Date Point: 14y4d AV
Farthrow facility, Lavmuy, Planet Gao
Lt. Col. Owen Powell
“…Bloody Hellfire…”
The Swarm had…run. Fled, even. Scrambled over each other to escape. Farthrow’s deep-space sensors were tracking warp signatures scattering all over the sector at hundreds of kilolights in a blind panic.
Even the Hunter scouts had been stunned by the onslaught of…whatever they’d just been hit with. Their limp, drifting carcasses were easy prey for the Firebirds, which pinned them down with gravity spikes and sliced them to ribbons.
The system defence field went up…and nothing happened. No new signatures, no weapons fire from undiscovered ground-based weapons, no sudden X-ray lasers and no surge in Hunter comms chatter. From all appearances, Gao had, against the odds, been secured.
“…Literally,” Daar grunted, and snapped Powell back to the moment. He turned, and the Great Father gave him an appraising stare. “…Y’all’ve been holdin’ out on us.”
“They fookin’ held that one out on me!” Powell replied, fervently.
“Hrrm.”
Daar dropped to four-paws with a thump and stalked out of the command center, leaving Powell to rub his face and gather his thoughts.
He sat down. Performed a quick mental reset. Focused. There was still a lot to do, but right now there was an unfinished job ahead of him.
He picked up his comms headset and cleared his throat. “…ABBOTT,” he said. “STAINLESS. Alert’s over. Carry on as before.”
Costello’s confirmation had a note of confusion in it, but the younger man was patient. He’d seek an explanation when it was appropriate. For now, Powell looked back up at the helmet cam feeds as the HEAT relaxed again and resumed their preparations to recover a fallen Brother.
…To recover Rebar. That was a painful loss. Firth would undoubtedly blossom when he stepped into those boots, but…
He pushed the thought aside. There’d be time to mourn later. For now, it was time to focus on recovering his marooned technicians.
Date Point: 14y5d AV
High Mountain Fortress, The Northern Plains, Gao
Mother-Supreme Yulna
Yulna had finally learned a trick that her predecessor, Giymuy, had mastered in her youth: She’d learned how to steer a conversation without speaking. Looking at the right person at the right time, the right set of ears, the right non-verbal vocalization…The knack, once learned, was powerful. She was discovering that the less she said, the more she heard. It was…she wished she’d learned it earlier.
Still. Sometimes a little nudge was necessary.
“You must have some idea, Champion Meereo…”
Meereo’s huge, expressive ears swivelled awkwardly as he paced the room. “…it’s some kind of wormhole technology, that’s as much as I can deduce. It used a beacon code on the Farthrow generator’s exemption list…The sheer scale of it, though! Our sensors were completely overwhelmed!”
Meereo was an open and colourful book by Champion standards, but even for him such a display of raw frustration was telling. He paused his pacing, glanced at Yulna, and was prompted into continuing by nothing more than an interested tilt of her head.
“…Energy transmission? Somehow? But the only things I can think of that would be energetic enough would be a star, but for that kind of energy density you’d be trying to open the event horizon inside the photosphere…”
Grandfather Kureya shook his head. “Too dense. Even the corona would be dense enough to burst the event horizon. The wormhole wouldn’t form.”
“So they have to be sending something through…”
“That far from any beacons?”
“No, that’s easy. There are solutions to the tuning algorithm which permit formation at arbitrary distances from the receiving generator provided the absence of intervening barriers, that’s how jump arrays work.”
“…Then why even trade places with the beacon?” Kureya asked.
“Because those solutions get less accurate the further from the beacon you go. Beyond a very short distance they’re only pseudo…stable…” Meereo tailed off. After a second, his ears flattened against his head and he shook his head. “…Keeda’s burning balls! Humans are crazy!”
Yulna waited a second and then spurred him with single word. “…Because…?”
