Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (159/?) WiP 1

(Author’s Note: Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 159 I hope you guys enjoy! :D Also just a bit of forewarning, I have an assessment at the hospital tomorrow so the full chapter will probably be released a few hours later than usual. I’ll try to get it out on time, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up first just in case! :D)

Earth - Atlantic Ocean - Special Administrative Zone under requisition by the United Nations Science Advisory - Institute of Anomalous Studies (IAS) Pilot Research Facility Codename: ATLANTIS II. ECS Holding Facility. Local Time: 2357 Hours.

Captain Calico Li

“Is that a fucking dragon?!”

I was unsure who exactly said that.

But that just about summed up the sentiments of the room in one, admittedly blunt, exclamation.

Two glowing purple eyes regarded the Cadet’s helm from a gnarly, scaled, and leathery snout. Crystals of all types, jagged, irregular, shattered and cracked, all jutted from its purple-hued hide in seemingly random clusters, completing that unmistakable visage of a western fantasy dragon; body, wings, four legs, and tail in full.

There was no doubt about it.

This… was the only honest word you could even use to describe it. 

I looked around the room caught in the grip of history, at stunned faces and dumbfounded expressions, all having either not yet registered or refusing to register both the creature and its reality-defining implications.

Everything, every single moment over the past few decades seemed to have led up to this moment.

First contact.

Live first contact, with a visual feed.

And with a fucking dragon at that.

This wasn’t your archetypal spec-evo hexapod or some planetary fungal hivemind. 

This was as far from any hard science fiction trope as we could’ve gone.

We’d gone so far into the realm of science fiction, that we circled around and now landed firmly into the realm of fantasy. 

I didn't want to believe it.

Nobody did.

But it was there all the same.

“Sig-Int.” I blurted out, turning and then looking eyes onto the on-duty signals intelligence officer. “Confirm visual feed authenticity.” 

“Visual feed authenticity confirmed, sir.” The man acknowledged after only a second’s delay, causing the otherwise shocked crowd to begin the expected whispers and murmurs, all of which were soon shot down by a harsh shushing courtesy of Weir.

I turned to Ivo, urging him on, given that this whole development spawned from his insistence.

=====

Dr. Ivo Mekis

I wasn’t ever one to mince words.

Ever.

But in this instance… the formulation of even the most basic of sentences eluded me.

“I… Cade- mm… tch…” 

All pretenses of knowing, and all advancements made in the field of theoretical xenobiology — the speculation, the proposed models, the literal sea of hypotheses — immediately died at the panning of that camera.

Just one frame from this simple call would come to redefine an entire field — no — several, tens, even hundreds more niche disciplines. 

Never could anyone wishing to be taken seriously in their fields have put forth a dragon as a potential alien. Especially not as our first live encounter of alien life.

With a sharp breath, I pushed that intense anachronism to the back of my mind, focusing instead on the pressing matter at hand. 

“An astounding display, to be sure, Cadet Booker. One whose subject will be discussed thoroughly and promptly.” 

“But not now.” The Cadet retorted with a distressing bluntness. “Captain Li, Director Weir. Pilot II Mission Operator formally discloses the emergency use of a third-party agent in the facilitation of this Unscheduled Exoreality Entanglement episode, and all signal transfers henceforth.” 

“Acknowledged.” Came both Weir and Li’s synchronized responses, as Emma continued unabated.

“Dr. Mekis, you may check out the full read-out of the data — live and recorded — of how all of this is happening.” 

“Forwarding the relevant information to you now, Dr. Mekis.” A junior technician announced swiftly, filling my field of view with both raw and annotated datasets.

“Good. Keep parsing the data, team.” My eyes were pulled towards more relevant information to discern the cadet’s current state, her inventory and backlog reports, and, in conjunction, to trace, map, and analyze not just the properties of the signal but the nature of the exoreality entanglement event itself.

What followed were a startling series of revelations, all narrated by the Cadet — the most pertinent bits, at least.

“The crystal we received. In fact, all of the crystals sent over were forcefully extracted from the dragon you see in front of me. These crystals have innate exoreality entanglement properties, sustained by mana radiation, and are in a way… a part of the dragons’ quasi-decentralized sensory cognitive—”

“Mesh cognition.” I clarified succinctly, running through both the Cadet’s qualitative, and the EVI’s quantitative live-reports. “Continue.”

“Owing to the fact that the other half of our crystal is drawn from Kaelthyr’s crystal lattices, she’s capable of… sensing it, through currently unknown means, in a process she refers to as resonance.”

“So she’s actively facilitating this narrowband exoreality entanglement event, completely independent from that of our ‘formal’ contacts on the other side?” 

“Correct.” The Cadet nodded.

“To the point, the inventory reports say that the Exoreality Communications Suite has been destroyed, initiated by the automatic asset denial system. And by your own words, this polity of the Nexus is to be considered hostile. Seeing as this…” I shut my eyes for a moment before opening them up, finding myself to still be in this incredulous waking world. “—Kaelthyr is facilitating communications as a third party, I’m left with a certain impression. Still, I must inquire as to why you didn’t initiate contact with the addressing of third-party involvement.”

“I was operating under General Order 37-a. The immediate reporting of any confirmed existential threat to the Greater United Nations, without contextual mediation, where delay — by action or inaction — risks encroachment of GUN territorial integrity or political sovereignty." 

“Understood, Cadet. We’re going to continue parsing through the data, but for now, relay all relevant matters to the rest of the command staff.” I paused, then quickly turned to Director Weir with a look with many men on the bleeding edge had worn before me. “I want a direct channel with that… dragon at the nearest convenience.” 

A brief nod from the Director was all I received, following which, Captain Li once more took to the forefront.

“Can you confirm that this entanglement episode is stable, Cadet?” He asked hurriedly. 

Following which, and after a brief vocal interaction between the Cadet and the dragon, did she finally confirm.

“Yes. She says we have… at least a few hours.”

“Alright. Then let’s do a Full Action Report. Critical Events, Milestones, Principal findings. Let’s start with the gross infringement of your diplomatic pouch, and—” 

Li paused uncharacteristically, his eyes going wide, with Weir soon following, at an annotated report detailing the events of the ECS self-destruct.

“—actual intent to imprison and restrain a diplomatic envoy, assault, coercion, and attempted murder.” 

The room went silent once more, as all eyes landed on Emma’s growing features of discomfort.

“The offending party in question is a member of faculty, and a self-reported ‘member of the privy council’ — Professor Mal’tory.”