Date Point: 14y3d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Timothy “Tiny” Walsh
The humans (and Daar) had set up camp a respectful distance from the Ten’Gewek village. Close, but far enough away for some privacy and to avoid loose talk around the fire at night from maybe causing problems with awkward questions in the morning.
Walsh liked their camp. Even though it was a camp, it was a clear reminder of which species was the more advanced. Synthetic fabrics, carbon-fiber rods and nylon rope were a heck of a lot different to the furs, leathers and wood used by Ten’Gewek. Then there was the photovoltaic tarp which still had a place in the era of forcefields—they didn’t need a kick-start of power to get them running, and they didn’t produce detectable emissions.
Metal cooking utensils, the weather station with its scientific instruments, and the music completed the impression. It was Professor Hurt’s turn to put on some tunes, and he’d elected to start the day gently with some Norah Jones. Not Walsh’s style usually, but he had to admit that her voice went well with breakfast.
Hurt was napping in a camp chair with a book over his face, and Coombes and Hoeff were probably off getting in their morning ablutions over at a nearby Yshek-free stretch of river.
All of which made for a good moment for Walsh to ask Julian something that had been tickling at him.
“…Hey. Question.”
Julian paused at nibbling his fingernail and shook the finger out. “Yeah?”
“D’you have this whole big feelin’ like… ’okay… now what?’ too?”
“…Yeah. Been thinkin’ about that a lot, actually.” Julian scratched at his head as they ambled towards their tents. “I mean…I gotta figger you fellas won’t be hanging around forever. Daniel’s great, but he’s not exactly an outdoors man…we gotta whip him in shape, too. And am I staying? What about the girls?”
“Shit, bruh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well…can I be honest?”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re totally gonna stay, bro.”
Julian half-turned to look at him with his head slightly on one side. “How d’you figure that?” he asked.
“The Air Force pays me for more than my dashing good looks, y’know.” Everybody kept forgetting that behind everything else, Walsh was intel.
“Yuh-huh. And your actual answer?”
“You’re giving off all sorts of microsign. Word use, man. You’re talking past the sale, like it’s a foregone conclusion you’re gonna be here for years. Why else you talk about we whipping our nutty professor into shape? And if I’m not mistaken,” He gave the campsite a good look, “I somehow doubt you’d have built out something this nice if you weren’t planning on staying.”
Julian stopped and Walsh watched him survey his own handiwork. The campsite was…
It was a Human campsite. The People knew living in the woods and in the wilderness because that was their daily life and they’d been doing it since probably before they were even properly sapient. They were good at it, but their approach was a way of life. There was a layer of tradition and ritual on top of everything that said they did a lot of what they did because that’s how they’d learned it. It was all correct of course, but…
But Julian had learned how to live in the wilderness as a citizen of a civilized nation, and blended that knowledge with what his grandparents’ people had taught him. Everything he did, he did because he knew exactly what and why he was doing it. The tools, the materials, the placement and layout, it was all more scientific. Not sterile or lacking in character, but different in character, in hundreds of small, barely-definable ways.
He seemed to get the point. “…I maybe didn’t need to build a shelf, I guess.”
“Yuh-huh. So really, way I look at it? You’ve got a culture that’s depending on you to guide them through this. That’s a hell of a fuckin’ burden but duty calls, and all that. You’ve got the prof to help but he needs you too; we gotta whip his ass into shape ‘cuz he’s gonna die of a heart attack if he’s not careful. And you gotta study.”
“Gotta whip my ass into shape, too,” Julian grumbled. “And that still doesn’t fix the girlfriend problem.”
“Nah, it does. They’ll be on-board, trust me. Besides…we have a jump portal here, and Colonel Jackson’s gonna be deploying a system shield pretty quick, so…”
“…So, don’t worry about it?” Julian seemed incredulous.
“Nah man, just stop assumin’ like you gotta do this all on your own. ‘Cuz you’re not gonna, bro!” That seemed like a good time to pull the shorter man into a crushing sideways hug.
