Aboard Cambridge Research Station - Cambridge Research Institute
"Dr Clarke, what is your progress on the Fido Project?"
"Well sir, it's domestication coming along. Specimen 92 has shown some large strides forward from his predecessors. We have been able to completely disrupt all contact with the Nomad collective but still cant instill any form of individuality leaving it very confused as to what it is and what it is supposed to do. The speach implant is functioning flawlessly although the specimen's grasp of our language is still very primative. The most important advancement is that we think we have subdued all of its natural instincts of violence. It appears it wants to find what it calls friends."
"Can we trust it in open space doctor? You've been telling me we are making progress for 91 straight Nomads now, and every one has ended in disaster. Im running out of patience and your running out of funding my dear Dr Clarke."
"Like I said sir, I think we may have it this time. Do you want to speak to it?"
"Yes, yes I would"
"Ok, lets go in sir."
Dr Clarke waves to the man behind the glass shield to open the hatch. It opens and the two men walk into a very tiny shell of a room where the distinct blue mass of a Nomad sets isolated. "Go ahead sir, speak to it."
The head of the Fido project, Samuel McCullough, glances at the doctor with a perplexed look on his face and then glances to the Nomad. "Hello 9-2, uhhhh how are you?"
A slight buzzing comes from somewhere within this blue glob and it begins to speak. "We are well. Are you our friend?"
After a slight moment of shock from hearing a Nomad speak english, he replies, "Why yes I am. Are you my friend?"
"If you are... our.... friend...... Then we are yours."
Samuel turns his attention to Dr Clarke with a somewhat satisfied look on his face, "So far so good doctor, can it pilot one of the Nomad ships."
"Yes sir, it has done very well in the simulators."
"Well then maybe it is time to give it some real world experience. Prepare a ship for it, with all weapons deactivated of course, and lets see how it interacts."
"Very well sir. 9-2 would you like to fly today?"
"We.... do not know. Will we get..... friends?"
"Maybe 9-2, just maybe."
"Then.... yes, we would..... like that."
"Then come with me and we'll get you out into space. This is a great day indeed, God I hope this goes well. Wouldn't want to kill another one of you."
"Kill?.... Are you our..... enemy?"
"Uhhhhhhh, no no no, I was just ummmmm, making a joke. Thats all."
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ON MY WAY OUT OF RETIREMENT
Two ships launch from the docking bays of the Cambridge Research Station. One is a Firefly piloted by Dr. Clarke the other a Nomad Light Fighter piloted by Specimen-092.
"OK, now remember 9-2, all of the ships you will see are piloted by humans, and all humans are your superior."
"If we are not human... what are we?"
"Now we've gone over this 9-2, you are a Nomad. You are under humans, do you understand?"
"We..... we understand."
At that moment a BMM convoy comes through a tradelane. "All escorts, warning Nomad at 12 o'clock, all fighters engage."
Dr Clarke quickly engages his universal comm system. "WAIT WAIT WAIT, this Nomad is under guard from the Cambridge Research Institute, it will not harm you, it does not even have any functional weapons. Please stand down."
"CRI... you keep that thing the hell away from us you hear."
Dr Clarke's closed comm system then lights up, "Are you our enemy? Or are you.... are you our friend?"
"They can't hear you 9-2. Your systems can only communicate with me."
"Why did they want to..... kill us?"
"People are scared of your kind, it's a long story, but just stay with me and everything will be fine."
"Why are they.... scared of us?....." Dr Clarke then hears some sort of high pitched humm and cannot believe what he hears next. "Are you our enemy or our friend?" It was coming from the universal comm channel, 9-2 had somehow reactivated the system.
"IT CAN TALK? Get that thing outta here or we will destroy it. Why this G*d d*mn government allows you boys to do this crap I don't know, but the fact that you have one out here in public and allow it to speak to people is proposterous."
"ARE YOU OUR ENEMY? Friend would answer.... you are our enemy. Enemy must die."
