:: 16.10.2003 ::
Chapter Seven
As Jai'mar's fighter docked inside the behemoth Tradeship, free from the tyranny of the Super Acolytes and having evaded the vessel's Ion Cannons by staying in the craft's blindspot, he suddenly felt another headache. A sharp, painful one, similar to those he'd been having over the past year, but far more brutal.
Headaches were not considered major health issues; their physiology prevented the Turanic from acquiring even the smallest brain tumor. However, over the last several years a chronic condition had cropped up throughout almost the entire Turanic population throughout the galaxy. No one in the public knew the reason for the sudden ailment. Only the newly regimented Turanic military, the Turanic Assembly, and Jai'mar, knew what was happening to their people…
His ship shuddered as it made contact with the hangar floor. The room was airless; the Bentusi had no need for an atmosphere as they lay in their highly developed biopods, controlling the ship's functions. Their artificial gravity, however, was still activated, and Jai'mar was forced to jump out of his suit feeling all of the bulk of his vacuum suit.
As he walked over to the airlock at the other side of the room, an ancient voice filled his mind.
You cannot violate our ship. Leave immediately.
Jai'mar only shrugged, and began welding open the sealed airlock. It fell heavily to the ground with a thud, and Jai'mar started down the corridors of the ship.
The sleek hallways of the ship were most pleasing, he couldn't even find straight edges in the hallway's corners; they were all smoothed out. Few had ever been onboard a Bentusi vessel before, and this time the ship's controllers weren't making it easy for their guest. Every single door leading up to the bridge was sealed, and he either hacked his way past the doors using very refined slicer codes-the most powerful algorithms were necessary to counteract the split-second calculations of the Bentusi collective mind-or by blasting through them with his weapons. Every time he chose the latter, he could notice small repair bots spill out from unseen traps and begin rebuilding the damaged entryway.
He finally reached the last door in his way. He took out a mold of explosives and placed it on the door's frame. He stepped far back and activated the charge. In the disorienting fashion that dictated interstellar physics, he could not hear the powerful explosion through the vacuum, but was still knocked to his feet from the force of the blast. He picked himself up and walked through before the repair bots got to it.
As impressive as anything else built by the Bentusi, the bridge of the Tradeship was a sight to see. Easily the largest chamber he'd ever seen aboard a starship, the room had absolutely no viewports and almost no illumination. Which made sense, he figured, as the Bentusi had no need to see normally.
At the center of the cavernous room was a circle of twenty Bentusi biopods; a considerably more advanced form of technology than that used by the Hiigaran Karan Sjet or the late Taiidani Emperor. Each biopod was a cube of about three meters to a side, to accommodate the massive Bentusi form. They each had control ports on one side, used to regulate lifesigns or even to extract the Bentusi within in case of an emergency. Jai'mar was impressed by this humbleness; it was proof that even the Unbound did not neglect help from Bound hands, as only they could physically manipulate the controls.
And at the center of this circle was an amazing display. One giant hologram, it showed in the most precise way possible the Home Galaxy. Every single star was displayed, each one a brilliant pearl in the stellar necklace. Wired directly to their sensors, Jai'mar could not understand why the Bentusi would bother displaying a hologram at all, but he did not mind this triviality; he merely soaked in the detail.
He was awakened from his reverie when another hologram manifested right in front of him. It had a Turanic form, but Jai'mar knew that it was a Bentusi message; Unbound creatures often chose to display themselves as other creatures to make negotiations more palatable with Bound life forms.
The creature began to speak; Jai'mar of the Turanic, you should not have come here.
Jai'mar shrugged. "It was my contract. I always follow up on my work."
You cannot comprehend the technology you wish to tamper with. Leave and we shall allow leniency.
"Ha," the mercenary laughed. "What can you do? You have no onboard weaponry; my ship is safe in your hangar. And as for your ship, I'm taking it to where it's needed."
