Date Point: 14y AV
Clan Straightshield Grand Precinct, Lavmuy City, Gao
Cytosis
Justice and the rule of law on Gao were a subject of fascinated study for Cytosis. The Clans were practically a law unto themselves, and there was no higher court in Gaoian culture than the esteem and opinion of Females. Even the Clanless—who in many ways would have been the largest Clan if only they had ever bothered to organize themselves as such—had considerable latitude in regards to some behaviours that other species would have considered gravely criminal.
A fight to the death between males, for instance, could be perfectly legal in the right circumstances. And Gaoians had such a strong cultural drive to share their possessions with their Clan or Workhouse that theft was a rare and treacherous subject. More often than not, the only things a Gaoian had which they viewed as being theirs were keepsakes, mementoes, souvenirs, trophies and other items of little conventional value but great personal importance. When those were stolen, usually it turned out that the thief felt an equally great sense of personal attachment to the object in question.
What mattered were the details. When a male killed a male, whether they were punished or not depended on many factors. Was it a fair duel, or an ambush in the alleyways? Did the killer have an overwhelming physical advantage? Had the victim yielded?
There were neither hard-and-fast absolutes nor black-and-white statements of objective truth in the Gaoian conception of criminal justice, and so the existence of a Clan devoted to law, order and a system of justice took some understanding.
But somebody had to be the fair mediator and moderator, the rock in the ever-shifting sea. A Judge-Father of Clan Straightshield didn’t so much interpret the law as decide what the law was in that particular moment. An arrangement that should have been anarchy and probably only worked thanks to the species’ unique social psychology.
Gaoians were, as a rule, intensely loyal people and no other Clan could be trusted with such a burden.
Straightshield fulfilled their mission by isolation—the only friends they had were among their own. In public, a Judge-Father never went by name. They wore their fur uniformly clipped and intentionally bred in a highly regular size, build, and coat coloring, to the point where it was a challenge to tell one apart from another even by scent. The Clan had legions of Brothers and Associates who deviated from the physical pattern of a Judge-Father, but they were advisors, enforcers, riot police and investigators. Even among the ones who met the physical requirements, very precious few could withstand the blisteringly difficult educational standards. They too were among the rest of the Clan. Big, strong, flawless specimens…but they weren’t the Law.
And nobody looked more like a Straightshield Judge-Father than Champion Reeko. Even those who knew him well often needed a moment to recognize him.
Cytosis hadn’t seen the Champion for too long, so his return to the Grand Precinct warranted immediate attention. With the whole planet rushing headlong toward imminent invasion, he absolutely could not afford unknown variables, especially when the variable in question was a Champion.
Fortunately, Reeko picked up Judge-Fathers, Brothers and advisors like a car plowing through a leaf pile—he picked them up and swept them in his wake. He acknowledged Cytosis with a sharp duck-nod and continued to converse politely into his communicator.
“Yes, I understand that Sister. And I apologize. Under normal circumstances the Mother-Supreme would have my full—yes. …As you say, Sister. No…forgive me, but no. I have nothing more than rumor and speculation and I wouldn’t want to waste the Mother-Supreme’s time with hearsay…” Reeko trailed off and listened intently for a minute. He came to a halt in the middle of the Precinct concourse and the blizzard of attention-seekers swirled around him before settling. “…Yes, Sister. As soon as I can speak with more confidence, I will contact you. No, thank you. I hope to be in touch soon. You as well.”
He raised his claws to ward off an inundation of queries, requests and pleas as the call ended.
“Brothers!” If there was one thing any experienced Judge-Father knew, it was how to loft their voice powerfully above a hubbub. “I know you all need me but for now I have business only with the Judge-Fathers. I trust everybody else to be able to handle their cases without me a little longer.”
Cytosis admired charisma. He stepped aside and let the disappointed Brothers disperse, glad that he wouldn’t have to wade through and overrule them to gently probe the Champion for information.
Reeko tucked his claws into the belt-loops of his working harness and watched them go with an impenetrable expression. He was hardly an open book at the best of times, but here and now his expression was completely locked down.
Cytosis had been harboring suspicions about the Champions and what they knew for some time. Now, he was all but convinced.
