Transport ship, Skies of Vzk’Tk Colony World
Jennifer Delaney
The situation in the Vzk’tk colony was obvious to anyone who cared to look. It was a recently settled planet—relatively speaking—and had clearly been designed as an agricultural world. Vast tracts of land had been cleared around every community, and long, straight tracks brought everything back to the only major city on the planet. Every aspect of it spoke of pre-planning with the notable exception of the smouldering ruins. The outlying communities must have been abandoned near the start of things, while the city was a wasteland of broken technology, the smashed and torn wrecks of starships, and the makeshift shanty-towns of desperate survivors. It was like a poster-child for post-apocalyptic settings, and the crew of the transport had a birds’ eye view of the whole tragic mess.
“Sweet merciful shit,” breathed Jen. “This is… it’s almost beyond comprehension. They’re even fighting over what’s left!”
She pointed at a barricaded park that held a gathering of the peaceful leaf-eaters—they were in the middle of staging a series of rather grisly executions.
“I thought they were supposed to be gentle and harmless?” Xayn asked as he observed the events taking place. “It would appear they were merely the beneficiaries of a stable food supply.”
Jen nodded. “On Earth we have a saying: every society is only three meals away from revolution. Never thought I’d get to see the proof up close.”
“The galaxy is a mess,” Chir growled. “This is only one small world, and nobody will be coming to help them if everywhere else is the same. I’m not sure they would even if this was just an isolated case. The Vzk’tk possess an unusual perspective on what constitutes civilised behaviour. Call it their herd mentality.”
“It is strange that they remain in the city when ample food surely awaits in those farms,” Xayn noted. “The collapse of technology is one thing, but allowing yourself to starve is another.”
“I doubt any of them have ever done serious farming in their lives,” Chir replied. “Farms are automated everywhere… the closest you’ll get to farming is if you maintain the machines. No doubt some of them will figure it out, but then what? I may be a fighter, but even I know those big machines are out there doing something more than just trundling around.”
“I feel like we should do something to help,” said Jen, still staring at the situation in the park. “Just leaving them like this is a bit too heartless.”
“We can barely feed ourselves with what we have,” Xayn reminded her. “And I doubt they will be too willing to give over command to three outsiders like ourselves. Unless you know a lot more about farming than you have previously mentioned.”
“I’ve grown potatoes,” Jen replied. “Although you mostly just stick one in the ground and let it do the rest. They’re these big lumps of complex carbohydrates that grow under the ground, and once you plant them you’ll never be rid of them.”
“You have just described eating weeds,” Chir surmised. “I don’t know why I’m even slightly surprised. Xayn, what are your thoughts on what caused all this mess?”
The V’Straki engineer pondered the matter for a moment before answering. “I think it means I was right. It had to be something that hijacked the quantum connections to spread this far in an instant. Note that the vessels in orbit were all slaved to the planetary network. Also note that the mining base we passed was still functional, suggesting their array was powered down during the broadcast. They would only turn their connection on for intermittent updates, just like we do on the Ark.”
“Can’t say I like where that trail of logic leads us,” Jen added.
“It leads to the nearly total collapse of galactic civilisation,” Chir replied with a wince. “Trillions dead as a conservative estimate. This… is a problem beyond our help. It may be beyond fixing at all.”
Jen cleared her throat—it all seemed too much to manage, but it went against the grain to just stand around doing nothing. “We were intending on saving a few hundred Gamel from extinction. How do we let something like *this* keep happening?”
“I do not enjoy suggesting it,” Chir replied sharply. “But if we try to help then our ship might be disabled as well. The only person I can think of who can even start to fix this is Askit, and he’s on Gamel.”
“Hopefully still alive,” Xayn added. “It would be unfortunate to discover that he was killed in the very disaster we hoped he could set right.”
“He has two humans with him and he somehow survived a prolonged association with Adrian Saunders,” Chir reminded them. “I’m sure he’s fine. But that gives us a goal.”
“The same goal we started out with,” Xayn noted with a light hiss. “Rescuing those three from whatever has happened to them.”
“And then to Gao,” Chir firmly added. “Even if they don’t want our help.”
“Are they fools?” asked Xayn. “Or is it hubris?”
“Xayn’s right. Surely they wouldn’t turn away help if it’s anything like here?” Jen asked, her eyebrow raised. “They might be a little wary, given our association with Adrian, but they’ll need to be pragmatic.”
