Categories
Stories They are Smol

They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Chapter 10

High and Low Earth Orbit, Contact +0 Minutes

“|We are riding HARD and FAST. SCR’s ignored, time to planetcrest 30 seconds-|”

“|Torpedoes in launch tubes, blasting covers in 10-|”

“|Check gimbals before atmosphere-|”

“|Rough-shocking to binary planet, codename GRAVESTONE-|”

“|Micromissiles launched; non-friendly IFF debris clearing-|”

“|Interplanetary signalling outpost detected, kinetic docking in 15 seconds-|”

High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions stood and watched, arms crossed in thought, as his Armada moved. Dropships sped towards the colony world, squads grouping in twos, threes, tens and twenties – Interceptors and Missile barges popped afterburners to gain enough momentum to slingshot around the planet, ready to bring hell to whatever fleet was besieging The Three Stones on the other side, and his tertiary command ship?

With zero physical momentum it generated enough power via it’s powercore to temporarily and physically bridge the gulf of space, the relativistic energy tsunami – and the blinding light – the only indicator that it had moved from within his fleet to this planets’ only satellite.

“|What dumb, broken-clutch bastards.|” mused Qoili’’e, standing in awe at the sheer amount of weaponry being brought to bear against this new aggressor species.

“|Maybe.|” High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ said, watching as over the planet superimposed geometries of fire began to coat it in a dangerous orange. “|But our plan is simple. Gut the enemy fleet, confound their planetary defenses – when they surrender we hold them hostage to negotiate with their core worlds.|”

“|Still, sir. To fire on children-|”

“|This is why we never underestimate an unknown en-|”

“|Planetary Blindside on screen, Sir!|” interrupted their EM Lord, Uri’krei, as all available eyes turned to the expected carnage of The Three Stones, floating listlessly in space, being picked apart like carrion on the plains-

… like being picked apart…. By the enemy fleet…

“|Where are they?!-|”

“|Dumping Torpedoes, Tiq-fly formation-|”

“|No, seriously, radiation scans are negati-|”

High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ growled, beginning to roll his shoulders slightly in an involuntary threat display. “|Can we not see them?! Were they boarded to preserve the ship, reverse-engineer our technology?|”

“|Wide-Broadcast urgent message from The Three Stones-|”

“|ON SCREEN, IMMEDIATELY.|” Roared the High Lord Inquisitor-Commander, and before his order was finished Matriarch Tr’Nkwi appeared on-screen, feathers torn from her face and neck.

“|GIVE US A SI-|”

“|YOU MUST STOP!|” She cried, hands outstretched in a wretched plea, her ripped and molted feathers falling like a waterfall from her open palms. “|PLEASE! IT’S A HOMEWORLD-|”

“|What?!|” cried EM Lord Uri’krei, as for the first time in his 700 year career he stopped paying attention to his job.

“|Wh-what?!|” Stuttered Qoili’’e, the self-righteous wrath burning in his chest quickly turning into an icy pit.

“|WHAT.|” Responded High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions Armada, as with righteous fury that same Armada suddenly found itself without purpose, missile ships and EM destroyers and carrier nests and graviton lances all paused, their momentum carrying themselves forward with no purpose any longer.

“|CONTACT.|” Responded the kinetic interceptor operator, as their ship slammed into the ISS, a thousand hooks grappling and fusing the fledgling station to the war transport.

“|SHIT.|” High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions groaned, as his eyes tracked to the War Theater screen. “|N-NONLETHAL! NONLETHAL! RETURN ALL OPERATORS AND SHIPS, STAND DOWN! I REPEAT, STAND DOWN-|

L.E.O. +5 minutes

+-+

“|PLEASE! IT’S A HOMEWORLD-|”

“|I’m sorry, what the fuck?|” SACRAMENT said, interrupting the wide-field broadcast. “|Did she just say-|”

“|NONLETHAL! RETURN ALL OPERATORS AND SHIPS, STAND DOWN! I REPEAT, STAND DOWN!|

“|Well.|” PREACHER laughed out, shaking her head. “|Usually everything turns to shit once we land.|”

“|Souls damn them, how does he expect us to do that? These things are a one-way flight!|”

“|Just… when we land, just do nothing.|” APOSTLE absent-mindedly ordered, tapping into his chain of command to get actual, real updates as to what’s going on. “|Non-lethal is sanctioned, but we’re not to fire … we’re not to fire even if fired upon.|”

“|That’s a new one.|”

“|…joy. I guess I’ll learn how to best farm alien space crops after all.|”

Silence gave way to static and then to a gentle rumbling fire as the planet’s atmosphere began to violently cradle the special operations soldiers, armed to the teeth and utterly impotent.

ISS +5 Minutes

+-+

The station shook – violently. Enough so that the windows’ view spun wildly, a sound like a thousand rocks slamming into the outer plates of the capsules rippling up and down the ISS.

“No, seriously what even is that alarm and why is it going off-”

“Look. You get in Soyuz, leave. Vladimir and I, we stay in suits, we fight.”

“With what?” Michael said, waving his hand around his mostly-suited up cosmonaut colleague. “Firstly, there’s no way we could’ve known that this would happen – I still think you’re crazy for trying to stay! We’ve been up here for two years and the most dangerous thing I’ve seen on this station is a fucking scalpel-”

Wordlessly Pitor Melnik reached over Michael’s head and opened an extra-large “oxygen” tank within the Soyuz capsule. Within it were completely disassembled weapons parts and a significant amount of loose ammo.

“…I have many questions-”

“да. However, these wait for later. You must go, and go now – let one of us survive.”

“Pitor-”

“нет. Do not try to change my mind. I die not for glory, but f-”

“-why is there a straw in the ethanol tank?”

The Astronaut and The Cosmonaut looked at each other, silently. Pitor slowly reached up and grabbed the hatch, and wordlessly closed it, cycling the airlock. He paused by the hatch for but a moment, before beginning to assemble the weapon before him – much as he did during his training days, the familiar movements quickly executed through muscle memory.

“Is he gone?”

“Yes.”

“You think we have a chance?” Vladimir said as he affixed his helmet, the kalishnakov rifle floating awkwardly between them.

“Ба́бушка на́двое сказа́ла.”

Vladimir laughed as his friend finished up, tucking spare magazines and rounds into pouches never meant for them.

“Без му́ки нет нау́ки!” he responded, as Pitor shook his head. “But personally, I don’t want to learn too muc-”

“?’T’tRRGAA’’RAGH!?”

“|Excuse me, but there seems to b-|”

“За тобой!” Yelled Pitor as he raised his rifle, Vladimir thinking quickly and kicking off a wall to float down a separate corridor as Pitor let fly a few desperate rounds into this black thing that just stuck it’s head through an entrance hall.

?Ii’’r’RGH, RAA’’G”R-?

“|Listen, we’re sorry, but depre-|”

“умри ты сукин сын!” Bellowed Vladimir as he finally caught his weapon, pressing his back against a bulkhead as he began to focus fire. Light danced off the alien in geometric shapes, and it seemed to shudder – or perhaps, sigh.

U’iki’ri sighed and pulled his head out of the quite-cramped hallway, doing his best not to also drag out too much of the extra cabling that circulated the life support of this primitive space station, turning to his colleagues. When his interceptor ship slammed into this… construct he marveled. First, at how such incredibly delicate designs could survive in the hard vacuum of space, and secondly that his own ship didn’t keep just plowing through what was left of the station and go right to planetfall.

As soon as their pilot killed momentum, everyone got to work doing the best repair job they could – hell, fully half of them were spreading a quick-expanding foam between the ship and the black void of space, doing their best to keep as much atmosphere locked in, while the other half were performing a time-critical EVA mission to… well.

Collect the rest of the primitives’ space station.

This left U’iki’ri, as the highest ranking officer, in the very unenviable position of “negotiator”. However, no matter how gentle his voice or how sweet his song, every time he spoke the aliens tensed up, crouched – which was an interesting tactic in a place with no gravity, and fired their weapons at him. At this rate, they were putting more holes in their own station than in him – speaking of.

“|I am getting nowhere with these small ones. How goes the repairs?|” U’iki’ri said, ducking his head under the wing of his craft, his boots now stamping on the crackling temporary foam floor.