“…Champion, where—?” He began.
Reeko looked in his direction. Not at him, but past him, at somebody standing behind Cytosis’ shoulder.
“Now,” he said.
Numbness descended. The clothy, head-in-a-bag feeling of being suddenly and unpleasantly disconnected from the point wormhole field and its connection to the Dataspace. It was far worse than the mere physical pain of being thrown bodily to the ground by three of the Judge-Fathers and having his his paws wrenched awkwardly behind his back.
He was swiftly and efficiently stripped of his pulse pistol, his suppression prod and all the other tools of a Judge-Father. His paws were bound together so that no matter how he squirmed or pulled his claws would be useless, and he was unceremoniously heaved back onto his feet.
Reeko’s expression was no longer locked down. Now it was showing undisguised, disgusted contempt. He shoved his muzzle to within an inch of Cytosis’ borrowed throat and growled through bared fangs.
“I know what you are, Igraen. Speak.”
Cytosis calculated fruitlessly for a moment, but frankly he was too impressed to maneuver, here. Being so completely exposed actually gave him some paradoxical hope.
“…Then there is a chance for your people to survive,” he said.
Reeko paused and pulled back for a moment, tilting his head slightly. Then his paw gripped Cytosis’ neck and he dug his claws in through the fur. “What is your code name, Ghost? Who are you aligned with?”
“You are… familiar with the Cabal?”
Reeko’s claws tightened. “I ask the questions.”
Having his throat torn out was not on Cytosis’ list of desired outcomes today. And the pulse pistol pressed to the side of his head was hardly encouraging, either. “…My Cabal name is Cytosis,” he revealed. “To the Hierarchy, I am Thirteen. Do you need to know more?”
“Is Judge-Father Taarken still alive in there?”
“…It has been too long. His personality has…if I restored him, he would be insane. He is too badly degraded, now.”
“Hm.” The claws relaxed, microscopically. “An honest answer?”
“There’s no point in deception, now…”
“No. And if you had lied, I would have gutted you,” Reeko snarled. He yanked on Cytosis’ throat to make his point. “But you killed a Brother of mine, creature. How long have you insulted him by walking around in his corpse?”
“Seven years.” Cytosis debated inwardly for a second whether to reveal more information than that. Not yet, he decided. If the Straightshields knew interrogation as well as Six had reported that the Humans did, then it would all come out sooner or later anyway. Better to just answer the questions as they came, for now. Additional information was barter, and if Reeko didn’t think that he, Cytosis, was worth more alive than dead then presumably he wouldn’t have survived even this far.
“…That long, huh? Well. In that case—” the Straightshield Champion tore a terrible slash across Cytosis chest.
Cytosis locked the pain receptors down. The wound wasn’t fatal, and even if it was…well, discontinuity wouldn’t be much fun but his restored backup persona would only suffer the equivalent of a few hours of amnesia.
Of course, he as he was now would be dead, but rationalizing that particular problem was old hat to a digital sapient.
There was no sense in antagonizing Reeko, however. If cheated of his vengeance, the Champion might do worse, so Cytosis instructed the body to scream and struggle and watched the Gaoian’s satisfied snarl.
Reeko stepped back and licked the blood off his claws. “Lock this…thing away ready for interrogation,” he ordered. “And confine all Brothers with neural implants to their precincts until I say otherwise.”
Cytosis elected not to protest or whine for medical treatment as he was heaved firmly away. Now was a moment for delicacy.
He only hoped the moment for forthrightness wouldn’t be too long in coming. Gao didn’t have much time.
Date Point: 14y AV
Mother-Supreme’s personal aircraft, en route to Lavmuy, Planet Gao
Sister Myun
“You’re telling me that Champion Reeko brushed you off?”
“Yes, Mother.” Sister Yeyla duck-nodded nervously. “He was polite enough but…”
“Tiritya’s Sisters, what in Keeda’s name is happening today?”
Myun stepped aside as Yulna threw herself down at her desk. The Mother-Supreme’s personal aircraft had everything she needed to perform her duties, and that included handsome Takwood furniture and a state-of-the-art communications system dutifully installed for her by Clan Longear.
