Back Home – The Dual War
by Warringer
Chapter 54 (Party written by Cobalt Greywalker over at the Maximum Addventure)
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High Sideryt Catall, democratically elected head of the Nomads, sighed as she looked out of the large window that covered one of the smaller craters of The Home. Beneath was the brown marble of New Omelos.
Even if the remnants of the Dilgar had already made their home on the planet, New Omelos seemed to be the destination of a long journey to a new homeworld. Even if it was a world with a thin atmosphere and they would have to share it with another race.
But the atmosphere, even if thin, was breathable and could be compressed to fill the domes that would allow her people to live on the planet.
And the Dilgar... They were in pretty much the same situation as the Nomads, through her people had been better prepared with The Home, the result of more than a hundred years of work, prior to the Exodus. Comfortable living space for more than twenty million Nomads and it had been modified and adapted over the millennia of their journey.
She sighed again. She had never thought that she would live to see this happen, as she looked down to the glistering strands that spanned from The Home down to the planets surface and the platforms moving down.
Maybe it had been fate that they had met up with the humans, living in the sole fully habitable planet of the Corian Expanse. They had been the ones that had talked to the Dilgar, who had been grateful for the Nomads help. So grateful that they allowed them to settle down on the planet.
The large factories of The Home had been online and working all the time since they had entered orbit of New Omelos, producing parts and goods for increasing the life standard in the Dilgars life domes. Air filters, water plants, some of the most basic things of life support. Parts to bring their warships back to something that was close to their original stats. Allowing them to fight to defend themselves better again.
She chuckled a little. The Dilgar were already seeing the Nomads as friends, not as the pariahs of space they had been so long.
But that had not been everything. Old plans for planetary settlement had been put into motion. Plans that had been modified and adapted to new salvaged technologies over the duration of the journey.
The first thing they had done was to bring The Home into a geostationary orbit over New Omelos, while scouts had looked for an equatorial area of the planet that was extremely stable, with a ground of stable and hard stone. They had found it and construction ships had brought massive amounts of material down to build the Ground Station.
Massive pillars of extremely hard and strong alloys had been driven into the rocky ground, several hundred meters deep and over an area of several dozen square kilometers. The entire work had needed a month, before the foundations had set and had been able to do what they were designed to do.
The Home had opened ancient air locks and the first Strand had been rolled down to the planet. Helped with gravitic control systems, they had been able to send it straight down to the foundations of the Ground Station. They had needed a whole planetary day to unroll more than 38.000 kilometers of the strand before the beginning had been set and connected to the foundations of the Ground Station.
A single mono molecular strand of one centimeter thick material, that had needed two hundred years to grow properly, had connected The Home to the Ground Station. The first of 24 strands that were now the Ladder to the Stars.
She had been surprised by the humans as it seemed that they knew about this form of construction and called it Orbital Lift. The Dilgar however had been greatly surprised about the construction that now allowed to get to the planet and off the planet much easier and cheaper. Not to mention that the single climbers could carry more freight than any transport currently in system.
The Ladder would be modified soon however. The Home would detach from the massive Orbital Station that was currently build and would need another asteroid as anchor. And they would create massive shield tubes around the four climber routes, allowing them to move faster and with less danger of orbital debris and micrometeorites.
She looked down towards the planet and a small zoom window. The zoom window showed the Ground Station, a large area what was now slowly covered.
For a moment, she recalled the old plans for the Ladder. They would continue to build on it, until it was a single massive structure that connected the planet with the Orbital Station with more than 24 strands of mono molecular material.
It would be a greater construction than anything the galaxy had seen.
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Ever since the Nomads had arrived at New Omelos and he had talked with their leader, High Sideryt Catall, Battle Master Len'dar had time to think.
He had been a little surprised that most of the rumors about the Nomads were wrong. They didn't eat their young to keep their number in check, but practiced a strict, but still voluntary form of birth control. They weren't even remotely cannibalistic. Instead they had powerful hydroponics, aquacultures and had managed to breed Spoo in special acoustic insulated chambers.
The Nomads had been send from the heavens, every time Zerberoff passed The Home and the 'Ladder to the Stars' they had build, he thanked Serity and all the Old Gods of the Dilgar pantheon. With the first time the 'Ladder' or 'Orbital Lift' as the humans called it had gone to the planet, the living conditions on the planet were becoming better and better.
He breathed in the fresh air of his personal office aboard the dual space tree Zerberoff. For a moment he wondered if the Jurian treeships looked like this. He certainly had grown to like the way the tree was meking things better for his people. More than two million Dilgar, the entire population that used to live in orbit in habitats welded together from hulls of wrecked ships, had found a new home inside the tree.
The air was fresh, there was enough water and light. The living space borne organism never needing any form of maintenance as the dual tree regenerated any damage. The living conditions in the domes on the planet were also slowly but surely getting better and better.
