7

Isaac

Introduction done, the thing to do was go home. Both Kha and I were injured – even if Kha only really had scratches and bruises to worry about, and both Kov and Kha were in deep need of some TLC before they were anything close to healthy. We had to take any and all food on the elf ship. Getting a hold of all the data the ship held wouldn't be bad either. These elves, these…'Dark Ones' were depraved, but they were bound to have useful information on this ship. There were bound to be discrepancies in how data was stored between systems, keeping us from getting everything but anything would be invaluable. I let Esau take care of it while we waited, using the time to take medical scans of both Kov and Kha.

They were both reluctant, scared that the omni-tool was some sort of torture device. Kov was more reluctant than Kha. It took some convincing from Esau, but they eventually agreed. It had been less than an hour but Kov had become inseparable from Esau. Wherever Esau went, Kov would follow behind him. It was as if Kov didn't see Esau when looking at him, instead he saw something greater than the physical. It was close to a religious experience for him. It was the same for Kha, I saw. She made it less obvious but it was still evident that she had similar sentiments.

She had called him Great One, after all.

Like lightning, it struck me. Whatever effect was causing this semi-religious fervour in both of them, had been the same effect that made me so willing to raise Esau in the first place. I mean, I would have committed myself to raising him, but I doubt I would have invested so much doing it. My love for him had pushed me past the general loneliness I had felt, having been isolated from my family and friends. Without it, I would have likely been a wreck.

For that reason, I was thankful for this unnatural ability. At the same time, I was wary. Esau was an artificial human being. This meant that someone, somewhere out there likely had the ability to give someone the abilities that Esau had. That included the supernatural charisma Esau had. Whoever this person was; they were immensely dangerous.

Millions of people have died in countless wars for people with only middling charisma. The amount of people who would willingly put their lives on the line for someone with literally supernatural charisma was hard to imagine. Even with my new Forge granted intellect.

The intellect that the Forge had given me after Kha joined us was hard to describe. Intelligence was an aspect that was difficult to quantify. Even IQ tests often came short, because intelligence was often a result of the stressors present in the environment of a developing brain. There was some genetic component, but nurture was as much or more of an influence as nature. Still, the Forge had given me a genius level intellect. Not even normal genius you would ascribe to scientists like Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking. It was the type of genius you would see in Movies, or TV shows. My mind was like a highly advanced computer. I didn't process information faster per se, I processed it better. Each new piece of information was linked to old information almost instantly, allowing me to make astounding leaps in logic.

I was smart enough that I was sure I could, right now, make healing serums that would heal near any injury – even broken bones, in days instead of weeks or months.

I was also smart enough to know that I was still less intelligent than Esau was. He could obtain, process and make inferences from information so fast it made my head spin. I had full confidence that Esau could make even better serums, if he only had the same base of knowledge to draw from. He had more mechanical, architectural and electrical knowledge than I did, but I had more general scientific knowledge because I was an expert in literally all scientific disciplines. I was sure that if Esau had the knowledge I had access to, he would be absolutely unstoppable.

This made the prospect that his creator was out there in space - right now - very frightening. If his creator could give Esau such abilities, surely they could give themselves the same abilities? Worse yet, they could give other people Esau's abilities. I was already sure that at least one person of Esau's mental and physical calibre existed; his pod was labelled as 'II' after all. This implied the existence of at least one more person who could match Esau.

Still, there was no point worrying about it right now. There was already a lot to worry about in the immediate sense.

Like keeping all four of us alive.

The medical scans revealed that both Kha and Kov were suffering from dehydration, starvation and varying amounts of physical and mental trauma. The physical, I could take care of due to my intellect but the mental was more problematic. Psychology technically counted as a science, which meant I was an expert but there was no such thing as a quick fix for mental anguish.

Soon enough, Esau was done. As it turned out, while the databanks on the ship had some information we could use, most of it was behind layers of encryption that would take us years to get through at least. It also had a bunch of information we couldn't use at all. It made sense; it's not as if every ship sent out into the sea had a library on it after all. Information on how their technology or society worked wasn't on the ship.

What was both on the ship, and readily available was mostly a result of logs kept on personal devices analogous to cell phones. The information we could use gave us some much needed context concerning the planet and where it lay in the greater context of the universe. It also told us that the elves were pirates.

They were raiders who would hit a planet or asteroid, steal supplies and take slaves. This particular vessel was specifically built for taking slaves. As a result, there were quiet a few life support systems that we could take advantage of. Similarly, there was a lot of food specifically for human bodies which was welcome for our future survival.

More importantly, since this was a pirate vessel, the elves had star maps.

The elves didn't exactly have a map that pointed to Earth exactly, but had maps that indicated where the Milky Way was, marked as the 'Mon'keigh origin system'. Mon'keigh was what the elves called humans, apparently. Not only were the elves depraved, they were also racist.

After I ascertained that this was, in fact, the Milky Way by counting the number of planets in the system, we were able to figure out where we were in relation to it, and thus Earth. This news made me ecstatic. Even if this was the future, or I was in some messed up sci-fi/fantasy dimension; the thought that I could find my way to Earth buoyed my spirits considerably.

The only problem was that the distance was likely impossible to cross using conventional spacecraft. It would take hundreds of lifetimes, even travelling at the speed of light to cross the distance. Luckily, the elves had access to the technology we would need – otherwise, there would be no way they would know enough about the galaxy to map it. We just had to reverse engineer the technology on this very ship.

The issue was, even with my increased intellect, and Esau's genius, it would likely take years or even decades to reverse engineer to a standard I would consider safe.

I wanted to bury the other three humans but that had to wait until we were all healed, so I decided to leave them in their pods for now. It was time to go home.

