First Contact

//DAXIN! DAXIN! DAXIN!//

The electronic shout was full of slobbery excitement as the Goodboi frame charged across the reception lounge toward the massive cyborg that had just exited the airlock with a practiced flip and twist of someone long used to going from zero-G to artificial gravity. The Goodboi frame was an older model, chrome warsteel, three times as heavy as modern ones, but the towering cyborg caught it in mid-leap and brought it his metal chest in a crashing hug that sounded like someone had dropped an entire smithy from a great height.

//HELPED NEWBOIS DAXIN! FIDO GOODBOI!//

"Yes, yes you were," The big cyborg said aloud. On the private channel he sent -*-FIDO GOODBOI DAXIN MISS FIDO-*-

When he tickled the Fido's petting nerve they both relaxed, things going back to normal.

In the station security monitor center the attendants stared nervously at their screens. The Fidoframe had been bad enough, heavily armed enough to require serious effort to counter if the Fido had gone crazy, but the big cyborg was something else. Built like a Terran Marine Mechaneck, it wasn't the armor, weapons, and secondary systems that made the security personnel look at one another and then at their supervisor.

It was the identification code of the big cyborg.

FREEBORN, DAXIN - CLINICAL IMMORTAL - EXTREMELY DANGEROUS - HOSTILE TO CONTACT - DO NOT APPROACH - WARNING! NEURAL ABERRATION! WARNING!

scrolled across the screen above the file. The supervisor checked the file again. Most beings undergoing transit had only a page or two, even Old Metal and Old Blood guys had, at the most, a fifteen or twenty page report on them.

Daxin's was over fifty pages and the supervisor stared at the fact it was file 1 of 11, of unclassified data. His System Idenfication Number threw an error. It was pre-Diasporia, Pre-Loss, back when the first colony war happened before Terra had done much more than a few trips.

Digital Omnimessiah and his Twelve Biological Disciples, this guy fought in the First Colony Rebellion and the Mars Rebellion, the Saurian thought to himself.

The ship was bad enough. No name, just a registration number that matched an old Facey McFacepunch light frigate but the supervisor's station identified it as an Adaptus Light Cruiser with a "highly dangerous" and "restricted technology" set of tags on it.

The security being, a Rigellian Saurian, watched the two cyborgs reunite. His systems could detect extremely close range transmissions between the two that ran military grade encryption codes but he slapped the override before the station's VI could attempt to jam it.

CONMILINT had wanted to debrief that massive cyborg and had been willing to restrict the stations traffic if the station manager had pushed it. Something about a fight against a Precursor machine. The station manager wasn't sure what the big deal was since everyone knew that beyond the Long Dark there was a bunch of settled system under Precursor attack, but apparently everyone in the Confederate Intelligence branches wanted to talk to the big cyborg.

To be honest, the station's security breathed a sigh of relief when the big cyborg turned around and jumped into the transit tube, moving through zero-G easily, back to his ship, the big old Fidoframe following him.

--------------------------------

The use of the Sydney Starship Docks by anything other than a high-volume cargo transit ship was rare. The fact that an Adaptus Cruiser wanted to land in the sea dock was not a rarity, it was a flat out unique situation.

When the controller added in the fact that TerraSol Intelligence Services had slapped away any attempt to stop the ship from landing it went from unique to downright bizarre.

The ship was heavily damaged, although it had flat gray durasteel patches and seals slapped all over the massive hull. The twin rotating six barrel C+ cannon arrays and the massive plasma wave phased motion gun were covered, the missile bays sealed, and strangely enough, when the ship settled into the water of the bay, it looked like a massive wet-navy ship riding low in the water.

The dock controller, Treana'ad by the name of Harvey Kikakakik Jones, watched as the safety engineers inspected the vessel to make sure control interlocks were offline and physically air-gapped on the weapon systems. There was some difficulty as there was no crew spaces aboard the ship, but the engineers were satisfied by the owner removing the fire-control VI case and turning it over to the shipyard security. When they wanted a copy of the ship's log the owner refused. There was some concern when a TERRASOL MILINT lockout appeared on the ship's log and memory, but the owner agreed to remove it entirely.

When the owner and his single crew member left the ship it caused even more concern. The datapack on the two was thick and covered in warnings. They were both in heavy cybernetic frames, loaded with tech that was illegal for civilian possession. Between the two of them they possessed enough firepower to level half the docking area and large enough creation engines and nano-forges to create serious problems. Again, a TERMILINT code appeared allowing them to disembark.

