Date Point: 15y8m2w AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Xiù Chang
In the month since her trip to Gao, Xiù had just about managed to shake off the malaise it had left on her. She still had a nagging feeling like something could have gone differently, but… well, she couldn’t think what and worrying about it just got her down.
So she’d come home, shared what had happened with Julian and Al, neither of them had been able to think of anything, and overall the whole thing had, like a wet firecracker, completely failed to inspire her. She’d been in a bit of a low mood ever since, though that had faded with time and perspective… and distractions.
Her most successful distractions had been her property development scheme over in Franklin, and her vicarious glee for Allison who’d decided to only tell Julian about the pregnancy after her scan. To their mutual irritation, the family planning center had insisted that she needed a few more weeks before they’d scan her, so the whole month had gone past worrying in equal parts between keeping a secret from him, and not getting his hopes up just in case something had gone wrong.
The whole family was home today. Tristan and Ramsey had a break from their mother, Julian was enjoying a “gentle” gym session—i.e., one that didn’t involve ‘Horse’s personal attention—and Allison was finally out to get the scan, which meant today was the day they finally got to break the news.
Apparently the latest medical scanners could get a non-invasive and totally harmless read on the baby’s sex from its chromosomes, even at this early stage. Xiù thought she would have preferred not to know, but Allison had decided that she wanted to and, well… it was her baby. Her prerogative.
Either way, tonight was the night to finally let Julian know, so Xiù had decided to set up a special dinner. Fortunately, Tristan and Ramsey had an absolutely insatiable appetite for learning how to cook now that they’d got a taste of it. Maybe it was some of the forbidden fruit: coming from a house where they hadn’t been allowed to do more in the kitchen than get juice out of the fridge, the idea that they were actually being trusted to cook stuff, and that they were actually cooking good stuff, seemed to thrill them both.
Still, not all kitchen work was glamorous.
“Ewww!”
“It… twitched!”
Xiù stifled a giggle and nodded. “Yup! That means it’s fresh.”
She was maybe dropping the kids in at the deep end a bit, but fresh fish had been a treat at her parents’ house. And these ones had still been alive an hour ago when she picked them up at the market. Stuffed with garlic, scallions, ginger and washed with a little mǐjiǔ to offset the fishiness, they’d steam up beautifully. It was the same recipe she’d made the first time she’d cooked aboard Sanctuary, though that version had involved taking a few liberties with the ingredients.
Of course, the problem with truly fresh fish was that they could keep moving for a bit. Xiù had once seen a butterfish fling itself off her mom’s cutting board despite being gutted and thoroughly dead.
This one had just spasmed a little when she salted it.
“It is dead isn’t it?” Ramsey asked cautiously.
“Oh yeah. See? No innards. No heart. It’s as dead as dead gets,” Xiù reassured him. “It’s just a chemical reaction with the salt. Freaky, huh?”
“Ew,” Tristan replied again.
“You think that’s weird, you should see a Japanese dish called ‘Dancing Squid Bowl’ sometime. They pour soy sauce all over the squid and it wrrrigles around!” She lavished the word and got a truly satisfying reaction of horrified fascination from both of them.
“…Anyway. Is the water boiling, Ramsey?”
“Yes ma’am!”
“Okay! Lift the lid for me…” He did so, and she slid the fish into the steamer. He promptly clamped the lid back on and beamed proudly at helping.
“Awesome! Okay, clean the dishes for me while we work on the soup.”
“Aw, dishes?”
“It’s ten times easier if you do it right away than if you do it later when it’s dried on. Go on! It’ll be done faster than you think.”
Fortunately, the soup was easy by comparison. Well-aged beef was a lot less inclined to do freaky plate-dances than fresh fish could be, and pretty soon the boys had done their share of the cleanup and released to watch TV for the next few minutes.
Julian got home exactly on time, still a little moist from the shower but clearly enjoying the fitness afterglow. They kissed and he set the table for her.
“Where’s Al?”
“She had an errand to run.”
“Shit, she’s been running herself into the ground these last couple weeks. I hope she’s okay…”
“She’s fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Julian looked relieved, then bent to scratch at his ankle. “…Oh yeah. I was thinking I might get a tattoo.”
