Disclaimer: I do not own Zootopia or any of its characters, nor do I plan on monetizing this book.
Authors note: This is a sequel to "The New horizon project" So I recommend you read that one first. I'm aware of the quality of writing for the first half of the book, but I REALLY don't want to rewrite half a book.
Chapter One: Old friends
Some memories are unforgettable, remaining ever vivid, heartwarming, or otherwise.
My name is Elliot Felix Crawford, and my life has been quite the interesting ride. When I was born, my family and I were moved light-years away from our home for me to become a pet project to the Galactic Federation. I was put through genetic alterations in a program called the S.D.I; The idea was to create the best living strategist in the Galaxy, which worked to some degree. My mind was over three-hundred years old when I was just the age of ten, and I could defeat entire fleets without batting an eye. All was well in my relativity complex life… Then I was taken prisoner for five long years, subjugated to every possible way you could extract information from a man. I lost hope in the world, I was ready to throw in the towel... I mean, who wouldn't. Even though I wanted to die with all my being, something inside me just refused to let me die. Something told me over and over 'Wait just a little longer, you'll be rescued.' I never knew what that voice really was, but it was right; I was eventually rescued by the one and only Judith Crawford, my wife.
Just like me, she went through the S.D.I program, and was the best fighter management officer in the Navy. In her quest to find me, she had defied all orders to stop searching for me. 'I just had this feeling in my heart that you were still alive.' That's what she told me hours before her death. Someone had given up her location, and she was pulled out of hyperspace by an Imperial Interdictor. That was the last straw for me. The very government that raised both of us from birth had thrown us away like a dead battery.
Why am I telling you this you may be asking. This all has something to do with the New Horizon wormhole generator. Shortly after her death, and before I was going to resign, I'd been posted to run a small Marine base on Wolf 1061-D, just one planet away from where I was born. Within two days of arriving, I was asked to test a 'Leap in transportation' by being a human guinea pig; The man responsible for sending me hadn't even sent probes through the thing beforehand, but when you're kinda wanting to die, why would you care.
I'd been granted a state of the art communications system to send a message from where I was sent, over forty-five thousand light years away from colonized space. We'd long since developed FTL transportation and communications, but a normal message would still take years to reach colonized space. I was told the system would use encoded light to slingshot the message through space, this struck me as odd since light isn't faster than light. I eventually found out it used a quantum entangled storage drive, that when altered on one end, it would be instantly altered on the other, anywhere in the universe.
"Excuse my rambling, I just happen to have a hard time staying on track." I said with a chuckle while looking down at the small arctic fox curled up in my lap.
"Daddy, just tell it already, I don't care if you… What's rambling?" The small Arctic fox replied with a little smile that still warmed my heart every time I saw it.
"Rambling means going on, and on without reaching the point you're trying to get at, pumpkin."
"Oh, okay."
"Anyway, When I went through the wormhole, I was sent here. At first, I was completely oblivious to their being smart Mammals like you here. Once I did find out, things went downhill very fast. I was shot in the stomach by a Rabbit, then I ended up shooting seven Mammals that tried to kill me. After that I went away, and found our home buried in a mountainside. I went to the moon with someone I still can't remember, all I know is I loved her with all my heart, just like you." I said while boop-ing the little kit's wet nose with one hand and scratching an ear with another. Her response was a small giggle.
"We were fighting a mean man with robotic arms and legs-"
"Uncle Alex!" She interjected.
"Yes, Uncle Alex was being controlled by an evil lady that eventually controlled me for a short while."
"But you killed her too, right?" She asked while throwing half-hearted punches into the air, almost hitting my chin on a few occasions.
"You always change that part silly, she beat me." I replied in a soft tone.
"Yeah, but you're invincible, you even survived the Baal-hermon explosion."
"Well, this woman far more dangerous than a Simple Neutron bomb. Now stop interrupting or I'll tickle you to death." I said while poising my wilted hands over the small Arctic Fox's ribs. She immediately widened her sparkling amber eyes, which had an exotic slit like a cats eyes. The fox also put on a suppressed grin that made her face look most adorable.
"Now, where was I?"
"The mean old lady that owned you." She replied with a smug little smile.
"Did you learn that from uncle Alex?" I asked with suspicion.
"Mmmhhhmmm." She replied while nodding her pure white head furiously.
"Right… The lady's name was Zofia, the scout of the Galaxy. She saved my life to a degree, then tried to take it as hers. I rebelled, and eventually won with the help of forces beyond my grasp. After that, I spent all my time training where the Lunovian people live-"
"Oooh can we go see them again? PLLLLEEEEEZZZZ?" She asked while looking up to me with her puppy eyes. "Hahahahahah, s-stop it daddy! I'm-Hahahaha-Sorry!" The small kit giggled out in a squirming ball of laughter due to my merciless tickling. Once I had sufficiently tickled her, I resumed my story while stroking her soft and fluffy ears, which came to a pronounced point.
