- Location
- Australia
Eyes The Sun: "Preparing to pass heliopause, we should be transmitting soon ... [loud bonk noise] ... look'sh cleaaaaar ouuut here boss, only ush shtars."
The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
- Location
- Somewhere.
Oh dear, that doesn't sound good.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Ooh. And Iris is with us...
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
What? Do Tribute fleets not return home for centuries on deployment? Do they just rotate between tributary systems?
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
I mean, yes, if that task force includes AI assets, then they'll have an easier time of it with Iris missing. On the other hand, there's still Vision and there's a lot of Potentials which have undoubtedly been training with Iris before she left and Vision still in how to deal with attacks like that. There's also the fact that it seems the Shiplords have yet to realise that a lot of Humanity's most potent assets and abilities are able to recognise and sense things on a soul level. So they probably aren't going to be as stealthy as they think they are...
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Excerpt
Also, there's Project Insight.
Last edited:
...I love the implication that those existing is a problem they've encountered in the past. Kudos to whoever gave them that problem. It might have backfired, given the Shiplords, but a good try in civil resistance.
...since I'm posting anyway, I think we can spare Iris with the Hearthguard codes, and I... don't want to take longer given the stakes and casualties.
[X][Solution] Eyes Are For Seeing - Ask Iris to dedicate her time to unravelling this mess. It will lose you easy access to her talents for the next Sorrow, but it will provide a solid answer to whatever Vega was able to return to you.
[Iris unavailable for the next Sorrow]
[X][Sorrow] The Second Sorrow
[X][Solution] Eyes Are For Seeing - Ask Iris to dedicate her time to unravelling this mess. It will lose you easy access to her talents for the next Sorrow, but it will provide a solid answer to whatever Vega was able to return to you.
[Iris unavailable for the next Sorrow]
[X][Sorrow] The Second Sorrow
[Iris unavailable for the next Sorrow]
[X][Sorrow] The Second Sorrow
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Meanwhile, in the technical channel where I discuss future chapters with my betas.
I have a small holiday this week starting on the 19th, then return home to jury duty (I live in one of those countries) so not sure if you'll get the result for a week or so. Still, I'll do my best.
I have a small holiday this week starting on the 19th, then return home to jury duty (I live in one of those countries) so not sure if you'll get the result for a week or so. Still, I'll do my best.
Messy Revelations
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
It had been tempting, so very tempting, to ask Vega to put right the gestalt she'd plucked from the First Sorrow. But doing so would have required a pause in your mission. Likely not a long one, given the presence of a small Chorus of similar Potentials to Vega aboard the Adamant. Still a pause though and one that would have to be taken somewhere far from any Sorrow. Miracles appeared as manifestations of Practice that tore the world around them to create a new reality. That was never subtle.
Instead of risking that, or the possible consequences of lingering between the stars — a Directive that even the Group of Six had respected — you turned to your daughter. Iris possessed the necessary skills to untangle the chaotic data structure at a level that was figuratively bone deep. She'd not had much opportunity to exercise those skills in recent years, but she was still far, far more capable than the intel section. And with the Hearthguard codes now tested, there was far less immediate need for Iris as a cyberwarfare trump card.
She hurled herself into the task as you made preparations to depart the First Sorrow, thanking Rinel for his hosting, and the many questions he had answered. The reaction of the mission's science teams to the revelation of what had been contained by the Shiplords here had led to a significant increase in alcohol consumption for several days. And though Mary was not among them, there was something concerning the woman who you'd raised a daughter with.
Mary had seen something in Rinel's presentation of why this place was a Sorrow. It had rattled her then, and that had grown into an active concern of hers since. Your own was rather different - you couldn't tell why. Was it what she'd seen — the truth of what the First and Fifth could do when joined together — or was it how she'd known it was true? If this concern of hers became something greater, you'd ask what you could. But for now, you'd choose trust. Mary knew you were there, and you wouldn't push her to open up about something that she was clearly struggling to explain properly.
Iris was watching her too, you were sure. Your daughter took the wellbeing of her parents very seriously, and she'd make time the same way you would if she thought it necessary. Oh, she'd dress it up in fancy words, justifications — valid ones — to support the most important scientific asset in humanity's arsenal. But at the end of the day, she'd be doing exactly the same as you: looking after someone she loved as family.
