Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 2d AV
Folctha Colony, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Gyotin
“Thank you all for coming.”
The Thing—and it had taken Gyotin quite a long time to figure out the difference between a Thing and a…well, a thing—was built in the palatial grounds, out of what had once been some kind of large courtyard or walled garden. The colonists had put a tarp over the roof to ward off the nightly rains and had kept some crates in there to begin with, and then had used the convenient dry space with its convenient impromptu seating as a meeting room.
Subsequent iterations had added real chairs and a more permanent roof structure—a thick plastic sheet of material that diffused the sunlight into a warm off-white glow during the day, woven with fibre-optics that induced it to glow at nighttime while it warded off the gentle nightly rains. Somebody had put a lot of effort into that roof, and it had become an artistic landmark in the heart of Folctha, visible from practically everywhere in town.
Despite those upgrades, it was still very much an informal event, with only a few rules. There was a length of Aluminium rod that was passed around, and whoever held it was the one who was currently speaking. The governor, Sir Jeremy, never ventured an opinion or motion himself, but instead kept the peace, granted the rod to would-be speakers, and confiscated it if he felt that its current holder was going on for too long.
It was a simple, makeshift system that was mostly dominated by the business of drafting a more formal constitution as the colony grew, but for now Folctha was still small enough for everybody to attend.
It still felt a little cramped when literally everybody attended, however. Doubly so given that the few dozen nonhumans who had accepted the invitation to attend were nervously keen to keep some distance between themselves and the deathworlders, who in turn were politely obliging them with a good two meters of clearance.
This time, the speaking rod was handed straight to Captain Powell. Gyotin had grown somewhat used to the intense human soldier, but even from across the room the man radiated a kind of focused aggression that made even other humans a little nervous.
“Thanks for coming.” he acknowledged, and despite his low volume, every being present shut up and listened.
“As you’re all aware, there was a battle overhead last night, which we won. We successfully rescued an incoming freighter full of refugees from the Hunter swarm, though five of the refugees were killed by Hunter boarders. A further seven Royal Navy personnel were KIA, and before we go any further I’d like for you to join me in a minute’s silence.”
The humans, practically as one, bowed their heads.
It was…eerie. Gyotin knew death well, he’d seen enough of his Brothers and fellow Gaoians killed in his life. Death was just life plus time, a fact, an inevitability. He had felt pain at the losses, of course, had keened and whimpered to see his Brothers hurt and dying, but…that was it. You mourned, you lived, you moved on, eventually you died.
Only twelve dead in the face of an entire Hunter swarm was…incredible. The humans should be whooping and cheering and celebrating. Instead, they seemed to feel those few losses almost more than they had felt the news of the death of millions back on Earth.
The silence stretched on, and while the others fidgeted, Gyotin continued to watch the deathworlders. Some simply stared off into an unfocused distance beyond the floor. Others had their eyes shut. Some were mouthing words, silently. One or two were weeping. Over a victory.
Their sense of perspective was clearly all wrong.
No signa l was given that Gyotin could detect, but as one the deathworlders shook themselves out of whatever mourning trance they’d been in. They looked up, looked around, took some breaths, wiped away tears. Gyotin couldn’t shake the sense that he’d witnessed something profound and quietly intense, but utterly lacked the means to translate or understand it.
Powell cleared his throat.
“Thank you. Now. On to business.”
He stepped into the center of the room and faced the nonhuman contingent. “This morning, the swarm left. So far as we can tell, every single ship just warped out. We have no explanation at this point, but it does create an opportunity for us to honour the promise we made to our guests that we would return them to their people as soon as was practicable. Gyotin, if you could translate that for me, mate?”
Gyotin hadn’t properly processed the sentence himself, and it was only when he repeated it in Gaoian that the words clicked. He could go home! They were offering to send him and all the others back home! Back to Gao, to his clan, to females.
“When?” he asked, as soon as he’d finished, as the surprise and delight percolated through all the aliens behind him.
“Bathini?”
Powell handed the rod to another man, this one wearing a uniform of some kind. Gyotin had never seen him before.
“For those who don’t know me, I am Captain Rajesh Bathini, and I command HMS Caledonia.” He introduced himself. “She has all the capacity needed to deliver the refugees and is ready to depart at any time. Given that we don’t want to leave the colony undefended should the Hunters return, our destination will be the Gaoian planet of Gorai, which is relatively nearby. We hope to make friendly contact and hand you over swiftly and with enough currency and supplies to let you travel on to wherever you wish to be. Gyotin, you’re the only Gaoian among us, so I would appreciate your insight into how best to peacefully approach the border.”
