Date Point: 12y8m AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Rear Admiral William Caruthers
Fleet legend had a lot to say on the subject of HEAT operators. Most of those stories, air recycling on a spaceship being what it was, came from HMS Caledonia and had to do with their legendary body odor.
The rest had to do with violence. The shuttle pilots in particular had enjoyed the privilege of watching HEAT operators drop out the back of their ride and inflict harm on a scale normally reserved for aerial bombardment.
Even accounting for exaggeration, those were some tall tales, and Caruthers was eager to see if they stood up to reality. Seeing that kind of performance in action might just help him endure having to make nice with the Prime Minister, a man whose career had begun with strident calls for nuclear disarmament.
In all the rush and confusion of trying to find appropriate officers to fill the gaps as the chain of command in the space fleet moved up a link, he’d almost forgotten the demonstration today. Filling his own shoes had been easy—Rajesh Bathini, captain of HMS Caledonia, had seniority. Bathini in turn had appointed his XO, Commander McDaniel…and the PM had objected. Even though Admiral Knight’s signature had gone nowhere near McDaniel’s promotion, she was still his daughter and the PM had smelled nepotism.
The man was going to be a pain to handle, clearly.
Fortunately, there were others present. Governor Sandy, Chief Arés and Cimbrean’s three supreme court judges all got their fair share of the PM’s time, so he’d finally had a chance to orbit higher out and catch up with the newly-minted Lieutenant-Colonel Owen Powell.
Now there was an easy icebreaker. “Never seen a man look so grumpy over a promotion, Powell.”
“You’ve never had a promotion party thrown for you by ten tonnes of American beef,” Powell confided, sharing something that might almost have been a wry smile.
“Sounds exhausting.”
“A dozen puppies, the smallest of whom puts a WWE heavyweight to shame, and they all want to show you how much you mean to them.” Powell actually looked fond. “Aye. Exhausting is the word.”
“Here’s hoping they can turn some of that energy on Davies,” Caruthers mused. The far end of the room was becoming an impromptu parade ground as HEAT operators both human and Gaoian lined up to shake hands. They’d apparently chosen to present themselves in ascending order of size. Sergeants Firth and Arés were having a mostly covert wrestling match to determine who stood on the end.
Firth won, via superior height and dirty tricks.
“Do they…always do that?”
“Aye, at all times, everywhere. They have a chart on the wall and everything.” Powell adjusted his collar. “For them, it’s healthy. Hell, that little tussle there was discreet and polite.”
“The Gaoians seem much more…restrained.”
“They’re the civilized lot. Even Champion Daar, when he wants to be.”
Daar himself flicked an ear at the mention of his name, but didn’t move. He was standing a good bit to the right of the next-largest Gaoian, in among the humans.
The Prime Minister made his way down the line, politely nodding and smiling without covering his teeth, Caruthers noted. That would need to be trained out of him. He spared a little longer for Murray, delivered a handshake firm and trustworthy enough to leave all of the Whitecrests massaging their paws, nodded politely at the human Operators and paused when he reached Champion Daar.
“You’re certainly a big fellow!”
“I am! Champion and Stud-Prime Daar. Hi!” He stuck out a paw that would make a grizzly bear blush, and gave Davies a taste of his own medicine. The PM’s smile became…strained.
“You’ve got a laborer’s grip, not bad! But you should pro’ly be careful with us weak little aliens,” he advised, baring his teeth in an imitation friendly grin that looked much more like a snarl.
“Erm….yes. Thank you for that.”
Daar released his grip and immediately slapped the PM on the shoulder. “If you ever visit Gao, we’ll give you the Champion’s treatment! I think the word is…state visit?”
Davies looked over desperately at his aide for clarification, and was treated to a few urgent words whispered in his ear.
“Oh! Right. Yes!” he managed, grinning weakly and trying to massage his hand without looking like he was massaging his hand. Caruthers gave silent thanks to long and arduous training sessions for the way he was able to keep a straight face while watching the odious little prat get wrong-footed.
