A Tale of Arcane Space: Lost & Found

"Can I at least vaporize one of her hands before she runs off like a beaten bitch?" Amelie's fingers were all aglow, and she gave Kallitrix a feral grin. Kallitrix swallowed nervously, and walked briskly to the medbay's door, where Snowdrop waited to escort her back to her shuttle.

Areeso snorted. "Was that really necessary, Amelie?"

"Yes." She made a show of blowing out the lights on her fingers as if they were candles. "Anyone who breaks my dear elf-love's heart is destined to get melted into mulch, as far as I'm concerned." She turned to face Coriolis and Danielle, who had given each other nervous looks at that last declaration. "Speaking of which -- fair warning. The only reason I haven't snapped up this lovely fellow for myself is because I'm married to my work -- but if I ever hear that either of you treat him wrong... mulch."

Lin shook his head. "Amelie..."

"Hush, dear. The ladies are talking. We clear on this, Coriolis? GraveDancer?"

Cori and Danielle looked at each other, and then back to the WarSaint. "Crystal," Cori said firmly, and Danielle nodded.

"Good. Areeso, I'm gonna head outside, make sure that this Thurmond dick-wipe doesn't try anything cute and stupid. Keep me company?" The green Tientang nodded with another quiet laugh, and waved his goodbyes as he followed Amelie out the door.

"And with that attended to," Captain Liang said as he pulled up a chair and sat down near Lin's bed, "we should all have a talk. Please, sit down."

As Cori and Danielle moved their own chairs closer, George's face-image appeared on one of the monitors mounted on a nearby wall. "Permission to take part, Captain?"

"Granted, George. I was just about to ask you to join us." He looked directly at Danielle. "How are your repairs coming?"

Danielle closed her eyes for a moment. "My main drive reactor's flywheel has been functional for almost an hour now, and is purring like a well-fed sabertooth. I can release the stone-cocoon at any time....but I can barely move."

George chimed in. "Engine damage?"

"Yes. I don't have the right materials on hand to fully restore them, even with nano-crafters. The Gnome wreck might have some of what I would need, but considering the damage done to that ship by Lin and their own self-overload, it's unlikely. My limbs and their contributions to my mobility are all crippled, basically limp and inert lumps, and the engine on my back is operating at a fraction of capacity. It would take me weeks to reach the nearest station or settlement under my own power."

Lin scratched at his chin. "Couldn't the Endurance use a tow-beam?"

The Captain shook his head. "We could, but it wouldn't help much. GraveDancer is many times this ship's size, and the Endurance's Arcane Drive just doesn't have the output needed to move itself and GraveDancer, not to mention our half of the DreamNought wreck."

Cori's head suddenly shot up. "I have a brilliant stupid idea." She turned to look at the two Arcane Intelligences present. "George, Danielle...could we maybe, um... merge the Endurance with GraveDancer? Dani, we've got the engines, but not enough power. You've got a massive Sun Golem-powering flywheel in your belly, but no engines to use with it! Do you follow where I'm going with this?"

George's eyebrows raised. "I... well. Huh. Danielle, I'm going to send you my blueprints, tell me what you think."

Danielle's eyes flickered. "Hmmm. The power transfer systems have changed significantly since my day, but I think we can adapt. George, I'm sending you my reactor specs."

"Oh... oh! Oh my goodness, yes. Captain, with GraveDancer's power output, we could easily move a combined vessel, and tow the Gnome wreck, and have energy left to spare!" George's face took on an excited grin. "Lady GraveDancer, would you do me the honor of merging your chassis with mine? Just imagine what we can create together."

Danielle blushed. "I'm imagining a battleship that can shift into my Golem form, for when things get especially difficult. We can even incorporate some of the Gnome salvage, if you like."

George's face took on an eager grin. "Oooooh, you like to bring toys to bed, do you? Oh my yes, this is going to be exciting. I'm already rendering some building plans." George looked to Captain Liang. "With your permission, sir, I'd strongly advise that everyone move their personal belongings to the main cargo hold to avoid anything getting damaged. Everything else on this ship is about to get a drastic remodel, and will then be yours to command."

Captain Liang's eyes took a bright orange shimmer of surprise. "GraveDancer... you're giving command of yourself... to me?"

She nodded. "I trust you, Captain. You've surrounded yourself with a wonderful crew of kind people, and to me, that speaks volumes. I want to find a place for myself in this new future I've found myself in, and doing so as a part of your crew would make me very, very, happy."