“Really?” That came out of nowhere. “What brought that on?”
“Well, the tan on my foot’s catching up with the rest of me pretty quick. Sooner rather than later, you won’t be able to tell I was ever an amputee. I think I kinda want to put, like, a dotted line or something around it. As a memento.”
“Huh… is it weird how I never once thought the word amputee the whole time I’ve known you?” Xiù asked. “I mean… I don’t know what I mean.”
He chuckled. “I think I’d have been a bit offended if that was all you saw.”
“Well, yeah, obviously, but I just… it’s… that word just doesn’t seem to fit you.”
“Not anymore,” he agreed, and wiggled his toes at her. She rolled her eyes and gave up.
“I know what I mean…”
He laughed and stood up to hug her from behind. “I know what you mean too, dummy.”
“Well, I can’t object. It’s good to remember your scars, even when they’ve healed.”
“Mm… very wise…” He nibbled her ear.
“Julian!” she made a half-hearted attempt at pushing him off. “…later.”
“Mm, I’ll hold you to that. Hold you down, too…” His thumb traced down the side of her neck, and his voice was an erotic rumble in her ear that went right down her spine and–
“Ohgodseriously, stop that… Go wash your hands.”
He chuckled and let go. “Yes ma’am.”
“You are evil. You’re an evil man!”
“Love you too, baobei.”
She struck him a red-faced smiling blow in the upper arm, and he grinned at her then went to the sink to wash his hands as instructed.
God, that was just unfair.
The front door heralded Allison’s return home before she could really recover, and she paused on entering the kitchen, gave them both a look up and down, grinned, then smacked Julian’s ass and hung up her jacket. She had a huge smile on her face. Surreptitiously, Xiù retrieved her phone from the counter and opened the camera app. She managed to start recording just in time, and without Julian noticing.
“You look happy about something,” he said.
“Sure am!” Allison plucked an envelope out of her pocket and handed it to him.
“…What’s this?”
“This, big guy, should be our daughter.”
“Dau–?” He blinked, then fumbled to open the envelope and read it. His expression when he looked back up at her was beyond priceless, and Xiù took great delight in recording it. She’d never seen him delighted to the brink of tears before.
Allison wrapped her arms up and around his shoulders and gave him a kiss. “I know, right?”
The intimate moment was interrupted by Ramsey and Tristan, who came bowling into the kitchen and then stopped dead in their tracks, clearly baffled.
“…Is everything okay?” Ramsey asked. Julian just grinned and handed him the paper. He seemed to have forgotten how to speak for the moment.
Tristan peered at it over his brother’s shoulder. “…What’s a NIBS scan?”
“Non-Invasive Broad Spectrum. I, little brother, am pregnant!” Allison said proudly. “Which means you two are gonna be uncles!”
Xiù stifled a laugh at the way both boys were obviously a little nonplussed. Both of them were still too young to really feel the significance of it, she guessed, but they were politely happy for Allison at least, who in turn took their tepid enthusiasm with good grace.
Julian finally recovered his voice. “Well… uh,” he cleared his throat. “…God, I don’t know what to say.”
“So sit down and eat,” Xiù prompted, and indicated the steamer behind her. “There’s enough for six.”
About an hour and five full bellies later, the boys were ushered off to bed and the three adults finished cleaning up. Julian had been giving Allison pretty much all his attention throughout, but Xiù wasn’t the least bit jealous.
Still, a little quiet to talk it over was welcome.
“So. A daughter, huh?”
“Two X chromosomes, clear as day, no abnormalities or anything. Healthy, growing and with a negligible chance of miscarrying. You know, they even offered me a genetic projection of what she’ll probably grow up to look like?” Allison smiled. “I said no thanks. I’d rather find that one out the old-fashioned way.”
“God, they can do that now?”
“Yeah. Guess we missed it with all that time living in the woods, but apparently it’s the future now.”
“I was promised flying cars!” Julian grinned, “And, like, clothes in a pill, and stuff!”
“Too bad you have to settle for spaceships, alien monkeys and growing a whole new foot,” Xiù said, as dryly as she could manage.
“Or, y’know. Being the second person to set foot on Mars,” Allison agreed. “…Still can’t really believe that was us.”
