Date Point: 16y3m5d AV
Planet Rauwryhr, The Rauwryhr Republic, Perseus Arm
Ambassador Sir Patrick Knight
Rauwran Great Trees were… They were quite a thing to behold.
Each one was as thick around at the base as a cricket ground, and soared up and up and up until their canopy was an invisible dark haze high overhead. The Rauwryhr had evolved in the perpetual twilight of the forest, and rather than cutting their forest down they’d cultivated it. It was the foundation for their cities.
Those cities, or at least the city of Wrhyfrur, were not as… round… as Knight would have expected. If he’d been asked to picture a city where treehouses and gantries between the mighty forest giants took the place of skyscrapers and pavement, he would have described something elegant and rounded, perhaps exotically lit by pale blue bioluminescent plants and suchlike. Something with a natural aesthetic.
The Rauwryhr weren’t quite so sentimental. The lighting was LEDs, and the buildings were designed to reinforce the trees they were built around, onto and into. They were sealed and had air conditioning, and were made of glass and steel rather than wood with the result that the fact that they were built around, out onto and among the branches gave them an odd topography that reminded Knight of bismuth crystals.
And of course, everywhere were the signs of thriving capitalism. Advertising hoardings, animated billboards, lit signs in every colour of the rainbow. There was a lot of orange, which glowed warmly in the low light levels, but plenty of green, red and blue too, seasoned with swatches of pink, purple and blue.
And then there were the open spaces between the trees where “pedestrian” traffic went gliding.
The planet Rauwryhr would have been a higher class if not for its utterly pathetic gravity. That, combined with a relatively dense atmosphere, meant that the Rauwryhr themselves lived a three-dimensional life. They didn’t quite have wings, but what they had was more pronounced and developed than the loose skin of a sugar glider and it let them glide easily on their homeworld, though they were sadly grounded and ungainly in most other environments.
In Wrhyfrur, there were holographic motes of light suspended in the air to guide people and prevent mid-air collisions as the locals flew across the open spaces between the trees. Guided by them, Rauwryhr commuters and civilians swooped and looped gracefully in the artificial updraft generated from the ground level, and circled down around the edges.
All told, it was an incredible sight. One day, the Ten’Gewek would come here and be suitably awed. It certainly gave Knight a shiver down his spine, and he’d seen fireworks over the Thames, the Las Vegas strip and the famous Shibuya intersection. Wrhyfrur was a spectacle on that kind of level.
He was immensely grateful to see it.
The Rauwryhr equivalent of laughter was a kind of hiccuping chirrup sound, and it occurred to him that he was hearing it from beside him. The Rauwryhr ambassador to the Dominion Security Council, Scrythcra, was waiting patiently for him.
“You approve, Ambassador?” he asked, when Knight glanced at him.
“It’s… stunning,” Knight admitted.
“I’m sure your cities are just as striking,” Scrythcra replied, pleasantly. “Too bad I’ll never have the privilege of seeing them.”
“And I’ll never have the privilege of gliding this one. But I’m glad to have seen it.”
“We have transportation suitable for our alien guests,” Scrythcra assured him. “You’ll see this city as it was meant to be seen, I promise. After all, the conference center is in the canopy.”
Knight glanced behind him at the jump terminus they were leaving, and reflected that if they’d come via shuttle he’d have been able to see the canopy from above on final approach. As convenient as jump tech was, there was an argument that it took some of the thrill and scenery out of travelling.
“Yes, I’d like to see that,” he agreed.
“This way, then.”
As promised, the ride up into the canopy was spectacular. Spencer, Knight’s personal protection officer, clearly wasn’t entirely happy about the transport’s huge sweeping windows but he accepted his Rauwryhr counterpart’s assurance that the transport was designed with the safety of visiting VIPs in mind.
Knight wasn’t concerned. He could see the faint shimmer of forcefields shielding, and he noted with interest the several discreet panels with small warning labels on them that he guessed meant airbags. A fall at terminal velocity on this planet? With something soft to land on?
Best not to be too cocky, though. Life could always surprise a man.
They came up into the conference center from below, following another trail of holographic runway lights onto the landing platform alongside a dozen similar aircars.
“Many of our alien guests are intimidated by heights,” Scrythcra said as they disembarked. “We have safety netting under and around the platform for your benefit. So long as you don’t do a running long jump off the edge, you’re in no danger.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Knight said glancing over the shoulder-high railing beside him and having a sudden perverse vision of himself doing exactly that. He quashed the sudden attack of l’appel du vide and stepped away.
