Human Star Charts (mapped by remote probe pass-through)
18013 System Planets (outward from star)
18013-Rocky-1
18013-Garden-1
18013-Gas-1
18013-Gas-2
18013-Rocky-2
(Definition of terms at the end of the chapter)
Tally wipes the steam from the mirror's screen. She has to hand it to the salarians; they know their showers.
Pain shoots up her ribcage, roiling under her skin on both sides. It's like something wants out and is going to tear her skin to get it.
Next to the mirror, Kitty welded a shelf for medications, crest oil, and other bits and pieces for grooming on top of the DRAG-Zero insignia next to the on-wall computer terminal. Pushing aside Kitty's lotion, Lola's crest oil and-Terrific! Absolutely belongs there rather than in a drawer-Lola's favorite biotic pulse dildo, she finds the painkiller-spiked Hallex, holds the mister under her nose, and gives a single twist to the dial to release a puff.
The face in the mirror is hers, but she doesn't know what that means. She looks 'human', she is told. But she's not so sure. Kitty looks human: Her skin a dusty brown in rest state, her figure very much that of a woman, her lips, her nose, her eyelashes...all look like the humans they pass. The fissures on the back of her head, where her asari crests are, would not even be extreme next to some of the body modifications and cosmetic surgery they've seen on Omega.
Tally doesn't. She's tall-not too much, but more than usual-her limbs a bit too long, body bit too muscular, hands broader and longer than they should be, and now, a sudden broadening to accompany this pain in her shoulders, her ribcage spanning out, her shoulders thickened like round rocks. She hopes it passes.
Her face is so pale and smooth that she hates looking at herself in bright light. In shadow, she has personality-the slant of her nose, the shape of her brow, her jaw, her chin-because the pure paleness is cast into relief.
In bright light, she's just white, absolutely white. Her skin shimmers with an ever-shifting film of something damp, and smooth, and slightly slippery. Usually it's opalescent and shifting like oil on water, but today, whatever it is is bluish, thicker, and glowing in the dimmed lights of the cabin.
The glow is new. Far too confusing before breakfast.
"Morning, Tal!"
No sooner has Tally stepped off the ladder onto the bridge than Lola has gathered a palmful of her ass to give it a squeeze.
Kitty turns from her seat at the helm and looks her up and down.
"Ooh, new flavor of Tally. Clear your schedule ladies, we are having some fun tonight."
Across the screens showing them the outside, blue and green swirl. Nitrogen and hydrogen. The planet is rich in the building blocks of starship fuel, yet small enough that keeping altitude in this layer doesn't burn too much. Every day, the fuel indicators for helium for the reactor, and the indicator for the engine's antiproton bottles climb another bar, sometimes two.
"Given any more thought to looking for the other triplets?"
"Nah," Kitty replies. "One of you's plenty sexy. If they're anything like you, Tal, they're safe."
Lola turns to look at Tal.
"You miss them."
"I never met them. Still frozen when we broke out, remember?"
"Yeah, but there's what, fifty who are like me and Kitty? Just two like you. I wouldn't blame you."
"Forget it. Maybe someday," Tal sighs.
"You're the captain," Kitty mutters. "...fucking swear that dice was loaded."
Tally climbs down the ramp into the depression in the deck where the captain's chair is located. The walls around her wrap her entire field of vision in screens, haptic controls, and rotating three-dimensional holos rising from a ring of emitters. Her seat is actually probably welded to the next deck down, given how deep the station is sunk. She turns on her comms to video-to-video between their stations so no one has to shout.
"We were just discussing our pirate name," Kitty tells her. "Now that we've actually captured a cargo."
"Mmph!"
She gives a swift kick to the sleeping pod containing their batarian hostage.
