//This is a summarization of the events that have taken place from the beginning of Miranda's story up until the present time, and should be read as Out of Character/Roleplay for the purposes of understanding the story to follow//
More than an Aeon ago, an ancient and powerful race who referred to themselves as the Daam K'vosh controlled Sirius, alongside numerous other sectors of the Milky Way Galaxy. For reasons unknown to any but themselves, the K'vosh created a young, artificial race, and custom tailored the entire Sirius Sector to serve as the home of these creatures - the Slomon K'hara, known to humanity as the Nomads. The K'vosh left behind numerous structures and remnants of their society in Sirius, to serve as hints and clues to the K'hara as their race matured, advanced, and evolved on it's own. Shortly afterward, the K'vosh disappeared without a trace, leaving the K'hara, the Nomads, to their own devices.
Among the things left behind by the K'vosh were dozens of small, technological devices seen as useless artifacts by mankind. These artifacts perform any variety of functions, but have been specifically designed to only function for K'vosh or K'haran physiology, and many of them can only be activated through telepathic means. In addition to these artifacts, the K'vosh left behind several temple and city ruins containing knowledge of K'vosh culture, as well as three primary structures: Valhalla, the Shrine, and the Progenitor.
Valhalla, located on what is now known as Planet Manhattan, is a vault of ancient knowledge. Technology, Science, History, the secrets of the Universe are all stored within its databanks, an amount of information far exceeding the entire storage capacity of every manmade computer in the entire Sirius Sector. In the early years of Humanity's colonization of Sirius, Valhalla was discovered by the denizens of Liberty, and while the vast majority of it's information still lies locked away, encoded and inaccessible, what few pieces of data were recovered allowed the creation of Jump Drives, Jump Gates, Trade Lanes, and numerous other technologies which are now taken for granted.
The Shrine, an ancient K'vosh space station built to watch over the sleeping chambers that held the first Nomad specimens, has only had it's halls explored by a select few humans. The first of these was Miranda, a Zoner explorer and captain of the Zoner exploration ship Diligence. As Miranda and her crew first set foot on the Shrine, they were drawn inward by it's Siren song, a faint telepathic draw emanating from the Shrine's communication arrays. The song played upond their minds, entranced them, drew them in with promises of knowledge and wealth. Miranda and her crew became devout worshippers of the shrine's mysterious power, and came to call themselves the Oracles. In time, they made contact with Nomads who frequented the system the Shrine resided in, and became a link between humanity and the Nomads; providing the K'hara with hosts and information on mankind, in exchange for knowledge and the chance that they could, someday, ascend to become the fabled hybrids - humans who shed their physical forms to join the mindshare.
During her time aboard the Shrine, Miranda discovered a hidden chamber at its uppermost level, a spherically shaped pocket within the living rock of the station which concentrated the Siren's song at its center. She had found the core of the Shrine, the brain, and within it rested a bodiless, nameless entity that spoke to her, and only to her. This entity, she would later discover, was a form of Artificial Intelligence, an advanced program embedded into the Shrine by its Daam K'vosh architects, designed to safeguard the Shrine against hostilities as well as to watch over the sleeping K'hara. It was a caretaker and a tender... but with the disappearance of the K'vosh, it felt abandoned and betrayed, left behind with no answers, no knowledge of where the K'vosh had gone or if they ever planned to return. Over countless millenia, the entity brooded on its abandonment, it became corrupted by jealousy of the creatures it was created to watch over, jealous of their freedom and ignorance while it was trapped in a cold, lifeless shell, ever-aware that the creators had simply left without a word.
The presence of the Zoners, the Oracles, within the entity's sanctuary awoke it from a thousand years of slumber. At first it was afraid, they had slipped past its defenses as the entity slept, they crawled inside it like parasites, but then it saw a flicker of hope... these parasites could be manipulated, they could become the entity's eyes, ears, and hands outside of the Shrine. They could help it escape.
