Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
High Mountain Fortress, Planet Gao
Champion Fiin of Stoneback
There were some events that Fiin had felt he’d never witness. More than a few of them had come true regardless, but among the remainder that he’d felt absolutely certain would never happen was Champion Genshi losing his composure.
That was, right up until the moment the Whitecrest champion gasped and sat down heavily, interrupting and disrespecting the Great Father in one action. “Keeda’s burnt balls!”
Daar looked just as bemused as Fiin felt. He gave Genshi a small interval, then cleared his throat.
“…You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Champion,” he commented.
“I think I have!” Genshi exclaimed, then apparently remembered who and where he was. He glanced at Daar, his ears flattened in a momentary medley of shame and contrition, and he flowed back to his feet with his silvery dignity back in place but now sporting just a little patina.
Daar gave him the stare of careful calculation, then duck-nodded and surrendered the table. “If it’s enough ‘ta ruffle your fur, Genshi, it must be important. What happened?”
Genshi took the table without so much as a polite protest or demurral, another first.
“…I just received a priority message from the Clan’s operations directorate,” he said. “One of our senior Fathers just got back in contact. I thought he died five years ago at Capitol Station.”
Daar’s ears worked as he thought. “…Whitecrest lost a lotta Brothers at Capitol Station,” he recalled. “But only one Father, ‘s’far as I know…”
“Garaaf,” Genshi agreed.
“Your womb-brother.”
“…Yes, my Father.”
Fiin flicked an ear. It was rare for Gaoian males to openly acknowledge when they shared the same true mother. It was a close bond and a private one, closer than Cousins. In fact, Males who referred to each other as Womb-Brothers would undoubtedly have been calling each other “Cousin” even without the more immediate relationship.
“You’re certain it’s him?”
“His codes are correct. He wasn’t implanted the last time I saw him. I’m not certain, obviously I can’t be… but…”
He gestured some files from his personal tablet to the holographic emitter above the ancient wooden table. “He calls this The Ring. It’s a Hunter megastructure, and he’s stuck on it… with some Humans.”
There was a susurrus around the table. Daar silenced it with a tap of his huge claws on the ancient wood.
“…Our friends at AEC forwarded somethin’ earlier today about some Humans maybe appearin’ in Hunter space,” he recalled.
“Yes…” Genshi was obviously speed-reading a document as he spoke. “Apparently they stole a Hunter swarmship. Garaaf was able to scratch together a basic communicator out of some of its components.”
Daar duck-nodded slowly, and considered the hologram over the table. It was actually two holograms side-by-side, a fully pulled out overview of the planet, against which the structure was the mere suggestion of a hair just above its surface, and a pulled-in view of the structure in a little more detail. Neither view truly gave Fiin a sense of scale or proportion, but how could it? Anything on a planetary scale was just too big to really grasp.
It didn’t take Daar long to think, though. “…This ring,” he asked slowly. “Important?”
“Uh… almost certainly vital, Great Father…” Genshi said. Fiin had never seen his Whitecrest counterpart so off-balance, and that just wouldn’t do. Genshi needed to keep face in front of the other Champions. Maybe a little distraction was in order.
He interjected himself into the conversation in the artfully artless way that both Daar and Tyal had trained him in. Brash and plain-spoken could be all kindsa subtle, used right. “Ain’t no reason to build anything that big,” he said. “It’s dumb. That means it’s important.”
Champion Wozni inclined his head as he considered it. “Important how, though? Is it communications infrastructure, a shipyard, a breeding ground?”
“Take yer pick. Fyu’s nuts, even if it’s just a big ego project, imagine the damage to their morale and pride if we—”
“Don’t matter,” the Great Father rumbled. “Only thing that matters is that they value their stupid spacedonut. ‘Fer all it matters, maybe it’s filled with, I dunno, cushions an’ sweet-herb, whatever. The question is this: how much would it hurt ‘em if we destroyed it? An’ can we pay the cost t’do it?”
