《Home》 Home Chapter 1 101 RE(Rebirth Era) I woke up, hopping out of my sleep pod. I cracked my back and did some stretches. ¡°Sabrina, what is the news?¡± I spoke out, eliciting a response from my personal AI. My white room came alight, some light blue strips of light bracing the wall. A small bead popped out of a charging case, my AI¡¯s shell. The teensie gravity drive held within kept her afloat circling around my head. I popped into my custom-fit jumpsuit, the dark green trim flashed gently as it recognized my DNA, and the grey clothing melded against my body like a second skin. The dark green showed my rank, an Opheli, the rank just under the Rulers. I walked out of my room, hearing my AI list off various current events. ¡°Juol-isi has won the 1v1 combat tournament currently taking place.¡± A strong Giggam. Fought him once. Tough. She continued. ¡°The scientific community is also abuzz in what has been revealed to be a discovery of what dark energy truly is.¡± She said. I quickly stopped her. ¡°Show further info.¡± I said hastily, tuning my brain into the hive mind of the debate on the info and what it could mean. ¡°Dark energy as shown by a multitude of sources and scans to be a sort of wind of the universe. It pushes out expansion in all directions, everywhere at once, all the time. There have been multiple ideas proposed, with some already being worked on, such as unique energy plants, far faster travel in between galaxies, where matter interference and gravity interference is nil. This would allow us to coast into our new home within the week. Weaponizing it would be hard and ineffective, however, if dark matter were to be discovered, and should it have similar properties, it could be a very useful weapon.¡± She spoke in her robotic voice. Thank you, Sabrina.¡± I muttered quickly as the assault from the thoughts of billions in this simultaneos debate hit me. The hurricane of thoughts, accusations, and questions was hard to visualize, however this wasn¡¯t my first rodeo and I took it in stride. I took the Dragonfly, a mode of public transportation akin to trains took one wherever they might want to be. The electrified magnetic rails it coasted sped me through the migration ship, traveling 344 Holj before I was ejected from the Dragonfly at the Cafeteria section of the ship. I slowly ate a Jup stick, a lemony, sweet tasting stick of plant matter. Beside it I also had a small meat cube made from lab-grown Kilo meat. Kilo were like feathery, large centipedes. As I ate I poured over the data presented by the abundance of minds, and I came to my own conclusion. I presented my data, inspired by a few others. Energy fins. They would be attached to the sides of our ships, and they would provide significant boost. Over the course of the next hour many solutions were debated before one rose up to the top. Large haloes would surround the ships, and it would cycle the energy through, and this could potentially get us to the closest galaxy in the next twelve years. It would be risky however. There was a decision made. We would have to use our material stockpile for that instead of the additional housing that it could¡¯ve been used for. So tomorrow, we would enter stasis. We would cast an enchantment on every crew member, and very few would stay awake, only to maintain the drones and ships. I would not be staying awake, so I too would enter stasis. I decided where I would land. All in all, there were going to be eleven systems colonized, with hundreds of worlds that were going to be built on. I chose the hardest one. Krig¡¯Guyo. The advanced military world. I was going to be a field general. However, I had to beat a challenge. Rank in the top 20,000 in the arena. I was already rank 23,689, so I had some work to do. I returned to my quarters with a mission. I entered my closet, and equipped myself for the arena. It was a nonstop battle in there, and while virtual, copied your exact physical form and felt as real as anything else. The small dark blue triangles that dotted all across my light green armor reflected in the light of my visor. It was in the shape of a ¡®T¡¯ and was white. I activated my genetic tattoos, an enormous blue phoenix covered my back. The pattern repeated itself on my armor as well. I grabbed a RG-787 and a volt launcher. The long RG I held in my hands, and my volt launcher attached to my waist magnetically. I walked out of my quarters and took the Dragonfly again, this time to the arena. I walked in and logged into one of the terminals. I logged into my arena account, and was greeted by my fellow team Salamander. We hopped onto the war game, and saw we were against team Helio. Some lights flashed, and we entered the battlefield. Small, green and blue birds chirped in the jungle environment, and the map appeared. Me and my team silently pinged a few locations, organizing ourselves. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. ¡°I¡¯ll take the left flank, and hope to ambush them.¡± Ordered one of the eight team members, then pointing at me. The Uro didn¡¯t exactly point, for having no limbs to do so with, but did show the appropriate body language indicating it. ¡°You¡¯re the best we got, skirmish with them and pick them off if you can.