Star Force: Cascade (SF73) Read online

  “Perhaps a more intricate addition process,” Davis offered.

  “I’d guess something like that,” Paul agreed.

  “Once you get some ambrosia in you, feel like taking a nap on a med table?”

  “Might as well figure this out sooner rather than later,” he agreed, slowly getting to his feet. “If I fall feel free to catch me.”

  “Where you going?” Davis asked.

  “To trade my towel in for some clothes. Morgan pulls off the nude patient thing better than I do.”

  2

  “Here,” Vortison said, pointing to the hologram that was situated beside the med table that Paul was now sleeping on. Curious as he was as to what was happening to him medically, his need for rest had called for a crash nap while the scanners did their work, arrayed over him like a giant arch.

  “Here what?” Rio asked, looking on with Aaron and Davis at the small point somewhere inside Paul’s head that had been enlarged.

  “Tissue displacement. And here,” the chief geneticist said, pointing to the base of Paul’s holographic neck, “bone restructuring.”

  “Why bone?” Davis asked.

  “Curious, isn’t it? The nodules that make up the Jumat emitters are located in all tissues, even the heart muscle. I’d guess this is due to transmission angles, but in the case of his skeleton the flash growth actually damaged the bone, for I can see the work the regenerator did creating new tissue,” he said, zooming in even further and highlighting a specific region around a tiny sphere.

  “The flash growth actually broke his bones?” Rio asked.

  “On a very small scale, yes. That’s correct. I think your insistence on pushing the ascensions immediately didn’t allow for a necessary conversion. In fact I can show you,” he said, bringing up a second hologram to Rio’s right that had Paul’s biomonitor data. The level of detail was far less, but it showed the same location in his neck.

  “If I can loop this…” Vortison said, bringing the full, multi-hour process into a three second compression. “And there you go.”

  The three Archons looked at the very small change in the tissue, almost too small to notice if the medtech hadn’t pointing it out to them.

  “The bone was prepping,” Aaron realized.

  “By beginning a ‘softening’ cycle that would allow the flash growth to be absorbed, then the bone density could even out afterwards or retain the higher density like a cocoon around the emitter. I’m not sure which, but either way that softening was never allowed to fully take place, hence he had a lot of tiny bombs go off inside and break bone, along with probably damaging the new tissue at the same time from the collision.”

  “Did the regenerator fix the Jumat tissue?” Davis wondered.

  “It did,” Vortison said, bringing up two more holos, one the before view of Paul post-ascension and the other more detailed one of him currently. “All is functioning correctly now, though I only have Morgan’s file to compare with. I highly suggest you don’t try any more 1-time ascensions going forward, especially with the unknowns. There is no data on them for us to speculate on.”

  “Was this problem in the database file on Jumat?”

  “No, it wasn’t. And not a lot is. I don’t think they wanted people understanding the full depth of the psionics, medically speaking. Most of the files are geared towards maintenance and repair, not their actual construction. Ascensions aren’t even mentioned other than a transition period, and that was in the restricted files.”

  “What about his current fatigue?” Rio asked, glancing down at Paul who was lying motionless with his hands folded over his abdomen in a ‘Jedi trance’ pose.

  “Jumat tissue is the densest and has the highest volume of all the psionics we’ve discovered. As a result it had to suck a lot of resources out of his body just for the building blocks, not to mention the energy expenditure. Add in his workout load, which you said was already full and completed for the day, then add the drain the regenerator had by cannibalizing even more tissue to make repairs…well, let’s just say he’s been hit on all angles and needs a table of food and a good, long nap.”

  “Anybody got some whipped cream and a feather?” Aaron asked, prompting a smirk from Davis before he pointed into one of the holograms.

  “How crammed is his head getting with the new tissues?”

  Vortison twisted his own neck to the side, as if in redundant thought that wouldn’t quite process. “If you’d asked me earlier I would have said you’d be experienced a world of problems by now, but every upgrade has fit in seamlessly, excluding the first bit of nonsense with the latent abilities being suppressed through successive reproduction cycles. It’s all fitting in there, but there was a lot of reorganization going on this time, simply due to the size of his emitter particles…which are larger than Morgan’s, by the way. I don’t know why.”

  “Did hers grow with time?” Rio wondered.

  “In volume, no. Density, yes, and number, yes. It seems you add a few more as needed in response to training, but not in any localized area. The distribution pattern is like clockwork, and hers have increased by…” he paused, checking another file for the number, “18% since her first scan. Density has increased by 208% on the originals, less so on the newer growths due to them beginning at a higher…damn, that may be your answer right there.”

  “Paul is more advanced,” Aaron said, catching on. “So maybe the dragons built in a curve to match power output to your fitness level.”

  “No,” Rio differed. “Not unless volume is a variable. Have any of Morgan’s doubled up in the same location?”

  “Never,” Vortison said firmly. “There is a wide distribution pattern.”

  “How much bigger are Paul’s,” Davis asked.

  “17%, each and every one,” the medtech testified. “The precision is machinelike.”

  “Individual variation?” Rio floated.

  “Possible,” Vortison allowed.

