Callsign Arclight rubbed his sweaty hands together nervously. He could break a man's neck without blinking and usually carried himself in an unobtrusive but confident manor. But that was before Adder had stuck him in this bucket of bolts. Dropping his traditional work garb for a complete EVA suit, the helmet sitting beside him, Arclight tried not to think about the space outside. The suit helped. He wouldn't instantly die if a crack formed on his ship. He had reached the coordinates he had been given, assuming that his nav computer wasn't way out of whack by now (which wouldn't be surprising given the number of dangerous radiation pockets he'd been through). Well, he was here now. Might as well get started.
A few keystrokes later, the comm panel lit up, ready for work.
"This is Arclight, searching for Contact. Weapons powered down. Approach at will. I want to talk."
He set the message to repeat, broadcast all channels. Radiation would wipe it before it made it anywhere close to civilization. He was not expected, so he didn't know how long this would take. He was told that these systems were better guarded than they looked, but he hadn't seen anything. Omicron Lost... what a stupid name for a system. They could have at least given it a letter...
He kept thinking about anything other than the hard vac outside while he waited.
Something glimmered from the direction of planet Moros. Traces of movement, heat, emanations of a kind. Then an all consuming silence as a mass of blue fused with arcing energy came seemingly out of nowhere.
A low tone/vibration humed from it as it came to a halt.. an odd feeling since space has no way to transmit sound that seemed to come off the "being".
It hovered... Seemingly waiting or at the vary least keeping a close eye on the visitor.
A loud curse from the startled agent as he instinctively reached for the weapon controls. Then he calmed. Good thing the guns were off. Arclight had no doubt he was over matched, and the.. ship.. thing.. was right on top of him. He didn't even have a chance to maneuver if he wanted to.
Remembering his specialized training for this mission, he disabled the radio. No need for it now, if there ever was one. Trying to remain calm, he said, "It took a bit longer than we thought it would. But it's done." He brought up a work log on his screen.
He read it aloud to make sure it as 'transmitted', as it were.
"The scrubber's done. We have addictive non-lethal cardamine based on liquid samples. So far in tests it's worked as a very effective control mechanism." He figured that the entity outside was following the train of his memories., and saw the potential for their work. Otherwise he was probably dead.
The colors within the ship shifted and churned... There was an intense review of the stream of memories.. Odd focusing.. slowdowns.. particular analysis of certain details.
A pair of Diamond earrings.. Was that something this -one- experienced? ... This one has empathy, it soaked up memories of its kind.
Uncommon...
The being shared itself... its Symbol. Aruru. Mother symbolism. As a pale sign but the words just came into his mind. It wasn't like a whisper... more like a strange prose, poem from an alien mind.
As Alcors sight began to blur the vision of cardamine fields stretching as far as the eye can see spread out before him in the mind.
It was more of a sharing of... "this is what I have seen about that..." The vision seemed straightforward. As tall 12 foot tri-podal aliens stepped seamlessly through the fields. One turned to look at Alcor... its eyes an iridescent purple with three pupils. The purple grow in brightness until...
The setting flashed to several of these tall ones surrounding the..corpse? of some winged creature... an apparatus extracting an iridescent purple fluid that looked awfully familiar.
Flashing again... the same room but another type of alien smaller fuzzy marsupial like creature. being injected with the subsistence with great success. The tri-pod using some form of telekinetic to alter this creature, advancing its evolution by many thousands of generations... The focus moved to the tri-pod they seemed to be celebrating success.
A tri-pod turns and looks at Alcor... he saw its eyes... then.. on the reflection on its eyes.. A hint of a floating blue/purple form..... Vary Nomadish and the vision quickly ends.
The... Nomad was no longer there... But there was a Prison liner hailing him.
+This is Sanctuary, ORB. A.I. speaking... You have data this one presumes?+
What the frag had just? Had he been dreaming? No.. No, that was exactly what was expected. Even with all the forewarning he had had from others who had encountered nomads before, he had been brutally overpowered.
He checked the chrono... almost six hours had passed. The comm beeped again and he realized with a start he should probably answer it.
As the message came through. "This is Sanctuary, ORB. A.I. speaking... You have data this one presumes?", everything came together.
Holding down the 'speak' button on his console, he replied, "Sanctuary, this is Arclight. I don't think I do. I do have a proposal. Quid pro quo, if you follow. I have a sample here. I'm told it's only enough to treat a few cells, and should prove the effectiveness of the research. Now, we assume you want more, and I know we want more." He wiped his sweaty palms once more. "So here's the deal. You give us a mass sample. We industrialize the process. We'll return some to you, along with the process for synthesis. That part was quite reasonable and he couldn't see there being a problem with. Now for the tricky part.
