Chapter 8

Remis Prime Observation Station

February 13th, 2169

"Good work, Senior Officer Lastimosos. HIGHCOMM would've expected more hesitation from the locals but it seems they're more different from the Na'vi than expected." Said Grand Admiral Leon Razeraski.

"Thank you Admiral." I said while standing at attention.

"As of right now we have no new assignments for now so continue what you're doing before until Admiral Cole and his fleet arrives. They recently got out of combat with the Rebels so it will take time to make repairs." The Grand Admiral said.

"Permission to speak freely sir?" I asked the Admiral.

"Permission granted Officer." Said the Admiral.

"If a local of Remis Prime ever gets the chance to go off world and head to a place under UNE jurisdiction and control will they be allowed to get off world, Sir?" I asked, he remained silent for a few seconds then answered.

"That is something I'm afraid I am unable to answer since it's outside my jurisdiction but I will bring it up in the next Conference report. For now just wait. You have brought something very important up to ask our government as things may end up that way. I say it's very important if we ask ourselves that." He said.

"Yes sir." I said, then the video feed ended only giving out to the dull white background that was present on most UNFE Ships. Going towards the communication rooms door I pressed the button that opened the metal door it quickly slid open with just a slight sound as the metal slid across metal I then stepped through the door and began making my way towards my quarters.

Due to my status in the UFE Navy I was granted more comfortable living quarters than the average Marine or Soldier. I was essentially an Officer. Well I am a Senior Officer of the Military Science arm. They mostly deal with interaction with primitive civilizations and anomalies whenever we come across them. If it's with a primitive civilization we would begin opening up to the civilization secretly and begin making agreements with the civilizations nations most preferably one of the most isolated ones but still has periodic contact with the outside world.

Usually starting with a Robotic Rover just to test out how a civilization will react to it to get an idea on how they will most likely react to us. This process takes a few years. It was put into effect after the RDA got kicked off Pandora after aggravating the Natives to the point of war.

My steps echoed on the metal flooring of the ship as I made my way to my Living Quarters. When I arrived I quickly opened the door and jumped on the bed. My PC informed me of a new message from a friend.

Playing it I silently listened to it while I launched up a game of Chess Online and began playing with a random person online. A video showed up when it started to play. It was my friend Ragio who was in a pair of swim shorts. Next to him was a very beautiful Japanese woman who was in a red two piece swimsuit. He, as expected, was recording on the beach.

"Hey! Rune coming to you directly from Saturn Europa O'Neill Cylinder!" In the background was the Gas Giant Saturn as he said. In the game of chess I started the round off moving my pawn at c7 to c9. My enemy moved his Pawn at b2 to b4.

"I haven't heard from you in a while man? I know you're busy and I just want to talk to you some time. On your next leave we would like you to come to Saturn Europa to just relax and all if you're fine with that. Also met Sakura. I met her a couple of months ago at the bar, come say hello to Rune." Ragio asked his girlfriend.

"Hello!" She said with a smile on the video. I slightly smiled at the fact Ragio is getting successful in life, I haven't had any chances with women in recent years. Even less so during school. Online dating apps don't exactly work when you're someone who is far away from any population centers.

The game of Chess I was playing on the other hand was more successful as I was completely destroying my enemy. He was pretty bad at chess, gonna be honest..

"Lastimosos hope you're doing fine. After all, I don't know if you're still alive. But say hello as soon as you can. Peace!" He said while holding out a gang sign, the video ended and my match ended at the same time.

I decided to respond and I began to record "Hey Ragio! I'm doing fine, don't worry I'm alive and well!" I said, "Thanks for checking up on me, I sadly can not exactly tell you what I'm doing, it's a secret. I do want to head to Europa Saturn with you again one day when I get my leave. Also congrats on finding life and hope things between the two of you are doing well!" I said, "So I don't really have much time to talk so I… bye!" I said ending the short 20 second recording.

Laying on my bed my thoughts wandered back to the surface of Remis Prime. Especially with Sora, honestly I felt I could be with her. She was aware of who I was and wasn't thrown off by my AVATAR's looks. I have been talking to her for some time now, it wasn't a text message or anything just a voicemail. It was one of the first things she learned on how to use the Holodisk, outside of activating it.

It was strange, really it was hard for me to find someone who I can be with. During my last year of Highschool almost everybody I knew was in a relationship. Except I wasn't, I thought god had a plan for me or something although nothing came. Was she really the one? Although we were people from different worlds it was shown she was nearly identical to humans from Earth even though we were from different worlds.

Although I shouldn't really dwell on it, whatever it was it could be figured out later, so I decided to take a nap. I really needed one.

