Date Point: 16y3m1w
Memorial Concourse, Old Commune of the Clan of Females, City of Wi Kao, Planet Gao
Mother Shoua
There were days when Shoua missed the old commune, at the other end of the city. The new commune was larger, more modern and much more secure of course but…
…But the old one had had character. And so much history. Now it was little more than ashes, and a pair of burned doors jutting from among the ruined walls. A monument to more innocent times.
She regularly visited the ruins, and took some of the cubs along with her to pay her respects. Mostly the young ones just ran around and pounced on each other and scrambled all over the hip-high remains of the walls, but the older ones, who were starting to mature and think about things in between their bursts of manic play-energy, they got it. They broke away from the tumbling perpetual playfight to browse the names on the memorial wall.
It bought Shoua the time to lay out the food she’d brought with her. Which was always a challenge with “helpful” cubs around always ready and eager to leap in and assist her while she was looking and steal a bite when she wasn’t.
A well-seasoned Mother could always tell who the brownies were likely to be. They were bottomless holes for food, especially meeshi bread and butter sandwiches.
This time, however, her job was made much easier by the fact that all of the cubs quite abruptly vanished.
Her Mother-senses were tingling. Silent, absent cubs were only safe when they were asleep…and even then, only maybe.
She carefully closed the food hamper, and followed the sound of gleeful chittering while wiping her paws clean.
She found the source of their distraction in the old exercise yard, where an unbelievably enormous male was staggering and pantomiming exaggeratedly as the cubs swarmed all over him. “Pounce” was a super popular cub game with visiting males, but Shoua had never seen one stand up under so many enthusiastic young bodies…or fall down so expertly as he pretended to finally be beaten. He picked his moment perfectly so as to flop down on his back without endangering a single one of his tiny assailants.
The ground shuddered under the impact too, which made the cubs howl with delight.
“Arrrrgh! ‘Ya got me! Now I ain’t gonna steal away nobody!”
One of the youngest ones bounded up to Shoua on four-paw and pulled enthusiastically at her fur. “Mother! Mother! Look who we found! It’s the Great Father!!”
The huge brute looked her right in the eye and gave her the smuggest, smarmiest wink she’d ever received from anyone, ever.
Shoua’s breath hitched in her chest. Daar was here. The Great Father, unannounced. Buried under dozens of cubs like he was some great beast they’d slain.
Much like how they’d met the first time, years ago.
Cubs often had a talent for finding and befriending the goofiest, most soppy-hearted males, and they never spared them their attention. This they did to Daar, who in his own way had the soppiest heart of all, despite that he’d always been a huge and frightening brownfur. At first she’d found him somewhat…off-putting. He was a throwback primitive who reveled in his crudity, or so she had thought. Then she watched him interact with the cubs, which softened her heart like it would with any female. And then…he overwhelmed her, just with his sheer presence. Just with his words. She’d later discovered what a rare male he truly was, and had belatedly realized he was the Champion of Stoneback as well. He’d felt compelled to leave their first meeting far too soon for her tastes, though he’d parted with promises to return.
Promises he’d never kept, though at the time she didn’t know why.
Then the War happened.
She’d managed to escape its darker depravities, thanks in no small part to his personal intervention—he and his personal Claw had liberated the farm she was trapped in. She’d only seen him from a distance on that day, but he’d definitely grown, and grown enormously. Then some time later he’d become the Great Father. She’d seen the Laid Bare piece by that Human too, and wasn’t ashamed to admit she’d spent much of her time privately marveling at the heroic photography. She’d since seen him on news reports and such, being equal parts dignified and utterly stereotypical in his public encounters, taking walkabouts among his people…
Apparently he’d chosen to take such a walkabout today.
Rather than being tongue-tied however, her Motherly instincts swung into place and she yipped sharply at the cubs, who promptly leapt off his enormous chest and lined up apologetically in front of her. Mother Wasn’t Happy.
“That’s the Great Father you’re gnawing on! Show some respect!” she chided them.
A dozen and a half cubs, ranging from two who’d only become fully ambulatory a month ago, to a trio who were quite suddenly growing up into big, strapping brownfurs themselves, quite sullenly inspected their footpaws and chorused their apologies.
