This is what the first interlude would have been had Taylor died.
Non-Canon Interlude
"We're getting feedback now, but the interference is still there."
"Increase power and adjust base frequency. We are too close to contact to let this slip through our fingers."
Teana watched the Sojourner's crew work on the radio with a frown. A nudge to her arm made her glance over at Erga, who unlike her looked like the very definition of relaxed. "Ease up, Lanster. If scowling was gonna get this working again, we woulda been talking to Command weeks ago."
"That's the problem. Weeks ago. The Lost Logia has been loose on that world for months now, and we have solid proof that it has reactivated." She turned away only for scenes of fire and death to fill her mind's eye. "You didn't see it last time," she said in a softer voice. "This thing, the army it builds. It doesn't care about honor or mercy or peace. All it wants is to kill. Those that don't die immediately it rips apart to make more soldiers.
"I spent six months aboard the Targe. I knew all its men. I watched them be cut down and transformed. Three hundred good men, and in the thirty hours it took to find the Lost Logia and seal it, we lost 110. A third of the crew, just gone in less than two days." A sound distracted her and broke her out of the memories. Erga shifted, as though he was considering putting a hand on her shoulder or some other comforting gesture, and her cheeks burned with embarrassment. There was a time to come to terms with the guilt, but that was when the mission was over and she was back on Midchilda, not a moment before. "Add in the crews of the other ships, and we're talking about over five hundred people who lost their lives to this thing the last time some idiot turned it on. You'll have to forgive me if I'm not looking forward to a repeat of that, and after that fight, it seems like that's where we are headed."
"Eos will love that, I'm sure."
Teana winced at that drawling rebuke. The Warrant Officer was not taking his killing of the bombardment-type puppet well. That was not a great surprise; marines were trained for combat, but the majority went their entire careers without having to kill anyone. Using lethal force during a mission was followed with mandatory therapy sessions, and having just gone through them herself, she knew Eos would benefit from them no matter how uncomfortable they were.
Unfortunately, she doubted he would be the only marine on this ship who would be visiting a psychologist by the time this mission was done with.
"Contact confirmed!" cheered the communications officer.
Captain Aska nodded. "Strong work, Ensign. Commander, Lieutenant Commander, the comms are yours."
"Thanks, Cap." Shrugging his shoulders, Erga waved at the screen that appeared in front of them and said, "Enforcer Command, this is Commander Arton Erga, ID number 558F4. I need to speak with Admiral Tucson immediately."
The officer on the screen smiled back. "Good to see you're still in one piece, Erga. Give me a moment to patch you through."
The Enforcer insignia appeared, but soon enough it was replaced by the relieved face of the Enforcers' highest officer. "Erga, Lanster. Took you long enough. We were all starting to get worried around here."
"Ah, you do love me."
"You know what? Considering the circumstances, I'm actually going to let that one go," Admiral Tucson sighed. "Report."
She and Erga exchanged glances for a moment before she took a step forwards. The admiral might be relieved enough to ignore Erga's lip this time, but she was in no mood to see if that would last through catching him up on everything that had happened. "Three and a half weeks ago, the day after our last contact, we encountered what I can only describe as a controlled dimensional dislocation."
Tucson's eyes widened, and for good reason. Dimensional dislocations were rifts in the Dimensional Sea, bottomless holes that led to annihilation within Imaginary Space. Small dislocations would ravage cities, and the largest had erased the primordial civilization of Al-Hazard from existence. Even worlds not experiencing the event could be thrown into chaos from the immense gravitational waves dislocations threw out. "I take it you avoided it at the last moment?"
"No, sir. We didn't even know it was there until we had already flown straight through it. I've never seen anything like it, sir. Paper-thin, almost as it were an artificial barrier to keep something out." And wasn't that a terrifying thought? She had no clue how much power was needed and how advanced the technology would have to be to turn a multiversal disaster into a privacy screen, but she would be perfectly happy never finding out the answer. "We were moving fast enough that we weren't torn apart by the gravity shear, but it still damaged the engines to the point we could not remain in Dimensional Space. We crash-landed on the nearest planet."
"So much for discretion," he muttered, "but at least now we know what brought down the Agharti. If it had already fought off pirates, it could have been in bad enough shape that it did not handle the dislocation as well as you did and was torn apart. How many people know about your presence?"
"None."
Tucson brought his head up to stare at her. "None? Our local contact made it sound like her world had a substantial population."
