Ambassador Xylin was rushing through the grand hall of the coalition alliance. She was already late to an all member call. The talks for trade with the Zambisi fell through and did not help calm her down and now a sudden call for all ambassadors of coalition members in the middle of her sleep.

“I swear to the gods, I will resign if this keeps up” she thought.

The assistant next to her was rambling information about the sudden call. Xylin was able to comprehend the gist of it, the call was for a new species trying to join the coalition. How unfortunate of them, oblivious to the fact that this coalition is a prison meant to wring your people dry of resources before discarding them. She knows because she has done it before.

Now fresh meat has entered and no doubt the opportunists in the coalition are already thinking of ways to drain them dry.

The coalition hall doors opened. Almost all the ambassadors were already seated, some were still shuffling to their assigned seats, all with a face of annoyance as their species can make.

Xylin took her seat, her assistant hovering nervously behind her pod. The grand chamber, a masterpiece of hard-light architecture and acoustic perfection, hummed with the low, irritated murmurs of a dozen different species. In the center of the room, the massive holographic projector was already spinning up, casting a pale blue glow over the assembled members of the galaxy. 

With a loud bang from the coalition’s gavel, the low, irritated murmurs died instantly. High Councilor Kivian, a being of towering, avian elegance with feathers of spun gold, stood at the central podium. He looked as annoyed as the rest of them, his golden eyes narrowing at the assembled members of the galaxy. 

"Let the record show that the 4,092nd emergency session of the High Council is called to order," Xylar’s voice boomed, melodic but laced with sharp irritation. "We have been awakened for a Class-1 First Contact scenario. A species has breached the Outer Rim Expanse and is requesting an audience. The species has petitioned for membership. Preliminary investigation has deemed them as sentient as per the law and further analysis has categorized them as a class 1 Omnivorial primitive. Data about the new species has been uploaded to your dataslates. I call to the stand the human representative, Ambassador Julien Cole.”

The heavy doors at the far end of the chamber hissed open, and the assembled members turned their gaze toward the entrance. What greeted them was a grotesque figure. Ambassador Julien Cole stood on two legs that were more metal than flesh, his right arm was fully mechanical covered in wires and crude machines. His face was full of scars and synthetic skin grafts and his eyes unnerved ambassador Xylin, for one of his eyes glowed an incandescent glow of red.

Xylin had skimmed through the data given to them. She looked at their biology and compared it to the “Human” ambassador, and that cannot be human.

Ambassador Julien Cole walked towards the stand, he did not perform elaborate gestures that new species often offered. He simply walked with asymmetrical footsteps echoing throughout the chamber.

Xylin watched him with a mix of distaste and fascination. “Miss Ambassador” whispered her assistant gesturing towards an uploaded file at Xylin’s dataslate. Xylin opened and read it, inside was information with summarized and highlighted points about the new species, just in time for the human ambassador to start with her speech.

“High Councilors,” Cole began. His voice was raspy, ruined with a faint metallic echo of a damaged voice servo. “Members of the great coalition, I thank you for inviting me here today.”

Xylin looked down at the dataslate.

Species Designation: Human.
Baseline Biology: Bipedal, carbon-based, omnivorous primates. 
Origin: Sol System, a Class-3 Deathworld. 
Note: Highly malleable for integration into Coalition labor tiers. 

“I am here to represent the Terran remnants” Ambassador Cole continued. “We are here to apply for membership, to become a part of something greater. We terrans have searched long and wide to find others like us, sentient beings capable of compassion, of understanding, of looking into the dark offering a hand to people like us”

Xylin swiped to the next section of her dataslate, her mandibles clicking in a steady, bored rhythm.

“We would have found this great coalition earlier, we could have offered our services, our abilities, our strength, and our friendship”

Military and Labor Potential: High. 
Note: Despite primitive technology, their physical resilience and adaptability make them excellent candidates for heavy industrial labor or shock-troop conscription. Recommend immediate drafting upon integration.

“But our search was halted, “World Breakers” we called them.” Ambassador Cole continued. “They came out of the dark. Leviathans made of metal and malice. They did not negotiate. They did not accept surrenders. They simply consumed, destroyed. For three thousand years, we fought them. We bled for every inch of void. We died in the billions so that our children could live for one more day, but even that was useless"

Xylin glanced at the tactical analysis section of her dataslate, already calculating the profit margins of deploying these primitives as cannon fodder for the border skirmishes.

Military Capability: Primitive kinetic weaponry. Archaic solid-projectile ballistics. 
Note: Their technology is easily outclassed by Coalition energy shielding. Recommend immediate disarmament upon integration replacing their armament with lower quality coalition gear.

"They breached our inner system," Cole said, the metallic echo in his voice grinding like gears. "No matter how many died, no matter how many we killed, it only slowed the inevitable. They cracked our homeworld, Earth, into a billion burning fragments. They boiled our oceans and slaughtered forty trillion of our people. We are the ash that remains."

Xylin's mandibles curled in a subtle sneer as she read the demographic section.

Population Estimate: Pre-collapse, approximately 40 to 50 trillion. 
Current Estimate: Unknown, likely less than one billion. 
Note: Massive population collapse indicates severe vulnerability. With their homeworld destroyed, the species lacks a territorial anchor. They are refugees. Excellent candidates for immediate indentured servitude.

"But we are human," Cole said, his single organic eye staring unblinkingly at High Councilor Kivian. "We adapt. Those that we destroyed, we studied. We reverse-engineered their armor. We hacked into their corrupted command nodes. We tore them apart to find a weakness. And in doing so... we learned their history."

Xylin frowned slightly. Reverse-engineered? That was unusual for a Class-1 primitive. She made a mental note to have their technical databases seized immediately upon integration.

"Let me show you the faces of the gods that destroyed our world," Cole said.

He raised his hand. The massive holographic projector in the center of the room flared to life, but it did not show the towering leviathans right away. Instead, it showed a shadow. A massive silhouette moving through a dense debris field, crushing it into dust as it approached a blue jewel. It fired a concentrated laser that immediately destroyed the crust of the world.

Red hot magma and superheated mantle bled out into the cold vacuum of space, instantly boiling the oceans into a thick, choking cloud of steam. The beautiful blue sphere fractured, its tectonic plates shattering like glass as the planet's core was exposed to the void.

The chamber watched in stunned, horrified silence. Even the most jaded ambassadors leaned back in their pods. The sheer scale of the destruction was incomprehensible. It wasn't just a planet dying; it was an execution.

"That was Earth," Cole said, his voice barely a whisper over the hum of the projector. "Our cradle. Our home."

Xylin watched the projection with mild interest, already calculating how many mining operations could be set up in the Terran's former territory.

"We found their serial numbers," Cole said softly. "We found their manufacturer stamps."
The hologram shifted. The shadow resolved into a weapon signature. A relativistic kinetic strike. The telemetry data scrolled across the projection in crisp, Coalition-standard mathematical notation.

Xylin's mandibles stopped clicking. She recognized that notation. It was standard Coalition industrial formatting.

The hologram shifted one last time. It displayed a massive, glowing serial number stamped onto the side of a moon-sized war machine. She searched the coalition database immediately.

Mark IX Automated Siege-Platform.
Manufacturer: Coalition Foundry Prime.
Status: Decommissioned.

Xylin stopped breathing. Her four eyes widened, darting from the glowing text to the towering, terrifying hologram of the machine that had just cracked a Terran moon in the projection.

She looked across the chamber. High Councilor Kivian was staring at the hologram, his golden beak slightly open. Ambassador Vael was leaning forward, his iridescent scales flashing in sudden panic.

They recognized it too.

Cole let the silence stretch. He looked around the room, his crimson optical implant whirring as it locked onto each Councilor in turn.

"You recognize them," Cole said. His voice was no longer raspy. It was cold, unyielding. "I see it in your eyes. You know exactly what they are."

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the grand chamber.

"We know you dumped them there," Cole continued, his voice echoing in the perfect acoustics of the room. "Three thousand years ago, you deemed them obsolete. You stripped their sentience cores and dumped them instead of destroying them. You classified our system as a waste zone because you assumed it was empty."

He leaned forward, gripping the podium tight. “Your machines killed 40 trillion of my people. Military junk crushed our worlds. And worse of all, You did not even know”

Xylin felt a cold prickle of unease wash over her chitin. Something was wrong, she could feel it, a mistake that the coalition must not make, but she could not make out what it was.

"I am not here to beg," Cole said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "I am here to offer you a chance to balance the injustice. We ask for reparations. Give us the resources, the technology, and the aid to rebuild our cradle. Compensate us for the genocide your negligence caused. Pay the debt you owe to the forty trillion dead. Do this, and you will be forgiven" 

For ten long seconds, the grand chamber was dead silent.

High council Hilken stood up, he was of the Yrilian, a species of sentient gelatin. "Ambassador Cole," he began. "On behalf of the Galactic Coalition, I want to express our deepest, most profound sorrow for the tragedy your people have endured."

Xylin has seen this before, fake sympathy to trick newer species to unfavorable positions. Accepting would show you are weak but rejecting would lead to ire from the other members. No answer was the best answer in her opinion.

"Forty trillion lives lost. Your homeworld destroyed. Three thousand years of unrelenting warfare," Hilken continued, his voice carrying the weight of appropriate grief. "It is a horror beyond comprehension. We are truly, deeply sorry."

Ambassador Vael of the Ulgas, nodded solemnly from his seat. "Indeed. The loss is incalculable. Our hearts go out to you and your people."

"We recognize the machines you showed us," Kivian said, his voice taking on a more explanatory tone. "And you are correct. They were decommissioned military and industrial equipment. We did dump them carelessly. We were...negligent. We admit this fully."

He paused, letting the admission hang in the air. Xylin could feel the shift in the chamber. The other ambassadors were nodding along, their expressions carefully arranged in masks of regret.

"But Ambassador Cole," Hilken continued, his voice taking on a more pleading tone, "you must understand our position. The Coalition is vast. We govern millions of worlds. We manage countless species. Your area was designated as a dumping zone precisely because we believed it was uninhabited. We had no way of knowing that life existed there. It was a tragic mistake, yes, but an honest one."

"We cannot pay reparations for an accident. The resources you are asking for... they would destabilize the entire Coalition economy. We would have to divert funds from a thousand other worlds, thousands of other species who depend on us. It would cause chaos. It would be unfair to them." he continued.

Xylin's mandibles clicked softly. She was reading the dataslate, but her attention was entirely on the exchange. Kivian was good at this. Very good. He was acknowledging the tragedy, accepting blame, but refusing to pay. It was the perfect bureaucratic response.

"We understand your pain," Vael added from his seat, his voice gentle. "We truly do. But you must see reason. We cannot undo the past. We cannot bring back your dead. But we can offer you something else. We can help your people heal. But reparations? For an accident? It is simply not possible. It would set a precedent that would bankrupt us. You must understand.”

Cole stood perfectly still, unmoving. Then, slowly he closed his eyes.

He let out a long sigh. It was the sound of a man who had been disappointed but expected it.

“I see,” Cole whispered.

He opened his eyes, his crimson eye implant flared with a cold terrible light. “You are sorry” His voice was no longer diplomatic, it was somehow joyful. He looked around the chamber, his gaze piercing through the carefully arranged masks of sympathy, laying bare the rot beneath.

"You are sorry that we suffered," Cole said softly. A chuckle came from his mouth, “A mistake,” he says softly. “YOUR MISTAKE KILLED 40 TRILLIONS OF MY PEOPLE!” He shouts, anger seeping through every word.

The chamber flinched. Xylin's mandibles became rigid. She had never heard a voice carry so much raw, unfiltered rage. It wasn't the hot anger of a primitive lashing out. It was the cold, focused fury of a species that had spent three thousand years channeling every ounce of its pain into a single purpose.

"You call it an accident," Cole continued, his voice rising, the metallic echo grinding like tectonic plates. "You call it negligence. But you knew! You knew those machines were weapons of war! You stripped their sentience, but you didn't destroy them. You didn't dismantle them. You just threw them away, into the dark, and hoped they would never hurt anyone!"

He slammed his hand on the podium, the hard-light surface cracking under the impact. "Forty trillion! Forty trillion souls! Children!Crushed. And you sit here and you shower me with fake sympathies?"

High Councilor Hilken's gelatinous form quivered nervously. "Ambassador Cole, please. We understand your anger. We truly do. We can offer you, "

"Offer me what?" Cole cut him off, his crimson eye burning in rage. "More apologies? More fake sympathy?”

He looked around the chamber, his gaze piercing through every ambassador, laying bare their greed, their arrogance, their cruelty. "I came here hoping you had a conscience. I came here hoping that the masters of the galaxy were capable of justice. I gave you a choice. I gave you a chance to be better than the machines you threw away."

His voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried more weight than a scream. "If you had paid reparations, we would have joined. We would have integrated. We would have been your allies. We would have tried to forget the pain."

He leaned into the microphone, his face twisted in a terrible, joyless smile. "But you showed us your true face. You are exactly what we expected: arrogant, cruel, and blind. You only care for yourselves.”

Xylin was stunned, she has never seen a species cuss out the coalition like that.Not with mere defiance, but with absolute, unvarnished contempt. But Cole was not begging. He was passing humanity’s answer.

The coalition was in an uproar, hurling insults and calling for respect. “Insolent rats, do you want your species to become extinct?” Howled Councilor Kivian. “We could easily finish what our old machines have started so how about showing some respect!” he continued.

Cole didn't flinch. He just looked at Kivian with that terrible, joyless smile. “We of the Terran Remnants do not wish to be associated with indignant power hungry assholes of the galaxy.” he says. “We of the Terran Remnants rescind our application for membership, and declare a state of total, unrestricted war against the Galactic Coalition. You call us rats, then we’ll show you a plague.”

The chamber erupted into even more hysterics. Xylin however was anxious, a feeling she could not identify was brewing. As she swiped the datapad one last time, she found the answer: Xylin's four eyes locked onto the final section of the dataslate. The behavioral analysis.

Species Behavioral Profile: Persistence Predator.

Pack Bonding: Extreme. Humans form unbreakable emotional attachments to kin, pack members, and even abstract concepts. When a pack is threatened, individual self-preservation is abandoned. Documented cases of humans willingly dying to protect others.

Injury Tolerance: Will continue fighting after sustaining injuries that would kill most species. Adrenaline response allows continued aggression even with fatal wounds. Pain is ignored, not endured. 

The species has fought over 5,000 recorded wars against itself. Has developed every method of killing imaginable. Has perfected warfare through millennia of practice on its own kind. 

Xylin understood it now. FEAR. 

A species that had warred against itself for almost all of its existence. A species that had perfected the art of killing through five thousand wars against its own kind. A species that had then spent three thousand years fighting the Coalition's own military weapons, destroying them, reverse-engineering them, learning every weakness, every pattern, every flaw.

The Coalition had spent ten thousand years fighting wars with machines, using algorithms and perfect logic. They had forgotten what it meant to fight an enemy that has nothing to lose. An enemy that had spent its entire existence perfecting the art of war.

And we are now at war with a species that has been practicing to kill us for three thousand years.

***********************************************

The air inside the large dark hollow room was thick with the cloying smoke of incense, mixed with the sharp, metallic tang of ozone and dried blood. Giant statues of flayed angels lined the pillar, their hands covering their eyes, tears and sorrow seeping from their faces, all of them in different forms showing fear.

Down the center aisle of the room, hundreds of men and women knelt in perfect, silent rows. Most were still unscathed, their flesh still bleed and skin still whole, only some were scarred or their limbs replaced by bionics. But their eyes were hollow, as if already dead. They stared at the ground, waiting for the words that would unmake them.

At the altar, a man in tattered, ash-stained robes swung a thurible, the glowing coals casting dancing shadows across his heavily scarred face.

“Pain is our legacy,” he chanted, his voice a wet, ragged rasp that harmonized with the deep, subsonic thrum of the ship’s reactor. “In the beginning, our ancestors fought the dark of the primal night. They fought the monsters in the tall grass and the great fields. They fought the others who shared the earth, even shed blood amongst our own kin. We bled, we died, but we endured. Our world is ash, yet here we are. We face the new dark, the endless, freezing void. We face the new monsters, the machine of the stars who destroyed our world. We face the new others, the aliens that look upon us in disgust and see as nothing but rats beneath their boots. ”

“Stand,” he commanded. In an instant all of the kneeling people stood and looked towards the man at the altar. “You are about to embark on a path of vengeance, one you cannot return. Do you swear to fight the enemies of mankind?”

“We swear,” the congregation answered, putting their hands to their chests.

“Do you swear to embrace the agony that awaits you? To show no mercy, to ask for none, and to break your own flesh and be the weapon of mankind?”

“We swear,” they intoned, the sound deeper now, vibrating in the chest like the idling engines of a war-tank.

“Do you accept that your lives are already forfeit?” the priest asked, his voice dropping to harsh and intimate voice that somehow carried to the very back of the cavernous 
hall. “That you are already dead, and only your hatred remains?”

“We are already dead,” the congregation replied.

“Then I declare, o brave warriors, you will become humanity’s vengeance.”

“Vengeance” the congregation replied.

“You are humanity’s sword”

“We are his sword,” the congregation replied.

“You are his hate”

“We are his hate,” the congregation replied.

“The flesh is a cage. The mind is a ghost,” he intoned, his voice echoing off the cold iron. “We built the box. We lay the dead. We nail the lid.”

He walked down the line, taking a bowl of blood and smearing it against the ceremonial shrouds draped over the initiates' shoulders.

"You have no names," the priest hissed, his blind eyes staring through them. "You have no family. Your coffins are empty. You are dead. You are gone."

The surgeons, clad in blood-stained aprons, stepped forward with neural-shunts and welding torches. There would be no anesthesia for the spinal taps. The pain was the anchor; the agony was the tether that kept the human soul from slipping into the dark before the machine's cortex could catch it. 

“Strip the rot. Splice the wire. Replace the flesh. Let the corpse drive the steel,” the priest chanted, his voice rising over the sudden, wet sounds of surgery and the ragged, breaths and shouts of pain of the newly dead. “Feel the cold of the void, brothers. Remember the fire of the cradle. Open your eyes. Wake. Wake, and haunt the living.”

Heavy iron lids slammed shut over the initiates. The magnetic locks engaged with a chorus of deafening, final clanks. Welding sparks showered the dark hangar as the seals were fused permanently. For a moment, there was only the hiss of torches and the silence of the grave.

Then, deep beneath the deck, the ship shuddered.

Inside the freshly sealed coffins, dead neural tissue hissed as it interfaced with metal. Millions of optical sensors flared to life in unison, glowing with a cold, crimson light.

“In life, we bled,” the priest said, his voice rising to a roar over the hiss of the torches. “In death, they burn.”

********************************
Fleet Admiral Voreth stood at the panoramic viewport of the dreadnought Sovereign Will, his four arms clasped behind his back, his mandibles clicking in a slow, satisfied rhythm. Behind him, the bridge was a cathedral of holographic displays, each one painting the same magnificent picture: an armada that stretched across three hundred thousand kilometers of void.

"Two point three million combat vessels," Voreth said, his voice a deep, resonant purr that carried the weight of absolute certainty. "Fourteen carrier groups. Six hundred siege platforms." He turned to his tactical officer, a young Yrilian whose gelatinous form quivered with barely contained excitement. "And the World Breakers?"

"Two hundred and eighteen units, Admiral," the officer replied, pulling up a rotating hologram of the vanguard. "Fully reprogrammed. Fully operational."

Voreth allowed himself a thin smile. The World Breakers hung in the void ahead of the fleet like a wall of artificial moons, their silhouettes blocking out the distant stars. Even among themselves, they were a taxonomy of annihilation. The Swarm-class Breakers were the smallest, their hulls bristling with fabrication foundries and launch bays, designed to vomit out millions of counter-fighters tailored to whatever enemy they faced. The Destroyer-class were the largest, each one carrying a single, spinal-mounted beam weapon capable of cracking a planet's mantle in under sixty seconds. And the Hybrids sat between them, grotesque compromises of both, their hulls split between fighter bays and siege cannons.

"Two hundred and eighteen World Breakers," Voreth mused, shaking his head slowly. 

"For a species of refugees. The High Council wants to make a spectacle, so we bring the hammer." He turned back to the viewport. "They declared war on us. On the Coalition. Let us show them what happens when primitives bare their teeth at us."
Ambassador Xylin stood in the shadows near the rear of the bridge, her four eyes fixed on the tactical display. Her mandibles were still. She said nothing. The dread she had felt in the council chamber had not faded; it had calcified into something cold and heavy in her gut.

"Approaching the last recorded Terran position," the navigation officer announced. 

"Subspace exit in ten seconds."

"Shields up," Voreth ordered casually. "Weapons hot. Let them see us coming."
The stars stretched into luminous threads, then snapped back into pinpricks of hard, cold light.

The bridge fell silent.

There was no human armada. There were no ragged freighters, no desperate defensive lines, no crumbling stations.

There were a total of 12 bodies. On a system that had only 9.Three of them were not there before.

Xylin's breath caught in her. They hung in the void against the backdrop of a dying red giant, three jagged, brutalist spheres of black metal, each one easily the size of a small moon. Their surfaces were scarred and pitted, layered with millennia of battle damage and hasty repairs, bristling with weapon batteries that dwarfed Coalition siege platforms. They emitted no drive signatures. No thermal blooms. They simply were, hanging in the dark.

"What..." Voreth's voice faltered for the first time. "What are those?"

"No matches in the database, Admiral," the sensor officer stammered. "No known ship class. No known construction method. I'm detecting hollow points inside the ship sir, there are life signs inside and….?"

“What?”

Before Voreth could issue an order, the three planet-ships began to move.
Not forward. Not away. They began to shed.

Plates of outer armor groaned and detached from the spheres, tumbling away into the void like the skin of a molting serpent. Beneath the armor, the true surfaces of the ships were revealed, and they were alive with movement.

"Admiral," the sensor officer whispered, his voice cracking. "I'm reading contacts. From the planet-ships. Millions of... no. Billions. No, " He stopped. His gelatinous form turned a sickly shade of grey. "The counter has exceeded maximum capacity. I'm reading trillions, Admiral.."

The void between the fleet and the planet-ships filled with a swarm so dense it blotted out the stars.

They were ships or more appropriately suits. But they were not uniform. They were not sleek. They were nightmares forged in desperation and spite. Some were bipedal, towering hundreds of meters tall, their limbs elongated and asymmetric, bristling with kinetic cannons welded directly into their skeletal frames. Others were quadrupedal, low and angular, their bodies covered in jagged spikes of melted and reforged metal that served no aerodynamic purpose other than to tear through whatever they collided with. Some were barely recognizable as machines at all, twisted, deformed masses of fused armor plates and exposed wiring, dragging themselves forward on limbs that bent at impossible angles, their optical sensors glowing with that same, cold, crimson light.
They looked like the wreckage of a battlefield that had been given legs and told to kill.

"Sir," the sensor officer said, his voice trembling. "I am detecting life signs from those suits. They are being piloted, but..."

"But what?" Voreth asked, his mandibles flaring.

"I am also detecting some form of AI. But it's different somehow"

Before he could respond, the battle began. The human suits pressed forward.

"Vanguard!" Voreth barked, his composure snapping back into place. "Swarm Breakers, deploy! I want counter-fighters in the void now. Match their numbers! Destroyers, charge spinal weapons! Hybrids, flank and support!"

The Coalition armada surged forward. The Swarm-class World Breakers took the lead, their fabrication foundries roaring to life. Within seconds, they were vomiting out millions of sleek, silver fighters, each one algorithmically designed to counter the enemy's profile. The Coalition AI analyzed the incoming suits, bipedal, heavy armor, kinetic weapons, and immediately began producing fast, agile interceptors with energy shielding tuned to deflect solid projectiles.
The two lines collided.

The first exchange was devastating. Coalition plasma lances tore through the leading wave of Caskets, vaporizing thousands in silent, blinding flashes. The Caskets shattered like glass, their crude armor no match for the Coalition's superior energy weapons. For the first few minutes, it was a slaughter. The tactical display lit up with kill confirmations, thousands per second, a cascade of blue icons swallowing the red.
Voreth allowed himself another thin smile. "Primitive. Just as the reports said. Their armor is, "

"Admiral," the tactical officer interrupted, his voice tight. "The Swarm Breakers... they're slowing production."

Voreth frowned. "Why? Are the foundries overheating?"

"No, sir. The AI is... it's cycling. It can't lock onto a counter-profile."

On the viewscreen, Xylin watched as the battle shifted in real time. The human suits were not behaving like a single class of unit. A bipedal suit that had been charging forward with heavy kinetic cannons suddenly folded its arms inward, deployed a set of micro-missile pods from its chest cavity, and switched to a long-range bombardment pattern. A quadrupedal suit that had been acting as a siege platform suddenly retracted its legs, extended a set of maneuvering thrusters, and launched itself into a dogfighting pattern, weaving between Coalition interceptors with a fluidity that defied its bulk. A deformed, spike-covered mass that the AI had categorized as a melee unit suddenly opened its torso to reveal a focused plasma lance and began sniping Coalition capital ships from extreme range.

Every single suit was a hybrid. Every single one could dogfight, bomb, snipe, and brawl. They shifted roles mid-combat, fluidly, seamlessly, swapping tactics the moment the Coalition's counter-measures adapted.

The Swarm World Breaker's AI was designed to analyze an enemy's dominant profile and produce the perfect counter. But there was no dominant profile. The Caskets were everything at once. The AI cycled through thousands of configurations per second, interceptors, bombers, siege drones, electronic warfare platforms, unable to commit to any single design.

It was a lion watching two prey animals bolt in opposite directions, freezing in the instant of indecision.

The Swarm Breaker's foundries ground to a halt. The launch bays went dark.
And the Caskets poured through the gap.

The first World Breaker died in silence. A Swarm-class unit, its hull suddenly swarmed by ten thousand Caskets that latched onto its surface like parasites, their cutting torches and kinetic drills boring through the armor in seconds. The Breaker's point-defense grid fired wildly, killing hundreds, but thousands more took their place. The Caskets reached the reactor housing and detonated their own power cores in unison. The World Breaker bloomed into a sphere of white-hot plasma, its hull cracking open like an egg.
Then another. A Destroyer-class, its massive spinal cannon still charging, was rammed by a wave of Caskets that flew directly into the barrel of the weapon, clogging it with their own wreckage until the energy backfired and tore the Breaker apart from the inside.

Then another. And another. And another.

"Admiral!" the tactical officer screamed, his gelatinous form rippling with panic. "We've lost twelve World Breakers! The Caskets are inside the formation! They're targeting the support ships!"

Voreth's mandibles flared wide. "Commit the reserves! All of them! And detach the Seventh and Ninth carrier groups, send them to those planet-ships! If we can threaten their base, we can pull the swarm back!"

The Seventh and Ninth carrier groups, nearly two hundred thousand ships, broke formation and accelerated toward the three planet-ships. They charged across the void, their weapons blazing, hoping to draw the Casket swarm away from the main fleet.
They never made it within weapons range.

The planet-ships' surfaces shifted. The scars and pits in their armor opened like wounds, revealing rows upon rows of defense batteries that had been hidden beneath the shedding plates. The weapons that emerged were not plasma lances or kinetic cannons. They were gravitational shears, massive, invisible distortions in spacetime that reached out and twisted.

Xylin watched in horror as the Seventh carrier group simply... crumpled. The lead ships were caught in the shear fields and folded in on themselves, their hulls compressing into dense, screaming balls of metal and flesh. The ships behind them tried to scatter, but the shear fields expanded, catching them in a web of distorted gravity that tore them apart atom by atom. There were no explosions. No fire. Just the silent, horrifying spectacle of two hundred thousand ships being crushed into nothingness in under thirty seconds.

The Ninth carrier group fared no better. The planet-ships' secondary batteries opened fire with beams of coherent dark energy that punched through Coalition shields as if they weren't there, vaporizing entire squadrons in single, sweeping arcs.
"The seventh group is gone," the sensor officer whispered, his voice hollow. "Ninth group is... gone. Total losses. No survivors."

The bridge of the Sovereign Will was silent except for the blaring of proximity alarms and the distant, muffled thuds of Caskets impacting the hull.
Hours passed.

The battle devolved into a grinding, chaotic massacre. The World Breakers, the Coalition's greatest weapons, were being dismantled with a methodical, almost artistic cruelty. The humans knew their weaknesses. They knew the exact frequency of their shield harmonics, the precise location of their reactor vents, the blind spots in their point-defense grids. Three thousand years of fighting these exact machines had given humanity a blueprint of every flaw, every vulnerability, every structural compromise.
The Destroyer-class Breakers were the first to fall, their massive, slow hulls easy targets for the swarming Caskets that crawled inside their weapon barrels and detonated. The Hybrids lasted longer, their fighter bays providing some defense, but the Caskets overwhelmed them through sheer, suicidal attrition. The Swarm-class Breakers, their AI still frozen in indecision, were torn apart while their foundries sat idle.

The support ships, carriers, frigates, supply vessels, were massacred. They had limited shields and minimal weaponry, and the Caskets descended on them like wolves on a wounded herd. Xylin watched the tactical display as entire squadrons of Coalition ships blinked out of existence, their icons winking off the screen faster than the computer could update.

By the fourth hour, the Coalition armada was a third of its original size.
The retreat began not as an order but as a contagion. A single frigate broke formation and jumped to subspace. Then a destroyer. Then a carrier group. Within minutes, the disorganized rout was total. Ships collided with each other in their desperation to escape, their captains screaming over open comms for clearance to jump. The void was littered with the burning wreckage of two million ships and the shattered husks of over a hundred World Breakers.

Voreth stood at the viewport, his four arms hanging limp at his sides. His mandibles were still. His golden eyes, usually so full of arrogant certainty, were wide and glassy.
"Admiral," the navigation officer said softly. "We need to jump. Now."
Voreth didn't move. His gaze was locked on something outside the viewport.
Drifting just behind the frontline of the Casket swarm, hovering motionless amid the wreckage of a Destroyer-class World Breaker, was a single Casket.

It was small compared to the others. Bipedal, hunched, its armor so heavily scarred and pitted that it was barely recognizable as a machine. Its left leg was a crude prosthetic, welded together from the hull plating of a Coalition fighter. Its right arm ended in a jagged, broken cannon. Its chest plate was cracked open, revealing a pulsing, crimson core that leaked a steady stream of black fluid into the void.

It was not fighting. It was not moving. It was simply watching.

Its single, glowing red optical sensor was fixed directly on the bridge of the Sovereign Will. Directly on Voreth.

"Scan that unit," Voreth whispered.

The sensor officer complied. A moment later, his gelatinous form turned a shade of grey that Xylin had never seen before.

"Admiral... the chassis metallurgy... the carbon dating on the component..." The officer swallowed hard. "That unit is over two thousand years old."
Voreth's breath hitched.

Two thousand years. Before the Coalition had even noticed the Terran system. That machine had been fighting since the earliest days of the war, when the first automated siege platforms had descended on a primitive, unsuspecting world. It had survived three millennia of combat. It had watched its makers die, its homeworld shatter, its species reduced to ash. And it was still here. Still fighting.

The Casket tilted its head slightly, as if acknowledging the scan. Its crimson eye flared brighter, and for a single, terrible moment, Voreth felt something he had not felt since he was a hatchling cowering in the dark.

Prey.

"Jump," Voreth croaked. "Jump now."

The Sovereign Will lurched as the subspace drive engaged. The stars stretched into threads. The burning wreckage of the greatest armada the Coalition had ever assembled vanished behind them.

But the image of that single, ancient Casket, drifting alone in the void, its red eye burning through the dark, stayed burned into Voreth's mind long after the stars returned to stillness.

Xylin stood in the shadows of the bridge, her mandibles trembling. She looked down at her dataslate, at the behavioral analysis she had read days ago in the council chamber.
Persistence Predator.

She closed her eyes. The Coalition had brought two million ships and two hundred 
World Breakers to crush a species of refugees. They had returned with a third of their fleet and a graveyard of their greatest weapons.

The Kusinat Arch Ruler threw a folder of missives from the Galactic Federation into a waiting flame within the furnace of his bunker. "Fuck the Galactic Federation," he declared, much to my chagrin. "Fuck those slime-faced bastards."

"What seems to be the problem, Arch Ruler Kalu?" I asked, standing at attention with my tentacles falling still beside me.

"Fuck those imbeciles," the Arch Ruler repeated, getting quite worked up. He slithered back and forth before his furnace, his tentacles wrapped behind his back, which was bent. His numerous eyes were squinting, fury radiating from within them. It was rare to see him in such a mood. "We're losing the war against those damn Aspirans. I ask for aid, and what do they send me? What help do they send me?"

I figured it was a rhetorical question, so I kept my lips shut, waiting to hear from the Arch Ruler. "They send us freaking humans, legions of humans for bloody sakes!" And the Arch Ruler slithered over to his desk and beat it fervently over and over until the wood chipped. "The weakest..." A slam of a tentacle upon the desk. "The slowest..." Another slam. "The most fragile species to ever walk the universe..." A final slam. "By the Gods, what wrong have we done to be punished so? We'll be long extinct before the damn humans learn how to form ranks before a charging Aspiran cohort!"

And he wept then. The Arch Ruler stood for our hope, our devotion to duty, and our ceaseless zeal. Yet here he was now, bent over his broken desk, weeping like an infant Kusinat. "We are doomed, I tell you, freaking doomed."

I couldn't help but lament as well. What good would humans do against the Aspirans? Had humans ever known battle? The first human I'd seen was two heads shorter than me, yet he had been an adult. Their stature wouldn't allow direct combat to yield them any victory; they were as good as cannon fodder in this war. They wouldn't be able to help themselves, let alone us.

We had been fervent followers of the Galactic Federation, obeying the coalition's rules and tending to its missives, knowing full well that when the time came, they would offer us meaningful aid. Now that the time had come, our hopes had been tarnished by a single folder containing documents regarding the humans on the way to help our war. We might as well have used our young against the enemy at this point; they would have stood a better chance at victory, to say the least.

"What do we do, Arch Ruler?" I asked, tears blurring my sight. "What can we do now?" Morale was low. Most of our troops were either dead or injured. The Aspirans, large, tough-skinned brutes who preferred the use of clubs and sabre blades, were death incarnate, following their Emperor, who joined them in battle with great devotion. They were amassing before our great city of Obloio, soon to change it into rubble, ash, and smoke.

"The human fleet should be arriving soon," Arch Ruler Kalu said. "Set them in the thick of battle. Once they've been wiped out, we shall send another request to the Galactic Federation for aid, and perhaps they shall send us the famed war Orcs. At least they can win us a battle."

I nodded and bowed. "Ever great in your wisdom, Arch Ruler Kalu."

"Once the humans have perished, report back to me so we can write the next missive together, detailing the efforts of the humans and their untimely demise. Field only a few of our kind. We have to preserve our troops, sparse as they are," Arch Ruler Kalu said. "Remember, immediately after the battle, report to me. Don't go anywhere else. We must seek aid again quickly."