The flying office was full of mementoes to past Mothers-Supreme. Pride of place went to one of Giymuy’s walking sticks, resting in a display stand at the front of the desk.
Myun sometimes wondered what item of Yulna’s would stay behind to remember her. She’d been something of an ascetic for as long as Myun could remember. Her journal, probably—Yulna had a handsome Naxas-leather journal with a biometric lock on it, and she jotted a few sentences at the end of the day, every day.
Right now it was sitting alone and ignored on a side table.
“So Reeko wouldn’t talk. What about Father Shaal? He always fancied himself the Clan’s second stud, can’t you soften him up?”
Yeyla’s ears flicked nervously and she duck-nodded. “I’ll…try, Mother.”
“Good. …What about the Stonebacks?”
Normally, the Stonebacks would have been first on Yulna’s list. Whatever had happened with Daar on Cimbrean had badly hurt Yulna, though. She was treating them carefully nowadays.
Which was silly, in Myun’s estimation—Daar just wasn’t that complicated. Not that she could tell the Mother-Supreme she was being silly, but she’d got to know the Stoneback Champion quite well during their brief stay on Cimbrean. Even flirted a bit, until the mating app had confirmed what their noses picked up a bit too late to spare their blushes but early enough to spare them from worse.
She remembered being smugly proud for days of having a Champion for her sire, though the reaction amongst the Females had been…split. When she’d reported that revelation to Mother Ayma in their regular correspondence, Ayma had expressed delight. Yulna meanwhile had quietly muttered something about how it “explained everything,” though she had said it with her ears up. She had a talent for perfectly balancing compliments and insults in a single sentence, and she used it as a litmus test for junior Sisters: She would put them on the spot with a statement that could be taken either way, and wait to see what they did.
Ayma had also noted in her reply that Yulna had taken Daar as a mate some years ago. Yulna claimed not to know what Myun was talking about…but the nose never lied. Myun was pretty sure she knew exactly who her True Mother was, now.
“Daar is still off doing…whatever he does with the Humans,” Yeyla reported, checking her tablet. “Grandfather Garl is at Highmountain Fortress for some reason. Brother Tyal is doing…something with First Fang.”
“Whatever he does? For some reason? Doing something?” Yulna asked. “Yeyla, your information is usually a little more precise than that.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Mother, really. Things have been…rapid, recently.”
“Ever since the Conclave,” Yulna mused.
“We…don’t actually know that it was a Conclave, Mother…” Yeyla ventured.
“No, but I’d bet my other eye that it was,” Yulna made a frustrated growling noise, and thought for a moment “…What about the Openpaws? Tense times mean more fights, more wounds, more for the medics to do…”
The communicator clipped to Myun’s ear vibrated, and played a distinctive ringtone for her alone to hear. She stepped aside and took the call.
“Sister Myun here.”
Champion Genshi didn’t bother to introduce himself, but she recognized his voice anyway. “GAMETIME is in the fourth quarter, sister.”
“…You’re sure?”
“Our friends say that BIG HOTEL and RIDLEY are coming. Soon. The threats we discussed are now very real. Cubs play Sly Liar, behind Mother’s back.”
Myun made absolutely sure that her ears didn’t betray so much as a twitch. She knew Whitecrest’s covert phrases perfectly, Genshi had made sure of that, but all the secret words in the world wouldn’t be much use if she started to look panicky and fearful, even if there was a yawning hole under her stomach now that her courage was threatening to fall into and vanish.
“Thank you,” she said aloud.
“Good luck, Sister.”
“And you too.”
Yeyla was letting herself out as the call ended. Yulna gave Myun a curious look. “Anything important?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Myun replied, truthfully. Yulna didn’t argue. Instead, she yawned and combed her fur with her claws for a moment.
“…Any news from Wi Kao? Sister Teelyin’s cub is due today, isn’t it?” she asked.
Myun duck-nodded. “I think so.”
“I need to clear my head. I think I’ll call Ayma. Some news from home would be very welcome right now…”
“You should get some sleep, Mother,” Myun suggested, knowing full well that Yulna would need it in the coming days, and also that she wouldn’t agree.
