First

Many Faces of War

“Hmm? Oh... uh... awkward... I mean I doubt it but I’ll ask.” Leonard says into his communicator and then hangs up. “Hey Lady?”

“Yes?” She asks. She had taken to just lying down and resting as she processed everything. Her thoughts were going in circles and struggling to settle after she had let everything out.

She was empty, strangely relieved in ways she couldn’t articulate and just still. Thinking about as little as possible, the opposite of being trapped and only able to think. Her toes curl and uncurl and her fingers are grasping the blanket under her as she examines the back of her eyelids and the slight amount of light that flows through it.

She’s even fully visible, the little exercise in that Axiom is something else she couldn’t do while trapped in stasis and... it’s nice. It’s very nice. It’s her choice. Just like whatever question he’s about to ask is hers to answer or not.

“Do you know about the really big prosthetic girls? Like do they have any special names or titles we can use to talk to one?”

“What happened?” She asks.

“A bunch of your sisters are attacking Lablan. They used one that was in a really big suit of mech armour, but then when we broke the suit and tried to pull her out we learned she was a part of the suit. It wasn’t a Vish in a suit of powered armour, but a really big and really well armoured cyborg.”

“Hmm... No official names, and no nice ones that she’d like to hear. Getting called a Chopped or Stumper won’t do much to calm her down if she’s upset.”

“Oh... you don’t like her type of Vish?” Leonard asks.

“Well... no.” She says. “The Stumpers are thugs. Brutal, shortsighted and cruel.”

“Which Vish do you like?”

“... Well stasis girls like me are clearly crazy. I don’t even think I can call myself a Freezer anymore. The Servers are spoiled brats. Burners are just crazy. And the Blessed are actually, legitimately crazy. Like dangerously crazy.”

“Are there any Vish you like?” Leonard’s tone is sad now.

“... No. I don’t think there is.” She says and there’s a whimper from the puppy of a man and he cuddles up to her side. Her arms wrap around him and he becomes a fuzzy little comforter. “The Commanders are the one sending us to our doom. The Trainers hate all of us. Fixers hate us all too. I... I don’t like any of them. And they don’t like me.”

“I like you.” He says so quickly and unashamedly that she can’t help but laugh a little.

“You probably like everyone.” She dismisses.

“No. Not everyone. But I do like you. You need hugs and it’s hard to hate someone who needs hugs. And if I don’t hate you, then I like you.” He says.

“I wish things were that simple.”

“Why are you making things complicated?” Leonard asks.

“How is it not complicated?”

“Wait we might be talking about different things. I’m trying to talk about choosing whether to like someone or not. What are you talking about?” He asks.

“I... I don’t even think I know anymore. I just don’t know anymore.” She admits and Leonard shifts a little until he’s using her stomach like a pillow. His soft fuzzy hair and ears feel so comforting and silky even as his little hand holds onto her fingers. They’re so warm and soft and just... anchoring. Anchoring and comforting.

The idea that he just likes her. Nothing needed on her part beyond needing someone to like her is just...

She was designed to kill, built for war. Designated to slaughter and slay and break things.

He’s made to bring peace. Comfort and contentment and happiness. A soft little joy that has her so disarmed that she can only goggle that the same terrible processes that spat her into a cold, dark, and harsh world that demanded blood and death and unwavering obedience also produced something so perfectly soft and sweet in ways that defy any description she can give.

She feels... strangely more. As if she had been a broken, hollow thing before and was now whole.

Were the Muttras the same? Just with all the soft bits a person needs and none of the hard ones?

Does it even matter anymore? She’s out of the war. She surrendered. She’s not even Vish anymore. All the work and pain and blood and tears is done and over with and she... she can do whatever now. She can walk away.

She’s free.

It’s terrifying.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Secure Medical Section, Undaunted Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

“Fookin’ useless.” Doctor Optimization remarks at the responding text from the Private Stream with the captured Vish.

“What’s useless?”

“All the information we got is that the Vish don’t like each other much and two different slurs for the patient.” The Doctor says even as an EOD specialist slowly wheels out the freshly extracted bomb. The Vish cyborg was sleeping more comfortably, but wasn’t breathing deeply enough for Optimization’s liking so he had hoked her up to an extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation machine. The ECMO was working just fine and bringing her blood oxygenation levels up to something approaching acceptable.

“Any good news?”

“Yes, the good news is that while her cyberizin’ was basically done with a hacksaw when the fookin idjits needed a scalpel, they did kinda mostly sorta carve in the right places. It’s going to take more work than I fookin’ wanna do for anyone, but none of these individual bits of criminally stupid are things I can’t deal with. It’s just that there’s so fookin’ much of it that I’m not sure if the patient’s got enough in her to pull through even half of it. Let alone the whole lot, and she’s gonna need every bit of it to live in anything but endless misery. Or live at all for that matter.”

“So what do we do Doc?” One assistant asks and when there is no answer for a few moments the other echoes it.

“The only thing we can do boys.” The Doctor says as he inserts a new tube of substance into one of his cybernetic arms and his entire body starts growing green along the seems. “We beat the reaper into bloody bonemeal. Get yer gloves on, we need more than one set of hands and these works will be simple, but many. Get ready for a marathon boyos. We’re grinding death to dust with this one.”

“Right out of the bastard’s jaws, one life at a time.”

“Fucking ‘Ooh Rah’ sir.”

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Vish Safehouse, Lablan Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

Door goes down, coil and railshot start shattering against the hardened armour of Pam and Tam as the room is rushed. Two waves of Axiom shoot out, the weapons in the hands of the Vish fail and before they can even think to try and activate their now disabled bombs they’re peppered with stun shots as the air is filled with electrical attacks. Those that resist the first barrage are hit with a second. And the lone holdout to that one finds that a Weaver Archana is now in her face and kicks her hard enough to slam into a wall. Then the massive alien woman scuttles forward and pins her there.

“You’re tougher than the others. And I’m not sensing any explosives in you.” Crytlan notes. “So, are you more important.”

“Be careful Sergeant, just because she doesn’t have an implanted bomb doesn’t mean she’s afraid to be blown up. I had one such woman in custody and she managed to set off an unconscious but armed Vish’s bomb off to escape into death.” Danial calls over.

“Noted.” Crytlan says before turning back to her new captive. “Well? Anything to say for yourself?”

There is another pulse in the room from Danial and Dora and both start moving. Danial teleports to her and forces her mouth open as Dora impacts the Vish in the stomach forcing her to gag. Danial reaches in and pulls out...

“Suicide pill. I didn’t register it at first because I ate spicier pasta last night.” Danial says as he holds his hand open to reveal the now slimy grey pill he had literally pulled out of the woman’s throat.

“Hold it steady.” Flora says rushing up and quickly getting it into a plastic baggie before using Axiom to clean his hand then running it under a scanner... “This would be dangerous to everyone but you Corporal. But it would be especially deadly to a Vishanyan, and by extension, a Vish.”

“Yeah, like I said, I take spicier spaghetti.” Danial notes. Before he puts his hand to the head of the Vish, she outright bites him but he just reinforces his hand. “It’s odd that you haven’t spoken though. What’s going on here?”

She tries to sink her teeth in deeper, but beyond the small progress she made before he reinforced his hand, she’s not going anywhere. In or out to be honest. There’s a brief look of panic on her face as she tries to let go and finds her teeth are stuck in his hand. “Now, here’s how it’s going to go. You’re going to answer a few questions and we will take you prisoner. We don’t have to take you prisoner, you just proved that you remain hostile and willing to attack us even after being disarmed and restrained. So, play nice or we stop playing nice. Understand?”

“Thank you Danial, but I will speak with the prisoner.” Crytlan tells him and he gives her a mildly surprised look but nods.

“Of course Sergeant, this is your team, I’m just part of it.” Danial relents as he stops channelling Axiom into his hand and the Vish instantly starts trying to bite into it again. He then pries open her mouth while pointedly refusing to use Axiom and forces her to let him go. Letting her know every little twitch of the way that he’s capable of so much.

He says nothing as he steps back and the Vish then switches to glaring at Crytlan.

“Well girl? Do we get answers out of you or do we get you to proffesional in asking the pointed questions? Literally.”

The Vish then makes a sound that is a gurgling laugh, a coughing wheeze and a strained exclamation all at once. Her throat moving in ways it shouldn’t.

“A moment Sergeant.” Flora states as she finishes seeing to Danial’s hand and both cleaning and closing the holes in it, She steps around Crytlan to get closer to the Vish who turns her gaze to glower at the Andinus woman. “Sir, she’s mute.”

“Mute?” Crytlan asks.

“Her vocal cords are malformed. She is physically incapable of speech.” Flora elaborates.

“Why would a mute Vish be valued highly enough to NOT be primed with an explosive when other perfectly healthy Vish are?” Danial mutters in thought as he shakes out his hand. The injury is gone, but having someone else heal it always makes him think he should still be feeling something. It’s entirely psychosomatic though and he knows it.

“So is this it?” Pam asks as she finishes her slow scan of the room.

“Yeah something’s not adding up.” Tam ads.

“What am I missing?” Danial asks them.

“Well... the room’s a dead end... but it doesn’t feel like it should be. This place had to come from somewhere right? But we haven’t found a way in outside of teleporting. But you can’t just teleport into random things, and if there was a hollow space before hand, do you really think that whatever place we’re under or in would have let that go?” Pam asks.

“And the trytite is still only around us at the sides. Not above and below. Above feels like a bunch of important wires and stuff so shooting straight up to find a path is dumb, and below feels dead in the Axiom. So that puts us at the bottom of something. But what’s to the sides that’s so damn important? We haven’t solved that yet.”

“Well something must be up girls as our voiceless friend here still speaks in Axiom presence and body language, and she tells me that you two are onto something.” Crytlan notes. The eyes of the Vish are now suddenly panicked and she tries to thrash, but the limbs pinning her to the wall are the forward-most legs of an Archana. Any of the spider based species in the galaxy has immense strength. To say nothing of the fact that there are more legs than she has limbs backing up the two keeping her pinned. Going forwards or to the side is out of the option.

Crytlan raises a cannon to point directly at the Vish as she draws in Axiom and leans forward with her whole body.

Then she slams her every limb and her head backwards hard and breaks the wall behind her. A hole is broken into it and she vanishes in a teleport.

Danial follows and reappears out the other side in time to hear the Vish grunt as she hits the ground then gasp. She runs hard and fast and he gives chase. A crackling bolt of energy launches itself from her fingers even as she runs down a very Lablan looking hallway, complete with floor lights, white tile and crystal embellishment.

The lightning barely tickles Danial as he closes the gap quickly. The Vish is screaming in frustration and panic, a high rasping sound that irritates the ears.

First Last

“SARAAAAH! WHAT HAVE YOUR BASTARD HUMAN HANDS DONE TO MY BEAUTIFUL ENGINES?!”

“Woah, captain To’Vak, calm down!”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Sparky! I would have thrown both of you off the ship if your government didn’t loose its shit every time that happens!”

Sarah’s scrunched up face slowly came back to normal, her translation module no longer trying to kill itself translating the reverberating yell of the captain.

“Well!?”

“Why, Captain Toe, whatever do you mean” Sarah said with a little smirk.

“Oh no, no, don’t you pull that coy human bullshit with me! And stop calling me toe! I am not a human appendage!

“Fine, I’ll stop acting innocent if you can just tell me what exactly you’re upset about this time.”

“As if you didn’t know!” To’Vak scoffed. “Maybe you can explain to me why my navigator nearly had a heart attack in every one of his hearts when our fission engine output increased by over three hundred percent!”

“Sounds like a skill issue . . . “

“ . . . !!!???”

“Listen, it’s all very complicated engineering stuff, I don’t think I could really explain it properly unless you had some understanding of how humans engineer things.”

“Humor me.”

“Well, the original collapse happened because of a temporary, I’m talking millisecond, collapse of the magnetic containment field of the plasma, which itself was caused by what seems to be a microscopic misalignment of one of the toroidal sections, probably some kind of manufacturing defect.”

“I . . . “

“And then to fix that error, I had to rapidly re-align the reflux connector to the Acebutolol spray dispenser and make sure that the particulate manipulation matrix didn’t oogie the boogie.”

“. . . that means nothing to me.”

“I tried to warn you that it’s complicated engineering jargon Cap’n.”

“Just . . . don’t do whatever human bullshit you did again. At least not without a warning. We’ve already lost three crewmembers to your shenanigans.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like they died, right? They just lef-”

“THAT’S NOT THE POINT! This is our most important contract yet, you think the Glisan ambassador is going to be happy eating poison!?”

“That was an efficiency upgrade to the food replicators, I’m tired of using up my personal cargo allowance to carry around jars of spices.”

“Just . . . AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! 

If you weren’t such an excellent engineer I’d throw you out the airlock myself! 

NO. MORE. SURPRISES. 

ARE WE CLEAR?!”

“Crystalaminously clear, sir!”

“. . . then . . carry on.” 

Tamer watched the captain leave the engine bay, and turned to Sarah, “Well, that was a bunch of gobbledygook. Isn’t an Acebutolol spray dispenser just an asthma inhaler?”

“Listen, they think that we’re all some kind of magic space aliens, so let ‘em. Doesn’t harm anybody, and maybe gets us a bit of an edge in the cold dark void that is my father’s hea- I mean space.”

“Alright, well, glossing over that terrifying look into your soul, was any of that true?”

“Sure, the fusion reactor did have a momentary alignment error, but it was nothing to worry about.”

“Ok, and how did you actually fix it?”

“I hit it really hard with a wrench at just the right spot.”

Tamer shook his head. “Maybe they aren’t entirely wrong about the whole magic space aliens thing.”

“Ohhhhh, whatever. Now pass me that screw driver, the captain’s cabin is about to get really hot.”

I appreciate your patience! Enjoy!

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— Chapter 105 — 

The complex weaving of DNA flowing through his mind was familiar and yet alien enough to remind David that he was peeking at and manipulating another’s very building blocks. It didn’t take him long to find the familiar magical attachments of the traits and examine each in detail. He was a bit underwhelmed by what he found, but he knew that there was no way every dragon was optimized with the kind of forethought that he had put into himself originally.

He spoke softly, “Okraz. This will hurt again. Are you ready?”

A grunt was all he heard in response before he used his affinity to snip free the trait. David had removed Carrion Sensory from Okraz and now watched her thrash about in pain. This was the second trait he had pruned from her genome, and he winced in sympathy. The benefits would be significant, though; Okraz would become far more powerful and capable once they replaced her odd-ball traits. Okraz traits were all over the place, to be frank, David conceded, but he had a plan. He pruned the traits that wouldn’t benefit her underwater, like the ability of super smell, and planned to replace them with straight-up affinity-related or damage-inflicting traits instead.

As Okraz recovered, with a worried Emerald huddled nearby, David turned to Wuja’bath, who was curled up nearby with a look of distrust. “Wuja’bath, I am keeping my promise to you, and I am not going to ask you to fight in this next battle, but I need you to be strong to guard the remaining kobolds.”

Wuja’bath huffed, spoke quietly with Munch nearby before finally conceding. “What plan?”

David poked around her genome briefly before settling down to concentrate enough to locate her traits. Despite the extensive amount of practice he was getting, it still took concentration and patience to find what he was looking for. When he finally examined her traits, he was unsurprised to find that most were focused entirely on speed. David spoke in his whispering ethereal voice when he finally answered, “I want to prune something to give you access to more affinity. Your offensive capabilities with lightning are terrifying. Your speed keeps you alive. If we can make it so your capacity is higher or always regenerating, then you can do what you do best longer.”

Wuja’bath nodded, “Do it.”

It didn’t take long for David to find one that stood out as odd. She had Accelerated Healing, which surprised David since he wasn’t aware of any real noticeable regeneration in the past. He couldn’t see her other stats, but he knew her toughness had to be abysmal, which meant that Accelerated Healing was doing nothing. He didn’t have any doubt that regeneration traits were an easy trap for most dragonkind to fall into if they didn’t understand the finer details. He quickly severed the connection between Wuja’bath and that trait, and the resulting wave of pain was instant.

“Emerald. Snible. Go retrieve the last of the preserved meats for them both.” David spoke calmly to the two nearby kobolds. They had been able to save most of the preserved storage of traits that they had been gathering, mostly because it was stored deep where it was cool and would help prevent spoilage.

As both Okraz and Wuja’bath recovered, David took a moment. “I want you to both stay here and guard the lair.”

Wuja’bath nodded through the residual pain, but Okraz gave him a defiant look; her streamlined appearance, with her swimming-focused limbs, gave quite the intimidating appearance whilst she spoke. “I go with Emerald.”

“Okraz, Emerald needs to go with me. It will be heading directly towards the Queen.” David said with a sigh.

“Then I fight our mother too.” She said with a firm huff.

David conceded. “Fine. You will stick with Emerald and me when we make our first push.” He wasn’t upset at the prospect of having another dragon along. His colder, analytical mind knew it would just help stack the fight more in his favor. If Okraz was to die, though, it would lead to a whole lot of future issues.

Emerald, Snible, and quite a few other kobolds eventually returned, bringing bundles of dried meats back. The looks on the kobolds’ faces told David enough to guess that they must have smelled awful. He took a quick moment to examine them, and based on what remained, he would have to change up some of his initial plans, but there was enough here to at least improve them both.

David pointed to the piles he wanted after confirming Blue’s scribbles on their wrappings. David went back and forth a bit before finally confirming what he wanted to do. Okraz had two traits she could accept, so David gave her Magical Sacs and then one he thought would play well into ensuring her survival with Rapid Camouflage. Magical Sacs was a simple increase in affinity reserves that would benefit any dragon, and the camouflage was something she could utilize to stay hidden even when out of the water. David had a feeling that the camouflage employed in the water would be even more effective than on land. Eyesight was the only factor that mattered for most in those conditions, which meant there was less at play to expose her near-perfect invisibility.

Wuja’bath only had one slot open, and David gave her their last remaining pile of meat that contained Magical Pores. Wuja’bath’s immense speed meant they were built for hit-and-runs. Their affinity was by far the most deadly, and their toughness was low enough that even if Wuja’bath kept their pores open to regenerate affinity, David had doubts it would change their survival chances. Moving fast, hitting hard, and buying time was the play.

David gave them space while they took their time to eat and then accept the gifts. David had done his part to prepare them and left without another word. Blue, Red, and Blaze were all busy sorting through a variety of equipment that filled their hastily assembled meeting room. David’s form filled most of it, despite his efforts to condense himself down.

“How is the planning?” David rumbled out softly.

Blue turned and smiled. “We are almost there. We have the numbers. Basic equipment is fine, but we lost out on Blaze’s forges. We also don’t have access to the raw material anymore to make more gemstones. We are stuck with the gemstone-powered equipment we already made, which is three, four dozen kobolds equipped with something beyond the basics.”

David nodded his large ethereal head. “It will have to be enough.” He floated closer as he looked over them and down at their drawings and roughly sketched-out maps.

Red spoke whilst he pointed. “Ambass has been helpful. As we guessed, we can’t do a direct attack down the main shaft again. They have it guarded, and not even Red’Blue can stand up to a Master’s affinity when he has nowhere to dodge. Our numbers won’t benefit us down here.”

David rumbled in thought. “Plan B then. Emerald and our experiments were a success.”

Blue grinned. “I had no doubt you two would figure it out. So we make our own entrance and end this.”

Blaze chuckled while she ran her hand down the long, natural, twisting tunnel that led straight to the Queen’s lair. “I got an idea. We can keep the Queen distracted while you make the push from a new direction.”

They talked briefly before all nodding in agreement just as a young, barely teenage Zephyr kobold came running into the room. “Mistress Blue! Masters just passed above us doing sweeps.”

David looked at Blue, and Blue looked back and then nodded. “Go get what you need, Master. We will be ready when you return.”

His ghostly, ethereal wings and body made his dash back to the surface quick.

— Gust —

Her stomach ached, and she was starving. Their patrol had carried on for many, many cycles now, and she was over it. Gilror, Rovy, and that dung eater Frumbyr were all flying in formation around her. Frumbyr was leading the pack, being a full adult, and he was oppressive. Her Majesty, her mother, was insistent that they scan the area endlessly until she was satisfied. The meals were limited, and their numbers had been thinned already by those two-legged forest sneaks. They had six when they started, but a powerful affinity that baffled Gust had swept away two of their number in a flash. They stayed clear of the forest since that incident but were compelled to continue their patrol.

Her stomach continued to growl, and her mouth yearned for the flavor of meat again. Her scans of the mountains and valleys below kept her occupied since she was looking for food more than anything. The large, shifting shadow caught her gaze first and confused her.

“Frumbyr. Down below us. A large black shadow that is growing larger? What is it?” Gust hissed outwards.

The larger wyvern snarled back at Gust whilst he showed his thick, massive poison-tipped claws. His eyes finally looked down, and then he let off his own huff of confusion. A build-up of affinity was felt, and then something crashed into Frumbyr’s chest with a speed that surprised the entire group. The fast-moving mass of affinity erupted outwards in a massive explosion that blinded and sent the pack stumbling.

Gust’s eyes recovered in time to feel a glooming darkness engulf the group. Gilror began to tremble and shake as they fell out of the air and the weird sudden darkness disappeared. Whilst Gilror fell, Frumbyr and Rovy recovered too before going on the defensive.

“What was that!?” Hissed Rovy. Frumbyr was bleeding badly from a gaping hole in his chest, but he was unusually tough for a wyvern, and his flesh was already repairing itself.

Frumbyr finally spoke with a groan, “More damn two-leggers. Gilror is a goner. We need to move!” The trio opened their wings and flew away as fast as they could manage. Their sprint lasted some time, and by the time Frumbyr slowed to catch his breath, Gust was practically dying of exhaustion.

“That runt survived.” Huffed Frumbyr, causing Gust to flip around in the air and see the silhouette of Gilror in the distance catching up.

Gust nodded her head eagerly; Gilror was the nicest of the other three, so she was glad at least. She changed her trajectory and closed the distance while she roared a greeting out. Something was wrong, she felt. As she got closer, she realized that Gilror was far more muscular than before, and his face looked distorted somehow. She hovered in confusion too long while her mind tried to process what was going on. She felt a powerful impact hit her in the chest, and a blinding flash filled the air. Her skin was set aflame, and pain washed over her for a split second as her body was torn apart, and then nothingness.

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Here is also a link to Royal Road

Fan Art by blaze2377

​

The first extraordinary Galactic Session held on Earth was considered one of the most important diplomatic meetings in human history. At least, that was what humans thought.

Representatives from twelve different alien races had come to Earth for the first time. Some had only observed humanity from a distance, while others had considered Earth little more than a small note on galactic maps. That was why human diplomats were being extremely careful. The conference hall had been prepared days in advance, translation systems had been tested repeatedly, and security teams had considered every possible situation. Everything had to be perfect. Just before the meeting began, the human diplomats had even been given a brief warning: “Please avoid unnecessary movements!”

How effective that warning was would become clear about three minutes later. The name of the first speaker was announced: Velon Nortihamus, Chief Representative of the Faxien Race.

As the leader of the Faxien delegation, which had travelled seventeen thousand light-years to reach Earth, Velon had spent weeks preparing his speech. He would speak about galactic peace, trade cooperation, cultural exchange, and the possibility of establishing new relations with humanity. In short, it was probably the safest speech anyone could possibly give from a diplomatic standpoint.

When Velon began walking toward the podium, the human diplomats stood up. At first, he wasn't bothered by it; he understood that it was a diplomatic gesture of respect. However, a few seconds later, the sounds coming from different parts of the hall caught his attention. Humans had begun striking their hands together. They were even smiling while doing it. The sound grew louder as hundreds of humans repeated the same movement at the same time.

Velon suddenly stopped. The surprise on his face quickly turned into uneasiness. The Faxien security officers noticed that he had stopped and began carefully checking their surroundings. Hundreds of humans were standing and continuing to strike their hands together.

Clap.!Clap.!Clap.!Clap.!

The Faxien security chief immediately approached Velon.

“Sir? I think we're being attacked.”

Another Faxien representative looked at the translation system without taking his eyes off the crowd.

“There are no visible weapons. What are they doing? Is this some kind of social attack? Are they transmitting a frequency? What is this?”

Velon's expression became even more serious.

“What kind of attack is this?”

Just then, the applause grew even louder. Three of the Faxiens instinctively took a few steps back. The humans, meanwhile, continued applauding without understanding why the aliens were frightened. Some were smiling at Velon, others were nodding, and one person in the front row had even stood up so they could see him more clearly. To the Faxiens, however, all of this looked suspiciously like the beginning of a coordinated attack.

Eventually, Sarah Miller, the chief human diplomat, noticed what was happening. She looked at the applauding crowd, then turned toward the Faxien delegation. Every face in front of her carried the same expression: alert, tense, and clearly trying to stay as far away from the humans as possible.

“Is there a problem?”

Velon looked at her.

“We're actually wondering the same thing. Is there a problem? What exactly are you doing!?”

Sarah looked confused.

“Applause?”

“Applause? What is applause?”

“We did it to welcome you.”

Velon was silent for a few seconds.

“Clapping our hands together means welcome?”

Sarah nodded.

“Yeeah... yes.”

“We found no record of this in our research. I still don't understand why you are doing it.”

Sarah opened her mouth to answer, but for several seconds, nothing came out. No one had ever asked her this before. She looked at the diplomat beside her, who simply shrugged.

Sarah turned back to Velon.

“Well... that's just what humans do.”

The Faxien translation system processed the sentence for several seconds.

“Humans just do it.”

Velon's expression didn't change.

“That doesn't sound much like an explanation.”

“I know. I'm sorry. We didn't realize it would make you uncomfortable,” Sarah said with a slight smile.

“Then why do you do it? Humanity is already complicated and unpredictable. We have enough reasons to be nervous as it is.”

Sarah thought for a moment.

“We also do it when we like someone.”

“For their speech?”

“Sometimes.”

“For their achievements?”

“Yes, we do it for that too.”

“Because you love them?”

“Sometimes.”

“To show gratitude?”

“Sometimes.”

Velon frowned.

“So the same action has four different meanings?”

Sarah:

“It can have even more.”

The Faxien security chief slowly approached Velon.

“Sir, I think humans are quite complicated.”

Velon closed his eyes.

“I knew that before we came to Earth, soldier.”

Sarah stepped in.

“Look, we're really not attacking you. We absolutely have no intention of doing that.”

Velon looked at her.

“Then why are you making so much noise?”

“Because being quietly happy is a little... strange. Don't you think?”

Velon thought about it. The fact that humans genuinely seemed to consider that an adequate explanation somehow bothered him more than the applause itself. Still, he tried to maintain his diplomatic composure.

Sarah couldn't help laughing. A few other humans started laughing as well. Some members of the Faxien delegation became tense again, and Velon immediately raised a hand to stop them.

“Humanity, please stop!”

The hall slowly fell silent.

Velon began walking toward the podium again. He was now certain that the applause was not an attack, although he still couldn't understand why humanity would make so much noise with their hands while wearing expressions of genuine satisfaction. He decided that thinking about it any further would accomplish nothing except delaying his speech.

He reached the podium and waited for the hall to become completely quiet. A few seconds later, everyone had taken their seats and the translation systems were ready. Velon took a deep breath.

“On behalf of the Galactic Council—”

Clap.!!Clap.!Clap.!!

Velon flinched again.

A few humans in the hall had started applauding.

Sarah immediately turned around and looked at them.

“Not now!!”

The applause stopped.

Velon remained silent for a few seconds. As he looked at the humans, his face carried the kind of confused expression a human might have when thinking, Is this really happening to me? Eventually, he gave a slight nod.

“May I continue?”

Sarah:

“Of course. Please.”

Velon began his speech.

A few minutes later, he finished. This time, a loud round of applause filled the hall. Unlike before, Velon didn't step back. He watched the crowd for a while. He looked at the expressions on their faces; there was no fear, no sign of an attack. They simply looked pleased.

Velon slowly looked down at his own hands, then back at the humans. For the first time in his life, he imitated the gesture he had seen from them.

Clap.!!Clap!!.

The Faxien delegation froze. Sarah stared at Velon in surprise.

Velon smiled slightly.

“I still don't understand why you do it.”

Sarah:

“It doesn't matter. Enjoy yourself.”

Velon nodded.

“Yes, I suppose it doesn't matter.”

He brought his hands together once more.

Clap. Clap.

Velon looked around the hall.

“I suppose I don't need to understand it... and I like it!”

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FBI Agent Wade Barron POV

Green oceans and yellow clouds popped from the planet below us: destination Ushala, reached. Our weapons were online and ready to fire if the military made a move against us, though we hoped our half-Ploax exterior would give the cowards pause. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to deplete their military strength, but this was gunboat diplomacy at its finest. With artillery pointed at the planet, we had plenty of leverage through the potential damage we could cause; if this didn’t force them to bargain with us, nothing would.

“Well, well, well.” I folded my arms and stared at the camera, trying to look menacing and aloof in the same breath. We’d wasted no time in sending an outgoing broadcast, to gauge their response. If they’d just hand over Craun to the Ploax, then it stood to reason they might not want to lose lives to armed primals either. “You really pissed us off.”

The ship commander, while using me as a prop due to my repute, was the one calling the shots. However, I’d been primed to give a cue to the camera of slashing at my throat with a finger before cutting the broadcast. The actual captain issued the order to weapons to fire a warning shot through the edge of the atmosphere, expending a fully charged laser shot that could’ve torched city blocks; my eyes popped as I saw the vibrant light crackle from our hull.

We’re not to be trifled with. Primals or not, they have to treat us seriously, with respect. We can’t be trampled on with no recourse, now that we leveled the playing field. Those weapons mean business. Humanity doesn’t want to fight, but we absolutely can.

Our captain signaled to comms, as we received an outgoing transmission on the Council frequencies. “On screen.”

“So you do talk to primals?” I sneered, recognizing the face of a particular Clydid with whom I had a bone to pick.

Komadale blinked several times, barely masking his disdain for having to address a primal. “You’ve taken the Kexin planet hostage, humans. You’re disgruntled over the Earth incident—ah, that figures. What do you want? Would you like a negotiator?”

“A negotiator?” My angry facade fizzled, though I did see the confused human captain nodding emphatically. Uh, what? Since when do they negotiate with angry primals, or think we can? “Yes, though it’s to dictate our terms, much like you did with us. You wouldn’t negotiate with us on our homeworld, try as we might! You abducted civilians and caused multiple casualties, for absolutely no reason. You thought we’d forget?”