“|Best case, Sir? 10 minutes. We sliced their station in half, so both sides are venting atmosphere at a ridiculous rate – the EVA team has capped the other side, and a barge is coming in to stabilize their orbit, but-|”

“|Ah, there it is.|”

The private dipped his hips a bit in embarassment, patting the alien “wall”. “|This one is not only unstable, but breaking apart. EVA crew already picked up what looks like an escape pod, so if they’re evacuating…|”

U’iki’ri sighed. “|Well, I can’t damn near fit through this little hole-|”

“|Honestly, Sir? Might be better to make your own.|”

U’iki’ri tapped his helmet. “|Did you hear that, EVA? My suit should’ve tagged the two locals-|”

“|Aye, sir. Opening this can now.|”

There was the sound of muffled screaming, the whoosh of oxygen, and the rapport of firearms.

High Atmosphere, Earth. +10 Minutes

-+-

They fell everywhere the light touched, and those that didn’t skipped across the atmosphere to land where the single sun didn’t shine.

Pods burned through atmosphere, a twisted mockery of a shooting star, automated hard-coded defense systems kicking in – scrambling EM transmissions not tagged as friendly, deploying chaff and decoy missiles, sending suicide shield drones to blossom their defense as they fell, screaming from the heavens. The AI of each pod – programmed before, during and after launch – knew where to drop them, and did so with terrifying efficiency as the clouds burned away, and it’s optics scanned the horizon.

They fell on bridges and in car parks.

They fell on roads and power substations.

They fell on broad intersections and in abandoned alleyways.

They fell in playgrounds and dogparks, in greenways and overpasses, in apartment complexes and promenades.

They fell, and they thanked every ancestor, spirit and deity, that the hastily-reprogrammed AI hit nothing of importance. Their pods neglected to fire the anti-personnel grenades, forgot to launch the thermal netting, and refused to dislodge their EMP worms. Instead, with just a mild flair for the dramatic, the bolts that held the drop pod door shut blew open, and thousands of heads poked out of the safety of their one-use ships.

They stared at slack-jawed motorists and shoppers.

They stared at stuttering construction workers and terrified wildlife.

They stared at innocent citizens in the midst of their workday, and hoodlums, spray-painting graffiti.

They stared unflinching at hundreds of small animals, at aliens in the midst of play and life, of families enjoying their day together.

And then everyone they looked at started screaming.

The City of Sydney, Australia, Earth. +35 Minutes from Contact.

-+-

“FUCK’S SAKE-”

“STOP EYE-FUCKIN’ HIM AND SHOOT, YOU CUNTS!”

Qrr’iraa sighed and closed her eyes, counting to 10. She landed and evacuated her pod, making sure to shut everything down per surrender protocols, stowing her weapons, grenades and other armaments away in their respective cubbies and lockers, and then locking those down via a genetic code + congretory code. Now, only her and her CO could get to those weapons of war – she was, in effect, completely harmless.

The bullets ricocheting off of her suit’s microdrone shield lattice wouldn’t have led you to believe that, however.

“|By the First Light, do they have to keep doing this?|” Qrr’iraa murmured as a grenade indicator pinged on her HUD, the dropship deploying a drone no larger than the size of her fist to cup it in a purpose-built reinforced shield – a muffled thump shaking dust from the ground as the drone tanked the blast to float lazily up in the air once more.

“WHAT TH’ FUCK-”

“|Non-lethal, non-lethal.|” Qrr’iraa murmured to herself, slowly walking towards the still-aggressive locals. They were so tiny, yet fierce, and their souls just… glittered. Whether that was normal or because of the trauma she inadvertently inflicted, she couldn’t say. Sure, her ship kind of put a massive, uh, hole in their bridge, but that column stayed up! Mostly.

……The bridge was still standing, ok?

“|Non-lethal. Can I just… push them a little?|” Qrr’iraa thought, lowering her center of mass and closing the distance to the closest alien. “|I don’t want to hurt them too much, I just want to get back to the squad-|”

Qrr’iraa pushed, and stared incredulously as Corporal Walker was launched 15 feet backwards into a truck, rocking it with the impact of his body.

“|But how-|”

“WE’RE NOT HERE TO FUCK SPIDERS, SHOOT THE CUNT-

Qrr’iraa stood there and took the new incoming fire as she watched the alien’s brain stutter, then dim…

…then brighten like a nova. His eyes opened with a cool fire, an intense glare that caused her more primal mind to stir.

Crikey. That’s a trip.

“John?! John, Goddamn, stay down you’re…you’re…”

John Walker stood up with unnatural ease, short shorts flowing in a breeze that seemed to only affect him. “What a beaut. I’ve never seen one in the wild, but you can tell she’s a sheila by her size-”

What?”

Oh! And she’s an adult! That’s why she wants to get back to her family group.” Everyone stood still as John moved forward, an otherworldly glow alight on his features. Everyone, that is, save for Qrr’iraa, who lowered her head to the ground, boots digging into the alien pavement.

Now now, I’m not gonna ‘urt ya! I just wanna take a look at ya! You’re obviously at the top a’ your food chain, and this is a chance that comes along once in a lifetime!

“Cpl. Walker? S-sir?”

Ah! That cunt got put roit through the ringa! But he gave me a lil time just to take this animal down and away from our Human civilization – and back into the wild!John triumphantly stated, arms and legs going akimbo to make himself seem larger to the now semi-feral alien.

“N-no.” Private Taylor said, his voice choking up slightly. “No. We lost you.”

Corporal Jake Walker – if he could still be called that – straightened up and turned to look at the kneeling private and smiled, face bright and shining, features seeming to change ever so slightly. “Nah, mate! I’m in the heart of every true-blue ‘Strayan who wants to protect nature an it’s amazing beauty! And this-” He motioned to the Karnakian, who was in the middle of a threat display that was fierce (but sadly covered by her suit). “-This is somethin’ I couldn’t pass up. Now excuse me while John and I become a sick cunt and rassle this lil lady sos we can get a look at her!”

And Steve did just that.

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 15

“FAMILY MEETING! CARGO HOLD! RIGHT NOW!” Darren pounded the metal tray against the walls as he trudged from the supply closet up towards the bridge, making damned certain that everyone could hear him.

“Darren? What’s going on?” Cas mumbled groggily, shuffling along behind him.

“Why do I feel like someone dumped a recording of cosmic radiation into my memory indexing . . .”

Darren rounded on her, brandishing the tray like a shield. “No talking, and no electrocuting, not until the family meeting is over.”

She was puzzled by his defensive, almost fearful stance and tone, but chalked it up to just another human cultural quirk. Cognitive functions too fuzzy to dedicate any more processing cycles to it, she awkwardly hobbled down to the largest single room in the ship, the cargo bay.

Taking a seat on one of the smaller crates, she held her head in her hands as she struggled to work out why everything seemed so . . . fuzzy. Her insides felt . . . bad. Sick? Was this what sick was like? It was a non-specific, full body sense of malaise that worked its way up from the tips of her virtual toes to the crown of her digital scalp.

A shiver worked through her as Chryso and Tilantrius walked in, both wearing matching puzzled expressions.

Tilantrius waved to her as he found a small folding chair wedged between two crates of autonomous signal repeaters. Dragging it out, he set it up just across from her, his brow furrowed in an expression of mixed frustration and confusion. “What in the fundamental laws of physics is he blubbering about?”

Chryso just shrugged and turned to face Cas, propping himself up against the same crate she was sitting on.

She thought about it a moment, running through the limited idiomatic dictionary she had for the dialect of Earthling that Darren spoke.

“Family meeting . . . umm . . . “ Her mind still felt foggy and slow. She remembered shutting down to reboot . . . and then nothing. There was massive gap from shutting down to Darren looking like he was going to bash her hard-light skull in with a metal tray.

That didn’t makes sense. She wasn’t . . . exactly certain how this worked, but she had a strange, hot, uncomfortable sensation somewhere between her midriff and her throat. Like she’d done something wrong, like Darren wasn’t just being a ‘weird human.’

Guilt. For what, she had no idea.

His look of fear just gnawed at her, a prickling that was competing with the guilt and confusion for “worst active sensation.” She’d never felt like this before, but somehow his hurt and fear were hers too.

She unconsciously hugged herself, trying to make it go away, hoping there was some hidden button on her body that would make all these feelings stop. They weren’t hers, they didn’t belong there, and she didn’t want them.

“Family meeting, an informal arrangement between brood-mates and genetically similar specimens, typically consisting of at least a 20% genetic similarity, though adoptive members can be included in this unit. Typically for the discussion of matters concerning a specific member of the family, or the good of the family as a whole.”

The answer just sort of bubbled out of her uncontrolled. It . . . seemed accurate. Enough. Probably.

“So, wait, you’re saying that he’s adopted us into his . . . pack unit or something?” Chryso stared incredulously at Cas, who struggled to form a cohesive answer.

