Date Point: Thanksgiving, 10y11m3w AV
Independent Light Freighter ’My Other Spaceship Is The Millennium Falcon’, The Coreward Band
Dog Wagner
“This is another one of those ‘humans are crazy’ things, isn’t it? Or is it just you? I can never tell.”
Krzzvk had some major advantages over the average Vzk’tk when it came to the brains department. His parents had paid for some genetic engineering stuff and an expensive suite of implants, with the result that he could be downright intelligent on a good day. He sure had some lip on him and he was about the only member of the crew who would even dare to aim it at Dog.
Which was why he was Dog’s best friend in the whole world.
“Nah, brother, nah. The tradition’s simple. You get your family together, eat a big turkey dinner and be thankful for stuff. Easy!”
“For what? And to whom?”
“Brother, I don’t even care. Just thank whoever for whatever. Or thank whatever for whoever. Whatever.”
Krzzvk stopped and gave him the tilt-headed look he used when he was about to say ’You are very strange, Dog.’
“You are very strange, Dog.”
“Look brother, are you coming or not?”
Krzzvk nodded slowly, which was an impressive gesture on his species. It looked like somebody headbanging to the tempo of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
“It clearly means a lot to you,” he said.
“I haven’t celebrated it in a long time, brother.” Not since he’d parted ways with Hazel, fourteen years earlier. She was the last human he’d spoken to, too. Sure, he’d seen humans in the newsfeeds and heard about the new colony at Cimbrean and all that stuff but the last time he’d actually seen, smelled or touched another human had been Hazel.
He didn’t regret not going back with her though.
“Fine. But I have some questions,” Krzzvk said.
“Shoot.”
“Did you actually manage to procure one of these ‘turkey’ things? How? And am I expected to watch you eat it? I am not sure I want to watch you eat meat.”
“Nah brother, no turkey. I made what they call a nut roast. Sorta.”
“Nut roast.”
“Yah. You’ll like it, no meat at all. Super rich by Vizkitty standards but that’s, like, the point. You eat big rich food.”
Krzzvk looked skeptical. “That sounds like an excellent way to become nauseous.”
“Brother, if you don’t get nauseous then you ain’t doing it right.”
Krzzvk gave him that look again. “…You are very strange, Dog.”
“Five.” That was the day’s running tally of Krzzvk saying that. He was close to beating the record of seven that he’d set on Talk Like A Pirate Day.
“What?”
“Never mind. Just bring the wife and kids, yah?”
“…Yes, shipmaster.”
Dog snorted, waved his Vzk’tk first mate away and whistled merrily to himself as he returned to his cabin.
His cabin was a mess. It was always a mess. His inexpertly hand-made clothing was all over the floor waiting to be washed, there were datapads everywhere and his bedding hadn’t been changed in… uh…
Well, it hadn’t been changed recently. The room smelled of him, of Cqcq cigars, and of the still in the corner that was working its way through another sour mash of grains and Rwhk fruit. The resulting beverage, which he called ’Bootlegger’, was potent and surprisingly tasty thanks to years spent perfecting both the recipe and the still.
Or maybe his taste buds had a bad case of Stockholm syndrome. Didn’t really matter—the stuff not only got him drunk, but he enjoyed drinking it which was really all you could ask of booze. Taste good, pickle the ol’ grey matter. Check, check.
Oh, and not make you go blind. Check.
He grabbed a small glass of the stuff and sat on his bed to watch… something. He wasn’t sure what. Vzk’tk entertainment ran along most of the same lines as the human stuff but it was formulaic as hell. Though, the romcoms were better. They relied less on farce and wacky hijinks and more on slapstick humor, with the result that the hapless protagonist tended to suffer from a sequence of improbable accidents calculated to inflict maximum embarrassment, rather than from his own stupid schemes backfiring.
Honestly, the fact that the protagonists in Vzk’tk romantic comedies were generally smarter than their human counterparts was mildly upsetting, but Dog loved those movies as a result. They were the least predictable by far.
He was playing paddle-ball and watching the hapless Trkkvk climb out of the pond she’d just fallen into moments before handsome and suave Krtrktt came around the corner (or so he guessed—Vzk’tk standards of suavitude and handsominity were… different) when he was called to the bridge.
