Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Prey-ship, the human second-world, Prey-space.
Alpha of the Brood-With-Steel-Teeth
Twenty of its very best brood-lessers—chosen specifically for the dangerous task of boarding a Deathworlder vessel—were dead, none of them sending more than a flash of confusion and pain. Most sent nothing at all.
The Hunters were being hunted. Sickening!
Still. That was a state of affairs which would not continue. The initial confusion was over—the last crew of this freighter were barricaded and under siege, all of them only one open breach and one nervejam grenade away from being meat in the maw.
It focused its attention on this other force, calling every one of its Brood to its own location, watchfully covering every entrance, anticipating the assault.
It never came.
The Alpha was still pondering this delay—the aggressors did not have unlimited time before the battle outside turned against their ship—when its nostrils caught a hint of a scent.
The aroma was…delicious. The olfactory equivalent of the ecstasy which was a taste of human flesh.
It was still casting around trying to identify the source of that intoxicating fragrance when the knife entered the side of its throat.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Refugee freighter, Cimbrean System, The Outer Reaches
Captain Owen Powell
“Fookin’ hell, Murray! When you grabbed that pipe I thought we were done.”
Murray himself was bent over, hand between his knees, swearing softly. Powell was thoroughly impressed: The man had grabbed a metal pipe for a handhold while they had been dragging themselves along under the floor, only for it to turn out to be frying pan hot. How the Hunters hadn’t heard the sizzle, and how Murray had refrained from making any noise at all, he wasn’t sure. In fact, his comrade’s first sign of pain was only now that they’d killed every Hunter in the room.
The place was a carpet of greasy white bodies, stained with pinkish alien blood and garnished in filthy black metal. The death of their Alpha had thrown the Hunters into just enough disarray for the team to haul themselves up through the floor access grate and fire into them, only stopping when they were absolutely certain that everything was dead.
It hadn’t exactly been elegant, but Powell cared less for elegant solutions than for whatever worked. You left the other guy dead and you went home: Doing it elegantly was a luxury he could live without.
So far, so good. He banged on the barricaded door, and spoke the password.
“Oi! You lot! You want off this fookin’ ship or what?“
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Ceres Base, Sol
Drew Cavendish
There was an email waiting for Drew when he finally got back to his office, tired and strung-out from a meeting which had descended into recrimination and bickering rather than constructive planning.
In fact, there were several messages, but most of them were routine. Only one stood out, tagged as it was with an “urgent” label.
He’d already opened it before he read the origin address: “[email protected]”
The mail’s name and content were just as mysterious. “Mystery solved” and “Run the attached program and load your corrupted CCTV footage.”
What he should do, of course, was to contact corporate security. He certainly shouldn’t run a .exe of unknown provenance on the advice of an unknown sender.
What he did, was exactly what he shouldn’t.
He wasn’t stupid about it. Drew had grown up as a computer nerd in his youth, he knew a few tricks. He copied the file onto a virtual machine, screened it with every security program he had access to, and only when he was certain that things were as secure as he could reasonably get them, did he run it and follow the mail’s suggestion.
After the bars had spent a minute filling up and the program notified him “unscrambled”, he skipped straight to the missing segment of footage from the hardsuit workshop the morning Aces’ suit had experienced the heat field malfunction.
As he had expected, the CCTV footage was intact and unscrambled.
There was something disturbingly familiar about the figure he saw entering the workshop. Something about the way they walked, their stance, their proportions, nagged at him. He knew this person, but for the life of him he couldn’t place who it was. He racked his brain, trying to match all the little familiar details with everybody on Ceres Base.
That train of thought flew sideways off the rails when the figure on the screen turned around, and he saw his own face.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Folctha, Planet Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Ava Rios
“You’re back!”
Adam surged to his feet as she entered, ignoring whatever he’d been watching. Ava just sighed happily and buried her face in his chest.
He put a hand round the back of her head and rubbed it. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.” She said. “You were right, I was being…uptight, I guess.”
“Change your mind?”
“A bit, yeah. I thought about it some, and…I guess.”
“You guess?”
Ava nodded. “Are we going swimming this weekend then?” she asked
”…Do you want to?”
“Do you?”
Adam paused. “It sounds like fun.” he said.
“Then we’ll go.” Ava agreed.
“Are you sure? If you’re not…”
“Adam.” she went up on tiptoes to kiss him. “No, I’m not sure. Our home was destroyed, I moved halfway across the galaxy with you, I’m living with you now. I miss my mom and dad, I miss my friends, I miss…Come on, I had a conversation today with a five foot tall raccoon man who thinks I’m weird for praying! I’m not sure about anything, except that I’m not ready for any of this.”
She sighed “…Maybe I just need to leave behind what I used to think was ‘normal’ or ‘weird’. Maybe there’s no such thing.”
“Maybe we just need to stop worrying and try and have fun.” Adam finished the thought for her.
Ava smiled into his chest. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
HMS Myrmidon, Cimbrean System, The Far Reaches
Captain David Manning
“Myrmidon, strike team has the survivors, we’re pulling out.“
“First good news I’ve had for several minutes, Powell!”
