The Secrets' Crusade

Personal Log, Mary D'reve, August 29th​, 2130

Visiting another planet has been a dream of mine since I was a child. And I don't mean going back to Mars, like I did, or visiting the other worlds of the solar system, which humanity has. I mean planets in other systems, far away from the light of Sol. I know that our mission doesn't have time to indulge childish dreams, and I hope that Mandy wasn't trying to find a way to do so yesterday.

I know that she's right about my expertise; I'm the only true specialist in the science behind Practice on this mission. But am I really going to find anything immediately actionable down there? I can't answer that, but I can't avoid the question. Despite all my work, what others often call brilliance, I'm still just a scientist. I don't have the ingrained training that Mandy or any of the Unisonbound do, and I can't think faster than them like Iris can.

I'm dressing this up, aren't I.

I'll be a liability down there. I'm slower, comparatively inexperienced, incapable of reaching orbit on my own, I could go on. A single mistake could doom not just this mission but my entire species. And yet I still can't restrain my excitement. I could barely sleep last night, and I've felt like I could walk on air all morning. Without my grav belt. I've been trying to distract myself with equipment checks, but none of it works.

And everything was ready last night, anyway.

You blinked as words you hadn't typed flowed across the text log, then raised your eyes towards the ceiling. You took a steadying breath, and-

"Right here, mom," Iris' voice cut through whatever question or condemnation you'd been about to speak, transforming them into a shocked exclamation.

"Iris!" Your pronunciation was significantly higher up the vocal scale than normal – how had she gotten in here? For her part, your daughter looked anything but shamefaced, but her smile lacked the tilt of her more mischievous grin. This smile was... You looked closer, examining. Hmm. Her avatar had a fully reactive synthetic musculature, and though you knew she could manually control it, she rarely did.

There was something at the corners of her smile, a flickering motion that kept trying to drag it down into something else. You looked up, and her eyes flicked away from your gaze. You knew this expression. You'd worn it three months ago, not accounting the week, when Iris and Mandy had left for the Third Battle of Sol.

"Come sit with me?" You didn't ask what was wrong, you didn't need to. Iris sagged in place, then did as you'd asked.

"That obvious?" She asked, wringing her hands as she set herself down next to you. Your quarters weren't anything extravagant, but they were large enough to have a small social area, and you'd worked hard to make it cosy. You shook your head.

"Only to me," you told her, resting a stilling hand atop her own. "And maybe Mandy. But that would be parental privilege."

She blushed, but the rosiness of her cheeks didn't drive her worries away. How on earth had Amanda managed this with you? You shook yourself mentally. Introspect later, act now.

"You're worried about me." You were quite sure that just saying that was some sort of violation of psychological strategies, but you didn't care. Iris slumped back into the soft pillows of your sofa, her expression strained, tugging on your hand as she went.

"I suppose it is obvious," you agreed, flicking away the log panel you'd had up and shuffling closer. "And I don't think either of us needs to say why."

"No." Her voice was low enough that your enhanced hearing had difficulty catching it. "And I'm worried about both of you, mom. It's just," she broke off, lips twisting into a painful frown.

"I'm just a touch less resilient, aren't I." You kept your voice as level as you could, but somehow a touch of humour slipped through. Iris' hand tightened on yours, and her eyes – blue with golden pupils this time, were hot with tears as she viciously shook her head.

"It's not just that," she snapped, and words spilled forth in a sudden flood. "It's about what you might find down there. What we found on the Zlathbu homeworld changed mom, and it's still changing me. You're still safe from it, and I know that's a silly thing to say when I think about the Sorrows but I just can't get away from the thought of what you might find and how it might change you too. And I don't want that. They don't deserve to make us into something like them."

"No," you agreed. You didn't need to ask who they were. "They don't. But Iris." You caught her chin with your other hand, the motion well-remembered even after the years of her living away. "For everything I said in my log, and please do try to stop snooping on those, dear, you know that I might end up needed down there. We need to understand how this war ended, beyond the obvious. Tahkel told us that the Shiplords don't talk to the Uninvolved, but this was older than their memories. We need to know what's changed, and what happened here that was enough to make them act at all."

