Fifty light-years away from Earth…
"Rumy…could you please repeat that?"
The pretty Terran-born girl appearing to be about fifteen or so turned from her main work terminal to gaze wide-eyed at her transformed Daite'cha. "It's gone, Tariko," Rumy whispered as her eyes teared. "Phentax Twelve is nothing but an asteroid field. And there's no sign whatsoever of the bioroid factory in the system."
The others on the Hasei'cha's bridge all gazed wide-eyed at the young science chief petty officer. "What happened to the planet?" Eluza asked. "External attack?"
A shake of the head. "No, Shipmistress. Clearly, the planetary self-destruct system the people who organized Project: Avalon built into the planet's core was used to destroy the planet. That could only be done from the factory itself."
"What about any Avalonian bio-signs?" Shildy asked from her place in the row of consoles at the starboard forward end of the bridge.
Rumy shook her head. "None, Watchmistress-prime. Nowhere in the system."
The crew of the special missions warp sloop and their current guest took that in, and then Lufy shuddered. She — along with Mie and Rabby — stood off to one side of Shildy's post; since they flew the Gladiator point-defence fighters that Hasei'cha carried, they didn't have places to sit down on the bridge. "You think that Ganzo guy stole the factory?" the blonde Yehisrite Pirpirsiw'r-born pilot asked. "He's been working to get the Avalonians emancipated since he first found the damned thing over a century ago and these kimei'aidoei decided they'd be a perfect source of cheap sexual labour." She jerked her chin in the general direction of Phentax Two.
"That's possible. There's no wreckage indicating the factory was destroyed," Rumy answered. "Atop that, there are no Avalonian corpses anywhere within the solar system. The factory did have a 'mass-recall' function built into its primary controls. Whoever seized the factory and destroyed Phentax Twelve clearly knows about that. Thoughtmaster-prime Ganzo would know these things." She then tapped controls to bring up a hologram of the Phentax tri-star system, showing the orbits of all twenty-three planets — all save Phentax One and Phentax Four being Earth-like in one sense or another; that such a solar system existed had fascinated intergalactic explorers and xenobiologists for centuries even if the race that had risen on Phentax Two left a lot to be desired — and several target icons at various places all over the system. "Even more so, the Niphentaxian fleet anchorage orbiting Phentax Twenty and the system destroyers that protect Phentax Two itself are destroyed."
"The old man did a clean sweep," Spea noted from her station to Shildy's left.
"That's who the surviving elements of the Army of Lum are blaming this incident on," Amy noted as she listened to the communications traffic emanating from Phentax Two and several colony worlds. "Everything was alright until about five days ago, when all communications with Phentax Twelve was lost. Next thing people in Lumukyō…" — she tried to not make a face on saying the most recent name given to the capital city of the Niphentaxians — "…knew, the System Destroyers were firing on each other and the anti-matter containment fields in the warp cores of most of the warships in the Army of Lum were collapsing. Before anyone could make sense of anything, observers on Phentax Eleven and Thirteen noted Phentax Twelve ripping itself apart."
"How many dead, Rumy-chan?"
That was the hollow-eyed woman in the temporary flag commander's chair placed on the bridge between Rumy's post in the middle of the space and the main entrance aft. As people gazed on Moroboshi Tariko…who looked quite different from the Sagussans who normally lived on this ship thanks to her black jumpsuit with the gold trim and the five pairs of wreaths-of-laurel on her lower arms indicating her position as the First Citizen of the Fifth Republic; the others were in Sagussan Navy dark blue jumpsuits with red trim and colour-coded pants for specialists like Rumy (who wore light blue pants to mark her specialty as a science officer) and Patty (who wore red as she was an engineering officer). "Possibly as high as ten million," Rumy then declared, modulating her voice in a way that would prevent Tariko from reacting badly to this news. Given the woman's current emotional state…
…to say anything of her physical state…!
Silence fell over the bridge as Tariko took a moment to absorb that, and then she sighed. "Ding-dong, the witch is dead," she then whispered before a hard look then crossed her face. "PLEASE tell me that bastard Ōgi died in this mess."
The Hasei'cha's Vosian-born coxswain smirked. "He is reported missing. As of now, the Church leadership doesn't know what to do. They're afraid of a possible Ipraedies attack on their home system now that they're so defenceless."
