Date point: 9y 4m BV
Dear Journal,
I’ve gained an orange friend!
Triv didn’t know much about where those rascally blue-giraffes were. Really, all he knew was that they still had those crates of the vaccine needed at Auaia-4, so that was where I was going. Unfortunately, that was not where Demon Dude and the 74th, as I learned my division was called, were planning on heading. That wasn’t too much of a problem, though, as it turned out.
“Oh that! That’s not too much of a problem.” (told you), Demon Dude answered when I brought the matter to his attention, “We’ll just use one of the Nanofab mills we have on the ship and make you an interstellar transport shuttle. It’ll be about as generic a ship as you can find, and mediocre in every way, but it’ll get you where you want to go easily enough.”
“Really? You’d do that for me? Free of charge?”
“Well, since you bring it up we’ll be using the pay you’ve accumulated over the past cycle you’ve been with us. We didn’t know if you would ever use it, but you were in the records so you were automatically paid, and with a little help from my personal account there’s enough to justify such an expenditure.”
“Thank you.” I said seriously, which means a lot coming from me, as I try to avoid saying anything if I can’t say it with my usual tone of boisterous joviality and a hint of sarcasm. Demon Dude heard the change in tone, I think, and looked please, once again, I think. For all I know he could have been twisting his face in anger, but I felt like he was pleased. “When will the ship be ready? I want to leave as soon as possible.”
“We’ll bump it up in the priorities list so you don’t have to wait for all the drop ships to be replaced.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Oh no, we needed an orbital strike and your method was effective and, in a strange way, extremely satisfying. Your ship should be ready in a few (days), but if you delay your departure for a little while after that then a translator I arranged for – one with a significantly better attitude than then our current model – should arrive. You, of course, can leave before that if you want, but life in the galaxy can be rather difficult without a translator.”
I laughed, mainly because I thought of all the craziness that could have been avoided had I started out with one. Then I thought a moment longer before I answered. “You’re right, but it would have been much less entertaining.”
And that was why, even after my beautiful box of a ship was complete, I was still with the 74th. We had been ordered back to the nearest military barracks, and Triv’s demeanor had darkened and soured with every passing day. Honestly, just because I almost choked him out doesn’t mean he has to be such a Dick about it, even though that is his name – although he doesn’t like it. Maybe his attitude was understandable. It still didn’t make it any easier to deal with him.
Manthlel made a full recovery, now with a shiny new arm. He’d also replaced the three legs I’d broken all those months ago with prosthetics as well. His biological legs had been saved, but he said they’d never worked quite the same after I’d broken them when I threw him out of the reach of that Vulza. After he had seen how much better the mechanical arm was in comparison to its biological counterpart, he’d asked them to replace the faulty legs as well, and was happy with the results. I felt a little guilty that I had ultimately caused more damage to his body than a Vulza, but as all his injuries were in some way one of those overgrown lizard’s faults, I decided to blame it all on them.
The translator arrived while I was sleeping, and Triv left without saying goodbye, although I think he might have spit on my pillow or something. Its installation went without a hitch, and, to my utter relief, the Corti surgeon said he could make it have an on/off switch, though he couldn’t fathom why I’d ever want such a thing. I think he tried to give me a lecture about it, but I turned it off the moment he started his monologue. He was pretty angry by the end, but I couldn’t understand his body language without my translator working, so I chose to believe he was waving his arms in a unsuccessful attempt at starting a rave party, although I tried to help him out by joining.
I had packed all my things, which meant my lava scimitars, my old clothes, which I hadn’t worn in months and were still tie-dyed with blood, a few spare uniforms, which were all I was wearing at this point – I really am stunning in black on red – and a bag to hold it all.
