Jesri shifted in her chair, trying to find a comfortable way to rest on the bare metal. Harsh...
Grand Design
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Part 1
- Location
- USA
Jesri shifted in her chair, trying to find a comfortable way to rest on the bare metal. Harsh lights shone down from above, deepening the far corner of the room in shadow that cloaked the trio of Kitan customs officers. Although their faces were indistinct, their whispered conversation carried quite clearly to her ears.
"Is there anything in the tertiary codex that covers her case?" one asked worriedly. Another shifted his weight rhythmically between his front and hind feet, scrolling through a lengthy chunk of text on his tablet. He worked silently for a long minute before disgustedly tossing the tablet at the third Kita.
"I can't find anything," he trilled in frustration. "No case to handle her, and no exception policy for unhandled cases!" The two others bobbled their heads in irritation before leaning further into their hushed conference.
Jesri sighed. She was used to some degree of confusion, but Kita were notoriously obsessed with protocol. If she had known they had purchased this station she would have gone well out of her way to dock elsewhere. "Excuse me, gentlemen?", she inquired, at which all three officers flinched as if struck. "Will you be much longer? I have a schedule to keep, so I'd prefer to be on my way."
A split second of hope colored their faces, quickly replaced by returning frustration. "No, no, no! We have to classify you in the biological threat matrix before we let you board. The first question in the assessment, as you are aware, asks whether you are a carbon or sulfur-based life form." He fixed her with an annoyed look. "You are neither."
She grinned at him. "How interesting. Does your codex say that unclassified life forms must spend the rest of their days stuck in customs?"
"No!", he buzzed back, stalking to and fro manically. "It gives no guidance. The classification questionnaire had questions for every lifeform - until today."
Jesri shrugged. "Obviously not every lifeform." She waved away his retort before it could form and forged onward. "I'm aware of some Kitan codices as well, you know. There's one that I particularly like which states that no sentient being may be held in government custody for longer than three arcs unless criminal charges are filed."
The customs officer stopped pacing and turned a pale shade of puce. "Well, yes, of course... But the codices also say that no life form may enter the station without going through the biological assessment."
"What a conundrum," she murmured, the corners of her mouth twitching.
"This is serious!", raged the officer, stalking towards her. "If the codex is flawed, then so is our security. If our security is flawed..." His mouth worked at words that never came before he slumped down. Looking back towards his comrades and finding no offered help from that quarter, he turned towards Jesri and straightened up.
"Please, ma'am - do you have any information on your classification that could help us?"
A direct question. Damn.
Do not lie.
"Yes," she said through gritted teeth.
All three officers goggled at her, but she offered no clarification. "Well?" said the one holding the codex tablet. "What information do you have that will help us?"
Not even by omission.
"You're looking in the wrong section," Jesri muttered.
Frustrated, the officer flipped through the index. "Do you have any idea how big the codex is? What section are you listed under?"
Not even if it puts you at risk.
Jesri shot an annoyed look at the inquiring officer. "Section 46, Subsection 1039 - Ancient Devices and Artifacts."
The looks on their faces almost made this whole affair worth it, she decided. The three officers conferred around the tablet for several seconds more before falling silent. "Well strike me," said the one holding the tablet. He held the tablet up to show the entry he had found. A passable image of her face was at the top left, with lines of Kitan script flowing down the screen beside it. "Jesri Tam," he read, "Human-form Biological Construct." His eyes widened. "The date stamp on this record..."
"Human?", sputtered the officer nearest her, cutting him off. "The Humans?"
"Yep," she said, giving him a bland smile. "The very same. Builders of the Cygnus Gate, architects of the transit networks, creators of one increasingly late trader. Did you think dogs were the only life they left behind?"
Kita didn't have a very good face for expressing annoyance, but this officer was certainly trying his best. "Dogs are a standard carbon-based spacefaring species, certainly no outlier. I understand dogs. Why are you so different?"
Tell the whole truth, always.
Jesri resolved to find a planet where direct questions were considered extremely rude and move there forever. "Human biological engineering discovered the concept of scaffold-assisted growth at around the same time their computer systems were using photolithographic nanoscale silicon networks. There were experiments to develop improved biological constructs that incorporated their traditional computing architecture as a growth substrate. I am the end result of a very, very long line of research in that technique."
The codex officer stroked his eye ridges thoughtfully. "Silicon-based biochemistry has never been observed - present company excluded," he added with an apologetic nod to Jesri. "That would certainly explain the classification discrepancy."
Jesri flashed him a bright smile and stretched theatrically. "Well, gentlemen, I'm glad we solved that mystery. Does that mean I can be on my way?"
He shook his head, tapping furiously at the tablet. "No, we should gather some more information to refine the biological questionnaire-"
"Won't matter," she interjected hastily. "The codex doesn't permit classification of unique specimens into the questionnaire, they all go under artifacts. This isn't the first time I've had this conversation."
All three officers blinked. "Of course," said the codex officer. "That makes perfect sense. In that case, ma'am, you are free to go about your business pursuant to the regulations of this station for a duration not to exceed 40 arcs."
"Thanks!", she chirped, popping up from the chair and gathering her things.
"But if I may ask," said the codex officer hesitantly, "Are you truly the only one of your kind?"
Do not lie, except…
"Yep, just me," she said, tossing them a wave as she strode out of the room.
---
Hi folks, thanks for reading the first part of Grand Design. This is an ongoing original web fiction of mine originally posted to r/HFY. I will be posting as follows:
"Is there anything in the tertiary codex that covers her case?" one asked worriedly. Another shifted his weight rhythmically between his front and hind feet, scrolling through a lengthy chunk of text on his tablet. He worked silently for a long minute before disgustedly tossing the tablet at the third Kita.
"I can't find anything," he trilled in frustration. "No case to handle her, and no exception policy for unhandled cases!" The two others bobbled their heads in irritation before leaning further into their hushed conference.
Jesri sighed. She was used to some degree of confusion, but Kita were notoriously obsessed with protocol. If she had known they had purchased this station she would have gone well out of her way to dock elsewhere. "Excuse me, gentlemen?", she inquired, at which all three officers flinched as if struck. "Will you be much longer? I have a schedule to keep, so I'd prefer to be on my way."
A split second of hope colored their faces, quickly replaced by returning frustration. "No, no, no! We have to classify you in the biological threat matrix before we let you board. The first question in the assessment, as you are aware, asks whether you are a carbon or sulfur-based life form." He fixed her with an annoyed look. "You are neither."
She grinned at him. "How interesting. Does your codex say that unclassified life forms must spend the rest of their days stuck in customs?"
"No!", he buzzed back, stalking to and fro manically. "It gives no guidance. The classification questionnaire had questions for every lifeform - until today."
Jesri shrugged. "Obviously not every lifeform." She waved away his retort before it could form and forged onward. "I'm aware of some Kitan codices as well, you know. There's one that I particularly like which states that no sentient being may be held in government custody for longer than three arcs unless criminal charges are filed."
The customs officer stopped pacing and turned a pale shade of puce. "Well, yes, of course... But the codices also say that no life form may enter the station without going through the biological assessment."
"What a conundrum," she murmured, the corners of her mouth twitching.
"This is serious!", raged the officer, stalking towards her. "If the codex is flawed, then so is our security. If our security is flawed..." His mouth worked at words that never came before he slumped down. Looking back towards his comrades and finding no offered help from that quarter, he turned towards Jesri and straightened up.
"Please, ma'am - do you have any information on your classification that could help us?"
A direct question. Damn.
Do not lie.
"Yes," she said through gritted teeth.
All three officers goggled at her, but she offered no clarification. "Well?" said the one holding the codex tablet. "What information do you have that will help us?"
Not even by omission.
"You're looking in the wrong section," Jesri muttered.
Frustrated, the officer flipped through the index. "Do you have any idea how big the codex is? What section are you listed under?"
Not even if it puts you at risk.
Jesri shot an annoyed look at the inquiring officer. "Section 46, Subsection 1039 - Ancient Devices and Artifacts."
The looks on their faces almost made this whole affair worth it, she decided. The three officers conferred around the tablet for several seconds more before falling silent. "Well strike me," said the one holding the tablet. He held the tablet up to show the entry he had found. A passable image of her face was at the top left, with lines of Kitan script flowing down the screen beside it. "Jesri Tam," he read, "Human-form Biological Construct." His eyes widened. "The date stamp on this record..."
"Human?", sputtered the officer nearest her, cutting him off. "The Humans?"
"Yep," she said, giving him a bland smile. "The very same. Builders of the Cygnus Gate, architects of the transit networks, creators of one increasingly late trader. Did you think dogs were the only life they left behind?"
Kita didn't have a very good face for expressing annoyance, but this officer was certainly trying his best. "Dogs are a standard carbon-based spacefaring species, certainly no outlier. I understand dogs. Why are you so different?"
Tell the whole truth, always.
Jesri resolved to find a planet where direct questions were considered extremely rude and move there forever. "Human biological engineering discovered the concept of scaffold-assisted growth at around the same time their computer systems were using photolithographic nanoscale silicon networks. There were experiments to develop improved biological constructs that incorporated their traditional computing architecture as a growth substrate. I am the end result of a very, very long line of research in that technique."
The codex officer stroked his eye ridges thoughtfully. "Silicon-based biochemistry has never been observed - present company excluded," he added with an apologetic nod to Jesri. "That would certainly explain the classification discrepancy."
Jesri flashed him a bright smile and stretched theatrically. "Well, gentlemen, I'm glad we solved that mystery. Does that mean I can be on my way?"
He shook his head, tapping furiously at the tablet. "No, we should gather some more information to refine the biological questionnaire-"
"Won't matter," she interjected hastily. "The codex doesn't permit classification of unique specimens into the questionnaire, they all go under artifacts. This isn't the first time I've had this conversation."
All three officers blinked. "Of course," said the codex officer. "That makes perfect sense. In that case, ma'am, you are free to go about your business pursuant to the regulations of this station for a duration not to exceed 40 arcs."
"Thanks!", she chirped, popping up from the chair and gathering her things.
"But if I may ask," said the codex officer hesitantly, "Are you truly the only one of your kind?"
Do not lie, except…
"Yep, just me," she said, tossing them a wave as she strode out of the room.
---
Hi folks, thanks for reading the first part of Grand Design. This is an ongoing original web fiction of mine originally posted to r/HFY. I will be posting as follows:
- One chapter per day until this thread has all current chapters. This will (absent any miscalculations, acts of god, etc) cover chapters 1 through 18 and end on Friday, December 7th. I won't be posting chapters on the 22nd through the 25th of November due to the holiday.
- One chapter per week thereafter on Wednesdays. The later chapters are longer, in case you were wondering.
Last edited:
Part 2
- Location
- USA
Strolling through the souk of a transit station was always an assault on the senses. To her left, Jesri was accosted by a diminutive horde of yellow-furred Uen hawking decrepit fruits. Unfurled cloth banners flapped listlessly in the draft from the environmental systems to her right, a rippling display of shifting colors masking stacks of raw materials, food and hunched forms taking inventory. A buzz of shouting voices in a dozen languages carried around her in a dull roar, punctuated by extremes of high and low pitch from the vendors seeking to stand out from the din. Shooing the insistent Uen to the side with a thickly gloved hand, Jesri ducked between a pair of faded banners and turned down a side corridor.
Her destination was far from the souk, far from the docks and the critical systems of the station. Most transit network stations were sparsely populated for their size, which spoke more to their massive construction than their still respectably large population. By the time she had come halfway, Jesri could no longer hear the bustle of the market. Cool, humid air drifted around her under a high ceiling, with unmarked doors sealed shut in rows down the hallway.
This far away from the hub, the sides and nooks of the hallway had accumulated a drift of organic particulates. Absent any maintenance robots, the dust accrued volume, trapping moisture. Speckles of algae and lichen colored some surfaces, and the tiny bells of mushrooms curved up from against one ancient door. It was rumored that the farthest reaches of some stations had hallways which were entirely overgrown with exotic and dangerous plants, with lurking predators peering from within. Jesri didn't believe that rumor, but she didn't disbelieve it enough to try proving it false.
She stopped in front of a door, peering at the battered grey-green metal of the surface. It didn't look that distinct from the others, but no detritus had accumulated in front of the door. The access plate was not free of lichen, but a cleared area in the center took the form of a circular splotch with five radiating lines above it. Stripping off the glove from her right hand, Jesri pressed her palm into the panel. Her hand splayed outward, perfectly matching the five-fingered silhouette.
Unperturbed by its own age, the door hissed lightly as it slid into the wall. The lighting was dimmer within, but still clear enough for her to see a thin path through the boxes and crates lining one side of the entryway. She grimaced and flattened herself against the wall, scraping her chest on protruding corners as she inched past into the main room. These had been living quarters once, with a common layout. An image leapt into her head, unbidden, the dusty crates overlaid by a brightly lit and clean room with pictures on the wall, pictures of children and sunlit green fields.
She shook her head, and saw just the crates. "I don't have time for this bullshit," she muttered.
At the sound of her voice a rustling noise came from an adjoining room, followed shortly by a stooped, robed figure. It shuffled into the room, pushing its hood back from a bare, wrinkled scalp to show its face. Pallid, emaciated cheeks framed a thin mouth and nose, looking incongruously dour beside the sparkle of delight in the eyes above. "Sister," it rasped.
Jesri sighed. "Anja, you look like shit."
Anja cackled dryly, her voice like dead leaves. "You haven't changed a bit. We haven't spoken in how many years and that's the first thing you say? What about, 'Hello, sister, nice to see you after all this time. Sorry I haven't dropped by in ages!'"
Jesri snorted. "Are you asking me to lie to you? I wouldn't have even come by this dilapidated scrap heap if I had known the Kita had taken over management."
Hairless brows drew together as Anja frowned. "That's unfortunate," she mused, rifling through a crate. Clouds of dust fountained up as she shifted its contents before coming away with a small black box. She smiled sunnily at Jesri, earning an eye roll. "Kita are such a trial to deal with."
Drawing off her other glove, Jesri stretched and set her light pack down on a nearby box. She doffed her hood, shaking out chin-length raven hair. "So," she asked, "Is that what you called me here to see?"
Anja shook her head. "No, I had something I wanted you to hear. Have a listen to this while I freshen up, I wasn't expecting you so soon." She tapped a wall panel and shuffled into the back room, leaving Jesri alone with the empty crates and a slowly settling cloud of dust. The room's speakers sputtered to life with a low static buzz punctuated by high frequency squealing. The static pulsed rhythmically, gaining pitch and tone until it resolved itself reluctantly into speech - into English, Jesri realized with a start.
"-link up with primary group," a gruff male voice was saying. "We will have to try for the rendezvous on Zephyr. Our reactors will last until-"
The static fuzzed into indistinct buzzing again, but Jesri stood transfixed. "Zephyr," she whispered. "Anja, where did you-"
The recording resolved into voices again, cutting her off. "-on reserve power for the moment. Containment is holding. We will update with our status in two days. Grand Design out."
Jesri stood agape for several long seconds before Anja sashayed into the room, pirouetting on one foot while beaming at Jesri. "I had to hit up the autodoc before we left, I haven't jumped in for ages. Do you like it?", she asked, running her fingers through lustrous blonde hair. Her cheeks and lips were smooth, her features youthful. She was nearly a twin for Jesri but for her light complexion.
Jesri shook her head in irritation. "Anja, you can't claim you have new information on the Grand Design and ask me about your hair. Where did you get this recording? Is there any more to it?" She blinked. "Did you say that we were leaving?"
Anja nodded excitedly. "We have to go, as soon as possible. I don't just have vague information - I know where to find it."
Jesri sputtered, at a loss for words. "Anja, we haven't..." She blinked rapidly, her voice sticking in her throat. "I gave up on the search so long ago."
Beaming, Anja crossed the room and grabbed both of Jesri's hands. "We never lost, sister. We were just waiting. And now we have what we need to win." She stepped back, one hand at her side and the other clasped in a fist against her heart. Tears glittered in her eyes as she spoke words that had not been uttered in five thousand years.
"Terra Invicta, sister."
---
The two women walked silently through the deserted corridors towards the docking hub. Jesri's head was spinning, her expression dazed. She had been aimless for so long that this sudden, bright flare of purpose beating in her chest felt like it would burn her alive. The walk back to the market passed in a blur, and before she knew it the lichen-dappled metal of the far halls was replaced with the sharp odors and draped fabrics of the souk.
Sliding out of their side passage, the women picked their way through the crowd towards the docks. Jesri turned towards Anja and jerked her head towards the market. "Did you need something before we left? I don't have much of anything on board."
"Still living like a solitary monk, sister?", giggled Anja. "You really haven't changed."
"Says the hoarder," she shot back. "I rescind my offer. Hope you like nutrient pellets."
Anja screwed up her face in disgust. "Nobody likes those but you. At least let me-" She trailed off, peering past Jesri. "Sister, you wouldn't happen to be docked in slip 49, would you?"
Jesri casually turned to study a banner beside her, studying the dock out of the corner of her eye. Burly, serious Kitan security guards stood around the access point. As she watched, one of them snapped his head up to look at Anja, who was making no effort to hide while staring straight at them. Jesri groaned, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her away.
The Kita muscled their way through the crowd, shouting and pointing at them as they started to run. The docking area was always a bustle of crowded activity, and neither group could make much headway. Jesri and Anja slid between knots of bemused aliens while the Kita simply bowled through them, a chorus of protesting voices in their wake.
They broke into a clear stretch of the docking ring, only to see the path ahead blocked by a waiting group of Kita. "Shit," Jesri grumbled. The pursuing group caught up to them quickly once their forward progress was halted, trapping the two neatly in the empty corridor. A swell of people gathered behind the security officers to watch the confrontation.
The leader of the forward group stepped towards them, brandishing a short club. "Jesri Tam," he shouted. "You are placed in bond under suspicion of illicit activity aboard this Kitan station. You and your accomplice will accompany us to the command center for questioning."
Jesri spread her arms in a nonthreatening gesture. "This seems like a lot of fuss just to talk to me," she said amicably. "What am I being accused of in particular?"
"Lying to customs officials!", shouted a Kita from the pursuit group. Jesri recognized him as the codex officer from earlier. "You said there were no others like you, but you've smuggled another onto our station!"
"She's nothing like me-", began Jesri, but Anja cut her off. "Onto your station?" she said, an odd note in her voice. She took a step towards the one who had spoken but Jesri moved quickly to cut her off. She smiled broadly, taking care not to show any teeth. "I'm sure this is all a huge misunderstanding," she said rapidly, keeping herself between Anja and the officers. "Let's just talk through your concerns and I'm sure we can all reach an accord-"
"No!", shouted the head officer from behind them. "We will have this discussion at the command center. Priest, restrain them!"
At his command, a robed Kita with a long, thin staff moved forward to stand beside the leader. Extending his staff towards the two women, he spoke solemnly and deeply while moving his free hand in a circle. "Sashun Endomibel Lel Trei Ges Afori Sashun," he intoned, pointing squarely at Jesri. "Rekes Shekuti Barar!"
At his words a shimmering wall sprang up around Jesri and Anja, enclosing them in a bubble of hazy, indistinct light. Anja ran her hand down the field with a disinterested expression, sparks trailing from her fingers. The head officer hooted in amusement as the priest stepped back solemnly, crossing his arms and bowing. "Now you will be placed in bond," the officer said loudly, addressing the crowd. "No irregularities will be tolerated on any Kitan stations!"
The assembled security guards beamed at the display of power, and the crowd watching the spectacle started to disperse now that the show was over. A pair of guards approached the women with restraints, but halted halfway when Anja began to laugh softly.
"Are you fucking serious?", she chuckled, fixing the officers with a mirthless stare. "Is this what passes for life these days?" Contempt dripped from her voice as she turned to look at the priest. "For civilization?"
Jesri grabbed her arm tightly, knuckles whitening. "Anja, let's just go with them to the command center, we can work this out quietly-" Anja shook off her hand and stepped away, turning her glare towards Jesri. "We're not playing their games, sister," she said softly, "Not this time." She bared her teeth in a feral grin. "But for you, I'll give them one chance." She turned to address the head officer, striding to the edge of the field. "You, come here."
The officer scoffed, drawing himself up. "You will make no demands of me, detainee. You should know your place on our station."
Now Jesri started to chuckle, throwing her hands up in a mock surrender. "Well," she said resignedly, "I did try."
Anja took a step back from the field edge and drew in a breath. "Station Indomitable," she said evenly, her gaze boring into the lead officer. "Major Anja Tam, TNMC Three Five Seven Two Sierra Five." A chirrup of acknowledgement sounded from the hallway speakers, and she smiled sweetly at the horrified priest.
"Command authorization."
---
Part two up! When I wrote the initial chapter I didn't really intend to expand on the concept much, leaving it as a one-shot. However, I got a good reaction to the initial post and a surprising number of people asking for a part two, so here we go. GD is the longest thing I've ever written, and my first serious attempt at a novel-length story. I'm hoping that you get as much enjoyment out of reading as I do out of writing. Thank you for reading!
Her destination was far from the souk, far from the docks and the critical systems of the station. Most transit network stations were sparsely populated for their size, which spoke more to their massive construction than their still respectably large population. By the time she had come halfway, Jesri could no longer hear the bustle of the market. Cool, humid air drifted around her under a high ceiling, with unmarked doors sealed shut in rows down the hallway.
This far away from the hub, the sides and nooks of the hallway had accumulated a drift of organic particulates. Absent any maintenance robots, the dust accrued volume, trapping moisture. Speckles of algae and lichen colored some surfaces, and the tiny bells of mushrooms curved up from against one ancient door. It was rumored that the farthest reaches of some stations had hallways which were entirely overgrown with exotic and dangerous plants, with lurking predators peering from within. Jesri didn't believe that rumor, but she didn't disbelieve it enough to try proving it false.
She stopped in front of a door, peering at the battered grey-green metal of the surface. It didn't look that distinct from the others, but no detritus had accumulated in front of the door. The access plate was not free of lichen, but a cleared area in the center took the form of a circular splotch with five radiating lines above it. Stripping off the glove from her right hand, Jesri pressed her palm into the panel. Her hand splayed outward, perfectly matching the five-fingered silhouette.
Unperturbed by its own age, the door hissed lightly as it slid into the wall. The lighting was dimmer within, but still clear enough for her to see a thin path through the boxes and crates lining one side of the entryway. She grimaced and flattened herself against the wall, scraping her chest on protruding corners as she inched past into the main room. These had been living quarters once, with a common layout. An image leapt into her head, unbidden, the dusty crates overlaid by a brightly lit and clean room with pictures on the wall, pictures of children and sunlit green fields.
She shook her head, and saw just the crates. "I don't have time for this bullshit," she muttered.
At the sound of her voice a rustling noise came from an adjoining room, followed shortly by a stooped, robed figure. It shuffled into the room, pushing its hood back from a bare, wrinkled scalp to show its face. Pallid, emaciated cheeks framed a thin mouth and nose, looking incongruously dour beside the sparkle of delight in the eyes above. "Sister," it rasped.
Jesri sighed. "Anja, you look like shit."
Anja cackled dryly, her voice like dead leaves. "You haven't changed a bit. We haven't spoken in how many years and that's the first thing you say? What about, 'Hello, sister, nice to see you after all this time. Sorry I haven't dropped by in ages!'"
Jesri snorted. "Are you asking me to lie to you? I wouldn't have even come by this dilapidated scrap heap if I had known the Kita had taken over management."
Hairless brows drew together as Anja frowned. "That's unfortunate," she mused, rifling through a crate. Clouds of dust fountained up as she shifted its contents before coming away with a small black box. She smiled sunnily at Jesri, earning an eye roll. "Kita are such a trial to deal with."
Drawing off her other glove, Jesri stretched and set her light pack down on a nearby box. She doffed her hood, shaking out chin-length raven hair. "So," she asked, "Is that what you called me here to see?"
Anja shook her head. "No, I had something I wanted you to hear. Have a listen to this while I freshen up, I wasn't expecting you so soon." She tapped a wall panel and shuffled into the back room, leaving Jesri alone with the empty crates and a slowly settling cloud of dust. The room's speakers sputtered to life with a low static buzz punctuated by high frequency squealing. The static pulsed rhythmically, gaining pitch and tone until it resolved itself reluctantly into speech - into English, Jesri realized with a start.
"-link up with primary group," a gruff male voice was saying. "We will have to try for the rendezvous on Zephyr. Our reactors will last until-"
The static fuzzed into indistinct buzzing again, but Jesri stood transfixed. "Zephyr," she whispered. "Anja, where did you-"
The recording resolved into voices again, cutting her off. "-on reserve power for the moment. Containment is holding. We will update with our status in two days. Grand Design out."
Jesri stood agape for several long seconds before Anja sashayed into the room, pirouetting on one foot while beaming at Jesri. "I had to hit up the autodoc before we left, I haven't jumped in for ages. Do you like it?", she asked, running her fingers through lustrous blonde hair. Her cheeks and lips were smooth, her features youthful. She was nearly a twin for Jesri but for her light complexion.
Jesri shook her head in irritation. "Anja, you can't claim you have new information on the Grand Design and ask me about your hair. Where did you get this recording? Is there any more to it?" She blinked. "Did you say that we were leaving?"
Anja nodded excitedly. "We have to go, as soon as possible. I don't just have vague information - I know where to find it."
Jesri sputtered, at a loss for words. "Anja, we haven't..." She blinked rapidly, her voice sticking in her throat. "I gave up on the search so long ago."
Beaming, Anja crossed the room and grabbed both of Jesri's hands. "We never lost, sister. We were just waiting. And now we have what we need to win." She stepped back, one hand at her side and the other clasped in a fist against her heart. Tears glittered in her eyes as she spoke words that had not been uttered in five thousand years.
"Terra Invicta, sister."
---
The two women walked silently through the deserted corridors towards the docking hub. Jesri's head was spinning, her expression dazed. She had been aimless for so long that this sudden, bright flare of purpose beating in her chest felt like it would burn her alive. The walk back to the market passed in a blur, and before she knew it the lichen-dappled metal of the far halls was replaced with the sharp odors and draped fabrics of the souk.
Sliding out of their side passage, the women picked their way through the crowd towards the docks. Jesri turned towards Anja and jerked her head towards the market. "Did you need something before we left? I don't have much of anything on board."
"Still living like a solitary monk, sister?", giggled Anja. "You really haven't changed."
"Says the hoarder," she shot back. "I rescind my offer. Hope you like nutrient pellets."
Anja screwed up her face in disgust. "Nobody likes those but you. At least let me-" She trailed off, peering past Jesri. "Sister, you wouldn't happen to be docked in slip 49, would you?"
Jesri casually turned to study a banner beside her, studying the dock out of the corner of her eye. Burly, serious Kitan security guards stood around the access point. As she watched, one of them snapped his head up to look at Anja, who was making no effort to hide while staring straight at them. Jesri groaned, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her away.
The Kita muscled their way through the crowd, shouting and pointing at them as they started to run. The docking area was always a bustle of crowded activity, and neither group could make much headway. Jesri and Anja slid between knots of bemused aliens while the Kita simply bowled through them, a chorus of protesting voices in their wake.
They broke into a clear stretch of the docking ring, only to see the path ahead blocked by a waiting group of Kita. "Shit," Jesri grumbled. The pursuing group caught up to them quickly once their forward progress was halted, trapping the two neatly in the empty corridor. A swell of people gathered behind the security officers to watch the confrontation.
The leader of the forward group stepped towards them, brandishing a short club. "Jesri Tam," he shouted. "You are placed in bond under suspicion of illicit activity aboard this Kitan station. You and your accomplice will accompany us to the command center for questioning."
Jesri spread her arms in a nonthreatening gesture. "This seems like a lot of fuss just to talk to me," she said amicably. "What am I being accused of in particular?"
"Lying to customs officials!", shouted a Kita from the pursuit group. Jesri recognized him as the codex officer from earlier. "You said there were no others like you, but you've smuggled another onto our station!"
"She's nothing like me-", began Jesri, but Anja cut her off. "Onto your station?" she said, an odd note in her voice. She took a step towards the one who had spoken but Jesri moved quickly to cut her off. She smiled broadly, taking care not to show any teeth. "I'm sure this is all a huge misunderstanding," she said rapidly, keeping herself between Anja and the officers. "Let's just talk through your concerns and I'm sure we can all reach an accord-"
"No!", shouted the head officer from behind them. "We will have this discussion at the command center. Priest, restrain them!"
At his command, a robed Kita with a long, thin staff moved forward to stand beside the leader. Extending his staff towards the two women, he spoke solemnly and deeply while moving his free hand in a circle. "Sashun Endomibel Lel Trei Ges Afori Sashun," he intoned, pointing squarely at Jesri. "Rekes Shekuti Barar!"
At his words a shimmering wall sprang up around Jesri and Anja, enclosing them in a bubble of hazy, indistinct light. Anja ran her hand down the field with a disinterested expression, sparks trailing from her fingers. The head officer hooted in amusement as the priest stepped back solemnly, crossing his arms and bowing. "Now you will be placed in bond," the officer said loudly, addressing the crowd. "No irregularities will be tolerated on any Kitan stations!"
The assembled security guards beamed at the display of power, and the crowd watching the spectacle started to disperse now that the show was over. A pair of guards approached the women with restraints, but halted halfway when Anja began to laugh softly.
"Are you fucking serious?", she chuckled, fixing the officers with a mirthless stare. "Is this what passes for life these days?" Contempt dripped from her voice as she turned to look at the priest. "For civilization?"
Jesri grabbed her arm tightly, knuckles whitening. "Anja, let's just go with them to the command center, we can work this out quietly-" Anja shook off her hand and stepped away, turning her glare towards Jesri. "We're not playing their games, sister," she said softly, "Not this time." She bared her teeth in a feral grin. "But for you, I'll give them one chance." She turned to address the head officer, striding to the edge of the field. "You, come here."
The officer scoffed, drawing himself up. "You will make no demands of me, detainee. You should know your place on our station."
Now Jesri started to chuckle, throwing her hands up in a mock surrender. "Well," she said resignedly, "I did try."
Anja took a step back from the field edge and drew in a breath. "Station Indomitable," she said evenly, her gaze boring into the lead officer. "Major Anja Tam, TNMC Three Five Seven Two Sierra Five." A chirrup of acknowledgement sounded from the hallway speakers, and she smiled sweetly at the horrified priest.
"Command authorization."
---
Part two up! When I wrote the initial chapter I didn't really intend to expand on the concept much, leaving it as a one-shot. However, I got a good reaction to the initial post and a surprising number of people asking for a part two, so here we go. GD is the longest thing I've ever written, and my first serious attempt at a novel-length story. I'm hoping that you get as much enjoyment out of reading as I do out of writing. Thank you for reading!
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Part 3
- Location
- USA
The treble notes of a bosun's whistle echoed through the hallway, reverberating in the shocked silence. A neutral female voice broadcast over the speakers in unaccented English. "Confirmed, command transfer to ranking officer aboard. Command authorization given to Major Anja Tam."
The priest's mouth worked soundlessly as he backed away, but the head officer stalked towards the two women in a fit of rage. "How dare you!" he bellowed, gesticulating incoherently. "What was that voice, what did it say? What lies have you told to the Guardians?"
"How dare I?", hissed Anja through a rictus grin, her eyes sparkling. "You think your guardians will come to strike me down? Who do you think you're talking to, bug?"
The officer stuttered as Anja stepped towards him, but Jesri slid in between them with her hands raised. "Okay, hi everyone! Let's just call this one a draw for today." She fixed Anja with a look. "We have places to be."
Anja stepped back with a shrug, the fire dying away. "No fun," she pouted, "but you have a point." She gave the officer a smile that stopped a million miles away from her eyes, then spoke in a raised voice: "Release security barrier!"
The haze of light surrounding the two dropped. The assembled crowd murmured in shock while Anja brushed stray strands of hair back under her hood, static snapping from the dispelled field. "Honestly," she muttered, "I had forgotten how much of a pain this was. Shall we?" The two stepped away from the stunned Kita, the crowd parting to permit them passage.
"Stop right there," howled the officer from behind them. "You will not escape punishment for this outrage!" Jesri sighed, and looked over to find Anja working on the beginnings of a smile. "Let me," said Jesri wearily. "You'll just get all worked up again.
Pivoting to face the head officer, Jesri blurred into motion before he could so much as shift his weight to react. She crossed the distance between them in two steps. Her leg kicked out, the ball of her foot crunching wetly through the joint of his foreleg and driving down to the floor. Jesri caught him mid-fall and held his screaming face up next to hers by the scruff of his neck. His breath stank as he hyperventilated, keening softly. "Listen, shitstain," she spat, "right now I'm the only thing keeping that one over there from hate-fucking your corpse into thin paste." She dropped him to the floor in a heap, wiping her hand on his jacket. "Stop us again. See what happens."
She strolled away from the quivering Kita towards Anja, who was clapping her hands in mock applause. "Station Indomitable," she said, "Captain Jesri Tam, TNMC Three Five Seven Two Sierra Four. Officer authorization, please."
"Confirmed," replied the station, "Jesri Tam has been registered."
"Remove all currently allocated guest authorizations. Grant level five guest authorization and VIP protected status to-" She paused, casting her gaze around the crowd of onlookers. She pointed directly at one of the Uen fruit vendors, who shrank away from her in terror. "-that Uen." She winked at it, then clapped her hand on Anja's shoulder. "Come on, let's go."
---
The two walked back towards Jesri's docking slip, the crowd making no attempt to follow them. Anja shook her head. "That poor Uen," she cooed, "that was a mean trick to play."
Jesri laughed. "Nah, they'll pay him so much to reallocate the access that he'll forget pissing himself on the decking."
Anja quirked an eyebrow. "Won't they just strongarm it out of him?" A bright flash of light came from behind them, followed by a strangled Kitan scream. "Oh, right," she mused. "VIP protected status."
They rounded the bulkhead separating slip 49 from the main docking ring and stopped short. Jesri's hands twitched, and her good mood from minutes ago vanished. "What the fuck," she seethed, "did those Kita bastards do to my ship?!"
Anja looked at the scattered hull plating and the dismounted primary engines, then over towards the reactor stack leaning precariously against the docking clamps. "Enhanced customs inspection?", she proffered innocently, earning herself a murderous look in response. Jesri growled softly, then stalked towards her ship. "I'm going to grab some things," she shouted back. "Secure another ship!"
"Ugh," moped Anja unhappily, scanning nearby berths for an alternative. Indomitable's docking bays had certainly seen more dignified days. Sweeping, precise arcs of metal formed the individual slips, marred by crumbling dark stalactites deposited by millenia of drive plumes washing over the bay. Most of the ships docked here were blundering scows docked two or three to a slip, as even the largest ones sat laughably miniscule against the military-scale bays. A few were refitted civilian pleasure ships, patched up with a haphazard mix of parts that looked questionably spaceworthy and decorated with garish colors.
Her gaze swept over to a small freighter docked two berths down from Jesri's wrecked craft. It was a mess, like all the others, but there was a certain care evident in the patchwork that the others lacked. The drives were recessed and enclosed, the trim understated and professional, and its extensively patched hull nevertheless was clean of any accretions or corrosion. She spotted a lone Htt ambling past the ship and gave it an energetic wave of her hand. It waved back hesitantly, and she strode over to meet it with a friendly smile.
---
Jesri stalked out of her ruined ship with thunderclouds trailing after her, having supplemented her light pack with a larger duffel-style bag. She spotted Anja standing farther down the docks, talking quietly with a Htt. She stood up as Jesri approached, waving cheerily. "Sister!", she shouted, "This one has agreed to offer us use of his ship!" Jesri looked at the glossy black insectoid alien, who was shaking like a leaf.
"Uh-huh," she said dryly. "I'm sure he's just thrilled to be of service." She dropped down to the Htt's aggregate eye level, smiling. Several of its eyes swiveled to track her face, but others remained fixed on Anja. "Hi, I'm Captain Jesri Tam of the Terran Naval Marines," she said smoothly, as if soothing a spooked horse. "Despite what my companion may or may not have said, letting us use your ship is voluntary and you will be compensated appropriately if you accept, both for time lost and any damage incurred."
The Htt stammered, its mandibles clattering together. "No, m-ma'am, happy to have you aboard!"
Jesri sighed. "Well," she said, "I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. What's your name, Captain?"
"Qktk," it rattled.
"Kikt-", she coughed, her throat catching on the staccato consonants. "No, damn, that's difficult without mandibles," Jesri muttered. "Does 'Kick' work for short?" She received a brief nod, which she returned. "Great! Let's get moving." The trio moved down the slip and up the ship ramp, entering the somewhat cramped confines of the ship. Unlike the endless, lofty hallways of the transit hub, the ship was a dense knot of rust-red corridors and gantries, the ceiling barely tall enough for the two to walk upright. Hot, dry air pulsed from the environmental systems, and the bass rumble of an idling reactor stack permeated every surface.
Anja strolled down the corridor and quickly vanished from sight towards the aft of the ship. Rolling her eyes, Jesri turned back to Qktk. "We'll need to make best time spinward, more or less. Who runs the port in Harsi these days?"
Qktk shook his head apologetically. "We've never docked there, so I'm not sure."
Jesri shrugged. "Well, I'm sure we'll manage. How soon-" She stopped, hearing a noise from the back. "Kick, did you have any other crew?"
"Yes ma'am," Qktk replied with a nod. "My artificer, Rhuar." He stiffened in alarm as a high-pitched squeal came from the aft corridors. "Will your companion-"
Jesri was already moving towards the rear. "Your crewman will be fine," she said. "Probably."
The two followed the muffled noises towards the main cargo hold of the ship, where Anja sat on the grated decking happily stroking the fur of a very irritated-looking dog with one hand. Her legs and free hand twined around her captive in a painless, efficient submission hold. The dog was covered in short black fur, lustrous where it wasn't caked with dust or grease. A silver metal exoskeleton ran down his spine, wrapping around his torso and down each of his four legs. At his throat, a small vocalizer crackled when it saw Qktk.
"Captain Qktk," he buzzed, pronouncing the name precisely. "What the fuck?"
The Htt gave a clattering sigh. "Ma'am, could you please..." He motioned towards Anja, who had begun scratching under the dog's chin.
Jesri sighed. Life had been so simple this morning. "Anja, come on."
Anja frowned, but released the dog. He scrambled away, straightening up and glaring at her, his fur rising along either side of his exoskeleton.
"Rhuar, this is Anja and Jesri," Qktk said. "They've requested use of our vessel for an important errand."
Rhuar shook himself and tossed his head to the side. "And you said yes? Respectfully, Captain-" he trailed off and stared at Jesri as she removed her hood, then looked back at Anja as she did the same. His ears went flat back to his head. "Holy fuck," he said, "you two are human."
Qktk's eyes darted in several directions at once, bouncing between Anja, Jesri and Rhuar. "Don't be silly," he squeaked nervously. "Madam Jesri said they were Terran, not human. Terran Naval Marines."
"Terran Naval-" Rhuar's ears twitched rapidly and he rocked back onto his hindquarters. "Captain Qktk, it's been great. Have fun on your trip! I'm getting off here." The dog trotted over to a pile of gear against the bulkhead, cleverly hidden manipulators extending from his exoskeleton at the shoulders and forearms. Donning a toolbelt and satchel, he shot one last look at a speechless Qktk before shaking his head and rushing through the door.
Jesri sighed. "Great." She turned towards Qktk, spreading her hands apologetically. "Of course we'll provide extra compensation-"
A startled yelp from outside cut her off, followed by the staccato clap of automatic weapons fire ablating the hull. Both women had produced sidearms from the folds of their clothing and were flanking the entry when the ship hatch slammed shut with a massive clang. A second later, a dark blur came tearing in through the cargo hold from aforeships. Qktk shrieked in panic as a speeding dog collided with him, sending him to the floor in a tangle of legs.
"Captain!" yelled Rhuar, his vocalizer blaring panic. "There's an armed group of Kita outside the ship! Why-" He stopped as he looked back at Jesri and Anja, still bracketing the door. "Oh, right. Oh, we are super fucked."
Jesri slipped over and hauled Qktk to his feet. "I hate to rush, but we should probably be leaving now." The hail of fire intensified and Rhuar howled mournfully, shaking his head. "We can't!", he wailed. "The docking clamps are still engaged, we'd rip the ship in half if we tried to leave."
Jesri's sidearm disappeared into the folds of her cloak as she grabbed a spare piece of plating from a bin. She braced it against her forearm, then nodded and turned to Anja. "Okay," she muttered rapidly, "if you cover me I can get outside the ship and release the clamps. This scrap won't hold up for long, but it should give me enough cover to-"
Anja shook her head and touched two fingers behind her ear. The ship rattled as the clamps disengaged along its length. Jesri's eyebrows shot up, and she dropped the scrap she was holding. "Your embedded comm is still working? Why were you using the voice interface earlier?"
Anja shrugged. "It was funny." The barrage of fire stopped suddenly, and the two shared a look. "That's probably not good."
Rhuar pulled up an external feed, which resolved to show several Kita wrestling a mounted gun into place. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," he whined, a high-pitched noise rising in his throat. "Oh, we are super double fucked." Qktk seemed to have gone catatonic, his mandibles twitching spasmodically.
Jesri studied the gun as a burly Kita slammed a power conduit into the base. "Yeah, Anja, we should probably do something about that."
Anja nodded, craning her neck to look at the feed. "The riot control system, do you think, or… Oh, wait, we're in the dock." She giggled and cocked her head.
"Hey, wait!", yelled Jesri, her eyes widening. "We're-"
The retention fields stretching across the outer dock snapped off, exposing the clear starfield beyond. So massive were the docking slips that it took a second or two before any change was felt at the near end. A sudden rush of air picked up debris, cargo, Kita and one large mounted gun, tossing the lot in a maelstrom down the length of the docks. The unfortunate Kita were left floating, helpless in a strangely calm spray of glittering debris and rapidly sublimating ice crystals.
None of the occupants of the freighter witnessed any of this, as they too were ejected unceremoniously from the docks in a tumble. Every unsecured object in the cargo bay was slammed against the fore bulkhead, then again to the floor as the ship detected the gravity drop and engaged its own generators.
Anja winced as she picked herself up from where the sudden acceleration had slammed her against the bulkhead. Jesri, Rhuar and Qktk were lying in a heap several meters away. She limped over, favoring her left leg. "Sister, are you ok?"
Jesri was sprawled facedown on the decking. "Hey, wait," she said in a muffled monotone. "We're not clamped in anymore, so venting the docks is a bad idea." She flopped over onto her back. "So glad we have these chats. I'm good."
Rhuar spat static and profanity from beneath Qktk's tangle of legs. "I'm so happy to hear the fuckin mythical super soldier is feeling well. I'm fine too." He winced, stretching his back. "Captain, you alive?"
"Kkkhh," drooled the dazed Htt. His eyes stared aimlessly across the cargo bay, pointing in a dozen different directions. His chitin was cracked and oozing a clear fluid across the top of his head.
Anja bent down, her brow furrowing. "Artificer, does the ship have a medbay?"
"Yeah," grunted the dog, shaking his head dazedly. "Fore, then port. Green placard."
Anja nodded, then scooped up Qktk in her arms. "Come on, squished bug," she cooed.
Rhuar watched them go, then turned to where Jesri was picking herself up off the floor. "So, uh," he said sidelong, "am I going to see him again?"
Jesri laughed. "Oh, don't worry about him. Anja may be a bit scattered these days, but she's still a professional when it counts."
The dog snorted. "A professional what? Don't feed me some bullshit about the Terran Marines. I don't know which viz drama you two fell out of, but there haven't been Terrans or a Terra for a long-ass time."
Jesri gave him a sober look. "I can't deny it. There aren't many of us left, and those of us that are… Well, not all of us are still Marines." She stood up, stretching her back. "I stopped being one a long time ago. But we could only walk away because we knew there would always be someone to welcome us home. Earth still lives as long as Anja does." She sighed. "At least, that's what I like to think."
Rhuar was at a loss for words, so he simply sat with Jesri and watched the display for a long minute. Twinkling debris and twisted metal spun lazily in the void, the vast expanse of the transit station consuming half the sky in a bulk of blackened, radiation-scored paneling.
Jesri cracked her neck noisily, then turned to Rhuar. "We should probably leave before they find a ship with a gun on it," she said. "Kick's out of commission, do you need my help to fly this thing?"
Rhuar laughed, which was a strange affair of natural chuffing noises with tones from his vocalizer overlaid. "Lady, I don't let the captain anywhere near the controls. Where are we going?"
"Harsi," she said.
Rhuar's ears drooped. "Oh, fuckin great. We're all going to die."
---
Part 3 today, rounding out our initial cast of characters. In a galaxy without itinerant freighter captains, protagonists are all doomed to die alone in their place of origin. Each of the newbies is here for a reason, of course. Qktk's species is a carryover from another short story of mine, and the mention of dogs in the first chapter made them Chekhov's Uplifted Species. Both have their part to play going forward.
Thank you again for reading, I'll see you tomorrow with part 4!
The priest's mouth worked soundlessly as he backed away, but the head officer stalked towards the two women in a fit of rage. "How dare you!" he bellowed, gesticulating incoherently. "What was that voice, what did it say? What lies have you told to the Guardians?"
"How dare I?", hissed Anja through a rictus grin, her eyes sparkling. "You think your guardians will come to strike me down? Who do you think you're talking to, bug?"
The officer stuttered as Anja stepped towards him, but Jesri slid in between them with her hands raised. "Okay, hi everyone! Let's just call this one a draw for today." She fixed Anja with a look. "We have places to be."
Anja stepped back with a shrug, the fire dying away. "No fun," she pouted, "but you have a point." She gave the officer a smile that stopped a million miles away from her eyes, then spoke in a raised voice: "Release security barrier!"
The haze of light surrounding the two dropped. The assembled crowd murmured in shock while Anja brushed stray strands of hair back under her hood, static snapping from the dispelled field. "Honestly," she muttered, "I had forgotten how much of a pain this was. Shall we?" The two stepped away from the stunned Kita, the crowd parting to permit them passage.
"Stop right there," howled the officer from behind them. "You will not escape punishment for this outrage!" Jesri sighed, and looked over to find Anja working on the beginnings of a smile. "Let me," said Jesri wearily. "You'll just get all worked up again.
Pivoting to face the head officer, Jesri blurred into motion before he could so much as shift his weight to react. She crossed the distance between them in two steps. Her leg kicked out, the ball of her foot crunching wetly through the joint of his foreleg and driving down to the floor. Jesri caught him mid-fall and held his screaming face up next to hers by the scruff of his neck. His breath stank as he hyperventilated, keening softly. "Listen, shitstain," she spat, "right now I'm the only thing keeping that one over there from hate-fucking your corpse into thin paste." She dropped him to the floor in a heap, wiping her hand on his jacket. "Stop us again. See what happens."
She strolled away from the quivering Kita towards Anja, who was clapping her hands in mock applause. "Station Indomitable," she said, "Captain Jesri Tam, TNMC Three Five Seven Two Sierra Four. Officer authorization, please."
"Confirmed," replied the station, "Jesri Tam has been registered."
"Remove all currently allocated guest authorizations. Grant level five guest authorization and VIP protected status to-" She paused, casting her gaze around the crowd of onlookers. She pointed directly at one of the Uen fruit vendors, who shrank away from her in terror. "-that Uen." She winked at it, then clapped her hand on Anja's shoulder. "Come on, let's go."
---
The two walked back towards Jesri's docking slip, the crowd making no attempt to follow them. Anja shook her head. "That poor Uen," she cooed, "that was a mean trick to play."
Jesri laughed. "Nah, they'll pay him so much to reallocate the access that he'll forget pissing himself on the decking."
Anja quirked an eyebrow. "Won't they just strongarm it out of him?" A bright flash of light came from behind them, followed by a strangled Kitan scream. "Oh, right," she mused. "VIP protected status."
They rounded the bulkhead separating slip 49 from the main docking ring and stopped short. Jesri's hands twitched, and her good mood from minutes ago vanished. "What the fuck," she seethed, "did those Kita bastards do to my ship?!"
Anja looked at the scattered hull plating and the dismounted primary engines, then over towards the reactor stack leaning precariously against the docking clamps. "Enhanced customs inspection?", she proffered innocently, earning herself a murderous look in response. Jesri growled softly, then stalked towards her ship. "I'm going to grab some things," she shouted back. "Secure another ship!"
"Ugh," moped Anja unhappily, scanning nearby berths for an alternative. Indomitable's docking bays had certainly seen more dignified days. Sweeping, precise arcs of metal formed the individual slips, marred by crumbling dark stalactites deposited by millenia of drive plumes washing over the bay. Most of the ships docked here were blundering scows docked two or three to a slip, as even the largest ones sat laughably miniscule against the military-scale bays. A few were refitted civilian pleasure ships, patched up with a haphazard mix of parts that looked questionably spaceworthy and decorated with garish colors.
Her gaze swept over to a small freighter docked two berths down from Jesri's wrecked craft. It was a mess, like all the others, but there was a certain care evident in the patchwork that the others lacked. The drives were recessed and enclosed, the trim understated and professional, and its extensively patched hull nevertheless was clean of any accretions or corrosion. She spotted a lone Htt ambling past the ship and gave it an energetic wave of her hand. It waved back hesitantly, and she strode over to meet it with a friendly smile.
---
Jesri stalked out of her ruined ship with thunderclouds trailing after her, having supplemented her light pack with a larger duffel-style bag. She spotted Anja standing farther down the docks, talking quietly with a Htt. She stood up as Jesri approached, waving cheerily. "Sister!", she shouted, "This one has agreed to offer us use of his ship!" Jesri looked at the glossy black insectoid alien, who was shaking like a leaf.
"Uh-huh," she said dryly. "I'm sure he's just thrilled to be of service." She dropped down to the Htt's aggregate eye level, smiling. Several of its eyes swiveled to track her face, but others remained fixed on Anja. "Hi, I'm Captain Jesri Tam of the Terran Naval Marines," she said smoothly, as if soothing a spooked horse. "Despite what my companion may or may not have said, letting us use your ship is voluntary and you will be compensated appropriately if you accept, both for time lost and any damage incurred."
The Htt stammered, its mandibles clattering together. "No, m-ma'am, happy to have you aboard!"
Jesri sighed. "Well," she said, "I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. What's your name, Captain?"
"Qktk," it rattled.
"Kikt-", she coughed, her throat catching on the staccato consonants. "No, damn, that's difficult without mandibles," Jesri muttered. "Does 'Kick' work for short?" She received a brief nod, which she returned. "Great! Let's get moving." The trio moved down the slip and up the ship ramp, entering the somewhat cramped confines of the ship. Unlike the endless, lofty hallways of the transit hub, the ship was a dense knot of rust-red corridors and gantries, the ceiling barely tall enough for the two to walk upright. Hot, dry air pulsed from the environmental systems, and the bass rumble of an idling reactor stack permeated every surface.
Anja strolled down the corridor and quickly vanished from sight towards the aft of the ship. Rolling her eyes, Jesri turned back to Qktk. "We'll need to make best time spinward, more or less. Who runs the port in Harsi these days?"
Qktk shook his head apologetically. "We've never docked there, so I'm not sure."
Jesri shrugged. "Well, I'm sure we'll manage. How soon-" She stopped, hearing a noise from the back. "Kick, did you have any other crew?"
"Yes ma'am," Qktk replied with a nod. "My artificer, Rhuar." He stiffened in alarm as a high-pitched squeal came from the aft corridors. "Will your companion-"
Jesri was already moving towards the rear. "Your crewman will be fine," she said. "Probably."
The two followed the muffled noises towards the main cargo hold of the ship, where Anja sat on the grated decking happily stroking the fur of a very irritated-looking dog with one hand. Her legs and free hand twined around her captive in a painless, efficient submission hold. The dog was covered in short black fur, lustrous where it wasn't caked with dust or grease. A silver metal exoskeleton ran down his spine, wrapping around his torso and down each of his four legs. At his throat, a small vocalizer crackled when it saw Qktk.
"Captain Qktk," he buzzed, pronouncing the name precisely. "What the fuck?"
The Htt gave a clattering sigh. "Ma'am, could you please..." He motioned towards Anja, who had begun scratching under the dog's chin.
Jesri sighed. Life had been so simple this morning. "Anja, come on."
Anja frowned, but released the dog. He scrambled away, straightening up and glaring at her, his fur rising along either side of his exoskeleton.
"Rhuar, this is Anja and Jesri," Qktk said. "They've requested use of our vessel for an important errand."
Rhuar shook himself and tossed his head to the side. "And you said yes? Respectfully, Captain-" he trailed off and stared at Jesri as she removed her hood, then looked back at Anja as she did the same. His ears went flat back to his head. "Holy fuck," he said, "you two are human."
Qktk's eyes darted in several directions at once, bouncing between Anja, Jesri and Rhuar. "Don't be silly," he squeaked nervously. "Madam Jesri said they were Terran, not human. Terran Naval Marines."
"Terran Naval-" Rhuar's ears twitched rapidly and he rocked back onto his hindquarters. "Captain Qktk, it's been great. Have fun on your trip! I'm getting off here." The dog trotted over to a pile of gear against the bulkhead, cleverly hidden manipulators extending from his exoskeleton at the shoulders and forearms. Donning a toolbelt and satchel, he shot one last look at a speechless Qktk before shaking his head and rushing through the door.
Jesri sighed. "Great." She turned towards Qktk, spreading her hands apologetically. "Of course we'll provide extra compensation-"
A startled yelp from outside cut her off, followed by the staccato clap of automatic weapons fire ablating the hull. Both women had produced sidearms from the folds of their clothing and were flanking the entry when the ship hatch slammed shut with a massive clang. A second later, a dark blur came tearing in through the cargo hold from aforeships. Qktk shrieked in panic as a speeding dog collided with him, sending him to the floor in a tangle of legs.
"Captain!" yelled Rhuar, his vocalizer blaring panic. "There's an armed group of Kita outside the ship! Why-" He stopped as he looked back at Jesri and Anja, still bracketing the door. "Oh, right. Oh, we are super fucked."
Jesri slipped over and hauled Qktk to his feet. "I hate to rush, but we should probably be leaving now." The hail of fire intensified and Rhuar howled mournfully, shaking his head. "We can't!", he wailed. "The docking clamps are still engaged, we'd rip the ship in half if we tried to leave."
Jesri's sidearm disappeared into the folds of her cloak as she grabbed a spare piece of plating from a bin. She braced it against her forearm, then nodded and turned to Anja. "Okay," she muttered rapidly, "if you cover me I can get outside the ship and release the clamps. This scrap won't hold up for long, but it should give me enough cover to-"
Anja shook her head and touched two fingers behind her ear. The ship rattled as the clamps disengaged along its length. Jesri's eyebrows shot up, and she dropped the scrap she was holding. "Your embedded comm is still working? Why were you using the voice interface earlier?"
Anja shrugged. "It was funny." The barrage of fire stopped suddenly, and the two shared a look. "That's probably not good."
Rhuar pulled up an external feed, which resolved to show several Kita wrestling a mounted gun into place. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," he whined, a high-pitched noise rising in his throat. "Oh, we are super double fucked." Qktk seemed to have gone catatonic, his mandibles twitching spasmodically.
Jesri studied the gun as a burly Kita slammed a power conduit into the base. "Yeah, Anja, we should probably do something about that."
Anja nodded, craning her neck to look at the feed. "The riot control system, do you think, or… Oh, wait, we're in the dock." She giggled and cocked her head.
"Hey, wait!", yelled Jesri, her eyes widening. "We're-"
The retention fields stretching across the outer dock snapped off, exposing the clear starfield beyond. So massive were the docking slips that it took a second or two before any change was felt at the near end. A sudden rush of air picked up debris, cargo, Kita and one large mounted gun, tossing the lot in a maelstrom down the length of the docks. The unfortunate Kita were left floating, helpless in a strangely calm spray of glittering debris and rapidly sublimating ice crystals.
None of the occupants of the freighter witnessed any of this, as they too were ejected unceremoniously from the docks in a tumble. Every unsecured object in the cargo bay was slammed against the fore bulkhead, then again to the floor as the ship detected the gravity drop and engaged its own generators.
Anja winced as she picked herself up from where the sudden acceleration had slammed her against the bulkhead. Jesri, Rhuar and Qktk were lying in a heap several meters away. She limped over, favoring her left leg. "Sister, are you ok?"
Jesri was sprawled facedown on the decking. "Hey, wait," she said in a muffled monotone. "We're not clamped in anymore, so venting the docks is a bad idea." She flopped over onto her back. "So glad we have these chats. I'm good."
Rhuar spat static and profanity from beneath Qktk's tangle of legs. "I'm so happy to hear the fuckin mythical super soldier is feeling well. I'm fine too." He winced, stretching his back. "Captain, you alive?"
"Kkkhh," drooled the dazed Htt. His eyes stared aimlessly across the cargo bay, pointing in a dozen different directions. His chitin was cracked and oozing a clear fluid across the top of his head.
Anja bent down, her brow furrowing. "Artificer, does the ship have a medbay?"
"Yeah," grunted the dog, shaking his head dazedly. "Fore, then port. Green placard."
Anja nodded, then scooped up Qktk in her arms. "Come on, squished bug," she cooed.
Rhuar watched them go, then turned to where Jesri was picking herself up off the floor. "So, uh," he said sidelong, "am I going to see him again?"
Jesri laughed. "Oh, don't worry about him. Anja may be a bit scattered these days, but she's still a professional when it counts."
The dog snorted. "A professional what? Don't feed me some bullshit about the Terran Marines. I don't know which viz drama you two fell out of, but there haven't been Terrans or a Terra for a long-ass time."
Jesri gave him a sober look. "I can't deny it. There aren't many of us left, and those of us that are… Well, not all of us are still Marines." She stood up, stretching her back. "I stopped being one a long time ago. But we could only walk away because we knew there would always be someone to welcome us home. Earth still lives as long as Anja does." She sighed. "At least, that's what I like to think."
Rhuar was at a loss for words, so he simply sat with Jesri and watched the display for a long minute. Twinkling debris and twisted metal spun lazily in the void, the vast expanse of the transit station consuming half the sky in a bulk of blackened, radiation-scored paneling.
Jesri cracked her neck noisily, then turned to Rhuar. "We should probably leave before they find a ship with a gun on it," she said. "Kick's out of commission, do you need my help to fly this thing?"
Rhuar laughed, which was a strange affair of natural chuffing noises with tones from his vocalizer overlaid. "Lady, I don't let the captain anywhere near the controls. Where are we going?"
"Harsi," she said.
Rhuar's ears drooped. "Oh, fuckin great. We're all going to die."
---
Part 3 today, rounding out our initial cast of characters. In a galaxy without itinerant freighter captains, protagonists are all doomed to die alone in their place of origin. Each of the newbies is here for a reason, of course. Qktk's species is a carryover from another short story of mine, and the mention of dogs in the first chapter made them Chekhov's Uplifted Species. Both have their part to play going forward.
Thank you again for reading, I'll see you tomorrow with part 4!
Part 4
- Location
- USA
Jesri bent an eyebrow at the dog. "Why, what do you know about Harsi?"
Rhuar gave her a strained look. "Why don't you know about Harsi? It's been a no-go port for thirty years!"
"Huh, really?", mused Jesri, absentmindedly tugging on her hair. "The last time I docked there-" She coughed. "Well, anyway, that was a while ago. Why is it a no-go? The captain didn't say anything about it when I mentioned it earlier."
Rhuar settled back on his hind legs and sniffed. "The Captain is as good as they come, but he's got no nose for danger. Me, I keep my ears up, hear rumors." He licked his nose. "Rumors aren't truth, but they give you a good picture after you hear enough of them. As best I can tell it was kind of a rough port for a long time-"
"Yeah, that's true," nodded Jesri. "Sorry," she added, seeing the exasperated tilt of Rhuar's head.
"Anyway," he continued, "the crew running the docks cashed out, sold the codes. They were scum, but they knew which side of the hull held air. The new folks, not so much - their teeth were too big for their mouth, things went bad fast. After that not many people hung around there except them like couldn't afford to ship out or were making too much money to skip. You were as likely to get your haul beaten out of you than bought if you docked."
Jesri nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like it would put a damper on traffic."
Rhuar snorted. "Yeah, a bit. Just killers or idiots dropped by, then not even them after a while. After a few years of no ships coming in, captain's got to start wondering what a port looks like when its got no outside callers for a span - all on its own in the void." Rhuar shuddered. "Some of the stories from those who did more than wonder get pretty fuckin dark."
Jesri frowned. "Well, that's all pretty concerning," she said, "but a bunch of starving bandits shouldn't give us too much trouble at the end of the day."
Rhuar made an indistinct noise and shot Jesri a look. "Who said they were starving?"
"Ew, ok," winced Jesri, "pretty dark indeed. Get us lined up in the approach corridor so we're clear of the docks, I'll check with Anja to see if there's another port that would work."
---
"Absolutely not," chirped Anja, the red glare of the medbay placard highlighting her blonde hair with an ominous dull carmine hue. "That port is the only place we can go to pick up the trail."