"Computer play Keye'ung atan ngenga until I fall asleep." I ordered the computer, Keye'ung atan ngenga was a Na'vi lullaby I learned to be very relaxing to me, I even got a recording of it while living with the Omaticaya clan.

After that the sound of soft drums being played soon followed by an angelic voice in Na'vi. I eventually fell asleep to the song after the first chorus was over.

When I reawakened, the Observation station was in the shadow of the planet indicating it was night right now we were in geostationary orbit. No one bothered to wake me up, so there was probably nothing important happening at all. Hope was probably doing fine as it was doing previous backlogged tasks it wasn't able to do, so it would be busy for a while and wouldn't need any new orders at all.

It was clear I missed dinner so I headed to the cabinet in my room and grabbed a small snack, I actually had a small personal kitchen as it turns out. Granted the Station is pretty large but it was surely not viewable from the surface. Hopefully, although the engineers really do love there reflectiveless paint that hide the most ungly part of the station.

The cabinet itself wasn't all that full. I didn't restock on snacks while I was awake. There was no point in fretting over every little mistake and might as well do it tomorrow. Then the computer chimed indicating a new message came in.

I grabbed a sweet n salty, opened it up and went to the computer to check it, as it turns out it was a message from Sora. Playing it a video of Sora came on.

"Hey Rune, I don't really know what to say. I've got so many questions I don't really know how to word it at all. Last time I sent a message was. No, I think this is my first time sending you a message actually now that I think about it. Well I hope you can come down again some time soon in your real body not a holder.

So I bye?" She said awkwardly the video then ended. I decided to do something I've never done, do a live video call. I pressed a few buttons and the call soon began.

Soon the call was answered and a surprised Sora soon came on the screen.

"Rune?! How did you- what- How did you do that?" She asked. I understood her confusion. After all, when I was young I didn't know you could facetime people only do voice text and text.

"Can't blame you. I'm pretty sure you don't even know you can track the time with it." I said.

"Oh come on! You could've told me that when you were on the surface!" She said her face was pouting. She was surprisingly cute when she was angry.

I just chuckled at her anger.

"Alright tell me what else can we do on the Holodisk?" She asked.

"We can play a game." I said, she was surprised at my response.

"We could play a game? Like what game? I never even thought about that, like how do you find something like that in the first place?!" She said, even more flustered than before.

"Well, Holodisks are very common in the Solar System, it's been around for nearly a century at this point." I said, her jaw dropped at the answer "Well what do you want to play?" I asked, going back to the topic at hand.

"I don't know anything really good. You can choose." She said.

"Alright." I said, I then went through the list of games that are available and I settled on a simple game Connect 4. Another holographic version of the Connect4 set appeared on my desk.

"This is a short game, and it's easy too, so I want you to try it. To win, get four of the coins in a row. It can be vertical, diagonally, or horizontally as long as you get four in a row. You can go first." I said, Sora then picked up a coin and placed it in one of the slots, the farthest one to the right. It fell to the bottom of the set.

"Your turn now." She said, I then picked up a coin and placed it on top of her coin, she then followed up by placing it on mine. Afterwards I placed it on another tile next to hers blocking it.

She then blocked mine. This went on until there were no more places to put it and the match was declared a stalemate.

"Although this game is simple. You have caught onto it quickly, how about another game a bit harder." I said, clicking on a game of checkers. I explained the game to her and all the things you could do, and we got playing. I ended up winning, she did better than expected. But she went to sleep as she had classes the next day.

I already slept so I had to be a night owl. So I decided to go to the Control Room where I could control Hope remotely. I went to my computer terminal and checked Hope's status. It was fine although there were multiple potential hostels according to sensors. So I continued trying to figure out who it was.

Hope has a multitude of sensors such Heat Vision, Night Vision, Sonar, Radar, and Motions Sensors for example which both have a Scientific and Military usage. Turning on the Heat Vision I spotted a group of 3 people. Their body structure matched that of the Humanoids of the Planet, nothing extra such as wings, or tails.

So it had to either be a Human or Elf. Turning on the Robotic arm I loosened the restrictions that were placed on Hope so none of the science equipment gets damaged, and not only that I check if it had anything of scientific value before heading into a potential fight.

Hope did, so I ejected it in a box and ordered a Skycrane to come down to pick up the scientific findings, which will arrive at the planet in about 30 minutes. The unknown assailants were clearly scared, the many microphones in hope picking up their conversation.

I knew the Language of the Elves so I could tell what they were saying.

"What the hell is it doing?" Asked one of the assailants, marked as Unknown 1, a male.

"I don't know? It looks like it's preparing to fight something." Said another, marked as Unknown 2, a female.