"No one asked you. Since we named our ship Toad, I was voting for the Three Witch-"
Torches. Silk. Screams in the night. Blue bodies shuffling through the snow in long lines. Touching someone's forehead. Blood pouring from mouth, eyes, nose, flesh peeling. The victim holds perfectly still. A crowd roars. Sending a hissing serpent from her palm, one that melts the ice under its belly before striking, searing skin, rendering fat, and melting bone. Moaning under her. Mewling. The universe filling her veins, endless power, endless pleasure. A corpse under her. Still warm. Twitching with the last fits of nervous potential. A blade-fine, gleaming, dancing with floral grooves and stories told in etching-held out flat before her by a crowned woman.
"You no longer serve a false god, Witch. Rise."
"-ink?"
Tally gasps.
"You all right? I was just asking what you think of it."
"I like it."
Kitty chuckles.
"Thought you might."
"Lola, any ideas on the armor?"
A projection appears on the pillar to her right.
"Batarians are looking for a Salarian scout ship. But..."
Lola must have entered something at her end because a projection of a reconfiguration of the ship appears on the camouflage system's display.
"Simulating...now," Lola informs her.
The pistons on the outer decks extend from the pressure hull, pushing the plates outward and unfolding them like petals to create extra decks. Blinking lights indicate where to pull machinery from storage and set it up. The outline of their ship then bulges, bends, wriggles, and then the projection flashes with a red outline. A chemical formula and a stream of numbers appear in the display and layer by layer, something grows out of the hull, like moss slowly covering a rock.
When it settles, the projected vessel is shaped like three arrowheads-or perhaps some monstrous snake-arranged so that the bluntest, broadest, and most grooved faces forward and the smaller, sharper points face backwards from it, leaving the main engines free to fire through the gap in the middle.
"Asari," Kitty notes. "You can tell by the fact that it's shiny. Haven't seen one like it."
Lola chuckles.
On the projection, the smaller hulls disconnect and fly away.
"Old design. Pre-FTL but they upgraded it later. Hulls scavenged from some trench in the ocean. Reworked via biotics. Handcrafted. Database has a book on how they did it. File says the salarians don't think the asari still have a copy."
"They were used as colony ships-they actually have solar sails-with long acceleration times, but they'd get up to about three-quarters lightspeed on a long run. Files said one hundred settlers give or take. Hundred asari in that ship...that must've been cozy."
"Probably all families," Kitty replies. "Better than strangers."
"True," Lola chuckles. "They went out looking for places based only on telescopes and not really knowing what there was, so they used the smaller hulls as two-seat scouts. And because they have solar sails..."
The ship's LADAR and thermal profile displays on screen.
"They're not invisible, but with the engines off, the sails down and that shiny hull bleeding the heat out over so much surface area, they're damn close when moving in-system on slingshots or inertia. And since they're a pre-FTL design, all the kinetic barriers, weapons, and drive cores were brought onboard, not built in place. We can upgrade as we loot."
Tally clicks her tongue.
"The ideal raiders. But we don't have any of that hull material."
"That's the beauty. Asari based their hulls on it ever since. This boat's got really advanced machine shops aboard. Advanced enough to strip batarian, salarian and turian drives with the same inner cores and create identical parts. DRAG-Zero meant this thing to go behind enemy lines. It's meant to convert itself without a drydock. All we need is that material. If we can find a wreck-cruiser or bigger-we can strip it for plating."
"Modern plating isn't as good as the old stuff-not even close-because that required by-hand refining. We can use our biotics to purify, reshape and compress any intact plates into proper armor and spars for the internal hull. Slide them into the grooves between the existing pistons, weld those in place, run the tubes for the omni-gel out so we can still use the nanocrystalline for disguises."
"We'd be stuck looking big, but there's easy reconfigs to the LADAR signature of batarian junk cruisers or mid-size commercial freighters. We can make it. At least a year, a few extra tools, atmo to work in, and seeds for experimental omni-gel that won't be cheap and would be tough to steal. But look at those capabilities. Hell of a ship."
"She's a killer, all right. Especially in close quarters. Hold's small but looks like it's a secured vault, which is nice. We're not a hauler. Unique design," Kitty points out. "Not great for pirates. Anytime we're not using the puffball hull, we're gonna stand out."