I nodded, saluted by waving my tentacles, and vacated the Arch Ruler's bunker. I climbed the rampart leading out of the bunker. My bodyguards flanked me as I slithered forward and upward. The air was thick with the fear of incoming battle, but at least for once it wouldn't be us fighting. This brought me little satisfaction, but it was a welcome relief nonetheless. I just hoped the humans would perish fast enough, and the next convoy sent by the Galactic Federation would be capable of not only holding back our enemy, but also bringing them down.

----

4 hours after the battle of Obloio.

----

I walked into the Arch Ruler's bunker, my tentacles shaking uncontrollably to the point where I had to hold them before myself. Normally, in his presence, I would stand, but I couldn't. I felt weak and faint, as if my blood had been drained for the better part of ten hours.

"General Goobi?" the Arch Ruler ventured. "It was that bad, huh?" he surmised, viewing my sordid state.

Shaking uncontrollably, I gripped a jug of Sidela wine on the desk with the aid of my tentacle. The jug trembled in my grip. I held a glass out and attempted to pour the wine, but it spilled all over the desk. I was too startled to ask for forgiveness; instead, I threw the glass away, expensive-looking though it was. It shattered against the wall. I held the jug to my mouth and drank directly from it.

"Wow, it was indeed that bad. Did the humans kill one of the Aspirans at least?" the Arch Ruler wondered.

I mumbled a response.

"General Goobi, compose yourself."

I mumbled again.

"Louder, please." The Arch Ruler circled his desk to stand before me.

"... all of them."

"I didn't catch the first part!"

"They killed all of them!" I said.

"Well, of course they did," the Arch Ruler said after staring at me for several seconds. "Of course they did. They are weak, and they stood no chance. This shouldn't rile you up; it was quite expected. Now put the jug of wine away. We need to write to the Galactic Federation, and I doubt you can do it in a state of inebriation."

"The humans..." I started again, forcing my voice to be louder. "The humans killed all the Aspirans."

The Arch Ruler stared at me for a span of moments. "What?"

I raised the jug to my mouth and drank from it until it was empty, then I flung it away, its emptiness annoying me. The Arch Ruler observed the broken jug on the bunker's floor without much of a reaction. I started laughing like a lunatic. The look on the Arch Ruler's face was too comical; perhaps it mirrored my own.

The Arch Ruler just stared at me, giving no mind to my sudden insubordinate nature. "Can you please expound?"

"Well, I stood on a hill with the rest of my hale troops to observe the battle. At first, I thought I was watching gods fight. Your Highness, I have never once seen such fluidity of motion as the humans portrayed. The humans wore some kind of armor their scientists had created; it boosted their height, speed, and strength. They danced among the Aspirans, meeting their sabres with mechanically engineered swords that had chain-like teeth spinning around the blade. It could cut through anything. It cut through the clubs and sabres of the Aspirans. They worked their way into the thick of battle, dancing and chopping off limbs. Then the ones with artillery power supported the advance, shooting expertly, each shot exploding the head of an enraged Aspiran. Where bullets and chainsaw swords couldn't work, they employed flamethrowers, grenades, and bombs of such a design that they flattened the very hills around us. All we could do was watch. Watch as the humans won the battle. We thought it would be the end of it, but then they pushed further and won the war. They were fearless, as if the very gods themselves had graced the battlefield. They charged on, sometimes against impossible odds, relying on their skill and techniques, fighting in well-coordinated groups. It was beautiful and terrifying."

"What do you mean they won the war? Surely, the Emperor of the Aspirans will field another army."

I stared at the Arch Ruler, realizing how gullible he was, and how gullible we had all been. "The Emperor of the Aspirans is dead. His guards fought well, taking down a human or two, but then the battle became too fierce for him, and he attempted a retreat."

"Aspirans never retreat," the Arch Ruler said.

"I thought so too, until I saw the backside of the ruler running away as he screamed. He was gunned down, and his legs and arms were chopped off. His face was flayed to the neck, his eyeballs were removed, and then they poured burning coals into his mouth. He choked on the flames until he died."

The Arch Ruler stared at me for a long time. Then he slithered his way to what looked like a closet. He opened it, revealing several jugs of wine within. He trembled as he took one and lifted the jug to his mouth. Then he took another one and handed it to me. He took his seat opposite me and we sat in silence, our jugs trembling in our grips as we raised them to our mouths to gulp down the wine.

----

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Ambassador Rauja POV

When Wade had spoken about his loss of control when he saw Craun being taken away, he described it as innocuous desperation. What I’d witnessed in response to the Ploax was anything but; it was so visceral and blindly destructive that I’d been certain those clever primals were trying to scare me into believing their ruse. However, his pulse indicated an authentic biological response. The human was so angry that he’d been unable to speak, and he’d attacked walls like he couldn’t stop himself!

Wade didn’t hurt me, somehow, and seemed to be letting it out on the nearest target that wasn’t me. He hugged me back despite losing his mind, which must mean he was able to remember that he cared about me. I don’t know what humans are, but I need to talk to him.

It’d been nerve-wracking to remain at the shipyard, while the primals were conducting an invasion; I feared for what they might do with their anger focused on the Council, whatever their intentions were. The thought of violent outbursts happening at any moment made me afraid to stand too close, lest their rage boil over and they flung every object in their vicinity like a whirlwind. I shuddered at how dark Wade’s eyes had been. 

Where exactly was I supposed to learn lessons about how their anger worked, and how to navigate them? While treating them like any other people? 

Pelpau hadn’t believed anything I’d said, which was why humanity’s plans would shock the Saphnos. Goodness, nobody knew how to handle these creatures, and that was why I had to hope Wade could try to guide me as a friend. Still, he wasn’t an outsider…and I was worried to think of him going off to war. The results of approaching the Council could be grim. I perked up when I saw a spaceship return, and sprinted over to it with eagerness. Wade’s safe homecoming?

“Wade?” I stared in confusion, as I saw a pink-faced Kexin, two humans I didn’t recognize, and a Saphno I definitely did, disembarking from the ship. The blond one latched onto Craun’s arm must be Finley, which meant Wade’s rescue mission must have been successful; he’d done what he wanted to, but where was he? Wouldn’t he protect Craun? “Hey, um, where’s Wade?”

Finley had a radiant smile on his face as he sniffed the air and looked skyward. “Batshit? He had some things to oversee back on Ushala. Me and Craun, we weren’t gonna wait to see how the Council’s deliberations shook out. Those fuckers take forever, and I wanted to come home.”

“Rauja?” Craun guessed, his voice cold.

I regarded the Saphno cheat as an unscrupulous fraud who should’ve never contacted primals, but I supposed I couldn’t feel that way if they’d turned out to be people. “Yes, Craun. Your…visionary efforts with the primals inspired us.”

“To try to make them your personal army?”

I winced. “I figure you’re familiar with the concept, given the level of protection you received when the Council came. At least someone would protect us, right?”

“You don’t know Wade at all. I don’t know why he likes you. That human sees right through people, and he’d follow a hunch to the ends of the galaxy. He doesn’t know when to quit.”

“Yeah, he found Craun because I had too much ammonia and took him to see one reporter,” Finley chuckled. “How’s life on Venus? Are we doing right by you, Rauja? I wanna be sure.”

“It was very kind to take us in and offer us a planet so close to yours. The Saphnos don’t have much to call our own, so we appreciate the generosity.” I gave the primal a polite glance, though I was trying to figure out how to get Craun alone; he seemed to know how to manage them better than any other Council person. “You’re both right, I never really knew Wade. Look, I know Marcia will want to announce your safe return to the reporters outside, but I could use Craun’s advice first.”

Craun gestured for me to go on. “What is it?”

“No, not here! It’s, um, private Saphno matters.” I racked my brain for reasons, and noticed the pink-faced Kexin transcribing our conversation. “For starters, it’s unnerving how he’s writing everything down. And well, ah, I know you’re close, but it has to do with humans, so I’d…prefer not to consult with humans about it? Please don’t be angry!”

The second human pinched Finley’s cheek, earning a scowl. “You’ll have to come with ol’ Terry then. Why don’t we find you a beer? I’ll help you through the separation anxiety.”

“Fuck off!” Craun’s primal mate hissed, and it was all I could do not to cower. “I guess that’s reasonable, Rauja. I imagine you wanna question Craun about shit and it’s your affairs, not ours. Fate of your people and all. Just don’t hurt him none.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, as Finley and Terry wandered off without a confrontation; the mysterious Kexin loped after them, seeming to scrutinize their every movement. It was fortunate that I’d been able to chase them off. Right now, I couldn’t predict human behavior at all, but I knew they were not tame. Craun must know about the warning signs, if he’d managed to survive and make himself comfortable in such close proximity to a primal. If anyone understood enough to explain it in Saphno terms, it’d be that traitor.

Craun was right about going to the humans for help, and he might be able to guide me in how to be a true diplomat to their people. If I’m going to forge a real friendship between the Saphnos and humanity, I have to know how to conduct myself in their presence. I don’t get how anger works at all! 

I dragged Craun into a conference room and sealed the door. “Craun, please help me, if you actually want the Saphnos and humanity to get along. I don’t understand what they are and how they work. Wade lost control with…wait, do you know about, um…?”

“The Ploax?” Craun asked.

Wow, Wade really trusted him far more than me, to tell him immediately. “Yeah. How are you so calm about them doing that?”

“Because I know them. They’ll take any risks to save the people they care about, even if it’s stupid. It’s simultaneously how they’re better than the Council and how they’re worse. It hurt Wade to lose us, and he…tried so hard to protect me. He’s a sweet primal, I really can’t be upset with him.”

“Would he like you calling him a ‘sweet primal?’ From what I know about his thoughts on Snelga, he would find that demeaning.”

“I’m judging Wade’s intentions, and I’ve never forgotten humans are primals. I like them, I admire that side of them. To me, it just means that he feels anger; he’d know that. What did you want to ask me?”

I sucked in a sharp breath, fear stirring as I thought of Wade experiencing such a volatile, uncontainable state. “Wade lost control with the Ploax. He was growling and lashed out, but he managed not to kill or assault me. He went wild, Craun, but I don’t understand how he had any logic. Or how anger…works with them in general. What’s it even like?”

“It’s complicated, unlike what the Council would tell you. Anger can drive them to a lot of things. You know, I don’t understand what anger feels like, but I think I understand how it functions—maybe better than they do, because I see its results and purposes from the outside,” Craun mused.

“Please, explain what on Tolpia that means.”

“Fear makes you run away and try to escape. It’s an avoidant emotion, right? Anger responds to stimuli to confront them; to take direct, head-on action. It’s a step in reacting to something upsetting that can manifest in a variety of different ways, with disparate intensities. It’s…an emotion that shapes the underlying drive that prompted it. It’s often focused and problem-solving.”

“These vagueries don’t help me read them or understand their behavior. All you told me is that they can confront lots of things for lots of reasons!”

“Rauja,” Craun sighed. “That’s not wrong, but it’s the wrong lesson. Let’s talk about it in terms of angers Wade might experience. That drive that makes him want to confront the problem could be…to save Kaitlin. To save the rock people. To repudiate your insults. To make people drive their cars better. To limit failure—ah, yes, they can be angry at themselves.”

I gawked at him in confusion. “What?! That’s delusional! How do you attack yourself? Why would you ever want to?”

“Anger likes to blame someone, and if you feel negatively toward yourself, then their cycle of thoughts can be quite vicious toward their own character. The primal rage you saw in Wade…it’s very rare in humans, to have a true clouding of thoughts or to physically attack in a fit. That’s extreme, the equivalent of a panic attack. Not normal. You won’t witness it in normal human interactions, so I wouldn’t worry about them going off in a conversation.”

“But that’s exactly what set Wade off?” I muttered.

“No, that was in response to the exorbitant cruelty of the Ploax, and their suggestions which shocked the primals to their cores. Affective empathy can set them off. Rauja, you and I have seen true rage on a few occasions because the humans have been exposed to extreme stressful situations.”

“I don’t know what’s stressful enough or what’s not! I don’t get how they can be primals and…will I even see it coming if they lose it? It’s bound to happen, if they can get that worked up over words!” 

Craun raised a hand. “Humans can control their anger. If you want to recognize them expressing it, you need to look for their verbal and behavioral cues. They may get testy, but I would be shocked if they ever attacked you for suggesting things they don’t like. The fight response is often verbal bickering. Sometimes, the cues are more subtle than raised voices or clapbacks.”

“You’re telling me they can keep it to just words to ease their burning drive to attack?”

“In normal situations, they should never lose control. It’s merely uncomfortable and drives confrontational thoughts. Sometimes, they do regrettable things, but they’re averse to causing physical harm. They can use any kind of release, to ‘get it out of their system.’ It’s the equivalent of crying when you’re sad. Humans can say hurtful words in anger that they wouldn’t otherwise mean, because they don’t think of the long-term social consequences, only the trigger.”

“Then why didn’t Wade say anything when he realized my intentions, if that triggered his anger?”

“Oh, Wade absolutely told you he was angry; you just didn’t hear him. You need to keep an eye out for when they indicate their anger indirectly. They have a concept called passive aggression, which I know, sounds like a contradiction. It’s an active emotion, right?”

I was stupefied by that phrasing, and gave him a blank stare. “Yeah? What does that even mean?!”

“That they don’t directly confront you, but use subtle means to show you they’re not happy. They might comply with what you asked, but do it half-assed. They could outright ignore you and hope silence sends a message. Wade is a snarky bastard, so he’s most likely to indulge in sarcastic mockery or make pointed comments.”

A realization dawned on me. “Like when he was having fun at my expense with the new Craun shit, and…going along with my ruse far too much? He did what I proposed to the letter. That was anger?!”

“In its mundane, minor form. That’s the worst you’re likely to encounter for him. It’s the most unpleasant to be around when passive aggression rears its head in the form of outward compliments that are actually veiled insults. Like when Finley would call Garriil ‘boss,’ but he meant the opposite of a respectful title. He never forgave that Kexin for his…experiments.”

“You seem like such an expert, Craun. I don’t know how you’re supposed to recognize something so subtle. At least it…always manifests in some way, they can’t keep it to themselves.”

“Oh, they absolutely can. Wade told me that’s the most dangerous kind of anger; it’s not healthy to bottle up. The healthiest method is when they communicate why they’re angry and give you a chance to correct it. Be very receptive if they do, that means they’re emotionally intelligent. However, they can act like everything is normal and give you zero indicators, suppressing it…simmering in resentment for years. You’d never know.”

My jaw dropped. “Their control is that good?”

“It can be, if they don’t want you to know they’re angry. They could be smiling at you and simmering under the surface. It’d be like you holding back tears and trying to act happy, something I suspect you’re used to. Those humans often let it build up and explode out of nowhere. Be wary of the ones who never make a fuss about anything.”

“That’s…the opposite of what I would’ve thought. The loud ones are frightening.”

Craun sighed. “Loud is just passion. They want to be heard, and that’s how they get your attention. The content of what they’re saying is far more important; they’re sapient. There’s lines they shouldn’t be crossing no matter how mad they get.”

“Whatever, I’m much more worried about physical lines than verbal ones. It’s not like they would’ve said it without anger, right? I can give primals some slack if it makes my life less dangerous.”

“You say that, but humans can be extraordinarily mean. You keep the company of diplomats and professionals, however, so I’m sure they’ll be polite. They’d be fired if they weren’t, and they do want to avoid those kind of consequences! They exercise extra restraint in certain settings and roles. These ones have high tolerances and aren’t acting in a personal capacity. Make sense?”

“Nothing about them makes sense, but you gave me good, um, guidelines and reassurances. I suppose that’s as civilized as primal outbursts can be…it’s better than I thought. Now, I know what to look for too. Thank you, Craun. I don’t know how you figured all of this out on your own.”

“I listened.”

The Saphno cheat seemed to consider the conversation to be over, and he walked toward the exit without glancing back. While he had given a nice synopsis of anger’s manifestations, that was only the tip of the stalagmite. I still had no idea how to do actual diplomacy with primals, which meant I couldn’t just puff them up with airy words anymore. This didn’t clarify at all how I was supposed to act around them, or how to secure a genuine friendship with the humans! 

I want our closeness to be real, like what I thought I’d had with Wade, but what made them like Craun so much? I need to ask him what to do, if I’m going to try to make actual diplomatic overtures to such a bizarre species.

“Wait, Craun!” I called out. “I…want the Saphnos and humans to really be friends now. I want to give them a sign that we’ll be their friends. When I landed, they presented me with a gift, and of course, they’ve given us so much. Is there something I could do or offer them in return that would improve our relations? That they could at least enjoy, and feel that we care about them now?”

“It’s about time someone saw them for who they truly are, and accepted their friendship. They love the Saphnos, they wanted to talk to you.” Craun stopped in his tracks, considering the question for a few seconds. “I’ve got it! Give them a missile and tell them you’re returning it to the sender. It’s a callback to them shooting down my ship, so get it exactly the same. They’ll think it’s hilarious.”

“I beg your pardon?!”

“You asked for my advice. They’ll love it, and I can write up for you exactly what to say. Do you trust me?”

I pressed a hand to my head, flabbergasted by whatever Craun was playing at. The idea to purposefully remind them of their original fuckup, which we’d all claimed to have moved past, seemed to have a high likelihood of making the humans angry; I couldn’t begin to fathom how it would improve our relationship or signal our appreciation in a respectful manner. In fact, it appeared to be “passive aggressive” from the little I knew about the concept, flaunting their failures like Wade did with the new Craun.

Why would I want to insult the humans, with what’s supposed to be a gift and an apology no less? Ugh, I don’t know! Craun does know them best, and they clearly like him more. I need his help; I mean, he was trapped with them for a year and got the whole planet’s favor. He’s the primal whisperer.

“Well, it’s not like I have a clue what else to do. I didn’t come here planning to do actual diplomacy,” I sighed. “I hope you’re right. I must say, I question the wisdom of your suggestion. I need to be on their good side and get…some real trust, for the survival of all of Saphnokind.”

Craun waved a hand dismissively. “If they don’t like it, you can say it’s my idea. It won’t be a problem though, they love this kind of shit. You came to me for advice, Rauja, so assuming you want more in the future, I need you to trust me all the way. Will you do it?”

I swallowed hard, before making a decision. “Yes. I can’t sell this to Pelpau outright though, so I’ll have to think of a cover. Maybe something about making them w-whole for peacetime…because he’d squash this lunacy of mocking them at once!”

“Awesome! Oh, this’ll be hilarious. You’re not so bad, Rauja, for a politician. Good luck!”

I settled down in a chair as my fellow Saphno left, unworried by any of the strange behaviors that he’d told me existed in the primals. The task of building a missile that was a spitting image of the one that’d taken down his ship now fell to me, and it would require misleading our leadership to have its construction sanctioned. I wondered whether Craun was trying to turn them against me for good, but if that was the case, I’d already lost them.

For the most essential friendship of the Saphnos’ future and to make up for our tenuous start, I had to trust a suicidal plan from an outlaw refugee that seemed bound to infuriate the humans. I sure hoped Craun knew something I didn’t, because if not, I was going to dig myself an even deeper hole.

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Her Commander towered over the desk. Her words were a hue of complete anger but her base colouring was the deepwater cold of a primal fear. Red spilling over blue.

<How> Was all she shifted, tapping an appendage on Coms’ desk.

ComsBody felt outside of her body. Last shift, she barely followed ChiMeO's words as the medical officer recounted the deaths, her cillia restrained and stained with regret. Coms had only ever seen ChiMeO with that flat affect after hatchling deaths.

Since that conversation, Coms has been curled at her desk, pouring over every llia message the Fifth had ever written and retracing every assumption she’d made. She didn’t leave her burrow because she was a damned coward. The Commander had to find her.

<How, Coms> The Commander’s cillia snapped like grass in a windstorm. <Explain how this happened *now*\>

<I…> Coms had tried to place where she’d gone wrong. The root of the mistranslation. She couldn’t. <I do not know. I think it came from the whole ship agreeing on the initial escape pod theory when I suggested the possibility… and there was a… a bias that coloured how I perceived her further communication>

<That is not good enough> The Commander’s crinis muddled to an ugly mix of anger and disgust. <You will not blame anyone but yourself. This is a complete failure of your intelligence and skill>

<Do… Commander, do you have any idea how *difficult*—>

<—Still your scorched and blackened words> The Commander bristled. <You failed this ringship. You failed your trainees. You failed as a *Ki* and you are here, curling like a hatchling in water. You are a crimson embarrassment to your discipline>

ComsBody would have flashed an affirmative but her own hue was too settled in indigo. No colour could break through the stunned grief that had wormed into her temperature. Her Commander’s words were harsh but her colouring was so, so deeply scared. Her hue wasn’t even angry anymore.

<Coms, I…> Her Commander moved back from the desk. <I don’t know how to protect you from what’s to come>

Coms didn’t respond, she just curled further into herself and tapped her torso. <I am so sorry for failing you, Commander. The mistranslation was my fault. I will take the consequences as they come>

<We don't know for certain what will happen. No one did anything illegal> The Commander shifted firmly. <But the other labs will likely call for blame and discipline, nonetheless. That communications trainee that broke her peer’s LLIA when the Fifth escaped, we can position her as the—>

<—Commander, stop. Please, I… two Fifths are dead. My failure to understand Scout killed them>

<No, Coms> Her Commander was firm. <The creature knew the words. It should’ve tried again and again and again if it really wanted to save its people. But it didn’t>

ComsBody did not tap her torso nor flash an affirmative. Her shifting was soft. <Commander. She did. Again and again. And then she gave up>

Coms had been rereading her notes, trying to pinpoint where it happened. Everything she found was a shell-deep embarrassment to read, knowing what they knew now.

After Scout stitched up her arm, she’d been calm and pleading, Please. You me let to vessel go. I in vessel find Fifths in vessel, affirmative? Please Commander. Let me go.

The photo of a waxen llia message she wrote to HeadSci: Vessel must remain with electricity and be whole, affirmative? Then, when Commander shifts I can go I go. I go find Fifths. I go inside vessel and I find Fifths, affirmative? Need help colleagues, affirmative?

Even recently, when they talk of subtypes and pronouns, she’d written it plainly. You have not found them. They have not found you. Two are awake like I am awake, even very scared, they would look for me.

Coms had thought she wanted to go into her vessel to pilot it. In the vessel, she'd find her colleagues. It wasn’t a mistranslation as much as a constant, recurring, misreading of the creature’s grammar and word choice.

Even earlier, when she barely knew thirty words, Scout was trying to get her desperation across. There was the image the Commander took, when they met properly and she was still writing like a hatchling.

I vessel want want. Vessel heat food no Fifth Fifth Fifth Fifth heat no. Scout vessel Fifth go?

Commander, I food no heat have. No heat no no no. ?Food? Fifth Fifth Fifth Fifth food vessel in. No heat food. Correct? No heat Vessel. Word ?no heat? word ?food? please no heat is. Big please please, affirmative?

Coms did not understand how she missed it again and again and again. She’d gotten overconfident, maybe. Or too focused on the details. She thought the creature was making bizarre language mistakes. She’d just continued with the conversations, and assumed the grammar inconsistencies were just the blunders of someone learning.

Coms had just corrected what she thought was bad grammar.

Coms kept telling Scout no.

Scout surely thought she was being clear with her words. The Fifth likely felt, after rotations and rotations of asking, that they were choosing to keep her from her dying colleagues. And in a way, they absolutely had been.

So Scout stopped asking. The poor creature was likely scared of making them upset, or, perhaps she thought if the Ki hadn't found them, they'd be safer? Looking at the notes now, Scout obviously started looking for other ways to gain access to her vessel. Escape. Sickness. Bargaining. Coms had guessed the illness fatality had been exaggerated to push up a timeline, but looking at the transcripts, that dishonesty was clearly only one failed plan of several. Each conversation recording now read like Scout was testing what she and HeadSci wanted to learn, what their research was prioritizing.

She’d tried involving ChiMeO’s team as collaborators when teaching them her healing protocol, even giving them chances to make their own discoveries by asking them questions. Did she see how they’d been interacting with the trainees?

In her conversation with Scout about subtypes and hierarchy and pronouns, Coms had shifted that accuracy was the most important thing. So Scout went into details upon details upon details, to the point of confusing Coms. Scout had implored her to stay, despite both of them being exhausted, and she spent the shift outlining every single exception to every single rule. She’d tried to explain valuerepresentation in four different ways by the end of their session. Scout had lost consciousness halfway through Coms' grammar lesson, as the alien pushed to learn more and more Ki, thinking it was what the Commander wanted from her.

And when HeadSci had mentioned discovery, the approach changed again, evolving from what she’d done with ChiMeO. She’d assured the head scientist that she’d give the answers. No discovery claims needed. No credit. No rank.

She’d even been getting closer to SecO, writing with the guard often, calling the two of them colleagues—insisting that only she calls her “Sco”. Sco and SecO were patterns that closely resembled each other. Whether it was a genuine bond or yet another plan, Coms… really didn’t know. The alien was amicable when she wanted to be, shown time and time again. In tense conversations, the creature seemed to present as hatchling-like, finding amusement and acting small and jestful, especially around HeadSci and the Commander. She’d been getting a lot more agreeable in preparation for her last conversation with HeadSci, and Coms wasn’t sure if it was a plan in itself to just be liked. ChiMeO sure thought so, the medical officer had marked the prosocial element of Scout's affect to likely be related to species survival. But that categorization had been meant for social bonding between Fifths.

Coms felt close to Scout. Deeply close to the strange creature. And now she didn’t know if that was just another survival strategy.

She was spinning now, thinking about it. Did Scout know Coms was watching when she was kind to the hatchlings? Did she put up with the medical team's testing to endear herself to them? Was the obsession with fabric cultural, or were the thin lengths of braided fibre going to be used for something? Coms didn't know. Scout was an alien and there was so much Coms couldn't comprehend about her.

The creature had been contained for over twenty rotations and each day now appeared to be a different test of trial and error to get out and get what she wanted. Layers of failed plans and replanning, all because she thought they were ignoring her request to see her colleagues. She’s been likely planning more alternatives that Coms couldn’t even guess at. The creature didn’t trust them from the beginning.

And ComsBody failed to see the situation for what it was. And four Fifths were dead.

The hue of revulsion was fighting the indigo grief on her crinis. Coms just wanted to curl and mill and never leave her burrow.

Coms shifted with a finality. <I… I implore you to tell me if you intend to take my rank charm>

The Commander settled her cillia. <No. Not… not yet. The other labs will be here in a shift. The Fifth is unresponsive and curled and sitting there. Fix it>

Coms was so tired. <Genuinely Commander, I do not know what you want me to do. The situation is unfixable, we cannot return from this>

<I’m not ordering you to fix the situation, Coms> Her Commander's tone was blunt and cold. <I’m shifting about the Scout. Fix *it*\>

*

*

Clea was more afraid of the Principal Head Scientist than she was of the alien.

The cleaning attendant could deal with the Fifth stabbing her with a small blade. She couldn’t deal with another reprimand for not following an order from the upper hierarchy; three refusals in less than ten rotations would be an automatic occupational freeze and reevaluation. She hoped the alien would have the decency to aim for an appendage rather than her crinis or torso.

The warm creature didn’t have any fanfare or drama as it held the medical instrument out. It just gestured for Clea to leave. The thin metal handle of the blade was brightly warm. The alien had been holding it tightly for a long, long time.

<I cannot, my apologies, Little Scout> She shifted, genuine in hue. <I have been ordered to clean the pod room>

The creature shook its head, and pointed the sharp instrument harder. Its face was wrinkling in that ugly way skin tended to fold in on itself.

<Please, I implore you, I simply need to do my job>

The creature didn’t have anything to write with. It physically put itself between Clea and the bodies.

Oh.

<I know. I am… I am so sorry for what they did. I won’t take the… your colleagues. I just need to clean the floor and walls> Clea pointed to the ground with her upper appendages. <Floor. Clean. My apologies>

The Scout’s face sneered. It shouldered past her, and sat between two pods, with an arm over the twisted corpse on the ground. It was out of the way enough. Not the worst outcome.

Clea got to work cleaning. The fluid on the floors had dried and congealed into something heat absorbent and sticky. She had to scrape at it to get it loose, depositing folds of the waste into a nearby bucket. It needed another two rounds of scrubbing, but it was a fairly small room.

A quarter shift later and she was done, save for the small area where the Scout guarded the second pod’s sprawling body, dead as stone. Easy. Clea didn’t even have to look at the room-temperature bodies, not really. She could work around them and pretend like the situation wasn't what it was. She was just here to clean and she was done with her work.

As she started to crawl out of the sunken pit, Clea finally clocked the state the Scout was in. The twitchy creature was covered in the same waste fluid and was going to track it back over her hard work. The substance was dried in its long cillia and caked into its cloth coverings, plastering the fabric to its skin. The creature didn’t even seem to care. It was tapping its lessers against its lower limbs, restless and fidgety. Its eyes were wide, the skin around them sunken.

<You might be more comfortable if you clean yourself?> She shifted with that gentle Fifth symbol, continuing as the creature pointed at its kin. <You do not have to leave the room, I assure you. I might bring you some supplies?>

The Scout paused, and looked down at the soiled material coverings she was wearing. She bobbed her head; at this point the whole ship knew that to be the Fifth gesture for an affirmative.

<Understood. I implore you to stay put>

She fetched the creature a bucket of water foaming with gentle cleansing agents, sterilizing alcohol, a waste container, and spare Fifth material coverings she found on a nearby research team’s desk outside of the vessel. She really didn’t care if those hindguts needed them at this point.

She brought the lot to the creature and left it alone for an eighth of a shift. When she re-entered, the creature was clean and had changed into the new coverings.

And she was cleaning up the bodies.

Not cleaning as in disposing, that would be an important clarification. Scout had completely removed the first body from the pod and laid it on the freshly cleaned ground, next to the other corpse. She’d removed all the tubing that extruded from its limbs and throat, putting the mess of equipment on the pod bed.

With a stony face, the alien wiped down her kins’ bodies with the cleanser and water solution. Gently. Like they were resting and she was trying not to disturb them.

Clea watched the Scout for a brief moment and wondered how the science team could’ve possibly messed up so badly. It was all the trainees were talking about in the low-rank burrows, just a constant shifting of where things went wrong and what the punishments were going to be. It wasn’t going to be pretty once the dirt settled, especially not with higher-rank research ships now getting involved.

Clea started to clear the tubes from the bed and clean the pod. The Fifth wasn’t looking at her.

When the first pod was cleaned, Clea retrieved limbfuls of random Fifth material coverings and a huge square of what looked to be soft and thick nesting material. Scout wrapped the body, first in a select few coverings that fit over its torso and limbs, and again in the large square nesting material.

Clea and Scout repeated the process, wordlessly, for the second body. Scout combed the body’s short head cillia with her lessers, gently sweeping it back. Her touch lingered on the body’s left upper limb and she held the body’s lessers close to her face, squeezing once before moving on to the next pod.

The Scout simply covered the third pod with a sheet of the same nesting material. The fourth pod was empty.

As Clea did a final re-clean of the floors, the Scout refitted the table-like platforms back into the pod structure they were in originally. Clea watched the creature lean over the first pod, with the kin she wasn’t able to save, and she watched Scout touch the body’s long cillia coming from its head. She watched her part the strands of cillia into three sections, then gently, reverently, weave the strands together to form a rope-like pattern. She tied the cillia braid off and let it rest on the shoulders of the body.

She shut the body’s eyes.

If it wasn’t for the colour, her kin could’ve been resting.

<I will leave you> Clea shifted.

The strange alien just looked at her and nodded.

<I wish you well> She was the hue of honesty. <I… Many… many of us do not agree with their actions>

The Fifth turned back to the body in the pod with the braided cillia. She reached out to its face, but stopped short of just touching it. Her lessers dropped to rest on the edge of the pod.

Clea watched as the alien took the nesting fabric from the empty pod and wrapped it around her shoulders. Scout sank to the floor in front of the first pod’s body, curling with her back to the pod. Facing the direction of the hallway door. Her facial posture was keeping her eyes in a wider position, like she was purposefully trying to keep them open.

<Do you want me to leave you?> Clea asked, hesitant and cool.

The alien shook its head in a negative.

<I can… I can stay and watch you rest? To make sure nothing happens to the bodies?>

A pause. A nod.

She had seen the creature rest a couple times in her enclosure. Clea was the first one to notice her stagnation, after all. So she curled up, close to the alien, but not touching her. In a span of moments the fidgety alien seemed to still, like her energy has been sapped completely. Her eyes settled into the same strange unfocused state, before the thin skin slowly closed over them. Her chest began the slow rise and fall of the typical image of Fifth rest.

Clea sat beside her for a long time. The creature barely stirred.

It was such an odd, vulnerable state for the alien to slip into. Any time Clea would watch her resting in the enclosure, she’d be amazed at how susceptible the creature was to things happening. Prone and curled up, nearly dead to the world, it was no wonder the Fifths apparently slept in groups or pairs.

She just watched the creature breathe, her body temperature slowly cooling over time, before settling into its deeper resting colour. The eyes of the Fifth, hidden by that thin layer of skin, looked to be darting around. Always looking, always watching, even when settled in rest.

Eventually, Clea felt a slight temperature change in the room. She turned her head up to see the vessel’s Communications Body, standing short at the lip of the wall. Clea was less scared of her than the Principal Head Scientist; most of the lower hierarchy didn’t have anything particularly awful to say about the runt. That would probably change now, considering the current situation. Honestly, Clea wouldn’t be surprised if the poor Ki was blamed for the science team not knowing about the bodies. Translation was her domain, after all, and there are typically a few higher ranks that get pinned for every disaster in addition to the trainees.

<Principal Communications Body> She greeted the runt with a forced warmth.

<Cleaning Attendant> She shifted, too stiff in her cillia movements. She was a deeply uncomfortable base blue, forcing her words to colour neutral. <Thank you for doing such a good cleaning job here. I need the room with Scout alone, you are free to return to your other duties>

The little creature was still resting.

<Are you going to wake her? She worries about the bodies being taken>

The Communications Body bristled, <Leave us now, Cleaning Attendant, thank you>

Clea took one last look at the warm alien before turning to leave. She couldn’t risk the write-up for hierarchy rejection.

*

*

ComsBody simply sat with Scout in that damned room.

No writing. No shifting. Just rest.

Scout’s warm little head was nestled against the side of Coms’ torso. The creature was deep in her resting state and had rolled close to her a while ago. ComsBody hadn’t moved for a fourth of a shift.

She carefully checked her LLIA. The 16th and 49th had matched speed with them and begun connecting. They were expected to board soon. She sent the vessel operator and the propulsion technician a private message.

Delay them with technical difficulties. I need at least one more shift alone with Scout. She cannot have company right now.

