Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
Heavy System Picket Utopian Aspiration, Perfection System, The Core Worlds.
Fleetmaster Xkk’rtnnk A’vkrnkt’k
“Fleetmaster? The human wishes to talk.”
“Wishes to gloat.” Xkk’ grumbled. He stood, and shook out his mane. “Very well. Relay this conversation to the fleet and the system. I want them to see what kind of monsters these deathworlders are.”
“Yes, fleetmaster… On screen.”
Xkk’ scrutinized his foe as the human’s visage appeared on the large screen. Was grey hair a sign of age in humans? They all looked so lumpen and solid that it was hard to guess whether this Caruthers was slender or stocky by his species’ standards. The human seemed to have sprouted a rough blueness of hair stubble along his jaw and around his mouth since Xkk’ had last spoken with him, and the skin under his eyes was darker. An emote of some kind, or just a symptom of stress and fatigue?
“What do you want?” Xkk’ demanded.
“My apologies for striking first. I suppose I lost my nerve.” the human replied. “I have left you with…” he checked something outside of the camera’s field of view. “Yes, with one ship that has full sensors. Be sensible and use it to guide the others to anchor.”
“Toying with us still, predator?” Xkk’ sneered. He checked the status of every ship in his fleet, and immediately found the only blue icon – the Racing Thunder. Of course: the Gaoians. The furry traitors must have been feeding intelligence to the humans, it was the only way that Caruthers could have known to attack first.
“If you’re awaiting the coup de grace, fleetmaster, I won’t be delivering one,” Caruthers replied. “We’re not your enemy. It’s unfortunate that we came to blows over this, but we have gone out of our way to avoid casualties. I would hope that gesture counts in our favour.”
“You have made an enemy.” Xkk’ spat. “And your Gaoian conspirators will be put on trial for their treason.”
“Now that, I can’t allow.” Caruther said. “Their ship is intact because the clans of Gao have been welcoming and civilized toward our people, which is a kindness I won’t betray. They’re innocent of any treason.”
“I see through your lie!” Xkk’ snapped. “They’re your agents, and I’ll have them shaved and executed for their treachery!” Around the bridge, several subordinates stared at him in alarm.
Caruthers’ expression hardened. “…A word of advice, fleetmaster, from commander to commander: Give the victories to your men and take the defeats for yourself.”
He glanced aside, listening to something that Xkk’ couldn’t hear, then smiled and made no effort to cover his teeth – several of Xkk’s officers flinched. “…And don’t threaten the one crew in your fleet whose ship can still go to warp,” he added.
Xkk’ rounded on the comms officer, who sent him a text update: the Racing Thunder had indeed disconnected from the tactical network and had shot out of the system at a hundred kilolights, headed directly for Gao.
“We are blinded and adrift thanks to you,” he shot at the human. “Article Three-”
“Requires me to leave you adequate means to return to harbor, yes.” Caruthers interrupted. “I did. We’ll repair our ship now, and depart – how you get home is no longer my problem. Goodbye.”
The transmission ended.
Xkk’ was still standing in the middle of the bridge stamping his hind legs angrily – a gesture of frustrated rage entirely analogous to a human pacing and clenching their fists – when the comms officer found the courage to speak.
“A… message for you from Planetary Director Luz, fleetmaster.” he ventured, quietly.
Xkk’ glanced around the bridge. Nobody met his eye.
Without a word, he turned towards the wardroom and went to take the call that would end his career.
Date Point 10y4m1w5d AV
HMS Violent, Perfection System, The Core Worlds.
Commodore William Caruthers
“I get the impression you enjoyed that, sir.”
Caruthers sat back, removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair before tugging it neatly back into place. The full weight of several days of inadequate sleep was now resting on him, and he really wasn’t in the mood for gloating.
“The Gaoians?” he asked.
“Departing at best speed, with thanks.”
“Acknowledge their thanks and inform them that they may seek refuge at Cimbrean if they need it.” Caruthers instructed.
“Aye aye, sir.”
Caruthers opened a channel to Caledonia. When he answered it, captain Bathini was back under his flash hood again. “You can relax, captain.” Caruthers told him. “Our ET opposite numbers are neutralized, for now.”
