Warpath (Rise of the Empire Book 4) (6 page)

She shook her head, and continued. “Right, where was I… Yes, we have been able to learn a lot from the Ra’a’zani hull pieces, and from the footage that the Monarch and the other surviving ships took. Scans of the Ra’a’zani hull had revealed that it was a composite of a metal-nonmetal alloy and a ceramic like material, with a kind of circuitry imbedded inside it. We don’t really know how the circuitry works, but we know the effect, it somehow allows for a sort of matter compression, that is what we believe allowed the Ra’a’zani ship to basically change hull modes, the rippling effect that our ships documented when the Ra’a’zani ship’s weapons raised from inside the ship. It also makes the hull virtually invulnerable to laser and particle beam fire of a certain magnitude – similar to our hull coating, only much more effective. We have tested and found the level at which the shimmering field of the Ra’a’zani hull loses its effectiveness, our current laser and particle weapons would be able to inflict damage to the Ra’a’zani hulls although the shimmer would still dissipate about half of the strength. The truth is that even now we haven’t been able to identify all the materials used to make the hull. The only thing that we have identified are titanium, carbon and a small amounts of risuminum – a metal that we have discovered just twenty years ago.”

Adrian narrowed his eyes, “But I thought that you managed to replicate the process? Create the same hull as what the Ra’a’zani have?” Adrian said glancing at Isani who kept his face expressionless. Sometimes Adrian really hated how Nel could do that, erase any trace of emotion from their face, even more infuriating was that he could feel his smugness through Sora.

“No, we haven’t been able to replicate the Ra’a’zani hull. It’s not like that technology is beyond us, it is just that we don’t know the ingredients, we could eventually crack the problem. But I wouldn’t recommend focusing on it, there are so many paths that our shipbuilding technology can follow that it is pointless of us to focus on that one, particularly when we know that some of our weapons proved very effective against it.” Lasani said, “What we have managed to do is replicate the abilities of the Ra’a’zani hull using our own materials and technology.”

Impressed, Adrian brought his left hand to his temple then down to his chest and turned his palm outward in a Nel gesture, telling her to elaborate. Lasani smiled softly at Adrian’s use of her people’s mannerism, most of the Nel in the Empire spoke English or what was now simply called standard, but a lot of Nel words and gestures had been incorporated into the standard over the years.

“Our version of their concepts is a bit different, as you well know we still haven’t been able to manage matter compression on such large scale.” Lasani said, referring to the lower scale mater compression that Clan Warpath’s military R&D was attempting to use in their battle suit and armor development.

“But we did manage to recreate the shimmering field. Ours is working on a slightly different concept, we have no internalized circuitry to handle the field creation in the material itself, but rather specialized nanobots that move through the coils that are connecting field emitters, and they can be added to the bottom of the hull walls, which means that we can add the field to any kind of hull. Our field is a bit stronger, about forty percent, but it also requires a lot more power. Our hull is more durable, able to withstand a lot more punishment and is more heavily based on metal alloy of risuminum and steel and as few ceramic as possible, that is why we chose to name the material ri-steel. Basically, it is superior in all areas except the mater compression.”

As soon as she finished Adrian smiled widely. “Well done! How soon do you think that we can start producing the hulls for the Tiamat and the Titan? And do you think that it will be possible to update the hulls of the rest of the ships?”

“Production can start in a few days, as for the updates, that will depend on the ship, for a few we can replace the old hulls as they aren’t that far ahead in the construction, for others we will need to improvise. Maybe add a lighter layer of the ri-steel over the existing hull, we will just need to try and see how it goes. In any case all of the ships will have the shimmering field installed, whether they have the ri-steel hull or not.”

“Great, good work chief. I will leave you and your team to the work.” Adrian said, then he turned to now grinning Isani and together they walked out of the room. All the while Adrian thought how things happened to fall into place at the exact moment he needed them to. But then again, it was nice that things went their way for a change.

Chapter Five

Adrian sat with his legs crossed on the floor of his bedroom, if anyone was to look at him now they would assume that he was meditating, relaxing. But the truth was far from it, inside his mind he fought a battle.

More than thirty years ago when he was barely a teen, Adrian received a prototype implant inside his head. This implant came with its own Ai, an Ai that wasn’t programed with all of the knowledge it required, instead it was given only enough to know what it was, and the rest the Ai would learn as human children did, from experience alongside Adrian. The Ai with Adrian’s help chose its name - Iris, and ever since then the two had grown together. Adrian was the only person who had this experimental implant put in before their brain was fully developed, and as Iris and he grew their connection deepened, and unforeseen side effects occurred.

The interactions between the Ai, the implant, and Adrian stimulated his brain, to the point where he developed unique abilities. Or more precisely allowed him a greater control over his brain and body’s abilities. The human brain was an amazing thing, it was powerful, capable of so many things that would seem supernatural. But most of humans never used their brain and bodies to their full potential, the human brain was inefficient, its potential and power bundled up inside a net of pathways.

It was capable of so many things, abilities that human brain was already capable of subconsciously, altering the perception of time – like when solders or martial artists suddenly start seeing events in slow motion during tough situations, conscious control over mind’s information processing, ability to consciously remove the limiters that the brain puts on the muscles strength – like when a mother suddenly gained the strength to lift a car and save her child, and others like shutting off pain receptors. And ever since the moment he realized he could do this, Adrian trained in order to master it. For now he was still the only one who could do it all consciously, but his mind was constantly scanned and monitored by the Empire’s scientist through his implant in order for them to replicate the effects, they were still unsuccessful.

But along with the ability to consciously do things that any human could do subconsciously or in times of great need, Adrian had developed one more unique ability that had never been documented before. He simply called it mind space. It was an ability where his brain suspended most of its control functions over the body in order to focus everything on a single thing, thought and imagination. It was very dangerous, the first time Adrian accidently went into mind space while meditating, he had stopped his heart, or rather his brain did. He would have probably died if it weren’t for Iris and his control implant. The only reason he survived was because Iris through his implant and nanites inside his body temporarily took over the control of his vital processes, while his brain focused on something else.

The mind space ability allowed Adrian to enter a world inside his own mind where time flowed at a much faster rate than it did in the real world. It was all an illusion of course, his mind was processing and imagining things at a much higher rate than it usually did, he wasn’t spending more time in mind space, his perception of time is what was altered, like dreams – a dream usually lasted about 5 minutes but it always seemed longer.

That allowed him to ‘shadow train’ inside his mind, and coupled with his unique ability to have greater control over his body’s function meant that theoretically anything he trained for or learned in his mind space would transfer over into the real world, what his brain learned his body would be able to replicate without the need for him to develop muscle memory. He still had to keep his body in a fit condition, real strength, agility, and stamina couldn’t be trained inside mind space. But the mind space allowed him to do so many things that he otherwise wouldn’t have the time to do. It was also one of the reasons why he wasn’t worried about the participating in the games. Others might have spent years training in the real world, but Adrian had spent decades training inside his mind space, coupled with his other abilities he knew that there were very few people in the Empire that could challenge him in hand to hand combat.

That being said, he still needed to prepare himself. That was what he was doing in mind space, training. He was fighting against conjured images of the masters he had sparred with. Even though his conscious mind might not remember every single nuisance of another person’s fighting style, his subconscious did, and in the mind space he had access to everything he had ever seen, heard, or learned. Every book he read, he remembered perfectly as if he had just read it, every memory as fresh as if it was made moments ago.

The scientists that were testing his ability had told Adrian that by focusing so much of brain’s processing power on the mind space it allowed him to refresh pathways to memories and data stored in the depths of his brain. That was also the reason why he remembered everything perfectly when he came out of mind space, but over the past thirty years he had learned that memories and knowledge that were not used frequently would become… Not forgotten, but buried beneath new knowledge and memories. Buried until he refreshed the pathways of his brain in mind space.

In mind space, Adrian moved sideways as one of his opponents attempted to kick him in the head, raising his hand to block the inevitable attack of the second opponent as Adrian stepped inside his reach. Blocking the attack, he gently guided the hand of his second opponent as he spun around, then Adrian pushed the hand towards the incoming attack of the first opponent. Losing his balance the second crashed into the first opponent, both of them falling to the floor.

The two on the floor looked like masters of martial arts that Adrian had sparred years ago, before the forming of the Empire. His mind recreating them exactly as they looked like, both young looking as all humans now looked. Their styles of fighting were different both from Adrian’s and from each other, but ultimately Adrian knew that they were just shadows of real people, Adrian was fighting his own impressions of those people. They might have the styles of those two people, but ultimately the two were figments of Adrian’s mind, they ‘thought’ like he thought. He was fighting himself.

Adrian stepped back and relaxed, the two opponents on the ground immediately dissolved. He closed his eyes and then opened them to see Sora and Akash sitting in front of him in his quarters. The two of them always sat and gazed at him attentively when he went into mind space, watching over him. Adrian tried to smile but his body still felt numb and unresponsive, he always needed a few minutes to recover completely, for his brain to reassume control over his body’s functions from Iris and his implant.

“A productive session I assume?”
Iris asked through the implant.

“Yes.”
Adrian responded simply, he was still a bit unbalanced from the experience, his mind needed to adjust to the waking world again.

“How long were you in there this time?”

“Somewhere between a few days and two weeks I think.”
Adrian responded, it was very hard to keep ‘local’ time inside mind space, his perception of time was so warped that he couldn’t keep an accurate account of how much time has passed.
“How long was I out?”
Adrian asked.

“An hour and seventeen minutes.”
Iris answered.

“Hmm… Closer to a week then.”
Adrian said. They had a rough estimate of how fast time passed in mind space compared to the time that passed in the real world.

“Well…”
Adrian started speaking as he stretched his arms above his head and then moved to stand, shaking off the last bit of stiffness.
“How long do I have until my match?”
Adrian asked.

“The semi-finals ended a few minutes ago. So about an hour and a half I would say.”
Iris said.

Adrian nodded absently as he started walking around the room and stretching. The martial-arts tournament, which was held twice a year was extremely important for Warpath, every citizen of the clan prepared for it intensely. Not every hand to hand specialist attended every tournament, people in Warpath were very busy, but they tried to attend at least once a year. Adrian could have entered the tournament as any other person that was fighting, but he chose not to. He had already won the tournament once and didn’t need, nor had the time to fight through the ranks until he reached the finale. But he needed to show his people that he was still strong, better than anyone else.

There had been rumors circulating for the past three years about how he wasn’t the best hand to hand specialist anymore, probably originating from the knowledge that Adrian was rarely seen training, with his mind space he didn’t have to. But as the leader of the Warpath clan, he needed to put those rumors to rest. People needed to see him as something more than an ordinary person, he needed to be a goal they all strived to reach. He was still the undisputed champion of fleet command, as he held the top scores in Warpath.

 There were two ways that Warpath citizens advanced and showed their prowess. One was the tournament, where people fought against each other in hand to hand combat, although it wasn’t as crucial as the second. The trials, these were yearlong events that a citizen could enter whenever he wanted, they ranged from solo trials to group. And they ranged across every area of significance, from simulated fleet scenarios to weapon courses and physical feats. Each accomplished trial gave a certain amount of points with every citizen of Warpath having his place at the clan Leaderboard. Adrian rarely did the trials, but when he did he always chose the hardest ones, those that were worth the most points. By doing that he had managed to keep his name in the top 10 spots, even without doing a lot of trials, quality over quantity.