“…Destroy it, My Father?”
“Yes.”
Genshi cleared his throat. The distraction had both reminded him and given him the opportunity to regroup. “It would be remiss of me not to mention that Garaaf estimates there are, ah, many billions of sapient slaves on board…”
“Yes,” the Great Father said patiently. “What kinda condition are these slaves in?”
“…Not good, my Father. From the report…” Genshi’s eyes quickly darted through the relevant text, “Most of them are the result of, uh, force-breeding. And…a substantial plurality of them are injured, malnourished…and apparently incapable of communication.”
That was a depressing thing to contemplate and the set of everyone’s ears reflected that.
Daar simply sighed and shook his great head sadly. “That’s ‘bout what I was expectin’ it ‘ta be. You got a plan ‘ta address that? Feed ‘em? Rehabilitate ‘em? Convince their herd species ‘ta take back their lost members?”
The unspoken observation behind the question was that even if the Dominion species had had a history of charitable altruism, convincing any government to take that many charity cases was…unlikely, to put it gently. It was difficult to imagine one that even could.
Genshi knew it too, but he would not be dissuaded so easily. “In your own words, My Father—every pyre must be witnessed. This would be collateral damage on an unprecedented scale, and I fear we might not weather the consequences.”
“Yup,” Daar agreed. “An’ you didn’t answer my question.”
Genshi didn’t so much as twitch an ear. “…I don’t.”
“Well. This is a problem then, ain’t it? We’ve got…how much time do we have? Not much anyway,” he growled, “An’ we’ve gotta notify the Humans, and…balls. This is gonna spiral right the fuck outta control in about two whisker-twitches, y’all know that.”
“What about those consequences?” Clan Goldpaw was, as ever, concerned about the commerce between species. “What will they be?”
“Good question. Besides the Humans, which relationships are gonna actually matter?”
Sheeyo was absent, dealing with the summit on the Rich Plains out over the ruins of Gorai, but his Champion-in-Stead, Tagro, was a bold one. “The Humans are a military ally, My Father, but they’re the least economically developed trading species. If the Dominion chose to impose sanctions on us—and we must assume that under Hierarchy influence they absolutely will if given a half-decent excuse—it could cripple the reconstruction, set it back by generations.”
“Again, I don’t hear an answer to my question,” Daar noted. His patience was approaching legendary as far as Fiin was concerned. A young ‘Back who danced around the direct answers like that would have earned a hefty clawed blow to set him right. But the reconstruction was important to Daar. It was the difference between being the Gao’s savior, rather than their destroyer. He wasn’t about to jeopardize it without a very good reason.
“…The Directorate would be the most important, now that they’ve defected to our bloc,” Tagro said.
“They’re also the most likely to view the destruction of this thing in a rational light,” Meereo chimed in. He was generally silent at these meetings, but that had given him gravitas. When he spoke, the other Champions listened.
“The Kwmbwrw will have the most negative reaction,” Tagro predicted. “We can probably lean on the Domain heavily enough to dissuade them from committing to an opinion either way… Assuming, that is, the kill is quick and clean. The longer and messier it is, the more they’re likely to start making demands we’ll never be able to satisfy.”
The Great Father furrowed his heavy brow in thought, while Genshi seemed to take that as his cue. “…We do have the means to achieve a clean cut,” he pointed out. “We have an agent on the Ring after all. One who’s been able to build a communicator. If he can assemble a jump array as well…”
“If,” Champion Loomi said.
“Garaaf has survived in that place for years, and managed to do this. I have faith in him.”
“I know he can, Cousin.” Daar stood up to his full commanding height, shook out his pelt, and wandered over to the window. “Attend me, Champions.”
Unsure of themselves, they followed the Great Father to the window, and then out through the door onto the ledge overhanging the great bulk of High Mountain Fortress. It was an impressive view. Daar took a deep, deep breath, held it for a long moment, and exhaled.
