Ravens of Eternity

453 Action-Reaction, Pt The Spirit of Amelia flew over the serene and beautiful planet below them. It was among the few sanctuary planets in what used to be the Hegemony, and was also deep inside of Godeater’s ‘territory’. The ship surveyed the land just beneath, which was a massive rainforest with a sweeping tree canopy.

Because it was so thick, the corvette’s sensors could hardly pierce through to scan the forest bed.

Thankfully, there was a wide, raging river close by that cut the forest itself into two. The river itself was filled with various schools of fish and amphibians. Its banks were also teeming with all kinds of life, from various mammals to insects and pests.

The ship kept on going and followed the wide river all the way to the forest’s edge, and met rolling valleys filled with overgrown stalks of grass and flowers.

The river itself forked into two directions – one that eventually led to the continent’s edge and flowed out to an ocean. However, the other fork simply led to a massive and serene lake surrounded by grassy hills and voluminous trees.

The corvette flew down close to the lake’s bank before it landed on a relatively even patch of flat land close by. She hissed as her internal pressures and atmosphere normalized with the planet surrounding it.

A few seconds later, her side ramp lowered down, which allowed Freya, Raijin, and Azrael to step out.

All three were in awe of their surroundings, and couldn’t stop looking in every direction. It was all simply too beautiful and too serene not to.

They quickly shook the feeling off, however, and got right to work. All three began to scan their surroundings in greater detail.

.....

Azrael scanned whatever biological signals she could find, from various plants and fungi to any animals and insects close by. She dove into their genetic information in an attempt to glean how the ecosystem worked within itself.

Freya’s eyes shifted to that of an orange-gold, and exactly like a hawk, peered off into the far distance. She surveyed the mountain ranges that surrounded them on all sides, and noted how visible they all were from her vantage point.

Raijin grabbed a small handful of dirt, which her nanite cloud quickly broke down and absorbed. She quickly determined what minerals were in the soil and their relative amounts. Not only that, but she checked the readouts of their initial aerial scans to determine, roughly, how much of that soil was around.

But before she could float off to gain more samples, Azrael called out to both of them. All three walked towards each other and met somewhere in the middle.

“I need to update your inoculation registry,” she said.

At the same time, she pulled out her medgun and formulated customized vaccines for each of them.

“There’s some nasty viruses and bacteria just in this area,” Azrael continued. “Before we go anywhere else, we’d better get updated.”

“Do I honestly need it?” Raijin asked. “My cells are made of titanium carbide and probably not very vulnerable to biological attack.”

“You especially. This planet’s rich with metal-eating bacteria. You could end up as a massive banquet for some of ‘em.”

Raijin nodded approvingly, then stuck out her arm to receive her inoculation without further complaint.

“Azrael, why’re you even here?” asked Freya. “Aren’t you still the Republic’s Physical Health Director? Shouldn’t you be with the fleet?”

“What, don’t like me being around, is that it?” Azrael teased.

“N-no! Of course not. Nothing like that! I’m just… you’re too important to be messing around down here with us.”

“I’m just another doctor, and the fleet’s got plenty. And besides, this Godeater problem’s too… big to ignore. I need to be doing something about that, or I’m gonna go crazy, alright? I can’t just sit by when I could be doing something like this. Something good for the fleet’s future, you know?”

Azrael then injected each of them with their own customized vaccines, and protected them from the environment all around. But she didn’t just see it as an inoculation. It was more like acclimation.

To her, the only way to insert people into an environment that had developed without them was to ease into the ecosystem itself. That was the only way that they could avoid destroying each other. Or at least, that was her hypothesis.

She thought gravely about what Freya had said about Godeater, about how it seemed to act like an antibiotic and antivirus. And what that meant about what humans were, from its point of view. Was Godeater inoculating the galaxy from humans and drogar?

If so, why?

Azrael quickly shook the thoughts out of her head – she needed to concentrate on the here-and-now, not some hypothetical scenarios.

“What’re your thoughts on this spot?” she asked.

“The entire area appears to be rich in nitrates,” Raijin responded. “It is more than enough for any agricultural needs. Combined with the relatively clean and fresh water source, this is an excellent site.”

“Yeah, entire basin’s great,” Freya added. “Mountains and plateaus all around, so we’ve got good vantage points from down here. Could see if Godeater’s attacking just by glancing up and around. Plus, it’s gorgeous.”

“Then we’d better set up camp here and now,” Azrael said. “I’ll send my medical data up to the fleet so we can get everyone else inoculated. In the meantime, let’s settle in.”