Jesri groaned. "Rhuar says it's pretty rough in there. This could get messy."
Anja grinned at her. "Sister, rough for the doggie doesn't mean rough for us. Besides," she said, "we can just go through the abandoned parts of the station. If it's been a ghost port for thirty years like he said, it won't be hard to avoid contact. I've been doing it the whole time on Indomitable."
Frowning, Jesri nodded. "Yeah, there is that. Do we have to go anywhere special?"
Anja shook her head, leaning against the doorjamb. "Nah, any of the sector data terminals should work. We can be in and out quick, thirty minutes tops."
"Uh-huh," snarked Jesri. "You've said that on some other missions. Like that extraction on Wonderland, with the masquerade ball?" Anja winced and opened her mouth to reply, but Jesri cut her off. "Ooh, or the data drop where we had to hide in the reprocessing tanks for a day? How about the snatch and grab where Colonel Xi got shot in the ass and we had to carry her for-"
"Yes, yes, sister, point made," sighed Anja. "However, in this case I really don't see how anything-"
"Don't you fucking say it," Jesri snapped, her eyes narrowing.
"-could go wrong," concluded Anja, smiling primly. Jesri sighed, resting her forehead on her palm.
"I hate you."
---
Jesri walked up to the bridge, where Rhuar was standing at the controls. All of his manipulators were extended, either hovering over physical controls or jacked into the console directly. His head jerked from side to side at random intervals - Jesri figured at least some of those jacks were overlaying visual information, maybe even tactile stimuli.
"So?", he asked distantly, his voice echoing weirdly from several points around the bridge. His head didn't turn towards her, but small cameras mounted beside the viewscreen were tracking her face as she moved. "How'd it go?"
Jesri moved beside him and leaned against a support beam. "Anja says no joy- we've got to dock at Harsi." She paused, considering. "You know, we've already put you two through a lot. If you want we can hit up somewhere else spinward, we'll hop off and find another ship. I don't want to ask you to risk your life."
There was a pause while the ship finished drifting into the approach corridor, the positional thrusters flaring brightly on the monitors. The thrusters died as the ship killed its momentum, then Rhuar unjacked and turned to face her directly.
"I'm not saying I believe your story," he said, licking his nose. "But I believe what I can see, and I see that at least one of you has high-level Access on that station."
Jesri blinked slowly at him, her face neutral. "What access would that be?"
He snorted. "Please. I'm not some decklicker with my nose up a priest's ass. The station is a machine, the machine recognizes Access. Do you know what the Captain and I trade in?" Jesri shook her head, and Rhuar grinned, his tongue lolling out. "We're locksmiths."
Jesri nodded, considering. Every station past a certain size had a locksmith or two, and smaller ones depended on the traveling crews like Qktk and Rhuar. Although you could access almost any corridor and walkway in a station, the rooms were another matter. Hence, locksmiths - although the skillset involved made them more of a highly specialized electrical engineer. She could place them at the top of their trade with a few well-chosen words.
"Ok," she said, "name your price."
Rhuar licked his lips. "Full Access. As much as you can give me, and the Captain too."
Jesri was shaking her head before he had even finished talking. "Absolutely not. There's no way I could responsibly give you access to open engineering, security or weapons systems." She paced over to the side of the bridge, then swiveled to face him again. "How about this? You stick with us for one or two stops past this, I'll come with you to two stations of your choosing and give you access to all residential and common areas. Oh, and Kick too."
Rhuar tilted his head to the side, contemplating her offer.
A small voice had begun screaming distantly inside his head after Jesri said the word "engineering", and had only gotten louder with each passing second. Rhuar had thought he was asking for access to open any of the regular residential doors on the station they just left, which was full of angry Kita that would probably kill him on sight and give his stuffed corpse to their children. Even that would have been worth the risk, establishing Qktk and Rhuar as the richest people on the station and the most accomplished locksmiths in modern memory.
Rhuar tried cocking his head to the other side.
The little voice was getting louder. Jesri had just implied that not only could she give him that access on any station, she could also open the larger, more imposing doors that cordoned the mythical command and control systems of a station. Everyone knew those were inaccessible to mere mortals, sealed until the death of the universe or a wayward black hole tore the station to pieces. The voice in Rhuar's head was telling him that he should profess his undying love and devotion to this woman and beg her to allow him to remain in her divine presence.
Instead, Rhuar said: "How about three stations?"
Jesri stared at him, expressionless, and Rhuar was afraid he might have pushed it too far. After a few long seconds, however, she smiled slightly and nodded. "Yeah, okay," she agreed. "If you hang with us for a couple of jumps, you'll probably have earned it. Set course for Harsi?"
Rhuar nodded and plugged back into the console, turning to face the viewer. Data flooded in, and for an eyeblink he was blind, deaf and numb. At once, reality snapped back in a new configuration. He could feel the metal of his skin, the plasma of his breath. He flexed the engines, feeling them burn strong and hot. "Ok," he said flatly, his voice issuing from every corner of the bridge. "Heading to the ramp."
The ship accelerated down the approach lane, and the thrum of the engines seeped into his body from the feet up. As he raced away from the docks down the center of one of the station's petal-shaped lobes, he inched closer and closer towards the raised vane running down the center of its length. Jesri's view out the window was unremarkable, but Rhuar saw a kaleidoscope flow of gossamer field lines just above the vane, receding into the distance and curving away from the station towards the great pinnacle at its center.
He felt the shudder as he stabilized in the center of the field, then started to rise slowly with its curvature. "We're in the pocket," he broadcast over the intercom. "Brace for transfer."
He gritted his teeth against the sensation of the field charge soaking the hull like static crackling in his fur, a low rumble slipping from his throat as he accelerated into the deepest part of the ramp's spaceward curve. As they passed the midpoint, the directional charge from the straightaway was induced into motion by the asymptotic curvature of the pinnacle. The lightning wind swirled around him in gusts and bursts, spiraling into his bones.
He was dimly aware of the other feeds, of Jesri fastened tight into a bridge chair, Anja securing the captain in the medbay's traction field, but his universe was the ship and the lightning and the void. All at once they were off the curve, the ship leveling out at a perpendicular trajectory away from the station. The invisible tempest crackled, a lucent glow rising just ahead of the bow. Rhuar spun up the drive gently, coaxing the field from potential into action, streams of light splashing against the hull until all at once they bound, twisted, stretched-
Space was pulled away in every direction at once, and the ship was gone.
---
That's it, the end of the "prologue" chapters. From here on in the chapters are longer and a bit meatier as they really get into their adventuring. After this chapter was published initially I had a two week long hiatus for a vacation. Lucky you, you get the next chapter tomorrow.
Thanks again for reading!
Rhuar gave her a strained look. "Why don't you know about Harsi? It's been a no-go port for thirty years!"
"Huh, really?", mused Jesri, absentmindedly tugging on her hair. "The last time I docked there-" She coughed. "Well, anyway, that was a while ago. Why is it a no-go? The captain didn't say anything about it when I mentioned it earlier."
Rhuar settled back on his hind legs and sniffed. "The Captain is as good as they come, but he's got no nose for danger. Me, I keep my ears up, hear rumors." He licked his nose. "Rumors aren't truth, but they give you a good picture after you hear enough of them. As best I can tell it was kind of a rough port for a long time-"
"Yeah, that's true," nodded Jesri. "Sorry," she added, seeing the exasperated tilt of Rhuar's head.
"Anyway," he continued, "the crew running the docks cashed out, sold the codes. They were scum, but they knew which side of the hull held air. The new folks, not so much - their teeth were too big for their mouth, things went bad fast. After that not many people hung around there except them like couldn't afford to ship out or were making too much money to skip. You were as likely to get your haul beaten out of you than bought if you docked."
Jesri nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like it would put a damper on traffic."
Rhuar snorted. "Yeah, a bit. Just killers or idiots dropped by, then not even them after a while. After a few years of no ships coming in, captain's got to start wondering what a port looks like when its got no outside callers for a span - all on its own in the void." Rhuar shuddered. "Some of the stories from those who did more than wonder get pretty fuckin dark."
Jesri frowned. "Well, that's all pretty concerning," she said, "but a bunch of starving bandits shouldn't give us too much trouble at the end of the day."
Rhuar made an indistinct noise and shot Jesri a look. "Who said they were starving?"
"Ew, ok," winced Jesri, "pretty dark indeed. Get us lined up in the approach corridor so we're clear of the docks, I'll check with Anja to see if there's another port that would work."
---
"Absolutely not," chirped Anja, the red glare of the medbay placard highlighting her blonde hair with an ominous dull carmine hue. "That port is the only place we can go to pick up the trail."
Jesri groaned. "Rhuar says it's pretty rough in there. This could get messy."
Anja grinned at her. "Sister, rough for the doggie doesn't mean rough for us. Besides," she said, "we can just go through the abandoned parts of the station. If it's been a ghost port for thirty years like he said, it won't be hard to avoid contact. I've been doing it the whole time on Indomitable."
Frowning, Jesri nodded. "Yeah, there is that. Do we have to go anywhere special?"
Anja shook her head, leaning against the doorjamb. "Nah, any of the sector data terminals should work. We can be in and out quick, thirty minutes tops."
"Uh-huh," snarked Jesri. "You've said that on some other missions. Like that extraction on Wonderland, with the masquerade ball?" Anja winced and opened her mouth to reply, but Jesri cut her off. "Ooh, or the data drop where we had to hide in the reprocessing tanks for a day? How about the snatch and grab where Colonel Xi got shot in the ass and we had to carry her for-"
"Yes, yes, sister, point made," sighed Anja. "However, in this case I really don't see how anything-"
"Don't you fucking say it," Jesri snapped, her eyes narrowing.
"-could go wrong," concluded Anja, smiling primly. Jesri sighed, resting her forehead on her palm.
"I hate you."
---
Jesri walked up to the bridge, where Rhuar was standing at the controls. All of his manipulators were extended, either hovering over physical controls or jacked into the console directly. His head jerked from side to side at random intervals - Jesri figured at least some of those jacks were overlaying visual information, maybe even tactile stimuli.
"So?", he asked distantly, his voice echoing weirdly from several points around the bridge. His head didn't turn towards her, but small cameras mounted beside the viewscreen were tracking her face as she moved. "How'd it go?"
Jesri moved beside him and leaned against a support beam. "Anja says no joy- we've got to dock at Harsi." She paused, considering. "You know, we've already put you two through a lot. If you want we can hit up somewhere else spinward, we'll hop off and find another ship. I don't want to ask you to risk your life."
There was a pause while the ship finished drifting into the approach corridor, the positional thrusters flaring brightly on the monitors. The thrusters died as the ship killed its momentum, then Rhuar unjacked and turned to face her directly.
"I'm not saying I believe your story," he said, licking his nose. "But I believe what I can see, and I see that at least one of you has high-level Access on that station."
Jesri blinked slowly at him, her face neutral. "What access would that be?"
He snorted. "Please. I'm not some decklicker with my nose up a priest's ass. The station is a machine, the machine recognizes Access. Do you know what the Captain and I trade in?" Jesri shook her head, and Rhuar grinned, his tongue lolling out. "We're locksmiths."
Jesri nodded, considering. Every station past a certain size had a locksmith or two, and smaller ones depended on the traveling crews like Qktk and Rhuar. Although you could access almost any corridor and walkway in a station, the rooms were another matter. Hence, locksmiths - although the skillset involved made them more of a highly specialized electrical engineer. She could place them at the top of their trade with a few well-chosen words.
"Ok," she said, "name your price."
Rhuar licked his lips. "Full Access. As much as you can give me, and the Captain too."
Jesri was shaking her head before he had even finished talking. "Absolutely not. There's no way I could responsibly give you access to open engineering, security or weapons systems." She paced over to the side of the bridge, then swiveled to face him again. "How about this? You stick with us for one or two stops past this, I'll come with you to two stations of your choosing and give you access to all residential and common areas. Oh, and Kick too."
Rhuar tilted his head to the side, contemplating her offer.
A small voice had begun screaming distantly inside his head after Jesri said the word "engineering", and had only gotten louder with each passing second. Rhuar had thought he was asking for access to open any of the regular residential doors on the station they just left, which was full of angry Kita that would probably kill him on sight and give his stuffed corpse to their children. Even that would have been worth the risk, establishing Qktk and Rhuar as the richest people on the station and the most accomplished locksmiths in modern memory.
Rhuar tried cocking his head to the other side.
The little voice was getting louder. Jesri had just implied that not only could she give him that access on any station, she could also open the larger, more imposing doors that cordoned the mythical command and control systems of a station. Everyone knew those were inaccessible to mere mortals, sealed until the death of the universe or a wayward black hole tore the station to pieces. The voice in Rhuar's head was telling him that he should profess his undying love and devotion to this woman and beg her to allow him to remain in her divine presence.
Instead, Rhuar said: "How about three stations?"
Jesri stared at him, expressionless, and Rhuar was afraid he might have pushed it too far. After a few long seconds, however, she smiled slightly and nodded. "Yeah, okay," she agreed. "If you hang with us for a couple of jumps, you'll probably have earned it. Set course for Harsi?"
Rhuar nodded and plugged back into the console, turning to face the viewer. Data flooded in, and for an eyeblink he was blind, deaf and numb. At once, reality snapped back in a new configuration. He could feel the metal of his skin, the plasma of his breath. He flexed the engines, feeling them burn strong and hot. "Ok," he said flatly, his voice issuing from every corner of the bridge. "Heading to the ramp."
The ship accelerated down the approach lane, and the thrum of the engines seeped into his body from the feet up. As he raced away from the docks down the center of one of the station's petal-shaped lobes, he inched closer and closer towards the raised vane running down the center of its length. Jesri's view out the window was unremarkable, but Rhuar saw a kaleidoscope flow of gossamer field lines just above the vane, receding into the distance and curving away from the station towards the great pinnacle at its center.
He felt the shudder as he stabilized in the center of the field, then started to rise slowly with its curvature. "We're in the pocket," he broadcast over the intercom. "Brace for transfer."
He gritted his teeth against the sensation of the field charge soaking the hull like static crackling in his fur, a low rumble slipping from his throat as he accelerated into the deepest part of the ramp's spaceward curve. As they passed the midpoint, the directional charge from the straightaway was induced into motion by the asymptotic curvature of the pinnacle. The lightning wind swirled around him in gusts and bursts, spiraling into his bones.
He was dimly aware of the other feeds, of Jesri fastened tight into a bridge chair, Anja securing the captain in the medbay's traction field, but his universe was the ship and the lightning and the void. All at once they were off the curve, the ship leveling out at a perpendicular trajectory away from the station. The invisible tempest crackled, a lucent glow rising just ahead of the bow. Rhuar spun up the drive gently, coaxing the field from potential into action, streams of light splashing against the hull until all at once they bound, twisted, stretched-
Space was pulled away in every direction at once, and the ship was gone.
---
That's it, the end of the "prologue" chapters. From here on in the chapters are longer and a bit meatier as they really get into their adventuring. After this chapter was published initially I had a two week long hiatus for a vacation. Lucky you, you get the next chapter tomorrow.
Thanks again for reading!
Part 5
- Location
- USA
"I have to say, Rhuar, that was an impressive launch," remarked Jesri, unbuckling her harness. "What kind of conversion did you hit?" The space outside the window was a deep, inky black, occasionally disrupted by faint pulses of light streaming by the sides of the ship. "I don't think I've ever been this deep outside of…" She trailed off. "Uh, more massive ships, at any rate."
Rhuar unjacked, panting, and stumbled for a second before shaking himself thoroughly. "Looks like I blew past fifty," he said, his exhaustion failing to keep a note of pride from his voice.
"Holy shit," Jesri said, her eyes widening. Anything upwards of a twenty-fold mass multiplier off a jump ramp was considered to be excellent, the artificially enhanced weight slinging smaller ships much deeper into hyperspace than they could penetrate unassisted. Fifty plunged their small freighter well past those plebeian levels and into the true abyss normally reserved for the mightiest of warships. Apparently Rhuar's minor attack of smug was well-warranted.
"Eh," shrugged Rhuar, rolling his head to the side, "you should see it when I nail a jump with a full hold. You're full black all the way, go so fast you wouldn't believe it." He looked at Jesri. "Well, maybe you would."
Jesri laughed. "How long will the transit take at this depth?"
Rhuar tapped a few console buttons. "Well, we could probably cut it down to two hours or so, but it'd be a comfier exit if we came up near the end. Three hours, maybe?"
She let out a low whistle. Those were world-class numbers, truly something to brag about. "Thanks, Rhuar," she said, "I'll let Anja and Kick know." The dog nodded, turning back to the console and twitching slightly as he reconnected. Jesri scrambled down the short stairs and back towards the medbay, where she found Anja helping Qktk sit up on the bay's medical bed.
Blue and white nanowraps bound the top of Qktk's head like a bizarre turban, covering the site of his injury. He looked shaky, but awake and alert. "Madam Jesri," he clattered, nodding at her. "I think I recall a jump as I was waking up. Are we safely away?"
Jesri nodded, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Yeah, you've got one hell of a pilot." She shot a glance at Anja. "Rhuar says we'll be at Harsi in three hours, even with a soft-drop." Anja hung up the diagnostic scanner with a suitably impressed look while her patient preened from the bed.
"Yes, Mr. Rhuar is quite the talent," he said. "I actually only hired him for his artificer skills, so finding out he could pilot was a happy surprise. Don't tell him this, but he could probably make much more money as a pilot with his gifts."
Anja laughed, and Jesri chucked the Htt on the upper arm with her fist. "Oh, don't sell yourself short," teased Jesri. "I have a feeling you two will be cleaning up after we part ways."
Qktk and Anja gave her inquiring looks. "Rhuar and I had a talk as we were leaving," Jesri explained. "Rhuar feels that Harsi could be somewhat hazardous, but that the risk would be properly offset if we allocated residential access at a few stations."
The Htt peered at Jesri curiously, but Anja's eyes narrowed. "May we speak a moment, sister?", she said evenly, gesturing to the door of the medbay. Sensing a stiffening of the air in the room, Qktk eased himself up from the bed and rattled to the floor, testing his limbs.
"I do believe a walk would do me some good, so if you'll excuse me…" He nodded gratefully towards the two women. "Madam Jesri, Madam Anja, thank you for your care."
They returned the gesture as he ambled out, then turned to face each other as Anja slapped the door controls. Almost before it had hissed closed, the warmth had fled from her face. "Sister, I do wish you'd consult with me before making promises like that," she said. "I don't dislike the bug and the dog, but giving them real access sits poorly with me."
Jesri rolled her eyes, easing herself up from the bed. "Oh, don't start with that," she scolded, "you had nothing to say when I gave guest rights to the Uen just now."
Anja shook her head. "That was teaching a lesson, with rights had been given away long ago. You're proposing to barter our inheritance to pay a fare, sister."
"What I'm proposing, sister, is proper compensation. You bullied poor Kick into letting us on board in the first place, at which point an armed mob targeting us attacked their home and their livelihood. Kick almost died in the escape, and without Rhuar we would be arriving at Harsi days from now instead of hours." Jesri folded her arms across her chest and glared at Anja. "They've been nothing but gracious and we've been a calamity for them."
Anja stalked over to Jesri and stuck a finger against her breastbone. "Money," she said, jabbing with each syllable. "I don't dispute that we've incurred a debt, but that's what money exists to repay. Neither of us is destitute."
Jesri snorted at the understatement. For people their age, compound interest made the entire game somewhat unfair. "Rhuar didn't ask for money," she retorted, "he asked for a chance to earn it. They're locksmiths, Anja, they have more use for this than anyone."
This failed to mollify Anja, who spun away from Jesri with a glowering look. "Locksmiths?", she growled, "It's bad enough to give rights to strangers, but vandals and robbers besides?"
"They're just opening doors!", shouted Jesri. "If you think it's so wrong to do it their way, you should be glad to give them an alternative." She forced herself to take a breath. "We've been around a long time, but we'll die eventually. Should humanity's works help the future or stand apart from it? What do you want Earth's legacy to be?"
Anja met her gaze unblinkingly. "Victory," she said. "We'll finish what we started."
Jesri laughed unkindly. "Victory for who? For Earth? There's no victory left there, we lost that battle no matter what you think we can do for the war. We can click our heels together and shout terra invicta until the stars burn cold, but that doesn't make it any less of a lie."
Anja slapped Jesri across the face, her eyes furious and blazing. Jesri took the blow without attempting to dodge, but caught Anja's wrist before she could withdraw her arm.
"If you fight, you're fighting for their sake now," she said, her face stinging. "Nobody else is left."
Anja tore her hand away and stormed out, leaving Jesri alone in the medbay. She sat down on the bed again, rubbing her cheek. After several long minutes she sighed and hauled herself up. She felt every bit of her age. Toggling the lights, she sealed the bay shut and moved off to find where her wayward sister had gone.
---
Rhuar and Qktk sat on the bridge, watching the ripples of light drifting past as the ship cut a wake through the midnight void of deep hyperspace. The ship was mostly silent as it cruised, which meant that the indistinct sounds of Jesri and Anja's altercation were hard to ignore.
Qktk looked over at Rhuar, chittering to himself. "I've really done it this time, haven't I?", he observed.
The dog grinned at him toothily. "Captain, I don't believe either of us had the option to walk away from the moment they met us. Quietly being mediocre is off the table until they decide we're done."
Qktk got up to pace the length of the bridge, his arms rattling in consternation. "I'm not one for politics, or conflict. Quietly being mediocre was my best quality."
Rhuar chuffed laughter at him. "Don't be modest, Captain. You may not like making a splash, but you always walk away with your due."
"Of course," retorted Qktk, "because I know when to walk away. Now the exit is closed off, and I can't see the top or bottom of this."
Rhuar contemplated his words and found that he didn't have a good response. The two of them sat silently on the bridge, waiting for the first stars to shine out of the void.
---
The bridge was awash with light towards the end of the jump, soap-bubble fragments of a starscape sliding back and forth in a luminous shell as the freighter skipped along the thin boundaries of hyperspace. Jesri poked her head in from the corridor, then ambled up to stand beside the crew.
She flashed Qktk a friendly smile when he turned his head. "Looks like we're almost out, huh?"
He nodded, chirping. "We're in the final runup. You should watch, Madam Jesri - Mr. Rhuar is something of an artist in this regard."
Rhuar bared his teeth in a grin, but said nothing. His muscles twitched sporadically and his eyes stared ahead, unfocused. Moving fast in hyperspace was easy, but moving slow required much finer control. The window to drop out within easy reach of their destination would span only a fraction of a second. Missing the window would drop them well outside the station's entry envelope, after which they'd face the prospect of a long, slow burn to get back into position for docking.
The timbre of the ship's engines changed slightly, and Jesri reached out to grab a chair. Qktk chittered at her, standing unsupported next to Rhuar. "Here we go," he said, leaning towards the viewports.
The liquid lines of starlight brightened, flowed together, then snapped back to a stable starfield around the ship. Jesri felt a brief shudder in the decking, then stillness. Wisps of glowing light curled away from the hull and drifted past the viewports, dispersing to show the massive expanse of a transit station hanging close ahead of them.
Rhuar let all of his breath out in a whoosh, slumping over sideways on the decking. "Ok, short nap," he said, tongue lolling out of his mouth. "Being this good is fucking exhausting."
Jesri clapped her hands together. "That was spot on, and the smoothest exit I've had on any ship this size. Most of the old navy pilots would just try to shake up the groundpounders if they got the chance."
Rhuar stretched his head up. "Lucky for you I'm not a navy pilot, then."
She peered through the viewport at the station hanging silently against the stars, a thin crescent of light illuminating the near edge where the local star shone weakly against the grey hull. No telltale flashes or streaks of engine light played around the docks, and large swaths of the shadowed hull seemed darker than they should be. She frowned.
"Seems pretty quiet over there," she muttered, scrolling through a data display.
Rhuar hauled himself to his feet with a grunt, then turned his head towards the station. "You're not wrong," he said, eyes darting rapidly. "Thermals are way below average, and I don't read any recent drive trails. If people do live here, they're not up to much. If I didn't know better, I'd say that some of those near sections were unpowered." He turned to Jesri. "I've never seen a transit station like this."
"I have," said Jesri grimly. "Reactor damage. The station is cutting power to nonessential systems and uninhabited sectors."
Qktk rattled his arms. "How could something damage a transit station?", he wondered, agitation creeping into his tone. "The way they're built, that seems like it would be impossible."
Jesri looked away, her eyes distant. "Oh, it's possible."
There was a long moment of silence, broken by Anja's arrival on the bridge. She wandered up to stand next to Jesri, who indicated the silent bulk of the station with a jerk of her chin.
Anja frowned. "That could complicate things," she said. "We did not have any reports indicating that this station was one of the damaged ones."
"There are others?", asked Rhuar, his ears twitching inquiringly. Anja gave him a pained look, and Jesri shook her head sadly.
"Most transit stations are like this," Jesri sighed. "You just use the ones that survived. Right now there are around two hundred active stations-"
"Fewer," whispered Anja, cutting her off. "One-hundred eighty nine left."
Rhuar's ears flicked back. "Wow, I had considered myself well-traveled having visited fifty or so. How many were there originally?"
Jesri closed her eyes. "Thousands." Anja walked to stare out the viewport, turning her back on the group. Jesri looked at her, then turned back towards Rhuar and Qktk. "We shouldn't sit exposed for too long. Can you see which parts of the docking ring still have power?"
Rhuar nodded, and a display flared with a map of the station. Three bright arcs were highlighted in green across the perimeter. "We can dock in any of these sections, I think. Based on our nav data, the old port operated out of this area here." A smaller segment of the green area turned blue.
Jesri nodded, then pointed to a smaller arc several segments away. "Let's dock here," she said. "We're already on that side, and it's distant enough that we shouldn't run into anyone."
The engines hummed as Rhuar laid in a course.
---
The ship slid noiselessly towards the cavernous docking bay, the wide rectangular edges growing to dwarf them as they passed through. The ship vibrated softly as they moved through the docking field and into the bay's atmosphere, light currents of wind buffeting the hull. Through the viewports, the slips bristled like a jagged row of needle teeth drawn with grey and white.
Aside from them, the bay was deserted.
Rhuar sidled up to one of the slips and unjacked, stretching his legs. "Ok, hard part's over," he grunted. "Now we just need to deal with all of the crazed cannibal bandits on the spooky derelict station."
Jesri laughed and shook her head. "We're far enough away from the old port that I'm hoping we don't see anyone. We just need to head a short distance back from the docks to a data terminal, then we can leave. You can stay on the ship with the captain, we shouldn't be gone more than an hour."
Rhuar whined softly. "I wanna come," he muttered.
Lifting an eyebrow, Jesri turned to face him. "What about the spooky cannibal bandits?," she asked with a grin.
"You said yourself they probably wouldn't be an issue," he retorted, embarrassed. "This place feels like a bad fuckin idea, but I'm not such a tail-tucker that I'd miss out seeing whatever magical ancient human tech you're about to mess with."
"Fair enough," said Jesri, "but if you come along you follow instructions. Your curiosity is secondary to our goal."
Rhuar sniffed. "Which is?"
Jesri smiled wider. "Primary." She turned to look at Anja. "I'm going to grab a few things for my bag, then we can head out."
Five minutes later, the three of them stepped out onto the slip. The light breeze from the circulators rushed past them, the air neutral and dry. Rhuar looked around nervously. The docking bay stretched spare and empty in all directions, the flat grey decking spotless and uncluttered. "You know, this actually looks better than some of the ports I've been to."
Anja's lips pressed together in a line. "This is how it they should all look," she said. "Most of the ports are so dirty these days."
Jesri turned back to Qktk, who was standing in the hatch. "Captain, keep an eye out on things from the ship. Don't open the hatch for anything but our return."
The diminutive Htt nodded and chirped. "Of course, Madam Jesri." He inclined his head to Anja and Rhuar, then stepped back and toggled the hatch closed. It hissed shut, leaving them alone on the slip.
"Now then," said Anja brightly, "shall we?" She cocked her head for a moment, then nodded. "The station responds properly when queried. You should register too, once we're out of the slips."
They trekked over to the nearest bay exit, then passed through into the corridor beyond. Jesri stretched her shoulders, then addressed the ship. "Station Ariadne," she said, "Captain Jesri Tam, TNMC Three Five Seven Two Sierra Four. Officer authorization, please." The speakers gave a crackly chirrup in response. She turned to indicate Rhuar. "Register Artificer Rhuar with level five guest access and VIP protected status."
Rhuar shot her a grateful look, mouth lolling open, then ran over to a nearby supply closet. The door hissed open, revealing a bare room beyond with a few sealed yellow barrels. He yipped delightedly, spinning in place before retreating and letting the door close. The two women watched him as he approached the door again, causing it to slide open.
Anja snorted. "That door wasn't restricted to begin with," she said quietly.
"Shhhh," smirked Jesri. "Let him have a bit of fun." She looked down the hall, pointing at a door. "We're in the central dock for this segment, so the terminal should be straight back." Anja nodded, and the two started walking towards the door. Rhuar tore himself away from the supply closet door and trotted along behind them, grinning like a maniac.
Anja led the group through a twisting series of corridors for several minutes. They walked in silence, their footsteps echoing softly against the gentle hum of the station and kicking up small puffs of dust from the deck. Yellow and red lichen speckled the walls, spreading from corners and seams.
They stopped in front of a large door, dark grey with a thick frame. It opened silently when Anja stood in front of it, sliding up to reveal a small, dark room covered in displays and blinking lights. "Well, here it is," she remarked brightly. The three entered, and both women took a console.
After a few long minutes, Jesri frowned and looked up. "I'm not finding anything. It should be in the trace logs, right?" A message flashed red on her display, casting bloody highlights across the room. "The data is either corrupted or missing, I can't access it."
Anja pursed her lips. "Not missing, sister." She tapped a few times on her console, and a map of the station swam up on the display. "The network links to the inner core appear to be down."
Jesri groaned. "Please don't say that," she groused, pushing away from her console. Rhuar gave her an inquisitive look, cocking his head. "She's saying the dock terminals aren't going to work," she explained. "We're going to have to access the data core directly from the inner ring."
He perked up. "We get to see the inner ring? Awesome!"
Anja smirked. "Yes, and the transit pods won't be working. We get to walk there."
Rhuar's gaze flicked back and forth between them, his expression falling. "Uh, how far is it?", he asked.
Jesri stood up. "We'd better get back to the ship and let Kick know we'll be longer than expected." Anja nodded and followed her out of the terminal room.
Rhuar rushed after them. "Hey, wait! Is it really far?"
---
Anja, Jesri and Rhuar approached a tall, heavy door at the end of a corridor. Anja stood in front of it and a muffled whine of machinery sounded. It built and grew higher pitched, then a jarring clunk sent vibrations through the deck. The whine stopped.
"Dammit," said Jesri, closing her eyes.
The three had been walking for four hours, and this was the fifth broken door they'd encountered. Every time they found one, they had been forced to backtrack to a different section to continue their inward progress. With a straight path they could have been most of the way to the center by now, but their convoluted route and frequent interruptions meant that they were still stuck in the outer ring, nearly two thirds of the way out from the center.
"It would have been very convenient if it worked," grumbled Anja. "The next door we could use to access the middle ring is a kilometer antispinward from here."
Rhuar made an exasperated whining noise. "Are you sure it's broken?", he said, his exoskeleton unfolding to prod at the access panel.
Anja rolled her eyes. "You're the locksmith, you tell me."
"I don't deal with broken doors," Rhuar muttered, the arms of his exoskeleton peeling back the panel cover and prodding at the electronics underneath. "I'm not in the business of repairs. I deal with functional, locked doors. Hence, locksmith."
Anja leaned against the corridor and took a drink of water from her bag. "Shouldn't a locksmith be making locks as well? If all you do is unlock the locks it makes you more of a lockpick than a locksmith."
Rhuar shot her an annoyed look as his arms kept working inside the panel. "I'm not a word historian or whatever-"
"Etymologist," supplied Jesri.
Anja frowned. "Surely it's just a linguist?"
"Whatever you'd like to call it," continued Rhuar, glaring at her, "I'm in the business of opening locks. We can stand around talking about it, or we can-"
The door groaned and rose a meter, leaving a gap through which warm, humid air flowed softly. Rhuar blinked. "Huh," he said. "Hey, the door's open."
Jesri bent down to peer through the gap. "Well," she said, sucking her teeth, "it's not pretty but it's traversable." She peered at Rhuar. "What are the odds this door will chop me in half if I try to go under it?"
Rhuar gave her an arch look. "And now I'm a statistician?"
Anja cocked her head. "Actuary?"
Jesri shook her head. "Okay, I deserved that." She slipped her bag under the door, then bent and passed through. "Looks good over here. Come on through."
Anja and Rhuar slid through the gap to emerge on the far side of the door, looking down the long corridor. It was wide and tall, even taller than the residential corridors on the outer parts of the station. A slight curve caused the corridor to bend out of sight after several hundred meters, but it looked as though it ran for a very long way. The floor and walls were thickly covered in lichen, with mosses crowding the sides of the hallway in splotchy greens and browns.
Anja beamed. "Oh, good. This is one of the primary radial corridors. It will take us all the way across the middle ring, at which point we can transit to the inner ring and reach the core."
Rhuar peered into the distance. "How far is it across the middle ring?"
Jesri stretched her arms. "Ten kilometers. Ready?" She smirked at him and started walking, Anja on her heels.
Rhuar slumped. "You know, this is much less interesting than you made it sound on the ship." He shook himself, then padded off down the hall.
The moss at the sides of the hallway thickened as they walked, and after the first kilometer it formed a mossy bed of green stretching across the decking. Several centimeters of growth had accrued across the hall, supplemented in thicker areas by some sort of sparse grass.
Anja bounced experimentally on the moss, standing on the ball of one foot. "Springy," she noted. "More comfortable to walk on."
Jesri waved a hand at the ceiling. "Yeah, but it means the environmental controls are messed up. The humidity is way above normal. Plus, the green plants mean there was some sort of hydroponics breach. We're probably going to have issues further in."
Rhuar sniffed the air. "It does smell a bit mulchy from that direction. I don't think it's going to get any clearer as we keep going."
Anja shrugged. "Not much we can do about it." She squared her pack on her shoulders, and the group continued.
The greenery intensified as they continued, clover spreading underfoot as ivy covered the walls in a thick mat of green. The plants clustered densely where the hallway lighting was strongest, making regular patches of high growth as they progressed. The hallway grew dimmer as the ivy climbed in great shaggy clumps around the light tracks at the top of the hall, interspersed with hanging, thorny vines.
The two women were forced to dodge around clumps of thorned tendrils descending from the ceiling, stretching in verdant ropes over the passageway. Jesri pulled a long knife from her satchel. "This is worse than I've ever seen it," she grumbled. She drew the knife slowly across a woody collection of vines and they parted with no resistance.
Rhuar stared at the cleanly sliced vine, fascinated, then turned wide eyes to Jesri. "Uh, can I see that knife for a second?"
Jesri gave him a look, then kept on walking forward.
Even with Jesri clearing a path they made poor forward progress through the strangling vegetation. The air was hot and humid, and Anja was muttering under her breath. Rhuar panted rapidly, his tongue hanging from his mouth and small clinging seeds dotting his coat. They pressed forward for a couple of kilometers, cleaving a rough green tunnel through the undergrowth.
They passed a hissing pipe at a junction, slick and green with huge mats of algae slumping around it. Anja smacked at it. "There it is," she complained. "One stupid pipe spraying excess moisture around for a few thousand years and you have a jungle in the hallway."
Rhuar stared at the tiny trickle of water from the pipe spraying out to coat a broad leaf with a sheen of beaded droplets. "Seems like it's too small to cause all of this."
Jesri shrugged. "It's not a significant leak, but time is the ultimate force multiplier. If the environmental humidity regulators are out, this is more than enough to throw a station's atmospheric mix out of balance." Rhuar nodded, pondering.
The group pressed forward, leaving the hissing pipe behind. The vegetation grew higher with every step, the smell of rotting plant matter thick in the air. After clearing through a particularly gnarled tangle, Jesri stumbled forward and found herself in an open stretch of hallway. The ghost of a grin rose to her lips, but died quickly as she looked farther down the corridor. "Aw, shit," she spat. "Guys, come up and look at this."
Anja and Rhuar walked through the hole she had cut in the greenery and looked ahead. The hallway ahead of them was dim and murky, the plants along it brown and stunted. None of the wall lights were on past the point they had reached, and the far arc of the corridor was lost in shadow.
Rhuar peered into the darkness. "How long do you suppose this goes on for?", he asked.
Anja shrugged. "Could be a few hundred meters, could be several kilometers. Hard to say, but it should not extend to the inner ring unless there are unrelated problems with that grid as well."
"Great," Jesri sighed. "Now it's dark." She reached into her satchel and grabbed a small, round ball of metal, which she tossed into the air. It floated up to hover over her head and began shining softly, illuminating the hallway with a dim amber glow. She turned to Rhuar, who was staring at the light intently.
"No," she said.
Rhuar pouted. "I didn't say anything."
"Mmhmm," replied Jesri, adjusting her satchel as she peered further ahead. "My mistake." She began moving forward again, the ball of light trailing along above her head. Anja and Rhuar followed on her heels, casting the dying plants into shadow.
Together, the three walked into the darkness.
Rhuar unjacked, panting, and stumbled for a second before shaking himself thoroughly. "Looks like I blew past fifty," he said, his exhaustion failing to keep a note of pride from his voice.
"Holy shit," Jesri said, her eyes widening. Anything upwards of a twenty-fold mass multiplier off a jump ramp was considered to be excellent, the artificially enhanced weight slinging smaller ships much deeper into hyperspace than they could penetrate unassisted. Fifty plunged their small freighter well past those plebeian levels and into the true abyss normally reserved for the mightiest of warships. Apparently Rhuar's minor attack of smug was well-warranted.
"Eh," shrugged Rhuar, rolling his head to the side, "you should see it when I nail a jump with a full hold. You're full black all the way, go so fast you wouldn't believe it." He looked at Jesri. "Well, maybe you would."
Jesri laughed. "How long will the transit take at this depth?"
Rhuar tapped a few console buttons. "Well, we could probably cut it down to two hours or so, but it'd be a comfier exit if we came up near the end. Three hours, maybe?"
She let out a low whistle. Those were world-class numbers, truly something to brag about. "Thanks, Rhuar," she said, "I'll let Anja and Kick know." The dog nodded, turning back to the console and twitching slightly as he reconnected. Jesri scrambled down the short stairs and back towards the medbay, where she found Anja helping Qktk sit up on the bay's medical bed.
Blue and white nanowraps bound the top of Qktk's head like a bizarre turban, covering the site of his injury. He looked shaky, but awake and alert. "Madam Jesri," he clattered, nodding at her. "I think I recall a jump as I was waking up. Are we safely away?"
Jesri nodded, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Yeah, you've got one hell of a pilot." She shot a glance at Anja. "Rhuar says we'll be at Harsi in three hours, even with a soft-drop." Anja hung up the diagnostic scanner with a suitably impressed look while her patient preened from the bed.
"Yes, Mr. Rhuar is quite the talent," he said. "I actually only hired him for his artificer skills, so finding out he could pilot was a happy surprise. Don't tell him this, but he could probably make much more money as a pilot with his gifts."
Anja laughed, and Jesri chucked the Htt on the upper arm with her fist. "Oh, don't sell yourself short," teased Jesri. "I have a feeling you two will be cleaning up after we part ways."
Qktk and Anja gave her inquiring looks. "Rhuar and I had a talk as we were leaving," Jesri explained. "Rhuar feels that Harsi could be somewhat hazardous, but that the risk would be properly offset if we allocated residential access at a few stations."
The Htt peered at Jesri curiously, but Anja's eyes narrowed. "May we speak a moment, sister?", she said evenly, gesturing to the door of the medbay. Sensing a stiffening of the air in the room, Qktk eased himself up from the bed and rattled to the floor, testing his limbs.
"I do believe a walk would do me some good, so if you'll excuse me…" He nodded gratefully towards the two women. "Madam Jesri, Madam Anja, thank you for your care."
They returned the gesture as he ambled out, then turned to face each other as Anja slapped the door controls. Almost before it had hissed closed, the warmth had fled from her face. "Sister, I do wish you'd consult with me before making promises like that," she said. "I don't dislike the bug and the dog, but giving them real access sits poorly with me."
Jesri rolled her eyes, easing herself up from the bed. "Oh, don't start with that," she scolded, "you had nothing to say when I gave guest rights to the Uen just now."
Anja shook her head. "That was teaching a lesson, with rights had been given away long ago. You're proposing to barter our inheritance to pay a fare, sister."
"What I'm proposing, sister, is proper compensation. You bullied poor Kick into letting us on board in the first place, at which point an armed mob targeting us attacked their home and their livelihood. Kick almost died in the escape, and without Rhuar we would be arriving at Harsi days from now instead of hours." Jesri folded her arms across her chest and glared at Anja. "They've been nothing but gracious and we've been a calamity for them."
Anja stalked over to Jesri and stuck a finger against her breastbone. "Money," she said, jabbing with each syllable. "I don't dispute that we've incurred a debt, but that's what money exists to repay. Neither of us is destitute."
Jesri snorted at the understatement. For people their age, compound interest made the entire game somewhat unfair. "Rhuar didn't ask for money," she retorted, "he asked for a chance to earn it. They're locksmiths, Anja, they have more use for this than anyone."
This failed to mollify Anja, who spun away from Jesri with a glowering look. "Locksmiths?", she growled, "It's bad enough to give rights to strangers, but vandals and robbers besides?"
"They're just opening doors!", shouted Jesri. "If you think it's so wrong to do it their way, you should be glad to give them an alternative." She forced herself to take a breath. "We've been around a long time, but we'll die eventually. Should humanity's works help the future or stand apart from it? What do you want Earth's legacy to be?"
Anja met her gaze unblinkingly. "Victory," she said. "We'll finish what we started."
Jesri laughed unkindly. "Victory for who? For Earth? There's no victory left there, we lost that battle no matter what you think we can do for the war. We can click our heels together and shout terra invicta until the stars burn cold, but that doesn't make it any less of a lie."
Anja slapped Jesri across the face, her eyes furious and blazing. Jesri took the blow without attempting to dodge, but caught Anja's wrist before she could withdraw her arm.
"If you fight, you're fighting for their sake now," she said, her face stinging. "Nobody else is left."
Anja tore her hand away and stormed out, leaving Jesri alone in the medbay. She sat down on the bed again, rubbing her cheek. After several long minutes she sighed and hauled herself up. She felt every bit of her age. Toggling the lights, she sealed the bay shut and moved off to find where her wayward sister had gone.
---
Rhuar and Qktk sat on the bridge, watching the ripples of light drifting past as the ship cut a wake through the midnight void of deep hyperspace. The ship was mostly silent as it cruised, which meant that the indistinct sounds of Jesri and Anja's altercation were hard to ignore.
Qktk looked over at Rhuar, chittering to himself. "I've really done it this time, haven't I?", he observed.
The dog grinned at him toothily. "Captain, I don't believe either of us had the option to walk away from the moment they met us. Quietly being mediocre is off the table until they decide we're done."
Qktk got up to pace the length of the bridge, his arms rattling in consternation. "I'm not one for politics, or conflict. Quietly being mediocre was my best quality."
Rhuar chuffed laughter at him. "Don't be modest, Captain. You may not like making a splash, but you always walk away with your due."
"Of course," retorted Qktk, "because I know when to walk away. Now the exit is closed off, and I can't see the top or bottom of this."
Rhuar contemplated his words and found that he didn't have a good response. The two of them sat silently on the bridge, waiting for the first stars to shine out of the void.
---
The bridge was awash with light towards the end of the jump, soap-bubble fragments of a starscape sliding back and forth in a luminous shell as the freighter skipped along the thin boundaries of hyperspace. Jesri poked her head in from the corridor, then ambled up to stand beside the crew.
She flashed Qktk a friendly smile when he turned his head. "Looks like we're almost out, huh?"
He nodded, chirping. "We're in the final runup. You should watch, Madam Jesri - Mr. Rhuar is something of an artist in this regard."
Rhuar bared his teeth in a grin, but said nothing. His muscles twitched sporadically and his eyes stared ahead, unfocused. Moving fast in hyperspace was easy, but moving slow required much finer control. The window to drop out within easy reach of their destination would span only a fraction of a second. Missing the window would drop them well outside the station's entry envelope, after which they'd face the prospect of a long, slow burn to get back into position for docking.
The timbre of the ship's engines changed slightly, and Jesri reached out to grab a chair. Qktk chittered at her, standing unsupported next to Rhuar. "Here we go," he said, leaning towards the viewports.
The liquid lines of starlight brightened, flowed together, then snapped back to a stable starfield around the ship. Jesri felt a brief shudder in the decking, then stillness. Wisps of glowing light curled away from the hull and drifted past the viewports, dispersing to show the massive expanse of a transit station hanging close ahead of them.
Rhuar let all of his breath out in a whoosh, slumping over sideways on the decking. "Ok, short nap," he said, tongue lolling out of his mouth. "Being this good is fucking exhausting."
Jesri clapped her hands together. "That was spot on, and the smoothest exit I've had on any ship this size. Most of the old navy pilots would just try to shake up the groundpounders if they got the chance."
Rhuar stretched his head up. "Lucky for you I'm not a navy pilot, then."
She peered through the viewport at the station hanging silently against the stars, a thin crescent of light illuminating the near edge where the local star shone weakly against the grey hull. No telltale flashes or streaks of engine light played around the docks, and large swaths of the shadowed hull seemed darker than they should be. She frowned.
"Seems pretty quiet over there," she muttered, scrolling through a data display.
Rhuar hauled himself to his feet with a grunt, then turned his head towards the station. "You're not wrong," he said, eyes darting rapidly. "Thermals are way below average, and I don't read any recent drive trails. If people do live here, they're not up to much. If I didn't know better, I'd say that some of those near sections were unpowered." He turned to Jesri. "I've never seen a transit station like this."
"I have," said Jesri grimly. "Reactor damage. The station is cutting power to nonessential systems and uninhabited sectors."
Qktk rattled his arms. "How could something damage a transit station?", he wondered, agitation creeping into his tone. "The way they're built, that seems like it would be impossible."
Jesri looked away, her eyes distant. "Oh, it's possible."
There was a long moment of silence, broken by Anja's arrival on the bridge. She wandered up to stand next to Jesri, who indicated the silent bulk of the station with a jerk of her chin.
Anja frowned. "That could complicate things," she said. "We did not have any reports indicating that this station was one of the damaged ones."
"There are others?", asked Rhuar, his ears twitching inquiringly. Anja gave him a pained look, and Jesri shook her head sadly.
"Most transit stations are like this," Jesri sighed. "You just use the ones that survived. Right now there are around two hundred active stations-"
"Fewer," whispered Anja, cutting her off. "One-hundred eighty nine left."
Rhuar's ears flicked back. "Wow, I had considered myself well-traveled having visited fifty or so. How many were there originally?"
Jesri closed her eyes. "Thousands." Anja walked to stare out the viewport, turning her back on the group. Jesri looked at her, then turned back towards Rhuar and Qktk. "We shouldn't sit exposed for too long. Can you see which parts of the docking ring still have power?"
Rhuar nodded, and a display flared with a map of the station. Three bright arcs were highlighted in green across the perimeter. "We can dock in any of these sections, I think. Based on our nav data, the old port operated out of this area here." A smaller segment of the green area turned blue.
Jesri nodded, then pointed to a smaller arc several segments away. "Let's dock here," she said. "We're already on that side, and it's distant enough that we shouldn't run into anyone."
The engines hummed as Rhuar laid in a course.
---
The ship slid noiselessly towards the cavernous docking bay, the wide rectangular edges growing to dwarf them as they passed through. The ship vibrated softly as they moved through the docking field and into the bay's atmosphere, light currents of wind buffeting the hull. Through the viewports, the slips bristled like a jagged row of needle teeth drawn with grey and white.
Aside from them, the bay was deserted.
Rhuar sidled up to one of the slips and unjacked, stretching his legs. "Ok, hard part's over," he grunted. "Now we just need to deal with all of the crazed cannibal bandits on the spooky derelict station."
Jesri laughed and shook her head. "We're far enough away from the old port that I'm hoping we don't see anyone. We just need to head a short distance back from the docks to a data terminal, then we can leave. You can stay on the ship with the captain, we shouldn't be gone more than an hour."
Rhuar whined softly. "I wanna come," he muttered.
Lifting an eyebrow, Jesri turned to face him. "What about the spooky cannibal bandits?," she asked with a grin.
"You said yourself they probably wouldn't be an issue," he retorted, embarrassed. "This place feels like a bad fuckin idea, but I'm not such a tail-tucker that I'd miss out seeing whatever magical ancient human tech you're about to mess with."
"Fair enough," said Jesri, "but if you come along you follow instructions. Your curiosity is secondary to our goal."
Rhuar sniffed. "Which is?"
Jesri smiled wider. "Primary." She turned to look at Anja. "I'm going to grab a few things for my bag, then we can head out."
Five minutes later, the three of them stepped out onto the slip. The light breeze from the circulators rushed past them, the air neutral and dry. Rhuar looked around nervously. The docking bay stretched spare and empty in all directions, the flat grey decking spotless and uncluttered. "You know, this actually looks better than some of the ports I've been to."
Anja's lips pressed together in a line. "This is how it they should all look," she said. "Most of the ports are so dirty these days."
Jesri turned back to Qktk, who was standing in the hatch. "Captain, keep an eye out on things from the ship. Don't open the hatch for anything but our return."
The diminutive Htt nodded and chirped. "Of course, Madam Jesri." He inclined his head to Anja and Rhuar, then stepped back and toggled the hatch closed. It hissed shut, leaving them alone on the slip.
"Now then," said Anja brightly, "shall we?" She cocked her head for a moment, then nodded. "The station responds properly when queried. You should register too, once we're out of the slips."
They trekked over to the nearest bay exit, then passed through into the corridor beyond. Jesri stretched her shoulders, then addressed the ship. "Station Ariadne," she said, "Captain Jesri Tam, TNMC Three Five Seven Two Sierra Four. Officer authorization, please." The speakers gave a crackly chirrup in response. She turned to indicate Rhuar. "Register Artificer Rhuar with level five guest access and VIP protected status."
Rhuar shot her a grateful look, mouth lolling open, then ran over to a nearby supply closet. The door hissed open, revealing a bare room beyond with a few sealed yellow barrels. He yipped delightedly, spinning in place before retreating and letting the door close. The two women watched him as he approached the door again, causing it to slide open.
Anja snorted. "That door wasn't restricted to begin with," she said quietly.
"Shhhh," smirked Jesri. "Let him have a bit of fun." She looked down the hall, pointing at a door. "We're in the central dock for this segment, so the terminal should be straight back." Anja nodded, and the two started walking towards the door. Rhuar tore himself away from the supply closet door and trotted along behind them, grinning like a maniac.
Anja led the group through a twisting series of corridors for several minutes. They walked in silence, their footsteps echoing softly against the gentle hum of the station and kicking up small puffs of dust from the deck. Yellow and red lichen speckled the walls, spreading from corners and seams.
They stopped in front of a large door, dark grey with a thick frame. It opened silently when Anja stood in front of it, sliding up to reveal a small, dark room covered in displays and blinking lights. "Well, here it is," she remarked brightly. The three entered, and both women took a console.
After a few long minutes, Jesri frowned and looked up. "I'm not finding anything. It should be in the trace logs, right?" A message flashed red on her display, casting bloody highlights across the room. "The data is either corrupted or missing, I can't access it."
Anja pursed her lips. "Not missing, sister." She tapped a few times on her console, and a map of the station swam up on the display. "The network links to the inner core appear to be down."
Jesri groaned. "Please don't say that," she groused, pushing away from her console. Rhuar gave her an inquisitive look, cocking his head. "She's saying the dock terminals aren't going to work," she explained. "We're going to have to access the data core directly from the inner ring."
He perked up. "We get to see the inner ring? Awesome!"
Anja smirked. "Yes, and the transit pods won't be working. We get to walk there."
Rhuar's gaze flicked back and forth between them, his expression falling. "Uh, how far is it?", he asked.
Jesri stood up. "We'd better get back to the ship and let Kick know we'll be longer than expected." Anja nodded and followed her out of the terminal room.
Rhuar rushed after them. "Hey, wait! Is it really far?"
---
Anja, Jesri and Rhuar approached a tall, heavy door at the end of a corridor. Anja stood in front of it and a muffled whine of machinery sounded. It built and grew higher pitched, then a jarring clunk sent vibrations through the deck. The whine stopped.
"Dammit," said Jesri, closing her eyes.
The three had been walking for four hours, and this was the fifth broken door they'd encountered. Every time they found one, they had been forced to backtrack to a different section to continue their inward progress. With a straight path they could have been most of the way to the center by now, but their convoluted route and frequent interruptions meant that they were still stuck in the outer ring, nearly two thirds of the way out from the center.
"It would have been very convenient if it worked," grumbled Anja. "The next door we could use to access the middle ring is a kilometer antispinward from here."
Rhuar made an exasperated whining noise. "Are you sure it's broken?", he said, his exoskeleton unfolding to prod at the access panel.
Anja rolled her eyes. "You're the locksmith, you tell me."
"I don't deal with broken doors," Rhuar muttered, the arms of his exoskeleton peeling back the panel cover and prodding at the electronics underneath. "I'm not in the business of repairs. I deal with functional, locked doors. Hence, locksmith."
Anja leaned against the corridor and took a drink of water from her bag. "Shouldn't a locksmith be making locks as well? If all you do is unlock the locks it makes you more of a lockpick than a locksmith."
Rhuar shot her an annoyed look as his arms kept working inside the panel. "I'm not a word historian or whatever-"
"Etymologist," supplied Jesri.
Anja frowned. "Surely it's just a linguist?"
"Whatever you'd like to call it," continued Rhuar, glaring at her, "I'm in the business of opening locks. We can stand around talking about it, or we can-"
The door groaned and rose a meter, leaving a gap through which warm, humid air flowed softly. Rhuar blinked. "Huh," he said. "Hey, the door's open."
Jesri bent down to peer through the gap. "Well," she said, sucking her teeth, "it's not pretty but it's traversable." She peered at Rhuar. "What are the odds this door will chop me in half if I try to go under it?"
Rhuar gave her an arch look. "And now I'm a statistician?"
Anja cocked her head. "Actuary?"
Jesri shook her head. "Okay, I deserved that." She slipped her bag under the door, then bent and passed through. "Looks good over here. Come on through."
Anja and Rhuar slid through the gap to emerge on the far side of the door, looking down the long corridor. It was wide and tall, even taller than the residential corridors on the outer parts of the station. A slight curve caused the corridor to bend out of sight after several hundred meters, but it looked as though it ran for a very long way. The floor and walls were thickly covered in lichen, with mosses crowding the sides of the hallway in splotchy greens and browns.
Anja beamed. "Oh, good. This is one of the primary radial corridors. It will take us all the way across the middle ring, at which point we can transit to the inner ring and reach the core."
Rhuar peered into the distance. "How far is it across the middle ring?"
Jesri stretched her arms. "Ten kilometers. Ready?" She smirked at him and started walking, Anja on her heels.
Rhuar slumped. "You know, this is much less interesting than you made it sound on the ship." He shook himself, then padded off down the hall.
The moss at the sides of the hallway thickened as they walked, and after the first kilometer it formed a mossy bed of green stretching across the decking. Several centimeters of growth had accrued across the hall, supplemented in thicker areas by some sort of sparse grass.
Anja bounced experimentally on the moss, standing on the ball of one foot. "Springy," she noted. "More comfortable to walk on."
Jesri waved a hand at the ceiling. "Yeah, but it means the environmental controls are messed up. The humidity is way above normal. Plus, the green plants mean there was some sort of hydroponics breach. We're probably going to have issues further in."
Rhuar sniffed the air. "It does smell a bit mulchy from that direction. I don't think it's going to get any clearer as we keep going."
Anja shrugged. "Not much we can do about it." She squared her pack on her shoulders, and the group continued.
The greenery intensified as they continued, clover spreading underfoot as ivy covered the walls in a thick mat of green. The plants clustered densely where the hallway lighting was strongest, making regular patches of high growth as they progressed. The hallway grew dimmer as the ivy climbed in great shaggy clumps around the light tracks at the top of the hall, interspersed with hanging, thorny vines.
The two women were forced to dodge around clumps of thorned tendrils descending from the ceiling, stretching in verdant ropes over the passageway. Jesri pulled a long knife from her satchel. "This is worse than I've ever seen it," she grumbled. She drew the knife slowly across a woody collection of vines and they parted with no resistance.
Rhuar stared at the cleanly sliced vine, fascinated, then turned wide eyes to Jesri. "Uh, can I see that knife for a second?"
Jesri gave him a look, then kept on walking forward.
Even with Jesri clearing a path they made poor forward progress through the strangling vegetation. The air was hot and humid, and Anja was muttering under her breath. Rhuar panted rapidly, his tongue hanging from his mouth and small clinging seeds dotting his coat. They pressed forward for a couple of kilometers, cleaving a rough green tunnel through the undergrowth.
They passed a hissing pipe at a junction, slick and green with huge mats of algae slumping around it. Anja smacked at it. "There it is," she complained. "One stupid pipe spraying excess moisture around for a few thousand years and you have a jungle in the hallway."
Rhuar stared at the tiny trickle of water from the pipe spraying out to coat a broad leaf with a sheen of beaded droplets. "Seems like it's too small to cause all of this."
Jesri shrugged. "It's not a significant leak, but time is the ultimate force multiplier. If the environmental humidity regulators are out, this is more than enough to throw a station's atmospheric mix out of balance." Rhuar nodded, pondering.
The group pressed forward, leaving the hissing pipe behind. The vegetation grew higher with every step, the smell of rotting plant matter thick in the air. After clearing through a particularly gnarled tangle, Jesri stumbled forward and found herself in an open stretch of hallway. The ghost of a grin rose to her lips, but died quickly as she looked farther down the corridor. "Aw, shit," she spat. "Guys, come up and look at this."
Anja and Rhuar walked through the hole she had cut in the greenery and looked ahead. The hallway ahead of them was dim and murky, the plants along it brown and stunted. None of the wall lights were on past the point they had reached, and the far arc of the corridor was lost in shadow.
Rhuar peered into the darkness. "How long do you suppose this goes on for?", he asked.
Anja shrugged. "Could be a few hundred meters, could be several kilometers. Hard to say, but it should not extend to the inner ring unless there are unrelated problems with that grid as well."
"Great," Jesri sighed. "Now it's dark." She reached into her satchel and grabbed a small, round ball of metal, which she tossed into the air. It floated up to hover over her head and began shining softly, illuminating the hallway with a dim amber glow. She turned to Rhuar, who was staring at the light intently.
"No," she said.
Rhuar pouted. "I didn't say anything."
"Mmhmm," replied Jesri, adjusting her satchel as she peered further ahead. "My mistake." She began moving forward again, the ball of light trailing along above her head. Anja and Rhuar followed on her heels, casting the dying plants into shadow.
Together, the three walked into the darkness.
- Location
- Elsewhere
- Location
- USA
I like to think there's a lot of me reflected in Qktk.It's a difficult job, but somebody has to do it.
Part 6
- Location
- USA
Amber light licked softly across the hallway, vanishing into murky shadow ahead as they walked down the hall. Whorls of latticed fungus hung in gossamer sheets from the walls, drifting gently in the air currents stirred up by their passage.
Rhuar shivered. The warm pool of light from Jesri's floating lamp let him see well enough, but each shrouded doorway and corridor took a sinister aspect in the low light. The two women seemed unperturbed by the darkness, moving quickly now that they were free from the vegetation choking the corridors behind them.
They had moved a couple of kilometers into the darkness with no end in sight. "I think this really may continue until the inner ring," sighed Anja. "So dreary." She sniffed. "And musty."
"Probably not the best air to be breathing," agreed Rhuar. "Smells like mold and mushrooms."
Jesri shook her head. "Fantastic," she muttered. "Let's just keep our pace up and try to minimize the amount of time we're in here." She lengthened her stride, and Rhuar broke into a trot to keep up. They continued in tense silence, their footsteps seeming to echo endlessly from every side passage.
Rhuar collided with Jesri's legs and stumbled backwards. She had stopped suddenly, peering intently down the corridor past the light's radius. Anja had drawn up short as well, frowning. A complaint rose and died in Rhuar's throat as he heard the patter of soft footfalls sounding from down the hallway. A rasping noise came from the same direction, like paper sliding over stone.
Jesri shifted her weight slightly, one hand drifting to her sidearm under her cloak. The footsteps and dry rustling came closer, and Rhuar bristled. His exoskeleton folded flat, freeing his movement and shielding his legs.
They could see a figure moving towards them with a galloping lope in the dim light, its gangly limbs splaying out precariously. Jesri tensed for a moment, but then cocked her head curiously. Anja looked at her, brow furrowed, listening intently to the rasping noises. "Sister," she murmured, "is it speaking?"