“Do you know what I did in this very place, my Champions?”
Fiin wasn’t likely to forget: The shade of RFG strikes raining down on the horizon by the thousand wasn’t ever going to leave him. He’d never be able to see the balcony view ever again without having that vision etched invisibly behind it like a watermark. He didn’t reply, though: the question was rhetorical.
The Great Father flicked his ears. “It was here that I obliterated our civilization.”
Fiin couldn’t chitter—the subject was far too grim for such an irreverence, and Daar probably would have at least torn off one of his ears if he had—but the uneasy glances most of the Champions shared was almost comical. Only Genshi and Gyotin seemed to take it in stride.
Daar leaned forward and rested his brutish arms on the railing to look out over the landscape he’d so permanently touched. “I personally summoned the fire that wiped out aeons of our history, ‘cuz I knew it was the only way for anything to rise from the ashes. There ain’t no sapient being alive today ‘cept for some Keeda-damned malware that has as much blood on their paws.”
He turned his head slightly. “I did that to my own people, whom I love,” he added. “So you tell me. You think I’m gonna let all those poor damned alien slaves stop us from givin’ those monsters what they got comin’ to them?”
He glanced at Gyotin in particular. “No. I will not. I will mourn them, but I will do what must be done.”
He turned around. “Genshi. Get as much intel outta your Womb-Brother as you can. Fiin, prepare First Fang. Loomi…I want the biggest Fyu-fucked bombs ‘yer Clan has left in our legacy stockpile. Somethin’ that’ll make WERBS look like a squeak toy.”
“…We have a number of gigaton-class devices left in the Legacy, My Father, and we’ve kept them well-maintained…but they haven’t been test-fired in a century!”
“Then test-fire one and do it now. The rest we’re gonna use t’blow that ring into a zillion pieces before they have any clue what’s happenin.’ Meanwhile, we need to get ready ‘fer a full-scale invasion of the planet it’s orbiting, too. We may never get another chance ‘ta hurt those evil motherfuckers this hard ever again. I want details. What they’re doing, how much we can hurt them, alla that. We don’t go until I give the word, but I wanna be ready an’ I don’t wanna waste lives.” Daar sighed again, this time almost…mournfully. “If I’m gonna murder maybe trillions more, ‘least I can do is make it quick an’ give ‘em meaning.”
The wind over the balcony was the only thing Fiin could hear. The Champions had been here before, and yet again they didn’t know what to say—the only appropriate sound was a painful, complete silence. Again, Daar glanced at Gyotin, who’d been silent so far. This time he spoke.
“You keep looking at me as though you expect me to say something, My Father,” he said.
“…No. I suppose there ain’t anything that could be said.”
“Then I’ll make a plea. Let’s bring our people home, if we can. Just Garaaf and those Humans. If we can save them…”
“That was the idea, Champion. I don’t wanna waste lives if it can be avoided. If we can get nukes there, we can get a team there, we can jump back…all o’ that.”
Gyotin duck-nodded. “I’ll prepare a service for First Fang. With Champion Fiin’s help, if he can?”
Fiin duck-nodded. “They’ll need it.”
“Do that. Everyone I named, get to work. The rest of you…We have business to conclude.”
Daar returned to the high table, along with most of the Champions. Fiin, Genshi, Loomi and Gyotin had no place there now, they had their missions.
They waited until they were a long way down the stairs and well outside Daar’s sensitive hearing range before Loomi finally spoke.
“Calls like this will kill him, in time,” he predicted.
“Fyu lived longer than almost any other male in recorded history,” Fiin retorted loyally. He felt he had to stand up for Daar’s strength.
“Fiin, Champion… Fyu died long before they cremated him,” Gyotin said. Loomi and Genshi duck-nodded. “And I’m not sure if Yulna didn’t kill Daar the day she elevated him.”
“He has Naydra.”