"Yachting clubs and something called...the Justicars? Some sort of warrior monks. Not sure on that, exactly. Both still use them. Tally?"
"I vote yes. Guessing you do too, Lola?"
"You kidding? No one's made one of these from scratch since before the asari developed mass effect, just remade them. We'd be the first."
"Kitty?"
The snort from the cockpit seems to be of the "yes" variety.
"Let's put out an ear. Look for wrecks. No scavenger recovers heavy plating. Launching buoy...now."
"Incoming distress call," the VI drones. "Signal degraded. Attempting to compensate."
"Play it back, Crackpot."
The ship's VI projects as a three-inch tall dalatrass on a nearby pedestal.
"I do not answer to that designation."
"Yes you do. Because I can crack your case and pour power cell fluid on your circuits. And the fact that you care..." Tally chuckles. "Surely a nice little self-aware AI like you wouldn't want to be reported to the Committee on Synthetic Threats? Safer to stay with us. So let's all be friends."
The projection's shoulders sink in a way that proves Tally's point: ordinary VIs don't care if they get deleted and they don't have allegiances to governments.
"Playing back."
"-ecialist S. Ry...of SSV Bunsen, fu-" "-ble to maintain or-" "-sh landing...Bridge cre...En-" "-cercise...UTION. Pro-" "-tifact is hosti-" "-y Council vessels, pl-" "-re down at coordinates to follow. Nine injur-" "-ssage repeats. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, thi-""We need to get like, a cute pyjack avatar for that AI. Or maybe a vorcha, like that one standup comic on Omega. She was funny as hell."
Tally puts her fingers to the haptic controls and starts searching the frequencies.
"Second planet..." Lola mumbles. "Got it. Kitty!"
"Marked and plotted. Alliance has to pay rewards for rescuing their crews, right?"
Up ahead, the planet is green. Not a single fleck of brown or any clouds thick enough to hide the jungle below. Even at the poles, vegetation covers the surface.
Is that a planet, or a plant?
"Getting an exact fi-"
Everything goes dark.
"The fuck?" Kitty hisses.
A beam of pale blue fires from the planet's surface and engulfs the ship.
Lola grunts.
"Fuck, that hurts. It's like it's squeezing every node in my body. Like it's hijacking my damn biotics."
Voices. Concern? Disappointment? Fear. Fear. Fear. Rage. Fight. Fight back. Screaming. The blare of a horn harsh enough to shake dust from the rocks. A swarm of metal insects, chattering and clicking. Death. So much dea-
"Tally!"
"Huh?"
Kitty and Lola are holding her tight, one on each side.
"Thought we'd lost you," Kitty sniffs, pressing a kiss under her ear. "Whatever that was, it let us go. We're about a minute from landing. Having the autopilot put us right at the tail end of their debris. Transponder is an eight-click walk-but that's not where the salvage will be-and at this end, no one to see us."
"You want to come with?" Lola asks. "I'll understand if you don't."
I need to get out of this ship. Now.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll come with."
Kitty sniffles.
"Glad to have you back. Let's go."
Lola goes over to the armored bag she stored her kit in while Kitty cracks open a medical case.
"What flavor today? Hmm. How do you feel about some dental anesthetic, Barak? Paralytic, but non-drowsy. That way you can read the list of charges Omega has on you while you wait."
She flips open the valve for the pod's jerry-rigged injector. Neat trick on her part, making a sleeping pod for camping or cold environments into a one-prisoner cell.
"Please, do-"
"Night, night."
She seals the pod up, clamps an anti-personnel mine on top of one of the windows as a hint, snapping her fingers to be sure that Barak watches her attach the trigger wire to the nearest latch.
Tally unzips her kit bag.
"Fixed your backplate, by the way. Thank me later!" Kitty jokes. "The electrocrystalline layer of the armor was sketchy on attaching to the Silaris, so I put on more kinetic fabric and put it between the layers. Should anchor the plates better."
