With the Melchior back on Abaddon and the shuttle out in the debris field, there is a lot of room available in the nearly empty dorsal bay. At the moment it is airless and without artificial gravity. This is to help with practicing a particular maneuver: Tasha has a heavy backpack attached to her space armor, which holds a parachute and an extra-vehicular maneuvering pack. Strapped to her front is a smaller suited figure. Yue's spacesuit is a colorfully painted skin-tight affair - as close as you can get to being naked in a vacuum - save for the helmet and life-support pack.
"Try a more gentle thrust this time," the diminutive Terragens Agent tells Tasha. "You need to find your center of mass.."
Having risked death and bet on genocide only hours before, the impulse to give in to frivolety and relax is strong as the latent stress paces in her mind. Were she more green than she is, she might well have given in to the urge; as it is, her long list of recent near death and high stakes missions has given her the willpower and experience to solider on. Resisting a remark yet again, Tasha pushes herself to focus on the life-or-death mission ahead of her.
"I'm working on it," she says in a neutral, distracted tone. Freefall isn't at all like flying to the young half-Vartan, but being above whatever is declared 'the ground' makes her want to flap her wings or contort in useless ways. She resolves to keep working on linking a EVA thruster array to wing movements -- somehow -- and keeps trying. "How's this?" she asks as she tries again.
The conjoined pair floats forward with only a slight tumble. "Not bad. Remember we'll need that tumble when we fall. Gotta go butt-first, then turn when there's enough air to use your wings for gliding," the human notes.
Tasha also decides not to mention how embarassing the situation is. "I've jumped off a sky island before, but from space? It's going to be something." She just hopes that 'something' isn't a short lived fireball. "Do you do things like this often? I mean, do they train you for this?" As she asks, she tries another puff on manuvering, this time trying to turn, stop, turn again, and stop.
"Nope, never done anything like this before," Yue notes. "Getting into places you shouldn't be usually involves bribery instead. I've always meant to try skydiving someday though!" The far bulkhead is coming up, so there probably needs to be a touch more thrust on the stopping attempts. "I'm good with a broomstick though."
"I know about those." Tasha fires the jets, turns, then lands so that she's standing on the bulkhead and looking 'up' across the largely empty bay. She stares for a long moment, quiet, in much the same way she might have otherwise looked in to the sky while thinking. At length she asks, "So what do you think of the long-lost magical land of Primus," in a distant, distracted tone.
"It's hard not to treat it like a theme park at times," Yue admits. "Not that I've seen much of Abaddon yet. Not even any of the monsters! It's just not right, visiting a world with giant monsters and not getting to see any. The actual magic I'm still not sure of. I just have to hope it will work like it's supposed to when we get down to the surface again."
"I think it's working like it's not supposed to, like a hack or a jury-rig." Tasha doesn't lowers her gaze, but she does turn away from her thoughts and push off again; after drifting, she fires the thrusters in an attempt to right herself and align with the floor and ceiling as relative to ship operations. "So what did you tell your ... handlers, I think they're called? Handlers, about what you were doing with us, and out here?"
"Oh, I only reported to them that my Encante mission was completed," Yue says.. and then shifts her weight to see if Tasha can compensate. "This other stuff is a bit too secret still - I'll be waiting until after Ms. Smith makes official contact herself. Can't risk sending anything about the Jotoki find yet until we know more about the circumstances."
"I see. Thank you for being honest," Tasha replies as she tries to compensate. She's slow on the recovery, not having expected the movement, but soon rights the disturbance in their alignement. "So old Treachery is going to make contact." It's not a question. "I wonder how that will go, if it was worth it? I'm sure she knows what she's doing, but ... Well, anyway, focusing."
Her head shakes, then she compensates for that too, before firing the jets and beginning a acceleration-deceleration cycle that involves firing, turning back to the wall, then using the sensory feeds to determine proximity before rotating and spreading her wings to slow their approach, and touching down on the wall. After a few of the early attempts her efforts become less reactionary and jerky and more precise -- aniticpated -- and the process begins to gain the feel of routine. It's minutes in when she says strays from practice details again. "Yue, in your opinion, do you think I handled the Berserkers well? You said things like that were common?"
"Machine Order life is.. very alien," Yue notes. "There are agreements and treaties in place, but there are clauses for dealing with a machine that goes rogue. Just one of them can sterilize a planet. Some of them are planets. But we've seen the signs of large scale warfare throughout Known Space. Clearly, there have been several times in the past when Galactic Civilization deemed it necessary to purge a biosphere or aggressive species."
