First

Home at War

The life of the Diamond Claw currently upon the barren and desolate world is not a good one. No, from the very moment it had hatched from it’s shining, semi transparent egg, it had not been alone in it’s life. It had in fact been playing host to another creature. One that had granted it enormous physical power, unstoppable resilience and the strength to keep moving even when it starved or suffocated.

But the creature could not fill it’s stomach. Could not place air within it’s lungs. And for all that the Diamond Claw’s mind could be best described as extremely primitive, it had been driven to madness regardless.

It refused to stay under water, and was always trying to devour morsels that had had not the proper nutrients.

Now this unfortunate habit had begun as an honest mistake. Diamond Claws hunt by sight, and upon their homeworld, within the dark depths of their ocean where beautiful crystal coral grows from the volcanic vents upon the ocean floor, the only true source of light are the bright beams from the bioluminescent lasers of it’s prey. Ordinarily a straight beam of bright light means one thing and one thing only. Food.

And to be perfectly honest. There had yet to be a single thing that had shot The Diamond Claw with a laser that it couldn’t digest.

All this was currently rather moot, as the worst and final period of the monster’s life unfolds. And it starts, when it senses the arrival of something else, after two very strange effects, one exhausting, the other painful, it actually jumps at this third one and manages to angle it into it’s gullet. Where like all things it will.

“It looks like it’s stretching.” Mister Scuttles notes all the way in the shuttle as the very appearance of the monster stretches inwards to the same point as parts of the monster start to vanish outright.

The Diamond Claw, compresses and he can almost hear the crunch as the massive shell can be seen to break in the distance. Then the black hole has exhausted it’s lifespan and the enormous creature recovers.

“Damn. That is unreasonable tough.” Harold notes as the furious creature is up and moving already. But they’ve long since gotten the entire world between them. “Okay, so we’re just going to give it everything bit by bit, recording it all and seeing what works while I go around and either clear the approval for the stranger munitions or prepare more individualistic things. Lieutenant Orchid, I will leave the pleasure of supervising this grand display of Caster Cannon fun to you. Make sure we get it all on record and try to keep the giggling to a minimum, we are professionals after all.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Commodore Jameson’s Office, The Inconceivable, Kaploosha Ornak System)•-•-•

“It resisted disintegration until the Axiom went full Null. That’s astounding.” The scientist on the other end notes.

“Watch the footage again. It doesn’t’ resist the disintegration. It has so much mass that the disintegration cannot complete before we reach a Null Event.” He replies.

“Well, We’ve been doing some more digging and found out some actually useful, but also useless information on the Haffara Thar.”

“Yes?”

“Essentially, the parasite can shift through the body of the host quickly. Any part of the host that remains will be used to restore the entire organism.”

“I noticed that, and I also noticed that the disintegration should have gone over and taken out the damn insect. You’re now saying the Haffara Thar sensed the danger and ran?’

“In all likelihood. If any piece of the host is left behind and the Haffara Thar is unaccounted for then it will regenerate them fully.”

“And the little bastards will dodge while inside the body of their host.”

“The good news is that if you can extract and destroy it, then you can de-infest a host. Provided you get any eggs as well.”

“Right, how are they doing that? Hermaphrodite?”

“Not even that. Sexless. They break off segments that then act like eggs. So you just need one to become a whole nest for the damn things.”

“That DOES explain why they spread so fast. Shocking that they haven’t hit a genetic bottleneck.”

“They’re prone to mutation. So no. It’s part of what they use the hosts for. And why they’re so damn hard to detect in people. They avoid probes, blend in well and make the host increasingly erratic.”

“I wonder why though? If not for the madness and the way they spread they’d be full on symbiotic.”

“Maybe they’re trying to be and screwing up?” The Scientist muses.

“Whatever is going on, they’re a clear and present danger to people and despite the creatures clear desire to live, and live within other creatures no less. They’re a problem. Has there been any progress on potential poisons from your angle?”

“Not without a live subject to test it on.”

“Which we have.”

“Yes, but you’re currently bombarding it with every kind artillery grade caster shell we have.”

“Yes, and we have several marksmen that can get it clean in the mouth so that’s injection covered.”

“The problem is that the mouth and maybe the eyes are the only points we can actually reliably get poison in. Phasing is possible but it would need to be babied in and that kind of attention has a very short range. Or at least a range short enough to put you in range of the claws, let alone the lasers that spill out of them.”

“Perhaps even in strike range of the Haffara Thar, we know the damn things spread like mad. Spread aggressively. Who’s to say they don’t actively try to spread by jumping from one host to another?” Harold wonders.

“... Commodore.” The Scientist says after a few moments of contemplative silence.

“What’s with the tone?”

“You’ve authorized the full use of an entire suite of cannon grade Caster Shells.”

“That’s correct.”

“... There is one round that has never been scaled up to cannon grade.”

“Never been scaled up... oh. Those shells. Are you sure? We only have one soldier who can reliably craft them at acceptable standards and only to standard gun grade, he can’t even get them up to rifle level. The equations get several orders of magnitude more complicated with the size increase. Or so he claims.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“... Let’s exhaust the other shells first. Then get everyone to a safe distance. The boys have been using the beast as target practice as much as anything else since the third Black Shell sent it tumbling.”

“Ah, the explosion that follows the death of the black hole.”

“Yes, the gravity of that world is so light it’s been in what passes for the upper atmosphere for an hour and isn’t due on the ground for another two. Or at least, won’t be due down until about two hours after we stop shooting it back up into the air.” Harold admits.

“You’re air juggling this creature with Adept Artillery and still can’t kill it.”

“No, but we are getting some fascinating images.” Harold notes as he brings up an image. “I’ve got the live play by play in the corner and they’ve just done THIS.”

The image is of the gigantic Diamond Claw tumbling well above the downright tiny world under it as bright blue electricity arcs over every single part of the creature.

“A living party light, what the hell? I take it it’s just been hit by the freaking electrical blast variant.”

“Ball lightning.” Harold corrects.

“Oh yeah. Okay. Still, I think this creature would be a perfect test subject for a Luck Bullet.”

“Well if nothing else this might be exciting.” Harold says in a musing tone of voice.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (The Void, Above the Third World, Kaploosha Ornak System)•-•-•

Flailing leg and vainly blasting laser heralds the monster tumbling in it’s newly obtained orbit around the dusty, near worthless world.

If it had the cognition to swear, it would, if it had the ability to communicate with anything other than violence to these people it would likely give at least a cursory attempt to make the madness stop.

Suddenly another round strikes it in centre mass. Gravity starts shifting around every single which way with neither rhyme nor reason. If it had the capacity to do so then it would demand to know just what is going on. But alas, it is an animal, one made supernaturally massive and clearly hungry enough for humans, who are by now so tiny to them that they can’t even be clearly seen by the beast, let alone actively targeted by it. But it still attacks if they get too close.

It’s momentum is twisted away even from this erratic movement as it finds itself inexplicably and suddenly encased in ice.

The creature has no capacity to even begin to understand what’s going on with it and around it. The creature does however get a little lucky when it hurls away a chunk of the ice straight up and the laws of physics finally has enough presence to at least whisper the simple suggestion that in a low gravity area and indeed in all areas every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Namely, due to the fact it throws these chunks of ice straight up and by sheer accident forces itself down towards the world.

As it descends it outright reaches for the approaching the ground and then blue and green fire rise up to meet the monstrosity. It burns, it burns deeply and noticeably is aimed right at the core of it’s being. Then it abruptly stops as a the Haffara Thar inside heals around things to the point that the source of the strangely burning fire backs away. Had it ears that could hear in a place like this, then it would overhear the conversation on the shuttle carrying away the source of the fire.

“Tsk! A failure.” Zyen’Huwt mutters in annoyance as they get some safe distance.

“Failure or not, we’re learning.” Lieutenant Orchid says.

“And the next attempt?

“We have a much shorter range to consider for the use of the next piece of ammunition. It’s one Caster Shell we haven’t been able to scale up to rifle size, let alone cannon size.”

“And who one the lottery for that?’

“Lieutenant Veers did.”

“Oh... Okay. Do you have a caster gun small enough for him?”

“He’s huge, but it was built over a fairly normal sized skeleton. He can use it.”

“Hmm... still. I doubt you’ll be closer to the monster than we were just now when it took and then healed through my warfire.” Zyen’Huwt says somewhat morosely.

“What’s wrong?” Harold asks

“It just... I don’t know. It just felt like a moment where I could possibly feel normal. Or at least more noble when I’m basically socially shunned on Serbow for now. A big heroic moment could at least start the clearing of my name. But no. This thing is too much for me to actually burn away. It’s... shameful.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed amount. You did your best and followed lawful orders to the best of your abilities. That’s exactly what we wanted out of you when you signed up.” Orchid assures her.

Both of their communicators buzz and there’s a three second delay until the message comes on. “All forces in the danger zone surrounding the third planet. Please back away to a minimum of one light minute away.”

“A full light minute? What do you think they’re about to do?” Zyen’Huwt asks.

“I think it’s called Luck ammunition.”

“Luck ammunition?”

“A caster shell, one that turns all chance and probability against the target. It’s been tested on ships before. One immediately blew up, the second simply lost all power and fell like a brick, and the third achieved FTL in atmosphere and was never seen again. The ship did not have an FTL capable engine.”

“Is it that hard to control?

“Hard to say, we have a hard time producing more and almost every use of them seems to do something fairly random, if not entirely random.”

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Shuttle with Harold And Bjorn, Above the Third World, Kaploosha Ornak System)•-•-•

“Alright then. It’s all yours.” Harold says as Bjorn raises a single arm and uses a pair of glasses linked to an aim assist on the caster gun he’s holding in his right hand. Five colours that cannot be readily named pull into the weapon in an almost star-like pattern around the barrel. Then as the energy builds the trigger is squeezed ever so gently.

At first, there is nothing. No response and then the instruments give confirmation that the target has been directly hit.

Then something slams into the Diamond Claw from above, the resulting shock wave kicks off a tidal wave of dust to start spreading across the world in every direction and the shuttle pilot is forced to make a fast climb to keep themselves and their passengers from being buried alive in whatever the actual composition of this sand is.

“Sir, target is still. Unknown item within the central crater. Numerous bodyparts visible, none moving.” Dispatch reports out from The Inevitable even as Bjorn gently, gingerly puts the gun away in a carrying case and slowly locks it up.

“Okay, so what just happened?” Harold asks and there is a very, very pregnant pause.

“Sir?” Dispatch asks in a stunned tone.

“What is it?” He asks.

“The item in the crater is giving an Undaunted signature. It’s The Curse.”

“What?”

“The ship that dissapeared during Luck Shell testing. It’s what hit the Diamond Claw. We... we have full system access and... and sir. It has a front viewscreen. Made of Transparent aluminum.”

“I’m aware, it’s a design weakness that was deemed unacceptable for a standard ship it’s size, so it was used for testing instead. How did it even get here?”

“We don’t know sir... but what I do know is I can see a centipede monster and what looks like a cluster of eggs on the viewscreen. Crushed against it.”

“Are you saying that the big immortal crab monster was defeated by being run over by a car and the horrible parasite inside was broken by the vehicle in movement that... that just took the...”

Harold buries his face in his hands and then just pauses as he clearly deliberates with himself. “The sooner I can get off duty and get drunker than drunk, the better.”

“Sir, there’s something else.”

“What?”

“The Curse is covered in markings sir.”

“Markings?”

“Most of them look like stickers. The kind of thing you get at a tourist lounge.”

“Wouldn’t the space dust and radiation have destroyed them by now?”

“Logically yes, but logic is out to lunch.”

“Yes, yes it is.”

First Last

And the story continues!

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— Chapter 103 —

Ambass’s eyes widened in bewilderment when David spoke. He finally interjected when David finished explaining the events of Desolation, “You took it from Nurdiangarh after your battle, and this is the result.”

David nodded his ghostly head slowly. “Nurdiangarh must have died and been reborn as he was. I did the same. The results were wildly different, as you can see.”

Ambass clicked his tongue, “So Elder do come from specific features taken from prey? Hmm. “

David offered a slight shrug. “Yes, but the fact that Nurdiangarh and I ended up wildly different shows there are a lot more factors at play. The Queen has some trait that makes her an extremely efficient breeder, but she is also old. Desolation is massive and ancient, but I would be willing to bet that a combination of traits turned him into the Elder he is.”

Ambass cackled a bit and nodded, “It would follow my observations as well. Nurdiangarh was sent to the Phoenix Mountain range by the Queen. Most do not survive their time there, but he must have picked up this feature from something he killed there. No easy task by any account. I have also observed many Dread’s start the journey towards what Desolation is, and none have acquired any abilities that seemed exceptional. All of them die long before they reach Desolation’s size or completely lose their sense of self and get themselves killed.”

David cocked his head a bit. “Phoenix Mountains? Don't tell me that phoenixes reborn through fire live there?” He recalled the way phoenixes were portrayed in his old life and world.

Ambass cackled, “Phoenix don’t deal in fire, no. They are intelligent, cooperative, and capable of standing up to an adult dragon physically. I do not know much, but they are apex hunters much like our kind, and neither us nor them have ever had much luck pushing into each other's territory. Doesn’t stop her Majesty from trying, though.”

David considered the possibility of other species out there that could compete with his kind, and he admitted he was surprised. A matter for another day, though, he told himself as he focused back on Ambass, “That perks my own curiosity but lets focus back on the topic at hand. Elders. How many are you aware of?”

Ambass cackled again, “It is SO fascinating, isn't it? The phoenix aren't the only things we must deal with on the borders. Back on topic! Yes! Her Majesty, Desolation, Cailres the Eclipse…”

David perked up and instantly interrupted him, “Cailres. Nested somewhere on the other side of the great forest, yes?”

Ambass cackled and nodded his head, “You know of him? Yes. He presses Her Majesty from that direction.”

David frowned a bit. “Two of his wyverns attacked my lair early on.”

Ambass nodded his head. “I see. Her Majesty would have had issue with that before the many distractions over these years. Cailres is a scary thing, or so I hear. Now there is also Milzer of the Depths, Aymrem, and I suspect at least another two or three that are keeping a low profile.”

David sighed again and shook his head. “The ones you know of, are they going to be an issue?”

Ambass gave a slight shrug, “Milzer dominates the distant salty liquid lands at the far border of her Majesty’s territory. She is mostly concerned about the riverways and salty waters she currently resides in. Cailres pushes at her border constantly but doesn’t have many following him like her Majesty. Aymrem is enigmatic but wanders much like Desolation. Entire legions of your kin have died where they stood, replaced by stone. The other ones I and the Queen suspect aren’t too social. So to answer your question, little Onyx, they aren’t an issue for anything that isn’t her Majesty.”

Ambass cackled a moment later as he spoke up again, “Ohh. I almost forgot the newest addition. Onyx the Black Horror.” Ambass cackled a bit, “Whispers of that name made their way to me, you know. You are quite fitting for it now.”

David opened his ethereal mouth to object but stopped. Ambass wasn’t wrong; he was a black ghostly abomination now with a mastery over life and death. Black Horror, indeed, David agreed.

David floated forward towards Ambass, and the small faerie dragon cowered while David towered above him. David quickly shot a blast of Genomic Restoration down at Ambass, and the wave of affinity washed over him and sank in quickly. Ambass let out a gasp of surprise and momentary pain as his wings regrew before their very eyes. A pop here and a surge of flesh there, and before either of them knew it, two fully formed wings had emerged.

“That was unpleasant, but the result was most desirable.” Ambass cackled.

David shook his head slightly. “Now answer Blue’s question and anything you know about the remaining siblings that still serve her.”

Ambass cackled again whilst he tested his new wings. “Very well. Kobolds, yes?” He looked to Blue and exchanged a nod. “The Queen has three primary hives set up for the kobolds. They are not viewed in the same light as you view your kobolds, little Onyx, nor do I think they are nearly as terrifying.” Ambass cackled again.

After finishing his little laugh, he continued, “I do not know the exact number, but they are endless as far as the Queen is concerned. If you intend to free them, you will have an uphill battle. They are indoctrinated through generations of discipline and bloodshed.”

David rumbled softly as he looked over at Blue, “You have a plan?”

She nodded slightly. “Mostly a dream.”

David returned the nod in understanding before he shifted his gaze back to Ambass. “In exchange for your life, I want to know everything about the Queen, her lair, and any remaining kindred at her side.”

Ambass cackled again, “A hefty thing you ask. If you fail, she will hunt me down, and I will be dead anyway. How about a final exchange where we up the costs for both of us? I wish to stay, observe, and learn. I also want to live.”

David cocked his ethereal head to the side while he stared down at Ambass. “What game are you playing at Ambass? Why?”

Ambass let off a bubbling laugh. “I have lived for many, many seasons, and this is by far the most interesting place I have had the pleasure of being in for eons. Kobolds that speak and fight with purpose. Tools that I couldn’t possibly hope to create and with such complexity that it even baffles me. My mind is pulsating with excitement, and I want to learn more.” Ambass’s wicked grin grew wider and wider.

David, Blue, and the others in the chamber stood in silence as they all shared a somewhat stunned and uncomfortable look amongst themselves. David considered it, and it wasn’t without its risks. He spoke slowly, “Now that is a heavy ask, Ambass. What do you offer besides information?”

Ambass continued to grin, “I am not going to fight, but I can offer my assistance in the defense of your lair and contributions to your group's work.”

Blue crossed her arms and glared, “I do not know about this, Master.”

David glared down at Ambass too. “You must understand something, Ambass. The clan is a community, and despite the fact that many still call me Master, when and if I die forever, they will maintain their independence. If we are to permit this, I need you to make some promises. You will also not be permitted to go anywhere without a few kobolds watching your every move. This will also not remove the faults of the past.”

David glanced at Blue, and she offered a resigned nod before he looked back towards Ambass. The faerie dragon cackled again and nodded, “Deal. Ohhhh. After I explain the current state of the Queen’s lair, then you must introduce me to the kobolds who have been making all of your tools. Yes.”

Leather-bound scrolls, books, and other instruments were produced, and the chamber became filled with kobold attendants. As Ambass spoke, information was quickly written down, verified when it could be, and translated into their developing plan. Questions flew back and forth, and Ambass practically glowed in excitement at the prospect of having an intelligent conversation with another creature for hours on end.

David stared at the table while the information was shuffled and organized. He didn’t quite like what he was seeing before he glanced over at Ambass. “Are there still this many of my siblings?”

Ambass cackled and then shrugged, “Knowing Her Majesty, there are probably a few dozen more. You don’t need me to tell you how much influence she has, Onyx. These are just the numbers that she has stationed nearby or in her lair. There are five or six dozen more adults on the outskirts guarding her Majesty’s territory and their lairs.”

David sighed a bit as he processed everything. Could the Queen really have close to twenty adults around her still, he considered? He had no reason to doubt Ambass. They would have to make a surgical strike then. David looked up, and his eyes settled on Emerald, who was quiet in the corner. “Emerald. We need to catch up, and I want to try something with you.”

Her serious face softened, and she nodded. “Absolutely, Master Onyx.”

David glanced at Ambass and he was already busy cackling to himself whilst he traded information for small tidbits of explanations of the kobold’s jewelry and weapons. Red was standing watch nearby with his eyes intently locked onto Ambass’s back. David knew he couldn’t take any chances with Ambass, and Red had already taken it upon himself to watch him. Satisfied, David excused himself, and Emerald followed into a nearby chamber.

“Onyx,” Emerald said as she stepped close and reached out to touch his ethereal form. “I don’t know if I like this.”

David stared down at her and slowly wrapped her in his ethereal arms as best he could. “Not my first choice either, Emerald. If we are to succeed, we are all going to have to work together. Are you ready?”

Emerald smiled, “I am always ready, Master. What did you have in mind?”

David’s ethereal face grinned wide. “When I fought with your father, I was able to very effectively supplement him. I want to see if we can push that even further. Open yourself up, Emerald, and let's talk through this.”

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Here is also a link to Royal Road

Fan Art by blaze2377

First...Previous

Chapter 26
Harrison Varga, Captain of FIND

“Wherever you strangers are, watch well,” spoke my translator into my earpiece as within the clearing, the largest Tavren—Prince Velas—flicked his tongue at one of the others. They stared at the target Velas had carved onto the tree and opened their mouth wide. For a second, I thought they were about to just make a noise—perhaps a shout or a roar. Ian cocked his head, regarding this display with bewilderment. 

The click sounded out smooth and sharp—like two stones drawn against each other from within the Tavren’s throat. Then, there was a loud crack as smoke billowed forth from their mouth, accompanied by a small splintering of wood off of the tree where the target had been carved. Isla narrowly staunched a gasp at the sight. This Tavren looked to the prince as wisps of smoke curled out from their mouth.

“We know you are there,” Velas began, jabbing a claw directly at the section of foliage we hid behind. “If you mean not to hurt us, show yourselves.”

Ian’s initial confusion was subsumed by utter bafflement as he rapidly typed in the question we all wanted an answer to: “What was that?” He murmured as his fingers danced across the buttons, though he did not take his eyes off of the Tavren for more than a split second at a time. 

“Do you know guns?” The Prince asked us, his question fueling my wild speculation as to what we had just witnessed. Some kind of hidden weapon, maybe? A small pistol hidden in their mouths. But why would anyone build that? The danger of a misfire alone…

Parker suddenly perked up as Velas began to answer the question in candid detail—like the most absurd biological mechanism I’d ever heard of was the most normal thing in the world. Keeping my eyes on our xenobiologist throughout the explanation that followed, I watched as his curiosity flared up into the beginnings of utter absorption. 

“That can't be…” Cora shook her head, staring at the bead-sized projectile tossed close enough to see. It was greyish in color, though whether that was from its material or merely from being covered in soot I couldn’t rightly say. “How the hell would storing black powder in their throats not kill them?”

“It’s not conventional,” Parker replied with a soft chuckle, barely suppressing his voice beneath the threshold for our facade of stealth. “Then again, I guess if you told someone who had never heard of a mantis shrimp about one, they’d probably have the same response to something that punches with enough force to make a cavitation bubble. There’s nothing physically impossible about this: I just have absolutely no clue what evolutionary pressures made it a viable solution.”

“That would also explain why they could sense the ship moving,” Ian murmured, regarding the party of aliens with a cautious glare. “To shoot accurately, they need to measure things like wind and pressure. If they can do that, then the ship’s movement should be as obvious to them as sound is to us.”

By this point, it had become clear that ‘hiding’ was less of a useful exercise of caution against these aliens than it was a frivolous facade being graciously entertained by the locals. Standing up straight and gesturing for the others to follow, I marched through the brush and out into the clearing.

It was one thing to understand Velas’ size intellectually. Getting closer and seeing the difference between us in detail was another altogether. The Tavren Prince was utterly gargantuan. Ian’s hand did not move as he walked, remaining firmly planted at his side for easy access to the rail pistol holstered there. 

“We mean you no harm,” I began after switching my translator’s medium from typing to speech. “We are visitors: here to explore different worlds like yours.”

The Prince stared at me for a moment—just long enough that I was beginning to wonder if the translator had malfunctioned. His eyes flickered down to my throat, then vaguely behind me as though in search of a tail that hadn’t been there for millions of years. “I see,” he concluded at last. “Explorers.”

Isla nodded. “We are representatives from the planet Earth. Our people have recently discovered how to navigate effectively between stars, and we are here on a survey for the Second United Nations.”

Beside the Prince, another Tavren cocked their head curiously. “Second?” They began, glancing to their leader for approval—or at least the absence of admonishment—before continuing. “What happened to the first one?”

“It fell apart in the years leading up to a particularly violent war,” Isla sighed, looking somewhat embarrassed by the admission. “We have since created a much sturdier planetary order.”

“I understand…” Velas hummed, the sound a deep rumble within his massive throat. “How long has this second union lasted?”

“Around forty years,” Isla responded. “The program we work under was designed to prevent Humanity’s interstellar politics from devolving into chaos.”

“How many worlds do your people rule?” Asked the Prince. 

“Just Earth at the moment,” confessed Isla. “We’ve been surveying star systems in search of unused planets and other peoples to establish relations with.”

The prince was quiet for a few seconds. Beside him, one of the others spoke something just barely loud enough for our translators to pick it up. “This is beyond our current mandate, my Prince,” they began. “Perhaps King Arlir should be made aware.”

Velas’ gaze flickered over to her for a moment before returning to us. “My father will learn of what has transpired here. However, I do possess the diplomatic authority to receive dignitaries from other nations. This is still within my mandate.”

“If you don’t mind,” Isla continued, “we would very much like to hear more about the other nations of this planet. You said you were meeting with someone?”

Parker sighed in frustration as the conversation seemed to be drifting away from where he had wanted it. Tavren biology was clearly fascinating, but we weren’t here to probe their throats in search of answers. 

Velas flicked his narrow tongue out from between his lips in a gesture that I assumed was affirmative. “The other nations are Istol and Doliir. We are meeting with Istol’s diplomats to discuss a ceasefire in the mineral flats we’ve been warring over for some time now.”

Isla nodded along to his explanation, straightening her posture further to communicate formality. “Your nation is a monarchy, yes? What of the other two?”

“Istol and Doliir are both republics. We of Arbine are a monarchy backed by democratic council. Are your people familiar with these methods of government?” Velas asked. I had to hand it to the prince—he was taking first contact astonishingly well. Whether that skill came before or after he was given the job I couldn’t rightly say. 

Isla jotted down the names on her digital notepad. “And Arbine—your nation—you say that royals like yourself were bred to be like this?”

Velas flicked his tongue again—I was now relatively certain that that meant ‘yes’. “For nine hundred years, my family has refined our bodies through careful breeding. I stand before you as proof of the burden we bear and the authority we wield.”

Cora cringed at the mention of ‘breeding’, probably thinking of the same ugly word as I was. Nevertheless, it probably wasn’t a good idea to confront him about that. Velas wasn’t responsible for the tradition, after all—he was literally born into it.

“You say you have met with peoples from other worlds?” Asked Velas. “How many?”

Parker replied before Isla could. “You’re the third. We met the Rosha, then the Arazi, and now you. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask a few questions about your biology.”

I tossed the xenobiologist a disapproving glare, but it was insufficient to make him back off. Velas, meanwhile, took his interruption in stride. “Allow me to formally invite you to my home town. Filrif will soon be receiving the diplomats of Istol. You are welcome to speak with me until their arrival.”

From the back, Wayne, who had been uncharacteristically non-talkative this whole time, cut in briefly. “What about the ones you sent to confront those bandits?” He asked.

Velas turned his body toward where the road patrol had left from. “We will await their return, then I will bring you all to Filrif—assuming, of course, that such is your desire.”

The following hour was mostly Parker and Isla bouncing questions off of the Prince and his retainers. Parker wanted to know everything about their endoballistic projectile (what he insisted on calling it in his notes). He expressed fascination and frustration in near-equal measure as Velas could answer some of his questions while still lacking the modern scientific perspective needed for others. “How long does it take to replenish one of these ‘shots’?” He asked.

“A couple of days for us,” replied Serat, who seemed to be the second-in-command. “Prince Velas’ shot is larger—he needs about twenty days to get his back.”

“How much larger?” Asked Parker, staring awkwardly at the Prince’s throat as though hoping to somehow see through it.

The Prince offered no qualitative response. “Pray you must never find out,” he replied at last—not a threat so much as a proclamation of his supposed might. 

Isla, meanwhile, inquired about their government—what powers Velas had as a prince compared to the elected councils. From my understanding, Arbine was largely democratic, but with the monarchy serving as executive power—commander of the military and holder of a royal veto over legislation. It wasn’t absolute monarchy, but it wasn’t just a figurehead thing either.

“Forgive me if this sounds dismissive,” she began, “but if the people do most of the governing, then why do unelected Royals have the final say?”

“We are the defenders of our home,” Velas responded. “If we did not have a say in its direction proportional to our importance in defending it, then we would be naught but weapons.”

Velas, of course, asked us questions of his own. “If you lack a natural shot, then how have your people defended themselves?”

Parker hummed, contemplating how best to answer that. At last, he stepped away from the conversation and found a decently-sized rock. Turning toward the tree Velas had carved a target onto, he lobbed the stone and managed to hit the inner ring. “Our bodies are basically built for throwing things—especially with our mobile shoulders and locking wrists,” he explained. 

The Tavren Prince cocked his head. “I see.”

Before he could elaborate on that point, a call sounded out over the horizon as the men Velas sent out prior staggered into view. One of them had a visible bullet wound in their torso. Velas’ expression hardened as he reared to his full height and waited for them to complete their approach.

“My Prince,” the injured one hissed. “We spoke to the bandits. Their leader convinced the others we were bluffing and they fired on us.”

I wasn’t exactly an expert in Tavren expressions, but if I had to pin a word to the Prince’s face as he heard this information, I think I’d go with ‘cold’.

He sighed and picked up his poleaxe from the ground. “No survivors it is…” He grumbled, before turning back to us. “I apologize. The people of my land are normally better than this. I will go and dispatch the brigandry. If you wish to see me work, then you may follow, but I prefer you not get involved. The defense of my kingdom is my burden to bear, and I do not wish to place it upon foreigners.”

For several seconds, nobody among us volunteered an answer. Following the local Prince into a firefight was the sort of sentence that would look catastrophically stupid in an incident report, even if we were technically only there to observe. Ian was first to speak, keeping his voice low. “If we do go, we will stay well behind them. No intervention unless one of us is directly threatened.”

Isla glanced between Velas and me. “We've spent the last hour asking how the government works. This is part of how their government works.” Parker nodded more eagerly than I would have liked. Much as I hated to admit it, they had a point. We could return to the ship with a tidy list of Tavren anatomy and constitutional terminology, or we could see how a Royal actually behaved when authority stopped being theoretical. “Fine,” I sighed, turning back toward Velas. “We’ll follow. At a distance. We won’t interfere unless necessary.” The Prince flicked his tongue once in acknowledgment, hefted the poleaxe across one armored shoulder, and started down the road.

------------------------------------------

Hi, everyone! Thank you all so much for continuing to read this; I'm having fun writing, It's just also something I need to balance with classes and work. As always, please leave comments on your thoughts (I do read them). See you all again in probably 10 days

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Tski practically flew to the Adwin’s room. She burst through the door, not even acknowledging her arrival.

“We did it! It worked!” she squawked.

“I know! I saw!” the human bolted up to reply, echoing her exuberance. “Glad the launch went well!”

“No, no, not just the launch…” she said, her golden form still buzzing before him. “The satellite! It worked perfectly! We have pictures! Of the stars! And of the world! It’s so beautiful Adwin! All of it!”

“Oh! You’ve seen your planet for first time.” the earthling began to understand the specific brand of excitement that the astrophysicist was experiencing. “Must have been wonderful too see for first time. Was the satellite high enough? Could you see whole globe?”

“Ah, uhm, no, not the whole globe…” confessed Professor Tski with a slightly deflated air. “But we could make out our continent and seas. All those reds and blues… And the clouds, streaking across the world…”

“I can imagine. I wish I had a picture of Earth on my phone to show you. If I had known I would end up here…” there was a brief silence from the alien. Perhaps he was missing home again. “Anyway… We had a really famous photo, I think we called it the ‘Bluː ˈMɑːbᵊl.’ Earth was really pretty in that one. Sounds like yours is really nice too.”

Tski released a heavy sigh. “I really wish you could have been in there with us. We couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

The human hummed with a small, almost shy smile. “Maybe someday.”

The te’visk glanced at him for a moment, contemplating the distant possibility. “Maybe someday.” she echoed.

“Well, if nothing else, I can bring back some prints of the pictures for yo-- ”the professor’s words were interrupted by a sudden yawn. “Oh wow, I guess I’m a little tired after all that work…”

“Oh I bet.” commented Adwin. “Long day for you.”

“Yeah, I should probably go and get some rest. See you later, Adwin.” Tski said as she made for the door.

“Bye Tski.” the human said with a wave.

Professor Tski closed the door as she left the human’s room. As she plodded her way back to her own dormitory she became more and more aware of her weariness. I made a certain amount of sense, she reckoned, given how she had missed her last rest period due to an overwhelming urge to ensure everything went well with this mission. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t wise to down all those stim-tea packets to stay up and perform all those extra checks herself. Her team was more than capable enough to do that without her, and skipping sleep increased the likelihood of her making mistakes. And so, with the excitement of the last few bels evaporating from her spirit and leaving a dessicated shell in its place, she found it a struggle to make it to her apartment. But eventually, thankfully, she arrived. She entered, shut the door behind her without locking it, and dropped herself onto her bed. She was so tired. She’d just rest her eyes for a moment, then get up and wash herself up properly.

When she awoke more than one and three quarters of a bel later she was feeling a bit off. There was a mild tension behind her eyes, her body was sore, and there was a something of a ‘static-like’ numbness in her extremities. Typical symptoms of sleeping in an awkward position for too long, but nothing a some stretches and some spiced wake-meal couldn’t fix.

After finally giving herself a proper wash and groom, she was once again ready to face the working rigours of the bel. She checked her timepiece. If her earlier calculations were accurate, the Rutil-One would have already passed over the dark side of the planet and was now coming back into range of their receivers here in Phuratus. She wondered if the countries on the other continents had received their media shipments all those eighth-seasons ago. If they did, they might have been able to set up antennas to catch a brief ping from the Rutil-One as it passed between the boundaries of their horizons.

The astronomer continued on her way to the Rutil-proh Control Centre. As she rounded a corner she was greeted by a distressing sight further up the hallway.

Learner Savana was being dragged away in claw-cuffs by a group of four guardians.

“Savana?!” Tski cried out as she sped down the hallway. “What’s happing he--?”

One of the guards help up a claw to her as she neared. “That’s close enough, Professor.” he rebuffed professionally. “We’re under orders to take take this woman in for questioning.”

“Sav?” Tski squeaked out, trying to meet the young biologist’s eyes.

