BECMI Chapter 85 – Recruitment Drive

“Good morning, Miss Saliaveli. I trust your headache isn’t bothering you anymore?” A little Healing magic had rid of her of most of the bruises she had suffered, thereby returning her to consciousness. She was naturally stripped, two subdermal surprises cut out of her first, and had been put into a room I simply completely shut, save for windows to let some air in and circulate. She had jumped onto her rough bed as the entire wall melted away opposite her, leaving me seated there behind a table… with a couple of computer displays up, keyboard in place, finger-mouse tracking extra gestures, and I wasn’t bothering to look at her as I spoke. I also brought up her personal records from their own computer drive on the imaging holo-projector, multiple pages winking up around the very clear image of her own head there. “You…!” she blurted out in shock and consternation. “How are you doing this?!” she demanded, all wide-eyed in disbelief. “Aren’t you a native? How are you understanding all of this?” she blurted out. “The same way I’m speaking your native tongue, Miss Saliaveli. I’m quite intelligent.” I flipped her a glance that pinned her to the wall like a fly. “Your associates are all dead, by the way. I don’t know where they got the idea that the moral and ethical guidelines of interacting with new planets, peoples, and cultures should be thrown out the window for the practice of becoming slavers, mad scientists experimenting on the helpless, brainwashers, cult leaders, and tyrant conquerors with no care for their underlings instead, but it doesn’t seem to have panned out for them.” She swallowed. “You, you even killed Chief Ferru?” she whispered in disbelief. I reached down out of sight of her behind the desk, and lifted up a wide brazier to put on the desk without looking. Sitting on top of it was the head of the former Security Chief Ferru, once the head of security for the then renegade, cult leader, and megalomaniacal would-be conqueror, his expression of hate and denial forever stamped onto his face. “I’ve completely subverted the systems and technology you stole from the , as you can see. Of course, you had a quintet of little surprises and backdoors you put into the system that I had to purge, but locating those and removing them was part of the fun.” My fingers were flicking over command keys rather too fast to follow, and programming language was racing across the screens like something alive, programs brought in and dispersed in a grand web of redesign. “Now, it seems like you didn’t have anything to do with the more morally unacceptable measures taken by your comrades, so you’ve been left alive.” A stone chair flowed up out of the floor as she stared at it without disbelief, but with great consternation. I pointed only once, still not looking at her. She swallowed and scampered rapidly into it, finding it cool, hard, but actually pretty comfortable. “I think I’ve gotten a fairly good picture of what was going on with the from conversing with your dead associates, Miss Saliaveli. Perhaps you might have something the others didn’t know or left out in their answers to my admittedly basic questions. Why don’t you start with your exit from hyperspace in this system, and go from there,” I did not ask her. I still wasn’t bothering to look at her, because I didn’t need to. The holo-projector had four extra displays beyond the two hardware sets, and I was somehow managing to interact on and between all of them at one time. --- Dani Saliaveli was quite shaken by the show of competency in handling the technology that so overawed the natives of this world, science so advanced they just considered it another form of their magic beyond their ability to understand. Clearly that was not the case with this… elf? It was hard to tell, as her skin was much whiter than other elves that had passed through the slave pens. It was neither albinism nor paint, her skin was just almost completely smooth and flawless white, with elegant pointed ears that only seemed to accentuate cold and flawless features and liquid ruby eyes and lips that went so well her black sclera, flowing unnaturally night-black hair, and needlessly lacy crimson and raven-black attire. She was programming a computer thousands of years of technological advancements ahead of this primitive world, and doing it with supernatural skill and surety, clearly familiar with everything. Dani’s blood ran cold, wondering just what she and the crew of the had managed to fall into. But she had been ordered to make a report, which was something that she at least had some experience of doing. “The came out of hyperspace at the outer edge of this system, which is designated Geos-14, a rim system in the frontier Jezebel Sector. We were engaged in routine mapping and survey of uncharted systems in Federation Space, our job primarily exploration and assessment, not military.” She paused, but the elfin just kept working. “You have my attention, Miss Saliaveli. Do not take my ability to multi-task at a superior level for a lack of it. Keep going.” Long-fingered hands with nails as black as ink Dani was abruptly sure were that color naturally continued to dance across keyboards and motion trackers with subtle deftness equal to the best coders she’d ever seen working in virtual replays. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. She nodded hastily. “Nothing seemed out of routine until we arrived in the inner system worlds, and detected this world smack dab in the middle of the ideal habitation zone… which had some strange form of energy field around it which we had no records of ever being discovered before.” Her hands worked nervously. “Within minutes of initiating a scan of the world and attempting to analyze the energy field, there was an explosion in the ship’s main anti-matter reactor. Emergency protocols managed to vent most of the explosion into space before it went critical, but the full and secondary drives were damaged and unable to save the ship as it fell into the gravity well. Full power to the anti-grav systems managed to prevent an uncontrolled plummet and stop us from a killing plunge, but we had little guidance as we came down and crashed badly. “That was… several of the local solar years ago. Captain Emeril has attempted to institute martial law and concentrate on keeping the ship secure and self-sufficient while making repairs, but…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “The is too damaged in too many critical systems, especially the main reactor. Without bringing in a Class Twelve fabber with the required materials available, there is no replacing the core, and that is completely ignoring the structural stresses that will likely tear the ship apart if we even attempted to break out of sub-light. “The nearest outpost of the Federation is only a hundred-some light years out, but the energy field around this world is completely interfering with subspace communications. We’ve not even received acknowledgment from the emergency beacon that was jettisoned while we were still in orbit, and it should have received at least a distant confirmation, even if no relief would be coming for some time.” Dani hesitated, trying not to think about this, but the truth of it had motivated her to leave the ship, in the end. “It will be at least twenty years before we are missed, and who knows how much longer before another ship is assigned to retrace our path and find us after that. Captain Emeril tried to maintain order, but between hostile native lifeforms, their strange powers, and the dangerous ecology, the idea of settling outside of the ship and waking up everyone in cryo to start a colony was nixed… over many protests. “Given what we could observe of the natives, they are in a firmly medieval mindset, with feudal societies, conquering empires, multiple intelligent races competing on one world for space and power, all of it fueled by the strange energy they call ‘mana’ and what seems like magic out of Exudar IV or some other video game. The natives are capable of ridiculously powerful personal feats, rivaling the highest standards of technology in their powers. “Captain Emeril started administering combat programming to people to secure his authority, and that was the trigger to the mutiny that Chief Ferru attempted. He failed, but was able to secure numerous supplies as he fled the ship in a shuttle, with several of us following us rather than be brainwashed by the captain into slave soldiers.” Dani paused to see if the elfin was following, but only more clicking of nails ceaselessly and an ever-mutating display of programming answered her, making her wince internally before the alien woman responded. “Chief Ferru was the mastermind of this slave-taking, gene-modding, brainwashing cult on his own. I can see why the captain was not taken by surprise by his mutiny, given his egotistical belief in his own intrinsic superiority,” the elfin murmured with clinical detachment, and Dani flushed. It was truly working with the tools they had available, the locals having no real resistance to the idea of enslaving others, converting enemies and slaves into servants, and doing it all in the name of their strange frog god. The idea that the frog god might actually be a real god was ridiculous to think… there were no such things, surely it was just another variant tradition of the magic these savages threw about so readily… “I just maintained the technology and kept everything operational. There are creatures attracted to the technology, some of the plant life seems to mutate weirdly in the vicinity of the generators, and they attempt to infiltrate the power systems regularly.” She shook her head in exasperation. “I have to do a lot of spraying and desiccating the systems here to keep everything running.” “I found your parked shuttles in the back woods, and will be making use of them going forward. Have you considered what you are going to be doing now that your megalomaniacal madman of a leader is reduced to a talking head?” the elfin asked her with merciless calm. “I… honestly did not think I’d survive. I was hoping that we might be able to set up a viable colony starting here, and draw other members of the crew to us.” “You set up a base of operations within operational flitter range of the and thought you wouldn’t get bombed into dust by a warbot and shuttle assault force as soon as they knew where to find you?” The cutting amusement was lethal to hear, trampling all over her delusions. “Of course, the mere idea of surveying the locals, ascertaining which were of acceptable moral and ethical fiber, and allying with them in a mutually beneficial exchange of men, materials, and knowledge didn’t occur to any of you, I’m sure…” Dani bridled. “Federation protocol is very firm on not interfering with developing cultures! Rapid uplifting of societies in the middle of this formative period always end in disaster!” “With megalomaniacs brainwashing natives, setting up cults to serve them, mutating the locals, and shooting anyone who gets in their way?” was the clinically razored reply. Dani shrank back down. Certainly their actions were in no way in accord with ANY kind of first-contact protocol. “In any event, this is not a first-contact situation,” the elfin went on, unperturbed. “Take a look at this.” An image of a robohorse in a polished blue hue popped up in front of Dani’s startled eyes. It was fairly classic in design, perhaps a bit more retro than current models, but she didn’t know exactly how. “Is that a Vehrenschult Industries Model you’re looking up?” she asked carefully, wondering why those files would be important. Was she looking to fab some invincible robosteeds for the local knights in armor? “No. This is a thirty-four-hundred-year-old piece of archaic technology that was sitting in a dragon’s hoard and awarded to Leopold Antonix, the Azure Knight of Darkmoor. Vehernschult Industries based their original robohorse models on this design.” Dani’s jaw would have hit the floor if it were capable of doing so…