Chapter 21
Restricted Maritime Zone BZE:4200.04
Cycle 6002.667.09.25
Gil had been surprised that Sihric had suddenly agreed to have the ‘blessing extraction’ ceremony. When she first met him she felt his very identity was in his giants form. Its strength to protect, serve, fight and work for those he cared for. She felt he would always be torn between that and wanting to change for a chance to be with his wife.
This time it looked like they had the outcast, that was creating all the talk, with them as well. It was interesting to see human armour mixed with lizard clothes and cloak. Despite seeming watchful the outcast gave off a calm vibe that certain warriors had. Besenelles on the other hand was a mixture of nerves and excitement.
Besenelles had been given to Sihric years back much to most people’s relief, to avoid her suffering from several options for nasty political marriages. According to their sources in the village, the giant had diligently cared for the lovely young girl that the beast god seemed not to favour. But now it seemed that the pair were both hoping Sihric could be brought back to a much smaller half-lizard so they could be a real couple.
Gil was really enjoying the new temple. The fascinating thing was that unlike the medical bays that had been linked to a reactor, this one was different. It was almost like the reactor of this temple was alive. She couldn’t be entirely sure, since she had only had a few days of base data, but it seemed like the reactor had been at least thrown of balance by extracting energy from Mean
It was quite a concern as to how or if she could fix it. For helping Sihric today it shouldn’t be a problem. If energy was extracted from him, contamination shouldn’t affect him. For the reactor it should only help to have more compatible energy returned to it.
In a lot of ways she couldn’t believe that she was even getting the chance to be part of what was happening. Even just treating Nyoma had been exhilarating. Then treating Mean had been beyond her wildest dreams for the research she had hoped to find working for big organisations.
The only trouble was even if an expert or Mean were here to help now, she wasn’t even sure that they could fix things, let alone understand what was going on. For that matter, she hoped Mean was okay, the instability after his treatment and the worry that she might have done something horribly wrong was still bothering her.
For now she could only focus on Sihric. He at least had two supporters, which after seeing how Means extraction had gone, she was glad to see. She did worry that while Means was a bigger quantity extraction, Sihrics body had adapted to the state over many years and had no sign of genetic aerials.
Gil could only put on a brave face and talk Sihric through the change sheet Mean had made for her. She got through many question without seeming to make progress. When asked if he was ready to find a new way forward without the power he had relied on, she felt she could finally feel emotions from under the leathery skin of his face.
She realised Sihric was a lot more uncertain about it than even he probably realised. She assumed it was just training that made him push forward anyway.
That was until she got to the statement part of the form that Gil had never really understood. His statement was that he had been grateful for the strength, in the battles it had been needed for.
He now wished to be free of the beast energy so that he could fight the battles and be there for the people around him in a way of softer beings. He wanted to join a fight, that until recently; he had never seen a warrior shed their strength to enter.
Despite here confusion, it had done the trick. The dialogue now was resonating with ridiculously high levels of something that Mean had only even managed to describe to her as like the souls form of determination.
She happily announced that it looked like he was good to go. With that he sat in the chair ready. The others took a side each and she set the first field in place. Bizarrely there was little configuration needed to set the field.
For the process to be manageable Sihric would need to be freed of a lot of energy in the first phase. She set the image and dialed it up. She could tell the field hit him hard, if Besenelles hadn’t been there the untrained observer might not have noticed. She showed how much the extraction was shaking them despite the two males seeming composed.
The strange thing was, that she wondered if it wasn’t a show for the outcast. Not only did he seem reasonably unaffected by the affects of the second field being passed on to him, Sihrics body seemed to be adjusting and stabilising on his side faster as well. Unbelievably things were resolving on one side of his body. Then as this eased the pressure, Besenelles could recover and things would be ready to dial up again.
She was really unsure how the second phase would go. But again the side of the body with the outcast on would stabilise first. Then she could use the third shield on the anchor points on the outcast’s side with a thickener on the opposing side.