“Okay,” Julian said once he’d managed squirm out from under Walsh’s arm and come up for air. “So, again…what now?”
“Realistically? We’re prob’ly gonna be here for a while, ‘cuz SOR ain’t gonna be re-deploying us until they got a better mission. That’s maybe gonna be, like, a year or more away.”
“Wait, really?”
Julian crossed his big arms and tilted his head, which Walsh knew was one of those subconsciously dominant postures he’d recently favored. Julian was a rare man; he had no real idea how dangerous he was nor how much his body language telegraphed it.
If they had time some day, maybe Walsh would teach him the fundamentals of body language. Julian was a newly-big dude who still carried himself like a smaller man; he tended to posture himself to ward off attention in a friendly sort of way, which worked just fine when he wasn’t unintentionally looming about. Now those same habits could seem aggressive to people who didn’t know him, or at least impressively intimidating.
That was only a problem when he was stressed out, though. Tensed up, Julian moved an awful lot like a big predatory cat, and it was unnerving. Relaxed…he was much more like a lazy wolf who wanted belly rubs. Walsh just needed to get him to unwind.
And with Julian, the best possible way to do that was with honest, relentless optimism.
“Schyeah! With Gao and all that they’ve got their hands full and they’re gonna be full for a long damn time. They’ll want this system on fuckin’ lockdown too, and I bet they’ll want explorers for the surrounding star systems…”
Sometimes it was good to drop a little hint about what the future might hold, and if Walsh was perfectly honest with himself, it was maybe a teensy bit manipulative. But to be fair, it did at least have the advantage of being the likely truth…even if he would need to suggest it to his chain of command and encourage the correct outcome.
Julian took the bait and pondered that possibility, which seemed to take a little worry off his mind. “That’d be…nice. Still, we’d need to do all sorts of prep, I gotta worry about—”
More distraction.
“Nah, one step at a time, bro. First, we make Yan’s stew—”
“Heh. Yan can cook.”
“…I feel like I missed something.”
“Old TV show my gran’ma loved. Older’n me. Anyway after we’ve done with that, then what?”
“Well,” Walsh felt a little off-kilter for a moment. “Okay. Next, we’re gonna laze about for a while and answer all of Vemik’s questions. Day of rest and all that. And then, I’m gonna put both our asses through the wringer. Good stress relief!”
Julian actually seemed to like the notion of a good, solid weight session, and if Walsh were honest, he did too. But Julian still wasn’t happy. “…And after that?”
“We take it as it comes. You need to get stronger? No prob, we’ll get’chu fuckin’ beastly, you just tell us when to stop. Smarter? Dude, tell me the Prof ain’t chompin’ at the bit to fill your head with all sorts of cool stuff. Hell, I’ll be right there with you for all of that, man!”
“Allison and Xiù…”
“Them too! Duude,” Walsh chuckled and shook his head, “You really don’t know how fuckin’ valuable you three are, do you? Man, people are gonna bend over fuckin’ backwards to make this work, ‘cuz you three have drive and talent, the locals trust and respect you, and nobody anywhere doubts you can get the mission done. Don’t worry, man! Shit’s gonna work out, You’ll see.”
Julian still seemed a little skeptical and resumed his defensive posture. Oh well, Walsh had said what he could. Best to leave it be.
“Alright bro. It’s cool. But honestly? If life’s taught me anything it’s that you gotta go with the flow, dude. Only thing you can do right now is…what you can do.”
That probably wasn’t what Julian was looking for. Walsh could tell he really didn’t like the massive cloud of uncertainty that hung over his future, and if his suspicions were right, a big part of that was his girls’ futures as well.
But that was how things had to be. No point worrying about the future when the future was so precariously in the balance. The least Walsh could do is help him prepare.
He slapped the big woodsman on his shoulder. “C’mon, man. Dwelling on shit’ll just make you die younger. Sooner we get Yan’s stuff, the sooner we eat and the sooner we get to lift.”
