Date Point 10y6m1w AV
Mrwrki Station, Uncharted system, Deep Space
Kirk
“So what are your thoughts?”
Vedreg was proving yet again that, far from being stupid, he was a thoroughly formidable intellect in his own right if given enough time to lumber up to speed. Certainly he was proving more equal than Kirk to the task of scrutinising the contraption that Lewis was painstakingly assembling and iterating.
Annoyingly, his mood was still difficult to read, but Kirk didn’t blame himself or Vedreg for that. Where the Rrrrtk eye had two kinds of color-receptive cell, the Guvnurag one outstripped even humans at five, and the emotive bioluminescent lines on their flanks made full use of that chromatic agility. It was like trying to hear music that was written partially outside of his hearing range, or like trying to read a book where three fifths of the words were printed in an ink that was only visible in the ultraviolet.
Kirk took a guess anyway and hazarded that his old friend was emoting a blend of admiration and mild fear.
“Lewis Beverote is correct,” Vedreg rumbled. “What he is making would be devastating if turned to warlike ends.”
Kirk walked around the holographic table that Vedreg was working at. They all had their little demesnes inside the station now, though Vedreg’s was by far the most sprawling – a function of his sheer size more than anything else. That and his unfolding passion for bakery, which had recently yielded fruit – literally – in the form of an approximation of “cookies”. Lewis had groused something ungrateful about ‘oatmeal and raisin’, whatever they were, but had later thanked Vedreg profusely for the unexpected treat.
Right now, the table was busy dissecting the latest generation of what Lewis was calling his ’Von Neumann Colony-in-a-Can’ or the ’Coltainer’ for short. To Kirk’s eye, it was an impenetrable tangle of interconnected systems bolted onto something that looked like a hybrid between an enormous power core system and the scoop field emitters off a lane-clearing ship, all feeding power to a nanofactory that was equal in size and capacity to the one on Mrwrki Station.
The Coltainer’s actual function, as Lewis had described it, was to serve as a deep-space automated probe that would search for habitable planets of classes ten to thirteen. Upon discovering one, it would do everything within its power to satisfy itself that the planet lacked native sophonts of any stage of development and, once happy that the planet was not inhabited, it would survey for and identify an ideal spot for a new colony to be built, based on a complicated equation that took into account variables like clean water supply, ocean access, arable land, grazing land, forestry, local geology and mineral availability, climate, drainage, defensibility, proximity to other suitable locations and the feasibility of constructing roads between them, and more.
That done, it would mine some local asteroids or moons for raw materials, build an exact duplicate of itself, send that duplicate on its way in search of a new project, and then finally lay the groundwork for human colonization by sending down drones that would simultaneously excavate and print a basic colonial ‘hub’.
The hub was a defensible structure in which the first settlers could live and work before expanding outwards according to their own agenda. It would have a power generator, a landing pad, a jump array, a kitchen and mess hall, gym and recreational facilities, a chamber for democratic decision-making, enough housing for fifty families, and even a number of deep basement levels designed to serve as a nexus for subterranean roads or railways, complete with TBMs already in place.
Finally, it would restock itself, dispatch a probe to Cimbrean containing the transponder codes for the colony’s jump array and orbital beacon, and depart the system in search of a new project, dropping a system field as it went.
Kirk could easily see the unlimited military potential of a machine that smart that could replicate itself exponentially.
“Does that… alarm you?” he asked.
“Sufficiently that I’m giving serious thought to vetoing the project entirely and purging the files.” Vedreg rumbled, something akin to rueful laughter. “When I voiced my concerns to Lewis, he advised me to ’be Zen, man’. He is quite correct: I must ruminate on the matter before I decide.”
“Quite right,” Kirk agreed. “No disrespect, old friend, but your government’s hasty actions in the past-”
“-Are the reason we even have a human race to try and save,” Vedreg interrupted. He rumbled again and a pulse of ironic mottled pink ran up his sides. “And of course, it may not have been panicking Guvnuragnaguvendrugun, but panicking Hierarchy who made that mistake.”