Gyotin imitated a human nod even as he translated. “I have questions.” he said, as soon as he’d relayed the captain’s words.
“By all means.”
“How do you know the Hunters are gone? This could be an ambush.”
Bathini and Powell shared a look, before the latter man shook his head and spoke up.
“I can’t go into the details for reasons of security.” he said. “I’ll only reassure you that we have very good reason to be confident that there are no Hunters at least within a few lightyears of here.”
“In any event, Caledonia will be primed and ready to jump back to Cimbrean at all times.” Bathini added. “If it does turn out to be an ambush, we are entirely confident of being able to escape it. We shall not be taking unnecessary risks.” He paused to allow Gyotin to finish translating. “Any further questions?”
“Why?”
The question, coming as it did from Xktnk, the self-appointed leader of the vzk’tk population on Cimbrean, was not understood by the human, nor at first by Gyotin, who turned to look at him with an interrogatory expression.
“Ask him why.” Xktnk insisted. “Why are they doing this?”
Gyotin shrugged, and phrased the question in English. It seemed to take the humans aback.
“Why…wouldn’t we be?” the governor, Sir Jeremy Sandy, asked eventually.
“These are deathworlders. Killers and maniacs, you saw the ones who boarded our ship, Gyotin. You saw the traps one of them designed. How do we know we’re not just the bait in another trap? They’re at war with the Hunters, and now they want to bring the enemy back by putting us in harm’s way.”
Gyotin paraphrased the accusations. A ripple of outraged mutterings from the gathered humans drove the aliens into a dense protective knot, glancing around nervously, but Xktnk raised his blue head and stared defiantly back, even though he was shaking.
That defiance earned him the direct attention of Owen Powell, and didn’t last long. It wasn’t that the human soldier gave him a particularly hostile look, but the man seemed to exist at a level of intensity beyond even that of other humans. Even his simple, curious, studious stare suggested that he was evaluating all of the hundreds of ways in which he might harm or kill the paranoid Vzk’tk.
It was Captain Bathini who spoke, however, recapturing the quivering Xktnk’s attention. “We’re people too, sir.” he said. “Maybe it’s different for you, but for us, to be in your situation, to be far from our homelands, our people and our families would be difficult. Deathworlders or not, we believe in treating others as we would wish to be treated. Is that so alien a concept?”
It certainly wasn’t for Gyotin.
As for Xktnk—For the rest of his life, Gyotin never figured out whether it was Powell’s withering gaze or Bathini’s warm diplomacy that shut him up. All he knew was that there were no further questions.
They were going home.
Date Point: 4y 8m 3w 4d AV
La Mesa Memorial Overlook. San Diego County, California, USA
Kevin Jenkins
“Hey, Terri.”
The memorial overlook was a testament to the devastation of the blast. Five miles from Ground Zero, and still the sheer scale still struck the visitors with just an echo of how truly immense the energy release here had been.
The once-vibrant city of San Diego was a field of broken glass, pulverised concrete, splintered wood and drywall, crushed brick, fractured asphalt and mulched plastic, with an ugly black bullseye in the middle, a mile across. Hardly anything within five miles of ground zero had been left standing, and most of the few survivors had ignited and burned down. The fires had scoured the hills and national wildlife refuge.
Ground zero itself was a bay, the bomb’s crater having intersected the shore and filled with water.
There really could be no appropriate memorial other than to just stand there and take in the devastation. It was unlikely that the city would ever be rebuilt.
The local climate had changed drastically, too. Denuded of trees and with the air full of soot and ash, a few days of rainstorms had badly eroded the hills, changing the air currents, warping the weather. It was subtle, but the air still, months later, carried fine, sharp debris that dried and irritated the skin.
For Kevin, though, nothing had been quite so personal about the death of San Diego as the total obliteration of a particular grave site. He had to resort to sitting on a hilltop, mumbling uselessly to himself. It wasn’t that he thought Terri could hear him. In fact he very much hoped she couldn’t—the idea of an afterlife, any afterlife at all, scared the crap out of him. But it helped him to talk, and his dead…friend…was at least the perfect confidante. She would never betray his secret confessions.
