Date Point: 10y2m2w AV HMS Caledonia, Deep Space
Adam Arés
“Okay… Murray?”
“He’s a fucking ninja, but he never watches his surroundings properly; too focused on the goal. Claymore, tripwire, something like that. Force him back into it with a couple of Aggressors, or maybe lure him into it by being a tempting target.”
“Makes sense… What about you, Vandenberg?”
“Me? I wouldn’t last two seconds in CQB against an Aggressor. And hey, that way they could maybe live-capture me, get the implants out again.”
“Just what the hell are you boys talking about?”
The five of them turned. “Hey Kovač.” Adam smiled at her. The diminutive blonde NCO in charge of biomechanics and EVA system life support gave him a friendly wave, though her attention was on her tablet.
“pH balance check and last QA, guys.” she announced. “Show me your butts.”
They dutifully turned around with an assortment of chuckles, presenting the life-support packs that rode low on their back and pelvis for her to assess with her tools. “So what were you guys talking about?”
“Uh, what we’d do if one of us was biodroned.” Firth told her.
She shuddered. “Yuurgh. Just the thought of that…!”
“I know, right?” BASEBALL agreed. “Fuckin’ shoot me, if it ever happens to me.”
This sparked universal agreement. “So you’re basically having a ‘who would win in a fight?’ conversation.” Kovač noted. “Very macho. You’re good, Firth.”
“Yeah, but this way it’s practical an’ shit.” Sikes noted.
“Well, don’t let me stop you…” she assured them, after a few seconds of silence. “You’re good, Burgess.”
“Okay…” Vandenberg thought for a second. “Blaczynski?”
“He’s too cautious for an ambush. Just gotta put the pressure on, I guess. Suppress him and work round the side.” Firth noted.
“Okay… WARHORSE then.”
Kovač giggled. “Sniper round. From long range.” she suggested. “You’re good, REBAR.”
Everyone nodded, muttering variations on the theme of “Oh yeah.”
“Hey!” Adam objected.
“No, she’s right dude. No way I’m confronting your ass up close.”
“Yeah, but, dude-”
“From extreme long range.” Vandenberg added.
“Come on, I’m not an aggressor!”
“Take it for the compliment it is and move on, brother.” BASEBALL suggested.
“Gee, thanks…” Adam rolled his eyes.
“Shame to ruin that face, though.” Kovač teased. “You’re good, Arés.”
“Same goes for you, Base.” Vandenberg said. “Get some JETS guy to do it from a thousand yards.”
“Damn straight!” Burgess agreed, and exchanged a fist bump with him.
”…What about the Major?” Firth asked.
“Major Powell?” Adam asked, still trying to ignore the comment about his face. Kovač had a knack for making his ears go red, though right now they were mercifully hidden under the collar and neck sheath of his EV-MASS.
“What other fuckin’ Major am I gonna be talkin’ about, dumbass?”
”…right. Yeah.”
“You’re good, Sikes.”
“Airstrike.” Sikes said.
“What?” Adam asked
“Airstrike.” Sikes repeated.
“Dude, come on, yeah he’s a fuckin’ badass but he’s not THAT-”
“Nah bro.” BASEBALL interrupted. “It’s not about him being too scary, though he fuckin’ is. It’s about giving him a proper sendoff.”
”…you’re right.” Adam agreed. “He’d deserve nothing less.”
“Nuke the site from orbit.” Firth nodded.
“It’s the only way to be sure.” Kovač finished for him. “Helmets and masks on, boys.”
They scooped the helmets up and put them on, pushing them down firmly until they engaged with the rigid component of the seal at the back of the skull with a sharp clack! The mask locked into place along the jawbone and mated with the suit’s air supply and to the helmet with similar mechanical solidity. The flexible rubber seal that did the rest of the work of keeping their faces protected from vacuum slid together easily and automatically.
Kovač tugged the roll of duct tape she’d been wearing as a bracelet off her wrist. “Seal check!” she announced.
