37. Lost Child

"Fucking bitch.", Parker Selfridge the highest placed RDA official on Pandora, and a thin Caucasian man, cursed right after Dr. Grace Augustine left his office as he slammed his fist on his desk to wince at the sudden influx of pain from his hand.

It wasn't even his fault if one of the scientists was idiotic enough to die in a mugging of all things, it's not like this brilliant scientist couldn't afford bodyguards, be they organic or not. It placed great doubt on this said scientist's supposed intellect.

What does she want him to do? Magic the scientist back to life?

Clearly, as of now, it's not out of the RDA capabilities with the recent research and success in digitizing memories and personality on physical copy called Soul Drive, the problem was it was still in the testing phase when Tom Sully died.

And to save the billions that were siphoned in the investment of this dead man the RDA took the secondhand option, a crippled marine, Jake, Tom's twin brother. Their similar genetics was the only reason.

The sudden death and replacement of one of her future team members was the reason she was beyond mad which he found understandable but the way she reacted was still completely blown out of proportion in his opinion.

But either way, it wasn't surprising for her, and there was something else that she seemed pissed off about before she entered his office.

He knew her for nearly three decades, and even if he despised her he knew a lot about this woman for several weeks she had a sudden shift in priority. One she kept from mentioning.

She had found something and he let her do as she pleased until he deemed enough time had passed and she showed results but it seemed fairly important.

Though if this 'fairly important' for her was the same for him he didn't know, she was fascinated more by alien grass than anything else after all. They did hold very different priorities, but alas for her he is the RDA administrator of this dirt ball full of savages.

She might need another wake-up call on what was truly important and who was letting her do her research.

"You truly managed to piss her off right there. I think the only time I saw her nearly this peeved off was after the shooting of her school pet project or when you said her to fuck off after she asked you to help for some disease affecting the blue monkeys.", Miles Quaritch the RDA Security Commander and Selfridge's right-hand man, an old muscular man with short grizzled hair and scars adorning his arms and side head said amusedly as he entered his boss' office.

"Pissy scientist aside… Can I get an overview of the new recruits?", the old colonel asked, earning an affirmative glance from Parker.

He took his job relatively seriously, particularly about the lives of men and women under him. That didn't mean he will succeed in keeping all of them alive but that's part of the job, and death was low for those brave, insane, or desperate enough to voluntarily be dragged to Pandora by the RDA.

The only way of effectively and reliably communicating with Earth is either by sending messages directly through the ISV Venture Star, which took an extremely long time due to the travel time of the spaceship.

Or the use of Superluminal Communications, a type of device that gives the middle finger to the theory of relativity as it permits information to travel faster than light by the use of an oscillating magnetic field but to send one Bit it costs 7500$ and it's only three per hour.

For example, a pixel of a random picture is 24 Bits. While interesting it was a very invective device whose only real use was to send or receive extremely short and coded messages, such as emergency ones.

And the reason why it was only now the new information reached Hell's Gate.

Day 167.

The last few days for Liam had been calm, he worked as usual, collected resources or created ones, and took care of his garden, and tames, not forgetting the slinger's head, which for the first five days after its capture refused to eat and lost a significant amount of weight but it slowly changed resulting in it now, while lighter than before not to the point of starvation. And it was less 'hostile' but nothing worth noting.

He crafted a lot as well, up to now he has a bit more than half a thousand bullets of all kinds combined, several dozen explosives from fragmentation, toxic gasses, and incendiary grenades, to more than a hundred explosive arrows.

All of it is done through a slow and tedious process that will lead to many deaths but a necessary one. And it wasn't enough. Most of the earlier mentioned bullets were for the turrets and to have those arrows capable of blowing off the helicopter's rotorblades he needed the hyper-dense oil found at the Tree of Souls down below.

An oil he was certain to collect more another meeting with the All-Mother will be necessary, to avoid unnecessary problems. Eywa won't probably care if he took a ton of such liquid but the Na'vi certainly will, friends or not.

He already had an idea of what to bargain for, he didn't need this oil to power his machines truly, and if he wanted something really potent he would go for nuclear, it's a better source of energy.

Though he neither did have uranium or thorium, or any other such material at his disposal, the regular heavy crude oil from the roots and the self-recharging hydrogen batteries would do for now. He wasn't powering an entire city after all.

Some of his crafts were designed to be usable by his tetrapterons as well, four grenade pouches containing, well, grenades, the tetrapterons being capable of pulling the pin and dropping them from the sky. Or potentially even place C4, or something akin to that, and them off in the future, or even potentially extremely powerful EMP if he cracked the secrets of the pandorium.