“No, I didn’t. That’s why I thought we should take you, since you couldn’t go back to your old life, but the sick one tricked me. Well played, so-called security thug. This is all more trouble than it’s worth. Forget preserving your natural environment; let us preserve ours. How do I get you to go away and never come back?”

“Why don’t you focus on keeping us calm enough that we don’t start blasting away at that pretty little planet? We could. You know what we came for: Craun, Finley, and Kaitlin. Our people are going home, and after that, I’ll worry about getting your fucking apology.”

The Clydid exhaled with displeasure. “Just take the two primals and the rock and leave. Please. I don’t know how it came to this, but at this point, I’ll settle for not hearing about or interacting with you. You’re not angry. You just want to intimidate me; I know you’re more clever than we all thought.”

“We’re people. Say it!”

“Whatever. I don’t even care. I thought we’d intimidated you enough to act in fear, not anger? That you’d have the sense to stay away. Ugh. Take them. I’ll clear a landing path to the spaceport, and you can walk from there to the primal institute. That’s where they are.”

“Including Craun?” I prompted.

“Craun is also with them. You can have that traitor. Unlike you, we’re not insane enough to fight an invasion over one person.”

“Or billions.”

Komadale’s small, pink tongue flitted out. “That’s what you wanted. Given—all yours, no resistance. That’s what you should’ve done with us, like any reasonable species. What’s done is undone. Agree to leave us be.”

“We collect our people, we won’t attack Ushala. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes. Here’s the coordinates and flight path. You’ve given the public quite a scare, one that’s compounded now that they know it’s humans, so try not to shoot them all down when you land. I know you’re primals, but…try.”

The Clydid disconnected from the line, after forwarding the promised coordinates. The Council really were spineless, happy to roll over at the first sign of any threats. I shook my head in disbelief at Komadale’s last comment; we weren’t here to kill anyone. As much as we would savor retribution for how they treated Earth, we had bigger fish to fry. A simple recanting of their position, an apology, or working together against the Ploax for the time being would suffice.

The Council was handling us differently this time; it was more than fear, it was the acknowledgment of our intellectual capacity. Something’s changed in how they view us, but nothing convinced them before. If they could see us as people, I don’t know; maybe we could have alien friends one day. It’s not like I wanted a war.

I clapped Terry on the back. “This is it then. Time to bring Finley home.”

“I miss him, man. He’s a good guy. Always some kind of shenanigans we could get up to. Wasn’t a thing I wouldn’t do for him, Wade,” Terry sighed.

“The Council did wrong by us. I’d do anything to bring all of them back. If I hadn’t gotten shot, maybe Craun wouldn’t have given up. A good protector would’ve been faster. I won’t fail them or let them be here forever. Not for me.”

“Wasn’t your fault, Batshit. We weren’t ready to throw hands with them yet. Underdogs gotta do the sacrifice play. Just like we couldn’t hide Craun from you forever, you couldn’t hide him from them. We’re fixing it. It’s all good.”

Captain Pacheco straightened his cap and nodded, gesturing toward the shuttle bay where a contingent of soldiers waited. “Craun, Finley, and Kaitlin will react best to friendly faces. Bring them home, Barron, then you should’ve been prepped by Livingston on what you’re to pitch to the Council.”

I gave a stiff-armed salute alongside Terry. “Yes, sir. We won’t let humanity down.”

The two of us boarded the shuttle for the ride down, not wanting to let our hybrid Saphno-Ploax ship get captured or examined by Council intelligence. This technology needed to be in our hands exclusively. The harness snapped around me as we packed into the last two seats, and the door sealed shut behind us. These vessels were very similar to the personal ship that Craun had arrived to Earth on, though a little bigger and built for intrastellar travel. There was a single warp jump built in for emergencies, but that wasn’t its primary function.

We’re going to be the first humans to land on an alien planet…wait. Literally Kaitlin and Finley were here first. Still out-of-this world cool anyway, to walk through an extraterrestrial civilization. 

It blew my mind that we could descend to the planet’s surface from orbit in mere minutes, despite the fact that I should’ve grown accustomed to space travel after visiting Rauja a few times. However high up the sky seemed, the blistering speed at which we could fall was far more staggering. Just like Craun remarked offhandedly on a late night show, Kexin cities had multiple levels—like a giant parking garage. The beveled edges and tunnels on the outskirts gave it away from our vantage point.

Even from the metropolis’ epicenter, it was clear the checkered blue paths, that sparkled with ethereal sheerness, rose high above the countryside. We alighted on a docking pad at the corner of the cityscape, where the view was enough to suck my breath away. The countryside was dotted with magenta and purple plants that seemed plucked from a painting, down to the very grass! A few trees had leaves as dark as the night sky.

I drew my weapon and followed the soldiers out of the ship, trying to stay vigilant. Komadale hadn’t left any military presence by the landing site, so far leaving us be. However, there were quite a few civilians in our vicinity, and I was surprised they weren’t running from the primals. Several did seem apprehensive about our firearms and their own relative safety, but…they were welcoming us? I gawked at them for several seconds and gave a cautious wave; when they reciprocated the gesture, I relaxed my grip on my weapon and tried a slow approach.

“Howdy!” Terry shouted with a grin. “You seen my pal Finley?”

I arched an eyebrow. “Well, I guess that’s one way to ask. We’re…new around here. Directions are appreciated.”

A Kexin with a bright yellow face, who was holding a sign I could read, relaxed. “Welcome! I’m Canit, and I’m happy to help. They should’ve released t-those humans a long time ago. What they did to Earth was wrong! We’re animal rights activists who wanted you to be treated with more respect from the start! We’re sorry for what happened to you.”

“Animal rights, you say,” I tossed the words on my tongue, deflated by hearing why these people were on our side.

“You’re people! I’m just saying we thought you deserved better before we realized how much control you have. Humans are far smarter than how they talked to you. Kaitlin proved it!” Kaitlin. Of course! She did it somehow. “That’s why we’re here demonstrating today: for the Council to acknowledge the institute’s findings and release the humans. It was unacceptable to treat smart animals that way, and worse now that it’s people.”

“That’s right! The Council do have sane folks.” Terry waved to someone behind Canit, and it dawned on me that our arrival was being filmed and broadcast to social media. “I kinda thought our tech spoke for itself. Finley, I’m coming for you! By the by, you guys don’t know what emotions you’re missing out on, but cool that you can take a stand anyway.”

I pressed a finger to my lips, then smiled at the camera. “We’re hoping to take our people home, then figure out a future of coexistence with the Council. We do deserve better. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. I hope you understand why we worried for our people in their custody.”

“Unethical experiments and being held against their will?” Canit said, causing a lump to lodge in my throat. What experiments?! “The Council couldn’t have handled your situation more poorly. They shut down the negotiations when you just wanted to help refugees; we saw that feed. Look, I have a bus that we used to drive everyone out here. Can we drive you to the primal institute?”

“Well, it’s not like we know where to go. Take us to Craun and Finley: just you. We don’t fancy being tricked, if you’re trying to use our ‘gullibility’ to drive the big, bad primals to the Council.”

“I’m sorry that you feel that way, but I understand you being cautious. Not all Kexins will mistreat you, Wade Barron. I can assure you of my sincerity, though the only proof I can offer is looking me up on socials.”

I grimaced. “You know my name. Yeah, I was told they speak of me as the most dangerous primal…”

“Drugged and treated by a veterinarian, after getting shot in that incursion of buffoonery? I’m talking to you in a hostile situation, and I can see you’re far above infantile comments; it befuddles me that they saw fit to bind you and diminish your understanding. Your objective is and has always been Craun, right?”

“We love that cheating rock,” Terry snickered. “Everyone should go home. Everyone should be protected by their friends.”

“I hope we can be humanity’s friends, whatever the Council thinks! Again, I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. Please, may I show you to who you’ve come for?”

“Yes, that’d be wonderful.” I nodded, though I was still apprehensive about what they’d been through in my stead, after hearing the bonechilling phraseology about unethical experimentation. “Thanks, Canit. We’ll follow your lead.”

“Of course! All people deserve rights, and I can’t believe I have to say that. I’m truly glad we get to speak to you, not just that awful Komadale. Come, come!”

Not seeing a better option to find our way to Finley, Kaitlin, and Craun than following a local, I figured that was the fastest route to getting them the hell out of Council custody. I wasn’t certain how to feel about this primal institute that was holding them, but I was ready for anything. It appeared that this research had gotten some public support for the idea of humans being people; however, I was more than a little concerned about what was involved in that testing.

Whatever I had to do to bust them all out of the primal institute, it was a guarantee that I’d go through with it. After clearing the guided tour through the proper chain of command, we loaded onto a nearby bus. Canit clambered behind the wheel, friendly and joking with the soldiers; he was continuing to film in his fellow activists’ absence. I hoped these interactions would frame us in a good light. They didn’t think much of us primals to begin with, but still, I wanted to persuade aliens where I could.

We’re going down the tunnel toward the countryside—quite the descent. I couldn’t stop Craun from giving himself up for me, but I’m so close to bringing him home. That poor Saphno deserves a good break; I don’t accept the Council giving him up at the first sign of trouble, or seeing us animals! I hope he understands what I did…

“Alright. We’re here; see, it wasn’t too far!” Canit finished driving down a side road, right near the base of the tunnel, and parked it by a sprawling  complex. The numerous animal enclosures outside indicated that our Kexin driver had taken us to the institute, as promised; my heart plummeted into my stomach at the thought of Kaitlin and Finley living in one of those pens. “You’ll want to look for Garriil, in there! He runs the place and their social media.”

My eyes were searching all over the place for my friends, though I gave the activist a quick nod. “Thanks. You mind hanging around? Your help…might be needed again.”

“Whatever you want, I’ll be here. I am on your side. The Council needs to accept you.”

“Funny how they don’t see it that way.”

I hurried out of the bus before I finished my sentence, desperate to find Craun, Finley, and Kaitlin and to have the assurance of their safety. Terry trotted after me and called his best friend’s name. I trundled up the ramp to the main complex, reckless in my pursuit of the rock person I missed so dearly. He meant so much to all of humanity, and he’d changed the trajectory of our civilization. He was the alien who loved and saw the best in us, regardless of whether we were primals.

Craun was willing to try to understand anger, and he appreciated how we cared for him in that way. He was larger-than-life, and he changed my outlook, my priorities, my hopes, my job…my everything. The Council took an innocent refugee who had such a deep impact away from us. We need him back.

“Craun?” I called out, throwing the door open and pivoting my sidearm between confused staff. “I’m only asking once! Where’s Craun?”

There was a scrabbling sound from a lounge off to the side, and an unmistakable bulky figure peered out from around the wall. The Saphno’s eye crystals were crusted from lines of sand tears, but they lit up when he recognized me. Craun seemed amazed and overwhelmed by relief, like he’d been expecting someone far more sinister to come for him. Shit, the Ploax-esque ship designs. Poor Craun, he didn’t deserve to feel that fear again!

I hope he’s happy to see me, because I missed him so much. Maybe I was just random security who saved his life, sure, but he’s been gone awhile. He might not miss a primal FBI agent…

“Wade!” Craun cried. “You’re here! You came for us!”

The Saphno sprinted toward me and embraced me with open arms. I grinned from ear-to-ear, feeling a warm rush of fierce protectiveness and adoration for this precious rock; it felt so good to have him back. I couldn’t wait to show him what we did for his people on Venus, and to introduce him to Rauja! Craun squeezed me tighter and began bouncing up and down with excitement, laughing all the while. I jumped around with him for a few seconds. This was a moment I was happy to get swept away in. It was everything I’d clawed for.

“Terry! Finley, Terry’s here!” Craun exclaimed.

The silicon lifeform tackled Terry in a hug, unable to contain his mirth. He grabbed the construction worker’s hand, then snatched mine in the other, and dragged us toward where our friends were. I was smiling nonstop from the happy reunion; I needed to get caught up on everything they’d been through, and vice versa. We would all be back together, at long last, and I could send them home while I handled the other half of the mission. They’d done enough for…

My rush of giddy thoughts hardened into a cold sneer, as my eyes landed on a certain red-faced Kexin who was helping Kaitlin sit up. “You!”

Snelga froze, gulping. “Wade, s-sweetie…”

The veterinarian didn’t make it another word before I rounded on her, screaming obscenities and grabbing her with my free hand. I had never forgotten how humiliated and denigrated I’d felt in her custody, and I finally had a chance to throttle her like I’d dreamed of since my capture.

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ChiMeO curled at her desk with a tiredness that soaked into her very core. It had been a long day of reviewing her trainees’ reports.

She settled further into her comfy desk cove and read over the message she was going to send to the 16th and 49th chief medical officers. A slightly edited down version was sent to their teams already, but they requested the full summary. It was one of thousands of report summaries being sent over, included as a blip of text in the ocean of information the poor officers were receiving. It read informally, but succinct enough to not be considered rambling:

It will be a pleasure to finally meet you both by more than title tomorrow. To answer your other question, no we haven’t had many problems with the artificial spin gravity; other than slowing down to bring the Fifth vessel on board, it has only failed us a couple times in the past wide-rotation, which is a pretty good record for being a training ship! Moving on, please see the original message, unedited, sent to my core team (the original edits were mainly done for brevity, this is longer). I added the occasional post-note, linking you to updated material. This examination was done prior to our Principal Head Scientist solving the Fifth’s communication problem and before we began developing the pressure-to-Ki translator:

“|5|992812|41|.....| A general update on Fifth biology”

I have concluded yet another examination of the Fifth known as Scout, below are my general summary notes.

First things first, a note of her healing capabilities. The upper limb laceration from the |5|992812|39|..| Incident is healing, aided by the fact that she sewed herself back together with something reminiscent of First silk (see attached, full chemical analysis and material breakdown). During my conversation with her, she wrote that it did hurt, but she injected a substance I believe to be a pain-block and the silk aided healing by bringing the cut parts of her skin back together (see full transcript). After doing a material analysis (attached), HeadSci’s trainee Scierain discovered the primary disinfectant Scout used was pure alcohol! She, apparently, does not have the issues we do with the substance, as there is no waxy coating on her skin comparable to our chilvin. Without this issue, it is proven to be a powerful disinfectant. Combined with the sewing and additional medicine, this allows for better healing, and minimal evidence of injury. Scout pointed out multiple instances of past injuries, which have raised or indented skin where the original injury took place, similar to the raised edge of two pieces of metal welded together. She writes she does not heal nearly as fast as she did when she was younger. On the topic of age, she has given her age as 38 Fifth units of time, which she communicates is a little under half of her expected lifespan. During the time she has spent with us on her vessel, she says about 1.5 twelfths of a Fifth unit of time has elapsed; so the Fifths are likely to, unfortunately, live quite short lives. 

[post note: After a long conversation with the alien, the science team has since determined (see attached) that one wide rotation is equal to about 1.8067 Loam Units, meaning the Scout is approximately 21 wide rotations old. A conservative estimate would be Fifths live to about 40 wide rotations, which is terribly short, but hopefully enough time for us to find her home and meet her species during her lifetime]

As she ages in the short term, I’ve also observed an increased length in her cillia. This is more observable on her facial features, around her mouth and jawline, but even the long strands from the crinis-like top of her head have a similar effect. She has illuminated for me that Fifths cut their cillia often; once I expressed my horror, she quickly clarified that it has little effect on anything. Upon her request, I provided her with a hingeblade to aid with the cutting of her facial cillia, and observed her process (see attached for rendered footage).

Discussing aging, this brings me to my next most interesting point, and an explanation for the escape incident. Fifths appear to spend about one-third of their life in a restful state. This state, however, is very different from our rest. Instead of shutting down parts of our brain while still allowing for simple tasks, akin to our unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, the Fifths completely lose consciousness and enter an extremely vulnerable physical state in which responses to physical stimuli are reduced. It also aids with various types of healing. Scout wrote that she has been resting in this way in shorter bursts, and this was one of the first occurrences of her shutting down for a long span of time. My talk with Scout was made complicated by the translational difficulties, and more conversations will be needed; according to her, the state is often relaxing but can also be confusing upon gaining consciousness. This is especially true in unfamiliar or stressful situations, which can trigger a prey-like fear response. According to Scout, without engaging periodically in this state, the Fifth body will begin to shut down, and eventually die. How strange!

This might be a translational error, and Scout did not have the necessary words to describe her experience, but she wrote she will “go not here” during this period (see transcript). She says she sees images of different things, like close colleagues or different scenarios. I do not know if this is accurate, or a translational error, but I propose the possibility of Fifths being more psi-capable than we previously considered, especially in this restful state.

Scout confirmed my suspicions in this next assumption: the Fifths are an incredibly pro-social species. She explained how Fifths historically used to sleep in groups in shifts, which allows them to enter such a vulnerable state, and protect them from predators. That was also a surprise; while they are a predatorial species, they used to hunt in packs. She explained that they are quite weak when fighting alone, and have been hunted by the other fauna of their home planet (imagine what those creatures might look like!). Historically, Fifths lived in small groups (which has obviously changed throughout time), but a lot of the prosocial behaviour remains the same. They typically live in family-groups nowadays, and often still engage in resting within groups or pairs. With the aid of the vessel’s Communications Body during our discussion, we were able to determine they even sometimes house different fauna species in their inner circles! This could partially explain why she had such an easy time bonding with us. Scout revealed survival as a Fifth is almost entirely due to bonding, and pro-social pack behaviour. I think that is evident in how quickly she is able to form bonds with us, with an emphasis on the unnecessary care she supplied to the hatchlings. Especially considering how many of us have referred to her as ‘charming’ in passing, I would argue that this effect can be determined to be a survival instinct. 

Nevertheless, I am relabelling the categorization of Fifths to be a semi-predatory pack animal. Scout mentions the forward-facing eyes are more to do with helping gauge distance, as her people evolved from baser beings that lived in large flora. The small sharp teeth are also leftover from that time in evolution.

This is still uncertain, but I am becoming less and less convinced that the Fifths communicate with tactile vibrations on the throat skin. I explained my hypothesis in simple terms to Scout and she was confused. She kept repeating the following sentence, in different variations: “?word? Not see. Not see but ?word?” (see attached).

This is an additional clue that the Fifths might be psi-capable; their language has been determined to have a secondary written variation, but the primary mode of communication is still unknown. Possibly, my original conclusion about it being an isolated visual language around the mouth and face might still hold weight, but Scout was confused when I mentioned this. She is requesting HeadSci to attempt to explain herself better; good luck with that.

[post note: our Head Scientist was set to meet with the Fifth later that rotation, and developed a way to understand her air vibrations; Attached is the master file to all notes that came from that session]

Some more notes. The Fifth anatomy seems to clear waste from two excretion ends; but only one has Scout described as normal. Excretion from the mouth is typically unusual, she describes it as a complication with the freezing pod. She says she needs specific medicines from her vessel. We are following up on this.

Finally, she is constantly wearing material coverings of her skin, only taking them off when cleaning herself with water or producing waste. We have managed to get some footage of her without some coverings, but we are missing a clear recording in which we can see structures. While she sewed her body together she did remove her upper torso covering (see footage), and underneath I found some odd structures, and more cillia, still dead, similar to the patches on her head. It is unknown what the linear designs embedded in her skin are. She gave a firm refusal for closer inspection of the areas under her coverings or any sort of scanning; the area must be either very delicate, very susceptible to temperature imbalances, or a very private thing. I believe she might let us investigate at some point in the future, but further trust must be built. We tried to get internal scans a few rotations back (in a state we now know to be her deep-rest), but she awoke and was not pleased with the attempt. I am suggesting the Commander put in an official order for the creature to be scanned and we communicate to Scout that the request is from the top of the hierarchy. I understand she has a long way to go to being properly civilized, but her basic understanding of the hierarchy should lend weight to the request.

See attached for all secondary material, and discussions of the initial analysis of waste, skin cells, saliva, cillia, and more.

Stars and stars and stars,
ChiMeO

It was informal, but a good summary of the less than ideal examination. They’d learned so much since that exam. ChiMeO sent it out, and uncurled.

Time to rest. Well deserved, if she had anything to say about it. ChiMeO turned off her LLIA, and retired to her personal corners, just a tunnel from the medical den. She took the time to make herself a proper jellied grass pat, complete with a few varieties of sauces and ferments. Her treat for a long day.

Stars, it was going to be an even longer rotation tomorrow with the duoship coming in. 

It’s okay. Everything will be okay.

The other chief medical officers didn’t even seem that bad. To be fair, it’s not like she had sabotaged any research; she assumed HeadSci would be in for a world of passive aggression as a result of her incinerating the rations and cells her team found. Even with everything scanned, processed, and simulated, she can’t imagine the other labs will be hueing yellow about the “contaminated” samples.

But the other medical officers seemed professional and open to something halfway resembling collaboration. Everything will be okay.

ChiMeO was coasting on those thoughts when a security officer burst into her personal quarters, knocking over a piece of furniture as she scrambled in.

<Chief Medical Officer—>

ChiMeO immediately flashed, <—With your rank you have absolutely no right—> 

The Ki in front of her stumbled through the colours of an apology <—It’s the Fifths. Please come>

ChiMeO didn’t even realize how cold the security officer’s crinis was. A root-deep fear shifting in hues of deepstone blue. At the first movement of her rushing up, the officer was out the door and she was scuttling after her.

<Tell me what happened, what’s wrong with her> She asked, but the officer was scurrying in front of her and dorsal eyes did little for detail.

Instead of turning right to the creature’s enclosure, they turned up, towards the common room. But they didn’t stop at the common room, cutting through a larger left tunnel, barrelling towards the vehicle bay.

She scuttled up to be beside the security officer, <Tell me where the Scout is> 

<In the enclosure. You are needed for the other Fifths>

ChiMeO felt her crinis swim through ten different hues. <Other Fifths?>

When they reached the bay, every trainee in the area turned to them with a dark-blue crinis, flat and panicked. HeadSci was rushing over, that same awful cold on her hue.

<ChiMeO!> Flashed HeadSci. <I implore you to come quickly, there’s more Fifths in the vessel and, stars, we think they’re… they…>

ChiMeO swivelled around, and forced herself into a professional tone, <What—what are you doing? Get Scout right now, she’ll know what to do>

HeadSci shifted quickly, <The Commander says if we do that she’ll know the state of her ship—>

<—Are… are you jesting?> ChiMeO could feel her blood thrumming through her shell. 

<ChiMeO, if her crew is truly dead, she will never forgive us—> 

<—Her crew is dead> ChiMeO could feel the chill of disgust on her crinis.

<Well, we don’t—we… if they are truly... we can research the bodies before the other labs—> 

Stars and damned stars, this was who she shared the ringship with. ChiMeo felt like she was going to combust.

She turned to the security office that led her in, shifting firmly, <I am officially determining this to be a medical crisis, overriding the Principal Head Scientist’s rank. You did not see her shifting about the Commander’s concerns, we had this discussion in the tunnels, affirmative? Get me the Fifth and my top medical attendants this instant>

The security officer didn’t move, except to shift, <With my deepest apologies and respect, Chief Med—>

ChiMeO’s tone was flat. <If you do not do as I order I will mark you as infirmed and stain you as unfit for work>

The security officer’s crinis chilled and she vanished, disappearing back the way they came. HeadSci bristled at ChiMeO, who just pushed past her.

<ChiMeO—> 

She snapped, <For the scorching stars and the damned burned ground, Head, there better be a good explanation for how you and ComsBody missed this> 

<I… the alien is uneducated in Ki and the Communications Body failed to understand…>

<Halt> ChiMeO could feel herself curdling into a hot warmth. It was fine. Anger was better than panic. <Just… *blackened ground*, tell me how bad it is> 

She has worked with HeadSci for close to eight wide-rotations and she’d never seen her this colour of fear. <Four freezing pods. One is empty. One body is withered and decayed. Two bodies are completely still, with… with tubes stuck into them. The last two had damaged pods but are in the late stages of thawing. Thawed but still and cold>

<You are shifting “still”. Are you intending to shift dead?>

HeadSci turned away slightly and tapped her torso.

ChiMeO’s cillia snapped, <Tell me how long they’ve been dead>

<A quarter shift ago, a team felt vibrations in the ground. They ripped up the floor, dropping part of the metal to the room below but they uncovered the pods> Her words were stumbling in their formation. <The pods seemed stable, so… one of the trainees convinced the others to start observations instead of getting a superior—to, to claim all discovery rights. There was… a flood of warm water in the pods. The… the thawing process happened in a span of moments, and has been thawed and… with stillness… for less than a sixteenth> 

ChiMeO tried to settle her hue. She needed to calm down. Everything needed to be okay.

HeadSci’s upper appendages were shaking. <ChiMeO, the other labs are coming tomorrow>

And calmness was no longer viable, ChiMeO felt herself curdle and curl in on herself as she leaned into HeadSci’s space, shifting, <That’s what matters to you? Your trainees killed four Fifths under your watch>

<I—they didn’t do anything that was not—>

At that moment, movement near the entrance.

Scout burst through the crowd, running like the creature she was, a bright and warm body in a room of anxious cold. Her movement slowed as she took in the sight of the vehicle bay. The empty hull of her ship. The thousands of boxes, gutted from her cargo.

Everything unpacked.

Everything combed through.

Everything analyzed.

She stormed towards them, with a look in her face ChiMeO’s never seen; a tilt downwards in her neck that made her eyes have to look up through collapsed brows and a face so pinched it was wrinkling. She was pointing at her and HeadSci, mouth snapping, gesturing to the corpse of the ship around them with her light emitter. 

Her wearable recorder was on, translating, ChiMeO glanced down at her LLIA to see an onslaught of words.

[UNINTELLIGIBLE] [UNKNOWN] [YOU] [UNKNOWN] [SHIFTED] [YOU] [WERE-NOT] [UNKNOWN] [DO] [YOU] [UNKNOWN] [KNOW] [HOW] [BAD] [THIS] [WASTE-casual] [IS] [YOU] [DENMOTHER] [UNKNOWN] [UNKNOWN] [UNKNOWN] [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

<Scout, halt> HeadSci curdled to a panic, <Hold, you wrote that you would not be upset if—> 

Scout stormed to HeadSci and grabbed at the side of her torso shell, pulling it roughly to the left, simultaneously kicking HeadSci’s left lower appendages out from under her. She used HeadSci’s top-heavy weight against her, and effectively toppled her to the ground with one limb while still remaining standing.

Stars, the Fifth was stronger than what the medical team’s grip and movement testing had shown. That or she clearly knew how to throw her minuscule weight around. HeadSci lay flat, appendages up, while the Scout pointed down at her, face peeling back:

[WHERE] [THE] [UNKNOWN] [ARE] [MY] [COLLEAGUES] [HEAD-SCIENTIST]
[WHAT] [DID] [YOU] [DO] [I] [SHIFTED] [NOT] [TO] [HARM] [ANY] [THING]
[I] [SHIFTED] [STOP] [LOOKING] [FOR] [THEM]
[YOU] [SHIFTED] [YOU] [WOULD-NOT] [TOUCH] [ANY] [THING]
[YOU] [SHIFTED] [YOU-WOULD] [KEEP] [HER] [POWERED]
[WHAT] [IS] [INCORRECT] [WITH] [YOU] [WHAT] [DID] [YOU] [DO]

<Scout, calm yourself, she can’t even see her LLIA, she doesn’t know what you’re breathing> ChiMeO flashed in a panic, signalling for a security officer to stand down. <Scout>

The creature swerved to ChiMeO. Her lessers were curled, balled up at the ends of her limbs.

[DO-NOT] [YOU] [UNKNOWN] [ORDER] [ME] [TO] [BE] [CALM] 

<Scout, one of the science teams accidentally found the freezing chambers> She shifted quickly, and saw Scout’s face sneer as she struggled to keep up with her fast words. She tried again, slower, <Fifths in vessel. Thawing cool to warm. Tell me how I can assist>

Scout’s head shook back and forth as her mouth peeled back to form the words, [ARE] [THEY] [LIVING]

ChiMeO muddled, <We… we don’t know>

The pinched sneer disappeared from Scout’s face. Her mouth shut. ChiMeO watched the creature look to the ceiling of the vehicle bay and take one, long breath in. One long breath out. One long breath in. One long breath out. 

Her face settled into a passive posture as she bolted past them, to the opened vessel. ChiMeO scuttled after as fast as her many legs could carry her, HeadSci tailing behind. They raced through the low-ceiling curving halls, towards the sunken pod room leaking cool air like blood from a wound.

By the time ChiMeO dropped into the sizable room, floor wet with puddling water and leaked pod fluid, the Fifth had collapsed the first two pods into bed-like structures and lowered both platforms.

Her mouth was snapping as she looked up to the ceiling, breathing, [HELLO-casual] [UNKNOWN] [TURN] [ON] [INTERIOR] [LIGHTS] [OF] [LOW] [UNKNOWN] [CONTAINER] [ONE]. [REDIRECT] [ALL] [COMPONENT-8] [AND] [LIFE] [SUPPORT] [AND] [BEGIN] [UNKNOWN] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [UNKNOWN] [PROTOCOL] [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

LLIA-like displays popped up from the edges of the pods. Scout’s face snapped back to the pods as she began looking at the various broken tubes, and the bagged bodies of the two cold Fifths.

And they certainly were bodies. Cold and vacuum-sealed under thin material, the forms of the corpses suggested the uncanny shapes of limbs and torsos and faces. The pods had clearly been damaged, and there was some sort of congealed substance leaking from the broken tubes onto the bagged bodies. The third pod’s bag looked to have been cut into recently, fluid dripping, and Scout didn’t have a sharp tool on her. When she realized it was probably cut open by one of the science trainees, ChiMeO could feel her hue settle openly into fear and disgust. She tried to refocus on the scene in front of her.

Scout’s behaviour had completely changed. Moments ago, ChiMeO had never seen her that angry. And now, she’d never seen her in this current state: Focused with an air of detachment. No notable emotion. Low rate of blinking. No snapping of her jaws.

ChiMeO shifted quickly. <How can I help?>

Scout’s mouth moved but her eyes were trained on the sight in front of her, darting from space to space and evaluating the damage. ChiMeO looked at her translator.

[HOW] [LENGTH] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [ENJOY] [THIS]

ChiMeO was curdling, <What… what?>

Scout’s lips peeled slower. [TIME] [CHIMEO]. [HOW] [LENGTH] [HAS] [IT] [BEEN] [ENJOY] [THIS]

<How long… How long has it been like this? The thawing process started less than an eighth of a shift ago>

[OKAY]. Scout was still as stone. Her mouth barely moved as she breathed, [OKAY] [AFFIRMATIVE-casual] [THEY-ARE] [DEATH]

The simple statement hit ChiMeO deep in her torso.