The raspy noises resolved into crackling, whispered speech as the form hurtled closer, breaking into the pool of light surrounding Jesri. "Light!", it croaked, "No light!"
Now that it was near, they could see it clearly. Thick, grey-skinned legs and a squat torso sat low to the ground, supported by long, thin forelimbs that spidered out ahead of it as it scrambled over the decking. Three large, solid black eyes sat in a triangle on its head, twitching and shuddering as they struggled to see past the glare of the lamp. "Pleash!", it gasped, skidding to a stop. "No light!"
Jesri and Anja shared a quick look. Anja shrugged, resting her hand nonchalantly on her gun.
Jesri reached up above her head and grabbed the light, plunging the group into sudden darkness. Quiet stretched over the hallway for a few long seconds before Jesri cleared her throat.
"So, friend," she said, "we're listening. Talk."
The newcomer shifted nervously. As his eyes adjusted, Rhuar saw faint specks of blue light stretching down the corridor. The latticed sheets of fungus on the walls glowed softly, and he could make out the silhouettes of the others against the bioluminescent filigree.
"Light," it rasped, spreading its arms. Jesri tilted her head expectantly. "Bad!", it concluded, crossing its arms emphatically.
It was too dark to see it, but Rhuar and Anja could feel Jesri's eyes rolling on a deep, visceral level. "So we had gathered," she said evenly. "Why is the light bad?"
The tiny alien paced in a circle, its forelimbs shaking in agitation. "Light bad!", it croaked insistently.
Anja walked over and knelt next to the quivering little being. "Friend bug," she said sweetly, "tell us why the light is bad or we will turn it back on."
"No!", it yelped, then cringed at the noise. "Light bad, bad, bad," it whispered. It drew itself up, looking at Anja. The blue light from the walls reflected like stars in the black of its eyes. "Light danzher," it said firmly. "Light bad."
Jesri snorted. "A fifth word. Danger? All right. What danger?"
Its head darted around, looking up and down the hall. "Bad danzher." It scuttled over to a side passage, then crooked its arms in a beckoning gesture. "Come shafe," it whispered, pointing down the passageway.
Jesri and Anja looked at each other again. This time, Jesri shrugged. "Sure," she said. "Wouldn't want to run into any bad danger." She walked over to where the little alien was urging them forward, addressing it directly. "We'll follow you, friend, as long as it's safe." She placed her hand conspicuously on her sidearm.
The alien shrank back from her, trilling softly. "Come shafe, shafe," it muttered, scuttling off down the passageway.
---
They trailed along after their guide, winding through side corridors and narrow access walkways. The alien was furtive, crouching to scout ahead at intersections and proceeding only after a careful check of the area. The shaky nervousness from before had fled from its stance, replaced by a grim deliberativeness of motion.
"This one walks like he is defusing a bomb," murmured Anja.
Jesri grimaced. "Either he's putting on a show for our benefit or he's convinced death is waiting around every corner," she whispered. "I'm not sure that I like either of those options."
Rhuar snuffled. The corridors had an ever-increasing stench of mold and rot layered over an eerie silence. With so many station systems deprived of power, the hum that normally masked small noises was replaced by an echoing stillness, punctuated by soft drips, clicks and other indistinct sounds that made him feel as though someone was stalking along behind him.
At least the darkness wasn't absolute. The glowing fungus that coated the walls provided more than enough light to see obstacles, now that his eyes were fully adjusted. Looking down the long halls, a swirling cascade of azure traced the curve of the bulkheads and the arched span of the ceiling. It was oddly beautiful, despite the pee-inducing terror that was scrabbling at the back of his mind.
As Rhuar gazed down one corridor, he noted a particularly bright glow from an intersection several dozen meters away. "Hey," he whispered, "what is-"
He fell silent, watching the glow. It was noticeably brighter, and increasing in brightness as he watched. Their guide whirled to face it and let out a low hiss before diving for cover around a nearby corner. "Danzher!", it breathed, flattening itself against the wall. "Bad, bad, bad!"
Rhuar didn't waste time on further questions. He crouched low against the same wall, crowding into the corner. Jesri and Anja took up another alcove across the corridor, weapons drawn.
From around the far corner, a tall, lanky figure revealed itself as the source of the glow. It slouched forward, a flaming torch grasped tightly in one hand. The dull light of the fire seemed impossibly bright in the darkness, sending flickering shadows questing down the hall past their hiding spots.
Another figure joined the first, and another. They carried crude clubs and torches, their bodies swathed in a ragged blend of cloth and leather. Jesri recognized a few species - slight, winged Tlixl, many-legged Arrigh, even a few lumbering Kita - but even more figures in the crowd evaded her classification as they patrolled past the junction. The last one of them to pass was a massive Dhumma over three meters in height, its footfalls shaking the deck. A bandolier across its chest swung heavy with leering skulls from a dozen species and it carried a wicked-looking glaive fashioned from metal scrap.
The last of the patrol moved past the junction, and the glow of their torches diminished to leave the four of them crouched in blue-spangled darkness once more. Rhuar sniffed and shot Jesri a look. "Looks like those spooky cannibal bandits get around more than you thought," he hissed.
He saw a flash of white teeth as she smiled back. "I owe you lunch," she whispered, holstering her weapon. She turned and tapped Anja on the shoulder. "What do you think?"
Anja stowed her own weapon and adjusted her cloak. "Not a threat individually, except for the big one. We could have a problem if they surprised us or attacked as a group."
Jesri nodded, then cast a glance towards the small alien. It hauled itself to its feet shakily and peered around the corner, then straightened up. "Shafe, shafe, shafe," it muttered, resuming its walk down the corridor.
They walked for a while longer, navigating deeper into the black maze of passages. The little alien stopped suddenly in front of an unremarkable maintenance hatch. Its forelimbs spread to grasp the edges of the panel, which popped out to reveal an access tunnel behind it.
After they had entered the tunnel and carefully replaced the access panel, they followed the tunnels for several meters and emerged in a wide, dimly lit room. The little alien chittered happily and tore off running towards a collection of old crates stacked against the far wall, soft flickering light visible from within.
"Looks like an old maintenance bay," Jesri mused, "drone storage or something. Only accessible via the maintenance tunnels." She looked over towards the crates, which were arranged in a loose semicircle. "Defensible, hidden. Smart choice to hole up here if they needed to hide."
Their guide reappeared along with a larger version of itself, who advanced cautiously. It moved stiffly, and as it came closer Jesri could make out stripes or striations across its skin. She got the sense of age, or illness. Behind them, three smaller aliens peered curiously from the line of crates.
The old alien stopped nearby and fixed them with a piercing look. "Kenet-Ei says that he found you wandering the halls, lit up like a hundred torches," it whispered, its voice like soft falling sand. "Which means you are either very brave or very stupid."
Jesri smiled at the alien and shrugged. "I like to think we've got good self-confidence," she replied. She glanced down to their guide. "Your name is Kenet-Ei?", she asked. He chirped happily in response. "Thank you for telling us of the danger and leading us here," she said. The little alien chirped again, bobbling its head back and forth in what Jesri assumed was a pleased gesture.
The elder alien chuffed at them. "I am named Kenet-Tel. I beg your forgiveness for being forward, but I must know this from you." Its three eyes peered intensely at the group, and it leaned forward. "You are from off-station, are you not?"
Anja's eyes narrowed, but Jesri held up a hand before she could respond. "What if we were?", she asked, her tone neutral.
Kenet-Tel spread his arms wide, lowering his head. "Please do not misunderstand me. I have been living on this station for a long, long time, and I have not seen a visitor in years. It has been… hard, here." He looked down at the decking. "When my children were nothing more than nestlings I tried to leave, but I could not pay for a ship. I had to take them here and hide from the others, live in the darkness. My youngest three cannot remember anything else."
He straightened up and looked Jesri in the eye. "If you have a ship I must beg of you, please - take my children off this station. I will do anything, give anything, but I cannot let them stay here. And if I can earn my own passage beside them, my gratitude would be endless." He looked at the trio and seemed to consider saying more, but he folded his arms and stayed silent, waiting.
Jesri frowned, thinking. "Kenet-Tel, how well do you and your children know the passages going inward, towards the center ring?"
The old alien shifted nervously. "We know the passages as we know the faces of our nest. Most of my children know little else."
Jesri glanced back towards Anja and Rhuar. The former gave a long-suffering sigh and raised her hands in surrender, while the latter gave her a curious look and panted.
Jesri smiled.
"Okay," she said, "if you can guide us on safe paths to the inner ring and back out again then we'll consider that payment for transport to another station. I can't promise we'll go straight there after we leave, but we'll take you with us."
Kenet-Tel leaned back on his hind feet and closed his eyes, translucent membranes sweeping over the large black sclera. "It will be dangerous, to move so far in a group. But we will die in darkness if we stay, so I will risk dying in darkness to leave. We will guide you."
He crooked one of his thin arms, and the remaining three children ran up to huddle behind him, their angular faces peeking out from behind his legs. Anja bent down to coo and wave at the tiny aliens, who cheeped softly and hid further behind their father. Kenet-Tel looked down at them reproachfully. "Forgive them, please," he said, "they are young and a bit shy. These three cannot speak yet, and Kenet-Ei must molt again before he can form words well."
The younger alien chittered and bobbled his head. "Shpeek ghood."
Kenet-Tel stroked his son's head with a forelimb. "We have nothing to take with us, so we will leave when you wish to depart."
Jesri nodded and turned to the others. "Good to go?", she asked.
Rhuar and Anja nodded. She turned back to Kenet-Tel and gestured towards the panel. "Lead on."
---
They followed the family of aliens through winding twists of hallway speckled with luminous midnight blue, Kenet-Ei taking point. His younger siblings clustered around Kenet-Tel, keeping close to his legs. Their pace was slow and cautious to allow for careful reconnaissance of every intersection and junction. Twice they laid still and quiet, watching the angry orange glow of torchlight move across their path in the distance.
After a maze of utility passages crowded with boxes and debris, they emerged in a long, narrow hall with a massive door at the end. Kenet-Tel turned to Jesri, waving his arm at the door. "We have arrived. This is the end of the passage, the door to the inner ring."
Rhuar ran over eagerly to inspect the door. "Wow, this one is massive. I've never been this far in on a station before." His exoskeleton popped arms out to prod the smooth metal, tracing the seam of the door. "Yeah, damn - I don't think I could get this thing open in a hundred years."
Kenet-Tel snorted. "It has been closed for much longer than that. It may never be opened."
Rhuar chuckled. "Would you care to make a wager on that?"
The old alien gave him a look. "I cannot. I have been living in abject poverty in the dark for many years. I have nothing with which to wager."
Rhuar's ears twitched. "I didn't… uh." His exoskeleton arms waved aimlessly, then folded back against his limbs.
Anja laughed, walking over to the door. "Poor doggie. At least you'd have won the wager." She placed her hand on the door panel, and the giant slab of metal ground open with a high metallic whine. Blinding shafts of light lanced through the opening, shattering the darkness around them.
Jesri winced and put her hand over her eyes. "Damn, that's bright. Looks like the power's on in the inner ring, at least. Let's head in." She jogged through the door, scanning the room beyond.
Kenet-Tel's mouth worked soundlessly. "What-", he managed, leaning against the wall. "How?"
Rhuar grinned wolfishly at him. "You get used to it after a while. Come on!" He bounded over to follow Anja through the door.
---
They paced quickly down the hall, this one clean and brightly lit. Kenet-Tel's brood hung close to him, heads swiveling rapidly as they took in the unfamiliar surroundings. Jesri rushed the group forward, tossing a glance behind her as she walked. The massive door behind them had failed when they tried to close it, and the shining light from the inner core was a blinding beacon in the dark warrens of the middle ring. It was only a matter of time before the roving patrols saw the light and investigated.
Anja gave a small shout of glee when she spotted the central terminal room, running over to the door. She flew into the nearest chair and began working the console, flitting through directories at lightning speed. Rhuar and Kenet-Tel followed her in, gawping at the displays and giant server racks lining the room.
Jesri stopped at the threshold of the room, a detail having caught in the corner of her eye. "Oh Anja," she called, her voice saccharine. "I've just spotted my favorite room on the station. I'm going to go check it out."
Anja waved her off without looking or offering a response, her other hand tapping a rapid sequence on the console.
As Jesri vanished down the corridor, Rhuar turned back to Anja. "So, uh. What was that about? Does she need to pee or something?"
Anja giggled. "Silly doggie. She's just checking out something interesting." She withdrew a black box from her cloak, unspooling a cable to jack into the console.
Rhuar chuffed air out his nose. "I'm not a doggie." He peered at the display, which was showing a rapid scroll of text and icons. "What are you looking for, anyway?"
"Flight logs," said Anja, her voice distant. She had found actual files now and was flipping through data summaries. Abbreviated snippets of audio played and were cut off over and over as she skimmed through transmission data.
"From Harsi? We're probably the only ship to come here in years." Rhuar's ears dropped. "Oh, fuck. You mean earlier."
Anja grinned wider. "Rude doggie. Yes, quite a lot earlier. I'm looking for the last ship that humans ever built." She punched her finger down on the console triumphantly and a file swam to life on the display. Atop the display, the words "TNS GRAND DESIGN - CRUISER, SPECIAL DETACHMENT" shone bright and red.
Anja pressed another button, and a voice filled the room. "This is Captain Zachary Coates," it said in clear English, "TNS Grand Design. On our way out of Ariadne we were clipped by a Golf Bravo that killed several crew and crippled our reactor. Currently unable to link up with primary group. We will have to try for the rendezvous on Zephyr. Our reactors will last until then if we don't push them hard, so we're keeping to low hyperspace until we've cleared the Aurelius gravity well. Everything but the hyperdrive and life support is running on reserve power for the moment. Containment is holding. We will update with our status in two days. Grand Design out."
Rhuar and Kenet-Tel stood speechless for a few moments. The thin grey alien turned to Rhuar. "What did it say?", he asked.
Rhuar shook his head. "Damage report from a ship, with some plans for a rendezvous."
Anja looked at him, impressed. "I didn't know you spoke English."
Rhuar grinned at her. "Dogs are terrans too, you know. What's so special about the ship?"
Anja's smile faded. "It was carrying something of great importance."
"Oh, come on," he whined. "You can't just blueball me with 'something of great importance' and not elaborate a bit."
Anja fixed him with a look, her eyes blank. "I'll tell you, if you really want to know," she said evenly. "How much do you know about the death of humanity?"
"Uh," stumbled Rhuar, "not much. I know that everyone even close to a human died, all at the same time. Any planet with a human population on it was a wasteland. Trillions died, and we've been working our way back up the ladder for five thousand years."
"Yes," Anja hissed, baring her teeth. "Do you know why?"
Rhuar edged away from Anja's chair. "No, I don't."
Anja stood up, pacing. "We were at war, in those final years, although we never fired a shot. We had discovered a neighbor on our borders, hugely powerful and advanced. Made all of the technological accomplishments of humankind look like toys. They were friendly, though. Let us ask questions, taught us new technology."
She closed her eyes. "Then they told us that they were researching vacuum energy. Unlimited power, tapped from the fabric of space itself. They had figured out how to do it safely, with just one precondition - they had to destroy the universe first."
Kenet-Tel drew back. "I do not understand. How could that benefit them?"
Anja shook her head. "They were going to propagate a lower energy state of vacuum, which would eventually spread to the entire universe. The conversion to a lower vacuum state is violent, very violent. They had some way to survive the conversion, but they didn't care about the rest of the universe. They considered us entertaining, but ultimately insignificant next to their own potential - like bacteria."
Rhuar shuddered. "That's so fucked up. How did you stop them?"
Anja looked at him, bemused. "Stop them?"
"Well, yeah," said Rhuar, puzzled. "We're still here, aren't we?"
"Oh, we tried to stop them - but ultimately failed," she said softly. "We diverted a significant portion of our military research to building something that could hurt them enough to stop the project. They found out right after we launched the Grand Design with the weapon aboard. They triggered gamma-ray bursts from a few dozen stars and focused them through hyperspace. They were all timed to arrive at once, and they scoured entire star systems bare. We never stood a chance."
Her face grew bitter and pinched. "We didn't make a dent in their schedule. They've been working on their project for thirty thousand years. They could finish in another thirty thousand years, or tomorrow. When they do, we will all die so quickly that we won't even know anything was wrong."
Kenet-Tel slouched forward. "I give thanks for the long years of my life I spent unaware of that story."
Rhuar slumped down as well. "Seriously. That's the most depressing thing I've heard since we met Kenet-Tel." He ignored the pointed look from beside him and gestured to the display. "How will finding the ship help? Do you have a plan?"
Anja showed her teeth in a humorless smile. "Find the ship, recover the weapon, kill the enemy, save the universe."
Rhuar gave her a look. "The last time anyone got on that ship, they shot at you with stars. You two are going to take this on alone?"
"You are not coming?", pouted Anja, affecting a hurt look. "I was going to let you fly the ship."
Rhuar made a strangled noise. "You fight dirty."
"I knew I could count on you," said Anja sweetly, unjacking the black box from her console and stowing it in her cloak again. "I have what I need from here, let's go find my sister."
She placed her palm on the door and it hissed up, revealing the hall beyond. "I believe she went left-"
A fist slammed into her stomach and she flew backwards, sliding along the floor to rest in a heap. Rhuar watched in horror as the towering Dhumma ducked his head to enter the terminal room. A throng of other bandits waited behind it, eagerly brandishing clubs and crude maces.
Kenet-Tel's children fled to hide behind his legs as the old alien stepped back, eyes flitting around the room for cover or escape.
The Dhumma laughed, a low grunting wheeze escaping his mouth folds. "Told you I smelled food," he rumbled. Laughter echoed from behind him as the rest of the patrol crowded into the room. Rhuar backpedaled, quickly running into a server behind him.
A group of three thin aliens peeled off from the main group to close on Kenet-Tel, huddled in a corner. They advanced slowly, jeering at the old alien as he stood shaking between the attackers and his children. The closest raised his club to strike and Kenet-Tel flinched away, raising his arms instinctively.
The alien's head exploded with a wet pop and the hiss of superheated steam, showering Kenet-Tel with hot gore. Anja coughed and levered herself into a seated position with her free arm, firing her pistol twice more. The shots took the remaining attackers in the center of mass, gouts of blood and steam filling the terminal room with a vile stench.
More of the bandits charged towards her and she rolled away, coming up in a half-crouch and snapping off shots that destroyed abdomens and severed legs on the charging aliens. They stopped, three spreading out to encircle her with raised clubs. She took a low stance, pistol extended, her other hand drawing a short knife from her boot. A feral grin played across her lips and her eyes flashed with excitement. "So rude," she purred.
One of them, an Arrigh, yelled hoarsely and swarmed towards her, segmented legs clacking against the deck. Anja ducked left under its wild club swing, then sprang right to land beside the surprised alien with her knife extended. It staggered, arms clasped weakly against its thorax as white and pale yellow entrails dribbled out of an open wound across its chest.
Anja flicked a drop of milky blood off of her knife and fired two shots at the nearest alien. It collapsed in a ruin of shredded flesh as its remaining companion screamed a challenge towards Anja, stepping in for a vicious swipe with an improvised maul.
She sidestepped neatly, slid forward and stabbed her knife into the alien's wrist. It howled and fell back, clutching its arm, only to be trampled as the Dhumma charged and caught Anja across the chest with the shaft of his glaive. The blow sent her rolling across the floor for several meters, her arm held protectively against her ribs. Her pistol's capacitors trilled softly as it slid to a stop across the room from her.
The Dhumma's mouth hung open, ropes of drool sliding down his jowls. "Time to die, food," he said, lumbering towards her. Anja looked up, trying to scramble backwards as he loomed closer to her. As he swept his glaive high she suddenly looked behind him and grinned.
"My sister's favorite room is the armory," she said conversationally.
The Dhumma paused mid-stride. "What?", he grunted.
A blaze of white light erupted from the doorway, a mangled body went flying back to crash into the other bandits. They went down in a tangle, falling aside while Jesri darted around to hurl herself at the Dhumma. He spun to face her with a roar, his blade whipping towards her head. Her right hand shot up to intercept it and the blade struck with a deep clang, flashing actinic light. The Dhumma blinked. Jesri glowered back at the Dhumma and flexed her hand, shattering the metal blade in a spray of red-hot fragments.
Rhuar gaped in awe. Her right arm was encased in armor up to the shoulder, carbon-polymer muscles bulging under a plated metallic skin. Her clenched fist was wreathed in a flickering cloud of plasma, which snapped back to crackle in tight bands across her hand as she opened it.
The Dhumma roared in anger and slashed towards her with the smoking shards of metal remaining on his weapon. She whirled to grab it again with her armored fist. He strained against her grip, and with a flare of plasma she pulled the ruined glaive towards her to draw him off-balance. Her other hand came up and fired a pistol shot into his leg, pulping it. He bellowed, falling forward, and Jesri's armored fist swung high to pound him down against the deck. Light rippled from her arm and rent into the hulking alien's chest, tearing a gaping hole through to the decking. The Dhumma gasped, twitched, and died.
Jesri snapped her head up to glare at the remaining bandits, her right arm shining with gleaming metal and arcing fire.
As one, they threw down their clubs and ran out of the room, their footsteps echoing in the hallway.
---
Melee build best build. I know I said I was going on a hiatus for the holiday after part 6 but this is just a really bad stopping point. Therefore, I'll be posting one more chapter later this evening that will leave us at a more natural stopping point. Thanks for reading, and remember to check back later today for the next chapter!
Rhuar shivered. The warm pool of light from Jesri's floating lamp let him see well enough, but each shrouded doorway and corridor took a sinister aspect in the low light. The two women seemed unperturbed by the darkness, moving quickly now that they were free from the vegetation choking the corridors behind them.
They had moved a couple of kilometers into the darkness with no end in sight. "I think this really may continue until the inner ring," sighed Anja. "So dreary." She sniffed. "And musty."
"Probably not the best air to be breathing," agreed Rhuar. "Smells like mold and mushrooms."
Jesri shook her head. "Fantastic," she muttered. "Let's just keep our pace up and try to minimize the amount of time we're in here." She lengthened her stride, and Rhuar broke into a trot to keep up. They continued in tense silence, their footsteps seeming to echo endlessly from every side passage.
Rhuar collided with Jesri's legs and stumbled backwards. She had stopped suddenly, peering intently down the corridor past the light's radius. Anja had drawn up short as well, frowning. A complaint rose and died in Rhuar's throat as he heard the patter of soft footfalls sounding from down the hallway. A rasping noise came from the same direction, like paper sliding over stone.
Jesri shifted her weight slightly, one hand drifting to her sidearm under her cloak. The footsteps and dry rustling came closer, and Rhuar bristled. His exoskeleton folded flat, freeing his movement and shielding his legs.
They could see a figure moving towards them with a galloping lope in the dim light, its gangly limbs splaying out precariously. Jesri tensed for a moment, but then cocked her head curiously. Anja looked at her, brow furrowed, listening intently to the rasping noises. "Sister," she murmured, "is it speaking?"
The raspy noises resolved into crackling, whispered speech as the form hurtled closer, breaking into the pool of light surrounding Jesri. "Light!", it croaked, "No light!"
Now that it was near, they could see it clearly. Thick, grey-skinned legs and a squat torso sat low to the ground, supported by long, thin forelimbs that spidered out ahead of it as it scrambled over the decking. Three large, solid black eyes sat in a triangle on its head, twitching and shuddering as they struggled to see past the glare of the lamp. "Pleash!", it gasped, skidding to a stop. "No light!"
Jesri and Anja shared a quick look. Anja shrugged, resting her hand nonchalantly on her gun.
Jesri reached up above her head and grabbed the light, plunging the group into sudden darkness. Quiet stretched over the hallway for a few long seconds before Jesri cleared her throat.
"So, friend," she said, "we're listening. Talk."
The newcomer shifted nervously. As his eyes adjusted, Rhuar saw faint specks of blue light stretching down the corridor. The latticed sheets of fungus on the walls glowed softly, and he could make out the silhouettes of the others against the bioluminescent filigree.
"Light," it rasped, spreading its arms. Jesri tilted her head expectantly. "Bad!", it concluded, crossing its arms emphatically.
It was too dark to see it, but Rhuar and Anja could feel Jesri's eyes rolling on a deep, visceral level. "So we had gathered," she said evenly. "Why is the light bad?"
The tiny alien paced in a circle, its forelimbs shaking in agitation. "Light bad!", it croaked insistently.
Anja walked over and knelt next to the quivering little being. "Friend bug," she said sweetly, "tell us why the light is bad or we will turn it back on."
"No!", it yelped, then cringed at the noise. "Light bad, bad, bad," it whispered. It drew itself up, looking at Anja. The blue light from the walls reflected like stars in the black of its eyes. "Light danzher," it said firmly. "Light bad."
Jesri snorted. "A fifth word. Danger? All right. What danger?"
Its head darted around, looking up and down the hall. "Bad danzher." It scuttled over to a side passage, then crooked its arms in a beckoning gesture. "Come shafe," it whispered, pointing down the passageway.
Jesri and Anja looked at each other again. This time, Jesri shrugged. "Sure," she said. "Wouldn't want to run into any bad danger." She walked over to where the little alien was urging them forward, addressing it directly. "We'll follow you, friend, as long as it's safe." She placed her hand conspicuously on her sidearm.
The alien shrank back from her, trilling softly. "Come shafe, shafe," it muttered, scuttling off down the passageway.
---
They trailed along after their guide, winding through side corridors and narrow access walkways. The alien was furtive, crouching to scout ahead at intersections and proceeding only after a careful check of the area. The shaky nervousness from before had fled from its stance, replaced by a grim deliberativeness of motion.
"This one walks like he is defusing a bomb," murmured Anja.
Jesri grimaced. "Either he's putting on a show for our benefit or he's convinced death is waiting around every corner," she whispered. "I'm not sure that I like either of those options."
Rhuar snuffled. The corridors had an ever-increasing stench of mold and rot layered over an eerie silence. With so many station systems deprived of power, the hum that normally masked small noises was replaced by an echoing stillness, punctuated by soft drips, clicks and other indistinct sounds that made him feel as though someone was stalking along behind him.
At least the darkness wasn't absolute. The glowing fungus that coated the walls provided more than enough light to see obstacles, now that his eyes were fully adjusted. Looking down the long halls, a swirling cascade of azure traced the curve of the bulkheads and the arched span of the ceiling. It was oddly beautiful, despite the pee-inducing terror that was scrabbling at the back of his mind.
As Rhuar gazed down one corridor, he noted a particularly bright glow from an intersection several dozen meters away. "Hey," he whispered, "what is-"
He fell silent, watching the glow. It was noticeably brighter, and increasing in brightness as he watched. Their guide whirled to face it and let out a low hiss before diving for cover around a nearby corner. "Danzher!", it breathed, flattening itself against the wall. "Bad, bad, bad!"
Rhuar didn't waste time on further questions. He crouched low against the same wall, crowding into the corner. Jesri and Anja took up another alcove across the corridor, weapons drawn.
From around the far corner, a tall, lanky figure revealed itself as the source of the glow. It slouched forward, a flaming torch grasped tightly in one hand. The dull light of the fire seemed impossibly bright in the darkness, sending flickering shadows questing down the hall past their hiding spots.
Another figure joined the first, and another. They carried crude clubs and torches, their bodies swathed in a ragged blend of cloth and leather. Jesri recognized a few species - slight, winged Tlixl, many-legged Arrigh, even a few lumbering Kita - but even more figures in the crowd evaded her classification as they patrolled past the junction. The last one of them to pass was a massive Dhumma over three meters in height, its footfalls shaking the deck. A bandolier across its chest swung heavy with leering skulls from a dozen species and it carried a wicked-looking glaive fashioned from metal scrap.
The last of the patrol moved past the junction, and the glow of their torches diminished to leave the four of them crouched in blue-spangled darkness once more. Rhuar sniffed and shot Jesri a look. "Looks like those spooky cannibal bandits get around more than you thought," he hissed.
He saw a flash of white teeth as she smiled back. "I owe you lunch," she whispered, holstering her weapon. She turned and tapped Anja on the shoulder. "What do you think?"
Anja stowed her own weapon and adjusted her cloak. "Not a threat individually, except for the big one. We could have a problem if they surprised us or attacked as a group."
Jesri nodded, then cast a glance towards the small alien. It hauled itself to its feet shakily and peered around the corner, then straightened up. "Shafe, shafe, shafe," it muttered, resuming its walk down the corridor.
They walked for a while longer, navigating deeper into the black maze of passages. The little alien stopped suddenly in front of an unremarkable maintenance hatch. Its forelimbs spread to grasp the edges of the panel, which popped out to reveal an access tunnel behind it.
After they had entered the tunnel and carefully replaced the access panel, they followed the tunnels for several meters and emerged in a wide, dimly lit room. The little alien chittered happily and tore off running towards a collection of old crates stacked against the far wall, soft flickering light visible from within.
"Looks like an old maintenance bay," Jesri mused, "drone storage or something. Only accessible via the maintenance tunnels." She looked over towards the crates, which were arranged in a loose semicircle. "Defensible, hidden. Smart choice to hole up here if they needed to hide."
Their guide reappeared along with a larger version of itself, who advanced cautiously. It moved stiffly, and as it came closer Jesri could make out stripes or striations across its skin. She got the sense of age, or illness. Behind them, three smaller aliens peered curiously from the line of crates.
The old alien stopped nearby and fixed them with a piercing look. "Kenet-Ei says that he found you wandering the halls, lit up like a hundred torches," it whispered, its voice like soft falling sand. "Which means you are either very brave or very stupid."
Jesri smiled at the alien and shrugged. "I like to think we've got good self-confidence," she replied. She glanced down to their guide. "Your name is Kenet-Ei?", she asked. He chirped happily in response. "Thank you for telling us of the danger and leading us here," she said. The little alien chirped again, bobbling its head back and forth in what Jesri assumed was a pleased gesture.
The elder alien chuffed at them. "I am named Kenet-Tel. I beg your forgiveness for being forward, but I must know this from you." Its three eyes peered intensely at the group, and it leaned forward. "You are from off-station, are you not?"
Anja's eyes narrowed, but Jesri held up a hand before she could respond. "What if we were?", she asked, her tone neutral.
Kenet-Tel spread his arms wide, lowering his head. "Please do not misunderstand me. I have been living on this station for a long, long time, and I have not seen a visitor in years. It has been… hard, here." He looked down at the decking. "When my children were nothing more than nestlings I tried to leave, but I could not pay for a ship. I had to take them here and hide from the others, live in the darkness. My youngest three cannot remember anything else."
He straightened up and looked Jesri in the eye. "If you have a ship I must beg of you, please - take my children off this station. I will do anything, give anything, but I cannot let them stay here. And if I can earn my own passage beside them, my gratitude would be endless." He looked at the trio and seemed to consider saying more, but he folded his arms and stayed silent, waiting.
Jesri frowned, thinking. "Kenet-Tel, how well do you and your children know the passages going inward, towards the center ring?"
The old alien shifted nervously. "We know the passages as we know the faces of our nest. Most of my children know little else."
Jesri glanced back towards Anja and Rhuar. The former gave a long-suffering sigh and raised her hands in surrender, while the latter gave her a curious look and panted.
Jesri smiled.
"Okay," she said, "if you can guide us on safe paths to the inner ring and back out again then we'll consider that payment for transport to another station. I can't promise we'll go straight there after we leave, but we'll take you with us."
Kenet-Tel leaned back on his hind feet and closed his eyes, translucent membranes sweeping over the large black sclera. "It will be dangerous, to move so far in a group. But we will die in darkness if we stay, so I will risk dying in darkness to leave. We will guide you."
He crooked one of his thin arms, and the remaining three children ran up to huddle behind him, their angular faces peeking out from behind his legs. Anja bent down to coo and wave at the tiny aliens, who cheeped softly and hid further behind their father. Kenet-Tel looked down at them reproachfully. "Forgive them, please," he said, "they are young and a bit shy. These three cannot speak yet, and Kenet-Ei must molt again before he can form words well."
The younger alien chittered and bobbled his head. "Shpeek ghood."
Kenet-Tel stroked his son's head with a forelimb. "We have nothing to take with us, so we will leave when you wish to depart."
Jesri nodded and turned to the others. "Good to go?", she asked.
Rhuar and Anja nodded. She turned back to Kenet-Tel and gestured towards the panel. "Lead on."
---
They followed the family of aliens through winding twists of hallway speckled with luminous midnight blue, Kenet-Ei taking point. His younger siblings clustered around Kenet-Tel, keeping close to his legs. Their pace was slow and cautious to allow for careful reconnaissance of every intersection and junction. Twice they laid still and quiet, watching the angry orange glow of torchlight move across their path in the distance.
After a maze of utility passages crowded with boxes and debris, they emerged in a long, narrow hall with a massive door at the end. Kenet-Tel turned to Jesri, waving his arm at the door. "We have arrived. This is the end of the passage, the door to the inner ring."
Rhuar ran over eagerly to inspect the door. "Wow, this one is massive. I've never been this far in on a station before." His exoskeleton popped arms out to prod the smooth metal, tracing the seam of the door. "Yeah, damn - I don't think I could get this thing open in a hundred years."
Kenet-Tel snorted. "It has been closed for much longer than that. It may never be opened."
Rhuar chuckled. "Would you care to make a wager on that?"
The old alien gave him a look. "I cannot. I have been living in abject poverty in the dark for many years. I have nothing with which to wager."
Rhuar's ears twitched. "I didn't… uh." His exoskeleton arms waved aimlessly, then folded back against his limbs.
Anja laughed, walking over to the door. "Poor doggie. At least you'd have won the wager." She placed her hand on the door panel, and the giant slab of metal ground open with a high metallic whine. Blinding shafts of light lanced through the opening, shattering the darkness around them.
Jesri winced and put her hand over her eyes. "Damn, that's bright. Looks like the power's on in the inner ring, at least. Let's head in." She jogged through the door, scanning the room beyond.
Kenet-Tel's mouth worked soundlessly. "What-", he managed, leaning against the wall. "How?"
Rhuar grinned wolfishly at him. "You get used to it after a while. Come on!" He bounded over to follow Anja through the door.
---
They paced quickly down the hall, this one clean and brightly lit. Kenet-Tel's brood hung close to him, heads swiveling rapidly as they took in the unfamiliar surroundings. Jesri rushed the group forward, tossing a glance behind her as she walked. The massive door behind them had failed when they tried to close it, and the shining light from the inner core was a blinding beacon in the dark warrens of the middle ring. It was only a matter of time before the roving patrols saw the light and investigated.
Anja gave a small shout of glee when she spotted the central terminal room, running over to the door. She flew into the nearest chair and began working the console, flitting through directories at lightning speed. Rhuar and Kenet-Tel followed her in, gawping at the displays and giant server racks lining the room.
Jesri stopped at the threshold of the room, a detail having caught in the corner of her eye. "Oh Anja," she called, her voice saccharine. "I've just spotted my favorite room on the station. I'm going to go check it out."
Anja waved her off without looking or offering a response, her other hand tapping a rapid sequence on the console.
As Jesri vanished down the corridor, Rhuar turned back to Anja. "So, uh. What was that about? Does she need to pee or something?"
Anja giggled. "Silly doggie. She's just checking out something interesting." She withdrew a black box from her cloak, unspooling a cable to jack into the console.
Rhuar chuffed air out his nose. "I'm not a doggie." He peered at the display, which was showing a rapid scroll of text and icons. "What are you looking for, anyway?"
"Flight logs," said Anja, her voice distant. She had found actual files now and was flipping through data summaries. Abbreviated snippets of audio played and were cut off over and over as she skimmed through transmission data.
"From Harsi? We're probably the only ship to come here in years." Rhuar's ears dropped. "Oh, fuck. You mean earlier."
Anja grinned wider. "Rude doggie. Yes, quite a lot earlier. I'm looking for the last ship that humans ever built." She punched her finger down on the console triumphantly and a file swam to life on the display. Atop the display, the words "TNS GRAND DESIGN - CRUISER, SPECIAL DETACHMENT" shone bright and red.
Anja pressed another button, and a voice filled the room. "This is Captain Zachary Coates," it said in clear English, "TNS Grand Design. On our way out of Ariadne we were clipped by a Golf Bravo that killed several crew and crippled our reactor. Currently unable to link up with primary group. We will have to try for the rendezvous on Zephyr. Our reactors will last until then if we don't push them hard, so we're keeping to low hyperspace until we've cleared the Aurelius gravity well. Everything but the hyperdrive and life support is running on reserve power for the moment. Containment is holding. We will update with our status in two days. Grand Design out."
Rhuar and Kenet-Tel stood speechless for a few moments. The thin grey alien turned to Rhuar. "What did it say?", he asked.
Rhuar shook his head. "Damage report from a ship, with some plans for a rendezvous."
Anja looked at him, impressed. "I didn't know you spoke English."
Rhuar grinned at her. "Dogs are terrans too, you know. What's so special about the ship?"
Anja's smile faded. "It was carrying something of great importance."
"Oh, come on," he whined. "You can't just blueball me with 'something of great importance' and not elaborate a bit."
Anja fixed him with a look, her eyes blank. "I'll tell you, if you really want to know," she said evenly. "How much do you know about the death of humanity?"
"Uh," stumbled Rhuar, "not much. I know that everyone even close to a human died, all at the same time. Any planet with a human population on it was a wasteland. Trillions died, and we've been working our way back up the ladder for five thousand years."
"Yes," Anja hissed, baring her teeth. "Do you know why?"
Rhuar edged away from Anja's chair. "No, I don't."
Anja stood up, pacing. "We were at war, in those final years, although we never fired a shot. We had discovered a neighbor on our borders, hugely powerful and advanced. Made all of the technological accomplishments of humankind look like toys. They were friendly, though. Let us ask questions, taught us new technology."
She closed her eyes. "Then they told us that they were researching vacuum energy. Unlimited power, tapped from the fabric of space itself. They had figured out how to do it safely, with just one precondition - they had to destroy the universe first."
Kenet-Tel drew back. "I do not understand. How could that benefit them?"
Anja shook her head. "They were going to propagate a lower energy state of vacuum, which would eventually spread to the entire universe. The conversion to a lower vacuum state is violent, very violent. They had some way to survive the conversion, but they didn't care about the rest of the universe. They considered us entertaining, but ultimately insignificant next to their own potential - like bacteria."
Rhuar shuddered. "That's so fucked up. How did you stop them?"
Anja looked at him, bemused. "Stop them?"
"Well, yeah," said Rhuar, puzzled. "We're still here, aren't we?"
"Oh, we tried to stop them - but ultimately failed," she said softly. "We diverted a significant portion of our military research to building something that could hurt them enough to stop the project. They found out right after we launched the Grand Design with the weapon aboard. They triggered gamma-ray bursts from a few dozen stars and focused them through hyperspace. They were all timed to arrive at once, and they scoured entire star systems bare. We never stood a chance."
Her face grew bitter and pinched. "We didn't make a dent in their schedule. They've been working on their project for thirty thousand years. They could finish in another thirty thousand years, or tomorrow. When they do, we will all die so quickly that we won't even know anything was wrong."
Kenet-Tel slouched forward. "I give thanks for the long years of my life I spent unaware of that story."
Rhuar slumped down as well. "Seriously. That's the most depressing thing I've heard since we met Kenet-Tel." He ignored the pointed look from beside him and gestured to the display. "How will finding the ship help? Do you have a plan?"
Anja showed her teeth in a humorless smile. "Find the ship, recover the weapon, kill the enemy, save the universe."
Rhuar gave her a look. "The last time anyone got on that ship, they shot at you with stars. You two are going to take this on alone?"
"You are not coming?", pouted Anja, affecting a hurt look. "I was going to let you fly the ship."
Rhuar made a strangled noise. "You fight dirty."
"I knew I could count on you," said Anja sweetly, unjacking the black box from her console and stowing it in her cloak again. "I have what I need from here, let's go find my sister."
She placed her palm on the door and it hissed up, revealing the hall beyond. "I believe she went left-"
A fist slammed into her stomach and she flew backwards, sliding along the floor to rest in a heap. Rhuar watched in horror as the towering Dhumma ducked his head to enter the terminal room. A throng of other bandits waited behind it, eagerly brandishing clubs and crude maces.
Kenet-Tel's children fled to hide behind his legs as the old alien stepped back, eyes flitting around the room for cover or escape.
The Dhumma laughed, a low grunting wheeze escaping his mouth folds. "Told you I smelled food," he rumbled. Laughter echoed from behind him as the rest of the patrol crowded into the room. Rhuar backpedaled, quickly running into a server behind him.
A group of three thin aliens peeled off from the main group to close on Kenet-Tel, huddled in a corner. They advanced slowly, jeering at the old alien as he stood shaking between the attackers and his children. The closest raised his club to strike and Kenet-Tel flinched away, raising his arms instinctively.
The alien's head exploded with a wet pop and the hiss of superheated steam, showering Kenet-Tel with hot gore. Anja coughed and levered herself into a seated position with her free arm, firing her pistol twice more. The shots took the remaining attackers in the center of mass, gouts of blood and steam filling the terminal room with a vile stench.
More of the bandits charged towards her and she rolled away, coming up in a half-crouch and snapping off shots that destroyed abdomens and severed legs on the charging aliens. They stopped, three spreading out to encircle her with raised clubs. She took a low stance, pistol extended, her other hand drawing a short knife from her boot. A feral grin played across her lips and her eyes flashed with excitement. "So rude," she purred.
One of them, an Arrigh, yelled hoarsely and swarmed towards her, segmented legs clacking against the deck. Anja ducked left under its wild club swing, then sprang right to land beside the surprised alien with her knife extended. It staggered, arms clasped weakly against its thorax as white and pale yellow entrails dribbled out of an open wound across its chest.
Anja flicked a drop of milky blood off of her knife and fired two shots at the nearest alien. It collapsed in a ruin of shredded flesh as its remaining companion screamed a challenge towards Anja, stepping in for a vicious swipe with an improvised maul.
She sidestepped neatly, slid forward and stabbed her knife into the alien's wrist. It howled and fell back, clutching its arm, only to be trampled as the Dhumma charged and caught Anja across the chest with the shaft of his glaive. The blow sent her rolling across the floor for several meters, her arm held protectively against her ribs. Her pistol's capacitors trilled softly as it slid to a stop across the room from her.
The Dhumma's mouth hung open, ropes of drool sliding down his jowls. "Time to die, food," he said, lumbering towards her. Anja looked up, trying to scramble backwards as he loomed closer to her. As he swept his glaive high she suddenly looked behind him and grinned.
"My sister's favorite room is the armory," she said conversationally.
The Dhumma paused mid-stride. "What?", he grunted.
A blaze of white light erupted from the doorway, a mangled body went flying back to crash into the other bandits. They went down in a tangle, falling aside while Jesri darted around to hurl herself at the Dhumma. He spun to face her with a roar, his blade whipping towards her head. Her right hand shot up to intercept it and the blade struck with a deep clang, flashing actinic light. The Dhumma blinked. Jesri glowered back at the Dhumma and flexed her hand, shattering the metal blade in a spray of red-hot fragments.
Rhuar gaped in awe. Her right arm was encased in armor up to the shoulder, carbon-polymer muscles bulging under a plated metallic skin. Her clenched fist was wreathed in a flickering cloud of plasma, which snapped back to crackle in tight bands across her hand as she opened it.
The Dhumma roared in anger and slashed towards her with the smoking shards of metal remaining on his weapon. She whirled to grab it again with her armored fist. He strained against her grip, and with a flare of plasma she pulled the ruined glaive towards her to draw him off-balance. Her other hand came up and fired a pistol shot into his leg, pulping it. He bellowed, falling forward, and Jesri's armored fist swung high to pound him down against the deck. Light rippled from her arm and rent into the hulking alien's chest, tearing a gaping hole through to the decking. The Dhumma gasped, twitched, and died.
Jesri snapped her head up to glare at the remaining bandits, her right arm shining with gleaming metal and arcing fire.
As one, they threw down their clubs and ran out of the room, their footsteps echoing in the hallway.
---
Melee build best build. I know I said I was going on a hiatus for the holiday after part 6 but this is just a really bad stopping point. Therefore, I'll be posting one more chapter later this evening that will leave us at a more natural stopping point. Thanks for reading, and remember to check back later today for the next chapter!
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Part 7
- Location
- USA
"Impeccable timing, sister," groaned Anja, rising unsteadily to her feet. "Although I might not have complained if you had come earlier."
Jesri hopped off of the smoldering Dhumma corpse and scanned the room, the bands of plasma dissipating from her arm. Kenet-Tel and his brood were huddled in a corner of the room, drenched in a pastel coating of blood and viscera. Rhuar appeared to be relatively unscathed, staring blankly at the corpses of their attackers with his mouth hanging open.
She walked over to Anja, reaching out an arm to steady her. "You good?", she asked.
Anja gave a pained smile and nodded. "Yes, sister. No bleeding, but bruises and perhaps a fractured rib. I will be good as new when we reach the autodoc on the Grand Design."
"You got the data?", asked Jesri, her eyes widening. "You know where to find it?"
"Aurelius," confirmed Anja. "I have the complete transmission plus the vector logged by the communications array. I can narrow it down to a searchable volume."
Jesri grinned. "Let's get back to the ship." She turned to Rhuar and Kenet-Tel. "Guys, you okay? Anyone hurt?"
Kenet-Tel swept a ribbon of gelatinous entrails from his shoulder. "We are uninjured, but perhaps not okay." He shuddered. "We should leave quickly."
Jesri nodded. "Rhuar, buddy? You good?"
The dog tilted its head to look at her, his expression blank.
Jesri frowned. It wasn't uncommon for a first taste of battle to leave survivors in a state of shock. She'd experienced it herself, a long time ago. Shards of broken memories gathered together in her mind, the smell of blood and burnt flesh insinuating itself slyly.
She shook her head. Not the time. Jesri slowly leaned closer to Rhuar and reached towards him. "Hey, it's all right," she said softly. "We're safe now."
Rhuar whined. "Jesri," he said, hesitation creeping into his voice, "can I touch it?"
She froze. "Huh?"
Rhuar's exoskeletal arms shot out to grab either side of her armored hand, caressing the metal. "Oh, it's so smooth," he crooned. "Are those directed plasma arcs? Does each part have independent containment fields?"
Jesri's fist clenched and a ripple of fire washed over her glove. Rhuar yanked his arms back with a yip. "Yeah, okay," she sighed, "let's head out."
---
They trekked through the darkness once again, Kenet-Ei darting ahead to scout for torchlight. Despite their wary advance, no bandits revealed themselves.
Jesri worked her fingers in the armor as they walked and felt the smooth motion of the articulated joints. Her hand sat comfortably in the forearm of the glove, wrapped in a strong coating of metal and carbon polymer. The armor's own hand sat farther down. She clenched her fist and the armor's fingers curled into a solid hammerhead of metal, meshing to form an unbroken striking surface.
Anja smirked and flicked a finger against Jesri's plated shoulder. "I think you made an impression on them, sister."
Jesri snorted. "I'd have made more than an impression with a full suit." She relaxed her hand, the carbon muscles rippling under their metal sheath. Nerve inducers let her feel the air flowing across her open palm. "This was the only usable thing I found in the armory, and it's almost out of charge."
"Such a shame," Anja sighed. "I had hoped there might be something I could use. Hopefully things are in better shape on the ship. The log indicated that they were hit by a gamma-ray burst, which would not have been kind to the power cores."
Jesri nodded and looked back at the group. Rhuar was walking innocently behind them, a thin strand of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth. "Perhaps we should do an inventory first-thing," she suggested wryly.
They walked along in silence for a while. Kenet-Ei led them through several twisting passages before they found themselves in the radial corridor, faint light visible beyond the curve of the corridor.
Green crowded the passage as they moved into the lighted area, crouching to pass through the cleared path that Jesri had cut earlier. Kenet-Tel huffed in amusement as his children dove in and out of the shaggy ivy. "We would come here to harvest food," he said, "but the youngest ones have not made the trip before now."
He turned to look Jesri in the eye. "Thank you for agreeing to take us with you. I feared that my children would grow old on this station, as I have."
Jesri smiled, but shook her head. "No need for thanks," she said. "You more than earned it helping us avoid those patrols." The smile faded from her face. "If we had to fight them back there in the dark it would have ended badly."
She hadn't seen the first part of the fight with the Dhumma, but she could read its blows in Anja's pained movements. The women were both capable fighters, but they only had skill and experience as their shield. In the long years since she had last worn this armor she had forgotten the feeling of having more.
Jesri rolled her shoulder in the armor sleeve, watching the thick bands of muscle flex and relax. In a full suit she would be an imposing figure - inhumanly strong and fast with unparalleled destructive power. The old piece of armor dredged up a dusty realization of how weak and vulnerable she was without it.
"Something the matter, sister?", asked Anja.
Jesri realized that she had stopped walking, staring down at her hand. The others ahead of her were looking back curiously. She shook her head and walked forward. "It's nothing," she sighed, "It's just been a while since I wore one of these."
Anja raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The group continued onward through the overgrown hallway.
---
The greenery faded to a shaggy carpet of moss, which dispersed to show the lichen-mottled decking as they neared the end of the corridor. Jesri hung back as the group slipped under the half-raised door into the outer ring, then ducked her head to follow and frowned. A tuft of coarse hair was lodged in the door track.
Her eyes widened with realization. Diving under the door, she rolled and stood just in time to see a broad-shouldered bandit spring out of a side corridor close to the front of the group. He grasped a pitted bar of metal, bringing it up to swing at Rhuar. More assailants poured from behind him, spreading out into the hallway. Jesri shouted and reached for her pistol, but the alien was already in mid-swing by the time her gun cleared its holster. Rhuar looked up in shock as the bar flashed towards his head.
And stopped inches away.
The dog and the bandit stared at each other in confusion for a long moment, the air between them rippling with a lambent haze. With a flash of light and a sharp crack, the bandit was thrown backwards in a tangle of uncontrollably twitching limbs.
The other bandits charged, howling. Jesri grinned carnivorously. "Security grid is online, fuckers! Ariadne! Engage riot control protocol in this sector!"
Three incongruously cheerful ascending tones echoed through the hallways. "Attention," droned a calm feminine voice, "a curfew is in effect for this sector. Please return to your resid-." The voice was cut off as the audio scratched and sputtered into garbled static. Blurry fields of light cut across the path of the onrushing bandits, bouncing them violently to the floor.
Peering down the hall, Jesri could see a few more clusters of bandits prone on the ground or thrashing violently against the fields. One particularly large four-legged alien with prominent fangs crouched and sprang into the field surrounding it with a swipe of its claws. The field flashed white, and a cascade of sparks fell from the ceiling. It bellowed in rage, hammering the field again and again. Jesri grimaced. "Okay folks, time to move!", she shouted. She caught Anja's eye and pointed towards where Kenet-Tel's brood was enclosed in a shining bubble.
Anja nodded and flicked her hand at the huddled aliens, dismissing the field. They grouped up and raced down the corridor, retracing their steps towards the ship.
---
They ran in silence, broken only by an occasional grunt of pain as Anja jostled her injured ribs. Somewhere behind them a throaty roar sounded. The lights flickered.
"Not good!", yelled Jesri. "That was the field generator, move!" She fell back towards Kenet-Tel, who was frantically herding his children forward. They pushed onward quietly for several tense minutes. Rhuar was panting heavily and Kenet-Tel's skin had darkened several shades.
Slowly, implacably, the noise of heavy footfalls swelled from down the corridor. The deep pounding of feet against the deck grew louder and more distinct with every passing second. At last from far behind them she saw the huge quadrupedal alien that had raged against the containment fields come careening into the corridor, clawed feet scrambling for traction on the deck. He found purchase and charged forward, his massive mouth hanging open to expose curved yellow fangs that jutted out dangerously from his tangled grey fur.
Jesri shouted a warning to Anja and drew her gun, taking aim down the hall at the charging alien. She fired, but the alien dropped low and began juking from side to side. It moved with surprising speed and foresight, and her shots slid past without connecting. Anja opened up from behind her only to miss her initial shots as well. Jesri's gun spat invisible lines of energy again and again, but only managed to inflict grazes on her target as it serpentined its way towards the fleeing group.
"Shit," she swore. "Fall back! I'll engage." She kept her armored side back in a ready stance and continued to fire at the oncoming assailant with her free hand. Finally, one of her shots connected with the massive bulk of the alien's flank, gouging flesh and eliciting a roar of pain.
It was too little, too late, she realized. He was already closing to within striking range, and she pivoted to counterpunch as he leapt through the air at her. Fire blossomed from her fist, swirling back over her arm and shimmering the air beside her with heat. She jabbed directly at his face, but stumbled forward as her arm refused to extend properly.
The alien collided with her, knocking her gun from her hand and sending her flying against the wall with a shoulder check. She bounced back and hit the floor, slumping over her half-bent arm. The fire was gone, and a prickly numbness crept up towards her shoulder as the inducers stopped sending tactile input. The armor had run out of power. Jesri snarled in frustration, slamming the unresponsive hand into the ground and trying to wrench her arm free of its bindings.
The alien kept bounding past her towards Anja, who managed to tag him with a shot that ripped a slab of hair and thick skin from his hip. He swiped his claws in retaliation, drawing a deep gash across the outside of her thigh. Anja was slammed into the wall and slid to the ground in a daze, clear fluid oozing from her wound.
The big alien growled smugly and turned his attention to the rest of the group. Rhuar and Kenet-Tel had kept running during the short fight, retreating further down the corridor while Jesri and Anja bought them time - but it wasn't enough. The alien burst into a run again and Jesri screamed a hoarse warning to Rhuar.
Rhuar spun around, exoskeleton flattening over his legs while Kenet-Tel took up a guard position in front of his children. Kenet-Ei bristled at their attacker, yowling wordlessly as he closed distance with them.
Jesri struggled to her feet and ripped her arm out of the armor. Her vision swam as she staggered towards the others, her breath roaring in her ears with every ragged gasp. She could see the alien crouched in front of Rhuar and Kenet-Tel, muscles tensed. Rhuar flung himself onto the alien's back, snarling and biting. The massive creature ignored him and whirled to spring at Kenet-Tel. One huge paw flicked out to slam into his side, flinging him away from his huddled children. He sprawled senseless and gasping on the deck, one side of his chest caved in.
A scream of rage tore its way out of Jesri's throat, her vision blurring. She broke into a stiff run, dimly aware of the sparks of pain flaring up her injured legs. She saw the alien advance and swing his paw again. Rhuar swung remora-like from his broad back as his jaws tore into fur and skin. Jesri smelled blood and smoke as her head pulsed with a dull throbbing, every jarring footfall sending a jolt through her bones.
She hurled herself at the alien, pulling her knife and stabbing deep into his flank. He roared and whirled around with a blind swipe of his paw. Jesri's leg gave out as she flinched away from the strike and the paw raked empty air over her head.
Rhuar lost his grip and went tumbling to the side as the alien shook himself, finally tiring of the dog's efforts. Jesri watched him land hard and yelp in pain through the dark haze clouding her vision, pounding against her temples with the din of a long-dead firefight. She drew breath in shallow gasps, blood trickling across one eye and blurring everything with halos of light and motion.
The alien stalked over to where she lay. It grinned toothily, baring its curving fangs. Jesri's legs worked frantically but failed to push her away from the monster leering over her supine body.
It opened its mouth to tear into her flesh, its maw descending towards her with languid disinterest.
Jesri tried to roll away but her leg refused to move. She bucked frantically, sliding back and landing hard against the deck. The impact dispelled some of the fog clouding her vision, bringing the corridor into sharp relief. Half the world was teeth and dark, stinking gullet, nearly upon her. Anja sat slumped against the wall, immobile and bleeding, her eyes wide as they stared at Jesri. On her other side, Rhuar was struggling to his feet as he stared in horror at the alien drawing closer to her throat.
Behind the alien sat a still chaos of thin limbs and dark blood.
Jesri's sight faded behind a bloom of white fire, heat pulsing through her veins. Screams echoed distantly in her ears as gunfire and explosions roared in a dissonant chorus. She saw her hands, red to the elbow, pressed against a wound that had long since stopped gushing blood.
Her vision cleared and she saw just her hand, clean but for ragged cuts from her armor weeping clear across her skin. She held her knife.
With a ragged yell she thrust her arm up into her attacker's open mouth, her blood running freely where the fangs tore into her. Her knife slid deep into the roof of his mouth and sliced back across his palate, ropy blood oozing from the cut. His breath rattled out in a warm, fetid rush across her face. She threw herself to the side with the last scraps of her strength as the massive creature slammed dead into the deck.
---
Jesri blinked her eyes. She was upright, leaning heavily against a limping Anja as she was half-dragged, half-carried down the corridor. A low growl rumbled from behind her.
"Anja, another!", barked Rhuar, his artificial voice grim. Anja dropped Jesri roughly and spun on her good leg, pistol in hand. A group of three bandits were rushing towards them screaming a thin, warbling ululation.
Sighting down the barrel of her gun, Anja shot twice. The lead bandit's torso crumpled in on itself with a spray of blood and steam. The other two scrambled to a stop and dove towards a nearby passage. Anja managed to tag one of them in the leg, sending him to the deck screaming and clutching the torn ruins of his stump. The other vanished down the passage, the noise of his flight rapidly fading to silence.
Jesri coughed. "Ow," she muttered, rubbing her hip where she had fallen to the deck. A litany of half-felt injuries had burst into bright, blinding pain with the impact. She lay on the deck for a long pair of seconds, willing her mind into focus and feeling the pain drain away to a manageable agony, beating frantically against the back of her consciousness.
Anja glanced down at her and smiled, extending a hand. "Sister! I am glad to see you awake," she said. "You are heavier than you look."
Jesri grabbed her hand and dragged herself upright. "No heavier than you," she retorted, pausing to take stock of the situation. Down the hallway, the wounded alien had stopped screaming and passed out, his blood mingling with the wide puddle left by his dead comrade. Rhuar paced ahead of Jesri and Anja, his shoulders set low with tension. Nobody else was in the hallway.
She closed her eyes, the events of the fight replaying in her mind. The alien rushing close before they could shoot it down, the armor failing, Anja falling, Rhuar's desperate attack. "The others?", she asked quietly. She saw a mass of blood and small bodies flit before her and forced her eyes open again.
Anja was looking at her with a neutral expression. "We should keep moving, sister," she whispered, "More will be coming."
Jesri gritted her teeth and began to move down the hallway, forcing her legs to move despite the pain crackling through her with every step.
---
Anja ran the dermal binder across the last of the cuts on Jesri's arm, leaving a trail of shiny, pinched skin. Jesri frowned and scratched at it, flexing her elbow. "Tight," she complained. "It feels stiff."
"It will have to do until we get to an actual autodoc," replied Anja, stowing the tool in a cabinet. She winced and scratched at her leg, the same smooth scars visible through the blood-encrusted slash in her trousers. "I admit it's not ideal," she conceded.
Leaning back, Jesri stared upwards at the harsh lighting of the medical bay. A low thrum resonated through her as the ship's engines engaged. Rhuar had waved off Qktk's stream of questions and fled to the bridge, insisting on departing as soon as possible. With their wounds treated, Jesri supposed that they should join them on the bridge sooner rather than later.
She laid still on the medical bed. Anja finished stowing the supplies they had used and sat down beside her, taking Jesri's hand in hers without speaking. They sat there together in silence for a while, the timbre of the engines rising and falling as Rhuar maneuvered his way out of the docks. The air rushing past the ship made a susurrus of whispers that grew by the moment, then disappeared with the tiniest of jolts when they passed through the exit and into the void of space.
They absorbed the quiet, and Jesri closed her eyes.
"What happened back there, Anja?" she asked.
Anja bit her lip. "I imagine that like me, you have not fought seriously in a while. Without practice, things degrade."
"Bullshit," Jesri snorted. "We don't lose muscle memory like that. I'm not wondering why we lost that fight, I know why we lost that fight."
"Sister, unless I am very mistaken with my definitions we won that fight," observed Anja. "In particular, you won that fight."
Jesri opened her eyes and glanced over at Anja. "Doesn't feel like it," she muttered. "And that's what I'm talking about."
Anja frowned. "Does it trouble you so much?"
Jesri quirked an eyebrow at her. "The death of comrades?" Anja raised her hands, acknowledging the point, but Jesri continued. "We've seen innocents die before, and ones we knew better than Kenet-Tel. Mountains of them, planets of them, piled on top of each other over and over." She folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself. "We swam up that river of death and kept on going for five thousand years. And after all that I close my eyes and see those five instead." Jesri let her eyelids drift shut. "I feel old, sister," she sighed.
Anja ran her fingers through Jesri's hair, brushing away amber crusts of dried blood. "I missed most of that fight," she said after a while. "I was cut and dazed. And when I could see straight the first thing I saw was you on your back. I tried to get up, to lift my arm to fire at the beast, but I failed. I saw you fail too." Anja pulled her hands back, looking away. "And then you got up and fought anyway."
