Amonna was still alone, standing in
the cavernous VR chamber. She scanned the walls, examining each of the
hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny hard light emitters. It was certainly more
complex than anything she’d ever seen on the Waystation. As fascinating as it
was, she only had a few minutes to get to the bridge, so she could ill afford
to spend her time contemplating the finer details of hard light. As she moved
to exit the VR chamber, it the general held her attentions. Vrang was . . .
puzzling, and his questions even more so. She shook her head sharply, as if
trying to forcibly empty her head of existential fears. She had no use for
things like that, not now. Self-doubt was a luxury she could ill afford . . .
Her thoughts were interrupted by the steady tempo of heavy boots, and as she
sealed the door to the VR chamber behind her, the march came to a sharp halt. A
barking order rang out, but her translator didn’t recognize it . . . something
that should have been impossible.
“Arch-Judge Tav! Coryphaeus Honor Guard, reporting as ordered!” There was the
unmistakable crispness of military discipline, like every interaction she’d had
aboard the vessel, but there was almost a raw edge to his voice. Her
interactions with the Admiral, and Vrang had all carried a calculating,
measured tone, but this was discipline of a different flavor. This was fervor.
This was zeal. As she turned to face
whomever had come to accost her, she was met with a solid dozen figures,
arrayed in two neat columns, facing her, at sharp attention.
Her eyes narrowed, and she took a moment to really take them in. They were
almost motionless, as still as living bodies could be. They were carbon copies
of one another, figures clad in glossy black ceramic armor from head to toe.
Dozens of elegant, silver buckles and latches covered in fine scrollwork
clashed sharply with the utilitarian sheen of armored plates. Archaic looking
knee high marching boots with all terrain soles added to the strange clash of
style and pragmatism. While each of them were carrying a three-barreled rifle
of some kind, the strange mixture of sleek black and gilded components made it
appear as more of a work of art than a lethal weapon.
“Honor Guard?” She finally said, eyes still searching them over. She’d only
seen a few Coryphaeus troopers in her time, but these definitely looked . . .
different. The armor was bulkier, and covered in various pouches for gear. The
helmets, usually angular, sleek, and pressurized, now left the lower half of
the face open, and didn’t even have a neck seal. The armor had compensated for
that with a fairly pronounced gorget rising up from the chest-piece, but it
certainly wasn’t meant for use in a compromised environment.
The lead figure on the left, somehow, managed to stand up a little straighter.
“General Vrang requested a detachment to shadow you. Permission to speak
freely.”
It took a few moments for Amonna to realize that was supposed to be a question,
not a statement. She nodded subtly at the figure, and she found herself staring
at the only visible flesh of the one addressing her; a dour expression, drawn
in a thin line across the only patch his helmet didn’t cover, was all she could
see. “Permission granted.”
The soldier, or perhaps marine . . . she wasn’t sure which he would be, saluted
sharply. “It was the opinion of General Vrang, and myself, that you have not
been shown the proper decorum your rank demands.” There was a very pointed
pause in his words. “Nor do you seem to understand the weight it carries. This
honor guard is intended to act as that weight, and stands ready, able, and
wholly willing to enforce that decorum.”
Amonna glanced over her shoulder down the corridor. Vrang had only left a few
moments ago . . . had he been waiting for her to arrive to saddle her with this
group? Or were they being placed here to keep an eye on her? Maybe he hadn’t
taken to being interrupted in the VR chamber too kindly . . .
The . . . trooper, shifted slightly, drawing her attention back to the present.
“And if I refuse this “Honor Guard?”
He remained stone faced, but the long pause made it readily apparent that
either he was struggling to come up with a response, or that wasn’t an option
to begin with. Amonna sighed, quietly, and let her head droop.
“I’m heading for the bridge. Can you Honor
Guard me there?”
All 12 of them snapped their heels together sharply, saluting in unison, before
flowing past her neatly on both sides. They readyied their weapons at what she
assumed was some fashion reserved for drill and parade with a chorus of sharp
clacks. As the formation, now finished reforming around her, came to a halt,
she found herself in a neat bubble of midnight clad troops. Two ranks stood
ahead of her, and two ranks stood behind her as well. As she glanced up and
down the now far more crowded corridor, she couldn’t help but wonder why Vrang
had orchestrated all of this. As she took a tentative first step towards the
bridge another barking order rang out, and the cadre of black armored figures
moved with her apace.
