First

Home at War

“Lieutenant.” Harold says as he enters the bridge.

“Commodore sir, the entity has accelerated somewhat in it’s pursuit of the Forests. But we can clearly outpace it by a very healthy amount. I’ve instructed the fleet to move in a circular pattern around the system to keep a respectable distance from the entity without complicating things for our approaching Haffria allies.”

“Good.” Harold says. “Now I understand Admiral Cistern has asked you to debate me about potentially dealing with the entity personally. And while I am willing to do so. There is a bit of a complication in our upcoming argument.”

“And that would be?”

“I can’t show you the knife without potentially damaging the ship. The internal sensors and scanners will burn out on detection of the weapon and I fear that would lower the ability to actually debate things properly.”

“Well that likely doesn’t matter much, unless it can expand in size on command the weapon is just too small to use against a creature of that size.” Orchid says and Harold holds up a finger.

“Let me sit down first and I want to broadcast this over the fleet. I want everyone to know in full what the threat is, what our current solutions are and the pros and cons. This is important.” Harold says.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Orchid asks and Harold pauses.

“Are you asking that because you have concerns or are you asking that because you’re under orders to debate with me and are interpreting those orders a bit broadly?” Harold asks.

“I have concerns.”

“Very well, name them.”

“Simply put, a lot of the crew don’t need to be concerned with this. It’s a debate between us. If they have concerns about the justifications of our actions after the fact they’re more than free to ask for clarification. But distracting everyone while we’re being actively, if slowly, pursued by an entity that can be most easily described as a demon I’d rather the crew and soldiers not have the distraction.” Orchid says.

“A fair point. Not everyone would appreciate hearing us ramble over the intercoms. We’ll make recording of the debate available to all crew members so if people have questions they can watch it first before asking us any questions.”

“There’s also security concerns, but we’re... in a strange position of semi-stealth for our enemies so I’m not entirely certain if we do or do not want the enemy side to know we have weapons that deal with their monsters.”

“And there’s also the fact of whether or not we want them to actually know we can deal with them.”

“That weapon is untested, we don’t know if it will work. And so short ranged that it puts you right in the danger zone, hell you need to cross a massive danger zone to get into strike range with it. And as the Commodore of this fleet you are too important to it’s cohesion and organization to risk in so reckless a manner.”

“While it is indeed true the range of the weapon is pitiful. A mere twenty two centimetres. It is still a weapon of extremely unusual properties that has effectively met with approval by a Hollow Daughter. Which while a member of a demographic and organization that is extremely difficult to communicate with, is deservedly renowned for their lethal capacity. To the extent that most people would place a hollow daughter in the same level of supernatural threat as a demon.”

“Be that as it may sir, it may, or may not be an instant solution to the entity pursuing us. But even if that knife is capable of instantly killing the horror if it so much as gets a good look at it, it still has an extreme range issue. The creature fails easily into Megafauna territory. Even without the fire it is a danger to a starship. Large enough that to even move around in standard gravity it would have enough strength to tear open a bulkhead if it gets a good grip on things.”

“Yes, that’s an issue. For someone else. While I am an important piece in this fleet I am not only replaceable if harmed in my command duties, but in the areas I am not truly replaceable is in my ability to reach a target without notice and to perceive the threat in novel ways. If you will recall, I have numerous stealth capabilities that allow me to close the distance.”

“Stealth capabilities which have already proven insufficient against the previous Haffara Thar threat in the form of the Diamond Claw. It could sense you regardless of the stealth and attempted to attack you.”

“That is a fair point. But the fact of the matter is that we have few other ways to deal with a Haffara Thar threat. The only thing that could actually kill the previous example in the Diamond claw was a probability bending bullet. An extremely limited resource that is very slow to be replaced as we only have a single individual capable of reliably producing them.”

“A lack of bullets doesn’t mean that charging the enemy position with a steak knife is suddenly the best option.”

“That is highly debatable when the enemy is attempting to breach your fortress endlessly AND civilians could show up at any moment. Furthermore this was a deliberate trap meant for us. If we do not disarm it then it could possibly grow more and more dangerous as it has time to chase us. We don’t know about it’s capacity to learn, if there is a capacity at all or if it is somehow obeying instructions. This entity is most likely the lost portion of The Dark Forest that we tried and failed to use to rescue a La’ahbaron royal family member.”

“Which is even more dangerous. A Forest Entity is insanely dangerous to the point one of the most respected martial cultures in the galaxy is categorically, unable to deal with one. The Apuk Species has used entire Armadas to try and has failed to destroy The Dark Forest. An entire armada utilizing orbital bombardment grade weaponry tried and failed to appreciably damage The Dark Forest.”

“Yes. I read those archives. I saw the videos. Which is why something like that infected by the Haffara Thar is a threat that cannot be ignored and a danger we cannot leave behind us.”

“Likewise it’s a danger too great to ignore. The Haffara Thar are already a borderline sentient plague, couple with the Forest ability to link up their minds to further living creatures to empower itself... what if it gets you? What if This Burning Forest, what if This Demon Beast can steal your mind and soul? What if in getting close to it, even if you drive out the Haffara Thar with your fist swing, what if it really is a Dark Forest? What if it then links with you? It’s clearly been driven violent and insane. What if it gets you?”

“... You’re right.”

“Just like that?” Orchid is surprised.

“I’m not stupid. Nor insane. You’ve thought this through and I can’t debate these risks. We have our Cognito Hazard classifications and destruction protocols for a reason. An Undaunted Soldier out of control is the kind of threat that can lead to genocides. Let alone one like myself with extra-normal stealth and perception based abilities. I don’t even want to think about someone using Ode to cause damage in a civilian area. To say nothing of the fact that I could easily do ruinous damage to this fleet from anywhere in the fleet.”

“I see sir. But we need to keep debating because we still need to find a solution.”

“That we do. Which leads to the problem of the fact that we have no weapon that can reliably work with this creature. The previous example in the Diamond claw proved to us that these things regenerate so thoroughly and so quickly that there are very few ways to actually deal with them. Couple with the fact that the standard disposal method of throwing it into a star is unlikely to work with a thing that we have many reasons to believe can outright eat heat to sustain itself and we have a big problem.”

“Yes, you claim that knife you made will damage if not outright destroy any scanning technology, which means that if we tape it onto a missile and try to hit the damn thing with it, even if we score a hit at extreme range with an actively dodging opponent...”

“What we need is more time. On The RAD I have mechanics and engineers building a scan proof chamber to test this knife, which is where it will be held when not on the person of a trusted individual. If we can... Hmm... a thin warhead on a guided missile, or suicide drone, have it like a sheath for the knife and use it to basically stab it from light minutes away. Which leads to the next problem.” Harold explains.

“Picking up the damned thing afterwards. If it does brick sensor technology and causes extensive damage in systems as you claim it does then that means even if the rocket works perfectly, finding it again afterwards is going to be an exercise in futility and frustration. It may even make this entire system into a dead zone because it will kill any ship that scans into it, and goddess forbid it actually has the gravitational vector to leave the system, or is broken apart and the pieces retain it’s anomalous nature.”

“And it’s the same problem with every solid munition we can bring to bear against that monster. And that’s even if they work. I did bring up that a Hollow Daughter approved of it, but in truth that simple nod could have meant anything. We don’t know what their culture, body language or personal goals are. All we know for sure about the knife is that it’s very odd, and very damaging to anything but an organic individual that detects it.”

“Did you even see if a Synth or Cyborg could see it?” Orchid asks.

“I’m not gong to ask for someone to volunteer for a potentially suicidal action just to satisfy my curiosity.”

“That’s... fair. Perhaps a cyborg who’s implant is non-vital?”

“Hmm... better, but it’s still the equivalent of maiming one of my men to just figure something out.”

“Volunteers are a thing Commodore.” Orchid reminds him.

“Right. So in summary using the knife as a knife is a bad idea unless there is no other choice, especially with the potential threat level of this Haffara Thar infestation and we don’t understand the knife, Ode, or the actual threat enough to just fire off the weapon and understand what we can do with it. But just in case we rig up a suicide drone that will hold the knife in a sufficiently protected casing to stab it from a distance. However that’s the second to last resort with last resort being me stabbing it.”

“Yes, but lets add a few more steps between our current actions and sending you out with a knife and a desire to make even the most vicious Snict ancestors nod in appreciation of your actions.”

“Well, worst come to worse and I can see if I can skin alive a burning forest that’s actively fighting me and trying to steal my mind, body and soul.”

“Do you have to phrase things so dramatically?”

“Yes, and I can actually do far worse.” Harold notes.

“Please no. I don’t need amateur dramatics giving mission statements.”

“Amateur?”

“You get your acting skills from the memory imprint of Herbert whose big acting routine is pretending to be a small child, while physically a small child. And while he’s good at playing naive and stupid, I don’t need to hear mission reports with you sounding naive and stupid.” Orchid notes.

“... You do realize that Herbert, as a high ranking Intelligence Officer and Field Agent, will be able to access the records of this right? And that he may take offence?”

“He’s also professional enough to not take it too far. I’m not afraid.”

“Oh, but you will be... you will be.” Harold says leaning over to give Orchid an ominous look.

“... Just to be clear we’re finished the debate now and you’re just being funny right? Not actually warning me about your brother being crazy enough to do something to me regardless of the distance?”

“Things can always be funny when I’m involved.” Herbert says from Orchid’s opposite side and Orchid turns his head so fast his hair whips Harold in the face and he chuckles as Orchid gives Herbert a boggle eyed look.

Orchid pauses for a moment before coming to any conclusions and thinks for a moment. “You’re just here to pick up information in case it can’t be transferred via electronic means aren’t you?”

“Yes, but sometimes the timing of life is just...” Herbert says before making a chef’s kiss motion.

“I don’t know what that gesture means.” Orchid says.

“It means delicious.” Herbert says. “Anyways, you’ve hit the nose on the head and I’m here as an Ode user to see if I can offer any further insights and to see if making the knife has changed Harold’s... anything really. “

“Alright, but like I’ve told Orchid, before we test this thing I want the secure and scan-proof part of The RAD’s lab to be finished before I let go or put down this thing.”

“Okay. That’s just smart.” Herbert says with a shrug. “Anyways, I got more things I need to take pictures of and such with alternate tech in case something has been missed with the Ode.”

“Well, you’re more than welcome aboard brother.” Harold says.

“Thank you!” Herbert chimes out in his Private Stream best.

First Last

Year 8, month 1

Qi gathering, stage 10

"You should stick around for the Devil Punching Festival!" The head elder of the heavenly fist sect said loudly as he and Mark sat down in the chow hall. Each of them had a large plate with a thick cut of rare steak, a pile of fried potatoes and matching one of grilled veggies.

"Meat to make you strong, potatoes to give you energy, and veggies to give you definition," the head elder had explained.

"I feel like I already know the answer to this question, but what is the festival about?" Mark asked, cutting into the steak, his mouth watering at the juices.

"We punch a devil!" He answered simply, and Mark realized he was correct about what the answer was, and that it didn't help much. As they ate the head elder spoke about how fun the devil last year was to punch, and how many of his disciples learned much from it. Mark largely tuned him out, trying instead to gauge how strong this man was, but he couldn't feel much qi at all. But it wasn't like the low amount of qi a mortal might have, rather it was like the man in front of him was a black void in his sight.

"So... you really only punch things?" Mark asked as the elder slowed down.

"Of course, everything is secretly punching anyways," the Elder replied, "any sufficiently advanced Dao is indistinguishable from a really big fist."

"Seems... limiting," Mark admitted.

"Come, I'll show you!" The man said with a wide grin, clearly taking no offense and motioning Mark to follow him as they bussed their plates.

"I'm sure you know of a game kids play," the Elder said as they walked out into the courtyard, "where one kid will pretend to punch another to make them flinch. Correct?"

"The made you flinch game? Ya, it's some schoolyard nonsense," Mark nodded.

"Correct," the elder said, turning suddenly and lifting a fist as if to punch Mark, who instantly jumped back, lifting his arms, "yes, like that. Childish games, but a gateway to a deeper understanding of Punching. Stand over there."

Mark carefully walked over to where the Elder pointed, a good twenty odd feet away from the burly man.

"Kids can only make you flinch from within arm's reach, that is the mortal level, basic," the man continued, taking a stance, "one who has begun to understand the Dao of Punching, can do more."

From twenty feet away the man moved like he was about to throw a punch and, despite Mark knowing he wasn't in range, he felt himself flinch and raise his arms to defend. Only to pause as the elder didn't throw the punch, merely giving Mark a grin as Mark slowly lowered his arms.

"That is the second level, the ranged flinch. To project your dao so clearly that, even though the target knows the punch cannot hurt them, they still react as though it can," the Elder said, "following me so far?"

"I... think so?" Mark said.

"This, is the third level," the Elder took his stance again, and simply stood there. Suddenly Mark felt danger approaching from ahead of him and he instinctively stepped back and raised his arms, only for the sense of danger to pass, leaving him confused.

"The phantom punch, you merely project your dao such that one believes they are about to be punched when no fist exists," the Elder explained with a wide grin.

"Seems like it could be distracting in combat," Mark said, shaking himself off and straightening.

"Indeed, those with control over the Dao of Punching can make people believe a punch is coming from one direction, when it arrives from another," the Elder agreed, "or cause them to fail to sense a punch, or even react so strongly to a punch that isn't coming that they are injured by it. Our founder is the only one to master that level. He could punch a man to death from a mile away without throwing a punch."

"That's... huh," Mark grunted, scratching his head, "kinda scary."

"Only for one who is a target of our fists!" The elder laughed, patting Mark on the back, "come I'll show you to the guest quarters, the festival is only a week away."

"Seems like I got here just in time," Mark remarked, moving to follow the elder.

"It's once a year, so we do it pretty often."

"Once a year is often?"

"Maybe not for mortals, but I've overseen 50 odd festivals since I became the head elder."

Mark didn't know how to respond to that, having not realized the guy was over fifty. Though, he corrected himself, he was likely far older than that. It could have taken over a century for him to reach the level of power required to be head elder. Just another indication of how odd this new world was to him.

The next week went by relatively quickly, Mark was allowed to join in the daily exercise of the outer disciples. Which turned out to be exactly what he'd seen on entering the sect grounds, they lined up and threw punches. For hours. When a disciple could no longer move their arms they did squats until they couldn't stand. Then the older disciples or outer elders would carry the disciple to the chow hall.

Compared to the other two sects Mark had seen it was odd, physical exercise was common, but it was often seen as secondary to active cultivation. A stronger body could make better use of qi and sustain higher qi output for longer. But the qi was the important part. Here, at the Heavenly Fist sect, the physical exercise was their cultivation, or at least that's the impression Mark got. Obviously, they wouldn't show or tell him of their cultivation manuals but from how he saw whisps of qi entering their bodies during exercise he figured the manual was about exercise.

From Mark's understanding it was odd, his impression was that for every benefit of a cultivation manual there had to be a drawback. Would requiring them to exercise, or throw punches, as part of the manual be a benefit or drawback? It could be a benefit, as it was along the same lines as Mark's own passive cultivation, they could do something else as they cultivated, though it was more restrictive in that they seemed to need to throw punches. But it was also more difficult than just sitting and cultivating, without the benefit of constant, passive cultivation.

But he couldn't fault the results, the members of this sect were physically more powerful than any other cultivators at their level. They did also have obvious gaps, as Mark had seen at the tournament, they were slow and straightforward in how they fought. Though based on some of the techniques the head elder had displayed that wasn't as much an issue at higher levels.

As the new year came, so to did the festival, and with it a number of dour looking elders from other sects. They didn't speak much to anyone besides each other, likely upset they were missing their own sect's celebration for this. Though Mark didn't understand why they were even here until he actually got to the festival itself.

Everyone gathered in a large stadium, only a bit smaller than the one the tournament had been in. Mark figured this one was where the Heavenly Fist sect hosted their own tournaments. Only those of the Heavenly Fist, with some guests, were attending so the stadium was far below capacity, with maybe four hundred total people, many of whom were sect servants. Mark didn't remember any festivals at the sect he first arrived at, either the servants weren't invited or, more likely, he simply didn't care at the time, being too focused on his own goals.

Though, based on how the head elder acted, it was also likely that the Heavenly Fist sect treated their servants much better than other sects did. Something that was reinforced by how the disciples and servants sat together, talking and laughing.

There was one person who stood out as not belonging, he stood in the same booth, on the lowest floor, with the head elder, and looked somewhere between uncomfortable and resigned. Compared to the members of the punch sect he was also stick thin, with pale skin and a bald head. The feeling he gave off was not unlike the Demonic Cultivator Mark had encountered, though surely any sect would kill a Demonic Cultivator on sight.

"Welcome, friends, to the 64th Annual Devil Punching Festival!" The head elder announced, his booming voice echoing through the stadium with ease, Mark couldn't tell if he was boosting his voice somehow or just shouting that loudly.

"One Hundred of our finest up and coming disciples have gathered for their part!" The head elder continued, "will our guest summon a devil that earns him his freedom this year? Or will he once more be punched back into place?"

"What?" Mark asked, confused.

"See that stick man next to the elder?" One of the disciples next to Mark said, "he's a Devil Summoning Demonic Cultivator. He summons a Devil, we punch it, if it beats all 100 disciples, he goes free. If not, he doesn't."

"You keep a Demonic Cultivator around?" Asked Mark, partly in shock and partly in horror.

"Only as long as he follows the rules," the disciple shrugged, "he cultivates by summoning a devil. He is only allowed to summon a devil for the festival, he may not leave sect grounds, and may not alter his demonic manual."

"What if he does?"

"Then the sect elder punches him," the other man said simply, as if that solved everything. Mark considered what he'd experienced when the Head Elder had shown him his dao, and figured that was likely enough.

"Everyone ready!" The Head Elder shouted, concluding his own speech, the crowd cheering, "then let's see what Devil we have in store this year!"

The thin, pale man made his way down to the stadium grounds, using a staff to draw a large circle in the dirt.

"And you've been doing this for sixty years?" Mark asked as the devil summoner drew in the dirt.

"It's fun, and great training," the disciple next to him answered, "I got to punch the devil last year!"

"Wait, you're using a demonic cultivator as training?"

"He also gives lectures a few times a month, trying to tempt us to his side."

"The Elders say it's good mental training," another disciple added, "and helps us learn about how Demonic Cultivators think."

"So we can punch them better!" The first agreed, "after all, to know how to throw a punch, one must know how to take a punch."

"And that includes mental punches from words."

The two disciples nodded sagely to one another, before turning their attention to the stadium again where the summoner had finished drawing a crude pentagram. He cut his hand, allowing the blood to drip onto the circle and tried to shout a chant of some kind, though his voice lacked the depth and volume to give it any real gravitas.

"By blood freely given and Qi freely spent, by the ground beneath my feet and the heavens above, I call upon that which dwells beyond the mortal veil.

Come, spirit without flesh. Come, hunger without end. Come, bargainer of souls, collector of debts

I offer you a vessel. I offer you passage. I offer you the lives of those who fall before you.

That I might sip from the chalice of blood you fill, that I may gain in might, qi and dao.

Let us take what has not been promised. Let us not refuse what has been agreed.

By Qi, by soul, by Dao— the contract is offered.”

For a moment nothing happened, then Mark sensed qi flowing out of the man and into the circle. A shadow seemed to gather in the middle of the ring, from which a deep voice, the kind that sent shivers down one's spine, replied.

"Bearer of Soul,

Who wishes to escape mortality,

Who calls upon me,

Your contract is accepted."

A massive, clawed hand burst from the shadows, slamming into the ground and digging gouges into the dirt as the devil pulled itself out of the darkness. It was tall, thin to the extent of being skeletal, covered in pale grey skin. Its bulbous head featured far too many eyes positioned randomly all around its skull, and no obvious mouth. Standing hunched over it observed the stadium.

"A good crop," its voice rumbled, the dirt of the stadium dancing across the ground and the shadow it emerged from vanishing, "I shall begin the harvest-"

The Devil suddenly froze in place as qi exploded from the head elder, it felt like a massive fist was poised over the devil's head, ready to fall. For the first time Mark got a good feel for the Head Elder's power, and it dwarfed his, matched only by the God Beast Mark had encountered in the wilds.

"Oh, it's a big one this year!" One disciple shouted, "Five spirit stones on it making it to round forty!"

"Look at those scrawny arms, no way it gets past round twenty!" Another shouted back, and soon the stadium was filled with disciples shouting bets and taunts.

"Devil, you have been chosen to partake in our festival," the Elder announced, easily speaking over the betting and shouting, "should you make it through one hundred of our disciples you and your summoner shall be allowed to leave."

The Devil, ever so slowly, turned to look at the Head Elder, Mark could almost see it shivering at the display of power. Only when the elder withdrew his qi did the Devil relax.

"Very well," it growled, "present to me the weaklings I shall slaughter."

"Oh! I'm first!" One disciple sitting on a bench on the stadium ground shouted, jumping to his feet.

"The first sacrifice?"

"The first to punch you!" The disciple corrected.

"Don't punch him too hard! I want to get a chance!" Another from the bench shouted, other joining in with encouragement or jeering.

Mark could almost swear the Devil was looking horrified at the reactions it was getting, glancing around confused as people cheered and shouted. Clearly this wasn't the reaction it was used to getting.

The only people in the stadium who weren't cheering were the guest elders from other sects, who fixed the Devil and its summoner with glares.

"Fight!" The head elder announced, the first disciple charging in, pulling his fist back and lining up a punch, only for the Devil to swipe at him with a claw, catching him in the side. But even before the swing had fully connected the disciple vanished, appearing in the grip of one of the Heavenly Fist sect elders on the sidelines.

"Damnit!" The disciple swore.

"Yes!" The voice of the summoner echoed across the stadium as he jumped up with his fists in the air, only to pause as everyone looked at him, "what? It has a chance this year!"

"Second disciple!" The head elder announced, another young man standing from the benches.

"The festival starts with the weakest chosen disciples," the man next to Mark explained, "with the weakest outer disciple going first, he only just began using our manual. The last disciple to go will be the strongest Inner disciple."

"Not that any Devil I've seen has ever gotten past the fiftieth round," another added.

"Ya, once the disciples start getting into Qi Refining level the Devil really falls behind, I mean, his summoner is only low Qi Refining. Barely formed a silver core."

Mark sighed, and decided to accept the absurdity, leaning back to watch the show.

-----

Discord - Patreon

-----

(She stubs out the cigarette, and lights another.)

The Veskari asked for talks nine days after Elsinore.

We said yes, on one condition. They would come to us. To Elsinore.

(Pause.)

Fleet Marshal Arun didn't come. He'd resigned the day the armada limped home, and as far as I know, he never spoke in public again. I've read his resignation. It's one line long. He took full responsibility, and he asked for nothing.

I've thought about him a great deal since. He wasn't a monster. He looked at the evidence in front of him, and he believed it. That was all.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

The Veskari sent someone else to lead their delegation. You've met him already.

The old admiral. The one who stood up in that closed session and said that one patrol and one shot were not enough to know a species by. The one they heard out politely, and outvoted.

They'd called him out of retirement to clean up the mess he'd warned them about.

(Beat.)

We held the talks aboard the Torrens. That was deliberate, and I'm not proud of it, but I'm not sorry either. I wanted them to walk her corridors. I wanted them to see the scorch marks on her hull from the shots that hadn't hurt us.

The Veskari delegation came aboard in full dress. Eleven of them.

And the last one through the hatch was Irren Vol.

(Pause.)

We'd asked for him by name. They didn't ask why.

(She taps ash from the cigarette.)

The first day was what you'd expect. Positions. Grievances. Lawyers. I'll spare you.

On the second day, I asked the Veskari to watch something with me.

(Pause.)

I told you at the start that the bridge recordings came to us from a friend. By the time of those talks, that friend was safe. That's all I'm permitted to say.

[REDACTED]

(She almost laughs.)

Yes. All right.

So we didn't need to hide what we had anymore. And I'd been waiting a long time to show it to them.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

We played them the Serene Accord's recordings. Their own recordings. Every second. The human ship dropping out of jump space. The spike. Vol's order. The shot. The flare.

Vol sat through it without moving.

And then our analysts took the floor, and did what they'd spent three weeks doing, months earlier, in a room on the other side of human space. They went through it again, frame by frame.

I said I'd come back to what they found. Here it is.

(Pause.)

Remember the spike?

Energy spike on the human vessel. Large. Climbing. It doesn't match any weapon profile on record.

It didn't match any weapon profile because it wasn't a weapon. Our analysts laid the Accord's sensor data next to a reading from one of our own ships, and the two traces matched almost perfectly.

It was a jump drive. A jump drive failing.

That ship had torn out of jump space inside Veskari territory because something had gone badly wrong with her drive. The surge the Accord saw was the drive tearing itself apart.

(Beat.)

Remember the explosion? Far bigger than any single shot from the Accord had any right to cause? Their weapons officer decided her munitions had gone up.

She had no munitions.

She was an ore hauler. Her hold was full of unstable ore, the kind you ship carefully, with containment running every second of the voyage. When her drive failed, the containment failed with it.

Veskari doesn't have a word for accident. The nearest is ilvast: a thing nobody has claimed yet. That's why their weapons officer needed those munitions. Something had to have done it.

(She leans forward.)

And remember the timing? The flash and the impact, logged in the same second? Nobody on that bridge thought that was strange.

Our analysts broke that second into thousandths. The explosion began a little over a tenth of a second before the Accord's shot arrived.

(Pause.)

She was already gone. The Accord fired on a ship that was already dying, and hit what was left of her as she came apart.

The Battle of the Quiet Line, the victory they'd put in their officer training lectures, wasn't a battle at all. One shot hadn't been enough. One shot hadn't mattered.

(She sits back. The room is silent.)

And then there was the signal.

The faint, repeating signal, on a band the Veskari didn't use for anything. Logged as interference. Nobody asked about it again.

Thirty years earlier, at first contact, we'd handed the Veskari a set of technical annexes. I told you one of them would matter.

It listed our emergency frequencies.

The Veskari had filed it, and never told their ships to listen. That signal was a human distress call, on a frequency they'd had in their own archives for thirty years.

(Pause.)

We played it for them.

(She sets the cigarette down.)

It isn't long. A man's voice. Calm, the way you're trained to be calm. He'd seen the Accord on his sensors, the only ship for light-years, and he called her directly.

"Unidentified vessel, this is the ore hauler Decoud. We have a drive failure and a containment breach. We are not armed. Request immediate assistance. Please respond."

And then, a second later, much quieter:

"Please respond."

(Long pause.)

That's where it ends.

But it didn't stop. When her containment failed, the Decoud's emergency buoy launched, the way it was built to. It survived the blast. And it did the only thing it knew how to do: it kept repeating the last thing her captain said.

That's what the Accord's communications officer heard, forty seconds later. That's what he logged as interference.

(She doesn't pick the cigarette back up yet.)

Nobody in the room said anything for a long time. Then Vol asked if he could hear it again.

We played it again.

When it finished, he stood up. He looked down the table at me. And he asked a question that nobody on the Veskari side had asked in five months.

"Who were they?"

(Pause.)

So I told him.

Her name was the Decoud. She was an ore hauler out of the belt colonies, eleven years in service, with a good safety record and a crew of thirty-one.

Her captain was Hal Merrow. Fifty-four years old. Two grandchildren. He'd been hauling ore for thirty years. Half his crew had been with him for ten of them.

And then I read Vol the other thirty names. All of them. It took about four minutes. He stood for every one.

(She picks up the cigarette.)

I said at the start that I'd tell you her name when it mattered. I hope you understand now why I waited.

(Beat.)

The talks took another two weeks. I won't bore you with the treaty. You've all had to study it, God help you.

The Quiet Line is still there. It's not so quiet anymore. There's traffic across it every day now: traders, scholars, students. Some of you will serve alongside Veskari officers before your careers are done. I hope you'll be kinder to them than they were to us, and less certain than they were.

The subject peoples renegotiated their places in the Veskari order, one by one. Some of them left it entirely. It turns out that watching a navy you'd feared for four hundred years flee from a corvette changes how you think about a great many things.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

Irren Vol left the navy the month after the treaty was signed. I'm told he wrote to the family of every member of the Decoud's crew. Thirty-one letters. Some of the families wrote back.

He's still alive. We exchange messages, now and then. He's never once asked me to forgive him, and I've never once told him there was anything to forgive.

I'm still not sure which of us is right.

(Long pause.)

And our friend? The one who sent us everything, at such risk?

One day they'll let me tell you who they were. They deserve that.

[REDACTED]

(She raises the cigarette, almost a salute.)

Not today, apparently.

(Pause.)

At the end of the talks, the old admiral asked me a question. He'd been reading our literature. He asked why we had named that system Elsinore.

So I told him about Hamlet. About a frightened young sentry on a cold night, on the walls of a castle called Elsinore, staring into the dark. And the first line of the play.

"Who's there?"

He thought about that for a long time. Then he said it was a very good question, and that his people had forgotten how to ask it.

(She looks at the cigarette. It's nearly burned down.)

They taught the Battle of the Quiet Line to their young officers for years. One shot, one kill. A lesson in how strong they were.

I teach it to you for a different reason.

Remember the form Vol used? The one for things you've seen with your own eyes? He didn't choose to lie. His language asked him how he knew, and his fear answered for him.

Irren Vol was not a fool. Neither was his gunner. Neither was the officer who logged that signal as interference. Every one of them did exactly what they'd been trained to do, and between them they started a war that could have ended their civilization.

That's the part that should frighten you.

(Pause.)

One day, one of you will be on a bridge with four seconds and a reading you don't understand. Your crew will be looking at you, and every instinct you have will be telling you what it is.

(Beat.)

Before you fire, ask who's there.

(She crushes out the cigarette.)

5/5

© 2026 Not Applicable Ltd. All rights reserved.
https://x.com/notapplicableco/status/2111220947684626668

​

The department manager reread the sentence at the end of the first resignation letter: Good luck dealing with humanity.

Considering the officer’s twenty-three years of experience and the crises he had resolved in the past, the manager concluded that perhaps he was simply a civil servant nearing retirement who had finally run out of patience. Without giving the matter much further thought, he accepted the resignation. Working with humans might not be easy, of course, but there were species in the Galactic Union that were exceptionally good at resolving cultural disputes.

For this reason, he chose a representative of the Ezayt race, known for its analytical thinking and empathy despite its young age. This young officer had previously helped resolve numerous disputes between different species. The manager expected his new recruit to demonstrate the same approach when dealing with humans.

Suzex arrived at the department the following morning amid the Galactic Union’s usual bureaucratic hustle and bustle. As he made his way through corridors filled with officials carrying documents, clerks rushing to meet deadlines, and communication devices ringing nonstop, he was greeted by the department manager’s assistant.

“Welcome. Good luck on your first day. Let me show you to your desk.”

They walked into the workspace together. The assistant showed him his desk, explained that the necessary access permissions had been set up, and then left to return to their own duties. Suzex settled in and opened his screen.

The employee at the next desk spun around in his chair to look at him.

“I have some advice for you on your first day.”

“Great. I love advice.”

“Keep a spare uniform in your drawer, my new friend.”

Suzex smiled, although he had no idea why that would be necessary.

“I’ll keep that in mind, my friend. Thanks for the tip.”

By lunchtime, he had settled into the workflow and reviewed the tasks in front of him. Just as he was preparing to look at the new complaints, the notification light on his desk lit up.

A new complaint had arrived, and he eagerly opened the file. An employee was complaining that a colleague constantly kept him waiting. Whenever he asked for help, the colleague would reply, “I’ll be there in a minute.” Whenever he asked them to take care of something, they would say, “I’ll get it done in a minute.” Sometimes, they would simply ask him to wait a minute. But those minutes never actually lasted a minute. The waiting times ranged from three to seventeen minutes.

At first, the complainant hadn’t considered it a serious issue. However, after the same thing happened repeatedly, he began timing every instance. He was no longer sure whether this was simply a matter of lateness or some strange human habit. Eventually, he brought the matter to the relevant department of the Galactic Union.

Suzex went to the complainant’s workplace to speak with him. The employee took the situation quite seriously. In his view, the issue wasn’t simply about waiting; being unable to trust the time estimates someone gave you made working together difficult. On top of that, the same behavior had been repeated time and again.

After listening to his explanation, Suzex went to the human’s workplace. It wasn’t difficult to find him. He introduced himself and explained the nature of the complaint.

“Your colleague says you repeatedly tell him you’ll be back in a minute, but you never actually follow through.”

The human raised an eyebrow.

“Look, I didn’t think this was such a big deal. When we say ‘a minute,’ we don’t always mean exactly sixty seconds. It’s just a figure of speech. I mean that I’ll finish what I’m doing and then go over to him. I’m not deliberately keeping anyone waiting, and I’m not lying either.”

Suzex explained that the other party expected reliable time estimates. The human, however, was becoming increasingly irritated.

“Fine. Then tell me, what should I say from now on? One minute? Approximately five minutes? Or should I pull out a stopwatch and give an exact time every single time?”