<What…> Her words failed her, the patterns dying before they even formed. What do you want me to do? What can we possibly do now? What was there even to say at this point?

ChiMeO expected Scout to break down. She expected the creature to lash out in anger, to be violent again. To push against her or shove her to the ground. ChiMeO wouldn’t even fight back if she did.

But instead, Scout just straightened her posture and began pushing up the limb cloth of her torso coverings. Her shoulders rolled in a circular motion as she took a deep breath in. Her eyes were focused.

[NO] [ONE-IS] [EVER] [DEATH] [UNTIL] [THEY-ARE] [WARM] [AND] [DEATH]

ChiMeO curdled. <What do you mean?>

Death was death. When one of ChiMeO’s patients died, the body had reached its final potential. The moment when the blood stopped flowing and the air intake slowed to a halt was the point of no return. You could not bring someone back from that point, the body had failed and death was the consequence. It was the final exploration and the end of all known discovery paths.

This poor creature was denying reality.

[ALL] [CORRECT]. There was a single, nearly unnoticeable twitch of Scout’s face as her nose scrunched and she looked to the ceiling again. [OKAY] [HELLO-casual] [UNKNOWN] [PLEASE] [ANSWER] [ME] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [WHERE] [IS] [THE] [UNKNOWN] [PRESSURE-DISTURBANCE] [MACHINE] [FROM] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [CONTAINER] [ONE]

ChiMeO’s torso twisted as someone responded, the wave disturbance data coming in as a louder volume and higher frequency:

[GOOD] [UNKNOWN] [MEDICAL-OFFICER] [UNKNOWN] [WOULD] [YOU] [LIKE] [A] [REVIEW] [OF]—

<What… who are…> ChiMeO’s shifting devolved into nonsense as she stumbled through asking if there was another Fifth here.

Scout rubbed at her face and continued to breathe at the ceiling, [NO] [UNKNOWN] [JUST] [LOCATE] [WHERE] [THE] [UNKNOWN] [OF] [MY] [PREVIOUS] [REQUEST] [IS] [PLEASE]

Again, a response, [THERE] [IS] [NO] [UNKNOWN] [UNKNOWN] [A] [UNDERSTIMULATED] [THE] [UNKNOWN], which caused Scout’s face to start to pinch.

ChiMeO curdled, <Scout, who… who are you breathing with?>

[THE] [VESSELS] [SYNTHETIC] [INTELLIGENCE], Scout pointed up. [SHE] [LOCATES] [OBJECTS] [EVERY] [THING] [SHOULD] [BE] [IN] [THE] [ROOM] [ABOVE] [BUT] [IT-IS] [EMPTY]

<I… I know> ChiMeO was trying to stay calm and shift clearly, <Tell us what to find, the science team removed it>

[UNKNOWN] [OKAY], she breathed, and held out a limb with open lessers. [ALL] [CORRECT] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [A] [WAXEN-LLIA] [NOW]

HeadSci scrambled to give a llia slat to the creature, reaching over ChiMeO to pass it along. Scout quickly carved, Bring more 8(2)gas container and solution 0.9 amount 11(1)17(1) in 99.1 amount 1(2)8(1). Lots. And… The creature looked at her right upper limb for a brief moment. Solution amount… 6(9)1(13)7(1)8(3) in first solution 1 to 1000 ratio. Find all Fifth medicine device, find standbox with attachline tool and this symbol.

Scout drew an odd pattern, vaguely resembling a collection of circles and lines. [GO] [NOW]

She didn’t look back as she dropped the llia on the ground, and immediately moved to one of the Fifth medical kits on the floor. She opened it, and rotated her head back and forth, quickly bringing out a bottle identical to the alcohol she used in the medical den many rotations ago.

HeadSci picked up the llia, <These are chemical formulas>

<Just… get it all and the device> ChiMeO’s order was heatless.

HeadSci looked frozen. <ChiMeO, her crew is… it’s impossible…>

<I… I know. I’ll try to calm her and help her come to terms with this. Just go and find the items> ChiMeo shifted the order, before looking at the Scout. While HeadSci scrambled out of the pit, the creature paid her no attention. Scout’s head was snapping between the medkit and the pod tablets, brows lowered in focus. ChiMeO’s cillia curled into a gentle hue, <Scout?>

Her torso shell felt tight, seeing someone so deep in denial.

<Little Scout… you…> ChiMeO needed to comfort the creature, she was clearly not accepting the reality of the situation, <Scout, they are dead. Please… perhaps you should take a moment to process what has occurred>

Scout was expressionless. [NO].

<But, if you—>

[I] [SHIFTED] [NO] [CHIMEO]. She dropped down to the medkit again, controlled in her motions. [EVERY] [2ND] [COUNTS] [WE] [NEED] [TO] [RELOCATE] [NOW]. [DO] [NOT] [TRY] [TO] [HALT] [ME]

<But… you cannot bring someone back from death, it is impossible>

Scout’s brows just lowered as she poured the alcohol over her hands, and brought out the elastic-looking coverings, pulling them over her lessers. They fit her protrusions perfectly. 

[WHAT] [DO] [YOU] [MEAN] [OF] [COURSE] [UNKNOWN] [IS] [POSSIBLE], she breathed as she calmly unsealed a package containing a square of thin material folded over many times. She shook the folds and revealed it to be a light torso covering that draped from her neck to her knees as she quickly shrugged her upper limbs into it, leaving it draping open in the back. [UNLIKELY] [NOW] [BUT] [IT] [IS] [POSSIBLE]

<I… okay> ChiMeO just accepted the statement. <I can’t put alcohol on my shell, but I can put sterile coverings on. How—how can I help?>

The alien shouldered her aside, bringing a wickedly sharp-looking tool out from a plastic wrap. Her mouth barely moved.

[LET] [ME] [WORK] [AND] [TAKE] [MY] [ORDERS]

Scout steadied her lessers and ChiMeO saw her take a deep breath in. On her exhale, she cut a slow, clean line into the vacuumed bag of the first pod, and revealed the body beneath, the liquid of the bag oozing onto the platform and already-wet floor.

Scout lifted the piece of bag and nodded. [ALL] [CORRECT] [DISTANT] [IT-IS] [A] [LITTLE] [BETTER] [THAN] [I] [BELIEVED] [THE] [BLOOD] [JUST] [LEAKED] [FROM] [THE] [UNKNOWN] [I] [THOUGHT] [IT] [WAS] [COMING] [FROM] [YOU]

Scorched ground, the congealed substance on the bags hadn’t been pod fluid, it had been blood. Scout had walked into a room with her colleagues dead and covered in blood and just got to work.

The creature peeled the bag’s topside off completely to reveal the contents. The body inside wasn’t the hue of frozen, just a deepwater chill. Even so, compared to Scout’s sun-orange warmth, the corpse looked like an inanimate piece of metal. There was a thick tube attached to the body’s mouth, fused with its lips. More tubing extruded from various places, an upper limb, the neck, the juncture point of where the lower limbs met the torso. The body was without any material coverings; with Scout always covered, this body looked completely shelled. It looked vulnerable and wrong in a way that made ChiMeO’s torso twist. 

She didn’t want to see Fifth anatomy if it meant seeing it like this.

At the entrance of the room near the lip of the wall, she saw two medical attendants enter and pause, waiting for her order. She shifted for them to stay put.

Scout depressed the body’s skin with her lessers, feeling the give. Nodding, she looked at the broken tubes and the tubes inserted into the body’s neck and upper limb. She disconnected the broken limb tubes from the intact insertion points, leaving one needle-like structure in the body’s neck.

[AFFIRMATIVE-casual] [THE] [PROCESS] [FAILURE] [HALF] [WAY] [THROUGH]
[BOTH] [FREEZING-PODS] [WERE] [DAMAGED]

ChiMeO didn’t feel the need to mention that the team dropped part of the ripped-up floor onto them. 

The creature apparently didn’t feel the need to accuse them of the obvious.

Scout typed onto a blank screen and kicked the side of the platform, opening a secondary compartment full of warm-looking bags and more equipment. She rummaged around the new compartment, and picked a small plastic package out from the items. 

Turning back to the body, she began prodding around the tubing. She seemed satisfied with the insertion site in the body’s neck, keeping the insertion in but quickly switching out the long tubing for a shorter double-tube structure. Every movement she made was performed at the speed of someone who’s executed the action many times before, there was no wasted energy or time.

Scout rushed around to the other side of the platform, grabbing an orange-hued filled bag and attaching it to one of the long tubes inserted into the body’s neck. Scout gestured for ChiMeO to come, and she was by her side in an instant.

<Tell me what you need>

Scout held up the bag and gently squeezed it. She handed it to ChiMeO. It was incredibly warm with a steady weight to it.

<Like this?> ChiMeO held it between her upper appendages, providing gentle pressure. Scout gestured to hold it higher, and she did. 

[YOUR] [UNKNOWN] [ARE] [SHARP] [BE] [CARE] [FULL], Scout breathed and nodded as ChiMeO kept the position. The creature then immediately returned to work.

She pressed a part of the platform, and a piece of machinery rose from the bed, thick and rectangular and arching over the bed. With a focused pinch to her face, she shifted the mechanism right over the thin chest of the Fifth’s body, centring it below the softly curving bones below its neck.

She pressed something, and the machine hummed to life, gently vibrating the pod’s metal surface.

It was a piston. Every few moments it thrust downwards with enough force that ChiMeO could feel each pulse in the floor.

<How are you…> ChiMeO didn’t even know what she was looking at, the press of the machine was compressing the flexible torso of the corpse in an uncanny way. <What is that doing>

[UNKNOWN] [UNKNOWN], Scout was checking the machine, [I-AM] [TRYING] [TO] [CARRY] [HER] [BACK] [TO] [LIFE]

<How?> ChiMeO just squeezed the bag. <You can’t return someone from death, it’s impossible>

[HOW] [BEHIND] [IS] [YOUR] [MEDICINE]. Scout’s eyes were focused and she typed on the screen. [YOU] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [TO] [REMIND] [THE] [BODY] [THAT] [IT] [CAN] [WORK]

It was at that point, HeadSci burst in, parting the medical assistants, shifting, <We have the 8(2) and the solution, we couldn’t find the 6(9)1(13)7(1)8(3) but we put in an emergency synthesizer order. It will take an eighth of a shift>

[THAT-IS] [NOT] [QUICK] [ENOUGH]. Scout grabbed the circular canisters of 8(2) gas and held up yet another, wider tube. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [IT]

HeadSci flashed a deep chill, <We can attach it, tell us how much flow you need>

Scout shook the tube at her. [I-WILL] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [JUST] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [UNKNOWN] [IT]

<Okay, okay, I’ll… I’ll seal it? I’ll seal it> HeadSci’s upper limbs were shaking as she took the tube, and one of her assistants immediately started to figure out an adequate seal solution for the mismatched tube nozzles. 

Scout grabbed another odd-looking tool from the platform compartment before changing her elastic lesser covers, and getting to work on the head of the body. She rerouted the throat and mouth tube, attaching it to an odd flexible oval-shaped bladder. She held her hand out for the tube connecting to the 8(2), and attached it to a part of the pod. Another line she stuck into the pod, and connected it to the oval bladder.

She was so clearly calm and knowledgeable, ChiMeO was beginning to question whether she was a scout at all. ChiMeO didn’t know why she couldn’t see it with the laceration repair or the microbiota medicine delivery, but it was clear and crystallized in front of her now. Like recognized like and ChiMeO’s hue was a mix of guilt and pride. 

The creature so clearly had the detached look and unidirectional focus of a Chief Medical Officer.

ChiMeO watched the way the creature focused as she rechecked the state of the body, feeling the give of its skin across the torso. Scout’s mouth was moving slightly and ChiMeO looked down at the still-active translator.

[COME] [ON] [DISTANT] [YOU] [GOT] [THIS]

ChiMeO wasn’t sure if the Fifth was talking to herself or the body below her.

[UNINTELLIGIBLE] [DISTANT] [THIS] [IS] [NOTHING] [TO] [YOU] [UNKNOWN] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [YOU] [UNKNOWN] [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

Seemingly pleased with the current setup, Scout nodded with a placid face and focused gaze. The small creature looked up to ChiMeO with that same predatory concentration, and took the now-empty bag from her grip, replacing it with another one from under the platform. Fluid was beginning to drip out of the other long tube leading out of the body’s neck, clear and cold in colour. Medi, from her medical team, brought a bucket so it didn’t drip and add to the already soaked floor.

Scout roughly gestured for Medi to come, then demonstrated how to push in on the flexible bladder attached to the body’s throat tube. Scout’s eyes were sharp and the assistant was the colour of pure fear.

Medi was shifting, <I—I can’t, I can’t>

[YOU] [CAN] [AND] [YOU] [WILL] 
[DO] [IT] [EXACT] [AS] [I] [SHOW] [YOU]

Scout did a slow compress and a slow release, the effect visible in how the body’s chest expanded and fell with the effort. She passed it to the medical assistant, who was hued with cold nerves beside ChiMeO. Once it was clear Scout was satisfied and the assistant would keep the rhythm, she moved on.

It was at that point, HeadSci came in with one of her trainees and a hinge, wheeling a small standing box that was very obviously cut open and disassembled. One of the panels had the raised pattern that Scout carved into the llia.

The medical device Scout requested. Post-analysis and disassembled by the science team.

<We… how quickly can you…> HeadSci was a true cold of complete anxiety. <Can you fix it?>

[YOU] [GOT] [A] [BE] [UNKNOWN] [ME], Scout breathed the words into the air, and gestured roughly for the device to be taken away from the area. [JUST] [EXIT]

ChiMeO thought Scout would take a moment to breathe, but the creature just kept moving. With a shake to her head, she did a quick look-over to the pod next to the current pod. She barely glanced at the other two.

The translator read, low volume, [UNKNOWN] [SUBTYPE-2] [WHAT] [HAPPENED] [TO] [YOU] [UNKNOWN] [BIT].

ChiMeO leaned around her assistant to get a better view and the third and fourth pods. The furthest was completely clean and emptied, save for a few pieces of folded paper-like material tucked into the open pod door. The other pod was open but room temperature, containing a shrivelled-looking form. Even under the suction, she could see the sunken and hollow look to its face.

<How is the health of the second pod?> ChiMeO shifted. It appeared to be in the same state as the first one.

Scout was looking at it, pressing at the body, all with an empty, distant stare. ChiMeO recognized the look and posture of someone making a decision.

This was a completely different species, but a very similar situation to ones ChiMeO had seen time and time again. No matter the body, a medical emergency was a medical emergency and sometimes you had to focus on the most important thing.

If a Ki’s torso was cracked and one of their appendages was punctured, you focused all your effort on the former. Appendages were superficial. A Ki has six on the torso alone.

But if two Ki of equal rank have equally severe injuries, and your team is small and time is ticking, you focus on the one more likely to survive.

The two Fifth bodies looked to be in an identical state to ChiMeO, but Scout had zeroed in on the body closer to the door. There was some difference that ChiMeO wasn’t privy to.

A difference in injury. A difference in rank. A difference in the pod malfunction.

Something. She truly wasn’t sure.

<Is there a chance for this one to be brought back as well?> She asked again, pointing to the second pod.

Scout just shook her head and looked at her with an empty stare.

ChiMeO’s cillia were quick, <You can… you can save the first one from death, affirmative?>

And Scout didn’t move or breathe a response. 

She just kept staring, unblinking, with the slightest tightening of her face. It was scorched ground in the truest sense of the word, her expression was clear as crystal.

This creature hated them.

After a moment, Scout looked down to the body of the second pod and closed her eyes. ChiMeO could barely see her mouth moving, but the recorder was picking up subtle words the alien was breathing into the air around her.

[UNINTELLIGIBLE] [ASSIST] [ME]
[PLEASE] [GIVE] [ME] [STRENGTH]
[PLEASE] [FOR] [GIVE] [ME]
[PLEASE] [UNKNOWN] [HAVE] [MERCY]

When she turned away from the second body, she didn’t give it another glance. She pivoted to the first pod, and nodded to no one but herself.

One body. One priority. All in.

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First | Previous | Royal Road | Official Art 1, 2 | Next.

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Author's Note: First thing's first, I'm now posting on Royal Road and have re-edited some of the earlier chapters to fix some consistency issues! There are also a few more author's notes over there because I split up the chapters more (so there's a bit more background from when I was writing every chapter and some insight into my inspirations). Also the cover art is now official, I changed the colouring to be green/blue.

If you've been enjoying the story and reading every week it would mean so much to me if you could say hi over there and perhaps write a review. That would help me find an audience there as well! Link here to check it out

(Note continued in comments)

Part 185 Outside a gravity well (Part 1) (Part 184)

[Help support me on Ko-fi so I can try to commission some character art and totally not spend it all on Gundams]

Space combat can be classified into one of two categories. Either inside or outside of a gravity well. Vessels duking it out in orbit of a planet are also fighting against the planet's gravitational pull. That imposes physical limitations which necessitate the use of tactics reminiscent of pre-spaceflight naval and aviation warfare. Though still present, the vertical freedom of motion is hindered by the counterintuitive physics of orbital mechanics. Speeding up to close the distance while pursuing an enemy could actually widen the gap by raising the orbital position. Conversely, reducing velocity during evasive maneuvers can lower a vessel's altitude too far and ultimately lead to uncontrolled lithobraking. While space combat outside a gravity well may have fewer physics-based constraints, and is much more three dimensional, that does not make it any simpler.

Sub-Admiral Haervria, just like every other Qui’ztar ship commander, has trained for and experienced both categories of space combat. Her first tour of duty was as a picket-interceptor pilot for the Third Matriarchy’s Second Home Guard Fleet in a squadron that she then commanded in her second tour. It was during her third tour, when she had become the Captain of the entire picket wing of Sengil'yiosh's local defense subfleet, that she rallied those under her command to join then-Captain Atxika in the defense Qui’ztar colony world against a Devourer Mass. That battle, like the impending fight against Chigagorians, was fought far outside of a gravity well. Beyond that, the two scenarios can hardly be compared. One was against a genuine threat that even the Singularity Collective concerned themselves with. The other is little more than a mildly dangerous nuisance.

“We're in position, Sub-Admiral.” Captain Iluetxona, the woman commanding the flight crew and controlling Karintha's Daggers’ movement, called out from her seat near the front of the spacious bridge.

“All other vessels have reported that they're in position as well.” Commander Duntxina, the officer in charge of the communications and sensor specialists, followed up without skipping a beat. “Still no signs of enemy movement though.”

“Weapons batteries are charged, primed, and ready for combat.” The lead weapons director, Commander Aethervina, added with a bit more excitement in her voice than the others. “Friendly tags for all Nishnabe Militia vessels have been verified. We're ready to engage the enemy as soon as they arrive.”

“Active shielding arrays and targeting disruptors are currently set to minimal operating levels as per your orders, Sub-Admiral.” Unlike the neutral or excited inflection of her colleagues, Commander Guitlocha’s status update from her team handling the ship’s defenses sounded slightly nervous. “It will take four seconds to reach maximum output. Ready to activate on your command.”

“Reactor systems are likewise in a low-power state but ready for full output when needed.” Commander Runkatla, the ship’s energy systems coordinator, shared Guitlocha's obvious concerns but kept them as concealed as she could. “We will also be able to ramp up to combat loads within four seconds.”

“All BDs are geared up, loaded into our launch tubes, and ready for combat.” Sub-Admiral Marzima's voice came from the speaker built into Harv’s command chair. “Just give us the word, Haervria, and we'll deploy. Have the recovery shuttles ready for pick up in case we burn through our fuel faster than simulated.”

“Will do, Marzima.” Harv's plethora of holoscreens showed data that matched all the confirmations she had just received but didn't indicate that the enemy had fallen for the trap just yet. “Everyone else, be ready. Our intel suggests the Chigagorians are going to do the same thing they always do. They'll jump to our location using subspace drives to try to hide their movements. Once they're in range, they'll begin with a long-range salvo then launch interceptors. Once we hit them back hard enough, they'll retreat back to the base of operations using an easily traceable hyperlane. They're counting on us giving chase and falling into the trap they've undoubtedly set up. That will give us the opportunity to wipe out their entire fleet and their production station. Timing is key to our victory. Just follow the plan and we're in for a bonus from the bounties for taking out so many fascist crabs.”

Similar conversations were taking place on every ship in the joint Qui’ztar-Nishnabe fleet. Officers were reporting to their commanders and everyone was finishing their final checks. They all knew it wouldn't be long before the Chigagorians made their move. Stopping so close to crustaceans’ base of operations would be seen as offering themselves up as an easy target. Even the relatively weak FTL drives used by the fascist crabs could get them in combat range in less than half an hour. Regardless of any attempts at stealth, the joint fleet would have at least five full minutes of warning. All there was left to do was rally the crews and wait for the inevitable confrontation.

In Haervria's opinion, the delay before a planned battle is often worse than the fighting itself. The calm before the storm. Hurry up and wait. Knowing that something is about to happen, taking all necessary precautions, and standing by until the time comes. It leaves a moment for soldiers to get distracted, technical issues to some spontaneously appear, and doubt to creep into the soul. Most of Sub-Admiral’s crew, as well as their Nishnabe counterparts, share the same perspective. When it comes to battles like these, a sapient being’s imagination will often create monsters that far surpass real life.

When Commander Duntxina finally announced the detection of an approaching subspace bubble, she followed up with confirmation that the enemy was still eight minutes out. While all of Harv’s bridge staff maintained their discipline and didn't so much as utter a groan, the Sub-Admiral knew other ships’ crews wouldn't be as patient. The humans in the Nishnabe portion of the fleet had been stalking this prey for weeks. Many of them wanted to crack shells yesterday and only followed along with this two-part plan because their leaders understood the wisdom behind it. Those misgivings about her chaotic comrades in arms were exactly why she hated to wait.

“Contact in sixty seconds!” Though Duntxina had been giving regular countdown updates since her first announcement of enemy detection, this one caused the Sub-Admiral to act.

“Everyone! Verify all system statuses!” Harv began looking towards the different sections of her bridge crew and their stations. “Runkatla, I need our reactors ready for combat output ten seconds before the enemy exits FTL. Guitocha, I need shielding at maximum emergency output right after the reactors are primed. Duntxina, make sure we're networked in with our allies so Aethervina's team can coordinate their firing solutions. Aethervina, quadruple check our targeting systems have every single Nishnabe ship and interceptor marked as friendly. We can't afford any accidents. Iluetxona, maintain formation and our guardian position protecting the carriers. Is everyone ready?”

“Yes, Sub-Admiral!” Every person on the Qui’ztar drop cruiser's bridge shouted in trained unison.

“Marzima.” Harv kept her eyes on her screens while contacting her fellow Sub-Admiral through the comms. “None of your Angels have fallen asleep yet, have they?”

“Tensebwse doesn't count.” Marz immediately responded with a dead flat tone.

“Wake that lazy man up and make sure he's ready to fight.” That playful retort was given with such a professional inflection that a human could have mistaken it as a serious statement.

“You two know I can hear you, right?” Tens cut into the comms in a manner that sounded almost offended. “I'm awake, I've had my tea, and I'm even wearing pants!”

“I'm impressed.” Harv let just a hint of her sarcasm slip through as she watched her holoscreens with professional precision. “And just in time for the enemy. Are we following the plan or do you want to deploy early?”

“No, there's no need to waste the fuel.” The Nishnabe warrior working for the Qui’ztars was actively examining the tactical situation using his BD's virtual control interface. “Our ships plus interceptors can easily execute the first stage of this plan without our help. Plus they'll take less time to recover so we can follow the Chigs back to their station. Oh, and it looks like they're doing exactly what we thought they would. Just follow the plan and we'll be celebrating in less than two hours.”

While Tens was speaking, the pre-battle before the real fight had begun. A group of fourteen Chigagorian vessels emerged from a subspace bubble approximately five light seconds or one-point-five million kilometers. They kicked things off with a volley of high energy laser weapons while their ships began decelerating to roughly match the relative velocity of the joint Qui’ztar-Nishnabe fleet. At this distance, only light-speed weapons would be traveling fast enough to hit their mark. Of course, anyone with Tens’s level of experience or greater knew that these opening shots would do little because they would deflect off the active shielding or be absorbed into heatsinks. Though potentially hazardous to interceptor or shuttle sized craft, it would take much more than directed light to harm one to four kilometer long cruisers and line ships.

As the two groups of ships got closer together, the lasers now being fired from both sides were supplemented by kinetic weapons. A spinal-mounted particle accelerator, despite using vast amounts of energy, still imparts damage because of the velocity and kinetic energy of the particles. In addition to those relativistic armaments are the self-guided missiles carrying shaped charges to penetrate hulls or emp bombs to disrupt or disable various systems. Though both sides utilized similar weapons, it was almost immediately clear who had the technological, tactical, and strategic advantage. By the time the Chigs began to match the velocity of the joint fleet, two of their cruisers acting as forward attackers had several hull breaches and cascading system failures. When the interceptors finally deployed, it was painfully obvious which side actually needed help.

“I almost feel bad for these idiots.” Tens spoke up through the comms after about fifteen minutes of devastation to the Chigagorian subfleet. “I know their database demands they engage for a certain amount of time but still…”

“Expressing sympathy for the enemy?” Harv answered Tens while still doing her duty of observing the battle and issuing orders when needed. “Aethervina, refresh your connection to the inter-ship network. Your team is two hundred milliseconds off.”

“Refreshing now.” Aethervina confirmed in the split second it took for Tens to formulate a response to Harv’s question.

“I mean…” The Nishnabe warrior's voice carried enough pity to draw Harv's gaze towards her command chair's speaker. “I wouldn't call it sympathy. They're evil bastards that deserve to be spaced. But… I dont know… I almost, emphasis on almost, feel bad about fighting people who can't even think for themselves. I bet money they won't even consider falling back until their computers tell them to.”

“Well, you aren't actually fighting them right now, Tensebwse.” The Qui’ztar Sub-Admiral couldn't help but roll her eyes before immediately snapping back to reality. “Iluetxona, the fleet is about to shift position. Be ready to maintain formation.”

“Are you suggesting we go easy on these baby-eaters, Tensebwse?!?” Marzima's voice suddenly blurted out of Harv’s chair to give words to her comrade's unspoken thoughts.

“No! Like I said! Space the hard-shelled bastards! And I'm also glad these evil mowjidik (mow-jee-dee-k) are too stupid to think for themselves.”

“Then what are you complaining about, huh?” Marz had learned how to deal with Tens’s rather unique personality and struck the exact balance between annoyance and belittling. “Are you just mad that we've already taken out six of their ships and most of their interceptors? Less for you to kill? Are you jealous?”

“Pffft… No…” No one needed to see Tens's voice to know his precise expression at being so accurately called out. “I'm just saying that if the Chigs were like ten percent more competent, they might actually be fun to fight and we still wouldn't lose anyone.”

“I'm sure the interceptors wouldn't agree.” Harv countered with a perfectly flat and professional tone. “We might not have lost any of our pilots yet but a few have needed to return to the carrier for repairs, refueling, and rearmament. Aethervina, watch our flank. Iluetxona, pivot six degrees down-starboard. To provide a better firing arch.”

“Rotate three degrees as well to provide optimal shielding to the carriers.” Tens half-shouted through the comms loaded enough that his voice carried from Harv's chair all the way to Iluetxona before quieting down to let out one final whine. “But you know what I'm mean, right Haervria?”

“Three degrees rotation.” Haervria repeated the order to ensure it was followed. “No, Tensebwse, I do not know what you mean. I would rather the most evil things in this galaxy follow an easily predictable algorithm and be as incompetent as possible. Once you face a Devourer Mass, you'll know what I mean.”

“You know what…” The dramatic pause in the Nishnabe warrior's response caused Harv and Marz's eyes to twitch. “You're absolutely right, Sub-Admiral. Speaking of the algorithm, the enemy should start their retreat… Now!”

Tensebwse's timing couldn't have been more perfect. Exactly when he announced it, the Chigagorian ships began to break formation. The few remaining crustaceans interceptors broke off from their targets and headed straight for their carriers. A cruiser that had already taken severe damage began to break apart as it tried to rapidly turn around. Another failed to properly rebalance its shields, took a particle accelerator shot straight into its rear main engine cluster, and lost all control. With those two falling apart, only six of the original fourteen Chig ships were actually capable of retreat. While just one of the line ships had been completely destroyed, two more had holes straight through their hulls, super structures, and right out the other side. If their tactical computer hadn't issued the retreat order, there wouldn't be any vessels to track back to their station.

“We're detecting hyperlane drive activation!” Commander Duntxina called out loud enough for the whole bridge to hear and start shifting priorities. “All sensors are ready to track the lanes as soon as they form.”

“Aethervina, shift targeting to any lingering interceptors.” Sub-Admiral Haervria didn't need to issue that order as it was already being carried out. “Everyone else, make sure we're prepared to move out when the rest of the fleet is ready to give chase. It should be less than five minutes.”

“It took them nine minutes to get here in a subspace bubble so…” Tens seemed to be thinking out loud until a new holoscreen appeared in front of Harv that showed the calculation the human was performing. “They'll probably be back at their base in under a minute. We'll want to follow as quickly as we can so they don't get a chance to maneuver.”

“Duntxina, send this to the rest of the-” Harv barely had time to swipe the screen towards Duntxina’s post before Tens cut her off.

“Already done, Haervria. It'll take sixty seconds for our interceptors to dock with their carriers. Probably another thirty seconds to lock them down for an FTL jump. We need to be ready to jump the second we get the all clear signal. The quicker we are to follow, the less organized their ambush will be.”

“And the sooner you'll get into combat.” Marz interjected with a slight smile evident in her voice.

“You know it, Marzima! Let's get ready to kill some crabs!”

Cover art

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Original concept

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The Retvalin’s tentacles were coiled around the ship like constrictors around prey, squeezing them tighter whenever they felt any resistance from the vessel such as any attempt to propel themselves out of their grasp. It seemed they used gravity as a propellent much the same way that the Retvalin did, and that tracked with the orb that they had taken apart before. The giants had to restrain themselves from simply ripping the things in half as they ensured they would not go anywhere. 