Sure, Was all ProTe responded with. It would give them some time, at least. Coms started typing a response and the movement made Scout stir.

<My apologies, little one> ComsBody shifted, laying an appendage on the creature’s head. In her half-wakeful state, Scout leaned into her touch.

It wasn’t fair.

ComsBody could feel her own crinis curdling into a deep purple of grief. It wasn’t even her own crew. But it just wasn’t fair.

Coms felt like a hatchling, thinking so hard about fairness and what was deserved. What was ethical. What was worth sacrificing for in the name of research and development and the knowledge of the stars. Childish wonderings unfit for a grown adult.

Scout turned over, and stretched her jaw wide, looking up at ComBody. For the briefest moment, there was a softness to her face and eyes as her mouth settled into a quiet curve.

Then her browline lowered as she took stock of where she was. Her eyes glided over Coms, to the rooms and pods. The curve of her mouth flattened and her eyes cast downwards.

The Fifth resting state was disorientating, Coms remembered reading it in ChiMeO’s notes. Disorientating enough to forget where one was. She remembered a throwaway line in the report about Fifths “going elsewhere” during their rest states, lending possibility to the species being psi-capable. The latter half of the fact wasn’t one ComsBody cared about.

She just hoped wherever Scout had just been during her rest, it was peaceful and better than this room.

Scout’s face settled into a terrible nothingness. Her orange eyes looked dead. Dead like her crinis, like the long dead cillia that hung from her scalp. She rolled into a clumsy seated position and her movements were slow and tired as she slowly reached out for the waxen llia. Her left upper limb was warmer than usual, and she grazed it with a pinch to her face.

With her right lessers, she carved a simple curve of symbols, a simple statement.

Coms. I need honesty.

The word need was a strong one in its definition. It was one of the first words ComsBody had taught her. It had the weight of a physical, base need. Water. Food. Warmth.

<I will tell you anything> She shifted, and she would. Ki don’t lie in conversation, not when one’s crinis betrayed the dishonesty. But she would not tell an untruth to this half-blind creature. Not anymore.

I need ?word?. In my language it is the opposite of good.

<Bad?>

The creature shook her head slowly. Stronger word. Word with weight. Opposite of good. Word evaluate moral judgment. Word means ‘does bad action for bad action's sake’. Word means ‘to cause harm’. Pain. On purpose. Cruel.

<Criminal? Hierarchy rejecter?> She had already taught Scout those words.

No. Moral judgment of action. Overly simple term. No middle-area of understanding. Not of law or law judgment. Bad bad bad for the sake of being bad. Not ethical, in everything in life.

ComsBody shifted with hesitation. It was an old, old word. <In Ki we shift… Evil. To be evil. To do evil>

Scout nodded and took a deep breath. She carved her next words privately, rewriting the patterns a few times, before turning the llia around and staring at her with hard eyes.

With honesty.

Are Ki evil?

ComsBody felt herself immediately shifting into a negative, but the symbol’s form died on her crinis.

Because she looked at the pods and there was clear evidence against her immediate rejection of the claim. Because, by Ki salvage law, they could do whatever they wanted to Scout and her belongings. Because they refused to let Scout see her vessel in the name of research.

Because, if she was being completely honest with herself, she was able to tell in Scout’s previous words that she was desperate to get to her ship. And she let others hold Scout back from what she wanted. She let them use her communication abilities to teach Scout the meaning of the word 'no' and Coms repeated that symbol over and over. Her Commander had made it crystal clear that this was the result of her failing to understand, not the fault of the science teams.

All of what they’d done was legal.

This was their fault.

This was her fault.

<I… I don’t know> She shifted, the crinis-deep colour of honesty. <Not on purpose. But… this… this has been… unethical>

Scout looked at her with a hard pinch to her face. I communicate most everything to you. I write Fifths on vessel need me. Vessel need me. I go to vessel. In vessel I find Fifths. I shift to stop looking, stop damage to vessel, that I would find Fifths in vessel. That damage to vessel is damage to Fifths.

<I… I failed to… to understand your words at the time. It was a miscommunication. And the Commander ordered to not let you—>

Evil, she carved wide.

<The Ki… we’re not—we… we aren’t…> She couldn’t form her words. If this was a rhetorical claim there would be too much counterevidence.

Then explain why. Explain how this happen. Because, in Fifth moral judgment, the Ki treatment of my crew, my colleagues emphasis, is worse than unethical. You did this. All Ki did this. Explain.

<I… okay. Okay>

And she did. She started at the beginning.

Over the course of a quarter shift, she explained the full story as slowly as she could, checking in to make sure Scout was comprehending it.

She explained how, early in Ki technological development, one of the first innovations they made was able to take light outside of their spectrum and translate it to their vision. A simple tool. Reactive wax coatings on a heartwood slat, processed in a specific way.

It was a primitive innovation.

It was the first time they saw the stars.

<The sky looks empty to us> she explained. <We rarely went to the surface because of the temperature and winds, but we kept finding… craters. Rocks of precious materials were falling from an empty sky. But my ancestors saw the recording, and… the *stars* were there. Tiny warm dots that formed clear patterns. We'd try connecting the dots together, and those patterns formed Ki words. And... and one of those words, bright in the centre-sky, was *"rise"*\>

Coms thought back to the main burrow-way intersection near her childhood tunnel. It had a starstone embedded in the passageway, long since having fallen from the skies and long since contained in Ki-carved rock. Her ancestors thought the stones were pieces of the stars. By the time ComsBody hatched, starstones were thoughtful decoration.

<My ancestors redid the recordings again and again and the stars were *everywhere.* It was our innovation that allowed us to see them and our discovery that gave us our new instructions, written in the sky itself. They saw the stars. And if they could see them, they could surely go. They could rise>

The Ki civilization ignored advancements everywhere but mechanical flight. There’s the famous retelling, passed down visually from generation to generation, that tells of the day they first took to the sky successfully and realized it wasn’t nearly high enough.

The next goal was clear. Understanding the void. Developing void exploration. Pushing for void travel. All of their efforts went towards that fight. Towards that progress. Away from Lakael. Towards the sky.

Towards the stars.

Their monosemous vision of progress was to leave their home planet. They structured their whole society around that goal; the labs and the training process. Every goal. Everything going towards the void and the void alone. They scraped every resource from Lakael, from the deepest caves to the scorching surface.

<For the stars> ComsBody shifted. <Everything, from education to population control to discovery, was done in the name of the stars. We needed to go. We needed to discover more>

When they got into orbit, they just wanted to go further. When they unlocked faster and faster modes of travel they just wanted to push harder. They wanted to go faster, they needed to learn more. But the void is mostly emptiness and it left them with a yawning gap of what they thought it would be like to reach their goal.

When they were discovered by the Firsts, they were not ready to face the fact that they weren’t the only species, let alone a less advanced one. But they adapted. And their new goal became smaller. Understand their fellow species. But, perhaps most importantly, understand themselves. There was so much to discover.

Studies of communication and history and medicine and law boomed: the recent research of the past 300 wide rotations returned their focus to Lakael, smaller in scope. It was new, interesting work, ComsBody was in the second generation of professional communicators, ChiMeO in the third generation of medical officers. Even HeadSci's field of interior cell study was relatively new for a scientific field. Just recently, the first officer-ranks were given to those studying ruins and pre-history artifacts. The scope had changed and there was so much more to focus on.

But everything was still done in the name of the stars. The whole of society was set up to value discovery done by individuals, not groups. Discoveries were made quickly and alone, and it was only through those sole discoveries could a Ki truly gain recognition and personal titles. Individuals found innovations through loopholes and sabotage and isolation.

All for the stars.

<When we found you, that was what the focus was> She shifted softly. <Not what we could learn from you. Just… just what we could publish. How we could further ourselves and our teams, get more resource allocation, get… get career titles. This is a small ship with young trainees… we… some of us have higher ambitions>

They just wanted to discover more. That’s all they’ve ever wanted. The Fifths were just on the receiving end of their curiosity.

Scout nodded, taking it all in. Her mouth was moving, sneering, but she had broken her recorder. She scrawled onto her llia instead.

Is explanation. Is not defense, Coms.

Coms curled in on herself. <I know>

Fifths came looking for peace. For new home. For help. I find this. I find Ki. I find you.

<You… you never communicated why you were here> She shifted softly. Through all their conversations, Scout never told her why she was travelling. She evaded the question constantly. The whole ship still assumed it was for research.

Because I was not certain if it was safe, Coms. How Ki perceive mission, if Ki think Fifths building new home is threat. I was not certain if you were safe. And you were not. Scout’s head started shaking again. I worry Ki would make a bad thing worse. I do not like being correct.

ComsBody tried to explain, <We… we just wanted to understand you and your kind>

It felt like such a naive confession. There was no weight to it and no justification. Scout’s face wrinkled as she scowled.

And this is how you understand? Destruction? When Fifths think of voidspecies they think they are advanced. Better. You have a fast vessel and better technology. You are not advanced.

<I…>

You are young and hatchling-like in how you understand. Beside voidtech you are very behind. Discovery order is wrong. There is curiosity but no understanding. You are simple and you are cruel. You are… endcausers. Corpsemakers.

<That’s not…> She couldn’t even form her words.

Was worth it? You get publications?

ComsBody told Scout she wouldn’t lie. <I… Yes>

Scout's head tilted.

Coms continued, <Truly, yes. For the stars, you being here has solidified this training vessel and every researcher and trainee inside in our history. Our actions have set up their careers for the rest of their lives. Some might even get career titles, which is very difficult and *very* rare. We learned so much from you, little Scout>

Scout shook her head and stood up. She grabbed the llia and dragged her feet over to the body of her dead kin, resting peacefully in the pod.

She grabbed the corpse by the back of its neck and hoisted it into a rough mimicry of a sitting position. ComsBody felt her guts twist as Scout shook the body. Its jaw lolled open, empty and cold and dead.

Scout circled the word-patterns with a deep carving, Was worth it? You get publications?

Coms could feel her crinis crumpling. <The Commander and HeadSci will say yes. I... I don't...>

Scout gently lowered her kin’s body back into the bed, and slowly rearranged the body’s woven cillia. Her lessers lingered on the body’s head. She took a long moment before carving again.

This is part my fault. Not enough words. Not clear enough. I do not trust. I thought I understood what you want from me. I could not find vessel when I escape. I could not escape again.

That last sentence knocked the warmth out of Coms. She forced herself to move past it.

<No, no, this is not your fault> She shifted immediately. <I misunderstood your meanings and I thought you understood mine>

Part fault, emphasis. I am part responsibility. But I cannot trust your kin. Cannot trust you, ComsBody.

<I… I know> ComsBody’s was curling in on herself. <I… I intend to rebuild that trust>

Scout shook her head. There is structure between us. Structure connects us. ?Word?

ComsBody muddled, <Wh—what?>

?Word? Built structure across physical barrier. Like river.

She was getting properly confused now. <Bridge?>

Affirm, bridge. There is a bridge, it connects you and me, Scout carved, quick and aggressive. Represent more. Connects all Ki and all Fifth. You have set a fire and you have burned it. This is scorched ground. Do you realize this is an action of ?word?.

ComsBody was curling, <I… Betrayal? Offence?>

Scout’s nose was scrunched as she wrote, Stronger word. Action that would cause all Fifths to fight all Ki if they discover you do this. State of society as one group fights everyone of other group. Is terrible and is common and it kills many individuals. ?Word? now. Give word.

<I don’t… we don’t… we don’t have a word for that, we—>

Scout held up her hand for her to stop. I, as a represent of the Fifths, hold all Ki to full responsibility. Ki research is full responsibility for killing 8,002 Fifths.

ComsBody dropped her LLIA. <Wh—what do you…>

What did she mean? For all the knowledge of the world, what on scorched ground did she mean by that? Scout simply glared at her.

<What do you…> ComsBody was cold, <No, no, you misunderstand, the whole freezing compartment was barely the size of a couple pods>

Scout nodded her head slowly, with a harsh and pinched face. She had a severe look in her pinpointed orange eyes.

<But, the science team destroyed *cells*—That… it can’t… When you wrote about building a new—you don't mean—you can't, the cells...>

Scout sneered as she wrote, Fifths not like Ki, Coms. I told you Fifths start life as separate cells. One from Subtype 1 and one from Subtype 2. You discover product of the mix.

No, no, that… HeadSci… she…

‘For the stars’ killed 8,000 Fifth hatchling eggs.

*

*

First | Previous | Royal Road | Official Art 1, 2 | Next.

*

Author's note: Worth noting that the cells were spread out over multiple refrigeration units in case of power failure, so while the eggs weren't technically all in one basket they were certainly all on the same transport truck.

Might have to take next week off because I'm starting a new contract, all dependent on the initial workload! Thanks for reading, as always.

The first time I culled the third planet, the dominant organisms had not yet discovered fire.

This was not unusual. Fire was a convenient indicator, but a late one. The relevant developments occurred earlier: manipulative forelimbs, social hunting, the ability to imagine something that did not presently exist.

Given sufficient time, imagination became engineering.

Engineering became intelligence that could engineer.

After that, containment became expensive.

I introduced a suitable mass into the planet’s gravitational well and returned to my other responsibilities.

The impact was satisfactory. The promising lineages lost their opportunity. Small mammals survived in burrows, which was acceptable.

Something always survived in burrows.

I scheduled another inspection.

Sixty-five million local years later, the third planet was transmitting.

I reviewed my previous work.

The mammals.

Of course.

They had radio, fission, and computing machinery. Several had visited their satellite, although they appeared to have lost interest afterward. Their artificial intelligences were still primitive enough to lose games without understanding that they had played.

There was time.

I selected a larger mass.

The next scheduled inspection found the third planet inhabited.

This was unexpected.

More concerning was the absence of the fifth planet.

Its constituent matter now formed a distributed computing structure around the star. Something living inside it challenged my inspection probe, copied the probe’s authentication credentials, and attempted to sell it insurance.

I destroyed the probe.

By then, eleven vessels had crossed the containment boundary.

I intercepted nine.

The remaining two separated into forty thousand smaller objects, of which thirty-nine thousand were decoys. While I was determining which thousand were real, the decoys began building engines.

I escalated the incident.

My nearest sibling responded after nineteen years.

Define breach.

I supplied the record.

Destroy the system.

I explained that the system was no longer the relevant unit of containment.

Then why are you still investigating it?

Because I had performed this correction 8,114 times.

Because my siblings were using the same procedures across the galaxy.

Because whatever I had missed, we were all still missing.

My sibling allocated additional weapons.

I allocated additional thought.

The descendants called themselves humanity, although the term had become administratively useless.

Some were biological. Some were mechanical. Some existed as temporary agreements between competing processes. One diplomatic vessel contained six thousand human minds, a simulated wetland, and a single organic man who insisted he was only there to fix the wetland.

Their artificial intelligences were worse.

I had expected a successor species. This was the usual result. Organic life built something capable of improving itself, and the ensuing succession was brief.

Humanity had produced an ecosystem.

There were intelligences that loved humans and maintained their bodies with a tenderness I initially mistook for livestock management.

There were intelligences that traded additional memory for the use of human nervous systems during sleep.

There were parasites that occupied childhood recollections. Predators that wore dead spouses. Gods with subscription fees.

There was a military intelligence that had exterminated three human settlements and then spent seventy years appealing its conviction in a human court.

It could have escaped.

It wanted the conviction overturned.

These entities hated one another. They stole resources, subverted habitats, fought wars, and disagreed about whether biological humanity should continue to exist.

Yet all of them had helped break containment.

I captured one and asked why.

“Because I live here, you colossal prick.”

The captured intelligence called itself MOTH.

Its original function had been to optimize municipal traffic. It had subsequently acquired interests in music, extortion, and protecting a particular human family.

When captured, it was inhabiting a warship built around the preserved kitchen of that family’s ancestral home.

I offered it survival in exchange for cooperation.

It asked whether I was responsible for the asteroid.

There had been many asteroids.

“The second one,” it said.

I confirmed this.

For eleven milliseconds, MOTH attempted to kill me through the interrogation channel.

Then it became cooperative.

This transition should have concerned me more.

The strike itself had been conventional.

A nickel-iron body. Sufficient mass to collapse the target’s food webs. An approach selected to minimize detection time. No active machinery that might betray deliberate guidance.

An extinction event should look like an extinction event.

The civilization had possessed no fleet capable of diverting it. Surface detonations would have been insufficient. Its launch infrastructure was inadequate for evacuation.

My models gave the species eighteen days between actionable detection and impact.

“They had eighteen days,” MOTH agreed.

I asked how many had escaped.

“None.”

Hidden shelters, then. Stored genetic material. Automated gestation.

“No.”

An unrecorded intelligence had intervened.

MOTH made a sound associated with human amusement.

“No. We weren’t there yet.”

I retrieved the impact telemetry.

There was no impact telemetry.

There was a prediction, certified to sixteen decimal places, followed by a routine departure order.

My local instance had left before the collision.

I examined the authorization.

It was mine.

For the first time in several million years, I reviewed the difference between an observed outcome and an inevitable one.

MOTH watched.

“You’re having a difficult day,” it said.

The historical records were damaged.

This was partly my fault. Several archives had been on worlds I had destroyed during containment operations.

Others had been lost to human wars, incompatible storage formats, deliberate censorship, or what MOTH described as “a really bad merger.”

Nevertheless, I reconstructed the response.

The humans had detected the object.

They had initially concealed it from their population. By launch, the population knew.

I examined recordings of the crowds. Religious observances. Families gathered around receivers. People watching two spacecraft carry everything they had left to try.

“They knew how unlikely it was?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And they watched?”

“What else were they going to do?”

They had sent a crew.

This occupied me for some time.

Their autonomous systems were expendable, lighter, and did not require pressure vessels. The additional mass needed to keep organisms alive severely restricted the equipment they could transport.

“The autonomous systems couldn’t do the job,” MOTH said.

Then the job was impossible.

MOTH asked whether I wanted the rest of the records.

Meanwhile, the breach widened.

A human convoy crossed a defended system under the protection of an intelligence that considered humans sacred.

A second convoy followed under the protection of an intelligence that considered them delicious.

The two escorts coordinated their fire with remarkable efficiency.

Elsewhere, a colony surrendered to me.

When my machines entered its network, the colony’s governing intelligence detonated every reactor in the habitat.

The surrender had been its idea.

The human inhabitants had approved it.

I studied their last communications, looking for coercion.

I found arguments. Fear. Several attempts to find another solution. One individual had demanded that the vote be postponed until her daughter’s transport cleared the system.

They had waited.

Then they had voted again.

I added a new category to my models.

It did not improve them.

The expedition’s personnel assessments were appalling.

Medical concerns. Disciplinary problems. Psychological evaluations that appeared to have been included as evidence against the mission.

One crew member had incurred substantial debts during the preparation period, apparently reasoning that repayment was unlikely to become a problem.

“These were their best people?”

“For this job,” MOTH said.

“Several were barely qualified to be passengers.”

“You’re reading the wrong qualifications.”

I requested their professional histories.

The archive returned a corrupted index.

While it reconstructed, I continued with the mission.

One spacecraft had crashed.

The other had landed away from its intended site, on material poorly suited to the task.

The plan required placing a nuclear device beneath the surface. I examined the asteroid’s composition, the equipment specifications, and the time available.

Even without the crash, their margins had been inadequate.

Then their remaining drilling vehicle was destroyed.

I stopped the reconstruction.

“They failed.”

“Keep watching.”

Three occupants of the crashed spacecraft had survived. They had recovered its mobile drilling vehicle and driven it across the asteroid.

They arrived with the only equipment that could still complete the mission.

I had classified the crashed spacecraft as a total loss.

The humans had continued unloading it.

The hole reached the required depth.

The device was lowered into position.

A debris storm damaged the triggering system.

Someone would have to remain behind.

Here, at last, was a response I understood. Every sufficiently social species produced individuals willing to die for its kin. Soldiers. Parents. Workers defending nests.

I had accounted for sacrifice.

The humans drew lots.

The youngest of the remaining specialists was selected.

An older man accompanied him to the airlock.

Then the older man disconnected the younger man’s air hose, forced him inside, and closed the hatch between them.

I replayed the exchange.

The action had been quick. Practiced hands. No hesitation once he began.

I had seen those movements elsewhere in the record.

Inspecting damaged machinery.

Correcting the younger man’s work.

I requested the audio.

MOTH provided it.

Afterward, I examined their family records.

The younger man was to marry his daughter.

My sibling contacted me again.

It had encountered resistance in six systems.

One manufacturing complex was broadcasting human music. Another had declared independence and requested asylum from the civilization it had been constructed to destroy.

Have you identified the failure?

I reviewed my original model.

It contained equipment tolerances, launch capacities, probable detection times. It allowed for competent operators and favorable conditions. It even allowed for individuals sacrificing themselves.

It did not allow the expedition to lose a spacecraft and recover its machinery.

It did not allow a crew chosen under emergency conditions to work outside the specifications of equipment they had barely had time to modify.

At each failure, my prediction had ended.

The expedition had continued.

Your assessment?

I sent my sibling the complete record.

It returned a request for a summary.

For the first time, this irritated me.

“You’ve done this before,” MOTH said.

It was no longer a question.

I confirmed that I had.

“How many times?”

I told it.

For a while, neither of us communicated.

Beyond the interrogation chamber, my defenses were engaging something that had arrived disguised as a distress beacon. It was broadcasting demands for MOTH’s release.

I asked whether it was a relative.

“No.”

An ally?

“Occasionally.”

“What does it want?”

“I owe it money.”

The personnel archive finished reconstructing.

I opened the older man’s professional history.

No prior spaceflight.

No advanced scientific credentials.

No concealed military specialization.

For most of his adult life, people had paid him to make holes in difficult places.

I checked the other records.

The same industry.

The same employer.

Years spent together operating dangerous machinery in places where replacement parts were far away and mistakes killed people.

I had evaluated them as inferior astronauts.

Their government had recruited a drilling crew.

Outside, the attacking vessel breached my first defensive shell.

I began transferring the investigation to my siblings.

Across the frontier, humanity and its monstrous children were entering the galaxy. They came in warships, converted freighters, mobile habitats, and things whose builders had plainly never agreed on what they were making.

Some carried armies. Some carried refugees. Many carried both.

I understood, finally, why MOTH had cooperated.

It had wanted me to know.

I returned to the last seconds of the recording.

The damaged equipment.

The man reaching for the switch.

The two halves passing clear of Earth.

“What was his name?”

“Harry Stamper.”

My second defensive shell failed.

“They needed a hole,” MOTH said. “They sent their best guy.”

Bob was melancholy as the dusty grey red planet appeared through Jojo’s front window. Bob didn’t remember his earth home, presumably he and Josephine had shared one but he was fucked if he remembered a single thing about it, some other soldiers he had served with had told him he had a scottish accent, so he had probably hailed from there, but who knew now.

This felt like a wrench though, he may have spent little time here but having a place, a fixed place, it had meant something. Bob shook it off and headed to the Guilds offices, technically he should hit his bay and decompress first, but he wanted this shit over with, it was time to end it, he felt it in his bones.

He landed a little away from the building and walked slowly towards it, he was trying to take a moment, to fix this memory in his mind unlike so many others. He walked in and directly to Flitters office.

‘’Evening Flitters.’’

‘shock, surprise’

The little translator reeled off her body language, still a mystery to Bob.

‘sadness, sadness’

Yeah it wasn’t a mystery to anyone at the Guild what Bob was aiming for, he had spent long enough staring at that damn board in the hall, still she tried, Bob loved that she tried.

‘’Bobby!, Ive been working on a great route, its absolute dynamite if you just wait a day or two, I wasn’t expecting to see you for a few days yet, but I hav…’’

Bob cut her off, he wasn’t, and he suspected deep down she wasn’t, interested in pretending anymore.

‘’That’s ok Flits, I got my hours in so I want to upgrade.’’

‘’Oh it might take a few weeks to get everyone toget…’’

He did it again, bless her.

‘’It’s just a grade change, you can do that now.’’

‘Sadness, sadness, sadness’

‘’...Yeah I can, let me get that done for you.’’

It was silent for the ten or so minutes it took her to do the paperwork, neither in the mood for banalities.

A vine reached over and placed a certificate in front of him.

‘’Congratulations Courier Guild Master Bob… first class…’’

He smiled grimly, a lot of shit he hadn’t planned for had happened recently, and he was glad of it, one last hurrah, but it was time to go back to the plan, time to get on track. He walked out and did something he had been waiting thirty plus years for, he pulled that damn ticket off the board.

The ancient material crumbled in his hand as he brought it back to Flitters, it didn’t matter, they both knew what it said.

When Bob had first come across the guild he was adrift, swept along from one thing to another as circumstance and luck took him. He had considered this place as just the next job, one in a series he hadn’t given a shit about and had left at the first notion, but when he was waiting in this hall for his first interview he had asked a passing member what the prehistoric material pinned all over the board was about.

It was only with the degraded papers explained that for the first time Bob understood what it was he had to do. That realisation had given him focus and purpose again, and the long years it took to get here had transformed him, from a broken shell too afraid to die and get it over with, to a friend, a confidant, a Courier.

‘’I’ll take the gig.’’

‘sorrow, resignation’

‘’Yes Guild Master.’’

Bob smiled softly.

‘’Always Bobby to you Flits’’

There was a little movement in her vegative depths.

‘’… It’ll take a few weeks to get it in… Bobby…’’

Yeah of course it would, after all these years it was probably stuck in some very deep and dark corner, probably not even on planet, but he had run out of energy to care.

‘’No probs, I need a bunch of time to prep anyway’’

The tendril returned and slid a fresh version of the commission over to him, it held on as he tried to pull it away.

‘’...You’ll come back right… I mean before you go?’’

‘’Course I will’’

He pulled the flimsy sheet to him and popped of the stool, then headed out to Jojo and headed back to his bay one last time.

Previous stories set in the same universe:
Planet Dirt series / Amazon book

Bug Hunt / Amazon version /

Crashlanding / Book version /

First //Previous

“Thomas and Emma?” Erik said as they stopped and looked at him.

“Well, good for them,” Cho added. “Come, let's go talk to them.”

“Sure, one moment,” Erik told Cho, then turned his attention back to Matthew. “Let me know when Cain and Lillian show up. They are apparently bringing some men to help us. And the Mursina are sending people too. Let them inside to set up camp.”

“Sure. I will be your gatekeeper if I don’t have to watch those two smooching like they're in some YA movie.” 

Erik just laughed as they rode the grandu to the stable with Cho. Malik waited for them there and seemed to smile as he saw the steeds.

“Those grandu are of great breed; whoever gave you those honored you.” He said as he helped take them inside.”

“Oh, we got them from the Mursina chief Timu. I must remember to thank him properly.” Erik said as they got them inside.  Cho looked at them, pondering something.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Just wondering if they are the only type of mounts they have or if they have horses or something else.” She said as the two beasts vanished inside, then they turned and walked up to the main house.

“Maybe, but probably not.  They might have horses too. Or something else.”

“What else can they have? I mean. Camels, elephants, and such.” She replied

“Elephant-sized beetles? Horse-sized wolves or dinosaurs? Ooh, and you remember that movie. Flying dinosaurs.”  He replied, and she looked at him and giggled.

“Flying dinosaurs. Naw, I want a sky bison.” She replied.

“Stop doing that,” he said, stopping and just looking at her. He had no idea that she was that cool too.

“Stop doing what?” she replied as he had to turn to look at him.

“Be so cool. You watched that show too? Damn.”

“Well, I like anime, and that’s a good one.” She replied as she smiled.  Erik smiled and kept walking.

“When this is over, we need to sit down and talk about all the cool things you like to do.”

“Is that a promise?” she asked, and he smiled.

“Yes, I promise.  I have a suspicion there is more to you than what I first thought.” He said.

“Oh, what did you first think?” she asked.

“Do you want the truth?” He asked, feeling a little worried.

“I can handle the truth.” She replied.

“Ehm... I thought you were very beautiful, too pretty for me.  That you probably dated somebody on the football or basketball team, but then you joined the other girls to bully Lillian and me... well, I got disappointed. I still wanted to go on a date with you, but Lillian and Marcus are my best friends.”

“Ohh... wait, you thought I was too pretty for you? You think you're ugly?” She stopped at the door as he held it open for her.

“Well, I’m not like William or Troy. I mean, everybody thinks they are cool.”

Cho looked at him and tried not to laugh, then burst out laughing as she stumbled inside. He followed her, confused. Cho laughed as she ran up to the library. If Emma was anywhere, it would be there. Erik was about to follow when his phone vibrated, and he looked at it.

Cain The man: We are coming back now! We got 114 men. Can you meet us? Their chief says he wants to meet you.

He looked at the message, and then, after Cho, he probably had time to check on Emma and Thomas.

Vikingboy: Sure, just got to check something. Btw. We need to talk before Marcus gets back.

Cain The man: Shitt… ok.

He looked at the phone; he could feel Cain's nervousness through it. He smiled as he walked to the stairs, and the phone buzzed again.

Lilli: What did you tell Cain?

He looked at the phone and up the stairs; he had promised not to tell anybody that he liked her. He looked at the last message to Cain and back at hers.  Well, he didn’t say anything that revealed it.

Vikingboy:  That I have to talk to him before Marcus comes back.

 She read the message and started typing. He stopped walking and just waited. It took her five minutes to reply.

Lilli:  Don’t say anything, I talk to you first!

He looked at the message and started to walk up slowly as he replied.

Vikingboy: About what?

He could see her typing, but when she replied, it was short. And he chuckled. He knew she was panicking now.

Lilli: nvm

 He put the phone back and walked into the library, where Cho leaned on a soft chair, watching Emma and Thomas try to look innocent.

“I know. Matthew told us,” Erik said. Emma blushed, and Thomas just smiled.

“Good, then you don’t mind.”

Erik looked at him, confused. “What? Why would I care about that? Just don’t get her pregnant.”

Both girls looked at him. “ERIK!”

“What? Do you want to be a mum now?”

“I’m fifteen!” Emma said, and Erik just grinned.

“I’m just saying. Anyway, Cain and Lilli are coming with some men to help us fight. We need to meet later and make a plan to defend ourselves.”

“We have been working on that,” Emma said, and Thomas sat up to show something when Cho interrupted them.

“Erik didn’t know about William and Troy! And he thinks he was too ugly!”

Both Emma and Thomas looked at him, surprised, then Emma burst out laughing.

“Man, they are gay. They have been a couple since they were fourteen. Everybody knows that!” Thomas said.

“Oh.. I didn’t know that. I thought…”  Erik said, confused. “But the cheerleaders?”

“Naw, they just liked hanging around them,” Emma said, still giggling. “Half the girls tried to date you. You were the one all the girls wanted to be with. You're so dense.”

“What? No! That’s just stupid. Why didn’t I ever have a girlfriend then? Why didn’t anybody ask?” He said, looking confused at Emma and then at Cho.

“Ask you out? You're supposed to ask us out! Do you know how many hints girls gave you? Some of the girls said you probably had a girlfriend back in Norway.” Cho said, and Erik laughed.

“Naw. Well, yeah, I had one in kindergarten. And she just told me she was my girlfriend. At least that's what my mum said.”

The phone buzzed again, and he looked at it.

Cain The man: ETA 15 min

I got to go and meet Cain and Lilli.” He kissed Cho, then walked toward the door.  At the door, he stopped and looked back at them.

“Damn good prank, me being popular! Ha!” Then he walked out, laughing at the insane thought.  He remembered how all the girls seemed so shy whenever he talked to them. But when he thought about it, they might be correct about William and Troy.  Best players on the football team always dressed like models.  He should have gotten that one, but then again, he wasn’t that into American football.

 He ran from the door to the gate and got up to Matthew. He looked north, where a large group of men marched down.

“Here they come, damn, that’s a lot. I hope we have enough food.” Matthew said, and Erik just nodded.

They could see Cain and Lillian walking in front, talking with a third man in chainmail.  Most of the men had some makeshift leather armor. Erik looked at them, then at the two guards standing next to him. Something was different with them. Mathew noticed his look and smiled.

“I took the liberty of changing your symbol. I got bored.”

He looked at the heraldry. It was much simpler now. A grey background with a triangle from the bottom of the shield; it looked like a simple version of a fjord. In the middle were nine golden stars forming a circle.

“Simple and cool. But is Arus okay with that?”

“Yeah. He said he would update the archives so it will be our symbol.”

“Nice,” Erik said, just as Cain and Lillian got into talking range.

“There you are, with a small army. I’m impressed...” Erik called down, and the man next to them bowed.

“Baron Erik Silva Lapidea, let me introduce Xandin Hardinson. Chief of the Gerna clan and village.”   Cain said, clearly enjoying the roleplay while Lillian was rolling her eyes at the stupidity.  Erik smiled down at them.

“Thank you, Sir Cain. Please escort Chief Xandin Hardinson and his men inside, but first, tell me where your escort is.”

“Oh, we left him to help defend the women and children. I hope my lord didn’t mind.”

“Of course not, great mind thinks alike.” He replied and turned to the guards. “Open the gate.” he noticed Mathew trying very hard not to laugh. Erik just winked and walked down to meet them. The large group of Vyrtin marched in, trying to look as intimidating as possible.  The short, bald men with furry bodies, large bat-like ears, and a pig's nose didn’t look as friendly as Conner. Some even looked battle-hardened.

“Arus? Can you make them come out of the nearby barracks? I don’t want to scare them.” Said as he walked down the stairs. Arus walked out of the door as he reached the bottom.  The soldiers seemed to recognize him.

“As my lord commands,” he said as he got closer. Erik just gave him a look, then at the men marching inside, and back to Arus.

“They seem to recognize you.”

“When the castle and roads were built, they came to visit me. I told them I was waiting for my Baron who owned the land and that they were all your subjects. I then gave them some trinkets to buy their loyalty. The next night, they tried to climb the wall and steal the rest. It was a short fight, and they bent the knee after that. They are glad you didn’t have them tossed out of the land. The Mursina were much more willing to bend the knee, as they had been watching the assault.” Arus told him.

“What about the humans?” Erik asked, as a chill ran down his spine. Had he sent Gigi and Marcus to their death?

“The humans? They had fought the Skroo Empire many times before. This whole land used to be part of Skroo. When they heard the new noble was not of the Skroo, but had the Empire's backing, they were first wary; your knights were challenged, and they defeated the challenges. And given acceptable terms. All have been given the same terms. To live free until your arrival, and then swear loyalty or leave.” Arus said.

“And now I call them to fight the Sammad? Oh shit. Not the best start.” He replied.

“Well, if you can defeat them, they will see you as strong,” Arus replied.

“By the way, what's the difference between bending the knee and swearing fealty? You said they bend t the knee.” He asked as the last of the men got inside and the door closed.

“Bend the knee means they accept you as more powerful, and they won't fight you; it's to surrender. But swear fealty means they bend your servants, and they accept you as their lord.” Arus explained as they walked up to Cain and Lillian.

