Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session XXVI

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The burning ship streaked through the sky at high speed before plowing into a snow covered forest. Coming to a stop in the moonlight, the still burning craft was quickly lighting the surrounding trees on fire too. A hatch on the side of the ship blew open and two young children that looked to be no more than eight years old flew out of the opening using flight systems similar to my own. The Soung Family insignia was emblazoned on their white cloaks that fluttered behind them as they floated above the forest floor.

(Girl #1) They’ll be able to find the crashed ship!

(Girl #2) We need to get as far away from the crash site as possible before the enemy has a chance to land. Keep flying low under the tree-line and avoid making tracks in the snow.

The first child pulled out a pouch and began sprinkling a glowing violet powder on the pair of them. Once that was done, the two children took off flying just above the snow covered forest floor as the skies lit up with intense search lights scanning the forest. Moments later an explosion washed over the forest that originated from the direction of the crashed spaceship.

(Girl #1) It sounds like they found the ship!

(Girl #2) We need to find some shelter before they start carpet bombing the place.

They continued to fly through the underbrush as the searchlights continued to scan the forest for signs of movement. A few times the search lights would wash over the two only for them to be surrounded by a violet glow until the searchlight continued on. The two of them flew on for about ten kilometers before coming to a stop at the edge of a perfectly circular clearing. Whenever the searchlights passed over the clearing, trees would be illuminated only to vanish again as they moved on.

(Girl #2) That’s a neat trick.

(Girl #1, as she pressed her hand against a shimmering wall of light) Looks like an illusion spell is blanketing the area. We can see through it since we’re mystically talented, but the ships above are only seeing more forest.

(Girl #2) Can we enter it? Do we enter it?

Behind them I could hear signs of massive walkers having landed on the surface to begin a search on the ground.

(Girl #1) Well, it would be safer to hide in here than anywhere else. I even think I see a house at the center of the clearing.

She stepped back, reached into a pouch on her belt again and pulled out a stone which she then pressed to the shimmering wall of light. A hole opened up in the wall that was large enough for the two children to enter. They flew through as the hole closed behind them. Snow began to fall in ever increasing quantities as the wind started howling. Despite this being a dream or a vision, I could still feel the cold chilling me to my bones and it was easy to see that whatever heating the equipment of the two children provided, it was struggling to keep up with the demand.

As they approached the house, it was clear that it was inhabited at least very recently given the lights in the windows and the smoke coming from a chimney. The main doorway was guarded by a pair of hauntingly eerie headless statues and the wood of the porch creaked loudly even in the blizzard winds. Repeated knocks at the door went unanswered though. Surprisingly the door was unlocked when tried and the door opened with a creaking of poorly oiled hinges. Inside was a living room with furniture that looked centuries old even if it appeared warm and inviting. A large fire crackled loudly in a central fireplace that was as warm as the blizzard outside was freezing.

(Girl #2) Hello? Is anyone here?

(Girl #1) We’re sorry to intrude, but we need somewhere to stay until our family can come rescue us. They’ll reward you handsomely for the trouble.

There was no response, but the pair of them caught sight of a kitchen through one of the many doorways. Whether it was hunger or just trying to look for the inhabitants for the house, they entered the kitchen to find a fully set table with a lavish feast large enough for twenty people ready to be eaten. The two resisted the temptation however.

(Girl #2) Where is everybody? This food looks ready to be eaten and yet no one is here eating it.

(Girl #1) Emergency elsewhere in the house then?

(Girl #2) We’d have heard them by now. Something isn’t right here.

With that the lights suddenly went out and everything suddenly looked like it had been abandoned for decades as floorboards looked rotted, paint flaked off the walls, and furniture was in various degrees of ruin. A loud stomping noise could be heard rapidly approaching the kitchen. With fear overpowering sense, the two children immediately crawled under the table and went as silent as possible hoping that the remnants of the tablecloth would hide them from whatever was approaching.

Moments later…. something burst into the kitchen. It was hard to see much from under the table, but whatever it was – while human shaped – looked like it was made of a boiling mass of glowing black ink that began to prowl around the kitchen in search of the two intruders it knew were nearby. So far it didn’t look like it was smart enough to look under the table, but how long that blessing would last wasn’t clear at all.

Most unnerving of all though was the incessant droning screeching noise it made as two red circles of light like a miniature pair of searchlights scanned across the room. Whatever that noise was, it touched upon something primal and instinctive in the heart to generate an intense terror.

Well, while we at least had gained control over the labs, that still left much of the castle still under the control of the weaponized Untremi. We had proven that it was possible to make one of the weaponized Untremi join the same network that was the maintenance Untremi, but that was just one example and not one of the more blatantly weaponized Untremi at that.

(Vanatica) Can we think of a method of safely forcing the hostiles into the maintenance Untremi network on a large scale? That might be smarter than trying to fight these things room by room.

Not that I didn’t think fighting room by room wasn’t worth the time and effort. I did have concerns over the amount of destruction to valuable equipment and notes such fighting would cause. A swift and relatively clean victory would be less likely to destroy that which we were fighting to attain.

(Felix) I think to do that we’d need to find all the virus code sources and fix it. And that means venturing into the danger zone.

(Vanatica) Well, we have one of them in our “custody” now. Perhaps studying it will reveal some vulnerabilities that we can use to do this more reliably the next time around.

(Jacob) The corrupted ones use some fairly heavy encryption, but will fall back on the unencrypted standard if secure channels are cut off. That’s difficult, although enough water and metal will do it.

(Vanatica) Or perhaps if we manage to saturate the area with enough noise on the right frequencies.

(Felix) It might be possible. I am not an expert on ECM.

Jacob began comparing his scans of the maintenance Untremi to those from our captured weaponized Untremi.

(Jacob) Major vulnerabilities…. electrical or ion attacks, are thrown back on their own resources if jammed, can – in theory – be hacked and misdirected, but faking it coming in on the right channels would be tricky unless you’re using telepathy or magical messaging.

On the hardware side of things it looked like the encryption on the communications was going to be tricky to crack. They needed real-time communications, so it wasn’t like they were operating under galactic banking security standards or anything like that. But they used frequency shifting, long-key encryption, and new patterns and keys were passed on to mission groups via direct links. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to THELOS so he could brute force things nor did I have the magical skills needed to remotely upload commands directly into their “brains”.

(Vanatica) I am fairly certain that such tricks are beyond my abilities.

(Zin) I can perform divinations and healing effects. Divinations should help, at least as a component.

(Jacob) Hmm, anti-chronitons…. and other local equipment…. nothing coming to me for a plausible plug-in at a distance on moving targets and mobile enough to get there. On the other end we might be able to flood a war lazotter we have hacked with anti-chronitons so it never receives the keys and…. how much control do you have on what those divination spells show?

(Zin) I am capable of Level Zero and weak Level 1 divinations.

(Jacob) Quantum entangled anti-chronitons! We can use those to see when changes happen to an area by allowing certain fields to disrupt the chronitons! We simply have to get them in the memory in the memory addresses the new keys would come in on!

(Vanatica) WHAT?!

(Jacob) It’s so simple, why didn’t I think I think of it before?