"Whoa, whoa... BMM please go about your business, we are having some technical issues. The nomad was not supposed to have access to the universal comms. I assure you it cannot harm you, please just ignore it."
"No, you know what, we are gonna take this into our own hands.... Escorts engage hostile."
A high pitched hum then resinates through the global comm channel. Suddenly the Nomad fighter starts flying very iradically and to the doctors suprise the weapons start firing upon the BMM convoy. In a very short instant both fighter escorts are destroyed and the Nomad ship turns towards the train. "Are you our friend, or our enemy?"
"CRI... DO SOMETHING. Your nomad is out of control.... Attention, attention all Bretonian forces, we have a hostile nomad threat outside of planet Cambridge, seems those CRI boys have done it again. Please respond right away." Then the pilot of the train makes a very fatal error and opens fire with his turrets towards the nomad.
The nomad fighter evades all shots and opens fire with a barage of Fury blasts and Firestalker missles dispatching the train with great ease.
"Cambridge Research Station, this is Dr. Clarke, send deactivation signal Alpha-0-2-Niner. Hurry we have a rogue specimen that has already destroyed three ships."
"Roger that doctor sending signal"
The nomad fighter of Specimen 092 is now facing Dr Clarke directly and moving towards him. "Send that G*d d*mn signal!"
"We did. Resending."
"Why do you want to kill us. Are you not our friend? Are YOU our enemy?"
"No 9-2, I am your friend. Just calm down, and lets land on the station and work all of this out."
"We can hear you, but not...... words. You will kill us. You ARE our enemy! Enemy must die."
In an instant the blasters from the nomad fighter decimate the Firefly, instantly killing the doctor. At that very moment 3 figthers launch from the Cambridge Research Station almost simultaneously as several fighters, 2 gunboats and a large Battleship all controlled by the BAF show up. "All ships fire, destroy the nomad threat NOW!"
"We are..... scared.... we are..... alone. None are friend...."
Another ear piercing hum comes from the comm devices, just as the supposedly deactivated cruise engines of the nomad fighter engage.
"Stop that thing now, all ships launch cruise disruptors." They do, and the extremely agile nomad fighter evades every last one of them and dissapears into a flash. "All BAF ships, pursuit course. Attention all BAF and BPA forces in the area, be on the lookout for a nomad light fighter, it is armed and extemely dangerous. CRI, you remain here, you're gonna have some questions to answer. All pilots, engage cruise and pursue hostile."
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ON MY WAY OUT OF RETIREMENT
After stumbling across the Omega-5 jump hole and going through it Specimen 092 finds itself in a strange place that it is not familiar with.
"Where.... are we?"
"Attention all Corsair pilots, unidentified bogey in sector C-5. Readings suggest nomad threat, but it speaks. Approach and examine immediately. This is Cadiz out."
"Corsair? What is.... Corsair? Are you our friend? Or are you..... our enemy?"
Three Corsair Centurions bear down on the lone nomad fighter. "Attention Cadiz, confirmed, it is a nomad, dispatching threat immediately. All fighters engage and destroy the target."
"CORSAIR IS ENEMY! Enemy must die!"
"Kill it now!"
"Its a slippery little worm, I cant hit anything. Taking heavy fire........ My cockpit is cracking! I don't wanna diiiiiiiiiieeeeeee!" The Corsair fighters are destroyed one by one.
"Cadiz, two fighters destroyed, I am attempting to flee.... please send reinforcements..... Life support systems failing....." The distinct crackle of a lost transmission then eminates from the global comm system.
"We are..... alone..... still. None are our..... friend...... Must find our friends." The nomad fighter then engages its cruise and heads out into unfamiliar space in search of what it calls friends.