He kept playing paddle-ball on his way up there. Why stop? A reputation for oddness was pretty well automatic for a human living among aliens anyway, so he played up to it whenever he could.
“Talk to me.”
“We just shared data with a Laru Group heavy bulk freighter out of Free Trade Station Ninety-Four going the other way,” the comms officer said. He was one of the few crew members who wasn’t a Vzk’tk, a Rauwhyr by the name of Tlorcral and he didn’t like Dog at all. As far as Dog could tell, he only stayed on because Dog was by far the most profitable free captain he’d ever worked for.
A lot of that was because Dog was a smuggler, but the crew didn’t need to know that. Because hey, if a man found himself alone in space with his own spaceship and a conveniently uninquisitive crew, what else was he gonna do?”
“Must be juicy if you’re bothering me,” he half-observed, half-warned and half-accused.
“It is. The Group wants to run a convoy out to Cimbrean and set up a trading outpost there. Some kind of collaboration with a human organization called Hephaestus.”
“And they’re hiring free traders?”
“Cheaper for them than diverting their own ships from their scheduled runs. If you’re interested the convoy is forming up at Free Trade Station Fifty.”
“What’s in it for us?” Dog asked.
“You could see your own kind again?”
“Coulda done that already.”
“Get laid?”
“Enticing, but unlikely.”
“Expand your media collection?”
“…Sold. We’ll finish this run and head for Fifty.”
“Fine, fine. Just… stop paddling that ball next to my head.” Tlorcral had sensitive ears. Dog shrugged and took his paddle-ball to the other end of the bridge to read the message.
It didn’t share much. Some kind of a collaboration between Laru Trading Group and Hephaestus Limited Liability Company to establish a permanent port station at Cimbrean outside the forcefield, with adequate defenses to see off most plausible Hunter raids. He wasn’t quite clear on why the humans needed to be involved at all: if the aliens had wanted to, they could have shipped a station out there any time they liked.
Which meant that Hephaestus had requested it.
FTS-50 was more than a month out of their way, but he was already persuaded. He didn’t exactly plan on reconnecting but…
But Dog had to admit: He was curious.
Date Point: December 10y12m1w AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Kieran Mears
Letter for notes,
RE: SSgt John Burgess
Sergeant Burgess dutifully attended today for his routine annual assessment.
I have never quite got to the bottom of his reluctance in this matter, because he opens up readily and engagingly when actually in the session—indeed, he can scarcely be induced to pause long enough to be asked a question—and he has shown repeatedly that he is an insightful and highly intelligent man.
Reading between the lines, however, I suspect that he second-guesses his career decisions more than the other members of his team. He readily admits that he joined the SOR in support of Sergeant Arés, and may not have done so if not for his friend’s example. He also expresses self-doubt about his physical capability; in his words, “[he] wonders if maybe Firth would be a better Protector, and [himself] a better Aggressor.”
Self-doubts aside he presents as euthymic and positive. He takes a substantial yet quiet pride in his intelligence, though there is some small conflict at play; most of the rest of the team seem genuinely intimidated by his intellect in flashes through daily life, and Burgess may resent this. He also describes similar reactions from his childhood friends and family, and states that “being smart was never a good way to make [oneself] popular where [he] grew up”.
He is “bromantical [sic]” with Sergeant Arés by self description, which does much to alleviate these small issues of self-doubt. Arés, in fact, has done much to encourage Burgess’ intellectual pursuits stating that, quote: “If [he] [didn’t] get [his] Master’s degree [Arés would] bend [Burgess] into a pretzel and fuck [him] silly.” In the context of HEAT operators, this is merely an affectionate rebuke.
I will see him again in a year, but have made sure he knows my door is always open.
-Lt. K Mears Counsellor, HMS Sharman
Date Point: December 10y12m2w AV
BGEV-11 ’Misfit’, Interstellar deep space, near the Border Stars
Xiù Chang
“…*Fifty?!*”
Julian nodded. “Yeah! Turns out the whole Near Three Kiloparsec Arm is riddled with possible temperate planets.”
