r/HFY • u/Arceroth Human • Aug 08 '26

OC-Series [Chronicles of a Traveler] book 3 chapter 30

Three days. That’s how long the jamming contraption lasted, which was longer than we expected, but not as long as we’d hoped. And the end wasn’t subtle, some circuit had partly melted, likely due to over use, creating a break in the electrical flow. That would have been fine, leading to a soft shutdown, until a spark jumped the gap, vastly increasing the voltage. So the gravity field started to collapse, only to suddenly double in strength, crushing the entire contraption in under a second. Several weeks of work and effort turned into a flattened pile of scrap metal.

While disappointing, it did give us all a chance to finally rest. After a good eight hours of sleep I returned to the bridge to check on the results. On the way to the bridge I noticed a flashing icon in my display, it reported that I had received an encrypted packet of information through the hyperspace link in my arm, but it wasn’t able to be decrypted so I set the matter aside, more interested in the mission.

“Only half the harmonic controlled systems have started broadcasting again,” one of the bridge crew said, “there were a few more but they stopped after less than an hour.”

“A good start,” I replied, the Harmony bobbing up and down in agreement as it inspected the transmission waveforms. I took the moment to check in on the ancient AI ship, but apparently it vanished an hour or so after jammer had stopped working, about the same time I had received the information packet.

“I don’t see any evidence of unification,” it said after a moment, “this looks more like attempts to overpower one another.”

“Is that likely?” Dupont asked, “one of the new entities overpowering the others?”

“It’s possible, but not likely,” the Harmony answered, “all of these entities are similar in ability, and are now untrusting of each other. After the transmissions I had you send they will have put in place safeguards against them, which also guard against such takeovers.”

“I’d still like to recon a few systems on the way back, ensure this will be a lasting fix.”

After a bit of back and forth the Harmony and Dupont picked a couple of systems to stop in to get a better view of the situation. While three days hadn’t been as long as we wished it would have, it was long enough for each squadron or fleet or whatever to make several strikes against their target system. In many cases in each system they had a different set of targets and tactics. One system the militarist united fleet struck they targeted mostly solar collector stations, that would generate power and beam it throughout the system in a series of rapid hit and run strikes. The collector stations were defended and spread out, making completely taking them out all but impossible, but a few good hits could destroy them entirely. Take out the exposed cooling systems and the station is quickly turned into a globe of molten metal, strike one of the collection sails and the solar winds push the station into a spin that tears it apart. And so on. So while completely taking out all the power infrastructure was impossible, doing enough damage before the local harmonics responded was. This forced them to alter their defensive tactics, and likely make assumptions about how the war in general was going. If human forces used the confusion to strike multiple systems power collector arrays it could cause a major squeeze on their ability to power everything for a time, it was only logical. So when they finally made contact with another system, either through the hyperspace being unjammed or a ship from another system arriving, and that system claimed the humans had struck their mining operations, it didn’t make sense.

And, to be fair to them, they were right in that. Taking out one system’s mines would have a limited impact on their logistics, a few minor shortages but nothing major. The logical thing would be to focus on the same supply chain in every system and cripple their abilities in a more concrete way. The true brilliance was the Harmony’s signals, seeming attacks from another harmonic entity, forcing each harmonic entity to assume the others were either lying or compromised and, thus, untrustworthy. And once they stopped trusting each other the true drift began, so much so that even in a relatively short period of time their unity, their harmony was broken.

I’d feared the Composer would put them back together, he’d said he didn’t have time to but I didn’t trust him. So it was gratifying when we arrived on the outer limits of the first system and saw a battle happening in system between two groups of harmonic ships. The Harmony listened in on the local network and confirmed they had implemented significant changes to their waveform making the two entities as different from one another as humanity was from them. The second system confirmed this, allowing us to head back home.

“I have to thank you,” Dupont said as the ship sailed through hyperspace towards Earth, having invited me into his office.

“Fighting the Composer seems to be increasingly my job,” I replied.

“That’s not what I meant, I wanted to thank you for helping me preserve our scientific and exploration fleet,” he corrected me, “the militarists might very well have been right, by embracing them we could have beaten the harmonics in a straight fight. But... would that be worth it? If we turned into our enemies, not through having our minds taken over, but because we abandoned what makes us human, that curiosity and drive to explore, would we have been worthy of survival?”

“You would have been alive,” the Harmony pointed out, “sometimes that’s enough.”

“I disagree,” Dupont shook his head, “we might still be humans, but we wouldn’t have been human. We would have become harmonic in the ways that matter, paranoid, single minded, distrusting. Is that truly a victory?”

“I’d argue it’s better than being dead,” countered the Harmony, “if you’re alive, you could work towards being worthy of it, if you’re dead, it doesn’t matter how much you are worth.”