“Patrick!” The deck was sturdy enough to handle several shuttles, but Martin Tremblay’s footfalls still rang through it as he jogged up to say hello. The two old friends shared an enthusiastic hug. “How are you?”
“Enjoying the view!” Knight said.
“I’ll say. Hopefully one day there’ll be a documentary team with a drone who can come out here and do it justice. But there’s a bit of a snag, I’m afraid.”
“What snag?”
“The Great Father isn’t coming after all. I just got word from his officer here, apparently something important came up.”
“Why does that fill me with a mild sense of dread?”
“Because he’s arguably the most powerful man in the galaxy?” Martin gave him a wry look.
“There’s no arguably about it.”
“Well, whatever came up I’m sure he’ll handle it and we’ll know when we need to know. He doesn’t, uh, do coordination. Luckily for us we’ve either been super lucky or he’s considering our interests as he goes…”
“Some things move too fast for extensive liaison. Besides, I had rather a long conversation with the 5-EYES leaders about Daar not so long ago. There’s an… understanding.”
“He knows that messing up the alliance would be a bad idea, and we know he has the freedom to act that our own leaders sometimes wish they had, so we don’t comment overmuch on Gaoian aggression as long as it remains ethical?” Martin summarized, shrewdly.
“That’s about it, yes.”
“If I know Sartori, he used almost those exact words.”
Knight shrugged and glanced at Scrythcra, who was listening with interest. “Daar was created the Great Father specifically to crack skulls, after all. Doing what he must only increases his power.”
“That is the very root of the Kwmbwrw grievance with him,” Scrythcra said. “They don’t like unaccountable leadership, as a rule.”
“Neither do we… as a rule,” Knight assured him.
“He is not as unaccountable as people suppose,” Martin said. “Not even a Great Father could long stand against the Clans if they turned against him.”
Scrythcra cocked his head and perked an ear curiously. “How so?”
“Daar’s power is built on trust, and that trust comes from a long history of consistently doing the right thing. I think far too many misread why the Champions so respect him.”
“Is it respect? Or is it actually fear?”
“I’m sure personal fear is no small consideration. I mean…he is Daar. But long before he was the Great Father, he was Champion of Stoneback. He was well-respected even then.”
Knight nodded. “From what I’ve heard, he never wanted to be Great Father anyway.”
Scrythcra spread his hands and ducked his head, a gesture Knight remembered from his Rauryhr body language primer was meant to signify agreeableness. A human would have nodded. “You aren’t alone in thinking that Henenwgwyr and her supporters at the Council are too hard in their judgement.”
“She’s guilty of some mirror fallacy, I believe. She’s treating Daar like he’s a breeding-stud from her own people. There is a reason they are a matriarchy, after all.”
The Kwmbwrw had the opposite gender ratio to the Gao, and their males were… not stupid, but gripped by their hormones and emotions to a degree that was genuinely alarming. Worse, that ratio wasn’t genetic, but came about as a result of male competition…and the resulting attrition. The Kwmbwrw matriarchs only preserved an orderly society through an iron grip that sometimes bordered on totalitarianism.
After all, their young maidens could be just as gripped by their hormones as the studs could be. They were a passionate people, deeply and devastatingly passionate. For Knight, getting his head around that fact had been the key to understanding Henenwgwyr’s intransigence… and her fear. She saw in the Gao a society that embraced their wild side in ways that would be genuinely catastrophic for her own people.
No doubt they’d feel much the same about the Ten’Gewek in future decades.
Humans on the other hand, or at least the tiny minority of humanity that existed as an interstellar power, seemed to receive a lot of positive press among the Kwmbwrw. According to intelligence, the general consensus in the Great Houses state-controlled media was that humans were the product of a fearsome, violent planet and posed an enormous threat to everything around them simply by existing… and then praised spaceborne humanity for their restraint, discipline, and for keeping the more ‘feral’ proportion of the species contained on Earth.
A frankly offensive misreading of the situation, but not one that Knight was about to correct them on. It was too useful.
“Well,” he decided. “If the Great Father isn’t coming, maybe the Kwmbwrw will re-think their willingness to attend.”
“We shall have to discuss it,” Scrythcra said. “Inviting a species like them on short notice is not easy.”
“There’s a lot to discuss,” Martin said. “And not many days to discuss it all in. Let’s have this tour of the conference center, and then we can get down to the details.”