"Terra itself resides in an Ash Zone - the systems around us were burnt or sterilized in the past," the human adds.
"Is that so? An Ash Zone ... " Tasha remembers the galactic maps, the area of emptiness around the Terran home system but she had simply been told it was devoid of resources -- or was it it simply empty? -- but whatever the truth of the memory is, she wasn't told it was ash. She files that away, deciding somethign new may have been discovered in the long silence of six thousand years. She begins in to another rotation, turns, and after stabilizing has time to ask, "Then do the Galactics actively interact with current, living machine civilizations that are not Galactic members and not Clients? Do you know who or what caused the Ash Zone?"
"I don't know about 'actively' interact, unless you count keeping battle fleets at the ready," Yue notes with a chuckle. "Everyone wants to trade with them though. Living technology is.. scary and attractive. But there are risks. The machines themselves don't participate in Galactic society that we know of. We suspect they still have a patron-client system of their own though, but naturally occurring machine life is rare. As for the Ash Zones.. galactic war, most likely. It's one of the extinction scenarios for what happened to the First Ones: they all killed each other for some reason."
"That seems, uh, likely," Tasha admits, looking off down the bay at nothing in particular. It used to be that she thought the Sifran abnnhilation of all galactic -- and perhaps pangalactic -- sentient life was unforgivable. Now that she's also participated in the destruction of a civilization, no matter how worn down and worn out, she finds her viewpoint has shifted in unpleasant ways. Now she has a perspective beyond a victim or a observer, but as a participant. She wonders at their motives: the killers some less clear cut villains, and the victims have fallen under suspicion. Not sure which way to take the matter of galactic war, she stumbles and adds, "Maybe they had a reason? I don't know, but, I mean, I had a reason ... so ... uh ... "
"Well, there's always a reason," Yue says, still occasionally shifting her weight to simulate turbulence. "That's what this whole mission to get the book is about, after all. What did the Progenitors know? What made them leave or go into hiding? Why'd their worshipers want to come here.. or keep people from coming here?"
The jets abruptly fire, the two turn, and Tasha is standing on the ceiling looking down (or up) at Yue. "You say all that like you've been over this before. You know the details about the book, and you're not surprised and you didn't ask if that was correct and didn't even ask if that was what that was trying to accomplish. That's a lot to assume." She then balls her right hand, rapping her knuckles on Yue's head. "So, how is that?"
"The Kampf are descended from the Teutons of Fafnir, who claimed to know the Truth about the Progenitors - it's even where the term comes from," Yue explains. "They send one ship along on the Expedition, uninvited, and they never shared their Truth with anyone else. That they came here at all suggests this place, or the Sifras, have something to do with it all. It follows that that is the only book they'd have worth stealing, and also the only one they'd be protecting. Do I get a cookie?"
"Yes, but later." Tasha raps on the helmeted head a few more times as she thinks. "Well there's no point in my saying you're wrong, because the Tuetons didn't set up their organization to be subtle -- so much for human superiority right? --- and to anyone with any knowledge of them it'd be obvious. So, yes. That's the plan. Maybe they know something interetsing, and I want to know what that is. Now your turn: does the Terragens government know anything about the Progenitors that they've told you?"
"It never really came up," Yue says. "It's a religious matter, and since the Progenitor 'cultists' didn't cause any trouble or try to infiltrate governmental bodies on Terra or the colonies.. and also only seemed to attract human disciples.. it was just ignored. Terra has hundreds of religions. It was also a common enough religious notion that most other Galactics had their own versions."
"Not much to work with, but the part about other versions is interesting." After kicking off, Tasha floats back in to the air, upside down and staring at the inverted bay. "So do you think we need to keep practicing or should we move on to the next step?"
"We'll need gravity for that," Yue notes. "I've made a holographic mockup of the route to take, so you can learn it in the dark.. except we don't have room in the bay for all of it, so it's going to just be in sections. Could have done it in VR, but that surprisingly doesn't make for good muscle memory and your equipment requires using the medical beds for it.."
"I have access to a Khattan full BCI immersion system, but it's not on the ship," Tasha notes. She does so for two reasons: becaue it's useful to mention and also to see what Yue's reaction is to the technology and its makers. "It requires an implant to use, though. Otherwise we'll have to use what we have here."
"I should have just packed more than one of my headsets," Yue notes. "Get us to the floor and I'll turn the gravity back on."
