Song of the Void

”The abilities of a psion can be extremely varied between individuals as every psion has their own talents. All the races have conducted systematic research into the subject of the various abilities psions can have, but even with all that effort, new abilities are discovered regularly. In the end, when discussing the capabilities of a psion one thing remains a constant: every psion is different. There are some abilities that are extremely common, even to the point of being almost universal, but even then a particular psion’s capabilities with those abilities can be extremely varied, and they might utilize them in completely different ways. One psion might move objects via the manipulation of gravity, while another might do it by creating invisible appendages made of energy that can be used to lift objects. Regardless of the method, they accomplish roughly the same thing, but these details can influence the specifics of what they can use their ability for. While some abilities are almost universal, some are the exact opposite. Some talents are rare enough to almost be called unique. In the end though, almost nothing is impossible. If something seems impossible at the moment, that’s only because it hasn’t been done yet.”

- High Ambassador of the Mrrroww

---------

Amaterasu frowned in displeasure as she thought about the report she had just read. The Cybran attack had been a complete shock to them and threw their carefully laid plans into disarray. That wasn't the cause of her displeasure, although it didn't exactly make her happy either. No, what made her so displeased was the fact that they should have seen the possibility coming. If they had, they could've made preparations. Most of all though, they should be better than this. She should be better than this.

“So. The Cybrans and the Tetrarchy have found common cause, or at least they think so. And there’s very little we can say to convince them otherwise.” She tapped the table impatiently with her fingers.

“That seems to be the case. The Tetrarchy’s little play was a stroke of genius. It plays to all the suspicions that the Cybrans have about us. The Cybrans have always thought we are hoarding Progenitor technology and using it to advance our cause at their eventual expense. They are right of course, just not when it comes to this particular case.” The Handmaiden who had brought in the reports replied.

"They don't understand." The Empress said with a sigh. "They think we are doing it out of greed and to promote our own agenda. They have not realized the greatness of those that came before us. These items should be revered and not pilfered and used for nefarious purposes. What would the Progenitors say if they returned and saw what has happened?”

That was one of the tenets of the faith of those that were part of Illum. What would the Progenitors think if they ever returned? They did not know why the great beings had vanished, but it stood to reason that they might someday return. If they did return, how would they react to seeing their old cities and dwellings looted? How would they react to societies built on the ruins of their accomplishments? Perhaps there were ways of mitigating some of the inevitable anger. If the items were treated with due reverence, then maybe they had a chance. If instead of being torn to pieces for a slight advancement, the Progenitor relics were carefully and lovingly studied, perhaps the Illum might be spared. And even if the Progenitors did not return, did beings of their greatness not deserve respect and veneration? What did a little bit of respect cost really?

“We need to find that ship.” The Handmaiden stated the obvious. “If the Cybrans are seriously considering joining hands with their hated old masters just because we might gain an advantage due to that ship, then we might at least gain that advantage. Or we need to find it to show evidence that we do not have it.”

The Handmaiden might have been stating the obvious, but it didn’t make it any less important. “It’s a good thing we have been working on achieving that goal before the problem occurred.” The empress stated and pressed a button. “Have the smiths completed their work?” She asked as soon as a communicator made a sound indicating a connection. She had a way to possibly find the ship, but the downsides had been too great before now.

“They have and we are prepared to proceed.” A male voice replied. He was one of the most important leaders of psionic development among the Illum. He was also in charge of the program that created many of the psionically crafted items their empire used. Psions, in general, were not known for their great talents in creation, aside from using their powers in the place of tools or creating very temporary constructs out of energy of course, but there were exceptions if you found the right people.

The Empress hesitated for just a moment. For a long time, she had felt so close to touching something magnificent with her mind, and that she just needed a little push to reach that something. Out of all the Illum, she was the one closest to doing so. That gave her certain advantages. Because she was so close, there were already certain things she could do that others could not. One of those things was to use that very delicate connection to find certain people over long distances. Whatever that magnificent thing was, it knew where all the people were and could share that information. It was just that to get that information, you had to fulfill certain conditions and you had to ask the right way.

“Do it. As soon as you’re ready, send the item to me.” Amaterasu finally said and closed the connection.

The Handmaiden looked at the Empress in question. She clearly wanted to ask but didn't dare to do so. Amaterasu gave her the signal to stay patient. Half an hour passed while she went over other reports before another Handmaiden entered the lavish room just long enough to hand a small package to Amaterasu before leaving. She opened the package to find a glowing pendant inside. The main part of the pendant was a large intricately carved crystal covered in Progenitor runes.

The Handmaiden recognized the runes and her eyes widened. This was one of the relics they had discovered. "Your Majesty is that…?" She was hesitant to finish her sentence.

