Three Square Meals Ch. 067

He gave her an affectionate smile, and looking embarrassed, he admitted, "It's easy to do. That's how I picked up my first combat injury."

"What happened?!" Dana asked him, looking intrigued.

He laughed, and waving her away, he replied, "That's a story for another day."

"Boo!" she pouted playfully.

He smiled at her pouting expression, and said, "The last thing I wanted to note, is what an excellent job you girls on the fireteam did with squad formations and positioning. I've been with Special Ops forces who weren't that disciplined, and it was really impressive to see."

Rachel rewarded him a broad smile for his praise, and she glanced at Alyssa as she said, "Actually, it's pretty easy with a certain someone giving you a relentless stream of orders."

Dana laughed, and grinning at Alyssa, she said, "She's right, you get really bossy in combat!"

The blonde's musical laughter filled the room, and glancing at John she replied, "I learnt from the best."

Not breaking her beaming smile for an instant, Dana looked at Calara and said, "Talking of impressive, you should have seen John slugging it out with a dragon in hand-to-hand combat. It would've fuelled your white knight fantasies for years!"

Calara blushed and looked at John with a starry-eyed gaze as she said, "I wish I'd been there to help."

He smiled at her, and said in a conciliatory tone, "I heard you did one hell of a job commanding the Invictus. You took out both a Kintark and traitorous Terran fleet single-handed, right?"

The Latina glowed at the compliment, but she smiled at Irillith, and said, "I think most of the credit for that one goes to our devious Maliri IntOps Officer." Turning to look at Jade she added, "With honourable mention going to our gifted Pilot, of course!"

Irillith and Jade both smiled at her in gratitude, then at John as he said, "Bravo girls, the three of you make a phenomenal Bridge Crew." Turning to look at the wider group, he asked, "Does anyone have anything else interesting to report?"

Dana nodded, and replied, "While I was waiting for the schematics for Rachel's respirators, I built the projector that'll let us view the Nexus Unity files."

In his surprise, John dropped his fork with a clatter, and exclaimed, "So we can watch video clips of the Mael'nerak?!"

Dana gestured towards Irillith with a flourish, and John's intense stare switched to the Maliri girl. Now that he was focusing his full attention on her, he noticed that Irillith was looking a bit wide-eyed, as if what she'd seen that afternoon had shocked her to the core. She met his penetrating gaze, and said, "I've been going through the files. It's crazy stuff, John..."

He grinned at her in delight until a sudden thought crossed his mind, and he asked curiously, "How did you go through the files so quickly? You've only had a few hours to review what must be days of footage?"

"Time moves much faster in the cyber realm. I projected myself into our digital network as soon as the codecs for the new projector were in place, and I viewed the files virtually," she explained with a patient smile.

John was itching to abandon dinner now, like his recently dropped fork, and go racing to wherever the girls had set up the new projector. He realised he needed to keep his strength up though, as he was using plenty of energy enhancing Sakura, so he retrieved his cutlery and began to wolf down the rest of his dinner.

Alyssa smiled at him, and said, "Take it easy, handsome. We'll go straight there after you've eaten, there's no need to give yourself indigestion."

He took a big breath, and forced himself to slow down, taking a long drink of water before finishing off his dinner at a measured pace. The girls were finishing up too, and as soon as they were all done, John glanced at Irillith with a raised eyebrow, and asked her eagerly, "Are the Unity files ready for us to view?"

She gave him a hesitant smile, and said, "I've set up the Projector in a spare room on Deck Three. You'll see why when we start viewing the files."

John nodded, then got up off his chair, offering a hand to Sakura and Alyssa who were sitting next to him. The girls were as curious to see what the files contained as he was, and by unspoken agreement, they abandoned the dishes for later. Irillith took the lead, and the eight of them walked down the corridor to the grav-tube, before stepping into the soft blue of the upward-flowing gravity field.

They stepped out of the grav-field onto Deck Three, and walked past the Tactical Simulator Room on their right, then John's sparring room on the left. He glanced at it as he walked past, his mind going to Yamamoto, and the distraught state the normally taciturn man had been in on their last phone call. He resolved to try calling him after viewing the Unity files, to check that he was alright, assuming they were close enough to the Alliance comms beacons for the call to go through.

