[Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror (Completed)

[Krulle]

I like it.
It transports very much the fear of what these two combatants are doing to each other, and the felt danger of the Humans when interfering in this.
Yet the need to get the diplomatic mission and knowledge gathering forward is present.

It felt very intense to me.
(But then I just heard an extremely intense song. For the Germans: a song adoption of the poem "Erlkönig" YT link)

[Sweforce]

I intended this part to be longer but I felt that what comes next should be the beginning of the next chapter.

So chapter 14 is done and marines have already given very descriptive monikers to the two major combatants.

PS: I am certain that this will need a rewrite.

If what the special Umiak "device" is what I suspect, then I really hope Doranzer Needle got a powerful tranquillizer available.

The comic have not come to the point where we have been shown what the Umiak use to blind farseer but indeed, the loroi, so used to use their psychic abilities against their enemies are not that used to be on the receiving end, other then in their own internal conflicts. Having access to allies immune to most of them comes in handy then. Sure telekinetics could still crush a human but it would need to be in line of sight and then the teidar could just as well have been using a gun.

[Argron]

Man the story is getting more awesome with each chapter, keep up the good work Dragoongfa!

[Grayhome]

Another awesome chapter, can't wait to see what the next chapter holds.

[Zakharra]

It just occurred to me that the device could very likely have affected the other races of the Loroi Union since they are able to be telepathically scanned. Humans, being immune to all telepathic contact, might be one of the few immune races to the effects of Screamer (as I dub it). Of course this doen't explain the Umiak's not apparently being affected either. Maybe they just get a headache and ignore it to do their tasks.

[dragoongfa]

It just occurred to me that the device could very likely have affected the other races of the Loroi Union since they are able to be telepathically scanned. Humans, being immune to all telepathic contact, might be one of the few immune races to the effects of Screamer (as I dub it). Of course this doen't explain the Umiak's not apparently being affected either. Maybe they just get a headache and ignore it to do their tasks.

Ooowww so close to spoil something...

Let's just say that the Umiak device is expected to have many, many more uses that what it and maybe its operator realize.

[dragoongfa]

Chapter 15, part 1

Lieutenant Allerberger just stared perplexed as Doranzer Needle completely ignored the unconscious warrior sprawled on the floor, she instead went straight to the one who was still awake and kept shaking her comrade without paying any heed to the environment.

He pondered for a few moments if they should push further ahead while living the medic behind, hoping to find Shadowcloud alive and extract her. His curiosity about what happened to the two elves combined with the need to find out what was going on made him wait, in the hopes of getting some answers. Both of the Loroi didn’t have any visible injury, nor did their armor bore any of the usual signs of damage; it was obvious that what they were hit with was telepathic in nature. It was certainly the same thing that terrified the pilots and made it hard for Needle to think as she put it.

Needle tried at first to take off her comrade’s helmet but she was just shoved away repeatedly. Shaking her head she took out what looked like an injector from her medikit and tried to inject her comrade through a small pre existing receptor at the base of their armor’s neck. She was pushed away again and he decided to expedite the matter by grabbing the struggling Loroi’s arms and keeping her still until Needle injected her.

“…Thanks…” Needle said when her struggling patient collapsed on her unconscious comrade.

“What happened to her?” Was all he managed to ask.

“…Shout…strong…mind…haze…focus…diral…friend…weak…defence…shout…erase…mind…coma…necessary…” The Loroi medic struggled to explain.

“You put her in a coma?”

“…Temporary…necessary…protect…mind…” Needle explained.

“What about the other one?”

“…Mind…erased…shout…” Needle said and shook her head.

“What about you?”

“…Doranzer…touch…wounded…mental…training…pain…shout…” It was obvious that she was mentally struggling against whatever was attacking them but she seemed to be keeping herself in order.

“We are going to find your comrades and get them out. Stay behind us and in cover until you are needed.”