Not that you'd see much of her until that was needed, if it was needed. She'd essentially vanished into the heart of the Adamant's lagless logical processors after the meeting where you'd agreed for her to handle the gestalt data Vega had recovered. She was still present through communicators, and her avatar showed up at meetings or small socials as you detached from the First Sorrow and headed out-system. You'd almost, almost asked if there was any reason you couldn't jump from the edge of the Stellar Exclusion Zone.
Some mysteries would remain for now.
First Daughter's Sight: 88 + 25 (Lagless Computing Matrix) = 113. Solid Success.
Others wouldn't.
By the time you'd reached the edge of the system, Iris was well into producing noticeable results from her work. Weaving together trillions of disparate data points into something usable was anything but simple, but your daughter was proving why she'd been more than just a valid choice. No other human could multitask like she could. Vega might have been able to do this faster, once out beyond Shiplord sensors. You didn't think anyone else could have more than matched Iris.
And this was with her deliberately restricting herself to a single primary processing stream, blindingly fast as it was. You'd seen the data from the first and only time she'd forked. The potential you'd seen in that, potential that the Shiplords appeared to deliberately restrain in their own operating intelligences, was as powerful as any Miracle. Iris couldn't reshape the world around her like you or Vega had done, or directly wield power enough to scour stars from creation. But if she could find a way to safely access the searing brilliance you'd helped her master that day, you didn't think she'd need to.
That wasn't a matter for the here and now, but neither could it be entirely ignored. Your daughter had always been more than human, and something like this embraced her nature as an infomorph far more completely than anything you knew she'd done before. That was going to change her, but then, so did life. And it had been her choice to make the offer. Difficult, sometimes, to untangle good parenting from a desire to wrap your children in cotton wool.
And so you faced the next jump as calmly as you felt you could. Rinel had offered no hints about the nature of the Shplords' Second Sorrow. He'd only stated that he was glad you'd come here first, that it would help give you context for what followed. And that hadn't exactly given you the warm fluffies. But the only way to find out was, well, to find out.
So you watched and monitored from your place on the Adamant's bridge, as the ship made its way out through the barrier. Once again, the sensors of the gate probed and checked and once again the fruits of Project Trailblazer did their brilliant work to protect you. It was strange, leaving so openly, but you couldn't complain. It was also far less likely to go horribly wrong. You'd made it in and out twice without issue, but you were still trying to bypass a security system you didn't fully understand every time you did it.
At some point, that would've caught up with you. The Trailblazer's systems, in comparison, had been designed to overcome Shiplord scanners with heavy support from Project Insight. That might catch up with you, eventually. But the balance of probability favoured their use far more than your largely unguided manipulations of Practice to open stable paths through the Shiplord's obfuscating tripwire.
That it gave you a front row seat to acquire passive scans of how the Shiplords manipulated the screen to let ships through was a happy bonus, and one that you were thankful to have. Even as you hoped you'd never have to rely on it again, you doubted that fate would be quite so kind.
Space rippled, shifting subtly, and the Adamant coasted from the Shiplord station out into the interstellar void beyond. The coordinates for your next jump had been set shortly before you undocked, but the bridge crew checked them once more. The faint hum of the Adamant's drive rose to a high-pitched whine, its energy ready to breach reality's cage.
"We're ready," Jane reported.
"Then by all means," you replied. You'd done all you could to prepare yourself. "Jump."
Touch The Void: 44 vs ???. Failure.
For a moment you glimpsed that space that you'd seen first during the Third Battle of Sol, but there was someone… different? More? there this time. Your vision swam as you fought to hold on, to make sense of the figure staring out across the vista of endless stars. For a moment you glimpsed Tahkel's presence and another beside the Uninvolved, but the two blurred together. They were almost the same height, but something… they both felt familiar somehow.
Why?
The edges of the vista turned to hazy colour, starlight washing through and carrying them away in a handful of moments until nothing remained but white. Then the Adamant snapped back into creation, trailing contrails of swiftly-fading energy, and the image shattered. You lurched forward in your chair, gasping for breath as your eyes watered.
"Amanda!" You heard the twin cries of concern from the chairs closest to you, but your attention wasn't on them. You tore back into your memories, searching for the moment you'd caught between the stars. Sidra was there beside you, the fullness of their presence almost choking in its intensity, burning within your own. Was something - no, later.
:Not too much later,: you added, making it a promise. The heat of the Unison Intelligence's mantle shifted subtly, but it was enough to know the words had been needed.