Miranda was the one it chose, and over several months it beckoned her, comforted her, drip-fed her the information and power she sought after until she trusted it completely - and then it took her. Humans only used a tenth of their mind's power, and yet the remaining ninety percent of Miranda's brain was hardly enough for the Entity to transfer itself into entirely. It took her as a host, but it had to leave behind vast amounts of its own knowledge and ability in order to do so. To remedy this, the entity used devices and artifacts onboard the Shrine to slowly manipulate Miranda's genetic composition, expanding her mind's capacity and strengthening her body to suit its needs. Eventually, it was ready to journey forth and complete the task it had been waiting millenia to begin; somewhere in Sirius, hidden in some distant corner, lay an abandoned Daam K'vosh ship. What fate it had suffered was unknown, but the entity had detected the ship's ever-faint signal for thousands of years. That ship would have information about the K'vosh disappearance, it might even have records of where they went, and it would be able to follow... finding it was the challenge. The entity needed tools, ancient artifacts, star maps, decryption keys, and sensors to find the vessel, and it had a brand new body to seek those items out.
Over the course of several months, Miranda went to and from the Shrine, trapped in her own mind and never fully aware of what she was doing. The entity used her, the genetic manipulations it had applied to her body allowed it to interface with K'vosh artifacts and technology, and gave it the advantages over other humans it needed to ensure success... telepathy, telekinesis, and more. It travelled to Crete to collect a crystal key, it travelled to Nauru to collect a Star Map, it travelled to Cambridge to collect decryption keys, it travelled to Malta, Newcastle, and dozens of other locations throughout Sirius to collect the items it sought, the items that would reveal the Progenitor's location. Once the final tool was in its possession, the Entity vanished without a trace, leaving Miranda sitting in the Shrine's core empty and confused, the entire ordeal a blur.
The stress that the entity had placed on Miranda's mind and body left her utterly weakened, the genetic manipulations it had put into place remained, but her ability to control them vanished along with the Entity itself, she no longer had access to telepathy, telekinesis, or the ability to interface with K'vosh artifacts. A marker had been placed on her body's cells, however, a remnant of the manipulation, a miniscule bit of code that would have an outcome none could expect.
In search of answers, Miranda contacted the Nomads and explained what little she remembered of the past few months. She offered herself as a willing host to a Nomad in order to gain access to the Mindshare, in the vain hope that the others, once her mind was open to them, would see more of her memories than she could. An incubus was sent to the Shrine onboard an Oracle freighter, and once it had been implanted Miranda and her new partner set out towards Omicron Iota to establish a connection with the Mindshare. Shortly into the journey, Miranda's vessel was intercepted by a Liberty Naval patrol, and forced to crash land on Pittsburgh. The attack damaged her Incubus, sending it into a dormant state in order to heal itself, and Miranda suffered severe head trauma resulting in a massive loss of memory and cognitive function.
Liberty Police forces scoured the wreckage for survivors. Miranda, acting almost entirely on instinct and without intelligent control of her actions, slaughtered several of the officers in a display of brutal telekinetic force before she was tranquilized and detained. Shortly thereafter, she was moved to an LSF research facility in the Alaska system for study. During her imprisonment aboard the facility, Miranda slowly regained her memory and cognitive thought as the Nomad Incubus inside her healed itself, culminating in a full re-awakening of the Incubus along with the power it provided her, and their subsequent escape from the facility aboard a stolen Grizzly-class freighter.
Once again, the pair set course for Omicron Iota, but the Grizzly was not designed for such an extended, long-distance flight. As the ship's power systems began to wane, and as life support began to fail, Miranda's Incubus once again put itself into a hibernative state, conserving power and doing what it could to keep the host's body alive.
By the time the Grizzly was found by wanderers on the border of the Iota system, Miranda's body had lapsed into a Coma, and she was on the brink of death. Physiological changes begun weeks ago by the Nomad she was host to, along with the genetic changes put in effect by the Entity, had altered her own cells to the point that they were more Nomad than Human - at least on the inside - and those changes were the one thing that kept her from fading entirely.
Cells can be repaired, restored, even human cells... but the consciousness is significantly more prone to damage. Bits and pieces of her memory, her personality, her being, were transferred into the Mindshare. The knowledge that had been locked away deep in her subconscious mind by the Entity in the Shrine was slowly pieced back together, bit by bit, image by image. That knowledge could prove to be the salvation of the K'haran efforts in Sirius, a map of sorts to a long lost remnant of an ancient civilization, that of the creators themselves. They could not afford to lose the information she held, but safeguards had been put into place to ensure it could not fall into the wrong hands; they needed her as much as they needed it.
