64. Alien...?

Three hundred and sixty-five days, one year since Liam was brought on this moon by unknown means and for an unknown reason, an entire year he has been and done things to him that the past would have never been capable of.

Many of these things he wasn't proud of, and they changed him. He perceived others differently having the power to rip others apart and having done so wasn't without effects. If those were bad or not only time would tell.

One-year anniversary or not, it was a normal day.

"So that's supposed to know my age by scanning the structure of my bone?", Liam asked the Avatar in front of him as she fiddled with a device that was almost too small to handle.

"It's more complicated than that but basically yes, it works on trees too. Hmm… Ya sure you don't want anything to dull the pain?", Grace said, her voice muffled by her exopack as she disinfected the needle-shaped drill.

"I wish yes was an answer but no, it won't work unless you put enough to knock me unconscious.", he answered, placing his right forearm on the table.

"Your choice, it won't be pleasant.", she said placing the drill above the location of his radius, she never used it on anything aside from plants.

"You don't say.", he said not interpreting himself as the drill drove through his skin, muscle then bone, and bone marrow, his only reaction was his face handling and the muscles of his right forearm slightly tensing up and he paid attention it wasn't too much or the body of the drill would have bent.

Two minutes later the drill was taken out leaving behind a droplet of blood and a few seconds later the result arrived on the holoscreen.

"Huh… Between one to two years old, strange. But can't say I didn't expect that. Maybe it's innate to your biology and the computer can't understand.", Grace mumbled reading the data while for Liam a simple amused chuckle escaped him.

A two-meter tall muscular bearded thirty-year-old-looking man that was in fact a bonafide one-year-old. Quite a bizarre reality he was in.

Jake wasn't different in that aspect now that he thinks about it. The ex-marine body even if the time taken for the Avatar to grow was put in consideration the Olo'eyktan of Omatikaya was physically less than ten years old.

Even less if the moment the Avatar was out of the pod counted as a birth then he was barely one year old and it was the same for Grace to a lesser extent if too decade could be considered that.

It was amusing, Jake and he were not that much older than a newborn like the son of Miles Quaritch but ultimately it didn't truly matter what physical age a body artificially created had, only the mind in it mattered.

"Unrelated to that but you seem to be doing better than Jake after he switched.", Liam said, hinting toward the first few weeks after the Battle of the Hallelujah mountains where the Avatar in question was brooding over his decomposing human body.

"No, it feels like a dream. I feel better in every way possible… It's hard to put into words. It's a constant feeling of euphoria. It's different than when I drove, it's clearer… It feels real. I feel alive.", she explained, a hand going over briefly on her stomach, a faint smile appearing.

"That's good to hear.", Liam let out relieved, the wound on his arm was already closed he flexed the fingers of his right hand and stood up. 

His fingers were all healed, only thin scars lines of the worse damages remained but to see them great focus needed to be put on them. They were pretty inconspicuous.

Today Liam had other plans so he bid the ex-human goodbye.

Plans for when the RDA will come back, and working on them as soon as possible was a must. Better ready than dead.

On Earth, the company already was aware of what had happened. At the very least the big picture, messages were sent and they were pretty clear on the fact surrendering was the best option to alleviate a very long list of crimes against humanity.

A list he found hilarious coming from the company that was the main reason behind Earth and humanity's currently more than deplorable state.

The usual hypocrisy of a megacorp aside this was why having tamed Aegis, his giant armored shark changed everything. 

His nalutsa gave a safe access to a large supply of extremely pure raw uranium which he hadn't begun to exploit aside from taking a few kilos of it after having taken the half-melted hermit crab drone out of the shark's stomach.

A mineral that might seem pointless at first glance as fusion reactors existed in those days and ages but why he needed tons upon tons of this element wasn't to specifically generate energy via nuclear fission. 

He needed radiation, an excessive amount of it in a controllable way, nothing hazardous like polonium. Nuclear waste was exactly what he needed.

The best source available was uranium, precisely the more radioactive form it can be turned into, the element found in nature was certainly radioactive but nothing special or really dangerous. 

Radiations aren't some kind of supernatural killing force, it's when it's too much it becomes bad, like pretty much everything. And radiation included many things.

He needed them for a very special reason, to grow Element, or more accurately to accelerate its growth. And to do so a safe area needed to be chosen, not for what is grown but for everything around as such the option for a specialized facility dedicated to that goal couldn't be on Pandora. 

Even if everything went perfectly fine it was still too much of a risk, permanently damaging the one hospitable celestial body in light years away being one such risk.