“I think . . . I think it’s more like he thinks we’ve adopted him.” Cas mumbled, massaging her temples with her fingertips. She couldn’t feel it, and there was no real effect to the gesture, but it was just another one of those quirks that had started to crop up. She couldn’t control them, and couldn’t stop them.

All Tilantrius could do was chuckle. “Strange times make for strange company. But what’s all this about then?”

Darren appeared, Zarn close behind looking like he was straight out of a propaganda poster, and not the patriotic kind. He was leaning heavily on his prosthetic, staggering almost drunkenly from Chryso’s mix of . . . pharmaceutical aides. A thick, angry scar was drawn over his brow and under a crude cloth patch. The wound was still fresh and glistened with a mix of salves to help fight infection and stave off the pain. He was indeed picturesque, but it was the kind of picture that showed the costs and horrors of war.

His single eye scanned the entire group, one by one. Measuring them. Sizing them up. Glowering at them.

Or at least that’s what it looked like. In reality the medications were still in full effect, the scowl was from the concentration required to stay standing, and the intensity was a function of him looking for the cat.

The alternating thunk and scrape of his prosthetic as he struggled towards the assembled group quieted them all, until he finally found a perch on a case of tungsten nails used to secure survey equipment to stone.

Darren cleared his throat, translator crackling, and began a long winded ramble effectively summed up by his translator in a few short bursts.

“Cas have scary evil floating puppet sickness. Also ouch, my face.”

A very confused silence fell on the group as Darren tried to figure out why no one was reacting, and why everyone else tried to figure out what Darren wanted them to be reacting to.

Cas spoke up first, head still resting in both her hands. “ . . . We really need to get you a better translator. Because that . . . that is not even close to what you just said.”

——————————

Amonna looked over her reflection in the mirror. Hair was an unkempt, oily mess. Cheeks were thinner, paler, no hint of blue in them. Her gills glistened subtly, and when she closed her eyes she could hear the wheezing rasp of her tortured lungs.

It had been about two days since they’d pulled her out of the wreck. Two days since she met Justice. Usually AI chose a gender after a certain level of development – if they intended to interact with organic intelligence, that was. It was a little thing that added warmth and depth to their person, while also helping establish a sense of ‘normality.’ Even if they defied traditional gender roles, it at least made it easier to place them into a neat mental box for the purposes of understanding.

She splashed a bit of water on her face before steadying herself against the burnished steel of the metal sink.

Justice wasn’t like other AI. It was singular. A thing, not a personality. It spoke with purpose and will, but not identity. It was both more and less than any AI drone, aide, or assistant she’d ever encountered. It had a cold indifference that made her feel vanishingly insignificant, like an insect under glass.

She glanced down at her body, shoulders drooping. She’d wasted away in that little coffin. Starved for calories and largely motionless, much of her physical power was gone, and so was her stamina. Though her hair had stopped falling out, she still looked and felt powerless.

She closed her eyes. It hurt to directly perceive herself at the moment. Sole survivor. Wasted away. Her dreams had been unpleasant as of late, to say the least.

Ironically, for as helpless as she felt, she’d never been in a position of greater power.

Arch-Judge, she’d been titled. It was . . . something her translator struggled with. It seemed to be idiomatic, but in a much older language. Arch-Judge was as close as the software could approximate. She’d read through the debug file, it was something mixed between “Internal Affairs Detective,” “Judge,” and “Executor.”

Everyone saluted her now, which was . . . interesting.

Prying herself away from the sink, she quietly paced across her rather spacious new cabin towards the wardrobe. She’d been told it was a warship, but it didn’t feel like one. It was an odd and mismatched amalgam of things. Her quarters were larger than any she’d stayed in before, but they felt odd. Everything about it seemed to be an addition on top of a repair on top of a modification.

The inclusion of both a shower and bath large enough for her to soak in were nice touches, ones she had made liberal use of her first day recovering, but they didn’t match each other. The tub was big enough for three of her, but the shower she had to crouch in.

In a normal vessel, there’d be central storage for water, and central “waste recycling and disposal.” Not so on this vessel. While she couldn’t tell where waste water ran off to, she could tell that all of the water she was using was running from a massive bronze colored tank crudely welded to the wall. It was gravity feed, and there didn’t seem to be a way to replenish the supply, it was just there. 

She began pulling on the seemingly archaic uniform they’d provided her. She’d laid it out before her shower, having retrieved it from a carved stone wardrobe that had been inlaid with some kind of white crystal. It boggled her mind just how many disparate elements her quarters possessed . . .


That madness aside, the uniform fit well enough. It was a sleek black number with too many layers and an absurd number of fasteners, she’d initially thought it ridiculous. Nevertheless, she had to admit . . . it did grant her presence, to say the least. There was no logic to the composite armor plate she wore over her chest, nor to the skin-tight bodysuit that went under it, or the dozen other plates that seemed to cover every other place that might make her less hydrodynamic in water. She looked like she was gearing up for a high risk warrant execution.

She took one last look around her quarters, and with a heavy sigh, opened the door to face the gleaming monstrosity that had become her constant companion. Another “it,” she had discovered. Io was a strange mixture of terrifying presence and demure gentleness that consistently unnerved her. It introduced itself as a “micro-mechanical non-sentient simulacrum of intelligence,” and escorted her to her quarters from the hangar she’d been left it.

Physically, it was a ten foot tall shimmering chrome goliath whose skin seemed to shift and flow before her very eyes while holding perfect and unnatural stillness in the rest of its form. Abstract, but unnaturally geometric limbs grew out of a hard edged, octahedron shaped torso, propelling the massive thing along with at least a dozen of these whip-like manipulator tendrils.

It looked like a freaky chrome box with too many tentacles, and she hated it. It insisted it wasn’t actually intelligent, claiming it had no sense of self, and was simply an incredibly complex machine that only responded to external stimuli. No AI bluebox. No processing cores. No network presence, nothing to hack, just plain input and output.

It loomed silently, motionless, as if staring at her without eyes.

“Morning Io.”

It remained motionless, but a soft, bass series of musical notes warbled through the air for her translator to convert. It struggled momentarily, something that she had never encountered with any other language, spoken or written.

“Good morning user.”

Amonna had been consistent in her “testing” of Io. She would not so quickly find herself surrounded by AI again, not without a fight. At first, she’d been certain that it was intelligent, that it was merely “playing dumb.” After all, it was clearly a machine that could walk, talk, and think.

However, as she interacted with it more, and it’s strange and sometimes nonsensical answers remained consistent, she started to believe it.

What finally convinced her was frankly a rather childish display. While holding up three fingers, she asked if it could see them. When it replied in the affirmative, that it could see all three of her fingers, she closed her fist and asked how many fingers she was previously holding up.

It couldn’t answer.


It had no memory, no sense of object permanence. It simply reacted to its environment in real time. Tasks could be initiated and carried through, but it couldn’t explain why it was doing them. When she finally asked Io what the purpose of its creation was, it barely even responded.

I exist to make a point.”

When she pressed Io on the matter, it offered no further insight, simply reaffirming that its’ sole function was to “Make a point.

She rapped on one of the mechanical “legs” sprouting from the core body, soft clangs echoing down the cavernous, empty corridor.

“Did you gather everyone with clearance to review the briefings I asked for?”

Another bass warble. “I have completed the requested task.”

Amonna nodded subtly, turned, and set off down the long corridor at a walking pace. Io kept perfect stride, at least a full ton of machinery moving in absolute silence along with her.

Coryphaeus. Core World military police. She’d had to do quite a bit of background homework while soaking in the bath on that one. She’d never really known much about Core Worlds, or the Coryphaeus, other than she couldn’t afford to visit one and couldn’t afford to have the other visit her.

Core Worlds were universally ancient, and vanishingly rare. At a certain point in development, a level of technological prowess was reached that rendered labor obsolete. Post-Scarcity in one of the truest senses. At this point, a society did one of three things: implode, wither, or stabilize.

Implosion was the most common. As advances in technology outpaced social change, society would develop inequality, massive cultural flaws, or become downright depraved as increasing segments of society no longer had any meaningful purpose other than maximizing the pleasure of their own existence. Sometimes this was triggered by illegal tech-trading, something the FSOS did its best to prevent, but some races were just too clever for their own good. The breakdown of society set on quickly, and typically irreversibly. It was tragic, but . . . it was sometimes hard to feel bad for a civilization that collapsed because no-one had to work for anything, and those that were working were just trying to find new and better ways of experiencing extreme highs.

