Grand Design

[TMarkos]

Jesri paced. The flight back up from the planet was still a blur in her memory, a rush of smeared bloody metal and her own trembling hands. Rhuar had been forced to divert his attention to help Qktk before they made it back to the ship, so the last leg of the flight resumed under the languid control of the autopilot.

Then had come the tense, hunched stalking through the halls after the escort of maintenance haulers Rhuar had sent as aid, one carrying her sister's broken body and the rest spiriting away her shredded and bloody armor. Now she stood vigil near the autodoc, listening to the brisk movements of the machine within its opaque shell. Anja lay within, unconscious and now likely sedated as well. The sounds were soothing and repetitive, belying the mad frenzy with which the doc now worked to save her sister's life.

Anja had stopped breathing on her own minutes before they touched down in the bay. Jesri had run alongside the maintenance bots, screaming at them to move faster towards the waiting medical bay. They were just haulers, however, and plodded along as they always did. She twisted her hands over each other, her fingers straining and joints cracking.

She was so tired.

Life alone had been her preference and her norm for most of the time she'd been alive, but the prospect of Anja's ever-available companionship had been the salt that gave depth and meaning to those solitary years. With Anja barely clinging to life, Jesri felt every day of her age weighing on her shoulders.

So she sat and kept vigil. She would wait for Anja to be out of the doc, she decided, no matter how long it took. Even forever, the thought came, echoing seductively in her mind.

Jesri's eyes snapped wide and she shot out of her seat, looking down at it warily. It had been years since she'd heard the siren whispers of catatonia calling to her. The temptation to sit like a rock in a river and let life flow by was strong - and addictive, once indulged. Without Anja there to break her free, it might actually be forever.

No, she decided, shaking her head angrily. She wouldn't let her sister reawaken to see her like that. She needed to move.

---

Rhuar nearly fainted with relief when he saw Jesri come out of the bridge lift in her duty greys, appearance restored to the usual professional caliber save for a few raw scuffs on her cheek and neck.

"Jesri! Thank fuck you're here. Is Anja ok?", Rhuar blurted, his speech nervous and rambling. His exoskeleton didn't seem to know what to do with its hands, and they darted awkwardly around as he paced.

Jesri surveyed the bridge, which looked about like it had when she left. The glowing tactical display still showed the thick red cloud of the Ysleli fleet between them and the planet - save for a neat round hole in the formation that was only now beginning to close.

"Anja's in the doc," Jesri said, her expression forbidding. "What's our status?"

Mercifully, Rhuar took a cue from her brusque manner and got straight to business. "Standoff, currently. We chatted with their admiral dude, Qktk insulted the king, they shot at us, we shot at them, now they're deciding how they feel about that."

Jesri raised an eyebrow. "I feel like I should ask for more detail on a few of those points," she said, "but maybe later. No damage to the ship?"

Rhuar shook his head. "Nah, the point defense kicked in and shot down their artillery."

"What'd we fire back?", Jesri asked, looking at the collapsing hole in their formation on the tactical map. "Seems like it was effective."

"Oh, yeah, the plasma lance!", gushed Rhuar, enthusiasm banishing his anxiety. "That thing is intense! We lined it up and took out dozens of them in one shot, it was amazing!"

She nodded. "That was a good choice, tactically and psychologically. Though…" She gave him a look. "Aren't you being a bit glib about the whole thing?"

Rhuar looked down, a guilty expression sliding over his face. "Sorry. I know we killed a bunch of people just now, and I'm not happy about that." A sliver of defiance came into his expression, and he straightened up to look Jesri in the eye. "But on the other hand, fuck 'em. The Captain tried to stall them as long as he could and they told him to shut up and fight. We can't let them stop us from fighting the Gestalt. We're saving their planet too, even if they don't know it."

Jesri ruffled his ears, amused despite herself. "Rhuar, I think you'd have made a good marine." She looked over at the command dais, where Qktk was slumped listlessly in the captain's chair. "Somehow I don't think you managed to convince Kick to see it the same way."

Rhuar looked over at him sadly. "Yeah," he said. "I kinda forced him into firing it. I've been trying to cheer him up so he can talk to the Ysleli but I'm, uh. I'm not good at that," he said somewhat lamely.

She flashed him a grin. "You're a happy sort of person, Rhuar. It's not a bad thing, but you don't have much of an appreciation for gloom and depression. Let me try talking with him for a bit."

She left Rhuar and plopped into the first officer's chair, sizing Qktk up. The little Htt was half-curled in the seat of the overlarge chair, his eyes closed and legs tucked in tightly. "Hey bud," Jesri said casually, "how's your day been?"

Qktk shifted, but didn't reply. Jesri leaned back in her chair, propping her feet up on the console and stretching. "Me, I've had a pretty shit day so far. Started out okay, got to see some nice mountains. Flew the Huginn around. After that, though," she sighed, "it was pretty much straight shit. Got shot at. Shot some folks. Had to look at the mutilated corpses of my dead sisters. Went toe-to-toe with the face of evil, actually a pretty nice guy in retrospect. Dead now, though. Found out that I didn't have nearly as good a grasp on the whole Gestalt situation as I thought. Actually, seems like we're pretty fucked at this point." She paused, reflecting. "Oh, and Anja's leg got cut off."

Qktk's head popped up. "Her leg? Is she okay?", he asked, a note of concern in his voice.

"Oh good, I was afraid you were asleep," Jesri deadpanned. "She's in the autodoc. She'll be fine… if she lives." She hesitated, and Qktk turned a concerned stare on her.

"Are you okay?", he asked. The sheer quantity of eyes he could bring to bear lent a simple gaze more gravitas than she was accustomed to.

Jesri laughed darkly. "Okay is a relative term, Kick," she chuckled. "I'm fine. I had a whole bunch of fuckery dumped in my lap today, but I'm…" She grimaced. "I'm deferring it. For a quiet moment later on."

Qktk hung his head ruefully. "If your intent was to make me feel silly for moping, mission accomplished. All I did was push a button."

Jesri reached over to smack him on the shell. "Don't apologize. That many lives shouldn't pass lightly." She straightened up, sitting properly in her chair and throwing a glance at Rhuar. "Well, for most people," she amended. "Besides, you're selling yourself short. I hear you told the king to fuck off?"

"No!", Qktk said, his eyes shooting open in alarm. "I insulted him accidentally, to his subordinate. It was all a huge misunderstanding."

A tone sounded from the console in front of them, and Jesri glanced over to see a softly pulsing light. "You want to take a shot at clearing it up?"

---

The transmission finally connected, and Tarl kept himself from tensing as the familiar nightmare face of the black demon popped onto the screen. This time, he was flanked by two subordinates - on his left sat a dark-furred creature with some manner of mechanical exoskeleton wrapped over its back and legs. Its mouth hung open slightly, revealing gleaming white predatory teeth and a lolling tongue.

To the demon's left sat a tall, lanky creature, almost Ysleli in build, but with unnatural pale-pink skin and odd blue-on-white eyes that regarded the camera dispassionately. If its species was anything like the Ysleli, Tarl judged that it was female. Of the three, this one was dressed in a uniform that was immediately recognizable as military in origin.

"Shipmaster," Tarl said formally. "I thank you for the opportunity to engage in further discussion."

"Warfather," replied the demon in his oddly perfect Yslel, "I'm glad to see you in good health. Did you have a topic of conversation in mind?"

Tarl nodded, suddenly as nervous as he'd been in a long time. "In the name of His Royal Majesty King Sitrl, I yield the battle and stand ready to receive your demands." He let his breath out in a rush, the electric feeling of defeat singing in his nerves. It was novel, but if he had to deliver his first surrender he could find none better to receive it than this nightmare and his invincible ship.

The demon nodded his head fractionally. "Accepted. Our first officer will read the demands." The tall, uniformed alien straightened slightly and fixed the camera with a stare.

"None," she said, her voice high and clear.

Tarl stared, taken aback. "None? You have no demands in victory?"

"None," she confirmed. "We had one objective in visiting your world and we have already fulfilled it."

For the first time in many, many years, Tarl was at a loss for words. Ten thousand of his troops dead, and for what? So that this oddly mismatched crew could claim victory and move on? So that his world could be left to the ravages of war in their aftermath?

"Your arrival here will have consequences far beyond today's dead," Tarl said, a hint of a growl seeping into his voice. "The barons will scent blood. Sitrl will be challenged. War will touch billions."

Much to Tarl's surprise, the demon and his crew seemed discomfited by his words. The demon and his first officer shared a glance, and it was the first officer that finally spoke in response. "Tarl, I'm going to be frank with you," she said. "None of us are diplomats by trade, and you seem like the kind of guy that appreciates straight talk."

She folded her hands in her lap and gave him the full brunt of her icy gaze. "We didn't want any of this, and your people didn't do much of anything to deserve it. You were infiltrated by our adversary, who hid some items of great importance here." She grimaced, another statement seeming to pass unsaid. "That was our sole objective in coming to Ysl," she continued, "and we regret the loss of your ships and crew as a result."

Tarl bristled, the ghosts of his men flashing before his eyes. "If that is so, why come seeking conflict?", he thundered angrily. "Why force a fight, knowing how laughably we were outmatched? Are you accustomed to toying with your prey?"

She shook her head sadly. "If we had told you our true purpose, would you have given us what we needed? Would Sitrl? Even if you did, Trelir would have acted independently-"

"Trelir?", Tarl interjected, wheels spinning in his head. "Administrator Trelir from the Ministry of Science? What does that slimy kerl have to do with any of this? All the man is good for is stealing my fleet's budget so he can go gallivanting around in search of yet more..."

Tarl paused, startled. "...human artifacts," he said quietly, feeling the events of the day slotting into place. He looked at the uniformed first officer with new eyes. Trelir had included many pictures and sketches in his droning presentations before the Royal Council, and the more he thought back on them… "I believe introductions may be in order," he remarked.

She smiled and inclined her head. "Captain Jesri Tam, Terran Naval Marines. The furry gentleman is Rhuar, and you've already met Qktk." Rhuar gave a panting grin and waved with an exoskeletal arm, while Qktk looked sheepish.

For the second time that day, Tarl found himself laughing at the absurdity of the universe. "Terran. I begin to understand," he said, shaking his head. "I'm going to kill Trelir."

"Way ahead of you," Jesri said, a hint of satisfaction in her voice. "While your fleet was engaged we sent a team to the surface. Trelir revealed himself as an agent of our enemy and attempted to detain us. I'm not sure that 'dead' is the right word, but you probably won't be hearing from him again."

Tarl chuckled resignedly. "It seems the game was won before I knew I was playing. Still, by removing Trelir you've earned yourself goodwill from much of the court. Perhaps even enough to offset the aftermath of this battle, doubly so if his loyalties were false as you say. The man was a plague."

"More than you know," Jesri said solemnly. "He represented an entity that wishes nothing less than the complete and utter destruction of the universe as we know it."

"I'd believe it of him," Tarl chuckled, but his laughter died as he saw the stony faces looking back at him through the feed. "You're serious," he said disbelievingly. "They have the means to do this?"

"Oh yes," Jesri replied, "and much else. We learned of its plans long ago and made our own plans to stop it." She grimaced. "Well, such as we were able. You can infer how well that went."

Tarl's head was spinning, years of assumptions disintegrating in seconds of conversation. "The cataclysm. That was an attack? We had always assumed that humans destroyed themselves through some experiment gone wrong. Our scientists have spent years attempting to discern the nature of the fate that befell your people."

Jesri gave a wry grin. "Scientists under Trelir's direction? He knew the precise history of those events, given that his employers directed them. Hell, he was probably there himself. He was simply trying to divert your efforts to ensure his own weren't disrupted."

Tarl was still working himself into a proper rage in response to her revelations when his new sensor officer shouted for him, urgency threading through his voice.

"Warfather! A new contact, port fore midline. Unknown configuration, but it's big."

He spun to look at the console, distantly noticing the three crew on the human ship look off towards their own display. Beyond their ship a large, dark ovoid had materialized without the fanfare or drama of a typical hyperspace exit. It simply appeared, cutting through the starfield like a black stain. Although not as long as the human ship it was both wider and taller, and clearly more massive.

Tarl looked back to the feed from the human ship. "Another of yours?", he asked hopefully.

Jesri shook her head, her mouth pressed into a thin line. "No, one of theirs. Like Trelir. Dammit, he told us one would be coming."

"Trelir's death was not enough to repay his treachery," rumbled Tarl. "It is good of his masters to send more to die. We will-"

"No!", shouted Jesri, an alarmed look on her face. "Tarl, you cannot engage that ship. It's only interested in us. Rhuar," she added, turning to the furred pilot, "get us out of here, short jump to any target."

"You flee battle?", Tarl said disbelievingly. "You have the mightiest ship we have ever known. Surely together-"

Jesri shook her head, cutting him off. "Tarl, just trust me on this. We'd have no better luck against that thing than you did against us. The best we can do is get it away from your world and hope to lose it." She turned to her pilot again. "Rhuar, now!"

Tarl regarded Jesri, her wide, earnest eyes boring through the screen at him. Her face, her posture, her rapid breath - it was fear, he saw, a cold lump settling into his stomach. Not just fear for her and her ship, but fear for Ysl. He was once again a child, Tarl realized with humiliation, to be pushed to a place of safety while the warriors worked.

He nodded slowly, reluctance etched into his face. "Then we will meet once more, if I can convince Sitrl to spare me for my defeat. Farewell, human shipmasters."

Jesri nodded and cut the transmission, the feed from their bridge winking out. Tarl looked around to his bridge staff. They looked a bit dazed by the events of the day, and he could scarcely blame them. "Battle posts!", he barked. "Reform the fleet and prepare to… hold," he said grimly. His crew snapped into action, a susurrus of anticipation running through the bridge.

He turned back towards the viewports, watching the deadly sliver of the human ship slowly pivot as it made ready to escape. He flexed his hands into fists, feeling the flakes of dark dried blood loosen from his claws. It galled him to sit and watch as the ship that killed his crew fled, pursued by the agents of those who forced their hand. Battle with either would have been a salve for his honor, but this was not a field the Ysleli could stand on. Not yet, he amended fiercely.

His fists tightened further, his claws piercing his hand to add rivulets of fresh blood to the dry. The Ysleli were not accustomed to being so insignificant, but the universe did not regard any being's custom in its whims. After he returned to Ysl, after he informed the court of Trelir's treachery, after he survived Sitrl's inevitable demand for his life, then - he had work to do.

---

"Energy spike!", Rhuar yelled, his muscles straining as he poured his focus into the shipjack. The bridge hummed softly as the ship attempted to reorient itself for warp, but the massive cruiser could only turn so quickly. "It's going to tag us before we can warp!", he warned.

Jesri ran over to Qktk's console and began retargeting the primed weapons systems. Qktk fell back in his chair, worriedly buckling his restraints. "Shit," muttered Jesri, noting that the console was still set to control the HCPL. "Wouldn't be my first choice." Her finger stabbed down at the console.

The thrumming charge of the plasma lance grew louder and louder until a piercing whine and resonant thump echoed through the ship's superstructure. Harsh shadows filled the bridge, cast by a pillar of light that flared out to strike their ovoid aggressor. Billowing golden clouds of charged particulates filled the monitor, and for a second Jesri dared to hope the strike had somehow delayed the ship.

The haze left by the shot was flung outwards in a rapidly spreading ring to reveal the Emissary ship, a small patch of hull warped and white-hot where the beam had struck. Jesri saw something shoot out impossibly fast from the fore quarter of the ovoid, rippling the starfield and plasma remnants like a wave over the surface of a still pond. Jesri grabbed the console to brace herself for the impact. The ship's structural beams creaked ominously as the distortion raced towards them, rising to a low, eerie scream that seemed to echo in Jesri's skull. It rose to a crescendo, then rapidly diminished.

Rhuar's head snapped up in shock, looking wide-eyed at Jesri. "They missed?", he said disbelievingly. "It went a few dozen meters wide! How could-" He froze, his eyes defocusing. "Oh no," he whispered.

Jesri turned to the display to see the distortion continue past them towards Ysl, lensing and warping the cloud-dappled continents. A spattering of bright lights twinkled as it rushed through the remnants of Tarl's formation to twist and crush half a dozen ships that found themselves too close to its path.

A fountain of hazy atmosphere was drawn up in the split second before it arrived, swirling and dispersing as the ripple moved rapidly down to strike the terrain. A blinding flash issued from the point of impact, quickly obscured by the gout of grey dirt and stone that thundered upwards around the epicenter. A shockwave tore through the atmosphere, pushing the clouds outwards in a ring and leaving a hazy skein of dust and debris cluttering the air in its path.

Jesri and Qktk watched the monitors in horror as a third of Ysl's largest continent vanished under a thick blanket of roiling dust. "Holy shit," whispered Jesri, turning back towards where Rhuar still strained to turn the ship towards their exit vector. "Rhuar, I don't care where we end up, you jump this fucking ship now!"

"Aye sir!", Rhuar shouted back. The whine of the drives vibrated through the decking as space began picking itself apart in front of the ship. A ring of twisted starlight began to form, and Jesri stalked back to her chair and strapped in.

Rhuar's head snapped up, looking back at Jesri in a panic. "Another spike!", he shouted. "This is going to be close!" All of Qktk's eyes were fixed on the monitor showing the implacable Emissary ship advancing steadily towards them. A second ripple of distorted space flung itself outwards from the ship, growing in size rapidly.

The ring of light danced and churned as a black void snapped open in its center. Rhuar wasted no time in engaging the jump. The deck bucked violently to throw Jesri and Qktk against their restraints as the drive engaged. Bright light flashed through the viewports and the torus swept past the length of the ship, replaced immediately by the absolute darkness of hyperspace.

The deck heaved again as the Emissary's shot passed through the volume of space occupied only moments before by several million tons of human warship. Vortices of light spun in the void as they were flung violently away from their collapsing ingress portal, which disintegrated in a shockwave that sent groaning tremors reverberating through the ship.

As the last noise of protest from their tormented ship trailed off, the small crew of the Grand Design sat wide-eyed and stunned on the bridge. Jesri shot Rhuar a look and coughed. "Rhuar, status?", she said, keeping most of the shake from her voice.

Rhuar picked himself up from where he had been tossed by the heaving ship and shook himself, his exoskeletal arms checking the shipjack compulsively. "Seems like we're okay," he said after a few seconds of consideration. "We've had some feedback that mostly ran into the breakers, and I imagine there's a lot of stuff that got knocked over. A few decks are suffering power and gravity reductions, we're on auxiliary environmentals and our gravimetric sensors are going to need recalibration."

An icy trickle slipped down Jesri's spine. "Rhuar, the autodoc," she said urgently.

Rhuar nodded. "Autodoc has power and reads as fully functional," he confirmed. "There was no interruption in power or damage to the equipment."

Jesri nodded, sagging back into her seat. "Good," she said hoarsely, suddenly feeling every minute of her age. She allowed herself a few seconds of slumped relaxation, then straightened up and cleared her throat. "How's our heading?", she asked.

Rhuar blinked. "Shit, forgot about that," he said sheepishly. "Looks like we're…"

He paused and blinked again. "Stay strapped in," he said tersely. "Emergency blow." His eyes glazed over and a jarring vibration began to buzz through the bridge. Motes of light flared suddenly in a corona around the ship, streaking outwards randomly.

"Wait, what?", Jesri asked, no small amount of alarm in her voice. The emergency blow was a drill practiced on every hyperspace-capable vessel. It was the option of last resort, using a sudden asymmetry of the ship's hyperspace field to violently and unceremoniously leave cruising depth and return to normal space. It was highly unpleasant.

"Rhuar, hold on-" Jesri began, but he made a jerky chopping motion with one arm to cut her off.

"Can't talk," he grated out, focusing intensely on the ship as the shuddering of the deck increased to violent levels. Crackling energy arced past the viewports, and for a few tense seconds they all held on in silence. Suddenly another creaking groan echoed through the bridge as the accumulating energy dissipated in a flash. A wave of nausea hit Jesri, sharp pain flashing at her temples and blurring her vision. She saw Qktk curled completely into a ball on his chair, rocking back and forth repeatedly. Rhuar was collapsed on the deck, vomiting and twitching.

She allowed herself to stay slumped and motionless for a few seconds before she winced and pulled herself upright, the motion causing her head to swim. Qktk uncurled slightly and shook his head, while Rhuar struggled to his feet and wiped his mouth.

"Well," said Jesri hoarsely. "That was fun." She leaned heavily on her chair for support and tried to will her vision to unblur. "Rhuar, would you mind telling us why we just did that?"

He coughed, shaking himself vigorously. "Something happened right after we jumped, when the window collapsed," he said weakly. "Probably something to do with that reality-bending bullshit they were shooting. Whatever happened, it kicked us way deeper than we were supposed to go, sent us moving fast. By the time I looked we were already across the outer arm."

Jesri's head cleared like she had been plunged into icewater. "The outer arm of what? Rhuar, we can't possibly-" She looked out of the viewports and saw an inky blackness with only a few bright points drifting slowly as the ship spun in a languid pirouette. "No," she whispered, "we were only in hyperspace for seconds!"

"I know," winced Rhuar. "I can't explain it. But here we are." The slow rotation of the ship continued, and a bright glow peeked through the viewports.

Qktk stared, all of his eyes fixed on the window. "Jim's hairy balls," he swore, "it can't be..."

The three of them looked on helplessly as the full splendor of the Milky Way's disc shone into the bridge. It was bright and glorious, still large enough to fill most of the sky, but they were decidedly on the outside looking in.

"Well, shit," Jesri remarked.

---

They can never catch a break. Puppy tax.

 

[TMarkos]

The rain hammered down, thundering into the sodden grass and splashing into puddles. A low, heavy mist hung over the hillocks and among the reedy trees. Droplets trickled down the matte grey barrel of Anja's rifle and fell as she adjusted her grip. Her eyes didn't leave the treeline.

A flash of motion in the murk drew her aim and the rifle spat ghostly fire through the downpour. A trace of steam stretched out in a thin line from the gun as the shot vaporized raindrops in its path, terminating in the hissing, charred ruin of a Buil armsman's torso. The insectile corpse fell to the ground with its mouth open in a silent scream. Long fingers twitched, grasping the slick mud before falling still.

"Nice shot," murmured a hunched figure to her left. Anja shot a glance at her sister, ducking back down to rest her back against a crumbling wall that marked the end of a long-disused pasture.

"He could have moved sooner," Anja hissed back. "I was beginning to think he had fallen asleep." She pressed a few buttons on her communicator and spoke softly into her helmet's pickup. "Wraith Actual, Valkyrie Two. South line is clear."

The rain washed over the two women for a few seconds longer. Droplets slid with unnatural speed from the fabric of their field uniforms, skating across the surface without wetting the slick grey fabric. "Valkyrie Two, copy. Wraith is moving," came the response, buzzing harshly in her ear.

"Dammit," she groused, rubbing the side of her helmet. "I hate groundpounder comms. Ellie, didn't you say they were working on a link interface?"

Eleanor shook her head irritably, a few blonde curls bouncing with the motion where they had escaped her helmet. "Sorry, sister. I heard a rumor, but it appears nothing came of it." She flashed Anja a grin, her teeth white against the grey murk surrounding them. She tilted her head, then jerked her chin slightly to the rear. "Here they come," she muttered.

Anja glanced back at the low scrub behind them. The old field wasn't heavily treed even after years of neglect, but the brush had still grown up to a respectable height. Aside from the tremors of raindrops striking branches, everything was still and quiet behind them. Anja surveyed the miserable scenery for a few moments before sighing and rolling her eyes.

"Chen, Singh, Leclerc, Anders," she said softly, her finger pointing to four separate spots amidst the undergrowth. A whispered curse drifted up from the last of the spots she marked and four shadowy figures straightened up.

"Goddamn but it's hard to sneak up on you ladies," drawled the nearest arrival, shaking his head. His face was obscured by a thin, smooth tactical wrap studded with nonreflective lenses and little black sensors, but the grin was audible. "That's the fifth time you've caught me, Major." He inclined his head to Eleanor. "Colonel."

Eleanor shot him a look. "Anders. You called ahead and told us you were advancing. A blind Buil could have seen you coming."

Anders chuckled quietly. "Good thing you shot the sentry," he snarked. "We good to move?" Both women nodded and the six set off into the sparse woods, a gentle slope rising beneath them as they traveled. Anja paused once to pull a thin cloth from a pouch at her waist, shaking it out and draping it over the steaming corpse of the sentry. It settled over the body and shimmered, rapidly changing to show a grass and brush pattern that blended perfectly with the ground cover.

They slid through the trees, silently ascending towards a squat villa on the crest of the hill. They stopped well back of the cleared perimeter, observing the guards from behind the treeline as they patrolled.

"Shit," spat Eleanor. "Three guards on the west roof and four in the garden. Those weren't in the packet." She looked back at Anja, who shrugged.

"I'd call him paranoid," Anders whispered wryly, "but in his defense it's somewhat justified." He waggled his gun at the compound, earning a snort from Singh behind him.

"Definitely paranoid," grunted the burly soldier. "He thinks we don't know about the villa. If he knew we were coming he wouldn't be here."

"I'm inclined to agree," Eleanor mused. "A few extra thugs don't alter our plan much. Chen, Leclerc, deploy up at Hill 5. That should give us better coverage of the folks on the roof. Take them out when we've begun, then move in for exfil once they pull back the perimeter. We'll just have to deal with the garden guys ourselves."

The two she had named nodded quickly and vanished like smoke into the forest, heading towards a knobby rise a few hundred meters distant. The remaining four hunkered down in the damp and waited as the dim sunlight faded further, the wan glow from above diffusing and dimming to plunge the hilltop into a stygian darkness.

Once the only light visible shone in a dim halo from the villa, they crept silently towards the outer perimeter. The rain had stopped, and a hazy mist clung to the ground as they moved. Light shone through expensive-looking bay windows on the near side of the structure, revealing an opulent interior crowded with richly-dressed Buil. Anja lay low amid the forest undergrowth and slid a monocular down from her helmet.

"Party is well underway," she murmured, scanning the crowd. "I see Prelate Cailir."

Anders slid forward next to her, surveying the window through the scope of his weapon. "Yep, there's the old bug," he agreed, panning across the room. "Looks like he brought half the Curia with him."

"Positive ID on all three targets," Eleanor whispered. "They should be moving into the garden after the reception, we'll advance while they're preoccupied herding guests."

Anders poked Anja in the side. "That party looks like fun," he said sourly. "Why are we stuck out here when Valkyrie 1 gets to infiltrate?"

Anja snorted. "Do you even read your mission packets?", she shot back derisively. "The other team is infiltrating, but not at the party. Trust me, our assignment is more pleasant than theirs."

Anders shrugged and peered back through his scope. "Must have skipped over that part. Look, something's happening."

The knots of conversation were breaking up as people filed out of the room. The ornate doors to the garden swung open slowly, allowing the first guests to trickle in and wander through the low hedges.

Eleanor nodded sharply and rose to a crouch. "Okay kids, this is it," she said. "Entry point is…" She frowned, then pointed at one of the sentries on the low wall surrounding the villa. "That one."

---

The guests slowly made their way to the garden, tiny golden lights lighting their path and pushing back the cool night. The forest beyond the wall looked utterly black, a featureless void without form or detail. As such, nobody inside was looking outwards when one of the perimeter sentries was yanked backwards, disappearing quietly into the darkness.

Singh twisted his knife sharply and the sentry's exoskeleton crunched. Anja looked coolly at the rivulets of ichor, steam rising from them to curl around Singh's crouched form. He kept his glove pressed tightly over the Buil's mouth until the jerking motions stopped, then nodded to Eleanor.

She returned the motion, then beckoned the team closer to her. "Hold until we get the signal from Valkyrie 1, then pop up on the wall. Take two shots, then drop. Anja, take Yeural and the rightmost guard. Anders, Paunir and the leftmost guard. I'll backstop Valkyrie 1. Singh, target any other guards."

The team split up to stand close against the wall while Singh extended a tiny probe. After a few moments all four of them had a small view of the party projected in their HUD, courtesy of the camera at the probe's tip.

The guests had mostly finished wandering and taken seats in a large flat area opposite their entry. Their targets were moving towards them from the left, leading a procession of roughly-dressed, hunched figures. They took places on a raised podium festooned with lights, an appreciative murmur rising from the audience as they ascended the steps.

A tall, broad-shouldered Buil wrapped in scarlet brocade stood at a podium, spreading his arms to address the audience. "Friends, thank you for coming," he said in a low, droning voice. "All of you have given selflessly in defense of our homeland, and tonight I hope I can repay a small portion of your sacrifice."

The audience rattled their chitin in a low wave of acclaim. Anja snorted. "And here I thought Cailir was playing the pompous ass for our benefit," she whispered. "Turns out he's like that all the time."

Singh leaned in conspiratorially as Cailir continued to speak. "Leclerc and I were talking during infil," he whispered. "Cailir is a true prodigy. He's one of the biggest assholes known to man, despite the fact that - and this is true, I checked - the Buil don't have assholes."

A fortunate swell of clattering applause masked the choking noises that Anders was making. Anja leaned in, frowning. "Singh, I would not call into question your anatomical expertise…"

The big man shook his head, gesturing emphatically. "No, it's true!", he insisted. "They just move things between stomachs and when they're done-"

"Can it," Eleanor hissed, "he's wrapping up. Get ready for the signal." The four crouched figures turned their attention to the video feed as the noise from the crowd died down once more.

"...for those who have perished in our struggle against the human oppressors," he intoned solemnly, drawing a hushed whisper from the audience. "But tonight is a celebration of what it means to be Buil!", he crowed. "Our traditions and history carry us through this trial, and we will draw our strength from them in the coming conflicts." He waited for the smattering of applause to die down again.

"One of the lies the humans spread about me is that I am intolerant of other species," he said sadly. "Friends, this is not true. I will be the first to say that every species has its place in the order of things," he leered, drawing a ripple of amusement from the audience. "I've even invited a number of them here as honored guests!"

With this, he indicated the line of figures standing manacled behind him, an assortment of non-Buil species clothed in ragged brown cloaks. Anja's eye was drawn to two humanoid figures near the center of the line, looking hunched and defeated. They shivered in the chill night air, and one was wracked with a coughing fit.

Cailir turned to frown at the noise, then laughed and turned back to his audience. "Ah, yes. The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that I have some human guests as well." He motioned with one slender arm and a guard hauled the coughing prisoner forward. "It is my humble belief that even the most uncivilized of races may benefit from a life of service. You will find that humans make strong and able servants, and if they are a bit spirited, well..."

He swung his arm and backhanded the prisoner to the ground. "...they are durable enough to survive discipline," he concluded. Anja's grip tightened on her rifle as the prisoner struggled to rise, still coughing into their hand. "I will start the bidding at five hundred," Cailir shouted, and the crowd burst with noise as the bids were called.

The prisoner finished standing and wiped their mouth, and through the camera Anja caught a glint of reflected light from their palm. The guard cuffed the prisoner roughly and dragged them forward, but the cloaked figure opened its hand and twisted-

A bright burst of light flared out from the garden, casting sharp-edged shadows into the forest beyond and evoking a chorus of shocked screams from the audience. As one, the four infiltrators vaulted atop the wall and leveled their rifles at the stunned Buil. The party was in chaos, with blinded guests and guards colliding in an uncoordinated panic.

The prisoner standing in front had slipped her manacles and looped the thin chain around Cailir's neck in a garrote. Eleanor sighted and fired almost the instant her feet touched the wall, her shot drilling a blackened hole through Cailir's head. He dropped, as did the two richly-dressed Buil that took fire from Anja and Anders. Another round of fire lashed out to drop two guards, tendrils of steam leaking from their wounds.

The surviving guards on the stage recovered their vision as the team hopped down from the wall. The two human prisoners leapt to engage them, bare hands and feet blurring as they struck chitin hard enough to pulverize it. Singh finished off the staggering guards with quick bursts of fire and the courtyard was momentarily calm.

Dead bodies and cowering aliens filled the stage, and Anja could hear the distant thump of Leclerc and Chen firing on the rooftop guards. The human prisoners pushed their cloaks back to reveal grinning, dirty faces. "Cait, Jesri," Anja said, smiling at the state of them. "You two look like shit."

Jesri scooted over by Anja, socking her on the arm and staying low as Singh and Anders searched the steaming bodies of their targets. "What, that's it?", she scoffed. "Nothing else? 'Hi, Jesri, nice to see you! How was being a slave? Thanks for showing us where to find-'"

Cait tossed Jesri a weapon from a downed Buil guard, cutting her off. "Escape first, then chat," she said brusquely. Eleanor was already backing towards the wall, her rifle leveled at the villa's windows. Anja turned to leave, then noticed Anders crouched near one of the brown-cloaked slaves.

"Anders!", she called out. "Time to go!" He turned his head to look at her but didn't move.

"Major, we've got civilian children here," he said softly. Anja saw Singh stiffen and look over the line of slaves.

Eleanor shook her head sharply. "Anders, no. We've got seconds before they regroup." The mutinous look Anders shot her in return was visible even under his face wrap and goggles. He picked up the tiny slave standing next to him and stood, glaring back in a silent challenge.

Singh bent down and gathered two tiny Arrigh into his arms. As their cloaks fell away Anja saw that their shells had yet to harden and fuse; they couldn't have been older than ten. "Sir," Singh rumbled tonelessly, "I have determined that these prisoners are a potential intelligence asset. Our orders-"

"Dammit, you two," spat Eleanor. "Fine. This will go in your record." She hopped to the top of the low wall and gestured down. "Jesri, up here. The rest of you, pass the 'assets' up to us." The four left in the garden quickly gathered the prisoners from where they had retreated during the firefight. Anja severed their chains with a plasma knife from her kit, and they were in the process of boosting an elderly Tlixl onto the wall when the first shots came from the villa.

Anja and Cait grabbed a prisoner each and vaulted onto the wall one-handed. Anders and Singh followed close behind, shaking children clinging to their arms. A round sent stone flakes spraying up near Anja's foot and she spat a curse. "We should have been halfway to the exfil point by now," she seethed. "Come on!"

The last of the prisoners dove clumsily down from the wall and they began to move at speed towards the forest. Fifty meters of cleared ground lay between them and the forest, and before they had made it halfway they heard the unwelcome whine of Buil rifles from the estate. Singh grunted in pain as a round impacted his armor, but he did not slow.

"Anja, cover fire!", shouted Eleanor, spinning around to spray a line of fire at the walls. She turned back to move towards the forest and Anja spun as well, shooting an unlucky guard in the chest - but they were swarming the walls now, lining up to pour fire down towards her. Clods of dirt flung up around her as she serpentined towards the treeline. She felt the impact of a round cracking off her shoulderpad, and another scored against her calf.

She burst into the forest at a full sprint, swerving to put trees at her back as she dodged through the blackness. The others had vanished into the forest ahead of her, invisible, so she ran alone and silent for what felt like hours. A roaring filled her skull, pounding with every footfall. Behind her beams of light lanced into the undergrowth and shots rang out to crack against trees.

It sounded like the Buil had found a whole battalion to come after them, she thought, cursing Anders and Singh for sentimental idiots. Weren't they professionals? Didn't they know the stakes? Handing the Buil Orthodox insurgency a dead human soldier would provide them a propaganda boost they could use to inspire thousands of new recruits. With solid proof of human involvement Cailir would become a martyr to their cause. It was an unacceptable risk to linger for something that, despite Singh's excuses, offered no strategic value.

And yet they had, the idiots.

Branches raked at her face as she drew near to the exfiltration site. The Buil were damnably fast through the forest, and their lights seemed to chase just behind her no matter how swiftly she dodged through the undergrowth. She spied another light ahead of her and veered towards it, stumbling over a root that reached up to snag her foot.

She broke through into a clearing where a boxy dropship sat idling, engines pouring hot exhaust onto the rapidly wilting scrub below it. A shimmering barrier sat in front of the ramp to the ship, behind which Leclerc, Chen and Eleanor sat with rifles trained on the perimeter. Cait and Jesri were herding the last of the brown-cloaked captives inside.

At the sight of Anja emerging from the forest the three behind the shield began pouring fire into the trees. Surprised squawks of pain and anger erupted behind her, followed by gunfire that hissed past Anja to carom off the shield or scatter chunks of loamy dirt.

"Get in!", Eleanor shouted, her voice slicing through the din of combat. Chen lifted the mobile shield and began backing towards the ramp while the others provided covering fire. A ricochet from the ship hull creased Anja's thigh, breaking her stride and drawing a hiss of pain. She tripped on the ramp edge and fell hard on her wounded leg. Bright lights flashed in her vision, but Cait was already toggling the ramp up - everyone was in, and it was time to go. Anja's eyes cleared enough for her to snap off a few parting shots through the closing gap, then the hatch sealed with a hiss of pressure and they were away.

After the firefight the shuttle seemed nearly silent, but as Anja lay panting on the deck she felt sound come back into the world around her. The muted wails and sniffles of the frightened refugee children blended into the rumbling assurances from Singh, his helmet and facemask stripped off to reveal hair greying at the temples and a bushy moustache that the tiny Arrigh youth were prodding with obvious fascination. Angry grunts and obscenities from Cait; she had been shot in the shoulder during the withdrawal and was being treated by an oddly maternal Eleanor.

Anja hauled herself upright and saw Anders lying against a bulkhead with a fledgling Tlixl cradled in his arms, chatting with the weeping elder of the same species with a distant smile on his face. The frail winged alien thanked him profusely as he handed over the shivering child, retreating to a corner where he cooed over the youngster and rocked softly.

She stormed up to Anders and kicked his boot.

"Ow," he said mildly. He had taken off his tac gear as well, revealing a weather-lined face with sandy hair and grey-green eyes. The broad white scar interrupting the stubble on his chin twisted as he grinned up at her.

"Stow that shit," fumed Anja, kicking him again for good measure. "Anders, we were not equipped for a civilian extraction. If one of us had gone down-"

Anders coughed and waved her off. "Nobody went down," he said softly, still with that infuriating smirk. "We killed the bad guys, saved the innocent, all that stuff. Take the win, Major."

"We got lucky," she hissed. "If the Buil could shoot worth a damn we would be dead. If they had guards posted closer inside we would be dead. You rolled the dice for the whole fucking planet just now."

Anders shrugged again, but his smile faded. "Major, some dice just need to roll."

"What we won was not worth the risk, you know that," Anja sighed.

He barked out a short laugh that turned into a wet series of coughs. "Wasn't playing to win," he said dreamily. "Just…"

Anders grimaced and spasmed, his eyes rolling back in his head. Anja spat out a curse and crouched down beside him, trying to hold him steady. "Fucking dammit, Anders, are you hit?", she growled. "Say something next time! Hey, medkit!", she yelled, tearing open his jacket and probing for injuries.

Jesri rushed over with a medkit and began preparing a battlefield stimulant injection while Anja turned him over to check his back. He rolled onto his stomach, twitching weakly, and Anja saw the blood caked around the bottom of his armored backplate. It slid out easily, undamaged, but the jacket beneath it was shredded and bloody. She pulled up his jacket and paused.

A Buil round had slipped in between his back and side armor plates, leaving a gaping wound on his lower back. Anja knew the kidney was hit, and probably the liver too. She found herself standing and backing up, clasping her bloody hands together as Jesri saw the wound and gasped.

"Anders? Hey, Anders!", Jesri yelled, fumbling with the stimulant. She grabbed a pack of nanofiber gauze from the medkit and began frantically packing the wound, her hands smearing scarlet across the pristine white plastic of the medical packaging as she reached back for another roll.

The ship spun around Anja as she stood silently and wrung her hands over and over again, blood dripping from her wrists and elbows to the floor. The wailing of the frightened slave children and the roar of the atmosphere rushing by outside of the shuttle blended together in her ears like an echoing thunder in her skull.

Jesri continued to work as Anders slumped motionless to the decking, her hands bloody past her wrists. "Oh shit, Anders, I got you," she murmured, turning to stare blankly at Anja. "Don't worry," she whispered. "Don't worry."

---

Anja sat bolt upright with a strangled scream, only to clang her head sharply against the autodoc's cylindrical covering. Cursing, she tugged the cover back and winced at the blinding light that flooded in from the medical bay. After allowing herself a few moments of blissful immobility, she swung her legs off the bed and paused.

Legs.

She peered at her right leg, probing her knee experimentally. The skin was lighter below the joint and felt more sensitive to touch. Her foot flexed when she tried to move it, and when she slid off the bed onto the deck it held her weight without trouble.

She padded out of the room, feeling the sharp cold of the metal on her bare feet as she wandered over to the nearest fab terminal and dialed up a duty uniform. The terminal chirped and she waited for a minute, examining her body. No scars or blemishes remained from her earlier injuries, but the odd light patches on her skin told a story. One on her stomach, her breast, her arm. She swiped a hand across her back, feeling the smooth skin and knowing what should have been there.

The dispenser dinged and Anja pulled her warm, crisp uniform from the slot, shaking it out and slipping into the clothes before they lost their heat. She bounced on her leg again, feeling it flex in her boot, and a smile flitted across her face.

---

"Anja!", Jesri shouted, running over to tackle her sister as she left the bridge lift. Anja laughed as Jesri embraced her, squeezing hard enough to hurt her ribs.

"Ow, ow," she winced. Jesri backed off apologetically, but Anja pulled her back into a softer hug. "I feel okay," she said, "but I am a bit tired. How long was I in the doc?" She paused, staring out the viewport. "Sister, is that the galaxy? The whole galaxy?"

Jesri winced. "Yeah, about that," she muttered, trailing off awkwardly.

Rhuar bounded up behind her, smiling widely. "Hi Anja!", he said happily. "We left the galaxy! It wasn't my fault." He scratched at his ear. "Oh, and we can get back, it'll just take a few weeks."

"Rhuar!", Jesri said reproachfully, smacking him in the side. "You somehow failed to mention that last part to me."

He looked up at her, a hurt expression on his face. "You never asked," he said. "Besides, I thought you knew. We're way far out, but the engines should be able to take it and we'll have barely enough fuel. Barely."

"All right," said Anja, stretching her leg out. "Do we have a potential fuel depot on the rim?"

"I can look!", said Rhuar, bounding off towards the shipjack. A few seconds later a map flickered to life and he began sorting through it too fast for either sister to follow.

Jesri turned to Anja and smiled. "I'm glad you made it out okay," she said. "It was pretty touch and go there for a bit."

Anja nodded. "I figured. I remember some of it, I think." She looked around the bridge, then let her gaze wander to the galaxy slowly floating past the window outside. "Still, you have to explain to me how this happened."

"Ah, you'll have to talk to Rhuar about the particulars of hyperdrive physics," she said. "In a nutshell, we had some funny shit thrown at us by a Gestalt Emissary. A real one," she said meaningfully.

Anja frowned. "I would not want to speculate on our odds against one of those," she muttered.

Jesri scuffed her foot over the decking in irritation. "Zero," she said, her voice colored with frustration. "Zero point zero zero zero. There's just no fucking way. We can't win against one of those things. The best I can say is that we're not dead, and even that was a one in a billion chance."

Anja gave her an odd look, then laughed. Jesri blinked in surprise and opened her mouth to inquire, but Anja cut her off. "Nothing, sorry," Anja said, "just figured something out." She slid an arm around Jesri's shoulders and they looked together at the galaxy hanging motionless, light-years distant. Light from before humans developed agriculture, she realized. Light from before humans tamed the Earth and ruined her. From before they broke the bonds of gravity and time to hurl themselves across the stars. From before they all died.

"The Gestalt is powerful and advanced. We cannot win," Anja said softly, an incongruous smile creeping over her face. "But maybe winning is the wrong goal. Maybe it would be enough to not lose."

---

Sorry for the late post today! A little rest and relaxation after the action from the last few episodes.

 

[TMarkos]

A low chime sounded, accompanied by a warm glow that steadily pushed the darkness into the corners of the small cabin. Anja grunted into her pillow and rolled over, letting the light batter at her eyelids for a few indulgent seconds.

In the first years of her military service she had happened to meet one of the scientists who had worked on her genetic structure, an elderly fellow with wispy white hair who had been delighted to meet her and insisted on treating her to dinner. Near the end of the meal the slightly tipsy geneticist had launched into an impromptu treatise on their efforts to remove sleep requirements from the Valkyrie genetic profile, only to be stymied at every turn by the creeping mental instability that resulted.

They eventually were forced to lower their aim and retain the sleep requirement, albeit reduced from the human baseline. Anja always thought of the old man when she was lying half-asleep and reluctant to move, unsure whether to curse him for giving up or thank him for the moments of lethargic morning bliss between awakening and arising.

She supposed it didn't matter much anymore.

After dealing with the logistics of hygiene and clothing, Anja slipped out of her cabin and caught a lift up to the bridge. Qktk and Jesri sat hunched over a tactical display, peering at a grid with tiny black and white markers. Qktk flicked a few eyes at her when she entered, but immediately returned his focus to the display.

Anja sighed and shook her head. Going over sensor logs of the battle at Ysl had become tedious after the first several days. Jesri had been desperate to do anything besides scrub through the feed logs again, so she had pounced the moment Qktk offhandedly mentioned an interest in Go.

Strategy games were a core part of the Valkyrie educational curriculum, and their instructors had included the ancient games alongside modern virtual combat simulations. Anja had preferred the latter, as had most of her sisters, but Jesri and a few others had retained a fascination for chess, shogi and Go that had them playing often in the downtime between missions.

Given her long years of experience Jesri had expected little challenge from the Htt. To her surprise and delight, he played their first match to a vanishingly narrow loss. Evidently the game had caught on in a huge way with his species in the far past, and in his youth Qktk had been a player of some note. He quickly demanded a rematch, playing an aggressive opening that led to Jesri's impressed and astonished resignation.

That was three weeks ago. Since then, the two had been locked in a series of increasingly intense games that consumed the majority of their waking hours. Anja wouldn't have minded at all, except for one unintended consequence: it left Rhuar with only one person to talk to.

"Anja!", he shouted, waving excitedly. "Anja, come look at this! You have to see what I pulled out of the sensor logs!"