When Mean had described how a third shield had been used by several labs, instead of blades, she was relieved. But she definitely didn’t think that she would be working with so many of the functions so quickly.
Within a couple of hours the third field was starting to take shape and Sihric had almost halved in size. Once again she was surprised how well the chair was designed to cope with this. The thing she had been putting off though, was checking his Genome.
Without aerials this could be the bit that was going to be really messy in Sihric’s case. She mustered up her courage and requested a scan. She wasn’t sure if she should be more confused or more relieved. But seemingly out of nowhere he had developed aerials.
Confused she ran a search for these aerials. The results came in slowly as if the computer was working hard and re-building it algorithms and search criteria several times. It was beyond belief. The outcast and the generator both seemed to be contributing to the aerials Sihric was developing. Not only that but it seemed that the two aerial donors’ aerials, were becoming the same and passing on or adjusting links to stabilise Sihric.
Gil was fascinated switching between observing Sihric and the transformation of the aerials involved. Occasionally she would feel just as concerned for Besenelles who didn’t like so tiny any more, but it was obviously being worn down by her involvement in the procedure.
The with that the aerials of the outcast and the generator synchronised. For a moment Gil hoped it might just be like a system upgrade. But as the outcast suddenly looked unsteady and struggling to fight spasms to hang on, she became more worried.
Then to her terror one of the reactor shielding sensors, indicated partial failure. Now she flicked between watching the outcast hang on despite the spasms and watching the generator shielding failing. She sent a panicked message to the craft, that she was reading reactor shield failure.
Whoever was on comms at the craft quickly caught on to the panic in her voice and contacted engineering with her still on the line. After the initial crashing and cursing as the team ran to consoles things went calm. They reported back that the temple must run off a separate generator.
The islands generator had been improved with input from the computer while they were there. It was now a model of auto adaptive mastery. As far as they could tell it should be stable well beyond their great grandchildren’s time.
The comm’s personal said that wasn’t a very specific measurement.
A laugh came from engineering and they said it was an okay reference, as they had heard that it as the geneticist that was on the line.
They asked if Gil wanted someone down there.
She said that would be great.
In the panic, she had forgotten about her patient and his support. Strangely now they were all calm and the process seemed to be complete.
In odd clicks the outcast spoke for the first time. The computer slowly translated that it was thanking her for her work. It thought that they were ready for her to severe the connection and turn the shielding off.
Bizarrely she did and everything went eerily smoothly she flicked to looking at the reactor and it was still function with no shielding.
She was distracted as Sihric jumped out of the chair in reclined position. He let out a strangely joyful cry and ran around the room despite Gil’s feeble protests. With no one to curb his excitement he ran up and picked up Besenelles and spun her around in his arms.
She was soon giggling in relief.
Eventually he calmed down and sat down for scans despite his belief that he was clearly in incredible condition.
She listened to the strange translated conversation as she ran the scans.
From what the computer was translating, Sihric was teasing the outcast that he had been melodramatic and made the procedure seem like it destroyed you.
The outcast seemed strangely confused. He had lost the calm presence that he had before, but he also seemed, freer and lighter.
The strange conversation continued.
Sihric was struggling to put into words that he was feeling like he was just about free after being trapped for so long that he was stiff and achy.
The outcasts words were worrying.
They translated that he was feeling the same emotions. It was probably the after-affects of being linked with the beast.
What seemed to be confusing the outcast the most, was that after supporting in the procedure he felt better. He wondered if his condition had been linked to the state of the beast acting as a reactor. During this procedure the beasts condition must have resolved for him to be feeling better.
To add to the strangeness of the entire day; once Sihrics scans came up clear, they said there was no need for further observation and they quickly left. There was no way that she was going to stop them. It didn’t mean that Gil wasn’t worried something was horribly wrong.
Soon after they left Nyoma showed up and told her she’d heard Gil had, had an eventful morning.