"It probably does. We did not land on her exact world, though. Earth Bet is a cluster world. Our astrometry counts fifteen dimensions within extremely close proximity, plus another two or three that we can't conclusively identify."
"A cluster world of fifteen to eighteen," he repeated. "That rivals the Haranyl cluster, the largest cluster world we have ever located."
Teana nodded. "It was a surprise to us, too. We've been exploring the worlds as quickly as we can, but with the Sojourner grounded we have been limited to personal transfers, and Lieutenant Sambar can only transport a few people at a time even with the short distance we have to travel. It has taken longer than we like to search each world. Thankfully they are all low-magic worlds, so we have focused on scanning for mana use to speed up the process."
"Any success?"
"You could say that," Erga interjected lazily.
She shot him a glare, and he grinned before pantomiming locking his mouth closed. Turning back to the admiral, she explained, "We were exploring Earth Bet-12 when we noticed active magic use and went over to obtain more information. It was one of the Assimilation Engine's bombardment-types."
"You are sure about this?" She nodded, and he closed his eyes with a groan. When he opened them again, it was the most experienced Enforcer still active who stared back at her. "Casualties?"
"None on our side, sir." He waved for her to continue with her report. "The mage noticed our approach but was not on high alert on arrival. An attempt was made to ambush and capture her for questioning, but she defended herself and so we deployed a barrier as per procedure. Before the barrier had stabilized she was able to call in a familiar. None of them had familiars last time," Teana added with a frown, "but that was probably due to a lack of animals to convert. If all four types the Logia can deploy are capable of creating familiars, that doubles the rate at which it can build its forces. Regardless, we engaged the pair. And order to stand down was ignored, which is not a surprise as none of the others did, either, though at least she did not immediately tell us how we would be converted into forces for Galea. Lethal force was authorized once the mage cast her type's Buster-class bombardment spell at the building where Sambar and I were located and demolished it. We barely managed to escape the blast, and thankfully we also avoided being lethally irradiated; that might have been because the spell was fired at a building in open air rather than within ship corridors, but I can't say for sure. Captain Erga was able to clip her with his Buster, though with less than expected results, so I locked her down with a bind and fired Starlight Breaker. The familiar went on a rampage at that time, but Warrant Officer Eos was able to recover and land the killing blow to the mage before the familiar could inflict substantial injuries."
"I will make sure he's scheduled for therapy on your return. Did you recover the body and the Device?"
"Body, yes. It's in storage for burial, either here or at sea. Device?" She shook her head. "It autocast her Buster spell and broke the barrier, then it flew off under its own power too fast for us to track it. I don't know how or why it did that. None of the bombardiers' Devices did that last time. With the barrier gone, we transferred out with the body before any more converted mages could find us."
"Or the Rare Skill users," added Erga, breaking his promise to keep quiet.
"Rare Skill users," Tucson echoed before pulling a document up on another screen. "Yes, I remember Taylor saying something about people with unique skills on her world. 'Parahumans', that's right."
"We aren't sure how to approach that problem," she admitted. "We watched a few fight in secret, and none of their abilities triggered the mana sensors. I just don't know how they can have Rare Skills without utilizing mana, nor how there can be that many unrelated Skills coming from one planet."
"That matches what information the Infinity Library could track down about them. It's only been documented once, in Middle Belkan times soon after the start of the Saint King Unification War. For a couple of generations adolescents started showing signs of Rare Skills that were unrelated to the Belkan casting style, but they all lost their abilities once the person in question began their combat training, and then the appearance of those skills petered out. They were found on Haranyl, too, if I remember right," he ended thoughtfully.
Was there something about large cluster worlds that was involved in the development of these nonmagical Rare Skills? Something to leave to the theoretical magicists, she decided. "How do you wish us to proceed now that we know for sure that the Assimilation Engine is active again?"
"Make contact with Taylor and Dragon first. They are our only local contacts, and they should be able to help find the Lost Logia without rousing suspicion. They know this world and these parahumans. I'll forward the identification code for the Agharti's radio; that is currently our only means of contacting them. Just so you are aware, they have had difficulties with their power situation, so I don't know how long it will take you to track them down."
"It's better than nothing. We'll find them."
"See that you do, Lanster. More importantly, find them before the Lost Logia does."
so her dying would result in Lacy/Epoch/Shipwright becoming not!Taylor? Hope the body would modified to look like the last version of her or that would just be suicide inducing levels of horror for her combined with body dysmorphia and it sounds like it tried doing that back when it was doing the enslaving thing.
Should have voted for lethal...