“That’s fantastic news, sir.” Bathini nodded. “My reactor chief says we should be able to fire up main power in twelve hours.”
Caruthers tutted. “Nearly got out of this without a fight.” he mused. “Oh well. That’s still well ahead of the estimate.”
”Chief Andow believes in giving pessimistic estimates.” Bathini replied.
Caruthers chuckled, tiredly. “Good for him. I’ll hear from you in eight hours, then, shall I?”
Bathini laughed with him. ”I believe you will sir, yes.”
Caruthers gave him a thumbs-up and closed the call.
He was rubbing at his forehead and composing his log when the most welcome scent in the universe wafted across his workstation, and a voice asked: “Coffee, sir?”
Caruthers gave the Midshipman who was offering him the mug – black, sugary and double strong, exactly as he liked it – the grateful smile that only a half-dead man being given coffee could produce and accepted it. “Very much appreciated, thank you mister Faulkner.”
He sipped half of it while he recorded his log entries, then finished by swigging the remainder. A quick survey and check-in with the fleet satisfied him that they could step down enough for him to grab another power-nap.
Somewhere in the future beyond that, however, was the siren promise of a full night’s sleep and right now, that sounded positively decadent… but there were at least another eight hours of hard work and stress before then.
He stood, left the flotilla in the capable hands of Captain Manning, and returned to his cabin.
Date Point 10y4m1w6d AV
Heavy System Picket Utopian Aspiration, Perfection System, The Core Worlds.
Fifty-Three
The bridge had been a subdued hubbub ever since the fleetmaster had trudged off it as if walking to his own execution. Fifty-three had taken the opportunity to restore some order and had demanded a compilation of every sensor log they had of the human attack.
The data was depressingly sparse. Strobing beams of EM radiation, each perfectly tuned to their sensors’ points of most sensitivity, had lashed their fleet, with each of the human ships generating thousands of such beams. All of the sensors had been overwhelmed and blinded, orders of magnitude too quickly for the reaction times of any organic life-form.
Fifty-Three had little more to go on than the precise time that each ship’s sensors had burned out. It really wasn’t much, and certainly exceeded her ability to think of countermeasures.
No matter. The Hierarchy was only the front line of Igraen defence, and Fifty-Three predicted that even these meagre crumbs of data would admit of something that could be used. The humans would not hold their advantage for long.
The bridge went quiet. Fleetmaster Xkk’ had emerged from the wardroom, looking old, frail and devastated.
“Shipmaster Mefr.” he announced, quietly. His voice was barely more than a croak, but the silence carried it clearly to every ear in the room. “By the order of Perfection Planetary Governor Luz, it is my final duty as master of this fleet to appoint you as my replacement. All command codes and privileges are now transferred to you. The security of this system and its people is now your responsibility and duty, if you accept it.”
Fifty-three straightened. This was not ideal – Hierarchy doctrine called for their agents to remain in well-placed subordinate positions rather than in command. Unfortunately she was not able to refuse, and Mefr was too valuable a host to sacrifice on doctrine.
“…I accept that responsibility, and relieve you of it,” she declared, formally and carefully. There was a cascade of alerts and updates in her implants as the command codes were transferred.
“All ships are to prioritize repair of their navigational sensors.” she said. “We only need one to get us home.”
The order was acknowledged and followed, while a pair of Vzk’tk marines led the former fleetmaster off the bridge.
“If one of the ships repairs their targeting sensors, shall we destroy the human ship?” one of the crew asked.
Fifty-Three considered the options, weighing her responsibilities to the Hierarchy’s secrecy, to its mission and to the options appropriate for completing that mission.
“…No.” she declared. Out loud, she gave a convincing reason that would do for the meatspace lifeforms. “Their retaliation would not be so restrained as they have been so far, and I have no doubt the Hunters would relish the opportunity to raid this system with the defence fleet weakened.”
Internally the logic was more complicatedly political. This incident would certainly have cost the humans much of the goodwill they’d earned at Capitol Station, but to really twist the knife…
++0053++: <Message for 0020> I have a request.
As for the humans, even if they did have a nanofactory now, that would almost certainly work out in the Hierarchy’s favor. Every previous occasion where a species got their hands on that technology prematurely had resulted in massive recession and strife.