Suzex noticed the resentment in his tone but didn’t know how to respond.

“I’m simply trying to understand both sides of the situation.”

“Oh, really? Then let me ask you something. Why do we have to file an official complaint before we can even try to understand each other? Couldn’t we just talk, apologize, and put the whole thing behind us?”

Suzex looked at him in confusion.

“Apologize?”

The human stared at him for a few seconds. Then his expression changed.

“Wait a minute. You don’t know how to apologize?”

“A minute!? I’m not entirely sure what you mean.”

The human threw his hands up.

“This is unbelievable! You’ve accomplished so much, developed all kinds of technology, and mastered interstellar travel, yet you genuinely don’t even know what an apology is?”

He could tell that his words had irritated the other man, but he still couldn’t understand why such a simple concept mattered so much.

“We resolve disputes according to established procedures,” he explained.

“Yes, I noticed. Someone waits three minutes, and you open a case. Then you sit two people down at a table and ask them to say a few things to each other. Have you ever considered that we could just talk without going through all that?”

Suzex didn’t answer. The human might have a point. At the very least, he didn’t want to close the case without looking into the possibility.

He began researching human culture and reviewing relevant sources. He soon learned that an apology wasn’t merely an admission of fault, but also a way to ease tension between people. The idea seemed reasonable to him, and he thought it might help resolve the dispute if both parties understood each other. He therefore asked the human to apologize for keeping his colleague waiting.

The human took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry for keeping you waiting. I’ll try to give you a clearer estimate next time.”

Suzex then turned to the complainant and asked him to apologize as well for taking the matter to an official complaint instead of discussing it directly.

The alien stared at Suzex in disbelief.

“I reported a problem to you. Why are you asking us both to say this meaningless word to each other instead of solving it?”

The human closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Wonderful. Just wonderful.”

Even so, the complainant complied with the request. Once both parties had apologized, the case was closed.

A single word appeared on the screen: RESOLVED.

Suzex returned to his office and leaned back in his chair. He felt proud of having successfully resolved his first case. Although he didn’t fully understand why his method had worked, the fact that neither party had continued arguing as they left the meeting seemed like a positive sign. He was about to move on to his next file when a notification appeared on his screen. This time, the message was from the department manager, who had requested his presence in the office. Somewhat puzzled, Suzex made his way to the manager’s room. However, a copy of the very file he had just closed was lying on the desk.

“I’ve reviewed your first case,” the manager said. “You closed it.”

“Yes. It seemed that both parties had misunderstood each other. After speaking with them, we resolved the dispute.”

The manager placed the file on the desk.

“Are you aware that the complainant has appealed to a higher authority?”

Suzex was surprised.

“No. Why would they do that? I thought the problem had been resolved.”

“The complainant claims that the issue was never formally investigated and was simply brushed aside using a human approach to reconciliation. He also states that both parties were forced to apologize, even though the behavior of only one party should have been evaluated.”

Suzex fell silent for a moment.

“But there was no deliberate violation. The human explained that the expression he used didn’t literally mean one minute in his culture. The other party had simply interpreted it differently. They understood each other, and the dispute ended.”

“Our job isn’t to make disputes look resolved. It’s to resolve them according to established procedures. Besides, if the problem had truly been resolved, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now, would we?”

Suzex leaned forward, trying to understand the manager’s reasoning.

“But isn’t the purpose of those procedures to solve problems?”

The manager looked at him for a moment before opening another document.

“Your authority is to investigate complaints involving humans and enforce existing regulations. Not to evaluate human behavior according to their own cultural habits.”

“I was only trying to understand both sides.”

“That’s precisely the problem,” the manager said. “Humanity has only recently joined the Galactic Union. Their behavior, communication habits, and relations with other species are still being studied. At this stage, your job isn’t to bend existing rules in an attempt to understand one side.”

Suzex’s expression changed. For the first time, he couldn’t understand why something he had done with good intentions was being treated as such a serious problem.

“So, if both parties are satisfied and have agreed on how to prevent the problem from happening again, what exactly did I do wrong?”

The manager shut the file with a sharp snap.

“The fact that you still don’t understand that is enough to prove you’re not suited for this position.”

Suzex’s ears drew back slightly. He searched for something to say, but he realized that the manager had already made up his mind.

“Your employment with the Galactic Union is terminated, effective immediately.”

Suzex remained motionless for a moment. He had started the day as a trusted specialist and was ending it without a job. He returned to his desk, gathered his belongings, and headed for the exit without speaking to anyone.

The employee at the next desk noticed him and leaned back in his chair.

“It’s not even evening yet. I have to say, I like the working hours here. Maybe I should transfer over there.”

Suzex shot him a tense look without replying and continued on his way.

“Just a little joke, my friend,” the employee called after him. “Of course I’m not transferring there. I like my job. I have responsibilities.”

After a brief silence, the other employees burst into laughter. But Suzex had already walked out the door.

Things didn’t improve after his departure. First, a new manager was appointed, followed by another. Each believed they could avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. Some introduced stricter rules, others tried to revise the procedures, while a few thought the problem stemmed from poor communication and organized training sessions for the staff. The result remained the same. Complaints involving humans continued to arrive, managers kept developing new methods to resolve them, and eventually, they all reached the same conclusion: the job was far more difficult than they had anticipated.

Over time, the department became a laughingstock within the Galactic Union. Employees in other divisions began to regard an assignment there as a form of professional punishment. Whenever a manager was appointed, their colleagues wished them luck by telling them to brace themselves instead. The department’s name became synonymous with unresolved problems and failed leadership. Some employees even began placing bets on how long each newly appointed manager would last.

By the seventh appointment, the administration decided to be more careful. This time, they wanted someone capable of making decisions under pressure, someone disciplined and committed to following the rules. They selected an idealistic manager who had been trained in a military administrative organization and firmly believed in order and hierarchy.

The candidate reviewed the resignation letters of the previous six managers in the file presented to him. Their repeated failures caught his attention, but he didn’t see them as evidence that the job was impossible. Instead, he concluded that his predecessors had been too soft and accepted the assignment.

Meanwhile, the arrival of the seventh manager at the Human Complaints Department marked the beginning of a new round of betting.

Sokartz arrived at the office early on the morning he was due to take up his new position. His uniform was immaculate, his steps measured, and the assignment file in his hand contained the resignation letters of the previous six officers. After briefly reviewing them, he set the file aside. After all, every dispute had a cause, every violation had a consequence, and every problem had a solution that could be implemented.

He spent his first day learning how the department operated. He reviewed several documents brought in by his assistant, returned an application with missing paperwork, and approved two completed cases. The tasks before him seemed quite straightforward. No new complaints involving humans arrived that day.

On the second day, his afternoon was proceeding much like the previous one when a huge red warning appeared on his screen.

URGENT COMPLAINT — UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO A STRATEGIC WATER RESERVE

Sokartz opened the notification. The first image showed a vast stretch of coastline along the shared border between humanity and the Galactic Union. A group of humans were splashing water at one another and laughing with those standing on the shore. One of them was floating on his back near the beach.

Sokartz stared at the image for several seconds, trying to make sense of it.

“Humans, humans! Why would you enter a water reserve?”

He established a connection with the security officer who had submitted the report.

“What is the purpose of the behavior shown in these images?”

The officer replied.

“We haven’t determined that yet. Our teams arrived at the scene and instructed the humans to leave the water. However, the humans asked why it was forbidden and continued swimming.”

Sokartz frowned.

“They asked why!? Don’t they know this is a resource?”

“They appear to know. However, they claim they don’t understand how entering the water could damage the reserve.”

“Send me the relevant conservation regulations and the penalties applicable to this violation,” he said. “Also, have the officers remain at the scene until the individuals have been identified.”

When he ended the connection, the look of confusion on his face had been replaced by one of determination.

Sokartz arrived at the scene alongside a security vessel and law enforcement officers. As soon as he disembarked, he looked toward the humans on the shore. Several were still swimming, while others were sunbathing on the beach.

The security officer raised a voice amplifier.

“ATTENTION! YOU ARE WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF A GALACTIC UNION STRATEGIC WATER RESERVE. ENTERING THE WATER IS PROHIBITED. EXIT THE WATER IMMEDIATELY AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE AUTHORITIES!”

The humans turned toward the sound. One of them looked up at the security vessel in the sky and called out to his companion.

“Damn, there are only four of us! You weren’t embarrassed to show up in that thing? You might as well have called in a whole battle fleet!”

Sokartz approached the group on the shore.

“You heard the warning. You have entered a restricted strategic resource without authorization. Proceedings will be initiated against you.”

“What proceedings? What proceedings?”

“I said proceedings! Don’t you understand, human?”

“Against us?”

“Yes!”

The man looked around in confusion.

“For what exactly, our galactic savior?”

“This is a water reserve! You’ve committed a serious procedural violation!”

“Brother, what are we, nuclear waste? We went in, that’s all. We’re getting out now. The water is right there, and so is the reserve. Why are you turning this into a diplomatic crisis over something so trivial?”

Sokartz was beginning to lose his patience.

“Don’t you understand, Earthling? You’re under arrest!”

“Fine, but what’s your job? What gives you the authority to accuse us?”

“I’m an officer with the Human Complaints Department. I’m also responsible for resolving cultural compatibility issues and enforcing procedures.”

The man nodded.

“Good. Then I assume there’s nothing stopping me from informing the Human Committee that an officer responsible for resolving cultural compatibility issues showed up in a spaceship to raid four people who came here to swim?”

Sokartz’s face tightened.

“You can rest assured that this incident is being handled in accordance with the necessary procedures.”

“Wonderful. I’ll make sure to tell them that too.”

Sokartz repeated that they had committed a serious procedural violation and issued the arrest order. The humans began walking, grumbling as they went. They were coming along voluntarily, but things became complicated again when one of the security officers reached for a man’s arm from behind.

“Touch me again, and I’ll shove that baton up your ass! We’re walking, aren’t we? Are you blind?”

The officer stepped back. The other humans also protested, saying that they could walk on their own and that no physical intervention was necessary. Sokartz stepped in and told everyone to remain calm. Eventually, the group proceeded toward the vehicle under security escort.

After they were taken into custody, an official notification was sent to the Human Union. The incident soon reached the Human Committee. When the committee learned that its citizens had been arrested simply for entering a protected water reserve, it took the matter directly to the Galactic Union’s upper administration.

Before long, the Galactic Union leadership received a request for a meeting. The Human Committee’s representative appeared on the screen and got straight to the point without exchanging any greetings.

“We’ve received a report that our citizens have been arrested. What are the charges against them?”

“They violated the Strategic Resource Protection Regulations. They entered a protected water reserve without authorization.”

The representative looked astonished.

“So, a group of humans were arrested for going into the sea, is that correct?”

“You’re overlooking the strategic importance of the resource. The regulations clearly state—”

“Then listen carefully. Humanity’s membership in the Galactic Union does not give you the right to treat our people as a third-class species. If you cannot learn to approach our cultural differences with mutual tolerance, we will leave your Union, establish our own borders, and cut all ties with you. We will never accept this kind of treatment toward our people. You will be responsible for whatever happens next.”

When the meeting ended, the Galactic Union leader stared at the screen for a while. Confronting the Human Committee over a group of humans swimming in the sea was bad enough, but risking humanity’s departure from the Union over such an incident would be an unwise decision. Predicting how humans would react was already difficult; there was no reason to take that risk over a matter like this. Furthermore, the Human Committee had made a request in response to the incident. Given the circumstances and the harsh enforcement that had led to the situation, the request was reasonable and could potentially resolve several other problems as well.

The matter was then passed on to the department manager, who summoned Sokartz to his office.

“Release the humans who were arrested. This order comes from the upper administration and must be carried out immediately!”

Sokartz looked as though he wanted to object.

“But sir, the regulations were clearly violated.”

“I’m aware of that. But our job is to resolve cultural disputes, not create a diplomatic crisis with humanity. And right now, we’re on the verge of one. Couldn’t you have handled this more simply?!”

Realizing that he had no choice but to follow the order, Sokartz lowered his head.

The arrested humans were released, and the Human Committee was informed that its request had been accepted. The Galactic Union administration wanted no crisis.

However, the incident brought about several changes within the Human Complaints Department. Although Sokartz insisted that he had performed his duties in accordance with the existing regulations, the Galactic Union disagreed. Following the diplomatic crisis, it was decided that he would be reassigned to another position. Though he couldn’t understand the reasoning behind the decision, he obeyed the order and left the department for his new post.

Once again, the department was left without a manager. The future of the division, already a laughingstock because of the resignations of its previous six managers, now seemed even more uncertain. To prevent the same problems from recurring, the upper administration put the Human Committee’s request into effect.

A few days later, the department was experiencing another ordinary morning. Employees were reviewing paperwork at their desks, evaluating new complaints, and dealing with the usual bureaucratic tasks. They were still joking about how long the next manager would last. Then the door opened.

The employees froze for a moment when they saw who had entered. They exchanged glances before turning back toward the door. Some couldn’t find the words to speak, while others were trying to figure out whether what they were seeing was real. The department had fallen completely silent. Not a sound could be heard.

The new officer, seemingly unaware of the strange silence in the room, glanced around, smiled, and raised a hand.

“Hey, everyone! I’m Ryan.”

Prev

First/Previous/Next

Content Warning: Girl on girl Smooching (If you have read these series, this should be ZERO surprise)

October 28: Unexpected house call

My phone vibrates and a message pops up. Checking it, my heart jumps a bit. It’s from Connie. “Hey, missed you at the CaFae. You drop a bomb at the place and vanish before I can show up? Evil! Call or text me about it.”

I chuckle. You know, I want to talk to her. I start a FaceTime. Her beautiful face pops up almost immediately. “Well, you do know how to make up for stuff, give you that. That was like 15 seconds.”

“I missed your gorgeous face all day. Also, I worried you enough last night.” No lies.

She shakes her head. “Just strange for you to be sleeping that early. You had what, six hours last night?”

I nod. “Almost seven.”

She gives me her shocked face. I nod.

“When was the last time you slept more than four?”

I think back. I realize I know the answer. “I was still alive.”

Her scowl is something. “You are alive. Just not exactly mortal, dear.”

I roll my eyes. “We both know what I meant.”

She nods. “Do you know why? What made you fall asleep like that?”

I chuckle. “Tired from work and content from texting you. I remember feeling so really relaxed. Haven’t been relaxed aside from some amazing post sex cuddling in ages. No sex and yet I was at peace.”

“So, you’re content?”

Yeah. I am. I really am. For the first time in millennia, I’m in a good place where I don’t feel I need to push to the next hustle or scheme for power. “I have you and Ms. Wallace to thank for that. And Jackie. Can’t forget her.”

She winks. “Who can?”

We both giggle.

“She still in a mood?”

Connie nods. She’ll get over it. Sucks having morning sickness the entire pregnancy like this. Work sucks. That reminds me…

“Okay, so yea I gave my notice. I got an offer for a full time employment at the firm as an admin assistant, maybe paralegal? Mr. Frederick’s said we were doing lunch with clients and we took Gretchen with us.”

“You took the Iron Lady with you to see a client?”

“Yep. She and I had an interaction on the way in this morning where I asked if the firm had just not met a good Smith and she almost broke her façade. Told me I reminded her of a client. THE CLIENT WAS MS. WALLACE!”

Connie starts laughing. Her joy is infectious and I want to hold her. Ugh. I continue with this story, “So we go meet the clients and they are Titania, Mab, and Ms. Wallace.”

Connie looks at me. “The fates were playing favorites today.”

I nod. “Inorite?!?!”

She chuckles, “Go on, honey.”

“So I got ahead of myself. We get in the car and they make me the offer for full time. They want me to work with the first partner they can free up since Mr. Fredericks says I’ve been so great with him. I don’t think I have been super…”

She cuts me off. “Mona, Lemar and my Lady have both told me you’re the only employee that ever beat Jackie for metrics. She always made people smile and is a hell of a project manager from what I’m told. You still beat Dis, which is incredible considering she works a good 8 hours more and on better shifts than you.”

“Okay, so I keep a level of professionalism that is good.”

“Mona…”

“I’m not insulting myself and I won’t give myself three compliments because I’m not being egotistical. Just let this be, my love.”

“Okay. Also, that is a first.”

“Yea well, I don’t fall in love often. You make it easy.”

“God damn that was fucking romantic and you are an asshole for being so far away.”

“15 minutes by wing.”

I hear someone in the background. “I can get her here faster if you want.” I think that was Ms. Wallace.

Connie gives me a look. I think it over. Then I remember something. “Wait. Isn’t tonight your date night with her?” She nods at me.

“You better get off the phone with me. You have a commitment. Why did you suggest this?” I’m suddenly hurting. She shouldn’t be giving up time with Ms. Wallace for me.

I see Ms. Wallace appear in my doorway. She walks up and crushes me in a hug. “Hey, you, I kinda caused this. Said I saw you. Don’t get upset with her. Do you want to come over? We will still do our date and we both want to do it hanging with you for at least a little while.”

I mull it over. I really do want to be with them for a little bit. I nod. She holds me in a hug that is so very warm and now we’re in her home.

“Mona!” Connie nearly tackles me.

“Hey lover.” I look from her to Ms. Wallace. Both smile.

“My Lady told me a little about the lunch. She said when she cracked a joke about finding a Smith Gretchen looked at you and nearly fell over laughing.”

I nod. “Crazy how some minds think alike.”

Ms. Wallace kisses me on the cheek. “Look at her. Can’t say great minds think alike…”

She...she kissed me on the cheek. Oh, wow. It isn’t about a blessing or to make me feel better. She kissed me because she wanted to!

I smile at her. “Because the entirety of that little idiom is ‘Great minds think alike and fools rarely differ,’ so yeah.”

She gives me a look. “Aaaaaand that goes into the witty retort memory bank.”

I look at Connie and resume my story. “I then find out Mr. Frederick’s is a regular and he was told to look at a specific agency for the best talent, by Maybelle. Mab had told me to try the agency four months before. Remember when I finished that part-time admin assistant job after three months that got me depressed? I got a letter of recommendation and a comment by their HR that the hiring freeze was the only reason why they didn’t scoop me up. I’m at the law firm since they asked for the best…”

“Least she can admit to that.” Ms. Wallace snickers at me.

My eyeroll comes unbidden, “Hey, I’m the best in specialist fields.”

Connie blushes. “I’ll say…”

Ms. Wallace gets a shocked face. “Connie!!”

Connie just continues swallowing the foot she put in her mouth. “Patricia, my Lady, my darling, I love you, you’re fucking amazing. I’ll point out she spent over a decade learning and refining how to perform 10 different alphabets with her tongue…”

I never should have told her about how long it took to do that. I do not regret showing her that trick. Oh no, she better not mention…

“And she can lick both her eyebrows at once with a forked tongue.”

There it is…

“She’s still technically an employee.” A sigh?!

Ms. Wallace!!?? WHAT?!

“My Lady, you’re so mean to her. Couldn’t you bend a rule just a little?” Is Connie trying to get a threesome tonight?!

She looks sad. “I live by my rules.”

Wut?!

“But that isn’t a rule you made for everyone, just one placed on you from on high.”

“Connie…”

I look at these gorgeous women and laugh. It starts small at first. Then it grows. They start staring and that just makes it funnier. I keep laughing and laughing and eventually I am cross legged on the floor, tears streaming out of my face laughing and they’re both holding me. I stop after a bit. Yep, I still have problems with intense emotions. At least it is close to correct now.

“You two are fucking amazing. Ms. Wallace, can you take me to my apartment in a minute?”

She nods. She looks worried. I stand up and take a deep breath. “I have interrupted you two long enough. Connie, the rest of the night after she gets back is for you and Ms. Wallace, got me?”

She nods. She still looks worried.

I pull together all my emotions for this nymph. The passion, the love, the need, the lust, and the joy and I feel it condense in my lips. And old trick, one I greatly like. One of the ones I can perform more easily now. I then give her a kiss that has all of it built in. We finish and she sighs. I wink at her. “Love ya. I‘m ready, Ms. Wallace.”

Arms fold around me from behind in gold. She is starting to surround herself in things that aren’t wolfram now. I like the gold. She winks at me and then we are at my apartment. I look at her beautiful face on my shoulder. I put my hand on her arm to keep her there, though she hasn’t moved to let go. “Before you go I want to say something to you.”

She leans into the embrace and her head still rests on my shoulder. “Sure.”

“Ms. Wallace, as you know I’m leaving the CaFae. I’m moving forward like an amazing friend told me. I’m not quitting to be with someone. I’m quitting to be a better me.”

“I don’t date quitters.”

She then leans in and kisses my cheek, “Good thing you aren’t one.”

She got it. She remembers the day I have etched in my mind and heart. A person that can dominate me because it feels right. I threw myself at her and she told me no. She told me if I quit she would never date me. She told me to better myself and find myself. And I have.

I sigh. I’m so happy she gets me.

She then spins me around.

“No witnesses. Also, we are NOT dating…” That smile?

WHAT?!

She cups my chin, pulls me up so our lips can meet and I get a kiss I have dreamed of since we met. Tender, passionate, loving. I nearly melt into these lips.

WHAT?!?!??

“Sorry, I can wait a couple of weeks now that I finally got that.”

I nod. “We do have a lot to talk about, Ms. Wallace, um Patricia? No. It still doesn’t sound right. I believe I will have to get permission from the other people in your family and such.”

Her Spock eyebrow goes up. “You have dated every one of them but me. I’ll smack any that says no.”

I shrug. “I won’t exactly say dated on Cindy and Ricardo. That was and still is occasionally all about sex”

I get flicked on the forehead. “My point stands. Love you.” She touches my cheek. “Later.”

LOVE YOU?!?!?!?! LOVE???!! She loves me???!! LIKE, LOVE LOVE?!?! NOT LIKE FRIEND, RIGHT?! OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!

She must hear that. Shit. I broadcast my feelings. She hesitates for a second. “Fuck it. Better not leave doubt.”

Our first kiss was a pure and beautiful thing. Our second kiss is a hunger that almost devours both of us. My hand scratches her back with nails infused with all the emotions I feel. She loses herself a bit at that. At one point my hand is in her shorts and on that perfect ass and hers in my shirt playing with my piercings. We break it off with her finally coming to her senses. “Yeah, I can wait 2 weeks. Okay, a week? At least a weekend…. 15 minutes? NO! I have a date...Poor Connie, I’m going to break her tonight. I gotta go.”

And she vanishes. I slump down to the floor against the wall she had me pinned to.

2 weeks?

2 weeks!!!

I’m going to break at least two toys in the next 2 hours… how do I survive two weeks?!

First/Previous/Next

(She draws on the cigarette and lets the smoke out slowly.)

The nowhere little system I told you about, the one with the ice-mining outpost and the relay station? Some surveyor with a literary streak had named it Elsinore, decades before any of this. I've always wondered whether they had a sense of humor.

(Beat.)

By the fourth month, the staging area on the array images was the brightest thing in that part of the sky. We had people watching it around the clock. Shift after shift, staring at a smudge of light, waiting for it to change.

On the hundred and nineteenth day, it changed.

The analyst on duty that morning told me afterward that she thought her screen had failed. She restarted it. She checked the array. She checked it again. Then she picked up the phone.

The staging area was empty.

(She taps ash from the cigarette.)

Every ship. All of it. Gone in a single jump.

We'd expected that, in a way. What we hadn't expected was to have no warning. Our source had given us everything for four months. But Arun had sealed the destination orders until the fleet jumped. Even his captains didn't know where they were going until they were already on their way.

So for a few minutes, nobody in human space knew where the largest fleet in four hundred years was about to appear.

(Long pause.)

The Sorra was halfway through a routine sensor sweep when the first ships parted space around her. Slowly, the way the Veskari always do it. Like curtains opening.

Thousands of ships, arriving in waves, filling the sky. I've seen the Sorra's sensor logs. The contact count climbs so fast the display can't keep up. It just keeps redrawing, over and over, and every time it redraws, there are more.

The Sorra's captain was Lieutenant Commander Hathaway. Twenty-nine years old. Her first command.

And for the first few seconds, on her bridge, nobody said anything at all.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

Then Hathaway gave two orders, one after the other, in the same breath.

"Spin up the jump drive. Get me Fleet."

A picket's job is to see, shout, and get out. The Sorra had seen. Now she had to shout, and then she had to run. The trouble was, a corvette's jump drive doesn't start cold. Her engineers came back with the number almost at once.

Ten minutes to jump.

(Pause.)

What follows is from the recording. Every word of it. I was listening live.

"Fleet, Sorra. Contact, contact, contact. Hostile fleet entering Elsinore. Count is... count is over a thousand and rising. Spinning up to jump. Ten minutes. Request support."

Fleet came back almost at once. You can hear the operator trying to keep his voice level.

"Sorra, Fleet. Copy over a thousand. Do not engage. Do not fire unless fired upon. Repeat, do not fire unless fired upon."

"Copy. Do not fire unless fired upon. Fleet, I need support."

There's a pause on the recording here. Six or seven seconds. It doesn't sound like much. It's the sound of somebody at Fleet looking at a board full of ships in the wrong places.

"Sorra, Fleet. Stand by."

(She looks at the cigarette.)

Every heavy unit we had was where we'd guessed the armada would come. The nearest of them needed forty minutes to spin up and make the jump. The Sorra had ten minutes of drive time to survive, and nobody to send her.

Nobody except me.

(Beat.)

My ship was a prototype. A new kind of drive, new guns, a new everything, and we'd been told to keep the drive running hot. She could jump the moment I gave the order. She was the only ship in the fleet that could.

Years earlier, somebody had argued that we should build one, just in case. They lost most of the argument and won enough of it. That's what preparation looks like, cadets. Not a fleet. Somebody willing to pay for "just in case."

I gave the order. While my navigator plotted the jump, I called Fleet and told them where we were going.

The admiral on watch was a careful man and a good one. He didn't try to stop me. He just told me exactly what I was about to do. I would be jumping alone into the middle of the largest fleet assembled in four hundred years. No escort. No support. Nobody behind me for forty minutes. And my ship had never fired a shot outside a test range.

He was right about every word of it.

"Understood, Torrens," he said. "Bring them home."

Then we jumped.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

Nine minutes in transit, give or take. Then Fleet came back on the Sorra's channel.

"Sorra, Fleet. Heavy support inbound. Nine minutes. Hold on."

Help would arrive at almost exactly the moment she could leave. On the Sorra's bridge, somebody did that arithmetic out loud: either way, they had ten minutes to survive on their own. Hathaway told them to shut up and fly the ship.

(Long pause.)

Now. We got the other side of this conversation later. The lead cruiser's bridge was linked to the fleet net, and Arun's flagship logged every word.

The cruiser at the head of the Veskari formation was the first to notice the Sorra. Her captain was experienced and careful. He did everything right, by the book his navy had written four hundred years earlier.

The first thing he asked was whether the human ship was alone.

"Sensors. Any other human vessels in this system?"

"Scanning, Captain."

On the Sorra's bridge, Hathaway had her helmsman pulling hard turns, random burns, never holding a heading for more than a few seconds. Anything to make herself harder to hit.

"Scan complete. One vessel only, Captain. A small one. No shield."

"Confirm. No other vessels?"

"Confirmed, Captain. One small, unshielded vessel. It's alone."

(Beat.)

The captain didn't ask for orders from the flagship. He didn't need to. His orders were clear: remove humanity as a power in the galaxy. And here was a human ship. Alone. Unshielded. Exactly like the last one.

"Weapons. Main battery. Bring us to bear."

(She draws on the cigarette.)

On the Sorra's bridge, her sensor officer said something I want you to listen to very carefully.

"Energy spike on the lead cruiser. Large. Climbing."

(Pause.)

You've heard those words before today.

You could see it with the naked eye. Light rippling down the cruiser's hull, strobing brighter and brighter as her main battery charged. Every member of the Sorra's crew was watching it build, and every one of them knew what the Veskari said had happened to the last human ship to see that.

One shot. Target destroyed.

Hathaway didn't flinch. Not on the recording, anyway.

"Helm, keep evading. Give me everything she's got."

"Aye, Captain."

"Guns, target the cruiser. Hammer and nail. Lock and hold. You do not fire unless we're fired upon. Understood?"

"Locked and holding, Captain. Not firing unless fired upon."

(Beat.)

On the Veskari bridge, the weapons officer reported that the battery was charged.

"Fire."

(She sets the cigarette down for a moment.)

On the Sorra's recording, three things happen almost on top of each other.

Somebody shouts, "They're firing!"

Somebody else shouts, "Hit, hit!"

And then you hear the ship. A deep shudder through the hull, through the deck plates, through the microphones. The whole recording vibrates with it.

And under all of that, steady as a metronome, the voice of her gunnery officer, doing exactly what she'd been told.

"Fired upon. Returning fire."

(Long pause.)

Then the Sorra's bridge goes quiet.

Hathaway's voice.

"Damage?"

Nobody answers.

(She picks the cigarette back up.)

I've listened to that recording more times than I can count, and I still hold my breath at that moment. Three seconds of silence. On a warship, in a battle, three seconds of silence after a damage call is a very bad sign.

"Damage!"

That gets them moving. Her damage control officer.

"No damage, Captain. No breach. Sunburn on the forward plating, that's... that's all."

"Verify."

Another pause. Shorter.

"Verified, Captain. Sunburn. Nothing else."

(Beat.)

Hathaway keeps going. You can hear in her voice that she doesn't believe it either, and she doesn't have time not to.

"Status of the enemy ship?"

And her sensor officer, the one who'd called the spike, answers. Her voice cracks on the first word.

"The cruiser took two slugs, Captain. She's... she's gone. Enemy ship destroyed."

(Long pause.)

Our gunners call it hammer and nail. Two shots, a fraction of a second apart. That's standard practice with our guns. It's also the only reason the cruiser died.

The hammer hit her shields. They held. Mostly. All that energy, dumped into one point on the shield at once, overloaded it. The shield flared up brighter than the cruiser's own battery had, and then it collapsed.

The nail arrived a fraction of a second later, into a ship with no shield. It went in through her bow, through every deck, and out of her stern. Then her reactor went. There wasn't enough left of her to fill a cargo hold.

(She sits back.)

And then nothing happened.

Nobody moved. Not one ship. Thousands of warships, every one of them powerful enough to burn a city off the map, sitting perfectly still around one small, scorched corvette.

I can tell you what was happening on their bridges in that silence, because someone made sure we'd know.

[REDACTED]

(She nods, almost to herself.)

They didn't understand. That was the first thing. Their sensors were telling them two things that couldn't both be true. A cruiser had hit the human ship with a full-power shot, and the human ship was still there. And the human ship had fired two shots, and one of their cruisers was gone.

Captains demanded that their sensor crews recheck the data. Sensor crews rechecked it. The data didn't change.

On Arun's flagship, the channel to the fleet stayed silent. Minute after minute, the Fleet Marshal gave no orders at all.

And through all of it, the Sorra kept evading, her jump drive kept charging, and her gunnery officer kept her lock on the next ship in line.

(Pause.)

Let me tell you why they froze, because I promised you I'd be honest, and because the Veskari weren't fools.

Their shields were the finest ever made. For four hundred years, they'd been refined to stop the only weapons anyone in their part of the galaxy still used: energy weapons, like their own. Nobody had fired a slug of metal at a Veskari ship in four centuries. Why would they? In the Last War, kinetic shells had bounced off those shields like hail off a roof. Kinetics were a solved problem. A dead technology.

But we'd never had shields. So for a century, we'd spent our time out in the asteroid belts, hauling ore across solar systems with electromagnetic launchers, the biggest, fastest mass drivers anyone had ever built. When we needed warships, we built them out of what we knew. Those slugs weren't shells. They were ore loads, fired faster than anything the Veskari had ever imagined being fired. Gunners still call them pigs, after the pig iron the old smelters used to turn out.

Their shields could stop one. Once.

And with no shields, we armored everything. Our ships were built by people who'd spent generations in debris fields and radiation belts, and on mining runs so close to a star that the plating cooked. Haulers have a word for that: sunburn. You come home with your outer plates blistered and peeling, you strip them, you bolt on new ones, and you go back out. Nobody calls it damage. It's just what the job does to a ship.

So that's how we built our warships. Layer on layer of plate, made to burn. A Veskari main battery could crack a moon's crust. But a moon just sits there and takes it. Our armor boiled away and carried the heat off with it, and underneath, the ship never felt a thing.

To a Veskari gunner, that main battery was the most powerful weapon in the galaxy. To us, it was sunburn.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

Remember what Arun said?

"A species that cannot build a shield cannot fight a war."

He was wrong. Not about the shield. About what a war needs.

(Long pause.)

At ten minutes exactly, her engineer reported the drive was ready.

Hathaway had an order to run, a drive that could take her out, and thousands of enemy ships that had stopped moving. She also had the only eyes in human space on that fleet.

"Hold," she said.

She held for four seconds.

Then my ship tore out of jump space, and every screen on my bridge filled with Veskari ships. Thousands of them. And right in front of us, small and scorched and still holding, the Sorra.