“Galactic civilisation falls to pieces and suddenly they’re confronted with people in league with the Human Disaster… they might get the wrong idea,” said Chir. “When we go we’ll need to wear some different names and hope nobody recognizes us. As pragmatic as they might be, they’ll have more than one reason to prefer ripping us all to shreds.”
Jen sighed. “All the piracy.”
“And some other things they didn’t like very much,” Chir confirmed with a nod, although he refrained from elaborating. Jen didn’t have the full story, but she gathered that Chir was something of a legendary criminal figure amongst the Gaoians. “The other reason I have for wanting to go there is their recent admission to the Dominion. The transition to standardised hardware only occurred recently, so a lot of the original systems should still be in storage. Those are the backup plan if Askit can’t get the Dominion systems back online. Hopefully he can tell us exactly what happened.”
“If we save the Corti, we can also save a planet,” Xayn summarised. “Possibly many. It is a reasonable plan.”
“And we just abandon the people here,” Jen replied, gritting her teeth. But it wasn’t a question, and nobody considered it one.
“My father taught me many things,” said Xayn. “One of them was that both victory and defeat are bought in blood. You simply have to decide when to spill it and why.”
“Meaning you don’t fight battles you can’t win,” Chir added, boiling the advice down to its essence. “Your people used a lot of words to say simple things.”
“My people knew nothing but total war for hundreds of cycles,” Xayn hissed back. “They managed to find some time to gain some wisdom from it all. It is also wise to listen to the words of your elders.”
“You’re not my elder,” Chir growled. “You cannot count the time you spent in stasis.”
“Break it up, boys…” Jen interrupted, rolling her eyes even if she was glad of them ending the bleak mood. She didn’t think she’d had to say line that since she’d talked to her brothers. Terminating the display, she turned to the pair. “We’re screwing around here and there’s no hope of saving this place. Let’s find that Corti and—while we’re at it—come up with a better plan than ‘go to Gao and hope for the best’. Agreed?”
“Completely,” Chir replied, matching Xayn’s nod. “As Adrian Saunders would say: let’s get the fuck out of here.”
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Village Outskirts, Agwar
Adrian Saunders
“What’s the word?” Adrian asked as he met his companions in the morning. They had spent a night trying to convince the remaining members of the community to join them in their escape to the stars, and from the looks of things it hadn’t gone entirely well. Many of the Elders were pragmatic and had accepted how things had to be, but some were still mired in the traditions and their ties to a world that no longer existed. “Still no good?”
Aladyn nodded. “There are those who do not want to be saved. This world is our home, and they intend to live or die on it.”
“I can see their point,” Dalon continued. “Even if I find it to be overly sentimental. A Gretch must eventually leave its nest, and it does not always have the luxury of choosing its moment. It seems to me that this is ours.”
Aladyn stared back at the village. “Adrian… if this were your world, what would you be doing?”
“Leaving,” Adrian replied without hesitation. “And if I could save the rest of my people I would do it. That’s part of why I’m helping you here. I want to help you get to where your future is. How many do you think will be joining us?”
“Most of them,” Dalon replied. “Especially those with young. I think we’ve properly impressed upon them what life their children can expect if they stay.”
Adrian nodded. No doubt it was a manipulative tactic, but sometimes you could only aim for the greater good. He was fine with just about anything if it meant that there’d be more Agwarens joining him in the safety of the ship. “Don’t worry about the rest. We’ll swing back through here in a few days, once they’ve had a chance to re-think their decision. Sometimes you just need to let reality settle in.”
“Thank you,” Aladyn replied, plainly relieved. Neither of the pair were very happy about leaving anyone behind. “What about your ship in the sky?”
“It’s mostly ready,” said Adrian, “though you might want to let them know that it’s still being cleaned up so they’re not totally shocked by all the gore.”
“I can only imagine what you did to the enemy,” Dalon remarked. “I am doubly glad that you elected to be on our side.”
Adrian smiled. “It wasn’t just me, but you can be confident in their safety. We’ve also prepared for any disease you might bring along—we don’t want a plague running through the ship. We’ll have to keep them all confined to one area until they can get treated.”
“Understood,” said Aladyn, “we’ll try to explain, though I may end up with more questions than I can answer. This is a strange world we are entering, after all, and we’re putting a lot of trust into you.”