When the PM had moved off, Daar looked Caruthers dead in the eye and winked.
They watched with interest as Davies tried—and failed—to recover his dignity by testing his handshakes on the Beef Trio. Firth in particular managed to be both perfectly polite and perfectly intimidating at the same time, and the only thing that stopped Arés from doing something similar was the tiniest shake of the head from his father.
Formalities complete, they settled in for the actual meat of the session—reviewing the simulator run. Stoneback’s First Fang had been invited along and were hanging off to the side, unwilling to inject themselves into the politics of the moment. All of them were…impressive. Not so much as Daar, but few of any species were.
They watched with interest as the ‘highlight reel’ from their scenario was called up by one of the simulation technicians, who conversed briefly with Technical Sergeant Kovač before launching into the mission objective.
“Scenario one, ground-based. The target installation has been overrun with Hunters, and key personnel and materiel must be evacuated from the field at any cost. The enemy is present in overwhelming numbers and the assault force must secure their ingress, hold the line, retrieve the HVTs, egress via jump array and, if possible, destroy the installation.”
Caruthers watched with interest. Ground combat was of course not his forte, but many of the principles were identical. Surprise, Speed, Security and Shock were at the core of spaceship battle doctrine just as much as they were at the hear t of the kind of ultra-aggressive ground assault he was watching. Species be damned, breaching and clearing a room was the same for everybody.
The Stoneback commander was one Brother Tyal, who stepped up to provide a running commentary. “We cleared our entry towards the objective using simulated air support. We would normally use Firefang assets for this but the Humans kindly provided in this case.”
The aforementioned air support…mowed a line right through the veritable anthill of hunters surrounding the installation. The Royal Navy pinned the Hunters in place and destroyed their orbital superiority with American nuclear devices, the Air Force’s fighter wing made very quick work of the Hunter’s air superiority, and the aforementioned close air support left little opposing First Fang’s ingress. From there, First Fang assault craft sped towards the installation and disgorged what could only be described as an angry wolf pack of assaultmen.
Once inside the installation the fight was man-on-man and their performance was… the word that sprang to mind was ‘feral,’ yet they were obviously quite competent and the mission had been accomplished with precision and skill. They wore only light armor and carried little besides weapons, yet they were so quick and aggressive it seemed not to matter. Every phase of the mission was stunningly violent and fast, especially the egress, where they detonated a nuclear device to destroy the installation. They left such an impressive trail of Hunter carnage in their wake it had even Firth nodding his approval. Daar, standing apart from everyone else, rumbled his own.
Had the simulated Hunters been flesh, the members of First Fang would undoubtedly still have reeked of blood and guts. The room stood quiet for a moment. The aggression on display had been breathtaking.
Tyal broke the silence. “Our objective was achieved at the cost of one Brother killed in action and two wounded. We estimate over one hundred thousand Hunters destroyed at the objective, the installation denied their plunder, and the targets secured to friendly control.”
He scratched at his scarred muzzle thoughtfully. “Obviously, the casualties are the big learning point here.” He turned to face the Whitecrests. “Officer Regaari, my Champion speaks very highly of you. Do you have any criticism to offer?”
Regaari duck-nodded to Tyal and to Daar with what Caruthers judged to be gratitude in the set of his ears, and took a step forward. His prosthetic paw drummed thoughtfully on his opposite forearm for a second as he thought.
“Whitecrest could never match your level of violence,” he said, obviously quite impressed. “But I think, perhaps, in his zeal to achieve the objective, Brother Kiru failed to discern the threat that claimed him and which may have been avoided with clearer communication.”
Kiru’s fellows pounced him in good humor as Tyal nodded along. “A fair critique, one we shall endeavor to improve upon.”
Daar chittered somewhere in the baritone. “You’re using your big words again, Brother!”
Tyal flattened his ears to the raucous chittering jeers of his fellows. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you? Even ten years later!”
“Nope,” Daar chirred smugly. “Shouldn’t pretend ‘yer civilized when you ain’t! I never do.”