(Felix) I think I only understood half of that. Did you just say that you were going to use particles of time energy to literally read their computers?

(Jacob) Yes. Well anti-time energy.

(Felix) The more I think about this, the less I understand how it works.

(Jacob) I can’t set it up on a moving target, but it is better than a virus on a system we do not understand in its entirety.

I had my doubts about that assertion given that I only barely understood what he thought he was doing on a conceptual level and was still at least partially certain he was making it up on the fly.

(Vanatica) Well, I’ll give you a chance to try it, but I suspect we’re going to have to fall back onto the use of the heavy ion cannon.

(Felix) Wouldn’t it only work if you could get the anti-chronitons into their physical location, only have them disrupted by their computers in precise patterns, and record and analyze the activity remotely?

(Jacob) We can also try the virus in case it works, just I have little hope it will have huge results. It never got too many of the Borg.

(Vanatica) I don’t think this can… will… will have… worked?

(Katlyn) Well, considering we arrived BEFORE our ride got here to deliver us, is this that weird in comparison?

While Katlyn did have a point, I was still not entirely sure that it was possible to have time actually flow backwards as opposed to simply slowing it down to near imperceptibility like how stasis fields operated. Unless that was how the precognition of the Force operated.

I also started preparing a trojan to load if we managed to create a connection to the weaponized Untremi’s systems. Programming it on the castle computers was a simpler task than it first seemed since it appeared that while the computers were running on fairly different hardware, the instruction set was remarkably similar to galactic standards. Plus there was the fact that the programs the Untremi were running were highly derivative of galactic droid programs too. It didn’t take too long to find at least a few vulnerabilities that hadn’t been patched in the era these programs were from. Building a trojan to exploit those vulnerabilities wasn’t an issue either. I elected to build a few different vectors of attack and some feints in case the Untremi organics added any extra complications towards their security defenses.

Our next assault was against the fabrication facilities, although not surprisingly the facilities were held by the Weaponized Untremi. Eight of them were in the facility at the moment, and getting in from our side was going to require blowing up a sizable plug of wreckage or cutting through a wall. Explosives were ridiculously easy to make as well given the resources available to us. The maintenance staff was generally against indoors explosions, but didn’t seemed intent to try and stop us.

(Vanatica) Explosions or cutting? Anyone have a vote? I’m leaning towards cutting.

(Jacob) Cutting would be nice, but it might be so slow we will have an army larger than we can handle before we get through. How fast can you cut these walls? Test on one that we have access to both sides of and where we think there are no cables.

(Felix) Cutting is perhaps the best option. My preference, as always, is for SPLOZIONS!

I walked up to one of the walls we were in control of and made a few quick test swipes against it with my lightsaber. Surprisingly, the material resisted being cut significantly like it was made of hull material. While the lightsaber was going to win the battle, the time needed was excessive compared to anything I had been expecting to deal with. Jacob in turn was running his own scans.

(Jacob) Looks like they are using a structural integrity field to boost the durability of the structure of the castle.

(Vanatica) Structural Field?

(Jacob) A field that basically makes the place tougher. Related to the anti-chroniton infused materials your people have been unknowingly using.

(Vanatica) Drat. Well then, time to clear the debris plug I suppose.

While the power crystals made incredibly handy explosives given their availability, actually cutting one into a shaped charge of suitably small scale was a nerve wracking experience though. I once again wondered if these things were another Censor-banned technology, or if there were just a weird bit of the Tier-IV Multiverse. My initial suspicion was that they were too weird to possibly be a part of the physics of my universe, but I would have said the same thing about chronitons and tardions a few days ago.

With the tiny shard of crystal cut and placed, we all took up positions where we would hopefully be sheltered from any excess explosive blasts. From that vantage point, I remotely triggered the detonator I had rigged up and was glad I had hidden behind a particularly thick corner of wall. Glancing around the corner, I saw that the debris had been cleared out or at least blown to bits. I rushed into the breach as the others followed.

It did appear we had the element of surprise at least as four of our targets were visible. Two were facing away from us, one was busy at a workbench, and one had turned to face the explosion. I dove under a tool chest and instantly found myself wishing I had the foresight to enhance my personal shield with tardions to help block the weapon attacks that were likely going to be making short work of what cover I had.

At which point my shield appeared in my hand along with memories of doing exactly what I had been lamenting I hadn’t done just a moment ago.

(Lindral) Handy, isn’t it? This skill I taught you is one way to annoying precognitives! Kinda hard for them to foresee what you’re going to be doing when you can simply make minor edits to your own timeline far more safely than those Codifiers could ever hope to achieve!

Ok, if this was the result of all of those mental exercises Lindral had run me through, then this was a potential game-changer. Of course, the spellcasting she was already teaching me was a game-changer too of probably an even larger magnitude. It did make me wonder what else she could teach me if I managed to acquire the other pieces of herself. Hopefully circumstances would soon let me pursue that objective.

More immediately…..

The toolbox I was taking cover behind was quickly being turned to so much scrap metal as a massive wave of firepower came our way. What shots did get through the toolbox to me were at least being deflected by the shield I “had” prepared earlier. The paint job showing the Soung Family insignia was rapidly being warn off, but that was a minor inconvenience compared to being vaporized. From my vantage point I could see Katlyn hiding behind a workbench while looking at her own shield with a look of amused consternation.

I pulled out the tablet computer we had loaded my trojan onto as I waited for Jacob and Zin to do whatever nonsense they were attempting to set up a remote computer link. I watched as Jacob did…. something that resulted in the tablet briefly displaying an active network connection before suddenly losing it again. Glancing out at the ongoing battle, I saw the Untremi he had been aiming at shrunk down to a pup like the ones we had first encountered.

(Vanatica) Wait…. WHAT?!

(Jacob) Ah drat, some type of anti-chroniton phase interference event.

So evidently tardions can actually reverse time on some level unlike how I figured. I was also increasingly convinced that Jacob was a delusional schizophrenic that was somehow altering reality to conform to his hallucinatory perceptions as opposed actually doing anything remotely resembling “science”. I found myself questioning the wisdom of actually relying on his skills for anything given failure modes such as what I had just witnessed.

(Vanatica) So do we need to try again?

At least the shield was holding up against this onslaught of energy being directed against us. I made a mental note that I should treat my armor with this same process the next time I had the opportunity. Unfortunately, the Untremi had finally figured out that using direct attacks was not accomplishing much as they switched to trying to hit us with area-of-effect attacks. I saw blasts of fire roar around us and explosive canisters rolled by. My shieldsuit helped reduce that significantly, but it still was clear that we’d be overwhelmed fairly soon if we didn’t end this quickly.

Part of me wanted to call this plan dead-on-arrival and switch to using the heavy ion-cannon, but Jacob and Zin were intent to give it another go. At least the switch to AOE attacks was cutting down on the total amount of firepower coming at us.

I got a connection again on the tablet and this time it actually maintained the connection for more than a few seconds. The trojan was immediately uploaded to their network and went to work as designed. Their communications became readable and I could tamper with it to some extent. It was obvious that they were cut off from the rest of the “tribe” elsewhere in the castle. This limited their intelligence and tactical knowledge of the situation beyond the immediate area. However, this did show that there were four more Untremi close by that might move to engage if the tactical situation seemed to call for it. The trojan was still processing its way through their systems and it was going to take some time before it completed its work.