Jesri opened her mouth to protest, but Anja held a hand up and continued. "I saw all of the same deaths you did, every mountain of corpses and each river of blood. Today I saw you about to die, and nothing I had in me would let me raise one arm and fire. Not even to save the only one I have left."
Anja smiled sadly. "And you had what I lacked, for five strangers you had known for hours. You found something out in the void that never came to find me while I sat and searched. But for that, we would all be dead."
At a loss for words, Jesri lay back and studied the smooth arc of the ceiling. After a while, she lifted her head to look at Anja. "I can accept it," she said resignedly, "even if I don't want it. It looks like even we change given enough time." Her lips drew into a thin line. "Not you, though," she said. "If we're alive because I changed, then we're also alive because you never did."
Anja looked back with a curious expression and Jesri sighed. "Tell me," she whispered, "were all of them dead?"
Anja's face went blank. "We did not leave anyone behind."
"I know," she replied, her voice barely audible. "Was there another option?"
The stoic mask on Anja's face hardened. "No."
"And yet I might have chosen it," said Jesri, "and we would be dead."
Her sister frowned and leaned back, the stone seeping out of her face. The two women clasped hands again and sat quietly in the medbay as the soft hum of the ship faded away, leaving them in silence.
---
Rhuar stepped backwards and disconnected from the ship, his awareness suddenly sliced down to just the parts of him that were Rhuar. It felt like losing a limb every time, and he paused to steady himself before stowing the jack in its place by the console.
"Did they say where they would like to go next?", chirped Qktk inquiringly from behind him.
"No, not yet," Rhuar replied, stretching low against the ground. "Just wanted to get out of the dock. I figure they're gonna take a while in the medbay."
Qktk rattled his arms together in agitation. "Yes, I'd expect. They both seemed to be injured quite severely. Are you all right, Mr. Rhuar? What happened on the station?"
"Oh, I'm fine," said Rhuar. "Just a couple of bruises." He shook his head. "I'm a fuckin idiot, though."
The captain didn't say anything in response, and after a long moment Rhuar continued. "I wanted to go on the station to see all the cool shit. I thought it would be fun."
He settled on to the floor, curling into a circle. His head rested on the cool metal, and he closed his eyes. "You get used to the idea of feeling insignificant," he said, his voice muffled. "Just hopping from station to station, maybe you make some money and maybe you don't. And you think you know what it'd be like, being more than that. You have it in your head what you'd do if one day you were the grand fuckin poobah of the shit pile."
"But it's still a shit pile, Captain," he spat ruefully, "everything we've ever known. I thought we were better than the fuckin decklickers because of the ship, because we dreamed big. But you know what I learned today? We never knew what 'big' was. Our lives are so small that we couldn't even imagine it, whatever we came up with would still be this tiny fuckin speck compared to how it really is."
Qktk settled down on the deck beside Rhuar. "Yes," he admitted, "I had felt a bit of that. We're in over our heads."
They sat beneath the stars for a few minutes.
"I tried to take my piece of it," Rhuar said, "there was a second where I thought I could do something that mattered, tip the scales for the first time in my life. I tried as hard as I've ever tried before." Bitterness crept into his voice. "I wasn't even worth killing. I just got fuckin ignored. And then Anja…"
He trailed off, then opened his eyes and looked at Qktk. "Be careful around those two, Captain. They may like us, and they'll keep their promises if they can. And if they ever even think that we're gonna get in the way, they'll kill us and lose no sleep over it." Rhuar snorted. "If they fuckin sleep at all."
Qktk nodded gravely. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, "but I'd like you to think on something as well." He drew himself upright, forelegs spreading wide. "We Htt have a story about our past, long ago, when someone came to our, ah, shitpile. We didn't know what we didn't know, and he expanded our horizons somewhat forcefully. Suddenly we knew just how small we were, and that we could be wiped out without a hint of malice or evil or anything else grand from our stories. It would happen because the wheels of the universe just happened to grind over our speck of sand and not another."
"Yeah, that sounds right," grumbled Rhuar. "How'd that go for you?"
Qktk chittered. "Much as you'd expect. Many people hated our visitor for the change he'd brought to us but others saw the gift in it. We were children before he came, and now we could grow - had to grow, in fact, or we would die as quietly as we had lived. So we grew, grew so fast it hurt, and we survived."
The captain settled back to the deck and folded his legs. "So while I respect the danger we're in, having those two with us, I can't think of them badly. There is no malice in being truthful." He paused, contemplative. "And if a human once again lifts up our eyes to stare at the sky instead of the sand, I had long ago decided that I preferred the sky."
Beyond the viewports, the vast stretches of the cosmos glowed with gentle light. The captain and the artificer sat and watched as they drifted, one mote among trillions.
---
As promised, the second chapter I'm posting today. This brings us to a nice lull in the action so that I'm not heading into the holiday break right in the middle of an action scene. I admit, it's not the most cheerful note to take a break on, but there's only so much cheer to be had after the extermination of humanity.
I should also note that it was at this point in the story that I was forced to enlist the aid of my trusty co-writer. She is a bit of a grammatical stickler, but essential to the process.
That's it until Monday - see you then!
Jesri hopped off of the smoldering Dhumma corpse and scanned the room, the bands of plasma dissipating from her arm. Kenet-Tel and his brood were huddled in a corner of the room, drenched in a pastel coating of blood and viscera. Rhuar appeared to be relatively unscathed, staring blankly at the corpses of their attackers with his mouth hanging open.
She walked over to Anja, reaching out an arm to steady her. "You good?", she asked.
Anja gave a pained smile and nodded. "Yes, sister. No bleeding, but bruises and perhaps a fractured rib. I will be good as new when we reach the autodoc on the Grand Design."
"You got the data?", asked Jesri, her eyes widening. "You know where to find it?"
"Aurelius," confirmed Anja. "I have the complete transmission plus the vector logged by the communications array. I can narrow it down to a searchable volume."
Jesri grinned. "Let's get back to the ship." She turned to Rhuar and Kenet-Tel. "Guys, you okay? Anyone hurt?"
Kenet-Tel swept a ribbon of gelatinous entrails from his shoulder. "We are uninjured, but perhaps not okay." He shuddered. "We should leave quickly."
Jesri nodded. "Rhuar, buddy? You good?"
The dog tilted its head to look at her, his expression blank.
Jesri frowned. It wasn't uncommon for a first taste of battle to leave survivors in a state of shock. She'd experienced it herself, a long time ago. Shards of broken memories gathered together in her mind, the smell of blood and burnt flesh insinuating itself slyly.
She shook her head. Not the time. Jesri slowly leaned closer to Rhuar and reached towards him. "Hey, it's all right," she said softly. "We're safe now."
Rhuar whined. "Jesri," he said, hesitation creeping into his voice, "can I touch it?"
She froze. "Huh?"
Rhuar's exoskeletal arms shot out to grab either side of her armored hand, caressing the metal. "Oh, it's so smooth," he crooned. "Are those directed plasma arcs? Does each part have independent containment fields?"
Jesri's fist clenched and a ripple of fire washed over her glove. Rhuar yanked his arms back with a yip. "Yeah, okay," she sighed, "let's head out."
---
They trekked through the darkness once again, Kenet-Ei darting ahead to scout for torchlight. Despite their wary advance, no bandits revealed themselves.
Jesri worked her fingers in the armor as they walked and felt the smooth motion of the articulated joints. Her hand sat comfortably in the forearm of the glove, wrapped in a strong coating of metal and carbon polymer. The armor's own hand sat farther down. She clenched her fist and the armor's fingers curled into a solid hammerhead of metal, meshing to form an unbroken striking surface.
Anja smirked and flicked a finger against Jesri's plated shoulder. "I think you made an impression on them, sister."
Jesri snorted. "I'd have made more than an impression with a full suit." She relaxed her hand, the carbon muscles rippling under their metal sheath. Nerve inducers let her feel the air flowing across her open palm. "This was the only usable thing I found in the armory, and it's almost out of charge."
"Such a shame," Anja sighed. "I had hoped there might be something I could use. Hopefully things are in better shape on the ship. The log indicated that they were hit by a gamma-ray burst, which would not have been kind to the power cores."
Jesri nodded and looked back at the group. Rhuar was walking innocently behind them, a thin strand of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth. "Perhaps we should do an inventory first-thing," she suggested wryly.
They walked along in silence for a while. Kenet-Ei led them through several twisting passages before they found themselves in the radial corridor, faint light visible beyond the curve of the corridor.
Green crowded the passage as they moved into the lighted area, crouching to pass through the cleared path that Jesri had cut earlier. Kenet-Tel huffed in amusement as his children dove in and out of the shaggy ivy. "We would come here to harvest food," he said, "but the youngest ones have not made the trip before now."
He turned to look Jesri in the eye. "Thank you for agreeing to take us with you. I feared that my children would grow old on this station, as I have."
Jesri smiled, but shook her head. "No need for thanks," she said. "You more than earned it helping us avoid those patrols." The smile faded from her face. "If we had to fight them back there in the dark it would have ended badly."
She hadn't seen the first part of the fight with the Dhumma, but she could read its blows in Anja's pained movements. The women were both capable fighters, but they only had skill and experience as their shield. In the long years since she had last worn this armor she had forgotten the feeling of having more.
Jesri rolled her shoulder in the armor sleeve, watching the thick bands of muscle flex and relax. In a full suit she would be an imposing figure - inhumanly strong and fast with unparalleled destructive power. The old piece of armor dredged up a dusty realization of how weak and vulnerable she was without it.
"Something the matter, sister?", asked Anja.
Jesri realized that she had stopped walking, staring down at her hand. The others ahead of her were looking back curiously. She shook her head and walked forward. "It's nothing," she sighed, "It's just been a while since I wore one of these."
Anja raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The group continued onward through the overgrown hallway.
---
The greenery faded to a shaggy carpet of moss, which dispersed to show the lichen-mottled decking as they neared the end of the corridor. Jesri hung back as the group slipped under the half-raised door into the outer ring, then ducked her head to follow and frowned. A tuft of coarse hair was lodged in the door track.
Her eyes widened with realization. Diving under the door, she rolled and stood just in time to see a broad-shouldered bandit spring out of a side corridor close to the front of the group. He grasped a pitted bar of metal, bringing it up to swing at Rhuar. More assailants poured from behind him, spreading out into the hallway. Jesri shouted and reached for her pistol, but the alien was already in mid-swing by the time her gun cleared its holster. Rhuar looked up in shock as the bar flashed towards his head.
And stopped inches away.
The dog and the bandit stared at each other in confusion for a long moment, the air between them rippling with a lambent haze. With a flash of light and a sharp crack, the bandit was thrown backwards in a tangle of uncontrollably twitching limbs.
The other bandits charged, howling. Jesri grinned carnivorously. "Security grid is online, fuckers! Ariadne! Engage riot control protocol in this sector!"
Three incongruously cheerful ascending tones echoed through the hallways. "Attention," droned a calm feminine voice, "a curfew is in effect for this sector. Please return to your resid-." The voice was cut off as the audio scratched and sputtered into garbled static. Blurry fields of light cut across the path of the onrushing bandits, bouncing them violently to the floor.
Peering down the hall, Jesri could see a few more clusters of bandits prone on the ground or thrashing violently against the fields. One particularly large four-legged alien with prominent fangs crouched and sprang into the field surrounding it with a swipe of its claws. The field flashed white, and a cascade of sparks fell from the ceiling. It bellowed in rage, hammering the field again and again. Jesri grimaced. "Okay folks, time to move!", she shouted. She caught Anja's eye and pointed towards where Kenet-Tel's brood was enclosed in a shining bubble.
Anja nodded and flicked her hand at the huddled aliens, dismissing the field. They grouped up and raced down the corridor, retracing their steps towards the ship.
---
They ran in silence, broken only by an occasional grunt of pain as Anja jostled her injured ribs. Somewhere behind them a throaty roar sounded. The lights flickered.
"Not good!", yelled Jesri. "That was the field generator, move!" She fell back towards Kenet-Tel, who was frantically herding his children forward. They pushed onward quietly for several tense minutes. Rhuar was panting heavily and Kenet-Tel's skin had darkened several shades.
Slowly, implacably, the noise of heavy footfalls swelled from down the corridor. The deep pounding of feet against the deck grew louder and more distinct with every passing second. At last from far behind them she saw the huge quadrupedal alien that had raged against the containment fields come careening into the corridor, clawed feet scrambling for traction on the deck. He found purchase and charged forward, his massive mouth hanging open to expose curved yellow fangs that jutted out dangerously from his tangled grey fur.
Jesri shouted a warning to Anja and drew her gun, taking aim down the hall at the charging alien. She fired, but the alien dropped low and began juking from side to side. It moved with surprising speed and foresight, and her shots slid past without connecting. Anja opened up from behind her only to miss her initial shots as well. Jesri's gun spat invisible lines of energy again and again, but only managed to inflict grazes on her target as it serpentined its way towards the fleeing group.
"Shit," she swore. "Fall back! I'll engage." She kept her armored side back in a ready stance and continued to fire at the oncoming assailant with her free hand. Finally, one of her shots connected with the massive bulk of the alien's flank, gouging flesh and eliciting a roar of pain.
It was too little, too late, she realized. He was already closing to within striking range, and she pivoted to counterpunch as he leapt through the air at her. Fire blossomed from her fist, swirling back over her arm and shimmering the air beside her with heat. She jabbed directly at his face, but stumbled forward as her arm refused to extend properly.
The alien collided with her, knocking her gun from her hand and sending her flying against the wall with a shoulder check. She bounced back and hit the floor, slumping over her half-bent arm. The fire was gone, and a prickly numbness crept up towards her shoulder as the inducers stopped sending tactile input. The armor had run out of power. Jesri snarled in frustration, slamming the unresponsive hand into the ground and trying to wrench her arm free of its bindings.
The alien kept bounding past her towards Anja, who managed to tag him with a shot that ripped a slab of hair and thick skin from his hip. He swiped his claws in retaliation, drawing a deep gash across the outside of her thigh. Anja was slammed into the wall and slid to the ground in a daze, clear fluid oozing from her wound.
The big alien growled smugly and turned his attention to the rest of the group. Rhuar and Kenet-Tel had kept running during the short fight, retreating further down the corridor while Jesri and Anja bought them time - but it wasn't enough. The alien burst into a run again and Jesri screamed a hoarse warning to Rhuar.
Rhuar spun around, exoskeleton flattening over his legs while Kenet-Tel took up a guard position in front of his children. Kenet-Ei bristled at their attacker, yowling wordlessly as he closed distance with them.
Jesri struggled to her feet and ripped her arm out of the armor. Her vision swam as she staggered towards the others, her breath roaring in her ears with every ragged gasp. She could see the alien crouched in front of Rhuar and Kenet-Tel, muscles tensed. Rhuar flung himself onto the alien's back, snarling and biting. The massive creature ignored him and whirled to spring at Kenet-Tel. One huge paw flicked out to slam into his side, flinging him away from his huddled children. He sprawled senseless and gasping on the deck, one side of his chest caved in.
A scream of rage tore its way out of Jesri's throat, her vision blurring. She broke into a stiff run, dimly aware of the sparks of pain flaring up her injured legs. She saw the alien advance and swing his paw again. Rhuar swung remora-like from his broad back as his jaws tore into fur and skin. Jesri smelled blood and smoke as her head pulsed with a dull throbbing, every jarring footfall sending a jolt through her bones.
She hurled herself at the alien, pulling her knife and stabbing deep into his flank. He roared and whirled around with a blind swipe of his paw. Jesri's leg gave out as she flinched away from the strike and the paw raked empty air over her head.
Rhuar lost his grip and went tumbling to the side as the alien shook himself, finally tiring of the dog's efforts. Jesri watched him land hard and yelp in pain through the dark haze clouding her vision, pounding against her temples with the din of a long-dead firefight. She drew breath in shallow gasps, blood trickling across one eye and blurring everything with halos of light and motion.
The alien stalked over to where she lay. It grinned toothily, baring its curving fangs. Jesri's legs worked frantically but failed to push her away from the monster leering over her supine body.
It opened its mouth to tear into her flesh, its maw descending towards her with languid disinterest.
Jesri tried to roll away but her leg refused to move. She bucked frantically, sliding back and landing hard against the deck. The impact dispelled some of the fog clouding her vision, bringing the corridor into sharp relief. Half the world was teeth and dark, stinking gullet, nearly upon her. Anja sat slumped against the wall, immobile and bleeding, her eyes wide as they stared at Jesri. On her other side, Rhuar was struggling to his feet as he stared in horror at the alien drawing closer to her throat.
Behind the alien sat a still chaos of thin limbs and dark blood.
Jesri's sight faded behind a bloom of white fire, heat pulsing through her veins. Screams echoed distantly in her ears as gunfire and explosions roared in a dissonant chorus. She saw her hands, red to the elbow, pressed against a wound that had long since stopped gushing blood.
Her vision cleared and she saw just her hand, clean but for ragged cuts from her armor weeping clear across her skin. She held her knife.
With a ragged yell she thrust her arm up into her attacker's open mouth, her blood running freely where the fangs tore into her. Her knife slid deep into the roof of his mouth and sliced back across his palate, ropy blood oozing from the cut. His breath rattled out in a warm, fetid rush across her face. She threw herself to the side with the last scraps of her strength as the massive creature slammed dead into the deck.
---
Jesri blinked her eyes. She was upright, leaning heavily against a limping Anja as she was half-dragged, half-carried down the corridor. A low growl rumbled from behind her.
"Anja, another!", barked Rhuar, his artificial voice grim. Anja dropped Jesri roughly and spun on her good leg, pistol in hand. A group of three bandits were rushing towards them screaming a thin, warbling ululation.
Sighting down the barrel of her gun, Anja shot twice. The lead bandit's torso crumpled in on itself with a spray of blood and steam. The other two scrambled to a stop and dove towards a nearby passage. Anja managed to tag one of them in the leg, sending him to the deck screaming and clutching the torn ruins of his stump. The other vanished down the passage, the noise of his flight rapidly fading to silence.
Jesri coughed. "Ow," she muttered, rubbing her hip where she had fallen to the deck. A litany of half-felt injuries had burst into bright, blinding pain with the impact. She lay on the deck for a long pair of seconds, willing her mind into focus and feeling the pain drain away to a manageable agony, beating frantically against the back of her consciousness.
Anja glanced down at her and smiled, extending a hand. "Sister! I am glad to see you awake," she said. "You are heavier than you look."
Jesri grabbed her hand and dragged herself upright. "No heavier than you," she retorted, pausing to take stock of the situation. Down the hallway, the wounded alien had stopped screaming and passed out, his blood mingling with the wide puddle left by his dead comrade. Rhuar paced ahead of Jesri and Anja, his shoulders set low with tension. Nobody else was in the hallway.
She closed her eyes, the events of the fight replaying in her mind. The alien rushing close before they could shoot it down, the armor failing, Anja falling, Rhuar's desperate attack. "The others?", she asked quietly. She saw a mass of blood and small bodies flit before her and forced her eyes open again.
Anja was looking at her with a neutral expression. "We should keep moving, sister," she whispered, "More will be coming."
Jesri gritted her teeth and began to move down the hallway, forcing her legs to move despite the pain crackling through her with every step.
---
Anja ran the dermal binder across the last of the cuts on Jesri's arm, leaving a trail of shiny, pinched skin. Jesri frowned and scratched at it, flexing her elbow. "Tight," she complained. "It feels stiff."
"It will have to do until we get to an actual autodoc," replied Anja, stowing the tool in a cabinet. She winced and scratched at her leg, the same smooth scars visible through the blood-encrusted slash in her trousers. "I admit it's not ideal," she conceded.
Leaning back, Jesri stared upwards at the harsh lighting of the medical bay. A low thrum resonated through her as the ship's engines engaged. Rhuar had waved off Qktk's stream of questions and fled to the bridge, insisting on departing as soon as possible. With their wounds treated, Jesri supposed that they should join them on the bridge sooner rather than later.
She laid still on the medical bed. Anja finished stowing the supplies they had used and sat down beside her, taking Jesri's hand in hers without speaking. They sat there together in silence for a while, the timbre of the engines rising and falling as Rhuar maneuvered his way out of the docks. The air rushing past the ship made a susurrus of whispers that grew by the moment, then disappeared with the tiniest of jolts when they passed through the exit and into the void of space.
They absorbed the quiet, and Jesri closed her eyes.
"What happened back there, Anja?" she asked.
Anja bit her lip. "I imagine that like me, you have not fought seriously in a while. Without practice, things degrade."
"Bullshit," Jesri snorted. "We don't lose muscle memory like that. I'm not wondering why we lost that fight, I know why we lost that fight."
"Sister, unless I am very mistaken with my definitions we won that fight," observed Anja. "In particular, you won that fight."
Jesri opened her eyes and glanced over at Anja. "Doesn't feel like it," she muttered. "And that's what I'm talking about."
Anja frowned. "Does it trouble you so much?"
Jesri quirked an eyebrow at her. "The death of comrades?" Anja raised her hands, acknowledging the point, but Jesri continued. "We've seen innocents die before, and ones we knew better than Kenet-Tel. Mountains of them, planets of them, piled on top of each other over and over." She folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself. "We swam up that river of death and kept on going for five thousand years. And after all that I close my eyes and see those five instead." Jesri let her eyelids drift shut. "I feel old, sister," she sighed.
Anja ran her fingers through Jesri's hair, brushing away amber crusts of dried blood. "I missed most of that fight," she said after a while. "I was cut and dazed. And when I could see straight the first thing I saw was you on your back. I tried to get up, to lift my arm to fire at the beast, but I failed. I saw you fail too." Anja pulled her hands back, looking away. "And then you got up and fought anyway."
Jesri opened her mouth to protest, but Anja held a hand up and continued. "I saw all of the same deaths you did, every mountain of corpses and each river of blood. Today I saw you about to die, and nothing I had in me would let me raise one arm and fire. Not even to save the only one I have left."
Anja smiled sadly. "And you had what I lacked, for five strangers you had known for hours. You found something out in the void that never came to find me while I sat and searched. But for that, we would all be dead."
At a loss for words, Jesri lay back and studied the smooth arc of the ceiling. After a while, she lifted her head to look at Anja. "I can accept it," she said resignedly, "even if I don't want it. It looks like even we change given enough time." Her lips drew into a thin line. "Not you, though," she said. "If we're alive because I changed, then we're also alive because you never did."
Anja looked back with a curious expression and Jesri sighed. "Tell me," she whispered, "were all of them dead?"
Anja's face went blank. "We did not leave anyone behind."
"I know," she replied, her voice barely audible. "Was there another option?"
The stoic mask on Anja's face hardened. "No."
"And yet I might have chosen it," said Jesri, "and we would be dead."
Her sister frowned and leaned back, the stone seeping out of her face. The two women clasped hands again and sat quietly in the medbay as the soft hum of the ship faded away, leaving them in silence.
---
Rhuar stepped backwards and disconnected from the ship, his awareness suddenly sliced down to just the parts of him that were Rhuar. It felt like losing a limb every time, and he paused to steady himself before stowing the jack in its place by the console.
"Did they say where they would like to go next?", chirped Qktk inquiringly from behind him.
"No, not yet," Rhuar replied, stretching low against the ground. "Just wanted to get out of the dock. I figure they're gonna take a while in the medbay."
Qktk rattled his arms together in agitation. "Yes, I'd expect. They both seemed to be injured quite severely. Are you all right, Mr. Rhuar? What happened on the station?"
"Oh, I'm fine," said Rhuar. "Just a couple of bruises." He shook his head. "I'm a fuckin idiot, though."
The captain didn't say anything in response, and after a long moment Rhuar continued. "I wanted to go on the station to see all the cool shit. I thought it would be fun."
He settled on to the floor, curling into a circle. His head rested on the cool metal, and he closed his eyes. "You get used to the idea of feeling insignificant," he said, his voice muffled. "Just hopping from station to station, maybe you make some money and maybe you don't. And you think you know what it'd be like, being more than that. You have it in your head what you'd do if one day you were the grand fuckin poobah of the shit pile."
"But it's still a shit pile, Captain," he spat ruefully, "everything we've ever known. I thought we were better than the fuckin decklickers because of the ship, because we dreamed big. But you know what I learned today? We never knew what 'big' was. Our lives are so small that we couldn't even imagine it, whatever we came up with would still be this tiny fuckin speck compared to how it really is."
Qktk settled down on the deck beside Rhuar. "Yes," he admitted, "I had felt a bit of that. We're in over our heads."
They sat beneath the stars for a few minutes.
"I tried to take my piece of it," Rhuar said, "there was a second where I thought I could do something that mattered, tip the scales for the first time in my life. I tried as hard as I've ever tried before." Bitterness crept into his voice. "I wasn't even worth killing. I just got fuckin ignored. And then Anja…"
He trailed off, then opened his eyes and looked at Qktk. "Be careful around those two, Captain. They may like us, and they'll keep their promises if they can. And if they ever even think that we're gonna get in the way, they'll kill us and lose no sleep over it." Rhuar snorted. "If they fuckin sleep at all."
Qktk nodded gravely. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, "but I'd like you to think on something as well." He drew himself upright, forelegs spreading wide. "We Htt have a story about our past, long ago, when someone came to our, ah, shitpile. We didn't know what we didn't know, and he expanded our horizons somewhat forcefully. Suddenly we knew just how small we were, and that we could be wiped out without a hint of malice or evil or anything else grand from our stories. It would happen because the wheels of the universe just happened to grind over our speck of sand and not another."
"Yeah, that sounds right," grumbled Rhuar. "How'd that go for you?"
Qktk chittered. "Much as you'd expect. Many people hated our visitor for the change he'd brought to us but others saw the gift in it. We were children before he came, and now we could grow - had to grow, in fact, or we would die as quietly as we had lived. So we grew, grew so fast it hurt, and we survived."
The captain settled back to the deck and folded his legs. "So while I respect the danger we're in, having those two with us, I can't think of them badly. There is no malice in being truthful." He paused, contemplative. "And if a human once again lifts up our eyes to stare at the sky instead of the sand, I had long ago decided that I preferred the sky."
Beyond the viewports, the vast stretches of the cosmos glowed with gentle light. The captain and the artificer sat and watched as they drifted, one mote among trillions.
---
As promised, the second chapter I'm posting today. This brings us to a nice lull in the action so that I'm not heading into the holiday break right in the middle of an action scene. I admit, it's not the most cheerful note to take a break on, but there's only so much cheer to be had after the extermination of humanity.
I should also note that it was at this point in the story that I was forced to enlist the aid of my trusty co-writer. She is a bit of a grammatical stickler, but essential to the process.
That's it until Monday - see you then!
Part 8
- Location
- USA
Lightning and fire crackled around the ship in a fulminous halo, then fell away into the midnight black of deep hyperspace. Rhuar shuddered and unjacked, falling to rest on the spartan metal deck of the bridge. "We're away," he reported, his voice incongruously steady despite panting heavily. "We should be at Aurelius in 5 hours or so."
Anja smiled and bent down to scratch a vaguely offended Rhuar behind the ears. "Good work!", she said cheerily. Rhuar looked too exhausted to object.
Qktk chittered and reclined in his seat. "I confess I haven't heard of Aurelius before," he said, waving a tablet in one segmented arm. "Is it one of the defunct stations?"
Jesri shook her head. "No, Aurelius was always just a waypoint. Some gas mining, but the system doesn't have much of note in it. It sits off the galactic plane a ways, so people would use it as a target to pop up over the Perseus Arm."
Rhuar raised his head. "If there's no station it's going to take a long time to get back. Even if there's a station straight planeward from Aurelius we'd be spending weeks riding the bubble." He shuddered. "Longest no-assist jump I ever did was three days and it was pure, straight hell."
Anja laughed. "Don't worry, doggie. We'll have a much faster ride back."
She giggled at the dark look Rhuar cast her way. "Excuse me if I don't want to bet on a millenia-old ghost ship," he shot back. "You're not the one that gets to sit here for hours and hours if it doesn't work."
Jesri frowned. She hadn't given much thought to the condition of the Grand Design prior to Anja rediscovering it, not for many, many years. The news that it had been hit by one or more gamma-ray bursts was not encouraging. In the worst case scenario the ship and its precious cargo would both be long-dead, lost to the ravages of time and radiation. More than her own well-being, Jesri worried about Anja if that proved to be the case. Her sister had maintained her laser-focus for so long that a sudden revelation like that would be…
Well, bad.
The focus of her worries was currently waving off Rhuar's concerns about the derelict ship. "It will be fine," said Anja dismissively, "the Grand Design is a late-model navy cruiser. The systems are quite resistant to radiation and are designed with multiple backups in case of a primary failure." She crossed her arms. "The transit stations were all attacked as well. If a transit station can make it to the modern day without degrading, then the ship will be functional."
Rhuar nodded, but didn't look convinced. Jesri figured he was remembering the rather degraded transit station they had just departed back in Harsi. Anja's points were sound, though, she had to admit. The only way to test her assertions was to wait and see.
Jesri sighed. After five thousand years, five hours shouldn't feel this long.
---
They arrived in a splash of white light, Rhuar's deft touch bringing them gently back to normal space. A dull red star glowered at them across a dusty band of rock and ice. To their right, the warm glow of the galactic disc hung like luminous thunderclouds in the distance. To the left, a vast sheet of black held a scattering of lonely stars shining weakly against the void of intergalactic space.
They had arrived at Aurelius.
Qktk peered out the viewport appreciatively. "Goodness," he rattled, "I don't believe I've been this far off the plane before. That's quite a sight."
Rhuar shook himself as he stowed the shipjack again. "We're going to be seeing it a lot, unless you've got some way to narrow the field. I didn't see any obvious signal sources, and it's going to be a pain looking for anything with all this dust in the inner system."
Anja grinned and produced a small black box from her pocket. "This should help. The station logged the ship when it left, including the last IFF authentication update it received." She unspooled a cable and proffered it to Rhuar. "With the proper authorization code, which we now have, the ship will respond to a query with a tight-beam authentication sent to our coordinates."
Rhuar's exoskeleton reached out and snagged the cable. He studied his console for a few seconds before selecting a port and connecting the box to the ship. "That seems a little too easy," he grumbled. "If that's all it takes, why didn't someone try it before?"
Jesri leaned forward, her brow knitting. "If I remember correctly, there's a range limiter on the response. It also needs to have the correct authentication code. The codes for sensitive missions are changed for each leg of a long trip, and are only provided to the ship when it departs."
Qktk nodded. "So to find the ship, someone would have to know which system to scan and obtain the correct code."
"Yeah," Jesri confirmed. "For obvious reasons security was a concern, so there are a number of restrictions." She hesitated. "Also, the code will only work once."
Rhuar blinked. "I mean, that makes sense," he said, "but doesn't that hurt our chances?"
Anja shrugged. "If it does not work, then we will adjust our strategy. For now, please send out…" She leaned over and punched a few buttons on the console, then straightened up with a bright smile. "There," she said cheerily, "that configuration should work."
Rhuar stepped back and waved a hand at the console. "Please," he said, "be my guest."
Once more, Anja leaned over to press the glowing panel. A low chime sounded, and she stood away from the console. Anja quickly clutched her hands together behind her back, but not before Jesri caught a slight tremble in her fingers. "There," She said softly. "Transmission sent."
Rhuar looked around at each of them, the silence on the bridge stretching out awkwardly. "Uh, so," he said, "what now?"
"We wait," replied Jesri. "Given the short range it should be a quick-"
She cut off as the console chimed again, indicating a response. Anja dove towards it like a striking snake, nearly bowling over Rhuar in her enthusiasm. "Confirmed!", she said, her voice tight. "It's in the dust belt on the near side of the star. About five million kilometers out."
Rhuar nodded and grabbed the jack. "We can microjump close to those coordinates. I'll bring us in a bit away from the precise origin." He paused, flicking his ears nervously. "You, uh, may want to buckle up for this one."
"What's the matter, ace pilot?", Jesri needled as she grabbed for her harness. "Feeling okay?"
"Oh, fuck off," he retorted crossly. "I'd like to see you make a millisecond-tolerance jump into a gravity well." His arms finished securing his own restraints, plugged in the jack and stored themselves tightly against his legs. "All right," he muttered, "hold on to your butts."
The ship's engines thrummed as Rhuar reoriented them for the jump, then shifted to a high-pitched whine as the drive charged. Tones layered across each other and a film of white light began to dance across the starfield outside. Ripples distorted the angry red glare from the system's lone star, sending motes of fire scattering across the starscape.
Rhuar tensed, and the light wrapped around the ship like a constricting fist. A brief flash of familiar soap-bubble starlight wreathed the viewports. The dull red star leapt towards them, the dust clouds around it grasping upwards to enclose them in an expanse of dim embers. The ship jolted violently, as if plunging into water. They slammed against their harnesses, eliciting a grunt of pain from Anja as her injured ribs hit the restraints. From the rear of the ship came a loud crash as something tore loose and tumbled across the hold.
Jesri's breath caught in her throat as a bar of deepest black jumped into view. It swiftly grew to become a gaping void in the red glow surrounding them. Qktk shrilled a piercing note of alarm, his legs scrabbling reflexively against his seat as Rhuar swore and veered the ship to the side.
As their velocity dipped down to near-zero, Qktk slumped in his seat. "Mr. Rhuar," he clacked irritably, "please try not to run my ship into any ancient derelicts. That looked like we came within meters of collision!"
Rhuar was standing stock-still with his mouth hanging slightly open. "Captain," he said haltingly, his ears flicking back and forth. "No, it's…"
"Oh my," said Anja faintly, raising a shaking hand to her head. "I can hear her. Hello, pretty girl."
"Kick," chuckled Jesri, "take another look."
The captain gave her a questioning glance, then peered out the viewport again. "I don't see what you're-"
Anja flicked a hand at the ship. He paused.
"Oh, by Jim's dusty bones," he whispered, his voice filled with awe.
At Anja's unspoken command lights had flickered on across the length of the ship. The illumination washed over its hull and brought the ship's true size into perspective. Nearly a kilometer of slate-grey plating hung motionless in front of them, speckled by tiny viewports and cold white running lights. The ship's boxy frame tapered to a raked wedge at its bow while the aft half flared wide on each side to accommodate the mammoth engine block.
On the starboard bow, GRAND DESIGN was stenciled in large, faded letters. Below it sat the triple-starburst insignia of the Terran Navy. Jesri felt a hot pressure in her chest looking at it. It had been a fixture every day of her young life, stenciled on her clothes and her belongings. Seeing it hanging there, even worn and obscured by years of abrasive dust and radiation, she could almost make herself believe that she was on the shuttle to her first assignment again, staring up in awe as they approached their berthing.
She glanced at Anja. She too was staring up at the ship raptly, a look of bliss on her upturned face. This had been her dream every day since the Grand Design was first reported missing. For all of the emotions rushing through Jesri, she could only imagine what Anja felt upon seeing the ship.
The four of them sat spellbound for a moment. Anja found her voice first, walking over to Rhuar and settling a hand on his back. "Take us below the ship," she said. "I'll open the door."
The engines spooled up and they began to move, slowly gliding under the massive bulk of the ship. As they moved past the bow Jesri could make out the edges of the armor plates, gigantic bands of metal stretching pitted and scored over the underside of the hull. The low blisters of gun emplacements sat clustered on the edges and ridges, flanked by hummocks of sensor gear.
Ahead of them a thin line of light appeared in the hull. As they drew near it widened to show a cavernous docking bay beyond. The opening dwarfed their ship as they rose through it to enter the bay, sliding through the docking field with a subtle vibration and rush of atmosphere. Inside, dozens of berths lined the walls around a large central space stretching back hundreds of meters.
Rhuar twitched. "How fuckin big is this thing?", he muttered, his ears flicking back as he pored over the feed of sensor input. "There's at least three other ships in here, and space for a fuckton more."
Anja nodded. "Most ships this size have a few small shuttles, fighters and fast attack craft. She says that half of her complement is on patrol, so I assume they were lost in the attack." She cocked her head. "She is asking for a berth registry. Does your ship have a name?"
"The Leviathan," said Qktk proudly.
Jesri snorted, earning an acid look from all of Qktk's eyes. "It's for advertising," the captain said crossly. "Besides, how many civilian ships do you know of that are bigger?"
Anja gave him a pat on the head and the captain knit his arms in irritation. "It's a good little ship," she said. "Berth three?"
Rhuar nodded and they settled down over a crisp numeral painted on the deck, a light wave of dust rippling up as they descended. Jesri slid free of her harness and stretched. "Okay," she said, "we got air?"
"We've got, uh..." Rhuar said, tilting his head for a moment as he queried the sensors. "Oh, yeah, you're good. How does that work, anyway? I have to change the filters out on this thing every year or we can't breathe. What sort of magical bullshit keeps air on the stations for that long?"
Jesri gave him a look. "Well, on this ship nothing is taxing the filters because the whole crew is dead."
Rhuar looked abashed, but pressed the point. "What about the stations? People live there."
"Not really," said Jesri, shaking her head. "The stations were designed to be inhabited to capacity, and the air systems can probably handle twice that." She looked over at Anja, who was developing an irritated tilt to her posture. "Let's table this for later," Jesri sighed. "It looks like Anja is about to chew her way through the hatch."
Rhuar blinked, and the doors hissed open. A draft of cool, dry air snaked in through the door to the bridge, fresh and clean with the barest hint of ozone. A rush of memories crashed into Jesri's vision: her, thirteen years old on her first visit to a real navy ship, pushing her way through a crowd of her sisters to gawk at the reactors, the hangars, the bridge. Her, back from her first assignment, the crisp air of the hangar washing away the tang of smoke and blood that had crept into every corner of the shuttle. Her, years later on a different ship, listening to a terse communique listing the worlds that had fallen silent.
Anja had gone immediately to stand outside the ship, tilting her head back to take in the distant sweep of the hangar's ceiling. Jesri, Rhuar and Qktk followed closely behind her, looking around the bay.
"Yeah," said Rhuar, stretching. "I stand by my initial assessment. Big fuckoff hangar."
Anja flashed him a quick smile and set off up some stairs towards an exit. Jesri sighed and turned to the other two. "Stay close to us," she said. "I don't expect trouble, but we should limit our exploration until we've accessed internal sensors."
The three followed after Anja, but caught up to her only a short way past the exit door. A body stretched out on the floor in front of her, shrunken and brown with its arms curled inwards against its torso. Faded grey rags wrapped around it, the occasional strip of stained gold piping the only hint that it had once been a naval uniform.
Rhuar looked down the corridor and saw more bodies, slumped against walls or sprawled across the floor. "There's so many of them," he said uneasily, backing away.
Jesri nodded sadly. "More than just these. Crew for a ship this size would be in the thousands." She walked over to look more closely at the body. It was male, and the corroded pips by its neck indicated a rank of lieutenant.
Anja straightened up. "We can deal with them after we have secured the ship," she said reluctantly. "The lift will be farther aft." She began walking again, her stride determined - but she could not keep her gaze from straying to each fallen form as she passed.
Jesri also found her eyes drawn to the dessicated corpses. Each one was a former comrade, humans who had been about their normal routine unaware that they had seconds to live.
Qktk and Rhuar tailed the women closely. If they had been disinclined to risk becoming lost before, the eerie bodies had removed any remaining desire to explore. Rhuar kept his eyes up from the floor, focusing on the neatly spaced numbered doors and counting the differences from the standard civilian models he was used to.
One door wasn't numbered. Rhuar paused and dredged up his recollection of written English, but he couldn't make sense of the label. "Hey, guys?", he called out. Anja and Jesri glanced over from where they had been studying a chunk of corroded metal clasped in a mummified hand.
"What does 'Valkyrie' mean?"
Their heads snapped up to stare at Rhuar so quickly that Qktk flinched back in alarm.
"Where did you see that word?", Anja asked quietly. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes set every bit of Rhuar's fur on end.
"Uh," he managed, pointing towards the door.
Jesri stalked over to the door, staring wide-eyed at the label. She turned to Anja. "There was a deployment here?", she asked incredulously. "Did you know about that?"
"Not a thing," said Anja, coming over to stand beside Jesri. "But they would often keep sensitive deployments off the official listings." She reached towards the door, pausing with her hand an inch away from the controls. Jesri put a hand on Anja's shoulder, and the two shared a look for a moment before Anja placed her hand on the panel.
A wash of light appeared over Anja's hand, moving across it methodically before receding into the panel. A chirrup sounded, and the door hissed open. Beyond it lay a long hallway with several large doors along the walls. The two women walked inside, moving quickly past two doors and stopping in front of a third. They shared another look, then opened the door and disappeared within.
Qktk and Rhuar shared a look, but waited outside. Their sudden reaction to the room had been an alarming reminder of how dangerous their companions were, and how little they knew about them. After a long minute, Jesri walked out of the room, her lips a thin line. She looked at them expressionlessly, her eyes like dull chips of ice. Rhuar shivered.
Jesri breathed out, her shoulders sagging, and seemed to notice Rhuar and Qktk for the first time. She shook her head and waved them inside. "Sorry," she said, "didn't mean to be strange, we were just a bit startled." She waited until they drew closer, then continued, her voice soft and flat. "Valkyrie was a special unit of the Naval Marines," she explained. "They used a blend of biotechnology and cybernetics to make enhanced soldiers. They deployed them for espionage, strike missions, extractions and to oversee sensitive operations like this one."
Rhuar tilted his head, confused, but then realization struck him. "Your unit," he said. Qktk rattled his mandibles quietly.
"Our sisters," Anja replied from past the door. Rhuar moved further to see inside and saw her standing in spartan living quarters, cradling a body in her arms. Its skin was dried and pale brown, better preserved than the corpses outside but very clearly dead. On its head the remnants of a thick braid still showed a clear red hue. "This is Hana," she said, her voice forced and harsh.
Jesri caught Rhuar's eye and waved him past the door. He and Qktk took the hint, moving farther down the hall. Jesri said something quietly to Anja and slid the door closed, walking over to join them.
"Leave her there for a bit," she said quietly. "Let's look through the other rooms."
The other living quarters across the hall proved to be empty, with bedsheets folded neatly over a thin cot. Jesri stepped in and looked around, feeling a pang of remembrance. She had spent most of her military career living in rooms like these, the same dimensions and furniture no matter how far-flung the posting.
She sighed and moved on to the next room. Racks and shelves of equipment lined its walls, festooned with dust-covered guns, knives, swords, grenades, and all manner of tiny electronic devices, their innocuous appearance made all the more sinister by their company. Jesri slid the door closed again, earning an indignant look from Rhuar. "We're not going to check that out?", he asked disbelievingly.
Jesri gave him a faint smile. "You don't want to waste your time there." At his questioning look she moved across the hall and opened the door opposite from the armory, revealing a dimly lit room that bent away to the left. Curious, Rhuar trotted over and stuck his head around the corner.
Three meters tall and shining like frozen quicksilver, four full suits of powered armor sat in evenly spaced alcoves along the far wall of the room. White and black plating framed the metallic skin like a latticed shell across the chest and shoulders. The helmet had a smooth white faceplate with a grey triple-starburst covering the front.
Their digitigrade legs spread wide at the foot, smooth plating stretching up midway to dissolve into a latticework that meshed neatly with the chest armor. The arms hung loosely, fingers uncurled to show the metal supports running throughout.
Across the room, each suit had a set of equipment: a rifle the size of Rhuar with an underbarrel launcher and a matte-white sword with a straight blade tapering to a sharply angled tip. Rhuar stood transfixed, a high whine escaping from his throat, while Qktk's eyes flickered rapidly across the equipment. Jesri walked up and ran a hand over the latticed chestpiece, hooking her fingers on the armored ridges.
"I wasn't expecting to find a Valkyrie armory here," she said, "but I'm glad we did. With an intact and fully charged suit we can hold our own against pretty much anything."
Qktk chittered, finding his voice. "Madam Jesri, I don't believe force will be necessary. I can't picture the scenario where you show up in a kilometer-long ancient human warship, step onto the dock wearing this armor and find the inhabitants anything but friendly and willing to please."
Jesri flashed Qktk a grin. "Only if they're smart," she retorted playfully. "In my experience looking threatening only gets you halfway there. You have to be threatening as well." She stepped back and glanced at the oversize weapons. "Not that I have any plans to pick a fight. Once we've secured the ship and located the weapon, we should be able to move self-sufficiently from there."
Rhuar tore his gaze away from the shining armor and looked back towards the hall. "There was one more door at the end. What's in there?"
Jesri laughed. "Nothing else exciting, I'm afraid. That's the briefing room." She paused and a cloud slipped over her features. "We should look, though," she muttered, drawing curious glances from the other two. Jesri had been opening each door with trepidation as they proceeded, her anxiety growing each time. It was inescapable: Valkyrie teams were always deployed in pairs.
She walked quickly over to the door, keying it open. Her face was lined and she sank unconsciously backwards into a ready stance. When the door opened, however, she saw only what she knew must be present: a long wooden table, some scattered chairs, a large display and a small figure with long black hair lying prone on the ground.
Jesri walked over to the corpse. When Rhuar had found the Valkyrie section, she had resigned herself to finding more of her dead sisters. When Anja had found Hana lying in her quarters, it had stripped away a sliver of hope that they might not have been aboard. As Jesri gently turned the body over to see the dry, shriveled features of her sister Tessa, there was nothing left to feel. Perhaps a slight sense of grim relief as she discovered, finally, what had become of her wayward sibling.
There were only a handful of Valkyrie left that Jesri had not seen since before the attacks, and she had long since given them up for dead. Anja kept in contact with those few left alive, but it had been a long, long time since anyone but Jesri spoke with her. Jesri's assumption for millennia had been that Anja was her last living sister.
It didn't make seeing proof any easier.
She turned back to see Anja standing behind Qktk and Rhuar, looking over at the body. "Tessa?", she asked quietly. Jesri nodded, and Anja closed her eyes. After a moment, she reopened them and set her shoulders. "Let's continue to the bridge."
They exited into the hall and continued towards the lift, walking together along the silent passageway.
---
The four took a lift up and over to deck 1, aft, where the main bridge was located. The lift exited directly into the ops area, rows of consoles lit up and displaying systems information in a kaleidoscope of dancing lines and numbers. A few bodies sprawled on the floor, but the bridge was largely empty. An elevated dais held duty stations for the captain, first officer and pilot. Huge viewports swept along the outer edge, allowing a splendid view of the Aurelian dust clouds and tinting the whole room with a bloody red glow.
"Why is everything so big?" grumbled Qktk, his eyes flicking around the room. "Humans weren't that tall. You could park my ship in here."
Jesri held up a finger. "The first and only driving principle of human engineering: 'Because It's Awesome.'"
Qktk buzzed, his arms flailing in exasperation. "But it's not practical! Exposed viewports, unreachably high bulkheads, right on the surface of the ship! I thought this was supposed to be a military vessel!"
Anja giggled. "Silly bug. We have a practical bridge too, of course. It's back by the Valkyrie section, amidships, encased in armor plating. That was the war bridge, and probably the one they were using for their mission. This was the bridge for convincing people they shouldn't fight us." She flounced up the stairs to the command dais and leapt into the captain's chair, pressing controls on the armrest.
Rhuar glanced around the bridge, taking in the metal beams high above. "Makes sense. Something just feels right about being able to see outside. That said…", he trailed off, indicating the rows of ops panels with a sweep of his exoskeletal arm. "How are we going to manage all this with just four of us?"
Jesri gave him a puzzled look. "We don't need most of that with a shipjack, and Anja said you had agreed to fly. Didn't you want to?"
Rhuar gaped back at her. "I thought she was joking. You'd let me fly the ship?"
"Well, sure," said Jesri. "You're the only one of us who's a pilot." She stretched her arms. "You'll need to see the captain first, though." Rhuar looked over at Qktk, who shook his head and looked at Jesri. Jesri winked and pointed behind them.
They both looked back bemusedly at Anja, who waved to them from the command chair. "Hi! So, I can only release flight functions to a crew member," she said cheerfully. "If you want to fly the ship, I will need to give you a field commission. We decided earlier to extend both of you the offer, if you wanted to stick around."
Rhuar and Qktk shared a glance. The Htt gave him a passable shrug and nodded, and they both turned back to Anja. "We're in," said Rhuar. "What do we do?"
Anja stood. "Raise your right hand," she said, all levity gone from her voice. Rhuar sat back and raised a paw, while Qktk lifted his primary forelimb.
"Do you swear to support and defend the rights of all living beings to life, liberty and self-determination, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the Terran Federation?" Anja looked them over with steely expectation.
Jesri leaned in and whispered, "I so swear."
"I so swear!", Rhuar and Qktk said. Anja nodded. "Do you swear to obey the lawful orders of the Terran Command and their designates? To serve as the bulwark and guarantor of freedom for all whom you encounter?"
"I so swear," they replied.
Anja's steel face softened, but her voice rang out hard and clear through the empty bridge. "Then by the power vested in me by the Terran Command, I hereby award you the field commission of Ensign." She broke into a smile. "May you discharge your duties with honor and pride."
They stood still for a moment, Anja beaming at them, before Rhuar craned his neck to look around. "Uh," he said awkwardly, "now what?"
Jesri laughed. "Now you can fly the ship. Go ahead, there should be a standard shipjack at the pilot's station." She motioned up to the console at Anja's left hand.
"Be nice to my girl," Anja said, the ominous tone of her voice somewhat spoiled by her smirk.
Rhuar climbed to the dais and grabbed the shipjack with his exoskeleton, slotting it eagerly into the data port on his neck. "So," he asked, "is there any sort of authentication-"
Rhuar froze, twitched once, and started screaming a high, thin wail of pain.
---
Hey folks, hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. We're back on schedule and the posts will keep coming until I run out of backlog. Since we're very nearly aligned with the main posting schedule (Wednesday updates) I think I'm going to finish up with parts 17 and 18 together on Dec 5th, after which I'll post updates here weekly.
Please find attached a document I dug up from the future, as well as a note from my co-author.
Anja smiled and bent down to scratch a vaguely offended Rhuar behind the ears. "Good work!", she said cheerily. Rhuar looked too exhausted to object.
Qktk chittered and reclined in his seat. "I confess I haven't heard of Aurelius before," he said, waving a tablet in one segmented arm. "Is it one of the defunct stations?"
Jesri shook her head. "No, Aurelius was always just a waypoint. Some gas mining, but the system doesn't have much of note in it. It sits off the galactic plane a ways, so people would use it as a target to pop up over the Perseus Arm."
Rhuar raised his head. "If there's no station it's going to take a long time to get back. Even if there's a station straight planeward from Aurelius we'd be spending weeks riding the bubble." He shuddered. "Longest no-assist jump I ever did was three days and it was pure, straight hell."
Anja laughed. "Don't worry, doggie. We'll have a much faster ride back."
She giggled at the dark look Rhuar cast her way. "Excuse me if I don't want to bet on a millenia-old ghost ship," he shot back. "You're not the one that gets to sit here for hours and hours if it doesn't work."
Jesri frowned. She hadn't given much thought to the condition of the Grand Design prior to Anja rediscovering it, not for many, many years. The news that it had been hit by one or more gamma-ray bursts was not encouraging. In the worst case scenario the ship and its precious cargo would both be long-dead, lost to the ravages of time and radiation. More than her own well-being, Jesri worried about Anja if that proved to be the case. Her sister had maintained her laser-focus for so long that a sudden revelation like that would be…
Well, bad.
The focus of her worries was currently waving off Rhuar's concerns about the derelict ship. "It will be fine," said Anja dismissively, "the Grand Design is a late-model navy cruiser. The systems are quite resistant to radiation and are designed with multiple backups in case of a primary failure." She crossed her arms. "The transit stations were all attacked as well. If a transit station can make it to the modern day without degrading, then the ship will be functional."
Rhuar nodded, but didn't look convinced. Jesri figured he was remembering the rather degraded transit station they had just departed back in Harsi. Anja's points were sound, though, she had to admit. The only way to test her assertions was to wait and see.
Jesri sighed. After five thousand years, five hours shouldn't feel this long.
---
They arrived in a splash of white light, Rhuar's deft touch bringing them gently back to normal space. A dull red star glowered at them across a dusty band of rock and ice. To their right, the warm glow of the galactic disc hung like luminous thunderclouds in the distance. To the left, a vast sheet of black held a scattering of lonely stars shining weakly against the void of intergalactic space.
They had arrived at Aurelius.
Qktk peered out the viewport appreciatively. "Goodness," he rattled, "I don't believe I've been this far off the plane before. That's quite a sight."
Rhuar shook himself as he stowed the shipjack again. "We're going to be seeing it a lot, unless you've got some way to narrow the field. I didn't see any obvious signal sources, and it's going to be a pain looking for anything with all this dust in the inner system."
Anja grinned and produced a small black box from her pocket. "This should help. The station logged the ship when it left, including the last IFF authentication update it received." She unspooled a cable and proffered it to Rhuar. "With the proper authorization code, which we now have, the ship will respond to a query with a tight-beam authentication sent to our coordinates."
Rhuar's exoskeleton reached out and snagged the cable. He studied his console for a few seconds before selecting a port and connecting the box to the ship. "That seems a little too easy," he grumbled. "If that's all it takes, why didn't someone try it before?"
Jesri leaned forward, her brow knitting. "If I remember correctly, there's a range limiter on the response. It also needs to have the correct authentication code. The codes for sensitive missions are changed for each leg of a long trip, and are only provided to the ship when it departs."
Qktk nodded. "So to find the ship, someone would have to know which system to scan and obtain the correct code."
"Yeah," Jesri confirmed. "For obvious reasons security was a concern, so there are a number of restrictions." She hesitated. "Also, the code will only work once."
Rhuar blinked. "I mean, that makes sense," he said, "but doesn't that hurt our chances?"
Anja shrugged. "If it does not work, then we will adjust our strategy. For now, please send out…" She leaned over and punched a few buttons on the console, then straightened up with a bright smile. "There," she said cheerily, "that configuration should work."
Rhuar stepped back and waved a hand at the console. "Please," he said, "be my guest."
Once more, Anja leaned over to press the glowing panel. A low chime sounded, and she stood away from the console. Anja quickly clutched her hands together behind her back, but not before Jesri caught a slight tremble in her fingers. "There," She said softly. "Transmission sent."
Rhuar looked around at each of them, the silence on the bridge stretching out awkwardly. "Uh, so," he said, "what now?"
"We wait," replied Jesri. "Given the short range it should be a quick-"
She cut off as the console chimed again, indicating a response. Anja dove towards it like a striking snake, nearly bowling over Rhuar in her enthusiasm. "Confirmed!", she said, her voice tight. "It's in the dust belt on the near side of the star. About five million kilometers out."
Rhuar nodded and grabbed the jack. "We can microjump close to those coordinates. I'll bring us in a bit away from the precise origin." He paused, flicking his ears nervously. "You, uh, may want to buckle up for this one."
"What's the matter, ace pilot?", Jesri needled as she grabbed for her harness. "Feeling okay?"
"Oh, fuck off," he retorted crossly. "I'd like to see you make a millisecond-tolerance jump into a gravity well." His arms finished securing his own restraints, plugged in the jack and stored themselves tightly against his legs. "All right," he muttered, "hold on to your butts."
The ship's engines thrummed as Rhuar reoriented them for the jump, then shifted to a high-pitched whine as the drive charged. Tones layered across each other and a film of white light began to dance across the starfield outside. Ripples distorted the angry red glare from the system's lone star, sending motes of fire scattering across the starscape.
Rhuar tensed, and the light wrapped around the ship like a constricting fist. A brief flash of familiar soap-bubble starlight wreathed the viewports. The dull red star leapt towards them, the dust clouds around it grasping upwards to enclose them in an expanse of dim embers. The ship jolted violently, as if plunging into water. They slammed against their harnesses, eliciting a grunt of pain from Anja as her injured ribs hit the restraints. From the rear of the ship came a loud crash as something tore loose and tumbled across the hold.
Jesri's breath caught in her throat as a bar of deepest black jumped into view. It swiftly grew to become a gaping void in the red glow surrounding them. Qktk shrilled a piercing note of alarm, his legs scrabbling reflexively against his seat as Rhuar swore and veered the ship to the side.
As their velocity dipped down to near-zero, Qktk slumped in his seat. "Mr. Rhuar," he clacked irritably, "please try not to run my ship into any ancient derelicts. That looked like we came within meters of collision!"
Rhuar was standing stock-still with his mouth hanging slightly open. "Captain," he said haltingly, his ears flicking back and forth. "No, it's…"
"Oh my," said Anja faintly, raising a shaking hand to her head. "I can hear her. Hello, pretty girl."
"Kick," chuckled Jesri, "take another look."
The captain gave her a questioning glance, then peered out the viewport again. "I don't see what you're-"
Anja flicked a hand at the ship. He paused.
"Oh, by Jim's dusty bones," he whispered, his voice filled with awe.
At Anja's unspoken command lights had flickered on across the length of the ship. The illumination washed over its hull and brought the ship's true size into perspective. Nearly a kilometer of slate-grey plating hung motionless in front of them, speckled by tiny viewports and cold white running lights. The ship's boxy frame tapered to a raked wedge at its bow while the aft half flared wide on each side to accommodate the mammoth engine block.
On the starboard bow, GRAND DESIGN was stenciled in large, faded letters. Below it sat the triple-starburst insignia of the Terran Navy. Jesri felt a hot pressure in her chest looking at it. It had been a fixture every day of her young life, stenciled on her clothes and her belongings. Seeing it hanging there, even worn and obscured by years of abrasive dust and radiation, she could almost make herself believe that she was on the shuttle to her first assignment again, staring up in awe as they approached their berthing.
She glanced at Anja. She too was staring up at the ship raptly, a look of bliss on her upturned face. This had been her dream every day since the Grand Design was first reported missing. For all of the emotions rushing through Jesri, she could only imagine what Anja felt upon seeing the ship.
The four of them sat spellbound for a moment. Anja found her voice first, walking over to Rhuar and settling a hand on his back. "Take us below the ship," she said. "I'll open the door."
The engines spooled up and they began to move, slowly gliding under the massive bulk of the ship. As they moved past the bow Jesri could make out the edges of the armor plates, gigantic bands of metal stretching pitted and scored over the underside of the hull. The low blisters of gun emplacements sat clustered on the edges and ridges, flanked by hummocks of sensor gear.
Ahead of them a thin line of light appeared in the hull. As they drew near it widened to show a cavernous docking bay beyond. The opening dwarfed their ship as they rose through it to enter the bay, sliding through the docking field with a subtle vibration and rush of atmosphere. Inside, dozens of berths lined the walls around a large central space stretching back hundreds of meters.
Rhuar twitched. "How fuckin big is this thing?", he muttered, his ears flicking back as he pored over the feed of sensor input. "There's at least three other ships in here, and space for a fuckton more."
Anja nodded. "Most ships this size have a few small shuttles, fighters and fast attack craft. She says that half of her complement is on patrol, so I assume they were lost in the attack." She cocked her head. "She is asking for a berth registry. Does your ship have a name?"
"The Leviathan," said Qktk proudly.
Jesri snorted, earning an acid look from all of Qktk's eyes. "It's for advertising," the captain said crossly. "Besides, how many civilian ships do you know of that are bigger?"
Anja gave him a pat on the head and the captain knit his arms in irritation. "It's a good little ship," she said. "Berth three?"
Rhuar nodded and they settled down over a crisp numeral painted on the deck, a light wave of dust rippling up as they descended. Jesri slid free of her harness and stretched. "Okay," she said, "we got air?"
"We've got, uh..." Rhuar said, tilting his head for a moment as he queried the sensors. "Oh, yeah, you're good. How does that work, anyway? I have to change the filters out on this thing every year or we can't breathe. What sort of magical bullshit keeps air on the stations for that long?"
Jesri gave him a look. "Well, on this ship nothing is taxing the filters because the whole crew is dead."
Rhuar looked abashed, but pressed the point. "What about the stations? People live there."
"Not really," said Jesri, shaking her head. "The stations were designed to be inhabited to capacity, and the air systems can probably handle twice that." She looked over at Anja, who was developing an irritated tilt to her posture. "Let's table this for later," Jesri sighed. "It looks like Anja is about to chew her way through the hatch."
Rhuar blinked, and the doors hissed open. A draft of cool, dry air snaked in through the door to the bridge, fresh and clean with the barest hint of ozone. A rush of memories crashed into Jesri's vision: her, thirteen years old on her first visit to a real navy ship, pushing her way through a crowd of her sisters to gawk at the reactors, the hangars, the bridge. Her, back from her first assignment, the crisp air of the hangar washing away the tang of smoke and blood that had crept into every corner of the shuttle. Her, years later on a different ship, listening to a terse communique listing the worlds that had fallen silent.
Anja had gone immediately to stand outside the ship, tilting her head back to take in the distant sweep of the hangar's ceiling. Jesri, Rhuar and Qktk followed closely behind her, looking around the bay.
"Yeah," said Rhuar, stretching. "I stand by my initial assessment. Big fuckoff hangar."
