Three Square Meals Ch. 061

Dana grimaced, and said, "Babes, that's pretty cold."

Jade smiled at the brunette, and said, "Please don't worry, I don't mind at all! In fact, if you're able to tell me more about how my body works, then that would be amazing!"

Rachel had been looking shamefaced, but after hearing the Nymph's forgiving, encouraging words, she smiled at her and said, "Thank you for not being upset with me." When Jade waved away her concerns, the brunette brightened up considerably, and continued, "I'm sure this sounds bad, but it was really interesting actually! I knew you didn't have blood, which got me wondering if you had a heart, or some other kind of organ that was critical for sustaining life."

"Did you find anything?" John asked, curiously. "I saw Jade take a nasty buzzsaw wound to her side, and her body seemed to be made up of dark-green flesh."

"I did!" Rachel exclaimed with excitement. She smiled at Jade, and said, "You appear to only have the one vital organ; it's an exquisitely beautiful viridian crystal right where your heart would be. I don't want to make you sound like a robot, but I think it acts like a power source of some kind. The assassin must have been aiming where a tiger would have a heart, and her strike pierced straight through your heart-crystal."

The Nymph blinked in surprise, then said brightly, "I knew I had to have a heart in there. I wouldn't be able love all of you so much without it."

The girls faces softened, and touched by her words, they gathered around the Nymph hugging her and giving her affectionate kisses. John made eye contact with Jade as the girls swarmed around her, and he had to admit he felt a little moved himself at the expression of pure joy on her face as she was surrounded by her adoptive sisters. He let them enjoy their moment, and they eventually parted and formed a circle, kneeling on the bed as they gave him their full attention once more.

"We need to discuss the damage we sustained to the ship during the attack." John said to them all. He looked at Faye, and said, "First things first though, anything to report, Watch Commander?"

She grinned at him and replied, "Nothing so far, it was all pretty clear. Quite a bit of merchant shipping, but no military vessels."

"We'll be approaching the picket lines in a few hours," Calara warned them. "We'll have to watch out for that irritating Carrier Captain if he's still the Commanding Officer for the reserve forces."

"Captain Maddox," Alyssa supplied helpfully.

Calara nodded, her eyes narrowing with annoyance as she said, "He had a real chip on his shoulder about John. He was commanding a Heavy Carrier called the Medusa if I remember right."

"I'll keep an eye open for him, but I'll let you know the moment I see any military ships on the long range sensors!" the perky AI sprite replied.

"Great, thanks, Faye," John said gratefully. He leaned forward a little, and asked, "I assume the Assassin is still in stasis? You didn't mention it, and I'm sure you'd have woken us if there was a problem."

The purple construct shook her head, and replied tersely, "Still sleeping like an evil baby."

John nodded, and said, "Alright, we'll go and investigate her in a little while." He looked at Dana as he continued, "Now, on to the damage we sustained. How serious was it?"

The redhead didn't look as upset as he'd expected and she replied, "Me and Faye already patched up the Drive Room, and replaced all the destroyed power couplings. It needs a bit of a clean up, but aside from that, it's fine." Her face fell as she added, "The Officers' Lounge is a write-off though. There were a couple of explosive devices that went off, and they royally fucked up the place. We'll be eating in the Galley on Deck Four for a while I think."

Alyssa felt quite cheerful over John's empathic bond with her, and when he glanced her way, he expected her to be upset, but she was far from it. She was listening to his train of thoughts of course, and she gave him a big grin. "This just gives us a chance to remodel the place! It was comfortable enough before, in a bland, militarist sort of way. Now we have an excuse to refurbish the entire lounge!"

Rachel brightened considerably, and she said, "I've had a fair bit of experience with opulent luxury. I think we might be able to come up with something pretty special!"

The girls were all quite animated now, and they began to chatter amongst themselves, discussing potential plans for the decor. John watched them with amusement, marvelling at how they always seemed to find the silver lining, no matter how dark the cloud. Alyssa grinned at him, then shushed the girls so he could continue.

Faye took the opportunity to pipe up once the conversation died out and said, "While you were asleep, I got my boys to clean the place up. They removed all the debris, and replaced the damaged fire extinguisher system, that kind of thing. When they were done, the cleaning bots gave it a good scrub."