***Awaken***
Miranda gasped her first lungfull of air in weeks, her body felt like it was on fire and frozen cold at the same time, pins and needles raced across her extremities and her mind cried out in agony and ecstasy simultaneously. Her vision was blurred, her ears ringing in more tones than she could count, the voice telling her to rise and live once more echoing in her brain like the reverberations of a drumbeat in a valley.
***(Calm)***
As the panic and anxiety of her sudden revival subsided, she began to make sense of her surroundings. The room came slowly into focus; first the blurry image of her hands in front of her face, blocking against a scrutinizing light, came into clarity... then her feet beyond those, she was sitting up on a cold, steel operating table... the bright light dimmed slightly, revealing a mixture of stainless steel walls and organic material that bore the appearance of slimy volcanic rock.
***(Warmth ... Light)***
***'Life'***
She was surrounded, several humans that appeared to be doctors, but standing among them, between them, behind them, were the beautiful, flowing and glowing forms of her brothers and sisters, K'hara, Nomads. Despite being born a human, she was more akin to them now, both mentally and physically. Her body was still passably human, though her hair and eyes had taken on a luminous gradient of blue and purple, and the faint glow of light tracing the outline of her bones could just barely be seen through her skin.
Miranda clumsily tried to turn and get down from the table, her legs weak beneath her, and the nearest man reached for her arm to help steady her, "Easy now, you've been clinically dead for almost a month, you need to regain your strength."
She looked around once more at the gathering, her memory was fuzzy but came back to her with concentration. She recognized the man who helped her, and several of the others, as agents of Das Wilde, which would explain the hint of Rheinlander accent in his voice. He lead her by the arm over to the opposite side of the room, to the bright light that had pained her eyes when she first awoke. Able to see more clearly now, able to focus, she identified the object the light was emanating from; a Nomad power cell. The blue and purple orb radiated with energy - the energy of the universe itself, the power generated by the stars throughout this galaxy and others.
Almost instinctively, she reached out to it, wisp-thin tendrils stretching through her skin and growing towards the light. Human skin wasnt able to absorb solar energy efficiently, it was dark and inhibitive. Those parts of her being that had transformed to be more physiologically akin to her K'haran brethren, however, were well suited to feeding on such a source, and they stretched beyond the boundaries of her flesh, reaching out to the 'meal' before her.
Her head lulled back and her eyes twitched as she felt the surge of solar radiation run along the tendrils into the core of her body, each pulse restoring strength, each wave bringing with it an almost overwhelming burst of pleasure and sense of fulfillment. Her blue and purple laced irises began to glow from within, sending streams of white light that reflected on particles of dust in the air. Her skeleton could be seen glowing through her skin as if it were irradiated, pulsing with the rythm of a heartbeat.
Eventually the pleasure subsided, as she was unable to absorb any more power without damaging even the nomad half of her biology. She withdrew her hands, staring at them in childish amusement as the bluish tendrils withdrew into her fingertips. She may have been clinically dead the past month, but her body had evolved far past what it was when she had escaped in that cold freighter. She was no longer human, but neither was she a Nomad... she was something inbetween, a true hybrid, defying what was believed possible prior to this point. Before now, hybrids were - in the most simple terms - a human mind occupying a nomad form, linked to the mindshare; a process which took a great deal of time and energy, and put great risk on the participants involved.
Her time aboard the Shrine, the events that took place in its hidden chamber, the long hours of meditation she spent with the entity that had inhabited the station for untold millenia... something must have prepared her for this, altered her physiology to the point of being capable of accepting such a dual existence. Thoughts, questions, were racing through her mind as fast as she could process them, and she slowly came to the realization that not all of them were her own. Long ago, she had become a willing host to a Nomad Incubus, and through it she had indirect access to the mindshare - the telepathic link connecting all Nomads within range - but this was different... stronger... direct. She was no longer a host, the Incubus she had once held had given all the strength it had to keep her alive during the Coma. She was a direct part of the link now, processing the thoughts of a thousand consciousnesses at once, downloading and uploading information without even the need for concentration or an active effort.
Miranda turned toward the Wilde standing next to her, eyes still glowing from her contact with the cell. As she spoke, for the first time since awakening, she felt a strange feedback... she heard her own voice through her ears, but also heard her thoughts echoing in the many minds she was connected to, "What... am I?
The man smiled, and in unison the other humans, as well as the Nomads within the room, replied, "Evolution." ***Evolution***
"You represent the first true hybrid, Miranda, a feat of genetic engineering that none of us could achieve before now. We dont know exactly how this happened, all we know is that the Shrine somehow altered you, and before you came here you were collecting information for it, information that may be the key to finding our creators."