Considering that, Tariko then nodded as a strange glitter flashed in her dark brown eyes. "I need to do something right now," she said as she stood up, and then she waved everyone else back to their seats. "Try to trace down any signs of where the factory went," she then ordered. "If we can find it, everyone back in Tomobiki will be human again in a day. If we can't, well…" A shrug before she walked off.
The others watched her go, and then Mie sighed as she went after her…
The Republic of Sagussa Starship Hasei'cha was a small vessel as spaceships of the Defence Force of the Fifth Republic came. Unlike the city-sized bulk of vessels like the Gatherer, the Hasei'cha was about the same size as the U.S.S. Enterprise had been depicted in the original Star Trek series. That suited Tariko just fine; ever since she learned of her "destiny" as Daite'cha of the first generation of the fifth civilization to live on Sagussa — given the fact that she was now a woman in heart and soul and a gynoid in body, that the being born Moroboshi Ataru wouldn't also be the first Daimon'cha had actually been accepted without a blink by the Daishi'cha as a whole — the overwhelming nature of the elements of the long-dead Fourth Republic that still remained scared her deep down. She hadn't channelled that fear into some sort of action, though; given the overall situation confronting all her friends and acquaintances back in Tomobiki — to say ANYTHING of the woman she loved more than Life itself — that there might soon be a confrontation on a scale that could shatter planets meant that every technological and psychological advantage the Sagussans could bring to bear would be needed.
I'm not really cut out for this job! she thought to herself as a warning flash indicating that her primary energy charge was getting low appeared in her vision. Even if it hurt like hell to see what those Shōzōki monsters had done to her, having Amora at my side has helped out a lot…but I'm seriously NOT cut out for this job!
"Are you alright, Boss-lady?"
Tariko blinked, and then she gave the lovely twenty-something Ellsian ex-special forces officer/mercenary a light smile. "Well, I don't know, Rose," she confessed as she allowed Rose de Hausenbach — "Rose of the Seven Disguises" as she was more commonly nicknamed — to draw her into a warm embrace. "Just found out that the bioroid factory is AWOL and up to ten million of Ōgi's sycophants might be dead. The machine part of me is…"
"Helping keep your heart from breaking," Rose finished for her as she noted Mie's presence nearby…until the Terran-born Gladiator pilot made a gesture with her hand and literally faded from sight. Trying not to shake too much at the sight of the powerful arch-mage — during her decade living on Earth as an amnesiac and being cared for as the adopted daughter of the Seikō family in the remote mountains of Kyūshū, Mie had apprenticed under one of the most powerful magicals ever to live on that planet, the great freedom fighter Yomigawa Tsukiko AKA the Mahō-Shōgun Tsukuyomi-no-Tsukushi, the destroyer of the International Confederation of Wizards — cloaking herself with an invisibility spell, Rose reached up to gently stroke Tariko's shaggy brown hair. "You need a recharge," she then stated. "C'mon. Let me take care of that."
A hum. "Onē-chan is so warm…" Tariko then cutely mewed.
Rose groaned as she felt her own womanhood start to dampen at the idea of having very hot sex with her new employer. While Ataru — thanks ultimately to what happened to him on his sixth birthday — had been a clumsy idiot who appeared to be driven totally by his hormones when it came to pretty women, Tariko was both a sultry seductress that could possibly turn a gay man straight…and a lonely little girl who — driven by some of the same fears that had driven her when she was still a man and organic — wondered if she was worth anything at all. And while Tariko's mother Kinshō was working overtime to make up for the years of emotional near-abuse she had heaped over her son-turned-daughter — especially in the wake of Tariko's decision to find some way to allow the women of Tomobiki to become organic again and put an end to the threat of the Shōzōki forever…and her willingness to become a gynoid herself to share in the sufferings her mother, her would-be wives, her friends and female acquaintances had been made to endure over the last half-year — because of the loss of Ataru's twin brother Kaeru under very mysterious circumstances ages ago, it wasn't enough.
Rose smiled as she moved to shift Tariko's face so they could gaze into each other's eyes. "I'll let you kiss my circuits right into a major malfunction if it'll make you smile, Tariko-sama," she whispered as she kissed the younger woman on the forehead.
Tariko's lips quirked into a faint smile. "Strange as it will sound to you, I'm not that horny right now," she confessed before moving to walk hand-in-hand with Rose to her private cabin in the upper superstructure. "How…?"
"We just endure," Rose answered her as they stepped into a turbolift, the mercenary tapping controls for the uppermost level. "Just like the monthlies normal women endure from the instant menarche comes on." She sighed. "Are you worried about Negako-sama?"