I had found out during my two-week-or-so wait that xenos, as a whole, think a scimitar is a scythe. A trip to their Xeno 3D printer, which I guess they call a Nanofab mill, and I showed them what a real war-scythe was. They weren’t really impressed until I showed them why the grim reaper is given a scythe. Yes, I know it’s because scythes are traditionally used for mowing, or reaping, grass, but I choose to believe it’s because the scythe, especially its battle-modified cousin, was one of the most popular and fearsome weapons used by peasants during their uprisings throughout history due to its ability to cut, pierce, and generally mutilate any who felt the bite of its blade. I’ve already seen a few xenos carrying them instead of their old fusion weapons. I, of course, kept the one I printed out.
Demon Dude and Manthlel were waiting by my ship as I approached it with my things. The rest of the squad had said their goodbyes back at our squad-cubicle, but I guess Manthlel wanted a neck hug or something, which was a shame, since I hated hugs, neck variety especially, and wouldn’t be giving any.
“I dislike goodbyes so I’ll keep this brief,” Demon Dude said as I approached, “Normally you’d get a medal for your actions, but it’s somewhat of a precedent for a ‘non-sentient specimen of indigenous fauna’ to qualify for one, so my thanks will have to suffice. On behalf of the Dominion, Thank you, and good luck.”
I, too, hated long goodbyes, so I decided to go with my traditional farewell. Plastering a smile on my face, I cheerily reciprocated, “It’s been great knowing you for the past two weeks. Don’t die!” I guess it took on a different light considering the fact that he was in the military, but that’s how I say goodbye to everyone. It’s one of the most sincere things you can say to someone, and it usually bypasses the never-ending hugging and hand-shaking ritual that are usual goodbyes. It worked the same way with xenos, apparently, because Demon Dude smile-grimaced as he left. I had glanced at Manthlel while saying it, meaning my parting advice to apply to both of them, but apparently that wasn’t good enough.
“I want to go with you.” Was a long goodbye really that important to this guy that he was going to come along so he could fulfill his greatest farewell fantasy to its fullest conclusion?
“Uh, aren’t you currently in the middle of something, like, a war?”
“I’ve been discharged. It’s standard procedure to allow an enlisted soldier the choice of an honorable discharge if they lose 50% of their natural born limbs in combat, or, if the soldier in question has an odd number of limbs, as in my case, 44.4%. The fact that I considered my ‘healed’ legs to be permanently damaged qualifies them as lost while in service, and with my arm, that’s 44.4%. Colonel Blatvec has filed the necessary paperwork, so I’m no longer part of the 74th. I want to go with you.”
Call me slow, because maybe I was missing something, but I still had to ask, “Why? I’m 33.3%-” I did that in my head in case you were wondering, please hold your applause, “-of the reason you’re in the condition you are now. Why would you want to spend any more time with me than you have to? I’ll probably end up snapping your neck or ripping out your spleen by accident if you come along with me.”
Manthlel paused at my vivid and particular descriptions, but only for a moment, “I think you’ll be able to control yourself, at least where my spleen is concerned, but I don’t see the injuries as a major factor compared to what you’ve given me. I was a coward before you joined our squad, but after you arrived, it was your influence that drove me to shoulder-slap one Vulza and stick my hand in another’s mouth.”
Crap, he was getting all serious on me. If he kept this up I’d have to drop my tone for the second time in a month, “Exactly. You’re a hero now. I’m sure if you went home your war stories and medals would have you dripping in money and favors for the rest of your life. Why would you want to skip out on that to gallivant across the galaxy with a recently self-rehabilitated – poorly, I might add – killing machine in search of idiotic but laughably loveable blue-giraffes?”
“I can’t go home. Ruibal, my species, are a very political people, though only amongst themselves. Compared to other species of the Dominion, our schemes are nearly as childish as those attempted by Vzk’tk when unguided by a Rrrrtktktktkp’ch. Despite our simplicity, my family would still have had enough political sense to disown me the moment word of my extreme cowardice reached them, and I’m afraid no actions of courage save defeating a Celzi force on my own would make them take me back. So as you can see, going home wouldn’t really bring me all that I would desire. I hate my petty home planet anyway, as do a large number of our people, come to think of it, so I wouldn’t want to go back anyway. That’s why I want to go with you, because it’s only with you that I’ve accomplished things I never thought I could. It’s only when . . .”
