254 Reunion 2

"Are you for real?"

"Yeah I am, I hit a grouping of them with absolutely everything and nothing was effective."

"That sounds like a somewhat worthy challenge…"

"Just don't blow up this planet Ra."

"I won't!"

With introductions and casual banter over Dax took half an hour to broadly explain what had happened since he had stranded in this world, before finally talking about the elders and their possible connection to the precursors and as the talk eventually pivoted towards countermeasures Dax made sure to remind Ra not to do anything too rash.

"But enough about all this for the moment, I want to know more about that particle that's present here, from what I've already seen it is strangely abundant around you miss Solaris."

"Eh, me? What's a particle?"

With Mu suddenly switching over the attention to Solaris asking what was supposed to be a simple question, the conversation once more came to a halt.

"They mean mana Solaris… Could you please explain how to use it?"

Realizing he hadn't tried explaining the concept of mana at all to Ra or Mu, Dax figured a practical demonstration would suit them best.

"Ah, right. It comes to me because I command it, simple as that."

Spreading out her wings, Solaris collected the mana around her, creating a small light that floated in the palm of her hand.

"My world calls this power 'mana'. It comes from somewhere deep beneath the ground and enriches the land, creatures such as myself that have been blessed by the creators have the ability to use mana to do just about anything imaginable."

While Solaris was boasting with a prideful expression on her face, Ra slowly closed in on her from the front while Mu went around the back.

"... We're going to need way more information than that. How do you control that? What are the limits? Are you actually interacting with the particle or is something else going on?"

"Yeah, and how is all this achieved? Are there other ways of casting these spells, if so which of those would take the least amount of effort to weaponize?"

"Um, girls, please calm-"

"Then there's the issue of the mana itself, when you say it comes from the earth do you mean the ground itself, or could it be something about the core of this planet? Miss Solaris, we would very much like you explaining all that to us, please follow along without resistance."

Before anyone knew what was going on Solaris was dragged off by Ra and Mu, leaving Dax, Phillipa, and the others behind.

"Well, we're most likely not going to see Ra, Mu and Solaris for the next few days so why don't I show you around Phillipa?"

"Sure."

-

"You sure have changed Dax."

"Really? I don't really think I've changed all that much."

"Dude, you got a girlfriend, serval girlfriends even. What's worse, they seem actually okay with it."

"... Okay, fair point. But this entire thing was Lux's idea, she basically forced me into the relationship under the threat of violence."

"Yeah right."

"No, I am actually not kidding about that specific point, she really did threaten me into the relationship."

"... Well, that makes my point all the more relevant, the Dax I knew would never let himself be threatened into something like that."

The Dax Phillipa used to know was only interested in work, while that was partly due to the fact that he was denser than anything else in the known universe, but also because he just didn't care about anything else. Phillipa used to believe that was just how Dax was, due to circumstances of his genetic makeup and childhood he the perfect soldier, the perfect commander, the leader of the 125th combined ops orbital drop troopers, but it appeared that Dax was more than that, he just needed some room to grow. While Phillipa was happy about his emotional growth, there was still the issue of Dax's combat effectiveness, if it had dropped too much Phillipa would 'remove' everything which was distracting him without batting an eye.

"So how is it going with exterminating the Emergence?"

Suddenly Dax's atmosphere completely changed, as if his previous change/growth had been a lie, it would seem that the Dax Phillipa knew and respected was still there in some effect.

"Bad, while we're not losing yet, it is getting harder to contain as it continues to learn more about us. Currently, we've managed to contain them at the 435th district for the last 5 years."

"It's learning? So biological adaptation has been confirmed?"

"Yeah, in certain cases the Emergence will go out of its way to disable some warships for capture, some times we've managed to evacuate those ships in time, other times we were forced to leave them behind… The bits we recovered after the fact combined with the Emergence behaviour after those encounters have led us to believe it is indeed absorbing the knowledge of any personal it manages to capture alive. As the acting leader of the 125th, I've advised all navy personnel that they should self terminate in such a situation."

Judging by Phillipa's expression alone Dax could easily guess that she had been personally leading the vast majority of those casualty recovery missions herself, what she had seen must have been horrible enough to shake her.

"That can't be good for morale."

"Yeah, no shit…"

"... Wanna go get a drink? I know a somewhat okay place."

"Sure."

Feeling like Phillipa needed a chance of pace, Dax moved to a bar where he knew the owner, getting a corner stall to share with Phillipa they continued their talks.

"The real issue is not even morale, we can somewhat fix that with information control. The problem is the 125th, I haven't been able to control them as well as you and Lux…"

"Control them? Is that even a problem?"

"Yeah, it is… Paying people a blank check and offering them the best equipment there is only really works if you're able to control them, while I haven't been able to prove it yet, it seems there's a serious case of corruption growing within the unit."

Explaining the situation further Phillipa told Dax how heavy equipment had gone missing from inventory while the recruitment procedure which was supposed to be hardest in the galactic empire had somehow managed to slack, resulting in a fall in the quality of members in the 125th after Dax went MIA, along with a steady increase in disciplinary cases from misuse of power. Due to the very nature of the 125th still being a semi secret black operations unit, 3rd party oversight had always been lacking with only overt breaches of operational doctrine being brought before the galactic senate in closed hearings, but it would seem bad behaviour wasn't even getting reported anymore.

"I was first alerted to this about 50 years ago when ICI flagged a recent shooting where 23 civ's had been killed with military grade hardware, a single REX rifle was recovered at the scene and local police for some reason needed my clearance to look at the logs on it."

To prevent unauthorized usage of military firearms, their fire control systems are normally id locked to the individuals or units registered to use them, meaning a rifle that had at some point been in the 125th's possession had been used for a mass shooting.

"So what was in the logs?"

"Nothing, they had been wiped clean. Using my authority as the commander of the 125th I shut down the entire investigation, using the excuse that the rifle had been illegally salvaged by some criminal organisation at some random battlefield… But the thing is: that rifle was brand new."

"So at best we have a leak in production or at worst we have some members of the 125th partaking in criminal activities?... That's just great, in either case, we're going to get fucked with public hearings and possible jail time, that or we purge the bad part of the organization ourselves."

"I agree completely."

"Sure you do, but in any event, this will be the end of the 125th…"