"I will take you when your grades improve."
"But I'm getting A's and B Pluses… And I'm only ten."
"When I was ten, I had three PHD's and Seven thousand men under my command."
"But you had that computer."
". . . Very well, I'll take you to see the Lunovians next time I go... I'm just trying to prepare you for the world sweetie. I don't want your life to end up like mine." I replied while absentmindedly feeling my mangled face.
"Daddy, you're face isn't that bad. I've see the pictures of you before…. Can you tell the story now?"
"Oh, yes. Once I trained for a long time, I was sent to battle the Thargoid Empire. A race of varying Insect people who are far more advanced than Humans. After a battle I don't remember, I won at the cost of something I can't recall. The one that I loved was safe, and then I came back here to live my life. Everything after that point is still a haze up until a few years ago, right when I met the most beautiful Arctic Fox in the world… Now go to bed darling." I said while attempting to remove myself from the kit's grasp.
"No, stay with me." She demanded while clamping down on my waist.
"I'll be back Ella, I just need to go plan with Uncle Alex for a while." I said while forcefully pulling the Ball of white fur from my abdomen. Upon tucking Ella into her bed, I kissed her forehead and left the room I used to call mine. Once I closed her door, which shot from within the door frame with a hiss, indicating an airtight seal. I headed towards the mess hall of the old and out of date Federal Corvette we now lived in. The once gray walls had turned to a slightly corroded brown over the years of the ship being under a waterfall. Most of the lights were still intact, some occasionally flickering from their old age. All in all, this was no place to raise a young girl, but when you're wanted for the deaths of millions and can't contact your own species, what do you do?
-=Ten minutes later=-
"Sorry I'm late." I said while shuffling into one of the rooms we'd properly preserved; The mess hall was still a pearly white color with a few white dining tables bolted to the floor.
"Hey, with your condition, I'm still thankful I don't have to carry you everywhere." Alex replied. The man standing in front of me had been a lot of things though life, my friend was the first. Back then his name was Ben Anderson, the lieutenant in charge of all invasion forces aboard my ship.
-=Twenty-one Years ago=-
I was just instated the Captain of my own Farragut Battlecruiser, and I was only eleven at the time; In heindsite, I should've expected no one to take it seriously that I was in charge of them. I had a breakdown after my inauguration speech, and the only one to help me though it was Ben Anderson.
"Sir? Is everything alright?" He asked the small crying boy, who was leaned up against a wall with his knees tucked up to his chest.
"No. . . No one respects me even though I could easily beat them in combat, or any war-game out there." The small boy replied without a hint of crying in his voice. His face however, told a completely different story. His eyes were puffy and red from crying, and his knees were damp from tears.
"I don't know much about how you came to be in charge of me, but I respect you sir. It's not what's on the outside that matters, only through actions will your character be determined." The far older Lieutenant said while kneeling in front of the boy.
That was how our relationship started. Alex may have been twenty years older than me by cellular aging, but I was two-hundred and seventy years older than him though my mind. Years later, my ship was destroyed and he was presumed dead.
-=Present time=-
"Look, I know this is a two man job, but you can barely walk, let alone fight." Alex said in an almost pleading tone. Ella still found his robotic limbs slightly off putting, but once he showed they wouldn't hurt her, she loved him almost as much as me.
"The only option is to make it a two man job, besides, I can still shoot better than you with my frail limbs." I replied while pulling up my wool sweater to reveal pieces of Kryptek camouflage from my G-suit still graphed into my skin at the cellular level; We tried to remove the fabric, but due to the nature of the armor melted into my body, it was inoperable. On the plus side, my skin was impact resistant to a degree; My whole body was irradiated and burnt, making me look more like one of Frankenstein's monsters than a Human being.
"Yeah, how you can do this is bullsh-"
"SHHH!" I hissed in the middle of his sentence.
"What? Ella's not going to hear us talking."
"It's a bad habit." I replied while slowly sitting at one of the dining tables where a holographic building was being displayed.
"Yes mom, I'll stop talking about bull's crap. Anyway, If you insist on coming, you'll be most useful as overwatch, up here." Alex said while moving the building out of view and a mountain range into view.
"That's five miles away, are you sure I shouldn't be farther. We might want to be over the horizon when I'm blowing APC's apart." I replied sarcastically, not that the shot was hard with a Railgun, it was just impractical if Alex needed backup.
"Ha-ha, very funny. If you see a better position, let me know. Until then, this is the best option that I see." He said while swiping back to the building schematic.