“Alright, alright you can come. Just stop making me feel like a good person or you might actually trick me into believing it. Do you have all your things?”
“They’re on the shuttle.”
I gave him a flat look. “ . . . Excellent.”
He smiled, “Also, I have one of the new ultra-harnesses. My mechanical limbs made interfacing with one easier than it would have been for Cresh, and my actions in previous battles made it so the Colonel wanted me to be the squad’s new ultra-heavy. He hadn’t foreseen me leaving, but since each harness has to be custom made for each species, and I was the only Ruibal in the squad, he just let me keep it, saying it would help me stay alive being trapped on the shuttle with you.”
I smiled as well. “You just became a significantly more interesting traveling partner. Welcome aboard the USS-F-4 Phantom II.”
Manthlel was confused. “USS? F-4? Phantom? II? Why II? Isn’t this your first ship?”
“The first thing we’re going to have to get set between us now that we can properly talk and we’re going to be traveling together is that you never question what I choose to name something, no matter how bad or nonsensical it is.”
“Alright, but can I just call it the Phantom, as that’s the only part of the name that I even know the meaning of?”
“I like the way you think. Now let’s go.”
The only problem was that while the USS-F-4-Phantom II sure lived up to its name sake, it did not live up to its nickname. Despite the conniptions Einstein would be having if he could see my relativistic velocities, breaking Albert’s speed limit wasn’t enough for Manthlel, and he continued to make disparaging comments as to the less-than-exemplary FTL drive of my new and beautiful box. That is until I threatened to stab it with my new fusion war-scythe so as to rid him of its annoyance. Apparently it wasn’t bad enough to scrap entirely, which pretty much summed up every possession I’d ever owned, so it was fitting that my ship should be the same.
If you’re a guy (or a gal who has the stereotypical conversation skills of a guy) and you’ve taken a car trip with another genderless being of similarly stereotypical male conversation skills (alright, who’s still offended by my gender labels?) then you know that unless you’ve been friends with that person since childhood, most of the trip will pass in a silence only broken when the other person has to pee or eat. We had our food and bathroom on board, so we didn’t even need to tell each other when we had to visit the loo.
It was a pretty quiet two weeks. At least Manthlel got used to my talking to myself. I usually just turned off the translator so he could drown out my babbling.
Date point: 9y 3m 2w BV
Personal log,
My trip with Human has been significantly less inspiring than I originally expected, although that’s not to say it was uninteresting or devoid of disturbing discoveries. Apparently Human had been toning it down when he howl-wailed in the shower. I had thought myself used to Human’s unsettling cleaning ritual, but I was woefully unprepared for the audible onslaught the first night on the shuttle. The only remark the loud little biped made upon his exit was to say that the facilities had exceptional acoustics. Unfortunately, I must agree with his assessment.
Human also has a tendency to talk to himself, though only with his translator off, which is even more unsettling due to the harsh barking nature of his native tongue. I told his so, and his reply was to laugh and tell me I should be happy he wasn’t “German”, although he failed to explain what that was. That’s another point of contention between us, although I doubt he sees any such points as I do. I believe his entire outlook upon life is defined by his ability to overlook conflicts until they become too great for even him to ignore. Soon I may need to adopt a similar philosophy in order to maintain my sanity.
I digress, however, and return to the matter of his unwillingness to properly explain the many references he makes to his home world. The eccentric name of the shuttle aside, he has yet to explain “German”, “chocolate”, “Bachelor-pad living”, although I believe it to be a synonym for living in squalor, “Star Trek”, “Star Wars”, “Dick move”, or what my alternative name, “Bro”, means, as it is different from the bastardization which he has already shortened my given name to “Manny”.
