Zakalwe
Inactive Member
MissingNo:
[Lenwe's Office on New Kohana.]
"We have trained her as much as our knowledge can allow us. She can perform her tests with great success, though there are flaws in her execution of certain tasks-"
"What is your point?" Lenwe's voice was terse. "Is she ready or not?"
"She is trained, but she is not ready. There are things that we cannot teach her. The Sha'Nai, for example, are masters of stealth and death, but she lacks certain skills that they make heavy use of in their trade. She will need to find some other place to be adequately instructed in this area. Likewise, while we, her caretakers, know of firearms, we are unable to teach her what she needs to know about them."
"I see. Thank you for your report." Lenwe turned his chair's back toward the scientist and heard the Kohanian exit the office. After the door shut, he turned his thoughts to this newest problem.
It would be unwise to send his prize to Yamatai for training. They would seize, destroy, or turn it against him as a spy or assassin when they discovered who she was working for. The elf happened to rest his eyes on a star-chart on the wall. Now that was an idea...Nepleslians were masters of the more common weapons, ones that Nelew would find lying around the galaxy when the time came. They would be more suitable for her training.
He dispached a communique to a contact in the Nepleslian military and leaned back as he awaited the reply.
*****
[One month ago. Secret Laboratory, Palace of Kohana.]
Deep under the Palace, a team of Kee'Awloo and Dy'Unnar scientists worked feverishly on deconstructing the technology gathered from the crash. A small group of them, however, worked in a smaller lab than the larger experimentation chambers that the others used. This was possibly because the focus of their examinations was no larger than an eyeglass case. Laughing Rain had turned the strange artifact that she received from Lenwe over to her scientists as soon as she had returned to the Palace.
That was months ago. And, despite their major discovery a few weeks after she had delivered the artifact, they had nothing to show Her Ladyship since then and she was becoming impatient with their lack of progress.
In another part of the lab a makeshift gymnasium of sorts had been set up. Alongside weights, boxing bags, sparring dummies, and a running track were sparring pads, body armor, and weapons. Two Dy'Unnar and a Kee'Awloo watched as yet another To'Yaree hit the ground in a battered heap.
"She's learning."
"Not really. She's been using the same move every single time. True, it works every single time, but she needs to find out that not everyone can be defeated the same way."
A tremor shook the ground, barely noticeable but still there as the subject of the observers' conversation lifted the To'Yaree above her head and lept five feet before hurling the unfortunate warrior downward again. She landed, slightly harder than one would have expected someone of her slight frame and stature to, and was about to pick the equine up again when the Kee'Awloo observer called out for her to stop. Nelew did so, stopping where she stood and staring at the Kee with her golden gaze. The small female wore a loose jerkin with a pair of fitted breeches that stopped at her calves.
"You may return to your quarters, Nelew."
She nodded, then walked away, her peculiar gait making it seem like she was trying to step in the stride of someone taller than she was. Which was true, in a manner of speaking...
"Come, we need to get him to the healers. Let's hope she didn't beat him too severely this time."
*****
[Eight months ago. Secret Lab.]
A Kee'Awloo researcher eyed the box. He had been awake for two days. Finally he sat down in front of the table upon which the box sat, mocking him, and dropped his head to the table top, letting his arms hang from his shoulders.
The box was surrounded by sensors. None of them could see anything but a small object that was assumed to be a microcomputing system behind the symbols and the hole. Behind the computer was an empty area with particles scattered throughout the space. Those particles were components of an aerogel material, but the material was unknown to the Kohanians and they couldn't figure out what it was.
The scientist stood and yawned. He glanced over at the computer system that the sensors were linked to and watched the same readings scroll by on the screen for the hundredth time. His eyes drifted toward the case that housed the computer and blinked.
"Well pull my tail and call me a pup," he muttered and stood, knocking his chair over. He disconnected one of the cables from a sensor and picked up the strange box. The connector for the cable would just barely fit in the hole. So maybe it was a data jack! He slid the connector in until it clicked.
The computer screen went blank.
"DAMN IT!" The others were going to kill him! Then he saw the dim violet symbols beginning to speed by over the black screen. What the...
The next day, the project lead, a rather short Dy'Unnar, leaned over the Kee who had made the discovery with a paw on the colleague's shoulder and curious eyes examining the symbol streams.
"I think this is raw code. Not any language we have here, nor is it like anything we've seen anywhere on the shuttle. I think this is something else entirely," said the seated Kee. "Maybe-"
"There!" The Dy blurted out, pointing a clawed finger at one of the code streams. "Damn, it's already passed...but I could swear that the symbol there matches one of the symbols around the jack."
"We think those are buttons, but we haven't pushed them since we don't know what they do."
The Dy smirked. "Wise choice, but the snake who sticks his head in the hole catchs the rat," was the reply as the feline walked over to the case. "Holding Winds, take this into the testing chambers. We shall find out what this object hides once and for all, or we will die whether or not it is what does the killing."
Catching the veiled threat, Winds quickly stood and removed the data jack from the box, carrying it down a long, narrow hallway into a bare room with reinforced walls and ceiling. There was armor plating, mostly iron and steel that was layered a foot thick on all walls with crossbeams arranged in a repeating delta pattern across the ceiling. The room was far enough away from the main labs that any large explosions would only collapse it in the worst-case scenario. There were several dozen of these side-rooms arranged along the outer perimeter of the underground lab, each constructed after a piece of salvaged technology exploded unexpectedly and caved in half the complex.