"That's not..." Iris started to say. You shook your head.

"It's not more important than our family, no. But do you know how we stop it from being that?" You asked. It was her turn to shake her head, and you smiled a sad, old smile. "We choose otherwise."

She stared at you for a long moment, golden pupils flickering, disbelief etched on every line of her face. But she was your daughter, and Mandy's, and that meant she understood what you meant. Even if she didn't know it yet.

"You'll get there, love," you told her, pulling her abruptly limp form into a hug. You wiped her eyes as you drew back, then reached out towards the table next to you. Your fingers twisted inwards and the equipment on the table, all the gear you'd prepared, rose into the air. Then you made a fist, and each piece flung itself across the space between you to attach to pre-programmed hold points.

"Would you like to walk me to the shuttle?" You asked. Her hold tightened, fingers pressing almost painfully through the layers of nanotech masquerading as casual wear. Another answer without words, one you knew as well. "Alright. If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

Gently, you extricated yourself from her hold, then lent forward to place a kiss on her forehead. "I'll be back soon. Promise."

A thought activated your flight systems, lifting you up over the cosy mess of cushions around the table towards the entrance to your quarters. You twisted in the air, looking back at your daughter as the door flickered open behind you to see her frown starting to fade. She'd get there, you told yourself. Maybe even sooner than you thought. For a moment, you considered calling back, offering again, but that would be too early.

You floated out into the hallway, catching yourself short of the far bulkhead, and touched back down onto the deck. You might feel like walking on air, but there was a time and a place. And that would be once you were safely back aboard the Adamant. It took little time to pass through the ship to her small hanger bay, where Amanda and the rest of the ground team were waiting for you. Jane was there, too, her mouth set in a thin line. She still wasn't completely happy about your going down.

"Are you ready, Mary?" Mandy asked, turning away from Mir with a smile that reached all the way to her eyes. Vega lounged by entrance to the shuttle, leaning casually on empty air with an understated elegance that was utterly unfair no matter it being the result of her Focus. All of their Aegises were fully extended, and light absent of any shade flickered between Kalilah's fingers as you nodded.

"As I'll ever be," you said, a quick glance showing that you were quite alone beyond those present at the shuttle. "Everything set on this end?"

You caught a movement from Jane, and in that moment almost found yourself asking the same question you'd been writing about. Was it really so wise for you to come? But you stopped yourself, closed your eyes, and took a breath. By the time you'd let it back out, Jane appeared to have never moved.

"Pre-flight's all green." Vega said, righting herself. She looked over at Mandy. "Sooner we're gone, the sooner this is done." There wasn't anything cruel in her words; you knew Vega liked you. This was just Vega as the Proven Miracle, the inviolate core that hid beneath an unmeant appearance of idle fancy.

"And the sooner we should have some idea of what actually happened here," Mir added, his expression serene. You nodded in silent agreement.

"Then let's go." Vega ducked into the shuttle, followed by Mir and Kalilah, leaving you with the two commanders of the mission.

"You sure you have everything there?" Mandy asked, looking you up and down and taking in the hardpoint-latched systems. You'd deploy your Masque once aboard.

"Quite sure," you replied, "and I'm not going to change my mind."

Her eyes brightened above her steady smile. "Had to ask. Jane?"

"Commodore Hawk?" The FSN officer's reply was stiffer than normal, but only that. Her disagreement couldn't be truly severe, then. That was something, at least.

"The Adamant is yours. We'll be back as soon as we can."

"Yes ma'am." Amanda winced, then gestured for you to follow.

The shuttle was as you'd remembered it, simple, but not uncomfortable, and fully capable of far more than just planetary descent. The five of you fit easily into its forward spaces, though you'd made sure to request a large selection of observational gear to be packed into its cargo spaces. You took the time to ensure that all of the equipment was properly secured before moving forward to the cockpit. You didn't expect to be much help there, but you could link into the sensor array.