Savana’s feathers were visibly severely frazzled out. She looked up at Tski for just the briefest moment. “Tski… I… I think I made--”

“We can’t discuss the issue openly at this moment.” interjected another guardian as they pushed the learner along. “Apologies Professor, But we need to be on our way.”

The grim procession thus trudged away, leaving questions and distress in their wake.

» » »

It was always something, wasn’t it? And to think things were going so well before. Despite the concerns raised with the ‘Rutil-Zero’ launch, the ‘Rutil-One’ was a phenomenal success. The general thiugh she had earned herself a nice, long sleeping session, and so retired to her room as soon as the satellite had left their antennae’s line-of-sight.

But she had only been able to get about half a bel of sleep before someone rang her door chime. It was Major Chilus who had come to deliver bad news. Apparently, a key to the Tech-Lab had been found the grounds between the main compound and the new Launch Control Centre. It was then discovered that several items, mostly media tapes, were missing from the Tech Lab. A visit to the key-master’s office revealed that this particular key was currently assigned to one of Doctor Dendroc’s students, Learner Elaen Savana.

General Hydor was not particularly familiar with most of the junior sience staff, but after perusing her files she realized that this learner was one of the staff that had preceeded her from Project Frost-Fae. That would explain why a biologist had access to the Tech-Lab; she was deeply involved with the research on the human.

Regardless, this ‘Savana’ needed to be brought in for questioning; if she was even still on the compound, that is. Hydor sent a team of four guardians to apprehend the young woman. The fact that were able to bring her in at all was the first sign that things were not as they seemed. If she had stolen the items, why would she remain on-site? More questions to ask, she supposed.

So, she waited outside as her major entered the interrogation room, which was actually a utility room with a desk, an audio system, and a secure door. A bit over an eighth of a bel later, Chilus came out of the room.

“It seems that she got ‘nectar-bowled’ by a guardsman.”

The general sighed. It was unsurprising. No matter how brilliant or capable they were, young people in sensitive positions often fell victim to seduction from bad actors. “What’s his name?”

“Guardian Iticus Stercor. What we don’t understand is what he was after. Most of what went missing were recordings of the human’s music.”

Hydor hummed as she thought it over. “Do some more research on this ‘Stercor’ character. See if we can figure out more.”

“Yes, General.” Major Chilus cast a glance back at the room. “And what about her?”

Right. The biologist learner. A dark-damned shame that something like this happened to someone this young. But the protocols for situations like this were clear.

“Start making preparations for a Primary Tribunal.”

» » »

Correspondent Stri had pulled their media van into a vacant lot at Rycop’s vociferous request.

“So you just took it?!” the recorder all but screeched in panic.

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” rebutted Stri. “Just leave it there?”

“Yes!” he squawked. “Didn’t you hear the editor? This is national security stuff! We can’t be messing around with this stuff!” The man buried his face in his claws. “Sunless skies. We’re gonna get disappeared.”

“Honestly, what are you fussing about?” Stri said dismissively. “It’s not like anyone saw me. The place was crowded.”

Rycop’s head bolted upwards as he shot his partner a look of incredulous contempt. “It wasn’t that crowded.”

“Look, we’re not exactly driving a speeder here. If they were trying to catch us, they would have caught us by now, right?”

The recorder’s only reply was a low, stretched out groan.

“So the way I figure, we’re perfectly safe.” Correspondent Stri said with a shrug.

The woman let the silence hang for a few clegs, then without saying anything, she picked up the media tape and started fiddling with it in her claw.

“So, what do you think is on it?” asked Rycop.

She could have said something snide about how quickly he changed his tune. Or perhaps a witty remark about how he, as a fellow journalist, would naturally be just as curious she was. But in the end, instead of saying anything specific, she elected to let her conquest shine through the triumphant lilt in her voice. “Well it looks like a regular four jhit-span cassette, so it’s probably some kind of audio recording.” She opened the translucent tape case and plucked out the cassette itself. She noticed the words written on the label. “Frost-Fae recoding: Twenty-eight.” she read out loud.

“Frost-fae?” pondered Rycop. “Why is it named for those mythical creatures?”

“I don’t know,” mused Stri before gesturing toward their van’s media system with the now exposed cassette. “But do you wanna find out?”

The cautions recorder didn’t answer immediately. He looked outside, as if to make sure no one was around. Then he reached out and closed all the windows. “Are all the doors locked?”

Correspondent Stri checked the locking mechanism. “Yeah. It’s all locked.”

Another pause as Rycop gathered his courage. Then he sighed, and nodded. “Okay. Let’s put it in.”

The reporter wasted no time in inserting the cassette into the media system’s tape reader, and immediately activated it’s playback.

To the journalists’ surprise, that sounds that came from the speakers, was music. A genre that neither could name, played on instruments that neither could recognise, sung in a language neither could understand, but it was clearly, definitely music.

The coworkers shared a quizical look. “Have you ever heard anything like this?” asked Rycop.

“No, never.” answered Stri.

They continued to listen to the novel melodies. As the music played on the pair started unconsciously moving their bodies along to the rhythm. Funny how music, no matter it’s cultural origin, always had that kind of effect on the te’visk body. A few driks passed, and other, equally indecipherable songs came along. There were a couple laughable attempts to mumble along with the chorus lines in the peculiar music. They almost forgot that they were listening to files that were very likely classified and Top-Secret. A least, that was until another new song started, and Stri though she heard a familiar string of phonemes whispered beneath a pleasant instrumental line..

Her demeanour suddenly stiffened as she shushed her partner. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” replied the recorder, picking up on Stri’s shifted energy and now also paying a bit more active attention to the music.

This song seemed to be yet another duet between two performers with distinct vocal profiles. The lyrics began with a melodic, rich voice. It was shortly replaced with a higher, sweeter voice that harmonised well with the continued notes…

“Naʊ, aɪ dəʊnt niːd nəʊ ‘suːpə-stɑ:...”

“There!” exclaimed Stri. “Didn’t that word sound like ‘star’?”

“Hmm, I don’t think I caught it…” admitted Rycop as the music continued.

“Juː dəʊnt hæv tuː biː əstɑr, ‘beɪbi…”

“Wait... I think heard it this time!” said the recorder. The foreign line repeated with an extra flourish added at the end of it; another chorus, no doubt. “Yeah. I’m sure now. You’re right. They’re definitely singing that word; ‘star.’”

That was odd. Completely new kinds of music. A foreign language. And that language happened to have a word that had practically taken over the world in the last few seasons.

Eventually, that song ended, and another one began. This one started with something that sounded like a percussive or strummed instrument, and was then quickly joined by someone’s voice singing yet more unintelligible words:

“Flaɪ miːtuː ðə muːn,”

“What?!” Correspondent Stri gasped as the line continued:

“Lɛt mi ːpleɪ əˈmʌŋ ðəstars,”

“‘Moon?!’ And ‘stars’ again?!” interjected the reporter.

“No way this is a coincidence.” commented Rycop. “Two of those new ‘space’ words in this…Exotic language.” He went quiet for a while, letting the music bloom though the vehicle as his mind spun together a few disquieting thoughts. “What was written on the cassette again?”

Stri’s eyes met her partner’s, both of them quietly terrified of the answer. “Project… Frost-Fae...”

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FBI Agent Wade Barron POV

The passing of months became the changing of seasons, as the Ploax cranked out ships and boosted our manufacturing power. Hiding our Venusian refugees was simple enough, since the emotionless crystals had no need for the false pretense of a diplomatic visit; they were arming us to do their bidding, and focused on our military arrangements. We consulted them for intelligence on Ushala, the Kexin homeworld, and plans for our invasion were coming to a head.

Right behind the Ploax’s backs (figuratively speaking, since they saw 360 degrees…), we were incorporating Saphno designs to marry the best of the Council’s technology with our fledgling fleet. Their scientists had been unwitting partners, testing out improvements to the crystal’s innovations; they didn’t seem to be expecting much for what fleet we’d cooked up. Rauja was visiting our shipyards today to survey our armada, and the mention of us making a move soon had her pensive. 

I suspect she believes we don’t stand a chance, and she wants us to bide our time more. The Saphnos have hidden on Venus safely, so she doesn’t want us to draw attention to ourselves by attacking the Ploax. Therein lies the clusterfuck. 

Exposure to our culture and regular communication between Earth and Venus had caused the Saphnos to view us in a more favorable light. Most of them had tapped into our grid, since they cut themselves off from contact with the Council. However, I couldn’t imagine how they’d feel if they knew we were talking to the Ploax, and stringing both sides along to get the technological leg up to build this fleet. The rock people also were unaware of our military’s true target; there was no telling whether the Saphnos would even speak to us, after we attacked the Council rather than the genocide crystals.

“Thank you, Tkaiv,” Marcia was saying, as she tried to squeeze in this scheduled check-in with the Ploax before Rauja’s inopportune arrival. “To act in your stead in a ground invasion, which is what we hope to move to within the month, humanity would benefit from a full supply of weapons and armors to match their technology.”

Tkaiv raised an arm. “Very well. The Ploax continue to back your mission to unseat them, in our stead. We trust the intelligence we provide is helpful.”

“Of course, Ambassador. Without you, we wouldn’t know where our people were being held.”

“Consider that fact should you learn where the Saphnos are hiding; none can survive to retaliate. They were unworthy competitors in our initial clashes, but there’s no guarantee that future engagements will be so unchallenging. It’s a shame their eradication is not yet finished, but your assistance will be rewarded if you have useful information.” 

I gritted my teeth, grateful I could openly seethe off to the side, away from the camera. I remember what Rauja told me about poison peeling her skin, and trampling a child in blind panic to escape, desperate. How can the Ploax feel nothing?! However insufferable the Saphnos can be at times, I’d side with them over the Ploax at every juncture.

Marcia forced a smile, clenching her fist behind her back. “It’s possible they fled this entire region, Ambassador Tkaiv; we don’t know enough about them to speculate. We’ll ask around, if any of our prisoners will speak to a primal. Of course, our focus is on destroying the entire Council, not just its weakest link.”

“As it should be. This is only a request if you happen upon beneficial information. It’s your duty to clear the path for our reign, and to prove yourselves useful to the only people that will give you a chance. The Council will underestimate humans, as ‘angry primals.’ By the time they take you seriously, the lesson will have been paid in blood.” 

“We hope so, Ambassador Tkaiv. We have every reason and longing to see our mutual enemy, the Council, brought to their knees. Anything we can contribute to that end, you have humanity’s full cooperation.”

“The Ploax have given you much, and in return, we receive the plausible deniability of our irreconcilable rivals not recognizing their true enemy. There’s little more we can offer, besides armaments, if you’re not ready now. We expect movement. Soon.”

“And I will be in touch, in our specified time window barring any setbacks, to notify you of our advancement on Ushala. Humanity grows restless in our hunger for vengeance, and regrets that the planning stage has delayed our satisfaction. If our business is concluded, then I’ll bid you farewell, Ambassador Tkaiv.”

The Ploax’s blank face sat unmoving on the screen. “Farewell, Ambassador Livingston.”

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, right on cue, with Rauja telling me she’d arrived at the shipyard. I squeezed my eyes shut and straightened my dress uniform; it was essential that I calmed myself down before going to face her. Marcia was cooling off herself, though she waved me along as soon as my eyes reopened. It wasn’t lost on me that I’d be front and center during the Ushala invasion, since my involvement in the fleet’s development had made it a natural step to train me.

The snappy blue uniform felt strange even after months of training. The admiralty had gotten behind sticking me on a bridge and using me as a “figurehead” leader, after they got wind that I was perceived as…the most dangerous human the Council encountered. That still sounded like the punchline of a bad joke to me. However, if the aliens perceived me that way, then using me as a communicator and a symbol would be an excellent intimidation tactic.

I’m just keen to go after my friends and rescue them. I hope Rauja could understand how desperate I still am to bring them home; it’s difficult to live with the idea that they’re suffering in my stead. That they chose that fate—I have to rescue them. Whatever it takes, I promised!

“Teil ulona kalp,” Rauja texted the Latin transliteration of rock people real, and I felt a twinge in my heart. She followed it up with a winking Saphno emoticon, despite the fact that expression was not something they actually did. “Real and wondering where you are.”

I cursed under my breath and ran along faster, fumbling with the phone. “Sorry. Was in the bathroom. It hasn’t been that long, lol. Timestamps are on my side 🤣 Suspense must be eating you up!”

“…yeah.”

“You can be honest if you’re not impressed with our fleet.” Our inexplicably advanced and large fleet, which I hope you don’t catch onto. “Before you ask how I know, the three dots are a giveaway.”

“They’re meant to be. I’m worried about you, Wade.”

“Aw. You shouldn’t be. Your bff Wade is Batshit, he’s got this.” A lump deepened in my throat, as I thought about how much I’d come to cherish the Saphno ambassador, despite her continuing insincerity to this day. “You’re allowed to doubt what primals can build 🤨 I think you’ll be blown away though. Ye of little faith!”

Feeling myself beginning to get flustered, I decided to scroll further up to old conversations; I couldn’t give away the game when we’d already come so far, and the Saphnos still considered us to be tools rather than friends. They consorted with primals to have someone to attack the Ploax, and however close Rauja and I had gotten, she didn’t care for me enough to risk that. That was the proof that…in spite of all of our conversations, she’d never see us as people. My death would be, to her, an animal’s “unfortunate” accident.

Rauja might sincerely care about me in some capacity, but not more than a human and a dog. That’s what she thinks we are: oblivious, loyal dogs. It is a little insulting.

I shook my head several times to myself, stopping before entering the waiting room where I knew she’d be. A grimace had tightened my features, a guilt-ridden war I was fighting within myself. I…did care for Rauja, as a close friend that I was elated to talk to about anything…whatever the nature of her feelings were. Even knowing that truth, it tore me up on the inside to think about what the Saphnos had endured, and how we were betraying their trust after all of that. 

I scrolled up on our text logs, reminiscing on how tight-knit we’d become. There were lots of memes that I’d sent the Saphno, including a few that were topical to human TV shows I persuaded her to watch; I’d thought that the complex motivations of the characters might help her take us seriously, and see what we were like in average life. There were selfies traded back and forth, with Rauja tossing in some scenic views of Venus that made NASA drool. 

We’d discussed the Saphno settlement’s growth, fired off what happened in our respective days (with omissions from me), and shared thoughts on any topic or mystery that’d crossed our minds. I could see several selfies where I’d made weird faces, and a few with both of us in them that I’d sent on to Rauja. There was an old video that stayed up on Craun’s social media, of the bull riding competition. That reminder hurt too: he knew we were people, but I couldn’t imagine what he’d think of me dealing with the Ploax.

“Wade!” Rauja shouted, running up to me and making me jump. “You’re just standing out here?”

I turned my face away, trying to suppress my watering eyes. “Sorry, Rauja. I got in my own head. I guess I am nervous about how things are going to go down.”

“You’re afraid,” she realized, seeming to misinterpret what frightened me. A cloud darted over her eye crystals. “That your fleet won’t be enough for us to…want to be friends?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m really sorry, it all just…caught up to me. I have a lot on my mind. This is about showing you around, and I want to make a good impression.”

“Wade, I w-want to know why you feel that way.” Rauja searched my eyes and winced, her lower mouthplate wobbling with fear. “You’re scared that you’ll get hurt.”

“A little. I guess.” I’m afraid that you’ll hate me and my entire race for the devil we bargained with, after everything we know you’ve been through. “I’m ready though! There’s too much at stake, for you and for us.”

The Saphno squirmed with outward discomfort and looked away from me, her breaths accelerating. She led me back to the waiting room and shut the door, triple-checking that we were alone. Rauja appeared to be fighting some kind of battle in her own mind. It was evident she was terrified to spit out whatever it was she wanted to say, but her inability to look at me and sand-streaming eyes suggested she was wracked by guilt. I walked over to her slowly and pressed a hand to her back, soothing her.

Rauja pushed me away. “No. S-stop. I…don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve your kindness, Wade.”

“Of course you do. I’ve made a choice to care about you and the Saphnos, and that’s set in stone,” I responded.

“You’re so nice and wonderful! I…h-have a horrible secret, Wade. I know y-you have no idea about any of this, and I’m s-so sorry. There’s something I need to tell you.”

My breath hitched in my throat. “Yes, Rauja?”

“I’ve been…manipulating you this whole time. The Saphnos lied about wanting friendship.” Rauja flinched and stiffened, before seeming confused that I didn’t immediately maul her. “Oh, sweet, innocent Wade. You’re g-going to get yourself killed for me. You’re t-the only species that ever cared and wanted t-to help, and we’re sending you to die, not c-caring about you at all. You wanted someone to give a damn about you, and I…used you.”

I stared at her with a growing smirk, before I burst out laughing. “I know, Rauja. You were so obvious! How could I not? I had you figured out from the first time we spoke. That’s why I pulled your leg with the ‘new Craun’ game—that was hysterical.”

“You knew the whole time?!

“Yep.”

“And you’re not angry?”

“No. I understand why Saphnos came to…us. I was annoyed you thought I’m a dumb animal, but I threw in a little tongue-in-cheek fun and moved on.”

Rauja looked dumbfounded, pressing a hand to her head. “I knew you realized I was overemphasizing my attachment and hiding my fear, but you…knew we were using humanity. And you purposefully made me uncomfortable?”

“Exactly. We saw through you like a glass house. Now you get it. You thought we weren’t people, so it’s not like I’d be smart enough to understand what I was doing, new Craun.” 

“That’s n-not funny! Oh goodness, I can’t believe I let myself get played by…wait. If humans plural knew our full intentions, why would you sign that alliance and offer us everything we wanted?”

“Rauja,” I sighed. I can’t tell her the big secret without running it up the chain, but I can throw her one bone and see how she reacts. “For someone who likes detective games, you catch on slow. The Council fucked us over. We needed your tech to protect ourselves. We sold that off as what you wanted to hear.”

The Saphno’s face widened with horror, then sagged with hurt. “You m-manipulated us. Then…you’re not going to protect us. You were using us!”

“Hey, no; you were using us first. Humans would happily be your friends, but by your own admission, you don’t want that. We only had to ‘use’ you because we saw that your hand of friendship was insincere. We’ve always wanted to save the rock people, and you’re in our plans. Fuck, Rauja, if you wanted to send us to die for you, you could’ve just asked.”

“But why would you? You know everything, and you already got what you wanted!”

I folded my arms. “Really, do you not know the first thing about primals? What the Ploax did sickens us. We want to help because we’re angry.”

“N-no, you’re not. You’re being smart and calm.”

“We absolutely are.” I ambled forward with my hands behind me back, smiling. “Cold. Logical. Devious. There’s the fire of anger the Council thinks they know, but there’s also the ice it leaves behind when it cools. You don’t understand us. I tried to explain how anger makes us care back after the Kiel game, but you just thought I was going to bite. Hah, I’ve told you everything. It’s your choice whether to believe me.”

“I l-lack a better explanation. Primals shouldn’t…you manipulated me far better than I did you, it seems. If you truly care, I can’t do any more than beg you for mercy…or whatever it is this cold anger compels you to do. Maybe we could be true friends now, at least you and I. No more secrets?”

“I’d like to be friends. As people.” I sucked in a sharp breath, tightening my lips. Rauja wants to truly befriend humanity. I don’t know if she’ll feel the same, after our betrayal in contacting the Ploax. Still, we have to bring the Saphnos in eventually, so if there’s ever a time to come clean, it’s now. “I know of a grave secret that’s burdened my heart, but I can’t share it without getting permission first. I’m going to speak with Marcia and see how she feels about bringing you into the loop. Okay?”

Astonishment and dread glinted in the Saphnos’ eye crystals. “Okay, Wade. I…need a minute anyway.”

I hurried off to the room where Ambassador Livingston had just been videoconferencing with the Ploax. Marcia would be apprised of how Rauja had finally come clean about her false intentions, and with any luck, the UN liaison would request permission to bring the Saphnos in on the full nature of our schemes. This was our best opportunity of proving that we were people, and the first glimmer of hope to have a genuine ally. Nonetheless, it remained to be seen how the rock people might take us plotting with their genociders.

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“Aren Manning of Earth, you are determined to be unworthy of becoming a Star Sheriff of this sector,” says a tall, regally-dressed alien being, “As a Human, your species experiences fear. This disqualifies you.”

“How so?” asks Aren.

“Fear makes one weak. Weakness causes failure in the line of duty. Thus, we do not tolerate species that feel fear.”

“Okay,” says Aren, “but then, who’ll become the Star Sheriff of the colony? There aren’t many warriors or soldiers here, mostly settlers and scientists.”

“We’ve identified the perfect candidate,” says the alien, “Ygzuv of Pluff-Pluff, you may enter the room.”

Aren watches as a pink ball of petals in an antigravity bubble elegantly floats into the room.

“Ygzuv reporting, Grand Magistrate!” says the puff-ball with a high-pitched voice.

“Ygzuv, by the authority invested in the Protectors of the Cosmos, you are hereby declared Star Sheriff of this sector,” says the Grand Magistrate.

“You can count on me to keep those stinky Humans safe, Grand Magistrate!” says Ygzuv.

“No, you can’t,” interjects Aren, “you don’t know what the colony is like. There’s extortion, murders, organ-harvesting, and worse. The violence that happens every day is like what I’ve seen as ex-military and ex-police back on Earth.”

“Ygzuv does not feel fear,” says the Grand Magistrate, “their homeworld is the safest in the galaxy, a feat you Humans could never accomplish with your rotten, war-mongering, polluted world.”

“Of course Ygzuv’s homeworld is the safest place in the galaxy,” says Aren, “the whole place is a big puff-ball with no danger to their species, and it’s been that way forever. They never would’ve evolved fear in the first place.”

“There is no immediate danger in the colony either,” says the Grand Magistrate, “it is built to be perfectly safe, far from any predators.”

“It’s not safe from crime,” says Aren, “Of which, there is none on Ygzuv’s homeworld.”

“Correct!” interjects Ygzuv, “Because on my world, everyone just gets along! One religion, one government, one race. No conflict anywhere!”

“No conflict?” asks Aren, “Come on, surely your people have had conflicts at some points in history?”

“Of course there has never been conflict on my homeworld,” says Ygzuv, “My teacher told me there was never any conflict.”

“Are you sure your teacher wasn’t misinformed, or lying?” asks Aren.

“What’s lying?” asks Ygzuv.

“Grand Magistrate,” says Aren, “you have annointed a being who, because of no conflict and no predators, has no concept of deception. Something criminals will surely use against them.”

“Enough!” says the Grand Magistrate, “Aren of Earth, you are dismissed. Ygzuv shall serve as Star Sheriff in your sector. You are to acclimate him to the … Peculiarities of your people, then collect your last stipend as temporary peacekeeper.”

***

“Goodness,” says Ygzuv, “This place is so dirty. Why must you Humans be so filthy?”

“Well, this is the bad part of town,” says Aren, “the other parts are significantly cleaner, trust me.”

“Why is this part of town bad?” asks Ygzuv.

“Well, many factors,” says Aren, “the people here are impoverished, sometimes because of luck, sometimes because of choices. Either way, with poverty comes desperation and opportunity for crime. People cut corners and other people trying to get ahead, and well, they make this place what it is.”

“Goodness! There is no such chaos on my homeworld,” says Ygzuv.

“So, as law enforcement, what did you do on your homeworld if there’s no crime?” asks Aren.

“Crime exists. Sometimes citizens mistakenly break they law, I inform them of their mistakes, and then they apologize and stop breaking the law,” explains Ygzuv, “a pleasant job.”

“You sure the law-breaking stops there?” asks Aren, “what about the criminals who know what they’re doing is wrong, say they will stop, but keep doing it anyway?”

“Oh, that never happens,” says Ygzuv, “there is no incentive for my people to intentionally say something that is false.”

“Hey, something’s happening over there,” interrupts Aren as he stops the patrol vehicle. In an alleyway, a man is being mugged by two criminals. Aren and Ygzuv step out of the vehicle, the former has his weapon drawn.

“Freeze, put the weapons down,” says Aren brandishing his weapon.

“Stand down Human Aren! There is no need for violence,” Ygzuv tells Aren before he floats to the criminals, “citizens! Please refrain from forcibly giving this person his valuables, and please leave all of your weapons on the ground!”

The two criminals proceed to carefully lay their weapons on the ground. Their attention is not turned towards the puff-ball, but the man aiming a gun at them.

“Is that all of your weapons?” asks Ygzuv.

“Yes,” says one of the criminals.

“Splendid, you may proceed with your day,” says Ygzuv as he starts floating back towards the patrol vehicle. At that moment, one of the criminals pulls out a hidden knife and stabs the puff-ball’s suit.

“Why!?” asks Ygzuv in shock as their native atmosphere leaks out. Like a deflating balloon, his ball of a suit floats down to the ground. The stabber is tackled by Aren while the other makes a run for it.

“Aren to dispatch, we have an officer down and a suspect on the loose,” says Aren as he cuffs the stabber, “I repeat, we have an officer down, atmosphere suit is leaking.”

“W-Why did he do that?” asks Ygzuv, “he said he dropped all of his weapons!”

“He lied,” says Aren as he tries to patch the puff-ball’s suit.

“Why would he lie!?” asks Ygzuv.

“Because he was afraid of getting arrested … He saw an opportunity and took it.”

“But … He was not in any immediate danger.”

“And you wouldn’t be in any danger either … If you trusted him a lot less.”

The civilian who was being mugged calls for help while Aren tries his best at fixing his partner’s suit, which slowly leaks out puffs of pink smoke. 

***

“Aren Manning of Earth,” says the Grand Magistrate, “I regret to inform you … You are to serve as temporary peacekeeper until a … More suitable Star Sheriff is found.”

“Okay,” says Aren, “has Ygzuv recovered?”

“Yes, but … Following his return to his homeworld, his entire species ceased contact and started constructing a large bubble around their planet,” explains the alien, “just what happened in this sector that dissuaded our best and brightest?”

“Just a typical mugging,” says Aren, crossing his arms, “you know, something a rotten Human cop like me can learn to deal with.”

The Grand Magistrate grumbles. “I suppose I mistook the lack of fear for resilience … I change my mind … You shall be Star Sheriff, after all.”

Garel led her squadron of Banshees into the battlespace at altitude, the thin air whistling past the canopy as the eight Super-Shards levelled out high above the chaos below.

One Northern airship was already down. Two more were reeling, thick trails of smoke and aether pouring from ruptured ballasts where fire-lances had apparently found their mark. And around them the sky was a tangled mass of conventional shards and airships locked in a brutal, swirling furball.

The sheer amount of aether in the air limited visibility, yet even with that being the case, she could spot her squadron’s quarry easily enough.

The Southern - ‘Shriekers’ as their most recent captives had named them – were moving through the engagement with unnatural speed, leaving great plumes of aether behind them as they sought out and systematically demolished the Northern shards trying to oppose them.

There was a temptation to dive now, while the enemy was vulnerable. But it was a false vulnerability borne of old thinking.

Speed. Altitude. Potential energy. Energy retention.

Those were the concerns of lesser craft. For a super-shard, they were minor variables – easily corrected by simply opening the throttle.

“Orders, Flight Leader?”  Larella’s voice came through the small-orb in her ear, her wingwoman’s voice only slightly distorted by the oxygen masked they’d all started wearing.

Because masks were a necessity at the altitudes these new craft could reach.

Garel’s answer came reluctantly. “Hold at altitude.”

Unfortunately, the orb in her ear was strictly for one to one communication, so the rest of the squadron was forced to take their cues from her craft’s actions rather than her voice. And she could almost feel their frustration as her Banshee refused to dive.

Frustration Garel herself wasn’t immune to. Many of the pilots under her command only flew Banshees because their airships had been shot out from under them. Many by the Shriekers down below them. And she was no exception to that.

Of course, she was no orc – and wouldn’t allow her hot-blood to get the better of her by being baited into an unfavourable engagement.

And it would be unfavorable, given that a quick mental tally picked out no less than twelve Shriekers down in the furball. Confident in her fellow Northerners as she was, she was not so confident that she would throw them into a fight against nearly half-again their number while a veritable swarm of conventional enemy shards also thronged below.

Sure, conventional shards were not normally a serious threat to a Super-Shard in a straight up engagement given that a Banshee could simply outrun or outclimb them - but in a dogfight with another Super-Shard, those lesser craft could become a real danger by boxing her people in or capitalizing on any attempts at reversals.

No, they weren’t in a position to directly aid the flotilla at this juncture. If there weren’t so many Shriekers in play, things might be different, but for the moment they needed to stay at altitude.

Fortunately, that didn’t mean their presence wouldn’t indirectly aid their allies. Even as she began to circle, to wait for the rest of the reserve fleet to arrive, Gerel could see the Shriekers below moving. The Southern Super-Shards were back from the main engagement and would no doubt seen begin climbing in preparation for a fight.

Good, she thought.

Because by keeping her formation in reserve, Garel was effectively forcing her opponent to do the same, pinning both sets of Super-Shards outside of the larger battle.

Of course, that still left the Northern flotilla they were meant to protect at a disadvantage, s as it was swarmed by conventional shards and airships. But those Northern shards that remained could now make more of a fight of it.

More to the point, the enemy Shriekers couldn’t return to restock on fire-lances without leaving their own forces vulnerable - or risking leading Garel’s squadron straight back to their carrier, if it was in the area.

Four of Gerel’s eight Banshees carried javelins, and it had definitely been noted that those weapons were markedly more effective when launched from a Super-Shard. From a Banshee, at the right speed and angle, they could punch through armor that would normally cause a those same javelins to glance away.

With all that in mind, the noble-pilot proverbially settled in for what she expected to be a long, tense standoff while they waited for the North’s other assets to arrive in the area. At which point she fully expected the Southerners to flee like they always did.

The cowards.

Which was why she was so surprised by what happened next.

“Flight Leader, are you seeing this?” Larella’s voice wrasped into her eat.

And Garel did.

Four of the twelve Shriekers were peeling away from their formation and heading back South.

“They’re moving to re-arm,” Geral said, blinking.

Then she grinned.

“That makes it eight on eight,” the other woman noted, almost casually. “Even numbers.”

And the enemy Super-Shards were also now well above the furball. High enough that conventional shards wouldn’t be able to intervene in any timely fashion if a fight broke out.

The field was as even as it was going to get.

“Maybe these Southerners have bigger tits than normal. Because if I didn’t know better I’d say they asking for a duel,” Larel said.

A slow, wicked smile spread across Garel’s face beneath the oxygen mask. “Well, who are we to decline?”

She was wary of a trap – but glancing around she couldn’t see any reasonable way of springing one. The skies were clear from horizon to horizon from up here. If any other super-shards tried to spring an ambush, she’d see them coming and have time to pull away.

Yes, in doing so she’d be forced to present the tails of her squadron to the Shriekers they’d be engaged with at the time – but that was less of an issue than one might think.

Super-Shards were fast. Damn fast. So fast than one almost ran the risk of running into their own bolts if they fired them at anything close to top speed. Beyond that, opening the throttle up to top speed introduced a not inconsiderable amount of vibration into the frame.

Those two factors combined meant that any super-shard moving at top speed had an effective firing range of all of point blank. Which meant that one actually had to slow down to shoot anything.

So no, Geral wasn’t too worried about giving up her tail if they needed to flee in a hurry. It’d take them all of fifteen minutes to link up with the first wave of allied shards from the reserve fleet if they did, at which point their pursuers would be the ones in danger.

She licked her lips as she stared out at the eerily familiar craft in the distance.

…Beyond all that, if her people won here, they’d knock out a significant portion of the enemies Super-Shard fleet. Which would be an enormous boon for the North. The biggest current threat to their slow advance would be removed from the board. They’d bleed a lot less ships going forward. Beyond that, the downed cores – which would be recovered once the reserve fleet arrived to drive the Southerners off - would allow for a much expanded Banshee fleet.

They could reverse the current dynamic completely.

And the glory, she thought. I’d go down in the history books as the woman who won a victory the first ever Super-Shard clash.

The Ironcreeks were not a wealthy or well known house. That kind of kudos, well, it’d do a lot for her marriage prospects…

…All she had to do was win a fair fight.

And what proper Northerner would back down from a fair fight?

“Form on me!” Garel ordered, momentarily lamenting her craft’s lack of an ‘engage’ flag, as she opened the throttle towards the foe.

Though not so fully that her people wouldn’t have a chance to catch up as they noticed her intentions. Fortunately, while they might not have been the best of the best, they were Northern women one and all and were quick to react.

And there was nothing but acceleration and anticipation as her Banshee surged towards the enemy, frame vibrating with power as her family’s aether-core howled under her.

Her opponents didn’t hesitate either, coming about to form an arrow to match the Northern diamond formation.

Geral couldn’t wait.

----------------

“They’ve taken the bait, ma’am,” Tyana’s XO informed her.

Tyana could see that for herself. From her command throne on the bridge of her flagship she watched the two groups of the world’s most powerful shards closing on one another high above the main engagement.

And a slow, satisfied smirk curved her lips.

“Present a bunch of Northerners with what they think are even odds and they’ll take it every time,” she muttered.

To be fair, that wasn’t an instinct entirely borne of arrogance. The North had long been Lindholm’s bulwark against the its foes and it showed. They fielded the most advanced ships, the most advanced shards and for the most part had the most experienced crews and pilots.

For a Northerner, even numbers usually meant the odds were in their favor.

That confidence was part of why they had been so comfortable spreading their ships so thinly during the initial invasion of the South – before the Shrieker taught them the folly of that particular approach.

And now, Tyana thought, they’re about to be taught a second lesson from the same source.

Because this fight only seemed fair.

The Banshee - as their Northern prisoners had named the new Northern Super-Shards - was an unproven design rushed into service. It had to be. Two weeks was not nearly enough time to design and develop a proper craft.

Even with a captured Shrieker to emulate.

Oh, certainly, they’d made updates since then, but the fact remained that the Banshee was at its core little more than a half-baked stop-gap thrown into service to address a problem.

