Chapter 124: An Introduction

The figure was ghostly. Translucent and wispy, like a hologram. Sage blinked and looked upwards where a set of lights were on. It might actually be a real hologram. The figure was about seven feet tall and very thin. Humanoid in shape with two arms and two legs, standing upright. Despite being thin, the torso seemed thick which reminded Sage of his own serpentine body. The person had light blue scales and sharp facial features. They had no ears or hair, instead having a set of fins and ridges on the top of their head. It was sort of like if a person and an Eel or Fish got combined together. A light shot out from above and passed over both Sage and Rocky for a few moments before Sage finally heard a voice inside his head.

“This one is the artificial intelligence of the carrier craft Quittance. There is no response from the Psychic Relay. In accordance with the accords of the Ethereal Exarch, these two shall be given preferential treatment of the fifth rank for their contributions.”

A bit stunned, Sage could only stand there in silence and try to figure out how he’d suddenly stumbled onto what could only be termed an alien. From afar a pair of palm sized discs floated over towards Sage and Rocky. Each the size and shape of a large seashell yet when it touched Sage’s hand he felt it was made of some sort of smooth rounded white plastic like an i-device.

“These two have minds that are unable to process any more than these simple messages. Take these devices. If they can be activated in the future, these two can become citizens of the Ethereal Exarch.”

Rocky stood in silence, merely holding the plastic seashell, saying nothing. Sage felt the dismissiveness of the voice and quickly asked some questions.

“What happened here? How did you get here? Are you leaving?”

The holographic figure was completely still, just as before, the voice only in his head.

“After Quittance finishes recharging it will be attempting to return to the Klonfesh Consortium. Please pay attention to the following images from the Quittance’s logs.”

The holographic image of the alien disappeared and instead the whole room seemed to light up. The walkway they were on was the single path into a huge spherical room. The huge sphere seemed to be made of screens which all turned on simultaneously with no gaps between them. Instead of standing in a dark spherical room it now looked like they were standing in the emptiness of space. Behind them they could see the huge body of the whale like ship, just like they were place on the front nose of the ship.

After admiring the stars and planets in the distance, Sage noticed that they weren’t alone. To either side, above and below there was other ships. A few looked the same as the whale they were on while others were shark like or shaped like huge fish. A few minutes later a noise that sounded like a distorted fire alarm started going on. A few seconds later there was a glow of energy up ahead of the fleet of ships and the screen changed. A picture in picture display popped up next to a bunch of tiny dots in the distance and the new display slowly zoomed in, bringing the dots into focus.

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It was a group of about a dozen old men, each of them wearing the fighting uniforms and robes of Cultivators. Only a few of them had matching uniforms with each other, and Sage didn’t recognize any of the badges on their chests. What was most surprising though was that their might was almost palpable through just the display screen. They were glowing with vibrant energy corona’s like small suns and each held primitive style weapons that were covered in symbols that Sage recognized as arrays and crafted from, no doubt, extraordinary materials. The Cultivator’s mouths weren’t moving but they looked to each other and shook their heads or nodded as if they were conversing. The alarm sound kept blaring along with other trills or whistles going off at different times.

Sage guessed there was also many things they were missing from the ship’s point of view, but they weren’t allowed to hear it or couldn’t understand it. After about a minute the group of Old Men shot towards the fleet of ships at high speed. Each of them turned into what seemed to be a shooting stars. One of the tiny flashes of light smashed through one of the ships to the Quittance’s right. Starting a chain reaction that quickly overtook the whole ship, the explosions in space looking quite different than those in an atmosphere. Small screens popped up all over the place, each of them zoomed in on one of the Old men and women, one of them actually rewinding to show how the ship to their right was destroyed by a single swipe of a sword. A huge arc of glowing light flew out of the sword and sliced the ship in half vertically. Slicing the ship cleanly into two pieces which tore a main power generator in two and caused a chain reaction of detonations.

Similar things seemed to be happening all over the fleet, a huge swarm of fish like ships flew out from below the whale ship, a fleet of fighter craft rushing into action only to get swatted down like flies by those tiny people in robes. One of them suddenly flew up in front of the Quittance and formed some seals with his hands. He seemed suddenly massive in the viewscreen as he got closer and closer. The life-sized man then reached out with a fingertip and pressed it against the screen. Everything went dark.

All the displays were off again. The hologram reappeared.

“Quittance has no further logs after this point. Star maps show the Quittance to be on the Planet Iugrade Delta, the location of a exploratory supply base that Quittance was assigned to defend. Beginning power saving function. These two should leave now.”

Before Sage could ask any more questions, the holographic figure disappeared and dismissed them. From what he saw, there wasn’t much more he could get here if the AI wasn’t willing to answer their questions. Sage asked a few more just to check and got the same response as before, ‘These two should leave now.’

The ship’s gratitude only seemed to extend so far. Maybe because it knew they were cultivators which, from the logs they saw, made them their enemy. Shrugging his shoulders, Sage looked over to Rocky, “Guess it’s time to go.”

Rocky just nodded and they started their walk out. The two of them stored the seashells they got and the trip back out was just as uneventful as the one in, slightly less given Rocky didn’t try to break into any other doors. The capabilities of this ship seemed far past what they were capable of, but at the same time, Sage had just watched some cultivators that could fly through space and destroy these ships like they were nothing. Just what level of power had they reached?

Soon enough they were back outside the Quittance and sitting on the back of the Lance Beetle, just looking at the huge ship still floating motionlessly in front of them. Sage took this time to get out a new Memory Sphere and record everything that came after they opened the seal, figuring this might become some sort of classified information and not wanting to mix it in with the seals.

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