“Uh…” Meereo cleared his throat. “Wormhole tuning involves some, ah, finicky mathematics. It’s easy to generate a distorted-space bridge. It’s extremely difficult to generate one that will safely displace an enclosed volume to a predictable destination in a stable way. All of the unstable solutions are wildly unpredictable, by definition.”
“Unpredictable how?” Yulna asked.
“They destroy whatever’s attempting to transit the wormhole,” Kureya explained, “and/or have an impractical margin of error in their arrival coordinates.”
“‘Impractical’ is a delicate way of putting it,” Meereo said. “An unstable wormhole big enough to carry a helium atom could appear literally anywhere in the galaxy with a temporal margin of error measured in geological epochs.”
“So…You’re saying the humans have beaten that problem?” Yulna summarized.
“Beaten it? They’ve weaponized unstable wormholes!” Kureya exclaimed.
“They must have weaponized a pseudo-stable version,” Meereo corrected him. “One that still requires a receiving beacon, even at a remove. If they’d weaponized unstable wormholes I doubt very much if they would have fired it even now.”
Kureya nodded sagely, and Yulna decided she needed to prompt them again.
“Why so?” she asked.
“If they’d mastered unstable wormhole technology, it could shoot through their own system containment field and destroy it,” Meereo explained. “They’d have to be insane to give the enemy the key to exposing Earth. As it is…”
“…It’s a mark of how seriously they take our defence that they fired it now,” Yulna surmised.
Kureya duck-nodded. “You have it. It’s only a matter of time before the enemy figures out how that weapon works for themselves. Once they have…” He paused and exhaled.
“…Well. The Humans just changed the nature of galactic warfare forever. Again.”
Date Point: 14y5d AV
BGEV-11 Misfit, Planet Akyawentu, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Allison Buehler
“Well that was fucking terrifying.”
Xiù nodded fervently. “I thought they were going to rip your arms off for sure, God!”
Julian shook his head vigorously. “Nah.” He noted the incredulous look on both their faces and clarified, “At least, they wouldn’t have meant to.”
“Oh, great,” Xiù said, going pale.
Allison folded her arms. “Real reassuring there, babe,” she chided.
The ride back to Akyawentuo had been a long and tense one. After the uncomfortable revelation about comets, the Singer had wanted to see all the planets and the moon before they went home. The ship still smelled of Ten’Gewek body odor, which wasn’t unpleasant exactly. It was just… earthy. Unwashed. Even the Singer, who was fastidious about her ritual cleanliness, had a healthy hippy scent to her.
It had been an excuse to finally catalog the system’s planets, at least. Two Jovian gas giants and their retinue of moons, one with a set of rings nearly the equal of Saturn’s. Three blue methane gas giants, one of which had been a riot of swirling cloud systems that the exoplanetologists were going to love. There was a hard-baked cinder in a decaying orbit that was destined to fall into the star in a couple billion years, and the system’s answer to Venus was swaddled in blinding white clouds and had a surprisingly eccentric orbit.
The real crown jewel for Allison’s money, after Akyawentuo itself, was one of the ringed giant’s moons. There was oxygen in the atmosphere down there. That had taken some explanation when Singer noticed they were all nerding out about it; Julian did his spirit-monkey thing and had them all crowding around the display while he talked about what it meant. Vemik and Yan were rapt, the other Given-Men couldn’t pretend to their anger anymore…
He was good at that.
“Come on, you know them better’n that!” he protested. “I was never in any danger.”
“We know…” Xiù agreed. “But it was still terrifying.”
“You did good, dummy,” Allison reassured him. “Just… I dunno. I wanna say ‘be more careful in future,’ but you didn’t actually do anything careless.”
“Eh, maybe.” He scratched the back of his head. “We forget we scare them, y’know?”
“How so?”
“The ‘magic’ stuff. We’re tall, tall things are threatening. We look strange…”
“They’re really scared of you, Al,” Xiù added.
“All three of us,” Julian nodded. “But yeah.”