The levity took some of the edge off, and everybody nodded around as the simulator tech loaded up the next highlight reel.
“Spaceborne scenario, HEAT Whitecrest. The mission is covert infiltration of a space station with the objective of retrieving an enemy commander for interrogation. For the purposes of this scenario, the HVT is a human…”
Date Point: Three days earlier
SOR training facility, HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Regaari
“Strike hard,”
“Strike fast,”
“Strike once…”
“Strike unseen.” SOUTHPAW finished. Humans would have produced the punchline in a lusty chorus, but Gaoians, or Whitecrests at least, didn’t work that way. The mantra was enough.
“Cubs play pounce.”
Regaari had to hand it to the humans: They’d come up with a hell of a training system. Apparently the idea had its roots, as so many human things did, in fiction. Specifically something called a ‘holodeck.’ Akiyama insisted that the Sharman training center was a pale imitation of a ‘real’ holodeck—and only a human would refer to the fictional thing as the “real” version—but reality was impressive enough.
The SOR’s training techs could assemble a one-to-one replica of any constructed environment in hours, populate it with simulated friends, foes and civilians of any species, and adjust the scenario on the fly from their control room. Some cosmetic details might be missing, but other details were impressively present. Details like the silent rush of air and loose debris as the Brothers created a small hull breach through which to board their MDF and spraypaint space station. Details like the way SOUTHPAW’s infiltration of the station’s networks contained the damage control alarm.
Gaoians could do things that humans couldn’t. Sticky electrostatic pads on the Suit paws allowed the brothers to swarm four-pawed across the walls and ceilings, ignoring conventional notions of “up” and “down” in favor of total control of the three-dimensional space of a room. Gaoians were good climbers even without the suits, but ‘spider-manning’ as the humans called it was a whole different game.
It certainly made infiltration a breeze. Absolutely nothing in the galaxy was instinctively alert for dangers from above.
The humans had offered a small cash reward to a Folctha citizen who was willing to join in what Blaczynski insisted were called their ‘reindeer games.’ The reference was impenetrable even for Regaari but the principle was simple: Hire a colonist, pay the colonist, give the colonist some simple instructions. Instructions like “Some Gaoians are going to try and capture you. Try not to let them.”
Regaari hated to admit it, but whenever he got the chance to stalk and pounce on a human, he got the faintest flicker of understanding where the Hunters might be coming from. Deep in their DNA, Gaoians were ambush predators. Cubs played pounce because stalking and ambushing something was fun—stalking and ambushing something that was actually difficult to stalk and ambush was both fun and rewarding.
Doing so to a human scratched an itch. Just for a moment, Regaari could forget that he was dealing with a species that outmatched him in every way. In the moment of the successful pounce, he and his Brothers were the better creatures. Fun, rewarding…and cathartic.
Which was why “Brandon”—Regaari never had learned his surname—never saw the abduction coming. He was alert, even nervous, and nothing was more alert than a jittery human…so the moment when Regaari and Thurrsto simultaneously dropped from the ceiling and had him pinned to the deck in one well-practiced pounce was oh so very sweet.
“JEEEEZZZusss fuck! How-? Where the….?”
“Shh. We sticky-patched you. You’re unconscious now, okay?” Thurrsto said, and tapped conspiratorially on the side of his muzzle in imitation of the human gesture.
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
Faarek had the portable jump array set up in a heartbeat. The three of them carried the “unconscious” and giggling Brandon efficiently into its field boundary, the rest of the team joined them, and they hit the jump button.
It wasn’t a real jump array of course. Hitting the button just sounded the klaxon to signal the end of the simulation, and Regaari glanced up at the clock on the training warehouse’s ceiling. Less than four minutes from ingress to egress. No shots fired, no alarms sounded, no violence necessary.
All in all…anticlimactic.
But damn had he enjoyed it.
Date Point: 12y8m AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Rear Admiral William Caruthers
The Stonebacks had earned the PM’s attention and discomfort through sheer untamed violence. They’d torn into their scenario like a sledgehammer, smashing and crushing and ruining wherever they landed.
