Date Point: 15y7m1d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Allison Buehler
There’d been a text from Julian about some kind of impromptu Guy’s Night, don’t wait up, love you, etc. Allison couldn’t blame him: After all that time hanging around with the cavemonkeys, some time with his actual human friends couldn’t hurt Julian at all.
Still, she was maybe a little disgruntled. But not enough to give him the cold shoulder when he finally slid the bedroom door aside at dead o’clock in the fuck-knew-when.
She was getting sick of being the big spoon anyway. Xiù was completely out for the count and didn’t even grumble when Allison retrieved an arm from under her head and turned over.
“Hey,” she murmured. She couldn’t see Julian, the room was completely pitch dark, but she knew it was him anyway. It was the little details: the exact sound of his breathing, the specific way he undressed, the exact contours and warmth of him as he slid in under the blankets and snuggled up to her.
“Hey.” His voice was warm and soft in her ear, accompanied by a kiss. “Sorry ‘bout that. Some… baggage came up, I guess.”
“Did you have fun?”
“Yeah. What’d you two do while I was gone?”
“Yoga, dinner, homework, watched a movie, sent the boys to bed…” A slow troll-grin spread across her face in the dark. “…Had some pretty amazing sex…”
Julian snorted slightly and cuddled her up. His hand cupped her breast and teased it. “Now I’m real sorry I wasn’t here…”
“Too bad, I’m tired. You got to bro out anyway, so you don’t get to complain.”
“Sausage fest don’t count,” he grumbled happily, and finally got comfortable. His hand didn’t leave her breast though: she didn’t complain.
Allison was about to fall asleep with a smile on her face when he shifted again and spoke, softly.
“…Hey, Al?”
“Yeah?”
“…Never mind. Should prob’ly wait for morning, talk about it with Xiù too.”
She knew what he was going to ask. “Yes, dummy. We’ll both say yes.”
“…Psychic badass spacebabes, I guess.”
She smiled and snuggled into him. “…Wo ai ni.”
He held her close and kissed her gently behind the ear. “I love you too.”
There were no more questions.
Date Point: 15y7m1d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lt. Col. Owen “Stainless” Powell
Birthdays. If Powell had his way, birthdays wouldn’t be a thing. For one, it was difficult being about fifty…ish…and looking like he was in his mid-to-late twenties. Sort of. Hair notwithstanding.
The hair was the biggest problem, really. Not just the stuff on his scalp, which had gone for a burton years before, but his beard was… When he shaved in the morning, he looked baby-faced. By late afternoon he looked like a grizzled old man. He could age thirty years between breakfast and supper.
All of which made celebrating the specific day he clocked up another orbit around the star he didn’t even live in orbit around these days…
…Well, okay. The way the Lads pulled out all the stops with regards to food and booze was nice. And Rylee was coming with a cake.
One never went wrong with cake.
Also, ‘Horse brought the whole family with him, and Powell had to admit… While he wasn’t usually a sucker for babies, he’d definitely make an exception for Diego Arés. Okay, the kid was only a month old, meaning pretty much the only things he wanted to do were sleep and occasionally go looking for a tit—a man could sympathize, really—but…
…Well, the fact was, Powell was pretty sure he was never going to have a child of his own.
He’d managed to talk the Lads into not giving him any kind of a gift, though. Sort of. They’d settled on a charitable donation in his name as a kind of compromise. And of course, enough food to ensure he’d need to put his shoulder into closing the fridge for a few weeks didn’t count.
He’d have opened it up for his neighbours to come and join in, except the Lads were his neighbours.
…A small error, that.
Oh. And thank fook they’d finally got it into their heads that he absolutely, completely, under no conceivable circumstances, wanted to hear another rendition of “Happy Birthday To You.” Especially not one led by Gaoians. Gaoian singing combined all that was best in howling and traditional Chinese opera.