Things were going badly. Swarm-ships were dogpiling the beleaguered human craft, warping in from all across the huge sphere of their blockade. Each one cut down their options, each one robbed them of safe havens in the melee. As their options dwindled, as the number of bogies climbed, each blink-jump took longer to calculate, especially given the need to coordinate with Caledonia to ensure that they didn’t both jump to the same place.
The fact that the other ship had joined the fight was the only thing that had kept Myrmidon from being overwhelmed, but both of them were now running short on staying power. Caledonia had just trickled below the 50% mark, Myrmidon was even lower.
Their EOB was full. EWAR was working overtime tasking the limits of both the systems and their human operators. Three of the Skymasters were offline venting heat, and the rest were borderline. The CIWS had all run out of ammo. The battlefield was a hazard in its own right now, thick with tumbling wreckage and high-speed shrapnel.
Learning that the raid was a success put a huge top-up in his morale.
Right up until the point where the whole ship lurched and screamed.
“Report!”
“We’re hit amidships…Looks like it took out a capacitor bank.”
“Fire on C-deck, mid! Damage Control, seal and vent!”
“Sir, we’re below the red line!”
The red line was their minimum threshold for jumping back to anchorage. They had only one shot at survival.
“Skymasters to ballistic, shunt the reactor output to emergency charge. Throw out our WITCHES.”
Aurora crackled around her as Myrmidon flung wide her energy-catching shields, which flared and glowed wherever they intersected some hurtling particle or cloud of gas.
“Above red line in four minutes.”
“Swarm-ships closing. Guns are holding off the big ones…little ones are through.”
Manning grabbed his microphone. “All hands, prepare to repel boarders!”
“Signal from Caledonia sir, they request a sitrep.”
“Tell them it’s a bit sticky over here!”
For a few busy seconds, Manning was left alone as the crew rushed to do their jobs. His ship groaned as the first Hunter boarding proboscis violated her.
“Signal from Caledonia sir. Quote: ‘Took liberty of arranging backup stop sit tight stop’.”
“Marines report hostile contact on B deck aft.”
“Ditto D deck port….ditto D deck forward. Ditto A deck dorsal.”
Manning grabbed a pistol from the weapons locker at the back of the bridge. “Red line?”
“Three minutes twenty, sir.”
He glanced the information available to him. “How long until that big one catches us?” While the little dropships weren’t a problem for making good their escape, if the huge ship now bearing down on them latched on then its tonnage would add hugely to the energy demands of the jump engine, effectively trapping them on the battlefield to be swamped and devoured. Evasive action would only serve to drain their remaining capacitors of much-needed energy.
“About two minutes forty, sir.”
Manning scowled, and loaded his weapon. He could hear gunfire on the deck outside the bridge. “Then we do as the man says and sit tight.”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Lower District, First City, Planet Perfection
Vakno; “The Contact”
“Next.”
The being that entered her study did so cloaked, as requested, and supporting themselves on a walking aid of some kind. Vakno double-checked her files for the day, refamiliarizing herself with the details of this particular client.
It was redundant. Vakno’s memory for her clients was absolutely perfect, but that perfection came about as a result of her scrupulous attention to revision. Even so, there was no way she could forget this particular client. From the very first day, their deal had been an enormously lucrative one for her.
From what her networks told her, the client was making good use of the information in turn. In some circles, that would be a cause for significant alarm
But not in this one. All The Contact cared about was getting paid.
She offered her guest the courtesy of a seat appropriate to their anatomy, which they sank into with a grateful groan of relief.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” They said.
“Your notice is always short.” Vakno replied. “But for you, I’ll extend the courtesy of not minding.”
She watched her guest throw back the hood of their cloak, and don a pair of vision-correcting lenses, before beginning their business transaction.
“So. What is it you want this time, Doctor Hussein?”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Battlespace, Cimbrean System, The Far Reaches.
Rylee Jackson
“Jump complete…they’re covered in boarders.”
“If that big one latches on they won’t be able to jump out.”
Rylee was still getting used to having a partner in the back seat, but right now she was glad that Lieutenant Semenza was there. So much was going on in the battle space that she would have hated to try and fly, gun and play the music all at once.
“Copy that. Edda wing, clear out the little ones. Only those within one click of Myrmidon.“
“Wilco, Odyssey. Edda wing, weapons tight, sweep and clear. Til Valhal!”
“OORAH!“
“Odyssey wing, Firebird actual. Let’s fuck up the big one.”
She grinned along with the relish in Semenza’s voice. “Copy that. Arming a bruiser.”
Rylee came about and canopy-rolled around and underneath a smashed Hunter ship at twelve Gs, comfortable and grinning as Firebird automatically shunted some of its ample energy reserves into the warp engine’s inertial compensation system to protect them from the punishing acceleration. A snow of frozen atmosphere, metal debris and bits of cooling meat hissed off the forcefields, but the maneuver ended with them lined up on the biggest ship, which was advancing on Myrmidon despite the efforts of her last functioning Skymaster to hold it at bay.