Dana was walking behind him, and she mistook the quick glance he threw at the door. Thinking that he was wondering about the state of the training room, she said, "The cleaning bots have tidied up the mess in there. I found your broken training blade, so I've fixed that, and repaired the holo-simulation device as well. I haven't tested it yet, but it should work fine."

John looked back over his shoulder with a grateful smile, and said, "Thanks Sparks, I appreciate it. I was planning on giving Yamamoto a call, but he might be up for a sparring match too."

Irillith stopped at the next door on their left, and pressed the button to open it. The room beyond was large and empty, completely devoid of furniture of any kind. Built into the wall beside the door was a panel with an unusual looking device slotted into the centre. It was jet-black and had a series of glowing red buttons down the right hand edge.

"How does the projector work?" John asked. "Does it need a screen or anything like that?"

Shaking her head, Irillith replied, "Dana installed dozens of holo-projectors in the ceiling. The effect is quite... convincing." She turned towards the panel, and pressed several buttons, which highlighted a disc edged in green on the previously blank section on the left side of the device. Looking at her audience, she asked, "Are you ready?"

When everyone nodded their readiness, she hit the button, and suddenly their surroundings swirled as the projectors activated.

***

They were in some kind of dimly-lit control room with bizarre, unfamiliarly shaped equipment spaced evenly around. It seemed to be some kind of lab, with snaking cables linked to a blocky, hexagonal shaped object about four feet high in the centre. The holographic image was incredibly sharp, and the multitude of projectors made the three-dimensional hologram disturbingly realistic.

John had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't in the room, and he glanced around, taking in the sights. He was going to ask Irillith for the year this footage was taken, when a man strolled past him to the right, appearing through a door that opened before him.

Irillith paused the playback and Jade gasped, "I know him!"

John turned to look at her in surprise, and said, "You knew the Mael'nerak?"

She scrunched up her features as she tried to remember, but she gave him a helpless shrug, and said, "Sorry, I can't give you more details than that, but I'm sure I've seen him before."

He turned back to the image, and said, "He reminds me of Nexus."

The ancient Progenitor had pointed ears just like John, but his stern features were dominated by an aquiline nose, and a cropped goatee. He was dressed in immaculate, perfectly-pressed white robes, which emphasised the blackness of his neatly trimmed hair.

"He probably made Nexus in his own image," Irillith said, staring intently at the serious-looking man. She smiled and added, "Also, I don't think he was called, 'the Mael'nerak'."

"What do you mean?" John asked her, turning to look at the Maliri girl.

She had an ambivalent expression on her face as she gazed at the mysterious figure, and said, "You'll see shortly." Irillith had unclipped a remote from the projector, and she pressed a button that resumed the video.

The Progenitor walked over to a peculiar looking console, and pressed a few buttons, before turning a dial. All the machinery surrounding the hexagonal object began to throb with power, devices lighting up as they surged with energy. That power flowed out of the machines down the cabling, blue-white light shrouding each section of cable at a glacial pace. Eventually the noise reached a crescendo as the power touched the object at the centre, and hundreds of lights flickered over the surface of the blocky, six-sided shape.

A deep, resonant voice filled the room, and it said haltingly, "We are... alive. Are you... our Creator?"

Turning to face the hexagonal object, the Progenitor strolled over to it, then looked down with a haughty expression on his cruel face. "You are to be called Nexus, and I created you to assist me with my experiments. My name is Mael'nerak, but you are to address me as 'Master'. Is that understood?"

"Yes Master, we will obey," Nexus replied dutifully.

"Excellent," Mael'nerak said, his eyes narrowing, and his mouth twisting up into a cheerless smile.

Irillith paused the footage again, and said, "Over the millennia the Maliri must have mixed up his name with a title."

"How old is this footage?" John asked, staring in fascination at the Progenitor.

"Just over sixty-two thousand years old. I incorporated a translator so that you could understand what they were saying, as they were originally speaking the Progenitor language. It sounds like an archaic form of Maliri, so it was easy for me to learn and translate," she replied, sounding wistful. When he looked at her with an arched eyebrow, she explained, "Tashana would have loved to have seen this. To actually be able to see the fabled Mael'nerak with her own eyes..."

John smiled at her, and said confidently, "You'll be able to show her yourself, soon."