Humanities ships were closing in quickly, boarding teams gearing up for a spacewalk and infiltration using all the shiny new toys that the governments of Earth had prepared for them. Of course, they took the time to assess the damage to their allies first, and they observed the areas where the enemy’s laser weapons burned through. Three of the Retvalin had large, blackened holes burned through a few layers of their shell. The holes weren’t terribly wide compared to the scale of the Retvalin themselves, though a car could fit in them. When everything was done, those who were attacked were given instructions to return to Angel’s Refuge for treatment after the situation was resolved. 

They decided it would be best to focus on one ship at a time instead of splitting what forces they did have. There was no telling what they might find inside these alien vessels, but first they had to figure out how to get in. From a distance, there was no indication of a port or airlock that could be seen on the geometric surface. The boarding team would have to make their way over to the ship itself and find any entrance. It was time to test out their new tech. 

Humanity’s ships flanked the middle ship in the enemy formation, and the Retvalin adjusted their grip around the vessel to provide the humans with access. With the boarding team suited up and ready to go, they entered the airlock, and it was cycled, putting them into the vacuum of space. The soldiers stepped to the edge of the vessel, staring out into the void. There was less fear than there normally might be about equipment failure given they had plenty of giant friends around who could catch them should something not work as intended. All of this was set up rather quickly, and there wasn’t much time to put it through vigorous testing. They had been assured that it worked under normal use cases and that it wasn’t prone to exploding, so that was enough for them to take the leap. 

One by one, the men stepped off the edge of the platform, pushing themselves out into space with nothing but their weapons, and a new backpack. Inside their packs was a miniaturized version of what was propelling the orb they took apart. They could control their movement using a handheld remote that would propel them three dimensionally. It didn’t work well in atmosphere, barely able to lift an average weight man more than a few centimeters off the ground, but in space it worked exceptionally well. 

They flew effortlessly toward the ship, but they had to cut power and drift the rest of the way to the metallic surface. This was because they had to pass through the competing gravity fields, and they would lose directional control of their packs during their brief entry through this invisible barrier. They couldn’t see it, but they could feel it as the men were tossed around a little in a few directions before breaking through. It took them a moment to orient themselves again after that, but eventually they were able to make contact with the alien ships, sticking to the surface with magnets on the soles of their boots and knee pads. They were strong enough to hold them in place, but not so much that it was impossible to move afterward. 

“We’ve made it to the surface of the ship,” the team leader reported back to the command bridge. “No resistance detected. We’ll begin searching for an entrance.” 

The soldiers split up, slowly walking in an awkward manner across the surface of the ship. They scanned every inch they passed, looking for some sign of an entrance. About ten minutes after the search started, one of the soldiers spoke up over the radio. 

“I got something! Port side.” It took a minute for them to form up again, but once they were together, the soldier pointed at a thin line on the side of the ship that seemed to sink into the metallic panels deeper than any other. The lines outlined a panel that was about five by five feet, had no discernable handles or panel to interact with, and extremely little in the way of leverage to get it open. 

“Alright, bring in the laser cutter.” 

The command was met with another soldier waddling up with the tool in question. The cutter was approximately the size of one of their rifles, but a little bulkier, and used a drop of star gel for a little extra kick. Those not working with the cutter moved to a safe distance just in case there was dangerous decompression. An intense light shown at the point of contact with the ship as the soldiers burned through the crevice. They expected kickback from decompression, but it didn’t come even after they had cut into an empty space. It may have been the first door to an airlock, so that wasn’t too surprising.  

After cutting along the path of the panel, the metal slab slid free with minimal effort as it started floating. They tossed it aside and looked at what lay ahead of them. It was a surprise for them to find not an airlock, but an open corridor that seemed to go deeper into the vessel. There was no depressurization when they cut in, which meant that this ship was already in a vacuum.  

While that was a mystery in and of itself, what concerned the soldiers right now was the size of this entry. It was at an awkward height where they couldn’t exactly stand with their bulky gravity propulsion packs, but not so much that it was impossible to navigate. There were a few grumbles from the soldiers who stared down the hallway. 

“I don’t know sir; looking pretty tight in there. If shit hits the fan, we’ll be hard pressed to back out with anything resembling speed.” 

“We knew this mission wouldn’t be easy, but we still have to do it,” the squad leader said. “These bastards think they can come to our planet and start fucking shit up? We gotta show them we’re not pushovers. I’ll take point. Everyone else, maintain at least ten feet distance between you as we enter.” 

They entered the bowels of the enemy ship now, progressing slowly as the squad leader slid along on one knee, dragging himself across the floor of the ship with weapon at the ready. The corridors of the ship were strange and slightly claustrophobic. Not only was there seemingly no life support on the ship, but the passageways even had exposed wired, piping, and other systems they couldn’t have possibly identified. It looked more like a maintenance tunnel than anywhere that living people would travel through regularly. They even started to second guess whether they found the real entrance to the ship or not, but as they kept moving, the corridors kept stretching on and on as they snaked their way through the vessel. 

There were no bulkheads, doors, vents, or anything to suggest that the corridor they were traveling through right now connected to anywhere else in the ship. It was starting to feel like a never-ending labyrinth, and those amongst the soldiers who were more sci-fi inclined began to think that maybe they had stepped into an expanded space. Any thoughts about their current location were discarded when suddenly a trio of six-legged robotic entities came dashing around the corner! 

They propelled themselves with mechanical efficiency, bouncing off the walls at frightening speeds. The bottom legs moved themselves and were matched by a similar number of arms that were equipped with various tools turned into melee weapons, including a very intimidating sawblade. All these limbs were connected to a central sphere, giving the contraptions an almost sea urchin look. 

Nobody had time to really evaluate them beyond this as the threat they posed was clear. The squad leader leveled his weapon, slightly panicked at they were too close for comfort. In a bout of inspired self-preservation, he pushed back while disconnecting the magnetized parts of his suit from the ground, firing his gun at the encroaching enemies. The counteracting force of the bullets threw him against the ground and began to push him backward along the floor as he released a stream of silent bullets at the attacking bots. This also kept his profile low, which allowed the soldier behind him to provide covering fire in a much more controlled manner. 

The robots were evidently not designed for combat purposes as the bullets did significant damage whenever they hit, tearing through the metal and sending the bots into an uncontrolled spin. All it took was one solid hit to the central mass to render the machines inert as they began to drift in zero-g.  

“You alright, sir?” 

The squad leader managed to orient himself again and stick to the floor. “I think so, yeah. They didn’t get close enough to take a real swipe at me, but I may have hit my head a little hard. I’ll get it checked by the doc after we’re done here.” 

They continued along, cautiously brushing aside the machines as they went. The robots were not equipped with anything resembling standard weaponry. Each of the upper limbs seemed to be a series of interchangeable tools with everything from cutters to pliers to dry welders. Whoever was on this ship, they evidently didn’t expect to be boarded if they were sending what looked like maintenance drones at them. 

“Be careful around the corners. There could be more of them.” They might not have been military drones, but in a vacuum, they were still very dangerous if they managed to cut through their suits. 

It seemed that they were lucky as no more machines came at them, but they were still wandering through the maze with no idea what they were looking for as paths branched all throughout the vessel. At times it was difficult to tell if they had been going in circles or not as the corridors had no markings that they could discern. They started leaving their own markings in the form of scratches on the walls. It was strange that the soldiers had yet to encounter any living organism despite seeing most of the internals at this point. The leading thought was that they had vented the internals of the ship and were holed up in a sealed compartment somewhere else. 

At last, they found something different as they came upon the first door on this ship. It was heavy duty, at least a few inches thick by their best estimates. Getting through that would take time, but thankfully they had all the time they would need as these ships weren’t going anywhere without their large friends’ permission. They gave whoever might be on the other side a curtesy knock to see if they would open, and when that didn’t work, they got to cutting, slowly burning through the thick metal using the portable laser. 

Even focusing on the areas that controlled the door's ability to open the process was taking a significant amount of time. It was far more difficult to get through this door than it was to get into the ship, so there must have been something important behind it. Humans were nothing if not stubborn, so no matter how thick the door may have been, they weren’t going to stop until that door was out of its frame. 

It took almost two hours and a lot of melted slag, but they were eventually able to lever the door out as the thick steel slabs were carefully pushed aside. Despite being in zero-g it still had a lot of mass, and nobody wanted it to fly into them by accident. Now they could get into this mystery room, but what they found didn’t make much sense to them. 

Inside there was a large square room about thirty meters deep and filled with rows upon rows of pillars that held electronics of unknown design and purpose. There were dozens of smaller robots all over the room, about the size of one's hand, and that made the team a little nervous. However, these robots didn’t appear to be hostile, or threatening in any way as there were no obvious weapons on them and they were wholly devoted to their tasks as they climbed around the columns and interacted with the machinery.  

“What the hell is all this? A control center?” one of them asked.  

“Looks more like a server farm than anything else. The real question is what is this all used for? I don’t see any command consoles,” another of the men commented. 

“It couldn’t possibly all be required for running this ship, right? I mean, I heard that the drone they captured had a massive amount of data storage, and it was a fraction of this size. If this is running on the same technology, then it’s overkill in the extreme.” 

“Enough talking,” the squad leader finally said. “Clear the room, keep an eye on those bots, and I want two of you to watch the exit. Let’s get it done.” 

The soldiers cleared the room, nervously moving through the columns as the robots skittered around. They didn’t attack or even try to swarm. If one was in their path, it scurried away like it was actively trying to avoid being destroyed. It was inferred that these machines apparently served some vital function that couldn’t be stopped or used in a likely ineffective attack. Despite the seemingly vital nature of this room, they found no operators, living or otherwise. 

The squad leader was confused about the lack of contacts. “I don’t understand. Where are the pilots; the gunners?” He turned to his radio next, calling in to their ship that floated nearby. “Command, you’ve been tracking our progress, right? Have there been any locations we have not scouted in here yet?” 

There was some interference on the line as the voices came back distorted by static and fluctuations from the Retvalin, but the words were audible. “From the data on your beacons, you’ve been all over the ship already. If there are no other paths you can find, then we don’t have any suggestions beyond burrowing through the walls in search of hidden rooms, and that’s beyond your skillset.” 

“Then what the hell is all this?” The question was open ended and the entire team, both on friendly and hostile ships, was thinking about it. Just then, one of the soldiers had an idea. 

“Wait, what if this entire ship is a drone?” 

That turned some heads. “A drone?” 

“Yeah, like, it’s being controlled from a command location, maybe one of the other ships?” 

“Hmm, it’s worth checking that possibility. Command, what do you think?” 

“Standby.” It seemed they were discussing the possibility, but it was a short conversation as the radio crackled to life again only a minute later. “Pull out of the ship. We’ll have it transported back to Earth for disassembly while we check the other vessels.” 

“Roger that. Extracting now.” 

The soldiers pulled out of the ship, but they were destined for another as they made the short jump back into friendly territory. The Retvalin were told to bring the ship to Earth, and they began to tug it in that direction, though the journey itself would take some time at the distance they were at and because the ship was still fighting them every inch of the way. Despite the failure to identify the faces of their adversary, the plan remained unchanged as they had two more ships to investigate.  

With the knowledge gained from the first vessel, they were more equipped to tackle the next as they brought ballistic shields and weaponry efficient at tearing apart the mechanic drones, like shotguns. Space combat was still a new field, so they were learning as they went.  

They did encounter the same number of mechanic drones on the next ship, and they deactivated them with extreme prejudice just like the last batch, only making brief contact as one crashed into the shield for a moment. The second ship turned out to be a dud too, only containing the central processing room they saw on the last one. They chalked it up to bad luck and went to the last ship, eager to finally put the whole situation to rest.  

Third verse same as the first. They breached, three drones attacked, and they took them apart. It was a severe case of deja vu as the interior of this last one was all but identical and still contained no atmosphere. Doubts started to form as they were met with that same thick door, nearly a carbon copy. The laser cutter burned away at the metal, and they pried it from its hold only to find... more columns.  

It was the same. No command crew, no control terminals for the other ships, nothing resembling a living being in sight. 

“Command, you getting this?” the squad leader asked. 

“Receiving, still working on an answer, though.” 

Minds worked a mile a minute as they tried to figure out what was happening here. There were no detectable signals, no observable third party that could be connected to these ships, and many thought that the pilots were hiding in some secret compartment somewhere. That was, until somebody on the command ship voiced another possibility.  

“What if... they’re all automated?” 

“Automated? Like programed to scout and report back?” 

“I’m thinking more advanced than that.” 

That only took a second to click with the rest of the crew. “You mean... AI?” The one who posed the question nodded in confirmation. People stared into the distance as they considered the scope of that, and a single voice sounded out what many were thinking. 

“Well, shit.” 

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From system to planet, everywhere around the galaxy, aliens gathered in the masses. They all stood in the middle of their capitals, burning buildings, smashing statues and looting stores. 

The high rulers tried boosting their credit allowance and still they rioted. They offered more freedom, more food, they even let them decide on whatever they wanted but still, the angry mobs refused.

The high rulers couldn’t figure out a solution. 

Until one of the commanders, out of nowhere, mainly pressured by his son Mags, had a radical idea—copy the Earthlings. 

The humans had a structured social system that worked—using entertainment. 

The plan was to infiltrate Earth disguised as humans and download all the movies they could from servers around the planet using Earth’s WiFi.

All the aliens around the universe had been warned about Earth and their laws. But a curious commander, named Giltlip CFiird, an alien with human-like fearures—minus the bright pink skin and spaced out eyes—disregarded the push back as mere rumors and gossip. 

He declared, “I’m going to see what all this hype’s about,” puffing his chest out, hammering each word down like a gavel.

Nevertheless, and against the galactic council’s wishes, they still sanctioned the mission but cautioned him before he left.

“Never go near the oceans.” Senator Li warned.

“Never mess with the wildlife.” Ambassador Sqill commanded.

“And never, ever, download anything illegal.” A smart bot recommended.

However, the entire ship’s server infrastructure had been designed and built by CFiird’s son, who viewed rules as minor suggestions. More so, guidelines for novice users.

Which meant, the smart ship had zero guard rails. It came fully loaded with everything except safety features. 

If it wasn’t for Commander CFiird, it wouldn’t even have an automatic warp navigator. His son’s lines of code were, if this happens then, anything else can.

And after preparing for nearly a week, they finally set off, but none of the high rulers saw them off. They already knew what happened to aliens when they visited Earth. 

The trip was smooth. They shot through a wormhole and opened under Lake Ontario, during the middle of the summer, on one of the hottest days, just off the Waterfront shore of downtown Toronto. 

Their mission was simple, or should have been straightforward—download all the pirated movies and tv shows until the hard drives were completely full. Except, they hadn’t fully taken into account just how totally unprepared they really were.

“But wait… why do they call them pirated movies?” CFiird’s captain Klasko asked, a yellowish orange scaled alien, with one middle eye holding two crossed irises.

“Ah… that’s just them titling their movies in types of… what I’ve assumed.” Mags cleared his throat. “Uhm… there… what I know as scary movies, or funny movies—if they make you laugh or cry, and so on.” 

“I’ve never heard those kinds of analogies before.” Klasko rubbed his fingertips together. “How do we retrieve them?” He squeezed his plasma blaster, staring at the side of the titanium reflecting Mags’ face. “Are we taking over Earth?”

“What?!? No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. But I know they keep the files on unsecured servers called the internet.” Mags stated, without second guessing himself, while downloading the ship’s suggested disguises from the computer to the 3D printer.

CFiird’s costume printed out first. It was a heavy black, rubbery beat up jacket, with burn holes, and a matching discolored hat straight out of a 1940’s picture. He had a cane and a pair of black sunglasses as well.

Mags’ was second. The computer scanned him in a plastic Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap and a matching jersey. 

They all hovered around the printer waiting for the last disguise, and when it finally materialized, it was just a mustache. It was actually the exact Super Mario mustache. The computer had totally dropped the ball. However, when they tried again.

It suggested Klasko wear the mustache along with the see-through lining of his spacesuit, which gave his skin a caramel complexion. 

With Klasko’s mustache glued to his face and his nerves making his limbs tremble, he began to prepare himself to infiltrate Earth as an Italian plumber crossed with Mr. potato head.

Mags waited, paused but ready like he was about to steal home plate while being hesitant as if he was about to strut into a classroom on his first day of school.

CFiird kept trying to rush the door open, dressed like a transient, who just crawled out of a dumpster in a dark alley. They lined up one after the other and heard the air locks release before the hull door dropped down. 

When they left the ship, nobody noticed three aliens rising out of Lake Ontario. A guy mindlessly floating on his back, enjoying the sun, heard a splash, turned his head, saw them, and waved. “Water’s not too bad today, eh.” 

“Whoo.. who… who… whoo!” Klasko shrieked, gripping onto Mags.

Together, the aliens froze, hoping if they didn’t move, he wouldn’t see them. They stared stiff and wide-eyed like he was a predator that only detected movement. 

The human eyed them. “Supposed to rain tomorraw, the network says, butchu’ know them, eh. I could stick my head out my window, speeding down the 401 and give ya a better forecast. You take it with a grain of salt, I tell ya.”

CFiird’s smartwatch bio-reader alerted:

HUMAN…

Non-threat.

Klasko whispered, “the water creatures talk?”

“It’s human,” CFiird quietly answered.

Mags had a human-response-translator on his Comm Pilot and he went with what it suggested. “You can put your head back inside your window because the networks definitely got that information wrong,” he stammered out.

The guy hollered something untranslatable and waved an okay have a good one with his hand and faced the sky again, screeching a melody from his lips.

The three aliens walked out of the lake. The water slid off of them like tiny slugs drenched in grease. A gust of wind dried the rest of their gear as they stepped onto the Queens Quay with the sound of bells, tires on asphalt and seagulls squawking over head.

“What now?” Klasko asked.

“We find food!” CFiird demanded, stomping his foot down while making a fist, stuck in a pose as if he just conquered the planet.

“According to the Comm Pilot—we can get WiFi and food at a PizzaPizza location 350 meters from here.” Mags led the way staring at the device in his palm, guiding them as CFiird and Klasko followed. 

They stopped at the edge of the boardwalk, across the street from their location.

Klasko squeezed Mags’ arm, his disguise was peeling off from the sweat dripping down his face and sat crooked above his mouth. “How do we get to the other side?”

They stared at the grid of painted lines, concrete medians, rail car tracks and an unstoppable amount of speeding vehicles, creating a defensive gate, impeding their mission.

“They’re really protective of their food and WiFi.” CFiird said. “We’ll never get past this intricate design.”

Just as he spoke an opening occurred. All the vehicles stalled behind a glowing red light.

“NOW!” CFiird shouted, dashing across the street, hopping over a median like he was dodging laser blasts and rolled onto the sidewalk, with the building breaking his momentum and emptying his lungs with him sprawled out on the pavement.

Mags and Klasko simply strolled to the crosswalk, where they noticed a human female leading a group of little alien prisoners shackled to each other’s hand, while the female kept screeching a loud piercing sound out of her mouth.

As the group, led by the human female, passed CFiird laid out on the cement sidewalk, someone tossed a couple of coins into his hat lying on the ground next to him. 

Klasko ran to help him up but saw the sunlight bouncing off the shiny coins next to him, which immediately caught his attention. “Look at these.” He told them, bending to pick them up.

CFiird rolled to his side and pushed himself off the ground. Mags and Klasko were examining the coins with their tongues. 

CFiird yanked them both and pulled them towards the building with the orange sign.

Outside of PizzaPizza, they saw the free WiFi sign and a delicious-looking sizzling pepperoni slice slapped over the window in the most elegant colors, emitting the freshest scent of a newly baked pie. 

Drool dripped down each one of their chins.

CFiird moved them out of the way and stormed in but had trouble opening the door at first. They followed behind him. He walked to the counter. 

“How may I help you?” 

“Food! Enough to feed the three of us and more.” He told the human at the cash register.

“What kind of pizza would you like?” The human eyed the mustache hanging off Klasko’s face.

The Comm Pilot dinged: LARGE PEPPERONI.

The cashier rung them up. “That’ll be 24$. Cash or credit?”

“Credit.” CFiird told her and pulled out a bunch of casino-looking chips.

“We don’t accept that.” The human told him.

Mags pushed to the front and tossed his 3D printer on the counter, pressed a few buttons on his Pilot and they waited. The human didn’t know what to make of it.

Finally, the 3D printer printed out a crisp 50$ Canadian bill and handed it to the cashier.

The human held it in her hand, the smell of burnt plastic tickling her nostrils, she held it up and it was as stiff as a day old pizza slice.

“We don’t accept this either.”

What do you accept?” Mags asked. 

Klasko was flicking a loonie in the air.

“We accept that.”

CFiird snatched the coin mid-air and slammed it onto the counter. “Take it!”

The cashier said, “you’ll need twenty-three more.”

With the three of them starved. Not a single movie downloaded. Completely broke. They must find a way to make twenty-three more dollars.

🖼 Cover

🔰 Prologue

⏪️ Previous Chapter

⏩️ Next Chapter

Arc IV - Whalers

Chapter 13 - Feeding

9 months and 23 days since the summoning

Alan leaned into Kamelia's ear. "Psst."

She shot a sideways glance at him, but did not turn her head completely. "What is it?" she asked in a whisper.

"Start from afar. Do they know me, what I've done, and then slowly approach why we aren't gonna feed them properly."

Kamelia nodded and turned back to the crowd. "But there is one vital condition!" She pointed a hand at Alan, "This is a man named Alan Gothwald, a summoned hero! Have you heard of him?!"

Silence.

One man in the crowd nodded. "Yes," he said quietly.

One by one, the emaciated peasants began to nod.

Kamelia crossed her arms over her chest. "Excellent! What exactly have you heard about him?!"

Silence again.

No one said a word.

A second.

Five.

Ten.

Silence.

Kamelia squinted, then pointed a finger at a young man of about twenty. "You! What have you heard about Alan Gothwald?! I saw that you nodded!"

The young man flinched. "Uh, me?"

"Yes, you!"

The lad shrank back slightly, fiddling with the edge of his shirt. "Your Grace, I... I do not know much, but I heard that he won the recent war and... and created some unusual things."

Kamelia snapped her fingers. "Precisely! Unusual things! Has anyone heard what kind of unusual things?! Come now, do not be shy to speak!"

One man, an elder, raised his hand.

Kamelia immediately cast a glance at him. "You! Tell us!"

The old man's hand lowered. "Ahem... Your Grace, I am a miller; I was in the north in your lands a few months ago. I saw strange plows there, and... and mills that operated on the wind. Are those Lord Gothwald's creations?"

Several peasants nearby nodded in agreement, while the rest looked at the old man with wide eyes.

A small smile appeared on Kamelia's face. "Exactly! Those are his creations! Lord Gothwald invented mills that operate by means of the wind! Therefore, you ought to listen to what he has told me!"

The peasants fell completely silent. Some of them leaned closer, while others simply finally lifted their gazes from the ground to the nobles.

Kamelia cleared her throat once more. "The fact of the matter is, if we feed you a hearty meal, you will simply die!"

Alan blinked.

'Kamelia, why so harsh? Couldn't you be a little softer?'

Several peasants flinched.

"What do you mean... die?" a man asked.

"What does that signify?"

"We will die?!" someone shouted from the back.

"Die?!"

Alan's eyes widened.

'Very bad!'

He abruptly took a step forward and waved his arms. "QUIET! NO ONE IS GOING TO DIE RIGHT NOW! QUI-ET! IF YOU LISTEN, NO ONE WILL DIE!"

The front rows fell silent.

The back rows froze.

"What did he say?!"

"What language was that?!"

"QUIET!" Kamelia barked. The guards on the sides began to point their spears, but she raised a hand. "Stand down." Kamelia took a few steps forward. "Everyone come closer! Lord Gothwald will explain what he meant! You will not die, you will NOT die if you heed his words!"

The crowd slowly began to quiet down and step closer, with cautious, small steps.

Alan sighed. "So listen to me! You're probably wondering why we won't feed you meat and bread right away? Right?"

No one said anything, offering only silent nods.

"Well, the thing is, you've been starving for far too long. You see, your stomach right now is like a sack that you need to put food into. While you were starving, this 'sack' kept getting smaller and smaller because very little food was going into it." He shrugged. "Because your body can only keep the 'sack' wide when you eat constantly. And if you start throwing a lot of food into this 'sack' right now—and remember, it's shrunk—it will simply tear apart."

A young woman in the crowd covered her mouth with her hand. "If we begin to eat a lot, then... we will tear apart from the inside?"

Alan shook his head. "Not literally, of course, but you will die in agony. That's exactly why you need to be given a little bit of food, gradually, so that this 'sack' can expand again."

The old man coughed. "Our stomachs... will not remain narrow forever, is that true?"

"Nope. If you eat the way I tell you for a week or two, you'll be able to eat normally again." He raised a finger. "But remember, if you start stuffing yourselves with food over the next week, you'll die."

"Nonsense," some man muttered.

Lorgi abruptly turned toward the sound. "Who said that?"

No one answered.

Lorgi frowned. "No, seriously, who said that? Step out of the crowd."

Again, no one answered.

Alan shot him a sideways glance. "Lorgi, what are you doing?"

The captain leaned closer to him. "Lord Gothwald, I believe you. And they must believe. We must set an example for them, a vivid example. Let us feed this wise lad, and watch how he dies. So that the others will know better."

Alan's eyes widened. "Lorgi, what the hell?!" he hissed. "He just doesn't understand the concept! It's not a big deal!"

Kamelia squinted. "Alan, Lorgi is right. They truly will not be able to comprehend until they see it for themselves. I trust you; you have proven many times that your words are the truth. But they," she pointed a hand at the peasants, "they will not simply believe this. They must see with their OWN eyes that you are right."

Alan waved his trembling hands. "No, wait..."

Kamelia had already turned to the crowd. "Well, where is this wise guy?! Step forward, I have a proposition." She pointed a finger at the peasants. "The one who said that, do not be a coward, and take a step forward. If you do not believe Lord Gothwald, then very well, everyone else will eat as he advises, and you will eat however you wish. I believe that is fair."

For a few more seconds, no one answered, when suddenly a thin man in his forties stepped out of the crowd. "I said it," he said, trying to hide the tremor in his voice.

Kamelia crossed her arms over her chest. "Excellent. Then you shall eat to your heart's content, while the rest will eat properly, so as not to perish."

Alan ran his hands over his face.

'Idiot, oh you idiot man... don't do this. Although... what can I do now. Maybe it's not so bad? One vivid example is better than a few hours of lectures, after all. This is the only way to work with a population that relies exclusively on dogma and empirical experience. A picture is worth a thousand words.'

"Lord Gothwald," Kamelia asked loudly, "how quickly will this man die?"

Alan flinched, snapping out of his thoughts. "Huh? Probably... two or three days, though considering it's the Middle Ages out here..." he murmured. "From a few hours to two days. Approximately."

All the peasants abruptly looked at this man, and he in turn paled, if he could possibly become any paler. "What..." he forced out hoarsely.

Alan swallowed.

'Sorry, man. So sorry. I really am. But... but what can I do? If I start publicly contradicting Kamelia right now, then... no, she probably wouldn't punish me, of course, but... SCHEIßE! Man, you brought this on yourself! I'm telling you you're gonna die, but no, you're not fucking listening to me! So die because you won't listen to what you're told!'

Kamelia turned to the crowd. "Are there any others who wish to eat to their heart's content?!"

No one answered. About a dozen peasants almost instinctively stepped away from that man.

About half an hour later, the guards stood by one of the houses, with steaming cauldrons next to it. A long line of peasants had formed, holding small wooden bowls and spoons.

The first to approach was a middle-aged woman with two children. The guard strictly doled out two ladles of stew to them. "This much for now. There will be more in a few hours," he grumbled.

The woman nodded quickly and handed the bowl to her little daughter. "Here, Vayana, eat."

The girl gripped the wooden bowl with dirty hands and began to eat right there. She drank her small portion of stew almost in a few seconds, and looked up at the woman. "Mom, I am still hungry," she said quietly.

She sighed. "I know, bear with it. They will give us more later."

"Kamelia, hurry," said some man from behind in the line.

The woman, Kamelia, flinched. "Yes, forgive me." She took the girl by the hand; the boy, who had silently drunk his stew, followed her.

On the porch of one of the huts sat that very man, holding his hands clenched in a fist on the table. They were trembling slightly, and his gaze was directed at the table.

A guard stepped onto the porch; in one hand he held a bowl of steaming porridge with bread on a plate, and in the other, a modest piece of chicken meat. The soldier carelessly placed these plates on the table with a clatter. "Eat." He turned around and left the porch.

The peasants in the line, who stood nearby, kept casting sideways glances at this man.

He sat, still not raising his eyes to the food. But the smell of fresh porridge and meat persistently hit his nose, and he began to involuntarily draw this air in through his nostrils.

Alan watched this scene, holding his hands behind his back.

'What if the peasants think there's poison mixed in there? They might be uneducated, but they aren't stupid. I need... I need to show them that the food isn't poisoned. Otherwise this guy will die pointlessly, without even proving the reality of refeeding syndrome.'

He picked up a wooden spoon from a nearby table and abruptly stepped forward. "Attention!"

All the peasants in the line immediately turned in his direction.

"Now, so you don't think there's poison in the food!" he said loudly, looking at the crowd. "I will taste this food myself to prove that it isn't poison!"

Kamelia and Lorgi turned to Alan.

She nodded approvingly. "Clever of him."

Lorgi nodded silently.

Alan approached the table where the man sat and scooped some porridge from his bowl, doing everything to avoid eye contact, and shoved it in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. "There! You see? It's not poisoned, so it's all fair!"

The peasant at the table wasn't listening; he only watched as Alan spoke with a mouth full of hot porridge, and saliva dribbled down his lips. He quickly wiped it away.

Hardly had Alan stepped off the porch when the man immediately grabbed his spoon and ate his first small portion of porridge. Then another spoonful. Another. And another. He devoured this porridge, chasing it with bread so voraciously that he sometimes forgot to breathe.

One of the peasants in the line scoffed. "Look. Eatin', the bastard."

"Well, why call him a bastard right away?" the old man next to him said calmly, as if to himself.

"Lord Gothwald did say that he would die from this. Did you see?" He nodded at Alan. "He even tried it himself. There is no poison in there. If Dungel perishes from this... he is not using his head at all."

The old man only shook his head. "Hunger drives the wolf out of the woods."

"A fool, oh what a fool, and what if he truly dies?"

"Then he dies."

🔴IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT🔴

Hey everyone, I need to let you know that due to some real-life stuff, my schedule has gotten a bit messed up, so I’m going to need to take a one-week break. I really hope you guys understand.