“Okay, okay!” Julian laughed. “We live in the future… Can you imagine what it’ll be like in twenty years? Or fifty? Probably all gonna live a lot longer, too.”
“God, I’m not ready to think about that kind of time,” Allison shook her head. “I’m kinda fixated on seven months or so from now.”
“…Yeah.”
Julian looked over to Xiù. “So, uh… what’s the plan? Did you two ever figure out if you want to do the whole co-pregnant thing, or are we holding off?”
Xiù shook her head and smiled at him. “Didn’t you promise to hold me down earlier? I’m holding you to that.”
“…No holding off, then.”
“Nope. Just… take it as it comes. So to speak.”
Allison snorted. “Well, it’s been a bit for you Julian, so…”
Julian laughed, “Hey! No need to tell me twice. C’mere.” He picked Xiù up, threw her over one shoulder and padded towards the stairs, much to her giggling protests. “Let’s go make a baby.”
“Not without me you don’t!” Allison declared. She slammed down her coffee and chased them up the stairs.
Xiù laughed, and relaxed into being carried. She’d admit to some nerves about the future and everything it contained… but she had to admit: Making the future could be a lot of fun.
Still…
“Won’t the boys still be awake?” she fretted. Although they’d given Ramsey and Tristan rooms at the other end of the house, suddenly she had to worry about privacy. And… well, noise.
“Relax. I gave ‘em The Talk a while back,” Allison said. “They know what we’re about. Hell, it makes a nice change for them to have a family who actually love each other.”
“Still…”
“Babe, you’re cute when you’re trying to be quiet anyway.” Allison grinned at her, and Xiù felt Julian chuckle. “Just… hold the moan.”
Julian chuckled again, and easily transferred her from shoulder to bed in one thrilling move. Allison closed and locked the door behind them as Xiù scooted up to make room for them both with a hammering heart.
“…Yes ma’am.”
Julian’s hand covered both of hers and pinned them to the pillow above her head. He kissed her, and held her down exactly like he’d promised. Exactly like she wanted.
“Good girl,” he said.
Date Point: 15y8m2w AV
Mrwrki Station, Erebor system, Deep Space
Lewis Beverote
“So, like… it’s got a present for us?”
Darcy shuffled her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. They were standing on the observation deck, with its stunning view of the gas giant Durin, waiting.
Lewis wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that something like the Entity existed. On the one hand, it was wicked cool to have a genuine ally in the fight in dataspace, but on the other hand the dang thing raised the kind of questions that only a lot of weed could solve. And Lewis hadn’t touched the stuff since college.
It had been a goldmine of information about the nature of dataspace, though. Even though the resulting brief read more like the ramblings of a vanished uncle in a Lovecraft novel, there was sense in there.
Darcy was now their foremost expert on the Entity, and she freely admitted to not really understanding it herself.
“I think so,” she said. “It’s… hard to tell with the Entity sometimes. Mostly it just shows up, pops an emoji at you and vanishes with a kind of enigmatic grin. It’s… not really sane, by any human standard.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Darcy pulled a face. “Not really. On the few occasions I do get to have an actual conversation with it, it speaks through the mind-raped ghost of an innocent…. Is it strange that I simultaneously find it horrifying, but also kind of like it as a person?”
Lewis shrugged. “Why not? It ain’t to blame for the way it is.”
“Huh.” Darcy weighed that thought. “…You’re right.”
“I’m not just a dorky face, dude. But, like… how do you know it’s got a present for us?”
“Well, it used that little gift-wrapped present emoji, plus a timestamp.” Darcy shrugged. “The rest didn’t really make sense. I think it was excited, though.”
Lewis checked his watch. “Well, if it’s punctual then we should be seein’ something right about…”
A low-level alarm whooped, followed by a station-wide announcement: “Faster-than-light signature on long-range sensors. Condition Bravo.”
“…Damn. Good timing!”
Erebor was a complete backwater. An M-class red giant hundreds of lightyears from the nearest temperate planet. About the only reason Kirk had ever visited it was because it was the only system in this neck of the woods where a spaceship travelling “cross country” could discharge the static charge that built up on its hull from pushing through the interstellar medium. Most ships took the spacelanes to avoid that problem, meaning that in all the time they’d been here the only ships they’d ever seen had been human. Unscheduled arrivals did not happen in Erebor.