Allison quirked her head. “Why? That bit with the drones and the shotgun? They’ve seen worse since.”
“Yeah, but you don’t relate to them. And then there’s the ship’s systems. You control the lights and the gravity. That’s big magic.” Julian pulled the couch out of the wall and sat down. “My kinda magic is easy for them. I can beat on steel and they can beat on steel and there’s a connection, and I can talk shop with Vemik all day. And Xiù… I swear you can make anybody fall in love with you.”
That set Xiù’s blush off, and he flashed a grin at her then returned his attention to Allison. “But you? They don’t have any of the stuff they need to know to even start havin’ a handle on your job.”
“Also, that Sarah Connor look,” Xiù added as her face started to return to its more usual hue.
Allison nodded sombrely, seeing their point. “…It’s not like I want to be,” she said. “I just… hell, I love them! They’re great people! But about the only thing I have in common with any of them is bein’ a mom, and I wasn’t any kind of a mom either!”
“…Um… about that…” Xiù said, slowly.
“…Yeah?”
“…I think…I know this is a weird time to bring it up but better now than never, right? I just…” Xiù paused and gave them an apologetic look. “I don’t think I want to keep being a space explorer much longer,” she said.
Allison surprised her and Julian both when she nodded and sighed. “…Yeah. The shine’s kinda gone out of it.”
“You too, Al?”
“Me too,” she said, firmly.
“…Okay. Well. Way I see it, we have three options,” Julian said. “And we maybe get to pick two. Keep flying, stick with the People, have a family.”
Allison smiled and sat down next to him. “I bet I can guess where your vote is,” she said. “You suit workin’ with the People, and it suits you. And I know you want kids.”
“…Yeah,” Julian agreed. “But I care about what you both want too. Like, way out in front of those other things.”
Xiù climbed onto their laps and sat across them, slipping an arm under Julian’s and around his back. “And I care about what you both want,” she reminded him.
“You want to settle down too,” Allison observed. XIù nodded fervently, and she smiled. “…Then that makes three of us.”
“…You sure?” Julian asked. “You pushed hardest for… well, this.” He waved a hand to indicate Misfit and the whole adventure they’d gone on together.
“Women’s prerogative, Etsicitty,” she teased him and flicked his nose. “I get to change my mind.”
“Heh. Yes ma’am.”
“There’s no way we can raise kids on a spaceship, though,” Xiù pointed out.
“It’s fine. The last few days kinda drove home to me what’s really important in my life,” Allison replied. She scooted up closer and cuddled them both. “Bein’ a pioneering deep space explorer is cool an’ all? But I want you. And I wanna be a mom again. I’m ready this time.”
“…That will make Singer happy,” Julian observed. “Woulda made Vemet happy, too.”
“We still have the region to explore, and I bet the Group won’t let us go without at least another tour. We don’t need to figure it all out right away.”
“Lots of study time…” Julian mused.
“Face it, there’s a lifetime of things to do on Akyawentuo. I guarantee we won’t be bored.”
“I wonder if they’ll let us keep Misfit?” Xiù mused.
“I doubt it. She’ll probably end up in the Smithsonian next to Pandora one day, but there’s a lotta life in the girl yet. It’d be a sin to keep her grounded.” Allison looked around fondly. “But I’ll miss you, darling.”
By a quirk of pure timing, the message update tone pinged around the room as if the ship had replied, and the three of them devolved into giggling for a few seconds until Xiù, grinning, stood up and collected one of the tablets.
“I’d better see if that’s anything important,” she said.
Allison stole a kiss off Julian and snuggled into him. “Guess we get our little house in the woods back,” she said.
“No beaver,” Julian pointed out.
“There’s those little root-burrower things, they’re kinda like—babe?”
Xiù had made a strangled noise, and gone as white as a ghost with her hand over her mouth. She tottered back a few steps and sank onto the couch with tears welling up in her eyes.
She was immediately the focus of concern. “Xiù? Baby? What is it?”