So he’d cleaned off all the clutter on the pool table in the garage, invited Titan to bring along a games console and was generally just enjoying… a party. It just happened to be a birthday party, that’s all.
Of course, there was one bigger bit of news than a mere birthday.
“Fookin’ champion. Christ.”
“Yeah. Our Thurrsto!” Deygun was almost literally buoyant with pride, which was helping Shim’s game quite nicely; Deygun had just scratched needlessly. Shim retrieved the cue ball with a smug look and prowled around the end of the table, calculating where best to place it.
“In hindsight he’s an obvious match. The Clan needs somebody Daar can respect and trust…”
“But none of yer saw it comin’,” Powell predicted.
“We didn’t even know the Championship was in crisis until… well.” Shim decided on a good spot for the cue ball, set it down, fine-tuned it with his paw and then backed off to chalk the cue and find a comfortable angle. Gaoians played pool a little differently to a human, thanks to the difference in shoulder anatomy. Ergaan still swore by his “javelin throw” stroke, even though it involved bending so low and long over the table that he inevitably wound up moving a ball with his chest and invoking a foul.
Actually… something about the whole thing had been pricking at Powell. Regaari in particular had got himself caught up in the politics in a big way, and though he’d withdrawn from the HEAT to pursue the career demands of a Father, he was still a Brother. Which was great until you realized that he’d been involved in going against the Great Father’s wishes.
Right or wrong, the HEAT took a very dim view of that kind of thing. Arés in particular couldn’t put his feelings on the matter to words…which, being honest, wasn’t surprising. Still, it was a sensitive topic, and a difficult one to broach.
In this case he didn’t need to. Out of the blue, Deygun seemingly resumed that very conversation.
“I can understand why he did it. And… I mean, I don’t know if it was the right decision or the wrong one. I can definitely understand the Great Father’s decision…”
“Doesn’t matter. The Great Father decided. Right or wrong doesn’t enter into it.” Shim took a shot that clacked the cue-ball harmlessly off a bumper where it finally came to rest just touching his six-ball.
Deygun took the cue off him. “Regaari’s lucky as Keeda himself.”
Shim duck-nodded. “The Great Father coulda castrated him and ordered him to bury his balls at the north pole. Probably woulda, to anybody else.”
“Anybody else would be carrying their entrails home in a bucket,” Deygun stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth as he concentrated on sending a ball careening across the table, where it rattled at the very entrance of the corner pocket but didn’t go in. “…Ugh. It’s not like Regaari to set a paw wrong like that though.”
“It can happen to any of us,” Shim commented, taking the cue.
“Anyone can make a mistake, yeah. But this was a blunder. Big difference.”
Shim paused. “…Yes,” he agreed. “Not like Regaari to miscalculate like that.”
He stared at nothing for a second, then focused, hunkered down, and perfectly sunk three balls in a row while Deygun groaned.
The 8-ball dropped just as there were cheers of welcome from outside, and when Powell poked his head out the door he found Rylee smiling and tickling the baby’s cheek while Faarek delivered a large cake box onto the garden table like the smoothest of high-class waiters.
Rylee grinned, cooed over Diego one last time, then trotted up the garage drive and gave Powell a kiss. “Hey. Happy birthday.”
“Don’t bloody remind me…” Powell murmured, but he was smiling, she laughed and jerked her head toward the cake.
“Come on, get it outta the way.” She had a smirk on her lips, too. Something was definitely Up.
He grabbed a plate from the buffet on the way past. Some potato salad, some mac and cheese, some chicken drumsticks. Everything that was best in garden party food.
Faarek opened the box with a flourish as everyone gathered around the table. The cake, as it turned out, was an oversized replica of an SOR beret. The icing was dark chocolate, so a little to the brown side of pure black, but the silver sugar badge on the front was unbelievably detailed.
“Huh! Not bad!” Powell commented. Faarek looked pleased.