From our brief and infrequent conversations I have discovered that, despite how he may sound, he’s not as unintelligent as one would first assume . . . quite. Interpersonally I can safely say he is an idiot, but during my explanation of several of the ship’s functions that are not featured in a military drop ship, and therefore outside his sphere or experience, he was quite attentive and understood my instructions and explanations with ease. He is capable of controlling the ship with the same level of proficiency as I, and were our ship to befall any misfortune I am certain I could count on him to be an asset rather than a burden.
Which is why I almost wish we had encountered some crisis during our travel, as he certainly is a burden to my sense of comfort when he is bored, which seems to be whenever he isn’t doing something absurd or completely mad. At random intervals he would turn off the gravity, after only giving me a moment’s warning, because he through “it felt cool,” although I’m certain he didn’t touch the temperature controls. He would proceed to roam about the ship, pushing himself off the walls, and seeing how quickly he could enter each of the ship’s room in turn, going so far as to ask the ship to time him.
On another instance he dropped the Phantom out of FTL next to a planet. We still had many nutrient spheres left, and try as I might I couldn’t come up with a reason for why we had stopped and were descending into its atmosphere. I eventually asked him, but received the answer that has conditioned me to assume asking questions is a pointless venture. “You’ll see.” That particular non-answer usually means that I will regret whatever it is that I am about to witness, and oddly enough his resulting actions often result in my closing my eyes so as to not see.
This particular incident was no different, except in this instance I was unable to avoid feeling what I closed my eyes against. After turning off the ship’s gravity field in favor of the planet’s, he introduced me to what he termed a “Barrel-roll”, which, as far as I can tell, is an overcomplicated, ritualistic, and terrifying form of torture on his planet. I can only guess as to the cruel depravity of the minds that conceived of such an act, or why Human would behave even further outside the bounds of sanity than usual so as to experience its horror. My only guess is that it was an act of defiance against its creators; a rebellion against its debauchery by willingly submitting oneself to it while pretending to enjoy it. That’s the only explanation of mine that can justify the insane cackle he released while performing, in my mind, a quite unnecessary number of these “Barrel-rolls”. He also failed to explain what relevance “Star Fox 64” had to do with his psychotic antics.
The above episode as well as several similar examples made the two week journey alarming to say the least. I am not ashamed of admitting I have never been more thankful to come to the end of a journey, even when that end was a station above a planet whose inhabitants were suffering a highly contagious plague. After all, it only afflicts their kind, so I was as safe as it is possible to be while being the travel companion of Human.
As I said, the two week journey was pretty uneventful, except for a few isolated moments of entertainment genius. Considering the boredom that kind of inactivity tends to create, I was thrilled when we made it. Our destination was actually a station above the planet, but there were far too many ships around it for me to be able to give it a once over to see if the blue-giraffes in question were there. I’d only seen the ship from the outside a few times anyway, and then only through that hospital’s windows.
Manthlel found us a docking port, since apparently the operators had a particular form they wanted you to follow rather than my suggestion, which had been to just yell “Where do you want me to park!?” into the microphone until they gave us a straight and simple answer. This was the first station I’d been to where everyone wasn’t wearing hazmat suits, and it was a welcome difference.
Although dirty, the station had a comfortable, lived-in feeling, and the bustle of busy aliens going about their important work was a sharp contrast to the fearful caution of my previous station experience. It was also significantly more confusing. “How are we going to find anyone in this,” I asked as we joined the steady and inexorable flow of the crowd.
“First place we’ll check is the docking master. If he’s the relaxed type and likes the look of us he’ll tell us anything we want to know. If he’s strict and takes his job description seriously, he won’t tell us a thing unless we have a permit or a high enough security clearance code, in which case we can ask around and see if anyone has heard of a recent shipment of vaccines. If that doesn’t work we could just wander around and hope we find something, but we’ll be pretty lucky to find anything in this mess.”