Anja flashed him a quick smile and set off up some stairs towards an exit. Jesri sighed and turned to the other two. "Stay close to us," she said. "I don't expect trouble, but we should limit our exploration until we've accessed internal sensors."
The three followed after Anja, but caught up to her only a short way past the exit door. A body stretched out on the floor in front of her, shrunken and brown with its arms curled inwards against its torso. Faded grey rags wrapped around it, the occasional strip of stained gold piping the only hint that it had once been a naval uniform.
Rhuar looked down the corridor and saw more bodies, slumped against walls or sprawled across the floor. "There's so many of them," he said uneasily, backing away.
Jesri nodded sadly. "More than just these. Crew for a ship this size would be in the thousands." She walked over to look more closely at the body. It was male, and the corroded pips by its neck indicated a rank of lieutenant.
Anja straightened up. "We can deal with them after we have secured the ship," she said reluctantly. "The lift will be farther aft." She began walking again, her stride determined - but she could not keep her gaze from straying to each fallen form as she passed.
Jesri also found her eyes drawn to the dessicated corpses. Each one was a former comrade, humans who had been about their normal routine unaware that they had seconds to live.
Qktk and Rhuar tailed the women closely. If they had been disinclined to risk becoming lost before, the eerie bodies had removed any remaining desire to explore. Rhuar kept his eyes up from the floor, focusing on the neatly spaced numbered doors and counting the differences from the standard civilian models he was used to.
One door wasn't numbered. Rhuar paused and dredged up his recollection of written English, but he couldn't make sense of the label. "Hey, guys?", he called out. Anja and Jesri glanced over from where they had been studying a chunk of corroded metal clasped in a mummified hand.
"What does 'Valkyrie' mean?"
Their heads snapped up to stare at Rhuar so quickly that Qktk flinched back in alarm.
"Where did you see that word?", Anja asked quietly. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes set every bit of Rhuar's fur on end.
"Uh," he managed, pointing towards the door.
Jesri stalked over to the door, staring wide-eyed at the label. She turned to Anja. "There was a deployment here?", she asked incredulously. "Did you know about that?"
"Not a thing," said Anja, coming over to stand beside Jesri. "But they would often keep sensitive deployments off the official listings." She reached towards the door, pausing with her hand an inch away from the controls. Jesri put a hand on Anja's shoulder, and the two shared a look for a moment before Anja placed her hand on the panel.
A wash of light appeared over Anja's hand, moving across it methodically before receding into the panel. A chirrup sounded, and the door hissed open. Beyond it lay a long hallway with several large doors along the walls. The two women walked inside, moving quickly past two doors and stopping in front of a third. They shared another look, then opened the door and disappeared within.
Qktk and Rhuar shared a look, but waited outside. Their sudden reaction to the room had been an alarming reminder of how dangerous their companions were, and how little they knew about them. After a long minute, Jesri walked out of the room, her lips a thin line. She looked at them expressionlessly, her eyes like dull chips of ice. Rhuar shivered.
Jesri breathed out, her shoulders sagging, and seemed to notice Rhuar and Qktk for the first time. She shook her head and waved them inside. "Sorry," she said, "didn't mean to be strange, we were just a bit startled." She waited until they drew closer, then continued, her voice soft and flat. "Valkyrie was a special unit of the Naval Marines," she explained. "They used a blend of biotechnology and cybernetics to make enhanced soldiers. They deployed them for espionage, strike missions, extractions and to oversee sensitive operations like this one."
Rhuar tilted his head, confused, but then realization struck him. "Your unit," he said. Qktk rattled his mandibles quietly.
"Our sisters," Anja replied from past the door. Rhuar moved further to see inside and saw her standing in spartan living quarters, cradling a body in her arms. Its skin was dried and pale brown, better preserved than the corpses outside but very clearly dead. On its head the remnants of a thick braid still showed a clear red hue. "This is Hana," she said, her voice forced and harsh.
Jesri caught Rhuar's eye and waved him past the door. He and Qktk took the hint, moving farther down the hall. Jesri said something quietly to Anja and slid the door closed, walking over to join them.
"Leave her there for a bit," she said quietly. "Let's look through the other rooms."
The other living quarters across the hall proved to be empty, with bedsheets folded neatly over a thin cot. Jesri stepped in and looked around, feeling a pang of remembrance. She had spent most of her military career living in rooms like these, the same dimensions and furniture no matter how far-flung the posting.
She sighed and moved on to the next room. Racks and shelves of equipment lined its walls, festooned with dust-covered guns, knives, swords, grenades, and all manner of tiny electronic devices, their innocuous appearance made all the more sinister by their company. Jesri slid the door closed again, earning an indignant look from Rhuar. "We're not going to check that out?", he asked disbelievingly.
Jesri gave him a faint smile. "You don't want to waste your time there." At his questioning look she moved across the hall and opened the door opposite from the armory, revealing a dimly lit room that bent away to the left. Curious, Rhuar trotted over and stuck his head around the corner.
Three meters tall and shining like frozen quicksilver, four full suits of powered armor sat in evenly spaced alcoves along the far wall of the room. White and black plating framed the metallic skin like a latticed shell across the chest and shoulders. The helmet had a smooth white faceplate with a grey triple-starburst covering the front.
Their digitigrade legs spread wide at the foot, smooth plating stretching up midway to dissolve into a latticework that meshed neatly with the chest armor. The arms hung loosely, fingers uncurled to show the metal supports running throughout.
Across the room, each suit had a set of equipment: a rifle the size of Rhuar with an underbarrel launcher and a matte-white sword with a straight blade tapering to a sharply angled tip. Rhuar stood transfixed, a high whine escaping from his throat, while Qktk's eyes flickered rapidly across the equipment. Jesri walked up and ran a hand over the latticed chestpiece, hooking her fingers on the armored ridges.
"I wasn't expecting to find a Valkyrie armory here," she said, "but I'm glad we did. With an intact and fully charged suit we can hold our own against pretty much anything."
Qktk chittered, finding his voice. "Madam Jesri, I don't believe force will be necessary. I can't picture the scenario where you show up in a kilometer-long ancient human warship, step onto the dock wearing this armor and find the inhabitants anything but friendly and willing to please."
Jesri flashed Qktk a grin. "Only if they're smart," she retorted playfully. "In my experience looking threatening only gets you halfway there. You have to be threatening as well." She stepped back and glanced at the oversize weapons. "Not that I have any plans to pick a fight. Once we've secured the ship and located the weapon, we should be able to move self-sufficiently from there."
Rhuar tore his gaze away from the shining armor and looked back towards the hall. "There was one more door at the end. What's in there?"
Jesri laughed. "Nothing else exciting, I'm afraid. That's the briefing room." She paused and a cloud slipped over her features. "We should look, though," she muttered, drawing curious glances from the other two. Jesri had been opening each door with trepidation as they proceeded, her anxiety growing each time. It was inescapable: Valkyrie teams were always deployed in pairs.
She walked quickly over to the door, keying it open. Her face was lined and she sank unconsciously backwards into a ready stance. When the door opened, however, she saw only what she knew must be present: a long wooden table, some scattered chairs, a large display and a small figure with long black hair lying prone on the ground.
Jesri walked over to the corpse. When Rhuar had found the Valkyrie section, she had resigned herself to finding more of her dead sisters. When Anja had found Hana lying in her quarters, it had stripped away a sliver of hope that they might not have been aboard. As Jesri gently turned the body over to see the dry, shriveled features of her sister Tessa, there was nothing left to feel. Perhaps a slight sense of grim relief as she discovered, finally, what had become of her wayward sibling.
There were only a handful of Valkyrie left that Jesri had not seen since before the attacks, and she had long since given them up for dead. Anja kept in contact with those few left alive, but it had been a long, long time since anyone but Jesri spoke with her. Jesri's assumption for millennia had been that Anja was her last living sister.
It didn't make seeing proof any easier.
She turned back to see Anja standing behind Qktk and Rhuar, looking over at the body. "Tessa?", she asked quietly. Jesri nodded, and Anja closed her eyes. After a moment, she reopened them and set her shoulders. "Let's continue to the bridge."
They exited into the hall and continued towards the lift, walking together along the silent passageway.
---
The four took a lift up and over to deck 1, aft, where the main bridge was located. The lift exited directly into the ops area, rows of consoles lit up and displaying systems information in a kaleidoscope of dancing lines and numbers. A few bodies sprawled on the floor, but the bridge was largely empty. An elevated dais held duty stations for the captain, first officer and pilot. Huge viewports swept along the outer edge, allowing a splendid view of the Aurelian dust clouds and tinting the whole room with a bloody red glow.
"Why is everything so big?" grumbled Qktk, his eyes flicking around the room. "Humans weren't that tall. You could park my ship in here."
Jesri held up a finger. "The first and only driving principle of human engineering: 'Because It's Awesome.'"
Qktk buzzed, his arms flailing in exasperation. "But it's not practical! Exposed viewports, unreachably high bulkheads, right on the surface of the ship! I thought this was supposed to be a military vessel!"
Anja giggled. "Silly bug. We have a practical bridge too, of course. It's back by the Valkyrie section, amidships, encased in armor plating. That was the war bridge, and probably the one they were using for their mission. This was the bridge for convincing people they shouldn't fight us." She flounced up the stairs to the command dais and leapt into the captain's chair, pressing controls on the armrest.
Rhuar glanced around the bridge, taking in the metal beams high above. "Makes sense. Something just feels right about being able to see outside. That said…", he trailed off, indicating the rows of ops panels with a sweep of his exoskeletal arm. "How are we going to manage all this with just four of us?"
Jesri gave him a puzzled look. "We don't need most of that with a shipjack, and Anja said you had agreed to fly. Didn't you want to?"
Rhuar gaped back at her. "I thought she was joking. You'd let me fly the ship?"
"Well, sure," said Jesri. "You're the only one of us who's a pilot." She stretched her arms. "You'll need to see the captain first, though." Rhuar looked over at Qktk, who shook his head and looked at Jesri. Jesri winked and pointed behind them.
They both looked back bemusedly at Anja, who waved to them from the command chair. "Hi! So, I can only release flight functions to a crew member," she said cheerfully. "If you want to fly the ship, I will need to give you a field commission. We decided earlier to extend both of you the offer, if you wanted to stick around."
Rhuar and Qktk shared a glance. The Htt gave him a passable shrug and nodded, and they both turned back to Anja. "We're in," said Rhuar. "What do we do?"
Anja stood. "Raise your right hand," she said, all levity gone from her voice. Rhuar sat back and raised a paw, while Qktk lifted his primary forelimb.
"Do you swear to support and defend the rights of all living beings to life, liberty and self-determination, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the Terran Federation?" Anja looked them over with steely expectation.
Jesri leaned in and whispered, "I so swear."
"I so swear!", Rhuar and Qktk said. Anja nodded. "Do you swear to obey the lawful orders of the Terran Command and their designates? To serve as the bulwark and guarantor of freedom for all whom you encounter?"
"I so swear," they replied.
Anja's steel face softened, but her voice rang out hard and clear through the empty bridge. "Then by the power vested in me by the Terran Command, I hereby award you the field commission of Ensign." She broke into a smile. "May you discharge your duties with honor and pride."
They stood still for a moment, Anja beaming at them, before Rhuar craned his neck to look around. "Uh," he said awkwardly, "now what?"
Jesri laughed. "Now you can fly the ship. Go ahead, there should be a standard shipjack at the pilot's station." She motioned up to the console at Anja's left hand.
"Be nice to my girl," Anja said, the ominous tone of her voice somewhat spoiled by her smirk.
Rhuar climbed to the dais and grabbed the shipjack with his exoskeleton, slotting it eagerly into the data port on his neck. "So," he asked, "is there any sort of authentication-"
Rhuar froze, twitched once, and started screaming a high, thin wail of pain.
---
Hey folks, hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. We're back on schedule and the posts will keep coming until I run out of backlog. Since we're very nearly aligned with the main posting schedule (Wednesday updates) I think I'm going to finish up with parts 17 and 18 together on Dec 5th, after which I'll post updates here weekly.
Please find attached a document I dug up from the future, as well as a note from my co-author.
- Location
- Elsewhere
And now begins the exciting tale of careful measurements over the course of several ye-Awww, nobody ever writes about careful measurements.
- Location
- USA
Awww, nobody ever writes about careful measurements.
"How are today's numbers looking?", Jesri asked. Nobody answered. Rhuar and Qktk had died of old age decades ago, and Anja had shut herself in her room analyzing signal traces decades ago. Jesri was, of course, totally insane. "Ah, another day of methodical scanning," she muttered to herself. The bridge was quiet. Jesri was quiet. And so, the day proceeded.
- Location
- USA
Well, consider that it's been 5000 years - certainly some did survive, but then they had to survive the chaos afterwards and find a stable niche to keep going. I plan to explore some of it later on, was actually just writing a bit of relevant backstory yesterday.
Part 9
- Location
- USA
"Rhuar!" yelled Jesri, dashing around to kneel down beside the twitching, keening dog. His eyes were open, staring wide and darting in crazed patterns around their orbits. Qktk swarmed over to stand beside him with his antennae vibrating in concern.
Anja bent down to examine him, then met Jesri's eyes. "Jacksick?", she said, getting a nod in return.
"Definitely," Jesri replied, wincing. "He's a good pilot, but I forgot that he's never used mil-spec feeds." She turned to reassure Qktk. "He should be fine in a couple of minutes. We just need to wait and provide some repetitive sensory stimulus to help him focus."
"Stimulus?", Qktk buzzed. "Like what?"
---
Rhuar was a mortal mind stretched suddenly, brutally into godhood. Light, color and sound poured over him in a synaesthetic waterfall that whirled in eddies along the recesses of his skull. Shapes appeared and vibrated through his being, his bones resonating like a struck gong with every pulse. His apotheosis drove liquid starfire into his eyes like a thousand tiny needles shining from the deepest radio wavelengths to the fizzy sparkle of gamma radiation.
He reached with a thousand arms and grabbed a thousand stars to steady himself. The swirl of reality rushed around him in a vortex, each glowing mote of space with the void of hyperspace behind it stretching precariously back into infinity. He grabbed at the onrushing tide of space-time and the points collapsed to a paltry three dimensions.
His senses regaining themselves, Rhuar's mind was presented with the precise details of everything occurring within a quarter light year radius. Dust billowed gently around them and he felt its every contour against the scarred metal of the hull. Starlight played over them and out into the abyss. Every lump of rock, scrap of debris and twisted hulk of abandoned mining equipment pirouetted in a slow waltz around him, each one a bright node of thousands of years of observational data.
Rhuar clashed against the flood of information and shattered it, sweeping fragments into categories, generalizations, hierarchies. Information fled and hid within its wrappings, shrinking and folding to abstract representations that stretched in endless rows away from him.
Suddenly it was still. Rhuar floated in space, one kilometer long and millions of tons in mass. The vast sweep of the universe stretched around him, stars and dust jumping with perfect clarity into his mind. Layers of data flickered tantalizingly before his eyes, flooding him with knowledge when he reached out to brush them and receding when he pulled back. A light pressure flitted across his fore and he moved his mind across the ship's sprawling decks to pursue it. Beams stretched through the superstructure, the minute flex of gravity waves sending rippling shocks through the metal. Dust-covered floors held dust-covered bodies sprawled beside chairs and beds throughout the ship.
A stronger pressure beckoned him farther aft, and he swept into the engineering section to bask in the star that was his beating heart, the warm light of fusion kept calm and controlled in a steady pulse. Power surged from his core to permeate every corner of the ship, flowing through a million kilometers of conduits and wires.
Pressure, irresistible, pulled him upwards to the bridge. He saw with a thousand eyes the huddled forms of Anja, Jesri and Qktk standing over his body. Every spark of a nerve and twitch of a muscle drew bright lines along their forms, the layers peeling back to show biological status, chemical composition, biographical profiles.
A tickle of curiosity sent him deeper into the biographical information, pulling up a swirling cloud of images around Anja as he focused. He suddenly knew the full details of her birth, her military service, her hundreds of sisters. He reeled away from the burning tide of information and refocused on the Anja standing over him on the bridge. Lightning raced through her arm as it stretched forward, a thin finger arcing fire and pointing forward to touch-
"Boop," said Anja once more, poking Rhuar in the nose.
---
"And then I was the whole ship, just sitting there in space but it's not just space, you can feel the space behind the space-"
"Rhuar," Jesri said patiently.
"-tell you that military sensors are better but who actually has a military sensor anymore? I thought it might be a little better but like holy fuck! It's like I've never looked at anything properly until now-"
"Rhuar," rattled Qktk.
"-could actually visualize the plasma flow through the reactor torus, get down inside and see the magnetic field lines. They seemed like they were fluffy, but that's probably just some extraneous tactile crossover I need to nail down-"
"Ensign Rhuar," said Anja, "Shut up."
Rhuar shut up.
---
After some time to let Rhuar come down from his momentary godhood, Jesri cleared him to reconnect to the ship. "But don't just drink from the sensor feed like before," she scolded. "Every pilot should know that. I'm not going to let you turn into a jack zombie just because you can't keep your paws off the feed."
Rhuar paused, shipjack in hand. "Uh. Say again?"
"Not literal zombies, obviously. That was what we called the pilots that spent every moment they could jacked in. If you ever caught them without their jack, they would just be standing around staring at the wall until they could hook up again." She gave him a look, and Rhuar gulped. "This can fuck you up long-term if you're not careful," she warned. "Don't overdo it. Set a timer, two hours, and whitelist your inputs. We can go longer after you've gotten used to it."
He blinked. "Yep, nope, won't stay longer than that. I hadn't really thought about it with other ships, but with this one…" He shivered. "I could see that happening. I feel like I'm too small now to even remember it properly."
Jesri gave him a pat on the head. "You'll be fine," she reassured him, "just don't overdo it. When you're ready, we need to access internal sensors and figure out where they're keeping the weapon."
Rhuar gingerly connected to the ship again, dipping his toe into the vast sea of data and sensation. He sought out the bright filaments of sensor feeds, drawing lighted corridors and rooms together into a shining facsimile of the ship. "Let's see," he murmured. "We've got a couple of areas marked specially here. What's a 'Heli-', uh." He frowned. "Helical Collimator Plasma Lance?"
A slight thrum of power vibrated the air on the bridge. Jesri gave him an alarmed look. "Rhuar, do not power up strange weapons systems," she half-shouted.
The dog winced and the hum of power vanished. Jesri looked at Rhuar reproachfully and he shook his head. "Right, sorry, sorry. Guessing that's not what we're after. We've got, ah..." he trailed off, ears flicking back and forth rapidly. "Oh, here's something. A cargo bay in the secondary hold is wired to draw an absolutely stupid amount of power."
Jesri nodded. "That sounds like it."
---
Jesri stood outside bay 17-C122 with a tablet in hand. She had been ready to compare door numbers, but there was no need - she was obviously in the right place. This hold had extensive extra security on the doorway, which had in turn been reinforced. A temporary placard sat below the hold's designation, reading simply: "MANTRA: NO ENTRY".
"Rhuar, can you pop this hold?", she asked aloud.
Rhuar's voice came from all around her with no obvious source. "Yeah, one second," he said, echoing strangely down the empty hall. Some quiet clicks issued from the door's locking mechanisms and it hissed open slowly. Inside the hold, sleeved bundles of cabling ran haphazardly beneath a carpet of dust to a dull grey pedestal. Complex folds and protrusions of metal adorned the top in a bowed chalice, reaching upwards to enclose…
Nothing.
Jesri stared at the pedestal, tapping her foot slightly. "Rhuar, am I missing something here?"
"Nope," he said. "I'm looking over the logs for that room. The logs for the inside are security-restricted, but you're the first person to open that door since they finished building, uh, whatever that is."
Jesri's foot tapped a bit faster, a bit harder. "Could the pedestal itself be the weapon?", she wondered aloud.
"I don't think so," said Rhuar hesitantly, "but I can't be sure. There are open power and network connections for it, but they're just labeled "Interface" and don't seem to do anything."
"Shit," Jesri observed. Her foot stopped tapping. "All right, don't fuck around with the pedestal for the moment. It's not here."
Rhuar didn't answer, and she stood quietly in the hold staring at the light sparkling off the razor-petal curves of the pedestal. After a long minute, she raised her head. "I'm coming back up," she said, striding towards the door. She paused at the threshold, considering. "Hey, Rhuar?"
"Huh?", came the reply.
Jesri sighed. "Let me be the one to tell Anja."
---
A thick tension slithered over the bridge, winding its coils around the silent air. Qktk edged over to stand beside Rhuar, who was panting and exhausted after his latest dive into the ship's systems. Jesri sat upright in the first officer's seat with her eyes locked on Anja, who was sprawled lazily in the captain's chair.
"Shit," said Anja, looking mildly annoyed. "I was hoping it would be here."
Jesri blinked. "I thought you were sure it was here."
"No, sister," said Anja, stretching and sitting up. "I merely hoped. The logs I could find were inconclusive as to where the loading port was."
"You never thought to mention this?", Jesri shot back. "Seems like it would be an important thing to go over."
Anja smiled infuriatingly. "I just said I had found the ship, and nothing about what I hoped may be on it." Jesri slouched in her chair, conceding the point, and Anja continued heedless of her sister's sustained glowering. Their unique constraints meant that all the Valkyrie developed a certain skill with indirect omissions, but Anja had always been the natural. "Getting to the ship had two purposes," she continued. "The first was to secure the weapon, if it was aboard. I thought it unlikely that we would be that lucky, but I had hoped. We will have to pick up the trail somewhere else along the ship's itinerary."
Jesri frowned. "It had scheduled stops aside from Zephyr?", she asked. "I always thought that was its final port of call."
"That is what they told us," confirmed Anja. "I checked. But when I found a batch of logs from the quartermaster corps on Hyannis, they had an entirely different list of stops. Several different copies were circulated, but from what I can tell there were fifteen planets on the route."
"Fifteen?", groaned Rhuar. "Even if they're close, and I bet they're not, that's going to take weeks of flying to check them all."
"I thought you liked flying?", said Anja sweetly. "It will be faster than you think, though, since I have managed to confirm many of the planets the ship stopped at already. Aside from Zephyr, there are only three systems left to check."
Jesri raised her eyebrows. "Four systems isn't bad."
Anja nodded. "Bartlett, Tengri and Apollyon are the other three."
"Zephyr is closest, and Tengri is pretty close to that," mused Jesri. "Not sure on the other two."
Anja nodded and called up a map. Bright motes of light swirled into being above them, resolving into a narrow swatch of the Perseus arm. Their current position floated high above the starfield, marked with a light blue glow. A line of orange light pulsed down from Aurelius to intersect the Zephyr system, then veered outward to connect two more points. Finally, it reversed back to coreward and lanced through a fourth star.
Jesri frowned. "Why does the route have us doubling back? Wouldn't it be faster to hit them like this?" She traced with her finger, drawing a smooth line through the four points.
Anja shook her head. "Faster, yes, but we have to visit Apollyon last." She held up a hand as Jesri opened her mouth. "You're about to ask why? I did research on all of the listed systems and they each have a military presence. Zephyr had the Prochazka Institute, Bartlett had the naval yards. Tengri didn't have anything on the books, but I found some indications there was a listening post there."
"Okay, that makes sense," said Jesri, nodding. "But what makes Apollyon special? I've never even heard of it before."
"It was new to me too," replied Anja. "I was having no luck searching the name in the charts, the system does not appear anywhere. So, I widened the search to what was left of the station logs and still found nothing. I went back in desperation and started running the term through any dusty archive I could find, buy or steal."
She grimaced. "And still, nothing. Eventually I gave up and started running searches on nonsense databases out of spite and frustration - compilations of recipes, children's stories, things that could never be of use. But when I ran the search for topics related to philosophical history, I found thousands of hits." She touched her slim black data archive within the folds of her cloak and tilted her head, querying with the ship. The starmap was replaced with a flat image of a few ornate lines of text on aged-looking parchment.
"And they had upon them a king," Rhuar read, squinting, "the angel of the abyss, to whom the name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but by Greek Apollyon, and by Latin he hath a name Exterminus, meaning Destroyer." He blinked. "Well, that sounds ominous. Who names a system that?"
"Nobody official," said Anja. "The only place that designation appears is on the flight plan copy I found at Hyannis."
"It's a code," breathed Jesri, realization striking her. "It wasn't the last stop, it was the mission target."
Anja nodded. "I was able to do some more targeted research once I realized. That system was our best guess at the location of the Gestalt."
Jesri drew her breath in sharply, but Rhuar shook his head. "You've lost me," he complained. "Who or what is the Gestalt?"
"What do you know about the years leading up to the final attack?", asked Jesri. "The advanced species we encountered?"
"Anja told me the basics," said Rhuar. "I filled Captain Qktk in on it later. The aliens are the Gestalt?"
"As best we could tell, just 'alien'," said Jesri. "There were a lot of competing theories, but the consensus was that most of their race decided to run with their technological singularity as far as it'd take them."
Rhuar gaped at her. "They transcended?", he said, disbelief coloring his voice. Qktk looked at him questioningly. "There's been theories about singularities since forever," he explained rapidly, excitement coloring his voice. "Most of them predicted it'd happen a long fuckin time ago, before we knew about the Moore Limit. Dogs talk about it a lot because, you know-"
His exoskeleton gestured to itself.
"-but it's one of those things that's always ten years away," he concluded. "I figure if we never did it when the humans were around, we're sure as fuck not doing it now. One of the popular scenarios was a collective super-consciousness as people and computers became mentally linked through technology. Good in theory, but nobody's been able to get past the practical issues."
"We learned about the concept as well, because of what we are," said Jesri, nodding. "It was a concern, obviously. It's one of the reasons why we don't have network links to each other. They apparently tried that before our generation with, uh, mixed results."
"Insanity, delusions of grandeur, self-destructive behavior," whispered Anja. "It turns out that it is rather easy to make a superintelligent being, past a certain level of technology. Making one that isn't suicidal or homicidal is apparently much harder."
Jesri leaned back in her chair. Their minders at the Valkyrie creche had never made a secret of what they were or why they were made. Far from a demoralizing or confining truth, Jesri remembered it lending a clear, cold flame of purpose to her daily life. Still, despite her unflagging vigor for her role the minders had been cautious after raising her predecessors. There had been regular counseling sessions to detect signs of instability or any of the psychoses peculiar to artificial neural nets.
Jesri had never developed any indications thereof, nor had any of her sisters. Those who didn't know Anja sometimes thought her to be dangerously unstable or manic, but that couldn't be farther from the truth - more than Jesri or any of their long-lost kin, Anja was anchored by gleaming purpose and inexhaustible faith. Jesri had shared in her fervor, before the fall.
But afterwards, unmoored, Jesri had spent years alone in the void feeling insidious, numbing tendrils squirming in the back of her mind. Many times, she found an eddy in the chaos left after the fall and simply…
Stopped.
She had passed decades motionless, speechless, staring sightlessly forward in a depressive haze of nihilism, apathy, or whichever flavor of jeering madness had found root in her head.
But every time she fell into darkness, Anja found her and pulled her back up. A befuddled courier would arrive with a message, a grizzled bounty hunter would wordlessly press coordinates into her hand. On certain memorable occasions Anja had ventured out herself, springing into Jesri's life like a ray of sunlight lancing into a disused and moldering room.
She was certain that some of her sisters had fallen victim to that darkness. Being functionally immortal rendered the long years of the onrushing future in a harsh and uncomfortable light that was hard to face alone.
She had wondered, at times, about the mind of the Gestalt itself. Far beyond homicidally insane, it was omnicidal - set irrevocably against the universe with a lethal nihilism. Was that what waited for her as well, if they survived? Or was that all-encompassing purpose the ash that remained after a fire like Anja's burned low?
Jesri looked over to her sister and realized that the conversation had continued while she was lost in thought. Anja was looking down at Qktk, who was gesturing insistently. "But you said humanity had met the aliens. Ah, alien." He fiddled two of his legs together, then pressed the question. "You never found out where they were from?"
A strained look flitted over Anja's face. "We only ever met its Emissaries. Artificial bodies that it created as its tools. They look like beings in their own right, but they all share a link back to the Gestalt."
"Yeah," added Jesri, catching up to the conversation. "After we figured that one out I remember some of the intel guys theorizing that the Gestalt's true body had to be in some sort of remote, inconspicuous place."
"That was the primary theory," Anja agreed. "We surveyed the area where we met the first Emissaries. The reports I read say we found Apollyon when someone noticed that the gravitic charts had a system the electromagnetic charts did not."
Qktk skewed half his eyes towards Anja. "A dwarf star of some sort?", he asked. "Hot enough to sustain a facility but not to emit light?"
Anja shook her head. "Zero emissions. If not for the gravitic mapping probes, we would not even know a system was there."
Jesri frowned. "The intel guys had a lot of theories about what the Gestalt actually was, but most of them involved really flashy, high-energy stuff. The sort of thing that you can see from light-years away because it's radiating exotic particles. I don't think I heard many theories about it being some low-energy stealth facility."
"And yet here it is," said Anja, spreading her hands in a shrug. "Intel obviously came to a different conclusion. To be honest, it may be simply because it was the only thing on the survey that they couldn't explain."
Qktk shook his head violently, his mandibles making a clattering noise. "That's all we have to go on? It sounds like they were just making a wild guess."
Jesri grinned over at Qktk. "Maybe," she said. "We weren't in the habit of questioning intel assessments. They always gave us the best information available, so there was no point asking for better. In the rare cases where they were wrong, well, we improvised."
Qktk crossed his arms, a much more intensive process for a Htt than for humans. "And did the intelligence report say anything about what we're supposed to do in the event that they've guessed correctly? Whatever we may find there, it's obviously extremely old and powerful, able to wipe out entire star systems at will. The last time you tried this it knew you were plotting against it before you were ready to move. What plan do you have to attack it once you arrive?"
Anja giggled. "We use the weapon, of course. It was created specifically for this purpose."
"What does it do?", Rhuar asked skeptically. "Must be something special if it'd work on an entity like the Gestalt."
Anja sucked on her lower lip. "There were no files on that," she said.
The others stared at her.
"You don't know?", asked Qktk incredulously.
Anja glared at him crossly. "It was a secret project, you know. The combined effort of humanity's best and brightest to confront an existential threat. They didn't leave the specifications lying around on the mess table."
Rhuar groaned. "So we don't know what it does. We don't know where it is, but we know a few places it might have been five thousand years ago. We know where to put it on the ship, once we get it. We maybe know where to take it afterwards, but not what to do with it or how we're going to get close enough-" He paused. "Fuck, we don't even know how close we have to get."
"Let's find the weapon first," sighed Jesri. "We'll worry about the ancient murdery alien after that."
The four of them sat on the bridge for a moment, soft light from the wall panels mingling with the bright glow from unmanned consoles to paint their faces with strange color and shadow.
"What's the second reason?", said Qktk suddenly, addressing Anja. She gave him a quizzical look. "You said there were two reasons you needed this ship," he said. "What was the second?"
"Oh, that," she said dismissively. "It's nothing strange. Like I said, the first was to secure the weapon if it was aboard. The second," she continued, a predatory grin creeping to the corners of her mouth, "was so that we had the resources to secure it if it was not."
She gestured expansively to the empty bridge. "This is the most powerful remaining relic of humanity's might. Now that we have it-"
Jesri shot to her feet. "No, don't-"
"-nothing can stand in our way." concluded Anja triumphantly.
Jesri groaned. "Anja, goddammit."
---
Far outside of Aurelius, floating invisibly in the interstellar void, a small knot of blackness drifted. Its matte surface was featureless and smooth, reflecting no light and showing no contour. It hung motionless in the black gulf of space, waiting and listening as it had for an eon.
A faint signal washed over it, a coded query sent from close in beside the star. The surface of the object did not change, but inside its midnight shell a flurry of activity took place. Sensors reached out and saw the hazy remains of a hyperspace exit, then another bright burst as a ship jumped into the center of the dust belt at the system's core.
Minutes passed, and it patiently watched the system for further changes. Its sensors picked up the sudden spike of ramping power from a military-grade fusion reactor, the flare of emissions from a million kilometers of power conduits as they surged with energy. Pattern recognition routines locked on to the new signals, processed them and fired a tight-beam hyperspace message on an outward trajectory to the stars.
It was an impossibly dense information packet, with a complex mathematical structure buried under layers of encryption. If one were to strip away the stream of sensory data and mangle the rest down to the dull bleats of common language, it might conceivably be translated as:
It sat in silence for a few seconds before the answering burst came back.
The object settled into an observation mode, silently logging data from the bright center of the star system. It had served its purpose. Now the Emissaries would serve theirs.
---
Another day, another chapter. Obey my dog.
Anja bent down to examine him, then met Jesri's eyes. "Jacksick?", she said, getting a nod in return.
"Definitely," Jesri replied, wincing. "He's a good pilot, but I forgot that he's never used mil-spec feeds." She turned to reassure Qktk. "He should be fine in a couple of minutes. We just need to wait and provide some repetitive sensory stimulus to help him focus."
"Stimulus?", Qktk buzzed. "Like what?"
---
Rhuar was a mortal mind stretched suddenly, brutally into godhood. Light, color and sound poured over him in a synaesthetic waterfall that whirled in eddies along the recesses of his skull. Shapes appeared and vibrated through his being, his bones resonating like a struck gong with every pulse. His apotheosis drove liquid starfire into his eyes like a thousand tiny needles shining from the deepest radio wavelengths to the fizzy sparkle of gamma radiation.
He reached with a thousand arms and grabbed a thousand stars to steady himself. The swirl of reality rushed around him in a vortex, each glowing mote of space with the void of hyperspace behind it stretching precariously back into infinity. He grabbed at the onrushing tide of space-time and the points collapsed to a paltry three dimensions.
His senses regaining themselves, Rhuar's mind was presented with the precise details of everything occurring within a quarter light year radius. Dust billowed gently around them and he felt its every contour against the scarred metal of the hull. Starlight played over them and out into the abyss. Every lump of rock, scrap of debris and twisted hulk of abandoned mining equipment pirouetted in a slow waltz around him, each one a bright node of thousands of years of observational data.
Rhuar clashed against the flood of information and shattered it, sweeping fragments into categories, generalizations, hierarchies. Information fled and hid within its wrappings, shrinking and folding to abstract representations that stretched in endless rows away from him.
Suddenly it was still. Rhuar floated in space, one kilometer long and millions of tons in mass. The vast sweep of the universe stretched around him, stars and dust jumping with perfect clarity into his mind. Layers of data flickered tantalizingly before his eyes, flooding him with knowledge when he reached out to brush them and receding when he pulled back. A light pressure flitted across his fore and he moved his mind across the ship's sprawling decks to pursue it. Beams stretched through the superstructure, the minute flex of gravity waves sending rippling shocks through the metal. Dust-covered floors held dust-covered bodies sprawled beside chairs and beds throughout the ship.
A stronger pressure beckoned him farther aft, and he swept into the engineering section to bask in the star that was his beating heart, the warm light of fusion kept calm and controlled in a steady pulse. Power surged from his core to permeate every corner of the ship, flowing through a million kilometers of conduits and wires.
Pressure, irresistible, pulled him upwards to the bridge. He saw with a thousand eyes the huddled forms of Anja, Jesri and Qktk standing over his body. Every spark of a nerve and twitch of a muscle drew bright lines along their forms, the layers peeling back to show biological status, chemical composition, biographical profiles.
A tickle of curiosity sent him deeper into the biographical information, pulling up a swirling cloud of images around Anja as he focused. He suddenly knew the full details of her birth, her military service, her hundreds of sisters. He reeled away from the burning tide of information and refocused on the Anja standing over him on the bridge. Lightning raced through her arm as it stretched forward, a thin finger arcing fire and pointing forward to touch-
"Boop," said Anja once more, poking Rhuar in the nose.
---
"And then I was the whole ship, just sitting there in space but it's not just space, you can feel the space behind the space-"
"Rhuar," Jesri said patiently.
"-tell you that military sensors are better but who actually has a military sensor anymore? I thought it might be a little better but like holy fuck! It's like I've never looked at anything properly until now-"
"Rhuar," rattled Qktk.
"-could actually visualize the plasma flow through the reactor torus, get down inside and see the magnetic field lines. They seemed like they were fluffy, but that's probably just some extraneous tactile crossover I need to nail down-"
"Ensign Rhuar," said Anja, "Shut up."
Rhuar shut up.
---
After some time to let Rhuar come down from his momentary godhood, Jesri cleared him to reconnect to the ship. "But don't just drink from the sensor feed like before," she scolded. "Every pilot should know that. I'm not going to let you turn into a jack zombie just because you can't keep your paws off the feed."
Rhuar paused, shipjack in hand. "Uh. Say again?"
"Not literal zombies, obviously. That was what we called the pilots that spent every moment they could jacked in. If you ever caught them without their jack, they would just be standing around staring at the wall until they could hook up again." She gave him a look, and Rhuar gulped. "This can fuck you up long-term if you're not careful," she warned. "Don't overdo it. Set a timer, two hours, and whitelist your inputs. We can go longer after you've gotten used to it."
He blinked. "Yep, nope, won't stay longer than that. I hadn't really thought about it with other ships, but with this one…" He shivered. "I could see that happening. I feel like I'm too small now to even remember it properly."
Jesri gave him a pat on the head. "You'll be fine," she reassured him, "just don't overdo it. When you're ready, we need to access internal sensors and figure out where they're keeping the weapon."
Rhuar gingerly connected to the ship again, dipping his toe into the vast sea of data and sensation. He sought out the bright filaments of sensor feeds, drawing lighted corridors and rooms together into a shining facsimile of the ship. "Let's see," he murmured. "We've got a couple of areas marked specially here. What's a 'Heli-', uh." He frowned. "Helical Collimator Plasma Lance?"
A slight thrum of power vibrated the air on the bridge. Jesri gave him an alarmed look. "Rhuar, do not power up strange weapons systems," she half-shouted.
The dog winced and the hum of power vanished. Jesri looked at Rhuar reproachfully and he shook his head. "Right, sorry, sorry. Guessing that's not what we're after. We've got, ah..." he trailed off, ears flicking back and forth rapidly. "Oh, here's something. A cargo bay in the secondary hold is wired to draw an absolutely stupid amount of power."
Jesri nodded. "That sounds like it."
---
Jesri stood outside bay 17-C122 with a tablet in hand. She had been ready to compare door numbers, but there was no need - she was obviously in the right place. This hold had extensive extra security on the doorway, which had in turn been reinforced. A temporary placard sat below the hold's designation, reading simply: "MANTRA: NO ENTRY".
"Rhuar, can you pop this hold?", she asked aloud.
Rhuar's voice came from all around her with no obvious source. "Yeah, one second," he said, echoing strangely down the empty hall. Some quiet clicks issued from the door's locking mechanisms and it hissed open slowly. Inside the hold, sleeved bundles of cabling ran haphazardly beneath a carpet of dust to a dull grey pedestal. Complex folds and protrusions of metal adorned the top in a bowed chalice, reaching upwards to enclose…
Nothing.
Jesri stared at the pedestal, tapping her foot slightly. "Rhuar, am I missing something here?"
"Nope," he said. "I'm looking over the logs for that room. The logs for the inside are security-restricted, but you're the first person to open that door since they finished building, uh, whatever that is."
Jesri's foot tapped a bit faster, a bit harder. "Could the pedestal itself be the weapon?", she wondered aloud.
"I don't think so," said Rhuar hesitantly, "but I can't be sure. There are open power and network connections for it, but they're just labeled "Interface" and don't seem to do anything."
"Shit," Jesri observed. Her foot stopped tapping. "All right, don't fuck around with the pedestal for the moment. It's not here."
Rhuar didn't answer, and she stood quietly in the hold staring at the light sparkling off the razor-petal curves of the pedestal. After a long minute, she raised her head. "I'm coming back up," she said, striding towards the door. She paused at the threshold, considering. "Hey, Rhuar?"
"Huh?", came the reply.
Jesri sighed. "Let me be the one to tell Anja."
---
A thick tension slithered over the bridge, winding its coils around the silent air. Qktk edged over to stand beside Rhuar, who was panting and exhausted after his latest dive into the ship's systems. Jesri sat upright in the first officer's seat with her eyes locked on Anja, who was sprawled lazily in the captain's chair.
"Shit," said Anja, looking mildly annoyed. "I was hoping it would be here."
Jesri blinked. "I thought you were sure it was here."
"No, sister," said Anja, stretching and sitting up. "I merely hoped. The logs I could find were inconclusive as to where the loading port was."
"You never thought to mention this?", Jesri shot back. "Seems like it would be an important thing to go over."
Anja smiled infuriatingly. "I just said I had found the ship, and nothing about what I hoped may be on it." Jesri slouched in her chair, conceding the point, and Anja continued heedless of her sister's sustained glowering. Their unique constraints meant that all the Valkyrie developed a certain skill with indirect omissions, but Anja had always been the natural. "Getting to the ship had two purposes," she continued. "The first was to secure the weapon, if it was aboard. I thought it unlikely that we would be that lucky, but I had hoped. We will have to pick up the trail somewhere else along the ship's itinerary."
Jesri frowned. "It had scheduled stops aside from Zephyr?", she asked. "I always thought that was its final port of call."
"That is what they told us," confirmed Anja. "I checked. But when I found a batch of logs from the quartermaster corps on Hyannis, they had an entirely different list of stops. Several different copies were circulated, but from what I can tell there were fifteen planets on the route."
"Fifteen?", groaned Rhuar. "Even if they're close, and I bet they're not, that's going to take weeks of flying to check them all."
"I thought you liked flying?", said Anja sweetly. "It will be faster than you think, though, since I have managed to confirm many of the planets the ship stopped at already. Aside from Zephyr, there are only three systems left to check."
Jesri raised her eyebrows. "Four systems isn't bad."
Anja nodded. "Bartlett, Tengri and Apollyon are the other three."
"Zephyr is closest, and Tengri is pretty close to that," mused Jesri. "Not sure on the other two."
Anja nodded and called up a map. Bright motes of light swirled into being above them, resolving into a narrow swatch of the Perseus arm. Their current position floated high above the starfield, marked with a light blue glow. A line of orange light pulsed down from Aurelius to intersect the Zephyr system, then veered outward to connect two more points. Finally, it reversed back to coreward and lanced through a fourth star.
Jesri frowned. "Why does the route have us doubling back? Wouldn't it be faster to hit them like this?" She traced with her finger, drawing a smooth line through the four points.
Anja shook her head. "Faster, yes, but we have to visit Apollyon last." She held up a hand as Jesri opened her mouth. "You're about to ask why? I did research on all of the listed systems and they each have a military presence. Zephyr had the Prochazka Institute, Bartlett had the naval yards. Tengri didn't have anything on the books, but I found some indications there was a listening post there."
"Okay, that makes sense," said Jesri, nodding. "But what makes Apollyon special? I've never even heard of it before."
"It was new to me too," replied Anja. "I was having no luck searching the name in the charts, the system does not appear anywhere. So, I widened the search to what was left of the station logs and still found nothing. I went back in desperation and started running the term through any dusty archive I could find, buy or steal."
She grimaced. "And still, nothing. Eventually I gave up and started running searches on nonsense databases out of spite and frustration - compilations of recipes, children's stories, things that could never be of use. But when I ran the search for topics related to philosophical history, I found thousands of hits." She touched her slim black data archive within the folds of her cloak and tilted her head, querying with the ship. The starmap was replaced with a flat image of a few ornate lines of text on aged-looking parchment.
"And they had upon them a king," Rhuar read, squinting, "the angel of the abyss, to whom the name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but by Greek Apollyon, and by Latin he hath a name Exterminus, meaning Destroyer." He blinked. "Well, that sounds ominous. Who names a system that?"
"Nobody official," said Anja. "The only place that designation appears is on the flight plan copy I found at Hyannis."
"It's a code," breathed Jesri, realization striking her. "It wasn't the last stop, it was the mission target."
Anja nodded. "I was able to do some more targeted research once I realized. That system was our best guess at the location of the Gestalt."
Jesri drew her breath in sharply, but Rhuar shook his head. "You've lost me," he complained. "Who or what is the Gestalt?"
"What do you know about the years leading up to the final attack?", asked Jesri. "The advanced species we encountered?"
"Anja told me the basics," said Rhuar. "I filled Captain Qktk in on it later. The aliens are the Gestalt?"
"As best we could tell, just 'alien'," said Jesri. "There were a lot of competing theories, but the consensus was that most of their race decided to run with their technological singularity as far as it'd take them."
Rhuar gaped at her. "They transcended?", he said, disbelief coloring his voice. Qktk looked at him questioningly. "There's been theories about singularities since forever," he explained rapidly, excitement coloring his voice. "Most of them predicted it'd happen a long fuckin time ago, before we knew about the Moore Limit. Dogs talk about it a lot because, you know-"
His exoskeleton gestured to itself.
"-but it's one of those things that's always ten years away," he concluded. "I figure if we never did it when the humans were around, we're sure as fuck not doing it now. One of the popular scenarios was a collective super-consciousness as people and computers became mentally linked through technology. Good in theory, but nobody's been able to get past the practical issues."
"We learned about the concept as well, because of what we are," said Jesri, nodding. "It was a concern, obviously. It's one of the reasons why we don't have network links to each other. They apparently tried that before our generation with, uh, mixed results."
"Insanity, delusions of grandeur, self-destructive behavior," whispered Anja. "It turns out that it is rather easy to make a superintelligent being, past a certain level of technology. Making one that isn't suicidal or homicidal is apparently much harder."
Jesri leaned back in her chair. Their minders at the Valkyrie creche had never made a secret of what they were or why they were made. Far from a demoralizing or confining truth, Jesri remembered it lending a clear, cold flame of purpose to her daily life. Still, despite her unflagging vigor for her role the minders had been cautious after raising her predecessors. There had been regular counseling sessions to detect signs of instability or any of the psychoses peculiar to artificial neural nets.
Jesri had never developed any indications thereof, nor had any of her sisters. Those who didn't know Anja sometimes thought her to be dangerously unstable or manic, but that couldn't be farther from the truth - more than Jesri or any of their long-lost kin, Anja was anchored by gleaming purpose and inexhaustible faith. Jesri had shared in her fervor, before the fall.
But afterwards, unmoored, Jesri had spent years alone in the void feeling insidious, numbing tendrils squirming in the back of her mind. Many times, she found an eddy in the chaos left after the fall and simply…
Stopped.
She had passed decades motionless, speechless, staring sightlessly forward in a depressive haze of nihilism, apathy, or whichever flavor of jeering madness had found root in her head.
But every time she fell into darkness, Anja found her and pulled her back up. A befuddled courier would arrive with a message, a grizzled bounty hunter would wordlessly press coordinates into her hand. On certain memorable occasions Anja had ventured out herself, springing into Jesri's life like a ray of sunlight lancing into a disused and moldering room.
She was certain that some of her sisters had fallen victim to that darkness. Being functionally immortal rendered the long years of the onrushing future in a harsh and uncomfortable light that was hard to face alone.
She had wondered, at times, about the mind of the Gestalt itself. Far beyond homicidally insane, it was omnicidal - set irrevocably against the universe with a lethal nihilism. Was that what waited for her as well, if they survived? Or was that all-encompassing purpose the ash that remained after a fire like Anja's burned low?
Jesri looked over to her sister and realized that the conversation had continued while she was lost in thought. Anja was looking down at Qktk, who was gesturing insistently. "But you said humanity had met the aliens. Ah, alien." He fiddled two of his legs together, then pressed the question. "You never found out where they were from?"
A strained look flitted over Anja's face. "We only ever met its Emissaries. Artificial bodies that it created as its tools. They look like beings in their own right, but they all share a link back to the Gestalt."
"Yeah," added Jesri, catching up to the conversation. "After we figured that one out I remember some of the intel guys theorizing that the Gestalt's true body had to be in some sort of remote, inconspicuous place."
"That was the primary theory," Anja agreed. "We surveyed the area where we met the first Emissaries. The reports I read say we found Apollyon when someone noticed that the gravitic charts had a system the electromagnetic charts did not."
Qktk skewed half his eyes towards Anja. "A dwarf star of some sort?", he asked. "Hot enough to sustain a facility but not to emit light?"
Anja shook her head. "Zero emissions. If not for the gravitic mapping probes, we would not even know a system was there."
Jesri frowned. "The intel guys had a lot of theories about what the Gestalt actually was, but most of them involved really flashy, high-energy stuff. The sort of thing that you can see from light-years away because it's radiating exotic particles. I don't think I heard many theories about it being some low-energy stealth facility."
"And yet here it is," said Anja, spreading her hands in a shrug. "Intel obviously came to a different conclusion. To be honest, it may be simply because it was the only thing on the survey that they couldn't explain."
Qktk shook his head violently, his mandibles making a clattering noise. "That's all we have to go on? It sounds like they were just making a wild guess."
Jesri grinned over at Qktk. "Maybe," she said. "We weren't in the habit of questioning intel assessments. They always gave us the best information available, so there was no point asking for better. In the rare cases where they were wrong, well, we improvised."
Qktk crossed his arms, a much more intensive process for a Htt than for humans. "And did the intelligence report say anything about what we're supposed to do in the event that they've guessed correctly? Whatever we may find there, it's obviously extremely old and powerful, able to wipe out entire star systems at will. The last time you tried this it knew you were plotting against it before you were ready to move. What plan do you have to attack it once you arrive?"
Anja giggled. "We use the weapon, of course. It was created specifically for this purpose."
"What does it do?", Rhuar asked skeptically. "Must be something special if it'd work on an entity like the Gestalt."
Anja sucked on her lower lip. "There were no files on that," she said.
The others stared at her.
"You don't know?", asked Qktk incredulously.
Anja glared at him crossly. "It was a secret project, you know. The combined effort of humanity's best and brightest to confront an existential threat. They didn't leave the specifications lying around on the mess table."
Rhuar groaned. "So we don't know what it does. We don't know where it is, but we know a few places it might have been five thousand years ago. We know where to put it on the ship, once we get it. We maybe know where to take it afterwards, but not what to do with it or how we're going to get close enough-" He paused. "Fuck, we don't even know how close we have to get."
"Let's find the weapon first," sighed Jesri. "We'll worry about the ancient murdery alien after that."
The four of them sat on the bridge for a moment, soft light from the wall panels mingling with the bright glow from unmanned consoles to paint their faces with strange color and shadow.
"What's the second reason?", said Qktk suddenly, addressing Anja. She gave him a quizzical look. "You said there were two reasons you needed this ship," he said. "What was the second?"
"Oh, that," she said dismissively. "It's nothing strange. Like I said, the first was to secure the weapon if it was aboard. The second," she continued, a predatory grin creeping to the corners of her mouth, "was so that we had the resources to secure it if it was not."
She gestured expansively to the empty bridge. "This is the most powerful remaining relic of humanity's might. Now that we have it-"
Jesri shot to her feet. "No, don't-"
"-nothing can stand in our way." concluded Anja triumphantly.
Jesri groaned. "Anja, goddammit."
---
Far outside of Aurelius, floating invisibly in the interstellar void, a small knot of blackness drifted. Its matte surface was featureless and smooth, reflecting no light and showing no contour. It hung motionless in the black gulf of space, waiting and listening as it had for an eon.
A faint signal washed over it, a coded query sent from close in beside the star. The surface of the object did not change, but inside its midnight shell a flurry of activity took place. Sensors reached out and saw the hazy remains of a hyperspace exit, then another bright burst as a ship jumped into the center of the dust belt at the system's core.
Minutes passed, and it patiently watched the system for further changes. Its sensors picked up the sudden spike of ramping power from a military-grade fusion reactor, the flare of emissions from a million kilometers of power conduits as they surged with energy. Pattern recognition routines locked on to the new signals, processed them and fired a tight-beam hyperspace message on an outward trajectory to the stars.
It was an impossibly dense information packet, with a complex mathematical structure buried under layers of encryption. If one were to strip away the stream of sensory data and mangle the rest down to the dull bleats of common language, it might conceivably be translated as:
Code:
REVISION REQUEST
SET TASK23093.STATUS = PENDING
SET OBJECT3902032559.STATUS = ACTIVE
Code:
REVISION ACCEPTED
TASK23093.STATUS (COMPLETE > PENDING)
OBJECT3902032559.STATUS (INACTIVE > ACTIVE)
LINKED UPDATE
CONTINGENCY.STATUS (INACTIVE > ACTIVE)---
Another day, another chapter. Obey my dog.
Last edited:
- Location
- Austrlia
Face it, it's a fairly awsome dog.
- Location
- Elsewhere
"We've long since discovered the perfect, repetitive stimulus that will provoke a reaction from any pilot."
"What is it?"
"It's a mantra, repeated over and over. 'Are we there yet?'"
- Location
- USA
She's a menace, I tell you. A menace!
Fortunately for the crew of the GD, Rhuar is the one most likely to be asking that question.
Part 10
- Location
- USA
Jesri slammed the hatch cover closed, wincing as the noise reverberated painfully around the cramped access tunnel. "Okay, how about now?", she said, speaking to the air.
"Ah, let's see," came Rhuar's voice in return. "Oh yeah, that fixed some of it. I've got some more power flowing to the secondary hyperdrive coils - wait, no, that's the tertiary hyperdrive coils. Why did you build ships with three fuckin hyperdrive coil sets?"
"In case the first two break?", said Jesri innocently. "I don't think you should be complaining about redundant engineering considering how much of this shit is broken."
"Fair," admitted Rhuar. "So that's two sets of coils working, all of the nav computers and about two-thirds of the field plates. All that's left is to get at least one of the White-Juday stabilizers online and we'll be good to go."
"Let's try for two," said Jesri tiredly. "Unless you want to try being a five-dimensional noodle when we spin up the drive." They had been running around for hours trying to repair the damage five thousand years of neglect had wrought upon the ship's systems. Although the primary systems were admirably intact, the fact was that the ship was well outside her maintenance schedule and mean-time-before-failure is never infinite.
She started walking back along the access corridor towards engineering, rolling her shoulder. "How's everyone else coming along?," she asked.
"Hmm, looks like Anja has the communications back online," he said, "as well as a few sensors we were missing. Captain Qktk has made good progress on the aft radiator array, and I've managed to reboot and restore all of the functioning key systems that needed it."
"Good work," said Jesri, somewhat surprised. The ship had been in rougher shape than she thought, but even with only four of them they were making very good time on the repairs.
Rhuar had been key. As worried as she was about his mental state while linked, Jesri had to admit he was a natural at isolating the errors and broken components that plagued the elderly ship. He was always monitoring their activity, providing directions, specifications or advice on the task at hand. He had even found and reactivated a small legion of maintenance bots that were currently waging war against the accumulated dust of millenia.
Jesri stretched, working out the kinks in her neck. "All right, sounds like we're good to go in a bit if you can get those stabilizers up," she said. "I'm going to hit the autodoc before we head out, I'll be back up on the bridge when I'm done."
"Righto," said Rhuar cheerfully.
---
She paced down to the end of the corridor, then dropped down a ladder to the hallway proper. She had been able to visit an autodoc here and there as needed, since almost all the transit stations could be counted on to have a few capable of handling her unique biology.
The gulf between the civilian docs and the military model she was about to hop into was immense, however. She hadn't been able to find a working military doc in nearly three thousand years, so the prospect of slipping into one was adding an extra bounce to her step.
She passed through a wide mess area crawling with tiny off-white robots that carved methodical slices away from the omnipresent blanket of dust. Faded faux-wood paneling and white tile gleamed where they had traveled, save for the areas still covered by the corpses of the ship's crew. Those waited for larger facilities robots, who would take the bodies to the morgue.
Jesri sighed. The morgue would overflow long before they managed to store all of the bodies. She hated to do it, but they would have to find a less dignified place to hold the fallen until they could come up with more suitable arrangements.
She passed beyond the mess, into another hall and then finally into the medbay. The robots had already been through this section, so every piece of equipment gleamed as if newly installed. Three autodocs sat at the rear of the room, each prominently featuring a wide cylinder open at the near end. As Jesri approached, the cap of the cylinder slid away smoothly.
The top retracted to show a flat bed of hard grey material raised slightly at the end to form a headrest. Shrugging her cloak on to the nearby exam table, Jesri quickly peeled off her clothing and sat on the bed. She scratched idly at the tight, shiny scars raking across her body while she modified a few settings on the doc's front panel, then nodded to herself and prepared to enter the machine. As she was pivoting to lay down, however, caution broke through her enthusiasm.
"Hey, Rhuar?", she said.
The speakers in the room crackled to life. "Yeah, what's up? I see you've come to a more enlightened stance on clothing."
"Hm?", said Jesri, looking down. "Oh. Not for your benefit, Ensign."
"Yep, yep, cutting visual feed," he said hastily. "Aye aye, sir. Ma'am."
"It's sir," Jesri said, a trace of irritation creeping into her voice. "I need to know the status of these autodocs. Which of them is in the best condition?"
"Hmm, let's see," grumbled Rhuar. "Well, hop off the one you're sitting on now, that one's no good. Looks like the far one is out of order as well. The middle one… yeah, that'll work." He paused for a second. "Okay, open the access panel on the middle one, rear hatch."
Jesri worked her way back to the rear of the huge machine and popped open a thin hatch, revealing numerous brightly-colored electrical components. She paused expectantly for several seconds before realizing she had told Rhuar to cut his feed. "Okay," she said loudly. "I'm here."
"Good, good!", said Rhuar eagerly. "Okay, do you see a big brown data card up top that has "P3308" on it?"
Jesri peered into the hatch, searching around a bit before spotting a green card on the circuit board with a matching label. "You mean this one up top on the right? Yeah, I see it."
"Remove it from the board, that component is broken," he said. "We're going to take one from the first machine and swap it out."
Jesri reached her hand in the hatch and paused a few inches away. Small blinking lights on the board illuminated her fingers in a pastiche of amber and blue. "Hey, big guy," she said, "you going to cut the power to the machine for me or should I just stick my hand in there and see how it goes?"
"Ah, fuck. Sorry," he said sheepishly. "Power cut."
The lights winked off and the hum of the machine faded from imperceptibility into nothingness. Jesri gave it a count of five for the capacitors, then reached in to pull the card. It came out with a satisfyingly mechanical choonk in her hand, a razor-thin array of boards stacked within a sturdy metal frame. "Okay," she said. "Card out."
"Great, now pull the card from the other machine. I've already cut the power, no need to rub it in," Rhuar muttered. "Have the card? Good, now slot it into the other board, that should bring it to full functionality."
Jesri did as instructed, pushing the card lightly into the slot until it stopped at the end with a vanishingly faint click. "It's in," she said, shutting the hatch.
There was a pause before Rhuar spoke, scored with the faint whine of power rushing back into the machine. "You sure?", he said. "I don't see it connecting. Try giving it a push."
Jesri gingerly pushed down on the card, which didn't move. "Looks like it's in," she said. "Should I try the one from the other machine?"
"No," came the reply. "Give the card another push, it's definitely not seated."
Jesri frowned and pushed harder on the card. She felt a minor give and increased the pressure even more. The card slid in another few millimeters with a sickening cracking noise before coming to a stop. "Ah, shit," she said. "Rhuar, I think it's broken."
"No, that's great," said Rhuar cheerfully. "Everything looks fine from up here. Go ahead and hop on in."
"Rhuar," she said evenly. "I am about to have my body rearranged in microscopic detail by a sensitive piece of medical equipment that has been gathering dust for millennia and may have just suffered a part failure. Please run another diagnostic."
"Okay, fine, just one second," said Rhuar testily. Jesri folded her arms and waited. "Okay," he said after a few dozen seconds. "I've triple-checked everything. The machine thinks it's working just fine."
She sighed and climbed in. "You couldn't have phrased that less reassuringly. If I'm not out in an hour, send your maintenance robots to clean up what's left of me." The cylinder slid shut around her, and Jesri was enclosed in darkness.
---
Anja strolled off the lift and back to the ops area, where Qktk and Rhuar stood conversing around a console. Rhuar had unjacked for a break, his exoskeletal arms smoothing the fur around his data port mindlessly. Qktk noticed Anja first and gave her a small wave.
"Hello!", she chirped happily at the two. "All systems go?"
Rhuar nodded distractedly. "Yeah, it looks like the drive is good, Jesri patched it up before she jumped in the autodoc. We've got full environmental, sensors, comms." He paged through the report on the console, pausing here and there to make note of an entry. "We should probably think about finding a source of deuterium before we do anything too energy-intensive. Ship seems to think our current stores will be good for a while, but if we start jumping all over the map it'd be nice to have some extra."
Anja nodded. "Okay, I have a few places we could visit," she mused. "How are we on materiel?"
"Uhhh," mumbled Rhuar, paging through the readout. "We've got a whole fuckin mountain of railgun slugs for the CIWS and CQB emplacements, so we're good there. A full complement of long-range torpedoes too, but I haven't had a chance to check the engines out. There's a few other specialized weapons systems, but this report is just abbreviations that I can't make any fuckin sense of without the jack." He squinted at the display and scratched his port under his fur. "This HCPL is probably that plasma lance thing I was looking at before, we've got a thousand shots or so there and it seems to be in working order. We've got about fifty rounds for the other one, says it's a WCML?"