:For now, we need thi-: Sidra's voice halted suddenly, shock resonating out into the shared aspects of your soul. Then the image took shape, and you saw why. Firm lines had swam into hazy colour, silhouettes less than the barest caricatures of people. Shapes without detail, that blurred into the background, and told you nothing.
"Incoming transmission, ma'am," you heard someone report, as if from a great distance. That was meant to be something important, wasn't it?
"Route it to me," another voice replied. "Mary, get her out of this."
"I'll try."
:What the hell?: The communication was unmeant, itself a marker of how shocked you were, but you didn't realise quite how deeply until someone other than Sidra responded.
:Mandy, what's wrong?: Mir asked. The calm of their Focus didn't cut, but it slid into your thoughts with a quiet inevitability, as if it had always been there. Your breathing steadied, and the sharpness in your eyes faded to let you blink away the tears that had forced their way through.
:I saw something,: you replied. The blurred memory leapt from your mind to Mir's within the words, and you felt the confusion of him and more as he struggled to make sense of it. :When we jumped. And there…I know there was more here. There was sharpness, clarity, but I couldn't grasp it in time.:
You blinked a few more times as Mir processed that, wiping at your eyes with a hand until they were clear. Mary hovered over you, her face drawn as she swapped and recompiled inputs from the Adamant's internal sensors. Trying to work out what was wrong. You should probably do something about that.
"I'm," you rasped. You blinked, swallowing quickly, then tried again. "I'm alright." That was better, you actually sounded human.
"Are we blown?" Jane demanded before anyone else could speak. Her eyes were fixed on her plot, but that didn't make her slow.
"No, no," you shook your head. "This, it wasn't anything that should be detectable in realspace. It was something in the jump."
"In the-" Jane cut her question off sharply. She, like all of the Adamant's crew, knew why you had been sent out here. At least in general terms. But that didn't make your contact with an Uninvolved something much talked about. And some knew far more than others.
"It doesn't, it isn't important," you corrected yourself. "I'm fine. It was just a shock, and one we can deal with later. We need to focus on right now." Mary gave you a mutinous glare, but you could see the internal sensor returns as well as she could.
"There's nothing wrong with her that I can find," she admitted reluctantly, one hand flickering through output sets even as she stepped back. "And she's right." The and we will be discussing this later went unsaid, but you didn't protest it. The rarely heard harshness in Mary's voice told you everything.
Instead you shoved that concern of your own aside, and nodded.
"Status of our approach?" You asked, a ring of command wiping the bridge clear of previous matters.
"Our codes have been recognised as expected," Lieutenant Aster reported from the helm. "We're shifting onto the approach vector provided. We're skipping the queue a lot."
"Any details above what's inside yet?" Jane asked. Sunset shook their head, the intelligence specialist having chosen to run sensors this time.
"Nothing so far," they said. "Though this shell has twice the transit stations of any other Sorrow."
"I see," you acknowledged. If Sunset had had anything more to say, it would've been said. "What's our ETA for the transit corridor?"
"Six minutes," Aster replied.
"I can't imagine that they'll be any slower at getting a message to us than the First was," Jane pointed out. "Will that be long enough?"
"It'll have to be."
Five minutes later, on your final approach to the transit corridor, you got your first glimpse of what awaited you. Project Insight had prepared you for a star system shattered by conflict, fragments of planets scattered beneath a star's bloody light. What your sensors found as the system shell was moved aside before you was still a shattered system, wracked by the scars of ancient battle. But it could never have been mistaken for a dead one.
"What the hell." Kalilah's voice, so calm recently, bubbled with a barely-contained fury that you hated to recognise. Sensor contacts flooded the display of the star system. Ships in number far beyond those you'd expected, yet among the debris floated the unmistakable signatures of populated orbitals.
One of the star's habitable worlds had been scattered so utterly that apparently not even Shiplord stellar constructors had been able to restore it. Yet there was life on its closest kin, cities built in the shadow of scars inflicted on the scale of continents. It must have taken millennia to restore the biosphere.
"What." Kalilah repeated, scarlet light kindling around her, within her as you all stared at the readings. "The hell."
For all of that was nothing, a pale shadow at best, next to what came last. The people on those orbitals, those ships, those cities?