Every pair of eyes could help given the watchful gaze of all those suborbital survey probes. Getting down without them noticing you was going to be a challenge even with Vega aboard, and part of you wished that Amanda hadn't chosen to leave Elil behind. An Insight Focused would have closed the circuit for the shuttle's stealth systems, but he'd been left aboard the Adamant to ensure the larger vessel's secrecy from the Shiplord science vessel and its venerable escort.

:Comms check.: Amanda's voice sounded in your head, translated from text and identifier into something recognisable as her by your stack. A mental command brought the implant to full readiness, synchronising with the craft's system and signalling an affirmative to the rest of the crew. The shuttle lifted and oriented towards the world below, the sightless eyes of its sensors opening wide. You saw the shape of the Adamant behind you for a moment, the sloping angles of its hull so strange compared to the utilitarian angles of the newer Solar Navy designs. But it was only a moment, before you crossed the edge of the mix of Practice and more understandable science that rendered the ship invisible to all eyes. Then yours turned to the world before you.

Breaching the Snare: 3
Ways of Peace: 75

The descent wasn't a smooth one, and here the decision to leave Elil aboard the Adamant came back to haunt you. Against most detection systems, a Harmonial would have been enough to smooth away any indications of descent, but the Trailblazer systems had never been designed to handle a massed microsatellite network. It was Mir that saved you from its gaze, his Focus passed through the medium of a Word providing the right path down through the atmosphere. Mir's Focus was founded in the man's desire to create or preserve peace. In that moment, as your shuttle veered towards detection by seemingly endless orbital eyes, it provided.

The world that welcomed you, once your stealth systems had adjusted to the atmosphere, was so very different from Earth or Mars. And yet, some similarities remained, as if by cosmic chance. The most common colour wasn't green, the ecosystem had evolved in different directions in its quest to synthesize energy. Many shapes were, however, quite familiar. And why wouldn't they be? The most efficient shapes for absorbing sunlight would be the same here as on Earth. The Adamant had begun the process of cataloguing the ecosystem, and you continued the process through the endless minutes of your descent.

Plants of all types grew in abundance, their roots reaching deep in the soil. Some were similar to Earth plants, though you saw nothing equivalent to a tree. Some were akin to spiderwebs, and would have been torn apart by a breeze, had a breeze ever made it through the cocoon of symbiotic fungal vegetation.

It was too much data to even begin to analyse, but that wasn't why you were doing it. That would come later. Your work only stopped when the presence of life ended at the border of the city-scar, this one chosen deliberately to maintain maximum separation from any of the quasi-sapient species that you believed would one day call the world home. It was hoped that their absence would keep any watching satellites far away.

Vega dropped the shuttle into the shadow of an ancient building, moving you carefully into the structure, and you shivered as your sensor feed took in the spaces that revealed.

:What is it, Mary?: Amanda asked, feeling the motion through your link. You flicked several data points along it. Enough to prove the point.

:These cities were meant to have been homes, Mandy. The cradle of a civilisation older than humanity,: you sent, pulling up more images as Vega brought the shuttle into land. :And yet there's nothing to identify who or what they were. Did they walk on two feet, or four, or something entirely different?:

:Whatever was done here, it was thorough.: Vega agreed, her mental voice far more subdued than usual. :Left nothing of theirs behind except the buildings. Not even on the inside.:

:Exactly,: you sent, any excitement from your approach fading quickly under the weight of this bare sarcophagus of a city. :Do you think it's safe out there?:

:I think so.: Amanda's voice came steady in your mind. :And if it isn't, well, we won't stay out there any longer than we have to. But we need to go out if we're to have any idea of what happened here.:

:Any good idea,: Kalilah corrected, in a tone of chipped ice. :If it comes to it, we'll make do with whatever the three of you can find in here.: You felt a surge of warmth for the older woman as she stated that.

:Of course.: Amanda replied, but it was just a little too quick to be disarming. She sighed in your head, lifting herself out of the copilot's chair as the shuttle's personnel ramp lowered and extended. :Sorry. You're right, Kalilah, Mary. This place doesn't feel right. Like a scar on the surface of the world.:

:Then let's get this done,: Mir suggested, a tense energy pouring off of him as his own Aegis- and Masque-coated body moved swiftly back through the small craft's exit. :There's nothing out there right now; we can be gone before the engines get cold.:

They wouldn't regardless, of course, but you knew he hadn't meant it literally. It was a strange feeling, really. The stacks allowed some level of emotional component to be transferred, but it had to be done deliberately. Talking to Unisonbound over link provided a depth of connection that went entirely beyond that. They didn't signal their feelings; they were them.