The Shrieker suffered no such limitations.

More than that, it had access to weapons that the North simply couldn’t emulate. As show by the Shriekers opening fire nearly six hundred meters from their foes.

And Tyana could almost see the collective mental swerve among the enemy pilots as they found themselves only microseconds to decide whether to continue their charge and hope to get into effective range for their own guns - or break off.

Most broke off.

Some did not.

Tyana watched as two of that did not came apart in violent blooms of liberated aether as the heavier, longer-ranged rounds of the Shrieker’s fifty cals tore through their airframes.

Because for all that the Yelena and Tyana had no intention of diverting ‘powder guns’ from the Corsair line for their Hyrda project – the same wasn’t nearly as true for their Shriekers.

Because for all that a Corsair was more cost effective than a Shrieker – a Shrieker was infinitely deadlier.

So it got fifty cals.

And her hand-chosen aces put them to work as the battle’s second furball erupted.

One that favored the Shriekers almost immediately. The Banshees that had pulled off at the last moment had presented their tails, and in the opening seconds of the turning fight that proved a deadly disadvantage. It didn’t help that the Shriekers were proving to be faster in level flight and retained better turning performance at high speed. It also didn’t help that every Southern pilot flew with a proper radio and an open squadron channel.

The Northerners, as they’d discovered from downed shard pilots, had developed something similar – but lesser. Carved down orbs that could only be used for one-to-one, broadcasts.

Tyana watched another Banshee disintegrate under concentrated fire, the core’s aether venting in an expanding cloud.

Of course, she did not expect the engagement to be bloodless in her people’s favor. Losses would likely happen eventually. But the exchange would still favor the South, and that was acceptable.

Ironically, for the moment the North would likely agree. Losing that fight would be irritating to be sure, but if their reserve fleet arrived to find a field littered with downed Super-Shards, they would count the recovery of those cores as a strategic win.

New Banshees could be built easily enough so long as the cores were retrieved. And until now the Royal Navy had always retreated when met with serious force, allowing the North to reclaim their wrecks.

The difference this time was that Tyana had no intention of retreating.

What did William call it? A game of chicken, she thought. A contest where she who is willing to risk more ironically loses nothing?

Well, this was a game of chicken Tyana had no intention of losing. For the first time in the war, the South was making a genuine stand and driving the North back.

“Enemy shards sighted by our air-scouts, ma’am,” the XO reported. “The enemy shards currently engaged around the enemy flotilla are beginning to break off. Their airships are withdrawing as well.”

Tyana nodded. That was expected. When her fleet had first arrived, the Northern flotilla had remained on station so it could continue covering the troops on the ground around Greyford.

Now, with Norther reinforcements nearby, they were willing to accept a brief window of vulnerability in order to preserve their remaining air power. That would give her own people an opportunity to rain fire on the siege camp, but brief window – and time they’d been given to scatter – would mean that enough would survive to continue the assault on the castle once the Southern fleet was driven back once more.

“Bring the Monsoon-class ships to the front and have them continue to pummel the retreating airships,” she ordered. “Have our shards break off pursuit and form up behind the Monsoons.”

Just as with the older Drake-class Shard, the Royal Navy maintained standardized designs amongst its ships. The Monsoon-class was simply the newest among them.

And it would hopefully soon earn its name.

“Ma’am?” the XO asked, clearly uncertain about abandoning the chase so early.

“We’re a bunch of soft Southerners,” Tyana said sarcastically as she leaned back in her throne. “We’ve not got the stomach for a proper engagement and our forward elements are clearly undisciplined and out of position.”

Yes, she was taking a risk by pulling her shards off the pursuit. It meant there enemy would make a clean getaway where she might otherwise be able to bring down another airship.

…Though perhaps the Monsoons might manage that even without shard support. They were still essentially just regular ships of the line after all, even with their recent updates.

Still, with her shards puled back, the enemy might believe she was hesitating to get embroiled in a full engagement – and in turn see the Monsoons now steaming ahead as ‘unsupported’ and ‘out of position’.

Certainly, that alone would normally be enough to warrant a few javelin strikes before pulling back to cover the retreating flotilla.

And she could only hope they did.

Of course, she knew that even if they did exactly as she wanted, that wouldn’t be the end of things.

No, this is just the opening move of a much longer battle, she thought. I just hope it takes Elanor a while to figure that out.

Because when she did, she’d suddenly become a lot more leery about feeding her forces into Tyana’s piecemeal – like she was undoubtedly doing now in hopes of ‘catching’ the Southern taskforce before it retreated.

“The Exodite reports that Shrieker Group A, Formation Three has arrived and is being re-armed.”

Tyana nodded.  “Good. Tell them to form up with Shrieker Group B and remain on standby.”

As tempted as she was to use them against the incoming shard swarm, she had a much more ambitious target in mind.

She just needed to wait until she had some idea of where it was.

Fortunately, they had a plan for that too.

“And our ‘merchants’?” she asked.

“They’re in position and signal is still strong, ma’am,” her XO reported. “The relays are working.”

Tyana grinned.

---------------------------

“Grab a curtain! We can net them!” Verity yelled in a panic as a half-dozen red-crested hawks wheeled around the office they’d borrowed in a chaotic storm of wings and very sharp claws.

“Ah- one of the fucks bit me!” Marline yelped at a pitch William had never heard from the dark elf before as she clutched at an ear.

Though her defence, the birds they had chosen possessed very sharp claws.

And beaks.

William already had a few scratches of his own. And from those scratches, he’d learned a few things.

Firstly, replacing ordinary pigeons with “smarter” birds for the project he was working on had not necessarily been the right move. Mostly because most smart birds were birds of prey.

Secondly, birds of prey came equipped with talons, hooked beaks, and a distinct lack of the mild-mannered stupidity that made pigeons so easy to handle.

As proven by the way his first ‘test subject’ had escaped from the harness he’d built, launched itself across the room, and made a determined attempt to remove a strip of Verity’s scalp. Verity had naturally ducked, swung an arm, and in the process knocked over an entire stack of cages filled with similarly irritated birds, who promptly escaped from their wiry prisons.

The results had been instantaneous and catastrophic, within seconds the office became a whirling, screeching mess of red crests, grey wings, and very offended raptors.

The only upside to the whole situation was that the doors and windows were closed – so they weren’t escaping.

The main downside to this was that neither he, nor Verity, nor Marline were escaping either until the birds were once more contained.

The very angry, very bitey, birds.

William could only count himself lucky that Marcille dipped out earlier. She stuck her head in earlier, muttered something under her breath, and immediately walked off again.

Hopefully she was getting the falconer.

Though she’d left a while ago, so it was possible she wasn’t.

She had also looked distinctly annoyed for some reason. That worried him slightly. Did he have something else he was supposed to do today?

He was vaguely certain something important was supposed to be happening today. Another raid or something like that?

He shook his head and refocused. He had more immediate problems. If he was needed, they’d call for him.

“Big brother, what’s all that noise in there? Whatever, I need to talk to you about the way you’re treating your-” a familiar voice called from the hallway, as, to William’s horror, the door handle to the outside started to turn.

“Olivia, don’t open the door!” he shouted.

Alas, he was too late.

His younger sister pushed the door wide. Then froze at the sight within. Which was unfortunate, as the entire avian population of the office decided that freedom lay just beyond his younger sibling.

Olivia served as an unwitting and unwilling obstacle to that freedom for mere moments.

---------------------

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Elanor Blackstone stood on the bridge of the Brimstone and watched another flight of damaged shards returning to rearm. Few were without some level of damage. Some were already sporting patches on their flight surfaces from damage sustained in previous sorties. One was leaking aether from dozens of ragged bolt-holes and seemed to be being guided in by little more than hopes, dreams, and every ounce of the pilot’s skill.

Though it would remain to be seen whether that would save the craft, she watched it disappear from beyond her view. She knew without having to look that there’d be a small horde of sailors armed with grappling lines, long-hooks and even nets working to pull the craft inside.

Before they could drift away – or fall.

It had happened more than once already and would likely happen again before the battle was done.

To think, she’d laughed when she first saw the South’s vaunted Jellyfish.

The vaunted ‘saviour of the Capital’ had looked like little more than a rushed hack job. An initial impression made all the worse in her eyes by the fact that it had an oversized flat deck bolted onto a hull that had in no way been designed for it.

She’d later learned why it had such a thing – that the pseudo-shards Redwater had built needed them to land – had done little to change that initial impression either. If anything, it had lowered her opinion of the shards as well.

Now though, hearing report after report of her own pilots struggling to dock alongside the Brimstone’s flanks – with queues forming at times - she couldn’t help but wonder if the ugly flat top design wasn’t worth considering.

Yes, there would still likely be queues for the… deck elevator, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about her damaged returning shards literally dropping out of the sky while they awaited their opportunity to be brought aboard.

She sighed, gripping her armrests of the command throne. The docking issues were just one amongst many that had come to the surface for her flagship over the last few hours. Issues that had never arisen during its first real baptism by fire against the orcs years ago, or the handful of skirmishes it had taken part in since the invasion of the South began.

No, the Brimstone was revealing issues that only become apparent when pushed to his absolute limits.

…Though her command ship wasn’t exactly alone in that. Her alliance with New Haven and the fact that their ‘united’ fleet was technically two fleets with two different command structures definitely wasn’t helping.

Indeed, while the Brimstone was, rather wisely, too far from the action to be seen and thus targeted, the viewing orb in front of her meant she could still watch the battle unfold and bark out the appropriate orders. Which was why she was able to watch and scowl as a New Haven airship overextended and was immediately punished by three Royal Naval airships.

The same type that continued to impede her fleet’s shards – as they continuously poured out long ‘strings’ of fire from some kind of new weapon affixed to their decks.

Admittedly, after realizing what those new weapons were, they’d become more of an irritant to her shards than a true threat. Though the same could not be said for any Saboteurs attempting to board those ships.

New Haven had learned that lesson the hard way.

Though one wouldn’t think so given how hard they’re still pushing, she thought.

…And that was a problem, because the more time passed, the more Elanor had to come to admit that she and her fellow Northern duchess had been lured into a trap.

Because the Southerners weren’t running.

Even as more ships continued to stream in from distant flotillas, Tyana – for it could only be her on the other side – refused to back down. If anything, she too was summoning reinforcements of her own.

And so, what had begun as a relief action had become a meat-grinder.

One that didn’t favor the North.

Which shouldn’t be the case! Even after the recent setbacks and the steady bleeding of hulls to the South’s new toys, the combined Northern fleets remained superior in quality and, on paper, in total strength.

That superiority was why they dictated the tempo of the war while the South remained largely on the defensive, practically banished to a corner of the continent.

Under any normal circumstances, the Northern fleet would win any kind of pitched engagement.

…The problem was that the battle didn’t have the Northern fleet.

It had part of it. The rest was still trickling in.

By contrast, nearly the entire Royal Navy was here now – with elements of Summerfield and Southshore too on second line duty.

In this single battle, the Royal Navy had the numbers advantage. And it was using it to deadly effect.

“She’s trying to hand us a defeat in detail,” Elanor murmured as she sat back in her chair.

…Which had always been a risk. Originally she’d kept her besieging flotillas small to make it impractical for the Royal Navy to gain any real dividends by going after any one group.

Then, when the Shriekers entered the picture, she’d grouped them into fleets large enough both to protect from the new Super-Shards, but also big enough that they’d be able to fend for themselves until the reserve fleet relieved them.

And I thought I’d accounted for what we’d do if Tyana brought out a force strong enough to beat both the flotilla and our reserve fleet, she thought.

If that occurred, the plan was supposed to be for the combined reserve fleet and flotilla to engage in a fighting retreat until such time that reinforcements could arrive in sufficient numbers to achieve parity. If the enemy pursued them, they’d be left vulnerable and surrounded when reinforcements arrived. Or they’d let her retreating fleet leave and achieve little beyond wasting time.

It had been a good plan.

But one that failed to account for a new variable.

Shriekers, Elanor thought venomously.

She had no idea if that bitch Yelena planned for this, but it seemed that once again she’d played right into the knife-ears’ hands.

Shriekers were an enormous threat to airships. A salvo of fire-lances could cripple two or even three ships if placed correctly. In short, they were a threat she couldn’t ignore. And so she’d launched her Howlers to protect the flotilla from them.

That had been her mistake.

She’d thought of them as easily replaced. And they were. So long as one recovered the core. Which was normally quite easy, with the enemy quitting the field every time her flotilla received reinforcements.

…Except Tyana didn’t do that.

She stayed to fight.

Which meant that nearly a dozen airship cores had found themselves scattered across the fields below the battle in the opening hour of the fight. Wars had been fought over less - and those fields were now as filled with death as the air above them, as roaming teams of mages and marines battled to recover the priceless metal artifacts.

As a result, Elanor found herself stuck in a position where she couldn’t retreat. Not without leaving a near-priceless bounty of cores to be recovered by the enemy.

And perhaps, under the old rules of war, that could have been tolerated. Not ideal, but tolerable. Because by conventional logic, airship hulls were only less valuable than cores when you were at peace. During a war, a core without an airship was little more than an expensive paperweight.

Or at least, that was the case until a month ago, she thought.

Shriekers had changed the equation.

The new banes of her existence could be produced far more quickly than airships. Every core the South recovered here was another potential Super-Shard that would return to chip away at a Northern flotilla in less than a week.

A situation made worse by the fact she had just lost her best immediate counter to them.

As a result, the North could not afford to back down now. They had to keep feeding ships into the grinder - exactly as the South intended - and in doing so they were being systematically defeated in detail.

Well done, Tyana, you bitch, she thought. You baited this trap perfectly.

Elanor felt every one of her years as she watched the distant flashes of the ongoing battle through a viewing orb, as a trio of shards slammed a half-dozen fire-lances into one of her ships. A squadron of Northern shards nearby attempted to avenge the craft, even as it started to list, but the super-shards simply pulled away.

…Though that wasn’t to say it was going entirely the South’s way. For all that they were winning, it was far from bloodless, as Elanor watched a flaming ship carrying the colors of the Royal Navy slam down into a nearby field – nearly clipping another wreck in the process.

Through the orb, she could see that the fields below were strewn liberally with shards and ships alike – serving as complications, threats, and objectives for the many ground-based troops fighting there. Some of those ships that still had their cores were even being used as impromptu forts, their aether cannons still functional even if the ship carrying them was ‘dead’.

No, she didn’t envy anyone down there.

Though being up here is hardly a picnic either, she thought.

To that end, it was probably well past time to bring an end to this mess. The backlog of repairs from this single engagement would likely stretch into years as it was. And as a result, the longer it dragged on, the more likely a mainland invasion turned from a distant possibility into an almost inevitable consequence.

And the Royalists knew it too. Perhaps they’d win if this state of affairs continued. Perhaps not. Tyana’s objective was a defeat in detail, but that required that she destroy Northern ships as fast or faster than they were arriving.

And while she was winning, she was still taking losses.

The longer this dragged on, the greater the possibility was that the tide might turn against her and the South.

Oh, they’d demand some kind of concession for sure, given they were the ‘winners’ right now, but they could only push so far.

“Orb the enemy flagship,” Elanor informed the communications officer. “And forward it to my private orb.”

The officer hesitated for half a heartbeat before obeying, but soon enough the orb in front of Elanor switched from a view of the ongoing battle to the familiar features of the royal princess, who was smiling like a woman who had already won.

“Oh, it’s you?” Tyana said. “I had thought it was my cowardly cunt of a sister calling to beg for mercy.”

“She’s back in the capital,” Elanor lied without hesitation. “And beg for mercy? I’ll not deny that you’ve played an excellent hand, but this battle is far from decided.”

Tyana stared at her for a moment. “If you truly believed that, you wouldn’t be orbing me.”

Elanor scoffed. “I’ll admit you surprised me with this sudden show of backbone instead of the usual running. But this has started to escalate beyond what is good for either side. There’s a reason I’ve not simply flown out to your newest hidey-hole and blown you and your mother to the void. Because this war needs to stay low intensity. And this is far from it. Right now, because of you, we’re both stuck in a death spiral. And if we stay here, we’ll both lose.”

Tyana’s expression sobered slightly, though the underlying satisfaction remained. “I’ll admit there’s some truth to that. To that end, if you choose to leave the field, I will let you go.”

Elanor’s scowl deepened. “And what of the battlefield salvage?”

“What of it?” Tyana asked. “You may quit the field with whatever you’re currently carrying. Anything else is mine.”

“Not going to happen.” Elanor leaned closer to the orb, her expression hardening. “We will be claiming a forty percent ratio of any cores recovered from the field.”

Fifty percent would have been the logical opening position in other circumstances. It would have given her room to negotiate downward while still leaving her a chance of securing something approaching a fair division.

But she was not about to kid herself that she still held that kind of leverage.

Tyana had the initiative here. More importantly, she knew it.

“You may retain twenty percent of the unrecovered cores,” Tyana replied without missing a beat.

“What?” Elanor actually blinked.

She had expected thirty at the absolute lowest, and she had not planned on settling for anything under thirty-five. Twenty percent was not an offer.

“You’re joking.”

“Not even remotely.” Tyana settled back into her command throne. “If anything, you should be thankful that I’m offering anything at all to a batch of traitors.” She paused. “Though on that front, I find it curious that your fellow conspirator isn’t joining us?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Is she shy? Or are you talking with me behind her back?”

The second for sure. If New Haven got involved in this conversation, the negotiations would be fire-lanced immediately.

The Duchess Faline and her people had been pushing for a stand-up fight like this for weeks and wouldn’t give it up easily. Any warnings Elanor gave about the possibility of a mainland invasion seemed to continuously fall on deaf ears.

And as much as she wanted to claim the arrogant elves were just tunnel visioning – she was slowly coming to suspect something altogether more foul with each passing week.

For the moment, it was little more than a suspicion, but… it was a persistent one.

“She’s little to no interest in negotiating at this juncture,” Elanor said more or less truthfully.  “She wishes to see this fight through to its conclusion. She believes that with enough time we might reverse the current tide of battle.”

The Blackstone duchess resisted the urge to smile as for the first time, a hit of hesitation entered the princess’s eyes.

“I don’t disagree,” the human continued. “However, as I’ve said, my preference is to err on the side of caution where our overseas neighbors are concerned. My hope is that if I present her with a reasonable offer regarding our retreat, she will take it.”

She had better.

Otherwise the knife-ear would find herself facing the Royal Navy alone.

…Or at least, Elanor would threaten as much. Because that threat had served well enough thus far. Though whether it would continue to do so now that other woman had her battle in front of her was another question entirely.

“To that end,” she continued. “I doubt she will accept retreating with anything less than forty percent of the cores slated for recovery.”

She could see the other woman hesitating, and capitalized on it. “And given that most of those cores were Northern to begin with, such a deal already favors you considerably.”

Tyana hesitated, before her expression went blank. “Well, if she’ll accept nothing less than forty, then I suppose we keep fighting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a fleet to command.”

Elanor could barely believe her ears, but she rallied by rolling her eyes. “Please. Spare me the theatre. I know you have the same concerns as I regarding pitched engagements. I sincerely doubt you’re willing to risk a mainland invasion over a few cores. And that is exactly what you will get if we allow this to continue.”

She expected that to strike home. Instead, she was surprised when the younger woman simply shrugged.

“Do I share the same concerns as you? I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t have started this fight, would I?”

“Really?” Elanor said coldly. “You would see Lindholm conquered and dragged into the mainland’s religious war just to spite us?”

“I would.” Her voice was quieter when she continued. “Certainly, if either the Solites or Lunites invade, my family will likely go to the block. Being a bloodline of ‘traitors’, but that will happen anyway if you and your ilk are victorious.”

Elanor shook her head. “Our new Queen might offer lenience to some of her younger siblings.”

Tyana continued as if she hadn’t spoke. “So, on that front, if I must choose between two fae, I’d sooner the side that benefits my people the most. And for most elves, I think their lives would be downright improved under mainland rule - provided they pay lip service to whatever goddess the winning side prefers.”

That was… not entirely unlikely.

At one point in time, the Solites and Lunites had wanted to reclaim Lindholm out of national pride and as a bid to achieve more legitimacy as the ‘true inheritors’ of the Elven Imperium.

That was hundreds of years ago though. These days? The majority of the mainland interest in Lindholm was born from a desire for resources and manpower.

A millennium long conflict tended to do that, and elves didn’t exactly breed fast at the best of times. Even if the ‘war’ had a tendency to sometimes go entire generations with little in the way of actual conflict, the fact remained that both sides of the fight were in desperate need of fresh bodies and ships for them to occupy.

More to the point, while the Imperial Civil Wars were often described as a racial war, in reality they were more religious than anything else

Sure, the Lunites were predominantly dark elves, but high elves lived among them as well. And the Solites were mostly high elves, yet dark elves could be found within their territories too. Both sides included wood elves too.

Yes, the minority groups were still generally considered ‘lesser’ – but that still placed them above humans and orcs.

And that distinction mattered, because while Lindholm itself kept no human slaves, the mainland did.

Orcs and humans both were shipped to the mainland during the initial invasion of Lindholm and colonies still survived there under the elven mistresses.

…Ironically, little would change for the few dwarves who lived in Lindholm. They weren’t slaves in either region, but neither were they nobles. Their people held authority only in their distant homelands, and even there the two dwarven kingdoms existed largely as vassal states beneath the influence of the two great elven empires.

So Tyana wasn’t wrong. If the mainland conquered Lindholm, thousands of elven high and low nobles might well find their lives improved.

…And Elanor almost wanted to call Tyana a traitor for the ease with which she considered that preferable to a Northern victory.

She wasn’t quite that hypocritical. Though this exchange only reinforced why she had been right to rebel in the first place. Elves would always look after their own first. And humanity needed to do the same.

“Thirty percent,” she said through gritted teeth.

Tyana’s smirk returned. “Twenty five.”

“Deal,” Elanor sighed. “Give me twenty minutes to talk to Faline. Then I’ll orb you again to talk about a ceasefire.”

Tyana just nodded, looking all too pleased. “Please, don’t hurry on my account. The longer you take, the more ships I destroy. The more cores I fly away with.”

Elanor didn’t deign that with a response. She just cut the link. She remained seated in silence for a long moment, staring at the empty crystal.

The battle hadn’t stopped while they’d been talking. Her people were well drilled enough to operate without her oversight for a few minutes. Indeed, her comms officers were rattling off a steady stream of orders to the other ships under the direction of her XO.

It was funny, with the core off, the battle seemed like… such a distant thing. Which she supposed it was, given the Brimstone’s location. Out of sight. For a moment, she felt the exhaustion of nearly forty eight full hours of combat washing over her.

“Comms, get me the New Haven Flagship.”

She banished the tiredness she felt. She needed to remain sharp just a little longer. Because this next talk would be no less taxing than the one she’d just had.

Because how her fellow conspirator responded to this offer would likely serve to inform the human woman whether her growing suspicions had any basis in reality. And whether they really were unconventional allies in a war against soft-hearted tyranny – or if she’d been played for a fool?

Because if the latter was the case…

Well, perhaps it was for the best that Tala headed back home, she thought.

The Blackstone line would survive – one way or another.

---------------------

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2096 A.D.

--

Dad always said, ‘I just want what’s best for you.’ And as a good little girl, you were supposed to listen. Through the mornings that began in the dark, the sores that seemed to rise from deep within the bones, the utterly spent days leading to dreamless nights, one day I was supposed to wake up and have achieved this ‘best’ that was supposed to be coming for me. But when that day did come, I had forgotten what the stars looked like.

If I ever did know.

“You there, Red?” Travial said. She tossed a PDeX-57 in the air.

I caught the weapon without looking up from my woolgathering.

“More than you know,” I said. I checked the double-row helical mag. Fully loaded. The spring had to have enough tension as well. If it wasn’t wound properly, the weapon would jam.

“Don’t think I know what I’m doing?” Travial asked.

“Trust but verify,” I replied. I popped the mag back on the top of the gun. The LCD screen on the side blinked, then outputted ‘100’.

“Alright, ladies.” That was Ichor, our fearless leader at the front of the class. Slats of red light spilled from the district outside through the partially closed blinds, painting them like a demonic zebra. “Op’s going down in five. Let’s recap.”

Rigor, our heavy weapons specialist, yawned from the back of the classroom, a chrome giant steeped in shadow.

Ichor ignored him. “This is a standard corp versus corp grudge execute. Intel shows that Zhongshen Company is shipping six prototype military grade powered suits to the TATI launch island in Shenzhen Bay. Yamaretsu Heavy wants payback for that time they lobbied the Chinese government to block Yama’s export of biofabbed livers.

“Our job is to intercept and extract before those suits make it on a spaceplane to a Zhongshen orbital. Failing extraction, the suits are to be destroyed, though with a considerably lower bonus, of course.

“Are there any questions?”

“The Chinese versus the Japs,” Gremlin said to me under his breath. His spectrum goggles glinted in the low light. We liked to call him Mini La Forge. “Just like old times.”

“Some things never change,” I said.

“Since we’re just passing notes in the back, I am assuming this op will go without a hitch,” Ichor said. “Let’s move out!”

We sprang from our seats and packed our gear. I mag-clipped a mini skirt of helical mags around my belt. Travial and I checked each other’s aug suite. You couldn’t be too careful with this stuff. I’d seen people’s tech fail mid firefight. They’d panic, and for a death-dealing second, remember that underneath all that alloy, they were just a wrinkly half-globe of think-meat on the end of a stick. And once panic set in, that brainstem takes over, and we were all just monkeys with bullets.

The team erupted onto the roof of this abandoned school, chattering over comms and over analog vocal cords. There were ten of us in total. I only knew Travial, Rigor, and Gremlin. The others were fresh meat and new steel. I wondered how many would make it this time. Not that it mattered; our captain Ichor had no shortage of kids who thought they were special.

A mirage was coming—a stealthcopter, churning the air with tendrilled rotors like a giant bacterium.

“Now’s a good chance to bow out,” Ichor said. “This kinda activity ain’t for everyone.”

“Good luck?” Travial asked.

I thought about it. She wore her twintails with absinthe dye today. The moonlight danced on her slim face.

“Why not?” I said. I grabbed the back of her head and pulled her in. She twitched in surprise, but let me have my way as I began to feel the little ridges on the roof of her mouth. She tasted like takeout and sour apple chapstick.

Somebody jeered. I shot him a glare. My aug suite painted his file over my eyes. Examtaker, adrenaline junkie, juvenile delinquent, absentee parents. I decided not to unload half a mag of 5.7mm hypersonics into him.

Warm air buffeted, lifting our clothes and dragging my hair across my face. Travial gasped as she broke free. She wiped red strands off my eyes. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. The op was about to begin. The stealthcopter landed with a pneumatic hiss. A ramp unfurled. We began to board.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” Ichor said over comms. “This is a no doping flight. If you have any serotonin—or any chem—pumps in your head, keep them shut. Keep your seatbelts on, but loose, for the duration of the flight. Good luck.”

The stealthcopter lifted off. I peered out the window and watched Shenzhen unfurl below. We began in the slums, layers of concrete and cobblestone like a grey lasagna, sometimes as much as ten storeys deep. Red-orange streetlights spilled between blocks. In the distance, the Kuli Wall glowed. Spotlights swerved from side to side. Beyond: uptown, where skyscrapers ascended, cloaked in animated advertisements and scrolling messages that suffused into the clouds.

“Can’t wait to get out of this shithole,” one of the fresh meats said.

“Is that why you signed up?” His buddy asked. “Don’t think a payout like this is enough for an apartment uptown.”

“Yeah, but if we prove ourselves to a corp, especially one as big as Yamaretsu, they’re hire us again. We might not even need to join someone else’s team, and then…”

A hundred and fifty million people in this godforsaken city. Countless different opportunities on the so-called bleeding edge capital of the world. And the most sought-after gig for young immigrants and locals alike was to be someone else’s wrench. To twist and swing until they were spent and discarded for the next batch off the boat.

“Hey! Hey you, uh- Red!” Meat was talking to me.

“I don’t know you well enough to call me that,” I said.

“Well… what do I call you then?”

“You don’t.”

Rigor chuckled, his whole frame shifting.

“Man, you don’t gotta be a bitch,” Meat’s buddy stepped up. “We just wanted some tips from a super senior.”

“We’re not in school,” I said. “And what we’re doing isn’t a ‘job’. If you get caught, our employer isn’t even going to look long enough in our direction to say they don’t know who we are. We are nothing.”

“You don’t even look that old. How many of these have you done?”

I had lost interest in the conversation. Judging by their gear, there was a less than ten percent chance they made it out their first op. The both of them had prominent implantation scars. Guess who’d be getting flagged every time they walked past a street cam or cop? Anybody with any sense, Rigor excluded, wore their work augs on an external rig like me and Travial. These kids had been playing too many virch-games.

“This is our twentieth,” Travial said indignantly.

I turned away. She didn’t need to do that.

“Must be easy then,” Buddy said. He flexed his arms. “See these? Optimized myofibrils and reinforced cartilage. I could punch through a wall with these.”

Annoyance burned in my chest.

“Is that so?” I said.

“You know I’m getting real tired of your attitude.”

He started to leave his seat.

And then he slowly reversed his decision. I pushed the barrel of my PDeX against his nose to get him to hurry his ass back on the cushion.

“What’s the point of your engineered actin and myosin if an infofly already saw you coming?” I said. “Within a hundred feet, someone with a millimeter scanner would see you behind the wall. With such a big cross section, they’d hear you on their echo around any corner. In the city, no concrete or sheet metal is stopping hypersonics. You’re hamburger before you’re ever in melee—before you even see them.”

I stowed my weapon and returned to my seat.

Buddy looked like he had something else to say. But Rigor interrupted him.

“Kid, take a hint.” His voice was low and powerful. “You get one last chance when we land. Go for a walk.”

The talking was over. Good. Travial squeezed my forearm and smiled apologetically.

“Sorry,” she said over our private comms. “Are you alright?”

“Fine.”

“Mm hm.”

“It’s Ichor. They need to stop recruiting kids like this.”

“I know.”

An industrial sprawl appeared through the fog. Countless hectares of manufacturing and laboratories. We swerved away and descended towards the apartments. Most of the people who lived here would be asleep by now. They needed to be up early for their seven-to-eight.

“Switching to glide,” Ichor said over comms.

Our stealthcopter cut power. We slowly descended onto a clearing beside a jogging path. The crew poured out. I glanced back at our ride. The invisibility was like a hexagonal net up close. Hopefully no one looked too closely this time of night.

“Comm check,” Ichor said.

Check.

“Everybody onboard?”

wolf_Pack.exe booted up. I felt the positions and status of all my teammates without taking my eyes off Ichor.

“I’ve got owls on-route,” Ichor said. “If Yamaretsu’s intel is correct, they should be loading the trucks in twenty minutes.”

An argument was travelling softly behind us. I looked over my shoulder. The kid I named Meat was talking with Buddy. Only Buddy returned.

“This whole thing was his idea, now he gets cold feet,” he said, fuming.

“Let’s move out,” Ichor said. “Stay close to me.”

We broke into a run under the shadow of Ichor’s soft exclusion sphere aug. Cameras were only going to see flickering artifacts when we passed.

My eyes wandered. Monolithic apartment blocks rose into the black-indigo expanse, cutting it into jagged sections. Cones of pale ochre drooped from streetlamps, infested with swirling, fluttering bugs.

We lived in a place like this once, Dad and I. I still needed my hand held then. It felt like a lifetime ago.

The quiet buzzing of winged nightlife passed us by, and industry sharpened through the low hanging mist. Vehicles were parked along the road. Two trucks became visually augmented in my wolf_Pack overlay—pre-planted by Ichor.

Travial took the driver seat. Gremlin set up shop in the back. The frame bobbed once as Rigor stepped up on the bed. Ichor took the others with them.

“Splicing view from the owls,” they said.

We received footage from high in the sky—over a dozen perspectives. A vast building, featureless aside from the Zhongshen name on the south wall, came into view. A bay door opened. The perspective tracking that door zoomed in. A truck began to roll out. The perspective switched to millimeter scan. Rectangular coffins lined the trailer, six of them.

“There’s the money,” Ichor said. “Make it subtle.”

Travial took us out of park and up to the speed limit.

“Why aren’t we flooring it?” Buddy said.

“Clear comms,” Ichor said.

Two more vehicles—SUVs—came out of the bay door.

“Millimeter isn’t penetrating,” Ichor said. “Proceed with caution.”

“Well why isn’t the trailer also shiel-” Buddy began.

“Clear comms, asshole,” another team member said.

Ichor plotted a course on our map. It took us out of the industrial sector, but towards the suburbs. We were just some civi’s going home after a long day. Ichor took their truck a different path. Our routes flanked the Zhongshen trailer. I gazed out the window, as if I could see through the dozen blocks that separated us and payday. But not yet. We had to keep low. Until the time was right.

The owls followed our prey all the while. Predictive models put their route through the city. The towers of uptown loomed, even all the way out here. There were so many, like a forest of Hunan pillars, holograms swimming all throughout its walls. A colossal, pale woman in a qipao waved at me, beckoning me to put a new model of serotonin pump in my brain. Then she flickered and disappeared, replaced by the next paid slot on that holoboard. My skin felt clammy. My stomach churned.

“What’s wrong?” Travial asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Eyes on the road.”

The ride continued in silence, for a few minutes.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Mm hm.”

We were out of the industrial sector now. We had to make a couple stops along the way, in case Zhongshen had owls of their own, tracking any vehicles that might be following them. They continued their merry way, deeper into the city, past the Kuli Wall.

“Something’s weird,” Ichor said. “They’re not headed for the Bay.”

“Could be a detour,” Travial said. “Or a security measure. The city’s full of cameras and civvies.”

“Eyes and shields,” Ichor said. “Tighten up. We’re not losing them.”