That seemed to get at least a sideways grin from him. They wandered back toward Yan’s fire together, and Vemik was already there, bouncing about and ready with Julian’s lab-in-a-pack.
“Samples!” the young man declared happily, his hangover apparently forgotten.
Julian chuckled. “Okay, Sky-Thinker. But we’re getting wet today. I want samples from the river.”
Vemik pulled the best disgusted face that Ten’Gewek could, considering they didn’t have a nose to wrinkle. “River? Wet, muddy, full of Yshek and sickness,” he said.
“And fish. Good source of food, fish,” Walsh added. Vemik’s tongue lashed—a human would have blown a raspberry.
“Sickness is a good reason to study it,” Julian said, in the calm way he did when talking to the excitable young alien. “You can learn a lot from studying sickness.”
“Like?” Vemik asked, skeptically.
“Like how to cure it,” Julian replied. “Come on…”
Walsh chuckled and fell into a slow rolling step behind the two. He had a soft spot for the Misfit scientist and his cavemonkey Igor, but the life of training and protecting a researcher wasn’t for him.
He was thinking about the future, and he was pretty sure of exactly two things. One: This JETS team was done. Daar was gone and almost definitely not coming back, and if the war on Gao didn’t shake shit up to the point where recruitment to the SOR went skyrocketing, he’d let Firth kick him in the balls.
That meant more JETS members, which meant the current members would end up with increased seniority, maybe training roles. All for the good…but that wasn’t Walsh’s style.
Which meant thing number two that he was certain of: the second he got off this planet, Walsh was going back on the Crue-D, and back into the HEAT pipeline.
And this time, he was gonna fuckin’ well finish it.
Date Point: 14y3d AV
The Jitney, somewhere above the northern plains, Planet Gao
Technical Sergeant John “Baseball” Burgess
“So when LT said *‘retrieve the Champions for a strategic meeting’*…”
“He meant them an’ a buncha other guys as well,” Firth nodded. “Figgers Champions wouldn’t go nowhere in times like this without their buddies.”
“Be glad so many of them are still alive,” Regaari told them, flatly. He’d been in a morbid mood for two days, but as much as they were all worried for him there wasn’t a lot anyone could do. ‘Horse was adamant that the healthiest thing for Dexter right now was to keep him busy, and Regaari seemed to know it too—even in-flight he was constantly reviewing intel reports, combining the data that flowed to him from both the FIC high above and the ground intel from Human and Gaoian sources alike.
He was going to fall apart if that kept up forever, but they were all there for him. He’d keep it together long enough, Burgess was certain of it.
There were a lot of Gaoians on the Jitney. Champion Reeko, the Straightshield, was easily the most imposing of them. He was tall, stately, and looked like the kind of person who’d carefully and painstaking researched humor and then decided it wasn’t for him. His Brothers had similarly serious ears and the rigid posture that said there was a pole so far up their ass it was tickling their breakfast. They did not, apparently, trust Humans.
The Goldpaw Champion was every Hollywood stereotype about a medieval spice merchant all at once, and even in the middle of a crisis he was flaunting his Clan’s wealth by wearing it. It was like running into a playboy white kid with a Patek Philippe watch buying blow on the corner of ‘Base’s old neighborhood, except somehow less classy. Even his whiskers had precious metal braided into them.
…Okay, the whiskers were fuckin’ boss. He wasn’t about to admit that to Titan, though.
Titan was less than amused. He was a Japanese fireplug of a bro whose family had clawed their way up from poverty on the back of all their hard work. He was, in his own way, the hardest motherfucker John had ever known, and there weren’t much that he hated more than a Jive-ass motherfucker fronting it for all he was worth.
Watching Champion Reeko attempt to pry any bit of intel out of Adam was probably the most entertaining thing John was gonna see for a long time.