Kov were blinded in the sunlight while Kha was not, and after spending months at least in the relative darkness of the ship, I didn't blame him. We waited for a few minutes for him to adjust before we navigated our way through the bodies surrounding the wreck.

I left two molecular analysis machines outside the entrance of the ship using the build gun. Kha was amazed, but Kov was not. Did they have technology that matched the build gun on his home planet? A question from Esau confirmed my theory. The planet Kov was from; 'Home' was a penal colony before the 'Dark Night', whatever that was. 'Home', thus had technology related to the construction of buildings and walls, ostensibly to expand the prison when more prisoners were brought to the planet. Specifically, through the use of a large machine the size of a mountain that could construct buildings wholesale.

Though to hear Esau say it, it seemed no one actually knew how the technology worked. People just kind of waited for the machine to make a building, and then they moved it to where they needed it by hand. Apparently, the buildings were cubes that were the light enough for ten men to carry by hand, while simultaneously being capable of filtering out the heavily polluted atmosphere.

Kov was apparently taken in his sleep while he was at a friend's home. His friend died. I was not so insensitive as to ask how.

We walked silently, navigating the junk surrounding the crash site before I asked a question that I was burning to know the answer to.

"Does Kov know what this 'Dark Night' was? He mentioned it a few times but he never explained it."

Esau talked to Kov for a minute or two, before answering my question.

"No, the Dark Night was apparently so long ago that no one really knows what happened. All everyone knew was that before the Dark Night, humanity was dominant throughout the stars and that immediately following it, humanity was not. The elders on his home planet use this as a cautionary tale." While I processed this, Kha spoke from behind me where she walked, unaided.

Despite having no eyes, it seemed that her eyesight was unaffected. Hearing her say it, her eyesight was even better now. It was apparently a result of ability that all wytches had. A mystical third eye that allowed them to see not just the physical, but what was hidden from regular sight. This included stuff like whether an object was used for violence or not, or something was made using the hands of a living being. Like everything else surrounding her, it straddled the line between 'interesting' and 'worrying'.

"The old crone on Tectum told us of a similar event." She said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes. I do not know if it is the same event of which the child speaks, but there was a time of great turbulence in the Great Ocean that we wytches draw power from. It began to churn and bubble. In that time, our visions were clouded and all who tried to draw strength from the Great Ocean died or were driven insane by what they saw or dreamt."

So whatever the 'Dark Night' was, it resulted in both the collapse of human civilisation on what must have been thousands of planets, and the death of millions or billions of magic users across those planets. Those numbers were hard to fathom.

"How long did this event last?" I asked.

"I do not know. It may have been a year or ten or thousands."

"I see." I said. That was useless in isolation, but I had a feeling that the information was useful somehow. A stray thought hit me. "But it's over now right, this 'Dark Night'?"

"I do not know." Kha answered.

"What do you mean?"

"I do not know, because even today, the Ocean churns."

We reached our home soon enough and I went to work constructing the house Kha would live in, while Esau went to build some drones – we went through those very quickly it seemed, there were never enough drones. I was alright living with Kov, but Kha had tried to kill us after all. She had no objections; apparently it was tradition on Tectum for wytches to live separate from the rest of society. I felt bad for suggesting it after that but not bad enough to allow her to live in our home.

The build gun was easy to use, especially since Esau had stored the designs for the house on it and in minutes it was built. It was built to the same specifications, but with less specialized equipment because I doubted that she would be analysing anything anytime soon. What I did do, however was include a domed reinforced above ground corridor that connected both houses, allowing movement in case of emergencies.

That done, I went to work on making an IV for both Kov and Kha because they were both severely dehydrated. They were both hesitant to get the drip inserted, but eventually I was able to convince them.

Soon, Esau was done with the drones. They would go and collect food and material from the crash site and bring it here, for preparation and analysis respectively. The MAMs I left outside the elf ship would scan and analyse any gear the orks and the elves had on them before the bodies were burnt. At Esau's urging, the MAMs were also set to scan and analyse ork and elf DNA. If there was something useful there we could use, he rationalised to me, we would kick ourselves for losing.

The drones were sent out and soon, we had food delivered to our doors. Some of the food consisted of fruits and vegetables, though none I recognized, but most of the food was powdered protein and nutrient packs that we would have to mix. A blessing in disguise. Ingesting solid food would have had Kov and Kha suffering from refeeding syndrome as their bodies struggled to replace lost electrolytes.

I made the food, in the kitchen, as Esau made new drones in the workshop. The process was simple, I had to mix water into the nutrient pack after checking the packs for traps. It was slightly paranoid to do so but after finding metal particulates in some packs, I was glad for it. The metal particulates were harmless but would be extremely to digest once swallowed as they left microscopic cuts in your digestive tract that they would then get stuck in. The elves really were bastards.

I called Esau, and Kov who had followed him, even with the IV in his arm from the workshop to eat. The meal tasted god-awful but food was food, so I was thankful. Esau ate more bowls of food then everyone else by far, with Kov a close second in an attempt to mimic him – His stomach was going to bother him later, that was for sure. That done, Esau and Kov returned to the workshop while Kha and I worked to get a garden started.

Usually, it would be unreasonable to expect someone to take care of food that came from a completely alien environment, but I was now a genius and with Kha's ability to sometimes tell the origin of objects she came into contact with, we were soon done. The fruits would likely take years to grow, and the vegetables would take months which was unsustainable with for four people but luckily, we found an edible fungus growing on the fruit.