“Like the last two?” Xiù asked, just a little acidly. She didn’t mean to be, but it had turned out that looking out for nitrogen and water alone generated quite a few false positives. Aphrodite had been understandable, but their next wild goose had been a pair of chemically very different moons dancing around each other as they orbited a gas giant. The BEST, it turned out, wasn’t quite living up to its name.
She wanted to land somewhere. Stre tch her legs, swing her arms, breathe some clean air. Misfit was home and cozy and wonderful, but it was still small and confined. She missed birdsong and the sound of the wind. Their first temperate planet just couldn’t come soon enough.
Allison was reading the report with an eyebrow raised skeptically. “Are we sure the telescope isn’t fucked? I could run a diagnostic…”
“Be my guest, but I’m pretty sure it ain’t,” Julian replied. “I think it’s just great at spotting exoplanets and chemicals, but not so hot at definitively isolating all the right chemicals down to one planet at the right temperature.”
“So we’ve gotta check them all then.”
“We’ll never get through fifty planets in one mission!” Xiù objected. “Even if they’re all quick checks like Aphrodite.”
“Uh-huh. And we’re gonna spend weeks on a real one. We’ve got material here for…years!” Julian grinned. “Which is good news! They can’t all be false positives.”
“True…” Xiù conceded. “We must have found at least one real planet, we just have to… you know, find it find it.”
“Is there any way to narrow it down?” Allison asked. “I really don’t think there are gonna be fifty temperates around here. There’s gotta be something we can do to help the BEST figure out which are the real ones.”
Julian shrugged. “Send our data on Aphrodite back to Earth? Let them use it to update the telescope.”
“That’ll take months.”
“Well… why not kill two birds with one stone?” Xiù asked. “There’s a Free Trade Station not far from here. Maybe we can access the Dominion’s archives and see if there are some old star charts in there? That could help us narrow it down…”
The archives had been her favorite way to pass the time when she was alone after parting ways with Ayma and Regaari. They contained orders of magnitude more data than Wikipedia and just went down, and down, and down. She’d lost hours trawling through obscurities about the galaxy, most of which were uselessly academic… but a more targeted search could turn up something useful.
“No way we’re the first to think of that…” Julian said.
“I dunno…” Allison mused. “Did you ever take a look at the archives? There’s so much in there and it’s not like the Group knew we’d be exploring this exact region. If we search through them with actual system coordinates…”
“If you think it’ll work…” Julian conceded.
“It’s only a week out of our way and it might save us months,” Xiù said. “And we’ll be able to send letters and our data home and stuff so it won’t be a wasted trip anyway.”
Julian nodded “I’m sold. Allison?”
“Let’s do it.”
“Okay!” Xiù picked up her tablet and plotted a course. “We should get there on… huh. Christmas Eve.”
“I guess there are worse places to find yourself on Christmas Eve than a trade station,” Allison smiled. “At least we can buy presents. Maybe.”
“Maybe.” Julian sounded skeptical.
Xiù laughed and stood up. “Let’s get to warp, then.”
They headed for their workstations and got Misfit ready for FTL. Julian reeled in the BEST, Allison rebalanced the powerflow, and Xiù…
Xiù wondered if her memory was playing tricks on her, or if she really had visited that station before.
Date Point: December 10y12m3w AV
Cabal Communications Relay ZR343-9847X-AA4D9-BBB1B
Priority Session 159
++Cynosure++: We haven’t seen any sign of it since.
++Proximal++: Nor have our former comrades.
++Metastasis++: Is it too much to hope that it might have been destroyed in the battle? Large sections of the local dataspace were crashed…
++Cynosure++: It doesn’t share our notions of personal sanctity. It has shown an alarming willingness to copy itself, especially before engaging in risky actions.
++Proximal++: We do that too. You yourself restored from a backup…
++Cynosure++: But I do not keep my backups online and conscious. The Entity permits multiple instances of itself to exist at once, which can observe the primary instance and learn from what happens to it.
++Apoptosis++: So it has gone to ground.
++Substrate++: It could be anyone. It could be one of us.
++Cynosure++: I don’t think it is one of us, no. It is probably posing as a junior agent among the Hierarchy. One in the low triple-digits possibly.
++Proximal++: Junior enough to avoid constant scrutiny, but senior enough to be informed and to plan its next move. I agree.
++Metastasis++: That does not greatly narrow our search.