You came to your feet as well, flicking the various instruments subsumed into your Masque online. The shuttlecraft had excellent sensors, but it had been designed as a covert infiltration craft, not a survey vessel. You needed your own scanners to make up the differences. You turned as the ramp crunched down into what you imagined had been the alien's concrete analogue.

"Alright." Amanda said, speaking deliberately. "Mary, Kalilah, you stay aboard. Kalilah, you come get us Mary tells you that something's gone wrong. This shouldn't take long." Then she stepped down the ramp, reaching out her hands to the two Potentials next to her. Mir took her right hand, Vega her left. What they walked down into was difficult to describe.

It was a room, of course. If the Hjivin had been human-sized, it could have been a comfortable looking lounge, or something similar. The walls were scorched into a black-streaked grey, the same as the floor and the ceiling above the shuttle.

"Mary, are you ready?" Kalilah asked from beside you, one hand of her tightly regimented Masque flexing around the spot on her built where you knew her weapon lived.

"Yes," you nodded quickly. "All of my sensors are online, and I've pointed the entire shuttle array at their location. If anything happens here, we'll see it." The last word terminated halfway as Amanda, Mir and Vega stepped down onto the floor of the room, and one of the sensors you'd brought along with you suddenly flared with readings. It had been designed to track the presence of energies like Practice, and something was reacting.

"Mary?" Kalilah snapped, concern drawing your name tight against her lips. You didn't waste time with verbal motions.

:I'm detecting an energy spike,: your broadcast across the local link. Another sensor, this one a finely tuned but more general scanner for local soulspace flared with its own response signal. :Growing steadily, but nothing that they should be able to detect from orbit. These places seem to act like enormous jammers to anyone outside.:

:Praise be to small mercies,: Mir added to that ruefully. :Vega, do you feel that?:

:I do.: The Harmonial's voice was muffled, an odd sound to anyone who didn't know her. You did, but you had to question how she'd reached halfway to a Trance already. This was almost a new record, and you didn't like that. :It's like,: you felt the image of a single shaking head, :it's like there's a warning here. In this place, all around us.:

:Maybe you should leave it alone, then?: Kalilah asked, but you without any real effort. Some things weren't worth fighting, and all you'd detected so far was internal readings. None of them should pierce the city-scar.

:And let this entire trip be for nothing?: Vega asked, and you felt the image of a headshake again. :We can't waste this. Not unless we absolutely have to.:

:I agree,: Amanda's voice was still steady, undisturbed by the presence of a Trance. :If whoever did this left a warning, it behoves us to see what it was.: The tone of her voice shifted, and you watched energy flood into her soul, concentrating in the physical space of her lungs. They filled, focused, the energy inside of them crystallising into something that was almost solid.

Vega and Mir matched the display with smooth professionalism, and when they Spoke, it was as one.

Let. Us. Know.

The pattern of energy around the three Unisonbound froze into immobility, its edges sharpening into jagged shapes, terrifying angles of lethal power. And for a long moment, you were faced again with the awful question that haunted you on late nights. What would happen on the day a Potential overestimated their ability to understand something bigger than themself?

Uninvolved Motivations: 100 + 64 = 164. Critical Success.

The patterns around the three smoothed, and then power flooded into their bodies, enough to make your sensors let out a warbling cry of objection. Not enough to breach the scar, you thought, but that wasn't a certainty anymore. Digging into it further, however, was interrupted by Kalilah. The woman pulled you back from the ramp's edge with the ease of a mother cat lifting a kitten as energy pulsed out again. And below you, Amanda, Mir and Vega snapped to ramrod straight and inhumanely still.