A nod. "Hai. And it's not just the magic of the Promise that's making me feel that," Tariko admitted. "I don't remember Kaeru at all. Because of what happened to him, I also lost Nokoko-nēchan and had to put up to ten years of Baka Kā-san's 'I wish I never had you' and all that bullshit. Part of me wishes that these folks would've voted to keep me on Sagussa after Noa took me there to help them learn how to emote." A wry smirk. "But then again, if I wasn't around, who would have taken up the Promise to keep Onê-san alive and well." A sigh. "Well, all I can hope…"
"If half of what Pilot Chief Petty Officer Lufy, Master Chief Petty Officer Priss, Shipmistress Makoto and the other Pirpirsiw'r have told me about Negako-sama is true, she'll be alright," Rose stated as the turbolift stopped on the upper deck, the doors opening to reveal a small hallway leading to the main guest cabin. A glance off to one side revealed that Mie was near, just cloaking herself so as to not draw Tariko's attention on her; the Terran-born pilot/arch-mage was under Eluza's direct orders to stay close to Tariko whenever she was not in the company of the other members of the crew. Rose was grateful for that. Mie was a fierce fighter — as was her teacher; Tsukiko-sama had earned the scary sobriquet "the Dark Lady of the Orient" by her personally crushing the best duellists the European colonial magical ministries could muster during the decade or so of the Greater East Asia War in the normal world — and full of surprises. Against the Shōzōki, having such a powerful metahuman like that was an ace chip to be used. "I'm sure that when she gets the chance, she'll contact us."
Tariko nodded as they walked inside the beautiful guest suite. It was composed of a bedroom with a beautiful view of everything forward and to both sides of the Hasei'cha. A side door to the starboard led to the bathroom suite while the port door led to a small kitchenette unit. The bed itself, which was fixed to the forward bulkhead below the window and was on a turntable to allow it to be swung around in any direction, was king-sized and built of special memory foam which made sleeping on it quite comfortable to the half-dozen or so that could fit under the hand-made quilts and blankets with room to spare. There were two small nightstands at both sides of the head of the bed. Of course, given the current situation, two android service units — the Sagussans had come to call them "GSUs" for "gynoid service unit" in reflection of the gender-specific term for her type of AI construct; Tariko had adopted it even if Rose and Amora still used the older term — were on the nightstands beside the reading lamps there.
Slipping off her jumpsuit with Rose's help, Tariko sighed as she moved to lie down on the bed, staying above the covers in respect to the potential fire hazard exposed circuits and charging cables could present. Once she was comfortable, the mercenary reached for a dermal sealer unit to open Tariko up under her well-formed breasts. Gazing at those shapely mounds with their jutting nipples and small areolae, Rose then paused as she remembered the one time over a year before when she had seen Moroboshi Ataru nude. Like all marathon runners, he had a slender, lanky but muscular body…and oh, merciful Fates, was he ever hung, even if he wasn't aroused! Looking on the beautiful gynoid that now held the soul of that boy within her central processors, Rose tried not to whistle too much. Tariko had Ataru's muscular leanness and quite ample sexual organs, which made her the perfect mix of athletic tomboy and sexy teenage bombshell. Even if many gynoids in Tomobiki found it hard to accept the many truths that had dominated Ataru's life for a decade, Tariko's looks went a long way to make them forget that this gynoid was once the man such people had derisively called the "cancer of Tomobiki," blaming him for practically everything under the sun that had hit Tomobiki since the first Tag Race two years ago…
TN-9449: Hey! Can I get charged sometime this week?
Rose gasped before she moved to open Tariko's abdomen up to reveal her CSAT and charging port. As she did that, she gave the other woman an apologetic look.
TE-4992: Sorry, Tariko-sama! I was just remembering…
TN-9449: When you saw me nude in the private baths back at the Palace?
Rose's cheeks went very red on hearing that.
TE-4992: Even if Babara-sama was mad at me for dragging Shinobu-san, Mendō, Jariten and Lum's nerd-squad to Elle when I kidnapped you from the Kashin, I still wanted to make sure you didn't present any sort of danger to Amora-sama.