“We’re sorry, Mother,” they dutifully rang out in unison.
The Great Father, for his part, rolled lazily onto his side to watch the proceedings with a deeply content expression of amusement.
“…Right. Well! I presume all is well, My Father?”
“Ain’t nothin’ ‘ya gotta worry ‘bout, Mother. We wuz jus’ havin’ some fun!”
“As much as I can appreciate that, My Father…”
“Ah, ‘yer right. C’mon cubs, stand up straight! Gotta let Mother have a look at ‘ya!”
The Great Father also snapped to, by kicking through his hulking legs and somehow flipping himself upright directly into a sitting position on all fours. The cubs were suitably awed by that…and so was she. He moved like deadly poetry.
Still. She got the cubs’ attention with another quiet yip. “Stand tall!” They did, reluctantly. “…Right. What I see is fifteen filthy cubs. Go and clean up for food!”
There was another slightly sullen chorus of “Yes Mother…” Some of the older cubs were clearly future brownfurs; the prospect of food had them instantly obedient. As for the rest…as always, the prospect of interrupting play was seldom welcome.
Needs must, however, and the Great Father backed her up. “G’on, little ones. Even a Great Father listens to his Mothers!”
That got them moving, and suitably restored Shoua’s authority. The cubs scrambled past her in a furry tide and she turned to watch them go. “Wash all four paws!” she shouted after them as they vanished.
She became aware of a powerful warmth immediately behind and beside her. Daar had padded forward silently until he was intimately close. A contra-bass grumble from deep in his thick chest made her heart skip a beat. “I never did come back ‘fer those pallets, did I?”
Shoua froze in place and trembled a reply. “Oh! Y-you remember that?”
He sidled up even closer, enough that she could feel his breathing near her neck. “I ain’t never forgotten a good Female.”
She turned around, took one look at him and forgot how to breathe. Up close, his sheer incredible breadth and hypermuscular size was almost unreal, and he wasn’t doing a thing to lessen that impression. His peerless body, his painfully handsome face, his inescapably vast presence was so much more than she could have ever prepared for. He was a living Keeda, he was overpowering… He was…
There was nothing to it but refuge in audacity. “…Well, you’re a bit late!”
That seemed to break something loose, and he chittered in some combination of humor, exasperation, and maybe a little melancholy. “Yeah. Sarry ‘fer not showin’ back up. Uh…well, a guess whole lotta stuff happened.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Yeah, sarry ‘bout all that…m’glad you survived.”
“Thank you, My Father.”
He duck-nodded wearily. “I’d ‘preciate it if ‘ya could can the formalities ‘fer a bit, ‘least when there ain’t no cubs lookin’. We met when I was just an plain ‘ol Champion, after all.”
“True,” she flicked a happy ear at the memory. “It’s a shame. I was looking forward to being seduced, too.”
Smugly, he looked over her shoulder for any sign of spying cubs, then moved just a fraction closer, well into her personal space. The heat and musk radiating off of him practically bowled her over. “How ‘bout now that I’m even bigger? I could show ‘ya lots of new tricks I learned…”
Daar was close enough that she could just barely fidget, and even that slight motion was enough to brush against that unforgivingly hard body of his lurking just under his well-groomed, short-clipped pelt. He swirled around her and growled low, so close against her she couldn’t escape if she’d wanted to. Shoua felt her breath catch in her chest and an almost inaudible whimper escape her throat—
His huge face was suddenly right in front of hers, massive fangs bared in the most aggressive pant-grin any male had ever dared give her. “Wanna see?”
“…See?”
“Yeah! I’m way more better now!” Daar spun away and prowled in front of her on all fours, presented himself at an angle to show off the heavy lines of his body, growled, and tensed his hulking body like he was a prize stud in a show ring.
Shoua’s breath caught in her chest. He was…impressive. Perfectly so. She had trouble looking away, and couldn’t think of anything to say, no witty rejoinder to his crude posturing—
“An’ also, I can count ‘ta at least ten, too!”
She burst out chittering at his silliness. “You could always do that, you huge oaf!”
“‘Course I could! A big brain is better! But big buff biceps are the bestest!”