After using a MAM to analyse it, I concluded that the fungus would grow fast as long as it was supplied with water and nutrients. It would also likely taste like sand. We set aside some more space underground to cultivate it and then rested. Kha left to shower and go to sleep while I looked into what I needed to get healed. After getting a proper scan using the MAM in the med-bay, I extracted my blood using a syringe. Then I used a I used a mix of chemicals I fabricated along with some of the medi-gel to turn the serum collected in the petri-dish into a specialized set of pluripotent cells.

Normally, this would take days to do at least and would need some genetic engineering to insert transcription factors into the cells, but my intellect was allowing me to skip steps in the process. Or come up with novel methods entirely, all on the fly. I then took the mix of cells and injected it back into myself. My shoulder would heal in a day or so. That done I took a look at the items fed into the MAMs near the crash site.

Most of what was fed into the MAM was broken, providing us with no new information - besides what materials they were made of. The stuff that wasn't broken however, provided very telling information. I already knew that the elves were depraved but even after what I saw on the ship, and in Kha's mind. I still underestimated them.

Some of the items that were being fed into the MAMs were people.

The elves apparently had very advanced technological and body modification technology. They could give elves and even humans extra organs and limbs. They could bolster the immune systems of creatures they had only just met and create cures for even the most stubborn of diseases. Instead they used these technologies to enslave others and amuse themselves. People, elf and human alike were stuffed in grotesque metal suits where their lobotomised minds were drowned in stimulants and wired so that every step they took induced pain.

Of particular note was a creature roughly the size of an elephant that looked like a legless metal scorpion. When it was alive, I imagine that it floated. From the outside, it looked like a particularly complex metal drone.

Now that it had been scanned by the MAM, I could see that it was an elf that had been extensively modified before being stuffed into the machine, where its body grew in grotesque fashion to meld with the machine. What was even more disturbing was the machines function. It was a mobile living sampler and scanner. It would go and consume a living being, where it would slowly and painfully kill it was absorbing information that it would later relay. Its brain was also wired so that it enjoyed doing this immensely. It had died when a few orks had apparently endeavoured to tear it in half.

All things considered, its death was a mercy.

The weapons were similarly telling. I couldn't understand how ork weapons worked exactly, but from what I did understand, everything was made to have immense stopping power. The weapons the elves had were made to capture living beings, painfully. There were guns that shot nets made of razor and cannons that shot poisoned shuriken in endeavours that seemed impractical when a regular net or a gun would do the job just as well.

If there was anything I had learned today, it was that the universe I had found myself in was a dangerous place. I stood up from my table. There seemed to be threats around every corner. I made my way to the workshop. Almost everyone I had met seemed hostile. If I was to survive long enough to see Esau grow up, I would have to be better.

-Esau

Esau disliked working with machines he had already worked with. It seemed a waste of his abilities and his time. Every machine that he worked on taught him something. Every machine he opened up telling him a story. Esau found that he enjoyed stories. He just hated hearing the same story twice.

It came down to efficiency, he mused to himself. He liked being efficient. Anything that was not efficient was…disappointing, because it was not fulfilling its full potential.

He had realized soon after he had awakened that he was special, that he had gifts. Even with a sample size of one, it was clear that he was smarter, stronger and faster than his father. His mind was making connections so fast that his father literally couldn't explain concepts fast enough.

He was so gifted that using his abilities to create and modify drones to replace destroyed ones seemed a waste. Problem was, no one else was as good at creating drones so leaving the job to someone else would be a bigger waste of time in the long run than if he did the work himself. He would have to design maintenance drones after this, just to make sure that he had time for projects he enjoyed more.

Like working with the Drukhari and Ork technologies.

Those were interesting. Each piece of technology he came across told him so much. It told him that the Orks loved violence and nothing else. Every piece of their technology reflected this fact. Their guns were almost comically large to inflict the most damage when shot. Their knives, such that they were, were serrated and crude suggesting that they didn't have the technology to sharpen them. This blatantly wasn't true because as Esau, had seen. They had somehow advanced enough to build a spaceship. Even if it was bashed together with seemed to be random parts.

No, Ork weapons were crude not because they couldn't make them better, but because making them better would take up time they would rather spend fighting. Perhaps he was wrong, his father had shown him that mistakes were likely when extrapolating from information taken from sources that were less then trustworthy. But something told him he wasn't.

Even vehicles were built such that even when travelling, they could cause physical harm in some way. It didn't matter if it was the passengers being harmed or the enemy. He hated the technology but it spoke to something in him. It spoke to him of efficiency.

It was a twisted form of efficiency, where form was sacrificed for function when it was best to strike a balance between both. But it was efficiency none the less, and he found it fascinating.

He heard a noise in the workshop. The sound of tools falling. He looked up and saw Kov, frantically try to make himself smaller. He had tried to imitate Esau and had failed, dropping the tools.

Anger rose up in Esau. The distraction meant less time focussed on building the drone in his hand, which meant less time to work on things that truly interested him. How could Kov not see this? That his attempts to impress him, had rankled him instead?

Briefly, he thought about smacking him about his head for his incompetence. He stayed his hand. There was no need to do such a thing. Kov had none of his gifts, none of his intelligence, his speed, his strength. And he was a child besides. The only thing that was even close was his enthusiasm to help. That was the sticking point. Kov was trying to help. Even if he had failed abysmally in the attempt, Esau could applaud the effort.

"Do not touch my tools without permission again." He said in the rough language of Kov's homeworld. Kov nodded meekly, properly chastised.

This pleased Esau. Kov knew he had made an error and was willing to make amends. No violence necessary. He beckoned for Kov to sit next to him, on the work bench. While Esau was building, modifying and testing drones, Kov would hold the tools.

Kov was ecstatic that he was helping. Esau didn't have the heart to tell him that his job was better served by the table sitting in front of them. If anything, Kov was actively making it more difficult to do his job, as his jitters meant that he occasionally dropped a tool or fidgeted with it just when Esau needed it.