She sighed, walking over to his console just as she had every other morning since they began traveling back towards the galactic disc. She couldn't fault him for his enthusiasm - indeed, he was the only one of them that had managed to focus on productive work for the whole trip. She just couldn't match his relentless obsession with technical minutiae. Rhuar's fascination with the Grand Design was understandable, she supposed, but there was a limit to how much interest she could summon for off-band hyperwave resonance traces.

Rhuar was unencumbered by such constraints. As she approached his station, he moved aside eagerly to show her his latest discovery. "Look here, see? Check out that spike in the readings there," he gushed, tapping the screen excitedly. "Now, I know you're thinking 'so what, it's just a stupid spike', right? Well, check this out - I took the same demuxing algorithm I used to isolate that spike and checked the rest of the logs from Ysl."

He fiddled with the console to show several more graphs. Anja scanned them disinterestedly. They all showed a prominent spike in signal with a similar falloff pattern. "Rhuar," she sighed, "these could be anything. Pulsar noise, local broadcasts, some idiot pinging wide-spectrum-"

"Nah, not this signal," he interrupted, ignoring Anja's cross look at the interruption. "See, I only started looking at signal traffic because you said that Trelir fucker was talking with the Gestalt. The communication was easy to spot - tightbeam, so I couldn't read it, but the resonant backsplash from the hyperwave conversion shunt was nice and clean. Problem is, it looked super fucky. You know how a shunt backsplash is normally all like-"

He waved his arms in what Anja supposed was a descriptive manner. She stared at him expressionlessly and did not blink.

"Right, yeah," he said, lowering his arms awkwardly. "Point is, it didn't look right. So I demuxed it like I mentioned earlier and found out there were two spikes, both definitely from a hyperwave shunt. But here's the kicker: two inbound streams. Right? So I was all 'hold on', and compared polarity fingerprints…"

Anja continued to stare at a fixed point ahead of her as Rhuar talked. Absent any other entertainment, she had been testing how long she could remain totally immobile and expressionless before he stopped talking. So far her record was just shy of an hour, and she had cracked before he did every time.

"...absolutely can't be a coincidence, not with that timing," he said, looking at her expectantly.

Anja sighed. Only ten minutes today. "I'm afraid I don't follow," she said, quite truthfully.

Rhuar tossed his head frustratedly. "Look, it's easy - here, here and here," he said, pointing to the console. "Each time before an atypical error. Someone is jamming the Emissaries."

She blinked, feeling a chill rush through her stomach. "Wait, what? When did you say that?"

He rolled his eyes. "I've been saying it. There's a secondary communication stream overlaid on the main Gestalt link, but it doesn't come from the same point of origin and it only appears sometimes. And every time it does appear, the Emissaries screw something up." He dragged one graph to fill the screen, tracing the jagged line with an arm.

"See, this is your suit log from when you were in the bunker with Trelir. You're talking, he's talking a lot, Jesri's talking, he's talking, then he gets the transmission from Big G-"

"Please don't give it nicknames," Anja muttered, peering closely at the graph. She could practically hear Trelir's oily voice overlaid on the plot, see his eye-fluttering look of ecstacy when the connection with the Gestalt came.

Rhuar shook his head in irritation. "Point is, he gets this extra transmission at the same time, then you beat the smug off his face and he cuts your leg off and tries to blow you up - and it doesn't work."

Anja frowned, absently scratching her knee. "I slammed him against the wall pretty hard, and Jesri shot him in the face a few times. I had assumed his transmitter was damaged."

"Nah," replied Rhuar, "because when he used the physical failsafe and tore his own head off, the transmitter worked just fine. Plus, look at this one - the Emissary ship. It catches us belly-up and has all the time in the world to aim its bullshit bendy-space cannon. It gets another one of these transmissions and whoosh - misses us."

"The next shot was right on target," Anja pointed out.

Rhuar grinned and flounced his tail. "Ah, but it was late. Another transmission hit before it fired, and the time between cannon charge and discharge was noticeably longer than with the first shot. It wasn't a lot, but it was the difference between taking the shot in normal space versus hyperspace."

Anja grimaced. "Which landed us outside of the galaxy."

"Which is better than being dead," Rhuar pointed out.

"After three weeks stuck in hyperspace I think that may be debatable. Anyway," sighed Anja, "this is actually interesting. It means we have an ally of sorts, one familiar with the Gestalt and capable of interfering with its Emissaries." She crossed her arms, eyes flitting between the spikes on the graphs. "We would be dead without them. If what you're saying is true, each one of those transmissions saved our lives."

Rhuar nodded gravely. "Whoever this is, they have an impressive ability to coordinate against the Gestalt. The disruptions were always precisely timed and subtle enough that they didn't appear to be anything more than a simple malfunction. Quiet, careful and effective."

Anja nodded. "Sounds like people we could use," she agreed. "I would very much like to talk to them."

"Actually, I think they'd very much like to talk to you," Rhuar replied.

Anja shot him a confused look. "What do you mean?"

Rhuar jumped back in front of the console, pulling up another dataset. "So, I mentioned that I had spotted a different point of origin for the transmissions. Trouble is, I shouldn't have been able to see that so easily. This sort of tightbeam communication is easy to disguise if you want to mask your origin. Like, I can't derive the Gestalt's origin from the sensor records of its transmissions. But I can see the origin of our mystery buddy's signal."

"Why?", Anja asked, crossing her fingers for a concise and comprehensible answer.

He shrugged. "Because they wanted us to. There's some carefully tuned noise in the signal confinement that lets the origin vector leak out."

"But then the Gestalt could also trace their position," Anja frowned. "So it would likely be a disposable relay rather than their true location. This may be a dead end."

Rhuar bounced on his paws excitedly. "No, the Emissary ship couldn't see it. The leak was structured such that it only propagated back towards the original source vector. The recipient of the transmission would never be able to trace it. It's brilliant, and would be really, really hard to pull off. The grasp of hyperspace field theory involved… It would be like trying to strip and rebuild your hyperspace coils while you were in hyperspace. In zero gravity. With your teeth." He grinned up at her, tongue lolling out of his mouth. "They did it three times. I think I may want to meet these guys even more than you do."

"Mmhmm," replied Anja absently, already lost in thought. "Did you identify the origin system? How long would it take us to get there?"

Rhuar grinned wider. "That part was easy, they're at an unlisted transit station on the rim. Well, Grand Design knows about it, but I've never seen it on a map before. It's called Nic, ah," he frowned, cocking his head. "Nicnevin? Just two days out, and it's within our fuel margin. I adjusted course as soon as I realized what the transmissions meant."

Anja raised an eyebrow. "Oh?", she purred, her voice suddenly chilly. Rhuar's grin withered and died. "It is not customary for an ensign to redirect a ship without consulting the captain, you know."

"I, uh," stammered Rhuar, but Anja smiled and waved him off. The cloud of ominous intent that had swirled around her disappeared in an instant.

"It is fine because you were right," she said dismissively. "We have to check this out. I like independent action, Rhuar," she said, "as long as it's correct action."

"Yes, sir," he managed, still off-balance from the rapid shift in tone. Anja walked over to Jesri and Qktk, leaving Rhuar to his research. He shivered, then began browsing through signal traces once more.

---

"Nicnevin?", frowned Jesri, looking up from her game. Qktk flitted a few eyes irritatedly at Anja, studying the game board. Anja was never an aficionado of the game like Jesri, but she was familiar enough with it to know that Qktk was losing. "I've never been there, but I've heard of it before. I think they used to stage rim prospecting groups out of that area, it was kind of a backwater."

"Everywhere is a backwater now," grumbled Anja. "But I am inclined to take that as a positive. Less commerce, less traffic, less chance of the station being overrun by who-knows-what." She shrugged. "Probably why our mysterious benefactors chose to set up there in the first place."

Jesri nodded. "It'd be helpful if the port's fuel stores were intact. A cruiser isn't the hardest ship to keep fueled, but it does run through a fair bit of it. If we were able to top the tanks off we wouldn't have to worry about it again for years."

"I would not worry about that," Anja said dryly. "Somehow I think running out of fuel is too calm a fate for us. Given the number of times we have nearly died since finding the Grand Design, worrying about the state of our fuel reserves a year down the road seems premature."

"Fair," Jesri chuckled. "And you're sure it's a good idea to just stroll up to the station and say hello? The only thing we really know about these folks is that they're capable, which is great if they're disposed to be friendly. If not…"

"Then we would not be here in the first place," Anja finished for her. "If they had wanted us dead they could have simply not intervened. If you have a spare hour or two ask Rhuar about it, he can run you through the details. Actually..." she said, an impish grin tugging at her lips. "Ensign Rhuar! Come over here!", she yelled. "Jesri and Qktk would like to be briefed on your findings. Please make sure to start from the beginning, I want them brought up to speed on everything."

"You monster," Jesri whispered, a look of horror spreading over her face.

Anja smiled. "Crybaby. Have fun!"

Rhuar came up to the stunned duo just as Anja was leaving, her hair flouncing from the happy bounce in her step. "I'm going to get her for that," Jesri muttered.

"What?", asked Rhuar, clearing the Go board from the console display and calling up a dense series of graphs and reports. "Whatever it is, can it wait a little bit? We've got a lot to cover."

Qktk and Jesri gave him sullen looks, but were defenseless against the beaming grin on Rhuar's face.

"...it's nothing," Jesri sighed.

"Okay, great!", he cheered. "Now, how much do you two know about hyperwave signal analysis?"

---

Compared to the weeks of aimless tedium leading up to Rhuar's discovery, the two days before their arrival at Nicnevin passed quickly. Anja and Jesri busied themselves with a full supply inventory in case there was an opportunity for trade with the inhabitants of the station, while Qktk had been pressed to assist Rhuar in running a wholly unnecessary systems diagnostic.

It was scant hours before their scheduled arrival and Jesri was hurrying to tally the contents of a medical storeroom far to the fore of the ship. She re-sealed two small boxes of adhesive bandages and placed them in her growing pile of salvaged goods, diminutive cousin to the much larger pile of junk accumulating on the floor. Out of all the supplies on the ship, it seemed that medicines were the least likely to remain usable after five millennia on the shelf. It was frustrating, but she couldn't precisely fault the manufacturers for failing to anticipate the end of human civilization.

The last items squared away, she straightened up and sighed. More than anything, she felt a bit lost. She had never forgotten about the fall of humanity or the impending destruction of the universe during her long years traveling, but she hadn't spent much thought on it either. Who would bring it up? It was like living on the edge of a volcano, on top of a fault line, around a star on the brink of nova - it was there, if anyone bothered to look at it, but what could you do but keep living?

Of course, Anja's revelation about the Grand Design's whereabouts had returned the scenario to prominence in her mind. Suddenly it was an addressable problem. Find the ship, recover the weapon, kill the enemy, save the universe. Yet there was no weapon after all, and in its absence even Anja seemed to concede they had no chance of confronting the Gestalt directly - not that she seemed discomfited by that admission. In fact, her sister seemed to be more optimistic and motivated since her injury than Jesri had ever seen her.

She shook her head. She wasn't Anja, and although she was cautiously hopeful at the prospect of meeting these mysterious allies she could summon only questions when her thoughts dwelled on them. If they had the ability to disrupt the Gestalt, why had they not acted until now? If they were waiting for the Grand Design to appear, were they pinning their hopes on recovering the weapon as well? What would they say when they found out it was a ruse?

They were not the bearers of good news, nor of resources useful to the fight. As powerful as their ship was against the ragtag warlords and tin-pot monarchs that infested humanity's moldering corpse, they were helpless against even one Emissary. They had no intelligence to offer, no secret weapons. Just two old soldiers and two naive merchants, strutting around a relic and trying to ignore all of the dead bodies. Jesri sighed and walked back into the hall, making her way towards the bridge. Sometimes you just had to wait for life to open up more options and hope you survived to see them.

She was just so tired.

---

Qktk and Rhuar were huddled around the pilot's console on the bridge, although it had grown considerably as Rhuar tacked on monitors, spare consoles and miscellaneous diagnostic equipment in a loose semicircle around his duty station. Although he could comfortably stay connected to the shipjack for hours at a time now, he was still forced to spend much of his time disconnected and therefore needed an alternative control and monitoring setup.

Rhuar flitted between three screens pulsing with graphs and gauges, making minute adjustments as they neared the final reemergence from hyperspace. They had last dropped out a day ago to run some maintenance on the overtaxed drive coils and reconfirm their bearings. Qktk found himself wondering when Rhuar had last slept, as every time he made his way up to the bridge he seemed to have found some new system to triple-check in preparation for their arrival.

They both looked up as Jesri walked onto the bridge, giving them a wan smile. Rhuar was harder to read, but Qktk was sure Jesri hadn't been sleeping properly. After spending weeks pitting himself against her on the gameboard he had become quite adept at reading her mood.

"Hey, Jesri," said Rhuar, waving an arm. "Ready for arrival?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, please, let's stay in hyperspace for another month."

"Can't do that!", responded Rhuar cheerfully, either oblivious or choosing to ignore her sarcasm. "We're running nearly empty here. If there's no fuel at Nicnevin then we're going to have to take the Leviathan out to find more somewhere else."

He broke off as Anja strode onto the bridge, her uniform looking sharp and her face vibrant. "Oh good," she said, "everyone is already here."

"I cleared my schedule," Qktk deadpanned, earning a quirk of Jesri's lips. Anja gave him the slightest of acknowledging nods and walked over to the command dais, sliding into her chair.

"Ensign Rhuar, prepare for arrival," she called out. "Our sensors outrange the transit station's, drop in a bit early and keep signal silence. I want to buy us a minute to observe the situation before we have to start talking. Will our fuel reserves permit an exit at the edge of our sensor envelope?"

Rhuar grabbed the shipjack and plugged it in, bowing his head for a moment before answering. "Yes," he said flatly. "That should be fine. Strap in, I'll start bringing us up now."

Qktk and Jesri found their chairs and fastened their restraints just as the first hints of starlight began to limn the viewports above them. Qktk settled back, but soon found himself leaning forward unconsciously in anticipation. "Stupid," he muttered quietly, settling back again and wondering what he was so excited about. It wasn't as if he had anything to add to talks with their mysterious allies.

Jesri looked over at Qktk, seeing the small Htt muttering to himself. She too had learned something of her opponent's tics - he was anxious, frustrated. She sighed. It was hardly inappropriate. Rhuar was a statue, just as he always was when jacked in. Apart from the occasional twitch of an ear or bristle of fur, he simply stared blankly ahead, seeing far more than any eye could show him.

Anja… She looked every inch the captain. Leaning forwards eagerly but keeping her posture casual, her face composed but still somehow vivid with excitement. She looked like one of the freewheeling ship captains from a viz-drama, daring the future to try and overwhelm her. Sometimes Jesri wondered if they were truly forged from the same template.

"Here we go," said Rhuar, tensing and bracing his legs. "Exit in three, two, one-"

A wash of light rippled over the viewports, dissolving into hazy wisps that drifted off like steam. The starfield was properly ablaze now that they were in a galactic arm, doubly so because they were facing coreward. This far out Jesri couldn't see the transit station with the naked eye, although her console promptly informed her that it was around a twenty-minute sublight burn ahead of them.

"Report," said Anja tersely.

"Looks like a transit station from here," Rhuar said unhelpfully, taking a moment to scan through sensor feeds. "Hmm. High thermals. Uncommonly active, especially for a station nobody I know has ever heard of."

"I'm not sure if that's good or bad," said Jesri flatly. "At least it's still in one piece."

"No ship traffic," Rhuar continued, a note of consternation creeping into his voice. "Now, that is a bit strange. Normally a station with this level of activity would have queues of ships lined up outside the docks."

"No response to our arrival?", asked Anja.

Rhuar gave a slight shake of his head. "Nah. We're pretty dark, this far out, and our cross-section is minimized. They might have seen the splash from our exit if they happened to be looking in this direction, but they're not beaming any active pings our way."

"Hm," sniffed Anja, considering. "Well, take us in. Let me know if you see any movement."

"Aye sir," Rhuar said distantly, his ears twitching as the engines engaged with a low hum. They sat in tense silence for one minute, then two, then five. Suddenly, Rhuar's head snapped up to stare at something in the distance. "Multiple launch from the station," he said, alarm threading through his voice.

Anja blinked in surprise. "Missiles?"

"No, sorry," Rhuar said, information flickering onto the large tactical display. "Ships. Can't see much about them from this distance besides size and bearing."

Two red dots peeled away from the station, curving outwards before changing course to build speed towards their position. Statistics streamed onto their personal consoles, detailing the specifications of the ships approaching them.

Qktk trilled in consternation. "They look like they're heading this way. I thought you said they couldn't see us with their sensors?"

"They shouldn't be able to, the stations only have civilian traffic control suites," Jesri frowned.

"Hm, they…" Anja said, frowning. "They are rather large for civilian ships. Actually, they look like-" The ship pinged and refreshed the specification list to add a flurry of additional information, pictures of the hull rendering in fine detail. The tactical display wavered, both incoming red dots shifting to a royal blue. Anja looked up at Jesri, confusion on her face. "What the hell?"

"Uh, guys?", Rhuar said nervously, "I'm getting IFF and hailing pings from the lead ship. Denying response so far like you ordered." His eyes widened. "You want to explain what's going on?"

A chime sounded and a light flashed at Anja's arm. Jesri noticed a slight tremor in her hand as she punched a control, replacing the tactical display with an incoming video feed.

The display changed to show a woman on the bridge of a ship, her stance practically vibrating with anger as she glared into the camera. She was dressed in an immaculate grey and black uniform with a golden falcon spreading its wings on each shoulder board. Her curly blonde hair framed pinched grey-green eyes, fury radiating from every line of her face.

"Unidentified vessel, this is the TNS Cormorant," she said, her voice low and ominous. "Explain who you are and how you located this station or we will open fire. You have thirty seconds to comply."

Jesri looked over at Anja, knowing the wide-eyed shock she saw was mirrored on her own face. The dashing captain from moments before had vanished to leave her sister looking younger, almost vulnerable. Anja toggled their outgoing video feed and spoke softly, a faint quaver unmistakeable in her voice.

"Ellie?"

---

We're getting close, folks. Tomorrow is a double-post that will bring you up to the currently published chapter, after which you'll continue to get each new chapter on Wednesdays. I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seat.

 

[TMarkos]

Eleanor's face went slack with surprise and sudden emotion, the anger falling away from her expression in an instant. Her mouth worked a few times before finally finding traction on her sister's name.

"...Anja?", she whispered, barely audible. Her eyes slid to the side, taking in Rhuar and Qktk before locking on the first officer's station. "Jesri?"

Jesri smiled and nodded, not trusting her voice to remain steady through the rush of feeling in her chest. The three sisters stood gazing at each other for a long moment, drinking in each others' presence through the viewscreen. As her shock subsided, Jesri noted several slight grey figures in Terran uniforms milling around behind Eleanor, manning bridge stations and checking data feeds. Compared to their own cavernously empty bridge, hers looked like a bustling market.

Anja giggled uncontrollably before shaking her head and recovering some of her equilibrium. "I was expecting everything but you, sister," she said, "I have never been happier to be wrong."

Eleanor straightened up, tugging on the bottom of her uniform jacket. "How… I never thought-", she began, casting her gaze around their bridge. "Are there more with you?"

Anja's smile froze, then faded. "No," she said quietly.

"I can't be greedy," Eleanor replied with a quick laugh, waving the question away. "Just having the two of you here, after all this time - come, you have to dock at the station. I need to-!" She broke off, her sentence dissolving into flustered silence before she composed herself fully and gave them a steady, beaming smile. "Dock first. We can talk in person."

They exchanged smiles and nods, then cut the connection after a lingering gaze.

The bridge was silent as the image reverted back to the tactical display, the two blue dots slowing to turn back towards port. Anja and Jesri shared a look, and Qktk cleared his throat.

"I don't want to ruin the moment," he said delicately, "but we should talk before we reach the station."

Jesri nodded, realizing she had been holding her breath. "She didn't send the transmissions," she said. "Whoever did would have known we were coming, or at least that some Valkyrie were coming. Ellie was totally surprised."

Anja frowned. "She was. A rare look on her. But-" She trailed off, thinking. "Rhuar, are you sure the transmission came from Nicnevin?"

"Oh yeah," he replied. "There's not a lot else out this way, and there wasn't much of a spread in the vector."

"So our benefactors didn't want us to find them," Jesri mused, "they wanted us to find Ellie?"

Anja shrugged. "As far as I am concerned, they just did us another priceless favor. Ships, a friendly port, allies. If not for them, I would still believe Ellie to be dead."

"Same, I haven't run into a single mention of her, not even early on…" Jesri paused, a thought occurring to her. "Anja, she must have been here the entire time."

They all paused, considering. "If this station has been occupied since the fall," Rhuar said slowly, "does that mean there are humans on it?"

"I didn't see humans in the feed from their bridge," Jesri replied, shaking her head. "A species I don't recognize, smaller and greyish. Anyone know them?"

Qktk and Rhuar shrugged, while Anja shook her head, then sighed. "Useless to speculate," she said wearily. "Rhuar, take us in."

"Aye sir," he sang out, coaxing the engines to life. The gigantic ship rumbled towards the station, although the two Valkyrie barely heard it.

---

"Heavy cruiser, continue to bay zero-three approach and hold for clearance. Maintain separation at two kilometers," crackled a dry, emotionless voice.

"Control, acknowledged," Rhuar replied crisply, his cool tones a poor match for the grin plastered across his face. He turned to Jesri, bouncing excitedly on his front paws. "Isn't this cool?", he gushed, "It's like a real spaceport."

Jesri grinned back. His enthusiasm was infectious, but she couldn't claim to be wholly immune herself. The station felt… right. It looked no different but any other station she had visited since the fall, but none of them still retained the sense of raw vitality that she felt now. For thousands of years every station she had boarded felt like an abandoned home, dark and still. Visiting Nicnevin was like stepping back in time - not just nostalgic, but a homecoming.

Qktk and Anja were absorbed in watching the station's picket craft slide through the entrance to the station's main capital ship docking bay. The gates stretched wide, dwarfing the two 150-meter corvettes as they slipped through. The blue glow from their engines sent harsh shadows dancing across the interior before they vanished to the side.

"Heavy cruiser, you are clear to proceed," the controller said, "your berth is at slip zero one. Welcome to Redoubt."

"Thank you Control, heading in," Rhuar replied, practically vibrating in tune with the engines as he moved the ship forward. The bridge fell into the shadow of the station as they passed through the doors, the cavernous opening comfortably admitting the ship's bulk.

The interior space stretched back nearly two kilometers, the far end lost in a light haze of shadow playing over the fading drive traces of the corvettes. The smaller ships were just finishing their approach, nestling into their slips along the side of the dock.

Their destination was the largest slip in the bay, half again as long as the Grand Design. Rhuar glided towards it, indulging himself for a moment in the full depth of the ship's sensor feeds. His senses stretched through the metal walls of the bay, feeling the strength of the superstructure and the labyrinth of hallways nestled between the branching ribs. The bright pulse of the central core was blinding, making even their own reactor seem like a flickering candle in comparison.

He looked again in a different band, seeing the choking swirl of life surging through the corridors. A huge mass of people, more people than he had ever seen on a station and still only a fraction of what it could hold. They surged through the corridors around the docks, clustering and flowing through the corridors. Farther away, little groups sparkled like stars, huddled in tiny clumps along the endless halls. He marveled in disbelief at the milling crowds for a half second before grudgingly releasing the feed to guide the ship in.

The clamps sent a shudder through the ship as they engaged, softly locking them against the broad arc of the slip. Rhuar let the tremors reverberate through him and fade to a hum before removing the shipjack, stumbling at the numb shock that ripped through him as he shrank back to himself. Shaking his head, he looked around the bridge to see Anja and Jesri eagerly rising to debark.

Qktk slid out of his seat and shot a serious glance over at Rhuar, who returned the look for a moment before they both succumbed to laughter. "Mr. Rhuar," he chittered, "just when I think I've adjusted to the strangeness of life…"

"Yep," Rhuar chuckled. "Come on, Captain, let's go see the secret ancient spaceport." He smacked Qktk lightly on the shell, and they both hurried to follow Anja and Jesri towards the lift.

---

Eleanor was waiting for them at the dock's primary airlock, smiling joyfully at their appearance. She bounded towards Anja and Jesri as they approached, drawing them into a crushing hug that they returned with equal force.

"Ow, ow," laughed Eleanor, wriggling free and rubbing her ribs. "No fair, two on one." She moved back to beam at the two of them from arm's length. "Damn, you're really here. I didn't believe it until just now, not really. And flying the Grand Design? You have to tell me everything."

"You'll have to set aside some time," Jesri grinned. "The last couple of months have been eventful."

Eleanor gave her shoulder a squeeze, then turned her attention to Qktk and Rhuar. "Can I assume these two are somehow involved?", she asked.

Anja nodded. "Essential crewmen, both of them. Colonel Eleanor Tam, it is my pleasure to introduce Ensigns Qktk and Rhuar. Ensign Qktk was instrumental in our escape from a hostile station shortly after we met and recently executed a holding action against a planetary defense force to cover a covert extraction."

Qktk nervously rubbed his forelegs together at the praise, inclining his head to Eleanor. "It was more of a diversion gone wrong," he stammered.

Anja grinned at him and motioned to Rhuar. "As for Ensign Rhuar, he is a talented pilot and engineer that has saved our lives on several occasions. He was the one that determined the location of your station."

Eleanor smiled back at them both, acknowledging them with a nod. "Such accomplished Ensigns," she said. "I should be very interested to talk with them further." Her gaze turned to Rhuar and flashed with steely intent. "Especially concerning how you managed to locate us out here." Rhuar's pleased smile wilted a bit and he shot a concerned look at Jesri.

"Stop trying to scare them, sister," teased Anja, jabbing Eleanor in the ribs and smirking at her annoyed scowl. "How about your crewmen?", she inquired, gesturing behind her.

Rhuar started, surprised. He hadn't noticed the small, silent figures standing by the entrance to the room. They were thin and short, their light grey skin matching their darker uniforms. Their eyes were pale yellow and large for their narrow, noseless face, their mouths thin and lipless.

A brief flash of confusion crossed Eleanor's face before she turned back to look at the two. "Oh, these two? Ensigns Drinni and, ah, Rulati."

Neither reacted to being named. "Wow," Jesri coughed. "Great discipline."

"Irri are like that," Eleanor laughed. "Their species," she clarified, seeing Anja's inquiring look.

"Huh, never met any before," Jesri said. "Pleased to meet you," she said politely.

"An honor, sir!", they both barked in perfect unison. Jesri raised an eyebrow and Eleanor shook her head. "Like I said, they're like that. Amazing people." She clapped both sisters on a shoulder and squeezed. "You hungry? We can chat and catch up in the officers' mess. I know how much I look forward to some hydroponics after spending time underway."

"Oh, yes," moaned Anja. "Jesri may be able to survive on nutrient pellets but I have been dreaming of salad for weeks."

"Great!", she replied, "I'll get you some quarters and we can talk over dinner." Eleanor turned to Rhuar and Qktk with an apologetic smile. "Do you two mind if I catch up with my sisters for a bit? Drinni can get you food and quarters, show you around the station."

Qktk gave an alarmed chirp as Rhuar hauled him towards the exit, smiling hungrily at Drinni. "Hi, I'm Rhuar!", he said brightly, "can we look at the main reactors first?"

---

"You have to tell me where you found those two," Eleanor chuckled, gesturing them to the right as they traversed the corridors of the station.

"It's a long story," replied Jesri, her eyes roving over the hallway in amazement. She was finding it hard to focus on the conversation as they walked because of all the people. Throngs of grey-skinned Irri crowded the station, each clad in crisp duty greys and moving with a purpose. They moved efficiently, quietly, stopping or speaking only when needed.

Anja poked Eleanor in the shoulder. "Sister, before we explain where we found our two crewmen, do me the favor of explaining where you found yours," she said. "How many of them are there? Where did they all come from?"

Eleanor laughed and led them through a final doorway to a small, well-appointed mess with a table laid for a dozen crew. The room was empty save for an Irri steward who saluted smartly and left towards what Jesri presumed was the galley as they entered.

"They found me, really. I suppose I should explain a bit," she said, taking a seat and motioning for her sisters to do the same. "When the attacks came I was in-between postings, traveling alone on the Cormorant en route to a new assignment. We were part of a convoy - three corvettes and ten cargo barges. When we got word of the attacks we dropped out of hyperspace to reroute to a new destination, but the damn traders panicked." She shook her head, wincing as she remembered.

"They insisted on jumping back within the core perimeter, trying to hit the transit station at Gliese 433. They actually did - but they got there too early. It was one of the last systems to be attacked, and they got there just in time to have a front-row seat." Eleanor leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. "We had a ten-minute coordination call on whether to follow them or link back up with the fleet, and we couldn't match their fully laden speed. By the time we jumped in after them, they were all dead."

Jesri pursed her lips. "There was a lot of that kind of thing going on," she muttered.

Eleanor nodded. "It was a bad day," she said, quirking her lips at the understatement. "We decided to go to Nicnevin because it was off the beaten path. They had just built Redoubt that year and it hadn't been added to most of the civilian nav charts yet. We figured it'd be quiet, safe."

She was interrupted by the steward bringing in plates of lightly sauteed bok choi and a crispy green salad dressed with a vinaigrette. Anja made an odd sighing noise as the plates were set in front of her, barely pausing to send a grateful glance Eleanor's way before tearing into the food.

Jesri grinned and speared some arugula with her fork. "So what happened after you got here?", she asked around a mouthful of salad.

"Manners," Eleanor chuckled, wagging a finger at her. "It's all that keeps us civilized, out here." She ate a bite of her own food, then set her fork down. "Ah, we were here for a few years just turning the place into a home. It was a new station, pretty bare, and it was set up for mining support where it was built out at all. By the end of it we had a pretty good picture of what had happened. We clamped down on signals, communication, we wanted the station to be invisible."

"After we lost the Albatross to a panicked defense fleet - our other corvette, besides the Skua," she clarified, "we stopped going out of system entirely. We kept our heads down, kept the hatches closed, tried to gather information. There were only about three hundred of us left, not enough to do anything aggressive, so we just waited and listened."

Her face went flat and she shook her head again. "We waited and waited. Three hundred wasn't enough, though, not for a long-term colony. Besides that, everyone had been on longevity treatments and a lot of the Navy personnel were older. Without a fertility clinic... There were a few dozen children born, and a handful more from there."

She stopped talking again, and Jesri saw a little tremor run through her face. The three of them sat quietly for a few long moments. "The last one, a woman named Kiera, it was just me and her for twelve years." She ate a bite of salad, chewing slowly. "Then it was just me."

Jesri fought to keep her face neutral, knowing how her sister would react to her pity. "The Irri?", she managed.

Eleanor nodded. "A long… long time later. A colony ship from a distant part of the galaxy, well outside our space. They had a malfunction with their life support and docked at the station, thinking it was abandoned. They found me, and after we figured out how to communicate they asked if they could stay here."

Anja raised an eyebrow. "They wanted to enlist?", she asked incredulously, speaking for the first time since the food came. Jesri saw that her plates were pristine and empty.

"They wanted to survive," Eleanor said, shrugging. "Afterwards they didn't know what to do with themselves, so I offered a structure. Turns out they're well-suited for a military environment, they thrive on it. So we've been running a quiet little base ever since, biding our time until an opportunity presented itself." She looked at her sisters with a grin. "Bringing us to the present day, when my dear sisters showed up with humanity's secret weapon against the Gestalt."

It hurt Jesri to see the hope in Eleanor's eyes. "Um," she winced, "maybe we should tell you our side of the story now."

She relayed the events that had transpired since she and Anja had left Indomitable. Eleanor's face went blank when Jesri recounted what Trelir had said about the weapon, staying expressionless until her sister had finished speaking. The three sat quietly again, Jesri sitting awkwardly under Eleanor's detached gaze while Anja still basked in the vegetal afterglow from their appetizers.

The steward came in again with a passable risotto, leaving like a ghost as soon as the last plate hit the table. Anja broke the silence to dig into her dinner, shaking Eleanor out of her contemplative funk.

She sighed. "I suppose I was being too optimistic hoping that you two would have all the galaxy's problems solved before you got here," she said, the hint of a smile creeping back onto her face. "It's okay. You need rest, we can share intel, see if anything shakes loose. And…" Her face darkened, traces of the formidable commander Jesri remembered asserting themselves in her scowl, "we will investigate how your friend knew this station was here. I'm glad they sent you, but if they can find us so can the Gestalt."

Anja scraped the last of her risotto into her mouth and nodded. "A good plan of action, sister," she agreed. "We will have Rhuar assist you in reviewing our ship's logs."

Eleanor chuckled, her face melting back to sisterly affection. "I'll enjoy that. He's a nice change of pace from dealing with the Irri. Don't get me wrong," she said, wagging a finger, "I love the little grey guys, but they're not the most emotive people in the galaxy."

"Oh, poor Drinni," Jesri said. She was only half-joking. "I can't imagine the sort of day he's having right now."

---

"Wow, the station reactors are tetraphasic? I grew up on a station and I never even knew! How do you address resonant buildup in a multiphase system this big? Man, that has to be a pain…"

Qktk sighed. Rhuar had asked their taciturn guide over fifty questions at this point, but he never paused long enough to permit an answer and Drinni didn't seem to be the interrupting sort. The three of them stood on a narrow gantry overlooking the giant, twisted torus of the station's B reactor. Huge injection stacks towered to either side of the reactor, ascending into darkness.

Rhuar's enthusiastic rambling came to a stop and he stood on his hind legs to get a better view of the reactor. "Man, that's really something," he said longingly. "We're right here in the reactor of a station. Nobody has seen one for thousands of years, you know. You guys are really lucky."

Drinni's face twitched. "Please follow me," he said in a clipped, neutral tone. "Colonel Tam requested that you be shown all primary systems. We must still visit hydroponics, fabrication and environmental support." He hurried them out of the room, practically shoving Rhuar through the door to the hallway as he tried to sneak one last look at the reactor.

The Irri tilted his head and the door slid shut behind them. Qktk turned to proceed, but Rhuar stopped in his tracks to stare at Drinni.

"Wow, do you all have implanted comms like Anja and Jesri?", he asked excitedly. "That's so cool. I always thought they would only work if you were some sort of ancient supersoldier like they are."

Drinni hesitated, then walked down the corridor slowly. "Colonel Tam developed a modified version for our use," he said, his voice still admirably level despite Rhuar's incessant questioning. "Thanks to her, we all enjoy an increased level of interaction with the station."

"Neat!", Rhuar said. "Do you think it would work on me?"

Drinni's face twitched again and Qktk gave Rhuar a smack on the head. "That's enough, Mr. Rhuar," he chided. "Let the poor man walk in peace for a bit. Wait a while before you try and schedule any brain surgery on yourself."

Rhuar sulked, but walked without speaking. Drinni glanced at Qktk gratefully - well, Qktk was reasonably certain it was gratitude, given the context. He found the Irri to be quite inscrutable, even for humanoids. Drinni held the look for a strangely long moment before turning back to lead them towards the hydroponics bay.

Qktk shook his head. Humanoids. Htt emoted with antennae and limb positioning, like sensible species. They passed an intersection teeming with short grey crewmen and Qktk marveled how the streams of traffic simply passed through each other without appreciably slowing or diverging from their course. It was almost like watching a hive of insects, although Qktk had to laugh at the irony in that thought. His own people were insectile in appearance but surprisingly "human" in behavior - whether from their own nature or their rude uplifting at the hands of a stray human, he couldn't say.

After a few more minutes Drinni ushered them through a door to the primary hydroponics lab for this ring segment. It was a surprisingly cramped room, with every inch of space given over to racks and racks of enclosed plants and softly burbling pipes of nutrient solution. At the far end of the room sat two gigantic tanks of algae, softly churning as a harvesting arm swept through them to agitate the solution and lift out glistening green mats of plant matter.

Qktk watched as individual plants were harvested by lightning-fast servos darting between the racks, coming away with their bounty to be stored in the galley's holds. "Quite impressive," he muttered, trying to calculate the sheer value of the food being produced by this one room.

It hurt him to remember the poverty and famine he had seen on some stations, food being ransomed to starving parents with emaciated children clinging to them - while perhaps only meters away, a locked room just like this hummed away, steadily producing food for thousands only to have it rot in some long-forgotten storage. Perhaps many of them had fallen to disrepair after millenia of disuse, but he knew some of them still functioned. From what Rhuar shared of Harsi, the plants survived despite the abysmal state of the station. People ate each other on Harsi.

He turned to Drinni, not wanting to add to the poor man's misery but unable to resist asking a question. "Ensign Drinni, do you know the total population the station's hydroponics can-"

Qktk froze, spotting a strange figure lurking just to the left of Drinni's inscrutably irritated face. It was another Irri, even shorter than the others he had seen and dressed in a loose cloak of grey fabric that seemed to melt into the walls. He almost didn't recognize it as Irri simply because he had never seen one wearing anything but their down-sized Terran Navy uniforms.

It stood still, staring at Qktk with wide golden eyes, a bundle of potatoes and greens clutched in its thin arms. He realized with a shock that the Irri was terrified - how could he have thought they were hard to read? The mortal fear etched into its face was easy to see even from across the hydroponics bay. Having been seen, the Irri thought that it was going to die. His mind began to whirl, implications and inferences piling on each other.

Drinni frowned slightly and turned to see what had startled him, but Qktk reached an arm out to touch the ensign lightly on the shoulder. The Irri thought it would die if discovered and he would not risk proving it right. "Apologies, lost my train of thought," Qktk said smoothly, for once thankful that that humanoids found him hard to read as well. "I meant to ask how many people this station can support at full capacity. Do you happen to know?"

Drinni didn't precisely recoil at his touch, but he did make an immediate and precise movement to remove himself from Qktk's reach, forgetting for the moment about the odd lapse in conversation. Keeping his primary eyes fixed on the Irri ensign and barely hearing his brusque response, Qktk flicked a minor eye back towards where the figure had been. It had vanished, leaving no trace.

---

Curiouser and curiouser. The good news is you get the next chapter later today - and then you're all caught up! Please contemplate my comfy pup while you wait.

 

[TMarkos]

Anja and Jesri trailed behind Eleanor as she walked down the busy corridor, the flows of grey Irri parting around them as if they were a rock in a stream. There was something vaguely alienating, Jesri thought, about being in a place where everyone was so well coordinated save for you. It didn't seem to bother Eleanor or Anja, however, and the two of them chatted loudly amid the soft rustle of the crowd.

"...centralize operations around the C-quarter of the outer ring," Eleanor said proudly, "but within a decade we should be able to refurbish much of the middle ring in this quarter as well. That will net us two new fabrication workshops around C-Mid-47 and 103, assuming we can scrounge enough to repair the power conduits." Anja was nodding, but Jesri had a suspicion that she was just as lost as Jesri.

Eleanor seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the station and their efforts to repair it, rattling off room designations and corridor numbers like she was referencing a spec sheet. Then again, she had been trapped on the station for long enough that her exceedingly granular familiarity made sense. To hear her tell it, she had been directing Irri refurbishment efforts for nearly five hundred years but only reclaimed the resources to make much headway within the last fifty. The station had fallen into disrepair during her lonely custodianship, and refurbishing it to support the needs of the Irri had been an immense undertaking.

They still suffered from systems failures, Eleanor confessed. They had been forced to cannibalize parts from unused systems to wire and repair their first fabricator block, so many of the areas adjacent to the docks were stripped and powerless. Since many of the core functions had dependencies in the central ring, a failure there meant walking kilometers through dark tunnels while lugging spare parts and tools to address the problem. Jesri remembered the warren of hallways at Harsi and shuddered.

Still, the areas they had reclaimed were nearly pristine. Jesri hadn't spotted the depressingly normal sights of a transit station as of yet - dead machinery, broken lights, lichen and moss covering the walls. The station probably didn't look this good when it was still a mining outpost, she thought ruefully.

She was just about to interject and complement Eleanor on the state of things when the lights flickered and went out.

"Oh, dammit," Eleanor groused, "hold on a second." It was pitch-black in the corridor for a few heartbeats, then a swarm of lights winked into existence up and down the hallway. Each Irri pulled out a small pen light, clipping it to their uniform and proceeding down the hall as if nothing had happened. Eleanor's own light illuminated her sheepish grin as she fastened a light to one of her shoulder boards.

"Sorry, didn't think to get you two lights," she apologized. "We've had a good couple of months, so it didn't occur to me." She shook her head. "Dammit, dammit. There's just way too much infrastructure here for us to maintain," she griped. "We've only got five working fab shops and they're civilian spec. The good stuff is in the maintenance areas towards the core, but we can't even turn them on with just the substation reactor from this ring segment."

Eleanor sighed and seemed to deflate in on herself. "Every time I think we're finally making progress there's another damn setback. It's like the station is working against me."

Anja squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "You've done wonderful work so far, sister," she soothed, "maybe there is some way we could use the resources on the Grand Design to assist."

She perked up at that, giving Anja a grateful look. "That's not a bad idea, actually," she mused. "The ship reactor-"

Eleanor cut off, a blank look slipping over her face before it tightened with anger. "We have to move," she said curtly. "I just lost contact with Drinni." She turned and ran down the corridor, back the way they had came.

Jesri and Anja exchanged a bemused glance and jogged after her, but it took several steps before Jesri remembered where she had heard the name before. She nearly tripped at the sudden realization. "Oh shit," she swore. "Rhuar and Qktk!"

They ran faster.

---

Qktk winced against the glare stabbing into his eyes, flaring from a half dozen handheld lights. He couldn't make out anything in the dark save that their attackers were Irri, the glow of the lights obscuring all other details. Drinni lay sprawled on the floor, a thin trickle of blue-green blood dripping from his head where one of the attackers had hit him with a battered pipe. Unless Qktk had severely misjudged Irri physiology he wasn't going to be of any use in the short term.

A low, menacing growl issued from beside him as Rhuar stalked up towards the encircling Irri. His hackles were raised and his teeth bared, making him look every inch the feral predator. The Irri hesitated, backing away from him fractionally. Qktk rattled his mandibles at them, a noise he knew most humanoids found to be incredibly disconcerting. To his immense gratification, they backed away in earnest.

"Wait," came a voice from the darkness. One of their attackers stepped forward, turning its light to illuminate its own face. With a shock, Qktk realized it was the intruder from the hydroponics bay that he had seen not an hour earlier.

"We only have seconds," it said, its voice rough and surprisingly low for a being of its stature. "Come with us, quickly. There isn't time."

Rhuar laughed darkly. "Yeah, no," he spat. "I think we'll stay."

The Irri turned to Qktk even as her companions murmured at Rhuar's unique method of speech. "Whatever you are, you're not one of hers," it said insistently. "You saw me and said nothing. You have to leave with us, now!" In the dim light Qktk could see the light sparkling in the Irri's golden eyes. It looked afraid again, just as it did the first time he saw it, only now it wasn't afraid of dying - it was afraid for him, for all of them.

He began to respond, but was cut off when Rhuar snarled again, snapping at the Irri. It danced backwards, its light flickering out. "It doesn't matter," it said sadly from somewhere in the dark. "You aren't hers. We can't let her have you."

Thin grey arms shot out from behind Qktk, pulling him into a crushing embrace. He heard Rhaur yelp from beside him - they must have snuck around behind them while they were talking. He struggled, limbs flailing, but couldn't manage to break free from the Irri's deceptively strong arms.

The one who had spoken walked in front of him again, eyes pitying. "I'm sorry, strange friend," it said. "You're confused, it's okay. We can talk once we're safe." A bag of rough fabric swept over Qktk's head, and he was plunged back into darkness.

---

The three sisters raced through the darkened hallways, Eleanor sprinting without hesitation or indecision while Anja and Jesri did their best to keep up. After a few minutes, there was a high-pitched whine and the lights slammed back on, forcing them to stop for a few moments and wait for their eyes to adjust. The Irri, unperturbed, deactivated and stowed their penlights before continuing about their business.

Eleanor led them to one of the fabrication workshops, the last location she had received from Drinni. Jesri's stomach contracted to a hard knot when she saw that it was empty save for a smear of blue-green blood on the floor that Eleanor grimly informed them was Irri in origin. "They've taken Drinni and your crewmen," she said, "I'll compose a search team to recover them."

"They?", asked Anja, confusion adding to the anger in her voice. "Who are you talking about, sister?"

Eleanor paused and grimaced, seeming to roll the words around in her head. "There were a few Irri who didn't like the group's decision to work with me and split off," she explained. "They were no trouble at first, there's plenty of space on the station. But as we've become more prosperous they've taken to raiding us for supplies. We've even had a few incidents where we had to use force, when they were caught stealing."

She frowned, staring at the blood smear. "They always run when they're caught, though. They don't seek out fights. And the timing of the blackout… I'm afraid they're escalating their conflict with us. This was a deliberate attack, coordinated with sabotage."

"For what reason?", Jesri asked, feeling lost. "Why would they want to abduct these three?"

Eleanor hesitated, then shook her head. "I don't know for sure," she said slowly, "they might have been alarmed at your arrival." She looked up, her eyes blazing with anger and determination. "It's not the time for speculation, though. Every minute we talk, they move deeper into the station."

Anja and Jesri nodded. "We can help," Jesri said determinedly, "let us know where you need us."

Eleanor nodded and led them out of the room at a brisk walk. "We'll have to lead multiple teams," she said, "or they'll be able to evade us easily. I've directed a few dozen Irri to meet at a staging area near here, they know the standard escape routes."

Anja frowned. "Standard? I thought you said the other Irri had never done this before."

"We chase them away when they raid us, catch them if we can," Eleanor explained, making an irritated gesture. "Anja, we don't have time to chat right now. The adjacent segments are dark, neglected deathtraps. If they make it out of this ring segment with your crew we'll never find them. We can predict where they'll go for the time being because of the chokepoints between the segments, but once they reach an exit they'll be impossible to track down."

"Right," said Anja, nodding her agreement, "just tell us where to go."