Plate by plate, she lifts out the patchwork suit: Armor from a crashed asari fighter, cut up, bent into fitted plates, smoothed, and attached over the unholy fusion of several skin-tight kinetic weave suits and some of the electrically responsive armor from the ship, with helmets and torsos stretched and widened to match a salarian style. The sensors and computers were packed into the space where a salarians helmet would have horns. Tally clicks each plate into the latch on the weave, powers it up, jiggles it to check the latch, and then omni-gel-welds the rim so that grit doesn't get in to short something out and drop her chest plate off.
Heavy as fuck and crude as fuck, but it does the job just like a fancy, pretty suit of multilayered Silaris plate armor would.
Lola glances at the ammo indicator on her Disciple, fiddles with the shotgun's programing to tune the projectile clusters, and holsters it before she passes Tally her favorite gun-the Spirit sniper rifle, way beyond overkill-and sets one of the Acolyte pistols on the shelf next to Kitty, who's busily shifting the chestplate on her armor to sit right.
"Not bad for scrap, eh?" Lola jokes, slamming her hand into the airlock's controls. "It's like I'm a wizard."
Tally powers up the weapon and looks down the long, muddy trench of debris.
"Not bad at all."
She waves her crew forward.
The first body isn't even fifteen meters past the glow of the ship's running lights. His armor is melted, and the flesh beneath burned to black ash along the right half. His left half is being chewed on by two varren. Tally signals to Kitty to fall behind Lola and twirls her hand.
Quiet, she tells them in hand-talk.
Matriarch Aethyta made them all learn it so they could enjoy her dirtiest jokes.
Two grouse. Arrow, eliass, net. ["grouse" is an unaware target, "arrow" is the weapon most likely to be lethal at distance, "eliass" is a rabbit-like creature from Thessia that uses a biotic charge-like behavior to evade predators, and "net" is the weapon that requires the least precision.]
Tally runs her fingers along the weapon's sleek shell, stroking the controls to dial the computer in on the large male. Lola brings her shotgun up and trains it on the smaller varren.
The rifle's kickback jams into the soreness of her shoulder more than she'd like, but the varren is a thin smear of bubbling fat at the start of a trench that glows cherry red with the bullet's heat. The second varren lifts its head and Lola charges forward, tossing it into the air with the shockwave at her exit point. It tumbles a few feet off the ground, dazed and scrabbling its legs in empty air. She puts the gun to the beast's belly and fires twice before flicking the nearly weightless corpse into the distance with her biotics.
"Varren here," Kitty mumbles over comms. "Love it."
"It's good to know," Lola reminds her. "Means someone, sometime, landed on this planet, and not the Alliance. They're not sloppy. Wouldn't miss stowaways. We probably don't have to worry about native scavengers, either."
"True," Kitty mutters, staring down at the paw prints.
Malyk watch sky, Tally reminds them before she waves them forward. She drops a stab light with a radio transponder next to the body before walking on. ["malyk" is the huntress, "watch sky" refers to staying alert.]
"Up ahead," Kitty whispers.
The ship's engineering section tore into three pieces on impact, one of which still has racks upon racks of spare parts, power cells, and tools.
"Call in Bonkers. Have him use one of the hull plates for a sled."
Lola taps on her omni-tool.
"Bonkers is booted up and on her way. Zap and Crackle are booting up too. I'll have them watch the airlock."
"Get Dandy's leg fixed yet? " Kitty asks.
"No. And the AI upgrade isn't quite trustworthy either."
"Yeah, let's leave the maybe-homicidal mech with the sniper rifle, omni-shield and plasma-torch sword home."
Behind them, the whirring, thumping, and general clatter of a YMIR mech echoes between the trees.
"Let's not be near that noise," Tally suggests. "Three clicks to the crash site. Put a stab light next to any bodies and drop a marker for Bonkers on anything juicy."
Sara jams her foot into Scott's uninjured thigh.
"Wake the fuck up, baby bro."