He sighed.

If anything, Kov's constant hovering presence was teaching him a new skill. It was teaching him patience.

Hours passed this way, until he was finished. By the time he was done, Kov was fast asleep, his drool staining the bench. He thought about picking him up and leaving him in a bed, but thought better of it. His time was better spent looking over the scans the MAMs were taking.

He was deep in his analysis of this data when he heard a set of footsteps coming up the corridor leading to the workshop. The footsteps were easy to recognise. His father. Though the way sounded indicated that he had healed his shoulder somewhat. That was interesting, and disappointing. Esau would have liked to have been present during the process so he could have learnt from and improved on the process. Still, he sounded as if he was in good health. Though his heartbeat and general quick stride indicated nervousness or determination. Perhaps both.

What news did his father bring that bothered him so? Esau waited patiently to find out.

His father walked in. He was right, the shoulder was much better. No swelling at least.

"Are you winning, son?" he asked. The tone suggested that it was a joke or a reference of some kind. His father was prone to references, especially when nervous. They were to relieve his tension. Esau wondered if his father was aware of this.

"I think so, Father. I am done building the drones." Esau replied.

"Good, son. That's great. We were in no rush but I'm happy you got so much done." Esau decided not to tell his father that he was in a rush. Instead he just preened with the praise.

"Thank you, Father."

His father rubbed the stubble on his chin, a nervous habit for whenever he was formulating a question or argument.

"I think, Esau…" he said. "I need your help."

"Help with what, Father?"

"Recent events have shown me that I need to be better. To better survive against physical threats. And to triumph over mental ones." A sentiment Esau agreed with. His father would likely have died several times over without his help.

"What do you need from me, Father?" Esau asked.

"I need your help in the lab, son." His father said. "And I think I need to take a sample scan of your DNA."

Notes:

6.1. Perk(s) earned this chapter:

None.

Chapter 7: Interlude 2 – Esau

- Esau

The journey to the lab was preceded by a detour where Esau and his father put Kov to sleep. It wouldn't do for him to sleep in the workshop after all. Esau lifted him up, supporting his neck with one of his hands and they walked to the bunkroom where Esau gently deposited Kov into one of the beds they had. They were walking to the laboratories when his father spoke.

"He really looks up to you, you know?"

"He is annoying." Esau answered honestly. "He lacks basic motor skills, yet he insists on assisting me in the workshop."

"He is a child, Esau. All children lack motor skills, especially at his age."

I am a child, Esau wanted to say, but he knew that it was different. No other child possessed his talents. From what he had seen, very few adults possessed even a fraction of his talents. Perhaps that was why he had agreed for his father to take a scan of his DNA. It was part curiosity at what he was and part a need for someone he could truly match wits against. His father was adequately intelligent, now that the Forge had enhanced his intellect, but he was still too slow.

Even a moderate increase in processing speed would be welcome.

"Yes, Esau. I realize that you're one too." Esau's face had evidently betrayed him. "But you're different. Come now, there should be some quality he possesses that you can admire?"

Esau couldn't help but scoff.

"I heard that. There's no need for that kind of attitude. Think, Esau. There has to be something." His father said, stern. A part of him wanted to protest. His father was wrong to insist upon him and Kov's friendship, but then another part of him squirmed at the idea of his father being disappointed. The idea of his father being disappointed by him was unfathomable.

So Esau thought about Kov. The boy was malnourished and dehydrated, and yet persistently tried to assist him. He often failed dismally, but he tried. That had to count for something, right?

He thought about himself in the same position. Would he have the same persistence under the same conditions? It was likely that he would. Esau had yet to meet a challenge he could not match.

Persistence, then. Through persistence Kov had learned how Esau constructed his drones. He learned when Esau needed a certain tool and when he did not, despite not being told or taught directly. He still jittered and hesitated, but in time that hesitation would turn to confidence as his health improved and his motions became memory.

"He…is persistent. This annoys me, but I can respect it." Esau said. His father motioned for him to go on.

"He often drops my tools, or gets so excited that he hinders me but through sheer persistence he has learnt how some of my drones have been built." Esau could almost feel his father's surprise. Before his father had his intelligence enhanced, he had trouble following Esau's actions when he made drones, yet Kov had somehow followed his process.

"Really?"

"Yes. He likely cannot build them, but he knows how they are built." His father scratched his chin.

"That's…interesting. I'm glad that you're willing to at least try to find common ground with him. Doing more of that in future will do nothing but help you." Esau preened at the praise. Esau was many things, but he was not a disappointment.

"Thank you, Father."

They had just reached the entrance to the labs when his father spoke again.

"How good would you say Kov's memory is?" he said. Esau thought through his interactions with the boy.

"I would say that his memory is perfect." Esau said, surprised despite himself. How had he not noticed sooner?

"I see. It looks like Kov is an autodidact, like you. At the very least, it looks like he either has a photographic or eidetic memory. He's not nearly as intelligent as you and doesn't possess your physical gifts but he seems to have more intelligence than the baseline human being." His father said. Esau was stunned. He should have noticed. If he had, he would have invested in teaching Kov directly. If Kov was even a fraction as talented as he was, he would have learnt the process of assembly, effectively increasing production time.

That he hadn't noticed despite the signs being right in front of him told him that he wasn't paying attention. He would be better in future.

"In hindsight, it makes sense." His father continued. "The elves had a lot of medical equipment on their ship. They seemed to have specifically been collecting humans with extraordinary features or abilities, likely for experiments or torture. Likely both."

"Drukhari." Esau said, automatically. "The species are known as the Drukhari. It means 'Dark Ones'."

"I see." His father said, turning on the lights in the lab.

