DISCLAIMER: This story is based off of the Tenchi Muyo! anime series, produced by AIC and released by Pioneer Anime America. All characters from said series are the property of such. The characters Hikaru Moriyata, Lucy O'Bannion, and any Argelians are the product of the collective imaginations of Dennis Carr and Karmin St. Jean, and belong to same. The character Trakal, insofar as he is developed herein, is the intellectual property of Karmin St. Jean. The persons and many events in this fanfic are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any event other than what has obviously happened, is a coincidence. Any military or police procedure outlined throughout the fic does not necessarily depict any real life procedure or scenario. Any similarity to real life procedure/scenarios is, again, coincidental. Tenchi Muyo: Unfinished Business A fanfic by Dennis Carr and Karmin St. Jean Chapter 2:1 - Pandora November 1970 Having some control over dimensional transport was something that made things a little easier, Kain decided, as he separated two pieces of himself and returned them to wherever. As the cannon hit him, he then separated his mind from the rest of himself. *There will be another time,* he decided. *If I can wait one hundred years, I can wait one hundred more. Or longer, if necessary.* And then he lost track of the bits of him that were separated. He now existed solely as a thought process. While the embodiment he had left was more or less no longer, the officer he broke off a bit of himself would provide just enough sustenance to start things over again. If he had it right, he would be encountered in the future. Maybe 26 years, maybe 50 years. But then, if one exists as nothing more lucid than data, it must be contained. He would not be able to survive long in this form. And then he encountered a communications relay network. Moments later, he found a computer terminal. It was a fairly developed planet, it would seem, from what Kain saw of the data flowing through. They were just now developing faster-than-light travel for themselves. And this child, the user of the terminal he found his way to. He must have been some computer program designer, based on what he saw in the circuitry. Surely, he could serve his purposes. --- Asal was enjoying the evening. Another night of code, coffee and chat. It would be a good all-nighter, he decided. A few more code routines, and he sat back and compiled. No errors. "Ah, something is wrong," he decided with a smart-assed smile. "It compiled too cleanly for the first build." Satisfied that, despite his remark, all was well, he closed the window he was working at. Immediately, another window came up, again a command prompt interface. This one asked a simple question. "Would you like to play a game?" He snickered at this. "Not until I eat," he said, and walked out of the room. Five minutes later, he returned. The display had not changed. Asal sighed, and typed "Yes" on the terminal as he took a bite of a sandwich. The instant the reply was sent, the screen flashed brightly for no more than a tenth of one second. And Asal was enlightened. --- Relative Earth date: November 7, 1998 Esa's alarm went off. Something resembling a fur-covered hand reached out from the blankets, and struck the button, as she slowly sat up, absolutely no expression on her face. *Another morning,* she thought. *Time to deal with the idiots again.* She was an albino, an oddity of any race - her white fur and eyes, which exhibited an odd shade of red in the right light, showed it. Also unlike her race, she maintained a continually neutral facial expression, in contrast to the otherwise insanely emotional expressions the rest of her friends would exhibit. Nobody knew why, it was just the way her personality developed. It was perfect for somebody to administrate the ship's computers. Esa stood up out of bed, walked over to her mirror, and stared. After a moment, a thought crossed her mind: *It's still me. Damn.* Of course, it *was* still her. After all, if she were somebody else, who would be her? A bit of grooming, a bit of breakfast, and it was out the door to the bridge. The lunar gravity of the ship made it such that she would have to be careful as to how she walked. She tended to be rather quick, and more than once bumped her head on the upper bulkheads as a result of taking too hard of a step after her footing disconnected from the floor. It was thus that handholds were installed in the corridors to allow for fast movement in the event that it was needed. She took advantage of these quite often, since by nature she tended to be in a hurry to get just about anywhere. During her foray to the ship's bridge, she encountered Etain, a communications specialist, who greeted her with a smile. Upon seeing her, Esa allowed herself to land, and walked with her. "You're late this morning," Etain said, getting nothing more than a nod in reply. It was the usual routine they went through, as they slowly bounded over to the "tubes". These were, in all effect, gravitational anomalies that allowed for more efficient transport than a standard lift - two shafts placed parallel to each other, one with a gravity generator at the top end of the shaft to give an upward pull. All one had to do was step inside, and they were on their way to the floor of their choice, said decision being made by grabbing onto a handhold and pulling yourself out upon arrival. It was certainly more efficient, but it could get crowded when duty shifts changed. After the pair stepped into the up-bound tube, Esa turned to her friend. "Etain, have you heard anything yet about the next job?" "A little. Why?" She shook the sealed beverage container she was carrying upward once, knocking out a globule of coffee, and slurped it up as it drifted past her mouth. "I'm a little bit worried about it." "Why is this?" "It's an inhabited planet." This got Etain's curiousity aroused. "Really? Which one?" "Jurai." *This is an interesting turn.