Then there were the Firefangs. Champion Halti, and Grandfather Ruuli. Neither was in any mood to speak with a human at all, and ‘Base almost couldn’t blame them. Their clan had been hit harder than any other by this war, first losing the great bulk of their Brother pilots to implants, and then watching as the fleet massacred those lost Brothers. By all accounts the brief high-speed knife fight between Firefang strike fighters and the 946th had been…ugly.
Human ships held a strong hand. The pilots were tougher, stronger, could handle G-forces that’d straight break a Gaoian. They had the edge in reaction speeds and the Firebird itself stacked up well against whatever it was that the Clan preferred to fly. When it came to straight-line acceleration the Firebird won by a wide margin, which meant they ruled the kinetic energy advantage.
Still. Gaoian tech was a long way ahead of where humanity was at. Probably the only reason the fight hadn’t been an order of magnitude nastier for the 946th was that the war—and intel gathered from a captured Igraen source—was highlighting an important difference between different “grades” of biodrone. Most were being controlled via a civilian implant suite—translators, cybernetic memory, that kind of thing—which could certainly subsume their will and march their body around, but didn’t seem to retain full access to the host’s skills and abilities.
Those “zombie” drones might be sitting in a pilot’s chair, they might have access to the knowledge of how to fly…but they weren’t seasoned, experienced pilots. They had no ability to interpret their orders or employ tactical cunning. In the absence of which, the tech advantage was much less important.
Even so, the 946th had lost people. The only saving grace was that when a Firebird was destroyed, the pilot and WSO probably didn’t feel a thing.
John thought a peace offering was in order. He sidled up next to Regaari, “Yo, bro. Can I snag one of your rations?”
Regaari glanced up from the combined report he was assembling and snapped to the here-and-now with a blink. After a second to mentally replay the question he duck-nodded and gestured to his pack. “If you suddenly crave cod oil and liver, be my guest.”
John nodded and dug one of the meals out of Regaari’s pack, then ambled over towards Champion Halti, who recoiled subtly. John kneeled and offered the food. “Dex says it’s pretty good.”
Halti gave the foil pack a long and suspicious look before taking it off him. He probably hadn’t eaten in the last couple of days if ‘Base was any judge. If he had, he probably would have refused it.
He sat down and let the Gaoian eat. At least in the pressurized air that whole airline food thing applied, dulling the pungent fishy scent that Gaoians seemed to love so much.
It was hard to tell if it had a positive effect on Halti’s mood. Hopefully it did—when the world went to shit, sometimes it was the little pleasures that made the biggest difference. Murray had a story about UKSF training in the Brecon Beacons mountains when he’d got soaked to the skin in foggy weather, wound up on the very edge of collapse and a simple cup of cheap hot chocolate brewed from a thermal flask had been the difference between failure and selection.
Before long, though, the food was gone and Halti was delicately licking the oily gravy from his chops.
“We’ve got more, one for everyone.” Without needing to be prompted, each of the Whitecrest operators reached into their combat packs and fetched their meals.
Diplomacy wasn’t all that hard, really. Still, Halti in particular seemed to be a tough shell to crack through. He said a polite “thank you” and sat in silence, watching the sky roll by outside the Weaver’s tiny porthole windows.
‘Base could play that game just fine. He settled in and waited, going over a few things in his head he’d been wanting time to go over anyway.
He got what he was waiting for after about twenty minutes. Halti’s ears had flicked a few times, until he finally sat forward and spoke to him directly.
“You seem very…calm.”
“That’s my job,” Burgess told him, emerging from his thoughts with practiced seamlessness.
Halti scoffed and looked away. “I wonder how easy you would find your job if this was your homeworld…” he mused, and went silent again.
“Ain’t about findin’ my job easy, sir. It’s about doin’ it anyway, especially when it’s hard.”
Halti didn’t reply, and ‘Base gave up. Some people, you could extend the hand to them and they’d rather fall into the ravine than take it.
