The Demise

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

It is indeed a sort of "rough draft" as of yet. Will edit it. I only made it this short since I had to shut down the computer when I was pretty much in the middle of the story.

Well, opinions so far? Is my style of writing terrible? Please, tell me.

I meant this to be longer, in the sense of "Is my style of writing terrible? Are my characters less interesting than a Redshirt?" etc. but I couldn't really think of anything then, and I had to go anyway.

I like the "young Capt. Janeway" comment, hadn't thought of her that way yet thank you for your advice really appreciate it.

Sorry Turin, but I just wanted to execute a little self-mocking procedure. And btw, there's nothing stopping you from telling yor story at the bar

[dogscoff]

Well, you've not really written enough for us to really comment on your characters, but you've done well with the few hundred words you've used.

I like your style, and I'm extremely glad to see more fanfic breaking away from actual games- so often game-led fanfic ends up as an endless series of dull reports on routine colony ship launches and tech advances, peppered with the odd Weberesque combat description.

Looking forward to more.

[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-----

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Pretty good.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Please, if anyone has criticism, post it!

Oh, and for all those people out there who love a fair dose of BLAM (Phil), well, you're about to get what you want.

Pity that Chapter Five was unrecoverable from my disk accident, it had fighter action in an asteroid belt (yes, I've watched Episode III. Does it show? ) between Tamarillho and..... You didn't really think I was gonna tell you, huh? Just gonna have to rewrite Chapter Five. Oh well.



-----CHAPTER TWO: THE SECRETS THAT REMAIN-----

Tamarillho remained in her quarters for the rest of the trip to Yheta, pondering about what Heggson had told her. Then, when they prepared to exit the warp point to the Yheta System, her self-imposed solitude was broken by a visit from the young Lieutenant.

“Captain?” Tamarillho still hadn’t gotten used to being called that, and so it took a second or two before she reacted.
“Yes?”
“We’re approaching the Yheta System. Could you come to the bridge please?”
“Why?”
“Could you imagine the face of Captain Degbar when he sees you on the bridge of his ship?”

Tamarillho grinned broadly and got up to follow Heggson to the bridge. She could imagine the look on the face of her old engineer from the Vulture.....

*****

“This is Captain Degbar to the NKCX Faint Haz..... Oh my god!”
“Hello Yuin.”

*****

After several hours, and after she took a shuttle planetside, Tamarillho still found her old engineer to stare at her goggle-eyed.

“But..... you’re..... you’re dead!”
“Well, thank you very much for being happy for me that I’m alive and well.”
“Oh, yes, of course..... Sorry.....”

She looked at him as he struggled to find words. After a minute or so of this, she silenced him with a look and asked for passage to Kythera.

“Of course! Well, you outrank me so I’d be insubordinate if I didn’t take you.....”

*****

Needless to say, Central Command was very surprised to see an officer deemed dead for ten years enter the CC building. The desk clerk at the entrance almost had Security apprehend her, until the DNA checks showed she was indeed Captain First Class Elsee Tamarillho, in person, in good health, and, most of all, not being a clone. She was admitted to the CC conference chamber – which was more than unique, since CC members are the only people allowed in the conference chamber, under penalty of lifetime imprisonment or death – where everybody stared at her in wonderment. How could this be?

The CC Chairman was the first to speak after several minutes of silence.
“Captain Tamarillho?”
“In person.”
“We thought you were dead?”
“I was. I don’t know how, but apparently I’ve been resurrected some way after ten years of being, well, dead.”
The Chairman looked ponderous for a moment.
“You don’t know what happened with the nanos in your suit?”
“No, why? I know there was something about them that made a young science officer wet his pants, but I don’t know what.”
“That young science officer was still in training, but is now on his way to being catapulted onto the Board of Science Directors.”
“Why?”
“He’s studying your nanos, and what he’s discovered is going to make everybody on the Board of Science Directors wet their pants.”
He motioned Tamarillho to step closer, as he waited for a simulation to load into the viewscreen.
“We need to update that viewscreen with nano-optical computer circuitry,” one CC member half mumbled.

An image appeared on the viewscreen. Before Tamarillho could recognize it, the viewscreen flickered and distorted coloured bands zipped across the screen. The Chairman cursed, opened a panel below the screen and gave the inside a good kick. The image resolved into a standard-issue vacc suit nano – the standard of ten years ago, that is. An elongated, blockish “head” from which twelve tiny three-jointed legs ending in claws

“Yep, really need to update.” another CC member agreed.
“Shut up. I told you we need to wait until the tech’s been refined.”
“It’s less prone to bugs than what we’re using now.”

The Chairman grumbled and pressed a few buttons. The image flashed off for an instant, then the nano began to “pulsate” as the scientists call it. The standard motions of an idle but activated nano.

“This is what the nanos in your suit looked like when you, well, died.” the Chairman resumed.
“It’s OK, I’ve gotten used to people talking to me about my death and what happened after my death.”
The image began to change. Slight changes in pulsations, small bulgings. The nano was mutating.
“This we do not know exactly, it’s a computer-generated simulation of the transition from the normal suit nanos to –”
He pressed a few buttons and the nano started to change more quickly. After a few seconds it slowed down again.
“this.”

Tamarillho was stunned.

-----END OF CHAPTER TWO-----