"Ooooh," cooed Anja. "We have a whack-a-mole? That's so fun, I've always wanted to see one of those in person."
Rhuar gave her a flat look. "There is no way that's what that stands for. What does that even mean?"
Anja shrugged. "No idea, some old joke. I forget what the actual name is, something official-sounding that nobody ever used. It's fun, you'll see." She bent down to the console, paging through a few more entries. "What else, what else…" She chewed on her lower lip. "We have some fighters, that's good, a pair of shuttles, a Huginn fast attack craft, hm. We could do a lot with these."
"Only one of the shuttles works," Rhuar pointed out. "I also haven't had a chance to do full checks on the other craft, or to pull diagnostics on your suits."
"Three out of four suits functional," said Jesri, striding on to the bridge. She walked close to the others and grinned impishly. "I checked earlier. What do you think?"
Rhuar fumbled for a reply and found none, so he just stared. Jesri had left her cloak and old clothing back in the medbay and was clad in a TNMC duty uniform, a trim charcoal jacket and trousers with a gunmetal collared shirt and slim black tie.
Gold piping adorned her left shoulder beneath thin shoulder boards marked with the silver triple-bar and flared wings of a Valkyrie captain. Her knife and pistol looked especially well-used in contrast to their slim holsters, which looked and smelled for all the worlds like the few leather artifacts he'd encountered. Rhuar had no idea how she had managed that trick.
Anja clapped her hands excitedly. "Sister, you look incredible! Is the autodoc working, then? And the fabricators, obviously."
Jesri nodded. "Yes, Rhuar was a great help with the doc." She winked at him, eliciting a grumble in response. He found it hard to be irritated with her, however. While Jesri had always been an intense presence, she had been hard and distant with flashes of her good humor shining through. Where there was hard steel before, Rhuar saw flashing quicksilver in its place. She seemed young, vital, brimming with energy.
The changes were more than just affectations of personality, though - as Rhuar looked he could see where her skin was smoother, her movements more fluid, her dark hair lustrous and her eyes sparkling. He made a mental note to see if the doc worked on dogs.
He realized with a start that Jesri was talking to him. "I'm sorry," he interrupted, "I didn't catch that."
Jesri gave him a look. "I was asking if you feel up to taking this barge on a jump."
Despite himself, Rhuar felt a thrill run down his spine. His mind raced through the status reports and schematics he had been poring over most of the day, and he keyed his vocalizer to respond with his professional artificer's assessment of their readiness. "Fuck yeah," he said.
Jesri smirked. "Let's get to it, then. First stop is Zephyr, the coordinates are already in the nav comp." She ascended the dais, black boots clicking on the deck, and both sisters took their seats. Qktk secured the navigator's station, and Rhuar moved back to his pilot's post to once again interface with the colossal ship.
"I hope you don't mind if I do this kinda slow," he said as he jacked in, feeling the pressure of the ship's massive flood of data straining against his mental barriers. A few select streams of information were allowed through to spiral into his brain, and he keyed up the jump parameters. He took a deep, steadying breath, then approved the jump sequence.
"Warning, jump imminent," cautioned a calm feminine voice. The bridge lights dimmed, supplemented with amber caution lamps. Qktk looked around nervously and fastened his restraints, and a low hum began to vibrate through the ship. Outside the viewports, the stars began to slowly drift as the ship aligned itself for an exit.
They waited in silence for a long minute. Qktk tapped his legs nervously against the armrest of his chair. "Mr. Rhuar," he clacked, "Is everything all right?"
Rhuar shot him an annoyed glance. "This isn't the Leviathan, Captain, it's like driving a fuckin asteroid." He patted the console. "Sorry, babe, but it's true." Qktk trilled softly, but otherwise stayed quiet as the ship continued in its slow turn towards the exit vector.
"Okay, pretty lady," said Rhuar, the stars outside the viewports sliding to a stop, "let's see how you dance."
Another warning tone sounded throughout the ship, and the hum from the drives escalated to an insistent low tone. Rhuar could feel it in his bones, or in the ship's superstructure - he felt the tide of sensation pressing against him through the jack, flitting around the periphery of his vision. He locked it away and concentrated, initializing the hyperspace window.
Unlike smaller ships that had to take advantage of mass ramps to achieve any sort of meaningful speed, the Grand Design could forge its own path into the inky depths of hyperspace. A patch of space in front of the bow rippled and bent, swelling to hundreds of meters across and stretching thin.
The circular distortion seemed to vibrate as if under tension. Light from the stars behind it bunched and swam around its periphery, warping into smudged and lensed streaks. Slowly, the stars in the middle crept towards the edge of the ring to join in the coiled twists of light that danced there. The spread accelerated, faster and faster, the final stars smearing like oil across the stretched canvas of space-time until it quivered and tore. The middle of the ring snapped apart with a flash of energy to leave a yawning void into the trackless abyss of hyperspace.
Rhuar marveled at it, letting a few more sensor feeds through to bathe his brain in the wash of data from the ship. "That is so fucking cool," he observed. "Okay, executing jump in three, two, one..." The coils spiked in pitch and the gateway swept aft in a blur of twisted space and crackling energy, devouring the length of the ship in an eyeblink before snapping shut behind them.
---
Jesri and Rhuar sat alone on the bridge, watching the oppressive blackness through the viewports. The jump had taken them deep, deep into the bowels of hyperspace, where light was a distant memory. Even the interior lights of the ships seemed to dim in deference to the total night outside.
On the upshot, that meant they were moving screamingly fast. It had taken five hours to make the trip from Harsi, but the slightly longer trip back planewards to Zephyr would take a mere two. Anja had taken the opportunity to visit the autodoc, while Qktk had excused himself to fetch some personal items from the Leviathan.
Rhuar looked over at Jesri, who was staring contemplatively into the inky murk outside. "Have you been to Zephyr before?", he asked.
"Hm?", she replied, seeming to have just remembered he was there. "Ah, yes, several times. It was a major military logistics hub and had a few research groups that were involved in the Valkyrie program. We would often stage or resupply from there." Her eyes took on a distant look. "I always loved going there. The sky was a peculiar shade of teal and the plants were vibrant red, very striking. Big, beautiful oceans over half the planet."
Rhuar shuddered. "I don't know if I could walk around on a planet like that. Just out there in the universe with no suit, breathing unfiltered air and standing on rocks and dirt and shit." He laid his ears back in disgust. "Yeah, no thanks."
Jesri gave him a sad smile. "You probably don't have to worry about it. I haven't been back since the fall, but Zephyr was hit just like all of the other planets. If the atmosphere wasn't totally blown away, it'll be a thin mix of nitrogen dioxide and ozone - not breathable under any circumstances."
Rhuar had the grace to look abashed. "Sorry, didn't mean to, uh." He paused, glancing away awkwardly before gamely rushing back into the conversation. "Where are we going on Zephyr? One of your old research labs?"
Jesri let her breath out slowly, thinking. "Not sure, to be honest. There were a few places that would be reasonable to store something like the weapon. I was hoping we could use the ship sensors to narrow it down, but we may end up having to brute-force search on the ground. Most of the potential sites are clustered in one big research park, but we may have to shuttle-hop to get between some of the others."
Rhuar started to speak again, but said nothing and settled back. After a pregnant pause, he looked back at Jesri. "Do you need me to pilot the shuttle, or…?"
Jesri frowned. Something in Rhuar's voice was strained, tense. "You can if you want to," she said slowly, "but I was actually going to fly this one with Anja. I planned on having you up here in case we need to do a quick evac."
His relief was palpable, and it showed as he flopped back into his chair despite his deliberate efforts at nonchalance. Jesri's frown softened, but she pressed forward. "Okay, out with it. Why don't you want to go?"
Rhuar fidgeted, chewing on his paw for a few seconds. Eventually he lifted his head and looked her in the eye. "Harsi…", he said hesitantly, "well, it wasn't what I expected."
"It was rough," Jesri admitted. "I probably would have recommended that you stay back if I had known how bad the locals were going to be."
"I'm not talking about the bandits, I expected that someone might come after us," he said with a slight shake of his head. "You didn't see everything that went on, after the fight was over."
Jesri pursed her lips. "You mean with Kenet-Tel and his kids." Rhuar nodded. Jesri sighed and dragged her fingers through her hair, mussing it and leaving strands jutting in odd directions. The youth and vitality she had exuded since using the autodoc slipped away, leaving her face worn and tired once more. "That was my fault," she said at last, her voice hoarse. "I couldn't stop the bandit, couldn't get over to you guys in time."
Rhuar shook his head vigorously. "Jesri, that was not your fault. That one was fuckin fast and dangerous, nobody could have done better." He swallowed. "Besides, it didn't kill them." He looked at Jesri significantly, ears flat back against his head.
Jesri gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head. "I know," she whispered hoarsely.
Rhuar sat up on his chair. "You remembered?", he said, surprise evident in his voice. "I thought you were unconscious."
"I was," said Jesri. "Anja filled me in later." She rested her head in her hands, elbows propped on her knees. "It doesn't change anything, though," she said sullenly. "I failed, and they got hurt. We all got hurt, so badly that we lost our good options. If Anja had to pick one of our bad options and they didn't make it out, that's on me."
"No, you don't understand," Rhuar said quietly. "We didn't just leave them. Anja-"
"I KNOW!", yelled Jesri, her face contorted with anguish. Her eyes glared at Rhuar's shocked face through a haze of pain and anger. "I fucking know what my sister did! Do you want to make me say it? She murdered a man and his children, people we had promised to protect! Innocent people!"
"But then-" started Rhuar, but she cut him off with an angry swipe of her hand.
"You think that makes it better?", she raged, "You think it takes any of the blame off my shoulders, just because I made my sister murder people by fucking up? You think just because she's not a fucking wreck about it like me that it makes her somehow responsible? I put her in a situation where we had only bad choices, and she chose the one that didn't end with them getting eaten alive by bandits. The one that didn't end with us all getting run down trying to carry them back."
Rhuar didn't know how to respond, so he didn't. Jesri dropped her glare and rested her head back in her hands, saying nothing. The dim bridge lights splayed multicolored highlights across her hair, which shimmered as she raised her head to look back at Rhuar.
"Don't judge Anja," she said, the anger gone from her voice. "She made the right move, even if it was a move nobody wanted to make. That's what she always does. That's why she's Anja." She sat up straight in her chair, looking down at Rhuar across the dais. "The universe doesn't owe anyone happy endings. Sometimes you're just left there picking which flavor of fucked you are. We both spent a long time learning that."
"If you're that helpless, where the fuck does that leave me?", he spat back. "I tried too, and that fucker just brushed me off like dust on the manifold. Are we just gonna tag along like useless pets until we're collateral for your mission? Is that how this ends?", asked Rhuar sullenly. "With Qktk and I dead because you ran out of good alternatives?"
Jesri laughed darkly. "Buddy, we're all dead. We're going up against an ancient alien superintelligence with unfathomable power and resources, and we've got no clear plan besides discovering someone else's desperate gamble and hoping we can fill in the blanks."
She shook her head and leaned back in her chair, her face hardening. "I'm not going to let it happen the same way again, though, not like on Harsi and not like back then. If we go out, we'll lose perfectly. We'll make the best damn plan possible, we'll execute it brilliantly and pull out every trick we can think of. We will bend space and time to our will, perform miracles and call down the wrath of ages past on the Gestalt's shiny genocidal ass. And at the end of all that, if it isn't enough," she said, looking over at Rhuar, "then I promise we'll all at least die together, as a team."
Rhuar gave her a sidelong look. "That is, without a doubt, the worst motivational speech I've ever heard. I feel more depressed now than when you started."
Jesri snorted. "I've been told I have a gift."
Rhuar chuffed out a quiet laugh and curled up in the seat of his chair, tucking his tail over his paws. "Okay," he said, his voice muffled. "I'm in. Here's to an insignificant and painful death."
Jesri laughed, a real laugh this time, and mimed a toast. "To irrelevance and agony."
They leaned back in their chairs on the dais and stared into the blackness beyond the viewports, awaiting their arrival at Zephyr.
---
Chapter up! Puppy tax.
"Ah, let's see," came Rhuar's voice in return. "Oh yeah, that fixed some of it. I've got some more power flowing to the secondary hyperdrive coils - wait, no, that's the tertiary hyperdrive coils. Why did you build ships with three fuckin hyperdrive coil sets?"
"In case the first two break?", said Jesri innocently. "I don't think you should be complaining about redundant engineering considering how much of this shit is broken."
"Fair," admitted Rhuar. "So that's two sets of coils working, all of the nav computers and about two-thirds of the field plates. All that's left is to get at least one of the White-Juday stabilizers online and we'll be good to go."
"Let's try for two," said Jesri tiredly. "Unless you want to try being a five-dimensional noodle when we spin up the drive." They had been running around for hours trying to repair the damage five thousand years of neglect had wrought upon the ship's systems. Although the primary systems were admirably intact, the fact was that the ship was well outside her maintenance schedule and mean-time-before-failure is never infinite.
She started walking back along the access corridor towards engineering, rolling her shoulder. "How's everyone else coming along?," she asked.
"Hmm, looks like Anja has the communications back online," he said, "as well as a few sensors we were missing. Captain Qktk has made good progress on the aft radiator array, and I've managed to reboot and restore all of the functioning key systems that needed it."
"Good work," said Jesri, somewhat surprised. The ship had been in rougher shape than she thought, but even with only four of them they were making very good time on the repairs.
Rhuar had been key. As worried as she was about his mental state while linked, Jesri had to admit he was a natural at isolating the errors and broken components that plagued the elderly ship. He was always monitoring their activity, providing directions, specifications or advice on the task at hand. He had even found and reactivated a small legion of maintenance bots that were currently waging war against the accumulated dust of millenia.
Jesri stretched, working out the kinks in her neck. "All right, sounds like we're good to go in a bit if you can get those stabilizers up," she said. "I'm going to hit the autodoc before we head out, I'll be back up on the bridge when I'm done."
"Righto," said Rhuar cheerfully.
---
She paced down to the end of the corridor, then dropped down a ladder to the hallway proper. She had been able to visit an autodoc here and there as needed, since almost all the transit stations could be counted on to have a few capable of handling her unique biology.
The gulf between the civilian docs and the military model she was about to hop into was immense, however. She hadn't been able to find a working military doc in nearly three thousand years, so the prospect of slipping into one was adding an extra bounce to her step.
She passed through a wide mess area crawling with tiny off-white robots that carved methodical slices away from the omnipresent blanket of dust. Faded faux-wood paneling and white tile gleamed where they had traveled, save for the areas still covered by the corpses of the ship's crew. Those waited for larger facilities robots, who would take the bodies to the morgue.
Jesri sighed. The morgue would overflow long before they managed to store all of the bodies. She hated to do it, but they would have to find a less dignified place to hold the fallen until they could come up with more suitable arrangements.
She passed beyond the mess, into another hall and then finally into the medbay. The robots had already been through this section, so every piece of equipment gleamed as if newly installed. Three autodocs sat at the rear of the room, each prominently featuring a wide cylinder open at the near end. As Jesri approached, the cap of the cylinder slid away smoothly.
The top retracted to show a flat bed of hard grey material raised slightly at the end to form a headrest. Shrugging her cloak on to the nearby exam table, Jesri quickly peeled off her clothing and sat on the bed. She scratched idly at the tight, shiny scars raking across her body while she modified a few settings on the doc's front panel, then nodded to herself and prepared to enter the machine. As she was pivoting to lay down, however, caution broke through her enthusiasm.
"Hey, Rhuar?", she said.
The speakers in the room crackled to life. "Yeah, what's up? I see you've come to a more enlightened stance on clothing."
"Hm?", said Jesri, looking down. "Oh. Not for your benefit, Ensign."
"Yep, yep, cutting visual feed," he said hastily. "Aye aye, sir. Ma'am."
"It's sir," Jesri said, a trace of irritation creeping into her voice. "I need to know the status of these autodocs. Which of them is in the best condition?"
"Hmm, let's see," grumbled Rhuar. "Well, hop off the one you're sitting on now, that one's no good. Looks like the far one is out of order as well. The middle one… yeah, that'll work." He paused for a second. "Okay, open the access panel on the middle one, rear hatch."
Jesri worked her way back to the rear of the huge machine and popped open a thin hatch, revealing numerous brightly-colored electrical components. She paused expectantly for several seconds before realizing she had told Rhuar to cut his feed. "Okay," she said loudly. "I'm here."
"Good, good!", said Rhuar eagerly. "Okay, do you see a big brown data card up top that has "P3308" on it?"
Jesri peered into the hatch, searching around a bit before spotting a green card on the circuit board with a matching label. "You mean this one up top on the right? Yeah, I see it."
"Remove it from the board, that component is broken," he said. "We're going to take one from the first machine and swap it out."
Jesri reached her hand in the hatch and paused a few inches away. Small blinking lights on the board illuminated her fingers in a pastiche of amber and blue. "Hey, big guy," she said, "you going to cut the power to the machine for me or should I just stick my hand in there and see how it goes?"
"Ah, fuck. Sorry," he said sheepishly. "Power cut."
The lights winked off and the hum of the machine faded from imperceptibility into nothingness. Jesri gave it a count of five for the capacitors, then reached in to pull the card. It came out with a satisfyingly mechanical choonk in her hand, a razor-thin array of boards stacked within a sturdy metal frame. "Okay," she said. "Card out."
"Great, now pull the card from the other machine. I've already cut the power, no need to rub it in," Rhuar muttered. "Have the card? Good, now slot it into the other board, that should bring it to full functionality."
Jesri did as instructed, pushing the card lightly into the slot until it stopped at the end with a vanishingly faint click. "It's in," she said, shutting the hatch.
There was a pause before Rhuar spoke, scored with the faint whine of power rushing back into the machine. "You sure?", he said. "I don't see it connecting. Try giving it a push."
Jesri gingerly pushed down on the card, which didn't move. "Looks like it's in," she said. "Should I try the one from the other machine?"
"No," came the reply. "Give the card another push, it's definitely not seated."
Jesri frowned and pushed harder on the card. She felt a minor give and increased the pressure even more. The card slid in another few millimeters with a sickening cracking noise before coming to a stop. "Ah, shit," she said. "Rhuar, I think it's broken."
"No, that's great," said Rhuar cheerfully. "Everything looks fine from up here. Go ahead and hop on in."
"Rhuar," she said evenly. "I am about to have my body rearranged in microscopic detail by a sensitive piece of medical equipment that has been gathering dust for millennia and may have just suffered a part failure. Please run another diagnostic."
"Okay, fine, just one second," said Rhuar testily. Jesri folded her arms and waited. "Okay," he said after a few dozen seconds. "I've triple-checked everything. The machine thinks it's working just fine."
She sighed and climbed in. "You couldn't have phrased that less reassuringly. If I'm not out in an hour, send your maintenance robots to clean up what's left of me." The cylinder slid shut around her, and Jesri was enclosed in darkness.
---
Anja strolled off the lift and back to the ops area, where Qktk and Rhuar stood conversing around a console. Rhuar had unjacked for a break, his exoskeletal arms smoothing the fur around his data port mindlessly. Qktk noticed Anja first and gave her a small wave.
"Hello!", she chirped happily at the two. "All systems go?"
Rhuar nodded distractedly. "Yeah, it looks like the drive is good, Jesri patched it up before she jumped in the autodoc. We've got full environmental, sensors, comms." He paged through the report on the console, pausing here and there to make note of an entry. "We should probably think about finding a source of deuterium before we do anything too energy-intensive. Ship seems to think our current stores will be good for a while, but if we start jumping all over the map it'd be nice to have some extra."
Anja nodded. "Okay, I have a few places we could visit," she mused. "How are we on materiel?"
"Uhhh," mumbled Rhuar, paging through the readout. "We've got a whole fuckin mountain of railgun slugs for the CIWS and CQB emplacements, so we're good there. A full complement of long-range torpedoes too, but I haven't had a chance to check the engines out. There's a few other specialized weapons systems, but this report is just abbreviations that I can't make any fuckin sense of without the jack." He squinted at the display and scratched his port under his fur. "This HCPL is probably that plasma lance thing I was looking at before, we've got a thousand shots or so there and it seems to be in working order. We've got about fifty rounds for the other one, says it's a WCML?"
"Ooooh," cooed Anja. "We have a whack-a-mole? That's so fun, I've always wanted to see one of those in person."
Rhuar gave her a flat look. "There is no way that's what that stands for. What does that even mean?"
Anja shrugged. "No idea, some old joke. I forget what the actual name is, something official-sounding that nobody ever used. It's fun, you'll see." She bent down to the console, paging through a few more entries. "What else, what else…" She chewed on her lower lip. "We have some fighters, that's good, a pair of shuttles, a Huginn fast attack craft, hm. We could do a lot with these."
"Only one of the shuttles works," Rhuar pointed out. "I also haven't had a chance to do full checks on the other craft, or to pull diagnostics on your suits."
"Three out of four suits functional," said Jesri, striding on to the bridge. She walked close to the others and grinned impishly. "I checked earlier. What do you think?"
Rhuar fumbled for a reply and found none, so he just stared. Jesri had left her cloak and old clothing back in the medbay and was clad in a TNMC duty uniform, a trim charcoal jacket and trousers with a gunmetal collared shirt and slim black tie.
Gold piping adorned her left shoulder beneath thin shoulder boards marked with the silver triple-bar and flared wings of a Valkyrie captain. Her knife and pistol looked especially well-used in contrast to their slim holsters, which looked and smelled for all the worlds like the few leather artifacts he'd encountered. Rhuar had no idea how she had managed that trick.
Anja clapped her hands excitedly. "Sister, you look incredible! Is the autodoc working, then? And the fabricators, obviously."
Jesri nodded. "Yes, Rhuar was a great help with the doc." She winked at him, eliciting a grumble in response. He found it hard to be irritated with her, however. While Jesri had always been an intense presence, she had been hard and distant with flashes of her good humor shining through. Where there was hard steel before, Rhuar saw flashing quicksilver in its place. She seemed young, vital, brimming with energy.
The changes were more than just affectations of personality, though - as Rhuar looked he could see where her skin was smoother, her movements more fluid, her dark hair lustrous and her eyes sparkling. He made a mental note to see if the doc worked on dogs.
He realized with a start that Jesri was talking to him. "I'm sorry," he interrupted, "I didn't catch that."
Jesri gave him a look. "I was asking if you feel up to taking this barge on a jump."
Despite himself, Rhuar felt a thrill run down his spine. His mind raced through the status reports and schematics he had been poring over most of the day, and he keyed his vocalizer to respond with his professional artificer's assessment of their readiness. "Fuck yeah," he said.
Jesri smirked. "Let's get to it, then. First stop is Zephyr, the coordinates are already in the nav comp." She ascended the dais, black boots clicking on the deck, and both sisters took their seats. Qktk secured the navigator's station, and Rhuar moved back to his pilot's post to once again interface with the colossal ship.
"I hope you don't mind if I do this kinda slow," he said as he jacked in, feeling the pressure of the ship's massive flood of data straining against his mental barriers. A few select streams of information were allowed through to spiral into his brain, and he keyed up the jump parameters. He took a deep, steadying breath, then approved the jump sequence.
"Warning, jump imminent," cautioned a calm feminine voice. The bridge lights dimmed, supplemented with amber caution lamps. Qktk looked around nervously and fastened his restraints, and a low hum began to vibrate through the ship. Outside the viewports, the stars began to slowly drift as the ship aligned itself for an exit.
They waited in silence for a long minute. Qktk tapped his legs nervously against the armrest of his chair. "Mr. Rhuar," he clacked, "Is everything all right?"
Rhuar shot him an annoyed glance. "This isn't the Leviathan, Captain, it's like driving a fuckin asteroid." He patted the console. "Sorry, babe, but it's true." Qktk trilled softly, but otherwise stayed quiet as the ship continued in its slow turn towards the exit vector.
"Okay, pretty lady," said Rhuar, the stars outside the viewports sliding to a stop, "let's see how you dance."
Another warning tone sounded throughout the ship, and the hum from the drives escalated to an insistent low tone. Rhuar could feel it in his bones, or in the ship's superstructure - he felt the tide of sensation pressing against him through the jack, flitting around the periphery of his vision. He locked it away and concentrated, initializing the hyperspace window.
Unlike smaller ships that had to take advantage of mass ramps to achieve any sort of meaningful speed, the Grand Design could forge its own path into the inky depths of hyperspace. A patch of space in front of the bow rippled and bent, swelling to hundreds of meters across and stretching thin.
The circular distortion seemed to vibrate as if under tension. Light from the stars behind it bunched and swam around its periphery, warping into smudged and lensed streaks. Slowly, the stars in the middle crept towards the edge of the ring to join in the coiled twists of light that danced there. The spread accelerated, faster and faster, the final stars smearing like oil across the stretched canvas of space-time until it quivered and tore. The middle of the ring snapped apart with a flash of energy to leave a yawning void into the trackless abyss of hyperspace.
Rhuar marveled at it, letting a few more sensor feeds through to bathe his brain in the wash of data from the ship. "That is so fucking cool," he observed. "Okay, executing jump in three, two, one..." The coils spiked in pitch and the gateway swept aft in a blur of twisted space and crackling energy, devouring the length of the ship in an eyeblink before snapping shut behind them.
---
Jesri and Rhuar sat alone on the bridge, watching the oppressive blackness through the viewports. The jump had taken them deep, deep into the bowels of hyperspace, where light was a distant memory. Even the interior lights of the ships seemed to dim in deference to the total night outside.
On the upshot, that meant they were moving screamingly fast. It had taken five hours to make the trip from Harsi, but the slightly longer trip back planewards to Zephyr would take a mere two. Anja had taken the opportunity to visit the autodoc, while Qktk had excused himself to fetch some personal items from the Leviathan.
Rhuar looked over at Jesri, who was staring contemplatively into the inky murk outside. "Have you been to Zephyr before?", he asked.
"Hm?", she replied, seeming to have just remembered he was there. "Ah, yes, several times. It was a major military logistics hub and had a few research groups that were involved in the Valkyrie program. We would often stage or resupply from there." Her eyes took on a distant look. "I always loved going there. The sky was a peculiar shade of teal and the plants were vibrant red, very striking. Big, beautiful oceans over half the planet."
Rhuar shuddered. "I don't know if I could walk around on a planet like that. Just out there in the universe with no suit, breathing unfiltered air and standing on rocks and dirt and shit." He laid his ears back in disgust. "Yeah, no thanks."
Jesri gave him a sad smile. "You probably don't have to worry about it. I haven't been back since the fall, but Zephyr was hit just like all of the other planets. If the atmosphere wasn't totally blown away, it'll be a thin mix of nitrogen dioxide and ozone - not breathable under any circumstances."
Rhuar had the grace to look abashed. "Sorry, didn't mean to, uh." He paused, glancing away awkwardly before gamely rushing back into the conversation. "Where are we going on Zephyr? One of your old research labs?"
Jesri let her breath out slowly, thinking. "Not sure, to be honest. There were a few places that would be reasonable to store something like the weapon. I was hoping we could use the ship sensors to narrow it down, but we may end up having to brute-force search on the ground. Most of the potential sites are clustered in one big research park, but we may have to shuttle-hop to get between some of the others."
Rhuar started to speak again, but said nothing and settled back. After a pregnant pause, he looked back at Jesri. "Do you need me to pilot the shuttle, or…?"
Jesri frowned. Something in Rhuar's voice was strained, tense. "You can if you want to," she said slowly, "but I was actually going to fly this one with Anja. I planned on having you up here in case we need to do a quick evac."
His relief was palpable, and it showed as he flopped back into his chair despite his deliberate efforts at nonchalance. Jesri's frown softened, but she pressed forward. "Okay, out with it. Why don't you want to go?"
Rhuar fidgeted, chewing on his paw for a few seconds. Eventually he lifted his head and looked her in the eye. "Harsi…", he said hesitantly, "well, it wasn't what I expected."
"It was rough," Jesri admitted. "I probably would have recommended that you stay back if I had known how bad the locals were going to be."
"I'm not talking about the bandits, I expected that someone might come after us," he said with a slight shake of his head. "You didn't see everything that went on, after the fight was over."
Jesri pursed her lips. "You mean with Kenet-Tel and his kids." Rhuar nodded. Jesri sighed and dragged her fingers through her hair, mussing it and leaving strands jutting in odd directions. The youth and vitality she had exuded since using the autodoc slipped away, leaving her face worn and tired once more. "That was my fault," she said at last, her voice hoarse. "I couldn't stop the bandit, couldn't get over to you guys in time."
Rhuar shook his head vigorously. "Jesri, that was not your fault. That one was fuckin fast and dangerous, nobody could have done better." He swallowed. "Besides, it didn't kill them." He looked at Jesri significantly, ears flat back against his head.
Jesri gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head. "I know," she whispered hoarsely.
Rhuar sat up on his chair. "You remembered?", he said, surprise evident in his voice. "I thought you were unconscious."
"I was," said Jesri. "Anja filled me in later." She rested her head in her hands, elbows propped on her knees. "It doesn't change anything, though," she said sullenly. "I failed, and they got hurt. We all got hurt, so badly that we lost our good options. If Anja had to pick one of our bad options and they didn't make it out, that's on me."
"No, you don't understand," Rhuar said quietly. "We didn't just leave them. Anja-"
"I KNOW!", yelled Jesri, her face contorted with anguish. Her eyes glared at Rhuar's shocked face through a haze of pain and anger. "I fucking know what my sister did! Do you want to make me say it? She murdered a man and his children, people we had promised to protect! Innocent people!"
"But then-" started Rhuar, but she cut him off with an angry swipe of her hand.
"You think that makes it better?", she raged, "You think it takes any of the blame off my shoulders, just because I made my sister murder people by fucking up? You think just because she's not a fucking wreck about it like me that it makes her somehow responsible? I put her in a situation where we had only bad choices, and she chose the one that didn't end with them getting eaten alive by bandits. The one that didn't end with us all getting run down trying to carry them back."
Rhuar didn't know how to respond, so he didn't. Jesri dropped her glare and rested her head back in her hands, saying nothing. The dim bridge lights splayed multicolored highlights across her hair, which shimmered as she raised her head to look back at Rhuar.
"Don't judge Anja," she said, the anger gone from her voice. "She made the right move, even if it was a move nobody wanted to make. That's what she always does. That's why she's Anja." She sat up straight in her chair, looking down at Rhuar across the dais. "The universe doesn't owe anyone happy endings. Sometimes you're just left there picking which flavor of fucked you are. We both spent a long time learning that."
"If you're that helpless, where the fuck does that leave me?", he spat back. "I tried too, and that fucker just brushed me off like dust on the manifold. Are we just gonna tag along like useless pets until we're collateral for your mission? Is that how this ends?", asked Rhuar sullenly. "With Qktk and I dead because you ran out of good alternatives?"
Jesri laughed darkly. "Buddy, we're all dead. We're going up against an ancient alien superintelligence with unfathomable power and resources, and we've got no clear plan besides discovering someone else's desperate gamble and hoping we can fill in the blanks."
She shook her head and leaned back in her chair, her face hardening. "I'm not going to let it happen the same way again, though, not like on Harsi and not like back then. If we go out, we'll lose perfectly. We'll make the best damn plan possible, we'll execute it brilliantly and pull out every trick we can think of. We will bend space and time to our will, perform miracles and call down the wrath of ages past on the Gestalt's shiny genocidal ass. And at the end of all that, if it isn't enough," she said, looking over at Rhuar, "then I promise we'll all at least die together, as a team."
Rhuar gave her a sidelong look. "That is, without a doubt, the worst motivational speech I've ever heard. I feel more depressed now than when you started."
Jesri snorted. "I've been told I have a gift."
Rhuar chuffed out a quiet laugh and curled up in the seat of his chair, tucking his tail over his paws. "Okay," he said, his voice muffled. "I'm in. Here's to an insignificant and painful death."
Jesri laughed, a real laugh this time, and mimed a toast. "To irrelevance and agony."
They leaned back in their chairs on the dais and stared into the blackness beyond the viewports, awaiting their arrival at Zephyr.
---
Chapter up! Puppy tax.
Part 11
- Location
- USA
Qktk didn't have much use for planets. The Htt were a nomadic people, a tradition that stretched back to the days when young and ambitious Htt would swim between the thin sandbars that were their ancestral home in search of food and mates.
Volumes of poetry and prose were set down in the decades following the destruction of the Htt homeworld, lamenting the loss of the sandy beaches and clear warm water they loved. Generations of his people flocked to Earth after the Home Fleet had negotiated settlement rights with the humans, yearning to find their old home once more in its tropics.
Qktk had other opinions. As far as he was concerned, the coarse sand and filthy water of the few unspoiled planet-bound oceans remaining could stay right where they were. A clean bunk and a trim ship were his cozy sandbar, the stars his warm waters. Still, for all his disdain and distaste it was hard to see the ruined corpse of a once-vital planet, knowing what it had been.
He looked out the viewport. They had arrived at Zephyr mere minutes ago, but the mood on the bridge had plummeted at seeing the destruction wrought there. Angry orange cracks spiderwebbed the surface, venting foul gas and dust into the rarefied atmosphere. Vast basins stretched bare and scorched where oceans had once been, their water long ago lost to the hellscape surrounding them.
Anja and Jesri had been studying the planet with solemn looks for several minutes now. Anja had come back from the autodoc just before they arrived at Zephyr, and was now clad like Jesri in a charcoal and grey duty uniform, the sole difference being the gold major's starburst on her shoulder boards. Their presence lent the bridge an odd air of gravitas, as if the ship was still part of a larger navy. It was easy to believe, watching them gaze out in their stoic grief, that a similarly-clad staff of officers waited just out of sight rather than seven decks down in the morgue.
He glanced at Rhuar, who noticed and gave him an encouraging toss of his head. Qktk acknowledged him with a wave of a forelimb. His artificer and pilot had taken to working with the two not-humans well, perhaps because of his shared Terran heritage. Or, perhaps it was simply the difference between Qktk's sanguine personality and Rhuar's casually outgoing tendencies.
Qktk wasn't really sure what he was doing here, staring into the face of the apocalypse. He was a good freighter captain despite lacking any natural inclination for the job. He had secure income from his cargo hauling and locksmithing careers, a good ship and good prospects. He wasn't sure when a simple passenger job had turned into a mission to save the universe against impossible odds. Often he felt like jumping back in the Leviathan and fleeing to the nearest station, never to return.
And yet, there was precious little opportunity to sink a solid foundation into the shifting sands left after the fall of humanity. Indeed, if what Anja said about the Gestalt's plans was true there may be no opportunity. Why not, then? Why not Qktk the fighter, Qktk the warrior, Qktk the hero? Because of his stature, or his temperament? Simply because he was Qktk?
But who was this Qktk, to constrain him so? He sat pondering the blasted planet ahead of them. Perhaps tasks like theirs were how one created that definition.
---
Jesri tore her eyes away from the viewport and looked over at her sister. Although fresh from the autodoc, lines already creased Anja's face as she stared out at the devastation wrought on Zephyr. Anja met her gaze, then turned back to look out of the viewport.
«Nothing is left down there,» Anja's voice said. Jesri experienced a brief moment of disorientation - it had been over a millennium since her communications implant had failed. The autodoc had restored it, giving her access to ship functions without cumbersome vocal commands - but also the very handy ability to share a voice link. True networked communication was forbidden for security reasons, but her creators had at least seen the utility of a silent means of more traditional conversation.
«This was more than a gamma-ray burst,» she replied, relishing the feedback from the link after so long. Anja broadcast back a wordless agreement, but did not speak further.
Rhuar, however, was not inclined to be silent. "No disrespect intended," he mused, "but that planet looks a hell of a lot worse than I thought it would. I thought GRBs were mostly destructive to life and the atmosphere, not the planet itself."
Anja looked back at him. "That is correct, Ensign," she said neutrally. Rhuar shied back a bit at her tone, but Anja continued. "The tectonic disruption and increased volcanism are mostly consistent with a relativistic kinetic impact."
Rhuar's mouth dropped open a bit. "Wait, what? How kinetic are we talking?"
"Hard to say without knowing the size of the projectile," Jesri sighed. "A rock a few hundred meters wide moving at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed would do it. Zephyr had early warning systems designed specifically to monitor for high-speed kinetics, as did any major world, but if they attacked after the GRB..." She shrugged, leaving the rest unsaid.
"But why?", clicked Qktk. "The GRBs killed everyone, didn't they? Why go through the extra effort to utterly destroy the surface?"
"To destroy something the radiation wouldn't kill," Anja said darkly. "To make certain something on the surface would be lost forever."
"Wait," said Rhuar, "you're not thinking the weapon was down there, are you?"
Jesri brushed her hair back, toying with the ends. "Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. The fact that there were multiple versions of the schedule means that there was misdirection in play. If it worked, the weapon wasn't where the enemy thought it was."
Anja nodded her agreement. "At this point it is clear we lack some vital information about the original plan. We cannot say definitively where the weapon was or should have been. The only thing left to do is to check the other planets."
She turned towards Rhuar, straightening up noticeably. Despite himself, Rhuar stood at attention in response. "Ensign, set a course for Tengri and jump through. I do not want to stay here longer than we have to."
"Aye, m-," Rhuar cut off his voice box, glancing at Jesri, "uh, sir. Aye sir."
Anja smiled and ruffled the fur on his head. "Good… ensign," she purred.
Rhuar grumbled and stalked off towards the shipjack.
---
After they were safely away Rhuar removed the shipjack and slumped against the console, panting. Jesri gave him a concerned look. "Hey, you okay?", she asked, moving to stand beside him.
"Yeah," he said, artificial voice steady despite his winded state. "I'll be good through the end of the jump. Would like a break when we get to Tengri, though, I'm still not used to this link." He shot a frustrated and longing look back at the dangling shipjack, ears twitching rapidly.
"Can't promise the whole place won't be on or under fire, but barring that - sure," Jesri said, clapping him on the shoulder and smiling. "You're doing great, most pilots took months or years to work their way up to cruiser links."
Qktk crossed his arms. "Do you think it's likely that the planets will all be destroyed?", he asked.
"No, probably not," replied Anja, shaking her head. "The Gestalt displayed a great ability to project power from installations in its home space when it attacked, but we never observed it operating physically outside its home sector in any significant way." She hesitated, then added, "Until today, that is. Even so, I believe that is an exception. We were aware of a few dozen of its Emissaries, but not enough to coordinate this sort of action across many planets at once."
"Given thousands of years, even a small force could address a dozen planets or so in that manner," replied Qktk, shaking his head. "I suppose we will see."
Jesri sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. "Only one way to find out," she sighed.
Rhuar, somewhat recovered from the jump, sat up and cocked his head at Anja. "You said you had some intelligence on these Emissaries. What are they like?"
"They vary in form," said Anja, steepling her fingers. "The consensus was that each was unique and built for a particular purpose. The first ones we encountered were big, half the size of the Grand Design and able to travel alone through space. Initially we thought they were some sort of intelligent drone ships, but after our first contact smaller bipedal versions started showing up to try and communicate."
"Do you think it created the bipeds just to talk with you?", asked Qktk. "It's odd that it would care enough to make the effort, given its other actions."
"There was a lot of discussion on that front," agreed Jesri, "but we never really nailed down its motivations. It's possible that it was just whimsy, if it has a thing like that." She made a face. "We really don't know enough about it to make guesses."
Qktk rattled his mandibles unhappily. "And yet this weapon is supposed to be effective, when we know this little about the enemy? We're relying on too many things we know nothing about."
Anja nodded, grimacing. "I know," she said sadly. "But no matter how we proceed, the next step has to be obtaining the weapon. Even if it does not answer all of our questions, it will at least provide a better foundation to pursue the missing answers."
Qktk nodded, although he did not look mollified. Rhuar sighed. "If you don't mind," he said, leveraging himself to his feet, "I'm going to go catch an hour of sleep before we arrive." He hopped up into a nearby chair and curled up on the seat, tucking his tail over his paws. "Wake me up before we crash into Tengri."
---
Tengri had been a sparsely populated world even before it was attacked, with a relatively thin atmosphere and little water. The predominant geography was wide, rolling hills and endless plains which were covered in the local grass analogue. A few aggressively saline inland seas and anemic rivers provided some respite from the arid climate, hosting chaparral and scraggly vinelike plants that crowded against the shore.
No longer. The already-lacking atmosphere had been further depleted, and what was left formed a hazy brown fog rich in nitrogen oxides. Although higher in oxygen than in centuries past, the atmosphere was still nowhere near breathable. Any water on the surface had frozen and sublimated away long ago. The landmass had lost its brownish-green covering of grasses to show the faded blue of the clay-rich soil below.
On the ground, grey-brown fog floated low across the hills and over frozen, mummified grass. A light, glaring and harsh in the gloom, shone through the fog to cast sharp-edged shadows from hummocks and rocks across the plain. Billowing clouds parted to reveal a descending shuttle, drive flaring brightly as it sank towards the clay. The landing skids of the shuttle touched down and the landscape was once again was plunged into darkness.
The rear ramp opened and two figures strode onto the stygian plain. Anja was clad in full Valkyrie armor, artificial muscles rippling as she strode out from the ship. She carried her rifle high and ready, the hilt of her sword protruding up at an angle from her back. The splayed ridges of the suit's feet sank into the clay, snapping dead stalks of grass and cutting semicircles into the ground.
Jesri followed behind her, wielding a smaller rifle and wearing a heavy-framed respirator. Panels of light body armor layered over her shoulders, torso and legs, while a heated compression wrap formed a barrier against the thin and freezing gases outside. She came up behind Anja and keyed the ramp, which sealed in a hiss of hydraulics.
«Ready?», asked Anja, broadcasting through the suit.
Jesri gave a quick nod. «Go ahead. I'll follow.»
The suit whined as its legs tromped forwards, sending ribbons of clay pattering over frozen grass. Jesri crept behind with her head on a swivel, making no sound as she moved. They advanced forward in the hazy twilight for half an hour before they saw the corroded remnants of a metal fence jutting up from the soil.
The sturdy supports and thick panels were pocked with holes and pits, supplemented every so often by the nearly-unrecognizable warning placards rusting against them. Anja pushed through it as if it were packed mud, the ruined metal crumbling at her touch.
«We're getting close,» Jesri noted.
They pushed forward for a few more minutes before the first buildings came into view. Squat concrete structures emerged from the fog as lumps of indistinct shadow, resolving themselves into the rounded corners and narrow windows of a bunker.
This was the Tengri listening post, an off-the-books installation that was the only significant military presence on the planet. They had spent hours pinging the surface to narrow down its location, only succeeding when Rhuar performed some truly inspired work with the sensors to get a reading off what was left of its heavy metal support beams.
Anja advanced towards it, stopping short as she approached the door. It had been opened forcefully, cut away from its hinges and discarded beside the doorway. She shared a look with Jesri, then stepped in with her weapon ready. Nothing moved as they entered, but a swath cleared through the coating of dust betrayed the presence of others in the recent past.
Jesri advanced behind Anja, squinting through the cloud of dust raised by the suit's passage. The facility had been stripped bare, with consoles hacked out of walls and equipment conspicuously absent from niches trailing wires and ports.
«Thieves,» Anja seethed, her fists clenching. «They took everything.»
«Let's check around,» replied Jesri. «We need to confirm if the weapon was here.»
They passed through room after room of spare concrete and dust, Anja crouching low to pass under the stooped bunker door frames. Each was nearly identical save for the occasional debris, but in the fifth room they came upon the remnants of a massive security door. Like the front door, it had been severed from its mounting and thrown beside the door to lean haphazardly against the bunker wall.
«See how shiny it is on the edges?», said Jesri, indicating the sides of the door. «It hasn't been out in the air long. Whoever raided this place was here recently.» She ducked her head around to check the backside of the door, then stepped back with a frown. «Anja, can you move the door away from the wall?», she asked.
Anja stepped over and lifted the heavy slab of metal, her suit's muscles straining with the effort. She stood it upright, one hand resting on top. «Shit,» she said venomously. «It was here.»
Jesri moved around to see the backside of the door. The surface was covered with the same tarnish as everything in the bunker, but the remnants of a sign stood out on the front. The visible letters spelled out: "NTRA: NO".
«MANTRA, no entry. Just like on the ship,» Jesri agreed. «Let's search the rest, see if there's anything interesting.» She split off to look over the inside of the vault while Anja stomped over to the next room down the hall.
A short while later they grouped back up at the entrance to the bunker. Anja was empty-handed, her frustration evident even over the comm link. Jesri had come up with a single broken cylinder etched with a symbol on the side, a few lines of geometric alien text spiraling across it.
«It's not the weapon,» she said, «but it is a lead. Let's take this back up to the ship and see if we can learn something from it.» Anja nodded stiffly, the suit's helmet jerking as it mimicked her. Together they turned and left the bunker, picking their way through the eerie mists back towards the shuttle.
---
"It looks like lines," Rhuar said, tilting his head to get a better look at the object. "Are you sure that's writing?"
Jesri nodded. "The ship can't recognize it, but it's definitely text. See how the glyphs are formed by the combination of intersecting angles?"
Rhuar scrunched up his face. "No," he said, "but I'll take your word for it. How does that help us if the ship can't read it?"
"Well, for starters, it lets us know that it's not a species we made contact with pre-fall," mused Jesri, turning the cylinder over in her hands. "Otherwise they'd be in the database."
"Let me see that," said Qktk, clattering over to peer at their find. Jesri handed it over, and Qktk turned it over to look at the text.
"This is Ysleli," he said definitively, handing it back. "See that symbol up top? That's the royal seal."
Rhuar blinked. "Captain, you sure? I've never seen anything like this before."
Qktk rolled an eye at him. "Mr. Rhuar, I did have a career before I hired you on. It's how I learned I should outsource my technical work, among other things." He jabbed a foreleg at the text spiraling around the cylinder. "I used to run out of a station that imported most of their food from Ysl, and I recognize the seal and script from the bills of lading. If I'm not very much mistaken, the cylinder is the casing of a writing implement."
Jesri rubbed the seal with her thumb. "Any idea what it says?", she asked.
Qktk took the casing back and turned it over, studying the crosshatched lines. "I was never very good at reading Yslel," he grumbled. "Let's see. This glyphrow is the sequence for the current royal house, and the next is some sort of baronial commission…" He paced back and forth, rotating the cylinder several times. "Well, I have good news and bad news," he said, looking up at the group.
Anja inclined her head impatiently, and he hurried to continue. "The good news is that the items from the site are probably all on Ysl," he said. "The bad news is that this pen belonged to the Ysleli Royal Expeditionary Corps of Archaeologists."
Jesri made a face. "They took the listening post's contents for study? Like in a museum?" She took the pen back and sighed, shaking her head. "I'm getting a premonition about this being a pain in our ass."
Anja smiled. "On the contrary. Now that we know where it is, we can go there and obtain it."
"And if they don't want to hand over their collection?", Rhuar asked, scratching his ear. "They've obviously invested resources in this project. If they're any kind of smart, they've got the important stuff at a lab locked up tight for their military."
"We can ask… persuasively," Anja grinned. She swept her arm wide, taking in the whole of the bridge. "I believe I can lend our argument a fair degree of rhetorical weight."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," said Jesri, hiding her face in her hands. "The last time I heard you talk like that was when we had to retrieve those stolen plans from Barbos."
"We got those plans, as I recall," Anja replied mildly.
Jesri looked up at her, exasperated. "You opened negotiations by blowing up their moon."
"And concluded negotiations successfully the same day," she responded primly, "all returned in exchange for some much-needed orbital debris cleanup. Don't worry," she continued, waving off Jesri's objections, "I wasn't thinking of blowing up their moon. Though..." She looked at Qktk. "Does Ysl have a moon?", she asked thoughtfully.
"Thankfully, no," mumbled Qktk.
"See?", said Anja cheerfully. "No need to be such a grump, sister. I was planning on simply showing up in-system and asking nicely."
"...in your kilometer-long battleship?", inquired Rhuar.
"Cruiser," nodded Anja, "but yes. I think that should be sufficient."
Most of Qktk's eyes winced. "Perhaps not," he said. "From what I know of the Ysleli, that might be a bad decision. Their monarch rules by strength, keeping his barons in line by threat of military force. He would be opening himself up to opportunists if he capitulated to a threat of force, no matter how much we outmatch him." Qktk pondered. "Which may not be a given, actually. They're a belligerent sort of people, I imagine their standing navy is quite large."
Anja waved dismissively. "Quantity against quality. I doubt they have anything that can pose an issue if we press our case."
"Whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not?", Jesri snarked. "Is that really how you want to play this?"
"This is beyond matters of preference," Anja snapped back, suddenly irritated. "Sister, are you saying you would allow some up-jumped warlord to rattle his saber and stall the mission?"
"No," soothed Jesri. "I agree that we need to get the weapon from Ysl. I'm just saying that we should make a reasonable effort to plan further than 'ask for the weapon and shoot everyone that says no.'"
"Yes, please," said Qktk fervently. "The Ysleli are proud and arrogant. If you make this an issue of strength they will force you to kill thousands of them."
"That's on the table, given the stakes," Anja noted grimly. "But I agree it would be best to avoid it. Any ideas as to how?"
They sat in silence for a while.
Qktk spoke first. "Perhaps we can use their combativeness against them," he mused. "Their society places great importance on conflicts between the powerful. If we show up and present a compelling show of force, they will all be focused on us."
Jesri considered, nodding her head. "Yeah, that could work." She looked over at Anja, who was stroking her chin contemplatively.
Anja met her eyes and shrugged. "We can always fall back to plan B. I assume you're thinking both of us should be on the ground team?"
"Wait, what?", Qktk interjected. "If you're both going to ground, who will command the ship? Who will communicate with their navy?"
"Don't look at me," objected Rhuar. "It'll take everything I've got just to pilot this barge in a straight line without melting my brain out my ears. Besides, if the ship can't translate I can't talk to them anyway - I've never even heard of Ysl before today."
Everyone looked at Qktk.
---
Lytrlas watched the green-grey plains of Ysl spin by below him, fluffy white clouds sporadically streaking across the mottled terrain. Being posted on picket duty was boring, but the view and solitude suited him well. Many considered the posting drudge work, offering no opportunity for earning distinction against foes - a clerkship, not a real military posting.
He couldn't disagree, but it didn't bother him. After several years of this, he could transfer to the Royal Naval Academy and lead his unit as an officer. The rewards were delayed compared to seeking his honor more directly, but it was much less risky to take the field as a lieutenant than as a grunt in the baronial carabiniers. His colleagues were focused on next year, but he was already considering the quality of his retirement. It was important to look ahead.
A flashing light on the console jolted him from his reverie and he pushed himself to float towards it, claws hooking into the retention straps to keep from drifting aimlessly in the microgravity. He sighed. Another incoming vessel. Dialing up his sensors, he noted that it was not broadcasting the required IFF beacon - why could these idiot freighter captains never remember the proper approach sequence?
"Unidentified vessel," he broadcast in a bored monotone, keeping his words clipped and professional, "you are entering the domain of His Royal Majesty Sitrl, long life and glory to the King. Activate your transponder and approach this station for inspection and customs."
He took great pride in the emotionless affect that was the de facto standard for all traffic controllers, his voice never wavering in the face of irate captains or bellicose minor lords spewing threats. Such things never ended well for the party that allowed emotion to cloud their judgment, and he knew he had the backing of His Majesty's Navy as long as he stuck to protocol.
He did allow a slight crease around his eyes as the ship failed to respond, however. Perhaps they were having system trouble? "Unidentified vessel, activate your transponder and slow to two hundred ri immediately," he droned. "Failure to comply will result in interdiction."
He punched up the sensor feed details, scanning through. It appeared to be a custom ship, extensively modified, as the superstructure was not a match for anything in the database. It was slim, if a bit boxy, and was drifting in without engine power. His face creased further as he studied the readout - the reactor signature was dim, but didn't match anything he had scanned previously. Whatever this ship was, it was foreign. A Ysleli ship would never dare run the picket line, but barbarians had no honor. Today might be exciting after all, he allowed.
"Unidentified vessel, this is your final warning," he broadcast, his voice as level as still water. "Activate your transponder and heave to or you… will…" He trailed off, his eyes bulging as a giant slice of space behind the approaching ship rippled and deformed, the stars gliding outwards to form a twisted ring of light. A void grew at the center of the ring until the fabric of space parted violently to show the deep darkness of hyperspace beyond. Out of this gargantuan portal the prow of an impossibly large ship emerged, lines of white fire curling and snapping around it as it transitioned back to real space.
Lytrlas stood transfixed as the ship slid inexorably into being in front of him, hundreds of lesa in length and still coming. It outmassed any ship he had ever seen, if not any task force. Strange markings decorated the aft section, just afore of the blazing engines casting their actinic light into the cloud of rapidly dissipating plasma wreathing the portal.
As the ship emerged fully and the portal shrank to nothingness behind them, an image crackled to life on the hailer. He shrank back as he beheld the monstrous insectile face filling his screen, its clustering of eyes glinting like dark glass and mandibles clattering threateningly. It shook itself and spoke, the staccato clicks of its voice echoing through the customs post.
"Attention Ysl tiny ship!", it said in broken Yslel. "Ship ours honorable talk! Shipmaster Qktk! Ship yours honorable talk!" It paused for a moment, seeming to consider its words. "Talk now," it amended ominously.
His mouth working soundlessly, Lytrlas had the presence of mind to reach over and key the emergency beacon on his console. A signal raced out to the naval customs task force on patrol in this sector, although he didn't know what they could do against this behemoth captained by a thousand-eyed nightmare beast. He flicked the hailer controls with a trembling claw, trying desperately to find the proper words to respond.
"Unidentified vessel," he broadcast back, wincing as his voice cracked. "Please hold."
Behind him, forgotten, the smaller craft he had been tracking sailed towards the planet below.
---
Forward to the next plot arc, full speed ahead! Captain Qktk the invincible will surely save the universe. Puppy tax.
Volumes of poetry and prose were set down in the decades following the destruction of the Htt homeworld, lamenting the loss of the sandy beaches and clear warm water they loved. Generations of his people flocked to Earth after the Home Fleet had negotiated settlement rights with the humans, yearning to find their old home once more in its tropics.
Qktk had other opinions. As far as he was concerned, the coarse sand and filthy water of the few unspoiled planet-bound oceans remaining could stay right where they were. A clean bunk and a trim ship were his cozy sandbar, the stars his warm waters. Still, for all his disdain and distaste it was hard to see the ruined corpse of a once-vital planet, knowing what it had been.
He looked out the viewport. They had arrived at Zephyr mere minutes ago, but the mood on the bridge had plummeted at seeing the destruction wrought there. Angry orange cracks spiderwebbed the surface, venting foul gas and dust into the rarefied atmosphere. Vast basins stretched bare and scorched where oceans had once been, their water long ago lost to the hellscape surrounding them.
Anja and Jesri had been studying the planet with solemn looks for several minutes now. Anja had come back from the autodoc just before they arrived at Zephyr, and was now clad like Jesri in a charcoal and grey duty uniform, the sole difference being the gold major's starburst on her shoulder boards. Their presence lent the bridge an odd air of gravitas, as if the ship was still part of a larger navy. It was easy to believe, watching them gaze out in their stoic grief, that a similarly-clad staff of officers waited just out of sight rather than seven decks down in the morgue.
He glanced at Rhuar, who noticed and gave him an encouraging toss of his head. Qktk acknowledged him with a wave of a forelimb. His artificer and pilot had taken to working with the two not-humans well, perhaps because of his shared Terran heritage. Or, perhaps it was simply the difference between Qktk's sanguine personality and Rhuar's casually outgoing tendencies.
Qktk wasn't really sure what he was doing here, staring into the face of the apocalypse. He was a good freighter captain despite lacking any natural inclination for the job. He had secure income from his cargo hauling and locksmithing careers, a good ship and good prospects. He wasn't sure when a simple passenger job had turned into a mission to save the universe against impossible odds. Often he felt like jumping back in the Leviathan and fleeing to the nearest station, never to return.
And yet, there was precious little opportunity to sink a solid foundation into the shifting sands left after the fall of humanity. Indeed, if what Anja said about the Gestalt's plans was true there may be no opportunity. Why not, then? Why not Qktk the fighter, Qktk the warrior, Qktk the hero? Because of his stature, or his temperament? Simply because he was Qktk?
But who was this Qktk, to constrain him so? He sat pondering the blasted planet ahead of them. Perhaps tasks like theirs were how one created that definition.
---
Jesri tore her eyes away from the viewport and looked over at her sister. Although fresh from the autodoc, lines already creased Anja's face as she stared out at the devastation wrought on Zephyr. Anja met her gaze, then turned back to look out of the viewport.
«Nothing is left down there,» Anja's voice said. Jesri experienced a brief moment of disorientation - it had been over a millennium since her communications implant had failed. The autodoc had restored it, giving her access to ship functions without cumbersome vocal commands - but also the very handy ability to share a voice link. True networked communication was forbidden for security reasons, but her creators had at least seen the utility of a silent means of more traditional conversation.
«This was more than a gamma-ray burst,» she replied, relishing the feedback from the link after so long. Anja broadcast back a wordless agreement, but did not speak further.
Rhuar, however, was not inclined to be silent. "No disrespect intended," he mused, "but that planet looks a hell of a lot worse than I thought it would. I thought GRBs were mostly destructive to life and the atmosphere, not the planet itself."
Anja looked back at him. "That is correct, Ensign," she said neutrally. Rhuar shied back a bit at her tone, but Anja continued. "The tectonic disruption and increased volcanism are mostly consistent with a relativistic kinetic impact."
Rhuar's mouth dropped open a bit. "Wait, what? How kinetic are we talking?"
"Hard to say without knowing the size of the projectile," Jesri sighed. "A rock a few hundred meters wide moving at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed would do it. Zephyr had early warning systems designed specifically to monitor for high-speed kinetics, as did any major world, but if they attacked after the GRB..." She shrugged, leaving the rest unsaid.
"But why?", clicked Qktk. "The GRBs killed everyone, didn't they? Why go through the extra effort to utterly destroy the surface?"
"To destroy something the radiation wouldn't kill," Anja said darkly. "To make certain something on the surface would be lost forever."
"Wait," said Rhuar, "you're not thinking the weapon was down there, are you?"
Jesri brushed her hair back, toying with the ends. "Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. The fact that there were multiple versions of the schedule means that there was misdirection in play. If it worked, the weapon wasn't where the enemy thought it was."
Anja nodded her agreement. "At this point it is clear we lack some vital information about the original plan. We cannot say definitively where the weapon was or should have been. The only thing left to do is to check the other planets."
She turned towards Rhuar, straightening up noticeably. Despite himself, Rhuar stood at attention in response. "Ensign, set a course for Tengri and jump through. I do not want to stay here longer than we have to."
"Aye, m-," Rhuar cut off his voice box, glancing at Jesri, "uh, sir. Aye sir."
Anja smiled and ruffled the fur on his head. "Good… ensign," she purred.
Rhuar grumbled and stalked off towards the shipjack.
---
After they were safely away Rhuar removed the shipjack and slumped against the console, panting. Jesri gave him a concerned look. "Hey, you okay?", she asked, moving to stand beside him.
"Yeah," he said, artificial voice steady despite his winded state. "I'll be good through the end of the jump. Would like a break when we get to Tengri, though, I'm still not used to this link." He shot a frustrated and longing look back at the dangling shipjack, ears twitching rapidly.
"Can't promise the whole place won't be on or under fire, but barring that - sure," Jesri said, clapping him on the shoulder and smiling. "You're doing great, most pilots took months or years to work their way up to cruiser links."
Qktk crossed his arms. "Do you think it's likely that the planets will all be destroyed?", he asked.
"No, probably not," replied Anja, shaking her head. "The Gestalt displayed a great ability to project power from installations in its home space when it attacked, but we never observed it operating physically outside its home sector in any significant way." She hesitated, then added, "Until today, that is. Even so, I believe that is an exception. We were aware of a few dozen of its Emissaries, but not enough to coordinate this sort of action across many planets at once."
"Given thousands of years, even a small force could address a dozen planets or so in that manner," replied Qktk, shaking his head. "I suppose we will see."
Jesri sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. "Only one way to find out," she sighed.
Rhuar, somewhat recovered from the jump, sat up and cocked his head at Anja. "You said you had some intelligence on these Emissaries. What are they like?"
"They vary in form," said Anja, steepling her fingers. "The consensus was that each was unique and built for a particular purpose. The first ones we encountered were big, half the size of the Grand Design and able to travel alone through space. Initially we thought they were some sort of intelligent drone ships, but after our first contact smaller bipedal versions started showing up to try and communicate."
"Do you think it created the bipeds just to talk with you?", asked Qktk. "It's odd that it would care enough to make the effort, given its other actions."
"There was a lot of discussion on that front," agreed Jesri, "but we never really nailed down its motivations. It's possible that it was just whimsy, if it has a thing like that." She made a face. "We really don't know enough about it to make guesses."
Qktk rattled his mandibles unhappily. "And yet this weapon is supposed to be effective, when we know this little about the enemy? We're relying on too many things we know nothing about."