The beings of the ship dockyard breathed a sigh of relief when the big cyborg and his massive Fido companion boarded a heavy groundcar and left the city of Sydney, heading into the Deathlands of the Outback.

The driver of the car, a Biological Artificial Sentient named Yuri Redpaw, kept glancing at the huge cyborg sitting where there would normally be a passenger seat. He was heavy enough that the car had to add additional power to the antigrav generator that was used to offset the heavy armor of the groundcar.

The car swept out of the city and into the Deathlands. The desert was red, with swaths of black and purple sand. Racing across the sand were the Eatmu's, massive long legged birds with explosive spittle that possessed feathers capable to deflecting forcebolt packs, light kinetic weapons, and lasers. Some of them kept up with the car, spitting at it, the spittle exploding on contact with the warsteel armor. They raced along with it for nearly ten miles before the car left that packs territory, the Eatmu's giving great cries of victory as the car drove away, driven off by their ferocity.

"Huh, you kept those," the passenger rumbled.

"The Eatmus? Why wouldn't we?" the driver asked, swishing his long tail with nervousness.

"They outfought the Australian Army four times," the cyborg mused.

"Australian?" Redpaw asked, frowning. The whiskers at the end of his muzzle twitched.

"The name of Ozland," the cyborg answered. It had turned the squat heavily armored head to look out the crysteel window, the robotic eyes glowing softly red.

"Oh," Redpaw expected his passenger to add more but instead it was totally silent until the armored car swept into the Green Death. Trees shot razored edge thorns that actually marred the warsteel, a dropbear with a mouth full of long fangs and paws adorned with razor sharp claws stared at the car from where it was holding onto the tree, eating a massive snake, reddish-pink venom drooling from its jaws. Vines stretched across the road tried to stop the car, trying to tie up the diamond-thread mesh tires, squirting caustic strong enough to melt duralloy. A handful of Sunburst Flowers fired bright pink lasers as the car, hoping for a boost of nutrients.

"Hate this part," Redpaw grumbled as the car's battlescreens swept aside vegetation that had thickly grown over the road in the time he had driven to Sydney and back.

"Used to be worse," the cyborg commented.

"Worse? How worse?" Redpaw asked.

"Most of the planet was covered by this stuff after the Extinction Agenda Attack," the cyborg said. "Killed almost three billion people. Back then, wasn't much more than Pure Strain Humans and a few genejacks. Wasn't much more than just a few colonies in the system."

"Extinction Agenda Attack?" Redpaw asked, glancing at his passenger, who seemed unaware of the horrid slur he'd used. "What was that?"

"Nevermind," the cyborg said. "Nothing that matters any more."

//FIDO NO LIKE BITEY PLANTS//

-*-Me neither, boy-*-

The car swept into a tunnel, the battle-screen lowering just long enough for the car to shoot in. Even so, before it could raise again, spores swept in, increasing explosively. A thin mat of cellulose strands followed in the car's air current, latching onto a battle-screen projector and draining away energy even as the spores rapidly began to cover the inside of the tunnels nearly ten meters.

The car was enveloped in plasma as the tunnel flushed and then went to vacuum.

It swept through a decon-screen and came to a stop. Fire played over it, hot enough to actually raise the temperature of the warsteel armor for a few seconds.

Redpaw and his two passengers waited silently. It had been a fourteen hour trip and Redpaw's passenger had barely spoke.

So much for getting any information out of this guy, Captain Redpaw, TerraSol Military Intelligence thought sourly.

The two cyborgs got out, leaving Redpaw to take the car to the motorpool for full decontamination. There was a uniformed female Pure Strain Human, wearing a breather mask, who didn't bother speaking, just turned and led the cyborg and his companion into the massive complex, over 80% of it underground, inside an armored cube that used the warsteel to prevent the ever-questing roots of the plants from getting in.

The halls were clear of any other personnel, the heavy duty elevator empty, as the female led him deep into the facility.

Daxin found it interesting that the pathway was still the same after several hundred years to the cybernetic organism debriefing rooms. He wondered, for a moment before he stopped caring, if they had made sure it was identical in the hopes of putting him at ease.

In the security surveillance room the head of security, a Terran Army officer, watched his monitors as he chewed on one fingernail.

Great and powerful Mok

, God of Rock and Rule, preserve us. This guy's a walking war crime, he thought to himself. He'd gone over the massive unclassified file and found himself time and time again having to reference the historical database just to get context on the events. The guy hadn't fought in every war, but damn close to it. Apparently, at one time, the big cyborg had been the leader of one of the most militant armed gangs in Delta-City before being sentenced to the Aspen Anti-Vegetation Camp. His gang had gone toe to toe with the Lawbringers until Delta-City had called out the military to crush the gang once and for all. That the figure walking through the facility had been captured alive had made historical headlines.