The surgical Whitecrest performance put him equally off-balance, not least because Admiral Knight was discreetly dripping some choice observations in his ear. Observations such as Whitecrest’s own threat assessment of the Hunters. The idea was quite simple: Put the fear of God into the man, then let him know what God was afraid of.
To judge by his expression, Davies was listening.
Regaari finished summing up his commentary on the operation. “Target secured. No casualties, though some of our movement wasn’t as well-planned as we’d have liked: we had no intel on the layout of the target’s office, and we didn’t have time to properly evaluate the ventilation system for security countermeasures. Brother Tyal, do you have any thoughts?”
Tyal studied the simulation carefully. “Play back the scene where they entered the environmental ducting, please?” The tech did so dutifully.
“Ah. See that?” He gestured with a claw tip, “How your equipment is moving in the wind? That vent was blowing toward those guards, it could have carried your scent and led to your detection.”
Regaari paused, then duck-nodded ruefully. “I can’t argue with that. The suits make us less sensitive to scent and airflow. We shall note this in our training plan.”
Caruthers looked over at Powell, who was watching the reviews with a slightly arched eyebrow. He met Caruther’s eye, nodded, and spoke up. “Excellent observations,” he announced. “We’ll break for a bit now and grab a bite before reviewing the third scenario—Rear Admiral Caruthers has kindly laid out a spread for us and I don’t intend to let it go to waste.”
There was some appreciative chucking from the Lads, and they needed no further encouragement: they bounced over to the table and were quickly layering frankly alarming amounts of food onto their plates. Caruthers hoped it would be enough; he’d told his Chief Steward to go heavy on the vittles and she apparently had needed no reminder. Having already catered for them once before, she’d visibly steeled herself and set about the task with a solemn determination that told half a story all by itself.
One glance over at Warhorse told the other half; he had three steaks on his plate already and he wasn’t done loading up.
Shaking his head, Caruthers ambled over to Powell as they stood back and waited. Enlisted men always ate first in a combined mess anyway and it was a good excuse to pick Powell’s brain.
“Exceeded your expectations?”
Powell’s jaw worked in a distant, thoughtful way for a moment, but his firm nod confirmed Caruthers’ suspicions. “…Aye. All of ‘em. I had my doubts from the beginning, especially with Daar and his First Fang, but…”
Caruthers considered what he’d seen. “They’re good.”
“They’re fookin’ elite, they are.” There was an unmistakable gleam of vicarious pride in Powell’s eye. “They just needed a bit of a nudge. Everything else was already there, waiting to be used.”
”Oh dear.” Caruthers shook his head and chuckled. “Have we created monsters?”
“Woken sleeping ones, maybe…but you haven’t seen what my Lads can do.” A rare smile flitted across Powell’s weathered, handsome face. “We’ll see how First Fang takes that.”
“What was their scenario?”
“Sabotage of a shipyard, with the secondary objective being to recover ship schematics and technology blueprints from the station’s memory…” the table cleared and Powell invited Caruthers to join him in grabbing their share. “And I must say, they did a bloody good job…”
Date Point: five days earlier
SOR training facility, HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Anthony ‘Abbott’ Costello
Costello had several operations under his belt outside of the HEAT context, but being HEAT brought something that had been previously unavailable: The EV-MASS, and the men who could wear it. Their suits were fully-integrated sensors platforms and formed a resilient battle-net, placing Costello at the center of it all. He was a walking nexus of information, connected to the fight in a way most leaders could only dream of.
It was… incredible. Real-time LADAR mapping of the environment, the positions of his men within that environment, smart analysis of heat signatures and the tell-tales of weapons fire and active electrostatic shielding to help him track the enemy, highlighting of chemical, electrical and thermal environmental hazards…
All the tech in the world at his fingertips, but the real gift was the men. His Aggressors were the finest raiders in the galaxy. His Defenders treated the terrain like it was clay, and they themselves were walls: once the Aggressors had cleared an area, the Defenders would claim it and it would stay claimed.