“It was way more fun than painting Orcs for Righteous,” he commented, drawing jeers and good-natured laughter from the Lads.
“I figured it was about time you eat your beret like you promised,” Rylee said.
“Hey?”
“Your very words.”
“When?”
She grinned, and knew he’d blundered right into her trap. “Five years ago? In London? Saint James’ Palace?”
Recollection came back, and Powell groaned. This one was going to hurt.
“There it is! You guys wanna hear the story?”
There was general, and loud, approval.
Rylee’s grin got wider. “Alright! So this was while we were on Earth and Dexter was up at Buckingham Palace getting his medal from the King. And Stainless and I had a nice conversation about careers and honors and diplomacy and alliances and stuff…”
Powell grit his teeth and took a bite out of his drumstick to cover his embarrassment. Here it came…
“And this big lunk—” Rylee tapped him in the chest with her knuckles, “—said he didn’t think Gaoians would ever make good allies to humanity.”
Obviously the Lads already knew the story, because they dutifully groaned and made disapproving noises. Murray even tutted, the cheeky sod.
“D’you remember exactly what you said?”
“I don’t fookin’ know, it were years back!” Powell protested.
“Your exact words were:” Rylee pulled an excessively serious expression and did a passable impression of Powell’s accent “‘If we were to do joint trainin’ and it turns out they wouldn’t wind up slowing our lads down? I’ll eat my fookin’ beret, badge and all. They’re not deathworlders.’ …Wrong on two counts, right guys?”
More good-natured jeering.
“Well, here’s your beret. Time to eat it… After your speech.”
That got a cheer, and cries of “Speech! Speech!”
It had to happen eventually. Powell gave Rylee a mock glare, which she met levelly with a smirk that promised a hell of an apology later, and he stood up.
It occurred to him that he was still holding a drumstick. He waggled it at ‘Horse.
“This better not be crow for good measure,” he joked. It got a laugh. “…Arright. I was wrong. I’ll eat my words, I’ll eat my beret, I’ll eat humble pie, I’ll eat whatever fookin’ thing you put in front of me and I’ll like it. As Deygun commented just a few minutes ago, anybody can make a mistake… But in this case, I’m bloody glad I was wrong. ”
He turned and raised his glass to the Gaoians. “To you, gentlemen. You’ve earned my respect and admiration, you’ve proven me wrong… and however high my expectations of you might be nowadays, I don’t doubt you’ll continue to exceed ‘em.”
There were cheers, raised glasses, and Rylee pressed a bread knife into Powell’s hand.
“Happy birthday?” she tried, sweetly.
“…I’m gettin’ revenge later, so’s you know.”
She laughed. “Fair.”
“You sat on this for five bloody years?”
“Eh…” She shrugged, and indicated the table. “…You gonna cut that cake?”
“Fine, fine…”
It turned out to be excellent.
Date Point: 15y7m1d AV
High Mountain Fortress, The Northern Plains, Gao
Daar, Great Father of the Gao
The week had come to a close, so Daar went down to the ancient amphitheatre to attend the week’s Closing—a very old tradition that Starmind was reviving, with his enthusiastic approval—to listen intently to the brief, cheery remarks of the day. Like much of what the Gao did, it wasn’t a very formal ceremony, but it did have its ritual. Simple, to-the-point, clean of unnecessary adornment. The amphitheatre faced toward the horizon, which had mercifully remained largely clean of the tall, angular shapes of the modern world. The Champions and their retinue gathered, choosing their seats with all the usual care and intelligence.
One, however, was conspicuously absent. There was no Whitecrest champion today. Indeed, the whole Clan had gone completely opaque. And when a Great Father’s spymasters went opaque…
The Champions hadn’t failed to notice, either. Word had spread fast about what he’d done to Genshi, and he was being paid more than the usual deference. He could smell their restrained fear. That…saddened him. It was necessary, but still. Daar wasn’t about to lie to anyone, especially not himself, and if he were being totally honest he’d much rather be wrasslin’ with his fellow Champions instead of dominating their lives, figuratively and literally.
