles. Doing so will help accelerate her nanite production to catch up with the rest of your team’s osteo-cladding fusion timelines.”

“Excellent, thank you. We will be sure to do so. Will we be able to have her resume training right away?” Paul replied.

“Yes,” The Alderei doctor replied somewhat hesitantly, “Assuming the Commandant approves a return to the simulator.”

“What do you mean by that?” Paul asked, confused.

“I’m not the best one to ask, the Commandant should be able to brief you soon. I will see to it that her arms and armor are delivered to the waiting room as soon as possible. If there aren’t any other care related questions, I really must get back to work. We are taking on quite a large number of overflow patients.” The Alderei replied.

“You may go, doctor, I’ll talk to them.” Henry replied. The Alderei nodded, then hustled back into the hospital wing. The hard light shield re-activated moments afterwards, blocking their access once more.

“Wait! What? Henry, what’s happening?” Paul asked.

Ariana helped Estefani over to sit down next to Jenkins, who was beginning to stir. A hushed conversation brought him back to wakefulness, followed shortly afterwards by the pair of them waking Hamilton.

“Once everyone is up and aware I will explain everything to the best of my current knowledge.” Henry replied, looking over at the stretching giant in the corner.

“Captain! Good to see you, sir!” Hamilton said as he got to his feet. His massive form towered over everyone else in the room, and his skintight undersuit showcased his absurd musculature in a way that Henry had to consciously work to avoid gawping at. The man truly was a new breed of human, putting most bodybuilders to shame. Just two weeks in the training room had done wonders for him, and for Paul too, though to a lesser extent.

“Good to see you as well, Staff Sergeant. I can see you have been busy training hard these past few weeks, it shows! I even hear you managed to take down Dyeus Pahter, congratulations!” Henry began, looking for a segue.

“Damn right we did, we stomped his ass! Another week or two in the training room and we can probably do the same to Sekhmet and Hathor too!” Hamilton bragged with a flex of his biceps and a bounce of his eyebrows.

“Well, I have some bad news. There is a decent chance we may not get more time in the simulator.” A chorus of objections interrupted Henry before he held his hand up to calm their voices.

“A few hours ago, Apophis struck three Alderei border worlds with relativistic kinetic kill vehicles which impacted directly into civilian population centers before sending in follow up invasion fleets. Lor Ix’Alderos was not exactly forthcoming on details, but it sounds like the casualty counts are extremely high. Furthermore, it sounds like all or part of this very fleet may be recalled into the thick of the fighting under a different fleet command structure.”

“Fuck, no, hell no! We need the extra time to train, we are not ready!” Jenkins exclaimed. “We barely won that last fight, Estefani got injured. Every time we fight Sekhmet and Hathor we get slaughtered! We are not ready!”

“Preston….” Ariana put her hand on his shoulder. “Did you hear what Henry said? Who knows how many thousands of Alderei have just been slaughtered in that surprise attack! Their cold war has turned hot. They’re going to need everyone they can get.”

“We still need all the help we can get! If we go down there now, in the state we are in now, we go to our deaths. It may not be all of us, but some of us are going to die.” Jenkins dug his heels in.

“That may be so, Preston, but such has been the lot of soldiers since the earliest days of warfare. There is no amount of equipment or training that will guarantee all of us come home.” Lance said.

“He’s right, the best we can hope for is to spend our limited, precious resources well, and to not waste them. The lives of our people are our single most precious resource. I can promise you I will not waste them, I cannot promise I will not have to spend them.” Henry said, staring straight at each of the assembled people in front of him.

“Think about it from the Alderei perspective, Preston. A few human lives versus being able to save many more Alderei lives. Be honest with yourself, what choice would you make?” Ariana asked him.

“I guess I see the need, I mean… they just murdered thousands of innocents, sent multiple invasion fleets…”

A bright flash of light announced a new arrival to the room. Henry turned to see Roh Thaad’at standing beside him.

"Not thousands, no. Millions of our people have lost their lives. Not just a temporary death either. The true evil of this act is that entire cities have been turned to molten slag, along with their civilian populations. We will never be able to recover their memories or provide replacement bodies. Those millions are gone forever. There are more than one thousand ships landing troops and securing those systems as we speak. If we don’t stop their progress before they split their forces and move on, then we could easily see the death toll rise into the billions. Your war is important to us, and we will support you still, but our ships and soldiers are needed urgently right now.”

A shiver ran down Henry’s spine.

