Space Odyssey: Spectre-Chapter 501: Stealing Tech

"Argh! Damnit!" Jace cursed as Charlie pulled a chunk of chemi-metal from his shoulder. Before his shoulder was fine because it had healed around the metal. But it was better to go in and remove those pieces early on. "Do you have to be so rough?"

"Get over it." Charlie scoffed as she dropped the chunk of metal in the bowl full of other pieces of shrapnel that she had been pulling from his body. "If you can’t take the healing then don’t take the wound." She told him.

Jace grunted and rolled his eyes. "Ow!" He yelled as she pulled out another piece of metal.

"Colonel Jace, can we focus?" Jace looked at the source of the voice, General Isaiah, who seemed to be at a loss. "We need to come up with a strategy. We should have expected this after the Daemons appeared. But we did not even know their name before, these Mortella."

"It is not a lack of knowledge. But last time there was not a common language between Xenar and Mortella. But it appears the Mortella know the human dialects or learned a method to quickly learn it since then." Solisa explained. "I have already made available what the Xenar discovered about the Mortella. But like the daemons, some of the information might be outdated."

"We will- ow! We will just have to fix it if need be. We learned a lot from our encounter. It appears they are especially susceptible to static electricity. Amusingly enough." Jace informed them with a wince of pain.

"Don’t you mean electricity?" Solisa asked in confusion.

"Nope. I- hmmm..." He glared at Charlie as she pulled out a rather large piece of metal from his shoulder. She shrugged shyly before moving up to his neck where a few pieces of metal were stuck in his collar bone. "Electricity does not work. It can’t be an overwhelming constant flow. It needs to be static and come in constant flows. At least that is what works best against their shields and shells."

"Shells?" Victor asked. He was at this table meeting as well. It was a temporary arrangement as they waited for the greater fleets. While also going toward the Princess’ Pride. They need to go for repairs and to get more equipment.

"I thought they were Artificial Intelligences. But you would not use the term shells if they were." The Valkyrie pointed out. Unlike the others she was still in her broken armor. She seemed to still be suspicious of them. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"Jace, did you get close enough to one to scan it?" Solisa asked, her otter form flipping in the air in excitement.

"I did." Jace went to nod but Charlie firmly grabbed his chin to prevent him.

"Stop moving your head for a few minutes." Charlie instructed.

Jace pouted but stopped moving his head.

Admiral Dakota chuckled in amusement before looking over at Colonel Dahlia. "How is The Elysium and your people?"

"The Elysium has several damaged areas and areas that are not usable anymore. I believe it would be best to dock it for the long term for repairs. As for personnel. We lost almost half of our people. But none of the Spectres were lost. In fact, I think Jace was the only Spectre that was injured." Dahlia ended her report with a smirk toward Jace who flinched.

"Very well. Solisa, how about Cerberus?" Admiral Dakota balked when he saw the otter was trying to make Jace laugh by making funny faces and expressions at him.

"Huh? Oh, we are all good. No casualties to report. A lot of destroyed and left behind equipment. But Jace’s training of them really paid off. They started destroying the drones before Jace even gave the order. Jace was the only one that was badly injured. Our ship suffered some minor damage but is still operational. Although we did use the experimental EX- 6411-8UR so we are down three shells for that." Solisa reparked and both the General and Admiral flinched.

"Haaa... we will discuss that later at the International Conference that is being set up at the Princess’ Pride." Admiral Dakota rubbed the back of his head and looked at Victor who just shook his head. "Colonel Nina, how about you? How did your missions go?"

Nina was looking at Jace with clear amusement but looked at the Admiral and made several hand motions before stopping. She basically told him the list of missions she accomplished before they had to stop and pull back because of the Mortella’s appearance.

"We will keep that in mind going forward. But I believe we need to first figure out what our plan of action is regarding the guests we have aboard the ship. Has there been any problem so far?" Admiral Dakota nodded and looked toward Colonel Dahlia and Solisa.

"Nope. I have them in the hangars and other non critical areas of the ship. We have guards at the doors to prevent them from wandering around the ship and getting any ideas." Solisa answered without looking back at him. She was now putting on various holographic hats that looked ridiculous.

"We are having a few issues. Especially since most of our people are injured in some way. We might need to borrow manpower from the Wolfsbane, Requiem, or Venture in order to keep them in line. Unless Victor Al-Ulman or the Valkyrie would like to find a way to keep them in line." Dahlia suggested with a scoff and a side glance at the ragged pair who looked like they had seen better days.

"I will talk with my people and make sure they keep in line." Victor told her.

"I will try to do the same. But do not expect much." The Valkyrie told her. "Racism runs deeply in our people."

"Ow! Are you done?" Jace groaned as he looked at Charlie who looked over his collarbone one last time before nodding.

"I am done." She then turned and looked at the Valkyrie who flinched. "Now for my next troublesome patient."

"I am fine." The Valkyrie insisted.

"You are not." Charlie told her as she walked up and moved around the seat that Valkyrie was sitting inside of. "You have a broken arm. Your cybernetic needs intense repairs. While your right eardrum has burst and a cut on your leg that is not bleeding only because of the armor you are wearing. Which is probably why you have not taken it off yet."

"I...urgh..." The Valkyrie growled out but Charlie was already removing some of the armor. The others were speechless when her helmet was removed and they saw the graceful face full of a white hair. It looked to be her natural hair color as well. "What are you all looking at?" The Valkyrie demanded.

"We just did not expect you to be so attractive. We were expecting an old hag at the very least." Victor answered bluntly. The others, Jace included, froze before Valkyrie’s helmet was suddenly bouncing off of Victor’s head. As Victor’s head snapped back with a burst of blood coming from his nose.

"Is that what you all think?" The Valkyrie asked.

"Hahahaha-"

"Nope." Jace shook his head while he quickly muted Solisa who burst into laughter. He also threw Victor under the bus. "It is solely Victor’s belief." The others nodded around the table.

"Ahem!" Admiral Dakota cleared his throat before looking at Jace. "I believe you have something to tell us regarding the Mortella’s weaknesses?"

"Actually it is about the Mortella themselves. I managed to get close enough to make a scan of them and learned both what they actually are as well as aspects regarding their armor and shells." Jace declared before looking around and then tossing his armored glove on the table. There was a green hue around it on the table as Solisa quickly scanned and downloaded the contents of the gauntlet.

He had first scanned the information and then moved it to a space in his armor where he could store data and information. There were plenty of packets and digital storage locations where there were gaps within his armor. His hands were one of the main ones since they were more heavily armored.

A bunch of different schematics appeared. All of the things he scanned since he last emptied and erased it which was right before the battle. The Valkyrie flinched and frowned, "is that my arm? How...? When did you do that?" The Valkyrie demanded in confusion.

"At any point during the fight when I actually touched you." Jace shrugged. "It is a very useful talent of mine since learning how to control electricity." He held up his hands and an arc of electricity moved from one to the other. "Since everything has some latent electronic pulse I just run electricity across a thing in order to make a digital schematic and then I upload it into digital storage."

"That is... How much technology have you stolen with that?" Victor asked as he seemed to be in thought.

"Enough that the Victorium have a secret project trying to replicate the ability." Jace answered and nodded at General Isaiah who flinched and growled. "But forget about that and let me get to the important information we need to know about the Mortella and then we can come up with a strategy to take them down."