"Please don't kick my patient," Greer grumbles, popping another plate off of Scott's armor to create a larger area around the bare bone of his shattered leg.
She grits her teeth and pushes harder-how the fuck do asari do this?-to spread her dome barrier around herself, her brother, and the doc again.
Kirkland sits just outside, his rifle barking occasionally when he gets a bead on the varren.
"We are properly fucked if we do not deal with that signal," he grumbles. "So is rescue, if they get our mayday."
"You got any suggestions on shutting down ancient, ridiculously fancy tech with a control panel and labels written in a language no one in the galaxy has learned to read after thousands of years of trying? I'm all ears," Sara huffs before putting a pinhole in her dome long enough to launch a singularity at a three varren that got too close together. Kirkland chuckles and drops the beasts with three shots.
"Thanks, wizard."
"Anytime, jarhead."
Scott lifts his hand to his omni-tool-sluggish, slow and please let it be the sedatives, not shock sloppy as hell-and sends out two of their ever-dwindling supply of drones.
"Eyes up, spiky-hair," Sara hisses. "I need you to focus on the tech bullshit. This isn't blowing up dad's computer."
"Three months out of the academy and we've already crashed the car," she mutters.
"S'gonna like you best," Scott slurs out. She whips her head around and Greer mouths 'drugs' at her. "S'pretty badass."
"No shit," Greer chuckles. "Ship is falling apart and you bubbled this whole compartment just before impact."
"And I've got the migraine to prove it," Sara jokes, noting the so fucking not good sign that she can taste copper. Either a nosebleed or worse, hemorrhaging from the roof of her mouth from the strain of prolonged use of intense biotics on not much sleep, eezo-water, or rations.
"Dad's gonna like you best."
"Alec Ryder liking his kids," she scoffs. "How would we be able to tell?"
"Leg's good," Greer tells Scott. "For certain values of good. It's not going to be what kills you."
He turns to Sara.
"Go. You're the expert on Prothean stuff."
"I'm the only biotic," she protests. "Hell, I'm the only shelter."
Greer puts his hand on her arm.
"And we've got Scott's nasty little toys, Kirkland's shooting, and now mine. We can hold the line. Go shut that thing off."
Sara's barrier just melts and three tall, masked figures in shiny armor with a salarian outline step into it. Except with five fingers, she notes. They just put camo circuits around the middle and ring fingers. Too tall to be human women and too narrow shouldered...at least those two...to be men. Asari weapons with STG paint jobs. Asari dressed up as salarians. As if my day wasn't fucking weird enough.
"Don't suppose you Alliance types would accept some help from friendly neighborhood pirates?" The tallest one teases.
"Can you shoot varren?" Greer asks.
The stranger balls her fist and lets out a flare of biotic energy that blasts a clearing five trees wide. A dozen leg bones can be seen inside the crater.
"That'll do," Kirkland mumbles.
"K, L. Stay with them," the leader tells the other two.
She holds out her hand.
Tally learns that outside of combat, the short human-Sara Ryder, she called herself-is cheerful, talkative, and more than a little clumsy. She trips on tree roots three times, but also zeros her own mass and rights herself almost instantly when they tumble over the edge of a drop-off, alighting next to Tally's clumsy landing with a dainty touch of the toes.
"So..." Sara begins.
"So..."
"So how'd you get past the field?"
Tally shrugs.
"It hit our ship. Hurt like he-"
"Awful," Sara mutters. "Like every particle of eezo in my body caught fire. Apparently, I have some in...places. Either never gonna have kids or they're gonna be half eezo by weight. Never bothered to look at the medical charts that close."
She snorts.
"Glad it wasn't a sudden bonus period. One a month's good, thanks."
She kicks a loose stone a few feet ahead.