Gils head was still spinning and it was struggling to put the pieces together. Nyoma listened and made reassuring sounds which surprisingly helped Gil process.
Eventually she was surprised that she had missed something so obvious. She leaned over to Nyoma and whispered if Nyoma had at least told her Mean was the outcast things might have gone smoother.
This clearly caught Nyoma off-guard.
Gil hurriedly apologised. She’d assumed that she would be the first he would tell, since Sihric and Besenelles seemed to know.
Nyoma regained her composure and asked what the real problem was. Gil indicated to the reactor monitor on a console to explain that the console had lost it’s shielding. They were confronted with a much different problem though. It seemed that the reactor had gone offline.
Nyoma wasn’t much help as Gil furious scrolled through readings and shortly after, someone from the engineering team arrived to join her on another console.
Dueliet had been called in to manage this situation and it sounded like she was down in engineering. So far Gurney had found the possible reactor site with re-modulated sensors. They had detected shallow seismic activity on a smaller nearby island and a partial collapse of potentially old volcanic structure.
Everyone was relieved to hear that there were no strange energy readings coming from there or anywhere close-by. Half a demi later and engineering called their team member back to the craft. An exploratory team would be sent out because they couldn’t make much sense of the readings from the temple.
As the guy from engineering was leaving, Gil asked how he would make sense of things.
He almost flippantly summarised that you start with the basics, then figure out what is really going on. To start with the basics Mean’s energy transformation had been estimated to be stabilised by some of the weirder team members, as requiring about two hundred large sharks to create.
From what she’d said and guessing off the nutty ramblings of his colleagues, you would need a giant prehistoric alligator to sustain the transformations of the village over this time. That’s got a low probability of actually being the situation they were facing. Then you just have to figure out what other mechanisms are in play.
He said then secondary questioning could be used for developing a hypothesis. Was there some sort of amplifier, are there multiple tanks of extracted crocodile energy linked together like cells in a battery somewhere? The same goes for the translation of the reactor being offline. Was their reactor also on a craft or did vibrations or coastal erosion lead the structure failure, that then cut the connection in the process?
Still worried Gil asked what if it was the basic scenario.
The guy laughed. He said he was pretty sure that they would have noticed if a prehistoric super alligator had mutated with Means ultimate shark-man energy. If it was a living creature why would it destroy the shielding, but then sit and wait for the procedure to be complete?
That did reassure Gil a little. She worked a while longer, but the more she went over things, the more she worried.
Dueliet checked in seeing how Gil was going after her big day. She was about to head back to the bridge and was also checking if Gil had any last updates.
Gil ask for secure connection
Dueliet hesitated for a moment, then clearly could be heard moving out of the room and adjusting her com. She confirmed once the comm connection was secure.
Gil reported that she was pretty certain that the generator had been one alligator like beast originally. This made her worry as to it’s cognitive abilities if it was able to wait for the procedure, then slink calmly slink off un-noticed.
She was also worried because unlike Nyoma who had only received aerial code, Sihric now had park shark genetic mix. This indicated that the generator beasts mutation had stabilised and that if it was ever returned to the shield, even those there for extraction would be affected by the new genetic code.
On top of that there was one other thing that she was hoping to prove wrong before worrying people. But she hadn’t found any errors in the scans. The projectile that she had been analysing from the Tliet fighters directly de-stabilised the spirit. It suggested another party was involved; because the technology seemed beyond them and not relevant for fighting lizard-elite.
Dueliet whistled at the list of worries. She reflected that this had been a tough lot of issues to be dealing with and thanked her for reporting them. Dueliet asked if Gil wanted someone to give her a ride back to the ship for a couple of days down time.
Gil laughed and thanked her for her consideration. She said it would only make things worse. While she was here, she could at least better understand things and maybe even help. If she had down time she would worry even more with no way of processing it.
Dueliet understood and said to let her know if she changed her mind. She thanked her for her days work on top of everything else she had already accomplished and signed off to head to the bridge.
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