This was a simple ritual—each man carefully examined the seal of the man beside him and announced it was good with a ringing slap to the helmet. Kovač then double-checked for him and then applied some tape over the seal for good measure. It probably wouldn’t actually do anything, but everyone felt better for it.
“HUD check.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“All good!” she tapped at the large button on her tablet. “KMP check.”
The spacewalkers stood and jolted in place a bit as they used the controls on their wrists to test their Kinetic Maneuvering Packs, and another round of “Good” was called.
“And… equipment.”
Adam helped the guys shrug on their equipment packages and make sure their loads were properly strapped on and distributed. That was his job specifically, backed up by BASEBALL, and he did it right. He took pride in that.
“Good.” he declared.
“That’s our checklist, you’re green-lit.” Kovač stepped back. “Over to you, Vandenberg.”
“Thanks, Kovač.” She nodded and joined the rest of the techs in heading for the airlock. REBAR, being the senior NCO, was in charge of the EVA they were doing.
“RIGHTEOUS?” he prompted.
Firth nodded, and touched the side of his helmet. “CIC, RIGHTEOUS, we’re green-lit for EVA.”
The reply came back in a few seconds. “RIGHTEOUS, Caledonia CIC, we have you ready. Condition Amber.”
“Condition Amber!” Firth called. “Clear the deck!”
One of the techs by the airlock echoed the call – “Clear the deck!” and they filed out. Once it had cycled and the light above it indicated full seal, Firth nodded to the guys, they exchanged fist-bumps, and he touched his helmet again. “CIC, RIGHTEOUS, go for doors. I say again, we’re go for doors.”
The acknowledgement was lost as a siren hooted five times—giving plenty of warning to anyone who might need to dash to hit the emergency button—and then the gravity went away. So did the air, brushed to the corners of the room and held in place by a forcefield that swept the deck empty. They all glanced at one another, checking for any signs of distress. Everyone’s suit was working fine, and they watched the huge flight deck doors push outwards and then split into two halves, which both swung aside.
Naked stars yawned at Adam from incomprehensibly far away, somehow made to feel close and dangerous by the fact that literally nothing separated him from them save distance and his EV-MASS. All he could hear was the faint muffled sound of his own heart, his own digestion, and the rush of air into and out of his mask past his ears.
“CIC, RIGHTEOUS. Commencing spacewalk.”
“RIGHTEOUS, Caledonia CIC: have fun.”
“Man, we have got to get some sound or music or something in this shit.” BASEBALL commented. “Vacuum’s too quiet.”
“I hear ya… There’s our box.” Firth agreed. Adam’s HUD filled with a flight waypoint and instructions on how much thrust to give himself, which he followed to the letter. Firth knew best when it came to EVA navigation.
Caledonia threw a spotlight on their target as they got close to it—a round vehicle, the proportionate shape of a hockey puck but twenty feet across and bright blue, covered in alien labels and script. One standard type three Dominion life raft. Without the light, both it and the bulk of their mothership would have been damn near invisible. The human eye had never really been designed for the lighting conditions in interstellar space, some light years from the nearest star. In fact, aside from the spotlight and the blinking beacon atop the liferaft, the nearest and brightest point of light was the gravity spike that Caledonia had deployed to catch the tiny craft so that it could be brought aboard.
They swung into place. As Firth set up shop notionally “above” the life raft to keep an eye on its velocity relative to Caledonia, Adam went with Sikes and Burgess joined Vandenberg in approaching antipodal spots on the rim of the little craft, where the two Defenders set to work welding larger versions of their suits’ KMPs to it while the Protectors held them in place.
It didn’t take long before REBAR reported “Done.” prompting a quiet cuss from Sikes.
“Done. I owe you fifty.”
“Damn right you do. RIGHTEOUS, over to you.”
The five of them settled on the life raft and held on as Firth took over piloting it into Caledonia’s waiting flight deck.