“Agreed.”
Knight nodded in agreement, and followed behind as Scrythcra started to point out the features and facilities that made this particular venue such a prime choice for the Interspecies Defense Symposium. But he couldn’t resist one last glance at the view of the city.
That alone made this whole venture worthwhile. Everything after that point? Every step they were about to take in rebuilding the Dominion’s military structure and pushing back against the Hunters? That was the objective of course…
But what was life if it was all work, without a healthy dose of beauty now and again?
Hardly worth defending at all.
Date Point: 16y3m5d AV
The White House, Washington DC, USA, Earth
President Arthur Sartori
The morning defence briefing was always a ‘highlight’ of Sartori’s schedule. It was mercifully efficient, so it had that going for it, but it was a constant grinding reminder that there was a whole world of life and death out there and that he was compelled to make a move in that huge, grand-stakes game literally every time he spoke.
“…They’ve traced the kidnappers to a small village in the mountains, but the local authorities are concerned it’ll be a massacre if they send in their own people. The deadline until they start executing hostages is now, uh… sixty-one hours away.”
Sartori nodded, resisting the urge to doodle on his notepad as he thought. His hands liked to be busy as his brain worked, but it wouldn’t have been seemly. “Do we have assets in a position to do anything?”
“Yes, Mister President. There is a numbered task force within range, and a special activity even closer. I would recommend the task force but that will still require a Finding.”
Findings were not a thing Sartori particularly enjoyed. They had many uses, but one of the biggest was to authorize a covert activity. That also caused select personal enemies of his in Congress to be notified, which meant that every time something dark had to be done, his foes gained yet another point in the even more covert game of DC influence peddling.
Fuck it. “Right. Authorized. Who are we using?”
“Delta, for this situation. There are radiological hazards.”
“Of course there are… How long?”
“Quickly. The real delay will be getting airborne and over target, frankly. We anticipate mission completion by this evening’s summary.”
“Okay. I look forward to it. Anything else?”
“Just a political matter. The Great Father’s Office reached out to us, Mister President. They want to plan a large state visit coincident with a strategy session amongst the 5-EYES. The Great Father apparently feels that the battlespace regarding the Hierarchy has changed significantly and that warrants high-level discussion.”
“He’s not wrong. Have they reached out to our allies?”
“Yessir. His office has extended formal invitations to His Majesty and family to visit at their pleasure, and we gather that a formal invitation in reciprocation is forthcoming. There is also talk about visiting other nations abroad. It was made clear to us they would appreciate advice. Particularly about Thailand.”
“…Thailand?”
“Yes, Mister President. It’s to do with that ‘laughing man’ incident on Cimbrean just a short while ago.”
“…Oh! Right. There’s a Thai citizen involved, isn’t there. What was his name again?”
“Preed Chadesekan, sir.”
“…Right. Well, Thailand isn’t exactly a bastion of political stability, even if they are largely pleasant in international affairs these days…”
“They’re also frequently governed by a military junta. They’ve just held free elections for the first time in many years.”
“Might not be the image Daar wants to project to the rest of the human race, then.”
“We will advise them on the complications, Mister President.”
“Please do, and draft a personal invitation from me to Daar.”
“Yes sir. That should be…” General Moss checked his list one last time and gave a satisfied nod. “…yes, that’s everything.”
“Great. Thank you, general.”
“Mister president.” Moss and his entourage left, and Sartori watched the usual West Wing bustle and hubbub unfold as the next issue on his schedule for the day was deftly summoned…
It was a busy day. Not a lot of time to think. At some point during the morning, his invitation to Daar arrived. He read it, decided he was happy with it, and signed it. Daar might have the run of Cimbrean thanks to his understanding with Annette Winton, but a visit to Earth was a different matter entirely. Best to make sure absolutely everything was done properly.
The evening summary arrived before he even had the chance to come up for air. Time, it seemed, flew just as much when a man was swept off his feet with work as when he was having fun. But he was pleased to learn that the rescue mission had gone flawlessly: Hostages rescued, radiological items secured, and a high-value target currently undergoing surgery but expected to survive to be subsequently delivered safely into custody.
He took a moment to briefly imagine the flurry of tense activity, the precision lethality and the sheer scale of what had been set in motion long before it arrived in his office, and which he’d given his blessing to with a simple nod and one word. It was easy sometimes to condense the world down to just his office, and paperwork, and quick decisions.