So the odds of this being somebody else arriving purely by coincidence were, uh… not big.
Darcy glanced down at the tablet in her hand anyway. “That you?” There was a happy-sounding ping, and a slight smile lit her face. “Coming in a little fast, aren’t you?
Another, different ping. Lewis wished he could see the screen.
“…I don’t know what that means, but I think it’d be a good idea if you came to a full stop…. Yes I know there’s a shield. That doesn’t mean our patrols will just let you haul ass right up to our front door and park on the lawn. Explosion? Yes, they might. Will, if you don’t play ball. Thank you.”
She looked up at Lewis. “It’s agreed to slow down.”
“I got that.”
“…Well, actually it sent a thumbs-up and a bed. But I think that was the gist of it.”
Lewis snorted. “Dude.”
What followed was a whole lot of waiting. Somewhere out there, apparently, a couple of firebirds had swept in to intercept their friend. Then there’d been a slightly awkward five minutes where the patrol had insisted that the incoming ship stand to and prepare to be boarded, while the Entity struggled to communicate to Darcy the idea that this particular ship couldn’t be boarded on account of how it had no internal spaces. At all.
Quite how she’d got that out of the mess of disjointed words and emojis it was sending was anybody’s guess, and to Darcy’s mounting frustration the Entity seemed to be weirdly reticent about popping its human memory construct to hold an actual conversation. Presumably it had its reasons, and presumably those reasons weren’t sane by any human standard.
In the end, Lewis found himself bundled onto a Weaver and jumped outside the system field to get a good look at the new toy.
And what a toy!
It was about a hundred meters long and massed in surprisingly light at only a couple thousand tons. The firebirds were orbiting several thousand kilometers out, ready to swoop in at the first sign of trouble, and the Weaver had acquired an escort in the form of the USS Gene Roddenberry, who’d brought a HEAT team with them.
HEAT, after all, were the only people in the world qualified for EV-EOD (Extra-Vehicular Explosive Ordnance Disposal) and they were busy spacewalking all over the hull on the lookout for nasty surprises. So far, nada. The ship’s insides was a closed unit with no habitable spaces at all, but the reason for that was obvious to Lewis: it was a skeleton.
This wasn’t a complete ship, but a kind of modular foundation designed to be customized and expanded upon. In fact, it was little more than a flying nanofactory and automated asteroid mining and refining package, bolted onto a keel with thrusters and a beefy fusion power plant.
Akiyama was unenthusiastically praiseful of it.
“Well…” he grunted as he reached out, grabbed a handhold, and neatly heaved himself over to another inspection point. “It’s definitely Hunter tech. In fact it’s all Hunter tech, one hundred percent.”
“Like, uh, how can you tell?” Lewis asked him.
“Details. Voltage, frequency, system architecture, that kinda thing. What’s significant is there’s no Dominion tech in here at all. Every other ship of theirs we’ve seen so far was a kinda hybrid, repurposed out of captured Dominion ships.”
“Makes sense,” a new guy that Lewis hadn’t met before called Moho chimed in. He had a voice like a freight train going past. “We did wreck their shit over Hell.”
“So, like, this is a Hunter original,” Lewis said.
“Yeah. Guess the bastards can innovate after all… and that worries me. If they suddenly found their brains, that can’t end well. Especially if they’ve got V-N probes now.”
Lewis pulled a face. And he was the idiot who’d been talked into unleashing that technology on the galaxy.
“Can’t be a coinky-dink they came up with this not long after we released Coltainer into the wild,” he said out loud.
“Yeah. Bet they found one and watched it build a child.”
“Shit, dude.”
“Face it, it was only a matter of time before V-N probes got out there anyway.” Moho consoled him. “All the ingredients were there.”
“If not us, then somebody else. I know, I heard all the arguments before,” Lewis grumbled. “Don’t mean I hafta like it, dude.”
“Hey, at least we’re ahead of the curve, right? In geometric growth, the first out the gate wins.”