The dock master was probably the most uptight xeno I’d ever seen. If he clenched his butt-cheeks any more I figured the resulting heat and pressure would make him shit diamonds. The moment we asked for information concerning cargo ships crewed by blue-giraffes, or “Vizk-tiks” as Manthlel called them, he virtually sprayed us with spit in his eagerness to ask us to show him the necessary paperwork or clearance. When we said we didn’t have any, he started yelling while waving around something that – from the way Manthlel later explained it – was the xeno equivalent of a cattle prod. Once again I had chosen to turn off my translator when he started yelling, so I chose to believe he was giving his impression – and a good one at that – of one of those inflatable wavy-armed advertising things you see in front of used car dealerships.
Plan B didn’t work out too well either. There were many cargo ships carrying vaccines, and had been for several months. Apparently they just arrived whenever they were able, a point which caused Manthlel some political annoyance. From the way he told it, the Dominion was so overtaxed with the war on top of all the usual logistical nightmares they dealt with that they had been unable to organize a dedicated medical convoy to deliver the vaccines all at the same time, so had instead leased the work out to private vessels, which was in turn creating nightmares of their own. I didn’t care so much for the political reasons for why it was. The only thing that I cared about was that it meant the blue-giraffes could be here but there was no way to be sure except honest legwork.
Thankfully the station was symmetrical, which made it easy to keep track of when I had Manthlel work his way up from the bottom and I’d come down from the top. That’s when my height really became a problem. Before, I hadn’t really needed to see far through the crowd because we had been heading for set destinations. Now I had to be able to see what kind of ship was docked at each port through the use of handy little displays next to each dock which detailed the ship connected to it, and it would have been much easier if I could have seen over the crowd. Being 5’9’’ (175 cm) had never felt so inadequate. Thankfully, this crowd was much easier to push through, so in the end it just meant I had to walk right up to the display rather than glance at it from afar.
Manthlel was probably having an even worse time of it than I was. He was trying to find a ship based off of the vague description of an inaccurate memory by someone who doesn’t pay much attention to detail. If he actually managed to find them I would probably start wondering if he had met them before, because more than half the ships I was seeing could have matched my wholly inadequate description.
It’s a miracle I actually found them, especially considering that the guy usually given credit for dispensing miracles doesn’t seem to see me as a friend. I would have passed right by, if I hadn’t seen a familiar blue face atop a long neck exit an airlock and join the flowing station crowd. I would have yelled out to catch Mama’s attention, but I doubted she would actually answer to that name, and even if I had known her real one I wouldn’t have been able to pronounce it. Besides, her face had the determined set of someone on a mission, which, on the face of a blue-giraffe, probably meant she was about do something of supreme importance, so I decided not to run up and grab her attention.
She hadn’t activated the lock on the panel beside the airlock, so I assumed someone must still be on the ship. I was sure no one would mind if I let myself in. After all, I was their beloved pet, wasn’t I? Sure, I may have almost killed them, and traumatized their children, and come close to ruining their livelihood, but that’s not something to hold against a guy. They’d just be absolutely thrilled to see me.
Tnnxz breathed a sigh of relief once Xkkrk shut the airlock hatch behind her. It wasn’t as though she were mad at him – the hatch wouldn’t have made him feel safe enough to relax if that had been the case – but she was certainly angry with the current circumstances concerning the vaccines, and anything that caused Xkkrk discomfort caused discomfort to those around her as well. Apparently using a ship of an unofficial yet still recognized pirate caused problems when it came to delivering vaccines in that said same ship. The station officials refused to accept the vaccines because they were initially registered to Tnnxz in his old Crixa, and because they had been unable to declare it lost the moment they had abandoned it, the consequent rigmarole and paperwork were becoming an enormous headache.