“No flowers, not from me. That always seemed kinda stupid to me, y’know? Saying “sorry you’re dead” by killing a plant. Yeah, let’s honour the dead by killing some more stuff, smart move there.”
He picked at a fingernail. “Kirk got in touch.” he said, finally. “Invited me to come star trekking with him. See the galaxy, do whatever. Poor bastard always did think I was the shit. Think I hurt him a bit when I said no. I’d feel bad but…he needed to grow up.”
He squinted at the sun. “I ask myself what I’m doing though, y’know? I mean, we’re out there, we’re doing this, we’re being the shot in the arm that crazy fucked-up excuse for a civilization out there needs. And I’m just sitting here serving drinks to the guys who are making it all happen, pretending like I know jack shit about what it’s like out there just because some fucking Corti took me, way back when.”
”…My daughter’s fourteen years old next week. I’ve not seen her since the day she…since like two weeks before those grey fuckers took me. I don’t know anything about her any more. That hurts. That hurts more than feeling like a phoney. It hurts more than thinking maybe I’m the asshole who made the whole galaxy afraid of us because I was too wrapped up in myself. I had to go and fucking preach.”
“What if I’d just kept my mouth shut?” he asked. “Y’know, just told them my ink was, like, decoration? Not unloaded all my baggage onto a galaxy full of stupid aliens who didn’t know shit about us? Maybe not prejudiced them all against us? Could I have done that?”
He sighed, and played with a bootlace. “Moot fucking point, huh? And that…hah, that gricka’s out the bag. Not like I can do anything about the past, right Terri?”
He sat for a while, chin on one knee, and watched the sun go down over the ruins of a city he felt, in some small way, responsible for killing.
“I don’t want to matter.” he decided. “I don’t want to be somebody important. I don’t want to be the fucking ‘butterfly’. Cause all that does is…is this.“
“But maybe…maybe it’s not about what I want, you know? I want to say shit like ‘I’ve done enough for the human race’ or whatever but…”
The sun was a flake of blaze orange on the sea by the time he spoke again, standing, stretching and blowing a kiss towards roughly where he thought Mount Hope cemetery had been.
“Thanks, Terri. It’s been good talkin’ to you…Goodbye.”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 5d AV
Firebird, orbiting Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Rylee Jackson
“That’s the last one.“
“Copy that Edda-Two.” Rylee allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. Deploying a series of satellites into Cimbrean’s orbit had been a tedious job, but made vastly easier by jump technology. No need for a dangerous and expensive rocket launch, the sat could go straight from the lab to orbiting an alien world in a moment. It wasn’t quite a free launch, but considering how cheap power was becoming as Earth deployed more and more solar collection fields to replace traditional power plants, it was the next best thing.
The result was that there were a LOT of them, many whipped up in universities and colleges by their doctorate students, running on raspberry Pi or reprogrammed last-generation cellphones. Between those plus the NASA, CERN and other professional offerings, there was a lot to do, and Rylee and all the other TS pilots were back to being glorified space truckers.
The deployment of CHICKSAT-1, an offering from MIT designed to use laser interferometry to map Cimbrean’s ocean floors, marked the end of the deployment operation, and thus the moment when Odyssey and Edda became available to escort Caledonia on her return voyage.
“Hey, captain?” Semenza sounded like he had something on his mind.
“What’s up, Joe?”
“Take a look at the continent below us. That’s where Folctha is on our right, yeah?”
Rylee turned to get a good look, rolling Firebird a little to help. “Yeah…hey, is that supposed to be there?”
“Glad you see it too.” Semenza commented.
Clear as day, cutting across most of the width of the continent, was a crescent line of brown.
“It’s visible from space, it must be huge.” she said. “Hey Edda-two, Firebird actual here. Can you give me eyes on ground over the Folctha subcontinent? You guys see a discoloration?”
“Stand by…yeah, some kind of brown scar, right through the forest. You reckon it’s important?“
Rylee rolled Firebird back over so that her belly was facing dirtside. “Joe, get some pictures, send them down to the colony.” she ordered.
“Wilco.”
Firebird’s heritage included spy planes, and given that such equipment took up only a tiny portion of her comparatively large airframe and mass allowance, an advanced suite of cameras and sensors had been found a place in her underbelly. “Give me, uh, ten degrees left roll.” he requested, followed by “perfect, hold it there…okay, got it. Myrmidon, Firebird two, I have recon data for groundside, LOSIR check.”
