[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Chapter Three is kinda small, so I'm going to couple it in one post with Chapter Four.



-----CHAPTER THREE: NANOSCOPIC-----

The image began to rotate. It was nothing like the nanos she knew. A brownish-green organic skin had taken the place of the blockish grey metallic surface of the “head”. The skin was semi-translucent, revealing a complicated mesh of artificial and biological parts, kept together by what seemed like tiny rods of pure energy. Neuron-like tendrils sprouted from the rear, not the twelve manipulators of the original, but an intricate fabric of interlaced tendrils, stretching out a total of one centimeter – which was enormous, regarding the microscopic size of the rest of the nano – with numerous sliver-thin secondary tendrils sprouting from the tail at numerous locations. At the center of the rear of the nano, in the middle of the hollow tail, was a deep pit, similar in appearance to the visualization of a black hole’s gravity well. It continued to deep within the nano, with side conduits which weaved through the artificial and biological machinery emerging at its edges. Just under the outer skin at many points, coils of biological material could be seen. After the Chairman activated a subroutine in the simulation, these coild began to unfurl. New tendrils appeared all over the nano’s skin, growing in length and shrinking in width until they were over twice the length of the nano’s body, and so thin they were barely visible.

“Biological machinery. Microscopic organs. Shafts of pure immaterial energy. Now you know why that science officer wet himself. This is the greatest discovery mankind has ever made since the wheel. This opens up possibilities we couldn’t even dream of dreaming about before. And it’s all locked within you.”
“M-me?”
“We’ve analysed as much of the biological parts of the nanos as we could. We were able to run a DNA test.”
“What was–” Tamarillho’s mouth fell open and she stared at the Chairman goggle-eyed.
“The DNA is yours.”

-----END OF CHAPTER THREE-----



-----CHAPTER FOUR: WHEN THE SH*T HAS HIT THE FAN.....-----

“But– but how?”
“That’s what we hope to find out, if you’re willing to cooperate.”
“Sure, sure, take as many nanos as you want–”
“That won’t do.”
“No?”
“The nanos are directly linked to your nerve system. To find out their deepest secrets we need you in person. In fact, we can’t even perform any further research than we’ve already done without you.”
“Linked to my nerves?”
“Linked to your nerves.”

Ever since she was picked up by the Faint Hazard, Tamarillho had had a strange sensation, like there was something inside her, something subliminal, something hidden. At first, she didn’t think about it – after all, she had been brought back from the dead, perhaps it simply was something you didn’t notice until you had been dead for a while – but now she realized what it was. She didn’t know how, but she knew that she was sensing the nanos. She focused on the feeling, isolated it, made it grow.

She felt a slight tingle throughout her entire body. She had activated the nanos. But there was something strange about it she couldn’t quite place..... Then, she realized she was the nanos. Her consciousness was spread out over the nanos throughout her body. She could feel through them, see through them, hear through them. Her brain had stopped working, yet she remained conscious and alive. The nanos themselves had taken over the tasks for which her brain had had to send electrical impulses through her nerves. The nanos kept her heart beating, they kep her lungs breathing, they had even taken on the task of filtering waste material from her blood in her kidneys.

She controlled the nanos, and the nanos controlled her. She knew that it was a symbiotic relationship; even though her very consciousness had moved from her brain to the unimaginable amound of nanoscopic devices throughout her body, the nanos were still dependent upon her nerves for communication, and to keep her nerves from dying, they had to keep her body functioning. Tamarillho controlled herself from within, from a third-person perspective.

She realized she could do almost anything with the nanos. The tendrils that could sprout from the nanos’ heads could be used to manipulate matter, down to the very atomic particles. She could use the ethereal energy stored within the nanos to compress matter to the extreme, she could store tons of matter throughout her body.

It was a strange realization to hear someone speak to her. She heard it as though relayed through a remote communications device.