¡± I nodded, and left running. I had a secret weapon though, and it was about to come out. I pulsed my brain, then neurons releasing immense amounts of energy into the area. The ¡®scanner wave¡¯ easily leapt across the 200 miles of terrain in this massive reality. I identified the team, and marked them all for my teammates. One was missing however. Top-notch cloaking, the best we had. They would be tricky. I noticed they were heading the right way, and gave them some pointers on how to better approach. I then took off running. My muscles flexed as I soared across the tree-filled landscape, bristling with green leaves and red bark, not unlike that home left so long ago. The mossy soil beneath my heavy, armored feet left easily seen tracks. This was one of the quickest maps to play on, the tracks usually demanded a speedy confrontation. I barreled across the landscape dodging trees and rocks, soaring ahead, before launching a grappling hook around a tree, my brain going into overtime, the cybernetic enhancements giving the math and answers, enough for my genetically enhanced glial cells processing it in the half second. The grapple reached out to the strong trunk of the tree, however not latching on. The metal rope ripped through the tree, slicing it in half, tearing the roots and wood up, launching them to the front of me while I slowed to a near halt, beginning a slow 5 mph jog. The tree fell into the forest, scattering the virtual birds. And as they fell, the earlier noted enemy team hit it straight on, sending two of their members careening into the ground. The other two in that section of the team, slowed as quickly as they could, but not fast enough. My volt launcher sent small chunks of electrically charged ionized matter, ripping through the weak shields of the scout unit I targeted. And as my grapple came back around, it caught the Heiive still in the air, and maneuvering my shoulder, rammed it into the ground. I continued to slam the rounds of my volt launcher into the armor of the Giggam, the electricity at such close ranges locking up the armor of the Giggam, and as the plasma-like substance drilled into the armor of the alien, it zipped out of sight. A ¡®game over¡¯. I dropped the volt launcher, picked up my RG-747, and launched a slug into the back of one of the slowing team members. They were launched far away, out of sight and out of mind. Not really, their location was still in my head, but they were of little consequence now. I quickly holstered my weapons, activated my cloak, and set off running. The movement around me wouldn¡¯t stop sensors from seeing me, but it was far to late. I was gone. Two of my team members launched artillery from where we had started, and the group still gathering themselves was blown to bits. I gave them the thumbs up, target down. This team was far out of their league. That is half the team down, now is time to find that guy who I had blasted away from the coordinated strike. I pulsed my mind again, getting an updated location of their position. The enemy team had engaged with my team, surprising them. We had managed to break even with them, driving them away after the loss of two more members. However, we had lost three to a surprise grenade and a well hidden sniper. He was the one I had failed to locate, and I got very worried. Deep breaths flew quickly in and out. The panic attack hit, my body felt like it was crunching up. I had failed again. Screams. Blood. Slaughter. I couldn¡¯t get there quick enough. The all too familiar face grinned a wicked grin, burned deep. My armor injected the solution into my arm, and I got up. I could do this. This was all virtual. The person I¡¯m going against is likely another PMI, like me. I shook it off, and ran towards the man downed. The crashed trees and destroyed path of his flight had provided a trail. I pulsed again, this time a tight scan, the energy flowing out in a cone. The blue and purple images rang in my mind, everything bigger than a pebble clear as day, though made confusing by the color. The ¡®dragon¡¯ Juncathari had launched into the sky, weapons ready and charging. On my position. The stream of highly condensed plasma rocketed through the air, covering the trees and ground, melting everything. I lept to the side, avoiding it¡¯s fiery path. I got my RG, and fired off a few rounds. They flew through the air, but now that I was at the disadvantage, I was incapable of doing anything but shooting up as the enormous genetically modified Juncathai sliced through the air and dodged my bullets. I pointed my left arm at it, my assistant AI helping me to aim. A small beam launched from my arm, going far 1.7 times the speed of light. The thin, blue beam only had one use in my custom armor, but fuck it. How else would I take this asshole down? The Polyyiu beam made of G-energy and Radio-Locked Gallium, pierced the shields, shattering them, penetrating through the armor, and vaporizing the cells it came into contact with, giving that one the ¡®game over¡¯ too. I got my gun back in my hand, and began to hunt down the last of my enemies. Two left. They were the hard ones though, and with a psychic and a magic caster against us, it would be difficult to take them out. Chapter 2 The jungle landscape flashed by me, streaks of green and red, the humid atmosphere touching my armor, dew forming. I pulsed again, to no avail. The caster had figured me out. I tried a new strategy, and ¡®flexed¡¯ my brain. I felt my blast effect the two enemies, both in the same area, roughly 20 miles in diameter. I couldn¡¯t pinpoint exactly where they were, but the blast did get them, and I coud guess from there. I called down spread out artillery fire from my friends. Shells stormed through the air and spread out over the area where I had detected them. They weren¡¯t hit, unfortunately. I continued my search, and