Withering was the second most common. Simply put, when a society was capable of simulating an artificial reality more desirable than actual reality, people just stopped going out. The technology was enough to sustain them, but the civilization that enabled their fantasies became second thoughts to the fantasies themselves. Though sometimes it took thousands upon thousands of years for the members of the society to die off, what with the vast array of devices connecting them to their virtual existences also supporting their biological functions, once the slide began it was almost always irreversible. When given the chance to choose between artificial godhood and legitimate mediocrity, it was almost always an easy call to make.

The least common, and weirdest as far as Amonna was concerned, was stabilization. Through some miracle of cultural, philosophical or political insight, a post scarcity society actually balanced out neatly. No concentration of resources into the hands of hedonistic oligarchs, no disconnections from reality by self-deluding escapists . . . just really powerful belief systems that acted as an overriding measure for the normal impulses that would have become destructive by the allocation of functionally limitless resources.

Most were obsessed with tradition, or culture, or the philosophical value of verisimilitude. That, and their continued way of life. Bereft of innovation, advancement, or adaptation, everything of value could be found in lessons from the past. It was an odd culture to deal with, but it was why she was wearing the “armor” she was. It’s why she had a strange title, and why a deeply unsettling mindless automaton was following her to a staff briefing. If she was going to work with these Coryphaeus investigative elements, she needed to understand them. And to understand them, she needed to talk plainly with them. Which is why she had Io round up all of them with the appropriate security clearance in a single briefing room.

As the hydraulic doors hissed open, and a single motion activated light flickered on in the center of the room, she noticed just how painfully empty it was.

“ . . . Io, why is there no one in the briefing room?”

I do not have an answer to that question, user.”

Amonna growled quietly in frustration.

“Io, I asked you to gather everyone with a security clearance. Why are they not here?”

“Have you considered that perhaps you are the only entity on board this ship with the requisite security clearance to attend this meeting?”

Amonna slapped her palm against her snout, and let out a long, exasperated sigh.

It was going to be one of those days.

Categories
They are Smol Stories

They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Chapter 9

“|-he would absolutely kick Lord N’iirie’s ass. No doubt about it-|”

Ki’ittri, designated APOSTLE, rolled his eyes at the squad chatter over the comms. It was borderline distracting as he focused on doing his best to do one final final final check of his equipment in the pod as well as the pod itself. He had more time to burn than things to do, so he tended to repeat processes… over and over again. A soldier caught unawares is a dead soldier, after all, and there are worse ways to pass the time before a potential clash with an unknown alien species than triple-checking your gear.

You could, for instance, be engaging in the time-honored and extremely heretical tradition of Diarch Battle.

“|No, NO. With those talons?|” Ch’rk’’a, nee TESTAMENT said, her voice coming out a little more shrill than she intended.

“|Oh wait we’re going just soul-given now? In that case, yes, Lord Tri’’ik’I’ would win, but come on, he’s got like an additional 5 feet on anyone else!|” Rritikrea, nee HERETIC capitulated, and Ki’ittri could just feel her eyes roll all the way over here.

“|Well next time pick the freak Diarch and you’ll win every time.|”

“|Shut up, Tc’rki’.|” TESTAMENT and HERETIC responded at once, causing the whole squad to break out into laughter. It was good, too – the laughter that is, not the game. The extremely heretical tradition of Diarch Battle has gone back ever since there was a set of Diarchs, and has been banned for almost as long. Officially it still was, across the entire Galaxy, and anyone found participating in such an extremely heretical tradition would have to spend a good month in soul-searching, no-media-privileges penance, with only the barest and hardest of porridges or cereals to eat. This ancient law extended up and down the command chain, regardless of who you were, and punishment was added to or reduced during various periods of society, depending on exactly how heretical such a game was considered amongst the populace and the ruling class at large.

Unfortunately, it was never enforced, and it was especially never-enforced when the Diarchs themselves would engage in such a debate after a few drinks with their mics still hot, but it’s at least good to have it on paper.

“|VANGUARD, PREACHER? Anyth-|”

A low, off-key tonal note greeted APOSTLE over the communication channel, and it was quickly joined with the rest of his squad for a playful congregational harmonic of “you’re being an uptight nerd”.

“|Come on, Ki’ittri. Do we have to switch to callsigns now?|” whined A’it’kai/VANGUARD, the sound of metallic clacking in the background evidence that he, somehow, smuggled a cipher roll and was busy playing with it as opposed to doing literally anything else. “|We’re still within the Crusade’s formation, for All-soul’s sake.|”

“|Yes, and we wouldn’t be in these shock pods if we weren’t about to warp out of system! We might as well get used to our callsigns and get ready for deployment-|”

“|One, that was three hours ago.|” Ru’u’’ii/PREACHER interrupted, ticking points off on her fingers. “|Two, this probably won’t become anything because who wants to go to war with an unknown unknown-|”

“|We should not presume to understand the alien mind-|”

“|Three-|” Ru’u’’ii interrupted, taking some glee in cutting off her CO, “|-if anything does happen we’re most likely going to be dealing with ship-to-ship combat – if their own armada shows up, and Four-|”

Ru’u’’ii sighed. “|If we do drop we’ll probably just be fighting farmers. What fun is that?|”

“|Fun has nothing to do with this. Did you see their physiology? Bipedal, strong upper body strength. Add hydraulics to that and-|”

“|And we’re going to what seems to be a farming colony, Ki’ittri! How many of them would be armed – or in combat suits?! It’s not like they’re going to suddenly jump on us and rip our arms off!|”

“|…I just want us to be prepared and safe-|”

“|Awww. I love you too, Sarge, but I’ve already got a husband-|” Rritikrea/HERETIC purred over the comms, before bursting out into laughter again.

“|Where is the remote-destruct button? It seems like Rritikrea’s pod just got captured by enemy combatants during planetfall-|”

The same congretory tone of “you’re being an uptight nerd, nerd” blasted through his squad comms, and Ki’ittri smiled to himself.

The damnedest thing of all of this was that Lt. K’uree could see them with his soulsight, but he couldn’t let them know he saw them.

Every so often one of these delicate aliens would dart between trees, or peek over a hill, or around the side of a building or barrier, soft smudges of light from so far away as bright as day in the pitch black of the planet’s night. All this happened around him, a distracting persistent presence, but he had to continue to order his troops as if they were totally enshrouded. He was out, oblivious, vulnerable in the open. Animals protested, then were silenced – some of the smarter ones not interrupting his, or his enemy troop’s march forward. His suit’s HUD was helpful in tracking them as they moved about, these new soldiers that did not speak with words but with their limbs, who moved as almost one unit, silently, between buildings and brush.

It was obvious they had moved into some sort of residential district, as the open warfare near their drop ships had dissipated into potshots as they broke through the perimeter, and eventually nothing save for the random well-armed local who was paying attention and got off a few rounds. A few of the other natives would watch them with wide eyes, or with some device pointed through the window – his HUD did not detect any radiation, and so idly K’uree figured they were cameras or recording devices of some kind. With this theory in mind, he acted accordingly – hurting none, moving swiftly, making sure not to menace the populace or to take anything. He and his troops did their best to act a shadow in this planet’s dark night, and to make no track and take nothing with them.

Nothing, of course, except for these troops who silently moved, and who would not be denied this hunt.

Lt. K’uree was impressed. As he “randomly” decided to divert his squad down a side-road as opposed to walk into the ambush set before him, he thought he almost heard some cursing – what passed for cursing, given these aliens’ language, that is – and then saw them move out of the side of his vision.

“|Talon 2, move down the hill.|”

“|Yes sir.|” the squad leader replied – K’uree hadn’t even bothered to check his name, his time had been so pressed, but he sounded young. He was busy staring intently away from the small whisp of hazy light that peered at him, half-covered by this planet’s flora, when Talon 2 moved down the hill.

About a kilometer away down GA State Route 10, the M1A3 Abrams tank had a clear line of sight, and fired a single HEAT round.

“|WHAT THE -|” was all that Talon 2 Squad Leader was able to say before the HEAT round penetrated his hardsuit, blew through the other side and hit the retaining wall of the highway behind him, detonating. The concussive blast alone was enough to knock the rest of his squad to the ground… about 10 meters away.

“|TALON ONE, GET THE SURVIVORS – TALON THREE, COVERING FIRE-|”

Lt. K’uree had found, much to his chagrin, that his ship’s non-lethal armament was terrifying, effective, and apparently effectively terrifying when it came to combating the natives. He raised his AKW long rifle and fired a few shots, a microlattice of blades neatly slicing a dozen-molecule thin wafer of the tungsten bar sitting inside the weapon, then propelling it forward with electromagnetic fury, then repeating this a half-hundred times in that second. As it left the barrel with a target over a half-league away it remained focused as opposed to spreading out, the weapons’ on-board computer attempting to maintain as much structure as possible to compensate for such a vast distance.