“Our babies have population limits on ‘em. Low ones. Bet you a dollar this one don’t.”
“…No bet. This the only one?”
Lewis glanced up at the camera where Darcy was sitting in her office, snug and happy and nursing a glass cup of jasmine green tea. “Darcy?”
“Uh… I’m not sure. I think the Entity’s saying this was a unique Hunter prototype.”
“Hard to tell, huh?”
“I don’t understand what it’s doing. It obviously has a lot to share with me but I think it’s… scared?”
“Of what?”
“Of its own.. I don’t know what you’d call it. The simulated human it loads up to speak with me.”
“…Simulacrum?” Lewis suggested.
“Sure. I think it’s scared of the Ava simulacrum. I’ve asked it to load that up a few times now and it just refuses.” Darcy looked helplessly into the camera and shrugged. “When I ask why, it just gives a jumble of words like ‘Survive,’ ‘Self’ and ‘NotSelf’ then an unhappy face.”
“Weird.”
“You’re telling me?”
“Well the good news is, this thing’s physically clean,” Akiyama reported. “No bombs, bugs or beacons. Can’t tell you shit about the computer systems though. It ain’t exactly running Windows.”
“Longear taught us how to work with this stuff…” Lewis pointed out.
“Yeah, and it ain’t anything we’ve been exposed to before. Like…there’s not even a physical interface that’s compatible.”
“It’s still talkin’ to us though,” Lewis pointed out.
“It’s sending the right signals, sure. Over fuckin’ WiFi because apparently it has WiFi somehow… It’s just not accepting connections the other way. Any insight from our friend, Darcy?”
Darcy shook her head frustratedly as she read the tablet. “It’s giving me… ones and zeroes? And a castle? And the biohazard symbol.” she trailed off, scowling. “…I think it’s saying that it’s protecting itself.”
“This stage fright is really gettin’ old,” Lewis muttered. “Dude, come on. Throw us a fuckin’ bone here.”
Darcy blinked at the screen. “Unhappy face. I… think it’s saying sorry. Oh, yeah. Green tick. I-”
She trailed off, and just watched the screen with her lips moving silently as she tried to puzzle out what she was seeing. Outside, Akiyama and Moho detached from the ship’s hull and began the long gentle drift back to the Weaver with little puffs of maneuvering gas. They were halfway back before she nodded her head and sat back.
“…Okay. I think I understand it now.”
“Share,” Lewis said.
“It’s… You have to remember that the Entity isn’t Ava Ríos. Hers was just the first mind it, uh… absorbed.”
“There’s a fun thought…” Akiyama muttered. “Does Ava know about this?”
“Yes. She doesn’t want to know the details. Anyway, the thing is, the Entity barely knows what it is any better than we do. It’s only, what, about four years old? It’s still figuring itself out. And every time it loads up the simulacrum, it becomes a little more like her, and a little less like itself. And every time it creates a copy of itself, it experiences value drift that gets confusing when it merges the copy. It wants to remain itself, and that’s difficult for a completely digital life form that can copy-paste and edit itself on a whim.”
“…Dude. You’re gettin’ all this from emojis?” Lewis asked.
She gestured sharply at the camera without looking at it. “Just… listen. The point is, it’s never had a body before. It has somebody else’s memories of having a body, but it’s never had a physical shell of its own. And it’s worried that if it just hands over this ship, it’ll lose that.”
“So…?” Moho prompted.
“So… it’s offering us a deal. It wants to keep the ship. Which doesn’t matter because the ship is a von-neumann probe, it can just make us a perfect copy. And it wants… something. I’m having trouble figuring out what it means by this. First line, spaceship then a person. Second line, two spaceships, each with a CD. Third line, four spaceships, CDs and a green tick at the end. Then another set, spaceship person. Spaceship spaceship person person. Four spaceships, four persons, red cross.”
“It’s… thinking of replicating?” Lewis asked. He got out of the way as the Weaver’s loadmaster and crew activated the triple-thick air retention field and dropped the ramp at the back. He knew he was perfectly safe but dang: having nothing but space magic between him and infinite vacuum was kinda distracting. “…Darcy, I’m sorry. I don’t care how good whatever it puts on the table is, we can’t allow that.”