Not forgetting a multipurpose pair of metallic claws that pretty much was a Swiss military knife.

And for his great austrapede, a saddle was out for the moment, he wanted to grow and avoid potential injuries but adding one or two automatic turrets on its armor was already a possibility.

Evidently, it was enough to defend himself against most Na'vi clans and creatures of Pandora not enough for the war that is to come.

Other than this he communicated with the two scientists on an almost daily basis thanks to the program Overseer.

For all of those days, there were no face calls, however, there were a few short voice calls and a lot of text messages. That was only received and answered when he wasn't in his base, noting that his base wasn't the best location for long-distance transmission in the first place thanks to Pandora's soil.

The program in itself was just like any group chat application from his old world such as Whatsapp but upgraded and pushed for maximum effectiveness and ease of use.

As such it wasn't surprising it had access to everything of the watches and could use its recording functions without consent.

He wasn't proud of this function, slightly disgusted even, the name of the program wasn't chosen by pure hazard. But paranoia was of utmost importance and in general having a way to spy on others was always a plus.

And he seriously doubted either of the two was naive enough to not believe or stupid enough to not know with all the clues he gave that he hadn't put in such measures. He asked them to give them blank slates for him to modify as he pleased.

Anyone with two working brain cells would have, and to be fair the camera, microphone, and various other sensors such as the one to moderate the wearer's heartbeat were, while functional, in dire need of restoration.

The image quality was trash and the range of the microphone for anything better than intangible white noise was barely around two meters (~6ft6). And also sometimes data was simply lost or corrupted thanks to various outside interferences.

It was a miracle in itself that most of the two watches' original functions worked relatively fine, to begin with. And from what Max further said they endured a lot, one that by the scientist's words even saved his great-great-grandfather from a bullet to the heart because he forgot he left his watch there.

If it was true or not Liam cared little, in all cases what could be taken from all of this was it made things easier for everything related to communicating with the two scientists.

Though it could be improved on his side too, the drone-phone was not good by any means, an ineffective design that will need rectification.

Currently, Gladius had its' two pairs of eyes hyper-focused on the ground where if you squinted and had a bit of imagination you could almost decipher Arabic numbers. The great austrapede cawed in frustration.

"Eight multiplicated by seven and add seven, it's easy, Gladius. You can do it.", Liam encouraged his great austrapede who was, evidently, in the middle of doing basic calculus that 99% of Na'vi wouldn't even be able to begin to understand.

What Liam was doing by itself didn't hold much value, Gladius wasn't going to be a mathematician or anything of the like. But it stimulated the beast's brain and it only cost the human a few minutes of his day, and being able to count was always a nice skill to have.

Gladius suddenly tensed as input from the hive mind came.

"Fucking finally they out, I thought they died.", it's 'Father' said aloud, cracking his neck as he stood up, he had waited longer than he anticipated, not that he complained it gave him more time to prepare but it was stressing him for one of the reasons he just mentioned.

Having them die even if it wasn't his fault was bad, unreasonable individuals weren't exclusive to humans so being blamed for such a tragedy wouldn't be out of his expectation.

It was exactly the type of scenario he would expect to unfold.

A few hours later within the great plain, flying slowly and close to the ground was a mountain banshee.

A creature that in normal circumstances wouldn't be found here. Riding it was a female Na'vi, the tsakarem of the Omatikaya clan. Her face was calm, yet her eyes didn't hide the internal conflicts she was having since the Tsaheylu with the Tree of Divergence.

Many pieces of information, most fragmented and too complex or simply incomprehensible, were given, a lot she couldn't even begin to comprehend.

However, what confirmed was the supposed what of what was the Lost Child, an anomaly, an unknown, something that had never been seen before by the Eywa. Someone alone and lost who suddenly came into existence, someone young, barely older than an infant. It should be impossible, insane even but it was the truth.

She suddenly snapped her head to the right as a blue and purple tetrapteron flew past her banshee at incredible speed, a speed that would have easily outpaced her mount at full speed without diving.

Blinking in surprise at this caused her mount, Seze, to grunt in annoyance and it brought her back to why she was here. In front of her eyes was a lush tree standing up like a sore thumb within the plain imprisoned by walls upon wall composed of the ground and dead vegetation while in front stood a double gate.

Veering toward the ground she commanded her mount to land and it did so. She hopped off her mount before approaching her fellow tsakarem that did as she did.

He dismounted his mount as well, a young thanator he raised himself, one of the many he raised. He was a bulky male wearing a head medallion holding the sign of the Tipani, his clan, a shield. It signifies they were warriors, and hunters but protectors first and foremost.