“…Understood…”

“Charlie, leave an element to guard the approach to the airlock; the rest, standard advance and clear. We find the elves and get them out, no heroics.” He ordered in English and his marines acknowledged him. Accompanied by the lone Loroi they proceeded deeper into the eerily silent ship, despite the fact that they didn’t even have a last known location of the Loroi boarding party.

Examining their surroundings it was easy to notice how vastly different the interior of the Umiak ship was to the Loroi one, with tight corridors and weirdly angled rooms instead of the wide spaces that the Loroi seemed to prefer. The lack of space reminded him of the TCA warships he had served upon and those were eerily reminiscent of the ancient submarines. The doctrine behind such a design was the simple fact that more equipment, weapons and armor were preferable than some extra leg space. The simulator jockeys hated this approach but their common sense stopped them from complaining to loud about them. After all, the extra weapons and armor could make all the difference in regards to their survival in case of a fight. As a marine he was of two minds about it, the claustrophobic surroundings did make long deployments mind boggling but from a tactical point of view the tight quarters allow for some excellent killing grounds at chokepoints, something that the designers of the newest warships took into account, making it very hard for any boarder to get into a critical area without going through a grinder or blowing the ship up.

Thankfully the Scout corps took a different approach, their very long deployments demanding extra crew amenities and space, which was why the marines always preferred being posted on a Boy Scout ship even if the crew was more often than not overbearing with their attitude.

“Contact…numerous dead bug…” Sergeant Westwood of Beta squad reported. “Looks like an one sided firefight and then… executions…”

“Impressive…” Lieutenant Allerberger commented the moment he saw what the sergeant described. It was a make shift barricade at a small intersection. He counted twelve bugs in total, none of them armored. Most of them bore evident wounds from particle blasters, their wounds reminding him of the hits privates Matthews and Yucesi took when the bugs that sneaked aboard stopped fooling around with low outputs. Yucesi lost an arm and he was lucky, Matthews… not so much. The weird thing with the picture he was seeing was that there were no scorch marks on the walls behind the elf side of the firefight while there were more than a dozen scorched holes on the walls behind the bug position, there were some broken bug weapons laying around which meant that they were armed when the Loroi took them our. The ones that Westwood described as executed were three bugs that were set side by side with their back on the wall. Their arms and legs had been torn off while their head were either crushed into a pulp or torn off their necks.

“Are the elves so stupid to waste time torturing prisoners in the middle of a boarding?” He wondered out loud.

“It is a genocidal war…” Westwoord commented.

“True…”

“Could be interrogation…” Sergeant Suzumi pointed out. “From the way the Loroi explained it, they can read surface thoughts and the thoughts that are triggered to come to the surface. The torture could be aimed to disorient the victim and have their self preservation instincts kick in during questioning. Everyone who has been through anti-interrogation training swears that they always had the answers to the questions in their mind while they were being water boarded. Telepaths shouldn’t need anything more than that.”

“Indeed…” He replied and shuddered to the memories of his own time in anti-interrogation training. “The mind seeks all the answers on its own if there is any chance of stopping the pain... Nasty business…”

“Nasty but effective… for telepaths.”

Chapter 15, part 2: http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 614#p21614

[dragoongfa]

Initially this would be the last part of the previous chapter but the 'theme' of this chapter will be 'answers under fire'.

Small but the next part should make up for it.

[Krulle]

Yeah, the conclusion we drew from a previous passage. Telepaths are good for in-combat intelligence gathering.
And intelligence gathering works faster if there are no limits on what you're allowed to do.

The best solution is still now knowing the answer they seek, but they might still torture you for that, although a telepath will find out fast that there's no need to spend time trying to get the answer from you.

Is the device protecting itself by using strong powers to scream at the intruders?
Has the device recognised it cannot see/read the Humans?

[dragoongfa]

Yeah, the conclusion we drew from a previous passage. Telepaths are good for in-combat intelligence gathering.
And intelligence gathering works faster if there are no limits on what you're allowed to do.