She returned his smile, her heart lifting with hope, then glanced back at the frozen image, and said, "There's weeks' more footage of testing and calibration where Mael'nerak programs and configures Nexus. I'll spare you that, and just skip to the next section." She eyed the ancient Progenitor with what looked like grudging respect, as she added, "The man certainly was a genius. I tried to translate and follow his work, but the extent of his knowledge on Artificial Intelligence was astonishing, and far beyond my own understanding."

"What was he experimenting on?" Rachel asked, her curiosity piqued.

"Creating life," Irillith said, staring at the stern-faced man before them.

She pressed a button on the remote, and the image of the lab slowly faded away, as if someone had turned down the lights. The room went pitch-black for a moment, then began to lighten as a new scene appeared before them. They were in a new location now, and no longer in the lab that had been used to create Nexus.

"This next file was recorded ten years later," Irillith explained. "It seems like a lot of these records have been purged, and only the most momentous events saved for posterity. You'll see what I mean in a minute."

It seemed like they were in some kind of tower, which had spectacular views overlooking a lush paradise world. The large room had Nexus' hexagonal server located in one corner, and all about the room were numerous eight-foot-tall cylinders, filled with blocky-shaped humanoids. Mael'nerak strode into the laboratory accompanied by an entourage of several blue-skinned women.

"Holy shit! Pause it a sec!" Dana called out in shock.

Irillith did so, and said wryly, "Yes, our first glimpse of the ancient Maliri." Her expression was unreadable as she added, "They appear in a large number of the remaining videos, all fitting the standard template like modern Maliri."

Dana shook her head, and replied, "No, not that..." She turned to look at John, and continued, "Doesn't this remind you of something?"

John was completely spellbound as he stared at the images, and he muttered, "The Ashanath monoliths..."

She nodded exuberantly, and said, "Yeah, exactly! That last set of stone tablets the leader guy showed us."

"Councillor Talari," Alyssa interjected, recalling the helpful leader of the Ashanath Collective's Security Division, who was the member of the High Council that had pushed for the offer of alliance.

Dana smiled at her, and said, "That's the one."

Calara frowned and asked, "So who made the stone monoliths then? I can't imagine it was Mael'nerak, and the Ashanath wouldn't have been able to find them if it was one of the Maliri, as they wouldn't have been allowed to enter Maliri territory."

Irillith gave her a maddening smile, and said, "You'll find out the answer to that fairly soon, too."

Calara laughed, and said, "It's a good job I love you like a sister, you're treading on dangerous ground, Irillith."

The Maliri girl looked touched by the Latina's words, and she smiled at her fondly, then raised the remote to continue the playback of the recording.

Mael'nerak strolled over to a nearby console, which displayed a vast array of intriguing dials and instruments, and snapped over his shoulder, "Nexus, is the maturation process complete?"

"Incubation to full adulthood has been successfully completed, Master," Nexus replied, sounding pleased.

"Excellent," Mael'nerak said with a wolfish grin. He glanced over at his Maliri entourage, and said in a curt voice, "I'll begin with pod one. Assist the first specimen as it awakens."

"Yes, Master," they chorused obediently, then moved to stand by the first of the tall opaque crystal cylinders.

The Progenitor began to tap commands into the alien-looking console, and power began to creep along cables towards the tube as it had with Nexus. When it reached the top of the cylinder, the device began to shine with an eerie ethereal glow, which gradually brightened in its intensity. They could see slight twitches of movement from inside the tube, and as the light abruptly diminished, a panel slid back to reveal the figure within.

"I was right!" Rachel gasped triumphantly, delighted to have one of her theories proven correct. "Mael'nerak created the Trankarans!"

"I never doubted you for a minute!" Dana exclaimed, hugging the brunette and relishing the sight of her beautiful lover's face lighting up in joy.

As John stared at the image, he watched the four Maliri women help the tall, stocky humanoid out of the cylinder. Those blocky features were unmistakeable on the incredibly muscular eight-foot-tall creature, whose bald head and dark-grey skin clearly identified him as a Trankaran male.

"What do you wish to name this species, Master?" Nexus asked Mael'nerak politely.

The Ancient Progenitor sneered as he replied, "What about 'slave'?"