Adrian nodded deliberately. He knew the size of the burden he was taking on, just like he knew it wouldn’t stop with getting the Agwarens to some other world. They needed to be properly cared for, protected, and finally introduced to the rest of the galaxy. It was going to be the work of decades, but it would be nice to have at least one group who unambiguously considered him to be a friend. Alien sasquatches they might be, they were human enough to slip into his comfort zone even faster than the Gaoians, and he wasn’t going to abandon them when they needed him most.
“As long as you understand,” Dalon noted, then turned back to the village. “Come, Aladyn, let’s try and get them ready sooner rather than later. I can practically feel this planet dying around us.”
Adrian watched the two take their final trip back to the village, and wondered how they’d all adapt. They might not be humans, but they’d been through enough horror and change that he hoped that the comforts of a starship would be a welcome reprieve. Certainly he’d wasted no time in using the on-board facilities, and it’d done him a world of good.
His communicator, built into the star-like pattern that adorned the cuff of his left sleeve, beeped and glowed a faint blue to indicate a waiting call. He tapped it and raised it towards his mouth. “Saunders here.”
“Shiplord, it is Artiz,” the V’Straki scientist greeted. “Have you met with success?”
“Yeah, for the most part,” Adrian replied. “We’ll be leaving by the end of the day. How’s the clean-up effort?”
“Ongoing,” said Artiz. “The last of my species have left an enduring stain that is quite stubborn. I have organised the application of more aggressive cleaning agents, although your companions here have notified me that they will be unable to breathe the surrounding atmosphere for half a day-cycle after its use.”
Adrian raised an eyebrow. “Just how dangerous is it?”
“The degenerate youth would occasionally use it as a means to experience a false euphoria,” Artiz replied. “Given your complex neurology I will guess what it might do to you.”
The unpleasant memory of the Celzi fire-suppression chemicals sprang fresh to Adrian’s mind as Artiz explained the possibilities. “Let’s hold off on that for now, what about my implant?”
“I have studied it thoroughly,” Artiz said, clicking his tongue thoughtfully. “It is ingenious, but there is room for some flexibility. I have constructed a prototype that will allow you to suppress the bacteria currently filling you with that dangerous regenerative substance. It is accompanied by a remote key that allows you to turn it on and off as you desire. Obviously the same feature will not be extended to our guests.”
“Obviously,” Adrian agreed. While Cruezzir had regenerative effects on most galactic species, it was supposed to be applied in limited amounts and only as needed. Humans were, he had once been told, about the only species for whom such a long and intense exposure were not incredibly deadly. “Let’s focus on fixing them first. We can upgrade me later.”
“I predicted your decision and have already commenced mass-production,” said Artiz. “It is fortunate that your medical scans were so thorough, since I would otherwise be unable to manage these operations without the help of a skilled Medician.”
Adrian cleared his throat. “Well… things did get a bit rougher than I’d hoped. Was that all?”
“Just that your computer-based companion has been running simulations,” Artiz added. “She has determined that there is nowhere left untouched by the bacteria.”
“We already knew that,” Adrian replied. “That’s why we’re in a hurry.”
“Then let me add that my former crew never detected any sapient threat from elsewhere on this world,” Artiz continued. “A short study was put forward to determine why this region was different, and we discovered that—unlike the rest of the biosphere—the food chain was not delivering extra bacteria into their diet.”
“That’s because I got them to start cooking their food and boiling their water,” Adrian informed him. “I figured it was the only way to slow everything down for them.”
“An effort that worked,” Artiz replied. “Locally.”
Adrian hesitated. “Are you… are you saying that the rest of the planet is too far gone?”
“I cannot be certain of that,” the V’Straki admitted, “but I do suspect it to be the case. I estimate we have considerably less than one thousand Agwarens distributed in the local area, with an unknown percentage afflicted by the brain-eating parasites. We may not have a minimum breeding population, so that would make it *two* species you’ve effectively extinguished.”
“Neither of your species are going anywhere,” Adrian told him. “Remember that I have a plan.”
“I remember,” Artiz replied. “I would be much less cooperative if I thought it was a lie. I will see you later, Artiz out.”
The pattern returned to its usual yellow as the communication link ended, leaving Adrian with a sour taste in his mouth. He knew it was possible that there’d be nothing he could do to save either species, but it seemed like the most worthy place to invest all his effort. The rest of the galaxy was stuck in a war of its own making, but it was otherwise just fine—these were the people who needed him. That was why he was glad to see the assembling group of refugees wasn’t as small as he’d been fearing. “Well,” he said to himself, “at least it’s a good start.”