And it had all been Cqcq’trtr’s fault. Tnnxz knew, intellectually, he couldn’t really blame Cqcq’trtr for the many tribulations he had heaped upon the crew’s collective heads. There was no way he could have known he could kill the entire crew by existing, or that his careless movements were dangerous in the same way a kinetic pulse was. He couldn’t understand the thought processes of herbivores, being a carnivore himself. Only Corti could make it so they didn’t feel their emotions, though, and right now Tnnxz’s emotions told him he should blame Cqcq’trtr, so that’s what he was doing.
Still, the nightmare was over and Cqcq’trtr was gone. Unfortunately, his presence could still be felt on the ship, principally from Xkkrk and, exasperatingly, Vtv. At least Xkkrk’s case was understandable. She had apparently started to communicate with Cqcq’trtr on a rudimentary level during those last few ricta (weeks), and she still believed she had made some kind of connection with him. She had always had a tender heart, and so he felt he could understand her feeling sad over Cqcq’trtr’s probably death. But Vtv’s recent depressive state completely dumbfounded him. Tnnxz had never before had a pet, but surely its loss couldn’t be so awful as to cause its owner to mope about for weeks, could it?
Besides, it wasn’t as though Cqcq’trtr had been all that cute or endearing. Sure, he had had those funny little patches of hair atop and around his head which gave him a certain charm, and maybe if his personality had been something other than that of a crazed, carnivorous, destructive, deathworld abomination, he might have been approaching the fringes of what could be called, if not cute, then loveable, but his personality had been that of a crazed, carnivorous, destructive, deathworld abomination. His hair had often been speckled with blood as well.
No matter, Cqcq’trtr was gone, from Tnnxz’s life at least, and Vtv and Xkkrk would get over their grief eventually. In the meantime, he was going to settle back into the comfortable existance he had always dreamed of and had been happily living before everything had gone wrong. One advantage of having been in stasis for the past cycle (six months) was that the Cqcq plants Cqcq’trtr had . . . well . . . trtr-ed, had grown back, albeit unevenly, having done so without the guidance of the gardeners. Tnnxz had hated losing those plants, though he never would have admitted the real reason for his burning anger after that embarrassing incident.
It was a practice generally scowled upon, and if Xkkrk had ever caught him indulging in it she would have ejected every Cqcq plant from the airlock herself, but if one dried its leaves, which could be accomplished in seconds through the unconventional use of the water recycling unit, lit them on fire, and inhaled the resulting smoke, they had an extremely relaxing effect upon the user. It wreaked havoc upon one’s lungs, as well as several other harmful side effects, but Tnnxz rationalized that he had already ruined his lungs after all those years he’d spent in the mines as a youth, so there was little more he could do to them. Getting rid of the smell was simple when one had access to life-support systems, and after some fiddling with the ships safety parameters, he’d managed to declassify smoke as an alarm-worthy hazard in his private chambers. It meant he’d probably die by fire, but he was willing to accept that fate so long as he could return to his previously enjoyed lifestyle.
He had already prepared several leaves during Xkkrk’s previous forays into the station, and had been waiting for another just like now to taste the fruits of his efforts. To that end he retired to his quarters, cut a strip from a leaf, rolled it, lit it, and was just relaxing in his favorite chair when a sound from the connected bathroom tore him from paradise. The state of reality continued falling from paradise past the normal state of affairs and far into the depths of a tortuous oblivion as the object of Tnnxz’s recurring night terrors stepped from his bathroom. Then it spoke.
“You know, smoking is bad for you, dumbass. Ah, fuck it, I don’t know why I should bother talking to you. You never liked me, and I doubt you could pour water from a bucket if the instructions were written on the bottom. Thanks for letting me use your bathroom though; I’ve been looking for this ship for the better part of two hours, and the lemon’s needed squeezing for the past one and half of that. Is Dink still around? Or I guess you wouldn’t know who that is. Uhm . . . he’s blue, looks like a giraffe, has stripes like all of you do . . . you know, I’ve never been good at descriptions. He was my ‘caretaker’. Was almost kidnapped by blue-giraffe pirates before I stopped them. Ring any bells? If you keep your mouth open any longer something’s going to make a nest in there.”