The facility was a multi billion dollar private security company run by three individuals we still hadn't been able to identify. Prism Private security had built their main research and development facility over the ruins of Bunnyburrow. It took up more space than the entire town ever did, and looked more like a modern castle than an R&D lab. The entire perimeter was walked by dozens of armed and Exo-skeleton wearing Mammals. The wall itself was made of reinforced concrete, and had automated Gau-19 turrets on each of the ten points around the decagon shaped wall. The upside was once you breached the outer perimeter, it was just security cameras and the occasional rotor based drone.
Every bit of technology that company used was based off my Security Station from when I came through the wormhole Six years ago.
"I would have to concur with my positioning, although I want you to put a suppressed D.M.R here, so I can take out the guards and turrets." I said while pointing to a small tree about two-hundred meters away from the main gate.
"You got it. Anything else you think we should go over before we do this?"
"Umm. . . Yeah, just one thing. Keep track of how many you kill."
"Are we really going to have a competition, because I think you have a sore disadvantage." Alex said boastfully while deploying one of his black, arm mounted nano-blades.
"No, I want to know how much to send the company for distribution to the individual families." I answered quietly with a completely blank gaze into the orange hologram.
"Oh… Sure thing." Alex replied in an ashamed tone. "H-hey, I was going to save something until Christmas, but it's done now, and I know you would put it to good use."
"You don't need to redeem yourself from that comment. Besides, Ella's going to come looking for me if I don't return soon." I said while slowly standing from my seated position. Alex immediately stood, and helped me over the bench-seat, something that I never liked him doing, but knew I needed.
"Come on man, It'll just take a few minutes."
"Fine." I whined out. I started preparing myself for the short journey I would be walking to wherever it was Alex had stowed my gift. Instead, I found myself picked up like a newlywed, immediately being whisked around the ship faster than I'd moved in years. "I'm not a child, in fact, you're still older than me by a decade."
"Yeah, and who looks younger?" He asked rhetorically. My response was an incoherent mutter.
Alex eventually took me to the armory, which was one deck up and across the hall. When the door shot open, I was met with the same sight I had seen the last thousand times I entered the room; Hand held weapons on the left. Ammo, magazines, and clips on the far wall, mounted weapons systems on the right wall. Although Alex often carried a Metal storm system like a normal rifle. And finally, attachments on the door-side wall.
"Now, close your eyes." Alex requested while setting me down gently. I did as he asked, albeit grudgingly. He began to rummage about the small room, eventually setting four things on the table bolted to the center of the room.
"Okay, open em' up."
Upon opening my eyes, I noticed a few black blobs on the table. "Hold on, my eye's acting up again." I said while adjusting the calibration of my robotic eyes.
Alex made them for me since my retina's were burnt beyond saving without an immediate application of an R.S.K, which I didn't have. My eyes were replaced with a high resolution camera, and a radar sensor to give me a sense of depth perception. The whole thing was packed into two eye sized, clear balls, which broadcasted a wireless signal to an implant in my brain. I didn't even know I had the neural implant, but Alex said that if I didn't have it already installed, I would be entirely blind.
Now, I had awful depth perception and glitches every now and again. Ella didn't seem to mind that one of my eyes had a camera in it and the other had a radar dish. I however, had long since stopped looking in mirrors whenever I was able, simply not wanting to see my own face.
"When's that message supposed to reach explored space?" Alex asked as I continued to calibrate the focus on my right eye.
"I sent it just over two years ago, so any day now… ya-know, if it actually reaches explored-HEY, you fixed the-" I shouted out in happiness, only for it to be interrupted by a deathly sounding string of coughing and wheezing.
"Dammit man, you can't be yelling like that." Alex chastened while resting a carbon fiber, titanium blended hand on my chest and back.
"And *Cough* You can't be cursing like that around Ella." I replied as I fully regained my composure.
"Of course you'd spot that out of everything." He replied in a semi snarky tone.
"I have to, I'm a father now." I said while slowly walking to the table, where four pieces of equipment that had been lost long ago now rested. Before me laid three, sleek, black drones with a wingspan of about four feet. They were called Martha Mk.12's, however I had always called them Martha's; Developed by Core Dynamics, they were supposed to be autonomous Security drones for cities that couldn't be protected by Human security forces. With a speed of Mach 2.5 under one atmospheric pressure, a combination of Tesla and plasma weaponry, and armor that could withstand anything up to .338 lapua magnum. They were quite formidable to any non ship owning thief, which was all they were designed to combat.
"I know this is asking a lot, but did you manage to retrieve the individual AI systems, I always liked them."