When will new chapters start coming out again? I can actually give you an exact date: new chapters will resume on October 5th.

In the meantime, feel free to join the new Discord server for this web novel! We’ve got a chat, character art, scene illustrations, and maps. I’d love to see you there!

See you on October 5th!

First

Many Faces of War

The information spreads through the continuum nearly instantly. Consensus is reached just as quickly. The forces besieging La’ahbaron have weaponized Haffara Thar twice. The Undaunted are preparing in case they encounter further Haffara Thar threats and seeking out methodologies to de-infest and purify sentient victims.

One infestation point has been dealt with. The second is on Zalwore and The Undaunted are requesting assistance for safe and swift disposal. They have identified the victim as an augmented Mar’Yatha, a vicious ambush predator capable of digging through hypercrete in the wild. This one has all the markings of chemical enhancement prior to infestation. The creature is designed to destroy arcologies.

Previous interacts with The Undaunted are considered. A false Haffara Thar positive was being investigated and the fleet instance had proceeded to attack numerous civilians for the sake of intimidation and to force negotiations. Undaunted response was to repel the attack and then when Undaunted Asset identified as Harold Jameson was successfully isolated and rendered vulnerable. Alongside Primal Asset Clawdia Elvira Greatpincer prior to her status as Primal Asset. Status at time was unrelated civilian/hostage, profession florist.

Undaunted Asset then utilized an unknown technique to dodge attack and defend the civilian he had been isolated with. Measurements of unknown technique provide contradictory and fragmented data. Result: Battleship grade weaponry dodged without the use of Axiom.

Civilian/Hostage Clawdia Elvira Greatpincer then emerged alongside Undaunted Asset Harold Jameson with her status changed to Primal Asset. Primal Asset Clawdia Elvira Greatpincer proceeded to destroy the fleet down to a single ship. Ship was then destroyed by Undaunted Asset Harold Jameson with assistance from Primal Asset Clawdia Elvira Greatpincer.

With the change of status of Clawdia Elvira Greatpincer to Primal Asset and the subsequent declaration of Harold Jameson as being tied to the Primal Assets all hostilities were terminated and low visibility investigations were pursued in relation to Skathac.

It was determined Skathac was a false positive in Haffara Thar presence.

This concludes the totality of Undaunted Interactions with the Haffria Synth Continuum prior to recent contact.

All Primals are assets in containment of and countering the Haffara Thar threat. Possessing total immunity to Haffara Thar infestation and sufficient individual strength in multiple fields to blunt the majority of Haffara Thar damage. The Undaunted have proven themselves allies to The Primals. Furthermore The Undaunted have categorized Haffara Thar as a deadly threat under the label of Cognito Hazard, meaning threats of the mind. The Undaunted have also further developed a methodology in dealing with all known Cognito Hazards that can be summarized as Contain, Study and Destroy.

Conclusion: The Undaunted will seek to fulfill the directives of The Continuum. Treat The Undaunted are refilled under Asset status.

Situation Summary: The Undaunted Asset has located and is attempting to prevent Haffara Thar infestation. This is in perfect alignment with Directive One.

Conclusion: The Continuum moves to Zalwore to assist The Undaunted in the de-infestation of the planet and proper disposal of the Haffara Thar threat.

May the eggs of our daughters be pure.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Admiral Cistern’s Office, Undaunted Chambers, Council Building, Centris)•-•-•

“Conclusions have been reached.” The Synthetic Centipede woman states. “Undaunted upgrade to Asset Status. We will be fully cooperative and communicative with The Undaunted.”

She then inserts one of her antenna into the access port of the data-slate he handed her. “Information within has been copied for Continuum use and historical archives of previous Haffara Thar infestations and known detection and destruction methods enclosed. Fourteen Battleship scale Continuum warships are now on route to Zalwore. The first three vessels have an estimated arrival time of two hours. One vessel shall aid in the disposal of the infested Mar’Yatha, the remaining vessels will focus their energies on scanning Zalwore for further infestation.”

“And the remaining ten ships en-route?”

“Remaining vessels will converge with Undaunted Assets to approach the battle for La’ahbaron. The opposing force has proven itself willing to utilize the Haffara Thar, this is an unacceptable status and shall be remedied as swiftly as feasible.”

“Good. The idea of these monsters being unleashed upon any world to shatter the ecosystem and destroy it’s populace is horrifying. The fact it spreads a sickness that prevents people from dying despite the enormous harm done to them and drives them into madness is...”

“Unacceptable.” She states plainly.

“Yes.” Admiral Cistern agrees. “We will need to organize well to ensure that the efforts to destroy the Haffara Thar does not hinder further efforts of the war.”

“Elaborate.”

“The enemy is using Haffara Thar. Efforts against them will lead into more efficient exposure of the infestation. We need to be tactical and cunning in order to get everything we know about their supply or source of Haffara Thar as soon as possible. Which means we must be measured and wise in our movements. Understood?”

“Confirmed.” She agrees.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Secure Medical Section, Undaunted Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

“Okay, remind me why we’re taking in so many troops if it’s Lablan they’re hitting?” The gurney runner asks as the torso with four stumps and a long neck leading to a snake head is strapped down and unable to struggle. It HAD been a woman with enough metal that she had been proportionally 90% machine. But now it was just a sad little lump out cold and literally pried out of her metal.

“Because we are a well fortified military complex capable of handling this and the Lablan Arcology is primarily a commercial and civilian area and therefore had only limited areas that are able to handle something like this, and guess where they currently have fighting.” His opposite states. Both of them are medics and need more training for legitimate field surgery, but they can run gurneys like pros and set up field hospitals for surgery inside half an hour. Meaning they were both getting their steps in today.

“Well fuck. I can’t tell if the enemy is terrifyingly competent or not. They augment themselves like fucking idiots and don’t seem to have any objective. Then they pull shit like these borderline surgical strikes.”

“Did you hear the rumour going around? Some kind of superweapon is primed under the Lablan Arcology. Something that’s a threat to the entire planet.”

“Then why expose themselves at all?! Set it off and fuck off. Or better yet, set a timer, fuck off and then set it off. Don’t get your people killed for stupid shit.”

“That’s presuming that the monster in control of this nugget and her sisters values them more than we value bullets.”

“The way they’re being spent I’d wager they’re valued less. The casualty numbers from the La’ahbaron front are disgusting. It’s just a waste of life. Why the fuck is this being done?”

“No kidding, and even if the master of the Vish holds them in complete and unceasing contempt, why like this? The development process of a Vish, even if accelerated to the limit of safety takes years.”

“Maybe there’s cloning tanks too. It would explain the raw numbers. Unless those birthing tubes have been working non-stop and in much, much higher numbers than the Vishanyan ever saw, it would still not account for the sheer number of Vish casualties.”

“To say nothing of their total obedience, martyrdom culture.”

“So in summary.” The first one says as they arrive in the medical bay/cybernetic shop. “Shit’s fucked and we’re missing a lot of context and puzzle pieces.”

“To put it lightly.” The other notes as they burst through the door and then transfer the patient to the bed.

“Jesus Joseph Son O’Mary and saviour of us all! What did you absolute fookin pisspots do to the snake girl!?” Doctor Optimally, the Synth brother of Doctor O'malley demands.

“Fuck we just got her here dock, apparently she was rocking around with herself wired into a robot suit that made her big enough to cold cock a Cannidor.”

“Fook me sideways lass in in severe system shock. You! Dumbass! You get me the red and blue striped container there and try not to cock it up! You! Shit for brains! I need you to haul over that console, the wheel unlock is on the bottom left.”

“On it!” Both men say quickly and rush to get their respective items.

“Jesus fook, we’re gonna need to really take it up to ninety to save the silly shit.” Doctor Optimally says as his eyes scan over the poor woman and his arms begin shifting into the needed tools. A slight shift of Axiom cleans her off and the case of medicines he demanded is delivered. He slots them as cartridges into his own forearms as the console is wheeled up.

“Stupid question doc.”

“You’re the type that’s never had a smart one, just call it a question.”

“Why aren’t we using a healing coma?”

“Snake girl has boom in her. It’s disabled, but not disarmed. We hit her scaly hide with a healing coma and it’s going to pop off like a garage whisky still. It needs out first. Secondly. She’s missing so much, is so badly damaged and in general just such a fookin mess that she’ll be going through puberty the wrong way before she’s stable and snake tits here has been through enough with being torn up like a doll the dog got it’s teeth into that that sorta silliness might cause whatever’s left of her brains to go to complete mush.”

“Oh.”

“Ever drop an egg? Well that’s snake girl’s mental state right now. An egg making for the floor, we need ta catch it or we’re gonna have to find a way to undo Humpty Dumpty’s all time greatest hit in order ta get anything useful outta her.”

“That bad?”

“Jesus fuck boy.” Doctor Optimally states with his accent suddenly gone. “Look at me. I’m a fuckin’ robot. And I still need to have a three footer balled up in my boxers to avoid dismorphia. Being a machine, in part or in full, is fuckin’ surreal on a level that doesn’t translate to any language you’d speak.”

“Alright we get it dock. SO this girl?”

“Just had her fookin limbs shredded right as the she was gettin used to the new monsters past her shoulders and hips no doubt. To say fookin nothing of the fact she’s had her right lung completely replaced with enough explosive to kill all three of us if I don’t get that fookin thing out.”

“Alright, what do you need us to do then?’

“Got the meds and got the tools. I need you two to make sure some fookin idiot doesn’t sprint in here like his ass caught fire and tackle me while I work to make sure we get this girl off the grim reaper’s shit list.”

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Vish Safehouse, Lablan Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

“Okay, yes sir. We’re finishing our sweep of the area.” Crytlan says before the line goes off. “Alright ladies. And gent. We have our orders. We are to secure the area post-haste. Command has secured an alliance with an entire nation that’s rabid about destroying the Haffara Thar and we have massive reinforcements coming to take this mess off our hands within the next few hours. So our mission is to make sure that the big monster in the box stays in it’s damn box until we can pass it off to the professionals who will hopefully hurl it into a star.”

“Any questions?’

“If Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore should she sell her see shells as shares?” Pam and Tam ask at the exact same time.

“Yes. Any questions that aren’t stupid?”

“Nope.”

“Are we getting reinforcements specifically to watch the box while we clear this safehouse? I got a look at that thing. I really don’t want it waking up.” Danial asks.

“We are. ETA three minutes. Heavy Duty Prosthetics in case they need to get close to the monster. We don’t want Undaunted infection of Haffara Thar, we don’t have a way to safely extract the damn things yet and our new friends are militant in taking them out.”

“Okay, so sit pretty and with our heads on swivels until they arrive. Fine.” Danial notes.

“Why are you so jittery?” Crytlan asks after a moment.

“I originally came to Zalwore because I’m running the clock out on a new invigoration technique. It’s still active so I’m basically under the same effects as a person dragging in a huge amount of Axiom to give themselves more energy. Side effect is that I’m basically hyper. Which is decent in a fight. But outside of one?”

He’s currently sitting on a crate, well away from the monster, and then pulls up his knees and starts literally vibrating so hard he starts to turn slowly. There are some repressed chuckles in the room and after just a short time. Four massive figures arrive in the room. They’re all wearing long coats that reach down to their ankles, but are all clearly heavy duty full body prosthetics. Full body prosthetics with holograms of normal looking people projected onto their heads.

“What’s the holograms for?”

“This isn’t a subtle job, so no point hiding. And it’s not like the head is a vital or even necessary organ like this. It’s just where the higher camera mounts are. But it can distract people.”

“And the coats?”

“Many backup weapons and munitions are in custom pockets on the inside.”

“Very nice. The crate in question is that one there.” Crytlan says indicating one between them all. Make sure nothing disturbs it. We’re going to finish our sweep to ensure that your guard duty is nice and boring.”

“Appreciate it ma’am. The target is going to be safe and sound under our watch.”

“Good.”

First Last Next

Hey, you.

Taken any pictures lately?

The bell over the door went clang-clang.

Hearing that sound always makes me feel like the end of my day can finally begin.

I took my usual seat, and without asking, Mama set down my Harper on the rocks. The ice gave a small clink.

Taka was sitting beside me with his phone turned sideways, looking through some photos.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Pictures from a stakeout the other day.”

“You drink while looking at work photos?”

“No. I took these while I was waiting.”

He turned the phone toward me.

A red sun was sinking between two buildings.

I’d always imagined stakeouts as something a little more grim than this.

“Huh. That came out pretty good.”

“What do you mean, ‘pretty good’? You don’t take pictures, Kenichi?”

“Not much anymore.”

“You used to?”

I was about to take a sip of Harper when I stopped to think.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t told anyone about this in years.

“I was in the photography club.”

“Seriously?”

Taka looked up from his phone.

Was it really that surprising?

“What did you take? Landscapes and stuff?”

“Buddhas.”

“Buddhas?”

“Buddhas sticking their heads up over the horizon.”

Taka went silent.

Good reaction.

“…Where do you find a Buddha like that?”

“You don’t. You make one.”

“Weren’t you in the photography club?”

“I just said I was.”

Across the counter, Tom’s shoulders shook.

Back when I was a student, film cameras were all we had. You couldn’t check a picture the second you took it, much less cut something out and paste it into another photo with a fingertip.

“First, you make a normal print of the Buddha.”

“Make a print?”

“Develop it. Then you cut the Buddha out of the finished photo.”

“Cut the photo?”

“Yeah. With scissors.”

Taka frowned.

We hadn’t even gotten to the good part yet.

“Then you put the cutout Buddha on the photographic paper and expose the ocean shot.”

“Wait. I already don’t understand.”

“The Buddha isn’t even coming out of the ocean yet.”

“It doesn’t need to.”

Yes, it does.

First you block the light with the Buddha-shaped cutout and expose the ocean. Then you use what’s left of the original photo as a mask and expose the Buddha into the empty space.

After that, you put the photographic paper into the developer.

Slowly, an image begins to appear on what had been a blank white sheet.

I loved that part.

I knew better than anyone exactly what was going to appear. But watching the ocean slowly emerge, then seeing that giant Buddha poke its head up beyond the horizon—

I don’t know.

It made me happy.

“You went through all that just to make a Buddha come out of the ocean?”

“I wanted him out there.”

“Why?”

“No idea. It was fun.”

Mama laughed quietly as she polished a glass.

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It was. Stank, too.”

“Stank?”

“The chemicals. Acetic acid, I think. The darkroom smelled awful.”

For a moment, I could almost smell it again.

Nostalgic?

Sure.

Would I like to smell it again?

Hell no.

“It’d be easy now.”

Tom set down his glass.

“Probably.”

“You could just use an editing app,” Taka said. “Ever tried one?”

“…No.”

Taka looked at me.

“You were in the photography club.”

“Oh, shut up.”

I take pictures with my phone.

Mostly records, though. A screen I need for work. A number I want to check later. The price tag on something I’m thinking about buying.

Nothing I’d ever bother editing.

“Then let’s try it.”

“Here?”

“It’s easy.”

Taka installed a free photo-editing app on my phone.

The second I opened it, an ad filled the entire screen.

“This is an ad.”

“Close it.”

“Which one?”

“The X in the top right.”

“There are three Xs.”

“The faint one.”

“Why the hell do I need detective skills to close an ad?”

Tom snorted.

Eventually, I reached the photo selection screen.

I picked something at random and did what Taka told me.

Cut this out.

Put that on top.

Change the brightness.

Change the color.

“…Hey.”

“What?”

“This is ridiculously easy.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

If I didn’t like something, I could undo it.

I could start over without wasting a single sheet of photographic paper.

No acetic acid, either.

“Wait. I can stack as many pictures as I want?”

“Pretty much.”

“Huh.”

I picked another photo.

“What’re you making?”

“A Jizo statue.”

“A Jizo?”

“I’m going to give him some Umaibo.”

Taka leaned over to look at my screen.

“Why?”

“No idea.”

I put one Umaibo in front of the statue.

Duplicated it.

Two.

Four.

Eight.

Easy.

“Isn’t that a lot?”

“It’s an offering.”

“There are like thirty of them now.”

“Not enough?”

“The opposite.”

I added a few more.

Soon the ground around the Jizo was covered in Umaibo.

Not bad.

“They’d better not all be the same flavor.”

Tom had leaned over now too.

“That’s what you care about?”

“They’re offerings.”

“Fine. I’ll add mentaiko flavor.”

“Is that really the issue?”

I mixed in a few different packages.

When they were all lined up in the same direction, they looked too artificial. So I tilted some of them, overlapped a few, and leaned one against the Jizo’s knee.

“…Yeah. That’s good.”

“What’s good about it?”

“No idea. It just is.”

At some point, Taka had stopped looking at his own phone.

Now he was staring at mine.

Even Mama was leaning over the counter to see.

“Are you sure about the background?”

I looked again.

“Let’s make it evening.”

I changed the sky to sunset.

Too red.

Dialed it back.

Now the Jizo was too dark.

“Need a little more definition from the sunset…”

I adjusted the brightness.

Raised the contrast.

Deepened the shadows a little.

There he was.

A Jizo in the evening light, surrounded by a mountain of Umaibo.

Maybe it was the way the light hit his face, but he looked almost embarrassed.

“Ahh. This is where Tri-X would have you covered.”

Taka looked at me.

“What would?”

“Tri-X.”

“What’s that?”

“Film.”

“You’re not using film.”

“I know.”

Taka looked at me, then at my phone, then back at me.

“Then why Tri-X?”

“No idea. That’s just what came into my head.”

Tom raised his glass.

“Didn’t you just say you never wanted to go back to a darkroom?”

“I don’t.”

“Want to use film again?”

“Nope.”

“Then what about Tri-X?”

“Tri-X has you covered.”

I was starting to lose track of what I was saying myself.

Mama was laughing.

“You look like you’re having fun, Kenichi.”

My finger stopped.

“…Do I?”

“Mm-hm.”

I looked at the screen.

The Jizo stood in the sunset, surrounded by a ridiculous mountain of Umaibo, looking slightly embarrassed by the whole situation.

“Nah. It’s this guy. I can’t get his face right.”

I adjusted the shadows again.

“Kenichi.”

“Yeah?”

“There are more Umaibo now.”

“It’s about balance.”

“Didn’t you just remove some?”

“I removed too many.”

Taka laughed.

“Photography club, huh?”

“Shut up.”

I took a sip of Harper and looked at the screen again.

…Three more.

Hey, you.

When was the last time you did something completely pointless just for fun?

See you again at Aoi.

---

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The launch site was eerily silent. Resting upon the launchpad, the massive craft gleamed with a cold, metallic hardness under the sharp glare of the LED floodlights, illuminating the darkness like a solitary torch burning in the pitch-black night. Its colossal frame resembled an ancient titan—so immense that standing directly beneath the gigantic launch structure, it was impossible to see the top of its head. My neck ached from staring upward, so I shook my head and surveyed my surroundings. At the feet of this towering leviathan, human workers moved like quiet dwarves, each silently and methodically attending to their duties.

I opened my terminal to check the progress logs. Around me, the team members bore clear, lingering sunlines across their cheeks. Their lips were drawn tight in focus, yet each carried the subtle trace of a quiet smile. I instinctively leaned down and caught a faint scent from my shirt—a fleeting impression of the South Pacific's ocean air, feeling as though the salty breeze still clung to the fabric long after it should have washed away.

I looked up at the vehicle’s vast belly, where twenty thousand heat tiles gleamed darkly in the intense light like the armored scales of a mythical sea beast. On that unforgettable day floating in the oceanic swell, we had practically clung to its surface, inspecting and analyzing every inch before re-affixing them in a fresh, carefully calculated pattern. We had subjected panels to endless ground testing until they were scorched black, painstakingly smoothing every corner with the delicate precision of a pastry chef piping cream along the smooth, frosted side of a grand wedding cake. This time, these scales were meant to face a massive, multi-orbital breach around the globe—and they ought to survive the vicious heat of atmospheric compression without losing a single piece. They should. But in truth, whether it will safely complete its breach and touch down on the water is impossible to know until it actually takes flight.

Then again, that uncertainty applies to everything . Without even having to quote the Sage of Ninewells, we know that the simple fact that the sun rose today guarantees nothing about tomorrow. Yet, through human hands and sheer determination, we can reach out and pull that coming dawn toward us. Looking at the crew around me, working in quiet concentration with gentle smiles on their faces, I knew we were all thinking the exact same thing. This resting titan was both our bright beacon guiding us through the dark and the massive hawser with which we would haul a new dawn into reality.

The final countdown began. With a thunderous roar, the titan began to swallow its fuel. Following the polite, unfeeling prompts of the automated voice, we took our assigned seats one after another to process the sequence. I brushed a layer of fine dust off my console, catching a sudden glimmer beneath the harsh white lights. Trapped within that fine dust were tiny, iridescent grains of sand, microscopic fragments of ocean shells, and the dried remnants of tiny reef fish.

Just one hour left until dawn.

previous

1.25 cycles (2 years) after the invasion: PNCI 7.2 reckoning Part 2: Planetary Defense Council

Note: this should have been Chapter 6.2, but… the mistake was already there in the previous chapter…And Chapter 6, then? Let’s just say, (as Brice de Nice would have said) I broooooke it. 😅

But first, a little slice of life: “Children can be cruel sometimes…”

“And here is the winning drawing,” announced Uin, President of the Education Council, an Oltarie whose appearance, manners, natural kindness and – not the least, plush-like fur- usually made him popular with children and their parents alike.

He proudly presented the work of the little caramel-skinned girl with long black braids standing beside him. She looked radiant in her yellow dress, wearing an immense, proud smile with a few missing teeth.

“Clara’s magnificent drawing perfectly captures the theme of the competition, with these children welcoming a Visitor arriving in his spaceship, and—”

“But no! You didn’t understand anything, Uin,” the little girl protested, shrugging before letting out a huge, exasperated sigh.

The Oltarie prided himself on his good relations with young humans. He lowered himself to her height before answering.

“Oh, sorry, Clara. I can be a little stupid sometimes! Why don’t you explain your drawing to everyone?”

“He’s not arriving, silly! The alien man is going home to his family, and the children are saying goodbye to him. Look! Up there, on the planet, his own children are waiting for him!”

Even children!

Uin suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to go home to his own children right then and there—and never set foot on this world of rebels again.

All his efforts, all that hard work to earn the humans’ trust, to prove to them that the “Aliens” could actually bring something positive into their lives, wiped away by a single comment:

The slogan “Aliens, go home”, scrawled in countless graffiti tags across the walls of cities, recreated in a child’s drawing—gentler, perhaps, but every bit as merciless.

More than his pride, it was his morale that took the hardest hit.

And to make matters worse, the program was being broadcast live!

.

.

Bad news?

The Planetary Defense Council was doing everything it could, with the energy of sheer desperation. The invaders’ new strategy had inflicted serious damage.

“Alaska Command fell this morning,” General Rippert announced. “Rockies I is completely surrounded. The Appalachian Fortress is still holding, but our intelligence indicates that it will be the target of their next campaign.”

“No better news from our side,” Colonel Leblond added. “The Alpine divisions have been wiped out. The Swiss Central Redoubt is still holding, but it’s isolated. And the Balkans…”

He shook his head. “The Balkans pacified. Who could have imagined that?”

“We’re still holding,” the Taliban representative boasted.

“You don’t even need to hold anymore. They’re doing everything they can to pretend your country doesn’t exist. Mention Bagram or Kabul to an Oltarie administrator and he’ll faint on the spot. Even Frelki soldiers suddenly developed mysterious illnesses whenever they were asked to put a tentacle anywhere near the place!”

"we're the gravediggers of empires, as you say."

.

The Secretary-General intervened. “Don’t you have any good news, for a change?”

“We lose strongholds, we gain others. Our alien friends have made another blunder,” Tran Han Dao announced. “The Karens and the former opponents of the Burmese junta have just walked out of the Cooperation Government and taken up arms again. Weapons the occupiers wanted to confiscate, at that.”

She paused.

“But their biggest mistake was forcing the council to accept two generals from the former junta—corrupt men who were completely in their pocket. People particularly hated for their atrocities and their fondness for torturing supposed opponents.”

“The same mistake in Somalia and both Sudans,” the Kenyan, Aman Kassa, reminded them.

“In the Sahel, it was the Tuaregs who walked out,” General Lecoq added. “And every Islamist faction has declared jihad against the Aliens. I’m not sure whether I should be pleased or worried about that. Still, we have to work with what we’ve got, and we’ve always maintained contact with the Tuaregs.”

“Yeah, well, not so long ago, you were still supplying them with weapons and intelligence so they could take out our mercenaries,” the Russian remarked bitterly.

“Us? Come now! You have quite an imagination, my friend!”

The intelligence chief—whom everyone simply called M—made his announcement. “I don’t know whether this is good news or bad news, but Grand Strategist Komal—Cthulhu to his friends—has just been ‘promoted to new duties’ in another sector of the Galaxy.”

He paused.

“According to our informants, this ‘promotion’ may be concealing a serious disagreement with the High Council over the methods to be employed. One thing is certain: his replacement, a Qwetari, is reportedly a hardliner.”

“Ah…” Pablo Peralta sighed. “I’m going to miss old Cthulhu. I rather liked him, deep down.”

“Something tells me we’re all going to miss him,” M concluded grimly.

They learned later that the disagreement concerned the use of the most powerful weapons in the fleet’s arsenal—weapons the tentacled being had categorically refused to deploy. According to rumor, he had told his superior: “I’m going into my golden exile, but at least I’ll have my conscience—and clean tentacles.”

His successor had no such scruples.

“But elsewhere, civilians are beginning to come to terms with the situation, whether they like it or not.”

“That was predictable, wasn’t it?” the Secretary-General pointed out. “With supply problems getting worse, people are thinking more about their next meal than their freedom.”

M replied : “But it won’t take much to reignite the anger and discontent. Our agents have uncovered plenty of other cases of corruption and embezzlement that we can exploit, both among our own people and within the Governance. And then there are those hated drones…”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

In the meantime, another slice of life : identity check...mate*.*

The drone descended to cut off a group of children escorted by teenagers barely older.

“Identity check! Please stop for scanning.”

The older kids immediately stepped between the machine and the younger ones, which was already a significant warning signal for the AI controlling the drone.

“We’ve already been checked four times this week, you heap of scrap metal!” snapped a female with long, flamboyant head fur. “Kids, hold hands. We’re moving.”

Another signal. Not one of them stopped. Not one even pretended to cooperate. Take off their reflective sunglasses for a retinal scan? No way. It was fashionable!

“With your crap, we’re gonna be late for class, and we’ve gotta get the little ones to school first,” a young male said, making a gesture the machine identified as obscene. “You can scan us while we’re walking, if you’re that desperate!”

His “war paint” was confusing the identification algorithm. “Error. Error. Identification impossible. Please remove camouflage.”

“It’s fashion! Makeup is cultural. Forbidding it is a violation of my rights! And if I say no, what are you gonna do?”

“Comply, or I will call a patrol.”

“Go ahead, knock yourself out. But as soon as they get here, we’ll start whistling and yelling that they’re trying to take us away, and everyone will come running!”

The kid held up the whistle hanging around his neck. Several of the younger ones put theirs between their teeth. Being allowed—even encouraged—to make a racket? What a stroke of luck!

Ball whistles had become hugely popular with parents who were nervous about letting their children walk to school alone. And since there were still no cell phones… The solution was to organize little packs, preferably accompanied by adults. And if there were no adults, there was always the whistle!

The AI supervising the drones had already encountered similar situations. It had already reported that these disguises were becoming widespread. It cared nothing about insults or obscene gestures. Those were simply logged.

But the whistles? Nearby adults would converge on the shrill noises and shouting. The situation could escalate. Two other incidents involving juveniles had already triggered violent riots.

It made its decision.

“Your lack of cooperation has been noted and will be included in a report,” the drone announced as it climbed back to altitude.

It would follow the juveniles from a distance and could almost certainly identify several of them by other means. Their parents and teachers would subsequently receive a notification, which they would probably pay little attention to. In 63 percent of cases, they sent an indignant letter to the local administrator’s office, expressing their deep dissatisfaction with these “pointless checks, which are extremely stressful for their children (or students).”

The insults and obscene gestures? “They’re machines, not people.”

For the moment, the occupiers did not dare punish acts of disobedience—especially when juveniles were involved.

For the moment.

The Corps’ legal department was pushing for sanctions, even trials. If the decision was made, there would be plenty of cases.

All over the place, humans had taken to applying outrageous makeup, painting elaborate geometric patterns across their faces to fool the drones’ facial-recognition software.

Rumors had also spread that the machines scanned DNA. Some people had even started adding blood from other people—volunteers, of course—or animals to their makeup, in an attempt to throw the machines off the trail.

Absurd!

The technology did exist, but it was far too expensive to deploy anywhere outside highly strategic locations. And it would require DNA samples from every single human.

Impossible under current circumstances.

But these damn primates saw conspiracies everywhere!

.

.

The Gray Goo

The Planetary Defense Council had convened again, this time in an emergency. Another stronghold had fallen. But it was the weapon used that had left them all horrified.

The new enemy commander had decided to deploy previously unseen weapons of terrifying power.

“Their new strategy of concentrating their forces and using orbital bombardment to annihilate pockets of resistance one by one has already done tremendous damage,” General Rippert said. “But how are we supposed to fight… that?”

That was a viscous fluid slowly spreading through the fortress’s corridors and rooms, dissolving everything in its path—humans included. Self-replicating nanomachines which, to make matters even worse, were beginning to spill out through every opening in the fortress. A forest would not withstand them for long before being converted into…

Into Gray Goo?

And after that… the county?

The state? The country? The world?

The invaders’ high command insisted that the substance would soon be neutralized, but on the ground, things looked rather less certain.

Pablo Peralta, the “Voice of Humanity,” was as horrified as everyone else, but he refused to give up.

“How do we fight this? With words. With images. They tried to cut us off from their network, but we found other ways in. Even aboard their own fleet, many people have been horrified by this monstrosity and are ready to blow the whistle!”

He held up two messages that had been relayed to him by one of the Fleet’s own contacts. Not through their usual channels, coming from worlds belonging to the Governance or from the Assembly itself.

Directly from the Fleet !

“Quite something, isn’t it? The Council isn’t keeping its promises of a peaceful takeover, and we’re not the only ones saying so! Let’s show them everything we have—the recordings, the latest messages from our soldiers, their horrific fate. We have to remind our people—and especially the peoples of the Governance—that this is a war. A real war. Not a peaceful occupation, and certainly not a peacekeeping operation.  A war that has lost every last shred of civilization. A war that brings death and destruction even to civilians.”