"Best I can figure, it's a transmitter and a scanner. That's a guess, based on the fact that it tight-beams any drone I send up, but it also has three-hundred-sixty degree fields running at all times. Some kind of cyberweapon defense, I think. When we spotted it on telescopes and saw the angle it was sitting at, we realized it was loose. Just stuck in the mud. The plan was to load it into the Bunsen and make for the Citadel. Brownie points for turning in Prothean tech."
"And now?"
"Once rescue arrives? Same, unless you kill us and steal it."
Tally chuckles.
"We're more in the Hallex boosting, weapons smuggling, mech-customization, and batarian ransoming to Aria T'Loak business. And we steer clear of the Traverse."
"So I don't have to feel guilty taking help from a pirate," Sara jokes. "Because you don't operate in Alliance space."
"Exactly."
Sara points ahead to a spire of black metal sitting next to what looks like an identical spire, but made of white sand, flowing and shifting around itself.
"That one was not there before. Only the one on the left. C'mon!"
Tally chuckles.
"Humans. So excitable."
"Erg."
Sara blinks enough of the pain out of her eyes to see.
"What the fuck?"
Tally is leaning on the pedestal, rigid, twitching, and in obvious pain.
"Pirate lady?" Sara whispers. "Fuck. I am not qualified to do asari first aid. This is Ryder to Bunsen FOB, come in."
"Ryder to FOB, respond."
She glances down at her omni. Every signal display and indicator is blinking the same thing: "Data overflow" and white crystals are growing like salt in a cave from the data module, the port for the utility cable, and the disk slot.
The pirate gasps.
"You all right?"
She groans.
"Second time today I've downloaded someone else's nightmare."
"Bunsen FOB to scout team."
Sara flicks the switch for her armor's backup transmitter.
"This is scout team."
"Field's down," Greer reports. "Kirkland is working with Scott on the transmitter so we have at least one half of a brain."
"Hey!"
Sara shoots the pirate a thumbs up.
"There's a starchart."
"Huh?"
Over the pedestal, a ghostly image of the Milky Way hovers, twinkling with a dozen white and red lights.
"Hang on, those positions look familiar..."
Sara leans closer.
"Earth. Or Sol, at least."
She drags a finger across the galaxy, past the galactic core.
"Kahje. Palaven, I think? Maaaaaybe this is Tuchanka but I'm not sure where that is on the map without reference points."
"...And something batarian. Just what we need higher tech pirates and slavers."
"Thessia, but it's in white, not red. And Mars, the batarian one, and this...wherever...have red and white."
"That means something to you?" Tally asks.
Sara gulps.
"Yeah. Mars and Kahje are known locations of Prothean Archives. Not beacons. Not scrap. Entire libraries. The Mars one is how Earth got mass effect, weapons, barriers, you name it. Kahje's the only other one that's complete. So if these are archives, a lot more races than we ever realized are sitting on major Prothean tech."
"That is Tuchanka," the pirate points out. "Been and done."
"Lucky bitch," Sara huffs. "I want to visit, but it's a hell of a lot of paperwork with the turians. So that's Palaven...agreed?"
"Agreed.
"We're talking about previously undiscovered archives on the homeworlds...and something here. This is huge."
The forest north of them vanishes into a pit. In its place are shattered crystal roofs claimed by the planet's overpowered flora and dozens of buildings of the same metal as the Prothean transmitter. The pirate kicks a stone in and waits for the sound of it falling.
They have to wait a long time.
"That's not fitting in your ship," Tally teases.
"Nope. We're gonna need a bigger boat."
Tally glances at her ruined omni, wishing she had some way of knowing that her ship still existed. And this morning, I couldn't wait to be off it.
Kitty is passing out ammo, blankets, heating rods and rations to the survivors. Lola is setting up single-use security mechs and mines. After some moaning, she agreed to leave them Barak's cache of weapons, save a really nasty set of rifles that launch harpoons for some reason.
"On behalf of the crew of the SSV Bunsen, thank you."
"Wait. You were acting commander? Are you even old enough to drink?"
Sara grins.