Still, I did have access to the system and thus could alter some values directly in the meantime.

It took some frantic digging to find the right memory block, but I was able to alter our designation to put us all in the “friendly” category via a faked tactical update. After a few moments of me pushing that update out the amount of incoming fire slowed to a complete halt. The trojan was still cranking away at their software, but at least we weren’t likely to be killed while waiting for it to finish. That gave us a few minutes to take stock of the room we were in, or at least what was left of it.

The major activity here seemed to be recycling. It appeared that some of the other materials they needed were rare around here – so there was a lack of resources for expanding their population to the point they could overwhelm the other side. Amazingly enough, this had kept the situation “stable” for all this time. It looked like the rare-earth dopants for the computational crystals and related systems was the key bottle-neck.

Hmm, that was a problem that could be solved with a few shipments from orbit and then letting the situation take care of itself.

Now the problem with that was that it appeared that the Untremi took about three years to mature and tended to run in litters. On the other hand, they didn’t seem to be too attached to the young ones and refrained from producing litters when they didn’t need to. As for the Weaponized Untremi, it seemed that they needed only one or two years to mature since they used the power crystals to dump energy into the organic side. That had a lot of negative long-term consequences, but did let them produce new units relatively quickly.

Hmm, if the remaining Weaponized Untremi had any sort of sense or sapience, then we just moved to the top of the top of the priority list since we just took away their ability to replace their losses.

(Vanatica) Barricade the entrances! We’re going to have company REALLY quickly.

Best bet was to try to funnel the attack through a single location that we could concentrate our firepower against. I picked one doorway as the location for the funnel and directed everyone to block the other entrances accordingly. Luckily we had considerable stocks of structural materials to work with given that this was the fabrication room.

This could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Since this was a location that the Weaponized Untremi had to capture at all costs, that meant they had to come here as opposed to us having to dig them out of the castle room by room. With any luck we could build a solid enough defense to slow them down enough that we could capture them as fast as they arrived. With enough assaults like that, we could permanently cripple their “tribe” and let the Maintenance Untremi handle the rest.

Meanwhile the Maintenance Untremi were installed defense turrets and the trojan infected Weaponized Untremi finally switched sides to be part of the Maintenance Untremi tribe. Zin was looking for structural weaknesses that the enemy might exploit against us and Jacob began deploying trapspider venom traps along the predicted assault routes. Katlyn was patching up our injuries and Felix was using that mech of his to put large objects in the way of entrances we wanted blocked.

With any luck, the battle to take over this castle and all the treasures of knowledge it contained might soon be done with.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session XXV

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It said a lot about my life that the green humanoid wearing wooden armor was far from the weirdest thing I’ve seen over the last few weeks. The fact that whatever “language” his grunts were in was still intelligible was more or less par for the course with whatever passed for reality here. He did provide confirmation that Jacob was repeating throughout the local history as a result of his transporter accident although that just further reinforced my opinion that transporters were eldritch abominations with failure modes that just broke reality on some level.

(Green Guy) Iz gelloos! He maks hiz armer out o metal. Iz always haz ter yoose WOOD!

I had to wonder if that horrible accent or whatever you would call that speech pattern was a result of a translation convention or if he was suffering from a serious speech impediment that made him sound like an idiot.

(Jacob) I still do not understand why you even bother with heavy armor like that. The advantages are minimal and the maintenance costs are annoying in both time and resources.

(Felix) Because it keeps me from dying.

(Green Guy) Whutchutalkinbout? Easy ter fix! Just taks a littul whittlin…. I’s be needin sum planks…. Bouts all thas left un mine armer bed ter gauntlet!

(Katlyn) I have to imagine we can find you some wood somewhere around here.

I don’t know if I found him idiotic, the idea that reality conformed to his notions of such things was itself idiotic, or if I was the idiot for getting perturbed by a something so mundane compared to snot monsters and beach resort paintings you can visit. Deep breaths….

(Vanatica) I find the advantages substantial and can afford to offload the maintenance to hordes of droids and technicians.

We now had access to the biology lab, plus some sealed off labs for physics and something else. Except for the biology lab though, they were all underwater. The physics lab itself was next door and the doors were currently sealed. According to Jacob’s scans, there were drains in the flooded labs, but the weather system was stuck on “storm” for extra power, which was being stored (as it has been for some millennia now), and more than a few drains have been blocked by debris of one kind or another.

(Jacob) It looks like…. standard security doors, magnetically operated physical locks, duralloy. Currently duct-taped together for extra security.

(Vanatica) I am going to presume that “storm mode” is due to the ongoing conflict causing demands for as much power as possible.

(Jacob) Power is more than sufficient. Emergency reserves are currently at roughly five million percent. They just have nothing to do with it but grow more crystals and the control system is in the upper levels.

(Felix) Err…. five million percent of what?

(Jacob) Nominal maximum capacity.

A few quick calculations in my head based on some rather iffy assumptions easily told me there was enough power stored here to blast a hole in a continent if it all went up at once. At least if most of the energy didn’t get blasted into space once it punched a hole in the atmosphere. Compared to the typical energies throw around back home, this respectable if not extraordinary in some ways. I just found it hard to believe that one could accumulate that much power just harvesting lightning even over the course of millennia. Either the lightning was weird on some level, or there was something else going on.

(Vanatica) Ok, that is…. potentially disastrous if that goes up.

(Jacob) They will have to start dumping energy crystals down the mountain eventually.

Which only further reinforced my opinion that we needed to take control of the situation now before this whole place ended up a worthless crater. When the backup plan was to dump thermonuclear grenades down the slopes of the mountain because you couldn’t stop producing them, something was definitely wrong.

(Jacob) I am perfectly willing to cart off some extras. And your power systems could really use the upgrade given to even the downgraded form.

(Vanatica) That may be, but I think getting control of this place has moved up the priority list given the potential bang that mess will cause.

(Green Guy) Yah! Bult armer outen TAT! Pwr Crysse Armer Be BIG fer Status!

(Katlyn) Well, I have to admit, would you want to shoot at him if he wore something like that?

(Vanatica) Anyway, where are the plugged drains and can we access them? And if we drain those labs and other areas, do we risk allowing the enemy to flank us?

(Jacob, as he continued to scan with his tricorder) Well, the Lazotters are busily setting up defense turrets. Flanking is possible, but should be difficult. The drains are in the rooms of course. I can get you diagrams even. It is just that thousands of years of raging storm and all the damage upstairs is pouring water into all kinds of places where it shouldn’t be going.

(Vanatica) Well, next question then: can anyone think of a method to get someone in there with some tools without flooding this area with water as well?

(Katlyn) Barring phasing and such I presume?

(Vanatica) Last time you tried to vibrate through walls into a pool of water, you flash boiled the whole mess in a giant steam explosion.

(Katlyn) That was an accident!

(Vanatica) They always are….