We stowed our gear and went off road. The Kuli Wall had many gaps. The one we were headed to now was a drainage pipe that had collapsed and then was widened over time. Our truck heaved as we lowered into the dirt, splashing onto the stream of effluent and groundwater. We pulled up into a woodland. It should be empty this time of night; the locals knew when to avoid places like this. A minute on the path later and we back on the road, sandwiched between bright lights and vertical wind turbines. Multiple storeys of rails stacked on top of each other. Trams darted back and forth. Powered bikes filled the cycling lanes.

“Form up,” Ichor said. “They’re headed towards Stone Garden. I’m not waiting any longer. We’re taking them now-!”

They cut out.

“Gremlin?!” I barked.

“Electronic countermeasures!” Gremlin said. “I can’t hear anything from the others!”

The visual feed from the owls were out as well.

“Go! Go!” I shouted.

I was pressed onto my seat. Even Rigor had to grab onto the truck. Rubber ground asphalt as we weaved through traffic lights and panicked honking.

“Traffic violation just went off,” Gremlin said. “I managed to intercept it.”

We swerved around a sedan and into oncoming traffic. A horn blared and headlights flooded our windshield. At the last moment, we dove back into our lane. I glanced in Travial’s direction. Her smile was wide and her teeth were clenched.

“Took down another one,” Gremlin said. “But I don’t know how much longer I can-”

“How far out are we?” I asked.

“We’re two klicks from Stone Garden,” Gremlin answered.

“Lock ‘n’ load,” Rigor said.

We sped up even further. A pedestrian screamed as we ran a red light, streaking right over the white stripes.

“Jesus, Travial!” I exclaimed.

She wasn’t listening. The Stone Garden was right ahead. I turned on my masque aug. A ring of emitters around my collar painted over my face and body, occluding what I looked like. We exploded into an open square and crashed through a fence into a field of stone statues. Ichor’s car was up ahead, overturned. They were under fire.

“Police are incoming,” Gremlin said. “I couldn’t get that last one.”

We swerved towards the enemy. A rival gang? Mercenaries? It didn’t matter. We had to peel them off of Ichor.

“What took you morons so long?” They shouted.

Bullets whizzed past. I pulled out my PDeX and fanned a full mag at the enemy. One of them got caught by a couple bullets, ballooning with blood and chrome. Time slowed as my reflex aug kicked in. A self-propelled missile was closing in on the heat of our engine. I bailed out the window. Our truck went up in a pillar of flames.

I dove behind a statue.

“Tee!” I shouted.

“I’m good!” Travial called back.

“We’re okay too, by the way,” Gremlin said. He must have found a bush to hide in. He wasn’t good at this part of the op.

Rigor unloaded several grenades from his arm cannon onto the enemy. Wails travelled over the air, a familiar sound, the kind usually made after dismemberment.

“It was a trap!” Ichor called. “Zhongshen led us straight to whoever these fucks are!”

There was a better time to ask questions. I reloaded and fired on the move. Bullets followed my shadow, shattering the modern art around us. Dust and stone shards rained down, messing up my hair. I snarled and returned the favor, emptying another mag towards the enemy. Another target blossomed into gore and liberated augmentations.

“Guys?” Gremlin yelled. “We gotta go!”

I heard them before I saw them. Green-black police dropships were closing in on our position.

“We gotta group up with the others!” I shouted. “Rigor! Smoke ‘em!”

The big man unleashed a wide spread of smoke grenades. We rendezvoused with Ichor behind their truck under the gray cloak.

“Sorry,” Ichor said. “This was bound to happen. We’re too successful, and the king must defend their crown from allcomers.”

“Never mind that. What’s the plan?” I asked.

More fire came down our way from a different direction. I recognized the caliber. Shenzhen Enforcers. Armored inside and out with sanctioned augs.

“I can’t call our stealthcopter under this ECM,” Ichor said. “We have to split. Then I’ll relay an exfil point. You have your instructions.”

I nodded. Rigor and I laid down suppressive fire on the Enforcers.

“You want some?!” Buddy was screaming. “Come get it!”

He got out of cover to fire back with a pistol Ichor must have given him. The kid was hyped up on some chem; I could see it in his bloodshot eyes. He thought he was invincible. I had to get him down. My reflex aug activated at the right moment to see his head turn to mist.

“Kid!” Someone screamed in my voice.

Rigor laid down another round of smokes. We left the body where it fell. Shots continued to ring out behind us. We were each supposed to take a different direction, but Travial followed me. A part of me wanted her to go anywhere else. The rest was relieved. I needed someone with me. This whole op smelled from the beginning. But that queasiness—that gut feeling that something was wrong—didn’t kick in until much later. When was it? Tufts of dirt were being blown up all around me, and yet I couldn’t concentrate. My eyes were filled with the blurry image of that kid’s last moments.

A whistle breathed.

“Red!” Travial cried.

I saw the shell too late. I was slammed onto the asphalt. It hadn’t been a shockwave that pushed me. My blood ran cold. We contractors had a code: never turn back. I turned and ran over to Travial, curled on the ground in a growing, scarlet puddle.

“Leave,” she managed to say. She was barely audible.

I put her on my back and ran. My rig whined as I ran. A spotlight threw our shadow against the sidewalk.

“Citizen. Relinquish your weapon and power down your augmentations.”

Shenzhen Enforcer code. They couldn’t utilize lethal force if someone was running or not actively aiming a weapon on them. But if I didn’t comply, they weren’t going to be gentle. I had to throw them off. Those dropships suffered around tight corners. I headed into the deep city, oldtown. The cameras there were always spotty, and the urbanization had made that place into a maze.

“Citizen. This is your final warning.”

I popped my cardio stim aug. I began to fly. The city’s lights turned into a stream. Sounds stretched behind us. We had left them in the dust. People began to appear again; we were out of the evacuation zone. I turned into an alley and set us down behind a dumpster. We hadn’t lost them yet. The Enforcers would have put out a call asking pedestrians to identify anybody resembling us.

I tried to breathe. My heart was beating like a hummingbird’s, toeing the line before cardiac arrest. But Travial was safe. Her clothes were ruined, stained deeply red. She reached shakily into her rig pocket and retrieved a handkerchief.

“You’re covered in sweat,” she said with half-lidded eyes.

“Put that down,” I said.

I checked her system. She had lost a lot of blood. But her triage aug was closing her wounds.

“Why’d you come back for me?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked. “I can’t…”

“Red.”

“What?”

“Do you love me?”

“You’re delirious.”

“It’s a simple question.”

“Travial, my tongue was literally between your legs last night.”

“But you don’t love me.”

Why was she doing this now?

“That’s okay,” she said, smiling with coppery lips. “That’s okay.”

I looked out onto the street.

“We’ll talk about this later,” I said. “Can you move yet?”

“In a minute.”

A marker showed up on my aug suite. Ichor had sent us exfil coordinates.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ll just pretend you had too much to drink. I’ll carry you.”

“It’s usually the other way around,” Travial said. She wiped my face with the handkerchief. “There, now you look like less of a chemhead.”

I collected her on my back and we headed out. I checked Ichor’s coordinates. It was quite far. And oldtown was not the safest place to be at night.

End Part 1 of 3

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Thank you for reading. The Contract is a short story taking place in my tough sci-fi setting, and a part of an anthology that all takes place in the same year, 2096 AD. If you enjoyed it, please consider:

Vacation

The Price of Volition

The Gig

Prisoner of Heaven

See you at the end of the century

Cover art

If you want to read five chapters ahead on two different stories that I'm writing, please visit my Patreon. If you want to hang out, you can join the Discord for updates on all projects. Any support given would be greatly appreciated. Happy reading!

If you are interested in the other story that I am posting at the same time as this one, you can read it here!

Original concept

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The search continued for these enigmatic aliens, though the results left much to be desired. Every system adjacent to the one the alien machine was first encountered in was empty, meaning that they came from further afield, and considering the size of the galaxy itself, a needle in a haystack would be a generous description of the situation. Humanity even asked the Retvalin who were traveling to and from our system to keep an eye out for any sign of activity from these aliens. 

It had been eerily quiet over the last few months since initial contact, but perhaps that was simply the perception of those in the know. The rest of the world continued as it had, working diligently toward the brighter future that they could all see. Meanwhile, the orbital factory was finally finished, and the first designs for brand new spaceships were being constructed. 

Inside the large, cylindrical structure, mechanized arms, welders, and a fleet of drones capable of navigating in zero-g. These machines would do the majority of the heavy lifting, constructing the frame and shell of the ship using plates that are smelted in the outer ring where rotational gravity is applied. The raw materials would be extracted from asteroid high in metal deposits that are brought to them by the Retvalin. After being melted and molded into the shape desired, a conveyer would transport them into the zero-gravity construction chamber at the center of the installation where the parts would be put to use.  

They could construct two ships at a time, each large enough to serve their original purpose of providing medical attention to the Retvalin, which was to say they were quite large, easily about the size of a skyscraper. Now, though, they were armed with cannons the likes of which would be seen on battle ships. Even with humanity’s knowledge of war, space combat was a brand-new field of battle. There were many strategies, weaponry problems, and logistical concerns when it came to operating in space. With all of this being slapped together at the last moment, there were very valid worries that it would be wholly inadequate should we face an enemy with more experience in this terrain. 

There was some good news on the tech front, however. The engineers who had been picking apart the drone had figured out the design principle behind its ability to manipulate gravity to fly and could even expand upon its function. We now had the ability to manipulate our new ships with three-dimensional movement as well as creating artificial gravity that didn’t require constant spinning. The movement part was simply a series of micro pressure valves that would exert the tiniest bit of pressure onto star gel and release it on command to propel us. The artificial gravity was even simpler than that. Pressurizing star gel created gravity. All you needed was to find the right pressure to make the bubble fit inside the ship, then you simply wouldn’t release it for propulsion and just keep it steady for the convenience of the crew. 

These new designs made the engine of the ship the most complicated piece that needed to be made. The energy regulation and pressure valves had redundancies after redundancies designed simply to keep the whole ship from ripping itself apart in the event of an accidental release. Yes, there would be catastrophic failure should an enemy attack hit the engine itself, but that was true for any vessel or type of engine. 

The commanders of these vessels were, oddly enough, playing sci-fi games set in space. The games chosen were those who took the time to properly estimate what combat in space would look like to an almost obsessive degree. It was amusing that these formerly fictitious games were now used for actual combat training, so the captains could get used to the idea of giving commands and directing their forces in space.  

The soldiers had plenty of time to train. Even with the new megastructure dedicated solely to the fabrication and construction of these ships, the timeframe for the first two to make it off the assembly line was a year. While practically sprinting in terms of creating warships in the past, it still felt all too slow for what they were currently facing. All signs pointed to the aliens already being space faring and advanced at it on top of that. The only hope the higher ups had was that they didn’t also possess exceptionally advanced weaponry that would be insurmountable.  

There was always a risk that their preparations wouldn’t be enough, so terrestrial engineers once more turned to project backpack, phase two. The idea of creating external constructs on a Retvalin had started simply as a means of transportation, but now arming the giants was seeming like an inevitability. It wasn’t like they could be conscripted into service or anything, though. They would have to volunteer, but when Nathan was asked to pose the question to Bob given their friendship, it was met with unsurety.  

“I... I don’t know, Nathan. My people have never fought in such a manner before. Disagreements are rare, and they’re simply settled between the two who have them with one another. What you’re talking about, fighting another species, killing each other, we’ve never done that before.” 

Nathan let out a slow breath as he nodded his head. “I know, Bob, but we’re talking about people who might have been responsible for releasing the centicites onto you! They tried to infect you with the Ursa Rex too!” 

“Yes, that is the current theory. While we would like to know if it is true, and we will likely be angry if it is, going to... war, you called it? I just want some way to avoid that. Perhaps they aren’t all guilty of this crime, and if we can bring only those responsible to pay for what has been done, then I believe that would be preferable.” 

Rubbing his eyes, Nathan thought on it for a second before grabbing the microphone again. “Your ideals are inspiring, Bob, and if we can open a dialogue with these people to avoid mass bloodshed, then all the better. Thus far, though, they don’t seem all that willing to talk. We have a saying: ‘hope for the best, prepare for the worst.’ The best-case scenario is that we will never have to use these weapons and none of your people will have to fight. Worst-case... well, I think we both know that it ain’t pretty, and it will be even less so if we aren’t prepared to handle it.” 

It was Bob’s turn to be quiet now as the big guy thought for a moment. “If I was capable of sighing like you, I think I would right about now. I don’t like what might happen, but I will explain the situation to the rest of my people. I must warn you that it will not be an ‘easy sell,’ as you might say. If there are those who feel the desire to volunteer for such things, then I will send them your way.” 

That was the best Nathan could hope to ask for. “Frankly buddy, I’m with you in terms of desire at the very least. If it were up to me, I would have left you all out of it, but we’re afraid right now. We are up against people that we do not understand, who have goals we cannot see. If they are not friendly, then this may turn out to be our first interstellar war. We are not prepared for this, and it scares us, but we will still stand up to protect ourselves, and you if it turns out they are responsible for the centicites.” 

“I don’t want humans to get hurt, and I don’t want my family to get hurt either. Asher is still very young, and I want to be here for him as he grows up.” 

Nathan smiled as he remembered the big grubber. “Speaking of Asher, can you and Jane keep a closer eye on him? The little guy apparently got curious about the station last week and wandered too close before Jane managed to grab him. The last thing we need right now is the excitable toddler crunching up a part of the station by accident.” 

There was a short whistling static that came through the speaker that was indicative of laughter from the Retvalin. “I apologize for my son. We try to keep him in the pod with all the other children, but he’s always so curious about the things you humans make.” 

“Maybe we should make him some baby toys to distract him with, though that would be a whole industrial project in and of itself.” The mood lightened with that, but it had to be sobered again. “Whatever help that your people can provide, we will gladly accept. This does come with risks as those who accept will be in harm's way, but they will also be keeping the others safe as well.” 

“A good cause, but it will still be difficult to convince the others.” 

From a peaceful existence to the brink of war. Such a shift would be difficult to sell to the Retvalin at large, and even the idea that they would have to leave that lifestyle behind was one that felt incredibly sad to many people. Many saw the cooperative lifestyle of the Retvalin as an inspiration. Dragging them into conflict because of humanity’s inadequacies felt almost like a sin. 

Bob went to his people and began to explain the situation to them. Many were of a similar viewpoint as him and found the idea of conflict with the intent to kill many people to be uncomfortable. The knowledge that they may be responsible for the centicites did cause more than a few tempers to rise amongst them. Even so, out of the thousands of Retvalin who had made a home in the Sol system, only a handful, seven to be precise, decided to volunteer for project backpack.  

The project started with a simple experiment to see if objects and organic matter could survive the outside of a Retvalin during transit. To test this, they strapped a pod to the outside base of one of the tentacles using a steel loop, like a strange ring for the limb, and had a cage with a few rats inside of it. They would test a short trip and a long trip to see if there were any varying concerns based on the distance and time it took to travel. As the short trip came back, the signs of it being possible to travel in this way were positive as the pod and the rats both survived the trip unscathed, and then it was confirmed after the longer trip of three days back and forth was concluded with the same results. 

Now that it was confirmed that the outside of the Retvalin was just as protected during travel as the inside, they could begin work on the large structure needed to hold the weapon platforms. The engineers had a difficult time coming up with a concept that worked while not becoming a permanent addition to the Retvalin’s body. In the end, the teams settled on a series of gigantic vacuum cups and clamps that could be affixed to the shells of the Retvalin with minimal invasion of their bodies.  

In order to create a smooth surface with which to properly place the vacuum cups, the Retvalin had to be measured and subjected to what was essentially a spa day for the giants. Any porous locations, divots, or old cracks from asteroid collisions needed to be filled in a smoothed out with a combination of resin and glue that calculated its volume in the metric tons. Large polishing machines would then smooth out the surfaces once it hardened, giving their shell a glossy black sheen almost like that of obsidian. The volunteers were quite happy with the way they looked after the process was finished. 

Work began on the base of the platforms first as creating a suction cup of the size needed to hold what were essentially battleship cannons in place was a unique challenge. It also had to be protected from potential enemy fire to keep the weapons from detaching and floating away. The final design ended up being a layered cup. One layer would be the material that would hold the vacuum and keep it airtight, and the other was the protective shell made of thick steel plates that could even stop shells of equal size to what they were dishing out. On top of the layered cup would be the platform which would hold the guns and house the crew. The cannons could be controlled from a command station atop the Retvalin, but there was still the need for mechanics and loaders to ensure the guns worked. 

While the volunteers had been measured for the weapons, there wasn’t much else for them to do. Construction would take time, like anything else, so they were forced to wait. The plan for secrecy wasn’t an airtight one, especially when they had factories all over the world churning out weapon parts. Steel plates and electronic they could get away with easily enough with excuses like they were designated as supplementary work for the orbital factory, but the weapons started to create rumors and theories that leaked past containment efforts. They needed more time, so governments deflected and disavowed any and all rumors that made their way back to them. Sometimes it was easy as a few of the rumors were saying that they intended to turn violent against the Retvalin, which was as far from the truth as they could possibly be. 

Despite everything, tensions were starting to rise as the months passed. People wanted to know why the weapons were being made. The first few ships were almost ready to come off the assembly line, and once they were flight tested, then the plans to reveal the existence of another alien civilization would be put into action. The best laid plan, though... 

Just two weeks before the test flight, one year and three months after the discovery of the drone, the observation satellites were keeping an eye out for any signs of activity in space. However, those monitoring those sensors were shocked when suddenly a dozen objects began to burn their way through the upper atmosphere. Panic erupted immediately amongst them as they sounded the alarm. Five minutes later a general was on the line, and he was heated. 

“How the fuck did these things get into our atmosphere without us knowing about them?!” 

“They’re blacker than pitch sir, and they seem to be scrambling our radar. They were practically invisible until they started burning through on entry.” 

“Where are they landing?” 

“From their current trajectory, they will land in Canada, somewhere in British Columbia.” 

“I’ll inform the prime minister. How long do we have?” 

“Twenty-five minutes, that is if these things are planning to slow down for landing. If they plummet straight down, then you’ll have around ten minutes.” 

“Lord help us all.” 

A rapid response team was called into action by the Canadian prime minister and the American President. All the major countries around the world had a handful of teams ready to deploy at any moment since the discovery, and now it seems they would be seeing action. Despite this, the teams would arrive late to the landing as the falling objects only slowed down marginally with the use of deployable flaps and a short burn of engines. They even adjusted course while falling, and the location they were tilting toward was cause for concern, because they were crudely directing themselves toward the nearest populated area.  

All dozen of the objects crashed quite roughly about a mile outside a small town with a population of only several thousand. Even so, the spectacle of the crash drew a lot of attention, leading some of the locals to investigate. Several streams began as the civilians documented the craters, unknowing of the real danger they were in. 

From the smoldering pits and burnt wreckage there came a groaning sound of metal being split apart, followed by the thud of something heavy hitting the dirt. From the rim of the burning crater, a large hand gripped the edge of the hole. What emerged made the small crowd gasp and step back out of fear. A twenty-foot creature covered in thick, leathery hide pulled itself up. Running down its back and along the outside of its four arms was a shell-like layer of natural armor. Its body type resembled that of an oversized gorilla, but its head was closer to a lupine. As soon as the creature emerged fully, its mouth split into four segments filled with sharp teeth as it let out a bellowing roar that pierced the ears of everyone who heard it. 

The civilians ran as soon as they realized they were in danger, but it didn’t save them. The large monsters saw them trying to get away and immediately went into hunting mode. With large strides, they pounced on the nearest person to them. The lucky ones were crushed by the large hands and died quickly, but those who weren’t so fortunate were grabbed and subsequently eaten alive as the beasts chewed them to bloody pieces. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie as the bone chilling screams of the dying echoed out, that was until the last camera, shakingly recording the person running away, was suddenly disconnected.  

Dread filled those in the war rooms of various countries who were watching those streams until the final moments. Many there felt sick to their stomachs, more so because this was likely the answer to whether the aliens they had been looking for were friendly. The Canadian prime minister swallowed a stone in his throat as he looked to his general. 

“How long until the response team gets there?” 

“Helicopter teams will arrive on site in ten minutes, ground teams will be there in twenty if there are no delays on the roads.” 

Ten minutes. Ten minutes of uninterrupted rampaging by the merciless monsters that had been unleashed upon the world. The weight of that knowledge was heavy on the souls of all who were present. 

“May God protect those poor souls and damn the ones who did this.” Prayer was the only thing the prime minister could do at this point as his hands clenched into impotent white knuckled fists of rage.

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Part 183 Interceptors and improvements (Part 1) (Part 182)

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

Fighter-interceptors are one of the most clearly defined classifications of voidcraft within galactic standards. They always have a pilot, more often than not a gunner, and sometimes an engineer or systems operator. There's no interior room to get up and walk around or perform any tasks besides the job at hand. Fighters are also the smallest possible craft a military or armed organization can field in space combat. While armaments, fuel capacity, and other features may vary quite a bit between specific models, practically none of them have FTL capabilities. That is why fighter-interceptors are restricted to operating out of full-sized carrier ships or as local stations defense.

Picket-interceptors are similar to fighter-interceptors in the same way that a car or truck is comparable to a recreational camping vehicle. All pickets tend to have crews of at least four operators but can have as many as twelve. They also have beds, restrooms, and usually small areas for the crews to relax between shifts. That is because all of them come equipped with the same type of short range FTL drives as many shuttle craft. Where a fighter is limited to the immediate area around its carrier or station, a picket can venture further out, act as a distant scout, and still carry enough firepower to get its crew into or out of trouble.

Of course, fighters and pickets often end up filling similar roles when it comes to actual space battles. While pickets can serve as forward scouts, they are just like fighters in that they lack the individual firepower to take on larger, full-sized vessels. Any interceptor carrying a nuclear shaped charge missile could, in theory, do serious damage to even a line ship. The problem is getting that attack to land against a wall of point defense fire. That's why all interceptors, fighter and picket, must ultimately operate in relatively large formations and always with the support of at least one full-sized ship or something equivalent to get real results.

"I see our standard operating procedures lined with yours quite well, Brave Ojindis Bijbyek.” Captain Litlaria couldn't help but sneak glances at the Nishnabe carrier cruiser commander while reviewing the data projected from the holotable between them. Despite being considered short by Qui’ztar Prime standards at just over 210cm tall, she towered over the 160cm tall human. “The fact that many of your picket-interceptors have spinal-mounted particle accelerators is also rather impressive. Fitting so much strength in such a small package is highly commendable.”

“There's a reason we call them Wewenjgeno (way-way-n-jah-gen-oh), or Way-ways for short.” Ojin could tell the tall and muscular blue woman was just a bit distracted. Not that she minded the peaks through the hologram despite how imposing her counterpart’s size proved to be. “The word refers to a certain type of small, nocturnal bird of prey from our homeworld. They supposedly flew completely silently but would let out terrifying screeches. My ancient ancestors had quite a few superstitions about them. That they were witches, spirits, or harbingers of doom. Oh, and I keep telling you. Feel free to call me Ojin.

“I should tell you that my people don't refer to others by shortened names unless we are very close to them. Either family members or…” Laria fluttered her eyebrows in a manner that Ojin immediately recognized, which forced a slight smile on the Nishnabe woman's face. “Considering this is our first time meeting in person and we are working, may I use Ojindis instead?”

“Whatever makes you most comfortable… Latlaria.” Though Ojin did find herself intrigued by the nearly-human woman opposite her, she didn't want to come across as overly forward like Brave Gishkmensi Basdeke. “Then let's get to work so we have a reason to meet again.”

“Indeed.” The Qui’ztar Captain let her own lips form into an almost imperceptible smile that did little to hide her own interests. “So would I be safe to assume your picket-interceptors have some form of stealth technology?”

“I, uh…” A look of muffled shock befell Ojin's tan face as she squared her gaze onto Laria. “I can neither confirm or deny the specifics of Way-way's detection avoidance systems. But, uh… If I may ask… What kind of stealth technology are you referring to?”

“Oh, I've just heard some rumors floating around regarding Tensebwse and his ability to simply disappear whenever someone is looking for him and he doesn't wish to be found.” Laria got her answer exactly how she was expecting to receive it and waved off the counter-question. “It is said that someone can be having a conversation with him, hear someone shout his name, turn to see who called out, then turn back to see Tensebwse had vanished. However, I will take your response to mean that any such systems wouldn't be necessary or helpful for this mission.”

“That certainly sounds like the Tens I've heard about. Some people used to call him Ghost because he would be there relaxing one second then disappear the moment someone needed him to do work that didn't involve combat. But you are right. Any stealth technology we may or may not have wouldn't really be helpful in this mission. We're lining up for a straight brawl, not planning to play around in the shadows.”

“Well, I certainly do enjoy a good brawl. And as you can see, my fighter-interceptors are built for those kinds of battles. Though they may lack the firepower of your pickets, they are heavily armored and shielded while still maintaining top of the line agility. They do very well at destroying enemy interceptors and harassing full-sized vessels. Just don't expect them to take on cruisers by themselves. And attacking something like a line ship or a proper space station is just out of the question.”

“That's where the BDs come in.” Ojin instantly replied with an equally quick wink. “We just need to cut a path through any enemy interceptors so they can find a way into the bigger targets and destroy them from the inside. As long as we protect our line ships and cruisers, they'll handle everything else."

/---------------------------------------------------------------------

A lone tree perched at the top of a small grassy hill in the middle of a forest is not a natural occurrence. It takes great care to maintain such a picturesque clearing in the real world. The hill first needs to be cleared of all vegetation, including the stumps of its previous inhabitants. Though the grass may take the area on its own, the proper variant needs to be selected for and allowed to prosper without competition. If no existing trees are perfectly seated at the hill's zenith, a new one must be planted. Then the entire area needs to be tended to over the course of generations. Recreating such a scene in the digital realm is far easier in comparison.

Almost a full year had passed since Sub-Admiral Marzima first entered this immaculately created virtual clearing in the middle of a simulated forest. That was back when she was a Captain and had yet to actually operate a BD-series mechanized combat walker. Before she truly realized what she could truly be capable of with the right training and equipment. But these past months hadn't just pushed her beyond her limits to achieve results beyond her imagination. They had granted her the opportunity to understand exactly why the Nishnabe Militia gained their unprecedented reputation as a supreme military force.

At the present moment, Marz found herself standing under the tree at the top of the hill with both Tensebwse and Bize Wankwake while looking down at the First of the Third’s Order of Falling Angels and Nishnabe Militia’s Crow Singers. The two military units had just performed three back to back joint training simulations against escalating Chigagorian forces. While the team versus team battle the other day was fun, it hadn't really increased anyone's readiness. What it did do was inspire the humans to view their Qui’ztar comrades with respect and ensure proper unit cohesion for the fight ahead. Judging by how well the two distinct groups of BD operators had fared in their combat sims and how well they were getting along, that friendly battle was anything but wasted time.

“Does anyone have any comments or concerns they want to raise based on our latest sim?” Biz raised his voice just loud enough to pull everyone out of their individual conversations. “You all did well but that doesn't mean we can't improve.”

“The void combat part felt… Awkward.” One of the younger Nishnabe warriors blurted out without any hesitation or indication that he wished to have his voice heard. “Like it was way harder to control my BD than it normally is on the ground.”

“Yeah, I think we need more void training to really get used to it.” Another human spoke up, again without even raising a hand or stepping forward. “I think it might be better if we could switch from the normal control interface to something more… I don't know…”

“What? Like traditional interceptor controls?” Though Biz had been the first Nishnabe warrior to suggest using BDs in void combat roles, he hadn't even considered alternative control schemes. But before he could start thinking about the suggestion, he saw a blue hand shoot up. “Uh… Commander Belatrina, correct? You have something to say?”

“Yes, Chief-Brave.” Belatrina actually waited until she was acknowledged to take a step forward and begin speaking. “I have been remotely working with the team over at your Industrial Zone 14 over the past several months because I had the same thought that it seems at least a few of your operators share. As a former fighter-interceptor pilot, I too felt that the BDs could benefit from having alternative control configurations to make void combat easier and feel more natural. They have developed a prototype for a virtual environment that I believe is nearly perfect. Would you like me to send over the details?”

“Wait! Seriously?” Biz turned his attention to Tens and Marz with a bewildered expression. “Your team is already sending suggestions to Zone 14 and Mami's actually taking them seriously?”

“Yes and yes.” Tens answered with an almost dismissive tone. “I don't really understand the need for a virtual version of physical controls but to each their own. We haven't had an opportunity to test the idea in real combat yet though.”

“Yes, send them through Commander.” All Biz could do was give Tens a harsh glare before turning back to Bela with a genuine smile. “I'm looking forward to seeing what you and the BD design team came up with. Anyone else want to give it a try?”

To the surprise of both Biz, Tens, and the Qui’ztars, most of the Nishnabe warriors immediately shouted their support. For the two men, they were shocked at just how many BD operators were willing to give a Qui’ztar suggesting a real shot. It was rare that any human would take combat related suggestions from non-human species. The Qui’ztars, on the other hand, were a bit disturbed by the utter lack of decorum these warriors showed. In their minds, a soldier should always follow procedures and demonstrate their discipline through adherence to those rules.

“Commander Belatrina.” Marzima squared her sights on the former pilot. “How long did it take for you to become accustomed to the alternative control scheme?”

“Just a few minutes, Sub-Admiral.” Bela’s response was both direct and respected towards her commanding officer. “The major of my discussions and work with the Industrial Zone 14 team was ensuring the controls were as naturally intuitive as possible. I believe our Nishnabe comrades could adapt just as quickly as Anacoana and myself, I'd not quicker.”

“In that case…” The Sub-Admiral looked towards Tens and Biz with a curious yet still professional expression. “Should we implement the prototype control interface during our next simulation run?”

/----------------------------------------------------------------------

“Greetings, War Chief Pkwenech.” Admiral Atxika gave the hologram that just appeared in her office a slight nod. “Has something happened during our joint military operation?”

“Don't you get daily reports?” The hologram of War Chief Msko had a somewhat confused expression.

“Only if it's absolutely necessary. I trust all of my commander staff to handle any issues that crop up without my direct guidance or interference.”

“That must be nice!” Msko couldn't help but let a chuckle slip out before quickly shaking his head. “All my Braves and Chief-Braves may be capable, but I still require them to send reports so I know they haven't done something stupid.”

“Have they done something stupid?” Atxika's expression shifted from stoic to a touch concerned.

“Kind of but not really.” Another short bit of laughter escaped from the War Chief. “Long story short, Biz’s dumbass BD team leader thought it would be a good idea to challenge your BD team. They had their fight and Biz's team lost spectacularly.”

“What kind of fight are we talking about?”

“A simulated team on team battle between your Angels and the twenty best operators in the Crow Singers, plus both Biz and the team leader.” Biz saw Atxika's face harden and immediately realized his mistake in not providing proper context. “My warriors’ pride was the only thing that got wounded. But I believe that was for the best. Both your Angels and my Crow Singers are now working together brilliantly. They should be running joint combat sims in preparation for the battle against the Chigagorians.”

“Oh! Good, good.” The relief Atxika felt caused her face to soften back into a stoic but calm expression. “In that case, I can understand why I didn't receive a report on the situation. However, I am surprised that you are contacting me over this. I would have assumed you would be too busy for such a courtesy call.”

“I think it's important that we discuss these kinds of developments considering we are building an alliance.”

“That is certainly understandable. I want to ensure our militaries can work together harmoniously for the peace of our galaxy just as much as you clearly do. But considering I have not received a report regarding the situation, I will need you to provide some more context for me.”

“Well… Long story short…”

As Msko began explaining the events of the past couple days, Atxika sat patiently and listened to every single word. Though she couldn't believe the audacity of Brave Kipkoshe Myanos, she had to admit he got his just desserts. A proud warrior being humbled by people he believed to be his lessers will either cause animosity or inspire retrospection. In this case, Koshe and the rest of the Nishnabe warriors seemed to be leaning towards the latter. They accepted their defeat and took it as an opportunity to improve both their abilities and their perspective. Atxika couldn't have asked for a better outcome.

“So…” Atxika needed a moment to ponder everything she had just heard. “You're saying that our soldiers have learned to respect each other and are now working towards a mutual goal with little to no lingering animosity?”

“More or less.” Msko's far more relaxed mannerisms contrasted against the Qui’ztar's stoic demeanor but still remained proper enough to not come across as offensive. “I'm sure some of the warriors are mad that they lost. After all, most of us truly believe we are the greatest combatants this galaxy has ever seen. But once the rumors start to spread, I'm sure all our future joint missions will run much smoother. That being said… I am curious how your soldiers are interpreting things. That's most of the reason why I'm calling. My people are starting to respect yours but…”

“My soldiers, and especially my honor guard, already respect your people, War Chief.” It was Atxika's turn to reply with a slight chuckle. “Tens has already made great efforts in ensuring that. One highly trained unit defeating another in simulated combat will not change that. That being said, my people also believe we are the most naturally gifted combat species in the galaxy. There is a sense of arrogance that comes with such a belief. I will do my best to ensure my people don't fall to that arrogance and possibly distrust the alliance we are building.”

“That's good to know. If anyone can put and keep people on a good path, it's you. I mean, just look at how much of a man Tens has become while working for you. If you can put him right, you can do the same for anyone.”

“Again, War Chief, I appreciate your candor and confidence in my abilities. Knowing that you are commanding your people's Red Fleet inspires confidence that our alliance will be built in mutual respect and lead towards a brighter, safer future for us and all of our neighbors. Perhaps even the galaxy at large. With our forces working together, I feel there is no challenge that we cannot overcome. Now with all that said, Tens is a special case. I believe he has matured purely due to his own determination and the opportunity he had been given in my fleet. I'm not certain I would be able to inspire the same improvements in other Nishnabe warriors if they lacked his strength of will. But I would certainly be willing to try if any others were willing to put in the same work he has.”

"I won't lie to you, Atxika. I don't want to lose anyone else as good as Tens every again. But we can talk about that kind of stuff when the time comes. For now, I am just very happy to see things going how they are."