Given that the Hierarchy’s analysis was that most of the so-called “Allied” nations were already accumulating immense debt as they pumped finances into developing their fledgling spaceborne military and the Cimbrean colonization effort, the Hierarchy would be quite happy to sit back and let another mass of stress land on the human economy.
She settled in the fleetmaster’s chair moments before the reply reached her.
++0020++: A request?
Twenty was their infiltrator among the Hunters, posing as a lowly Omega communications monitor. It was a perfect position – overlooked, unsuspected, and able to feed whatever morsels of intelligence the Hierarchy wanted directly to the Alphas who made the real decisions.
The rest was down to Hunter psychology, such as it was.
++0053++: Perfection is currently without a system defence fleet… thanks to the humans.
++0020++: Destroyed?
++0053++: Better. Intact but crippled. Lots of meat for the maw.
++0020++: Please don’t use that hideous phrase, I receive it dozens of times a day as it is.
++0053++: Apologies. Can you arrange a Hunt?
++0020++: Easily, and I shall. …Done.
Fifty-Three carefully kept her satisfaction from showing. She was simultaneously about to finally demolish the Dominion’s goodwill towards deathworlders, and resolve the problem of her own unwelcome rank. It would be trivially simple to arrange for her host to meet an untimely end between a Hunter’s teeth.
++0053++: That simple?
++0020++: The Alpha-of-Alphas has been looking for an opportunity to deploy some reverse-engineered human technology. Trust me, the attack will come very soon indeed. Good work.
++0053++: Thank you.
Twenty did not acknowledge the thanks, not that Fifty-three was inclined to care.
She could smell the promotion in her near future.
Date Point: 10y4m1w6d AV
HMS Caledonia, Perfection System, The Core Worlds
Chief Michael Andow
“Okay… Final checklist. Combustion chamber pressure?”
“Ten to the minus seven milliBar, chief.” Patel reported.
“Emergency breakers?”
Evans double-checked them. “Engaged, chief.”
“Ignition lasers?”
“Charged, chief.”
“Deuterium?”
“Pump primed, chief, Two thousand kilograms in the tank.”
“ESCC field?”
“Online, chief.”
“Sphincters?”
There was a round of laughter. Evans spoke up. “Clenched, chief.”
Andow flashed a one-sided grin at the younger man and called the bridge. “Captain,” he said, “reactor room. We’re ready for ignition, sir.”
”Excellent news. Wake her up, chief.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Andow patted Cally’s hull affectionately. “Alright girl. Let’s get you home, eh?”
“Amen.” somebody muttered
“Alright hooky,” Andow gestured to Patel, “do the honours.”
She nodded, took a deep breath, popped the cover on the fusion reactor’s main ignition, and thumbed the huge red button thus revealed.
It made an alarming slamming sound. Nobody flinched – it was exactly what they’d hoped to hear.
“Stage one ignition complete and burning, increasing deuterium flow… Stable.”
“Reaction temperature steady at eleven million kelvin.”
“…That’s our girl.” Andow grinned. The generator array was reporting nothing but green across the board as the forcefields deep within it simultaneously compressed, contained and enabled the fusion reaction, and bled off the surplus energy for electricity.
It wasn’t quite perfect – Andow had cut his teeth on gas turbine engines and supercritical water generators. He missed hearing the muffled howl of a turbine, next to which the fusion plants were disappointingly quiet. There was a steady low hum, almost inaudibly faint, but it just wasn’t the same. It didn’t sound like a gigawatt.
He grabbed the shipwide intercom. “All hands prepare for a change in gravity.” he announced, and hooted the alarm for good measure. He turned to Evans. “Slow adjust to one G.”
“Aye aye, chief.”
The sensation of gravity weighing down on them picked up. They’d become so used to one-quarter gravity over the last few days that it took a second or two to adjust to the natural weight of their bodies. Evans hissed as the shift dragged his wounded arm heavily downwards in its sling.
“LR?”
“I’m fine chief.” Evans professed.
“Nearly home.” Andow promised him. “How’s the jump drive, Hooky?”
Patel gave a huge, bright smile as she checked it. “Powered and ready to jump, chief. We’re above the yellow line.”
Andow snatched a fist in front of his chest in celebration, and contacted the bridge. “Sir, we’re ready to jump.”
