23 years ago ...
Bhikkuni Kalsang steered the convent's
old ground-effect vehicle around the forested outcropping which lay
between her and the plume of smoke she and her sisters had spotted
earlier this morning. The wizened Intaki woman had seen enough forest
fires to know that this was not one. The smoke was too dark and too
dense for burning wood. So she had gathered a group of four younger
sisters – among them Ayang who had an aptitude with technology
unsurpassed by any other – and went out to investigate.
Once the unstably floating old
transport vehicle had completed it's detour around the natural
obstacle, the five women encountered a scenery of singular
devastation. Trees had been snapped like they were mere twigs, rocks
had been shattered and small fires were smouldering everywhere. The
swath of destruction formed a convenient path to follow to the source
of the acrid clouds which darkened the sky ahead. Several hundred
meters down the scar in the lush landscape of Intaki V they found it:
A twisted and shattered mass of metal, solar panels and composite
materials. It was a spaceship. Not a large one by any means, nothing
larger than a frigate. With it's wings broken into translucent shards
and the bent metal fuselage, it looked like a gigantic mangled
insect.
Bhikkuni Kalsang was by no means
knowledgeable about such things, but Ayang immediately called out
when she saw it 'It is an interceptor! A Stiletto or Claw class
frigate of Minmatar design!' Kalsang nodded, satisfied that she had
brought the young disciple along. Although the order did not concern
itself with worldly matters, it encouraged study among it's members,
and Ayang had focused mostly on the technology of interstellar travel
and the engineering of starships.
The Intaki nun veered the rickety
floating vehicle around the wreckage and set it down at a suitable
spot as close as possible to the burning remnants of the fighter
craft. The younger women left the vehicle before she could heave
herself from the driver's seat. Gentle Tenyu gave her a hand and
Kalsang smiled thankfully at the girl.
Ayang was the first to approach the
crashed spacecraft. Before she could even get close enough to need
her breathing filter for protection against the smoke, she stopped in
her tracks and pointed at the wreckage. 'Look sisters' the young
woman shouted to her companions.
The other women respectfully kept pace
with Bhikkuni Kalsang as she approached carefully. Once she had
arrived at a point close enough to see, the old Intaki looked in the
direction her young disciple pointed to.
Where the main hull had broken open, a
rounded shape lay split among the remains of the fuselage. Inside the
seed-like shell, a smaller kernel of transparent composite material
was slowly leaking a viscous fluid from several cracks, and within
that, a human body floated suspended in the same liquid.
A woman's body by the looks of it.
Bhikkuni Kalsang moved closer, helped
along by one of her disciples, and pulled the respirator over her
face to protect herself against the toxic smoke that rose from the
burning wreckage.
As a nun of the Ida she lived in
seclusion, but she knew enough of the world to recognise what she
saw. 'It is a capsuleer.' she whispered with surprise in her voice.
'What is a capsuleer?' disciple Tenyu
asked. Despite being very knowledgeable in medicine, that girl had
come from a very sheltered home and knew little about the outside
world.
'A human being who has sacrificed their
spiritual rebirth to become one with a machine.' the old nun replied.
'They live inside their spaceships and have gained unnatural
immortality through the use of technology.'
Ayang, followed by Keioki – the
Achura convert – climbed carefully into the ship to inspect the
capsule.
Ayang found an instrument panel that
had miraculously survived the crash. It showed lifesigns on it's
flickering display.'I think she is still alive!' she called out, her
voice muffled by the respirator which she was now wearing.
“We must get her out of there.”
Kalsang said and then addressed the disciples beside her. 'Tenyu,
Lahoi bring the toolboxes from our transport.'
Apprehensively she looked over the red
and green markings of the crashed ship. She noticed the spiny,
multi-legged form of an ebailla insect, almost invisible under a
layer or soot. It was an instrument of warfare, and the markings
looked threatening. Bhikkuni Kalsang hoped they did the right thing
by rescuing that crashed capsuleer 'May the ancestors be with us.'
she muttered under her breath.
***
Bhikkuni Kalsang was still straining
her mind to come up with an explanation for this whole situation
while she looked at the girl moaning and writhing on her bed in the
recovery room. Tenyu knelt beside the young capsuleer and dabbed
sweat from her brow with a cloth.
'She has bad dreams.' the disciple said
with a concerned look on her face.