"Wait, it looks like it's preparing to fight. Us!" He said "Get away, it can see us!" Yelled Unknown 3, they all got away and tried to hide behind the tree.

"How? We have invisibility spells, nothing should be leaking?" Asked Unknown 2.

"I don't know, but we have our orders to knock it unconscious, then notify the nearby Imperial Soldiers to put it in a cage." Unknown 3 said, at the order I activated the emergency Fight Protocol inputted during the Early Days of the Jovian Rebellion.

Hope then unfolded its wheels that turned into triangles, allowing for better mobility, along with its other extra arm to unfold. Turning it into a battle droid, a large one at that. A few minutes passed as Hope continued to unfold its attack rover part of itself.

"Shit! How did it do that!? Attack it!" Unknown 3 ordered, then one of them came out hitting Hope in the process which did not even leave a scratch, only chipping the paint, and gave the attacker a shattered sword.

"What the?!" Said the attacker, in response I ordered Hope to kick the guy into a nearby tree. When the kick came he was still in shock and was thrown into a tree killing him on the spot and also splattering him against the tree staining it with blood.

I then ordered Hope to chase the other attackers, which it did with brutal efficiency. Hope came across one of the assailants, a female and a mage, the one which used the invisibility spells to hide them from Hope's main camera.

Hope then grabbed her by the torso. She was a mage that made her a high value target to capture and gain information. They were usually the ones who knew the most of things. At least magic wise, but she was probably only informed the bare minimum from whoever hired her. I could "convince" her to go back down the surface and get more information on who hired her people.

Hope then put her in a specialized container designed to catch and hold animals and put an anesthetic in the container rendering her unconscious. Originally planned to be used on animals to render them unconscious and preserve them to be sent to an O'Neill Cylinder that's a Nature reserve with other animals in its local environment, but works just as well on humans when capturing them.

"No you monster! Let her go!" Yelled the last alive and free attacker, marked as unknown 1 the leader of the group, he charged at Hope with a sword.

"Would you like to be with her? Don't worry, we'll take good care of her." I said through the microphone my voice appearing on Hope's speaker.

"You're a monster, I'll free her." Hope then grabbed him. He was trying to get out of Hope's grasp. He kept struggling to get free even though I was getting close to crushing him. The pressure slowly increased and then. POP! His bones broke and went out of shape. He died of shock a few seconds later.

After that anti climatic battle, I requested a plane to pick up the cargo, which I will be personally in. I quickly made my way to the Psionic room and got into my Psionic Pod and then connected to my AVATAR which was in the room where AVATAR was held.

Getting up I got my gear on, and made my way to the hangar bay where three Space Planes were waiting. I got into the Space plane that was called 3749er.

"Sir, the plane is ready for launch." Said the pilot, we then got in the plane. I was the co-pilot in case anything happened like we were attacked, although we could just outrun anything in this world. But it's better to be safe than sorry.

The plane then taxied to the runway and prepared for launch. The runway itself wasn't that long, actually there just needed to be a space separate from the hangar bay itself so no depressurization occurred and everybody would die. It launched the plane via catapult and the plane made its way to the empty void of space and then to the atmosphere of Remis Prime.

The ride was silent as we descended down into the atmosphere outside of the occasional turbulence, other than that it was silent. When we landed Hope was busy loading its scientific materials onto the rocket which launched a few seconds after we arrived.

Blood splatter was everywhere, including one dead body, the only one that was identifiable.

"Looks like Hope was busy." The pilot said sarcastically.

"Yep, alright help me with this cargo, press that button there." I ordered the pilot who pressed on the lock buttons which unlocked it from the casing of Hope.

"That's heavy." The pilot said, but we were able to pick it up and put it on cargo hold of the plane. When we finished we cleaned up Hope and her hands so it looked good as new. We then left with the package.

"So what's in the box? A new species? Or considering all the blood there I would say a prisoner?" The pilot asked as the plane made its way up the atmosphere of the planet into space.

"You're correct on the prisoner part." I said.

"Oh. So we're kidnapping people for our little reservation or what?"" The pilot asked.

"Not exactly, but I may end up putting her there with some friends since I also have her friend's genome after I've done what I plan on doing with her." I said.

"So you're getting that desperate huh?"

"What? No, nothing like that. I'm going to get information out of her to figure out who sent her after Hope, if I couldn't get any information I'll break her to make her an agent to find information on who sent her."

"Ohhh? So CIA style then huh? You know I recently heard that one of their newest agents is a natural at breaking people." The pilot said.

"How did you learn of that?" I asked, the plane just exited the atmosphere and began making its way toward the station.

"I have friends in high places." The pilot said.

"I see." Was my response, the ride was silent after that.