You cannot threaten us. You will not steal our technology. If need be, our lives will be a small price to pay to prevent this. WE WILL NOT BE BOUND!
The hologram's face contracted into a hardened rage, and it bowed its head in anticipation of the ship's sacrifice. Alas, the famous Bentusi epitaph was not followed by an annihilating explosion, and the hologram looked confused.
We…you have usurped our control!
"That's right," Jai'mar taunted. "I took the liberty of disabling the self-destruct mechanism on this vessel before I even came onboard, as well as denying all of you control of any other ship functions. I'm not foolish."
But…we have become impotent! We have become less than Bound! The Bentusi pointed an angry finger at the bounty hunter. You…you took that from us!
Jai'mar had grown tired of this little argument, so he turned and walked away from the hologram, which cursed him as he left. He approached one of the biopods and raised a hand to its control panel
This is what you've come for, he thought, and he guiltlessly deactivated the life support for the biopod. He heard a frightening wail shriek through the ship as one of the Bentusi faded into non-existence, and then there was silence again. He further manipulated the controls to eject the life form within, and finally opened the pod.
The top of the pod opened, and Jai'mar used his clawed appendages to scale up to the opening. He could see the life-giving amniotic fluid that the Bentusi had been submerged in, as well as the several neural shunts hanging limply from the walls of the pod. The fluid had begun to freeze upon contact with the vacuum of the ship; Jai'mar knew he had very little time in which to act, so he went through his long-planned procedure quickly.
First, he exhaled all the air in his lungs. Then, by pressing a button on his vacuum-suit, which he'd modified long before for this specific mission, the suit collapsed completely from his body, leaving him naked in the airless bridge. His carapace already starting to feel the effects of absolute-zero freezing and the beginning of explosive decompression, he dove right into the inviting fluids right before the automatic timer on the biopod closed the hatch above him.
He was naked, and in darkness.
He inhaled the amniotic solution sharply, suppressing his need to gag, and let the heavily oxygenated fluid get accustomed to his lungs. Turanic Intelligence had already briefed him on the entirety of this mission, and long before he'd made the deal with Terr'niet he'd spent many days onboard Turanic ships that had oxygen-rich fluid for an onboard atmosphere. Having fully acclimatized himself to such conditions, the transition from breathing air to breathing liquid was very minor indeed.
He felt another sharp pang in his head, and he knew he had to begin the procedure immediately. Before he began, though, he marveled in the brilliance of his scheme.
For years now, the chronic head pains and dramatic increases in intelligence throughout the Turanic people had been closely observed by members of the Turanic Assembly. After long, hard experiments, all of which were concealed carefully from the rest of the galaxy, the Turanic had to seriously consider the possibility that they were finally turning Unbound.
This was not a total surprise, however. It was no secret that, though lacking the powerful technology of their peers, the Turanic were remarkable pilots and military strategists, which was exactly why the Taiidan Emperor had decided to enslave their race, and name them with the diminutive title "Raiders", rather than destroy them. For centuries, legends of the "Starfarers" were rife in every Turanic sect; members of their race like Zha of the Khor or Klu'koth of the Gul'Daan, who had a curious, innate sense of piloting from birth. Their ability to absorb as much information about the environment around them granted them amazing reflexes and insight. It was only in recent times, however, that such skills had been observed as most common in every member of the Turanic race.
Though a semi-legitimate people now, the Turanic Assembly knew they couldn't simply ask for the Unbound to hand over their technology; most of them, especially the T-Mat, were fiercely opposed to merely offering such secrets. It also did not help that the Bentusi and Turanic were never on very good terms.
So, they waited. Through secret experiments carried out by the most covert spies in their ranks, they found out that the two most powerful Bound races, the Hiigarans and the Taiidan, were both centuries away from achieving that most revered level of evolution, but the Turanic also knew that both races were going to try very hard to accelerate the process, dogged by the achievements of Tasiin Limandatt'sa.