Daar stood alone, front and center in the ranked rows of the amphitheatre’s seating. The unsubtle analogy wasn’t lost on him.
Gyotin, as always, was the only one who didn’t have a whiff of nerves about him. He’d managed to somehow blend the roles of spiritual advisor and court jester: he got to poke the Great Father in ways nobody else could, and he did so safe in the knowledge that he knew exactly where the line was. So, his next move after finishing his brief part in the ceremony was to fling himself down on a seat to Daar’s left and sniff the air.
“…No sign of Genshi today.”
“No, I ‘spose not. If I were a bettin’ tail, an’ I am, I’d say they’re figgerin’ on a new Champion.”
“Or they’ve already chosen one.”
He caught it, then. The whiff and ear-flick of mischief. “…You already know who it is, don’t’cha.”
“I’m… looking forward to seeing your expression.”
Well, balls. Now his curiosity was up, and Daar momentarily forgot his worries. “Oh? You say it like ‘yer expectin’ something, I dunno…”
“Characteristic?” Gyotin suggested. “No. I just think you won’t guess who it is.”
Daar had to admire his playfulness. “‘Yer enjoyin’ fuckin’ with me, ain’t ‘ya?”
“My Father, I defy you to tell me you don’t enjoy being fucked with.”
…He was right. When Daar looked back, he noticed his tail was wagging, and the Champions around him struggling to remain dignified.
He chittered and relaxed a bit. Tension faded, but concern swept over him suddenly.
“Is Genshi…doing okay? Do you know?”
“I haven’t spoken with Genshi. I haven’t seen him, not that it surprises me. He’s never been inclined to seek my opinion.”
“No, I s’pose not. I love ‘em like almost nobody else, but he were always a bit arrogant.”
“High intellects often can be. You know, he considers all of… this…” Gyotin waved a paw at the amphitheatre and the night’s traditional observation, “…to be wasted time. Perhaps for him it is.”
Daar sighed. “I know. It’s why I valued him so much. That cold, detached perspective of his was damn useful. I’m gonna miss that. But he’s wrong ‘bout this. People ain’t robots, and we need to break ourselves of that artificial ideal. It was foisted on us. It weren’t ever natural.”
“For myself—for most of us—I agree. But I wonder… if it was completely unnatural, could it ever have been foisted on us at all?”
“…Eh, prol’ly not. I think mebbe a lotta bad ideas keep kickin’ around ‘cuz there’s some part o’ them that, I dunno, resonates? Is that a good word?”
“Maybe. Or perhaps folks can be bad at separating the grain from the husk. And, frankly, some personalities just don’t need… ceremony. Whatever they believe, whatever their private ‘religion’ may be, they believe it without the assistance of ritual. It took me quite a while to accept that conclusion.”
“Fair ‘nuff. I’m just a big ‘ol brownie really. I…like routine. Get up early, work hard, play hard, sleep hard. Do all o’ that better the next day. There’s rhythm to it, y’know?”
Gyotin nodded. “Genshi was never a creature of rhythm or habit. His natural inclination is to twist and flow around and through life. He’s what you might call a water personality: Forceful and destructive when he needs to be, agile and light when appropriate, he’ll go around what he can’t wash away.”
Daar flicked an amused ear, and issued a small challenge to Gyotin. “An’ me?”
“You’re drawn to solidity, dependability… you’re not afraid to be hard and unyielding, because you know that’s what civilizations are built on. Very much a stone personality, appropriately.”
The sun had finally touched the horizon, lighting the sky with beautiful yellows and a deep fading blue. Daar’s human friends had said there was lots of bright red and orange colors too, a beauty he couldn’t see or even imagine. Especially lavender, which allegedly lived between red and blue.
Oh well. No use lamenting that. What he could see was good for the soul.