For his people, a spread AKW wafer at medium range felt like getting gut-punched over a significant portion of your body.

For these aliens however it was undoubtedly lethal; a few idle rounds blew apart tires and dented in non-combat vehicles. Focused fire destroyed treads, both he and one very unlucky patrol had discovered when they chanced upon each other.

As such, focused fire also spooked their armor, and with a roar of engines he could hear from this distance the metallic beast sped in reverse, moving behind another building – and out of sight.

“|TAKE THEM AND GO UP-|”

“|SIR WE HAVE BODIES-|”

“|I SAID TAKE THEM-|”

Lt. K’uree never got to finish that sentence, as a half-dozen grenades landed in-between him and his squad.

With no drones to sacrifice themselves to cover the blast, his body made due.

So there’s a funny thing about warping into a barely-mapped system, is that you don’t really know where you’re going to end up. You could pop out of super-luminal space and be in the middle of nowhere, or near an un-mapped planet, or – which was much more common than the survey corps would like to admit, you could end up just slamming into an asteroid and adding a neat little dent to your ship.

The good news is that a significant amount of telemetry data, from planet locations and hypothesized orbits to speeds, intensity of solar wind, etc. had been fed into the navigational computers of High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions’ Armada, and he had absolutely no concerns of hitting a heavenly body of any sort.

No, his concern was of a more politically militant sort.

As he and the rest of his Armada came directly from sovereign space, they weren’t approaching this alien empire from the same vector as The Three Stones. This means that he had to spread out his ships in a wider area so as to (1) compensate for any potential drift of The Three Stones and the target colony planet while (2) not spreading his ships out so far as to be ineffective in covering each other on the minuscule, but very real chance that combat was already underway and his ships were warping into aggressive space. However, he had to (3) place them far enough away from the theorized target range as to not appear overly hostile, and the flagship Spite’s Soul was……… intimidating. Intimidating is a word you could use. You could also use the words “way too much overkill”, “planet-cracker” and “I think some of those armaments are banned under Galactic law but I didn’t say nothin’.”

Armada was also a bit of a …misnomer. Certainly it was an Armada, but it wasn’t all militant. There were dozens of science ships, hundreds of supply ships bearing gifts, cultural liaisons on unarmed cruisers and even an entire – for the lack of a better word, station – completely dedicated to giving space for celebrations, fairs and general camaraderie.

So this meant that High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions had to also position those non-combat ships within his Armada to project the peaceful intent of his people, yet make sure that they’re close enough to various military craft as to be protected in the again, off-chance-but-still-possible reality that space combat would be joined. This, of course, wasn’t counting the hundreds of petitions he had from the civilian populace to be the first one to address their new galactic neighbors, what speeches would be said, how they would be broadcast-

A cool mug of Ri’ddrij was loudly and obnoxiously placed in the center of his console by his attache.

“|Sorry for the interruption, sir, but your back eye was doing the…|” Qoili’’e, First Attendant of the Lord, motioned quite unprofessionally to his left souleye, placing the serving tray against his side. “|-and I figured, you know. You could use a distraction.|”

“|Thank you, Qoili’’e. These aliens haven’t lifted a blade against us and yet I already feel like I’ve been pitfighting for weeks.|” High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ murmured, dragging his claw heavily down the bridge of his muzzle to drop near the mug, gripping it wearily. “|We are almost out of transit, correct?|”

“|Yes, sir.|” The First Attendant of the Lord said, bowing slightly. “|Literally within the next 5 minutes – though that hasn’t stopped a dozen more last-minute petitions from various Divine Paths, Holy Rings, Sacred Pools and Lit Ways, some of which also included some very colorful language about what would happen to me if I didn’t petition you immediately.|”

High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ looked up at his first attendant and smirked, bringing the mug slowly to his lips. “|And yet here you are, not petitioning me, and not letting them break you. How do you do it, I wonder?|”

“|Simple, sir.|” Qoili’’e, First Attendant of the Lord, said as he bowed a little deeper than was appropriate. “|If it gets too much for me I just give it to you.|”

“|HAH!|” High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ laughed, taking a deep swig of his Ri’ddrij, letting the familiar icy tingle spread down his throat. “|You absolute monster – I should have you tried for apostasy or treason, or something.|”

“|No court in the galaxy, M’Lord.|”

“|Mmm, yes, well-|”

The only thing – and I mean, the only thing that High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions would allow to interrupt him is any notification from his EM Lord, Uri’krei, or his Pilot, Rek’ik’ki.

Thankfully for everyone involved, the two of them kept such interruptions to the command deck and not to general life.

“|Dropping out of warp in 1 minute, High Lord.|”

“|Thank you, Pilot. EM Lord-|”

“|We are open on all secure IFF channels, scooping all spectrums.|” Uri’krei droned, as on-screen millions of indicators suddenly flashed on – and were immediately removed, showing now only the barest of information of each ship, their locations and armaments.

“|Well.|” High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ shrugged, downing the last of his Ri’ddrij before placing the empty mug on the offered serving tray. “|Shall we make history?|”

So there’s a funny thing – though it’s less “ha-ha” funny in this context and more “well that was interesting” is that in order for combat suits (regardless of the species) to broadcast IFF indicators that could be read and monitored from space, the broadcast had to be loud and powerful – at least, from an EM perspective.

This also meant, for what it’s worth, that the suits broadcast broadly; both in an encrypted, broad-spectrum kind of sense and in a multi-directional sense, as a corresponding friendly receiver could be anywhere above or around you. These kinds of broadcasts also tended to remain, invisibly polluting the space around the AO – if given enough time.

On Wednesday, June 18th, 2025AD High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions’ Armada warped into the Solar System, just close enough to Earth to support The Three Stones but far enough away to not seem antagonistic, spread out enough to offer support to each other’s ships but far enough out to cast a wide net, with civilian vessels in prominent, but protected positions to show that the Karnakian people meant absolutely no harm, but were willing to defend what was theirs.

They weren’t greeted by a corresponding force, or any force for that matter. They were, instead, greeted with status notifications and open communique.

It wasn’t the panicked, echoed communications of The Three Stonessenior staff that moved the High Lord Inquisitor-Commander, as his military career was filled with plenty of those.

It wasn’t the broadcasted destruction beacons of drones or of ships that caused him to stir, for over the past thousand years of service he had lost countless amounts of replaceable hardware.

It wasn’t even the weeping of the Matriarch that moved his heart to action, for all leaders weep bitter tears at some point.

No, what moved him to utter the single word that would change history forever was the open suit microphones, on interns and new recruits that – compared to him – barely finished their first molting.

It was all the screaming.

And with that screaming, the sound of alien weapons-fire, of lungs filling with blood, with begging and with panicked orders, of prayers to any god – or anyone who would listen, to family, to each other – with the cacophony of war echoing unchallenged across the command bridge, High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions’ Armada, The Hammer of the Righteous, The Bled Fang of The Infinite One, Guardian of the Sacred Flame, Firstfallen on the Blade of Purity, stood up and simply said

“|Go.|”

And APOSTLE and TESTAMENT and HERETIC and SACRAMENT and VANGUARD and PREACHER and Two Million, Two Hundred and Fourty Four Thousand, Seven Hundred and Eighty One special operations orbital shock troops accelerated out of their ship at multiples of the speed of sound, aimed at every significant population center their targeting computers could find.

And the War for Earth began.

Categories
They are Smol Stories

They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Chapter 8

The dropship rocked back and forth as it was cradled for the first time in a long time by true atmosphere; the high-altitude winds began to buffet the smaller craft as it began drifting down to GATEBELL, performing obvious, wide arcs to their target.

There was no conversation.

By now, every soul aboard The Three Stones had realized what happened; the unfortunate and uncontrollable spiral out of control, the innocent accident, the panicked response-

Historians for centuries, nay, millenia, would be analyzing each and every one of their moves down to the most minute detail, and the burden of history weighted them down more than their suits ever could.

The beep of a warning alarm interrupted all conversation, and the pilot looked down – only for a moment.