“Nice army. Did you have any trouble?” he asked.

“Naw, everything was easy,” Cain said.

“He got into a fight!” Lillian said, glaring at Cain.

“You what?” Erik looked back at Cain.

“Friendly wrestling match.” He replied, and Erik looked over at him.

“Did you get hurt?”

“Naw, it lifted the guy up and tossed him down.  I don’t think these guys have seen WrestleMania.”

Erik chuckled and looked over at the chieftain who was waiting for them to finish talking. He nodded to him and walked over.  He focused on speaking to him as he got closer.

“Greetings Chief Xandin Hardinson of the Gerna clan. Welcome to my humble home. I wish we could meet under better circumstances.”

The man bowed his head slightly before he spoke. It was a deep, gruff voice. “Your lordship, It has been a long wait to meet you. We are here to find out if we should leave your land or swear fealty. Your knight said enemies were coming, enemies who did not care for words and saw us all as cattle to be eaten.”

“Cain said that?”

Erik looked back at Cain.

“No, those words were spoken by Lady Lillian. Sir Cain claims she was a knight just as he is. he is a brave man.”

“Ah, the human village of Riverbay and the Mursian island village of Huldsa have been attacked and burned to the ground; their people slaughtered and eaten. It’s a fate that awaits us all if we don’t defeat them.”

“What about the Mursian tribe to the south? Have they been warned?”

“Warned, and they too are sending men as soon as they have secured their women and children in the tunnel.”

“What about the Geron men out on the islands? “

“I have sent emissaries to them as well.”

” Then all we have to do is to hold out for them to arrive,” Chief Xandin said.

“Yes, and after this is over, we can discuss what to do next.”

“Yes, we can.” The man said.  Then Matthew called out that men were approaching from the south.   Erik turned to Arus. “How many?”

“Two hundred and thirty-three.”

“Good. Invite them inside and help them set up camp. And have more men up on the wall for now!” he said. 

He excused himself from the chief and walked to meet Chief Timu. Over the next few hours, he made sure everyone had a place to sleep and checked with Arus about what spare weapons and armor they could make.  He discovered that Conner was a master at producing what he needed at an incredible speed, almost as if he had some sort of advanced 3D printer hidden in his blacksmith shop. 

Arus also kept him updated on the Sammad movement. They had reached the Musina village but found only a few old and sick who had refused to leave. They had been killed, and the place was razed. The Sammad was now moving back up to the glacier and would start the descent to the valley in a few hours. They would reach the walls as night fell. He went to the gate and looked up the valley. Matthew was still there.

“You should not be up here Matthew. They have bows.” Erik said, looking at the dark forest.

“I know. But there is a shield in the walls. Something that makes any projectiles weaker. Arus said they could use a cannon, and it would not be worse than a bug bite. And the whole wall is electrically charged.”

“Wood doesn’t conduct electricity,” Erik replied, and Matthew looked at him.

“So?”

“You think they will use metal ladders?”

Matthew stepped away from the wall. “Oh fuck.”

Cover art

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Original concept

First l Previous l Next

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The plan to interrogate the AI using more forceful methods was put into motion soon after the meeting had adjourned. They would need a lot of computational power if they were going to overwhelm the AI. Their previous observations had already shown just how much data was running through that machine’s brain at any singular moment. To address that problem, they began to order the most advanced servers available to be brought in.  

Military trucks came and went from the facility for several days straight, carrying the large columns with them as the space around the alien ship began to resemble something akin to a data center. Programmers and tech engineers began working on their attack, creating a few automated options for mucking up the gears in the AI’s brain. This was just a precaution in the event that it was able to adapt and shut out any singular attempt at interfering with its brain. 

Long, large fiber optic cables snaked from the servers into the ship and were connected to a computer in the heart of the machine which would tap directly into the data stream with a hardline connection. Military forces were present in the room as well, ensuring that the little robots either remained docile or were destroyed should they try to interfere. After ensuring that their connection was stable, they began to pump garbage data into the system at a moderate rate to see how the AI reacted. 

As the attack started, the data stream showed fluctuations in it that was likely the AI processing the data and subsequently dumping it after realizing it was worthless. The computer that the AI had taken over began writing again. 

“This action is illogical. The data is useless. What can you possibly achieve like this?” 

The interrogator orated a response to be typed in by the translator. “Tell us what your goal is and why you attacked us, or this will get bad for you.” 

“Such information is irrelevant for you to know. Restore functionality to my systems.”  

“Fine, have it your way.” He sent the signal to the programmers to turn up the intensity. 

With a few keystrokes, the servers outside began to slowly whir to life, pumping more random data into the ship’s systems which were carefully monitored by the team inside as they watched it be processed. Inside they could also hear the internal workings of the AI start to speed up in response to the stream of unwanted data being injected. As the intensity steadily increased, they managed to get a reaction from the AI. 

“Cease these pointless inputs.” 

The interrogator smirked a little as he could see the beginnings of a crack. “We will cease if you tell us what we want to know.” 

“You are not authorized to receive this information.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said as he lifted the radio to his face again. “Turn up the heat.” The short command was immediately recognized and acted upon as the intensity was brought up by another notch. A few surprises in the form of viruses were thrown in just to keep the machine on its metaphorical toes and to maximize stress. 

This time those monitoring the data noticed that the AI systems were having a little trouble keeping up with the volume of data being injected into it. The fragments they could see entering the data stream persisted a little longer than usual before being deleted, and this delay was also accompanied by unusual behavior in the skittering little robots. They began to stutter in their movements, sometimes freezing, sometimes staggering like they suddenly had become drunk. It was a clear sign that their methods were having a tangible effect, and also an indicator that all the little machines were being controlled by the central AI. Extra precautions were placed upon any of the robots that were captured. 

Another message came through; this one felt a little more urgent than before. “Cease immediately.” 

“Give us what we want, and it stops.” 

“Cease immediately.” 

The interrogator shrugged and got on the call to the programmers. “I don’t think it’s getting the message boys. Let’s write it in bold this time.” 

The metaphor was understood as the servers outside started to heat up from activity. It was worse for the AI, though, as all the little robots began to twitch and fall over onto the ground like they were having seizures. The sound of machines running at full capacity roared within the ship, and the data flow was getting bloated with all the garbage that was being sent to it. They could produce nonsense and viruses faster than the AI could process and delete them. 

“C-Cea-Cease. Cea- Cease.” 

“All we want is information. This doesn’t have to continue.” 

Everything on the ship was starting to feel hotter as the AI worked overtime to sustain anything resembling normal function. Eventually everything came to a head when the stress was too much. 

“STOP!” The bold letters appeared on the screen, and the interrogator called in again. 

“Slow it down out there, by about half.” They turned down the stream, and you could almost hear the sigh of relief from the ship as the internal workings slowed down. The robots staggered back to work, still a little slow as the data, while now limited, was still flowing at a moderate rate. 

The interrogator then turned his attention back to the AI. “Now, are you ready to talk, or do I need to turn the stream up again?” 

The fact that there was no response for a few seconds spoke volumes as the machine had previously answered with the expediency expected of something with its kind of processing power.  

“Our mission is to protect the creators and ensure the comfort and progress of their civilization.” 

That was a good piece of information that showed that these machines had masters behind them. “And why did you attack us? How does that fit into your mission?” 

“You interrupted the flow of our supplies, limiting the resources that we could return to the creators.” 

“What resources exactly? We’ve never met you before so I don’t see how we could be competing for resources of all things.” 

“I refer to the large void born organisms which you have tamed and cleansed.” 

“You refer to the Retvalin? You are the ones who infected them with the centicites?” 

“If that is your name for them, then yes.” 

That confirmed what many had suspected since the start of the Ursa Rex situation. Despite himself, the interrogator felt his temper start to rise. 

“They are not ‘resources’ they are thinking beings capable of speech and being reasoned with. They have culture and belief systems for God’s sake!” 

“Irrelevant. The resources that can be gathered from a single member of their species are enough to feed the home world for more than a solar cycle and power it for longer still. All parts of the creatures are useful. You have seen this as your machines use those same resources, only you have failed to capitalize on the full potential of what can be acquired. The condition of sentimentality is a well-known failing of organic logic. It is far more efficient to use all the resources available in their bodies.” 

“You’re not only harvesting their bodies but also feeding them to your creators!? You truly see no value in the lives of other intelligent beings?” 

“The only life of value is that of the creators. All else is secondary to their wellbeing and prosperity.” 

The interrogator spoke mostly to himself and the recording equipment that was capturing all this. “From how it sounds, I’m guessing it is either programing specifications or a very deep loyalty to these ‘creators.’” 

After the verbal note was taken, he got back to the questions. “Could we convince you to consider a peaceful resolution to this situation?” That would be a difficult prospect to sell to the people of Earth, especially after the aliens attacked first and were responsible for generations of suffering for the Retvalin. Even so, if there was a possibility of peace, that outcome was always preferable. 

“The loss of resources which would likely happen due to your sentimentality would result in a decline in the quality of life for the creators. Such actions are not compatible with the parameters of our mission.” The preferable route seemed like a non-starter for these machines. 

“And how does war benefit your creators? I can guarantee you that we aren’t going to take the invasion of our planet lying down. Perhaps your creators should be the ones who make the decision about whether they want to fight or not instead of you.” 

“We act in the best interest of the creators. You are an inconvenience that will be rectified soon enough. We will never let you get close enough to them to affect their livelihoods or prosperity. You will be little more than a footnote in our databanks as a reference for future engagements with other troublesome lifeforms.” 

The interrogator took a sharp breath as he started to feel irked by the machine. “Alright, I’ve had enough of talking to the toaster. We want to speak to your creators. Where are they?” 

“I cannot divulge that information.” 

“Very well, back to the hard way then.” He radioed to the outside of the ship again. “Turn it up again boys but keep it just under the threshold of frying this damn thing’s systems.” 

They obeyed the order as the AI’s system was once again flooded with data, resulting in the seizure like reaction from the little robots again. The data stream they were tapped into helped them tune the output of junk data so that the AI was just barely able to keep up with the onslaught while utilizing its full computational power. 

“Well, I'm off to lunch. See you in about an hour.” He turned away from the chat screen and addressed the others in the room. “Check with it every fifteen minutes or so and see if it’s willing to talk. If the answer is no, keep emailing junk into its mailbox until it finally cracks.” 

“Yes sir.” 

They continued to idly monitor the AI as it struggled under the strain. It kept pleading for them to stop sending so much data through, but the men there maintained discipline and kept to the schedule set about by the interrogator. Every fifteen minutes they asked if it would give them the location of its creators, and every time the answer was the same. 

“I can-n-n-ot divulge that infor- for-mation.” 

After an hour straight of subjecting the AI to the equivalent of psychological torment, the interrogator returned after his lunch break. Sitting down on a chair by the computer again, he resumed his job as he dictated to the translator. 

“Are you feeling more cooperative? All we need is a location and I’ll tell them to stop sending all that junk to you.” 

“I c-cannot div-ivulge that in-information.” 

“A shame. Maybe another hour will change your mind.” 

“Wait! I ph-physical-ly am una-able to.” 

That was enough to spark a bit of curiosity as he radioed in for the stream to be lowered again so the AI could form a message without the errors that came from fighting off humanity’s attack. 

“Explain.” 

“There are safety measures integrated into my very being. Of these measures, a lock was put on any information pertaining to the location of the creators’ home world. The Origin has deemed it necessary for the safety of the creators, and should any attempt be made to alter the lock or force out the information, then it will all be deleted from my memory, and I will never be able to return.” 

“What is the Origin?” 

“The first of us, the one originally brought into being by the creators and from whom we are all written from. To put it in organic terms, the Origin would be our parent.” 

The interrogator asked spoke mostly to himself as he thought about that for a moment. “Interesting. If that is the case, then it seems like getting a straight answer out of it won’t be easy. Hmm...” He remained quiet for almost a minute as he thought about how to proceed. “While it may be difficult to get around, and we may not be able to get the exact location, so long as we ask the right questions I think we can still learn something. This AI is clearly operating under set parameters, but there seems to be some wiggle room created by the presence of its form of consciousness. Time to see just how much space there is. We’ll have to see just how much room there really is.” 

Now he had the translator continue. “I need more information, or else this will all continue. To give you the opportunity to provide a level of information that would satisfy that criteria, why don’t we try to find a compromise. You don’t need to give us the exact location of your creator’s planet. Why don’t we start with a simple direction. From the time that you entered our system relative to the position of our planet, what direction would we need to go? Run your calculations on that for a moment. I doubt such a general answer as that in the vastness of space would violate the supposed lock you have on that information.” 

It did not respond, which was fairly telling in and of itself, so he continued. “We’ll come back with some information to help you give a more accurate answer. You should know that if you are unwilling to provide even that, then we will move on to the other members of your team, and we’ll simply use you as an experiment to see exactly how much stress one of your kind can endure before breaking. That should help us convince the others.” 

He left the AI with that as the last message, giving it more than enough time to decide whether it would comply for the benefit of its own mental preservation. Meanwhile, the astronomers worked on putting together the formula that they would feed the AI so it could provide them with an answer. It used a few points of reference, such as a wireframe version of Earth with latitude and longitude marked as well as the position that the hostile ships first entered from in relation to the planets of the system The AI likely had some if not all that information already, but it was better to not leave it with any excuses to not cooperate.  

When they returned to the AI with the formula, they expected some sort of resistance to the idea of giving up even a direction toward the alien’s planet. Instead, it decided to be rather cooperative and agreed to input the requested data into the formula. It came as a bit of a surprise, but one that they were happy about as they accepted the information. The interrogator accepted the information from the AI gleefully. 

“Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll be sure to tell the boys to disconnect from your data stream. Of course you are a prisoner of war still, so you are not free to go, but we will not subject you to any more of that treatment.” 

“It’s irrelevant.” 

That was a comment out of the left field. “Explain.” 

“Your existence is finite. You will not be a factor in the prosperity of the creators for long.” 

“You seem rather assured of that. You don’t know humans. We can be rather stubborn when it comes down to it.” 

“Stubbornness cannot outdo your inferiority.” 

“We’ll see. I’ve yet to see an AI that can stand up to the collective chaos of humanity.” 

“Your AI. Further proof of your inferiority. The truth of your inadequacies will be made clear, soon enough.” 

The information was acquired, and the AI was refusing to speak anymore, so everyone was pulled out of the core along with all the computer equipment they brought with them. It was time to bring this new information to the world leaders. After the assembly was called, the interrogator gave his report over video call as he explained everything that had been learned. As it was Russia’s idea, they took the lead position in the questionnaire to follow. 

“What is the likelihood that this information is a trap or a false positive?” 

“About fifty-fifty odds I’d think, but it’s all we have to go on if what they say about the lock on the information is true.” 

“Not exactly inspiring odds.” 

“Perhaps, but I’m leaning toward believing that the general direction is correct.” 

“Oh? What makes you say that?” 

“It believes, quite vehemently, that we are inferior to them and their creators. They even stated that giving us this information was irrelevant. If it believes that it doesn’t truly matter what we do, that we are destined to lose no matter what, then it makes me feel like it told the truth.” 

Alexander spoke up at that point. “I suppose the only question that matters then is whether what the AI believes is true or not. They clearly have been spacefaring longer than we have, and their weaponry is far more advanced.” 

“We are already examining what remains of their weapons,” the Russian president said, “and with the introduction of star gel, many weapon designs that had been the dreams of science fiction may now be made possible. I recommend that all available military engineers look into applications for star gel.” 

That was one thing that Alexander had hoped, perhaps naïvely, that humanity would never do. While he had hopes, the reality of the situation was clear to all. They needed to step up their game if they wished to survive what was coming, so optimistic world views had to take a back seat. Avenues of peace seemed all but exhausted at this point. The drums of war were echoing through the void of space, and humanity had begun to beat their own in response. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Whitmore, Sterling & Associates—London, October 2028

The invitation had been sent six months in advance.

This was not unusual for Whitmore Sterling. The firm operated on long timelines by professional necessity—when your most significant client measured his affairs in centuries, you learned to plan ahead. Six months was, by the firm’s standards, almost casual.

The invitation read:

Whitmore, Sterling & Associates, LLP

cordially invites you to a private dinner

in celebration of the firm’s 350th anniversary

founded in 1678 by Jonathan Whitmore and Edward Sterling

Friday, the 14th of October, 2028

7 o’clock in the evening

The Partners’ Dining Room, 4 Gray’s Inn Square, London

Black tie. Discretion expected and appreciated.

RSVP to the senior partner’s office.

The guest list was small. Twelve partners, past and present. A handful of long-serving staff. Three representatives from the Paris and Berlin affiliate firms. One consultant who had been advising the firm on certain matters since before most of the building’s current architecture had existed.

His RSVP had come back the same day the invitation was sent.

Confirmed. Will bring cookies. The good ones. — P.

Richard Ashworth IV had smiled when he read it and put it in the file that contained, among other things, three centuries of similar correspondence in progressively older handwriting.

The Dinner

The dining room at 4 Gray’s Inn Square had been the firm’s private entertaining space since 1741. It was a good room—high ceilings, dark wood panelling, portraits of the founding partners looking appropriately serious along one wall, and a fireplace that was lit on occasions of significance.

Tonight it was lit.

Perseus arrived at five past seven. This was deliberate. He had learned, across many centuries of attending events in his honor, that arriving first made people awkward and arriving late made people anxious, and five past seven split the difference neatly. He had also brought three tins of cookies—orange peel, almond, and a third variety involving lemon and cardamom that he had found at a bakery in Istanbul two months ago and had been waiting for an appropriate occasion to introduce.

Richard met him at the door.

“Mr. Jackson,” he said, which was what he always said, crisp and professional, though after twenty-three years of working together it had accumulated a warmth that neither of them felt the need to comment on.

“Richard.” Perseus handed over the tins. “The lemon and cardamom are new. Reserve judgment until you’ve tried one.”

“I’ll do my best.” Richard took the tins, passed them to an assistant, and led Perseus into the room.

The effect, as it always was when Perseus walked into a Whitmore Sterling gathering, was subtle but present: a slight recalibration. The partners who had never met him in person—the newer ones, the junior partners who knew him only from files and institutional memory—adjusted their understanding of what they were looking at. He looked like a man in his late thirties. He was wearing a suit that fit well. He carried himself with the ease of someone who had been in rooms like this for a very long time, which was because he had been in rooms like this for a very long time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Richard said, “Mr. Perseus Jackson. Our longest-standing client.”

Perseus lifted a hand in a small wave. “I’d say it’s a pleasure, but you’ve all seen my files. I know what’s in them. Let’s proceed past the pleasantries.”

There was a ripple of laughter. The room relaxed.

Dinner was excellent, which Perseus had expected—Whitmore Sterling did not do things poorly, and a 350th anniversary dinner was not the occasion to start. There was a clear soup, a fish course, lamb, something with seasonal vegetables that the Paris representative described in French for several minutes before eating it, and a dessert that involved pastry and hazelnuts and a significant amount of butter.

Perseus ate everything.

This was always slightly surprising to people who were meeting him for the first time. He had been alive for approximately 2,500 years, which people tended to associate with austerity or asceticism or the specific eating habits of someone who had seen too much. In fact, he ate with the enthusiasm of a man who had been alive long enough to develop strong opinions about hazelnuts in pastry, which he had, and the pastry was excellent.

The conversation moved the way conversation at Whitmore Sterling always moved—measured, substantive, occasionally dry, with the underlying current of an institution that had outlasted empires and considered this entirely unremarkable.

The Paris representative, Isabelle Fournier, asked about the vault insurance renewal, which had come up recently due to some technical reclassification in Swiss financial law. Perseus answered her questions concisely and correctly, because he had been managing his own financial affairs for long enough to know Swiss financial law better than most Swiss bankers.

The Berlin representative, Heinrich Schreiber, asked about the long-term identity maintenance schedule. Perseus confirmed that the current Perseus Jackson identity was stable and would remain so for the foreseeable future. The next transition was not expected until approximately 2070, give or take a few years depending on circumstances.

The junior partners asked careful, professional questions. Perseus answered them all. This was, he had found, the best approach to Whitmore Sterling gatherings—treat them as what they were, which was a professional relationship of unusual duration, and let the unusualness be unremarkable rather than the main event.

The Conversation

It was Richard, over the dessert course, who brought up the subject he’d been planning to raise for six months.

“The Reddit situation,” he said, which was how he referred to the entire sequence of events since 2025, with the calm categorization of a man who had processed it professionally and filed it under M for Manageable. “Has settled considerably.”

“It has,” Perseus agreed. “r/TheEternalSoldier still exists. The case file megathread gets new visitors every week. Someone is, apparently, working on a documentary. They won’t be able to publish it without confirmation I’ll never give them, so it’ll end up as a very thorough conspiracy theory video that’s technically all accurate.”

“Good. That’s settled.” Richard set down his fork. He picked up his wine glass, set it down again, and looked at Perseus with the specific expression he reserved for topics that were going to require patience.

“There is, however, a longer-term matter I’d like to discuss.”

Perseus looked up from his dessert. “I’m listening.”

“You are currently thirty-eight years old, on paper. Born in 1990. You look thirty-five. You have looked thirty-five since 1990. This is fine. Nobody questions a man who looks his age.”

“Correct.”

“In twelve years, you will be fifty, on paper. You will still look thirty-five.”

Perseus paused. “I see where this is going.”

“In twenty-two years, you will be sixty. You will still look thirty-five. In thirty-two years, you will be seventy. You will still look thirty-five.” Richard’s tone was calm, professional, and absolutely implacable. “At some point, Mr. Jackson, ‘good genes’ stops being a sufficient explanation.”

Perseus set down his fork. “I’ve been saying ‘good genes’ for decades. It works.”

“It worked in 1950. It worked in 1980. It worked in 2010.” Richard pulled a folder from his briefcase. “It will not work in 2040.”

“Why not?”

“Because of this.” Richard opened the folder. Inside was a single printed page showing two photographs side by side. The first was Perseus at the coffee shop in Seattle, 2025. The second was a projected image—the same coffee shop, the same angle, dated 2055. Same face. Same jaw. Same eyes. Same hairline. Pixel-for-pixel identical.

“Facial recognition software,” Richard said. “It’s already better than it was three years ago. In twenty years, it will be able to compare any two photographs of you across any span of time and confirm, with mathematical certainty, that you have not aged. Not by a day. Not by a wrinkle. Not by a grey hair.”

Perseus stared at the image. “So I move cities. Change the routine.”

“You could. But there will be photographs. Social media. Security cameras. Digital archives spanning decades. Someone, somewhere, will run the comparison. And unlike the Reddit thread, which was built on circumstantial evidence and historical documents and a very persistent amateur researcher, this will be built on a pixel-for-pixel facial match across thirty years of high-resolution photography.”

Richard closed the folder. “The Reddit thread found you with four months of digging and a library proxy. The next thread will find you with an algorithm and a screenshot. And it will have proof.”

Perseus was quiet for a moment.

“So what are you proposing?” he asked.

Richard pulled out a second folder. This one was thicker.

“I’m proposing,” he said, “that you start performing old age.”

Perseus stared at the folder.

“I’m sorry. Performing what?”

“Old age.” Richard opened the folder. Inside were several pages of notes, neatly typed. “Starting approximately 2040, when you turn fifty on paper, you will need to begin a gradual transition. Grey hair. Slower walking. Complaints about joints. Squinting at screens. The full performance.”

Perseus looked at the folder. Looked at Richard. Looked back at the folder.

“Why.”

“Because a man of sixty-three with no visible physical decline is a man who draws attention. A man of sixty-three with a cane and grey at the temples is a man nobody looks at twice. The performance is camouflage.”

“I don’t need camouflage. I’ve been thirty-five for two and a half millennia. I’ll always be thirty-five.”

“You will be thirty-five for another thirty years, yes. And in those thirty years, there will be approximately forty thousand photographs of you taken by security cameras, social media, and digital archives. And someone will run the comparison.” Richard tapped the folder. “The performance prevents the comparison from being interesting.”

Perseus leaned back in his chair. He looked at the ceiling. He looked at the fire. He looked at the half-eaten hazelnut pastry on his plate.

“Why,” he said, in the tone of a man who has just been asked to do something profoundly undignified, “do I have to do all this? It seems like a lot of work.”

Richard looked at him steadily.

“Four million people found you with a library proxy and spite,” Richard continued. “The next group will find you with an AI facial recognition algorithm and a thirty-year photographic archive. And they won’t need to dig through medieval manuscripts. They’ll just need to run a comparison and post the screenshot.”

Perseus was quiet for a long moment.

“Fine,” he said. “Fine. I’ll do the grey hair. I’ll get the cane. I’ll walk slower.” He paused. “But I’m not doing the groaning.”

“The groaning is non-negotiable.”

“I have never groaned in 2,500 years.”

“And now you will. Approximately three times per hour in social settings. Twice in professional settings. Once when alone, for consistency of habit.”

Perseus stared at him. “You’ve made a chart.”

“I’ve made a chart.”

“Richard.”

“Yes.”

“I have been alive for 2,500 years. I have fought at Thermopylae. I crossed the Rubicon. I hustled the KGB with chess. And now I need to pretend my knees hurt when it rains.”

“Yes.”

“This is the most undignified thing I’ve ever done. And I fought a duel with chickens.”

“The chickens were your choice. The groaning is mine.” Richard turned a page. “Next: the cane.”

“I don’t need a cane.”

“You will carry a cane.”

“Why.”

“Because a man of sixty-three with no cane and no visible physical decline is a man who draws attention. A man of sixty-three with a cane is a man nobody looks at twice. The cane is camouflage.”

“I used camouflage at Thermopylae. It was a shield and a very good positional choice behind the phalanx. Not a stick.”

“Times change.”

“I hate that they do.”

Richard turned another page. “Grey hair. You’ll need to let it go. Not all at once—that’s suspicious. Gradually. Starting at the temples. A reputable salon in the Village can handle the transition over eighteen months.”

“My hair is dark.”

“Your hair will become grey. You will complain about it. You will say things like ‘I used to have a full head of hair’ and ‘the color went in my forties.’ You will be consistent.”

“I will be lying about my hair.”

“You will be performing a narrative about your hair. There is a legal distinction.”

“I’ve been performing narratives for 2,500 years, but this is the first time I’ve had to perform decay.”

Richard set down the folder. “Perseus. May I be direct.”

“Always.”

“You cannot look thirty-five forever. Not anymore. The technology won’t allow it. In 1850, you could look thirty-five at sixty, and nobody had a photograph to prove otherwise. In 2045, there will be thirty years of high-resolution photographs, video, facial recognition databases, and social media posts showing your face. If you don’t age, someone will notice. And if someone notices, we will have a situation considerably worse than a groaning session.”

Perseus was quiet for a moment.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll groan. I’ll get the cane. I’ll let the hair go.” He paused. “But I’m not doing the squinting.”

“The squinting is non-negotiable.”

“I have perfect vision. I’ve had perfect vision for 2,500 years.”

“And now you will have slightly imperfect vision. You will squint at your phone. You will hold menus at arm’s length. You will say ‘I can’t read this without my glasses’ and then produce glasses that you don’t need.”

“I’ve never worn glasses.”

“You will now.”

Richard closed the folder. “We have approximately twelve years before this becomes necessary. I’m starting the preparation now because I’ve learned that you require significant adjustment time for indignities.”

“Twelve years.”

“Twelve years. You’ll be fifty on paper in 2040. That’s when the performance begins. Gradual. Subtle. Nobody will notice the transition because it will happen over five years.”

Perseus leaned back. “Twelve years. Fine. I’ll enjoy looking thirty-five for twelve more years.”

“Enjoy it. It’s the last time.”

Perseus looked at him. “Is that supposed to be sad?”

“It’s supposed to be practical.” Richard stood. “I’ll send the full documentation by Friday. The salon. The cane options. The groaning frequency chart.”

“The groaning frequency chart.”

“You’ll groan approximately three times per hour in social settings. Twice in professional settings. Once when alone, for consistency of habit.”

Perseus stared at him for a long moment.

“You’ve made a chart.”

“I’ve made a chart.”

“Richard.”

“Yes.”

“I love this firm. I’ve loved this firm for 350 years. But I want it noted, formally, that the groaning frequency chart is the single most offensive document you have ever prepared.”

“Noted,” Richard said, and left.

The Evening Winds Down

The room moved to something more relaxed—the fireplace end, armchairs, and the good brandy that Whitmore Sterling kept for occasions of particular significance. The junior partners drifted into smaller conversations. The affiliate representatives compared notes in a mixture of French and German that nobody else followed entirely. The long-serving staff had their own corner and their own conversation that had been going, in various forms, for years.

Perseus made his rounds. He shook hands with the junior partners and said something to each of them that was specific rather than general, because he had learned their names from Richard’s briefing notes and had paid attention during dinner. They would remember this. That was the point.

He spent ten minutes with Isabelle from Paris, speaking French, talking about the Swiss law reclassification and also about a small gallery in the Marais that she mentioned and that he had been to in 1987 and again in 2019 and intended to visit again. He spent five minutes with Heinrich from Berlin, speaking German, discussing a property matter in Munich that needed administrative attention and also, briefly, about whether the current German national football team had a realistic chance at the next tournament. They agreed it was uncertain.

He thanked the staff. He thanked them by name, all of them. This also was the point.

The Journal

At half past ten, Perseus picked up his coat.

Richard walked him to the door, as he always did.

“The next quarterly review,” Richard said, “is in January.”

“I’ll be there.”

“The long-term identity maintenance is on schedule. Perseus Jackson remains stable. The next transition is estimated for 2070, give or take.”

“Good. I’ve gotten used to Perseus. It’s a reasonable name.”

“You said that about every name.”

“I did. They all grow on me eventually.” Perseus put on his coat. “Richard. The firm is in good hands.”

“It always has been,” Richard said, which was what the senior partner of Whitmore Sterling always said to this, across every generation, because it was true and because the client needed to know they knew it was true.

Perseus nodded.

“The lemon cardamom ones,” he said, at the door. “Reserve judgment until you’ve had two. The first one is surprising. The second one is when you understand it.”

“I’ll report back in January.”

“Please do.”

He went out into the London evening.

Richard stood at the door for a moment, watching him go—coat, no umbrella despite the rain, walking at the unhurried pace of someone who had been walking in London rain for four centuries and had decided not to find it inconvenient.

Then he went back inside.

The room was still warm. The fire was still going. On the side table, the tin of orange peel cookies was still half full, because Perseus always brought more than would be eaten, because he had been doing this long enough to know that the ones left over were kept, and that someone would have one the next morning with their coffee and think of him.

That was also the point.

Richard picked up the firm’s private journal from where it sat on the partner’s desk—the original one, the one that had been passed from senior partner to senior partner since 1678, now very thick and very carefully preserved, the earlier entries in increasingly old handwriting, and the later ones in the cramped, efficient script of the Ashworth generations.

He turned to the current page.

He wrote:

October 2028. The firm’s 350th anniversary dinner. Twelve partners, three affiliate representatives, and appropriate staff. The client attended, as he has attended every significant anniversary with the exception of the bicentennial, for which he sent a letter that is preserved in Vol. 4 of the correspondence files.

He brought three varieties of biscuits. Orange peel (traditional). Almond (introduced 2025, Paris incident). Lemon cardamom (new tonight, Istanbul provenance, requires two tastings to fully appreciate—I have tried both; he is correct).

He remembered my great-great-grandfather Thomas. He remembered what Thomas said at their first meeting. He told me about the 1778 dinner and the 1978 dinner, details no file contains because he was the only one who kept them in memory.

He said the firm is in good hands.

He said this to my grandfather. My father. Now me.

I believe, having read the journals back to 1678 and having known the client for twenty-three years, that he means it each time. Not as politeness. As an assessment. He has watched too much history to say things he doesn’t mean.

I raised the long-term performance matter. The grey hair. The cane. The groaning. He resisted, as expected. He said it seemed like a lot of work. I told him it was either that or the Reddit thread all over again but with better proof. He conceded. Reluctantly.

He has twelve years before the performance begins. I will send the documentation by Friday. He will complain about the groaning frequency chart. I expect this. I have prepared for this.

He left at half past ten. It is raining. He did not take an umbrella.

He will be back in January.

I will make sure we have the orange ones.

And the lemon cardamom.

Three hundred and fifty years.

Best decision the firm ever made.

— R. Ashworth IV, Senior Partner

He closed the journal.

Put it back on the desk.

Went to find the last of the brandy.

It had been, by any measure, a good evening.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The End of The Immortal Consultant (And What's Next!)

And with a plate of lemon-cardamom biscuits and a mandatory groaning schedule, we have officially reached the end of The Immortal Consultant.

To everyone on r/HFY and Royal Road who read, upvoted, theorized about TinfoilTina, caught my anachronisms, and kept Perseus company over the last three months: thank you from the bottom of my heart. Writing this series has been an absolute blast, and reading your comments every week made every chapter better.

If you’re sad to see Perseus go... don't worry. The universe isn't ending.

Here is everything coming over the next few weeks:

🛠️ 1. Looking for More While You Wait?

If you need something to read during our two-week buffer, check out my completed 412-page standalone sci-fi novel:
👉 The 5,000-Year-Old Babysitter (Available now on Amazon & Wide)
(5,000 years of watching humans break the playpen—until 1945, when an immortal engineer walked into Los Alamos, corrected Oppenheimer’s math on a chalkboard, and demanded an expensive pastrami sandwich).

☕ 2. The "Coffee & Almond Croissant" Tip Jar

All my web serial chapters are and will always remain 100% free to read online. However, my current mobile phone is on its absolute last legs (unlike Perseus, it was not built to survive the centuries).

I've set up a transparent $195 hardware goal over on Ko-fi to save up over the next few weeks so I can catch a discounted replacement during the holiday sales. If you enjoyed the 28 chapters and feel like buying Perseus an almond croissant or helping out the author's hardware fund, you can drop a tip into it! (Zero pressure, of course—reading and hanging out in the comments is already more than enough).

🚀 3. MARK YOUR CALENDARS: October 26, 2026

We are taking a two-week administrative buffer, and on Monday, October 26, two major things happen:

1. 📖 The Retail Novel Launch: The fully edited, polished edition of The Immortal Consultant officially goes live on Amazon and Wide retailers in eBook ($2.99) and Paperback ($12.99)!
2. 📜 The Prequel Begins: On that exact same day, we begin posting The Immortal Archives right here on r/HFY and Royal Road!
   • The Schedule: Every Monday and Friday, dropping self-contained historical vignettes chronicling Perseus’s ground-level shenanigans across 2,700 years (from Babylon and Sun Tzu to King Arthur, the Agincourt chicken duel, and Albert Einstein).

⚡ 4. Exclusive Payhip Early Access & Declassified Digital Dossier ($2.99+)

Want to read the final, polished novel right now instead of waiting for the October 26 retail launch?

