“Just that you are trying so hard to be the perfect Thaf’ell and yet your true nature is fighting so hard against it,” she said with another bark of laughter.
He was completely at a loss at this.
“My choices have been perfectly logical and--”
She nodded. “Most of them have been. But you are wrong when you think that the Thaf’ell way is always the logical way. Sometimes I think we are the most illogical species out there.”
“How do you mean?” He’d been frowning so hard through this conversation that his face was starting to hurt from it.
“We act according to our traditions,” she said, “from things that have been passed down. We accept--without thought--that these are the best ways. We do not take in new evidence and change our opinion though.”
“We do, but we have not found better ways,” he stated.
She lifted an eyebrow. “It looks like we’re going to be spending a lot of time with the humans--definitely with one very special human.” Her eyes twinkled in a way he did not like. “I wonder how long you’ll believe that statement you just made.”
He was going to tell her that he was sure his viewpoint would last. After all, everyone knew what humans were like. Jace was different. He was exceptional. That was all it was.
Jace and his parents were standing in front of a wide open set of doors, waiting for them all to catch up. The peculiar scent of Precursor weapons flowed out of the room. Bitter ozone and a chilly scent of snow and ice. Khoth quickened his pace. He wanted to see what was inside.
“All of these rooms were closed to us,” Colonel Parker said with a touch of awe as she gazed inside. One of her hands crept up to the collar of her shirt. “Nothing we did could make them open. And now…”
“Yeah,” Captain Parker said as his gaze flickered over all he was seeing. “Look at all of that.”
“We need to have our scientists in here now,” General Intoshkin stated. He gestured for one of the soldiers to go find the scientists they had left in the Core.
Khoth pressed up behind them, and since he was taller than everyone, he was able to see past them.
It wasn’t just one room with racks of weapons and exo-suits. There were dozens of rooms. He could see into them not just through the now open doorways, but the walls were made of a clear material. Rooms lit up one after another after another seemingly endlessly.
Jace went inside, followed swiftly by everyone else. The others fanned out, looking at all of the weaponry with wide eyes. Captain Parker immediately went to an exo-suit that looked to have a jetpack in the back. Thammah joined Jace’s father. She took down the suit and they both leaned over it, exclaiming at what they saw.
“It’s a good thing there is more than one of these, Jack,” Thammah teased, “because even with your son’s commandment that we take nothing, I would so be stealing one of these.”
“You and me both, Thammah,” Captain Parker laughed.
General Intoshkin, followed closely by the three soldiers, went over to a rack of draagves, though some of them were quite a bit different from his own. He picked one up and aimed down the site. The weapon let out a low whine and the sections on the top of it lifted up, showing a red glow inside. The general grinned and smoothed his hand over the weapon’s silky surface.
Colonel Parker went over to an open-faced cabinet that had what appeared to be chips of different colors. She picked one up and it immediately lit up. She dropped it, but the chip did not fall. Instead, it hovered at her eye-level and then a colored web of lines encircled her.
“Force field!” she breathed, understanding what it was.
She touched the glowing, translucent green shell around her. Where she touched the shield bloomed with brighter light, but her hand was able to pass through it. She stepped right then left. The force field stayed around her. She laughed delightedly as she plucked the chip out of the air and the force field vanished.
Gehenna glided over to Jace. He went to one of the cabinets that was waist high and Khoth walked to his side. The top of the cabinet lit up, a bright blue white, and a display appeared. Jace swiped through a visual listing of weapons. Khoth recognized versions of his bladed weapon, the rahir, and his sighted rifle, the draagves.
“These look like the weapons you had when we met,” Jace said, pointing to the correct ones.
“Yes.” He was surprised considering the condition Jace was in that the young man remembered that. But perhaps it was Gehenna who did so.
“But these are different. More powerful.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
Jace struggled to explain, “On Earth, we have games where a better version of a weapon is indicated by a different color. Like you start with a blue-coded weapon, but then you see one that’s a purple-coded one. Even though they are the same or have the same name anyway and generally the same shape, the purple-coded one can fire faster or the projectiles deal more damage. That sort of thing. That’s sort of what I’m seeing here. Gehenna is explaining pretty much that you have the blue-coded one.”
You should both try one. Face off against one another, Gehenna suggested.
“Face off? You mean… fight?” Jace gave out a laugh.