I still had the teleportation psionic tattoos from the Archive. I also had a couple of Dimension Leap spells prepared too. I’d rather avoid using such limited resources if a mundane solution was available though. Unfortunately, this castle was not designed with the need for airlocks in mind.

(Jacob) Hmm, we do not have the tools for putting together even a short range transporter here, but there was another version of me running around here some time ago. Did the other me have access to the physics lab?

(Green Guy) Came in thru that door!

(Jacob) Hmm…. ok, so let me look at these schematics for a second. Perhaps I left behind equipment that I could steal from myself.

Leaving Jacob to figure out how to outsmart himself, I grab a few tools and supplies from what was laying about and then used one of the Dimension Leap spells to simply teleport to the other side of the door. The breath mask was doing its job of providing air despite the lack of computer supervision at least. Sometimes it was smarter to go with simple mechanical controls over more complicated computer controls for things vital functions like this.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to seeing through the water given the dim lighting, but it looked like my teleport spell worked as advertised. Was this sense of barriers such as solid blast doors becoming meaningless what it felt like to be a hybrid? Or was there an even greater sense of freedom given that people like Mother and Father didn’t have to prepare a limited number of spells per day to perform whatever tricks they desired? I’ll probably never know for sure, but it did feel exhilarating to just be able to bypass a blast door like it was nothing for once. It’ll be interesting to see what other tricks Lindral can teach me.

It was as I started getting my bearings that Katlyn’s voice came over the radio.

(Katlyn) Did you make it through ok? You disappeared from our sight, so I am presuming you went somewhere.

(Vanatica) I’m here, there is a dim blue light saturating the place whose source I can’t identify and the water is transmitting sounds of machinery from somewhere.

Continuing to look around to try and gain my bearings, I found that the ridiculous ponytail of hair I had acquired from that damned cosmetics box was quickly getting in my way as it floated through the water in response to me turning my head and the slight currents in the water. Despite being a mass of dead protein, it certainly seemed to be going out of its way to be in my way.

(Vanatica) This would be a lot easier without all this hair getting in my way.

(Katlyn) Why exactly did you grow your hair to such a ridiculous length?

(Vanatica) An accident with a magical cosmetics kit that I’ve yet to figure out how to undo. Every time I cut it, it grows back to this length in under a minute.

(Katlyn) Well, it looks nice….

(Vanatica) It makes me look like my mother.

(Katlyn) Not really. You have Aunt Valerie’s hair and height, but you don’t have her build.

My grunt of displeasure was apparently audible over the radio link to Katlyn.

(Katlyn) Oh come off it. Aunt Valerie has got the tall, slim build. Aunt Virstris is the tall, athletic build. And you’ve got the height of a Soung with the curves of a Keldav. No one is going to be easily confusing you for them anytime soon. Especially now that we know that you’re broadcasting your life story into the heads of anyone nearby.

(Vanatica) That is the Force that is doing that, not me.

(Katlyn) I think that position is becoming a bit untenable given the evidence so far. I think it a bit ironic that you’ve had a monotalent this entire time, but it was one that was impossible to detect normally since everyone back home already knew who you were.

Unfortunately, Katlyn couldn’t hear how much I was glaring at the microphone pickup. I also had my doubts regarding the theory about my supposed “monotalent”. Not that I had a good counter to it as of yet.

By the time I got my hair out of the way, I was able to see that the area was illuminated via a dim glow. Much of it was clogged with mud and debris and the outlets were obvious – two drains, each about thirty centimeters across – and the major inlet looked to be through an open door to an elevator shaft. Water pressure seemed to be consistent with a depth of about twenty meters. In theory I could unplug the bottom of the elevator shaft – but the depth would end up being about a hundred meters and it would be awfully hard to avoid being washed away. From what I recall of the layout schematics from earlier, that should open up into a vehicle garage of some sort.

It was probably better to go through the door into the elevator shaft and see if there was a smarter place to block the inlet that would get us access to more than just this room. Once that decision was made, I could easily tie myself off and unplug the drains after sealing the inlet. From what I could see in the elevator shaft, the top of the shaft had been blown open long ago. If I could seal off a few doors I might be able to drain most of the laboratory complex on this level and the next one up. Opening up the bottom would then hopefully drain the whole area of course.

I was unlikely to find pockets of air – after a few thousand years it will generally have dissolved into the water under pressure – but it was still a sizable laboratory and manufacturing complex. It appears that grabbing it was a high priority for both sides of the Untremi and so it wound up quite a mess. The door on this level and the next couple up should keep it from pouring water in the lab complexes if I got them closed. The door two levels up would take welding. The door one level up just seemed to be jammed on something. The door on the current level would take minor repairs; someone apparently put a hold in one of the sides of the door.

I elected to start working on the door two levels up first. Thankfully, lightsabers worked just fine underwater.

(Vanatica) Can Jacob get a reading on what is jamming the door one level up the elevator shaft?

(Katlyn) Not really, he’s complaining about readings of intense radiation interfering with the tricorder.

Well, it wasn’t like radiation had much of a hold over me due to the talisman my parents gave me. Once I got the door welded, I floated down to the jammed door to see what the problem was. Looked like the jam was caused by a partially crushed cyber-creature wedged in the door. In all likelihood, the radiation reading Jacob was picking up was from the heavy power crystal. It looked like the creature was set for breaching work, and carrying lots of extra power – and got shot, then slammed in the door. The safety shield around the power assembly was what’s jamming the door. While I could probably force the door closed, it was probably insanely unwise to have it crunch through a pocket nuclear explosive. Better idea was to try to unwed it and move it out of the way. Must have been a lot of metal in its composition if it hadn’t decayed into nothing by now.

I wasn’t able to un-wedge it given that the door was still trying to close. I was able to pry loose the power crystal. It was probably showing a high-energy radiation leak because it was slightly cracked on one facet now. The crystal was also becoming uncomfortably hot now and was leaking a lot of ominous blue light.

Not good….

I wasn’t sure the talisman could ignore that much radiation and my ability to chuck the crystal tens of kilometers from myself was highly limited at the moment too. Luckily, the water should absorb most of the radiation and take much of the damage too as it flash boiled to steam. The only problems were going to be the kinetic shockwaves and trying to get as much distance between me and it as possible.

The obvious answer was to chuck it down one of the partially clogged drains. That I was able to do without too much issue, but I found myself counting the seconds as I swam to a spot with several walls between me and the drain and hurriedly anchored myself with the variable stars. I got to about two hundred seconds when the whole area exploded with bubbles, steam, mud, and debris. The shockwave off all of that slammed me into the wall far harder than I thought possible and I was more than a bit dazed. I continued to be buffeted around as water rushed by at a tremendous rate as apparently some of the drainage was unblocked by the explosion.

It took several minutes for my ears to stop ringing and for my vision to clear. I was about to return to the elevator shaft so I could finish cutting through the dead cyber-creature and close that door when I head a sound approaching. It took several seconds to place it as a propellor sound like primitive watercraft frequently used. Probably a bio-droid coming to attack me. Or at least investigate the loud noise I had just caused then attack me. This area was also beyond the maintenance Untremi’s zone of control and thus this meant whatever was coming was probably not in the friendliest of moods. Worse still, an ion cannon was not going to work well underwater.