Raijin agreed with a nod, then waved her baton in the air. She traced plans for an A-frame and laid it out over a small plot of land, which all of them saw only through their DI’s. While she did so, a handful of her drones floated out of the Spirit of Amelia.

Each of them held small stacks of various solidified raw materials, mostly metals, carbons, and oxygen. They went down right where Raijin was, set their stacks down, then absorbed a portion of each others’ stacks.

And once Raijin was done setting down the a-frame’s footprint, the drones got to work.

First, they swallowed up some of the land itself and flattened it. Then they began to print out the hab’s foundation with exacting precision.

All three women watched the drones work for a few minutes – their work was seriously fascinating to watch.

“You think this’ll work?” asked Freya. “I mean, let’s say we’re successful in putting a hundred thousand people on here. If Godeater decides to wipe out the planet, we’ll have sacrificed all those people… all their time, and their effort. And of course the planet itself on top of it all.”

“You’re saying it like we’re forcing them to come here,” Azrael replied. “A million of us volunteered to do this, remember? We all know what’s at stake, and we’re all in this together.”

“I know, I know. But it’s our half-baked idea to try in the first place. I feel a whole lot of responsibility for it. For everyone. If we mess up, or if things go bad, then…”

Freya trailed off, unable to express her fears much further.

“We cannot simply do nothing either,” Raijin said, and filled in the silence. “There is a different kind of death in that. And many would find that fate worse, myself included.”

“Exactly that!” Azrael added. “And besides, we aren’t the only ones risking our lives. Aren’t some of your Einherjar out there trying something on their own, too?”

Freya nodded.

“They want to attack Godeater,” she said. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them.”

“They asked if I had any experimental weaponry to loan them,” Raijin said with a light chuckle. “So I gave them access to my design folder and told them to discuss it with Yggdrasil.”

“See?” Azrael said. “We’ve all gotta to try whatever we can, otherwise, what’s the point, you know? We can’t just cower in a corner for the rest of time. It’s just not in our nature.”

“Yeah, well, our natures got us in this mess,” Freya said with a sigh. “But… you’re right. It’s our nature that’ll get us out of it. Let’s just hope that we choose wisely.”

All three watched with growing awe as the drones put together their hab. It was a picturesque a-frame whose angular roof reached all the way down to the ground. Its front facade was wholly transparent, which allowed anyone inside a commanding view of the lake.

The front slid open as they stepped up to it, and welcomed them into the rest of the hab itself.

Although the a-frame was relatively small, it was certainly large enough for the three of them. In fact, there was enough space in it for a small family or group of friends like them. It was also multi-leveled, with the lower floor designed for living, eating, and working.

There was a spacious lounge up front with comfortable padded couches on one side, and a terminal with a large screen on the other. Behind the lounge was the kitchen and meal prep area. It had an assortment of tools and containers and cooking devices – perhaps more than was necessary.

Up above, the upper floor was wholly designed for sleeping and relaxing.

The back half were four beds that were cordoned off from each other with thin sections. There was enough space in each of those sections for the beds themselves, closets, and personal storage. The front half of the top floor was a relaxation area lined with large pillows. It even had a small reading nook right in front of the transparent front.

Back down and out back of the a-frame was a small plot of land that was dug up and prepped to be a garden. It seemed large enough to support anyone living inside.

“What a brilliant design. Where’d you learn to make this?” Freya asked Raijin.

“This was designed by committee,” the girl replied. “Numerous people in the Republic had a hand, and most of the First Feathers completed the design itself. Of course, we made our own finishing touches right here and now.”

“I think we’ve got a few variants, right?” Azrael asked. “I remember having to come up with a few garden designs. Like, vertical ones instead of horizontal, and so on.”

“Oh, I certainly received dozens of different designs. I instead reformed them into a single modular one, so if anyone wants something in particular they could alter the hab themselves in its final stages of the build.”

“That’s so fascinating… Could some maybe have a clinic in the front instead of a living space? Or maybe a coding bay?”

“Anything they want, yes.”

Freya smiled as the two carried on about the a-frame. Seeing those two, being near them, watching them work. It filled her with so much joy, even in the face of armageddon.

“It’s just like old times,” she said. “Back when our lives were so much simpler, so much easier. Us five, and the ship. What we did only really affected us, not millions of people.”

The other two were quickly beset with nostalgia as well. They started to feel it tug at them the moment they all stepped foot on the Spirit of Amelia. But it swept through them all throughout their venture thus far, and completely flooded them the moment Freya pointed it out.

“I miss Xylo,” Raijin said. “I bet she would love it here.”

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