The lab was composed of a number of seats facing a workbench where a computer was coming to life. Spaced out though the room, were a series of cabinets that would later be filled with chemical reagents, samples and equipment. Now most of them were empty. The computer was attached to a molecular analysis machine which in itself took up a quarter of the room, its various scanners showing the progress of the various scans that were currently underway.

Esau had discovered, during his analysis of the data generated, that for some reason, all molecular analysis machines shared computational power and that each analysis was conducted in series, not in parallel. This meant that unless projects were prioritised, the MAM would analyse things in the order in which items were fed into the machine. This was displeasing, it was increasingly inefficient.

While Esau could work with the hardware of the machines, altering the software of the machine proved to be more of a problem. The primers on the omni-tool didn't cover programming so everything he knew about it was through personal experience and experimentation. He could look at the code that the MAM was running but experimenting on the system while it was actively scanning was a bad idea. The machines would run as they did, for now. They both sat down at the bench in front of the MAM. His father, looking at the computer, while Esau hooked up to the MAM through the use of his omni-tool.

Despite the inefficiency of the MAMs methods, Esau could barely argue with the results. They now had access to schematics as drawn up by the MAM of a variety of equipment, belonging to both the Orks and the Drukkhari. Occasionally, the MAM would encounter components it had difficulty understanding. Here, the schematics would be highlighted and stored for later analysis.

This tended to happen more for the Orks than it did the Drukkhari as Ork technology seemed to have the startling tendency to not make any logical sense. There were areas of open space stuffed with machinery that was not plugged into anything in particular that somehow still worked, as the dead Drukkhari could attest to. Not all their technology was built this way, but a good sixty percent of it was. The mystery of how these eclectic parts would work together was something that stumped both Esau and his father.

That would be something that would need some looking at later.

"Esau, could you go into the scanner please?" His father said, having reviewed the changes in the objects analysed by the MAM. Esau stood in one of the scan areas, a ceramic and glass tube surrounded by a metal ring that would travel up and down, scanning an object.

The machine activated, beginning its scan. The metal ring was shooting a variety of particles at him and recording the results of how the particles interacted with his body as they either bounced off or passed through him. This information would then be processed and then iterated on until a full picture is generated by the MAM.

Esau stood still for thirty minutes, by his count, while the MAM worked. After it was done, he exited the machine and found his father with his head in his hands. Had the machine not worked? He stood there, unsure of how to comfort his father before he spoke.

"Son? Come take a look at this." He said, pointing to a screen in front of him.

Esau walked over to the screen and saw his physiology laid out in front of him.

He had a whole series of organs that didn't exist in normal human physiology, including a second heart, a third lung, an additional kidney and a variety of glands and organs of indeterminable use. By his count, he had twenty additions in total. If he had a more solid foundation of biological knowledge besides first aid, he would have been able to pinpoint the functions of the organs. As of now, however, he could only guess. There were multiple glands that controlled muscle development and a series of membranes that seemed to protect him against physical trauma.

The machine had worked. Then what caused this change in his father's mood?

"I underestimated the task ahead of me." His father said, as if answering his question. "There are a lot of systems in your body, working together, with complex interplays between organs, nerves and glands."

He hit a few keys on the keyboard bringing up a scan of his own body with an accompanying visual of his DNA versus Esau's.

"Your genetic code is human. A double stranded helix with the ordinary nucleotides. Except," He put his index finger up. "Your genetic code is obviously altered, somehow. Despite being one hundred percent human, elements of your DNA seem to change when I try to look at them. They twist and turn and move. It feels like your DNA actively doesn't want to be deciphered."

He stood up.

"That's not all. There seems to be a clearly supernatural element to you. I would have doubts about that but-"

"We already encountered the supernatural." Esau finished for him.

"Yeah." His father agreed. "Even with all these modifications, you should not be as strong as you are or as smart as you are. Your grey matter shouldn't be able to accommodate the speed at which I saw your neurons fire and your muscles are too small to exert the power that you so clearly can." He said before he exhaled, deflating visibly.

"I just don't know where to begin or how I should begin." He said as he sat down. Esau sat down as well, his mood turning sour. He was disappointed. His father had not promised him that he would succeed, there was no guarantee he would; but giving up when they were the closest they ever were, when he was the closest he ever was to having an equal was infuriating.

The silence in the room was deafening. Esau had never been the most eloquent of speakers, but finding the words to describe the low that his opinion of his father had gone was difficult. He leaned on the table that held the computer. They sat there in silence, for a few minutes before his father stood up suddenly, as if lightning struck.

"What was that you were saying earlier, Esau? About persistence? I'm about to show you what persistence can really do." He said, before stopping suddenly. "How far have the drones gone in incinerating the bodies?"

Esau checked his omni-tool. The drones had done their work. "All the bodies in the battlefield were incinerated, following MAM scanning."

"What happened to the machinery?"

"The machinery was removed from the battlefield where it awaits further analysis, following scanning."

"Even machinery like implants and artificial limbs?"

"Yes. I thought that disassembling them for reverse engineering would provide valuable information in the future."

"Did the MAM take scans of Elf and Ork biology?" His father was getting visibly excited.

"Yes, they did."

"Good. I need you to bring the scans up and I need you to take a look at the machinery of these creatures. I have a feeling that they are exactly what I need." His father said as he scrolled through multiple scans before pointing out a creature in black, on a stilt-like apparatus and another that looked more like a large bulky drone than a living creature. The creature on stilts had its hands, and most of its lower body removed and replaced with tentacle-like metal tubes while the bulky creature was large, perhaps multiple times the size of a normal man with multiple tubes sticking out of it. "Please make sure they are thoroughly cleaned and sterilised before you take a look at them."