The Domain language didn’t have an equivalent to ’Touché’, which was a shame, but fortunately that particular human word could be almost approximated by a Domain throat, and Kirk took the opportunity to use it.
Vedreg highlighted one of the denser parts of the project’s anatomy. “Fortunately, he has spent the last few days assuaging my concerns,” he said.
“…What is that?” Kirk asked, leaning forward to study it.
“A bomb. An extremely large one, sufficient to vaporize the Coltainer.”
“Programmed to detonate under what circumstances?” Kirk asked.
“Under any circumstances where it can’t jump to safety instead,” Vedreg observed. “If it is attacked, if it is interfered with in any way… Lewis has assured me that not even he, its creator, could tamper with one of these once it is launched and active.”
“Not even to shut it down if it went rogue?”
“To tamper with it would be to shut it down, effectively. Explosively so. I have stressed the need for caution in this project.”
Kirk pondered the schematic. “Arguably of course, the Hunters wouldn’t need to tamper with it to see it replicating itself,” he pointed out.
“I have said as much to Lewis. He was… intransigent. He feels that the exponential growth of the coltainer system is essential.”
Kirk snorted. “I have received some news that may cause him to re-think.”
Vedreg rumbled at length before the translator finally delivered the equivalent, which was equally perfunctory in both English and in Domain: “Oh?”
“Let me summon him.”
Lewis ambled in some minutes after Kirk had called him, wearing his black clothing today. Apparently he’d finally aborted his experiment in growing a beard after a week of increasingly bitter grumbling about his own hair follicles, and had shaved. Neither Kirk nor Vedreg were in a position to know what a beard was supposed to look like in anything more than the academic sense.
“News?” he asked, hopping lightly up onto the stool that Vedreg had kindly installed for him.
“From Allied Extrasolar Command,” Kirk informed him, feeling quite pleased with himself. “Apparently they believe that the Hierarchy on Earth are now neutralized.”
Lewis took a high breath and sat back, with a smile spreading across him. “Oh man. That takes a big fuckin’ load of my mind. You think they’re right?”
“Paranoia remains our best strategy,” Kirk reminded him, “but… yes. I think the news is genuine. Or if it is not, then we have already been hopelessly outplayed.”
“The plan ain’t changed, then.”
Kirk nodded. “It has, a little. I need a ship, Lewis. A fast one. Faster than Sanctuary, if you can manage it without a Blackbox drive.”
“You’re gonna go meet them in person?”
“We cannot remain locked up here indefinitely.” Vedreg observed. “You said it yourself.”
“Hey, just… y’know, bring some other humans in on this shit!” Lewis exclaimed. “So long as I’ve got somebody fuckin’ bipedal to talk to I’ll be easy like Sunday morning. If it can maybe be somebody who can help me on the Coltainers, so much the better. Do you have any idea what it’s like having to learn everything from scratch for that shit?”
“I honestly do not think I could even begin to guess,” Kirk admitted.
“Most humans couldn’t, bro. Hell, I can’t. I’m givin’ it my best, but if it’s just my skinny ass workin’ on it then we’ll be done sometime around about, oh…?” He looked around and then jerked his thumb towards the window, indicating the huge red star they were orbiting. “When’s that scheduled to go bang?”
“You’re exaggerating.” Vedreg observed.
“Well, duh, yeah, ‘course I am,” Lewis nodded. “But still, I’m just one dude, dude. There’s gonna be like a fuckzillion things I never thought of with a project this size. I need help. And hey, maybe we can get you some actual flour, sugar, chocolate chips and apples. And – sorry guys – some fucking bacon because GOD. A man shouldn’t go this long without bacon.”
Kirk repressed the urge to grimace, and the green nauseated glimmer on Vedreg’s sides was a weak flutter as he fought down his own revulsion. They both knew perfectly well that while nutrition spheres claimed to be universally and perfectly nutritious, the reality was that they had been designed for the needs of herbivorous non-deathworlders. The medical suite that kept an eye on their general health had been reporting for some time now that Lewis was slowly but steadily falling behind on his needs for Cobalamin, Sulfur and Docosahexaenoic acid.