Tariko nodded as she felt her circuit hatch being pulled away from her body, and then she stiffened as both the diagnostic cable and the charging cable were inserted into the appropriate jacks inside her body. As her body then went limp and the light in her brown eyes faded, Rose sighed as she moved to hold Tariko's hand. She herself wouldn't need charging for sometime now — the time spent with the Sagussans had allowed the native AI specialists to devise ways of improving the durability of a gynoid's internal power pack to allow at least several days between charging sessions — but whenever she did charge, she always had either Tariko or Amora at her side during the period her primary systems were down, holding her hand in a show of quiet emotional support.
TE-4991: How is she right now?
Rose turned as a lovely woman walked in from the kitchenette. The green-eyed redhead — who was the same physical age as Tariko — was draped like her would-be "husband" in a black Sagussan jumpsuit with gold trim and the five pairs of wreaths-of-laurel on her lower arms. This particular model with that rank insignia was always worn by the Daite'cha or those whom she considered part of her immediate family; only Redet Lum and Amora de Rosenbach — the recently-abdicated Queen Elle LXIV — had the right beyond Moroboshi Tariko to wear such a uniform in the eyes of the Daishi'cha. In respect to her origins as an Ellsian, Amora still wore a silver bandanna around her shaggy hair, the blooming silver rose over her left ear; many Ellsian-born Daishi'cha had come to do the same thing in acknowledgement of their original birth-world…chief of them being the current Shipmistress-prime of the Sagussan Navy, who had taken the name "Elle" in respect to her "spirit-sister."
TE-4992: She lasted at least ninety hours with the new pack Science-Thoughtmistress Maria designed for her, Boss. If the intensive testing works out, we can pass on the design to Chief Petty Officer Nene so all the girls in Tomobiki can be retrofitted.
A relieved look crossed the former Rose Queen's face.
TE-4991: Well, that's good news. A bit disappointing that Elder Ganzo decided to abscond with the bioroid factory; I was monitoring Rumy's report from my office. Given how leery our new friends are when it comes to cloning…
Rose nodded on "hearing" that inside her mind and seeing the text of Amora's message play out on a data screen in her field of vision. While the Sagussans' desire to help those women who had been transformed into gynoids ultimately by the Shōzōki regain their humanity was more than appreciated, that offer was facing considerable opposition by the more conservative elements among the Daishi'cha. It was understandable in the end; the Daishi'cha — from Yoakkenikkō to Tenba — had been literally reborn to restore Sagussa to life in the wake of the War of Clone Rights, a five century-long apocalypse that had effectively wiped out the Fourth Republic. Because of that, the Daishi'cha had elected to follow what they called the "Edict of Clones and Cloning Technology"…which flatly FORBADE the cloning of any Daishi'cha for ANY reason, even in the case of trying to save someone's life! Such did make sense…and cloning wasn't really needed in the long run. Sagussan medical technology was augmented by the use of the mesonium-charged regeneration matrix which could be found in the mantle of that planet's lone moon, Sagurei. With that matrix, a total of 104,915 recently-deceased women — ranging from ages fourteen to twenty-five in Terran terms, hailing from twenty-three separate known humanoid races, collected over a period of ten millennia — had literally been given new life to help become the first generation of mothers for the new Fifth Republic of Sagussa.
It was because of carefully-preserved memories of the horror of the Clone Rights War — which had been inserted into every Daishi'cha on rebirth thanks to knowledge that had been preserved by the last generation of the Fourth Republic when they launched the Grand Design to create the Fifth Republic in the first place — that had prompted Tariko to seek out the Avalonian bioroid factory when she learned of it courtesy of Ganzo dai-Louc the day the Promise of Bunka Go-nen was finally fulfilled and the being calling herself "Moroboshi Negako" achieved what she had desired for two centuries to have.
If only…
TE-4991: I just got an update from Lum.
Rose looked over.
TE-4992: What's happened, Boss?
TE-4991: It turns out that the 'Prime Converter' has decided to expand its operations into neighbouring towns and districts. We have new sisters now from Fūrinkan-chō in Nerima-ku. Not to mention a sister-AND-brother in the person of Saotome Ranma.
TN-9449: RANMA?!
Both Ellsians gasped as a spark of life flashed in Tariko's eyes.
TE-4991: Honey! You're recharging now! Relax! Master Ranma's alright! Lum's keeping an eye on things back in Tomobiki! Calm down, please!
Tariko seemed to mentally "blink" on hearing that, and then a moan echoed in both Amora's and Rose's minds as she willed herself to relax.
TN-4991: Oh, man…I hate this…!
The light in her eye faded as we now…
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(Posted Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:01)
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