”Many thanks.” came the terse reply. The situation on the bridge had to be just as tense and nervous as down in the reactor room. After all, they weren’t home yet.
Moments later, the alarm sounded for a jump. All across the ship, hatches were sealed, firefighting equipment prepared, and crew braced in case of another fire or power failure.
There wasn’t one. Instead, Caledonia shunted several megajoules into her jump engine, leapt through space in a direction other than up, and went home.
Date Point: 10y4m1w7d AV
Starship Negotiable Curiosity, Deep Space
Wilson ‘Titan’ Akiyama
Being SOR meant being on good speaking terms with pain. In fact, it meant having something that verged on being a friendship with pain. Pain was how they knew they were getting stronger. Pain told them where their limits were, so that they could push them back, and back, and back.
If you weren’t in pain, you weren’t improving.
That thought was becoming a mantra for Titan. His abdominal muscles had already cramped up and spasmed a couple of times now, as the unrelenting pressure of his EV-MASS forced them to push back. His limbs were tired, just from the simple fact of days spent living and moving around in a suit that weighed the best part of a hundred and fifty pounds even stripped down to the bare minimum as it currently was.
Even his mind hurt. A man could function on regular powernaps, but there was no substitute for a solid night’s sleep.
Preferably nude. Nothing heavier than his sheets. Maybe not even those. Maybe a shower first, if he could hold it together that long. The suit had all the necessary pelvic plumbing to be worn for days but that didn’t mean it was hygienic. In fact, Titan was feeling filthy, itchy, and disgusting. He knew that there was no detectable scent coming off him yet, but he also knew that the moment the seal on his suit was popped, the accumulated BO would bleach hair.
And there were still two days to go.
He had to face it: It was time to use another Crue-D injector. He’d held out long enough.
His buddies weren’t faring any better, though Rebar was suffering the worst. The huge burst of energy he’d expended chasing the escaped Mwrmwrwk through the marketplace had left him with a deficit that he’d never quite caught up on. He did his part just fine, keeping an eye on the ETs between sleep shifts… but that was all he did. Watch, eat, and sleep. His eyes were a long way away, staring blankly at nothing and leaving his thoughts opaque.
Akiyama knew how to help, though, and the burst of energy and vitality he was going to get from this next Crude shot would be of value. That fact made him feel better about finally giving in and injecting it, twenty minutes before Blaczynski was due to relieve him at the pilot’s station. That was plenty of time for it to work.
They shared a weary greeting and hug as they traded places and Titan headed back to the ship’s common area, feeling much better now. He was going to need a lot of recuperation, but for now the pain subsided, his muscles regained some of their spent strength, and he felt more alert and focused.
He sat next to Rebar and put an arm around the big guy’s back. “Ow.” he commented.
Rebar’s voice was little more than a rumble, way down in contrabass territory. “Yeah.”
“How’re you doing for…” Titan glanced at Bedu’s doorway. The Corti was still sitting there, as seemed to be his habit for the flight. “…Doses?”
“Two left.” Rebar grunted. He looked ashenly haggard, almost old. Despite the youthfulness that Crue-D use returned to everybody, there were deep lines in his brow and around his eyes and mouth. “Gonna… pop one tomorrow an’…one for when we’re landing.”
“Bro, don’t even worry about that. You know Horse and Base’ll want to carry you off this thing if you need it.”
“…You always gotta be the logical one, huh.” Rebar groused.
“Shit, bro. Take my fuckin’ sleep shift, too. You need more than two hours.”
Ordinarily, Rebar would have refused. This time his expression was relieved and hopeful, but he still asked “…You sure?”
“Pop a dose and get some real sleep in, man.”
Rebar nodded. He slipped open the blue-green Crue-D pouch on his belt, pulled out one of the injectors, then leaned forward and injected himself through the little port in his suit’s flank.
It wasn’t surprising at all when he slouched back against the wall and then rested his head against Titan’s arm. “Still pissed that fuckin’ Kwmbwrw got away.” he grumbled.
Bedu had been sitting, as he habitually did, in the doorway to his cabin and watching them. Now he spoke up.
“Mwrwmwrwk was always an intelligent one,” he commented. “And resourceful. She was a pleasure to work with.”