Nexus was tactful as he replied, "Perhaps something a little more distinct to help separate the slave species from one another?"

Mael'nerak shrugged, and replied, "Call them 'miner' for all I care, that's what I made them for."

"As you command, Master. 'Trankaran' it is then," Nexus said, as the forefather of the galactic species took his first tentative steps, supported by the four Maliri girls.

Irillith paused the footage, and she smiled as she said, "I left the original Progenitor term in there, so you could understand where the name is derived from. I'm sure Chancellor Niskera might have a few choice things to say about that." She turned to look at Sakura, and gave her an apologetic smile as she explained, "Chancellor Niskera is the leader of the Trankaran Republic."

Sakura had stayed quiet through the footage, and she sounded stunned as she asked in an awed voice, "Did we really just witness the birth of the Trankaran species?"

John nodded, and said, "Mael'nerak was the Progenitor who ruled this section of the galaxy tens of thousands of years ago. Rachel had already discovered his 'fingerprints' all over the Trankaran genetic code from some samples she took, but this just confirmed he created that species beyond all doubt."

"They aren't the only ones," Irillith murmured, looking pointedly at the screen again.

She cycled onto the next scene that she'd selected for them to view, and the holo-recording faded away, before reappearing again with some subtle changes. The room was the same, but the vegetation looked different in the view from the tower, the planet considerably more developed. The lab equipment was there too, but while the basic setup was the same, the console had been replaced, and the design of the incubation cylinders was now more intricate and complex.

"This was recorded just over two hundred years later," Irillith explained, as Mael'nerak suddenly appeared by the console.

The Progenitor's appearance had changed now, and his goatee had been grown out into a Van Dyke. His hair was longer too, and while he still wore white robes, they were a different style, which seemed more relaxed and flowing. A dozen Maliri girls were moving between the incubation pods, checking readings and observing the small humanoid occupants inside.

"Power up the first of the pods, Nexus," Mael'nerak commanded in an imperious voice, throwing an excited glance towards the opaque-crystal cylinders.

Nexus replied without pause, and said, "Beginning the animation process, Master."

Power crept along the cabling to the first of the tall crystal chambers, shrouding it in a brilliant light before it ebbed away. The doors opened as before, but instead of an huge hulking Trankaran, a slight, diminutive figure stepped out, aided by the Maliri. It looked around the room with unblinking black eyes set into its huge bulbous head.

"Fuck me! He created the Ashanath too?!" Dana gasped, staring at the image in amazement.

Irillith nodded, and pausing the video, she replied, "It certainly seems so."

"Shit! They lied to us!" Dana blurted out, as she looked at John and the girls with wide eyes. "I'd bet serious money that the ancient Ashanath created those monoliths!"

John blinked as he thought about it, and said, "Yeah, that fits. They were there to witness the Mael'nerak creating life, even their own species, so they knew what the inside of his lab looked like."

"That set of stone pictographs was in considerably better condition than all the others," Jade noted, thinking back to the battered state of the other monoliths. "I wonder if they treasured and revered them as showing the creation of their species?"

Alyssa gave John a wry smile, and said, "It seems our allies were holding out on us."

He nodded, and said, "It's got to be worth paying them another visit to hear their side of the story. If we show them this video, I bet they'll be far more likely to tell us the truth." Turning to Irillith, he asked, "Does Mael'nerak explain why he created them, like he did with the Trankarans?"

The Maliri girl shook her head, and replied, "I've scanned through all the accompanying footage. The Ashanath only appear briefly, and Mael'nerak doesn't discuss them with anyone."

"I'd love to examine their DNA," Rachel said with a sigh of longing. "I'm sure it'd be fascinating."

"Their homeworld, Ashana, is amazing," Dana said as she recalled the vast floating platforms, levitating in the air with the Ashanath's anti-gravity tech. She smiled at the tawny-haired girl and added, "You'll love seeing that too."

"Really? Why's that?" Rachel asked with interest.

Dana glanced at John, and grinned at him as she replied, "You'll just have to wait and see!"

He chuckled as he remembered teasing Dana, Alyssa, and Calara in just the same way before their first visit to Ashana. The girls had been dying to find out more about the first alien homeworld they were planning to visit, but he'd made them wait, so they could witness the spectacular sights for themselves.