“I’ll see what I can arrange,” he promised. “There is one last matter…”
“Lemme guess. The von Neumann bit of these probes.”
“The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that we should not light that fire, Lewis.”
Lewis hopped off the stool and went to pour himself a glass of water, without replying. Kirk and Vedreg exchanged confused expressions as he did so.
“…Lewis?”
The human sighed. “Kirk, d’you really think I don’t get it? I’m a smart dude. A really smart dude. One of the smartest, maybe. You think I don’t understand exactly how big of a can’a worms I’m popping here? I’ve read Alistair Reynolds, man. Greenfly, interstellar Grey Goo, you name it, I know what the possible outcomes are.”
“Then why-?”
“Because some motherfucker is gonna do it eventually, so it may as well be us!” Lewis knocked back a mouthful of water – a volume that would have sustained Kirk for a day – and then a second, before clearing his throat and continuing. “But the idea’s already out there, man. I’ve seen the data lifts from the Internet, I’ve seen human fiction being sold on space stations all over the place, and that was five years ago. Von Neumann machines aren’t exactly a fuckin’ secret.”
“That is the sum of your reasoning?” Kirk asked.
“Only way to beat exponential growth is to start first, dude. Get ahead of the curve and stay there.” Lewis shrugged. “To be brutally fuckin’ honest, I have no idea why the galaxy ain’t already overrun with the damn things. Unless they’re one of the things the Hierarchy’s kept a lid on.”
“Or maybe nobody was ever so reckless as to launch them.” Vedreg suggested.
“Riiight, ‘cause interstellar civilization’s a fuckin’ beacon of rational decision-making.” Lewis said, levelly and acidly.
“There is no need to-” Kirk tried to intervene, but Vedreg interrupted him.
“And yours is?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, of the two of us, whose species is against the wall right now?” Lewis asked. “If it’s do something reckless or die, I for one choose reckless.”
Vedreg glowed crimson. “That is… only a deathworlder would think like that! You don’t have the right to make a decision that will permanently affect the entire galaxy. None of us do.”
“Choosing not to has the same effect!” Lewis gesticulated madly, which had the effect of launching his remaining half-cup of water across the room. It bounced and skittered into the corner of the room and spun crazily on its axis for a few seconds before finally rocking to a standstill. Lewis stared at it, then took a cleansing breath and went to retrieve it. “…The idea’s already out, man,” he repeated. “I ain’t making the decision, it was made the moment somebody uploaded Wikipedia to the galactic archives. So it’s gonna happen.”
“You are certain of that?” Kirk asked.
“Completely. An’ I figure… y’know, if we’re about to kickstart the galactic epoch of the self-replicating spaceship, we may as well do it by building one whose primary mission is to declaw all the OTHER self-replicating spaceships that are gonna follow.”
“A vaccine for the whole galaxy.” Vedreg mused.
“Dude. Project GALACTIC VACCINE, I like it.”
Kirk inclined his head at Vedreg. “You are persuaded?” he asked.
Vedreg pulsed contrite teal and imitated a shrug. “I will need time to consider… could the Coltainer project be modified to make suppressing other Von Neumann machines its primary mission?”
Lewis shrugged. “Dude, the Coltainer project’s still in, like, generation zero. I dunno how you’d program a mission like that, but…”
“I shall raise it,” Kirk told them briskly, “with Allied Extrasolar Defence.”
“You will?” Lewis lit up. “You mean I’m finally gonna get some help?”
“If you are so determined to do this, Lewis, then yes, I will request some help. Whether or not it is given will not be for me to decide.”
Lewis nodded. “…I’ll run up that ship for ya, then.”
“Thank you.”
“Whaddya want me to call it?”
“Pardon me?”
“Gotta have something for the reg code, dude. Whaddya want I should call it?”
Kirk spread his arms. “Choose for me,” he said.