He only hoped that insular attitude wouldn’t cause trouble later on…
Date Point: 14y3d AV
Three Valleys, Amanyuy Territory, Planet Gao.
Yeego, Clanless
“That’s the farm Dinso mentioned.”
Yeego stood up and got out a pair of optics to take a good long look at the farm in question. The whole area was glacial valley, wide and mostly flat with the occasional smooth roll to stop the terrain from being soporifically dull. The farmhouse was built on one such rise, just high enough above the surrounding fields that its occupants could survey their fields without difficulty.
The makeshift fortifications were obviously new. There were low walls of what looked like feed sacks or fertilizer bags, the farmhouse windows had all been filled in, and the whole property had a…prickly quality that Yeego didn’t normally associate with the agricultural life.
The bright yellow warning sign nailed to a tree probably wasn’t standard either. Yeego doubted that even the most fervently territorial farmers would be quite so aggressively defensive.
It read, in clear Gaori script: “Restricted area. Unauthorized approach will be met with lethal force.”
There were other markings below. Yeego couldn’t make sense of them, but if he had to guess he imagined that it was the same message repeated in a second language.
Below that, in smaller text, were the instructions. He scratched at his whiskers as he read them, then read them a second time. They weren’t difficult instructions, but…how to proceed?
Option the first: Turn around and return to the compound. Increase patrols around the treeline. Try to maintain order now that they knew there were armed Humans active in the area. Safest in the short term…too many volatile unknowns in the mid to long term, not least of which would be the accusations of cowardice from among his own ranks.
Option the second: Approach en masse…and get slaughtered, no doubt. Not truly an option, therefore.
Option the third: Follow the instructions on the sign. Approach alone and unarmed, and proceed to a spot that was still some considerable distance from the farm itself.
This was the option that posed the most personal danger to Yeego, but the known consequences of the other two options and the need to keep face in front of his followers made it also the one he was mostly likely going to have to take.
That settled it, really. If he was going to build a Clan, or at least a focus of stability in a world gone mad, he needed respect. Lose that, and the disillusioned Clanless would probably tear him apart anyway.
Tuygen cleared his throat. “I, ah…I heard that it is a Human tradition to use a white flag to indicate a desire for peaceful contact,” he suggested.
“It seems to me that too many people in our compound know a lot about Humans,” Yeego muttered.
“At least it’s proving useful?” Tuygen submitted.
Yeego sighed. “Any other useful nuggets?”
“…Don’t fight them. They’re stronger than you.”
Truly, a seneschal without peer. Yeego resisted the treacherous urge to flick his ear in irritation, and settled instead for grace and poise. “I will bear that in mind,” he replied. “Let’s find that white flag…”
In the end he made do with a dirty light gray tarpaulin. Hopefully it would look white enough, fluttering above his head on a pole. He borrowed a two-wheel vehicle from one of his scouts and kept his speed on the cautious side as he followed the route clearly laid out on the sign, until he reached the meeting spot.
He’d never met a human before. He’d seen them on the infosphere or broadcast media, but reality was something else, bringing with it the sheer impact of a deathworlder’s presence. There was nothing tangible about the sensation, just…an energy. He was looking at a being strong enough to rip his limbs off and crush his body accidentally and everything about the Human from his scent to his stance was a reminder of that fact.
This one was a robustly-built male burdened under a heavy-looking pile of combat equipment and armed with a black mechanical knot of a weapon which he leveled directly at Yeego’s chest.
“Halt!” he commanded. “Drop to your knees, paws behind your back!”
He stank of strength, authority and command, not to mention solvent, blood, mud and explosives. Disobeying an order like that from a being like that would have required Yeego to fight hard against his own instincts, and he’d already resolved that the best approach here was to let the Humans be in charge, for now.
Yeego was not, however, quite prepared for the indignity of being shoved face-down into the dirt and having something painful shoved against the back of his head.