“Myun, if I go to sleep now I’ll wake up just in time for my ninetieth birthday,” Yulna chittered. She stood up and headed out of her office to watch the busy Sisters outside. “Besides. Something is going on with the males, and I intend to find out what. I just need a moment, that’s all.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Yulna chittered back at her. “Don’t sound so tense, Myun!” she chided. “It’s probably nothing.”
If she only knew. But for her sake, Myun duck-nodded and pretended to unwind slightly. Inwardly, though, her guard didn’t drop for an instance.
She could smell violence in the future.
Date Point: 14y AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Master Sergeant Derek “Boss” Coombes
Daar wasn’t exactly a pilot. Not really. The ship had just been designed so pretty much anybody could fly it, to the point where even though the controls were in Gaori, Coombes had pretty quickly picked up everything he needed to man the guns.
Which was pretty fun, right up until a big, sharp and unhappy-looking Gaoian character in a triangle lit up prominently in the top-right of his monitor, to the tune of a kind of wailing screech that shot right in through both ears.
“Fuck! What’s that?!”
“Uh…Incoming. Missile. That’s what that is.”
“Can you shake it?”
“Relax, we got a bugout beacon in orbit…” Daar licked his jowls as he concentrated and threaded Drunk on Turkey neatly down a river valley, so low that Coombes kept expecting to hear branches slap at the ship’s belly. “Next target is…twenty klicks.”
Coombes nodded and did his part. “Locked.” At least, that’s what he presumed the stylized eye-shaped icon with the X in the middle meant.
Daar chittered as the guns slammed on either side of their nose and a fourth Abrogator was scrapped. “Think we got BIG HOTEL’s attention?”
“Nah,” Coombes managed sarcastically. The lock alarm’s slowly accelerating beep was getting on his nerves. “I’m sure the Ten’Gewek have a mess of SAM batteries and the whole stone-age hunter-gatherer thing is just an elaborate joke. By the way, we got three minutes until it hits us.”
“…that long?”
“Yeah! Our pilots would be disgusted by locking on that far out. No surprise!”
“What kinda dumbass deathworlders did they fight with these kindsa tactics, anyhow?” Daar asked. He grunted and flung Drunk on Turkey almost down to the deck as they raced across an inland sea. He poured on the power, and they were now moving so fast the bowshock was practically dragging the whole damn lake behind them. “Target five, twenty klicks.”
“Ones who’d already nuked their asses to Hell and gone…”
“We came close to doing that, too! I’ll tell you the story some other time.”
“What, y’ain’t got time for a history lesson right now?” Coombes was surprised to find he was enjoying himself. “Lock.”
“I am kinda busy…Net, Tigger. Splash Abrogators four and five. BIG HOTEL anti-air givin’ us some trouble.”
“We got five more jump beacons loaded,” Coombes told him. “After that, I gotta grab some more outta storage. Two minutes.”
“We’ve got time for one more…” Daar declared.
“Nah. No need to take a risk. Jump out.”
“‘Kay.” Daar pushed a button, and…
Nothing happened.
“…Uhhh…”
“That missile’s still comin’…” Coombes warned.
“Workin’ on it!” Daar promised. He swiped angrily at his controls and made a growling sound. “…Uh…I, uh, think they might maybe have a wormhole suppressor.”
“Orbit?”
“Nuh. It’ll catch us.”
“Go to ground?”
“…No good spot close enough.”
“Dodge?”
“Tryin’…I ain’t a fighter pilot, Boss.”
Coombes barged out of his chair and yanked the door of the emergency locker open so hard that he broke a hinge. With the other hand he smashed the glass over the emergency ramp override, and it suddenly got a lot harder to hear. There were forcefields to stop the airflow, but they did nothing about the fearsome thundering sound that slammed into *Drunk On Turkey*’s every corner.
“Parachute!” he yelled, throwing one Daar’s way. “Net, Boss. BIG HOTEL have wormhole suppression and SAM, we’re attempting to evade—”
“Radiological alarm!!” Daar called back. His ears had plastered themselves to his skull.