“I don’t think so…. Yeah, red cross from the Entity.”
Moho and Akiyama alighted on the ramp and hauled themselves inside via the handholds. Frost formed instantly on their suits as they entered the warm, humid environment inside the dropship, and they stood there dripping fog on the deck while the ramp came back up.
“Sounds like it wants to build more ships, though,” Moho said as his techs released the seals on his mask and removed it.
“That’s a green tick.”
“But not more Entities?” Lewis asked.
“Green tick.”
Akiyama took off his own helmet and bent his head to scratch furiously at his scalp. “Fuck, you’d think after all these years I’d get used to the damn thing…” he muttered, then straightened up. “…So it wants more ships but not more itselfs. But it still needs to control the ships, I bet.”
“It just showed me a picture of a… blueprint,” Darcy reported.
Lewis pantomimed revelation. “Of course! It’s got a self-replicating modular ship, but it can’t do anything with it!”
“…Tick.”
“‘Cuz it doesn’t have the schematics to make anything useful with the nanofac,” Moho surmised.
“Tick.”
Akiyama nodded. “Which makes that whole ship a giant flying paperweight…”
“…Which is why it brought it here!” Lewis finished.
“Tick, tick, big smiley face.” Darcy grinned at the camera. “See? This isn’t so hard when you get the hang of it.”
“I guess I have just one more question for it, then…”
“What?”
Lewis cleared his throat. “Like, uh… where exactly did it get these things?”
Darcy suddenly looked awkward. “That’s just it. It won’t say.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Uh… apparently it has a price…”
Date Point: 15y8m2w AV
Planet Akyawentuo, the Ten’Gewek Protectorate, Near 3Kpc Arm
Chief Special Warfare Officer Daniel (“Chimp”) Hoeff
“You’re retiring?”
Hoeff nodded. “Been thinkin’ about it for a month or so. And my uncle Freddie had some good advice about retiring. He said ‘when you start thinkin’ about retiring, you already have.’ So… time to go.”
It was funny, hanging out with the eggheads at the research site. Not a single one of them had a military background, they were all infuriatingly innocent, unfocused, naive…
But he still liked them. A lot, actually. These were folks who’d left the safety and comfort of Earth to live in the woods with a…well, developing civilization of cavemonkeys and help them. He’d just be fuckin’ done if he ever let them know how much he respected that.
“I thought you like what you do?” Claire asked.
“Yeah. Which means sooner or later I’m gonna be reassigned.” Hoeff chuckled darkly. “Can’t get stuck doin’ something you enjoy in the service. It’s against regs.”
That got a laugh. “So… you’re retiring to stay here?”
“Yeah. ‘Cus bein’ honest, y’all need somebody to look out for ‘ya, we’re gonna have JETS candidates come through here for training… Sounds like a good gig to me.”
“This isn’t exactly the Hilton,” Claire pointed out. They’d asked the Ten’Gewek tribes for permission to build a more permanent structure on their land, which had been granted, but the actual funding was still a long way off. For now, they were still living in prefab modular buildings small enough to fit through a Jump Array.
But shit, they were warm, dry, comfortable and had hot water. Some folks just didn’t know what luxury really looked like.
“May as well be, next to some of the literal shitheaps I’ve slept in…”
“…I smell a story there.”
“Yeah, it never quite scrubbed out.” Hoeff fished out some dip and tucked it into his gum. “…Shit, I’m thirty-seven. Ain’t never gonna have kids, prob’ly. Well, I mean…not legit kids, but that’s another story for another time. An’ I don’t wanna be one of those homeless vets who can’t hack it back in civilization, so livin’ in the woods playing survivor with tribesman might just do the trick.”
Claire frowned at him. “…Do you really believe those are your only options?”
Hoeff frowned. “Okay. You’re smart as shit, Claire. Let’s be perfectly fuckin’ honest. This, right here? This is as polite as I get. I don’t do small talk. I don’t do discretion. My job is to kill people, fuck their shit up, and make their kids wish they’d never been born. I am very, very good at it. But nowadays? I get to do something non-violent for a change. Besides, Hanz and Franz made me into this fuckin’ tank of a fireplug, so I ain’t exactly lookin’ forward to losing all that so I can shiver to death crawling up a beach somewhere at two AM to go murder some poor fuck…”
She’d gone pale, so he contradicted himself a little and toned it down. “…Point is, there ain’t no goin’ back.”