Most of them weren't Shiplords. Their lifesigns reflected similarities to Gysians, and that should be utterly impossible. The Gysians had almost ended all life in creation. They'd lit the fuse on a device so cataclysmic that calling it a bomb seemed insufficient. They'd clearly lost the military conflict, been reduced, their fleet crushed and worlds devastated.
"They let them live?" Mary rasped, her worry for you long forgotten in the image of a waking nightmare before you all.
"After everything they did." Kalilah ground the words out flat. You could feel the rage howling beneath. "Everything they threatened."
It was like the very cruellest of jokes, and for a moment you wondered if the codes Kicha had given you would suddenly fail, making the nightmare complete. Yet no alarms sounded, and that was almost worse. At least they could've distracted you.
"They let them live."
Then you discovered that you'd been wrong about how cruel a joke it could be. The gateway yawned open, and the Adamant slid through, its crew still working even as the bridge descended into automatic action. And a signal met you, cast from one of the cities of the inhabited world.
"We greet you, those who bear the Third Warden's sigil. We greet you, in joy and sorrow, that we might offer up the truth of this place to new-come pilgrims." The words were translated, but somehow you knew that this wasn't a Shiplord voice.
"I am Warden Entara," the figure bowed low, not a human gesture, but another confirmation of difference. As if their appearance hadn't been enough. The First Sorrow had given you enough basic biodata on the Gysians to confirm the image in front of you. "And I bid you welcome to this our home, greatest joy, and a loss truly terrible."
Kalilah spat something wordless and bloody between the links of your Heartcircle, all but vibrating in place with the force of her roiling emotions, denied a rightful target.
"It would be my honour to offer my services as your guide, and I stand ready to accompany you. If you would consent, I will meet you at Last Cry, where the story of our people changed from certain death to something more."
:We are going there,: the words weren't just Kalilah. Vega was there, and Mir, and you beside them. For a moment you glanced between each other in ways that none but Unisonbound could understand, confusion running between thankfulness.
:I suppose we are,: Elil agreed. His agreement was the touch of a wry smile. :But you might tell our newest host first.:
:And take some time on our way there,: Vega…you supposed it could have been a suggestion. :Not just for you.: Who among those who'd lived it didn't have trauma from humanity's own Sorrows? The Elder First had done spectacular work, and you'd done a great deal to build on it. But nothing was perfect. And for all your luck, you'd only escaped free of venom. Not free of scars.
It will take two days to reach the orbital Entara called Last Cry. It has been 'suggested' by Vega that you take time away from command responsibilities to focus on supporting yourself and others. How will you spend this time? Or more precisely, who with?
[] Family - Mary, Iris and Sidra are among the best placed to support you, as you are to support them. The rawness of such feelings are not to be underestimated, however.
[] Heartcircle - Kalilah is not alone in her emotion among the Heartcircle, she is just the most obviously affected by it. After all, it is only she among you who lost children to the Week of Sorrows.
[] Crew - You don't know them as well, but the Adamant's crew are as much a part of your mission as the rest. And they will be hurting, in scores of their own unique ways. Perhaps an outside perspective could help? Them, and you.
[] Write-in?
Plan voting, please.
Instead of risking that, or the possible consequences of lingering between the stars — a Directive that even the Group of Six had respected — you turned to your daughter. Iris possessed the necessary skills to untangle the chaotic data structure at a level that was figuratively bone deep. She'd not had much opportunity to exercise those skills in recent years, but she was still far, far more capable than the intel section. And with the Hearthguard codes now tested, there was far less immediate need for Iris as a cyberwarfare trump card.
She hurled herself into the task as you made preparations to depart the First Sorrow, thanking Rinel for his hosting, and the many questions he had answered. The reaction of the mission's science teams to the revelation of what had been contained by the Shiplords here had led to a significant increase in alcohol consumption for several days. And though Mary was not among them, there was something concerning the woman who you'd raised a daughter with.
Mary had seen something in Rinel's presentation of why this place was a Sorrow. It had rattled her then, and that had grown into an active concern of hers since. Your own was rather different - you couldn't tell why. Was it what she'd seen — the truth of what the First and Fifth could do when joined together — or was it how she'd known it was true? If this concern of hers became something greater, you'd ask what you could. But for now, you'd choose trust. Mary knew you were there, and you wouldn't push her to open up about something that she was clearly struggling to explain properly.