The Nomads had pulled a small comet into orbit, turning it into usable water with the machinery on their generation ship before dropping it to the surface over the 'Ladder'. Air scrubbers and other systems that had needed replacements had been replaced, filtering smells from the air that had been there for the last decades.
The factories had been repaired and modified. The first new fabrics and goods of daily use were coming out and slowly replacing the old clothes and improvised things.
Len'dar closed his eyes for a moment. He was still wearing his old clothing, the same uniform that he had worn for years, through now it had been cleaned and patched up. He himself had been sitting in a tub of water from Zerberoff for several hours, even when he was clean. He hadn't felt that good in years.
He smiled a little as he thought how much Catall was like him. Even if she was a Nomad, a member of a different race, she had the same drives to lead her people to a better future.
He turned towards the virtual window and watched how The Home slowly passed Zerberoff.
At first he had thought that the Nomads had a government like most races, only to find that they had a form of government he had learned to know as democracy from the humans. Catall had been elected by the Nomads to be their leader. She hadn't been born into that roles, but worked hard for it.
He closed his eyes again as his thoughts came back to the same thing that had occupied them for the last weeks. The reasons why his people had started the War. How the old government had rallied the people, who hadn't anything to say. How they had made laws and how a monster like HER had gotten into power. The corruption of those in power.
The humans had gone through something similar, several times in fact. Names like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tze Tung or Pol Pot came into his mind, names from the human history.
On the other side he had read about other people that had created governments that were not as easily to manipulate or corrupt. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or Konrad Adenauer.
He breathed in. He wanted the same for his people. He wanted them to govern themselves, make their own rules, elect their leaders. He wanted to give them the freedoms Captain Garret had talked about.
Freedom of speech, the freedom of choice, to equal treatment under the law, to due process of the law, to participate in the government...
He wanted that the children would grow up in a world without the errors of old.
'Those who don't learn from their errors are bound to repeat them,' he had heard some humans say.
They were right.
He opened his eyes and looked as the document he had written over the last days, after long terms of research and the help of Zerberoff. He would put the document on the local networks, allowing everyone to read it. And than they would get the chance to help revising it over the next weeks, before they could say yes to it.
"Constitution of the Free Republic of New Omelos," he read out loud.
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Ami grit her teeth and tried to focus through the sound of...well, it sounded expensive at any rate. Even here, in the depths of Professor Habuki's personal lab complex, she couldn't find the uninterrupted quiet she needed to work on the blasted technomage implants the Senshi had in themselves. Mihoshi had apparently paid a visit to Geneva. Dammit.
Ami found it galling that she, working primarily on this for the last year in the midst of the brightest minds on the planet, had only cracked the secrets of two systems, while Rei (FREAKING Rei) back in Japan had, in her spare time, cracked four through meditation.
Oh, how she WISHED for the peace of the shrine.
Still, she was learning a lot from her colleagues. Maybe that was slowing her down?
So, current score was Rei with Sensory Enhancement, Mathematical Assist, Body Sense, and bloody Touch-Telepathy. They kept that last one quiet though. The furore over the existence of real telepaths was still bubbling under the surface all over the world.
Ami had to settle for the Enhanced Healing and Translation Assist. It was not a Universal Translator dammit. Westerners and their pop culture references. It only let you learn other languages much faster and more accurately, but you still had to be taught. Though if she cracked the implant linked to it that she thought was a pattern recognition system she might have something.
At least Pluto (not Setsuna, who was the telepathic lesbian lover of Dark Knight in her mind. She really didn't want to confuse the two.) had taught them how to teleport by themselves in Senshi form.
Stretching to get the kinks out, Ami's foot brushed something. Looking down she saw one of Washuu's injectors (not hypo-sprays. She was spending a bit too much time with the 'Geek Brigade'.) on the floor. What in the-? HOW in the-? No, no. Contemplating Mihoshi was the path to ulsers. Just put the injector with (quick check of the ID tag on the system) retroviral memory boosters? No, she REALLY didn't want to know. Just put it on the desk, she'd return it in a couple of hours when she left for dinner.
Right. Now, this connects to that and gets inhibited by this so...
The relaxing sound of fingers typing filled her ears.
"HEY! AMI!"
"Gah!" Ami jumped in surprise, then snapped around. "Minako! Don't scare me like that!"
"Well you were ignoring me!" Minako scolded her friend. "Anyway I thought you'd gone home for dinner by now so I dropped by."
Ami looked at her computers clock. Yes, it WAS that late.
"OK, let me close up here and we'll go out."
Minako sat herself on the edge of the desk so Ami wouldn't forget. She HAD done it at a few of their study sessions back in Japan. Then she spotted something.
"Ami!" She exclaimed in shock, grabbing the injector from the desk. "Are you doing drugs?!?"
"WHAT? NO!" Ami shrieked, then saw what Minako had picked up. "Whew. Don't DO that Minako!" She complained. "That got left behind by Mihoshi after her visit to the lab."