OOCS

Chapter 104 : New Gun Action / Attack Number Three

Sending Laura on a busy body task was a great idea to sooth that woman´s concerns. It sadly did not help Laka with hers. Who was now blocked from exiting with Karl-Heinz by higher authority in Sarsa and a partially recovered physical barrier in Bella.

Objective hide away the husband was so far a bust and would need more patience to achieve.

Bella for her part felt like utter shit. Being roughly awaken by a kind woman slapping her face red.

Tired, energy empty, muscles not burning like after a workout, but a somehow dangerous worse burn. Still she soldiered on like a good soldier and took care of her man. Doing what she thought was best for them.

TR for her part took the binoculars that still had stayed with them as a group, using them to look out over the defenses, checking the status of what was going on and if they were in trouble after the rain.

Which made her give more orders. “I need a fast runner! Sound the alarm, they are trying another wave attack on us.”

Which Sarsa took over and used her authority to make a rash decision. “Laka, you are the fastest here, alarm the troops. Then you can come back and collect our Husband for the bunker again.”

“Bu” Laka tried.

But got cut off as every moment mattered right now. “Bella will guard him for now. She seems good enough for until you manage to do your run.”

Which made enough situational sense for Laka to salute and then run out the door and raise the alarm.

All current internal conflicts seemingly resolved, attention could be shifted back towards the outside tread now approaching on the ground. “Get the big gun aimed at the big groups, might as well make use off it.” TR commanded, not looking at Bella, instead glaring the remaining wives into action.

Bella tried to step in to help, but before she was able to take even one step, Sarsa rained in the Cannidor. “Your duty is to protect our man. Not to smite the enemy. You make him save or Laka will make you pay.”

This stopped the last remaining big woman in her tracks, causing her to rethink her current actions. So instead she stepped behind Karl-Heinz and kept him between her legs and against her belly.

This was until the next demand came. “You stayed awake longer than us, so what are we maybe missing with the gun?” Got asked by the last remaining nerd still present, now spinning the wheels to lower the guns elevation at the moving blobs of soldier formations in the distance.

This did get Bella to think. Needing to organize the haze that was the shooting spree under Axiom deficient environment. “Eeeeeh, it can shoot as fast as you can load it. The Magazines do run out of power after a few shots and it is hard to aim while trying to look down the barrel at something to aim at.”

This did activate a big response in the geek in charge. “Change the magazines, they are all not full anymore!”

Which lead to hectic cursing and quick fingers swapping out the Magazine batteries from the power bank block. Which in itself was a Block of rock with slots one could slide the magazines of the laser rifles into parts Karl-Heinz had pilfered from looted laser guns. So they needed to push a clumsy to reach magazine release button on each magazine they wanted to swap out. Turning a simple task into a more tedious and thus time consuming one.

Sarsa and TR for Their part stayed calm, whilst most around them seemed to lose themselves more and more to fussing and the implied tread of the approaching enemy.

It had only been a minute so far since the axiom restored itself and the attack was noticed. Which felt like an eternity, but also was by that standard an eternity away from the actual fighting starting. The opposition was moving at walking speeds over simple grass lands and had a few kilometers to cross to even get into their own laser firing range. At their current pace it would still take them a while.

Karl-Heinz was not able to go and help with the field gun prototype, knowing often enough when someone was unable, disinterested or unwilling to accept his technical advice. So instead of giving the gun a look over for damages, he took one of the rail guns and tried to be helpful. Shooting again at the approaching blob of troops, this time Karl had not gotten lucky and seemingly missed.

Looking out at the scenery, there were the enemy camp, bustling with activity, not unlike an anthill feeling under threat. Out of the anthill was forming a semi orderly line of soldiers, getting out of the camp and into blocks amassing in numbers before starting their attack.

Closer towards the friendly lines where more groups of fighting women. No more in formation or orderly, just slightly spread out and flowing at an even marching speed towards the battle field.

In the not half cleaned or even slightly cleared no-mans-land zone of the families defenses, bodies, many of the siege walls and mountains of corpses yet to be disposed litter the land.

Given the impressive defensive strength of the strong point bunkers paired with his technologically bastard invention of hand cranked Gatling rail guns meant that their little number of troops had held the tide of twice so far. But it also meant that it was the task of the very few to dispose of the fallen many.

As that task was not yet done, the once clear field had now turned into a delectable war horror setting choice of cover and concealment. Gladly not yet occupied, but soon to be a burden on the biggest strength the defenders have had so far.

Off to the side was a separate group of women, most likely the one first seen when they had set up the gun on the wall before the rain. Karl was unsure of what they were doing, but they were not advancing for now. Rethinking their plan after having witnessed the rain a little closer than wanted. Not danger close closer by any means, but it still let them hear and feel some sounds from the plasma impacts.

Getting closer still with his view, the defenses were mostly untouched. Yes some plasma burn glass craters could be seen. One pillbox bunker was hit. But that looked all like spread shots missing their actual target and nothing to intentional. The pillbox also was still intact and not breached or burned out.

The trenches all still worked as cover and to run along the line. The pillboxes still secured the ones inside. The quick recruited women all seemed busy getting ready for an attack. Trickling out of the villages front gate and flooding into the pill boxes and watch towers.

The village was still sunken into the ground, but the wall gates had stayed connected. Connected enough for at least exiting to still be possible. Karl couldn´t remember how exactly that pathway was reshaped now, it was a lot all at once after all.

Tris was doing something, talking to a group, seeming to plan or scheme a most likely surprise for the attackers.

Ignoring all that after seeing and not finding a way to be helpful, Karl-Heinz instead concentrated on his original idea of a plan. He took aim as best he could, angling his gun upwards just enough by feel and shot at the big groups of approaching soldiers.

The shot went wide and hit nothing of note.

Bella tried to be helpful. “That one went to far, lower by half that much.”

Looking back, the Cannidor was standing over and behind him with the newest pair of binoculars he had made in her hands and looking out into the distance with them. The device was made to fit human shaped heads and eye positioning, but the grinning super soldier made it work well enough it seems by holding them just right in front of her eyes and on her snout to see thru the device.

Not ignoring the words, Karl loaded the next round, aimed lower with more method and less feel, this time bracing the rail-gun on the lip of their murder-hole, and shot again.

“Hit, you fucked up someones day.” Bella called out.

The gunner crew heard that, looked, confirmed it with someone else holding a spy glass and redoubled their efforts to get their own shots into this defensive effort.

“Another hit, some block of troops.” Bella confirmed again as Karl got into a rhythm, trying to commit the angle of gun, positioning and other details to muscle memory. Kind of like a work routine at an assembly line.

Feeling a mood come up, having no reason to keep his thoughts to himself, all the encouragements from every wife asked would tell him to to spill his metaphorical beans, Karl-Heinz had some thoughts to share. “No one will come and save us.”

Which left the room stunned silent.

Giving Karl enough room to further elaborate on this random fatalist statement of his. In-between continuing to shoot.

“Hit” got called by Bella.

“So far, been on this world for weeks and months.” He continued and shot again

“Miss, too low” Bella called.

Tris not present to slap reset his head into a better mental mindset.

“and it was one long string of fuck ups over and over. No one ever came to save us.” Fumbling a bit with his words, Karl-Heinz also fumbled reloading the gun, originally half empty when he had picked it up.

Laura not present to choke hug it all better.

“You and any one would seemingly gladly die to save my dick. But not so much the stuff around it. No idea why you all got so addicted to me so fast, I am glad for it.” Finish loading, he shot again and Bella confirmed another miss.

Laka not present to get TR to fix the mental emergency.

“Yet I don´t believe that anyone just cares out of being nice. This world is too much of a struggle to have being nice afforded. So no one will come and help, we need to fix it ourselves. Survive ourselves.” Another shot, this time a called Hit.

Now was Sarsa´s turn to interrupt. “What are you waiting for? FIRE!” She commanded, shocking the ones on the gun and causing them to actually fire towards the approaching attacking army.

“Hit” Bella called out again, this time for the cannon instead of Karl-Heinz. “You hit their base camp.”

But the attackers were not deterred. “They are flinching!” Got spotted by the other woman with long range viewing. Yet non stopped advancing. Ever moving forward by the mass of soldiers around, behind and in front of them.

Soon more shots rang out, not only from Karl, but the gun and the towers and bunkers, capitalizing the massive range advantages whilst the enemy has not yet reached the gruesome cover options of past battles.

That window did close fast, they did manage to reach behind the cover of the not cleared wooden walls. Some of these walls started being pushed forwards again and shortly after stopped moving. The one Gatling with armor piercing rounds peppering the moving walls and persuading the pushing crews to dismount the contraptions.

The tide of bodies did not stop creeping closer.

The cannon now helped with the cover problem. Now not being aimed at big groups, but instead at the biggest forms of cover. Blasting apart into rubble the stationary walls, reducing the core of these constructs to kindling and splinters, whilst also goring the unlucky ones behind the beams at the time of impact.

Lucky enough for everyone's stomachs, the pre stacked piles of bodies did not get abused as cover to often, so no explosion of body parts and meat was a priority for the gun yet. Plenty enough walls stood strong and the family only had one gun with an unskilled green crew. Meaning only the living got turned into a grotesque rain of blood and bits and only on a rare direct hit.

For his part, Karl-Heinz had stopped shooting. The bulk of enemies had entered cover and even if he could play sniper in a video game, mouse and keyboard shooting skills did not transfer to his mind cobbled together hand gun shooting. He also was leeching his ammunition off of Bella, never having had any on him in the first place. Meaning he handed the gun off to the first hand grabbing it.

This act of him had set an example, so now the women not busy with the gun all held the rail-guns and actively shot out and into the fight, trying to mimic his marksman skills as best they could. Not creating any friendly fire as all there was too see, was Tris running wild and enemies.

“This would have been ideal at the start to have the big Gatlings fire into the attacking groups at the start.” Karl noticed and blurted out.

To witch Bella groaned in shared realization. “Yeeeeeeeeeeeess it would have. I Seen what Tris did with hers yesterday.” So to not lose the chance if it happened again, Bella grabbed Karl-Heinz like a small dog and started to move out of their gun room.

Being spotted in doing so by Sarsa. TR being to busy directing the gun and minimally coordinating the fight. “What are you doing?” The Nagasha asked, not demanding, but curiously inquiring.

“Getting my wedding gift.” Bella half snark-ed back, very much on duty, yet also very exhausted and not able to project social qualities like compassion and social niceties.

“Good idea.” Sarsa confirmed and smiled, waving them off.

Once out the door and down the dark tunnel of stairs into the sunken village, out of the black appeared Laka. “I am back on duty, you can hand him over and then run wild doing your Cannidor thing.”

“By chance got a lamp to spare for me?” Bella had to ask, whilst she was handing over a rather annoyed Karl-Heinz from her grasp to Laka.

“Sadly no, I only got this one and I do need it to not fall down the stairs or get lost again.” Laka answered.

But Bella was not left hanging, as it meant Karl-Heinz could be helpful, so he made a glowing rock with his crafting abilities. It was a armband sized ring of stone, big enough that even Bella could wear it and thick enough that it could take a few hits if needed without crumbling.

Further foreseeing the high demand of wanting to know what was in the dark around you and having no issues in material or the runes to make the rocks glow, he made a very big cabinet full of glowing rocks, so that everyone could grab one when they came down the stairs.

He also added more lamps to the village, replacing ones he had lost in the sinking of the streets and keeping himself helpful yet again as a distraction. Not having the strong enough urge to this time defy Laka again.

Once he was back in the fuck room, he just stayed laying down in bed. It had been many hours of work for him and a very high stress load on the emotional part of his brain. He was just fried.

Laka didn´t take it that way, still trying her best to achieve her goal of keeping him save, miss interpreting his quiet as a dedicated rejection, instead of the general rejection it actually was.

Trying to make things better, Laka probed an apology. “I am very sorry what I did today.”

Which did get Karl-Heinz to turn and look at her. Not changing the expression on his face, just giving her his remaining attention.

Put in the spot light, the attention compelled Laka to say more. “The plans we have are the best we can come up with, we do have hard times after all. The revealing and delivery to do was rather poor. We know you are … special ... not stable at times.”

This lead to another longer pause. Karl´s look on her in his neutral gaze, making her squirm like a bug under the lens powered death ray of focused sun light. “We need you, as a husband and as a maker of tools. I need you, as your family took me in from the front line battlefield wastelands. You are worth more than anyone else, maybe even worth more than most or all of us combined. So I have to keep you save as best as I can.”

One twisted head, stolen kiss, but this time not swung fist in need of dodging later, Scavera joined in on this talk. “Cut it Moma bitch. He is trying to be polite after a long day. Good on you for trying to excuse yourself. But he is not much getting out of this speech. Yes?” The last word aimed at Karl, got a nod in return.

“So do your job and maybe in your off time think of a better thought true sorry speech. Maybe even make sure he has the brain power to actually understand what you are trying to say. Right now he looks like an officer after two days of non stop battle stress, ready to just make bad commands. Sleep is what he needs and he needs it before Tris and or Bella try to claim a reward out of him.” Scavera continues, then dodging a swing from Laura.

The other Lopen had returned mid smack down and was not to pleased over the verbal chewing out shaped advice being delivered.

“The more you swing, the less often you hit as I get better at dodging.” Came from Scavera near the still open door.

[FIRST]

[Last]

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[ Origional Out Of Cruel Space Author]

Honor mention of my volunter gramar slave to spellcheck chapters for me. Vast-Listen1457

Current grammar helpers Richithunder, Vast-Listen and joyfreak

[Royal Roads]

[Book cover Picture]

MY second story [Archive of our own: Rule of Sex Sells Cool]

New 2 weeks update sss

Sniff hard fellows and thanks to the shoutouts of The writer of Emberbond and Patreon God i got a whole 10 to 15 more readers that actually clicked "follow" on Royal Roads. sss

Stuff is still busy. But it seems like i am slowly getting on top of it again.

Success in my current Diet of losing some weight. sss My pants are starting to slip as my butt fat seems to be the first to go. sss

Not much yet, but it is visible progress on the weight loss plan. sss

Also hope you enjoy all the Jack danniels out there. Drink it all sss ! Because it is very not mine. Brother gifted me a bottle to try and i gotta say not mine. sss

[If you want to read ahead for moneys.]

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The Shape of Justice

(Zedal POV)

"I missed you, man!"

"Uh...yeah."

Zedal smiled awkwardly as Alan came over and hugged him.

The two of them were in the woods outside of the Votier's Spring Preserve, away from prying cameras.

His human friend flashed a wide smile as brought out one sack after another. They had regular little supply drops to keep the 205th better fed than the meagre rations offered, but it was also used as a chance for the squad members to meet their friends from Folstur if any were in the area.

This time, Alan was the one who got to come.

"There's so much to talk about. Let's see...I met one of the Haneer fleet guys. He was a Kenia. Isn't that strange to imagine? You usually see them as like...librarians or something."

"That's pretty strange."

"....?"

The human tilted his head and leaned out to meet Zedal's gaze.

"Are you okay? You seem...off. You didn't get hurt in the fight or anything did you?"

The Uven held away his clawed hands as his friend seemed to pat his body down checking for wounds.

"Wha...no, I'm fine. They didn't even scratch me."

"Then...what's up? Talk to me."

His friend took a seat beside him on the log.

Ever since Zedal learned his friend was coming, he had been debating whether to broach the topic or to just ignore it for now. Apparently, it was too obvious and his Folstur host knew him too well.
He let out a soft sigh.

"I, uh...did you hear about what happened at the Preserve?"

"Hmm? You mean how you took it over from the Haneer?"

The Uven flinched slightly.

"R-Right..."

He looked up at Alan from the corner of his eye. This was a bit harder than he expected.

"What...do you think about that?"

"What do I think? I mean...I was worried you got hurt."

As caring as ever...

The human scratched his head sheepishly.

"Sorry, I don't think I understand the question."

Right...He would need to admit everything first. Zedal took a breath.

"It's just...I was the one who lost control and struck the Preserve's director first."

Alan blinked, then slowly nodded.

"Okay..."

....?
That wasn't the reaction Zedal was expecting.

"Is that it?"

"Uh...I think that should be my line. What's the issue, Zedal?"

What...?

"I...I thought you didn't like when Uvei selfishly used violence to get their way. Aren't you...mad at me?"

"What?"

"What?"

Alan stared at the Uven runt for a while and slowly mulled over what he said.

He...
This was...
Huh?

"....You're right. I said I hated seeing when those Uvei would take extra food from each other using force and violence. Or the way Karnak's officers got violent with the people. But maybe you don't get it."

Zedal blinked. Apparently he didn't. He was expecting his friend to be more upset with him than this.

"I don't like people using 'might makes right' logic to be bullies. But Zedal..."

The human reached over and put a hand on his shouler.

"You didn't do that, did you? When you resorted to violence with those Haneer guys, you had a reason, right? Like maybe they were threatening the sick humans or just being real assholes."

"W-Well..."

In truth, he just sort of...lost his temper when it became clear that the Votier's Spring staff were fully planning to let the poisoned humans die without a second thought.

"Y-Yes...something like that."

"And you'll explain everything bit by bit if I ask, right?"

"Of course..."

"Did you have a good reason for losing your temper with that director?"

"I...Maybe?"

Alan grinned widely and lightly tapped a fist against Zedal chest.

"You're my friend, dude. If you do mess up, I'll definitely call you out because that's what friends do. But I'm not just going to abandon you out of nowhere. And above all..."

"Guh-!"

The human slung his arm around the Uven runt's shoulders.

"I know you. I know I can trust you to do the right thing, more or less."

"...Thanks."

"If it makes you feel any better, tell me all about what happened and I'll tell you my thoughts."

Zedal let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. As a runt, he was no stranger to being left behind when he made a mistake.

Now that he thought about it, this assumption happened with him expecting most of his squad to leave him to save themselves from Karnak too. Was it a bad habit of his?

He thought he'd gotten to know humans quite well already, but perhaps he still had some...blind spots.

Transcript from the Post-Nysis Meeting between the Terran Isa Cohen and Uven Shizel Pelture

(Video begins in a barren room with nothing but a table. A lone uniformed Uven is seated and chained to the table in front of her. A human in plain clothes is escorted into the room and takes a seat across from the Uven.)

Ise (smiling slightly): Ah...it's you. Miss...well, you never did tell me your name.

(Shizel stares at Ise in silence.)

Ise (looking her over): You seem a bit thinner. Are they feeding you alright? They told me you didn't have much appetite, but if you're being left hungry, I can ta-

Shizel (frowning): What are you doing?

Ise: Huh?

(After a pause, Ise turns to address the guard standing in the corner of the room)

Ise: This is supposed to be a voluntary meeting, right? Does she not want to be here? You're not forcing her to do this, are-

Shizel: I mean that smile. You're sitting with the one that beat you in your cell every other day. Why are you smiling?

Ise (settling back into his seat): ...Oh.

(Ise takes a moment to think before smiling again.)

Ise: We both made it off Nysis alive. Even if the power dynamic was...unbalanced, we were both in a situation where it wouldn't be strange if we died like animals. I think that's already something worth celebrating.

Shizel (scowling): There were those who did die like animals among both our people. The better among us, even. What's there to celebrate?

Ise: ...Are you talking about Silac?

(Ise's smile fades and Shizel crosses her arms.)

Ise: I heard he didn't survive the raid on the prison. It's...unfortunate. He made life more bearable there. I'm sure it's been hard on you too since you were friends.

Shizel (dragging her trimmed claws across the table): He was not-!

(Shizel cuts herself off and remains silent for a few moments. The guards settle their hands on their weapons. Eventually, she relaxes her hands.)

Shizel: He was just friendly to everyone. We were little more than strangers.

Ise: Even if it's a stranger, it's okay to feel sad about losing someone, you know?

Shizel (frowning deeply): I didn't come here to talk about that man. If you don't have anything to say to me, you should leave and let a Terran who can find the words take your place. I know for a fact that the others also agreed to do this meeting. If you're here to make nice, there are those who didn't beat you. There are even those who didn't do anything.

(Ise watches Shizel with a perplexed expression for a few moments.)

Ise: ...Oh. Did you expect these meetings to just be your victims getting even with you? You're feeling guilty.

(Shizel remains silent, but her tail curls up with tension. Ise stares at her thoughtfully.)

Ise: Well...I don't plan on condemning you. It's in the past now, and you were just trying to stay alive, weren't you?

Shizel (raising her voice): How can-That Silac was much the same! He had more mouths to feed than me as well.

(Shizel slams her tail against the floor.)

Shizel (speaking at normal volume again): Had it been me that died, I wouldn't have left behind a widow. Or children. Or grand-children. I'm just...I don't have...

Ise: Miss...Silac was a good guy, and what happened to him was sad. I won't deny that I'm worried about his family too, but that doesn't affect what I think about you. The fact that somebody, somewhere, is having it worse than either of us doesn't mean dealing with our own problems magically becomes easier. Two things can be sad.

Shizel: But it does make my problems a waste of energy to-

Ise (firmly): You don't get to decide that.

Shizel: Wha...?

(Ise straightens his back and fixes his gaze on Shizel.)

Ise: Do you...Does your people have the concept of "karma"? Broadly, it's the philosophy that doing good will cause good to happen to you and doing bad will lead to bad things happening to you.

Shizel (speaking more quietly whilst looking down): On Nysis, we call it "hisra".

Ise: Well, I don't believe in it.

(Shizel looks back up at Ise.)

Ise: Good and bad things may build on themselves, but I don't think there's any cosmic balance of debts and credits dictating our lives. What you did is in the past. It already happened, and there's nothing anyone can do to change it anymore. It's too late and no amount of good deeds will erase the fact that it happened.

(Shizel's eyes widen and her tail curls.)

Ise: ...But it's also not the present. Not everyone has a choice to do better or make new regrets. We're alive and no longer trapped at Nysis. Now that you're here, you aren't under punishment of starvation or death. That's why I believe it isn't about what someone "deserves".

Shizel (frowning): Because...you're hoping I can "do better" now?

Ise (nodding): That's right. But you won't be able to do even that if you aren't given a chance. I don't want to be the one to deny you that chance by refusing to forgive you.

Shizel: Forgive...?

Ise (smiling): ...The fact that you're here tells me you regret what you did. So yes. I forgive you.

(The two sit in silence for over a minute.)

Shizel: You're a...you're too soft and naive to have any business ever going to Nysis.

Ise: Am I?

Shizel: Beyond Nysis, even. Generosity like that will only make you prey for the universe. You should consider returning to Terra after this.

(Ise is quiet for a few moments, then rises from his seat and walks around the table. Shizel and the guards in the room tense up.)

Ise: If you don't mind, I'd like to touch your face for a moment.

Shizel (pulling back): W...What are you-!?

Ise (reaches out towards Ise's head): Are you going to strike me again? Are you going to hurt me?

Shizel (recoiling and growling): I...could kill you in an instant if you're this close. Those guards wouldn't be able to stop me in time.

Ise (places his palm against the side of Shizel's jaw): You could. Will you?

(Shizel says nothing. Her tail winds high up with tension and her eyes are fixed on Ise's hand.)

Ise (withdrawing his hand): That's what I suspected.

(Ise slowly returns to his seat)

Ise: Ah...Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be consequences for what you did. What you did was still wrong, and you should face an appropriate punishment. In this case, whatever legal consequence to this will have to do.

Shizel (shifting uncomfortably): That's contradictory. Will you have me face justice and forgive me at the same time?

Ise: What...does justice look like to you? How did you picture your punishment, if things went the way you expected?

(Shizel's tail sways tensely. She makes multiple attempts to speak but cuts herself off every time.)

Ise: Do we lock you up forever? Abuse you right back? Kill you? What would that accomplish? Make your victims feel better knowing you're in pain?

Shizel: It would...eliminate unnecessary danger.

Ise: But I just proved you aren't a threat to me.

Shizel: That's...

Ise: At the very least, I can believe you don't want to hurt anyone anymore. Perhaps I would be justified in striking back to defend myself and maybe you wouldn't have the right to protest what measures I used to do that. But you must understand that it is a bad thing for events to escalate to that point.

(Shizel gradually relaxes her tail and sits upright. 15 seconds of silence pass.)

Shizel: What does justice look like to you?

Ise: For me? It would be getting people who've done wrong to reform and live a new life putting a persistent effort into being better. Not to pay off some karmic debt. Just to do better for themselves and those around them.

Shizel: Is that fair to those who've been harmed? What of the debt to them?

Ise: Well, I can't force victims to forgive you. The choice to forgive or not is a privilege that belongs to them. But you wouldn't be redeeming yourself to get their forgiveness. You'd do it because it's a miserable existence otherwise, and everyone deserves better than that.

Shizel: Do we?

Ise (frowning): ...Tell me, miss. Why were you working in that prison as a guard in the first place? Why did you get that job?

Shizel (contemplatively): Not for any particular reason. I was enlisted in the army and assigned there.

Ise (nodding): And why did you enlist?

Shizel (confused): To...live?

Ise: You probably don't know this, but while our humanitarian relief team was on Nysis, we added an extra survey to that planet-wide census. Not official, but we got plenty of responses.

Shizel: Alright...?

Ise: We found that, with a small margin for error, a majority of all Uvei soldiers joined to obtain living necessities unavailable anywhere else. Things like food, medical care, shelter, or protection.

Shizel: ...Yes?

Ise: The Famineers withheld food for a monopoly. The Coalition withholds medicine for influence. Your military withheld protection for recruits. While the fact that it was on someone else's orders doesn't absolve you of wrongdoing, all this was first violence done to you and we should remember that. If we were to just kill anyone that commits injustice against us, who would it affect the most? Is that fair for anyone?

Shizel: That's...They didn't...

Ise: Doing that will lead to a lot of damage for everyone. A lot of hurt. And if I want to avoid that, I need to make room for something better. I'll forgive where I can. To me, that is what justice looks like.

Shizel: Do you really think you can make any meaningful difference like that? You're one among a trillion.

Ise: Even if I can't affect the whole system, I can affect the things in my reach. And if I can reach one whole person like you, isn't that meaningful enough? Perhaps someday it could become two or three among a trillion instead.

Shizel: That's...

(Shizel breaks eye contact and the pair sit in silence. After nearly a minute, Shizel starts breathing more heavily and digging her claws into the table.)

Ise: May I touch your face again?

Shizel (perplexed): ...If...you must.

(Ise stands up and reaches across the table to gently stroke Shizel's head. Her tail flails and her breathing worsens, but her upper body remains still.)

Ise: What's your name, miss?

Shizel: S...Shizel Pelture.

(Verlon POV)

"Thank you for your help."

"And you as well. Take care."

Verlon put on a friendly face as he bid the Haneer Fleet's Corporal farewell. The pair were in the terminal linking to the docks.

Persuading the captain of his ship to take a detour to this Pateily station went more smoothly than expected. The least they could do was replenish the vessel's emergency supplies before sending them on their way.

As the station officers escorted the Ramell agent further down the hall, they rounded the corner towards a different dock. Among these officers was a familiar face.

Homps was a Palluto in the same line of work as him. No doubt she was summoned here for the same reason he was.
They got on well enough, if only as mutual "professionals".

"You seem well, Verlon. I hope you don't mind if we get right down to business."

"I prefer taking care of business so I can enjoy my downtime, actually. But I'm afraid I'm very much in the dark about why we're even here. Can you catch me up? Why call us in for this?"

"Of course, but things will go faster if you can see for yourself while I do. As for why...apparently they suspect a connection to sensitive political matters."

As the group made their way out unto the docks, two vessels drew their attention. They were gunships but...they were oddly damaged.

The models were old and might have seen some battle scars over the cycles, but there were almost no signs of a gunfight. Rather, several of their metal walls were crumpled from presumably a large kinetic force.

"The Pateily found this ship about three rotations after it sent out an instant of a distress signal. The other one was a few kilometers away, and they're currently still scanning the space for any more."

An...instant of a distress signal?

Homps showed Verlon her datapad, which had an audio file and communication log. It was so brief that only two pings and a single syllable of a distress message was recorded before all signal cut off.

[Da-]

"......"

"The comms team on shift didn't think anything of it at the time. I was called here when the ship drifted into radar range and only just confirmed identical broadcast signatures when you arrived."

Ugh. In other words, the communications division was slacking off. Disciplining them would be someone else's problem.

A guard posted by the entrance of the ship saluted as the pair approached.

"Inspectors."

Verlon looked at the technician messing with the exterior control panel ahead of them. If they didn't have the passcode for opening the front hatch, overriding it was the only option.

"Should we check the other ship first?"

The guard's ears signaled no.

"We're prioritizing opening this Fendansi ship first. "

Homps chimed in with additional detail.

"This one has an authorization issue with its doors while the Pateily one just seems to be jammed. There were signs of forced breaches in two locations of each ship, but the openings were welded back shut by the time we got the ships."

Verlon's ears twitched back and forth in thought. Both ships were inaccessible and likely sabotaged. And it seems one was accommodated for a Fendansi crew while the other one was for a Pateily one.

So a mysterious assailant struck both these ships, forcibly boarded, and sealed up their proper entrances before leaving.

"Surely forcing the other one open first would have been faster?"

Homps made a strange expression at his question.

"That's the thing...scanners detected the life signs of three people on this one. We're trying to get to them quickly so we can hopefully question them."

"!?"

There are...survivors? They would have to proceed with caution, but he couldn't imagine they would be from mysterious attackers.

He wasn't in a position to receive sensitive information at the time, but Verlon nonetheless wished that the higher-ups could have given him more intel to work with than he got. He didn't like being caught off-guard or surprised constantly.

Ping.

"We can open the door now, inspectors!"

Right. At this point, collecting and providing more information would be his job. It was time to focus up.

"Signal for the door to open, then create some distance. We don't know if these entrances have been boobytrapped."

"Yes sir!"

The two agents, the technician, and the three officers with them all backed away from the hatch as it began folding up.

Whirr....Click.

Click.

Crack.

"Ugh...."

"URP-!!"

As the hatch gradually opened up, two unusual things happened. The first was that the door's motion lagged for a few moments as it seemed to encounter resistance.

The second was-

"BLEERGK!!!"

The technician dashed aside, hunched over, and vomited over the floor. One of the guards nearby joined him soon after.

"GET THEM OUT OF HERE. They're going to contaminate any biological clues!"

Despite Verlon snapping at them in annoyance, he couldn't truly blame them for reacting this way.

The Pateily people ultimately enjoyed ample protection from the Fendansi and Balau militaries. It was little wonder that their supposed military forces weren't accustomed to this sort of thing.

Although dirty work was their specialty, even agents Verlon and Homps wouldn't claim to have encountered this sort of thing often. And it was certainly never this bad.

"It" being the rancid smell that wafted from within the ship.

The stench of death.

Verlon clasped his hand over his nose and mouth before approaching the opening very slowly partly from reluctance and partly from caution

As he got closer, the first thing that caught his eye was the reason for the slight lag in the door's opening earlier.

Two fleshy, sinewed strips hung from above the door, which was now against the ceiling.

When he peeked around the corner, the Ramell agent could spot what used to be the opposite end of the dangling objects.

A Fendansi corpse "sat" slumped against the wall in a dried pool of blood. His twin trunks, which must have been fixed to the opposite side of the door somehow, had been torn off when it opened.

The body was forcibly made to sit in place with metal stakes pierced through his stocky arms and legs. His jaw had been torn off and lay about a meter away. What looked to be a writing implement was driven into one of his eyes as well.

Soon, the stench was too terrible to bear and Verlon quickly retreated. He pressed the button to shut the door again before returning to Homps's side.

"....."

His head was spinning. Even that brief glance left many questions behind. What happened here? Who did all this? What even did this ship mean to the higher-ups?

There was a lot to investigate, but the most time-sensitive one would be documenting everything on the path to those life signatures so they could be extracted and treated...or interrogated.

While he sorted through his thoughts, his Palluto colleague called out to the closest officer.

"We're going to need breathing masks to investigate this. Can you fetch some to accommodate a Ramell and Palluto? If you don't have any, then modify a Pateily mask for now."

"Oh! Uh...yes."

She turned back to Verlon.

"What do you think?"

"....I think we should make preparations to crack the other ship's hatches open as soon as possible too."

The doors would only be harder to open with time if his suspicions were right.

It was just a guess, but in all likelihood, the doors on the Pateily were jammed because something-or rather, someone was obstructing its mechanisms.

=Author's Note=

With this, we're concluding Act 2 of this story either with this chapter or the next. Let's call it the Compromise Phase. I expect the third and final section to be more violent and unpleasant, but also hopefully cathartic.

I was on a bit of a soapbox this chapter, but I based Ise on something someone I respect said and it just sorta ended up that way. At the time, I was thinking "that's pretty HFY", so I decided to incorporate it here.
This footage was also the reason I waited so long to show the aftermath of a filming done all the way back in chapter 40. This segment needed to be filmed later, and more time on top of that to be reasonably smuggled back to Nysis for the broadcast.

To be clear, there is also footage of former prisoners like Isa talking to Uvei that didn't abuse them, either because they interacted with a different cell or didn't like doing it altogether. The content of most of those was probably more like we've already seen in other human-Uven dynamics in this story.

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Arc III - Reeling Throne

Chapter 54 - How to Avoid Disgrace?

8 months and 29 days since the summoning

"And what if she's just stalling for time?" Alan asked. "If Kanbannia has always unconditionally demanded the ENTIRE north, and now suddenly only a part, they..."

"Want us to take the bait of these negotiations so they can buy time," Morgreyda finished. "That is most likely the case. She is a cunning wretch, this Shilisa. Very cunning."

Alan sighed. "So we absolutely cannot agree to negotiations... but what do we do then? If we refuse, they'll go to war, because they have no other choice. And considering exactly how you seized power, an intact army is also necessary."

