Free Ouroboros 2: Before by Odette C. Bell Page A

happening to her. And it seemed neither could she.
    Feeling humbled by that, he admonished himself for pulling rank on her before. Even if it had mostly been a game.
    ‘ Is there anything else I need to know?’ she asked after a long pause.
    ‘ Well, the Vex appear to have had an uneven technological progress throughout their history. For a large part, they are quite agrarian, but then my scanner has come across mentions of quite sophisticated technology too. While they have radio communications, relatively undeveloped television, and appear to be looking into utilizing microwave bandwidths, their medicine is second rate, and their architectural construction techniques are woeful. They are still using stone and brick and mortar. They don’t even have proper heating, and still resort to combustion fires for cooking and temperature regulation.’
    ‘ What have they been concentrating all of their energies on then?’
    ‘ War,’ he said plainly, and with far too detached a tone. Because he wasn’t just learning some set of curious facts here about an ancient alien race. He was, right now, on Vex, and though he had a set of armor from the future, and a strange alien device that acted like his telekinetic implant, but could manipulate all forms of matter and with greater power, he was not invulnerable. And neither was Nida.
    Now the warlike tendencies of the Vex should be one of his top priorities.
    ‘ War?’ she questioned, no longer distracted by her hands. She looked at him enquiringly, and he could see a flicker of worry crumpling her brow.
    ‘ War,’ he repeated. ‘Hence the fact they have made great leaps and bounds in their communication techniques, but not in medicine or the usual comforts of life.’
    ‘ Hold on, if they were so fascinated by war, you would think they would have put at least some research into medicine too,’ she challenged.
    He shook his head. ‘Not when life is cheap. And it appears that life is worryingly cheap to a Vex,’ he noted in a gravelly tone.
    He didn’t like the look she now shot him. It was vulnerable. He didn’t hate it because he thought she should be stronger; it frustrated him because he couldn’t do anything to assure her that everything would be okay. Because, the more he learned about the Vex, the more he realized how dangerous this impossible mission really was.
    Now, more than ever, he wanted the entity back, which was strange when you considered how much trouble it had caused. But the fact was, it knew more about this situation than anyone or anything else. If only it could tell them exactly where the dimensional bridge had shifted to, Carson and Nida wouldn’t have to go through this rigmarole.
    And even if it couldn’t tell him exactly where the bridge was, at least it could tell them what kind of thing they were to look for. While Carson could fancy that something as enormous and incredible as a bridge between dimensions would have noteworthy effects on the space around it, he wanted to know more. If only he understood those exact spatial distortions, he could set his scanner to search for them. Though it didn’t have the range to penetrate this whole planet, at least he would be able to confirm whether one was nearby.
    . . . .
    He suddenly considered what he had just thought, and shook his head at how damn bizarre it was. Seriously, he was a lieutenant in the Galactic Coalition Academy, and he knew science, or at least he hoped he did, and this wasn’t scientific in the least.
    But he also knew as a lieutenant in the Galactic Coalition Academy he always had to keep an open mind. That was the first rule of interstellar travel. Though there were a great number of similarities across the many races that inhabited the Milky Way, there were still surprises. Sometimes violent, sometimes horrible, sometimes incredible, sometimes wonderful. But always surprises.
    So maybe, if he tried really hard, he could accept the existence of the entity, the bridge between