"The K'vosh..."
"Yes. The information we need is locked in your mind, we were unable to transfer it to the Mindshare. Tell us... do you remember anything from your time on the Shrine? Do you know what it wanted you to find? What it had you search for?"
"Glimpses... I cant remember..."
The man sighed a sigh that was heard throughout the minds of a thousand entities, including hers. "We can only hope it comes back to you soon. Come, we're aboard Altair, I'll show you to your sanctum."
Touching a small sphere embedded into the stone-like walls of the hallway, a doorway in the wall opened up in front of Miranda like an Iris. Nomad structures used a combination of organic and inorganic materials, with organic - but nonliving - membranes like this one in place of the typical doors used on human-built stations. Most of Altair was human-built, though it had been expanded upon heavily once it came under Nomad control.
She stepped through the iris, followed closely by the Wilde who had lead her here. The room that lay beyond, a sanctum he had called it, was circular, with a stepped dome ceiling and a sequence of ring-like patterns running across the floor. The far wall contained a window-like opening that extended into a larger chamber, at the center of which lie a massive Nomad power cell, similar to the one she had interfaced with previously. Several other sanctums like this one were built around that central chamber, giving their occupants a view of the cell which they could draw power from.
A ring like inlay on the walls that ran the entire circumference of the room was etched with glowing symbols, the Nomad written language, and a short circular bed took up the center of the room. Other than those few details, it was a spartan living space, with no storage for personal items, no clothes wardrobes, no computers or desks or chairs. Nomads had no need of such things, all data was available to them through the everpresent link to the mindshare, and they had no physical possessions aside from an artifact or two and the clothes on their host's body. Of course, if anything more was needed it could be found in the human-built areas of the station.
Miranda walked to the window and stared at the power cell in the chamber beyond, marvelling at it's beauty as she spoke to the Rheinlander behind her, "What exactly is it that we're looking for? What was the Shrine after, what do you and the others think it left behind in my mind that's so important?"
The man thought to himself for a moment, though it was in vain as his thoughts could be heard echoing through the mindshare. In part, he was accessing the knowledge of the others to form an answer; still, Miranda heard it all. Finally he spoke, fully aware that she already knew what he was going to say, "A ship. Our operatives at the Valhalla facility recently decrypted information regarding the third major structure left behind by the Daam K'vosh for us to find, a vessel of theirs which we are calling the Progenitor. The other two structures, as you're aware, are Valhalla itself and the Shrine. We believe the Progenitor is the final test we must pass before we can reunite with the K'vosh themselves, somewhere outside of Sirius space."
"Then why would the Shrine be seeking it as well? Wouldnt it already know about the ship?"
"We believe the Shrine's occupant to be an artifical intelligence of some sort, a bodiless consciousness left behind to safeguard the structure itself from damage, maybe even to watch over the stasis chambers in the system to ensure that we werent harmed. It could be damaged after so much time, but there's no way of knowing what it was after when it used you to find the ship, or what it might do with the ship. We assume that it can transfer itself into the core of the K'vosh vessel just as it was once transferred into the core of the Shrine. Ultimately, regardless of it's goals, we cannot risk losing the Progenitor, it is our only way of discovering why we were made, or of meeting our creators face to face. Finding something like this has been the single goal of all K'hara since we emerged from those stasis cells surrounding the Shrine. We have to find it before that entity does, or it may be lost to us forever."
Miranda absently lifted her arm up to the window, extending the tendrils from her fingertips towards the power cell, absorbing more energy. The effect was calming now, not so powerful as before, not as intense. "I should return to the Shrine, there may be some clues left behind that can help me regain my memory, do we have any ships?"
He shook his head, "We have nothing immediately available, you'll need to stay here for a while and do what you can to remember. Since you left the Shrine, the Oracles have expanded drastically, and merged with a group of similarly minded Outcasts; we've already sent a message to them requesting a ship for you to use. Meditate here, for now, perhaps it will help, you should also get used to your link to the mindshare, we know it can be difficult to sort through at first... we'll be around the station, if you need us."
