Chapter 633: Did I Just See What I Think I Saw?

Ayaka was the first in the conference room to react to Joon-ho's sudden collapse. "Proxima, dispatch RES-QR response to my location immediately!"

Her words shook the rest of the attendees out of their stupor and a low hum of activity picked up in the background. Dr. Standing Bear muscled her way through the gawking civilians around her and rushed to the fallen awakener's side. She pulled an instrument from the pocket of her traditional white coat and ran it over Joon-ho from head to toe.

"I... what... how!?" she stuttered.

"How what?" Ayaka practically snarled.

"He's suffering from mana deprivation. I don't understand how that could be! We simply aren't made to store mana—it flows through and enhances us, it isn't something we require to function..." the petite Native American woman muttered, shock still clear on her features.

Then her gaze sharpened and she continued, "The trees. The trees, Commander! They must've done something and I think I know what the source of the anomalies we found in his scans is. Quick, help me get him out of this room, it's too tightly shielded and there isn't enough mana here for him to function."

The two women hauled Joon-ho roughly to his feet and threw his arms over their shoulders. "Make way!" Ayaka bellowed, roughly elbowing people who were too slow to move out of her way as she practically dragged both of the people she was linked with toward the hatch leading to the passageway outside the secure conference room they were in.

As the two women disappeared through the door, Fleet Admiral Bianchi smiled wryly and said, "I'll see you here tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen. Come with your questions ready." He turned to his flag captain and continued, "Take us to ten light hours away from the planet, Captain. I'll be on the flag bridge."

"Yes, Admiral," Captain Das replied, getting only a casual wave of the admiral's hand in response as he headed toward the lift with broad strides, his chief of staff and personal awakener flanking him.

......

Mobile fleet hospital, TFS Proxima.

Dr. Cho met Ayaka and Dr. Standing Bear at the entrance of the hospital's quarantine ward. "I'll take it from here," she said, gesturing for a RES-QR to take Joon-ho from the two anxious women in front of her.

"Dr. Cho, a moment, please?" Dr. Standing Bear asked.

"A moment is all I've got, Miss Standing Bear. Make it quick," the chief surgeon snapped. It was obvious by the irritation and exasperation in her voice that she wasn't fond of the task force's head researcher.

"He's suffering from mana deprivation. When the trees rebuilt his body, they incorporated the same type of mana veins and storage that they use in their own. You'll need to—" Dr. Standing Bear began, but was cut off by the woman in scrubs.

"Don't tell me how to do my job, Rebecca. I'm well aware of his status and receiving continuous updates. Don't you have a lab to get back to? If you don't, then go somewhere else, I'm busy," Dr. Cho sneered, then turned to go back into the hospital ward she had just walked out of.

"But—!" Dr. Standing Bear began.

"Leave, Rebecca. You've always been good at that before, so just be good at it now and leave."

"But!"

"Fly, AWAY! Get out of here!" Dr. Cho snapped as the door to the hospital shut behind her.

Dr. Standing Bear took a deep breath and muttered the numbers one through ten under her breath, then, having obviously calmed herself somewhat, turned to Ayaka, who was standing there, her eyes glowing with a gentle white light.

As Rebecca watched, Ayaka floated a few inches above the deck and simply phased through the bulkhead and into the hospital ward. The researcher blinked, then rubbed her eyes and asked, "Proxima, did I just see what I think I saw?"

[I'm not sure, Lead Researcher. What do you think you saw?] the AI faithfully replied.

"Never mind, Proxima," she sighed, then rested her right elbow in the palm of her left hand and brought her right hand up to massage her temples. "It's been... a day."

......

Fleet Admiral Bianchi strode onto the Proxima's flag bridge, then called out, "I'll be in my ready room."

"Aye, Admiral. Should I...?" the watch officer began, but trailed off as he saw the hatch swoosh shut behind the admiral. He shrugged and turned his attention back to monitoring the fleet's movement through the Proxima Centauri system, shuttling to and fro as they sent asteroid after asteroid on a near-approach pass to the star itself, where they would be separated into their components by virtue of the different melting points of the metals and silicates contained within them. The star itself was a critical component of the protostellar forge they had spent so long setting up and was only now coming into full operation.

Marco Bianchi removed his uniform jacket and hung it on its designated peg, then set his uniform beret on it. He groaned as he fell into his chair, not because he was growing older and creakier, he mused, but rather out of habit and expectation. The VR pods used by the fleet maintained the sailors' bodies at their peaks, so there would be no creaky old bones until their bodies reached an age that not even genetic enhancements and engineering could counter and decrepitude finally set in.

He sighed and poured himself a snifter of brandy, then pulled a cigar from the humidor on his desk. He cut it and wet the cut end in the brandy, then clamped his teeth on it and lit the other end with a wooden matchstick.

"Well fuck me sideways," he muttered to himself. "That was certainly an eventful meeting."

The conference room they had met in was a SCIF, and was classified as Secret, Need To Know. The majority of attendees had had no need to know about the security measures that went into the cityship's SCIF, but that had flown out the window thanks to Dr. Standing Bear's ill-timed revelation that the admiral's current headache had collapsed due to mana deprivation. He knew his officers, and once they had time to think, they would realize what that meant.

(Ed note: A SCIF—short for Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility—is a secure facility that's exactly what it says on the tin. If information needs to be handled and absolutely cannot be leaked, it's stored and/or communicated in a SCIF. They're the most secure facilities that the military and government agencies know how to build and are constantly upgraded as new discoveries are made.)

The SCIF was impermeable to mana.

During the cityships' construction, the emperor himself had visited the shipyards and carved runic circuits into one large conference room in each of them. There was nothing to indicate that the rooms themselves were any different than any other meeting room on any of the cityships, but they were indeed very special. They were shielded from ALL outside influences, be they biological, chemical, electronic, and even—

thanks to Aron's shielding—shielded from the mana that permeated the very fabric of existence.

Smoke wreathed his head in a swirling vapor as the admiral puffed on his cigar. He knew that, come tomorrow, he would have some explaining to do.