The best solution is still now knowing the answer they seek, but they might still torture you for that, although a telepath will find out fast that there's no need to spend time trying to get the answer from you.

Is the device protecting itself by using strong powers to scream at the intruders?
Has the device recognised it cannot see/read the Humans?

Perhaps an Umiak will know, who knows what he knows and why he ordered for the device to act in such a way, instead of I don't know, disassemble it and have everyone who knows killed or commit suicide

This part (and segments of the previous) isn't meant to pass the capabilities of Loroi intelligence gathering but rather that the humans are quickly catching up on certain facts, something that will prove itself important.

[raistlin34]

I admit I´m curious about what the average Loroi will think regarding humanity, once the information of humans as a possible "Loroi prototype" of the Soia is released.

[dragoongfa]

Chapter 15, part 2

Kitiiikht-14-Tahkit-Tuk was wrong about the device. He realized now, that he saw and felt its attack on the Enemy boarders, that its ilk could perhaps be trusted; provided that they went through the same treatment it went. Perhaps the still drawn plans of having such devices oversee the Hierarchy’s many client races weren’t farfetched.

Just the abilities to feel the mood swings of the alien masses and to instantly recognize the various rebellious elements would help immensely in the pacification of everyone who would dare rebel against the Hierarchy. Thus the Hierarchy wouldn’t have to spend countless resources in ships and Hard-troops to oversee the other races, instead they could be use to expand the Hierarchy in previously unthought of speeds. More research was needed for that of course but the results were almost guaranteed and all that was thanks to those Historians who provided what was needed after seeing the wisdom in helping the Hierarchy.

They still had to win the war before all that could be realized. As long as the Enemy existed the Hierarchy would never be able to attain its true destiny. It shamed him that his actions up to that point was detrimental to the war effort, he was the one who got the ship he was entrusted with destroyed by a primitive race that was working with the enemy.
He still couldn’t understand how the enemy’s trap was laid, were the human even real and all this was a fabrication to lure in a ship equipped with a device? It sounded ridiculous considering how things unfolded but everything made sense only if the humans were agents of the Enemy. What other explanation was for the fact that their crashed ship was attacked by a group led by Torturing killers?

They had been briefed about the Torturing killers. Masterful spies and saboteurs of the Enemy, who strike even behind the Hierarchy’s lines in order to sabotage the war effort or kidnap personnel for information gathering through torture. They were the reason why personnel with knowledge about the device were ordered to commit suicide or killed by any means necessary than face capture. He and everyone else on the ship who knew were more than prepared to fulfill this last obligation to the Hierarchy, taking the device and their knowledge about it with them.

That was his first thought when he realized that those who boarded them were Enemy Torturing witches. His duty was to see the device completely thoroughly destroyed and the associated personnel killed before turning a weapon to himself. Before the realization of their true enemy their goal was to just survive as long as possible until an other ship with a device would detect them and come help them. He concluded that the humans didn’t have any more fusion torpedoes after enough time passed and without such weapons they wouldn’t be able to destroy the crashed ship. They should be able to fight back a boarding from such a backwards species and even if they slowly perished while waiting rescue they would leave a warning about the humans behind them.

This changed when the torturing killers attacked. The plan then changed into a choice between a quick, painless death and a slow agonizing one at the hands of an Enemy that would learn everything that they wanted to know. They couldn’t self destruct the ship and the Enemy advanced quickly when Kt’rkrktkr 48 trkrk offered an alternative that would perhaps allow all of them to serve the Hierarchy one last time. He would turn the device against the Enemy Torturing witches, killing some of them and disorienting the rest to a point that they would be easy prey for the crew’s claws.