finally hit the area where they were. I don¡¯t think they had left the general area, a sniper and a caster didn¡¯t have much reason to. The same trick I used last time wouldn¡¯t work again, I caught the psychic off guard, he likely was defending against it now. If I tried again, I could reveal MY location and letting a sniper know that was a horrible fucking idea. I ejected 180 nanites from my armor, and spread them out. As they progressed through the forest faster than I ever could with their microscopic gravity drives, I felt a ping. Half my nanites were being hacked. They fell out of the air with an AI tearing apart streams of code, setting off their ¡®bangs¡¯. An even smaller area was protected by a magic shield. Only a half mile across. All stealthing dropped, and I pinged their locations. A sniper sent out a scan pulse, registering me, and small drones, looking like crescents fired two merging beams on my location. I set up a shield to block them as well as possible, but my shields still broke, and my armor melted. The beams went right through me, dodging anything anything important, due to the reflection effects of a old, but still useful, technology called the scatter shield. The beams missed my beating heart, piercing my right bicep and my lungs. My armor thinned out some, partially covering the wounded spots, enough to apply some medicinal gel. It expanded quickly in my body, filling the gaps, letting blood run through, and providing a numbing sensation. It also sort of filled the purpose of helping my breath and flex my arm, but not very well. The air inside my suit got more oxygen-rich, letting me breath easier. My suit used more energy to help my damaged bicep work. When biology failed, technology was there. The drones shot again, again hitting me, this time through the kidney and the left side of my collarbone. The gel worked again, and my suit sucked more power. The drones were finally shot down by my team, before the damned drones could fire again. I sweat and my chest heaved, Muscles rippling, and a single, solemn bead of sweat dripped down my chest. My eyes clouded with tears, the numbing solution needed to have come before I even felt it. Damn it hurt. I stood slowly, fighting the urge to cool into a fetal position as I stood up, and small runes on my arms flashed and glowed, my pain being numbed more. I magically increased my adrenaline and regeneration rates, and a felt a significant drop in my soul, and a sort of tingle released off of me. Now that the video game-like mana in Infinity¡¯s atmosphere was now absent, I had not nearly as much magic. The sudden drop in skill I had had taken me by surprise, and I had just never picked it back up. ¡°I will learn magic,¡± I swore for not the first time, gritting my teeth, and standing at attention. My charred insides stung, but I would get over it. I had to. I would be a failure if I couldn¡¯t. So I had to. My subconscious shuddered at these thoughts. And the grin returned. That FUCKING grin! The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°Come on Rade,¡± It taunted. ¡°Where¡¯s your bravado now, your happy go lucky grin? Piece of useless shit, next time you should be more ready, be more prepared, don¡¯t let them down.¡± It took me by the shoulders, I could do nothing, I wasn¡¯t strong enough. My hands clammy, sweat poured off me in droves. ¡°YOU PIECE OF SHIT, COULDN¡¯T SAVE THEM THERE! WHY COULDN¡¯T YOU!¡± I could only flinch as it yelled at me, tossing me around in my own head. My own realm. ¡°I did all I could¡­¡± I whimpered in soft protest, a single tear running down my cut and bruised cheek. ¡°Yeah, and all you could wasn¡¯t enough, was it?¡± It whispered softly, the voice echoing as it floated away, dissipating into the darkness. I collapsed back to my knees. The syringe buried itself in my skin, the solution I had added to my custom suit, cooling my racing nerves, stopping the poison seeping into my body, as my psionic cells tried to kill themselves, and bring me down with them. As soon as I regained control over my body, the toxin stopped being released, as my cells remembered what they were doing was bad. I swept way the remainders of the attack, and slowly moved forward. By now the gel had done it¡¯s work, and I could function as a soldier again. I took off into the woods, looking for a fight. Hopefully not a fight lie that, but I couldn¡¯t control what my enemy brought to the battlefield. As I stepped by the drones, there was a flash of white light. My retinas burned, just like the rest of my body, destroyed in the self-destruct mechanism. I threw myself out of the virtual reality, and broke down on the floor, before dragging myself off the ground, heading to the Dragonfly, and getting taken back to my room, and put myself into the sleeping pod. I allowed myself to weep in blissful silence for a few hours before I had no more tears to cry with. Sabrina knew to shut the hell up when I came back like this. I stepped out again, checked the news, and found my team had won. My performance had shot me up the rankings, barely qualifying at rank 19,651. I head to the cafeteria, and got some grub. The cool water soothed the back of my throat, rehydrating me. This allowed more tears to spill out which I quickly dabbed away with my napkin. I slowly ate the cube of fruit in front of me, before I was notified I had made it. I would join the elite on the most advanced military planet in the soon-to-be formed Renewed Union. The Renewed Union was an industrial and scientific empire, with a strong