++++
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Dastasji, Skies of Agwar
Dalon
Adrian had told them that they wouldn’t even feel the movement inside the small vessel that ferried groups of refugees towards the sky-ship named Dastasji. Dalon had been sceptical, but he had not been able to comprehend the level of technology they were dealing with. Adrian told them they had arrived after several minutes of standing around, and the ramp had lowered to reveal a completely changed scene. Gone was the backdrop of the village in the jungle—in its place was a damaged field of metal, wreckage and organic sludge. Dalon had warned the others that they were going to see a grisly sight, but he had severely underestimated the scope of the carnage, and he was once more glad that Adrian Saunders had never taken the Agwarens as an enemy.
“Where have you brought us, Dalon?” one of the villagers asked as he stepped onto the ramp. “You said that Adrian Saunders came here and did this?”
Dalon nodded, his stomach in knots. “Yes.”
The villager grimaced. “Dalon… I have been thinking about our myths. I think we may have been wrong.”
“Wrong?” Dalon asked, looking sidelong at the villager.
The villager nodded. “I was a historian before the change. The myth of the dark one goes back before that creature actually appeared. It goes back much further, in fact. It wasn’t just some story we invented out of desperate hope, the ancients had a religion around it. I assume you know it?”
“Of course,” Dalon replied. It was something that had been drummed into all children before the Great Change. “The Dark One comes and brings death and destruction in their wake, and then the Chosen One comes and saves us. Or something to that effect.”
“Good,” said the villager approvingly. “Then you’ll appreciate my suspicions that we got the prophecy right but the identities wrong? We thought the other human was the Chosen One.”
“An interesting theory,” Dalon replied, “but I no longer ascribe to that kind of hamka-shit. Adrian Saunders is not some myth, he is something called a human and they are apparently incredibly dangerous. I think it would be best if you keep your theory to yourself, lest you might offend him.”
His tone was enough to shut the conversation down, and his glare prevented anyone else from picking it up from there. Dalon didn’t personally believe in the myth of the Chosen One, even if the arrival of Jennifer Delaney had temporarily suspended his disbelief, but he was beginning to question the role of these humans in the dark heavens. Jennifer Delaney had apparently defeated the Dark One, but a greater enemy had arrived before there could be any celebration. Then Adrian Saunders had turned up and started killing absolutely everything that posed a threat. Dalon had seen the crash sites, and Adrian had claimed his involvement, but those had only ever been stories. Seeing the killing field inside the Dastasji made them feel real.
He startled when Adrian Saunders stepped onto the ramp beside him. “Yeah… I did warn you.”
Dalon stared at him. He was fairly sure the human was slightly embarrassed by the scene. “It is hard to prepare for something like this. I can only imagine what it looked like before you started cleaning.”
“There was a fuckload more fire and… organic matter,” said Adrian before clearing his throat. “Anyway, we’ve got some drones here to guide your people to their rooms. We can manage introductions to the crew once everyone is settled in.”
The floating machines in question were covered with bright yellow paint in some vain effort to make them look cheerful. It was clear that this had been one person’s idea, and that whoever had carried it out hadn’t given a shit about the end result. It was reassuring to see that some things were the same no matter where you went. The job looked so dismal that it seemed to be breaking the tension for anyone who noticed them—anyone incapable of getting things properly painted wasn’t likely to be a real god figure.
Dalon drew the attention of the crowd. “We’re to follow the floating things. I’m told we’ve been given rooms, and no… I don’t know what we can expect. I doubt the former residents lived in squalor.”
The villagers did as they were told without too much grumbling, but compliance was to be expected given the situation. Dalon saw them off before returning to Adrian. “I think they’ll behave themselves. For a while at least. As for me… it’s nice to have a solid roof over my head again. I hated the underground when I was a child, but when it was gone… well, this reminds me of it in a way.”
Adrian frowned. “There’s something I should tell you.”
“Bad news by your tone,” Dalon surmised.
“I already told you that the Great Change has happened across the entire world,” said Adrian. “From what we can tell, the only reason any of you are here right now is because I convinced you to cook all your food and boil all your water.”
“We are *still* changing,” Dalon reminded him. “Albeit at a far slower rate than before. I take it that the other settlements…”
Dalon ran out of words. He wasn’t sure what would have happened to them, but he’d seen the process in the animals he’d hunted and it had always happened quickest with the predators—endless growth and a maddening hunger swiftly followed by collapse. If it happened to the beasts, it’d happen to his own kind. “They’re all dead.”