“And if she can keep him going, she deserves a higher place in history than Tiritya herself…” Gyotin flicked an ear in what was almost a kind of smile. “I hope she earns it.”
“…We seriously have gigaton-grade weapons?” Fiin asked, changing the subject.
“It was in your brief when you were elevated, Champion,” Loomi reminded him.
“…I admit, there was a lot going on at the time.”
“They’re scientific instruments,” Loomi revealed. “I know that sounds ludicrous. But sometimes, the only way to really learn about the universe is to blow part of it up.”
“And… what did we learn?” Fiin asked, genuinely curious.
“We learned what the core of a moon looks like. Among other things.”
“…You think that’ll be enough?”
Loomi sighed. “Cousin,” he said, “against the Hunters? I’ll call it a good start.”
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
Dataspace adjacent to The Ring
The Entity
The Ring was closely scrutinized. It wasn’t just the Hunters themselves, feeling outwards from the tight locked cages of their own brains to explore its dataspace with their limited senses, but the Hierarchy kept a tight watch on what their ‘control species’ did, said and thought among themselves.
Infiltrating such an edifice was dangerous, not that the Entity was any stranger to risk. It had assailed harder systems. It was experienced enough to feel confident… And knowledgeable enough to feel afraid.
The experience was… strangely healing. It was plunging into dangerous territory again. There was no time or room for doubt, or factional squabbles within its own psyche. There was only danger, and the challenge of surviving that danger.
To be sure, staying safe and cautious upheld its core directive to < survive > above all other concerns… but what was survival? What did it even mean unless the possibility of failure was present alongside it?
The moment it had put itself back in harm’s way, the Entity had come to a revelation: that life requires death in order to be life.
The Ring’s dataspace was hard… but porous. The Entity knew how to work its way through flaws that simply wouldn’t have existed in a stupider system, knew how to find ways in that just weren’t monitored because nothing was supposed to come through that way. Dataspace was not a network, it was a space, and in a space options like smuggling across a border by walking rather than taking the road became available.
And once inside…
It searched.
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
The Ring, Hell System, Hunter Space
Rachel “Ray” Wheeler
Ray woke up cold. She wasn’t cuddled up to Spears any longer, he was on the other side of the room, in quiet conversation with Garaaf. Neither of them seemed to have noticed she was awake yet.
Rather than sit up, she turned her head slightly and focused on what they were saying.
“…Blow it up?”
“Yes.”
“With us on it?”
“…I’ve been promised that if we can build a jump array, they’ll extract us.”
“And if we can’t?”
Garaaf didn’t answer directly. Instead he lapped up some water and cleared his throat. “If we can’t… well, we’ll probably have died in the attempt.”
“There are… there have to be a lot of people on this station, Garaaf.”
“Yes. Slaves, if they’re sapient at all. Plenty aren’t, any longer. Trauma and a total lack of education or nurturing will do that to an intelligent life form.”
“But this Daar guy is willing to kill all of them.”
Garaaf glanced around the room. Ray didn’t bother closing her eyes, instead she made eye contact with him. A moment of understanding passed between them.
She sat up. “Aren’t you?” she asked.
Spears watched her for a second, then hung his head.
“…I guess we killed that herd just for the chance to escape…” he said, looking away.
“We didn’t. The Hunters did.” Ray sat up properly and dropped her feet to the floor.
“We used what they did,” Spears argued.
“They’d have done it anyway.”
“You shot that guy Gorg.”
“I ended his suffering.”
“And botched our escape in the process,” a new voice joined in. Conley.
Ray turned to face him. He didn’t look angry or accusatory, just… tired.
“…Do you want an apology?” she asked.
“I just want it acknowledged. We could’ve warped out if they were a little slower. The second they knew there were humans around….”
“We would have starved to death in deep space, if the Hunters didn’t run us down first,” Ray said.
“You didn’t know that.”