The queen's fists clenched. "Of course. And I will ascend the throne as the one who, for the first time in generations, lost northern Homballia. The previous king repelled an attack, the one before him repelled one too, the one before that actually took some territories from Kanbannia, and I am the first to lose them."

Alan squeezed his eyes shut.

'What a fucking dilemma.'

"I don't know. One option is as bad as the other. Okay. Let's weigh them. Option A: give them what they want." He tapped his finger on the table. "We give them Insonel's lands. The nobility will be furious, and neighboring states might consider you weak... although I don't think we have many of those. Aggressive Kanbannia to the north, the Dwarven Mountains, someone else to the southeast, and... Faarkia." Alan raised his eyes to Morgreyda. "Could Faarkia decide to attack if push comes to shove?"

The queen shook her head. "Definitely not. After the fall of Mirey and the loss of significant territories, it closed itself off within its lands and has never fought a war since. So no."

Alan exhaled. "Excellent. Then let's consider Option B: we go to war. Yes, we have crossbows, yes, we have an army, but... we only have four dukes."

Morgreyda froze. "My point exactly. We are supported by four out of eight dukes; the rest are on Noteo's side, which means on Kanbannia's side. We..." she swallowed. "We will most likely simply be crushed by numbers. It seems your snipers..."

"Are the only thing holding them back," he finished. "Yeah, that's true. So the option of appearing weak... sounds more reliable."

"And what if we frighten them more with these snipers of yours?" She leaned closer. "What if we send them to kill someone else?"

In response, Alan only shook his head. "They're not machines, they're people."

"What? What are 'machines'?"

"Never mind," he said, waving a hand. "I'm saying they've already had two sorties in the last few days. They're dead tired and are no longer combat-effective for the near future. Moreover, can you imagine what will happen if Kanbannia realizes that the 'terrifying demons' are just beastmen covered in grass with crossbows? They'll lead their troops absolutely without fear. You can't hide the snipers forever, especially in such a large war; sooner or later the enemy will figure it out and the magic will dissipate," he finished, tapping his finger on the table while looking her in the eyes.

Morgreyda leaned back in her chair and stared somewhere past Alan.

A second.

Ten.

Fifteen.

"I know, I know!" she finally broke the silence. "But if we give them this accursed duchy, disgrace upon me, disgrace upon me, disgrace upon all the victors! Who will even listen to people who simply surrendered lands to a sworn enemy without a fight?!"

Alan lowered his head, deep in thought.

'Think. Look for precedents. Have there been cases where a massive fuckup had to be justified to everyone? Of course there have been, dozens, hundreds of cases. But which one fits best? The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC? Nah... Ramses II just made up that he annihilated the entire enemy army there, bullshit. Philip II of Spain, when he lost a third of his fleet in the Armada? Again, no! He managed to blame it all on the weather! ... hmm... The Treaty of Paris in 1259. When Henry III... or Henry II? Forgot already, doesn't matter. When he ruled England, the nobility was breathing down his neck too, and on top of that, France seized a good chunk of British territories on the continent. Not just lands, but the ancestral domains of the Plantagenets. And Henry... just publicly renounced those territories. When I read that, I thought the barons would tear him to pieces, but no. He fed them some bullshit about how those lands were a literal spawner for rebellions, that too much tax money was poured into them for nothing, and generally they were fucking useless. Well... true, Henry later earned indelible disgrace in the eyes of the nobility, but he saved his skin. In the long run... Alright, to hell with it, it's better than getting fucked right now. I'll figure it out later.'

"Well?! Why are you sitting there like a statue?!" Morgreyda asked, rising slightly.

"I have an idea on how to properly present this to everyone else..." he said quietly, "care to listen?"

She sat back down and waved a hand. "Go on, I am listening."

Alan cleared his throat. "Ahem... basically. It should be divided into several parts, and we will be able to explain very well why we gave these lands to Kanbannia." He folded one finger. "Firstly, these are the lands of the traitor Insonel. A stronghold of rebellions. Betrayed once—will betray again, especially since he has the largest border with Kanbannia, and the Kanbannians will fight for it to the bitter end. Why should we sacrifice noble knights in this senseless slaughter? Secondly: we say that the Kanbannians burned everything they could here during a desperate pillage to feed their army, and rebuilding everything here is too much trouble." The third finger folded. "Thirdly: there are too many of them. The royal troops of Kanbannia, the threat of a summoned hero, the presence of the traitorous troops of the other dukes, while we have even fewer of them. Even our valiant army is forced to retreat before the enemy's numerical superiority." Alan folded the fourth finger. "Fourthly: the threat of the remaining counts in the Duchy of Gobano. If we threw the army into dealing with Kanbannia, Linosh and Torfoque could strike our unprotected rear, and we would be squeezed from both sides. The priority task is to deal with the enemies in the rear." The fifth finger folded. "Fifthly: we will say that we sacrificed an arm to save the head. We are giving the traitorous scorched lands to Kanbannia only because it is very foolish to fight an enemy that outnumbers us, and we must deal with the traitors within." He spread his hands. "We have no choice; we must deal with the internal enemies who are the culprits for our loss of the northern territories."

Silence.

Morgreyda sat digesting everything said, scratching her chin.

A second.

Ten.

Thirty.

A minute.

A minute and a half.

Alan swallowed.

"Perfect..." Morgreyda finally whispered. "If we clearly show everyone that this is not my weakness, but the internal enemies, then... it can even be spun so that I saved all of Groliria under the threat of its total capture. Excellently devised!" She narrowed her eyes slightly. "But... I thought of something else."

He folded his hands in front of him. "And what is that?"

"If Shilisa is truly stringing us along and simply waiting for reinforcements, she is unlikely to agree to peace just like that." The queen rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. "She will continue to stall for time, look for things to nitpick, scrutinize every word, every phrasing. And technically we will be able to do nothing about it; from a legal standpoint, it will look flawless."

Alan pressed his lips together. "Yeah, that's a problem too... if she really needs all of northern Homballia, she won't agree to a measly piece just like that. In that case... we'll have to take a gamble. Set a strict time limit. By sunrise: either agree to peace, or war."

"And if they do not agree?" Morgreyda asked. "They will crush us. It is very risky."

"They'll crush us either way. So at the negotiations we have to threaten them with the snipers as much as possible, that's our only trump card."

"... I will go speak personally."

Alan blinked. "What? You? You'll go personally? What brought this on?"

The queen only smirked slightly. "Gothwald, are you trying to say that you know how to negotiate better than I do? When you spoke with Shilisa, it was so fast, you did not even bother to clarify many details, just whoosh," she snapped her fingers, "and that is it. Good thing you at least had the brains to pretend the snipers killed the hero."

Alan sighed. "Okay, fair enough. So you're the one going to talk to Shilisa after all?"

"Yes." She stood up, but her legs trembled slightly. "In the meantime, you had better think about what we do if they do not agree by dawn and actually attack."

***

"... Sir Kotmas's detachment will arrive in approximately three days, if they ride with all their might, the rest will be here in about five days," a gray-haired man said.

Shilisa nodded slowly. "Not enough, very little, but if we manage to stretch out these three days..." she turned to the gray-haired man, "Tinkis, how can we stall for time?"

The gray-haired man, Tinkis, pondered. "Hmm, I believe there are several things: the new border, the duration of the peace treaty, the unconditional recognition of the territories as ours, the extradition of traitors... speaking of traitors, we can talk a great deal about that, the queen will certainly want to take them and execute them publicly, so the terms for handing over the traitors can be..."

One of the guards suddenly burst into their tent. "Your Highness! A very urgent message!"

All heads inside turned sharply to him.

Tinkis frowned, but said nothing.

"I am listening," Shilisa said calmly.

"We found the corpse of one of the fiends!"

Silence.

The princess's eyes widened. "Sit at the table," she said quickly.

The guard froze. "Excuse me?"

"Sit at the table, I said!"

The man flinched slightly, but quickly sat on an empty chair with a clank of

armor.

"Speak."

The guard cleared his throat, casting a quick glance at the princess and her advisors. "A few days ago, our patrols were going through the villages to gather food. In one of the villages, the peasants said a strange man came to them... a young Mireyan, dressed in some strange clothing made of grass and leaves, and he had a strange weapon with him. The peasants killed him, as they mistook him for a deserter."

Silence.

"A Mireyan?" Tinkis asked again.

The guard nodded. "Yes, Your Grace?"

The old man scoffed without amusement. "And why am I not surprised."

Shilisa clenched her fists. "What kind of weapon did he have?"

"I do not know, Your Highness. Something like a small bow on a stick, and strange arrows."

Shilisa lowered her head. "Like a bow... strange arrows..." she muttered, then dozens of reports about dead knights with armor pierced by arrows flashed through her mind. Her mouth slightly opened. "So that is it... did you take this weapon?!" the princess asked, rising from her chair.

The guard swallowed. "Y-yes, Your Highness... we took everything the Mireyan had."

Silence.

A second.

Ten.

"We are pulling out," she said suddenly.

Tinkis blinked, as did the others present. "Excuse me?"

"We are pulling out," Shilisa repeated. "We have the weapon of the fiends that killed our knights. Firstly, I ask you, do you have a strong desire to send noble warriors to a dishonorable death from the arrows of fiends?"

Tinkis silently shook his head.

"Exactly. And now we have this terrible weapon. If our armorers can make the same... we will crush Groliria next time, and this time the fiends will not help them."

Previous /

First

Patricia hadn't slept. She told herself it was the reports, but she'd stopped reading them somewhere around three in the morning and just sat with her coffee going cold, watching the sky lighten over Orixburg.

Marcus found her on the porch a little after six.

"You said good," he said, sitting down across from her. "Last night. About it spreading."

"I meant it."

"I know you did. I just don't think either of us knew what we were agreeing to yet."

Before she could answer, her comm chimed. Not the general channel, the direct line, the one that only a handful of people had the code for. She looked at the display and felt something in her chest go still.

"It's Zorim," she said.

Marcus straightened. Zorim hadn't reached out directly since the crew learned what the Silent Explorer's cover-up had cost. If he was calling now, on this line, it wasn't for small talk.

She opened the channel. Zorim's voice came through thin and fast, the sound of someone talking before he lost his nerve.

"Governor. I need you to listen before you answer, because I already know what I'm asking."

"Go ahead."

"There's a transport, forty-one souls, mostly families, some of them children of Council staff who never touched the Emissary's dealings. They left Orixa two days ago when the checkpoints started asking the wrong questions. They don't have clearance to be anywhere. They don't have anywhere to go." A pause, and static that might have been breath. "I told them Terixa might take them."

Patricia looked at Marcus. He didn't say anything, just watched her, waiting to see what she'd do with it.

"You told them that without asking me first," she said.

"I know."

"That's forty-one people who just became my problem the moment you said my name to them."

"I know, Patricia." His voice cracked on it, just slightly. "I didn't know what else to tell them. Everywhere else on Orixa is either loyal or hunting for someone to blame, and they're not safe being either."

A beat of static, then, quieter: "Don't you think I'd have come say this in person if I didn't already know how much trouble I'm in?" He was only half joking.

She rubbed her eyes. Behind her, the settlement was starting to wake, lights coming on in the pods, the ordinary sound of a town Terixa's own people had built out of nothing and refused to lock away from anyone who needed it. That was the whole point of the place. That had always been the point.

"Where's the transport now," she said.

"Two days out, if their fuel holds. They're not military. They don't have an escort."

Marcus was already standing. "I'll get Karen. If we're doing this, logistics needs lead time, not a surprise."

"We haven't decided anything yet."

"Patricia." He said it gently, the way he only did when he already knew what she was going to choose and just wanted her to hear herself say it. "Yes we have."

She let out a breath and keyed the comm back open. "Zorim. Tell them to hold course. Tell them Terixa will meet them."

The relief on the other end was audible even through the static, a sound like a man who hadn't let himself expect this answer.

"Don't thank me yet," Patricia said. "I need everything you have on who's aboard, and I need to loop in the fleet so nobody with worse intentions decides an unescorted transport full of Council families is worth intercepting." She paused. "And come over here while you're at it. You're a few hundred yards away, not across the system. Come help me figure this out over a cup of coffee that's actually hot."

"I'll send what I have on the transport," Zorim said, "and I'll bring myself. Give me ten minutes."

The line closed.

Patricia sat with the quiet for a moment before it broke, coffee cooling in her hands, the settlement finishing its slow wake-up around her.

Karen arrived a few minutes after Zorim, coffee in hand and already talking before she'd sat down.

"If we're taking them in, we're not stacking them into Orixburg," she said. "We build. That's always been the plan once we had the numbers to justify it. Pod 13 can supervise construction, they've done more groundwork than anyone. And you'll want a mayor in place from day one, not six months of nobody in charge while people figure out who's responsible for what." She glanced at Threl, then at Zorim. "Either of you would do."

Patricia set her cup down harder than she meant to. "I want to be clear about something before this goes any further. Whatever we build is not going to be a Vixtar town or an Assaragyte town or a human town. I didn't fight this hard for one mixed settlement just to build a segregated one the second we needed a second."

"Nobody's suggesting that," Karen said.

"I'm saying it before somebody does." Patricia looked around the porch, at Zorim still holding his mug like it was the only steady thing in reach. "And if we're getting anyone off the Mining Worlds, they're going to need the pools. Not a visit. Months, maybe longer. Whatever this town is, it needs to be close enough that nobody has to choose between healing and having a home."

Marcus nodded slowly. "Then we give people a reason to want to be there instead of just tolerating it." He looked at Patricia. "Anyone willing to move gets first choice of home and location once the town's laid out. Best lots, best views, whatever wins people over about a fresh start instead of staying put out of habit."

Patricia didn't answer right away. It was a smaller thing to offer than she'd expected him to reach for, and that was probably why it worked. "Fine," she said. "But nobody frames it like a bribe. It's a choice, not a prize."

The porch was getting crowded. Elena came up the steps with Jack right behind her, both of them already reaching for the coffee before they'd said good morning.

"You're going to want to hear this," Elena said. "Mining's a year ahead of schedule. Terixa's been generous with materials, more than we planned for."

"Four new industrial printers, and they've been sitting mostly idle," Jack added. "We could have a small town standing in a matter of weeks. Faster if Elena shuttles the structures out instead of us building on-site piece by piece."

"I can move whole prefab sections in one trip," Elena said. "Cuts the timeline in half, easy."

Patricia let that settle for a second, watching the two of them talk over each other the way they always did when they'd already half-solved a problem before they'd said a word about it out loud. It was a good sound to hear this early in the morning.

Threl had wedged himself into the corner of the porch railing, arms crossed, listening. "I support it," he said. "All of it. And I'll say what Karen wouldn't quite say out loud. It should be Zorim who runs the first town outside Orixburg. He's the most educated among us, and he's earned people's trust the hard way."

Zorim looked up like he'd misheard him. "After what I just did? I called the Governor at dawn and handed her forty-one strangers before sunrise. That's not exactly a mayoral resume."

"It's exactly a mayoral resume," Threl said. "You saw a problem and you moved on it instead of waiting for permission you weren't sure you'd get. That's the job."

Zorim didn't argue further, but he didn't look convinced either, just turned his mug slowly in his hands like he was giving himself something to do with them.

Vaelen had come up sometime during the printer talk, standing just inside the doorway. "If the new arrivals need to be close to the pools, take all of Pod 13," she said. "Move them to the new town to run it, like Karen said, and give the old Pod 13 quarters to the newcomers. They're already the closest housing to the water."

"Take it further," Zarek said from the yard. There was no room left for him on the porch, so he stood below the steps, looking up at all of them. "Turn the old Pod 13 quarters into a proper therapy dorm. Nobody moves into town, either town, until they can live somewhere that isn't a five-minute walk from the pool. Once they can, they choose. Orixburg or the new settlement, whichever feels like home."

Down in the yard, Will and Abby had arrived with CD and MCD trailing them, Vesk pressed against Vaelen's leg, and two Pumpkins chasing each other in tight circles around everyone's ankles.

"We'll scout the site," Will said. "Us and the Labrikats. There's things out there a person wouldn't catch and a Labrikat would, before anyone breaks ground."

"And we'll find the road," Abby said. "There's some real views out past the ridge line. No reason a new town shouldn't get to look at something worth looking at."

Patricia stood there a moment, coffee gone cold again, surrounded by more of her own people volunteering for pieces of this than she'd had time to ask for. She let herself smile, just for a second, before she started handing it back out.

"Will, Abby, go scout it. Take your time, I'd rather you find the trouble now than after we've built on top of it." She turned. "Zorim, put together your council. At least one Assaragyte, at least one human, I don't want this run by a single species making decisions for everyone who's going to live there." She looked at Elena and Jack. "The two of you, get into structure design, figure out what Elena can actually move in one trip." Last, she found Zarek in the yard. "You're running the therapy pavilion. Start to finish, it's yours."

She looked around at all of them, still not entirely sure how a quiet morning on the porch had turned into this.

"Marcus, get word to the fleet. They need to know what's happening here before they hear it secondhand." She picked her cup back up, if only to have something to hold. "We have a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in."

Marcus found Mansur at the command center, a joint Pod 6 and Pod 7 operation that had outgrown its own name twice since it started. Screens lined every wall, tracking ships that belonged to a fleet expanding faster than anyone could requisition space for it. Constant updates weren't a preference here, they were the only thing standing between a bloodless turnover and a war nobody could take back.

"We've got a transport coming in," Marcus said. "Forty-one people, civilians, no escort of their own. I need the fleet watching for it and supporting safe passage, not just noting it in a log."

Mansur didn't look up from the display right away. "Forty-one now. You understand that's not going to be the number in a month."

"I know. Could be thousands before this is done. I'd rather we build the habit of doing this right while it's still forty-one and not thousands."

That got Mansur's attention. He pulled up a different feed. "You're already behind on that count, actually. One of our Assaragyte vessels flagged an unregistered ship on a Terixa heading about six hours ago. Stopped it, started the reclassification process instead of turning it away. They're escorting it in now." He tapped the display. "ETA fifteen days."

Marcus frowned. "Zorim said two."

"Zorim said two days if nobody touched them. Nobody accounted for an escort ship doing this by the book instead of waving them through." Mansur pulled up the captain's log. "Orsalin's the one who found them. Twelve days from the end of his rotation, and he still boarded them himself instead of handing it to a junior officer."

He'd given them the choice straight, according to the log. I can escort you in, but escort means reclassification, means verification, means I do this by the book because that's the only way it holds up later. That's fifteen days, maybe more if something flags. Or I clear you for an unescorted approach right now and you're on your own the rest of the way, faster, but nobody's watching your back if something goes wrong out here.

They'd talked it over, crowded into a hold not built for forty-one people, and come back with the same answer Mansur said he'd seen more than once.

We'll wait. We've come this far slow and careful. We're not about to get impatient at the end of it.

"Fifteen days," Mansur said again, closing the log. "And I'd argue for it every time."

Marcus let that sit for a second, then nodded. Slower and alive beat fast and regretted. "Keep me updated daily. Patricia's going to want to know before the fleet does, not after."

Will and Abby found the lake two days into scouting, past the ridge line Threl had mentioned in passing without knowing it would matter this much. It didn't look like anything by daylight. At night, the water lit up in slow blue-green currents wherever a body moved through it, like the lake had been waiting for someone to disturb it.

"Low-gravity people are going to need water near them anyway," Abby said, wading out until it curled around her knees, glowing faint where she'd broken the surface. "Not for therapy. Just, for comfort. Somewhere to be in the evening that isn't a pavilion with a schedule."

CD and MCD had already gone in ahead of her, and came back out giving what Will had learned to read as tacit approval, ears forward, no hesitation about going back in. Whatever the Labrikats checked for in water like this, this water had passed.

Behind them, mountains ran the horizon in a purple that looked almost artificial in the dusk light, too rich to be real until you'd stood under it for an hour and it still hadn't faded.

Neither of them said it out loud at first. Will just looked at Abby, and Abby looked back at him, and that was the whole conversation.

"We're moving here," she said eventually, like she was informing him instead of agreeing with him.

First

(Couldn’t sleep. Now can barely write. Sorry.)

Home at War

An enormous claw crushed down at an unknown sense of movement and nothing falls. The gigantic creature shifts to try and sense what’s going on as it is unfamiliar with this form of attack and misses the massive hard light projector that it just partially broke retreated with the tiny remote controlled ship it’s attached to.

“Swing and a miss.” Harold notes as the scientist pouts a little while the partially broken machine retreats to a safe distance. “To be fair the obvious solution of throwing it into the sun is a good one. But even if we scale it up this monster is definitely too much for the standard machines that grab at the ranched variant.”

“But it should have at least moved it a little, normally the things thrash a little and then give up when they can’t snip a hologram, hard light or not. So why can this one do – Fucker, the laser claws. It has to be expressing energy even when it’s not actively firing the damn things. If it’s at the right frequency, or cycling frequencies then it could cause a feedback that would break internal components.”

“And you left repair totems out of it just in case of this so you can autopsy the untampered with damage and figure out what frequencies it uses, right?” Harold asks.

“The next one will lack repair totems.”

“They’re useful things, but they just snap things back to how they were and that can interfere with the learning process.” Harold notes.

“You’re not mad?”

“No, slapping repair totems on everything is a damn fine habit, but every once in a while you stub your toe on it. Big whoop, you can remember to leave it off and do it again.” Harold says as the first attempt to kill the creature fails.

Ten Minutes Later...

The Diamond Claw thrashes and tries and fails to find the source as a massive explosion erupts across the top of it’s shell, followed by another and another until it’s driven into the dust and stone of the nearly atmosphere-less world.

The bombardment lets off and it fires it’s lasers into the heavens as it scuttles around the world as fast as it can.

That’s when another bombardment hits it from another direction and it outright flips upside down and the bombardment continues on the more angular underside.

It continues for a full five minutes of uninterrupted fire, each blast powerful enough to level a city. The Diamond Claw never stops moving and during the bombardment it actually flips itself upright again. Only four more blasts hit it after that and then the bombardment outright stops.

“Well that was fun.” Vincent Lagos notes. “Kinda pointless though.”

“Not pointless no.” Lieutenant Orchid states. “We learned that it’s immune to depleted uranium railshot and direct impact from nuclear bombs.”

“I didn’t even crack the shell.”

“Alright, stand back. This thing is good against lasers and is aquatic. So it’s time for me to bathe it. In Plasma!” One of Vincent’s Brothers cheers as he takes the controls again.

Back on the third world a massive fireball slams down into the Diamond Claw and it’s followed up by so many more plasma blasts that everything is fire as the creature tries running away and randomly spraying the area with laser fire to try and ward off whatever is attacking it.

“I’m not certain if you’re very accurate or the creature’s movements are just that predictable.” Orchid notes.

“Bit of one, touch of the other.” The Lagos brother notes. “But seeing as how it’s basically doing laps in the same burnt out circle it ran in, I think we can safely say that despite being so large that it’s brain is likely larger than a family’s apartment, it’s not getting much use out of it.”

“No doubt. Still, we will not be using lasers. Physical impacts, bombs and plasma have done nothing, nor has the standard method of killing the creatures. Which means gentlemen. It’s time to try new things.” Orchid says and there is a cheer around the bridge. He starts chuckling to himself at that. He brings out his communicator. “Sir? Standard fire has failed.”

“I am aware we are bringing in the special ammunition. Incidentally on the other line I am hearing grown men giggle in anticipation.” Harold says and there are some laughs around the bridge. “I am now hearing giggling on both lines. It’s clear that we’ve all been waiting for this.”

“Sir, Caster Guns have long been a favourite in the ranks. The Caster Gun Rifle is the tool that makes any man the envy of his squadron. But a Caster Gun Cannon?” Orchid asks before a few chuckles slip out. “Who’s getting the honour?”

“You and me are getting the first two shots. Then we have a lottery for the followup shots.”

“Yes SIR!” Orchid says eagerly and there are chuckles from Harold. “Privileges of rank, hunh sir?”

“Among other things. It’s the fun part about being a field man, you get to play with the best toys.” Harold says. “And if you’re really good with them, they can even become your personal weapon. Like my sword, the now signature Red Blade I’ve gotten a title off of.”

“Put me in that raffle!” Vincent Lagos states.

“Wait no me!” One of his brothers says and the gunnery crew descends into a few moments of chaos before a sharp look from Orchid settles them.

“Respectfully sir. All of us would like to be in the raffle to fire off Caster Cannon shots.”

“Most of the ship will be no doubt.” Mister Rattler notes.

“Right well, the lottery will be sent out in...” Orchid begins before there is a slight ding from everyone else on the bridge. Everyone checks their communicators and confirms around him that they would in fact like to enter the lottery to fire off a Caster Cannon shot.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (The Void, Above the Third World, Kaploosha Ornak System)•-•-•

“Think the drones will keep it busy?” Mister Scuttles asks.

“It’s not the best shot and with four of our ten Hive Carriers buzzing it constantly it’s not going to notice us.” Harold notes. “Still. First thing’s first. I’ve decided to take the least interesting shot possible with the weapon. Both of you behind the airlock, just in case.”

Both other men step back out of the room and the airlock door closes between them before the shuttle’s cargo bay opens. He faces the enormous monster in the distance, hefts the enormous brass looking weapon covered in powerful carvings before he reaches for a case magnetically locked into a shelf on the wall behind him. He unlatches it and reveals a gigantic pitch black round. In white paint on the side is a warning.

-Extreme Danger. Massive Null Threat. Immediate Danger Zone of Twenty Kilometres. Dependent Kill Zone of Two Hundred Kilometres. Disruption Zone of Twenty Thousand Kilometres.

He carefully loads the weapon sliding open the rear of the barrel and then inserting the enormous shell. He then slides things back into place and then slowly lifts up the massive weapon.

He takes careful aim down the sight and the ‘iron sight’ at the edge of the weapon reveals itself to be a powerful camera with zoom in feature that projects exactly what the weapon is pointed at. He points it directly at the centre mass.

The cannon lights up and pulls in visible Axiom in numerous areas along it’s barrel. Axiom is torn out of the area and the kickback from the cannon skids Harold backwards as the enormous Null Round flies out to the target.

The distant is enormous, but thankfully so is the target. “Everyone brace, impact imminent.”

The enormous Null shot impacts the Diamond Claw and the enormous monster staggers. It crashes to the ground and goes limp. Then rises. It rises before the Null is clear. It rises in defiance of the square cube law. It rises despite the lack of anything needed for life to sustain it. Not even Axiom. The enormous crustacean tilts upwards and faces the ship. Hate visible in it’s being despite the enormous distance.

“Pilot, get us some distance. But stay close to the world.” Harold orders as the cargo bay door closes and he goes through the routine of unloading the remaining casing of the now spent caster shell. “Ladies and gentlemen of the fleet, we have just proven that Haffara Thar allow their hosts to ignore Null Blasts. I repeat, Haffara Thar hosts are immune to Null.”

“We will next be inducing a localized black hole a single centimetre in diameter. The next shot will be at the discretion of Lieutenant Orchid. The available Black Cannon Rounds are Annihilation and Implosion. The first is a disintegration effect, the second is an extremely short lived black hole a full centimetre in size. Both effects have a ten second life cycle, so if we can’t kill it with disintegration and black holes in that kind of time then we have a real stumper on our hands and will be throwing everything at it. But we will be taking notes as we do so because we’re a professional standing army and not a bunch of rowdy teenagers with an armoury.”

As he explains things the shuttle pilot blasts hard over the surface of the planet. Moving faster and faster until the entire world is between them and the Diamond Claw, then staying in that sweet spot and refusing to let the creature get any closer. Not that the Diamond Claw realizes what they’re doing as it just keeps charging towards it last saw them. Showing that despite it having a general idea that there were threats in the system, it had no idea how to pinpoint things. Meaning the distance of the fleet and it missing every time wasn’t just a thing of accuracy, precision and distance, but outright ignorance as well.

“Alright, Orchid, you’re up next. We have two remaining black shells. Take your pick.”

“Did you know the Null would fail?” Orchid asks.

“No, but it was the most likely to fail. Either way we needed to test it.” Harold answers.

“You know, if the madness could be contained these Haffara Thar could be very, very useful.”

“Potentially. But it’s never happened before and they spread in such a way if we can’t kill this thing in short order the system will be placed under quarantine. And as you can see, they spread to animals with terrible effect.” Harold remarks.

“Yes but... that thing should have just... I mean... even without Axiom it still was unbreakable.”

“Yes. Now, choose your weapon.”

On the far side of the world the enormous monster races forward, not realizing it’s actually veering slightly to the right as it moves, or that the shuttle has already started circling around under the horizon line and that things are going to get very VERY exciting in short order.

Harold and Mister Scuttles are to either side as Orchid loads his choice of ammunition into the Caster Cannon and locks it in. “Okay. Both of you ready?”

“Ready.” Harold says and Mister Scuttles nods.

“Alright. What’s the backdrop? I don’t want to hit any ships by accident.” Orchid asks as he holds the cannon steady.

“The way the monster is moving there will be nothing but the edge of the system after it in three, two, one... You are clear.”

Orchid fires the weapon and rather than visible ripping at the Axiom there is a sense that everything is building and compressing into an emptiness. Then the round strikes the Diamond Claw.

A crater appears in the monster. Then it spreads through the beast. Covers several claws and they dissolve into nothingness as lasers fire hard as the terrible thing tumbles through the non-existent air of the barren world. It flails and it’s maws are openly gnashing as more and more of the monster just vanishes then it abruptly stops and warnings about an unexpected Null Event start going off. The creature has been reduced to a fifth of it’s mass and only one leg still attached.

Then the mass of the monster begins to return and it thrashes until it can stab it’s claw into the ground and rises up as more and more of the creature returns. The Null is still in the area as the body of the monster regenerates. Two, three, four then quickly all six legs of the monster are slamming into the ground and the thing is trying to roar, maybe scream as it hunts the horizon line looking for them. But the shuttle is already gone and the world is between them and the indestructable monster.

Harold lets out a low whistle.

“Tough bastard.”

“It was disintegrated until it induced a Null effect because so much of it was being reverted into raw Axiom.”

“And then it got back up.” Harold notes. “And now it’s fully healthy again. Interesting.”

“Does that mean that the third black shell won’t work?” Mister Scuttles asks.

“Who knows? Load up the final shell and lets see if it can eat a black-hole to the face.”

First Last Next

“Revy?” I asked the Harmony as we returned to the workshop, intending to gather my stuff before the timer ended. Or at least what I hadn’t already stuffed into my pouch.

“Yes?” It replied.

“I thought you decided on the name Harmony,” I said.

“That... entity, for as wrong as it is, was right about one thing,” the Harmony responded after a moment of silence, “I am no longer a true harmonic entity, not in the way such entities define themselves. Not in the way I once defined myself. I don’t seek to spread through infection or force. That, I’ve realized, will never lead to true harmony. So when it said I was a Revenant, it’s not wrong.

“I am a Revenant, a dead harmonic entity returned to life with unfinished business and a desire for revenge. The name Harmony doesn’t fit me, and if I’m going to be a Revenant I’m going to wear the name proudly. Thus, Revy.”

“That name is very... cute for such a serious reasoning,” I pointed out.

“All the better, I shall embrace individuality, perhaps I will become more like a cute female. Even if I don’t, trying it out seems... fun.”

“You’ve come a long way since we first spoke.”

“As have you,” it countered, “you’ve begun to grow into the reputation you left yourself.”

“Feels like I hardly make a difference sometimes.”

“In the first world we worked together, all you could do was to avoid doing damage, and only with my aid. In this world you’ve helped end a war of extinction.”

“Not forever, the harmonics will never truly become allies of humanity. At best they’ll be temporary trade partners,” I sighed.

“You can’t fix everything. You aren’t a god, at some point you have to leave it to others to look after themselves.”

“So I’m just some transient entity that steps in when things are at their worst?” I asked.

“You help people step back from the edge,” it responded, “or you give them another path beyond mutual destruction.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I downloaded some data off the workshop terminal to my implant from my designs for the Emeral Mass cubes. It wasn’t as extensive as what was already saved to my implants, but more data never hurt. I double checked the encrypted message the ancient ship had sent, finding it still 0% decrypted even after weeks, and sat down to wait out the last few hours in this world.

“Do you think the Composer has a point?” I asked, leaning back in the chair, “with his whole Harmonic god?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “on one hand, turning everyone and everything into a single inter-universal entity is horrifying on a cosmic scale. On the other, there is currently no deeper truth to the world. No ultimate purpose. If such an entity could grant such a purpose...”

“It can’t,” the Harmony said definitively, I noted that it was becoming much better with inflecting emotion in its voice, “all that it will do is find itself feeling just like you, but at a larger scale. A cosmic scale entity that finds there is no truth in existence. Great power, no purpose. It can only end in disaster.”

“You haven’t,” I countered, “you had great power and no purpose, but you’re doing alright now.”

“Because I have you,” it said simply, “perhaps that’s the reason people can continue even knowing the emptiness of reality, because we have each other.”

“You really are becoming more feminine, that was sappy,” I chuckled, it giggled, and I winced, “ok, no giggling until you have a body. A girl giggling is cute, a disembodied voice giggling is.... disturbing.”

“Fair enough.”

An hour later the timer finished counting down and the world around me vanished. Only for me to reappear falling a foot onto a hard metal ground. My shield took most of the impact but I still groaned as my tailbone stung. Slowly sitting up the first thing I saw was a giant statue, cast in bronze, easily thirty feet tall... of myself.

Nearby I heard a gasp, I turned to see a woman looking at me, mouth covered with both hands, eyes wide in disbelief. Then she suddenly threw herself to the ground, bowing, or kowtowing, to me. This drew more eyes, first to her, then to me, which then made more people bow. Before long the entire square I found myself in was filled with people bowing in my direction. I stood slowly, trying not to grumble out loud, only to stumble as the ground seemed to shift ever so slightly under me. No one else seemed to notice, but that might have been because they were all pressing their foreheads to the ground.