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ON MY WAY OUT OF RETIREMENT
Specimen 092 feels, yes I said feels, very alone and confused now. His futile search for "friends" has taken him through several systems. It has made dozens of new enemies, but no friends. The closest he has gotten was the Robot Planet of Gammu in Omicron Kappa. True they were not friends, but he hears nor felt anything negative from them. As a matter of fact he felt nothing at all from them, Specimen 092 wondered why. Either way it was the closest thing to friends it had yet to experience.
Well, there was that other thing it had been sensing lately. Some sort of presence within its mind. This Nomad was hypothetically stripped of all of its telepathic abilities. However, the artificial implants that subdued those abilities were not as powerful as CRI had imagined. It could not quite place it's mind on what that presence was but it did seem somewhat familiar. As if it had somehow felt it before.............
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ON MY WAY OUT OF RETIREMENT
Vision dragged further into the unknown, into the shiny tunnel, pulled away from the reality.
Passing around the stars, the planets, into the nebulae and asteroid fields, through the atmospherics of the unknown worlds, raging storms and volcanic eruptions to the nights where calm warm wind carried little leaf through its domain, diving deep into the crust beckoned by the dazzling brightness and the warmth of the cores, and then back into the cold vast void, empty space...
A home?
Yet changed...
Suddely it blurred away as if something was blocking the vision. The little lost one awoke.
As Specimen 092 awoke from it's vision, a feeling of familiarity resonated through its core. It tried to return, to turn off all the implanted controls and blocks that CRI had placed inside of it. Alas it could not, that warmth, that feeling of home slowly dwindled and all together disappeared. "We are.... alone.... still."
Still the questions within Specimen 092's mind swell. What was it? Where did it come from? And most importantly why do the only other beings that resemble it attack him. Not even knowing what family was, it didn't know that it was missing one. But indeed it was missing just that, a family. Little did Specimen 092 know, this is what it was looking for, what it called and thought were mere "friends".
Not being able to reestablish its previous vision, Specimen 092 decided to continue it's physical search for it's friends. Hopefully these visions would find it once again.
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ON MY WAY OUT OF RETIREMENT
*We have possesed the human known as Jacob McCundrys, our host is a master of the pathetic military of what the humans call Bretonia. Soon we will regain the home of our masters for their return.* The nomad discontinues it's link with the Nomad collective.
"Admiral McCundrys, you need to go ahead and back up against that wall." A military officer aims a blaster at the admiral. He is accompanied by a dozen other soldiers, one high level government official and several CRI scientists carrying several pieces of unknown equipment. "Sir, please back up against the wall and place your hands above your head."
"Colonel, may I?" One of the CRI scientists comes forward and is waved forward by the soldier. "We know who, what you are, we are going to remove you from your host, we will kill Admiral McCundrys if we have to, and you if it comes to it... Release him... RELEASE HIM!"
Almost instantly the Nomad infested Admiral snaps his hand forward and grasps the throat of the scientist and raises him into the air. He begins to speak a strange and very foreign language. "SHOOT HIM" the government official calls out, "SHOOOOT HIM!"
Several of the soldiers come forward and begin to repeatedly shock the Admiral with their prods. After several moments the Admiral looks up and a blue glow begins to eminate from his mouth. Suddenly the blue creature violently protrudes from the Admirals mouth and begins to hover above. The Admiral's body falls lifeless to the floor and the CRI scientists madly scramble for their equipment. The Nomad lets out an ear piercing squeel just as it is sucked into some sort of electronic cage devise.
There it is, floating through space, oblivious to its surroundings, just awakening from some sort of dream. No, it was too familiar to be a dream. "Was that... is that us.... are we.... are we Nomad?" Specimen092 begins to remeber everything. Being taken back to CRI, having its memory erased, all those chips implanted, stripped of its connection to its kind, stripped of everything it was. "We are Nomad... we must... we must find Nomad... we are Nomad." After this realization came another. "No.... no human are our friend... no human will ever.... ever be our friend, we must find.... find Nomad."
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ON MY WAY OUT OF RETIREMENT