The security head had spent nearly two hours reading that historical archive, fascinated and horrified at the same time.

Now he stared at the brainwave scanner, which was flashing ABERRATION over and over. The security chief glanced at the head of psycho-analysis, who just shook his head.

"It's an extremely rare disorder, not some type of engineering," the psycho-analysis head said. He tapped the brainwave scan. "Almost zero empathy, very little capacity for emotional attachment, it was rare back then and is almost extinct nowadays."

"I just wish someone would tell me why we need to bring him in here. I'd feel safer if they'd debriefed him on Luna, or maybe Io Station. Why did they bring him here anyway?" The security head asked.

"Because this is the only place that has the decryption keys for the type of memory compression and encryption he uses. The keys can't even be loaded into a SolNet or internal networked computer system. He has to be physically brought here and a specially made piece of hardware installed for him to be able to do a memory download," The psycho-analyst answered. He shook his head. "We had to have the nanoforge run off something called a USB-Iron-Key built to specifications in his file. We had to build a computer that could accept the Iron-Key and download his memories and could later hook up to your own systems."

"That old and the much proprietary hardware?" The security officer asked.

"His brain literally has Kawasaki class black ICE imprinted in the dendrite patterns, he's got embedded cyberware containing counter-attack counter-intrusion aVI's that will attack anything he gets connected to that doesn't use extremely ancient handshake protocols," the psycho-analyst said. "They try to debrief him without that Iron-Key system and we'd lose half the computer systems in the Black Box before we could shut it down and the whole time he'd go on the attack to level the place. He'd old Age of Paranoia and a Clinical Immortal."

"That sounds like some old-tech right there," The security head watched the big cyborg and his companion enter a blank room that only contained two heavy duty cyborg cradles, a featureless table, and a chair for the small female officer.

"Try Pre-Diasporia," the analyst replied. He turned to his console and activated the security screens to pay attention to his data displays.

In the blank room the female stared at the two big cyborgs. "Would the two of you be more comfortable if I went by old protocols or do you prefer a more human touch?"

"Humanity is overrated," the big cyborg answered. "Do what has to be done and lets get it over with."

She was unfazed.

//FIDO NO TALK FIDO RESIST//

"Very well," she said. She touched the icon on the tabletop that was tilted in such a way that only she could see it.

"FREEBORN, REPORT," flashed in mid-air in front of her face.

The interrogation started.

-----------------

The female intelligence analyst watched the heavy armored groundcar leave, shooting into the protective tunnel to head through the Deathlands and take the two big cyborgs back to Sydney.

A male, non-descript, almost forgettable while you were looking at him, stepped up next to her.

"At least we know the timestamps to look at otherwise we'd be trying to go through nearly 1,500 years of heuristic memory full of interlocks," the male said.

"Why did he resist a normal debriefing and force us to use old semi-conscious interrogation methods?" The female asked.

"Because he doesn't like us," the male said, as if it answered everything.

And from the female's experience, perhaps it did.

--------------------

The entire port breathed a sigh of relief when the battered Adaptus Cruiser lifted off, seawater pouring off of it. It lifted up on counter-grav, oriented itself, and moved at maximum legal acceleration up and out.

However, it didn't entirely, technically, leave atmosphere, instead cruising at a steady pace at 100,000 feet up. It avoided continents, staying over the oceans, as much as possible. With the exception of law enforcement, military, and air traffic control systems, the ship ignored or rejected all other attempts at communication.

Once it reached its goal it settled down into another cargo ship port, TerraSol military orders overriding the various port authority concerns. Then there were issues of letting a heavily armed clinical misanthrope onto shore and then into the public transportation system.

------------------

"You have a visitor coming, Nakteti," Major Carnight said. "He's on the heavy elevator right now. He may be alarming."

Nakteti nodded, sitting on the couch and watching a Tri-Vid channel that just showed the interior of a greenhouse with nothing else but "The Plant Growing Channel" displayed.

"Who is it?" Nakteti asked. "A member of my crew?"

Major Carnight shook his head. "A living legend. The last of the Immortals."

That made Nakteti bounce off the couch. She knew immediately who Major Carnight was talking about. The terse and distant Daxin, who had saved her ship, saved so many of her crewmates, and had sent his most valued companions to come with her to make sure her crew and her would reach safety.

The door opened and the massive cyborg stood in the doorway, looking around slowly.