“It is one of the psionic foci we discovered in the original ruins that gave us our chance to rise," Amaterasu replied with a voice filled with suppressed emotion. Those ruins were one of the main reasons the Illum had become what they were in the first place, and their capital was built over them.

She stared at the pendant for a while before looking towards the Handmaiden. “You need to know because I’ll need the help of the Handmaidens to keep up appearances while I’m gone.”

“Gone?” The Handmaiden asked with an alarmed voice.

“Yes. I will use the focus to find the ship. Or to be precise, I will use it to find Envoy Miyo. I just hope she is still on the ship, or at least somewhere close." Amaterasu explained. The cruel fact was that finding Miyo was not important. Finding the ship was. If Miyo's body had been dumped in space somewhere, then this would all be in vain, and they would have expended a great deal of resources for nothing. Activating this item and preparing it to find Miyo had taken several of their most skilled Deities out of commission for weeks due to sheer mental exhaustion. And it would take her away from the battle just when her wisdom was needed.

“Your Majesty, surely someone else can take on this job? We will prove ourselves worthy of your trust!” The Handmaiden stated fervently.

There was a reason they had not used this method as soon as they got the word about the Progenitor ship. The time and effort required to prepare the focus were part of it, but not the most important part. “Unfortunately I need to do this personally. No one else can use the focus to do what must be done. We all have our talents, and this is tied to one of mine.” As she spoke, she concentrated and connected with the focus.

The smiths had done a great job of inserting Miyo’s psionic signature inside the focus. The focus could be used to find another signature of the same being, and Amaterasu was the bridge between the focus and that great something that could tell them the information they were seeking. As she concentrated, she could sense a response and she could even roughly locate it. ‘Good, Miyo is still alive. That said, there’s something weird about her signature. It’s like she’s frozen in time like she’s in some kind of stasis. Wait. The Progenitor ship had stasis capabilities? Could it be?!’ Previously separated pieces in her mind suddenly fell into place. A thought that had been unthinkable just moments before suddenly seemed possible.

Her eyes shot open and she was almost panting at the mere thought of what she had just realized. An intact Progenitor ship that had never been seen before that had stasis capabilities? Likely capabilities beyond anything they could understand? And a powerful psion had emerged from that ship seemingly without arriving there on another ship? That psion then piloted a Progenitor mech to destroy a Tetrarchy ship in one strike? ‘It can’t really be true, can it? Yet, just the possibility makes my actions even more important.’

“Prepare my ship. Send away any crew that is not part of my Handmaidens, and then fill the vacant spots with the best we have. This just became a lot bigger than we ever thought.” Amaterasu stated with a stern seriousness. The Handmaidens could be trusted.

‘How could we have been so blind?’ Now that she thought of it, the answer to their earlier questions was so blatantly obvious. Of course the original owners of the ship could pilot it and make it suddenly vanish.

“Where are we going?” The Handmaiden asked, clearly indicating she was going as well.

“We are going to…the Haven?” Amaterasu replied after consulting a star chart. She had sensed a location but had not made the connection earlier. "Well, that might be a problem.”

--------

Selendil allowed herself to relax as the auxiliary power generator started operating without trouble. She had known what to do thanks to the knowledge she had stored in her mental library of Dhar that had passed on, but seeing things actually work was like having a weight lifted from her shoulders. Now they were no longer in such a dire situation. Her ship now had power and had the ability to defend itself. It was far from being at full strength, but this was a start. The ship was still the pinnacle of Dhar technology, so even working at 10% of effectiveness made it powerful enough to fend off almost any threat. Assuming she didn’t do something silly.

She'd had the personal strength to protect the ship of course, but that assumed she was on the ship. Now she could leave the ship for a short time without having to worry about it. The ship could also now function in case she was injured or incapacitated. She'd just had a nap that took millions of years, but that didn't mean she was never going to sleep again. She didn't have to, considering her nature as an energy being, but she enjoyed doing it. Or at least she had enjoyed it before waking up from the stasis. Now she was a little afraid of what she might see in her dreams.

Shaking off that thought she ran through a mental checklist. She’d had the beacons focus on non-essential repairs and turning some of the air breathable again. The beacons were extremely inefficient when it came to filtering air, which is why the Dhar ships still used hydroponics. That and the pleasure of seeing some greenery in the darkness of space. However, while she didn’t actually need to breathe, her new gardeners would need some air until they got the hydroponics started, hence the need for the beacons to take on a job they were not really suited for.

"Running thorough diagnostics on our defensive and offensive systems," Lux announced. Now that they had power the AI could do a better job.

“Well, the good news is that the weapon systems themselves are working. The auxiliary power generator won’t allow us to use our main arsenal, but we have access to some of our weapons at least. The bad news is that our defenses are in a worse condition. The structural integrity field is unusable until our main power is online of course. The full-hedron shielding is operational but I wouldn’t put too much stress on it until we get more power. The structure of the ship is intact and without fractures, so unless they hit us with something big…” The AI left its voice hanging.