And into that Claimed space would step the Protectors, carrying enough gear to outfit a field hospital and a small armory. Butler was proving his worth already: He was still quite green, substantially smaller than and not as fleet-footed as any of the team’s veterans…and thus by any sane standard a huge, strong, lightning-fast guy, and one acclimated to a Protector’s crushing armor to boot. They’d found his tactical niche easily—he was the HEAT’s armor-plated gopher, and his specialty was keeping the rest of the Lads supplied.
He grinned while doing it too, Costello knew it without even seeing.
When it was all running smoothly, the whole team could exert pressure in a way nobody else could. The Aggressors could pile on the firepower in perfect confidence that there’d always be a reload when they needed one. The Defenders never wanted for an explosive and wherever an extra gun was needed, there was Butler.
Parata and Newman were finding their niches too, slotting neatly behind Murray and Akiyama and complementing the two’s already comprehensive expertise…
In the moment, though, the thinking was less abstract, more immediate. Stimulus-response. Knots of hostiles that needed Firth to hit them like a wrecking ball, high-threat targets that demanded immediate servicing from either Murray or Blaczynski. The little tell-tales of an imminent counterattack on the right flank that not even the all-knowing Vandenberg saw coming, but which he and the other Defenders were nevertheless perfectly placed to counter when it arrived.
And once placed, nobody on the team needed much prompting. Daar and Sikes attended to their assigned mission task and had their explosives pattern planned out so well, they managed to finish slightly ahead of schedule even while dealing with very aggressive resistance. Arés and Burgess could move so fast and carry so much weight, they could quickly dart out of their basecamp, resupply anyone, and zip back to their duties before anyone had noticed. They only did it when it made sense too, leaving most of the gopher work to Butler.
And above it all, Vandenberg managed all the conflicting tactical details calmly and with utter confidence, deferring seamlessly and automatically to Costello when needed. Rebar’s radio voice was always level and absolutely suffused with command no matter what was going on. He even knew how to order Costello through a tactical problem without actually usurping his authority, which was a trick so impressive the lieutenant marveled at it afterwards. His team was perfect.
The whole scenario was surgery, done more by feel than by sight. Open a wound, insert the right tool at the right angle, work, withdraw. The whole team crammed themselves into the Jump Array within seconds, covering their retreat with smoke grenades and claymores. Sikes was the only one to drop out of character, when he looked up a camera, grinned, said something and hit the detonator in the instant before the array fired and the scenario ended.
The second it was over, Costello relaxed, and immediately skewered Sikes with a raised eyebrow.
“…’Watch this’?”
Daar baritone-chittered but said nothing, and instead focused on detangling himself from the rest of the team. Fitting everyone into the array was a bit like a game of Telephone Booth.
Meanwhile, Sikes just grinned. “Hey. Cool guys don’t look at explosions.”
He was promptly engulfed in a friendly wraparound one-arm hug from Firth. “Nerd.”
“Does that even count for fake explosions?” Costello asked.
“Sure does,” Sikes’ grin hadn’t faded, as he persuaded Firth to let go.
“Alright. Let’s get out of these suits. Hopefully we’ve given the Admiral what he asked for…”
Date Point: 12y8m AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Rear Admiral William Caruthers
Where the Stonebacks had been feral and the Whitecrests had been precise, the humans were textbook. The Aggressors moved with speed and precision that First Fang clearly admired. The Defenders—especially Sikes and Daar—laid charges and methodically crippled the installation as they progressed. Vandenberg and Akiyama worked their way towards the station’s datacenter, and everyone had their timing down so perfectly, the enemy had no chance to react.
Caruthers watched Costello closely. The young man had a commendable zeal for improvement, and was scrutinizing his own performance with a perfect poker face. He flicked his laser pointer over the screen to circle something that Caruthers hadn’t even noticed. “Blaczynski’s skills were wasted here. I failed to place him against a knot of Hunters, which ended up harassing the Protectors and their base camp. As a result, Burgess was required to engage the enemy. He did so effectively, but ideally we want Protectors to be focusing on support.”