"Yes, and no. Greer's Alliance Medical. Not allowed. Kirkland's way more senior, but he's a grunt and he prefers it that way. Career enlisted man. And someone scored thirteen points better than her brother on the exams. He's second lieutenant, but I'm first."
Tally takes Sara's hand.
"Nice job with the biotics."
"For a human?"
Tally gestures at what could generously be called a foxhole but not a campsite.
"How long have you been down here?"
"Four days."
"You held a barrier for four days?"
Sara rubs her temples.
"Well, judging by the hangover and the fact that I wasn't on shore leave... Wonder what they did when I was asleep? Did I sleep? That would...hmm..."
Tally puts a hand on her shoulder.
"Precise, hard and fast biotics hit just as hard as big and slow. It's badassery of the biotic, not the size of the field. Remember that."
Tally trips over something just inside the airlock, bouncing herself off the deck with her biotics and then off the ceiling.
Really need to work on not overpowering it.
Turning back to look at the ramp, she sees a naked human girl-sixteen, probably younger-with muscular limbs, shaved head and pronounced ribs. Raised rough scars run circuits on her arms, legs, and outline her spine. Amp implant utility ports, Tally realizes. But seven, not one. Her feet are muddy and her legs sliced and scratched by the jungle's thorns.
"Whoa!" Kitty exclaims when she looks up the ramp. "Why is there a naked small human on our ship?"
"She's smart enough to want to be out of the rain, I suppose," Lola grumbles, pushing her half-dome barrier farther over her head to try to do the same. "Must have crawled in."
Tally bends down and puts her hand on the child's neck-just above a barcode and a symbol with a black diamond flanked by two orange bars. She instantly regrets it when a lifetime of distilled trauma blasts into her mind, widening the meld.
"What have they done to you, little one?"
"NOT ZERO!" the girl shrieks, foaming at the mouth and thrashing. Nightmare? Tally wonders.
"M'not Zero..." she moans. "My name is Jack."
I write various things for various sites including AO3, and others (see my profile).
If you want to know more, I have a Tumblr (alephthirteen-writes dot tumblr dot com) that ties it all together-every site I touch, I link there in a pinned note-and I also I post musings and ramblings about my various headcanons, characterizations, character and trope rants both for and against, and follow fanartists I like.
For detailed entries on all, see the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex
electrocrystalline - A material that takes a different shape or changes properties when exposed to electricity; typically made with small nodules of artificial quartz or industrial diamond suspended in reactive gel, wrapped in a 'bag' layer to create a fixed shape. When powered up, high-end mixtures exceed the shear and flex limits of many civilian alloys. It acts as the underlayer in all but the most heavy armors-above the 'kinetic weave' bodysuit, below the armor itself-and as a floating layer between hard plates made of ceramic or metal.
haptics - The touch sensitive or eye-tracking controls found on omni-tools, cockpits, shipboard stations, and high-end desktop and portable workstations. A flash-forged carbon mesh suspended on mass effect fields in order to 'hover' and then strobed with lasers to project an image, haptics can replace any finger-operable controls and be relocated, reconfigured and reordered to the user's preferences.
nanocrystalline - Nanocrystalline material or (NC) is a form of electrocrystalline (EC) gel enhanced with beads of alloy, spheres or flat plates of industrial diamond, carbon-nanotube and other carbon nano-structure materials suspended in a special formulation of high viscosity, expandable EC gel. As it is powered up by precise pulses delivered via thin filaments, the heavier plates and tubes are pushed away by the gel as it flows between them, sorting the more durable material outwards and the gel inwards, meaning the surface forms a diamond-hard outer shell of a predictable shape.
omni-gel - A blend of industrial plastics, ceramics and light metallic alloys-such as aluminum, magnesium, and certain formulations of steel-suspended in a semi-molten state in a mixture containing a fluid that is formulated to be rapidly manipulated with extreme precision by an omni-tool's forger into any shape. This process is far slower but creates far more durable objects than flash-forging which is nearly instant but limited to wafer-thin structures or shells of carbon plus small amounts of iron.