  “Morgan is not going to like to hear that,” Aaron said, with Rio nodding. “Damn, what would this look like on a Zen’zat?”

  “Given their larger size? No, it has no effect. Other psionics may grow larger under the stimulation, but I’m positive Jumat particles will not. They act almost like implants rather than a functioning part of an entire system. Leaches, if you will, that suck ambrosia and other nutrients out of the system while remaining isolated from it. Same way with the bioshield emitters. They’re not part of your cognitive processes like the other tissues are, even if some of them are positioned within your skull. They’re ‘hardware,’ linked to software but independent of it.”

  “Do you think we got enough data to locate the trigger?” Davis asked.

  “Too early to say. The fact that we’ve got several hours’ worth is promising, but I don’t want to commit to anything just yet.”

  “How soon will you know?”

  “Maybe tomorrow…maybe 50 years from now. We have a stack of data to sort through looking for a needle. If it’s in there we’ll find it, but I can’t quote you a number, even if I have my own suspicions…none of which I feel like sharing, because they’re a total gut instinct that will probably prove wrong.”

  “So insecure,” Aaron commented, shaking his head slightly.

  Vortison frowned, then cringed as he decided to violate his own order. “I think Paul got enough, but each trigger is different so we won’t know until we actually find it…if we find it.”

  “If you do,” Davis said, his voice imbuing importance, “then we will have a significant advantage against the V’kit’no’sat…assuming they hold to protocol.”

  “You already do with Sav,” Vortison pointed out.

  Rio shook his head. “No, Davis is right. Jumat isn’t a technique, it’s a literal biological cannon. If we all get this, par for the course, we’ll be able to take down other Zen’zat far more powerful than us…even some of the larger races. Jumat is pretty much the holy grail for the Zen’zat, and only a rare few have ever achieved
it.”

  “I know the numbers,” Vortison reminded him.

  “But you haven’t seen it in action. Haven’t felt it hit you. Morgan has a huge advantage over the rest of us, and she’s learned to use it so well that no one could touch her until I got Ubven.”

  “Unless she made a mistake,” Aaron added.

  “She doesn’t make many. This is going to be extremely important if you can find the trigger.”

  “And give the V’kit’no’sat even more reason to hunt down and eradicate us.”

  Davis pointed a finger at the trailblazer. “Word.”

  Aaron frowned at him. “Word?”

  “It’s old school.”

  “I know what it means, just didn’t expect you to use it.”

  “My vocabulary altered going through basic, then some more in the sanctums afterwards.”

  Rio glanced at Aaron. “We’re rubbing off on him.”

  “It’s pithy, so therefore useful,” Davis clarified. “We know the V’kit’no’sat will want us dead. If we get Jumat we’ll be better able to defend ourselves, but it’ll enrage them even further.”

  “How do you know that?” Vortison asked.

  Davis hesitated to answer, trying to find the right words. “It’s an Archon/Zen’zat thing.”

  “It means we’re getting to use the cool toys they’re banned from,” Aaron translated.

  “That makes a weird sort of sense,” Vortison said, returning to his data examination and dismissing all but the active hologram.

  “How strong is he? Concussive wise?” Rio asked.

  “Difficult to say, but he shouldn’t have any coordination. That will come with training, as you well know. I would guess he can produce a great deal more force than Morgan could initially, but nothing compared to her levels now.”

  “The new emitters Morgan has got…gradual or flash growth?” Aaron asked, getting back to another point.

  “She’s never mentioned any painful transitions, so I’m assuming gradual. The flash growth seems to only manifest during ascensions or under the stimulation of a regenerator. Something we still haven’t fully cracked, and it’s not a tech issue, I’m afraid. We’re not supplying the necessary genetic command codes. The ones the V’kit’no’sat use are so complicated even I don’t fully understand what I’m reading when I’m reviewing them…and like most things, they didn’t bother to leave an instruction manual in the database.”

  “Does bioshield add more emitters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Volume increase?”

  “No. They actually seem to be patterned the same way, or rather from the same source design material. The Jumat is larger, but they’re pretty much the same type of psionic tissue. Density increases, along with number of particles, equates to upgraded strength.”

  “He was also the first to get bioshield,” Davis pointed out. “Any chance that’s a coincidence?”

  “Discounting Morgan as an anomaly,” Aaron clarified.

  “Actually it’s going to be one of the first avenues I pursue looking for the trigger,” Vortison said. “I’m hoping it’s not a coincidence and there is a correlation between the two.”

  Rio gestured towards Paul. “How soon is he going to be back into training shape?”

  “It’ll take more than a day for his body to digest the necessary foodstuffs to replace the redundant tissue that was cannibalized. Knowing him he’ll probably be back at it in 12 hours or so. I’d recommend taking it longer than that, but new psionics are like candy to you guys and you can’t help but pursuing them with equal fervor.”

  “Change that to ‘donuts’ and you’d be about right,” Aaron said deadpan.

  “Alright then,” Rio said, taking a step back and spinning around heading for the door. “If you find any more interesting stuff send me a report. I’m heading back to my own training. I’ll get with Paul later for…calibration issues.”

  Vortison frowned at the retreating Archon. “Meaning what?”