“—Scratch that, BIG HOTEL have nukes! We are bailing out.” He shrugged the ‘chute onto his back and yanked on the straps. ”Misfit, recall to Cimbrean and get us some backup!”
“I got a confession!” Daar yowled over the hammering wind as he struggled into his own chute while trying to fly one-pawed.
“What?!”
“I really hate jumpin’ outta stuff!”
“You’ll hate gettin’ blown up even more!”
“Not fer long I won’t!”
That earned a grim laugh, and the ship lurched as Daar experimentally tried to fly with his foot while he got his ‘chute fitted. Coombes gritted his teeth and held on.
“Boss, Sister.” Chang scored big points—She sounded laser-focused and cool. “Wilco. Godspeed.”
The ride smoothed out abruptly, and Daar charged past in the confined space.
“Tiggs, what—?”
“I slowed down!” Daar’s claws eviscerated his footlocker and he swiped through it for a few precious seconds. “Can’t jump at those speeds!”
“Tiggs, we don’t have time for souvenirs—!” The beep was getting dangerously close to being a sustained, steady note.
Daar yipped triumphantly and snatched a fat black package of some kind from the footlocker. He rammed it in between his chest and the ‘chute’s straps.
“Go!”
Coombes didn’t need telling twice. He turned and dove out of the ramp like an Olympic swimmer.
Even though Tigger had slowed a heck of a lot, the wind still hit him like a wall and snatched him away. The shriek of *Drunk On Turkey*’s engines faded to a distant tearing sound, then all that was left was altitude, a hollow yawning feeling in his stomach, and the hammering rush of air past his ears. He spread his arms to dampen his spin and stabilize his fall, screwed his eyes shut and looked away from the ship. As much as he wanted to give the poor doomed gal a last glance….
The flash was dazzling even through closed eyes from behind, and the heat was something else entirely. He’d watched the People tapping a smelter and the heat off that had damn near felt like he was cooking. This was worse, but over in an instant.
Then the sound hit him. Even from…fuck, half a mile away the blast was deafeningly loud and he grimaced against the urge to clap his hands over his ears. As it was it flung him across the sky with a pulverising force that bruised his bones and addled his senses.
But he wasn’t dead. He was still conscious, he still knew up from down, and…whatever. Any radiation problems or whatever were just gonna have to wait for later on.
Experimentally he looked back towards *Drunk On Turkey*’s last trajectory and aimed a raised thumb at the angry boiling cloud it had left behind. It was a dumb old trick his grandpa had taught him and he didn’t know if it was even worth doing right now…but it made him feel a lot better to see that the detonation’s imprint was entirely hidden by his thumbnail.
He shook his head to clear it and keyed his radio.
“Tigger, Boss. You get out okay?”
There was a long, hissing silence.
“…Tiggs! This is Boss! You alive?!”
Nothing. Coombes groaned a curse through his teeth and tried again. “Godfuckingdammit, Tigger! Boss! Sitrep!”
The explosion’s echoes came back at him like distant thunder…but the line remained quiet.
“…Daar?”
Date Point: 14y AV
Hierarchy Dataspace, deployment buffer
0722
<Satisfaction>
0722 watched the variable-yield warhead do its work, and reassessed his priorities—There would be time to mop up later, now that there was no longer a ship smashing its Abrogators, he decided. Right now, the more pressing matter was 0665.
The traitor was assigned to Gao, and could disrupt that entire operation. All other concerns were secondary.
He reactivated the Abrogators and their drones, instructed them to run an automatic sweep, and turned his attention elsewhere.
Date Point: 14y AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Yan Given-Man
“Nukes…” Yan took a deep breath, and asked the Vemik-like question that was burning in his gut. The word had badly shaken the Sky-People. “…Means what?”
Walsh was becoming one of Yan’s favorite Sky-People to talk to, all easy cheer and good humor. He was very fond of them all, of course, but Walsh somehow felt like…like if Yan had a ‘human’ brother, one who wasn’t troubled with the burdens of a Given-Man.
Not right now, though. Walsh thought hard for a long moment before he spoke, and when he finally did, he started with questions like Daniel did when working up to the answer.
“You remember that your sun is a star very close up, right?”
Yan nodded.