Implants, he realized. The Human was scanning for implants, which dissipated his last lingering doubts over the advice he was getting from his “nerd squad” advisors.
He was, quite abruptly, let go and hauled unceremoniously to his feet. The human made sure he was upright and then backed off. It wasn’t a deferential or polite distance, but the room he needed to shoot if need be.
“Name,” he demanded.
Yeego flicked some dirt out of his chest fur and straightened. “Yeego.”
“Clan?”
“None. But I own a lot of land in the three valleys…including that farm.” Yeego indicated it with a tilt of his head.
“Why are you here?”
“I want answers, mostly. Some of our people were shot, using a weapon like that one.” Yeego indicated the Human’s rifle. “And your people have been scavenging from a township in the area. I’d like to know what’s going on before anything…unwise happens.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No. I’m not stupid. But my people are desperate, scared and under attack. I want to make sure they lash out in the correct direction, yes?”
The Human’s expression behind his dark glasses was unreadable, but after an uncomfortably long moment of silent scrutiny he stepped back again, turned aside and indicated with his head in a manner which unmistakably said ‘this way.’
Yeego duck-nodded and followed the road, aware of the fearsome weapon behind him every step of the way.
He glanced sideways at a ru stle from the brush at the edge of the path. A second Human, hitherto invisible among the foliage, materialized from behind a bush. The message was clear: ‘You don’t know how many of us there are, but we’re watching. Behave.’
Nice of them to warn him.
He could vaguely remember the last time he’d visited this farm. It had been…what? Fifteen years? Seventeen? Animal fodder wasn’t the most glamorous side of agriculture, but it was a solid investment. Naxas would always need hay, after all. In some senses, not much had changed. The still buildings all appeared to be present. The tractor looked like a newer model and he was quite sure the cheap PV panels on the barn had been a later upgrade, but mostly the layout was the same if one ignored the Human fortifications and holes, or the way they’d methodically smashed every window to replace it with sandbags.
He was ushered into the farmhouse and up the stairs, where a Human female with bright gold head-fur gathered into a neat bun looked sharply up at him from her position of power at a makeshift desk.
“Gave his name as Yeego, ma’am,” his captor reported. “Clanless. Apparently he’s the local land baron. Says his people were shot by attackers with firearms.”
The female sat back and gave him an appraising look. “So you came here to parlay? That’s quite a risk.”
Yeego gathered his paws in front of him and duck-nodded politely. “These are risky times,” he said smoothly. Which was nothing but the truth, in fact—the whole point of his exercise in Clan-building was that the world had gone insane and that daring action needed to be taken by those who intended to come out on top. Daring, by definition, meant risk.
“Hmm.” The female stood and extended a hand. “…Lieutenant Kovač, Spaceborne Operations,” she introduced herself. Yeego detected with interest a small hitch or hesitation in the moment before she said it, as though she wasn’t quite used to introducing herself that way.
Interesting. So Humans weren’t made of bedrock after all—they could be off-balance just like anybody else. That was useful knowledge.
“Thank you for receiving me,” he said aloud. When ko-vatsh or however her name was pronounced gestured open-palmed to the seat opposite, he perched on its edge with his ears up and an alert expression of polite interest on his face. “Forgive me, I don’t know this word loo-tenant.”
She nodded, and spoke in remarkably accomplished Gaori. [“The nearest Gaoian equivalent would be ‘Officer’ or ‘Brother’ among the military Clans.”]
[“I see. Thank you. I assume you did not attack my people?”]
[“We came under attack ourselves,”] she told him. [“By Gaoians armed with our own weapons.”]
[“And looting the town?”]
[“We needed the supplies. Appropriate reparations will be made once the emergency has passed.”]
[“And what, exactly, is the nature of this emergency?”]
Ko-vatsh took a second or two to think about how to phrase her reply, which was a clear sign of a big question. [“In short, it’s an existential crisis for the Gao,”] she said. [“A hostile galactic power has decided to eradicate your species. I presume some of your fellows—the ones with implants—have attacked you or sought to sabotage you?”]