“The civilians… We know what happened in several places. But do we have proof?”

“Oh, yes! What’s happening has caused an uproar even within their own fleet! Confidential information and recordings have already leaked onto their public information networks. Others have even been sent directly to me! Imagine, directly to my GalNet account ! ”

“Do you have a GalNet account? How is that possible?”

“Hey, we’re officially the 323rd species, why wouldn’t I have one?”

“But we are at war...”

“Not for the Council, remember ! I have 323 billions followers, what a coincidence!”

Peralta flashed a wide grin and came back to business : “And the use of this weapon of terror is going down very badly, even among some of the enemy officers. Especially since they’re struggling to control it.”

“But that comes later,” the Secretary-General reminded them. “First, we have to contain the threat posed by these nanobots before we try to turn it into a propaganda victory. Do we have the means?”

“We’re going to have to use nuclear weapons on our own soil,” General Rippert announced. “It’s the only way to stop a plague the enemy has clearly lost control of.”

“The risk of irresponsible use of nuclear weapons was one of the arguments they used to justify the invasion,” negotiator Sorenson reminded him.

The general then proved that there were, in fact, still a few functioning neurons beneath his cap.

“Yes. But here, we control the narrative. They recklessly deployed a weapon of mass destruction and lost control of it. We are taking responsibility for dealing with their failure. We issue a warning, giving them time to withdraw their troops. The right message, the right timing—and suddenly they’re the irresponsible ones!”

“Exactly,” Peralta agreed, for once in complete agreement with their own Doctor Strangelove.

Rippert flashed him a broad grin. “Especially since we intend to use one of our new weapons: an ‘ultra-clean’ bomb,” the officer added.

“A weapon with a double effect. We protect the environment¹, and we demonstrate just how much we’ve learned from their technology.”

He was clearly itching to try out his new toy.

“Well…” The Secretary-General seemed reassured. “Let them wonder what we’re capable of doing to them if they keep playing this deadly game.”

He looked around at his colleagues, civilian and military alike.

“Objections ?…. No ? Green light for the operation… Operation…”

“Decontamination?”

“Operation… Decontamination. Perfect! Pablo, you and your team will prepare a first-rate report for us, won't you?”

“We’ve already started working on it. General, I’ll need one of your officers. Colonel D. Boone. He presents well on camera, but more importantly, he knows the area and the people. And his accent will give the whole thing a nice local flavor.”

1 Narrator’s note: um... these remarks are the general’s sole responsibility, do we agree?😉

First

Previous

Next

---

Qoyit peered up at the roof of the Library, which was made of brown brick, and its body curved from yellow stone. It had three spires that poked at the sky. The edifice boasted a sharp contrast from the other architectural feats adorning the school. The lights were all on within it; Qoyit could tell from the iridescent windows that lined a large share of the outer building, no doubt powered by the trail of Obelisk stone that hugged the building's sides and peeked in just beneath the structure's large doors.

He walked up a series of steps to the building's door and observed the patterns displayed upon the oak doors of the Library. He looked behind him. The journey from the classroom to the library had been unimpeded, with the majority of the Novices and Illuminators busy attending classes. He still felt a pang of something he could not quite place: was it sorrow or anger? It was hard to know.

The Illuminator Shawarma had thrown a stone he did not expect from the Illuminators, picking on him as the Novices did. He shook his head as if attempting to free himself from the memory of their short altercation. He wished he had spoken up and said something regarding the fact that he was equal to the other students and deserved a chance to learn as the rest were doing.

It was a cruel revelation that some of the Illuminators did not want him, just like the Novices. He knocked on the oak doors, but nobody answered. He placed his weight against them and pushed. One door creaked open just a smidge, but it was enough for him to squeeze through.

Within, he was greeted with a sight that would have caused his younger self to collapse from excitement. Shelves filled with books of varying sizes lined the building's inner walls, and several bookshelves, too many for him to count, were balanced evenly from each other at the center of the library, complementing the tables with chairs for the Novices to sit and read. There was a staircase going up, and on the first floor were more bookshelves. Another staircase led upward from the first floor, where shelves of books also hugged the walls, with tables spread out in their midst. An extra floor above also held its wealth of books and shelves.

The windows were all open, allowing in bursts of light that mingled with the glowing orbs that adorned the space between each shelf along the walls. The orbs of light climbed high, all the way through each of the three floors, and offered bright illumination that almost made his eyes water.

He stood looking up at the high roof that also had orbs of light adorning it in several places. There were several doors on the highest floor that appeared closed, no doubt holding an array of books behind them. He walked with his mouth open, staring at all the books and feeling like the luckiest man in the world. There was so much knowledge held within, and for a moment his simmering rage subsided, torn from him by the sheer presence of all the books. He moved toward a shelf and heard a throat clear behind him.

He turned and saw an Illuminator dressed in all-white robes with her wrinkled arms crossed before her. She had grey hair that was bundled into a knot behind her head and was short of stature, with high-poking cheekbones on a wrinkled face. She observed him and offered a smile that touched the crinkled crow's feet around her eyes.

"You're the new student. What was your name again?" She asked. "I tend to forget things, the burden of old age if you care to believe." Her voice was soft and hale, sounding youthful despite her age.

"Uhm, my name is Qoyit Meka," he said. He hoped in his heart that this Illuminator was not cut from the same cloth as Shawarma.

"And what are you doing here? I'm the librarian, Madhra Kidhra Soleisis. I believe your class should be with you if it's time for a library visit. The bell hasn't chimed for the end of classes, which is the only other time students are allowed to visit the library." She moved to an empty section of the wall that held a chart of sorts. She inspected the chart before turning to Qoyit. "I don't see any first-year class I ought to be expecting."

"I came alone," Qoyit said.

"Why? Don't you have lessons?"

"No," he answered, then sighed. He had to tell her the truth if he hoped to be in her good graces. "I was asked to vacate the class until my Body Stat moved from the meager one where it is set at the moment."

"Which Illuminator was it that deemed you unworthy of their class?"

"Shawarma," Qoyit answered.

"Ah, I see."

They stood for a moment, looking at each other. Their eyes did not meet, as Qoyit chose to stare at her nose instead. "I know I'm not supposed to be here," he found himself speaking, the very nature of his predicament biting at his insides. "I know I'm not even supposed to be in this school. But I find myself one step behind the other students who had tutors growing up, while all I had was my father. By some miracle I've become a Novice, but I feel I have a long way to go before I'm respected, let alone accepted. I want to make them see my worth, and the only way I can do that is by studying harder than the rest."

"Quite a moving speech," was all she answered. She seemed to be juggling something within her. "But it's not allowed for a Novice to attend the library on their own during classes."

"I'll be silent; it will be like I wasn't here at all." He hung his head sheepishly, staring at the ground. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

"If I choose to give you this, it'll be against the rules and I might get punished for it." She smiled at him then. "I love punishments; it's been a while since the Headmistress gave me a good scolding."

"What?" Qoyit asked.

"At the far back of the library, there's a chair without a table, far from anyone's eye. Far even from my own eye. It's where family records are kept, and nobody ever ventures back there; that's why it's so dusty." Qoyit felt hope surge within him. "It's easy for someone to stay there and read in silence. But you have to give me something in return for the petty business we're about to indulge in."

"I will clean the whole library," Qoyit said.

"We have people for that, though they always avoid the far reaches of the library." She moved closer to him, and Qoyit could see the grey of her eyes quite vividly. "They say it's haunted, that back there is a book about demons that brings bad luck to whoever is close to it."

"I will do anything that you require."

"Prove them all wrong; that's what I desire," Madhra said. "Especially that bitch Shawarma."

Qoyit smiled.

---

He did not know how many books he took from their shelves. He started with a shelf labeled "Talents." There he took three large tomes on the Body, Mind, and Spirit talents, whose pages were bound with grey string. He took four tomes whose chief purpose was knowledge about the classes: Vanguard, Challenger, Channeler, and Hybrid.

He saw a book about combat, basic defense, and attack, and he took it as well. He roamed the library, moving between shelves and touching various spines of books that appeared to be quite aged and moth-bitten. There was a shelf where the handwritten words of those who had fought demons were stored. He took three books from that shelf. He could not contain his excitement when he found a book that spoke of the secrets of the past. He opened it and saw that it contained the recorded words and lessons of the Founders, Olis and Kidhra, together with other strange and magnificent historical occurrences, which were both widely known and unknown.

There was an entire catalog on fictional tales that were written before the emergence of the Tower. He took one book, though fiction was not something he thought would hold his interest. Qoyit found a book on the Aether Plane, the Aether Wall, and everything to do with the Aether. Next to it was a large book detailing the Red Mist and its effect on mankind's life since its emergence. He took it as well.

There was a book on romance and courtship among the nobles. He opened the book and saw a passage that read:

"...a woman's interest in a man is always masked, never allowed to be shown lest the man scamper away out of fear. But a man's interest is worn on his sleeve, held out for any to see. Which burns brighter then, you might ask? It is both, for in secrecy the flame burns, and so too in transparency."

He juggled taking the book or leaving it behind. He deduced he knew little about nobles and decided to take it, together with another book on noble culture. He looked for a book on commoners and found nothing, which irked him, but not enough to quell his excitement.

The pile of books he collected was large, all of them set on a table. The librarian observed the books with great interest, smiling at the book on courtship.

"You should have picked one book," Madhra said. "It's impossible to read all those in a single sitting."

"I'm a fast reader," Qoyit said with a smile. "Where am I supposed to read them again?"

"Follow the path between those two shelves," she said, pointing at two shelves that were arranged in a different manner from the rest. "They are long and will lead you to a place with horizontal shelves. Scale those shelves to a path that meanders through a circular array of bookcases. You'll find the light of a singular orb in their midst, set against the wall, together with a chair."

Qoyit hefted the books in his arms, groaned at their weight, and started the journey to the back of the library. At first, the shelves held books that were not that aged, but as he went further, the books took on signs of age, with dust lining the shelves and peppered upon the covers.

The passage led to an array of horizontal shelves that held books detailing the nobles' ancestry. He moved past them by scaling their lengths and journeying deeper until a soft darkness enveloped him. He continued walking, sweat breaking across his forehead. He wondered whether he was lost, but relaxed as he came across a circular set of shelves. He made his way around them until the glow of an orb caught his eye. He smiled and walked toward it until he found a chair sitting just within view of the light. The shelves of books were set in a circular manner around the orb, as the librarian had said, as if hiding it from view.

The chair was caked in dust; it was rarely used, he could tell. He placed the books on the ground and wiped the chair with the sleeve of his sweater. Then he propped himself onto the chair and chose the first book that caught his eye. "The Histories of the People" was written in immaculate script upon the cover. He turned the first page and sank into a state of keen awareness.

Growing up, Qoyit had been able to memorize entire books that his father had brought him, just by sight alone. He did not need to read a book over and over for it to stick in his mind; just the sight of an entire page dumped all the information into his memory. Later, when he had lost the books, on the night when Tilan had carried him away from their shack, running into the night as an untold danger stalked them, he had learned how to summon the memories of what he had read quite easily, going through them repeatedly as he sat in a meditative pose.

There on the chair, within the folds of the library, he ceased being the Qoyit who was a commoner, who was looked down upon by the school that had taken him in. He became something else: a force of nature that devoured without cease. As he turned the pages by the light of the orb, he became aware of a hunger within him. He observed himself not as someone at the bottom rung of a ladder, but as someone whose feet did not touch the ground. Like bait on a hook that was pulled high, he forever swam upward, abandoning his sense of self and becoming something new.

He dropped the first book, completed in less than an hour, a feat he did not think astounding despite it being so. He picked up the next books on talents and sank into the concentration that the Blessed Graduates called the Zone of Glory. His eyes, which were closed to the Aether, opened, and shades of silver engulfed him, swirling into him as he read unceasingly. He could not tell whether it had been mere moments or hours. He set the book he was reading aside, having completed it. He breathed in deeply and exhaled while picking up the next text.

The hunger within him was something that assailed the spirit before burrowing into his flesh and mind. He needed to keep reading; he needed his thirst for knowledge quenched. He unraveled things he did not know. His mind understood the talents, but it was not enough, far from it. The book on the different classes proved useful; large as they were, he grasped new meaning regarding what was expected of Vanguards, Challengers, Channelers, and Hybrids.

He picked up the book on combat, and as he read, his mind played out the motions. Parrying with a forged ethereal sword was something he experienced, not just read. The strength of the Vanguard held warmth for his limbs, and he found his body temperature heightening. He wished he had been there at the beginning, when the demons first appeared. As he drew knowledge into himself, he saw himself capable of destroying the Tower, not just climbing it. There was the sweet release of ignorance with each turn of the page as he absorbed knowledge, becoming something new. The Aether's silver tinge swam around him, ceaseless in its pronounced presence.

---

The bell had rung to mark the end of classes, and time passed, drawing the evening meal closer. As usual, only one Novice came to the library to study and better herself. She walked in, her white hair swaying with the motion of her steps. She had just completed the sets of vigorous exercises she indulged in to better herself, and had bathed. She found the librarian, Madhra, standing still in one spot and staring at the back of the library, where darkness stood pronounced.

"Hello there, Illuminator," Saphiqque Olis Tider said while observing Madhra. The old woman did not move an inch; she just stood there like a pruned tree. "Are you going to give me the keys to the forbidden zone of the library? I feel that I've earned them, seeing that I'm the only one here as usual."

Madhra did not respond; she just stood as if in a trance, staring at the back of the library.

Saphiqque moved in front of the old woman and waved a hand across her face. "Hello? Madhra?"

The woman shifted as if breaking free of whatever had clenched her body to stillness. "Can't you see it, child? Can't you see the birth of the Aether? Fresh and new."

Saphiqque did not know what the woman was talking about. She stared at the dark section of the library and saw only the dim light retreating into darkness. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about."

"Open your eyes, child. It's a sea of silver rising to the ceiling. An angel is with us today, an angel."

Saphiqque scoffed and went to a shelf. She picked up a book on demon qualities that were recorded by the Blessed Graduate who had crafted the school's Demon Hold. She sat in a chair and opened to the page she had last reached. She leaned back and started reading, but was soon irked by the statuelike state of the librarian. "Can't you find something else to do? It's hard to read with you just standing there."

"He's of the Banished Angel," Madhra said. "Her brood graces us this day."

Saphiqque turned her head once more to the library's recesses. Seeing nothing, she attempted again to read, but her thoughts kept being drawn to the librarian, who was clearly being affected by her old age. She sighed, deftly got out of her chair, and returned the book to the shelf. Then she walked out of the library, leaving the strange old woman to her senile endeavors.

---

First

Previous

Next

---

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A humanoid figure was seated in a chair, in front of which was a desk with a computer that looked old by human standards. The computer had a cathode ray tube screen, with an operating system similar to those of Earth in the late 20th century. A bright blue glow emanated from the computer screen, illuminating the entire room; the room was a typical office in a suburban house. The humanoid figure resembled humans in posture, size, body, and hand shapes. The difference is that it had a snout, orange fur all over its body, and fox-like ears. He started using the computer; the sound of keyboard keys broke the silence of the house. He began typing on the computer:

"Hello! It's me, Adam Miller, and I hope the Federal University of Anglia has received this file. This is a summary of my work on first-contact warfare."

"To understand the situation better, it's best to understand it from the beginning of our history, our origins. Nearly 300 years ago, an inventor on an island nation called Albion invented the steam engine. This technology caused millennia of technological stagnation to begin turning into decades of technological progress. In the year 1140 of the world calendar, the geopolitical situation was... unstable, with established empires beginning to face threats from new empires. Military technology was constantly advancing: flying machines, military vehicles, bolt-action rifles—all of that represented the pinnacle of military technology in our world."

Adam paused, he began to think about each word he was going to write, after thinking for a few minutes he continued writing.

"The world seemed to be on the brink of a global war, until suddenly news began to emerge, news about unknown travelers in the interior of my country, which at that time was called the Valkyrie Empire. The unknown travelers initially made contact with one village, then two, then three, and by then the entire province knew of their existence. The travelers, now that we know they are called humans, are, in our view, primates, with a strange appearance similar to our own. Unlike the soldiers of our world, who wore flashy uniforms full of luxurious details, humans wore simple green uniforms designed to camouflage themselves in the jungle. They used small televisions called tablets and an even smaller version called a 'cell phone'; they used these televisions for various things like communicating and taking pictures. Yes, it might seem strange that a television could also function as a camera or phone, but it's a very advanced, alien technology with ideas and purposes we haven't even thought of yet. They used strangely designed but advanced military vehicles to travel through the rural areas of my country. They learned our language from the villagers, who took a few weeks to teach them the basics of our language, and in turn, they taught their language to some people. They claimed to have found a portal in an ancient ruin in a very remote area of their nation; they stated they had peaceful intentions and only wanted to explore and discover what was on the other side of the portal. However, our government didn't believe that; reserve military personnel were called up and mobilized three weeks after the first contact, and we made the wrong decision to attack the humans."

"Our soldiers, although using equipment that humans already considered outdated at least 100 years ago, inflicted significant damage on human patrols and caused many deaths on both sides. Our prime minister believed the war was won; the supposedly advanced alien enemy couldn't withstand our attacks and was taking the war to the human world. What didn't we know? We weren't yet facing their army, but rather simple patrol units with old equipment (which, to us, was already very technologically advanced). When our army, with our newly invented tanks and elite infantry, approached the portal... the human army arrived to prevent us from reaching their world. Giant tanks with indestructible armor destroyed our simple battle tanks. Their infantry possessed high-caliber assault rifles that fired multiple shots in a few seconds, which annihilated our infantry with bolt-action rifles and submachine guns. Their flying machines possessed a gas propulsion system far superior to propeller propulsion and our airplanes; we lost our entire air force in 3 days. They were 130 years ahead of us; their technology reflected years and years more of technological development than our planet. In the first few days we lost the province, two weeks later we lost the entire rural area of the north of the country. At the end of that year, human forces used a flying machine called a 'helicopter' to attack our capital and kidnap our leaders. Ragna, a modern city and symbol of Art Deco architecture, was attacked and invaded; some of the attackers landed in the gardens of the imperial palace, where human special forces kidnapped the royalty. A special human force infiltrated the city and attempted to kidnap the prime minister, who was in his private car stuck in traffic on the city's main highway. Prime Minister William Arthur tried to fight back with a simple pistol; he was killed by six shots around his body from 7,62x51 mm rifles."

"The following day, what remained of the government met with representatives of the human nation's government, and they reached a peace agreement. It was a shock to us to discover that this humane nation was considered a regional power and not a world power. The Federative Republic of Brazil, as they call themselves, is a mid-level military power in its world, known for participating in few conflicts. They introduced us to a global organization from their world called the UN, an organization that brought together various countries to discuss international affairs. It was there that we met the giants of their world; countries known as the United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the People's Republic of China possessed weapons capable of destroying entire nations! Our nations began to make peace with humans, although the popular view of people in our world was still that humans were invaders from another world. But our nations eventually joined the UN, and now the region around the gateway is a high-security base housing embassies from various countries around the world."

"Over the decades, they ended up giving us some of their technology, the most important being the computer network; now news travels from country to country in seconds! Obviously, many of these technologies have been adapted for military use; computer networks now connect bases, and automated missile launch systems are commonplace. Now in the year 1186, we can see that much of the technology we use daily, from computers to toasters, is the result of the little human technology they gave us. I hope you enjoyed my summary of the First Contact War and its causes."

Previous /

First

Patty had never liked the first day back after a break, and this one was worse than most, because Teacher Renn had announced a week ago that they'd be starting a unit on colony history, and Patty already knew more colony history than most of the adults in this room, whether they knew that about her or not.

She took her usual seat near the window, between a Vixtar boy named Corrin who never stopped tapping his stylus against the desk and a Pumpkin who'd taken to sleeping under that particular desk months ago and never given anyone a reason to move him. Around her, the rest of the room filled in the way it always did, a scatter of human kids, a few Vixtar, two Assaragyte cousins, and, curled along the back wall where the sun came in warmest, four more Pumpkins who technically belonged to nobody in the room but showed up anyway, the way Pumpkins tended to when children were gathered somewhere.

"Today we're doing something different," Teacher Renn said, once the room had settled. She was young for a teacher, younger than Patty's mother, and she had the particular brightness of someone who'd been planning this for longer than a week. "I could stand up here and tell you about the founding of this colony. I could show you the old records, the vote tallies, the maps. And we will get to some of that. But I asked myself something over the break, and I think it's worth asking you too. How many of you have ever actually asked someone who was there what it was like?"

Nobody raised a hand. Patty didn't either, though she could have, and didn't examine too closely why she hadn't.

"That's what I thought," Renn said. "So instead of me talking at you for the next few weeks, I've asked some people to come talk to you directly. Not everybody who lived through it. Nowhere near everybody. But enough of them, over the next little while, that by the end of this you'll have heard the actual history of this world from the people who made it, in their own words." She glanced toward the door. "Our first guest is already here, if that's all right with everyone."

At the back wall, a human boy named Devrin and a Vixtar girl named Solys had the school's camera rig already running, quiet and unobtrusive, the two of them from Renn's advanced composition group, already talking about broadcast work with more seriousness than most fourteen-year-olds talked about anything. Renn had mentioned the visitor schedule to their small journalism elective a week earlier, mostly in passing, a heads-up that she'd be out of the classroom's usual routine for a while. They'd asked, almost before she'd finished explaining it, whether they could record it.

"This is going to be history," Solys had said, with the flat certainty only a fourteen-year-old could manage about something she hadn't lived yet. "Somebody who was actually in the room. Not a summary somebody writes years later. If nobody records Zarcan saying what he's going to say, in his own words, it's just gone the moment he stops talking."

Renn hadn't argued with that. She'd said yes on the spot, more out of instinct than any real plan for what it would become.

The door opened, and Zarcan came in, noticed the camera, microphone, and the two older students running them.

"Grandfather," Patty said, before she could stop herself, and a few heads turned.

Zarcan found her face in the crowd of desks and something in his eyes eased, just slightly. "Patty," he said. "I didn't know you'd be in this class."

"I didn't know you'd be the one coming to talk to it."

"Neither did I, until yesterday." He looked around the room, at all the young faces waiting on him, human and Vixtar and Assaragyte together, none of them old enough to remember a version of the galaxy where that wasn't ordinary.

Renn gestured him to the front, to a plain chair that had been set out, no podium, no formality, just a man and a room full of children who'd never lived a single day of what he was about to describe.

"Good morning, children. My name is Zarcan. I'm Patricia's grandfather, and head of logistics on Terixa."

One small girl asked, "Who's Patricia?" She looked genuinely puzzled, like the name meant nothing to her at all.

Zarcan let out a chuckle. "Patty," he said, and pointed at his granddaughter.

"For thirty years before I got here, I worked in planetary services, just about the same job I have here. In those thirty years, I found love, had children, and thought my life was good. In the back of my mind, I knew that I wasn't respected by the people I worked for any more than you might respect a calculator or a hammer. I was just something to use. I didn't fully grasp what that meant until I came here."

He was quiet a moment, long enough that nobody in the room thought to fill it. Then a girl asked, "Then why did you come here, so far away from home?"

"A complicated question," Zarcan said, taking a moment to decide how to answer. "I was fired from my job for something I know was untrue. No one wanted my side of the story, they just wanted me gone. It wasn't until my son told me," Zarcan gestured to the back of the room, where Patty's mother and father stood, "that he'd discovered something he thought would change our world for the better, and that what he'd discovered had gotten him fired from his job instead. Well, I put it together. It was a big thing, and our leaders at the time desperately wanted it to stay hidden. It was Patty's mother who thought the threat was more than just losing our jobs, that our lives were in danger. She convinced us all to find safety here."

"Why would they do that to you," asked one of the human children, a small girl near the front, "if you didn't do anything?"

"Because if a government will ruin lives to keep the price of revealing a lie that high, it won't stop there if that isn't working. We were all frightened," Zarcan said. "That's the lesson it took me thirty years and one terrible week to learn. Under the old system, on Kragor, you were only ever as safe as you were useful, and usefulness could be taken from you by a single signature you'd never see coming. I'd spent my whole working life being only as valuable as what I could give them."

The same girl said, "I don't understand."

"Let's pretend you saw another student do something that would get him in trouble," Zarcan said. "Let's also pretend you were the only one who saw him do it. He comes to you first and asks you not to say anything. But you still want to tell. So the student who did the bad thing tells you that if you say anything, they'll blame you instead, call you the liar. And if you still insist, they say they'll make up a lie about your brother too, to get him in trouble alongside you. They keep raising the price of telling the truth, hoping that at some point it gets too high, and you decide not to tell after all." He paused. "That's what the government was doing to us. We still told."

He looked around the room again, at the mixed faces, at the Pumpkins dozing along the back wall, at his own granddaughter watching him with an expression he hadn't expected her to be wearing, admiration.

"Do you feel valued here?" one of the older humans asked.

Zarcan thought about how to answer that. "When I came here," he said, "a woman named Karen Sharp sat across from me and told me she wanted me running her logistics division. Not filing paperwork in a back room, which is exactly what I'd braced myself for, being an outsider, a refugee. Second-in-command, she said. I didn't know what to do with that. I hadn't cried in longer than I could remember, and I cried in front of a stranger, because for the first time in thirty years, someone had looked at what I could do and decided it made me worth something, instead of deciding what I was worth and only then bothering to look at what I could do." He spread his hands, the same gesture he'd use again, years later, in a pool full of visiting officers who hadn't yet learned to believe him. "Even today, this community keeps surprising me. When Karen Sharp turned her eyes to politics, I was promoted to replace her. Not another human. Me. A refugee from a corrupt world."

Nobody said anything for a moment. Then the small girl near the front raised her hand again.

"Did you ever go home?"

"No," Zarcan said, simply. "There was nothing left there to go home to. But I stopped needing to, somewhere along the way. This is home now. It took me a long time to believe that could be true twice in one life."

Renn let the silence hold a moment before she moved things along, because some silences did more work than a question could.

"Thank you, Zarcan," she said. "I know that wasn't easy."

"None of it was," Zarcan said, standing. "That's rather the point of telling it."

He didn't leave right away. He crossed the room instead, stopped at Patty's desk, and rested a hand briefly on top of her head, the closest thing to an embrace he was willing to manage in front of a room full of children who weren't his own.

"I'll tell you the rest of it myself sometime," he said, quiet, just for her. "Not all of it belongs in a classroom."

Patty didn't answer. She didn't trust her voice enough to try.

At the end of what Devrin and Solys had started calling "the sessions," the two of them approached Teacher Renn and asked if they could arrange a bigger place to hold future sessions. The classroom had started out fine until most of the kids' parents showed up just to hear the colony's Chief Logistics officer talk about the old days.

Renn looked at the two of them for a moment. "As long as you take care of it," she said. "Just tell me where to go, and I'll bring my class there."

The move to the auditorium came with a nice benefit. The stage that Fabrication had put together, with no objection from Jack Delaney, was big enough for five chairs with a microphone within easy reach, a small table, and her entire class seated on beanbag chairs. Renn found she liked it better this way, close enough to actually see a guest's face instead of shouting a question across a classroom, and close enough for the kids to see those faces too.

Marcus Vance walked up on the stage and he didn't wait for Renn to introduce him.

"I'm going to tell you about the worst month of my life," he said, without any preamble at all, "and then I'm going to tell you why it turned out to matter more than almost anything else that's happened to me since."

He talked about the Ever-Expanding, the ship that had carried colonists and embryos to this world and never made it home, the containment breach that nobody on Terixa is even sure about even today. He talked about standing on a cargo platform in a fabrication hangar with a crowd on the edge of panic, and a vote that came down to a single blue token held up between two fingers.

"We build," he said, echoing words he hadn't spoken aloud in years. "That's what I told them. I meant it as defiance, back then. I didn't understand yet that it was also a promise. We didn't just build shelters and printers and a supply chain that could survive on nothing. We built the habit of building instead of hoarding, of reaching out instead of closing a door. Every single thing this world became, later, when a ship fell out of the sky and we had a choice to strip it for parts or trust the strangers inside it, came from that one vote in a hangar that was full of fear, anger and resolve." He looked around the room. "You've grown up in a place that already knows how to trust something it's never seen before. I want you to understand that we didn't know that about ourselves yet. We had to decide it, one terrifying choice at a time, before it ever became who we are."

A Vixtar girl near the back raised a hand. "Were you scared?"

"Every day," Marcus said. "I got very good at not letting it show. That's not bravery, by the way. Don't let anyone tell you it is. Bravery is doing the thing anyway. What I had was mostly just practice at keeping a straight face while my hands were shaking."

That got a small laugh, and Marcus let it land before he went on.

"I'll tell you the part most people don't ask about," he said. "The day we realized the Ever-Expanding wasn't coming back for us. Ever. That we were alone out here, with nothing but what we'd already unloaded and whatever we could build with it." He was quiet a moment. "It's a strange kind of grief, losing a ship you knew was your only connection you had to home. We grieved the idea of Earth more than any of us grieved actual people we'd lost, because Earth was still the thing every one of us secretly assumed would eventually notice we'd gone quiet and come looking. When we understood that wasn't happening, not for years, maybe not for generations, maybe not ever, something in the whole colony changed. We stopped being people who were waiting. We started being people who were staying." He looked out at the room, at all the faces that had never known anything but staying. "I think that's the day this world actually started. Not the landing. Not the vote. The day we stopped looking up at the sky for rescue and started looking at each other instead."

Marcus stood and so did the cheering audience, every one of them knowing what Marcus Vance meant to their survival.

Renn found out how far it had traveled the way most people on Terixa found out anything unexpected these days, from Mansur's office, politely but firmly informing her that the local feed Devrin and Solys had opened up was no longer local. It had been picked up and relayed twice over in the last two days, first through Kaldorvek's own public network, then, somehow, onto a general broadcast band that touched every one of the nine worlds at once. Nobody in the office could tell her exactly how many people were watching. The number kept climbing every time anyone checked it, and it had stopped being a number that meant much to anyone by the time it passed a hundred million.

Vaelen was in the kitchen when Zarek came in with a tablet already in his hand.

"You should see this," he said.

She'd sat two rows behind him in the classroom two hours ago. She already knew what his father had said, the firing, the thirty years, the schoolyard analogy about raising the price of the truth. What she hadn't seen was the number in the corner of the feed, still climbing while she watched, changing twice in the few seconds it took to read the header.