The maneuver had been practiced thousands of times in the simulator. Now it was time to test if the programmers had got it right.
“Shieldbreaking.”
She felt the familiar shove in the back as the GAU-8/S howled beneath her, violently decelerating her ship. She heard Semenza counting under his breath.
”…mississippi, two mississippi… Odyssey One, fox three.” he announced.
Firebird lurched as the missile disengaged and tore away from them, and Rylee peeled out of the attack run.
Three clicks away, a cloud of 30mm rounds smacked into the Hunter ship’s shields, overwhelming them in a second. While a few penetrated, the ship was so large that the damage would be cosmetic at first. But their objective was complete.
Half a second behind them, travelling much too fast for the eye to follow and still accelerating hard, the Bruiser anti-ship missile struck its target amidships.
“Good kill!” somebody yelled. The celebration was not premature—the Hunter ship had been broken in half, and both those halves were on fire and disintegrating, as dead as dead could get.
There was a broadcast in the clear. “Allied units, Myrmidon is above the red line. Much appreciated.“
The besieged ship vanished. An instant later, so did Caledonia.
Seconds behind them, so too did Edda and Odyssey wings.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
“Sanctuary”, landed on Planet Ikbrzk
Allison Buehler
”…Oh.“
“Shit.”
“Quite.”
“So the Igraens were…wild, vicious, cannibal murder machines before they uploaded themselves?”
“Oh, no. No, not at all. But they were already a highly advanced civilization at the apex of their power, just before the fall. One with the capacity to treat a being’s sense of self, their…how best to put this…”
“Their soul?” Allison suggested.
“Let us call it their Subjective Continuity of Experience. Which they were able to treat as data, to be transferred from device to device.”
“And deleted from the original? That sounds like you’d effectively suicide every time you moved on.” Allison mused.
“The Igraens did not seem to care for such philosophical vacillation.” Vedreg’s tone suggested that he shared this dismissive attitude. “But in the centuries immediately prior to their…technological apotheosis, they set about exploiting their newfound liberation by creating a variety of custom-built bodies suitable for different environments and work. One of which was a bio-mechanical caste of soldier forms they developed specifically for going to war against the V’Straki.”
“The Hunters.”
“Yes.”
”…I take it they won.”
“Oh yes. But only barely. The V’straki were a tenacious foe, masters of weaponized forms of radiation, and the subject of some considerable fascination—they are one of the more interesting and noteworthy species recorded in the archives.”
“Why?” Kirk asked.
“Because, old friend, they were the only spacefaring species other than…well.” Vedreg indicated Allison and the sleeping Julian “-ever recorded as having evolved on a class twelve planet.”
He sighed. “And so the Igraens destroyed them. They cloaked some asteroids, set them to collide with the V’Straki homeworld, and mopped up the few survivors. And therein lies the first happenstance—there is an alternative interpretation for the motive behind quarantining Earth, quite aside from one herd animal’s panic—you are Deathworlders, and the Igraens will want you dead. Containing you is the first step in your destruction.”
“What, by setting up an impenetrable forcefield?” Allison scoffed. “Doesn’t that kind of stop them from throwing rocks at us?”
“It would…if your home system did not already contain an ample supply of suitable ‘rocks’ orbiting well inside the shield boundary. And if that fails, they have other options lined up.”
Julian shifted on his cot, turned over slightly, and looked straight at Vedreg. Even Allison jumped—none of them had even suspected he was awake.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
The huge alien hesitated. “….I, ah. Well. It stands to reason. Nothing that old or capable of wiping out one class twelve species is going to fail to have contingency plans.”
“Bullshit.” Julian sat up, wincing at the mismatch between the reduced physical state of his leg, and his kinesthetic sense telling him that his foot was now below the floor. “You said these archives are Yottabyes large. You said that even the best search algorithms take decades to produce the goods. You’ve had…what, a year? Since your friend died?”
“How do you know that?” Vedreg countered.
“I watch the news. The death of the Guvnurag secretary of security from an unexpected brain haemorrhage made quite the headline. Don’t try and deflect me. There’s no way you could know even half of this stuff, without it being common knowledge.”
“How do you know it isn’t?”
“Because Kirk’s been listening to you and asking questions.” Julian pointed out. Kirk inclined his head, seeing the logic. “If Kirk doesn’t know it, then it’s not common knowledge.”
“I…ah.”
“If this ‘Hierarchy’ has worked for so long to keep their implant…civilization, thing, whatever, a secret and are competent enough to do all this stuff, then there’s no way you figured it all out on your own in just one year.” He paused. “No offense. You’re smart, Vedreg, but nobody’s that smart.”
Vedreg sat with colours swarming on his flanks like a psychedelic ‘60s TV show special effect, as they all stared at him, waiting for an explanation. Finally, he settled down into one solid colour—the magnolia glow of resolve.
Vedreg took a deep breath and spoke. “He called himself…‘Six’.”