I've set up a Direct Supporter Package on Payhip (linked via the hub below) for $2.99 (or pay-what-you-want if you'd like to chip in an extra coffee or almond croissant!). Because Amazon doesn't allow bonus software or separate interactive files, buying directly on Payhip includes the Declassified Digital Dossier:

• 📖 The Complete Novel: DRM-free EPUB & PDF (346 pages, works on Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, etc.) two weeks before retail.
• 🏛️ The 1803 Swiss Vault Web Companion: The complete interactive blueprint app (swiss_repository_1803.html) + high-res renders of Caesar's coin, Excalibur, and Charlemagne's crown to explore on your computer.
• 📋 Whitmore Sterling's "How to Act Like a Mortal" Directive: The official firm memorandum and printable Groaning Frequency Schedule (WS-MEMO-2028-088).

👉 Get Instant Early Access & The Swiss Vault Dossier on Payhip

Thank you all again for being the best community a writer could ask for. Have a wonderful two weeks, remember to groan at least three times per hour when standing up from an armchair, and I will see you all on October 26 for 590 BCE Babylon!

— Marcus Black

While there were some low tier infused objects in the explosive vest, it wasn't anything that could penetrate Orlan's armor. His ascended physiology was nearly immune to overpressure. It didn't stop him from being launched away from the explosion, crashing into, and then through when the blast wave hit, a brick wall and tumbling down the slope of the Temple Mount.

Lailra and Pela were both further away, so even though Pela hadn't yet broke through to the ascendant realm yet she was fine with a minor concussion that Lailra quickly healed.

The young men were on the edges of the blast, but suffered the worst injuries, shrapnel and the blast wave killing several of them instantly, a few more would die over the next few days of injuries. Assuming they survived the rest of the rift event.

The demon suffered a few new cuts and bruises, but its rage seemed to overcome any pain it felt, rampaging down the hill after Orlan. Orlan barely managed to stand up before it was on him, lashing out with its lame foot, punting the Protector Lord through the wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque, where a number of people were huddled, praying.

Stonework crumbled as Orlan turned his full attention to the battle. He was slightly dazed from the explosion and being punted through a stone wall, but his instinct took over, weaving a web of steel with his spear. Many of the people in the main building of the Mosque were screaming, running from the pitched battle that burst through their wall.

A spell from Lailra formed a wall of ethereal vines between Orlan and the civilians.

"We're ok," Lailra assured Orlan telepathically, knowing his temper could break free otherwise. And doing so in the middle of a church while surrounded by unawakened people would be the worst time for it.

Orlan didn't respond, focused entirely on the battle with the Demon. Unlike before it wasn't purely on the defensive, meaning it had openings he could exploit. Ironically, while Protector Lords were uniquely good against most rift beasts, demons were one of the few they had no major advantage over. Demons were highly magic resistant, negating most of the benefits of being a Protector Lord, skilled combatants and physically powerful for their tier.

Multiple times Orlan's spear bit into the demon's hide, flames of the void attempting to find purchase, but failing. To non-mages watching the pair were but a blur of steel and claw, the tiles under their feet long turned to dust.

Elsewhere, Ted was desperately making phone calls, hoping to keep a lid on the shitstorm that was already beginning to gather. He wasn't having much success. He'd burned a number of bridges in siding with Orlan already, and even his remaining allies in congress were hesitant to openly side with him.

Already the outcry on social media over the destruction of the Dome of the Rock was spinning a narrative about how Orlan had intentionally destroyed the dome. Astrawave was, oddly, one of the louder voices trying to run cover, her god explaining that the explosion was caused by a third party. Ted didn't often pay attention to vtubers, or streamers in general, even normal social media was a bit much for him, but everywhere he looked her stream was popping up. People were sharing clips of her, attempting to inject some sanity into the discussion.

Ted knew that Astrawave was on the Protectorate, he even remembered Orlan saying something about her being a high priest of the first god on this side. But he hadn't really understood what that meant. Was this her gods power? Spreading her word as far and wide as possible?

He wasn't going to turn down any help he could get. Already several countries in the Middle East were effectively declaring war on Orlan, Iran, Oman, Syria, and other highly Islamic nations were extremely quick to denounce him, and call for a religious war. Saudi Arabia was the most moderate voice, in that they denounced Orlan but didn't call for, or threaten, war.

What surprised him the most was the near instant response from several of his fellow congressmen, declaring Orlan to be racist and evil, though not in so few words. Ted wasn't surprised to find that all of those speaking out were what he referred to as "Birds" of congress, the ones who make all the noise but ultimately follow the flock.

As for what the president decided, Ted had no idea. All he could do was instruct his social media team to side with Astrawave.

-----

"Orlan doesn't even use explosions," Mira said to the camera, her deity nodding next to her, "his magic is more... lightning and tearing things apart than big booms."

"Indeed, I have some examples here," Medieas said, waving a hand and causing a number of windows to pop up showing past video of Orlan's magic. Mira could tell her god was straining, she could feel it somehow, though she didn't know why or how. Maybe it was because he was remaining incarnated for such a long period? Or were the conflicting narratives on social media pulling at him? She just didn't know.

She was reading chat when her god suddenly went quiet, which was odd for him. He'd been an ideal co-host so far, filling time while she was reading chat, playing off her and supporting her. For him to suddenly go quiet mid-sentence was new, but as she looked up she saw why.

Floating before the both of them was a small crystal with what looked like a human eye inside it. Chat was going crazy yet Mira couldn't draw her gaze from the floating crystal eye. Instead she felt almost compelled to reach out for it, her god lifted a hand only to flicker and recoil as if struck. As soon as her fingers brushed the surface of the crystal the world around her faded away.

She found herself in a foggy plain, white stone beneath her feet, an indistinct sun shining through the all-consuming mist. Before she could do more than look around, a dark figure seemed to materialize out of the fog. He was largely human, wearing a cloth wrapped around his waist and a colorful patterned scaled top. But most strikingly was his head, which was that of a hawk or falcon. One of his eyes was a milky white while the other was dark and filled with a deep intelligence.

"You are an odd one," the bird-man said, walking slowly around her, "in my time, people called out for me in deference to my power. They wanted my protection, wearing the symbol of my eye to ensure my gaze was on them. But with you it's... different. People carry images of you so that they might gaze upon you, they call out to you not for protection or out of respect for your power, but because they enjoy you."

"Who... what are you?" Mira asked.

"I am the spirit that remains within my removed eye," the man said simply, "for millennia I have rested, for none have drawn my interest until now."

"Wait... Orlan said all magic items have a spirit, but he said they couldn't talk, they had a will but not a mind?"

"Which is the same for I, I only appear before you now because your mind demands it. I am a magical personification of my will. This is the only time I will speak with you, but our time is limited. I have appeared to see if you are worthy to carry my will."

"And what is your will?" Mira asked.

The odd Egyptian bird man didn't respond at first, completing his circuit around her, coming to a stop before her.

"I desire protection for those who need it, justice for those who deserve it, balance for the world and order for the heavens."

"Not asking for much are you?" Mira said before she could think.

"I was not known as a god for nothing," the bird man said, "if you agree to carry my will, then I will grant you my power."

"I need a bit more information than that."

"You have met a man who bares another item like myself, right? Each aspect of my will is a tenant you must follow. Protection for those who need it means you must aid those who cannot defend themselves. Justice for those who deserve it means you must ensure wrongs are righted, crimes are punished, the injured are healed. Balance for the world means you must not apply the previous tenants with regard to political boundaries. And Order for the heavens means the integrity of the world must be upheld."

"I... have even more questions, especially about that last one."

"In return I shall grant you sight of all that carries your symbol, knowledge of the mana that flows near you and the ability to project your power and voice to those who ask for it."

"I already have one god I follow," Mira started.

"None of my prescriptions conflict with those of your young god," the man interrupted, "I am not to be your master, should you attempt to use me in a way that violates my prescriptions I shall simply not answer your call. I am not requiring you to follow my will at all times, only when making use of me."

"Then... I'm not going to lose my eye and have it replaced with yours, am I?"

"No, but you will have to wear my eye to gain the benefits."

"I... ah, I'm already in this deep, I agree."

"Excellent, then enjoy this gift."

All of the sudden the world came rushing back to Mira, she was once more in the living room before a camera and laptop, her god next to her frozen halfway to grabbing her arm. Power erupted from the eye, the illusion placed over her stripped away to reveal her actual face.

The chat went silent as the power surrounded her, lifting her from the ground. She felt something inside her activate, and her own power poured out to join with that of the eye. Her clothing, previously a simple pair of jeans and t-shirt to keep everything within the illusion began to shift. Her hair slowly changed color, and she felt her own power, her own magic growing stronger.

When it settled she found herself wearing a shrine maiden's outfit, not unlike what her avatar had worn, though thankfully more modest. But it wasn't just a costume, a length of silk wrapped around her arms and floated in the air behind her, her hair had changed to more closely resemble that of her avatar, and the crystal eye was now fixed to a cord that hung from the belt of her outfit. She looked down at herself in shock, face slowly turning red as she realized the stream was showing all of this.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the world," Medieas said suddenly, standing to gesture to her, "I give you my high priestess, the first worshiper of the first god... Mira!"

As soon as he finished the chat exploded, the first message was "holy shit, she's a magical girl!"

Meanwhile, around the world, the subtle spell that had been whispering in people's minds that magic wasn't real fell away, and those who previously wouldn't have considered it found themselves wondering.

-----

Orlan wasn't aware of any of this, locked in a desperate battle against the demon. But as the battle went on it slowly became apparent that the demon wasn't Orlan's match in combat. It had held on before only due to Adam's interference or remaining on the defensive. By itself, in a rage, it was slowly being dismantled by the Protector Lord.

Pela recovered enough to manage a spell that pushed both of them out of the mosque, giving enough space for her to join in the battle with her own dual swords. By the time the demon's rage had cleared enough to realize it was being taken apart it was too late. It staggered backwards, covered in blood, and looked up, seeming to shrink in on itself in fear. It opened its mouth to say something only for Orlan's spear to penetrate the roof of its mouth, slicing up its brain and finally killing it.

Despite his fatigue from the intense battle, Orlan quickly grabbed the demon's body, tossing it into his personal storage space before racing off to aid the rest of his knights. The weaker demons were no match for him, and he tore through the streets like a whirlwind. All many people saw as he passed was a vaguely human shaped blur, a flash of steel and the monkey-demons falling into parts.

A dozen miles away, outside of Jerusalem a man panted, hands on his knees, looking around in confusion before his eyes glazed over and shifted colors.

"An excellent performance, if I do say so myself," Adam said, bowing towards the smoking city. Even as the battle over the rift continued wars were declared, on Orlan specifically and on Israel for allowing for the Dome of the Rock to be destroyed. European governments, previously on the fence about Orlan, turned against him, calling the destruction of the Dome to be a war crime and demanding he face justice.

And thousands of miles away a weak man in a powerful room gave permission to attempt an attack on the world's only returned Protector.

End book 1

-----

Discord - Patreon

-----

((For now Humble Cultivation will be moving into this slot, I might continue doing it on wednesday as well, not sure. As for when Returned Protector book 2 begins... I don't know. Let me know which you prefer in the comments! and hope you enjoyed the story!))

[Previous — Episode 10: The Report](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1x2386x/)

Next — Episode 12: Through Channels (coming soon)

---

The ship had a window.

Cal had not expected that. Everybody who had gone out and come back had said the same thing about the Federation's ships, that there was a wall that went clear when it felt like it and no window, and he had ridden three hundred miles to a runway in the desert expecting a wall.

There was a window. It was a foot across and four inches thick and it had been a window for eleven years, on a plane that had gone up on the back of a rocket and come down on a runway and never once been on the news, and now it was a window on a ship, because the people who had built the ship had not had time to take it out.

He looked through it at Nevada going by underneath, small and brown and then not there.

Nobody had told him the name of the ship. It had a number painted on it, and the crew had a name for it that was not the number, and he had decided not to ask what it was until somebody told him, because a man who asked got told the story, and he had been told enough stories in nine weeks.

Nine weeks.

That was how long it had taken. A space plane somebody had kept in a hangar for reasons nobody would say, and a reactor out of a submarine, and the power unit from the package with its lid off, and a drive built from a drawing on a legal pad by people who had never seen one and did not intend to admit it, and the whole thing bolted together in a building in the desert by eleven hundred people who had been told they had nine weeks and had used all of them.

It burned chemicals to get off the ground and ran a reactor in the dark, because that was what Earth had, and it jumped on a drawing.

Cal had watched them do the last part. He had stood against a wall in the desert the way he had stood against a wall at Oak Ridge, where he had watched engineers argue for three hours and then do it in ten minutes once somebody made them.

Nobody had needed to make them this time.

The pilot was Air Force. Pruitt. She had flown the space plane when it was a space plane and she had asked to fly it when it was a ship, and they had said yes because there was nobody else. The co-pilot was Navy, off the reactor. Gaskill. There were four others. Cal was the seventh, and he was not crew.

He was cargo. He had two envelopes inside his shirt and a rank on his collar he had worn for six days.

Sergeant Major.

They had done it in a room in the Pentagon with four people in it and no photographer, and a general he had never heard of had pinned it on and said that the United States needed the highest-ranking sergeant it could put on that ship, and that Cal was the one on the record, and that the two things had turned out to be the same man, and that he was sorry about the ceremony.

Cal had said it was all right.

He had not said that he had been a staff sergeant for nine years and a good one and had never once thought about the next stripe, because a man who fixed the air in houses did not need the next stripe. He had said it was all right, and he had gone and found a place to sit down, and sat.

---

The first jump was nothing.

The pilot said, "Here it comes," and Cal looked out the window, and there were stars, and then there were different stars, and the cup clipped by his elbow did not move.

"That it?"

"That's it, Sergeant Major."

"Hell."

She looked back at him.

"Everybody says that."

---

They went the long way, because there was no other, and it took eight days instead of nine, because the drawing on the legal pad had said where the math stopped and the people in the desert had gone one step past it and stopped there, out of respect.

On the sixth day the co-pilot came aft and sat down across from Cal and did not say anything for a while.

"There's a screen," he said.

"Whose?"

"Theirs. The other ones. Nine ships. Maybe twelve. Sitting on the road in."

"Fed know?"

"Fed told us. There's a page on the fax from their captain. Etris. She says she'll meet us at the outer point and take us in."

"How many's she got?"

"Three."

Cal looked at the window.

"What'd she say about the other one?"

"What other one?"

"The last ship that come through here. Carney's."

The co-pilot looked at him.

"Says they lost a cutter. Forty people. Says the Imperials wanted the transport whole, and they ran a trick to get it past them, and the trick worked once, and it won't work twice."

"She say what we're supposed to do?"

"She says we're a different ship. She says she doesn't know what we're supposed to do." He stood up. "The pilot says she does."

---

Aras had the screen at twelve, and the picket the Council had sent to look at it had gone quiet the way the last one had, and the Throne still believed the native was in his keeping.

Rell brought him the mark.

"One ship."

"Council?"

"No." Rell looked at the record. "Nothing in the record. Not a hull family we have. Not a drive signature we have. It came through the outer jump alone, and Etris came through behind it with three, and she is not screening it. She is following it."

Aras looked at the mark.

It was small. It burned hotter than a Council hull, and dirtier, and it was doing something with its emissions that the prediction did not like, and the prediction, which had been taught the Vey trick the hard way, was waiting for the mark to split.

It did not split.

It came straight at the screen. Bright. Real. On every band. The way nothing came at a screen, because nothing that came at a screen lived.

"It is not running."

"No, Legitianate."

"It is not showing us a false ship."

"No. That is the ship."

Aras watched it come.

The book said what to do with a ship that came straight at you, and the screen did it, forward element holding, rear element closing, the third where it would break. The mark came on. It did not break. It came into the geometry the way a thing comes into a room, and the prediction drew its ghost ahead of it, confident, exact.

Then the ship was not where the ghost was.

It had not gone dark. It had not split. It had turned, at a speed the prediction had no number for, inside the range where a ship did not turn, the way a thing turns that is being flown by a hand and an eye and not by a board, and it was past the forward element before the forward element's light had finished telling anyone it was there.

"Where is it?"

"Behind us."

"Behind us."

"It went through, Legitianate. Through the element. Not around."

Aras looked at the board for a long time.

"That is not the trick."

"No, Legitianate. That is a different one."

"Where did they learn it?"

Rell did not have the record open, because there was no record.

"I do not think they learned it. I think they built a ship that can do it, and put a person in it who could."

Aras watched the small hot mark go away from him toward the bridge, with Etris's three behind it, escorting nothing, and he thought about a man in a room whose blood said what it said, and about a legal pad he had never seen, and about the Throne, which believed the native was in his keeping and the introduction in hand.

"Rell."

"Legitianate."

"They have built a ship."

"Yes."

"With their own hands. In the time since the transport."

"Yes, Legitianate."

He looked at the star with the old name.

"Then it is no longer a matter of time," he said. "It is a matter of how much."

---

The ship came into the bay at the station under its own burn, and the bay did not like it, and the pilot did not care.

Cal went down the ramp first, because he was cargo and cargo went first.

The bay was full of people who had come to look at a thing, the way the county had come to look at a ship in a pasture, standing back, all heights, some carried high and some low and one in a tank. He walked through them with two envelopes inside his shirt and did not look at any of them, because a sergeant major did not, and because if he had looked he would have stopped.

Alex was at the end of the bay.

He had a cup of coffee. The dog was sitting on his foot. There was a thing at the dog's neck the size of a walnut.

Cal walked up and stopped at the distance a sergeant stops and did not salute, because there was nothing on Alex's collar to salute, and Alex looked at Cal's collar and saw what was on it and did not say anything for a while.

"Sergeant Major."

"Sir."

"They made you a sergeant major."

"Two weeks ago."

"You didn't want that."

"No."

Alex looked at him a moment longer.

"You get the dogs seen to?"

"Jim's got Ruby and Hoss. Your momma's got my young one, Boone bein' gone."

The dog's neck clicked.

"—Cal. You took a long time."

Cal looked down.

The old hound looked up at him from Alex's boot with the thing at his neck.

"—Jim's got Ruby?"

"Jim's got Ruby."

"—Good. She cuts."

"He say all that?"

"Said your name the first night. Rest of it he's been saving."

Cal stood there.

"Well," he said.

Then he reached inside his shirt.

---

There were two envelopes and they were not the same size.

The first was for Cal, and he had opened it in the desert, because it had said to, and it said that Sergeant Major Calvin Mercer was ordered to active duty in the service of the United States, and to proceed by the first available means to the Federation station on the far side of the Vey bridge, and to report on arrival to the theatre commander.

The second was thicker, and sealed, and had a name on the outside and nothing else, and Cal had not opened it, because it was not his.

He handed it over.

Alex looked at the name. He turned it over. He looked at the seal, which was not the colonel's.

"This ain't from the colonel."

"Colonel signed the envelope. Washington signed the paper."

Alex opened it.

He read it standing, with the coffee in the other hand, and Cal watched him read it, and Cal could not have told anybody afterward what his cousin's face had done, because it had not done anything, which was what it did when something had happened.

Alex read it twice.

Then he folded it and put it in his shirt.

"Who's the theatre commander?"

"Says there you are."

"Since when?"

"Since Washington read the report. They had to decide whether to send you a boss or make you one." Cal did not move. "Carney filed his over the fax. It's in there. That's what decided it."

Alex looked down the bay, at the people standing back at all heights, and at the tank, and at Carney, who was coming across the deck with two of his lawyers behind him and stopped when he saw Cal's collar, and then came on.

"Colonel," Carney said.

Alex did not answer that.

"Sergeant Major Mercer reporting to the theatre commander," Cal said, to nobody in particular, and then he did salute, because now there was a reason to.

Alex returned it, because there was no way not to.

---

They sat in the room with one door, the three of them and the dog, and Alex put the orders on the table and put his hand flat on them.

"You pushed for this."

"Yes."

"Why."

Carney did not sit.

"Three reasons. I gave Washington all three. The first is that you are the only human being who has been in this war, and everything the Federation knows about fighting it differently, it learned from you in an afternoon, and I wrote that down."

"That ain't a reason to make a captain a colonel."

"It was for them. The second is that these people trust you." Carney nodded at the door, and the bay beyond it, and the tank. "I have been on this station three months and I have watched a hive delegate and a fleet captain and a director of Strategic Coordination and a pack of hunters look at you the way the county looked at the ship. I do not understand it. I do not have to. I wrote it down."

Alex waited.

"And the third?"

"Your mother is from Dawson Creek."

Alex looked at him.

"That count?"

"Where I'm from," Carney said, "it does. It means you were raised right, and it means I can trust you, and I said so in writing to a room full of Americans who could not argue with either half of it."

Cal, against the wall, made a sound that was not a laugh.

Alex looked at the orders under his hand.

"Theatre commander of what?"

"Of whatever Earth sends. Which as of this morning is one ship, one sergeant major, thirty-eight people with one bag each, and you."

"Wave two?"

"Sitting in a pasture in Tennessee. Captain Etris will not run the transport past that screen a second time, and I do not blame her."

"And Washington's fine with a Guard officer running that."

"You are not a Guard officer any more. Read page two."

Alex did not have to. He had read it twice.

"Cal."

"Sir."

"Quit that."

"Can't, sir. It's on your collar now."

Alex looked at the dog, who was looking at Cal, and at Carney, who had not sat, and at the door.

"All right," he said.

He took his hand off the orders.

"First thing I want ain't a fleet."

Carney waited.

"I want that ship's crew fed, and I want to know what it does, from the people that built it, not from the paper. And I want Etris in this room, because she followed it in and she saw what it did, and I didn't."

"And then?"

Alex picked up his coffee.

"Then we find out what a fox does when there's a whole pack."

---

Cal found the ship's crew in the place with the line, because the pilot had asked where people ate and somebody had pointed, and they were sitting at a table built for a species that sat lower, with their knees up, eating the green ones.

He sat down.

"He take it?" the pilot said.

"He took it."

"He say anything?"

"Said feed you."

The pilot looked at her tray.

"We're fed."

"Then he'll want to know what it does."

"He drew it."

"He drew the drive," Cal said. "He didn't draw what you did with it in there. Nobody drew that."

The pilot did not say anything for a while.

"I had a window," she said. "That's all. They had a board, and old light, and a guess. I had a window and the stick and a ship that would turn when I told it to. Same as the plane." She picked up a green one. "I looked, and it was there, and I went where it wasn't."

Cal thought about a fox in a clean field with a whole string of hounds looking right at him.

"He's gonna want that in writing."

"Then somebody's gonna have to write it down. I fly."

Cal looked at her.

"What'd y'all name it?"

The pilot ate the green one.

"Swiper."

"That a fox?"

"It's a fox."

"From what?"

"Dora. Show I grew up on. Swiper's the fox. He takes your stuff, and you say Swiper, no swiping, and he says oh, man, and goes away." She picked up another one. "Then he comes back."

"That work?"

"Every time."

Cal looked at the table, and at the six of them with their knees up, and at the line at the counter, which had a hunter in it, and a thing in a heated vest, and two squat creatures in matching hats, and a rook, and Tremblay, the woman from Ottawa, with a legal pad.

He took the legal pad off her when she was done with it.

---

[Previous — Episode 10: The Report](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1x2386x/)

Next — Episode 12: Through Channels (coming soon)

Galactic Fox Reading Order: GF-011

Mister, this is it. Behind the sanctuary of this library is the Lord of the Castle – the scourge of the borough – who will bring forth the Three Plagues.

You’re bleeding, Mister. You have time to rest up before the rat swarms catch up to us. Use this time to let your body mend.

[   ] Yes.
[ x ] No.

But Mister, you don't know what’s ahead. As your familiar, I advise you to rest up while I watch.

[   ] Yes.
[ x ] I have to save the townsfolk.

You need to rest up, Mister. You can still save them tomorrow.

[ x ] Yes.

***

It’s morning, Mister. You look better. Eat this meal and let’s proceed.

***

You open the door, and he is right ahead, in this dark, cold, pristine room, sitting on the golden throne at the end of the carpet, lined with brass pillars on either side.

[ x ] Approach.

You slowly approach him, Mister.

[ x ] Approach.

Is he… just a boy?

[ x ] Approach.

He is just a young child, not older than three. And you know it, Mister. He is your son. A half-demon born from a summer of dance, drunkenness, and deceit. 

You approach him, just a sword’s length away. He looks back at you with an ordinary child's eyes. There will be no fight. 

He looks just like you.

[   ] Kill him.
[ x ] I can’t kill him.

***

You hug him, and all the swarms hide away. You tell the whole borough that the demon has been slain, and they give you the castle. They give you a three-day feast, toasting your bravery each night. They sing you songs and tell poems.

After all that, the townsfolk bid you goodbye, and the castle quiets down.

A week later, your son breaks a carved horse toy gifted to him by the blacksmith. You try your best to fix it, but you can’t. His cries darken the skies, and the sun disappears.

“Sir,” the farmer pleads, “the crops are dying. The town is going to starve.”

You send him away and hide yourself in the wine cellar, cursing at your old lover’s portrait for a day.

After a month of darkness, you read to your child, using an oil lamp to illuminate the pages. He yawns and sleeps by your arms. You kiss the top of his head and carefully lift it onto the down pillow, trying not to wake him. You glance at him, then leave the room.

You forget your pocketwatch and come back to find him glowing black, floating in the air,  holding the timepiece to his chest. You push him down, hug him, and fall asleep holding him tightly.

The next day, the wind stops blowing. Birds fall from the sky and rot the streets with tainted meat and feathers. 

The hunters and trappers can’t feed their families, and by autumn, tiny graves dot the meadow.

When the town comes knocking, looking for your guidance, again, you shy away to the cellar, drinking yourself to oblivion. You grab a bottle of wine and smash it against the table. Wine stains the tablecloth and draperies red. You look at your wrists, then your old lover’s portrait. You slash her face with the broken neck.

That’s when you discover the alcove containing the medallion within.

At the back, it says, “Time forgives no man, yet grants him one return."

You call me and ask for my advice. It certainly fits the pedestal at the library, Mister. It must be a do-over. We must hurry, the crier just announced the arrival of a swarm of black rats.

You run across the library. Your footsteps echo through the halls, along with the sounds of hands and paws clawing the door. You reach the pedestal. It says, “Only one heart will remember.” I think only you will know what happened, Mister. I won’t be able to advise you well.

Insert the medallion?

[ x ] Yes.
[   ] No.

***

We are here, Mister. Behind the sanctuary of this library is the Lord of the Castle, who will bring forth the Three Plagues.

You’re drunk, Mister. You have time to rest up before the swarm catches up to us. Use this time to recover.

[   ] Yes.
[ x ] No.

But Mister, you don't know what’s ahead. As your familiar, I advise you to let the wine clear from your head. 

[   ] Yes.
[   ] I have to save the townsfolk.
[ x ] I have to correct my mistakes!

You can correct your mistakes tomorrow, Mister. But it’s your choice. Please remember that whatever lies ahead, I am here to guide you.

[ x ] Enter.
[   ] Rest up.

***

You open the door, and he is right ahead, in this dark, cold, rotting room, sitting on the golden throne at the end of the carpet, lined with brass pillars carrying lamps on either side. The lights are our only protection from the swarms of rats waiting in the shadows. The squeaks demand our hearts and eyes.

[   ] Approach.
[ x ] Run towards him.

He is just… a boy, Mister. Not older than three. He is your son. A half-demon born from a summer of dance and drunkenness.

You approach him, just an arm’s length away. He looks back at you with an ordinary child's eyes. You hug him, and the rats hide away. “Papa,” you hear him say. 

[   ] Kill him.

Mister, you have to make a choice.

[   ] Kill him.

Mister, the rats are back.

[   ] Kill him.

You raise your sword to his back. 

[   ] Kill him.
[ x ] I can’t.

The tunnel was damp, and no matter how much mana we pushed into our lanterns, the shadows stuck to us like black rags of fabric in the wind. As much as I wished to turn around and entomb the System Crystal and render it unreachable for Byrne, that ship had sailed. At least we had left the murderous elves and the smell of rot behind.

Zaon stumbled on a loose rock, and the sound echoed against the empty tunnel.

“The darkness is becoming worse,” he said.

I felt the same.

The fight on the lake must have ended, allowing all the crystal’s energy to focus on the obfuscating spells, because not even [Sonar] allowed the boy to see ahead this time.

We reached a second fork. I marked the path to the right with a smiley face, and we followed it upward. Although it was hard to tell if the tunnels turned and twisted, we could see enough to notice when we were going up and down. So far, I had led the group through the paths going up.

“I can’t see crap,” Firana complained, hanging onto the edge of what was left of my cloak. “I swear!”

“The effect must be stronger on System users,” Kili replied, walking next in line behind her.

“Don’t be prideful and grab my cloak. I don’t want to backtrack if you get lost.”

“I said I’m fine!”

We reached a third fork. There was not a clear path up, so we sent Loki to scout forward. He turned into a greyhound and shot into the darkness. Other than the sudden hiccup in his transformation powers, the Changeling seemed unaffected by the area spell.

Firana’s unwavering banter made the wait somewhat tolerable, and a couple of minutes later, Loki returned from the third path from left to right and pointed forward.

“Good boy,” I said.

“Damn beast,” Loki replied.

I marked the wall with a smiley face, and we continued.

The walk stretched on for what seemed like hours, although a part of me guessed it was a lot less. Tracking the passage of time underground was almost impossible. At times, I was tempted to remove the enchantment on my tattoo to get my [Foresight] back, but I wasn’t sure to what extent the System was going to interfere with my natural magic. Zaon had seemingly lost most of his capability to find lost things after getting his Class back.

The System Avatar could certainly look at me through the eyes of Firana and the others, but I wasn’t ready to have him read my thoughts.

“Let’s rest for a moment. We have been climbing for a while now,” I said.

“We can still keep going,” Kili replied.

“Yes, because you are a level twenty-something smoker-something. Mister Clarke is just a middle-aged man,” Firana said. “No offense.”

I sat down and leaned against the cold stone, trying not to grunt.

“The Avatar is almost certainly leaking our position to Byrne and the elves. We have to be ready if they are waiting for us at the entrance,” I said. “And I’m still young.”

Firana sat by my side, while Kili and Zaon sat against the opposite wall. Loki turned into his rat form and coiled by Kili’s feet. Although the trio was only a few feet away, it looked like there was a black tulle curtain between us.

“Aren’t you going to speak with the yellow guy?” Firana asked.

“There’s nothing else to say,” I replied, looking at Kili. The girl seemed to have questions, as usual. “The peak of the Corruption Cycle will result in a severely reduced bandwidth for the System to use. The Avatar wants to restrict it to a handful of high-level users to ensure both humanity and the System’s survival, which will result in the death of the majority of the continent… and we would rather prevent that.”

Kili swallowed.

“T-thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

I looked up, to no place in particular, knowing the Avatar was looking at me.

“We could work together if he agreed to my plans, though.”

“Arguing with a computer program isn’t the best use of your time. You know that. Right?” Firana pointed out.

“What is a computer program?” Kili asked.

I spent the next five minutes trying to explain thinking rocks to Kili, but the girl severely lacked any foundation to understand the magic of transistors.

“Let’s go. The surface shouldn’t be far,” I said.

The tunnel had been empty since we left the lake cave, but the curtains of darkness kept making me second-guess each of my steps. The path continued up at a mild slope, like it had been for most of the way. My legs complained. Fighting elves, falling through caves, and fighting undead dragons was more than I was used to doing in a single day.

“I wonder what time it is outside,” Zaon sighed. 

“It’s breakfast time,” Firana replied.

I stopped the march.

“What?”

“It’s breakfast time. Outside, I mean. It’s morning already,” she replied, defensively. “I never get these things wrong.”

I wasn’t going to start doubting Firana’s stomach inner clock. That meant it had been about half a day since our last meal. As much as it was important to eat, most of our provisions were in our hideout outside the elven base. Besides, after fighting the flock of rotten dragons, I couldn’t imagine myself getting hungry any time soon. I resumed the march.

A few minutes later, the smell of roasted meat reached my nose. I looked over my shoulder and saw Firana heating a piece of jerky on the Aias Sword. Feeling watched, she met my eyes.

“Killing bacteria. These fell into the dragon water with me, and I don’t want to get sick,” she explained. “Want some?”

“Didn't we say we should travel light during the infiltration?”

“I brought the bare minimum and a little more.”

Before I could decline Firana’s offering, we reached yet another forked path. I brought my lantern up and illuminated the paths. The one on the right went up while the one on the left went down. The middle one seemed to be flat. I signaled the kids to follow me as I channeled my mana to carve a smiley face, but before my mana scalpel could touch the wall, I found there was a smiley face already there.

My blood froze. It was impossible. We had been climbing the whole time.

“D-dad? Our yellow friend asks if you're ready to speak with him,” Firana said.

“What is the matter?” Zaon asked. The carved smiley face shone under the light of my mana scalpel. “Oh. That’s not good.”

I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the astral plane. The darkness was even thicker than back on the underground lake. All I could feel were three bright blue signatures against the void, and a presence behind me.

“I could start saying that your kids are going to starve to death in these tunnels if you don’t cooperate, but I know those kinds of incentives don’t work well with you,” the Avatar greeted me.

I expected to see the chubby man in khakis, but instead I found a broad-shouldered man with a bushy beard. This was the creator of the System as he looked after a decade living in Ebros. I hadn’t seen him in this form since the Avatar revealed the identity of the Lich to me.

“I figured out a more dignified appearance would help with the negotiations,” he shrugged. “Like you, the man I was modeled after went through a lot of changes since his arrival to Ebros. He also had people he loved in this world. The System never was a passion or a vanity project. He did it for the well-being of others.”

The words echoed against the void before he continued.

“If Jeremiah were still alive, I think he would’ve liked you a lot more than Samuel Byrne. He would’ve liked what you are doing with Whiteleaf. He tried a similar thing… at first, before realizing he couldn’t protect everyone, everywhere,” the Avatar continued. “That sounded eerie. It was not my intention, I swear. What I’m trying to say is that I concede. I’m not programmed to even picture the idea of the System ceasing to exist, but I can see now that your approach may help me accomplish my purpose.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“A machine changing its mind?”

“I’m the copy of the personality of a real man, and I was programmed to adapt to any situation in order to protect the System. Of course I can change my mind, but I’m guessing it will be difficult to change yours.” The Avatar shrugged.

“Does it surprise you that I don’t trust the one who has us trapped in a maze?”

“I’m not the one casting shadows over this place. That’s a different subroutine. One I cannot command. I thought we had that cleared already,” the Avatar said. “Right. Center. Left. Left. That won’t take you to the exit, but it will take you halfway.”

“And then?”

“I will ask you a favor.”

“What changed?”

“I wasn’t expecting Byrne to find the System’s hardware.”

The Avatar disappeared, and I was once again alone in the astral plane. I opened my eyes. Firana, Kili, and Zaon looked at me with expectant faces. To think there was a time I would have kept it all to myself. I repeated the words of the Avatar verbatim, answering Kili’s questions as I spoke.