‘Engage the enemy’ and ‘effectively’ were both heroic understatement. The violence that Burgess unleashed was effective, efficient and over swiftly, but Costello was right. They couldn’t afford to have their Protectors pinned down.
Arés grinned; The most he’d done in response to the threat was to shuffle around so that his armor’s thick backplate was facing the threat. Otherwise, his trust in his EV-MASS and in his wingman was so complete that he didn’t even seem to acknowledge that the threat existed.
It was only a small wrinkle in an otherwise flawless performance, but Costello tapped thoughtfully on his chin as he scoured the footage for any further flaws, though even he grinned when, after everyone had converged at the jump array with nearly perfect timing, Sikes looked dead into the camera and said “watch this shit,” before pressing his trigger in the instant before they jumped out.
The simulation technician shot the smirking Defender a wry look. “We simulated that demolition. There was a slightly more efficient way to achieve total structural failure, but it would have taken twelve hours and involved lots of drilling.”
“Sikes, you were telling me about that demolition pattern?” Costello asked.
“The scenario had that station orbiting a Hunter temperate world,” Sikes nodded. “We uh…Daar and me, we got to thinkin’, wouldn’t you wanna break the station into as few chunks as possible? That way it re-enters and does collateral damage groundside.”
“We had’ta run around faster to do it, but with the two of us, we got it done!” Daar fist-bumped with Sikes and sidled up alongside him in a remarkably canine show of affection.
Caruthers noticed First Fang’s positive reaction to that display of acceptance. There was something else at play in the room besides a simple training review.
Politics. The whole affair stank of it, both from the Prime Minister’s presence to the inter-clan compliments and deference between the Gaoians…all political. What wasn’t political, plainly, was the unforced and genuine affection between the human HEAT operators and their Whitecrest comrades.
“Daar is something of a political hot potato, isn’t he?” Caruthers asked of Powell. “He’s the closest thing to Gaoian royalty. Can we afford to let him join the fight?”
“From what I gather, it’d undermine him if we didn’t let him fight,” Powell replied. “Besides, he’s too bloody useful to waste. Costello put him to work well here, but I think we’ve got other plans for him.”
“Right. The JETS. You have a training and acclimation exercise lined up for a couple of months for now?”
“Aye. Should be more up Daar’s street.”
“Oh?”
“Gaoians are meant for the open ground, especially a great oaf like him.” Powell allowed himself a small smile. “Besides. Daar’s already on-board, today was about First Fang.”
Caruthers scratched at his chin. “How so?”
“Daar’s…summat I’ve learned about Gaoian leadership; they bloody well lead from the front, an’ that goes triple for Daar. I don’t think he’d ever have sold the alliance to his own Clan if he couldn’t show ‘em the benefit.”
“So this was, what, politics?”
Powell nodded approvingly. “Aye, but mostly it was to see what Stoneback was all about.”
“And your verdict?”
“They’re raw and maybe a little too blunt. But the ability is there. Give ‘em a bit more training…”
Caruthers nodded, then checked on what their visiting dignitary was doing. Judging from the slightly glazed look on his face, Knight’s friendly chat was nicely rounding off the impact of the footgate they’d just seen.
“I’d better earn my pay,” he decided. “Congratulate your men for me, Powell. I think they’ve put on an excellent show.”
“Will do,” Powell nodded. “Best of luck, sir. Rather you than me.”
Caruthers chuckled, sipped his drink for fortitude and then rejoined the fray. The day’s battle may have been won, but there was still a long war ahead.
Frankly, he’d have preferred Hunters.
Date Point: 12y8m AV
Starship Negotiable Curiosity, Planet Aru, Elder Space
Bedu
Corti ought to have respected the OmoAru, but they had always been too different in outlook. When the first University of Origin apparent-linear-velocity probe had taken its test flight, the OmoAru had been there to merrily applaud their new, diminutive gray neighbors.