Xiù handed the tablet to Julan and buried herself in Allison’s shoulder, making a tortured noise. Allison stroked her hair and held her, throwing a desperate look at Julian for an explanation.
Julian was way ahead of her. His shoulders dropped, he shut his eyes for a second, and ran a comforting hand up Xiù’s back.
“…it’s from Regaari,” he said, and Xiù heaved an enormous sob. “…He says Ayma’s dead.”
Date Point: 14y5d AV
High Mountain Fortress, the Northern Plains, Gao
Regaari
The fortress was both huge, and a maze. Centuries of modifications, renovations, remodelling and occasionally the wholesale construction of entirely new wings all while staying inside the existing footprint had left its innards winding and confusing and full of character. A knowledgeable mason could have read half of Gao’s history just by glancing at the walls.
Then there were the little details. Here, a claw mark in the wood told the story of some forgotten frustration. There, the dishing of a stone step eroded by hundreds of thousands of feet. The unique symbolism hidden in a rafter-banner told those in the know that its creator had been, if not actually a Whitecrest, then certainly some kind of a Clan precursor.
Despite the labyrinthine nature of the fortress’ interior, there was one route that was simply too straightforward to get lost on. Up, up and up the north tower, around a square staircase that was never quite the same number of steps on any given flight. It smelled of age, of dignity and of power, and Regaari could have navigated it blindfolded with crushed garlic stuffed up both nostrils.
He checked his personal messages as he ascended. It was the first chance he’d had since returning from Dark Eye. Aside from honoring a fallen Brother and maintaining his gear, there had been a priority summons. Great Father Daar wanted to speak to him personally.
So he read as he climbed. He’d sent Shoo an entirely too-brief message in the snatched time ahead of the Dark Eye mission, abandoning all his careful planning about how to break her heart in the gentlest way. In the end, circumstances hadn’t permitted kindness.
One more reason to hate the Hierarchy.
Shoo’s reply had pain written in every line, but she mercifully didn’t seem to blame him for breaking the news so abruptly.
Regaari,
Can’t believe it. Don’t know what to say, what to think. Wish I was there, wish I wasn’t, wish…
I don’t know. I have support. I hope you do too. I’ll come and see you as soon as I can I promise, if you can’t come and see me first. I’ll come to Gao, if I can. I don’t want to see it all torn up, but I’ll be there for you even so.
Please be well.
All my love and friendship,
-Xiù
He closed the message and took the last three flights on four-paw, dignity be damned.
The view was breathtaking, he had to admit. Night was falling, and of course High Mountain Fortress had a commanding view of the surrounding terrain. That was why it had been built where it was, after all. On a clear day, a sharp-eyed Gao could see the haze over three different cities.
On a clear night, he could see the lights.
And Daar had been given the top floor as a personal suite of rooms. He’d hate that. Daar’s first instinct was always going to be to bed down in the barn with the Naxas wranglers, if he could. Sleeping isolated at the top of the highest spire was going to fray his nerves raw.
Which was probably why Daar barked a sharp “Come!” as soon as Regaari scratched on the door-plate. Inside, Gao’s second Great Father was pacing a new bare patch into the rug, carefully avoiding the austere, antique furniture presumably for fear that he might damage it.
The door didn’t creak at least. It smelled of new oil, behind the rather more pressing scent of Daar’s own frustration. Regaari let it close quietly behind him and gave his old friend a wary look.
“…You wanted to see me, My Father?”
Daar sighed and to Regaari’s astonishment actually keened softly. “Not in private, Cousin, I’m begging you. Please don’t call me that when we’re alone.”
…Ah.
Regaari relaxed, answered with a soft keen of his own and dashed to his old friend’s side, no longer a deferential Father of his subservient Clan, but a concerned brother-in-arms.
He was the recipient of a back-breaker of a hug in return. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, right?” he asked, just about managing to not sound strained.