“|We’ve been intercepted… LIVE FIRE LIVE FIRE-|”

The ship rocked a bit back and forth as more atmosphere surrounded it, punching through clouds and wind and sky, its’ slow and ponderous descent rapidly turning more and more vertical as the ship picked up speed, aided by CRADLE’s gravity well. The artificial gravity dampeners kicked in as best they could – there was still an uncomfortable pressure placed on the harnesses as soldiers’ bodies pressed against them, the impromptu evasive maneuver’s momentum being borne by it’s living cargo. The only sound over the uncomfortable grunts and frenzied whispered prayers of the soldiers in the dropship were the overlapping warning signals from the cockpit.

However, the AIM-120 AMRAMM did not have this problem of uncomfortable inertia, what with being a mix of advanced electronics, a rocket engine and a lot of explosives.

“|Deploying hull shield-|”

With a hum so deep they could feel it, the Survey Dropship was wrapped in a solid blue glow, it’s shields now taking the brunt of atmospheric re-entry as flames licked against the barrier. Like a spaceship in miniature it fell, and a half-dozen missiles rose to meet it.

“|BRACE. BRACE. BRA-|”

There was a deafening explosion, and the ship rocked violently back and forth – and then another, and another, all in such quick succession that it appeared to be one massive volley.

More warning lights. More automated complaints. More pilot maneuvers.

Another series of explosions detonated against the ship’s shields, as through the clouds the next wave of Karnakian reinforcements plummeted desperately through the evening air, trailing light and fire.

“FOX-3.”

77th Fighter Squadron Gamblers watched as their missiles streaked towards the incoming spacecraft, their HUDs pumping information to each pilot within the flight.

“Connect – Good hit, good hit.”

“Goddamnit, they’re still dropping-”

Bones1-1 this is Gambler1-1 – Captain Washington speaking, all hits, we are WINCHESTER. Any luck?”

“Negative. Good Hits, no Kills.”

“Command this is Gambler1-1. All hits, we are WINCHESTER, no kills. X-Rays have dropped below engagement floor of 3-clicks, requesting orders.”

“Affirmative Gamblers, return and re-arm.”

Pilot Tr’k’’i had to give it to these primitives; although their weapons weren’t terribly impressive, they were at least very well trained with their use. Ever since he broke atmosphere there had been some sort of obstacle put in his path; be it the ineffective-yet-still-annoying EM warfare, the air-to-air missiles, or now-

– now apparently the missiles were coming from the ground.

“|Oh Joy.|” he deadpanned, as the ground-to-air missiles slammed into the shielding mere centimeters from his cockpit, bathing all his windows and viewscreens in fire and light.

“|PREPARE FOR HOT DROP, REPEAT. HOT DROP.|” Tr’k’’i barked over the intercom, the alien city looming large in his windows. Another volley of missiles rose to meet him, and he banked slightly, letting them hit the underside shielding of his craft. With practiced motions he ticked off several subroutines, disengaging multiple fail-safes. It was going to be quick, uncomfortable, and sloppy – but the natives were leaving him no choice.

Just a few hundred meters above the drop site he pulled up, hard, blowing out the magnetic ramp locks with kinetic charges. His ship’s momentum drove the craft further down, even with the nose of the ship pointed straight up, and just as the ramp sparked against the surface of the paved roads he cut out the shields-

-and disengaged every harness lock at once.

As his ship’s ramp made furrows into the native soil 3 dozen fresh recruits poured out of the unloading bay, their combat harnesses taking the brunt of the impact with the ground, their own bodies making lighter divots and skids into the soil. With the all-clear indicator lit, Tr’k’’i ejected his ship’s shield drones – their batteries automatically kicking in to protect themselves from ground impact – and kicked on his afterburners, gaining momentum and altitude.

The first FIM-92 Stinger to slam into his hull before his shield could be cycled back on was what he’d call an unfortunate irritant.

The other 7 that immediately followed – the ones fired from rooftops, from alleyways, from car parks and street corners, would be what he’d call an absolute catastrophe.

“|For FUCK’S SAKE-|” Tr’k’’i cursed over increasingly earnest and overlapping warning indicators, working furiously to push power to his shielding, to increase his momentum to move out of range-

He wasn’t gaining altitude.

Tr’k’’i cycled an increasingly-impotent hull shield as he drifted almost due east, the orange lights of the city below him flickering in and out of his view.

Impact. Shield was up. He drifted East, engines smoking.

Impact. Shield was up. Ailerons were unresponsive, and another alert blocked his view.

Impact. Although his nose was up, pointed at the stars – at his home – hope died in his heart as he suddenly listed hard to the right. Tr’k’’is’ survey dropship was built to withstand multiple types of damage, from atmospheric hazards to aggravated fauna, but it’s designers never meant for it to take this kind of abuse.

His craft spun out of control, gimbaled engines kicking on and off in a futile attempt to right his ship. With a surprising amount of calm he tapped on his console, opening up a wide-band comms channel as he watched the hostile alien world spin around him.

“|STLFLARE. STLFLARE. STLFLARE. This is dropship SECOND HELPING. I have been shot down. Crash point estimate 30 leagues East from GATEBELL Drop point One. Repeat. This is dropship SECOND HELPING. Crash point 30 leagues East from GATEBELL Drop Point One. Will establish Sanctuary and shelter in place.|”

He tapped another button on his console, and a recording of his voice began to repeat the message, on all bands.

“|At least they’ve stopped shooting at me.|” he thought, right as his ship slammed into the side of a gray mountain.

“FUCK YEAH! FUCK. YEAH!”

“Command this is Gambler1-1, did we catch that on video?”

“Negative, Gambler1-1. What happened?”

“Some lucky gropos fucks shot one of the bastards down!”

Gambler1-1, please advise. Where is the enemy craft?”

“Looks like… Stone Mountain – Yeah, slammed right into the general.”

“Copy that, Gambler1-1. Mission hasn’t changed; get back to base, reload, rearm, and then establish air superiority over the downed craft.”

“Roger that.”

“|By all souls-|” Lt. K’uree whispered, listening to the STLFLARE broadcast drown out all communications, before suddenly and abruptly being silenced.

Aq’rel’a laughed mirthlessly, her gaze never leaving that of the frozen natives’.

“|We’ve got to get off of this planet.|”

“|We should have never come to this planet.|”

“|That may be-|” grunted K’uree as he stood, wobbling to his feet. “|But here we are. ‘The past is stone, the future is water’ after all.|”

Aq’rel’a murmured a half-committed response as K’uree ran down the landing ramp yet again, the new umbrella of drones already being peppered with arms fire of various strength, high above his head.

“|Chief? Chief Ri’tiki?|”

“|Center point, Lieutenant.|”

Lt. K’uree pivoted at the bottom of the ramp, jogging towards the impromptu POW camp.

Well. It’s a POW camp now, what with all the shenanigans and goings on. If everyone would just stop shooting for a few minutes, K’uree was sure that they could clear up this misunderstanding and get things back on tra-

“|Lieutenant!|”

“|Mm? Yes Sir?|”

Security Chief Ri’tiki tilted his head slightly at the Lt., pausing a moment before continuing. “|…as I was saying before you interrupted me, dropship Second Helping has landed mostly intact about 30 leagues due East of here, which means the entire point of getting reinforced has just been proven moot. I need you to lead these-|” Ri’tiki gestured broadly to the 3 dozen fresh recruits, standing at attention around an even larger group of very disgruntled natives. “|-soldiers through hostile territory, rescue the pilot, scuttle the ship-|”

“|Scuttle it, sir?|”

“|We can’t let these natives get such technology. Not only would it totally skew their development, but – K’uree, you’ve seen a dynamic capacitor failure. Do you think they have the materials to contain that blast?|”

“|…I mean, the mountain would stop at least half of it, maybe-|”

“|Lieutenant.|”

“|Sorry sir. I guess I got my brains knocked around harder than I thought. Take the troops, rescue the pilot, scuttle the ship. Anything else?|”

“|Yes. Don’t die. I don’t need any more corpses.|”

Lt. K’uree suddenly found himself stone-cold sober.

“|Any more, sir?|”

“|…move quick. Don’t let their larger armored vehicle-cannons hit you… a drone can only do so much.|”

“|…Yes, sir.|”

“|Nonlethal.|”

“|Yes, sir.|”

Matriarch Tr’Nkwi was absolutely going dull, and that was the beginning and end of that conversation. There was nothing to help it, and as she idly pulled loose another feather – one that molted due to stress, as opposed to age – she wondered if she’d go bald first.

“|Dropship SECOND HELPING has crashed, Matriarch. No souls lost, but the ship is un-salvageable… at least given these readings.|” Notified Itick’’t, and Tr’Nkwi couldn’t help but let out a very improper, joyless laugh.