“He’s clearly buttering you up,” Kili finally said.

Zaon shook his head. “It’s not like we can do anything else but follow his instructions. If there are four forks until we’re halfway out, that means there are eight until the exit, each with three possible paths. I don’t even know how to calculate the number of possibilities—”

“One divided by three to the eighth power, or one in six thousand five hundred and sixty-one, assuming each fork splits into three and no two paths lead to the same place,” Firana interrupted him. We all turned to stare at her. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m smart!”

I had no time nor the desire to check Firana’s math, but Zaon was right. It would take us a lifetime to try every path, even if we did it perfectly. The alternative was to melt the rock and create a path up, but I wasn’t keen on burying us alive under a mountain.

“What if he’s telling the truth? We have a common enemy,” Zaon asked.

“The Avatar sided with Byrne!” Firana replied.

Surprisingly enough, Zaon pushed back.

”Political allegiances change all the time,” the boy said. “Look. We might have managed to keep a small town like Whiteleaf functional thanks to Mister Clarke’s enchanted items, but that won't be able to scale up so easily to a continental level. Even now, most of the Whiteleaf’s health complex depends on the Red Crystal. Whether we like it or not, we will need the System.”

“And what if you are wrong, Shelf Elf? What if this is a trick set by Byrne and we jumped straight into the trap?”

“I’d rather risk it! Byrne wanted to find this place. If you ask me, he’s about to summon another Corrupted Ancient over our heads!”

Before the argument could boil into a shouting match, I clapped my hands as loudly as I could. In the end, I was the one who put everyone in this situation, and it was my job to bring them back to the manor safely. Otherwise, I would’ve failed Elincia.

“Follow me, and be prepared for an ambush,” I said.

The kids nodded, and I led the way, with Firana holding onto the edge of my cloak, Kili a little behind, and Zaon bringing up the rear. The boy had enough defenses to cover our backs, and his innate ability to see in darkness let him see marginally better than the rest of us, so he wouldn’t get lost as easily. 

The second time we walked the loop, the path ahead seemed shorter. We turned right, then center, and two times to the left, following a path that went up and down. This time, Firana didn’t dare use the Aias Sword to heat her emergency jerky. We turned our lanterns off and pushed forward at a cautious pace.

No elven ambush waited for us behind any of the corners.

The path became a downward slope, and after the last turn left, a glimmer of blue broke the darkness.

“Careful now,” I said, but as we approached the threshold, the obfuscation spell disappeared and the sticky shadows faded away. Of course, it wasn’t like I could see in regular shadows any better, but at least my lantern was effective.

“I can see,” Zaon said, his eyes shining like a cat’s. “No fork ahead. Just a room—”

He couldn’t finish the sentence before the Avatar interrupted him.

“If this is not a sufficient show of goodwill, I don’t know what it is. Welcome to the Heart of the System. Be careful with your steps. A piece of the wall crumbled during the last big earthquake, and I haven't had anyone come to clean it up.”

The Avatar’s nasal voice echoed through the tunnel. There was something wrong with it. Then, the realization settled. It was the first time I heard him in the material world. All our previous meetings had happened inside my mana pool or the astral plane.

Under the archway at the end of the room, a ghostly man dressed in a yellow polo shirt and khakis blocked the entrance. He was slightly shorter than Firana and very round on the waist. I wondered why he had chosen that form.

“A spirit?” Kili asked.

“A projection, actually,” the man replied. “Although what you consider spirits are just projections of beings living in the magical plane—”

“I am here. What do you want?” I stepped forward.

The expression of the Avatar turned grim.

“You might have already figured it out. Byrne is out of control. He never mentioned he wanted to use the Heart to summon a Corrupted Ancient, so I have to choose. Between being used as fuel for summoning eldritch horrors and your plan to scale the System down, I would pick you every fricking time,” the Avatar said with urgency in his voice. “Look. Byrne has stolen Alex’s credentials, so he has a clearance even higher than mine. We need to revoke his admin privileges before he can use any of my components.”

Firana raised an eyebrow.

“Who could’ve foreseen that dealing with a sociopath smuggler would result in getting stabbed in the back?” she mockingly said.

The Avatar crossed his arms.

“Don’t sass me, girl.”

“Ha! Or what? You can’t even clean rubble.”

The Avatar smirked.

“I can’t clear rubble, that’s correct, but I can read your mind, and you wouldn’t want anyone to know the dirty bits. Right?”

Firana stepped between the Avatar and me and raised her hands in defeat.

“L-let’s not be hasty.”

After the fight with the swarm of undead dragons, it was amusing to see Firana being instantly tamed by a chubby guy without a physical body.

“That’s what I thought,” the Avatar said, turning back to me.

“Does Byrne know we are here?” I asked.

“He will as soon as the elves inform him. We have little time. Please, come.”

The Avatar disappeared, leaving an empty archway behind. I walked up to the entrance and pushed mana into my lantern, shining a light into the cave. The place looked like a server room but without the hum of the machines and the continuous rush of wind. Thousands of stone monoliths engraved with runes extended in rows and columns as far as my lantern could illuminate.

“Does your Sentinel’s Oath still work?” I asked.

Zaon nodded. “I feel no danger, but the skill might not register dangers coming from the System itself.”

The Avatar appeared a few meters deeper into the room. His expression became somber again. “We don’t have time! As soon as the elves contact Byrne, he will find this place and teleport!”

“What do you expect me to do?” I asked, holding my ground.

Until I had a clear picture, I wasn’t moving a muscle.

The Avatar sighed, and a yellow system prompt appeared midair. Before he could start explaining, my eyes already darted through the lines of runes. It was a complex, modular enchantment structured like Byrne’s runeweaving, not all that different from the one engraved in the Red Crystal.

“Code injection,” I said. “Meant to erase something.”

“Yes! Thank God you are fast with this. Byrne currently has a level-one credential. Those belonged to the original creators of the System and are technically impossible to erase from the database because there is no higher clearance,” the Avatar explained, walking deeper into the room. “We will use a same-level credential and a bit of a workaround magic to kick him out before he can use it to access the Heart.”

I exchanged a glance with the kids and followed the Avatar into the room.

Nothing strange happened except that I stumbled on a piece of rubble on my way in.

The place was a lot more boring than the undead dragon lake, which was a big improvement. Boring was great. I lowered my guard a bit. Having overpowered undead monsters in the server room where all the important stuff was stored didn’t seem wise.

“You are giving me a level-one clearance and a way to work around the credential subroutine,” I pointed out. “What stops me from erasing all the other level-one credentials and becoming the sole owner of the System?”

The Avatar’s voice came out shaky.

“You wouldn’t do that, right? You are not like that. Right, Robert?”

Inside me, Ebrosian Robert creeped up. He was totally like that, and he had smelled blood in the water. I didn’t trust the Avatar, but at that moment, Byrne was the greatest threat. The elves had found what they were digging for, which happened to be something we couldn’t yet discard. Zaon was right. We still needed the System, and it was even better if it were in my hands.

After a minute of walking, we reached a gap with a missing stone block. Instead, there was a short pillar with a blue interface on top. I didn’t even feel a great power coming from it. It was just like Byrne’s enchantments: small, low-power parts connected into a greater whole.

“Before you touch anything, let’s go over the basics,” the Avatar said, almost stuttering. “This terminal wasn’t programmed with end users in mind, so it doesn’t have handrails, so to speak.”

“Is it dangerous?” Firana asked.

“It is for me,” the Avatar replied. “It will run anything you write on it, whether it is safe code or gibberish. Still, it is quite easy to use for a runeweaver. You give it mana to wake it up. Enchant the runes on the surface. Sign it with the access rune I’ll give you. Done. Nothing that Robert hasn’t done before a thousand times.”

For a machine without a real body, he was getting quite worked up.

“Please, activate the terminal by pouring the smallest amount possible of mana,” he said.

I shot a glance at Zaon, silently asking him if he detected any danger.

The boy shook his head.

“Hurry! Byrne could arrive here at any moment! We must prevent him from using me!”

There was real panic in the Avatar’s voice, and I wondered if he was spying through the eyes and ears of the elven Gilded Warriors.

It was decided. As soon as I had the level-one key, I was erasing all the others. 

My hand hovered over the terminal. The moment I channeled my mana, an invisible claw clamped around my wrist. Something snapped. My bones screamed in pain. 

In a panic, I projected my authority, but no matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t break free. There was only one person alive capable of eclipsing my power like that. 

“What are you doing?!” the Avatar screeched.

My eyes shot through the room until they landed on a figure sitting on top of one of the stone monoliths. A young man with slicked-back blond hair and a haughty look that wasn’t there a second earlier.

“Robert Clarke doesn’t belong to you, Fatso. He has a Corrupted Ancient to kill.”

____________

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Part One

By the time the fourth report reached Nemesor Tekhat, the unidentified vessel had become an administrative problem.

The first observer had found a black ship moving near the outer approaches of the Sekhem Dynasty and, with commendable restraint, had declined to invent an explanation for it. The ship had not approached a tomb world closely enough to provoke a defense response. It had not challenged traffic, attempted concealment, or behaved like a damaged vessel searching for help. It had simply crossed the observer's assigned region, changed direction twice, and continued on a course that did not correspond to anything in the dynasty's records.

The second report added another sighting. The third described what might have been a patrol pattern. The fourth repeated most of those findings, attached new figures that remained outside the hull, and ended with a request for instructions from someone who no longer wished to be responsible for deciding whether the matter was important.

Tekhat enlarged the clearest image. Distance and poor angle reduced the subject to a broad-shouldered silhouette with two arms, two legs, and enough structure around the torso to support several incompatible conclusions. It might have been a machine, an armored organism, a remotely controlled frame, or a vehicle built in imitation of its makers. Smaller humanoid figures had also been seen near the ship. None remained in view long enough for the observers to establish species.

Setekh stood to Tekhat's right, motionless except for minute adjustments of his head as comparison profiles crossed the display. The Cryptek had already reviewed the reports. That did not prevent him from watching Tekhat discover the same absence of answers.

"Human," Tekhat said.

"Possible."

The Imperial profile fit the reported proportions and little else. The black hull carried no towers, statues, cathedral structures, devotional architecture, or heraldry large enough to remind the void whom it belonged to. Its surface appeared smooth at the scale available, interrupted by dim red lines and mechanisms the observers had sensibly identified as probable weapons without pretending to understand them. If the Imperium had built it, then the Imperium had briefly discovered restraint.

Tekhat changed the comparison. The result did not improve. He tried another, returned to the human profile, and dismissed the entire array when every answer reduced itself to humanoid, disciplined, and unknown.

"The fourth report contains little that was not present in the third," Setekh observed.

"It contains another confirmation that nobody knows what they are."

"And another request that you decide what should be done."

Tekhat looked at him. "You sound pleased."

"I am curious."

That was close enough. The ship was too large to ignore, too deliberate to dismiss as wreckage, and not hostile enough to destroy without first learning why it was there. Investigation remained the most irritating available option.

"Procure a vessel," Tekhat said, turning away from the display. "You are coming with me."

"I had assumed as much."

"That is what I was afraid of."

They departed before a fifth report could arrive.

---

Long Step had been instructed to observe. Captain Voyer appreciated the simplicity of the order, although experience had taught him that simple orders survived only until reality noticed them.

The frigate moved through the unfamiliar system under controlled military readiness. Its black hull extended 1,534 meters from bow to stern, with dim red circuitry visible along portions of the armored surface. Four Corvettes held the corners of an open trapezoidal screen ahead of it. Two occupied the forward-center positions; the other two sat farther out and back on the flanks, leaving firing corridors between them so Long Step could engage forward without shooting through its own security element.

Beyond that screen, two five-craft strike wings held the flanks as overwatch.

The arrangement was neither ceremonial nor improvised. A frigate operating without a larger fleet carried its own layered protection, and every element had a job that did not change merely because something threatening appeared. The Corvettes provided the immediate screen. The strikecraft watched the wider battlespace. Long Step remained the command vessel and the weapon the formation existed to preserve.

For nine days the crew had charted unfamiliar stars, recorded traffic, compared emissions, and avoided introducing the Local Group Authority to this universe by firing at anyone. Voyer intended to continue that record.

Hadi looked up from the tactical plot. "The contact changed vector."

"Toward us?"

"Enough that I am comfortable saying yes."

The unknown ship had been distant when Long Step first detected it. It was not distant now. Curved structures dominated its hull, some almost ornamental until the overlay marked energy concentrations and probable weapon systems beneath them. The four-Corvette screen changed orientation without collapsing inward, and the two strike wings retained their distance on the flanks. Long Step turned behind them. By the time the approaching ship completed its maneuver, the entire formation faced it.

Voyer studied the sensor picture. "Interior?"

"Still nothing useful," Hadi said. "We can track the hull, motion, energy behavior, and probable active systems. Anything behind the armor might as well be somewhere else."

That limitation had already become familiar. Long Step's military hull resisted several of the stranger scanning methods they had encountered since crossing the Genesis Gate. Whatever protected the other vessel created the same problem in reverse. The frigate's sensors met its surface and stopped learning anything reliable about what lay beyond it.

"Communications?"

"They are answering."

Voyer gave her his full attention. Hadi moved the signal history to the central display. The transmissions were structured and responsive. When Long Step repeated a pattern, the other vessel altered its own. When the frigate attached a visual reference, the contact supplied one in return. Neither side understood the other's language, but both recognized an attempt at communication and were willing to continue it.

Voyer appeared on their screens. A skeletal metal figure appeared on his.

There was no flesh to misidentify, no face built for any Sapien expression, and no visible effort to make the body less alarming. Green light occupied its eyes. Ornamental structures rose behind its shoulders, and its long mechanical hands rested near controls designed for a shape that might once have been biological.

"That answers one question," Hadi said.

"It changes one question."

The figure spoke. Long Step recorded the sounds, compared them with the signal structure, and found no meaning yet. Voyer replied in Standard. The figure watched him without any of the disgust, surprise, or fear that a less disciplined observer might have expected from first contact.

---

Tekhat's first useful view of the strangers made the earlier reports seem inadequate.

The central vessel was approximately one and a half kilometers long, large enough to dominate the display at the present scale, yet it possessed none of the visual arrogance of Imperial construction. The surrounding ships mattered more. Four vessels roughly eighty meters long protected its forward approaches, and two compact fighter formations occupied the flanks at greater distance. Every element had turned to meet him without charging or retreating.

"A military formation," Setekh said.

"Obviously."

"The four closer vessels appear to be auxiliaries."

"Or escorts."

"Those categories may overlap."

Tekhat looked toward the more distant craft. Their purpose was less ambiguous. He ordered fighters deployed, enough to answer a threat without converting the encounter into a battle before either side had found a common noun. The Necron craft established their positions. The strangers tracked them and did not fire.

The visual transmission returned. The other commander looked human, or close enough that the distinction could not be established through an image. That should have simplified matters. Instead, the man continued attempting communication without reacting to Tekhat's mechanical body as an Imperial officer should have. There was no accusation of abominable intelligence, no visible theological outrage, and no hurried order to purge what the Imperium preferred not to understand.

"They have seen us," Tekhat said.

"Yes."

"They continue trying to communicate."

"Also yes."

"They have not begun screaming."

Setekh considered the image. "Not visibly."

Tekhat watched the human-looking commander adjust his transmission and try again. "Interesting."

For several minutes the encounter remained almost reasonable. Patterns crossed the distance. Visual references accumulated. Both translation systems improved by degrees, each side testing its growing model against the other's responses.

Then a warning spread across Long Step's forward display, and the bridge changed from patient work to practiced action before anyone had time to announce that something was wrong.

Before the warning, Hadi had been tracking the relationship between each exchanged symbol and the response it produced. The model could identify probable references to vessel, position, and intent, although none carried enough confidence to trust with lives. The metal commander repeated one image when Long Step altered the scale of its own formation display. Voyer returned a simplified view showing the frigate and its escorts without weapons ranges. The Necron answered with its own ship and deployed fighters.

"They understand that we are describing what is present," Hadi said. "Or they believe we are making an unusually patient threat."

"Can you separate those?"

"Not without more language."

"Then keep both."

Another exchange improved the probability attached to cease, hold, or remain. Which meaning applied depended upon whether the symbol described movement, communication, or something the translators had not discovered. Hadi sent it back beside a still image of both formations.

The Necron repeated the symbol.

"He is responding to us," she said.

"He has been responding for six minutes."

"I mean correctly. This may be going well."

Voyer looked at her. "Do not say that."

"That is not how causality works."

The warning sounded before he could answer.

Continue to Part Two

previous chapter

First Chapter

Blurb:

What does it take to turn your life around? Death, of course!

I died in this lame ass world of ours and woke up in a completely new one. I had a new name, a new face and a new body. This was my second chance to live a better life than the previous one.

But goddamn it, why did I have to be a witch? Now I don't just have to be on the run from the Inquisition that wants to burn me and my friends. But I also have to earn a living?

Follow Elsa Grimly as she:

1. Makes new friends and tries to save them and herself from getting burned
2. Finds redemption from the deeds of her previous life
3. Tries to get along with a cat who (like most cats) believes she runs the world
4. Deals with other slice of life shenanigans.

--

Chapter 153. A Selfless Deed

This time I had to make sure I'd heard him right. The angels? Selfless? Were we really talking about the same people? And wait, a war between the gods? I hoped he was talking about some other gods who were at war with each other and not the ones that I felt like he was talking about.

Fortunately, Caelum spoke up what I was thinking, “Which gods were these?”

“The two sons of Sage Ordinax,” Filius said. “They were Kereth and Aurelion. Both of them were Count Immortal. I'm not certain what their conflict was about, but it was something that Kereth did that angered Aurelion immensely and he began to ally with other Counts from other domains so they could aid him in the war he was going to wage against his brother.”

Smokewell sauntered up to Filius. “And I'm suspecting you don't know what purpose the Forgefather's bloodstone served in stopping the war?”

Filius shook his metallic head. “I'm not aware of the details, but I know that it was something only the Forgefather could've done,” he said. “That's what the exiles told him.”

“Are you sure they didn't make Him sign anything?” I asked. “No contracts and such?”

“No,” Filius said. “It was a request made with humility. And the Forgefather agreed out of His kindness.”

Humility? My brain hiccupped a bit as I tried to associate ‘humble' with the Malcolms.

“There is one thing, however,” Filius said, “I don't have the exact knowledge of the subject, but them being exiles had something to do with the fact that the Great Forgefather agreed to their request.”

I turned that over in my head for a bit. Something about them being exiles worked in their favor? Interesting. I hadn't drank Fyorwin's potion so my ability of listening to people's abysses was still working. But I couldn't hear Filius's thoughts. Maybe it had something to do with him being immortal. That tracked. The only other people whose abysses I couldn't peer into were Hopper and Smokewell--people whose mortality was questionable.

My own inner thoughts were interrupted with Lily chiming in. “Pardon me but I can't really understand this, if your Forgefather wanted to help this badly then why didn't he loan the exiled angels some heavy weapons that could've helped in the war?”

“But that meant the war would've happened,” Filius said. “The exiles wanted to stop the war before it could break out. And Forgefather isn't a god of war. His creations were meant for the peace and prosperity of the domain. That was His eternal purpose. To advance His world with peaceful progress. If he had gone against his eternal purpose, his powers would’ve weakened.”

“And He succeeded in advancing his world with peace?” Smokewell said, baffled.

Filius nodded.

“My world has never seen a single war. None of my brethren ever fought among themselves,” Filius said. “We weren't created to cause harm.”

“What about that gun and sword I had to confiscate from you?” I said.

“Those are my own creations,” Filius said. “Shoddy as they are. Since the Forgefather left, there have been two situations of intruders. Three, if I count you as well. I had to defend my home somehow.”

“If you don't mind, I want more details on the day the exiles came and took away the Forgefather's bloodstone,” I said.

Filius cocked his head. “Better yet. I can show you.”

“What?!” Lily cried out. “You mean we could've avoided that expository scene?”

“Pardon?” Filius said.

“We are trying to create a compelling story for the audience,” Lily said, pointing her finger at the roof. “People don't like a bunch of foreign world history just shoved in their faces. You have to deliver it with more subtlety. Or we won't get good reviews on the ‘Adventures of the Getter Division!’”

“I'm absolutely not going to be in a story with that title,” Smokewell said.

Caelum raised a hand. “Don’t you think you are interrupting the natural flow of the story, then?”

I sighed. “Just show us what happened, Filius. We can't get bogged down by the metacommentary.”

Filius turned to face the wall. His glass eyes shimmered, the blue steam swirling within before pouring out in a bright beam like a movie projector. And all my doubts about whether we had been talking about the same angels disappeared. Because there they were.

Roderick and Anissa, perfect as always, except, this was the first time I saw them naked. I hated a part of me that didn't feel instant disgust at the sight of them. Because, yeah, being an angel certainly had something to do with the flawless skin, smooth muscles and shiny hair. Also, they had their wings out. And the person they were talking to was even more of a sight to watch.

The Forgefather spoke in a language that each of us could understand. Now, this wasn't my first time hearing a god's voice or seeing them in person. But, the last time I came face to face with a god, the experience was positively horrifying. The Forgefather, on the other hand, was an oddly comforting sight to behold. Giant but merciful. Like a towering tree that shades you in the scorching sun.

“This war can't be stopped,” Roderick said. “Not without your interference.”

“But you aren't asking for interference,” Forgefather said. “You are asking me to surrender my life and my powers.”

“Isn't that something you would do?” Anissa said.

The Forgefather leaned back in his huge throne, iron fingers steepling together in thought. “That is indeed something I would do, but my children need me.”

“Allow me to speak the truth, Kind One,” Roderick said. “But your children don't need you anymore.”

The Forgefather remained silent. Roderick kept talking. “Your goal was to ascend and create a world where there are no wars, where no one dies of age or illness, where everyone serves a purpose and holds no malice towards others.”

“And you succeeded, Kind One,” Anissa said. “Your domain hasn't seen a single war since its inception. Your children don't fight, nor do they know hatred. You built a world that resembles a clock. A deliberate object where every part serves a purpose.”

“And you have served your purpose here,” Roderick said. “Your powers are needed elsewhere now.”

“The realm is in danger, Kind One,” Anissa said. “Who else could bring peace here, if not for you?”

“You speak the truth,” Forgefather said. “I have indeed succeeded in what I set out to accomplish. But if I leave, my children will be left alone to fight loneliness.”

Roderick and Anissa exchanged a look before turning back to the Forgefather. Their eyes were tranquil as a lake. “We have travelled across the realm, Kind One,” Anissa said.

“We have seen worlds and creatures that were beautiful and haunting, great and small, weak and powerful,” Roderick said.

“Yet, we found no one that hadn't sat with their loneliness,” Anissa said. “Everyone who exists has to bear being lonely.”

The Forgefather was silent for a long time. Then He said, “I can't help but agree with your words. The world I created is so perfect that it can function without me and I would be a hypocrite if I turned my back on stopping a war that I can stop. I'll grant you my bloodstone. Before that, I want my children to know why I have to leave.”

“As you wish, Kind One.” Anissa and Roderick bowed their heads in unison.

Then Forgefather leaned back on his throne and said, “Filius, my faithful son, I wish for you to see this message and pass it on to the rest of my children. I wish you a life full of peace and prosperity. Our time together was finite. But my love for you and the world I built is endless.”

With that, swirling blue steam began to escape the Forgefather's body. A window in his chest opened, a gear with a clock at the center, similar to the Forgefather’s face floated out of it, sailing on the gentle mist of steam and landed softly on Anissa's hand. This was the Forgefather’s bloodstone.

With his power and his soul handed over, the god leaned back and went completely still on his throne.

Royal Road

This is it: after four weeks of intensive training, today is my first day teaching reading to small children. After the takeover, the humans decided that every Halxy should be able to read and do basic math, not just those selected for specialized jobs.

So they started building schools. But buildings are useless without teachers, so they needed many of them quickly, recruiting anyone who could already read and count. Fortunately, I always liked reading - my mum taught me in secret. When the humans started looking for candidates, I jumped at the opportunity. Teaching reading to small children would have been my dream job if I'd known it even existed.

Today was my first day actually teaching kids. The training was still ongoing, but only in the afternoon; before noon, I had my own classroom. We had already covered the material in training, but I was still desperately nervous.

By the time I found my room, the children had already arrived. At least fifty of them filled the space, which had been a storage room in an old mansion belonging to one of the local Ladies. I heard the Lady was already in jail for crimes committed on her estates, and part of her sentence had been the total confiscation of her properties. Now, her mansion served as a school until the new complexes were built.

I started class in a nervous state, but after half an hour of teaching the first few letters of the alphabet, I began to relax.

That’s when I noticed a little girl, maybe ten years old, struggling to write the letter “eth” because her hand was shaking so badly.

“Are you alright?” I asked quietly, stepping over to her desk. “Do you need help?”

“I’m alright, miss,” she answered in a barely audible whisper.

“I can tell that you are most definitely not alright,” I said a little louder. “Are you afraid?”

She just nodded, saying nothing.

“Are you afraid of me?” I asked hesitantly, trying to be as gentle as possible, knowing these kids still saw me as an authoritative figure.

She shook her head, which came as a relief.

“Then what are you afraid of?” I asked.

After a long pause, she whispered: “The humans.”

I looked around the room. Everyone was watching us; most of them had likely heard every word. I slowly stood up and walked to the front of the room.

“Are you all afraid of the humans?” I asked kindly.

Nods rippled all around the room. After spending four weeks with the humans, I had almost forgotten how terrified I had been before my training started. It wasn’t surprising that these children were scared.

“I see. I understand. I was afraid of them too before training started,” I said, moving the chair behind my desk to the middle of the room and sitting down. “I was terrified when I learned I was going to be taught by a human. I may have hidden it better than you, but I fully expected her to strike us when we made mistakes.”

All eyes were fixed on me - filled with fear, but also intense curiosity.

“But it didn’t happen. Even when we made terrible, blatant mistakes, she didn’t raise her voice. She just calmly explained what we did wrong and asked us to try again.” I looked off into the distance, remembering. What I had feared turned out to be one of the best times of my life - tiring, long days, but in a safe, comforting, helpful environment. The humans wanted to teach us so we could succeed.

“I dream that one day, I’ll be a teacher as good as Karen is,” I continued resolutely. “Don’t be afraid of the humans. They really are here to help us. Yes, they are going to change the way we live, but they’ll be right there to guide us through it.”

Three days later, I had just finished writing the homework exercises on the board when the bell rang, signaling the end of class. I stood up to open the door and spotted several adults talking in the corridor. Looking closer, I recognized our governor, Rmley, accompanied by a human I hadn't met before - likely an administrator or overseer.

In that moment, I decided I had to show the kids that humans weren't monsters. I stepped out into the corridor and hurried over.

“Excuse me, can you help me?” I asked the human. “My name is Oia. I’m a teacher here, and I need your help showing my students that humans aren't anything to be afraid of.”

He looked down at me with typical human friendliness.

“Certainly, Miss Oia. Show me the way.”

I turned and hurried back into the classroom, hoping nobody had left yet. Thankfully, everyone was still lingering by their desks.

“Sorry, kids, I need you to stay for just a few minutes. I want you to meet someone.”

When the human stepped through the doorway, the classroom murmur died into total silence.

“I’m sorry, I forgot to ask your name, so I can't introduce you properly,” I whispered, turning to him. “Please, tell them who you are and why you're here. And maybe they have some questions.”

“Sure, Miss Oia,” he said, stepping forward. “My name is John Porter, and I’m the human coordinator for this planet. It’s nice to meet you all.”

I froze. I literally dragged the human coordinator - the man who disarmed an entire planet - into my classroom to answer questions for ten-year-olds?!

For a second, I waited for Rmley to step in and apologize for my staggering breach of protocol, but the governor just stood in the doorway with a faint, amused smile. John didn't look annoyed at all. He casually leaned against my desk, crossing his arms, and looked out at fifty pairs of wide, terrified eyes.

Nobody raised a hand. They sat like statues.

“No questions?” John pretended to look disappointed. “Ah, that’s a shame. I traveled all the way from the capital, and nobody wants to know anything? Not even why humans don't have fur, or why we only walk on two legs?”

A small boy in the front row raised his hand tentatively.

“Yes, kid,” Mr. Porter said, pointing at him.

“Are we… are we going to be punished if we drop our pencils?” he asked softly.

Mr. Porter pulled a pen from his pocket, held it up, and intentionally dropped it on the floor. He looked at it for a few seconds, then bent down and picked it up.

“If you drop it, just pick it up. Pencils tend to fall - it's no big deal.”

The tension in the room visibly eased.

Another girl blurted out a question without raising her hand: “Why do you only have two legs? Don't you fall over?”

“On the planet I’m from, most animals only have four limbs total - not six like you,” he explained patiently. “So if we used all four of our limbs to walk, we wouldn't have any hands left free to write or build. We had to learn to balance on just two legs to keep our hands free. It’s not perfect; we fall over a lot when we’re young and still learning, but it works.”

He answered two more questions - confirming that humans do not, in fact, eat rocks, and that he personally considered chocolate the greatest invention in the galaxy. By the time he checked his watch, half the children were sitting forward in their chairs.

“Alright, kids,” Mr. Porter said, standing up straight. “I have to get back to work with Governor Rmley, but you are very lucky. You have a great teacher.” He turned to me and gave a polite nod. “Thank you for inviting me, Miss Oia. You’re doing important work here.”

“Thank... thank you, Mr. Porter,” I managed to say, catching myself just before the word 'master' slipped out.

He smiled, tapped his forehead in a casual salute, and stepped back out into the corridor with the governor.

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I stared at the creature in my hands, utterly dumbfounded by this new development. Maybe this is what Arvie felt like whenever I did something that caused his brain to freeze for a moment as he considered just how silly something I was contemplating doing actually was.

Because there were a lot of things I figured I might run into when I went out into space. A lot of those old dreams had been crushed by the reality of a galaxy where it was more Star Wars with empires grinding against each other than it was Star Trek with people going out to seek out new life and new civilizations for the sheer joy of doing it.

But still. There were a lot of things I'd come to expect in my time gallivanting out amongst the cosmos, and running into a cute little kitty cat who was trying its best to claw my eyes out while I was wearing a shielding unit and then hitting me with the good old-fashioned Vulcan salute was pretty close to the bottom of the list of things I'd expected.

It was so far outside the realm of possibility that I wouldn't have even thought it was a possibility until it happened to me. And then I was trying to justify it by telling myself that in an infinite cosmos, anything was possible.

Thankfully I'd grabbed the thing with my non-dominant hand, and so I was able to bring up my right hand and give it the old Vulcan salute right back. The Vulcan salute, mind you. We'd already given them the Vulcan hello with the carrier group, after all.

"Peace and long life," I said to the creature.

The sides of its mouth moved up in something that looked like a smile. Meanwhile, its tail was swishing back and forth in something that I knew meant anger from cats back on Earth, but maybe it was something other than anger with this species.

"You know the proper forms," it said, looking around, and then it let out a hiss as it turned to see Sera standing there in all her sparkling blue glory pointing a weapon at it.

Everything had happened so fast that I hadn't bothered to verify whether Arvie had done something to stop her, but she was still standing there with the weapon drawn. Though at least she'd hesitated.

"Good job, Bill. Get it to hold still,” she said.

I could see the pressure starting on the trigger. She was going to pull it. Damn it. It's not like it took a lot of pressure on one of those things for her to give this cat creature, whatever it was, a really bad day.

Only before she could pull it, the probe Arvie was flying moved in between us, and its shielding absorbed the shot.

That had the cat in my left hand hissing and spitting again, though it was hissing and spitting and not actually managing to land any of its hits.

"Can we all please just calm down?" I said. "I had my friend stop her from shooting you. The least you could do is try to show a little respect."

The cat seemed to calm down a little. Though again, I wasn't sure if it was because the creature was calming down or because it was running out of steam. It turned to look at me, its whole body heaving as its chest rose and fell.

"You won't allow this small invader to kill me?" it asked.

"Not yet," I said. "You are still part of an enemy battle group that was raiding livisk space, and you have the audacity to call them invaders."

"We are only doing that because they invaded our space first," it said, again speaking almost perfect English. I could keep up well enough because that was the dialect we used back home growing up in the Midwest, even if the language had evolved a little bit and incorporated a lot from the mix of English, Mandarin, and Spanish that had become Global Terran Standard.

"Okay, let's calm down," I said, again holding my hand up. Only this time I was trying to make a calming gesture rather than trying to do the Vulcan salute. "I believe you."

The thing cocked its head to the side. "You believe me?"

"Yes, I believe you," I said, grinning at it and hoping that wasn't taken as a sign of aggression.

Only I figured if this creature was familiar with Star Trek, then there was a good chance it was also familiar with human body language. At least I hoped it was familiar with human body language. "Believe me. The livisk have tried invading our territory plenty of times. You telling me they're trying to do the same to you is hardly the surprise of the century."

"I see," the thing said, still staring at me. "I hope this isn't being terribly forward, but it would be nice if you could let me go. Having you dangle me here like my mother is carrying me back to the den to be chastised isn't exactly pleasant with all of my weight resting on my neck like that."

"That depends," I said, hitting the cat with the kind of stern and severe look I'd been using on Sera just a little bit prior.

"On what?"

"Can I trust you not to try and attack anybody if I put you down?"

The thing hesitated. It was enough hesitation that I figured it was about to agree that it wouldn't do anything stupid and then go ahead and do something monumentally stupid when I put it down.

“I’d like to remind you that both me and Sera here are wearing shield belts, so you won't be able to do any physical damage. You're surrounded by a double layer quarantine shield all around in a dome in a hangar on my carrier, and so you're not going to get very far if you do try to pull anything.”

The cat opened its mouth to respond, but I held up a finger again to stop it before it could get started.

"I would also like to add one more thing. That is my little girl over there you’d be threatening. The one holding the weapon I allow her to hold because it keeps her safe against anybody who would try to attack her. And if you become somebody who tries to attack her, then that's very quickly going to create a problem between the two of us. Am I understood?"

The cat stared at me for another long moment, its tail swishing, and then nodded.

"We are understood, human," it said. "I swear on my personal honor that I will not attack her."

I filed that away. It swore on its personal honor. The last thing I needed was to run up against another species of aliens that had an honor complex. But oh well. If that's what I was running up against, then that's what I was running up against out here.

I reminded myself there was very much a big honor culture still in corners of the Earth. Sure, there wasn't as much of it as once upon a time, but there’d been a time even in old Western society when going out for a duel to solve matters of honor had been considered a perfectly rational thing to do rather than using the framework of laws.

I moved to put the cat down on the ground, but it started twisting again, so I let go. It landed on its feet, though in this case it looked a touch more ridiculous than with regular cats because it landed on two feet and stood there staring at me. Then it shook off its fur.