Date Point 10y6m2w AV
Starship Racing Thunder, Orbiting planet Gao
Regaari
Regaari didn’t know ships very well. His business was a medley of intelligence-gathering and, when needed, of blood-on-the-claws interpersonal violence. Starship combat was too detached to fire him up, though he had to admit that he liked Clan One-Fang’s philosophy on the matter.
The One-Fangs were one of Gao’s youngest and, rapidly, one of Gao’s most distinguished Clans, holding as they did a near monopoly on spaceborne military action. Naturally they were allied with the Whitecrests but the tangled web of inter-Clan politics being what it was, One-Fang had aligned with the Ironclaws and their asteroid-mining and exoplanetary spaceborne industry, while Whitecrest were allies with the Ironclaws’ chief rivals, the Stonebacks.
Both of those two industrially-minded labor clans would be watching here. The Ironclaws in particular had a lot to gain from good relations with the Dominion. They were the ones producing the goods that got exported, after all. The Stonebacks were dammers, bridgers, construction engineers and general movers of soil. Their work was less exportable.
The Racing Thunder was a product of the One-Fang – Ironclaw alliance, and it was, in starship form, a Gaoian throwback: All claws and teeth and speed.
The privilege of flying Tiritya, the first Gaoian FTL ship, had gone to a Firefang Brother named Shoru, and the Firefangs remained devotees of the art of speed. Theirs was the other third of the alliance. Ironclaw provided the ships, One-Fang crewed them, and Firefang piloted the fighters. It was all guided by an interpretation of the requests and standing orders laid down by the Dominion, who had specified what kinds of ship fit with their doctrine.
Neither the One-Fangs nor the Firefangs had objected – after all, the Dominion’s fleetmasters had infinitely more experience of space combat than any Gaoian – but within those stipulations they had designed their ships to reward a Gaoian’s fighting instincts. They were fast, they were agile, and they were savagely over-gunned.
Regaari approved. He also quite liked the shipfather, Officer Yefrig, who was in many ways as un-Whitecrest as a Gaoian could be.
Whitecrests, for instance, were considered slightly effete by the other male Clans because Whitecrests typically tried to avoid scars, whereas the One-Fangs like many of the other more traditional warrior Clans actively cultivated them. A proper One-Fang wore his scars like medals, and father Yefrig in particular had a perforated right ear, the left ear was a blunt-tipped stub, his right eye was a cybernetic replacement that looked just as milky-white and blind as the original had been left (a neat touch that – all the masculine gravitas of a blinded eye without the inconvenient loss of depth perception) and there was a particularly impressive three-claw gouge on his muzzle.
Regaari of course had an actual medal. A circular one made of silver from Earth of all places, hung on a crimson ribbon with five narrow blue stripes and bearing the effigy of a crowned human male. The “George Medal” it was called, and while the medal itself was safely on display in Regaari’s office back at the Clan’s enclave, he’d chosen to honor the award by wearing its ribbon bar on the chest of the security harness that no self-respecting Whitecrest went anywhere without. Not a Gaoan tradition, but of course the award was not Gaoian either.
He could see Yefrig eyeing it. When the humans gave an award for “acts of great bravery”, it tended to make people take note, apparently.
He met the shipfather as wary equals – with a duck of the head and with paws held wide and to show that their claws were in.
“I hope you have good news,” he told Yefrig, by way of a greeting, “because I think I’ve done as much as I reasonably can.”
“It’s been enough.” Describing Yefrig as ‘terse’ was a minor understatement. “We’re ready.”
“Excellent. I’m ready whenever you are, then.”
Yefrig poured them both some Talamay and indicated the bustle of the bridge as his subordinate Brothers finished their preparations to go FTL. The ship had been badly hurt by her exertions in getting to Gao as fast as they had, and under the relentless pressure from the Dominion for her crew to be handed over for trial, securing all the resources necessary for her repair had been tricky and delicate. Unbeknownst to the One-Fangs, Regaari had even been forced to arrange an exchange that was not, technically, entirely above-board. Not illegal, that would have been ruinous to his reputation in the Clan. But not completely honest, either.
“How will you be returning to Gao?” Yefrig asked, handing him a glass.