Adrian shook his head. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“We’re only alive because you intervened,” Dalon told him. “I remember what it was like before that. We were always hungry, we hunted everything we could and we were little more than animals. Most such creatures are gone now, and their last days were spent crashing through the jungle trying to find enough food to sustain them. I don’t think we would have been very different.”
Adrian was quiet for a while. “That’s the theory, yeah.”
“Are we doomed?” Dalon asked him. He doubted Adrian would be putting all this effort into a lost cause, but sometimes people tried even when failure was guaranteed.
“Not yet,” Adrian replied. “I think you’re going to be okay. As much as you can be, anyway.”
That meant that survival wouldn’t be easy, but as far as Dalon was concerned it never had been. Most of his life had been spent in the shadow of the creature known as the Dark One and its artificial minions, and the Great Change had just made things different, not worse. If anything it made the rescue plan more straightforward, since they wouldn’t need to figure out how to accommodate several cities of people aboard a fairly limited sky-ship. “Then don’t be so concerned. You didn’t start this problem, and you stayed to help even though you could have abandoned us. Only the most ungrateful would blame you for being unable to save everyone. Still… you should avoid mentioning this to anyone else, not everyone is as practical as I am.”
Adrian nodded as he thought about this, and stared out at the horizon beyond the entry to the ship. Dalon studied him, trying to understand what the strange creature was thinking, though he held out little hope of success. He was sure that it wasn’t a human thing; Jennifer Delaney had apparently been as open as an unfamiliar creature could be. Nor was Adrian particularly wistful, as the intensity of his stare did not match his otherwise passive expression. Dalon guessed the human was considering exactly what might happen if word got around about the real situation, and what would need to be done in response. It was what Dalon himself would do, but it was more difficult to judge how Adrian would approach things.
“How long do you think before we can leave?” Dalon pressed, wanting to change the human’s line of thought. The scale of the disaster should speed things up if nothing else. “Not that I’m eager to leave, but…”
“But you don’t like sitting around waiting for things to happen?” Adrian finished, glancing sidelong towards him. “I get it, and as you might suspect we’ll be wrapping up a lot sooner than I’d first thought. What happens from there? That’s a work in progress.”
Dalon had been hoping for a little more than that, but he didn’t pass further comment. That was how the Elders thought, and it was practically impossible to satisfy all their expectations even though few of them could accomplish the things they’d requested. Those who had remained behind had been the worst for this, but the rest were almost as bad. They’d talked quietly amongst themselves when they thought he couldn’t hear them, plotting how they’d eventually talk Adrian into giving them one thing or another. The scene that had greeted them on arrival would pacify them for a while, but if there were discontent it’d be spread from those old con-men. Adrian might not see it coming at first, but he would certainly respond. Poor though he was at dealing with people, Dalon knew that he and Aladyn were likely the only two pillars standing between their people and the abyss.
He sighed. Those days of hunting giant hyper-predators in an unnatural jungle were almost preferable to navigating politics. At least those monsters had been honest.
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Artiz
The native sophonts had seen what they’d needed to see when they’d arrived, and it’d had the desired effect on every last one of them. They were coming into a new place with their existing community intact, and that was bound to cause friction between themselves and every other group they brought aboard. From the very beginning there could be absolutely no doubt about who was in charge, and what might happen to those who stepped out of line. They could argue amongst themselves as much as they wanted once they were safely on another world, but until that time they needed to be obedient. A starship full of malcontents could lead to disaster, and if it took fear to prevent that then that was just how it had to be.
“I will be honest,” said Artiz as he surveyed the new arrivals through the interior cameras, “I did not think your plan would work.”
Maybe it was just his natural bias against such primitive civilisations, but he’d expected them to be little more than savages. He’d even imagined that their sudden arrival into a completely alien place like the Dastasji would drive them into animalistic madness as they ran riot through the ship. The reality was far different, and the natives were simply following the drones responsible for guiding around their communal areas. Worried but far from violent, they were talking quietly amongst themselves, and Artiz was forced to accept that it had been right to show them what happened to people who picked a fight with the Shiplord.