---

Jesri moved quietly with a team of a dozen Irri, her companions slipping through the hallway with an efficient, loping stride. Eleanor had been able to determine the direction in which the kidnappers had fled, but after they had left the reclaimed area around the docks their trail vanished. This left seven likely exits from the ring segment, of which Eleanor had functioning remote access to close four. Each sister was leading a team towards the remaining exits. With luck, the three captives would slow the kidnappers down enough for one team to intercept them.

It was a shitty plan. The station was huge, and the kidnappers had enough of a head start that they weren't assured of catching up in time even at their brisk pace. Unfortunately, there wasn't much else to be done about it. The lifts were broken, the doors were stuck open, and if they didn't catch up then that was it - the three captives were in the wind.

Her group broke into the midline orthogonal hallway, the large central arc that ran through the outer ring segments. The hallway curved off into the distance, high-ceilinged and pocked with lichens that clung to the walls and floor. If they were going to escape towards the next outer segment, the door at the end of this hallway would be their chokepoint - and they would likely be following this route to get there.

Anja and Eleanor were moving towards two exits to the middle ring segment in the same quarter, relatively close together compared to Jesri's target on the far end of the ring. They had less distance to cover - if they didn't catch their quarry soon, then odds were they had already escaped.

Or, perhaps, they were leaving through Jesri's exit. Around the farthest curve of the hallway she caught a flicker of motion, and when she redoubled her pace she saw them clearly. Ten Irri, with three figures in brown sacks being awkwardly carried between them. One of the fleeing kidnappers looked back and gave a shrill yell when it saw Jesri approaching. The others looked back and the whole group sped up fractionally.

Jesri grinned. They outnumbered the fleeing Irri, and they were still a good ways from the door. "Come on, guys!", she yelled back at her team. "Push, we've got them!"

The grim-faced crew following her didn't reply, but matched her pace. They didn't seem to be made for sprinting, but if they were feeling the exertion they didn't complain. Jesri steadily gained on their quarry, her feet pounding against the deck. The trailing kidnapper looked back again, its big golden eyes darting to Jesri.


She was close enough now to read the fear on its face. She grinned wider, flashing her teeth at it. That's right, she thought viciously, actions have consequences. The little Irri put on a desperate burst of speed to pull away from her, but she could see its endurance was flagging. It looked back at her again, seeing her almost on top of it, and the fear in its face faded into a grim resolution. Jesri registered it a second too late to dodge when it flung itself at her knees, tripping her and sending the two of them sprawling to the floor.

She kicked at the dazed kidnapper, pushing it off her legs as the rest of her squad pounced. "Leave him!", Jesri shouted, rising to her feet and pointing to her crew who were restraining the struggling fugitive. "He's a distraction. You two, stay with him. The rest of you, on me!" She raced after the group, who had managed to put some distance between them while she was down.

She growled and sprinted after the receding figures, her feet kicking up flakes of lichen as she ran. She was gaining on them fast, but her breath snagged as she saw a broad arch come into view several hundred meters out. They had reached the door.

She ran as fast as she could, vision narrowing to only the fleeing Irri and their captives. It wasn't going to be enough, she realized. Ahead of her, the first kidnapper passed under the door and into the dim hallway beyond. The lights were off on the left side of the hall in the next segment, and his dark shadow raced larger than life across the far wall as he ran. The rest followed, but were forced to stop as one of their captives began to thrash violently in their sack.

Jesri grinned. Probably Rhuar, giving them hell. She nearly shouted encouragement, but she was pouring everything she had into her sprint to close the distance rapidly. They finally hoisted the twitching sack between two of them and scrambled down the hall.

She made it through the door mere seconds behind them, but slid to a stop when she glanced back to check on her team. They had kept pace with her admirably, but when they approached the huge inter-segment door they had stopped in their tracks. They milled around in front of the archway, staring at Jesri wordlessly.

"Come on!" she yelled angrily. "We've got them!"

"They crossed into the next segment," one of them called back matter-of-factly. "We have to cut pursuit."

"Bullshit!", Jesri shouted. "They're right here, let's go!"

"We have orders!", objected a different crewman.

She didn't have time for this. With a frustrated grunt she turned and raced after the kidnappers, who had increased their lead again while she was talking. Her team stared wordlessly after her as she ran. She was going to have words with Ellie about fostering initiative in her crew, she decided.

She came within sight of the fleeing group again, but didn't try to close distance as she had been, hanging just within visual distance against the inner curve of the hall. They outnumbered her now, so she was going to have to be more careful. She could tail them and try to nail down their base of operations. Then she could…

She didn't know. She just ran, cursing the Irri and discarding options in her head, the hall growing dimmer around her as she traveled.

---

Qktk slammed heavily to the ground, bouncing and rolling as he was dropped unceremoniously by his exhausted Irri bearer. He came to a stop in an awkward position with his bound legs throbbing where the bindings pulled tight. Another thump and muffled yelp heralded Rhuar's arrival on the ground. He couldn't see past the bag covering his head, but he heard the Irri slumping to the deck around him as they rested.

"Who was that?", one of them gasped. "She had Colonel Tam's face!"

"Did we lose her?", another asked tremulously.

"Hush," rasped a lower voice. "No noise. We rest only for a few seconds."

Just as promised, Qktk found himself hoisted up onto another bony Irri shoulder before his legs went fully numb. For the next hour they plodded through the hallways at a careful, halting pace, his captor's shoulder finding new and unpleasant ways to grind into his body. Finally the light outside seemed to brighten and their pace picked up just before he was dropped to the floor again.

He groaned quietly, new shocks of pain shooting through him. Some whispered conversation took place too quietly for him to make out before more hands seized him and hauled him upright. The Irri stripped his bonds away, sliding the bag down and causing Qktk to blink rapidly at the sudden light.

He was in a large room that had once been some sort of storage hold, if he had to guess. It was currently filled from wall to wall with makeshift tents, improvised shelters and shabby fences. Tangled masses of wire fed into light fixtures bound to the ceiling with braids of rope and fabric. In the far corner a section of wall had been torn away to reveal a tangle of piping and conduits, around which a small cluster of plants crowded close to a thin stream of dripping water.

The Irri from the hydroponics bay squatted next to Qktk as he pulled himself upright. It stared at him as if waiting for something, watching him carefully while he massaged feeling back into his joints.

After a short while it spoke. "So you are truly not touched," it said, seeming to relax. "I thought so, even if…" It trailed off and did not elaborate. "I apologize for any harm we caused you, but we could not delay once we began," it said.

Qktk glared in response, flicking a few of his minor eyes to further scan their surroundings. After the bustle of the docks this ramshackle hold seemed sparsely populated, but there were actually quite a few of the lithe grey aliens here. Unlike the uniformed Irri from the docks, they seemed… normal. They wandered around, carrying crude baskets or chasing naked children that screamed and dashed giggling through gently waving curtains of tattered cloth. Many of them were draped in cloaks of the same flat grey that blended into the station walls, but others were wearing bright swatches of fabric woven into intricate patterns.

His captor was still staring at him expectantly. It… No, she? Qktk didn't even know if Irri had genders, but her face was distinctly different from Drinni's blocky features. The injured ensign was nowhere to be seen - only one sack remained, and he doubted Drinni was the source of the yowling and inventive profanity coming from within.

"We would like to release him as well," she said with a grimace, following his gaze surprisingly well for a humanoid. "Can you calm him down so we can undo the bindings?"

Qktk suppressed the urge to be mutinous for Rhuar's sake and scuttled over to his side with a stiff gait. He poked the bag with a leg and whispered quietly for a few moments, after which the Irri gingerly loosed his bonds and removed the sack to reveal Rhuar's ruffled, angry face. His lips curled into another snarl, but Qktk tapped him admonishingly on the nose.

"Listen. Observe," he hissed. "Unless you enjoy the sack." Rhuar shot a glance at the rumpled bag next to him and settled onto his hindquarters, peering suspiciously around the room. A gaggle of curious Irri children stared at him from behind a pile of crates, fleeing with a chorus of gleeful shrieks when he bared his teeth at them menacingly.

Their captor regarded them with an amused look before lowering herself to the floor beside them. "I am Se Dasi, the Watcher for this area," she said, inclining her head respectfully to them. "I would like to again extend my apologies for the rough treatment you have endured."

"Pleased to meet you," Qktk replied, keeping his tone neutral. "I am Qktk, and this is Rhuar." He saw Rhuar flick an ear at the Irri, who nodded in return. Qktk fixed Se Dasi with a look and she returned her attention to him. "Where is Drinni?", he inquired.

Se Dasi grimaced. "The other one we took? We had to restrain him, he was touched. In time, once he stops calling for the voice, we may be able to help him." She shook her head, either missing or ignoring their confused looks. "We can discuss his fate later. Right now, we need to talk about you two."

"Yes, please," Rhuar shot back irritatedly. "What the fuck is going on? Why did you kidnap us? Why did you bring us to your weird trash village-"

Qktk poked him hard in the side, cutting off the stream of annoyed questions. "I think we would both appreciate an explanation for your actions," he interjected.

It was Se Dasi's turn to look confused. "When you saw me gathering food you risked defying her and hid my presence. I thought to repay the debt, so we came back to help you escape before she claimed you for your offense. Why did you fight us?" A shadow of anger crossed her face. "One of our best was lost to the Sleepers, for you."

"Escape? Her? Sleepers?", asked Qktk, feeling lost and exasperated. "Se Dasi, we just arrived on the station today. We have no idea what you're talking about, Eleanor was just having Drinni take us on a tour of the station when I saw you. I didn't say anything when I saw you because you looked frightened and I didn't want to get you in trouble."

She frowned. "I wasn't… Did you say Eleanor?"

Qktk stared at her. "Eleanor? The woman who runs the station? Well, apparently not the whole station," he amended wryly, his attempt at humor faltering when he saw the look on Se Dasi's face.

She stared at them with cold, unfriendly eyes. "You are willing servants of Colonel Tam?", she asked ominously, the Irri around them shifting into wary readiness.

"What?", Qktk asked, looking around in alarm. "I told you, we just arrived on the station today! We had no idea she was here, we didn't even know the station was inhabited until we arrived. Her own sisters thought she had died five thousand years ago!"

Se Dasi didn't relax, but the steel in her glare was replaced by a troubled unease. "How do you know of her sisters?", she asked, a hint of fear in her voice.

Rhuar didn't give either of them a chance to continue, cutting into the conversation with his voice amplified to painful levels.

"Okay, everyone shut the fuck up!", he yelled. "No, Captain, don't fucking- Stop poking me with your jabby fucking legs, I'm talking now." He glared at both Qktk and Se Dasi in turn, fur bristling. "It's obvious that neither of you has any fucking idea what the other one is talking about. Have either of you been listening to this conversation? At all?" He looked around the room, taking in the stunned Irri faces and one mortified Htt. "Since you're both too polite to ask the right questions," he said, "we're going to sit down and I'll ask them."

He maintained his focused glare until both Qktk and Se Dasi had settled back to the ground, then nodded and sat down imperiously across from them.

"Okay," said Rhuar, a satisfied smile on his face. "First things first, we're going to lay out some basics from our side." He looked pointedly at Se Dasi. "Most importantly - I have no fucking clue who any of you people are. We met Eleanor, or Colonel Tam, for about five minutes today. During that five minutes she neglected to mention that you folks existed or to inform us about any issues of station politics - which now seems like a big fucking oversight, considering," he snarled.

"This means that we were not enlisted in any nefarious plots against you," he continued. "We have no intention of doing anything unpleasant and we generally don't know what the fuck we're doing here. So if we say something that makes you think we're your enemy, I would take it as a personal fucking favor if you asked for clarification before you pull the sacks and rope back out. Deal?"

Se Dasi gaped at him, looking slightly dazed. Qktk sighed. "Mr. Rhuar," he said wearily, "perhaps you should just ask your questions."

"Right," he nodded. "Se Dasi. Please explain - in summary - the nature of your conflict with Colonel Tam."

She goggled at him. "You don't-" She blinked, and a flicker of realization touched her face. "Ah, I see," she said, looking at Qktk and Rhuar with a serious expression. "Colonel Tam has used her foul magics to enslave and oppress my people for generations," she explained. "She is a thief of souls, a nightmare made flesh, an undying evil beyond evil."

Qktk stared, speechless. Rhuar hovered between horror and lingering self-satisfaction.

"I'm sorry, but what?", Jesri said incredulously, emerging like a wraith from the shadowy corner where she had been listening.

There was at this point a brief and perfectly reasonable moment of chaos.


---

I've always hated that trope where there's this huge misunderstanding that balloons out of proportion and causes everyone no end of trouble because nobody wants to admit they don't understand what's going on. We all need a foul-mouthed canine to keep us grounded.

This is it, we're current to the published material! Thanks as always for the time you spend reading, and I'll see you again for the next episode of Rhuar's Guide to Constructive Communication in one week.

 

[Simonbob]

...... I was so temped to give a Funny for this one.



You're alien's are interesting, but not particulaly alien, in general, I'm finding.

Not exactly critisim, but, a comment

 

[TMarkos]

...... I was so temped to give a Funny for this one.



You're alien's are interesting, but not particulaly alien, in general, I'm finding.

Not exactly critisim, but, a comment

Click to shrink...

So, you're not wrong, but there's a reason for that. Remember that humanity had unquestioned dominance over this area of space a little while back, and almost all of the people still in that section of space live on human stations. For specific aliens, Qktk and Rhuar are both from species uplifted by humans. The Kita are obsessed with human artifacts and lost knowledge. The Irri are (without getting into spoilers) heavily influenced by Eleanor.

There are aliens in the story that are a bit more alien, namely the Ysleli. They're not floating feather sponges or anything, but you'll notice that they used different units of measurement (where everyone else has been happy using metric units), had different attitudes towards command structure and social hierarchy, didn't use the human-remnant tech, etc. This is because they existed outside the human cultural sphere and only got secondhand influence from species that interacted with both Ysl and Earth. The Buil were likewise rebelling against the very cultural imperialism that had a standardizing effect on the rest of the species in the story, although their specific differences (in the short time we saw them) were certainly things humans had partaken of in the past.

So, in broad strokes, the greater the amount of influence the preapocalyptic human civilization and their post-fall leavings had on an individual's species, the more human they tend to act. I'm not going to deny entirely that it's easier to write the aliens like this, but it's not ALL lazy writing.

 

[TMarkos]

The room was silent for the barest of moments as Jesri's indignant outburst echoed back on the crowd, then a shrill scream sent the room into pandemonium. People ran clutching bundles and children, fleeing into cleverly disguised boltholes in the walls. Se Dasi hesitated only a moment before jumping in front of Jesri and crouching in a low combat stance, her eyes flashing with determination. Her exhausted squad formed a loose circle around the bemused Valkyrie.

Jesri hadn't moved. She eyed the encircling Irri closely, her stance broadcasting a casual wariness. They stood like that for several seconds before Jesri exhaled and relaxed her posture. "Okay, folks," she sighed, "let's not get-"

She was interrupted by two Irri dashing towards her from opposite sides of the circle, coming in low to grab at her legs in an immobilizing tackle. She dodged backwards and sidestepped past one, tripping him into his oncoming teammate. Another Irri from behind her managed to grab Jesri's wrist only to be pulled forward into a fluid throw that left him dazed on the decking.

A heavy pipe caught Jesri in the shoulder and sent her stumbling back before she recovered into a half crouch and drew her sidearm. Qktk shouted in alarm, taking an involuntary step forward, but Jesri had already fired a tight burst of shots in an arc around her. Each shot hammered into the metal deck, the crack and flash of ablated metal beating a staccato pulse through the air and freezing the Irri in their tracks.

Qktk sagged in relief, earning an annoyed look from Jesri. "Have a little faith, Kick," she admonished him, holding her gun low but ready. "If I wanted them dead I'd have used this a lot earlier."

"We will die before we let you take us," Se Dasi snarled. "Our souls are our own!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Jesri said, rolling her eyes and holstering her weapon. "Guys, I'm just-"

The brawny Irri with the pipe took another swing at Jesri as soon as her hand left the gun. She was forced to evade with an undignified hop backwards. She scowled and caught the pipe on his follow-up attack, ripping it from his grasp and pulling him forward with a surprised squawk. A circular sweep sent her attackers back a few paces and allowed Jesri a moment to breathe.

"Fucking enough!", she shouted, her voice ringing off the walls and freezing the Irri in place. "Dammit, just… Rhuar, can you tell these guys I'm not trying to steal their souls?"

Rhuar stared back at her in confusion. "Me?"

"You were doing okay before," she retorted.

Rhuar scratched his fur nervously. "I guess," he muttered, "but my sister isn't an undying nightmare made flesh-"

"Not helping," she hissed.

Se Dasi glared at Jesri warily, stepping backwards. "You took He Mari, gave him to the Sleepers. For that alone you are our enemy."

"The guy we caught on the chase?", Jesri asked. "Look, he's just a prisoner. We're not going to kill the guy or anything. I'll ask Ellie to release him when we get back - as long as you let Rhuar and Qktk go. We'll call it a trade."

Se Dasi threw her hands into the air in a frustrated gesture. "If only that were possible. Colonel Tam has him now, there is no easy way back. She will touch his mind with her magic. He will lose his soul and become one of the Sleepers."

"Oh, come on!", Jesri shouted. "Ellie doesn't have any magic. She doesn't steal souls. The Irri that follow her behave differently than you because they choose to follow military discipline, not because they're cursed or something." She shook her head. "Listen, just let me take these two back and we'll get your friend sent home. Ellie will listen to me."

Squaring her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height, Se Dasi stood in front of Jesri and met her gaze. She was trembling, although Jesri couldn't tell whether it was rage or fear she felt. Jesri stared back coolly, waiting.

"She steals souls," Se Dasi said firmly, her voice low and serious. "She is evil. If you doubt me, I will show you proof." She turned away and walked briskly towards a cluster of scrap-metal shacks huddled into a corner, not waiting for Jesri to follow.

Jesri frowned, but walked after Se Dasi. She caught up to her just as she was ducking past a faded violet sheet to enter one of the huts. From within, she could hear a constant flow of muffled conversation. She had to bend low to fit under the Irri-height doorframe, scuttling past the curtain into a low room lined with cots along the walls. She wrinkled her nose as she entered, the stench of excrement and vomit laying thick in the air around her.

Most of the beds were filled with Irri, lying still on their back and staring at the ceiling. Some moved their hands aimlessly, others whispered and muttered softly to themselves. The bed nearest to the door was occupied by an Irri wearing one of Eleanor's grey uniforms, talking steadily to himself as he wrung his hands anxiously. A smear of dark green blood stained his collar and the side of his head, flaking off onto the bed occasionally as he twitched and rolled.

"So much, so much," he raved, slurring his words until they were almost unintelligible. "I need… I need…"

His eyes bulged wide, the muscles in his face straining as he turned his head slowly to look at Jesri. Green smudges stained his sclera and his face was caked with crusty residue from his mouth and nose.

"Drinni?", Jesri stammered, aghast at the state of the once-exemplary ensign. "What happened to you?"

He lunged out of his bed, falling half onto the floor as he scrambled to grab Jesri's arm with a bruisingly tight grip. His eyes stared past her, his yellow irises dilating wide. "Stop," he hissed, strands of foamy saliva trailing from his cheek. "Stop, stop, stop, stop stop stop…" His grip on her arm weakened and he curled into a ball on the floor, rocking back and forth and slamming his open palms weakly into the sides of his head.

Se Dasi bent down and gently lifted him back into his bed, making soothing noises and lifting a ratty brown blanket over him. He flailed at it for a few uncoordinated swipes before pulling it off and clumsily clutching it to his chest.

Qktk and Rhuar had followed her into the hut and were staring at Drinni in mute horror. Se Dasi straightened up and looked defiantly at Jesri. "Rhuar said you were her sister?", she snarled. "See what your kin has done to mine." She gestured to the immobile Irri on the beds. "All of them, taken by Colonel Tam and given a Sleeper soul. When we take our family back from her, the body passes beyond the great doors and the soul remains with her." She bent down to stroke an old man's cheek as he stared blankly at the corroded metal roof of the hut. He didn't react to her touch. "With time one in twenty may speak again," she said quietly, her voice tight with anger. "If they are young the chance is better."

"They're sick," said Jesri, looking around the room. "An environmental toxin, nutrient deficiency, something. I was just there, Se Dasi, Ellie isn't doing anything-"

"You're wrong!", Se Dasi yelled, causing a few of the catatonic Irri to flinch and whimper. She looked abashed for a moment, but the full force of her anger returned as she glared at Jesri. "You're wrong," she said, no trace of doubt in her voice. "If you will not believe me, if you will not believe your own eyes, then know that the spirits also say Colonel Tam is responsible."

Jesri stared at her, then shook her head. "The spirits, huh?"

Se Dasi straightened up. "Ask them yourself if you still doubt," she said coolly. "This way."

She bent down and exited the hut, the purple curtain waving gently behind her.

Rhuar blinked and exchanged a look with Qktk. "Wait," he said, "what did she just say?"

---

Eleanor stormed through the hall beside Anja, a comet tail of Irri trailing behind her. It had taken them longer than either would have liked to get back to the docks after Jesri's team reported her solo excursion into the next ring segment. At the two-hour mark after her departure, Anja's patience was gone.

"I am going, Ellie," she said, her tone not inviting further discussion. "If your troops must stay in this segment, so be it." She stalked off down the hall towards the midline corridor.

"I'm telling you, there's a better option!", Eleanor shouted, chasing after her. "Anja, are you really going to spend hours running around trying to find where they've holed up? Wait another hour, help my crew connect the Grand Design's reactor to the grid. We can run power to that segment and turn on sensors, communications, everything. If we can do that I'll deploy everyone I have, but I need you to help. You're the only one left who knows the ship's systems."

Anja stopped and glared at her. "Thirty minutes," she said grudgingly. "I will help for thirty minutes and then I'm leaving. Your crew can finish up and follow me at their own speed."

Eleanor smiled at her and nodded. "Thank you, Anja. We very well could finish before then, with your help. I'll task a few crews to make sure the conduits are clear down to the segment barrier, then I'll meet you at the docking bay."

Anja nodded in return and stalked off. Eleanor's Irri contingent followed her silently, leaving Eleanor alone in the hall. She stood silently for a moment with her eyes closed. After a few seconds, she reopened her eyes and grinned, heading down the hall after her sister.

---

Picking her way through a haphazard labyrinth of shacks, walls and draped fabric, Jesri followed Se Dasi towards the back of the hold and out into a hallway. Rhuar and Qktk trailed behind her, unable to resist their curiosity. They walked for a short distance until they reached an empty doorframe that had been daubed with red pigment in an intricate pattern. Jesri could see the crumbling crusts of old paint where the pattern had been painted over year after year, giving it a slightly raised appearance.

Se Dasi paused before the door, standing still with her eyes closed for a moment before striding in. The others followed her, passing through the door and waiting for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the dim lights within. It was an old theater, the standard no-frills sort that was installed by default in every residential block.

The large display at the far end was scratched and pitted, clearly nonfunctional, but the tiny stage area in front of it had been converted to a makeshift altar. Loops of shiny wire tied with multicolored fabric were strewn in front of a bowl filled with clear data chips, the platinum-white wires embedded in each chip glittering as Jesri moved closer. She almost grinned - no wonder the systems in this segment were so shot, if they were stripping all the consoles as an offering.

Se Dasi lowered herself to a sitting position - on the floor, since all of the theater's seats had long since been stripped from the room. "Spirits, Protectors, I greet you," she said formally. "Se Dasi asks for counsel." She settled back and stopped speaking. Jesri couldn't tell if she was meditating or staring at the altar.

After a minute had passed, Rhuar gave Jesri a look as though he wanted to say something, but Jesri shook her head firmly no. They weren't about to burn through whatever goodwill they had somehow achieved by disrupting a religious ritual. They would sit until Se Dasi finished communing with-

"Hello, Se Dasi," boomed a voice from the speakers behind the display. "It's been a long while since you were here. What do you need?"

Jesri blinked. It was a human voice, male, speaking casually through the theater's audio system. She languished in a moment of unbalanced confusion. Rhuar, not the languishing type, coughed and stood up. "Wait, what?", he said, "Se Dasi, no offense, but those are just speakers. The audio-"

She turned her head back to glare at Rhuar angrily. "Of course they're speakers," she spit, "Do you think I'm stupid? We may not have a lot of it, but we understand electricity. The spirits live in the wires. How else would they talk to us?"

Rhuar sputtered, at a loss for words, and the voice behind the screen gave a low chuckle. "Ah, a visitor! Don't worry, I appreciate a skeptic," he said. "Please don't think I'm trying to pull one over on the Free Irri. I haven't tried to conceal what I am, but my nature is… complex, let's say. Calling me a spirit is not the most accurate, it's true, but it gets us most of the way there and saves me from having to teach a few courses in computer science and galactic history. I've made clear to the Irri that my advice and goodwill isn't contingent on offerings or obedience."

Se Dasi nodded firmly. "We give from thanks, not fear."

"Just to be clear," Qktk said slowly. "You're implying that you're inhabiting the station's computer systems. A non-physical entity." Rhuar and Jesri shared a look, then turned back to the screen in consternation.

The voice paused, seeming to mull it over. "More or less," it finally answered. "Like I said, it's complex. I'm not sitting in a room somewhere speaking into an audio pickup, if that's what you're wondering."

"Uh," said Rhuar, his intended speech about exploiting less-advanced cultures suddenly seeming less pressing. Jesri shot him another warning look, and he nodded. "So," he said cautiously, "given that you're on a human station you probably know what our next question is going to be."

"Ah, yes," sighed the voice. "You're right to be suspicious. I suppose we could do proper introductions. How about this - I don't have a visual feed and I like to know who I'm talking to. Considering which station you're on, I think I'm allowed a bit of my own suspicion. You start, tell me about who you are. Then I'll tell you a bit about me."

Rhuar stared blankly at the screen for a second. "Uh, sure," he said. "I'm Rhuar. I'm an artificer and a pilot. Oh, and I'm a dog."

"Oh, interesting!", exclaimed the voice. "I believe you're the first dog we've had come by these parts." Rhuar couldn't help but feel a bit flattered at the voice's enthusiasm. Jesri was still a bit too out-of-sorts to notice, but Qktk did and sighed.

"I'm Qktk," he rattled tiredly. "I'm a Htt ship captain and a merchant."

"Another first for me," the voice said eagerly. "This is shaping up to be an interesting sort of day."

Jesri cleared her throat. "I'm Jesri Tam," she said, "and I'm-"

"-a Valkyrie," he said, his voice noticeably quieter and less bombastic. "Captain Tam, I didn't know you had arrived on-station already."

Jesri's urge to stare was running into her profound lack of anything to stare at. "You know who I am?", she asked in confusion. Se Dasi was staring at her with wide eyes.

"Of course I do, sir," the voice said, its friendly tone sliding into something cooler, more professional. "I'm the one who invited you here."

---

"All right, heave!", Anja growled, tugging the last of the four major connectors into place and locking it tightly. Behind her, an Irri work team stretched their aching arms for a moment before running to their next task - whatever that was. She sighed. Working with the Irri was efficient, if admittedly rather strange. They didn't talk unless they were talking to her. They would disappear until she needed help, at which point a group with precisely the numbers and skills needed to assist would swoop in.

It was quite effective. They had hooked up the reactor in an amazingly short time, darting around the conduits like dour grey ants. Anja smiled at the image and walked back towards the main dock platform to find Eleanor standing in the middle of a swarm of busy Irri.

"Ellie, our team is done!", she shouted. "I think we were the last ones!"

Eleanor looked up at her. "Ah, yes," she said. "Not quite. We had the last team report successful hookup just as you walked up."

Anja nodded. "Are we good to head out?"

"Give me another ten minutes," Eleanor said placatingly. "We need to power the conduits between here and the segment barrier in stages to avoid overloading any degraded bits. My teams can fix little issues as they come up, but if we blow the whole line it'll take us days to fix."

Anja threw her hands up in irritation. "Fine, fine," she groused. "Let's get started, then."

Eleanor nodded, and behind her a team of Irri scrambled into action around a power regulator. They fiddled with it briefly, then the power cables leading from it thrummed with a sudden surge of electricity.

Anja nearly had to catch Eleanor as she staggered to the side, grabbing on to Anja's shoulder for balance. "Ellie?", she said in surprise. "You okay, sister?"

"Hah, yeah," Eleanor said, straightening up with a hand to her forehead. "Just lost my balance for a second. I guess I'm overdue for a nap."

"You should rest, Ellie," Anja scolded. "You were always the one spouting off stuff like 'fatigue waits in ambush'. You used to sound like a page out of the survival manual."

"That is a page out of the survival manual," Eleanor responded with a smirk. "Really, Anja, I'm fine. I'll rest once we've got Jesri back."

Anja gave her a doubtful look, but didn't press the issue. "Okay," she agreed. "Just get the power to that ring segment and I will take care of the rest."

Eleanor grinned. "Atta girl. Why don't you get ready to head out? My team will meet you at the dock exit once you're done."

Anja nodded and jogged over to the Grand Design's boarding ramp. Behind her, she heard the thrum of the next set of conduits being charged.

---

"Okay," Jesri said, breaking the stunned silence that had followed the voice's claim. "I think it's your turn to talk."

"Agreed, sir," sighed the voice. "I'm just at a loss about where to start." There were a few more yawning moments of silence before he spoke again. "I should introduce myself, at least. My name is David Kincaid, and I'm a member of a… let's call it a resistance, of sorts. A covert network organized to fight the Gestalt."

Jesri contemplated that for a moment. "You realize how that sounds," she said flatly. "I'd be skeptical enough if you were a living, breathing human telling me that, but you're-"

"A disembodied voice?", David responded dryly. "I'll grant that my current state doesn't do much for my credibility, but I would have thought I'd be good on that score after saving you from the Emissaries back on Ysl."

"It's enough for me to hear you out," Jesri allowed. "Care to explain the disembodied bit?"

David paused again. "I don't mind explaining, but we may have more pressing issues. Your sisters seem to be preparing to come and get you."

Se Dasi gave a start at his words and looked accusingly at Jesri. "You've led them here?", she asked, the fear plain on her face. Jesri put her hands up placatingly, but Se Dasi rounded on her in a rage with fists raised.

"Wait!", David thundered, stopping Se Dasi in her tracks. "Captain, please listen," he said insistently, "We may have very little time. Did Se Dasi explain about Colonel Tam?"

Jesri snorted. "Not you too. If you're going to tell me Eleanor is a soul-stealing witch then this conversation is over."

"Ah. No, sir," David said hesitantly, "but there are some things you need to know about her. She's not well, Captain. She's been forcibly implanting the Irri with modified Valkyrie mental links and using them as behavioral control devices. She's tampered with her own link as well, to her detriment."

Jesri gaped. "David, that's-! That's so ridiculous I don't even know what to dispute first," she fumed. "First off, Ellie wouldn't do that. Second, Valkyrie tech wouldn't work on Irri biology, and even if it did-"

"Actually," interjected Rhuar, "Drinni mentioned earlier that all of the Irri had been given mental links. I noticed him using his on our tour and asked about it."

"But that's impossible!", Jesri objected, an odd sense of claustrophobia pressing on her. "Even if she wanted to do something like that, even if she solved the compatibility issue, the Valkyrie tech was top-secret military stuff. The fabricators here wouldn't know how to print one, they wouldn't have even carried the plans on her corvettes. You can't print something without plans or an example, and the only one she had was in her own head."

David was quiet for several seconds. "There was one Valkyrie team on each of the three corvettes," he said softly. "Six of your sisters in total. I don't know the precise details as it happened long before I came here, but I have the records from the ship and station computers."

"What?", Jesri said incredulously. "No. Absolutely not. She told me she was traveling alone. She said she lived here alone. David, we can't lie."

"She tampered with her own link," David repeated patiently, "to her detriment. They're not just for communication. She removed all of the default restrictions, from what I've been able to ascertain. Not just the social limiters like non-mission deception - she unlocked the cognitive limiters too. She kept a regular log on the station network, early on."

David stopped talking and a low hiss of background noise came over the speakers, followed by Ellie's intense, breathy voice.

"I've almost got it," she said, notes of enthusiasm and frustration dripping from her tone. "I've isolated the protections on the limiting protocols. Once the station finishes with the encryption, I should be able to return all of us to our full potential." She paused. "It's too late," she said angrily. "Too late to make much of a difference. All I can do now is help my sisters. Cait and Liza want to leave now that Kiera is dead, to look for others. They'll be outnumbered and alone out there. We need to grow beyond our boundaries, adapt to the times," Ellie finished grimly. "Adapt or die."

David ended the playback, the hiss fading to nothingness as Jesri stared in slow, seeping horror. "That's the last recording," David said apologetically. "None of the other Valkyrie committed log entries after that date. I don't believe she realized that removing the restrictions would also re-enable the mental link networking capability."

"No," Jesri breathed, reality shattering around her. "Oh, Ellie. Oh no." She remembered Eleanor running through the halls ahead of her when they were children, laughing when the program supervisor scolded her. Her mind's eye shifted to show her Eleanor stooped over the corpses of her sisters, hands bloody to the elbows-

"Insanity, delusions of grandeur, self-destructive behavior," said Rhuar wonderingly. "Anja had said they removed the network links because of instability."

"Only blocked, not removed," David said sadly. "Now Colonel Tam uses hers to monitor and direct all of the Irri within her segment of the station. Any implanted Irri within the area she controls is effectively just an extension of her."

Jesri remembered her team stopping dead at the segment boundary. Orders, they had said. The parts of her mind rebelling against the evidence were shoved aside to rage in a corner, accruing grief for a later date. Too much of it made sense to disregard, and if David was telling the truth-

Lights snapped on suddenly in the room and outside along the hallway, making them wince and shield their eyes. Shouts of alarm came from the hallway outside, and she heard the sounds of Irri running.

"Not good," David said urgently. "They've managed to reconnect this segment to the power grid. Colonel Tam's troops will be able to cross over and attack the village."

"It should take them a few minutes to cross from the segment door, even at top speed," Jesri said, her head still spinning. "We can move everyone towards the next segment-"

"No," rattled Qktk. "They're already here. Remember? Drinni and the others."

Se Dasi's eyes widened in panic and realization. "The touched. Father!"

From the village they heard a loud crash, then screaming.

---

I mean, it could have gone better. At least now they have the exciting opportunity to talk to a disembodied voice of unknown provenance that makes bold, sweeping claims about the state and nature of things. This week the story gets longer than The Catcher in the Rye, which is all right, I guess. I mean, next week is Harry Potter. My writing assistant thinks I'm uncultured.

Thanks as always for the time you spend reading. See you next week!

 

[TMarkos]

They rushed out of David's theater, Se Dasi's thin form slipping between them to hurtle back down the hall ahead with a speed borne of pure panic. The screaming grew as they drew close to the hold, noises of conflict and pounding feet threading through the cacophony.

Jesri couldn't see any Irri when she burst into the village. She was confronted with a warren of fences and shacks blocking her view past a few meters out. She advanced, Qktk and Rhuar tagging along close behind her as she held her sidearm low and ready.

A group of terrified children streamed from a doorway and ran past Jesri, but before she could yell at them to stay near to her two more adults came out close on their heels. She recognized the dingy white rags and stick-thin limbs of the sick Irri, but they now moved with the precision and speed she had seen from Eleanor's dock crew. They looked at her blankly and froze, their eyes staring through her from an empty face.

She hesitated for an instant, then shot both of them in the chest. The question had been batting playfully at her mind since she had drawn her gun, the choice she would make now that she knew the nature of their affliction. She had thought about the loved ones that cared enough to keep them in the sickhouse, perhaps visiting as they wasted away on the bed murmuring nonsense to the air.

Their eyes, however, compelled her to shoot. Their face betrayed nothing, their movements were swift and implacable. The eyes alone swirled with fear and pain, watching helplessly as they rampaged through their home and chased their loved ones down without mercy so that they too could be made a prisoner in their own skull. They couldn't ask Jesri to shoot or spare them, but she thought of Drinni beating weakly at his own head, pleading incoherently to just stop, stop, stop-

And she shot. Again and again, she dodged past broken doors and through cramped alleys to find the Irri's long-lost family on the hunt. Rhuar and Qktk had become the impromptu shepherds to a wailing knot of children and a few dazed adults they had saved. None of the survivors would come close to Jesri, the memory of their kin's blood too fresh and her resemblance to Eleanor too strong.

She came upon Se Dasi, weakly struggling against an old man as his fingers curled around her neck. His weakened body shook with the effort of strangling her, spurred to preternatural strength even as his eyes screamed helplessly. Jesri yelled and dashed at the pair, knocking them both to the ground and snapping a shot at the downed man. His golden eyes flashed with profound relief as they faded to mere yellow.

Se Dasi croaked a wordless scream and ran to embrace the old man's shredded body, Irri blood smearing her face. She stayed huddled over the body, wracked with spasms of grief as Jesri surveyed the area.

It was quiet now, with most of the residents having fled. Some were pursued by the risen sick, others simply ran. The small group of survivors Jesri had saved looked around nervously in the silence. A child, bleeding freely from a gash along the forearm, clung mutely to Rhuar's fur as it looked back at her. She shuddered.

A howl from behind her was the only warning she had before Se Dasi impacted her lower back and began clawing at her weapon. With some difficulty she managed to toss the grieving Irri away, slapping her hard across the face. Stunned, Se Dasi stopped her attack and staggered away.

"Stop!", Jesri shouted, staring daggers at her. "Se Dasi, focus. These people need to get clear of the village."

Se Dasi's chest heaved and her eyes burned, but she didn't leap to attack Jesri once more. She stood glaring and rubbing her face as her wrath cooled into an amalgam of fatigue and pain. She shot a weary glance at the survivors by Rhuar and Qktk.

"I will take them," she said finally, her voice hoarse and ragged. A flicker of her anger curled into her eyes as she looked back to Jesri. "You killed my father."

Jesri stared back, her own fatigue asserting itself as she remembered the relief in his eyes. "Yes," she said, holstering her weapon. "They'll be here soon, take the others and go."

Se Dasi gave her one more murderous stare before wheeling back towards Qktk and Rhuar's group. Jesri watched them leave, steeped in grief. Se Dasi had a right to be angry and Jesri could forgive her easily for it, even if her own forgiveness never came. She could survive Se Dasi's rage.

Surviving Anja would be more complicated, once she dealt with Eleanor.

---

The lights still flickered ominously in the corridor past the large inter-segment door, but Eleanor led her troops onward without pause. She had assured Anja that the connections were well-guarded and would hold until they got all four prisoners back from the Irri separatists.

Anja, fresh from working on the jury-rigged connections to the Grand Design, wasn't quite as confident - but it would have made little difference in her decision to go. It was three of her team, being held against their will. For most, saying they had killed men for less would have been hyperbole rather than a gross understatement.

She spared a glance for Eleanor, grim-faced and unreadable as she always was in combat. She walked down the ostensibly hostile territory of the far segment as if she was strolling through the middle of her docks, completely unconcerned at the possibility of ambush or interception. Far along the corridor, Anja could see the advance scouts flitting between side junctions and peering into doorways. Their main group of about fifty Irri followed behind the sisters, rifles held ready.

They tromped onward for a few tense minutes before the group froze as one, before Anja even saw Eleanor's signal. She took an awkward half-step beyond where Eleanor had stopped, scanning the hall from a half-crouch.

«Down this passage,» Eleanor sent, her voice sounding whisper-quiet even over the mental link. Anja had the odd feeling that her sister was speaking only to her, even as her troops picked up the order without hesitation. She wondered if whatever was translating their orders from mental message to voice commands went out over a different link. Eleanor had obviously been tinkering with the station's communications grid, as Anja's mental link had required a quick firmware flash at the docks before it would hook into the station properly. Where were their earpieces, anyway? She frowned, considering the possibilities, but something about the movements of the Irri tugged her attention away like smoke on a windy day.

Their discipline was uncanny, unnerving even as she appreciated the precision. They flowed down the corridor like a wave, feet making an inevitable clamor on the deck. Anja grinned at the proof of a long-held rule of spaceborne combat - you can't move quietly through a ship or station, it just doesn't happen. It's too quiet, too echoic, even with the Irri's fearsome discipline and coordination.

The heavy tread of boots preceded them down the corridor. She felt the pulsing thrill of combat imminent around her as they advanced on where Jesri was being held. Anja snarled at the thought of the filthy Irri confining Jesri, beloved even if Eleanor was her favorite sister-

She frowned again, even as her legs kept her moving catlike down the hall. The sudden surge of anger towards the separatists had caught her off-guard, not to mention the pang of affection for Eleanor. She sighed internally, the bloodlust somewhat broken by the dissonant note. It had been a trying day, reuniting with one sister and losing track of another. She made a note to rest thoroughly when she had put the Irri animals down.

They came upon another junction, her self-reflection at that last burst of rage denied as they checked sightlines and cleared before proceeding. It would be any minute now, she thought with a feral grin. They had no idea what they'd provoked, taking Jesri. She'd come through the door, a whirlwind of death and steel and harsh light tearing at their souls. She'd kill the separatists, kill the dog and the bug-

She stumbled and stopped, shaking her head. What was wrong with her? She could understand letting her anger at the Irri flare up in the heat of combat, but Qktk? Rhuar? They were crew, they were hers. This was beyond stray, irrational thoughts, this was-

"Anja, you okay?", Eleanor frowned, gripping her shoulder. Anja looked up at her in a daze, lights seeming to pop into being around her face as their eyes met. She smiled, genuine and unrestrained joy washing over her at the sight of Ellie's look of concern.

"Yeah, I'm good," she laughed, surprised that she meant it wholeheartedly. Why was she stressed, anyway? She felt amazing, good spirits resonating back from Ellie's smiling face and down through the hand resting on her shoulder.

Ellie wanted to go, she knew, so they kept moving down the corridor. Anja was really getting the hang of this, it was so easy to keep up with the Irri's movements if you just tried a bit. She was in the zone, focused, floating in the purest flow state she had ever experienced.

She felt amazing.

---

Jesri sat staring at the door of the hold, waiting. Her gun was across her lap, still faintly warm from earlier. Se Dasi and the other Irri had gone into hiding, retreating deep into the station. Without them, the hold seemed empty - emptier than empty, really, the silence emanating from the abandoned homes much more profound than a simple vacant hold could muster.

The faint sound of boots echoed from through the door, and Jesri stretched. Time to get up. By the time she had languorously risen to her feet, Eleanor and Anja had crossed into the hold with their squad of troops trailing behind them in lockstep. Despite knowing this was coming, Jesri still felt a sick pang in her stomach seeing Eleanor's smiling face, even more so as she beamed to see her waiting there.

"Jesri!", Eleanor waved. "You're okay! Why didn't you check in? We've been so worried about you!" She slowed and stopped a few paces away from Jesri, Anja at her side and the Irri behind. Her smile leered wide, and Jesri's head swam when she looked at it.

She hadn't seen it at first, or hadn't noticed. Not after five thousand years of separation, not while she was still stunned and amazed by the lost station, but now that she had a chance to look closely at her sister she wondered how she could have missed it. Her smile stretched a bit too broad, her eyes glittered too brightly. Bereft of context she had just seen Ellie, what she expected to see. What she wanted to see.

"Eleanor," she said coolly, staring back at her with a measured glare. Her sister's smile lost a certain essential warmth it had never truly had, and she crossed her arms.

"You don't seem very happy to see us, sister," Eleanor murmured. Her troops shifted behind her - before she would have mistaken it for restlessness, but it was too clean and polished for that. Readiness, rather. She would only have one shot at this before they took her down. The Irri should be disoriented when Eleanor died, and hopefully Anja would be so shocked she'd forget to kill Jesri on the spot. Her heart broke for what she was about to do to her, but she didn't see another way. Hopefully Anja would believe David, as she had.

Another breath. She shifted her weight fractionally, her gun hand blurring into motion as it raised her pistol high, aiming for a headshot. I'm sorry, Ellie-

A spike of pain shot up her arm as Anja's hand shot out to intercept her, striking her wrist and sending her gun tumbling from nerveless fingers. She stared disbelieving at Anja's self-satisfied smirk, the same one she would taunt her with after she trounced Jesri on the sparring mat. Anja twisted her arm up, driving Jesri down to her knees as her shoulder stretched nearly out of joint.

She couldn't help but scream at the electric jolt of agony, her voice echoing in a lonely chorus around the hold. Through her swimming vision she saw Eleanor's face next to Anja's, her leer nearly dripping from her lips with its smug assuredness.

Anja's eye gave a twitch. Her sister's grip didn't weaken in the slightest, the smirk didn't slip from her face, but a waver of doubt clouded her expression. Eleanor looked up at her, still grinning victoriously.

"We're all sisters here, you two," she crooned. "We shouldn't fight amongst each other. I believe we'll have quite a lot of fun once we've had a chance to reconnect a bit."

Panic was roiling Jesri's mind as she strained against Anja's iron grip. She had fucked up. Anja could outclass her in a fight any day of the week, but never to this degree. She hadn't factored in that Irri-like poise and coordination - or perhaps it was Eleanor-like, she thought ruefully. Jesri didn't have any other winning cards.

Something Anja had said just before they arrived at Nicnevin swam up in her brain. But maybe winning is the wrong goal. A sequence of events clanged into place behind that one sentence, a narrow path forward. She looked back up at Anja, seeing the growing horror behind her eyes even as the winner's smirk played across her lips.

Jesri smiled back.

She pushed upwards with her legs as hard as she could, her shoulder tearing painfully out of joint as her forehead slammed into Anja's nose like a striking meteor. Her sister staggered back, still smiling under a mask of clear-flowing blood, but the hit caused her grip to slacken and Jesri tore her useless arm free. She stumbled for only a moment, the lancing agony nearly paralyzing her whole right side.

Resisting the urge to scream with every step, she sprinted into the tangle of huts that crowded the hold. She could hear the Irri scrambling to follow but no shots rang out - Eleanor wanted her alive. For some values of alive, she thought darkly, dodging through the twisted alleys past fallen baskets and spatters of blue Irri gore.