The wounded destroyer was in a higher orbit, nearly half a light-second out, but there was an unobstructed line of sight between her and Firebird. On the smaller ship’s dorsal hull, barely a meter behind Joe Semenza’s head, a tiny ball rolled in its socket, exposing an infrared laser lens and matching camera to space, where they aimed themselves toward the larger vessel’s RFID. The system was only good at comparatively close ranges, but allowed for huge bandwidth data transfer.
“Copy Firebird. Establishing LOSIR connection…connection’s good, clear to send.“
“Sending…sent. Forward to groundside marked for civilian science, please.”
“Data received and wilco, Firebird. Myrmidon out.“
“Okay. What’s Caledonia’s ETD?” Rylee asked.
“Three-seven mikes. Cap’s at…seven-six percent.”
“Okay, coming to orbital rest. Deploy the WiTChES.”
“Aye aye.”
The WIde aTtainment CHarging Energy System always made her think that Firebird was perfectly named. The two generators for the system were mounted just forward of the thrusters and thrust out sideways. At first they were invisible, but as they stretched out to their full width and caught the solar wind, they started to glow a vivid aurora crimson, shading to orange at the edges and tips.
Happy that her baby was getting well fed and would be at maximum capacity when the time came to depart, she relaxed back in her flight seat and looked outwards towards the stars.
There was a blinking star out there, which was impossible in space, but she knew what it was, even before a quick check of the nav radar confirmed it.
It was half a Hunter ship, tumbling in its orbit where she and Semenza had killed it.
Smiling to herself, she gave the dead aliens the finger. Life, she reflected, was good.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 5d AV
The Scrapheap Sea, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ava Rios
Ava had to admit. Her boyfriend looked good naked.
Colony policy was that exercise was mandatory. While there had been some grumbling over the authoritarian nature of that edict, it had largely faded in the face of a long and comprehensive introduction to the effects that low gravity had on the human body. A good part of their loaned finances had been spent building a large variable-gravity gymnasium fit to handle even the most aggressive population growth estimates for the next five years, staff it with trainers tasked with keeping the colony in shape, and establishing a requirement of a minimum of two hours of intensive physical training per week.
Adam took five two-hour sessions a week in the 1.1G room, plus a half-hour warmup and cooldown on either side in 1G. The result was that her skinny boyfriend was rapidly becoming her otter-fit, toned and gorgeous boyfriend.
It made the thought that she was living with him a difficult one. Ava was a “not before marriage” type in principle—she’d promised as much to her parents, and especially wasn’t about to break that promise now that they were in Heaven. But they lived together, unsupervised, and the whole colony gave the impression that they would have been surprised and a little put out to learn that she and he weren’t having sex.
As far as she was concerned, however much they’d been through together, sixteen was still too young. She didn’t care if Folctha had inherited Britain’s very…European laws in that area, it felt wrong to her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but…
Lots of things had felt wrong to her lately. The whole world had turned out to be wrong in so many ways that every day had become a temptation to just let go and go with it. But…here they were. The air was cool, the water was crystal clear and apparently surprisingly warm, and they had barely arrived before Sara had vanished into it in a skinny flesh-toned blur, leaving her clothes on the beach, followed equally shamelessly by her little brother and two of their school friends.
It was all so weird. Especially when Adam just met her gaze, laughed sheepishly, shrugged, and pulled his own shirt over his head. Guilty or not, she’d had to admire his body as he had shed his jeans and run into the water, laughing nervously.
She’d tried to follow them. She really had. She’d tried to let go like she’d said she would. But every time she tried to will her hands to her T-shirt or her jeans waistband, they’d clenched into fists and retreated on a tide of nausea.
It was so stupid! She knew it. She knew it, on a deep and visceral level, that the problem was all her own making, she could see right there in the water the evidence that she was being ridiculous. But still she lingered on the bank, hugging her knees and quietly going desperate and neurotic from the absurd shame that she was the only one wearing clothes.
Eventually she couldn’t take it any more. She stood up and slipped away into the woods. It was quiet back there, somewhere she could get some alone time and process her feelings.
On a whim, she plucked a shoot from a nearby bush, stuck it in her mouth and, after a moment to take note of where she was, strolled deeper into the sunlit glades and wooded halls of an alien forest.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 5d AV
HMS Caledonia, approaching the Gorai system.