He relished the moments when he was reminded what those decisions meant. They meant, for a dozen people in a far-flung corner of the world today, that life went on and their nation was a slightly safer place to live. Thoughts like that were what kept him doing what he did.
He retired for the night in a good mood, and slept easily.
Date Point: 16y3m5d AV
”Stinkworld,” The Irujzen Reef
Daar, Great Father of the Gao
Garl had the smell of terminal decline all over him, and his eyesight was vanishing terrifyingly fast.
Daar had known some silverfurs to hold on for a decade or more when they started to go, enduring years of aching bones, blindness and stiff joints… but the Stonebacks had always had the opposite problem. Their lives were healthy and robust and comparatively long, but when nature did finally catch up with them it hit like a rockslide.
Garl would be dead within a month, at most. That was… not an easy thing to contemplate, really. He’d been a senior father on the day Daar became Champion, and had gone on to become one of the longest-lived Grandfathers the Clan had ever known. Top three, certainly.
And of course, he was Daar’s own sire. That relationship was not traditionally acknowledged, but it still mattered somewhere deep under Daar’s fur.
And Daar was nothing if not sentimental. He did his best to suppress it when being the Great Father required him to, but… at moments like this, it was hard to convince himself that Garl shouldn’t have the right to go out with a very literal bang.
Garl sniffed the air and grumbled to himself, “Din’t ‘yer den-mamma teach ‘ya how ‘ta wash ‘yer balls?! I could smell ‘ya from the jump gate!”
Well, decline and impending death certainly hadn’t dulled Garl’s claws. A few nearby Longears looked at him utterly aghast, not believing anyone would speak to the Great Father himself that way, but it wasn’t like Garl had much left to lose… and he knew damn well that Daar would always let it slide.
“Musta been one’a those things the old shits running my Clan beat outta me when I was young,” Daar replied. The two collided in a hug, and sniffed noses. “Balls, ‘ya smell positively ancient, Garl!”
“You mean just-shy-of-dead, right?”
“You mean y’ain’t already rotting?”
Garl chittered, then coughed, shook his fur irritably and felt his way back to his seat. “…Pretty sure I might be,” he admitted.
Daar couldn’t suppress the keen in his voice.
“Ah, shaddup ‘ya huge fuckin’ sentimental cub. We all gotta go sometime.” Garl sat down heavily. “An’ I’ve done a lotta important shit in my time. Kinda wanted to do one more, if you’ll let me.”
“I had a quick brief on the way over. Meereo wants to blow it up too, but he told me he can’t really say whether smashin’ it or leavin’ it up will help the war effort more.”
“He told you ‘bout how it covers Earth an’ that Guvnurag planet?” Garl checked.
“An’ he also told me you learn more from monitoring a live system than by picking over artifacts.” Daar huffed a sigh, and saw Garl’s ears droop just a little. “…But we’ve been monitoring this place ‘fer fucking years. I say it’s time we claw the Hierarchy in their nuts an’ see how high they squeal.”
Garl sagged in relief even as his ears perked up again. “So we’re gonna blow it up?”
“We’re gonna blow it up. You deserve at least that much.”
Garl sighed in relief. “Thank you.”
Daar chittered. “Also! It’ll be a fuckin’ awesome ‘lil gift ‘ta give when I do Earth Tour Two: ‘Lectric Boogaloo here pretty soon!”
“…Electric what?”
“‘Ya know those really awful clan epics from when we just figgered out motion photography? It’s a Human reference to their same era. Which wasn’t all that long ago. Balls, it’s almost in livin’ memory…anyway. Bad black-an’-white movies. With shiny rockets. And stuff.”
Garl groaned good-humoredly. “…Figgers I’d learn ‘bout something awesome like that right as I’m goin’ blind!”
“Can’t see everything, I guess.”
“Nope. Seen a lot that’s worth seein’, though. Seen our people shake off slavery we never even knew we were under, that’s been somethin.’ Seen a lotta real pretty Females, seen my cubs grow up to be great in their own right… I been at peace with this happenin’ ‘fer a while, really.”
“You talk to Gyotin at all?” Daar asked.
“The fuck do I need him for?”
“…Fair ‘nuff!” Garl was, apparently, the opposite of spiritual.
“I figgered this shit out a while ago,” Garl explained. “Maybe Gyotin did it sooner an’ he helps others figger it out sooner too, but I got there my way. I know he’s important ‘ta you, but… I don’t need him.”