“Cimbrean needs a stronger Whitecrest presence now that some Females are moving there,” Regaari mused, accepting it. “I may linger for a little while.”
This earned a gruff chitter from Yefrig. “Leave some for us!” he warned. “My Brothers have low enough morale as it is, without the added burden of an urbane creature like you competing for the attention of Females.”
Regaari returned the chitter and waved a conciliatory paw. “The humans have asked me to meet with them to discuss military cooperation, in light of… well, this.” he indicated the ship. “After all, there’s a permanent Clan enclave on Cimbrean these days, and now that females are moving there…”
Yefrig duck-nodded. “It’s almost our third colony.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Regaari said. “I doubt the humans will share it unconditionally. We wouldn’t.”
“You know them best,” Yefrig replied.
“Shipfather?” a Brother approached the pair of them deferentially and handed Yefrig a report.
Yefrig read it, then gave Regaari and encouraging nod. “We’re ready.”
“Outstanding,” Regaari derived quiet amusement from using the term. He’d learned from Warhorse that it had a very specific meaning in human military circles, along the lines of ‘progress made, but much too slowly’ and allowed the private joke to feed his good humor. It worked wonders, helping him effortlessly generate an air of unthreatening affability.
Yefrig, naturally, didn’t catch the joke and pricked his ears up pleased at the apparent praise. “I’m glad you think so.” He turned to the Brother and rattled off a few terse commands in a densely jargoned Clan-specific dialect that Regaari didn’t understand. He took no offense: Whitecrest had a similar argot of their own.
“Travel time to Cimbrean will be [six hours].” Yefrig reported, looking understandably pleased with himself. The transport that Regaari had borrowed for his last trip to Cimbrean, the Springing Ember had needed three days to make the voyage.
“So fast?!” he exclaimed. “I had no idea.”
“This ship is called the Racing Thunder for a reason.” Yefrig allowed himself a smug flick of his truncated ear. “Yours isn’t the only clan to borrow the idea of capacitor-based power systems from the humans, and not only does this ship have plenty of room for them, but ours are better than theirs.”
“I would hope so,” Regaari agreed, amiably. Gaoians after all had earned FTL travel and all its attendant technologies the hard way, through unassisted research and innovation. He couldn’t begrudge the humans for reverse-engineering nonhuman artefacts, but the fact was that they were the least technologically advanced species ever offered membership of the Dominion, while Gaoians had been rather more advanced than normal by the time Tiritya had first flown.
Gratifyingly, Gaoians were also not stupid enough to mistakenly conflate tech with primitivity, unlike some other species he could name. By and large, the Fathers of several clans were broadly thinking alike about humans and how potentially useful they might be to the Gaoian people… or at least how it would be desperately unwise of the Gaoian people to get on their bad side.
Hence this voyage.
The solution to Father Mavil’s challenge had turned out to be relatively straightforward. The Dominion would happily accept for the Gaoians to punish the deserters themselves, and banishment was a punishment. The One-Fangs wouldn’t have been satisfied with a punishment, but they WERE happy to have one of their ships assigned to the protection of Gaoian lives, provided that the crew had any hope of earning Clan prestige and the attention of females.
Cimbrean was the natural choice. It was “uncontrolled territory” according to the Dominion, and so any ship sent there under orders never to return was exiled. That part was easy. With the human fleet being down one of their best ships, and with their history of positive interaction with the Racing Thunder and its crew he had no reason to believe that they’d turn away the help.
As for the females, well… Cimbrean had plenty of males already. Between the Clan Starmind monastery and hundreds of Clanless in the Alien Quarter, Gaoians were actually the planet’s second-largest demographic. All it needed was for a few brave pioneering Sisters to take the first step. If the Sisters in question were pregnant, even better.
So, he’d called Myun.
Persuading her to move to Cimbrean had been simplicity itself. Quite aside from the fact that she was so guilelessly in love with anything and everything remotely human, it was effectively a free promotion for her. Myun’s xenophilia made her mildly unpopular despite her personal relationship with Yulna, which was an obstacle to mobility in the celebocratic and taxocratic world of the Clan of Females. Focused though she was, even Myun wasn’t so obstinate as to ignore that reality, nor so blasé as to scoff at it.