Without a reaction, Tasha assumes the knowledge is old and common technology. She knows the Khattans are favored for tehir reliable systems, and as far as her experience in the modern Galactic space, that hasn't changed. She knows her mining could be detected by the agent's own psychic abilities, but that too interests her and she's always liked pushing boundaries to discover something new -- and in this case useful to security.
"Alright." The jets fire, Tsha reorientates, and then her boots clamp to the ground and they're down.
Yue disconnects her harness, and floats to the main control panel. Gravity resumes, and air pressure increases. Finally, the woman removes her helmet. "They still use those implant BCIs. Library tech, probably. We've got halo headsets now. Individually calibrated, but they can self-calibrate pretty quickly."
"Library tech?" Tasha pulls off her own helmet, knowing she'll be putting it on again later but wanting to free her head from the confines, if briefly. "She tilts her ehad and continues, saying, "I always thought they were conventional technology, designed over time. I'm not sure why, in hindsight. So they still use them? I found mine as part of the Expedition Fleet leftovers, I might have had them installed on my own after punching my sister. It's a fun story." She grins, tail wagging even if her Vartan-made armor doesn't know what to do with the motion.
"Bend over so I can see?" Yue asks.
"Why not?" Again, no joke. She suspects Gabriel would have made one, though. Or Layth. Tomorrow's-Hope too. The list continues as she drops her head, hair hanging down.
Deft fingers sort through Tasha's hair to locate the studs. "Huh, there's more on the skin itself.." Yue notices the grown-over tattoos. "I imagine these things use programmable matter, or a reservoir for creating the nano-wires that go into the brain. The dermal circuits though.. I assume it has to do with piloting a Titan?"
"I'm surprised you know about them, I thought they were obsolete except for use by Silent-Ones," Tasha answers, glancing up but seeing little through her hair. "The Titan is the one with the system I mentioned."
"The Khattans still use them," Yue claims. "They are obsolete, but we think they just got it and the control parts from the Library, and never had a reason to innovate further. Civilians have halos though, and I've heard of something called a brain-cap that's requires removing the top of the skull. I think a lot of it is about status."
Tasha straightens, pushing her hair back over her ears and then flicking them a few times for good measure. "The more metal in your head, the higher status?"
"I think it's more that you can afford invasive brain surgery instead of wearing something around your head like a poor Terran," Yue says with a grin. "Also because they use them for security. You can't spoof or reuse the implant's identifier, even though most biometrics can be faked."
The human helps Tasha shed her backpack next. "Won't be taking this in with us. There's a self destruct in it to destroy the evidence.."
"Well, it's nice to feel superior to poor Terrans," Tasha remarks, planting a hand on her hip and grinning lopsidedly. "Especially because I'm usually the one feeling inferior. It's good to know you can't fake them, even now. That is useful." The hand falls, pulling the woman's helmet out from under the other, which she drops on her head and secures. After a moment she asks, "Ready to see my inferiority at infiltration? In my defense, no one trained me for this. Of course it's my mission, so ... " She shrugs in a 'still my fault, what can you do' sort of way.
With the backpack off and helmet on, Tasha gives Yue the universal Expedition sign of okay readiness: the thunbs up.
Yue places some relatively small, shiny devices at the corners of the hangar, and then semi-opaque walls are produced.. at least, they look solid within Tasha's helmet. There's also a blinking indicator in her heads-up display telling her which way to go. "The goal here is to move as quietly and quickly as possible, without touching the walls - that means being aware of your wings at all times. We can't assume the walls won't be alarmed somehow," Yue explains.
"Don't be a clumsy buffoon, got it," reports the hybrid, who stretches her hands in her armored gloves, then stretches and retracts here wings in a brief stretching and familiarization test. Once that's done she turns towards the direction of the indicator and gets walking. "You know I used to be a pickpocket? Do you know what that is? I never thought it'd come in handy again. I was trying hard to be legitimate, you know, official and accepted and so on. It's all the same inside the door, I guess."
"You have legitimate pickpockets?" Yue asks, monitoring things from the side apparently. There's a pause when Tasha reaches the target point, and then the whole map shifts around for the next 'segment' and a new target is given. "I'll want you to run this a few times before getting to the next phase," she tells Tasha.
"I mean, I'm back to stealing something and sneaking around. It's just the scale and the company that changed, and the value." She hesitates at the new section's start a moment, taking extra time to get a feel for her presence in the world and the space she takes up. Then she crouches slightly, tucking her wings in. "Here I go." A brief and unwanted flashback to the Themis-Skoll's performance report readouts flashes in her mind, but she curses it out of her head. "Going!" And she breaks in to a sprint.