Minako blinked at her fellow Senshi, nonplussed at her sudden relaxation.
"What does that mean?"
"You know what happens when you and Usagi try to cook?" Ami asked.
"Yes." Minako growled, scowling.
"Take that, multiply it a few hundred times, and apply it to this lab."
"Yikes." The blonde looked at the injector. "What's in it?"
"The memory boosters Professor Habuki uses for those fast teacher devices."
Minako's eyes lit up. "Cool! So I'd be able to remember my collage work!" She exclaimed.
"No you wouldn't!" Ami scolded. "It only works to help you remember skills."
"Like from the past?" Minako asked.
Ami opened her mouth to reply, then closed it without saying anything.
"Let me think on that." She said finally with a contemplative look on her face.
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"I really worry about Ami." Minako told Rei through the communicator, 8 hour time difference be damned. Of course, while she'd not got Ami out to the clubs, Minako had been partying. 1:30 in the morning meant that Rei wasn't ready to rip her head off. "She's working so hard she can't remember how long she's been here properly."
"Arranging a group holiday does sound good." Rei agreed. "Getting the new priests up to speed has been taxing Grandpa, and he had to take a break so I'm running the shrine. He'll be back in a couple of weeks so maybe we could arrange something?"
"The island again?" Minako asked.
"Probably. Has Usagi started to balloon yet?"
"Well, she IS getting a little chubby." Minako admitted. "Though I'm not sure if that's the food or the baby. Mamoru is doing well in his internship."
"And Usagi is conning him into buying lots of ice cream."
"And cakes and pastries and..."
"I get the idea." Rei interrupted dryly.
"I kinda envy Haruka and Michiru. Last I heard they were having fun down in France or somewhere."
"Like you're not with all those guys nearby?" Rei asked. "When I can find time I've been over to see Makoto and Hotaru. That health booster Ami found is working wonders on the poor girl. Good job Makoto had so much practice with Usagi so she can keep up with demand."
"I'm trying to see Hotaru eating like Usagi... Um...Nope."
"Oh it's a sight alright." Rei chuckled. "You seen Setsuna lately?"
"Ours or his? Cause Tenchi Masaki moved here a while back and I've seen leatherbutt."
"Leatherbutt?" Rei wondered whether she wanted to know.
"She walks through a crowd and all the guys (and a couple of girls too) turn to stare at her skin-tight leather clad butt. What is up with those leather bodysuits anyway? At least she isn't around much, as she's too sensitive or something. More guys for me!"
"She IS the one who got our Setsuna to loosen up remember?"
"Yeah, the mind reader thing. Knowing Ami she's looking at that as well."
"I know Ami's a workaholic but that's too much." Rei sighed. "She really needs a boyfriend."
"I'd talk to Haruka and Michiru and get her a girlfriend if that'd work." Minako broke off to yawn widely. "But I think Michiru offered to take her to an operation or something and got turned down." She yawned again.
"Go get some sleep." Rei told her. "It's almost two in the morning over there."
"Yeah, I'd better." Minako agreed. "Don't want to sleep during that movie Makoto's going to tonight."
"You're abusing your powers with all that teleporting." Rei scolded amusedly.
"Hey, if you got it, break a leg."
Rei blinked. "Good night." She told her and disconnected.
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"We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!"
Two man watches as Ryoko sang, not very good at that, and danced around in the command area of Ryo-Ohki's ship-form, while swinging around a bottle of rum.
"Tell me again why we are doing this?" Captain Pip Bernadotte asked Sam Fisher for the n-th time in the last about one and a half month.
"Mostly the money," Sam answered and they both continued to look at Ryoko who was being in one of her 'I am a pirate' moods." But you got that eye replacement from Washuu. Not to mention that your company got M244s and Pulsers."
Bernadotte nodded and watched how Ryoko's not really small chest bounced slightly in that very tight 'pirate' outfit of hers. Both of his eyes were following every movement of said two globes.
"Tell me again why you have suggested us for this job?"
"Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me."
"Because the Agency has filed the 'Wild Geese' as one of the best and the most trustworthy mercenary companies."
Sam breahted in deep before looking at Bernadotte from the corner of his eyes.
"And because of that stunt you pulled on me during that Bosnia mission..."
Bernadotte blinked, not pulling his eyes from the only two things he saw at the moment.
"What stunt?"
Sam narrowed his eyes.
"That stunt involving me drunk and that Drag Queen..."
Bernadotte blinked again and than nodded absentmindedly.
"Oh that one..."
There was a brief silence.
"Remember me to give you a kiss for getting us this job. We could have gotten something stranger. Like Vampire Nazis in giant Zeppelins or something..."
Sam blinked at the vampire Nazi comment and than frowned.
"A kiss from you can't be worse than a kiss from that Drag Queen..."