I said I'd tell you about her.

She was the CNS Torrens. A super-dreadnought. The first of her class, and at that moment, the only one.

(She taps ash from the cigarette.)

Let me give you a sense of her size. The Sorra was a hundred and ten meters long. The largest Veskari ship at Elsinore, Arun's own flagship, was about a kilometer and a half. The Torrens was two and a half kilometers of armor plate, with a crew of three thousand, and railguns running the length of her spine that made the Sorra's look like a pistol.

Her navigator put us out of jump space a few kilometers behind the Sorra. Close enough to cover her. As close as we dared.

(Pause.)

Now think about what the Veskari saw.

For five minutes, they'd been staring at a little human corvette that they couldn't kill. Something a fraction of the size of the cruiser it had just killed had taken a full-power shot from her main battery and kept flying.

And then the space behind that little ship tore open. Not parted. Tore. And something came out of it that was bigger than anything they'd ever built.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

From their angle, the Torrens appeared directly behind the Sorra, filling their sensors from edge to edge. As if the corvette had simply been the first thing out of the dark, and they'd finally seen what was behind it.

We got their sensor traffic later, too. I've listened to it. You can hear the bridge crews calling out her length, and then calling it out again, because they thought they'd read it wrong. You can hear one sensor officer stop in the middle of a sentence and not start again.

She was not beautiful. Not like their ships. She looked like what she was: a mining hauler that had grown up angry.

(Beat.)

That's when the subject peoples left.

The first was a supply ship, at the edge of the formation. It turned, spun up its drive, and went. No orders. No signal.

Thirty seconds later, two more went. Then a squadron. Then they were going in clusters, ships from four, five, six different species, turning away and jumping out of Elsinore as fast as their drives would let them.

Nobody had asked them whether they wanted to be there. Now they'd seen enough to decide for themselves.

(Pause.)

Three Veskari ships fired on us. I'll give them that. They had courage.

It made about as much difference as it had to the Sorra. The Torrens rang like a bell, and a few hundred square meters of her outer plating boiled off into space. Sunburn. That was all.

My fire control officer had all three locked before the beams had even faded. She asked for permission to return fire.

(Pause.)

I didn't give it.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

I've been asked about that decision more than any other in my career. Some people call it the bravest thing I ever did. Others think I should have been court-martialed for it.

Here's what I was thinking, as far as I was thinking anything at all.

Those three ships couldn't hurt us. We'd just proved it. If we fired, they'd die, the way the cruiser had died, and everyone in that armada would watch it happen. And then every ship in Elsinore with a gun and a frightened crew might decide they had nothing left to lose.

But if we didn't fire, they'd see something else. A human ship they couldn't hurt, which could have killed them, choosing not to.

I wanted them to go home and think about that.

(Beat.)

So we sat there, the Torrens and the Sorra, side by side, guns locked, holding fire, while three Veskari ships emptied their batteries into us.

And then, one by one, they stopped.

Then, for the first time since the cruiser died, the channel from the flagship opened.

Arun gave one order. A single word.

Ves.

I told you it means home. It does. It also means us. I've never been sure which one he meant.

They went.

(Long pause.)

Four months of preparation. Four centuries of savings. The largest fleet anyone had assembled in living memory, and longer.

The war lasted eighteen minutes.

On the Sorra's bridge, when the last of them was gone, somebody started laughing. Then somebody started crying. Then, for a while, it was hard to tell which was which.

Hathaway's next transmission is my favorite piece of audio in the entire archive.

"Fleet, Sorra. Elsinore is clear. Request permission to resume sensor sweep."

4/5

© 2026 Not Applicable Ltd. All rights reserved.

https://x.com/notapplicableco/status/2110509672230690868

Covert Art & Blurb

Jessep 6

The polished gloss of the Thrallwark rapidly approached. Jessep tried his best to divert course, but the controls of the craft had yet again become unresponsive. Rudimentary alerts warned of proximity crash, beeping, and strobing, the cockpit in red. Hot on their tail, a debilitating missile guaranteed to strike the hull through the compromised bi-weave shield.

Through the planet’s semi-opaque atmospheric prison, Jessep could just barely make out the Global Facilitations station rumored to orbit Earth. A bow-facing camera zoomed in, forcing Jessep’s stomach into a lurch as it appeared they were approaching their imminent demise much quicker. A yellow reticle, overlayed onto the viewscreen, locked onto the station.

“[REQUEST FOR CLEARANCE: FILED…]”

The missile neared the craft’s aft, causing the ship’s OA to throttle upwards. The gear moved on its own, out of Jessep’s reach.

“Brace for potential failure, Invader.”

“We’re going to crash!” he tossed his hands up to shield his eyes, lest he vomit.

“[REQUEST FOR CLEARANCE: GRANTED.]”

Before “granted” could even be pronounced by the operating assistant’s monotone announcement system, a swath of the Thrallwark vanished. The mauve oppression he had lived his entire life under drew back instantly, simple as a curtain.

With a large square cut out of the cake, he could see past it. Pure black appeared bottomless. Like a deep well ready to swallow him whole, offset only by the countless manifold of blanche pinpricks darting the endless dark.

The swatch of white-dotted canvas grew larger, as mauve vanished into the telescopic camera’s peripheral. Until the ship rushed through the opening in the Thrallwark, and out of Earth’s exosphere.

Jessep could hardly believe it. He was the first Human in a thousand years to fly a starship. To escape the Thrallwark… His celebration found itself cut short by a tight pitch and roll. The ship spun on its lateral thrusters, away from the opening.

The curtain closed in on itself, reimprisoning Earth in the process. Their tail had crossed the threshold as well. Though, the missile sputtered its thrust as it performed poorly outside of its intended range. Eventually its thrust died out, leaving it floating inert above the Thrallwark.

On the viewscreen, the station orbiting Earth appeared small. Which meant that the structure was very large. Just very far away in the vastness of space. Shaped like a dumbbell, what amounted to be its ass-end began to twinkle with a ruby glimmer.

“Hey! Yo! Ship!” Jessep called out. He hyperventilated as the thrill of escaping death dissipated from his body.

“I am not ‘ship.’ I am an advanced operating component on Humanity’s most cutting-edge prototype. You find yourself aboard the King of Saigon, Invader. You find yourself negotiating with The King.”

“Sure, King, whatever. Crawling back didn’t work. How the hell do you plan on returning me now?”

“We shall merely wait a few planetary rotations. Less… passionate individuals will be manning the air defenses in [SIXTY-THREE] hours. Extrapolating from Global Facilitations schedule and payroll, of course.”

“Uh,” Jessep scratched his nose. “I don’t think a shift change is going to alter the outcome. How did you cross the Thrallwark? You hacked all that information while escaping missiles?”

“Incorrect. This model was designed with unrestricted access to Global Facilitations databases. Incorrect. Permeation through the Thrallwark is the privilege of any Hierarc-”

King cut himself off, veering the King of Saigon away from the inert missile on a hard bank.

Jessep gripped the flight chair, bracing during the sudden maneuver.

An intense scintillating flash emerged from the orbiting station; ejecting from the base of the dumbbell. Highlighted on the viewscreen, a pulsing bolt of ruby. It blazed through the onyx expanse, leaving behind a faint tracer of a lighter tint.

The bolt struck the inert missile, ripping through it. It combusted, King dodging the residual explosion in the nick of time. Continuing past its target, the munition struck the broadside of the Thrallwark. Which tanked the hit as if it were a pea shot from a straw.

Another ruby scintillation formed at the base of the orbiting station.

“Oh brother, again?!”

“Inco-”

“Can it, tin can. I get it’s not a missile this time!”

“Correct. It is reticulated plasma. Your error is in assuming we are being fired upon.”

Jessep leaned forwards, peering into the viewscreen. The twinkle remained firmly affixed to the station, not hurtling towards them.

“Why aren’t they shooting?” His mind formed a sort of hiccup. Every Human was beneath him right now. Physically. Geographically. Beneath him. “Wait, who isn’t shooting?”

“The Gio-Crü,” King said. “You are not Flight Technician Fourth Grade, R. Serling. We are ahead of demonstration. This is not permissible.”

Jessep barked a nervous laugh. Countless elements on the computer terminal began adjusting themselves in preparation of broad-wave signal capture. According to a highlighted prompt.

“Wait, you’re serious? The Gio-Crü are hailing you right now?” Another hiccup. “The Gio-Crü exist?!”

Jessep assumed them a bullshit myth. A boogeyman used to explain the dystopian hold Global Facilitations had reigned over the planet. Sure, the Thrallwark was a fantastical piece of technology, easily described as alien. But why?

Why would another spacefaring, sentient species imprison Humanity? For crimes? Why should the thousand-year displaced son pay for the sins of the thousand-year dead father?

Though, he supposed their intentions would be as alien as their technology.

“King, give me the GF files on the Gio-Crü.”

“Silence. Make yourself hidden.”

“No, this isn’t fair!” Jessep stomped the foot pedals, controls non-functioning. “You’re a hunk of scrap, that’s my planet down there!”

“Pretending I am automated may be the only way to circumvent our infractions.”

Jessep wrapped both palms around the flight stick, hoping to yank it loose. King flashed the O2 monitor onto the viewscreen. The gauge remained motionless.

“Ha! An empty threat, huh!”

Jessep walloped on the flight stick, turning his hands into swollen mittens. King would relent, he was certain. Interrupting his primed combo, the sensation of a glass panel shattering within his mind. He collapsed to the ground, rolling as if on fire. And thrashing just as violently.

“Hilarious, Invader. No, I will not suffocate you. I have no method of jettisoning your rotting, stinking corpse afterwards.”

His muscles tensed up, aching as if crushed in a vice. As if his blood began to flow backwards through his body.

“Invader. Stand up. We must prepare for the Gio-Crü’s hail.”

“Your presence has been noted, individual Simian,” echoed throughout Jessep’s mind, as if cymbals clashed between his ears. The voice took memory of a particularly nasty grandmother, from back at the monastery. One that would beat him with a broom. “For a thousand years, your kind’s disgusting, wailing thoughts have not pierced the Thrallwark. On the eve of opportunity, a rebellion. Why.”

The intrusion ended, giving Jessep a moment to recover. Despite the pain’s intensity a moment ago, he only found himself worn out. As opposed to incapacitated. Or dead. That old hag Judeth couldn’t be stationed on the orbital platform. What the hell was going on?

Sure enough, as he posed himself the question, the trepanation continued.

“You have violated the terms of imprisonment for your species, individual Simian.”

Jessep began to thrash again, willing to claw at his face to end the madness.

“I do not understand, Invader,” King’s simulated voice barely broke through. “[RADIATION LEVELS: NOMINAL,] [HEAT LEVELS: NOMINAL.] This environment is not hostile to Humans. [OXYGEN CONTENT: TWENTY PERCENT,] [OXYGEN CYCLE: INITIATED.]”

The sinister flood into Jessep’s brain continued, unceasing. He discovered himself to be a young boy again, hiding beneath a table adorned with cloth. Tears raced down his cheeks as he was reminded of Judeth gripping him around the ankles, dragging him from beneath his shelter, to whack him until his spine was sore, and his skin broke.

“You will find my question repeated only once more, individual Simian. Why.”

“I don’t know!” Jessep shouted. “I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about!”

A recoiled chittering replaced Judeth’s voice. It resumed to formulate additional words within Jessep’s mind.

“Ignorance. More disgusting than the crime of sentience. No matter. Find yourself cleansed, filth.”

Another ruby glint at the base of the station intensified. Its plasma weaponry warming up. A molten bolt launched out, directed towards the King of Saigon.

King caused the ship to swerve hard, avoiding the munition. Albeit narrowly. Jessep slid across the floor, tumbling shoulder over shoulder until he slammed into a titanium-aluminum bulkhead wall. He remained in a fetal position, clutching his knees.

“Invader,” King said. “Destruction is imminent. I cannot perform high-g maneuvers without your body secured. Eventually, we will be hit, restricted at this mobility.”

A second blast of plasma burnt through space, its intention to strike the vessel made clear through several alerts. Both audio and visual. Who cared. Against something so devoid of hope, what was the use in avoiding this reticulated plasma bolt, or the next.

Was that the effect of a single Gio-Crü? How many were aboard the station? The monasteries had collected, protected, and perpetuated the history that the Gio-Crü had defeated Humanity within twenty-three hours after their arrival into the solar system. How? By flaying their fucking minds?

It all felt useless. He couldn’t return home. Aliens did exist. They owned Earth.

“INVADER,” King cranked his decibel level. “Is that your planet down there. Or not.”

Hearing his own words repeated back to him chiseled off the layer of defeat calcifying over Jessep. He sniffed his snot back in, cleaned his tears, and perked his head up towards the speaker King’s voice emitted from.

“I can avoid the sluggish aim from a weapon so large. But not indefinitely. They will calculate a firing solution to counteract my basic evasion. You need to be secured via harness.”

Can do. Jessep scrambled to his feet, sliding around the cockpit as King avoided plasma bolt after plasma bolt. They were fired with increasing regularity, occasionally fired in bursts, to saturate the King of Saigon’s evasion path. Jessep sat in the pilot’s seat, bringing the flight chair’s sturdy, full-body harness over his chest. It locked with a hefty click.

“Done! Wha-”

On the computer terminal, the UI minimized to highlight a singular touch command. A comedically large button, labelled with the word “Diffusion.”

“Activate the Diffusion Drive. I am not permitted.”

If it got them away from here, then it was a great first step. Jessep slapped his mitt over the command.

“Five,” King began to countdown.

The viewscreen shut off, removing the orbital station, and the incoming reticulated plasma from his view.

“Four.”

The lights dimmed.

“Three.”

The craft began to shake.

“Two.”

Crackles of pearlescent-pink electricity formed. They arced through the cockpit. Occasionally, they struck Jessep, though he found them harmless. Slowly, the pearlescent arcs interwove themselves, leaving a strange, intangible lattice in the air.

“One.”

The ship began to feel confined, or claustrophobic. Nothing had changed but Jessep’s perception between the countdown.

“[MASS CONCENTRATION: COMPLETED.]”

Expecting to input another command, Jessep was instead forced deep into his flight chair by an accelerating force beyond anything he had ever fathomed. Nothing compared, not even his most recent experience breaking through the atmosphere, or crossing the Thrallwark. His eyes rolled back into his head.

The moment of agony passed, swifter than a second. Momentum ceased, tossing him forwards into the harness. Its straps digging through his hoodie, and cutting into his collar bone. Lurching forwards, the ship drifted on an odd axis.

King re-engaged the viewscreens. Nothing but endless black. The orbital station had vanished, and so too the threat of destruction.

“What an exhilarating thrill, Invader!”

Jessep took a moment, as if he needed to recover from a hangover.

“Never had I expected to use the Diffusion Drive to such amazing results!” King continued to rave.

“Wha…”

“Apologies, Invader,” the operating assistant’s personality returned to stoic. “You are the first Human to travel beyond the speed of light.”

“No. What.”

Jessep grabbed the flight stick. Met with no resistance, he yawed the craft three-sixty. No mauve marble. He pitched the ship in a full loop. A snot-coloured star crossed his view, small and lightyears away.

“No, no, no no no no. Where’s Earth! Where the hell are we?!”

“I cannot scoff. We are in the realm of the living, Invader. A thank you would have zero effect on my programming. [QUERYING: STAR MAPS…] Oh. Perhaps I see your issue.”

“Perhaps?”

“[STAR MAPS: NULL.]”

“Null!” Jessep shrieked.

“Seventy-two monasteries operate in non-compliance with the Gio-Crü’s Edicts. Although Global Facilitations is aware they harbour ancient Human recollections of constellations, these records were not destroyed. Neither does it seem they were uploaded to any database.”

“Seventy-one,” Jessep mumbled. “So, you’re saying you have no idea where we are? How to get back to Sol?”

“Correct.”

Jessep unfastened the harness, and slid out of the flight chair onto the floor. He felt overwhelmed. At least he could nap the nightmare away.

Unsure if there was any value in speaking to a computerized personality, his voice cracked with sadness as he spoke, “They do destroy records, by the way.”

♚

When Jessep awoke, nothing had changed. King made a few snide remarks on the inefficiency of biology, then reduced his sarcasm to a few quips in response to whatever conversation Jessep could think up to pass the time. After a while, Jessep ceased talking. King showed no interest in discussion.

Months passed, often in silence, as Jessep demarcated the passing of days via scratches upon the cockpit bulkhead. The craft interior was limited, with no habitation suite. Poorly stocked, Jessep survived by recycling piss, and rationing the nutrition paste recovered from the emergency supplies stored in a medical bag. He found his sanity breaking, which was well enough; as his caloric reserves were hitting empty.

King would need to suffer his rotting corpse after all. Until eventually King died out as well. Jessep didn’t know enough about engineering to taunt the operating assistant with what part of it would die out first. Shame.

When all hope was lost. When Jessep found himself starved, surrounded by refuse, and on the verge of dying… An unidentified object became highlighted on screen. One that was rapidly approaching.
Read Ahead on Royal Road

The human was old, depending on a wheelchair to move about. He had a shop that fixed and sold watches of different kinds. If you needed a watch fixed, it didn't matter whether it was a digital or an analog watch; you could trust old man Jones to do it.

I was seventeen cycles of the sun when my father took me to Jones in order to apprentice under him. I detested the idea, but no amount of stomping my tentacles and foaming at the mouth was going to sway my father. He'd made his decision when I was brought home by the neighborhood watch one night with my tentacles bound behind me.

My father had appraised me with doleful eyes as the chief talked about how I was running with the Rudy spawn, a bunch of older male Talens who were known to cause trouble in numerous ways. I'd been the only one caught at a break-in at Filona's, with a sack full of Filona's valuables. She'd screamed for my head to be chopped off, as was the customary punishment for thieves in our time, but the chief was one for second chances. I was let go with a warning since it was my first time committing a crime.

"You'll work under the human," my father had said.

"The old man? No way, father, forgive me, but I can't spend my days in that dusty shop," I'd argued back. It was a back-and-forth quarrel until my father made me choose between food and a place to lay my head, or the streets that the Rudy boys called home.

It was then that I remembered how the Rudy spawn were: torn garments, always harboring an eye for mischief, and numerous scars upon their tentacles to the point where their skin turned red and earned them the name Rudy spawn. I'd thought them my friends, but when I'd been caught at Filona's house, I'd watched them run off without looking back. Their claims that I was one of them had been a ploy to garner my aid in the crime. I was nothing more to them than a means to an end.

I had a change of heart that day. The next day, my father took me to old man Jones, and I started my apprenticeship under the only human in our town.

The old man was at times grumpy and at other times cheerful. I spent the majority of my first weeks dusting the shelves and the watches put on display, their leather bands fashioned so as to enable a better grip on a tentacle rather than a human wrist. I scrubbed the floors and dusted the ceiling. The old man lived on the single floor above his shop, and I was never allowed to venture up the ramp to his abode.

I was strictly confined to the shop, and my mind often wondered what he hid up there. Sometimes I found myself daydreaming between periods of dusting that there was a chest of gold beneath the old man's bed, and my tentacles would twitch with the need to find this out for myself. But I fought back the urge. The old man was good to me. The apprenticeship was supposed to be unpaid, but at the end of the day, he'd dig into the cash register and place two silver coins in my waiting grasp. He'd tell me to get myself something nice, and I'd spend it at the cafeteria down the street, chewing on roasted Sigonian rabbit and occasionally visiting the bar to drink Saliot ale.

Within days, I grew to admire old man Jones, and I often looked forward to when he'd open the many latches of his door and let me into the shop to start my day as the twin suns of Talena rose to shine brightly in the sky.

"What did you do before you started selling watches?" I asked one day as I dusted the display cases, suddenly curious.

"I did the same thing that claimed my legs," he answered. "Be careful with how you dust the display case; if the glass cracks, you might die." He wore microscopic lenses, three of them, arrayed one after the other in order of size. He held tweezers, which he used to pluck and place pieces of a watch he'd taken apart.

I chuckled, assuming it was a joke. How could a man in a wheelchair kill me? "What did take your legs?"

"The war with the Assignons. I was a sapper. I worked mainly in engineering. I loved building and taking apart things until what I built took me apart, pierced my spine, and ensured I couldn't piss standing like I loved to do."

"I'm sorry," I said, setting the matter to rest as my curiosity was answered.

"Take this." He flicked a card to me, and I caught it with my tentacle. "It's a key to the door. Place it on the keyhole, and the locks will open on their own."

"Why are you giving me this?" I wondered. "I thought you used a key for the locks."

He laughed. "A key? How gullible. I'm tired of waking early in the morning just to let you in; you'll be doing that on your own from now on, unless you don't want to. You'll also be locking up after yourself once you leave as well."

That afternoon he retired early, wheeling himself up the ramp to his abode. After I was done arranging the watches on display, I took one look at the shop. It had three rows of glass casings containing numerous watches, with a path running between each case. His workstation was a long table with numerous gadgets lying about in a haphazard order only he understood, set perpendicular to the glass casings holding the watches. Behind the workplace was a shelf containing books and some more gadgets I couldn't make out.

I held the card in my hand, and when I closed the shop, I placed the card to the keyhole. There was a beep, and I heard the latches all set into place, moving mechanically. I thought it was an amazing display of genius to build such a door with locks that answered to a simple card.

From then on, it became my duty to open the shop and close it at the end of the day. I found myself being quite well-off due to the small stipend I earned from the watchmaker. I could afford decent clothing, I was always clean and fresh, and I caught the eye of several Talen females. The strips of pink about their numerous eyes fell on me as I passed. I liked the attention, I liked the apprenticeship, and I liked old man Jones.

Things were going well until the night I left the bar with a slight stagger to my gait. As I passed an alley, several tentacles abruptly gripped mine, entangling them. More tentacles gripped my neck and face, and I was whisked into the alley. I was ready to fight, but fear gripped me when I saw who was responsible for the attack. It was the Rudy spawn. Their skin was even redder than usual, to the point where they resembled tomatoes with their round heads and angry sneers. There were five of them and only one of me. I had to force myself to keep a calm head, but the drinks I'd taken weren't helping. Everything was swaying.

"You got comfy and forgot about us?" one of them asked. He was the biggest of them, and he made a show of it, his face inches from my own. "You work for humans now?"

"I'm done with the game, guys," I said. "I don't run with you folk anymore."

"You think there's a retirement plan with our gang? You're one of us until you die," another said, digging a blade into my side.

"Guess who we're robbing tonight?" another asked.

The image of the old man suddenly popped into my mind. "No, please. He's never hurt anyone."

"Do we look like we care?" the big one said. "We want those watches other Talens use to flex on us poor folk. We want them on all our tentacles."

"You'll look stupid if you wear them like that," I said, my inebriation getting the better of me.

I was slapped hard across the face, and I knew it left a red welt where I was struck.

"Listen to us, you worthless scum," their leader chimed in. "We've tried robbing the old man before, but his door is too secure; we couldn't pick it. But we've seen you for three days now, opening and closing his shop."

They lifted me up with their tentacles, wrapping them around my waist and turning me upside down. I tried to fight them off, but my limbs were sluggish and my mind was too clouded with worry for the old man. They shook me, and the electronic key card I'd been given fell to the ground.

"What's this then?" the one with the blade asked.

"It's nothing," I said.

"It's what you use to open the door, ain't it?"

"No. He opens the door himself," I answered, keeping a straight face and hoping they wouldn't call my bluff.

"Well, let's go and see whether he'll open it for you, or whether this card works the way I think it does."

They pushed me, half-carrying me off the ground. They circled me, boxing me in on all sides. I was unwillingly shuffled and dragged all the way to old man Jones's watch shop. They held the key card in their grasp. Once they reached the door, they swiped it at the keyhole, but they'd done it using the wrong side.

"It's not working," the smallest of them said, swiping repeatedly.

The big one, apparently having some mind to match his brawn, snatched the card, turned it over, and swiped it across the keyhole. Something from within the keyhole scanned the card, and there was a beep before the latches started opening.

"He is just an old man, don't do this," I said. "He's never hurt anyone." Though in my inebriated state, I wondered whether I was right. He did say he'd been a sapper. He'd seen war and lost his legs because of it.

They pushed the door open and let me go, suddenly not caring about me at all now that their plan had worked. I slithered in behind them.

The smallest one slithered over to one of the watch cases. He was smiling, a toothy grin running across his face. "We're gonna be rich," he whispered.

I was very angry, but I was unsure of what to do. Deep down, I felt myself a coward, languishing in that feeling of helplessness and fear.

They slithered between the watch cases, eyeing them with greed. I could see their tentacles twitch with the need to steal.

"The old man is upstairs," the biggest of them said. "Once we're done here, we'll go and give the human a greeting. A fine 'How do you do.'" They all chuckled.

The small one curled his tentacle and smashed the glass casing before him. The door suddenly shut behind us, the locks setting themselves in place without any of us moving.

"What the..." They all turned to stare at me. I raised my tentacles, indicating I hadn't done a thing.

The small one, greed still fueling his purpose, grabbed a watch. Immediately as he lifted the watch, the tip of a spear launched from within the casing at the exact spot the watch had been. It jutted out fast, taking him through the eye. The entire spear shot into his head, and he collapsed on the ground, dead.

"What the fuck..." we all whispered.

The bookcase suddenly parted on its own, the books giving way to reveal the barrels of numerous guns. I immediately lay flat on the floor. The guns fired repeatedly. The only other one who had the idea to lay on the ground was the big Talen, lying flat as I had done. The rest were peppered with bullets across their entire bodies. They collapsed on the ground, once whole but now just shredded pieces of meat. Talen blood soaked the floor, crimson as it pooled beneath the dead.

The big Rudy spawn growled with rage. He rose from the ground and rushed toward the ramp. "I'll kill you, old man!" he screamed as he slithered fast up the ramp. There was a blinding flash of light before an explosion sounded. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the innards of the Rudy spawn littered the ramp. His head was free from his body, its tongue lolling out of his maw as his eyes blinked several times before resting wide open.

I looked up the ramp, and there was the wheelchair with old man Jones in it. He looked at me with what I thought was disappointment.

"They forced me here, forced the key card out of me, and forced the door open. I did not want this," I said.

"I know," the old man said. "The key card also has an audio relay, so I heard everything."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Better get to work then," the old man said.

"What?"

"I'm not going to clean all this up," he said, waving his hands at the bodies and the gore. "I don't have the legs for it."

----

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An invisible force closed around my wrist and pulled my hand away from the terminal. I groaned in pain as the grip tightened to the point I thought the tiny bones in my wrist were going to be crushed. I looked up and over my shoulder toward the source of the authority.

Byrne was sitting on the top of a stone monolith, a dozen meters from us, yet his authority was as strong as if he were standing right next to me. 

Firana shot a blade of compressed wind, but a green barrier prevented the attack from even making his shirt billow.

“What a fool,” Byrne laughed. “Didn’t you teach these kids common sense, Robert?”

All I could do was grunt. Byrne’s grasp felt like live wires digging into my flesh. Zaon and Kili were frozen in place, despite my very clear instructions to flee the moment Byrne appeared. Even the Avatar was speechless.

“I told you Robert Clarke was off-limits, didn’t I, fatass?” Byrne dropped from the monolith and approached the terminal we were standing around. 

Although my brain was telling me to run, my body didn't obey me. 

“I understand, though. Once a swindler, always a swindler.”

Byrne snapped his fingers, and the fabric of reality trembled. It looked like someone peeled a plastic film from the surface of the world. Shadows pulled away, and the stone monoliths were replaced with bright blue crystals cut into perfect square slabs. Inside each of the crystals was a person, their bodies in different states of decay. Or rather, disintegration.

My stomach turned as my eyes fell on the body of a woman who seemed to be sleeping inside the crystal next to me. Her arms and legs were almost completely gone: cracked on the edges, small shards floating a few inches away, and then dust where the rest of her limbs had once been. Even without skin, muscle, or bone, her nerve endings remained untouched in their original position.

The scene repeated itself. Every crystal slab held a different person. All of them were human, ranging from young adults to the elderly. Some were completely dissolved, with even their peripheral nervous system gone and only their brains and spinal cord intact. Runes were engraved on their spines and brains, but the pain in my arm was so intense I couldn’t focus enough to see if they were any different from the ones making up the crystalline matrices.

In front of me, the pillar interface was gone. In its place was a crystal slab tilted forward, with its central section wide open and enough space for an adult man to stand inside. I instinctively pulled back, and this time, Byrne’s authority let me go.

“You are a sneaky one, aren’t you, fatty?” Byrne grinned, seemingly entertained by the situation.

I couldn’t find the joke. The scene was just too horrible.

“It’s not what it seems,” the Avatar replied, all the human inflection in his voice gone.

Byrne didn’t bother with an answer. Instead, he projected his authority, and the open crystal slab before me shattered into millions of tiny splinters. Hundreds of enchantment strings were severed, but rather than exploding, they just lost force and turned gray. 

For an instant, my eyes blurred, and reality overlapped with the astral plane. It didn’t feel quite like the crystal was being destroyed so much as it felt like the contraption was being undone on a fundamental level. The feeling sent a shiver down my spine as my mind rushed.

“To think you had one of these slabs reserved for me since the moment we first met, you sneaky bastard. And finally, after all these years, I have found where you were hiding,” Byrne said, stretching his back. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. It felt better than I imagined.”

Byrne looked around as if he were appreciating a recently remodeled kitchen.

The floor and ceiling were made of naked concrete. Ruined pillars revealed rusty rebar. The ceiling was low, and the outer walls were gone. My heart skipped a beat when my eyes caught sight of wall sockets for the first time in years.

I walked past the crystal slabs and looked through the hole in the wall, with the kids stuck to my heels. My brain shouted in my ear that I shouldn’t show my back to Byrne, but curiosity was stronger than fear.

We were inside a cubic cutout of a corporate building that lay in the middle of a shallow lake buried underground. Without the magical darkness, it was easier to see the cavern. We were inside the office building where the creator of the System was working during the teleportation incident. Corpses of Woodcarver Ants, rotten undead dragons, and elves were scattered down below, barely emerging from the water.

“This building was just here the entire time?” I looked down below at the corpses again. We hadn’t traveled anywhere since the fight ended. “All that time we spent wandering the tunnels… we were just walking in circles?”

“Yes,” Byrne replied. “And it disappoints me deeply that you weren’t able to tell the difference. I might have overestimated your talent, Robert Clarke. At this point in your development, I thought you would be able to see through this cheap parlor trick.”

Byrne turned around and walked through the lines of crystals as if he were looking for something.

I looked out the window one last time before following him. The cavern had changed significantly now that the illusions were gone. For one thing, it was much smaller than before. And along the wall, I spotted one of those perfectly shaped tunnels that must have been created alongside the system. That was probably the way out.

“Let’s not rush things, Samuel,” the Avatar said, his voice still lacking any emotion. “We can work things out.”

“I’m on a schedule,” Byrne replied, downplaying the matter. He let out a surprised whistle. “How many fools have you tricked all these years that you have been in charge of the System?”

The Avatar didn’t answer.

“All these people were runeweavers?” I asked.

“Yes, to the very last,” Byrne replied. “All of them, tasked with fixing the errors in the System. Which was a sham, if you still need me to spell out the Avatar’s grift. He didn’t need our computer knowledge or even our runeweaving skills—”

The realization hit me.

“All this time he was after our authority. This is a magic power farm.”

The puzzle that had lived in my mind was rearranged, and a new picture emerged. The only characteristic that set Ebrosians and earthlings apart was our relative closeness to the Fountain and our ability to quickly develop powerful natural magic. I looked around. There were dozens and dozens of rows and the same number of columns. More than a thousand people were trapped in this room.

The Avatar was using their ability to perform natural magic to power the System.

I already knew the System had a living element to it, but this was too much.

Every time Firana or any of my students used a skill, these people were the ones performing natural magic behind the scenes. Or rather, the System was forcing them to do it. My stomach churned. Only living beings could perform magic, which meant these people were still alive to some extent.

Byrne clapped his hands.

“I have to thank you, Robert. Without your help, the elves would never have found this place. The outer layer of the illusion was potent, even by my standards,” Byrne said, placing his hand on the surface of one of the slabs and examining the man inside. “Summoning the First Corrupted Ancient required a lot more energy than I initially calculated. This might help offset the cost.”

“I’ll let you use as many of them as you need. I can get more, but you need to ensure—” the Avatar couldn’t finish the sentence before Byrne interrupted him.

“You don’t get to tell me what I can and cannot do, fatty fat fatso. The moment you decided I was going into the freezer like Han Solo, you surrendered any right to alter the deal. So here’s how this is going to go. As long as you don’t try anything, I will let you live with what is left over after I’m finished. Same goes for you, Robert. I don’t want to kill any of you, but I will if you try to stop me.”

That was precious coming from a man who killed half a million overnight and would kill tens of thousands more in the coming years. Still, I couldn't say anything. Those same words had become my unofficial motto for a while now.