"Yes, Father." Esau said as he stood up to go take a look at the machinery. He signalled a few drones to bring the machines into the workshop. They arrived after he did, taking some time to travel the distance between the crash site and the workshop. After they dropped off the machinery, he ordered the drones to partially disassemble the Ork and Drukkhari ships. He had hit a bottleneck on what he could do to decrypt the Drukkhari systems.

If he could not access the information directly, he would have the MAMs force their way through the encryption.

He disassembled both the machines and felt their stories reveal themselves to him. His brain made connections between components and their functions as soon as he saw them. The speed at which he understood the components was unparalleled, even by his earlier efforts. Was his intelligence increasing? It was possible; his body was still developing and his brain with it. Still, the rate at which revelations came to him was mind boggling.

Then it hit him. There was something about him, which made it easier for him to understand technology of inhuman origin. The secrets of the machinery were almost jumping into his mind without effort.

The same effect had made it simple for him to access Drukkhari systems despite it being his first time coming into contact with them. But why had this effect not manifested when he was looking at Drukkhari and Ork technology on the MAM? Did he need to physically access the technology in question?

Almost a full hour passed. Some of the functions of the machines were difficult and sometimes impossible to decipher without direct access to the biology of the creatures they belonged to. They were cybernetic components built to attach to Drukkhari physiology. Though by his reckoning, Esau could modify them to work with human physiology.

The components had a variety of functions, they would 'sample' any biology that they came into contact with, in what looked to be the most painful way possible before processing the information and turning it into transferable data. The two Drukkhari creations were basically biological MAMs.

The methods in which they did, differed slightly and there were components that seemed to be capable of absorbing and transferring emotions along with a nebulous form of energy, somehow. He felt a torturous fear when he touched some components and he felt unbound joy when handling others. In some components he felt pain like he had never felt before. In most, he corrected himself.

This did not dissuade him. Esau insisted upon nothing less than perfection in his work. Not because he wanted perfection for its own sake, but rather because perfection was efficient. And efficiency was beautiful. Pain would not keep him from it. He was too strong for that.

Soon he was done. He carefully catalogued each component and its function before returning to the laboratory, machinery in hand.

There he found his father deep in research, where he was furiously looking through data from the omni-tool and the MAM. Next to him, was a moving cabinet adorned with a variety of carefully labelled chemical samples and equipment.

"I see you're done, son. Good job." He said, taking a few moments to look away from the monitor and acknowledge Esau's presence. "It looks like we'll need to get me enhanced as soon as possible."

"How so?" Esau asked. His father beckoned him closer and drew up an image of a DNA strand.

"This is an image of Orkoid DNA. That's a double helix, like a human, though the nucleotides are different." He said, pointing to a highlighted section.

"And this is a third strand." He said pointing to a different portion of the DNA strand. "It doesn't belong to the Ork. At least not in the same way your DNA or mine belongs to us. It's the DNA of a symbiont – an algae or fungus that the cells of an Ork somehow use as instructions for cellular replication."

"That's not all." He chuckled, a grim, humourless thing. "This fungus allows for the Orks to produce spores."

It didn't take a genius to realise what that meant.

"We're not done facing the Orks." Esau said.

"No, we are not." His father confirmed. "As it turns out, Orks are genderless and they reproduce via spores that they periodically shed. Each spore contains enough genetic information to build a new Ork, which would then produce a whole community of Orks."

"And there were dozens of Orks at the crash site."

"At the very least." His father hung his head low. "We're looking at an infestation of maybe thousands of Orks depending on how fast they sporulate. The more I learn about this planet, the more it seems that were are beset by enemies on all sides."

Then he picked his head up. "So we have to be ready."

"I agree." Esau commiserated.

"So first things first, did you take a look at the cybernetic interfaces?"

"I did."

"What do you think?"

"They were incredibly advanced, if purposely limited to ensure that the user was beset by crippling bouts of pain."

"I see. Were you able to reverse engineer their data transfer methods?"

"Yes I was. I catalogued my work." Esau said as he showed his father his omni-tool. His father browsed through before he saw something that made him pause.

"What is this?" He asked, pointing to an image taken of the components Esau had identified to have contained emotions somehow.

"These are tubes that contain emotions. The mechanism that allows this escapes me, however."

"Do you have access to any of the machines used to transfer the emotions?"

"Yes I do."

"Excellent, because these aren't emotions. This is the essence of a person's life, crystalized and they may be what could allow me to decipher your physiology."

"Do you understand their mechanisms?" Esau asked, surprised.

"Yes, Esau." His father said. "I think I do."

The plan was simple. Esau had to construct an interface that would allow both him and his Father to transfer data between each of their brains. This had a two-fold purpose. One, it would allow speed-of-thought communication between the two and it would also allow for his Father to transfer to him his deep scientific knowledge. That done, Esau would assimilate the knowledge while his Father consumed an concoction that was reverse engineered from a MAM analysed Drukhari design which would make his body more mutable and respond better to change.

The Forge had granted him a body that would accept enhancements but unwanted side effects such as cancer in the future. The serum would help with this. That done, with Esau's new knowledge, they would work together to craft a simulacrum of some of the organs Esau possessed, with some additions taken from Ork and Drukhari physiology. The crystalized essence would help with this last portion of the work. His Father had posited that the essence would count as the supernatural portion of the organs which would increase their abilities to match his.

They had used the very sensors from the Drukhari machines to determine which essences would be viable, removing every bit of essence that had an emotion that could be construed as negative and destroying it via incineration, very far from their homes – at his Father's insistence. His father had posited that the essence they had kept had come from the very Orks that they had incinerated. This was because the Orks seemed to only care about violence and thus would be the only ones that had come in recent contact with the Drukhari and not had any negative emotions – as far as they both could tell, the thought of violence was a happy one for an Ork.