“Dan’s gonna kill me, but…light doesn’t just appear or disappear. It’s a thing and it moves from place to place. Did you know that? It moves almost exactly like ripples in water, and it goes so fast you can’t see it move. We only know this because lots of very smart Sky-Thinkers did some very careful tinkering over many years, and they noticed stuff. Light does a lot of other weird stuff too but that’s the important bit. Light moves, and it moves faster than anything.”
That was a strange Sky-Thought, but Yan didn’t see the connection. “What does that have to do with the sun? Or these nukes?”
“I need to give you a sense of the scale. A beam of light could travel your entire world two hands over, in much less than a heartbeat.”
“That is…very fast.”
“Faster than we can really understand, yeah. It’s too much to fit in anybody’s head, really…But that same light, coming from the sun?” he gestured up at it, and Yan raised his hand to protect his eyes as he glanced toward it. “It takes as long to get here as it does to walk from Vemik’s forge to your hut. That’s how far away the sun is.”
Yan stared at Walsh. That…didn’t fit in his head.
“Now. Feel the heat from the sun? Imagine how hot a fire needs to be that you could feel it from that far away. That’s a star. A fire too big and hot for any man to really get, and we can see them from…years away, at the speed of light.”
Yan wasn’t happy with the direction this was going. “…Nukes,” he pushed.
“…A nuke is a weapon that makes a fire that hot. Just for a heartbeat, but that’s enough.”
“…You have…made weapons out of the stars?”
Walsh sighed. “Not…no. That ain’t exactly right. But this is why Dan is so worried, because the biggest secret of all, and one you should never ever tell Vemik, is that Sky-Magic has simple rules, and you can learn them all. All Sky-Magic. Even the magic of the stars, the moons, the rain, the dirt and trees…life itself. And the Enemy is using that Sky-Magic against you.”
“And you are fighting back with the same magic.”
“Because it’s the only one we have. And we don’t want you to lose yourself in it.”
The sky…flashed. Like a lightning strike in the night, but in the clear of day. So bright that it left a pinkish-green smear across Yan’s world
“Shit!” Walsh got on the radio and shouted so everyone nearby could hear. “Net, Tiny. Everyone get low, open their mouths and cover their ears!”
Yan knew absolutely nothing of sky-magic, but he knew when to listen to a man who did. He buried his face in the dirt and crushed his ears to the side of his head with his palms.
Nothing happened. Not right away, anyway. But through his hands, he could hear that Walsh was counting. ”One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three…”
He got as far as [thirty], a bigger number than Yan had ever bothered to count in his life, before the thunder arrived. It hit hard in the beginning then went on and on, loud enough to hurt as it rolled and bounced again and again from the hillsides and valleys. Birds scattered into the sky, blanketing the forest in frantic beating wings, and as the great godlike voice of the ‘nuke’ finally growled away into quietness, Yan heard other sounds. People crying out, children wailing, the distant braying of a Werne herd beginning to stampede. The alarm calls of more birds than he could count, and the hiss of the trees.
But the rumble didn’t quite go away. It felt like it might just get quieter and quieter but never vanish forever, as if the world had changed and the echoes would never be gone.
“Jesus…” Walsh muttered. “Ten Klicks, give or take…makes it a couple’a hundred ton [warhead]…”
“Tiny, Chimp. Does Yan wanna check in on his tribe? We’ve prol’ly got a few and you’re close.”
Walsh looked at Yan, who nodded. “He does, Chief.”
“Git ‘er dun, Tiny.”
“Will do, Chief.” Walsh clicked his radio and untangled himself from behind the barricade of [sandbags] and [gun] he had made. “We should do it quickly, though. The Enemy might take advantage.”
“What about Coombes and Daar?” Yan asked.
Walsh didn’t look at him. “…They had a chance. All we can do is…pray.”
Date Point: 14y AV
Commune of the Clan of Females, Wi Kao City, Planet Gao
Mother Ayma
“Well something is happening. I haven’t seen or heard from the Whitecrests all day!”