The species had been…well, many things. No species was one thing. But the overall character of a species could be broadly characterized. Corti were aloof intellectuals, Gaoians were savages with pretensions of civility. Kwmbwrw were hypocrites, Guvnurag were cowards, the Vzk’tk were blessedly simple while Rrrrtktktkp’ch were their long-suffering sophisticated shepherds. Humans were crazy.
OmoAru were…fun. Jovial, jocular, kind-hearted and playful. Their genuine glee as the Corti’s devoted scientific edifices had first raced and then torturously clambered towards matching their own had been humiliating to Corti sensibilities. Cortan had no word equivalent to ’soul,’ but the conceptual equivalent had itched for the OmoAru to sneer at them, just once. That was what the more advanced, the superior and the higher-positioned did… wasn’t it?
The OmoAru certainly hadn’t seemed to think so, and they had that in common with Humans, unbeknownst to the unfortunate deathworlders who would never get to meet them. Bedu’s long conversations with Rebar, Snapfire, Starfall and Titan during the painful week they had flown his ship to refuge had revealed that about their psyche at least—all four had made the point that there was no good reason for the Corti to have allowed their bodies to diminish in pursuit of an expanded intellect.
They were right, too: By any rational standard, the cultivation of both was obviously superior.
And it was that thought that had drawn him onto what he suspected might be his hypothesis path for OmoAru decline.
“See? Collagen.”
Vakno spared a disinterested glance at the feed from the microscope. “And?”
“Don’t you-? We have just discovered Collagen in the bone structure of a non-deathworld lifeform!” Bedu enthused. His OmoAru test subject nodded and lashed its tail enthusiastically, despite there being no possible way he could have understood Bedu’s meaning. He seemed to be happy to just agree with…well, everything. He’d certainly agreed readily and happily to be a test subject which, considering his species’ status as spaceflight-capable sapients, meant that any investigation Bedu chose to perform on him that didn’t cause actual harm was all perfectly legal, even under the stringent reforms that the Gaoians had brought in.
Bedu personally suspected that the poor happy thing barely had the capacity for consenting to anything more complicated than breathing. It seemed peculiarly incapable of any state of mind that wasn’t either blank inactivity or sunny contentment. And this was the species whose elegant white starships had been at the vanguard of the contingent welcoming the ancient Corti into the galactic fold.
It was proving to be alarmingly difficult to maintain his composure when he was literally looking into the blissfully happy face of a living tragedy.
Vakno, of course, was apparently unaffected, but then again she was a silver-banner, the highest of the Corti’s breeding castes. Her emotional centers would be almost completely atrophied.
Her…
Emotional centers. Brains. Atrophied.
Bedu looked from Vakno to the OmoAru specimen and back again as a thought-line linking the states of one and the other crystallized sickeningly and almost induced him to panic.
The Corti were the oldest species now—if the pattern continued, then they would be the next to go. And they had picked listlessly at the problem for a few centuries, sending their best scientists, the high-caste silver and steel-banner wunderkinder darlings of the Directorate to do little more than glance at the problem, dismiss it, do a little grave-robbing and return with a respected historical or archaeological finding but no actual progress.
And now, as he watched Vakno disinterestedly turn away from a biological find that should have invoked delighted wonder in a real scientist, Bedu realized just how close to the fall his people were without even knowing it.
“Vakno…” he began, tentatively.
“This had better be important, Bedu,” she grumbled for the *n*th time, not looking at him. She was still tapping away on the communications equipment she had brought with her, still ignoring the literal fate of their entire species, and something inside Bedu finally passed beyond the limits of its tensile strength.
Calmly, he retreated from the lab and went to Mwrmwrwk’s old cabin. He took a few seconds to find what he had been looking for, returned to the lab, and solemnly fired his late friend’s old pulse pistol into Vakno’s expensive communications equipment until it was all wrecked and the pistol’s temperature cutouts had activated.
Finally he had succeeded in inducing an appropriate emotion from her: She stared at him, completely paralyzed by shock. He holstered the gun, and spoke the words that had been orbiting his brain for weeks now.
“Shut the fuck up and listen…” he began.