And thinking enough precautions were taken for this risk to be worth was a moronic line of thought that had been the road to an early end for many. 

There never were enough precautions for what needed to be grown. This was even truer when he had zero solutions to act against it if things were to turn for the worse.

It was a problem with a solution rather easily found, if there is a problem doing it here then doing it elsewhere was the way to go. The other moons of Polyphemus were this solution, it was the gas giant Pandora was orbiting around that the Na'vi called Naranawm, which meant Greater Eye if translated directly.

There came another problem or several, moons needed to be chosen and it was between thirteen moons, their orbits, and general stats entered in the equation reducing this number to three as the distance to Pandora needed to be close.

The first was called Naratxep, meaning Eye of Fire and it was a moon 70% the mass of Pandora, its name is apt as it has an atmosphere composition and geological activity leading to a similar climate to Venus if less extreme.

Its orbit made it so it was always 'nearby' as it was similar to that of Pandora. Besides the gas giant, it was the biggest thing in the sky.

The second was half the mass of Pandora, an ocean theorized to be hidden below the multiple kilometers of ice that covered most of its surface. It was cold, colder than Antarctica on average by a factor of two, and overall a visibly barren ball of ice. Its name using the same logic as its counterpart was named Naratskxepay, Eye of Ice.

And its orbit was similar to that of Naratxep but farther away.

As for the third, its name was Naranìnän meaning Lesser Eye, and as its name indicated it was the smallest being less than 15% of Pandora's total mass.

Compared to the last two it had little to no atmosphere, still, it had both extremely cold and hot areas but also areas with less of these two extremes making it better but its orbit made it so it was close to Pandora only five days a month. This one would be good as a future automated mine.

The choice was on the second, all had pros and cons but Naratskxepay was the best of the three, or the less worse.

It was at a manageable distance, there was no acidic rain with constant earthquakes and volcanic eruption, instead an eternal blizzard on nearly its entire surface, and there was water. The Element thrived better in extreme conditions, be it from any source.

Looking at the rapidly increasing distance between his current position and Pandora, Liam felt the hold of gravity weaken to the point that jumping would lead to him floating in the pressured and recycled air of the Valkyrie.

'Beautiful as always.', he thought as the image of the back camera entered his mind through his implant. It was the first time he saw Pandora from outer space; it had just never been this far.

Going into space was the first thing he did after acquiring Valkyrie 16, it was a must and it was disconcertingly easy to do. 

It felt like driving a car to the grocery store, the type of vehicle the Valkyrie were had been designed for that exact purpose. Atmospheric exit and entry/re-entry, and space travel at 'short' distances to transport cargo, a giant flying delivery truck.

Pushing more power into the engines of the wings Liam began the acceleration phase and two bright light blue trails began following the spacecraft. 

After checking that everything was in order such as the angle at which the Valkyrie was propelling itself Liam pushed himself off a wall with a weak kick and let himself float through the recycled air.

He moved past several crates and various tools, all of them neatly placed and secured to the walls, grounds, and ceiling as floating objects when gravity was weak as much as they were amusing to play with were a complete hazard and it made atmospheric entry/re-entry unnecessarily dangerous. 

A little fun wasn't worth death or potentially crippling injuries.

This was why he wasn't piloting Valkyrie 16 where he slept but instead, the one that was used to collect the fuel for the multiple fusion reactors. 

Though a little fun was what he was going to have while he waited for the voyage, it wasn't going to be purposeless. Above his bare left hand, a bulky metallic gauntlet appeared, attached to it was a long cable he connected to the Valkyrie.

Liam flexed each of the bulky fingers before pointing his palm at a rectangular fire extinguisher he mentally commanded the clasps holding it to open. Then as the fire extinguisher started to float aimlessly he aimed the palm of his gauntlet.

The triangular light at the end of each fingertip and the circle on the palm turned from a soft icy blue to a bright fiery orange not dissimilar to the hologram above his implant, then he flexed his thumb.

Nothing happened at first then the fire extinguisher flew toward his spread-open left hand before it could slam into him he suddenly flexed his left finger, the orange light in his palm grew slightly brighter and the incoming projectile froze midair.

A large manic smile spread Liam's face as he began to make the fire extinguisher spin on itself. Each flex of his left hand and fingers led to an equal reaction to the fire extinguisher.

This was due to the gauntlet sending precise and more or less powerful magnetic streams. And by changing the parameters of those 'streams' with the movement of his left hand he could do the feats of controlling objects at a distance.