++Cynosure++: No… The only thing we can do is watch and wait.
++Apoptosis++: Unfortunately, I think you are right…
Date Point: Christmas Eve, 10y12m3w AV
Independent Light Freighter ’My Other Spaceship Is The Millennium Falcon’, Docked With Free Trade Station 50 ’Bastion of Fortune’, The Coreward Band
Dog Wagner
“Dog! *Dog!!*”
Dog ignored the way that Tlorcral recoiled in response to the cloud of Cqcq smoke he got in his face when the door was flung up.
“Merry fuckin’ Christmas, Tlorc. The fuck d’you want?” he growled.
Christmas was always bad. Christmas was the one time of year when he really felt isolated and alone. The ETs could get their heads around birthdays, and thanksgiving, and Labor Day, and Independence Day… but they really, really struggled with Christmas. The moment they learned how it was a religious holiday they just dismissed it as human strangeness and… tolerated it. Which was nice of them, but…
It wasn’t calculated to put Dog in a good mood. So he’d spent every Christmas for the last thirteen years alone, drunk and high.
Tlorcral stepped back respectfully, and Dog reminded himself to tone down the angry. Poor guy was shit-scared of him anyway.
“…Sorry, brother. I’m just cranky. ‘Sup?”
“There are humans on the station! They’re making a scene on the market promenade!”
“…No shit?”
“Two of them!”
“*No shit?*” Dog laughed. “Well damn, Brother. Lemme grab my pants…”
He jumped into the dark green canvas hand-stitched pants with the fewest stains and bounced to drag them up (putting his pants on one leg at a time like everyone else? Fuck that.) then grabbed his jacket—the real leather one, the one he’d worn on the day of his abduction that freaked ETs the fuck out because it was made of skin—and strapped on his sandals. Shoes and boots were way too difficult to make.
Then he stormed down the ramp and off the ship for the first time in months. ETs didn’t react well to humans. He liked to keep a low profile, usually.
This time though… well it wasn’t too hard to find Tlorcral’s humans. They were haranguing a Robalin shopkeeper and they were both fucking beautiful. A slender whipstrap blonde with a gun on her hip and a leggy asian chick with an action movie body, both wearing close-fitting dark sportswear. Sirens in polyester.
He stopped and stared because, fuck it, they were the first women he’d seen in years and a guy was allowed to-
“Hi.”
Dog nearly choked on surprise and spun around. Several nearby ETs flinched away as well. There was a third human, a rangy wolfpack kinda dude with shaggy black hair leaning against the wall alongside him with his arms folded, who smiled at him.
“Merry Christmas.”
Dog found his voice. “…Holy shit, brother! Where’d you come from?”
“Minnesota. You?”
“Uh… Indianapolis.”
The man extended a hand. “Julian.”
Dog shook hands—really shook hands, revelling in the fact that he could actually grip and apply some strength—and grinned. “Everybody calls me Dog, brother.”
“You’re a long way from home, Dog.”
“Nah, brother. Home’s moored at docking point six.”
Julian grinned. “I can relate to that.” He turned, stuck his fingers in his mouth and aimed an ear-biting whistle at the ladies. Both of them turned, saw Dog and dropped their jaws, then looked at each other and came over to join them. The crowd of ETs spread out a little more, watching these four deathworlders from a safe distance.
“Dog, This Allison and Xiù,” Julian introduced them.
“Zhao?”
Xiù smiled indulgently. “You can call me Shoo if it’s easier. I don’t mind.”
“Pleasure to meet ya. Feels like a gosh-darn Christmas miracle. I ain’t seen another Homo Sapiens in fourteen years and then three come along at once!”
Allison whistled. “Jeez. How long have you been out here?”
“Twenty years, thereabouts? I don’t really mind, but… dang.”
Julian laughed. “I can relate. Right Xiù?”
Xiù was staring at something in the distance and jumped at the mention of her name. “Huh? Oh. Yeah… um… Guys?”
She nodded toward a troop of security officers who were pushing through the crowd, and if their serious equipment was anything to go by they were armed for deathworlder. Dog knew Domain body language, and the Rrrrtk at the front was pissed.
It—she—drew herself up to her full and haughty height as she stopped in front of them.