Iris was watching her too, you were sure. Your daughter took the wellbeing of her parents very seriously, and she'd make time the same way you would if she thought it necessary. Oh, she'd dress it up in fancy words, justifications — valid ones — to support the most important scientific asset in humanity's arsenal. But at the end of the day, she'd be doing exactly the same as you: looking after someone she loved as family.
Not that you'd see much of her until that was needed, if it was needed. She'd essentially vanished into the heart of the Adamant's lagless logical processors after the meeting where you'd agreed for her to handle the gestalt data Vega had recovered. She was still present through communicators, and her avatar showed up at meetings or small socials as you detached from the First Sorrow and headed out-system. You'd almost, almost asked if there was any reason you couldn't jump from the edge of the Stellar Exclusion Zone.
Some mysteries would remain for now.
First Daughter's Sight: 88 + 25 (Lagless Computing Matrix) = 113. Solid Success.
Others wouldn't.
By the time you'd reached the edge of the system, Iris was well into producing noticeable results from her work. Weaving together trillions of disparate data points into something usable was anything but simple, but your daughter was proving why she'd been more than just a valid choice. No other human could multitask like she could. Vega might have been able to do this faster, once out beyond Shiplord sensors. You didn't think anyone else could have more than matched Iris.
And this was with her deliberately restricting herself to a single primary processing stream, blindingly fast as it was. You'd seen the data from the first and only time she'd forked. The potential you'd seen in that, potential that the Shiplords appeared to deliberately restrain in their own operating intelligences, was as powerful as any Miracle. Iris couldn't reshape the world around her like you or Vega had done, or directly wield power enough to scour stars from creation. But if she could find a way to safely access the searing brilliance you'd helped her master that day, you didn't think she'd need to.
That wasn't a matter for the here and now, but neither could it be entirely ignored. Your daughter had always been more than human, and something like this embraced her nature as an infomorph far more completely than anything you knew she'd done before. That was going to change her, but then, so did life. And it had been her choice to make the offer. Difficult, sometimes, to untangle good parenting from a desire to wrap your children in cotton wool.
And so you faced the next jump as calmly as you felt you could. Rinel had offered no hints about the nature of the Shplords' Second Sorrow. He'd only stated that he was glad you'd come here first, that it would help give you context for what followed. And that hadn't exactly given you the warm fluffies. But the only way to find out was, well, to find out.
So you watched and monitored from your place on the Adamant's bridge, as the ship made its way out through the barrier. Once again, the sensors of the gate probed and checked and once again the fruits of Project Trailblazer did their brilliant work to protect you. It was strange, leaving so openly, but you couldn't complain. It was also far less likely to go horribly wrong. You'd made it in and out twice without issue, but you were still trying to bypass a security system you didn't fully understand every time you did it.
At some point, that would've caught up with you. The Trailblazer's systems, in comparison, had been designed to overcome Shiplord scanners with heavy support from Project Insight. That might catch up with you, eventually. But the balance of probability favoured their use far more than your largely unguided manipulations of Practice to open stable paths through the Shiplord's obfuscating tripwire.
That it gave you a front row seat to acquire passive scans of how the Shiplords manipulated the screen to let ships through was a happy bonus, and one that you were thankful to have. Even as you hoped you'd never have to rely on it again, you doubted that fate would be quite so kind.
Space rippled, shifting subtly, and the Adamant coasted from the Shiplord station out into the interstellar void beyond. The coordinates for your next jump had been set shortly before you undocked, but the bridge crew checked them once more. The faint hum of the Adamant's drive rose to a high-pitched whine, its energy ready to breach reality's cage.
"We're ready," Jane reported.
"Then by all means," you replied. You'd done all you could to prepare yourself. "Jump."
Touch The Void: 44 vs ???. Failure.
For a moment you glimpsed that space that you'd seen first during the Third Battle of Sol, but there was someone… different? More? there this time. Your vision swam as you fought to hold on, to make sense of the figure staring out across the vista of endless stars. For a moment you glimpsed Tahkel's presence and another beside the Uninvolved, but the two blurred together. They were almost the same height, but something… they both felt familiar somehow.
Why?
The edges of the vista turned to hazy colour, starlight washing through and carrying them away in a handful of moments until nothing remained but white. Then the Adamant snapped back into creation, trailing contrails of swiftly-fading energy, and the image shattered. You lurched forward in your chair, gasping for breath as your eyes watered.