“And you don’t know that we wouldn’t have been caught just as fast if I hadn’t put Gorg down,” Ray retorted. “I just did what seemed like the right thing at the time. I’ll keep doing what seems like the right thing. And y’know what? Maybe the right thing will get us killed. I can live with that.”
Cook cleared his throat. “Uh… Technically…”
“Shut up, you know what I meant.” Ray sighed and checked on Holly. Nothing much had changed overnight, except that her brow felt hot and was beading with sweat. Ray brushed some hair aside to put the back of her hand against Holly’s neck for a better temperature check, and woke her up. With her eyes open, she looked even weaker than when she’d ben asleep.
“…Uh?”
Ray put on a brave smile. “Hey.”
“..You’re still here…”
Having her own words turned back on her actually made Ray’s smile a little more truthful. “We’re still here,” she agreed.
“…I thought you’d leave me…”
“I mean, that would be the smart thing to do,” Cook said, but he already had his hands up placatingly when Ray rounded on him. “But we ain’t exactly smart else we wouldn’t be here. We’re not quittin’ on ya, Hol.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Jamie agreed. Spears just nodded. Only Conley and Garaaf remained silent.
“…So what’s our plan?” Ray asked, giving Cook the first real smile she’d given him in years. “I presume we aren’t just gonna wait in a hole for the Hunters to tear apart the whole Warren?”
“They can try,” Garaaf declared, smugly. “But you’re right. We can’t stay here forever. So the plan is… what’s that phrase of yours? We go all in. We have loaded weapons and six able-bodied fighters. If we want to get off this station alive then we need to acquire some working jump technology from the shipbreakers.”
“Let’s say we achieve that,” Spears said. “Then what?”
”If we can get the technology, and if we find somewhere that’s both spacious and secure enough to build a working Jump Array and if we manage to build it out of salvage and scrap and if it works when we turn it on… then friendly people with big guns come swarming through it, evacuate us, and leave behind an extremely large bomb.”
“We can’t build it in here?” Ray asked. She felt dumb the instant she said so. They were packed in tight in Garaaf’s warren, and there was barely enough room to make an origami crane, let alone a working Jump Array. “…Got anywhere better in mind?”
Garaaf scratched his claws idly on his desk as he thought. “Maybe. Hunters really don’t like cold temperatures, but cryo technology has some useful applications, so there’s a whole facility on the Ring’s groundside outer surface that’s colder than you’d believe. My nose froze when I explored it, but it’s got the power supply, the space and some pretty thick doors. Plus there’s only a few ways in and out.”
“Sounds like a good spot to get ourselves backed into a corner,” Conley grumbled.
“We don’t have good options,” Garaaf told him. “They’re all bad. But some are less bad than others.”
“Hey, we either die in a famous last stand, or we flip the fuckers the bird an’ shit a nuke in their lap as we leave,” Cook said. “Either way, I’ll take it.”
“Okay, so that’s the general plan,” Choi said. “How about we talk actual… y’know, specifics? Like how exactly we’re gonna do this and stay effective if somebody’s looking after Holly?”
Garaaf pulled some kind of a Gaoian face and glanced at Holly, who’d sat up with a groan to drink some water. She obviously wasn’t going anywhere under her own power, and looked around at them with a solemn expression.
“..I’m open to suggestions,” he said.
“The… the smart thing,” Holly cleared her throat, but there was a ping from Garaaf’s homebrew communications gadget before she could finish. The Gaoian turned to examine it.
“We’re not leaving you, Holly,” Ray insisted.
“…M-maybe you should. I… I don’t… I…”
She was brave, Ray couldn’t fault her for that. But it was obvious from Holly’s expression and barely-contained tears that being left behind to die alone constituted just about her worst nightmare. The thought that she was willing to face that for them left Ray feeling much too guilty to take her up on it.
She shut her up by taking her hand. “Holly. It’s okay. You’re not selfish for not wanting to be left behind.”