The first run through results in zero collisions with the imaginary walls, and then Yue has her run it again and again, faster each time so that she has to remember what's coming around the corner before she sees it. "At least Vartan armor isn't noisy," Tasha's instructor notes.
"It held up well for being six thousand years old, just like my Gabriel," Tasha remarks as she races through the maze, feeling like some sort of Silent-One athelete and thinking Tomorrow's-Hope would see this as great fun. "I'd have liked better explosive resist-" A pause as she takes a corner, " ... resistance, though."
"If you want explosive resistance, get a tank," Yue advises. Once Tasha is back at the starting position again, the simulation alters: now there are doors in the walls. All closed though.
"Am I supposed to open these? Break them?" Tasha asks as she studies the nearest doorway. "And can I have a tank?"
"You're supposed to get past them," Yue notes. "We don't know where exactly there will be doors, or what they'll look like.. but there's sure to be some. And tanks are overrated. Ask any soldier that's tried to pick up girls with one."
Tasha knows of one girl she could pick up in a tank and possibly two or three. She breaks in to a jog, coming upon the nearest door and then stops. As she examines the blockade, she hunches down, tilting her head this way and that and looking for anything and everything that might be a trap, a trick, a lock or an ID. She considers what there could be, and a laundry list of too-many-things-to-check-for scrolls in her mind.
And in the middle of pondering, the door opens suddenly!
"Lesson one: don't linger next to a door," Yue says.
With her fist up, Tasha frowns as she stares at the door. "I thought it might be trapped or rigged or something," she insists as the hand falls. "Right, don't stand and stare at the door. I'm a Vartan, I can eyeball the door from across the room."
"It's not one in your path, just go past it," Yue notes. "This is mostly to gauge your reaction time to sudden events.. like doors opening."
"Ah, I thought it was important. I'll treat them as threats then." Tasha goes back to the start, rolls her shoulders, then breaks in to a run. This time she approaches the corners slowly, stopping just around them to peek down the hallway and listen, turning her suit's sensitive audio and her own eyes towards the doors and listening for movement before doing the same front and back. After the sweep is concluded, she sprints the the next corner and begins repeating the movement.
A door opens behind her, signaled by her helmet speakers.
Realizing there's little she can do to stop the entry from where she is, Tasha quickly assess shadows and obstacles to hide in or behind, also checking her distance to see if she feels confident about making it around the enxt corner in time.
There aren't any shadows at all in the simulated maze - it isn't that realistic. Going forward is the only choice.
Without a weapon, nor with any other option, Tasha sprints ahead to avoid what's behind. She remembers not to forget what's infront of her either, and so keeps her eyes and ears ready for anything that might be on the other side of her only escape route.
The doors are random, and change with each run through. Tasha does get better and memorizing the path though, and when to dash to the next corner or a previous one. "I can't simulate people showing up," Yue notes. "But knowing the route will make it easier to deal with the unexpected without getting lost."
"It's a good thing to know. A lot better than walking in without a clue. What are we going to do if we run in to people, though?" Tasha asks as she waits for the maze to shift again. "And what about security? I have some technical experience, but most of it was lost after my injury. I can kick in a door, cut wires and follow directions but anything more I'll need either a guide or, well, you probably."
"We have to hope that the distraction will deal with any security systems," Yue notes. "The easiest way to bypass alarms is to make sure they all go off at once, and then the security people which shut them down themselves. Dropping a meteor next door should do that."
Tasha nods, despite being quite a distance from Yue. "It's a good plan, it really is. And if wthings go badly, well, we'll have weapons if it comes to that. I'd prefer to not have to shoot anyone, but I want Gabriel to be alone even less." She moves to scratch her nose, pauses, then shakes her head again. "Should I keep at this, or should be continue?"
"This is about all we can simulate for," Yue admits. "When we're there, there won't be a target beacon, so it'll all be down to memory. If there are locks.. well, I'll deal with those. You deal with anyone who stumbles into us."
"I'm glad my thuggishness is a valued quality still," Tasha insists as the image fades and she pulls off her helmet. "I did a bit of threatening and hurting along with the pickpocketing -- and I thought I wasn't qualified for this!" She barks a laugh, walking over to Yue and nodding. "I guess we'll see how it goes then. If we fail, well, Remy gets bored when I'm uninjured."