As they crossed the threshold, Firth made a satisfied noise over the comms. “Okay, Caledonia CIC, RIGHTEOUS, we’re in the bay, close the doors. WARHORSE, you may as well wake ‘em up.”
Adam gave him a clear thumbs up and used the computer on the inside of his wrist to connect to the life raft’s comms, a process which automatically shut down the stasis field within.
“Hello in there.” he announced. “You’re being rescued by the United States Air Force.”
They’d gone over that one a few times, how to begin that introduction. In the end, they’d decided that any humans in such a life raft would probably have been in there for long enough to not know who the SOR was, and aliens wouldn’t know the difference anyway. And, seeing as Adam himself was still after all a pararescueman…
“Before we pop the hatch,” he continued “we just want to warn you guys that we”re humans from Earth, so if there”s any special precautions you need us to take to protect you from harm, you let us know.”
A male voice answered in definite untranslated English as the doors finished closing behind them, though there was a rough edge to it, like he had a throat infection or something. “No need, pal. We’re American.”
Adam grinned inside his mask when he heard a feminine exclamation of disapproval in the background, and the male voice clarified. “Alright, two Americans and one Canadian.”
“Three humans?” he broadcast an all channels, and the guys all held up a fist in celebration. “Jackpot! Y’all okay in there?”
“Three cases of recent vacuum exposure. We really need a doctor, fella.”
Adam waved at BASEBALL, who gave him a thumbs up. “Copy that. Sit tight folks, we’ll have you out of there in a minute.”
He switched his broadcast channel. “Caledonia medical, WARHORSE, do you copy?”
“WARHORSE, Caledonia medical, loud and clear.”
“Life raft contains three human wounded, zero Echo-Tangoes. Three cases of recent vacuum decompression, probable pulmonary edema, ebullism and DCS, possible pleural effusion. BASEBALL and I will triage, ventilation on standby please.”
“Wilco WARHORSE.”
“SOR, stand by for lunar gravity…” Adam swung himself out from the liferaft to arm’s length, and together they fell gently onto the deck at one-sixth of a G. Pressure returned with a thump, and as soon as the raft was down on the deck and safe, the gravity ramped up to one G.
Two lights over the main flight deck doors turned green. “Two on the board.” Firth announced, no longer needing the radio. “REBAR, we’re good to break seal.”
“Clear to break seals.” Vandenberg acknowledged. “Get ‘em off, guys.”
Adam got his helmet off as fast as he could, and hit the door release even as the first of Caledonia’s medical staff came squeezing through the airlock onto the flight deck with trolleys and life support equipment.
The occupants were in a bad way. The fit-looking tanned dude in the back had badly bloodshot eyes but seemed to be breathing fine. The whipcord athletic blonde woman to his right was coughing pink froth, but most worrying of all was the young asian woman in the front. She was barely moving, and he could see clear signs of shock.
“Shit, you guys weren’t kidding about the medical attention.” he said, and hauled himself in with them.
“You should see the other guy.” the blonde told him.
“Hah! Bueno.” He turned back out the door, using the excuse of talking to the people outside to cover prepping a dose of anaesthetic—the Chinese girl was going to need to go on life support immediately, and for that she needed to be asleep.
Not for the first time, he wished that they were authorised to use Crue-D for first aid. “Base, get the blonde patient, she looks oedemic.” he instructed. “REBAR, I’ma need that board there.” Vandenberg nodded and stepped smartly to retrieving it, so he returned his attention to the Chinese girl.
“Hey, can you try and grip my hand for me?” he asked her. Though she was able to raise her hand and sort of grip, there was nothing there in terms of strength, but she was so focused on the task it was simplicity itself to give her the shot with his other hand. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay, that’s fine.” He accepted the board from Vandenberg. “I’m just gonna get this board under you and we’ll get you taken care of, alright?”