She’d agreed to move, and where a pregnant Sister went, other Sisters would follow, trusting in each other’s maternal instincts and sense of safety.
Relocating to a new colony and installing herself as one of the founding Sisters of the commune there would be excellent for her prestige, and she hadn’t needed much advice from Regaari to see that.
As for the Racing Thunder’s crew, they had a safe, legitimate haven, the Dominion got their “justice”, the Clan kept their Brothers alive and still doing good work, Gao got effectively another colony via the power of migration, and Regaari got both a victory over Father Mavil and an opportunity to talk some more with Admiral Knight and Major Powell.
He excused himself from the bridge as the One-Fang crew made the final preparations for departure. Not being Clan, he didn’t have a nest-bed among the crew quarters, and had to settle for curling up alone in a corner of one of the cargo holds, surrounded by the provisions, technology and barter goods that the Racing Thunder had taken on to lubricate their negotiations with the humans… or else to keep them supplied and comfortable in case the deathworlders turned out to be less hospitable than Regaari had assured.
Solitude or not, sleep came easily. He hadn’t been getting enough in the last several days as he flitted from enclave to office to commune to ship to briefing to meeting to private conversation to occasionally being able to return to his nest-bed and snatch some inadequate sleep in the company of his Brothers. Despite their absence, he curled up, tucked his nose into his fur and a One-Fang Brother came to wake him seven hours later without his noticing the intervening time at all.
He could hear and feel that they were still at warp, not as a sound exactly but as a sense that the ship was producing one that he couldn’t quite hear. Some texture in the air told him that an awful lot of energy was coursing throughout its structure.
“We are being intercepted,” Yefrig explained, over comms. “I’ve slowed us to half a kilolight.”
“Have they identified themselves yet?” Regaari asked, tugging on his harness and scratching the backs of his ears to wake himself up.
“Valiant and Vendetta,” Yefrig replied. “A surprisingly small response…”
“Humans love jump drives,” Regaari reminded him. “If we extend our claws, the others will show up in an instant.”
”Understood.”
Regaari was halfway to the bridge when the ship jolted slightly and there was a solid ringing noise.
“What was that?” he asked.
The One-Fang brother escorting him flicked an ear, amused. “A shuttle landing,” he said, and indicated a line on the ceiling which pointed the way to the Racing Thunder’s small craft bay. Regaari duck-nodded and detoured that way.
He wasn’t disappointed. The detail of One-Fang security officers who were welcoming the humans on board were shooting nervous glances at each other at the sight of four SOR men disembarking from their shuttle in full EV-MASS, among them the unmistakably hulking silhouette of Warhorse.
Regaari raised his paw in greeting and all four humans relaxed substantially.
“Yo, Dexter!” Titan called, being the closest.
“Hello, cousins.” Regaari deployed the term carefully, and the One-Fangs around him took note. “Cousin” had a specific meaning in modern Gaoian life, referring to a Brotherly relationship between males who weren’t actually Clan-Brothers.
“Hey, this ship’s a bit bigger’n the last one,” Baseball sauntered over and led him through the elaborate handshake they’d taught him. Quite why the twinkly fingers at the end were important, Regaari wasn’t sure – he suspected that subtle human sense of humor was at play.
“One hundred and eighty-seven crew,” Regaari informed him. “Not including me and the forty females and cubs travelling in the forward cargo hold.”
“Man, this is gonna take a while.” Baseball sighed.
“Gonna need to talk to the cap- uh, the shipmaster, Dexter.” Titan informed him, walking over with some kind of equipment slung easily over his shoulder. Several Brothers eyed the package nervously – it was easily more than any of them could handle alone.
“I recognize that,” Regaari pricked his ears up at it. “A portable jump array?”
“Ship this size, a full customs inspection will go way faster if we can bring some marines over from Valiant to help out, bro.”
“…I’ll call the Shipfather.”