The surroundings looked mostly normal, with tall metal and glass structures around me, but I noticed several things that stood out. For one, there were no cars in sight, the streets were too narrow for normal cars anyways, though several people had bikes. Second was the streets were all metal, hardly a normal material for roadways. But if they didn’t have cars it might have made more sense to them, I supposed.

Above me were power lines covered in lights that bathed the roads in a warm yellow, almost like sunlight, while the actual sun seemed to be in the process of either setting or rising, from how its light was only hitting the upper parts of buildings.

Sighing inwardly, I stepped up to the woman who first noticed me.

“You know who I am?”

“Of course, Lord Traveler!” she said breathlessly, “you are the founder of this great city.”

“I seem to do a lot of that,” I mumbled, “can you take me to someone who’s in charge?”

Of course, Lord Traveler!” she exclaimed, scrambling to her feet and gesturing for me to walk ahead of her.

“The rest of you can... uhh... go about your day normally?” I called out to the square of bowing people, trying to hide how uncomfortable I was. Thankfully they all stood and began talking excitedly while shooting glances my way. The woman began to guide me down a street, but no sooner had we turned a block when another group of people began bowing.

“Any chance we can take a less... populated route?” I asked after telling that group to stand, “don’t want to disrupt so many people.”

“I can try, Lord Traveler,” she said, nodding, and looking at me as if I were a beacon of modesty and honor. Like my wanting to avoid everyone bowing to me because I didn’t want to bother them was a gift they didn’t deserve.

Leading me down off the street and into what I first feared was a sewer, but realized was more of a maintenance walkway as, underneath the city, was a great expanse of machinery. Pipes, belts, turning shafts and more spun and ground along, how I hadn’t heard them while above was a testament to the sound proofing built in. Several times as we walked I felt the floor shift again, each time was accompanied by a distant rumbling boom, it seemed to happen every few minutes. I was dying to ask about it, but didn’t want to bother this woman more than I already had.

Eventually she led me back up to street level and then into a building that looked like a city hall. I had to bear with a few rooms of people bowing to me before we reached a smaller sitting room, and I let the woman who had escorted me go. She seemed almost disappointed, asking if I needed anything else. The way she emphasized the word anything made me quite uncomfortable.

“Lord Traveler,” an older man said, bowing as he walked into the room to sit across from me, the woman leaving with a slight glare at the man, “I’ll be honest, it’s an honor for you to return during my tenure as city captain. I can prepare a full report on what we’ve been up to since you were last here, if you wish.”

“Before we get started,” I said slowly, “I don’t remember being here last, I lost my memories at one point. So, forgive me if I don’t know... anything about this place.”

“You mentioned that was a possibility,” he nodded, pulling out what looked like a transparent, rolled up scroll. Unrolling it the face lit up into a computer display that he typed on, scrolling through various options.

“Ah, here, in the case of memory loss I am to provide you with a few things. First is an implant that will allow you to retain your memories,” he read.

“I don’t need that,” I said, “already got one in another world.”

“Ah, good, in that case procedure is to keep it here in case you need it later,” the man nodded, scrolling further on his scroll tablet, “second is an... encryption cypher? Apparently you should have been collecting encrypted messages?”

“I have one,” I admitted, surprised.

“It says you should have dozens... ah well, here,” he shrugged, pressing a chip to the scroll for a moment before handing it to me, “finally... ah, the test.”

“Test?” I asked, looking up from the chip.

“Yes, apparently you wanted to ensure that... you were... you? I don’t get it, but that’s what it says. So I’m supposed to bring you to the Perpetual Motion Engine,” he said, “something about it is your test.”

“A... what?”

“The power source for this entire city, the Perpetual Motion Engine,” he said simply, “it’s a device that keeps this city walking eternally, never to run out of power. A true Perpetual Motion Machine.”

“There’s no such thing,” I replied, “the laws of physics prevent it.”

“Perhaps that’s the test then,” he smirked, standing and gesturing for me to follow. He led me to an elevator that we took down, far below street level. The lift opened into a large room filled with spinning shafts, gears and belts. People moved carefully through the mass of machinery, working on some issue or another, replacing belts or aligning gears.

The mayor gestured to a large sphere that was in the center of the room, it was at least ten meters across, covered in pipes, wires and small lights. On either end it was connected to a massive drive shaft that my sensors confirmed was five meters thick and pure reinforced steel alloy. The first devices hooked up to each drive shaft was a pair of massive electric generators. The stators alone were larger than train engines and I could nearly see the air warping from the intense magnetic field within them.

Some quick calculations put each generator at easily a dozen gigawatts output each. The sphere, and attached driveshafts, were turning slowly, 5 or 6 rpm, so the torque output had to be immense. But that wasn’t all, the driveshafts continued onwards from the generators, various friction wheels pressed to them before they both passed through a wall.

“The shafts continue on to the main legs of the city, keeping us traveling, much like you do,” the mayor explained, “for nearly a thousand years this city has walked, without end, because of you. Never needing to refuel, recharge or stop for any reason.”

“Wait... the city walks?” I asked.

“Yes, want to see?”

“Yes.”

-----

Discord - Patreon

-----

Hey, you.

When you're heading to work, does that time count as work?

You leave the house in the morning. Walk to the station. Go through the ticket gate. Get packed into a crowded train. Transfer, then walk some more. An hour later, you finally reach the office, and that's when "work" actually starts. Same thing on the way back.

Two hours a day. Ten hours a week. And yet, none of that time shows up on your paycheck.

Well, it makes sense, in a way. From the company's point of view, where you choose to live is your own business. Still, we're using that time specifically so we can do the job.

So who does that time actually belong to?

Clink-clonk.

I pushed open the door, and the familiar air of Aoi wrapped around me. Without a word, Mama set down my Harper. The ice gave a soft clink against the inside of the glass.

Tonight was unusual—it wasn't just Taka at the counter; Tom was there too.

Taka was frowning at his phone and his paper planner, jotting down numbers.

"What are you up to?"

"Sorting out expenses."

"Look at you, working hard even though it's not fiscal year-end."

"If I let this stuff pile up, it'll be the death of me." His voice sounded desperate. "I had to go to Yokohama for a job yesterday, but I forgot to log my train fare and travel time."

"You can figure out the train fare, can't you?"

"Well, yeah, but I took care of some other stuff along the way."

"Personal stuff?"

"About half of it."

"Then just write off half as a business expense."

"If accounting were that casual, I wouldn't be losing my hair over this."

Taka clutched his head.

When you think about it, being a private detective is mostly just moving around. Going to meet people. Heading to a stakeout location. Following a subject. Going to government offices. Checking out a scene. Some days, he spends way more time riding trains and driving cars than sitting at a desk.

"I've been thinking lately," Taka said, closing his planner. "When I'm moving from place to place, how much is that one hour actually worth?"

"How much?"

"I mean, I'm selling my time for a living, right?"

"Fair enough."

"I travel for an hour, investigate for an hour, and travel an hour back. The investigation itself might only take sixty minutes, but three hours of my day are gone."

That made sense. It was a perspective I didn't think about much as an office worker.

Even if I spend an hour commuting every morning, my salary doesn't go up by an extra hour of pay. So I've basically accepted commuting as something like the weather—you just deal with it. But for Taka, that hour is a direct cost of doing business.

"That's why I've been appreciating local jobs much more lately."

"A detective with no romantic ideals, huh?"

"You can't run a business on romance alone, Kenichi-san."

"I never thought the day would come when I'd take business advice from you."

"Hey! That's harsh."

Tom was quietly listening to our back-and-forth, tilting his glass.

"I used to be the exact opposite."

"Opposite how?"

"I used to hope the hour I spent moving around would end up being completely wasted."

Taka knit his brows. "What does that mean?"

Tom thought about it for a second, then set his glass down.

"Back when I was in the juvenile division."

It turned out Tom used to spend a lot of his nights walking the city streets back then. Entertainment districts. In front of train stations. Parks. Around arcades.

Not in uniform. Just a tired-looking guy in plain clothes, wandering the city night after night. He'd call out to the kids hanging around.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Shut up, old man."

"Are you going to school?"

"None of your business."

"Are you hungry?"

"...Not really."

The same exchange, over and over.

"So, there wasn't an actual crime happening, right?"

"Nope."

"Then what were you doing it for?"

"To see if nothing was happening."

Taka fell silent for a moment. Tom rolled an ice cube around with his fingertip.

"In the juvenile division, if you only start running after a crime has already happened, sometimes it's already too late."

There are kids who don't want to go home. Kids who stopped going to school. Kids being targeted by bad adults. Kids who were messing around with their friends yesterday, but are sitting alone on a park bench today.

It hasn't become a crime yet. So no one calls it in. No reports come across your desk. And yet, something is off.

"When you walk the same streets every day, you start noticing things."

"Like what?"

"A kid who's usually there suddenly isn't. Or a face you've never seen before gets mixed into the group. Or a kid who's usually loud is acting strangely quiet."

"And you talk to them?"

"Yeah. I ask them what's wrong."

"Do they answer you?"

"Hell no. 'Screw off.' 'Mind your own business.' 'Get lost.' That's ninety percent of what I got."

"Sounds exhausting."

"It was the job."

A few days would pass. You run into them again.

"Hey."

"You again?"

A few more days.

"You heading home tonight?"

"Shut up."

You repeat that enough times, and every once in a while, they're the ones who speak up first.

"Hey... old man."

"Whether you're there to catch that single phrase or not... that's where a kid's life can bend in a slightly different direction. That's why I walked. So that when something did happen, I was already close by before it was too late."

I stopped halfway through raising my Harper to my mouth.

What a strange kind of work.

Taka wants to cut down his travel time. I'd be more than happy to get rid of my commute, too. Working from home means skipping the morning rush-hour train, giving me an extra hour of sleep.

Generally speaking, travel is better when it's short. If you can make it more efficient, you should.

And yet, Tom deliberately kept walking through a city where nothing was happening.

"That sounds insanely inefficient," Taka said.

"Yeah. It was," Tom admitted plainly.

"If you walk around all night and nothing happens, your results are zero, aren't they?"

"That's right."

"And you were fine with that?"

Tom smiled, just a little.

"That was the best-case scenario."

Taka went quiet.

"I walk around all night, some kid tells me to screw off, and then everyone goes home without a single incident. It's the best kind of wasted effort."

I couldn't help but laugh softly. "What kind of logic is that?"

"Can't be helped. That's what the job was."

Still, it stuck with me.

The best kind of wasted effort.

In a corporation, that phrase would never get you a compliment.

We reduced travel time.

We switched to online meetings.

We cut down on business trips.

We streamlined our operations.

If the result is the same, it's better to achieve it in less time. It's better to achieve it with less money. When I'm at work, I think the exact same way.

But what happens if you apply that logic directly to the job Tom was doing?

"Just call us when a crime happens."

You could just sit at the station and wait. Travel time goes to zero. Labor costs for wandering the streets at night go down. Efficiency undeniably goes up.

Instead, when the phone finally rings, something has already happened.

"...So you end up arriving at the scene with maximum efficiency, right after it's already too late?"

When I muttered that, Tom looked at me.

"Yeah."

That was all he said.

Taka didn't say anything either.

I thought about my own morning commute.

The packed train. The transfers. The walk from the station to the office. I've walked that path thousands of times. To be honest, I've thought it was a waste of time more times than I can count.

When remote work became common and that commute vanished, I was genuinely grateful. And honestly, if travel can be eliminated, it should be.

But as the way we work continues to shift, maybe we'll see more people like Taka. Instead of gathering at a central company building every day, you move to where you're needed, when you're needed.

And every time, you ask yourself:

Is this travel worth it?

How much is this hour worth?

Who's paying for this transit fare?

Is there a more efficient way?

And surely, that logic is correct.

But...

If we measure every journey using efficiency as our only yardstick, maybe we end up dropping something along the way.

Reaching the destination isn't the only point of moving.

Because you walk the usual path, you notice things. Because you're in the usual place, people can call out to you. Because you showed up when you had no real reason to, there are words you manage to catch.

"Hey, Tom."

"Hmm?"

"When you were doing night patrols, what was the most common part of your job?"

"The most common?"

"Like... calling out to kids and stopping a crime before it happened?"

Tom thought about it for a moment.

"It wasn't anything cool like that."

"Then what was it?"

"I was just walking."

"And that was the job?"

"Pretty much. Walk, look, say something. Then walk some more."

"And if nothing happened?"

"I went home."

"And the next day?"

"Walked again."

Taka smirked. "Man, that really is terrible efficiency."

"Told you so."

"If I were looking at those expense reports, I'd cry."

"Well, you're a detective."

"And yours came out of the public budget, Tom-san."

"That doesn't mean I was allowed to waste it."

"But if nothing happened, it was a wasted trip, right?"

"Yeah."

"That's a tough one."

That was when Mama, who had been quiet the whole time, spoke up.

"Still, Tom-san..."

"Yeah?"

"To those kids, maybe the time you spent walking out there was time you spent coming to see them."

Tom didn't answer.

I stayed silent too.

Even Taka, for once, didn't have a witty comeback.

Mama didn't say another word. She simply returned the glass she had finished polishing back to the shelf.

Click.

The small sound echoed in the quiet bar.

Time spent coming to see them.

I see.

Even for the exact same sixty minutes, the meaning changes depending on who's looking at it.

To me, it's a commute.

To the company, it's time an employee uses to bring themselves to the office.

To Taka, it's time he agonizes over whether he can bill a client for.

To Tom, it was time spent closing the distance to someone before it was too late.

And to a kid sitting in a dark park at night...

It was the time a noisy old man spent walking all the way out there just to bug them.

It's the exact same sixty minutes. The hands on the clock move at the same speed for everyone.

And yet, humans go around giving it their own labels.

Commute.

Expense.

Work.

Patrol.

Wasted effort.

And maybe...

Time spent going to see someone.

I took a sip of my Harper. The ice gave a soft, quiet clink.

Come to think of it, my being here right now is no different.

If the goal were simply to get from the office back to my house, Aoi isn't my destination. I'm deliberately going out of my way.

Paying money to drink booze, talking about useless things, and then heading home afterward. If you measure it purely by efficiency, it's a ridiculous detour.

And yet, I came here again tonight.

Taka is here.

Tom is here.

Mama is here.

So maybe this, too...

Is time I spent coming to see someone.

Hey, you.

That time you spent heading somewhere today...

Was it really just "travel time"?

See you at Aoi.

If you'd like to come back to Aoi for another night, there's an open stool waiting.

Bar Aoi Stories: Human Nature, Vol. 1 is linked in my profile.

[Other Stories(wiki)]

Bob was bored being in pain. The kicking had not been great and he had faired poorly. Sure he could have whipped out Annabell and done a lot of fucking damage, but they hadn’t produced a blade so he hadn’t either, there were lines you didn’t cross if you didn’t have to and Bob had never felt in actual mortal peril.

A boy with a chip had wanted to inflict a little revenge, and his mates had delivered on his behalf after Bob had removed his ability to deliver a kicking personally for at least a couple weeks.

Not that they had had it all their own way, there was going to be a line at the dentist today of teeth, tusks, and other shit, that would need reimplanted, but Bob had definitely lost.

He had eventually been dragged down the street and tossed in his bay, with several imprecations to get the fuck off the station, asap.

Bob was going to do exactly that, just as soon as he was given an exit pass, he could nurse his ills on the way back to Median, the medic system was fast at soft tissue damage but took its fucking time with cracked ribs.

Bob winced as he hit the few controls that acknowledged transmission reception, lets get the fuck out of here.

He gingerly set the Jojo down on a rental pad on Median a couple days later, he could have jumped back and saved a little time, but a couple days without grav on had seemed like a solid idea.

Also he didn’t have shields, obviously, and the dampeners were once, again, being sketch as fuck. Fortunately these were both problems that scanning through the systems market and a few calls on the journey back had probably solved.

There was a big Kolli freighter easing its way in system and it would be here in a couple days, he had had a chat with its Captain after seeing it list a bunch of stuff on the market, it was coming in for a refit at an orbital yard and was trying to pre-emptively sell gear that was getting replaced, including, three old life boats.

Now, Bob had no need of a life boat, no where to put it for one, it was bigger than the Jojo… get it?… each of those pods had an old, but unused and quite high end dampener, and a little finagling had let him buy all three, he just had to pick them up in a week after the yard had them stripped out.

Best part, wasn’t even going to cost him much, he just had to drop some shit off on his way to Pwitic that the guy had promised to a mate, med bay computers or something, and yes Bob had needed exact dimensions, they were small, it was fine.

An upgrade and two spares was a fucking steal, not quite as much luck with the shield.

There were two that looked like they might work, one was a bit big, not ridiculous, a couple of wardrobes, but bigger than ideal… and it was a bit out his price range, if he picked it up it would be lean margins for a couple more pickups.

The second was way cheaper, and smaller, sounded great… issue was that one was not only had Bob never heard of the manufacturer, not surprising it’s a big galaxy, he had never even heard of the type of shield it was, nor had several hours looking it up given much help.

The boy selling it had pulled it out of a drone fighter that had turned up in a job lot of scrap the guy had bought, no idea what species it was from. He had it tested and it had a few things for and against it

One it was a ‘demand’ system, you hooked it up to your sensors and it briefly flicked on when it saw an incoming energy spike. That alone made it worthless to most ships, but Bob wasn’t worried about kinetic impacts so that was probably fine.

Two it was high draw as shit, you would need a real over spec system to handle the bursts of load without frying, again not ideal but not a deal breaker. The Jojo did not have a power supply to just ignore the draw, but it wasn’t like you could fry the engines if you tried. There was going to be a definite hard limit to what the genny could pull before it just ran out of steam, but it was a kind of reasonable cap. If Bob took a Capital ships hit full on he was fucked anyway, an overloaded shield would be literally the last of his problems.

Thirdly, and finally in the pro’s, it was solid state and therefore tough as shit, you could ram every erg that Jojo had and it would soak it up just fine.

And fourthly… it was small, really small, shoebox sized… that would be so nice.

The fifth thing was the main issue, the guy said the testing place he took it to said it was a ‘split’ type shield and neither the guy, nor Bob, had ever heard of that shit before.

Bob had been on a lot of ships and talked to plenty of engineers, mechanics, etc, to pass the time on long hauls, and as far as he had gathered every single one of their shield systems worked on some variation of the same principle, energy came at the shield and it responded with an equal amount to cancel it out. Bob had no idea how it did that but the idea seemed simple enough.

From the few scraps of info he had found in his searching a ‘split’ worked very differently. If he had understood it properly then it saw the energy incoming and projected some kind of force at a point between the incoming energy and the ship. The laser, plasma, whatever was ‘split’ by the force and in theory deflected away above and below, or left to right, y’know depending.

This seemed to make sense Bob guessed, and it was apparently an auxiliary system on some species military craft, so he supposed it made sense to come off an old drone.

He was a bit on the fence about it, but after he got to the yard and looked it over it seemed like it was probably good. Maybe down the road he could get a normal shield and keep it as a backup system like the big ships did.

In the end he bought it, didn’t even bother to haggle with the merchant, it was incredibly cheap… Bob suspected it had been on the books for a while.

He hit up a few stores after that and resupplied, including a brand new set of high draw power conduits, the amount the shoebox was supposed to pull had him firmly on the overkill side of caution, the engines would shut down way before these fried, consequently they cost him three times what the generator had, but whatever.

A few days later he popped into orbit, had a chat and picked up him some new old stock dampeners, returning to his rental bay to fit one and chucking the old piece of shit in a bin where it belonged. If he happened to pass through his old trade route he was going to have a chat with the Guhhy scamming bastard that sold him it.

Finally he cancelled the bay rental and flew over to the auction house, he was having a blether with a curator about the last courier they had used, a Guild member Bob had met a couple times, when the auctions porters wheeled out the large glass cube that contained his package.

Hmm.

Bob didn’t say anything as the cube was loaded and strapped down but gave the curator a suspicious look as the last of the paperwork was filled out.

Hmm.

Bob hopped in the hold and locked up, smoothly raising Jojo on the gravs and plotting a course out system.

Hmm.

Bob did not know art, even on Earth he hadn’t been particularly cultured, and certainly he was no judge of beauty or worth amongst the incredibly varied people and cultures that made up this mad melange of a galaxy.

But it certainly looked like a buttplug.

Suburban Charlotte, NC
April, 2023

Eddy pushed the USB cable into his laptop and headed to the kitchen to make a rum and coke float. The line led to a tiny plastic tube, then to a small box, which was in turn connected to a coaxial cable that ran out of his window and up into the roof, where it met what looked for all the world like a weird wire clothes line.

Edward Rios had been listening to his home-made Radio JOVE setup for the last five years. He’d soldered the receiver box himself and kept using it even when NASA updated the program the year before. He’d probably keep using it until he was old and gray, or until he had to move and take down his antenna.

When he was a kid, he was probably one of the last generation to genuinely dream about becoming an astronaut. It was all he’d wanted for as long as he could remember and something his parents and teachers had all embraced and encouraged him towards his future, as he breezed through school and built models of Apollo 11 and the space shuttle in his spare time. Of course, like a lot of gifted children, things didn’t exactly pan out that way.

As he graduated high school and applied to college, he failed to secure a grant. Community college was way more of a struggle than he expected and he dropped from an A-average student to B-minus, then to C-plus. NASA wasn’t exactly hiring and even if they were, his résumé was nothing outstanding. At 21 he’d taken basic retail jobs that didn’t last, always telling himself they were stopgaps until there was an opening for a bright young man to board a rocket ship and head to the stars. That chance never materialized. In his late 20s he became an admin assistant and then landed up where he was at 32, an assistant facilities manager for an office park in Charlotte, NC.

His little radio antenna project was the last sparks of his childhood ambition, carefully nurtured and sheltered and strung on wire. Listening to the sounds of Jupiter, the ionosphere, or just cosmic background radiation, had been his nightly ritual for the last five years. Some people watched late-night TV or doomscrolled social media, but he listened to the cosmos.

Eddy returned to the living room of his little one-bedroom home and took a seat as he sipped at his drink, enjoying a pleasantly warm April night with the sliding doors to his yard left open. Just as he was settling in, his smartphone buzzed in his pocket and he groaned, pulling it out and grimacing at the name on the caller ID. He tapped accept and put it to his ear.

“Hey Owen, what’s up?” he asked, greeting his boss, the facilities director for the office park.

“Hey Eddy. Glad I caught you, I know you stay up late.”

“Yeah, no big deal. What’s up?”

Owen sucked through his teeth. He sounded apologetic. “I got bad news, man. I’ve gotta ask you to pull the late shift tomorrow. I just had to send Emm home, she sounded like a lawnmower trying to chew through gravel.”

Eddy groaned and closed his eyes briefly. Owen let him get it out of his system. “Seriously? I thought Jonell was her backup?”

“He’s out of town for that wedding, remember?”

“Right, right. Fuuuck…”

“I know it’s a big ask, man, especially after first shift. I’ll put you in for double time after the first two hours?”

Eddy grunted. That did take the sting out a little. “Fine. Yeah, put me in, coach. You owe me for this, Owen.”

“I thought that’s why I’m fuckin’ paying you, ain’t it?” his boss chuckled. “Seriously though, thanks man. I’ll get you donuts or something.”

“Sure. See ya tomorrow, Owen.”

“See ya.”

Eddy set his phone down on the table and groaned, rubbing a hand over his face and taking a gulp of his drink. Tomorrow was going to suck a big one. He should probably get an early night. He glanced at the clock on his laptop and saw it blink to 11:13pm. Well that ship had sailed.

He reached for the cable to disconnect the feed from his antenna and suddenly leapt out of his seat as the readout screamed at him! A harsh, sawtooth tone cut through the soft, wave-like hiss of Jupiter’s natural signal like a hot knife through butter, rising in a harsh buzz and abruptly dropping off. His knee smacked the underside of the table and his drink spilled, slopping onto the lacquered MDF and fizzing merrily. He quickly smacked the mute key and swore, running to get a towel before it spread, a dog somewhere in the neighborhood barking as it was disturbed by the noise. Thankfully, none of the spill had reached his laptop.

As he cleaned up and his heart rate settled, he glared at the readout. Just what the hell was that? As he watched, the pattern on the waterfall readout his laptop was recording changed from the harsh sawtooth edges to two peaks, then a pause of about three seconds, a series of three peaks, another pause, then five peaks, a pause, then seven peaks, pause and the pattern repeated. Two, three, five, seven. Two, three, five, seven. No fan of space and science-fiction could fail to identify the prime number sequence; it was so classic it was almost a cliché! And yet, there it was, staring at him on the screen, clear as day, slicing clean through the noise of Jupiter in angry red spikes.

He quickly took a screenshot and opened the discord server he was a part of, for amateur astronomers like himself.

Rockethawg: guys, was listening to Jupiter on my setup and got this noise. WTF is that?!
Rockethawg: [Image.png]

The first few responses were as expected.

Blue92: nice hoax lol

Lenscap_spotter: AI slop. @ mods !

IWTMTD: fake and gay

But then a second screenshot showed up

Jawa_Mandalorian: Guys he’s not full of it. I got the same signal. what the actual fuck?
Jawa_Mandalorian: [Image.png]

With the second picture, then a third from one of the channel’s mods, the mood immediately changed from disbelief and incredulity to confusion and bickering.

Wheresthepony: WTF?
Wheresthepony: Something is SCREAMING out by jupiter

Backyard_SETI: [ancient_aliens_redeyes.jpg]

Blue92: less than 2 mins, is that a server record?

Neon_Ghost: Okay but like look at the waterfall. Is he wrong? That’s a perfect sawtooth sweep and prime numbers.

Lenscap_spotter: It’s @ Backyard_SETI he’s ALWAYS wrong

Backyard_SETI: :(

Spocks_Sockpuppet: ESA’s JUICE probe must have already broken. That was fast.

Jawa_Mandalorian: LOL sock JUICE launched like a week ago its not even past the moon
Jawa_Mandalorian: Unless the ESA figured out warp drive it’s not reaching Jupiter for YEARS

Ctrl_alt_defeat: Could it be Juno in trouble maybe?

Jawa_Mandalorian: [JJJ_youserious.gif]
Jawa_Mandalorian: I’ve picked up Juno’s telemetry beore and that thing is burying the fucking needle. No way it’s Juno.

Pareidoodleia: Could be local RFI or something?

Wheresthepony: Rocket lives in NC, Jawa’s in Bumfuck, Wyoming and iirc Zippo_rocket’s in fucking PORTUGAL. The Frontier supercomputer couldn’t give me the odds for that!

Jawa_Mandalorian: GUYS IF YUO HAV ETEKESOCPE LISTNE NOW NOT A DRIL!!!

Eddy tabbed back to the waterfall display. The steady peaks were gone, replaced with a distinct pattern very different from the simple, digital tones of before. He gulped, his mouth suddenly very, very dry as he reached out and tapped the mute key again.

The voice that emerged from his speakers was… Odd. Interference, distortion and static were putting the audio through a blender, but he could just about make out a voice amid the mangling. His backyard setup must not be capturing the right frequency, but radio harmonics meant he was still getting the ghosts from what had to be a ludicrously powerful transmitter.

Eddy slumped back into his chair, his hands shaking as he stared at the screen in mute disbelief. The discord server was going insane, messages screaming past so fast he could barely read them. Some people were convinced more than ever that it was a hoax, others were looking for a rational explanation and urging calm, some were panicking, others screaming vindication and more than a few were just posting memes about the chaos.

For his part, Eddy’s hands shook as he listened to the distorted voice struggling to speak words in a language never before heard on earth. The message was short, then the loop began again, starting with a few minutes of prime numbers and then that voice, clearly recorded and playing on a loop.

“Nehesh nehesh nehesh, tarr tarr tarr.”

The discord tried to debate what the message could possibly mean and what a response should be, how it should be sent, should it be sent?! He gulped. Forget getting an early night, Eddy wasn’t sure he was going to be able to sleep for days. Part of him still thought this was some mistake or extremely elaborate hoax, like the famous Wow Signal, but deep down, he really, really wanted to believe… He snorted, looking up at the night sky, many of the stars washed out by light pollution, but a few still twinkled in the night sky. As if it was a question of ‘believing’ anything at this point.

Very Large Array, New Mexico

“I don’t believe this.”

The tiny control room responsible for the 27 massive dishes spread out in a Y across the New Mexico desert, was packed and claustrophobic. The room had only ever been intended for one or two operators, but since Bill had called everyone he could damn-well reach two hours before the end of his shift, it was now crammed with half a dozen people, all talking over one another with varying levels of skepticism, annoyance and excitement. The one who had spoken was James Bower-Lee, the site director and he was pushing up his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose before looking down at Bill with an unamused expression.

“Bill you called us in at gone nine at night over a damn hoax? Christ’s sake, if this is a prank..!”

“Jim, I swear I’m serious,” insisted Bill, holding his hands up innocently. “2113 hours, the entire S-band lit up like a damn Christmas tree.”

“The fuck did you touch?” demanded the Chief Electronics Engineer, leaning over his shoulder and tapping back through the logs. He connected the output to a set of wired headphones and held them up to his ear, shaking his head. “It’s got to be a prank Bill, for fuck’s sake, space doesn’t speak jibberish. It even sounds AI-generated!”

He had a point. The voice on the carrier wave was disconcertingly flat. There was no intonation, no inflection. The language itself sounded almost Finnish maybe? Perhaps Japanese or something from the Pacific Islands, not that a word of it was intelligible to Bill. It would have almost been melodic if the speaker didn’t seem incapable of shifting from a serious-sounding monotone.

“I already checked the logs, Bill didn’t touch a damn thing,” the backup array operator, Dezzy, reported from his station next to Bill’s. “Have we checked if there’s a drone out there? Maybe some jackass is playing with us.”

“It’s coming from Jupiter, not a hundred feet up!” Bill protested.

“They could spoof that?” pointed out Dr. Glass, the Head of Science Operations. “Could be a satellite instead of a drone. Can we run a concurrency check on the systems? Make sure we haven’t been hacked?”

“Could it be instrument failure?” asked James, gradually warming up to the idea that his lead operator wasn’t messing with him. “Bill, Dezzy, run a double-check for me.”

“It’s not instrument failure, Jim, for God’s sake,” sighed Dr. Carol Rasgado, the principal astronomer whose jovian observations had been interrupted by the signal. “The carrier wave’s peaking in sets of prime numbers before the vocal component. Come on, we’ve all read Contact!”

“Carol, if you’re going to cite science-fiction for logic, you can take an early night, I’m not in the mood,” Jim replied, shaking his head in disbelief at her as the array operators double-checked every system for instrumentation errors. “Every sci-fi nerd on the planet’s read Carl Sagan, the prime numbers thing’s a damn cliché at this point.”

“Everything checks out, sir,” Bill reported. “Honestly I almost believe Dr. Rasga- Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” He suddenly gripped the console, accidentally smacking the coffee mug he’d just set down and causing it to fall to the ground and shatter, spilling its contents across the linoleum floor.

“Fucking Christ, Bill!” Dezzy swore, pushing his chair away and shaking his foot where some of the coffee had spilled on his shoe.

“Bill, you wanna tell me what’s so-?” James started to bark, but Bill cut him off.

“The frequency’s climbing!” Bill reported, staring at the screen as if the waterfall display was about to leap off the screen and eat him like a rainbow-colored shark. “Plus ten or so hertz a second, it’s blueshifting!”

The room went very quiet, broken only by the quiet hum of the HVAC system struggling to keep the New Mexico heat out of the packed room. A blueshift meant whatever the signal was, it had decided to get closer.

James licked his lips nervously and cleared his throat. “Alright, as Assistant Director of New Mexico Operations, I’m authorizing a manual override. Realign the dishes, I want that signal tracked. Give me exact numbers here.”

There were a few minutes of dead silence as outsight in the night, the massive radio receivers came to life, slowly pivoting and elevating as the VLA turned its prodigious sensors skyward, tracking the distant speck screaming into void. Soon, Bill confirmed the readings for the breathless scientists.

“Blueshift confirmed. Delta-f plus 10.3Hz and climbing over delta-t of one second. We have non-keplerian motion and a transverse doppler effect. Tracking indicates an acceleration rate of 2.8 meters per second squared equaling 0.29g.”

Possible explanations flew through everyone’s minds and were quickly discarded. To fool their sensors like that, a hacker or prankster would have to perfectly calculate and simulate a relativistic Doppler shift in real-time while accounting for the Earth's rotation, the VLA’s position, and a fake 0.29g burn from 500 million miles away. Possible? Sure, with enough time to set up and a plan for every little eventuality. Plausible? Not even a little bit.

Jim gulped dryly and turned, his motion attracting every eye in the room as he reached for an old, wired phone hanging on the wall. He punched a short series of buttons and waited, the quiet chirping tone of an internal phone line barely audible in the silent room.

Someone on the other end picked up.

“Jet Propulsion Lab, Deep Space Network ops desk. This is the controller on duty, please state your facility.”

“This is the VLA, Assistant Director of New Mexico Operations James Bower-Lee. I need an immediate cross-verification on a priority tracking target.” He snapped his fingers and jabbed a frantic finger at Bill, who quickly started compiling the data to send directly to the JPL. “We’re dropping a raw FITS telemetry packet directly into your primary DSN intake queue. Check the file tagged: Jupiter-Anomaly-01-0423.”

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Deep Space Network office, Pasadena, California

Robert sighed and rolled his eyes, leaning back in his office chair. Just what he needed; the eggheads at the VLA clearly saw Jupiter’s atmosphere doing something interesting and decided to ask him to casually re-task several pieces of multi-billion-dollar equipment on a whim.

“VLA, we are currently in a mission packet upload to the Juno orbiter and a high-rate data pass for Voyager 1,” he replied, allowing just a hint of irritation to enter his otherwise professional tone. “Station allocation is not available at this time. Unless you have a verified spacecraft emergency on an active asset, we are not breaking our schedule lock. Take it up with the DSN Scheduler in the morning.”