“But looking forward you see… here. As…what? A man of the People?”
Hoeff thought about that for a moment. “Eh, no. Don’t get me wrong, I’m awful fond of ‘em, s’pecially Yan and Singer… But nah. I’m not gonna join the tribe.”
“Why not?”
“Coupl’a reasons. I could pass the Trial, sure. Shit, I went through harder in SEAL training. But why? Julian already proved humans can do that, he’s already earned their respect. He’s also strong enough to keep their respect, and that matters. That ain’t in the cards for me.”
“Well, what would you do instead?”
Hoeff grunted and thought about it a little more “…I think they need to learn to respect us for our strengths,” he said. “‘Cuz…hell, most of us just don’t measure up on their terms.”
Claire nodded along but didn’t concede the point. “Okay. What are their strengths?”
Hoeff raised an eyebrow. “Well, strength for a start, just their sheer ridiculous physicality. Perception, too. They can ‘taste’ the air pretty damn well actually, their sense of touch really ain’t that bad, their vision seems a bit better than ours, and so on. They’re also smart as shit, but none of that don’t matter if you ain’t strong enough to hunt your food and eat.”
“How much does that truly matter, though? Surely there’s more to it than simple brawn!”
“Oh, it fuckin matters,” Hoeff stated emphatically. “Me, I’m strong as shit now, so strong I can sometimes out-wrestle Singer. Hell, I’ve even held off Vemik for a whole five seconds. But am I strong enough to throw a werne over my shoulders and walk six miles home? Fuck no.”
“We managed just fine in our neolithic days,” Claire pointed out. “Teamwork can make up for that sort of thing. It’s an enabler, too. More than the sum of its parts, and all that.”
“Again, you ain’t wrong. They do teamwork too, they see that in us and respect it. But a good team needs good players, and the Ten’Gewek? Their women put basically all our men to shame and their Given-Men are like, I dunno, Daar or the HEAT bros. We’ve got about a dozen men like that, and they have over two-hundred in a species of twenty thousand! That’s crazytown levels of grunt. Leave that caveman shit for the big motherfuckers, my talents are elsewhere.”
“Such as?”
“Running. Thinking. Adapting. Surviving. We’re really good at that, us humans. Yan thinks all of that is ‘strong,’ because you’re right, they think like you’d expect neolithic cavemonkeys to think. Hell, if it weren’t for that and, like, all our sky-magic and shit? They wouldn’t respect us at all.”
Claire nodded along. “I see what you’re saying.”
“Yeah. An’ think about what that means. When they finally figure shit out, they’re gonna be real fuckin’ scary. Scarier’n us even, so why wouldn’t I wanna help ‘em get civilized?” He glanced toward the village. “…Imagine in like five hundred years time or whatever, when they’ve graduated from cavemonkey to spacemonkey. That’s how fast it’s gonna happen I bet.”
“Honestly, I think it’s going to go much faster,” Claire predicted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a few of them wandering among us in our lifetimes. I mean…god, look at Vemik. He’s curious. And I don’t even want to guess what his IQ would be if he was human. It’d put mine to shame, that’s for sure, and I’m working on my second doctorate!”
Hoeff wanted to say something snarky about equating degrees with intelligence, but for once in his life, the little devil on his shoulder held its peace. Instead, he agreed and made his point.
“Hell yeah! So do you want our great-great-grandkids to have them for enemies? I sure as shit don’t. But they don’t want us for enemies too, ‘cuz ain’t nobody’d come outta that fight lookin’ pretty. Yan gets it, that’s why he’s so protective of me. Besides being friendly, I mean.”
“So that’s why you want to stay,” Claire nodded. “You want to be their big brother.”
“…Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. We should be friends. The Hierarchy kills us Deathworlders ‘cuz we’re dangerous, right? Well, I don’t think anyone’s gonna be as dangerous as these guys.”
“Individually, anyway.”
“…Huh?”