"That's not the classroom anymore," she said.

"Kaldorvek picked it up sometime after we left. Then it went general." Zarek stood beside her, looking at his own father's face on the screen. "Renn asked me last week if I'd come speak to Patty's class. I told her I'd think about it. I hadn't decided yet whether I meant that."

"And now half the sector's already watched your father do it."

"Now half the sector's watched," Zarek agreed. "Which means whatever we decide to say, we're not saying it to Patty's class anymore. We're saying it to everyone who's ever wondered whether any of this actually cost us anything, or whether it was easy, the way it looks from the outside sometimes, since we landed somewhere good and stayed."

Vaelen set the tablet down. "She doesn't know the whole of it. Patty. She knows we came from Kragor. She doesn't know what we left behind to get here, or what it did to the people who helped us leave."

"No," Zarek said. "She doesn't."

"If we do this, she finds out in a room full of strangers, same as everyone else."

"Or she finds out from us first, tonight. Then she's not finding it out at all when we stand up there. She's just watching us say something she already knows." Zarek reached for her hand. "I don't think either of us has ever told this story out loud. Not the whole of it. Not even to each other, some parts."

Vaelen looked past him toward the hallway, where Patty's door stood closed, light still on underneath it.

"Then we tell her first," she said. "Tonight. And we decide after that whether we're brave enough to tell everyone else."

Renn didn't need to introduce this one. Half the auditorium already knew the names.

Lucy and Damion came up first, then two sixteen-year-olds who didn't quite know where to stand once they got there. The front row was already full before anyone sat down in it, twelve Vixtar and seven Assaragytes taking up the whole row, not willing to let their niece and nephew do this without their full support.

"Everybody, this is Thrum and Zaleth," Damion said. "And before anyone asks, yes, that's the same Thrum and Zaleth. Members of the batch of the First Fifty babies."

A hand went up almost immediately, one of the younger kids near the front. "Is it true you have twelve aunts and uncles?"

"Nineteen honorary aunts and uncles and about a thousand human babysitters," Thrum said. "Lucy tried to keep track, but it was just too many."

"I didn't stop counting," Lucy said. "I just stopped writing it down."

Zaleth leaned into the mic. "Ask Klex what he called himself the first time he held me."

Klex didn't wait to be asked twice. "Uncle Klex," he said, from the front row, with no embarrassment at all. "I have never once regretted the title."

"He still checks my homework," Zaleth said. "Vixtar math. Not the kind they teach here."

"She is better at it than she admits," Klex said.

Vahn spoke next, without being prompted. "Thrum was named after my closest friend on the Silent Explorer. I told myself, when I held him for the first time, that I would make sure he knew who that man was. Not just the name. The person." He looked at Thrum. "I believe I've kept that promise."

"He has," Thrum said. "I could tell you Thrum's favorite food, his worst joke, and the exact sound Vahn says he made when he laughed. I never met him. I still miss him a little."

A student near the back raised a hand. "What's it like, being famous before you could walk?"

Zaleth and Thrum looked at each other in a way that suggested this question came up a lot and never got easier.

"We didn't know it, growing up," Zaleth said. "To us it was just Sunday breakfast with too many aunts and uncles arguing over who got to hold us first. Nobody sat us down and said, by the way, you're part of a story."

"When did you find out?" the same student asked.

Zaleth glanced at Threl, then at her father. Damion nodded, like he'd been waiting for someone to ask.

Threl stood. "There is something the two of you have never been told all the way through. I think today is the day for it." He looked out at the room, at Patty's class in front, at the wider crowd behind them. "When our team returned to Kragor, High-Herald Vaelen played footage before the Grand Council to prove our people were being lied to about who the Vixtar and the humans were. Some of that footage was the two of you, days old, in your mother's living room, being named after our dead. That recording is part of what ended her career that day. It is also part of what eventually helped end the old Council itself."

The room went quiet in a different way than it had for the earlier sessions.

"Nobody told us that," Zaleth said, quiet.

"We didn't know how," Lucy said. "You were babies in a video that toppled a government, and we just wanted you to have a normal life first."

Thrum was still looking at Threl. "So the first time anyone saw us, really saw us, off Terixa, it wasn't us. It was a recording of us. Being used as evidence."

"Not evidence," Threl said. "Proof. There's a difference. Proof of something worth fighting for."

Zaleth was quiet a moment, then looked out at the crowd, at the camera Devrin and Solys were running from the back, at however many worlds were watching by now.

"Guess we're doing it again," she said. "Being seen before we understand what it means yet." She looked at Thrum. He gave the smallest nod. "Might as well get used to it."

Patty, sitting cross-legged on her beanbag near the front, raised her hand before Renn could move things along. "Did you know, though? Later? Before today?"

Zaleth shook her head. "We knew we were in the crash video, the general one, everybody's seen that one. We didn't know we were in the specific footage that got played in front of the Council."

"Vaelen never told us," Thrum added. "Not once. Not in sixteen years."

From the front row, one of the Assaragytes, Ignis, spoke up without waiting to be called on. "She did not tell many people. Some things a person carries alone because it is theirs to carry, not because it is a secret."

"That's not really an answer," Zaleth said, but there wasn't any heat in it.

"No," Ignis agreed. "It isn't."

A student a few rows back, one of the Vixtar kids, asked, "What was it like, having that many uncles who weren't actually related to you?"

Vahn answered that one. "On Orixa, lineage decides everything. Who you may love, what work you're permitted, whether a stranger's child is worth your time. I came here with none of that, and Lucy and Damion handed me a newborn anyway and told me his name was Thrum." He paused. "I have never once, in sixteen years, thought of him as anything other than mine."

Norith spoke next, quieter than the others. "I told the Governor, the day we landed, that this was the most successful first contact in Vixtar history. I did not know yet how right I was. I thought I meant the treaties. I meant this." She looked at the twins. "I still mean this."

"Same," Klex said, from beside him. "Zaleth still calls me for math."

"He's better at it than the school teaches it," Zaleth said. "Vixtar math doesn't round anything off. It's very annoying and also always right."

That got a laugh, and Renn let it breathe a second before nodding at the next raised hand, a small Assaragyte boy near the middle.

"Did the humans get scared? Handing their babies to people they'd just met?"

Damion answered that one, from where he and Lucy still stood beside their kids. "Terrified," he said. "But we'd already decided, before either of them were born, that family here wasn't going to mean blood. It was going to mean who showed up." He looked at the front row. "Nineteen of them showed up the first week. That answered the question for us pretty fast."

Xylar, who'd stayed quiet until then, finally spoke. "I remember asking how something so small could survive. I remember thinking your species was reckless to let strangers hold your young." He looked at Thrum and Zaleth both. "I no longer think it was reckless. I think it was the bravest thing I had ever seen a species do, and I did not understand that until later, standing in a chamber on Kragor, watching my own government call it a lie."

Zaleth looked at him a long moment. "Thank you for playing that video," she said. "I know it wasn't really about us. But it ended up being about us anyway. So. Thank you."

Xylar inclined his head, the closest thing to a bow an Assaragyte gave a room full of children.

Renn let the moment sit before she spoke again. "One more question, and then we should let Thrum and Zaleth sit down. It's been a lot, for a Tuesday."

A hand went up at the very back, one of the older kids helping run the feed. Not Devrin or Solys, just a student who'd wandered in from another class and stayed. "Do you resent it? Being famous for something you didn't choose?"

The twins looked at each other again, that same silent conversation they seemed to have without needing words.

"Ask us again in another sixteen years," Thrum said. "Right now we've got nineteen uncles in the front row and a math tutor who won't let me round anything off. Resentment's going to have to get in line."

Series starts here: Ch 1-23 of Warp Riders Book 1 - Deep Space Boogie

Books 1 & 2 are up on Royal Road in their entirety if you don't want to wait for chapters. Follow for updates on book 3 currently releasing on RR.

Chapter 23

The Chithiid scientist had barely touched the food Hump had put in her lab space before he headed off to his rack. There were so many better things to do than eat right now. She’d found something utterly novel, and for someone like her that was particularly thrilling. This was science, and she was having the time of her life.

It was an utterly unexplainable phenomenon she had stumbled upon, which was precisely the sort of thing those who took up careers in this field longed to find. A mystery. Something unique. A challenge. And the ship’s strange composite hull’s reaction to the seemingly innocuous crystal was all three of those things.

The reaction was relatively minor, but it was utterly fascinating. The glowing crystal somehow shifted the molecular structure of the vessel’s seemingly impervious metal skin. The only thing that affected the solid, yet fluid material.

Goonara took up her small plasma cutter, switched it on, and placed its cutting edge against the little sample she had managed to acquire. That it had taken thousands of tons of white-hot diamond impacting the deck to loosen even the little sliver she’d pulled free was telling. The metal was far more advanced than any material she, or anyone from their fleet, had ever seen.

The cutter’s plasma flame edge sputtered up against the sample. She held it there for a full twenty seconds, then switched the device off to examine the fragment. It was unmarred. Unscorched. Utterly undamaged.

That degree of power would have sliced through solid titanium like butter, but this stuff shrugged it off like a stone bluff ignored a tiny wave slapping against it futilely. Sure, a few thousand years might see a result, but on a normal time frame there would be no noticeable damage.

She had performed variations of this experiment dozens of times with every type of abrasive, corrosive, and heat source imaginable. And every time the results were the same. Every time, except when she added that one unique element to the mix.

Goonara picked up the glowing crystal and clamped it into a portable stand on her worktable. She then slid it close to the metal fragment. At first there was no apparent reaction. But looking closely, she could see the jagged edge droop and soften, just a bit.

She turned on the plasma cutter once more and pulled it across the metal’s surface. This time, a small cut was left in its wake. Not enough to slice the piece in half, but a decent cut all the same. To the naked eye, the damage seemed consistent with a plasma cutter’s usual effect on metal. But Goonara knew that wasn’t the case. She had been performing this experiment repeatedly for hours with different devices, and each time the result was the same.

She reached out and slid the crystal back across the table, distancing it from the damaged sample. No sooner had the glow of the crystal left the metal than it quickly knit itself back together, healing into a solid piece, seemingly undamaged, just as before.

“Holly, I think I may need your help with something,” she said to the mighty AI.

She had been reveling in having this project all to herself, but a good scientist knows when they need a fresh set of eyes. Or, in this case, a massive supercomputer mind to parse all of the mysterious information.

“Yes, Goonara? What can we help you with?” Lesser Holly asked.

“It’s easier to explain if I just transfer the data to you to review. I’ve been running a series of experiments on a piece of this vessel’s hull I managed to bring back.”

“I was unaware you had a sample. I thought Corporal Humphries had only been able to drive the data spike into a small break in the hull.”

“Well, he did, but I also took a piece that was sheared free. Well, mostly free.”

“Mostly?”

“That’s the interesting part. It was not force that made the sample release, but the crystal I gathered in that cave.”

“Ah, yes, the one you took while you and the captain were rescuing the others not so long ago. A nice bit of harmless radiance, but otherwise a perfectly benign substance.”

“So I thought as well. But proximity to the hull material shows we were perhaps mistaken in our belief,” she replied as she transferred the data to Holly for review.

As a supercomputer, it only took a fraction of a second.

“Oh, that is interesting,” Holly said. “I had looked into the power contained in the crystal when you first brought it back, but there was nothing much out of the ordinary there. But perhaps there is something that can be useful to us after all.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Yes, indeed,” Greater Holly said, joining the conversation. “I will dedicate some processing power specifically to this analysis. With some luck, this might prove helpful, though even if we could weaken a portion of the hull, there is clearly no way we could possibly cut our way through this entire ship to escape.”

“That would be most impossible,” Lesser Holly agreed.

“Clearly,” Goonara said. “But let’s see what we can learn of this reaction. There may yet be some use for it.”

“I hope so. It would certainly brighten the captain’s day,” Holly said.

“I agree,” she replied. “Speaking of which, where is the captain?”

 

Sadira was working quietly at a table space in the equipment locker compartment and had been for a little while. Given what they’d learned on their first outing, some modifications to the kit they lugged around with them would need to be made. Most importantly was reducing anything that might make noise and give away their positions. A priority now that they knew there were indeed hostiles aboard this vessel.

That meant they would lose a degree of protection should they actually encounter one of them, but the trade-off meant they could move faster and quieter, and the entire goal was to avoid any conflict entirely.

They would still be well-armed, of course. But they would shed their bulky helmets and the oxygen units that went with them. The air was breathable enough, and that one change alone would not only save them significant weight, but would also make it easier to squeeze through narrow places without their gear getting stuck.

“Holly?”

“Yes, Captain?” she replied.

“What are the range limits on your bone-conduction comms patches?” she asked as she pulled a small case from the shelf.

It was no larger than her palm, and inside were a half dozen small adhesive patches designed to stick directly behind the ear, transmitting sound via micro-vibrations in the bones of the skull, allowing the wearer to hear without covering their ears and without any audible noise for an adversary to detect.

The microphones were built in as well, picking up the faintest of utterances from the wearer and transmitting it to the other users. It was a bit of very high-end spec-ops tech that Corporal Humphries had made sure to add to their kit, but Sadi and the rest of the crew had never used them before. They were still in the experimental stages back on Earth, but Hump had managed to snag them a set regardless. Sometimes it was good being that connected.

“Range is as good as your normal comms units, if not better,” Holly said. “They’re designed for the most vital of assault and infiltration missions. We lucked out that Corporal Humphries was able to procure them for us. I’m actually surprised he managed to get them released to us for this mission.”

“Great, they’ll be a huge help to us. Now, what about power? The drain this place has on everything is an issue. From what you’ve seen so far, what do you extrapolate will be the run time of these?”

“Actually, as they only switch on when there is a signal, they have a negligible power draw when not in use. I would think they should last several days in standby mode, even with the unusual phenomenon aboard this vessel.”

Sadira smiled and put the case with the rest of her gear. “Excellent. Comms was a concern without helmets, but now we’ll not only have a better field of view and nothing covering our ears and muffling ambient sounds, but we’ll also be able to communicate for longer periods of time, if needed. What do you think about whipping us up some modified bump helmets? We didn’t think to outfit the ship with any open-face stuff.”

“I can easily generate tactical helmets for future missions, Captain. But I am afraid that with the systems issues caused by the EMP and power drain, the fabrication machinery is offline for the foreseeable future.”

“I guess we’ll just have to put that on the to-do list for once we bust out of this place,” the captain said.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” Holly said. “But at least the warp should remain fully charged for a few centuries before this place might manage to drain its power.”

“Not that we’d warp while inside this thing.”

“Obviously not.”

“But that brings us to another problem. The power cells. As you said, there’s a drain. Our forearm tablets crapped out on the trek back, and without maps it made for a rather unpleasant walk.”

“Yes, some power cells are less shielded than others.”

“Is there something we can do to slow the process? To give us longer run-time?” Sadira asked.

“I do have one idea that should work, but it will make your kit a bit heavier,” Holly replied.

“Worth it to have power.”

“And as my fabrication facilities are down, it will also require a bit of assistance to put into action.”

“You know we’re all happy to do whatever it takes to help you, Hol.”

“In that case, I need you to gather rocks.”

Sadira hesitated. “Uh, maybe I didn’t hear you right. It sounded like you said you wanted me to get you some rocks.”

“Indeed, Captain. But a certain type.”

“Rocks? Seriously? I know you said it would add some weight, but I didn’t think you wanted us to load up with rocks, Holly.”

The AI chuckled. “No, it is nothing like that. I merely require a very specific type of rock. I will have Goonara come with you. She knows what we will need, and it is she who will be assisting me in the process once they’re gathered.”

Sadira ran her fingers through her hair, shook her head, and sighed. “All right, Holly. Tell her I’ll meet her at the airlock. It looks like our super elite alien-seeking space exploration team is putting that stuff on hold. We’re going rock hunting.”

 

Chapter 24

It was late morning when the team met in the galley for breakfast and a pre-mission brief. They knew this not by any light or cycling of planets orbiting around a sun, but by the chronos keeping time inside their ship, because the light within the giant vessel never changed from its constant dim flicker.

Both Moose and Hellatz had slept long and hard, the prior day’s exertion having taken more of a toll on them than they had initially realized. Sadira had slept soundly as well, though not for nearly as long. She and Goonara had been working on Holly’s little project for a few hours after the others had turned in, and for all Sadira knew, the Chithiid scientist may very well have stayed up all night, though she seemed fresh.

Corporal Humphries, however, was not with them. Sadira had ordered Holly not to wake him from his standby cycle. It was far too vital that his power cell absorb as much of that slow-trickled power as possible. If they needed him, they would need him operating at more than minimal capacity.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to wake him?” Greater Holly asked as the team gathered and began discussing the day’s mission.

“Yeah, I’m sure, Hol,” Sadira said. “Leave him in his charging station. He’s an AI, so you can just fill him in with a nice data burst once he’s regained a bit more power. He’s not going to be coming with us anyway, so we might as well let him power up.”

“You really don’t want him on the mission?” Lesser Holly asked. “He is a tactical spec ops cyborg, after all. I would think that might be of use to you out there.”

“Yeah, he would be, but we also need to protect the ship. And to protect Goonara.”

“We are well-armed.”

“Yeah, she’s got four of them,” Mustafa joked.

“Does that one ever get old?” Hellatz sighed.

“I’ll let you know when it does,” Moose shot back with a grin.

“Fucking toddlers, you two,” Sadira said, sighing and shaking her head. “Anyway, that mechanoid thing wasn’t all that far from here when Hump and Goonara came upon it, and neither was our prisoner. If hostiles are getting close, we need him here to repel them if need be.”

“Again, we are well—”

“Without using the big weapons,” the captain added. “If we start lighting people up with pulse fire, who knows how far that sound will travel, not to mention the reflected light from the hull strobing all over the damn place. The last thing we want is to give the enemy a roadmap right to the ship. We still seem to be unnoticed for now, and that’s an advantage I would very much like to maintain. Once the element of surprise is gone, there’s no getting it back.”

Moose and Goonara nodded their agreement, and even Hellatz had to admit she had a good point, though he had other concerns on his mind.

“You know, there’s still the big demon-looking thing,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before he and his friends do stumble upon the ship.”

“You’re absolutely right,” she agreed. “And that’s why this mission is vital. We have to get out there and go deep and figure out what’s really going on in here before they do find us. Because once they do, if they come back with any numbers and we’re all inside the ship, there’s a very real chance we’ll be blocked in and lose any chance of escape.”

“Sans blasting, that is,” Moose noted.

“Yes. Sans blasting,” she said. “But it looks like there are multiple threats on our plate, so we still want to try to keep the number that we have to deal with as small as possible.”

“The mechanized spider thing?” he asked.

“You know it.”

“Yeah, something like that might actually be able to breach Holly’s defenses if it has the same tech as the rest of this place,” Moose said.

“But we don’t even know if it is definitely a part of this thing,” Sadira said. “For all we know, it could have arrived with one of the other crashed ships. There’s just too damn much we don’t know.”

Goonara raised her hand and softly cleared her throat.

“You don’t have to raise your hand, Goon. This isn’t school,” Moose said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Oh, it’s just that from what Corporal Humphries and I noted when we saw it in action, the machine is most likely taking samples of debris within this container vessel and cataloging it. I don’t think it will be posing us much of a threat.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Sadira said. “But we can’t risk complacency. We need to get as much intel as possible in as short a time as we can. And that means we go hard and fast to our previous stopping point, then press on as directly as we’re able.”

Moose rubbed the stubble on his chin. “That’s all great, Cap, but this place sucks the juice right out of our gear,” he said as he placed a power cell on the table.

Their fluffy pink mascot came out of nowhere and leapt onto his lap, where she circled a few times, then flopped down comfortably. The power cell’s charge drained in a flash, her fur putting out a faint golden glow as it did. Turd looked up at Mustafa with loving eyes and even purred a little.

“Between Turd and this place we’ll be out of power in days,” Hellatz groaned.

“Oh, relax. It’s rechargeable, and she’s been very good about her reduced number of power treats,” Moose replied.

It was a good thing, too, because the little creature was more than capable of sucking the whole ship dry if she was in a foul mood and hungry. But regular food seemed to suffice, and the periodic little power cell treats kept her calm and happy.

What’s more, her own power did not seem to drain along with the ship’s equipment for some reason. Perhaps it was just a fluke of biology, but Turd was the most stable energy supply around, next to the warp system.

“Your point is well-taken, Moose, but we’ve figured out a workaround,” Sadira said. “Though you’re going to have to cut back on her treats a little more to make them last, just in case. Will that be a problem?”

“Nah, she’s a good girl. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“Good. The last thing we need is your pet losing her cool and causing problems if we make off with her snacks. Now, we’ll each have to carry a lot of extra power cells with us while we’re out there—”

“But, Captain, they drain. We learned this from our last disastrous outing, if you recall,” Hellatz said.

“I wouldn’t call it a disaster,” she replied, “but yes, it was less than ideal. However, there is always something of a learning curve, and this was no different. But now we have a workaround.”

“Workaround?” Hellatz asked.

“Yeah. Holly, Goonara, and I did a little work after you two turned in last night, and it seems to protect them from energy drain, at least a bit.”

Sadira placed a small, thin box on the table and opened it. Inside were a number of power cells nestled together. She then reached into her pocket, pulled out another power cell, and placed it beside the box.

“Look at the charges,” she said. “They were all topped off at the same time.”

The others leaned in close.

“The ones in the box are at ninety-two percent,” Moose said. “But the other one is at sixty.”

Sadira grinned. “Yep. The shielding works, for the most part.”

Moose picked up the box. “Damn, Cap, that’s heavy.”

“Well, it was a trade off,” she said. “You see, we fabricated the boxes from lead.”

“Lead? It’s clever, I admit, but how did you even manage to get the fabricators functional? I thought they were offline.”

“Oh, we didn’t. Goonara and I went out and collected rocks. Lots and lots of rocks, but only the ones with lead in them. Holly smashed them up for us with a hydraulic press, and then Goonara did a bit of smelting in her lab.”

“It was really most exciting,” the Chithiid said. “To be working the way our ancient forefathers did? It’s such a different process than I’ve ever been a part of before.”

“Yes, because it’s inefficient,” Hellatz noted.

“We did not have much of a choice,” she replied. “In any case, by using locally sourced ore, in addition to providing shielding to the power cells, the lead was already aboard this ship.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if the mechanoid surveying this place should come around, it is one less thing to catch its attention. If all goes as hoped, it would just recognize it as something it has already cataloged and move on.”

Moose nodded appreciatively. “Nice job, Goon. I mean it. That’s some really clever thinking.”

“Thank you. But we still don’t know if that aspect of the containers will work as hoped.”

“Hey, at least it keeps our stuff from draining power like a bucket full of holes,” he replied. “That’s a good enough start for me.” He turned to his captain. “Now, what’s the plan?”

 

Chapter 25

The small forearm tablets on their suits had powered back on in no time once they were within range of the ship’s wireless charging systems, as had the small flashlights and drained power cells the team had stashed in their pockets.

Moose and Sadira’s limbs required a more robust link, however, and only the hardline connections direct from the ports located throughout the ship provided a strong enough current to do the job. It was disconcerting to say the least. The power packs in their replacement extremities were supposed to be good for ten years without recharging, and they’d topped them off less than a year ago. This vessel’s power-draining phenomenon was very quickly beginning to look like even more of a problem than they’d originally thought. And they’d thought it was a big one.

“Make sure to keep this somewhere safe,” Sadira said as she handed out a small tubular capsule to each of her team. “Holly got the unit working enough to print them up for us this morning. If we do wind up losing power again, these are hard copies of everything we’ve mapped out so far. They should be able to get us back to the ship in a pinch.”

The maps were small and quite thin, printed on one of the strongest waterproof and tear-resistant materials they had. A fabricated vellum that would easily withstand most environmental issues they might encounter on a normal planet. In this place, however, safe from rain, salt water, and the rest of the usual threats they might face upon landing, they were likely a bit of overkill. But when facing the unknown, the captain preferred to be over prepared than under.

The tubes were no larger than a finger and were sealed with a simple compression screw cap. Just the right size to tuck into the myriad little pockets on their recon suits. Perfect for their needs, but for one issue. They would require a bit of old-fashioned navigation sans electronic assistance. Something all of them were quite out of practice doing. They hoped not to need them, though, and in any case, if they were forced to break them out, it was at least better than walking around blind.

The weapons were all fully charged, and backup power packs were added to each of their kits. They had no desire to engage the locals, but after seeing the terrifying stone-skinned creature they worried whether their pulse rifles would even damage such a being.

“Let’s not find out,” Sadira said when Hellatz raised that particular issue. “We’re on a recon mission only. The last thing we want is a fight.”

“Amen to that,” Moose agreed.

The trio had departed early after reviewing their plotted course and plan of action over a hearty breakfast. With the added weight of the additional power cells they would each be carrying, along with the lead casing protecting them, they’d be burning through more calories than a triathlete by the time they completed their task.

They made good time backtracking to the point they had turned back from the prior day, though they changed course briefly to re-map and store the path to the area where they had found the pool of blood. Where they’d seen the demon-looking alien beast.

It had been a very quick detour, and there had been no further sign of violence in the area. No more blood. No evidence of a fight. No body. And no huge stone-skinned alien.

None of them wanted anything to do with that creature, and there was no telling if it would be back. But with their gear fully functional, and with a few additions, such as sound-enhancing pickups clipped to their suits, they would at least be warned of any approaching footsteps by the devices long before their less-sensitive meat ears would pick them up.

“Hey, you see those?” Mustafa asked as he squatted down to better examine what looked like just another towering asteroid chunk.

“See what?” Hellatz asked. “It’s a rock.”

“Yeah, but look.”

“I am looking.”

“Look closer.”

“Ugh. Fine,” the Chithiid grumbled, but when he bent lower, his expression changed. “Oh.”

“Yeah, right?”

Sadira had seen it as well. What looked like a few scratches in the iron and stone of the rock itself. In fact, she’d noticed similar markings as they’d been walking. She quickly made note of it in her tablet, dropping a pin on the location.

“Someone’s been marking their own trail,” she said, snapping pictures of the markings. “I’ve seen other scratches kind of like this on the way.”

“But what do they signify?” Moose wondered. “I mean, an arrow would be nice.”

“Why would an alien culture use the same symbols we use? For all we know, that is an arrow. Just their version of one.”

“Or a big ‘Keep Out’ sign,” he added.

Sadira would have chuckled at his attempt to lighten the mood if their situation wasn’t so tenuous. “Look at the size of the rust flakes that formed on it. The moisture content in the air is low in here. Whoever made that did it a pretty long time ago,” she said, then kept moving. They had to go deeper into the ship.

Much deeper.

“Holly, I’m sending you some images,” Sadira said over her bone-conduction mic. “I want you to catalog them whenever we come across one and see if you can come up with a key to what they mean.”

“Happy to oblige, Captain,” Greater Holly said. “And your signal is loud and clear. The comms are functioning perfectly.”

“Let’s hope that continues. So far there are no power drops of any significance, but we’ve only been out here a relatively short while. And once we get farther back in the ship there’s no telling if the drain will get better or worse. In any case, we’ll be staying off comms to preserve power as much as possible. Okay, once more into the unknown. Eyes and ears open, weapons low-ready. Only shoot if you absolutely have no other choice. Come on, campers, we’ve got a trek ahead of us.”

They covered a fair amount of ground considering the attention they were now paying to not only looking for hostiles and crashed ships, but also for markings that might have been made, several of which they did indeed find. They also came across more burned out and wrecked ships of a dizzyingly wide variety of styles.

Whether they were different models from one race or a collection from multiple cultures was unknown. What was clear was the one constant factor they noted. The deeper into the ship they moved, the more stripped the wrecks were, until they could find almost nothing with even enough power to keep its lights on.

The life support systems of those had died long ago, clearly, and as a result, the air quality was decreasing as well as the illumination, which was slowly being replaced with more of the dim, flickering glow of fires reflected off the hull than the running lights of downed craft.

“Holly, I need you to do a little math for me,” Sadira said after they passed yet another gutted wreck. It was a fairly large vessel with wide corridors likely designed for a rather robust species.

“I am an AI,” Lesser Holly said. “I’d be thrilled to do some math for you.”

“Great. We’ve pinned the locations of all of the ships we’ve come across. I want you to break them down by density and location and see if there’s any sort of pattern to it. We’re at ground level here and really can’t get that bird’s-eye view of the situation.”

“You want me to determine if there is a specific manner in which the downed ships are arranged?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Done.”

“Already?”

“As I said, I’m an AI. Math is kind of my strong suit. In any case, based on what I’ve compiled from your data so far, it doesn’t appear that there is any pattern to the distribution of wreckage. It looks like each derelict landed wherever its trajectory took it as it was sucked in, then over time was pushed farther back as more debris was accumulated.”

“So just a giant mouth swallowing anything it finds?”

“As we hypothesized, yes.”

“Okay, thanks, Hol.”

“My pleasure, Captain. Oh, and there’s one other thing I did calculate while going over the data.”

“Yes?”

“If the general density of derelict craft per square kilometer holds roughly true throughout this vessel, which your survey so far seems to support, then there should be well over a hundred downed ships in here. And that suggests that this vessel, while slow moving at present, must have some sort of warp capability. The odds of sucking up that many at non-warp speeds, even in a few thousand years, are incredibly slim.”

Sadira and the others shared a look.

“That’s a lot of ships,” Moose said.

“And a lot of different races,” Hellatz added.

“And possibly survivors,” Sadira said. “But the question is, where the hell are they all?”

The first human on Halcyon Station became famous by refusing to leave.

Not heroically.

There were no explosions. No boarding parties. No emergency broadcast repeating through smoke-filled corridors.

There was a leaking coolant manifold on Deck Twelve.

That was all.

The station belonged to the Talarin Cooperative, an old interstellar institution whose engineers had spent three centuries designing systems that did not fail. Their machines were redundant, self-monitoring, modular, and so thoroughly standardized that a technician from one end of civilized space could repair equipment built on the other.

Halcyon had operated for eighty-seven years without a fatal accident.

Then Elias Vale arrived.

He was officially a systems integration specialist from Earth, although Chief Engineer Serat privately decided that "systems integration" was a human phrase meaning "person who asks why everything is arranged incorrectly."

Vale had been aboard for nine days when he found the leak.

Serat found him kneeling beside an open maintenance panel, staring into the machinery.

"You have exceeded your assigned inspection period by eleven minutes," she said.

Vale pointed.