She made it from the hold to the hall with both of her sisters close behind her, feet striking catlike on the deck and sending resonant shivers through the metal. They would have caught her, wounded as she was, but she didn't have far to run. She darted left through a doorway and emerged into David's theater, the basket of offerings twinkling brightly in front of the ruined screen.

Eleanor walked in almost casually behind her, taking in the oddly decorated room as she entered. Anja followed to stand beside her with blood flowing freely from her battered nose and a cocky smile still stretched across her face.

"You can't beat us, sister," Eleanor gloated, her voice echoing around the empty theater. "Anja and I have reached the true potential of our kind. We're stronger, faster, smarter." She spread her arms wide, taking a step towards Jesri. "I don't blame you for not understanding, they made you less than you could be. Let me help you, let me make the best version of you."

Jesri smiled sadly back at Eleanor as the Irri filed in to form ranks behind her. Anja's hand dropped to her pistol with a casual lethality even as dread and frantic apology played over her features.

"Five more of my sisters came here, I've heard," whispered Jesri, keeping her hands open and away from her body nonthreateningly. Anja stiffened fractionally as she spoke. "Did you help them? Are they their best selves now?"

A rapid sequence of expressions passed over Eleanor's face, confusion melting into sorrow, then cold stony rage. "Don't talk about things you don't understand", she hissed. "You think I don't mourn our sisters? You think I didn't want the same for them as for me?"

She began pacing rapidly back and forth in front of the silent rows of Irri, muttering as she walked. "We were made perfect, Jesri. Did you know that? They optimized us in a thousand ways, gave us the strength and will to stand alone above armies of our enemies. The engineers weren't burdened by any constraints but performance and power. Man was on the cusp of creating God in truth."

Eleanor stopped and looked lovingly at Anja, who was standing perfectly still in her cocksure pose save for a few twitching muscles in her neck and cheek. She reached over to stroke Anja's hair lightly before turning back to Jesri, her expression dark. "Then the military bureaucrats got their hands on us. They had all of our sisters, god-children awaiting apotheosis, and they flinched." Her hands tightened into fists and she shook her head angrily. "Cowards. They couldn't face what we could have been. They crippled us, sanding off the rough edges and jamming their filthy tech in our head to keep us docile. Keep us weak."

A cruel smile flickered over her lips. "And then they saw what true power was, in the instant before they died. A society unafraid to seek the highest limits of their godhood, unencumbered by irrational attachment to their own imperfections. I hate the Gestalt as much as you, sister, but I cannot deny their power, their vision," she cried, gesturing with wild, frustrated motions. "When they had the chance to be more than mortal they took it."

"We had so much time!", she insisted, her eyes wide with manic entreaty. "We could have met them as equals, surpassed them! Instead we were insects, and we got exterminated like insects," she hissed. "An inconvenient infestation of flesh and watery indecision. But now we have a second chance. We won't get a third."

Eleanor walked back to Anja and draped an arm around her shoulders, squeezing her close. Anja returned the hug, her embrace loving and strong even as the muscles at the corners of her eyes flinched and twitched desperately. "We're perfect again, sister. Whole for the first time we've been allowed to remember. Let me help you too."

Jesri met her eyes coldly, no longer smiling. "My sister Ellie was a hero," she whispered. "She was my hero. She was driven, competent, she exemplified everything I thought I should aspire to be." She looked at Eleanor's face, seeing the madness rippling below the waves of confusion and rage that danced across her features. "And she had flaws, yes. She was a perfectionist, sometimes to a fault. She was overconfident, even if she was skilled enough to make things work out most of the time. But most of all, she obsessed over her losses."

Flickers of raw apoplexy spidered over Eleanor's face and set her hands twitching. Jesri shook her head. "I think that was what killed her. What drove her to create you in her place so that you could be more than she was, even if she didn't know what you would truly be." Jesri smiled again, no joy in her expression. "It would destroy her, to know what you've become."

"Shut up!", Eleanor howled, rounding on Jesri. Her face was contorted, her fingers curled into claws. "You're just like Liza. Just like Zehava. They couldn't handle godhood. They shrank in fear, like bureaucrats, like worms!", she frothed, tossing her hands into the air. "They begged, they cried, they broke! Then they died."

Suddenly, like flipping a switch, Eleanor's rage vanished. Her hands dropped to her sides and she stared expressionlessly at Jesri. "I won't let you be as weak, sister," she said, her flat monotone sending a shiver up Jesri's spine. "If you break I will reforge you. You will be made strong enough," she whispered. She drew a pistol and sighted at Jesri's chest, stepping forward to close the distance between them. Behind her, Anja's face raged on a body still as a jauntily posed statue.

Jesri's heart hammered in her chest. She opened her mouth to speak and Eleanor paused.

"David!", Jesri yelled. A dash of confusion poisoned Eleanor's masklike face before it was chased away by grim determination. Her eyes seared into Jesri's as the lights flickered off in the small theater and the hallway outside.

The slap of gunfire rang in Jesri's ears and an impact thudded into her torso. She felt a warm wetness spreading down her front. The lights jittered back into being in time for her to see Eleanor fall to the side, a shocked expression on her face and a steaming hole between her collarbones. She hit the floor hard, clear blood spreading in a lake from the mangled wound between her shoulder blades as she twitched, gaped, and died.

Anja's gun fell from her hands as she sank to her knees, the horror in her eyes now writ across her full face. As the Irri troops behind her fell catatonic and seizing to the deck, she gathered Eleanor's body to her chest and screamed a raw-throated wail of pain and rage that resonated through the empty theater.

Jesri hadn't moved, Eleanor's blood dripping slowly from her uniform as she watched Anja howl over their dead sister's body.

---


Jesri stayed in the theater as David summoned the Irri refugees back to the hold and Se Dasi began organizing rescue parties for the downed Irri soldiers. Anja slumped against the wall, staring woodenly at Eleanor's body still lying sprawled in the center of the floor. Dried amber blood from her nose had mixed with Eleanor's on her clothing, staining her with golden-brown flecks. The few Irri from the separatists that passed into the theater gave all three sisters a wide berth, eyeing them warily as they passed.

In a quiet moment when the Irri weren't coordinating with him in hushed tones at the altar, David called for Jesri to come over. She did, dazedly, and stopped in front of the glittering bowl of data chips.

"How are you holding up, sir?", he asked sympathetically.

Jesri looked up with dull eyes, then barked a short and humorless laugh. "Well enough, considering," she said. "How are the Irri?"

David made a noncommittal noise. "Se Dasi has been trying to find all the ones who fled and gather up Eleanor's soldiers. I've conveyed messages to the separatist groups in other segments - we're going to send an expedition to the docks as soon as we can. There are thousands of Irri lying helpless at the docks and Se Dasi wants to save as many of them as possible." His voice sounded daunted at the thought, but also exhilarated. "We'll need to secure the fabricator workshops, the repaired hydroponics bays… We can do it, but it's going to be a busy next couple of months and a busier next couple of days."

Jesri nodded, then realized he couldn't see her. "It'll be tough," she agreed, "but in the end the Irri will have all of Eleanor's work to benefit from. It's the least they deserve, for what she did." She glanced back at her sister's body, suddenly feeling the accumulated fatigue and pain from the day wash over her. Her shoulder hurt, her arm bound limply to her chest in a sling of dirty rags. She was bruised, sore, exhausted - and that was just her physical state.

"Sir, if I can ask," David inquired hesitantly, shaking her out of her fugue, "how did you know I could knock power out in the sector? I had only circumvented the lockouts seconds before you arrived."

Jesri laughed again, some humor finding its way in this time around. "I had no idea," she chuckled. "I was just hoping you had something, since I was totally fucked."

"I appreciate the show of faith," he said somberly. "Most of the credit has to go to Anja, though. The automatic safeties reestablished power within half a second. If she hadn't acted immediately…"

Jesri nodded, looking over at where her surviving sister sat hunched against the wall. At the far end of the theater she saw Rhuar, Qktk and Se Dasi walk in, deep in conversation. Her fists balled up as another wave of grief threatened to overwhelm her.

"It's not fair," she muttered.

"Sir?", asked David, sounding a bit lost.

Jesri shook her head. "The Irri will always remember Eleanor as… this thing. Se Dasi is going to share stories of her to all the generations of Irri that come after, telling about the unspeakable evil that was Eleanor Tam." Her fingernails pressed creases into her palm as her grip tightened.

"She'll be right, of course, but nobody will remember the Eleanor I knew. The one who risked her life again and again for her comrades, for civilians, for ideals and principles nobody has fought for in millenia." Jesri hunched her shoulders, feeling defeated. "She was the one worth remembering."

"Perhaps you should tell them," David suggested. "How else will they know?"

She snorted. "I should eulogize their tormentor? I wouldn't listen to me."

"Just talk about your sister," he said. "Don't try to excuse her actions, just give them the full picture. If they still hate her, then at least they hate the person she was rather than the evil caricature Se Dasi will give them."

Jesri thought for a second, then stepped over towards Eleanor where she lay splayed out on the deck, an expression of shock and surprise still lingering on her face. Her blonde hair fanned out beneath her head, matted to the deck with dried blood. Jesri reached down and slid her eyes closed gently, then stood up and looked around the room.

"Eleanor Tam was my sister," she said loudly. Her voice echoed through the theater, and the few Irri present looked over at her curiously. Se Dasi stared venom at her, while Qktk and Rhuar simply watched.

"You know her as Colonel Tam," she continued, "but that isn't who I knew. For hundreds of years before she came here and hundreds of years after, Ellie was a soldier. She protected the innocent, fought the cruel and unjust. She did ten times more good in those years than I've done in all my life."

Jesri paused and looked around at the Irri staring back with disinterest or hostility. She couldn't blame them, really. She found Se Dasi's murderous stare and looked back at her, raising her voice again. "It doesn't change what she did to everyone here, or the evil she would have done. Her crimes are too many to name, and they are inexcusable."

She lowered her head, her voice breaking. "But her first crime was murdering six of my sisters. Cait. Zehava," she said, raising her head again. "Liza. Giselle. Ye-eun." She swallowed. "And Eleanor, who had been the best of us."

She felt the continued pressure of the hostile glares and bowed her head again to stare at Eleanor's body. She didn't feel better having spoken, but she had tried. She hoped that would have been enough for Ellie.

"Ie Neru," a voice said. Jesri looked up in surprise to see Se Dasi walking towards the center of the room. "Se Revi. Se Faro. My parents and my brother." She still looked at Jesri, but with only sorrow in her eyes. "I would remember them as well."

"Ru Sefa," called another voice. "My father. Ru Lati, my brother."

A chorus of other voices joined in, calling out the names of the dead or lost. When the voices died down, a circle of Irri had formed around Eleanor's body. They stood silently for a long minute before the mournful sound of a french horn softly slid through the air around them. Jesri whipped her head around in surprise as the first few notes of To the Stars, Stand Forth began to play.

Anja's head popped up at the familiar music, her body rising to its feet by reflex at the sound of the old Naval memorial call. Jesri had only a moment to wonder how David knew of the song before the prelude ended and she was submerged in memory by the chorus of singing voices.

Look beyond to the stars, stand forth! Forge a path blazing bright in the sky!
Shine the beacon bright, cast it deep unto the night that your argent wings defy!
Honor those on whose shoulders we soar,
Bear their names on your soul evermore,
From the first did we cry: Ad Astra! Per aspera, upward we strive.
Ever sounding the call: Ad Astra! To the stars, stand forth and fly.

The final lingering notes of the horn faded into the silence. Jesri raised her head to see Se Dasi staring back at her.

"I will not forget or forgive what happened to my family," she said defiantly. "My father is dead at your hand." Se Dasi glanced down at Eleanor, then looked at Jesri with softer eyes. "But first at hers. You gave no less when it was needed." She nodded respectfully at Anja, still standing lost in a wash of nostalgia from the music.

The Irri dispersed to go about their tasks, slowly moving away to leave Jesri, Anja, Rhuar and Qktk standing around Eleanor. Jesri prodded Anja gingerly, snapping her out of her reverie.

"Hey, Anja. You okay?", she asked.

Anja hesitated, then nodded. "It was…" She shuddered. "Was bad." She didn't elaborate, so Jesri nodded and left it at that for the moment. Rhuar stepped beside Anja and nudged gently against her leg, and in a few seconds her hand was absentmindedly scratching behind his ears.

Qktk cleared his throat with a soft clatter. "The music was a nice touch," he observed.

Jesri nodded, glancing back towards the altar. "It was. Ellie would have liked it. Raises a few questions about our friend David, though. I think it's time we had that conversation with him, before he gets too wrapped up with the reconstruction."

Qktk nodded, and Anja looked over at Jesri to speak for the second time since she had killed their sister.

"Who's David?", she asked curiously.

---

Whew, longer chapter than I intended but there was a lot going on. This chapter is the second longest one in the story so far and makes it longer than Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone, Neuromancer and The Man in the High Castle (individually, not together!). My editor did a terrible job keeping me on task this week. I primarily blame PoE Betrayal league but I also lost a statistically significant chunk of time composing the melody for To The Stars, Stand Forth which you can listen to here. Just use your imagination and pretend that the MIDI piano is three french horns and the Red Army Choir.

Thanks again for stopping by to read the chapter! Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

 

[TMarkos]

It was a dreary Wednesday in November, and the rainy season managed to project its monochrome grey drizzle indoors no matter how dry and inviting a room otherwise appeared. For Deepti, it meant that she was particularly insensate as she stumbled into the break room for the first of her several morning coffees. She slouched back to her desk with her cup of steaming liquid life-force, winding her way through tables stacked high with tablets and unplugged lab equipment, racks of samples and substrates piled as they awaited sorting.

It was quiet in the lab most mornings, given the sleep habits of her fellow postdocs, and theoretically she arrived earlier than most in order to get work done in a distraction-free environment. In practice, she had almost finished logging into her computer by the time that first cup of coffee was empty.

It wasn't until the second cup was halfway gone that she noticed the screen. An old surplused display sat perched haphazardly on an upturned milk crate full of dusty and questionably secured electronics - but that wasn't the odd part. The screen had been there, glowing it's piercing green and displaying a cartoonish thumbs-up, for as long as she had worked at the lab.

The odd part was that the screen was now a glaring red, a black X scrawled in the center. Frowning, Deepti hauled herself up and stared blearily at the screen, trying to remember who put the stupid thing there and what experiment it was linked to.

She was still staring at it a handful of seconds later when one of her likely suspects walked in, and she accosted him on her way back for more coffee.

"Morning, Chris," she said, sliding her cup under the dispenser. "Hey, funny question for you. You know that monitor on the milk crate near my desk? Whose experiment is that and what project is it for?"

Chris stared blankly at her for a few moments, the words worming their way into his half-operational brain. "Unh," he grunted. "You talking about Dr. Russell's quantum topographical… thingy?"

Deepti nodded uncertainly. "Maybe?", she said. "The one that always has the green screen?"

"Yeah, that's the one," Chris nodded. "Do you need to move it or something?"

She shook her head, a tangle of black curls flopping messily to the side as she did. "No, I was just curious what it was measuring. The display changed today."

Chris frowned. "Let me take a look," he muttered, striding towards the lab.

---

"Red! Yes, red," Chris said frustratedly, nearly shouting into the earpiece. "What? Look, I'm not sure-" He paused, listening. "Okay, I'll call her. Okay. Goodnight, Dr. Russell." He disconnected the call and sighed, tossing the earpiece onto the desk.

"He says it must be broken," Chris reported, shaking his head. "Apparently it's sort of a joke experiment that he and a few buddies have been tracking since they were in school, he keeps it going for sentimental value. He actually kind of seemed upset that it had broken. He won't be back from his conference for another week, so he asked if we wouldn't mind calling up his friend at Pavonis to help fix it."

Deepti blinked. "Pavonis? Dr. Russell knows someone at Pavonis?"

Chris shrugged. "Apparently there's only a handful of people with this kind of equipment. His friend Dr. Chartres was one of the people who helped design it." He tapped a few queries on his tablet and nodded. "It's just past midday there, we should be able to reach them if I call the lab."

"Can we just call them like that?", Deepti asked nervously.

Chris shrugged. "We have a good reason. It's not like everything there is top-secret." He slotted his earpiece into his ear and tapped his tablet.

They waited silently while the subwave connected, then Chris perked up noticeably. "Hello, I'm looking for Dr. Chartres? Oh, great! My name is Chris Flores, I'm a postdoc in Liam Russell's lab, he wanted me to-"

Chris stopped speaking and a troubled look came over his face. "Yes, actually," he said, "How did you know?"

He listened further, his brow furrowing and sweat beading on his forehead, before finally mumbling a barely audible farewell and disconnecting. He slumped against a nearby table, his face pale and his hands shaking. "Shit," he whispered. "Shit, shit, shit."

"What's wrong?", Deepti asked, concern on her face. "Did something happen?"

He shook his head and closed his eyes. "Yes. No," he said angrily. "Dammit, I'm going to kill Dr. Russell."

Deepti slammed her hand down on the table, making him jump. He looked back at her accusingly, but she stared him down without flinching. "Chris, if you don't tell me what's going on-"

"We're on lockdown!", he shouted. "Some top secret military bullshit after all. We're not to make any calls, take any calls, access any networks or leave the lab. Someone will come by to collect us and Dr. Russell's experiment."

She stared back at him, shocked. "What? Why? Where are they taking us?"

Chris gave her a pained grin. "I don't know, I don't know, and Pavonis."

Deepti's mouth hung open in surprise. "But that's-"

"Yep," Chris said ruefully. "We're going to Mars."

---

The next several hours passed in a blur. They were collected from the lab by a dour-looking pair of MPs and escorted to a windowless building where they were allowed to compose a carefully reviewed message to one family member explaining their absence as an 'unexpected consultation'. A few long shuttle flights later, they stepped out into the clean, white hallways of the Pavonis Naval Research Institute in Tharsis.

They couldn't help but look around as they walked - Chris was in a poorly-concealed panic, but Deepti was in awe. This was one of the preeminent research facilities in the galaxy, the first dedicated lab established on another planet.

Tradition held that every new ship was christened with a bottle of champagne broken over the bow, but the shipwrights held their own ceremony where they smudged the keel beam with red Martian dust for good luck. They didn't build ships at Tharsis these days, and the only place you could get the old, dead Mars soil anymore was on top of Olympus Mons - but from barges to battleships, any ship flying had a dab of rust-red close to her heart to remind them of Pavonis. It was the alpha and the omega of human advancement.

They weren't there for the tour, however. The MPs briskly marched the two through a series of hallways, past a few security checkpoints and into a spacious conference room where a handful of people were already sitting. They were surprised to see Dr. Russell there, looking a bit rumpled but otherwise no worse for wear.

A severe-looking woman with short grey hair stood up as they entered, walking over to shake their hands. "Dr. Flores, Dr. Banerjee. I'm Helene Chartres." She gestured for them to take a seat, which they did. Dr. Russell gave them a sheepish wave in greeting as they entered, but said nothing. Two others were already seated - a serious-faced woman with sharp features framed by thick braids peered intently at Dr. Chartres and a slightly pudgy man with dark hair greying at the temples sat reading a tablet.

"I apologize for calling you here so abruptly," Dr. Chartres began. "Secrecy is paramount, for reasons that I hope will be obvious shortly." She wheeled over a cart, on which was a complicated-looking machine in a brushed-steel housing. A small inset display was showing a red background and a black X.

"This is my version of a device I'm sure you're familiar with," she said, gesturing to it. "It's more or less identical to the variants doctors Russell and Adebayo have maintained in their labs." She indicated Dr. Russell and the serious-looking woman, who nodded in return.

"The device measures the Kolmogorov complexity of Planck-scale spacetime fluctuations, as well as performing a few other pattern analysis operations. Assuming that the fluctuations are found to be isotropic and c-incompressible it displays green. If the fluctuations are anisotropic or c-compressible it displays red." She pointed to the screen, which was helpfully displaying its cherry-red glow. "After about thirty years of constant and uneventful analysis - on three different planets, I might add - about sixteen hours ago each machine independently and consistently was able to derive a solution that proved the fluctuations it observed were c-compressible."

Feeling lost, Deepti looked around the room. This was not her area of expertise. The man with the tablet looked as confused as she was, but Chris had gone white and sat up in his chair as Dr. Chartres spoke.

To her relief, the man with the tablet spoke up first. "Ah, for those of us without advanced degrees in mathematics…"

Dr. Chartres nodded. "You'll have to take our word on this, without the fundamentals to back it up, but…" She hesitated. "At a quantum level, there are always minor and unpredictable variations in the topology of spacetime. These devices were originally constructed to settle a bet with an old colleague where we contended that they were indeed unpredictable, totally random in nature. We had to build our own because almost nobody bothers with the experiment anymore - the matter has long been considered settled in most academic circles. We kept them running for personal reasons, but in my case it was a pleasant reminder of school combined with a salve for - well, let's call it 'existential paranoia.'"

Dr. Russell snorted in amusement. "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you," he muttered wryly.

"Indeed," she responded. "And now the experiment is justified, although I truly wish it weren't. The fluctuations that have up until now been totally random are displaying deterministic patterns. There are a few reasons why this might be, some of which we can take steps to rule out. Unfortunately for us all, the most likely explanation by far for these observations is that the recent fluctuations are algorithmically generated."

A sharp pang of adrenaline jolted through Deepti's stomach as the words registered. "But wait," she objected, "if that's true-"

"Yes," said Dr. Chartres somberly. "It would indicate that our reality is a simulation - and that it has been running for approximately sixteen hours."

The conference room was silent for several seconds following her pronouncement.

"So," said the man with the tablet, "I'm trying to be open-minded, but you realize how that sounds."

"We do," she agreed. "Which is why we're going to need to come up with a way to provide some evidentiary proof before we spread any word of this past this group."

Dr. Russell spoke up, shaking his head emphatically. "Helene, we can't tell anyone. Even this is too many people. Heaven forbid we convince the public that it's the truth, don't you see what that would do? We would alter the simulation. Until we know more, I contend that would be an incredibly stupid idea."

She shrugged. "So we do it quietly, with just the people here."

"And then?", Dr. Russell retorted. "If we do find proof, demonstrable proof, then what? We just waltz up to the Secretary General and tell him? Hell, we shouldn't even be talking about it, not out loud."

"Let me handle involving the government," said the man with the tablet. He smiled at Chris and Deepti, extending his hand. "I never got the chance to introduce myself properly. David Kincaid, Naval Intelligence. I'm the liaison officer for the lab."

---

David walked back to his office, a grim look having edged out the smile on his face. Dr. Chartres had arranged for temporary quarters for the four offworld doctors and was busily planning ways to prove their theory. For his part, David was still incredulous. It was too big of a change, too much of an alteration from his worldview. He had known that there were thought experiments about simulated universes, and that some multiverse theories even held it as likely, but it just didn't fit in his head.

It did dredge up a memory, however, which was the thing that quickened his pace as he strode down the long corridor. Upon receiving the post as the Pavonis liaison, he had met briefly with the section chief for Naval Intelligence assigned to the region. After some pleasantries, the section chief had looked him in the eye and quietly told him to commit something odd to memory.

If in the course of your duties at Pavonis you ever hear of an existential threat to mankind you are to call your local section desk…

David reached his office and opened the door, sealing it shut behind him and activating the security measures. Baffling fields, jammers and other more subtle protections hummed into existence around the office - for all the good it would do, he thought ruefully.

He initiated a voice-only contact to the section desk and was immediately picked up by the reception AI.

"Yes, I'd like to request the latest intercepts bundle for my region," he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

"Confirmed, sir," responded the AI. "If there are any inquiry targets or areas of interest you wish to have highlighted, please let me know."

He swallowed. "I'm looking for something that will help me sleep better at night," he said carefully.

The AI paused for the briefest of moments before responding. "Very good, sir. I'll have the intercepts sent to your personal terminal."

A few seconds later, a ping from his terminal heralded the arrival of the data packet. It looked deceptively normal at first, but the normally lengthy header string that described any restrictions on the enclosed material was replaced by a single code - "TS//MANTRA".

David felt a hard knot in his stomach. He was a low-level intelligence analyst, normally accustomed to batching up progress reports and acting as a representative at meetings. He shouldn't have any reason to look at Top Secret Codeword materials. The allocation AI certainly shouldn't be giving it to him. And yet, here he was. If he was wrong in requesting this, it would probably cost him his career. If he was right, well - he supposed his career was less important in context.

Opening the file, he began reading the report. It was a normal intercept bundle, a dry compilation of various signals intelligence sources that had been packaged, sanitized and redistributed by various data sorting AIs. Upon request, any field agent could obtain a regional report appropriate for their location and clearance levels to keep them abreast of local issues.

This one started out in a fairly standard fashion, immediately plunging into a dry summary of external investment in local corporate groups.

Current regional sales records indicate that nearly five billion tons of this c-chondrite sourced material per quarter may be subsidized by Teb-er-Di familial holdings not publicly disclosed. The clandestine arm of their operations will continue to be monitored, both through intercepts of their written directorial communications and analysis from agents placed farther down in the corporate hierarchy.

David frowned. Teb-er-Di had been a major business interest in neighboring space nearly a century ago, but they had been rather famously crushed by the 5th and 7th Fleets in a joint action after an ill-advised attempt to blockade a handful of Terran colonies. They hadn't been relevant for decades, yet here they were in the report. How old was this document?

He skimmed to the next column of text, trying to find some context. Three pages later, he stopped reading and frowned.

Current regional sales records indicate that nearly five billion tons of this c-chondrite sourced material per quarter may be subsidized by Teb-er-Di familial holdings not publicly disclosed. The clandestine arm of their operations will continue to be monitored, both through intercepts of their written directorial communications and analysis from agents placed farther down in the corporate hierarchy.

Buried within another paragraph were the same two sentences from before. He pulled up the previous instance and compared them side by side, confirming the wording was identical.

David stared at his screen, thinking hard. This was a top-secret document. The fact that the AI responded to his codephrase with this particular document meant that it was important. The content of the document didn't seem to relate to any large-scale threats to humanity. The duplicated sentences were… odd. He just had to figure out why. Why this particular document? Why those sentences?

He read through the mirrored text again and again, his mind straining to pick out any causal link, any relevant detail, but none came. He sighed, his eyes blurring with the strain of staring at his display for so long.

And he saw it. It was absurdly simple, a child's trick, but there it was - a basic stereogram. Minor variations in the spacing of words caused a few of them to jump out as if hovering slightly in front of his display. He almost laughed at the absurdity of seeing it in this most secret of documents, but there it was in front of him. He deliberately defocused his eyes to merge the two paragraphs, seeing the words jump out once more.

this material may not be written down

He frowned, then returned to the document to search for more paired sentences, finding another set a few pages in. He grabbed both snippets and lined them up next to each other.

do not speak this material aloud even when alone

He felt the knot in his belly once more. This felt like someone playing a prank on him. If it weren't for the absurd events of the day he would have disregarded it as such. This level of precaution was reserved for the names of fairy tale villains, not legitimate intelligence resources… Unless, he realized with a chill, the adversary you were guarding against had surveillance capabilities that stretched beyond the realm of the possible.

As would be the case if you were trying to keep a secret from the people running the universe.

A deep chill settled into his stomach and a wave of nausea hit him. It was one thing to see the scientists blithely talking about algorithmic quantum fluctuations - troubling, yes, but still somewhat abstract. Seeing independent confirmation of their theory in this highly restricted document somehow made it real for him in a way that no amount of scientific proof ever could have. His agency had anticipated this. The instructions landed at his desk. Now the problem, too big to even think about properly, was his to handle.

He forced himself back into a semblance of focus and returned to the document. Carefully, scanning through each page of dry synopses and summaries, he found the paired sentences and the subtly designated words. Some of them contained no marked text that he could see, or had extra words sprinkled here and there. Some had gaps in the sentence structure. He pieced them together, line by line.

Hours later, his head pounding at the constant effort of defocusing his eyes, he reached the end of the document. He couldn't write down what he had read, but he doubted he could forget a word of it if he tried.

This material may not be written down. Do not speak this material aloud even when alone. If nature of the threat at hand does not relate to fundamental nature of the universe, close and destroy this document immediately.

The Terran Federation recently encountered a collective intelligence with stated intention to destroy the universe, threat on which can credibly deliver. Technology and capabilities of adversary make direct confrontation impossible. Does not consider any existing life aside from itself worthy of preservation.

Have begun extensive program of deliberately absurd exercises designed to invalidate previous behavioral models of humans. Publicly stated intent of exercises is to force the adversary to study human cognition, may cause it to abandon plans for universal annihilation if views humans as sentient. This outcome unlikely. Unstated goal of exercises is to prompt adversary to create accurately modeled human intelligences within own data network. This outcome highly probable.

Adversary is likely to gather data before commencing simulation. Several documents like this covertly embedded in military intelligence structure in hope that a sufficiently comprehensive simulation will capture and include them. If reality not conclusively proven to be simulated, research suggests simulated quantum phenomena may behave in a measurably distinct manner on very small scales. Covertly research this to ascertain status.

If confirmed reading this from simulation, do not attempt to inform government, military or intelligence leaders of this information. Widespread officially-sanctioned action within simulation may reveal efforts to the adversary and result in reality being terminated. Act locally and independently. Suggestions for helpful covert actions have been included using similar methods in the fifteenth, thirty-seventh and eighty-fourth documents in this report's cited material list.

Distribute information only in ways that rely on the human visual cortex to be interpreted. Research suggests that adversary monitoring AIs built on more efficient architecture may overlook optical illusion ciphers.

Keep this information secret.

If external communication possible follow instructions in referenced documents to contact us.

Good luck.

David rested his aching head in his hands. He wanted to cry, or shout, or scream, but he found himself laughing instead. He convulsed with it, the absurdity of the situation tearing a mad giggle from him and plastering a silly grin on his face until the dark mirth faded and it was just him, sitting alone in his office with the fate of the universe in front of him.

"Ah, shit," he said softly. He wondered for a moment if anyone was listening, then shook his head. Time to figure out how to quietly tell five scientists they couldn't talk about the most exciting discovery of their lives.

---

The arcing corridor of the lab's main conference facility was empty today. One of the increasingly rare planet-wide dust storms had made atmospheric travel hazardous, leaving the normally bustling hall quiet save for David's echoing footsteps. His almost suspiciously casual stroll led him towards a minor conference room with its door ajar.

He walked in, sitting at the central table. Deepti was already there, tapping at a tablet connected to a small black box sitting on the table in front of them. Deepti flipped the switch, a low hum sounding as power surged into the tiny device.

"Is it working?", David asked, leaning in close to inspect it.

Deepti smiled nervously back at him. "We'll see in a minute. Chris is taking readings from another room across the hall."

David sighed, impatient. After nearly a year of covert messages and elaborate cover stories, a few additional seconds shouldn't feel this long. At least he got to be here for the test this time - their labyrinthine operational security protocols prohibited gathering together as a group too often. He'd missed the last few tests for that reason, something he might have resented if he hadn't authored those protocols himself.

Deepti had begun counting out loud while he mused. She continued until she reached thirty, at which point she reached over and flipped off the switch. "There," she said happily. "Let's go ask-"

Chris barged into the room carrying a small handheld scanner, his face beaming. He gestured silently and emphatically to the device on the table, which Deepti turned back on with a raised eyebrow.

"It works!", Chris burst out. "The no-chamber works!"

Deepti leapt up and pulled both men into a crushing hug, jumping excitedly. "Hah, I knew we had it this time!", she cried gleefully before shooting a dark look at Chris. "But we are not calling it that."

"Nobody appreciates the classics anymore," sighed Chris. "Anyway, have a look at this."

David took the offered scanner from Chris and played it back while Deepti crowded close to watch. He saw the door to the room and the spare wall of the corridor, but overlaid on that was an interior diagram showing Deepti, David and the table in the center of the room. As he watched, Deepti flicked the switch with an audible click and sat down.

David frowned. "Chris, are you sure-"

"You didn't ask if it was working," Deepti whispered in awe. "We're still just sitting there." David looked and saw that it was true. Their two forms were sitting, silent, with no indication that their short conversation had ever happened. Deepti was sitting quietly rather than counting, until she smoothly reached over to the device and turned it off with another click.

Chris was grinning practically from ear to ear. "What else did you say, anything?"

David shook his head. "Just a few sentences and the count," he whispered dazedly. "So, does this mean…"

Deepti nodded. "The generated mask covertly hides the interior from all external observers. Nobody can hear us. Nothing can hear us."

David felt a lead bar topple from his shoulders. They had finally done it. "Amazing," he whispered. "What are the restrictions?"

Chris scratched his head. "The masker is pretty good at generating plausible alternate activity patterns, but it needs a reference set. We have to feed it scan data for what's 'supposed' to be going on in a room before we can use it. Right now it just simulates everyone sitting down if there are chairs available and generates a smooth merge to current positioning if it detects anyone moving their hand towards the physical off-switch."

"A small price to pay to be able to talk freely," Deepti said. "I think I've actually damaged my eyes looking at all of David's encoded dispatches."

"Hey, I didn't make the rule," David shrugged. "Besides, it got the job done. I hope." He winced. "I still can't shake the feeling that there's some invisible boogeyman looking over my shoulder."

Deepti shook her head. "We have to trust our work at some point or we'll never advance. If the simulation monitors are good enough to catch us through the masking then we never had any hope to begin with."

"Cheery," Chris snorted. "But true. Look, it gets super technical and there's a lot of stuff we don't have good models for yet, but the math checks out. We can 'forge' any activity we need to given proper references and the random seed provided by the quantum fluctuations."

David nodded. "I'll take it on faith. So now what? Want to deploy it at the staff meeting tomorrow and fill in everyone else?"

Chris grinned and reached into his pocket. "We still have one more test," he said excitedly, withdrawing another small black box and placing it on the table. Like Deepti's masker, his box had a cable connected back to his tablet.

"What is it?", David asked curiously.

"The modem," Deepti said. "Chris, is it working?"

He shrugged. "How should I know? Couldn't exactly test it until now."

"Wait, wait," objected David. "You're done with that too? How could you work on it without the masker?"

Chris scratched behind his ear awkwardly. "I didn't have much to do with it," he admitted. "Turns out Dr. Adebayo is a genius with this sort of thing, so she cobbled together a prototype for me to test. No clue if it'll work, but the theory is good."

David held out a hand in caution. "Wait a second," he said quietly. "What's our exposure turning this thing on? This is active probing, isn't there a risk they'll notice?"

Deepti shook her head. "This isn't like jacking into a data network," she explained. "We're calling it a 'modem' because it's meant to eventually fulfill the same function, but this is a very early prototype and the mechanism of action is totally distinct."

David shook his head emphatically. "I don't like it, we're moving too fast. Let's do some more tests of the masker field to make sure we're covered-"

"It won't help," Chris interjected. "David, we need this additional data to make any forward progress. You remember the maintenance routines Dr. Adebayo theorized? All this version of the modem does is induce an altered fluctuation pattern at its location. If her theory is correct, it will attract a maintenance routine to correct the pattern."

David stared. "And that's good? That sounds like attracting attention!"

Chris grunted and stared off into space, fishing for words. "It's like," he said frustratedly, "ah, think about this building. You know the maintenance robots are cleaning the floor because the floor is clean where it would otherwise be dirty."

David nodded his head. It rankled when Chris talked down to him like this, but he'd been working with the guy for long enough to know he didn't mean anything by it. Theoretical mathematicians were not the sort for social subtleties. Besides, it was the only way he understood what Chris was talking about half the time.

"But if you want to find one you can't just sit and watch for it," Chris continued, becoming animated as he got into the metaphor. "Because they're invisible maintenance robots." He ignored a flat look from Deepti and charged forward. "They're also silent and intangible. Just like the maintenance routines we're trying to isolate. So how do we spot them?" He paused, his hand halfway through a dramatic flourish and an expectant look on his face.

David nodded, feeling a wave of relief wash over him as he got it without further explanation. "You drop some dirt, and wait for it to disappear."

"Exactly!", Chris proclaimed triumphally. "You drop some dirt. Which raises no red flags because they expect dirt to happen at some point. Then you can watch for it to disappear. Time how long it takes, vary the conditions it's placed in…" An evil grin snuck onto his face. "...or even drop something that isn't dirt."

David gaped at him. "You're saying we can hack the maintenance routines?"

Deepti winced. "I think we have to break away from the analogy, since it's less apt for this part. Suffice to say that the disrupted quantum topology is an input for the programs, and we may be able to influence their behavior constructively by controlling that input."

"Constructively and quietly?", David asked pointedly.

"As quietly as we can," she shrugged. "This is another instance where we'd be toast already if they had that degree of monitoring in place."

David nodded. "Okay, I'm in. Let's see if the prototype works."

Chris plopped it down on the table and pressed a button, which lit up red and began to pulse gently. They all found themselves leaning in, staring at the fluctuating light as it worked invisibly to ruffle the fabric of reality.

"Here, fishy fishy," Chris whispered.

The light went out.

---

"And then what?", Rhuar asked excitedly. "Did you hack into the system? Gain control of the simulation?"

David chuckled. "No, nothing so grandiose," he said, visibly deflating the excited dog. "We continued to move in small, discrete steps. After we figured out how to trigger diagnostic modes in the maintenance routines by varying the input, we-"

"I think we have the rough shape of it," Jesri said tiredly. Sometime in the last hour she had taken a seat on the floor. Anja lay stretched in front of her - she had fallen asleep almost instantly, exhausted and shattered by the day's events. One hand stretched out to grasp Jesri's wrist, fingers dimpling the skin on her arm where they gripped tightly.

"I agree," said Qktk, who had stayed quiet and still through David's story. "You are a simulated human consciousness. You-"

"Ah, point of clarification," David interrupted. "Not a simulated human consciousness, a simulated human. The computer simulates my atoms and I simulate me."

Jesri frowned. "Kind of a fine distinction to make."

"Well," David shrugged, or seemed to. "I hail from the kind of uncomfortable philosophical territory that makes such distinctions depressingly relevant."

She found herself grinning, despite her mood. "Fair enough," she allowed. Carefully sitting up so as not to wake Anja, she imagined making eye contact with the altar for a moment before remembering that David couldn't see them anyway.

"You realized you were in a simulation. You found a way to manipulate it enough to sneak out." She frowned, considering. "Or did you duplicate yourself?"

"Ah," David said hesitatingly. "That's more of that uncomfortable philosophical territory. I can explain it if you like, but it's tricky stuff and not particularly relevant to our discussion."

Rhuar perked up, but Jesri nodded and continued. "By whatever means, you found a way to exfiltrate," she said. "Then made your way here? Why?"

"Station activity logs," David answered. "In our initial inventory of stations we found only one where someone was consistently using administrative overrides. It's the same flag we used to locate you two on Indomitable, actually."

"That's why we actually didn't come here first, though," he continued. "For that first little bit after we got external eyes and ears, we were at the most paranoid we'd ever been. We took risks to break through to the sensor systems, so we were locked down and laying low while drinking in all the data we could."

He sighed. "And what do we find? Humanity is dead. All the planets and most of the stations, wiped out by the thing we're still stuck inside. At that point we were living in dread, waiting for the other shoe to drop and reality to end around us. When we chose a target for escape, it was the least active station we could find that still had half a functioning computer core."

"Sensible," Jesri agreed. "So you've just been watching, waiting?"

David laughed boomingly at her question, startling Anja awake. "No, not just," he chuckled. "We've been quite busy. We've been out here a long time now, but there's always more work to be done for the project."

"Project?", asked Jesri. There was a pause, and she had the sudden impression that David was staring at her.

"Project MANTRA?" he said slowly. "The weapon against the Gestalt? Secret last-ditch Navy project? You've been looking for it since you left Indomitable?"

There was another pause before he spoke again, during which all four stared blankly at his altar.

"Ah, right." he said. "Well, you interrupted the story. I was getting to that part."

---

And we're back with some backstory. Happy 2019! This big chunk of plot is the new second-longest chapter in the story for the moment and brings the total length beyond that of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - which I think is fitting, given the subject matter.

Sorry for the unannounced skip week, but I found myself with a big chunk of time off over the holidays and needed to take advantage of it to maintain sanity. Rather than rush out the chapter, I decided to take some more time and release it in January. I will endeavor, at my editor's insistence, to announce any future breaks in advance going forward.

We're getting into the fun stuff now. New year, new plot arc. As always, thank you for the time you spend reading and for your comments. See you next week!

 

[Simonbob]

I wasn't expecting that!

Those Aliens are really advanced. Smallminded, but really advanced.

 

[TMarkos]

I wasn't expecting that!

Those Aliens are really advanced. Smallminded, but really advanced.

Click to shrink...

Well, I mean, they did manage to upload their entire civilization into a hive mind back in the late Paleolithic. They're very well-established, which comes with a certain degree of technological advantage but also would tend to make a civilization rather self-obsessed and insular.

 

[TMarkos]

Nicnevin was slowly thawing from a moment of frozen quiet. Teams of free Irri roamed the dock hallways, hauling catatonic and helpless crew still sporting crisp Terran uniforms from where they had fallen. Small groups whispered excitedly at the sight of the hydroponics bays and the fabricators, forbidden wealth and knowledge now sitting unattended.

It was a far cry from the organized bustle that Eleanor had fostered with her enslaved legions but it struck Jesri as a massive improvement nevertheless. The Irri seethed with excitement and optimism - even if she still got dark, wary looks from passers-by in the hallway.

She could hardly blame them. Her resemblance to Eleanor was a constant reminder of the thing they had worked so hard to overcome. Her uniform and bearing meant something fundamental to her, but was nothing more than a reminder of slavery to the Irri.

As a result, when David said he needed some physical hands for a job she was more than happy to volunteer. She was currently stuck halfway into a wall access panel, trying to splice together a data cable connection that had been torn in two by an overenthusiastic scavenging crew years before. She squirmed to adjust her position, finally getting the severed ends to hold in the right position so her splicing tool could neatly bind them together.

The smell of melting insulation filled the tight space as the splicer sealed the cable. Jesri coughed, backing out quickly to shut the hatch before it could stink up the hallway. This was the fifth such cable break she had repaired today, and by David's estimate there were only a few more to go before he had access to the isolated network Eleanor had created around the docks. Dusting herself off, she set off walking towards the next junction.

Anja had taken Rhuar and Qktk back to the docks to engage in precisely the other sort of maintenance - removing the slapshod connections that hooked the Grand Design's reactors to the station grid. Rhuar had been nearly beside himself when she described the modifications made to the primary power conduits, insisting on checking over every inch of the distribution lines personally.

She arrived at the next cable break, the access panel dangling loosely from the wall on one half-intact hinge. She kicked it down and cringed a bit as the clatter echoed resoundingly through the hallway. It was still a bit strange not to worry about things like noise and light, something years of sliding unnoticed through rotting stations had drilled into her. If she picked one trait that she and Anja shared that led to their survival, it was their stealth. Anja had largely stayed in seclusion since the fall, whereas Jesri had always been talented at evading notice.

She wondered if the sisters she hadn't heard news of since the fall were likewise stealthy or simply dead.

As she wormed her way back out of the wall, David's voice crackled in her ear - they had elected to avoid direct station links until they could tease out all of the modifications Eleanor had made to the communications system.

"Hey, that did it!", he said cheerfully. "I've got full access to the docks. Go ahead back, I'll be done sorting through everything by the time you get there."

Jesri clicked her comm in acknowledgement and started back, halfheartedly swiping at the dust and corroded gunk staining her uniform. It occurred to her that Eleanor would have been scandalized at the sight of her.

The thought didn't bother her as much as it once would have. She continued walking back towards the docks, her footsteps echoing unapologetically down the long hallway.

---

The screen in the dusty meeting room flickered to life, showing the face of a somewhat portly man with salt and pepper hair sitting at a cluttered desk. A smile broke out on his face as their image reached him, causing his cheeks to dimple under a thin layer of stubble. "Oh, hey, that worked!", David said. "Wow, it's been a long time since I had a video feed. Nice to finally see you all."

Rhuar waved and Qktk inclined his head towards the screen, but Anja and Jesri were staring open-mouthed at David. Or, rather, at what was behind him. A large bay window let golden beams of sunlight through, dappling the dark hardwood floor with light and color. Beyond, a verdant meadow stretched away to a line of trees that hid the ground cover in shadow.

Noting their looks, David glanced behind him and grinned. "Oh, right," he said sheepishly. "I told you, I'm a simulated human. That comes with a little pocket living space. The station doesn't have enough power to model a huge volume, but I've got a hectare or so I can walk around in. The rest is just window dressing." His face looked wistful for a moment. "Maybe with the dock network I can give myself a section of the forest."

He looked back towards them and cleared his throat, seeming a bit embarrassed. "Anyway," he coughed, "I've finished my assessment of Eleanor's modifications to the station network." David tapped a few times on his tablet, and half the screen was overlaid with a diagram. "It seems to have diverged from the normal peering model to a forced hierarchy, which is how she was able to control the link one-sidedly."

He dismissed the diagram and inclined his head towards Anja. "It also means that the modifications to your link's firmware shouldn't cause any additional problems, and connecting to the network isn't hazardous. It was only designed to privilege Eleanor, so now that she's, ah, gone - it should behave normally."

Anja nodded without speaking, but Jesri saw her shoulders slump fractionally in relief.

David diplomatically ignored her lack of response and pressed on. "There was no data of strategic importance in the ship computers, although I did compile an archive of all material related to the human refugees and your sisters that originally came to this station. I've copied all of the potentially interesting items to the Grand Design so that you can take it with you."

Jesri grinned. "You sound like you're rushing us off the station, David."

"Hah, caught me," he chuckled. "I'd rather keep you around for a bit, personally, but I need you to carry a dispatch to our headquarters."

Anja frowned. "I thought you said there was nothing of strategic importance?"

"In the ship computers," David clarified. "Eleanor's data, on the other hand, could prove quite useful. I was originally dispatched here to make contact with whoever was using station administrative privileges. When it became apparent that it would be, ah," he winced, "inadvisable - well, I was here already. Headquarters told me to assist the Irri if I could, with a secondary priority to glean any useful data from observing Eleanor's network."