Daar loosened up slightly. “Huh? Oh. Yeah. Especially if he doesn’t fuckin’ want it…”
“Strange, that expression. Humans have the exact same one you know, word-for-word.”
“‘Cuz it’s true.”
“…Why do we even have that word in our language?” The thought struck Regaari suddenly and ominously. “When did our people ever wear crowns?”
“Old history, friend. Very old history,” Daar told him. “Fyu was the last and then only at his coronation. But no way are they makin’ me wear a fuckin’ crown. Not happening.”
There was a disturbing collection of suppressed histories hiding in that statement, Regaari realized. But that was for later. He chittered sympathetically and managed to gently escape from the hug. “I should hate to meet somebody who wanted a crown. He’d certainly be no Brother of mine. But can I be honest, cousin?”
“Please!”
“You need to wear that crown, Daar. Or something equal to it. Symbols are important.”
Daar snarled and threw himself onto the couch. “Cousin, can I please go five minutes without somebody offerin’ advice? I don’t need…” he paused, flexed his claws and then gave Regaari an apologetic look. “…I don’t need advice on how to do what I gotta do. I need somebody t’help me cope.”
“I’m trying, Daar. I didn’t say that without purpose. The crown is as much for you as it is for the rest. Its symbolism is important to the man who wears it too—you can take off a crown.”
Daar nodded sadly, and huffed a gargantuan sigh.
“But…fuck that for now.” Regaari flopped onto the couch with as little dignity as he could muster. “I’m glad you’re still Daar.”
“…An’ somehow yer still Regaari. Knows everythin’, smooth as a frozen lake.”
“Hardly.”
“I know. I was watchin’ when we lost Rebar. Between him an’ Ayma…An’ I know you loved her, Regaari. In the old way.”
“…I did,” Regaari confessed. “I think she felt the same way. She once said ‘If I could just pick one…’”
“…We all gotta give up the shit we want, don’t we? I don’t know how you do it an’ still keep so composed.”
Regaari relaxed back and stared up at the ceiling. “…I’m very good at deception. It’s a skill that my Clan is proud of…I daresay that’s an alien concept for a Stoneback.”
Daar huffed a dark noise that was almost the start of a chitter. “It’d sure as shit make life easier sometimes.”
“See? I knew you wouldn’t get it. Lying doesn’t make life easier at all.”
“Naxas farts. It’s the grease in the gears. The only reason my Clan can manage its honesty is ‘cuz we’re strong enough to keep our principles.”
“You’d be amazed at the strength that goes into maintaining the biggest lies,” Regaari countered. “Especially ones like ‘I’m okay.’”
Daar whined instantly, rolled on top of Regaari and curled them both into a ball. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
They commiserated in silence for quite a long time before Daar finally spoke again.
“…I gotta do somethin’ terrible,” he said eventually.
“Genshi says you intend to concentrate the biodrones and nuke them.”
“Yeah. We can’t muster enough troops fast enough to retake the cities ‘fore we’re overwhelmed with disasters. The plan ain’t changed since the first war council.”
“The one where you slaughtered the Champion and Grandfather of Firefang.”
Daar winced a little, but duck-nodded. “Had to. They were puttin’ the wreck of their Clan ahead of the whole of Gao. That…and I needed to terrify the others.”
Regaari regarded Daar with an inward wariness. He may well have been Regaari’s “most bestest Cousin” but there had always been a…relentless side to Daar. He saw a job, he did the job and anything that got in the way didn’t remain in the way.
That was why Daar had been named the youngest ever Stud-Prime of his Clan, why he was tied for youngest Champion. Why he was so hugely and dramatically successful in all his endeavors. Why he was so friendly, so boisterous…
…And so darkly perfect for the role that now fell on him.
“…So what do you need?” he asked. “You know what needs to be done. Is it even a choice at this moment? Is there an equal alternative I don’t know about?”