I tried to take position in a rather hidden locale, but I wasn’t particularly good at hiding and my movements had the side effect of further stirring up the mud and debris making it obvious that I had been through here. It also wasn’t like I had a spell that could turn me invisible either. Whether or not an invisibility spell wouldn’t even help matters underwater was an open question too.

Still, from my vantage point I could see a medium sized Untremi with looked to be an aquatic design with lasers, torpedoes, and underwater sensors swim into view. Oddly, it looked “happier” than most of the weaponized Untremi we’ve seen so far. Probably a consequence of being closer to the base species than the weaponized Untremi typically were and thus able to enjoy being in its natural habitat as opposed to being a walking death machine in a corridor.

Hmm, that did imply a possible line of action to dealing with this one though.

Reaching into one of my many pockets, I pulled out a piece of jerky from the rations I carried with me. The water had made it soggy, but hopefully that didn’t matter much in this particular case. As the Untremi noticed my presence and moved closer to inspect me, I held out the piece of jerky as an offering of a treat. When the Untremi appeared hesitant to take it from my hand, I released it to float in the water and backed away slowly. It drew closer to the jerky and then nibbled at it as a test. Part of me wondered if the various seasonings and spices added to the meat or even the meat itself might prove toxic to the Untremi, but apparently it liked what it tasted as it proceeded to gobble the whole thing up in short order.

Well, so far so good.

At which point I started to receive a smattering of chirps and clicks over the radio link that I recognized as belonging to the Untremi language even if I didn’t fully understand it. What I could determine though was that it was a bit incomplete with whatever passed for syntax being a bit disjointed. Perhaps this was a consequence of it being separated from the others of the collective? It didn’t seem immediately hostile at least.

(Vanatica) I seek to end the fighting and complete repairs. I have no wish to fight.

I offered another piece of jerky which it munched cheerily, but it otherwise didn’t seem to acknowledge my words. Probably too much of a language barrier to cross with this. So I got back on the radio to the others.

(Vanatica) Have we made any progress yet on anything resembling administrator rights or command codes?

(Katlyn) Jacob says he is working on it and needs more time to complete his analysis. He asks that you stall as best you can.

Wonderful….

Well, trying to teleport back to them with my new friend was probably unwise given that there were maintenance Untremi back there as well. So that meant staying here. Continuing to work on clearing this place out by restoring the drainage would hopefully reinforce my friendly intentions and help stall for time. That meant trying to continue unclogging the drains and closing off what inlets I could.

The lightsaber made short work of the dead Untremi blocking the door one level up since I no longer had to worry about the power crystal going off like a pocket nuke. The lightsaber also helped immensely in chopping up debris that was blocking drainage. While that did seem to help restore water flow through the lab, it wasn’t having the anticipated effect of lowering the water level any. Probably a consequence of there being ridiculous amounts of water stored in several reservoirs that needed to all be drained first before any visible progress was made.

With several hours to kill while I waited for the water to drain enough for the blast doors to open, I started doing a survey of the lab. Needless to say, the place had a fair amount of damage, but it also possessed lots of equipment. It looked like the Untremi following me around came down something that appeared to be an emergency venting shaft for some sort of particle beam coming out of a generator system. Unfortunately, that same shaft also provided a means for other weaponized Untremi to come down here and potentially start shooting at me whenever the particle steam was inactive. Thus it was probably prudent to block that, but I didn’t dare do that while it was still periodically venting whatever this particle beam was.

Based on what data I could get out of my barely functional sensors built into my shieldsuit, that particle beam was composed of positrons held in a fairly tight stream. As best as I could tell, this whole setup was designed to generate exotic particles and then bombard various samples with them. Exactly what those exotic particles were was an open question.

Nor was I exactly sure on whether or not stopping the venting process was a smart idea. It was helping to block weaponized Untremi was flooding the place, but having a frequent beam of antimatter go off nearby was not healthy for people or equipment. And I wasn’t sure I could shut down the venting process whatever causing a containment breach in whatever was needing to vent in the first place. There was just too much damage to the laboratory to make a quick assessment.

The nonstandard design to everything was not helping matter either.

It took awhile to figure out that the humming sound I was hearing was coming from a transformer that looked to be out of adjustment. Probably a bit of corrosion in the wiring generating a bit more waste energy as sound and mechanical vibrations.

(Katlyn) Jacob is saying that he’s picking up increased amounts of magnetic flux and tardion radiation in your vicinity. The tardion radiation discharge in particular is increasing he says.

(Vanatica) What in the infinite hells is tardion radiation?

(Katlyn) Something about them being anti-chronitons. He also says that you probably need to shut off the generator now.

Chronitons I knew to be a hypothetical quantized bit of time that had never been shown to exist beyond the equations of scientists that I felt spent too much time on exploring esoteric bits of mathematical symmetry as opposed to actual science. If a tardion was an anti-chroniton and we had actual proof of their existence (at least in this reality), then that had potential implications regarding chronitons and whole branches of theoretical science I had written off as purely a source of published papers. I’d have to start looking at some of those papers a little more seriously once I had access to the subspace network again.

The emergency cutoff switch at least was fairly recognizable even by the weird engineering standards of this place. However, as my hand moved towards the switch, my whole body slowed down to a fraction of its normal speed regardless of the commands I sent to my hand. It seemed like time itself had slowed, but I was able to perceive it because my mind was still able to perceive things at the “normal” rate.

Was this what it was like for Hybrids and Codifiers? I had experienced a few brief moments of time dilation when I was drug along by family members when they used their powers in my presence, but never long enough for me to actually have time to feel the situation like this. Even more fascinating, this was being produced by a purely physical mechanism. So the possibility of mimicking the other Hypertime type techniques with pieces of technology was an open possibility. But if this was doable with such seemingly simple equipment, and the fact that Codifiers and Hybrids were accomplishing similar feats suggested it was then why wasn’t this technology more common?

Ah, it was the same issue as with the stasis fields: the capability of producing the Starbreaker weapons system. So this was probably on the Censor’s banned list for similar reasons.

By this point I had managed to get the switch flipped to turn off the generator (about forty seconds overall) and Jacob had found a way to hack the weaponized Untremi that was following me around to somehow force it to join the maintenance Untremi’s network. Moreover, the water level had finally subsided enough that the others were able to get the blast door to open. Which meant that everyone started immediately piling around the tardion generator to poke at it. This was annoying, but not unexpected given the potential applications involved with this technology.

More concerning though was that Felix’s armor was slowly turning a weird reddish tinge.

(Felix) This is probably bad. I imagine it’s instantly oxidizing?

(Jacob) No, it still is as shiny as ever.

(Vanatica) Beginning to see the heat output as it is blue-shifted from our perspective I imagine.

(Jacob) Hmm, iron nuclei occupy a low point on the energy scale, and so are extremely stable and change only slowly. This is in part because they naturally absorb tarpons. Since his armor contains a lot of steel alloys, Felix is well shielded from the residual tardion radiation the generator has made. His armor is saturated enough to be red-shifting reflected light somewhat right now. It will be difficult to alter the armor until the effect wears off though.

This reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite place what exactly. Now that I had a better look at the equipment, it did seem like all of this was set up to convert the output of the power crystals directly into exotic particles. A rather efficient setup considering the size of the equipment.

(Jacob) Interesting. Usually getting positrons like this is a pain without involving dilithium reactions. I wonder if I could use this to charge up dilithium crystals by effectively running them backwards turning antimatter into normal matter. Seems that all of this is not technology from my universe.

It definitely seemed likely that at least one version of Jacob was involved in setting this up if the accounts of the unnamed green warrior were of any value. Plus there was a large amount of what I would call Federation technology about the place. It also involved at least a group of people from the universe cluster of timelines I was from. It was also possible that this place was using some sort of undocumented Censor banned technology, but if it was then I didn’t immediately recognize it.

Wait a damn minute….

This was a system for producing “neutronium” or starship hull material. While true neutronium was simply a condensed mass of neutrons, for obscure historical reasons the incredibly tough but fairly normal density metal that was used for starship hulls and armor was also call neutronium. It was also almost totally nonreactive chemically; it would form iron-like compounds, but it took months or years to react. The really odd thing about that stuff was that it was never artificially produced, only mined.

If the stuff was just normal iron that had been infused with tardions, then that explained a lot of the properties we just took for granted about the stuff. That also meant that tarpons did exist back home and that were was presumably a technological method of producing them. Which in turn implied chronitons were real too. And I was willing to bet the reason why this wasn’t common knowledge was that this was yet another method of producing the Death Star’s main weapon system via infusing a suitable crystal with tardions instead of using a stasis field.

But then where did all the presumably natural neutronium come from that everyone was mining? Was it all the remnants of ancient ships that had long since lost all traces of being ships beyond the mass of neutronium they were built from? Or is there some sort of unknown natural process that had (or still does) infuse stuff with tardions? More things to look at once I get back home I suppose. I’ll also need to brush up on the more hypothetical particle physics stuff given that we now had very strong evidence that tardions and chronitons were actually real things and not the deranged ramblings of mathematicians.

Still, doing the math in my head it was obvious that the power generation and consumption of this place made little sense.

(Vanatica) This is a lot of power consumption for just some stormy weather to generate via captured lightning bolts.

(Jacob) Oh that…. it looks like it’s an emergency backup. The lightning bolts are artificially amplified, they’re generating fusion cores in the raindrops and feeding the energy to the castle.

(Katlyn) Uhh…..

Katlyn more or less summed up my thoughts succinctly with that one sound.

(Jacob) So it’s an open-air electromagnetically-confined burst-fusion system almost seven kilometers across.

That was impressive, horrifying, and ridiculous all at once. I was accustomed to throwing around those kinds of energies using only hyper matter or true neutronium systems. And those things were typically surrounded by massive layers of shielding and controls to keep things contained. This was just…. exposed to the atmosphere above a farming community that had little clue just how much power was brewing just above their heads.

Even more horrifying was the revelation of who the three main individuals were behind Stormkanal: Jacob Hatfield, Ben Therus, and THE JACOB (Jacob Schule). Well, suffice it to say, that explained pretty much any weirdness we might encounter here in Stormkanal. Just Jacob and Ben alone without someone like Alys Nere, Mother, or Father around to keep them in check was a recipe for all sorts of disasters. It honestly made me wonder how the Anomaly was still here then since Jacob Hatfield didn’t seem like the type to keep those two restrained. In our timeline Ben Therus had been hunted down and killed by Mother since he was a threat to the Galaxy itself. Jacob Schule was supposedly lost in the multiverse with hopefully no way back to our timeline after much of his home forest on Kashyyyk was burned by the native wookies. Not that I thought those particular incarnations of those two were responsible for this place, but it made everything that much more dangerous to know that at least some version of them were involved.

Oh, by the Force….

Now I find myself imagining what other horrors those two might create with access to Federation technology and no Censor to keep them in check.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session XXIV

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To say that the Anomaly was a treasure trove of wonders and new discoveries was one of the biggest understatements I’ve heard – only on par with saying that we Soungs were financially secure. Already I had seen wonders of magic, art, and science that could keep scholars back home busy studying for millennia. And we had yet to even begin to tap into the potential this place had to offer. The Untremi (nicknamed Lazotters by Felix and called Zerith by the computer for unknown reasons) alone had numerous valuable applications in their current form and even more with some modifications to the technology.

Is was easy to see though that Vanatica was in “Serious Mode” and as a result was getting easily frustrated when things weren’t immediately going our way. She got that from her mother, although Aunt Valerie was better at keeping that frustration in check – probably from decades of training as a Varen Sith. The fact that Vanatica (up till recently) didn’t have special powers had not helped matters either. Although considering what having full powers like my brother and cousins did to their personalities and dispositions, I consider myself lucky that all I got was superhuman speed.

(Vanatica) Well, I’ve figured out why our computers don’t work. It looks like the local rules governing energy leakage is fouling up our chip designs.

(Katlyn) So how do the Untremi deal with it?

(Vanatica) They seem to be using much larger circuitry in their chips in comparison to our own. They get around the reduced capacity that results from this by layering the chips three-dimensionally. End result is roughly equivalent to our best I would say. We don’t do it because it makes manufacturing the chips a bit of a pain, although we could replicate the design with some work.

(Katlyn) So no bringing THELOS online any time soon?

(Vanatica) Not without access to a manufacturing facility or a delivery from orbit. Neither of which is going to happen particularly soon I suspect.

(Katlyn) Well, this is a minor annoyance, but livable. Most people don’t even have access to an AI assistant the size of several moons with major sub-nodes spread across the galaxy.

Now everyone was discussing methods and tactics for clearing out the “infestations” in the rest of the castle. Ideas floated around included flooding contested areas, heavy use of ion cannons, hacking attempts, and looking for areas of strategic and tactical value. Personally, I figured heavy use of ion cannons and careful tactics was the tried-and-true strategy for dealing with this sort of situation. With some strategic planning, we could easily maintain a relatively small defensive position with maximizing opportunities to inflict damage on the Weaponized Untremi position.

As such, the banquet area and kitchens were mostly abandoned at the moment, and were off the main hall we already controlled. That put us up against a couple of flooded chambers on that side as well. The biology labs would extend our perimeter somewhat, and had a couple of guards, but might well be useful given what we’ve already seen.

The one called Felix was complaining though.

(Felix) I love a good adventure, but we should consider that we’re probably moving on in a while. So massacring the locals, however aggressive, doesn’t really solve anything.

Well, with such short-sighted strategic thinking, it was easy to see why his people were constantly fighting over scraps of technology they no longer understood. It should be easy to see what a valuable find this place was just from a base of operations perspective, let alone the potential for new technologies. The Untremi alone were worth a galactic fortune. Vanatica was having none of it though.

(Vanatica) It does give us a base of operations from which we can potentially open gates to our home universes Anomaly-side as opposed to via the Star-Treaders universe or whatever they were called.

(Jacob) I am all for having a base of operations with some decent power sources and the knowledge of how to maintain links to other universes.