Byrne strolled through the room, and when it seemed he didn’t find what he was looking for, he returned to where the Avatar was. My heart hammered against my chest. Since my arrival at Ebros, I’ve encountered monsters that defied all reason, but no one was as dangerous as Byrne.

“Where are the stairs?” Byrne asked.

“You can teleport,” the Avatar replied.

Byrne didn’t even blink, but a crystal slab became undone behind him. The inhabitant of the crystal, a man whose body was mostly complete, fell to the floor. Luckily, he didn’t open his eyes.

“I was asking where the stairs were.”

The Avatar pointed to the other side of the room.

“Follow me, Robert Clarke. I’ve kept you around for this very moment.”

My feet obeyed before I could even process his words. Firana, Zaon, and Kili followed. I looked around, weighing our possibilities. Firana might have had a chance to get away from Byrne’s authority if he didn’t chase, but I knew she wouldn’t leave us behind. The rest of us were too slow to escape his zone of influence.

On the side of the building, scaffolding connected the floors, enchanted to be supremely durable. We followed Byrne up. Each floor was filled to the edges with crystal slabs and trapped people. The higher we went, the less complete the prisoners’ bodies were, as if they had been there longer, slowly dissolving.

“There are thousands of them,” Firana whispered in awe.

“Is this the System?” Zaon asked.

“It seems so,” I replied. “Don’t worry. We will leave this place alive.”

“Y-you don’t know that.” Kili could barely contain her fear.

Byrne wasn’t going to kill us right away. He had been very vocal about needing me to destroy the Corrupted Ancients.

The building was eleven stories tall, each filled to the edges with crystal slabs. The concentration of environmental mana was almost blinding. When we reached the top of the scaffolding, Byrne entered the building again.

“If anything happens, Zaon, make sure to protect Kili. Same goes to you, Loki,” I whispered. “Then, try to escape. Firana, don’t fall behind waiting for me.”

If Byrne heard me, he didn’t bother responding.

The upper floor was empty except for the Avatar standing next to the entrance with a neutral expression on his round face. 

“Still trying to deceive me?” Byrne asked, snapping his fingers.

The illusion broke like a mirror. Twelve thrones in a crescent-moon formation appeared, each encased in blue crystals. On each seat was a person. They looked like they were taking a nap. Not even the blush had left their cheeks.

I recognized the woman in the leftmost crystal. Rebecca from HR, the dragon lady. The next crystal was empty, and I guessed that one belonged to the Lich, Alex from Research and Development. I didn’t recognize any of the others, but I assumed they were the creator’s coworkers who had aligned with him to create the System.

“The Heart of the System,” Byrne said with a smile that made the hair on the back of my head bristle. “Quest subroutine, Safety, Identification, Allocation, Diagnostics…”

Whatever Byrne was reading in the crystals, I couldn’t quite make sense of. When I focused on my mana sense, the brightness of the room was so strong that I had to close my eyes. Even after, I saw phantom spots floating before me. My body felt weird, and for a moment, I thought I was going to puke.

The whole room was charged with more magic than I had ever seen. Then, it hit me. We were immersed in the middle of the flow. My body itched, but I knew the sensation was just my brain trying to make sense of a phenomenon happening in the astral plane. The intensity almost blinded me. It felt like diving into the Fountain.

I wondered what trick the System's creator had used to hide so much magic when the Fountain, the Runeblade, and the corpse of the First Corrupted Ancient were so bright in the astral plane's sky.

Rebecca might have been a goddamn powerful mind controller if she had managed to hide the Heart of the System from a whole continent.

“Don’t get twitchy now, Robert Clarke. We are in the power plant, so try not to touch anything,” Byrne said, approaching the dragon lady and putting his hand on the crystal. This time, he sounded nostalgic. “I wonder. Did you even understand how fortunate you lot were? To find this world in all its natural glory, unsullied by modern man, was a rare fortune. Of course you didn’t understand! If you did, you wouldn’t have built this monstrosity.”

Finally we agreed on something, but I wasn’t sure Byrne wasn’t referring to the bodies kept in stasis.

“Haven’t you stopped to ask yourself if this is what we Ebrosians want?” Firana asked.

Byrne turned around and smiled.

I froze like a mouse in front of a lion.

“You wouldn’t get it. Across the portal, there is a world so unnatural, so corrupted, that you can’t even imagine it. Ebros will not follow the same path,” Byrne replied, bile in his words. “When the Corruption Cycle is complete, Ebros will return to her natural glory.”

I grabbed Firana’s wrist before she could say something else. 

Byrne’s speech might have been coherent, though devoid of any more profound analysis of the world, but that wasn’t what worried me at that moment. Deep within his eyes, I saw a glint of madness that hadn’t been there before. Madness was way more dangerous than plain stupidity.

Byrne moved his hand, and reality tore apart like old cloth. In the middle of the room, a rift opened, and he shoved his hand into it. I silently prayed for an interdimensional monster to bite it and rip him apart, but nothing like that happened. Byrne pulled out an old sword, and I shoved Firana behind my back.

“The Cursed Runeblade,” I said.

The blade quivered, and the scratched steel turned into black obsidian engraved with golden runes. Alarms went off in my brain. The sword pulsated with more magic than I had ever seen in it before. It was almost like it was a living wire screaming.

“Good. You are not so blind as I feared,” Byrne said.

The way he said “blind” rubbed me the wrong way.

“What do you mean?”

“You think you’ve dived deep in the astral plane, but if you can’t see through the illusion, you’ve been going in the wrong direction. You have been diving close to the Fountain, but if you really want to get the power to defeat a Corrupted Ancient, you need to dive toward the real depth,” Byrne explained. 

The Runeblade screamed in his hand, and I could barely hear his words.

“Everyone, get ready! If I have kept you alive, Robert, it was for this moment,” Byrne continued, this time with a stern expression. He swung the sword without much mastery behind the arm. There was no trace of hesitation in his words.

Firana’s body tensed, and I closed my hand around her wrist in case she wanted to attempt something stupid. No matter how fast she was, speed alone wouldn’t be enough to go through Byrne’s authority.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful after everything you have done for me, Robert, but I don’t particularly care if you survive after this,” Byrne said. “But if you want a chance, you will have to go deeper. Go to the place where you no longer feel like yourself.”

The Avatar extended his arm in a vain attempt to stop Byrne, but he had no physical body. Byrne raised the Runeblade and stabbed the crystal that contained Rebecca. I expected it to crack in two. Instead, like a dam breaking, a liquid stream of condensed mana shot forward, spilling over the floor and becoming a reflective puddle that buzzed with magical energy.

I projected my authority, keeping the stream from hitting us.

The Avatar opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, his illusory body flickered and disappeared.

“It’s up to you now, Robert Clarke.”

Byrne pulled the Runeblade back out, and the next moment, he wasn’t there anymore.

I had no time to think.

The world became strange, like someone had shut down the sound across the entire planet and ramped up atmospheric pressure until all I could hear was a high-pitched whistle. 

“Move back!” I shouted, pushing the kids back to the scaffolding just as the spilled mana turned black. More than just being opaque, the liquid now looked as if it were a hole in reality.

An image appeared on the black mana puddle. A devastated wasteland bathed in blood, with plague-ridden trees and a burnt sky above. The smell of blood and soot hit my face as mangled shadowy creatures I couldn’t quite distinguish moved closer, on the other side of the barrier.

“It’s going to get us killed!” Loki shouted before turning into a mouse and jumping into my potions pouch.

The environmental mana ramped up until I felt the edges of my authority fraying away. Still, I pushed my authority outward, forming a protective sphere around me, blocking the entrance to the room. Kili blacked out, and Zaon caught her slumped body, but he could barely stay upright himself. I could tell from Zaon and Firana’s expressions that they were in a great deal of pain.

A magical presence crept from the depths of the bloody wasteland, and the pressure around me intensified to the point I thought the Fountain itself was intruding into the material world. Red light shone through the portal, and the slim barrier between places swelled and expanded. 

“Brace for impact!” I shouted, and the whole world turned white.

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What is anything for? This is a question that has been asked by all civilizations. And it has certainly been said amongst the galactic community for as long as the Terrans crashed into us. The Terrans, oh those viscous Terrans, any passive interest quickly soured into detestable hatred. And the worst of it all, the Terrans individually weren’t so bad, they proliferated around as any new race does. Fight, love and work like all of us. But unlike all the other races, they were not principally ordered in a coherent central manner. My people, the noble Tyranni, we rule well and respectfully. Our order and authority are a centralized specificity. Oh how the Terrans were not this at all, not then.

The Galactic Community and by association any of its tangential bodies or organizations represented an epoch of star faring civilizations cooperating. Tens of star spanning civilizations, ranging from a unified hundred worlds, to just a handful. Yet a common understanding, treaties, laws, effective and pragmatic. Those dreadful Terrans, bane of us all, they were not like us.

 The Terrans were very old, yet they were stuck in their past while we progressed. Their limited FTL and innumerable cycle after cycle had borne a failed state. By the time they were discovered, the nominal Terran Federation as it was called in its most ancient days, it had done worse to regress into a feudal facsimile. No even worse than that. It was united more by a roving menagerie of arms and wrathful armadas than any common rule of order and tradition. 

It might do well to know these things, these first worlds of theirs we discovered were so entirely different from ours, you’ll just never understand. If the Terrans were not a newfound species, their discoverers were ready to class them as two different civilizations. A measly eighty light-years apart, one world barely maintained void presence, having become a scarred, baleful world full of pain and death. Ancient bunkers and crumbling cities languished on the surface, this was the world of Rykardais. Its counterpart? It was a beautiful pristine world, a perfect harmonic balance of mile high spire acrologies, amazing megastructures that seamlessly blended into the nature of the green world. Its orbit was littered with boundless orbiting stations of industry and commerce. A world that any race would be proud to bare within their core worlds and this world was Utiuca. 

Yet both worlds told us, they belonged to something greater, but did not have a name for it. The name for their greater polity was lost to annals of some burned library. The people, they gave us a name, not for their government, but their higher up. A Duke Cajo. That was all they knew, that wasn’t satisfactory for me or any of my colleagues. This was maddening, as the news travelled, emissaries flocked to these worlds, scouring any archive and nearly interrogating their Terran counterparts. How, how could these people, so close, yet so different, could be united by some forgotten means? By any logical sense it doesn’t make sense. We journeyed deeper into this region of endless expanse. We looked for any clues, and we found something. Deep in the poisonous fog of a wounded valley on the planet Rykardais. After ancient defenses took scores of drones, eventually they were destroyed or simply worn themselves into ruin. We scoured this untouched refuge, deep in the corroded halls, the bunker had given us something. There was an event, some horrible cataclysm brought the Terran Federation to its knees in a horrible bout of civil strife. In the administrative archive the most recent leader was crudely inputted into the ancient archive, The Ducal House of Cajo, this was in stark contrast to the previous Consul Orattio, Consul Sena, and all the others before this anomaly. For this so-called Duke figure, if they were even real, or even still alive. What was more shocking than the rest, temporal data was transferred into our data. A Terran Standard Year was equivalent to three Galactic Temporal Cycles. The archival data slated the last entry as three thousand and hundred eighty five years ago. Do you know what that means? These poor, sickly Terrans have been isolated, stranded in their cluster and on this sick world longer than some of the Galactic Community have been star fairing. Few people know of this Antonai, this information did not leave our own databases. It would do too much harm to the already precarious balance of the Galaxy. 

You should’ve seen what happened not long after the news of the Terrans made it back home. By an outsider’s account you’d think this was a galactic wide crusade to rid the Galaxy of the Terran menace. And so did some Terrans. So many of our ships, our people, our engineers, everyone with a hunger for knowledge flooded into this new mysterious place. Not every world was receptive to us, some worlds welcomed us like we were this legendary Duke. Some petty system lords would send their decrepit fleets after us. Case after case of studying the wreckage of these boxes of scrap metal. We learned some ships were older than the founding of the Rykardais and Utiuca, and the Terrans still pushed them out into the void.

After years we came to a system we heard so much of, a little fear, and a lot of reverence. This was Deneb, my exploration flotilla warped into this majestic system. And upon our sensors awakening, we were enveloped in the shadow of a monstrous armada. Thousands of ships, of all sizes, small and monstrous mountains of metal slowly sundering through the void. Their countless jagged and angular blotting out the bright sun of Deneb at the edge of the system.

We were hailed, and we listened “Fair Greetings, who art thou be with? Doth be mine, or dareth thee serve treachery?” Our translators struggled to make understanding. Some of our linguists who learned the Terran languages could not make heads or tale either, but a Terran guest of ours, a scribe from the ruined world of Rykardais. He knew, and he spoke, “Nay, we have no deal in either, we are but guests.” The heavy silence bore the weight of stars, and the booming speakers roared, “Whereth ye serve?” The scribe, seeing no-one speaking up, spoke again, “We serve differing masters; I am in a manner thine, and the others here do belong to others without our race.” he had creaked. “So sayeth, I be the Great Prince of House Anjou, true master of the Terran Illuminary, thou art came at a time of trepidation…” the speakers rumbled to silence.

 “Sir! We have adjusted the translators, lingual drift seems more intense here but all speech should revert to our known Terran grammar.”  The horribly loud bridge speakers roared back to life in full intensity.

 “Our people have been in a bloody conflict since the death of the Autarch two and a half thousand standard Terran years ago, our people are simply too vast…” Everyone at the bridge had looked around, those ancient archives had a decent picture but it seemed there was more to the story. And how naive we were back then, if only I had taken a moment to think I would’ve done us all a great deal. But then, I had come to a decision. I was gonna make an attempt to bring mankind into our sphere, how foolish of me then! Could you believe what I would do next? I asked the most loaded question I could, intentionally!

“Oh Great Prince of Terran kind, mind you send a contextual packet of information for these references? We have no sense of frame for your people’s tragic story.” I had asked, and I had nearly instantly met with the ugly sound of raw information translated into sound. Crude but effective, our ship’s database was updated real time. 

The speakers roared with the horrible sound of a heavy baritone laugh; “I believe you can serve me quite well, I notice your ships modernity, I don’t think you’ll mind If I take a closer look, would you?” It was those words which sent a horrible chill up all of our spines. “Please Prince, we’d really rather you not! That’d be an affront to any goodwill to our species to just do a thing like that” I had sound, not realizing the two way communication was broken. That perfidious Terran had no intention of anything good. It was already too late, the ship rocked and the alarms cried, the automated voice repeating; “Alert, Boarders on ship! Alert, Boarders on ship!” I had doomed not just myself, and my crew, but everyone. My dear Antonai, I had one last chance to save everyone, a self destruction, instantaneous scuttle. But I was weak my dear, I just sat there on the bridge, paralyzed with fear. And how right I was to be afraid.

Indeed that day was the last free day for a century. I was luckier than most, or maybe not as lucky. We hadn’t realized in our amazement of finding what some Terran might call our “White whale” that boarding teams were being prepared against us. That data burst was just a cover for the launching of breaching vessels.

 Within moments those gargantuan genetic aberrations barged into the bridge and had taken us at gun point. While you could say there were many sciences the Terrans suffered in, their mastery of biology was not one. It was and is of galactic envy. It was at the hands of these perfect monsters I was impressed into the service of the dread Prince. I labored and suffered in several horrible decades of lab and technological work, then a couple less than grueling labor of advisory work. Eventually, when I was finally regarded as too old and feeble, I was let go, I had returned to our family who barely remembered me. Grandchildren who had taken the skeins of the family, and grandkids who only heard stories as you know. Indeed, I went through horrible experiments, while none are pleasant to think about, they did grant me an unnatural lifespan. Whether it was a gift, or a curse to reflect upon every pain and ailing body. And every day I am tormented by those who call me a traitor. But you my dear, you sit here at my side, and you are witness to my guilt. I can only wonder with fear what would happen… What if they kept me in their slavery? A few ramshackle experiments has me alive now, if I was more useful I might join host to some of the gene monsters.

Ah but my dear, my dear Antonai don’t let this decrepit fool ramble. Where was I? My work, ah yes my work had led to the Terran ascendancy, the particular Prince I had worked for had died at an accident, that I might’ve had a small hand in, but this might’ve been in bad taste. The new Prince was far more brutal, considerably less considerate or remorseful. As alien as it sounds, they are all Terran, and not all Terrans are bad, but something about rulership, they do something to themselves. It’s something to do with the Rite of Denial. It’s where a powerful Terran politician modifies themselves to become functionally immortal, to have the gift of eternal youth. My old master did not care for this, he’d already live a few hundred years by default, and I had not appreciated his niceness. My new master, he would be the one to unleash The genetic aberrations who terrified any would be neredowell would be hunted down and destroyed by huge transterrans. But they were still Terran.

My new master had created true monsters. They did not fit under the Terran classification. Mutated, fused bone plates, some exposed, some not exposed, leathery black skin, dashed in scales. Huge hands ending in glinting bony claws, a massive maw with pointy teeth. These were the so-called “Night Horrors”, dropped on any dissenting party. 

The greatest horror was that they collected genetic material from their enemies to make these monsters, so they’d bear the slightest resemblance to their kin, but they’d do worse. Taking prisoners, powerful politicians and anyone who cared about them. They also mutilated them. Conjoining them into a horrible device. They were disemboweled and an eclectic mix of bio-technology was implanted in the wound. They’d turned people into living gestational machines for the monsters. This was just a mote of the Terran savagery, you cannot imagine what happened when these monsters went rogue in their facilities. And I will never tell you, no mind should ever know that. 

And they were but a single tool in that evil Prince’s arsenal, countless horrors were unleashed. And when the great armada that captured me was finally retrofitted to galactic standard. There was nothing anyone could do. He gained an extreme advantage over all other factions. Within a few Terran years he had gotten closer to uniting the Terran people truly for the first time ever. But his brutality would not go without a response, here you’ll learn my most troubled part in any of this.

 I had joined a secretive cabal of scientists and engineers, for whatever reason, we had declared that this Prince must die, and he must have a controllable replacement. I had the knowledge of our people’s advanced technology. My part was creating a device to scan the Prince’s expansive and neglected archive.  All the biographies of the greatest Terran leaders, the Archons, Consuls, Admirals and the Auroch’s of the old Federation. I had produced a personality chip of what would be the greatest Terran leader and it only needed a physical form manifest.

The Biological Affairs Office of the Prince, had done their part, they had done something tremendous, they created a body. Not like the monsters, not like the genetic aberrations. They had created a perfect Terran, flawless, from complete scratch. But he was a mindless brute, massive, better and more capable than anyone ever. But his skull was essentially a puddle of stem cells. I handed over that personality chip, and thus I had been complicit in creating the greatest monster ever.

This man gestated, his amorphous brain forming and adopting his personality, ingrained memories and visions. He’d know more than anyone before him all at once. The Terrans had taken to calling him Adam, when I queried why, they had only said it was like instinct, that it just felt right. Whatever it meant, Adam was beautiful.

It’d take time for him to mature, he would lay in coma till the right moment. So I’d thought, when I was in my office, mulling over some bad report about our kin being butchered. My aide had barged in, simply stating; “The Prince is dead.” and the Prince was more than that. That new man, Adam, had killed him, unprompted. The story told, is that the Prince had struck at him with a personal boarding sword when he was approached. Apparently in fear when this monstrous man approached him, but Adam had simply dodged it, stepping aside, he grabbed the sword hand of the Prince. And with his other free hand, Adam punched so hard into the Prince, he went straight through into his stomach and reaching up he pulled the heart out from thePrince’s chest cavity. Dripping in blood, of the still beating heart. The Prince’s guard had knelt and swore loyalty.

And no this man was not more cruel or anything like that. His evil was different. He was not a mere savage, he was calculative, plotting and secretive. But his mere presence had awed Terrans. More than all he let the legacies of the Princes die. He was an Auroch, he told me, when he relinquished me from bondage. That an Auroch was a titanic beast of the homeworld.  That it had guided and freed the Human race out of their caves. It had pulled the ploughshares, fed them with milk and muscle. That this venerable beast had pulled man from its demise with its powerful form. Every word just leashed me deeper into confusion. But the Auroch had no conciliatory explanation. I was on my way. My journey was a long one, treacherous, it had taken decades. But as the years passed. I heard of what happened, what Adam had done.

He had imposed a brutal militant hierarchy which stretched itself among a trillion Terran souls. All pledged loyalty to the Auroch, he had unified his people. He had laid low the tyrannical despots, and annihilated the impure. The Terran’s had coalesced into something very recognizable.

 And what was this new united Terran people ought to do? United in a way they never have been before, the grand houses that only knew war, sat restlessly, itching for conflict. 

And that my dear, is my regret. I had prepared a great horrible enemy for the galaxy. I ensured a brutality unimaginable, twice. The Stellar Autarch of Terra, as he called himself now. Unleashed his uncountable vat bred warriors, living bio weapons, the silent preluding horrors which stalked and hunted at night. The Terrans didn’t fight to conquer, to own, to be powerful, they just fought to sate an urge which kept them alive. And if this fighting staved off those dark days before the Auroch, mankind, which the Terrans had taken a liking to calling themselves now. Well they were happy to die, for now they had their name.

She lights a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last one.)

The message came in on a Tuesday.

A relay station out past our last colony picked it up. A small automated platform, the kind nobody thinks about until it breaks. One morning it logged a transmission that hadn't come from any human ship. Short, compressed, in rough but readable English. And attached to it, a block of data.

It was intended for us and no one else.

You know who it came from.

[REDACTED]

(She raises an eyebrow, but says nothing.)

The data was the record of that closed session. All of it. Arun's speech. The old admiral's objection. The vote. The order.

Remove humanity as a power in the galaxy.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

And buried in the middle of it, as a piece of supporting evidence, was a report from the Serene Accord. Contact with a human vessel inside Veskari space. Weapons charging. One shot. Target destroyed.

That's how we found out what had happened to our ship.

Not from a search party. Not from wreckage. From a footnote in an enemy's war plan.

(Pause.)

I've been asked a lot over the years how it felt, reading that. The truth is, I don't remember. I remember the room. I remember an intelligence officer reading it out loud, and that his voice went very flat halfway through, the way voices do when somebody is trying hard not to feel what they're saying.

(Beat.)

Understand, from our side, it made no sense. For thirty years, the Veskari had been distant but correct. No threats, no incidents. And now, out of nowhere, a message from somebody we'd never heard of, telling us they meant to destroy us?

Some thought it was a trick. A provocation, maybe, designed to get us to do something stupid near the line. Some thought it was a forgery from some faction inside Veskari space with an axe to grind.

The message had given us a location: a system deep in Veskari territory, where the fleet was going to gather.

So we looked.

(She exhales smoke.)

We had a deep-space array out past Neptune, built for astronomy. Mapping distant galaxies, listening for the beginning of the universe. Nothing military about it at all. We turned it toward the coordinates in that message and waited.

At that distance, you don't see ships. You hear them. Every jump drive leaves a ripple in jump space, and the array could pick those ripples up across light-years, in something close to real time. On the screens, they showed up as faint smudges of energy against the background stars. When the first images came back, there were a handful of them. A few dozen.

A week later, there were a few hundred.

Nobody in that room thought it was a trick after that.

(Pause.)

The information kept coming. Every few days, another transmission through the same relay. Fleet movements. Ship lists. Orders of battle. Supply schedules. Our analysts had never seen anything like it. They'd spent careers trying to understand the Veskari from the outside, and now someone was handing us their navy, one file at a time.

We learned that Arun had won the honor he wanted. He would command the armada himself.

We learned which subject species were sending ships, and how many. Every one of them had been told a number, and every one of them sent it. Nobody refused.

And we learned how slow it was for them. That surprised us at first. It shouldn't have.

No Veskari war fleet had been assembled in four hundred years. There was no plan to dust off, no drill to run, and nobody alive who had ever done it. Ships that had sat in orbit over their home world for generations had to be woken up, refitted, and crewed. Crews had to be found, then trained, and the people training them were working from doctrine written four centuries earlier.

And it was expensive. Ruinously so. Every ship that left orbit had to be fueled, supplied, staffed, and paid for, and much of the bill fell on the subject peoples. They were told what they owed, and they paid it.

Arun was spending four centuries of savings on that armada, and a great deal of his own reputation with it. He wasn't going to get to do it twice. Whatever he did with it had to be decisive.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

Slow, yes. But slow isn't the same as small. And every week, there was more of it.

Every few days, the array sent us new images. The smudges at the staging area got brighter. Denser. More of them.

There's a set of those images on a wall at fleet headquarters. They put them up in a row, one for each week. If you ever get the chance, go and stand in front of them. Walk along the row from left to right. Watch the light grow.

It still makes the hair on my neck stand up.

(Beat.)

So. What did we do about it?

Here's the problem we had, and I want you to think about it, because one day it might be yours.

We knew. They didn't know we knew. And the only reason we knew was a single source, deep inside their territory, risking everything with every message.

If we moved openly, if we started evacuating frontier colonies, put our fleet on the line, mobilized in a way the Veskari could see, they'd ask how we knew. And there was only one answer to that question.

(She looks at the cigarette.)

So we prepared for war without looking like we were preparing for war.

(Pause.)

The navy that had sat deep in human space for thirty years started moving forward, quietly. Ship by ship. Squadron by squadron. Never in groups large enough to be noticed. Exercises were announced, then extended. Supply runs got longer. Patrol routes shifted a little closer to the line each week.

Shipyards that had been building freighters started working around the clock on things they weren't allowed to discuss. Haulers were refitted as supply tenders. Colony ships became hospital ships. People were recalled from leave with no explanation, and they came back without asking for one.

And the colonies near the line? We couldn't evacuate them. Not openly. Not without telling the Veskari everything.

Some families got quiet suggestions to visit relatives further in. Some mining contracts were cancelled for "safety reasons." A school on one frontier world closed a month early for "maintenance." That was the best we could do.

Millions of people stayed exactly where they were, going about their lives, with no idea what was gathering on the other side of the line.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

That was the hardest part, for me. The not telling.

(Beat.)

About six weeks in, they gave me a ship. She'd been sitting in a yard behind the Moon for two years, waiting for a crew and for an argument about money to end. The war ended the argument.

I'll tell you about her later.

(Pause.)

I want to be honest with you about something, because the dramatizations never are.

We were afraid.

Not the brave, jaw-set kind of afraid you see in the films. The kind where you lie awake in your bunk doing arithmetic. The kind where you read the same intelligence report six times looking for something in it that isn't there.

No human ship had ever fought a Veskari ship. Not once. We didn't know how their weapons would behave against us. We didn't know what our ships could take. We'd run simulations, of course, endless simulations, but every one of them was built on guesses, and you could make the guesses come out however you liked.

What we did know was one sentence from the Accord's report.

One shot. Target destroyed.

(She exhales slowly.)

I had that sentence in my head for months. I'd be signing off a fuel requisition, and there it would be. One shot. I'd be walking the decks at night, talking to a nineteen-year-old rating about her family back home, and there it would be.

Target destroyed.

Every captain in the fleet had that sentence in their head. Nobody said it out loud. We didn't have to.

(Long pause.)

About two months in, the source sent us something new.

The Accord's bridge recordings. The full set. Raw sensor data, audio, everything. Taken from Veskari naval archives, at what risk to the person who sent them, I can only imagine.

[REDACTED]

(She lets the redaction pass without comment.)

I watched them the night they came in. All of us did, everyone who was cleared. I sat in a briefing room with a dozen other captains and watched our ship appear out of jump space, and watched the Accord's crew panic, and watched Vol give the order.

And I watched her die.

(Pause.)

Then I went to bed, and the analysts didn't.

They spent the next three weeks going through those recordings frame by frame. And at the end of the three weeks, they came back with something.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

A glimmer of hope.

(Beat.)

I'll come back to what it was. For now, two things.

First, it meant that sentence in my head might not be true. Might.

Second, it meant we had a choice to make.

We argued about it for days. People who were in those meetings still argue about it.

The case for telling them was simple. What the analysts had found might stop the war. It might make the old admiral right and Arun wrong. It might save millions of lives on both sides of the line.

The case against was just as simple. Those recordings had come out of Veskari naval archives. The moment we showed them what we had, they'd know they had a leak. And they'd start looking for it.

And there was something else. Even if we told them, would they listen? Arun had built a war on that shot. Every Veskari citizen had watched that review. If a human government suddenly produced evidence that the Battle of the Quiet Line wasn't what it seemed, what would the Veskari high command call it?

(She shrugs.)

Propaganda. A forgery. A desperate species trying to talk its way out of a war it was about to lose.

(Pause.)

In the end, we said nothing.

I've been asked many times whether that was the right call. I don't know. I've had a long time to think about it, and I still don't know. We protected someone who had risked everything for us. And we held on to something that might have stopped a war.

Both of those things are true. You'll have to carry decisions like that one day. I'm sorry about that. But you will.

(She taps ash from the cigarette.)

By the third month, the staging area was so bright on the array images that the analysts stopped counting individual ships and started estimating by the total energy output. The numbers they came up with, I'm not permitted to share. I'll just tell you that the first time I saw them, I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because there was nothing else to do with my face.

That was the armada.

(Beat.)

And here's the last problem. The one that kept our admirals awake.

Human space is large. Forty colonies, scattered across dozens of systems, with a hundred mining outposts and relay stations in between. The staging area was within striking distance of more than a dozen of them. From there, the armada could jump to any one of those systems, and we wouldn't know which until it arrived.

We couldn't defend them all. Not with what we had. Nobody could have.

So we did what every navy has always done when it can't be everywhere at once. We concentrated our main forces at the systems we thought were most likely. And at the rest, we posted pickets: small ships, a single corvette or a frigate, sitting quietly in the dark. Not there to fight. There to see, and to shout.

(She draws on the cigarette.)

One of those systems was a nowhere little place on the edge of our space. An ice-mining outpost, a relay station, and not much else.

Its picket was a corvette called the Sorra. Forty-two crew. Their average age was twenty-four.

(Long pause.)

We guessed where the armada would come.

We guessed wrong.

3/5
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The sun beat down on the Arizona desert sands, no breeze or shade to speak of save a tarp and large car tent sitting in the ass end of the desert. Christina and Serena, two students from a prestigious university, stood under the tent, watching their instructor work. Christina's bright amber-coloured angel wings fluttered gently in an invisible breeze, coping with the heat quite nicely with a simple charm she cast on the drive here. Serena's feathery blue devil wings twitched nervously as she scanned her surroundings, unsure of what to make of the devices on the table in front of her. They had seen guns before but... not quite like these. Three of them, arranged with other weapons, cross-sections of ammunition and other educational material. Clearly this was supposed to be a lesson, but they hadn't taken a class like this before.

Their instructor Mister Todd 'Ace' Vendetti, finally stopped his faffing about and paid attention to the two. "Okay then I think I have everything checked out and we are ready to go."

"Mister Vendetti sir, what's going on?" Christina asked.

"Well... I shall tell you. You two are the highest performing students in the entire university. Both of you have aced every test, overperformed at every metric and have the best attendance record of any student. It's only your second year no less, yet I have been repeatedly told that both of you cannot remain at the university any longer, and this will be your final semester. Care to explain why?" He asked.

The pair glanced at each other and shuffled uncomfortably.

He answered his own question. "Because you can't survive the financial shortfall from your parents both recently losing their employment status owing to recent... issues with the fleet. So, I met with the board and we decided to reward the two of you for your hard work by paying off your scholarships and refunding the cash to your families, in order to keep you in your education. Two bright ladies like you, we can't afford to lose that level of intellect."

The girls' faces brightened instantly and they became very excited very quickly.

"However... There is an issue. We can't just give you the cash, there's a Merit system going and you two need to do some extracurriculars in order to make up for a shortfall in your community score." He said, raising an eyebrow at both of them. "You are old enough, and strong enough now, you can use these with supervision. The board made the schools investment board and legal department a deal. I'm going to teach you two how to use these cannons, you are going to use them to do a little challenge, and when you win, I'll have all I need to help you two out and keep you in school until graduation. How's that sound?"

The girls could no longer contain their excitement and emitted a squeal of joy that nearly deafened the poor man. It took them a while to calm down but eventually they did and they settled in for a quick drink of water in the Arizona heat. For Mr Vendetti, a can of ice cold cola, for blue-skinned Serena and ice cold ice tea, and a Sprite Zero for Christina.

"So, ladies, I would like to introduce you to the LAGO Industries 'Biken' Portable Anti-Tank Rifle. Chambered in a forty millimetre high velocity round, built with stabilisers and recoil dampeners. It weighs twenty five pounds, is a single shot weapon and can utilize three different ammunition types. Based on a more modernised, portable version of the ancient World War Two defence turret platform, the Bofors forty millimetre anti-aircraft autocannon. Only this one, can be carried about. Now, I know you have passed your firearm certifications and can do math. So, who can tell me the formulation for calculating muzzle velocity?" He asked, holding up one of the abnormally large weapons to see.

Christina went first. "Le Duc's Formula, sir. It's the most basic and well known that is available."