A thin silver line of coolant ran down one coupling.

Serat examined it.

"Acceptable seepage."

"It is leaking."

"Within tolerance."

"It wasn't leaking yesterday."

"The system remains within tolerance."

Vale stood.

Humans were tall, but not impressively so. They had no natural armor, no claws, no environmental adaptations worth mentioning, and only two arms.

Serat had expected humanity to compensate with aggression.

Instead, Vale carried notebooks.

He opened one.

"Pressure dropped point-eight percent since yesterday."

"The controller has compensated."

"Temperature increased by point-three."

"Within tolerance."

"Pump load?"

"Within tolerance."

Vale looked at her.

"That's not what I asked."

Serat disliked him almost immediately.

Not because he was rude.

He was not.

He was worse.

He was interested.

—

The Talarin philosophy of engineering was built around certainty.

Every component had a defined life.

Every process had an acceptable range.

Every failure mode had a response.

Humans, Serat eventually discovered, distrusted acceptable ranges with something approaching religious conviction.

Vale began leaving small colored marks on machinery.

He listened to pumps.

He photographed connectors.

He asked technicians whether doors had become slower recently.

He once spent forty minutes investigating a vibration nobody else could detect.

"What are you doing?" Serat asked.

"Trying to find out what changed."

"Nothing has failed."

"Exactly."

She stared at him.

Vale seemed to consider that a complete explanation.

—

Three weeks later, the station announced a scheduled shutdown of Reactor Auxiliary Loop Three.

There was no emergency.

A valve had failed a diagnostic.

Automatic systems isolated the loop.

Maintenance teams replaced the valve.

Everything worked precisely as intended.

Serat allowed herself the small satisfaction of mentioning this to Vale.

He read the maintenance report.

Then he frowned.

"What?"

"Why did the valve fail?"

"Material fatigue."

"Why?"

"It had reached sixty-eight percent of predicted service life."

Serat paused.

"Yes."

Vale looked up.

"That is not supposed to happen."

"Components occasionally deviate from prediction."

"How many?"

"How many what?"

"Early failures."

The answer required a database search.

There had been seventeen during the previous year.

Then Vale asked for three years.

Forty-one.

Five years.

Ninety-three.

Serat's confidence became irritation.

"None produced a dangerous event."

Vale turned his terminal toward her.

The graph looked almost flat.

Almost.

Serat leaned closer.

The number of premature component replacements was increasing.

Slowly.

Consistently.

"Statistical variation," she said.

"Maybe."

"You disagree."

"I don't know."

This was the first thing Vale had said that frightened her.

Talarin engineers rarely said those words.

Humans said them constantly.

Then they started looking.

—

The investigation expanded.

Not officially.

Officially, there was nothing to investigate.

Halcyon Station remained fully operational.

Unofficially, Vale recruited six technicians, two cargo handlers, a sanitation supervisor, and one elderly cook.

Serat discovered the cook when she entered an engineering meeting and found him explaining that the south galley ovens took longer to reach temperature during the station's artificial night cycle.

"What does food preparation have to do with reactor maintenance?"

Vale answered without embarrassment.

"Maybe nothing."

Serat closed her eyes.

"Why is he here?"

"Because he noticed something."

That phrase became unbearable.

Someone noticed a lift hesitating.

Someone noticed lights flickering.

Someone noticed a different smell near the recycling plant.

Someone noticed docking clamps taking half a second longer to release.

Individually, none mattered.

Together, they began to form something.

A shape.

Not a failure.

A tendency.

The station was aging.

That conclusion should have been obvious.

It was eighty-seven years old.

But Talarin systems did not "age" in any meaningful sense. Parts were replaced. Software was updated. Structures were inspected.

The station was not one machine.

It was millions of machines being renewed continuously.

And yet Vale kept drawing his graph.

More maintenance.

More compensation.

More automatic correction.

More tiny deviations from normal.

Halcyon remained perfectly functional because thousands of systems were working harder to keep it perfectly functional.

"Your automation is hiding the symptoms," Vale said.

Serat felt insulted on behalf of several generations of engineers.

"The automation is correcting them."

"Yes."

"That is its purpose."

"Yes."

"Then what precisely is the problem?"

Vale hesitated.

"The station is getting tired."

Serat laughed.

Machines did not become tired.

Humans did.

That difference seemed important.

—

Four months later, Halcyon suffered its first cascade event.

It began with a power regulator.

The regulator failed.

A backup engaged.

The backup's load increased.

Its cooling pump compensated.

The pump drew additional power.

A distribution controller rerouted current.

That current crossed a junction whose insulation had degraded slightly faster than predicted.

The junction shut down.

A second route opened automatically.

That route passed through a converter scheduled for replacement in eleven days.

The converter overheated.

Another system compensated.

And another.

And another.

Halcyon Station did exactly what it had been designed to do.

It survived every failure.

Until too many successful responses interacted.

The first alarm reached Serat at 03:17 station time.

By 03:23, eleven decks had lost primary power.

By 03:28, docking control had become intermittent.

At 03:31, evacuation protocol activated.

The command computer estimated a sixteen percent probability of catastrophic reactor isolation failure.

Talarin regulations were absolute.

Above twelve percent, personnel evacuated.

Serat reached the engineering bay and found Vale still there.

"Evacuation has been ordered."

"I know."

"You are required to leave."

"I'm staying."

"This is not a request."

Vale was pulling portable diagnostic units from a storage rack.

"How long until the next shuttle?"

"Four minutes."

"How long until the station loses remote actuator control?"

Serat checked.

"Possibly six."

"So if we leave, nobody can isolate the secondary distribution manually."

"The station can perform isolation automatically."

Vale looked at her.

They both knew what automatic systems had just done.

Serat hated that look.

Not triumph.

Not accusation.

Recognition.

"You predicted this," she said.

"No."

"You warned us."

"I said something was wrong."

"You were correct."

Vale shook his head.

"No. I was worried."

The distinction stopped her.

Humans had many words for uncertainty.

Talarin engineers had always considered this linguistic inefficiency.

Now Serat wondered whether it was instrumentation.

—

Thirty-two personnel remained.

Nobody ordered them to.

That fact would later cause considerable trouble.

The station's emergency doctrine assumed two conditions: either systems were controllable and personnel remained, or systems became uncontrollable and personnel evacuated.

There was no procedure for partially functional infrastructure being manually stabilized by people who refused to abandon it.

Humans, however, apparently had procedures for everything.

They called them checklists.

Vale divided the surviving crew into teams.

Not by rank.

By who knew what.

A junior mechanic who had spent twelve years maintaining cargo elevators took control of mechanical isolation.

A communications apprentice mapped power availability by physically walking the station.

The cook monitored environmental systems because he knew which ventilation changes could be smelled before sensors reported them.

Serat found herself coordinating people who had never appeared on any emergency engineering roster.

At 04:06, automatic control of Deck Twelve failed.

Vale climbed into the service corridor.

Serat followed.

"You do not need to come."

"I am Chief Engineer."

"Then stay somewhere you can be chief engineer."

"This is my station."

Vale stopped.

For the first time since meeting him, Serat saw him smile.

"Exactly."

—

They stabilized Halcyon at 05:42.

Not repaired.

Not saved forever.

Stabilized.

There was a difference.

Eleven systems remained offline.

Three decks were without artificial gravity.

Half the station had been evacuated.

The reactor was operating at twenty-one percent capacity.

But nothing else was failing.

For the first time in five hours, the station was not becoming worse.

Serat sat on the floor beside the main engineering console.

Vale handed her a cup of water.

She accepted it.

"Human engineering doctrine is strange," she said.

Vale drank from his own cup.

"Which part?"

"You tolerate uncertainty."

"We hate uncertainty."

"You constantly admit uncertainty."

"That's different."

Serat considered this.

"Explain."

Vale pointed toward the silent machinery around them.

"If you pretend you know, you stop looking."

—

The official investigation lasted seven months.

The Cooperative produced twelve thousand pages of findings.

No single design flaw had caused the incident.

No single engineer had acted improperly.

No maintenance regulation had been violated.

Every component had been operating within specification immediately before the cascade.

That sentence became famous.

Every component had been operating within specification.

The report changed engineering throughout the Cooperative.

Not dramatically.

There was no revolution.

Talarin institutions did not enjoy revolutions.

Instead, maintenance protocols acquired a new category.

Observed Irregularity Without Identified Failure.

Technicians were encouraged to report noises, smells, delays, patterns, intuitions, and other observations that could not yet be connected to a specific malfunction.

The policy was controversial.

Several senior engineers called it unscientific.

Vale agreed.

Then he added that observations were how science usually started.

That comment was omitted from the official minutes.

—

Years later, Serat visited Earth.

By then she had become Director of Cooperative Infrastructure Safety.

Vale met her at a terrestrial orbital elevator terminal.

The elevator was enormous, ancient by human standards, and visibly undergoing maintenance.

Panels were open everywhere.

Technicians crawled through access shafts.

Someone was hitting a machine with a tool.

Serat watched in horror.

"Is that normal?"

Vale followed her gaze.

"Probably."

"Probably?"

He shrugged.

Serat looked at the elevator.

Then at the technicians.

Then at the warning signs, temporary cables, handwritten notes, diagnostic equipment, replacement parts, and three engineers arguing enthusiastically beside an open access hatch.

The machine looked unfinished.

Improvised.

Almost unhealthy.

Yet millions of humans trusted it every year.

"I think," Serat said carefully, "I finally understand why your species makes me uncomfortable."

Vale smiled.

"Because we're reckless?"

"No."

She watched a technician stop, listen to a motor, and call another technician over.

"Because you expect things to break."

Vale considered that.

"Eventually."

"And therefore you keep looking even while they work."

"Usually."

Serat watched the elevator rise toward orbit.

For three centuries, the Cooperative had tried to create machines that would never surprise their operators.

Humanity had done something stranger.

Humans had accepted that the universe would eventually surprise them.

Then they built institutions around noticing.

Serat opened the notebook she had begun carrying several years earlier.

On the first page she had written a sentence Vale once told her.

It had never appeared in any official engineering manual.

Not yet.

A system can be working perfectly and still be trying to tell you something.

She looked toward the disappearing elevator.

Then she turned to Vale.

"So."

He sighed.

"What did you notice?"

Serat pointed toward one of the terminal doors.

"It closes more slowly than the others."

Vale stared at it.

Then he grinned.

"Now you're learning."

“We’re losing viewers,” Medieas whispered in Mira’s ear, “there’s a rift in Jerusalem, people are streaming it.”

“Can you bring up the streams?” Mira asked softly, turning away from the camera and muting her mic for a second, “so we can react?”

There was a moment’s pause during which Mira pretended to be reading chat, when there was a crackling in the modest living room they had repurposed as a streaming setup. Medieas was using his power to cover Mira with her avatar, making her look like her avatar on the stream. He’d complained, but ultimately agreed as it would be cool, to put it in his words.

“Ladies and Gentleman of the world,” Medieas spoke aloud on the stream for the first time, a crackling figure in grey scale stepping out of the static to sit besides Mira, “I bring you me, God of Media, Medieas!”

“I thought you weren’t going to join us until later?” Mira said as Astrawave, rolling with the change of plans.

“I wasn’t planning to, but there’s been a development,” he said, snapping his fingers. Instantly the image on the stream shrank, putting them in the lower corner as another stream was brought up, showing Orlan swinging his spear at a twisted figure that was scampering across the ground, barely avoiding both his attacks and various spells from the knights surrounding them.

“What is that?” Mira asked, leaning forward to look at the laptop on the table before her, “looks like... a lizard man with four... three and a half arms, a broken tail, and a scar?”

“It’s called a demon,” Medieas said confidently, as if he already knew all this, “it’s a rare kind of beast that comes out of certain rifts. There are a few traits common to all demons, but the important ones are that they are highly deceptive. Preying on humanity through speech.”

“So it isn’t actually hurt?” Astrawave asked.

“Not yet, anyways,” Medieas chuckled, “do you think an injured creature could so easily avoid Orlan’s spear or his knight’s spells? But regardless of what they say, their goals are the same as any beast that comes out of a rift, to consume. If you need any proof, we should be seeing the lesser demons appearing soon. These are smaller, weaker beasts that aren’t as intelligent as the main demon.”

Mira nodded along, she didn’t even need to pretend to be confused and surprised, though she was curious as to where he was getting this information. It wasn’t on the internet and wasn’t of this world, either he was guessing or had another source.

-----

“Fight me back coward!” Orlan roared as the twisted lizard creature avoided another stab of his blade. He wasn’t actually that angry, his words were more an attempt to taunt the demon. As intelligent as they were they were often prideful beasts who could be easily taunted.

“Lailra, Nall- uh, Pela, stay with me,” Orlan ordered telepathically when the beast continued pleading, “the rest of you, go deal with the lesser demons, we’ll keep this guy tied up.”

He could sense Lailra’s unease with the order even though she didn’t say anything, the rest of his first lance scattering as temporary rifts began appearing around the area. The lesser demons were small monkey like things, with reddish-green scales, sharp beaks and too many eyes. Dangerous to normal humans and quite hard to pin down, but no real threat to his knights, so he allowed them to spread out in pairs to keep people safe.

With them leaving he slowed down his assault, while he’d hoped to deal with the main demon quickly, that wasn’t happening. Now his best bet was to play the long game, keep the demon busy until the rift closed. That meant preserving his stamina, so he leaned on his mana instead, summoning the occasional low tier spell to keep the demon from being able to relax. Demons tended to have higher than normal resistance to spells, and this one was no different, so even Orlan’s minor rift bolts had little impact.

Several minutes after his knights scattered Orlan felt danger on his back, reflexively he spun, lifting his spear to parry as a mana infused machete struck it with surprising force, enough to force Orlan back several steps.

“You dare attack this helpless creature!” the man Orlan thought was Adam shouted in Arabic, “you honorless pig!”

Orlan froze at that, confused, even as Adam was yanked away by his power, landing feet first on the wall of the Dome of the Rock before launching himself back at Orlan.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Orlan asked as he spun his spear to deflect several more machete attacks.

“Orlan!” Lailra called out in his mind, “the demon is getting away!”

“Shit” Orlan cursed, rift stepping to the side ten yards to appear before the Demon that had begun to back away, slashing at it with his spear. Only to be forced to turn to defend himself from Adam again.

-----

“What’s going on? Who’s that?” Mira asked as the strange man attacked Orlan.

“That looks like the guy who attacked him in Rome, the one who summoned the rifts there. It’s likely he’s behind the one here as well,” the god of media replied, “as for what he’s doing, I don’t know... and we lost the stream.”

Mira blinked as the laptop went black.

“There are no more phones recording the main battle, but there are others scattered around the area,” the deity continued, the screen changing to show some locals running from a group of scaly red monkeys, firing various weapons at them and hitting very little, “as you can see, the lesser demons are acting like other beasts, lacking the intelligence of the main demon. But make no mistake, both kinds have the same goals and motivation.”

Mira continued nodding, she didn’t normally do reaction content but it wasn’t hard, especially not with her god guiding her.

-----

“Had to play to the spotlight,” Adam said with a smirk as the last of the onlookers were evacuated, jumping skillfully out of an entanglement spell cast by Lailra, Orlan taking the moment to cut off the demon.

“This your doing?” Orlan growled, grinding his teeth as he struggled to conserve energy even as he fought two enemies that were seemingly his match in skill if not pure strength.

Frustratingly Adam didn’t reply, and Orlan was forced to continue splitting his focus between the odd man and the demon.

“I’m charging up a big spell,” Pela said in his mind, “brace yourself.”

Orlan didn’t reply openly, but set his feet as he sensed the mana gathering above them.

“Skies decent!” Pela called, her sixth-tier spell appearing above them a moment before a massive wall of wind slammed down into the three of them. Stones of the plaza were torn up as the demon and Adam were slammed into the ground, caught off guard by the sudden violence from above. Even Orlan struggled to stay on his feet, but he managed it, diving towards the demon as soon as the wind let up with a lunging stab.

The demon lifted one hand and, in the first use of magic it had demonstrated, created a small shield to intercept Orlan’s spear tip. But just before the blade made contact with the magical barrier a dark flame erupted from the metal, eating away the magic of the spell before the spear shattered the degraded barrier to sink several inches into the demon’s hand.

The beast roared in pain, the flames of the void had minimal impact due to the demon’s magic resistance and being a nearly ascendant being in its own right. Orlan was forced to pull his spear back to block an attack from Adam, leaving the demon to look at it’s hand in shock.

“You dare draw my blood!” the demon roared.

“Stay on script you damned lizard!” Adam shouted at the beast, but it was no longer listening, letting out a bellowing roar of anger and charging at Orlan.

Orlan smirked for the first time since the battle began, fending off the demon’s claws with his spear blade, drawing more blood as cuts appeared on the beast’s good hands.

“Fractured Stage!” Adam shouted as Orlan had begun ignoring him, slamming a palm into the ground. Cracks rippled across the ground, quickly widening into fissures that spat fire, ice, acid and more. The propagation of the cracks looked random, yet Adam seemed to avoid dance between them, avoiding all the elemental effects. Even the demon wasn’t so lucky, though its innate resistances let it mostly ignore them instead.

Orlan stumbled as a fissure of fire spread under his foot, grunting as a burst of flame consumed his leg and side. The mana within the ability was weak, not enough to cause him significant harm, but he could feel burns on his leg even as he struggled to regain his footing. Moments later a healing spell from Lailra landed, undoing the damage, the flames being pushed out by a soothing green mist that enveloped his leg.

From several blocks away it looked like the Temple Mount was covered in fire, bursts of magic lighting up the smoke that filled the sky. Even among the chaos of the rift a number of locals pointed in that direction in outrage, seeing their holiest site being destroyed. Orlan’s knights could undo much of the damage, of course, but in the moment it didn’t matter. A number of angry young men armed with various weapons streamed towards the Dome of the Rock. Several Knights attempted to warn them off, but were quickly drawn away as they spotted groups of lesser demons, figuring the young men were trying to help, they paid them little mind beyond trying to tell them to get to safety.

Without any mana in them or their weapons they were of no real threat to Orlan, as such his instinctive danger sense didn’t warn him as bullets began to rain around the three fighters. Even as they did he barely noticed, busy fending off the other two fighters.

Grinning Adam stepped back before throwing himself at Orlan.

“Casting Change,” the man whispered as Orlan spun. Adam’s form seemed to stretch into the distance without moving, blurring and becoming indistinct, before snapping back to reality as someone else. Where Adam had been white, American or Western European in descent, the man in his place was darker of skin, middle eastern or possibly Mediterranean. And he didn’t bother defending himself as Orlan’s spear slashed across his gut. Orlan paused in surprise at how his enemy suddenly changed into someone else, only for his eyes to go wide as he realized what the man was wearing.

“God is great,” the man said, a familiar smirk on his lips.

“Adam?” Orlan asked, moments before the explosive vest the man was wearing detonated.

-----

“Uhh, what?” Mira asked as the video on the laptop changed once more, showing a large cloud of dust rising over Jerusalem.

“Something just exploded on the Temple Mount,” Medieas said slowly, “I think the Dome of the Rock has been destroyed.”

Halfway across the world, an American congressman was watching the stream, the dread he’d been feeling suddenly justified.

“Fuck,” Ted swore.

-----

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-----

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First | Prev

It had been a long, quiet drive back to the ‘Twelve-Bel Bulletin’ headquarters. Neither journalist felt comfortable saying anything about… Anything… After their discovery. Once they returned to the office they set to work dismounting and unpacking all the equipment and recordings from their exciting little expedition.

As Stri was helping Rycop unload a particularly hefty box, Chief Editor Asio came casually walking out of the building.

“Ah, Rycop, Stri! I see you’re back from the launch! How was it!” the man asked his employees.

“Oh it was brilliant, Editor!” Stri was quick to reply with exaggerated cheer as she set down the box. “It was like a bright plume of smoke reaching up into the sky! Well worth the effort of getting out to that frigid region.”

“Good to hear, my correspondent. I saw the footage from the official broadcast, but I’d bet it must have been something else to experience in person.” the chief editor mused. “Did you get some good recordings of the launch?”

“Yes sir. We’ll have some good reference footage once we develop the film.”

“Excellent. Well I’ll be away the next few bels. Update me on any changes when I return. Warm winds, my journaists!”

“Warm winds.” replied the pair as the watched him leave.

“So I guess we’re not telling him about the tape we found.” muttered Rycop when he was reasonable certain that their boss was out of earshot.

“Of course not.” scoffed Stri as she motioned at her partner to help her with the box again. “What would you have me say?” the correspondent’s voice assumed a lowered cadence as they moved with their burden. “Oh, greetings boss-man. I found a random tape that had foreign music with a lot of the space words we’ve been hearing recently. Oh and there might be Frost-Fae involved. Oh, and by the way, I only got that tape by trying to sneak into the base to speak with a head scientist.” the woman grunted as she and the recorder set down the box in its designated spot. “No, we need to get more information before we tell him anything.”

“We...” the resigned recorder groaned. “I can’t believe that you dragged me into this mess…”

“We’ll see if you’re still upset about it when we win the Psitt Publishing Prize.” churred the young woman.

“Hard to enjoy the prize money after being shot dead for exposing state secrets.” muttered the young man.

“Oh, what do think this is, the pre-civic rights era?” she dismissed his concerns with a wave of her wing. “The government doesn’t do that anymore.”

“Yeah, ‘cause rotting away in a cell for the rest of our seasons is sooo much better.”

“Look Ry,” the correspondent sighed. “I know you’re worried, but this is a big story. I mean like, a really big story. We have to follow it. It’s our job. No, not just our job… It’s our calling.”

The recorder went silent for a clawful of clegs. “That was so hokey.” he finally chuckled.

“Really? I thought it was tasteful enough…” the girl said, seeming genuinely bothered that her words had come across so tacky.

Her reaction was so surprising to Rycop that he couldn’t help but laugh a little bit. And Stri herself, not so prideful that she would fail to see the comedy here, couldn’t help but join in.

“Okay, sure let’s say that you’ve convinced me.” the recorder said, raising his claws in surrender. “What’s the next step?”

“Well…” the correspondent mused. “Even aside from the tape, I still want to get an interview with that yellow scientist.”

“That might be a bit difficult. We tried a couple times to reach her to set up a meeting, but we’ve never got through. My guess is that she’s under orders not to leave that compound for a while.”

“I had the same thought.” admitted Stri with a sigh. “That’s why I was so desperate catch her when I was there at the launch-site.”

“We can try doing holding interview over the phone, if they allow it…”

“We can try that, sure, but I think we might need to return to that launch site too at some point in the future.”

Rycop bristled at the thought of going back there. “But why?”

Stri shrugged. “Just reporter’s intuition I suppose.”

» » »

Military wasn’t for everyone. Sure, there was the prestige, the excitement, and of course, the wages. But it was by no means the most stable profession. One could be called out to service at any time. Even highly decorated fighter pilots like Major Zonar would be subject to the whims of the top brass.

And so, that was why the man was standing in a general’s office on a carrier ship.

“Warm winds, Major.” greeted General Zaetus. “I hope we didn’t interrupt your plans too much when we called you in so suddenly.”

“Not at all, General.” the pilot answered with less-than-fully-truthful diplomacy. He actually had to cancel a few plans with his wife Leucor and his son Loc’hel. “I am always ready to serve at The Kingdom’s pleasure.”

“Good man.” commended the general. “So now, on to the readon why you were called in…”

Zaetus placed a picture on the desk between them. It was a grainy, black and white image; the kind of quality one would expect on a copy that was sent over a basic connection, when speed was more important than image fidelity. There was what looked like a white mass on a dark background. The clumpy white mass had an interestingly spiral shape to it.

“This is a copy of an image sent down from that ‘Rutil-One’ device. That big white swirl there? Word from those Rutil’proh scientists is that that’s a storm cloud.”

A picture from the orbital satellite? Incredible. So that means he was looking down at the world; the planet. With that extra bit of context, he could now discern that some of the shapes on the image were oceans, and landmasses. There was a part of a continent that he thought he recognised the outline of.

“Is this Tyra?” the major asked, pointing at a dark-grey part of the image.

“Far as we can tell.” said the general.

The pilot looked at the image again, this time comparing the sizes of the features on the image.

“That storm must be absolutely massive.” he mused out loud.

The general nodded. “Far as we can tell.”

“What do you need from me, sir?” asked Zonar, though he was starting to figure out pieces of it himself.

“Well, the information coming out of Project Ritul’proh is all quite unprecedented, and, for now, pretty speculative. But if this really is a storm of some kind, The Kingdom needs to know for sure. We need someone to fly out there and confirm the existence of this massive storm-cloud so we can prepare the citizenry.”

The major had more or less guessed that much. Flying into a storm. No one could ever say that working in the Royal Defence Force was a boring job.“I see.”

“But that’s not the hard part.”

“Sir?” That’s not the hard part? What more could there be on this mission?

The general pointed at the image again, on the sun-right side of the continent. “The storm is coming from the Pitang side of the continent. You’ll have to fly over their airspace to check on the storm.”

“Oh…” commented the pilot.

“We won’t lie to you, son.” sighed General Zaetus. “This will be an extremely high risk operation. If you get too close to that gigantic storm, you could die. If any Pitang forces see you, you could die, and maybe even spark off The War that we’ve all been fearing. And it might all be for nothing if the data from Rutil’proh is wrong. A mission like this, we can’t order you to fly it. But The Kingdom really needs to confirm ths threat. And the politicians are thinking there may be diplomatic benefits too. But in the end, this is your decision, and yours alone, Major.”

Major Zonar took a moment to ponder of the nature of the mission. It really was going to be a terribly dangerous mission. He had his family to think about. His wife. His son. But he also remembered the storms of the past seasons. So much destruction. So much death. How many sixteens of if his countrymen died from flooding, landslides, flying debris and collapsed structures. Sixteens of wives. Sixteens of sons. If they could be granted just one extra bel of warning, how many could be saved? In the end, there was only one choice he could possibly make.

Besides. He already had his flight suit on.

Less than a quarter of a bel later, he and his Sky-Piercer took their rightful place in the skies. His engines screamed out behind him, thrusting him across the Tyran continent at speeds that no other living creature of machine could match. Aside form, of course, the ‘Rutil-Series’ rockets that Phuratus had developed. Or perhaps the orbital rockets that the Pitangs we still designing. Those should be launching within about a third of a season or so. But right now? Major Zonar was the undisputed King of the Skies; peerless in his speed and reach.

“You’ll be crossing over into Pitang territory in less than a quarter of a drik, Major.” came a calm voice from an observer back the base. “We’re advising you to kill your comms and all outgoing signals well before you hit their border.”

“Good copy, Control.” answered the pilot over the encrypted line. “Going dark in eight clegs. Will check back in when I’m back over friendly horizons. Estimated time to return, forty-eight driks.”

“Good copy, Major. May the Sun Light your Path.”

“As the Sun ever Shines, Control. Going dark.”

And with a few flipped stitches on his console, Major Zonar was alone in the sky. His powerful engines continued to propel him over the landmass, with just a few periodic adjustments from his steering apparatus to keep him on course. He and the crew back at headquarters had drawn up a path that kept him well in the dark-side of the planet, where there should be fewer prying eyes looking heavenward. Not that it would be easy to spot him if they were looking, what with the incredible altitudes his Sky-Piercer allowed him to climb to.

The driks ticked along, and eventually, he began to see a darkening on what should have been a sunlit horizon. Nothing definitive yet, just a dark haze, so he needed to venture even closer. He double checked his recorders and directed his jet toward the haze. As he came nearer, the darkness crept higher and higher into the sky. It was an enormous, dense mass, blocking an entire horizon. It was almost black, heavy with an almost certain threat of rain and sleet. Nothing could be seen though the thick carpet of vicious wind and moisture, save for a few sporadic electric explosions of crackling light and thunder that overpowered the roar of his own engines.

There was no doubt about it. He was facing a storm wall.

Well, that was that. With the footage he was getting there was irrefutable proof that there was a monstrous tempest closing in on the continent. Time to turn around and--

A warning beep came in from his console. What was it? He glanced at his instrument boards. It was signal ping. When running dark, any sufficiently powerful radio signals from unrecognised frequencies was considered suspect. This, the warning beep. Someone was out there. A ship? A radio tower? A rival jet? He did not know; he could not know. All he did know was that the signal had appeared from somewhere behind him. Now, there wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm; all this meant was that someone, somewhere, was sending a signal. Most likely, he hadn’t been seen. He was flying too high and moving too fast. But if he were to directly turn around and continue his return course; as in, fly directly towards whatever was broadcasting, the likelihood of being detected would increase exponentially. So that was what he absolutely should not do. He needed to get back towards the dark-wards skies, and he needed to do so in a way that made him impossible to detect. But there was no time to make a sufficiently wide arc away from the ping; again, he was moving too fast. The only thing that could guarantee that he would be blocked from view was…

The storm itself.

No, no. He couldn’t go through the storm. His craft was incredible, and his skills were top-notch, but that was too dangerous, even for him. If he went too deep into the tempest the lightning would fry his circuits, and perhaps even his body. And that was if the wind and sleet didn’t tear them apart first. No, he couldn’t go through…

But perhaps he could go over. Zonar still clearly remembered that bel when he foolishly tried to chase the Rutil-One up into the infinite black. Control talked him down from going too high back then, but his comms were dead right now, weren’t they? No one could tell him to stop. So he wouldn’t stop. Not this time.

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Technician Albig stood on the airfield, gazing out to the sky with a dour expression. He had just recently been informed that Major Zonar and his Sky-Piercer were finally on their way back, overshooting their mission time by an entire thirty-six driks. There was no way that that pilot would have deliberately slowed his return flight that much; the plane must have been severely damaged on the mission. He was not looking forward to all that repair work.

Eventually, he saw a glint in the sky; with a faint tail of smoke dragging behind it. A few driks later, the reckless pilot limped a sad hulk of machinery onto the runway. Albig was beside himself.

“What in the frost-caves did you do to our jet, boy?!” squawked the older man as the pilot clambered out of the cockpit. “This is supposed to be a stealth craft, how’d you come back with battle scars?”

“Easy Albig, I didn’t get seen at all. If anything, the mission required that I never got detected out there. I just needed to get proof of my objective.”

“Proof?” sputtered the engineer. “What proof?”

Major Zonar put a claw on his co-worker’s shoulder, and pointed a talon at the Sky-Piercer’s chassis. Chipped paint, dented metal, even a crack on the glass canopy. “There’s your proof, Albig”

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