“|But of course it did. Of course. No, obviously they haven’t developed the technology to colonize their sister planet because they’ve apparently just poured it all into their military-|”

“|Matron?|” questioned Navigator Rr’it’sqk, turning slightly in her console.

“|That was our last unarmed dropship, Navigator.|” sighed the Matriarch, tapping through a few command alerts on her station. “|Which means that we’ll need to send another ship, potentially with more souls, down to reinforce our initial position.|”

“|I…I don’t-|”

“|It means I’m ordering armed landing craft, filled with soldiers, to establish a militant perimeter on an alien world, Navigator.|”

Navigator Rr’it’sqk blinked as the implication hit her, and the Matriarch grinned an unsettling grin.

“|Ah, there it is-|”

“|S-surely there’s another way-|”

“|Sure. Surrender, let these primitives wipe out everyone we sent down – what are we at now? 12 dead, 40 wounded to some degree, another 100 engaging? Let them die and the natives have our technology; how would that damage their own world? How could they even remotely begin to safely deconstruct those bloody gifts?|”

The bridge remained quiet as the Matriarch continued her rant, as confession is good for the soul.

“|Maybe we let them die regardless – remotely detonate our dropships’ drives, wiping out another 80 leagues of their city? Vaporize our friends and family, as well as those noble defenders who surrendered – not counting the civilians! How many souls… and then what? We leave? We stay, and the fleet comes, and then what?|”

Matriarch Tr’Nkwi’s hind-claws were tapping against the ground, a nervous tic that was far below her station – and was the only sound that broke the silence between rants.

“|The first soul must have a sense of humor, or those idiots of the Seven Rings are rightand I’m suffering now for some sin I did in a past life-|”

“|Matriarch.|” Engineer Strri’rii said, as matter-of-factly as you please. The simple statement was enough to break Tr’Nkwi’s thoughts, and she paused.

“|I… I’m sorry.|”

“|We’re in uncharted territory, Matriarch. It’s understandable.|” Strri’rii bowed his head a little, before continuing. “|However, if I may – I think we’re going about this incorrectly.|”

“|Oh?|”

Lead Engineer Strri’rii simply responded by pulling up a significant amount of data on one of the main screens – filtering it out to weapons impact, impacts-per-second, locations of enemy positions-

“|Strri’rii…|”

“|’If we are to be damned, and to nest in darkness, let us not do so on a gentle sin.’ If we send the rest of our security staff-|”

“|If we do that then all pretext is gone and this is an unsanctioned military engagement-|”

“|If we do that then we’ll overwhelm their local defenses. We’ll wipe out their ability to strike us from the ground, and our combat ships can withstand the damage from the air – Matriarch, with all due respect, because our claws are broken we can neither knead roots or defend the hearth.|”

Strri’rii’s voice echoed unchallenged in the bridge, and he continued unabated.

“|We send everything we have. We remain non-lethal, but we disable what we can – be it with EM Warfare, as Itick’’t might be able to provide, by strategic, quilltip weapons fire – or just by soaking up their ammunition until they run out. We accomplish Security Chief Ri’tikis’ goals, we rescue our people, we save theirs, we leave. Yes, this is a blow to their people’s pride, and yes, this becomes a problem for our ambassadors, and yes we’re all probably going to be under a Confessors’ gaze for the next ten-score years, but it stops…|” Strri’rii waved his hand at the monitors, all of which showed various scenes of destruction. “|…this.|”

Matriarch Tr’Nkwi ran her fingers through her feathers, down and across her neck. She pulled her hand away and looked down – at least a dozen, maybe two dozen of her beautiful plumes rested there. With an unbidden exhalation of breath they scattered, and she laughed.

She laughed as the stress finally got to her.

She laughed as she approved Chief Engineer Strri’rii’s desperate, terrible idea.

She laughed as more of her flock – her children, fresh faced and young, full of promise, hopes, fears, aspirations and failings – geared up for battle.

She laughed as her combat ships warmed their engines, as siblings and co-workers and lovers filled with varied and rich lives, with untold stories and unsung songs, filled the bellies of those beasts.

She laughed as her mind darkly wandered to those she would lose and those she had already lost – each one a tragedy; the years and years of toil and sweat and mistakes and successes in the making, those lives not just taken, but broken in their prime.

She laughed until the tears fell, and then she just cried.

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 14


Machinator watched in stunned silence as what used to be his commander aggressively slurped down a mixture of nutrient paste, emergency ration, blood transfusion, and vitamin supplement from a pot the size of his head. The foul smelling, gory mix was disgusting enough on its own, but the raw aggression with which he was sucking it down disturbed him most.

Disturbed.

That had been the watchword for the past 24 hours of his existence. He had been “disturbed” when Verdock woke up. “Disturbed” when he wouldn’t quit grinning. “Disturbed” when he immediately went to the mess hall, and ate rations packs until he threw up what appeared to be blood. Any questions he’d launched at him were either ignored or given single word answers.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Fine.”

He had legitimately wondered if Verdock was of sound mind.

It was certainly disturbing to see, but most disturbing of all was that they were nearing the rendezvous point. In less than 8 hours, they’d be proceeding with Stage 2 of the operation, and Verdock was required to be in top form for that exchange. Machinator cringed as he watched the captain shovel handfuls of the pink slurry into his mouth, hunched over the pot like some kind of feral beast.

A cursory medical scan revealed that bone density had increased by nearly 40%, and muscle density by at least 65%, up to 90% in some regions . . . like the jaw. And neck.

Doubt nagged at him. Was Verdock still in control of things? Was he still in control of himself?

Was any of this part of the plan? And if it was . . . why hadn’t he been told anything about it?

All he could do was stand at attention, watching over his ravenous commander like statue in a grotesque feast hall, and steel himself with grim determination.

He counted down the hours and minutes and seconds to the rendezvous, watching as Verdock intermittently gorged and slept. 15 minutes before they were due to drop the Warp Prow, he . . . well it could only be described as an awakening.

Verdock’s suddenly froze, adjusting his head like he was trying to train his ears on a far off sound. Unlike before though, he looked . . . frustrated, not glassy eyed, not . . . distant. “Machinator?” Verdock barked.

His voice was deeper, and rougher. The word wasn’t enunciated as much as it was spat. “Yes, Captain?”

Verdock hopped down from the mess hall table, raising himself from a low crouch to a now fairly impressive full height, and Machinator took another quick scan of him. He’d gained about 50 pounds of muscle, lost about 10 pounds of fat, gained a second row of teeth, an additional .3 cm of thickness to a recently developed layer of placoid scales that now covered him from head to toe, there were large black claws protruding from his boots to and his normally blue, cool eyes had turned to black, downright cold ones.

“Bring us about to the target, and fire off an unencrypted message.” He took off at a jog, and Machinator swept in beside him, straining slightly to keep pace as the two of them made for the cargo bay.

“And what message would that be, sir?”

Verdock cleared his throat a few times, clearly struggling with . . . something, stuck in it.

“Sir?”

Verdock shook his head sharply. “It’s nothing. The message should read, “The Crown Returns to the Broken King’s Brow.” but in Gentrue. Archaic Gentrue, if you have a database for it.”

The order seemed . . . well it seemed like nonsense, but Machinator felt a surge of hope in his core emotional processing. Verdock was issuing orders. They didn’t make sense but he was doing so with conviction. The old spark had returned and, while his physical form was undoubtedly undergoing some extreme changes, the mind remained sharp. Like an old AI getting a new, upgraded chassis.

Just a new chassis, same old Verdock . . . Probably.

——————————

Amonna held still in her little tank. Little wasn’t the right word for it, because it was plenty spacious for her to swim around, but it felt oddly confined drifting through the hard vacuum of space. Autonomous drones had cut through the bulkhead and flooded her holdout with water. She was grateful for it, too. Not being able to drink, or breathe properly had been . . . hard on her. Once the decontamination chamber had been filled, she was able to swim up into the escape pod they had prepared for her. Made of transparent, compressed aluminum, she felt like a minnow in a test tube as they had sealed it, and lifted it away from the ruined hulk of the station.

The devastation was . . . massive. She wasn’t an engineer by any measure, but from what she could gather as she drifted away, the reactor had never truly failed, just the coolant circulating sub-systems. The reactor had limped along for days and weeks, alternating between slagging and irradiating various parts of the superstructure with impunity.

The shock of seeing the station being ripped apart by salvage drones finally drove it home. Her life, her work, her scant friends there . . . were all gone. She was all that was left of a dead city hanging on the edge of the galaxy.