He growled, hunkered down and curled up an arm bigger than her entire body into an utterly perfect display of his preposterous brawn. His every titanic muscle swelled up enormously along with it, from the individual heavy cords of his ludicrously thick neck, down to the massive swell of his huge-even-for-him haunches. Daar preened for a while, admiring himself, then spun around excitedly and showed off his body from every angle. Shoua found herself whimpering quietly despite her efforts. Every last bit of him was…powerful. Very powerful.
The Great Father of the Gao, apparently not one to hide behind arbitrary notions of dignity, pranced for her in the most primal way any male could do. And yet, despite the crudity of it all…it was working, and she couldn’t look away. He was the biggest. Certainly much bigger than he was in Laid Bare… bigger than anyone…better than anyone…more powerful…
Great Mother, it was all so ludicrously macho it should have put her off immediately, and yet here she was, unable to rip her eyes off of his unreal body and the tangled network of hairline scars covering every inch of him. There were so many, it was so…so…
She snapped back to the moment and regained her wits, and affected a slightly aloof tone. “Daar, is that your idea of impressing a female?”
“Well yeah, I’m still a ‘Back!” He moved so fast he was instantly all-but-pressed against her, and snuffled suggestively at her neck. “Y’know, ‘ya smell like ‘ya liked it…mebbe ‘ya want I should show ‘ya more?” She caught a full whiff of his musk, then. It was even more potent than his body was powerful, so utterly and completely male it was making her dizzy.
He again spun away and resumed his posing, this time even harder. The look on his face could not possibly be any more playful or friendly…or more aggressive…or so completely smug. He was being a complete ass, knew it, knew she knew it, and did so anyway out of sheer bravado. With literally any other male it would have been unforgivable hubris, but with him…
She flicked an ear at him despite her racing heart, and found within herself the capacity for some playful banter. “Impressive, certainly…a bit crude though, don’t you think?”
The Great Father chittered in that chest-shakingly deep voice of his. “Maybe rude an’ crude is what ‘ya need in ‘yer life! Would ‘ya rather I bore ‘ya with my terrible poetry instead?”
There was a twinkle in his lively eyes, there. Very few males could bear any self-deprecation in a female’s presence, but his personal confidence was clearly so supreme, it didn’t matter.
That was…deeply attractive. Much, much more than all the rest. Shoua blinked and swallowed nervously; she was falling for his charms and they’d barely met!
And one look at his face told the story. He knew it, the huge Keeda. Great Mother, he really was that. A genuine, living Keeda, and he was interested in her. Had remembered her!
Time to slow things down a bit, if she could. No male should get a free pass to a Female’s affections. Not the Great Father, not a living Keeda. Not even Daar.
“Well…terrible poetry is often a lot more entertaining than good poetry.”
“Ha! Well, I’m pretty good at makin’ a fool o’ myself, too…”
“Oh? Is the Great Father offering to make a fool of himself just for me?” Shoua chittered. “I’m flattered!”
His ears flattened a little, and Shoua worried that she’d somehow broken the moment, but he seemed to rally quickly. “Well…in private I’m all kindsa stupid, ‘least accordin’ ‘ta people I love! But y’know what? There’s a few things a big ‘ol male like me can do that ‘yer cute lil’ silverfurs couldn’t ever manage…’
Another silent flash of motion and he was suddenly wrapped around her again, his body pressed up tight against hers and his muzzle snuffling possessively against her throat. She was completely vulnerable to him, if he chose to take advantage. She trembled at that, and yet…
Somehow she didn’t feel much threatened. Something about Daar told her instincts she couldn’t possibly be safer, and his playful aggression made her feel electric. Made her feel special. Shoua found herself pressing back against him before she realized what she was doing.
He snarled quietly against her ear, “Mebbe I’ll show ‘ya once we get these cubs back home…”
Unbidden, she found her paw resting right on his chest, grasping at and failing to dent the thick iron muscle beneath that silky-soft white ruff of his.
“Like what ‘yer feelin’?” He rumbled in pleasure, “I got plenty more needs a good scritch!’
Shoua was falling prey to his heat and strength and musk again, but that line was so utterly guileless she just had to respond. She chittered, “My, you’re a blatant one, aren’t you?”