John nodded his thanks to the holographic representation of Faye, and said, "That can't have been a pleasant job, thanks for sparing us from that."

"It made me feel useful, and I was glad I could help!" she replied, and her joyful expression made him smile.

His smile faded though, as he went on to say, "This episode with the assassin has really exposed some gaps in our security. We've been getting so good at carving our way through external threats, I got a bit complacent about hostile infiltration, and it turns out we were horribly exposed. As we've all now found out, the consequences have been horrendous, and it's only by blind-luck that I didn't lose one or more of you permanently." He clenched his jaw, and said, "I can only apologise to all of you for letting you down like this, but I promise you, no fucker is going to sneak onto our ship when we're through with upgrading security."

The girls looked shocked at his heated self-recrimination, and started to protest. Alyssa placed her hand on his shoulder, and said gently, "You can't blame yourself for this. We're all clever girls, and we should have come up with suggestions on how to improve internal security."

John nodded, but she could tell from his thoughts that he wasn't convinced. He turned to look at Faye, and said, "We've got a big advantage with you aboard. You don't need to rest, and with your digital nature, you can monitor far more than a normal person could. I propose that we find out how the assassin snuck aboard, then come up with countermeasures to prevent that, as well as anything else we can think of. Then we can give Faye the tools she needs to properly protect us in her Watch Commander role."

Dana looked eager to get started and she said, "I'm nearly done with that project I've been working on! As soon as I'm done with that, I'll get right onto security upgrades." She glanced at Irillith, giving her a winsome smile to encourage her to assist.

Instead of responding however, the blue-skinned girl looked at John and said, "Please don't feel that security was your responsibility alone. My people have been perfecting infiltration and assassination techniques for centuries, and I should have been all over the vulnerabilities we had. I think I became so obsessed with our cyber security, I overlooked the physical."

John smiled and said, "I was actively encouraging you along that path, but I appreciate your sentiments, thank you."

The Maliri girl smiled at him, then looked back at Dana. She hesitated for only a second, before she said to her, "I think it might be worth postponing that project for a day or two."

"How come?" Dana asked with a frown.

Irillith took a big breath before replying, then said, "That assassination attack happened so soon after rescuing Terra, we haven't really been able to discuss everything that happened with Nexus. I told you what happened when I confronted him, and everything he told me. I haven't had a chance to tell you that before Nexus kicked me out of his digital network, I launched a score of search routines to trawl through his archives. There were a few things I wanted answers to, but I also ransacked his data archives for everything I could find on Progenitors."

John was amazed at her bold initiative, and he gasped, "That's fantastic news! Did you find anything?!"

Irillith grinned at him, a gorgeous smile lighting up her face as she replied, "I got a lot of hits. I'll need to go through the data I acquired first, but it should make for fascinating viewing." Her jubilant expression faded a little, and she added, "All the recent data I can go through without any problems, but there's data that Nexus acquired when he achieved Unity. I can't read any of that, in fact, I don't even recognise the data formats."

"I might be able to help," Faye offered enthusiastically. "The device that powers me is pretty old, remember?"

Irillith gave her a grateful smile, and said, "If you can take a look, that would be amazing, thank you. I've uploaded the data I stole from Nexus to my IntOps Console under the 'Nexus' repository."

Alyssa frowned and said, "We don't steal things, we requisition them."

John and the girls laughed at that, although Irillith looked a bit confused, having not heard the reference before. Alyssa sighed, and she explained the joke to the Maliri while they waited for Faye to trawl through the files.

The purple sprite was back a few moments later, and her tiny face was downcast as she said, "I'm sorry, I don't recognise the files." She shook her head, looking positively bewildered, and continued, "The data formatting is incredibly complex! I don't even recognise the characterset. Here, take a look!"

She projected the formatting data onto the viewscreen, and a stream of bizarre shaped sigils scrolled across the surface. They all gazed at the oddly shaped characters, and Dana suddenly groaned, and squeezed her eyes shut as she clutched at her head.

"What's wrong?!" John asked her in alarm.

"I -know- this!" she groaned. "Fuck, this is excruciating!"

Rachel put her arm around her, and sounded worried as she asked, "Do you want me to get you some painkillers?"