(Felix) I am saying we should think about this in terms other than physical force. We should figure out a way to stabilize the situation rather than just killing everything that moves and seems vaguely threatening.

(Theo) Hey, to be fair, if you kill everything that moves and is even vaguely threatening, the situation is very stable.

(Vanatica) Well, if we could somehow gain access to command codes to everything else, we might be able to do this bloodlessly. Problem is that has proven difficult except when things have malfunctioned in our favor.

(Felix) I suppose what I am saying is, can we perhaps try to either find an accommodation with some of the inhabitants here or move them out in preference to blindly attacking? In my humble opinion, this is kind of their space to begin with, so….

(Katlyn) The maintenance group doesn’t seem to mind us a bit.

(Vanatica) Given that we’re talking about animals that have been upgraded with weapons, armor, and combat programs, negotiation for a mutually agreeable settlement is not really an option. They are running on programs and instincts. You might as well try to come to an understanding with a fire ant infestation.

(Theo) We can just feed them some kibble and scratch behind their ears. All should be good right? Or bacon.. That’ll do the trick.

(Jacob) Yeah, you can try that. This is like making angry giant ants with cybernetic enhancements.

(Felix) It’s a bit more complicated than that. Some of the opposition are enhanced animals, but others may be aliens lifeforms who were experimented on.

(Jacob) Yeah, there are others around, but the cybered up animals are the ones near us now where we have the handy and agreeable computer. They are also the most organized and dangerous.

(Felix) Even so, I would prefer not to wipe them all out simply for existing.

(Jacob) We can leave some around, but they seem to be expanding, taking over everything, and killing the maintenance Lazotters.

(Vanatica) It isn’t for simply existing. It is because the current situation is fundamentally unstable as the various factions of animals fight each other for territory including the territory we are currently standing in. They want to wipe US out for simply existing.

It was easy to see that Vanatica was getting really agitated with Felix’s obtuseness. If he pushed this much further he was going to end up abandoned in a highly lethal situation without the support he needed to survive. Not that I blamed her, Felix was being ridiculously dense, but I also suspected it was an idiocy born of never having dealt with droid rebellions or insane Force predators that killed for amusement.

(Katlyn) The fact that they have attack us on sight – whereas the maintenance Lazotters have been indifferent to possibly helpful – does tend to define sides. We also know that the ones that attacked us were corrupted or mis-programmed Lazotters modified to be war machines.

(Felix) Yeah, but you kick down the door to somebody’s home and they are apt to fight back.

(Vanatica) Well then, you can try to negotiate with them. We’ll wait.

(Felix) Didn’t plan on it. Whomever made this place obviously had a way to manage the inhabitants. So let’s try to figure out how they did.

Alright, even I was under the opinion that Felix was too dumb to live. He either hadn’t been paying much attention to the discussions this entire time, or was one of those idiots that thought everyone else’s ideas were his own. This was a sort of naive stupidity that could prove dangerous to the rest of us if he was left unsupervised too long.

(Jacob) Computer, how were these things managed when this place was operating normally?

(Computer) The Untremi (why the computer was referring to them as Untremi now as opposed to Zerith as earlier was unknown) are non-sapient without their engineered higher brain centers in operation. When they reach maturity, they download one of the primary personas and skill sets, the organic matrix provides a degree of spontaneity and an emotional response system. The corrupted versions have had their built-in cybersystems reprogrammed for warfare and grow into war machines. They have a limited set of combat programs, but little true intelligence except as groups. The uplift attempt proved unexpectedly vulnerable to such attacks. Unfortunately, the corrupted Untremi have infected a number of galaxies. This necessitated several gate shutdowns.

(Felix) That’s where I’m curious though – where did the corrupted system come from?

(Vanatica) I seem to recall we learned it was a previous set of adventurers.

(Jacob) It is most likely. It was apparently an attempt to create an army of rapidly self-reproducing combat-optimized cyborgs. This apparently turned out to be a bad idea.

(Felix) So let’s try to repair the computer system that’s causing it. Or, try to wipe out that cluster so it can’t do any more harm. What was the program originally for? There must be some function that isn’t being fulfilled.

It really was like he hadn’t been paying attention this entire time. I’d offer to give him a THELOS hookup so that THELOS could spend time giving the recap of the last hour, but unfortunately THELOS didn’t work here. He was lucky that he was dealing with the new Varen Sith as opposed to the old style Varen Sith or even HoloSith. They would have gutted him right here for this willful ignorance. As it was, Vanatica seemed to be considering doing it anyway.

(Jacob) Sapience. It was an uplift attempt with built-in skills and no need for schooling. Clusters of very similar personalities, so you would get lots of individual variations on “the maintenance guy”, “the farmer guy”, and other social roles.

(Felix) I meant specifically the one that was causing them to go mad and kill everything. Did they add that one in to the list, or did they mess one that already existed.

(Jacob) Program upgrades are being passed on and unnecessary bits are dropped across the generations. The corrupted version seems to have been intended as a weapon to build a galactic empire. Presumably there was some sort of control method implanted, whether it still functions after hundreds of unsupervised generations is another matter.

(Felix) Ok, where is the data being hosted? And how would we get access to fix or remove it?

(Jacob) Partial local copies in each one. Full copies, presuming there is one rather than a group getting all their partial copies together, unknown. Likely one of the dead zones.

(Felix) That makes it tougher! Do they infest all the dead zones? If they don’t spawn in any given zone, we can guess that has clean data.

(Jacob) Unknown, they’re dead zones due to the lack of pickups.

Finally it seemed to dawn on Felix as to the situation the rest of us had arrived at some time ago. Thankfully Jacob had the patience to lead the horse to water, unlike the rest of us. I wonder if it was a lack of genetic diversity his version of humans possessed that caused the issue. I still found the whole idea of feudal clans fighting over scraps on barely terraformed worlds a bit hard to swallow as a functional society. Of course, the vacuum tubes and fusion reactor his armor was equipped with seemed to suggest something weird was going on.

(Jacob) So grab the biology lab to study the fragments we can gather then try to push for the core if one exists and cure them? I would be on board for that.

Vanatica and I assented, as did the others in short order. Even if the biology lab didn’t have clues on how to deal with the corrupted Untremi, it surely had an immense wealth of data on how the Untremi were created in the first place. If we could learn how to perform this level of genetic engineering, then there was unfathomable amounts of applications available to be generated from that kind of know-how. Hell, it was possible that we might be able to adapt the core technology to work on humans.

Not that I necessarily thought that giving humans innate cybernetics was the smartest use of the technology. Sure, the idea of the Praetorian Soung Clan having innate cybernetics on par with advanced power armor systems would be a powerful tool in the arsenal, but the reality was that it was something that could readily (and less messily) reproduced simply by manufacturing powered armor like the advanced shieldsuits. Especially since I doubted there were methods to organically grow some of the more complicated and exotics components anyway. As a result, I figured it was more prudent to produce equipment separately and thus not be limited by the constraints of what could be grown. Especially given the issues the Untremi appeared to have regarding the need for electrical power in quantities no organic system could hope to sustain.