“Gotta give her…” Rebar yawed, “…points for tenacity.”
“Dude. Sleep.” Titan told him.
He needn’t have bothered. Rebar was already oblivious.
“…I don’t know which is more terrifying – those suits, or the fact that the four of you have only just begun to show real signs of fatigue and discomfort.” Bedu observed.
“Can’t really discuss them, man. Sorry.” Akiyama told him.
“You don’t need to. I am Corti, Titan. We can deduce much by observation. I know beyond a doubt that you’re using a Cruezzir-based medicine of some kind. The suit contains no powered components and does not seem to be at all loose on you, and you all dent the floor just by walking around.”
Titan shrugged for him, conscientously refraining from any comment. There was no point denying the Cruezzir observation, but he wasn’t about to confirm it either.
“May I ask you a question?” Bedu asked.
“Sure.”
“Are you doing this…Voluntarily?”
“Absolutely.” Titan nodded.
“You are clearly in severe pain. You are exhausted, incomprehensibly far from home, Cruezzir use has deviated your body far from the human baseline, and you have placed yourself in harm’s way for the lives of species other than your own… voluntarily.”
“That’s right. Hell, they tried to talk us out of it.”
Bedu’s brow arched upwards. Titan didn’t know if that was a native Corti gesture, or one he was imitating. “You were… dissuaded?”
“Oh yeah. Time and time again. The highway to become SOR is designed to persuade you to quit and go do something easier.”
“One would argue, something more sane.” Bedu commented.
“One would argue.” Titan chuckled, nodding. “But here I am.”
“In pain.”
Titan laughed at that. Rebar grumbled something and stretched out on the floor instead of against him.
Bedu just blinked. “Something is… amusing?” he asked.
Titan stood up and stretched. He may as well make use of the Crue-D in his system now to recover some flexibility with some extremely light exercise.
“…What’s funny is I was thinking about pain earlier.” he said. “I think maybe we have a different attitude to it than you do. What do you do with pain, what’s your… like, how do you deal with it?”
“I avoid it.” Bedu said. If the translator was getting his tone of voice right, the judgement implicit in his tone was that this should be the obvious and sane behaviour of any creature. “Don’t you?”
“Pain’s a good friend.” Titan told him. “And there’s not just the one kind. There’s the pain that says ’push harder, and you will damage yourself’ and another that says ’you are damaging yourself’ and another one that says when something else has damaged you… They’re all there to warn you, but that’s all they’re for.”
“And you ignore that warning.” Bedu sounded unconvinced.
“Because it’s too cautious for the modern world. Yeah, maybe way back when we were sharpening sticks and living in caves, our pain thresholds were in the right place, but now that we’ve got…” Titan caught himself before he mentioned the Cruezzir “…modern medicine and surgery and stuff…”
“And Cruezzir.” Bedu needled.
“Whatever. Point is, we can push on through. We call it ’mind over matter’ – willpower and…” he smiled, figuring out the most Corti way to say it. “Logic overriding more… base urges.”
Bedu inclined his head thoughtfully. “A strangely intellectual sentiment, coming from somebody so physically robust.”
Titan shrugged. “Bedu, I mean no offense,” he said “but the gravest mistake your species ever made was thinking that the two can’t coexist. For us, mind and body are the same thing. Healthy in one, healthy in the other.”
“That may be true for you, but-”
“Give me one logical reason why it couldn’t be true for the Corti as well.” Titan interrupted him. Bedu scowled thoughtfully, so he drove the point home. “There isn’t one. There’s no good reason at all why your kind couldn’t have what we have.”
Bedu gestured oddly, a kind of rapid twitching of his head as if he was trying to shake something out of his ear. “Corti as strong as deathworlders?” he asked. “What an… absurd mental image.”
“Why?”
“…I must admit you are right. Just by standing here and talking to me you prove that there’s no good reason for brains and brawn to not coexist in one species.”
“Just a thought.” Titan shrugged. “In the words of my people, ‘you do you’.”
“Is that a Japanese saying?” Rebar asked, sleepily.
“I’m American you racist fuck!” Titan told him, grinning fondly. “Go to sleep.”
Rebar grunted and rolled over. The odds were that he was in too much pain for now to truly rest, but the Crue would soon solve that.