The audience fell silent while one of Gyotin’s Clan-brothers ascended the stage and delivered the remarks. A good summary of a bad week, really. He didn’t shy from anything that had happened, on Gao or among the Humans…but he had found a downy lining in it all.
The next bit was surprising. A dark, heavily-built figure sat down to Daar’s right. “…Sorry I’m late, My Father.” He turned to look but he knew that distinctive scent instantly—
Daar found himself tackling Thurrsto and keening somewhere between surprise, happiness, sadness…a lot of feelings, really.
Thurrsto put up a damn good play-fight, too! He had the strength and speed to really hold his own, so Daar let him nearly wriggle loose a couple of times before finally pinning him and sniffing at his nose.
“You?!”
“I was surprised too.”
“Ha! I hope ‘yer gonna be as surprising as Genshi ever was!” Daar re-pinned him and nibbled at his shoulder playfully. Thurrsto! Champion!
“I promise, I’ll keep up… most of his traditions.”
Gyotin chittered. “Well, that was everything I hoped it would be.”
Daar was too shocked and happy to reply with anything clever, and in any case he had to know. “Thurrsto…is Genshi doin’ well?”
“His injuries are…extensive, My Father. You broke more than just his face, and I wasn’t gentle, either.”
Daar whined a bit but mostly kept his poise. “I know. Tell ‘em to get it taken care of properly.”
“…He had thought that unwise, My Father.”
“I know that, I ain’t dumb. Tell ‘em to get fixed up anyway. I’ll let him decide what that means.”
“…I will.”
Satisfied, Daar hauled Thurrsto up to his feet so he could meet the other Champions.
“Everyone! This is Thurrsto, our newest Champion! He’s a true Brother o’ the Rites as far as I’m concerned, served time on the Human’s HEAT with me! Whaddya say, do we welcome him?”
Cheers and cries of welcome went up. A new Champion was an opportunity, after all. Thurrsto would quickly find himself drawn right into the shifting web of Clan politics, which still existed even if it was centered on Daar nowadays.
A Clan was always weakest at this moment. Whitecrest had weathered such transitions well in the past, and would have to do so again, because although Daar considered indulging in some subtle intervention…he couldn’t, not merely because of his position and the increasingly obvious need for impartiality. Because frankly, with what happened…
…The Whitecrests needed to pay a price. If that price came as minor setbacks across their relations, that was Genshi’s mistake, not anyone else’s. And if Thurrsto managed to salvage matters or even strengthen their position, so much the better.
That was how it had to be, because Daar had a Plan. It was the Most Biggest Plan, even more bigger than his plan to destroy the Hunters and the Hierarchy.
He would forge the Gao into a Constitutional…Something. Monarchy wasn’t the right word. Nor was Republic. He had the shape of it in his head, but wasn’t sure if the word to encompass it existed in either Gaori or English.
Getting there, though, was going to require a trip through an even deeper level of dictatorship, one only he could wield. And it meant he had to do a thing he was resisting with every fiber of his being.
So, once the chatter had settled down, Daar flowed over towards the stage and leaped up onto it. He had everyone’s attention immediately. Now was the one and only moment.
“My Champions. Before we get to the food and the talamay…” He shot a significant look at his majordomo, who charged off to make preparations. “I must, at last, accept ‘yer collective wisdom on a painful item.”
Everyone fell dead silent. Daar looked to Gyotin, who duck-nodded solemnly.
“You’ve pushed for a long time now that we should ceremonially recognize my role and power. You want a coronation, an’ I’ve resisted. I can’t lie, I’ve resisted because I… fear… what that means. What transpired between myself and Genshi—whom I love, deeply—only makes it worse. Most of ‘ya don’t know what a coronation truly is. If you think my rule is difficult now, what will it be like when I’m made all but divine?”
Dead silence.