“But I don’t want you to die for me either…”
“…I think…” Garaaf said carefully, “that we can maybe eat our cake and still have it, actually…”
They all turned to look at him. He stepped aside and indicated his communicator. It was hooked up to a tablet he’d managed to keep, scrounge or steal from somewhere, and it flashed three of the most incongruous characters at them that Ray had never expected to see here at them.
<:-)>
“…What th’—?”
The characters on the screen changed.
+Call me a friend. And I have a plan for you.+
The seven of them looked around at each other, then back at the makeshift monitor.
“Go on…” Spears said, carefully.
+First, you’re going to need the following items…+
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
Demeter Way, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Technical Sergeant Adam (Warhorse) Arés
The one and only thing Adam would have ever written in his “List of Times When It’s Okay to Lose Gainzz” would be when a bro was caring for his wife and newborn. That was it. He’d somehow managed not to lose any of his strength but he was paying for it with indigestion and lack of sleep, which, being honest, wasn’t a thing he could keep doing.
Still wasn’t as bad as Marty had it, though. Diego was hungry. He wanted to nurse every two and a half hours, no exceptions, no excuses. Give him a tit and he was quiet as could be. Without it…
They’d finally got him willing to accept a bottle, though. Marty pumped before bed, Adam got up in the dead of night to bottle feed, go downstairs, get a workout in, thump up and feed him again, crawl back into bed…they were finding a rhythm.
He was just about to drift off to blessed sleep when his phone went off with the worst sound in the world. Mission WARNO. It wasn’t a deployment order, not yet, but he’d just been ordered back to the barracks on hot standby. Paternity leave or not, that wasn’t an order he could avoid; there was nobody alive who brought what he did to the team. Irish’s can-do determination, Base’s skill as a medic, and Righteous’s superhuman strength and agility were completely unmatched by anyone …except Adam. He was the best there was at all those things and everyone knew it. Asking them to stand in for him and do their jobs was a no-go.
For now, Warhorse was irreplaceable. That was a problem to solve another day but right then it was going to take him from his wife and his son at the worst possible time.
Fuck.
It woke Marty up too.
“…Oh, no…” She sat up. She’d bounced back from the birth pretty quickly, thanks admittedly to a little semi-authorized Crue-D, but Adam imagined it was still literally a drain having a hungry babe suck lifeforce from her every couple of hours.
“Ain’t a deployment, yet,” Adam told her, trying to be reassuring. “We have these scares like, every few months after all.”
She shook her head. “It’s gonna be. I can feel it.”
Adam didn’t argue. Her instincts were usually on-target, and he had the same feeling too. Sometimes, somehow, he just knew.
She kissed him, then got up to check the crib. If Diego had come with one extra blessing, he seemed pretty immune to loud noises. Probably came with having a dad who made minor earthquakes with his feet whenever he moved around.
Whatever. Best not to drag it out, so he grabbed his go-bag from the corner. She stopped him to kiss him again.
“…Uh… God, I’m scared,” she admitted. “I was never scared before, but now, I…”
“I’ll be back,” Adam promised her.
“With your shield, please,” she instructed him.
“…I’ll do my best.”
“Your best.” She laughed and relaxed a little. “Okay. Your best is everybody else’s superhuman, so… good enough for me.”
He blushed slightly, pulled her in for a warm nuzzle and held her. He didn’t really know what to say. Words…weren’t his thing, really. But then again, maybe they weren’t the thing for this situation, either. Holding her seemed like the right thing to do.
He had to go. He went. One more kiss, one brush of his thumb against her cheek, and then the stairs, the street, the fastest route to the base as Titan and a couple of the other guys came hustling outta their own condos.
They made eye contact. Their mutual hustle turned into a run, then a full-on sprint, leaping over obstacles and charging as fast as they possibly could. If there was one thing about his job that Adam wasn’t comfortable discussing with Marty…it would be how much he enjoyed it, for reasons both noble and infernal.
Then again, she probably knew.