"Amanda!" You heard the twin cries of concern from the chairs closest to you, but your attention wasn't on them. You tore back into your memories, searching for the moment you'd caught between the stars. Sidra was there beside you, the fullness of their presence almost choking in its intensity, burning within your own. Was something - no, later.
:Not too much later,: you added, making it a promise. The heat of the Unison Intelligence's mantle shifted subtly, but it was enough to know the words had been needed.
:For now, we need thi-: Sidra's voice halted suddenly, shock resonating out into the shared aspects of your soul. Then the image took shape, and you saw why. Firm lines had swam into hazy colour, silhouettes less than the barest caricatures of people. Shapes without detail, that blurred into the background, and told you nothing.
"Incoming transmission, ma'am," you heard someone report, as if from a great distance. That was meant to be something important, wasn't it?
"Route it to me," another voice replied. "Mary, get her out of this."
"I'll try."
:What the hell?: The communication was unmeant, itself a marker of how shocked you were, but you didn't realise quite how deeply until someone other than Sidra responded.
:Mandy, what's wrong?: Mir asked. The calm of their Focus didn't cut, but it slid into your thoughts with a quiet inevitability, as if it had always been there. Your breathing steadied, and the sharpness in your eyes faded to let you blink away the tears that had forced their way through.
:I saw something,: you replied. The blurred memory leapt from your mind to Mir's within the words, and you felt the confusion of him and more as he struggled to make sense of it. :When we jumped. And there…I know there was more here. There was sharpness, clarity, but I couldn't grasp it in time.:
You blinked a few more times as Mir processed that, wiping at your eyes with a hand until they were clear. Mary hovered over you, her face drawn as she swapped and recompiled inputs from the Adamant's internal sensors. Trying to work out what was wrong. You should probably do something about that.
"I'm," you rasped. You blinked, swallowing quickly, then tried again. "I'm alright." That was better, you actually sounded human.
"Are we blown?" Jane demanded before anyone else could speak. Her eyes were fixed on her plot, but that didn't make her slow.
"No, no," you shook your head. "This, it wasn't anything that should be detectable in realspace. It was something in the jump."
"In the-" Jane cut her question off sharply. She, like all of the Adamant's crew, knew why you had been sent out here. At least in general terms. But that didn't make your contact with an Uninvolved something much talked about. And some knew far more than others.
"It doesn't, it isn't important," you corrected yourself. "I'm fine. It was just a shock, and one we can deal with later. We need to focus on right now." Mary gave you a mutinous glare, but you could see the internal sensor returns as well as she could.
"There's nothing wrong with her that I can find," she admitted reluctantly, one hand flickering through output sets even as she stepped back. "And she's right." The and we will be discussing this later went unsaid, but you didn't protest it. The rarely heard harshness in Mary's voice told you everything.
Instead you shoved that concern of your own aside, and nodded.
"Status of our approach?" You asked, a ring of command wiping the bridge clear of previous matters.
"Our codes have been recognised as expected," Lieutenant Aster reported from the helm. "We're shifting onto the approach vector provided. We're skipping the queue a lot."
"Any details above what's inside yet?" Jane asked. Sunset shook their head, the intelligence specialist having chosen to run sensors this time.
"Nothing so far," they said. "Though this shell has twice the transit stations of any other Sorrow."
"I see," you acknowledged. If Sunset had had anything more to say, it would've been said. "What's our ETA for the transit corridor?"
"Six minutes," Aster replied.
"I can't imagine that they'll be any slower at getting a message to us than the First was," Jane pointed out. "Will that be long enough?"
"It'll have to be."
Five minutes later, on your final approach to the transit corridor, you got your first glimpse of what awaited you. Project Insight had prepared you for a star system shattered by conflict, fragments of planets scattered beneath a star's bloody light. What your sensors found as the system shell was moved aside before you was still a shattered system, wracked by the scars of ancient battle. But it could never have been mistaken for a dead one.
"What the hell." Kalilah's voice, so calm recently, bubbled with a barely-contained fury that you hated to recognise. Sensor contacts flooded the display of the star system. Ships in number far beyond those you'd expected, yet among the debris floated the unmistakable signatures of populated orbitals.
One of the star's habitable worlds had been scattered so utterly that apparently not even Shiplord stellar constructors had been able to restore it. Yet there was life on its closest kin, cities built in the shadow of scars inflicted on the scale of continents. It must have taken millennia to restore the biosphere.
"What." Kalilah repeated, scarlet light kindling around her, within her as you all stared at the readings. "The hell."