Titan nodded. “Lemme know when he’s here.”
“You can’t miss him. He’s got a white eye, a missing ear and more scars than fingers,” Regaari told him, quietly so that the One-Fangs couldn’t hear. “And if you want to make a good impression, compliment him on them.”
“Thanks bro.”
Yefrig, to his credit, listened to Regaari’s advice and came down to the bay himself. The humans paused in scanning the Brothers as Titan noticed the scarred old One-Fang enter the space and loudly snapped “Detail, a-ten-SHUH!”
Again, the Brothers who didn’t know humans were taken aback. All four men stamped rigidly upright in their gear. It was an unmistakable gesture of respect for Yefrig’s authority, especially, when Titan’s hand came up smartly alongside the visor of his helmet.
Yefrig, of course, didn’t know how to respond.
“It’s customary to return the salute, shipfather,” Regaari informed him, gently. Yefrig inclined his head curiously, flicked his remaining ear, then did his best to imitate Akiyama’s salute. The humans unwound as soon as Titan’s hand had snapped down and he’d quietly ordered “as you were”.
Formality complete, Titan shook Yefrig’s paw. “Thank you for having us aboard sir, this won’t take but a little while.”
“Is it necessary to search the entire ship?” Yefrig asked.
“It is sir, yes. We have some marines on standby to come over from one of our ships, with your permission…?”
Very subtly, Yefrig caught Regaari’s eye, and got the most miniscule duck-nod by way of encouragement. He imitated a human nod with rather more force. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you, sir. Horse! Base! Get the Array set up!”
The two Protectors jumped to, grabbing the hefty equipment and slotting it together with practiced speed. Titan watched them at it. With his breathing mask off, Regaari could see him smile, though he had the good sense to keep his lips closed. The last thing jittery Brothers needed now was a show of teeth.
“Man, those are some wicked scars you got there,” he observed.
This didn’t quite have the desired result. Rather than preening slightly, Yefrig’s lone ear twisted sideways, perplexed. “Wicked?”
“Ah, translation problem,” Titan waggled the device clipped to his MOLLE with a wry smile. “Uh… impressive. You look like you earned every one.”
It was subtle, but Regaari judged that Yefrig was preening slightly at the observation. “I’ve never backed down from a challenge,” he agreed. Titan nodded, smiling faintly, and Regaari judged that the human knew he was now in Yefrig’s good graces.
“Well in that case sir, would you mind setting an example for your Brothers and submitting to the contraband scan? Won’t take but a second,”
“Very well. Though I don’t see what contraband I could be…?” Yefrig trailed off as Titan gently pressed a scanner to his head and watched it ping. To Regaari’s eyes the screen lit up a kind of bright yellowish-green, but he was aware that humans had trichromatic vision versus a Gaoians dichromatic eyes, and that the display on the back of the scanner was probably in a colour that he couldn’t see.
Whatever it was, Titan made careful note of the result. “Thank you sir.”
There was a thump from behind them and the jump array pulsed into life. A second later, a cuboid of black air resolved itself into a dozen human marines. Their gear wasn’t vacuum-proof and not a one of them was as prodigiously huge as even the smallest SOR operator, but even Regaari, who trusted the humans absolutely, found himself considering the fact that there were now easily enough deathworlders on board to rip through every one of the Gaoians almost without effort.
They were perfectly safe of course, but as the marines spread out and began a thorough top-to-bottom inspection of the ship it was hard not to be reminded of the discrepancy. The humans were being deferential, efficient and professional, but there was just something about the way they moved. They moved like pack predators, and even though Gaoians themselves were ambush predators the difference was unsettling. Their teamwork was flawless, and unconscious.
“What was that for?” Yefrig asked quietly, as Titan returned to his work.
Regaari watched as another of the Brothers was scanned in the head, and this time the panel on the back of the device lit up a different shade.
“…Tell me, shipfather, do you have any cybernetics?” he asked.
“A translator and a communicator,” Yefrig told him. “They’re scanning for cybernetics? Why?”
“Give me time, and I may have a theory for you.”