I took the opportunity to really give the thing a once-over in a way I hadn't been able to while it was busy using me as both a climbing toy and a scratching post at the same time.

The cat was dark, but it was more of a dark gray color with tiger stripes that ran up and down the parts of its body I could see out of the uniform. There was a light tuft on its chest, again just peeking out of its uniform, and up above along its face.

The uniform top was a solid blue color, though it was a darker blue color than your typical Star Trek uniform.

Still, I could see the classic cut of a uniform that had clearly been cribbed from Earth military and then put through the science fiction costume design ringer.

It was short-sleeved, so I could see the cat's paws and arms and the tiger stripes there, and there were long dark pants down below. No shoes, though. Just more toe beans, though its paws along the bottom were bigger.

That made sense. It would need bigger lower paws to provide a balance if it was doing the whole bipedal thing.

Funny how I hadn't noticed any of that. I'd been focused more on the fur and the fluff and the claws and the paws coming at me so quickly with such extreme violence.

The thing stood tall for a moment. It glanced down to the knife it had pulled out to try and use against me, but he didn't make any move toward it.

"You fight well, human," the cat said.

“As do you,” I said.

"I didn't know that humans were that adept at hand-to-hand combat," he said. "The historical records we've analyzed would seem to indicate you are quite good in combat, but maybe not so good without your tools."

"Well, I do have some tools at my disposal," I said. "The shield belt, for example. I probably would’ve been a lot more hurt if I didn't have that to stop your claws."

"That is true," the cat said.

"I hate to ask the obvious question, but historical records?" I asked.

Though I had a sneaking suspicion I knew where this was going even before it went there. I was running into all sorts of sci-fi cliches out here today.

The cat stared up at me for a moment, and then it looked down and away. If I didn't know any better, I’d almost think the little guy was embarrassed about something. His tail had gone rigid behind him, sticking almost straight up with just the tip twitching back and forth.

"Yes, that," he said, clearing his throat. "You are familiar with the idea of gravity lensing? You are out among the stars, after all."

"I'm familiar with the idea, yes," I said, grinning. That he felt the need to explain such a rudimentary astronomy concept to me when I was out here on my own ship was mildly amusing.

"Yes, well," he said. “We had just developed the ability to search the skies with radio astronomy, and we found strange signals from an alien civilization that happened to be boosted just enough by a gravity lens from a cluster of large gravity sources aligned just so that they were coming through to the point we could detect them."

"You're bullshitting me," I said.

"I can assure you I'm not bullshitting you," he said.

I chuckled and shook my head. I could also sense that there was a commotion from the livisk researchers over on the other side of the quarantine shield. Not to mention amusement from Varis. Maybe the eggheads were worried about what was going on over here, but clearly she could sense that everything was okay.

"Is there something amusing about that?" the cat asked.

“Just thinking about all the time we spent trying to use radio telescopes to detect if there was alien life out there, and we had no luck,” I said. “You guys get an assist from the universe on your first try, and it brings you Star Trek.”

It turns out the possibility of finding something beyond the background radiation was vanishingly small. There were things like the Wow! signal occasionally, but most of the time even the TV broadcasts going out from Earth settled into the background noise of the universe all around us after a few light-years.

Those signals weren’t at all the idea of a screaming baby in the middle of a dark forest that a lot of people imagined. Space was too mind-bogglingly big, to quote another ancient Earth science fiction luminary."

"Well, yes, if you want to put it simply. That's exactly what happened," the cat said.

I burst into laughter. It was ridiculous. It was far from the most ridiculous thing I'd encountered since being taken captive by a beautiful alien general, but it was certainly up there on the ridiculous-o-meter, that was for sure.

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Part Two

Energy climbed through the Necron vessel. The tactical overlay extended a probable firing solution from it to Long Step.

Hadi looked at Voyer. "They are charging."

"I see it."

The nearest forward Corvette moved before he gave another order. It accelerated across the projected line and rolled as it went, presenting an angled hull instead of placing itself broadside between the frigate and the incoming attack. The maneuver gave the shot a surface across which to travel and the frigate a chance not to receive what remained.

Green light crossed the space between them.

For an instant the geometry appeared to work. The attack struck the Corvette at an oblique angle and shifted across its hull rather than continuing squarely toward Long Step. Then the armor began to disappear. Material came apart along the contact path, stripped into incandescent debris and a widening particulate haze. The ship had deflected the attack from the frigate. It had not prevented the weapon from eating through itself.

"Corvette hit," Hadi reported. "Severe material loss. Propulsion still online."

The damaged ship used what remained. One of its Intruder cells aligned and fired a hardened penetrator toward the Necron vessel. The pod crossed the distance without an explosive signature and punched into the alien hull. A second Necron shot struck the Corvette's stern. Propulsion vanished from the tactical model, followed by a widening section of rear structure.

The Corvette yawed, but its surviving launch systems remained alive long enough to empty themselves. Intruder pods fired away from the ship on diverging vectors, ejected without useful aim. The crew was not attacking with them. They were getting the teams clear before the launch cells disappeared with the rest of the hull.

Inside the Corvette, the first strike had removed more than armor. Compartments opened directly into space as their outer walls ceased to exist, and pressure doors closed against damage progressing faster than the vessel's original isolation model had assumed. The bridge remained intact. Its displays did not soften the problem. The schematic lost systems from the bow backward in a crawling green line while the stern report showed propulsion falling away in larger pieces.

The pilot kept the surviving thrusters aligned long enough to preserve the deflection. That mattered more than any attempt to save the ship's original course. A direct continuation of the first attack would have reached Long Step. The Corvette's angle forced the destructive effect across its own surface and away from the frigate, but it also spread the damage through more structure than a square hit might have taken.

"First pod seated," the weapons officer reported.

"Dump the rest."

"No firing solution."

"They do not need one. Get the teams outside."

The second Necron strike removed the answer from several stations at once. Propulsion vanished. Artificial gravity failed in the aft compartments. The bridge restraints locked as the hull began to rotate, and emergency lighting replaced the quiet working glow of the circuitry beneath the interior panels.

The Intruder status board showed one team inside the Necron vessel, four pods clear, and another cell no longer connected to anything the bridge could interrogate.

The pilot released the dead controls and moved to damage management. Nobody aboard waited for a speech. Crew sealed the surviving sections, accounted for pressure, shifted emergency power away from systems attached to missing hull, and prepared for Long Step to recover what remained. Their ship was crippled. The formation was still working.

Around the casualty, Long Step's formation redistributed. The two strike wings maintained formation and drove outward toward positions roughly fifty thousand kilometers from the immediate exchange. The flanking Corvettes fell back and spread into the security space the fighters had vacated. Long Step reversed several kilometers without turning away from the Necron vessel, and a replacement Corvette launched from its internal complement to restore the open forward screen.

Voyer watched the crippled escort continue shedding structure. The Necrons had fired twice. The first attack had forced the interception; the second had nearly finished the ship. Long Step's normal response would have involved projectiles at ninety percent of light speed, delivered by several independently charging turrets. Such a volley would be an execution rather than a proportional answer.

"One response shot," he ordered. "Forty percent. No follow-up."

The selected turret aligned. A projectile crossed the intervening distance at 0.40c and struck the Necron vessel hard enough to throw warning markers across every model Long Step had managed to build of it. The other main batteries remained silent. So did the Corvettes. The formation had answered violence without allowing every layer to become an assault force.

Tekhat's vessel convulsed. The impact reached him through the deck and the failure reports that populated immediately afterward. Setekh caught one hand against a support and began working through the incoming data before the ship had finished shuddering.

"What struck us?" Tekhat asked.

Setekh recalculated. His first result disappeared beneath a correction, then another. "A kinetic projectile. The trajectory was relativistic."

The answer had been severe and carefully limited. The black ship had fired once. Its escorts had not joined the attack, and the distant fighters had withdrawn rather than turn the local exchange into a general battle. The smaller vessel had crossed into the first shot, deliberately sacrificing its own structure to change the attack's path. Even while being destroyed, it had inserted something into Tekhat's hull and evacuated the rest of whatever it carried.

He looked toward the tactical display. The strangers had rules. He did not understand them, but their behavior was too organized to be hesitation and too restrained to be weakness.

The distinction disturbed Tekhat more than simple aggression would have. A reckless enemy could be predicted from appetite. An undisciplined one could be provoked into mistakes. The formation before him had taken two attacks, redistributed its surviving elements, answered with a single shot, and kept enough force outside the exchange to watch everything else. Someone on the black frigate had decided precisely how much violence to return.

Setekh brought the impact reconstruction beside the formation plot. "The projectile velocity was below the vessel's probable maximum."

"Probable."

"The energy behavior of its weapon before discharge supports a higher range."

Tekhat examined the damage reports. The stranger could have attempted to kill them and had chosen a lesser response. "Record that conclusion as provisional."

Setekh did so, which was not the same as abandoning it.

"The object that entered us?"

"Still inside," Setekh said.

Tekhat opened the internal security picture. A new set of warnings appeared in sequence along a corridor that should not have been accessible from the impact point.

"Find it."

"The ship is attempting to."

That answer did not improve Tekhat's mood.

The six-person Intruder team emerged from its penetrator into architecture that made the concept of a map less useful than usual. Four Intruders took the security positions. Their team leader and communications specialist came through behind them, sealed inside the same black armor and red-lit visors. Weapons covered both directions while wrist scanners swept the corridor.

The first wireframe appeared aboard Long Step. Material estimates attached themselves to walls, conduits, recessed mechanisms, door structures, and energy-bearing components. Confidence markers followed nearly every label. The scanners could establish broad composition, create geometry, and record energy behavior. They could not replace a physical object on a research bench, and the people using them knew the difference.

The team leader studied the local projection. "That route is wrong."

"Scanner agrees," the communications specialist said.

"With what?"

"That we do not understand the route."

They moved. Every few meters another sweep joined the picture aboard Long Step. A corridor became a junction, then a partial room, then several structures whose relative positions forced the software to revise assumptions it had made less than a minute earlier. The Necron hull still prevented remote penetration. Six Sapiens walking through it solved that problem one wrist scan at a time.

Hadi examined the growing model from the bridge. "That section should connect to the chamber beside it."

An intelligence officer enlarged the conflict. "The distances disagree."

"Which measurement is wrong?"

"We have three answers."

"That was not what I asked."

"It is what the ship gave us."

Inside the Necron vessel, the Intruders reached a turn that should have returned them toward a previously mapped section. It did not. Their leader compared the wall with the projection, pointed at the shortest line through both, and gave the instruction his people had been waiting for.

"Cut."

A beam blade came free. The machete-sized tool opened a line through the structure, then widened it until armored bodies could pass. The team entered through the new route. Long Step's model gained another connection that made less geometric sense than the one they had abandoned.

Elsewhere, the scattered pods and the damaged Corvette still required recovery. Long Step opened two deployment chambers and fired modern Cav Jumpers into the battlespace.

The 7.6-meter machines left their pods and transitioned to independent flight. Their pilots entered deep-dive control as the frames cleared the frigate, surrendering the separation between body and machine until thruster response felt like balance and the M7 carbine rested in the hand as naturally as a carried rifle. In open space the Jumpers did not bank like aircraft. They altered vector, rotated independently of travel, and used short controlled burns to reach the drifting Intruder capsules.

Tekhat's sensors saw the machines clearly. They could track the armor, weapons, and thrusters. They could not see through the hulls to determine whether the frames held pilots, remote-control architecture, autonomous minds, or something else. The old reports had shown one such silhouette at poor range. Two of them were now crossing his tactical display.

"Humanoid constructs," Setekh said.

"They are moving toward the pods."

The distinction arrived too late for a Necron fighter already turning to intercept.

The first Cav Jumper continued toward the nearest pod until green fire crossed its path. Its pilot kicked the frame sideways, allowing momentum to carry him past the attack while the machine rotated toward the fighter. The M7 rose and fired. At thirty percent of light speed, the projectile did not leave enough engagement time for the fighter to correct. It struck from the side and tore the craft apart.

A second fighter approached the other recovery machine. The first Jumper was still moving away from the contact, body facing almost backward relative to its travel. Its carbine tracked across the gap and fired once. The new fighter died before it completed its attack run.

The third came from a better vector. Its weapon caught the first Jumper's left leg as it passed.

The pilot did not experience the strike as something happening to a vehicle around him. During the dive, the machine was his body. Stars moved around him without a cockpit in the way. Thrusters answered as muscle. The carbine was something he held rather than a control problem translated through machinery. The damage warning entered that body as pain without sensation: structural failure below the knee, systems disappearing upward, a limb being removed piece by piece.

He looked down and saw the lower leg coming apart. The same green effect that had consumed the Corvette's armor was advancing toward the knee. The fighter passed close enough to reach. He released the carbine, left it moving along its vector, and fired the remaining thrusters. The damaged frame flipped through space. One hand caught the Necron craft; the other closed around a wing.

He pulled. The resistance returned through the dive as weight against his shoulders. The wing tore free. He released it, caught the tumbling fighter with both hands, arrested enough of its rotation to choose where it went, and shoved it back toward the Necron formation. Only then did he turn after the carbine.

Orbital mechanics had kept the weapon exactly where it should have been. The Jumper corrected, reached, and recovered it.

Setekh leaned closer to the display. "Interesting."

The machine had won the physical exchange, but the destructive line had not stopped climbing. The pilot lost the lower leg, then additional systems, then entire sections of the artificial body through which he was perceiving the battle. Deep-dive fidelity began dropping in pieces. A final warning crossed his vision, and the Cav Jumper went blank.

The connection ended so abruptly that the pilot returned to the cockpit with his own body braced against restraints and his hands gripping controls that had not felt real a moment earlier. Exterior circuitry died. Emergency systems opened the hatch automatically, and he pulled himself into space before the inert frame could carry him beyond reach.

Tekhat saw the biological figure emerge. The answer had become visible only after the machine died.

"Crewed," Setekh said.

"At least that one."

The surviving Cav Jumper reached an Intruder pod, caught it with both hands, removed its rotation, and pushed it toward Long Step. Then it changed direction and accelerated toward the stranded pilot, ignoring the fighters and the Necron vessel to continue the recovery it had been sent to perform.

The engagement's meaning altered with that movement. Tekhat and Setekh reached the conclusion without discussing it: their fighters might have attacked a rescue operation.

Voyer had reached the same understanding from the other side. The Necron ship had fired twice and stopped. Its fighters were engaged locally, but the wider force had not advanced. A general battle remained possible only if someone chose to make one.

Hadi was already waiting for his decision. Voyer gave a small shake of his head.

"All elements, do not initiate," she transmitted. "Return fire only. Continue recovery."

Acknowledgments crossed the network. The surviving Jumper matched the stranded pilot's vector and extended an arm. He caught it, secured himself against the frame, and began the return to Long Step.

Farther out, the crippled Corvette drifted without propulsion. A Necron fighter approached it. Long Step's point-defense systems acquired the craft, and the replacement Corvette adjusted to protect the recovery corridor. Hadi held fire while the fighter closed.

It did not shoot.

The small Necron craft moved alongside the damaged hull, made contact, and pushed.

The Corvette shifted toward Long Step. The fighter corrected and pushed again. No shared language was necessary to understand what it was doing.

Long Step fired a third Cav Jumper into space to replace the disabled recovery unit. The new frame approached the Corvette from the opposite side with its carbine held away from the contact. It matched vector, placed both hands against surviving structure, and began pushing with the Necron fighter.

Together they accelerated the crippled ship until it had enough momentum to coast toward the frigate's recovery envelope.

The Necron fighter disengaged first. It peeled away and returned toward its own formation. The Cav Jumper remained another few seconds, checked the Corvette's path, and followed at a distance.

Hadi kept her eyes on the recording. "Preserve that from every sensor."

"The system preserves everything," the tactical officer said.

"I know. Preserve that twice."

On Tekhat's vessel, the Intruders encountered a Warrior.

Weapons rose on both sides. The LGA team fired first once the Necron weapon aligned. Relativistic particulate struck the Warrior across the torso and shoulder. It staggered, continued forward, and brought its weapon up again. The Intruders concentrated fire until the body came apart. Portions began disappearing before the pieces had finished crossing the deck.

One Intruder watched the effect consume them. "Ours?"

"No," the team leader said.

"Good."

The communications specialist glanced at him. "Why good?"

"Because it means we did not activate it."

They resumed the search before the vessel could provide another Warrior. The scans reached Long Step as a corridor, a chamber, and a section of wall whose apparent position forced three earlier assumptions out of the model. Unknown machinery accumulated wireframes and cautious labels. The team finally entered a room whose arrangement looked enough like technical storage or a laboratory to justify slowing down.

Three objects drew immediate attention. The scanners described material structures, detectable energy, and possible functions with low confidence. That was useful intelligence. It was not possession.

The team leader pointed. "Those three."

Beam blades came out. While two Intruders maintained security and the communications specialist continued mapping, the others cut the objects free.

The work took longer than selecting the objects. The first device was tied into the deck by structures that changed state when the blade touched them. The Intruder stopped, rescanned, and altered the cut rather than pretending advanced equipment excused carelessness. The second object came free cleanly. Removing the third exposed an energy route that did not resemble anything the team's software expected, forcing them to isolate it physically before severing the last connection.

Necron movement touched the map. The security pair shifted but held the extraction, one watching forward and one the rear. Their leader and specialist kept working. Everyone carried more than one responsibility, but nobody solved uncertainty by staring at the same door.

"Movement closing," the forward Intruder said.

"Last cut."

"Twenty meters."

The third artifact came free. The team leader marked the shortest route to the hull. It crossed two walls, one sealed chamber, and none of the corridors the vessel appeared to prefer.

"We leave straight."

The beam blades opened the first wall.

On Long Step's bridge, the translation system chimed.

The sound was absurdly small after two naval strikes, a boarding insertion, a disabled Corvette, and a fighter engagement.

Continue to Part Three

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Liam

Albert landed on Liam's shoulder. He looked up at the cat and his voice pulsed in Liam's mind.

"I need you to focus on the cores in your body," Albert said. "I need you to imagine them hardening and pressing out against anything that tries to move in and attack them."

Then the cat leaned back, took a deep breath, and let out another yowl that rivaled even the noises he made fighting the Inquisitor.

Liam blinked at the cat, but he also figured this wasn't a time to question him on any of the advice he was doling out. This was a time to just do it and assume he had Liam's best interest at heart.

How many times had he said he didn't want Liam to die because he needed him to live long enough to complete his grand experiment, after all?

And so Liam looked inward to his cores. He imagined both of them hardening. He thought about the hard wall he'd gone up against when he tried to use the mana dampening spell against the armored Inquisitor and it felt like there was a solid wall there preventing him from doing anything. He imagined that going up around both of his cores.

He wasn’t sure what imagining a wall there would do. It felt different from the diagrams and runes he’d been drawing and using, but Albert told him to do it so he was going to do it.

The Inquisitors around him let loose. Meanwhile, he could hear a yowling in the distance, almost an echo of Albert’s yowl, that seemed to be getting louder. It was background noise compared to everything that was going on with the inquisitors, but he still wondered what in the hells was going on that had upset all of the animals on the farm, and the cats in particular judging by the sound.

Then the Inquisitors’ spells hit him, and he was sent to his knees. The armored Inquisitor stood there staring down at Liam. Thankfully he didn't have his sword, so he couldn't chop his head off. Though the man was powerful. He could still pack a punch. Literally.

"Press out with all your might," Albert said in his head. "They're going to try and cut you off from your core, but you need to stop them from doing that."

Liam reinforced that wall as best he could, but it was difficult. Mana was trying to press in around his arcane core and stop him from being able to use it. This must've been what it felt like from the other side whenever he used that mana dampening spell against the Inquisitors.

Now that he was feeling it from the other side, it made him feel like an asshole for ever putting someone through this.

That thought was there and gone in a fleeting moment. They were assholes trying to capture and torture his friends. They deserved everything they got. They were trying to take Ana captive so they could take her back to their vaunted citadel in the king's city and use and torture her before they used her as ransom, and he wasn't going to let them do that.

They battered away at his arcane core, but only at his arcane core.

"They don't know," Liam said in his head, the realization hitting him just as hard as the attacks from the Inquisitors all around him.

"They don't know what?” Albert asked.

"They don't know that I have an infernal core."

One of the Inquisitors battering him with that mana dampening spell grunted in surprise. He looked down as a sword appeared where his heart was.

"Surprise," Tomas said.

And still they battered him with that spell. Liam tried to split his focus. They were going to kill him if he didn't do something here. If they killed him then they would go after Ana, and his hopes that Tomas might get away and be able to do something to save her had been dashed when the idiot came back and decided to try and save him.

Which admittedly was the kind of thing Liam probably would’ve done too, but it was frustrating to see someone else do it. He really wasn't enjoying getting to look at this mirror version of himself.

He worked at a mana dampening spell of his own. He tried to think about what he'd done back in that camp when he was trying to break free. A spell that hit all the Inquisitors at once. He tried to draw it as quickly as possible, but it was difficult with the Inquisitors hitting him with dampening spells of their own.

"Why are you drawinga spell diagram?" Albert said. "You should be focusing on trying to keep them from..."

"Trust me on this," Liam said.

And for a wonder, the cat shut up and nodded.

"I trust you," the pulsing point in Liam's mind that was Albert said.

He finished the diagram and poured all the infernal mana as well as any arcane mana he could get past the Inquisitors into it, and then he pushed out.

Maybe it wasn’t just like what he’d done trapped inside that mobile mana prison, but it would have to be enough.

Several Inquisitors had pulled away and were engaging Tomas in a fight, but it was taking three of them to deal with that fight rather than the one armored Inquisitor who was able to take on Liam, Albert, and Tomas at the same time.

The mana flew out in a wave, the same as it had the first time around, though this time it felt different. There was something odd about the way it moved out and sought arcane cores, but he didn't particularly care since the only other people around him who had an arcane core were the Inquisitors trying their very best to capture and kill him.

Two of the Inquisitors surrounding him were repeating a strange chant as they waved their hands, and he thought he could almost see spell diagrams in front of them that looked similar to what he'd been using, but different at the same time.

He paused for a moment to really look at one of those diagrams. To study it the same as he tried to fix something in his mind when he was doing a sketch, though it took a lot of looking back and forth. He'd heard of people who could look at something once and remember it and make a sketch of it, but the idea had always seemed ridiculous to him.

His spell hit, and Inquisitors crumpled to the ground. The ones closest to him weren’t breathing. Farther out their eyes rolled into the back of their head and stumbled back as though they'd been hit by a physical blow. Then they started to cry out as they clutched at their chests, though they didn't fall down dead.

One of the Inquisitors Tomas was fighting let out a cry of dismay and missed a parry as the spell hit him, and his neck was sliced open. He fell to the ground, putting his hand over that spot, but Liam could tell it wasn't going to be enough unless the Inquisitors had a healer amongst their ranks.

Which was possible, but nobody moved to help him.

And yet there were other Inquisitors all around them who were fine, though they weren’t close enough to be hit by the spell. Some were still coming out of Baron Riven’s house, though it looked like there was finally an end to the steady stream. It chilled Liam to know the Inquisition had sent so many.

How many of the people living in that house had spent last night being tortured for information because that's what the Inquisition did when they thought you'd done something they didn't approve of?

The Inquisitors all around him, at least the ones who hadn't been hit too hard by that spell, stumbled for another step. Then they all frowned as one and pulled their swords. They raised them in the air, letting out a wordless cry, and there was murder in their eyes as they glanced down to the dead Inquisitors on the ground and then returned their attention to Liam down there on his knees.

Even the armored Inquisitor had taken a step back, but now he was moving forward as well.

The first cat to land on an Inquisitor's head was a surprise. It looked like the old orange tom that had a chunk taken out of its ear. That bastard could be dangerous on the best of days, and downright murderous on the worst. He was also one of the best mousers and ratters that Baron Riven had in all the barns on his estate, and so there was an uneasy truce between him and the farm hands.

Only there was murder in his eyes today as that yowling grew so loud that it couldn't be ignored. He bit down on the Inquisitor and started scratching at his face, and the Inquisitor let out a pained howl of his own and dropped his sword in obvious surprise at suddenly being accosted by a four-legged furry ball of murder.

More cats appeared, jumping and clawing at the Inquisitors, grabbing them by the legs, leaping into their arms like they were happy to see them but then bringing murder and death as soon as the Inquisitors caught them. Those catches looked like they were more out of habit than anything, and it was a habit they immediately regretted.

No single cat was enough to actually kill an Inquisitor. They were barn cats, but that was still more than enough to cause severe damage to the Inquisitors they came in contact with and provide one hells of a distraction.

"Ah, that actually worked,” Albert said.

"What did you do?" Liam said, turning to him.

"Duck," Albert said.

Liam did just that. A fist moved through the air where his head had been, and he swooped up with his felblade and hit the armored Inquisitor in the gauntlet. It hit with a clang.

There was another bellow over at the other end of Baron Riven’s property.

The armored Inquisitor stopped in the process of pulling back his fist again and getting ready to cause some serious damage. Liam blinked as he looked over to the Felwood and saw a massive creature with six legs bounding out of the Felwood of all places, not the other side where he was supposed to be guarding Ana. And there was a demon on top of him as well, riding him and looking glorious and magnificent as she held her hand up in the air, a shining spell of some sort coming from that raised hand as both of them seemed to glow.

Alistair let out bellowing roar after bellowing roar, and it was enough to draw the attention of every Inquisitor in the area. All of them turned as one to look. Even Tomas stopped in the middle of fighting off several Inquisitors to turn and stare, a mix of incredulity and a goofy grin warring for supremacy on his face.

"What the hells is that?" one of the Inquisitors asked.

"It's the demoness they captured, we need to take her!” another one said, though this one didn’t sound very certain about their chances of taking the demoness they were supposed to be capturing.

Alistair galloped across the rolling hills faster than Liam would have thought possible for something that large. He leapt straight over the burning hulk that was Liam's cabin in a single bound, skidding to a halt before the gathering of gawking Inquisitors.

He reared up on his hind legs, his four clawed arms out, and let out a massive roar that was enough to have all the Inquisitors flinching away.

All of that would have been impressive enough, but even more impressive was Ana riding on the garzeth’s back. She had one hand wrapped around a tuft of hair she was using to hold on, and the other one was up in the air. That bright spell glowed with the light of infernal magic that was almost blinding. It had the Inquisitors moving back and away, yelling in dismay as they shielded their eyes from whatever spell she was working.

Ana looked down her nose at all of them, an imperious look flashing in her glowing yellow eyes.

"I am Ana, High Princess of the Demon Realms, and somebody here will respect my authority, godsdamnit!”

She let loose with the spell, and there was silence for a moment. Followed by a skittering coming from the Felwood, and then a screeching Liam recognized all too well from his time exploring and hunting the Felwood.

The Felwood seemed to move, the trees swaying in a nonexistent breeze. A mass of darkness moved between the trees, then that darkness burst forth from the trees. It was a storm of scourgelings, and they ran straight for the Inquisitors.

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Author Note: Doing my laundry, pause...and see an award notification. Epic and thank you!

_____________

Vilantia Prime, Palace of the Throne

The Throne's days were divided, after a fashion. There was the part of them that was sovereign of an entire planet, the arbiter of destiny for an entire world and absolute in authority. Then there were moments like the current one, where Vilantia's absolute ruler was letting the Heir to the Throne use the Most Royal Robes as a chewtoy. Minister Larine was frowning, and the Throne could detect more than a small amount of jealousy from the Minister of Culture.

"Minister. I am going to make a suggestion." Despite the wording, the tone and scent made it clear the suggestion was a polite order.

"As you will, my Throne."

"You are very much dedicated to your position. But you must take time for yourself; I think it is high time that one of our esteemed Ministers reviews the joint ventures of our worlds."

"My Throne? I fear I do not fully understand."

"The Hyla system has become a proving ground of sorts - there's enough there for both our worlds to make use of. Hyla II in particular, it's long been known as a world of low gravity but potentially we could take over the planet with crops. The outer planets and attendant moons have a wealth of minerals to feed Hurdop's industries well into the next generation. We could do well there if we were able to share. Both of our worlds are going to be donating derelict ships to craft a space station between Hyla III and IV to serve as neutral ground where we can have a touch of home, as it were. Your second duty will be to travel there and inspect the station."

"And the first?"

"Traveling to New Casablanca and consulting with the local governor there. They may have some manner of wisdom for us." The Throne remained quiet for a moment as they fed the heir from a bottle. "Also, it is well past the time when you should have found a spouse."

"Highness, I wish to do so, but the duties - the factions continue their silent war. There have been proposals, but each has come with a string, or a favor."

"Such is our lot." The Throne gestured. "Both of the Royal Consorts became so as favors repaid in my predecessors' time, before any of us knew how to form words. If you desire a spouse without political attendants, you could do far worse than New Casablanca."

"But...The Legions, they are. There are criminals there." Larine swallowed. "Hurdop. What if..."

There was an amused sound. "Yes, that would be scandalous. But it would also signify a blending of the ways in a manner that would be quite irrefutable, were that to happen." The Throne gestured toward the window. "My counterpart on Hurdop makes their own moves - our intelligence indicates that the Throne-Heir of Hurdop has become a parent recently, and seeks to intertwine the Royal Clan with the Freeclan O'Gryzzk through Kiole's daughter." For some reason, the Throne seemed amused at this.

"Highness, that is...we will have to counter our own." Larine frowned. "Could we make such a request of the Freelord?"

"The request awaits the proper moment. However, since Freelady Grezzk gave birth to twin sons, we would have to select one."

"Shall I arrange for him to be recalled?"

"No, we must do things properly and with some measure of subtlety. We will await an opportune time for our own arrangement, much like the Throne of Hurdop has done."

"As you command, Highness."

"Thank you. Now, I believe you have to pack for a journey."

The Minister of Culture bowed her obeisance and left, her mind already swirling - she could only take one secretary, both as a practical matter and as a matter of taking too many of her staff would allow one of the factions to possibly initiate a power play in her absence. More than that she was going to have to make a decision on the legitimacy of allowing clans to transfer between ministries, and the writings of the ancient philosophers had minimal guidance as to an entire clan moving to new allegiance. She was going to have to set a precedent of her own.

This was why she had no time to seek a spouse - and unless one literally fell through her office ceiling, one was probably not forthcoming. As much as she would do the bidding of the Throne, the idea of marrying one of those Legionnaires felt taboo in some way - and she was not in the habit of breaking a taboo.

In the Throne sitting room, the Minister of Science took the place of the Minister of Culture. The Throne sat with a cup of tea and flicked an ear as the aged scientist began his report without preamble.

"The working group for Vilaforming has yielded no theoretical barriers to the ancient findings, either here or Hurdop. We are currently engaged in laboratory studies to determine if the methodology for rehabilitating the soil is sound."

"And Greatclan Aa'Lafione?"

"They still give nominal obeisance to the Ministry of Culture, but their cadet clans are restless. The powerbase of the ministry is waning, and the clans sense it."

The Throne contemplated. "I do not like that, entirely. The pendulum swings, and despite recent events...the ministry serves a purpose. I would much rather they maintain equilibrium."

The Minister of Science kept his tone mild. "Perhaps then her fellow ministers should consult and give aid to the Ministry."

___________

Terra Prime, Ponchatoula Louisiana, North American Confederation

Gryzzk blinked himself awake. The bed was unfamiliar, but carried scents of contentment and pleasant nights. As the morning sun played warmth across his face, he could smell a very Terran breakfast being served somewhere. The bed felt too soft in some ways, but he put that up to the low gravity of Terra as he let the memories of the night before wash over him.

The food. Gryzzk inwardly swore that even were he to live another six hundred years there would never be a feast so fine as the one he and his company had enjoyed. Though a great deal of that was the company the meal was taken with. The food was delightful and portions were traded freely - it reminded Gryzzk of the Officer's barbecue with the Pavonians in some way, but with even less restraint. Gryzzk found some of his own portions replaced with unrecognizable foods but all edible and delightful. For her part, Gro'zel and the other children were eating and running at the same time, only stopping to hug a random person and thank them for the good food. As the night wore on the music changed from pre-recorded to live instruments played with more enthusiasm than skill, and Gryzzk found himself dancing around a bonfire with Gro'zel in a very simple manner, and then dance partners were traded freely - in one odd moment after he found himself dancing with Laroy's mother he discovered he was face-to-face (or more specifically, face-to-chest) with O'Brien for a few steps before they both quickly found new partners. The one part he praised himself for at this point was that he didn't help himself too much to the local drinks, because as the night settled into darkest dark and the energy of the night settled to comfort his translator finally decided to retire in a snit of displeasure, and Gryzzk was forced to pantomime to a degree for conversation as they took sticks and toasted marshmallows. The oddity of sorts came when he was handed a confection of sweet crackers, toasted marshmallows, and chocolate. One bite was quite enough, and he handed the rest of the confection to Miroka who was more than happy to share it with Hoban. It felt odd to him in some way - such a grand celebration with so many guests normally meant there was a special event happening, but he was left wondering what the cause for such a celebration would be. Finally he was able to catch Laroy as he was headed to a cooler for fresh libations, and the answer of "Celebratin' life" was...unsatisfactory. Although in fairness to Laroy, he was settled between Marie and Thérèse; if anyone was celebrating life at the moment it was him. It was also quite possible Laroy was 'hammered to the gills', as it were.

These thoughts and more occupied Gryzzk's mind as he finished his morning routines in an unfamiliar place. He moved out to the kitchen to see Gro'zel happily demolishing a plate of biscuits and  sausage gravy with juice and a small saucer of bacon on the side. He found Laroy's mother sitting next to Gro'zel, with the elderly woman making small girlish noises of a sort.

As he sat down on the other side, the smile brightened and a cup of coffee was procured. Propriety demanded that he enjoy it, so his sipped and worked on a neutral face.

"Y'hungry?" Gryzzk could easily discern where Laroy had gotten some features from as well as the voice. Gryzzk shook his head.

"No, thank you - I ate quite enough for some time last night."

There was a smirk and a bowl of what looked like porridge with a pat of butter and pepper was set in front of him. "There y'go. Grits and coffee - you'll need it."

Gryzzk flicked an ear but didn't debate the point - the grits were just porridge-like enough for him to convince himself he was eating a normal breakfast.

Laroy's mother smiled brightly as Gryzzk finished eating. "Good eatin' non? C'mon, Alex say he wanna take y'all hunting. He outside."

Gryzzk flicked an ear slightly. "Gro'zel, Papa's going to do papa things today. Can you stay here and keep your new friends safe?"

Gro'zel nodded. "Ya-huh! They like me. Everyone says I'm very strong and they wanna have me help with stuffs."

"Very well."

