Star Force: Sav (SF51) by Aer-ki Jyr

toy and throw
out the instruction manual without ever reading it.”
    “Speaking of which…I think we need to have a chat with
our own.”
    “Kara?”
    “I’m going to swing by my quarters and send her a
message. Meet you guys at Vortison’s lab.”
    “Recall?”
    Jason hesitated. “Just a chat for
now. I don’t want to pull her off the front if we don’t have to.”
    Bo nodded. “Anything she can remember would be…useful.”
    “Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Jason said, turning left at
the next intersection and breaking off from the group.

 
    “If you’ve really done what you claim to,” Paul said
when the four of them, plus Jace and Riona who they’d
picked up on the way, walked into the genetics research lab, “you can have the
rest of the day off.”
    “Why would I want time off?” Vortison answered deadpan
as he enlarged a hologram that showed biotelemetry in a synthesis of numbers
and icons that made for easy recognition…once you got used to the tech
vocabulary. “Here it is,” he said, pointing to one particular area. “Quite
obvious now that I know what to look for. Bo’s data offered more than all the
rest of you combined. If you guys can prolong your ascensions as he did it will
shave centuries off us getting the complete set. ”
    “I don’t know how I did what I did,” Bo said with a
shrug of his shoulders. “I completely lost track of time.”
    Vortison pointed towards one of the beds and Bo walked
over and laid down…with the scanning equipment coming out over him.
    “Any side effects with this one?”
    “No pain, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Anything new?”
    “Other than a power boost, no.”
    “That’s standard for Pren,” Vortison explained, “but
you should be extremely tired now.”
    “A little bit, but compared to the others this has
been by far the easiest ascension…I don’t know why it took so long though.”
    “Perhaps therein lays the answer. You weren’t trying
so hard and took your time with it, hence the lack of physical trauma… cellularly speaking.”
    “Ah…actually I was pressing hard and it just wouldn’t
come.”
    “Impatient as always,” Vortison said as the scan
results started to come in. Archons never did like waiting for anything.
    While they were doing that Wilson was studying the
trigger hologram intently along with Paul and Riona, with the two men having a
telepathic conversation that was going on at a feverish clip…so much so that
when Riona asked him a question he held up a wait finger until they’d finished.
    “What?” she whispered.
    “We’ve got two puzzle pieces now. Pren
and Battlemeld.”
    “And there are some similarities in the triggers,”
Wilson finished.
    “ Trackable ?” Jace asked, walking away from Bo and joining the
conversation.
    “Possibly,” Wilson said, comparing something on his
datapad with the hologram. “I’ve seen these patterns before.”
    That comment got Vortison’s head spinning around to
face him, momentarily ignoring Bo’s scan. “Where?”
    “V’kit’no’sat engineering. Whether it be combat philosophy, infrastructure, or societal
architecture there are fingerprints on all of them that can be recognized with
a trained eye…and I’m seeing them here as well.”
    “What are you noticing?” Greg asked.
    “It’s just a hunch, but I’d say that Bo’s stall during
his ascension was the result of his Sav tissue. It’s not an add-on like the
others, but fully integrated into his every waking thought and subconscious
process. I think they designed it that way on purpose, and if I’m right every ascension from this point on for him will take extra long while it makes the upgrades.”
    “How did you get that from that data?” Vortison asked,
very confused.
    “It’s a training thing,” he said simply.
    “Then his massive headache earlier?” Paul wondered.
    “It wasn’t just growing tissue, it was acclimating that tissue to his current psionic tissues,”
Vortison said,