  “Nothing you have to worry about,” he said, walking out the door.

  Synthia-462991 walked down a hallway of the advanced training group’s private sanctum within Atlantis, having located Paul’s mental signature in one of the many mediation chambers ahead and needing to find him. Her master was in an intense training session at the moment and couldn’t be disturbed so she’d been sent to relay the message to Paul personally, but she didn’t expect to see Paul naked until she turned left and walked into the chamber to find him standing in the center and his clothes and shoes piled up on the edge of the circular room.

  “Oh…I’m sorry,” she said, glancing down at the floor for a moment out of reflex before looking back at him again as he turned around to face her. “I didn’t think you’d be undressed.”

  “If it mattered I would have closed the door. Am I in your way?”

  “Way?” she said, looking him up and down twice approvingly.

  “Do you need this chamber? I didn’t check the schedule, just grabbed an open one since this wing looked deserted.”

  “No, no…I was just sent to find you. Rio is stuck in an endurance challenge but he wanted to grab you before you got busy too. He didn’t expect you’d be back in training after only 5 hours.”

  “I had a really good crash nap,” Paul said, running his fingers through his short, blue hair. “And you can stop being awkward and just enjoy the view while you’ve got it.”

  Synthia almost blushed. “That obvious?”

  “Well, I do try to stay in shape…”

  “I noticed,” she said, smiling widely. “Rio said it’s important, so he sent me to find you.”

  “Important enough to bother me, but not stop his own workout?” Paul said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Sorry. When I felt you in here I didn’t think I’d actually be disturbing you…do you always mediate naked? And where can I buy tickets?”

  Paul laughed. “No. I’m not meditating, just needed some privacy to work on my new ability. The clothes really get in the way, hence they had to go.”

  “If you wanted privacy you could have closed the door.”

  “I’m displacing a lot of air, and connecting to the hallway makes it less turbulent. I didn’t know any hot padawans would be walking by.”

  “Hot? Are you flirting with me?”

  “A little.”

  “Why…other than just messing with my head?”

  “Returning the compliment in your eyes. I can get dressed if it’d make things easier on you?”

  “I’ll manage, thanks.”

  “Is there more to the message or did you just want to play cheer leader?”

  “Can I?”

  Paul smirked. “What is it that Rio wants?”

  “He said something about wanting to get to your memories while they were fresh. Wouldn’t get into it when I asked anything further.”

  “How long until he’s finished with his challenge?”

  “A little less than 3 hours to go.”

  “I’ll meet him when he’s done then.”

  Synthia nodded, then walked over and leaned against the wall, still staring at Paul. “Don’t let me hold you up. What exactly are you doing anyway? I know it’s Jumat related, but…”

  “Trying to get a feel for the damn triggering sensation,” Paul said, with a bit of frustration in his voice. “It feels like goosebumps, and I’m only able to do it about a third of the time I try. Once it starts I’m also having trouble sustaining it, and when I can it blows off me almost immediately. I have almost no control at all and ripped my shirt earlier, so I ditched the clothes. Until I can at least confine it to my arms and legs I’m better off naked.”

  “Makes sense,” Synthia agreed. “Is it really invisible?”

  “Save for a slight distortion, yes. Hold on…let me try again,” the titan said, closing his eyes and trying to make himself get goosebumps. It wasn’t something that he knew how to do, so he just tried to imagine himself in places of cold or excitement previou
sly that had rendered the skin pucker. He had to run through four different memories before he got one to catch and a tingle manifested itself at the base of his neck.

  He tried to latch onto it, which was like grabbing for a wet bar of soap under water, and managed to increase the volume a bit before it traveled down his back and mushroomed out into the air behind him.

  Synthia laughed, covering her mouth with her hand before she said anything.

  Paul frowned. “You saw the distortion?”

  “Yeah,” she said, giggling.

  “No, it didn’t come off my butt,” he clarified. “Started in my neck and went down my back before releasing.”

  “Took you a while.”

  “It’s getting harder and harder to get goosebumps. My bag of tricks is wearing thin, but I’m not that close to finding a way to manually do it yet. This may sound odd, but it’s like getting a third arm that you’ve never used before that’s twitching around all over the place whenever you send a mental signal to it and…yeah, ok, bad metaphor. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Kind of like the bioshield?”

  “Somewhat, but that’s a direct activation. This energy has to be generated, then released. Two step process that makes it a whole lot more trickier.”

  “Are you ticklish?”

  “Um…not sure, actually.”

  “May I?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in an unsure gesture.

  “Is this training related or are you flirting back?”

  “Both,” she said honestly.

  “That’s the best kind. Go ahead.”

  The padawan walked over to him and stepped behind where he couldn’t see. “Don’t use your Pefbar. A blind reaction should be better.”

  “Ok,” he said a moment before he felt her run her finger down his spine slowly.

  The next thing Synthia knew the air in front of her face suddenly blossomed and kicked her hair back. “Worked?”

  “Guess I am ticklish,” Paul admitted.

  “Being naked is probably part of it. I’m guessing here, but as far as I know most Archons might get naked without flinching, but we are hardly ever touched when we are.”