Aboard the Uyudaro Class Tantra.
January 01, OE 102
Circle Standard Time: 1:18AM
Madin Eo felt his consciousness begin to reassemble.
It was never a pleasant sensation - neither at first, nor later, no matter how many times one undertook it. The Circle's technology was such that, upon traveling to a new world, passengers aboard its vessels would be pre-programmed with the language and information necessary to interact with its culture. While this, in theory, sounded all well and good, in practice it felt unnervingly like waking up, feeling as though one had managed to miss out on about ten years worth of their life... Without anything about them actually changing. In addition, because it only modified existing memories instead of creating brand new ones, it sometimes created some confusion in understanding - such as forgetting the planet one's spouse was originally from... Or that they existed at all.
To some, giving access to their cranium to some faceless automatic system might have seemed...
Invasive.
But, to the citizens of the Great Circle, such things were both ordinary, and desirable - for it was on those central systems that they had once depended on to forge the unbreakable bonds of trust between worlds.
...Once.
Ah, yes - he thought mildly - the past tense was already settling in.
A blue-tinged hand gripped the edge of his stasis pod, and the Meyven lurched into a sitting position with a groan, reaching up to massage his temples, pushing long strands of hair out of his eyes as he did. A nanomachine bath worked to clean his skin, leaving only a pale aquamarine behind. The tide of small creatures served two purposes - one, to adapt him and those on the ship to the myriad of microorganisms that inhabited the Earth sphere by synthesizing untold billions of artificial bacteria over the course of their voyage - and also as a kind of coating, one that served to protect his skin from the ultraviolet rays that were not native to his own world - a deep, dark place below a depthless sea, where he had once whiled away his days in peace.
Such times were long past, and as he shook the last vestiges of sleep from his mind, reality began to settle in once more.
There was work to be done.
At length, he found himself striding purposefully down the dark corridors of the Tantra towards its bridge, pulling his off-white uniform close around him as he did to fend off the cold. The ship, it seemed, still hadn't even been fully reheated - and he hadn't seen another soul... Which could only mean one thing:
Something had happened.
As he entered the bridge, he was greeted by a majestic sight on the ship's massive forward monitors: A tremendous planetoid looming up at them, so vast that it eclipsed even the viewscreen itself with its creamy, orange and yellow surface. A ring of asteroids clustered about its exterior, jostling soundlessly with one another for position in their endless race about the planetoid... And he found himself struck, briefly, by it's majesty, in uncharacteristic uncertainty.
"Is that the Earth?" He said, incredulously.
A familiar voice answered him from the control panel overseeing the entire operation.
"No, Meyven. It's a gas giant, referred to in local parlance as Jupiter."
The broad shouldered form of Myr Rodis - an individual of import in their ranks, whose title would roughly have been translated as "Strategist" - came into view, and Madin felt the tension in his chest begin to recede. At least, he thought, he would not have to face whatever challenge had prompted their interruption alone.
"Ah. Good." Sighed the alien, with no small amount of relief in his voice.
He strode up and patted a hand on the armored shoulders of the larger man, who turned to give Eo a curious look, as though surprised he had taken to the customs of this new world so readily. Maskull towered over him in height - the majority of his body having been replaced with high performance cybernetics at some point prior to the ES wave - making the two appear an odd, mismatched couple. Yet, they had endured together the devastation of the ES Wave, the loss of their civilization... And were fellow travelers on this last, forlorn hope for survival, giving birth to an odd kind of respect between them born of mutual trauma.
"There are still some ways to go before we reach our destination." Said Rodis, his voice calm and even in its baritone, without even a trace of its cybernetic source.
"Then, why was I awakened?"
"An emergency situation. The Tantra detected what we have determined to be a distress signal being broadcasted from one of the distant Terran colonies orbiting Ganymede."
- The cyborg lifted a hand, pointing to an area just on the outside of a dark sphere on the outskirts of Jupiter.
"...Somewhere in orbit around that moon right there. Too far for any other inhabited location to assist, it seems."
Madin listened, arms folded as he contemplated the situation... but then, his response was immediate.
"We should help, then."
...The Strategist only raised an eyebrow, questioningly, as he regarded the young upstart.
"Is that really wise?" He asked, turning away from the control panel as he did so, palm upturned as he laid the facts of the situation bare.
"We come bearing weapons of great and terrible destruction, to a civilization that is only classified as a Class Two Plus on the Circle Advancement Index... A highly aggressive one, at that. There's no telling how they may react to our presence."
"Yet, for us to cruise idly by would hardly leave the best first impression, would it? The entire Earth Sphere will be watching us, Myr."
The cyborg paused, as if to offer a rebuttal... But eventually averted his gaze, giving a shrug as he did so, returning to the instruments.
"If you believe such a thing to be necessary."
"I do."
"As you will then, Meyven."
The matter settled, Madin clasped his hands together, rubbing them eagerly. It wasn't that he took the matter any less seriously - it was just that he couldn't have asked for a better way for them to make their presence known. Rather than skulking around the fringes of the solar system and fretting about how not to come across as a much-feared invasion force, now they could introduce themselves as benevolent saviors! He quietly said a prayer of thanks to the Guardian before continuing brightly;
"Who else was awakened? Any pilots?"
"Just the one. I understand there was some kind of malfunction with their hibernation unit. It's being rectified as we speak."
"One?!"
The Meyven couldn't hide the slack-jawed shock on his face. He was used to charging into battle at the head of (or preferably, behind) a dozen Bioroids armed to the teeth - but only one pilot, besides himself, had been thawed out in response?