Dana waved her away, and gasped, "No, it's not painful! It's just really fucking annoying!" She sounded incredibly frustrated as she continued, "I recognise the characters, and the answer's on the tip of my tongue, but I just can't put it into words!"

"Is this an ancient Progenitor language we're looking at?" John marvelled as he stared at the sigils, voicing what everyone was thinking.

When no one reacted, he looked around at the girls, and saw they were all staring at Alyssa, open-mouthed in shock. Her eyes were illuminated by a bright white radiance, and she beckoned over Dana and Irillith towards her.

"Come to me, you two," she requested, her voice reverberating with an eerie echo. It was as though there were two people speaking at the same time, but perhaps half a second apart. Her tone was kind, but her words rang with the confidence of someone expecting to be obeyed.

John watched spellbound as Alyssa reached out towards Dana, lightly placing her palm against the redhead's temple. Dana groaned again, wavering slightly as her brow creased with frustration. The blonde girl turned to look at Irillith next, and smiled at her as she caressed the side of the blue-skinned girl's face. Irillith suddenly gasped, her violet eyes shining brightly with a fierce inner glow. Letting out a low moan, the light pouring from her eyes flickered wildly, then began to project astoundingly complex diagrams in the air. The pictures were technical schematics, and they bathed the room with a soft purple radiance.

Dana's eyes flashed from side to side as she gawped at the schematics, and she blurted out, "Holy Fuck! You guys aren't going to believe this shit!"

The images cycled through several schematics, the incredibly detailed and intricate designs annotated with those same bizarre sigils. Alyssa abruptly withdrew her hands, and Irillith pitched over with a painful groan, while Dana let out an ecstatic sigh of relief. "I'm really sorry, Irillith," Alyssa murmured, stroking the Maliri girl's hair as the dazzling white illumination slowly faded from her cerulean eyes.

There was a stunned silence in the room, as John, Calara, Jade, and Faye gaped at the three girls involved in the totally unexpected display. Alyssa's eyes had returned to normal, but she seemed to be dazed, and was blinking owlishly as she tried to get her bearings.

John shook his head, and then exclaimed, "Where do I even start after that?!" He was dying to ask Alyssa about her glowing eyes, but he could see she was still groggy. He turned to Dana instead, and asked, "So what were those schematics? It seemed like you understood them."

Dana giggled with delight, and she said, "That was such a rush! We'll have to do that again!"

"No way!" Irillith groaned, waving her hand in protest. "My eyes felt like they were going to burst!"

Following John's thoughts, Edraele asked, *What happened? Is my daughter alright?*

John scooped Irillith up in his arms, and she buried her head in his shoulder, her eyes squeezed tightly closed. He stroked her back, and asked in a comforting voice, "Are you okay? Do you need Rachel to give you some painkillers?"

"I'll be alright," she murmured, clinging to him tightly.

*She'll be fine,* he said to Edraele, soothing her concerns.

While he held Irillith, he looked over her azure shoulder at the redhead, and asked, "What did you see, Dana?"

"Ancient Progenitor tech!" she replied gleefully, bouncing up and down where she sat on the bed. "Those Unity files that Irillith recovered are ancient video archives, and I know how to make a projection device that can play them!"

He looked astounded at her reply, and said, "So we might be able to see video footage of what... the Mael'nerak?!"

Dana chortled with delight, and said, "Yeah, I know... fucking crazy, right?"

Alyssa was still looking a little disorientated, but she reached over to John, and stroked his arm as she said softly, "You might be able to get some answers at long last."

The look he gave her was affectionate, but it shifted to a frown, and he said, "We'll get back to you in a moment, young lady."

"Okay," she replied, giving him a dreamy smile.

Turning to look at Dana, he raised an eyebrow quizzically and said, "How about the rest of the schematics? They were only up for a few seconds. Was that long enough?"

"To memorise them?" she replied, then let out a disbelieving laugh, as she said, "Hell yeah!"

"What did you see?" Jade asked, as intrigued as everyone else.

"Oh not much, just the schematics for a Progenitor tech Power Core and Tachyon Drive!" she exalted. Shaking her head, she giggled as she added, "Those sneaky little fuckers!"

"Who, the Progenitors?" John asked in confusion.