“There are two scenarios that no chief of security ever wants to hear,” she began in a kind of icy conversational way. “The first would be that we are under attack by Hunters, and the second would be that there are humans making a fuss in a station’s public area. Not least because the latter can so easily lead to the former. Imagine my dismay.”
Xiù shrank, Julian scratched the back of his neck, but Dog and Allison turned out to have something in common—they both bristled.
“That son of a bitch over there is selling contraband,” Allison asserted.
“The Robalin? Please, tell me things I do not already know. Do you have any proof?”
“He has a tiger!” Xiù piped up. “They’re a protected species!”
“Thank you. I shall investigate immediately. You however are endangering this entire station just by being here. Are you even inoculated?”
“We’re clean,” Allison snapped. “Dog?”
“Sister, I’m cleaner than a surgeon’s soap dish.”
This pronouncement didn’t seem to sway the security chief. “Then that only leaves the Hunters. Am I to presume you have forgotten the ultimatum?”
“Those things are fucking kittens,” Dog said, dismissively. “It’s been nearly a year since Capitol Station and ain’t nobody heard from them since.”
The Rrrrtk held up one of her stronger hands. “I am not here to argue with you,” she declared. “I am here to evict you. All four of you. Immediately.”
“Speciesist, sister.”
“Okay, Allison baby? Julian? Dog? Could you…?” Xiù stepped in front of them and waved them all back. Dog made note of the ’Allison baby’ with an inward groan, but he backed off with the other two and they retreated to the other side of the market and watched her work.
The conversation swiftly grew less animated. The security critters all unwound a bit, stopped fidgeting with their pulse guns, and eventually backed down and wandered off in ones and twos. Their chief even shook hands with Xiù before departing, though she still aimed the best glare a herbivore could manage at Allison and Dog.
Xiù rejoined them looking thoughtful
“I persuaded her to let us stay until we finish degaussing,” she said.
“That’s our girl,” Julian smiled.
“She’s right though, we shouldn’t stay too long. Now that they know we’re here… the Hunters might find out.”
Dog bit back a scoff. “Hunters ain’t all that tough.”
She looked at him. “You’ve fought them?”
“Saw what that Jenkins fella did to ‘em, heard what happened in Vancouver. How bad can they be?”
Xiù’s expression hardened and she raised her hand to show him the back of her arm. Dog finally noticed that it was covered in half a dozen long, ragged scars. “They nearly killed me. That’s how bad.”
“Uh… Shit. Really?”
She nodded. “Mm-hmm. And they would kill everyone here.”
Dog looked around. Several nearby ETs were listening in on the conversation despite not understanding a word of it, but they could all follow the energy of it. The social context cues his implant was putting out would give them his half of it anyway. And they were all people, he knew that… even if it was disturbingly easy to forget sometimes.
Embarrassment. That was a rare one for Dog. He hadn’t been made to feel like a heel in years.
“…Don’t mind me,” he said by way of an apology. “I ain’t never actually seen a Hunter, I guess you’d know better.”
“Don’t mind me either,” she returned the apology with a faint smile. “They scare me.”
Allison rubbed her back, then made an offer that surprised Dog no end. “Hey, look, we can make our Christmas dinner stretch to four if you…?”
Dog looked around. “Jesus, uh… I mean part’a me wants to be all polite and say it’s okay but that sounds like too good an offer to pass up.”
“You’d be welcome,” Julian agreed, and Xiù nodded.
“Man… Look, lemme run back to my ship and grab some stuff, ‘cause ain’t no way I ain’t giving y’all some kind of a gift. ‘Kay?”
“Sure. We’ll see you soon.” Julian shook his hand.
“For sure, brother.”
Dog returned the handshake, turned, and literally ran back to the My Other Spaceship Is The Millennium Falcon where he grabbed one of his bottles of Bootlegger, changed into his best clothing and showered, in that order.
Then he went for his first Christmas dinner in years.
One thing was for sure: he was beginning to look forward to the Cimbrean run.
Date Point: January 11y1m AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Kieran Mears
Letter for notes, RE: Miss Ava Magdalena Ríos
This young lady, who has special access to DEEP RELIC and was involved in Operation EMPTY BELL, returned to my clinic today. She is on Paroxetine 20mg for PTSD and I have been trying to secure a therapy animal for her.