“Oh my god… I’m so sorry for your loss.” Jenkins replied, with a look of abject misery on his face. “I understand how horrible a choice you have to make.”

“Fear not, Ensign Jenkins. You and your teams are more ready than you know. We will provide you with a ride into the outer solar system still as promised, and we will leave you with one of our Warden class support ships, the ACN Solar Warden. We will offload all of our augmentation chambers, supplies, and experts to the Solar Warden. Your new liaison will be Octa Silvar’Esh, as most of your teams are familiar with him, that and he practically demanded the role be his. You will have additional support from us the entire way, we simply cannot promise the same level of support that our Interdictor class ships could provide.”

“How much time do we have?” Henry asked.

“We will need you to recall your fleet immediately and prepare for an in-system jump within the next two hours.”

“Alright, you heard the Commandant! We need to get back to the gunship immediately and prepare! I need you to suit up and be ready to ship out on the double!” Henry called out. Team one scrambled back into their armor in a surprising display of prowess and familiarity.

“Commandant, what about our void suit upgrades?” Paul asked.

“They have been delivered to the docking bay in crates. You will be able to equip them before your return flight to your mothership.” Roh Thaad’at replied. “I must return to the war council. Octa Silvar’Esh will escort you back to the docking bay.”

Twin flashes of light saw the Commandant leave and their new liaison arrive.

“Hello humans! I will be your guide back to your ship. Are you all ready? Ah, just look at you all! How much you have grown! It seems like just days ago you were climbing out of my augmentation pods with your new genetically enhanced forms! You are already packing on muscle quite rapidly, most impressive! Lieutenant, is your upgraded telekinesis working as well as we hoped?”

The turbocharged mouth of the geneticist extraordinaire made it hard to follow as he chained topics together so quickly. Henry just smirked, as far as quirks go, it was a relatively harmless one. He would take him over Lor Ix’Alderos as their liaison any day of the week.

“Doctor Octa! Good to see you again buddy! I’m glad you’re gonna be our guy! Let me tell you, it worked perfectly. I am so much more powerful, and I still haven’t found my new limits on heat dissipation! I’m sure there is a limit, of course, but brain boil seems like a thing of the past for most situations. I can’t thank you enough!” Paul replied, clapping the Alderei on the shoulder.

“Excellent, I have some exciting news for you! I have been working on unlocking your species raw genetic potential by cross referencing your recovered junk DNA with that of the Nephaeli’im hybrid DNA as well as applying a few mutagenic fixes I have developed. I believe we can use this to unlock the hidden potential in the basal genomic structures of the baseline human. With some more work I may even be able to use clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats to add new RNA segments into non-expressing human candidates to convert them into fully expressed genetically enhanced forms with fully integrated neuroplastic carbonic resonance structures, all with minimal mutagenic or carcinogenic risk!”

Paul burst out laughing for a moment until he was able to pull himself together. Henry’s brain hurt trying to follow what the alien had been trying to explain.

“Doc, I don’t think any of us had any idea what that means. Could you boil it down for those of us who don’t have your wealth of genetic knowledge and training?” Paul asked.

“Of course! My apologies. What I am trying to say is that I may be able to selectively edit certain members of your squads to add telekinetic capability! There are at least two people that I have identified as possible trial candidates. If I could get a larger DNA sample pool from your soldiers I could identify more candidates. If you can get me fresh Nephaeli’im corpses to examine with intact brains and hands I may be able to further refine the method enough to be able to safely begin field testing with clone bodies. From there it will be a matter of finding willing test subjects to begin live trials and we can start adding telekinesis to those soldiers who have compatible genetics!”

Henry and Paul shared a look, before he looked around the room. Everyone’s ears had seemed to perk up at that bombshell.

“This could be a total game changer.” Henry began.

“No kidding! Doc, we will absolutely get you whatever you need to begin research on this. Unfortunately, Joshua Warden left with most of the surviving human Powerful, and nobody that we are aware of on board has any other powers. However, we had multiple psionic powers that were beginning to manifest and be studied, not just telekinesis. I have some files I can share with you in private that may be able to help your research along.”

“How exciting! I have inferred the possibility of the existence of other powers. Any information you can provide will be extremely useful, though what I really need are bodies to dissect or at least genetic profiles and brain scans.”

“You shall have them as soon as we can get our hands on them. Any slain god-king with innate powers will be retrieved for study.” Paul affirmed.