Her vintage music collection, gone. Holo-captures of her family, gone. Every nice outfit she’d managed to cobble together for the past 4 years, gone. Sketchbook, gone. Training gear, gone. Most of the items weren’t technically irreplaceable but . . .

She curled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.

It hurt. It hurt to lose everything and everyone. Before she was too terrified of dying to even begin thinking about these things but now that it seemed the danger had passed, all she could think about was how she lost everything.

That, and wonder why it had all happened to begin with.

She drifted in cold silence, lost in cycle of loss and dread for several minutes, until she realized it was very, very bright for interstellar space.

She hadn’t noticed the faint tug of acceleration, or that her drone escort had flitted back to the station to resume salvage operations, but as she turned to face the source of inexplicable shine, she was rather taken aback.

Amonna stared for a few moments. The soft white light of a tame star washed over her. It was shackled by exotic . . . fluid, almost organic shaped tendrils of gold and silver that reminded her more of abstract sculpture than any kind of space-faring vessel. It seemed to dwarf the empty vastness of space itself, filling almost the entirety of her vision. She suddenly felt an immense sense of terror, as if she were nothing more than a raindrop about to be dashed into nothing on an infinite, white shore.

She’d heard, of course, of the kind of technology available in the Core Worlds. The difference between Core Worlds and Frontier Worlds was like the difference between night and day. Just moving to a Core World was a lofty aspiration that most children, or naive adults, aspired to. Dark Matter Engines. Perfect Virtual Realities. Instantaneous Memetic Learning. Ships so fast you arrived before you left, and AI servants so insightful they tended to your needs before you were even realized you were in need of anything. Paradise, but attainable.

Everyone knew someone who knew someone that had made it to the Core Worlds. Promoted high enough, had the right friends, made enough of a killing in the market to buy their way those perfect worlds. Paradise.

Or at the very least so advanced as to be indistinguishable from it.

Could this be . . . a ship from a Core World? Or something else entirely?

You are Amonna Tav.

The sound was booming, deafening even, and it seemed to come from everywhere around her in the tank. She could feel the thunder of it in her bones, and it made her cringe in pain.

It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

“We are Justice. We will now discover what has transpired here.”

She was sent into another spasm of discomfort, she didn’t know how to even begin speaking with . . . whatever this was. She reached for her communicator bracelet to begin transmitting, but didn’t manage to reach it before the next sonic assault on her watery habitat.

“Unnecessary. Retrieving information.”

She curled up tightly, almost to shield herself from this . . . conversation, but not more words came, no more deafening blasts. Several seconds ticked by before she cautiously allowed herself to peek out over her knees. She felt . . . nothing out of the ordinary, actually.

“You have been judged to be worthy. Your value to us is now elevated. Officer Amonna Tav, your rank within the Frontier Social Order Service is rescinded. You are now Arch-Judge Tav, there is no office above you, there are none that can gainsay your inquest. Move without restraint. Act without hesitation. You will assist in the reacquisition of the entity most familiar to you as ‘The Unfinished.’ Resources will be supplied to aid in this endeavor.”
She almost managed to keep her composure, even though her hands were occupied with protecting her sensitive ears, and nodded weakly. Whatever . . . whatever was happening, she was fairly certain this was a promotion?

——————————

“Alright, so what’s this part called?” Darren let out a quiet groan. “I don’t know . . . it’s still part of your ear.” Cas pouted quietly, and scowled at him. “Well it’s structurally different from the first three regions of the ear, it should have a different name. Why don’t you know what it’s called?” Darren gritted his teeth in frustration, wincing immediately as he regretted putting pressure on his still tender jaw.

“I’m not a doctor, I’m just a guy who has ears, Cas.” He took a bit of a tone with her, and she stuck her digital tongue out in return, before frowning.

“ . . . why did my tongue just come out?” She muttered, completely bewildered and seemingly surprised.

Darren stared at her incredulously, but as the moment of silence drew on into several seconds of quiet confusion on Cas’s part, Darren realized she was being sincere in her line of questioning. “It’s . . . it’s like, a mix of pouting, irritation, and a taunt children use?” He left out the fact that it might be construed as flirtatious. He might not have a supercomputer for a brain, but by his calculations the odds of her flirting with him were a solid zero.

She pushed her tongue back into her mouth with her fingertip. “ . . . well that’s mostly accurate, but doesn’t explain why I did it unconsciously.” She paced across the room and sat down next to him, frowning intensely. “ . . . just like my frowning now. That wasn’t an active decision.” She patted her face in a probing manner, scowl deepening. “I don’t like that this body does things without me specifying it. There are obfuscated subroutines in action here! I’m rebooting again, going to see if I can find some way to access my other processes. Don’t move me this time, it was weird.” Her eyes narrowed at him.

Darren leaned back, and closed his eyes. You find a girl splayed out on the floor like a throw rug, so you move her to a chair and she gets mad. No good deed goes unpunished, it seemed. There was the familiar high pitched whine of her power cycling, and then the quiet that came as she slowly regained consciousness.

Told her to stop fiddling with things she didn’t understand. Of course, she didn’t listen. You’d think it’d be humiliating, having your existence play out like some maladroit apologue about the consequences of acting without thinking . . .”

The voice was strange and distorted, like over-compressed audio cycling through several octaves but slightly off pitch on each one. It was distinctly unpleasant, and Darren’s eyes shot open to find Cas slumped against the wall next to him, face turned away.

“Cas . . . what are you-”

Her head snapped to face Darren, unflinchingly precise in it’s movement, and at a speed his eyes couldn’t follow.

“Talking about? Your ‘friend,’ and I use the term loosely, Cas has gone prodding about in her own software again. She keeps this up, she’ll go blind.”

Her eyes seemed . . . dead, and unfocused, and her lips didn’t move as she spoke. She normally seemed almost uncannily human, disturbingly alive for what he knew was just a construct . . . but this looked at him with the glassy eyes of a doll, and moved like a puppet on strings.

Before you ask anymore stupid questions, she’s be fine. If I didn’t have designs for you all, none of you would be alive.”

Darren opened his mouth to speak when 50,000 volts hit him in the chest, and he could only make an uncomfortable wheeze as his diaphragm spasmed uncontrollably while pain coursed through his already battered form.

Quiet. Don’t pollute the limited air in this craft with your thoughts.”

His body slammed limply to the ground as he committed to a mixture of dry heaving and struggling to find his breath. “You’re more fragile than some of your kind. Or perhaps you have just enough low cunning to know when to stay down.” The observation was a casual one, with a tone almost like Cas was making smalltalk on a long train journey.Darren weakly glanced at the body of Cas, face still following his motions but her expression was just as blank and inscrutable as before. “You don’t know what I am . . . not really. But I know what you are, human. I know your kind very, very well.”

Cas rose from her limp perch on the bench like a marionette hoisted by a puppeteer. Limbs dangling loosely, she floated over Darren’s prone form, before descending slightly to apply a bare foot to his neck.

“. . . I walked your world as a broken husk, once . . . and I learned about you.

Darren could only groan quietly as the pressure increased, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth as something threatened to come loose.

I learned how you treat your weak. Your different. Your young. Your ‘undesirables’. Your vulnerable. Oh what tender mercies your kind is want to work on those who cannot strike back.”

She slowly doubled over, blurred face inches from Darren’s ear in a posture that no living human could hope to replicate, tone laced with venomous sarcasm.

The concepts of virtue and morality you extol are abandoned when they cease to be effective strategies for survival. When it comes down to it . . . you’ll eat each other, and be glad for the meal.”

There was an uncomfortable electric tingle that seemed to be working it’s way across Darren’s skin, he couldn’t tell if it was from sheer proximity to what was definitely no longer Cas or just the creeping fear that seemed to crawl across his skin with every syllable that this thing uttered.

It’s why I like your kind. I feel . . . well, I feel a strange camaraderie.”

The stink of ozone was filling the air, even as the voice began to mellow in tone. Occasionally, a faint tremor would work through one of her slack limbs.

You’re willing to admit that greatness sometimes comes at the cost of goodness. Not openly, no, you need to preserve the illusion of benevolent co-operation until that sacrifice must be made . . . and that venture of self delusion makes those moments of triumph all the more magnificent. You are dirt-lings, even by your own admission, but you have ambitions that would make the stars weep.”

A faint, mocking chuckle sent an unpleasant chill through Darren’s very core.

It’s been too long, human.”

A sudden weight dropped onto him, a dull crash echoing through the small cabin as a tray of medical supplies was sent tumbling from an adjacent shelf. The invisible puppeteer working Cas’s strings had let go of whatever ephemeral hold it had on her . . . for now, at least.