For all of that was nothing, a pale shadow at best, next to what came last. The people on those orbitals, those ships, those cities?
Most of them weren't Shiplords. Their lifesigns reflected similarities to Gysians, and that should be utterly impossible. The Gysians had almost ended all life in creation. They'd lit the fuse on a device so cataclysmic that calling it a bomb seemed insufficient. They'd clearly lost the military conflict, been reduced, their fleet crushed and worlds devastated.
"They let them live?" Mary rasped, her worry for you long forgotten in the image of a waking nightmare before you all.
"After everything they did." Kalilah ground the words out flat. You could feel the rage howling beneath. "Everything they threatened."
It was like the very cruellest of jokes, and for a moment you wondered if the codes Kicha had given you would suddenly fail, making the nightmare complete. Yet no alarms sounded, and that was almost worse. At least they could've distracted you.
"They let them live."
Then you discovered that you'd been wrong about how cruel a joke it could be. The gateway yawned open, and the Adamant slid through, its crew still working even as the bridge descended into automatic action. And a signal met you, cast from one of the cities of the inhabited world.
"We greet you, those who bear the Third Warden's sigil. We greet you, in joy and sorrow, that we might offer up the truth of this place to new-come pilgrims." The words were translated, but somehow you knew that this wasn't a Shiplord voice.
"I am Warden Entara," the figure bowed low, not a human gesture, but another confirmation of difference. As if their appearance hadn't been enough. The First Sorrow had given you enough basic biodata on the Gysians to confirm the image in front of you. "And I bid you welcome to this our home, greatest joy, and a loss truly terrible."
Kalilah spat something wordless and bloody between the links of your Heartcircle, all but vibrating in place with the force of her roiling emotions, denied a rightful target.
"It would be my honour to offer my services as your guide, and I stand ready to accompany you. If you would consent, I will meet you at Last Cry, where the story of our people changed from certain death to something more."
:We are going there,: the words weren't just Kalilah. Vega was there, and Mir, and you beside them. For a moment you glanced between each other in ways that none but Unisonbound could understand, confusion running between thankfulness.
:I suppose we are,: Elil agreed. His agreement was the touch of a wry smile. :But you might tell our newest host first.:
:And take some time on our way there,: Vega…you supposed it could have been a suggestion. :Not just for you.: Who among those who'd lived it didn't have trauma from humanity's own Sorrows? The Elder First had done spectacular work, and you'd done a great deal to build on it. But nothing was perfect. And for all your luck, you'd only escaped free of venom. Not free of scars.
It will take two days to reach the orbital Entara called Last Cry. It has been 'suggested' by Vega that you take time away from command responsibilities to focus on supporting yourself and others. How will you spend this time? Or more precisely, who with?
[] Family - Mary, Iris and Sidra are among the best placed to support you, as you are to support them. The rawness of such feelings are not to be underestimated, however.
[] Heartcircle - Kalilah is not alone in her emotion among the Heartcircle, she is just the most obviously affected by it. After all, it is only she among you who lost children to the Week of Sorrows.
[] Crew - You don't know them as well, but the Adamant's crew are as much a part of your mission as the rest. And they will be hurting, in scores of their own unique ways. Perhaps an outside perspective could help? Them, and you.
[] Write-in?
Plan voting, please.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I have basically nothing specific to point at to about this delay. Life just...went sideways. A lot. We're getting stability back again, slowly, but the last few months have been a mess. Really sorry for dropping contact like happened here, but at least it is done even if it took most of nine weeks instead of the one I'd thought I'd manage. I've tried to rewrite this a bit taking into account the scale of that delay - thanks to my lovely betas for pointing out the need. Here's to the next one not taking so damnably long.
- Location
- France
[X] Crew - You don't know them as well, but the Adamant's crew are as much a part of your mission as the rest. And they will be hurting, in scores of their own unique ways. Perhaps an outside perspective could help? Them, and you.
[X] Crew - You don't know them as well, but the Adamant's crew are as much a part of your mission as the rest. And they will be hurting, in scores of their own unique ways. Perhaps an outside perspective could help? Them, and you.
Shwaggy
Weapon of Math Instruction
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
Whelp, didn't see that coming. Color me intrigued. And happy to see this pop back up!
[X] Heartcircle - Kalilah is not alone in her emotion among the Heartcircle, she is just the most obviously affected by it. After all, it is only she among you who lost children to the Week of Sorrows.