'Not surprising.' Kalsang
thought. 'She must have endured horrible things. Who would do such
things to a young girl like that.'
When they had taken the capsuleer from
her ship she was in a deep coma that she had not woken from in the
five days since they had found her. When the nuns inspected her for
injuries, they found scars and burn-marks all over the girl's body.
Some of them looked so old that they must have been inflicted on her
years ago. Someone had abused and tortured that poor girl for a long
time.
Her features looked Gallente, and she
would be pretty if it weren't for a hard cast to her features which
spoke of hardships, both physical and emotional. She was not much
older than the youngest initiates of the convent, but there was
nothing girlish about her. Her lean body looked more like that of a
stray animal than that of a girl.
'Who turns children into capsuleers
like that?' Kalsang asked herself.
Suddently, with a scream, the capsuleer
girl rose from the mattress and opened her eyes.
With the panicked expression of a caged
beast she looked around herself quickly. Then, without a moment of
hesitation, the girl grabbed a pair of scissors from the small, low
table beside her bed and hurled herself at Tenyu with a feral growl.
The attack was savage but still
dangerously well executed. This girl knew how to fight and kill.
Tenyu would have ended up with the scissors lodged deep in her throat
if it weren't for the nun's own martial training. Thanks to that, she
reacted quickly. Tenyu sidestepped the attack, caught the girl's
wrist and spun downward dragging the attacker with her while sweeping
the legs from under the capsuleer while she turned.
With another scream the capsuleer girl
crashed into the ground and ended up with her arm twisted onto her
back and Tenyu pushing a knee into the small of her back to hold her
down.
Kalsang stood up with a sigh and walked
over to kneel down beside the girl who squirmed and screamed under
Tenyu's hold. The younger nun looked pleadingly at her elder, clearly
at loss how she should deal with this obviously disturbed young
capsuleer.
'Please, calm down.' Kalsang begged the
girl who hissed and spat at her. 'We mean you no harm.' the old
Intaki continued. 'We rescued you from your wrecked ship.' she added.
The girl seemed to calm down a bit, or
maybe she had just exhausted herself. 'My name is Kalsang, I am a
Bhikkuni, a practitioner of the way of Ida.' the old woman said
calmly. 'Would you like to tell me who you are?'
'There is no me.' the girl growled back
at her. 'There is only the swarm of The Hive and it will come and
kill all of you and burn your whole planet.' The last words were
delivered with such a conviction that Kalsang felt a momentary chill
crawl down her spine. With a sad expression she stood up and walked
over to the medicine cabinet at the far wall of the small chamber.
She retrieved a sedative injector and returned to place it against
the girl's neck.
'It is better for you to sleep some
more. Maybe we can talk once you wake up again.' Kalsang said and
pressed the release.
Tenyu rose when the girl finally
relaxed under her. 'What was she talking about? What is that Hive she
mentioned?' the young Bhikkuni asked with a troubled expression.
Kalsang looked at her disciple
earnestly. 'When I went to town last time to get supplies, there was
an information bulletin about them. When I saw the symbol on her
crashed ship I recognized it. The Hive is a group of capsuleer
terrorists who have killed thousands of innocents recently.'
Tenyu looked at her elder aghast. 'Then
she is very dangerous. We should bring her to the city and give her
to the authorities.'
Kalsang shook her head. 'No, that would
only make matters worse.' She looked down at the sedated capsuleer on
the floor. 'This poor young girl has endured too much already. We
have to heal her.'
Tenyu looked puzzled. 'But her injuries
are healed and she has clearly recovered her strength.'
'Not her body my dear sister.' Kalsang
said. 'We must heal her spirit.'
And is this Ida way documented somewhere, or just made up? If yes, could you provide a link?
ReplyDeleteHive history yaaay! Moar pliz, moar! (actually, moar of evritin')
No, I didn't make it up: https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Intaki#Ida_-_The_Intaki_Faith
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked that episode. I was a little uncertain about how it would work out to just wrench everything more than twenty years into the past.
Hmm, it describes the faith, but not the martial arts part. :-)
ReplyDeleteI like history "lessons", a part or two at a time is usually a good refreshment, but please, no more, leave those chapters for later.
I am afraid I have a bit of bad news for you. The next episode (which is almost finished) will feature some more character history. It will also return to the present day, though, and I am developing those two narratives so they eventually meet up on one track.
ReplyDelete