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t. He refused to accept it as real. He had just been overcome with the blissful feeling of smoking cqcq leaves after so long that he had fallen asleep and was having another one of his night terrors. A very vivid, detailed night terror. Cqcq’trtr had never spoken before, at least intelligibly, but it didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Tnnxz couldn’t help it; he started screaming. It was the only way to end one such apparition.
It didn’t end. It, in fact, got worse. Vtv burst through the door into the room still filled with a haze and the smoking leaf still in his hand. “Dad, are you okay?! I heard you screaming and I know you usually want Xkkrk when you start doing that but she isn’t here and –” he saw the object of his father’s outburst and his face lit up with a joy that had not been there for ricta (weeks). With a yell of “Cqcq’trtr!!” he ran at the creature that had nearly killed him and entire crew by accident as though it were a long lost sibling, smothering it in a child’s neck-hug.
Events seemed to have somehow surpassed that tortuous oblivion and discovered an alternate universe of eternal pain and despair. It was only fitting they should fail to stop there and continue into an elevated dimension so as to feel that eternal pain and despair in ways previously unimagined, and they happily took the opportunity to do just that as Xkkrk stormed through the door.
“They didn’t even bother keeping the appointment! I swear if they give me any more grief for our ‘unexpected state of arrival’ then I will personally find Cqcq’trtr and have him repeat what he did to those pirate – Tnnxz, what have you been doing in . . . what’s in your han –” She too saw the small biped nearly being stangled by Vtv and her mouth mimicked Tnnxz’s. Inexplicably, it spoke again.
“You called?”
Valur shouldn’t have expected his transformation would be over after only a few rics (hours). He probably shouldn’t have even expected it to only take only one procedure. What he had thought he could have taken for granted was that it wouldn’t have taken two rictos (4 days). When the pain had become too much and he had needed to sleep, he had forced his unwilling surgeons to take large doses of the general anesthetics he refused to take so that he could recover and sleep without fear of treachery.
His world had become nothing more than pain and sleep, but he persevered, and now was more powerful than even he could have previously dreamed. No longer containing any biological components but those most vital which he refused to allow his surgeon’s to touch on pain of death, it was as strong as the best Allebenellin combat armor, and was plated in an armor the researchers said was currently only being used on a powerful Dominion anti-Vulza combat harness.
But his body wasn’t the only thing enhanced. Extensive cybernetic implants had increased the efficiency of his neural pathways, though at the cost of making them more prone to ‘instability’, as the researches had termed it. He didn’t care, he could move so much faster than before, and his new body seemed invincible. Containing its own oxygen supply, it could even survive the hard vacuum of space, at least until that supply ran out.
If he was completely honest with himself, he had questioned for a moment whether or not it had been worth it. All doubt had left his mind the moment he had started hunting his quarry however. A simple data search using codes he knew because of his guard duty at the sensor station told him where the 74th had been repurposed, and a further searching had quickly uncovered a Corti who had recently disembarked from its main troopship after a short stay. Sometimes the Dominion’s nearly obsessive need to document everything seemed to help only those who wished to take advantage of it.
That Corti, according to the Directorate database he’d found on the research outpost, was identified as a certain Dr. Triv, who was currently conducting pathological research on a category 10 medical station. A trip of almost two rictas (3 weeks) and a dangerous pathogen taken from the research outpost had gained him easy docking authorization with the station. Every doubt he’d had of the soundness of his decision vanished when the heavy kinetic pulse fire from the security officers felt like nothing more than momentary inconveniences, and the guards had been swept aside with laughable ease.
Dr. Triv, once found, had been all too accommodating – most Corti were once you threatened their lives – with what he knew, and he knew a surprising amount. He had been able to point Valur directly to where the “human” could be found and exactly what he was looking for there. Valur couldn’t believe his luck. Xiavo would soon rest in peace.