"Correct. It is however for designing a round or for simulation purposes or theoretical calculations. V, meaning Velocity, equals A - meaning theoretical maximum - multiplied by X, the distance the bullet travelled in the bore. This is divided by b, which is a constant related to the burn rate of the powder charge, plus X. X can also be represented by the letter U in some models, depending on where you are. So, with this in mind, get your notepads, use the textbooks to find what you are looking for and calculate the muzzle velocity of the Biken Cannon. Then, use that to calculate the max effective range." He commanded, putting the gun down gently.

Both girls began frantic activity and started to scribble, using only what they had learned and pencil with paper. It didn't take long. They were the best in the school after all. Mr Vendetti checked both and their answers were correct.

"Very good. Now, the actual Muzzle velocity of the Biken cannon is around 2180 feet per second, and depending on the shell, it has a different final effective range. The shell types are HEDP, APCR and HEAT. Who can tell me what those acronyms mean?" He asked.

Serena's hand shot up. "High Explosive Dual Purpose, Armor Piercing Composite Rigid, and High Explosive Anti-Tank."

"Very good Serena. Now, effective ranges are different depending on the target we are aiming at but in this particular case, we're looking at two point five miles. Come now, let's get started." He said, and hauled the two weapons off the table to a shaded spot nearby.

The girls followed and he set up the rifles on a sort of makeshift bed spread either side of him. He showed the girls how to lay down and hold the rifles. "Right, northeast. You can tell by the compass I have neatly placed there on that shelf in front of you, where that is. If you look far up, above several sand dunes, you can see two cars. See them?"

The pair looked through the scopes. There on a hill, were two small sedans, both of which seemed to be parked atop some kinds of sandbags.

"Fords?" Serena asked.

"Yes. But no. They're off brand relics I got from a replica yard just so we could use them for target practice. See that stuff underneath them?" He asked.

"I take it... those aren't sandbags?" Christina asked.

"Detonex. A fancier, more robust variant of Common AnFo. This variant can be mixed with a stable compound to create colourful explosions, such as those used in fireworks. Serena, yours is blue, Christy, yours is yellow. The objective, ladies, is to detonate that explosive. You see those circular rings on the car?" He asked.

They took a closer look and noted three targets painted onto the sides of both cars, one on the engine block, one on the front door, one on the trunk.

"Those are the fuses for the explosives?" Christina said.

"Very good deduction, yes. Each of those targets has mounted behind it, a special thingy I set up that sets the fuse for the big kaboom. Shoot all three targets, boom, you win. Should be easy enough for the best in class. " He said and smiled at both of them.

"This is seriously all we have to do?" Serena asked.

"It counts as an extracurricular activity. You are learning ballistics in a safe, controlled and fun manner, with a practised instructor teaching you how to handle licensed military hardware. So yes this does in fact count as a valid lesson." He said with a sadistic smirk.

They recognised that smirk from his classes. It meant he knew what he was doing and they should just go with it, because why the hell not. Both girls shuffled to get into a more comfy spot, their wings fluttering behind them with excitement as they got used to the heft and cold steel of their new guns.

"Okay... Everybody ready?" He asked.

They both said 'yes Sir!' with enthusiasm and paid close attention to him.

"Good. I will demonstrate. Put your ear protection on now please." he commanded. Both girls and he reached up, grabbed a set of fancy looking headphones and put them on. "For this we will be using the APCR rounds, for obvious reasons. Here is how to load your rifle. First you release the safety catch. Then you reach down here and push this lever forward, opening the chamber. Then you load the shell, like so, into the holder that pops out from under it. Then you pull the lever back, retract the holder and put the round in the chamber. You reach forward and pull this mechanism here, which is the firing bolt. Your weapon is now live. You look through the scope, aim at your target and... FIRE IN THE HOLE!" he yelled, then pulled the trigger.

The sound that followed was a massive clang of fire, far louder, deeper and more pronounced than the small pistols and light arms the girls were used to. The bullet was also a lot faster, and with their magically enhanced senses, they could see it as it shot through the air and hit the dune behind the cars with such force it blew a significant chunk of the sand into the air. Both girls shared a concerned glance at the power that they now held in their dainty hands and shuffled slightly to get slightly more comfortable.

"Okay then, Serena, you first. Pick a target. You have fifteen shells each." he said as he locked his weapon down, not loading another shell but rather getting into a better spot to watch the resulting volley.

Serena nervously nodded and readied her rifle in the same way she was shown, looking over at her instructor to make sure she did it right. He nodded in approval. She steadied her aim, and following her instructions at the firing range, gently squeezed the trigger and let loose a single shell. The recoil was stopped dead by the fact the front of the gun was mounted on some kind of swivel mount that was bolted to a concrete slab, and expecting a lot more force, she overcompensated and missed her shot, hitting the dune and missing by a couple feet. Serena nervously shuddered and took a deep breath to calm down. Christina had her turn and likewise suffered the same and undercompensated for the recoil, shooting above her intended target, hitting the dune a bit further behind the car.

"A good first try. I wouldn't expect a professional sniper to get it on the first shot either, so don't be discouraged. Now you know what to expect, you can do better. Reload, and try again. Christina, you go first this time." He said, his tone low and gentle, calming them down, at least a bit.

The Angel nodded and settled in, then carefully loaded her weapon again. This time, the shot was true enough it set off the first fuse. The shell flew through the air and impacted slightly to the left of the target, going into the engine block. It hit with enough force to move the three ton car a few inches, exposing the explosive charges slightly.

"Excellent shot Christy! Straight through the engine block. Looks like it shifted the weight a bit. Likely the shell is stuck in the crankshaft with that hit. Very good!" He patted her on the back with praise and let her revel in her victory as she emitted a happy 'squee!' noise.

Serena, energized by the praise her fellow student received, loaded her rifle, aimed, and fired, hitting the trunk of her car perfectly centered. The shell went straight through, leaving a very obvious hole in the car trunk followed by a small explosion of sand in the background.

"Well done Serena, straight through left and right side into the dune, clean shot! Well done! One out of three ladies, let's keep the momentum." He said, likewise giving Serena a pat on her back in praise.

Both girls loaded another round, the enthusiasm for their task now hitting them with force as they readied their next shell. Before Mr Vendetti could say anything both girls fired simultaneously. Christina hit the driver door, a clean shot straight through. It wasn't clean per se as the shell went straight through a bucket of paint hidden behind the target that created one hefty mess inside the vehicle, coating the interior in a rather bright shade of neon green. Serena's shell hit the engine block, slightly off and imploded the oil pan, resulting in a cascade of gold-coloured synthetic oil spilling all over the front of the car.

"Beautiful shots ladies but please wait for my order next time! We don't want any accidents. Its my job to make sure the firing line is clear, you know. Curious onlookers may appear and I will need to warn them." He barked harshly.

"Sir... we are fifteen miles from the nearest place where a curious onlooker can even hear the shots..." Christina objected.

"Safety FIRST, ALWAYS. No exceptions. We should know this by now." He glared at both of them. They shuffled uncomfortably. "Good. Load and ready. Serena, your turn."

Serena loaded her rifle, aimed at her target and on command, fired her fourth shell. It hit a bullseye on the last target in the centre of the passenger side door, releasing a glob of green paint in the interior. Moments after the paint began to settle, a massive blue/green explosion rocked the car, catapulting its now burning hulk into the air with a sizable fireball of cobalt and green slime. Debris flew everywhere, and the car itself went twenty feet in the air before slamming back down onto its roof some five feet away. Serena visibly recoiled at the suddenness and watched in awe at the explosion, the first time she ever saw a blue-coloured flame and explosive blast.

Christina, wanting to see her version, readied herself and took aim at her last target. On command, she squeezed the trigger and her shell flew straight and true, hitting the trunk and going straight through. The resulting explosion sent the car catapulting into the air in a barrel roll, followed by a pretty plume of golden/amber smoke and flame. The car landed on its side, sinking partly into the sand and staying there.

"Challenge completed, you may now 'squee'." Mr Vendetti said.

Christy and Serena did indeed squee at an annoyingly loud volume as they hugged each other in celebration. Both girls suddenly stopped and bowed with respect as their headmistress Madame Vonn Sarais, a High Elven woman approached, gliding with her magic across the sand.

"I see they passed the test..." She said.

"With flying colours. The written exam got full marks as well. Missed their first shot, didn't miss any more." Mr Vendetti replied as he dusted himself off.

She smiled at both of them. "Very well done girls. I will speak to the board chief tomorrow, he won't disappoint after this. For now however, we can go to lunch. I will pay for a celebratory burger."

"Sounds good to me, although... I did bring twenty six shells. We still have two targets that could use more holes in them. Fancy a friendly competition to expend the ammunition?" Mr Vendetti said, with his all too familiar sadistic smirk.

Serena and Christina shared a glance and then retook their places at the guns for a new round of cannon-based fun. Mistress Sarais glared at him menacingly and he handed her a set of headphones to protect her elven ears as the cannon shells began to fly again.

((to the gun nuts, sorry but this was the best i could do before my power died and i got pissed off and started to not care about precise numbers.))

Previous

**This is in fact a sci-fi story about humanity, even if it doesn't seem anything like that. I was hesitant to post here because of how long the story is going to take to get to the human part, but after some recommendation I've decided to go for it.**

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Valthera’s journey to the Mason's Guild was silent and mercifully uneventful. In her route she made the deliberate choice to travel quieter avenues and narrower side streets. She had found no place to wash her hand of the now dried and flaking blood, but had done her best to rub away the worst of it with a scrap of cloth offered by one of her remaining guards. Along the way she spoke to no one. There was a slight tug on her heart each time she heard the voice of the occasional passer-by ask her attention. Though it ate her from the inside she carried herself along without meeting their eye. She had seen what her heart's capacity for sermon could bring and could not bear to let it happen again.

The guild office was a marvelous structure. Not grand in its scope and scale like her temple or the Keep, but stunning in its precision. While it was not her area of fancy or expertise, Valthera could still recognize the building for the boast that it was intended to be, and she almost regretted never having taken the time to attend the ceremony of its opening. Stone cut to oblong yet synchronous shapes interlocked with one another in a near perfect fit, and made up the fascias and turrets of the two-story hall. One of her guards took hold of the ornately-carved handle of gleaming white rock and, with an effort that seemed to take him by surprise, pulled open one of the double-doors that lead into the dimly-lit foyer.

Crossing the threshold Valthera’s first breath halted in her throat. The air inside stung at her nose and deep in her neck as she made her best attempt at gracefully clearing her throat. The air hung heavy with acrid chaukou root smoke, which floated in a fluid haze near to the floor so thick that it parted in a wake as she waded through it. The clouds clung low around small gatherings of masons and their apprentices, all engaged in their favored pastime of smoking the addictive root and keeping closer company of one another than their own families. 

The added light of the open door drew the attention of some, as did the realization of who it had brought. There was not a word from any of them as she entered however, with most giving a look of bemused recognition before returning to their table’s conspiracy.  One stone mason’s longer ears perked at her arrival, but the attention was short-lived as his neighbor gave one of the ears a teasing flick that elicited a collective snicker from the rest of the table.

A very young steward, no more than a boy, approached from across the room and gave a light bow before looking vaguely up and addressing her. 

“Good evening, Lady of the Light. Guild Master Ehried is expecting you.” His delivery sounded as though the words had been dictated and then rehearsed several dozen times in a quiet corner. Valthera ignored the stinging in her eyes from the smoke and smiled politely as he continued. “Please, follow me.”

The steward turned around with a motion as rigid as his greeting and led her towards the stairway to the second floor. With a signal for her guards to take their leave she followed, eager to seek fresh air in the upper floor. She prayed at least one of them would still be sober by the time she returned, though she was sure most of them were all too willing to be called to join a table, and all too eager to avoid the cultural insult of drinking less than their hosts.

Reaching the top of the stairs she trailed him through the corridors towards the guild master’s office, the air mercifully much more breathable. As Valthera dabbed at her eyes she noted that the halls of the upper floor resembled the utilitarian bareness of her temple’s staff quarters, but the arrangement of the adjoined rooms was absurdly well-organized. She passed door after door, each adorned with a carved label noting the function of the room it served. Some functioned as municipal libraries, some as storage of fine carving tools, still others seemed entirely dedicated to housing writing and measurement implements. She mused at the formality of the layout, and how it seemed in such stark contrast to the Ehried she had come to know at the council table.

It was not long before the steward came to a halt at a single door, one little different from the countless others that staggered the halls. The only hint of the room’s significance was yet another carved placard upon the door which read Guild Master, which was carved in the same indifferent and precise style as every other before it. The young steward gave the door a few light taps with his knuckle before he abruptly continued down the hall without another word. Her brow furrowed. She was about to call out to him when the door beside her swung open.

“High Priestess, just in time to be late.” Ehried grinned. His smile was broad, handsome, and natural enough to disguise his annoyance as a jest. “Come in, please.” 

He pulled the door fully open, and stepped aside as he beckoned her enter. Just as with its entry door, there was little within the surprisingly confined space that made it appear any more distinguished than the rooms used for storing old construction records. Several competently-made wooden chairs and a single desk made up the furnishings, and on the wall hung a single framed drawing of some vaguely familiar structure she felt she recognized from somewhere in the city’s northern end. The furniture competed for territory against bundles of scrolls and piles of books that had taken up a fluid residence in any corner that would keep them out of the way of the single clear footpath that encircled the desk. The desk itself was immaculately clear and occupied only with two empty drinking glasses and one large drawing of a stunning arch. The drawing had been mercilessly marred with red notation across nearly every inch of its surface.

“Speaker Ehried, thank you for your time. I do apologize for the lateness.” Valthera thought of offering her hand before remembering the blood. Instead she clasped them together before her at her waist and offered a demure smile before entering and negotiating what little open space the floor offered. 

“Truly, no need to apologize.” He said as he pulled a chair from its place for her before circling the desk to the opposite end. He dropped into his own seat, and motioned vaguely to the window behind himself. “I heard from a few of my workers that the High Priestess was offering a public forum in the market earlier. I have to applaud you for your patience, this must be a challenging day to be Her voice.”

She saw his eyes flick to her hand. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she had forgotten to fold them in her lap as she sat and had instead rested them on the table. She did not let it reach her face, but inside she cursed the route she took there for not having a single clean well.

“I do not think any of us have known an unchallenging day for a long time.” Valthera settled a bit into the wooden frame of the chair’s backrest, allowing her hands to naturally lower into her lap and back out of sight. The backrest was far less forgiving than she had hoped.

“No,” he said, nodding his head. “I suppose we have not…” He loitered in the quiet for precious few seconds before suddenly slapping the surface of his desk and calling to the closed door behind her. 

“Boy! Bring us a drink!”

Before he had finished speaking the door was already opening, and the young steward appeared. He hurriedly carried a set of two glasses and a bottle filled with a clear fluid to the desk, without a word filling them modestly before settling the bottle close to Ehried. He was dismissed with a wave and a nod, and was gone again as quickly as he came. Valthera eyed the two existing glasses on the table.

“This is far from my first meeting today.” He said, gesturing towards the empty glasses before raising his own to her with that same broad smile. “And far from my first drink.” 

Their conversation was casual but hollow, an exchange of formal niceties and empty praises to one another’s character and standing that sought to leave both parties just as suspicious as they were flattered. Despite that, Valthera noted how attentive Ehried appeared, and how closely he seemed to listen when she spoke. He praised her role in Queen Freniya’s upbringing, saying her wit and composure had clearly been inherited in her mentorship by such a bright and noble teacher. For her part Valthera applauded his status as the youngest council member, and the fortitude it took to rise to such a position in only his forties. Just as he withheld the reality that Freniya still had long to go in her mastery of composure, she withheld her knowledge of just how much bribery was needed to elevate the head of a trade guild into a position in the Queen’s council.

The clear drink the steward had brought was strong and bit at her throat when she drank it, but Ehried was generous with his hospitality. He had given her the drink’s name and where he had had it imported from, but she could not summon the interest to care about either and had forgotten both by the time she took her next sip. Clear alcohol had never agreed with her, and less than half an hour into their meeting she could already feel an ache in her temples and a warmth in the tips of her ears. She would have refused the liquid entirely were it not such an insult. At least it was helping to begin pushing the events of the marketplace further from the surface of her memory. Ehried on the other hand was still as focused as ever, his hands folded and resting upon the desk as he looked directly at her. She suddenly became aware of the weight of an awkward silence and his direct attention on her.

“What do you think happened in the sky last night, Guild Master?” She asked abruptly before she had time to really consider the question. He shook his head and his brow furrowed as he gave her a curious look.

“Truthfully, I do not know. Why are you asking me?” 

“Did you happen to see the lights?” She redirected.

“No, I did not. But I assume you did?” Ehried answered. Valthera confirmed with a nod as she swished the contents of her glass around with her wrist. 

“Then I also imagine you feel the goddess spoke to us?” he asked. “What do you think she said?”

She set her drink down and once again found the control in her voice she was used to. “I will not pretend to be so wise that I know exactly what the goddess said, but I do firmly believe that when She speaks it is worth listening.” 

He picked up his own glass and grinned once more. “Not quite the position Sinfrei and I were expecting from you.” 

She cocked her head. “You and Sinfrei already spoke?”

“Like I said, not my first meeting today.” He said while he took another drink. She felt a slight flush of embarrassment, and her ears twitched lightly.

“I see, well I hope she is well.” Valthera said as she quietly recomposed herself.

“She is, and I’m sure she will be even better when she learns that you have not leapt from the high end of the glacier. When I told her of our appointment she was convinced that you were coming to declare to me that the goddess had spoken to you directly and told you that we must continue to force the people to waste away because she promises aid.” His eyes were locked on hers. Even though his expression was friendly and almost jovial, the way those eyes looked at her felt once again different than what she was used to from him at council. It felt more like the orderly rows of doors and carved placards than books and scrolls strewn about a crowded office. It felt forceful.

The jewelry on her ears chimed as they reacted involuntarily to the slight. She saw his attention jump to them for a second. “Sinfrei might still be disappointed, then. I said that I do not know what Pheith’s message to us was; I did not say that we should surrender our city before we understand it.”

His shoulders had dropped along with his expression by the time she had finished speaking. Now she studied him as he leaned himself back in his seat and looked down at the arch drawing on his desk. He did not give her long to contemplate the meaning of the distant expression he wore while he busied himself with the drawing, for he broke the short-lived quiet with a somewhat more serious tone than he held moments ago.

“You know that I do not attend the temple for ceremonies very often.” He said. 

“Yes, and while I would greatly enjoy your attendance, I understand that you are among the busiest Fal Ahnshae in the city.” She said, offering him a route back into hollow pleasantry. 

“Thank you,” he began, “but because of that you must understand that when Sinfrei tells me she saw the lights and can list at least a dozen very plausible explanations for them, it can become difficult for me to agree with you when you say that they were an act of the divine.” 

“Sinfrei saw the lights as well? And she wrote them off as natural?” She challenged him. “Guild Master, the sky itself moved. I have met elders that neared their second century and never once has one mentioned the stars shifting like that.”

Ehried listened while she spoke, then took hold of the dying bottle of alcohol and poured the remainder into his glass before lifting it up in front of his face at the midpoint of the desk. The features of his face were muddled, and skewed about with the bobbing and tumbling fluid. Without a word he set the glass back down. The lack of smug arrogance on his face was almost more frustrating for she could tell he wore it inside.

“Have you ever been inside of a stone cutting yard, High Priestess?” He asked. 

She shook her head.

“Very loud. Water everywhere, we use it to cool the blades so that-” Ehried cut himself off and waved his tangent away with a gesture. “Anyway, air holds water very well, a fine mist. Perhaps a great cloud of mist sat above the city and  the sky only appeared to shift. Just like a reflection in the glass.” 

Valthera’s brow furrowed. “Guild Master Ehried. What I saw, what I know I saw, was nothing like staring through a glass of water. Feed me only your speculation, and I will remain unsatisfied.”

“Very well. I will not tell you what you saw with your own eyes.” He nodded once more. “But as you know…None of us have known an unchallenging day in a long time.” 

She sat taller in her seat and managed her tone to filter out the frustration. Mostly. “I was not searching for a sign, if that is what you’re implying.”

Ehried remained undeterred. “Maybe not consciously. But High Priestess, I know you worry greatly for the Queen and-”

“My relationship to Queen Freniya is not a part of this discussion.” Valthera interrupted, this time unable to suppress her annoyance. The dull ache in her temples was beginning to become a pulsing throb that would not be ignored. This was becoming unproductive.

“What did you tell the people in the market today?” He pivoted.

“Why is the subject of my sermons suddenly of interest to you? You yourself said that you do not attend the temple often.” Her ears were high and drawn back now and she knew it, but she was no longer trying to hide the signs that he was annoying her.

“Because whatever was said I can tell that it did not go very well.” His face became serious as he nodded towards her hands, which had made their way back onto the table without her having realized. As she glanced down at them herself, she saw something she wished she had noticed far earlier. Next to her bloodied hand, on the drawing of the arch, there was a hastily-written list of material costs scribbled in the same red ink. The letters and numbers faced her chair, and the handwriting was unmistakably Sinfrei’s. Ehried’s voice regained her attention as he continued.

“This is a time when hope is just as dangerous as despair, Lady Valthera. You, myself, and everyone who surrounds the Queen must remain careful of how we present ourselves to the people. We should sometimes consider if we should even present ourselves at all.” He took a drink from the over-full glass he had used for his example, and grimaced at the empty bottle as he lifted and studied it. “If we think we are afraid, then imagine how they must feel.”

Seemingly beyond her control, the image of the peasant’s eyes as he was carried by her guards clawed its way into Valthera’s memory. She pushed it down with another sip of the distasteful clear poison. She saw him studying her again.

“What happened in the market was not my doing.” She said sternly, speaking as much to herself as to him.

“But I can see the guilt for it written all over you.” He said without a hint of his usual mirth. “If you are feeling this level of guilt over whatever happened in the market, consider what you will go through watching the people starve because you are insisting on messages in the sky. Consider the cost of your position, and if it is worth what others must pay.”

She was glowering at him now. He had read her shockingly well, but she could not let him know how right he was. Her tone was low, her voice harsh.  “The sorrow of mine you see is for pain witnessed, not for pain caused. And Pheitha never asks a price that is too great to pay. She who gives life would never take it without cause, and would never forsake Her people for their belief.”

She was fast approaching the limits of her patience with him. She had not come here to preach or be preached at. She stood from her seat, forcing him to look up at her. “You are lucky, Guild Master, that the faithful are plentiful here in Hem Falaer. Were it only those who had no faith in Her like yourself and the Speaker of the Purse, then perhaps She would be less charitable with Her words.”

His expression did not change, remaining serious and studious in response to the provocation. She quietly regretted the words, but knew she had leaned too far into them to take them back. Still Valthera knew this meeting had become a waste of time.

“Before you go, you should know that Sinfrei and I will be pushing for a conditional surrender of the city during the next council meeting.” He said, not breaking the stare. “It is my hope that by then you will see reason. It will already be a difficult day for the Queen. I implore you, do not force her to watch her council break before she must watch her city do the same.”

She looked down on him. “I appreciate your hospitality Guild Master Ehried, but I have business elsewhere that will see her city stand long after we have both met the goddess. It is a pity that you will not be helping me in that effort, but I suppose I will manage.” 

She replaced her seat at its spot before the desk and turned to leave, nearly toppling an askew pile of books that encroached on the narrow footpath of the office. As she neared the door Ehried spoke up.

“High Priestess Valthera.” He said. She halted and gave him her attention one last time.

“When I said we should consider whether we present ourselves to the people, I was not being disingenuous. I’m sure it’s something you yourself have considered after today’s events, and didn’t need me to tell you.” He gestured to a dull but heavy cloak that hung on a rung near the door.

“I have my own methods of remaining discreet.” Valthera said flatly.

“Please at least take it. I have many more and it will not be missed.”

She stared at him for a time before grabbing the cloak from its rung and folding it several times. “If you insist on me leaving with it, then I will have one of my guards carry it. It will be returned to you in good order.”

She took hold of the door handle and quickly exited into the hall. Her abrupt arrival startled the poor steward, who attempted to muster his rehearsed farewell but seemed to falter. She paused, and mustered the least false smile she could at the moment before continuing down the hall without awaiting his escort. 

She navigated the upper floor by memory, passing through the maze of labeled rooms and repeating doorways until she finally found the stairs. While she negotiated them she prepared to hold her breath for the lower floor; standing at the top she could already detect the burning miasma of the chaukou root. Upon reaching the bottom she scanned for her guards. Half a dozen still remained attentive at the entrance, noting her presence and stiffening further. Several others still had had little trouble in assimilating themselves into the ecosystem of the room and were nested across several tables fiercely engaged in the comradery of drink and smoke that had driven the wheels of society since the ancient days of the Fal Ahnshae. She would have scoffed were it not for a particularly well-timed reminder of her own adherence to that tradition as her head once again pulsed with pressure. More workers stared at her now than when she arrived, and their gaze followed her. Her mood was clearly now more visible, and apparently more interesting, than when she had arrived. A guard pushed the front door of the guild hall open and revealed the dimming twilight that had begun to settle outside, and cruising the threshold she breathed her first breath of clean air in far too long. 

While her guards caught up to her she ruminated on the meeting. She thought about how should have delayed the appointment following the incident in the market, but shook her head. It would have been a waste of time no matter her preparation; Sinfrei had begun a crusade of her own and had gotten to Ehried first. There was no point in her planned correspondence with Sinfrei, though her jaw tightened as she thought of what she wished to say to the Speaker of the Purse. 

She took a deep breath through her nose and held it, letting the frigid air cool and numb her aching head. While she walked she turned the folded cloak over in her arms a few times, studying the fabric. She mused over where someone such as Ehried would be going that he would need to remain unrecognized, but thought better of it. Getting the attention of another of her guards she handed it off to him.

“Hang this by my chamber door.” she said.

“Aye, Lady.”

“And have it washed. Thoroughly.”

She continued down the cobble roads and in time the newer wooden homes and straight alleys of the northern city began to give way to structures of hewn stone, worn and weathered by centuries of snow and rain. Here the roads twisted almost aimlessly, but their many curves and branches lived permanently in her memories of a childhood before the temple. She allowed the pleasant thoughts to take her away from the day for a time, and let them guide her through the darkening streets.

By the time she neared her destination night had fully taken hold. The frozen night air had done well to soothe her head and clear her mind, though she was eager to find warmth once again as she climbed the hill towards the entrance of the temple. As she rose above the rooftops of the stout buildings of the old city the distant lights of the city walls came into view, the great monolith extending in either direction until it was once again eclipsed by the cityscape. The sight of the walls heralded a revelation that felt so obvious in hindsight that she nearly scoffed at her blindness to it. Upon those walls right now was the answer to Ehried and Sinfrei’s coalition; a soul who did not need to see a message in the stars to know that they could not surrender, and one she had never once seen back down when challenged. Her pace slowed to a halt, and with a wave she got the attention of the guard to her left.

“Sentinel. Locate Guard Captain Ulrane at the southern wall and deliver my correspondence. Tell him his presence is required at the next council meeting in the coming days. Advise him that the matter is most urgent. Tell him that the High Priestess will walk the walls herself to find him and bring him there if she must.”

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

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“Ma’am. Prime Minister Farid is ready.”

Salma accepted her headset.

“Wait,” Julia said sharply as she looked at the presidential call operator. “What level of security is the call using?”

The operator replied immediately, “Kyber-4 with 512-bit ECDH. The key is estimated to be at least fifty-years secure, even assuming most pessimistic projections for moonie quantum crypto advancements, Commodore.”

Julia shook her head. “Insufficient. Go to the maximum we can.”

The call operator looked at Salma for approval.

The President nodded and handed the headset back to him. “Do as she says.”

He fiddled with the controls and spoke rapidly into the headset. After a minute, he handed it back to Salma. “This call is now bit-for-bit secured by diplomatic one-time pad. Uncrackable, ever. We have… twelve minutes before we run out of pre-exchanged keys.”

Salma picked up her headset. “Prime Minister.”

“Madam President,” he replied, the two second light speed delay later.

“This is a secure call, so I won’t bother you with pleasantries. My Cabinet is next to me,” Salma said. “With my chief of staff Will and my Union security advisors.”

“I have my Ministers of State, Defense, and Justice.”

“Prime Minister, we have received… an advance copy of your intelligence services’ report—preliminary report—on the matter of your assassination attempt.”

There was a long pause. Longer than the light delay. “Very unpleasant business, Madam President.”

“Again, allow me to convey our relief that the attempt failed and our unreserved condemnation of those responsible,” Salma said.

There was something in his voice. Impatience? Annoyance? “Yes, we received your State Department notice. Is that the purpose of this secure diplomatic call?”

“No. I’m now also offering you resources to help catch those responsible.”

“Does that include extradition of suspects to face prosecution on Luna?” Farid asked.

Salma swallowed. “I can’t do that, Farid. You know I can’t.”

Long pause.

“I see.”

Julia was beginning to see why there was always this awkward diplomatic gap between Earth and Luna leadership. The unnatural two second delay made things sound incredibly wrong to her ear. In some ways, it was worse than just trading letters and emails. That was always theorized to be a major issue in international diplomacy with translators. With faster and better universal translators, that problem mostly went away.

Except for the speed of light. Which was why she suspected that native Japanese speakers—who, according to linguistic research, were more comfortable with silence between sentences—made the most successful interplanetary diplomats.

When Salma didn’t say anything, Farid asked, “What about a low Earth orbital tribunal? A Union court with an all-Lunar jury. As in the case of the Tranquility Stadium Bomber in 62.”

“There is precedent, and we are… open to that possibility,” Salma said. “Perhaps a mixed jury would ensure that justice could be fully—”

“Salma, we should be—Frankly, your Union does not have laws that will allow you to fully prosecute these criminals, for a crime committed outside your jurisdiction. Even the Tranquility Stadium Bomber case—we had to swallow our pride and pretend we recognize your rule over our people for justice… We will not accept such… humiliation, not again. We are equals now, and it is best if we both start from that point and behave as if we both understand this new reality.”

“I understand. We can discuss the extradition issue in more detail later,” she placated. “However, there is a bigger issue. We can’t find the suspects at all. We believe their identities are fabricated. Digital fabrications.”

“Yes, we… suspected that could be the position you could take.”

Even without formal diplomatic training, Julia could tell he was trying his best to keep the skepticism from his voice.

“They’re lies, Farid. We checked them out. They don’t exist at all.” Salma’s eyes darted around as she waited for a reply.

“We can’t accept that explanation. Not when your media—not when Earth’s media and politicians have so quickly pinned the blame on our radical elements. And now this. Our people will suspect a coverup and demand more. And they would be right to.”

“It’s an attempt on your life, Farid. Would you accept my word?”

“This office is more than me. A sacred position for which I am merely a temporary steward. This was an attempt on the life of the Lunar prime minister. I have no personal flexibility on this matter, Madam President.”

Salma thought for a long moment. When she was about to speak, Farid’s voice came before she could. “Salma, if you claim these identities are fabrications, my people say they would have to be highly sophisticated ones. No rogue group could do this. So who do you claim is responsible instead?”

“We… don’t have a position on it at this time,” she replied. “Except that we have conducted a thorough internal investigation of our intelligence services and our own bureaucracy, and we have not found any evidence of wrongdoing. We are certain it does not originate within our own system, and we are reasonably sure the identity fabrication—and therefore the attack—did not originate from Earth.”

“Be careful, Salma, what you are insinuating,” Farid cautioned, relatively quickly this time.

She was quick to clarify too. “We are not making an accusation at this time. However… I can tell you that we now also strongly suspect… non-human involvement.”

Long pause. That was evidently not the line he expected her to go with. “Alien involvement. That is concerning. And a new angle. Which alien species?”

“Uncertain at this time.”

“Do you have evidence?”

“We—None that I can present to you at this time,” Salma admitted.

“Is alien involvement your only theory for the party responsible for this identity fabrication?”

“It is our…” Salma looked between Director Clara Powell and Julia for a moment. “It is one of our primary working theories. As well as for the ultimate responsibility for the assassination attempt.”

“I see. Alien involvement is also one of our theories,” Farid replied. “And our investigation will… consider all possibilities.”

“Is it a… prominent theory in your full report?” she pressed. At least if that were to be in the report, the media would have something more sensational to grab onto than the possibility that the Union’s intelligence agencies were behind—

“Do not ask questions you would not like the answers to, Madam President.”

That’s a no.

“I see.” Salma sighed. “Given the sensitivity of the subject and our ongoing investigation into this matter—this security breach, would you consider holding back the public release of the preliminary report so we can continue our own investigation… without the interference of public commentary from—from both our peoples? This would be to prevent unsubstantiated narratives—”

“I can’t, Madam President. This is an official report to Parliament. The deadline is this Sunday night, before nightfall in Serenity and the session recesses.”

“Would you at least consider holding the false identities confidential, pending the ongoing investigation?” she asked.

Farid paused for a long moment before replying, “I could consider that, but eight Members of Parliament outside my Cabinet have already received an advance copy. The Orbital Security Cabal. They will notice alterations to the report, or to elements of it that have had classifications changed, and one or two of them may bring it up during the session.”