She nodded weakly as he manoeuvred her gently onto it and he realised she hadn’t actually spoke yet. “What’s your name?”
“Uh…” she frowned. Apparently the anaesthetic was kicking in. “I”m…Xiù. Xiù Chang.”
Adam didn’t allow his surprise to show. Of all the people he could have pulled out of a life raft, he’d found Regaari’s friend? Besides, her breathing was definitely too labored for comfort. There was fluid on her lungs, and that needed to be gone sooner rather than later. Surprising coincidences could be handled later.
“Nice to meet you, Xiù.” he told her, as he lifted her easily down from the life raft and onto the waiting trolley.
“A-a-and you?” She was definitely falling asleep now. “Uh… what’s your name?”
He took her hand, comfortingly. “I’m Adam. Staff sergeant Adam Arés, USAF Pararescue.” he replied.
He was pretty sure she was asleep by the end of the sentence.
“Right… let’s get that chest drain in.” he told the medics.
Date Point 10y2m2w AV The Arabian Sea, Earth.
Biodrone
It would have been easy to lose track of the MV Nasarpur without care and attention to detail. The ship was not large, and its running lights were just one of many visible across the open leagues of calm sea. Perfect sailing weather.
If there was one thing a biodrone was extremely good at, however, it was sustained attention to detail. The human it had once been could never have summoned the willpower or focus to stare at one target for hours on end, blinking only when biology demanded it. He would have shivered, or grown bored or sought conversation. He would have stretched his legs, or relieved the insistent pressure in his bladder.
Insofar as biodrones could be said to have desires of their own, it might have wished to receive an order to stretch its legs, or urinate. No such order was forthcoming, and until a Controller deigned to pay it any attention, no such order would be forthcoming. All that it had, therefore, was the data provided to it by the ghost of a personality, lacking anything functionally resembling willpower or agency. That ghost was interrogated often, when the biodrone was required to blend in. Had it been striving to blend in, the biodrone would have used that information to justify stretching its legs and urinating.
But it had received no order to blend in. And so it did not.
The order it had received was to watch the ship they were approaching. And so it did. No provision had been made for it to hand off this duty to another biodrone so that it could stretch its legs or urinate, and so it did not.
The Controllers had not left it with the autonomy to make these decisions for itself, and this was wise of them: If they had, the ghost of its personality would have responded to what had happened to him in the only sane way: it would have screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
The MV Nasarpur was mercifully close. Soon, a Controller would make contact and issue an order to prepare for combat.
Insofar as the biodrone was capable of looking forward to something, it was looking forward to that order. Urinating had a clear logical role to play in battle preparations. Relief was only one legitimately interpreted order away, and that order was imminent.
Until then, it watched the MV Nasarpur.
There were ten of them, biodrone bodies collected from around the geopolitical region collectively known as “Middle East”. The concept of being in the middle of the direction of prograde was nonsense, but the biodrone was not granted the autonomy to ponder that absurdity.
Many more biodrones had been assembled from all across this irrationally named region, but the ten in this boat were all, for lack of a term that more accurately and satisfactorily encompassed them, soldiers. Fighters, perhaps—men whose lives had left them proficient in the use of weaponry, though each for very different reasons. One or two were soldiers indeed, the volunteer agents of a legitimate state’s legal monopoly on controlled violence. Others had first raised a gun to protect themselves and their families, and never found an opportunity to put it back down. The rest had taken up arms for religious reasons that the drone’s programming simply was not equipped to understand, even if it had been granted leave to try.
The order came and the biodrone rushed to obey over the side of the boat, which took a good minute or two. Parameters flooded in as it did so—data about the layout of the target ship, how many men were on board, their armament and training, their exact locations, the location of the cargo they were protecting.
The drones conferred, bypassing crude language to form a network which evaluated the unique skills each one had inherited from the human it had once been and liaised this information back to a central Controller, which ran a rapid-fire of thousands of different simulations based on their suggestions, keeping the most successful, permutating upon them, combining them, throwing raw processing power at them until it had arrived at the most effective approach which carried a maximal probability of satisfying all mission objectives.