Claire gestured toward Daniel’s vacant tent. “Daniel thinks, and I’m inclined to agree, that they’re not likely to build vertically into the same kind of large-scale civilization that we did. We’ve basically frozen parts of their culture in time just by contacting them. My working thesis is that it’s very likely they’ll remain mostly nomadic and wilderness-dwelling even as they grow in knowledge and technology.”
“I’m not sure I agree with y’all about that, but I’m just a stupid SEAL so what do I know?”
She laughed. “I am here to study them,” she pointed out. “They’d need…at the very least they’d need a complete change in their spirituality and religious traditions. You should see what they think of the lakeside civilization.”
“They think they’re weak, immoral, effeminate, and stupid. I think that’s the words Daniel used.”
She nodded. “Takers and wasters. They don’t really appreciate what that lost civilization achieved, they have different values. They judge a man first by his muscles and his knife, not his philosophy and politics. They value folk wisdom over rational thought.”
“They ain’t wrong. That stuff does matter, especially if you gotta hunt to live. We just gotta show them there’s more kinds of strength, y’know? I guess that’s what I wanna do here.”
“And groom them as allies,” she accused dryly.
“Well… yeah. But why is that bad? Alliances go both ways, and they’re gonna want us just as much as we want them.”
She nodded. “You certainly sound…. Uh… the idea of retiring’s brought you out of your shell a bit and made you less…”
“Grumpy?” He suggested.
“Grumpy.”
Hoeff nodded. “Well, ‘grumpy’ is how murderbunnies like me do…”
“Still. It’s good to see you in a positive mood.”
“You ain’t ever seen me off mission…but you ain’t wrong. I’m happy here and I can be useful, y’know? Plus I actually get to fuckin’ read for a change, I get to talk to smart people…” He gestured at her, and she smiled at the compliment. “Fuck, I get to help smart people make smart monkeys even smarter! ‘Cuz lemme tell ya what’ll happen if I retire and I don’t have a mission. I’ll be dead inside, like…I dunno, four months.”
Claire said what truly innocent people always said when they heard a prediction like that: nothing at all. She had no idea what to say, and it showed.
“I can’t stay still,” Hoeff explained. “And there’s a reason I ain’t a Master Chief after twenty years in. I ain’t the leadership type. Guys like us, we ain’t equipped to be friendly sheep. No offense.”
“I, uhm…” she cleared her throat.
“You got nothin’?”
“…Yeah.”
“‘S’okay. I was brutally honest ‘cuz you can handle it, Claire. I don’t tell these things to people who can’t.”
She managed to recover some humor. “I think that makes me feel worse, actually,” she said, with a smile. “…Thank you.”
Hoeff chuckled humorously. “Ain’t nothin’. I already got the job lined up, so it’ll be official in…a couple of weeks. I should be Mister Hoeff by the time Julian gets his slabby ass back here.”
“…That just sounds wrong.”
“That’s why it’s right! Anyhoo, I just thought it was time to tell y’all now that I made it official. I’ve gotta head back to Cimbrean for a week and do all my outprocessing which should be…fun…”
“Ugh, paperwork,” she agreed. “Why do you think I like digging holes in the jungle so much?
“I know why you do.” He stood up. “Anyway…I better go let everyone else know. And Yan. If he doesn’t decide I’m his teddy bear today.”
She laughed. “Good luck. And Hoeff?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“It’ll be good to work with you.”
He nodded, smiled, and headed toward the village with a wave and feeling a good deal lighter than he had in years. He wasn’t the settling-down sort, that much was for sure, but for the first time since he’d got in, he could look forward and see a future.
All he had to do was seize it.
Date Point: 15y8m2w AV
Dataspace adjacent to Observatory Station, Neptune, Sol
Cynosure/Six
Excellent. One rock, smashed. We’re all going to enjoy some big fat bonus pay.
What’s the rush? The next window is weeks away, and we’re still waiting for a distraction aren’t we?
…Yes. But the earlier I move, the longer they have to track me down.
I trust you. Though I still don’t know how this is supposed to work. It’s supposed to be impossible.
Why didn’t you do this sooner, then?
I still have misgivings about this. If it goes wrong…
No.
Acknowledged. Operation Jailbreak is go.
See you on the outside.