Daar shook his head and whined again. “…No. It isn’t. And there ain’t. Balls, I’ve been hoping for one since everything happened…actually, I didn’t tell you. I got nuked.”
“…You look well for it,” Regaari ventured, and Daar burst into a massive prolonged burst of chittering.
“Yeah! Yeah I do!” he growled and cooled down a little. Clearly, he’d needed some mirth. “…It was on Akyawentuo. Micronuke on a long-range air defense missile. Tossed me around like a fuckin’ rag toy.”
“You came through it well, then,” Regaari told him.
“‘Know why?”
“…Tell.”
“Same reason you’re copin’. It’s the Humans. If I hadn’t learned from them—if they hadn’t freed my mind from the Hierarchy and all their cultural taint—I prol’ly wouldn’t’a been strong enough to take that kind o’ beating. I wouldn’t’a known how t’be that strong. And even if I coulda lived before, I can’t help but wonder if I woulda…given up.”
“You didn’t, though,” Regaari pointed out. “You’ve never given up on anything.”
“No. But if there’s one thing the Humans taught me, it’s if there is will there is a way.”
“Fair enough, but be careful. We don’t need a Church of Human,” Regaari joked, glad that he was able to. His sense of humor had taken a beating, lately. It was a relief to feel ready to joke again. Daar chittered again, but sobered quickly.
“…We’re not gonna get one,” he said. “Gyotin’s a smart tail from what I hear. Humans and gaoians are gonna be peers, not pets. I’ll make sure of it.”
“They wouldn’t have it any other way,” Regaari agreed.
“Sure they would. Some’a them, anyway. There’s evil Motherless curs in any Clan. But Clan SOR was stupid enough to take us in an’ train us,” he chittered in fond humor, “So the least we can do is make ‘em work for it! No way am I gonna let Highland keep his winning record, either!”
Regaari rolled his eyes fondly. “You shouldn’t wrestle primates, Cousin. That’s their game and they own it. Stick to foot races or sled pulls, you never lose those.”
“So what? I’mma do it, you’ll see. Just a few more matches…” He trailed off in a happy growl. Even now, Daar’s positive and relentlessly competitive spirit couldn’t be dampened.
They had bigger things to discuss, however, so Regaari sat up straight and returned to the topic at hand. “…Which cities?” he asked.
“…Most’a them.” Daar sobered up instantly. “I’m sparin’ Lavmuy, Wi Kao, Den So and Kanmuy fer reasons of culture, and Shem Yui out east in the Three Valleys ‘cuz we’re gonna need it to keep people fed. Also High Mountain fortress. Our history an’ heritage must remain intact. Everythin’ else we can relocate or rebuild, thanks to capturing Dark Eye.”
“That’s still a lot of lost heritage,” Regaari commented. “Every city has its history, its culture, its libraries and museums…”
“Yeah. I know. But I gotta draw the line between necessary heritage an’ sentiment somewhere.”
“…I’m glad you’re sparing Wi Kao.”
“That’s why ‘yer here,” Daar grumbled uncomfortably. “I’m…attached to that city. ‘Fer a lotta reasons. I need to know if I’m sparing it for the right reasons, ‘cuz bein’ honest, I’m gonna lose a lotta ‘Backs securin’ it. And a lotta Human infantry, too.”
“Culturally, it’s the city that killed Tiritya. The city where the Clan of Females was founded. Fyu burned it to the ground then rebuilt it from the rubble. It’s the city of our first contact with Humans, the site of the largest and oldest Commune…it also has some working hospitals protected by a handful of Straightshield holdouts, according to the last reconnaissance report that I read.”
“…And no other city has any of that.”
“The history of our people is written in those streets. I say we add another chapter, not a full stop.”
Daar duck-nodded solemnly. “…Can I afford to spare more?” he asked.
“You are the last living Master of War, Daar. Highmountain hasn’t trained a replacement and I fear they may lose the tradition if you don’t keep it. No other gaoian is as qualified as you to make that decision.”