The construction of the interface was relatively simple, now that Esau had personally worked on Drukhari technology, with only the fabrication of some specialty parts a concern of theirs. Within an hour of construction, he was done. He would later work on miniaturising the interface to work as a cranial implant, but for their current purposes, it was enough.

Both he and his father sat in the interface, and after a few moments of pain as the interface drove cathodes into their heads and calibrated itself, they were linked. The transfer of information began. The information transferred slowly at first, in small bursts, as his father's brain adjusted. When his brain fully adjusted, it was like a dam rupturing as hundreds of years' worth of scientific knowledge transferred itself to him. Esau's mind drank it up eagerly, each new piece of knowledge filling gaps that Esau didn't know existed.

Even with the advanced apparatus of the interface, Esau's brain worked faster than his father's and soon it was obvious that his father was the limiting factor in the equation. They had to stop after the minimum information needed for the upcoming organ crafting and implantation was transferred as it became clear that his father's brain just couldn't handle the sheer speed of information transferred.

That done, they relocated to the med-bay where his father laid on a bed. Esau affixed an intravenous nutrient drip to his arm. The upcoming transformation would demand much of his body. Fuel in the form of nutrients would be welcome.

His father drank the mutability formula. Immediately, alerts sounded from the omni-tool Esau was using to monitor his Father's health. The chemicals were killing him and healing him at the same time. Blood vessels collapsed before being rebuilt. He watched, in horror as his father's face sagged as bones deconstructed themselves before being reconstructed. Neither of them had thought the method of increasing mutability in his body would be this intense. There was nothing Esau could do. Any antidote he could think to create would only be done after this process was completed so Esau sat next to his father, as he thrashed in pain.

Then his vocal cords were reconstructed by the serum and he began to scream.

Two hours later, after Esau had replaced his IV a total of 5 times, his father stopped screaming. His vital signs were normal. He was alright. In fact, he was healthier with less cholesterol in his body, along with saturated fats which were replaced with unsaturated fats, a better than average blood pressure level and hardened cartilage at points being replaced by soft cartilage.

Esau felt relief beyond belief. For the first time in his life he felt doubt, truly confidence shaking doubt. Should they go forward with their plan? They had thought that the mutability serum would have no side effects, or if they did – that they would be mitigated by the modifications the Forge had made to his body. Apparently this had not covered pain, and if it had not covered pain, what else didn't the ability cover?

It took ten hours before his father woke up.

In that time, Esau made food for Kha and Kov as his father had done.

He didn't eat. He didn't have much of an appetite.

He thought about lying to them about what he and his father had been working on, but he reconsidered it. They all lived under the same roof. Anything that affected one of them, affected all of them. Both of them were astounded and perhaps unsurprisingly, both Kha and Kov were against them using Drukhari relics, even if they were re-engineered by Esau. Surprisingly, both of them wished to assist with the project.

Esau had half a mind to deny them; they didn't have the skills needed for the coming steps of the process but they used his logic against him. Anything that affected one of them, affected all of them.

So he let them into the labs.

"May I have access to the cogitator, sachem?" Kov asked. Cogitator was the term for a computer in Kov's home language.

Again, Esau thought about denying him, but his father had shown that he had underestimated Kov. He would not do so again. A ten minute span spent in the cybernetic interface, and Kov could now read and understand English. That done, Esau gave him access to the computer as he had requested.

Quickly, it was apparent that Kov was some kind of programming genius as he, in a few quick strokes, was able to streamline the analysis processes that the MAM was cycling through as it tried to iteratively fill in gaps in technology it encountered. The MAM was still not capable of parallel processing but it had stopped iterating after a certain point and simply stored the designs. It was overall more efficient. Esau approved.

Kha had asked to access the tools they had planned to use. Esau had doubts, but he allowed it. It took her fifteen minutes to go over the various components of the technology before she returned with a single vial of crystalized life essence.

"This is the only one that does not cause turbulence in the Great Ocean, Great One." She said. The vial glowed a sickly green. "Everything else will expose the energies of the Great Ocean to the crafted flesh if they were to come into contact with it. This energy would be unregulated and that would be devastating for your father if the flesh was to be implanted in him."

"Thank you, Miss Kha." Esau said, inclining his head slightly as was the custom of Tectum. He has seen her do it when thanking his father for his help. Her help had been invaluable. If they had used the life essence that she had destroyed, there would be no telling what would have happened. Her own condition was a testament to the unpredictability of the Ocean. Kha was clearly surprised as she bowed back.

Without ceremony, his father walked into the lab as it was abuzz with movement. Esau was constructing a chamber which would be used to print organs wholesale from the MAM scans. Kov, was removing any Ocean active components from the Drukhari technology that she had identified as potentially hostile. It was annoying for so many options to be removed, but Esau understood the need.

It took a few moments before his father's presence in the lab was recognised. The moment he was, Esau took it upon himself to chastise him before scanning his body with the omni-tool. After verification on his condition, his father was allowed back into the labs.

It took ten days before the first viable organs were produced. The 'day' of course, was metaphorical. It seemed that because the planet they were on was orbiting two suns, there was no day-night cycle. They had, at the suggestion of his Father, arbitrarily divided their time into 24 hour cycles where they worked, ate, rested and slept as they pleased. There was even some time where Esau's father fabricated a set of playing cards and showed them how to play a few games. 'Crazy Eights' was Esau's favourite, though he was soon banned from playing card games as his ability to keep track of cards made him impossible to beat.