And, finally, the chance to act presented itself. Jai'mar knew nothing of the Hiigarans' Project Tasiin, but the bounty offered for the Bentusi Tradeship was all he needed to know. The Turanic Assembly had discovered the bounty, and had enlisted him to apply for the job, knowing that his qualifications would easily sway the eager Taiidan Admiral Terr'niet. While he was accepting the job, he'd been secretly recording the negotiations with Admiral Terr'niet. Jai'mar knew he wouldn't receive bounty for stealing the Tradeship, but bounty was irrelevant. Not only did the Turanic finally have what they'd been wanting for all this time, the Unbound technology that could liberate their race and allow them to painlessly evolve as they'd been chosen to, but they also had evidence-which Jai'mar had released on the GalNet before he assaulted the Tradeship-which incriminated the Taiidan instead of the Turanic. The Council would be busy enough dealing with the Taiidan now that they'd give little attention to the Turanic, who would be exploiting the technology right underneath the noses of the Council members.
Screw Terr'niet.
Screw all Taiidan, Loyalist or Republican. They were but a means to an end.
It was now time. He was to be the first of many of his people to become Unbound, and he couldn't wait for the opportunity. Reaching down to his leg, he unstrapped the datapad and began to shift through its options, blinking away the cloudiness from his eyes as they strained to see through the liquid. Accessing its slicer codes, he remotely uploaded the information he'd brought with him to the biopod's computer, consisting of Turanic physiology, and the computer began to rewrite its subroutines accordingly.
He then activated the pod's neuro-link establishment protocol, a command activated at the very beginning when a Bentusi was inserted into a biopod, to link him up with the ship. Only, with the protocol changed to work with a Turanic body instead of a Bentusi body, the latter consisting of an actual skeleton rather than an insectoid exoskeleton, the neural shafts were ready to link him up properly without harming him.
Fighting the pain of the laser cutters searing into his carapace, he felt six large electronic tubes penetrate his body, the metal and silicon immediately beginning to bond with his nerve tissue. The last nerve trunk embedded itself into the back of Jai'mar's skull, forcing itself right into his brain, admitting a cascading feeling of torture to ripple throughout his body.
The end of the link was most odd, Jai'mar thought. One minute he was in blinding agony, and the second minute…
I hear all…he thought, his mind liberated. In microseconds, his evolved brain finally felt free to explore all the small nuances of the ship: the computer core, brimming with secret Bentusi knowledge, the weapons systems, humming with power, the trans-hyperspace engines, utterly complex and deliciously perfect for his brain to attempt to analyze…
And the voices.
He'd managed to deny them the power to run the ship, but he could not block out the consciousness of the hundred of Bentusi on the ship. He heard them all cry out in anger:
The Turanic! We have never felt such a mind before!
He is Unbound! What will happen now?
He has subverted the ship. We are no longer Unbound; we are sub-Bound; we cannot do anything.
He has murdered Hnngen'jugufal; I can feel his presence in his place!
How could he link up to the ship? The biopod was not designed to accept his physiology.
He tried in vain to block them out, but he couldn't. He felt a million things on the ship drawing his attention, and he felt that this new state was going to overwhelm him. It took him a few seconds to realize the full extent of his mental capacities, that he was not constrained the slowness of a Bound brain anymore, and learned with glee that he could do everything on the ship-survey several light-years around the ship through the sensors, regulate repairs caused by his violent entry onto the ship, and even manage the ship's incredibly advanced PDA-with only a tiny fraction of his mind. He started to use the rest of it to his advantage.
Through the ship's comm. system, he set up a channel with the Leader of the Duran back on Turan, several thousand light-years away. Jai'mar felt the voice of his Leader in his mind.
"Yes," Leader Gren'magan spoke, "who is this?"
Jai'mar almost opened his mouth before he realized that it was unnecessary. Merely thinking the words, he began communicating with his Leader. Leader Gren'magan, it is a great honor to speak with you. My mission is complete.