Yeego duck-nodded that it was so and she mirrored the gesture. [“Anybody with an implant works for the enemy now,”] she explained. [“Whether they want it or not. That’s about five percent of your population globally, and substantially higher among some of the Clans.”]
[“And when, exactly, is an emergency on that scale likely to end?”] Yeego asked. [“Promised reparations are a lovely gesture, but if we perish for lack of supplies then the promise was meaningless. I have thousands looking to me for guidance and protection!”]
Ko-vatsh raised one of the thin strips of fur over her eye; Yeego had no idea what that meant.
[“Thousands, huh?”]
Yeego duck-nodded. [“Farmers, workers, miners…Clanless from across the three valleys area. It began as dozens, but word spreads fast.”]
She sat back again and looked at one of the males. “That sounds like a militia to me,” she said in her native language. She didn’t bother to deactivate the translator on her table.
“A militia?” Yeego asked.
“…Would you excuse us for a minute?” Ko-vatsh asked politely. She turned off the translator, and she and the male retreated to a corner of the room where they held a brief, low conversation.
The thrust of it was difficult to deduce from an alien language and alien expressions, but clearly the male was a trusted advisor of some kind. He asked a question, she answered it, replied with a question of her own. He gestured with his hands in a balancing or juggling motion and made an observation, she nodded thoughtfully and gave Yeego a cold, clear, steady stare that betrayed nothing except that she was sizing him up.
She made one short comment, the male paused, then moved his head in an interesting way Yeego couldn’t interpret before speaking a single word: ‘Yusmam.’
Ko-vatsh sat back down and reactivated the translator, presumably for the male’s benefit because she continued to speak in Gaori.
[“Here’s the shape of things, Yeego. We’re here because our ship got blown up…by the Hunters. The Swarm-of-Swarms is coming,”] she explained and Yeego totally lost control of his ears for a second—they plastered themselves abjectly to his scalp and he felt a sick, cold feeling settle in his gut. [“And they aren’t even the worst of it. From what I know, the campaign to ensure the very worst doesn’t happen is proceeding on schedule, but we have to hold out here until our comrades can relieve us. Right now, that’s…low on the priority list for them.”]
[“So,”] she continued, [“We want to live through this and get back to what we’re supposed to be doing. You want to live through this as well. Now, we have the backup and the big guns, but you have what we don’t—manpower. We just don’t have enough people to properly secure this place and make something useful out of it.”]
[“You need my help,”] Yeego surmised.
[“Honestly? We probably don’t,”] Ko-vatsh disagreed with a sideways jerk of her head. [“All we need to do is hold out until the] ‘cavalry’ [gets here. But it’ll help all of Gao, it’ll help your thousands of Clanless and it’ll help you personally if we can lay a solid foundation here for them to build on. I don’t want to just survive this, I want a victory in the three valleys—I want to turn this farm into what we call a Forward Operating Base. If we can do that, then your Clanless will benefit. That’s what we would need your people for.”]
[“That seems…ambitious,”] Yeego said. [“Unless you intend to be an occupying force.”]
[“The Stonebacks could use it just as readily as my own people.”]
Yeego flinched and Ko-vatsh noticed. The thought of a bunch of over-mated, over-muscled, testosterone-poisoned browny Stonebacks stomping and clawing all over his land…
[“That’s hardly an inducement to cooperate. Is all of that the reason you’re here, or…?”] he asked, warily. Something about the situation didn’t smell right.
[“No. We’re here because our ship exploded. A lot of good people didn’t make it out alive or able bodied…I’m just trying to make the best of a bad situation. In truth I’m, uh…taking some liberties in interpreting my orders,”] she confessed.
[“How so?”]