One of the biggest technological developments, when it came to defense, that the Dhar had ever made was the structural integrity field. It basically used the power from the ship to enforce the relative positioning, integrity, and bonds of the atoms making up the ship. Theoretically, as long as the ship had enough energy, nothing could damage it. They could fly the ship straight into a black hole and with energy come out intact. Discounting the way time dilated inside black holes of course, but there were ways around that as well. There was a reason the system had become the main defensive tool of their fleets.

The secondary defensive system was made of overlapping shields of energy that could be deployed anywhere around the ship. The good thing about the shields, when compared to something like void shields, was that the shielding power could be deployed anywhere and focused on a single point if necessary. The system was called full-hedron shielding because the shield usually took various geometric shapes and joined together looked like a polyhedron.

The shields also had another function in that they could also work as short distance portals where the weapons inside the ship would fire into a shield and the shields could let the shot out anywhere around the ship. That’s also how they launched their fighters. It allowed the ship to be extremely sturdy without superficial openings and allowed all of the weapons to fire in all directions. Thus it was important that this particular system was working, even though its defensive value was much lower than the alternative.

A wave of safety washed over Selendil once she heard the report. She had been worried before this, but now she could relax. “Is the air already at a state where our new gardeners can survive being on the ship?” She asked.

"It is if we concentrate the breathable air into the sections they will be working and living in," Lux confirmed. The beacons really weren’t suited for the task and were taking more time than expected.

“That’s enough then. I’ll have to go and get them I suppose.” Selendil stated with a sigh.

She had returned to the ship with her mech, but with the beacons operational both on the station and the ship, she could just warp to the station and bring the strange plant beings over. The warping still required the presence of a Dhar after all, as their kind were the only ones able to connect with the warp network. There was just a slight problem. She would need to connect with the universal consciousness to do so, and the last time she had done it had almost been too much.

This time she tried to get it over with quickly instead of dithering about the whole thing, which ended up being a bad decision. The sheer silence of the Great Song crashed on her and the lack of other Dhar minds seemed to be screaming at her despite the silence. She fell to her knees as a wave of nausea hit her. Her entire body started feeling faint and she felt like having chills, which was impossible considering her state as an energy being. Her chest also felt like it was in pain and if she had been breathing, it would’ve turned extremely labored.

If she had been fully cognizant, she would’ve recognized the symptoms of a panic attack, but she had other things on her mind. It felt like she was hearing whispers of all those dead souls now cursing her. Why was she alive when they were all dead? The sadness from everyone she ever knew being gone hit her at the same time and the grief was overwhelming her. She was making soft crying sounds without realizing and Lux tried to call her name in a worried tone. The Ai had noticed something had gone wrong immediately. It had been worried something might happen sooner or later.

Selendil was too deep gone to be able to hear though. Her mind was lost in the universal consciousness, shivering and holding itself like a scared child. She was blind to any external stimulus, so the calls of the AI were futile. Selendil had pushed away dealing with her grief and the reality of her situation, as the circumstances had demanded her attention. Now she had felt a moment of safety for the first time, and her mind had simply given up on holding back those emotions.

She was alone in dealing with the loss of her entire race. She had nothing to live for except a vague mission given to her by her race during their last moments. A lonely directive to keep on living so that their kind would not be gone entirely, forgotten in the sands of time. She had no purpose beyond this, and she didn’t have the clarity to create her own purpose at this moment. A proper purpose might have been something to pull her back to clarity, but now her lack of purpose was just another thing pushing her deeper to despair. She was paralyzed with the sheer volume of negative emotions, and she stayed that way for almost a full day.

The thing that finally moved her was a faint feeling. The sudden wave of grief had dulled just a bit, allowing her to notice that faint feeling. Something or someone was pulling on the universal consciousness. That something was not really entering the unity, but they were on the very edge tugging on a slight string of the whole. It reminded Selendil of the first attempt their race had made with the universal consciousness. Someone was close enough to pull on that thread without being close enough to truly enter.

This roused a new emotion from the dark ball of negative emotions that had taken over Selendil. Curiosity. She didn’t have enough feeling left in her to really care about the matter, but the whole thing was arousing her curiosity just enough to make a difference. Judging by the fact that she could feel this feeble attempt, whoever was pulling on that thread was relatively close. That meant in this galaxy. The pulling was soon dulled into a minor connection that was barely holding.

This little bit of curiosity had not been much, but it had been enough to get her stagnant mind moving again. And once her mind started moving again, she found that she had grown numb enough to start recovering. The pain was not gone and likely never would be. But at least the pain was no longer crippling her. And if that was the case, then maybe she could start the process of someday moving on?