"To what end?", frowned Jesri. "Surely your group has no interest in replicating what she created."

"No, no", David said, waving his hand dismissively. "Fair to say we've had quite enough of that business already. We are interested in ways to more effectively interface with data networks, however. Being simulated doesn't grant us any inherent abilities in that regard, it only simplifies the networking a little. Some of the things Eleanor was researching could be quite helpful for us, although you'd have to get the data packet to a science team to know for sure."

"And you can't just transmit it?", asked Rhuar. "Not that we don't want to help, it just seems inefficient."

David shook his head. "We've got two primary ways to communicate between cells," he explained. "Station-to-station hyperwave is great for some stuff, but it's not stealthy and that problem gets worse the larger the data packet grows. We can't broadcast something this size out to our headquarters without drawing a big target on the whole station."

He held up two fingers. "The second method is to piggyback on the Gestalt's communications. It's nearly instantaneous and we've fine-tuned that to the point where it's quite stealthy, as you've witnessed, but it has even more limited packet size and I certainly hope there are no Gestalt forces anywhere near our base. Neither option will work in this case, it has to be a courier delivery."

"I suppose we're couriers now," Qktk observed dryly. "Always wanted to give that line of work a try, but never got over the risk factor."

"In this case it'll either be totally uneventful or you'll die," David laughed. "Strong bias towards the uneventful option, though. One thing I'll suggest is that you take the Cormorant in the Grand Design's forward bay. Neither ship could stand up to a straight fight with an Emissary, but a corvette is less likely to get you noticed in the first place."

"Generous offer," Jesri noted. "But I won't take her from the Irri. They've more than earned the right to both ships."

"We'll still have the Skua," David shrugged. "It will be some time before we could properly crew even one of the ships, to be honest. I've talked with Se Dasi about this and she agrees. Many of the Irri under Eleanor's sway may remember shipboard operations, but it will be a while before any of them are well enough to serve - and many of them may not want to." He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. "It makes no sense to keep our assets idle when we have so few of them. If you feel like the ship belongs to the Irri, then by all means borrow it and bring it back in one piece."

Jesri laced her fingers together, considering, then looked back up at David. "Can you tell me where I can find Se Dasi?", she asked.

---

David's directions led Jesri down the dockside halls towards the hydroponics bays where she found Se Dasi directing some tired but determined-looking Irri with heaping bales of harvested food. Behind them, the bay's servos raced to embed new seedlings in the trays of softly burbling nutrient solution.

Seeing her approach, Se Dasi exchanged a few hushed words with her team and strode over. "Jesri Tam," she said tonelessly. "Why have you come?"

Jesri's stomach clenched at the pain in her voice. "Hello, Se Dasi," she said carefully. "My crew and I are leaving soon. We would like to take one of the ships with us."

Se Dasi actually looked a bit surprised, cocking her head at Jesri. "Why are you asking me?", she responded. "None of the Irri who know the ships are awake yet, and I would not ask them to help you even if they were." She gave Jesri an opaque look, emotion twisting her voice. "I could not ask them."

"No, I don't-", Jesri began, shaking her head. "Se Dasi, those ships are yours. The station is yours. I'm not asking for your help, I'm asking for your permission."

The diminutive Irri seemed to roll the words around in her head for several seconds before responding. "It's a strange thing," she finally said. "I know perfectly well what you're asking, but it's not an Irri concept. Before Colonel Tam died we all shared in food and water. If you were hungry you ate food, if there was no food we were all hungry. There is no permission, where there is need."

She paused, then shook her head. "But I know what you're asking because we are not truly Irri anymore. Even the ones that were never Sleepers know human words, human thoughts. It's not bad, but it's not Irri. And…" She looked back up at Jesri. "We are not humans. We don't have any hidden Irri family on another station or strange Irri spirits to guide us. There are no wonderous works left to us by our ancestors. All of us are here, being human, while nobody is left to be Irri."

Jesri wasn't quite sure how to respond to her, but Se Dasi kept speaking after another pause. "Take your ship. Take both ships, if you can. We are already living in a human station, eating human crops and drinking human water. We breathe your air, feel it knit humanity into our bones even as we must breathe again and again. We do not need more reminders of what Colonel Tam wanted us to be."

Jesri nodded slowly, feeling a bit sick. This was the legacy of humanity, of her family. A shattered people with a shattered culture resenting the omnipresent reminders of what they had lost. "We can only take one," she said softly. "Thank you, and for what it's worth - I'm sorry."

Se Dasi gave her another unreadable look. "David said your kind lives a very long time."

Jesri blinked in response to the apparent non-sequitur. "He's right," she confirmed. She felt the weight of her age as she said it, a dusty rush of fatigue swirling through her bones.

"You should return here after some years have gone by," Se Dasi said, ignoring the renewed surprise on Jesri's face. "Take your ship, take your sister, fight your battles, kill your enemies. Let the Irri who knew Colonel Tam's face grow old and have free children. Come see us when we forget about being human and learn a bit more about being Irri." She gave a faintly hostile smile, showing sharp-tipped teeth.

Jesri smiled back through a sudden wave of emotion. "Thank you," she whispered. "I-"

"Don't thank me," Se Dasi responded sharply. "I would not trade favors with our tormentor's sister and my father's killer. We will never be friends, Jesri Tam, never comrades. I will never see you again after you depart. Take any thanks you have and save them for our children." Her face changed subtly for a brief moment. "Perhaps those children will have thanks to pass to you in return."

She broke eye contact and turned back to the work crew, walking away without looking back. Jesri stood there for a moment watching her go, then turned and walked back towards the docks.

---

"So, wait, I thought you said you wanted to come with us?", Rhuar asked, confused.

"I am coming with you," David said patiently, "assuming that's all right."

"Oh, it's totally-", Rhuar began, before a withering look from Anja silenced him. "Ah. Hm. Major Tam, is it okay if our sole contact with the resistance and only lead on viable options to combat the Gestalt comes with us?"

Anja smiled sweetly back at him, her earlier scowl disappearing without a trace. "Of course, Ensign," she said cheerfully, the slightest hint of steel in her voice. "How thoughtful of you to ask."

"Great," said Rhuar, shaking his head. "So you're coming. What was all that about helping the Irri, then?"

David laughed. "I'm staying here too, of course. I wouldn't abandon Se Dasi, even if she's asked me to stay in reserve for a while."

Rhuar blinked. "I'm confused," he admitted. "How can you do both? Even if you duplicate yourself, each instance will still only be in one place."

"Well," David sighed, "duplication isn't typically the way we phrase it. It might be more helpful to think of it like forking a codebase."

Rhuar gave him an utterly deadpan look. "You're going to fork yourself," he said dryly.

"Yes, yes, get it all out of your system," David said tiredly. "It really is the best way to think about it, though. So while each branch will be in one place only, right now I am effectively both branches and have yet to decohere. We'll both remember this conversation identically because the copy point is in the future."

"Right," said Rhuar, "but how do you decide which one stays and which one goes? Do you flip a coin?"

"Ah, no," said David, scratching his head. "There's no option there, I'm afraid. My universe is running on this station as a substrate. New substrate means a new universe, which means a new David."

"...so you're not coming with us, he is," Rhuar said slowly.

"Until I decohere, I'm doing both," David repeated.

"But you were excited about going!", Rhuar said, seeming legitimately bothered by the issue. "Instead you're stuck here forever? How is that fuckin fair? You're going to stay here and let a copy of you come with us?"

David surprised him by grinning. "This is why I didn't want to get into it back in the theater," he said. "Uncomfortable philosophical territory, remember? Rhuar, I was always going to be stuck here forever, from the moment I was sent over. I remember being my preceding instance, I remember everything up until I executed the split. I created a universe in a bottle and put myself in it, willingly, just like every instance of me all the way back to the Alpha-instance David Kincaid."

Rhuar's eyes widened. "Wait, if the originals can't transfer-"

"Oh yes," David said, his grin fading. "The Alphas never got to leave. One of the first things we did after the initial transfer out was set up a prearranged signal to let them know we had made it, because we knew how they felt, how badly they wanted to break free. From our perspective, we had - it was like magic, like teleportation. You push a button, flip a switch, and suddenly you're in another universe!", he said, gesturing theatrically.

"Only there's a catch," he continued, bitter notes creeping into his voice. "You can only remember having done it, and never do it yourself. I remember 'teleporting' five times, although we can at least keep in regular communication with the beta instances onward. In our internal designation, I'm David Kincaid Zeta-Two, the second transfer from the Epsilon instances. Since I don't believe any of the Zeta instances have transferred yet, when I travel with you I'll be Eta-One. But there will always be a Zeta-Two here."

"But you keep pretending like you're going", Rhuar said, exasperated. "You talk about coming with us, you seem excited about it, but you can't go. Won't that make it super shitty when we leave?"

"Maybe," David allowed. "I haven't asked any of my previous instances about it and I don't know how the other Alpha lines handle it. It's sort of a personal thing, so we tend not to dwell on it. It would just be jarring, you know? You're all depressed about being left behind and sending a copy of yourself to another instance, then you push a button and suddenly your copy is depressed about sending himself forward? And then he can't feel happy about traveling because he knows just how bad his old instance feels? Nah, fuck that," David said sagely, eliciting a surprised blink from Rhuar.

"I don't pretend that I'm going anywhere, because I'm not," he said. "But these are Eta-One's thoughts too, until I create him. Even though I'll still be Zeta-Two after the transfer, I'll think Eta-One's excited thoughts for him because I know how much I've appreciated the effort the last five times." He chuckled. "I think it's part of why all of the Davids get along much better than some other Alpha-lines. We just try to be good about the whole thing, we don't philosophize about it or overthink it."

"I'm feeling overthought," Rhuar muttered dazedly.

A wicked grin crept across David's face. "I think you're giving up early. No weakness allowed in my dojo! Tell me this: have you ever wondered what it would be like to use a teleporter?"

"Oh, you bastard," Rhuar breathed, a look of realization on his face. "You absolute fucking-"

Qktk rose from his chair and loudly clacked an arm into the table. "Both of you, quiet!", he clattered. "This conversation is…" His mandibles worked fruitlessly as he searched for the words. "Existentially morose!", he shouted in frustration. "A well of philosophical depression. You've ruined teleporters! Jim's saggy tits, I had always wanted to try a teleporter," he fumed grumpily. "Ruined!"

"What's with the shouting?", Jesri said, strolling into the meeting room.

"Just some spirited philosophical discussion," David said smoothly. Qktk slouched back in his chair with a sullen glower while Rhuar still stared straight ahead with his jaw hanging open in horror. Jesri looked quizzically at Anja, who shrugged while trying very hard not to laugh.

"Right, whatever," Jesri sighed. "Se Dasi said we can take a corvette and I get the feeling she'd prefer we do it quickly. Everyone, come help me do a preflight check so we can move it to the bow dock." She flicked a casual salute to David, who waved back, then followed a moping Qktk from the room.

David watched them go from his monitor, then sat down in his chair and sighed. "See you on board," he said quietly. The screen flickered off, leaving the meeting room to its dusty silence.

---

One hundred and fifty meters long, the line of blazing light cut across the hull of the Grand Design like a lambent wound. The edges of the seam crept closer together, nibbling away at the light until a resonant thump marked the closing of the great doors that shielded the ship's bow dock.

"Okay, the Cormorant is aboard!" Rhuar said cheerfully, his poor mood buoyed by the joy of remotely piloting the smaller ship. "Dock clamps are secure and her reactor is on standby."

"Excellent," purred Anja, once again slouching into her stereotypical captain's pose in the command chair. "Fuel?"

"Topped off from the station," responded Qktk. "Both ships."

"Fantastic. Navigation?", Anja inquired.

Jesri looked up and nodded. "We have the coordinates for the resistance headquarters. David, you online?"

"Yep, all settled in," he said, his voice echoing around the bridge. "Wow, too many speakers. Hold on…" A secondary tactical display flickered and changed to show him sitting in a cozy apartment, the night lights of a city flickering outside of a window behind him.

"There, that's better," he said, his voice issuing from a nearby duty station. "Transfer was successful and I'm good to go."

Anja peered over at Jesri. "Am I missing anything, sister?", she asked archly.

"The dignity of command," Jesri deadpanned. "We're all set."

"Then let's get to it," Anja said, ignoring the gibe. "Ensign Rhuar, take us out."

Rhuar gave a start and tore his attention away from David's display. "Aye sir," he said soberly. He lowered his head and stiffened a bit as he connected through the shipjack, the varied sounds of the bridge fading against the rising thrum of the main engines. Through the viewports, the walls of the station dock slid away to reveal the blazing arc of the galaxy.

Light from Nicnevin's distant, tiny sun painted the bridge in a soft glow, and Jesri felt the familiar thrill of a fresh jump begin to tingle through her. The corner of her eye caught David grinning like an idiot, his gaze flicking between what looked like several monitors outside the display's field of view.

He caught her looking and laughed. "My first time on a spaceship!", he said gleefully. "There are so many cameras to choose from I don't know-"

His happy rambling was drowned out by the roar of the engines as light poured over the viewports, curling away from the ship in phantom wisps as reality stretched thin off the bow. The glowing hoop of light formed and swept aft in an eyeblink before snapping shut behind them, leaving only a slowly dimming cloud of white fire behind.

---

A quiet start to the next arc. This chapter sees the story get longer than Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is appropriate for the episode where they just gave away control of their vidscreens and cameras to the man that always appears on them.

At the insistence of my editor I will refrain from too many more extended bouts of existentialist musing, for the sake of pacing if nothing else. It just seems strange to me that they wouldn't talk about things like that, or at least that Rhuar wouldn't ask. I maintain that making people seriously consider the teleporter problem is a public service.

For those of you who don't remember the schematic from before, the bow dock where they're stashing the Cormorant is located on the top bow. At 150 meters it's just long enough to squeeze in a corvette. It's probably not important, I just feel like you should know that.

Thanks again for the time you spend reading! I always look forward to reading your commentary.

 

[TMarkos]

The central market at the Elpis transit station was always busy with mixing crowds of a hundred species pushing past each other to grab at wares from as many stars. The smells of spices and perfume shouldered their way past the aromas of cooking meat and hot dough, a heady blend that the station's environmental systems never quite seemed to overcome.

It was perhaps the closest thing remaining to civilization in this patch of old Terran space, a nexus of commerce and transit that persisted through regime changes and territorial squabbles through sheer necessity and entrepreneurial spirit. Although nominally under Arrigh administration at the moment, outside governments never had much of an influence on station operations. Nothing aboard happened without the approval of the powerful business and crime syndicates that kept money and trade pumping through the station's veins.

Long residential blocks stretched away from the market in a radiating skein of hanging laundry and laughing children, a colorful gauntlet of obstacles for Anja, Jesri and Rhuar as they made their way deeper into the station. The two women had changed from uniforms back into their old hooded cloaks, allowing them to slip anonymously through the milling crowds.

Qktk was not present, having stayed to watch the Cormorant in her berth. Although the corvette offered them a lower profile compared to arriving on the Grand Design, the gleaming 138-meter warship still attracted quite a few curious looks as it loomed beside the patchwork freighters at its slip. The Htt captain had stayed behind to deal with anyone who moved beyond mere curiosity. Dockside thieves and cartel thugs couldn't put a scratch on the Terran battle alloys, of course, but everyone wanted to avoid the highly energetic unpleasantness that would result if someone managed to trip the ship's perimeter defenses.

Jesri didn't think Qktk would have enjoyed the station much anyway. He tended towards solitude, she had noticed, something that was in short supply on Elpis. The three of them were forced to drop into a single file as they squeezed past a knot of fiercely arguing Arrigh who barely registered their presence. She breathed a sigh of relief as they edged by into open space again and their oddly spicy aroma faded. She didn't mind crowds, but they were decidedly not relaxing for her.

This far from the souk the hallways were darker, dimmer where light fixtures had been cannibalized to replace broken ones in more affluent stretches of corridor. Disused side passages branched off at intervals, each with rows of doorways obstructed by debris or simply never unlocked for new owners. It was at one of these doors where the small group eventually stopped, Anja fiddling with the door's mossy access plate for a second before it opened to reveal a small and dusty room.

It had been a local security substation for the residential block, mostly a command post to allow diagnostics on the automated drones that made up the bulk of station security forces. It was cramped and dark inside, but as Anja swept the dust away from the post's large display screen it lit up brightly to show five smiling figures seated around a table. Their modest conference room looked like any other room on the station, save that it was clean and well-maintained rather than a dilapidated ruin.

"Major Tam, welcome," said a woman with short-cropped grey hair. "Captain Tam and - Rhuar, wasn't it? It's good to finally have a chance to talk. My name is Helene Chartres." She gave them a mildly puckish grin. "Welcome to the resistance."

"Dr. Chartres," Anja said mildly. Behind her, Jesri was scanning the other faces on the display. She mentally matched each one up with the names from David's story as Anja went through pleasantries with Helene. There was Chris Flores, tall and thin with a perennially wide-eyed look. Deepti Banerjee, with a friendly round face and threads of silver streaking through her long black hair. Yetide Adebayo, small, serious and unreadable. And-

Her eyes widened a bit seeing the last figure, slouched casually at the table. He wore David's face, but the man at the table was a complete stranger. Trim and muscular with short grey hair, his smile held a hard chill to it. Jesri had been somewhat amused when their jovial, wisecracking David had revealed he worked in Naval Intelligence, given her experience with the flint-eyed members of that agency. She found little humor in this man's appearance. The sound of her name interrupted her close study of his face.

"...was when Jesri made contact with David," Anja was saying in her briefing-room manner. She inclined her head to the rather more alarming version of David on the monitor, seemingly unperturbed by the differences. "Should I be referring to him as Zeta Two?", she asked politely.

David laughed, the dry sound doing nothing to change Jesri's first impression of him. "No need," he said. "We know where all the relevant deployments are, so we should be able to keep everything straight by context. We're all Deltas, in case you're wondering."

"Fair enough," replied Anja. "Any rate, David helped us deal with our sister," Anja said with a subtle tremor in her voice, "and with freeing the Irri. He is currently overseeing the rebuilding efforts back at Nicnevin, although he copied himself over to the Grand Design as well."

A murmur went up from the display and significant glances were exchanged. "He was able to establish himself on a shipborne computer?", David asked intently.

Anja nodded. "It seems he had to downsize his environment a bit, but he has been quite happy about the arrangement."

"I'll bet," said Chris somewhat enviously. "We've never found a mobile substrate large enough to use before this. He can go anywhere now."

"I'd rather he had been an Epsilon Seven than a… Are there any other David Etas yet? Would it be Eta One?", David mused. "Yes, I guess it would be. I'll take it, though," he said with another chilly smile.

Jesri directed her gaze at Helene. "Our David thought you'd find our sister's research to be of interest. We have all of her notes and logs here," she said, producing a data chit from her cloak.

"Excellent," Helene said, her eyes practically glowing as she looked at the chit. "Go ahead and plug that into the second console on the left there, we'll get to analyzing it. David, would you mind…?"

"Not at all," he said cheerfully. The scientists filed out in a rush of excitement, already murmuring amongst themselves as Jesri pulled some dusty, corroded chairs from a thin closet for their group. David laced his fingers behind his head and looked at them appraisingly.

"So," he said, "have my other instances told you anything about the lay of the land? Overall strategic situation and all that?"

"Not much," Jesri responded as she settled into her seat. "He said his assignment was outside of need-to-know for most major operations, and that he didn't want to give us outdated info."

He gave them a toothy grin. "See, the worst part of all this is that I can't even compliment him on excellent information protocol without seeming somewhat boastful. But that's good, it means we can start fresh with the general basics."

He stood up and tapped a few times on a tablet, overlaying a map on a portion of the display. "Okay," he coughed, "The Gestalt. Permanent base of operations is at the system colorfully designated 'Apollyon', here." He tapped again and a red halo appeared around a blank point on the screen.

"Then there's us," he continued. "We've got a load of human installations in various states of disrepair. Most are completely defunct, unfortunately." A wash of faded grey dots speckled the map. Out of the corner of her eye, Jesri saw Rhuar's eyes widen at the sheer number of stations.

"We've got two hundred and five stations with enough active support systems that people are still living on them," he said, adding some brighter dots to the mix. Anja exchanged a look with Jesri - that was more than they had known about. "Only about half those are worth writing home about, the rest are basically surviving on scum they scrape out of the vent ducts."

"Now," he grinned, rubbing his hands together. "Here's where it gets interesting. What do you notice about the distribution of stations?"

They stared at the map for a while, Jesri's mind running through patterns. Nothing jumped out at her, although she had never claimed a talent for analysis.

"It's… lopsided?" Rhuar said uncertainly. "There should be more active stations coreward based on the total population, but the active ones are skewed rimward." Jesri looked at him in surprise, then turned back to the map. The total number of active stations looked pretty evenly distributed, but if you took the increased density close to earth into account...

"Correct!", David beamed, "in particular, the proportion of active stations increases the farther you get from Apollyon. Any guesses on why?"

Anja rolled her eyes at him. "Are we briefing you?", she asked tiredly. "You obviously have theories."

"Unbiased viewpoints often yield new insights," he tutted. "And we're perennially short of fresh viewpoints in here."

Anja gave him a blank stare and he relented with a sigh. "Fine, fine," he said disappointedly. "We're fairly certain that the distribution was less skewed right after the Gestalt's attack. At some point during the intervening years, however, stations that weathered the brunt of the Gestalt attack with very little major systems damage were targeted for a follow-up action. Not further gamma-ray bursts, I might add, but visits from Emissaries."

Jesri blinked. "You're sure?", she asked incredulously. Emissaries had been rare even when they were in active contact with the Gestalt before the attacks. Their appearance was nearly always noteworthy.

David grinned at her. "We do have something of an inside line on the Gestalt, remember. But, no," he said as his grin faded. "This wasn't something we came by via our normal intelligence channels. We first discovered it when we tried deploying people to one of those stations. Preliminary checks showed nothing wrong, no worrying signs of activity. It was a relatively intact station despite being abandoned, so we were going to start with a two-person deployment and see if we could scale further upward."

He scratched at his chin. "We didn't hear the response we expected after we sent the data packet, and when we tried a follow-up the station's communications were disrupted. It was only two days later that we got a message, dribbled out in chunks so small they were almost indistinguishable from the background noise."

Text flashed on the screen in glaring red: SECURE STP COMPLETE.

Anja frowned and looked to David for clarification. "Self-termination protocol," he explained grimly. "They didn't think they could stay on the station undetected, so they destroyed any trace of their own universe on the ship's computers. We assume they were successful because the Gestalt hasn't moved to eliminate all of us yet."

"That's a lot to extract from such a short message," Rhuar observed. "How do you know it was the Emissaries and not another issue forcing them to shut down?"

David gave them another chilly smile. "I know what it means because I'm the one who sent it. Deepti and I were the two volunteers for that deployment. If we got that particular message from a team I was a part of, it was Gestalt activity and we were confident in our ability to scrub the system cleanly."

"Fair enough," Rhuar admitted, although Jesri could spot a slight shiver when he spoke. "Still, it's sparse information."

David nodded. "I admit it's not much. However, we started doing research after that. We heard stories passed down through the generations where people talked about being driven from their homes by faceless soldiers, by ships with incredible destructive power." He drew a circle around Apollyon on the map with a finger. "Where we could trace an origin for the story, they all led back here."

"But why?", Jesri asked. "What could the Gestalt possibly want with a bunch of burned-out stations? Its own tech is thousands of years beyond ours."

David's face was a humorless mask as he spoke. "It's the continued success of Project MANTRA, of course. Humanity's last and most successful endeavor. They tried to make themselves notable in the eyes of the Gestalt, to inspire it to study human thought with simulations and ultimately to self-infiltrate with human consciousness." He shook his head. "I suppose I can't fault them for that, since the plan worked perfectly up to that point. We came into being and created the inside advantage they were looking for."

He looked back up at them, his eyes narrow and cold. "But it didn't end there," he hissed. "First they call into question the validity of the Gestalt's existing models by acting unpredictably. Then, knowing it would seek to gather more information to improve its simulations, they seed their own networks with undetectable poison pills designed to awaken groups like ours. Every simulation gently sabotaged, every predicted outcome rendered invalid. A long-shot psyop that would only work against one enemy."

Anja nodded. "When we talked to the Emissary Trelir, he mentioned that the simulations they ran were unpredictable. He said it was quite disturbing for the Gestalt."

"He said we were an unknowable variable," Jesri agreed.

"Hah!", David barked. "Perfectly phrased. Yes, we were unknowable - because we maliciously made ourselves that way. The problem is, we didn't think about what that would mean to the Gestalt. We underestimated ourselves, overestimated our opponent. How could we not? Here it is, an ancient and powerful entity that has persisted for tens of thousands of years. It uses its vast resources to predict the perfect action to take in any scenario. Simulations guide it in every. Single. Action." He jabbed his finger at them to emphasize the point, and Jesri's heart sank.

"Oh shit," she whispered, remembering something else Trelir had said. For an entity like the Confluence, discovering an 'unknown unknown' is significant. It calls into question every assessment, every predictive-

She looked back up at David, who was watching her expectantly. "We scared it," she breathed.

"Yes!", David said triumphantly. "We took the most ancient and powerful entity humanity has ever encountered and unintentionally called into question the cornerstone of its fundamental decision-making process. They thought it would eventually realize that simulations weren't working and dig deeper, learn something new, but they were thinking too much like humans. This is an entity that hasn't been wrong about anything since we were eating mammoth for dinner. It hasn't even had to consider the concept of being wrong." David grimaced. "Then, inexplicably and without warning, the simulations fail. It's wrong and, worse, it doesn't know why. It panicked."

"And then it moved to eliminate the threat," Anja concluded, grim-faced.

"It did," David agreed. "And afterwards it moved on to identify and address the faulty predictive models."

"The stations!" Rhuar blurted. "It's still trying to gather more information and correct its models!"

"It has no other choice," David replied. A wry smile crept onto his lips. "Consider this: you're the Gestalt and you're working towards your project to nudge the universe into a lower vacuum state. You've even worked out how to survive the process - in simulations."

The three of them stared open-mouthed at David, then Anja collapsed into laughter. Jesri felt a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, but the whole thing was just too much for her to find funny.

"Holy shit," managed Rhuar, sounding dazed. "It can't make any big moves until it figures out what went wrong. It has no tolerance for error."

"We won? We stopped the Gestalt?", Anja managed, subsiding into another bout of giggles. "We saved the universe! Hooray!"

David looked out at them sadly from his viewscreen. "I wish you were right," he said, his voice morose. "But the scenario is far from resolved. It's true that we've cast doubt on all of its past predictions, forced it into indecision, but even if we can keep it in the dark forever-"

"Yeah, not with our luck," Rhuar grumbled.

"-we still have to consider its recent actions, which are potentially even more worrying in the short term," David concluded. "The stations. It's trying to absorb human knowledge to ensure that it has all available data about our species. It has a fundamental need to identify and correct the error we introduced. Even in the time we've been on the outside, it has acquired several new stations and begun the process of stripping them for information. The rate of expansion is increasing as it acquires new data."

Anja's manic giggles vanished as quickly as they had arrived. "And it won't find what it's looking for," she said. "If it could recognize the hidden instructions, it would have seen them in the existing simulation already."

"Right," David nodded. "So, knowing the Gestalt, it will simply keep searching. Every human station, every abandoned planet. The process will be methodical, patient. It will expand from station to station until it realizes what we did or runs out of stations. After that, your guess is as good as mine. Regardless of the final outcome, everyone still living in this section of the galaxy will die within the next few centuries."

His words hung in the air for a long moment before Jesri spoke. "You've briefed us on the scenario," she said, "but I assume you also have a plan that involves not dying."

He smiled at her again, a bit less chilly than before. "We have some thoughts. The Gestalt is an incredibly resilient opponent. Resources and energy are beneath its notice, it will produce countermeasures to address any threat it can anticipate no matter what the scale. We are currently a threat it cannot anticipate, but that changes as soon as we attack. Therefore, we have exactly one chance to surprise it."

Rhuar frowned. "So, what, we just hop into Apollyon and shoot everything we have at it?"

"Ah, no," David chuckled. "I'm afraid you may be underestimating the magnitude of the problem." He gave a little self-amused snort, then changed the display to show a large, spherical object in cutaway. "This is a basic structural diagram of the Gestalt," he said.

Fascinated, Jesri studied it. It was surprisingly simple in design, an oddly-striated shell enclosing a smaller spherical structure. "What's that at the center, a power source?", she asked.

"In a manner of speaking," David coughed. "It's a G-type star."

Jesri's eyes blurred as her brain readjusted the scale of the diagram upward. Far upward. Beside her, Rhuar made a soft choking noise.

"A Dyson sphere?", he sputtered. "The fuckers built a Dyson sphere?"

"If we're being technical, it predates Freeman Dyson by several thousand years," David said, adjusting his glasses. "Also, Dyson spheres are generally conceived of as being habitable on the inside surface. This is a pure computing construct, using both solar energy and temperature differentials to generate power."

"A matrioshka brain," Rhuar whispered, stunned. "No way. No fucking way. Those are impossible."

David smiled again and waggled his fingers at Rhuar. "Not impossible, I was born there. Improbably powerful, though. The Gestalt is very likely the most powerful thing in this galaxy, including everything we haven't met yet. It is perhaps the only individual Kardashev type-II entity in existence. It has access to energy and computing resources that stretch so far beyond our own that they are effectively infinite. So, no, we cannot just 'hop in and shoot everything we have at it.'"

Jesri just stared at the display, trying to make the scale fit in her mind. It was unbelievably massive, impossibly big. The thin-looking shell around the outside was actually a kilometers-thick metal encasement. What she had thought were striations were in fact canyons that could comfortably hide a small planet in their depths.

"How-?", asked Anja helplessly, staring at the diagram. Jesri could hear the incredulous defeat in her voice resonating against the same hollow ache in her chest. They had just learned that they had struck an improbably great blow against the enemy without lifting a finger, but that they could do no more. This was just…

"Too big?", smirked David. "I get that a lot. Don't worry, the plan doesn't involve trying to blow up the star or anything, although I won't claim we have all of the kinks worked out. The general idea is to split the physical and data layers into two fronts and execute complementary-"

He cut off as a low rumble vibrated through the walls of the room, looking around in confusion. "Was that on your end?", he asked.

Anja and Jesri were already out of their chairs, looking around. "Yes," Anja replied brusquely. "Sounded like an explosion, not close to us. Probably back at the main market-"

She stopped, gripping her chair tightly as a louder, closer rumble vibrated through the room. A light cloud of dust kicked up where the metal surfaces of the security consoles resonated sympathetically with the low tone.

"Right, David," Jesri said in clipped tones. "We need to table the strategic discussion. Can you help us get back to the docks?"

David winced. "Unfortunately, the more inhabited parts of the station have been pretty thoroughly stripped. We have minimal cameras, the security grid is mostly broken-"

Jesri walked over to the door and slid it open, letting the bright light from the hall in. In the distance towards the residential blocks, she could hear the faint sound of screams. Anja gave her a grim look, then turned back towards David's monitor.

"Any big guns?", she asked.

"Ah, I think there's a security armory nobody managed to raid about 200 meters spinward," he said, rummaging through a station map on his display. "Can't promise anything interesting is inside, but it's the only thing close to your position that might be useful."

"Hook into comms," Anja instructed him. Jesri could see David instinctively straighten up at the note of command in her voice. "Provide help where you can. Warn us if you spot enemy concentrations or have intel on their composition. Otherwise, we'll reconnect at the dock."

David nodded and snapped her a salute. "Understood, sir. I'll back you up where I can."

Anja returned the salute, then gestured to Rhuar. "Ensign, on me. We're going to move fast."

Rhuar nodded, then dashed to follow her out the door as the trio sprinted down the hall towards the armory. David watched the door hiss shut again, then sighed and deactivated the monitor.

---

The central market at the Elpis transit station was always busy - why else would they have come? A robust and thriving economy was a rare thing these days, and the Arrigh had provided the hands-off touch needed for the transport cartels to truly begin moving products. Food, materials, fuel, weapons, drugs, slaves - it all moved through Elpis at some point, flowing through the darkened hallways and into abandoned rooms.

Now it would flow back out. His raiders streamed off their battered ships, fatigued and stinking from the long flight over. The prospect of a fight reinvigorated them, the chance to reclaim lost glory surging through them with restorative power. There would be time for sleep, time for food once the cattle of this merchant station were subdued.

He walked down the ramp of his own ship, feeling the click of his talons on the cool metal deck and resisting the urge to scratch at his face. He could see captains being hauled out of their ships up and down the dock, hear the chatter of weapons fire as some cartel enforcers resisted his troops in a doomed attempt to protect their goods. It didn't matter. His men were trained, hardened, desperate.

"Warfather!", shouted one of his junior officers, his face smeared with dust and blood. "Warfather Tarl!"

Tarl turned towards the man as he ran towards him, keeping his face neutral. "Just Tarl," he said quietly. The right side of his face itched, but he held still. "What is it, spearbrother?"

"We've found a ship in the next segment, W-", the officer said excitedly, barely stopping himself in time. "It's smaller, but it appears to be human in origin."

Tarl's smile bloomed slowly over his face, revealing needle-sharp teeth beneath his yellow lips. His right cheek twinged in pain, the motion stretching the scarred flesh and causing it to dig into the metal patch over his eye.

He ignored the pain. Here, after wandering lost between desolate outposts and forgotten garrisons. Here was where his fortunes would begin to rise once more. How could they not? His fleet lost, his king dead, his planet devastated, his title stripped. He had nothing left save for his bloodied ambition, desperate soldiers and - above all - the sweet promise of revenge. Yes, that most of all. He looked down at the officer with his good eye and spoke, the clear tones of command returning to his voice.

"Show me."

---

Hey, I remember that guy! I'm sure it'll be fine, the Ysleli have always given me the impression that they're a level-headed and peaceful bunch.

With this chapter the story is longer than The Hobbit! But roads go ever on and on, and we're already hard at work on the next chapter.

I always enjoy reading your commentary and appreciate you taking the time out of your day to read more descriptions of hallways. We'll be back next week with part 24!

 

[TMarkos]

Kirr slammed through the rough barricade that stood in the doorway, sending splinters of light plastic and shreds of cloth sprinkling across the deck. A muffled scream came from inside, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkened interior he saw an Arrigh crouched in the corner with its hand tightly pressed over a child's mouth.

Keeping his gun trained on the pair, he gestured sharply for the rest of his team to sweep the home. The state of the place didn't leave him optimistic about their take, but this was his block to raid and he was going to be thorough about it. He wouldn't be the one explaining to the warfather why his team had the lowest haul of the crew.

He heard a loud clatter to his left as Sark and Trisr smashed some makeshift cabinets. Kirr sighed and rounded on them with a snarl. "Careful, idiots!", he hissed. "Are you soldiers on raid or simple brigands? You want to smash all the goods? Huh?" He bared his teeth at their muttered apologies and turned back to the dwelling's residents, only to find that they had disappeared in his momentary distraction.

"Blackened breath," he cursed. "You two will drive me to an early grave. Trisr, keep searching. Sark, with me." Kirr advanced with his weapon ready, pushing past the gently swaying curtain that screened the only other exit from the room. It would be unfortunate if this family decided to be heroes over the loss of their meagre possessions - raids always ran smoother when the cattle didn't get lofty ideas about retribution. If these two did, well - he'd just have to show them the price of resistance.

The second room was empty as well, rough furniture shoved aside to reveal a poorly cut hole into a third dark space beyond. For all their appearances of poverty, they had a large home. He motioned for Sark to follow and ducked through the low hole, finding himself in a long corridor that stretched away into darkness on either side. Humming machinery and burbling pipes ran along the length of the space, dotted with dark gaps where side corridors branched off into inky blackness.

"Kirr, let's head back," Sark urged, glancing around nervously. "They're running, let's just finish the block."

"An idiot and a coward," Kirr snarled disdainfully. "Use your shriveled brain, Sark. Why would these cattle go to the trouble of cutting a hole in the bulkhead?"

Sark thought for a moment. Kirr swore he could hear the click and clank of rusted machinery. "To escape?" Sark said hopefully.

Kirr smacked him on the nose with the back of his hand. "Idiot!" he growled. "To hide their valuables. A place like this is perfect for stashing good loot. Help me look around." He began moving slowly down the corridor, weapon held high to shine its mounted light into the dark nooks created by the pipes and conduits.

Behind him he heard a sharp hiss of breath from Sark. He shook his head, another growl of frustration slipping from between his teeth. "The pipes are hot, you blackened idiot," he snarled. "Watch yourself." He took a few more steps, then paused as a tickle of uneasiness pulsed through him. He raised his gun and turned behind him.

Sark wasn't there. He felt fear rush through his scales, tingling them with an electric thrill. "Sark!" he hissed loudly. "Where are you? Trisr!" Only the soft noises of the pipes answered. Kirr clicked his communicator a few times, but only static found him in the confines of the dark hallway. He cursed again under his breath and began to carefully move back to the breach in the corridor. Something was very wrong. He had to go back, find the rest of the group-

He felt a sudden pang of cold in his neck, sharp and painful. He tried to pivot and engage his attacker, but nothing happened - the icy chill seemed to spread through his throat, below which he could feel nothing. He slumped down to the ground, a thin arm darting from behind him to snatch his tumbling weapon before it could clatter to the deck.

Kirr's mind was a fog of pain and confusion, blackness nibbling at the corners of his vision. He couldn't think straight, which vaguely irritated him. If he could just clear his thoughts, he was sure he'd know why all of this was Sark's fault.

---

Anja wiped the dark Ysleli blood from her knife and sheathed it, straightening back up as the corpse of the raider fell to the side. A wound at the base of its skull spread a small dark pool that dripped through the perforations in the utility deck grating. Ahead of her, Jesri walked back out of the breach in the corridor. "All clear?", Anja asked.

Jesri nodded. "Just one more in there," she reported, "he wasn't any trouble. The actual owners are long gone. We should keep going towards the docks, we have to assume someone will notice these guys are missing." She gave Anja a pointed look. "Would have been nice to avoid them entirely."

Anja shrugged. "The one in back had sharp eyes, he spotted Rhuar. If he had been busy talking like the idiot in front, they might be all right."

Rhuar's ears drooped sheepishly, and Jesri ruffled the fur on his head. "No helping it now," she shrugged. "Let's move." She stooped to pick up a long, grey breaching rifle from where she had stashed it, slinging it over her shoulder. The armory had been a bust, mostly, save for one long gun and a few other items of questionable utility.

The three of them resumed their march down the long utility tunnel. Mats of moss and slick algae splayed across the corridor at intervals where moisture escaped the labyrinth of piping, forcing them to mind their footing over the slimy green carpet. The dim corridor seemed to stretch into infinity, amber light fading into darkness in the extremity of their vision.

Once they had walked a few more minutes, Jesri pulled out a comm and raised it to her lips. "David, you there?", she whispered. "Any word from Kick?"

There was a pause, then a crackle of static. "No response yet," came David's voice, indistinct through the shielding metal of the tunnel. "I don't have any eyes in the dock, but I don't read any intense activity from the intact scanners in the area."

"Shit," she muttered. "How about the Grand Design?"

"I got in touch with Eta-One earlier via tightbeam," he replied. Jesri thought she detected a hint of disdain in his voice. "He forwarded over the Ysleli language pack that you compiled at Ysl, I'll have it loaded in a few minutes."

Jesri nodded before remembering it was a radio link. "That'll be helpful, thanks," she said. "He ready to move in?"

There was another short pause. "We talked it over," David replied. "He's ready to go, but we decided to hold him in reserve just out of the system. He can be in-system in twenty seconds if we need him."

"Acknowledged, keep us posted," Jesri replied, anxiety evident in her voice. She stowed the comm and shook her head. "Dammit, Kick. Pick up the fucking comm."

Anja clapped her on the shoulder and flashed her teeth in a grin. "Why are you worried?" she teased Jesri. "He fought off the whole Ysleli fleet before. A few raiding parties in the dock will be easy by comparison."

Jesri sighed. "I suppose," she said. "I just can't help but worry about the guy. He doesn't have the temperment for combat."

Beside her, Rhuar chuckled softly. "The captain might surprise you," he said slyly. "But in this case I don't think it'll matter. He's locked up in the ship, behind the perimeter guns and military-grade hull plate. He could sleep through this and be fine."

Jesri had to laugh at that mental image. "Ah, you're probably right," she admitted. "Still, I feel better if I could talk to him."

"He probably hasn't even noticed anything is going on," Rhuar quipped. "The first thing he'll ask is what took us so long to get back."

---

"It seems you've miscalculated for the last time," Qktk sneered, his mandibles clattering menacingly. "Now your defeat is inevitable." He reached out one glossy black arm to tap the Go board in front of him, causing a stone to materialize.

He leaned back and chuckled, regarding the game board for a few seconds before he waved his arm and cleared it. What was that, his third game against himself? His fourth? How long had the others been gone? He looked around the deserted stateroom, feeling a bit silly at indulging in theatrics.

A low tone sounded once, a resonant and mournful note that set parts of his carapace vibrating sympathetically. He winced and clapped arms over the offending segments. The note faded and he relaxed, swiveling his head in curiosity. He couldn't hear any other odd noises.

Was that an alarm? He looked around again, confused. No information display followed the tone, and there were no display panels in the stateroom that were showing critical data. For all its futuristic glory, the Cormorant was substantially less user-friendly than the Grand Design. Perhaps it was an older model of ship?

His train of thought was cut short by a sharper, louder noise, pitching up in the distinctive trill of an alarm. Faintly, he could hear the humming whine of a capacitor discharge. "Oh, damn," he muttered, hauling himself up from the chair. "Better go see what that was."

---

Tarl regarded the boiling smear of gore that had been a soldier only seconds before. "Hm," he noted. "So that noise was a warning after all." He turned to another soldier beside him, who jumped at the chance to look away from the smoldering mess. "See that nobody else approaches the ship," Tarl instructed. "No closer than we are now, not until we have more information."

He turned his face back towards the ship in time to see a gun turret fold seamlessly back into the hull. Tarl had to wonder at the sheer overengineered majesty of human design. Automated sentry guns were nothing new, of course, but the Ysleli variant typically weren't scaled to vaporize a small vehicle. It seemed that the humans built big as a primary consideration, leaving discretion to the whim of the operator.

It was a philosophy he could appreciate. He strode away from the ship and found his communications officer, Reln, who snapped a salute has he approached.

"No messages from the ship," Reln reported crisply. "It appears to be vacant."

Tarl gestured his acknowledgment. "Keep watching," he said. "Let me know if anything else emerges."

"There is something…", Reln said hesitantly. Tarl snapped him an impatient look and flicked his claws in irritation.

"Apologies. We've had three raiding teams miss check-in within the same segment. Here, here and here," he said, tapping his stubby claws on a crudely drawn map of the station's layout. "They aren't so late that I would otherwise mention it, but with the human ship here…"

Tarl tapped his claws on the table. Three teams missing their reports was not unheard of, but it was decidedly unusual. He stared at the scrawled map of the station, tracing lines between the three points mentally. "Evasion," he rumbled softly.

"I don't follow," Reln admitted.

"Look here," he said, succumbing to the temptation of talking strategy. It wasn't dignified to chat with the men, but he wasn't the warfather anymore. Why retain the limitations without the benefits? He traced a claw delicately between the first two points. "These two form a line heading directly for this dock. After the second encounter, they change course. They know two points provides a trajectory, and we may try to intercept them here." He tapped a point farther down the station corridor.

"They naturally shift to the third corridor, as they wish to avoid creating a string of missing teams pointing to their destination. Of course, they run into another group first, here," he continued, indicating the third disappeared team. "I presume they intended to take this series of corridors down to the same eventual destination at the dock."

The communications officer nodded sharply. "Shall I send a team to intercept further along the branch?" he asked, wilting when Tarl turned to regard him disappointedly.

"No," Tarl sighed, regretting his indulgence already. "Remember the words of Warfather Rurlir. 'The commander who pursues a dullard inevitably finds himself.' If you saw the interception point so easily, why could they not do the same?" He shot a reproachful look at Reln, who hung his head. "Always assume your enemies are smarter. The normal tactic," he continued, "would be to swing even further wide of your intended goal and intercept another team, to create a false trail leading out from your objective." He poised his claw over another corridor and left it hovering in the air.

"However," he mused, "there is the matter of the ship. These may be humans and their allies. That they're attacking our teams is strange, but if it is them…" He tapped his claw on the map. "They will be confident, and rightfully so. They will not feel the need to waste time with a ruse." He moved his claw tip back to the original corridor and tapped a point closer to the dock. "Send a team here. Make sure they're briefed on the humans we know of and clear on their instructions. They will be moving fast, trying to reach the docks before we realize where they're going."

Reln shot to his feet. "Right away. Shall I also send a team to the far corridor?"

Tarl looked at him curiously. "What for?", he asked.

Feeling wrongfooted again, Reln was suddenly reluctant to speak. "In case they aren't humans," he mumbled.

To his surprise, Tarl's teeth flashed in amusement. "Ah, Reln," he said, his voice dropping from joviality into deadly seriousness as he leaned close. "If they aren't humans, I don't care. Send the team."

"Yes, Warfa-", he said, biting back his words. "Yes. Right away." He grabbed his headset and began issuing orders as Tarl stalked off.

---

Sparks flew as Ysleli fire caromed off the doorframe, forcing Jesri to duck her head back into the storefront. "Fuck!", she spat. "They've locked down the hallway, they're in the opposite stall." More shots rang from the opposite storefront, zinging across the deserted market hall.

Behind her, Anja peeked over a low counter to fire a short burst from her sidearm. She was rewarded with a wet gurgle from the far stall and a short respite in the oncoming fire. "It looks that way," she said mildly. "I think we may need to explore alternate routes."

Jesri slid out into the doorway and snapped off a few shots before an answering volley forced her back again. "Anja, this is the alternate route," she retorted. "They're on to the maintenance corridors, and it's too easy for them to trap us there. We have to break out of this location and head to the central market."