“So. In the morning, I’m gonna listen to the last of ‘yer advice an’ give you your very last chance to say no. But tonight, we’re gonna celebrate Thurrsto’s ascension to the rank of Champion. He deserves it! We’re gonna play, we’re gonna argue, maybe tussle. ‘Yer all gonna find beautiful Females and try ‘yer luck! Tonight, we live. I know I’m gonna…”
He waggled his ears for effect, and got the chittering jeers he deserved.
“But then the morning’ll come. I hope y’all will talk this over with Gyotin. Champion Loomi…maybe tomorrow, we share with them everything. What we know about our past. They need to know, because that is what a coronation really means.”
He noted the confusion, saw which ones nodded and which ones looked completely lost. “You’ll see in the mornin’,” he promised. “And unless y’all come up with any sudden…misgivings…I will accept that coronation.”
Inwardly, he very much hoped they would change their minds… but he knew they wouldn’t. And maybe they were right.
After all. Anybody who wanted a crown didn’t deserve it.
Date Point: 15y7m1d AV
Builder Facility, Hunter Space
The Builder Alpha-of-Alphas
Compared to building the Ring, hollowing out an asteroid was trivial. The Builders had done it many times, and found it neatly combined a source of raw material for industry, with a ready-made space station in which to base that industry.
Using rotation to provide centripetal pseudo-gravity, rather than manipulated spacetime gravity plating, kept the station’s nature a secret too. On long-range sensors the facility would just look like any other rock. Previously, it might have been a little warmer than its peers, but refrigerating the surface and radiating the waste heat in a thin, concentrated infrared laser had solved that problem.
Now, these asteroid habitats were set to replace the Ring as the Hunters’ permanent bases of operation. Each one was anonymous, invisible, and indistinguishable from any other asteroid. With jump technology, they could even be inserted silently into a star system’s existing asteroid belts. The Hunters could be anywhere, and almost impossible to find.
The <satisfaction> such a solution elicited in a Builder was indescribable.
This facility, however, was one of the biggest and most important. It was an experimental shipyard, held over from when the Builders had been free to actually Build, rather than merely recycle and repurpose prey-ships. Its nanofactories, dry-docks and assembly facilities could prototype, iterate and construct a new ship design with deeply pleasing alacrity.
Strange how the idea of equipping a ship to build more of itself had never occurred to the Builders before. The technological components were all there: energy absorption via the shields, nanofactories…
All that was needed was an appropriate intelligence to guide it.
There, however, the Builders were encountering a serious problem. Installing a Hunter would be ideal, but no Hunter would volunteer for the duty as it would involve being perpetually denied the Hunt and Meat. Any Hunter forced into that ship would inevitably lash out against its enslavers, wasting a good ship and potentially causing great damage.
Crewing the self-replicating ships would compromise their greatest advantage, by slowing their reproduction speed to that of the crew and forcing them to expose themselves to danger as they Hunted for meat to keep the crew fed.
…Which left automation.
Builders, as a rule, did not trust automation. For dreary menial repetitive tasks it had its utility, but for something as complicated as assessing, surveying and mining a star system for the appropriate materials to build more self-assembling, automated ships?
The whole idea made the Alpha-of-Alphas uneasy. It could see too many undesirable consequences that might arise from unforeseen programming errors and oversights.
But what did that leave?
…Nothing. It left nothing. Which was agonizing. To have the power of geometric growth so tantalizingly close and yet still beyond reach was the most infuriating kind of an itch.
The ship was capable of being anything. On that point, the Builders had collectively excelled themselves: the core of the thing was the nanofactory, of course, plus the refineries and asteroid mining systems. Beyond that, it was endlessly modular. It could redesign itself at any time to accommodate any scenario, and there was no reason it couldn’t grow to enormous sizes with time and resources.
It could be a scout, a transport, an assault ship, an electronic warfare platform. It could become an orbital habitat or even land and develop itself into a ground facility. The possibilities were limited only by resources and module designs.