Today she was well-groomed and appropriately presented. Her mood was objectively euthymic and she made good eye contact, though she reports still feeling “generally low” and states that she still has suicidal thoughts. She expressed frustration that these are still plaguing her.
She was pleased to report that her flashbacks have reduced in both frequency and severity. Her sleep is not improved, but she reports that she no longer feels quite as disturbed by her dreams or when she “zones out”.
I highlighted the progress she has already made and encouraged her. She has become very attached to the idea of a therapy dog, and I hope to have one for her soon. I will see her again in a month, when I will hopefully have good news for her.
-Lt. K Mears Counsellor, HMS Sharman
Date Point: January, 11y1m AV
Independent Light Freighter ’My Other Spaceship Is The Millennium Falcon’, En route to Cimbrean system, The Far Reaches
Dog Wagner
“Man, I shoulda been a mercenary. Can you imagine? A human mercenary, I could charge a fuckin’ premium, brother.”
Krzzvk turned in his chair to give Dog one of those long, patient stares he did so well.
“Dog, there isn’t a violent hair on your hide,” he said.
“Yeah but, like, a human mercenary brother. Wouldn’t ever need to shoot nobody, ‘cause they’d all be scared by the big bad wolf reputation,” Dog enthused. “Just show up like ’fee fi fo fum motherfuckers!’ and they’d be like ’aargh’ and I’d be like ’I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!’ and they’d be like-”
“You are very strange, Dog.”
“Heh. Preach it.”
Krzzvk snorted and shook his head. Several others around the bridge did the same and Dog returned his attention to the Chehnasho mercenary escort ship that was keeping station alongside them. There were five of them dotted around the convoy, all huge engines and huge-er guns full of sociopathic frog dudes who played a surprisingly mean hand of cards as Dog had discovered in the days before the convoy set out for Cimbrean. They had great poker faces.
And right now they were falling back toward the rear of the convoy as a new contact came sweeping in and fell in alongside the front of the merchant fleet.
“That’s a Gaoian Starfire class strike ship!” Tlorcral reported. Dog raised his eyebrows at him.
“That good?”
“They are the newest and most advanced class, the ones the Gaoians have been sending to system defence fleets across the whole Dominion.”
Dog examined the ship’s IFF. “’Racing Thunder’. Good name!”
“Good ship. It would tear our Chehn escorts to pieces.” Tlorcral told him.
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Tlorcral replied in slightly awkward English. “It’s faster, more agile, tougher and more heavily arm-…” He paused. “And it’s hailing us.”
“Yeah?” Dog grinned. “Put ‘er through!”
He hadn’t met many Gaoians before. This one had an impressive scar that had damn near torn his ear in half and ended just behind his nose, and he bared his teeth in a passable impression of a smile for Dog’s benefit as soon as the call connected.
“I thought so! A ship with a name like yours could only have a human on board.”
“Captained by one, no less,” Dog grinned. “Dog Wagner, nice to meet you.”
“Shipfather Yefrig. So are you a Star Wars fan, or do you just have a strange sense of humor?”
“Little’a column A, little’a column B.” Dog admitted.
”Hmmm… the only Wagner I have on the list of unaccounted-for human abductees is-”
“-William Wagner the Second, yeah yeah.” Dog interrupted him. “That’s me.”
”Thank you… please move to the front of the formation. I think Cimbrean customs and border control will want to see you first.”
Dog nodded at Krzzvk to make it so, and with a little extra juice to the warp drive, My Other Spaceship Is The Millennium Falcon steered out past, around and forward of the other forty ships in the convoy.
He traded a few more pleasantries with Yefrig and then was left to sit and drum his fingers on his foot as the Gaoian ship moved on to other business and the last few lightyears to Cimbrean ticked down.
“Fuckin’ Christ…” he grunted after a while.
Krzzvk looked up. “What was that, boss?”
“Nothing brother. Just thinkin’ on stuff.”
Krzzvk teetered to his feet and picked his way over to Dog’s station. “Are you… alright?” he asked, quietly.
“Just shaken,” Dog confessed. That dinner I had with those kids on Station Fifty kinda… it brought back some stuff I thought I’d dealt with, brother. And now we’re about to meet more of my kind. Kinda turned my world upside down.”