Their mouths opened, vocal chords twitching, yet no sound emerged. No more energy surged forth, but their bodies pulsed with a presence that was not greater, but coming from so many levels deeper than anything you'd observed before. Their nanoshells writhed beneath that flow of power, and you saw the shining not-matter of a Unisonbound Aegis glare through them. Yet still they didn't move. You tried to take a step forward, but Kalilah's arm stopped you.

"You're not going down there," she said. There was no malice to the words, but her lips were set in a firm line that you knew well enough from Amanda's descriptions. She wasn't going to budge. "Their Unisons are unresponsive too."

"What about in your link?" You asked, carefully withdrawing the threads of inquiry that you'd been about to launch from your stack. But there'd been something about those readings that you recognised. Kalilah shook her head.

"They're there, but if I reach out whatever's around them might affect me too," she told you. "And Amanda ordered me to keep you safe, Miss D'reve."

"We can't just sit here," you began to protest, only for Kalilah to turn back to you far, far more swiftly than you could track.

"We can and we will," Kalilah ground out, her voice utterly flat. "They went looking; now we have to trust that they'll come back from whatever they found. If they haven't moved in five minutes, then you can send down a drone. Until then-" A gasp cut through the air, and Vega staggered, dropping to her knees amid the far-too-sterile remains. Her Aegis made short work of any debris, and you stared at the readings in front of you in shock.

Tendrils of blinding light arced off of Mir's form, cutting into the blackened walls close to him as if they were paper. Composites that had lasted more than millions years melted and flowed under those thin whips of energy. He kept his feet, but it was a close-run thing, and your attention didn't remain long as more warnings flared across your analysis panels.

"This looks like a Unisonbound rejection," you whispered. Then, louder. "Kalilah, this looks like-"

"I heard you," she replied. Synchronising with a Unison Platform was a complex process, and one that required a great deal of the biological half of the input. You'd never experienced a true failure at the synchronisation point, but it had come close a few times. Kalilah had almost suffered one of these, and only Amanda's intervention then had been able to stop her from wiping out the entire facility. But if Mandy suffered a rejection, or something like one, you'd have no idea what it might do.

Except…it wasn't just a Unisonbound connection that had looked like this. There'd been something else, during Second Contact. When Amanda had found her way into the Reverie of the Marionette diplomat, a memory from millennia ago passed down through the souls of that people. You'd never believed that the Shiplords, or anyone who might have worked with them, were mindlessly stupid. An intelligent race had to have reasons for what they did, and that had to apply equally to whatever Uninvolved had done this to these planets.

In the late 20th​ and early 21st​ century, there'd been a great deal of dispute over how to properly identify sites where nuclear material was housed. Some sort of warning would be needed to protect those who might not understand the danger. Vega had even said that it felt like a warning. But what sort of warning would do this?

---

Your name. What had it been?

Looking out across an endless abyss of glittering light cast by the seemingly eternal stars, it was hard to care enough to remember. But some things stuck with you, even here. You'd been one of the very first to leave your bodies of flesh and blood behind, reaching beyond the material to something more. Something that had always been there, hidden in your |||||||||||||.

You'd watched for millennia as the galaxy grew and changed around you, until the myriad races that had followed your own had shaped it into something nigh unrecognisable. This wasn't a complaint; you could look out and see so much to admire in those ambitious youths. The desire to make something more of the galaxy, to create something better for those that came next, that was to be treasured. That had been the first lesson your race had ever been taught by another.

Not all was as it had been, however. You could feel it in the world around you, in the tenseness of your fellows as they had come together here, fear and more guiding them to this place, created as one where all your kind could speak. For tens of cycles, eyeblinks by your own measure, the path of the galaxy had found itself shifted. War had come to it, between your old mentors and another race. A war that had shattered systems and torn down entire civilisations, yet despite that still only a war.

That had been the consensus of your kind. You would watch, of course, and be prepared to protect reality from any action like that of the |||||||. But the race facing your past teachers had none of the mastery required, and that had been enough to calm many voices that might otherwise have sought to act.

Now the manifold voices of ancient races, and younger ones, rang across the space. Each to a side, each to a purpose, all seeking that ever-distant point of consensus. And yet, you could not help but be concerned. How long had it been, since this began? A glance revealed the galaxy shifted, more stars blazing out their last breaths as the lines of battle shifted. How long had it been since that had happened?