“Fair ‘nuff,” Daar repeated, more comfortably.
“So, uh… are we gonna blow that thing while my eyes still work enough to see the flash?”
“The Destroying Fury is in orbit right now, with a double pawful of RFGs just ready to go. An’ I maybe abused my authority just a teeny bit and had ‘em hook it up to a Big Shiny Button, which I just so happened to bring down here with me. Wanna do the honors?”
“…You do love me, My Father!!”
“I do. I’m gonna miss you like crazy, Garl.”
Garl had never been great with sentiment. He went still for a few heartbeats, then duck-nodded. “Well… if there is someplace that comes next, meet me by the biggest Naxas roast when ‘ya get there and we’ll catch up. And if there ain’t… I’m real proud’a you. The most proudest.”
Daar helped him stand. He’d called ahead and ordered Meereo to pull all of their people and equipment out of the Relay, cut the power to its overhead shielding, and form them all up on the hill above the camp with the best view of the Hierarchy edifice. His arrival had been the signal for everyone left in the camp to drop what they were doing and head up there.
Fyu’s furry sack, but he’d forgotten just how much the Relay hurt to look at it. It was somethin’ wrong, a weird-ass wibbly ball of directions that didn’t exist, hanging in the air above a fuckin’ monolith of dull metal. A ‘Back could go loopy tryin’ to make sense of that thing.
It didn’t take long for everyone to assemble with a general air of feral excitement. In particular, a buncha just tiny little silverfur soldiers gathered around Garl while he contemplated the Button.
Nobody needed telling what the Button was for. Big Shiny Buttons were always for the most bestest things. And right now, Garl was gonna make the most bestestest farewell speech ever.
He didn’t disappoint. He held the button lightly in his claws, sniffed the wind, and peered at the Relay until, Daar guessed, he was absolutely certain he could see it. Then he duck-nodded, and spoke.
“…This one’s ‘fer Gao, you motherless fucks.”
He pressed the button.
The Destroying Fury started the party with its main guns. RFGs took a while to arrive after all, so they needed something to look at and enjoy before the main event arrived. Orbit-to-ground direct fire punched down in a series of fat blue columns of radiation that cracked the Relay monolith’s facade and cracked the foundation. Hierarchy engineering was tough stuff, though, and though the Relay shifted and subsided, the impossible ball of wrong above it stayed active.
Local bird-equivalents spiralled frantically to get into the air as the first overlapping ripple of thunderclaps from the bombardment reached their ears. One round hit the relay phenomenon directly and refracted around its event horizon to smash into the forest at a crazy angle.
The bombardment promptly let up. Smoke and fireballs billowed into the air, but it was just a pause before the real moment of glory.
Eight RFGs landed in a tightly coordinated spread across the span of two or three heartbeats. Most of the watching Gao, including Daar, shielded their eyes: Garl just grinned ferociously at the brilliant flash and bared his teeth into the wash of roasting heat that slapped them even on their hilltop miles from ground zero.
The monolith cracked down the middle and fell. The air above it turned inside-out, spun sideways at angles that no living eye was equipped to track, became briefly and impossibly flat….
And then blessed reality finally reasserted itself. For Daar, it was like the sudden cessation of a high-pitched note that he hadn’t even noticed was being played on his nerves; The relief was full-body and profound. Overpressure flattened the trees for hundreds of meters in every direction, and when the sound hit them it threw dust and small stones into the air and slapped Daar in the chest so hard that he felt his ribs bounce.
They stood and listened in awe as the thunder of what they’d done bounced off the hills and through the ravines. They listened until it was gone, replaced by the shrieks, hoots and calls of traumatized alien wildlife fleeing from forces they couldn’t understand.
Finally, the silence was broken by a simple, clear voice from the button’s carrying case.
“Great Father, Destroying Fury. Bombardment complete.”
There was a general relaxing, some nervous, awed chitters. Somebody joked quietly to his Brothers. Daar stepped forward and put a hand on Garl’s shoulder.
“How was it?”
Garl chittered darkly, flicked an ear, took one last sniff of the wind and turned to look at him. His gaze missed Daar’s face by several degrees, focused on nothing. “…Think that flash mighta finished my eyes off,” he said. “Can’t see a damn thing, now.”
“…Was it worth it?”
Garl shut his eyes and nodded, an expression of the deepest contentment on his face.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”