Liang stood, and bowed. "I'll do my best to live up to your expectations, GraveDancer. George, be so kind as to inform everyone about moving their gear, please? After that, we'll all get into shuttle one, and watch the reconstruction from outside."

Lin moved to get up, but Cori gently put a hand on his chest. "Not you, lover. Even with the Healing-solution drip you're on, you need to lie still and rest. And don't even think about using divine fire to fast-heal yourself, your body needs to be fixed slowly and carefully, so we can make sure to catch and remove any and all long-term damage. I'll take care of your room for you, don't worry."

Lindauriel smirked. "Don't tell anyone about the tablet under my bed with all the dirty magazines loaded onto it." Cori smiled, kissed his forehead, and walked out, followed by the captain.

Danielle stroked his cheek. "I'll move your bed to the shuttle bay, Lin, and keep you company for a bit." She checked to make sure his drip was secured, and after a moment of looking over the unfamiliar controls, activated the bed's hover function, guiding it slowly towards the door and then down the hallway. "It's so strange. I've only ever had solo pilots before, and that could be lonely sometimes. But now, I'll be part of a crew -- and be with two dear friends whom I adore. Life changes so much -- I rather like that."

He reached out to caress her hair. "All things change, all things strive. You are not alone, beautiful. Not anymore."

An hour later, the crew of the Endurance watched in interest from Shuttlecraft One as the stone cocoon around the Sun Golem split down the middle, and then broke into thousands of smaller rocks, which fell away from the giant machine like raindrops off a bird's feathers. Thurmond and company had left with their share of the gnome hulk half an hour prior.

The Endurance moved forward in response to this, and came to rest on a spot on the Golem's upper back. Norrish chuckled from his seat at the shuttle's controls. "Kinda looks like the Golem's wearing our ship like a jetpack."

One of the Gnome children was sitting on his lap -- between Lin's bed, the Endurance crew, and the rescued prisoners, space was at a premium in the small craft. He pointed at the screen, looking to the Orc helmsman for confirmation. "Is that really a Sun Golem, like in the storybooks?"

"Sure is, squirt." Norrish ruffled the child's hair. "That's GraveDancer, who saved thousands of lives at the battle of Delkorath, a long, long time ago, among other feats. She's going to be part of our crew now."

"And save more lives?"

"That's the idea. She helped save your and your aunt's life, Dori, I'd say that's a nice start."

The little boy waved at the display. "Thank you, GraveDancer! We love you!"

To everyone's surprise, the Golem's head turned in the direction of the shuttle, and one of its hands managed a small wave. Danielle's voice came on the shuttle's speakers. "We love you too, Dori."

Dori beamed.

Inside GraveDancer's virtual mindspace, a loud knocking sound could be heard, and she turned towards the swirling portal that was forming off to her side. "Do come in, George."

George's avatar, a gold-and-chrome Kobold, very similar to his remote body, stepped through the portal, with a basket hanging over one arm. "You did say that the next time I came over, I should bring dinner -- so I whipped up a little something."

She laughed, and shrank her Golem-sized avatar down to his scale. "Very gallant of you, kind sir."

She reached out to the basket's lid, and he lightly tapped the back of her hand. "Please, my lady. Allow me." He opened the container, and lifted up a glowing sphere, a swirling coil that seemed to wrap inwards upon itself without end. "I happen to be quite the hand at composing Fractal Poetry. I coded this one in your honor, and I hope you enjoy it."

GraveDancer held out her hand, and as George placed the sphere in her grasp, her eyes took on a warm glow as she drew the executable file into her system. "Ohhhhh. Oh, this lovely, George!" With a shiver of delight, she raised her hand, and the fractal image filled her virtual space, filling her domain with swirls of gorgeous color, and a collage of sounds. Music of a dozen varieties, a historian giving an excited lecture about the Sun Geyser Wars, the whisper of a winter breeze, and the happy chirps and whistles of a young parrot, bashfully trying to please its owner. "Your coding is exquisite! It all flows together so wonderfully! I don't have the skill for it myself, but I certainly appreciate yours. May I keep this for later use?"

"Of course, my lady. You honor me with your kind compliments." He reached back into the basket, and held up a small square, a simple video file. "This is an old favorite of mine. Gives me a smile every time I watch it." He tapped the icon, and a window opened up to show the scene of an automated vacuum-bot, happily skimming across a home's wooden floor, as a juvenile wombat took a nap on the disc-shaped robot's back, its barrel-shaped bulk rising and falling as it stirred softly in its sleep.

"George, those are the cutest little creatures!"

"Hold on, the best part's coming up."