Dana shook her head, and laughed as she replied, "No! The Ashanath! They have this reputation for being gifted scientists in the fields of Power Core technology and FTL travel, but they've been cheating! The Tachyon Drive and Power Core they gave us must have been from their attempts to reverse engineer Progenitor Tech. They fucked up though, and made a bunch of mistakes, because they didn't fully understand the science behind it."

John looked astounded, and he paused for a moment before asking, "How on Terra did the Ashanath get their hands on a Progenitor Power Core and Tachyon Drive?!"

Irillith's pained expression had eased now, but she still clung to John for support, and looked a little pale. She kept her eyes closed as she murmured, "The Ashanath held huge amounts of territory before the Terrans started annexing it. Perhaps they found them?"

He nodded thoughtfully, and replied, "That makes a lot of sense actually. The Greys find some ancient ship parts, and tow them back to Ashana. Then they spend a few centuries researching them, and start figuring out how they work, improving their own FTL drives as they go."

Jade looked excited as she asked Dana, "How fast is the new Progenitor Drive?"

Calara leaned forward and said urgently, "Even more important than that, how much power can the Progenitor Core put out?! Can we use it to fire the Nova Lances?"

Dana grinned at the pair of them and said to Jade, "Insanely fast. Over double our current FTL speed!" Turning to Calara next, she looked equally excited as she replied, "The Power output is vast. A single core will be enough to power everything we're currently running, as well as the Nova Lances."

Both girls looked tremendously excited at the prospect of more ship upgrades, and they grinned back at Dana with delight. Her jubilant grin had dropped into a frustrated frown though, as she examined the schematics she had memorised in greater detail.

John noticed her mood shift, and he asked, "I'm sensing there's a problem?"

The redhead looked glum as she replied, "I can't just crank out all the parts using the Mass Fabricators. We need more elements from the Progenitors' Enhanced Periodic Table, so we'll definitely need Maliri help at Genthalas Shipyard to build this stuff."

He smiled at her as he said, "That's not a problem. When we've wrapped up our business in the Dragon March, and after we rescue Irillith's sister, I'm planning on going back to Maliri Space anyway. We can visit Genthalas then, and upgrade the Invictus."

"This ship is going to be so awesome!" Dana squealed with delight, sharing a wildly enthusiastic grin with Calara and Jade.

John could feel Edraele's excitement over their bond, and she sounded overjoyed when she said, *I can't wait to see you! How long until you arrive?*

*All being well, we should be there within a couple of weeks,* he replied, looking forward to it as much as she was. *It'll be great to see you too.*

John turned to look at Alyssa, and said gently, "Now, let's talk about what just happened with you. Do you have any idea what the white glow from your eyes was about?"

Alyssa frowned, and replied, "What white glow?" She was much more coherent now, but the thought that she'd done something without being aware of it was startling.

Turning to look at the girls, John said, "You all saw what just happened with Alyssa. When I brought Jade back to life, I met the glowing white figure we saw on that video that Rachel took with the Psi-scanner. I think 'Radiant Alyssa' only exists on the Astral plane, so I'm going to go and speak with her now, and find out what's going on."

Irillith looked up, having got most of her colour back now, and she said quietly, "Before we boarded that battlecruiser, Alyssa's eyes did the same thing. She reshaped the armour on the Raptor."

"So we're up to Quad-shaped on the gunship now?" Dana asked curiously.

Alyssa grinned, and said, "Fantastic! That saves me a job!"

Irillith sat up and slowly shook her head, staring at Alyssa as she said, "You didn't stop there..."

The blonde girl frowned, and asked, "Really? How many times did I reshape it then."

The Maliri girl sighed, and said with regret, "I was upset at the time and not really paying that close attention to the count. I'd guess at least seven more reshapings."

"No fucking way!" Alyssa balked. "Ten times! I can't even imagine what a nightmare it'd be trying to shape that many times."

Irillith nodded, and said, "You were planning on ramming that battlecruiser to knock them out of hyper-warp. I guess you wanted the armour tough enough to survive."

John studied the psychic blonde, and asked, "Do you really not remember any of that?"

She slowly shook her head, and replied, "It's all an angry red blur to be honest. Now I'm thinking about it, I'm starting to have a few flashbacks though. Kind of like going out on a real bender, then the next morning suddenly remembering the crazy shit you got up to on the night before."