Kitiiikht-14-Tahkit-Tuk was hesitant at first but he knew that he didn’t have enough time while also knowing how valuable the various teams of the Torturing witches were for the Enemy. A group able to set up a trap so elaborate and effective, that he didn’t realize the true threat until Enemies were quickly advancing towards the device; such a group must be made up of elite’s and veterans tasked to secure a device. Their loss would certainly be a heavy blow if they could kill them all before committing suicide.

He reluctantly agreed but the results were beyond his expectations. He never expected to defeat the assault with just a handful of hard-troops and his remaining crew but the device turned the table in an instant. Some of the Torturing killers just collapsed soon after the device went into effect while many others were clearly distraught and disoriented, allowing him and his crew to return every bit of torture and death that their comrades had been subjected to.

What shocked and emboldened him and every other surviving Umiak was the clearly felt cry of the device. They could never imagine that such a base creature could host such honest sentiments of awe for Kt’rkrktkr 48 trkrk, his Umiak comrades and the Hierarchy that they all served. They could feel its clear mesmerization from the Hierarchy’s glory and the fury it felt for the harm that rest of the crew were subjected to by the Enemy. Despite its many flaws the device shamed them all with its clear and unequivocal loyalty to Kt’rkrktkr 48 trkrk and the Hierarchy.

They would all make sure to honor this loyalty by using the opportunity it gave them by annihilating the rest of the Torturing witches that were now holed up in a defensive bastion that would normally be used by Hard-troops to defend the ship. They would kill them all, they had to kill them all of the Hierarchy’s war effort. After that they would have the sad duty to dismantle and completely destroy the device. It pained him greatly to think of that after feeling the device’s loyalty to the Hierarchy, he knows that it’s just a device and that it is one of many but that still doesn’t make the thought any easier.

Chapter 15, part 3: http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 714#p21714

[dragoongfa]

Whoever takes a certain keyword and connects the dots first gets to decide if I am to spoil something or not.

[Grayhome]

Was it the Historians?

Another awesome chapter, cannot wait to see where the story goes next.

[dragoongfa]

The chapter ain't finished and no the keyword ain't the Historians.

[Krulle]

The Historians are interested in an equalised play. They gave weapons to the Loroi, and telepathic technology to the Umiak... (The Historians are already explicitly mentioned in this part.)

But something is mentioned: a "base creature"...
Did the Umiak capture a Loroi-baby, raised and "brain washed" it to the Umiak worldview, and with the technology from the Historians strengthened the telepathic signal up to weapon grade?
Although the Umiak commander immediately afterwards again speaks of "just a device, and that it is one of many"....
He's getting scruples killing "the device"?

Anyway, I like these chapters more than the fighting chapters, which I already liked very much.
Go on... ;)

[dragoongfa]

Let's say that the Umiak don't respect the base design of the device at all for a reason.

If someone finds the keyword, connects the dots to the Insider and asks I will spoil it in spoilers

The way things are going the first reveal about the true nature of the device would come in 2 to 3 weeks. The analysis some time after that.

[Krulle]

The device is mesmerised by the Umiak, and eager to obey any possible wishes. Sounds much like Golim...

Possibly the Historians know more about the relationship of strong telepaths and being strongly influenced by nearby telepaths.

Possibly I am trying too hard to see something....
And I should stop. i don't want myself to be spoiled while reading the story.... (I cannot stop myself from reading spoilers.... Up to the point that I in my youth I read the last page of a thriller after I've read the first chapter, and only then continued to read chapter two. That way I could spot all hidden references to the solution.)
I'm more than fine with waiting three weeks to read the conclusion, but I have the impression you're quite eager to spill the beans.
(You're like me then, dropping hints and enjoy watching the hunt. my wife is tremendously curious, and my best Christmas present is her reaction when I drop hints what she gets and/or where the gift is hidden...)

[dragoongfa]

Fine I won't spoil it

Let's just say that the Historians don't know the science behind telepathy but they do have something of great telepathic value.

[halftea]

Does this mean we have a guest appearance by the Pol?