[X] Heartcircle - Kalilah is not alone in her emotion among the Heartcircle, she is just the most obviously affected by it. After all, it is only she among you who lost children to the Week of Sorrows.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Crew - You don't know them as well, but the Adamant's crew are as much a part of your mission as the rest. And they will be hurting, in scores of their own unique ways. Perhaps an outside perspective could help? Them, and you.
//
You know Mary, Iris and your heart circle - and they know you. You talk to them, you share thoughts and emotions. Not so for the ship's crew - they are still - just crew. After this tour de force emotional support is required, and they need it most.
//
So, in the past the SL were still able to make a difference between 'all the persons making up a people' and 'these people'.
//
You know Mary, Iris and your heart circle - and they know you. You talk to them, you share thoughts and emotions. Not so for the ship's crew - they are still - just crew. After this tour de force emotional support is required, and they need it most.
//
So, in the past the SL were still able to make a difference between 'all the persons making up a people' and 'these people'.
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- Location
- Australia
[X] Heartcircle - Kalilah is not alone in her emotion among the Heartcircle, she is just the most obviously affected by it. After all, it is only she among you who lost children to the Week of Sorrows.
Given past events, Kalilah is definitely someone we don't want going off without an emotional support structure in place.
Given past events, Kalilah is definitely someone we don't want going off without an emotional support structure in place.
- Location
- USA
[X] Crew - You don't know them as well, but the Adamant's crew are as much a part of your mission as the rest. And they will be hurting, in scores of their own unique ways. Perhaps an outside perspective could help? Them, and you
I must admit I am a little confused at the Adamant's crew reaction.
They seem to be in the grip of a rabid righteous indignation at the fact that the Shiplords did NOT genocide every single Gysian male, female and child in the universe, even if the responsibility for the accidentally runaway ultimate weapon could never be reasonably assigned to all of them.
Instead they showed a modicum of mercy and left some of the species alive, albeit in what amounts to a stellar zoo that is also disturbingly similar to how the Shiplords treat every newly emergent species.
There is a lot that seems objectionable in this (I say "seems" because we have seen that Shiplords have some debatable reasons for the stuff they do and we don't know how this came to be yet) but it should still be a notch better than cosmic genocide.
And yet, the fact that the Shiplords didn't do something as bad as what they were assuming thay had done was so traumatizing that our whole crew is in need of emergency group therapy? Just where is this coming from?
They seem to be in the grip of a rabid righteous indignation at the fact that the Shiplords did NOT genocide every single Gysian male, female and child in the universe, even if the responsibility for the accidentally runaway ultimate weapon could never be reasonably assigned to all of them.
Instead they showed a modicum of mercy and left some of the species alive, albeit in what amounts to a stellar zoo that is also disturbingly similar to how the Shiplords treat every newly emergent species.
There is a lot that seems objectionable in this (I say "seems" because we have seen that Shiplords have some debatable reasons for the stuff they do and we don't know how this came to be yet) but it should still be a notch better than cosmic genocide.
And yet, the fact that the Shiplords didn't do something as bad as what they were assuming thay had done was so traumatizing that our whole crew is in need of emergency group therapy? Just where is this coming from?
- Location
- Minnesota
[X] Heartcircle - Kalilah is not alone in her emotion among the Heartcircle, she is just the most obviously affected by it. After all, it is only she among you who lost children to the Week of Sorrows.
Every species blasted to oblivion. Every star smashed to shreds. Every parent ripped from the arms of a child, every broken heart, every inch of the catastrophe that is the Tributary program.
They're angry because the Shiplords are doing that to people that have done nothing wrong, both to the galaxy as a whole and the people on this ship personally. And the gysians, who actually did almost end the universe, get to live.
It's not that they want the Gysians to die, really. It's that, at least, it wouldn't be so cosmically, galactically, multiversally hypocritical.
It's ripping the bandaid off the reminder that there really, genuinely, was never any need for the sorrows inflicted on humanity and on all the species who just straight up got wiped off the face of the universe for learning the First Secret. The Shiplords, evidently, have other options for dealing with species that actually engaged in what the Shiplords fear so much, and, this is key, iirc 90% of the Shiplord population or so goes to look this in the face every century or so. They've built a monument around it. They celebrate it. Then they go out with bloodstained hands and rip apart families and blow up stars, in the name of protecting the universe.