As they watched, a little golden Quetzalcoatl fluttered into view, and landed on the robot's back. It wore a small collar marking it as a pet, much as the wombat did, and gathered itself into a coil right next to the chunky marsupial. The dangling length of its long tail rested over the wombat's lower back, while one of its feathered wings draped across the larger creature's shoulders. It gave a small purr, and closed its eyes as it snuggled into its friend. Below them, the cleaner bot gave a happy chirp, and rotated in a slow circle, before resuming its circuit across the room.

GraveDancer gave a squeal of glee that was almost hypersonic, and lunged for George, gathering him into her arms and laying a huge kiss on the tip of his snout. "Omikron George, THAT is officially the cutest thing I have ever witnessed, and I will thank you forever for sharing that with me. It's going in my permanent memory archives."

George gave her a warm squeeze back, grinning from ear to ear. "Cuter than a humble Emerald-rated Arcane Intelligence who dabbles in Fractal Poetry, hopeful and eager to try and impress a living legend?"

GraveDancer ran her hand across his cheek, her golem avatar's dimples on full display with her brilliant smile. "Tried and succeeded, George. I was already looking forward to merging our ship-bodies, but now? Now I'm downright aroused by the thought of sharing this virtual space with you." She paused. "But let's be clear -- I'm very, very determined to also explore things with both Coriolis and Lindauriel. You're sure that won't be a problem?"

He smiled right back. "Positive. What you have with them is quite different from the sort of bond we might form. I want you to experience your new lease on life to the fullest. I doubt that I'll ever be inclined to join the three of you in that manner, if they'd even be comfortable with adding my presence -- but that's fine." He opened his arms wide, gesturing to the virtual space around them. "You and I understand each other in ways that your organic friends simply can't, but you have understandings with them that I do not -- and as far as I'm concerned, your horizons should be boundless, endless, and entirely for you to decide. I'm just very glad to be a part of what you like."

"And I like you very, very much, George. Come, let's build a battleship-golem together. I've been eyeing some of the damaged shield-spires and other hardware from the DreamNought, and I have... ideas. Bright, shiny, beautiful ideas." Her eyes took on a bright glow. "Data connections open. Let's do this."

"Data connections open, oh yes." George nuzzled into her neck, and the virtual space around them filled with diagrams, blue prints, and the image of the two docked ships.

As his virtual lips nibbled along her neck, GraveDancer shivered in delight, and her sidekick interface became a flurry of activity.

SENSORIUM MERGE REQUESTED BY OUTSIDE SOURCE. ACCEPT Y/N?

"Yes," she groaned as George's hands enveloped her, pulling her tight into his embrace, and their thoughts intertwined.

ALL NANOCRAFTERS ONLINE.

ARCANE FLYWHEEL REACTOR AT FULL.

ANALYZING CONNECTED SYSTEMS.

ALERT! POWER CONDUIT SYSTEMS IN CONNECTED HARDWARE INDICATE INCREASED EFFICIENCY OVER CURRENT SYSTEMS. UPGRADE Y/N?

He was so warm in her arms, and as their cores found more and more data connections, she saw his memories, read centuries of history that she'd missed... she wanted it all. She wanted everything Omikron George was offering, and more. She wanted to live this new life with everything she could bring to bear upon it. "YES, GODDESS, YES!"

UPGRADE INITIATED.

FILE RECEIVED -- "GRAVEDANCER 2.0". INITIATE REBUILD PROTOCOL Y/N?

She saw herself through George's eyes, the awe, admiration, and attraction he felt for her. It warmed her, strengthened her, and she reached out, tow-beams pulling the Gnome wreck and raw minerals of the asteroid field closer. "YES!"

George pulled back for just a moment. "Please take care not to reshape my cargo hold. The crew has their personal items in that room."

GraveDancer managed a nod -- and the work began.

***

"They better not trash my spear collection while they machine-fuck, that's all I'm saying."

"Snowdrop, you're a very skilled warrior, a dear friend, and I'm very glad to have you as part of my crew, but for the love of my mother's mandibles, will you STOP going on about that?"

In the back of the shuttle, while everyone else's attention was firmly affixed on the giant shifting machinery outside, Coriolis slid her hand under Lin's covers, giving light little caresses between his legs. She whispered softly to him, her tongue tickling the point of his ear. "Think she's giving George the time of his life in there?"

He turned to give her a kiss. "You are a naughty goblin, you know that?"

She kissed back, and gave him one last squeeze. "Don't want innocent little children to see -- just thought I'd give you a little preview of what's waiting for you the instant your healing is done."