Captain Rajesh Bathini
“Signal from the lead patrol vessel, captain. Translates to ‘Unidentified vessel, you are approaching the sovereign territory of the Clans of Gao. You will halt before crossing the border or be met with deadly force. Comply immediately’.“
Bathini nodded, the picture of calm as he settled his cup of tea back in its saucer. “All stop.”
“Aye aye. All stop!”
“All stop.” the helmsman repeated, obeying instantly.
There was no visible change in the outside view. They had already dropped from the huge apparent velocities of interstellar travel to a much slower, much noisier approach that the Gaoian military couldn’t possibly have failed to notice. The stars had not visibly been moving for nearly ten minutes now. As they dropped to a sublight velocity, the most that anybody inside Caledonia’s bridge could detect was a faint lurch.
From the outside, as the Gaoian vessels came to a halt around them, the deceleration was so much more visibly violent. It wasn’t so much that the ships arrived as that they appeared, their incomprehensible “speed”—a term that wasn’t really applicable to the way that warp drives worked, but sufficed in the absence of an alternative—only hinted at by an eyeblink’s worth of motion blur before the ships were just there, solid and drifting as if they had never been anywhere else.
He admired their tactics. While it clearly betrayed that they were ignorant of Caledonia’s blink-jump tactics, the configuration was excellent, placing all three ships in a position so that, no matter which vector Caledonia might accelerate along, a minimum of two of the Gaoian craft would have a firing solution on her, and one that made sure that no allied craft was in danger of being hit by stray fire. An unlikely event when you were talking about distances of hundreds of kilometers, but still a sensible precaution.
Odyssey and Edda had both stopped at a rendezvous point two parsecs out, and were on a hair trigger to jump in via wormhole if summoned. While Caledonia’s own systems were only on about sixty percent charge, needing only five percent to effect an immediate retreat to Cimbrean, theirs would be fully charged by now, primed and ready to fight as hard as humanly possible in the event that it became necessary.
Bathini was resolved that under no circumstances would it be necessary. The very last thing they needed now was to disgruntle a potential ally.
“Best behaviour, people. I don’t want a peep of activity out of anything that might even smell like a weapon on their sensors.” he said.
“Signal from the lead ship, captain. It reads ‘Identify yourselves’.”
“I’ve wanted to say this for a long time.” He confided, standing up. “On screen.”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 5d AV
The Scar, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Dr. Mary Cleveland
Dr. Mary Cleveland had come to Cimbrean for the simple reason that it opened up a hitherto unexplored field of science: Xenomycology. The study of alien fungi, or at least of alien life forms that were functionally very similar to fungi.
Persuading her husband Colin to join her and become the human race’s first xenobacteriologist in the field had been as simple as suggesting it.
Both of them were of course trained in the proper use of protective clothing, to isolate themselves from their samples, but she had only imagined ever to need it in the lab, to prevent contamination of the sample. Protecting herself from a potential threat had never really been considered before. This was supposed to be a Class Four planet.
That had been before they saw the “mark” up close.
What had looked like a thin brown line in the satellite photo had turned out to a comprehension-defyingly large swathe of forest. From the shuttle, it stretched horizon to horizon in one direction, and filled half the world below in the other, flanked with sickly yellows, whites and blacks. The brown was…was death.
Trees had fallen, and nothing was growing to replace them. Streams were choked with scum and froth. They circled over one abscessous hole in the forest where even the fallen trees were gone, and inside it, Mary could see the skeleton of some native beast the size of a horse, and already it looked…incomplete.
“This shuttle’s sensors are next to useless.” the pilot reported. “but it’s good for atmospheric composition. Have a look at this..”
The scientists crowded round, leaving poor Mary stuck in the back, too short to see the display.
“Hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide…Putrescine…”
“Bloody hell. Now I’m glad we’re wearing the suits.” somebody commented. “It must smell like shit out there.”
“Lovely…” the pilot muttered. “Guess I’m in for a treat when that ramp comes down.”
“Is there anywhere to set down upwind of the…area?”
”…Close enough. You mind walking a half mile or so?”
The consensus was that they didn’t, so the shuttle spun down to drop its passengers off on a rock that lunged up from among the trees, forming the point of a gentle slope down into the forest. Aside from a slightly intimidating dash down the ramp onto solid ground, it was an easy walk.