If the place could have been called a place of meeting, you would have stood, and silence followed that in eyeblink instants. Another system flared, and again you felt it at the edge of your perceptions. You had watched the creation of a sibling once, those who had stood with you in the beginning, who had learnt from the same masters though followed you only many cycles later. This felt like that, but there was a strangeness to it. No, you corrected, looking deeper. A wrongness. The horrors of this war were not your concern; that had been the point of leaving it all behind.

But now you felt something else, unlike anything you'd seen in all the vastness of your years. You called out to your fellows to follow, and dived from the place to follow the thread across the galaxy. Another sun died as your form passed it, and you ducked between the rippling waves of its death cry with the deftness of ancient experience. Closer, you told yourselves. You had to get closer, to find the source of this, to understand it. The feeling of unease grew stronger as you trailed on, others of your kind descending in your wake, clearing the way and finding new ones for the rest, the host too great to come all at once.

There.

You recognised the system, despite the haze around it: a home star, the one from which this war had been launched. The sun pulsed at the centre of a converter, pouring out matter to serve the will of its masters, yet your attention was drawn to its worlds. Only two lived, yet you could feel almost nothing from them. How could that be? There were billions down there, tens of billions, yet so many of them were muted and dull. This hadn't been that sort of species, had it?

A younger one answered you that it had not, but your gaze was already diving deeper, cutting through the haze towards the living worlds. If you could truly call them that. Brighter sparks burned aboard ships all across the system, but the greatest concentrations on the planets were in the bare tens of thousands, and none of them felt right either. Their essence was changing, fading, becoming one. Why did that fill you with fear for the first time in a quarter million cycles? You had seen this before!

The answer came from the worlds below, a shivering cry through the spaces that your kind inhabited, rising in volume as you approached the oldest of the two worlds. You knew what you should find there now, you could see what was happening – this race was becoming one of you. But then why-

Hungry.

The worlds cried out together, keening the word with an almost sexual passion. And as you came to a halt above their homeworld, a gorge you thought long lost with your physical forms threatened to rise past the point of control. Your kind were meant to be creations of an entire race, a choice to leave the world behind, to become something of another type. It was no end to the journey of life, but it was a vast step, and one that no race should take except together.

Feed.

This time the word was a hiss, a yearning so great that it made you recoil. This wasn't how your kind was meant to exist. And yet there it was, in the space before you, wrapped around the planet like some feasting tumour. It reached down from your space to the one beyond, the one you had never touched, and lives withered away around the brightest sparks of this race. The only ones who you could recognise as having souls, instead of possessing them.

Around you, the younger and those of the middle scattered away, and you were the only one of the eldest to have reached this place yet. A glance turned back to the war beyond, the shattering suns and burning systems, yet all too far away. And this process, this thing, was growing too rapidly for those of that world to stop it. And when it reached the point of criticality, what would emerge? Nothing good, you could see that.

Hunger.

The cry echoed again, and you saw without seeing endless lines of life pouring into chambers at the heart of the terror's presence in the world beyond your own. You were meant to be better than this. To reach here, you were meant to find unity, not impose it. To do anything less would not be beauty, and this was far worse than mere ugliness. But you had also, all of you, agreed in the beginning. Acts upon the world beyond would not be taken without consensus. Yet there was no time for that now, as more souls streamed out of the husks that carried them.

This race was becoming Uninvolved, but they would make a mockery of that word. It burned at you, the promise you'd made, and yet this was worse than breaking that promise. To let such a thing be born would be to betray that oldest teaching, an older promise. Agreement pulsed within you, from the endless caverns of your merged souls, and you took one more glance across the world outside your own. Still not close enough, and they wouldn't reach here in time.

FEED!

It was louder now, and you sensed sluggish awareness in it, searching the space around it for more. And it wouldn't stop there. You weren't sure if it even could.

In your youth, you had played with the possibilities of your power, experimented far beyond the eyes of any with what a being of pure soul could do to the world of matter if it truly wished to. In the ancient myths of your people, gods had wielded fire and thunder. You knew how to do far worse, and now you drew upon those old lessons. This would have to be quick, and utterly ruthless. The younger ones might not understand, and could attempt to stop you, and that could not be risked.