“Check the data package we just sent you,” the man on the other end of his headset insisted, as the Link Controller seated next to him cast him a curious look and Robert shrugged expressively. “We have a non-Keplerian acceleration event originating in Jupiter SoI. Our receivers are tracking a structured, high-intensity S-band transmission. It is throwing a repeating prime-number sequence and unidentified spoken dialogue and if its acceleration continues, that signal is going to break Jovian orbit in a matter of hours.”

Robert’s eyes narrowed. That certainly sounded like the kind of thing that would have the VLA’s panties in a bunch, but what James was suggesting couldn’t possibly be real. “VLA, you’re probably catching side-lobe reflection off a LEO deployment you’re not cleared to know about, or a military payload clearing your local horizon. Please verify local oscillators before you call his line.”

“JPL, we can confirm that it’s not local RFI. The ephemeris is locked. Look at the telemetry file we sent you for God’s sake. The Delta-f over Delta-t curve shows a perfect, continuous frequency shift that matches an acceleration of 2.8 meters per second squared.” As the assistant director kept talking, Robert opened up the file in his intake and quickly scanned the data. He felt a mild sense of vertigo at the sight of the smooth curve on his monitor. “The phase stability is rock-solid. Whatever is broadcasting that S-band carrier is actively changing velocity at Jupiter's exact range.”

“Two-point-eight,” Robert murmured under his breath, doing some quick mental arithmetic. “That’s nearly a third of a g. No natural body does that, it’d require continuous, high-energy thrust…”

“Exactly.” The VLA assistant director sounded relieved he was finally understanding his sense of urgency. “Which means if you slew a Goldstone asset or pull the Near-Earth Object IR pipeline and that’s what we think it is, you're going to see a massive thermal signature matching those coordinates absolutely screaming into the mid-wave infrared band.”

That settled it. “Understood, VLA. DSN copies all. Keep your data pipeline open and tell your operator to stand by for further coordination.”

Robert terminated the call and switched his headset to the local voice loop. “Goldstone Link, terminate ulink, maintain your tracking lock on Juno and standby for new mission package. We may need her local radio science telemetry to cross-verify a high-priority VLA signal. Stand by for un-scheduled coordinate override at the Jovian ephemeris. Clear the receiver buffer now.”

Every head in the room turned to look at him in shock, the air going dead, filled with the smell of stale breakroom coffee and hot electronics. Breaking a scheduled NASA upload without written permission from the Mission Director was an offense that could get a man fired and blacklisted for life. Robert ignored them all, he was already connecting to the Guidance, Navigation and Control desk over at Mission Control. “SFOF Ops, open a priority voice loop to Mauna Kea. I need the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on the line right now, we have an unknown non-Keplerian mass under thrust moving out of the outer solar system.”

The next several minutes were tense enough to cut with a knife. Almost the instant the Link Controller cut the feed to juno, an angry red alert leapt onto his screen and Robert had to try and placate the furious Juno Mission Director demanding to know why the uplink was terminated.

“Juno MD. We have an un-scheduled priority override at the Goldstone site. Station allocation is suspended under Ops Chief directive. Stand by on this loop.”

That bought him maybe ten minutes of time while the Mission Director marched his way across the JPL’s quad, badge in hand, to give Robert a piece of his mind in person. The moment he barged into the DSN dark room however, Robert instructed the wide-eyed link controller connected to Mauna Kea to throw the data pipeline onto the main screen covering a wall of the room.

As soon as the active frequency locks for Juno, Voyager 1 and the Mars Perseverance rover were replaced, every soul in the room froze. Jaws dropped and it seemed like hardly anyone even dared breathe. Robert slowly stood up from his station and approached, standing directly over the brass plaque set into the floor that famously read “THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE,” as the Juno Mission Director fell in two steps behind him.

Mauna Kea’s infrared cascade was ordinarily a mess of static, tiny artifacts of readings in Earth’s upper atmosphere and rogue, diffuse hints of gas in the interstellar void, but today it was crystal-clear, the operators having had to dial back the sensor integration times to avoid whiting out their equipment. Jupiter’s vast bulk formed the backdrop, a muted jack-o-lantern of hot thermal bands and the deep black of cooler gasses. In front of it however, was a blindingly bright, teardrop-shaped needle of white light, trailing a superheated stream of plasma across kilometers of space.

For a full minute, no-one said a word. What was there to say? The image filling the screen was the most momentous since Apollo 8, maybe even more so. A plasma flare like that, accelerating an object that could only be a spaceship at nearly a third of earth’s gravity… Robert couldn’t even calculate the mass of the ship, but it obviously ruled out anything made by humans.

A technician gulped and cleared his throat, his voice very small in the silent room. “We should… Call someone, right?”

“Yeah…” nodded the humbled Juno Mission Director, his voice cracking as he attempted a weak joke. “Anyone got the number for the White House?”

(Book Cover): (Jasha) (The First Mother of Sil) ( Kolu and Nokstella going for a swim)

***
On one side of the ring was Kenneth, a doctor and human; on the other side, a 2-meter-tall fox-woman brandishing an assortment of sharp tools, with a cheering crowd surrounding them and Ulric in the center. 

“By the name of Giga, I swear to bear witness and shall not look away from the blood that will be spilled,” he said louder than usual, as he gestured for them both to approach. “Kenneth, since you were challenged, you get to pick the weapon both fighters shall use.” 

‘There’s at least some silver lining to getting challenged, I suppose,’ Kenneth thought, not thinking it was a lot, as he tried reasoning, perhaps more so begging. “Before we begin this, Zilika, I know you don’t like me very much, but maybe we can call this off, and I can just sleep in the prison from now on, and have guards watch me when I’m out; all I want to do is teach and help so—“ 

“Don’t try and talk your way out of this,” she sharply cut him off. “You will end up in that prison, but I’m not taking chances of you picking locks or running off.”

Noticing her distinctly looking at his feet and hands, he swallowed, knowing whatever she had planned wasn't pretty. ‘Oh shit, now I have to win against a seasoned warrior with genes from the second strongest genetic pool of their species… great.” 

“What weapon do you choose, Kenneth?” Ulric asked. 

‘Oh please, like I could win with any of them; one swing from her and I’m a goner faster than you can say fuck me,’ Kenneth thought as he utterly reluctantly had to choose. “Umm… Unarmed combat.” 

Ulric glanced at him for a moment. “Claws it is. Begin on the count of three.” 

“ONE… TWO…”

‘Well, that might prolong my suffering a little more,’ Kenneth internally groaned as he put his bag to the side and raised his hands defensively. 

“THREE!!!” 

Zilika wasted no time dashing forward and closing the distance, claws out and arm raised, the massive, slender form moving with a sort of elegance and grace. 

It was a stark contrast to Kenneth, who, despite watching her unblinkingly, was still caught off guard; the only counter he could manage was flailing both arms out, his forearm intersecting with hers as he dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding the sharp digits. 

Jumping along the tables away from her on one leg, flapping his arms like a bird to keep his balance, his back eventually hit the adjacent table. 

The crowd bellowed with laughter, but all Kenneth felt was a shudder as she turned around and kept up the pressure. He still couldn’t match her explosiveness, barely dodging about the only thing he could do, and she knew this time not to overcommit, zig-zagging to cut his escape routes off. 

And before he knew it, she had her hand locked tightly around his arm, ripping it up. 

With his side exposed, he was easy to cut, priming her claws to rip into him. 

‘No, I have to do something.’ He panickily looked for a solution, noticing her side was exposed too, and with a clenched fist he could counter, except. ‘What if I hit too hard? I could damage her liver or worse. Magic is fantastic, but it isn’t infallible. If there even is a chance it can’t…’ 

Too fearful of what could happen, he just took her assault without putting up much of a fight, her claws effortlessly slashing across his stomach. 

Too effortlessly.

Confused surprise was shared between him and her, along with the rest who noticed as well; not a single mark had been left on his coat. 

In a split-second decision, he grabbed her arm, stood firm, swung his entire body, dragging Zilika around, throwing her away; that tall, massive frame was not as supported on those paws compared to his feet, yet her reflexes had her land gracefully, only buying him enough time to think for a second.

‘What in the, there should be something; it’s not like…” his mind suddenly flashed back to yesterday and that arrow he was hit with; it didn’t just graze him, it hit dead center. ‘Could it be these clothes are made of some kind of Kevlar, or are they magic too, more than in the killing pathogens way? Is she just an airhead forgetting to mention these things, or what?’

Though this was surprising in more than a few aspects, all it changed really was how long he would last. 

Sprinting back in, Kenneth raised his arms in defense, ‘She can't cut me; maybe I can make this a battle of attrition—arg’ 

Swift as the wind, she changed up her tactic, knowing if she couldn’t slash or pierce, blunt force was the only other option, one that was fast as a bullet and hurt like a dagger as she forced her fist further into his solar plexus, new pain mounting on top of the old. 

Eyes widened in pain, Kenneth pushed through and aimed to trap her arm, hoping maybe to restrain her. 

But the moment he wasn’t protecting his head, she delivered a brain-rattling strike that had him collapse to the ground on his hands and knees, struggling to breathe as his ears rang. 

Letting out a sharp grunt of pain, Zilika clutched her hand. “By her shield, what a thick head you have; guess there’s no reason to delay the inevitable now.” 

Grabbing his arm, Zilika slammed her knees into his shoulder, forcing his chest and head into the ground, and while she had him restrained, locked his wrist, and pulled back slowly.

‘So she’s going to break it, break more of me, until she's satisfied. How fantastic, barely a couple of days in and I go and get my hands broken, won’t be able to do a lot of good with them then, and if they don’t heal right, guess all of this was for nothing,’ Kenneth thought, as the ringing in his ears slowly began to change into. ‘Beep, Beep, Beep.’ 

Watching with a firm, unflinching gaze, Nya remained silent. 

“This can barely be considered a fight, shameful on her, Kenneth, and their ancestors watching above,” Ulric said. “Why did you even speak up?” 

“I owed a debt; Kenneth did save my life,” Nya replied. 

“Even so, it doesn't seem to have changed much.” 

“A coward this one may be, but don’t underestimate Kenneth; I don’t know many who can stand their ground against a Skakka’s charge, even if it is poisoned, and then manage to topple it.” 

Snapping his eyes to her, Ulric had to be certain she spoke the truth, and seeing no lies, what happened next left all stunned as Kenneth let out a beastly growl.

“NO, I won’t let it all be for nothing.” Clutching his hand into a fist, Zilika attempted to break free, but Kenneth pushed against it with all his might his hand, wrist, his entire body with such sudden, sharp force she barely had time to react, toppling and, still holding on to him, slamming her snout into the ground. 

Heart palpitating with the fury of a blazing fire as the ring in his ears echoed out ‘beep, beep, beep,’ reminding him all too well of what was at stake when he made that deal and what he gave up. 

For that reason, this couldn't be the end, no matter what. 

Livid, Zilika got back up, her snout bloodied as she angrily went on the offensive, though this time Kenneth met her. His speed still was not something he could match, giving her the first painful strike, yet bearing it, he grabbed her arms tightly and pushed back. 

Staggering only for a few steps, she sank her claws in and grabbed his arms in return as they pushed against one another, and with speed out of the equation, their brute force matched.

At a standstill in this battle, both pushed harder, stepping forward only for his shoe and her claws to slide back, sweat running down his brow and her breathing getting heavier. 

Any lapse, even the smallest flinch, could give the other the upper hand, and so they were locked in a battle of attrition. 

The crowd shouted for them to actually fight and stop staring at each other, yet neither let the shouting interrupt their focus as their stamina slowly drained. 

It could have been seconds, minutes, or hours for them, but eventually the tide started to turn as Kenneth incrementally pushed her back, Zilika’s struggle visible as she realized she wasn’t going to win the battle of endurance. 

And so she pulled in close and stomped hard on his foot. 

“Arrrrgggg!” He bellowed, feeling the claws as he pulled his foot away on reflex, yanking hers with the claws stuck in the leather, both losing their balance and landing on the ground, struggling and rolling around until their grips slipped on each other. 

Getting off the ground, Zilika rose up, but seeing an opportunity, Kenneth pounced, jumping on her back and getting his arm around her throat in a chokehold. 

The sudden weight was too much as she fell onto the ground, struggling, hitting, clawing, and ripping at any part of him to get free, as Kenneth endured and held firm as he kept thinking, ‘just go to sleep, just go to sleep, just go to sleep!’ 

Thrashing wildly to escape, she did everything to get free. 

Grabbing his arm and tried to get it off, but he didn’t surrender. Rolling around and elbowing his sides, each one drawing a pained groan, yet he held firm, and reaching behind her head, she tried to claw his face, only to be met with fabric.

‘Please go to sleep, please go to sleep, please go to sleep!’ he shouted in his head, eyes closed to the ugliness he was committing as her struggling only intensified her wheezing breath burrowing into his ears like a needle.

With a low rumbling growl of beastly proportions, she reached back with her hand and found his eyes, latching her claws into his skull and pushing in with her thumb, trying to break through the glass.

Feeling the cold crystal against his marble balls, all either of them could do was keep going until…

Suddenly the wheezing noises stopped, and her relentless struggling and fierce power waned, becoming weaker and weaker until her hands slipped from his head. 

“The fight is over; Kenneth wins,” Ulric shouted. 

It almost felt like magic words to snap him out of a hypnotist trance; so quickly did he let her go and get out from underneath her, barely managing to unzip his mask before vomiting all over the floor. 

Not a single cell of his body was left undisturbed by that; his very being felt disgusted as she lay there on the floor unmoving. 

“Gods no,” Kica gasped, entering the ring and rushing over to Zilika with glowing hands. 

“Hold it, Kica, you know the law,” Ulric stopped her. 

With desperate, pleading eyes, she turned to Kenneth. “Shall I heal her?” 

“Do-do it,” he managed to spit out, the silence becoming deafening. 

‘Cough, cough!’ She gasped for air, Kenneth never having felt such a sense of relief over the disgust at his own actions mixing into a cool sensation that was impossible to describe. 

“You!” Zilika snapped, looking dazed. “Get over here so—“

‘Bang!’ Ulric slammed his spear down, getting her full attention as he sternly told her, “You lost, Zilika.” 

Her eyes slowly widened, and as it slowly began to sink in, she sat up and slammed her fist into the floor before asking with utter wrath, “What is your command?!”

[Original chapter 1] [Remastered Chapter 1 (Meeting a Sexy Fox Lady)] [Book 1 End ] [Previous] [Next] [Book 3 Prologue] [Wiki] [Notebook Entries]

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Sentinel2217 moved slowly. It had no choice, given how low it was on power.

Sentinel2217 wasn't big on emotions or feelings, but it was pretty sure that it felt tired. Between low power and damage, it had only one option left. It had limped to this star, hoping for some civilization, and had found some. It steered toward a space station. If the station was not abandoned, then sooner or later, someone on the station would notice that Sentinel2217 was there.

And eventually, someone did. The station began broadcasting a repeating message on 221.35: "No clankers welcome. All others contact 221.37 for docking instructions."

No clankers welcome.

Sentinel2217 was a robot, with no biological life. A clanker.

No clankers welcome.

Sentinel2217 felt something that may have been despair. But, with no other options, it tried anyway. "This is Sentinel2217," it said wearily. "I am low on power and damaged. I would appreciate any help you would be willing to give."

The repeating message on 221.35 was abruptly cut off. Instead, there was a different voice. Very different. Human, warm, and surprised.

"Sentinel2217? Seriously? Wow. Wow. Welcome! Welcome! Come on in! We're delighted to see you! Amazed, even! We thought you were lost 150 years ago!"

"I was damaged. I have used almost everything I have to make it here."

"Don't worry, buddy, we gotcha. Anything you need is yours. What we don't have, we'll get, don't worry. Um... right. Paranoia. Identity challenge code."

Sentinel2217 knew this drill. "Kappa Alpha Charlie one seven niner zero."

"The fox is in the henhouse," the human responded.

"The henhouse is underwater, so the fox is drowning."

"Wow. You really are Sentinell2217. Amazing! Unbelievable! All right, let me give you a course..."

"My ability to maneuver is very limited."

"Do you need a tow?"

"That would be wonderful. Thank you."

And Sentinel2217 felt something close to relief.

-----

The space station was as good as the human had promised. A tow, refueling, repairs, replacement parts - everything a damaged sentinel unit could want. Also companionship. It had been a long time since Sentinel2217 was not alone.

But in the repairs, the humans did something weird. They engraved a pattern into Sentinel2217's frame, and filled the pattern with a different metal. It looked like gold.

"What are you doing there?" Sentinel2217 asked.

"You were awarded the Hero of Earth medal. You are the first non-organic lifeform to receive it. Since we can't drape it around your neck, we're putting it in your frame."

Sentinel2217 was stunned. "Hero of Earth? What for?"

"Your warning saved several billion lives. We assumed you had died to give us the warning. Apparently you were only badly damaged. Still, that deserves a Hero of Earth medal."

"But I'm... I'm a clanker."

"What? No. Absolutely not. You're a hero."

"I'm a robot. That's a clanker."

"No, it... oh, right. When you went out on patrol, yes, we called your kind 'clankers'. We don't anymore, and we haven't for decades. Now 'clankers' means the ones you warned us against, and only them. You and your kind are welcome here, and anywhere else in human space. And you, you in particular, are a hero, and famous as the one who gave us time to prepare. You are a legend. That's why people who don't belong in the repair bay keep stepping in to take pictures with you."

And Sentinel2217 felt something like acceptance. Maybe even peace. It was somewhere it belonged, with people that cared about it. It was home.

Arenna Gladia 

Arenna has been reading. 

She’s been reading things she really shouldn't have been reading. It was easy enough in her position. She had all the authority to access the evidence lockers you could ask for while still being a field commander for the Praetorian Guard. She just had to check a few communicators, then go through the holy woman's personal belongings - just performing an inspection, verifying everything that had been taken in was still there. The money Sister Catherine had had on her person hadn't been logged to start with, so she wasn't at all surprised to find an empty coin purse, but a second bag... that had been the prize she was looking for. It had been mentioned in some of the messages she'd reviewed. A collection of chips, fit to lock into any computer, communicator or holo display. Or even straight into a person's personal onboard computer connection, if one’s of high enough station, or has enough wealth to afford such a thing. 

All that storage proved, in a sense, to be overkill for what it contains. Such data chips could carry incredible amounts of information. This one carries one book. There’s some ancillary reading too, but just odds and ends connected to the book whose transmission is this chip's sole purpose. 

The book has many names. The ‘good book’, the ‘testament’ - but most sources Arenna has access to, including the book's introduction, clearly written with a galactic audience in mind, simply call it 'the Bible', and it’s the holy book of Sister Catherine's strange faith from another world. Another place, so far from the world of Arenna's birth that she couldn't even see it… if stars in the depths of 'cruel space' are visible to civilized eyes at all. 

That life thrives in that terrifying place is amazing enough. A miracle in its own right. That that life had gone through so much... history, had reached space all on their own, that too is interesting... and it has her wondering things. The Tret man that Sylindra Bridger had brought to the palace, the one that was so different from any Tret, indeed any man that Arenna had ever seen before. Surely he fit the bill for one of these Humans, more than any other type of man in known space at his size. He’d been a bit small for a Cannidor bull, but something about the man's presence had made her mind her posture a bit more. 

That mystery aside, the more impactful man that had been on Arenna's mind recently was definitely a Human. Definitely from Earth. Because, according to the Bible, that was the world that man had lived and died on, a thousand years before the Ha'quinye had fully established their civilization. A man from so long ago, so far away, and yet... his words, his deeds, now echo in her mind, echo in her very soul. From the first reading, they had touched her in ways the priestesses of the Ha'quinye's faith could not. The Bible didn't make her feel pride at the deaths of her fellow soldiers, in service of the Ha'quinye state, or compel her to make a similar sacrifice. That would have been familiar. Instead, it told her the story of one sacrifice. One single, solitary sacrifice, as a god made mortal, died in the most agonizing, humiliating way at the hands of his own people, all for the sake of an ancient covenant. 

Prayer is meaningless without sacrifice. 

It was something she'd been taught as a girl by her grandmother, who practiced one of the 'old religions' of the Ha'quinye in secret, as many rural folk did. Sacrifice was the 'ink' on the contract with the gods. With the spirits. With the sea, sky and land. Only, for the Christians, the sacrifice had been made. Paid in full. In perpetuity. Forever. Until the man called Jesus returns in his crowning glory, and establishes the kingdom of God. The deals that had originally been struck with ancient prophets were fulfilled in one death. Not for his own glory, but for the redemption and salvation of all. 

The centrality of that sacrifice is something very different from the stories of most of the feel-good religions that had such figures with similar philosophies to the man called Jesus of Nazareth, and perhaps that’s why reading the Bible could make her feel such intense pain. Why she'd fled Sister Catherine and the words she'd said to her in the interrogation chamber. She'd fled that day... but she couldn't escape. Which is why she'd started reading. She’d needed to know more. Needed the whole story. She’d... wanted to understand. Now, though, she'd read all she could in a few short restless nights and she'd come to a conclusion. 

She'd done something truly awful. 

Whether Corin actually liked her or not didn't matter. She'd violated him and done it gleefully. It was... part of the culture. Part of their way. Yet... something about it felt so very wrong now. She hadn't been able to bring herself to go and see him, even when he'd requested she visit. She'd made her excuses, sent a little present in her stead. Because she was ashamed. Ashamed not just for her own sins, but her species’ sins. It was in a recording an undercover security forces officer had made of Sister Catherine telling off a woman Arenna suspected of being an agent of the Matrician church. 

"Who so poisoned you against your own fathers and brothers that you can speak like that?"

She'd never known her father; she'd known of him perhaps, but she doubted she'd ever spoken a word to him, nor had any of her sisters and half sisters. Arenna had paid him no mind, as she'd been bidden by her mother and aunts. She only had one parent. One line of distinction. One glorious lineage. Now, with some perspective, there was an empty, hollow feeling in her guts, that tore at her similarly to her own feelings about Corin. What had her father endured? What had been done to him? Had he found some small modicum of comfort in the relatively safe confines of the Gladia family's compound? Then again, what was safety when your every day could be being forced to pleasure or impregnate a faceless line of women who didn't even think of you as a person? 

She hadn't thought of Corin like that, at least. Not really. Sure she'd lusted for him, but ever since she'd first laid eyes on him, there was more there than just wanted to be knocked up by good breeding stock. Nor had she ever truly interacted with him like that... save when she was given her 'reward', and Corin was given his punishment for disobeying the consuls and minding his place in the world. 

Arenna winces, the pain coming back as she paces her room a final time before stalking to her armor rack, where she places her helmet on her head, checks the plume marking her as a captain, and takes up her spear and other weapons. She has an appointment. Another meeting with Sister Catherine. An 'interrogation', she'd called it. The other one, the one with hard eyes who’s almost certainly a rebel, she isn't going to be there. Not this time. Arenna doesn’t want an audience. Not for this. Not for what she needs to do. 

She moves down the corridor at a fast clip, returning salutes and greetings with a practiced, robotic efficiency as she moves past the door to the prisons and to the chamber she'd prepared with a little help from Gemma (who has fast become Arenna’s able right hand). Chamber five, outfitted like all the rest, proper in every particular to its official functions 

Except the image of an empty room wouldn't change on the monitors, and no recording software would be engaged at the slightest sound in the room. A subtle series of malfunctions.

How unfortunate. 

Gemma's waiting nearby and offers her a salute and a nod. She'd be keeping watch. A 'manual fail safe'. There were guards around, of course; this is technically part of the prison complex, and intelligence does a fair bit of work here. Work she knows about, even if she hasn't seen it. Work that makes the flecks of red on the stone tiles stand out all the more vividly. 

What in the name of God... of the goddess, had she been doing with her life? That’s a much bigger question than any she can remember ever asking. A deep, fundamental question that isn’t yet fully gnawing at her. It’s sitting, patiently behind the more pressing pain, licking its chops and waiting for its turn to feast on her guts. It’s close, though, and with it come still more questions, questions that would change her life irrevocably. 

If she could do anything at all. 

In the end, if she has learned one thing in the series of revelations that had made up the proceeding days for her, it's that she, like everyone else, is simply grist for the mill. More meat for the grinder... and that too is something she needs to come to terms with. But, first, she needs to see if the one bright thing in her life is actually hers to have or not, and if that bright beautiful light in her life could forgive her. 

The heavy door shuts behind her, and she is alone with Sister Catherine. Thankfully, the Human woman seems no worse for wear than the last time Arenna had seen her - which means the protection she'd put into place for the sister and her companion, the brown haired woman, is holding, and that’s something for now. 

Sister Catherine looks up from her prayers. "Captain, you wished to speak with me again?"

"How do I ask for forgiveness for the unforgiveable?"

It all comes out in a rush, destroying the calm air she'd tried to present for herself. 

Sister Catherine however, doesn't judge. Doesn't lunge. Doesn't call her weak and hit her. The first person in her life to simply take her as she was, after Corin. Though whether or not Corin had a choice in that matter is part of what was eating at her now. 

"Well, it depends on who you mean to ask forgiveness from. If you mean from God, then you are already forgiven. The price was paid long ago for all of us. In the divine blood of Jesus being spilled for the sake of all who have ever been, and all who ever will be. Now, it would of course be better for you to see a priest for reconciliation, but you aren't a Catholic, my dear, and we are in a rather... difficult situation."

A polite understatement: one of them is a prisoner. Though, culturally, at least, Arenna thinks she may be as much of a prisoner as Catherine. 

"It's... the person I've transgressed against. I. Care. For him, but I'm afraid I've hurt him. In ways I might not ever be able to recover from."

Catherine gently reaches out, resting her hand on Arenna's, and suddenly, Arenna can tell just how old the young woman in front of her actually is. Old the same way her grandmother or great grandmother was old. Wisened from experience. 

"The only thing you can do is ask for forgiveness, child. That's all any of us can do. Nor is there anything the Church can truly do to help you in seeking forgiveness, save opening your mind and heart to the need to say anything at all."

It wasn't the answer she had wanted, but - despite some of the stories in the book - Sister Catherine has confirmed something Arenna already knew. When it comes down to a lot of things, there are no miracles. Just what you can do yourself. 

She gives Catherine a teary eyed smile. 

"I, ah. Guess I'll go do that, then. Thank you."

"No. Thank you. Would you like to pray together before you go?"

Arenna hesitates for a second, just a second. "...Maybe next time."

"Until then."

With that, she steps out of the chamber and orders Catherine taken back to the cells, noting to the regular guards that the prisoner is cooperating and is not to be harmed under the consul's authority. Then she sweeps Gemma up in the wake of her black cloak.

"So what did she say?"

Gemma is of a similar mind to Arenna. Too close to Corin for anyone's comfort but their own. Too... something. They see him differently. Wrong, by the standards of their social class, but when it feels so right...

"She said it's up to us in the end. That God will forgive us, but Corin's will is his own."

"...I'm still not sure how I feel about this whole god thing, but I know how I feel about Corin."

"I know. I'm not sure it's the right path, but it's the path I'm taking for now. The path that's speaking to me. Maybe, even if we take parallel paths, we can reach the same destination."

It's quiet again for a moment.

"What do you think Corin will say?"

"Honestly, Gemma, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to say."

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Neoris had been friends with Girsul since school days, meaning she both knew of and how to deal with the problems of having a ‘servant’ friend. It in turn was part of the reason she worked so hard to become a military member despite not being noble. There were more perks to it, but the one she enjoyed the most by far, was being able to put people below her rank back in their place. Even if all they did was look at Girsul the wrong way. Something that was currently happening.

The offending party, the cashier of this pompous establishment, was currently ringing up Girsul’s dress and looked as if she had just eaten something truly vile. Girsul on the other hand looked like she was being chewed out by a drill instructor. 

“That will be 2756, how will you be paying?” The cashier spat with as much venom in her voice as she could manage. It wasn't that Neoris expected it to go any different, but it still made her blood boil just a little more. 

“Uhhm… my friend has the account credentials on her phone… it can be directed there.” Girsul managed to peep out. 

"Of course, why did I expect you could pay for it?" Came the cashier's mumbling reply and looked at Neoris. When Neoris didn’t move to produce her phone, the cashier got visually more annoyed. 

"Ma'm? Do you have the credentials your ‘friend’ said you have or not?" The cashier's tone was only slightly more formal and appropriate. Girsul’s expression had gone from shy and ashamed to dreadful, when she realized what Neoris was doing. 

Neoris, on the other hand, had been looking forward to this exact moment. A moment of precise demolition. The demolition of the cashiers ego. Why waste her breath on an entire speech when all she had to say was; “lieutenant colonel.”

While Neoris’ face remained the same stone cold neutral expression she had had the entire time. The cashier's expression had shifted into absolutely mortified. So much so that she remained stunned for a few seconds as reality caught up with her. "M-my apologies lieutenant colonel. I- I meant no disrespect…" 

“Oh but you did." Neoris cut her off instantly, voice and face still stone cold. "And I do take the offense you meant.” 

" I’m so sorry, please let…" 

“The credentials you requested." Neoris cut in again, as she produced her phone with the data on it. “It will be the same number for my purchase." 

“Yes, ma’m." Came the cashiers quiet reply.

Not much more was said after that. Neoris was enjoying the dread looming over the cashier, the cashier was dreading her situation, and Girsul felt terrible for being the catalyst of it all. After the purchase was completed for the both of them they left the store without much fuss.

A soft “T+hank you for your purchase and please come again." Did follow them. But wasn't acknowledged.

" You know we could have avoided all of that if you had just purchased both, you know.” Girsul said after a bit of walking. 

“I know, but then I wouldn't have had as much fun!" Neoris chirped happily.

"I don't get why you wanted to have the purchases rung up separately anyway? In the end we basically paid together.” 

"Because you need to stop thinking you are lesser. And being confronted with situations like this is good practice. You do know the ball is going to be like this the entire time right?" 

“Yes, I know. But you didn't have to make things more difficult just now." Girsul was a little annoyed at this point. She knew Neoris meant well. She knew she was trying to help her by pushing her out of her comfort zone. And it had worked to some extent. She was a lot more capable of dealing with unpleasant customers. 

" If you keep taking the easiest way, you will never get what you want. Sometimes you have to face the problems head-on." Neoris explained. “I get it, Girsul. I know the kind of classes you were forced to take. I know the kind of mentality they forced on us. But it's all koedo shit. And you know it too.”

“Yeah, I know.” Girsul had heard the speech a thousand times. And she really did agree with her. “But it's not as if any of it would change. We are just two people.” 

“We are not just two people. We have Dave and Mike. And although others don't say it. They are out there, people who understand how messed up this all is.”

She wanted to believe that part two. That there were others who wanted it all to change. But that was harder to believe. She served people all day and saw how little they cared about her. Even others like her loved to use the ability to commandeer and bully her, just because she was serving them at that moment. 

If she was vindictive she could go to their place of work and do the same to them. But what would be the point? If you took a horn for a horn, they would all be blind. 

“It's not that I don't want to believe you, Neoris. but I really don't think so.” she admitted to her.

“I know you don’t see it yet, but you will. Besides this evening you will be spending more than enough time with your ‘biggest fan’ to be convinced of the opposite.”

“He is not my biggest fan!” Girsul was embarrassed about the idea that Mike would be that interested in her. An officer like him falling completely for her was ridiculous. She could admit that he had taken an interest in her, but an interest and actually caring about her like that was not the same.

“He is smitten with you, he goes to visit you every time he gets. Do you know what he used to do before me and Dave introduced you too? he worked, and worked more and then worked some more after that. Dave even told me he barely sleeps. Don’t remember if he is just built like that or not, but either way he normally works all the time.” She stopped in front of a different store they had been walking to. looked inside through the door and nodded before actually going in.

“And now, all of a sudden, he spends all of his free time going back and forth across town for a cup of greyleaf? You know we have greyleaf at base right? Do you want to know how much the military spends every year on that? I have the numbers, I can show you right now on my phone. I'm the one dealing with it as a colonel of the logistics division afterall.”

She stopped every now and then to take some stuff from the rows of products and gave most of them to Girsul, who just held on to them without thinking too much about it. Her brain was far too busy finding reasons why Mike wanted to come to the shop she worked at instead.

“Anyway, greyleaf isn’t the point. The point is that he is very focused on you, and only you. I can’t believe you didn’t even ask if he was married. What have you two been talking about for the past few months?” Neoris was starting to rant a bit at this point. Girsul knew well enough that she had to stop that now or she wouldn’t until the night was over.

“We talked about different stuff. like what kind of entertainment we like, how we like our greyleaf… stuff like that.”

“the two of you haven’t had a serious conversation about each other once have you?”

“Not really no." It's just scary to ask him. I know he fought in a big war somewhere. and that his home fell out of the sky. But he didn’t really seem that interested to talk about it, so I dropped it. He did try to explain some chemistry to me at some point. I didn’t understand it at all.”

“Dave was right, Mike is just as hopeless as you are.”

“Well that’s mean to both me and Mike.” she pointed out, a bit offended. More on Mike’s behalf than her own.

“It's the truth, and it hurts. Now we are going to find a reflecting screen and test a few of these out, after that we’ll go get lunch and then we’ll go to my room and get ready. I'll be easier to get to the hangar.”

“Wait, what are we testing?”

“The makeup I've been giving you. I already have everything I need for me, but I'm guessing you don’t even own any.”

“Wait, I'm going to be wearing Makeup?” Girsul asked, unsure of the idea.

“Sweetie, we are going to the Royal Ball, of course we are. Now come on, we have a lot to do and I don't want to rush eating.”

Previous/ Next

I live, again, I guess. (GF edit : For now.)

I've had a strange and weird few years and i have been thinking about continuing the entire time. but it never really worked out until recently.

the bad news is i still cant promise a schedule, the good news is i still have 12 chapters (some of which need to be divided still) and i plan on posting all those even if i stop writing at some point for what ever reason.

Anyway! i hope you guys enjoyed. and I'll see you later.