Space Odyssey: Spectre

Jace rubbed the side of his head as they walked back onto the bridge, the new skin still felt a bit raw. His eye and the part of his face that had melted off had been completely repaired. But now he was absolutely starving and he could feel his body slowly draining power from the ship everywhere he went. So as they walked back onto the bridge everything dimmed for a moment before Solisa likely automatically adjusted power, already realizing what was occurring.

"That is disturbing." Nila told him from his side. He looked over at her in confusion. "I mean watching the skin literally regrow, not to mention whatever the hell your eyeball did… inflate?"

Jace flinched, "do not tell me. While it is useful, I already suffer enough from the pain that I undergo from the injuries." Jace told her as they moved toward the holotable where Isaiah was waiting while talking quickly and quietly with an engineer. They were talking about getting one of the ships so they could see how they arrived undetected from their censors. "I do not need to be told about the visual disturbance…uh… I do not need to know how it looks."

"Understandable." Nila nodded, "I wish I had not seen that. But were you really in pain? I did not see any sign of you being in even the most remote amount of pain during that entire experience." Nila pointed out while they moved to the sides of the table.

"Oh, I was in pain. But I have been trained in such a way that I can control my reactions. Although there have been versions of humans that turned off their pain receptors for soldiers it always ended badly. Their fatal flaw was them being unaware when they were… fatally injured." Jace explained as he took up position across the table from Nila. He then turned to General Isaiah, "So what is the situation General?"

"It is a desperate strike." General Isaiah began explaining, "I knew the fights on the other fronts were going well, we were even able to disable or remove any of the planet-killing bombs that you told us about. The few planets that were fending off enemy forces suddenly felt the weight lifted several hours ago. All of the Elder council's forces pulled back and set up this attack."

"What about the Elder Council? How many of them are left?" Nila asked as she crossed her arms. "I know three of the fifteen members surrendered early. Then we killed two and captured one. That leaves the other nine across the disputed territories."

"Five of the Elder Council died, while two more were captured." General Isaiah answered. "The last two managed to capture a moon, we use that moon as an experimental weapons testing facility."

"Well that does not sound good. But we should focus more on our current situation. How much of the attack have we repelled?" Jace asked as he brought up a holographic map of the Venture and the surrounding area.

"Boarding parties are still being repelled across the Venture. Then there are the enemy ships, acting on your orders the bridge crew were able to disable most of them and destroy a few others." Isaiah explained, and then manipulated the holotable to show the other ships that were in orbit around Yati. "The others had less boarding parties and the few ships that flew towards the surface were destroyed and the crash sites are being searched. We will know more about these situations in a few minutes."

"Then what is our plan?" Jace asked in turn. "Because I doubt we will be taking this sitting down. It would be better to finish them off while they have overextended themselves." Jace pointed out.

"I agree, we were going to leave soon anyways. All this did was push up our time table." General Isaiah agreed with a nod. "Go prepare your squad, I know you are short a man but I assume you will be fine despite that."

The General then waved them off. They both saluted and walked to the door. "What will we need?" Nila asked as they walked out to the hall.

"We will need our armor and weapons. Send the message to the Cerberus Squad members that as soon as they are done with assisting the ship security we are to move to Cerberus War Room." Jace informed her as he pulled out his own communication device.

"What are we going to be doing? It is not like we are going to be immediately going to the Elder controlled moon." Nila pointed out. "The moon is at least half a day's journey by warp, it is on the other side of the Victorium controlled territories."

Jace chuckled as they moved down the hallway. He spotted a group of Venture Security officers that were pulling bodies deeper into the ship. "I know, but I want to start breaking down a plan for when we get there."

"Will General Isaiah like that?" Nila asked as they stepped over the dragged corpses of a few enemy soldiers.

"I will make the official request once I am in the war room. But for the time being it would be a good idea to not mention our early preparation to him." Jace frowned as he spotted a group of enemies that were being pushed along while restrained.

"Why are we doing this anyways?" Nila clicked a few times as they came across more damage to the ship. It looked like someone had set off a few grenades in the intersection. Parts of the walls, roof, and ground were torn up enough that tubes, wires, and hidden components were visible.

"The amount of damage we suffered will be enough that the engineering and maintenance crews will be busy for a while." Jace sighed before he continued, "We are doing this for practice. We will likely do something like this in the near future so it does not hurt to practice like this."

Nila nodded her head and clicked in agreement.