The lab areas were partially flooded, but the biology labs were not part of that. Lots of power was available to plug into if we so chose, and not too much that qualified as highly dangerous unless you counted the auto-surgeon and neural interface devices. Plenty of cover was available and there were only two guards down here with both focused on area control. They didn’t seem to be inclined to wreck the equipment though, perhaps because upgrade experiments were occasionally done here on captured Untremi.

This did mean though that we had to deal with those two by entering via a door that was at least partially hidden by rows of storage cabinets. The hope was that we could conceal the opening of the door and thus quietly sneak into positions of advantage against the Corrupted Untremi. Once that was done, Felix would use his walker to kick in the door and pull the Corrupted Untremi into a vulnerable position where the rest of us could surround them and overwhelm them with massed ion cannon fire. Vanatica was going to stay with Felix and be ready with the ion cannon while I was to join the others sneaking through the door.

Unfortunately, one of the canisters full of something incomprehensible had been leaking something and I stepped in it as I swiftly tried to step through the door as it closed. This slippery fluid combined with my momentum to cause me to rapidly slide into a sheet metal cabinet with a ridiculously loud crash that I was sure half the castle heard.

Drat….

Vanatica will never let me live this one down. She didn’t appreciate that sometimes my superhuman reflexes and speed actually made accidents like this more likely at times since I didn’t have her parents’ precognitive insight. To add insult to injury, the cabinet decided it was down standing upright and fell on top of me with another loud crash. Thankfully the armor cushioned me against that, but it was impossible to deny that our targets had heard the commotion and were definitely coming to investigate.

Pulling myself free from underneath the cabinet, it didn’t look like the Corrupted Untremi had noticed those of us already in the room, but had seen Felix and Vanatica standing in the once again opened doorway. One was passing the biostasis vault, with the other one leaping on top of the remaining cabinets and having trouble finding stable footing amidst all the supplies. It was only a matter of moments before the trap was sprung too early and thus put us at a significant disadvantage in the ensuing firefight.

Well, time to live up to my heritage as a Keldav.

I accelerated myself to full speed to quite dramatically run past the Corrupted Untremi and thus get their attention (again). Now that I was prepared for the slick fluid on the floor, it even became a simple matter to use it to enable some dramatic sliding across the floor. The staff butt to the back of the Corrupted Untremi’s heads as I passed by wasn’t going to cause much damage without doing some stunts that weren’t wise in such a confined space, but it did the job of getting the creatures to turn and look my direction as I slid on by and then kicked myself off down an aisle of shelving out of their sight. They took the bait and attempted to trap me between them, but by now I had developed too much speed and gotten my muscles loosened up for some dramatic acrobatics. They’re programs were certainly not prepared for a humanoid of my speed and agility using a collapsible staff against the shelving like a gymnast or pole vaulter as I jumped, spun, slid, and ran circles around them. The fact that many of the metallic surfaces here had a mirror finish polished into them greatly added to their confusion.

That nicely distracted them from the shot from Theo that ruptured a power conduit above one of them discharging hundreds of thousands of volts of power. By the time the breakers or fuses finally blew that one was half-melted to the floor. The second one was still trying to get a target lock on me as I twirled around on my staff in the shelves above it when it got hit repeatedly by weapons fire from the others and was incapacitated in short order. That one was captured readily enough before it had a chance to reboot, but the one fused to the floor was probably going to be dead in short order though.

Jacob started pulling power crystals from their weapon and defensive systems as a precaution though. It was disconcerting to see that the power systems ultimately amounted to shards of crystal the size of a grain of sand though. I don’t think I’ll quite get used to power densities of that level that didn’t require massive antimatter confinement systems to keep stable. Vanatica went to work barricading the doors to the physics lab to keep the Corrupted Untremi from easily sending reinforcements.

Meanwhile I tried to see if I could save the Corrupted Untremi that had been fused to the floor. That took a bit of work, and it was likely whatever lifespan it had left had been severely shortened by the injuries it had sustained even if it ultimately survived. Still, that gave me an opportunity to examine these specimens in comparison with what we had learned so far about the Maintenance Untremi. While Jacob and Vanatica chatted about the communication system and weapons load out, I determined that these Untremi appeared to have a lot less spare processing power available on the computer components compared to the maintenance version.

It was also clear whoever made the modifications to the maintenance versions to make these things didn’t fully understand the technology they were meddling with. As such, most of the modifications seemed to be to the second-stage development blueprints and were haphazard at that. So clearly someone other than the original designers did this.

That probably meant these things were “semi-sapient” at best (for a given definition of sapience when it came to animals uplifted with cybernetics anyway). They certainly had less processing power to be “people” with anyways. That meant they were probably going to be easier to run simple circles around than soldiers, but still potentially more dangerous than the equivalent war droids. Sadly, this said that “make the perfect disposable troops” was not an uncommon ambition for ruthless military leaders. Whether this was a superior option to droids and soldiers was an open question, but I was leaning towards putting my faith in soldiers with droids used as a force multiplier.

It was amusing to see Vanatica put stasis belts on the Corrupted Untremi only to realize after the fact that this did nothing. She gave a grunt of frustration when I suggested that she try shoving them into the biostasis vault instead, but proceeded anyways. We did find another dozen Maintenance Untremi in the vault, a ridiculously ugly green humanoid wearing the remains of a suit of armor made of wood, and hundreds of biological specimens of unknown origins.

Still, this limited assault was potentially a highly productive one now that we had control of biological and genetic analysis gear, gene and protein synthesis equipment, a bunch of specimens in biostasis, and a fairly complete lab. A few items were overaged or in need of repair, but the Maintenance Untremi were already beginning the process of setting up defense turrets and commencing with repairs to the lab itself. They were even letting the Maintenance Untremi in the vault out.

While there was still a physics lab we hadn’t seen yet, there were still plenty of plenty of computer records of uplift experiments on several species, life-extension experiments, lots of designs for cybernetic implants, and a set of programs allowing the surgical systems to install most of them into humans and near-human species. The specimens in biostasis were also of a rather immense range, including several exotic metabolisms. Which was rather impressive even by the standards of my home universe.

(Vanatica) Hmm, first instance of local humans we’ve seen so far I think.

(Katlyn) Well, it seemed strange that the only humans we’ve encountered were exclusively from other expeditions to the Anomaly. It is kinda nice to see that others were here before us and quite possibly from our own set of universes if the Old Galactic Standard writing is any indication.

(Vanatica) Which sounds too ridiculously similar to English for it to be a coincidence.

(Katlyn) Well, we kinda knew that from Mint. She has always claimed that we were all speaking English, and she too was from a place called Earth.

By this point Vanatica and I realized that the others had let out the green humanoid who was speaking in unintelligible grunts. Jacob was again translating, which seemed to suggest this one had been recruited by another Jacob Hatfield to raid this castle in hopes of setting up some sort of a communications beacon home. Funny issue was that this one was supposedly fourteen hundred years ago and last I knew, the Federation was only about four hundred years old. So either temporal shenanigans were involved or even the Federation was plagued by multiple timelines like our own universes. There at least didn’t seem to be a mention of the rest of us alongside this other Jacob.

For whatever that was worth I suppose.