"Who?"
January 01, OE 102
Circle Standard Time: 1:18AM
Madin Eo felt his consciousness begin to reassemble.
It was never a pleasant sensation - neither at first, nor later, no matter how many times one undertook it. The Circle's technology was such that, upon traveling to a new world, passengers aboard its vessels would be pre-programmed with the language and information necessary to interact with its culture. While this, in theory, sounded all well and good, in practice it felt unnervingly like waking up, feeling as though one had managed to miss out on about ten years worth of their life... Without anything about them actually changing. In addition, because it only modified existing memories instead of creating brand new ones, it sometimes created some confusion in understanding - such as forgetting the planet one's spouse was originally from... Or that they existed at all.
To some, giving access to their cranium to some faceless automatic system might have seemed...
Invasive.
But, to the citizens of the Great Circle, such things were both ordinary, and desirable - for it was on those central systems that they had once depended on to forge the unbreakable bonds of trust between worlds.
...Once.
Ah, yes - he thought mildly - the past tense was already settling in.
A blue-tinged hand gripped the edge of his stasis pod, and the Meyven lurched into a sitting position with a groan, reaching up to massage his temples, pushing long strands of hair out of his eyes as he did. A nanomachine bath worked to clean his skin, leaving only a pale aquamarine behind. The tide of small creatures served two purposes - one, to adapt him and those on the ship to the myriad of microorganisms that inhabited the Earth sphere by synthesizing untold billions of artificial bacteria over the course of their voyage - and also as a kind of coating, one that served to protect his skin from the ultraviolet rays that were not native to his own world - a deep, dark place below a depthless sea, where he had once whiled away his days in peace.
Such times were long past, and as he shook the last vestiges of sleep from his mind, reality began to settle in once more.
There was work to be done.
At length, he found himself striding purposefully down the dark corridors of the Tantra towards its bridge, pulling his off-white uniform close around him as he did to fend off the cold. The ship, it seemed, still hadn't even been fully reheated - and he hadn't seen another soul... Which could only mean one thing:
Something had happened.
As he entered the bridge, he was greeted by a majestic sight on the ship's massive forward monitors: A tremendous planetoid looming up at them, so vast that it eclipsed even the viewscreen itself with its creamy, orange and yellow surface. A ring of asteroids clustered about its exterior, jostling soundlessly with one another for position in their endless race about the planetoid... And he found himself struck, briefly, by it's majesty, in uncharacteristic uncertainty.
"Is that the Earth?" He said, incredulously.
A familiar voice answered him from the control panel overseeing the entire operation.
"No, Meyven. It's a gas giant, referred to in local parlance as Jupiter."
The broad shouldered form of Myr Rodis - an individual of import in their ranks, whose title would roughly have been translated as "Strategist" - came into view, and Madin felt the tension in his chest begin to recede. At least, he thought, he would not have to face whatever challenge had prompted their interruption alone.
"Ah. Good." Sighed the alien, with no small amount of relief in his voice.
He strode up and patted a hand on the armored shoulders of the larger man, who turned to give Eo a curious look, as though surprised he had taken to the customs of this new world so readily. Maskull towered over him in height - the majority of his body having been replaced with high performance cybernetics at some point prior to the ES wave - making the two appear an odd, mismatched couple. Yet, they had endured together the devastation of the ES Wave, the loss of their civilization... And were fellow travelers on this last, forlorn hope for survival, giving birth to an odd kind of respect between them born of mutual trauma.
"There are still some ways to go before we reach our destination." Said Rodis, his voice calm and even in its baritone, without even a trace of its cybernetic source.
"Then, why was I awakened?"
"An emergency situation. The Tantra detected what we have determined to be a distress signal being broadcasted from one of the distant Terran colonies orbiting Ganymede."
- The cyborg lifted a hand, pointing to an area just on the outside of a dark sphere on the outskirts of Jupiter.
"...Somewhere in orbit around that moon right there. Too far for any other inhabited location to assist, it seems."
Madin listened, arms folded as he contemplated the situation... but then, his response was immediate.
"We should help, then."
...The Strategist only raised an eyebrow, questioningly, as he regarded the young upstart.
"Is that really wise?" He asked, turning away from the control panel as he did so, palm upturned as he laid the facts of the situation bare.
"We come bearing weapons of great and terrible destruction, to a civilization that is only classified as a Class Two Plus on the Circle Advancement Index... A highly aggressive one, at that. There's no telling how they may react to our presence."
"Yet, for us to cruise idly by would hardly leave the best first impression, would it? The entire Earth Sphere will be watching us, Myr."
The cyborg paused, as if to offer a rebuttal... But eventually averted his gaze, giving a shrug as he did so, returning to the instruments.
"If you believe such a thing to be necessary."
"I do."
"As you will then, Meyven."
The matter settled, Madin clasped his hands together, rubbing them eagerly. It wasn't that he took the matter any less seriously - it was just that he couldn't have asked for a better way for them to make their presence known. Rather than skulking around the fringes of the solar system and fretting about how not to come across as a much-feared invasion force, now they could introduce themselves as benevolent saviors! He quietly said a prayer of thanks to the Guardian before continuing brightly;
"Who else was awakened? Any pilots?"
"Just the one. I understand there was some kind of malfunction with their hibernation unit. It's being rectified as we speak."
"One?!"
The Meyven couldn't hide the slack-jawed shock on his face. He was used to charging into battle at the head of (or preferably, behind) a dozen Bioroids armed to the teeth - but only one pilot, besides himself, had been thawed out in response?
"Who?"
Last edited by a moderator:
