Chapter one: The Rave
>Night began to fall over Earth sector 5, a land that John Herman had once known as Georgia, a small country bordering Russia. It still was, he just couldn't refer to it as such anymore for the simple reason that sector 5 had been drilled into his head.
>"JACK! STAND READY!"
"IS IT COMING?"
>"SITED. LOW ORBIT. Information should be on your HUD."
>Jack started staring into the screen of his nano suit where he saw several flashing red diamonds, locked his optics and magnified the targets. Yup, them are some dropships. 
"Looks like we should have taken the dark forest theorem more seriously. Prey don't tell the predators where they are, let alone send out copies of their genome, the canon of their cultural history and all else that goes with it in some kind of convoluted 'universal' language. Well, they'll be here in the hour once the sun drops. If I'm reading the trajectories right, we're seeing impacts in sectors 4,5,7,14, and 23."
>"Alright kids, remember your training."
"Oh fuck!" John said, artificially raising his body's tempo to make the act more convincing 
>"What's wrong, we're seeing vitals spike!"
"I forgot how to load my gun!"
>A ruckus laughter came over the radio as everyone who knew John began cackling at the notion that he'd forgotten how to load his M-34.
>"Tighten it up, gents. We're stepping now."
"Alright, load your rifles and makes sure to check, I want magazine counts." Jack yelled into his radio 
>The yells all came back the same. "Forty rounds .70 cal APHE in mag, one chambered, safety on, five mags on standby."
"We're good to go, Stack up in the drop ships and brace in, we're gonna see some shit."
>Jack proceeded to the VTOL, making sure to rack the charging handle of his M-34 and give it a press check to make sure a round had chambered before sitting down and bracing into the cargo bay seat with the rest of his squad. He decided to occupy himself with how novel the idea of the M-34 might have been when the platform it was derived from had been engineered by Armalite, then a division of Fairchild in 1959, before they sold the rights to colt, who eventually sold it to the military as the M-16A1. 
>Jack knew he wasn't the only one as amazed as he had been that such a design had made it all the way to 2173, despite the years of experimentation with energized slugs that had been tried and tested to so little extra effect during the war of 2140, running through to 2148, that they were discontinued for improved M-16 like rifles that had dominated military issue since the time of their inception like no other article of military technology before or since. The M-34, was little to no different, since in the days of atomic centering, a process by which literally any matter could be fused into any matter with a higher atomic number, the only limit was what you could dream up and what access you had to purified elements like gold, oxygen, carbon, or whatever element you want to use to make gold or titanium, maybe even thorium. 
>The fact of the matter was that the literally everything on the M-34 was a scaled up part from an M-16 that had come about 214 years earlier. The resources were plentiful and as a result humanity had come a long way in a short time, colonizing mars in the 2120's and by the 2250's, despite the setbacks of the war that had consumed the decade, had settled in several solar systems and made contact with three alien races.
>The first race eventually broke the language barrier, calling themselves the Pok. The Pok were a peaceful species so long as they weren't attacked, as the first people to actually see them face to face and talk with them would testify, which had become easy, as communicating with members of another species quickly became pastimes on both worlds in the mid and late 2160's. The second race calling themselves the Acra were a fortunate find of '57, having been at war with the third race, the icrah. The Acra hadn't been seen by human eyes as light didn't travel far enough for us to observe them or transmit to them without wavelengths stretching into other spectrums of electromagnetic radiation. we haven't yet figured out how to modulate so that we can share with them the secrets we haven't yet unlocked of sharing video across vast space, Though we HAD broken the language barrier and it became common to make phone friends on their home world of Acrassas.
>"Positive lift confirmed." came the pilot's voice over the radio.
The ship lifted off the ground as all the thoughts flooding through Jack's mind fell away, he engaged his enhanced awareness sensor suite in the visor of the nanosuit, which, while not exactly allowing him to see outside the dropship, DID begin flashing symbology at him as missiles began to hop off the launcher, before traveling in a parabola trajectory for a second and a half, then accelerated upwards, gradually, then flashing to the sky or to the horizon on the same axis the dropship traveled, indicating to him that at least twelve dropships were either low to the ground or that they had deployed Icrah forces to ground and were trying to make an escape maneuver before getting fucked up.
"TOO LATE MOTHERFUCKERS!" Jack hollered as he saw the missile impacts flash up in a yellow triangle symbol in his HUD.
>The muscular appearing exteriors of the other nanosuits, which were a special carbon black color intended to absorb light, began turning their heads in the direction of Jack's gaze and cheering as the missiles began impacting Icrah dropships.
>"THE NIGHT REICH STRIKES BACK YOU ALIEN FAGGOTS!" One of them remarked, invoking the colloquial name for the Sector's defense hub, which took on more fascist tendencies, comparing Icrah sympathizers to AIDS, and dispersing their protests at dusk if they ever protested in the first place. It was already hard enough to fight the Icrah as many of the officers and NCO's had told Jack, having been veterans of the first battles across the stars against the fucking animals, meeting them with heavy resistance and teaching them a new appreciation for the phrase "dig in." but eventually being forced to make a tactical retreat to deal with mounting casualties and an impending strategic envelopment.
>A disembodied voice called on the intercom, broadcasting directly into the brains of all on board. "We're dropping you five clicks off in a landcast, prepare for an impact comp landing and a high intensity overhead brake when we hit the dropzone."
"I wonder if the missiles that went straight up have hit their target yet."
>"What's that go to do with anything, Jack?"
"We have space training. Just seems like it would be a good thing to put to use. Especially in keeping them from getting THIS close to earth."
>"We get it! You predicted this at the bar last week, but you see the problem is, the brass didn't for another couple days, so we didn't have time to put the defenses in a position to repel the fleet, so we had to put them on independent self defense."
>"THIRTY SECONDS." The intercom called.
>"That's why brilliant little fools like you aren't in charge. You can't think on your ass or two days behind."
>"TEN SECONDS."
Forces of deceleration began pulling the choc to the front of the cargo bay in a 7G deceleration before the VTOL reached a constant speed and began rippling the nanosuits out of trap doors in half second delays, shooting pairs out the bottom in half second increments
>Jack's ripple came and he found himself going limp, as he'd learned to do the hard way, so the suit could do the work instead of giving him the miserably experience of being forced into the impact compensation maneuver. 
>Impact in three
>two
>one
>A thud and a thunderous jolt shook Jack's body, the suit standing on its own for several seconds passively scanning the surroundings while he regained consciousness. Even with the impact compensation preventing his body from liquefying in the suit, it was still a fucking rough experience, and would age him considerable if he were to go on as few as a hundred, luckily for him this would only make three, and the first two were simulated through a neurological simulator so as not to PHYSICALLY damage the new recruits.
>As John stared at the bright night sky, just past dusk and already glaring with lights visible for miles in a strategic defense event that would one day in the future become known as "the rave."

>Jack stared into the sky as the flashes that had lit it and turned it to a light show ceased. His mind finally came back to him and he thought to himself that all Icrah dropships inside the earth sphere of gravity must've been destroyed or out of range of Sector five missiles. Watching the stars once more become the brightest things in the sky, he started to hear a voice come over the intercom.
>"Move to the waypoint, Marking it now." 
"I guess it's time to wake up and stop feeling the aches." Jack said to no one in particular as he switched the suit's systems to terrain mobility mode and began running his sensors into image intensification, infrared, electromagnetic and microwave spectrum scans. 
>five kilometers out was approximately a ninety second run through the forest as he prepared to start using the M-34.
>The selector having been the only standard part to REALLY change on the M-34, the troops could be trained on anything from an M-16A1 to the HK-416's that plagued the 21st century or even the accursed M-20 of the 2120's As long as the forty-five degree selector was present.
>Jack saw the first signatures not burdened by particularly human forms, standing at about nine feet tall and advancing slowly away from the stricken dropships. He flipped the selector a full ninety degrees, switching the M-34 from safe to auto, and began aiming, placing the line of his bore projected in the HUD onto the thermal signatures and began firing short controlled bursts. 
>The bursts from the M-34 ripped and tore at the Icrah fleeing the ship as overhead radar fed into the visor, and he realized he was right in the middle of their front, switching his suit to armored mode subconsciously as he took another three out before they started firing in his direction.
>Jack burst from his spot, nanosuit absorbing a hit as he sprinted and jumped to cover, having hardly any energy left in the suit after the jump and the hit, the sprint had drained him entirely, and he'd have to wait for the suit to recharge before he could take another hit without the green bar of what the suit estimated his condition to be widdling down toward zero, where the suit figured he'd be physically damaged to such an extent that he'd have no chance of surviving his wounds.
>Jack scanned around frantically as he wondered why the friendlies so close to him didn't fire on the Icrah. 
"The fuck are you-"
>His field of vision was suddenly consumed by the body of one of the warriors swinging around the tree his was hiding behind, Causing Jack to instinctively lunge to the side and drop to a crouch as he fired a burst into the offending Icrah, the five rounds of .70 caliber ammunition liquefying half the creature's torso as he sensed another plunging on him with some kind of axe.

	Chapter Two: OP:Ichirin
Date:(Redacted)
Planet:(Redacted)
Region:(Redacted)
>Pitra hoisted herself above an exposed boulder exposed in the side of the hill, having finally mounted the top of the obstacle, which had been too large to bypass on mission.
>As she took in the view of the valley she'd just surmounted, she couldn't help but think to herself for a brief moment about how she'd gotten here.
"How does a lowly Acrani girl get to become a member of a specialist unit pulling ops deep behind enemy territory like this? It's like one of those stories that strange species across the universe keeps sending us."
>"By being caught you stupid criminal." Tepri, her sqaud leader mutters.
"Makes sense."
>Tepri gestures a hold order to the squad. "All the assignments I could get and I get the prison fodder recon. Speaking of that strange species who kept sending us the stories, we're not so far from them anymore. In fact, we're in THEIR galaxy."
"I'd bet they're fighting them right now. Poor creatures. If their fight at Pyrin was any reflection, they don't stand a chance. They seemed so nice too. I'd have liked to meet them."
>"Careful what you wish for. Last person who thought like that GOT their wish."
"You're right. Should be just a over the next ridge. Getting the data core will be the easy part, we're not likely to face any resistance on our way to the vault, but I want you on high alert."
>The team crested the hill and began descending the valley before hiking up the next ridge.
"Vault sited."
>"No Icrah. Orbital scans confirm they're on another continent. Keep an eye out for animals."
>The Acranis advanced to the vault and fished the keys out of their packs. This vault had been placed on a backwater in the distance of space to protect the information held within, which could be used to activate various super weapons that had been constructed on Acrassis. 
>It was a startling amount of power for a single installation, then again, it was in the middle of galactic fuck all, didn't emit signals or signatures, didn't need personnel, it was even invisible until you were in the canyon below the forest canopy. It could contain all the sensitive information of the universe and still be secret if it was so decided that it should.
>"Lock it up. Predatory animal sighted to the right."
"What kind?"
>"The fuck should I know? I'm not a fucking zoologist. All I know is it's fucking big and it's not even acknowledging us. It's putting me more on edge as I think about it."
>"Lets set the keys and get in there."
>They set their four keys into their slots and counted down before turning them, prompting a heavy door to open to an access hatch leading into a diagonal access corridor descending at a steep fortyfive degrees.
>as they entered the facility, they came to the main chamber, housing the data core they'd need to retrieve in order to step up the operations against the Icrah on the major scale. All that was left was to enter a few commands to open the storage canister and pull out the core before beginning the trip back to Acrassas, which would take them further into contested territory once more if they wanted to refuel and actually REACH the planet.
>Though it WOULD be a good idea to get some rest first.
>The key retrieved, the team went back to their disguised probe ship, which had brought them a little less than half way through to completion and began napping in anticipation of launch, seeing as they were ahead of schedule, short of sleep, and unlikely to be discovered in their present location.

	Four hours later
>beeping noises filled the air, shaking Tepri from her sleep, she rushed into action and started the active camouflage of the ship before waking her team and calling them to sensors and weapons.
>"Pitra! What do we got?"
"A strange cruiser's orbiting the planet and performing sensor sweeps, I don't think they've spotted us but it's a safe bet they're landing forces."
>"Why here?"
"You know, I kinda wanted to meet humans, I've been pondering it for awhile, but if this is them, then this is going to be the biggest deus ex machina a war machine ever turned out."
>"We've got more signature- what are the Icrah doing here? Oh. Holy shit, they're fucking destroying eachother, I don't think anything's making it off either of those two."
"Yeah. Give them another orbit and I'll bet it'll be wreckage about ready to enter." Pitra said as she watched the ships tear eachother apart on the sensors before cresting the horizon out of sight. 

	Meanwhile: Aboard EDF-NR 564 "Ingrid Richter."
>"So there I was, approaching a horde of Icra, agitated as hell, they were swarming SOMEONE who was just fucking CLAWING his way out under the corpses and fucking clawing into their throats with his nanosuit, and I look over, and it's JACK FUCKING HERMAN over there, getting all dungeon master on their asses."
>"No shit, what's he doing on this one?"
>"Same shit we're doing. Deploying planet side in anticipation of an Icrah assault ship.
>An alarm began blaring through the ship, but, what could the nanosuit soldiers do? They WERE already strapped into their orbital drop canisters. All that remained was to launch.
"Well shit. Brace in, boys. I hope they got this shit well in hand. I don't want to have some bullshit slow death wound that the suit can heal."
>"I hear that, those post human warrior types are sad motherfuckers for a reason. And did it occur to anyone when they made these things that WE'RE surgically implanted in THEM?"
"Even better, suit grows into the wound, then they have to leave you in the suit. Some of those first generation nano suits have ACTUALLY taken on the form of the soldiers who wore them, and even a few of the second generation guys peeled the suits themselves and put them on other people before committing suicide. Now those suits are just suits with a literally hijacked body in them dreaming they were once someone with a net name and little more. Imagine that, you get fucked up but don't die quick enough, so in ten years your nano suit becomes you, but without basic bodily functions like eating, drinking, shitting, sleeping or fucking and you just walk around immortal forever, without any of the typical creature comforts."
>"Yeah, at least the suits can be skinned easily without killing us."
>Jack thought as he remembered reports of generation one nano suit soldiers being skinned, having a forty percent mortality rate just on the pain of the process alone, then a twenty percent among the sixty who survived from forgetting to indulge in basic bodily functions like eating, drinking and sleeping. Dehydration was the number one killer, followed closely by sleep deprivation, then starvation a close third, which was surprising when one considered that nano suited men still drank at bars, though WHERE the alcohol went along with its accompanying water was a mystery that could only be explained away as the suit breaking it down for raw materials, like the hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers and spleens of so many unfortunate wearers who'd live through the wounds to be literally consumed by, and merged irrevocably with the suits 
>The eighth generation nano suits still had their faults, particularly that users still had to be implanted, and they still required a symbiotic link to the user, but for the most part, breaking the link and removing the user without killing him was down to a science with little to no deviation in result, though only done with the right equipment. The effects of skinning a user without breaking the link however, could be as bad as removing a preserved corpse from the suit and killing it, or as painful as causing all sensory neurons in the body that COULD send out signals of pain to do precisely that.
>"What do you think is happening today?"
"Judging by all the shaking, and our current trajectory, we're going to find out if the suits can do the landcast from sub-orbit."
>"Odds?"
"Not a chance!"
>"All personnel to evacuation craft, prepare to abandon ship." Came the voice of the shipboard computer."
"Oh! We were prepared!" Jack sarcastically stated as he clipped the mask and visor of the nano suit in place.
>A violent jolt acted on the suits as the deployment pod jettisoned downward toward the atmosphere.
"Well, this just about figures."
>"What do you-" A suit inquired before being cut off as a jolt took the drop pod from its stable course and started it into a rapid tumble.
"Wait for it. Three. Two..." Jack trailed off, before pointing to a fire extinguisher which lit off a set of impact detonated signal flares, causing the fire suppression system to kick in
>"STOP FUCKING SAY SHI-"
"And the plasma heating starts..." Jack said, nonchalantly pointing to a viewing port that rose and fell with what looked to be fire streaming over the pod, ceasing its falling as the tumble developed into a stabilized fall.
"Now we wait."
>the pod began a destabilizing deceleration as the damaged and asymmetric drag and thrust controls struggled to slow down the tumbling and uncontrollable pod, providing far less drag and retrograde thrust than anticipated. It was sudden. And swift for almost all on board.

	Chapter Three: Separation Syndrome.
>Jack came to his senses, surrounded by crushed, mutilated, dismembered and now vacant nano suits in the now half missing suit bay of the orbital drop canister. As he surveyed the scene before him, he looked at the suit's survival probability bar, a green bar that showed survival probability as calculated by the suit's on board super computer, and noted that it was at measly twelve percent, with the blue suit energy bar just above it in his field of view slowly draining at a rate of one percent power loss every seven seconds. Now at eighty percent.
>"Suit damaged, shutdown imminent."
"FUCK." Jack said to the pile of dead nanosuits and debris in front of him as he scanned for signs of life, greeted only by the milky white interaction suits that created a preservative buffer between the titanium cobalt matrix that formed the muscles of the nanosuits.
>Jack used the neural interface to perform a diagnostic, finding that suit circuitry had been damaged to the point that environmental energy absorption had been halted. He quickly went to work shutting down radial suit functions like armor, mobility, camouflage, physical regeneration and suit regeneration, in the hopes that he might die quicker than what an inactive nano suit had in store for him. He managed to shut down all life support systems and disable all but the basic movement features and strength mode, allowing him to generate enough force to break free of his clamps, draining his suit of all but twenty percent of it's radial energy. In another couple minutes, the suit couldn't do shit for him. He couldn't get it off, it was no longer assisting him. All he had to do now was await the sweet embrace of death, though bitter it would be because he'd forgotten one of his most hated sensations... cold. 
>In the nano suit, soldiers felt no temperature, they were in a constant sensation of being in a seventy degree room, even as exterior temperatures would reach the hundreds in either direction. He lamented the new sensation of literal cold feet, a hot jungle to his face, and as he sat down for what he figured was the last time, he pulled off the visor and mask of the nano suit, exposing his face to the world, the sweet heat of the jungle.

>Pitra walked along toward the wreckage and counted the bodies in her path, she'd seen things like this before. Pods launched in some misguided attempt at landing troops on a planet from a besieged ship, inevitably they'd be hit by something, some control surface needed for the task of survivable impacts was always asymmetrical or outright nonfunctional.
>Though, these ancient looking things the alien troops wore were a rather unusual sight. She thought of some excuse to bring it up when the radio chimed in and gave it to her.
>"Pitra! It's Jiri, what's at the crash site?"
"I got a lot of these alien troops strewn about the site, all dead. The armor they wear looks like the composite sketches of the strange species in the galaxy. Uh... Humans, yeah, the armor looks like human muscle structure as sketched in the science books."
>"Odd, any survivors?"
"None yet, I'm going to circle around the wreck and see if there are any alive."
>"If you find survivors, capture one if safe."
>Pitra walked past the wreck after inspection the cargo bay, finding a fluid trail consistent of what was most likely blood leading from the Pod, upon deciding the black and white and spattered red objects were lifeless, made a point to follow the trail with haste.
>She peered her head out, seeing the brighter color of the blood compared to that in the cargo bay, indicating it was fresh. She followed it out for a hundred yards before coming across a carbon black muscular anatomy with a metal spine and reinforced nerve junctions, its mask. unlike the others, detached and discarded, the creature inside clearly nodding off into what could only become shock.
"Jiri, prepare a stasis pod, I think we've got a live one!"
>"Really?"
"Yeah, looks like a Human male, wearing nanite powered active body armor, but he won't be alive much longer if we don't treat him, he's badly wounded." 
>Pitra tapped the face poking from the suit in an attempt to elicit a response, only to see a pair of powder blue eyes look at her without focusing before closing in exhaustion.
>She picked up the body and cradled it, starting a mad dash to the probe ship.
>Pitra found the ship a kilometer away and ran in, panting as she gently lowered the heavy creature into the stasis pod, where he would be preserved and maintained among the (sort of) living until he could be better treated and pulled from the armor, which appeared to have no provision for removal.

>Jack awoke with a screech that could only be described as low and deafening, instantly placing half the ward into alert mode and causing telemetry devices across the ward to spike with brain waves and soaring heart rates. The doctors nearby rushing to his side and reading his sensors
>"Nurse! What's with the Human?"
>"His vitals are all spiking and brain activity reads extremely high in all neural signal channels."
>"Jesus, all his fucking neurons are sending pain signals! What the fuck are the humans doing to their soldiers? We take him out of his armor and..." The doctor trailed off as Jack finally passed out after several seconds. "...He stopped. What is it about that armor? Is it an individual effect? Whatever, I want him drugged out of his mind next time he wakes up."
>Pitra walked into the ward to find it in chaos, with nurses running to and fro, checking on the patients, a doctor walking out of the far room.
"Hows my pet?"
>"Your "pet" is getting drugged because he can't wake up without experiencing unimaginable levels of pain. We may have to euthanize him if we can't figure out what's wrong with him."
"Can I see him? I haven't seen him since we brought him here four weeks ago."
>"Go ahead, If he wakes up and tells you how to fix him, come say so." The doctor said with a heavy note of sarcasm in his voice.
"Funny."
>"I'm serious." He said, walking past her with a chuckle. Pitra walked into the room to see the man on the bed, now only six feet tall and a couple feet wide at the shoulders, as opposed to the hulk he was when she carried him in with the nano suit. She looked at the creature in the bed and was struck by the apparent similarity of stature that the Human in the bed showed to the Acra. The bodily makeup was the same, two arms, two legs a head, something there between the legs. The contrast wasn't too striking, smaller eyes, though according to the texts they weren't supposed to be this almost white or gray shade of blue, which texts transmitted from the human homeworld said only occurred in people who were born blind.
>He was still a hulk by Acrani standards, seeing as the tall Acrani male stood only about 5'8", where he stood at 6'1" He weighed in at 180 pounds, where an Acrani male of his size might have weighed in at 145. Luckily for the blue eyed hulk in the bed, the average Acrani woman could lift many times her own weight, with extreme exertions, such as a 1,400 pound nano suit with a 180 pound man inside it. Now if only what was wrong with him could be easily explained and remedied. 
>Pitra looked down at the creature and put a hand on what she thought was milky white skin on his right arm.
>The pair of eyes, dormant until then widened until they were perfectly round and flicked to her face, a visible tensing of all muscles in the arm drawing her attention to the rest of the body, which had spiked in telemetry, though settled down as Jack quickly spread his limbs away from his body. His glare shifting to her.
"Are you... Human?"
>"You speak English?"
"Yes."
>"How long have I been out?"
"four weeks since I found you."
>"Jesus. How am I not dead?"
"Stasis, and medical technology. Though you've been waking up screeching and you're already on so many painkillers you shouldn't be able to be conscious or feel things. let alone think. Do you have any ideas on getting you NOT to screech like a retard everytime you touch something?" Pitra asked before giving Jack a flick that caused a sharp inhale and spike on the telemetry machines.
>"GET*hnggggg* THE.*UGHHHHH* INTERACTION.*ACKH*Suit.*huff*OFF!"
"You mean that isn't your skin?"
>"WHAT FUCKING CREATURE HAS A DIFFERENT COLOR HEAD THAN IT'S BODY?"
>"Point taken." She said, picking up a scalpel and lightly running it around the milky white film cutting it symmetrically along the sides until it would resemble a mold half with a split line before giving it a snag and a tug, after which she looked over to see a naked Jack, Eyes wide, all muscles in the body contracted heavily, drenched in sweat and gradually sinking into a sagging posture as the pain subsided and he began taking deep heaving breaths.
>Jack let his breath come back to him and went slack on the bed before his next thoughts would come to him. "Everything's so cold. I suppose the nice thing about the nano suit was that it disabled nerve endings from feeling temperatures. Cold was but a distant memory. Wait, I was cut out of the thing, right? Please tell me it didn't grow into me!"
"I'll get the doctor. He can answer you."
>"Don't. I just remembered the interaction suit hurt like hell. So it was cut off and the neural link not cut."
"Can you walk? You've been patched up for a good two and a half weeks."
>"I can try." Jack said, slowly rising to his feet.
"How do you feel?"
>"Now that the interaction suit is off, I can live."
"Stay here, I'll get you a gown." Pitra said, prompting Jack to look down and realize that without the interaction suit covering him from foot to neck in order to interface with the suit, he was indeed naked before female company.
>"Please. I'm Jack by the way."
"Good. Now wait here for now." Pitra said as she walked out, returning two minutes later with a gown for her new pet. "I'm Pitra." She said.
>Jack began sizing her up instinctively, he couldn't read her like he could in the nano suit, but he could still tell he should tread lightly in the view of the blue skinned woman. He judged that her Red eyes and lightly colored hair were putting on a friendly front, and that he'd best make a good first impression, since he'd likely be meeting a militarily motivated and willingly abusive side of her soon, he could escape, but he'd be easily caught, and no other eventuality seemed probable than him being a prisoner or slave at worst or a household pet at best. The only thing he knew about his situation for sure, despite all these observations, was that he was in the custody of the Acra, and he couldn't escape to earth at that distance. It wouldn't dawn on him until much later that they were operating close enough to have an encounter in HIS home galaxy.
"Come on, Jack." Pitra said, picking Jack up and carrying him, like a baby five inches taller than her and twice her weight, out of the hospital.
>Jack was a person not given to such treatment, as he felt worthless if he couldn't do basic things like walk on his own and had people help him, but he was too high on the painkillers, now fighting only his actual senses rather than the interaction suit to make a fuss, but instead, remark on the salvation of the newly found comfort he hadn't felt in eight months time. "You're so warm. Finally."
>Jack awoke in what he could only assume to be an Acra nest, a small dome shaped building with the rudiments of refrigeration, cooking and various other home appliances installed. In his mind, it brought him back in time to his school days when he looked over pictures of human domestic life in the 1980's and 1990's, when things like microwave ovens were just becoming popular, and many homes with any age to them could be forgiven for excluding such appliances.
>The interior of the nest, house, hut, whatever it was, had a dingy but aesthetically pleasing look to Jack, a player of antique video games that had been preserved on the internet, without subjection to bit rot throughout his childhood. This one in particular reminded him of an obscure and always empty location called "Mike's Bar" in a video game long disappeared from the public psyche, of course with many articles published praising and criticizing it, called "FarCry 2" 
>Jack looked around and found the bright colorful rugs and sheets of the bed he was in may as well have come straight from the colored but color bled footage of live television circa 1990. 180 years or so definitely hadn't come at least until much more recently to the Acra civilization. 
>Jack stood up to find that he was only inches shorter than the roof, the building height evidently reflection the slightly shorter stature of the species. He then felt something he hadn't felt in eight months... Thirst. 
>Jack looked around for a source of water, finding a bowl laid out with a note. "Humans drink water, right? Scientists say the fauna and flora are similar, so you should be able to eat anything in the fridge if you get hungry."
"Well that's convenient." He thought to himself as he started drinking and looking around for any indication of time of day or whether the building was empty. 
>Jack finally found a window and was greeted by the sight of day break over Acrassis, an empty building and a full day ahead of him.
"It's just like mornings on earth... Cold. For once in my life can something be hot? I remember hot weather when I was little, but... Nothing's every hot anymore. I guess it's what I get for relying on a nano suit to keep me from feeling it. Where's that jungle planet when I need it?" Jack thought, lamenting his chronic sensation of cold in his hands and feet, which was more or less always present except in the hottest forty or fifty degrees earth had to offer, from the upper eighties up.
>It hadn't helped Jack's condition of sensitivity to cold that hoodies dominated cold weather gear, and actual jackets were nowhere to be found when one wanted to be warm below fifty and not dying above thirty.
>Jack looked around the dwelling and decided that he'd call it a hut, before attempting to exit to find out if it was cooler or hotter inside.
>He found the door and tried to open it, failing, tripping a brief alarm, which shocked him enough to push him off the door and blaring some kind of warning in acrani that was entirely lost on him.
"I guess it's locked. Wouldn't want the new pet running away now, would we?" He said to no one in particular.
>Jack sat in a blanket by a window as he looked out into the world around him, Which looked like fall on earth, plants resembling trees turning brown, plenty of fading greenery. Jack just took it all in as he sat back under the blanket and prayed that Pitra would return with perhaps some clothing, made for him or an acrani, and hopefully it'd fit, since society in this world, like on earth, didn't relish the idea of constantly being naked, as he was able to observe even during his short stint of consciousness in the hospital.
>Jack watched as figures came and went, their cat elf like ears and blue skin, and various colors of hair, ranging from a white that couldn't be confused with the gray of aged humans, to a bright green that he also found to be somewhat calming to look at.
"Yeah. Looks like a peaceful planet."
>Jack tried to remember what these new and strange yet familiar sensations were as he started to feel them, and went to the fridge as he remembered what hunger is.
>Jack watched as the sun finally lit the ground fully, and a figure emerged from a truck outisde and approached the hut.
>Pitra entered the hut, visibly shaking on contact with the cold air of the hut. Jack looked on at her as he realized this was abnormally cold for her.
"Too cold for you?"
>"A bit, you seem to be at home in it."
"No. This is actually about the middle of the average temperature range on my planet. A bit cold for me, actually."
>"Really? So I can turn off the cold air and you'll be fine with it?"
"No promises, but if the heat of the window is any indication I might want to stay on this planet forever. Is it this lovely all year?"
>"Yeah. You're wanted at the armory. They want you to tell them about some of the gear recovered at the crash. Here's some clothes they made you." Pitra said, handing Jack some remarkably familiar camo fatigues and a shirt before turning a dial on a box mounted to the wall. 
"They made these for me? How nice of them."
>"Cute alien or not, you aren't walking around my planet naked. I may be a criminal, but I at least have some decency."
"Wait, YOU'RE a criminal too?" Jack said, finally finding something to which he could connect with his gracious host about.
>"Too? WHAT DID YOU DO?"
"I beat an officer, so naturally the punishment was ten years as a nano soldier, because the first thing you want to do when someone is criminally negligent with the use of severe beatings is give them the ability to beat a ship out of orbit on a whim."
>"Doesn't sound like much of a punishment."
"Well, with the risk of becoming a 'post human warrior' as we called them, and the lack of sleep, and other bodily functions for entire tours on end, it can become a living hell. until this... what I assume is morning, I hadn't eaten in eight months."
>"How is that possible?"
"The suit does it. What crime did you commit?"
>"I stole a bunch of ammo and weapons to kill some enemies that... lets say I wasn't cleared to engage."
"Oh, so you acted autonomously. Against a stand down I take it?"
>"umm... yeah. How did you know?"
"It's all fairly similar. I did some time with the Pok, who did the same kind of shit, the only REAL difference is there's the occasional force that has a different discipline procedure and different penalties. Some of these guys have pagan sacrifices of bad soldiers, some have sacrifices of the best soldiers, some kill every tenth. Much of the life stays the same across every species and force you come across."
>"My punishment doesn't seem quite as severe when you tell me yours. I ended up being an infiltration and front line bypass specialist operating in capacities that I'd have to kill you to disclose. Should we head out to the armory?"
"Yeah. Lets go."
>Jack and Pitra walked out the door and into the open air, Jack shuddering with pleasure as he realized the air around him was at least eighty five degrees, maybe ninety.
>"You okay?"
"I just like hot temperatures. This has to be like... Ninety."
>"Ninety what?" Pitra asked, genuinely confused by the numerical value and its apparent meaning to the human.
"Ninety degrees."
>"What does that even mean?"
"It's nice and hot out here."
>"The heat?"
"Yes."
>"We have a different way of thinking about temperature here. Maybe a bit simple."
"How so?"
>"To put it in english, it's basically cold hot and burning. There are few variations on that save for really scientific purposes. But I don't think you'd understand that system. I don't, anyway."
"So they want me to teach them about earth weapons... suppose they'll have a good laugh when I tell them it's all kinetic projectile throwers."
>The drive down to the armory was uneventful, Pitra intermittently glancing over to Jack, who evidently enjoyed the hot air and stiff winds, an easy going smile on his face while he looked out and took in the scenery.
>They arrived at the armory and walked in, some armorers and research technicians greeting them.
>"Ah, Pitra! Good to see you've brought your new pet. I hope you're ready to tell us about your weaponry."
"Now look here, BUB, I don't mind being called pet by the lady, but you ain't the lady, you call me Jack. Jack or John, alright?" Jack answered in his best archetypal Rocky the gangster impersonation, driving the techs back a couple feet as they shrank from the relative hulk addressing them.
>"W-Why yes, Jack." The techs replied, much to Jack's amusement and Pitra's awe.
"Then lets get ourselves moving! What was it that you boys needed me to help you with?" Jack gently demanded in his best impersonation of a singer Named Bing Crosby, who'd been dead for almost two hundred years, but none the less, was his favorite lounge singer of the twentieth century.
>"Uh.. Right this way." The techs answered, leading jack to an armory cage full of weapons that looked like they'd been pulled from the wreck of the orbital drop canister.
"Now what we have here, is an assortment of various equipment that came from the same pod I did. Were there any other survivors?"
>"Uh... No. Nothing but... well, you were rested on an outcropping and the only one that wasn't mangled and maimed."
"Lucky bastards. No separation syndrome. No full scale symbiosis. I kind of figured. So what equipment did you want to look at?"
>"I suppose we should start on this" The tech said, pointing to the weapon he thought most likely to be the standard issue duty weapon.
"M-34. weighs thirty five pounds, fires a seventy caliber spire tipped bullet at twenty eight hundred feet per second."
>"are you saying this is a projectile weapon?"
>"How do you fight with these? The recoil forces of a projectile that size and description must be enormous!"
"Theoretically, a typical soldier can carry it as a crew served weapon or fire it from support or offhand, though with significant effort, on semi automatic."
>"WAIT. Jack, you mean this is fully automatic?"
"Yes. For a soldier in the nano suit, it's no trouble at all to manage it on full auto. The suits are capable of a lot of things like that. The standard service rifle, however, isn't present if all the gear here is from the same pod as I am."
>"You mean this isn't the standard?"
"Nano suits make up about two percent of the forces, and for us, this IS the standard rifle, but for the rest of them, it's the M-20, which is similar, but it's more on the area of a forty five caliber and it's much lighter. The next article I see is the J-5 five select fire pistol, chambered in nine millimeter parabellum. It's a very controllable gun, glowing tritium sights. It works for getting to the rifle, so we keep it. If nano suits are expected to operate in conjuction with normal infantry, they'll be issued common weapons."
>"So you don't use energy weapons? How do you hit anything moving?"
"It's a non issue when you get down to what our doctrine considers infantry range. We have energy weapons, but shit like gauss rifles and rail guns is strictly pretty out there. If you need a rail gun, you're fighting a pretty different enemy. Even a nano suit only defends from a few shots, admittedly newer ones do it against our crew served weapons and even the earliest of them could survive direct hits from most weapons short of tactical nukes. You'd be fighting an ultra hard enemy with a soft inside at that point. Other than that, energy weapons find their place on our star ships."
>"What were those two you referenced earlier, the um... gauss rifles and rail guns?"
"Their kind of the same things, Gause rifles fire projectiles at about six tenths to two thirds of the speed of light by electromotive conduction as opposed to the typical chemical propellants we use in our rifles. Rail guns, not named for Scientist Carl Fredrich Gauss, are the same things, just slower and with, ironically, actual rifling instead of just a tube surrounded by electromagnets. The material science isn't something I'm particularly familiar with. I'm armorer certified, but I'm not a physicist, nor am I qualified to explain the minutia of the system. Just think of it as rail guns being for bigger projectiles. Next?"
>"Well, a lot of these seem to be pretty predictable, grenades, some kind of signalling devices... what about this?" The tech said, pointing finally to the nano suit and the interaction suit pulled from jack's body.
"The Nano suit itself. Gives full spectrum light sensitivity, shown in false color under the visor, allows superhuman feats with radial functions such as armor, terrain mobility, strength, as well as sustainable chromatophoric active camouflage and high energy usage active cloaking, which allows the suit to turn literally almost invisible for a short time, reducing suit opacity to the lowest three percent of the spectrum."
>"You lost me at active."
"The suit can change colors to blend into the scenery around it, or become transparent."
>"And what of the under garment that was under it?"
"That's the interaction suit, it's used as a buffer between the skin and the suit. Otherwise, all this shit, which is a titanium cobalt lattice structure, would rip it off. The interaction layer also allows neural interfacing. Getting in the suit is painless, but getting out in that suit without the link to the suit cut is living hell. Pitra, thanks for cutting it off, by the way."
>"You're welcome, pet."
>"This is a lot of information you've given us. Why?"
"This is history. Stuff every child should know before they come out of school. They wouldn't trust nano soldiers with sensitive information. You don't get into the damn things unless you specifically volunteer and decide toward it even after lengthy advisement against it or by being a criminal sentenced to time in the suit. I was on my third year of a ten year suit sentence."
>"You understand why this seems like you're playing an angle, right?"
"I am. The angle is that you can't put me back into the suit." Jack finally said with a smile.
"Would be a shame for the lovely lady to have driven me all the way out here for just that. Did you want a look at the inside of the weapons?"
>"umm... Yeah. They seem interesting."
>A day of taking apart the weaponry and discussing their functions followed, along with Jack realizing he'd likely never be able to use the M-34 again. At least not on full auto. He walked them through the weapons components, disassembly procedures, maintenance, ammunition sorting and function. 
>Before long a day had passed, the armorers were more than occupied with creating more munitions for them and looking over the non functional nano suit, theorizing on making it functional again and creating a cradle so the nano suit could at some point be removed. 
>Jack and Pitra were on the way back home in contrast to the techs.
>"So you like weaponry, don't you?"
"What ever gave you that idea?" Jack said, grinning over to Pitra.
>"You get into it. And what was with the voices?"
"I don't know. Just kinda felt it. Rocky the gangster, Bing Crosby... Just some long dead voices that permeated my childhood. In order of appearance by the way."
>"But seriously, with the gear. That was... Are you mentally healthy?"
"Yes. I'm relatively reserved. There are those who HAVE married their guns. Think of that when you ask if I'm too into it."
>"WAIT" Pitra answered, looking to Jack in the passenger seat of the truck "You humans MARRY your rifles?" She demanded, clear shock and disgust on her face.
"Yes, about thirty years or so before that first became an OFFICIAL practice, acknowledged by the government, there were a couple guys, one in particular, who married his electric guitar, a musical instrument that fell out of favor in popular music sometime at the turn of the twenty first century, which would be a hundred and seventy three years or so ago."
>"You humans are DISGUSTING! How can a species look so similar but be so DEGENERATE!?" She demanded once more.
"Don't look at me. Some of the guns actually could manifest a human form. They became a somewhat standard fair in the arms market because there's a certain margin of hobbyists and military who need encouragement. They were guns, but they cold project themselves like any human woman. And before the outright fall of feminism from public favor, and the conservative uprising of the twenty-one-forties, before THAT it was a hilarious twenty five years of the public turning on those who wanted 'social justice' and were thought of as being 'politically left' by the political perspective of the time because they basically declared war on jokes except of course at the expense of white people. So it went that an ENTIRE GENERATION turned to the cartoons of one of the two mature races of the planet, learned to be conservative from watching that DEGENERATE anime, and well... They somehow changed the laws of reality. Rifles began having women in them who were loyal and loving, a stark contrast from the way many women of the past three or four decades had acted, so neither party in the relationship could ACTUALLY complain when people turned to their armaments for all their protection and moral support needs, as well as their reproductive desires. How could real women compete?"
>"Be loving?"
"Not in a lifetime."
>"Not in a life ti- WHAT?"
"There's a specific age where humans find their long term partners most often, about my age. Mid twenties. Waiting another twenty years just isn't an option at that point. For men, they've reached their peak. They'll be in a physical decline by thirty five. and they'll harden as they age. Especially alone. Especially in that timeframe the women would do likewise a couple years earlier, but the difference is women become infertile around forty five. Then they'd buy ten or twelve cats, an animal associated with lonliness and desperately search for a man with low enough standards to take them since they spent their youth being whores and no one wanted their diseased stretched vaginas OR their used up drug contaminated whore bodies. These were the simple realities of the day. That's partially what drove my great great great great grandfather, Anon Mous to his mate, an FAL named Emily, who he married and settled down with after being booted from the newly re-founded Rhodesian army. In this frame of reference, the woman who won't try to shove 'social justice', the laughable concept it is down your throat being far more of a rarity than men who didn't want social justice rammed down their throat, can you understand why such a practice would become common?"
>"Wouldn't the women want to compete?"
"Not for a few decades. At first they could still get the fashionable men. Then THEY stopped when they realized the women were parasites who just wanted to contribute nothing and have everyone else do the work. Then when all the men were marrying their rifles or the few conservative women around who actually wanted a mutually reciprocating relationship, well. Feminism basically died right there, since their major market share of vagina was unable to compete with loving women and rifles who wouldn't cheat or give you a disease, and would still give you youngins."
>"You humans are a fucked up bunch, but I can understand marrying a rifle in that."
"Hahahaha, yeah, nineteen thirty-four to twenty forty we didn't have it together. But if it weren't for the practice of marrying guns... well, I wouldn't exist. I want you to understand that."
>"I do, and with the history you've given me, and that they could have kids with the rifles, I retract my statements of it being degenerate. I didn't realize there was such a history about it or that there were women in them." Pitra replied somewhat apologetically
"Don't worry about it. You couldn't have known. You've heard enough about my history, hell, you've been getting an earful all damn day, how did YOU get to where you are?"
>"Well. Hard to say really, the majority of our history was destroyed when we did it. I suppose like any species, we've been fighting our wars. There was the great race war between the red skinned Acranis and the Blue and green skinned Acranis. Both sides were masters at inventing. It just dragged on forever about a thousand years later a war that had started with both sides using projectile weapons, like the y'indah and the epl'oje, which could be described as a curved stick with a twine for sending projectiles and a long sharp stick for stabbing respectively, ended in what you might call energy weapons and orbital ships. We just kept building better weapons after that for the past two hundred or so years."
"Quite non-descript."
>"Well, it's a bit hard to follow, so many battles that weren't worth naming, it was clash until one side gave out until the end when the red Acranis were wiped out in orbit. I'm only fifty."
"You're fifty? Years old?"
>"Well, yeah! but that's only like... twenty four on your planet."
"How do you know that?"
>"Well, the planet that talks to us across the universe is notable just about always and scientists follow with great interest. We have something similar to your internet. We call it planet band and this is a commonly asked question. But how old are you?"
"Twenty-seven."
>"Twenty seven. Just the right age." Pitra remarked almost to herself in a floating lilt. "We're here." She amended as the truck came to a stop outside the hut.
"Just the right age for WHAT?" Jack answered in an almost accusing tone.
>"Well, I'll give you some time to get comfortable with the idea. But when that time's over, you won't be able to stop me." 
>Jack looked over to Pitra as he exited the vehicle and stared in shock as he realized what she was on about.
"Well I'm glad you're so fond of me, then."

four hours later.
>Pitra woke to an empty bed, where she knew she previously held Jack, his lower core temperature cooling her, feeding into what she felt to be a balance of heat between a creature sensitive to the cold and attracted to the heat of her body, and herself, at home in the heat, but unable to resist the sensation of something, like jack, warm but cool to the touch.
>She rose and threw on a shirt and fatigues, quickly searching the hut for him, finding that he was nowhere in sight.
>She exited her hut to find the area around her was quiet. "Has he run away? Why would he? Is he really that opposed to what I had in mind for him? Did. Did he wander off in his sleep?"
>Pitra stared off into the distance, the silver tones of the planet's two moons, which happened to be full tonight illuminating no tracks, no trampled foliage. Wherever Jack had gone, he didn't leave any tracks. He left like a ghost chasing a shadow.
>"Fuuuuuuck. So there's an alien on the loose in a rural community. I hope whoever sees him first takes sleep medication and is running in the middle of nowhere." Pitra remarked to herself in Acrani. A young girl ran over a ridge and into her view, likely a child on one of the nearby farms.
>"HELP! You're military aren't you?!" The girl asked acrani
>"Yes, I'm military... Have you by any chance seen an alien? Looks like one of us but with smaller eyes, white skin and bigger than most men?"
>"THE SAME! COME ON, THIS WAY!" The girl exclaimed before beginning a sprint back to her farm with Pitra in tow.
>two kilometers of running later they reached the perimeter of the farm, running across half the northern third of the property before coming to a stop.
>"We last saw it that way, it was screaming at its reflection in the pond." the little girl said, pointing into the horizon "I don't want to go back to it, what do we do?"
>"Go inside, stay there. If it's the one I think it is, it'll be fine, just stay calm and go inside. I'll come tell you if I can solve it." Pitra instructed, then started off in the direct the girl pointed.
>Pitra could hear the screams. She was certain it was Jack, his screams of denigration and ire piercing the landscape. There was no certainty to who the screams were directed at, but they were filled with rage and venom.
>As she came close, five hundred yards, the screams vaguely took shape. Three hundred.
"USELESS... VERMIN... UNWORTHY... PARASITE!" Came the words, punctuated by seconds, and audible only between Pitra's breaths.
>Pitra came a hundred yards out to see a woman crouched behind a tree fifty yards from the pond where she could clearly see Jack scathing at his own reflection in the water, striking out at it.
>Pitra approached the woman, and crouched with her. "How long has he been doing this?" She asked in hushed Acrani.
>"About an Hour and a half." came the reply.
"He's not okay."
>"How do you know?" Asked the woman
"I can't really answer that. He's a bit of a guest. You should run back to the house, let me take care of him."
>"Oh. Okay. Thanks." The woman said before beginning a jog back to her hut.
>Pitra waited as she watched the woman disappear from sight. fixing her red eyes on the screaming man.
"FUUUCK YOOUU PARASITE!!!" Jack finished, pointing down into the water before walking out of the pond before collapsing on the ground nearby. 
>Pitra rushed over and rolled him onto his back. eyelids lifted to reveal a darkened set of Green eyes, unresponsively scanning the area, only occasionally collimated on one item or another in the sky.
>slowly, Pitra moved him further away from the water and propped him against a plant that could roughly be described as a tree. 
>Looking over his body, he seemed to have no harm, save for the obvious scarring that occurred during the orbital drop, patched up during his four weeks in a coma in the hospital. The only OBVIOUS change in his physical condition was the suddenly changed pigmentation of his eyes, previously the powdery blue that had befallen all who entered the nano suit, now a bright green.
>"Jack, can you hear me?" she asked him, hoping to pierce through the disorienting haze that had descended into Jack's mind.
>Slowly, Jack's eyes collimated and focused on her, their new green tint giving a soft glow in the silver tones of the moonlight.
"Pitra? Where am I?"
>"You don't remember?"
"No. Last thing I remember was going inside the hut."
>"You were screaming at the reflections in the pond."
"That's... painfully familiar. My first time out of the suit they didn't quite cut the link all the way. so I started wandering and screaming every time i saw my reflection for a few hours. I suppose the good news is that's the last of it. What have they done to me?"
>"I'm glad you're ok. Can you walk?"
"I can walk. I just need a minute."
>"You're not getting a minute, those farmers come back and you're probably getting scooped up by the volunteers."
"Alright, help me up and I'll see if I can walk from there."
>"So, is terrorizing farmers your idea of fun?"
"I mean... depends on the method." Jack replied as Pitra helped him to his feet and began walking, her arm hooked into his to drag him onto her shoulder if he fell.
>"So... Any chance shit like this happened on your planet?"
"about two hundred twenty years ago, give or take a couple decades, people used to say they saw aliens all the time. Granted they were usually jogging in the desert, out in the middle of nowhere, and of course they had already taken their sleeping pills. For decades because of this, many considered ayy lmao's to be non-existent and anyone who reported sightings of them to be mentally defective."
>"What's causing this? Such odd behavior for what seems to be your temperament."
"The wandering was what is usually the last stages of separation syndrome. Typically they'd keep us in cells for five days after skinning while we got the mental apparitions to die down, and that was WITH the proper equipment and cutting the neural link during the skinning process."
>"Always with the suit, does anything ELSE ever make the source of your woes?"
"Lack of self worth amplified by the suit targeting it in an effort to discourage self skinning and body snatching?" Jack answered, only half sarcastically.
>"The suit can't talk! The suit doesn't have a mind!"
"Well, You'd think that'd be true when you're wearing a super computer so powerful it hacks alien computers, but..."
>"My woes are caused by high risk operations behind Icrah territory, thinking each one might be my last and I'll never have anyone shed a tear for my passing, and here you are, complaining your armor is talking to you."
"Yep. And you know what the kicker is?"
>"Shoot."
"You'll never have armor that talks to you."
>"Right where it hurts. Oh well. I have a pet alien."

Chapter 4:Human/Acra relations.
>The relationship between Human and Acra had always been an amicable one. Given that the two races had started their relationship, in more than one way, as a friendly phone call to someone down the street. It always had promise to grow friendlier as the two managed to meet, but to say that they would soon be sharing beds and snuggling with each other would have been ridiculous, and still was for all but Jack, who had so far been the only human to MEET the Acra. The fact that they'd treated him more or less as a guest and saw to it that he'd been taken care of was encouraging. Less so the fact that they'd kept referring to him as a "pet."
>Jack awoke to a head slipping onto his arm, his eyes opening and collimating on a pair of red irises and a warm smile greeting him. He couldn't help but smile contentedly as he realized his new reality. There'd almost certainly be some catch somewhere, and maybe he'd be the key that unlocked diplomacy between the worlds. If the rest of them were as similar and welcoming as he'd seen so far, it might be that in ten or twenty years time they'd be allies or better.
>As he felt Pitra snuggle up closer to him,he thought to the future. Would he become embedded in Acra military? would he ever go home? Did any of that even matter? Did he really care?
>"Lost in thought there, Jack?"
"Yeah. Considering my priorities."
>"Oh? What's on your mind?"
"Just the little questions. Will I ever go home? Do I care? How long until I outstay my welcome? Will I care? Will I stay that long?"
>"You wouldn't leave. Go back to what? The suit? You're a prisoner, a peon, just like me. Do you really think anything GOOD would await you? Tell me. Had I not been along, would they have even came to retrieve your body?"
"No. Nano soldiers are penal. Disposable assets."
>"And for that matter, even if you were back, WHAT would they have to say about you snuggling up to a blue woman with big red eyes?"
"I don't know, depends who you ask. Many would exclaim their lack of surprise for one thing, then there'd be a few that would call me a heretic, then I guess there's those that would remark about how human you look. Hell, play your cards right and they might extend your government an offer to take on the Berlin protocol and become declared part of the Human race. What would YOUR people say if they came in right now and saw us like we are?"
>"Basically an Acra male but huge with smaller eyes white skin and a bit more shy? They might accuse me of having exotic tastes for frail aliens, but the worst they might do would amount to... what's the word? Teasing? Is that the word?"
"So they wouldn't mind then, but they would joke about it?"
>"They don't mind if the alien is BASICALLY one of us."
"Who's the sick degenerate now?"
>"Ha, I suppose I can see that one. But tell me, what do you think of me?"
"In relation to the other Acra I've met? The humans?"
>"Tell me how you feel about me. If you keep being shy about it I'm gonna start breaking bones." Pitra demanded, all levity gone from her face, an intense focus beaming from her face.
>Jack saw the change in her, a bolt of fear went through him, there was a certain way of talking in complete sincerity while being disingenuous.
>Her comment about breaking bones wasn't it.
"Well, until the comment about breaking bones, I thought you were a very sweet and patient girl who had a very charming personality with a body and face to match. Now I'm starting to think all the above with just a hint of some psychotic possessiveness. To be honest, I'm getting the feeling that you're gonna be there any time I interact with any other Acra whether I know or want it or not." Jack answered dryly
>"Why would you WANT to talk to others, Am I not good enough for you!?" Pitra demanded, her chagrin evident.
"Not good enough? Don't make me laugh... or do, I could USE a laugh right about now." Jack answered, the smirk on his face testifying to his quelling of her sudden distress.
>"S-so you're NOT going to try to get away from me?"
"I can live with possessive. I can't function in your society on the other hand, because of the language barrier and all that. Though now that I think of it, since we're on the topic... it seems like you went to a lot of effort to arrange your custody of me. Would you be so kind as to answer this... HOW did it come about that YOU speak English?" Jack asked, realization of something that may or may not be cause for concern crossing his face
>"Well... Truthfully, It's been a popular hobby for years to talk to humans by FTL voice relay, though that required modulation still and only the English speaking countries could afford, from what general knowledge I picked up, to host these lines of communication. So, having talked to humans for a couple years as a hobby, I really wanted to meet one in person. It's been a bit of an obsession for me. Then one day on a planet I can't name with a task I can't specify, I'm waiting to go home until two cruisers are away from the planet's orbit. hours later I'm picking up a set of armor that looks like your muscles if they weren't covered with all that skin. Four weeks later I've got my personal miracle, my obsession realized if you will, and here we are three days later. But... That probably sounds creepy and pathetic to you." Pitra answered, ending the length of it with a morose face that told Jack she'd bared her soul and awaited his merciless appraisal. 
>Some compassion finally flowed through Jack's mind, this was finally someone he could relate with. 
"No. I don't think that's pathetic." He said reassuringly. "I think you're just like me. Come here."
>Jack pulled Pitra close and held her tight, Reassuring the woman of his affections.
>Pitra and Jack lie there for a few minutes before they decided to get up.
>For a couple hours they walked the fields, sat in the sun, looked out over the fields and enjoyed the sunny day, sitting in the warm fields with this blue woman, Jack wandered if he was really alive, if truthfully, he hadn't died when he intended to after dropping from the Ingrid Richter and turning off his suit's healing support, and was the pain, the interaction suit in the hospital merely a subtle transition to the afterlife? Was he wrong to believe that only hell could await him if such a thing existed?
>Then it happened. Pitra's subdermal transmitter rang to life, snapping her from her relaxed state to one Jack recognized as the general state of alert following some kind of call to report in. As she started talking in Acrani to the air, Jack went for what items for readiness he didn't have, like his new boots and the field shirt.
>He didn't know what was going on, but reading Pitra's body language, she was heading in, and he wanted to be ready should he be needed along, or if she was called to bring him in. As he finished up his preparations, Pitra walked into the room and began pulling on her uniform, it was striking to Jack just how familiar the pattern was, surely he'd seen SOMETHING similar on earth, but for now, the questions came to his mind, and now was the time.
"Pitra, what's going on? What's the call about?"
>"We've been called in, How's your... diplomacy?" She said as she sat, resting her face in one hand and rubbing it up her forehead in exasperation. 
"I don't do it for a living. There is potentially a reason for that. Who am I negotiating with?" Jack asked, doubting he'd like the answer.
>"Your new job by the authority of earth and acrassas is ambassador."
"Damn."
"So I take it we're leaving now."
>"Yes. So a couple penal soldiers get to meet the king."
"Wait a MINUTE, you people have a monarch?"
>"...Yeah. Don't you?"
"Not in any meaningful capacity in a few hundred years. We've mostly moved to democracy and republican government."
>"Democracy? Republic?"
"You know what mob rule is?" Jack asked her as they started out the door.
>"Yes. We have that concept."
"So, imagine mob rule where everyone is asked to take a vote, and they all agree to go along with what the majority says. That's democracy. In a republic it's SIMILAR, except they choose a few individuals to represent each part of the mob by location, and those individuals make the choice for the whole mob." Jack explained.
>"There's so much wrong with that, I can't even begin."
"Then don't, it's much more refined than that, but I just don't want to put too fine a point on it, what I would like to do is get some information about something, but lets get on the road." Jack said as he hopped into the truck and the drive began. 
"Are there any known diseases on this planet that are severely lethal, or were in the past, but have not since seen the light of day in many years?"
>"Um, some of the more common illnesses that occur on the ekler sickness, the in'lah, and the alke'har. The more severe ones that I hear about are the polir, the yabuk, and I guess you'd call the worst of them the red plague."
"The red plague? How bad is it?" Jack asked, knowing he likely had no immunity to any of the microbial malignancies of the planet.
>"Well, you'll notice we're all blue or green. Well, shit turns our skin red when we're infected. The death rate is seventy percent. On the other hand, if you survive it, you get immunity."
"And how infectious is that?" Jack asked, now realizing his potential to be dead in not too long.
>"We get a few million here, a few million there. It stays on another continent though."
"Well, we'll have to take care about that. Immunize before visits."
>"Too late for that, you're already here."
"Now that I think of it... I'm not sure I want to take you to earth."
>"Why's that?"
"You have what, six of those diseases that you named? We've got countless. Just the deadly ones for you, Bubonic plague, Ebola, Malaria, Hanta virus, influenza of countless variants that have turned to super-strains, hell, we got so many we gave up NAMING them and just gave them countless acronyms like H1N1 and MRSA. Then there's Rhinovirus, HIV and various others. Usually it's easy for people to fight off Rhinovirus, until HIV turns to AIDS. Then a virus so harmless they call it 'the common cold' becomes the thing that kills you."
>"Well, how pervasive are these?"
"One third of all people on earth get the common cold. We'd have to see what genetic similarity there is between you and me, but you might be immune by being unreachable, or you could be about as immune to things as minor as rhinovirus as the natives of south america were to smallpox. Needless to say, they weren't immune to smallpox in the least. The conquistadors landed on the beaches, someone from the tribe met with them and headed back to the city to tell about their arrival, then, a little while later they leave the beaches and head inland to find the cities. The cities are empty, strewn with corpses baring painfully obvious signs of smallpox and measles. Turns out these people a continent over had no immunity. Now imagine a pretty blue thing across the universe goes to another planet."
>As they neared the military base, Pitra looked to Jack with just one question.
>"Jack..." She said, trying to focus on the truck's movement and contemplate the question at the same time, forming it in her mind. "Jack. What's your whole name? Like you'd have on a record of something."
>Jack thought about the severity such a question usually entailed before deciding to give an unabridged answer. She could know.
"John Herman."
>"I can know that before I die if I'm unlucky." She said.
"So you're coming with me to earth then?" Jack asked, practically to himself more than to her.

>"Can I go like we are? On your arm?"

"Yeah. It'd be nice to head out to earth and show you some of the things I've seen and lived with. I could show you Salisbury in Rhodesia."

>"Is that where you live?"

"Not in about five years. But it's where I'm from. A beautiful city really."

>The ride came to an end, Jack and Pitra got out and walked to the officer on duty.

>"afdmssngnjsdngsdngsgsd" was what Jack made out as Pitra began talking to the officer. He rose from his chair and started away signalling the two to follow. The two obliging.

"Pitra, What's going on?"
>"He's taking us to the transport. It's waiting for us."

>Soon Jack and Pitra found themselves in the cargo bay of a transport headed for a royal palace where they'd receive orders from the king of the acra.
>Somewhere.
>Some time.
>Is it here?
>NOW?!
>Jack's consciousness surged from a peaceful haze as he found himself in the cradle, the carbon black nano muscular structure of the MKVIII nano-muscle suit, or nano-suit for short protruded in front of him as he reached upward to block the light, only managing to realize he no longer needed to shield his eyes to prevent damage, and reminding him that he was now implanted in the suit.
>"Welcome to the twenty-fifth, Gauntlet. You're here for ten years.
>Before he knew it, Jack found himself on a battlefield with an M-20 like he'd always carried. Bathed in bullets, small caliber projectiles bounced off his suit as though they never connected, a blue bar showing degradation of suit energy.
>Jack went about firing on the assailants, the thrill of the fight gone, the urgency of avoiding death replaced by that of some unexpressed challenge to eliminate enemy soldiers as quickly as possible, not as a thrill or a fright, but just as an ongoing nuisance that had to, for some reason, be rectified quickly.
>Jack began using the suit less conventionally and began using its capabilities if for no other reason than to keep the fight interesting, see how much he could keep them on their heels why he decimated them.
>The suit's communication suite began picking up all transmissions in the theater, filtering signal from noise, and delivering to him enemy communications calling for airstrike. He watched bored as he saw the munitions depart from enemy aircraft.
>Jack watched as the tanks of incendiary mixture detonated mere feet from him. For some reason he heard them and yet... it wasn't right.
"Wasn't this intimidating?" He thought to himself
>As he heard the tanks spread their firing venom he heard no the thunder he recognized as napalm being dropped. But rather some sort of thunder far deeper and far more reaching to his mind than napalm should have been.
>As Jack thought of it more, the scene seemed less and less real, the consequences of being hit with napalm, even with the suit, being painful, seemingly less stinging and more droning as he felt it again and again, the tanks hitting the ground again, and yet again.
>Jack heard the thunder reach all the way into his mind as he realized where he was.
>"Jack? Jack..." A voice echoed though his mind from somewhere not readily apparent in his surroundings.
>"JOHN." Came the voice again, shattering the world around him as his mind flung from this hell, this...memory. His eyes snapped open as he began drawing breath from his idle state, filling his lungs and coming to alert.
>"Are you okay?" Finally came the voice of a worried Pitra, who sat looking into Jack's face closely, cradling his head in her lap.
"I'm fine. What's wrong?"
>"I was worried, you were twitching and mumbling about something." Pitra answered.
"Yeah. it was just uh... it was just a fever dream." Jack managed to get out, his face now giving hints of being ragged, as though the dream itself have beaten his body and left his joints sore.
>Pitra looked down into his eyes and saw that he stared back. She could tell he was looking past her. in his head must have been something resembling the sounds of hell.
"I dreamed about my first day with the twenty-fifth. I started to get lucid when I got to the napalm strike. On me."
>"Napalm?"
"liquid fuel. Like you put in your truck back on acrassis. Just thicker. And on fire. It burns most who get a hit from it."
>"You know, Jack. I thought you were primitive when you told me you used projectile weapons. Now I think you're just a savage." Pitra answered, stroking his brown hair as she looked down into his eyes.
"Well, if that's what you're into..." Jack answered with a smug grin.
>"Not like that. Although..."
"Well, we got another week before we reach earth. You'll get plenty of chances."


Chapter 5: Somewhere In Time.
>July 29, 2168 
>John thought to his last week as he approached the bench. How he'd gotten into this mess was clear enough, a battered Major across the room behind a guard testifying that an otherwise quiet Sergeant had drunkenly beat him senseless after "a few" remarks about his silence. In truth, John was drunk and the Major, clearly in the wrong place followed up on a series of comments stretching over months regarding many things, what they were, even as he sat in the court room weren't important, not to John, the Major, and almost certainly not to the panel presiding over the court marshal or even to Pam, his issued M-20. Oh well, she wouldn't miss him.
>"Sergeant Herman, stand." John stood as he awaited the punishment handed down. "Sergeant Herman, given your otherwise exemplary service record and the psychological profile made available to this panel, I would like to extend you a choice if no one on the panel objects." 
>The head of the panel looked to his peers and met silence. "A choice of punishment. You can lose ten years in a military prison, or you can lose twenty, aging only ten in a nano suit. I'll leave the decision of which is worse to you. With that, I'd like to adjourn this court marshal for ten minutes while the panel deliberates any objections. think it over in that time, Sergeant."
>With that, the court adjourned, John walking out to mull the idea over as though somehow the world was such a parody that prison might be better than the alternative.
>As he thought about it, he felt an elbow in his side prompting him to look to the angry face of Jenny, as always, angry at him.
"What now?!"
>"Shut up. What are you doing? I've pulled you out of so much shit and now you go and pull this."
"I'm stuck between prison and the twenty-fifth and eighty-eighth." John answered bitterly at the rifle.
>"So... That's it?"
"Yeah. You can finally be rid of me." John answered
>"B-But-"
"NO. Don't you fucking try that. You never had any affection for me, don't you fucking start now."
>"I... I took you for granted. I didn't know you'd do some stupid shit like this."
"Granted. I WAS granted. But now that you don't get me anymore, the next guy gets to put up with your shit. Until he does some shit and then you start to feel for him too."
>John knew he was wrenching her inside, but he didn't care. Jenny had been a bitch to him for years, even up to that morning. If he did anything, it was wrong according to her, and she wouldn't hesitate to tell him about it.
>A heavy sigh escaped John's lungs as he watched the 5'11" woman's face contort with the pain of having finally been appraised by all whose appraisal might matter as worthless.
"I guess I'll go for the nano suit."
>"D-Do you really hate me that much?"
"I don't hate you Jenny. In fact, you're like family. But I'm not going to be nice to you anymore. I'm going to be honest. You need to hear it, so here it is. You're a psychotic hyper judgemental bitch who's given me little but grief in the two years we've worked together, and hasn't once voiced any opinion on me or anything I do that wasn't spite or disapproval. You're just the worst, and now that some of your unending stream of negativity and criticism is directed back at you, you cry like you yourself haven't said all these things to me countless times in the last two years."
>"B-But, those were different!"
"HOW?" John demanded as he watched her clasp onto him, crying into his chest
>No response came. for two minutes she merely held onto him meekly. She'd get no sympathy from him. All she did was point out his negative qualities and the meaninglessness of his finer qualities for two years.
>"So that's it? You're just leaving me?"
"What choice do I have? Prison, and we're separate forever, I get out and get cast out, nano suit and they don't allow geists, owing to high chance of getting stuck on a planet in nowhere forever."
>"So I guess that's it then. I don't know what to say..."
"There's nothing more to say. Maybe when we next meet I'll be out of it. Or maybe they'll send you to me when we run out of M-34's, or get embedded in a company of space marines."
>"The though of you with some giant M-34 sized whore. I hope you like her."
"No geists for troops intended to go off world. Remember? Marooned on a planet in the middle of nowhere alone forever would suck. Bad enough if a troop craft crashes with no survivors. Worse if the geists are the only ones to survive and don't rate anything approaching a rescue."
>"Right. no geists. But what about me?"
"You'll be reissued, maybe treat the next guy like you like him. At least keep the relationship professional instead of venomous. I'd like to talk more but... our time is up."
>John patted Jenny on the back and walked back into the courtroom as she watched with tears in her eyes.
>"Have you reached your decision?"
"Yes, sir. I've decided on the nano suit."
>"Good choice. You're going to the twenty-fifth of the eighty-eighth where you will be stationed at earth defense sector five."
>A week later, John was escorting Jenny to the armory, and in another month he'd be in sector five talking to an administrator only known as "Ghost"
>By 2071 John had become a more gregarious and friendly person, having spent a year in and another out of the nano suit, currently into his second year in the suit. He truly felt that he'd regained a lost sense of youth, having no sleep or need of it or any other of the plethora of creature comforts that occurred outside the nano suit. Really, the only thing a nano soldier could do was work, talk to others, take up a craft hobby, which of course would be prohibitive since nano soldiers spent a great deal of their total time occupied in some deployment where these hobbies and crafts would be inaccessible. 
>Jack had stopped being John the mentally aged and cynical man devoid of youth and joviality, and began being Jack, the young nano soldier of twenty-five who acted like he was 19, save for his relatively shy demeanor of that age, which had since disappeared, replaced first by his bitterness at living with Jenny in his arms, pissing on the embers of his happiness every step of the way until he was twenty-two.
>"These nano suits are the most mixed blessing I've ever worn." Said Fireball, a new addition to the unit.
"You must be new here. What's this? Fifth day?"
>"Yeah. Something like that. How did I get here?"
"Committed a crime, made the wrong choice when the asked which punishment you'd prefer?"
>"Yeah... Something like that. I guess I was stealing a car and they sent me here. How did you get here?"
"I was in the first of the ninth, got into it with a Major, kicked his ass, so he pressed charges even though he asked for it. I used to have the whole sad smile going too."
>"HOW CAN YOU SEE THAT?"
"I can't. I can read your voice and judge by your inflection that you're reminiscing about better times by the stresses in it."
>"What do you do for entertainment when you have one of these things?"
"Take up arts and crafts or what ever. But you generally won't have time for any of that except for drawing. There's group gatherings. No sleep, you see."
>"What's there to do, assuming that you even CAN do arts and crafts in these things?"
"Well, to start with, the suits have great dexterity, you can carry a porcelain teacup across a battlefield in one of these without breaking it. Some people take up old fashioned machining, like they used to do two-hundred years ago, some take up painting or drawing, they can be really good at it. Sit around in circles painting happy clouds and such."
>"What do you do?"
"Talk to people, read, reminisce about times and folks gone by, turn my own pens."
>"Folks gone by? Suppose I can relate."
"Nothing quite like having people around and then suddenly having no one. Every now and again I wonder if my family would recognize me."
>"Don't think my own dear ma would recognize me. Girlfriend left me when she found out what I did."
"Every now and then, I think of my old rifle."
>"Oh yeah, you're in from prior. Did you love her? Was she hot?...Good in bed?"
"No. She was like family, her name was Jenny. All the way to the morning of my court marshal she treated me with scorn and contempt. Everything I did was wrong in her eyes, but... Truthfully, you only see things in clarity after they've passed. I took it to heart. Took it too hard. It wasn't scorn, really. We loved each other in our way. Just... not a joyful way. It wasn't until the day of the court marshal I saw even the slightest act of attachment from her. I miss her now and again, but... I don't think she'd recognize me being happy. I know she wouldn't let that happiness last. You?"
>"Occasionally I think of Rachel. Pretty brunette, nicest girl you ever saw. I don't know why I didn't marry the girl. She couldn't stand to see me unhappy. I dumped her and went after a bitchy tramp named Kelsey. She was a typical trust fund baby, always talked about how we should sympathize with the Ic'rah and how oppressed and yada yada yada she was. But... A workin' man's gotta be a workin' man. Play the hand you're dealt, ya know."
"Yeah."
>"Well, I figure that's enough about PEOPLE, the shitheads they are. When's lunch?"
"Lunch? OH, LUNCH! I don't think you get it. You're in the suit. You don't eat, sleep, drink or shit."
>"Oh. Right."
"You'll fit right in. I got something to attend to."
>"Hey! Take care."
"You too, Fireball. You too." Jack said as he walked away with a smile.

Chapter 6: A Happy Home? 
>Jack woke from his sleep aboard the all too familiar ship with none of the subconscious cues of day that made him stay up and make noise present, he felt only a sense that it was time to at least be quiet, and an ennui creeping over him, which would have overtaken him about the same time he adjusted to a twenty-five hour day.
>As Jack came to his senses he started to stroke Pitra's hair, pretty and white against the blue skin of her face. He noted that the both of them vaguely smelled of sweat with a hint of alocohol on the breath.
>As he leaned up to check the MET chronometer and figure out how long it'd been since the ship launched he heard Pitra let out a sweet grunt and a small adjustment of her head as his shoulder moved underneath it, finding a new, position on his chest as he lied back down and pulled her close, causing her to stir a bit in his arms before coming to a stop and slowly opening her eyes.
"Morning, sweetheart." Jack said, looking strsight into the red irises and smiling softly.
>"Good morning, sexy." She said as she pushed herself up to his head level and kissed him softly on the lips.
"Sleep well?" 
>"What can I say? You took a lot out of me last night." Pitra answered as she sat up and stretched, her supple breasts and midriff now fully exposed to Jack. "Put a lot in, too." She amended.
>As Jack thought about it, his sleep induced haze finally giving way to lucidity, he realized that she'd made good on her promise that she wouldn't be stopped when she was done waiting for him, and that he'd made good on his own promise that she'd have ample opportunity to catch him alone and in the mood. 
"So. We..." Jack probed for words as he tried to think faster than he spoke, failing by volumes
>"We mated." Pitra cooed to Jack before planting a kiss on him and resting her head at the base of his neck.
"Mated. So that's what you call it." Jack remarked, mulling over this tidbit of the Acra culture in his head.
>"Well, you could say we made hate as you humans call it, but it was much too loving an act for that to fit."
"First, it's 'Make love,' and second, what kind of humans were you talking to that you picked up that vulgarity and not the actual expression?"
>"Ha. Must've been deviants. Though I do like the sound of that. 'Make love.' It sounds so poetic." Pitra remarked as she thought of the expression and lay her head on Jack's shoulder, pulling his face to hers.
>After several minutes, Pitra and Jack finally decided to get out of bed, Pitra taking the lead and showing off her shapely and well toned rump complemented by a pair of long supple legs and the same similar midriff Jack had witnessed earlier, taking all his effort not to turn the morning routine into another round while the two went for the shower. They would, afterall be landing in only a few short hours.
"So, how do you wanna play this?"
>"Try to seduce you whenever I'm in the mood, forcably if you're not." 
"I was thinking more along the lines of whether you want to present yourself as my guard or..."
>"Arm candy. I want to present myself as your woman." Pitra answered, turning and looking up to Jack's face several inches abover her own.
"You'll hear no objection from me." Jack answered as he leaned down and kissed Pitra.

>Before long Jack and Pitra had managed to shower and dress, the ship landed, the crew finally came to ease, and the MET chronometer was logged, with a second watch set on landing.
>As Jack and Pitra walked arm in arm down the ramp they were greeted by a man in a formal suit. 
>"Good evening to... you two..." He said, his quarter grayed hair visibly moving as his face adjusted in clear disarray. Jack knew immediately that he was being sized up. The man attempted to continue on, his shift in voice buried under a shade of nonchalance. "Unfortunately the president couldn't come out to meet you due to some unforeseen security concerns. If you'll follow me, I'll be happy to take you to him."
"I understand how these things can jump out at you, please, Lead the way." Jack answered.
>As they walked, Pitra looked at Jack and saw his utmost professionalism and dignity of posture, noting that while he escorted her by the arm, he kept his chin up, chest out, shoulders back and jaw clenched. His face didn't seem to follow the man leading the way, so much as stay forward on the path he would walk in the man's wake, Jack on the other hand, only felt Pitra's eyes on the side of his head, with some sensation telling him that she was making a "lost bewildered child" or otherwise longing face, which of course would be interesting if true, given the people grazing the wall as they passed through, most likely somehow recording the event.
>"Jack?"
"Yes?"
>"Who are these people?"
"I recognize some of them, reporters for media outlets, the guys with the shorter haircuts are guards, I can tell because I see their J-25's, I think there are even some of president Jackson's cabinet members here."
>"Reporters?"
"They watch things, then tell other people that things happened."
>"Oh. So why would the president try to meet us on the landing pad even WITHOUT the security issues?" 
"Well, whether or not that line is true is up to speculation, but the president tries to show himself as much as he safely can and be as accessible as possible with a reasonable degree of safety, it isn't every day or even decade that an ambassador is briefed to represent us to another species, let alone with a lovely example of it on his arm." 
>"Oh, stop, you'll make me blush!"
"Speaking of feeling, if you feel anything odd at all while we're here, tell me right away."
>"I will! Suddenly so concerned!" 
"Ah, here we are. This is the presidents office. Madam, after you." Jack said as he disengaged from Pitra's arm, and made way for Pitra to proceed through the door as was expected of a propper gentleman.
>Jack struggled to keep all merriment from his face as he did this, being a sensible man, and not at all unaware of Just how ridiculous such an act of dicipline appeared when he was wearing what amounted to the least formal appearance in the history of such a formal event as briefing an offworld ambassador of humanity, clad in Flacktarn fatigues, a pair of black boots, and a flecktarn shortsleeve military blouse. 
>In Jack's head, images of disheveled characters named Colonel Clink and Sergeant Shultz flashed through his mind, standing at attention for some high strung nazi officer passing through with a clear look of disgust for the undiciplined oafs who managed to somehow maintain a record of no escapes in a prison camp.
>Jack followed Pitra into the oval office and took up the lead once again, cuing her in to shake president Jackson's hand, sit down and have a drink with them.
>"Good evening, you must be the John Herman I've been hearing so much about." Richard stated "And you are?" He inquired looking at Pitra.
"Mister President, this is Pitra."
>"I see, nice to meet you. If you don't mind my asking, what is the nature of your accompanying mister Herman?"
>"Well I guess you could say I'm his guard."
>"Is he a troublemaker?"
>"No, we figured he'd need one here more than acrassas. Naturally, since I found him, and he's lived with me since we managed to get him out of that armor he was wearing, I was the best for the job."
>"Well, shall we get down to business?" 
"You'll hear no objection from me." 
>"Well, we've seen the rather friendly relationship between the worlds grow closer, evidently even making a first rendezvous, so now the hard part is over. Now we get to strengthen relations between the worlds, as though the staggering amount of good will between our worlds hadn't been evident enough. In keeping it brief, I'm assigning you to be the human ambassador to acrassas at the behest of their king, I am assured their ambassador will be along in a matter of weeks and you will be my chief representative over there, in time, I hope that the two worlds can work on a variety of issues that are yet unadressed, like immunizing them to earthly diseases and vise versa in order to make travel and even coexistence with them possible in a short time, maybe even joining in coalition as an ally. Your work will be primarily toward that goal, and you'll ultimately have a large degree of freedom to pursue it."
"I thank you for the high degree of trust you put in me." 
>"Now with that over, I think it's time to share a drink and give the cameras some pretty picutres."
>In seconds the room flooded with reporters, gathered around to see the two men and the Acrani have a drink.
>Before too long, President Jackson decided that the reporters had more than enough, and he had more important or rather, other business to attend to, which meant further prolonged exchange with the new ambassador and his guard would further backlog any of these other affairs, not that their relative importance could truly be measured in his eyes.
>"Hey, it's been great talking to you, John, however, I've got a few affairs to take care of. and I'm sure you're eager to start on your vacation here before you have to head back to acrassas. Live it up and such."
"You're not wrong, I'd like to return Pitra's grace and show her around earth, maybe show her around my own hometown of Salisbury."
>"You're Rhodesian? Where were you stationed? If you don't mind my asking."
"I was stationed in Georgia, er sector five. Though I DID do some time out around Mars, Kepler 22 and even Kulundu and kulindi during the joint Pok-Human operations against the Ic'rah."
>"Kulindi?! Did you happen to know someone named Tyson Smith?"
>At the question Jack's face took on a morose expression, the sour thought entering his head.
"Yeah. I knew him. Orion was his name."
>"I only ask because I could never find anything about... what happened to him."
>As Jackson's face turned timid and pleading, asking to know what happened, Jack looked for a moment, down and seemingly through the world around him before snapping back to the present and answering.
"You'd have to have seen it." Jack answered before drawing in a breath and letting out a sigh. "I'm not going to discuss it."
>"Sorry I brought it up."
"No worry. If you'll excuse me, I've got some walking around to do."
>With that remark, Jack shook the president's hand, and departed the white house, strolling the national mall with Pitra in tow, absorbing the strange sights.
>Eventually the two came along to the monuments that had stood for two centuries since or more. "What are these?" Pitra asked, looking on the strange and obviously out of place buildings.
"Well, these are the monuments. On the end there..." Jack said pointing to the east, "... is the capitol building. It's where congress makes laws and decides national actions, though there's been a good bit of criticism and revolt whenever the ADD laws for the past hundred and fifty years, though. They mostly repeal them, wait for their maximum of four years to end now. To the right of that, are some of the Smithsonian museums, to the left there is one behind many of the federal government buildings that comprise various branches. That obelisk not too far from the middle is that Washington monument."
>Pitra's face perplexed as she said "It looks like something else."
"You're about a hundred and seventy years late to be the first to make THAT joke. It's a tower meant to honor George Washington, first president, and one of the first men to openly rebel against England during the american revolutionary war, about four hundred years ago."
>"What was it about?"
"A two percent tax on tea. The coercive acts, didn't feel like they were being heard when the government was so far away they had to take any where from six and a half to twelve weeks to make the trip from the government, to the governed. ONE WAY."
>"Who has the time to govern like that?"
"English, I guess."
>"What's this one behind us?"
"Lincoln memorial. He trample the whole United States bill of rights during his reign in the civil war, eventually wearing down the southern states with total war; A practice in which citizens of opposing states would be robbed in order to reduce the wealth of the states. Incidentally he also caused major problems in this country over a century and a half after his death. Fuck him. Fuck him and his top hat."
>"Sounds like he fucked something up."
"Yeah. The priorities."
>"So what happened?"
"So he sacrificed over half a million people for a segment of the population who wouldn't appreciate that sacrifice. A big one at the time, and of course, he set the precedent that government could do whatever it wanted in the interest of preserving or expanding its power, which was followed up on about seventy years later by Franklin Roosevelt." 
>"I don't get it. What's the big deal."
"Once upon a time, here, the government could spy on you at all times. It was around the time grandpa Anon I told you about was serving as a draftee in the U.S. Army. Luckily, in the building we came from to get here, once sat a president who got the ball rolling on getting the government out of most things."
>"What does that even mean?"
"Tell me, does the king watch you eat when you eat? How about when you bathe."
>"They couldn't... why would anyone do such a thing?"
"When you're not as popular as you claim to everyone who opposes you, suppressing those who do so openly requires a massive spying apparatus to discredit, silence, or kill them."
>"The hell was going on?"
"A bit. I'm read on this because it has a bit to do with how my home nation of Rhodesia ceased to exist between nineteen eighty and twenty twenty-one."
>Pitra looked at him, recognizing that zeal, the kind she'd felt a couple years earlier, when she was only forty four or so years old by her planet's standards. "Question, have you ever tried to understand your enemies?"
"I try to get in their heads to predict their actions, but beyond that, no. People tried that before. Our lessons are written on their graves."
>"So I have to ask, Jack what do you feel like, to see the universe like this, the things lost for those gained in the pursuit of things like peace between your people and mine? My people would never give up our old rural way of life more than necessary, but yours?"
"Two hundred and four years ago, the first man landed on the moon. I managed to pick up this media player while we were in the white house, so... I'd like you to listen to something. is there music on acrassas?" 
>"Yes."
"Maybe it'll relate to you then. You see, music is a reflection of the time that spawns it in my culture. When we first made all these achievements, in the middle of that competition, people people had a view of this. but... as we spent more time and money on the ground, not really going beyone low orbit for decades... the view stagnated, degenerated. Leftists of the early twenty first century denied that it even happened at all. Look. I. I know it must seem such a small step to get to the moon these days, only two hundred twenty thousand miles away as it is. But... THEN! Then, the people who achieved that were the heroes of the world. so... I just want you to understand the gravity of this when you hear it. This was all of humanity's hopes and dreams, for a better tomorrow, for a future without the strife that's always plagued us. We used to live on farms, work hard labor just to live, sure life's gotten much easier, we gained a lot, we also lost a lot of bad... but I can't help feeling something was lost in this great transition that shouldn't have been given up without consideration. This song, Pitra, was my great great great great great granfather, it was all of us when that man was my age."
>Jack raised the volume on the media player and pressed play, handing it to Pitra before beginning to sing along to the old familiar song of his childhood. 
>by the time the song had ended, Pitra had shed a tear, and wiped her eye before speaking.
>"That was beautiful."
"My mother used to sing that song to me before bed when I was a kid. I never thought about it until I was older. I researched how people lived in those times and it took on a whole new meaning as I learned more. There was a movie about it back when called the right stuff. The effort I had to go to just to watch it was extraordinary, and I just couldn't believe how different it was. The setting, the way of life, how people lived in those days was... well, alien compared with my own life. Closer to your own life on accrassas, but even THAT was closer to fifty years after that movie's lifestyle."
>"I see, you feel loss over what's changed and been replaced with something that might be better for everyone else, but not for you. You hold that belief that you aren't wrong even if others are right passionately, and disapprove of all this change that's had to happen because even the paradise of peace an familiarity must recede to the necessary changes of the perdition chosen by all others for you, even so indominable as to preclude you from even living at the same time as them to so much as raise your voice about it."
>Jack thought about what she said for a second before she continued. "You know, Jack. I think I've learned more about you just in the last couple minutes than even in all our time together before them. You're sweet, you're pasionate about what you believe... But you know ehat strikes me about you the most?" Pitra asked, desperately trying to keep a straight face
"That I'm a sentimental fool?" Jack offered.
>"Haha, you're so EASY to wind up get going!" Pitra said, now unable to stifle her laughter, which reached a cackle as Jack matched her, realizing how comically correct she was.
"Good god, you're right." Jack said, managing to stifle his laugh.
>"If I wasn't basically the representative of species right now, I'd be bullying you for being so easy to bait." 
"How many of you did it take to move me from the drop can? And what did you use to assist?"
>"Nothing, I just picked you up and carried you to the ship."
"HOW?! In a suit I'm like sixteen hundred pounds!"
>"Now, before you question if I COULD bully you, ask yourself this. Can you move the suit without the suit?"
"Hell no... well, actually, it IS possible for the average human. It's just not strictly at will. And it would physically harm the human from exertion."
>"Ooh, an anatomy lesson! Do tell." Pitra urged
"Well, Humans have muscles they use for everything involving movement. They can only voluntarily engage one third of the fibers at a time save for when the brain perceives an extreme crisis that could be averted by the use of all of them at once."
>"So... what would allow people to do this?"
"Well, an example over a hundred years old, a man was scaling a steep rockface over a thousand feet from the ground, he comes to a small lerch and starts climbing from it, as he begins the climb, a fifteen hundred pound boulder dislodged from the rock face, his arms supporting it are the only thing keeping it from crushing it, but because of its weight, it's dragging him to the edge of the perch. Well, his brain sees the crisis and he uses all the muscle fibers between his arms and shoulders. He throws the boulder off the cliff face, but when he manages to climb down and get to an emergency room, he's covered in his own blood, skin on his arms and shoulders torn or stretched out, and then his muscles are torn up because a lot of the outer fibers got extended too far to stay in one piece."
>"Lived to be like 90, right?"
"Ha! No. Died four months later when camping in a cave on el capitan. Lightning strike dropped him off the cliff."
>"...Wow."
"Camp on a cliff, what do you expect?"
>"When you put it that way..."
"Yep. Is there anywhere you want to visit before we head to the hotel?"
>"I kind of wanted to visit this landmark I heard about before I went to prison, MT.Everest?"
"we're on the other side of the planet from that. And the air on the peak is incredibly thin, we'd have to dress REALLY warm and look, that's a lot more risk than I'm willing to take with you for your first time on earth and probably more than I'll ever be comfortable taking."
>"I've heard it's so beautiful, though, how bad could it be?"
"Well, the place is a literal graveyard and landfill because human biology until the nano suits came along prevented any other option but literally throwing your trash on the ground and leaving it, including corpses, who would quickly assume ambient temperature of negative two hundred or something, and about a quarter of the two thousand or so corpses that have been created are so well preserved and until recently impossible to recover with any reasonable degree of safety that even George Mallory of the British army is still up there looking like a human puddle minus the liquids."
>"Who?"
"Guy who's been dead two hundred forty-nine years."
>"So what? You're afraid of seeing dead bodies?"
"No, though the bodies on that mountain are unsettling if you search out images. I'm more afraid of joining them. Shit that's hard to explain but alarmingly simple happens up there. We mitigate the risks so ONLY two thousand have died up there. We don't know how your body would react, so we don't know how we could shield it."
>"Oh. That's... really morbid. I kinda wanted to see greenboot's cave, but with all thoses gruesome things... Now I don't think I want to."
>Jack thought about what she'd just said, realizing what greenboot's cave was.
"Oh, Pitra. If only you knew the irony of what you just said."
>"What?"
"Green boots is the nickname of a mountain corpse."
>"Is it even a cave?"
"More like a tiny nook under a rock... with a dead guy in it."
>"That's... bad. Why do people go there?"
"Thrill seekers. Same reason people still ride motorcycles, street race, drive cars at all, do skydiving, or whatever other thing. Surely people do excessively dangerous things because their fun or give them a 'rush' on your planet too."
>"Yes, we have motorbikes and street races. I'm... actually really interested now, what other morbid stuff is there on that mountain?"
"There's an area they got to cleaning out a couple years ago called 'Rainbow Valley' in reference to the four hundred corpses adorned in brightly colored mountaineering apparel, there was a woman called sleeping beauty after she froze to death. Better things to die over."
>"What was HER thing?"
"Fuck if I know, it was one of my brief on-world assignments in the suit, so quite a few nights were spent searching the net from the sides of the mountain, waiting to be able to move again without the suit sliding ever so slightly. Naturally why all these fucking corpses look like they died yesterday and dressed in old fashioned down cloth with hobnail boots was a quick one. But, hey. I suppose it prepared us for Kilundu, where the terrain was literally mountain non-stop mountains with a nitrogen atmosphere."
>"I went to Heptora for a month when we had our run ins with the Lirt species. They were six legged crab people who hurled their eggs into space and from there the eggs would repeat. Well, a cluster lands on a planet near the Acra imperium and we take pre-emptive action. By the time we'd gotten there, they were in tunnels, operating from the planetside was impossible. So for a month I was deployed, went on my patrols, went back to the ship immediately. They were quick to be wiped out... but when they attacked... They didn't attack from the rocks. They WERE the rocks."
>"'Y'lep slyiusd yiliuck, anfhrgr' they said. 'Sk'tlyipe fsjuick jikimin' ah' They said to us. It was a load of shit as you'd say, but I can't deny it got the blood pumping."
"What happened? I've droned on about random shit in detail for a while, lets hear some of your stories."
>"We came to this valley, like any valley on any nondescript world, wearing our translucent atmosphere suits. I looked great in mine, as always. Then we hear this thunder, mind you the planet has an atmosphere of literally nothing but hydrogen. Good thing we brought our trusty plasma projectors. So we begin scanning all around us, and suddenly, BOOM. THE GROUND BENEATH US DROPS."
"So they used a seismic isolation to trap you? How far did it drop?"
>"About as far as you are tall and a half."
"So nine, ten feet?"
>"If you're six, then that'd be right. Anyway, we find ourselves surrounded by Lirt, and Tepri, our team leader shouts out 'So much simpler now, SHOOT EVERYWHERE!' So we begin shooting in every direction as they approach, eventually stacking their dead so high we had to advance to the point of stabbing them with charging hilts before we could fire on them some more."
"Sounds about right for bugs."
>"'Sounds about right for bugs?' What does THAT mean?"
"Well, that's how they've been imagined by many if they were to be formidable enemies to be fought on a battlefield with actual weapons as opposed to chemical agents."
">"Well, anyway, we killed thousands of those bugs and you think I'm a hero and I accept the responsibility."
"Why does that sound... nevermind. Wanna go get a bottle of scotch and get drunk at the hotel?"
>"As fun as that seems, why bother? If it's anything like the scotch we were enjoying in the company of that 'president Jackson' fellow, it'll just taste like spit."
"like spit, eh?"
>Jack fell into thought as Pitra delivered her affirmative answer on the last utterance.
"Were we drinking before we last slept?" Jack asked.
>"No- Oh. Maybe we WILL get drunk."
>"I still remember it. The most disturbing thing I ever saw from the Lirt was when their losses mounted so high that the hive mind collapsed. All those catacombs, and you never knew until they were in striking distance whether or no they were dead. A few good soldiers died before we confirmed that we'd killed the queen. So... why do you drink scotch on this planet?"
"To help forget things like what you just described. That disturbing last part, I mean. or at least to help come to terms with it. The alcohol in it impairs brain function."
>"Is the goal to be intoxicated?"
"Pretty much. or... inebriated."
>"Oooooh... Which way to the hotel?" 
"That way, shall we?" 
>"Yes! I think I know why the scotch tastes like spit. Come on!"
>With that, Pitra eagerly followed Jack to the hotel like a puppy, clutching onto his arm as though he'd get there faster. The couple checked in and for that day, they would pray they wouldn't be inconvenienced by such things as neighbors.

Chapter 7:Good Will and Malignancy.
Log entry number one. Earth date September twelve twenty-one seventy-one. Thirty days on earth is a long time, but so short for the amount of travel and wandering Pitra and I have done. We spent a good week in north america visiting such sites as mount Rushmore and the murder cube. in two weeks we were in Rhodesia, exploring some of the sights to be seen there, many of which surprisingly, I hadn't seen myself. I eventually got home to Salisbury with about a week left in our stay on earth before being dispatched back. Somehow I wasn't surprised when we started getting looks while we wandered through the city. What DID surprise me however was when I found out why. It is afterall not every day that you find yourself on the cover of a magazine, let along for such a minor reason as a speculative piece on whether you're having an extra marital affair with an alien. Which was amusing because I've never been married. Usually print media's been reserved for IMPORTANT things, like hard copy archival, not selling in markets for such outright petty purposes as gossip, it's even been seldom sold outside books, which have been more or less a redundant hard copy archive of digital text forms for at least a century. In any case, Pitra and I decided I should visit anyone who might still recognize me from before the earth defense force. So that surprisingly left only my Parents, who had to look at me a good two minutes before either of them recognized me. The joyful reunion was a surprise, though to no surprise they had to ask if the headlines on the publications were true, an honest answer of "Hard to have an affair when you've never been married" being given.
Altogether, it was a surprisingly happy reunion, even if only for an hour or two. Though even writing this I realize I'm a little caught in the past, having even miss-dated this entry as being from twenty-one seventy-one. Let's correct that now, Twenty-one seventy-three. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, I was at my parents' house, ole' ma and pa asking what I've been doing for eight years. Imagine the surprise on their face when they found out I gave up a promising career of being a mass driver engineer and getting to see the colonies to join the EDF. Sometimes in life you almost have all the answers. Though, probably to my dying day I will never have the answer to, "I can understand why you done it, son, but... Why the way you did? You just walked out and never said a word, we never saw you again. Do you know what it's like to have someone you love just... gone?" The answer to the second half was yes, but I don't remember why I did. They must have been worried to death for some time, accepting that for whatever reason their son wandered off and never came back for eight years. They probably looked at pictures of me the way I thought of my memories of Jenny. In a few hours They had stuff to do and I had places to be, but it was still nice to see them, even if it wasn't nearly enough time for all those years. Oh well, time goes on. Soon enough Pitra and I had no time left on earth and went back to Washington where President Jackson saw us off and sent us on our way with some communications equipment, and a couple prototypes for myself and the lady to try out, notably a prototype generation nine Nano suit, which can apparently be removed by the wearer without the neurological shocks that killed many operators and without the symptoms, though a few features like the integrated predictive analytics system are advised non use items or have tabs that say "use with caution." Even as I write this I have Pitra lying on my shoulder and suits in wait. And an M-25.
It's been about eight days since we left earth, we should be back on acrassas in another twenty four to thirty six hours of elapsed time. Given the massive distance between the worlds and the speed at which the Acra manage to travel, I have to wonder how much the worlds age beyond that of Pitra and I as such physical factors like basic and special relativity take their effect. If I were to set the supercomputers of the nano suit to the task I suspect they could make the calculation. In any case, the only existing entities that are of any substance to me anymore seem to be that prototype nano suit, the communication gear, maybe the M-34 and M-25 they sent with me, and of course Pitra, my only companion thus far, who I've ascertained secretes alcohol and some form of stimulant through saliva and some sort of stimulant pheromone when aroused, which is becoming seemingly more frequent. Whether this is due to some form of bonding between her and myself, some biological impulse or even a deliberate action on her part bears some looking into. Discreetly of course. Maybe I'll play with the new nano suit, but... Truthfully I dread the idea of losing myself in it as I have in my previous suit. Lastly of note, I may have picked up something in Africa, maybe Malaria. My joints seem to have occasional bouts of aching and I was there in the correct time window. Will try to get into the nano suit for recovery if symptoms become prominently pronounced. I will also attempt to get Pitra into the one made for her if she to falls ill. Luckily the potentially lethal strains of malaria are not common where we were. John "Outcast" Herman, signing off. 
>Jack signed the page he'd filled with his pen, tucked it into the spine and clapped the log closed.
>Pitra stirred, lifting her face, as jack began stroking her hair. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing yet. But would you promise me something?"
>"Anything." Pitra said, taking Jack's hand in hers.
"If I get sick, put on your nano suit."
>"What's wrong? Why do you think you'll get sick?"
"My joints have been aching, could be nothing or it could be malaria. Have you been feeling odd at all?"
>Pitra placed her head on Jack's chest and his hand in her hair. "I've been feeling fine. So... What would the suit do if I got in and you were sick?"
"It fights a lot of the battles your body fights for you better. You've imprinted on the one they made for you right?"
>"Yes. It was scary and unpleasant."
"Good, then we can go back to sleep."
>With that, Jack turned out the light he'd been writing under, and went back to stroking Pitra's hair while he waited for sleep to overtake him. Overall he felt he'd found a simple and uniquely pleasant place in the universe. He was in a loving relationship, he finally felt warmth that wasn't merely the suit disallowing him from feeling cold, and he still had challenges ahead, and even present. 
>Jack had no small number of things to think about, but the presence of challenges and hardships lurking was better than their total absence. For what man would know heaven if not for hell? These things were all fine and dandy to him, save for one, which reminded him WHY heaven is defined by hell. What would happen to Pitra if he fell ill? Would she be too different for such a sickness to adapt to her biology? Would she be immune? Would she perish in her footprint? Would he?
"Tomorrow we'll have to call for a sanitation scan. I hope there IS a tomorrow." Jack thought to himself, eventually concluding that he may as well just get his rest, as there was no course of action he could take, quieted his mind, and let sleep take him.

>Jack woke up, the time on the chronometer seeming to say "Eight hours remaining." as opposed to the actual elapsed time, he stared at the clock on the wall for what felt like a good minute before his gaze turned to Pitra's inert form, seemingly so dense. 
>Jack ran his hands through her hair for a few minutes and thought to himself how strange her lethargy was, placing his hand on her forehead and deciding that her temperature didn't seem to be perceptibly higher than normal, nor did she show any signs of the chills. All of these were good signs, Jack thought. He pulled his log from the lamp stamd of the cabin and opened it, extracting the pen and writing a brief entry.

Log entry Two. Pitra seems to be unusually lethargic, though she shows no typical signs of malaria when present in humans, her breaths are steady and effortless, she's not perceptibly warmer than normal, and she doesn't show signs of anything resembling the chills. Maybe this has something to do with her as of late increasingly frequent arousal. Maybe she's gone through a period resembling the phenomina of "heat" and is becoming exhausted? maybe she's worn herself out as much as she has me? In any case, we've slept for at least a good sixteen hours. Maybe she is sick and this is the fatigue manifest. Further investigation will be done quietly. If she falls ill, I'll place her in the suit myself. If it doesn't come to that, I'll be thankful. John Herman, signing off

>Jack silently slid the pen back in the spine of the log and quietly closed it, setting it aside.
>He merely enjoyed this time with her while he stroked her hair, thinking about what he'd done to be so lucky, what hook there had to be for him to have someone so pleasant. What would he have to pay the piper and when? 
>Pitra stirred and mumbled to him "Ji'kitlei sikripoj noi?" Jack had no idea what she said, but it felt like a rhetorical question.
"Come again, sweetheart?"
>"How are you awake? The stamina of gravity?"
"Nothing like that, I've only been awake a few minutes." Jack said in his defense. "How are you awake? Actually, we've been asleep alarmingly long." 
>"Oh? what's it been? sixteen hours?"
"Yes." 
>"Don't you humans sleep longer after mating?"
"Not that much longer."
>"Evidently not, would you go back to sleep? Your heartbeats are too loud when you're awake. I can hear you thinking about the consequences in my sleep."
"Thinking about the consquences?"
>"Shut up." Pitra said before slipping Jack a kiss that tasted just a tad metallic, seemingly dulling his senses before the turning the world black again for just another couple hours.
>"Wake up, darling." Jack heard through his haze, as the world turned first, a hazy gray, and then cleared, Pitra on top of him, her blue skin bare and her face adourned by an easy smile that seemed to say it would be a good day for a picnic in the meadow... now if only there was a meadow around. 
>Jack turned his head to the chronometer on the wall, now indicating a remaining four hours.
"What did you do to me?" 
>"venom."
"So you... stung me? Bit me?"
>"Not strictly. more like a big wet kiss. With a bit of a chemical to calm the nerves... a lot."
>Jack dropped his head into the palm of his hand.
"Are you telling me you have a literal sleeping venom?"
>"Well, only after heat. Then it's back to a more mild sedative. stops the mind but not the body. seems like you reacted the way any Acra male would."
"Jesus fucking christ, woman. Is there any other shit I should know about?"
>"Not until I get to do it to you."
"Fucking christ...whatever, we're landing soon, lets get dressed." Jack says, resting his head on his thumb and forefinger.

>In a few hours the two had departed the ship into the royal palace of the acrani king, Jack noting that the pain in his joints had since faded, as the two made their way to the king's chamber.
>Just as about fifty days before, the king of the Acra awaited their arrival into the chamber.
>"Ah! Mister Herman! It's been too long! I trust the President had plenty to say about my choice in ambassadors."
"He was surprised, though I suspect none too thrilled about having a penal soldier like myself represent the whole of the species to another world."
>"A penal soldier?"
"Someone who's either in a role, or our military in general as punishment for committing a crime."
>"I know what that is, but... YOU? A penal soldier? It would explain how you've been getting along so well with your host, like minds think in pairs and all that, but... what did you do to become a penal soldier and what role?"
"I punched out an officer in a drunken haze and ended up in that armor your soldiers found me in. What did Pitra do?"
>"theft, a couple other things. Nothing too bad compared to what we imagine to be the severity of your crimes. And we made her a high risk territory infiltration specialist. In fact, she was on assignment when she and her team brought you back."
>Jack glanced over to Pitra, standing at ease, and back to the King.
"I've been meaning to ask, are there any military operations about that might lend to my use of some of the gear they sent along with me?"
>"Like in the war with the ic'rah?"
"I suppose so, yes."
>"As of now, I'll place at your discretion any militarily related excursions you wish to make, however, as a governance, it is the policy of the Yi'lunda government not to introduce two foreign species to each other if they haven't met, nor is it our policy to allow diplomats into conflicts of their own volition or otherwise except as a representative of their own respective government, under secrecy of denial if they happen to be captured or killed. Essentially, while I place you at your own discretion if you wish to deploy against some species, we will not discuss any species with you unless you know about them, nor will we disclose our state of diplomatic relations with any other species to you. If you choose to deploy, you do so at your own liability and risk, with our government denying any role in or knowledge of your actions and those of any assets assigned to your command should you choose to undergo such a deployment."
"So what your saying is I can do what I want to who I want, but you're not aware of the existence of any such operation, or assets, nor would you be at liberty to discuss such an operation or assets if they did in fact exist."
>"So long as you aren't attacking Acra out there, that's the idea."
"Good to know we understand each other."
>"Likewise... Now about your living quarters, I was thinking of putting you somewhere in the palace or out in the country on your preference. Of course if you wish to continue living with Pitra as I've been informed, you may continue to do so. I understand if you need a moment to discuss it."
>Jack looked back over his shoulder at Pitra, and gave a questioning tilt of the head, to which he received an enthusiastic nod and a mouthing of the words "You're mine." Before turning back to the king with his answer.
"That won't be necessary, we'd prefer to stick together."
>"So be it. Now, for the time being, I must part company with you. It's been good to meet you, now I'm sure you have some settling in to do, I'll arrange personally for your transport and that of your equipment back to your residence."
"Thank you, sir. Best of luck." Jack said, turning, walking past Pitra with a stroke of the arm which more or less served as an order to follow, as he exited the king's chamber.
>As they walked Pitra decided to break the silence."So. The aches still bothering you?"
"No. They're gone. If it's anything, it's not malaria."
>"Hmm. In that case I'm not letting you out of my sight. It could be you got something from me." Pitra said as they turned a corner to the hanger, where the nano suits and weapons were being loaded to a planetside dropship.
"What'd that be, short range troop transport?" Jack inquired as he looked on at the strange looking drop ship.
>"That's right. We use them to carry troops and supplies to the line."
"No hiss." Jack replied with a rather odd tone.
>"What?" Pitra 
"Okay, maybe that one was a bit arkane."
>Once the two saw that their equipment was loaded up, they proceeded aboard the transport and Pitra said something to the crew that Jack could only assume was a simple direction to her residence.
>This was all fine to Jack he afterall, he could go for a nap...
A few days later....
>"Why did I have to be right? And of all things, Red Plague." Pitra Demanded to no one in particular, not an actual question to anyone, just a cry into the universe for an answer.
>A sharp inhale rose beside her for a moment before one of the many nonsensical statements that'd filled her ears all morning, seemingly out of place and time escaped Jack.
"Though there is knowledge in it, there's only a lifetime of silence behind the bulkhead."
>"Please come back to me." Pitra said to what she knew to be only a semi conscious vessel whose mind was desperately trying, and failing to escape itself and escape to the environment surrounding it.
"Piiiit.... Drop to sector seven-five-nine-one..... rapid descent, high angle entry...."
>Pitra watched as the body writhed, bits of one sided chatter escaping it, reliving the past over what may have been many years or a single week.
>"What can I do?" Pitra thought to herself. As she assessed her situation it became darker. If she left him to get help a single convulsion could asphyxiate him, if she stayed, her limited skill in treating physical harm could only help her keep him on this side of the abyss so long as his body could ride out the plague.
>If she moved him, he may infect her with it, though she had partial immunity already.
>She was more than capable of carrying him, she'd done it, granted with considerable effort, when he was in the suit, and he was only one seventh the weight of the suit, but to expose one's self to the red plague was... suicidal.
"Damn it. Gunships are supposed to have guns!" 
>Eventually the writhing stopped, then the talking. 
>Pitra moved to check his vitals, finding him to be warmer than she'd like and Breathing at a relatively spastic rate.
>"Just hand in there, big guy. Just hang in there."
"Fine, I'm ready.... Put me in." Jack said as he looked off into infinity, offering participation in some probably years distant Exercise or placement of undesirable repute.
>Pitra looked on as Jack finally lost consciousness for more than a period of only fractions of a minute.
>"I can't very well put him into stasis without the equipment. I don't have medicine to treat that shit. Would it even work on him?" The feverish symptoms were obvious enough, he clearly suffered red plague, but what difference was there about his dna that a virus could mutate in days? To a whole different species, although anatomically similar in nature. What similarity could there be? How different could his genome be? He was only SLIGHTLY anatomically different from the average Acra male, obviously the skin hair and eye color were different, many of the mental tendencies differing significantly. 
*ultra sharp inhale* "Pitra, GET IN THE SUIT." Jack commanded before staring at the ceiling for thirty seconds and lapsing consciousness once more.
>"Jack? Are you awake?"
"...."
>"Can you hear me?" 
>Jack raised his head, staring in silence at Pitra.
>"Do you recognize me?" 
"Who's calling me?"
>"It's me!"
>Jack fell back, while Pitra realized he was just reacting to being called by name.
"I'm ready, put me in the damn thing already!" 
>Pitra put it all together... Realization came to her.
>"The suit might be able to stop this, and mine will keep me from being contaminated."
>Pitra went to the room where the nanomsuits had been stored and donned her own nanosuit, becoming enveloped in it as it slithered over her. "The things I do for love!" She thought as it crept over her face."
Soon she'd carried Jack to the room and watched as his suit enveloped him, integrating his DNA profile and beginning to scan his body for abnormalities. 
>"If I knew how to use this thing better, the things I could do..." Pitra told herself.
>She watched as seconds passed before a twitch came from the suit on the floor.
"Aaaagh, If you were fully qualified to use a nano suit and knew all it could do it would still have tricks you didn't know about." Came the reply.

Chapter 8: A Far Trajectory
Somewhere in space. Some time.
>Jack looked off into space as he viewed a star from the safety of his nano suit. Only about a million miles distant, but getting visibly more distant with every passing second. He looked down to the suit in front of him, onto which he'd been holding tightly. 
>As the suit operator regained consciousness he scanned the suit, determining through a remote reading that the operator had sustained minor injury, and isolated his communications with the suit.
"How are you feeling?"
>"Aching a bit, but it's starting to go away." Came the voice from the suit, surprisingly to Jack, that of a female.
>The woman in the suit looked away to the star as it's apparent size diminished before turning back to him.
>"This is a nice situation we've gotten ourselves into. So what happens now?"
"I have a few ideas. We could watch literally all the movies and television shows in human history, and listen to literally all the music if we wanted to, but that would only last a few thousand years."
>"A few thousand years well spent?"
"Eh, seven hundred. I have a couple OTHER ideas, like we could use our thrusters to make sure we hit one of our homeworlds, but... there'd be nothing left to return to if we did, and we'd only be increasing our chance of ever hitting a planet at all from infinitesimal to a chance in a billion."
>"How long are we gonna be out here?"
"could be as short as a few centuries or millennia, could be billions of years. Maybe someone could be along in just a few short years or decades. We'd certainly LIVE until then."
>"Any ideas to pass the time?"
"'Any Ideas,' she asks. Well, technically I could slave your suit to my controls and we could drift through space like we we're napping until we hit a star, planet or our atoms get physically stretched to the point of losing all bonds and we disintegrate. In any case, we'd wake up somewhere, or we'd never feel it."
>"Could we maneuver so we'd get back to one of our home worlds faster?"
"Not to any meaningful degree. We'd just get there in long enough for the planet to be entirely unrecognizable as opposed to completely unrecognizable."
>A sigh escapes the woman in the suit, whose hope seems to have run out along with her patience."SO WHAT CAN WE DO?"
"I've already said it, if you hold onto me really tight I can slave your suit controls to my own, suspend the suit in container mode, and then do the same thing to my own, setting waking conditions upon the detection of breathable atmosphere or friendly assets and their IFF code to bring me to consciousness and then I can manually bring your suit out of container mode and wake you."
>"Would we dream?"
"I don't know. I've heard conflicting reports. I think any conscious or semi conscious events occurring during suspension are more than likely induced by continuing information processing by the suit's embedded supercomputer. Who knows? Maybe we'll wake up in the blink of an eye a million years or more from now, maybe we'll be dreaming so long we don't remember being in space. Maybe we never hit anything at all."
>"..." 
>The silence was deafening. Somehow, it just didn't seem real.
>"Do it."
"Hold on to me tight." Jack said, answered by the suit clinging to him as his HUD came into view, slaving the suit to his neuro controller. "Just breath in and out." He said as the suit went stiff, knowing that its pose, clinging to his own suit was immovable even to him. It didn't matter. He set the conditions for waking up over the next three hours took a final look at the stars and cosmos, then set the suit to container suspension, breathing in and out before his suit locked in its pose, holding onto the suited woman, greeting the darkness before him with a final exhale until the conditions were met.

>His eyes opened with a start, his heart rate accelerated and then dropped as he looked up, seeing Pitra, her yellow Matron length dress appearing rather unusual next to her white hair, a stream of tears rolling down her face as she made an exclamation of joy and embraced him, pulling his now throbbing head off the pillow as she lifted his body with her arms around his shoulders. A sharp inhale began reflexively.
"WHAT*cough* YEAR IS THI-S*cough*?"
>"RELAX! IT'S OKAY!" Pitra assured, trying to calm him. Jack went limp, folding forward into Pitra's arms.
"What year is it?"
>"2173. You've only been out a couple days."
"What... what happened to me?"
>"Well... first you slept a lot, then you got a fever, then I put you in the suit and put you in bed a few days ago."
"It's just a fever dream... Thank god. Now if this works anything like the generation EIGHT nano suit..." Jack trailed off as he opened his neural interface and started twitching his fingers, eventually coming to the option to skin the suit.
"Fuck me, this doesn't even sting."

Two days later.
>Jack didn't know just what day it was, then again, it was possible in his mind that he'd get transmissions made on the tenth on the ninth. Didn't matter. Every day's Friday when you're on an endlessly gracious host planet who are basically like you and can't get enough of you. Hell, even their endlessly different language could be instantly decoded and translated between Jack's speech and that of the locals when he wore the suit out. It was the handiest full body pocket translator he'd ever worn. 
>Jack clicked the button on the transmitter, which lit the button and a blank screen showed the words "Scanning. Relay access. transmit."
>"Signal! Test, do you read?"
"I read, what time is it?"
>"Eleven twenty pm, but that doesn't matter much, we'd like to know why you're a few days late."
"Sorry about that, a blue lady's had me pinned to the bed for a couple weeks."
>"... Really?"
"No, well not the past couple days at least, but she gave me something and I've been bed ridden."
>"Alright, you're going to give the king an offer of a special alliance with humanity."
"214K?"
>"Er... hang on a second while I check on that for you." The sound of papers being furled and flipped through the air came through the radio as clearly and as recognizably as ever. "Eh, yeah. 214K."
"I don't think he'll go for it. These are a rural and nationalist people, not given to surrendering themselves to an alien identity. They're what humanity should have been in the early twenty-first, and what they'd become in another forty years."
>"Well, the good news for me is that I get to hear this all and tell you I don't give a shit. You're gonna make the offer. Whether they choose this or not is up to them."
"I'll give him the offer at my first meeting with him."
>"Alright, so you give them the offer, they reject, possibly degrade our relations. What could go wrong?"
"I can think of a few things-" Jack said before Pitra's voice came through the small house
>"Jack! What are you doing out of bed? And CLOTHED?"
"Oh shit, gotta-" Jack managed to get out before he realized that the white house had terminated the transmission. "Boring conversation anyway."
>"They know when to butt out, it seems." Pitra remarked.
"Yeah, probably because they don't want to be the first people to hear a man fuck a xeno. People on earth tend not to be degenerates like that."
>"Oh? Not you. Point of fact, I'd say you more or less kept up with me in heat, if that's degenerate, then you're outright scum."
"Guilty. What can I say? You're so warm and you caught me fresh out of the suit. I truthfully thought the first week or so was going to be my life from then, doesn't make much sense to make a significant expense of sending a ship across the universe on account of a single man washed up on your planet when you could be using the seemingly massive amount of resources for more productive ends."
>"More productive than bringing the curiosity across the universe to US? More productive than making a new alliance? You may be right, but then again I wouldn't have my own pet human."
"er...yeah... But then again, I'd still be in the suit and need surgery to skin it for more than a brief period."
>"See, it works out for everyone." Pitra offers.
"Well. Since I have such a high degree of discretion, is there anywhere we COULD go that we could start ripping the Icrah to shreds? Personal excursion?"
>"I think um. Well. Give me a few days. I could probably. Uh." Pitra said, seemingly getting distracted by some irritating sensation. "I um. Fuck I can't think in a straight line, let me start that over."
"Are you okay, Pitra?"
>"Um, yeah..." Pitra said, fidgeting visibly as though some urge were surpassing her ability to control herself. "...If you gave me a couples days I could think of..." Pitra placed an arm across her center, right hand on her left pelvic bone. "...a couple places. Did I um... Did I mention I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted you in bed a minute ago?"
"Yeah I'm comi-umf!" Jack got out before Pitra had quite literally snatched him up by the rib cage and shoulders, beginning a brisk and fast walk to the bed. The rest was a blur.
Three weeks later.
>"We have a few from the sixth regiment of the ARA and you've put on a few post human warriors for this event. I can't say I'm not impressed."
"Did I ask your opinion?"
>"A good point as always." Fireball answered.
>"So 'Outcast,' what's the plan?" Pitra asked while stifling a giggle.
"I haven't ENTIRELY worked that out yet, but with a landing on-" 
>"HEY! Someone told me this operation was a low risk operation with a slight probability of mild inconvenience, is this where the briefing is?"
"Well, the exact words I used were 'suicidal' and 'certainty of expense, but we were just getting to the plan, good to see you join us." Jack answered, yielding slightly at the rye humor of the post human warrior known only as 'Moon Man.'
>Jack had known him to be a man of great violence when the shots started flying, and more than anything else being at rest for him was an act of restraint. He'd honestly regretted that night of browsing 2020's media, which prompted him to assume the name 'Moon Man' out of pure edginess. Then again, if anyone had an excuse to be Edgy, Jack thought, it was the post human warrior he'd known as 'Postman' Prior to 2170. He was, after all, stuck in a half melded generation five nano suit for the rest of his life. The differences of which were less obvious than those of generations one and two, but still pretty pronounced to his own former Generation eight, and now, generation nine.
"You see, what really gets me, is that I got president Jackson to sign off on my hijacking and misappropriating of ten post human warriors bound for a campaign on Kuneilly four."
>"The king isn't nearly as operationally liberal as Jackson, it seems. At the very least he'd DENY what we're doing." Pitra remarked with a smirk. 
"So what I'm thinking is we'll start the offensive with a cloaked infiltration of this station HERE." Jack said, marking a particular planet on the holo-map.
>The holo-map highlighted the selected planet in a red color, making it stand out from the mostly blue map of the system.
"So what we have here, is an orbital factory which according to intelligence afforded to us by the lovely Pitra, and the gracious king of Acrassas, is a factory which manufactures a large bit of the more advanced pieces of Icrah armor, particularly vital components in some of the more advanced Icrah infantry, of whom the Acra, such as Pitra and her recon team, here as advisers have experience in fighting. We however, have yet to encounter such units, apparently owing to the Icrah having a doctrine of sending in what you might call an inferior race or breed among them as fodder, and escalating to more adaptable, intelligent, and better equipped units and warriors as time goes on. It is believed by the Acra that the same breed of Icrah who pilot their fleet ships, such as those deploying dropships to earth during 'the rave' also wear powered armor and take on the infantry roles as the lower Icrah sent previously die off. In short, someone who could be an ACTUAL threat aside from their not too inaccurate orbital fire."
>"What access points are there, and how can we split around to map them?" came the voice of Moon Man, still, a little Disappointingly not the primitive text to speech voice of the early 21st century media.
"A great question. Acrani intel doesn't say shit about it, but we have the good luck of being in full body supercomputers that will map it as the suit sensors read it. If nothing else, we'll make our own ingress route. The ship can orbit ten kilometers off while cloaked."
>"Ten kilometers? How far is that?" Pitra asked.
"Doesn't matter, the suit will calibrate it to units you're familiar with. Don't worry don't worry about making orbital maneuvers, we're going to be inserting by a formation EVA. As long as you stay in formation with the rest of us, we'll at least hit the station."
>"Speaking of hitting the station, why so many suits?"
"Fuck if I know, Just figured it better to have plenty and go about it damn quick. Speaking of which, time to divide up the teams. Fireball, you'll lead predator, pick three. Moon Man, you'll lead radon, pick three, I'll take Pitra and the two you don't pick up will go with me. Any suggestions?"
>"Yeah, hack their systems and cut communications between a section or two to draw security away from our insert point."
"Noted, but lets try the quiet way first. I want at least ten minutes to pass before they figure out the guards are dead, even better if we get out and they never even know we came in."

>Those who had been briefed exited the room as Jack and Pitra, the only two as of yet unsuited remained.

>"What's up with Moon Man. He looks like he's melted."
"The suits have some chemical inhibitors that prevent them from melding onto the people and assuming the original human form of the operator. Post human warriors sometimes turn them off and they regain their human form after some time... or full body burning of the outer layer, you know, standard stuff."
>"So he's not completely fused?"
"Precisely. Some of the other post humans leave them on and have their body fully broken down, leaving what's left of them essentially as the closure of the loop that allows the suit to work. Eventually they end up just being a suit dreaming it was once a man."
>"So they take risks."
"You sign on knowing you risk it. Same with death, maiming, burning, exploding, mental apparition. This is no more than another consequence of going to war."
>"When you go to war in my society, if you die, you at least die, you don't do... this."
"Oh, we understand what you're getting on about, don't think we haven't thought of it. You sign on with EDF, you could die in the line of duty, you fuck up, you could be put in the nano suit and have a significant portion of your life involuntarily dedicated to staying up for a year at a time. And in doing that, if you're unlucky, you could still die or you could walk the universe dead and lose all those little things that make the time, ten years, twenty or a hundred mean anything. You sign the papers, you take the risk. No one HAS to get into the nano suit, even if they don't realize it at the time. There's still always prison. Let's get suited up."

>The suits cloaked and the door opened, thrusters spat out propellant and the suits were soon far from the ship they'd departed. With their magnetized feet they'd be on the hull of the station in a matter of minutes. 

>Soon enough the suits had come feet down on the station they intended to cripple, active sensors sending signals through the solid matter than made up the station, patching into communications and filtering signal to noise, mapping the station while giving the suits access to all information that was going through the station on anything but a closed circuit.

>"I'll get in through here, Fireball, Outcast, go around the station exterior and find a good spot to break in."
"Pitra, Dane and Azar, with me. He knows what he's doing."
>Jack and company split from Moon Man and Fireball's teams, circling sixty degrees around the cylindrically shaped station.
"Pitra, make sure to set your comms to isolated team chat."
>"Got it."
>Jack and team came to an agreeable spot where the mapping of the supercomputer didn't find any Icrah workers nearby. As the computer went to work on unsealing all bulkheads in the station, Jack went to work with the suit's integrated cutter.
>In a matter of seconds alarms began blaring inside the station, workers of course no longer appearing in the maps as the suit's computer determined them to be either lifeless or else couldn't make sense of the sudden disappearance of the signals coming through the hull, followed by a surge and then nothing.
>Jack finished his cut, the small square section he cut through just separating from the little pressure left on that side of the bulkhead.
"Advance. Be ready for contact, there may be workers or military personnel here ready for a de-press or an infill."
>The team advanced through their first rooms of the station, suits coming to conclusions of targets at what might be considered the "top" and "bottom" of the station, mapping them out fully, and proceeding to set waypoints to their locations. 
>"Moon Man for Outcast. Got anything?"
"Outcast copies, we see nothing so far, scanning in full spectrum shows nothing different. The gravity is still on, just the atmosphere isn't." 
>"I read you, I've seen a shockingly low number of corpses for what this place is."
"Nothing out of place here, though I'd be on look out for Icrah specialists. Scan in Full spectrum and be sure to cycle narrow ranges, low spectrum IR and high, maybe electron magnetic, cycle around and see if you can see them."
>As the team advanced they found the first corpses, two strange things comparatively, with long spindly extremities and heads buried into their shoulders, likely not having necks at all.
"Spindly, lenky things, ain't they?"
>"Damn right. about eight feet tall, limps look to be weak points, no necks on' em. Check over there, I got two more pinned up against some kind of structure."
"Safe to assume they're machines. They seem to have some kind of power armor on."
>"Yeah, guards. How good do you think your slug throwers are at penning that shit?" Pitra asked.
"Let's find out." Jack said as he pointed the M-34 at it and fired a lone shot, effortlessly penetrating the armor of the dead icrah.
>"HOLY SHIT! So that's what the fuss about slug throwers among you humans is about!"
"Well...Yeah, the only way to stop that shit is with actual material."
>"I'm throwing out my plasma projectors."
>Advancing through the next bulk head they were greeted with what they had hoped to be a few soldiers, but was disappointingly only five corpses. 
>in the darkened side of the room a bright window, some of... THEM behind it...
>"Contact front!" came the cry from Pitra.
>Jack watched as a good dozen of them lunged out and the artificial gravity and lights went out.
>Jack quickly enabled his thrusters, and began with the task of double tapping six of them before all settled and he realized his team had gotten the rest, not wanting to waste this momentum, he quickly flipped the switch and put a burst through the window, bringing the ten or so inside the compartment out.
>A blue burst of light protruded out and into Jack's side just below his left breast plate and spun him around.
>Jack rode the rotation and fired a short burst, virtually ripping the Icrah in half as the .70 cal projectiles ripped through its armor and then with energy directed more outward, shredded guts muscles and organs.
>Jack brought power back to his thrusters, slowing his rotation just in time to see five icrah dashing toward the rest of the team, only two of them catching lead before it turned into a hand to hand brawl of the type post human warriors loved. 
>As Jack decided to leave Azar and Dane to their business, he decided he'd better intervene with Pitra's fight, seeing as the young Acrani had not been trained among the nano soldiers in the art of four dimensional non gravity assisted pugilism.
>Just as Jack began thrusting toward pitra, chuckling internally at the double meaning of such a double meaning in its context while the slow advancement toward the melee suddenly derailed as one of them apparently decided that tackling him would be a fun idea.
> As a hand grabbed his shoulder and started to stretch his left arm, he switched into radial strength and used the arm to pull the Icrah's skull into the fist of his right arm, not quite punching straight through the skull as he'd hoped, but flattening the face and penetrating into the back of the skull, leaving a fist sized hole where the face of the icrah had been.
>"JACK! HEELLP!" Pitra screeched over comms.
"Switch to radial strength!" Jack yelled as he made a high thrust burn to the brawl and soon found his muzzle against the icrah's side, squeezing off a short burst before tumbling through the brawl, taking Pitra and her adversary with him.
>Jack found himself on the ground, and quickly deduced that the gravity had came back on.
"SHIT. That's gonna make it harder to traverse the main shaft, doable, just... harder."
>"How do you wanna do it, outcast?" came Dane's voice through the comms.
"we have terrain mobility, we can probably leap from point to point."
>"Fireball for Moon man and Outcast, we've encountered heavy resistance, they're cloaked and can detect us when cloaked, switch to armor and use EM sensors to see the--" 
>static washed over the line. another voice came on. "Moon man to Outcast, can you read on Fireball?"
"No, I've got nothing, he's off comms for the whole fucking theater."
>"AMAZING.Look, you're closer to the top of the station, you leave recovering and or incinerating them to me. I'll get to their LKP en route to the bottom of the station anyway."
"Don't get yourself killed. If it's too dangerous, just go to the bottom where the reactor is." 
>"Don't get killed?! As IF, DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I'M THE ONE AND ONLY ETERNAL MOON MAN!" 
"You can give me the real moon man speech when we're back on the ship, later."
>Jack climbed through the window as he looked around and found the elevator shaft, kicking the doors open and taking a look up the shaft.
>To jack's pleasure, the shaft had plenty of lips and ridges along the side that a nano suit could grab onto, though whether they would HOLD the suit and its sixteen hundred pound frame was another question he didn't feel like answering with the smaller of them, instead deciding that he would go for the larger girders instead of the smaller ones, whose width only could have measured three inches.
"Team, regroup on me, I'm gonna blaze a path up the shaft."
>Jack waited until all were watching, then made a twenty foot leap up the shaft to a large girder, hanging off for a moment before posturing his body and propelling himself up to the next, waiting for dane to come into position and observe his location before making the next leap. This procedure was repeated until all were in the shaft. Then, as he made the last leap, the gravity shut off again, slamming jack's head into the roof of the room he was jumping into, instead of dropping him in place to clamber over the ledge into the life support bay and signals station.
>As jack found himself disoriented floating through the bay he began making sense of his tumble though the air of the station, stabilized himself and began scanning the area to be greeted by nothing.
"Anyone else notice these guys are really boring to fight?" 
>"Yeah, rather an anticlimax after all this talk of power armor and shit, they practically couldn't be easier to fight with projectile weapons." Dane answered.
>"It's a bit different with energy weapons I suppose. NO ONE uses slug throwers out of the stars for some reason." Pitra answered
>"You know, I always thought that had to be some human science fiction fantasy that the aliens never use proper projectile weapons like people who weren't stuck up faggots, 'Ooh look at me, I have four eyes and a mastery of energy weapons.' Imagine my surprise when, no shit, EVERY SHOW about that shit for two hundred years was dead on." Azar added.
"DEAD. ON. Pitra, what have you to say for yourself?"
>"I don't know, how would you have any accuracy with those fucking things? They don't exactly shoot where you point them!"
"BUT THEY DO!"
>"Yeah, when you humans with your space magic show they do!"
>"Have you never heard of RIFLING?" Dane shot back.
>"What the fuck is 'rifling?' Are you just making up words now?"
"That explains a lot."
>While the conversation went on, Jack went about his way first booting the comms array offline and then planting his charges on the life support systems before broadcasting on leader chat.
"Outcast to Moon Man, come in. Charge planted, continuing on mission, have you found Fireball?"
>"Yeah, we found him and his team in the lower quarter pinned down, we remdered him assistance and we're just about to plant out charges, it looks like the whole factory is clear, I want you to get out and wait for us on the ship to clear our tails if anything follows."
"Good shit, we'll be waiting." 
>"Orders?" Pitra asked as she looked at Jack, floating through the air.
"Exfil."
>Jack led the way, beginning a slow descent down the elevator shaft when at the most inopportune moment, the gravity kicked on.
>Jack and Dane found themselves falling down the shaft at near terminal velocity as the instinctively switched their suits to strength mode, and shifted themselves into a controlled fall to cushion the fall.
>The suit voice began speaking "Impact in three. Two. One." in a moment they found their velocity reduced to twenty meters per second relative, but something was off. As Jack looked around he soon figured out what it was.
"Dane! GET ON THE THRUSTERS, WE'RE OUTSIDE THE STATION!"
>"How'd we penetrate the hull?"
"Easily!" Jack said, maxing out the thrusters to reverse his relative velocity.
>Twenty M/S turned to ten, then to zero, eventually giving way to another twenty going TO the station.
>"Impact three. Two." Impact came and jack starting hearing something over squad comm.
>"Moon man for Outcast, we heard some massive thud in the bottom of the station, I think something's on us."
"No, Moon man, that was Dane and I fucking plowing through the bottom of the station. We're off mission and will be getting to the extract a bit slower that you now. Hang on a moment." Jack said, adding his last before switching to team comms. "Pitra and Azar, I want you two to descend the elevator shaft carefully, the gravity seems to be switching on and off, meet at extract, Dana and I will be on mission when we link up with Moon man and Fireball's teams."
>"Roger that, Outcast Wilco, out."
"Moon man, we're linking up with you."
>Jack and Dane reached the end of the station and climbed into the elevator shaft, where moon man and fireball's teams had been waiting at the bulkhead. 
>"So you really WERE the thud." Moon man remarked.before beginning to jump up the elevator shaft, his team and that of Fireball in tow before Outcast and Dane began their own jumps up to the entry point.
"Why even go to the entry point?" Jack thinks as he traverses the elevator shaft.
>Soon they reach the entry point, and link back up with their team. Soon the teams had began on a rendezvous for the ship.
"Moon man, I'm hitting my charges, do the same."
>"glad to oblige." Moon man answered as large parts of the station started to jettison from several very apparent explosions.


Chapter 9: Ad Infinitum.
          Who shot last? A question often asked when you want to know who won a battle in the past, since whoever fired the last shot was likely the one who didn't die. In an overall war, however, such a concept was applied to a larger scale. It wasn't a matter of seeing it with your eyes once you got to the point that force on force combat occurred, it was a matter of seeing it on a computer screen without bias, impression or emotion. In about a month's time since we raided the factory station we made a big step in the relationship between humans and acra. The president ordered me to extend an offer that would be considered unwise for a species you've just met, no matter how gracious of a host they were when they made first contact by essentially abducting one of your soldiers. This time is no different, but the order is an order, and I extended to the king an offer to join a special league with humanity which might be considered essentially JOINING humanity. As warranting such an offer, which the king accepted to my not inconsiderable surprise, the acra could no longer be considered to be xenos, but humans. To add further to the situation, the ic'rah, previously focused on the central nexus of humanity, I suppose figuring it would be the easiest way to take us out, probably figuring the core of human civilization would be the most heavily defended and would incapacitate all human defenses, have now made an advance toward the space of the Kino organization.

	I'll attempt to make an omission of any further explanation of the Kino organization and their territory, the rules adherent therein and their general characteristics which could take a full page in the largest of recorded logs, as I expect anyone reading this save for Pitra and her deep territory penetration team would already be familiar with these details, instead I will opt for assessing the situation and the likely consequences of the ic'rah making the mistake they're making by advancing on Kino space. The situation assessment can be summarized in one word:Shit. The likely consequences that lead to the circumstances of my prediction in this situation are not as simple, but are easily understood and predicted. To start with, the space of the Kino organization, particularly in the general direction the ic'rah are advancing from is the border space between the Terran alliance and kino space. Being that the kino organization isn't known for their tendency to remain passive once they've been attacked, and they CERTAINLY aren't known for their ability to expend resources on common defense in their space without gaining SOME kind of resource in return. 
Normally they just advance on whatever attacks them, pillage and exterminate, then gain power, affluence and whatever else. 

	Resources are plentiful as a result of this policy, their schisms with the Terran Alliance hadn't so much soured relations between the two, but they didn't generally consider our war to be theirs, and vise versa save for special instances involving mutual interests. The organization's many conflicts on the border of their space and their idle expansion left them with nearly unlimited resources to run their worlds, enjoying a standard of wealth that the Terran alliance couldn't dream of with much of its resources invested in the war with the ic'rah, springing up in the last few years. Even so, the Terran alliance did a fairly good job at combating the ic'rah until they started fighting in space, capital ships generally outgunning cruisers. The Kino organization would almost certainly crush the ic'rah between their thumb and forefinger if given the provocation, expecting that they'd stop there rather than advancing into Terran Alliance territory, however, would be unwise. The relationship between the Terran Alliance and the Kino organization is strained across this one issue, many on both sides criticizing the Terran alliance as being "too quick" to extend trust and partnership to the Pok when contact was made, and would most likely think the same of the Acra. In essence, the kino organization is the true form of what earth defense sector five was claimed to be, to the dismay of all fifty ic'rah sympathizers across the planet. I suppose I can see some wisdom in the opinions of the kino organization and their criticisms of our tendency to trust other species within twenty years of meeting them face to face. There has to be an exception to the rule however, save for the laws of physics, such principles are never universal in application. I know from personal experience that we can at least trust the Acra not to kill us, but like the Terran alliance and the Kino organization, there's an inherent compatibility to the two cultures, no matter how brief their contact, as they meet even the kino organization's own criteria for diplomatic relations between cultures, being "Markedly different from, but basically like" human civilization.

	The history of the Kino organization beyond the aforementioned statement is irrelevant. The situation is quite simply prevent the ic'rah from reaching Kino space, or run the risk of calling them "the imperium of man" within the next twenty years. I assume my own relationship with Pitra, rather scandalous and still a xenophillic one at that, would most likely lead to my execution, despite having already faced the pseudo death penalty that is the nano suit and its perils. I've devised a plan for preventing this eventuality, but the first step calls for a trek into kino space itself to secure a "recreational device." Nothing too fancy to them, but for us, it's a necessary component in the plan, required to turn a floating ic'rah capitol ship gaining energy from a star, which we've determined it will have to stop at, to a floating ic'rah capitol NOT drawing energy from a nearby star and without the option to flee. Log end.

>Jack closed his log, having filled a few pages with information in his own poor handwriting. It was good to let some of it out, collect his thoughts, zoom out on the situation. Of course he left out his personal affairs, only his primary concerns, or rather those on which lives would hinge by what could very likely be the billions.
>To start, the suit still had the issue of turning people's eyes a very bright blue color, which would no doubt remain one of the most unsettling and immediately apparent issues as non white nano soldiers who almost always had brown eyes started turning up in town with powder blue irises, or the various other soldiers of white backgrounds whose eyes were still markedly brighter even if they actually had naturally blue eyes, seeing as the bright shade induced by the nanosuit was much brighter than any natural human eye color. The next issue that had come up is that the suit, at least in Pitra, still induced a relatively mild suit withdrawal, creating a state among other things, of paranoia and insomnia, which jack struggled on a constant basis to soothe.

>Jack looked to the roof of the ship's bunk room. Of course the other nano soldiers, some newer than him never slept, and so wouldn't be caught dead LOOKING at a bed. Poor Fireball. He must've been joined up in twenty-one Sixty-nine or seventy... A post human warrior of all things. Suppose it'll all work out for him in the end, when he becomes a full nanite organism. At least the praise of "doesn't create more half melded deformities like moon man" could probably be sung of the new suits.
>Speaking of deformities, Pitra entered the bunk room, apparently fresh out of the shower and dressed in only undergarments.

>"You look about half dead." She remarked before sitting down and placing her hand on his face adding, "Your eyes used to be so pretty and green."
"You used to sleep. And your eyes used to be red." Jack replied, looking into Pitra's eyes, now a disturbingly blended blue shade, which somehow unsettled him with their lack of contrast to her skin, despite their shade being much brighter.
"There was also a time when you didn't need me to rock you to sleep and your fellow acra being in the same room as me didn't bring you to full alert like you've been the last few weeks." Jack said, sitting up quickly
>"And just where do you think you're going?" Pitra asked as she put a hand on his chest, preventing him from moving his body further forward or to the side.
"There's that paranoia again." Jack answered, finishing the sentence as his arms bolted out around her, pulling her back with him as he pulled her down with him.
>"Do that again and I'll hurt you." She replied, her tone growing cold as ice.
"If you do that you won't sleep for a month." Jack replied.
>The sound of a door opening echoes through the bunk room as Pitra climbs on top of jack, her head now at his neck level, chest resting on the inner part of his shoulder. The two stare at each other as the sound of the footsteps grows closer, eventually culminating in the sound of a light body of maybe a hundred twenty pounds hitting the next bunk with a Pomf.
>Jack and Pitra had closed their eyes for several seconds, delighting in the mere presence of the other's warmth or relative coolness.
>Jack had placed his hands on her hips, falling into a lull and beginning to hear the voices from his past when one from the real world erupted from the silence, bringing both of them to alert.
>"So. You're Pitra's new pet." She said, turning her head to the two. "Answer me this. Why don't the others take off their armor?"
>Jack and Pitra opened their eyes and both proceeded to slowly turn their heads to her, absorbing the disturbance on her face when she saw their eyes matching in color.
"They can't take them off. The ones we wear and the ones they wear are different. Their suits are surgically attached and take over or eliminated a lot of bodily functions. They all got wounded to a mortal extent at some point and the suits grew into the woulds. Stopping them from dying, but also rendering the act of removing the suit fatal, since the suit takes over for the damaged organs and sometimes you'd have to rip large chunks out of them to take the suit off."
>"So they can't take them off without dying. Hell of a way to live. I'm Tepri by the way."
"Jack.-"
>"Alright now you two, that's enough." Pitra muttered before turning her head over and burying it in the base of Jack's neck, the irritation on her face fading as she relaxed herself, like Jack, eventually fading back into the lull of subconscious before being embraced by sleep.

Eight hours later
>Pitra lies awake, her position unchanged for the past ten minutes since she woke up. She had finally awoken from her sleep, though Jack had not, and she decided rather than to wake him, to merely enjoy his relative coolness.
>Pitra lay on top of Jack, his hands still on her hips, cool by comparison to her body, which hovered at a slightly warmer temperature just a touch above a hundred degrees, only a couple degrees warmer than him, but enough to make him feel moderately warm by comparison, rather than the near scathing heat another acrani would give off. 
>Pitra kept still and quiet, listening to his steady low pulse, his occassional breath, all the little things going on while he slept, much more slowly than when he woke. She delighted in the small bit of orderly rhythm in the chaotic and distant universe, in acting as his living blanket, hell, even in the leg between hers. For these ten minutes, she merely caressed her own personal fragment of heaven. 
>"If only mother could see me now. How proud would she be? Not very proud, I'd bet." she thought to herself. Here she was, a penal soldier and a xenophile. What had she even done? it had been so long, three years or five that it was, that she had forgotten. What had happened in only the last couple months however, is that she had by every account conceivable or objective in analysis mated with a creature that was literally subacra, regardless of his genetic or anatomical similarity. He all but certainly couldn't impregnate her, he couldn't contribute members to the acra species, anymore than she could contribute members to the human species, even the deformities they would be if he could, seeing as "reproductively isolated" couldn't be said of them with any degree of uncertainty.
>"Perhaps it's a good thing I was cast out for whatever I did." Pitra thought to herself as she watched the lighting on the other side of the door flicker to life.
>The door of the bunk room opens and a silhouette stands cast against the white backdrop behind it, first bowing its head and shaking it, before quietly walking into the bunkroom, the open door casting a harsh glare behind it.
>Pitra felt Jack's pules rising at first slowly, then quickly and settling, the sound of his blood flow dampening ever so slightly.
>A voice came from behind her, filtered through a speaker from an audio isolated environment within a nano suit. "Wake up love birds." it said as Jack came to and started speaking.
"Moon man. Good."
>"Having that kind of relationship with the xenos? I'm impressed, outcast. Always knew I'd win on that bet. now if only I could still use that drinkin' money."
"Yeah, I'm a degenerate, alright. Say, are we in kino space yet?"
>"Yes, we'll be landing at Grohmler three in just a couple hours, so if you and the xenos needed some alone time, or what ever before we step off into the land of leave them on the ship or die, now's the time." 
"Well, it's just Pitra and I, even we aren't that degenerate, so thanks for the heads up. Shouldn't you be checking on something?"
>"I'll get right back to it."
>Moon man exited the room before walking away whistling the tunes of a time long since past while Jack and pitra looked around, Finding themselves in only their underwear and flanked on both sides by Tepri and Jiri, two of the Acra on Pitra's territory penetration team, both of whom slept facing them.
>"Well, you wanna give it a go, or-"
"No. In fact, you're not coming along on this one unless you want to be a slave." Jack stated abruptly, cutting her off.
>"What's with the hostility?" Pitra asked with a look of mixed horror and concern on her face
"We're in kino space, they have official policies against xenophelia here, if they found out I was traveling with acrani women, they'd not only probably lynch both of us on sight, they'd probably invade terran space."
>Jack got up from the bed, lifting Pitra to her feet with him and picking a set of clothes for her.
"What's with the lack of enthusiasm?" Jack asked, noting the look on Pitra's face.
>"You wouldn't really sell me into slavery, would you?" She asked, apparently not understanding Jack's implications.
"No... Though you probably COULD be MY slave if you wanted to come along, but I don't think they'd sell recreational devices to people who would even associate with xenos as slaves."
>"Oh, so... Kinky but impractical."
"Yup. Now get dressed, or I will dress you." Jack commanded, eliciting a much more cheerful response from Pitra as he handed her the clothes 
>Jack took Pitra by the arm and began his trip to the ready room where he met up with the others.
>All came to the table as Jack and Pitra stood in casual attire, apparently the only two that were planning on leaving the ship or... putting on clothes today.
>"So, what's the plan, boss?" Fireball asked.
"Simple as fuck. We land the ship, you guys stay on board. Acra stay out of sight, nano soldiers keep prying eyes out, I'll go into town and try to buy a 'recreational device.' Hopefully I can find one suited to our needs. I'm thinking about two gigatons."
>"WAIT, you're trying to buy a two gigaton nuke?" one of the nano soldiers burst out.
"That sounded like an objection." Jack said, allowing just a hint of irritation into his voice.
>"I'm not against it, but how do you propose to find one for sale?"
"You can buy those here. We're in kino space. Anything but xenos goes, why else would the energy readings from this area be so prominent from earth?"
>"Ok, I get it, but... WHY? For what purpose?"
"I thought you always wanted to surf on a two gigaton thermonuclear weapon in orbit right next to a small star and guide that shit into a spaceship to see what happens."
>"Hmmm. Yeah. I did."
"Well, good, lolnuke. Call me when we land."
>Jack took Pitra by the arm and the two retired to do what the rest of the crew aboard the ship could only guess was "something" at most innocent and "Yeah, no. Those too degenerates are fucking like three balled cats" a mere few seconds later.

Four hours later.
>The ship came to a stop, having bottomed out its landing gear on the surface of Grohmler three, a planet named for the eccentric billionaire who led the project to Terraform the planet, making it, in a matter of two years, the first planet to be terraformed by the Kino organization in 2157. 
>Jack had always thought of Hans Grohmler as being an eccentric man, and had in fact met the man when he was in his mid teenage years in Rhodesia. He was about forty eight at the time of their meeting, though one could assume that Grohmler had been no older than thirty, having apparently aged less under intensive fields of gravity or relativistic velocities than any human naturally would in such times, though he was a prominent name in the galaxy by that point, having turned almost all of humanity into rural farmers and mining magnates in a matter of a decade, seeing humanity colonizing thousands of systems by the year 2167, just two years after Jack had met him.
>Jack's train of thought about the expansion of humanity into families with extremely numerous children, often times numbering between twelve and thirty in the colonies, came to an abrupt halt with the realization that he had been on the surface for minutes now. He stood and walked to the exit ramp of the ship, bringing his banking card and thanking the powers that be for the raise and exceedingly low prices of recreational thermonuclear devices in the kino organization's space.
>Jack stepped off the ship and into the environmentally uncontrolled surface of Grohmler three, feeling immediately that this was his kind of place. His skin wasn't the suit, and his eyes were not the visor, but they told him just as true, though with pleasant sensation instead of numbers, that the temperature on the surface was one hundred and seven degrees fahrenheit, the sun beating down, almost scathing in and of itself in the sensation it caused him.
>Jack felt for the first time since he'd left Rhodesia that he was home. He was in an arid environment with a high temperature, a scathing sun, he was shopping for a nuclear weapon that he and about twelve other... beings... would surf into the side of a rather large cruiser. What more could he want?
>Jack walked off the pad as the nano soldiers took up guard over the ship. Heading into the nearby town and entering queries into his digital implant, one of the more advanced perks that a man in a nanosuit gets in order to interact with the suit's muscles, both physical and mental.
"Eureka." Jack muttered to himself as the name "Adam's Atom Armory" came into his mind, instructions of getting to it and inquiries about inventory flashed in the back of his mind, eventually coming to the conclusion as though by some psychic divination that they had one such nuclear device of the type he desired in stock, and for only two thousand dollars, the traditional reserve currency of much of earth still even after two hundred years, and the traditional medium of exhange of the Kino organization and Terran Alliance, only dwarfed in value by the Swiss Prill, a currency that had only recently formed some forty years prior and saw standard use in the Alliance of Pret, a factional organization that made use of Grohmler's technological breakthroughs to essentially separate themselves from most of man kind... How very neutral of them.
>Jack eventually found his way into the shop, having worked up a respectable sweat on a jog to the place.
>"Howdy." The shopkeeper said as Jack's eyes adjusted to the ambient light of the shop, several sphere and oblong shaped devices of all sizes on the show floor.
"Howdy. I need a recreational nuke." Jack said, judging himself for even the utterance of such an obvious statement. The shopkeeper, professional as one could be refrained from shooting back sarcasm, and went on.
>"What kind of device are you looking for, friend, any particular application?"
"Well, it's a bit of a space demolition, and what I need is about a two gigaton nuke, nothing too fancy mind you, it's actually advantageous to have a bigger bomb." Jack mused to the now thoughtful shopkeeper, considering the challenges of such a weapon, and if he was up to it.
>"So Two gigatons, bigger is better. How big are we talking?"
"well, big enough to be carried by about twelve nanosuits, so I suppose ten feet long, four feet wide and cylindrical would work."
>"I'm up to the challenge, I've got something that fits that in stock... How much are you looking to spend?"
"I've got a few thousand to spare."
>"Excellent. I happen to have something like you want, and can have it ready to go in about an hour. How would you like it transported to your ship?"
"Well, precisely what are we talking about?"
>"Old school thermonuclear weapon, two gigatons, about eight feet by two, though. Two thousand and it's yours."
"Sounds good, I can radio the ship and get the crew going. Though I don't think we have the equipment to truck it to the ship."
>"Not a problem. We offer shipping. Are you qualified to use these weapons?"
"I'm a nano soldier, by interstellar treaty, I'm to be considered qualified with everything. I'd fly the planet itself if I had the inclination." Jack said, just the slightest hint of sharpness cutting into his voice behind his smile.
>The shopkeeper shrugged and nodded. "Then We'll gladly ship the device to your ship, there's just the matter of paying for the device and informing us of the location of your ship."
>Jack pulled out his wallet and from it, his banking card, happily paying the two thousand for the nuke, and advising the shopkeeper of the spaceport his ship was at, and to look for the ship with "...A bunch of blue and gray skinned alien voluntary slave laborers and the nanosuit wearing soldiers guarding them, can't miss it."
>The shopkeeper's face lost all expression as he watched Jack's face to assess how much of that remark was truth and how much was exaggeration.
>Jack stared him down while sending a datalink message to Moon Man, instructing him to relay the order for the acra aboard to be brought out to pose as hobbled slave laborers, before returning to the present conversation.
"Relax, I'm joking! Okay, I'm mostly not, they're just xenos. They signed the agreement, they're slaves until they learn English." Jack said, the shopkeeper reeling in relief as he realized he WASN'T talking to a confessed xenophile in a shop with recording devices pervading every nook and cranny.
>In a matter of minutes Jack arranged transport of the nuke to the space port and began to make his own way back, much more explicitly than before ordering over the link that the xenos be brought out to act like slaves unfamiliar with the human tongue of English, save for precious few words.
>Jack arrived after another pleasant jog to the spaceport on foot, finding the truck unloading a two gigaton nuke into the cargo bay of the ship, the acra, speaking their own language and pretending to be hobbled and feeble, loading it up with the use of the ship's equipment loader., making what would have been normally a pretty good strength exercise for a human into a very simple and easy chore for the Acra, who could synchronize their muscle fibers in order to simply exert more strength to lift heavier weights even when not in crisis, and without injuring themselves.
>"So, they weren't kidding."
"Don't get too snippy around the slaves, they might not know what you're saying, but they're getting pretty damn good on picking up the tone of what is said. They're PARTICULARLY good at differentiating praise from admonishment,"
>"So... how do they act?"
"They're a bit strange, they like to cuddle up against things that are warm, but a little cooler than them. They like me, but I'm up and about all day and all night, so I frequently go to bed finding them in blankets, face down against the corner between the wall and the floor. Otherwise they're pretty self contained. Don't go around looking for trouble, really they're kind of like bipedal house cats that we can tell to do our bidding."
>"Hmm, where'd you get these ones?"
"Never you mind that. They're a pretty alright species, these ones are just volunteering as slaves because they're all criminals."
>"A shame, I could use some hands on nuke assembly."
"Oh, you don't want these. They don't understand the concept of rifling ballistic weapons, I don't think you wanna test their comprehension of atomic physics."
>"I suppose not."
"Looks like they're done loading the nuke."
>"So, if you don't mind my asking, what kinda party are you throwing that you need a two gigaton nuke?"
"Oh, I figure we're either going to destroy the installation slated for demolition... or usher forth the green apocalypse. Time will tell."
>"Green apocalypse?"
"Never you mind. I gotta be going now, friend." Jack said, watching the acra close the ship's cargo bay, the killer of giants gently nestled inside, dormant for the time being.
>Jack walked to the ship and started making his preparations for departure as he watched the truck drive away, the engines start up, and other systems whirring to life, just by virtue of being exposed to him during their happening, taking a few days off his life.
>"Jack, I know you value your life fairly little, but you can't be staring at the engines like that." Came a digitized voice behind him.
"Suppose you're right." Jack said, turning away and receding to the inside of the ship. "I've got Pitra to take care of. Who else would do it, you?"
>"Right where it hurts, man, right where it hurts. Oh well, I'll be a nanite lifeform one day, though. Until then, I suppose I'll just be Fireball."
"Jack the outcast approves." he answered, much to Fireball's annoyance. Jack decided to retire to the cafe and get some food, as he after all did not have the same bodily functions he'd once had in the Generation eight nano suit. 
>While he ate alone, he found himself hearing noises, seemingly too light to be the footsteps of nano soldiers, soon finding the Acra, joining him, Jiri and Tepri in particular.
>"You're a pretty good liar." Tepri commmented, before adding "The youthful one who seems a bit shy here is Jiri."
"Thanks. Where's Pitra?" Jack responded, thinking "Im may jin moy showock!" to himself as he realized she wasn't there.
>"That's... actually what we wanted to talk to you about." Tepri started, sending an immediate wave of concern into Jack's mind. "She's been so paranoid about you, We just want what's best for her, you know, I think the human expression is 'you can't trust no damn bitch whore,' well, we're a bit concerned about the way she's been acting when you're gone, and we need to ask one thing of you. Have you been unfaithful to her?" Tepri inquired.
"You know, it's nice to get the easy questions for once?" Jack asked with a chuckle before adding, "No, I'm loyal, and expect the same in return. Her paranoia is a side effect of the suit, so's the insomnia. It's REMARKABLY strong in her, though."
>"Insomia?" Jiri asked, not grasping the concept.
"Insomnia," Jack enunciated " is when abnormal brain activity prevents the brain from settling down. It's a common thing in human nano soldiers when they exit their suits, though usually not as severe as hers, even in the generation eight suits. The Generation nine suits don't cause the symptoms to me that the eights once caused, but then again, she's an irregular case, and never had a generation eight suit."
>"Okay, so her behavior is the suit? What are the Atypical factors of her case?"
"Well, we strictly forbade putting women in these suits for OBVIOUS fucking reasons, so she's the first female in the suit, these are Atypical suits in and of themselves. Moon man, you wouldn't know it, looks similar to me but with dark brown skin under the suit, but his body's mostly broken down, and even then, he couldn't get out of his suit of his own accord. HE would need a team of technicians, a nanosuit cradle and even then, that's assuming his body was healthy enough to exit the suit without killing him. Hell, couple weeks earlier and I'd be wearing a generation seven suit like he does too. My suit was similar. Anyway, she's COMPLETELY out of the candidate pool for the suits, she's got tits that would need to be accommodated in the internal structure of the suit, female hormone chemistry that would be a bit more finicky to the suit's neurological interactions, primarily the dopamine inhibitors that prevent it from literally merging with her, psychological profiles have to be compiled and DNA imprinted, and that's assuming the acra are as similar to humans as I think, which is that they're almost just blue skinned humans. We never put a WOMAN in these suits past a couple trials with the generation three suits back when, and THEN there were no survivors of removal, let alone a XENO woman."
>"So, beyond any of that, is there anything else?"
"I simply don't know, it could be that a human woman wouldn't know that these suits aren't clothing, or it could be that her alien female neurochemistry is more stable under the suit's influences, and that's why she didn't get out of the suit and immediately start clawing off her own face before breaking her spine and choking on her tongue or something."
>"That sounds brutal. Why would they put women through this?"
"They simply didn't know and they volunteered for the experiments. Plenty of men go through the same thing, that's why after they sentence criminals and various other degenerates to the suit, they screen neurochemistry, psychological profiles, physical profiles and various habitual cycles of the prisoner in question. The one's who have certain psychoses will be eliminated and sent back to prison, certain habits and neurological balances or imbalances will also be cause for elimination. Suits are expensive, after all. Then it becomes a matter of who can survive their first separation syndrome. Back when I did it, a large portion of them didn't."
>"So, how long is she gonna be like this?"
"I'm not a neurochemist, I can operate the suit's supercomputer, but I can't scan what's happening in her head when neither one of us is in the suits and being in them would render the scan moot anyway. All we can do is wait until she stops being fucking looney."
>"FUCKING LOONEY AM I?" A voice shrieked though the room before adding "And what are YOU whores doing in here?" The voice continued, seething with rage.
>Tepri and Jiri stared wide eyed at the acra woman, her eyes practically glowing with rage to Jack as well, though his back was to her.
"Pitra, your friends? Associates? Colleagues? Whatever, they're concerned about you." Jack stated matter of factly, not turning his head to catch the hand dropping upon his shoulder, instead choosing to merely clench his jaw and slowly turn his head to meet her now hazy purple eyes, rather than attempt to fight the woman who could, if she wanted to exert herself enough, rip his very anatomy asunder.
>Her face hovered over his shoulder, a deathglare showing little in the way of subsidence on her face. "If I can't have you to myself, I'll just fucking kill you." She seemed to say, though Jack could make out none of it without the nanosuit, having apparently chosen to speak in her native tongue instead of English, looking subsequently to her colleagues after finishing her sentence, the response to which, shaking of the heads, Jack could practically FEEL.
"So where were w- Ahhhh!!" Jack got out before the already vise like grip of Pitra doubled, probably in his estimation, breaking his collar bone with a loud pop.
>Pitra's face remained stone as Jack stared into what looked to be fast becoming the face of death.
>"N'yaslehf thagn!!!" came a frantic cry from the edge of Jack's mind. Whether it was muffled by the sound echoing through his bones of her hand crunching his collar, or they were in acrani was indeterminate.

