Space Odyssey: Spectre

Chapter 621: Micromachines

"The rest of them are still asleep or waking up. But we can start with just us." K announced over the communication network.

Cain had just finished sending a packet of information to the Lance of Thanatos. While Jace was walking through the walkways to get back to the landing pad. "That is not necessary," Jace told them. "I will fly back in the wyvern and then pilot the Lance of Thanatos."

"You are positive that Cain can’t come back with you? We could set up like a temporary robot or something." Colvert suggested.

"That will not work. We checked into those options as well." Cain responded. "The portal needs to be closed after you get to the other side. But there is no telling how long that will take, so we need someone over here. To close the portal once you arrive at your destination. As for remotely activating it, the creators specifically forbade it as far as we can tell. They did not want to risk the portal being accidentally activated or something."

"Would the outcome be that bad?" Shilla asked.

"It would be. It would shatter the wall between dimensions and we could slip between them as easily as walking. It would also let anyone and anything slip into this dimension." Jace explained. "As it stands we are already bound in this dimension but imagine if you had to experience and manipulate every point of time at the same time." fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

"Nevermind." Shilla sighed, "I am starting to see the issue. It would be like walking into the void of space without proper preparation but there was no way to tell when it would happen."

Jace walked aboard the Wyvern and toward the pilot’s seat. He switched on the console as he sat down and turned off the programming that he had set up previously to get to the gateway station. "Exactly, so until we get more information, we do not want to risk it."

The Wyvern’s engines hummed as they powered on before the wings tilted slightly. Directing his takeoff up and away from the station. The gravity that had been holding him down since he arrived disappeared as soon as he was away from the station.

"In a rush, Jace?" K asked. Jace muted them as he flew on a path to go over the ship so he could get to the hangar on the other side of the Lance of Thanatos. He was spinning around the Wyvern as he got to the other side of the ship. So he could do a quick landing.

But as the hangar came into view he flinched when he saw a woman standing in clear view. She was clearly waiting for him to land and disembark. So he moved the Wyvern in and landed. As he walked down the ramp he could see her glaring at him.

Despite it being only a short time she had definitely perfected the motherly glare that he had only ever seen from Fenrir and Salem. He was not expecting to be on the receiving end by someone else for a long time.

"You lied." Valkyrie stated plainly as Jace walked past her and she followed him.

"I did." Jace answered with a grunt. "I do that a lot. So remind me what I lied to you about now."

"You told me that we could not do teleportation. The truth was that we could but there would be a low risk of either a miscarriage or my death because I was pregnant at the time." Valkyrie reminded him. "We could have taken the risk."

"It was not a risk." Jace told her. "I have two new abilities I gained after stabilization. One of them is foresight that lets me see into the future. The other lets me split my mental power and keep them separate. Like having one constantly viewing the future and the probability of all of us making it back to the galaxy before the war starts, which is zero. This situation had us getting back the fastest with the least amount of possible casualties."

Valkyrie digested that information as they stepped into the elevator. Now that he was back on the Lance of Thanatos he was remotely accessing a number of different systems. At the moment he was closing the hangars and securing everything.

When the elevator started to climb he looked over at Valkyrie who sighed. Running a hand along her robotic limb that was visible and seemed to have been modified and changed since the last time he saw her. Not to mention she wore more civilian clothing and the type that did not hide her cleavage or her arms.

"What now?" Jace asked.

"Will this open up a new can of figurative worms that will become a problem for us?" Valkyrie asked and he looked at her and tilted his helmeted head to show his curiosity. "There is a cost for everything and if this is the best option of the possible options then there must be a greater cost down the road. Am I wrong?"

Jace chuckled, "no, you are completely right. Fortunately it will not be a cost we will have to deal with. It will be up to our grandchildren to deal with problems that will blossom from this."

Valkyrie glared at him and then her eyes widened and she sighed more heavily. "You do not mean in a figurative sense like the next generations do you?" Valkyrie asked before continuing. "You mean our literal grandchildren will end up working together to resolve this problem."

Jace shrugged. "I do not know all the details but I assume that is what it means."

"So you filter information with one of your abilities. That has to be one of the more interesting ways to do it." Valkyrie pointed out and then seemed to realize something else. "Exactly how long are we all going to end up living?"

Jace shrugged. "No clue."

The elevator arrived and they walked across the opening to the door that was right across from it. Entering the bridge where a few of the others had woken up and gathered. They looked over at Jace but most of their gazes snapped over to Valkyrie who walked in with him.

"Umm..." Shilla was sitting in the command chair. Jace held out a hand to stop her.

He then walked over and sat in the unoccupied pilot seat. The one that Cain was usually occupying. Without Cain, he was the best option for a pilot. The only other one was Shilla and she was in the captain’s chair.

Jace held the gateway pass key over the console. "Now how do I-" He stopped talking as the pass key seemed to fall into sand before sinking into the console and disappearing. The white micromachines covered the console. After a moment the console reappeared, its format was changed and there was now a visible slot where the pass key had reformed and inserted itself.

"What the hell was that?" Victor asked in astonishment.

"Micromachines." Valkyrie was the one that answered. "But how are they doing that, back in the holy empire we concluded that the only things that can control them are Artificial Intelligences. Even then it was not at the level of what we just saw."

"It is reading our brainwaves and reacting accordingly." Jace explained as he checked the other two pass keys that were on his belt. "It changed the console to accommodate a reader for the passkey."

"It is old technology but more advanced than anything we have seen. Why am I getting a sense of deja vu, like what had happened with the Xenar?" K asked from her chair.

"Not quite. We were able to tell the differences because they were clearly not as prepared for their death. But these guys, whoever they were, seemed to be prepared more than just for their death but also for their technology to be used by someone else in the future." Jace explained as he began running a diagnostic on all of the ship systems. It had been over a year, almost two years since it moved.

"That makes sense." Shilla nodded. "But it is hard to imagine a race older than the Centuria."

"I am sure it is. But I doubt you all stopped at your borders for no reason." Jace pointed out, "there has to be a point in history when you decided to close your borders."

Shilla nodded her head. "Cain, we are preparing our systems. Do you have any last minute goodbyes?"

"No, I left everything in my temporary quarters aboard the Lance of Thanatos. I am sure we will meet again one day in the future." Cain told them. "Now then, Jace is the Lance linking up with the Gateway yet?"

Jace unmuted the communication network as he checked the results of the diagnostic before he checked to see if the ship was connected to the gateway. "We have a connection, it appears that the gateway is controlling the navigation and giving me a set of coordinates to follow but that is it."