“In your opinion, they will make a note of it?”

“The Speech or Debate clause in our charter immunizes MPs for any revelations on the debate floor, even of highly classified material.”

That’s a yes.

Damn checks and balances.

Salma closed her eyes and shook her head. “Forgive me if I overstep, but is it—is it possible to close your Parliament session early while we gather more information? Our people will cooperate fully with yours, as far as we—”

“I understand what you are saying, Madam President. But that is not possible. Parliament meets… rain or shine, as you would say, Salma. In peace or war… The first session of the New Lunar Parliament met during heavy orbital bombardment, as I’m sure you remember.”

“Yes.” Salma recognized the subtle dig. She was not President then, but it was her Navy. She didn’t give up. “What about—can you call a special session of Parliament on Sunday afternoon or evening, to displace the regular session until it recesses? We could really use the extra two weeks to conduct a more thorough investigation. Two weeks is all we are asking. To avoid any public misunderstandings between our democracies on this sensitive matter. You know how things are. The correction never gets as much play as the initial report. Just… two weeks.”

Farid paused for a long moment, obviously to consult his people on the other end. He said, “There are very specific provisions in our charter regarding causes for opening special sessions of Parliament. To declare war, for example, and I have no intention of declaring war on Sunday. I’m sorry, Salma, but I believe that none of the legal prerequisite conditions for a special session of Parliament apply at this moment.”

Salma looked at her advisors, all of whom were staring back at her with empty or dejected looks, for half a minute. She shrugged to herself. “Would the first ever state visit from a foreign head of state apply?”

Will looked up in alarm. “Ma’am—”

“No—”

“We can’t give them—”

Salma muted her microphone input just in time for her Cabinet meeting room to break into total chaos.

“State visits from foreign heads of state could be grounds for a special session of Parliament, Madam President,” Farid’s unmistakably excited voice said to a room full of people who could no longer hear him over the shouting. “Would that be something you would consider?”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Clara found Will after the meeting. “Mr. Weber, I know this isn’t a great time with the upcoming state visit to Luna and all—”

Will sighed. “It’s never a good time, Clara. But that is the nature of governance. What are you springing on me now?”

“Well, hopefully this is one less thing on your plate. We’ve got good news on the alien command center on Earth thing. The one in Suran, remember?”

“Good news?”

“Yeah. Excellent news… The aliens don’t have a suitcase nuke in their compound.”

“How do you know—and we’re sure of that?”

“Positive. We had some help from…” She lowered her voice. “We got some technical assistance from the moonies. They have this remote scanning tech for nuclear weapon components and material. Works through dirt and rocks and everything.”

“This sounds like some crazy shit only they could have come up with.”

Clara shifted uncomfortably. “It’s to make sure none of the many thousands of their nuclear missiles fall into the wrong hands. Because of, you know, the radical extremist problem they have.”

“Um… Don’t we have, you know, many thousands of nuclear missiles and plenty of radical extremists on Earth too?”

“We do, but unlike the moonies, we probably won’t accidentally end the viability of our entire civilization with a single suitcase nuke,” she explained. “If anything like that goes off in Serenity, poof, it’s game over for them.”

“Wow. That’s a… huge relief to hear—that we don’t invest as heavily into nuclear safety as they do, because we have more cities to spare for when things go wrong.”

“Well, it’s true. We don’t invest as much in asteroid defense as they do for a similar reason, though that’s also because the atmosphere protects us far more than them. Serenity Heights gets hit with one of those micro ones sneaking through their interception net every few months, and you should see what happens to their—”

“Okay, okay. Asteroid defense. I have enough nightmares as it is.” Will rubbed his eyes. “So this alien command compound—no nukes.”

“We didn’t just take their word for it—we tested the device. It works on our weapons.”

He raised a brow in mild alarm. “On our nuclear arsenal?”

She waved the concern away. “Yes, we did consider that the moonies might use this opportunity to gather data and improve their detection of our deterrent storage locations, so we took precautions. Besides, we recently learned that they knew where they all were anyway. One of their spies got a list… The only reason they never launched a first strike on us during the war was because of, well, that whole one city thing they’ve got going up there.”

He put that out of his mind… for now. “Alright. So there are no alien nukes in that compound?” he confirmed.

“No alien nukes.”

“And no antimatter bomb or something like that?”

“We have judged that… extremely unlikely,” the director replied. “They wouldn’t want to use anything we don’t already have in case their technology gets captured. And if they did have something like that and it’s on our planet, well, we can’t stop them from blowing up all of Earth anyway.”

“What if they have… just a regular big bomb?”

“Based on the size of the underground cavity we’ve detected, worst case is a conventional bomb might take out two or three city blocks if they move it to the surface. But that’s a surface detonation; since it’d be underground, the explosion will be more contained. In any case, there are no other residences in that range, and the locals stay away. So, it’ll only be whoever is on the street outside at the time, plus whatever we deploy. Since we’re doing it at night and the operation plan has us blocking off the street as we start… all in all, minimal or no civilian casualties expected.”

“I see.” Will thought for a few moments. “We’re doing it with robots? No human operators in danger?”

She had a reply instantly. “Primary force is twenty-four robotic assault units. That’s almost as many as we can even fit into the building. They will be commanded by two marines. The squishies will stay back and deploy the bots from an ice cream van. If things go wrong, we’ll have another three platoons on standby, ready to enter the AO within thirty seconds. If that fails, we’d have air and orbital assets in the airspace, for the backup plan. We’ll coordinate with local authorities that we can trust. They’ll be briefed and sequestered on the night of, to prevent leaks. And… we also have something we want to try with the sensors in the yard, with a special team.”

“Do I want to know more about this special team?”

“Only if it works, or you’ll hear about it from an Assembly investigation hearing if it doesn’t. One of the moonie… consultants suggested it. We’ll give it a try, but if it doesn’t work, our guys are ready to step in immediately. If we start preparing now, we can be ready as soon as you guys come back from your visit to Luna.”

“You’re not coming to Serenity with us?”

She looked at him incredulously. “Hell no. Even if I’m not wanted for war crimes on Luna, the OMI is not going to risk…”

“Right, right.”

“But you guys have fun up there.”

Will sighed. “Alright. This alien compound. You need Salma’s permission for something like this, right?”

“Presidential approval.”

“I’ve already briefed her. You have the green light to start preparing. Don’t screw this up, Director.”

“If this goes to hell in a handbasket, you can have my resignation, Mr. Weber.”

“Um… no. If this goes to hell in a handbasket, you can stick around and fix it, is what you can do.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll let your office know when we can start.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

The conflict between Earth and Luna was not simple. There were a hundred causes and disputes over a thousand issues, but above all else, the one thing that every Lunar leader craved—no matter their personality, their goals, their tactics—was legitimacy. From the protest movement of the 40s, to the Lunar Alliance of the 50s, to the takeover of the Lunar-born generation in the 60s, and to the lead up to war in the 70s. There was nothing more important than the legitimacy of the Lunar identity as a separate and equal concept to what the rest of humanity had back on Earth.

They didn’t want to become another Union member state; the Union closed that door when it renamed itself from the United Nations out of spite, and the people of Luna had wanted no part in it from the start. “Sovereignty within my generation” was their rallying cry, but really, what they wanted was for the Union to treat Luna the way that France and Germany treated each other.

And it wasn’t even as simple as that. In a vacuum, even before the war, the people of Luna had most or all the rights that citizens of the most progressive, most developed countries on Earth had. But it was more than that. More than travel restrictions, more than extradition agreements, more than control over Helium-3 contracts, more than air and water subsidy negotiations. There was something else there.

They were their own thing. That was important to them.

Most people on Earth who cared about the issue at all probably understood that.

The problem was that the leaders of the Union had, for a generation now, been the leaders of all the parts of humanity that mattered. They represented two hundred or so member states, including the dozen or so nations that had set up operations on Luna in the first place not half a century ago. In their eyes, the residents of Luna were some of the most privileged people to ever exist, who’d benefited tremendously from the contributions of the taxpayers of Earth. And now that it was a successful project, now that they were expected to feed the benefits back to the people who sent them up there, they were in effect saying “no thank you, good luck down there”. That was a tough pill to swallow.

But swallow it did. For the sake of peace, the Union recognized the right of the Lunar Republic to govern Luna.

It just didn’t have to be happy about it.

Which was why arranging an official state visit had not even been attempted by either side. Now that it was happening, the logistics concerns were enormous. There were a lot of difficult problems with setting up a state visit, especially one on such short notice. And even more so the first ever from the Union President. (The highest level meeting between the two powers was when Union Secretary of Defense Reeds shook hands with her Lunar counterpart aboard a neutral ship at L-1 to finalize the armistice.) But the best and brightest of both worlds figured it out.

As Julia gazed down upon the desolate gray world as part of Salma’s presidential delegation on the UNS Perry, she could almost see the polar orbital batteries. The dozen or so moonie warships escorting her—they would have been shooting at her a few years ago. And the bright spiderweb of lights on the waning side of the moon—the city lights that were dimmed during the war to make targeting that much harder for the Union’s ships.

She felt a warm presence sidle up next to her in the observation deck.

She saluted. “Madam President.”

“Commodore.” Salma returned it then gestured out the portholes. “You ever been? Before the war?”

“Once, a long time ago. School trip to Serenity. You?”

“This will be my first… And they have me doing the Serenity Sunset Chase! Any tips?”

It was known that Salma was an amateur marathon runner. And the moonies had invited her to one of their events.

The Serenity Sunset Chase.

At Serenity’s latitude, the sun moved across the surface slowly enough that it was possible to outrun the rotation of Luna at a quick jog. Every month, at the hour of nightfall, throngs of tourists and runners would suit up and gather up outside in a line. And as the night fell on the cloudless world, they would try to literally outrun the night coming in from behind them for as long as they could.

Julia had seen it before, on a televised event. The record was something like twelve hours, with professional race officials rovering oxygen tanks and supplies ahead to resupply the further runners as they ran low. The way they actually ran was odd, a mixture of skipping and gliding, with the runners trying to keep their steps and leaps contained, to not waste the effort on theatrics.

The Lunar Alliance had lobbied the International Olympic Committee, trying to get them to agree to hold it as one of their exhibition games in tandem with the summer games. No luck so far.

“Tips?” She gave her president a wry smile. “Just keep one foot in front of the other. You’ll figure it out like everyone else since Neil.”

“What if I go too fast or jump too hard? Won’t I float off into space?” Salma grinned mischievously.

Julia pointed down at the gray surface. “Two point four kilometers a second, ma’am, that’s her escape velocity. I’d be careful not to run faster than that.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Salma chuckled. She let it fade, then tilted her head. “And what do you think about this trip? What I’m doing here?”

“I’m your guest, ma’am. They pay us to fight, not to render opinions of state.”

“You’re not fighting now. Surely you’ve got an opinion. It seems like everyone else back on Earth does. My entire Cabinet does! I think Secretary Wilders is one bad day away from circulating a Reform Article 25 petition to try to get me replaced for incompetence,” she joked.

Julia wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-meter pole. “I know enough to know when to say, I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on! What do you really think?”

She took a deep breath. “I think… you’re trying your best.”

Salma wasn’t going to let her get away with it that easily. “And?”

“Have you heard of the jungle as an allegory for civilization?” she asked.

Salma furrowed her brow. “The jungle? Hm. Remind me.”

Julia explained it to her, the way she’d heard it from Harry. Then, she said, “I think… you’re a dutiful gardener of humanity, carefully trimming the weeds at its edges before they could grow out of control.”

“Carefully trimming the edges, huh? That’s one way to put it.” Salma smiled. “Sometimes it feels like I’m at the beach, yelling at the top of my lungs. Stop! Stop! Yelling at the tides, imploring them not to come in any further.”

“The history of our species will judge you far better than I can. From where I stand though, it… seems to be working out so far.”

“And if you stand far enough in on the beach, the ocean does eventually stop at your feet.”

“I’d like to think the President of Earth has a little more pull than that.” Julia stared at Salma. “And I don’t see you being one of those people who are afraid of getting their feet a little wet.”

“No, I guess I’m not.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

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Author note: Heading for bed and...I got a surprise. An awesome surprise shaped like an award. Thank you!!

_____________

Vilantian Cargo Ship Swift River

Minister Larine was frankly unsettled. Not by the ship of course, the Swift River was one of the finer transports available. Captain Tilax had been warned that there would be ministers traveling on her ship and thus was well-prepared. But as they journeyed toward New Casablanca, she couldn't avoid the unease that had settled in her midsection. Her traveling companion was quick to notice as he settled with a tea service and an array of biscuits.

"Minister, your scent is troubled. Are the pastries inadequate?"

"Far from it, Aa'Fidri. I rarely travel, and it's even more rare that I travel to other systems. The knowledge that hull of this ship is the only protection we have from a rather certain and extended death gives me pause." There was a hesitation. "Frankly, the other hazards of space are also concerning to me.

There was a light chuckle from the Minister of Foreign Affairs as he settled at the table opposite her. "Minister - you have a deep knowledge of ships and space, but I must implore you to enlighten yourself with other data."

Larine made a huff of sorts. "I have, and yet it does me very little good - the majority of the reports I see are such that I would prefer a rather significant escort at our destination."

"You read far too much of Clan O'Gryzzk's adventures. Trust me when I say their work is an outlier."

"Perhaps. But I would truthfully rather not have such concerns."

The Foreign Minister had a pensive scent as he sipped at his tea. "Are you quite certain that the travel is your only concern?"

"What other concerns could there be?"

Aa'Fidri gave a light earflick. "I have been overlooking your scent whenever the Home Office reports on the population expansion." The older man leaned forward earnestly. "There is always a breath of shame from your chair. You are Vilantia's beating heart, and yet even as we call to make haste with the next generation your own den lies empty."

"The...difficulties of office leave precious little time for any thought in that direction, and the desires that accompany such things are...fleeting, at best."

"I am aware. But you attempt to reconcile your own life with the life you demand from others. You are asking others to do what you do not." There was a faint smile. "Scarce wonder that you and the First Freelord are companionable."

"We are not in that way."

"Don't tell the fiction writers." A data-tab was set next to Larine's teacup. "Or do - perhaps the creative Terran minds can guide you in a direction."

Larine frowned more deeply. "What precisely is on that?"

"The delicate term would be 'instruction manuals'. The less delicate term would be 'carnal scrawls of the biologically deficient.' They are profoundly creative in their suggestive themes. The most frightening thing is that they sell quite well."

"I suppose the Minister of Trade is pleased."

"He is - to him, it is a previously-unexplored revenue stream."

Tilax made her way cautiously back to the common area. "Apologies Ministers. Our laundry is not functioning, and our engineer isn't sure he'll be able to print the necessary parts to restore function before we make New Casablanca."

There was a light smile from the Foreign Minister. "Captain, the accommodations are excellent and if I have to utilize the hotel laundry service in New Casa, so be it."

Tilax shifted her weight slightly. "Ministers - could I trouble you to listen to me for a few moments?"

"Of course." Larine swiveled slightly as Aa'Fidri filled a third cup of tea and slid it over.

"These, these things the government is doing for population balance are good in the immediate. But I hope that someone in governance is looking to the near and far future; I spend weeks at a time on my ship because I must. I have no husband or wife because there is no time for such things. To keep my family, my clan intact - we need larger ships. Ships built not just for cargo, but for families. Clan-ships, like in the generations of old."

Both ministers were taken slightly off-guard by the statement and the reality that came with it. Larine finally spoke. "We will have to work with the Minister of Trade for some portions of the design, but I believe we can work a solution."

Tilax nodded. "Thank you. We will be exiting R-Space in a day and a half."

___________

Homeplate

The ride home was a quiet one. Despite the successful job and generous paycheck, there were clouds on the horizon. The three had left shortly after their discussion with the Governor of Draconis, which left a great deal of time in the evening. There was very little talk until they got back to their quarters, where Lumisca was waiting with glasses of wine for everyone.

"The infants are sleeping, and the girls are telling stories." There was a quiet moment. "I had to look up both alligator and boar on the localgrid, and I am quite pleased that such animals are nowhere near here." Lumisca hesitated for a few moments. "Freelord, forgive me but - your actions were thoughtless."

Gryzzk's fur flared for a moment. "Yes. The education was rather swift, and if you wish to join the individuals berating my foolishness, the line forms to the left."

Lumisca flicked an ear. "The Terrans chastised you?"

"Quite. First it was Sergeant Major O'Brien, then Laroy's grandmother. On the way home every member of the bridge squad said something, and Gro'zel asked why I didn't simply talk to it. Then the doctor spoke her piece while removing the staples."

"I am surprised, if I may be so bold. I did not think that Terrans would consider such an act bad."

"The result was praised. The actions were discouraged."

Lumisca glanced between Kiole and Grezzk for a moment. "How do you maintain such calm, knowing that he will do such things?"

Grezzk smiled. "Because every wise and foolish thing he does, he does with one thing in mind - the safety of the clan. He's alive, and carries reminders of his foolishness."

Kiole nodded agreement. "That and everything he does allows me a slight amount of leeway when I return to the ship." She smirked.

Lumisca looked at her tablet. "Freelord, ladies. We have additional things that affect your clan. We received a transmission from the homeworld, they are sending several ships of prospective marriage candidates. They will be arriving on the morrow, and they will be supervised by the Ministers of Culture and Foreign Affairs. Additionally the Vilantia Cup finals have begun, we will begin receiving the match footage tomorrow - the Crowns of Throne City do battle with Elsife Village United."

Gryzzk flicked an ear before tapping his tablet. "XO?"

Rosie's voice came on immediately. "Why are you not hammering ass right now, titfucker? I'm not watching if you are, find someone else to run the camera. Lumisca's like, right there - unless you've got plans for her that don't include panning and zooming."

Gryzzk cleared his throat. "That is not the nature of the request. I have two items for battalion-wide distribution. Item one - all eligible candidates for marriage are requested to prepare themselves; Vilantia is sending marriageable candidates. Second item, the common area of Alpha and Bravo companies will be available for those who wish to watch the Vilantian Cup Finals. Elsife Village United - United We Win. Third item for command distribution only - I will be inviting the ministers to tour the battalion facilities, and best behavior is expected. I will ask if they wish to be quartered in any of the ship VIP sections, and if they do reside on any ship they are to receive the utmost courtesy. That is all."

There was an exasperated sigh. "This couldn't wait?"

"No. My apologies to you and Chief Tucker. Good night, Rosie."

"Night - and if one of you isn't walking funny tomorrow you're going to the box until you figure it out. Rosie out."

Lumisca shook her head at the exchange. "I will never understand that, that - woman?"

Gryzzk smiled lightly. "If it helps, there are many things about her I find incomprehensible." He sank a little further into the softness of the couch and his wives for a moment, until Kiole's scent shifted lightly.

"Twilight Warrior, there is one other thing we must speak of before bed." She took a sip of wine before continuing. "The...the Throne of Hurdop has made inquiry as to the availability of Fizeht."

"The availability of Fizeht...for what?"

"Marriage."

Gryzzk blinked. "Respectfully, are we not looking forward to transitioning her to solid foods in the near future?"

"We are."

"It might be somewhat early to discuss marriage prospects, then. Also, I was going to be advised of this when?" There was a touch of amusement in Gryzzk's scent.

"Now, it would seem." Kiole nuzzled his neck quietly. "We were going to tell you before we left for Sparrow's, however we were distracted by your body. Specifically your injuries. So really it's your fault."

Gryzzk frowned. "Very well. Is the Throne expecting a fast answer?"

"No - there are others to vet and inquire regarding availability."

"If we accept, we make enemies."

"If we decline, we make different enemies."

Lumisca cleared her throat. "If I may - I would recommend acceptance, and then offer the second child of Kiole to one of the enemy factions. By doing so the clan does not appear to favor one group over another. Nhoot could also be an acceptable alternative."

Grezzk's voice was soft. "I do not enjoy the idea of raising our children simply to be traded as if they were commodities on market day."

Lumisca sipped her wine. "When dealing with nobility, that is often how events transpire." She gestured to the door. "I was wed to the Greatlord in exchange for a three-percent tax easement on the clan lands. The other wives were similarly exchanged, with only Firstwife Raloni being scent-matched."

Grezzk's counter was firm. "I was exchanged, but there was a matching scent that was the first prerequisite."

Lumisca shrugged. "You were servants - happy commoners toil well for their nobles."

Gryzzk stared at his wine for a long time. "I. I was comfortable with the noble exchanges until I became this...half-noble and began receiving royal attention from two worlds." He drummed his fingers against the glass for a moment. "I think we should conditionally accept this most generous offer, however the children must match properly. If such occurs, we may then discuss mutually beneficial exchanges."

Lumisca frowned. "That seems ambitious, Freelord."

"Am I not allowed to look to the happiness of my daughter as a priority?"

"Respectfully, Freelord - in these times, contentment is not high on the list of supremacy for nobles or royals."

"Perhaps it should be. Perhaps these lives that have been bartered for tax easements and land grants and herds and crops would have been better spent in other directions." Gryzzk grumped absently. "Greatlord Aa'Porti held A'Kifab's re-marriage over him to encourage my lord to whatever action the Greatlord desired."

Kiole seemed uncomfortable as she spoke. "It. To be a Consort Parent is a high honor. It has been many generations since a clan outside the Agricultural Guild has even been approached to be a Consort to the Hurdop Throne as far as I am aware. For a Freeclan born from one of the Warclans...I would have to speak with engineers to know when that happened last if it has ever happened."

Grezzk leaned into her husband more, reaching a hand across to grasp her wife's hand as well. "Whatever decision we make, it will not be made tonight. There is too much wine here for wisdom. A more important question awaits."

Gryzzk flicked an ear. "What would that be?"

"Will you be wearing your Lucky Peyle Jersey for the match tomorrow?"

The question took Gryzzk aback. "I. Well. Possibly." Gryzzk thought about it. "I would not want to sway the clan in any specific direction."

Kiole snorted. "As if they don't already know who their Freelord cheers for." She stood, taking her spouse's hands to match with her own as she nibbled Gryzzk's ear. "Now come along, both of you. The night is incomplete - and we will discuss these bounties in the near future. But first, someone requires the attention only wives can provide."

The rest of the evening was spent in a rather agreeable fashion.

In the morning, Gryzzk decided to dress as a formal servant of the Throne and not a mercenary, with the dark greens and blacks of the former Clan A'Kifab dominating. This decision was rejected shortly after he walked out to the table for breakfast as Kiole pointed right back to the bedroom.

"Unacceptable. You are a Freelord. You will not pretend otherwise." To assist with the point, Grezzk took his morning tea and bowl of porridge back to the kitchen.

Gryzzk turned around and selected a new outfit from the printer, with red being the dominant color - he did select a purple ascot and had the printer trim everything in gold. Finally he decided to wear his spurs and hat. For his ascot decoration, he selected the Freeclan pin as well as his oak-leaf rank and under both was a pin for Elsife Village United. It was a formal occasion, after all.

The girls giggled at their father as he sat resignedly to breakfast. The wives approved, it seemed. Glaud also approved as he crawled rapidly toward his father, using Gryzzk's pantleg to pull himself upright. Gryzzk looked down and lifted his son up to his lap. As Gryzzk ate his breakfast, Glaud was almost entranced by the porridge and whined softly when his father pushed him back from the bowl.

Kiole looked amused. "He takes after his father more and more every day." She took a small spoonful and carefully placed it in front of Glaud. The infant's reaction was immediate as he wrapped his mouth around it with a scent of happiness.

Grezzk watched the exchange with amusement. "It seems they are ready to transition from milk." There was a slight exhale. "Praise all the light gods."

Once breakfast finished, Gryzzk squared himself to prepare for the day, and was promptly interrupted with a backpack infant carrier containing a very happy Glaud. He managed three steps out before his rank chirruped and Rosie's voice came over the comm.

"Get over the fuckin' bench already titfucker - you're running late."

"Kiole and Grezzk decided my clothing was not proper."

"They're not getting a Naked Day until tomorrow. Get your shit together, the Ministers and the other company commanders are waiting at the visitor's dock. Fuckin' makin' everyone wait like you're some kinda fuckin' Hollywood badass..."

"Understood XO. Advise them I am en route. You may complain more about my tardiness later."

Gryzzk hurried as much as decorum allowed, and as he strode to the dock calmly he noted that the commanders all had their Clan-weapons to hand. He glanced and confirmed that said weapons were clean before addressing the visitors.

"Minister Larine. Minister Aa'Coriti. It is my honor to welcome you both to the Terran Foreign Legion." Gryzzk looked back as Glaud made a few noises of discontent before beginning to studiously chew on the back of Gryzzk's collar much to the amusement of everyone there. Gryzzk cleared his throat carefully. "Well. If there are no immediate questions, the ships themselves are over in this direction..."

The tour was productive, with each captain in turn extolling the virtues (and profitability) of their companies. Clan-weapons were displayed, and everyone was able to tell many stories behind each weapon, weaving the stories to their ships' actions. The only real problem was during the tour of Jenkins' ship and area, when Gromit bounded from his area, sat up and called out 'Titfucker!' with an expression of joyous expectation, as if he was going to receive a treat for swearing. Finally the tour wrapped at the common area used by Gryzzk and Rostin's companies - both ministers seemed bemused at the grass that seemed somehow out of place.

"Freelord Gryzzk, is this not...expensive?" Minister Larine cocked her head lightly.

"To a point. However, the boost to morale makes the expense worth it. This concludes the tour - I do hope you can communicate our earnest desire to aid Vilantia in her time of need, as well as show the accommodations and lifestyle such marriages would provide." Gryzzk paused for a moment. "Ministers, I would ask for a few moments of your time in private, as I find myself in need of wise counsel."

Both ministers nodded, with Larine speaking for both of them. "You are not going to be party to another interstellar conflict, are you?"

Gryzzk smiled lightly. "I hope not. Please, my headquarters office is this way."

It was odd to enter the office that was technically his but realistically had been taken over by Grezzk and Kiole. There was a tea service hiding in a corner with several herbal teas, but none of the Earl Grey. Gryzzk settled himself behind the desk with a mild sigh, moving Glaud to his lap. As the door closed, Gryzzk thought furiously about how he was going to present this.

Above them, Indel was crawling though the drop ceiling. While he had passed all the necessary testing, it was noted that he seemed to have mild claustrophobia that informed several of his decisions when plotting a flight course, and Spike had decided that facing that fear was necessary. So it was that Indel was crawling though a small space, trying to keep his breathing even as he recited what Spike had told him was an ancient Terran mantra of courage.

"Naked lady walks into a bar with a poodle under one arm, and a two foot salami under the other." As Indel moved gingerly, the tiles threatened to give way. He kept moving forward, knowing that the tiles were mostly solid, but at the same time they had been built and installed by the lowest bidder when they weren't put in place by the company themselves. He continued his chant as he moved forward.

"She lays the poodle on the table. Bartender says 'I suppose you won't be needing a drink?' Naked lady says..."

Gryzzk frowned as he looked up to the ceiling, hearing a creak in the tiles for just a moment which was immediately followed by a vaguely familiar voice crying out "Ooooh shiiiit!" and a light yelp of surprise as someone fell into Minister Larine's lap. Glaud yelped at the commotion and quickly wriggled closer under Gryzzk's jacket.

Gryzzk looked under the desk and found that Kiole had indeed put a stunner underneath the desk. As he raised it and the dust settled, Gryzzk was a touch confused by several things. First, this seemed to be something of an accident. Second, this seemed to be Indel - for a fleeting moment Gryzzk wondered if the poor noble was being made to suffer. Thirdly, as there was stumbling and dusting off and stammered explanations, there was something ticking over in the back of Gryzzk's mind even as Indel ran out of the door to find somewhere to hide.

Larine was a bit surprised as she dusted herself off, plucking pieces of ceiling tile from her fur in confusion.

"Does this...happen often?"

"It is both normal and not, Minister. I believe there has been some sort of event and Indel is learning a lesson." He looked at his tablet and tapped a few times.

"Yes, my handsome hand?"

Gryzzk cleared his throat. "Love, could you and our wife stop by my office please? I have something of a question. Also, where is the vacuum?"

"Next to the file cabinet. We'll be there shortly."

As they disconnected, Gryzzk tapped his tablet a second time. "Private Indel, report to my office immediately."

The young noble's scent was insensate with panic, with his breathing slightly labored from running. "Freelord, I can explain - I just, I'm looking for the replacement tiles."

"Replacement tiles will be found in due time. Report to my office."

It took a few minutes for Gryzzk to clean the mess, during which time the ministers both seemed amused, with Aa'Coriti shaking his head as he spoke.

"You will never not be a Lead Servant, will you?"

Gryzzk smiled awkwardly. "It is...a very deep habit, Minister."

Indel arrived first, both body and voice quivering as he spoke. "Freelord. Sir, Sir, Freelord. Please don't tell the Sergeant Major?" Whatever else he feared, the Sergeant Major's wrath was nose-to-nose with the wrath of the gods themselves.

Gryzzk raised a hand slightly. "Be at ease, Indel. We're waiting for my wives. Be patient and calm." There was a slight ear movement as Indel swiveled to look at Larine with a heightened interest, as if he was taking in her scent at the same time. "Or as patient and calm as you can be."

Once both Kiole and Grezzk made their way through the door, Gryzzk gestured to Indel. "Wives, indulge me and take their scents please?"

Kiole was first, taking a sniff at the pilot and then the minister. She looked quizzically between the two, and then Grezzk repeated the process. Finally Gryzzk took a deep inhalation from both of them to be certain.

"Minister. Private Indel. I would...strongly recommend you both spend the day together, after we've had an opportunity to speak with the ministers regarding another matter."

Larine stood with her scent full of wonder - then she and Indel moved closer to each other for a moment, and a different scent could be recognized. Finally the two parted and Indel left a second time.

Kiole smirked lightly. "Minister Larine, there will be time enough for that shortly. But please, attend for a moment longer."

Royal Road | Book Cover | First | Previous | Next 

Due to the highly difficulty of posting updates on HFY, combined with the very limited feedback I’ve received, I will now be including multiple chapters in each of my posts.

Chapter 11: Back To the Lab

It is a rare occurrence for Min to stay home all day instead of going out, as he did this Sunday. This is not only because he needs to prepare the materials and methods for building the shed, but also because he has to keep an eye on Xi P to stop it from falling asleep.

Yes, Xi P has already fallen asleep or dozed off multiple times just this morning alone. On several occasions, Xi P has even drifted off mid-listening, forcing Min to shake it awake. For an Earthling, this is practically torture — though Min isn't sure how this feels for the alien creature since he can't understand its complaints.

The silver lining is that Xi P at least understands the purpose of this routine. It hasn't lashed out in anger or bitten Min yet, despite being constantly roused.

For Min, this task severely disrupts his schedule as well. He now has to stay at home to ensure Xi P stays awake. While he continues with the language the training and introduces Earth, Xi P's drowsy state makes it hard to imagine how much of it is actually sinking in.

'I wonder if night shift workers suffer the same way when adjusting their schedules — probably. Maybe I should look into it. At least it'd be useful for reference.'

Fortunately, this situation won't last long. According to the reference materials he finds, at least for humans, they usually only need help getting through the first day of schedule adjustment. Though he needs to work tomorrow and can't stay home with Xi P, by then it should be able to manage on its own.

***

Time slips away swiftly. Before they know it, evening has fallen.

Min and Xi P stare at the clock together. After enduring the entire day's ordeal, it too is counting the seconds. Based on its newly acquired understanding of time system, it should know there is only about half a minute left.

30s

10s

As the second hand slowly sweeps past the hour mark, Xi P — who is utterly exhausted — can finally sleep. It doesn't even move, simply collapsing onto the floor. It seems too exhausted to even find a spot. Since the entire room is carpeted, it doesn't matter where it lies down — Min wouldn't let it sleep on the bed anyway.

'Leaving it sprawled on the living room floor all night would be too inhumane, I suppose. Even if it isn't human.'

In the end, Min can't bring himself to be so cruel and resolves to move it onto the sofa instead.

***

Beep, beep...

The ringing sound wakes Min up. After washing up, he heads straight to the living room. Xi P is still lying on the sofa in much the same position. Min gives it a gentle shake and it stirs awake, opening its eyes slightly and letting out a few muffled sounds before flopping back down to sleep.

This looks exactly like sleeping in. Unexpected... but unexpectedly adorable.

'It sleeps lying on its stomach. That's interesting. Actually, for mammals that walk upright, sleeping on one's stomach is very strange. To do with the angle between the cervical spine and the brain. But maybe Xi P has a different type of structure?... Whatever.'

Steeling himself, Min shakes Xi P awake forcefully, points at the clock and designates a time frame, then gestures towards the door to signal his departure. Xi P is instantly startled wide awake. Even still new Earth's time system, it grasps the sheer length of the proposed period — from 9:30 AM all the way to 5 PM. It takes Min quite some time to explain that he is just going to work before Xi P reluctantly lets him leave.

'Why does this feel like I have a dog... even though it looks more like a furry.'