Ten days of skill transfer between him and his Father, which he used to reinforce his knowledge of Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Programming and dozens of other scientific fields, further increasing the knowledge he could draw from as his brain made connections between multiple points of information.

Ten days of organ crafting, using a mixture of chemical washes, genetic modification procedures to modify and replicate cells taken from both Esau and his father, which were then used to form organs. A bioscaffold was created using designs taken from Drukhari technology and grown in a Drukhari designed biological growth chamber. It took countless tries over the days as they encountered problem after problem until they had success with the implants.

The first organ to be implanted was an organ that would do the job of two organs in Esau's chest cavity. It was based on a mixture of Esau's body and the general Ork physique. The organ was a fist sized and it would function in controlling skeletal and muscle growth, with a focus on allowing the body to survive external trauma. It would be the first organ implanted because it would passively increase regeneration which would greatly help the other organs integrate. It was named 'The Regenerator'. This organ was implanted above the stomach and below the heart, underneath the ribcage and then left to heal as the body acclimated to the organ.

Through a mix of forge-granted physique, alterations performed by the mutability formula and the regenerator, Esau's father had recovered within hours instead of days or weeks. After a check with the omni-tool and Kha's abilities, the second organ was implanted. This one was a thumb sized organ designed from Esau's genetics and would control hormone secretion, helping the body grow while also flushing the body with stimulants, in the case of a fight or depressants when in need of rest. It was named 'The Regulator', It was implanted near the thyroid.

The third organ was an organ the size of four thumbnails. This was based on an organ that existed in Esau's cerebral cortex. This organ would enhance the other implanted organs and allow growth matching Esau's, both in brain power and physical strength. Some of the organ in Esau's cortex was indecipherable, but those portions were replaced with a mix of Orkoid and Drukhari based grey matter, which would greatly enhance the corpus callosum and the hypothalamus. This would allow Esau's father to match him in motor function and brain processing capacity. It was named 'The Polymath Gland'.

Due to the fact that it was to be implanted in the brain, it was implanted last. Again, he healed and the scans off of the omni-tool were in the green. Still, the results of the implants were below expectation. After taking an hour to check the progress of the implants, Esau's father was placed in a chamber and the green life essence was released into the chamber after some last minute checks.

The chamber filled with green light, and a sound like thunder filled the Esau's home. The chamber shook violently as the green light faded and was replaced with smoke. The smell of ozone hit Esau, as time slowed. Both Kha and Kov were in the room. Kov was nearest. He picked him up and ran into Kha, pushing her and Kov out of the door, as green lightning began to arc.

Esau found that he was starting to hate lightning. A stray bolt hit him, filling his vision with GREEN-

His name was Warboss Gritzz Earripper, and he was having a good time. He watched one of the boyz jump at one of 'em pointy ear gits, holding a stickbomb. The stickbomb killed both the boy and the pointy ear. He felt his grin widening. Scratch a good day. 'Dis day was perfect.

He and his boyz had found one of 'em Craftworld fings and seeing as it was out in open space lookin' shiny, they attacked. The pointy ears panicked, real stupid if you asked Gritzz. If you had your ship just sitting in space, ready for a fight, why were you surprised when a fight came to you? He shook his head. The pointy ears always had a strange, twisted logic. Maybe that wuz why he liked krumpin' 'em so much.

He ran through the halls of the Craftworld, not deining to duck out of the way of their puny weapons. He let his mek suit take care of them as he got close and ripped them in half. The pointy eared gits had weapons that were distinctly not Orky. There was no spectacle to 'em. No power. The pointy ears didn't use propa dakka in dere shootas', instead they had sharp bits of metal. That would never be getting fru his armour.

He felt an impact as the ship shook, somefing was explodin' somewhere. Somewhere where he wasn't. That wouldnt do. Gritzz ran towards the sound of the exploshuns, occasionally stopping to chop some pointy ears down with his choppa.

He found that the expolshuns were comin' from where he and the ladz had landed with his ship. One of the boyz called out to him.

"Boss! Boss! Dem gits are ejecting dis portion of da ship!" Gritzz smacked the lad for disturbing him before ordering the boyz back into their ship. Gritzz was a cunning Ork. He realized that if the pointy ears were willing to abandon this portion of the ship, it meant that all tha good loot was in the part that was going with 'em! Some of da boyz didn't make it as the Ork ship disengaged. No matter, Gritzz would get 'em later. If he remembered.

The portion of the craftworld that they were just on exploded. Well, there was no need to remember anymore. The explosion rocked the Ork ship, sending it spiralling out into space and into a warp storm.

The warp was confusin'. Up was sometimes down, and left was sometimes right. The colours were strange and there was nofing green in it. The warp wasn't really an Orky place, but da daemons always gave out a propa fight. Gritzz and the boys krumped the daemons that appeared on the ship good before one of the mekboys fixed their warp drive, allowing them out back into real space and crashing into one of 'em spiky spikey pointy eared gits.

The ships crashed onto a desert world, filled with good scrap for da boyz. Problem was, the crash krumped a good number of da boyz. He stood up, shook his head and punted one of the surviving grots for luck before he rallied the boyz and attacked the spikey gits. Exploshuns and the sound of dakka in the air gave him a good feeling. He ran into the spiky gits and as he wet his choppa with their blood, he couldn't help but smile.

What a lovely day!

Esau woke up, groggy from the vision he had just witnessed. The vial had contained the essence of the Ork warboss, and that was what had been infused into his father. He felt some vertigo as the floor disappeared. He was being pulled up. His faculties returned to him as he stared at his Father.

He was much taller, at almost 2 metres, with thick corded muscle visible through his skin. He smiled. His canines were sharper, more pronounced and his eyes had a faint green glow just behind the pupils.

"We did it, son. We did it."