“I’m not so optimistic,” Adrian replied as he nursed a cup of the old Shiplord’s Kuhl-Ad. He took a sip and frowned as he studied the security feed. “They’re not happy, they’re just desperate. This plan works for the time being, but tomorrow it could all go to hell. Part of me is glad this won’t be an extended evacuation after all.”
They were standing together in the same briefing room where Adrian’s predecessor had been debating what should be done about the mammalian upstart who’d managed to find his way onto the planet, and Adrian had no qualms about raiding the private stash of restricted beverages. Artiz couldn’t help but worry that this would be one of many similarities between the two Shiplords, although clearly the replacement was far more cunning and dangerous. The rest of Jrasic’s belongings had been unceremoniously recycled into their base materials, leaving no doubt as to whom the Dastasji now belonged.
“I believe you intended to explain the rest of your plan, Shiplord?” Artiz gently reminded the human. The fate of the rest of the crew was reason enough for careful words, but the return of the V’Straki hinged on keeping Adrian happy. “You had alluded to destroying the entire planet, but I must disappoint you if you intended to use the wormhole generator…”
Given what had transpired it was not so difficult to imagine turning wormholes into weapons, but the events had scarred space and were still disrupting the quantum field. It was simply impossible to form a wormhole at all, and even a decently sized warp bubble was more than they could achieve. Maybe they could get a small probe into a stable warp field, but there was nothing out there worth looking at and no attention they wanted to attract.
“Solid guess, but that’s not what I’m planning,” Adrian replied, switching the security feed to an unknown blueprint. Lacking the usual V’Straki symbols and designations, it was clearly something that the human had created himself, and the design included several warp projectors. He took another sip of his drink and pointed at it vaguely. “I figure a smart guy like you can see what I was going for?”
Artiz understood that this wasn’t a compliment, it was a test; the Shiplord was watching him closely to see whether he could figure it out, and how he would react. In this moment Artiz was representing the entire V’Straki science community—in his own area of expertise—and he had no intention of leaving a poor impression.
“Multi-layered warp fields,” Artiz mused as he examined the device. “It reminds me of…”
He trailed off as he made the connection. Not many scientists would recognise the technology in front of them, partly because the actual engineering was a high-level secret, and partly because the design was so different to the V’Straki configuration. A fully developed piece of this technology could be used to supply the enormous power requirements of a flagship like the Zhadersil, and was heavily over-engineered to prevent disaster. Absolute disaster would not occur even when breached by the weapons peculiar to the Dastasji, although the explosion would be extremely large. This device had no intention of preventing disasters, and clearly had the aim of actively producing one. It was exactly the kind of device that a total madman would develop, just before he was put some place where he couldn’t bring about the destruction of all life in the universe. “This… this…” he began, then took a moment to regain his composure. “Shiplord, this is… this device is a very bad idea. It would almost certainly kill all of us, no matter the distance.”
Adrian shrugged. “Nah, we just need to be moving fast enough when it goes off, then we can ride the shockwave out. I call it Operation Surfboard.”
The human took a small sip of the drink as Artiz stared at him with widened eyes. “Ride the shockwave… out?”
“Nothing I haven’t done before,” said Adrian with a nod.
Artiz was incredulous. “You’ve *used* one of these before?”
Adrian raised an eyebrow as if in judgement. “Mate, if you just keep repeating what I say I might start thinking I was wrong about how smart you are.”
“Forgive me, Shiplord,” Artiz replied, quickly recomposing himself yet again. This creature might be crazy, but at least he thought Artiz was intelligent and worth listening to. That was a step up from Jrasic, who simply assumed he was correct in all things. “Perhaps it is because I don’t understand how you managed to survive that experience.”
“Two parts courage, one part luck,” Adrian replied. “Or maybe it was the other way around. The original version was just patched together from whatever I could find. This is one that Trix and I have been refining, so it should be a little more reliable.”
“If the digitised mind was assisting you,” said Artiz, “then I have no doubt you know exactly what this does. And why it is suicidally risky.”
“Oh, yeah, completely,” Adrian replied, although Artiz suspected he was not telling the truth. “It’s just a really big bomb. We just tap into the power of a small universe and blow everything up, though there’s some changes to the timeline as well. Suicidally risky, yeah, but a risk is better than certain death if we run out of food or if that fucking machine manages to launch itself back into space.”
Artiz seized on a particular element the human had quickly glossed over as though it was unimportant. “Sorry, Shiplord, did you say there were changes to the *timeline*?”
The implications were absolutely horrifying in every respect.