Akiyama turned his attention back to Bedu. “…So yeah. You do you.” he repeated.
“And become like you, if we wish?”
“Why not?”
Bedu rubbed a finger against one of his long pointed ears, thoughtfully. “Why not indeed?” he mused.
Date Point: 10y4m1w7d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Martina Kovač
”Joder!”
“Nice to see you too, Warhorse.”
Sergeant Arés stepped up the ramp and into the shuttle. Martina was the only one aboard it – only the SOR were offloading at Cimbrean, and as the only injury among them she had been shuttled down early for medical reasons.
“Shit on Jesus,” he said, “when they called down from Cally and said I had a burn patient to look after they didn’t say it was you! Are you okay?”
Kovač feigned nonchalance. “Oh, y’know, just… painful blistering burns.”
“Well, shit, let’s get you outta there.”
She took his hand and heaved herself upright on it. He couldn’t have offered better support if he’d been an iron bar bolted to the floor and ceiling. There was another rip of stinging pain up her back and she gritted her teeth.
“Crue patch?” Horse offered, hovering nearby as she staggered down the ramp, internally cussing herself out for just how stiff and immobile her back had become. She had to hold herself like she was tied to a board if she didn’t want it to hurt. She hadn’t appreciated just how involved her back was in walking until she couldn’t use it any more.
“Bit late…” Martina pointed out. “The window’s long gone.”
“You’re still healing, it’ll still do something for ya.” Arés promised. Martina rolled up her sleeve for him and he pressed the patch firmly to the soft skin on the underside of her forearm, where it started to dissolve and sink in. The process stung a little, but it was nothing next to what she’d been enduring for the last few days.
“There ya go. You’ll have a lot of… y’know, dead skin back there after the Crude’s done its bit. Gonna need to exfoliate.”
They started across the flight line toward the barracks, and Martina tried to put up with the repeated needle-stabs her gait sent spearing into her.
“You mean part of my recovery is gonna be a spa day?” she asked, taking refuge in humor to cover her discomfort. “Oh no! How will I cope?”
“Don’t celebrate just yet, smartass.” Horse told her, grinning. “You’re gonna need deep tissue massage therapy as well.”
“What next in the parade of calamities?”
“…From me.”
That brought Martina back down. “Uh… You.”
“I’m not talking some relaxation reiki stones chakra alignment bullshit here. Your connective tissue’s gonna need stretching out good if you’re gonna heal up without losing flexibility. That’s where I come in.”
“Only you could make a massage sound like torture.”
“It, uh, kinda will be… sorry.”
“So what, you’ve got to massage the whole affected area?” Martina asked.
“Yup.”
“‘Cause, uh… I burned my butt.”
His face shut down. “Well, I, uh…” he began, then cleared his throat. “I mean, uh, w-we can, uh, sort out a, uh, a chaperone if-if you, uh…”
There was the trademark Arés blush. Warhorse got a couple of shades darker and ruddier when he was feeling awkward, especially around the ears and forehead. It was adorable, which was not a word that Martina had ever guessed she’d associate with a guy who out-massed her several times over and could bench-press small cars.
The annoying part was that she knew her own nose and cheeks had gone red, and given how much fairer-skinned she was than him, there was no way the effect was subtle.
“It, uh.. I mean, not for a couple of… you’ve got to heal up a bit more first,” he continued, and cleared his throat again. “Probably. I mean, I’ve not actually, uh… inspected your… I mean, the wound.”
They stood on the asphalt for a second or two in mutual silence, considering the near future.
“…This is gonna be weird, isn’t it?” She predicted.
“Dude. You measure my dick once a month.”
“Still gonna be weird.”
“…Yup.”
Date Point: 10y4m1w7d AV
HMS Violent, Cimbrean system, The Far Reaches
Commodore William Caruthers
The phone rang. Caruthers permitted himself the luxury of grumbling about it before answering.
“Oh, no, come on…”
This had been the first time in several days that he’d gone to bed anticipating a solid six or more hours. Glancing at the red numbers of his alarm clock, he saw that he’d had barely two and a half.
He answered the phone. It felt lead-heavy. “…Caruthers.”
The report he received woke him up like a sobering sluice of ice water.