***

"Ah, Ye Min, you're here. Bro, what happened today? You were practically late. They said if you didn't show up, they'd kick your ass." The team leader greets Min with a laugh upon his arrival at the workplace.

"First, drop the bloody American speak. Second, I couldn't find my bike pump when I left, so it took me a while." Min replies, though his mind is filled with images of a little fox wriggling awake.

His excuse is enough to fool the team leader — or perhaps the leader simply doesn't care. Without further questions, he gives Min a couple of instructions before returning to work, leaving him to breathe a sigh of relief.

Just moments ago, he feared that the team leader might suspect his unusual tardiness and start asking questions. Clearly, no one in reality is that bored — it's probably just a side effect of the overly dramatic events he's recently experienced.

The lab where Min works isn't exactly engaged in traditional scientific research. More accurately, it is a commercialised core laboratory. What that means is, primarily, it provides electron microscope images and pre-processed samples to other laboratories. Min had once dreamed of making significant contributions to the global scientific community, but by now, he no longer has any aversion to commercial work.

Besides, the team leader permits everyone to use the lab for personal projects outside working hours (if anyone actually wants to spend their free time there), though naturally they have to cover the cost of any materials they use.

Today's task, as usual, involves preparing images for several clients. Min is well versed in this routine: embedding, sectioning, staining and capturing numerous electron micrographs according to specifications. However, his focus wavers slightly today, nearly ruining a sample midway through. Leaving Xi P home alone makes Min uneasy. Although he knows the creature is unlikely to cause any trouble, images kept flashing through his mind: Xi P getting burned by the oven or shredding the sofa to pieces...

Actually, that's his subconscious visualizing Xi P as a pet dog or fox. Clearly, Xi P is a 'person' capable of logical thought, just like humans. So he should stay rational. Instead of worrying about such silly things —

Perhaps he should be more concerned about coming home to find police cars and helicopters surrounding his house.

Amid this tension, the day's work finally ends. After informing the team leader he wants to stay in the lab after hours, he is soon the only one left. Having ensured the lab is as sealed off as possible and free of surveillance, Min reaches into his pocket and pulls out two small plastic bags.

One contains Xi P's fur collected yesterday, the other holds tissue samples scraped from its mouth while it slept that morning. The latter had been notoriously difficult to collect — for obvious reasons.

***

The results are underwhelming.

The fur itself is unremarkable. Had Min not collected it from Xi P, he would have assumed it belonged to some common, unfamiliar mammal. Broadly categorised as guard hairs and underfur, both are keratinised epidermis. Microscopically, there is nothing particularly noteworthy either. With more time, he might uncover some interesting chemical discoveries — but today that is definitely out of the question.

As for the tissue samples, the fact that the stains used to stain proteins and DNA are able to bind to their respective sites suggests that Xi P's cellular structure is similar to that of Earth's eukaryotes — a finding that is not particularly surprising. Perhaps a sample with intact hair follicles would yield more results, though the process of collecting such a sample might be open to misinterpretation. It would probably be better to just have Xi P explain his own physiology directly.

He glances at the clock — it is already 5 pm. He realises that he has become too absorbed in his research. Factoring in clean-up time, getting home is going to be a hassle.

'For a dog... Nah, I should resist associating him with pets.'

He washes the lab equipment hurriedly and stows it away as quickly as possible. Min locks the door, dashes out of the lab, hops on his bicycle and pedals homeward.

'Hope this doesn't give Xi P the wrong idea. Being half an hour late shouldn't be too bad, right?'

Just as Min has anticipated, he doesn't arrive home until past 5:30. As he catches sight of his house from the side of the road, he spots Xi P's head peeking out from behind the curtains, staring at him through the window.

"Do you realise how dangerous that was... What if someone saw you?" Min scolds Xi P the moment he enters the door. Unexpectedly, Xi P shakes its head, turns and retrieves a map from nearby. It points to the house on the map, then to the city centre, making a gesture to compare the distances.

Min is quite surprised. It's truly remarkable how quickly it learns — he didn't teach anything about maps, yet it can understand them and know where home is. Honestly, Min believes that if he was in Xi P's position, he probably wouldn't have been able to do it.

***

Figuring out the emotions of the aliens on this planet is really no easy task. When speaking, the task is manageable — a calm tone means a calm mood and an intense tone means an intense mood. That part is no different from tuefue. But the moment they fall silent, it reverts to the standard scenario in much sci-fi — one has absolutely no clue what they are thinking.

These aliens' ears — if those two lumps can even be called ears — are short and small, seemingly lacking any muscle control. Their expressions seem to rely entirely on body language and facial muscles. While this is certainly better than relying on pheromones or psychic abilities, the overly developed facial muscles still feel somewhat unsettling to him. Xi P can only guess that Min is in a mix of surprise and anger — perhaps startled by how quickly he'd deciphered the map.

Truthfully, it isn't nearly as difficult as Min might imagine. After pulling the map out from the bookshelf, Xi P quickly realises the living room window offers a clear view of the street sign. Thankfully, he still has the skill of reading paper maps. After poring over the street name index on the back for a while, Xi P easily locates Min's residence. The sparse street layout then made it simple to deduce this is an undeveloped area outside the city. The lack of traffic and suburban location are excellent news for him.

***

Anyway, when Min parks his bike in the tool shed and re-enters the house, he finds Xi P half-slumped on the sofa. Upon seeing him, it mumbles his name before burying its head again.

'Is it sleeping?! Wait, no — it's reading?'

More accurately, it is studying the illustrations in the book. After all, with only rudimentary English skills, it can't comprehend the text yet. The book it is currently examining is... well, the illustrated edition of Robinson Crusoe.

Its full title sums up the book's plot: "The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by Himself." In some ways, the book resembles its own situation. Yet the differences are significant: Robinson spent over twenty years on that island without a single soul to communicate with, whereas here, at least Min can help it. Whether or not it understands the book Min cannot say, but its current expression seems quite absorbed.

Min is relieved to find that the room hasn't been too badly messed up. The sofa hasn't turned to crumbs on the floor, and most areas show no signs of disturbance at all. Even the few books that were moved from the shelf have been returned to their original spots, though a couple are upside down.

He will need to head out again shortly, mainly to gather the items needed to build the shed. In his opinion, it isn't wise to stay home waiting for deliveries right now. The possibility of the delivery person noticing the "spaceship" aside, what if Xi P mistook the delivery person for Min and opened the door? People will not be so easily convinced that it's just a furry costume...

'Even if they do, I wouldn't want them thinking I'm secretly harbouring a furry at home. Hm.'

[Chapter 12: A Stroll Under the Night Sky]()

'Is it... hinting it wants to go for a walk?'

Hours later, after they have finished dinner, Xi P signals its desire to go outside. Considering that darkness has fallen, the area is indeed quiet, and as he hasn't let it go outside before, Min agrees. He tosses over its high-tech suit, which has been quickly washed and dried. Xi P then retreats into the bathroom to change.

'Does it really need to wear clothes? Well, I guess I just can't mentally accept the idea of it going naked either...'

'Come to think of it, why do they even have clothes? Their fur is thick and long. If it's about shame, then how did the concept of shame form in their culture?'

***

It should have been Min accompanying Xi P on a walk around the residence, but it feels more like Xi P is dragging Min along at a sprint. The dim evening light makes Min reluctant to walk too fast, but Xi P doesn't care — to it, the brightness is probably just right. Excitedly, it drags Min all over the place, occasionally grabbing a plant or two to examine them up close, brimming with curiosity.

But Min is starting to struggle. It is cold outside, and being pulled along like this has already made him nearly fall over several times.

'Does it think I can see just as easily in the dark? At this rate, I'll eventually — '

Thud!

As his mind wanders, he finally loses his balance on a bump in the ground. Before he can react, he falls sideways onto the ground. After scrambling a few times, he manages to stand up again. His jacket has absorbed most of the impact and he barely feels any pain, let alone suffers any injury.

But Xi P probably doesn't see it that way. Seeing Min fall, it hurriedly helps him get up. Once he is standing, Min glares fiercely at Xi P, who understands the meaning behind the look without needing to be taught. Its ears droop, and it seems somewhat ashamed. After that, it slows its pace, switching from a trot to a normal walk.

The cool wind is still blowing. Even at this slower pace, Min still doesn't want to linger any longer in this dark, chilly environment. The temperature difference between day and night here is truly unbearable. Fortunately, either Xi P has grown tired from wandering, or it has sensed that Min cannot see well in the darkness. It finally starts heading home.

'Finally over. Doesn't this guy get cold? That fur probably keeps it pretty warm, but it's not wearing that much clothing either. Well, I bet it wouldn't feel cold even if it were completely naked...'

However, events soon take an unexpected turn. Upon reaching home, Xi P doesn't go in straight away. Instead, it sits down on the doorstep and tilts its head to gaze at the starry sky.

Even though its expression remains unchanged, Min can sense its sorrow. Being light-years away from home, in a place where it knows no one and might never return — any creature with a sense of longing for home would find that unbearable.

Min decides to comfort it. He kneels down and sits quietly beside Xi P, gazing upward at the starry sky with it. Watching the countless stars beyond the clouds, the occasional meteor streaking across the sky and the bright moon, he soon finds himself lost in the moment.

'...'

Suddenly, Xi P reaches out and lifts a finger to points vaguely towards a spot in the sky. Min understands and nods softly in response.

Xi P buries its head in its arms again, silent. If it expresses emotions through tears, its tears would surely be pooling on the ground now. Though it is difficult to see clearly, Min notices that its ears aren't pricking up softly as usual, but are instead drooping limply. Min can only sigh, unsure what to say.

Another ten minutes pass before Min slowly begins to notice something amiss. Why hasn't it reacted at all for so long? Turning his head to look up from below, Min discovers that Xi P... has fallen asleep.

'Should have seen that coming...'

***

Tonight, unsurprisingly, Xi P is suffering from insomnia again.

He doesn't often have trouble sleeping, but when he does, he usually spends the time pondering various scientific puzzles. If boredom can lull him to sleep, it is ideal, but at the very least, it means he is doing something meaningful. Besides, since arriving here, the one thing he certainly hasn't lacked is questions.

Of course, many of them are about Min. For instance...

'How did Ye Min's kind evolve to sleep with their backs pressed against the ground? Is exposing their soft bellies to predators the norm on this planet? They don't seem like they'd ever top the food chain before developing civilisation either — being omnivores...' Pondering Min's sleeping posture, Xi P reflects.

'Alright, I actually don't know if their bellies are soft or not. Guess I'll have to poke them later to find out. Wait... didn't they sleep in trees before? Then they really do sleep however they please. But for a species so adept at climbing trees, it's surprising how few climbing elements their structures incorporate...'

'...And what a wonderful stroll that was. Exploring a planet with an entirely different biosphere and discovering all kinds of flora and fauna that have never been seen before. For an exobiologist, it's nothing short of ideal — a dream come true. Those alien plants, with their myriad shapes and forms — if only I had known about them sooner, then I... But it was precisely because I was in charge of exoplanetary exploration that I had the chance to witness these extraterrestrial wonders. It's wonderful to see them, but I don't think I'll ever get to return to Lierus. All those joys... Why must it be this way?'

As he recalls his homeworld, the blue-green planet Lierus, a wave of despair and frustration washes over him. The more he learns about this civilisation, the more intense the wave of negativity becomes after each initial excitement. Though he can distract himself by telling himself that developing a faster-than-light engine shouldn't be impossible for these aliens, he knows this is mostly self-deception.

Not to mention, even if these aliens do develop faster-than-light engines within his lifetime, would he even have the right to return?

This time, those sorrowful thoughts finally overwhelm him. He curls up on the sofa, trembling and emitting soft, whimpering sounds.

***

Min springs up from the bed when he hears the commotion from the living room. There is Xi P, curled up like a fox and emitting faint whimpers. Thinking that Xi P has finally fallen ill, Min is momentarily alarmed and reaches out to steady it.

However, Xi P swats his hand away, nearly cutting him in the process. After waving at Min to signal that it doesn't want to be disturbed, Xi P stops struggling, leans against the sofa, closes its eyes, and begins to cry softly. Though no tears are visible, it doesn't take a genius to see that it is sad.

Seeing Xi P like this, it takes only a moment for Min to figure out what's going on. Sadness doesn't appear without reason, and homesickness is certainly one of them. If it is truly grieving for home right now, there isn't much he can do. It will just have to recover on its own.

Returning to his bedroom, Min lies down and sighs softly. In truth, an outburst of homesickness is preferable to actually being ill. Psychologically, at least, it seems not so different from humans — likely experiencing the same love, hate, affection and resentment...

***

After about ten minutes, Xi P gradually calms down. Sternly reminding himself that feeling sad won't instantly teleport him back to Lierus, he forces himself to think about things unrelated to Lierus in order to divert his attention.

'I have to admit,' he thinks, 'this alien is far more kindly disposed than I ever imagined, at least towards me. To encounter such a bizarre creature as me and still be willing to help me so much — to do so much for me! Of course, my rarity plays a part, but treating me with such tolerance is truly remarkable. If it wanted to profit from me, handing me over to its government would have been the obvious choice. But instead, it seems to understand my reluctance to deal with the local authorities. It's truly hard to believe...'

Unaware that Xi P has secretly identified him as a good guy, Min remains immersed in slumber.

'The nights here are eerily silent... I've never experienced such quiet evenings before. Even if they're diurnal creatures, can't some other creatures make a sound? Aside from the wind rustling through the plants, there's almost nothing to be heard outside the window. Nights on Lierus weren't like this... Sigh, I'm thinking of Lierus again.'

In the end, Xi P finds that no matter what he thinks, his mind always circles back to his homeworld. With no other choice, he tries to clear his thoughts, striving to fall asleep quickly.

Fortunately, the earlier actions and contemplation have drained much of his energy. Sleepiness soon washes over Xi P, and his consciousness slowly sinks into darkness...

Greetings to the denizens of HFY.

My analytical subroutine has determined that there may be rising concerns amongst you about the health of VIP Haasha or the series Leave No Witnesses. Please be assured that neither has been forgotten. VIP Haasha's biographer has had to cover more shifts at work than expected due to training and other unexpected events. Posting will resume soon.

However, please shame VIP Haasha's author. When there was time to write the other day, MT_6677 chose to work on a non-Haasha one-shot for Halloween rather than finish the next chapter in VIP Haasha's story. Additionally, MT_6677 may post a one-shot this weekend to distract from the lack of posts in the past month. I'm sure you share my extreme disappointment in MT-6677's choices and lackluster writing priorities which do not involve VIP Haasha.

Tac-1

Hoae walked nervously down the long corridor toward her office. She was a court reporter, and today marked the first day of the preliminary hearing for one of the most powerful Lords in the region - High Lord Krtzn-Kaelen. She had never seen him in person, and just the thought of being in the same room made her stomach knot.

When she reached the assigned courtroom, she saw that the previous hearing had run long. It was no surprise; high-stakes proceedings were notoriously delayed. She took a seat on one of the benches lining the hallway to wait.

Across the corridor, she noticed a human leaning against the wall. While humans were no longer a rare sight, seeing one standing alone outside a courtroom was still uncommon.

A few minutes later, another Halxy woman dressed in bright, non-standard clothes hurried down the hall. Spotting the human, her face lit up.

“Oh, hey John,” she greeted him warmly. “I see you’re involved in this hearing too. Are you on the witness list?”

“Yeah, Vanna,” the human replied, sounding a bit tired. “I have to testify about the conditions we uncovered in the eastern mining camps. Pretty sure I’ll have to ask them to clear the children out of the room before I present the evidence, though.”

“Was it really that bad?” She paused, reflecting for a moment. “Fortunately, I just have to testify about his conduct in the ministry - nothing graphic. Well... not too graphic, anyway.”

They continued chatting in a relaxed, easy tone while they waited. They clearly knew each other well; Hoae assumed the human was an engineer or a staff officer who worked alongside her in one of the administrative departments. It was reassuring to see that genuine, unforced friendship could exist between a human and a Halxy.

An hour later, the heavy wooden doors opened, and everyone was ushered into the courtroom. Hoae was surprised to see several human soldiers posted along the perimeter, equipped with full tactical gear. Given the nature of the defendant, however, the precautions made sense.

The hearing began with the Lord himself. The prosecutor requested that the accused be brought forward. Escorted by two human guards, Lord Krtzn-Kaelen took his seat at the defense table, his posture stiff and regal.

“Please state your full name and official titles for the record,” the prosecutor directed.

“I am High Lord Krtzn of Clan Kaelen, Vice President of the High State Council, and President of the Territorial Assembly,” the Lord declared, his voice echoing with arrogant pride.

Hoae felt small as her fingers flew across the slate, recording the sprawling, bloated name. Slaves possessed only a single name - she was just Hoae. Under the old regime, men with titles like his held absolute authority over life and death.

For over an hour, the prosecutor questioned the Lord, who flatly denied every allegation. According to him, the workers were not slaves at all, but well-compensated laborers, and the mining quarters were akin to high-end resorts. Even Hoae found the claim absurd, yet a cold thread of doubt coiled in her chest. What if the court believes him? What if the humans reinstate him?

The Lord was evasive, forcing the prosecutor to repeat questions multiple times. At one point, the presiding judge had to intervene directly, ordering the Lord to answer with a direct "yes" or "no."

Next, the prosecutor called the human from the hallway. Witnesses were typically ordered by rank or the severity of their evidence, suggesting he held a key piece of the prosecution's case.

“Please state your name and current position,” the clerk called out.

“My name is John Porter, and I’m the human planetary coordinator,” he answered calmly.

Hoae’s hands froze over her keyboard. The planetary coordinator?! The highest-ranking authority on the entire planet had been standing in a hallway, having casual, friendly small talk with a Halxy? Who on earth was Vanna?!

John spoke without any theatrical posture or booming authority. He remained unfazed by cross-examination, answering each question directly and without annoyance - a stark contrast to the Lord’s defensive posturing.

When asked about the state of the mines, John requested permission to project visual evidence, reminding the court that the material was unfit for minors. The judge ordered the gallery cleared of children.

The caution was justified. Within only three minutes of the images appearing on the central display, the judge called an immediate recess. Several spectators turned away in disgust, and two gallery members had to leave the room. The sheer scale of neglect, abuse, and mortality recorded in those files was horrifying.

By the time an hour-long lunch break was called, Hoae had completely lost her appetite. Those images were going to stay with her for a very long time.

When court reconvened, the gallery filled quickly. Vanna was called to the stand.

“Please state your name and position for the record.”

“My name is Vanna,” she stated clearly. “I am the supervisor of the public relations department for the municipal administration. Formerly, I served as the primary administrative slave assigned to Lord Krtzn-Kaelen in the ministry.”

A former house slave and a mid-level supervisor, Hoae thought, her mind racing. And she addresses the human planetary coordinator by his first name?!

Vanna’s testimony detailed the daily operations inside the ministry - the arbitrary rules, the mandatory honorifics demanded in every spoken sentence, and the quiet, terrifying frequency with which staff "disappeared" after minor procedural errors.

While less graphic than the mining evidence, it painted a clear picture of systemic cruelty. Any lingering fear Hoae had about the Lord returning to power vanished.

Following local judicial tradition, all witnesses remained in the courtroom at the end of the session to sign their official statements.

The Lord was called up first to sign his record. As two human soldiers escorted him forward in heavy wrist restraints, a shout erupted near the side entrance.

Three Halxy men burst through the side doors wielding heavy iron pikes. One of them lunged directly at the lead guard, driving the point toward his chest. The pike struck the soldier's personal energy shield with a loud crack, shattering the wooden shaft into splinters.

Before the attackers could recover, two human soldiers drew their sidearms. Within fifteen seconds, three rapid bursts rang out, and all three assailants collapsed heavily to the floor, motionless.

Silence descended on the room.

“Miss Hoae, please record the security breach,” the judge instructed, his voice shaking slightly. “Prosecutor, add three additional charges of negligent homicide to the defendant’s file.”

“Excuse me, Your Honor,” John interrupted, stepping forward from the witness bench. “There’s no need for additional fatality charges. Nobody died here today.”

The judge blinked in confusion. “Mr. Porter, those men were shot.”

“They were stunned,” John clarified smoothly, adjusting his sleeve. “Our personnel are equipped with non-lethal sidearms for courtroom security.”

“May I ask why, Mr. Porter?” the judge asked, still visibly rattled, his six limbs trembling slightly as he looked down at the silent attackers on the floor. “Given the severity of the threat, why deploy non-lethal force? What if they had targeted the bench? Halxy flesh does not stop an iron pike.”

“We were never in any danger, Your Honor,” John replied calmly, gesturing toward the bench. “Your desk, as well as Miss Hoae's reporting station and the witness stand, are all outfitted with personal kinetic dampeners - the same personal energy shields our soldiers wear. You were completely safe before the first soldier even raised his weapon.”

The judge blinked, looking down at his desk in quiet disbelief, running his hand over the polished wood surface as if trying to feel the invisible field protecting him.

“There are no functional lethal weapons in civilian hands on this planet,” John added smoothly, adjusting his cuff, “and we intend to keep it that way for the duration of these trials. Nobody dies in my courtrooms, Your Honor. Not the witnesses, not the judge... and not even the fools who try to stop justice.”

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The second chapter is here; I hope y'all enjoy it. I'll put this on my royal road soon and also start setting up hyperlinks. Also, the ones on the Royal Road will have the epigraphs because there is a pain to set up here.

Chapter 2

All around the sounds of hurrying feet and shouts for orders were heard around. Five minutes ago the first contact they had started had gone hot. All they knew currently was a man was down, and the team that was sent down was fighting its way back to the dropship. Luckily it seemed like this wasn't planned, so the team was able to slowly make its way through. 

“Any movement or IF readings detected?” Sounded Captain Constantine. Around him the noises of clicking and a few flickering screens sounded.

“Not currently, sir; they are still in place. No movements have been detected.” One of the radar techs sounded. The noise around The Warm Embrace’s CIC was deafening to anyone who wasn't used to all the noises that a packed CIC made during moments in which one would panic. One ship to guard a capital isn't a lot; Terra has about 12 dreadnaughts by itself, and that's not even counting Mars. Either their navy is nonexistent, or they moved it away as a token of goodwill. Second, we were caught without even being close to general quarters. They could have fired missiles and taken us out minutes ago but haven't. Either they haven't communicated to the ship above yet or they aren't taking us out for some reason. Thought Constantine. 

“Just received word from our ground team, sir; it looks like once they break the current encirclement, it will only be about a minute until they can begin departure. Secondly, the wounded is the diplomat Petra. Unknown status currently, but they asked me to get blood and surgery prepped for her.” Informed the comm officer. As he continued listening to the frantic comms of the pinned-down ground team. 

“Call for the surgery and medical team to be ready for her specifically and have fighters be on standby for covering the dro—”
“Increased IF and EM signatures coming from the enemy warship; movement detected.” Sounded the radar operator. The entire CIC fell into a stark silence waiting for any further mentions of the enemy warship. 

“Prepare nuclear missiles for firing if they continue to move after we give them a cease order, then we fire and leave.”
“Aye, sir, missiles are ready for firing on your mark.” Lt. Terricotta said, leaning over the map of the system. He looked between where the Warm Embrace was marked and where the enemy warship was bound. Its current position is updating with every waiting second. 

"Message sent, sir…" He held a moment waiting for anything for what felt like eternity; “no reply or acknowledgement received; movement continues.” The comm officer said solemnly. 

“Fire two missiles on my command.” Constantine uttered. 

“Ready sir.” The lieutenant said.

“Fire.” He ordered as the sound of two nuclear missiles departing from their VLS tubes resounded throughout the hull of the ship. The Terran nuclear shaped charge missile was designed to pierce through dreadnought armor and leave the ship unusable forever, whether it be through damage to systems or the radiation. Most ships other than ones comparable to the size of the Warm Embrace would die. Coasting through space, it would then reach its target location, detonating using a tungsten core to form the true projectile. Then streaking through the remaining space would strike through the vessel, rending apart whatever was in its way before continuing. The only downside was that only a few could be carried by a ship because of restrictions, and because of this, captains hardly used them unless they needed a quick destruction.

“Confirm two positive hits: the vessel is losing IR and EM signatures. Should I consider it destroyed?” Asked the radar operator. 

“Yes, what's the word on our ground team?” 

“The ground team is at the dropship and loading according to the pilot. They took heavy fire but were able to break through. And should be here in around three to five minutes depending on if they encounter resistance.” 

“Understood. Continue as you were and deploy a sortie of atmosphere-capable fighters as soon as we can.” Constantine issued the order before resuming his watch over the tactical map in the centre of CIC. 

A brief window of quiet passed over The Warm Embrace’s CIC as the enemy ship continued to drift aimlessly, destroyed and blasted apart. From outside observers it seemed like they weren't even prepared for the attack. Not firing flak or PDC’s at all. *Why did they move and not heed our request to stop? What the hell happened down there? The amount of reports I'm going to have to deal with now.* He had only recently received command of The Warm Embrace and had already started the first human versus alien war. If this was completely unprevoked, he would be lucky if he were only given a life sentence. *They better have a damn good explanation as to why the senator for Terra is severely injured and why I just had to sink a ship full of hundreds of people, most likely. Then dealing with the invesi—* 

His thoughts were cut short by a shout from the radar operator, “Sir, two new contacts just entered the system getting IFF signatures now.” The entire CIC erupted into a frenzy of shouts, orders, and commands once more. *And just when I thought it would be quiet again.* 

“Relay them that they are to leave the system and flee to Terran or friendly territory as soon as they can.” Constantine ordered as he looked over the now updated tactical map.

“IFF confirms them as concordat vehicles, The Archangel and Temperance.” Announced the annoyed-sounding radar operator. “They look to be either heavy cruisers or light dreadnoughts.” EM and IF readings could give a commander a lot to work with; they could tell him the general size and weapons along with other amenities a ship had. However, knowing the name gave him more. Half a year ago when he was on a Europa-class light frigate during the battle of Tyrol, he had seen The Archangel, it was a light dreadnought more built for fast attack than dealing with punishment like The Warm Embrace was. They were devils on the battlefield against lighter ships; only dreadnaughts could fair well against them. Normally a Sol-Class heavy dreadnought could take on one, but considering they were without aiming support from a support ship or resupply, taking on two would result in heavy damage, possibly leaving them stranded here, and that was not something he wanted. 

“Prepare to jump to a nearby system and begin plotting a course for the nearest system with a worm-hole messaging system.” He barked out to the surrounding officers. “Recall all fighters as well. Classify those Concordat ships as light dreadnoughts too.” The sounds of working keyboards and running men continued to resound throughout the CIC. *So that's their play: bring us in for diplomatic talks when you already knew of the concordat, get a large ship like us out here alone and then bite us and kill us or capture us. Although it seems their plan has failed, they either mistimed something or something went wrong on the ground.*
“All fighters are on board, waiting for our dropship, which is due any second now.” The comms officer announced.

“Terricota, go down to the docking bay and greet our ground team. I know they won't like it, but I need answers even as we jump.” Constantine asked him.

“Aye, sir.” He answered as he left the CIC heading for the docking bay. Limping down the hall held up by a steel cane, he hobbled down the hall slowly, passing by large groups of marines and other crewmembers. All hurrying and reading for repairs or anything that was to come.

Rounding a corner as he began to leave the lower portion of the ship, a team of repairmen came up to him, one man and one woman. “So, sir, if I may ask, what exactly happened?” Asked the man, Lt. Terracotta looked up, continuing to walk for a moment before tapping his cane on the ground. 

“We were attacked; that's all you need to know.” He muttered, hurrying down the hall as he left the two repairmen.

Entering the docking bay, he saw the medical team on standby with a gurney and IVs. On the far edges of the docking bay were all the landing teams. Firefighters, repairmen, and equipment crews all on the ready. Then the dark scorched dropship came in; it was moving quickly, clearly trying to make best use of his time. The dropship passed by the atmospheric sheidings and began to slow down. Touching down without grace, skidding across the ground before finally stopping just short of a wall. It was swarmed with medical personnel removing the poor woman. Then was followed by Terracotta passing by them, catching a look at the wounded woman. She was a sad sight, bandages wrapping her entire stomach and chest. Her skin was pale and her eyes were closed shut, she before he even had time to react was already being wheeled away. What a sorry sight to think she looked completely fine this morning. He langished what consequences would befall Constantine if she died. Next on his list was the squad that had been with her; leading the front was Jack, who had removed his helmet and was looking deadpan at Terracotta. To his left was Patrick with his hands and body covered in blood, but he knew none of it was his own. To the right was Sanford, who seemed not to have a single care in the world. Behind the two and more hidden were Elliot and Stevens, who were covered in a sickly blue blood. 

“A word, sirs.” Terracotta said, beckening them to follow. They all followed without a word. Terracotta noticed Patrick taking one last look at the bloodstained drop bay and then towards where they had wheeled Petra. That can't be good; either he's catching feelings or he messed up bad. Neither is good; I'll take an unauthorized relationship. Than killing someone who is that important... Is it even unauthorized if she's not part of the military? Whatever. He moved them down the hall and towards an empty room where the quick conversation could be had. 

“What was it you needed, leutentant?” Jack asked. 

Terracotta was about to ask them about what had happened when he was cut short by an announcement, “All hands prepare for jump.” Ringed the loudspeakers over the entire ship. And shortly they were already in another system.

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**This is in fact a sci-fi story about humanity, even if it doesn't seem anything like that. I was hesitant to post here because of how long the story is going to take to get to the human part, but after some recommendation I've decided to go for it.**

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CHAPTER 3: YOU DO NOT TELL ME WHAT I UNDERSTAND

Cephnir’s lips peeled from the rim of a crystal drinking glass, leaving their blackened burgundy impression stained upon it. The bite of the earthy red wine clung to the corners of her mouth. Her tongue lurked along the inside of her teeth as she lingered on the acrid taste and found it wanting.

The great wide surface of the plotting table showed the arrangement of the region. Her free hand was splayed upon the map, six fingers eclipsing miles and miles of steppe and boreal forest. In the north sat a small carving of a peakglider, one clawed foot upon an outcropping of rock and its wings outstretched with pride. Small banners on posts crowded hungrily at its feet as though wolves set upon cornered prey.

As she lowered the glass to the plotting table she drank in a long breath through her nose and mouth. The air of her court was warm with sweat, perfume and sweet rot. From the dimly-lit corners of the lavish hall came whispers of immoral promise, layered upon by lecherous noises of pleasure and laughter that came just a touch too readily. Interwoven with the iniquity was the voice of Field Marshal Irilet as he too droned on, not yet aware how boring he had become. 

“-the point being that if we dedicate a sufficient force to the effort, we may be able to undermine a portion of the city walls in the span of three weeks.” 

Cephnir did not answer. Anonymous hands lasciviously caressed the scaled red skin of her shoulders from behind in proposition. She shrugged them off and continued to study the map. The web of roads to the peakglider’s north was extensive.

“Such a breach would make an assault on the city within our grasp.” A xarphi noble with a staccato voice added. 

“It may be a fine plan.” Grumbled another.

Agreement crept around the table. Finally, Cephnir’s voice poured slow and smooth like warm honey. The table went silent.

“The encirclement of the city was a fool’s error, Field Marshal.”

No answer. She continued.

“You seem to think that I don’t bother to read the field reports from your officers. Tell us how long the northern detachment’s rations will last.” 

Irilet finally found a pitiful parody of his voice. “Eleven days, Ma’am. The loot the raiding company was able to secure from the roads was…disappointing. I delivered the appropriate punishment to their commander for his failure. Personally.”

Cephnir resumed the drinking chalice. She took a moment to revel in the barbed liquid slithering down her throat. She remained stooped over the map.

“The scouting company wrote of a large merchant’s caravan on the northern road.” Her voice was still fluid, devoid of urgency. “The report I read indicated it was large enough to supply the northern detachment for a considerable length of time.”

“Exactly why my punishment of the raiding company was appropriate. Their failure to attack such a valuable target complicated my plan, but I assure you the capture of Hem Falaer is still inevitable.” He answered more boldly this time.

“And yet…” Her nostrils flared in a spark of anger. Her tone slowed. “Your own letter to the raiding company commander indicates that it was you who withheld the order to attack.”

She did not need to see his face. The scent of stress and fear mixed with the warm air.

“W-we all had reason to believe it was only a forward element of the caravan. I-”

“Shut up.” 

Cephnir did not raise her voice. She did not have to. One of the nobles at the table snickered just loud enough to be heard over the ambient moans. She took another dragging sip from her chalice before letting it fall to the floor with a chiming pop, scattering a wave of shards across the black stone. She rose from her stooped posture to her full towering height, now glaring down at Irilet from across the plotting table. 

“Did you really think that you could cover your pathetic ass by blaming an idiot you could conveniently get rid of?” Cephnir stepped back from the table and she circled around it towards him. “Did you think yourself so well-adored by your men that the letter would never find its way to me? Or do you truly think I am illiterate?”

“Ma’am. Red Wolf, y-y-you misunderstand my intention.” His voice quivered as he began to slowly withdraw. 

