"As I recall, we have a minimum thirty minutes, perhaps more to recharge." Replied Sir Gavin.
He looked up at the broken Moon.
"Natural, or un-natural I wonder." He wondered aloud.
"My bet's unnatural," Jaq says as she follows Flynn along.
As they continue along, Jaq keeps her eyes scanning the surrounding terrain.
"Flynn, how do you know there's something thirty miles away? And what did you do to me? I don't think I've ever run this fast, even at a sprint."
Sir Gavin changes his mind and goes with the patrol. (He'll take the Haste as well.)
Traveling With haste, through the thick flora of this seemingly uninhabited world, It would take roughly 30 hours to get to your location. This is due to their being no paths to follow. Even animal hunting trails are seemingly absent.
The only sounds that immediately register are that of calm wind through trees and bushes.
Getting ready to set out, one can gather a rolling hill building into a small mountainous region on the way to your destination.
Aurora takes in the interior of the "car". It seems that these aliens enjoy their comfort! She sits still, waiting to see where they are going.
"What ever disease has stricken your ability to speak, I'm so sorry."
Lunis expresses deep sympathy by lightly touching her own throat as she speaks. She gives a small smile as she leans back.
"We'll be there soon...
She gives Aurora a wink before she flips open a panel on the arm of the couch. a few button presses later, a bottle of what look to be wine pops up from a sliding hatch on the table. Two glasses follow, both of an odd curvy stock with a surprisingly shallow bowl.
"If the humans gave us one thing... drinkable alcohol. I wish we could imbibe like they can."
She pours roughly half a shot into each glass, taking her own glass in hand.
"Enjoy."
After setting up a monitor, Jaq gets to work on a quick and dirty virus. It wasn't going to be pretty, but she hoped it'd be effective.
Frustrated, Jaq begins anew, switching from sweet tea to Mountain Dew and Monster as the hours pass.
Although the virus is created to do as designed, with her current skill in operation and her lack of knowing the cyber security levels...it may take a a massive stroke of luck to accomplish.
"Jaq—if you're creating something on this world, I can use the local magic to guarantee it succeeds."
"But they could tell the second you entered the network last time. And we can not reveal the location of our ship a second time—some I'd caution strongly against network hacking. That said, if you can get me the schematics for any simple devices, I can use the magic of this world to temporarily create one that should last indefinitely as long as we keep it near the manabug."
"Magic?"
jaq looks up, dark bags under her now bloodshot eyes. She stares at Flynn incredulous for a moment before sweeping a hand at the monitor full of code.
"Sure, why not? Lemme just add an ascii pentagram in there," she says sarcastically. She sighs as she leans forward and pinches the bridge of her nose.
"No, they caught wind when I tried to get into the database they apparently have the schematics and component designs for the anti-grav and reactionless drives. My plan was raise a ruckus and hope we can grab Aurora in the confusion. I figured the best way was to have them try and halt multiple simultaneous attempts on the database."
She's tired, having spent several hours straight on this project, and shows in her defeated voice.
"Not that if this works is going to matter anyway. I'm probably going to get drummed out for not even bothering to take some common sense precautions before trying to hack my way in."
The Night begins to fall. Roughly 8 o'clock in the evening. The 'mana-bug' begins to rapidly scuttle around with it's six legs within the jar. It also begin to generate a chirp. Akin to that of a cricket, but from its mandibles/mouth area.
"Jaq, with the Manabug, I can track Aurora's gear. We might be able to get her with no drama... but if you do anything to let them GeoIP our ship again, we risk losing a whole hell of a lot more. If you're going to insist on dropping malicious code, we'll look for a net cafe far from the ship with no visible security cameras where you can drop a thumbdrive and dash."
Jaq shakes her head, as much as at herself as Flynn.
"How are—" she starts before closing her mouth with a click and slumping into the chair. Her body shakes as her right arm twitches.
"I— I'm going to need to know how you plan on using the bug to find Aurora. I've already lost too many friends to chance. I don't know if I could survive losing one I was just getting a chance to know because of my stupidity," she says in a flat over-controlled voice, like she was forcing herself to bottle up something.
"Magic," Flynn explains, eager to have a new audience to lecture, "Is the manipulation of energy and matter through non-Einsteinian physical means. More specifically, studied spellcraft as we know it is based on the manipulation of mana, a fifth fundamental force and associated particles found only in certain alternate realities. Mana is more fluid and easily controlled than other energies, responsive to thought patterns and mathematical conduits. There are many different philosophies behind the application and theory of magic, but Mathemagic—which I practice—teaches that on a mana-heavy world, the uncertainty principle is loosened with respect to mana flows."
"In essence—Quantum Mechanics states that an object, when observed, alters its physical properties. It is a Mathemagician's talent to precisely describe the physics of a natural situation such that, upon being appropriately-approximated, the intervention of magic causes a pseudo-observation that shifts the reality of local physics. The reality is somewhat more complicated, as much of it is grounded on affecting the curvature of space or directly guided by the perceptions of a scientifically-trained human mind, but that is the basic extent."
"In a world like this, with natural magic, I can comfortably perform a number of reliable spells. Of interest to you would be movement spells (which locally distort space or time to allow faster reflexes and deflect attacks), illusion spells (which emit localized bursts of force, light, and heat, allowing the mimickry of real objects), creation spells (which act like a mild stimulant, enhancing someone's natural abilities to create or manipulate objects), healing spells (which accelerate healing processes by manipulating the natural pathways of tissue repair), and detection spells."