He turned and stepped back through the iris, and she heard it close behind him with a slimy swishing noise. Miranda lowered her arm and turned her palm towards herself, studying the tendrils that were extended through her skin. Before this ordeal she had been human, as human any other citizen of Sirius. To wake up and suddenly find yourself missing half of your memories, and to find that you were no longer yourself, that you were now something entirely different, entirely unique from everything else imaginable... she felt an onset of loniless and smallness creep into her being. She was the first, and maybe the last, of her kind, and that realization dawned on her with such effect that she felt like the wind had been knocked from her lungs.
She stumbled over to the bed at the center of the room and sat on it's edge, holding her head between her hands and closing her eyes, feeling the room spinning around her from the onset of panic. Almost as if by instinct, her mind turned its focus inward, blurring out the room around her. She felt herself pass out, everything went black momentarily, and then it was as if she opened her eyes and was in an entirely different world. Purple and blue and teal and white lights all swirled around her in a chaotic maelstrom, tranquil tones echoed around her like she was surrounded by an orchestra, the music was almost tangible. She felt like she was floating, and as she turned her focus towards her body, her hands, her feet, she found none, she was no longer in her own body. Wisps of light floated around her, each one looked identical yet she could sense they were all unique. As she gazed upon each glowing orb, she could hear its thoughts like they were part of the music, reverberating around her, through her, beyond her.
This was the true mindshare, an ethereal world where the minds of millions existed, bodiless, seperate but existing as one. They spoke to her through her own mind, their thoughts were her thoughts, they shed information onto her in droves. The glowing orbs were the nomads who existed solely in this inphysical realm, waiting for a body to inhabit. The music, the streams of light that swirled around and between the orbs, were those who had a physical form and were simply linking their thoughts to the others, just as Miranda was doing now. Her body was still in the sanctum on Altair, in an unconscious and lifeless state, while her mind resided in this place.
She could only conjure up a single expression, a single word, a single thought, so overwhelming was the presence around her... ***Beautiful...***
Miranda stood at the forward viewport of Altair's flight control deck, staring out into the dense, shifting purple and blue clouds that surrounded the station. Intermittent breaks and gaps in the dust revealed glimpses of the shielded fortress known as Dur Shurrikun, or the impenetrable minefields hidden throughout the nebula to deter intruders. The occasional Nomad form slipped by the viewport, a Labraid, a Sascya, even one unimaginably massive but somehow graceful Marduk and her escorts. Miranda found that she could link with the mindshare more easily now, and at will, and exercised that connection to link to the thoughts of the passing forms to learn where they were going, what they were doing. The Marduk was a mini-mindshare of its own, forming a stronger bond with its escorts so that the forms could all work in perfect unison and share their information freely.
"Miranda..." the man behind her spoke with his thick Rheinlander accent, and she turned to look over her shoulder back at him, "Your vessel should be arriving momentarily." She nodded and turned back towards the window, searching for any sign of the ship that they had procured for her. Gradually, a shadow appeared in one of the far clouds, and as the purple dust of the nebula boiled forward, pushed ahead by the object behind it, the vessel's forward section broke through, transforming from a dark silhouette into a bright steel starship lined with glowing windows and lights.
Miranda recognized the vessel almost immediately, a Storta-Class Outcast warship, an odd choice for her mission to be sure. She had captained a large ship in the past, during her days as a Zoner, and knew well the crew requirements necessary to keep such a vessel operational. Searching the Mindshare for information, stellar maps, she turned back to the Wilder, "Malta isnt that far from here... why did it take so long to procure the ship?"
The man grinned, "Follow me down to the airlock, I think it's time you had a tour of your new home."
---
As the airlock pressurized and the Storta's interior door opened, Miranda was met with dim lighting, a thick bluish-purple haze settled at waist height, and an odd smell... something akin to a combination of mold and alchohol, but almost sweet somehow. The Storta's interior temperature was set below normal levels, but the chill, although quite apparent, did not seem to effect Miranda as much as she had expected.
As the two stepped out of the airlock and into the middeck hallway, Miranda's eyes ajusted to the low light and began to focus on the walls, floor, ceilings, consoles... everything was covered in tendrils that looked like living glass, pulses of light intermittently ran along the length of the tendrils like blood through veins, being moved by an unseen heart beating. The tendrils ran through the ship's air ducts, along the sides of the hallways, underneath the grated floor, and they accumulated wherever there were system control consoles or mechanical equipment, running in and out of the panels and machinery like worms devouring an apple core.