Down among the foliage, the damage was alarming. They were a good kilometer ahead of the apparent border of the damage that was visible from the air, but it was immediately obvious that the true leading edge of this landscape-eating sickness was far ahead of the yellowing and death. Every surface of every living thing was squalid with wet orange and off-white spots. The light filtering through the canopy borrowed a wretched hue from the infection, leaving the whole science team feeling filthy even inside their suits.
“Bacterial growths, Colin?”
Colin nodded, rubbing a leaf between two gloved fingers. It disintegrated. “They could well be. Grab a sample, I’ll try and culture them back at Folctha.”
“Those on the other hand.” Mary said as the man with the sample bag produced a sterile tube and swab and set about collecting samples “are definitely fungal.”
She was referring to a mat of white fibers that had completely overrun one limb of a nearby tree.
“Don’t go near that.” Doctor Stevenson warned her, as she started to approach. When she turned and looked to him for an explanation, he dug a rock out of the soil and threw it at the branch. It cracked and a quarter-tonne of wood sagged on the trunk before crashing down.
Everyone on the team carefully stepped away from any overhanging limbs.
Samples gathered, they pressed onwards, and with each tree things seemed to get worse, but none of them were quite prepared for the abrupt change.
There was practically a line on the ground where living-but-infected plants gave way to dead, decomposing wreckage. In fact, there was a line, a meandering one as wide as a human forearm was long, and the colour of pus. Samples were gathered from that and from either side of it, and the air was captured for later analysis. A stream—presumably once bubbling and pretty but now more closely resembling the contents of a sewer, was likewise sampled, as was the putrefying carcass of another horse-sized animal.
Past that point, the damage almost seemed to play in a perverse kind of reverse. It wasn’t that there was anything alive and healthy beyond the wave edge of the disease, but the ground stopped slipping and squelching underfoot, the air became less heavy with spores and foulness. Eventually they reached the denuded heart of the scar, and found only bare soil, already starting to form a channel where the nightly rains were washing it away.
They sampled everything. Finally, as the sun was starting to set, they regrouped, and the important question was asked.
“Well?”
Mary looked around, at the rot, at the destruction, at the death, and at the river which was carrying the foulness who-knew how far away.
“Well…so much for Cimbrean.” she said.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 5d AV
Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ava Rios
“AAAVAAA!!“
The cold light of flashlight between the trees, the sound of a voice she loved on the edge of fear.
It should have bothered her.
“AVA!!!“An older voice, a dear one. She loved him too.
She loved everyone! But especially Adam and Gabriel.
“Over here!”
“Oh, hey Sara.”
“Ava? Ava what’s up?”
The expression of worry on her face was kind of funny. Her own low and happy laughter sounded creepy even to Ava herself, and that just made her laugh more. “Oh, I’m great, I’m fiiine.” she promised. This didn’t seem to reassure Sara, which made her laugh again.
Crackling and snapping in the bushes, more cold unnatural light.
“Adam, baby! You wanna get married?”
“What…Ava, are you drunk?”
“Didn’t drink nothing, no sir.” she giggled.
“More like high.”
“Gabriel! Daddee-heehee!” she sang the word as it turned into another giggle. “I’m so lucky, two daddies in one lifetime. I’m a lucky girl.”
She didn’t understand the strange glances they exchanged. That was funny, but she was already giggling, so there wasn’t room for more.
“Come on Ava, let’s get you back to Folctha.”
“Ah come on, let’s go swimming again! I didn’t get to earlier. Look, I brought my swimsuit!”
“For Christ’s sake girl, put that back on!”
“Take it off, put it on, make up your mind!”
“Dad, I’ll…handle her. You’d better figure out what did this.”
“Aww, no handle…Adaaaam….”
She didn’t really fight him. She was too…tired.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 5d AV
HMS Caledonia, near the Gorai System
Captain Rajesh Bathini
Gaoian really did sound very much like Chinese. Not in the specific sounds, but in the general cadence and flow of the language, the way it sounded to a native English-speaker’s ear.
Having Gyotin on the bridge to take over the negotiations had proven to be the right choice. For all their supposed positive attitude towards humanity, it had been known for years that Gaoian politics was completely fractured, and unless you were speaking to a female, you had no direct line to anything resembling a unified government. Evidently, there were factions within the military who regarded the “deathworlders” as a serious threat even in the face of the most overt peaceful overtures that Bathini could muster.
Not so different from home then, really. If the Gaoian language reminded him of the Chinese, then so too did their commander’s attitude.