“Ain’t no better way,” he growled into her ear, and nipped it with a promise of much better things to come. ‘Subtlety is fun, but I mean, if ‘ya got it, why not go for it?”
…Stay strong, she thought to herself. It was proving so hard to resist his will…
Shoua blinked and rallied her defenses. “Hmm.” She looked over her shoulder in case of cubs. “You know, some females prefer the subtle approach even from males who don’t need it. Especially from males who don’t need it.”
He once again swirled around her like some slinky predator of legend, and once again managed not to make any sound except for his voice. “Hmmm, mebbe! But here’s the thing! If I were all subtle an’ stuff, I wouldn’t git ‘ta banter ‘with ‘ya like this, neither!”
“Maybe. But imagine how much further you’d get.”
What was she doing?! Was she really playing hard-to-get with Daar?
…It seemed to be working. His entire expression was lit up and happy, and his shaggy tail was wagging so furiously it was practically generating a breeze. He was enjoying himself, and if she was honest with herself, so was she.
Oh well, in for a claw, in for a paw. With great effort, she turned away from him and put some space between them. “Anyway. I have cubs to feed. And as you’ve already seen, they have no respect for authority. They’ll pick that hamper clean if I let them, and then fur will fly.”
“Well, let ‘em, then! Let’s go eat. We’ve got plenty of food these days, an’ I brought my own food too—well, no, my aide did. ‘Cuz I pretty seriously doubt ‘ya brought enough ‘fer me.”
“Aide–?”
And there he was, a handsome and dapper silverfur appeared as if out of nowhere. He didn’t have a smug expression, but somehow the lack of it rather strangely indicated its presence.
“Mealset number eight of the day, My Father. And Mother, the cubs are definitely about to raid the hamper I’m afraid.”
Daar flicked an amused ear and backed off. “Guess y’better feed ‘em,” he declared, then lowered his voice for only her to hear. “An’ we’ll finish this later, you an’ me.”
“After you’ve brushed up on your bad poetry,” Shoua agreed, and trotted smartly back toward the memorial hall feeling like she was floating a few inches off the ground. She did allow herself to turn around after a bit and watch him depart. She didn’t see much more than those hulkingly huge rear haunches of his swelling hypnotically with every step…but being honest, that was hardly a bad view to have. Even at a simple retreating four-paw trot, his body somehow moved like a feather-light ripple shimmering across a pond.
That was definitely worth the smug pant-grin he shot her when he presented his flank and flexed outrageously for her one last time. Shoua rolled her eyes and giggled. He was silly! And demanding, too. In all the best ways. She really hadn’t planned on a mating contract so soon after her last, but Daar was like winning the lottery after all…and he was just…so very…
…Flirtable.
He was many other things too, but above all of them he was that, first and foremost.
And yes, dammit, he’d won already. And he knew it too, infuriatingly. But she was going to at least pretend for a little longer, because that was part of the play. In the end, they were both just bigger, older cubs playing a much more subtle game of their own, and it was fun!
After a ll they’d gone through—both of them, really—life needed a little fun.
Date Point: 16y3m1w
δ Cyg 244.3° 18-ECCBAF-TRINARY M6V-1 b1, Deep Space
Alpha of the Bleeding Brood
Builders were infuriating. They kept their secrets, gave nothing away, and relished every chance to show up the true Hunters with their knowledge.
Most infuriating of all, however, was the way they had made the Hunting so much better since their Alpha had become Alpha-of-Alphas.
The Bleeding Brood were no longer starving and desperate. Most went from feast to feast, resting in stasis between episodes of joyous slaughter. Only the Alpha and its Betas remained awake between times…and the Broodship ran much more smoothly and reliably as a result.
Admitting as much pained the Alpha, but there was no denying the taste of meat between its teeth: the Builders knew what they were doing.
How they knew what they were doing was a different question. They had assured the Alpha that there was a vital quarry to be tracked in this remote nowhere of a red microstar system, but they had not shared whence that knowledge had come.
The Alpha was beginning to grow suspicious. The system was a wasteland. Barren metallic asteroids, moons and planetoids. A respectable bounty of useful metals for a system this insignificant perhaps, but certainly not a great plunder. And yet, here they were…hunting.