Setting the box on the floor, Winds looked back at the Dy'Unnar, who had stopped at the doorway to the blast room. The Dy nodded and stepped back, closing the heavy door.
"Ancestors protect me," whispered Holding Winds, and pressed the button.
The Dy'Unnar watched in growing horror through the thick glass of the viewing portal in the door as the Kee'Awloo began twitching before falling to the ground in a slowly dissolving heap of bone, fur, and flesh. The poor scientist had not even time to scream before his nerves had been reduced to base particles and his brain had been absorbed by the activated nanites that were dormant in the box's aerogel storage space.
*****
[One week later. Lenwe's Headquarters.]
"This is a positively amazing device. Point, click, gone."
"We think it may be a generator of some kind, though we have not been able to figure out how to release or channel that energy...only how to give it fuel."
"The materials vanish within seconds now. It used to take a minute, sometimes two. We think it may be nearing some sort of limit."
"And what kind of limit would that be?" asked Lenwe, after listening to the trio of researchers give their eager reports. The way they were describing it, the device would consume things instantaneously when it reached its limit, he thought. However..."You said that it devours everything?"
"Metals, stone, animals. The first to try was one of my team. He was dead in moments, his body was gone after three minutes. All materials we have tried were 'devoured', as you said, and the speed increase does not seem to change regardless of the material being absorbed."
Lenwe allowed himself a small smile. They had discovered a very powerful weapon. "Taisho Araiah Jal...so this is your legacy," he murmured. To the scientists, he gave a slight nod. "Continue with the experiments. I will personally visit the laboratory tomorrow to check on your progress. And," he said, narrowing his eyes at the trio. "...say nothing to Miss Laughing Rain. If I find that there has been an information leak, I hold you -- all of you -- personally responsible. And your families shall share your blame."
The trio nodded, their eyes showing their complete understanding of the threat. With that, they were dismissed and Lenwe resumed his examinations of the latest reports.
*****
[Secret Laboratory. The Day after The Discovery.]
The girl awoke, her eyes flicking open as if by a switch. Darkness greeted her, lessened only by the dim, navy-colored light of the waning moon that filled the room. She lay still, on her back with her arms at her sides and her eyes fixed on the ceiling above her. Moments passed as her eyes adapted to the dimness and everything came into sharp, blue-tinted focus. Where was she? Slowly, she began to remember the first minutes of her short life.
Her birth. She didn't remember the actual process, of course, just the sudden start of her autonomous functions. Breathing. Energy usage. The sudden development of consciousness when he touched her.
Lenwe. She knew the elf by his name and recognized that the sounds that made it were associated with him somehow. And his voice caused her to focus, she knew that too. But language was still a foreign idea. She herself had made no sound except for her shallow breathing since her creation.
The room. And the bed, where she was now lying. The only sounds were the creaks and groans as the furnishings and walls shifted under the weight of the earth above it and the soft whisper of her breathing. Lenwe had helped her up. He had half-carried her to one of the researcher quarters off of the labs, leading her to a bed before he covered her with a sheet and blanket, and she had not moved from it since. Her body was still a distant thing to her mind, like devices that a computer has not yet recognized. As she lay there, however, she remembered what his hands had felt like as they carried her.
His touch. The action that had imparted some of his thoughts to her, a glimpse of his mind that sparked the formation of her sense of self when he blocked the assimilation of his mind by the nanites' ravenous sub-sentient intelligence. The seperation of 'other' and 'self' was realized, then explored and defined. Her brain had been built to accept a Melumsi, created to have another's personality in control. But with only a partial transfer, her mind knew that it was not whole and struggled to correct that incompletion. And so she was born.
The sheets rustled as she tested her limbs. They were strong. She knew that somehow, not realizing that a subconscious diagnostic was continuously feeding her the status of her body. Slowly, a foot slid over the edge of the bed. The leg followed it, and the girl rolled over onto her side. She continued to roll over onto her stomach, except there was no more bed to roll onto. THUMP.
Pressure on her nose and face. On her shoulders, chest, right arm, and left leg. They were all bearing pressure as she lay on the wooden floorboards. The momentum of her fall relieved that pressure, though, as she continued to roll until she was on her back again.
Two minutes later she figured out how to walk after discovering that she shared the same limbs as Lenwe did and deducing their use. Five more minutes and the girl was walking as if she had always known how. Now she was searching for something. Her hearing had detected a faint buzz coming from the walls of the room, and now she was seeing lines all around her...one of the lines led to a hole in the wall. She poked at the hole with her finger, the digit molding slightly to the socket as she pressed.
ZZZT-
!!!
Sparks flew from the socket, jumping between her fingers and teeth. Her eyes glowed like candles and her short hair stood on end. She jerked her finger out of the power socket as the muscles in her arm spasmed, leaving a sooty scorch on the wall around the hole. She eyed the socket, rubbing her finger until the tingle went away. Maybe it would be better if she left the mysterious buzzing hole in the wall alone.
*****
[Present Day. Lenwe's Office.]
Lenwe looked up from the inventory report he was reviewing when a notice flashed onto his screen.
"It has been decided that Nelew will be trained by the IPG. The conditions of her training are that she serve the IPG for the following amount of time," read Lenwe. He frowned as he read the condition, but the proposition of having Nepleslia's premier intelligence agency train her...
"Bring Nelew to my office, please," requested Lenwe over the intercom to his secretary's desk.
"Acknowledged," was the reply.
[To be continued when I have the time to write it...]