Behind him was a small group riding direhorses, within them was the Tsahìk with her student, the Olo'eytkan with his son, and two of the most able-bodied hunters. All from the Olangi clan.

'Uh where all of this creature that made loud noises go.', Mìruk wondered, it was something he noticed earlier but though the Lost Child had displaced them closer to his home, he still didn't see any.

Probably hidden he guessed, Tutee sitting behind him also noticed this but neither of the teens voiced it out or even informed anyone about it as the Lost Child had asked. They didn't understand how dangerous those 'bang bang creatures' were.

<He knows we are here, tsakarem Neytiri.>, Ukato, the male tsakarem of the Tipani informed with a frown, his gaze locked onto a red tetrapteron above the gate. A point that Neytiri noticed as well, causing her to tense up her hand close to her bow.

<Indeed, young one.>, the old Tsahìk of the Olangi added and continued, <The Lost Child must have known we were arriving for far longer than we realized, this fkio perched above is not wild (tetrahedron).>

And they knew why, the Lost Child could commune and control the fauna in a way similar to Na'vi, using them to learn was something that wasn't unheard of but rare to see.

There was a moment of silence where the small group approached further until the door slowly opened, the red tetrapteron above not having lifted its four eyes gaze off them, being particularly focused over Neytiri and Ukato. It knew.

<Everyone be calm, we are not here to fight, there is no reason to antagonize the savior of my son and Tutee.>, the Olo'eyktan said, his voice strict, indicating that whoever acted rashly would be heavily punished. Be they of his clan or not.

This was known to the two tsakarems from foreign clans simply due to Tutee having divulged it in an outburst of frustration when they criticized the human a dozen of eclipses ago. Yet it wasn't spoken on more until now.

It wasn't for the Lost Child defense in particular but for the two foreign tsakarems. Akwey hadn't forgotten how this man stopped and flipped a hunter riding his charging mount with no visible effort. It was imprinted in his memory.

This man had exceptional physical prowess, beyond that of any Na'vi, proven by his acts and further supported by the cryptic words of the All-Mother.

None here was unaware of his impossible strength, though to what extent they overestimated or underestimated him was an entirely different story.

The tsakarems from the Omaticaya and Tipani focused, their bodies tensing up at the figure walking out of the door.

A human, Sky Person, Demon, the Lost Child, or Liam Cram as they learned he called himself, over his face was no strange device only the usual pilosity known for his species, a short beard, a pair of eyebrows, and hair put into braids in an unknown style, all dark brown.

His left arm had a strange metallic prism growing out, it emitted a soft orange image that constantly flickered, something none of his kind had. It looked like an integral part of his body.

He was wearing a pair of garments typical of his kind known as pants, this one made of plant fibers and animal hide with a pouch attached to his side.

Over the upper part of his trunk was a chest plate, it was made partly unknown material but one that sported similarity to the one typically seen used by his kind, the rest being made of wood, leather, and plant fiber.

Around his neck was a rather discreet leather necklace adorned by various objects from what looked like a seashell, to claw whether they were intact or in fragments, the broken part of a proboscis from some creature, a strangely shaped golden trinket, and more.

His skin of an almost golden tan only put on display the defined and corded muscles of his powerful build, he was tall as well, for his kind. Taller and bulkier than any they ever saw. Not as tall as a Na'vi far from it, but it was notable nonetheless.

Then his face, neither of the two cared much for the beauty standard of his kind so it was unimportant, but his expression, it was cold in a way, almost detached, his eyes of an unnatural silver gray studying any and every one of their moves like the one of an apex predator, yet no malice or want to harm could be seen, only justifiable wariness.

Yet the most shocking part was that he was even if he looked dangerous, he was weaponless, completely unbothered by this fact as he approached them, were both were armed, Neytiri with a bow and Ukato with a spear. He never once let go of his gaze from them.

<Welcome, >, the Lost Child said, a confident smile growing, his expression unchanging yet visibly more relaxed as he asked, <Welcome to where I reside, may I know who you are and your purpose of coming here?>

Unknown to the Na'vi all of his turrets, the twelve of them were hidden in the wall behind him, and below them, in the ground were three dozen landmines he could independently detonate with but a thought.

No, he wasn't weaponless even without his inventory, in fact, he had control over everyone's fate here. But nobody outside of himself and his tames needed to be aware of this detail.

*

My P@treon if you want to give me money and have chapters I have finished in advance.

p@treon.com/user?u=60424165