“Fleetmaster” he interjected, using the title that the translator and Gyotin both had given. “It was my understanding that our species have, so far in these past short years, enjoyed a good relationship. I don’t see why I would want to break that trust now, nor why…or even how we would do so like this.”
“It is thanks to your species that Hunter attacks on our outposts and shipping have increased.” the snow-muzzled, aging Fleetmaster snapped at him. “I am tasked with safeguarding my people from all threats, and collaboration with your species seems to me to be a certain invitation to further retribution from those monsters.”
‘We are going to have to do something about that bad image’ Bathini thought to himself, as he picked his next words carefully.
“The Hunters have failed against the humans almost every time.” Gyotin said, before Bathini could finish assembling a sentence. “If your motive is fear, old Father, then these here are the species to be more afraid of.”
He showed his teeth, which was apparently not a friendly gesture in Gaoian body language. “Not to mention the ones less likely to eat you.” he added.
“Trying to intimidate me on their behalf, pup?” the fleetmaster snarled, but he didn’t fool Bathini. Gyotin had scored a hit, even the old Gaoian wasn’t quite wiley enough to hide it.
“Am I? I don’t find facts very intimidating, whitesnout.” Gyotin retorted, calmly matching the insult with one of his own.
“How dare-!” the fleetmaster began to object. Gyotin actually leapt forward and made a furous yipping noise toward his senior’s projection.
“Senile! Blind!” he snapped. “So afraid of today that he’ll quiver under a rock to save his hide and let cubs die tomorrow!”
Bathini leaned forward to whisper in his Gaoian’s pointed ear. “Gyotin, are you sure this is…?” he began, but he could see glances in the background behind the fleetmaster.
As abruptly as it had begun, the conversation ended as the furious Father cut the link.
The tension of the ensuing pause lasted two whole cups of tea before finally a hail from the lead Gaoian ship came through.
This time, the figure on screen was a different Gaoian, obviously junior to the fleetmaster, but not by much. Of the fleetmaster himself, there was no sign.
“Caledonia, you have permission to enter the Gorai system under our escort.” he declared. “Do not deviate from your assigned path or power your weapons or shields.”
Bathini raised an eyebrow at Gyotin who, alien body language be damned, was obviously feeling very pleased with himself.
“We understand and obey.” he replied, calmly. “Thank you.”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w 6d AV
Folctha Colony, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Gabriel Arés
“Okay, thanks for coming, we’re sorry for the short notice of this Thing, but this is important.”
Gabriel Arés stood up and held up the unadorned Aluminium rod that marked him as the speaker for now, both it and the silver shield badge of the colonial police on his jacket shone in the blue morning sunlight.
“First, as you’ve all probably heard, I can confirm that one of the children was evacuated back to Earth last night with a case of poisoning.” He began. “We’ve just received word from Scotch Creek that she’s made a full recovery, and while they plan on keeping her under observation for safety’s sake over the next couple of days, she should be returning with the next group of colonists.”
There was a general relieved sigh and some muttering. Ava was popular, especially among the regulars at the Faith Center. Concern had been flickering around Folctha like lightning in a mountain storm all morning. Gabriel held up the speaker’s stick a little higher to quiet them down.
“We’ve identified the plant that poisoned her. Cimbreaner Simiscamellia Delanii, the Cimbrean Tea plant. The young shoots seem to have a potent drug effect when chewed raw. We need to know if anybody else has been using these plants recreationally.”
Chatter erupted, and Gabriel banged his walking stick down a few times to restore silence. “I want to make it perfectly clear that nobody is in trouble.” he raised his voice. “The matter of whether or not we should be treating that tea as an illegal narcotic is a subject for a future Thing, but for now we need to know if anybody’s been using it to get high so we can make sure they’ve not harmed their liver function or anything.”
After a little more chatter, a handful of people stepped forward. The Tisdales, he was unsurprised to note, were among them.
“Right. Sorry folks, but you’re all going back to Earth for a day or two. We don’t have the facilities here to properly test or treat you. Hayley, Mark, your kids can go with you, or they can sleep round my place.”
The Thing cleared up rapidly after that. The Tisdales agreed to let Sara and Jack stay with Gabriel, there were a few questions which Gabriel deftly put off until next time, before finally retiring to let the colony finish discussing it on their own while he retired to his office.
In privacy, he ran his hands through his hair and swore softly. It was still hard to believe that Ava, of all people, had been so stupid.
He was beginning to doubt his own parenting decisions.