* "So how did you find out about this?" "Etain, when you have your hand glued to a person-to-computer neural interface for a full duty shift, lunch excluded, you learn a few things. I like to think that I have run of the computers, so I learn what goes on behind the scenes." "When's the job start?" "Two days, I think. I don't know very much about it." She sighed, just slightly exasperated, and continued. "I think the AI routines are getting a bit willful, as it were." She looked at her, and smiled mischeviously. "Maybe you're losing your touch?" Esa froze. "Etain?" "Yes? "You're mean." She paused. "I am?" "You are." They grabbed the handholds to exit to the bridge, and stepped out. "I am?" "You are." They both walked over to their workstations, and sat down. After another pause as they logged in, Etain looked at Esa one more time. "I am?" "You are." Esa placed her hand on the interface pad, and ended the conversation right away as her attention was turned towards "talking" to the computer. Etain shrugged. "OK, so I'm mean," she said to herself, as she tended to her duty of monitoring communications. --- First Lieutenant Eoai glanced over a datapad he was issued, curious about the orders thereupon. "Pilot a shuttle to Juraian sanctuary thirteen, third planet, recover the following as hostages...." He silently read the names and respective species listed, four of them, and closed his eyes for a moment. *what are we doing?* he thought to himself, *and why does that damned AI want those people anyhow. And a Draalthi. I thought they were extinct. What's going on?* For the five minutes he spent donning something resembling a fencing uniform, he continued to consider the circumstances. It was weird - just a little too much so, in fact - that the computer was doing this. Speaking of which, why was Asal following this computer's orders? Surely he should know better. The padded armor donned, he then entered the training room, where a younger lieutenant (jg) named Naisi was waiting for him, looking none too impatient. "A little late today," he said. "Fall in the head?" "Nah, late duty shift. Structural crap going on in the hangars, I had to rehang a few overhead trusses. That, and there's some order to reload the explosive bolts in the blowout in the blocks." "I'm a nurse," he replied, making a first move with his foil, "not an engineer. Could you translate for me?" Eoai grinned as he parried. "Of course not. You should know the ever-used technical term `crap'!" He pushed off the deck, flying a good solid eight feet up, and his opponent for the moment followed suit, bringing up behind him. A few more exchanges with their foils took place like this, the low gravity slowly pulling them down, with them using this to bounce around the chamber. So far, they were at a draw. After about ten minutes of this, a more sinister expression crossed Eoai's face. He stopped, pushed a button on a nearby computer console, and spoke into it: "Gravity off." It took about ten seconds, but a zero gravity field was eventually isolated to that room, which at that point added an interesting flavor to the battle. Eoai rolled 180 deg., pointing his head to what used to be the floor, and spoke to Naisi: "Have at you!" The pair proceeded to drift to the opposite end of the room, foils flashing. Eoai took a swipe; Naisi dodged successfully, rapelled off of a wall, floating to the opposite end. Stab, decapitate. Score. Eoai shifted his weight, spun, and bounced off of a wall to stop the spinning motion and propel himself towards Naisi, who was obviously having too much fun, as evidenced by his grin. In an attempt to change his mood, he made his own move towards him: after bouncing off the wall, he used a handhold to swing around slightly to meet his opponent, who was now drifting to a point above him, and swiped across his abdomen - he was now "disemboweled". After about fifteen minutes of this, it was clear that they were on par with each other. Eoai smiled as the younger Argelian stopped to catch his breath. "Why..." the younger one panted, "...are we... making a run on... Jurai?" Eoai frowned and pushed forward, and took one last swipe across his neck. Score. "Unfair!" Lt. Junior Grade Naisi protested. "I wasn't ready." "Do you think Jurai is going to wait until you're ready?!" "Enemy?" Naisi laughed. "We have no enemies." Eoai drifted towards the panel, and restored gravity to the room. "We will have soon." He took a deep breath and let it back out. "I don't like this run on Jurai any more than you do. In fact, I think it stinks. There's something not right here." He started to change from his sparring outfit back into his normal uniform. "We've been getting a lot of crazy orders since Asal launched that damned AI of his." Naisi remarked. "That thing gives me the creeps." "Its just a highly sophisticated computer program." Eoai put his sparring suit into his locker and sealed it. "The real problem is the way its orders are being so blindly followed." "I don't like it." Naisi replied. "It just seems a little *too* alive." --- Kain watched through a security viewer, listening in on this exchange. Certainly they couldn't be considering rebelling. Everyone knew exactly what happened to those who dared. And he wouldn't think twice about it, as life meant very little to him. *I will have to watch these two closely,* he decided, as he watched the pair (bound/walk) out into the corridor. --- It was finally the end of the shift. Etain removed her headset, and dropped it in a locker, which was specially designed to clean whatever residue winds up on it. As she did this, she watched Esa open her eyes slowly as she removed her hand from the interface pad. She looked over at her as they "boarded" the downbound tube. "I am?" Esa sighed. *She's starting this *again*?* "You are. Dinner?" "Sure."