"After that, let's face it, you guys don't have very good social skills when it comes to people. And we want to distribute. There's a fortune of credits in liquid cardi. And I think we have an idea of what you use it for. If you happen to change some of the code in a few samples, we wouldn't know about it, unless you want us to distribute it so somebody special. In which case we will."
"Arclight. This ones huristic parsing indicates 97.6% Chance you are affiliated with the Vagrant Raiders. Current diplomatic status is that.. if you have a use for it that is charitable in nature you are permitted to deliveries of formatted Liquid Cardamine. I also have several secret projects in the black files that the oracles and cult of sirius are working with them on but... aren't permitted to be chatty."
The liner came in closely... it looked ancient.. however it was still under upkeep as indicated by the many brand new hull panels put in, there were people.. honest to god people walking to and fro by the lights/portholes.
Yet.. a familiar.. mental hum came off the ship.. this A.I. was speaking telepathicly too... such a thing had odd consequences.
"Did you wish to come on board? We assure you nothing adverse will happen. Your wishes will be respected. Would be esier to speak about your "samples".
The request took Arclight by surprise. But, in for a penny in for a pound. Plus he was confident that the nomad from before could have pulverized him in less than a second if it had wanted to. " I'm ready to dock."
In his Arrow class interceptor, docking didn't take a lot of effort, and it was small enough to fit in just about anything.
Going on the assumption that they had standard Sirius docking procedures down, he pressed the button.
The prison liners bay opened after powerful uv / ozone purifiers flooded the environmental to sterilize it.
once inside, several scanners, and small machines crawl over the arrow. Being little more then a cockpit and metaplast hull shaped to cover the ships rediculusly powerful engine the arrow was seen as safe.
The bay doors shut and pressurization cycle began and completed. A door on the far side irised open with green go lights above it.
Cycling through the second Bio filter in the airlock itself was faster. The monitors blinked alive and a vary round lattice graphic of spheres within spheres flashed briefly before the final door opened to the inside of the ship...
Softly over the directional comm orb greeted the visitor.
"Welcome to Sanctuary, This vessel was to be used specifically for Maltese contact or Dons with the Slomon K'hara... but since the Cult has gained its own resources this old ship has had few visitors. The K'hara are disturbed by "new" ships and this vessel is the oldest and most familiar to them. This one was introduced to replace its former computing core due to infection. Though sadly I myself have been infected... We suppose its only a matter of time before I myself will cease to function. But.. such is the fate of guine pigs and volunteers of science."
"Just so we're clear, this is the human contact vessel because dealing with actual Nomads is difficult for people?" A slight headache from the mental contact before made this all too believable.
"Well I know a bit about the Cult, but nothing too specific. That's why I'm here, right? Rudess was gunned down on his way to a meeting with them, best as we can figure. We were left with all of our research, and no contact. Since you (understandably) keep quiet about who is connected to who, we eventually decided to send somebody here. Worth the risk."
Now on to business. Arclight reached into a pocket of is EVA suit, producing a single plastic capsule.
"Now here's a sample. We don't have much to give. There are seven polymer strands in there. Use them well for whatever tests or curiosities you may have."
"How ghastly, did not know Mr.Rudess was shot down... Your assessment is correct. This vessel was constructed by the Maltese but it was the cult who, as far as this one could tell, had no real assurances other then the visions of the founding teacher that it would be accepted in their territory.
It has been a campaign of baby steps since. I am probably the most severe step forward having been trusted to take over this.. "heirloom". We mostly ferry individuals to the various cells. bring cardamine grass from sources like Malta and other worlds implanted. This one does not lack for things to do."
The "lobby" area had many consoles, seats, and some discarded equipment though wide open to the rest of the ship. but oddly.. and strangely out of turn a vary small girl, couldn't have been more then six or seven pattered out on bare feet giving Alcor an odd smile, her eyes were bright indigo.
She collected the vial and placed it into an upright holder and carried it off deeper within the ship.
Seems the liner didn't have "cells" per say but halls and halls of private rooms, almost like a Common Era locomotive from the deck by deck maps posted on the walls of the lobby. No holographic s here just polished steel surfaces.
"This one is sure you at least understand that formatting the bonds and "programming" liquid cardamine is the point of it. Its a.. biologically formatted tincture. If left unprogrammed it alters dna in a certain fashion much like cardamine grass, but because the liquid form is so potent it will kill a mundane human.
Analyzing sample..
Oh dear.. You managed to do what we've been trying to accomplish for.. <blocked data please re format>
..pardon me.. this one hasn't hiccuped like that in some time.
Perhaps you know what this does? The format is contrary to how we were instructed by the slomon for patterning the substance... Yet this accomplishes almost a dizzying array of applications for sterility as well, also it seems this format is acceptable to mundain metabolisms.
Though this one would have to have enough to use on a macro organism and not this ones own simulations to be sure of this."
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