"If you learn a bit more of mathematics or encryption, I'd be happy to show you some of my spellbook pages. In the meantime, know that I can effectively detect the presence and location of any sort of technology I can visualize and understand. If Aurora carries the only Holdout Radio on a planet, I can detect her location, provided we're in the same city. It's the same with our other standard-issue gear; the spell merely identifies objects of a complexity requiring human-powered entropy reduction, and passes them through a shape filter based on my own conscious knowledge of engineering."
Aurora declines the drink. She makes sure she knows how to get back to the alley where the others are hiding, watching for landmarks and street names.
Jaq looks like she'd been hit between the eyes at the end of Flynn's lecture.
"You're telling me that you can manipulate spacetime with a thought? Or that you basically have the power to manipulate very makeup of something? Dude, do you have any idea how scary that is?"
The Manabug scuttles with increased activity. it's chirping continues, but the jar begins to rattle.
"No, it's... simply a set of physical and scientific rules for dealing with an additional force and energy source found only on some worlds. My use of magic still requires precise mental math and the occasional written equation, and—"
And Flynn glances down at the manabug, scanning it for unusual radiation in the near-visible spectra.
The Mana-bug pulsates with solar color spectrum, but it seems to fixated on Flynn, its four eyes looking up with its mandibles clicking.
"Yeah, this thing's... freaking me out. It seems to respond to talking about magic..."
IQ roll -
OMG.
Jaq's eyes are on the bug as well, she slowly gets up and starts inching to where her holstered Baretta M9 is.
"Riiiiight, harmless," she mutters.
"So, Flynn," she asks in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the hum of electric fans, "How do magic beasties and critters react to hot-lead?"
Flynn places his hand on his head. "Please don't sacrifice the mission by shooting it..."
"Sorry," she says sheepishly as she remembers what Flynn had said about tracking Aurora, "the Army and the MBSG didnt' really teach half-way solutions to threats."
Her hand slowly falls away from the grip of her pistol.
The Manabug's left set of eyes shift to...eye.. The pistol on Jaq's person. It remains still while the other set of eyes continues to eye Flynn. Aside from that, it's stopped chirping.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aurora attempts to recall where she was... She recalls that they had come into this world near a heavily populated military base. (High, like that...is bad. Low is good. and that was a crit fail.)
"It's truly unfortunate you cannot speak... But I wont lie, most of our women are a bit haughty. It's nice to have someone who listens. Now then, we're there..."
Lunis takes to here feat, glass still in hand as she's been sipping the tiny amount of wine carefully. She hops into the pilot seat and controls the car into a large, sky bound building.
The building is smooth, akin to the ship your being transported in now. Its lined with sleek purple/silvers and seems to be made to resemble organically flowing machinery. And odd concept by human standards. None the less, entering it seems to reveal it as more of an alter.
"Here we are."
The Avine muses as the car parks on a port within the building. the port leads openly into a cathedral like sanctum lined with reds and accented with golds. Three shorter humanoids, Avine males, approach where very loose fitting cloths easily exposing their chests.
"I don't think I have to worry about you stealing any of my men. Would I be right in assuming that?"
Jaq shuffles uncertainly under the bug's gaze.
"Um, you think we could go back and find Aurora, soon? This thing is really, really creepy."
"I'd be fine jumping back after eight hours have passed on this world. Captain, your thoughts?"
"I'd be fine jumping back after eight hours have passed on this world. Captain, your thoughts?"
"I would concur. Time to rest and prepare.
"Once we are there, can you Jaq, FIND Aurora? Can you get a direction and range, or even that GPS thing I've heard of?And, if we have to travel, are we capable of stealing transport?"
He leaned down and peered closely at the Bug.
"And are we any closer to understanding what this creature might be?" He inquired curiously.
"Yes," Flynn replies, "We've learned a lot about the bug, though none of it is unique to the world we were sent to. I should be able to track Aurora with its aid. We have enough for a report—though more could be welcome."
Aurora looks up at the alien and shakes her head. She has no interest in this creatures mates...that is for sure.
A strange feeling has been coming over her for the entire ride. An anger that she cannot understand...almost like a part of her is trying to tell her something about this alien, but for some reason it is not resolving in her cortex. But the anger and need to kill is growing the longer she is in proximity with this creature.
The Conveyor team rests for 8 hours in hopes that this will ease their return.
---------------------------------------------
"Anyway my dear you should head to the medical suit. You'll find a healing vat. Mine is especially unique in that it was design to mimic this world's...what are they call- Hot tubs!"
Lunis gives a smirk and nod, while motioning two her escorts to join her. the other, a young male named Tiven, Stands before Aurora, giving a large bow.
"Welcome to our Lady's flat. I will take you to the medical suit. If you have any needs or desires, please, let me know."
Aurora follows the non-human to this "healing" vat. She dismisses him once there and looks around for a sealed container that she could use to gather some of the material from the "vat".
She also places her finger-tip in the 'goo' to see how it would react to her nanite body.
The pit is akin to aloe, in texture and smell. It possess a blue tinge with small glow.
There are also plenty of vials of soaps and other human-esk cleansing materials.
The Conveyor team wakes after their undisturbed resting period ready to continue their mission.
Anything that looks advanced, Aurora will slip into a bag. Once she has found some items, she heads back out onto the balcony. Looking around she makes sure she is alone before she shifts into the shape of a golden eagle. Grasping the bag in its talons, the great bird takes off and wings back to where she thinks the others are waiting.