//------------------------------// // The Scan // Story: Faster Than the Stars // by Erie //------------------------------// Veran sighed in relief as Nox finally finished attaching some of the new modifications to the sensor array and he finally was able to stop holding up the heavy equipment without it falling. "Whew, I'm glad that we finally got that part done. My arms were killing me with how long I was having to hold that up." Nox merely began to fiddle with the sensory array, not even looking up at Veran before interfacing with it to see if the software within was working properly with the new modifications. "If your arms were getting tired, you should have said so Veran. There is no reason for you to push yourself when I can simply support the weight myself while you recover." Veran scoffed at their words. "We're still on a timer bud, I know it isn't much but I'd rather get this done quicker, even if my arms are sore later from it. If the worst-case scenario happens and I hurt myself while doing that? I just go to the medbay and get it patched up in a jiffy." "The true worst-case scenario is not that Veran. It is that your arms give out and we are set back to null with modifying the sensors and the aftermath caused by you going to the med bay, which is currently housing the bat pony could cause many different troubles as well." Veran waved a hand a Nox, as if that'd happen. "Semantics. You'd yell at me to stop long before that if you noticed it was getting bad, and I know when I actually have to call it as well. I'm not that stupid. Anyways, are those fancy modifications you made this time any good? Or are we going to have to go back to the drawing board with this attempt?" Nox looked up at Veran for a moment before looking back to the sensory array. "I am going through the motions to test it now. This method of detection while unlikely to work in the first place is something different and will at least narrow down what might work, ruling out an entire line of techniques I will not have to check in the future." They paused in their work for a moment before continuing on. "It is certainly curious how even our now more advanced sensors have not even offered a glimpse into why she is undetectable by them with the standard methods." "So maybe, gotcha Nox." Veran began to roll his shoulders as the soreness slowly faded away. "I honestly still can't believe that gal is actually sapient still. I mean it was one thing when she was just some new crazy alien horse we miraculously found barely alive in the wreckage of a slaver's ship we had just destroyed. But now? She's not some new animal, she's an entirely new species that's never been encountered before, except by those pirate bastards. And we're the ones that found her. It's incredible to me, y'know?" "It was was certainly quite the improbable series of events that led to us finding her. But not impossible, just like many other things. We just happened to be the ones in this situation and so now we-" Nox abruptly stops talking as they pause. After a moment of silence, Veran looked back over to the engi. Veran was not the type to worry too much about things but Nox pausing mid-sentence without any obvious reason for it? That had him a bit worried. "Uh Nox, you okay there?" The engi was silent for another moment before they finally responded. "Yes... I was merely dedicating more focus towards analyzing the results I got back from my tests." Veran felt a bit of relief course through him while he gave Nox a nod. "Did it actually work this time then?" "I... I am unsure. There is an anomaly within the test itself that I cannot resolve. I am going to redo it, this time while pushing sensors to their new limits." "You're unsure? Well shit, that's a new one. I can't remember the last time you were unsure about something." "I have been unsure of plenty of things in the past. A majority of the time it is resolved before you would even notice. This bat pony though has been the source of most of these situations in recent times, however. I will now need a moment so do not panic if I do not respond to any outside stimulus, these tests will require my full attention." Veran gave him a thumbs up which Nox did not react to at all. "Huh, guess he was quite serious about that one I suppose." After a few more moments of silence, Veran shifted one of the monitors over to the view of the medbay and the bat pony that lay asleep at the moment within, alongside a no life signs detected message in the corner of the screen. "What a troublemaker you've been, making Nox here push himself to actually figure you out. Cute like this though, I'll give you that at least." About a minute had passed before Nox moved once more, shifting something in the sensory array. The moment he did this, the no life signs message flashed for a moment before shifting to one life sign detected. "A simple yet unexpected solution. Strange." Veran's eyes widened while he looked over to Nox. "You got it?!" "Affirmative. The anomaly I detected turned out to be her and with a simple adjustment to what the sensors consider a life sign, I was able to make it consider her as one. It is an extremely crude and rudimentary solution, nor am I completely sure why she's only detectable while scanning for slug telepathy alongside normal scanning. Further testing will be required to confirm anything and to adapt this to the medbay's own medical scanners, but I am confident that in the next few days I will be able to perfect and streamline this." Veran smiled as he clapped his hands. It was quite the mystery why the bat pony hadn't been detectable but Nox had figured it out and quite quickly at that. "Hah! Well done Nox, you were starting to have me worried this was going to be a mystery we weren't going to be able to solve." A look of confusion then took over as he considered a bit more about what Nox had said. "Though why would scanning for slug telepathy work?" Nox shrugged. "As I have said, I do not know exactly why. And my wording was a gross simplification of what I was scanning for, but essentially it is a type of scanning that detects the frequencies many of the slug's telepathic powers shift whenever they are used. I did not expect it to work, it was merely to be thorough and