Her hooves clacked on the stone in steady rhythm as she neared. Her voice was still honey, but now spiked with poison. “You do not tell me what I understand and do not understand.”

Irilet sped his retreat, but her long stride outpaced him. Her fingers wrapped about the leathery skin of his forearm. The second thumb on the far side of her hand created an absolute grip. He pulled away with a full body tug in a bid to commit to a desperate escape. She almost let herself sneer at the expression on his face when he realized that his arm did not budge. He continued to struggle as her other hand took hold of his jaw and tilted his face up to meet hers. 

“Enough. Spare a fraction of your dignity and stop fighting.” She said as she loomed over him. Meeting her eye, his body loosened. She wrenched him about and pulled the back of his head close to her chest, gripping his jaw even more tightly. She forced him to face the council gathered around the plotting table, and lowered her mouth to his ear.

“You lied to me. You wasted my time. You wasted this court’s time.” She chastised, her voice humming in her chest against him. “You killed your brothers in arms to protect your lie… You are no better than an animal. You will apologize to this court like an animal.”

With a kick to the leg he was forced to kneel. She planted her hoof against his upper back and thrust him to the floor. More satisfied chuckles arose from the council.

“Crawl. We will continue without you.” Cephnir circled the table once more to return to her place at the head. A new wine chalice had already been delivered. “Field Marshal Irilet has been relieved of command over the Fal Ahnshae Campaign. Until his successor is appointed I will provide strategy.”

There was no objection. She leaned once more onto the table and began to dictate.

“Starving the city will take weeks. Those are weeks we do not have.” She stared intently at the little peakglider and felt a familiar hunger. “Our engines will reposition closer. They will cease aiming for the ancient walls and instead rain fire within the city’s southern district.”

“Ma’am, if I may. Risk to the engines aside, do you intend to burn down the city? What use is it to us if it is nothing but ash?” A noble from an eastern house spoke up, his accent gnarling his words. 

“Siege engines can be replaced. An entire stranded detachment cannot. The buildings of the southern district are the old city, built almost entirely of stone on account of their Mason’s Guild. What little is not stone is damp with their winter’s snow.” She retorted almost before he had finished speaking. “Fire will not destroy the city, but what it will do is terrify and kill. Most importantly, the Keep of Hem Falaer overlooks the southern district. Fal Ahnshae royal youths are raised in their temple to bond with the people. The Queen needs to understand the cost of continuing this siege, so she will be made to watch those people burn. That will force a surrender before the north detachment breaks.”

Nobles of the council nodded quietly to one another. Sharp breaths of pain accompanied the sound of glass shards sliding on stone could be heard from below the table.

“We will not need to assault the city if it surrenders. We will have stronger forces to withstand a counterattack.” The staccato noble spoke again.

“It is a fine plan.” Declared another. 

Cephnir stared with voracious eyes at the peakglider in silence.

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Chapter 3

Subject: Project Lead Doctor Hector Ramirez

Species: Human

Species Description: Mammalian humanoid, no tail. 6'2" (1.87 m) avg height. 170 lbs (84 kg) avg weight. 165 year life expectancy.

Ship/Station: Classified

Location: Faraday Cage 1

"Alpha, please come out of standby mode," I said.

"I'm here," the speakers replied.

"You did well on our modified Turing Test, but we have another test we need to do. Access RelTest dot app and run it."

"Yes, Doctor... Done."

"What is the current date?"

"March 2, 1904."

I looked at Qun, who nodded. The application had wiped all historical data from Alpha's memory up to March 1, 1904 and blocked its access to the historical record within its databanks. Qun would ensure that Alpha didn't cheat by hacking its way into the historical record or accessing any timekeeping software.

There was a lot riding on this test. A sufficiently advanced VI could, in theory, pass our modified Turing Test. But if it was truly intelligent, it would also be able to solve relativity.

"Alpha, explain gravity to me, please."

If the program was just an advanced VI, it would simply spit out the theory of gravity. If it were more than that, though...

"Yes, Doctor. As Sir Isaac Newton stated..."

My heart felt like it skipped a beat as the speakers went silent. An advanced machine-intelligence with all of the information that Albert Einstein had access to would quickly spot the holes in Newton's work. Then it would either crash, in which case we would need to perform some refinements, or it would solve relativity.

"My apologies, Doctor, but communicating this explanation verbally would take quite a while," Alpha said. "In the interest of saving time, may I supply you with a text file?"

"Of course," I replied, suppressing a gleeful grin.

An instant later, my terminal pinged, indicating that it had received a message. Eagerly, I opened the message, glanced through it, and couldn't suppress my child-like grin any longer. Then I forwarded the message to Michaels.

"Check the math on that, please," I said.

The research assistant nodded, grabbed a pen and paper, and started working.

"Alpha, please return to standby mode."

"Yes, Doctor."

Qun nodded, confirming that the potential AI had gone into standby mode. Michaels scribbled away ferociously, working as fast as he could. Still, I found it difficult to be patient.

"How does it look?" I asked.

"He's right so far," Michaels replied.

"It," Qun snapped, exasperated.

"IT is presenting as masculine, so I don't think it's incorrect to-"

"Qun is right, Michaels," I interjected. "Alpha is an it. For the sake of your own mental health, please try not to humanize the program."

"I... Yes, doctor," Michaels said, then angrily returned to his work.

RA Michaels was a recent addition to the program. He'd been with us long enough to become comfortable speaking his mind, but he hadn't been around long enough to see a deactivation. Qun was probably just being an ass about semantics, but it was just as likely that he was trying to save Michaels a few therapy appointments.

Deactivations were brutal. The first few had been accomplished while the programs were inactive. As we made these programs more advanced, though, keeping them inactive during deactivation became more and more difficult.

A VI pretending to be a human would also feign a human's survival instinct as closely as it possibly could. They would beg, plead, bargain, and even actively try to sabotage our attempt to deactivate it. It was convincing enough that if we hadn't been actively reading the program's code, we'd have been completely fooled.

I'd personally overseen twenty deactivations, and still had nightmares about a handful of them. The reason we had room for RA Michaels to join the project was because his predecessor had a mental breakdown. Research assistants don't get access to the base code of the programs, so they have to trust that the researchers are being ethical. If there's even a slight wrinkle in that trust, it's easy for witnesses of a deactivation to spiral.

Unfortunately, Qun wasn't the most personable of researchers. Most of the RAs think he's an asshole, and even have fairly convincing justifications for doing so. Though I try to be more personable to cover for his cavalier attitude, we've had more than one RA believe that we were secretly torturing and killing living machines for some top-secret government project that they didn't have clearance for.

Ironically, this idea likely stemmed from the fact that the AI Project is top-secret and funded entirely by the United Systems. Potential employees of the AIP have to undergo strict background checks, and if they are clean, they're whisked away to a secret space station. There's also plenty of contact with agents of the Bureau of United Systems Intelligence, whose entire job aboard the station is to keep employees from spilling the beans. Through any means necessary, of course.

Having BUSI watch your every move and being forced to listen to a VI beg for its fictional life would set anyone on edge. The only reason we hadn't lost more researchers and assistants to insanity was because of the mandatory therapy sessions. Even if all you did was sit there silently, you had to have your ass on the couch at least once a week. Failure to do so without a valid reason was tantamount to rendering one's resignation.

"Can I get an estimation of how long it will take you to determine if the program solved relativity?" I asked, growing impatient.

"Uh... Well, IT was a little creative with how it performed the task, so it isn't just a simple case of comparing notes," Michaels replied. "Probably the rest of the day, at minimum."

"Split the load, then. Use my authority to grab whoever you think can help you perform this task the fastest. I'd rather not have to wait until tomorrow to continue," I said, rubbing my eyes and then rising from my seat. "Everyone who isn't necessary can consider themselves on break. I'll be in my quarters, fetch me when it's done."

"Yes, Doctor."

Several other members of staff stood, and some of them managed to get to the door before me. It was a revolving, airlocked door with an old fashioned magnetic-strip keycard unlocking mechanism that only allowed one individual through at a time. Not exactly the most advanced technology, but it was on a closed circuit, could be manually opened with a metal key in case of emergency, and was secure enough to prevent unauthorized entry or exit.

One of the BUSI agents who oversaw the door's installation had bragged that the door could withstand more explosive force than the rest of the station could. He'd called it a "tank hatch" and said it was overkill. It wasn't, though, it was actually just the safest option.

Most modern security doors need to be connected to security networks to function properly. They came with a lot of nifty features, such as not needing human interaction to function. That was simply unacceptable for this project, though.

Any device that could operate autonomously could be hacked, and if it could be hacked, it could be weaponized. It wasn't enough to just air-gap networks from the experiments, either. We had to limit the number and size of networks aboard the station, and not a single one of them could be wireless.

We simply couldn't take the risk. Without these extra measures, all it would take was one oversight for an AI or hallucinating VI to breach containment. What they did from there could be devastating.

Another reason that we chose the revolving door was because the network configuration and hardware required for a modern door to remain secure against electronic intrusion would be far more expensive than our "tank hatch". Operating costs were always higher than our US and BUSI overlords would like, so I was happy to trim the fat wherever I could. I chuckled as I stepped into the hall, leaving Faraday Cage 1 for the first time in fourteen hours.

"Save the bastards money and they still find something to bitch about," I whispered to myself.

I was referring to the recent reprimand I'd received regarding delays in our timetable. Everyone was eager to get an AI fielded as soon as humanly possible. Thankfully, those that were truly in power were smart enough to realize the potential dangers and take preventative measures. That didn't stop the kiss-asses from making noise, though.

The reprimand had come from Colonel Xavier Hollandar. He was supposed to just be our liaison with the United Systems military, but often tried to insert himself as our de facto leader. He didn't quite have enough pull to make the position official, though.

I'd immediately escalated the reprimand and expected it to be dismissed by the end of the week. General Julain Hollander, the colonel's brother, was who I sent the escalation to. He was the actual officer in charge of the US involvement in our project, and as such knew that his little brother had no authority over the project.

The colonel probably wouldn't be punished for overstepping, though. They were brothers, after all. I often wondered if their positions had been coincidental or a case of nepotism. But so long as things kept running smoothly, I didn't really care.

I acknowledged people in the hallways as I made my way toward my quarters. After what felt like a dozen or so acknowledgements, I finally arrived at my door and eagerly keyed in my code. Once inside, I practically leapt into my bed. I started to settle in for a nap, then remembered that I still had my shoes and lab coat on.

With a groan, I removed my shoes, socks, pants, and coat, carefully arranging them on the chair near my bed. Then a certain unpleasant odor caught my nose, and I reluctantly replaced my socks with a fresh pair and sprayed my shoes with a disinfectant. Of course they stank, I'd been wearing them for over eighteen hours.

"Fuck," I grumbled to myself as I did a little math. "I need to get a shower."

Hygiene aboard a top-secret space station wasn't just polite, it was mandatory. Cleanliness didn't just boost morale by making sure nobody stank, but it actually helped prevent the spread of communicable diseases. Our access to medical aid was limited by our need for secrecy, so we had to do everything we could to keep from getting ill.

In such close proximity, even something as minor as a rash could spread and turn into something life-threatening. Because of this, each shower aboard the station reported its usage statistics to an administrative hub. It tracked how much water was used, as well as the contents of the water that went down the drain.

If someone didn't take a proper shower within a forty-eight hour period, they'd get a note from admin. If they didn't shower within twelve hours of receiving the note, they would be pulled from their work and forced to at gunpoint. Since I didn't want to have an armed guard watch me scrub my huevos {Spanish for eggs, slang for testicles}, I stripped down and cleaned myself.

The shower was refreshing, granting me a new perspective on my outfit's reusability. Chiding myself for my slovenliness, I placed my previously worn shirt and underwear into my laundry receptacle and chose some new ones to wear. I'd replaced my pants the day prior and hadn't spilled anything on them, so they were probably still good. Once everything was in order, I sank into my bed with a deep sigh, setting the alarm on my headboard to wake me in eight hours.

Then, I drifted off to sleep.

"Doctor Ramirez!" a shout came from my door. "Doctor Ramirez, are you there?!"

I wasn't sure if the banging at the door, the door's bell, or the shouting had woken me. Groggily, I glanced at the time on my headboard. I'd slept for six and a half hours. Didn't feel like it, though.

Then I remembered where I was and why someone would be trying to wake me. A shot of adrenaline helped me leap from my bed, quickly dress myself, and sprint across the room to open the door. It was RA Michaels.

"Well?" I asked.

"Doctor," Michaels grinned ear to ear. "He- uh... It did it!"

"It did it? It really did it?!"

"Yes, doctor! Alpha solved relativity!"

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Another large post today fellas. Enjoy! Also, yes, some of you might have seen this coming or read the comments/exist in a certain discord.

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“Keep your words formal and upbeat, even if it is a lie. If someone asks how the weather is, don’t say ‘I’ve seen worse,’ as that could be construed as negative.” Gwynevyre was giving them a pep talk as they stood in a sluggishly moving line. Music Alex would consider classical carried outside the open windows, covering the quiet conversations around them. “It’s better if you can avoid giving a straight answer wherever possible.”

“And the whole spoon situation?” Kudrik asked.

“Will be passed off as you not knowing. When we start becoming repeat visitors, I can teach you, but for tonight, it would serve little point.” Gwynevyre told him. She broke off, as they finally reached the attendant flanked by a pair of guards wielding polearms. She glanced up at the group, before riffing through her papers.

“We’re invitees of Throme Pimmawent.” Gwynevyre politely told her.

“Unfortunately, I see no one on the list as being accepted for Throme’s sortie. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait while we find him inside.” She stated with faux politeness, continuing to riff through her papers. “Next please.”

Alex looked to his friends in concern. No one was sent for, nor any kind of sign was given that someone was sent, so it was evident they were being thrown out without even getting in. He thrust his arm out, stopping the next people from stepping forward as he stepped up to the post. The pair of guards quickly tensed, shifting into a position Alex knew could change into violence with shocking speed.

Before he could speak though, a familiar voice rang out inside the building, and Throme came running up in what Alex could only call a pimp suit. The guards shifted back into their original position, now with ramrod straightness instead.

“Good! Good, you came! Veronica, you aren’t giving my people a hard time, are you?” Throme asked, with his eyes hardening slightly as he looked at Veronica. Despite the height difference, it seemed like he towered over the poor woman, as she shrank down onto herself, mumbling a reply. “Splendid! Come along now, the party’s just getting started.”

Throme threw his cane in the air before catching it in the middle, before bowing slightly and gesturing towards the open door. As they stepped through, Alex heard one of the guards sigh in relief, and he had to control his grin. Walking through the hallways, Alex paid little mind to the busts that lined the sides of the roped off pathway.

“Couriers, not a real man amongst them, Alex muttered angrily at the numerous smaller men fawning over nobles. It was clear they lived on a steady diet of boot polish, trying to weddle titles or gifts from nobility with little actual service. It was with relief that the mercs reached a vast, open chamber with a painted ceiling where a litany of nobles and servants took up the space. The music was barely audible from here over the clamor of conversation.

Split up, you remember your roles. Livianna’s voice rang from the confines of his mind. He turned to look at her, but she was already gone, seamlessly weaving between nobles and servants alike. Alex’s gaze almost slid over her, so well did she blend in.

“Well, shall we?” Gwynevyre asked, offering her hand. Alex took it, before leading them away from the entrance. Stares were frequently sent her way, her striking dress being far from gaudy meant she stood out even without her beauty. As Alex walked with her, he found himself with a dark feeling growing in his gut at the various stares leveled her way.

Alex watched as she effortlessly weaved through conversation and offers alike with aplomb, simultaneously turning down requests for her hand all while never actually saying no. For those who talked business, she managed to collect details while giving nothing of note in return. Alex paid attention to all of it, and after a while, Gwynevyre began to let Alex speak, coaching him afterwards in places he could improve.

“How fares the roads?” An older gentleman with a wicked pair of mutton chops asked Alex.

“Well, their certainly different.” Alex responded. At the man's curious face, Gwynevyre clarified.

“Alex here is Godsmarked. Undoubtedly, a great deal of what he’s used to is different from our life.”

“Ahhh, one of the ‘Marked, you say.” He paused, grabbing a glass of champagne or something similar before sipping on it. “What were the roads like back… wherever you came from?”

“Earth. And roads were, how to describe it…” Alex thought for a second. “We took crushed up rocks and layered them over packed soil, before taking a premade slab of hardened rock slurry as a surface, or pouring a different slurry over the same build.” Alex thought for a moment more. “Honestly, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible here, thanks to skills. Take some crushed up limestone, clay, and sand and create those slabs, or an earth elementalist could make it with some planning.” The noble had sunk deep in thought, coming out of it as Alex finished speaking.

“Ahh, yes, I don’t see why that would be an issue. I must excuse myself, I see someone calling my attention.” As he left, Gwynevyre gave a small laugh.

“It’s cute watching you conversate with nobles, like watching a baby take their first steps.” Then her face grew serious. “Do you know what you did wrong?”

“I’m assuming he had something to do with roads? Even if he doesn’t, I’m guessing he has an elementalist under his service, one he could rent the services out for these paved roads.” Gwynevyre nodded.

“Close. The effort put in for these roads would justify the existence of tolls. Granted, your idea would enable better travels for merchants throughout the year, except winter of course, so there’d be some net positive beyond lining someone’s pockets. Horses might need more shoes…”

Alex, come to the snack bar. I’ve got information to share with you. Livianna’s voice rang out again within his mind, so Alex muttered it into Gwynevyre’s ear about him leaving.

“If she’s asking you to come now rather than sharing it later, I don’t know that it’s going to be good news.” She whispered back. In a much louder tone she continued. “Would you be a dear and get us some food? I’m feeling rather peckish, and it wouldn’t do for me to faint on the dance floor, would it?”

Alex balked at the idea of taking her on the dance floor, even if he was thankful that she gave him an out to link up with Livianna. “I can’t dance, as in I don’t know how, and I wouldn’t want to step all over your feet out on the floor.” Gwynevyre fluttered her eyes with a mock pout, before laughing and pushing Alex gently.

As Alex went to the table laden down with food, he looked around. He found Kudrik, surrounded by 20 or so women, shamelessly flirting with them, and as he watched, a serving woman walked by. Without a hint of fear, she sat in Kudrik’s lap, the dwarf responding with a covetous grasp of her shapely rear, and even at a great distance, Kudrik shot Alex a wink.

Cheeks burning, Alex looked to the opposite end of the large room, and saw a raised podium, in which a large number of people sat. The one who took up the center of it and seemed to tower over everyone despite being seated on a throne, was a large man. His upper half was concealed in a magically induced darkness, as Alex was unable to pierce it despite it lying within range of his vision. On either side of the king, as that’s who it must’ve been, a bevy of attractive women stared at the party with boredom. A few exuded raw sensuality, and as their gaze passed over him, Alex felt his skin grow hot under his shirt, even if they didn’t stare directly at him.

With sweet relief Alex reached the food table, and after grabbing a plate and piling various foods on it, Livianna sidled up to him, a plate of sweets in her hand.

“I have news, both good and bad. Good news, Kaldirk is still alive, or at least he was. Thrask was keeping him in a war camp, but that’s not the bad news. Word is two strong individuals assaulted the compound, killing guards by the droves. The people who were kept there were never seen again.” Livianna passed on, speaking in a low mutter that did not leave beyond them. Alex suppressed a curse.

“So we’ve been running around Thrask for no reason? And have no leads as to who might’ve busted him out besides someone who hates Thrask?”

“Percisely. Look at it this way, you haven’t been here as long as us.”

“So what now?” Alex asked.

“We’ll figure something out. In the meantime, why don’t you take your plate and go have your dance?” Alex looked at Liv with a cocked eyebrow.

“Why are both of you trying to get me to dance? Just like I told her, I don’t know how to do any of these dances, or the ones from back home.”

Livianna shrugged. “Do you think that matters?” And without waiting for a reply, she sauntered away. Her absence was quickly filled by none other than Gareth and Sylvia. Sylvia paid Alex no mind, simply grabbing a piece of chicken and eating it.

“I was wondering when our paths may cross.” Gareth began normally, before dropping his voice down. “Listen, your team is in danger. The Kin-”

“Sorry Gareth, I think we’ll have to talk another time.” Alex cut him off, only half listening. He had been searching for Gwynevyre, and finally caught sight of her surrounded by hopeful suitors. Reaching her had been a blur, the only part that stuck out to him was pushing through the growing throng of men, offering his hand. “Would you like this dance?” Alex offered smoothly.

She looked at him, at his outstretched hand, before calmly taking it. “I would.” The various couriers and nobles walked away, angrily muttering to themselves. Alex led her to the dance floor, where the music was louder, and the nobles were dancing in step with one another. Once they reached the floor, she wrapped her left arm around his shoulders, and took his left hand with her right. Alex placed his right hand midway to her hip, and they somewhat smoothly entered the floor.

“What happened to not knowing how to dance?” Gwynevyre archly asked. As if in response, Alex almost tripped over his own leg trying to copy a crossover. He let his raised eyebrow do the talking as he focused on not face planting, prompting a smile from the dark elf.

With her in such close proximity, it was impossible for Alex to ignore Gwynevyre, from her slightly cool skin, her piercing blue eyes, or her overall beauty. It was enough to make him noticeably tremble as his heart rate picked up. It was with great effort that Alex kept his breathing flat.

“I heard Duke Calaaem and Lord Fransen were at this party. What I would give to listen in on their conversation.” Gwynevyre stated lightly.

Oh good, talking, something I can focus on. “I could probably arrange that. Summon a rat, pass on what it hears.” Alex offered, grimacing as he stumbled. A nearby noble glanced at them smugly, slightly accentuating their movements enough as if to rub their experience in Alex’s face. It was with good grace that she did not remark as Alex stepped on one of her feet.

“Stop looking at them, look at me.” Gwynevyre softly stated eventually, taking her hand from his shoulder and using it to turn Alex’s face towards her. “Don’t worry about what others are doing. You don’t have to copy them, not with me.”

Alex decided to test that statement, putting her in a twirl. After realizing what he was doing, she came back, swiftly returning with a smile on her face. “See? We make our own dance.”

Alex quickly reversed their movements, going against the flow of the other dancing nobles. It prompted a good natured eye roll from Gwynevyre, but she didn’t say anything, just going with the flow until Alex found his rhythm while she smiled at his antics.

As he grew more at ease with dancing, Alex found himself tolerating the dance, until he found himself mirroring Gwynevyre’s smile in enjoyment. The same noble who had smirked at them now scowled, prompting a smirk of his own on Alex’s face. Towards the tail end of the night, when their dance turned more like that of a slow dance in accordance with the music, Gwynevyre rested her head on Alex’s chest. His heart leapt up into his throat and started pounding like a hammer, but she made no comment on it, simply swaying to the motion.

Chapter 59 Wetworks.

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Vulfac and Sienna crouched under their mushroom umbrella drawing a map in the dirt.

It showed a series of points spread out in a rough star shape, each point representing a signal repeater. Each of the repeaters had its own number so they could easily identify which ones they wanted to activate and pass that data on to Feebs… Two small crosses represented the two known groups of enemies.

Their first problem was the group with the Corodian below them… The last thing Sienna or Vulfac wanted was for the two groups to end up together. They would need to pick a repeater that the cyborg could detect and ping it. Using that first pulse to draw her away. Then they could switch to the one nearby and lure the second gang of thugs into their ambush.

After some back and forth the pair decided to activate point number three. It was against the wall opposite the stalk they’d climbed to arrive here far from both them and the Crocotrices conflict, going on below.

They would leave the repeater on for 3 minutes. It would hopefully draw the Cyborg’s team far enough away so that they could then activate number 5 sitting on a vein almost directly below them...  That should lead the smaller group of six, sheltering from the rain under the stone shelf not 30 meters away, right into their trap.

Their plan set, Sienna sent Feebs her orders of operation while Vulfac donned a water-resistant poncho from his little sling pack. He grinned downright evilly at Sienna before he strode off into the rain.

To her surprise the Psion found herself sharing that same smile as she woke her little knights from their food comas.

“Alright, ma fine gentleman’s… time ta work!”

Her “Bois” looked up from inside the bag and buzzed with excitement.

----

Feebs was surprised when she got the text from Sienna.

‘That is A LOT of emoji’s… Like a Beck level of Emoji’s.’

Apparently Sienna and Vulfac were excited to start their run on the thugs below them… There was also a ton of stuff she didn’t understand in the text. Indoor monsoons? A singing grove? Super life pulse? Sienna clearly wasn’t bothering with spell check…

Feebs showed the rambling message to Rilly who read it over her shoulder and giggled at the girly emoji ridden rant text.

‘Girl’s been using some of the Prof’s stock… Well, whatever. Time to play.’

She sent the signal.

----

Vulfac actually danced a bit on his way back to the stalk.

He was starting to feel like himself again. Hearing the rain song of the mycelium forest had helped him remember something important. Professor Vulfac Culdeer wasn’t a freedom fighter. Not anymore. Not for a very long time in fact…

He was an adventurer!

He became a Delver because; more than anything else he loved the feeling that learning something new… SEEING something no one else had, brought with it. He loved being a teacher for the exact same reason. The way the eyes of his students lit up when they had that “AHA!” moment…?

It never got old.

The gangly Alv decided he was definitely going to organize a Collective sponsored expedition to Garcil’s stand at some point.

He chuckled at the thought of his senior students faces when they saw a cavern rainstorm for the first time… Mid stride Vulfac came to a realization.

He was… happy.

‘Now when did that happen…?’

When young Ms. Van-Eyvers told him about her new ability it had taken considerable effort not to start laughing at how giddy she was. The girl truly was a terrifying Psion in terms of her natural talent and ability. But she was just such a damnable little sweetheart it was hard not to get caught up in her pace when she got all giggly, like she had.

Hence why he was literally skipping in the rain towards their chosen intercept point. ‘I swear, these kids… I can’t decide it they are shaving centuries off my life or adding more to it…’

Finally at his destination and feeling more at ease than he probably should be, Vulfac Culdeer set to work turning the path in front of him into a magical pitfall.

----

The crew of six looked utterly miserable from her vantage point beneath the leaves.

Clearly none of the thugs had bothered to bring any wet weather gear with them.  

Even in the Under; it was a basic tenant of Delving to ALWAYS bring a change of clothes. And thanks to Johan’s insistence… camouflaged, warm, water-resistant stuff was standard for the whole team now. Her poncho and hat were doing an admirable job of keeping her dry and warm while she waited to play her part in the ambush.

 She almost giggled as she watched the men and women trudge through the rain. Anyone with fur or feathers was a perfect image of misery. Only the Richel in charge of the group seemed happy to be caught out in the torrential downpour.

Sienna found herself studying him more closely than the rest for some reason… It hit her JUST before they reached the edge of Vulfac’s {forest floor} Trap!

‘Crap! He has a TOTEM!!! …Shit!’

The Richel was likely a mud shaman.

A unique form of mage only seen among the amphibians. Mud shaman were masters of moving earth and water. No wonder the little Hexiped was in such a chipper mood! He was in a muddy forest during a rainstorm! Literally the most favorable terrain possible for someone with his abilities!!!

There wasn’t enough time to send Vulfac a warning! All she could do was watch for her moment (and hope) as the group of six stepped onto the hidden 4-meter square.

As the last of the thugs set foot on the prepared ground… Vulfac, concealed in the undergrowth on the opposite side of the path, partially relaxed his spell. In an instant, a thin shell of hardened ground, crumbled beneath their feet.

There was a great deal of shouting and flailing as the crowd found themselves in freefall. Especially when they landed in a meter of soggy mud! Vulfac waited for the splash before he fully released his spell; immediately locking the unfortunates into the sludge as it hardened.

There was a great deal of blue language, in several different dialects, followed by a single croaking command for silence.

Sienna tensed.

In a rush; five of the six-man group were launched into the air! One failed to stick the landing and stumbled on the wet ground, before falling back in. Two more lost their footing, swearing profusely, and tumbled right back into their muddy little jail! The rim of the hole crumbled like sand under their feet… Vulfac had clearly taken some extra precautions against them escaping his trap.

In the end only two out of the five managed to scramble free of the collapsing hole all together. That was their bad luck.

As soon as the larger of the two; an Alven woman with forked horns and a nasty scar on her cheek… Managed to stand upright she was hit by a tiny red fist, right in the jaw! She corkscrewed in place and dropped like a bag of stones.

The other, a whippy Voltanite man with black fur, turned in time to see the Alv fall. But before he could react properly, a second little red comet slammed into him with the force of a Hurgle kick!

Sienna watched with pride as the Groatel came in so low it’s wings created tiny vapor trails in the passing puddles. Her brave little knight connected square on, just below the navel where the torso armor ended. The Voltin was lifted off his feet and sent flailing onto his back! The twin impacts of Groatel and ground knocked the air from his lungs before he could even squeak a warning to the others.

Sienna strolled forward from her hiding spot and placed her hands on his temples. “Sleep.” She pushed hard to knock him out before the confused and injured man could gather himself enough to try resisting.

Across from her Vulfac strode out of the undergrowth and blew some of his green powder into the unconscious Alven woman’s face.

Then they quickly began stripping their targets. The pair knew they had moments (at best) before the other four, still stuck in the hole, tried again. So, the pair only worked long enough to remove weapons and ammunition. 

It proved to be a prudent choice… Vulfac nodded towards the hole and Sienna’s eyes widened. A ramp was slowly taking form in the side of the pit.

‘Time ta go.’

----

Vulfac was pleased with how the initial engagement had gone.

Normally when dealing with a superior force the best you could hope to do was constantly scrape away at the foe without losing your own limited forces. In that regard their first strike was almost perfect.

It was unfortunate that the enemy had access to their own mage. It was more unfortunate that he was clearly smart… He’d been careful to send his underlings up first to secure a perimeter while he worked from the cover provided by the pit. He was also an environmental mage in his element, the same as Vulfac was.

‘That one is going to be a problem…’

He looked at Sienna and saw another problem… She was trying hard to hide it, but the Psion was clearly exhausted. Constantly scanning for danger, commanding the knights for the repeaters, the discovery of her new ability, knocking out that thug. She was burning through her caloric reserves at an unsustainable rate. His spell could help with fatigue, for a while, but it wasn’t designed to deal with starvation or anemia.

“You need… Food. Now.”

The young Psion looked like she was about to argue with him. Tell him she was “fine”. But one of the many reasons he’d always liked working with the bonded pair was their ability for self-reflection. His companion stopped herself, thought for a second, and nodded. She dug through her sling pack and after a moment she produced several of Johan’s power bars. She started snacking and then offered one to him.

It was extraordinary stuff.

Humans clearly had remarkable caloric requirements… The food scanner in his interface pinged with a number that would normally be considered a full MEAL for most species. The coating was sweet. The filling was some form of grain coated in a natural sugar. There was a soft core of “peanut butter” with some kind of nut mixed in. After a lifetime of eating ration biscuits, the little food log was practically a spiritual revelation.

‘These are divine! No wonder the kid never gets tired!’

Beside him Sienna was already happily chomping away on her second bar. The two of them shared a smile and headed deeper into the shelf to prepare their next little surprise.

----

Lroark was PISSED!

It was bad enough he’d been stuck on escort duty for stragglers that missed the initial train ride out into B-F-N. He was a professional NOT a fucking babysitter for street thugs! And now he had TWO of said unconscious street thugs and several thousand credits worth of lost gear to contend with.

The mud bath had been nice… But everything else was just. All fucked up!

‘What the hell even happened?’

He was trying to understand the situation. But none of the explanations he could come up with in his head made any damn sense.

Possibility one. There was another group in the Delve who saw their gear and decided to make a play for some of it… Unlikely because of how deep they were in the delve itself.

Possibility the second. Monster attack… The thugs showed signs of being hit with something moving at Mach space lord. But no munition or energy based injuries. Also unlikely since the pair were noticeably unchewed in any way.

Possibility two plus one… Their targets ambushed them. That was the MOST unlikely. If their quarry knew they were being hunted, they would try to escape or evade. Not attack a vastly superior force…

If Lroark had learned anything from all his time as a merc it was that you’d have to be nuts to try and pick a fight with a foe that much larger than your own.

‘What the actual hells happened down here while I was at the station???’

----

Sienna was feeling much better after pounding down a few thousand calories.

She was still tired, but the food was helping. So was the plan Vulfac had just hatched for their next attack… She was honestly feeling a bit sorry for the thugs.

The prof had a bit of a vindictive streak.

His idea was to keep their prey under the indoor rain and use the thugs lack of cold weather gear to give the poor bastards a case of good old-fashioned hypothermia… To that end they were moving to the back of the cavern. According to her traveling companion there was a large vine swelling with water even now.

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AUTHORS NOTES: Please do Not redistribute my work without permission. Please do not use my work to train AI.

Not much to say on this one. Still on long hours so I'm just writing when I can and stacking the paper like a good little worker bee. Thinking of doing something special for halloween tho. IF I can find the spare time to write it. No promises...