“I know.” Daar never pretended to false modesty. “I know what I think. I’m askin’ what you think, and what ‘yer Clan thinks. An’ I need it straight, without any Champion nonsense in between. That’s why I’m askin’ you and not Genshi.”
Regaari sat forward and looked down at the floor between his feet for a while as he processed his thoughts.
“…Five is… not many,” he said at last. “But realistically, even those five will be hard-fought. Whatever our sentiments about the other cities may be, we have to consider what we can reasonably expect to take and hold. Sparing all the heritage our people have means nothing unless we win and save the people themselves.”
“…Right.”
Daar groaned and stretched. “…I’m leadin’ the charge on an ag station out in Three Valleys tomorrow. The Human troops’re green, is my understanding. Fuck, Fiin has more experience than most’a their guys.”
“I skimmed the report. Captain Landry has serious time in the desert on Earth, though.”
“You still got that report? I need’ta know the people I’m workin’ with.”
Regaari duck-nodded and called it up.
“This is very different from working with the SOR,” he said, reviewing a healthily well-rounded and replete MTOE. The company due to fly out to Three Valleys in the morning had a fully intact chain of command, a healthy mix of seasoned NCOs and eager but inexperienced infantrymen, and all the sheer bullying mass and resources that Spaceborne Operations so far lacked.
He loaded the information into a Whitecrest machine learning program, which scoured it for handles. Anomalies, points of interest, disciplinary matters, commendations, anything that was generally out of the ordinary. Fortunately, Longear had managed to maintain some of the Clan’s most critical information systems, undoubtedly hosted in their rumored ultra-secure datacenters scattered across the continent.
“Hmm. You might like this guy: Specialist Michael Murphy. He’s been busted in rank twice. Seems to be related to a dispute about a female.”
Daar chittered. “You’re right, I like him already.”
“Does he need watching, you think? That suggests a volatile personality and we need to manage this first deployment very carefully.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Sounds like a ‘Back! Brothers like that just need a mission.”
“Be careful,” Regaari warned. “Humans are not gaoians. Their psychology isn’t the same.”
“It’s close enough. But just to be safe I’ll keep ‘em close, at least for the first bit. See how he does for his first real mission. If we’re lucky we can get things secured before the ‘drones figger shit out and get clever. They blow up the elevators there…”
“Then the Naxas herds will starve, we’ll be short possibly millions of tons of meat, and an already strained logistics problem will break irrevocably. We’d have famine for the first time in centuries.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Daar stated. It wasn’t so much a promise or a claim as a prediction. “It’s just the first in a lotta steps, and it ain’t even the only thing we’re doin’ in the morning.”
“I had wondered about that. You’ve been in so many meetings it’s been difficult to keep up.”
“Yeah. We’ve got a division’s worth o’ airborne infantry an’ all their support stuff. It’s been mostly the Champions and me sortin’ out what gets hit first, and what we can hit. I’m only on this mission ‘cuz it cannot fail. Everyone else is securin’ territory and controllin’ disasters…but this’ll determine if we can eat this winter.”
“And every winter after that.”
“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nuclear reactors gonna start meltin’ down next week, sewage systems that’re gonna overload with nobody t’run them, an’ fuck knows what else is gonna start fallin’ apart without proper oversight… but all’a that’s a bag full’a Naxas farts if we ain’t got nothin’ ta eat. And that’s just the stuff we can maybe avert. There’s assload’a smaller disasters gonna drop on us that we can’t do shit about.”
“There’s also the question of my Brothers and the HEAT,” Regaari reminded him.
“Best thing is ‘fer Clan SOR to go back to Cimbrean and recover. I need ‘yer abilities ready to go at any moment an’ it’d be a waste t’spend y’all on mop-up operations.”
“…My Brothers will find that difficult to stomach, Daar. I find it difficult to stomach. The fight is here, our people are here.”