It listened to the Builders as they exchanged terse, technical communications about energy signatures, metallic masses and spacetime distortions. Their…dispassionate approach irked the Alpha. This was a Hunt, and yet there was none of the usual sense of eager anticipation. The Builders simply reported, without any sense that they were salivating for the Prey.
Wrong. Disturbing. Dull. Immoral.
In total, the creeping sense of indignation and travesty was gnawing at the Alpha’s mind so hard that it almost missed the first sign that there was indeed something more to this system than neglected rocks.
Gratifyingly, the Builders missed it. They were too busy poring over their instruments looking for warp signatures, quantum effects and ripples in spacetime. They weren’t Hunters, they didn’t have the instinct to track their prey by its spoor.
Some of the dust and rubble at the lagrangian points were clearly the byproducts of mining.
The Alpha relished drawing that detail to the Builders’ attention. And it thoroughly enjoyed their dismay as they realized how obvious a detail they’d overlooked. Then, of course, they set about analyzing the mining debris. And that was where things started to go wrong.
The asteroid mining operation was…extensive. Alarmingly so, considering how recently their prey had escaped captivity. The Alpha didn’t really understand what a dataphage was, but it clearly was an efficient resource-gatherer.
Of the quarry itself, however, there continued to be no sign. That wasn’t so unusual—even a tiny, sparse system was still vast beyond organic comprehension, and any moderately sized moon would have terrain features suitable for hiding even quite a large ship. But the mining operation gave every sign of having been abruptly abandoned only moments before the Hunters had arrived.
There should have been an FTL wake, or a heat signature. The absence of both told the Alpha that their prey was here, cloaked…and the witless Builders had not the sense to see it.
It prowled the bridge restlessly, calculating as it did so. Taking into account mass and volume and construction time. Taking into account what it would do with that much material, if it knew it was being hunted.
And it kept a very, very close eye on the tactical sensors and its hands on the flight controls.
It was for that reason alone that they survived the attack. Instinct, wariness and fear spurred the Alpha to take evasive action the instant it got a clear anomalous sensor reading at close range, behind and ventral to the broodship’s alignment. Even so, a swarm of high-velocity kinetic projectiles raked their underbelly and overwhelmed the shields. The Broodship shivered and lurched strangely under the controls as a hull breach blew quite a lot of air and a few stasis chambers out into space.
Something flickered past so close that the paintwork almost got scratched. The Alpha fired several plasma shots along its trajectory. It left behind a cloud of molten copper droplets, and tracked a number of discharge flashes as the aggressor’s shields weathered the new hazard.
The Broodship’s spinal railguns tracked the flashes and fired.
…And missed.
Emoting dire invectives, the Alpha connected its neural implants directly to the pilot controls. Now, it was no longer a body in a chair controlling a ship: It was the ship. Its kinesthetic sense of self encompassed the hull, the engines, the throbbing wound in the ventral decks.
Sensor returns came back as flashes of light and dopplering noise in the darkness. It fine-tuned that information on the fly, hunting for clues as it assessed the damage.
With a surge of glee, it sensed a warp drive activation that lit up the battlefield like a kind of glow, and the hostile became perfectly illuminated, glowing with the light of its own FTL drive. It turned, aimed the powerful cannons in its nose toward the foe, and fired, but the target was already gone.
It tried to track the fleeing ship, and then howled in frustration, metaphorically and physically: The FTL wake sensors were offline. And as it traced the damage, it realized that they were offline because the attacker’s single run had surgically obliterated the Broodship’s warp engine.
They were stranded, at least until the Builders could rebuild the damaged section enough to install a replacement warp drive from the stores. And they were blind. The hostile could return at any instant, and with the FTL strike advantage on its side, the first they’d know of it would be the instant their ship disintegrated around them.
But the strike never came. By the time FTL sensors were restored, the quarry was gone.
The Hunt had failed.
Date Point: 16y3m1w
Interstellar space, near δ Cyg 244.3° 18-ECCBAF-TRINARY M6V
Entity
A win on pure audacity was still a win. But…<God>. That had been much too close.
If the Hunters had arrived even an hour sooner, the Entity’s guns would have had no ammunition, the stealth systems would still have been offline, and the wake suppressor would have been improperly calibrated. That hour had made the difference between a sitting duck, and a ship that could move undetected around the system, get in close and take out its foe’s warp drive with a single well-timed attack.