That approach hinged upon two simple truths. The first was that their vehicle was invisible to the radar of the ships trailing MV Nasarpur at a discreet distance, and produced almost no audible noise—certainly not any that would be heard over MV Nasarpur’s own engines.
The second was that biodrones were expendable.
Everything was timed down to the second. Their boat pulled up alongside the Nasarpur, and three of the biodrones boarded her, using grapples, rope ascenders and a muscular boost from their fellows to scale the merchant vessel’s curving flank. Three more were delivered a little further forward, and the last four boarded the ship at its nose.
Or tried to. One of the biodrones turned out to have had a higher estimation of its abilities in life than was actually warranted, and plunged into the water, never to resurface. None of the others paid any attention beyond adjusting their plan of attack to account for the loss.
The drone that had needed to urinate was among the three that reached the deck at the prow. Theirs was simultaneously the most important part of the raid, and also the easiest – they were tasked with disrupting the ship’s ability to call for help. This had to be done first, and it had to be done silently.
It involved ghosting up three flights of stairs to a mid-level door on the ship’s forward tower. An unfortunate crewman was stabbed before he had even finished turning to see who was opening it.
As for the radio equipment, there were three men in that room, none of whom were alert for danger, all of whom were bored and undisciplined. Military they may have been, and trusted, but all of their careful preparations had simply never accounted for alien activity.
The third of them was dead only a second after the first, just enough time for the biodrone that entered the room first to switch aim, backed up by its fellows. The gunfire would draw attention, but instructions from the Controller, followed instantly and perfectly, meant that any attempts to radio for a report or to call for distress would meet with failure. The radio wasn’t turned off, it was simply turned wrong.
The three biodrone teams went mobile. Confused sentries on the deck gasped their last still wondering what was going on even as 7.62mm rounds ripped through them. Panicked shouting from below deck heralded the arrival of the garrison protecting the ship’s cargo, whose haste to fight back led them to blunder straight into grenade tripwire traps and ambushes.
As the Controller had planned, two of the biodrones were killed, sacrificed in distracting the defensive force long enough for their fellows to outflank and enfilade the enemy.
Another was sacrificed storming into the last knot of defenders with a brick of high explosives on a five second countdown in its arms. The few who survived its detonation were executed before they could recover their wits.
That left six biodrones, two of which were wounded. Those two were tasked with throwing their fallen counterparts overboard. The healthy four went to work with hoists, winches and trolleys, getting the loot they had come to steal up on deck.
With no human left on board who had even the mental capacity to shoot at it, the spaceship that had been trailing MV Nasarpur for hours dropped its cloak and lifted the cargo off the deck and into its hold. It remained visible for only five seconds.
The biodrones had one last task.
If it had been able to, the biodrone might have wished not to take this next step. But the Controller had given clear instructions. Obedience was inevitable. Within it, what might have been the last shred of a human being reflected that at least he would soon be released. Words that meant nothing to the Biodrone’s guiding programming drifted through its head like a passing thought, consigning the soul of its body’s former owner to Allah.
Together, the biodrones vaulted the rail and sank. The rings of white water they made when they hit were barely worthy of comment next to the disruption caused by the merchant vessel’s own wake.
Twenty minutes later, when a helicopter full of marines from PNS Zulfiquar arrived in response to a failure to make routine contact, they found only the corpses of their comrades and a worrying absence of the ship’s cargo.
Date Point 10y2m2w AV HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Adam Arés.
“Hey DEXTER. Man, you are not going to believe who we just pulled off a life raft on the edge of Elder Space. Although, maybe you can guess, because you wouldn’t be interested otherwise, huh? Anyway, we found your friend Xiù!”
“You tellin’ DEXTER?” Sikes stuck his head into the tablet’s camera field of view. “Hey DEXTER!”