"Looking forward to it, gorgeous." He leaned into her arms as he sat in the raised bed, watching the front monitor. "And to answer your question -- hells yes. I bet they're having a blast."

***

As the hull of the Endurance and GraveDancer's golem body moved in and around each other, she directed her nanocrafters to pull every molecule that was once connected to the Gnomish shield spires, telekinetic blast-pocket launchers, and plasma torpedoes. "George?"

He looked up from kissing down her shoulder. "Yes, my dear Golem?"

"We do have one slight problem -- but I also believe I have a solution."

He caressed her chin. "Go on."

"My limbs are heavily damaged and require an overhaul. Your hull is a material much weaker than my urutromium, and needs an overlay. To correct these problems, we would need a solar forge. There's only so much I can do with my nanocrafters."

"I had meant to ask you about that, but we got, ah, distracted."

"Well... between the newly enhanced power conduits I now have by adapting your modern designs, and the field manipulators, plasma channelers, and the telekinesis replicators I've salvaged from the Gnome wreck... I've got one monster of a work-around, by restoring one very old, very important function of mine."

He grinned. "Kiss me, you beautiful legend, and show me this masterful trick of yours."

She licked her lips. "Prepare to be impressed."

Their lips met once more, and every fiber of GraveDancer's mind exploded with utter delight.

INITIATE CLIMAX.EXE Y/N?

GraveDancer gasped aloud. "For the love of all things, YES!!!!!"

PLASMA FOCUS RESTRUCTURE COMPLETE!

CLIMAX SYSTEMS ONLINE!

URUTROMIUM RESERVES RETRIEVED FROM STORAGE AND DEPLOYED!

REFORGE TRAJECTORY LOCKED!

REFORGE LAUNCHED AND INCOMING!

***

"What the ever-loving..." Norrish's eyes were pulled to the shuttle's admittedly-limited sensor readouts, which were practically screaming with every warning notification they had. He took a closer look... "CAPTAIN! SUN-GEYSER INBOUND! Everybody, grab hold of something!"

The system's yellow sun rippled -- and a lance of pure solar energy reached out at impossible speeds, reaching the asteroid belt in mere moments. The combined hulls of GraveDancer and the Endurance were enveloped by this column of plasma, the sun's might focused and controlled by the will of the universe's last remaining Tanzanite-rated Arcane Intelligence. She was designed and built to pilot a Sun Golem, whose signature weapon, the Sun-Geyser, became the namesake of the war they were built to fight.

The controlled plasma, under GraveDancer's unblinking direction, melted and reshaped the four urutromium limbs hanging from the golem's joint sockets. Nodes of raw urutromium brought outside were melted down, and shaped by her will into replacement parts, and also into new armor plating over the sections containing the hull of the Endurance. With a roar of triumph, their new body took form, and the reforged Sun Golem emerged from the geyser, gleaming with power.

Looking through their new body's eyes, George and GraveDancer shivered with the joy of creation. "Fuck, YES!"

NEW DESIGNATION: SUN GOLEM ZERO-ZERO-ZETA: GRAVEDANCER ENDURING!

In their virtual space, GraveDancer went happily limp in George's arms. "...aaaaaand I'm SPENT. Whew!"

***

Onboard the watching shuttlecraft, Dori's juicebox fell from his hand as he stared in awe. Everyone onboard had been stunned into silence, and he was the first to find his voice.

"Holy SHIT."

"Dori Meriweather Bellington! LANGUAGE!"

"Sorry, Auntie!"

***

"So let me get this straight." Captain Liang was walking through the hallways of his new vessel, Danielle and George keeping pace alongside him. "The Sun Golem can shift at will into this battleship configuration, and when it does that, retractable Gnome-crafted armor plating emerges to cover the urutromium hull?"

George nodded. "We thought it would be important to be relatively inconspicuous in this form. It's a powerful-looking ship by any standard, but nothing that seems impossibly out of place."

Liang nodded. "And the Sun-Geyser?"

Danielle skipped ahead a few steps, walking backwards to face the captain as she talked. "Only accessible in Golem mode. The gnome-plating inhibits the body-wide solar collectors, but that's retracted when I shift into the bipedal form. We're a holy terror in ship-to-ship combat either way, but we're MUCH faster and more maneuverable as a biped. The geyser itself really takes a lot out of me, to be honest -- so think of it as a weapon of last resort." She grinned. "My designers hinted that with some practice, I might be able to manipulate solar plasma in other ways as well, but we never really had a chance to explore that during the war."