-=Five years ago=-
"Hey M-02, how's it going? I haven't seen you in a few months." I asked the floating drone before me, its' single blue eye looking at me; Their eye always seemed to be looking with the gentleness of a summer breeze, until you provoked the drone. Then it turned to a hateful red glare.
"I'm just great Admiral Crawford." The female voiced drone replied happily.
"Now Martha, you know I'm not an Admiral anymore. It's just mister Crawford, or Elliot if you're feeling daring."
"Oh, well. I'll keep that in mind, Elliot." The drone replied smugly. It then flew to within inches of my face, intently staring at my eyes with its center mounted camera; The eye rested in a recessed position within the upper glacis of the drones rounded armor. "Did you ask her yet?" Martha asked in a giddy tone while managing to contain it to a whisper.
My reply was fishing a small box from one of my coat pockets, and holding it up for the drone to see. Upon opening the small cobalt blue box, the drone lowered to my chest level and plowed into it. I tried to fight the drones' thrusters, succeeding for a fair amount of time. Just when I thought I had the equivalent of a teenage girl under control, one of the other Martha's pushed my feet out from under me. I ended up hitting the grass below me with a thud, followed by three blue eyes hovering above me.
"OHMYGOSHITLOOKSJAST!" Martha 01 yelled through the loudspeaker used to detain people.
"It looks nothing like the Joint Advanced Strike Technology." I replied.
"You humans, always with the annoying remarks." M-01 said.
"Yeah, cuz' you're so much better." I said; Simultaneously, I was attempting to sit back up, only to be landed upon by one of the sixty pound Martha's.
-=Present time=-
"Shit." I said at an almost yelling level.
"Hey, why do you get to say it and I don't?" Alex asked with indignance.
"I just had a memory come back, so shut up and write it down." I hissed while glaring daggers at the cyborganic man. After about five minutes of recalling the memory trigger, I was pretty sure I'd relayed everything to Alex. By that time, I was tired and ready to go to bed, but no, Alex wouldn't let me leave until I reactivated the Martha's. With a few presses on the hidden control panel, the drones clicked online one by one, taking a few minutes for them to launch and survey their surroundings.
"M-01 Taking heavy fire! Nee… Oh, I was destroyed, wasn't I?" The drone asked in a self-pitiful tone.
"M-03 Requesting backup! M-01 is dow. . . Hi, Elliot. Guess I didn't get that backup, did I?" The drone asked in an identical voice, although their mannerisms were a far different story.
"This is M-02, The Neutron bomb went off and I'm running low on power. I can't find- Well shit, how long's it been Sir?" The drone asked while staring at me with it's blue eye.
"Long time no see. This is Alex white." I said while gesturing to non other than the man in trim BDU's. The instant the drones laid eyes on him, all three blue eyes turned red along with their Tesla weapons deploying. "Whoa, he's a friendly now. It's a long story that I can't remember that well. Alex, I have officially activated the rowdy bunch of drones. Can I go to bed now?" I asked while continuing to watch the three drones, who complied by retracting their weapons, only to activate their blue scanners on Alex and I.
"Cellular damage detected, Genetic alterations detected, Epinephrine levels rising." M-01 said while scanning my body with the nose mounted scanner. "Aww, c'mon Admiral, I'm just checking your well being. Which isn't that well, I mean, who installed those archaic eyes? They belong in a museum."
"HEY! It was all I had." Alex snipped back.
"Mmmhhhmmm, and who caused him to lose his sight in the first place?" M-02 rhetorically asked.
Alex lowered his head slightly and mumbled something.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" M-02 asked while edging closer.
"*Sigh* It was me." He mumbled.
"Martha's, as In all of you. We're going to go to bed now. At least I am, I have a daughter to go cuddle with. Don-"
"YOU FINALLY DID IT!?" M-01 shouted through the megaphone embedded in its' hull.
"Seriously, lower the volume. Ella's trying to sleep… Or she's using my old bed as a trampoline."
"Awwwww." All three drones cooed out simultaneously.
"Seriously Alex, it's like their teenage girls."
"It-" Alex started to say, only to be drowned out by one of the drones that had encircled me.
"So, was it you that came up with the name, or was it the ever so beautiful Jacqueline?" M-03 asked while staring me in the face, far too close for comfort.
Once I pushed the drone away with my frail hand, I answered. "First off, Ella was adopted by me a few years ago. Second, who's this Jacqueline? I've never heard of her."
A/N: I hope you enjoyed my introduction to the squeal for "The New Horizon Project". I understand that my first book/story may be crap quality for the first ten to twelve chapters or so, but if you can bear with it until then, It gets much better. It would also explain some of the characters better. But if you can't stand the quality, I do plan on explaining some of the fist book via flashbacks.