This prompted BASEBALL, Firth and REBAR to join in too, and Adam just grinned at the camera as they expressed a series of happy greetings to their Gaoian friend-slash-mascot, before he finally shooed them away.
“Yeah, you’ve gotta visit us sometime man. We can do, like, a joint training thing or something. Maybe see what you’ve got to teach us, like that fucking pulse-gun trick you pulled, that shit was insane!” He cleared his throat. “Anyway… yeah, we found your friend. Looks like she’s been stuck in that pod for about five years, and they had a rough time of it, but she’s alive. By the time you’ve got this they’ll probably have taken her back to Earth, but don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll be able to sort out putting you two back in touch again…”
“Uh… Yeah, give my regards to this Ayma of yours. Guess she’ll want to know too. And… yeah that’s about it. I’ll see you around, southpaw. Peace!”
He stopped the recording, and sent it without bothering to play it back. Regaari had been in touch a couple of times since Capitol Station, and Adam knew that he’d be delighted by the news.
“All done?” BASEBALL asked. Adam just grinned at him. He’d saved lives, had some good training that morning, been able to send some really good news to a friend…
“Good day.” he commented.
“Yeah…”
BASEBALL had been doing that a bit for a while now. Something was bugging him, Adam could tell, but if Base didn’t want to share, that was his business. He wasn’t about to push it. “You got anything planned?” He asked instead.
BASEBALL shrugged. “Goin’ drinking with TITAN. Dude’s not been laid since he got shot. You?”
Adam exchanged elaborate handshakes and backslaps with the other three as they left. “Ava’s friend Sean’s coming up from Earth. Apparently his uncle’s like this journalist or something, doing a bit on the Byron group, yeah? We were gonna go up the lake, go for a swim. Really looking forward to that, they only just declared it clean this week. I’ve not been up there since before I enlisted!”
“Oh…”
”…something bothering you, bro?” Adam asked him.
BASEBALL stood awkwardly in the middle of the locker room, drumming his hands nervously on his thighs and licking his lips.
Adam stood up. “Dude… what’s wrong?”
BASEBALL apparently reached a decision. “Brother… you better sit your ass back down. I’ve got something you need to know.”
Date Point 10y2m2w AV Whitecrest Clan Enclave, city of Wi Kao, Planet Gao.
Regaari
Where other officers of the Clan had busy offices full of clutter, keepsakes, mementoes and memories of jobs well done, Regaari’s was characteristically rather more Spartan. This was largely because he never used it. He was usually too busy with fieldwork.
Whitecrest was all about security on a big scale, and that meant Intelligence, information, data, and the correlations and relations between those data. Most of the most important of that data crunching went on right here in the Clan Enclave, a subtle edifice of geometric shapes clad in Takwood and greenish glass, separated from the bustle of the city of Wi Kao by a low stone wall, a decorative moat, and some well groomed parkland.
It was a fittingly prestigious and understated home for a prestigious and understated Clan, and its sprawling warrenous basements were full of officers doing vital though unglamorous work.
Regaari, as a political officer, should not have been among them. The location of his office was a relic of the Clan’s disfavour, though that had softened over the years as the Fathers responsible had retired and as Regaari’s own influence had grown. His friendship with Giymuy had done wonders for the Whitecrest breeding program, and the fact that he was now forging bonds with a Human military unit…
Several of the Fathers were worried, he suspected. A younger male with that kind of influence—and certainly one with as many cubs as Regaari had now sired—was a threat to the established order.
His immediate future was doubtless going to involve either attempted assimilation into the Clan leadership or—vastly more likely—relegation to yet another satellite position with all the appearance of prestige.
Right now, though, politics ruled the day. That was Regaari’s job, and Regaari was good at his job. Indeed, he’d become even better at it ever since discovering just how modifiable his new cybernetic hand was. Had he worn sleeves, he would literally have had some tricks up them, first and foremost of which were the petabytes of storage space and the holographic projector in his palm. His workstation was literally attached to him, available at an instant’s notice.