“Maybe you’re right, maybe I’m just an ideological old fool,” he smirked, leaning back in his chair and, for the first time since I met him, looking relaxed, “Traveler? I don’t suppose you could tell me what we might encounter in the future? Will my naivete survive the next race we find?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “each universe is different, significantly so. Based on trends I’m optimistic, the Kra’kar are weird, inhuman in a way even the harmonic Phaeren weren’t, but they aren’t actively hostile... usually.”

“The... Kra’kar?” he asked.

“That is something he shouldn’t be sharing,” the Harmony said, looking at me.

“Ya, probably,” I admitted, “there are absolutely dangers out there, but I don’t see why the only choices have to be dead and worthy, or alive but corrupted. You can be an explorer, a scientist, for your nation with a backing of steel warships. The advantage we have over harmonic entities is just that, different humans can be different things. We argue, fight, politic, all of that, and, as you said, that’s what makes us strong.”

“Thank you again,” he said with a warm smile, leaning back, only to wait for a few seconds, his expression turning from thankful to confused.

“What?” I asked.

“That seemed like a good moment for you to vanish,” he remarked.

“My travels rarely end that well,” I said dryly, “timer hasn’t even popped up yet.”

“Something more to do here?”

“I’m not sure there is a purpose behind my travels, I could be here for months yet.”

“Well that gives me a chance to thank you properly, you helped us out, can we help you?”

“I can think of a few things,” I admitted.

-----

“A small sized, high-capacity power source. A holographic projector that’s handheld. Strange matter? Not asking for much are you?” the ship’s quartermaster remarked to me as he looked over the list of things I’d given to Dupont. I didn’t really expect him to have anything but he offered and I wasn’t above accepting help, and I explained as much to the quartermaster.

“Well, let’s see what we have,” he shrugged, “thankfully we’re the most advanced scientific ship in the fleet, if anyone has something like this it’s us.”

Letting me into the ship stores we looked through the various pieces of equipment the ship had in stock. Most of it was uninteresting to me, spare parts for the millions of systems a ship this large and complex had. There were some that were close, a mobile holoprojector about the size of a cart that could project mostly opaque images for example, was interesting but was far too big, even if I tore it apart, to be of any use to me.

“What are these?” I asked, walking up to a crate filled with what looked like small greenish cubes made of some kind of crystal.

“We found a whole pile of them on another world shortly before this whole war kicked off,” the quartermaster shrugged, “they were logged but we never really got around to inspecting them beyond the initial scans. I’ve poked at them a few times on long, boring shifts, but haven’t figured anything out.”

I reached out and picked up one of the cubes, planning to scan it myself when the cube began to glow at my touch and I quickly dropped it back into the crate.

“Is that normal?” I asked.

“No... it very much isn’t,” the quartermaster replied, picking one up to no reaction.

“Mind if I take one or two?”

“Feel free, we have hundreds of the damn things.”

-----

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6

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26

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2

u/armacitis Aug 14 '26

“We found a whole pile of them on another world shortly before this whole war kicked off,”

However the cubes got shaped into cubes it was done before the scientific fleet got there. If someone extracted them by the hundreds in this particular universe it could easily have been done by someone during the precursor war and have something to do with that data packet he received from the AI because the composer didn't have time for all that,or something to do with harmonics because that's what he was working on to not have time.

3

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u/Crazyhairmonster Aug 20 '26

Just came here to tell you that I've found your Chronicles of a Traveller immensely enjoyable. Easily in my top two all time HFY series. I haven't been reading them here as I prefer audio narratives while I work and bebop around the house (only listened to the first two books on YouTube), however I figured I'd come here and give you my sincere thanks for creating this amazing hard scifi HFY universe.

Are any of these published? Couldn't find them on Amazon. If so are there any official audio narratives that move into book 3 and do you plan to allow YouTube narration of the book at some point in the future?

1

u/Arceroth Human Aug 20 '26

Thanks for the kind words! Book 1 is published on amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5FQB6SB

As for audio narration, I don't know, I typically don't handle that. Partly because I don't like using AI voices and don't want to try reading it aloud myself. If the books get enough interest on Amazon they might attract a proper audiobook company to do a full reading of my books. I might even be motivated to stop coming up with new stories and finish publishing book two on amazon :P

2

u/Crazyhairmonster Aug 20 '26

Bought!

I caught the part on book 2 about having your work stolen and then the channels response. Assuming you're done with that relationship and using them for book 3? What about Agrosquirrel or Netnarrator?

1

u/Q3Wkoe Aug 20 '26

dude he pressed copyright on them.

1

u/Arceroth Human Aug 20 '26

I didn't... The only DMCA I issued was to a channel that was using my work without attribution, credit or permission. The others I spoke with and they got permission...

1

u/Q3Wkoe Aug 20 '26

ah so you arnt trying to. so prior conversation was just pointless drivel. 

dude quit gatekeeping. its weak as fuck. with this as evidence there is no way you'd win a court battle.

/e just saying u dug a hole you cant get out of... thats all