HUNG-

It never finished. Light and fire tore reality at your fingertips. You felt the shock from those behind you, the terror that one of their eldest might have betrayed them, but you ignored it. This must be done. The fullness of your race, a mountain forged of a million years and more, loomed above the birthing monster like an avalanche, and the weapon-vaults of your soul yawned open.

I am sorry.

You were never certain who that message had been for.

Light shattered the boundary between worlds, and the creature before you shrieked in agony as lambent fire lanced into its heart. This was the weapon that you'd feared the most, out of everything your younger, more warlike self had created. A weapon that struck not just at the soul, but at all souls similar to it. It was a weapon designed with only one purpose, for the extinction of a still extant species. You'd hated it, but had never quite been able to forget it. Now you were glad you hadn't.

The beast screamed again as the fire took root, reality shaking around it as you hurled waves of lesser weapons into its hide, littering it with cuts and craters that it was far too young to know how to defend from. And below, on this world and the one next to it, the fire of your creation poured down into the world, into the cities and all the life that this race had created. Ships burned like tiny stars in the void, and the shining lights of hunger within them and down below shrieked in agony. It was all they had left before being struck from existence.

The light spread out around you, and you caught it with hands that knew its deadly power better than anyone. The first thing that one did when creating a weapon was learn how to defend from it, after all. All the vast will of who and what you were pushed back at the fire, the full weight of your power exerted upon reality to end the conflagration before it could spread further. And as light filled your eyes, you remembered your name.

Not the name of the Uninvolved that had done this, but your own.

Your name was Amanda Hawk, and your head spun as you collapsed forward onto the hard ground, tears seeping between the shattered veil of your Masque. To either side, you saw Vega and Mir on the ground beside you, hunched over in matching expressions of revulsion and pure terror.

You'd seen horror in your life, but this was horror on many levels. The Hjivin, enveloping every star system they encountered, poised to devour every soul in the universe like a cloud of locusts. They'd reduced themselves from a thriving, sapient people to little more than the primal urge to consume and reproduce. Trillions of souls, twisted as they were, demolished without warning. A power that could annihilate a species in both body and soul, unleashed with ruthless necessity.

And it wasn't done by the command of the Shiplords.

The Uninvolved had stopped being that, just once. And this is what they'd done. You felt tears on your cheeks, seeping between your Masque, and hot bile in your throat. There was more of that below you, somehow. When had that happened?

:When we were in there.: Sidra, for the first time that you could remember, sounded shaken. :I think, at least. I wasn't here to watch properly.:

:I,: you tried, but nothing you could think of felt like it was enough. :I can't even begin.:

:I know.: Sidra said. :Mir and Vega, they're having similar conversations. And Kalilah is stopping Mary from coming down here.: That, at least, prompted a response.

"I'm ok." Your voice sounded hoarse, almost pained, and anything but ok. So you tried again. "I'm ok, really. But what we saw," you paused, looking from side to side. "You both saw too?"

Vega nodded, her usually bright eyes shadowed with horror, and Mir just stared back at you. You could feel the Peace Focused in there, but right now he didn't feel like talking. You honestly weren't sure how you still were.

"How bad?" Kalilah asked. The soldier's question, and you wished you had a better answer.

"Take the worst you can possibly imagine," you said.

"And then make it ten thousand times worse," Vega finished.

"You can come down," you added. "It's safe. But we shouldn't stay here. Analysing what we just saw is going to take everyone, and a trip to the inhabited world if I'm not mistaken."

"At least we'll be able to give a properly horrified reaction," Mir said, slowly pushing himself up from where he'd been on all fours. His Masque folded back into transparency, and you paled. The man's eyes were bloodshot, and he was deathly pale. "But let's get out of here, please."

The landing party will return immediately to the Adamant, and will do so safely. Pick a viewpoint to experience this event from:
[] Iris
[] Lea Halwood
[] Elil
[] Jane Cyneburg
[] Write-in?