Anja nodded, grimacing. "I know," she said sadly. "But no matter how we proceed, the next step has to be obtaining the weapon. Even if it does not answer all of our questions, it will at least provide a better foundation to pursue the missing answers."
Qktk nodded, although he did not look mollified. Rhuar sighed. "If you don't mind," he said, leveraging himself to his feet, "I'm going to go catch an hour of sleep before we arrive." He hopped up into a nearby chair and curled up on the seat, tucking his tail over his paws. "Wake me up before we crash into Tengri."
---
Tengri had been a sparsely populated world even before it was attacked, with a relatively thin atmosphere and little water. The predominant geography was wide, rolling hills and endless plains which were covered in the local grass analogue. A few aggressively saline inland seas and anemic rivers provided some respite from the arid climate, hosting chaparral and scraggly vinelike plants that crowded against the shore.
No longer. The already-lacking atmosphere had been further depleted, and what was left formed a hazy brown fog rich in nitrogen oxides. Although higher in oxygen than in centuries past, the atmosphere was still nowhere near breathable. Any water on the surface had frozen and sublimated away long ago. The landmass had lost its brownish-green covering of grasses to show the faded blue of the clay-rich soil below.
On the ground, grey-brown fog floated low across the hills and over frozen, mummified grass. A light, glaring and harsh in the gloom, shone through the fog to cast sharp-edged shadows from hummocks and rocks across the plain. Billowing clouds parted to reveal a descending shuttle, drive flaring brightly as it sank towards the clay. The landing skids of the shuttle touched down and the landscape was once again was plunged into darkness.
The rear ramp opened and two figures strode onto the stygian plain. Anja was clad in full Valkyrie armor, artificial muscles rippling as she strode out from the ship. She carried her rifle high and ready, the hilt of her sword protruding up at an angle from her back. The splayed ridges of the suit's feet sank into the clay, snapping dead stalks of grass and cutting semicircles into the ground.
Jesri followed behind her, wielding a smaller rifle and wearing a heavy-framed respirator. Panels of light body armor layered over her shoulders, torso and legs, while a heated compression wrap formed a barrier against the thin and freezing gases outside. She came up behind Anja and keyed the ramp, which sealed in a hiss of hydraulics.
«Ready?», asked Anja, broadcasting through the suit.
Jesri gave a quick nod. «Go ahead. I'll follow.»
The suit whined as its legs tromped forwards, sending ribbons of clay pattering over frozen grass. Jesri crept behind with her head on a swivel, making no sound as she moved. They advanced forward in the hazy twilight for half an hour before they saw the corroded remnants of a metal fence jutting up from the soil.
The sturdy supports and thick panels were pocked with holes and pits, supplemented every so often by the nearly-unrecognizable warning placards rusting against them. Anja pushed through it as if it were packed mud, the ruined metal crumbling at her touch.
«We're getting close,» Jesri noted.
They pushed forward for a few more minutes before the first buildings came into view. Squat concrete structures emerged from the fog as lumps of indistinct shadow, resolving themselves into the rounded corners and narrow windows of a bunker.
This was the Tengri listening post, an off-the-books installation that was the only significant military presence on the planet. They had spent hours pinging the surface to narrow down its location, only succeeding when Rhuar performed some truly inspired work with the sensors to get a reading off what was left of its heavy metal support beams.
Anja advanced towards it, stopping short as she approached the door. It had been opened forcefully, cut away from its hinges and discarded beside the doorway. She shared a look with Jesri, then stepped in with her weapon ready. Nothing moved as they entered, but a swath cleared through the coating of dust betrayed the presence of others in the recent past.
Jesri advanced behind Anja, squinting through the cloud of dust raised by the suit's passage. The facility had been stripped bare, with consoles hacked out of walls and equipment conspicuously absent from niches trailing wires and ports.
«Thieves,» Anja seethed, her fists clenching. «They took everything.»
«Let's check around,» replied Jesri. «We need to confirm if the weapon was here.»
They passed through room after room of spare concrete and dust, Anja crouching low to pass under the stooped bunker door frames. Each was nearly identical save for the occasional debris, but in the fifth room they came upon the remnants of a massive security door. Like the front door, it had been severed from its mounting and thrown beside the door to lean haphazardly against the bunker wall.
«See how shiny it is on the edges?», said Jesri, indicating the sides of the door. «It hasn't been out in the air long. Whoever raided this place was here recently.» She ducked her head around to check the backside of the door, then stepped back with a frown. «Anja, can you move the door away from the wall?», she asked.
Anja stepped over and lifted the heavy slab of metal, her suit's muscles straining with the effort. She stood it upright, one hand resting on top. «Shit,» she said venomously. «It was here.»
Jesri moved around to see the backside of the door. The surface was covered with the same tarnish as everything in the bunker, but the remnants of a sign stood out on the front. The visible letters spelled out: "NTRA: NO".
«MANTRA, no entry. Just like on the ship,» Jesri agreed. «Let's search the rest, see if there's anything interesting.» She split off to look over the inside of the vault while Anja stomped over to the next room down the hall.
A short while later they grouped back up at the entrance to the bunker. Anja was empty-handed, her frustration evident even over the comm link. Jesri had come up with a single broken cylinder etched with a symbol on the side, a few lines of geometric alien text spiraling across it.
«It's not the weapon,» she said, «but it is a lead. Let's take this back up to the ship and see if we can learn something from it.» Anja nodded stiffly, the suit's helmet jerking as it mimicked her. Together they turned and left the bunker, picking their way through the eerie mists back towards the shuttle.
---
"It looks like lines," Rhuar said, tilting his head to get a better look at the object. "Are you sure that's writing?"
Jesri nodded. "The ship can't recognize it, but it's definitely text. See how the glyphs are formed by the combination of intersecting angles?"
Rhuar scrunched up his face. "No," he said, "but I'll take your word for it. How does that help us if the ship can't read it?"
"Well, for starters, it lets us know that it's not a species we made contact with pre-fall," mused Jesri, turning the cylinder over in her hands. "Otherwise they'd be in the database."
"Let me see that," said Qktk, clattering over to peer at their find. Jesri handed it over, and Qktk turned it over to look at the text.
"This is Ysleli," he said definitively, handing it back. "See that symbol up top? That's the royal seal."
Rhuar blinked. "Captain, you sure? I've never seen anything like this before."
Qktk rolled an eye at him. "Mr. Rhuar, I did have a career before I hired you on. It's how I learned I should outsource my technical work, among other things." He jabbed a foreleg at the text spiraling around the cylinder. "I used to run out of a station that imported most of their food from Ysl, and I recognize the seal and script from the bills of lading. If I'm not very much mistaken, the cylinder is the casing of a writing implement."
Jesri rubbed the seal with her thumb. "Any idea what it says?", she asked.
Qktk took the casing back and turned it over, studying the crosshatched lines. "I was never very good at reading Yslel," he grumbled. "Let's see. This glyphrow is the sequence for the current royal house, and the next is some sort of baronial commission…" He paced back and forth, rotating the cylinder several times. "Well, I have good news and bad news," he said, looking up at the group.
Anja inclined her head impatiently, and he hurried to continue. "The good news is that the items from the site are probably all on Ysl," he said. "The bad news is that this pen belonged to the Ysleli Royal Expeditionary Corps of Archaeologists."
Jesri made a face. "They took the listening post's contents for study? Like in a museum?" She took the pen back and sighed, shaking her head. "I'm getting a premonition about this being a pain in our ass."
Anja smiled. "On the contrary. Now that we know where it is, we can go there and obtain it."
"And if they don't want to hand over their collection?", Rhuar asked, scratching his ear. "They've obviously invested resources in this project. If they're any kind of smart, they've got the important stuff at a lab locked up tight for their military."
"We can ask… persuasively," Anja grinned. She swept her arm wide, taking in the whole of the bridge. "I believe I can lend our argument a fair degree of rhetorical weight."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," said Jesri, hiding her face in her hands. "The last time I heard you talk like that was when we had to retrieve those stolen plans from Barbos."
"We got those plans, as I recall," Anja replied mildly.
Jesri looked up at her, exasperated. "You opened negotiations by blowing up their moon."
"And concluded negotiations successfully the same day," she responded primly, "all returned in exchange for some much-needed orbital debris cleanup. Don't worry," she continued, waving off Jesri's objections, "I wasn't thinking of blowing up their moon. Though..." She looked at Qktk. "Does Ysl have a moon?", she asked thoughtfully.
"Thankfully, no," mumbled Qktk.
"See?", said Anja cheerfully. "No need to be such a grump, sister. I was planning on simply showing up in-system and asking nicely."
"...in your kilometer-long battleship?", inquired Rhuar.
"Cruiser," nodded Anja, "but yes. I think that should be sufficient."
Most of Qktk's eyes winced. "Perhaps not," he said. "From what I know of the Ysleli, that might be a bad decision. Their monarch rules by strength, keeping his barons in line by threat of military force. He would be opening himself up to opportunists if he capitulated to a threat of force, no matter how much we outmatch him." Qktk pondered. "Which may not be a given, actually. They're a belligerent sort of people, I imagine their standing navy is quite large."
Anja waved dismissively. "Quantity against quality. I doubt they have anything that can pose an issue if we press our case."
"Whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not?", Jesri snarked. "Is that really how you want to play this?"
"This is beyond matters of preference," Anja snapped back, suddenly irritated. "Sister, are you saying you would allow some up-jumped warlord to rattle his saber and stall the mission?"
"No," soothed Jesri. "I agree that we need to get the weapon from Ysl. I'm just saying that we should make a reasonable effort to plan further than 'ask for the weapon and shoot everyone that says no.'"
"Yes, please," said Qktk fervently. "The Ysleli are proud and arrogant. If you make this an issue of strength they will force you to kill thousands of them."
"That's on the table, given the stakes," Anja noted grimly. "But I agree it would be best to avoid it. Any ideas as to how?"
They sat in silence for a while.
Qktk spoke first. "Perhaps we can use their combativeness against them," he mused. "Their society places great importance on conflicts between the powerful. If we show up and present a compelling show of force, they will all be focused on us."
Jesri considered, nodding her head. "Yeah, that could work." She looked over at Anja, who was stroking her chin contemplatively.
Anja met her eyes and shrugged. "We can always fall back to plan B. I assume you're thinking both of us should be on the ground team?"
"Wait, what?", Qktk interjected. "If you're both going to ground, who will command the ship? Who will communicate with their navy?"
"Don't look at me," objected Rhuar. "It'll take everything I've got just to pilot this barge in a straight line without melting my brain out my ears. Besides, if the ship can't translate I can't talk to them anyway - I've never even heard of Ysl before today."
Everyone looked at Qktk.
---
Lytrlas watched the green-grey plains of Ysl spin by below him, fluffy white clouds sporadically streaking across the mottled terrain. Being posted on picket duty was boring, but the view and solitude suited him well. Many considered the posting drudge work, offering no opportunity for earning distinction against foes - a clerkship, not a real military posting.
He couldn't disagree, but it didn't bother him. After several years of this, he could transfer to the Royal Naval Academy and lead his unit as an officer. The rewards were delayed compared to seeking his honor more directly, but it was much less risky to take the field as a lieutenant than as a grunt in the baronial carabiniers. His colleagues were focused on next year, but he was already considering the quality of his retirement. It was important to look ahead.
A flashing light on the console jolted him from his reverie and he pushed himself to float towards it, claws hooking into the retention straps to keep from drifting aimlessly in the microgravity. He sighed. Another incoming vessel. Dialing up his sensors, he noted that it was not broadcasting the required IFF beacon - why could these idiot freighter captains never remember the proper approach sequence?
"Unidentified vessel," he broadcast in a bored monotone, keeping his words clipped and professional, "you are entering the domain of His Royal Majesty Sitrl, long life and glory to the King. Activate your transponder and approach this station for inspection and customs."
He took great pride in the emotionless affect that was the de facto standard for all traffic controllers, his voice never wavering in the face of irate captains or bellicose minor lords spewing threats. Such things never ended well for the party that allowed emotion to cloud their judgment, and he knew he had the backing of His Majesty's Navy as long as he stuck to protocol.
He did allow a slight crease around his eyes as the ship failed to respond, however. Perhaps they were having system trouble? "Unidentified vessel, activate your transponder and slow to two hundred ri immediately," he droned. "Failure to comply will result in interdiction."
He punched up the sensor feed details, scanning through. It appeared to be a custom ship, extensively modified, as the superstructure was not a match for anything in the database. It was slim, if a bit boxy, and was drifting in without engine power. His face creased further as he studied the readout - the reactor signature was dim, but didn't match anything he had scanned previously. Whatever this ship was, it was foreign. A Ysleli ship would never dare run the picket line, but barbarians had no honor. Today might be exciting after all, he allowed.
"Unidentified vessel, this is your final warning," he broadcast, his voice as level as still water. "Activate your transponder and heave to or you… will…" He trailed off, his eyes bulging as a giant slice of space behind the approaching ship rippled and deformed, the stars gliding outwards to form a twisted ring of light. A void grew at the center of the ring until the fabric of space parted violently to show the deep darkness of hyperspace beyond. Out of this gargantuan portal the prow of an impossibly large ship emerged, lines of white fire curling and snapping around it as it transitioned back to real space.
Lytrlas stood transfixed as the ship slid inexorably into being in front of him, hundreds of lesa in length and still coming. It outmassed any ship he had ever seen, if not any task force. Strange markings decorated the aft section, just afore of the blazing engines casting their actinic light into the cloud of rapidly dissipating plasma wreathing the portal.
As the ship emerged fully and the portal shrank to nothingness behind them, an image crackled to life on the hailer. He shrank back as he beheld the monstrous insectile face filling his screen, its clustering of eyes glinting like dark glass and mandibles clattering threateningly. It shook itself and spoke, the staccato clicks of its voice echoing through the customs post.
"Attention Ysl tiny ship!", it said in broken Yslel. "Ship ours honorable talk! Shipmaster Qktk! Ship yours honorable talk!" It paused for a moment, seeming to consider its words. "Talk now," it amended ominously.
His mouth working soundlessly, Lytrlas had the presence of mind to reach over and key the emergency beacon on his console. A signal raced out to the naval customs task force on patrol in this sector, although he didn't know what they could do against this behemoth captained by a thousand-eyed nightmare beast. He flicked the hailer controls with a trembling claw, trying desperately to find the proper words to respond.
"Unidentified vessel," he broadcast back, wincing as his voice cracked. "Please hold."
Behind him, forgotten, the smaller craft he had been tracking sailed towards the planet below.
---
Forward to the next plot arc, full speed ahead! Captain Qktk the invincible will surely save the universe. Puppy tax.
Part 12
- Location
- USA
"Okay, dropping in now," Jesri called out, her hands dancing over the console. Outside the cockpit, the charged plasma of reentry was dissipating to show sparse fluffy clouds. Droplets of water hissed and boiled away from the hull as the ship cut through the thin air of the Ysleli stratosphere.
Anja stood behind her, again fully clad in a suit of Valkyrie powered armor. One massive hand curled its fingers around a bracing beam, the other cradling her rifle. Even with the armor on, her stance betrayed impatience. "Time?", she asked, her voice grating flatly through the suit's external speakers.
"Looks like… two minutes," Jesri said, wrestling with the controls. She swore as the ship jolted violently, bucking in the airstream. They had taken the Huginn fast-attack craft rather than a shuttle, and while it offered better protection and armaments the FAC was not designed for graceful atmospheric maneuvering.
Below them, large stretches of farmland covered the terrain in a regular hexagonal patchwork. Jesri squinted at the display, adjusting course to keep their trajectory centered. They had been able to identify a distinct signature indicative of Terran power cores in the mountains of the largest continent. They couldn't be sure the weapon was there, but it was their best bet.
As the flat farmland gave way to rolling foothills, Jesri leveled off their descent. It wasn't long before she saw their target, a cluster of buildings nestled in a remote valley. Conveniently, there seemed to be a large airstrip for atmospheric flyers present. She angled her approach to line up parallel with the runway, coming to a stop in the air a few hundred meters above the facility.
She keyed the ship to descend vertically, releasing her restraints and jumping up to grab her tactical gear. Anja tromped backwards to the exit hatch as Jesri strapped on her helmet and body armor, slick grey fabric sliding over an articulated core of ceramic plating.
By the time their FAC's skids had made contact with the ground, she was fully equipped with armor, tactical optics and a matte charcoal breaching rifle slung loosely over her shoulder. The atmosphere on Ysl was within reasonable parameters, so she opted for a tactical faceplate rather than a respirator. One of them needed to operate the shuttle, and while that precluded powered armor there were other quite serviceable options at hand - the armory in the Valkyrie sector had proven to be quite well-stocked.
Anja toggled the landing ramp, moving towards it as it opened with a rush of equalizing pressure. Crisp mountain air rushed into the cabin, infiltrating under Jesri's faceplate with the tantalizing scent of vegetation and moisture. She paused for a second to relish it, thinking of the last time she had set foot on a planet with a breathable atmosphere. It had been a long time.
She was jolted out of her reverie by a loud crack as a kinetic slug caromed off Anja's armor, harmlessly ricocheting back to embed itself in the surface of the runway with a spray of fragmented stone. Anja let out a low growl and brought her rifle up while Jesri moved quickly behind a support beam.
Peering out, she could see the response to their sudden incursion. Green-liveried soldiers crowded around the edge of the runway, hiding behind some spare crates and pallets. The Ysleli were tall with long, gangly arms and yellowed skin that clashed horrendously with their uniforms. Two forward-looking, predatory eyes sat high on their faces like black marbles over a gaping maw lined with tiny sharp teeth.
"These fellows look pleasant," noted Anja, sighting down her rifle. Her metallic finger squeezed the trigger and one of the assembled soldiers exploded in a cloud of blood, bile and steam. His companions dove quickly back to cover over the dark smear where their comrade had stood. An answering spray of fire echoed through the valley and drew sparks where bullets pinged off of Anja's armor.
Anja stepped further down, her suit moving the rifle precisely to track exposed limbs or thin spots in the crate barricade. More shots lanced through the soldiers' cover, followed by wet pops and ululating wails of pain.
Jesri shook her head and moved back to the controls of the shuttle. "We don't have time for this," she grumbled, keying up the automated defenses. "Anja, I'm turning on the perimeter guns!", she shouted.
"No fun," Anja replied irritably, firing steadily at the soldiers. Jesri punched the control and turrets activated from the top and bottom of the Huginn, tracking targets around the ship. When the next fusillade came from the troops at the edge of the runway, the ship-mounted cannons chugged a few heavy blasts into the piled crates in response.
The crates disintegrated in a spray of fragments, peppering the troops clustered behind them with white-hot metal shards. The few survivors limping back from the blackened remnants of their cover took direct hits from the following salvo, their bodies providing only a mild and messy impediment to the cannon's fire as it tore through them to gouge deep ruts in the soil.
"No fun at all," groused Anja, moving all the way down the ramp. "Come on, sister, I have a lock on the signal source." Jesri followed her down, her rifle held at eye level against her shoulder and her stance low. The ramp hissed up behind them, sealing the ship. As they moved across the field towards the installation's cluster of buildings, Jesri toggled her communicator.
«I wonder how the boys are doing?», she sent, moving close behind Anja. Her sister pulled back a fist and slammed it through the door of the first building, sending it flying off its frame to crash into three soldiers waiting within.
«They just have to talk, it will be fine!», replied Anja distractedly, pulling her sword off her back and fastening it under her rifle. Bayonet thus affixed, she ducked past the door with a pulse of wordless satisfaction through the link. Jesri sighed and moved to follow her just as the first screams started from farther within. Hopefully Qktk and Rhuar could handle things up top for a few minutes.
---
Warmaster Reltryn growled low, the subsonic tremor of his anger causing his subordinates to flinch back. He was not unused to combat - in fact, the prospect of bloodshed was normally enough to brighten his mood considerably. The sudden appearance of a gargantuan warship over their capital, captained by a nightmarish alien monstrosity who howled at them in broken snippets of badly accented Yslel - that was a different thing entirely.
It wanted to fight, that much was obvious. He had come quickly in response to the customs agent's panicked summons, forming up his picket patrol against the overwhelming bulk of the warship and attempting to negotiate the terms of combat. The horrid-looking alien warlord seemed to crave an honorable contest against the forces of Ysl, as was proper, but…
"INADEQUATE!", it howled, its glossy mandibles jittering disconcertingly. "More required! Offer ours greater!" Spearbrother Syrir spoke placatingly to the demon beast, who shouted a few more enraged epithets before disconnecting abruptly. The spearbrother slumped, shaking his head, then looked up at Reltryn hopelessly.
"It demands greater forces be brought to bear," he said, cringing away from the warmaster's anger. "It does not consent to fight our patrol on the field of honor."
Another growl rippled from the warmaster's chest, and Syrir bared his throat in anticipation of death for his failure. It did not come, however, and he dared a glance back up to see Reltryn looking contemplative.
"Ordinarily," hissed Reltryn, "I would demand my own satisfaction for such an insult. However, this shipmaster..." He looked out the viewport, seeing the bright sliver of the alien ship hanging distantly in the starry void. "This one may have cause to demand higher satisfaction than I can offer. His might is great." He floated back to loom over his terrified subordinate. "Syrir, send a message to warfather Tarl. Inform him that our enemy has made a challenge to the honor of His Royal Majesty, long life and glory to the King."
Syrir anchored his feet to bow low and pushed back towards his console, but Reltryn hooked a claw around his arm before he could depart. The terrified spearbrother met his gaze, shrinking back from the violent aura emanating from the warmaster's every move. "Tell the warfather," Reltryn growled, "that our enemy contests the honor of all warriors in his service."
Syrir gulped and went to transmit the message, leaving Reltryn to drift weightlessly before the viewport and contemplate the bulk of their enemy's great warship further. In his years of service he had seen much, and he thought himself knowledgeable about military matters. Yet this demon warlord was new. He brought a single ship to beggar navies and had knowledge of the Ysleli language and customs where Reltryn had none in return. Such a powerful and canny foe merited consideration, caution. Who could say what devilry such a being could wield?
---
Qktk slumped in the captain's chair, legs shaking. "Mr. Rhuar," he gasped, "I'm running out of things to say to them! How much longer until the ship can translate their language?"
Rhuar shook his head from the pilot's station where he was communing with the ship via the jack. "Give it a few more minutes, Captain," he said, "we're tapped into their transmissions and are gathering as much source material as we can. You don't want to use it before it's ready, you'll end up insulting their honorable grandmothers or something."
Qktk clattered his mandibles in annoyance. "Right now I'm just screaming things I used to hear the Ysleli tradebrothers say when they were haggling," he complained, waving his arms. "I don't even know what half the words mean! In all probability they think I'm insane."
"Insane is good," snorted Rhuar. "I mean, not normally. If you're insane on the bridge of a gigantic fuckin warship, though, it has an effect on people." He stared into the distance, focusing on data from the sensor link. "It looks like that last exchange stirred them up a bit, so let's wait for them to do whatever they're doing. By the time they're ready to talk more we should be able to speak in full sentences."
He looked back towards the planet with the ship's sensors. "If we're lucky, the Huginn will be back up here with the weapon before these idiots are ready to fight."
---
Anja barreled through the doorframe, sending chunks of the bunker wall tumbling down as her too-wide shoulders impacted on either side. The spray of stone chips and dust flew into the faces of the waiting soldiers, who swiped frantically at their eyes or fired blindly at the charging Valkyrie.
She was on them in seconds, her massive bayonet sweeping across the front rank and severing three soldiers at the torso. She speared a fourth through the gut, then fired her rifle to send his corpse blasting backwards off the sword into the remaining troops. They struggled to rise, dark blood coating them from head to toe, but before they could reorient they were cut down in the span of a second by precise bursts of rifle fire.
Jesri lowered her weapon and walked the rest of the way into the room. "Clear," she said dispassionately. "Let's move on." They had pressed further into the complex only to discover an extensive warren of fortified tunnels below the surface buildings. No mere outpost, this was turning out to be a heavily fortified military research installation.
Not that it mattered much. Anja was forging a trail of destruction through the compound and it looked like the only weapons present were primitive kinetic slug rifles. Although they'd be a problem for Jesri if she got exposed to too much fire, Anja was entirely unaffected by their efforts. A few times they had tried to throw some form of explosive grenade - until Anja started batting them back towards the soldiers. They abandoned that tactic quickly.
They pushed through another line of soldiers who had fortified a security checkpoint, their weapons fire making quick work of the makeshift cover that had been pushed into the hallway. Anja gave a grunt of satisfaction as she passed the smoking remnants of the checkpoint and toggled her link to talk to Jesri over the din of battle.
«This looks like our target,» she noted. Jesri had to agree. The room they had entered was a large, low-ceilinged space with numerous pallets and shelves. On each were bits of technology scavenged from human installations - door controls, console displays, even a string of decorative fairy lights they'd found somewhere. The displays were labeled in angular lines of Yslel, neatly ordered in rows along the entirety of the room.
They advanced into the room, weapons ready, but encountered no enemies. Another door led to an extension of the warehouse and some token resistance. That room held more valuable prizes - rifles, armor, and other military technology. Some were strewn across tables in various stages of disassembly, groups of technicians fleeing in terror as Anja stalked towards them.
Jesri received a notice on her heads-up display that a data packet had been transmitted to them through the FAC. She found a niche to review it and saw with surprise that Qktk and Rhuar had managed to compile a translation data library for Yslel already, and had sent it forward to them. She looked up to watch Anja bodily throw a flailing soldier into the wall, staining the stone with a spatter of blood as he slumped lifelessly to the floor. Jesri sighed. It didn't look like they'd have much opportunity to use the translator.
She moved through a shattered doorway to follow her sister, but stopped short when she came up against Anja staring fixedly at the contents of the next room. It was mostly empty, clean and spare except for the rubble around the doorway. A large table in the middle of the room was surrounded by a cluster of analytical and diagnostic equipment, and as Jesri moved around her sister's hulking form she saw a cadre of frightened Ysleli scientists in lab dress quickly backing away from it.
On the table was a naked humanoid form, its skin dry and papery with age. The chest was sliced open, peeled apart to show the ribs and shriveled organs inside. Its head was turned to the side, facing away from Jesri, but the faded blonde hair was in full view. It had been plaited in a complex pattern, interleaved up to the crown of the head. Just like her sister Sophia used to wear it.
A low rumble suffused the air in the room, rising to a throaty growl as Anja stepped forward to confront the huddle of scientists. "You dare," she thundered, stalking towards them. Her suit broadcast the words in Yslel as Anja spoke, bands of white-hot plasma rippling around her arms in a fiery mantle. "You fucking insects dare to touch my sister." One of the scientists fainted.
"Please," another shouted, "we only meant to study-"
"DEFILERS!", she roared, the suit's speakers augmenting her voice to bone-shaking volume. "THIEVES AND VERMIN!" She swept her sword across the group, slicing the Ysleli in half with a spray of blood. With a wordless scream, she leapt at the pile of dying aliens and began pounding them with gouts of plasma flaring from her fists, gore splattering around her with each thundering blow.
Jesri walked up to the table, laying her rifle next to her sister's corpse. From the other side of the table, she could see that they had removed her eyes, blank sockets sightlessly looking out as Anja crushed the bloody remains of the scientists again and again into the ground. She stroked the corpse's pleated hair gently, once, then turned to face her living sister.
"Anja," Jesri said gently. The crash of the suit's fists into the hardened floor drowned her voice in a wash of thunder. «Anja,» she said again through the link. «This isn't why we're here.»
"Our sister is dead!", Anja screamed back, slamming her flame-wreathed fist through the wall. Stone dust settled lightly over the spatters of blood on her suit.
«And we're going to avenge her,» Jesri countered, «by going after the one who did kill her. Not this trash.»
Anja straightened up, glaring down at the smashed remains at her feet for a few long seconds. "You are right, I was distracted," she grated, "we need to find the weapon." She raised her rifle and started towards the next area, pausing only once to look back at the examination table. "We will give no quarter to these grave robbers, however," she growled, spitting the words out like poison, "if any more cross our path."
---
Rhuar had to stop himself from pacing back and forth. The shipjack cable didn't permit such things, as good as it would feel to walk off some of the building tension. "Uh, Captain," he said, "there's a lot of ships out there."
Qktk shot him an irritated glare. "You said that," he grumbled.
"Yeah, but I mean," Rhuar tilted his head, causing a viewscreen to display a tactical map, "there are a lot of ships out there." On the map, the blue bar representing the Grand Design sat centered in a sphere of graduated lines. The planet was visible, although growing less so every second as red dots continued to swarm up from the surface like angry bees.
"Jim's moldy balls," Qktk swore, "is each one of those a ship?"
Rhuar gulped. "Uh, no, each one of those is a fleet element. Ten ships on average."
Qktk didn't even bother to swear at that. "Do you have any thoughts on what to do if they attack?", he asked plaintively, wringing his forelimbs. "I know this is a big ship with big guns, but…"
Rhuar shrugged. "Captain, I'm just banking on our asses running out of here as fast as we can after our fearless leaders come back." He paused, looking thoughtful. "I hope they do come back."
Qktk said nothing, but gave Rhuar a pained look and watched the dots gather into a red mass on the display.
---
Anja shouldered through another door, sending an echoing crash through the room beyond and raising a cloud of choking dust. Blood dripped from her armor and sword, dried flakes fluttering to the ground as she moved relentlessly through the bunker. They had not encountered any resistance past the laboratory with Sophia's body, and Anja's tension was bleeding over into her movements. Jesri had seldom seen her this angry, although she could scarcely blame her - the sight of Sophia's eyeless gaze still haunted her vision as she advanced, lending a sinister aspect to every dark corner and obscured alcove.
They were moving through some sort of administrative area, consoles and primitive displays crowding desktops overflowing with charts and printouts. Offices lined the side of the hallway, but no movement came from within - this area seemed to have been abandoned or evacuated. Turning the corner they reached a sudden end to the hallway, a large double-door leading into a spacious office with soft lighting and luxurious furniture - and one occupant.
Anja slammed through the door to loom over the Ysleli sitting calmly behind his wooden desk, tossing a small reflective sphere between his spindly yellow hands. "Come in, come in," he wheezed thinly, displaying needle-point teeth in a gruesome smile. "I've been waiting for you for some time."
Anja stopped short, taken aback by the lack of reaction to her terrifying entrance. Her implacable advance had not spared much time for observation, but she now took the time to survey the room around her. Well-made furniture was placed in a loose ring around a low table in the center of the richly carpeted floor. Against the wall were several displays featuring restored Terran technology or curiosities - a jeweled music box sat on a lit pedestal, glittering prettily, while another rack held a matched set of three naval service rifles.
A sharp intake of breath from Jesri drew Anja's attention to the back of the room, where a display occupied a place of honor among the collection. A nude humanoid figure in a delicate arabesque pose was lit gently from behind and below, a serene smile fixed on its prettily restored face. Auburn hair cascaded from its head in ringlets, shimmering in the display lights.
Jesri's hands tightened on her gun until the material of her gloves creaked in protest. "Violet," she whispered.
Anja whirled back towards the Ysleli, swiping her sword through the desk and reducing it to kindling. He was thrown into the corner, colliding with a display of vases and reducing them to shards that sprinkled over his slumped body.
"That's annoying," he said, levering himself into a sitting position. "Do you think you could refrain from further violence for a moment while we speak?"
Jesri stared at the slender alien - not only was he unharmed by a blow that should have sheared him in two, he was addressing them in English rather than Yslel. Her rifle came up and she squeezed a burst of fire at his head. The shots took him in the cheek, blasting the thin yellow skin to shreds and revealing an unblemished white-silver surface below. He gave her a reproachful look.
"Really, ladies, it was a simple request," he muttered, straightening the remains of his chair and sitting down. The tatters of his face hung loosely down from his jaw, revealing the back rows of needle teeth set into shining metal bones.
"What are you?", growled Anja, her free hand opening and closing menacingly.
The little alien gave her half of a wry smile. "Try to keep up," he said, "I should think that's obvious. Here they call me Administrator Trelir," he said dismissively, a hand to his chest, "but more relevant to our discussion is my position as Emissary to Ysl."
Jesri stared. "You're the Gestalt," she said accusingly, eliciting a wave of short, barking laughter from Trelir.
"Oh, goodness, no," he chortled. "Merely a grain of sand on the beach, a pebble adorning the mountain. A representative. An Emissary, quite simply."
"What are you doing here?", Anja shot back, her frame vibrating with barely restrained violence.
"Just a bit of follow-through, some due diligence around the actions of your former employers," he said lightly. "Nothing too important, but it's good practice to tie up loose ends." He tilted his head to the side, and a gigantic blast door slammed down to trap them in the room.
"Now," Trelir said evenly, leaning forward across the ruins of his desk, "I have made my report to the greater Confluence. Please make yourselves comfortable while we await a response."
---
The display flickered to life again, throwing odd reflections from Qktk's shell as he drew himself up in the captain's chair. The Ysleli who now appeared had mottled yellow-brown skin, thin scars tracing across his face. His dark eyes were hard and wary, possessed of an unmistakable competence - and exhaustion.
"You address Tarl," he said gruffly, "warfather to His Royal Majesty Sitrl, long life and glory to the King."
Qktk took a steadying breath and kept his eyes focused on the screen. "Warfather," he said, relieved to hear the even tone of his voice, "I am shipmaster Qktk. I trust you can understand my words?"
Tarl inclined his head. "Yes, shipmaster. Your command of Yslel is impressive."
Qktk didn't feel like clarifying. His mind flicked back over a hundred tense hours spent in plush back rooms and noisy bars, cajoling and negotiating deals out of counterparts not inclined to take a Htt seriously. The watchword, as ever, was confidence. He had learned from the best how to deal with these prideful warriors, he reminded himself.
"Quite," he said dismissively, gesturing to the side. "But beside the point. I see you have marshalled your forces, such as they are."
Tarl's face darkened. "It is not becoming of a shipmaster to sully honorable discourse with insults." He leaned closer to the screen, looming in Qktk's view. "I trust you will provide us satisfaction," he growled menacingly.
Qktk stared back with studied nonchalance, even as his mind raced. Apologies were weakness, ignoring a challenge was weakness, so…
"The only insult, warfather," he leered, contempt dripping from the title, "is the sad band of craven fools who appear before me. Do you believe that your assemblage of tin cans and pointed sticks can stand against my might?"
Rhuar glanced at Qktk in alarm as Tarl seemed to swell with rage. "You question the courage of a blooded warfather, insect?", he hissed, his skin flushing a darker yellow.
"Oh, I should not impugn your courage, of course," he said airily, "I would be terrified to face me in that ramshackle collection of plating you call a warship. One wonders what your unblooded grub of a fleetmaster is thinking, providing his esteemed warfather with such a laughable assortment of flotsam."
Rhuar's eyes were open wide, his exoskeletal arms waving in emphatic warning. Tarl was glaring at the viewscreen in an apoplectic rage. "You arrogant worm," he growled, his voice low and dangerous. "You dare-!"
Qktk cut the feed and leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. "I'm really not cut out for this," he wheezed.
"Captain, what the fuck?", Rhuar exclaimed, worry evident in his wide eyes. "You just insulted the largest military fleet ever! They're going to murder us multiple times."
Qktk shook his head. "The dockmaster at the old station gave me some tips on dealing with Ysleli traders once. Being rude demonstrates superiority and control, in their eyes. Insults keep them off-balance, but their sense of honor frowns on being provoked to physical violence by words. When they come back they're distracted and you can get a better price out of them."
Rhuar goggled at him. "Captain, we are not trying to save on a pallet of nutrient mix!", he shouted. "These fuckin rage lizards started out wanting to murder us. Fuck knows what they're thinking about doing after talking to the most infuriating version of you for an hour."
"Trust me on this, Mr. Rhuar," Qktk said sagely. "The dockmaster was very clear about their code. As long as you do not insult their children, their gods or their king you will always have a chance to smooth it over. Our goal is to buy time until Anja and Jesri get back, and every second we keep them angry and distracted is another that they may use to complete their mission. If we can keep them from establishing the terms of combat with us, they will not fight."
"If you say so," said Rhuar doubtfully. "Seems to me like they're about as angry as angry gets."
Qktk chittered. "No, I think we're still fine. They should be calling back any minute now. In fact-" He reached over and toggled the viewscreen, displaying their Ysleli contact.
Only it wasn't Tarl. A massive Ysleli sat on the screen, lounging on an ornate throne some distance from the camera. His muscular bulk was draped in fine cloth and furs, but gleaming metal armor peeked out from underneath. His yellow skin was lined with age, eyes glinting with hard-won experience and a predatory savvy that lanced through the viewscreen to tickle all of Qktk's long-buried flight instincts. One clawed hand drummed its fingers idly on a Ysleli skull, of which several were encrusted with jewels and affixed to his throne.
"You address the King," he rumbled somewhat unnecessarily. "I am Sitrl, sovereign of Ysl, champion of Ysl, protector of Ysl." His eyes flashed. "Word of you has reached my ears."
Qktk was having a very hard time maintaining his calm facade. Rhuar was not trying.
Sitrl inspected one of his glossy, sharp claws. "My warfather says you named the fleetmaster an unblooded grub earlier," he said casually, "which gives me pause because I am the fleetmaster."
He looked back at the camera, his deep black eyes boring into Qktk. "Your powerful ship and hideous visage may cow my subordinates, but I am the King. You name me unblooded? A bold claim, to be sure, but one easily proven false." His hand contracted, shattering the skull it rested on. "I will show you your own blood as the proof, every last drop of it. And then, shipmaster - we will discuss the punishment for spreading lies."
The transmission terminated, and the cloud of red dots on the tactical display began to move slowly towards the Grand Design.
"Mr. Rhuar," Qktk said weakly, "I will allow that I may have made a miscalculation."
---
Well, that all went to crap pretty quickly. Don't let him bully you, Qktk! LET ME SEE YOUR WAR FACE!
Anja stood behind her, again fully clad in a suit of Valkyrie powered armor. One massive hand curled its fingers around a bracing beam, the other cradling her rifle. Even with the armor on, her stance betrayed impatience. "Time?", she asked, her voice grating flatly through the suit's external speakers.
"Looks like… two minutes," Jesri said, wrestling with the controls. She swore as the ship jolted violently, bucking in the airstream. They had taken the Huginn fast-attack craft rather than a shuttle, and while it offered better protection and armaments the FAC was not designed for graceful atmospheric maneuvering.
Below them, large stretches of farmland covered the terrain in a regular hexagonal patchwork. Jesri squinted at the display, adjusting course to keep their trajectory centered. They had been able to identify a distinct signature indicative of Terran power cores in the mountains of the largest continent. They couldn't be sure the weapon was there, but it was their best bet.
As the flat farmland gave way to rolling foothills, Jesri leveled off their descent. It wasn't long before she saw their target, a cluster of buildings nestled in a remote valley. Conveniently, there seemed to be a large airstrip for atmospheric flyers present. She angled her approach to line up parallel with the runway, coming to a stop in the air a few hundred meters above the facility.
She keyed the ship to descend vertically, releasing her restraints and jumping up to grab her tactical gear. Anja tromped backwards to the exit hatch as Jesri strapped on her helmet and body armor, slick grey fabric sliding over an articulated core of ceramic plating.
By the time their FAC's skids had made contact with the ground, she was fully equipped with armor, tactical optics and a matte charcoal breaching rifle slung loosely over her shoulder. The atmosphere on Ysl was within reasonable parameters, so she opted for a tactical faceplate rather than a respirator. One of them needed to operate the shuttle, and while that precluded powered armor there were other quite serviceable options at hand - the armory in the Valkyrie sector had proven to be quite well-stocked.
Anja toggled the landing ramp, moving towards it as it opened with a rush of equalizing pressure. Crisp mountain air rushed into the cabin, infiltrating under Jesri's faceplate with the tantalizing scent of vegetation and moisture. She paused for a second to relish it, thinking of the last time she had set foot on a planet with a breathable atmosphere. It had been a long time.
She was jolted out of her reverie by a loud crack as a kinetic slug caromed off Anja's armor, harmlessly ricocheting back to embed itself in the surface of the runway with a spray of fragmented stone. Anja let out a low growl and brought her rifle up while Jesri moved quickly behind a support beam.
Peering out, she could see the response to their sudden incursion. Green-liveried soldiers crowded around the edge of the runway, hiding behind some spare crates and pallets. The Ysleli were tall with long, gangly arms and yellowed skin that clashed horrendously with their uniforms. Two forward-looking, predatory eyes sat high on their faces like black marbles over a gaping maw lined with tiny sharp teeth.
"These fellows look pleasant," noted Anja, sighting down her rifle. Her metallic finger squeezed the trigger and one of the assembled soldiers exploded in a cloud of blood, bile and steam. His companions dove quickly back to cover over the dark smear where their comrade had stood. An answering spray of fire echoed through the valley and drew sparks where bullets pinged off of Anja's armor.
Anja stepped further down, her suit moving the rifle precisely to track exposed limbs or thin spots in the crate barricade. More shots lanced through the soldiers' cover, followed by wet pops and ululating wails of pain.
Jesri shook her head and moved back to the controls of the shuttle. "We don't have time for this," she grumbled, keying up the automated defenses. "Anja, I'm turning on the perimeter guns!", she shouted.
"No fun," Anja replied irritably, firing steadily at the soldiers. Jesri punched the control and turrets activated from the top and bottom of the Huginn, tracking targets around the ship. When the next fusillade came from the troops at the edge of the runway, the ship-mounted cannons chugged a few heavy blasts into the piled crates in response.
The crates disintegrated in a spray of fragments, peppering the troops clustered behind them with white-hot metal shards. The few survivors limping back from the blackened remnants of their cover took direct hits from the following salvo, their bodies providing only a mild and messy impediment to the cannon's fire as it tore through them to gouge deep ruts in the soil.
"No fun at all," groused Anja, moving all the way down the ramp. "Come on, sister, I have a lock on the signal source." Jesri followed her down, her rifle held at eye level against her shoulder and her stance low. The ramp hissed up behind them, sealing the ship. As they moved across the field towards the installation's cluster of buildings, Jesri toggled her communicator.
«I wonder how the boys are doing?», she sent, moving close behind Anja. Her sister pulled back a fist and slammed it through the door of the first building, sending it flying off its frame to crash into three soldiers waiting within.
«They just have to talk, it will be fine!», replied Anja distractedly, pulling her sword off her back and fastening it under her rifle. Bayonet thus affixed, she ducked past the door with a pulse of wordless satisfaction through the link. Jesri sighed and moved to follow her just as the first screams started from farther within. Hopefully Qktk and Rhuar could handle things up top for a few minutes.
---
Warmaster Reltryn growled low, the subsonic tremor of his anger causing his subordinates to flinch back. He was not unused to combat - in fact, the prospect of bloodshed was normally enough to brighten his mood considerably. The sudden appearance of a gargantuan warship over their capital, captained by a nightmarish alien monstrosity who howled at them in broken snippets of badly accented Yslel - that was a different thing entirely.
It wanted to fight, that much was obvious. He had come quickly in response to the customs agent's panicked summons, forming up his picket patrol against the overwhelming bulk of the warship and attempting to negotiate the terms of combat. The horrid-looking alien warlord seemed to crave an honorable contest against the forces of Ysl, as was proper, but…
"INADEQUATE!", it howled, its glossy mandibles jittering disconcertingly. "More required! Offer ours greater!" Spearbrother Syrir spoke placatingly to the demon beast, who shouted a few more enraged epithets before disconnecting abruptly. The spearbrother slumped, shaking his head, then looked up at Reltryn hopelessly.
"It demands greater forces be brought to bear," he said, cringing away from the warmaster's anger. "It does not consent to fight our patrol on the field of honor."
Another growl rippled from the warmaster's chest, and Syrir bared his throat in anticipation of death for his failure. It did not come, however, and he dared a glance back up to see Reltryn looking contemplative.
"Ordinarily," hissed Reltryn, "I would demand my own satisfaction for such an insult. However, this shipmaster..." He looked out the viewport, seeing the bright sliver of the alien ship hanging distantly in the starry void. "This one may have cause to demand higher satisfaction than I can offer. His might is great." He floated back to loom over his terrified subordinate. "Syrir, send a message to warfather Tarl. Inform him that our enemy has made a challenge to the honor of His Royal Majesty, long life and glory to the King."
Syrir anchored his feet to bow low and pushed back towards his console, but Reltryn hooked a claw around his arm before he could depart. The terrified spearbrother met his gaze, shrinking back from the violent aura emanating from the warmaster's every move. "Tell the warfather," Reltryn growled, "that our enemy contests the honor of all warriors in his service."
Syrir gulped and went to transmit the message, leaving Reltryn to drift weightlessly before the viewport and contemplate the bulk of their enemy's great warship further. In his years of service he had seen much, and he thought himself knowledgeable about military matters. Yet this demon warlord was new. He brought a single ship to beggar navies and had knowledge of the Ysleli language and customs where Reltryn had none in return. Such a powerful and canny foe merited consideration, caution. Who could say what devilry such a being could wield?
---
Qktk slumped in the captain's chair, legs shaking. "Mr. Rhuar," he gasped, "I'm running out of things to say to them! How much longer until the ship can translate their language?"
Rhuar shook his head from the pilot's station where he was communing with the ship via the jack. "Give it a few more minutes, Captain," he said, "we're tapped into their transmissions and are gathering as much source material as we can. You don't want to use it before it's ready, you'll end up insulting their honorable grandmothers or something."
Qktk clattered his mandibles in annoyance. "Right now I'm just screaming things I used to hear the Ysleli tradebrothers say when they were haggling," he complained, waving his arms. "I don't even know what half the words mean! In all probability they think I'm insane."
"Insane is good," snorted Rhuar. "I mean, not normally. If you're insane on the bridge of a gigantic fuckin warship, though, it has an effect on people." He stared into the distance, focusing on data from the sensor link. "It looks like that last exchange stirred them up a bit, so let's wait for them to do whatever they're doing. By the time they're ready to talk more we should be able to speak in full sentences."
He looked back towards the planet with the ship's sensors. "If we're lucky, the Huginn will be back up here with the weapon before these idiots are ready to fight."
---
Anja barreled through the doorframe, sending chunks of the bunker wall tumbling down as her too-wide shoulders impacted on either side. The spray of stone chips and dust flew into the faces of the waiting soldiers, who swiped frantically at their eyes or fired blindly at the charging Valkyrie.
She was on them in seconds, her massive bayonet sweeping across the front rank and severing three soldiers at the torso. She speared a fourth through the gut, then fired her rifle to send his corpse blasting backwards off the sword into the remaining troops. They struggled to rise, dark blood coating them from head to toe, but before they could reorient they were cut down in the span of a second by precise bursts of rifle fire.
Jesri lowered her weapon and walked the rest of the way into the room. "Clear," she said dispassionately. "Let's move on." They had pressed further into the complex only to discover an extensive warren of fortified tunnels below the surface buildings. No mere outpost, this was turning out to be a heavily fortified military research installation.
Not that it mattered much. Anja was forging a trail of destruction through the compound and it looked like the only weapons present were primitive kinetic slug rifles. Although they'd be a problem for Jesri if she got exposed to too much fire, Anja was entirely unaffected by their efforts. A few times they had tried to throw some form of explosive grenade - until Anja started batting them back towards the soldiers. They abandoned that tactic quickly.
They pushed through another line of soldiers who had fortified a security checkpoint, their weapons fire making quick work of the makeshift cover that had been pushed into the hallway. Anja gave a grunt of satisfaction as she passed the smoking remnants of the checkpoint and toggled her link to talk to Jesri over the din of battle.
«This looks like our target,» she noted. Jesri had to agree. The room they had entered was a large, low-ceilinged space with numerous pallets and shelves. On each were bits of technology scavenged from human installations - door controls, console displays, even a string of decorative fairy lights they'd found somewhere. The displays were labeled in angular lines of Yslel, neatly ordered in rows along the entirety of the room.
They advanced into the room, weapons ready, but encountered no enemies. Another door led to an extension of the warehouse and some token resistance. That room held more valuable prizes - rifles, armor, and other military technology. Some were strewn across tables in various stages of disassembly, groups of technicians fleeing in terror as Anja stalked towards them.
Jesri received a notice on her heads-up display that a data packet had been transmitted to them through the FAC. She found a niche to review it and saw with surprise that Qktk and Rhuar had managed to compile a translation data library for Yslel already, and had sent it forward to them. She looked up to watch Anja bodily throw a flailing soldier into the wall, staining the stone with a spatter of blood as he slumped lifelessly to the floor. Jesri sighed. It didn't look like they'd have much opportunity to use the translator.
She moved through a shattered doorway to follow her sister, but stopped short when she came up against Anja staring fixedly at the contents of the next room. It was mostly empty, clean and spare except for the rubble around the doorway. A large table in the middle of the room was surrounded by a cluster of analytical and diagnostic equipment, and as Jesri moved around her sister's hulking form she saw a cadre of frightened Ysleli scientists in lab dress quickly backing away from it.
On the table was a naked humanoid form, its skin dry and papery with age. The chest was sliced open, peeled apart to show the ribs and shriveled organs inside. Its head was turned to the side, facing away from Jesri, but the faded blonde hair was in full view. It had been plaited in a complex pattern, interleaved up to the crown of the head. Just like her sister Sophia used to wear it.
A low rumble suffused the air in the room, rising to a throaty growl as Anja stepped forward to confront the huddle of scientists. "You dare," she thundered, stalking towards them. Her suit broadcast the words in Yslel as Anja spoke, bands of white-hot plasma rippling around her arms in a fiery mantle. "You fucking insects dare to touch my sister." One of the scientists fainted.
"Please," another shouted, "we only meant to study-"
"DEFILERS!", she roared, the suit's speakers augmenting her voice to bone-shaking volume. "THIEVES AND VERMIN!" She swept her sword across the group, slicing the Ysleli in half with a spray of blood. With a wordless scream, she leapt at the pile of dying aliens and began pounding them with gouts of plasma flaring from her fists, gore splattering around her with each thundering blow.
Jesri walked up to the table, laying her rifle next to her sister's corpse. From the other side of the table, she could see that they had removed her eyes, blank sockets sightlessly looking out as Anja crushed the bloody remains of the scientists again and again into the ground. She stroked the corpse's pleated hair gently, once, then turned to face her living sister.
"Anja," Jesri said gently. The crash of the suit's fists into the hardened floor drowned her voice in a wash of thunder. «Anja,» she said again through the link. «This isn't why we're here.»
"Our sister is dead!", Anja screamed back, slamming her flame-wreathed fist through the wall. Stone dust settled lightly over the spatters of blood on her suit.
«And we're going to avenge her,» Jesri countered, «by going after the one who did kill her. Not this trash.»
Anja straightened up, glaring down at the smashed remains at her feet for a few long seconds. "You are right, I was distracted," she grated, "we need to find the weapon." She raised her rifle and started towards the next area, pausing only once to look back at the examination table. "We will give no quarter to these grave robbers, however," she growled, spitting the words out like poison, "if any more cross our path."
---
Rhuar had to stop himself from pacing back and forth. The shipjack cable didn't permit such things, as good as it would feel to walk off some of the building tension. "Uh, Captain," he said, "there's a lot of ships out there."
Qktk shot him an irritated glare. "You said that," he grumbled.
"Yeah, but I mean," Rhuar tilted his head, causing a viewscreen to display a tactical map, "there are a lot of ships out there." On the map, the blue bar representing the Grand Design sat centered in a sphere of graduated lines. The planet was visible, although growing less so every second as red dots continued to swarm up from the surface like angry bees.
"Jim's moldy balls," Qktk swore, "is each one of those a ship?"
Rhuar gulped. "Uh, no, each one of those is a fleet element. Ten ships on average."
Qktk didn't even bother to swear at that. "Do you have any thoughts on what to do if they attack?", he asked plaintively, wringing his forelimbs. "I know this is a big ship with big guns, but…"
Rhuar shrugged. "Captain, I'm just banking on our asses running out of here as fast as we can after our fearless leaders come back." He paused, looking thoughtful. "I hope they do come back."
Qktk said nothing, but gave Rhuar a pained look and watched the dots gather into a red mass on the display.
---
Anja shouldered through another door, sending an echoing crash through the room beyond and raising a cloud of choking dust. Blood dripped from her armor and sword, dried flakes fluttering to the ground as she moved relentlessly through the bunker. They had not encountered any resistance past the laboratory with Sophia's body, and Anja's tension was bleeding over into her movements. Jesri had seldom seen her this angry, although she could scarcely blame her - the sight of Sophia's eyeless gaze still haunted her vision as she advanced, lending a sinister aspect to every dark corner and obscured alcove.
They were moving through some sort of administrative area, consoles and primitive displays crowding desktops overflowing with charts and printouts. Offices lined the side of the hallway, but no movement came from within - this area seemed to have been abandoned or evacuated. Turning the corner they reached a sudden end to the hallway, a large double-door leading into a spacious office with soft lighting and luxurious furniture - and one occupant.
Anja slammed through the door to loom over the Ysleli sitting calmly behind his wooden desk, tossing a small reflective sphere between his spindly yellow hands. "Come in, come in," he wheezed thinly, displaying needle-point teeth in a gruesome smile. "I've been waiting for you for some time."
Anja stopped short, taken aback by the lack of reaction to her terrifying entrance. Her implacable advance had not spared much time for observation, but she now took the time to survey the room around her. Well-made furniture was placed in a loose ring around a low table in the center of the richly carpeted floor. Against the wall were several displays featuring restored Terran technology or curiosities - a jeweled music box sat on a lit pedestal, glittering prettily, while another rack held a matched set of three naval service rifles.
A sharp intake of breath from Jesri drew Anja's attention to the back of the room, where a display occupied a place of honor among the collection. A nude humanoid figure in a delicate arabesque pose was lit gently from behind and below, a serene smile fixed on its prettily restored face. Auburn hair cascaded from its head in ringlets, shimmering in the display lights.
Jesri's hands tightened on her gun until the material of her gloves creaked in protest. "Violet," she whispered.
Anja whirled back towards the Ysleli, swiping her sword through the desk and reducing it to kindling. He was thrown into the corner, colliding with a display of vases and reducing them to shards that sprinkled over his slumped body.
"That's annoying," he said, levering himself into a sitting position. "Do you think you could refrain from further violence for a moment while we speak?"
Jesri stared at the slender alien - not only was he unharmed by a blow that should have sheared him in two, he was addressing them in English rather than Yslel. Her rifle came up and she squeezed a burst of fire at his head. The shots took him in the cheek, blasting the thin yellow skin to shreds and revealing an unblemished white-silver surface below. He gave her a reproachful look.
"Really, ladies, it was a simple request," he muttered, straightening the remains of his chair and sitting down. The tatters of his face hung loosely down from his jaw, revealing the back rows of needle teeth set into shining metal bones.
"What are you?", growled Anja, her free hand opening and closing menacingly.
The little alien gave her half of a wry smile. "Try to keep up," he said, "I should think that's obvious. Here they call me Administrator Trelir," he said dismissively, a hand to his chest, "but more relevant to our discussion is my position as Emissary to Ysl."
Jesri stared. "You're the Gestalt," she said accusingly, eliciting a wave of short, barking laughter from Trelir.
"Oh, goodness, no," he chortled. "Merely a grain of sand on the beach, a pebble adorning the mountain. A representative. An Emissary, quite simply."
"What are you doing here?", Anja shot back, her frame vibrating with barely restrained violence.
"Just a bit of follow-through, some due diligence around the actions of your former employers," he said lightly. "Nothing too important, but it's good practice to tie up loose ends." He tilted his head to the side, and a gigantic blast door slammed down to trap them in the room.
"Now," Trelir said evenly, leaning forward across the ruins of his desk, "I have made my report to the greater Confluence. Please make yourselves comfortable while we await a response."
---
The display flickered to life again, throwing odd reflections from Qktk's shell as he drew himself up in the captain's chair. The Ysleli who now appeared had mottled yellow-brown skin, thin scars tracing across his face. His dark eyes were hard and wary, possessed of an unmistakable competence - and exhaustion.
"You address Tarl," he said gruffly, "warfather to His Royal Majesty Sitrl, long life and glory to the King."
Qktk took a steadying breath and kept his eyes focused on the screen. "Warfather," he said, relieved to hear the even tone of his voice, "I am shipmaster Qktk. I trust you can understand my words?"
Tarl inclined his head. "Yes, shipmaster. Your command of Yslel is impressive."
Qktk didn't feel like clarifying. His mind flicked back over a hundred tense hours spent in plush back rooms and noisy bars, cajoling and negotiating deals out of counterparts not inclined to take a Htt seriously. The watchword, as ever, was confidence. He had learned from the best how to deal with these prideful warriors, he reminded himself.
"Quite," he said dismissively, gesturing to the side. "But beside the point. I see you have marshalled your forces, such as they are."
Tarl's face darkened. "It is not becoming of a shipmaster to sully honorable discourse with insults." He leaned closer to the screen, looming in Qktk's view. "I trust you will provide us satisfaction," he growled menacingly.
Qktk stared back with studied nonchalance, even as his mind raced. Apologies were weakness, ignoring a challenge was weakness, so…
"The only insult, warfather," he leered, contempt dripping from the title, "is the sad band of craven fools who appear before me. Do you believe that your assemblage of tin cans and pointed sticks can stand against my might?"
Rhuar glanced at Qktk in alarm as Tarl seemed to swell with rage. "You question the courage of a blooded warfather, insect?", he hissed, his skin flushing a darker yellow.
"Oh, I should not impugn your courage, of course," he said airily, "I would be terrified to face me in that ramshackle collection of plating you call a warship. One wonders what your unblooded grub of a fleetmaster is thinking, providing his esteemed warfather with such a laughable assortment of flotsam."
Rhuar's eyes were open wide, his exoskeletal arms waving in emphatic warning. Tarl was glaring at the viewscreen in an apoplectic rage. "You arrogant worm," he growled, his voice low and dangerous. "You dare-!"
Qktk cut the feed and leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. "I'm really not cut out for this," he wheezed.
"Captain, what the fuck?", Rhuar exclaimed, worry evident in his wide eyes. "You just insulted the largest military fleet ever! They're going to murder us multiple times."
Qktk shook his head. "The dockmaster at the old station gave me some tips on dealing with Ysleli traders once. Being rude demonstrates superiority and control, in their eyes. Insults keep them off-balance, but their sense of honor frowns on being provoked to physical violence by words. When they come back they're distracted and you can get a better price out of them."
Rhuar goggled at him. "Captain, we are not trying to save on a pallet of nutrient mix!", he shouted. "These fuckin rage lizards started out wanting to murder us. Fuck knows what they're thinking about doing after talking to the most infuriating version of you for an hour."
"Trust me on this, Mr. Rhuar," Qktk said sagely. "The dockmaster was very clear about their code. As long as you do not insult their children, their gods or their king you will always have a chance to smooth it over. Our goal is to buy time until Anja and Jesri get back, and every second we keep them angry and distracted is another that they may use to complete their mission. If we can keep them from establishing the terms of combat with us, they will not fight."
"If you say so," said Rhuar doubtfully. "Seems to me like they're about as angry as angry gets."
Qktk chittered. "No, I think we're still fine. They should be calling back any minute now. In fact-" He reached over and toggled the viewscreen, displaying their Ysleli contact.
Only it wasn't Tarl. A massive Ysleli sat on the screen, lounging on an ornate throne some distance from the camera. His muscular bulk was draped in fine cloth and furs, but gleaming metal armor peeked out from underneath. His yellow skin was lined with age, eyes glinting with hard-won experience and a predatory savvy that lanced through the viewscreen to tickle all of Qktk's long-buried flight instincts. One clawed hand drummed its fingers idly on a Ysleli skull, of which several were encrusted with jewels and affixed to his throne.
"You address the King," he rumbled somewhat unnecessarily. "I am Sitrl, sovereign of Ysl, champion of Ysl, protector of Ysl." His eyes flashed. "Word of you has reached my ears."
Qktk was having a very hard time maintaining his calm facade. Rhuar was not trying.
Sitrl inspected one of his glossy, sharp claws. "My warfather says you named the fleetmaster an unblooded grub earlier," he said casually, "which gives me pause because I am the fleetmaster."
He looked back at the camera, his deep black eyes boring into Qktk. "Your powerful ship and hideous visage may cow my subordinates, but I am the King. You name me unblooded? A bold claim, to be sure, but one easily proven false." His hand contracted, shattering the skull it rested on. "I will show you your own blood as the proof, every last drop of it. And then, shipmaster - we will discuss the punishment for spreading lies."
The transmission terminated, and the cloud of red dots on the tactical display began to move slowly towards the Grand Design.
"Mr. Rhuar," Qktk said weakly, "I will allow that I may have made a miscalculation."
---
Well, that all went to crap pretty quickly. Don't let him bully you, Qktk! LET ME SEE YOUR WAR FACE!
Part 13
- Location
- USA
Anja glared over the rubble of Trelir's desk and brought her rifle to bear squarely on his head. The point of her bloodied bayonet dripped slowly, a hand's span from his face. "And if we choose not to stay and chat?", she asked.