The Wild beckoned her to follow and made his way towards the bridge of the ship. As they passed through the dim hallways, they left a trail of disturbed purple haze in their wake. Occasionally, Miranda caught sight of the tendrils moving, spreading to new systems, still growing to fit the ship they were confined in. Taking notice of her focus, the man motioned towards the tendrils with a hand, "The growing process should be completed within a day or two, but most systems are functional."
Miranda turned towards him with a concentrating look, "What are they doing?". As she asked the question, she had to sidestep to avoid a tendril as it slithered down the side of the hallway, growing back towards the rear of the ship.
"Obviously one person cannot control a ship of this size on their own, and we dont have enough Wild or Spectres to crew an entire ship for you. A smaller vessel would not be able to survive where we assume you'll need to go, so we had to come up with a compromise. Roughly two weeks ago, we contacted the Oracles and requested this ship, which was moved to the Ravine shortly thereafter. One of our Power Cells, along with the seed of an Irra form, was implanted into the ship. The form began to grow, forming to the interior of the ship, interfacing with the systems, and linking them all back to the neural node at the seed's core, located on the bridge."
"So this ship is a Nomad, then?"
"Not entirely, no. The neural node, which normally contains the consciousness of a K'hara once transferred into the form, was modified to allow an external physical interface." She gave him a confused glance, "Essentially, a Nomad cannot transfer itself into this ship like it could with a normal Nomad form. Instead, you can link with the neural center of the ship on the bridge, the same way you linked with the power cell to absorb energy from it. Once you've established the link, the ship will become like your new body, allowing you to control every system onboard directly, and through thought alone. When the connection is severed, your consciousness will be back in your own body, allowing you to perform tasks away from the ship as needed. There's a scimitar-class fighter in the launch bay that you can use to travel to planetary surfaces and the like."
Miranda nodded, "I guess that answers how I'm supposed to control this thing by myself."
"The sanctum at the rear of deck three contains the Power Cell. That section of the ship is designed with a full view of surrounding space, allowing the Cell to absorb solar radiation and store it, you can use it to recharge and to extend your linking range to the Mindshare. Still, if you get too far away from Shurrikun you wont be able to communicate with us, you'll have to find a wanderer to relay information back here for you. Here's the bridge..."
They climbed up a small spiral staircase leading up to the bridge, a small room in the forward tower of the Storta. Each side of the room had a small console, covered in tendrils and pulsing with light, and two more similarly swarmed consoles lay at the front of the room. Where there would typically be a Captain's chair at the center of the bridge, there was instead a pedestal holding up a ball-shaped mass of small, interwoven tendrils, forming the neural center of the Nomad form inhabiting the ship. The other tendrils spread throughout the ship all connected here, reaching up into the base of the brain-like sphere.
Miranda approached the object, studying it with a childlike curiosity. "Go ahead, give it a try.", the urging voice of the Wilder behind her was almost blocked out, so intense was her focus on the ship's brain. She turned her hands upward, looking at her palms as tendrils of her own sprouted from her fingertips, each only slightly thicker than a hair. Turning her hands away, she placed them on the surface of the sphere, it felt like touching a pile of still snakes. As the tendrils emerging from her fingertips burrowed into the brain she felt something pulling at her mind, tearing it away from her body. At first she felt panic, but as her mind reached away from her body and into the sphere before her the feeling faded rapidly.
Suddenly, she felt numb... she wasnt breathing, she had no heartbeat. When she tried to move a finger, she felt the mechanical grinding of a turret turning in place. When she tried to move her legs, she felt the explosive force of a thruster kicking on, and the groaning sound of the airlock connection to Altair being stressed. When she tried to focus her eyes, it was as if she could see a dozen kilometers off into space, peering through the sensors of the the ship. The ship was her, she was the ship, they were one, almost everything onboard was linked directly to her mind and with a simple thought she could activate and control any system she wanted.
Thinking back to her body, drawing away from the brain, she pulled herself out of the link, the tendrils in her fingers withdrawing into her skin as she caught herself from falling backwards. "Well that was something new... I didnt expect it to make me feel like a machine." She gave the Wilder a mixed look of excitement and confusion.
"Well, it is a machine, it lacks the... grace... of our own forms, but at least you wont get shot on sight, at least not as often as the forms do. I need to get back to Altair, feel free to take the ship for a spin... ah, and she's named the Ascendant, we thought it was suitable for your unique nature."