Chapter 4

Stephanie

I was monitoring one of the scouts I had sent out, the bird was the farthest east we had ever looked. I was watching a small village, I controlled the bird to land near one of the earthen huts. I was working on getting a translation for their language, it was difficult to listen in as the villagers tended to be superstitious about crows.

I was bored, I had been monitoring the village for several days, they were simple hunter and gatherers. I already saw they could benefit from our farming techniques alone, many of the villagers were malnourished. I had been wondering why they weren't nomadic, with the hunting being scarce in the area, but on the first day I had seen that they sent their men to work in a cave, they were gathering rocks from the cave, it looked like they collected them.

I couldn't figure out the reason for it though, we had encountered some strange beliefs, hell our own town believed I was some sort of angel, and that Laura was a god. That meeting had ended in a stale mate, with the family taking a wait and see attitude on correcting the towns people of their beliefs, it was Shanor who stressed the importance of a peoples belief system. That it could be used for good, not to control the population, but to guide them on the right path, Laura didn't like it, but she had been out voted.

I was shaken from my thoughts, the village was under some kind of attack, soldiers with spears had marched on the village, they were organized, something that was not supposed to exist at this time. I watched as the head solider who looked like a cross between a soldier and priest gave orders. His troops began gathering the women of the village, even the young girls.

I sent an urgent message to Laura, the soldiers were met with little resistance, it was when they started taking the women from the mated pairs that the village got angry, I saw the soldiers kill two men who protested. The whole affair took less than two hours to finish, I had the crow increase its altitude to avoid being seeing by the soldiers.

// "Laura, I just watched soldiers take all the women from a village, I am having the scout follow them." I said.

// "Was it by force?" She asked.

// "Two villagers died" I said.

// "How far from here?" She asked.

// "About 1200 miles as the crow flies" I said, smiling at my own pun.

// " Steph, I only authorized scouting for 500 miles." She said, I could hear the reprisal in her voice.

// "I got bored, I wanted to test the range, Laura, they are taking the women against their will for Goddess knows what, or You Knows what, heh." I smiled again, I had started using the feminine when referencing God to piss her off.

// "fine Steph, send more birds, as many as we can spare, I want to know what we can about this." She said.

// "Will do Laura." I said.

I kept an eye on the troops as I exited my office in the newly constructed aviary, it housed all the Robo Birds, as I had taken to call them, Laura insisted on calling them advanced avian scouts, she was no fun. I sent out the signal for Faux and Raptor, my two pet project birds one a type of osprey, the other a peregrine falcon, they had been heavily modified by me, I had added a type of experimental thruster into their small body, their talons had been sharped and enhanced to the point they could easily cut through thin metals.

Laura didn't know about this side project yet, she had not authorized the use of the scouts as weapons, it wasn't that I was disobeying her, I just got bored and like to toy with different projects, I just hadn't had the chance to show these two to her. I figured now would be the perfect mission for them, I would send them out first to meet up with the scout while sending a few other crows to follow them and scout.

"Okay guys, do mama proud" I said stroking the two birds who had landed on the perch.

They both took off toward the exit, several crows following, the aviary had an open exit for the birds to come and go as they please. They were all well trained and programmed to come back, we had yet to actually send any missionaries yet, the bird scouts had taken the forefront of the project, allowing us to map out the area and find tribes we had not know were near us.

I went back into the office, sitting down I continued to monitor the troops as they force marched the women, I tracked my fast moving hawks as they flew, I activated their thrusters as they got far enough away so that none of the villagers would spot them.

Laura

I was working in my lab, it had taken me years to get to this point. I was ready to test out my new reactor, it was the model I had sent myself supposedly it would allow me to build an even stronger reactor. I looked over to the new nanites Steph had constructed for me, they were a new design using capable of harnessing the power of my new reactor.

I looked over the upgrades my other self had designed for me, I couldn't help but feel it was overkill. I signed turning on the reactor, at 2% it was already generating more power than my current one, I looked over to the nanites in the test chamber, they were gathering energy from the generator. I rose an eyebrow at that checking over my sensors, I couldn't detect how the process was working.

I looked over the instruction one more time, my other self had left detailed steps for me to follow, I notified my family members I would be out of contact for the night. I injected myself with the new nanites first, leaving the reactor at 2%, I could feel them flow through my body, changing and upgrading myself as they flowed through me. They were powering themselves remotely from the reactor, I sat down next to the reactor waiting.