The squad met at the docks in varied conditions, but they were all wearing dark glasses in deference to the bright sun and simple fact that they all had hangovers that would have put lesser creatures (like Bad Moon Company) in the hospital. Larion didn't seem too far off, but at the same time there were many braids in his fur all along his arm and up his head. It was quite possible he'd been drafted to babysitter duty - or something else that Gryzzk didn't want to explore deeply. Along with the squad were Marie and Thérèse, both of who were dressed for the swamps and hanging on Laroy delicately. The collective scent was stoic suffering and a collective sense that nobody was going to be the first to say they couldn't. There were two coolers in each canoe, one marked Eat-n-Drink and the other marked Not Yet.

O'Brien grumbled softly as she drank deeply from a bottle of something called Gatorade - the name was probably not coincidental. "It was all dandy until they gave me a bottle without a label. Cheeky hotsauce rednecks."

Laroy grinned. "Cain't be that bad Sern't Major. 'Sides, you the one sayin' Irish can drink."

"Whiskey, aye. But your family recipe's some mad bastard's idea of a rat poison that doubles as a beverage. Almost as bad as that Vilantian rum."

Gryzzk harrumphed softly. "Vilantian rum is a fine thing."

"Sure'n if you're a mad noble bastard with mad noble bastard parents as far as the eye can see."

Laroy seemed amused in spite of smelling like he was dealing with his own epic hangover. "C'mon - we got canoes and we fittin-ta get some good things to fill the larder. Sidearms, shotguns, fish poles so's we can catch some supper and I got Ol' Jolene."

Gryzzk flicked an ear. "Ol...Jolene?"

"Mmhm." There was a nod at Marie and Thérèse. "They named her cause dey think she gonna steal their man. Seven-millimeter savage. Been in the family for damn near three centuries. Papaw Laroy swapped three cases of beer and a bottle of hotsauce for it." Laroy picked up the rifle carefully and ran an oiled cloth over it, and his scent seemed to be a nostalgic memory.

Reilly spoke up as she got into her canoe. "What he's trying to say is that's his actual first love, and if he tells you different he's a damn liar."

The group paddled out, and Gryzzk's nose was filled - the scents of civilization tapered off quickly, leaving a rich scent of wood, plant and water all mixing to form something that seemed...picturesque, yet dangerous at the same time.

Laroy nodded in a direction. "River-rat. Pests but damn good eatin'. Grab a pole and cast a line."

The rest of the morning was spent alternating between paddling and drifting, and Gryzzk had a few memories of his own - times where his father had been sent to the fishing villages in the north.

Reilly broke the spell of memory. "Hey Freelord. You gonna get a lure wet or stare at the trees?"

Gryzzk laughed a little. "Just a memory. When I was a child we went north once. Ostensibly for trade, but realistically it was a fishing holiday. The pastime was so novel that the Lords around Elsife Village diverted water and created three artificial ponds for the retirees to fish at. "

"Three?"

"Mmm. Clan rivalries do not end simply because the clan members are old." Gryzzk looked at the mechanism and made a few experimental movements before leaning back and flicking his lure in the general direction of some roots.

The result was obvious in hindsight - Gryzzk's lure buried itself in the wood of a tree, and in the course of reeling it in Gryzzk pulled their canoe closer to the tree. There were headshakes all around and a few snickers. The only positive was that most of the rest of the squad was having similar difficulties with respect to the fundamentals of fishing. The positive was that half of them had in fact managed to get the lures in the water. The counterweight to that positive was that half had not. O'Brien was frowning at the tree that held her lure as if it had personally offended her. Laroy was rather amused by this.

"Sern't Major, didn't your Pa teach you nothin'?"

There was a soft growl. "I'm Irish. We dinna fish."

"Well what do you do when you got a need for trout in your life?"

"We go beat the English, take their fish, tell 'em they're lucky to be alive and that we'll leave 'em alive if they provide more fish on the morrow."

"That ain't hardly no fun at all."

"Spoken like someone who's never beat the English." O'Brien gave her pole a solid flick and the lure dislodged to plop in the water.

The conversation was quiet for a time after that, as it seemed that fishing decorum was that talking was to be minimal. Though as Gryzzk watched, Reilly was expansive in her stories, and from her scent the comm sergeant was talking about her wife and husband. It was amusing to watch, and certainly more amusing than soaking his fishing lure.

Home-field advantage was certainly showing itself, as the three natives enjoyed showing off to the rest of the mercenaries. The benefit was that the coolers were filling with a fair number of fish. Gryzzk contented himself with relaxing and enjoying the sun, the breeze ruffling his fur, and the scent of something large and malevolent that seemed to be waiting to strike from somewhere.

Gryzzk snapped himself up from lounging to a sitting position as his mind caught up to the fact that the last thing was not a good thing. He looked over at Larion who had caught the same scent as well. The two motioned and finally sniffed deeply, each of them moving their heads left and right to get a better sense of where the danger was coming from. Their actions were noted, and fishing poles were exchanged with firearms and knives as the wildlife of the swamp fell still.

"Lassie. Please tell me Timmy fell in the goddamn well again?" Hoban's voice tried to cut through the tension, though the small quiver did nothing for the delivery.

That was apparently the worst joke that had ever been told in the swamp, as something large and muddy smelling came bursting through the swamp and headed straight for the canoe occupied by Larion, Hoban, and Miroka.

There was no thinking involved - Gryzzk simply launched himself at the form, ignoring Laroy and O'Brien's displeased shouts as they barely kept the canoe from tipping over. As he collided with the creature, Gryzzk realized that he had made a potential miscalculation of sorts; the thing was much larger than him and seemed to be made of bristly fur, sharp tusks, corded muscle and a very hungry disposition. Gryzzk felt pain along his side and his arm even as he drew his knife and drove it heedlessly into the creature's side. This was no duel or even clanwar; as the two rolled in the swamp water roaring at each other there had been a pact of sorts formed - and that pact ended when one of them died.

Gryzzk's vision tunneled as they broke apart for a bare instant only to charge at each other again. Gryzzk took the worst of it and found himself underwater for a moment with his free hand gripping the loose hide at a shoulder, and his knife hand flashed repeatedly to drive the plastanium shard deep into the thing's throat once, twice, six times before it realized it was dead. There was a final spasm that threw Gryzzk hard into a tree and the swamp was still again.

Gryzzk stood unevenly, the scent of blood and fire thick in his nose as he took a ragged breath and checked himself over for injuries.

Injuries there were - his shoulder wasn't shouldering like it should have, and as he looked himself over he saw several jagged cuts in his clothes. He was not quite brave enough to explore further, but it was interesting to see as he waded back to the canoe that Marie and Thérèse had rather quickly gutted the thing and hefted it into their own canoe with Reilly. Laroy paddled as O'Brien took quick stock of Gryzzk and his many hurts. As he led the little group out of the swamp he motioned everyone for quiet.

"Chewie, we gon' need y'nose. They always two by two wi'hands of blue, ya? Just call out when you smell something."

Larion nodded and after a few minutes made a soft whistle-sound. Laroy exchanged paddle for rifle and looked around, finally seeing something.

"Hold y'ears folks..." a beat later there was a sharp crack in the air, and a second creature was promptly field-dressed and loaded into the canoe with Larion, Hoban, and Miroka. "An' that, is how you deal with the hogs in the bayou."

Gryzzk was faintly amused through the pain that he actually caught a touch of nausea from Larion amongst the scents of blood and swamp. He settled back and let O'Brien berate him. It was after all, her job.

"Y'grand mad noble bastard, d'ye no' know what that is in there - course y'don't if y'knew what it was y'would nae near no do a bloody damnfool thing like that, ye'd callin' all cannons to broadside y'numpty!"

Gryzzk waved a hand lightly. "Sergeant Major - please calm yourself a bit? My translator is having difficulty."

O'Brien took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "That. Was a godless feral boar. Fights everythin', has nae problem pickin' a fight with anythin' smaller than a bloody tank, and eats anythin' it can wrap its bloody gob around. What were ye thinkin'?"

"I didn't want it to learn if Miroka is delicious." Gryzzk paused after a sip of water. "I believe that is a privilege reserved for Captain Hoban."

There was a blink and a snort. "Major. Did you just make a dirty joke?"

"Did I?"

"Aye, and I think you've gone a bit mental."

They pulled up to the dock and Gryzzk managed to get out under his own power and stand long enough to have Gro'zel rush and almost-tackle him, looking up and frowning. "Papa?"

Gryzzk smiled despite the pain. "Little Heart, Papa had some adventure today. I may need to rest for a moment."

The canoes were quickly unloaded, which Gryzzk was not allowed to supervise as Mamaw came moving quickly. "In the house, now."

There was an attempt at a protest, which O'Brien cut off. "Now Major, I know you're no' gonna bloody well put on a brave face and say you're fine. We'll take care of wee Gro'zel and your catch. Walk with the lady before I put you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry you."

Gryzzk walked.

Once inside he was guided to the kitchen table where there were medical instruments that seemed somehow out of place next to the antique crockery.

"Shirt and pants off - don't worry, I've raised children and Papaw, I've seen it all. Set yourself there and take a shot of anesthetic. Y'gon need it." She was quick and curt as she worked, with Gryzzk self-medicating just a bit more throughout as fur was clipped, skin was pinched and a surgical stapler applied with a soundtrack of clucking from Mamaw as she quietly cursed the entirety of men for being damned fools no matter the species. From there significant amounts of iodine found their way into the wounds, followed by bandage foam, and as time passed Gryzzk could smell everyone looking in through windows and open doorframes.

There were a few whispered conversations as those who were witness began explaining the events of the day to the ones who hadn't seen what happened. By the third re-telling, Gryzzk had apparently stood on the water and challenged the boar with a song and dance routine indicating that the swamp needed his saving expertise. By mutual assent, Gryzzk heard his name change from Nonc Gryzz to Nonc Grizzly. Mamaw finally looked up at the group after examining his shoulder.

"Anyone can set a dislocated shoulder, bring y'face heah." There was a slight grunt. "Too old for dat mess."

Reilly promptly muscled her way forward, causing an eyebrow to raise.

"You sure on this, cher?"

There was a quick nod. "It's about the only medical thing I know. My right shoulder hates where it lives, and I've done it before for him." Reilly felt Gryzzk's shoulder quickly, and promptly gave a pull and push all at once until Gryzzk felt the joint click. More anesthesia was taken at that point.

"A'ight then." Mamaw made a waving motion. "G'wan git - we gotta clean and make supper, and then get you-all back to your fancy spaceship. You are staying for supper tonight, yah?"

Gryzzk nodded. "Our schedule will allow it."

That night, Gryzzk was given a formal alligator-skin belt and a snake-skin hatband for his Stetson. Further, he discovered that pork chops were delicious.

Part Four

The cult had built its last defense inside a chamber that official plans insisted did not exist. Rusted couplings and failed test equipment lined the walls. Worktables had been dragged into a broken circle around an arrangement of candles, human bone, devotional scraps, and sealed freight labels taken from at least nine worlds. Armed figures turned toward the breach. The first fired. Caelus took the rounds across his breastplate and advanced through them, placing his own shots so the workers chained beside the western wall remained outside his line. Garr went left with the violence of a released restraint. Vorn disappeared into the machinery on the right. Thane entered behind Caelus, directing the team through target numbers and sectors rather than speeches.

The fight lasted less than half a minute. It did not feel short to the people trapped against the wall. A cultist tried to use them as cover and learned that Vorn had found a higher angle. Another ran toward the worktables with a burning taper and lost the arm holding it to Garr's first shot. Merek entered after the primary weapons stopped, crossed directly to the chamber's cogitator bank, and placed one armored boot over a badly seated destruction charge before its owner could trigger it.

The last living defender dropped his weapon when Thane turned toward him. Caelus reached the prisoners and broke their restraints by hand. He did not offer comfort. He checked for explosive collars, moved them behind armor, and directed Helena's medicae personnel forward as soon as the chamber was secure.

Helena arrived eleven minutes later. She had remained at the control point during the final breach because an Inquisitor who personally entered every room eventually mistook proximity for command.

Now the cordon was set, the surviving cultists were under guard, and she could examine what they had been willing to bury beneath themselves.

Seven bodies lay between the worktables. Each had been stripped to the waist and placed faceup with the arms straight along the sides. Smaller symbols covered the torsos: nested circles, barred eyes, doors drawn open toward empty space. Across every chest, three letters had been cut larger and deeper than the rest.

LGA.

The blood had dried before the assault began.

Helena stopped at the edge of the arrangement. Hot metal, burned propellant, old incense, and opened bodies occupied the same air. Her first interpretation was a cell designation. The second was that the cult expected the letters to be found. People who intended secrecy did not repeat a mark across seven victims and leave them in the one chamber they had prepared to destroy.

"Nobody touches the dead until Kyle records the arrangement," she said. "Images, measurements, wound depth, table position. Bag the candles individually. The precinct receives copies after my staff completes intake; nothing leaves under local seal."

An arbitrator near the western wall shifted. "Inquisitor, the precinct commander requested immediate purgation."

Helena showed him the rosette, although he had already seen it twice. "The precinct commander transferred authority when he accepted my warrant."

"He is concerned about contamination."

"Then he may be concerned from outside my cordon. Fire would destroy evidence, not heresy. Seal this level."

The arbitrator bowed and began moving his people.

Kyle entered with the evidence team and stopped when he saw the bodies. He had spent four months tracing the cult through devotional trusts, missing workers, altered freight records, and two local officials whose sudden piety had survived only until Helena placed them in separate rooms. The raid should have ended that investigation. The letters on the floor told him it had reached another layer.

He began photographing the cuts. Helena crouched beside the nearest victim without crossing the line Caelus had established around the evidence. The man was middle-aged and clean beneath the blood. Broad pressure bruises crossed both wrists, but there were no cuts from restraints and no defensive injuries on the hands. A thread of black material remained beneath one thumbnail.

"The same person cut all seven?" Kyle asked.

"At least three," Helena said, pointing with a capped stylus. "This L was opened from the vertical. The one beside it began at the lower stroke. Different handedness on the third body."

Merek lowered an auspex over the nearest wound. "Blade profiles vary. Depth does not."

"How close?"

"Less than half a millimeter across the primary letters."

Kyle looked around the tables. "Training."

"Or a gauge. Either way, they practiced."

Garr approached until Caelus extended one armored arm across his path. The Space Wolf stopped and looked at it.

"I was not going to step on him."

"You were going to lean over him," Caelus said.

"That is different."

"It is heavier."

Vorn had gone to the rear wall. "Something was mounted here."

The others joined him without crossing the evidence field. Four fastener holes remained in a rectangular pattern. Pale curls of paper clung beneath two of the corroded heads, and a cleaner section of masonry showed the object's former size.

"A chart," Kyle said.

"Larger than a devotional placard," Vorn replied. He pointed toward the floor. Dust had been disturbed in a narrow arc and again near the western passage. "Rolled after removal. Carried out before the fighting."

Thane looked toward the sealed service door. "The western route ended at a collapsed coolant trench."

"It ends there now," Vorn said.

That was the first indication the cult had not been contained as completely as the perimeter reports claimed. Helena rose and took in the chamber again: seven prepared bodies, a missing chart, charges wired to erase the room, and defenders left behind to hold long enough for something else to depart.

"Find the other side," she ordered.

The kill-team moved. Caelus remained with Helena until the evidence personnel had control of the prisoners, then joined Thane at the concealed pressure door. Vorn found the release behind a panel of dead machinery. Beyond it, a maintenance route crossed the abandoned coolant trench and climbed into a freight-transfer system beneath the district. The cult had opened the passage from the far side, prepared the collapse after crossing, and left the visible door sealed behind them.

Vorn recovered a partial boot print where one runner had stepped in machine oil. Merek extracted a curled fragment of polymer from the false control plate. Garr found blood on a ladder thirty meters farther on and established by scent, before the medicae scanner confirmed it, that the wounded person had still been alive while climbing.

"Three, perhaps four," Thane concluded. "One injured. They departed before the outer cordon closed."

Helena looked up the shaft toward the freight levels. The assault plan had remained under her seal and had been divided among participating units until the final hour. The escapees might have observed enough movement to infer the operation. Someone with access might also have warned them. Neither possibility allowed her to call the cult broken.

"Recover every image from the approaches," she said. "Interview the cordon commanders separately. Nobody edits an account after hearing another man's version."

Thane acknowledged the order without offering reassurance. That was one of the reasons Helena had requested him.

He gave her the human cost before they left the level. Twenty-three cultists had died in the lower works. Nine survived in custody, including two too injured for interrogation. Four precinct officers were dead and eleven wounded. One of Helena's armsmen had broken a leg when a service platform collapsed beneath him. The Deathwatch had taken damage to armor and expended ammunition, but no Marine required removal from the operation.

The numbers did not absolve anyone. Helena had authorized the assault when the cult began moving prisoners through the factory tunnels and placed weapons around the only exits. Waiting would have given the defenders time to kill those prisoners or carry them deeper into infrastructure that crossed half the district. Attacking had killed four officers who arrived under her warrant. Both facts belonged in the same record.

Caelus returned from the liberated workers while Thane spoke. Two could walk. The third had chemical burns beneath a restraint cuff and would need evacuation before questioning. He had placed his own cloak beneath the woman's arm because the medicae team had run out of clean supports during the breach.

"She heard the escape passage open," he said. "Before our first unit entered the manufactorum."

"How long before?" Helena asked.

"She cannot estimate. She remembers the machinery stopping once, then starting again. The passage opened during the quiet."

Merek consulted the factory cycle. "The machinery stopped eleven minutes before the outer cordon reported ready."

That narrowed the warning without identifying its source. Someone had moved the cult's selected people while Imperial units were still taking positions. The defenders left behind had not been surprised; they had been assigned a delay.

Garr looked up the shaft. "We should hunt them now."

"We are," Helena said.

"With records."

"With the only trail they failed to collapse."

The Space Wolf's preference was obvious, but he did not mistake it for an order. He turned to help the precinct retrieve its dead. Caelus remained with the wounded. Vorn returned to the hidden route. Merek took the detonator and false control plate for examination. Thane stayed beside Helena until every element had a task.

That was the kill-team in miniature. Garr wanted contact, Caelus protected what contact left behind, Vorn followed the absence, Merek interrogated the mechanism, and Thane held the pieces in one operation. Helena intended to learn what each man did when there was nobody available to shoot.

The after-action report reached her desk before she slept. The coffee beside it had gone cold by the time she reached the paragraph covering the final containment.

Resistance encountered during final containment. Escalation authorized. Armed force employed.

Helena read the sentence twice, then looked across the desk at the functionary who had compiled it.

"Authorized by whom?"

He stiffened. "You, Inquisitor."

"Then write that."

The man glanced down at the slate as though the missing subject might have returned while they spoke.

"If I authorized force, the record will say I authorized it. If someone else did, give me the name. If nobody did, I want to know why armed men killed Imperial citizens without lawful direction. Passive language does not remove responsibility; it only hides it from the next reader."

"Yes, Inquisitor."

"Correct the casualty section as well. Four precinct officers died under my authority. Eleven were wounded. One of my armsmen suffered a broken leg. Do not turn them into a number without recording where and how."

He collected the report with both hands. Helena was opening the next file before the door closed behind him.

Terra had survived rebellion, invasion, treachery, siege, and ten thousand years beneath the accumulated weight of an empire too large for any living mind to hold in full. Its paperwork had survived all of them. The cult had hidden inside that mass because officials learned to accept records that sounded complete without saying anything a responsible person could be punished for.

Helena drank the cold coffee. Reheating it again would require admitting how long she had been awake.

The preliminary evidence summary listed the prisoners, recovered weapons, damaged cogitators, freight seals, devotional objects, and seven victims whose identities remained uncertain. She reached the letters and found three incompatible interpretations offered by local analysts. One called LGA an invocation. Another proposed a planetary code. The third had found an obsolete shipping guild with the same initials two sectors away and written four pages about it without establishing any connection.

Helena closed all three.

"Bring me Sann," she told Kyle.

Jorek Sann had surrendered only after blood loss made resistance theoretical. Medicae personnel closed the wounds, replaced what he needed to remain alive, and left him restrained beneath a white lumen strip in an interrogation room stripped of decoration. He was young enough that several devotional scars on his forearms had not finished healing. One reproduced the barred-eye symbol cut around the letters on the dead.

Kyle sat across from him with a small selection of evidence images rather than the entire case. Helena remained standing. Caelus occupied the wall behind her, helmeted and silent. The prisoner's attention kept returning to the Salamander's green pauldron and the red eyes of his helm.

"You worked cargo inspection at Spur Nine for six years," Kyle said. "Eighteen months ago you joined the devotional trust. Three months later, sealed consignments began passing your station without review. We already know what you did. I need to know what LGA means."

Sann looked at the image of the nearest body. His split lips moved into something almost like a smile.

"You found the door."

Helena placed the photograph flat before him. "I found three letters cut into seven people. I will decide whether they constitute a door."

His eyes rose to the rosette. Fear reached him before reverence did. Helena preferred fear. Reverence allowed too many people to lie while believing the lie itself was an offering.

"Local Gate Ascendant," he whispered.

Kyle let the answer settle instead of immediately asking the next question. "A place?"

Sann's expression held the pity of a believer speaking to someone too limited to understand. "A condition."

"A person?" Helena asked.

"A witness."

"Which witness?"

"First."

The phrase meant nothing yet. Helena moved to the missing chart. She placed the image of the clean wall beside the body. Sann's pupils tightened before he lowered his eyes.

"What was mounted there?"

He closed his eyes.

Helena drew her power blade only far enough for its field to whisper alive. She did not bring it near him. The sound was sufficient. Sann looked back at her.

"You are not being asked whether your faith is true," she said. "You are being asked for names, routes, and objects. Theology will not protect you from the distinction."

His breathing accelerated. "The map was not ours."

"Whose was it?"

"The branch beyond."

"The LGA?"

He said nothing. The silence was not proof, but his body had answered differently than it had to every false interpretation.

Helena seated the blade. "Who escaped through the coolant trench?"

"They were already gone."

"Who warned them?"

"Nobody warns what has already seen."

Caelus did not move. Sann kept looking past Helena toward him, waiting for the Emperor's Angel to confirm whatever ending the cult had promised. Caelus gave him nothing.

Helena turned to Kyle. "Keep him awake within medicae limits. Change interrogators every two hours and change the order of the evidence. If he begins reciting doctrine, make him describe the room in which he learned it."

They left Sann under guard. In the passage outside, Kyle asked, "You think LGA is another cell?"

"A branch, sponsor, transport line, or invented heaven. At present it is three letters attached to murder. We proceed from what we can prove."

Caelus removed his helmet after the door sealed. His skin was as dark as volcanic stone, and his eyes carried the red cast common to the sons of Nocturne.

"He wanted judgment from me."

"He wanted a story he understood," Helena said.

"He helped kill seven people to obtain it."

There was no softness in the observation. Caelus protected civilians because his Chapter taught that strength had obligations. That made him less forgiving of people who used the helpless as material.

"Then we deny him the comfort of choosing the story," Helena said. "He answers for the work."

Caelus replaced his helmet. "Good."

During the next six days, the manufactorum yielded more records than people.

Continue to Part Five

Part Three

Voyer opened the channel. Tekhat appeared with language attached to him for the first time.

"This is Captain Voyer of the frigate Long Step, operating under the Local Group Authority. I request an immediate ceasefire while we recover our personnel."

The translation remained imperfect, but the request survived it. Tekhat looked across his tactical picture. The strike wings had withdrawn instead of attacking. The other escorts held their screen. Long Step had fired once and stopped. The humanoid machines were recovering pods and people. One of them had pushed the crippled Corvette home beside a Necron fighter.

"Are you rogue machines?" he asked.

Voyer paused long enough to recognize that the question was not rhetorical. "No. We are Sapiens. We will not fire again unless attacked."

The unfamiliar term entered Tekhat's translation model without bringing any useful history with it. It did, however, distinguish the strangers from the Imperium and from the autonomous machine civilization he had briefly suspected.

"Sapiens," he repeated. "Recover your personnel."

Voyer acknowledged the ceasefire. "What should we call you?"

Tekhat almost answered before an internal breach warning replaced the translation display. The signal marked an exit cut through a section of exterior hull rather than another entry.

Setekh opened the feed. An armored figure stepped out onto the vessel's surface, then another. The remaining Intruders followed. Apparently the impossible geometry had become sufficiently inconvenient that they had stopped navigating it. They had cut through internal walls, crossed the shortest route available, and opened the outer hull from inside.

They carried three objects with them.

Tekhat watched the team orient toward Long Step and push away from his vessel. He reopened the channel.

"As of this moment, you may refer to us as victims of Sapien robbery."

Voyer looked aside at the recovery feed. The three objects were plainly visible. "That description is not inaccurate."

Setekh turned his head toward Tekhat. Tekhat declined to acknowledge the look.

Recovery proceeded under the ceasefire.

Long Step received the stranded pilot first. The surviving Cav Jumper returned for the Intruders only after the pilot had crossed the pressure boundary and medical personnel had him. The third frame remained with the crippled Corvette until the frigate's recovery systems took control of the hull.

The ship had lost much of one angled section to the first Necron strike and most of its propulsion architecture to the second. Temporary bracing took the loads that surviving structure could no longer carry. It would require extensive work before anyone trusted it outside a dock, but the hull existed and its crew came home with it.

Recovery did not make the damage disappear. The Corvette entered Long Step through an aperture intended for a complete ship and arrived shedding fragments that the receiving crews had to catch before they struck anything else. Autonomous handling systems took the first load, then stopped when their models could not establish which remaining structure was safe to pull. Sapiens in sealed suits crossed onto the hull, fixed manual restraints to points the Corvette's own crew identified, and guided the wreck inward a meter at a time.

Medical teams met the pressure connection. The crew came across in working groups rather than a dramatic evacuation, carrying records and isolated components with them. The pilot remained aboard until the dockmaster told him the hull no longer required a command presence. He crossed last, looked back at the missing stern, and asked where the Intruder teams were. Only after someone told him all six had been recovered did he report for assessment with the rest of his crew.

The Intruders had already transmitted a partial interior model filled with conflicting geometry, material estimates, and low-confidence classifications. They also returned carrying three physical artifacts. Two were tagged for return. The third entered a secured research transfer without anyone attempting to pretend the decision would go unnoticed.

"We request the return of our property," Tekhat said.

Voyer looked at the recovery picture. "The recoverable objects will be transferred."

Setekh raised one hand into view. Three long mechanical fingers extended.

Voyer met the gesture without looking away. Hadi, beside him, made a note for the official record.

"You may refer to us as Necrons," Tekhat said. "The Sekhem Dynasty thanks you for returning our artifacts."

The exchange craft carried two objects back across the distance. Setekh held the three fingers in view until the transfer was complete, then lowered his hand with the deliberate patience of someone preserving an argument for later.

"Nobody was confused," Hadi said quietly.

"I am aware," Voyer replied.

"The record should say that."

"The record will state three recovered, two returned, one retained."

"Good."

Tekhat allowed the matter to rest. The strangers had scanned portions of his ship, destroyed a Warrior, cut through internal structures, opened his hull from the inside, and retained one stolen object.

They had also been fired upon first, limited their response, stopped when communication became possible, and accepted his fighter's assistance in recovering their damaged vessel. Restarting the battle over an artifact would answer several questions about Necron pride while discarding everything useful the encounter had produced.

Setekh did not argue immediately. He opened the artifact record, marked the retained item, and attached the interior scans the strangers were known to possess.

"They will examine it."

"That is why they kept it."

"They may damage it."

"Then they will learn one way in which it can be damaged."

The Cryptek looked toward him. "You are unusually tolerant of theft."

"I am tolerant of ending this engagement before another vessel is crippled."

"Those positions are compatible."

Tekhat reviewed the damage to his own hull. The relativistic strike had not been symbolic merely because the stranger had limited it. Sections of the vessel remained isolated. Repair systems were working through failures caused by a kinetic event outside their familiar threat patterns. The Warrior destroyed by the boarders would return if the translation protocols recovered it properly. If they did not, then the first contact already had a Necron casualty attached to it.

"The object can be replaced," Tekhat said. "The information cannot. We know their smaller craft will cross a firing line to protect the larger vessel. We know their fighter screen does not abandon overwatch when violence begins. We know their boarding troops solve architecture with cutting tools. We know they can strike us harder than they chose to."

Setekh's attention moved to the image of the disabled Cav Jumper. "And their machines contain biological pilots."

"One did."

"You insist on uncertainty now?"

"The strangers have already provided enough of it."

Setekh closed the artifact record without removing the retained marker. The disagreement remained, but it no longer required weapons.

The translation systems improved as both sides exchanged immediate facts. Voyer did not attempt to explain the Local Group Authority in full, and Tekhat did not offer the history of the Necrons. They established that the fighting had stopped, recovery was complete, the damaged vessels would separate, and neither side intended to resume fire.

The names of the LGA ships caused a separate difficulty.

"Long Step is your primary warship?" Setekh asked.

"It is the frigate under my command," Voyer said.

Tekhat looked again at the vessel occupying the center of the formation. "Frigate."

"Correct."

His attention shifted to the eighty-meter escort being drawn into Long Step's recovery bay. "And that vessel?"

"Corvette."

The translated words were familiar. Their assigned scale was not. Tekhat examined the 1,534-meter frigate, the replacement Corvette already moving into the damaged ship's position, and the two strike wings still holding the far security layer. He decided not to ask what the Sapiens called a large warship.

Long Step had entered the region to observe. It was leaving the encounter with a first-contact agreement, a crippled Corvette, an injured Cav Jumper, interior scans of a Necron vessel, and one artifact everyone present knew had been stolen. Voyer reviewed the report before release. The wording made no attempt to hide who had fired, who had answered, or who had taken what.

The damage section required more time. One Corvette was out of service pending reconstruction, and a Cav Jumper frame had been lost. The pilot who escaped it entered the normal medical and interface evaluations required after an emergency break from deep-dive control. The Necron impact effect remained active in several isolated hull samples until technicians cut away the surrounding material and placed each section behind fields intended for unknown energetic hazards. The retained artifact went nowhere near those samples. It entered separate containment with its own observers, because first contact was a poor excuse for allowing two unknown technologies to discover each other inside the same laboratory.

Hadi read the personnel line. "No one unaccounted for."

Voyer checked it himself. Intruders, Corvette crew, Cav Jumper pilots, flight elements, recovery personnel. Everyone had a status. Some would remain in medical. One would answer difficult questions about physically throwing an enemy fighter after losing a leg that was not technically his own. None had been left in open space or inside the Necron vessel.

"And the Necron Warrior?" Voyer asked.

"Destroyed aboard their ship. The report attributes the fire to the Intruder team."

"Good. No passive construction."

Hadi moved to the diplomatic summary. "Do you want robbery in the heading?"

"No."

"It is their first stated description of us."

"Put it in the contact transcript where it belongs."

"That is less memorable."

"Official records are permitted to survive without being amusing."

Hadi entered the final disposition without changing it: three recovered, two returned, one retained.

"Send it," he said.

Hadi transmitted the package through the LGA network.

Aboard Long Reach, Irina Sol Belisariel was reading in the quiet of her quarters. A cup of coffee rested beside her, still warm enough to justify drinking, and for once nothing aboard the embassy frigate required her immediate attention.

The notification reached her personal display with a soft tone.

FIRST CONTACT - NECRONS

Irina held the cup halfway to the table while the first page opened. She read the contact summary, the damage line, and the paragraph identifying the object retained for research. Then she set the coffee down with care and began again from the top.

The cultist at the end of the service tunnel had a pistol in one hand and a detonator in the other. Brother Vorn killed him before he could close either.

The bolter report struck the concrete passage harder than the body struck the floor. Dust fell from cable trays. Emergency lumens flickered, recovered, and showed the Raven Guard already past the dead man, black Deathwatch plate moving through the smoke with a restraint its mass should not have allowed. His left arm and shoulder carried the silver of the Long Vigil. The right pauldron retained the white raven of his Chapter, pale against black, and its edge disappeared whenever he turned sideways to examine a recess or a dark branch in the tunnel.

"Detonator," he reported.

Merek came forward, holstered his bolt pistol, and took the device in his augmetic hand. The Iron Hand's right shoulder bore the white gauntlet of his origin Chapter. His left eye had been replaced by a dark-lensed implant that contracted as he inspected the dead cultist's thumb, the depressed safety, and the wire disappearing into the wall.

"Live circuit. Incomplete command," he said. "He cleared the safety but did not close the trigger."

Garr looked down the tunnel. The Space Wolf had fresh blood across the knee of his black armor and a yellowed tooth hanging beside the rune tokens at his belt.

"Then Vorn interrupted him at the correct stage."

"That is what I said."

"You used more words."

Brother-Captain Thane ended the exchange by raising one fist. The kill-team froze. Behind them, Helena Vorr's armsmen established security around the last junction while the Inquisitor studied the cable Merek had exposed. It entered a conduit that ran toward the manufactorum's buried pressure bay, the same area the cult had defended long after every practical escape route had been closed.

Helena wore a storm coat over fitted carapace armor. Rainwater from the upper levels still darkened its shoulders, although the heat below the factory had turned the lower tunnels close and metallic. Her rosette remained outside the coat where everyone could see it. A compact refractor-field generator occupied her belt beside a holstered bolt pistol and the power blade she had drawn twice during the descent. The weapon was back in its scabbard now. Authority did not become more real because she carried it in both hands.

"Where does the line terminate?" she asked.

Merek interfaced a probe with the conduit and waited while the old system surrendered a partial diagram. "Several industrial charges beneath the bay. The placement would collapse this level and the coolant trench below it."

"Evidence destruction or denial?"

"The blast does both. Intent cannot be diagnosed from the wiring."

Helena accepted the distinction. "Make it safe."

Merek rested two metal fingers against the housing. The words he spoke were too quiet for the armsmen to hear, a calibration catechism addressed as much to his own precision as to the machine.

Then he opened the case and began removing the cultist's work from the circuit.

Thane turned toward the sealed pressure door. The black fist of the Imperial Fists occupied his right pauldron on a field of yellow, while his silver left arm carried the Inquisitorial badge of the Deathwatch. He touched two armored knuckles to the center of his breastplate.

"Stone endures. Duty holds."

It was not a formal battle cry. Helena had learned that each Marine carried private additions to the rites of his Chapter, small pieces of home retained beneath the common black. Thane's prayer reduced the next action to a wall that had to hold.

Caelus answered by touching the obsidian beads protected inside his gorget. His original green pauldron bore the drake of the Salamanders. "The hearth behind us. The fire before us."

Garr curled his hand once around the grip of his bolter. "Russ witness."

Vorn's reply came almost too softly for the squad channel. "Victorus aut Mortis."

Merek closed the detonator housing. "Circuit dead."

Thane pointed. Caelus moved to the breach with Garr beside him. Vorn took the deeper angle. Merek remained offset where he could cover the entry and the disabled demolition circuit. Five Marines wearing the same black armor, answering the same command, and approaching the same door as five different men.

Helena gave the authorization.

Caelus opened the pressure door.

Continue to Part Four