“An’ yer vengeance is here,” Daar observed, driving a claw right into the metaphorical jugular as he so disarmingly did from time to time. “But here’s the thing. Real vengeance? That’s gonna come when we take the fight to the Hunters directly.”
That was such a blunt statement of intent it caught Regaari short. “You can’t mean—”
“This may just be cleanup, Cousin, but it’s at a scale nobody’s ever done before. We’re gonna do a crash-course basic training for every Clanless we find along the way, turn ‘em around, put ‘em with experienced units, do missions, and repeat.” Daar tilted his head curiously, “Have you done the math on this, Regaari?”
“…I admit, I’ve found the numbers daunting. A billion strong army always seemed…rhetorical.”
“Stonebacks don’t lie, Cousin.” He said it not unkindly. “An’ I ain’t in the habit of exaggerating, either. I meant what I said. We don’t have time to make weapons for everyone, kit them out properly or do any of the buildout the humans are used to. But for this? We really don’t need it. Gaoians got claws and teeth. What we need are warm bodies, fast, and we need an’ endless number of ‘em. So we basically press-gang the fittest Clanless we run into, show ‘em how an’ what to do by example…”
The numbers really were daunting, and the simple scale of Daar’s ambition was…
“…How long until the army is that big?”
“Prol’ly a year, maybe a little more. Train a group, go on mission, use that group to train more and send them on mission…we end up with geometric expansion. Add to that our industrial nanofacs an’ hardly any materiel requirements in the first place, things are gonna go way faster than America’s stand-up in World War Two.”
Regaari didn’t know the deep history of that conflict, but he did know the sheer logistical scale was in its own way unmatched—they had only just invented computers!
He reconsidered his friend warily. This was ambition like Regaari had not conceived. It was obvious just from Daar’s confidence and tone that the strategy was well-considered and carefully planned, too; clearly, he had been thinking about this for some time.
“…And you intend, once this grand army has swept Gao clean, to turn on the Hunters.”
“Eventually. We’ll need to rebuild, circle back and properly train and equip them. But by then they’ll all be blooded and eager to sink their teeth into the evil that did this to us. That army has an expiration date, Cousin, and we don’t even know how big of a die-off we’re facing. What else am I gonna do with an asset like that?”
“Disband them? Let them go back to a life of peace?” Regaari suggested, but his heart wasn’t in it. In his guts, he knew that what he’d just proposed was now impossible, for far too many. There was no such thing as a life of peace any more.
Daar just gave him a patient look which said loud and clear that he knew full well that Regaari knew he was being inappropriately innocent.
“Back to point, though. This is a numbers game right now. What remains of Whitecrest is much too valuable to squander. An’ if that don’t convince you, consider this: how long is it gonna take to train up assets that can actually breach a hunter space station?”
“…Years. And my Brothers will be the best option for training them.”
“An’ we’ll have HEAT ready and waiting t’help, too. Imagine what kinda force they’ll be when they finally get a full MTOE…”
“…Very well. Patience is one of our Clan values. I’m sure my Brothers will understand.”
“Don’t think of it like a burden, Cousin. ‘Yer doin’ what nobody else can. I’m gonna need you and your Brothers. Balls, thanks to you, the Gao has the finest nanofac in the Dominion right now. That’s huge.”
“Speaking of which, I have to be back at Farthrow. That nanofac came at a heavy price, and we’re sending him home in a few hours.”
“I know.” Daar heaved a sigh. “An’ I can’t be there. That fuckin’ hurts.”
“You need to rest and prepare for tomorrow, Daar.”
“Still hurts.”
Regaari duck-nodded and gave his old friend a brotherly scratch right between the shoulder blades. “I know.”
He stood up. “You know if you need me, I’ll come running four-pawed,” he promised.
“I know. An’ if yer findin’ that big lie a little too big to carry…”
Regaari duck-nodded. They sniffed noses as old friends, and he let himself out, back into the world where Daar was Great Father Daar.
They had a long and bloody war ahead of them.