Ayma had to admit—Yulna’s instincts matched her own. There was something off about the energy of the city today. The commune was disarmingly quiet, restlessly so. At the top of the sweeping front steps, Sister Layra was fidgeting with her fusion spear as if expecting a mob of males to storm them at any second and drag away all the Sisters, like in the bad old days before the Tirityan reforms.
But there were no males. Not even the usual Clanless hangers-on and desperate clowns, doing their best to amuse a female in the commune park. It seemed like every male in the city had gone to ground.
“Not even their liaison to you?” She asked. Yulna was away on business for now, soothing some political ruffled fur elsewhere on Gao and generally exerting the tediously tactful, but weighty, influence of the Mother-Supreme.
“He was the first to vanish. I think the Longears suspect something, but they’re being uncharacteristically closed-down, I haven’t heard from Champion Meereo in days, I can’t reach Champion Genshi, and nobody knows where Daar is, not even Grandfather Garl. I tell you, Something is happening.”
“Yulna, I believe you.” As an old friend, Ayma had the right to call the Mother-Supreme by name. “But what—?”
She was interrupted by a flash of light and fire. She went quiet and stared at it, not even properly comprehending what it was right up until the wave of swaying grass and disturbed dust tore past her and she felt the explosion with her bones.
Sister Layra began shouting orders, roaring at the Sisters and cubs to get inside. Keening females and cubs began streaming up the stairs past Ayma, and she was dimly aware of Yulna’s voice shouting in her ear via the communicator, demanding to know what was going on.
And in the distance, a second bomb went off in the Whitecrest enclave. This time, it was accompanied by the crackle of pulsegun fire.
Date Point: 14y AV
Clan Whitecrest Enclave, Wi Kao City, Planet Gao
Champion Genshi of Whitecrest
Genshi was not killing his Brothers. It was important to remember that. He was freeing them from alien slavery. His Brothers were already dead.
It just fell to him to strike the fatal blows.
But it was one thing to rationalize that and quite another to be shot at by a Father he’d known from cubhood, or claw the throat out of a Brother he’d personally promoted and initiated into the Clan.
He knew them all by name.
Brother Kyuuro, who’d infiltrated that shipyard consortium to gather intel on the deal they’d made with the pirate V’kt’zzknnk A’tzzktk’rrrk. The biodrone had his skill with a pulse pistol, but not his wit and alertness. Brother Gyoshey, uncredited hero who’d saved a thousand lives who never knew they were in danger. Fast, but not fast enough thanks to sluggish programming.
Father Taaru, whose brilliant mind had maneuvered spies, informants and enemy agents like pieces on a game board and whose uncharacteristic clumsiness in handling the disappearing colonists had aroused Genshi’s suspicions long before he ever learned the truth. In his youth, he would have seen Genshi’s fatal blow coming long before it arrived.
Still. Biodroned or not, these were still Whitecrests, and they put up a bitter fight. Pulse gun fire blitzed and lashed around the enclave as knots of Genshi’s unaugmented clashed with the biodrones. Groups would engage, swipe at each other and fade away, maneuver, engage again. Genshi and his loyalists held the numbers advantage and the element of surprise…but each duel left good Gaoians dead.
“Champion!”
Brother Fergiil. Loyal, young, eager. A raw weapon with limitless potential. Genshi had put him in charge of a Claw. He was doing well, but he didn’t watch his back enough which was why Genshi had set him to the comparatively safer task of overseeing the sabotage. And there was a lot to sabotage.
Whitecrest had been prepared for days like these since the moment of its founding.
“…Brother.”
Fergiil handed over the detonator. “Are we…really destroying the archives, Champion?”
“Everything we need is already in living minds. It would be the height of stupidity at this point to leave that sensitive information lying around where somebody might find it.”
“I…It’ll cripple the Clan, Champion…Whitecrest will be—”
“I know.” Genshi put his paw on the young Brother’s shoulder. “But there are secrets in that archive that would cripple all of Gao.”
“…As you say, Champion. But what do we do after—?”
Fergiil flinched as, far underground below them, the bomb went off and reduced the last of Whitecrest’s central archive to wreckage and memories.
Genshi slapped the detonator back into his paw, and hefted his rifle. There was still a lot of blood to spill.
“We Light The Darkness,” he said.