Everyone pretended the warborg's eyes had not instantly flashed to amber for a moment before going to solid blue.

"Daxin!" Nakteti ran across the room and hugged the massive cyborg's leg.

"Captain Nakteti. It is good that you survived," The cyborg rumbled.

"Every member of my crew who was alive when you found us survived to make it here," Nakteti said. "A lot of them need medical care, all of them need therapy, but they are alive, thanks to you and Fido."

"Fido Gooboi," the big metal quadruped said.

Nakteti moved over and hugged the big metal Gooboi. "Thank you too, Fido, for saving us."

"Newboi Nak-nak welcome," the Fido answered.

"I just wanted to extend my appreciation for taking good care of Fido," Daxin stated. He stood there for a second and then held out a plas-cloth bag. "Here. A gift. For you. I purchased it. For you."

Nakteti took it. "Thank you, Daxin. Thank you, for everything," she said. She looked inside and saw a simple t-shirt that said "I Went to Terra and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt."

"It has sleeves for four arms," Daxin said, somewhat awkwardly.

"It's wonderful. Thank you so much," Nakteti said, hugging Daxin's leg again.

"I must depart, I have a time limit. My ship makes everyone nervous," Daxin said.

"Take care, Daxin. It was nice to see you," Nakteti said, rubbing Daxin's leg. "Thank you, again, for everything."

"You are welcome. It is mandated by the Immortal Code of Conduct that I extend you assistance. It is good that I did," Daxin said, starting to turn away.

"Daxin?" Nakteti said, using her data-link to gather up a package of data.

"Yes, Captain Nakteti?" The big cyborg stopped halfway into his turn.

"If you ever need refit, or if Fido needs to go for a walk, you are always welcome at Second Chance," She said. She held up her hand. "Will you accept this file?"

Her datalink pinged that there was an open file transfer line. She made a tossing motion and the file transmitted to Daxin.

"I thank you for your generous offer, Captain Nakteti," Daxin stated, finishing his turn.

//FIDO GO HOME WITH DAXIN! BE GOOD NEWBOI NAK-NAK// was transmitted to her implant.

"Goodbye, Fido. Be well," Nakteti said as the quadruped followed Daxin out into the antechamber.

Everyone but Nakteti breathed a sigh of relief when Daxin left.

Nakteti rushed in and changed into the shirt. It was too big for her, and fell down to her knees, but she was happy to sit in it and watch the Tri-Vid.

She could sense how hard it had been for Daxin to visit her.

--------------------

Port Authority breathed a sigh of relief when the Adaptus Cruiser lifted off and cleared atmosphere. Most of the station authorities were happy when the ship broke Earth orbit. It headed to Mercury, made a short stop, then to Mars, where it made another stop. After that it stopped once near Neptune, then jumped out of the system.

Daxin knew the war wasn't over.

It had barely begun.

------------------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Wait, let me get this straight. The Precursor the Daxin the Immortal was fighting was run by Overqueen Neural Arrays?

Are you freaking kidding me?

------NOTHING FOLLOWS------

DIGITAL SAPIENCE SYSTEMS

I've looked over Daxin's neural files myself. There's no mistake. It was a Generation-Zero Goliath.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COOPERATIVE

THAT? That's what you're focusing on? Not the fact that apparently there's a still living Omniqueen and... oh, I don't know... HE FOUND YOUR GENESIS SYSTEM!

------NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

TERRASOL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

We're still going through the data. Some of those jumps gave glimpses to some pretty alarming stuff out there in the Long Dark.

---------NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

GAH! How long have you been there? I swear, you are the worst lurker I have ever seen. Stop sneaking up on us.

------NOTHING FOLLOWS---------

TERRASOL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Would you rather I rang a little bell when I came in?

------NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's bad enough all the seers are weeping. I'm telling you, something is coming. I felt something the other day. Something really weird. I mean, really really really weird. We're talking weirder then we first encountered Terrans.

I mean, seriously, an Overqueen brain with a dozen or so lesser queens? What the hell were my ancestors thinking?

----NOTHING FOLLOWS--------

CLONE DIRECTORATE

"Death to the Lanaktallans" apparently.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS------

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

You know, sis, you're not the only one with a bad feeling. We spotted something not too good the same day you complained you sensed something weird.

----NOTHING FOLLOWS------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

What?

----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Idiot fleets out by the Eye of Gorthaur. You know, the big Hellspace rip out there? Idiot fleets and a couple of the sensors buoys I keep out there detected Hellspace communications.

Something's got the Idiots out there fired up.

----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh, dear.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-----