>Jack looked on at Pitra, his face expressionless as he watched her wind up. In his mind, he knew this could very easily be "it."
>Suddenly, from the corner of his sight a gray blur took her from him, slackening her grip on his shoulder, but not before he'd been pulled to the floor, Tepri's gray frame, murky gray hair draped over her upper back and down her shoulders on top of her, bearing down on her with a vicious series of strikes, battering her out of her senses, while Jiri ran over him, checking to see that he wasn't maimed before she pulled Tepri back and restrained Pitra on the ground.
>As Jack came to his feet he heard Pitra wailing out Acrani that even he could tell was slurred and ill defined from behind the pain of his now crushed shoulder.
>Tepri and Jiri yelled something back at her before pointing to Jack. He stood alarmed, as he saw her look at him, then back at them with that same glare turning to distress, and finally to tears as she seemingly gave up on speech and flailing, collapsing from the little progress she'd made in propelling herself upwards and merely lying on the floor of the mess room with the two restraining her, feebly reaching out and writhing during her screams of agony.
>Jack looked on frozen, mind reeling from the turn of events. He continued looking on wide eyed, terror coming across his face as Pitra made a single last effort, rolling loose and lunging at him with tears rolling down her face, he back pedaled while shaking from the pain as Jiri and Tepri made a lunge after her, thankfully almost as she made hers, meaning that when she grabbed a second time, finding her arms around Jack's ribcage and squeezing on him, she only had time to squeeze his ribs to the brink of breaking, though its still left him sore after the two others pulled her off two seconds later.
>Jack retracted from the now frantic and reeling Pitra, his eyes wide, nerves, mind and emotions running wild in the moment of crisis, where rationality fell out the window in the name of prima facie reactions to the more nuanced and often subtle actions and reactions.
>Jack's mind was useless, conflicted by the desire to comfort her and the reflex to get away from the certain death she'd cause him with her strength and lack of emotional control, nerves buzzing at his pain in the adrenaline of the moment as he'd come realized the threat of the situation, his emotions running with sympathy for Pitra, and the near undeniable urge to comfort her cries of pain, the feeling of betrayal that she'd hurt him like this, fear, mistrust, but mostly just hurt. It was just... hurt. The kind of hurt that makes one feel low, helpless, the kind of hurt that makes one give up to it, and in his case, both emotional and physical, as he watched Pitra writhe and reach for him from the ground, her visceral cries and tears now forming puddles on the ground as he backed away in terror.
>Jack's world for the first time since before he'd left home turned inward, causing him to shrink into the corner under the now throbbing and flesh rending pain of the broken shoulder, and badly bruised band around his rib cage, which would probably encompass internal bleeding.
>"What's going on?!?!" came the voice, indistinguishable to Jack beyond the fact that it wasn't one of the Acra. 
>"GET JACK OUT OF HERE! HE'S BADLY HURT AND SHE'S THE ONE DOING IT!" Someone in the room yelled before Jack saw a carbon black arm ripping him from the room, carrying him by the torso.
>Before long Jack was placed into a chair in the ship's infirmary by the nanosuit which told him "Stay here, I'll get back to you once I've helped the acra." before it departed, leaving him alone with his pains, both emotional and physical.
>Jack sat, seemingly submerged in his hurt. He thought to Pitra and what she'd done to him, and he knew that he should forgive her, but he just couldn't get past the pain, he could empathize with her, but he simply couldn't get past the pains. He'd known it would fall apart somewhere, his luck wasn't that good. But it didn't prepare him. He shrank into the chair, wanting to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING to let it out. He started to feebly sing a song from centuries past as he gave up any pretense of composure.

"There ain't no summer and there ain't no spring
The skies ain't blue and the grass ain't green
The birds don't sing and fly around
Even they can't seem to get off the ground

My front doorbell never rings
I never go outside for anything
At every little house in town
The window shades are all pulled down
And the mailman never ever comes around

Here in Torture Town
That is where I can be found
In Torture Town
Don't you come around
If you got happiness in your life
Then you best
Stay away
From Torture Town

There's a little town bar - there ain't no stores
And they'll deliver a case to my front porch
They don't charge me a dime
'Cause I play guitar for them sometimes
As 1-2-3-4 shots kick in
My euphoria begins
That's me inside that liquor glass
Cold as ice and drowning fast
And I'm daring anyone to pour me out

Here in Torture Town
That is where I can be found
In Torture Town
Don't you come around
If you got happiness in your life
Then you best
Stay away
From Torture Town

If life gave me a second chance
I guess I'd change a lot
I'd make myself a better man
Aw hell, maybe not
The ghosts that live here find it hard
To scare my ass away
I'm scarier than they are, so
I might as well stay

Here in Torture Town
That is where I will be found
In Torture Town
Don't you come around
If you got happiness in your life
Then you best
Stay away
From Torture Town" Jack sang between dull yelps as he sat...
>Minutes passed as Jack decided he couldn't support his own weight enough to keep upright anymore, slowly lowering himself onto his right side, putting the shoulder that wasn't now shattered to the bed as he let the tears stream down his face and from his temple to the reclined chair.
"How long did it take? Thirty seconds? Forty-five?" he thought to himself.
>Jack took several breaths, at first lurched and hurried, inhaling interrupted by the most minute but sharply painful exhales before the continuation of the same inhalation of air, and then becoming slow steady breaths, which came from shallow and hurried to slow and deep.
>Slowly but surely, he regained his composure, the pain subsiding somewhat emotionally, into his threshold of tolerance at the very least. He could handle the pain in his body, even though the shoulder was positively excruciating, and he was fairly certain something was wrong with his ribs and internal organs.
>The door finally opened, the nanosuit returning to figure out what was wrong with Jack.
>"Alright, Tepri and Jiri have it... ah, you don't need to worry about it, Jack. Now can you lie down on your back and let me get a look at ya?" The suit said, now that Jack had his composure he could plainly distinguish the voice as belonging to Azar, one of the best medics he'd seen working on nano soldiers.
>"Now what hurts?"
"Fairly certain my left shoulder is broken and I have at least some bad bruising around my ribs, doc. Maybe a few cracked, possibly some internal bleeding." 
>"Well," Azar said "I guess we'll get you under the X-ray and see if you're a pussy.
>Another hour passed as examinations took place, and Azar fretted over what he COULD do to help his commander get back on his feet.
"Give it to me straight, doc. how bad is it?"
>"You'll live, but we're gonna need to wire your shoulder back together, you got three cracked ribs and a bruised set'a kidneys and liver. That's what's important. You get drugs and surgery."

Three elapsed days later.
>Jack stood in the mess room where he'd stopped in for a drink, as he'd done the last three days since Pitra broke his shoulder, which had been more or less "fit" back together with some attention to detail, "love" and a metal plate with some screws. naturally this didn't hurt too much unless it was prodded, but the ribs still did, as well as the bruised organs underneath. Jack remembered, until he had his drink for the "morning" at least, that at some point between joining the EDF and being put in the suit, he HAD in fact felt a worse pain than that which Pitra inflicted upon him, though he couldn't remember when even before he took his first sip of the "moonshine" and narcotics cocktail he'd mixed up.
>Sobriety left Jack like a bullet as he gulped down half the mix of 190 proof and narcotic mix. He thought about the state he was in for a moment, having come not just to forgive Pitra, but to sympathize with her, seeing as he couldn't exactly say he wouldn't have done the same thing had he spent his first separation period with a wife. He'd certainly been easy to convince of the conspiracy of the light bulb to drain his soul during his confinement at the time. Even so, reconciliation with Pitra was unlikely. Assuming she'd cooled off, she was kept in an area of the ship away from him by a compliment of nano soldiers who had not much better to do, and he was also kept from her by a similar compliment.
>One of them walked in before starting to speak. "Another one? I'm starting to think it isn't the wound in your shoulder you're trying to dull." He said before poking what had previously been an in tact trapezius muscle, eliciting no reaction from Jack.
"I feel you touching it, but that's about it. This shit works."
>"I'm glad, but you're gonna have to stop drinking that shit after this one, because you're getting FUCKED UP."
"Suppose you're right." Jack slurred out, finishing his drink and tossing the container to the waste port across the room.
"Seriously... I can't feel the stool I'm sitting on." 
>"Sir.... You're standing."
"Oh."
>Hours passed as Jack waited in his new makeshift quarters, eventually calling out to the nearest nanosuit.
"Hey! I've made a decision, pass it to Pitra's guard crew and I want an answer from her."
>"What should I tell them?"
"The next time Pitra puts on the suit... and I need her to if we're going to pull this shit off in a few days, it's going to be the last time."
>The doctor recommended that the two not reconcile for a time after the incident, and Jack could see why. With her strength she might further injure him assuming the best case that her separation would be recoverable. Worst case...

Chapter 10: The Patriarch Of The Stars

>Jack stood in the ready room contemplating what his situation was, what would have to be torn, what to throw away, what to salvage. He thanked the suit he was wearing for its contribution to clearing his mind, injecting, manufacturing and purging chemicals in his brain and in his blood stream.
>For the first time in days he was clear of the effects of the narcotic "moonshine" he'd been drinking like it was water. The only downside was that he'd had to get into the interaction suit beforehand, requiring a flexibility he couldn't easily muster with his injured shoulder.
>In the suit he was immune to residing pains, severe emotional stimuli, he could even survive direct hits from just about everything that fell short of a nuclear weapon, not that he couldn't easily survive a two gigaton nuke in orbit from a few kilometers out. His mind was once more what it had been. Cold. Calculating. He was no longer Jack with the suit to harden his mind and body, but "Outcast."
>He waited for Pitra, who'd agreed that this was only by necessity to put on the suit once more, the last time she'd put it on. She seemed to have recovered from the mental shock that the suit caused in the last week, and while the prevailing trend of the first time being the hardest hitting seemed to be the rule, a month was a long time to be in the throws of the psychotic reactions of the suit the FIRST time, the second time would still be prohibitively long if she ever got out of the suit again.
>Pitra finally arrived, readied and in the interaction suit, escorted by the acra, promptly leaving the room to tend to their duties elsewhere, primarily piloting the ship and monitoring the trackers to retrieve the suits after the bomb was detonated.
>"If I could take it back I would." Pitra said morosely to the carbon black suit standing before her.
"It'll all be better in time." Jack assured, seemingly looking through her, the ship, even the very universe.
>Moon man stood with Tepri in the cockpit of the ship, both staring out into the stars, Moon Man somehow giving off the quality of glaring into the cosmos as he stood, despite his face being entirely covered by the suit's optical plate.
>"Do you think he'll ever forgive Pitra for what she did to him?" Tepri inquired
>"undoubtedly. He just needs time to heal."
>"He seems to have healed already."
>"Nah. He's just hiding his pain in the suit. I spent the past week hearing about his wildly liberal use of alcohol and narcotics, not exactly in character for the guy who I've known to reject drugs entirely unless they were absolutely necessary. Speaking of being out in space, you'll be sure to recover us when the nuke goes off, correct?"
>"What's the matter? Don't trust me?"
>"No."
>"Suppose I'll have to earn it, then."

hours later.
>Jack and Pitra stand in their suits, surrounded by the others in the cargo bay, the bomb that Jack had affectionately scrawled "killer of giants" on, beginning to float off the rails of the cargo bay.
>"So uhhhh... You sure you don't wanna use something fancier, outcast?"
"Too late now." Outcast answered as the suits floated from the floor, and the doors of the cargo bay opened.
>The team assumed their positions all around the bomb, grabbing handles and pulling it to the exit.
>The ship cleared, a transmission coming through, Tepri's voice issuing a ready signal, meanwhile Jack activated the interface of the nuke, checking and ensuring that the arm setting was set to "safe" before lining the cursor to the setting for detonation triggering, changing from "Remote trigger" to "Impact-sensitive." 
>The maneuvering begins, the team of suits working in a concerted effort as delicate as a ballet of glass to change the trajectory of the bomb, placing it on an impact trajectory, just to gently bump into the ship still yet seven hundred miles off in the distance, as harmless as a wave against a boulder until it awakens with a flash.
>The trajectory alligned, the crew follows it in, each calculating with their suits supercomputers and checking the object's path above the star. 
"Hey, I'm getting some odd gravitational interdiction forces between us and the ship, looks like we're gonna have to escort the package to the door."
>"Is this your way of making me atone?" Pitra asked?
"No, it's what's necessary. If we don't we can't be certain of a hit."
>"What's at stake if we miss again?"
"Remember how you like fucking me? And cuddling and all that shit? Yeah, penalty for that shit is death in forty years or so across the universe if they get to the Kino organization, they REALLY don't care for our Terran alliance. Maybe rightfully so."
>"So it's a labor of love, is it?"
"You could think of it like that if it tickles your fancy, but can we focus on guiding this shit in? The better we do it, the less likely we have to get a signature for the package, the less likely we get executed for being xeno sympathizers and xenophiles."
>"Think we deserve it?"
"Look, we can save the moral commentary for when we have the benefit of hindsight."
>"Give me three meters per second up. Interdict in three minutes." came moon man, taking lead of the maneuvering effort."Hey, Outcast, can you tell your wife to stop questioning her existence until AFTER we're aboard the ship and the kino organization isn't waging a literal war of profit on all our fucking homeworlds?"
"What he said, Pitra. This isn't the time for this shit." 
>"Three meters per second normal."
>Jack began another three meter per second burn with his thrusters in coordination with the whole team, noting that, for all he could say about Pitra's moral commentary and her lack of willingness to stop questioning the obvious, she certainly kept step well with the rest of the team.
>"Give me seven point nine meters per second prograde." Moon man commanded, prompting the whole team to reposition themselves and start their burn on cue.
"You know, I never thought when I got the nanosuit that I'd be using its reaction control to carry a giant nuke to a fucking ship in orbit around a star."
>"What did you THINK it was for?" Azar chided.
"Shooting people in space. That's how I was TRAINED to use it, anyway."
>"Hey, Pitra, you might not have seen this before, switch your visor to H-Alpha and look around. It's beautiful." Fireball advised.
>"Jack! It really is beautiful! Look!"
"I know, it's a pretty little range in the spectrum between red and infrared."
>"I've never seen this color before!"
"I've never seen a literal distortion of the laws of physics in person before, but there's one and we're hitting it in ten seconds." Jack said, pointing to the interdicting anomaly.
>His visor showed a trajectory with extremely volatile oscillations on the other end, which he figured had a fifty fifty chance of either being accurate or reflective of being too complex for even the suit's computers to calculate and quantify.
>In seconds he watched the anomaly pass from three and a half kilometers distant to his position, passing him by as fast as he'd seen it.
>"We're a bit low, give me twenty three point two meters per second anti-radial, then two and a half normal."
>The burn took place. The interdiction finally cleared, the orbital rendezvous was set at a three hundred seventy meter per second collision speed. The team released the bomb and each made a gentle burn outward in order to disturb the trajectory as little as possible during their divergence.
>The retrograde burns began and they began separation at a speed calculated to put them twenty kilometers away at the time of impact and slightly above so they didn't get tossed into the star.
>Jack switched the arm setting in the interface to "arm" as he watched the bomb speed away.
"You know Pitra, somehow this situation looks vaguely familiar.
>"How so?"
>Jack thought about it for a second. Where had he seen this before?
>"Well? Beautiful view."
"I thought I had a dream when I was... sick." Jack said as he realized what was about to happen, making a burn to grab hold of Pitra.
>"Jack, what are you-" Pitra attempted to get out as she was interrupted by a great deal of gravitational and inertial forces acting on her organs, brain and skeleton.
>Jack held on to her for all he was worth, making full use of the suit's strength controls, death gripping her suit as the acceleration occurred at fifteen G's for several minutes.
>Jack came to his senses, having been semi conscious, and knowing that assuming the best, he'd be aged significantly in the joints.
>He held Pitra in his arms, unconscious and limp in his arms. He looked to the star and saw it visibly drifting away.
>Pitra's blood finally caught up with her brain as she came to her senses in his arms.
>"Where are we?"
"Far from where we were, getting farther every second."
>"What happened?"
"I had a dream about it when I was sick... There was an anomaly and we got forced through it when the bomb went off."
>"So... did we do it?"
"Yes. We did it."
>"We can never go back to the way things were. Can we?"
"I wish it hadn't come to this way of doing it, but we could be adrift in space a long time, I'm picking up nothing on the theater wide comms, which means no one is nearby. We COULD go back to the way things were. Start over from before our troubles."
>"Do you really think it will work?"
"Yes. Before what we did to each other. Go into settings and turn off the dopamine inhibitors. Make sure to get oxytocin and epinephrine regulators as well."
>Pitra was silent, looking into nothing for a moment before replying with a "Now what?"
"Just, slave your suit to me and hold me. I'll do the rest."
>In a matter of minutes Jack had suspended her suit into a stasis, and set a high impact probability trajectory. Then doing the same for himself, disabling suit hormone inhibitors and regulators.
>Jack took a final look at the universe before setting his suit into stasis. He wrapped his arms around Pitra, clinging tightly onto her nanosuit, and drew his last breaths as his suit locked, extremities bound into their positions, nervous system shutting down. At a rate with no place in time, so fast and yet almost slow, his vision faded and his mind finally started to shut down as stasis kicked in.
"I'll see you soon, my love." at last floated through his mind.
>The world around Jack went black, first into a tableau of which his mind was no longer capable of decyphering. The last thing he saw flashing through his mind before absolute oblivion was a woman of about five feet and maybe four or five inches tall, her pale white skin, disheveled brown hair and gentle smile looking lovingly upon him. She looked at him with all the love in the world before embracing him, her eyes, rings of glowing blue orbs, circling her pupils as they contracted and dilated, became the last thing he would see before slipping into darkness.

Epilogue: Why, yes I am.
>Jack awoke somewhere, he appeared to be in a jungle, much more the pleasant environment without the bodies of nano soldiers littering the floor. Rays of Light swept down diagonally from the canopy as he looked around the crater.
>Jack eventually swept his gaze to his left, where he saw her. She was looking down at him with a gentle smile, her eyes, held all the love in the world, their glowing orbs rotation in circles as her pupils dilated. 
>He looked to his body, finding no trace of clothing, only himself, lying naked on the jungle floor. He looked up to the woman, reaching a hand down and caressing his cheek as his eyes met hers. At this moment, his mind was quiet and blank save for one question.
"Are you Pitra?" He asked like an excited child.
>She looked at him, starting, "Jack..." pausing to wipe a forming tear from her eye, "Why, yes. I am." She said, taking him in a warm embrace.