budget for the military. Everything was built to have maximum function, nothing out of place. It satisfied OCD with clean lines and sharp edges, perfect symmetry, and functional, yet beautiful building and constructs. I slowly bussed my plate, and someone must have sensed my depression, and offered to do my cleaning up job. I gave them a shay smile, remembering it was easier to smile than frown, and got on my way. I wanted to leave this whole world behind, to stop the mental attacks, to be relieved of this mess of a world. No matter how advanced technology got, no matter how many times genetic engineering breakthroughs were reached, you couldn¡¯t delete misery. It was a fundamental part of the soul. I slowly reached up fighting the demons that told me I should just shoot myself and be done with it, and decided to actually sleep. And for the next 12 years, I did exactly that. Slept. Chapter 3 113 RE Everyone in the Renewed Union stopped what they were doing and stared. We had been let out of stasis just a month ago, and we got to see this sight, a galaxy rushing towards us. Stars grew brighter, and bigger, and then, we were there. There really is nothing like it. My ship entered a system with one enormous blue star, and a smaller red one orbiting it, naming it the Demon¡¯s Eye system. The ten planets that orbited it, three of which were gas giants, shone brightly in the first real solar system I¡¯d seen in over one hundred and fifteen years. I gawked in awe, however, my amazement was cut rather short because of a loud screeching sound, and a complete stop of the stretched light. ¡°No need to worry passengers,¡± a voice with a friendly Heiive accent announced into a small transponder embedded deeply in my ear. ¡°That was absolutely normal, just the sound of the dark energy riders being shut down. Kept them on for another second, and we¡¯d have been hundreds of lightyears past our destination!¡± I looked at the large planetoid we were entering orbit of. The three blue dots covered about an eight altogether of the surface, the rest of which was jungle, and rocklands. Very little of the soil was at all suitable, with there being very little soil to begin with. The rest of it was grey rock ,with bits of lichen covering parts of it. The blue dots were ferocious thunderstorms, containing and releasing roughly 89% of the water in the air combined. Lakes dotted the surface, with no real oceans to speak of. The world had one plant that was going to be repurposed into farming, a kind of long stalk with small bumps along the sides. These bumps would turn into flowers, and later, fruits. These fruits were rich with salt water, and incorporated a special kind of juice into it. Sour and salty, a unique mixture. The dirt was very rich in gold, but that was the only part abnormal about it. There was already ongoing research on how to do a spectacular sort of locking of the molecules that could turn it into a reinforced, high density fluid that could be solidified. There would be 29,000 people settling this world, an extremely small amount. However, there were new methods of reproduction that were extremely quick, and safe. Women had half of their eggs taken, ones that would not end up being used. Then various sperm donors, such as myself, would fertilize those eggs in ¡®birthing factories. The to-be children would be grown in pods, and would continue to grow until 24 years old. They would then be released, up to date on all kinds of information, they would also have their cybernetic and genetic enhancements, and would have had eggs extracted from when the women were on their period, the eggs being put back into the factories, and many sperm donations taken. Then the process would repeat. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I had mixed feelings on this. There was no consent for this process, and it just felt¡­ wrong. However, technically nothing bad could come out of this, because after release from the birthing pods they would be fully-grown adults, and independent. However, everywhere in the empire was extremely underpopulated. However with this process, every year, except for the first 24 that the factories were set up, new people would come out. That is how it worked for all of the races, due to us having similar reproductive systems. We touched down, in enormous transports that split off from the ship, and taking my small bag of personal belongings, I got off the ship, and became one of the first on an alien world. The ship started releasing swarms of ABCD¡¯s, autonomous building and collecting droids. The ship then reopened it¡¯s gates as the swarm of bots leaving left. I re-entered the mildly claustrophobic ship, as the bots took samples, and set up mining sites. I felt a pang of guilt remembering Mantis. The tall, powerful Mugani was the strongest of all of us, but when you were that big and powerful, it was hard to dodge a surprise orbital bombardment. The voice that roamed the back of my head decided to approach. ¡°You know you could¡¯ve saved him.¡± It whispered. I immediately swept that thought away, I was too busy rejoicing the moment. I got to my sleep pod, and took another long sleep. The ABCD¡¯s worked around the sleeping ship, as we took time off to go figure out how to turn the soil into a building material. Meanwhile, the framework for the city was being built, and meant it would not be a long process, the building of the city when we finally figured out how to lock the soil¡¯s molecules. As that happened, I slept For another eight years, I slept.