“Remember, please save the brains and hands from unnecessary trauma. I will provide you with temporal stasis pods to be installed in whichever ship you plan to take with you to the surface.” Octa Silvar’Esh replied.

“We will do our absolute best, but there will be some damage done in the process of killing them. We will just have to try and avoid damaging the brain and hands.” Paul replied.

“I get the brain, I think, but why the hands?” Jenkins asked.

“Have you ever noticed that I raise one or both of my hands up when I’m using my telekinesis? It’s because there is a second field generating structure in the hand that we call a foci that is used to shape and control the effect at the intersection of where the two fields overlap. It’s the same with a null barrier as well, that requires a generating structure and a focusing structure to cut through spacetime in the origin and end points of the field to allow raw null matter to flow into the third dimension and create the effect.” Paul replied.

“Oh, I kinda get it. So, if we encounter a god king with a new power we need both structures to study or we won’t be able to replicate it, right?” Jenkins asked.

“Correct, actually, that gives me an interesting idea. We shamelessly stole a Nephaeli’im technology to create our TK drives and barrier generators called a carbon bio printer. It uses a genetically engineered algae in a carbon rich nutrient solution to print a structurally perfect generating structure and foci that fills to the interior of the solution vat, making it an easily scaleable process. We analyzed the DNA on them and it seems they used a composite genetic structure remarkably similar to the identified extra genes that create the structures in the bodies of the powerful. Perhaps you can reverse engineer that into a head start on being able to help add null barrier generating structures into our soldiers also.” Paul said.

“Brilliant! If you have even a small sample of this bioengineered algae on your ship then I can use that as a starting point to work from.” The doctor replied.

“This is exciting! If we had a member of each team able to generate a TK field and another able to generate a null barrier, we would finally have an answer to those damned plasma lasers!” Ariana chimed in.

A chorus of welcome agreement from the assembled soldiers showed that in of itself was a happy thought.

“I cannot promise that it will work, or that it will be safe, at least not without weeks or possibly months of research and testing. However, the Solar Warden is supposedly being upgraded in dry dock as we speak with a fully equipped laboratory at the expense of some of her munitions. I can promise you that I will make this my first priority. Ah, here we are! Excellent, your void suit upgrades are here too. Oh! Looks like we also have extra meta-material packs for you too. This way you will have the extra material needed for suit size expansion and for self repair..”

“I don’t know about y’all, but I’m definitely gonna need it. My suits already getting a bit tight.” Hamilton said with a smirk on his face as he lifted the lid on one of the crates.

“Here are the expansion packs. It looks like there’s one for each undersuit and armor pack. Helmets are here, and labeled. Here are the life support modules, they attach to your upper back like so.” Octa Silvar’Esh explained as he began handing out the gear upgrades.

“I should get a loader over here to help move these crates onto your ship.” He began before Paul smirked and smoothly lifted one and moved with it up the gangplank.

“Or that works too. You truly have progressed far these past few weeks in the simulator. Most impressive!” Octa Silvar'Esh said.

“It’s just a shame that we had to cut their training time short like that. Not that we can blame you in the slightest for why you all needed to. My condolences to your people for their losses, and that you must once more fight a bloody war against these psychopaths. When they attacked us for the first time we lost a third of our homeworld’s population in orbital bombardments and the subsequent fighting and ecologic collapse.” Henry said.

“We have long ago accepted the fact that we will need to periodically remind them of the lesson that messing with us is a terrible idea. Perhaps this next phase of the war will buy us another few millennia of peace, if we are lucky. The alternative is to wipe them from the face of the galaxy forever. Such a terrible choice could never be undone, and by its end we would scarcely be any better morally than they are. Truly a horrible predicament we find ourselves in. At least we will be able to help your species liberate this world from their clutches. That will have to be consolation enough. The enslaved, murdered, and oppressed are seldom given a choice in their misery. Never forget that is at the heart of what your mission will be. You must give your people that choice, and most importantly, you must not become their new oppressor, murderer, and slavedriver.”

Henry studied the alien in front of him with a tremendous amount of respect.

“No, you are so very right. It’s a terrible responsibility, one we must take with appropriate gravity.” Henry replied.

“See to it that you do. We will be watching.”

Henry nodded as he watched his teams finish upgrading their armor and loading and locking down the crates in their gunship cargo hold. His eyes fixed on Paul, who was busy checking straps and getting the rest of the team locked into their acceleration harnesses.

He truly hoped they were up to the tasks and trials ahead.