rule out such a possibility. I will certainly not refute such a happening though." Just as Veran was about to respond, the Kestrel's internal comms crackled to life with Teron's voice. "Hey, I've just finished negotiations with the refueling and we'll have enough now to jump to wherever we may need to in the next sector and a bit extra. And over the next day or so, we'll be flying to the very edge of the exit beacon as required for a smooth transition to one of the sectors in our path. Though unfortunately are options for this aren't great unless we want to head away from the Federation Base which just isn't an option. We either get to go through a sector that's been swarmed by pirates ever since the Federation was forced to cede their hold of the sector or suffer far too high losses from the Rebels, or we can go to the sector that seceded to the rebels early on, forcing the Federation into leaving the other one in the first place. And frankly, this really isn't a hard choice for me to make so be prepared for lots of trouble from pirates. If you think differently about that though, feel free to bring it up to me." Teron's voice paused for just a moment before he continued. "And let me know if either of you two need more time in order to get the medbay and sensors updated, I know using the FTL drive while you're working with that can cause some unnecessary complications. Though I can already see you've managed to get the sensors upgraded and actually detect the bat pony so well done on that from both of you. I'll be busy just getting the auto-pilot ready to get us to the edge before getting some rest myself. Keep up the good work you two." A click followed as the comms went off. Veran snorted as he stretched his arms above his head. "Well, a sector full of pirates sounds like it'll be a joy to deal with. Oh well, at least they'll make good target practice if they try and push their luck when they shouldn't. I should get some rest if that's where we'll be jumping next, the last thing we need is for me to be too tired to properly operate the weapon systems and accidentally sabotage us. You'll be good in getting the medbay upgraded yourself or do you want me to help you out when I get back up?" "I should be fine in performing the upgrade myself, it is much more technical in nature what needs to be done with the medbay compared to how much hardware the sensors needed. The pirate-infested sector could potentially be trouble though considering our new passenger. It seems I will have to hurry that procedure on her along if we wish to mitigate that trouble." One of Veran's eyebrows raises as he gives Nox a look. "Procedure, what kind of procedure would you even perform on her and why?" Nox laid silent for a moment before they spoke. "One that is not particularly nice, but one that both I and the captain have agreed is necessary in the end despite its troubles." I woke up startled by a loud humming noise coming from somewhere around me. I looked around in a panic before my ears finally pinpointed where exactly the noise was coming from and I looked over to find it was only the metal being doing something with one of the many strange flickering counters in the room. It looked over at me for a moment before merely looking back to whatever it was doing. I took a deep breath as I began to work up my courage. I didn't know what it was doing nor did I know what it wanted. But there was only one way to figure it out. I shakily called out to it. "H-hello?" It looked over to me again with its motionless green visage and I almost shied away from it as it did so, but I forced myself not to. I couldn't just let myself be afraid of it forever, especially when it hadn't even done anything bad to me and had even helped me a bit. "I don't know what it is you're doing but m-maybe I can help somehow? Or is there something that you want me to do something?" The metal being didn't react at all for a moment a loud beep came from the counter it was working with and the humming noise stopped. It then slowly began to approach me, its right arm somehow shifting through some strange magic as it did so, the solid metal shifting before my eyes. My breath hitched as it came to a stop right in front of me and its right arm, having fully shifted from its claw-like look into something else entirely, reached for me. I couldn't help myself and closed my eyes as I squeaked in fear and awaited a blow from it. A blow that never came, instead in its place I felt the new bindings I had acquired here go slack. I cracked open an eye to see its right arm shifting back to the strange claw look as its left collected the strange blue cloth. It then moved back over to the corner of the room it had been in before and turned back to me, pointing towards a platform on the ground beside it. I was frozen looking in surprise. All it had done was just take off my bindings with seemingly no effort involved from it whatsoever. How had it done that? What magic did it know and how did it even perform it despite not being a unicorn? Why had its arm- My train of thought was brought to a halt as it pointed towards the platform beside it again. My eyes dilated as I rushed in a panic over to it. I couldn't let myself be a problem to it, I couldn't make them angry. It merely watched impassively as I came to a stop on the platform struggling not to panic too much before it hit one of the many buttons on the counter. A magical bright green light suddenly encompassed me as it did so causing me to jump a bit before I realized it wasn't doing much to me at all. It made me feel a little bit tingly all over but otherwise, there was nothing. Just the metal being staring at me and a strange screen on the counter while I stood within whatever magic it was doing. I began to grow nervous and antsy as a few minutes passed on by with more of the same but I kept myself from moving out of the green light. Eventually, it began to fade and it nodded toward me. I didn't know what exactly it had done but it was seemingly satisfied with whatever it had done there. And while it didn't seem to understand what I was saying, it had removed whatever those bindings were with ease and seemed incredibly powerful. I could at least be happy it was satisfied for the moment.