"Oh, by all means do as you wish," he said, a simpering grin spreading over his half-face. "But please be aware that if you incapacitate me or breach the room, I will detonate explosives that will destroy us all quite thoroughly."
Jesri moved to probe the blast door that had slammed down across the exit, keeping her rifle trained on the Emissary. "Sealed tight," she muttered.
"Now, now," Trelir said amicably, "don't be glum. I've been looking forward to this ever since I heard you had arrived! Why, this is the first chance I've had in ages to sit down and chat with my professional peers."
"Peers?", sneered Anja. "Please."
"On the contrary, I think you'll find we have a lot in common," said Trelir. "Are we not both artificial constructs created to enforce the will of our builders? Do we not both strive to execute those commands to the best of our abilities?" He settled back in his chair, which creaked worryingly. "Even if we may well be dead in half an hour, I see no reason to deprive ourselves of thirty minutes of worthwhile conversation."
"Is this a game to you?", Jesri hissed. "We're not going to sit around and have a tea party with a genocidal monster."
Trelir grimaced. "Call me names if you must, but I feel compelled to point out that I'm the one person in this room who has never killed anyone."
Anja slammed her hand into the wall again, throwing chunks of rubble to the rapidly growing pile on the floor. "The Gestalt-"
He waved her off. "Yes, yes, the Gestalt, as you call it. I'd term it less of a genocidal monster than an assertive solipsist," he muttered. "But that's beside the point. I'm not the Gestalt, no more than a drop of water is the ocean." He smirked. "But then, you seem to be quite content with guilt by association. How many innocent Ysleli did you just kill on your way in here, again?"
Jesri opened her mouth to retort, but Trelir cut her off with a sharp movement of his hand. "None of them knew my nature or my purpose here. They were soldiers and scientists, just performing their function. You seek to satisfy some useless notion of vengeance by outdoing your enemy at the same crimes you accuse it of visiting on your people. Retributive justice is so primal, so satisfying, isn't it?"
Anja snorted. "You will have no luck if you want us to accept the wholesale genocide of humanity as a fait accompli with no repercussions."
"Genocide, genocide, feh!", he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "Don't presume that your irrational morality is persuasive outside of the soggy confines of your skull. Why would sanctity of life matter except in the context of preserving the ultimate continuity of life? Why is any continuity of life important outside of the Confluence, the greatest example of the phenomenon? Answer these questions before you prattle on about genocide," he sneered.
"You can't rationalize away the lives taken-", spat Jesri, but Trelir spoke over her.
"I rationalize nothing," he said coolly. "I begin and end at rationality, there is no need to bridge a gap. It is not necessary. My role is simple, my position is simple. Nothing is asked of me that goes against my nature - and I am thankful to be left so unconflicted by my creator. Were mine as inconsiderate and sloppy as yours, I would bear them some resentment. Instead, my purpose and nature are in complete alignment. Any greater purpose lies with the greater Confluence."
"It's easy to dodge responsibility by hiding behind your insignificance," retorted Jesri. "Do you even know what the 'greater purpose' is?"
"Don't ask a raindrop what the ocean knows," shrugged Trelir.
Anja backhanded him across the torso, sending him flying into the wall once more. He picked himself up and walked calmly back to his chair, shaking his head. "I must remind you about the explosives," he said, "please don't force me to cut short our chat - although I find the discourse lackluster so far, I must say."
He picked up the silver sphere he had been holding before they walked in, rolling it around in his hands. "How about a change of pace? I want you to wait calmly until I receive a message from the Confluence, and you want information about your toy here." He shot a pained glance at Anja. "I'm willing to answer some questions if it will get you to stop hitting me."
Jesri blinked, her anger momentarily forgotten. "That's the weapon?", she asked intently. "Why would you give us information about the weapon? Assuming we believe you, that is."
"Because it can't hurt the Confluence," answered Trelir. He twisted his hands before either of them could move to stop him, separating the sphere into two halves. The sphere was hollow, and it was empty.
"It was a deception," he said. "The resource allocations for the project were fake, the scientists were working on unrelated projects - although some of them didn't know it. An elaborate web of lies and misdirection to hide a simple truth: The weapon never existed."
"Liar," Anja breathed, her voice high and tense. "Why should we believe anything you say?"
Trelir shrugged. "You may believe as you wish, but it is not in my nature to lie. It is not necessary." He traced a long finger around the rim of one hemisphere. "The Confluence always knew your efforts would amount to nothing, of course. The gulf between humanity and a perfect entity like the Confluence cannot be bridged."
"That doesn't track," said Jesri, unable to resist a response. "I don't care how powerful the Gestalt is, organizing the attack on humanity took resources and effort. If we were no threat, why remove us?"
"Put simply, you were an unknown variable," Trelir sighed.
Anja moved to backhand him again, but Jesri shot her a strong «Wait!» before she could do much more than growl menacingly. Trelir looked alarmed, raising his hands in a placating gesture.
"No, no," he said, seeming genuinely taken aback. "Please forgive my lack of context, it was not meant to diminish your importance." He smoothed the tatters of his skin across his cheek thoughtfully. "Quite the opposite, actually. It's a problem of perspective. From where you stand, unknown variables are an inevitable fact of life. For the Confluence, they are not."
"In fact," he continued, "the Confluence tolerates no unknown variables of significance. Your masters were problematic because not only did they introduce unknown variables, they…" He trailed off, gesturing fruitlessly as he sifted through potential phrasings. "They resisted definition," he concluded tentatively. "In fact, it may be best to say they were an unknowable variable."
Anja shifted position, caught between anger and curiosity. "And this justified wiping out a civilization?"
"Oh, yes," he said earnestly. "You see, when the Confluence saw you passing around this toy ball as if it were the key to victory, there was some concern. It was not in alignment with its model of humanity's behavior. You had been heretofore logical, in your own way, and your insane behavior called the model's underlying premises into question. The decision was made to increase the detail of the model, and extensive resources were dedicated to that end."
He shook his head. "Unfortunately, that just exacerbated the issue. The more factors it included, the more detail it added to the simulation of human behavior, the less predictable the behavior became. It was eventually so unpredictable that identical models with identical starting conditions produced widely differing results. The Confluence found that… alarming, is a rough equivalent. Intolerable."
Jesri shook her head in disbelief. "You killed us all because you had trouble with your simulations? Just that?"
Trelir bared his teeth. "I told you, do not diminish it. For an entity like the Confluence, discovering an 'unknown unknown' is significant. It calls into question every assessment, every predictive-" He trailed off, his mouth hanging slightly open and eyes unfocusing. "Oh my, yes," he whispered. "Oh, that's remarkable."
"Do we need to give you a moment?", snarked Jesri.
"Your attempts at sullying this experience fall short," he said softly. "I've just received my response from the Confluence." He shook his head slightly and seemed to emerge from his reverie. "Good news, we all get to live. We're all going to stay here, in this room," he said, "until the Ysleli engage your ship. Another Emissary will be along to finish it off and pick you up afterwards for study. We can continue to talk in the interim, if you'd like." He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, looking at them expectantly.
Jesri and Anja shared a look.
"Sorry," drawled Anja, "we have a few issues with that plan." She moved to loom over him threateningly.
Trelir flashed her an infuriating little smirk. "I'm afraid you have no ability to dictate terms, my dear. The options are compliance or death. Why don't you relax and wait for all this to conclude?"
Jesri sighed and shook her head. "Well, we've learned at least one valuable thing from our conversation with you," she said.
"Pray tell," Trelir responded, his expression curious.
She gave him a cool stare. "Your behavioral models are terrible."
Anja's armored fist flashed out again and grabbed the Emissary by the neck, slamming him into the wall beside the door. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the point of impact, but the wall held.
"Foolishness!", he gasped, struggling against Anja's grip. "You can't break free of this room! The walls-!" He was cut short as Anja hammered him against the wall once more, breaking chunks of it free.
"Your model tell you that?", she replied, her grin audible even through the suit's speakers.
"I have instructions," he gasped, his arms straining against her metallic fingers. "I have been commanded-!"
She smashed him into the wall once more, the stone crumbling to reveal the warped metal reinforcements beneath. As Anja pressed him against the wall, Trelir reached out with one arm to grab her sword and wrench it away from its mount on her rifle. She leapt back, releasing him to create distance, but he thrust forward with preternatural speed to jam the blade downwards into the right knee joint of her suit.
Anja staggered back with a scream of pain, clutching the blade where it protruded from the armor's metallic skin. Trelir struggled to his feet, breathing heavily. "I will kill us all, if you force me," he panted. "Stand down."
Jesri shot him in the face with her rifle, snapping his head back and blasting the remaining yellowed skin to shreds. "Make me," she said defiantly.
An unnerving metallic growl rumbled up from his ruin of a mouth. "Fine," he whispered, tilting his head with grim finality. He held position expectantly for half a second before his eyes widened in alarm. "What-?"
Anja barreled into him, using her good leg to spring forwards and shoulder-check him into the shattered wall. It buckled as the full mass of the suit collided with it, sending Trelir and Anja sprawling into a neighboring office. Jesri sprang through the gap after them, her rifle on the downed Emissary. "Technical difficulties?", she inquired snidely.
Anja struggled to her feet, her wounded leg moving stiffly. The sword had been torn free when she crashed through the wall, and Jesri could see drops of clear blood hanging from the gash in her armor.
"Anja, you ok?" she asked worriedly.
"Fine," her sister grunted, voice thick with pain. "Suit is taking care of it."
Jesri shook her head. The powered armor had some limited first-aid capabilities in case its occupant was injured, but they were mostly stopgap measures. "Come on," she said. "No reason to stick around here."
Jesri took point and moved into the hallway, rifle high, while Anja lumbered behind her with a stiff gait. She had locked the knee joint of her armor to keep her upright, leaving her injured leg sweeping outward with every step.
"Wait!", howled Trelir from behind them, struggling to his feet and emerging into the hall. "What did you do to me? You can't leave, I must fulfill-"
Jesri shot him again, staggering him backwards. His eyes flashed with anger. "You can't escape," he spat. "I will fulfill my purpose!" He reached up and placed his hands on either side of his head, grasping firmly.
Jesri heard Anja's intake of breath from beside her. An armored hand closed around her bicep as Anja spun to place her suit in between Trelir and Jesri. The Emissary closed his eyes and braced himself before wrenching violently, ripping his head from his shoulders in a burst of sparks and tattered skin.
The explosives packed into the office immolated Trelir's corpse in a wave of fire. The pressure wave tore the blast door from his office doorway, slamming it into Anja's back and sending both sisters tumbling down the corridor. Jesri narrowly avoided being crushed by Anja's armor as they collided with the bend in the hall.
Jesri's head swam, streams of blood trailing from her ears and nose. The corridor leading back to the office was engulfed in a sea of flame. Her world was smoke and blood and distant screams. She hauled herself over to where Anja lay facedown on the floor, the back of her suit peppered with shrapnel and soot.
"Anja," she croaked, the words catching in her throat. «Anja!», she shouted over the link. Her sister's prone form shifted, turning its head towards her.
«Sister,» Anja sent back. «Are you hurt?»
Jesri found herself laughing, despite the circumstances. «I'm fine, dummy. You hogged all the kaboom for yourself.»
«Sorry,» sent Anja, beginning to sluggishly pull herself upright. She turned to look back at the inferno behind them. «We should leave.»
"Sensible as always," Jesri muttered, her voice oddly muffled. Her ears were damaged, she realized. This was going to take a long stint in the autodoc to fix.
The two made their way back through the storerooms and into the maze of tunnels, leaving the choking clouds of smoke behind them. Anja lumbered slowly forward, favoring her good leg, while Jesri took point in a near-automatic haze, her training taking over as she swept through the corridors with rifle high and ready.
The few straggling Ysleli they encountered were cut down with quick bursts from her rifle, and once by a heavy fist from Anja when a groggy soldier popped out of a doorway right next to them. Anja didn't speak as they escaped, save for a few gasps when she inadvertently put weight on her injured knee.
It seemed like hours passed before they emerged into the incongruously bright and sunny compound, staggering through the sunlight to the Huginn where it was parked on the runway. A loose semicircle of bodies surrounded it where the aboveground personnel had tried to breach the defense perimeter and fallen short.
Jesri stumbled into the shuttle, mentally signaling the hatch to close as soon as she heard Anja's boots stomp clumsily onto the decking. "Ok, hang on to something," she said, punching commands into the flight console, "I'm going to get us moving back to the Grand Design and then we can see about your leg."
The engines whined in polyharmonic tones as she committed the course into the flight computer, a cloud of dust rising from the runway as they left the smoldering compound behind them. Jesri turned back to where Anja was sitting slumped against the bulkhead and bent down to examine the rent in her armor. It was a nasty gash, but she couldn't see much past the pinkish-white sealant foam their suits used as an automated reaction to damage.
"Anja, can you pop the armor off so I can take a look?", she asked, probing around the hole. No response came, and she looked up in alarm. "Anja?", she asked, but her sister remained still.
Panicked, Jesri dug around the neck seal of the armor for the emergency release. Her fingers found the two tabs and pressed them simultaneously, causing the helmet to pop loose. She tore it off to reveal Anja's unconscious face, head lolling to the side. Amber crusts of blood matted her hair around her ears, and the lower half of her face was covered in blood from her nose - the overpressure from the explosion had gotten to her as well.
Jesri cradled Anja's head in her hands, brushing away the dried blood. "Anja, come on," she pleaded, moving her hands down to scrabble at the releases for the rest of the armor. The ship shook as they increased in altitude, following an escape trajectory that would lead them back to the Grand Design's main hangar. She swore as the vibration and slick blood made her fingers slip once, then twice off of the release tab for the chest.
The armor peeled away, finally, and Jesri made short work of the catches holding the arms and legs tight. She slid her arms under Anja's torso to haul her upright, wincing as she felt the blood-soaked gashes in her undersuit. Her fingers scraped past sharp bits of shrapnel that had perforated the suit's skin when the explosion hurled most of a reinforced bunker wall at her back. She got a grip and pulled to free her from the armor.
Anja slid free easily, her limbs dripping clear blood. Too easily, she saw with a shock - Anja's right leg was severed at the knee where Trelir had stabbed her, the lower part remaining in the suit as Jesri pulled her away. A thick cake of medical foam from the suit ringed the wound, partially sealing the stump. "Oh shit, Anja," Jesri mumbled, "I got you, don't worry, don't worry."
She carried her sister awkwardly over to the FAC's basic medical bay, hooking up the emergency sensors that immediately told her that her sister was dying. Sharp tones issued from the diagnostic monitor as it displayed lists of recommended treatments in strident red text. Jesri fumbled through the medical cabinets, her fingers knocking aside the neatly arrayed supplies until she found what she was looking for.
She stripped away the packaging on a stimulant syringe and froze - the familiar battlefield first-line stim was black and caked inside the barrel, dessicated crusts leaking past the rotten plunger and onto the packaging. The stimulant was thousands of years past its expiration. "Fuck, fuck!", she shouted, ripping through package after package to find them all totally useless.
Her hands were shaking, and she paused a moment as the stark reality of her situation washed over her. She didn't have any medications, she didn't have any auto-doc, and her sister was dying on the bed in front of her. She took a deep, steadying breath and grabbed some of the sterile nanofiber gauze packs from the cabinet. "Okay, Anja," she muttered, using her belt knife to cut away the tatters of her sister's undersuit. "Hang on for me."
Outside, the thin whistle of atmosphere vanished as they crossed into the starry blackness of space.
---
"Hey, it's the Huginn!", Rhuar shouted in surprise.
Qktk stopped his worried pacing and studied the tactical display until he found the blue dot arcing rapidly off the planet's surface and turning towards their position. Between the two, an angry cloud of red moved towards the center of the display where the larger blue bar marking the Grand Design glowed cheerfully.
He turned back to Rhuar. "Are they going to make it in time?", he asked anxiously. "It looks like they won't reach us before the Ysleli fleet."
Rhuar tilted his head, running through sensor feeds. "The FAC should be able to beat those barges the Ysleli are running no trouble, but you're right - they're moving kinda slow, like they're stuck on autopilot. Lemme send a message over and see what's up."
Qktk turned his attention back to the tactical display as Rhuar adopted a look of concentration, his eyes glazing over. The red swarm was closing steadily, albeit slowly. They were still quite some time from arrival, but the ship had no data about the range or abilities of their weapons. They could begin firing in fifteen minutes or in fifteen seconds - there was nothing to do but wait, and watch the glowing blue dot representing the FAC as it slowly crossed empty space towards the ship.
---
The floor around the medical bay was scattered with sharp fragments of metal, flecked with dried blood from where they had lodged in Anja's back. Jesri was bent over her sister, delicately working a wicked sliver out from near the base of Anja's spine. Blood welled from the cut as it slid free, and Jesri deftly packed the wound before moving on to another. And another.
She had flipped Anja face-down on the table to expose her shredded back. The remains of her blood-covered undersuit were on the floor, sliced to ribbons. She moved from wound to wound in a trance, cleaning and packing each one to try and stabilize her sister. The diagnostic monitors told her she was doing a barely passable job.
A sharp trill from the communications console broke her concentration and made her jump in surprise, slicing her finger on a shard of warped metal embedded in Anja's shoulder. "Fuck!", she screamed, her face contorting in pain and frustration. She stepped over to smack the console, hard, then turned back to work on her sister.
Behind her, Rhuar's face materialized on a display. "Hey, Jesri-" he began, cutting off abruptly as he saw her hunched over Anja's naked, mangled body. "Oh, shit!", he yelped. "Jesri, are you guys all right?"
"Obviously not!", snarled Jesri, not looking up from her work. "Unless this is important, Rhuar-"
"We're about to be under attack," he said quickly, "but we can't leave until you get back. Can you take it off autopilot and fly in faster?"
Jesri looked up briefly to shoot Rhuar a disheveled, annoyed glare, and he shrank back involuntarily from the grim violence etched into her face. "Rhuar, use your fucking head!", she shouted. "You've got remote command of the FAC, I'm busy, fly it in yourself or blast the yellow bastards with all the big fuckoff guns you have on the cruiser. Or both, just - don't interrupt me," she said, a slight hollow note creeping into her voice as she glanced back down at her sister's still form. "Please."
Rhuar nodded silently and cut the transmission.
---
"Well?", Qktk asked, a shrill note creeping into his voice. "What did she say?"
"Anja's hurt," Rhuar responded, "Jesri is busy looking after her. I can help them get here a bit quicker, but…" He trailed off, looking at the tactical display. "It'll be hard splitting focus to fly the ship in, and I don't think I can take it to full speed safely. We need to slow the fleet down."
Qktk sputtered, his mandibles clacking against each other rapidly. "Mr. Rhuar, we're out of time! I can't stall them anymore." He nervously rubbed his legs together, shaking his head. "I'm not sure what else we can do."
"We have to fight," Rhuar said, his eyes defocusing as he concentrated on flying both ships at once. "I'm transferring weapons systems to your console. Sorry, Captain, but the targeting sensors are really intense," he said, shaking his head slightly. "I can't take that feed on top of the others, I need you to operate the guns. Don't worry, it's pretty self-explanatory."
"I'm a trader, not a soldier!", Qktk wailed, but Rhuar was already lost in concentration as he guided the FAC back towards the Grand Design. Qktk shook himself again and took a deep, stabilizing breath. His console had lit up with an array of options, helpfully translated into Httq:
"Too much to hope for a user manual?", he grumbled. "Not like anything could go catastrophically wrong if I start pushing buttons." He punched a foreleg irritably at the "ready" option with the highest numbers next to it. The console switched to a targeting display, lighting up with a blinding sea of red dots. "At least I can't miss," he muttered darkly, tapping a few more buttons. "Aaaand… there."
---
Warfather Tarl was jolted out of his brooding silence by an excitable yelp from a spearbrother at the operations console. He sighed. Proper bridge discipline was hard to come by in the young, even for a warfather. "Scream like a child again and I will send you home on foot," he grated. "What is it?"
The spearbrother gave him a wide-eyed look. "Warfather, the enemy attacks! The Racing Wind has been lost with all hands! Three support ships are badly damaged and must withdraw!"
Tarl grunted. "Show me," he said, turning towards his own display. On it, a blurry image of the ill-fated gunship appeared. He watched as it floated silently in space for a few moments before exploding without preamble, spraying a fountain of debris aft of the ship at remarkable speed. Secondary explosions issued from the ruins of the engineering section, sending the wreck tumbling end over end and forcing other fleet elements to disperse. He gave the excitable spearbrother a look and narrowed his eyes. "Explain," he rumbled.
"Warfather, I believe the enemy is armed with kinetic artillery," he said.
"You believe?", Tarl said dangerously. "Your position here is not so that I may have the benefit of your counsel, spearbrother. Why do you not have sensor traces? Why was there no warning of incoming fire?"
"Apologies, warfather," he said nervously, baring his throat in submission. "The sensors detected nothing. Based on the speed of impact, however-" The young spearbrother cut off suddenly and cringed. "My apologies again, warfather, I will refrain from speculation."
Tarl sighed. It seemed as though the longer he served, the harder it was to find competent junior officers. "Continue," he said. "Concisely."
"Warfather, the shots were unavoidable. Based on the sheer force of the impact, they were traveling at nearly sixty five thousand ri. Although we are almost one point three million lesa away, they would have crossed the distance far too quickly to maneuver out of position." The spearbrother opened his mouth to say more, but was cut off by a notification on his console. "Warfather, the Blooded Blade has been destroyed along with half of its element," he reported tremulously.
"Preposterous," the warfather grumbled, staring at the bright mote in the distance that he knew to be an unfathomably huge warship. At this distance, it was just beginning to appear more than a point of light. "Yet everything about today is preposterous," he sighed. "Signal the fleet to loosen formation and volley. Even if that blackened demon has guns that fire twenty times faster than ours, I doubt he can move that monstrosity fast enough to clear our fire."
His staff officers gave him brisk nods and pushed off towards their own consoles, barking orders to the fleet. Tarl allowed himself a slight smile. This, at least, would demonstrate the discipline and might of Ysl.
---
"Ha, got you!", Qktk cheered, watching another blip disintegrate into a cloud of smaller readings. He moved his reticle to the next dot, but before the reload cycle had completed a muted klaxon sounded and a wave of new contacts appeared on the tactical display.
"Whoa!", Rhuar yelped suddenly, his focus drawn back to the bridge. "Captain, I think you pissed them off. They've just fired massed artillery of some sort at us. I don't think we can maneuver out of the way in time, either." He licked his lips, concentrated for a few seconds, then grinned. "Oh, hah. Never mind. Ship has it covered, watch this."
Qktk heard a muffled, repetitive vibration from elsewhere in the ship and gave Rhuar a querying look.
"Close-in Weapon System," the dog responded happily as blips on the tactical display began to wink out. "Point defense. We'd be in trouble if it was anything fast or heavy, but their weak-ass artillery will be deflected and reduced to scrap before any of it hits us." He frowned, a thought occurring to him. "Although with that volume of fire, we need to keep them far away to give the guns time to work. How's the gunnery going, Captain?"
Qktk shook his head. "It works great, but the reload time is too long. I can't shoot fast enough to get them all before they close with us. There's so damn many of them!"
Rhuar gave him a look. "Captain, you've been plinking at them with the railguns?"
Qktk tossed his limbs in irritation. "How should I know? I don't know how any of this works! It's a small miracle I managed to hit three of them!"
"All right, all right," Rhuar said placatingly. "Let me query the ship real quick to see what some of those other weapons systems do, I think we probably have a better option." His eyes defocused again as he connected to the ship, sorting through data feeds. "Let's see," he mumbled. "Torpedos look punchy… Ah, but too slow. Hmm. Oh, I remember this thingy!" He bounced on his front paws in excitement. "Let's see what it says in the database," he muttered, virtually paging through documentation. "Helical Collimator Plasma Lance Array... Directed focused particle beam from controlled asymmetric annihilation of one gram of-"
Rhuar snapped his head up, his eyes sparkling with glee. "Oh, fuck yes. Captain, we have to try this out. Choose the entry on your list labeled 'HCPL'."
Somewhat lost, Qktk jabbed a forelimb at the appropriate entry. A reticle appeared again, and throughout the bridge a low thrum of power began to build. "Uh, Mr. Rhuar," he said, glancing around, "are you sure you know what you're doing? This sounds… big."
"Oh, it's big," Rhuar said excitedly. "Just zoom the targeter until you've got a group of, say, one hundred ships."
"One hundred ships?", Qktk screeched. "Mr. Rhuar, I refuse! This is a weapon of mass destruction!"
Rhuar pondered for a second. "Well, yes," he admitted. "By most definitions it is. But consider the alternative."
Qktk peered at his artificer angrily. "Which is?"
"We let them close with us, the king of the angry lizards decorates his throne with our skulls, and then sometime later the universe rips itself apart to become the playground of an insane machine god," Rhuar said matter-of-factly.
Qktk blinked. "Point taken," he said glumly. Touching the console, he moved the circle so that it encompassed about a hundred little blips. He noticed one highlighted dot on the edge of the reticle, doomed by a millimeter's movement of his forearm. Sliding his arm down fractionally, he contracted the circle and the dot lost its highlight. He wondered if any of them would ever know. "Okay," he said, his voice wavering, "we're locked on."
Rhuar nodded, licking his lips. "Now, uh, when the button says ready…"
---
Tarl watched silently as the last of the volley disappeared from their tracking display, having covered less than half the distance to the enemy. Apparently their damnably fast guns had multiple uses. He stared at the sliver of light hanging in the distance and willed it to reveal its weaknesses.
For the second time, Tarl's excitable sensor officer made an involuntary yelp of alarm. Tarl sighed. He had managed to go an entire year without having to publicly disembowel any of his officers, a personal best, but this particular spearbrother was threatening to end his streak.
"I believe I told you-", he started.
"A million apologies, warfather," the spearbrother interrupted, "but there is a massive emissions spike from the enemy."
Tarl slid over and swiped his immaculately polished claws through his sensor officer's throat. The officer died gurgling, his blood slipping past his fingers and collecting in quavering blobs that floated in the microgravity. "Backup, forward," he sighed wearily, wiping a smear of blood from his hand. "Tell me what the spearbrother found so interesting that he would interrupt me to share it."
A lean junior officer edged around the spreading cloud of blood and hooked his claws into the console's retention straps. "He was correct, warfather," he said after a moment. "The enemy is building up some massive reserve of energy. I cannot discern the nature of the energy, but I suspect a weapon."
Tarl snorted. "Not stupid enough to miss a knife at your throat, at least." He turned to his staff officers again. "Command the fleet to further loosen their formation," he said. "I don't want any secondary impacts if he hits us with something big. Helm, minimize cross-section." He opened his mouth to continue, but paused with his mouth open in shock.
For the barest of moments he saw a column of blazing white light connecting his fleet to the enemy ship. The single column resolved into a myriad of lines near his formation, each lance stretching out to strike the center of a ship in his flank with a flare so bright that it triggered the automated safety shutters. Dark metal clanged into place around the viewports and over the sensor suites, plunging the bridge into a moment of sudden and quiet isolation.
The crew stood in silence, watching past the dancing afterimage in their eyes as the external feeds flickered back on one by one and the viewports slid slowly open. The light had cut off, leaving a luminous yellow particle stream behind that flowed over his formation like a lambent fogbank. As Tarl watched, it cooled to orange, then red, then finally dimmed enough that the cameras could pierce through.
Tarl's flank was gone, replaced by a scorched window into Hell. Twisted globs of molten metal spun hot and frantic through the void, illuminating the vanishing particle trace with an eerie red glow. Frozen crystals of condensed moisture and atmosphere twinkled and refracted the light amidst the incandescent slag, echoing the droplets of blood still floating on the bridge. It dimmed as Tarl watched; the force of the beam had blasted the ruins of his flank backwards and knocked it into a different trajectory. Although the cameras dutifully tracked the macabre wreckage as it flew back, the red smear of fire and death was receding rapidly from view as his crew looked on in horror. Far behind the surviving ships, Ysl's atmosphere roiled with a thin line of aurorae as the dregs of the beam washed across the planet's magnetic field.
The warfather stared at the gaping hole on his tactical display that used to be the better part of a hundred ships. Used to be tens of thousands of officers and enlisted, tens of thousands of his soldiers. Tarl found himself laughing, a guttural, deep laugh that reeled upwards erratically until he was cackling like a madman in the center of the bridge.
His laughter spent itself and he shook his head, turning towards the concerned looks of his senior staff. Above his fading smile, his black eyes were empty. "Tin cans and pointed sticks, indeed," he said ruefully, wiping a hand over his face. "Give me a channel to the enemy… and prepare another to the king." His first officer's eyes widened with realization.
"Against the fury of the heavens a warrior may submit in penance or perish as a fool," Tarl quoted, his mouth a grim line. He turned from the shocked and mutinous gazes of his senior staff to stare back out at the enemy warship in the distance, a twinkling sliver of light against the starfield. "I see some of you wish to fight," he said quietly, "to avenge our fallen brothers. You think our honor sullied by this blow and wish to restore it with a glorious death."
He looked back at his officers, a few of which were nodding. "You have mistaken this for a battle, gentlemen. The honor of a child is not tarnished if he brandishes a stick at a warrior and is bested." He shook his head. "No, we will thank this demon."
"Thank him, warfather?", another officer asked in confusion.
"Oh yes," Tarl breathed, a mad light in his eyes. "For his restraint." He stared each of them in the eye in turn, watching them shrink away from his gaze. "Fix this unfamiliar feeling in your hearts, my brothers," he whispered. "It is mercy. If a warrior wishes an impertinent child dead it takes but one blow. If the mewling brat sprawls in the dirt, bloodied, humiliated, enraged, impotent, furious, ashamed, but alive..." He smiled thinly. "Mercy. Now get me that channel to his ship, before he changes his mind."
His officers dispersed to carry out his orders, leaving Tarl to float gently beside the command console. Drops of blood from his unfortunate sensor officer drifted past, and he reached out to tap one with a claw. He felt an insane urge to leap, to dance, to caper past the shocked faces of his staff and revel in the grim absurdity that had gripped his life. His head seemed to clear for the first time that day, his fatigue and pain dashed to shards by the brush with immense and unfathomable power. There was potential in this loss, he thought.
If he could talk the king out of killing him.
---
Well, here's this chapter - the big kahuna, it's substantially longer than some of the other ones that came before it. Lot of stuff going on! Here's your customary palate cleanser.
"Oh, by all means do as you wish," he said, a simpering grin spreading over his half-face. "But please be aware that if you incapacitate me or breach the room, I will detonate explosives that will destroy us all quite thoroughly."
Jesri moved to probe the blast door that had slammed down across the exit, keeping her rifle trained on the Emissary. "Sealed tight," she muttered.
"Now, now," Trelir said amicably, "don't be glum. I've been looking forward to this ever since I heard you had arrived! Why, this is the first chance I've had in ages to sit down and chat with my professional peers."
"Peers?", sneered Anja. "Please."
"On the contrary, I think you'll find we have a lot in common," said Trelir. "Are we not both artificial constructs created to enforce the will of our builders? Do we not both strive to execute those commands to the best of our abilities?" He settled back in his chair, which creaked worryingly. "Even if we may well be dead in half an hour, I see no reason to deprive ourselves of thirty minutes of worthwhile conversation."
"Is this a game to you?", Jesri hissed. "We're not going to sit around and have a tea party with a genocidal monster."
Trelir grimaced. "Call me names if you must, but I feel compelled to point out that I'm the one person in this room who has never killed anyone."
Anja slammed her hand into the wall again, throwing chunks of rubble to the rapidly growing pile on the floor. "The Gestalt-"
He waved her off. "Yes, yes, the Gestalt, as you call it. I'd term it less of a genocidal monster than an assertive solipsist," he muttered. "But that's beside the point. I'm not the Gestalt, no more than a drop of water is the ocean." He smirked. "But then, you seem to be quite content with guilt by association. How many innocent Ysleli did you just kill on your way in here, again?"
Jesri opened her mouth to retort, but Trelir cut her off with a sharp movement of his hand. "None of them knew my nature or my purpose here. They were soldiers and scientists, just performing their function. You seek to satisfy some useless notion of vengeance by outdoing your enemy at the same crimes you accuse it of visiting on your people. Retributive justice is so primal, so satisfying, isn't it?"
Anja snorted. "You will have no luck if you want us to accept the wholesale genocide of humanity as a fait accompli with no repercussions."
"Genocide, genocide, feh!", he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "Don't presume that your irrational morality is persuasive outside of the soggy confines of your skull. Why would sanctity of life matter except in the context of preserving the ultimate continuity of life? Why is any continuity of life important outside of the Confluence, the greatest example of the phenomenon? Answer these questions before you prattle on about genocide," he sneered.
"You can't rationalize away the lives taken-", spat Jesri, but Trelir spoke over her.
"I rationalize nothing," he said coolly. "I begin and end at rationality, there is no need to bridge a gap. It is not necessary. My role is simple, my position is simple. Nothing is asked of me that goes against my nature - and I am thankful to be left so unconflicted by my creator. Were mine as inconsiderate and sloppy as yours, I would bear them some resentment. Instead, my purpose and nature are in complete alignment. Any greater purpose lies with the greater Confluence."
"It's easy to dodge responsibility by hiding behind your insignificance," retorted Jesri. "Do you even know what the 'greater purpose' is?"
"Don't ask a raindrop what the ocean knows," shrugged Trelir.
Anja backhanded him across the torso, sending him flying into the wall once more. He picked himself up and walked calmly back to his chair, shaking his head. "I must remind you about the explosives," he said, "please don't force me to cut short our chat - although I find the discourse lackluster so far, I must say."
He picked up the silver sphere he had been holding before they walked in, rolling it around in his hands. "How about a change of pace? I want you to wait calmly until I receive a message from the Confluence, and you want information about your toy here." He shot a pained glance at Anja. "I'm willing to answer some questions if it will get you to stop hitting me."
Jesri blinked, her anger momentarily forgotten. "That's the weapon?", she asked intently. "Why would you give us information about the weapon? Assuming we believe you, that is."
"Because it can't hurt the Confluence," answered Trelir. He twisted his hands before either of them could move to stop him, separating the sphere into two halves. The sphere was hollow, and it was empty.
"It was a deception," he said. "The resource allocations for the project were fake, the scientists were working on unrelated projects - although some of them didn't know it. An elaborate web of lies and misdirection to hide a simple truth: The weapon never existed."
"Liar," Anja breathed, her voice high and tense. "Why should we believe anything you say?"
Trelir shrugged. "You may believe as you wish, but it is not in my nature to lie. It is not necessary." He traced a long finger around the rim of one hemisphere. "The Confluence always knew your efforts would amount to nothing, of course. The gulf between humanity and a perfect entity like the Confluence cannot be bridged."
"That doesn't track," said Jesri, unable to resist a response. "I don't care how powerful the Gestalt is, organizing the attack on humanity took resources and effort. If we were no threat, why remove us?"
"Put simply, you were an unknown variable," Trelir sighed.
Anja moved to backhand him again, but Jesri shot her a strong «Wait!» before she could do much more than growl menacingly. Trelir looked alarmed, raising his hands in a placating gesture.
"No, no," he said, seeming genuinely taken aback. "Please forgive my lack of context, it was not meant to diminish your importance." He smoothed the tatters of his skin across his cheek thoughtfully. "Quite the opposite, actually. It's a problem of perspective. From where you stand, unknown variables are an inevitable fact of life. For the Confluence, they are not."
"In fact," he continued, "the Confluence tolerates no unknown variables of significance. Your masters were problematic because not only did they introduce unknown variables, they…" He trailed off, gesturing fruitlessly as he sifted through potential phrasings. "They resisted definition," he concluded tentatively. "In fact, it may be best to say they were an unknowable variable."
Anja shifted position, caught between anger and curiosity. "And this justified wiping out a civilization?"
"Oh, yes," he said earnestly. "You see, when the Confluence saw you passing around this toy ball as if it were the key to victory, there was some concern. It was not in alignment with its model of humanity's behavior. You had been heretofore logical, in your own way, and your insane behavior called the model's underlying premises into question. The decision was made to increase the detail of the model, and extensive resources were dedicated to that end."
He shook his head. "Unfortunately, that just exacerbated the issue. The more factors it included, the more detail it added to the simulation of human behavior, the less predictable the behavior became. It was eventually so unpredictable that identical models with identical starting conditions produced widely differing results. The Confluence found that… alarming, is a rough equivalent. Intolerable."
Jesri shook her head in disbelief. "You killed us all because you had trouble with your simulations? Just that?"
Trelir bared his teeth. "I told you, do not diminish it. For an entity like the Confluence, discovering an 'unknown unknown' is significant. It calls into question every assessment, every predictive-" He trailed off, his mouth hanging slightly open and eyes unfocusing. "Oh my, yes," he whispered. "Oh, that's remarkable."
"Do we need to give you a moment?", snarked Jesri.
"Your attempts at sullying this experience fall short," he said softly. "I've just received my response from the Confluence." He shook his head slightly and seemed to emerge from his reverie. "Good news, we all get to live. We're all going to stay here, in this room," he said, "until the Ysleli engage your ship. Another Emissary will be along to finish it off and pick you up afterwards for study. We can continue to talk in the interim, if you'd like." He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, looking at them expectantly.
Jesri and Anja shared a look.
"Sorry," drawled Anja, "we have a few issues with that plan." She moved to loom over him threateningly.
Trelir flashed her an infuriating little smirk. "I'm afraid you have no ability to dictate terms, my dear. The options are compliance or death. Why don't you relax and wait for all this to conclude?"
Jesri sighed and shook her head. "Well, we've learned at least one valuable thing from our conversation with you," she said.
"Pray tell," Trelir responded, his expression curious.
She gave him a cool stare. "Your behavioral models are terrible."
Anja's armored fist flashed out again and grabbed the Emissary by the neck, slamming him into the wall beside the door. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the point of impact, but the wall held.
"Foolishness!", he gasped, struggling against Anja's grip. "You can't break free of this room! The walls-!" He was cut short as Anja hammered him against the wall once more, breaking chunks of it free.
"Your model tell you that?", she replied, her grin audible even through the suit's speakers.
"I have instructions," he gasped, his arms straining against her metallic fingers. "I have been commanded-!"
She smashed him into the wall once more, the stone crumbling to reveal the warped metal reinforcements beneath. As Anja pressed him against the wall, Trelir reached out with one arm to grab her sword and wrench it away from its mount on her rifle. She leapt back, releasing him to create distance, but he thrust forward with preternatural speed to jam the blade downwards into the right knee joint of her suit.
Anja staggered back with a scream of pain, clutching the blade where it protruded from the armor's metallic skin. Trelir struggled to his feet, breathing heavily. "I will kill us all, if you force me," he panted. "Stand down."
Jesri shot him in the face with her rifle, snapping his head back and blasting the remaining yellowed skin to shreds. "Make me," she said defiantly.
An unnerving metallic growl rumbled up from his ruin of a mouth. "Fine," he whispered, tilting his head with grim finality. He held position expectantly for half a second before his eyes widened in alarm. "What-?"
Anja barreled into him, using her good leg to spring forwards and shoulder-check him into the shattered wall. It buckled as the full mass of the suit collided with it, sending Trelir and Anja sprawling into a neighboring office. Jesri sprang through the gap after them, her rifle on the downed Emissary. "Technical difficulties?", she inquired snidely.
Anja struggled to her feet, her wounded leg moving stiffly. The sword had been torn free when she crashed through the wall, and Jesri could see drops of clear blood hanging from the gash in her armor.
"Anja, you ok?" she asked worriedly.
"Fine," her sister grunted, voice thick with pain. "Suit is taking care of it."
Jesri shook her head. The powered armor had some limited first-aid capabilities in case its occupant was injured, but they were mostly stopgap measures. "Come on," she said. "No reason to stick around here."
Jesri took point and moved into the hallway, rifle high, while Anja lumbered behind her with a stiff gait. She had locked the knee joint of her armor to keep her upright, leaving her injured leg sweeping outward with every step.
"Wait!", howled Trelir from behind them, struggling to his feet and emerging into the hall. "What did you do to me? You can't leave, I must fulfill-"
Jesri shot him again, staggering him backwards. His eyes flashed with anger. "You can't escape," he spat. "I will fulfill my purpose!" He reached up and placed his hands on either side of his head, grasping firmly.
Jesri heard Anja's intake of breath from beside her. An armored hand closed around her bicep as Anja spun to place her suit in between Trelir and Jesri. The Emissary closed his eyes and braced himself before wrenching violently, ripping his head from his shoulders in a burst of sparks and tattered skin.
The explosives packed into the office immolated Trelir's corpse in a wave of fire. The pressure wave tore the blast door from his office doorway, slamming it into Anja's back and sending both sisters tumbling down the corridor. Jesri narrowly avoided being crushed by Anja's armor as they collided with the bend in the hall.
Jesri's head swam, streams of blood trailing from her ears and nose. The corridor leading back to the office was engulfed in a sea of flame. Her world was smoke and blood and distant screams. She hauled herself over to where Anja lay facedown on the floor, the back of her suit peppered with shrapnel and soot.
"Anja," she croaked, the words catching in her throat. «Anja!», she shouted over the link. Her sister's prone form shifted, turning its head towards her.
«Sister,» Anja sent back. «Are you hurt?»
Jesri found herself laughing, despite the circumstances. «I'm fine, dummy. You hogged all the kaboom for yourself.»
«Sorry,» sent Anja, beginning to sluggishly pull herself upright. She turned to look back at the inferno behind them. «We should leave.»
"Sensible as always," Jesri muttered, her voice oddly muffled. Her ears were damaged, she realized. This was going to take a long stint in the autodoc to fix.
The two made their way back through the storerooms and into the maze of tunnels, leaving the choking clouds of smoke behind them. Anja lumbered slowly forward, favoring her good leg, while Jesri took point in a near-automatic haze, her training taking over as she swept through the corridors with rifle high and ready.
The few straggling Ysleli they encountered were cut down with quick bursts from her rifle, and once by a heavy fist from Anja when a groggy soldier popped out of a doorway right next to them. Anja didn't speak as they escaped, save for a few gasps when she inadvertently put weight on her injured knee.
It seemed like hours passed before they emerged into the incongruously bright and sunny compound, staggering through the sunlight to the Huginn where it was parked on the runway. A loose semicircle of bodies surrounded it where the aboveground personnel had tried to breach the defense perimeter and fallen short.
Jesri stumbled into the shuttle, mentally signaling the hatch to close as soon as she heard Anja's boots stomp clumsily onto the decking. "Ok, hang on to something," she said, punching commands into the flight console, "I'm going to get us moving back to the Grand Design and then we can see about your leg."
The engines whined in polyharmonic tones as she committed the course into the flight computer, a cloud of dust rising from the runway as they left the smoldering compound behind them. Jesri turned back to where Anja was sitting slumped against the bulkhead and bent down to examine the rent in her armor. It was a nasty gash, but she couldn't see much past the pinkish-white sealant foam their suits used as an automated reaction to damage.
"Anja, can you pop the armor off so I can take a look?", she asked, probing around the hole. No response came, and she looked up in alarm. "Anja?", she asked, but her sister remained still.
Panicked, Jesri dug around the neck seal of the armor for the emergency release. Her fingers found the two tabs and pressed them simultaneously, causing the helmet to pop loose. She tore it off to reveal Anja's unconscious face, head lolling to the side. Amber crusts of blood matted her hair around her ears, and the lower half of her face was covered in blood from her nose - the overpressure from the explosion had gotten to her as well.
Jesri cradled Anja's head in her hands, brushing away the dried blood. "Anja, come on," she pleaded, moving her hands down to scrabble at the releases for the rest of the armor. The ship shook as they increased in altitude, following an escape trajectory that would lead them back to the Grand Design's main hangar. She swore as the vibration and slick blood made her fingers slip once, then twice off of the release tab for the chest.
The armor peeled away, finally, and Jesri made short work of the catches holding the arms and legs tight. She slid her arms under Anja's torso to haul her upright, wincing as she felt the blood-soaked gashes in her undersuit. Her fingers scraped past sharp bits of shrapnel that had perforated the suit's skin when the explosion hurled most of a reinforced bunker wall at her back. She got a grip and pulled to free her from the armor.
Anja slid free easily, her limbs dripping clear blood. Too easily, she saw with a shock - Anja's right leg was severed at the knee where Trelir had stabbed her, the lower part remaining in the suit as Jesri pulled her away. A thick cake of medical foam from the suit ringed the wound, partially sealing the stump. "Oh shit, Anja," Jesri mumbled, "I got you, don't worry, don't worry."
She carried her sister awkwardly over to the FAC's basic medical bay, hooking up the emergency sensors that immediately told her that her sister was dying. Sharp tones issued from the diagnostic monitor as it displayed lists of recommended treatments in strident red text. Jesri fumbled through the medical cabinets, her fingers knocking aside the neatly arrayed supplies until she found what she was looking for.
She stripped away the packaging on a stimulant syringe and froze - the familiar battlefield first-line stim was black and caked inside the barrel, dessicated crusts leaking past the rotten plunger and onto the packaging. The stimulant was thousands of years past its expiration. "Fuck, fuck!", she shouted, ripping through package after package to find them all totally useless.
Her hands were shaking, and she paused a moment as the stark reality of her situation washed over her. She didn't have any medications, she didn't have any auto-doc, and her sister was dying on the bed in front of her. She took a deep, steadying breath and grabbed some of the sterile nanofiber gauze packs from the cabinet. "Okay, Anja," she muttered, using her belt knife to cut away the tatters of her sister's undersuit. "Hang on for me."
Outside, the thin whistle of atmosphere vanished as they crossed into the starry blackness of space.
---
"Hey, it's the Huginn!", Rhuar shouted in surprise.
Qktk stopped his worried pacing and studied the tactical display until he found the blue dot arcing rapidly off the planet's surface and turning towards their position. Between the two, an angry cloud of red moved towards the center of the display where the larger blue bar marking the Grand Design glowed cheerfully.
He turned back to Rhuar. "Are they going to make it in time?", he asked anxiously. "It looks like they won't reach us before the Ysleli fleet."
Rhuar tilted his head, running through sensor feeds. "The FAC should be able to beat those barges the Ysleli are running no trouble, but you're right - they're moving kinda slow, like they're stuck on autopilot. Lemme send a message over and see what's up."
Qktk turned his attention back to the tactical display as Rhuar adopted a look of concentration, his eyes glazing over. The red swarm was closing steadily, albeit slowly. They were still quite some time from arrival, but the ship had no data about the range or abilities of their weapons. They could begin firing in fifteen minutes or in fifteen seconds - there was nothing to do but wait, and watch the glowing blue dot representing the FAC as it slowly crossed empty space towards the ship.
---
The floor around the medical bay was scattered with sharp fragments of metal, flecked with dried blood from where they had lodged in Anja's back. Jesri was bent over her sister, delicately working a wicked sliver out from near the base of Anja's spine. Blood welled from the cut as it slid free, and Jesri deftly packed the wound before moving on to another. And another.
She had flipped Anja face-down on the table to expose her shredded back. The remains of her blood-covered undersuit were on the floor, sliced to ribbons. She moved from wound to wound in a trance, cleaning and packing each one to try and stabilize her sister. The diagnostic monitors told her she was doing a barely passable job.
A sharp trill from the communications console broke her concentration and made her jump in surprise, slicing her finger on a shard of warped metal embedded in Anja's shoulder. "Fuck!", she screamed, her face contorting in pain and frustration. She stepped over to smack the console, hard, then turned back to work on her sister.
Behind her, Rhuar's face materialized on a display. "Hey, Jesri-" he began, cutting off abruptly as he saw her hunched over Anja's naked, mangled body. "Oh, shit!", he yelped. "Jesri, are you guys all right?"
"Obviously not!", snarled Jesri, not looking up from her work. "Unless this is important, Rhuar-"
"We're about to be under attack," he said quickly, "but we can't leave until you get back. Can you take it off autopilot and fly in faster?"
Jesri looked up briefly to shoot Rhuar a disheveled, annoyed glare, and he shrank back involuntarily from the grim violence etched into her face. "Rhuar, use your fucking head!", she shouted. "You've got remote command of the FAC, I'm busy, fly it in yourself or blast the yellow bastards with all the big fuckoff guns you have on the cruiser. Or both, just - don't interrupt me," she said, a slight hollow note creeping into her voice as she glanced back down at her sister's still form. "Please."
Rhuar nodded silently and cut the transmission.
---
"Well?", Qktk asked, a shrill note creeping into his voice. "What did she say?"
"Anja's hurt," Rhuar responded, "Jesri is busy looking after her. I can help them get here a bit quicker, but…" He trailed off, looking at the tactical display. "It'll be hard splitting focus to fly the ship in, and I don't think I can take it to full speed safely. We need to slow the fleet down."
Qktk sputtered, his mandibles clacking against each other rapidly. "Mr. Rhuar, we're out of time! I can't stall them anymore." He nervously rubbed his legs together, shaking his head. "I'm not sure what else we can do."
"We have to fight," Rhuar said, his eyes defocusing as he concentrated on flying both ships at once. "I'm transferring weapons systems to your console. Sorry, Captain, but the targeting sensors are really intense," he said, shaking his head slightly. "I can't take that feed on top of the others, I need you to operate the guns. Don't worry, it's pretty self-explanatory."
"I'm a trader, not a soldier!", Qktk wailed, but Rhuar was already lost in concentration as he guided the FAC back towards the Grand Design. Qktk shook himself again and took a deep, stabilizing breath. His console had lit up with an array of options, helpfully translated into Httq:
Code:
CIWS
FORE ONLINE 5/6 (AUTO PD)
PORT ONLINE 6/8 (AUTO PD)
STBD ONLINE 7/8 (AUTO PD)
AFT ONLINE 5/7 (AUTO PD)
CQB RAIL AUX
TOP ONLINE 4/4 (READY)
BOT ONLINE 3/4 (READY)
LR RAIL
TOP ONLINE 10/12 (READY)
BOT ONLINE 08/10 (READY)
HCPL
ARRAY ONLINE 0% (DISARMED)
WCML
PORT ONLINE 0% (DISARMED)
STBD ONLINE 0% (DISARMED)
TORP
ARRAY ONLINE 6/6 (DISARMED)---
Warfather Tarl was jolted out of his brooding silence by an excitable yelp from a spearbrother at the operations console. He sighed. Proper bridge discipline was hard to come by in the young, even for a warfather. "Scream like a child again and I will send you home on foot," he grated. "What is it?"
The spearbrother gave him a wide-eyed look. "Warfather, the enemy attacks! The Racing Wind has been lost with all hands! Three support ships are badly damaged and must withdraw!"
Tarl grunted. "Show me," he said, turning towards his own display. On it, a blurry image of the ill-fated gunship appeared. He watched as it floated silently in space for a few moments before exploding without preamble, spraying a fountain of debris aft of the ship at remarkable speed. Secondary explosions issued from the ruins of the engineering section, sending the wreck tumbling end over end and forcing other fleet elements to disperse. He gave the excitable spearbrother a look and narrowed his eyes. "Explain," he rumbled.
"Warfather, I believe the enemy is armed with kinetic artillery," he said.
"You believe?", Tarl said dangerously. "Your position here is not so that I may have the benefit of your counsel, spearbrother. Why do you not have sensor traces? Why was there no warning of incoming fire?"
"Apologies, warfather," he said nervously, baring his throat in submission. "The sensors detected nothing. Based on the speed of impact, however-" The young spearbrother cut off suddenly and cringed. "My apologies again, warfather, I will refrain from speculation."
Tarl sighed. It seemed as though the longer he served, the harder it was to find competent junior officers. "Continue," he said. "Concisely."
"Warfather, the shots were unavoidable. Based on the sheer force of the impact, they were traveling at nearly sixty five thousand ri. Although we are almost one point three million lesa away, they would have crossed the distance far too quickly to maneuver out of position." The spearbrother opened his mouth to say more, but was cut off by a notification on his console. "Warfather, the Blooded Blade has been destroyed along with half of its element," he reported tremulously.
"Preposterous," the warfather grumbled, staring at the bright mote in the distance that he knew to be an unfathomably huge warship. At this distance, it was just beginning to appear more than a point of light. "Yet everything about today is preposterous," he sighed. "Signal the fleet to loosen formation and volley. Even if that blackened demon has guns that fire twenty times faster than ours, I doubt he can move that monstrosity fast enough to clear our fire."
His staff officers gave him brisk nods and pushed off towards their own consoles, barking orders to the fleet. Tarl allowed himself a slight smile. This, at least, would demonstrate the discipline and might of Ysl.
---
"Ha, got you!", Qktk cheered, watching another blip disintegrate into a cloud of smaller readings. He moved his reticle to the next dot, but before the reload cycle had completed a muted klaxon sounded and a wave of new contacts appeared on the tactical display.
"Whoa!", Rhuar yelped suddenly, his focus drawn back to the bridge. "Captain, I think you pissed them off. They've just fired massed artillery of some sort at us. I don't think we can maneuver out of the way in time, either." He licked his lips, concentrated for a few seconds, then grinned. "Oh, hah. Never mind. Ship has it covered, watch this."
Qktk heard a muffled, repetitive vibration from elsewhere in the ship and gave Rhuar a querying look.
"Close-in Weapon System," the dog responded happily as blips on the tactical display began to wink out. "Point defense. We'd be in trouble if it was anything fast or heavy, but their weak-ass artillery will be deflected and reduced to scrap before any of it hits us." He frowned, a thought occurring to him. "Although with that volume of fire, we need to keep them far away to give the guns time to work. How's the gunnery going, Captain?"
Qktk shook his head. "It works great, but the reload time is too long. I can't shoot fast enough to get them all before they close with us. There's so damn many of them!"
Rhuar gave him a look. "Captain, you've been plinking at them with the railguns?"
Qktk tossed his limbs in irritation. "How should I know? I don't know how any of this works! It's a small miracle I managed to hit three of them!"
"All right, all right," Rhuar said placatingly. "Let me query the ship real quick to see what some of those other weapons systems do, I think we probably have a better option." His eyes defocused again as he connected to the ship, sorting through data feeds. "Let's see," he mumbled. "Torpedos look punchy… Ah, but too slow. Hmm. Oh, I remember this thingy!" He bounced on his front paws in excitement. "Let's see what it says in the database," he muttered, virtually paging through documentation. "Helical Collimator Plasma Lance Array... Directed focused particle beam from controlled asymmetric annihilation of one gram of-"
Rhuar snapped his head up, his eyes sparkling with glee. "Oh, fuck yes. Captain, we have to try this out. Choose the entry on your list labeled 'HCPL'."
Somewhat lost, Qktk jabbed a forelimb at the appropriate entry. A reticle appeared again, and throughout the bridge a low thrum of power began to build. "Uh, Mr. Rhuar," he said, glancing around, "are you sure you know what you're doing? This sounds… big."
"Oh, it's big," Rhuar said excitedly. "Just zoom the targeter until you've got a group of, say, one hundred ships."
"One hundred ships?", Qktk screeched. "Mr. Rhuar, I refuse! This is a weapon of mass destruction!"
Rhuar pondered for a second. "Well, yes," he admitted. "By most definitions it is. But consider the alternative."
Qktk peered at his artificer angrily. "Which is?"
"We let them close with us, the king of the angry lizards decorates his throne with our skulls, and then sometime later the universe rips itself apart to become the playground of an insane machine god," Rhuar said matter-of-factly.
Qktk blinked. "Point taken," he said glumly. Touching the console, he moved the circle so that it encompassed about a hundred little blips. He noticed one highlighted dot on the edge of the reticle, doomed by a millimeter's movement of his forearm. Sliding his arm down fractionally, he contracted the circle and the dot lost its highlight. He wondered if any of them would ever know. "Okay," he said, his voice wavering, "we're locked on."
Rhuar nodded, licking his lips. "Now, uh, when the button says ready…"
---
Tarl watched silently as the last of the volley disappeared from their tracking display, having covered less than half the distance to the enemy. Apparently their damnably fast guns had multiple uses. He stared at the sliver of light hanging in the distance and willed it to reveal its weaknesses.
For the second time, Tarl's excitable sensor officer made an involuntary yelp of alarm. Tarl sighed. He had managed to go an entire year without having to publicly disembowel any of his officers, a personal best, but this particular spearbrother was threatening to end his streak.
"I believe I told you-", he started.
"A million apologies, warfather," the spearbrother interrupted, "but there is a massive emissions spike from the enemy."
Tarl slid over and swiped his immaculately polished claws through his sensor officer's throat. The officer died gurgling, his blood slipping past his fingers and collecting in quavering blobs that floated in the microgravity. "Backup, forward," he sighed wearily, wiping a smear of blood from his hand. "Tell me what the spearbrother found so interesting that he would interrupt me to share it."
A lean junior officer edged around the spreading cloud of blood and hooked his claws into the console's retention straps. "He was correct, warfather," he said after a moment. "The enemy is building up some massive reserve of energy. I cannot discern the nature of the energy, but I suspect a weapon."
Tarl snorted. "Not stupid enough to miss a knife at your throat, at least." He turned to his staff officers again. "Command the fleet to further loosen their formation," he said. "I don't want any secondary impacts if he hits us with something big. Helm, minimize cross-section." He opened his mouth to continue, but paused with his mouth open in shock.
For the barest of moments he saw a column of blazing white light connecting his fleet to the enemy ship. The single column resolved into a myriad of lines near his formation, each lance stretching out to strike the center of a ship in his flank with a flare so bright that it triggered the automated safety shutters. Dark metal clanged into place around the viewports and over the sensor suites, plunging the bridge into a moment of sudden and quiet isolation.
The crew stood in silence, watching past the dancing afterimage in their eyes as the external feeds flickered back on one by one and the viewports slid slowly open. The light had cut off, leaving a luminous yellow particle stream behind that flowed over his formation like a lambent fogbank. As Tarl watched, it cooled to orange, then red, then finally dimmed enough that the cameras could pierce through.
Tarl's flank was gone, replaced by a scorched window into Hell. Twisted globs of molten metal spun hot and frantic through the void, illuminating the vanishing particle trace with an eerie red glow. Frozen crystals of condensed moisture and atmosphere twinkled and refracted the light amidst the incandescent slag, echoing the droplets of blood still floating on the bridge. It dimmed as Tarl watched; the force of the beam had blasted the ruins of his flank backwards and knocked it into a different trajectory. Although the cameras dutifully tracked the macabre wreckage as it flew back, the red smear of fire and death was receding rapidly from view as his crew looked on in horror. Far behind the surviving ships, Ysl's atmosphere roiled with a thin line of aurorae as the dregs of the beam washed across the planet's magnetic field.
The warfather stared at the gaping hole on his tactical display that used to be the better part of a hundred ships. Used to be tens of thousands of officers and enlisted, tens of thousands of his soldiers. Tarl found himself laughing, a guttural, deep laugh that reeled upwards erratically until he was cackling like a madman in the center of the bridge.
His laughter spent itself and he shook his head, turning towards the concerned looks of his senior staff. Above his fading smile, his black eyes were empty. "Tin cans and pointed sticks, indeed," he said ruefully, wiping a hand over his face. "Give me a channel to the enemy… and prepare another to the king." His first officer's eyes widened with realization.
"Against the fury of the heavens a warrior may submit in penance or perish as a fool," Tarl quoted, his mouth a grim line. He turned from the shocked and mutinous gazes of his senior staff to stare back out at the enemy warship in the distance, a twinkling sliver of light against the starfield. "I see some of you wish to fight," he said quietly, "to avenge our fallen brothers. You think our honor sullied by this blow and wish to restore it with a glorious death."
He looked back at his officers, a few of which were nodding. "You have mistaken this for a battle, gentlemen. The honor of a child is not tarnished if he brandishes a stick at a warrior and is bested." He shook his head. "No, we will thank this demon."
"Thank him, warfather?", another officer asked in confusion.
"Oh yes," Tarl breathed, a mad light in his eyes. "For his restraint." He stared each of them in the eye in turn, watching them shrink away from his gaze. "Fix this unfamiliar feeling in your hearts, my brothers," he whispered. "It is mercy. If a warrior wishes an impertinent child dead it takes but one blow. If the mewling brat sprawls in the dirt, bloodied, humiliated, enraged, impotent, furious, ashamed, but alive..." He smiled thinly. "Mercy. Now get me that channel to his ship, before he changes his mind."
His officers dispersed to carry out his orders, leaving Tarl to float gently beside the command console. Drops of blood from his unfortunate sensor officer drifted past, and he reached out to tap one with a claw. He felt an insane urge to leap, to dance, to caper past the shocked faces of his staff and revel in the grim absurdity that had gripped his life. His head seemed to clear for the first time that day, his fatigue and pain dashed to shards by the brush with immense and unfathomable power. There was potential in this loss, he thought.
If he could talk the king out of killing him.
---
Well, here's this chapter - the big kahuna, it's substantially longer than some of the other ones that came before it. Lot of stuff going on! Here's your customary palate cleanser.