“Captain, we need you for the research. You open up a whole new range of possibilities.”
It took a microsecond for her to have a large number of nanos aligned along her lungs and windpipe so she could speak.
“What do you want to do?”
“Whatever it takes to reach the maximum potential of the nanos, and for us to be able to re-create them.”
“What will happen to me?”
“There is a high probability that you will not survive, but what we could learn from you while you’re still alive is invaluable. It could save–”
“No.”
The Chairman’s voice turned cold.
“Captain, you are to report to the Research Complex tomorrow at 13:00 hours.”
She fixed the Chairman in her gaze.
“Forget it.”
“Captain, you WILL report to the Research Complex at 13:00 tomorrow! It is your own choice whether or not you will be free to do whatever you want in that time or not!”
“Are you threatening me?”
The way she said that sent shivers down the Chairman’s spine, regardless of the fact that he’d faced death numerous times. His voice faltered slightly.
“I will have you imprisoned if you don’t cooperate!”
“Just – you – try.....”

Tamarillho placed her hand on the wall of the chamber. Thin black lines started to sliver over the wall, then the nanos started sucking in and compressing matter faster than anyone could ever have imagined. A large crater, three meters wide and one meter deep, remained when Tamarillho drew her hand back from the wall. She had taken in and stored a large amount of matter with dense nuclei consisting of large amounts of protons and neutrons. She could turn it into anything she wanted to by rearranging the subatomic particles.

“Cap – captain..... you..... what..... APPREHEND HER!!!”

Tamarillho sprinted to the door, only to find her passage blocked by two large security guards, looking like they’d skipped a few million years of human evolution. She altered a small amount of the matter she stored within her and produced two heavy pulse pistols. Upon seeing this amounf of firepower in the hands of this woman, the two guards backed away, keeping their eyes fixed on the barrels of the two weapons. With otherworldly speed, Tamarillho turned and ran for the nearest spaceship hangar, the guards chasing her.

One of the guards fired a pulse laser shot aimed directly at Tamarillho’s back, but she ducked and rolled forward, the pulse passing over her and hitting a third security guard emerging from a side corridor head-on. Guards started pouring out of corridors, rooms, even the broom closets it seemed. Without hesitation, Tamarillho leveled out her pulse pistols and started picking off heavily-armed men in reactive armor with uncanny accuracy. Almost all guards retreated to where they had come from. Tamarillho made use of this opportunity to create a few Firebolt-model heavy grenades and dropped them behind her, eliminating her pursuers.

Then, guards started coming out again. This time, they were armed with pulse bazookas, machine lasers, heavy sniper pulse guns and shockwave emitters. All of them wore heavy battle armor.

Making good use of the neutronium, Tamarillho created a super-flexible nuke-proof suit that covered her entire body and which moved like a second skin. She felt the impacts of pulses, flurries of lasers, narrow-band AP pulses and the broad impact fronts of shockwaves. Whenever a single atom was shredded apart, it was immediately replaced with another.

She ran onwards, seeing the hangar doors and her escape coming closer and closer. When she was within twenty meters of the door, a guard stepped in front of it, bloking her path. Without hesitation, Tamarillho lunged forward, crushing the guard against the door, ripping the solid pentronium plate which was the door out of its niche, taking a fair piece of wall with it. She rolled to a stop and stood up.

Around her, spaceships of various shapes and sized were parked. They were all official ships, slow, hard to maneuver, lightly armored and unarmed. Then, at the far end of the hangar, she saw a glimmer of hope. She saw what seemed to be the nose of a fighter, albeit more sleek than any fighter she’d ever seen, which was normal regarding her not having caught up with ten years of ship and fighter design yet.

A large pulse wizzed overhead, and she heard heavy weaponry being moved about behind her. She sprinted as fast as she could (and regarding the fact that she had created exoskeleton-like augmenters around her legs with high-powered servos, that was pretty fast – faster than the average scout hoverbike) and noticed that her assumption was correct, which relieved her greatly.

In front of her was a sleek, fast-looking fighter with what seemed to be hidden weapons behind small bulkheads, mounted in recesses in the hull to improve the fighter’s aerodynamic qualities. She got in and acquainted herself with the look of the cockpit. She heard people yelling outside.

“Go! Move move move! Get her!”
“She’s hijacked that prototype!”
“She’s in the X-3!”
“Then blast the ruddy fighter!”
“CC’s gonna have my head if I–”
Tamarillho closed the cockpit. She had taken some good looks around the cockpit and knew which button to press to fire up the engines and fly out of the hangar at seemingly impossible speeds, leaving several squads of security guards looking incredulously up at the tiny speck, shrinking into the blue of the sky.

-----END OF CHAPTER FOUR-----