Such a tool could grant the Swarm endless flexibility and adaptability. It would break them permanently of the rigid thinking and repetition that the deathworld species were exploiting. The Swarm would become unpredictable, fluid. Dangerous once again, rather than being confined to the limitations of adapting prey-species technology.
If only they could find a satisfactory control solution.
The best idea so far was to crew the ships with live hunters and slave each ship’s descendants to its control systems until enough Hunters could be bred to crew them. There were bandwidth and processing limitations to consider, but in theory one ship could become a swarm all by itself, and so long as the parent ship and its crew survived a battle, the slaved swarm could be considered expendable. Indeed, each one could be recycled back into a replacement swarmship if destroyed.
It was a start, a place to begin prototyping. Which was why the Alpha-of-Alphas had arrived at this facility to personally oversee the initial testing. That, and the arrival of some requested components.
The Brood of Endless Thirst had seized on an incentive—also a novel idea in Hunter society. The previous Alpha-of-Alphas had simply demanded and been obeyed. The Builder Alpha-of-Alphas saw the value in reward as well as coercion. It worked well: issue a demand, offer a reward. With supplies being so limited, the Broods were scrambling to fill their master’s wishes.
In this case, cryogenic pumping technology, and the sophisticated thermal management systems that came with it. The nanofactory produced enormous waste heat, demanding robust refrigeration that could handle both temperature extremes without damaging the hull or other systems.
These systems had come from a methane pumping facility. They were almost perfect, and easily adapted to the Breeding-Ship’s needs.
The Endless Thirst Alpha showed a very un-Eater-like interest in the new project. It even studied the blueprints, an activity that most Eaters would have found to be a waste of time. Possibly it was attempting to earn favor with the new Alpha-of-Alphas, but that didn’t matter. The intelligence to remain informed of its superior’s projects was valuable.
<Pride> +Does the Alpha of the Endless Thirst approve?+
The Alpha broadcast that it did.
<Respect> +I see limitless potential.+
<Pleased> +Good. Perhaps your Brood will be among the first to receive one of these.+
<Flattery> +The Alpha-of-Alphas is generous.+
While the Endless Thirst Brood gorged themselves on their reward of live Kwmbwrw slaves, the Alpha-of-Alphas oversaw the installation of the thermal systems, and updated the ship’s blueprints with the new design.
<Demand> +I require an assessment: is it ready for flight trials?+
One-by-one, the teams of Builders working on the project confirmed that it was.
The last report, however, was confusing and came from an unregistered agent in the system.
<Smug> +Yoink!+
…What did “Yoink” mean? Alarm signals filled the network as the firewalls and intrusion countermeasures detected an attack of bewildering complexity and power. Though the Builders reacted swiftly, they couldn’t react swiftly enough: every defence they’d built was clawed aside, gnawed through or simply ignored. In heartbeats, the whole system was locked down, every user locked out. Not even the Alpha-of-Alpha’s top-level codes worked.
Out in the assembly bay, the prototype ship ejected its umbilicals. The external doors opened without properly pressure-cycling, blowing hundreds of Hunters and pieces of loose equipment out into space as a howling vortex scoured the interior of the station. In the control room, the Alpha of the Brood of Endless Thirst abruptly toppled to the deck, completely dead.
The Alpha-of-Alphas could only watch in disbelief and confusion as its newest creation flew out of the facility, totally uncontested. It went to warp before it had even cleared the doors, rocking the whole facility with a blast of tidal forces that tore and damaged the construction gantries and left an alarming crack across the control room’s viewing window. The emergency shutters slammed down, sealing the room and obscuring the view of the ruined shipyard.
There was a final parting shot: every screen in the room flickered, and changed. No matter what they had shown before, and no matter how much the Builder technicians scrabbled at their command inputs, all that remained was a rune that the Alpha-of-Alphas knew all too well. Its shriek of rage and frustration was vocal.
<:-)>