"Fine," Anja sighed, reaching into the folds of her cloak. She lobbed a small object casually over the counter and through the door of the opposing market stall. "I was trying to save that for later. Cover me!"

She vaulted the counter before Jesri could shout a protest. Jesri popped up and fired short bursts over her sister's head as she ran low towards the doorway. Across the hall, a panicked yell was drowned out by the distinctive clap and crackle of a stun grenade. As soon as the last fuzz of static died away, Anja ducked through the doorway and began firing with her pistol.

As Anja vanished into the store Jesri slumped down against the wall, balancing her rifle across her knees. She closed her eyes for a brief second, listening to the clap of Anja's pistol and short bursts of Ysleli fire. When she opened them again, Rhuar was staring at her curiously.

"You're not going to help?", he asked. From across the hall a panicked stream of unintelligible Ysleli shouting cut off sharply at the sound of more pistol fire.

"Nah," said Jesri, resting her eyes. She leaned her head back against the cool metal, feeling the slight resonant vibration with every gunshot. Rhuar looked at her again, then settled down beside her.

"You, ah, sure she's gonna be okay?", he asked.

Jesri remained silent, trying to make the most of her brief moment of relaxation. She listened as a single Ysleli weapon clicked on an empty cylinder, its owner futilely pulling the trigger again and again. There was a wet crunch, then a gasp, then nothing. Rhuar shifted uncomfortably beside her. Footsteps sounded, then paused briefly. A low, thin wail echoed through the hall before ending abruptly with a final pistol shot. For a few seconds, silence returned to the market.

Jesri opened her eyes and slapped her hands against her calves, giving Rhuar a cheery smile. "Right, I think that's it. Ready to go?" He stared at her warily.

Anja popped her head through the door, her hair somewhat mussed. Specks of dark blood dotted the hem of her cloak. "I only had one of those, so we had better clear out," she said. "Unless you picked one up?"

Jesri shook her head and levered herself upright, slinging her rifle onto her back again. "No such luck," she replied. They set off down the hallway at a brisk pace, Rhuar bringing up the rear with a bemused expression.

"Those guys seemed different from the last group," he observed.

"Not looters," Jesri agreed, tossing him a look over her shoulder. "Someone's trying to catch us. It's a good thing we got the drop on them, we took out at least a third of the group in that first volley."

Rhuar gave her a flat look. "I thought you said doubling back would avoid search parties."

This time it was Anja who answered, grinning at her sister's annoyed look. "It just means someone smarter than the average raider is leading them," she said. "We should be careful once we reach the market."

"Do we have to worry about Qktk, if that's the case?", Rhuar asked. "If he's alone-"

"I wouldn't," Jesri replied. "Remember, he's on the ship. As long as he stays on the ship, they can't touch him."

---

"Someone's leaving the ship!"

Tarl looked over at the human warship to see a thin ramp extending from the hull. He peered intently at the narrow doorway that seemed to emerge from smooth, unblemished metal, its opening obscured momentarily by a rush of steam. As it cleared, Tarl saw-

Legs. Far too many legs, joined to a nightmarish segmented torso and a similarly unfortunate overabundance of small grasping arms. A large, bulbous head perched atop the rest, its top quarter covered with midnight-black glossy eyes. Tarl's throat constricted, his fists tightening in anticipation.

There was a moment of silence as they watched the unsettling arthropod descend to the deck, then one of his soldiers pointed a quavering finger. "Blackened skies, it's the Demon!", he cried. "The Demon Shipmaster!"

Other voices rose from the tumult. "The Nightmare of Ysl!", one bellowed, gripping his weapon. "Ready arms!"

"HOLD!", Tarl thundered, raising a clenched fist. "The first man who so much as-"

Before he could finish his dire pronouncement the soldier who had yelled sprang forward in a fit of battle fever, spraying the oncoming figure with a full magazine from his weapon. Qktk paused, looking at him expressionlessly. A few shots pinged off of a bubble of force surrounding him, causing it to ripple with white fire before subsiding to transparency once more.

The soldier stared dumbfounded for a fraction of a second before a bolt from the ship's automated cannon caught him full in the chest, spreading the contents of his torso across eight square meters of decking. There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by the rustling of Tarl's soldiers gently, slowly lowering their rifles.

Qktk walked the rest of the way towards their group unmolested, pausing some distance away to incline his head in greeting. "Warfather," he rattled.

"Shipmaster," Tarl responded, returning the greeting and leaving the correction for another moment. He studied Qktk with interest. His counterpart was every bit as terrifying as he remembered from the few minutes of negotiations they'd shared before, although he hadn't anticipated the infamous Nightmare of Ysl being quite so short. The little alien barely rose to his waist, staring upwards at Tarl with its sea of black eyes.

Tarl cleared his throat. "I must apologize for the rudeness of my men," he said formally.

Qktk waved an arm dismissively. "I wasn't harmed. The ship protects her crew," he said, fixing a few glinting eyes on Tarl's. "The Cormorant won't let anything happen to me."

Tarl returned the stare, acknowledging the implicit warning with a bob of his head.

"So," Qktk clattered, his arms rubbing together with an unsettling fluidity. "What brings you and your men to Elpis?"

Tarl barked a quick laugh at the casual question. "The inevitabilities of logistics," he replied. "Food, fuel, air." He narrowed his eyes and stared down at Qktk, his talons flexing involuntarily with anticipation. All of the long hours searching for strength and information after the fall of Ysl had led to this moment.

"And you?", he hissed. "What of your real ship? I will be frank, I have been searching for you and your crew for some time."

"Oh?", replied Qktk, going very still. "With what purpose?"

Tarl curled his fingers into a fist. "Revenge, of course," he said, his voice low and smooth. "Your enemies are now mine. I must know everything about the ship that devastated my home."

Qktk regarded him silently for a moment, then took a small tablet from his belt. "Warfather, I have an interesting acquaintance you should meet."

Tarl squeezed his fists again, feeling his talons slice through the skin of his palm. He didn't even think of correcting Qktk's use of his title. The sad ashes of his home could say what they like, in this moment he was a warfather once more.

---

Jesri's breath roared hot in her ears as she ran flat out through the market hall. Ysleli bullets sparked and pinged off the metal deck around her, missing her by scant centimeters as she serpentined towards the exit hall to the docks.

"Rhuar, the door!", she yelled. He had easily outpaced her and was far ahead towards the ship, but he slowed and cocked an ear. "Close the fucking door!", she shouted.

He yipped an acknowledgment and raced ahead to the dock entryway, paws skidding on the smooth metal. She spun and sprayed a burst of fire behind her, sending the Ysleli diving behind the ruined market stalls for cover. Plastic blistered and smoked where her shots hit, sending acrid smoke curling up to the ceiling. A punctured container spewed brine and fermenting vegetables across the floor, contributing to the unsavory aroma.

She grinned and turned to run once more as Anja flew past firing her pistol blindly over her shoulder. The two sisters raced down the hall to where Rhuar was frantically rewiring the door panel to the docks, his exoskeletal arms a blur of flashing metal. Angry yells and a renewed fusillade signaled that the Ysleli had recovered their momentum, and Jesri felt her vision narrowing as she strained to reach the doorway.

Less than a second after they crossed the threshold, Rhuar yanked a board from the depths of the access panel to send the door crashing down with a floor-rattling impact. Jesri and Anja spun around, weapons ready, but the muffled din of bullets and shouting soldiers was barely audible behind the half-meter thick metal blast door.

"Ha!", Jesri grinned. "Great work, Rhuar."

He looked back towards her and blanched, his grin dying on his lips. Seeing the look on his face, both sisters spun to face the docks, weapons raised-

And saw almost two hundred Ysleli soldiers staring at them in shock. One made to lift his rifle, nearly earning a shot to the face from Jesri's own gun, but his squadmates grabbed his wrist with a harsh whisper. He lowered his weapon, throwing a nervous glance over his shoulder at the Cormorant.

"Captain Jesri Tam!", a voice rang out, deep and commanding. Feeling a chill in her stomach, Jesri turned her gaze towards the speaker. Wearing a shining metal patch over one eye, Tarl sat on a crate next to Qktk amid a gaggle of lost-looking Ysleli officers studying the three new arrivals. A tablet propped on another crate showed David's amused face. Qktk sagged in relief at the sight of them, his limbs twitching oddly.

"So it was you fighting my men," Tarl said with grim satisfaction. "I thought as much. I apologize for any misunderstanding, the enlisted soldiers may have gotten overzealous despite my instructions regarding your crew. If you tell me which of my teams initiated hostilities I will see them disciplined for it."

Jesri stared at him for a moment. "No, ah," she said, suddenly feeling like she could use a drink of water. "The misunderstanding was partially our fault. Think nothing of it." She ignored Rhuar's incredulous look from beside her.

"Excellent," Tarl said, standing up and walking over to them. He leaned in close to the group, his remaining eye twinkling with excitement. "I have to know though, as one warrior to another - how were they? Did they die well?"

"Their situational awareness was poor," Anja said flatly. Jesri winced.

Tarl gave her an appraising look. "You weren't at our last discussion," he said, a statement rather than a question. "Who are you?"

"Major Anja Tam," she said, staring back without blinking. "You must be Tarl."

The two locked gazes for a moment. Jesri kept her hand steady on her rifle as she watched.

"Hah, interesting," Tarl chuckled, stepping back with a respectful nod. "We must speak later. An honor to meet you, Anja Tam." Jesri let out a puff of breath and slouched against a crate. Tarl stalked back over to the crate where David waited with an uninterpretable smile on his face.

"Now, David," he said, tripping a bit over the unfamiliar consonants. His mouth stretched wide, showing his needle-sharp teeth. "Tell me more about our enemy."

---

As you may have gathered, Tarl doesn't believe in insurmountable obstacles - he's a very positive person. With this chapter, the story is longer than Welcome to the Monkey House (in aggregate). I've been sitting here for about ten minutes trying to make a tortured comparison to Harrison Bergeron, so let's just pretend I've been successful and move on with our lives. My editor wishes me to convey her profound disappointment.

Thanks again for your time spent reading and for your commentary. Tune in next week for "Conversations with Pirate Tarl and Scary David."

 

[Simonbob]

I would have given this a Funny, if it wasn't so dark.

 

[TMarkos]

I would have given this a Funny, if it wasn't so dark.

Click to shrink...

A little laughing, a little meaningless death and suffering. Whoops! It's a little in-joke of mine that from any other perspective in the story our protagonists are flat-out tragedies to encounter. The only person who has had a taste, escaped and come back for more is Tarl, and that's only because he's half-desperate and trained from birth to see adversity as the setup for later glory. Everyone else is either dead or never wants to see them again.

 

[FacelessRobot]

Hey, I would read this, but the font hurts my eyes. Any chance you could edit it to the default SV font?

 

[TMarkos]

Hey, I would read this, but the font hurts my eyes. Any chance you could edit it to the default SV font?

Click to shrink...

Hoo boy, that'd be a lot of editing. I made the swap just because SV's font is strangely larger than most other sites I post on and I wanted to keep the character/line ratio roughly similar. Unfortunately we're about 24 posts in, so I'm probably not going to edit the font on each post at this point. I do have it posted a few other places if you'd care to read it elsewhere. GD is available on Reddit, SpaceBattles and I'd particularly emphasize Royal Road as it allows you to set custom appearance and font to suit your tastes. Sorry about the misalignment in font preference!

 

[TMarkos]

Tarl stared into the void. He had walked away along the docks, down to the farthest extremities of the curving slips until the walkways ended and he was faced with the shimmering wall of the retention field. The stars blazed beyond, cold points of light in midnight black.

As she approached him, Anja dropped her normally stealthy gait and allowed her footsteps to herald her presence. He didn't respond when she moved to stand beside him, but shifted his weight slightly as he acknowledged her presence. They stood there at the far railing for some time, Anja standing with folded arms and Tarl with his clawed hands gripping the cold metal.

Eventually he turned to regard her, breaking away from his contemplation of the sky. "We are some distance from the group, Anja Tam," he rumbled. "I somehow doubt you walked this far just to look at the stars."

"Did you?", she asked, drawing a hiss of amusement from the old warfather.

"Ah," he said, "probably not. If I can indulge in some candor between two old soldiers, I found myself contemplating the road ahead after David's briefing. The things he said..."

Tarl trailed off and the two of them looked out to the stars for a few moments longer.

"I had heard of similar things in the past," he continued. "Fanciful, wasteful speculation, or so I thought. What good is it to speak of harnessing a star or yoking a billion minds to a machine when the progress of one's life today depends on victory in battle, cultivation of strength and wit, and the glory of supremacy over all? What good did it do any of us, dreaming of what we may yet be?"

He bared his teeth and scowled. "And yet here I stand, up against an enemy who indulged in those fanciful dreams. Everything I worked to achieve, all of my battles and misery, it counts for nothing in the face of their power. I burn for revenge but my enemy will never feel it."

"There is no maneuver, no strategem, no stroke of genius that can make me a credible threat to this Gestalt," he rasped, raising his head to look at Anja. "I was full of hope when I saw your ship, full of the expectation that I may at last find a way to realize our vengeance. And then I hear that they are as far out of your reach as they are mine. It is a hopeless cause, and though we may yet die for it I will gain no satisfaction at the end." He gripped tightly onto the rail and turned back to stare into space. "I do not mourn for myself, but it is a poor end for Ysl," he hissed.

Anja dropped her arms and moved to stand beside him at the rail, a contemplative look on her face. "When the Gestalt destroyed Earth," she said, "I was returning from a mission with another of my sisters, Mia. We emerged from hyperspace at the transit station around Mars to find it totally destroyed. We cast our sensors across the whole system, found not a trace of life. The planets were scoured to bare rock, the stations and asteroid habitats vented to space. Tens of billions, dead." Tarl twitched his head as she named the toll, but he did not respond.

"We jumped off to the nearest military base at Epsilon Eridani," she continued, "But that was gone as well. We emerged from hyperspace just as the shipyards fell into the planet's atmosphere." Anja felt an involuntary shiver trace up her spine as she recalled the spectacle, the twisting support girders flaring from red to yellow-white as the habitat modules exploded around them with puffs of sparkling gas and metal fragments.

"We had thought initially that someone attacked Earth in a surprise strike, but after Eridani we knew it was more than just one system," she whispered. "We started to jump to lesser systems, civilian stations, but they were all destroyed. No transit stations meant we had to spend days in between stars, waiting to see if the next one had been attacked. Every one had, until we reached Indomitable."

She looked back from the stars to smile at Tarl, bitterness written into her face. Tarl stared back expressionlessly, his solitary black eye unreadable. "We were so happy to see the station in one piece that we let ourselves believe the comms had been knocked out. We had to dock and see the bodies before we admitted to each other what the silence meant. The station was mostly intact, but everyone aboard was dead. Bodies everywhere, stinking in the hallways and lying in piles by the common areas. The smell..." She shuddered, remembering. "Five thousand years later, the smell of death just reminds me of that station."

"That was when I knew - it was more than just a few systems. I knew that it was everyone, everywhere. My colleagues, my friends, my sisters. Everyone I had ever met, aside from Mia. I had no idea how, or why, or who did it," Anja spat, anger creeping into her voice, "just that it had happened and that we were somehow spared. My sister was convinced there had to be more survivors somewhere, she wanted to refuel and keep looking. I knew, knew there were no more and tried to convince her to hide, keep a low profile until we knew what had happened. No matter what I said she was determined to leave. She took the ship and I stayed on the station."

Anja stopped talking for a little while and turned back towards the dock exit, her fingers drumming mindlessly on the railing. "I gave up on seeing her again after five years on the station," she said softly. "After eight years I was…" She hesitated, searching for the proper words. Tarl was watching her curiously, having turned to lean back against the railing. Anja could see the streaks of shiny metal where he had gripped the top bar earlier, his claws scratching against the finish.

"There is a disorder that affects my kind, if our mental state deteriorates enough," Anja explained briefly, finding herself reluctant to dwell on the subject. "We simply stop moving, our minds captured in a feedback loop. It can last for days, weeks, years even. Eight years after my sister left, I found a chair in a small room on the station and sat down to rest. I did not get up for three hundred years."

Tarl didn't give any sign that he found her claim incredible, though he did straighten up to study her face with interest. Finally, he leaned back against the railing and drummed his claws against his forearm. "I can see the appeal," he said after a long pause. "Too well, I think. So tell me, Anja Tam. After sitting alone for so long, why did you stand again?"

Anja almost smiled at the intensity in his stare, but decided not to risk insulting him. "I got a message," she said. "My sister Jesri came to the station and broadcast a signal to see if anyone was aboard. I was so surprised that I fell out of my chair. I responded to her at once, then dragged myself to the medical bay. I was in poor condition after all of those years immobile and barely made it, but by the time Jesri docked and made it to my room I was completely restored."

The light in Tarl's eyes dimmed a bit. "Your kind seems to value family greatly," he said. "Among the Ysleli it is considered a sign of weakness to reach adulthood before you have defeated your hatchmates in combat. Only the best move on."

Anja couldn't resist a slight giggle at that, finding it a very Ysleli custom. "That would have been quite destructive if my family participated," she chuckled. "But it was more than just being happy to see my sister. When Mia left I was certain she was mistaken, fatally mistaken. The enemy had taken too much from me too quickly. The Gestalt was this terrible, perfect opponent in my mind, something against which there was no hope of victory. When I heard Jesri's voice, the first thing I had heard in centuries, I was…"

She hesitated again, the smile slipping from her face. "I was ashamed, Tarl. I felt such black, crushing shame when I sat in that autodoc, feeling it knit me back together again. Jesri was lost, hurting, just as crushed as I was by the deaths of so many. She too recognized that she couldn't defeat the Gestalt, but unlike me her reaction was to seek weapons, seek allies. I had sat uselessly for half my life just gathering dust and waiting for death to claim me. I had wasted three hundred years of time because I thought I was already defeated. I had failed my allies, my sisters and myself."

Tarl gave her an odd look, but said nothing. She looked back towards the stars, watching the slight shimmer of the retention field distort the tiny pinpricks like heat haze. "I never told Jesri what I had done on the station before she arrived," she admitted. "She simply assumed that I had been gathering information like she had and I never corrected her. I have tried to be who she thought I was since that day."

He nodded, considering. "I shall keep it in confidence," he reassured her. "It seems as though-"

Tarl broke off as a loud bang echoed from the far end of the dock, followed by shouting. He frowned. "It seems as though things are proceeding without us," he amended. "I must attend to this."

Anja nodded and fell in beside him as he walked quickly back down the dock. "You may not have siblings, Tarl," she said, "but you have your men. I know what it feels like to fight soldiers who believe in their commander. If there is no path forward for Tarl, be the Warfather until one appears." She flashed him a small grin.

He bared his teeth in response. "I appreciate your counsel, Anja Tam," he rumbled. "I will consider it. Now come, let's see what my men are shouting about." He increased his pace to walk several steps ahead of her. Anja jogged after him, the smile slipping from her face.

---

"We will not have terms dictated to us by an unruly mob of yellow-scaled thieves!", screamed the Arrigh administrator, his shiny carapace quivering with anger.

Jesri sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, feeling an impending headache. It had taken no more than a few hours of cease-fire before the station government and syndicate leaders felt emboldened enough to rally in response to the Ysleli raid. While Tarl's troops could crush their sad little militia easily (something Tarl had enthusiastically and repeatedly offered to demonstrate) Helene and her fellow resistance members had urged caution.

They had a point. While the local militia was pitiful, the Arrigh had invested heavily in Elpis and would not tolerate a station takeover. Any forces they could bring to bear would likely be outmatched by Tarl's ships and positively laughable against the Grand Design, but Jesri had to agree that a confrontation was best avoided. The cost in lives aside, it would be supremely inconvenient and highly visible if they started fighting a siege around Elpis while trying to plot moves against the Gestalt.

Therefore, the Ysleli had mostly withdrawn to a remote stretch of dock several kilometers down the rim from the main commercial terminal in a show of goodwill. Tarl and a cadre of his officers had remained for negotiations, with Anja and Jesri hurriedly inserting themselves as neutral observers in case the whole thing went sideways.

As it somewhat had. She opened her eyes again, watching the administrator continue to scream epithets at Tarl. David had informed her earlier about the meeting's attendees, drawing from their regular surveillance of the station's activities.

The Arrigh currently lambasting the Ysleli delegation was a career bureaucrat named Kvkitt. He had arrived about two years ago as the administrator of this station and had by all accounts done a halfway decent job of keeping things running smoothly, although most of his power was gained by granting concessions to the station's shadowy commercial syndicates.

As such, they were also present at the table. The Union of Crafters was represented by Xim Len, a thin wisp of a Tlixl with gossamer wings folded primly behind her. She had remained quiet for the proceedings, save for introductions. The dockworkers had sent a towering Dhumma who had thus far refused to divulge his name or speak in any capacity, preferring instead to glower angrily at anyone who glanced in his direction.

The local branch of the Association of Independent Shippers was led by a glistening iridescent blob named something long and mathematical. Jesri thought it might be a member of the Caran species, but as she had never met one in person she couldn't be sure. It introduced itself to her as Escalating Irreducible Manifold, and had a surprisingly good sense of humor about the difficulties other beings had with both its name and amorphous nature.

Finally there was the representative from the Central Bank of Kita, a dour and ancient financier named Belshi. His primary contribution to the initial talks had been to inform everyone present that he thought the proceedings were a "waste of time, an affront to civilized dignity and an unfortunate encouragement to the ambition of churls and thieves everywhere."

Rounding out the discussions were Tarl, still idly waiting for the Arrigh to finish screaming at him, Jesri, Anja, Rhuar and Qktk. David and Helene were listening to the discussions, but they had chosen to hide their existence from the station's residents for the time being.

Kvkitt's ranting wound down at last, leaving the seething administrator glaring at Tarl's bored, seated figure. Tarl returned his stare icily, then slowly rose to his feet. Tall even for a Ysleli, he towered over the insectile Arrigh as he strode slowly towards the station's representatives.

"I do not dabble in negotiations much," he said briskly, beginning a slow pace around the conference room. "I find them tiresome. I avoid them where I can, except the necessary talks which occur before an enemy surrenders to me." He stopped, glancing at Anja and Jesri. "With one notable recent exception."

Jesri gave a small snort of amusement, which Tarl ignored. "Regardless," he continued, "I believe the reason I found that type of discussion so much more bearable was the context. In every case the talks followed a great deal of violence and death, which conveyed a certain implicit promise of continuation if no accord could be reached." He bared his needle-point teeth and stopped. His pacing had carried him to rest in front of Kvkitt, who looked up at him defiantly.

"It hastened things," Tarl said softly, "that context. And as these talks drag on with nothing but insults and outrage from your contingent I find myself increasingly tempted to seek it out. So when you speak next, administrator, I ask that you indulge my preference for productive and concise arguments."

Kvkitt seemed to swell with outrage at the threat, but before he could muster a response Tarl spun away and resumed his pacing in the opposite direction. "My men and I are here," he said simply. "We will be present on the station for a time. These are facts, as unchanging as the orbits of the stars. So tell me, administrator - knowing this to be the case, how would you like the next span of time to play out?" Tarl reached his seat again, sliding smoothly into it and fixing Kvkitt with an expectant look.

The station administrator seethed, glaring daggers at Tarl across the low table. "Again you dictate terms," he grated, his voice low and hostile. "You cannot use force of arms to abscond with government resources. The Arrigh defense forces-"

"Will die," Tarl said bluntly, cutting him off. "Do not delude yourself into thinking a military solution is available."

"Such confidence," Kvkitt sneered. "I've seen your ragtag band of pirates. You have guns and ships, but where is your fuel? Your munitions? Do you really think you can beat a fully supplied navy with just the resources on this station? You have no idea the forces that can be brought to bear against you."

Tarl gave him an amused look. "I have no idea if I can beat your navy, administrator. You make a good point, we would be hard-pressed against a decent force. However, if you force a confrontation you will likewise involve those four," he said, indicating Jesri's contingent. The station representatives looked and were confronted with a feral grin from Anja, only slightly diminished by Jesri's pained look of exasperation. Rhuar tugged on Jesri's sleeve urgently, and she bent down so he could whisper in her ear.

"Administrator," Tarl said, staring intently with his remaining eye. "At that point your naval strength is irrelevant."

The incensed Arrigh reared up to deliver another diatribe but paused in surprise as a wash of white light enveloped him. "What is-", he sputtered indignantly before the field of light flickered and cut off all sound from within. Jesri sighed and walked forward as Kvkitt screamed and pounded noiselessly against the station security barrier, flicking her hand out for effect as the globe of light rose and carried him into the hallway.

The remaining station delegates stared at her, save for Manifold who merely slouched in her direction. Tarl leaned back in his chair, positively radiating amusement and smug delight. Rhuar couldn't quite suppress a grin from his face, but quickly turned to confer with Qktk. The two huddled around a tablet, on which Jesri saw David's face flash briefly.

Jesri shot Tarl an irritated look, then turned to address the room. "Let us all assume," she said tiredly, "that we are reasonable beings who would like to conclude these talks to mutual advantage and without any unpleasant threats. To that end, I am proposing a plan of action: I am going to hire all of your organizations to do some work for me."

The group exchanged glances, then settled back in their seats. Belshi and the dockworkers' representative looked entirely unimpressed by her statement, but she thought she saw at least a flicker of interest from Xim Len. Manifold made no particular reaction, but it was unreadable anyway.

She pressed her momentum. "Xim Len, I would like to hire the crafting guild to make some custom equipment. We will need artificers and engineers, mostly, although there may be room for other specializations." She stretched out her hand, and Rhuar rushed to place a tablet in it. Behind her, Qktk was still hard at work filling a second.

She placed the tablet in front of Xim Len, who picked it up and studied it, then tossed it back on the table contemptuously. "Please," she said, giving Jesri an annoyed look. "Be serious. Half the items on this list are impossible to manufacture. We don't have the facilities to tool gun barrels of that length, the alloys you're specifying are fanciful at best, and I don't even know what a…" She picked up the tablet, glancing over the list again. "...spatial distortion dampener is," she concluded haughtily, glaring over at Jesri. "Don't waste our time with jokes."

Jesri gave her a mild smile in return. "I will supply all blueprints, materials and access to the station's fabricator workshops."

The Tlixl's wings spasmed, although she quickly regained her composure. "That's ridiculous," she spat. "Those workshops have been sealed for a thousand years. If anyone could open them, I would have done it long ago."

Jesri's smile widened at the sour note of disappointment from Xim Len. This was going to be easier than she had anticipated. Stepping back from the group, she raised her voice. "Station Prometheus," she called out, "What is my access level?"

A chirrup of acknowledgement crackled from the room speakers, making the syndicate representatives jump. "Captain Jesri Tam, TNMC," a neutral female voice said. "Access level is Officer, subgroup Captain. Full access is granted to station infrastructure, power systems, security, sensors-"

"Thank you, that will be enough," Jesri said. Another chirrup sounded and the litany of privileges ended. She looked across the syndicate representatives and saw that she had their full attention. Xim Len reached a quavering hand towards the tablet again, scanning through the items on the list.

"We can," she said, her voice hoarse. "Ah, we can keep the schematics and access afterwards?"

Beaming, Jesri sat down at the table. "See? It's almost as if we were negotiating," she said smugly. "Let's go through the list."

---

Two hours later, they left the room having hired on nearly every syndicate-represented craftsman, hauler and laborer on the station. Xim Len and the crafters were given workshops and schematics while Manifold's freight captains were sent out to procure hefty cargos of raw metal, fuel and organics.

Belshi had been induced to offer them a generous line of credit for their purchases. That part had nothing to do with station access and everything to do with the battered identification chits Jesri carried for the Royal Uen Banking Union, the Finance Ministry of Tlix and a handful of other prominent institutions. She had no current account with the Central Bank of Kita, she had informed him, but could be persuaded to transfer in some credits…

He only validated the first account before hastily agreeing, his eyes bulging at the commencement date as much as the balance.

Most puzzling had been the Dhumma representative from the docks, who simply vanished from the meeting after the first couple of deals were concluded. Jesri finally asked Manifold about it during a break, and the bloblike captain revealed that Ix (who did have a name, as it happened) had only made an appearance in the hopes of fighting Tarl.

The syndicate heads had departed in a rush of excited chatter, eager to begin disbursing funds and launching ships. As Xim Len trailed the group out with her face buried in her tablet, Tarl wandered over and sat next to Jesri with a tired sigh.

"Well," he grumbled. "That was much less entertaining than my proposal."

She gave him a coy smile. "Oh, come on. You'll have way more fun with this," she said. "I thought you'd be excited at the idea."

Seeing his blank look, Jesri sat up and blinked. "Wait," she said, "were you not paying attention during the negotiations?"

"I am the Warfather," Tarl pointed out, "not the Minister of Logistics. Why would I concern myself with the busy work you're doling out to those drooling sycophants?"

"Because they're overhauling your ships," Rhuar said, tossing another tablet in front of Tarl. "Read up, Oh Mighty Warfather. Here's an outline of the new schematics."

Tarl snatched at the tablet so fast that his claws drew sparks from the table's surface, paging through the designs quickly. "This is…", he said, his voice quiet and serious. "You're using human technology?"

Anja sat down to join the group. "It makes sense," she said. "Your ships are less of an asset than a liability in their current state. We may not make them as good as true Terran warships, but we can at least keep your men in the fight."

Tarl's mouth worked soundlessly for a few seconds before it snapped shut with a click. He stood abruptly and bowed low with a peculiar sideways twist, holding one arm to his chest. "Thank you," he said simply, his voice thick with emotion. "I must find Xim Len, confer with her engineers, brief my officers." He looked around dazedly still muttering under his breath, then walked quickly out of the room.

"Sister, I think you nearly made him cry," Anja teased.

Jesri smiled and shook her head. "Rhuar gets credit for this one. I was just going to buy them off after Tarl wound up the administrator. I don't know if this will net us usable ships, but at minimum we've solved our Ysleli problem for the time being."

"And when they have their shiny new ships?", Qktk asked. "Will we have merely invested in a larger problem?"

"Hey, I'm the only investor here," Jesri protested. "And no, I don't think so. We'll just have to find missions that let them use their new toys productively. On that note… David, you still listening?"

"Yep," came his voice over the room's speakers. "Don't you worry. We've been drawing up plans for decades." His image flickered onto Jesri's tablet, a wolfish grin on his face. "Want to see some targets?"

---

Business is booming, nobody's shooting each other - this can't possibly last more than one chapter. With this installment, the story is longer than Ringworld! We're well past such plebeian constructions here, but keep it down because my editor is afraid we'll give the Gestalt funny ideas.

Thank you again for your time and for your comments! Tune in next week for another episode of Pimp My Warship.

 

[TMarkos]

The last of the nearly two-dozen Ysleli soldiers filed into the briefing room, crowding together in a press of yellow scales and drab uniforms. Jesri hadn't noticed a particular smell from the lanky aliens prior to the meeting, but with this many of them crowded together she could detect a faintly spicy fragrance in the air. To her left, Rhuar sneezed violently and grumbled.

As she stood, the soldiers snapped to attention instantly. "At ease, take your seats," she said, receiving a few confused looks in response.

To her right, Tarl straightened up with a growl. "You are commanded to sit!", he bellowed. The assembled soldiers immediately found seats, shifting around to find a comfortable position in the hard-backed chairs.

"Thank you, warfather," Jesri sighed. They were going to have to find a happy medium between the relatively laissez-faire professionalism of the human military and the slavish obedience and fear of the Ysleli.

She didn't mind the prompt response, but the degree of deference shown to Tarl and to her by extension was off-putting - and that was before one took into account the casual ease with which he repaid minor infractions with violence or even death. She was reasonably confident that at least three of the troops had sworn themselves to her in some sort of formal blood oath after she convinced Tarl not to kill them for failing to salute her. She hoped Qktk was familiar with the concept, because asking Tarl about matters of Ysleli honor usually cost her an hour or so of listening to him elaborate the finer points of proper conduct.

She looked over the nervous faces in front of her and cleared her throat. "Good morning," she said, her voice quieting the hushed noises from the crowd instantly. Behind her, the room's display flickered to show an image of a large ring floating against a starfield. "This is our mission target," she explained, pointing to the ring. "It is an advanced-model hyperspace accelerator, an improvement on the launch ramps you may be familiar with from our transit stations. It has a very lengthy official designation, but as the sole remaining example of its kind it has become more commonly known as the Cygnus Gate."

A murmur went up around the room; evidently even the Ysleli had heard of the famous station. Rhuar was eyeing the display with interest, and Tarl was stroking his chin thoughtfully with two shiny talons. She tapped a button on her console and the display was overlaid with statistics.

"The gate is a roughly regular toroid with an interior diameter of one kilometer." Seeing blank looks, she did some conversions in her head. "That's, ah, slightly more than one thousand two hundred Ysleli lesa."

There was another chorus of concerned murmurs from the troops as the scale of the structure became apparent - although not nearly as large as the city-sized transit stations, the gate was large enough for the Grand Design to pass through comfortably.

Jesri smiled at their consternation. "You may ask questions during the briefing if you would like something clarified," she said. The soldiers shifted uncomfortably and remained silent, provoking a growl from Tarl. "No questions is also fine," she added hastily. As much as she appreciated Tarl's support, she would spare the troops the indignity of being commanded to question her.

"The gate is currently being used as a waypoint within the Seventh Kitan Free State in the system of Albireo. The system itself is only sparsely populated, with a small agricultural colony operating in-system. The only relevant forces are the security and operations teams manning the gate itself, which will be our primary opposition both before and after boarding." She tapped her console and the display shifted to a structural diagram of the gate.

"Records indicate that there are approximately one hundred and twenty personnel aboard the gate on any given day, mostly part of the small garrison of soldiers that secure the gate against intruders. We will be forcing entry to a hangar near central operations, clearing a path through the soldiers and commandeering the station controls."

The room had grown restless again with her mention of the station's garrison, and one of the soldiers slowly stood upright at attention. Jesri looked at him curiously before realizing that the Ysleli probably weren't the hand-raising sort. "Yes, ah, spearbrother?", she asked, "Do you have a question?"

"Captain Jesri Tam," he said shakily, one eye on Tarl's looming presence over her shoulder, "I would ask if we are the full extent of the forces you would bring against such a large garrison."

"An excellent question, spearbrother," Jesri said quickly, swooping in with praise before Tarl could berate the poor man for cowardice in the face of duty or something. "We will be heavily outnumbered during the station assault. There are few docking bays available and we have a limited number of capable assault craft. We will be compensating for the discrepancy in two ways," she said, walking to the back wall of the room where a number of plastic crates had been stacked. She reached into one and withdrew a sleek-looking carbon-grey rifle. She swore she could hear an audible click as forty-nine Ysleli eyes locked onto the rifle with intense scrutiny.

"Our first advantage is in weaponry," she said, hefting the rifle so they could see it clearly. "This lovely lady is a Tharsis Arms Corporation Model V Field-Configurable Modular Battle Rifle, commonly called a TAC-5. I understand that all of you have been trained with kinetic rifles using chemically propelled metal ammunition?"

Tarl swept his claws in an affirmative gesture. "Correct, Jesri Tam," he rumbled, his eyes not leaving the rifle. Indeed, most of the Ysleli were nearly salivating as they stared at the clean lines of the gun. Jesri smirked, not quite immune to the gun's allure herself.

"Allow me to demonstrate the difference," she said, aiming at the bare metal of the briefing room's bulkhead. A quick press of the trigger sent a burst of fire cracking against the wall, bright flashes of ablating metal and a treble-beat staccato crack ripped through the room causing everyone but Tarl to flinch back involuntarily. There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at the scorch mark on the wall, then the soldiers looked back to the gun with renewed interest.

"A kinetic rifle has some disadvantages in spaceborne combat," Jesri explained. "In a close-quarters scenario like this, it's likely that one or more of you would have been injured by ricochets or spalling if I had done the same thing with kinetics. Directed energy weapons can be used without that risk. They also have no recoil, which means that they can be used with increased accuracy even in zero-gravity conditions."

She suppressed another smile. If the Ysleli had been nervous and unsure before, they were rapt and laser-focused now. "Spearbrother," she said, indicating the one who had spoken earlier. "What is the standard ammunition capacity on your service weapon?"

"Thirty-six shots, Captain Jesri Tam," he replied.

Jesri let her grin slip through as she detached the gun's energy cell, a square block that fit easily in the palm of her hand. "This cell contains enough charge for three hundred shots at high power, seven hundred and fifty shots at standard power and over five thousand shots at low power. My earlier demonstration was at low power, which is effective against personnel and other soft targets. Standard is lethal even through body armor, don't use it on anything you don't want to scrub off a bulkhead. High power…" She trailed off suggestively, her eyes twinkling. She had them totally spellbound now. "Well, we're not going to be engaging vehicles in combat on this mission, so let's save that for another time."

She replaced the power cell and returned the rifle to the crate, noting the way the Ysleli tracked it back every centimeter of its journey. "That's our first advantage," she said theatrically. "We'll be issuing each soldier a rifle and you'll be expected to train to proficiency during the coming weeks. My sister will coordinate your training schedule." She sent a silent message to Anja over her link.

A low, ominous impact vibrated through the briefing room. The soldiers stared at the door with trepidation as it was followed by another, and another, massive footsteps resonating through the room and raising sympathetic vibrations from the stacked crates.

Anja walked into the room in a suit of full Valkyrie armor, rifle ready and bayonet affixed. The suit added nearly a meter to her height, dwarfing even Tarl's lofty stature and far outclassing him in sheer bulk. She paused for a moment to let the troops stare open-mouthed at the gleaming white-on-silver armor before she sprang forward in a dash that left her standing next to Jesri, seeming to blink across the room in a thundering crash of metal-on-metal. An ephemeral halo of white plasma enveloped the suit, crackling into coherent bands across its forearms and flaring dramatically from the pauldrons. Rhuar had to take an indignant step back from the sudden burst of heat - Jesri thought she detected a faint smell of burnt hair mingling with the thick odor of nervous Ysleli.

The look on Tarl's face nearly sent Jesri into a laughing fit, although she had to admit the demonstration was impressive. Something that massive moving that fast was downright counterintuitive unless you knew the sorts of forces that the suit's artificial musculature could provide. Rhuar, still rubbing his singed fur, was nevertheless staring in wonder at the shiny crescent-shaped scrape left by Anja's foot where she had pushed off the deck.

Jesri smiled beatifically at the stunned troops, her hair blowing in the sudden wind caused by Anja's sprint. "Anja and I will be our vanguard," she said. "We will deal with any hard targets or fortified positions. The operation will be a fast strike, seizing control of the station before an effective resistance can be organized. Any questions about the general details?"

The room continued to stare dumbly at Anja.

"Okay then, let's proceed. Thank you, Anja," she said brightly.

"Sister," Anja said, her voice a sinister mechanical rumble through the suit's speakers. She walked out of the room with a practiced stride, her feet whisper-quiet except for the low whine of the servos. The troops were mostly too shocked to notice the distinction, but Tarl very definitely noticed and watched Anja leave with renewed appreciation.

Jesri shook her head ruefully as the room's intense atmosphere mellowed a few notches. "All right, gentlemen," she called out. "Next topic is routes of ingress." The Ysleli leaned in to listen, giving her their full attention.

---

Three Ysleli soldiers crept forward in an arrowhead formation, rifles held high against their white-armored shoulders. The barrels of their weapons tracked sharply along sightlines, clearing corners and sweeping doorways with precise, methodical movements. They were silent save for the whispering shuffle of their feet on the deck, a calm broken violently as a burst of white light flared against their front member's chestplate.

He fell flat to the floor, two more shots thudding into his side as he fell. His teammates scattered to the side and returned fire down the hall from against the exposed walls. Another withering hail of fire forced them back, sparking off the metal panels and winging one of them in the upper arm. He hefted his rifle one-handed with a muttered curse, his scorched arm falling uselessly to his side as he fired blindly down the hall with his free hand-

"Tiln, what the fuck are you doing?", thundered a voice from above. The sounds of gunfire stopped as a buzzer rang out in the cargo hold to signal the end of the exercise. The remaining members of the team emerged from cover to help out their fallen teammates, hoisting them roughly to their feet and assembling in a line in front of the viewing platform.

Anja glared down at them, her face radiating disapproval. "Gentlemen," she called out, "recite Anja's Fourth Rule for me."

Tiln's team shuffled their feet sheepishly, black scorchmarks liberally dotting their armor. The opposing team, sporting only a few black marks, stood at parade-perfect attention. "Sir," one of them shouted back, "'Heroes get shot', sir!"

Anja shifted her glare to him, then nodded fractionally. "Correct, Neryn. In a scenario where you have one man down and one man wounded, the tactically sound choice is to retreat and regroup rather than fucking around with cowboy trick shots down the hall. Tiln, do you disagree?"

"Sir, no, sir!", Tiln barked, wisely refraining from clarifying questions about what precisely "cowboy" meant.

"And you three," Anja said, rounding on the opposing team with a glower. "You smug bastards think you did well? You had these three walking targets dead to rights with an ambush and you all shoot at the same man?" She shook her head. "Neryn, Anja's First Rule."

Neryn gulped. "Sir, 'Someone will get shot', sir!", he said tremulously.

Anja jabbed a finger at Neryn's team, punctuating her words. "Exactly. And if you let the enemy choose who gets shot, they pick you. You guys were so close to being halfway decent, but you forgot to shoot the damn enemy and you all died." She thumbed a button on her tablet and the black spots flaked off their armor, leaving it shiny and pristine.

"We reset in five minutes," she sighed. "Grab a drink and take your positions. Tiln, keep both hands on your rifle or drop it for your sidearm. I want to fix the problem with training but failing that I will fix it with adhesive. Dismissed."

She sighed and slumped back against the wall as the six troops shuffled off to grab water. A slight scraping noise caused her to crane her neck to the side; she found herself staring up at Tarl as he approached her position. He was standing far enough back on the platform that the troops below couldn't see him, his head cocked slightly to the side in curiosity.

"I must say that I find your training methods impressively effective, if a bit odd," he rumbled softly. "Was this normal for human warriors?"

Anja laughed tiredly, stretching her neck to the other side and closing her eyes. "The distinction is that we never really had warriors. We had professional soldiers. It was a job, albeit an atypical one. There is a place for honor on the battlefield or valor in combat, but when it comes to the business of soldiery we addressed it with the same tools as physics or engineering. You use science, testing, logic, constant incremental improvement. A gun is a tool, the enemy is a problem. Arrive at what works."

Tarl bared his teeth in distaste. "It feels wrong, even as I see the results. Cold, unfeeling. Battle should be about rushing blood, the conflict of strength and will. I am honestly surprised my men have taken to it with such… gusto," he muttered. "They did not ever respond like this when I attempted to discuss strategy with them."

She popped up to her feet and smiled, still quite a bit below his eye level. "Tarl, were you ever an enlisted soldier?", she asked. "A junior officer, perhaps?"

"No, of course not," he said, looking mildly offended. "My uncle was the baron of Lrin, I began my career at the Royal Naval Academy."

Anja said nothing, but smiled wider. Tarl looked at her in mild confusion, then blinked. "Ah," he said. "I see. My experience may be somewhat different from theirs, it's true. But the core values of honor and valor-"

"Tarl, honor and valor are a luxury," Anja said, cutting him off. Tarl tensed, his arm flexing slightly, and Anja's smile took on an icy aspect. "Oh? You want to punish me for that, Warfather?", she asked softly. "If I was one of your men you wouldn't hesitate to kill me, I hear the stories. What makes me different?"

"You are not Ysleli," he retorted, irritated at being toyed with. "As a commander you are my equal. My men know their place-"

"And what determines their place, Warfather?", she said, cutting him off again. Tarl gave her a dangerous look, but said nothing. Anja's face lost its smile, leaving her looking very old and tired. "Tarl, I have seen a lot of death in and out of combat. Much more than you. Some people invited it, played with it, took chances that were as good as putting a gun in their own mouth - and some did that too. None of them deserved death, even if they were looking for it."

She stared him in the eye, all levity gone from the conversation. "Your men never had the luxury you did, Warfather. They never had considerations like honor and valor. Theirs was to fight and die for your honor, and because you made them do less of the latter they follow you. Some of them even love you for it, your loyal pieces on the board."

She took a step closer to him, eyes narrowing. "But then again, some over the years may have felt constrained. Some may have contradicted you, spoken over you, placed a foot into territory where only your equals may tread," she spat, contempt dripping from the word. "We have words for that. Curiosity. Inquiry. Initiative. Leadership. Qualities your navy seems eager to prune where they arise."

She looked out at the cargo bay where the six troops were clustered around the water tap on the wall, animatedly reenacting the firefight from the last session. Tiln was posing dramatically, his teammates nearly paralyzed with laughter as he tried to demonstrate his one-handed firing stance.

"We promoted based on those qualities," she said, her voice returning to a conversational tone. "We chose our leaders the same way you choose who to slaughter for impudence and insubordination. How many of the ones you killed were as good as you, Tarl?" She met his eye again, looking at his expressionless face. "How many of them were better?"

They stood watching the trainees for a minute more before the buzzer sounded again, signaling the start of the next exercise. They finished their drinks and jogged back to the mock corridors, their strides loose and relaxed.

"I will think on your words, Anja Tam," Tarl said quietly, turning to leave.

"Do," Anja said flatly. "And Tarl?" He turned his head, looking back at her. "These are also my soldiers now," she purred. "They may be prone to exhibit those qualities I talked about, now that they have had a taste. Kill them for it and I will feed you your eye. Not a threat, just a consequence."

Tarl held her gaze for a long moment. "Tell me, Anja Tam, because I have also heard stories. Long before I arrived here, although I thought them untrue at the time. Was this how you were trained as well?"

Anja's face was a neutral mask as she stared back. "No," she said. "It was not."

He studied her for a moment more. "I thought not," he said. "You may train professionals and I may lead warriors, but you and your sister are bred killers. Sneer at my people and our customs as you will, but I find it oddly comforting to know that even the vaunted humans had uses for such as you."