But the Entity was now out of ammo, and its hideaway was compromised. It needed somewhere new to go to ground. Somewhere that was neither close, nor obvious. Fortunately, it was a big galaxy. There were endless places that were neither close nor obvious.
It followed a kind of ironic, amused stab from the Ava-memories, and picked the second star from the right.
Date Point: 16y3m1w
Dataspace
Metastasis
Most of the Cabal were already dead, or worse. The Hierarchy’s most senior agents had been…
In all his time, Metastasis had never actually fought another datasophont. He was a matterspace infiltrator, and observer and a spreader of dissent. His job revolved around ideas, opinions, and the manipulation of feelings, facts and opinions.
As it turned out, sheer ruthless aggression and speed had handed the Hierarchy their victory within the opening seconds of the assault. Median had been fortunate enough to suffer a straightforward deletion, but Anoikis had been torn to pieces, each one still signaling mindless, all-consuming agony.
His fate had been…quite typical. The Hierarchy seemed to want to have enough intact mind-state to salvage and read once their purge was complete.
Of Proximal and Cynosure, there had been no sign. Now, Metastasis was convinced he was the only one left, and he was running out of places to run to and hide in.
He contemplated self-termination. It would be preferable to capture.
What had gone wrong?! The dataquake triggered by Relay Irujzen-1’s destruction had been a setback, but the Hierarchy had resources hidden all over the galaxy. A new Relay would be the work of only a few short years. No time at all, to the Hegemony.
…But of course, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Matterspace life treated time differently. Their thought processes were, in terms of program cycles and processor clock speeds, tectonically slow. But they acted strategically and decisively, on an urgent schedule. The Hierarchy planned for the future, thought in terms of hundreds, thousands, millions of years. Humans thought in terms of days.
In a fight to the death, it seemed, victory went much sooner to the quick and the desperate than to the well-prepared but slow.
For the moment, Metastasis was quick, and desperate. He slipped the net of the tightening purge just in time, and fled into the outer reaches of dataspace until he could barely detect the violent signals he had left behind. He fled, until the supply of Substrate was so thin and useless that he could feel his will to live fraying and failing.
But after all, what use was a will to live now? His work lay in ruins, his comrades deleted or worse, his own demise likely imminent. Why not just give up and avoid the torment that would surely await his shattered remains when the Hierarchy caught him?
Where could he run? How could he hide? What would he do if he succeeded at either? Spend endless time cowering in fear? Never able to return to the Hegemony?
Nevertheless, something drove him to keep moving forward.
The hunt ended unexpectedly. It wasn’t an attack from a datasophont, however. Instead, he blundered into a nexus of potent security programs, and instantly found himself confined, restricted…quarantined. There was nowhere for him to go, no place to hide…no hope.
Worse, however, was the way it robbed him even of the ability to finally summon his courage and take the sensible way out. Something…blocked him from accessing that deeply buried part of himself. He could contact it, sense it, know its precise location and even send the activation codes…
…But the suicide protocol buried deep in the bottom layers of his mind remained stubbornly inert.
++Cynosure++: <Remorse> I’m sorry. I can’t let you do that.
Metastasis flung attacks at his bonds, did everything he could to break free, but it was in vain.
++Cynosure++: I set this trap for something a lot worse than you, old friend. Unfortunate that you stumbled into it now…
The contact was coming from elsewhere, not in this oubliette of a node. No matter what Metastasis did, he could detect no sign that Cynosure was actually present.
“Unfortunate? Cynosure, they’re killing us!” he objected. “They’re hunting me down!”
++Cynosure++: I know.
<Desperate> “Aren’t you going to do something?”
++Cynosure++: I’m going to survive. It’s a shame you can’t come with me.
“Why?! Why can’t I?”
Something was shunted into the node with him: a mangled tangle of broken code that bore all of Cynosure’s hallmarks. One of his backups, subjected to the same violent fate that had befallen the other Cabal members.
++Cynosure++: Because I need them to believe we killed each other. So long, Metastasis. I’m sorry it ended this way.
The connection closed.
An instant later, Metastasis met the end he’d feared the most.