“You were very quiet after you met those three,” Krzzvk acknowledged.
“Shock to the system, that’s all. You ain’t gone for years without meeting one of your kind. Guess I’d forgotten how… natural it feels, talkin’ to another human.”
“Natural?”
“Yeah, brother. Like… talking with you, I get the social cues from the implant, I get all the body language but it’s like… if I’m talkin’ to another human I just know that shit. Like, know know. You know?”
Krzzvk gave him the ‘very strange’ look again, but didn’t say it this time. Instead he gave his shipmaster a reassuring pat on the shoulder and returned to his work.
Dog fidgeted the whole way there.
The bubble of stress and anxiety he’d built around himself popped and vanished as three more contacts matched course with them, and these ones were…
HMS Valiant. HMS Viscount. HMS Myrmidon
Brits. He’d forgotten that Brits even existed. Stiff upper lips and cups of tea and the Queen and all that other stuff. He’d completely forgotten what an English accent sounded like.
He listened as just such an accent called Krzzvk to park them in orbit over the Cimbrean system’s fifth planet and made arrangements to send over a shuttle. Krzzvk cleared the shuttle deck and Dog…
Dog “nonchalantly” sauntered aft to say hi.
He was slightly surprised to discover that the shuttle that came over was a bog-standard Dominion one, the kind that nanofactories spat out by the thousand. Little more than a gray brick with a hatch at one end. Ugly.
Then that hatch opened and spilled out ten marines and the biggest man Dog had ever seen. They lined up in front of him.
“Permission to come aboard,” the big guy said.
“Fuckin’ granted, brother. Welcome!”
All the guests relaxed and the big guy stepped forward, hand-first. “Nice to meet you. Name’s Rebar.”
“Dog.” Dog tried not to wince as he realised that the dude had enough grip strength to jellify his hand.
Rebar nodded. “Look man, we gotta do a complete contraband sweep. Few questions.”
“Shoot.”
Rebar produced a box-shaped thing from his belt. “First things first, I need to run a medical scan on you, okay?”
“Uh, sure…”
The box was pressed firmly but not uncomfortably against Dog’s head. It emitted a beep and a yellow light, and Rebar grunted.
“Okay. Do you have any jump beacons on board?”
“Uh… I don’t think so. No.”
“Any vials of the medicine Cruezzir?”
“Nah, brother.”
“Any non-sapient fauna?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Class ten flora or higher?”
“Nope.”
“Any active, motile nanotechnology systems of any design?”
“Like a nanofac? Nah, brother. I fuckin’ wish. Just the machine shop.”
“Cool.” Rebar put his gizmos away and the marines fanned out to start turning the ship upside-down. He looked around with an appreciative eye.
“Nice ship. Yrvrk Shipyards Light bulk freighter model seven, right?”
“Uh…yeah!”
“Mark… four?”
“Shit, brother, how in the fuck do you know so much about ET ships?”
“Dude, I got to geek out over *actual spaceships!*” Rebar grinned.
“Well shit, when you put it like that…” Dog grinned, relaxing. Rebar’s sheer size was so intimidating it gave him an inkling of what it must be like for your average squishy ET to encounter a human, but the guy was so relaxed and friendly that he was impossible not to like. “Lemme show you ‘round!”
“Sounds good.”
For the second time in as many months, Dog reflected that he’d been out in the cold for far too long.
Date Point: February 11y2m2w AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Kieran Mears
Letter for notes,
RE: SSGT Calvin Sikes
Sergeant Sikes attended today for his routine annual assessment.
Although objectively his mood was euthymic, he confided that he worries he is “the weak link” in the team, and expressed admiration for his colleagues, stating that he feels they all exceed him in intellect, physicality or competence.
I advised him to try and focus on the unique skills and talents he brings to the team as its sole demolitions expert. Sadly, for reasons of confidentiality I could not relate his comparative testing results, which show him as one of the more intelligent and well-balanced members of the team.
He has promised that he will try to focus on skill set as well as raw talent and “try not to worry about it so much”. I informed him that he was always welcome to approach me at any time. Assuming I don’t hear from him before then, I will see him in one year.
-Lt. K Mears Counsellor, HMS Sharman