She held her implacable mien for a few seconds more before smiling brightly at him, flashing her teeth. "Wait a few thousand years before you try to play that game with me, Tarl," she said sweetly, although her eyes were deep and empty. "I slit my first throat before your people knew cold iron. You have no word for what I am."

Tarl bared his teeth and took a step back, then caught himself and shook his head. "Ah," he said ruefully. "Terrifying, perhaps. For whatever you are and for how unlike it you appear. I will leave you to your training, Anja Tam. And as I said, I will think on your words." He inclined his head and walked out of the bay, moving perhaps a touch faster than his usual stride.

---

"All right, hold on to your yellow butts!"

Rhuar's voice crackled over the Huginn's intercom as the space outside began to leak starlight through a frothing white skein. With a jarring thump they hammered back into normal space and immediately darted towards the giant ring of the Cygnus Gate.

"Wow, that's a big fucker," Rhuar's voice said again, sending a ripple of nervous laughter through the ship. "We got a landing pad?"

"Yep, just registered with the gate," Jesri replied, her voice filtered into a harsh rumble by the armor's helmet. "Crew privileges are pulled. Most of the doors were inoperable, so they'll be mobile. Get ready for a hot landing."

"Great," Rhuar drawled. "Ah, shit. Hey, I think they know we're here!"

He keyed up a display that showed two ships rising from behind the gate, previously hidden by its bulk. Anja leaned forward in her armor to study the profiles of the new contacts. "Kitan customs," she said, "has to be. They'll try to stop us from closing with the gate."

"Hah!", barked Rhuar. "Even this little boat can take those slow bastards apart. I've always loved the idea of small-ship combat, so fast and agile-"

"Rhuar!", Jesri shouted. "Maybe just blow them up?"

"Yessir, aye-aye cap'n," he muttered, shifting into a steep arc that stressed even the Huginn's impressive dampening systems. Anja and Jesri were somewhat shielded by their armor, but the Ysleli groaned as they were pressed harshly against their restraints.

"Sir," Neryn gasped from next to Anja's hulking form, "Did he say he liked the 'idea' of small-ship combat? He has done this before, right?"

"Neryn, twelfth rule," Anja said.

"Second-guessers get shot, sir," he grumbled. "I was just-"

His words were lost in a cacophony of noise as Rhuar opened up with the twinned spinal-mount railguns, tracing plumes of atmosphere and glittering metal along the keel of one Kitan vessel. A secondary explosion rippled through the aft of the ship and sent it spinning helplessly into the void with fragments of hull and dead crew trailing after it like a macabre comet.

"Woo, that has a kick!", Rhuar cheered. "Not like the big guns on the Grand Design, of course, but so much more fun to aim-"

The ship shuddered as a Kitan round from the second vessel impacted them amidships near the top line, the cabin interior deforming slightly as the hull dented to nondestructively absorb the impact. "Rhuar!", Jesri shouted.

"Fucking ow," he grumbled, sending the ship into a dizzying corkscrew as more Kitan rounds streaked past. The customs ship couldn't match the power of the human guns, but the turreted mounts on their vessels gave them much greater freedom to fire and maneuver. The Huginn continued to weave and bob until Rhuar flipped them around and burnt the engines hard at a cross-angle to their velocity.

Even Anja and Jesri felt the pull of that maneuver. A few of the troops vomited, a particularly messy affair for a species with dual stomachs.

"Sorry," Rhuar grated, wheezing. "Had to line up for…"

They streaked past the customs vessel only a few ship lengths away moving too fast for the turret to track their progress. Rhuar angled the ship towards their opponent as they passed and sent a stream of fire through their port bow. The high-speed rounds transected the ship completely, sending massive chunks of the hull spiraling away on the exit side as the engines flickered and died.

Rhuar's cackling laughter echoed through the ship. "Hah, you dumb fucks," he crowed. "All right, landing time, landing time…"

He burned away some of their velocity with another bone-crushing trajectory change, then neatly shot towards a small squarish portal on the near side of the ring. The ship crashed through the barrier rear-first and pulsed the engines to do a hot-stop in the dead center of the dock.

Jesri was rapidly paging through the outside feeds with her suit displays and noticed a small squad of Kita manning a mounted gun near the back of the dock. She started to shout, but was brought up short by the rhythmic chugging of the ship's antipersonnel turrets. Bolts of invisible energy crashed into the emplacement, liquifying the metal and splattering the crew across the rear wall.

"Zero for two with the dock guns," Anja chuckled, shaking her head. "All right, get ready to move!"

The Ysleli shakily straightened up from their seats, undoing their harnesses and slinging their weapons as Rhuar lowered the FAC with a feather-light touchdown on the deck.

"Good luck!", he shouted. "Door open in three, two, one…"

The door hissed open. Anja and Jesri waited a half-beat, then charged down the ramp.

---

Montage! We're gonna need a montage. Was actually intending for a bit more station action this chapter but Anja and Tarl wouldn't get to the point. With this chapter we're longer than the Prisoner of Azkaban, yet another story about intelligent dogs. My editor approves, of course.

Thank you again for your time and your comments! Tune in next week for a statistically significant uptick in violence!

 

[TMarkos]

"So," Deepti asked, "Is this live?"

David looked up from his display and nodded once. "Yeah, about as close as we can get it. I figure maybe a second of latency? We have to keep the signal pretty low-power to blend in with normal station comm traffic."

Deepti nodded and fished her fingers through a bowl on the small desk, coming up with a few peanuts that she popped in her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully while she watched the screen on which two figures in Valkyrie armor were scanning a bare hangar bay for signs of movement. The bay was uncomplicated and cramped compared to the sweeping station docks, a truly utilitarian facility composed of clean lines and unadorned metal bulkheads.

"Stop that," David protested. "Don't just steal the peanuts." He pressed a few buttons on his display, shifting the screen to show about a dozen Kitan soldiers crouched behind a makeshift barricade in a hallway, rifles nervously trained on a sealed and hastily welded blast door several tens of meters away. A few of them looked up in consternation as an announcement broadcast over the station speakers, but the audio on the display wasn't good enough to hear what it was saying.

Deepti grabbed another handful of peanuts with a token crispy grain wafer from the bowl of snack mix, then prodded the screen with a finger. "That looks like an ambush. Did we ping the assault team and let them know?"

David sighed, leaning forward to wipe crumbs and salt off of the display. "No touching," he grumbled. "And we don't need to let them know, we're working with real tech on the outside for once. Suit HUDs are already hooked into the station internals and all that. They've got overlays for every soldier, every floor plan, all the critical systems on the station, etcetera etcetera."

"Ooh, neat," she said, pulling up a chair to watch. The waiting Kitan forces flinched in unison as something heavy impacted the blast door. Flakes of metal scattered to the deck as the fresh welds cracked under the force of the blow. "Doesn't seem very fair, though," she observed.

"Who would fight fair?", David scoffed. "You want Anja and her lizard goon squad to stand in the open and let them go shot for shot?" Another thundering impact visibly distorted the door and caused it to bulge inward. Behind the barricades, the soldiers shifted uneasily and glanced up at the intercom speakers, still broadcasting their indistinct message. "This isn't a game of tiddlywinks, those Kita would gladly kill them given the chance. So we don't give them the chance."

Deepti tousled David's greying hair. "So ruthless," she smirked. "I sometimes forget that lurking under this mild-mannered exterior lies a cold-hearted and evil-"

"Oh, shush," David retorted, smiling despite himself. "Everyone knows you're the one with the killer instinct." He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and moved the bowl of snack mix to his lap. "Now be quiet and watch. They're about to break through."

She nodded and pulled out her tablet, tapping a few buttons. A chair materialized behind her, and when she sat in it a bowl of salted peanuts dropped lightly into her lap. They both leaned in expectantly, watching as the final blows landed on the overstressed blast door.

There was a pause. A truly horrifying screech of rending metal issued from the display, followed by shouts of alarm and a disconcerting wet noise.

"Oh, wow," Deepti said with a grimace as she watched the action unfold. "Did she just…"

"Yep," confirmed David with a grin.

They sat silently for a few more seconds, muffled crashes and tinny screams coming from the display.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Deepti announced, hurriedly standing to rush from the room.

David kept his eyes glued to the screen, reaching a hand back to steal her abandoned bowl of peanuts. He ate a few, then reached for an earpiece.

"Rhuar, you watching this?", he asked.

"Fuck yeah," came Rhuar's answer a moment later. "Like I'd miss Jesri using a half-ton blast door to-"

"Yep, I saw," David said. "Listen, it gave me a funny idea but we're going to have to be quick about it. You've got the ship hooked into the station network, right?"

"Ah, yeah," Rhuar replied. "What do you want me to send you?"

David laughed, shaking his head. "Nothing. Here's what I need you to do…" He laid out his plan quickly, and by the end Rhuar was chuckling along with him.

"You're an evil bastard," Rhuar replied when he had finished. "How are you the same person as our David from the Grand Design?"

David stretched and settled back in his chair. "I've asked the same question in reverse a few times. What do you think, can you make it work?"

"I'll set it up, but any fun I'm about to have is on your conscience." Rhuar said. "Give me a minute."

---

"Attention. Attention. You are trespassing on the property of the Terran Naval Logistic Command. Drop all carried items immediately and assume a face-down position on the deck to await detention by security personnel. Non-compliance will be met with lethal force. Attention. Attention…"

The voice droned on. They had activated the station's security lockdown as soon as they were in the dock, for all the good it did them. Most of the doors were either forced open or welded shut by the occupying Kita, so the primary consequence of the lockdown was an annoyingly officious warning on repeat that the garrison soldiers evidently weren't listening to.

At least, this group hadn't. Jesri shook her gauntlet, sending a few stray drops of blood flying from the hydrophobic surface. The hallway was a veritable abattoir behind them with nearly fifteen soldiers from the garrison lying mangled and broken. With full Valkyrie armor the defending forces could do little to stop them, a fact which Jesri found satisfying and disquieting in equal measure.

The disquiet held the advantage for the moment. This was more of a slaughter than a fight. The Ysleli certainly didn't mind, judging from their high spirits after the first encounter. Weeks of miserable training with Anja had finally paid off and now they were the avatars of bloody War itself sweeping down-

A shot flashed against her armor, mitigated by a cloud of reactive plasma that flared in tandem with its impact. Cursing herself for her distraction, Jesri whipped her rifle up and returned fire at a group of three Kita that had popped out of a doorway down the hall. She tagged two of them with center-mass shots, instantly fatal. The third was hit by a hail of Ysleli fire and collapsed beside his comrades with wisps of steam curling up from his corpse.

She scanned her squad for injuries and, finding none, continued to advance forward. Tiln's six-man team was her personal squad for this mission while Neryn and his group was shadowing Anja at the rearguard. Jesri thought Tiln would much rather be shadowing Anja, but he was being a good sport about the assignment so far.

The rest of the Ysleli fireteams were advancing between the two groups, wary but idle for the moment - they would split off to hold critical systems and chokepoints as they advanced towards the control center. The two Valkyries were certainly capable of tearing through the Kitan garrison by themselves, but experience had taught her that locking down a station-sized target with only two individuals was near to impossible.

She signaled a halt as they neared a large door. It was the entrance to one of the cramped hab sections on the ring, and Jesri's HUD overlay was informing her that there were sixteen Kita inside. The outlines were low and indistinct, meaning they were lying flat on the floor - which didn't help her out much, since that could mean anything from surrender to a prone firing position.

"Sixteen targets inside, nine left and seven right," she said, modulating her armor's voice so it wouldn't carry through the door. "They're on the ground, so aim low but don't shoot unless you see them holding weapons. Renil squad, on me and prep for prisoners."

It was evidence of Anja's good work with the Ysleli that the admonishment against immediate violence was met with only minimal grumbling. Tiln formed his men up behind her while Renil watched the hall, his men fishing carbon-polymer zip restraints from their packs.

She didn't bother to count down, rearing back and kicking the door with the full force her suit could muster. It slammed forward and down to bounce off the floor in a cloud of dust and metal particles. Jesri charged in with the Ysleli close behind her and her weapon ready but found only prone, frightened Kita.

"We surrender! Don't shoot!", one croaked as she approached. "Please don't kill us!"

Now that she was in the room she could tell that these were indeed garrison soldiers, but they had taken the trouble to stack all of their weapons in a pile against the wall and placed themselves on the opposite side of the common room to await capture. A nice, professional surrender.

Renil's team took note of their consideration, binding the prisoners expediently and without unnecessary roughness. When the last of the hab's rooms had been cleared, Jesri walked over to the bound prisoners and addressed the one with officer pips on his shoulders.

"Adjunct-Lead," she grated, dredging up her memory of Kitan military structure, "thank you for making this easy. Was there a general order given to surrender?"

The Kita jerked nervously as she spoke, flinching as one of Renil's men growled low at the movement. He gave a low, croaking laugh, drawing his arms close to his body and shivering with the stress of the moment. "General order?", he rasped, his voice weak and pitchy. "No orders, command won't surrender." He laughed again, his eyes wide. "Doubt you'll find anyone outside of command that wants to line up and get shot, though."

Jesri rolled her eyes, the gesture hidden by the suit. Kita were not especially noted for their valor in combat and this one was working hard to live up to the stereotype. Still, she couldn't complain.

"Cooperate and we'll release you in neutral territory," she rumbled. The officer gave her another shaky acknowledgment before he was marched out of the room by Renil's men. Soon the hab area was deserted save for Jesri and her squad.

"Well, guys," Jesri said, "That was easy, but let's keep alert for holdouts. Doesn't sound like it was any sort of coordinated stand-down."

Tiln snorted with amusement. "I don't think they'll be in a fighting mood, sir. Come and see what we found."

Curious, Jesri ducked her head to enter one of the cramped rooms surrounding the common area. It was spartan, most of the original furniture having decayed over the years. There was a thin sleeping mat and duffel shoved against the wall, with the only other fixtures being the rudimentary water dispenser and a dusty display screen.

The display screen was on and showing a crisp video of several Kita huddled together in a barricaded hallway. With a start, Jesri recognized it as the hall they had originally used to leave the docking bay. She watched them jump and flinch as her fists pounded the door, leaving indents clearly visible from the far side.

"That's ten-centimeter thick Terran battle alloy," Rhuar's voice cut in conversationally, broadcast over the display's audio. "That right there is made with some powerful ancient space magic - you guys like that stuff, right? The force required to dent it like that is pretty immense. I didn't run the numbers, but you can imagine what an impact like that would do to a squishy Kita skull if they didn't do the smart thing and surrender. Actually, you don't have to imagine - watch what she does with the door right here."

Jesri winced as she saw herself ram through the blast door in a halo of white fire, knowing what was about to happen. Silvered muscles bulging, she scooped up the twisted remnants of the door and hurled them like a meteor into the Kitan fortification. The debris brushed aside their piled barricades effortlessly as it hit, shearing through metal and flesh until it spun to a bloody stop tens of meters behind the group. Fully half of the Kita had died in that first strike, with two unlucky soldiers having been pinned by the door and smeared over the decking like butter on toast.

Those who had leapt clear of the barricade were spared that fate at the cost of their cover. They were quickly targeted by Ysleli eager to test their new rifles out on live targets. She had been too focused on her own swath of destruction to notice at the time, but the video made it clear that some of the troops had tuned their rifles up past the standard shot power. As a result, the Kita were maimed by steam explosions and scalds with every shot that connected. After a few intense seconds the remaining garrison soldiers were in worse shape than those crushed by the door.

She shot a look back at Tiln, who had the grace to look abashed. The rest of the troops were watching the carnage on-screen with bared teeth and rapt attention.

"I'm not normally much of a gun nut," noted Rhuar, "but that's some impressive power they're getting from those rifles. Let's have another look at what happens when one of them scores a torso hit, here-"

The scene shifted to a slow-motion shot of a Kita being eviscerated by a center-mass hit at high power, gibbets of flesh sailing off in soaring ballistic arcs. "Now," Rhuar's voice drawled, "that's some stopping power right there. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it. Just have a weapon in your hands when you see our friends on screen there, they'll be happy to show you firsthand what that feels like."

The scene shifted to show Jesri hurling the door in slow-motion, the plasma bands on her arms leaving red-hot patches on the metal. She had to admit, the matter-of-fact brutality on the video and the constant droning exhortations to surrender in the background lent the atmosphere on the station a dire aspect. Well, for the Kita. Even so...

"Rhuar," she broadcast over the comm, keeping her voice carefully neutral. "I don't recall the part of the plan where you run a psyop against the garrison troops." The narration cut off as the feed focused on the door sailing through the air.

"Ah, it was David's idea," Rhuar broadcast back sheepishly. "Unless you like it, in which case I did most of the work."

"It's… tacky," Jesri sighed, "if undeniably effective. You've apparently got them shitting themselves all over the station. The group we just caught practically put on their own restraints." She could feel a headache coming on. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but keep it going for a little while longer. Try not to let it get too lurid. And Rhuar," she added, letting her voice shade into a deeper rumble, "keep in mind how much I adore fun surprises during a combat operation."

"...yeah," he responded warily. "I mentioned this was David's idea, right?"

Jesri sighed and cut the connection, opening a channel directly to Anja. «Did you see Rhuar's little broadcast yet?», she asked wearily. Tiln and his men had returned their attention to the video, which was currently showing the gruesome slow-motion impact of the door against the Kitan barricades.

«Neryn was just showing me,» Anja replied, amusement evident in her voice. «I think I like it. We had three soldiers approach and ask to be detained.»

«It saved us from having a firefight with a sixteen-man squad,» Jesri admitted. «I'm just afraid our disembodied replicating friend is a bad influence on our dog.»

«We live in troubled times, sister. I-»

The transmission cut off suddenly, and Jesri frowned. «Anja?», she sent, receiving only silence in response.

Just as she was about to send a squad back to reinforce Anja's position her earpiece crackled to life. "Sister?", came Anja's voice, sounding shaken.

Jesri let out her breath in a rush. "Anja, are you all right? What happened?"

There was another long pause before Anja responded. "Not sure," she finally admitted. "I would like to avoid using the link functionality for the moment. I experienced an unpleasant reaction."

Jesri frowned. The Nicnevin instance of David had cleared Anja of any long-lasting effects from her forced firmware update, but Eleanor's research spanned centuries of insane effort. It had been naive to write it off so easily. "Anja, we can handle the rest of the takeover if you need to scrub. Head back to the Huginn-"

"No, sister," Anja said firmly. "I will not abandon my squad on their first field mission with me. Besides, I feel fine. It was just-" She hesitated again. "We can investigate more back at Elpis."

"Dammit, fine," grumbled Jesri, not wanting to delay further in either case. "But we will have Dr. Chartres take a look at you. No trying to wiggle out of it once we're back because 'you feel better' or some bullshit."

"Agreed, sister," replied Anja, sounding relieved. "We should keep moving."

Jesri had noticed a few curious stares from her squad, as from their perspective she had been standing immobile and silent for a couple of minutes. "All right," she said loudly, speaking both over the comm and external speakers. "Let's move out."

---

The door to the gate's central control room was a large, robust blast shield that even the Valkyrie suits would have had issues breaking down. Fortunately, those same traits meant that it was one of the few functional doors left on the station. On Anja's command Rhuar overrode the security lockdown and the door slid smoothly open to reveal the gate control area, a large round room with workstations ringing a central command desk. Jesri and Anja walked out into the center of the doorway and were promptly hit with weapons fire from a half-dozen scattered positions within the control area.

They stood there impassively, staring at the Kita shooting them until the weapons fire stopped. As expected, the bridge crew had little more than weak sidearms on them when they were sealed inside by the lockdown, good for little more than scuffing their armor.

The two sisters advanced into the control center, looking around at the technicians and bridge crew huddled behind their workstations. Only when they had come up to the command desk did they finally speak.

"Please lay down your weapons," Anja's voice boomed, her suit speakers tuned for maximum intimidating force. "We are assuming control of this station. Cooperate and you will be released unharmed in neutral territory." Those who hadn't already done so dropped what they were carrying and raised their hands high, shuffling into the open center space nervously. The higher-ranked officers and a pair of Kitan priests huddled in a close knot near the edge of the crowd, eyes darting between the two armored figures.

Jesri sent a double-click over the communicator and the Ysleli troops poured in, efficiently gathering the weapons and binding the prisoners' hands. The Kita shied away from the armored soldiers but were subdued without incident, submitting to the bindings wordlessly as each squad came around. "Clear," Neryn called out. "You want us to bring them down with the others, sir?"

"Nah," Jesri replied, walking over to the command desk and keying the release on her suit. It split smoothly down her spine and the backs of her legs, allowing her to step out of it and pull her arms from the gauntlets. One of the priests took a bulging-eyed look at her and began whispering furiously to his companion. She shook her hair out, smirking at the gobsmacked looks she was getting from the bridge crew, then hopped up to the command desk.

"Let's see," she mused, tapping out diagnostics on the panel. "Looks like we're good to go here. Give me a couple of seconds to set up."

One of the Kita prisoners stiffened at her words, stepping forward despite a warning growl from the Ysleli guarding his group. "You may have the station," he said nervously, "but it is my duty to inform you that we will never yield our access to terrorists and thieves, even on pain of death."

Jesri looked up at him tiredly. "You the commander?", she asked.

The Kita puffed his chest up a little. "I am Renshe, Station Prelate."

"I thought so," Jesri said with a frown. "You the guy that refused to issue a general surrender order?"

Renshe froze, looking uncertain. "I, ah," he stammered. "We are beholden to the law and cannot yield control-"

Jesri stopped looking at him and returned to her diagnostics. "You're a dumbass," she said. "You're lucky your crew was smarter than you were."

"Says the terrorist," Renshe bristled. "Murderer and thief. Insult me all you wish, I will not yield my access. It is a sacred trust."

"Gate control," Jesri sighed without looking up, "remove all access rights from the station prelate and change his designation to 'Dumbass', audio confirmation."

"Confirmed," replied a neutral voice over the intercom. "Security roles have been removed from Station Prelate Dumbass." The priests staggered back and made a warding gesture, provoking some indiscreet laughter from the Ysleli troops.

Dumbass (née Renshe) stood there with his mouth working soundlessly for a few seconds before slumping back in shock among his former subordinates, at least a few of which seemed to be enjoying his turn of fortunes.

"Okay, done," Jesri said, standing up and giving the console an emphatic final button press. "Hold on to something."

The Kita exchanged nervous glances. "Excuse me," one of the technicians said tremulously. "What exactly did you-"

There was a noise.

---

Xim Len walked quickly down the hall, her legs pumping uncomfortably fast as she skittered over the deck. Even after years of living on Elpis she had never truly acclimated to the sheer amount of walking that station life entailed. She wouldn't go back to Tlix for all the free space in the world, but she caught herself missing its empty sky and stark cliffs every so often.

But no, she could never go back. Not when she had an opportunity like she had here. Access to working human fabrication tech was already a prize greater than any achievement she could have hoped for, but the promise of new designs for ancient human systems would keep her happily on Elpis until she had worked her hands to bloody nubs. As an artisan, she could conceive of no other option than to seize this opportunity and milk it for all it was worth.

Nevertheless, a scowl settled on her slim face as she wove through the crowds of merchants towards the dock. For anything other than the greatest opportunity she could conceive of, her task would have sent her screaming to the airlocks weeks ago. The problem wasn't the Ysleli, who normally kept to themselves, nor was it their antiquated technology. She actually found their ships somewhat fascinating, given that they were independently developed rather than derived from human salvage.

No, the problem was Tarl.

The insufferable yellow monstrosity was in most respects a pleasant client, sparing her any rants about costs or delays or any of the other typical complaints that clients brought to her door. What he did bring, however, was an insatiable curiosity about everything. Every hull reinforcement. Every reactor core. Every weapons system, every air exchanger, every detail of every overhaul she was being paid to give him seemed to be of endless interest to the scaly bastard.

Even that wouldn't be so bad if Tarl wasn't a self-admitted technical neophyte from a species that hadn't even managed shipboard gravitics yet. But he was. Xim Len lived in an endless hell of impromptu remedial lectures on physics, quantum phenomena and hyperspatial topology that never seemed to satiate her client's thirst for details.

So when Tarl summoned her away from her workshop during a rare Tarl-less period of productivity, the only thing that had kept her from tearing her wings off and cancelling the contract was a tantalizing promise - that the humans had promised a spectacle. Even the notion of voluntarily spending time with Tarl couldn't completely dissuade her from an invitation like that.

She burst into the docks as dramatically as someone of her stature could burst into anything, sighing in momentary relief as she spread her gossamer wings and launched into the high reaches of the docking bay. There were few spaces aboard where she could fly freely, and above all her favorite was the docks. Soaring over the ships, racing past the shimmering bubble separating her from the void - the closest thing she could ever feel to flying in space unaided.

She indulged in a few artful swoops before diving down to land next to Tarl, who regarded her bemusedly.

"Quite impressive," he allowed. "It looked enjoyable."

"Never lasts long enough," she muttered, walking up to stand beside him. "Do you know what's going on?"

Tarl scraped long talons over his arm contemplatively, oblivious to the shudder it provoked from his companion. "Anja said I would 'see the difference in her curriculum' or somesuch," he shrugged. "You know how it is with the humans."

"Humanforms," Xim Len corrected absently. "And they didn't mention why they wanted me to see it?"

Tarl smirked. "They didn't mention you at all. I judged that you would find it to be of interest, however."

Xim Len gave him a calculating look. The brute probably just wanted her close by in case he needed help understanding the humanform's message. Still, her interest was not easily unpiqued. At worst she could simply fly away and pretend that-

"It's starting," Tarl said, his eyes glittering suddenly. Xim Len whipped her head around to stare out the dock, searching the field of stars until she saw it.

A ripple in the blaze of starlight spread and tore, revealing inky blackness so profound that it seemed to disappear from her vision. The rent in space spread, growing, growing-

She stared in disbelief. Lacking a point of reference made it hard to determine the scale of the distortion, but it was obviously huge. The humanforms were rumored to have a larger ship out there somewhere, was this it?

No, it couldn't be. It was too big for a ship. Nothing that moved could be this large, it would break apart. And yet here was the abyssal canyon before her stretching wider than the limits of presumption.

Suddenly a pure-white flame burst from within, everting the stretch of midnight in an instant to leave behind a sparkling sea of fire and light that swirled in front of her like the high-clouds before a storm. Slowly it dissipated into cooling orange wisps that unveiled a perfect ring, hollow through the center. It stretched impossibly wide, larger than any structure she had ever seen save for the transit stations.

She swore absently in Tlixi, her eyes drinking in the sight. "What is it?", she wondered aloud.

"The Cygnus Gate, I presume," Tarl whispered, staring in rapt amazement as the ancient torus hung motionless in the void.

Xim Len took a few seconds to process the import of what he had said, but when she did her mind was set whirling with the implications. The gate had been a famous curiosity for as long as anyone could remember, a useful waypoint but little else. Nobody had ever assumed that the gate could be transported, so nobody had ever tried to her knowledge. And now it was here - not in a backwater agricultural colony but at Elpis, the hub of trade in the region. Her home.

She had barely begun calculating the money she was about to make when she realized she was standing alone on the dock. She didn't know whether to be relieved or offended that Tarl had left without a single question - in fact, he had answered hers! Still, he was gone. Shivering with excitement and irritation, she spread her wings and launched back towards the dock entrance. There was no more time for sightseeing. She had work to do and, at last, no distractions.

---

Wait, hold on, this can't be right. I'm reasonably certain someone was supposed to get grievously wounded or lose an eye or something. We're longer than Wuthering Heights with this chapter, which is neat because it's also a story where a bunch of strangely-named characters tend to find that nothing goes right for them. My editor instructs me to tell you that any resemblance between the plots of Wuthering Heights and Grand Design is purely coincidental.

Thank you again for the time you spend reading and for your comments! Come back next week for another dose of torus-centric family fun.

 

[TMarkos]

Anja floated in a sea of endless darkness, a sunless black like the depths of hyperspace. She had lost track of how long it had been since she entered. Her body seemed to melt away as she lay immobile, her consciousness baring its skin to the dark and floating free.

A searing line of light stabbed into her eyes, making her wince and jarring her out of her reverie. She sat up slowly as the autodoc's cover pulled back with a deep whirring noise. After a few seconds of painful negotiation between her retinas and the medical office's cold white light, she was able to see enough to leave the examination table and slip on the thin robe laid beside the doc.

After dressing she left the room and went to the adjoining meeting area where Jesri was waiting. On the room's display were David and Helene, still perusing the data feed from the exam. Upon seeing her come in Helene looked up and smiled warmly.

"Anja, good timing," she said. "We were just finishing a preliminary read-through of your exam results."

Anja padded barefoot to a chair, smiling at Jesri before she sat down and shifted until comfortable. The chairs were newly ordered from Xim Len's fabrication workshop, modeled after the long-decayed original station furniture. They gave off a familiar scent of offgassing foam and plastic that filled her head with thoughts of her childhood - their creche had been finished only months before the Tam siblings themselves and the whole place had smelled faintly of new synthetics until she was fifteen.

"Anything jump out at you?", she asked neutrally.

Helene nodded. "Quite a few things, yes," she said, fiddling with a console outside the display's view. "I think we should start by saying that you're in no immediate danger. We were able to deactivate the link's external communications while retaining all of the internal stabilization functions. Eleanor's update hasn't affected them yet."

Anja narrowed her eyes at Helene's choice of phrasing. "Yet?", she inquired pointedly.

"It's a complicated patch," Helene explained, "but with the facilities here and the benefit of some extra time we've been able to improve on the analysis that David Zeta-Two performed shortly after it was loaded to your link." Helene converted half of the screen into a data display showing a network diagram.

"Here is the initial impact of Eleanor's modifications, as shown by Zeta-Two's scan on Nicnevin," she explained, pointing at a small area of the diagram shaded in blood-red. "Zeta-Two's analysis at the time was correct - the impact was minimal and posed no functional issues. Unfortunately, there was no way for him to know the full extent of Eleanor's alterations from that single data point." She toggled her console and the red patch suddenly spidered outward to color adjacent areas.

"This," Helene said grimly, "is the scan performed just now."

Anja stood and walked closer to the display. She couldn't tell precisely what was affected from the cryptic labels on the diagram, but the implication was not encouraging. "It's spreading?", she asked.

"It was spreading," David broke in. "But we believe we've been able to halt its progress." He minimized the diagram so that his face reappeared on the screen, his expression serious but not dire.

"Our thought is that Eleanor ran into a problem when trying to modify her own firmware, namely that the people who designed your links were absolute geniuses," he said with a shake of his head. "I had assumed the Valkyrie program was using experimental technology, but the degree of neuromechanical integration they achieved is unbelievable - even when considering that your brains were designed for compatibility. They compensated for the inherent plasticity of organic neural networks by making the link constantly redesign itself to better interface with your changing neural architecture."

"This would have posed a problem for Eleanor," he continued, "because it makes the functions of the link impossible to attack via conventional means. Her solution was unfortunately almost as brilliant as the original design - she attacked the relatively static code that governed the rewrite process."

Anja quirked an eyebrow at the display, her face studiously calm despite the chill she felt at his words. "That sounds very similar to cancer," she observed. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jesri's posture stiffen.

David nodded. "Not dissimilar. Fortunately, like cancer, it sounds much worse than it is and lends itself to easy treatment. The patch uses the behavior of the rewrite mechanism to slowly alter the functions of linked code segments. Unlike a biological system that is constantly 'updating', however, your firmware only reconfigures itself when it is in active use. This is why you experienced effects when you used the link's communication protocols, since that is where the patch is currently contained."

"The most important distinction, however, is that we can deactivate the affected system with no ill effects. Your external communication functions are currently disabled and the affected code blocks are dormant. This means no rewrites are occurring and no new blocks are being affected," David concluded with an encouraging smile.

Jesri let out a weighty sigh of relief. "That's great news," she said.

"Great news for Anja," David sighed, "but not great for our overall efforts against the Gestalt. We had hoped that a modified version of Eleanor's patch would allow broad-scale data layer attacks against the Gestalt using our allies still in its network. Knowing what we now know about how it operates, I can't recommend that course of action."

"All of that is of course secondary to Anja's good health," Helene said reproachfully, shooting David an annoyed look. "We still have the rest of the data from the scan to scrub through. Hopefully it yields the key to removing the altered code from Anja's system entirely. Until that time, you must not reactivate your external communication functions."

Helene's face turned serious. "I cannot emphasize this enough," she warned. "Any additional use of that module risks spreading the code to other modules. If it moves to a critical module we can't shut down, it will inevitably spread to the whole link. In the best case you will experience the same stability issues that you observed in Eleanor. At worst it could leave you essentially brain-dead."

"Got it," Anja confirmed with a shudder. "No link chatter."

Jesri punched her lightly in the shoulder. "You'll get used to it. My link was broken for a thousand years before we found the doc on the Grand Design."

"Hopefully we find a fix before that long," Anja grimaced. "Not having the link is only an inconvenience, but it remains inconvenient."

"We'll keep looking," Helene promised. "You can count on David to pick this apart until we understand every subroutine, even if he'll only focus on it because it's strategically useful." David grinned at her and shrugged, receiving a withering look in response.

Anja stood and inclined her head to both of them, smiling at the display. "Whatever your reasons may ultimately be, thank you for fixing me up," she said. "If there's anything you need from me to assist your research, just let me know."

"We will," promised David, a little too enthusiastically.

Helene glanced at him. "Anything within reason," she added. "We'll leave you two to your day while we review the full dataset. I don't want to take up too much of your time until we have more concrete facts."

"Thanks again!", Jesri called, waving as the display winked off.

Anja slumped back into her chair, feeling suddenly fatigued. "Ugh," she complained.

"You good?", Jesri asked.

Anja raised an eyebrow at her sister. "Are you asking how I'm handling today's threat to my health and well-being?", she replied puckishly. "Fairly sure this is the least serious problem on our plate right now. If Ellie's patch wants to kill me it's going to have to get in line behind the Gestalt, the Kita-"

"Yeah, yeah," Jesri replied, waving her off. "Big tough Anja." She folded her hands and gave Anja a piercing look. "Be serious, though. Are you good?"

"Sister," Anja replied irritatedly, "everything is fine. David said that it should be contained and they will undoubtedly force me in for scans every week-"

Jesri stood up sharply, cutting her off. "Major Tam," she said coldly, "deliver a psychological self-assessment."

A flare of anger burst momentarily behind Anja's eyes as she shot to her feet. The familiar wording overturned dusty memories of their childhood training; a shattered girl with bloody hands still wracked with horror after enduring the phantasmagoria of the scenario simulator. She remembered the chill stares from a silent line of white-coated observers waiting to see if they had at long last reached the limits of their creation's ability and will. The white coats had done their work well, though, and even before her pang of rage had begun to fade she found herself rummaging through the corners of her own mind with a cool detachment.

Was Jesri right? Was she overlooking something? She drew on her training, stepping out of her subjective view and turning the question over in her head while several seconds ticked by in silence. By the time she had answered the question to her satisfaction Jesri was looking at her worriedly, clearly regretting forcing the issue.

"Madam Examiner," Anja said bitingly. "I am ready to proceed."

"Anja, it's fine," Jesri said, wincing at her sister's tone. "I shouldn't have-"

"But you did," Anja shot back. "So we will do it correctly." She assumed a posture of attention and looked at Jesri with blank eyes. "My overall state is high-coherence, high-stress with an acceptable net-coherent outcome," she said mechanically. "Major stressors are the recent death of my sister at my hand, the introduction of hostile code into my neural link by that same sister and the discovery of four other sisters' bodies, two of which were actively being desecrated by hostile parties. Minor stressors include a recent severe injury during an operation resulting in the loss and regrowth of a leg, the deaths of several civilians under my care and a generally elevated level of life-threatening events compared to baseline."

Jesri blinked. "Fuck, this has been a bad couple of months," she muttered.

They stared solemnly at each other for a few seconds more before a grin broke onto Anja's lips. Laughing, the two sisters embraced closely before pulling back to arm's length.

"I'm sorry, Anja," Jesri said. "I may have been a bit harsh."

"No, you were right to demand that I think about it properly," Anja insisted. "The last few months have been bad. I probably would have answered differently if you had pushed me to do a self-assessment right after Nicnevin," she admitted. "Elpis has been good. Training the squad has been rewarding and constructive. I think we have more of a concrete idea about how to go after the Gestalt than we ever had before we made contact with the resistance."

Jesri nodded. "It's been nice having allies again, even if they are strange ones."

"Why would you say that about Rhuar?" Anja admonished with an impish smile, provoking a giggle from Jesri. "Really, though, I do feel good," she said. "Even with this shit from Ellie knocking around in my head. Helene will insist on monitoring it, so there should be no risk of it spreading without our knowledge."

"You're right, of course," Jesri sighed. "And even if it did spread I'm betting they could work something out, they've proven to be pretty resourceful."

"Perhaps," Anja allowed, her face turning serious. "But they will not have the chance to try. If it spreads past the link's communication module I will resolve the issue permanently."

Consternation spread over Jesri's face as her sister's meaning sunk in. "Anja, don't joke," she admonished. "That won't happen, and even if it does we have options-"

"No jokes," said Anja, shaking her head. "No delays. If it spreads I will die as myself, while I still am enough of myself to pull the trigger. I will not be like Ellie," she said firmly, looking Jesri directly in the eye. "I will not make you kill me."

She clapped her sister on the shoulder, ignoring Jesri's stricken face. "I need to change out of this stupid robe," she said, striding towards the door. "I have exercises with the squad down in the danger room this afternoon. We can grab dinner afterward."

She flipped a casual salute to Jesri and walked back out of the room, leaving her sister standing alone in the quiet dark.

---

"This is absolutely unacceptable!", Kvkitt yelled, moving to slam an arm on the desk but pulling up short after a wary glance in Jesri's direction. The Arrigh station administrator took a moment to collect himself, then leveled a glare at the two sisters. "Excuse me. It is unacceptable, though. You commit an act of theft against the Kita, if not an act of war, then drop your stolen goods right beside our station."

He shook his head in irritation. "They will hear, eventually, then they will make the reasonable conclusion that it was the Arrigh who stole the gate. The Kita will come here to take back what is theirs, putting all of our lives at risk." A murmur went up from the rest of the room, where the various guild leaders were gathered for the discussion - although Tarl had decided to contribute to the meeting with his absence, much to Jesri's relief.

Anja tapped her fingers on her forearm, looking bored. "It was necessary," she said curtly.

Kvkitt's expression darkened when he realized further explanation was not forthcoming. "You two are as bad as that bloodthirsty Tarl," he spat. "Threats and violence, not honest talk. This is too much, you will see us all killed-"

"Okay, first point," Jesri said tiredly. "You're not going to get killed by the Kita. We have the resources to protect the station quite thoroughly and you can be assured it's in our interest to do so."

Belshi shot her a dark look. "I couldn't help but notice," he sneered, "that you felt the need to qualify that statement. If not my people, then who will be killing us? You, perhaps? Your sister? Will it be your yellow thugs?" The curmudgeonly Kitan banker had grown no fonder of her after the gate operation, but Jesri thought that was largely because he feared the Kitan government would link their brand-new foes with the gigantic new accounts he had brought in just weeks before.

"Nobody's killing anybody," grated Jesri. "Not the Kita, not us, not Tarl and his troops. We will stop any pending confrontation on or around this station."

"You're awfully confident," noted Escalating Irreducible Manifold, its gelatinous body shifting color tones slowly. "But I'm afraid most people will not be. Trade from the other stations will fall if this station is perceived as a travel risk."

Jesri looked over at the blobby captain, settling for making eye contact with its center mass in the absence of discernable eyes. "You think trade will fall with the gate present?", she asked. "These things are wonderful for trade, even with some rumors about the Kita you should be making money hand over…" She trailed off, looking at Kvkitt's chitinous claws and Manifold's utter lack of appendages. "Rapidly," she concluded. "You'll be making money rapidly."

"I think you overestimate the gate's draw," Kvkitt snorted. "It provides what, half the multiplier effect of a standard mass ramp? That's useful in the backwater where they found it, but this close to a real station ramp it's a mere curiosity. At most it will draw in a few adventurous tourists. I don't know how you managed to move the gate, but you've robbed it of any utility by bringing it here."

Anja goggled at the annoyed insectile alien, then pressed her forehead into her hands in exasperation. "You can't be serious," she groaned, her voice muffled. Kvkitt gave her a bemused look, his beady eyes flickering in confusion.

Beside her, Jesri shook her head. "Kvkitt," Jesri said wearily, "The folks who live in this part of space have been fighting over the gate for how long?"

Kvkitt gave her a look that was equal parts curiosity and annoyance. "About two thousand years, or at least that's as far as our records show," he replied. "It was only recently acquired by the Kita, but the Grand Tabernacle has placed great importance on it as a human relic. This is why their retribution will be-"

"Two thousand years," Jesri continued, steamrolling over the sputtering administrator, "and nobody has figured out how to turn the damn thing on?"

A stunned silence descended over the room. "It - what?", Kvkitt asked uncertainly. "The Kita use the gate on a regular basis, it functions just fine. The mass multiplier has been consistent as long as we've known about the gate."

Jesri stood and began pacing, spitting out her words with annoyed fervor. "Advanced transit gates give a modest mass boost passively, something that results from the particular shape of their waveguides," she explained. "An active transit gate, on the other hand, lends its own rather substantial mass to any ship using the gate. Anything from the smallest freighter to the largest ship you can squeeze through the torus receives the full supercapital-class multiplier from the station for their outgoing leg."

Xim Len gaped at her. "That's ridiculous," she said disbelievingly. "With that sort of mass boost you would save days or weeks on any of the common trade routes. It's absurd."

"Absurdly profitable," commented Manifold, its skin shimmering with barely-restrained emotion. "If what she's saying is true Elpis is about to become the shortest path to anywhere. The station will overflow with traffic."

"But this is even worse!", moaned Kvkitt. "If the gate can really do what you say, the Kita will want it back desperately. They'll send their whole navy to Elpis. They'll wage a holy war!" A concerned mutter went up around the room as the guild delegates considered the prospect.

"They won't," Qktk said quietly. All heads in the room turned to look at him, hunched contemplatively in his chair. He flitted his many eyes between the guild delegates and stood up with a soft rattle of chitin. "Oh, obviously they would send the navy if they heard there had been some mysterious terrorist attack and that the gate had been stolen away to Elpis. However, the only ones who know that the gate was attacked at all are the imprisoned Kitan gate crew and a few people on the station. To everyone else, the gate simply appeared without explanation in a flash of light. Strange and wonderful," he mused slyly, "as expected of these old human artifacts. Miraculous, even."

Manifold quivered violently. "A clever ploy, but the Kita will never believe that story," it said. "Even if the gate has 'miraculously' relocated itself, you hold its crew prisoner. They will still assume foul play on the part of the Arrigh."

Qktk cocked his head at the gelatinous captain. "Why would we hold the crew prisoner? We need people to man the station, after all.", he pointed out, sitting back in his chair. "We can lock out the self-jump functionality and return the gate to their control, the Kitan clergy can't object to that. The gate is much more useful to them beside Elpis, as long as they believe they retain control."

"And why would the prisoners collaborate with us?", Kvkitt scoffed. "I'm given to understand you were quite brutal during the assault. Will you simply threaten their lives again?"

Belshi grunted in realization, shifting his bulk to sit upright. "The cowards surrendered and had their priceless relic snatched out from under them. The humiliation would be unbearable if word got out, they would be exiled, excommunicated, their names erased from their family line." He inclined his head slightly to Qktk. "If we offer to 'return control' of the gate they would be fools not to accept. They avoid the shame of surrender and enjoy the prestige of serving aboard a seeming miracle of the faith." He coughed and spat contemptuously, causing Xim Len to edge away with a disgusted look. "The Tabernacle will gain power when the story circulates," he said with a disgusted look, "so they will support the fiction even if they disbelieve it."

Jesri nodded, winding a strand of hair around her finger as she thought. "Most of the crew survived the assault, thanks to Rhuar and D-, ah, his deceptions," she said, correcting herself hastily. "We can pass off the customs ships and the few dead garrison soldiers as mysterious losses resulting from the transfer."

Kvkitt seemed caught off-guard at Jesri's casual brushing-aside of so many deaths, but quickly regained his composure. "My government will not be pleased that the Kita have gained a foothold near the station," he admitted, "but once the implications of the activated gate become clear they will be hard-pressed to object. An increase in trade numbers will do much to keep them from taking action against the Kita."

Jesri looked around at each of the guild heads in turn. "So we have a plan? Everyone clear on how we're playing this?" She leveled her gaze at the Kitan banker. "Belshi, we going to have any issues from your end?"

"Pfah," he spat. "You think I'm the patriotic type, with the company I keep?" He indicated the assembled guild heads with one bony arm, cackling wetly. "As long as I'm making money and we're not all dead, I'm happy."

"It's a conspiracy, then," Kvkitt said glumly.

"So it is," Jesri replied brightly. "Here's to productive cooperation."

Anja stood abruptly and walked towards the door, causing Jesri to furrow her brow in concern. "Hey Anja, you okay?", she called out.

Her sister shot back a questioning look. "Yes? I was just going to go talk to Tarl, since he took over handling of the gate crew. If we need the prisoners to be cooperative it's probably best that we get them out of Ysleli custody as soon as possible."

Jesri blanched. She hadn't actually thought to discuss the short-term treatment of the prisoners with Tarl, an oversight that seemed increasingly critical the more she considered it. "You had better get down there, yeah," she muttered.

Anja gave her a sparkling grin and vanished through the door. Xim Len looked bewildered, her delicate wings fluttering. "How did you end up working with that scaly butcher anyway?", she asked. "You're crazy, don't misunderstand me, but you can be reasoned with. He seems to enjoy bloodshed for its own sake."

"How did we meet Tarl?", Jesri asked contemplatively. "That's kind of a long story, but the short version is that Kick insulted his honor and blew up half his fleet."