Simple to describe but less than easy to execute as every micro movement affected the object currently held, aside from him only individuals having trained years or powerful computers would be able to wield this tool effectively in the state it currently was in.

It was one of the results of pandorium research, the prototype of a magnetic gauntlet. The nascent technology behind it had an almost limitless potential in use but as of now it was severely limited, too energy-intensive, too slow, and weak. 

It had many parallels with the regular use of magnets to maintain objects in the air yet it was entirely different in many aspects.

The fire extinguisher wouldn't have been budgeted if it were to be on Pandora as thanks to its gravity on it, only small and light objects could be manipulated. And what the objects were composed of evidently played a major role. 

Liam wasn't sure how the pandorium in its natural state could hold such a massive amount of mass in stable levitation with seemingly no change, particularly the Hallelujah mountains with some rock formations weighing in the several hundred million kilograms. This kind of mass doesn't stay in the air for thousands to millions of years without reason.

There was more to it than the pandorium and he was ready to bet on Psionic, Eywa, or more precisely a fraction of her such as the Tree of Souls for these reasons, a very broad hypothesis without many bases aside from supposition but there needs to be a start somewhere.

Hours rapidly flew by and in seventeen of them he had arrived at his destination, the autopilot program having put the spacecraft in orbit.

Liam during those hours took a rest full nao that he just woke, and it was followed by him eating while sitting on the ceiling with the sight of the icy moon thanks to the cockpit being aimed downward. 

It was a unique experience, eating a microwaved pizza while only wearing a pair of grey boxers from the safety of a spaceship in the void space and with such a view. It seemed oddly banal.

However after that he began working on why he came here, first was to put in orbit the two satellites that were held below each wing of the spacecraft which he began immediately.

Their purpose was to have a more precise and in-depth map of the moon's surface up to several hundred meters down and also to serve as a signal amplifier. After putting the two in orbit the way he wanted he began his atmospheric entry.

It happened without a hitch as hostile as the eternal blizzard was; it wasn't worth mentioning compared to what the Valkyrie was built to withstand, such as the thunderstorm on Polyphemus. 

and second to drop a team of drones to have more knowledge of the terrain. 

It was cold but not sub-zero cold and the heat generated from multiple propulsor kept anything from potentially freezing.

"Can't see shit.", Liam mumbled the obvious as from any camera and the cockpit only white particles moving at an average speed of hundreds of fifty kilometers per hour (~93) could be seen.

He ordered the valves of the cargo room to open, he wasn't in it and the room was currently sealed off. He was doing this to avoid a violent shift in air pressure, it was by the protocol. 

He wasn't going to go down there on foot or land the spacecraft too. That was for later as doing it now was worthless at best and suicidal at worse.

The ramp suddenly opened and the two dozen metal crates, each being a similar model to the drone Aegis swallowed but with adequate modification to work for a few weeks here, and when all of them had slid off the ramp closed.

The hundreds-meter fall wasn't going to damage them, the gravity was lower here and they had inbuilt airbags programmed to activate a few meters before impact.

He wasn't going to start building a facility right now, that was folly. He needed more information than the general temperature, weather, and topography to do something that will be solid and functional for years to come. 

And he wasn't going to build it here, doing prefabricated pieces engineered for here to build a facility was how he was going to proceed. There was no need to go for complicated when simpler alternatives existed, and Liam was a fervent believer of work smarter not harder. 

He started his ascension a process that took a few minutes he made use to look at the twenty drones of which a fourth didn't survive the landing due to unpredictable variables, a very good result for the first batch.

Beginning the atmospheric exit the Valkyrie's speed multiplied to the point it would put to shame even the best of the 21st fighter jet a heavy frown appeared on his face.

'What is that? It looks like the tip of landmass that had been ripped off and dragged here…', Liam thought as the first few surface-level scan of Satelite CM2 revealed the water in the solid form changed to something with various metals in it in one of the highest peaks of a valley glaciers chain.

It looked like a fraction of a massive flat ovoid object if he were to take a guess, a rectangular protrusion full of intricate markings could be seen growing out of its periphery after that it was a blurry mess. The scanner did go deeper but for much more finer detail a more specialized one would be needed. 

It's not as if eerily geometrical shapes didn't exist without the intervention of a highly intelligent lifeform, they were extremely common in fact. So common nearly everything was geometrical in some ways.

It just didn't sit right with him but that unknown structure was a problem for later. He couldn't do everything at once, adding a potential space-faring alien civilization to the mix was a bit too much.

He was but one man.

*

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