SABBI VOLUNTEER RECORDS
باسم الحياة العظيمة، عندما نجتمع معًا

Name: Taimoor Ismael
Place of Origin: Al’Ahdeth Mosul
Birth Date: [REDACTED BY ORDER OF SABBI]
Height and Weight: ~160 cm, 53 kg
Assignment: Ashurbanipal Special Protection Unit [REDACTED BY ORDER OF SABBI] Unit Gim
Etc.: Highly volatile. Can be either the best on the team or a hindrance to the other pilots. Consider fielding on his own.

—

100 ADA

“I don’t know why you’re the one who’s so angry, it was your fault.”

Waheeda looked across the otherwise empty classroom/briefing room to the only other occupant, Taimoor. The teen boy was fuming, looking like his short black hair was about to catch fire. His fist slams down on the desk in front of him with enough force to shatter it, had his arms not been so frail and the table not been made from plastic reinforced on the molecular level. He stood up and spun around in a single awkward motion and pointed at Waheeda. Her gaze stayed on him like a steel girder.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and steadied himself for a moment. Then, after a deep inhale, he screamed. “KOL KHARA!!!”

—

070 ADA

Mahershala Habib raised his high-frequency vibrating saif over his head, and brought it down with a delicate swing, cleaving the absurdly thick vine in twain. He then winked his right eye, causing the transparent map overlaying his vision to zoom in. He spoke out loud into the microphone in his safesuit’s helmet so that his teammates could hear. “This should be near the marketplace. If I were to just…”

He reached an arm out to a thick wall of leaves, and dragged his hand down, grabbing plants as he went. Beneath the vegetation was a brick wall, clearly human-made. A woman’s voice comes over his headphones. “We should check inside, we might find something. If we’re lucky, maybe even a computer that hasn’t completely erod-”

“No,” Mahershala interrupted. “We can’t risk getting turned around. We keep going east.” His teammates wanted to disagree, but knew he was right.

—

100 ADA

Taimoor’s face was contorting in anger, a blood vessel formed on his forehead. “SHE’S DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU! You couldn’t take the damned shot!” Waheeda could easily tell that he was beating himself up over what happened, but if thought that he could pin the blame on HER, then he had another thing coming. With a quiet, furious voice through gritted teeth, she explained, “Because your laser pointer couldn’t stay on a stupid rock. It was just sitting there and you couldn’t keep your Yusha’s hand steady.”

At this point, Taimoor loses it. He kicks aside several desks and marches towards Waheeda, violence clearly on his mind. Waheeda hates fighting, but when it has to happen, she’s prepared. Taimoor’s slightly larger than her, but she knows that he’s a weakling. Just a quick strike to-

“Both of you, shut up and sit down.”

Rami marched into the room while they weren’t looking, and slammed a stack of papers onto the lectern at the front. Taimoor stopped in his place like an invisible rope had wrapped around his neck, and he turned and sat down onto one of the few desks that hadn’t been displaced in his rage.

“First things first, Syreeta’s not dead. Secondly, Waheeda winging it disabled it long enough for a targeted chargon foam missile to burrow into its carapace and put it into stasis. It’s not dead, but it’ll give us time to-

“Syreeta’s still alive?! How?! She took the full brunt of the laser!!” Of course it was Taimoor who had the bravery and tact to interrupt Rami when he was at the lectern, but the massive adult let it slide this time. “The shield did its job,” he explained. “It dispersed most of the beam into the surrounding area. When the shield failed, Unit Beh’s armor protected the cockpit before the beam completed. She’ll likely be able to pilot Beh once it’s repaired.”

—

070 ADA

The coordinates matched up, they were at the entrance to the original Library of Ashurbanipal. Mahershala’s second-in-command ran past him and pushed the rotten, overgrown wooden doors open to the inside. At one point in the past, it seemed to have been turned into a museum, as a front desk was now being used as a nest for canine-like creatures. One of which was an adult, and was growling through split jaws and an extreme amount of saliva at the intruders.

Mahershala whispered quietly and moved forward slowly towards the teammate who had run in. “Khamala… Step backwards, slowly. We don’t know how sharp this thing’s tee-” The loud sound of a laser blast echoes through the ancient site as the beast’s head disintegrated into a burning pile, as well as most of its chest and one of its forelegs. Its offspring bolt up and disappear further into the museum somewhere.

The gruff voice of the team member who had fired the gun simply said, “Doesn’t matter. Let’s loot this place before something else shows up.”

Mahershala didn’t know how necessary that was, but was glad at least that Khamala was ok. “We’re not looting anything,” Khamala explained to her trigger-happy comrade. “If I’m right, there’s something even deeper that the original discoverers never even knew about. Something that could change everything.”

But Mahershala knew exactly what that kind of roughneck responded to. “But if you light up any artifacts, it’s coming out of your paycheck.” He grunted, and obediently holstered his gun. “Don’t blame me if those puppies come back for blood, then.”

—

100 ADA

Waheeda could hardly believe what she heard. Unit Beh’s head disintegrated. She heard Syreeta’s scream, it’ll haunt her nightmares for sure. How could she have survived that? She wanted to ask if they could see her, but then…

“And now, you can’t see her. You’re all under complete lockdown, starting immediately.”

As Rami walks towards the door, Taimoor bolts up. “But what about Yufin-Yufafin?! If it’s in stasis, we need to kill it immediately!”

Rami turns around with a grim conviction in his eyes. “We’ll handle that. You don’t need to know how, but I figure there’s no harm. SABBI has been developing artificial brain plugs for the Yushamin, which we can use to remote control them. You’re still more useful in a fight, for now, but if all we need to do is remove the core of a sitting rock, then we don’t need you. Any questions?”

If anything, this was a relief to Waheeda, as the sooner she didn’t have to fight the better, but she knew what Taimoor was like. This was the only thing he had going for him. If he wasn’t fighting, then…

“No, sir.”

“Good. Dismissed. Report to your quarters, the only places you’re allowed to go besides there will be the mess hall and the restrooms.”

—

070 ADA

It was just a wall. Perhaps at some point, hundreds of years ago, there had been paintings, a mural, some etched writing on it. But time had done what it had always done, changed things. Eroded them. Replaced them with something new. Khamala rubbed her hand along the bricks, hoping for anything. They had come all this way…

Mahershala checked the remaining air in the safesuits. Enough time to explore the rest of the museum and grab some artifacts, but any longer than that and they’d have to rely on the air filters, which were far from perfect even in safer places. They were looking at almost certain chargon exposure. He walked up to the archaeologist and placed his hand on the shoulder of her suit. “I’m sorry, Kam. Maybe we’ll find some clues in what we can bring back.” He turned to the rest of the team, and started giving orders. “Alright, let’s split up and meet back at the front desk in an hour. Grab anything with writing or images on them and put them into stasis blocks.”

“NO!” Khamala yelled, causing everyone to turn to her. “No! It should have been here! It should have been right! Here!” With each angry exclamation, she punctuated it with a slam of her fists onto the blank wall. “My! Life’s! Work! All! For-” With one more slam, she fell through the crumbling wall, into an empty passage. Inside, etchings began to glow green, spreading down the corridor. Mahershala watched this, and then winked his right eye twice. An overlay in his vision showed him how much chargon was in the air, and he watched it flow down the otherwise empty and clean hall.

“It’s reacting to the chargon. It was completely clean… Everybody!” He waves his team inside the passage, who dutifully climb in. “Take pictures of everything! Khamala, you and I are heading deeper in. I think we found something really important.”

Art by  artsyrobo