“Yulna’s going to win.” he declared.
Father Terrik—the elderly officer ostensibly responsible for supervising Regaari’s work, scratched at his ear with an air of scepticism. “I had thought that her attachment to the human female… just like Giymuy…?” he suggested.
”-Is much less of an issue than Mother Suri and her supporters like to believe.” Regaari informed him. “I had Brother Ruuvi conduct a meta-analysis of the datasphere commentary. Most of the females just don’t care, and of those who do the majority are broadly positive.”
Terrik inclined his head. “Positive?”
“For reasons ranging from the pragmatic to the compassionate.” Regaari elaborated. He activated the gesture-based command in his new paw that caused it to project the files in an almost physical format above his palm. With his remaining natural paw, he could select, move and even throw the files around—copying them to another device was as simple as throwing them towards said device. This he now did.
“That’s my full report.” he explained, as Terrik studied and accepted the incoming file. “It details my findings, my reasoning and my supporting evidence. Much as I like and respect Yulna, I’ve made every effort to remain neutral and unbiased in my assessment, and I am still convinced that Mother Suri has a negligible chance of being the next Mother Supreme.”
Terrik stood. “I will read it in full and present it to the Fathers.” he promised. “Your recommendation, I take it, is to side with Yulna?”
“The risk to the clan is negligible, and the potential benefits considerable.”
Terrik made a thoughtful head-duck to acknowledge Regaari’s point, and let himself out.
Regaari gave it a few minutes and toured his office. He used the time in tidying up the minimal mess and examining his few keepsakes—a crystal data wafer full of Xiù’s precious collection of Earth entertainment, one of Giymuy’s walking canes that she had bequeathed to him, and a framed picture, a gift from the SOR, depicting all of them gathered round him and beaming those big toothy deathworlder smiles. Actual pigment printed on paper—a technology so obsolete in Gaoian society that it might have been an antique or relic, and obsolete by human standards too, but this one was glossy, crisp and new.
That was enough procrastination. He headed out, locked up his office, combed a bit of stray fur back into place as he jogged down the hall, and let himself into Brother Ruuvi’s office.
Ruuvi was an ally, a genuine one. A fellow victim of clan politics whose career had been similarly holed by voicing honest concern to the wrong Father, he was even more fervently in favour of reform and a change of leadership than was Regaari. Unlike Regaari, he’d been “promoted” to leadership of the clan’s digital security and information wing—what the SOR had called “SigInt” – and, like Regaari, had taken his new role and excelled at it, adapting to the demands of the job with the aplomb and rapidity that had made Clan Whitecrest’s reputation.
Regaari didn’t bother with a greeting—they’d been planning this particular sting all week. “Well?”
“He read the summary and then forwarded the file to Reyu, Redilo and Yemmil.”
Regaari sighed in relief, and Ruuvi chittered. The set of his own ears was relieved, though: Terrik had been the subject of an unresolved question, whether he was working with the little cyst of Fathers who held the reins of power in Whitecrest and were getting progressively cosier and cosier with the monolithic nepotism of the Dominion, or whether he was doing the right thing no matter what that right thing might be.
Forwarding the file to three Fathers who had, in Regaari’s estimation, successfully balanced authority with conscientiousness was strong evidence for the latter.
“Excellent.” He growled. “I think we-”
He was interrupted by his communicator, which cheeped at him in a one beep, two beep, three beep rhythm until he checked it.
“Ah!”
Ruuvi noticed his colleague’s ears prick up. “Good news?”
“A message from WARHORSE.”
“You have a human on your priority message list?” Ruuvi asked.
“I have three humans on my priority message list.” Regaari retorted, and opened the message.
Thirty seconds later, his hindclaws slid and scrabbled on the smooth concrete flooring as he bolted out of the room.