[“Decisions like the placement of FOBs is above my grade, so…I can’t actually promise that my superiors would want to build on anything we achieve here,”] she revealed. [“But I do know that one of the most important things for the Gao right now is finding a stable means of survival. You’ve just had your civilization kicked out from under you and you need to brace for the fall. Seems to me, a working farm that can defend itself from raiders and worse is a good place to start.”]
Yeego found himself duck-nodding along unconsciously. He recomposed himself but it was too late. She saw.
[“Besides,”] she added, [“in a survival situation it’s important to have an objective beyond basic subsistence. If you’re going to survive then your people will need a goal, something to motivate and inspire them. Without that…”]
This time, Yeego didn’t bother to stop himself from duck-nodding. She was perfectly correct, of course—He’d forgotten, behind worrying about things like a Clan name, emblem and motto that first and foremost a Clan was an objective, or a shared common goal. Without a sense of direction, his own position at the top would soon be toppled out from under him by an ambitious usurper with vision.
And Yeego had to admit, he couldn’t think of a better vision right now.
[“…What resources do you need?”] he asked.
Date Point: 14y3d AV
Delaney Row, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ava Ríos
Whining and scratching, and the snuffle of Hannah’s desperate nose under the door made for a pretty good welcome home. Ava pushed the door open with her shoulder, her hands being too full of camera equipment and takeaway food to achieve more than fumbling the key into the lock and twisting it, awkwardly.
Hannah, of course, was frantically happy to see her. But she was also a Good Girl, a top-quality, highly-trained service dog, so rather than jumping up her version of an enthusiastic welcome home was to immediately plop her butt on the ground and wiggle it ferociously.
Ava hung up her work bag on the hook by the door and knelt to scratch her ears. “Hey chica.”
Hannah was getting big fast, canine pregnancies being only about two months in duration, and the veterinarian said she was carrying a litter of six.
Six mini-Bozos. The thought was terrifying—Dogs with the intelligent energy of a border collie and the wall-smashing strength of…whatever Bozo was. Part mastiff, part pitbull, part hyperactive bulldozer. Astonishingly, all six of the puppies were already claimed—One for Adam and Marty, one for the Tisdale family, two for ESNN colleagues, one for the Governor-General…and one for Father Gyotin.
Bozo was literally over three times his mass, so Ava had no idea what he was on about…but Gyotin had been adamant.
Hannah was a much more manageable size all by herself. She sniffed at the takeaway bag, whined hopefully and thumped her tail on the floor with a lick of her lips.
“Yes, I got some for you…”
She left the takeaway bag on the kitchen island and got changed first. After a long day at work, the sheer relief of getting out of her bra and high heels and into fuzzy pajamas and an old, enveloping T-shirt that she’d stolen off Adam years ago and never given back…mere food could wait. The San Diego Padres were long gone, of course, but she was going to wear that shirt until it disintegrated.
A Red White and Blue burger for herself, and some lamb doner meat for Hannah. It was literally the first thing she’d eaten in twelve hours, and thank fuck for Charlotte and Ben who’d agreed to drop in and take Hannah for walkies. She owed them big for that.
“You wouldn’t believe the day I had, chica,” she said, as she settled in on the couch. Hannah flicked an ear, nose-down in her bowl. “I mean…God, the Gaoians are a big enough story all by themselves, but then, like…” she sighed. “This morning, I got an email landing about the biggest interview ever in my lap, and then two hours ago…gone. Just like that.”
Hannah finished scarfing down her treat and flowed up onto the couch to rest her chin on Ava’s ankle with a soulful expression. She got another scratch behind the ears for her compassion.
“…I mean, come on. The Misfit crew spent how long out of contact? No interviews, no comment, no..nothing. And then bam! Suddenly they want to talk to me?!” Ava sighed and inserted a fingernail under her drink can’s tab to lever it open.
She’d sworn off alcohol. It had been a painful decision, but there were too many negative forces pulling on her. She didn’t need another one…though right then, she would have killed for a glass of wine.
Instead she gulped down half a can of coke, and sighed again.
“I shoulda known it was too good to be true…”