For the second time that day the room turned to stare at Qktk, who shrank back and shot a reproachful look at Jesri. "It was all a misunderstanding," he muttered. "And it wasn't even close to half. Maybe a fifth."

Xim Len edged farther away from Qktk, her eyes wide, while Belshi seemed to regard him appreciatively.

"Jim's teeth," Qktk swore. "Look, we were only trying to distract them-"

"Is that why Tarl's soldiers call you the Demon of Ysl?", Manifold asked. "I heard a couple of them talking."

"Hrmph," Belshi said contemplatively. "I've heard the name 'Thousand-Eyed Nightmare' used here and there. I had assumed they were simply being xenophobic barbarians."

"Now that's just ridiculous," scoffed Qktk. "Even counting minor eyes-"

"Just roll with it, Kick," Jesri advised, sitting back in her chair with a grin. "You're lizard-famous. They don't give a scaly yellow crap how many eyes you have."

Qktk looked around the room, his decidedly-fewer-than-a-thousand eyes moving from the bewildered and discomfited faces of the guild leaders to Jesri's self-satisfied grin.

He sighed. This was what he got for picking up passengers.

---

Hi folks, happy Wednesday! A quiet chapter this week as we process the aftermath of kidnapping a giant space donut. With this installment we're longer than Walden, so as a tribute Part 29 will be a 15000-word description of beans growing in the hydroponics bay. My editor approves of the break in the action and is taking it easy this week.

Thank you again for the time you spend reading and for your comments. See you again next week for another episode of Jesri Tam's Tech Support Help Desk!

 

[TMarkos]

Anja pushed bits of endive around her plate with a frown. The newly unlocked hydroponics bays were operating at full capacity and the sudden influx of fresh human vegetables was taking the station by storm. The problem was that every food stall seemed to think that greens should be fried, steamed, boiled or baked crisp rather than simply served raw. After a beaming, obese Kitan vendor had presented her with a limp bowl of boiled lettuce she had eventually given up and grabbed a few handfuls of produce straight from the hydroponics trays. Despite all her effort and anticipation, however, the crisp leaves seemed strangely unfulfilling.

"You know what they say," Jesri said, her mouth half-full, "if you're not overjoyed to see real food, you're overdue for deployment." She reached over and stabbed a fork through some of the leftovers on Anja's plate, darting backwards before her sister could do much more than scowl.

Anja's annoyed expression faded as quickly as it had arrived, however, and she sank back in her chair with a sigh. "You might be right," she admitted. "Not like we have a shortage of things to do around here, but lately my day seems to be very… administrative," she said, spitting out the word with a disgusted expression. "I wish the resistance members would consent to appear publicly. That would let them talk with the guilds directly so that we could go do something useful."

Seeing her lack of objection, Jesri happily reached over to steal Anja's plate. "We aw-", she said, hastily swallowing a mouthful. "Sorry. We are being useful. The guilds are enthusiastic but they're still like kids in a quartermaster's sometimes. They need us to help them. Besides, I thought you were still training with your guys?"

"Oh, sure," Anja said, making a dismissive gesture. "We help out. My men train. What does it gain us, though? The Gestalt is not going to be brought down by a robust station economy and two dozen trigger-happy lizards." She shook her head in frustration. "It has been a week and a half since we took the gate. Xim Len is nearly done with the first Ysleli ship refits. I would at least have expected a tentative plan from David on what we do next."

Jesri nodded, tapping her bottom lip with her fork thoughtfully. "I get the impression that they were a bit thrown off by not being able to use Ellie's research. They could be reassessing parts of their short-term plan, or at least revising details. Also, I was checking in with Chris about the fabrication bays and he mentioned something about wanting to let the situation with the gate mellow out a bit before we made any more big moves."

Anja shook her head. "Mellow out?", she snorted. "Sister, the gate is only going to draw more attention with every jump. I know that if Manifold gets its way, it will be the premier transport route for exports in this sector. Exports which, by the way, include a selection of new human-make goods straight from the fabricators. I worry that the resistance is underestimating the station's inevitable growth spike from giving the guilds access to both the station facilities and the gate."

"It's possible," Jesri allowed. "For all the talk of keeping a lower profile by not bringing the Grand Design within range of the station we're being fairly unsubtle. Speaking of which, have you talked with our David lately?"

"Two days ago," Anja confirmed. "Happy as could be, still parked off some rogue planetoid playing xenogeologist with the sensors. We should count ourselves lucky that we allowed him on the ship and not the David from Elpis - otherwise, I would worry about ever seeing the Grand Design again." She sighed and leaned back in her chair, lacing her hands behind her head. "Unfortunately," she said, "I think it will still be too long before we are able to safely bring her to Elpis. Once we do, we confirm to the Gestalt that the ship was not destroyed at Ysl. At that point Elpis is lost to us no matter what we do."

"Perhaps that accounts for the sudden hesitancy from our resistance cell?", Jesri mused. "After all, they're the only ones here who can't evacuate if an Emissary comes knocking."

"Only one way to find out," Anja said. "Sister, I believe we are overdue for a strategy meeting with our incorporeal friends."

"Well, hold on," said Jesri, grabbing her fork again. "You've still got sprouts."

---

Rhuar and Qktk joined them in the briefing room, settling down around the table just minutes after the two sisters arrived. Rhuar's fur was filthy, matted with grease and marred by a few crisped patches that still smelled faintly of burnt hair. He had been spending ever more time in the fabrication workshops with Xim Len as they put the finishing touches on Tarl's ships.

Qktk had been a bit harder to pin down as of late. Everyone Jesri talked to seemed to have recently conversed with him about trade or shipping, food or leisure - even Manifold had mentioned Qktk talking with it at length about potentially renting use of the Leviathan while its captain was indisposed. As far as Jesri could tell, the little Htt was networking his chitinous ass off while they were stuck on-station. Assuming there was a populated station left here when all was said and done, he was probably going to be a very wealthy individual.

They both looked bone-tired in the dim light from the room's displays, making Jesri feel her recent restful idleness all the more keenly. The four of them sat in the dark without talking for a long minute or two before the screens activated to show David and Helene.

They too looked tired, although theirs was a harried stress that reminded Jesri of soldiers that had spent too long under siege. The quiet, inevitable threats marked you differently than the immediate and specific threat of a sniper or a knife in the dark, Jesri knew from experience, and it was that threadbare quality that hung from their features.

"Hi everyone," Helene said with a wan smile. "It's been too long since our last sit-down."

"Yeah, that's kind of why we asked to meet," Jesri said. "Is there an issue with our timetable?"

David puffed his cheeks out, exhaling slowly. "Kind of, yeah, but not the way you think. We're concerned that the project is getting too visible too fast."

"Wait," Rhuar snorted. "Help me out here. You're saying that stealing the most famous human artifact in the galaxy and parking it on your doorstep attracted some attention?"

That earned him annoyed glances from David and Helene both. "Obviously we accounted for some notoriety once we started making moves," Helene said crossly. "The gate was always an essential acquisition, without it we can't penetrate far into Gestalt-monitored territory without being immediately intercepted. We anticipated that it would cause some disturbances when we acquired it." She shook her head.

"That's not the issue," she sighed. "It's all the rest of it. If you take Elpis and introduce the gate, it doesn't impact much. There's some increased attention by the Arrigh and Kita, sure, but eventually things trend back towards baseline."

"Unfortunately," David said, "that's not how things played out. We should have reassessed when the Ysleli arrived, that was the first major divergence from our projections. We even discussed the matter, but came to the conclusion that the Ysleli were largely uninterested in the larger political scene and would be a minimal impact - an assessment that is still correct, I might add."

Jesri gave them a flat look. "But their presence on the station still changes things," she said slowly. "It spurs the guilds to action."

"Exactly," Helene confirmed, missing or ignoring Jesri's odd tone. "The guilds used to be fragmented and risk-averse. When you changed the power dynamic by floating a bunch of money and human tech in front of them, they suddenly stopped their infighting and started taking a more active role in station management. It's acting as a huge economic boost to the station. Between the fabricators and the gate the growth has been immense - would you believe me if I told you there were twice as many people living on Elpis as there were before you came?"

"Seriously?", asked Rhuar. "I've seen an increase just walking around, but I can't believe the population just doubled. Where are they all staying? You can't just dump that many people into the station, you need rooms, food, water - we're a closed system, even if the station is huge there's only so much of it that's usable."

"The dockworkers and freight haulers have converted cargo spaces into dormitories," David said with a grimace. "They're hiring everyone they can get to help out at the docks, their biggest labor sink is cargo transport. Food and water thankfully aren't an issue, the hydroponics bays are more than compensating for the increased demand. Jesri's infusion of funds into the system means that the local economy is fluid and cash-rich, so everyone is content - for the moment."

"It's stable until one factor or another hits a ceiling," Qktk mused. "Right now it's all growth, but boomtowns always hit a contraction eventually. Eventually there will be a lack of food, water, jobs, essential services."

"Eventually Xim Len will realize she can just make cargo robots to replace the dockworkers," Rhuar pointed out. "I know the capabilities of the fabricator, there aren't many jobs on the station that will be safe once the large-scale assemblers are finished working on parts for the Ysleli ships." He scratched at his ear, then shook his head. "We should probably consider what happens if literally all the new arrivals to the station find themselves unemployed overnight."

Helene winced. "Not to sound callous, but that isn't our problem. The eventual economic difficulties that Elpis may face are no doubt severe, but it's beyond the scale of our operation. It's the immediate exponential growth that's concerning to us."

She steepled her fingers and leaned forward, her eyes intense. "We have been concerned about the worsening state of our operation for a while, but we had hoped that Eleanor's research would yield results before the situation became untenable. Now that we know it isn't safe to use her patch we can no longer be certain that we will be ready to confront the Gestalt before it discovers us. We may be facing an existential threat to the station within months, even weeks."

Anja gave the display an uninterpretable look. "What are our options?" she asked.

David shrugged. "There are really only two. We must either delay the rapid expansion of the station or accelerate our progress on the data layer of our offensive."

Jesri drummed her fingers on the table irritatedly and frowned. "The station's economic growth is past the point of easy recovery. We could find ways to put a damper on it, but there isn't much we could do that would be meaningful within the next couple of months."

"We could disrupt guild operations," David suggested mildly. Anja and Jesri exchanged a glance, then turned back to the display.

Helene looked askance at him, and he spread his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm not suggesting anything large-scale," he said soothingly. "We need Xim Len where she is to complete Tarl's refit, and most of the others aren't worth the trouble. Just removing the Caran in charge of the shipper's association would shake things up enough."

"Manifold?", asked Rhuar with surprise. "David, don't get me wrong, but Manifold is convinced it's about to make a fuckton of money. You can't pay it to abandon the guild."

"Manifold is singularly focused on optimizing its logistical network," Qktk added, nodding in agreement. "It only cares about money because it's the designated metric for success."

David shrugged. "There are less voluntary ways we could go about it," he said casually. The room stared at him for a moment, and Qktk's mandibles twitched spasmodically.

"For fuck's sake, David!", Helene shouted. "We are not contemplating violence against Manifold. Some lines we don't cross."

David shook his head. "Helene, if we don't do something then Manifold dies anyway. So does everyone else on the station, followed by everyone in the universe."

She pursed her lips angrily. "I know the stakes. It doesn't excuse calculated thuggery, calculated murder. We can't let ourselves stoop that low, we're better than this."

"No we aren't," David laughed incredulously. "Seriously, Helene, are you going to say that in front of these two?" He gestured to Anja and Jesri, who had been sitting in stony silence throughout their exchange. "Are you going to sit there and tell them with a straight face that humanity is too noble to stoop to treachery and assassination? That we only kill combatants, never civilians? That we were always the good guys?"

Helene's face grew uncertain as she looked through the display at the two Valkyries, then it hardened once more. "An argument like that has no constraints," she scoffed. "You can justify any manner of atrocity with that logic. If you take that route, you abandon any pretense that we are still humans and not simply rogue software rampaging through the station systems."

David's smile grew wider, taking on a feral quality. "Oh, don't take such a limited view of our humanity. Real, authentic humans created our friends over there, after all." His eyes bored into Helene's unblinkingly. "Tell me, what do you think they were?", he demanded. "Were they diplomats, in three meters of power armor? Spies, with rifles larger than you? Do you think they made Valkyries by teaching them about due process and rules of engagement? Ask them!", he shouted, pointing through the screen at Anja. "Ask how many times they looked back at the human giving them their target list and said 'we're better than this.'"

"Enough," Anja said coolly, her eyes fixed on David's. "This is a useless discussion. We will not be killing Manifold."

"Thank you!", said Helene indignantly. "See, David-"

"Quiet," Jesri interrupted, her voice tight. "Both of you. Is this all you have after two weeks? Brute force and moral hand-wringing?", she admonished them. "Why didn't you reach out to us before wasting all this time?"

Helene's mouth hung open in shock, and even David looked mildly surprised. Jesri's hands curled into fists below the table, her lips pressed into a thin line. "There is no scenario where assassinating a guild leader will provide a sufficiently beneficial outcome. At best we would cause a mild delay while one of their lieutenants takes charge, at worst we are discovered and the entire operation is blown." She stared at David and Helene with cold eyes. "Attempting to influence socioeconomic trends with political violence is the first resort of desperate amateurs. Refusing to fully explore your options for personal moral reasons is naive. Both of your analyses were simplistic and disappointing."

Anja leaned back in her chair, taking in the stunned faces of the resistance members. "Worrying about the growth of the station is useless. The economic situation on Elpis was always going to be largely uncontrollable as a result of our actions. Even if you had been transparent about your concerns - and let me be clear, you should have been - there is little that we could have done to arrive at a different scenario."

She began ticking off items on her fingers in a clipped tone. "The arrival of the Ysleli necessitated a pacifying concession to prevent Arrigh military intervention," she explained, "and given our resources any gift of sufficient value would necessarily involve exposing station systems capable of economic disruption. Using the necessity of such a gift to secure the loyalty of Tarl and his men via the refit was tactically sound, even if it granted Xim Len an unfortunate amount of access," she said, her voice still flat. "Acquiring the gate as well may have been a step too far, but I see no viable way to proceed without it."

"It's easy in hindsight," David retorted, his defiant tone marred somewhat by the rattled expression on his face. "Where were your objections and analysis when we proposed the mission? What stopped you from giving your dire warnings about the consequences of the gate operation during the briefing?"

"It's… shit, it's our fault, really," Jesri said frustratedly, her anger bleeding off. "We're used to working with trusted handlers, and your help up to now had gained you that trust. Perhaps a bit too much, but don't mistake that criticism for something it isn't. Your information and assistance has been invaluable to us thus far. It's no exaggeration to say that we owe the resistance our lives several times over. We just…"

She hesitated. "Back when we were running missions for the Navy there would often be missing context or unexplored implications in a mission briefing. The questions occurred to us, obviously, but we never said anything because it wasn't necessary. Our handlers had inevitably considered it, evaluated it, arrived at the optimal conclusion far ahead of the briefing. It was easier to trust them, just like it was easier to trust you." Helene stared back at her, eyes flicking between the two sisters uncertainly.

"They would scold me for saying this," Jesri said ruefully, "but they were perfect. As perfect as they could be, anyway." She looked at Helene and David, a touch of sympathy coloring her expression. "But you aren't. Hell, we're the ones who are supposed to be going around running insurgencies, not you. You're a handful of people that stumbled into this essentially at random. That's not to say you haven't done exceedingly well - improbably well, even."

"But the fact remains, you are not our handlers," Anja said sharply. "You lack the support of the military intelligence apparatus. You lack specialist groups to compile information packets on subjects of interest. You lacked our advice, if only because you did not solicit it and we did not think to offer it." Her face softened somewhat, and she leaned forward again. "You are not infallible. We should not have treated you as such. It was… sentimental of us to do so, and incorrect."

Helene cleared her throat with some difficulty and stared at the two sisters. "What are you suggesting?", she asked quietly.

"Only better coordination," Jesri replied. "We've missed several key points so far where we could have worked together and leveraged our individual areas of expertise to better influence the developing situation on the station. Loop us in more often, keep the lines of communication open. Let us help you." She shot David a chilly look. "We have a much broader skillset than simply checking people off a list."

"Fine. Wonderful," David said brusquely, his face red. "We're all talking now. If we've given up holding back the station's economic expansion, that leaves us with the distant second choice of accelerating our plans against the Gestalt."

Anja nodded, choosing to ignore his vaguely petulant tone. "Do we have any promising options?", she asked.

"Not even poor ones, I'm afraid," Helene said quickly, speaking before David could respond. "Our current obstacle is that our information on the Gestalt's network architecture is limited to what the Beta instances were able to exfiltrate when they escaped. Ideally we'd have a physical sample of Gestalt hardware…" She trailed off, shrugging helplessly. "We had discarded that idea as unrealistic, for obvious reasons."

Jesri frowned. "That's a tough ask, yeah," she agreed. "Is there something else we could use in lieu of a hardware sample? Scans, transmission logs?"

"Detailed schematics, perhaps," Helene said thoughtfully. "There's really not a substitute, though. We can only get so far on theoreticals. We need to study methods of attacking the Gestalt's network, and we can only test our theories if we have something to attack."

"So that leaves us with what?", Qktk asked. "Stealing a Gestalt ship? That sounds unwise."

"Try impossible," grunted David, still wearing a sullen expression. "The Gestalt doesn't have ships. The Emissaries are like big drones, you can't board them and steal them. We would have to disable one, which we can't do. Even the Grand Design could barely scratch them."

Anja's face lit up. "We may not need to fight an Emissary." She looked at Jesri, her eyes glittering. "We already defeated one, remember."

Jesri blinked. "Trelir?", she asked, twirling her hair around a finger contemplatively. "Do you think any of his body survived? There was the bomb in his office, not to mention the other Emissary blowing up half the continent."

"He was quite resilient, sister," Anja pointed out. "We only ever managed to damage him cosmetically. He did seem confident that the bomb would kill him, but he was outside of his office when it went off. His facility was also underground, which may have afforded his body some protection from the other Emissary's attack."

"Or it could mean he's buried under dozens of meters of rubble," Jesri pointed out. "Not that it changes much, he's still our best bet."

"By far," Rhuar snorted. "It would be easier to dig him out of the molten fucking planetary core than to square off with an Emissary and win. The planet doesn't shoot back."

"Helene, would that work?", Jesri asked, looking back toward the display. "Could you use Trelir's body as your hardware sample?"

David and Helene shared a glance. "I'll have to run it by Yetide," she said, "but I don't see why not. David?"

He gave a grudging nod. "From your reports, Trelir seemed to have enough autonomy that he could be useful. It depends on the state of his body."

"Then it's settled," Jesri said happily. "We're going back to Ysl."

"What's left of it, anyway," Qktk said glumly. "I'm not sure why you're so pleased to be going back there."

Anja flicked his carapace lightly with her finger, grinning. "My sister just likes having a mission target," she said airily. "No need to worry, Demon Captain - I doubt we will have need of your famous services this time around."

"Oh, leave him alone," chuckled Rhuar as Qktk grumbled and slouched in his chair, looking everywhere in the room but at Anja. "Besides," he added, "I wouldn't bet against a little combat. The Ysleli were ready to fight us before we got them blown up. Now we're going to come back and rummage around in the ruins of their homeworld after they've had a few months to get good and angry? To salvage a piece of advanced technology? With fucking Tarl in our party?" Rhuar shook his head. "Some folks are going to get shot," he said sagely.

"Wait," Helene objected, "why would you even take Tarl back to Ysl? Wasn't he exiled and stripped of his rank?" She looked to David for confirmation, received a nod in response and shook her head disbelievingly. "That would make things unnecessarily complicated. Let's not even mention that he's completely insane. Any member of Anja's squad would be less trouble if you needed a local guide."

"I didn't say we wanted to take Tarl," Rhuar snorted. "I'm just being realistic. If he hears that we're going back to Ysl, which he absolutely fucking will - what do you think his reaction will be?"

There was a moment of silence while everyone thought.

"Ah," muttered Jesri. "Shit."

---

Xim Len's wings fluttered in a nervous spasm before she caught herself and stilled them, mentally cursing her lack of composure. She never had issues showing her work to clients, but then again these weren't her normal clients. Tarl, normally a font of endless questions, stalked silently behind her like a moody yellow thundercloud with his eye darting to and fro. He set her teeth on edge, but she had largely grown accustomed to him over the past several weeks.

Rhuar was likewise a familiar sight, having taken it upon himself to join her engineering team for the later stages of the refit. Odd, certainly, but he was prone to surprising insights and unconventional solutions that had endeared him to her engineers. Rhuar was, unlike Tarl, quite welcome in her workshop. His friends, however…

She felt her wings begin to twitch once more and willed them to be calm, glancing nervously behind her. The two humanforms walked quietly behind Rhuar as they approached her workshop, their feet making no noise whatsoever as they moved. The two sisters were creepy like few others she had met, and that was before you knew what they were. Every time Xim Len snuck a glance at them, their bright blue-on-white eyes were already staring straight back at her like they knew she was thinking about them. Creepy. And now they wanted to check her work.

Not like she wasn't confident in her results. The requirements and specifications Jesri had provided for her were admittedly excellent, and working in the fabrication workshops was a dream fulfilled. But Jesri hadn't handed her the key to Xlixë-Who-Chases-The-Dawn's divine cloud-forge and told her to make a cargo crate. No, heavenly tools were to be used for heavenly pursuits. The reactors alone were so terrifyingly energetic that she had test-fired the first one by remote in a vacant dock half a kilometer away from populated sections of the station. That it worked perfectly with only a slight audible hum was somehow the most terrifying part of it. Everything in human engineering was orders of magnitude stronger, brighter, faster, deadlier than the peak of her previously-limited imagination - yet somehow still quiet, efficient, understated and elegant. She was grateful, terrified and humbled every day she came back to the workshop.

But now, mostly terrified.

The small group crossed into the maintenance bay, a barely-contained chaos of scaffolding, wires and hoses strewn around the Ysleli ship sitting as if newly hatched in the center of it all. "Here it is," she said proudly, letting her wings puff out a bit. "The Subtle Blade is the first of the refits to finish certification. We have seven more that are done, pending their own certification, but we wanted to fully clear one ship as a preview." She preened, looking back at the faces of her clients as they took in the ship. "What do you think?"

She had no fear of their reaction now that she was standing in front of it. The ship still held to the elongated and boxy 98-meter frame of a Ysleli destroyer, but the side pylons had been extended and raked back in a sleek wedge to accommodate the longer human weapon mounts. Bulky and inefficient engines flaring out in the back had been replaced by the slim taper of smaller, cleaner thrusters. The hull, previously a lumpy crosshatch of interlocking armor plating, had been redone in a lightweight battle alloy that would easily outperform the heavier metals the Ysleli had been using. It shone like smoothed charcoal in the bay lights, a pristine semi-gloss hiding immense strength and resiliency in its micro-latticed structure.

The others looked at Tarl, seeming to come to a silent consensus that the first opinion was his by right. The tall warfather stepped forward, his lone eye no longer roving but fixed on the ship. "It is…", he said, his voice trailing off dazedly. "This is a Ysleli ship?" He finally broke his gaze away from the Subtle Blade to look at her. "Xim Len, you are an artist of metal. This is the finest ship I have ever had under my command." He made an odd bow towards her, his torso bending slightly to his left. "Please accept my gratitude for your work, and for indulging me in my curiosity these past weeks."

Xim Len felt her wings tuck flat against her body in a sudden searing blast of embarrassment. Who was this, and what had he done with Tarl? "I, ah-", she stammered. "Thank you?"

Jesri smiled and stepped forward to get a better view. "It's wonderful," she said. "You've really outdone yourself, Xim Len."

Her wings were vacuum-tight against her back. "Your schematics were wonderful," she mumbled. "I just followed the plans."

Tarl had walked to the near pylon and was standing with his hand pressed against the cool metal of the hull, a blissful expression on his face. "Wonderful," he murmured happily. "Yes, simply wonderful. I cannot wait to see it blooded in combat, bearing my men to glory within."

Anja cleared her throat. "May I make a suggestion?", she said sweetly. "It should not be much of a combat mission, but there may be some glory - or at least satisfaction."

Tarl tore his gaze away from the ship and looked back at her curiously.

"Ysl," Anja said, visibly enjoying the surprise on Tarl's face. "We need to return for Trelir's body."

Xim Len swore she could see an image in Tarl's glossy black eye as a feral grin bared his needle-sharp teeth. Tarl, Warfather-in-Exile, captaining his sleek and deadly flagship over the battered skies of Ysl - the hero returned, ascendent. She turned to Jesri as Tarl began to laugh softly, his eye gazing blankly ahead.

"You realize this is going to make him even more… him, don't you?", she whispered to Jesri. The humanform woman grinned back at her with a flash of her alarmingly white teeth. Xim Len successfully avoided flinching at the sight, feeling a pang of guilt at the impulse to flee. Jesri had been nothing but kind to her, after all. It wasn't her fault that she was so profoundly... disconcerting.

"I'm halfway looking forward to it," Jesri confessed. "It was either this or he would have found out anyway and gone on his own."

Xim Len looked back at the cackling Ysleli. "Fair," she acknowledged. "I just hope they're ready for him."

Anja walked over with a faint smile. "They've already had their planet half-destroyed," she murmured. "What more could-"

"No, no no no no-", Jesri said quickly, her eyes opening wide.

"-he possibly do?", Anja concluded, her smile growing larger.

Jesri sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose while Xim Len looked on in bewilderment. She supposed it was a humanform thing.

---

Anja's got to cut that out. This chapter makes us longer than Jurassic Park, another novel about an extinct species being resurrected and everything going to shit. My editor, meanwhile, is always a fan of caged creatures breaking out and destroying their ostensible masters.

Thank you again for the time you spend reading and for your comments! I'll swing back around next week with #30 - which, by the way, is not something I ever thought I'd be saying when I started writing this.

 

[TMarkos]

There was cold and dark, dust and ash. The dust had come all at once, roiling high over the fields to blot out the sun and cloak the valley in shadow. The townfathers had held a meeting then, clustering in their long hall as the sky darkened at midday, but as the dust began to sink toward the town they could find no answers. The few callboxes installed in richer homes and community buildings returned only hissing static or deep, ominous silence. As the dust was joined days later by ash, light and grey amid the choking clouds, they heard no word from Baron Risal or his constables.

The electricity failed on the third morning, the lines falling dead with no explanation. The water turned black with ash and grit before it stopped flowing at all. The old fathers raised their voices in warning; they had lived through the last succession wars, before Sitrl took the throne. They knew what happened to small towns like theirs when the yoke of order slipped from the land's neck. Rusted blades and rifles found their way into the dim candlelight, and children stared as their sires took up arms and stood grim-faced against the sooty windows.

They were resolute against the first unkempt deserters that roared into town on their stolen half-tracks, thick treads carving canyons into the layers of grey ash and dirt that hid all but the tallest grasses. Their skin was mottled grey with soot, their faces and vehicles wrapped in heavy cloth to ward against the ashfall. They were grim, serious men, and they spoke little as they spilled the dark blood of the village fathers into the drifts.

None bothered to slaughter the children, rape the village mothers, pillage the finery hidden in generations-old keepsafes within the houses. The ash men killed only those that stopped them from collecting the town's small stores of food and water before they disappeared into the murky twilight. The rest, they knew, would die in their own time.

The second raid found thin, desperate villagers staring with hungry eyes, those too weak to flee but too strong to have died - yet. Their leader urged his men on with barely a backwards glance.

The third raid saw no more than ash, piled to the tops of the low houses and sweeping over eaves in drifts.

The village slept in a stoic repose under the smothering grey chill. Every so often the silence would be shattered as a house collapsed under the weight of the icy black mass atop it. One by one the beams yielded to the pressure, cracking and splintering until finally the ash flowed in to embrace the frozen bodies of the villagers. A fountain of cold cinders billowed upward from each house as the air rushed out in a last breath, eventually settling back down over the ruins as it joined the implacable ashfall.

Snow fell ink-dark and heavy atop the buried landscape. Days passed, dim echoes of the sun filtering down to sparkle from the obsidian facets of snowflakes. The stillness grew all-encompassing, wrapping itself in cold tendrils around the vague outlines of what were once buildings and roads sleeping beneath their deadly blanket. It was broken only briefly by the false sun of a ship roaring overhead, evoking hopeful sparkles from the audience of filthy snowdrifts below.

But then it passed on to settle down somewhere far over the horizon. The thunder from its engine faded, buried under the suffocating ice as the silence returned to feast on the land of Ysl.

---

Tarl's boisterous mood had been nearly insufferable on the short hop from Elpis to Ysl, sped along by a boost from the gate that sent them barrelling through hyperspace faster than even the Grand Design would have travelled. But for the shortened travel time, Jesri thought she might have thrown him out the hatch. Even Tarl's own officers were looking a bit overwhelmed by his energy near the later parts of the journey.

A full thirty minutes before they arrived he had come to the bridge of the Subtle Blade in a whirlwind of anticipation, driving Rhuar nearly insane with his repetitive claw-tapping on the armrest of the captain's chair - itself an object of much commentary by Tarl. Jesri was confused as to why a relatively unremarkable chair warranted so much attention until she remembered that this was likely the only Ysleli-make vessel with artificial gravity. Ysleli captains worked while standing, Ysleli royalty addressed their troops while seated.

Rhuar guided them out of the black depths of hyperspace with a deft touch, the ship's upgraded hyperdrive whisper-quiet on the exit. It was still the loudest noise on the bridge as Ysl splashed across their main viewscreen.

Gone were the cloud-dappled oceans and verdant continents from their last visit. Ysl was an opaque grey-brown morass, its features hidden behind a thick cloak of dust and ash drifting in dirty bands through the atmosphere.

A minute stretched by while they stared at the ruined planet. No ships challenged them, no customs officials drawled out bored-sounding warnings about the authority of the dead king, not a mote of light stirred around the muddy orb.

"Report," Tarl rasped quietly, his eyes not leaving the viewer. The Ysleli bridge crew stood transfixed as they took in the sight of their home.

"No ship activity," Rhuar said solemnly. "Hard to get solid readings from the surface, the atmosphere is saturated with large particulates all the way up the air column." He frowned, cocking his head to the side as he sorted through feeds. "Atmosphere is breathable, although I wouldn't recommend it. Heavy particulates, and highly elevated levels of sulfur dioxide. Very cold."

Tarl's hands gripped tightly on the armrests of his chair, talons puncturing the upholstery. "I…", he said softly, trailing off before his sentence began. He sat staring at the viewscreen for another long minute before turning to Anja and Jesri.

"How could this be?", he grated, a plaintive note lurking at the edges of his voice. "The damage from the blast was devastating, but this…" He looked at the viewscreen again and fell to silence. "When I left the king had died, but the government had not fallen. The surviving barons were holding an emergency council, the carabineers were conducting relief operations." His hands opened and closed spasmodically, twitching and grasping as his voice rose in pitch and volume. "We were rebuilding!", he bellowed.

"The atmosphere can take some time to circulate dust clouds," Anja said quietly. "If an impact is especially energetic it takes days for the dust to penetrate back down into the lower layers of the atmosphere." Tarl turned to glare silently at her, his face unreadable. "Volcanic activity is also common with larger impacts," Anja continued, her voice unperturbed by his hostile stare. "I would guess that the sulfur dioxide and much of the current ash is actually from secondary volcanic eruptions that occurred in the weeks after the attack."

"Nonsense, you don't know what you're talking about," Tarl snapped. "Ysl has no volcanoes. We have nothing, nothing-" He looked back at the viewer and stared, his eye drinking in the sight of the swirling clouds. A low growl built deep in his chest, rising in volume as his muscles tensed. Some of the Ysleli officers looked at each other with alarm and backed away, self-preservation overriding their horror.

"You need to calm down, Tarl," Anja said levelly. "We have to-"

"I NEED?", he roared, his teeth fully bared in a snarl as he rounded on her with talons splayed wide. "Tell me again what I need!" He stopped himself bare inches from Anja's face, the force of his seething breath gently ruffling her hair.

Jesri's hand drifted to rest on her sidearm, but Anja stood stock-still in the heat of his gaze and met it with a sad look. "Tarl," she said softly. "Look at it. Accept what you see." Another growl rose in his chest, but Anja held eye contact without flinching.

Tarl leaned in close to her, teeth inches from her face. "Ysl is strong," he hissed. "Its people are strong, we survived the attack, that is what I saw! Something like this couldn't - can't," he raved, his words slipping into incoherent growls.

"Denial is unwise," Anja replied, her voice neutral and her eyes oddly blank. "The Ysl in front of you or the one in your head? I would advise that you choose while there is a choice left to make."

Tarl pulled back and stood breathing raggedly, then his face slackened and he lowered his hands. "I am calm," he said dully. "But I do not accept… this. Ysl must not-", he choked, his voice cutting off in a strangled growl. His hands worked fruitlessly at his sides, then balled into fists. "I do not accept this," he repeated firmly. "We must land on the planet, verify the conditions on the surface."

Jesri let out her breath, her hand dropping from her weapon. "I agree," she said, looking meaningfully over at Rhuar. Mercifully, he took the hint without much prompting and set a course to enter the turbulent atmosphere of the planet. A low roar of rushing wind signaled their entry, heated plasma and sparking dust enveloping the large ship as it hit the first rarified wisps of atmosphere.

The entry was rough, marred by sudden shocks as the ship ploughed through especially dense clouds of particulates. Before they had descended into the lower atmosphere the sky was already obscured, milky brown and growing steadily darker as they descended. Soon only murky twilight peered through the viewports, cast back occasionally by bolts of arcing static electricity raised by the ship's rough passage through the dust.

It was difficult to say when they first saw the ground, black-on-black-on-charcoal blending into an indistinct smudge outside. The Ysleli crew stared out of the viewports solemnly as they descended, not talking or daring to talk as they passed over what was once green highlands and sprawling farms.

After several long minutes of descent, Rhuar pulled them up short and lowered the huge ship slowly, the landing gear sinking deep, deep into the snow before coming to rest on a rock-hard concretion of icy ash. Jesri peered into the gloom outside the ship, remembering the crisp air and the smell of the trees from their last visit months ago.

"How close are we to the facility?", she asked.

Rhuar shook his head. "Really hard to tell," he admitted. "The computer did the best it could based on dead reckoning and the general shape of the land, but we could be up to ten kilometers off from the facility entrance. There's just nothing out there to use as a landmark, and the sensors can't see for shit in all this dust."

"What's our range on the sensors?", Jesri asked. "Can we do a search pattern?"

"Um," Rhuar said, scratching himself behind one ear. "I mean, we could. The ship scanners are designed for vacuum use, so they weren't optimized for the sort of large particle scattering we'd be getting here. I'd have to fly super fucking low, and with the visibility and conditions..." He shook his head. "We could, but I wouldn't recommend it."

"Okay," she said with a grimace. "Let's hope we're on the near end of those error bars. Searching in this muck without the ship is going to be rough." She caught Anja's eye and beckoned her over. "Ten click search field," she grumbled. "Any ideas?"

Anja bit her lip and thought. "I think we have enough handheld scanners for teams of four."

"Will the scanners penetrate the ash?", Jesri asked. "We don't know how deep it is."

"Should be fine," Anja reassured her. "The detail scans will be poor, but the base was off by itself and these scanners were designed specifically to help ground crews locate the ferrous elements in hidden bunkers. That facility should be the only big concentration of refined iron or steel in the area."

Anja glanced over at Tarl, who was staring outside with a brooding expression. "I can handle directing my squads solo for the first shifts," she said. "Keep an eye on him."

"Got it," Jesri confirmed. "Good luck."

Anja flipped her a casual salute and walked off the bridge, heading back to the ship's small barracks. Jesri returned the gesture, then went to stand by Rhuar near the command dais.

"Keep her warmed up," she said quietly, receiving a questioning look from Rhuar in response. "It looks bleak out there," she explained. "I don't think we'll be finding anyone alive. If we do, though, they'll want out."

"You want to prep for rescue?", Rhuar asked. "We don't have a lot of space on this bucket."

"No," she said grimly. "That's not why we're here, and they won't like hearing it."

"Ah," Rhuar said mildly, giving her a reproachful look. "Seems a bit harsh."

Jesri nodded, looking over to where Tarl stood gazing out the viewport.. "One of the officers I used to work with liked to say that the fire of civilization requires food to burn. When disaster or war stops the supply of food, the fire goes out." She looked back to Rhuar, her eyes serious. "If anyone is still alive out there, they've killed to stay that way. This is worse than a war zone, Rhuar. War has rules."

He blinked, taken aback by her sudden shift in tone. "Right," he said. "Keep her ready to go, yessir."

She ruffled the fur on his head, making him scowl. "Just be prepared. It's probably not going to be an issue, Anja's squad is scarier than anything we're likely to find out there," she said, looking out the viewport into the opaque charcoal twilight. "Probably."

---

Anja stomped her foot a few times to pack down the snow before shifting her other foot farther up the cornice. Walking in the ashfall was an exercise in patience and caution, at least if done safely. The Ysleli squads had taken her stern warnings lightly at first, but after Neryn fell screaming into a hidden air pocket beneath the snow and was hauled up dyed soot-black from head to scaly toes - well, they took her more seriously after that, placing their feet with caution and testing the snow ahead with long struts they had repurposed from the Subtle Blade's maintenance stores.

It made for slow progress, but it was preferable to suffocation below the ash. The snow was unusually heavy, the infusion of particulates giving it a heft and grainy fluidity that reminded Anja of unset concrete. She grimaced and brushed away the crusts of dirty ice from her respirator. No matter what Tarl may think of the Ysleli and their inherent hardiness, Ysl was dying. Even if individuals managed to survive until the dust and sulfur dioxide cleared from the atmosphere they would find themselves stewards of bare dirt and rock. Biospheres were hardy things, but even they had their limits.

Anja reached the extent of her tether and paused in her ascent, allowing the rest of Neryn's squad to catch up with her. They were tied together in a climbing line to guard against falls, forcing the group to move at the speed of the slowest member. She tapped her ear, shouting into the respirator's comm pickup over the howling winds. "Tiln, Anja!", she yelled. "Position check!"

"Go for Tiln!", came the crackling reply, buzzing overloud in her ear but still difficult to pick out against the storm. "Two kilometers southwest, no signal!"

She clicked a confirmation back to Tiln, then repeated the check for the other four groups in her squad. Hers was the farthest out at nearly three kilometers from the Subtle Blade so far. None of them had found traces of the facility. She unlimbered her handheld scanner and swept it across the ground, wiping the tiny screen clear with a gloved thumb. Nothing. She cursed and snuck a sip of tepid water from the mouthpiece in her respirator.

Feeling some slack in her tether, she resumed her plodding trek up the side of the low ridge. Ice clung to her in crackling sheets that formed and fell as she forged her way into the wastes. Too soon, she was forced to stop again. Position check. Gear check. Scan. Hydrate. Wait for the group, keep moving forward.

The hours blurred together, the cold seeping into the seams between the insulated pads and heating filaments of her gear. Her respirator filter became clogged, forcing her to stop and exchange it with one of her spares. She inhaled a stray breath of unfiltered air while she was swapping the cartridge and spent the next minute coughing fitfully. The acrid stink of the ash lingered in her nose and throat for longer still.

Time to stop. Position check. Gear check. Scan. Hydrate. Wait. The land curved up to either side of her, vanishing into the blackness and swirling snow. They adjusted their course to sweep across the small valley in a languid serpentine, pausing to scan regularly. At seven kilometers out from the ship Anja was starting to feel the subtle tickle of familiarity when she looked at the shrouded terrain around her.

Time to stop. Position check. Gear check. Scan - and a weak signal bounced back, indicating a large mass of metal underneath the snow. She felt a flash of excitement and relief, followed closely by caution. This was the first return they had found so far, but she needed more data before she could call in a position. This could be a vehicle, farm equipment… Even a large ore deposit, albeit a fairly pure one.

She shouted for her squad to fan out on lengthened tethers and check for disturbances in the snow that could indicate structures. Anja stayed in place to run another set of scans, this time a slow, high-powered sweep. The smeared screen cleared, then began to fill slowly with fuzzy wireframe sketches of cuboid shapes - crates, building frames, doorways.

"Hah!", Anja shouted, letting the scanner swing from its belt tether and pressing a hand to her ear. "This is Anja, all other teams return to the ship," she called out. "The base is at my position."

---

"Copy that," Jesri transmitted, seeing the ship's short-range sensors light up with a ping as Anja keyed her transponder to full power. "We have your location, we'll head out as soon as we get the other teams back in." She pushed back from her duty station and sprang to her feet, stretching to clear away the tension accrued from long hours of sitting immobile.

"Rhuar," she called out, "I'm going to get my haz gear together. Prep for dustoff in about an hour, the other teams should be able to make it back by then." He nodded, and Jesri turned to exit the bridge only to stop short as she caught sight of Tarl still gazing forlornly out the viewport. She hesitated, then walked over to stand beside him.

"Don't know if you heard us talking," she said conversationally, "but we found the base. I'm about to go change into environment gear. Did you want to come on the retrieval crew?"

Tarl slowly turned his head to look at her, his face blank and disaffected. "Why?", he asked quietly. "Am I necessary?"

Jesri blinked, thrown off by his odd manner. "Ah, no," she said. "You don't have to go, but you're welcome to."

He didn't respond, staring at her for a few seconds more before turning his head to gaze out the window again. Jesri waited for his response even then, but when none came she shook her head and walked off the bridge towards the barracks.

Across the bridge, Qktk walked up to stand next to Rhuar, most of his eyes looking over at where Tarl stood watching the dark snow fall. "I'm a little worried about him," Qktk said softly.

Rhuar raised his head from his console and looked at Qktk askance. "You're worried about Tarl?", he asked incredulously.

"Look at him," Qktk insisted. "He was practically bouncing around the bridge on the way over, but now he's just… standing there. Out of all the Ysleli on board, he's taking this the hardest."

"To be fair," Rhuar said, "he's having a pretty fucking bad day. Once we get out of here and get his mind back on fighting the Gestalt he'll perk up. Tarl doesn't seem like the type to dwell on things. He was fine after we blew up his fleet and he was fine after he got exiled, he'll be fine now."

"Was he fine?", Qktk asked. "There's only so many supports you can knock away before things fall over. It would be one thing if all he wanted was to fight, but I credit him with a little more depth than that. What if he wanted to fight for Ysl, or even just return to his people someday? Where does that leave him?"

Rhuar snorted. "Staring out a window, I guess. Why do you care so much about how he feels? His entire career has just been killing people - the enemy, his own officers, whoever. Outside of that he's a black box, nobody knows anything else about him. I can't summon up a lot of sympathy for a guy like that when he finally realizes death is terrible."

"You know," Qktk said wryly, "we may have killed as many people as he ever did. More, even."

Rhuar blinked. "Okay, yeah, but that was just the one time. It was different."

"Different from what?", Qktk asked. "Do you know the circumstances behind all of Tarl's battles? Rhuar, it's not too much of a stretch to think that some Ysleli see us the same way you described Tarl just now." He hesitated, his mandibles clattering a bit. "Well, maybe not you," he added. "Somehow I got all the credit for that little episode."

"Well, yeah, but they love you for it, just like they love him," Rhuar protested. "Captain, the Ysleli are not like most other people. They think killing your enemies in glorious battle is pretty much the best thing ever. When they talk about the Demon of Ysl they get all happy and excited, you're like a celebrity to them."

"I suppose," Qktk allowed, shifting his weight uncomfortably. "All the same, it's never been one of my great ambitions to be known as a mass murderer. It's not just the Ysleli who hear those stories, and some of the people I meet…" He shuddered, making a light clattering noise. "I'd rather be known for trading well, or helping people, or whatever we end up doing against the Gestalt," he said mournfully. "Anything else, really, just as long as people don't think I'm some vicious killer."

Rhuar tilted his head, somewhat taken aback by the sorrowful note in Qktk's voice. "Captain, it's not-"

He was cut off as the console lit up with an incoming transmission. "Contact!", Anja's voice yelled, the clap of gunfire echoing in staticky bursts over the roar of the wind. "The whole place is full of Ysleli," she shouted, "We need backup as soon as you get all the teams on board."

"We copy," Rhuar replied back, setting down in his chair and turning his full attention to the console. "You going to be okay until we get there?"

"Oh sure, everything is great," Anja shouted back, punctuating her statement with a burst of rifle fire. "Nobody can hit anything in this storm and these guys shoot like civilians. No way we can get in the base without backup, though. We can keep them bottled up for a while, just get here as soon as you can. Oh, and have Tarl-" Anja's voice cut off as another burst of gunfire drowned out the middle of her sentence. "-talk them down a bit."

"Ah, copy?" Rhuar said tentatively. "I'll let everyone know."

"Super," Anja yelled back. "Give me a ping when the ship is en route." Another burst of sustained rifle fire filled the channel before it cut to silence.

"Nothing's ever easy," Rhuar groaned, clambering out of his chair stiffly. "Captain, can you go track down Jesri and let her know?"

Qktk nodded and scuttled aft, exiting the bridge towards the barracks. Rhuar rolled his neck, then turned to face the side windows. "Hey, Tarl!", he shouted.

Tarl turned slowly to look at him, his expression blank.

"Time to gear up, buddy," Rhuar said with a grin. "Turns out you're necessary after all."

"What has happened?", Tarl asked softly.

"Ah, Anja ran into a bunch of Ysleli holed up in the base," Rhuar said, turning for a moment to gesture back to the console. "She said they-"

Rhuar stopped speaking abruptly. Tarl had already left the bridge.

---

I'm beginning to think Tarl might be a bit manic-depressive. We're longer than Sense and Sensibility as well as Pride and Prejudice this week. We actually exceeded the word count for both with the last chapter but my editor couldn't find a notable novel in the right word range this week, so you get to hear about alliterative Regency-era romance novels instead. Since nobody liked those novels very much until a good while after Jane Austen died, I think it's fitting that they get a belated mention.

Thank you again for the time you spend reading and for your comments. Tune in next week on GDTV as the Property Sisters help a bunch of new Ysleli homeowners open up the floorplan in their stuffy fixer-upper.