The voyage to the bridge was silent, save for the rhythmic stamp of marching
and the occasional order to clear the hallway. Amonna internally suspected that
this “guard” was just Vrang’s way of keeping tabs on her, but didn’t give voice
to such concerns. No point. She felt the subtle tremor of the ship
decelerating, and with a vessel as large at this it would take some time. Enough
time for her to get to the bridge, or so she thought.
The bridge itself was situated in an unusual fashion, or what Amonna thought to
be an unusual fashion. A single, broad avenue led in and out of the bridge,
which was nested securely in the very heart of the ship. As her guard led her
from one of the small, narrow side corridors, she was absolutely stunned by the
massive size of the space she was in. Thick girders and archways populated the
space above her head, with armored gantries every few hundred feet. She could
faintly make out what almost looked like weapon emplacements in the shadowed
space above the lighting strips. There had to be at least 20 meters of headroom
above her, and then another 20 meters of crisscrossing braces above that. It reminded
her of a thicket, almost. A carefully woven bramble of alloy vines, and large
caliber thorns guarding the most important room on the ship. At the heart of
that thicket sat a massive, iron gray sphere.
On the one hand, it seemed a waste of both space and resources to be this
prepared for a boarding action . . . the days of ships clashing together and
offloading marines were long, long past.
Occasionally there’d be a distress signal, a ship would pull alongside and be
boarded by thieves, pirates, and brigands, but . . . this was a Coryphaeus
warship. That would be tantamount to suicide, not even a madman would try
something like that.
The passageway sloped gently upward towards this core, which as she examined it
seemed to have no shortage of marring on its surface. Warped metal, drawn out
into strange barbs jutted viciously from one side, while the other seemed to
have a deep furrow running across it. There were intermittent patches of
discoloration, the kind caused by incredible heat, and no small shortage of
pitted craters that adorned it’s shadowed surface. It stunned her for a moment,
looking at the scarred heart of the vessel. The scale of weaponry required to
work such wounds, and the tenacity of a vessel to survive them were both
staggering. As she scanned the other, adjoining surfaces, she noticed a
distinct lack of similar damage, meaning one of two things. Either everything around the bridge had been replaced, or
the bridge itself had been salvaged from another, ruined warship.
Perhaps they weren’t as daft as she thought to be ready for a boarding action .
. .
Once they entered the main corridor, the column of troopers escorting her
split, and fanned out into an inner and outer ring. The movement was completed
with practiced and fluid precision, like 12 bodies moving with a single mind.
With even intervals of about a meter between each of them, they took up nearly
one third of the avenue leading to the bridge, parting the flow of crew around
them the way a great stone might part a river.
A single ensign strayed just a few paces closer than the rest. He seemed
preoccupied, eyes fixed on the tablet in his hands. Amonna paid him no heed
until one of her “Honor Guard” lashed out at him. She heard the dull, fleshy
sound of a blow to the gut, and her head snapped around to watch the ensign let
out a faint wheeze of surprise as he was doubled over. A single, black armored
figure shoved him roughly to the side, sending him sprawling and his tablet
skittering with a loud clatter. Trying to push himself to his feet while
spewing a mixture of surprised and indignant curses, the ensign stopped dead as
he looked up to three barrels of lethal weapon pointed straight at his head.
The bearer of said weapon, still moving with perfect precision and pacing, offered
no more explanation than a silent, unflinching expression of raw indifference.
She stopped dead in her tracks, part from shock, part from outrage. That was
assault, no doubt in her mind about it. A personal feud maybe? Perhaps the
reeling, gray suited ensign had-
“This ensign violated your security cordon. Do you have a summary judgment to
render?”
Summary judgment to render. The
trooper, his rifle still leveled at the helpless and now very afraid looking
ensign, had spoken clearly and without hesitation, but Amonna still struggled
to understand. He couldn’t mean . . . he couldn’t possibly mean what he obviously meant. That would be madness, that
would be . . . beyond tyranny. Barbaric, sadistic, and bald-faced insanity is
what he proposed. To . . . to put someone on their knees for standing too
close?
Her and the ensign’s eyes met, for a moment. His were filled with fear, hurt,
and bewildered betrayal. Hers were filled with regret, sorrow, and disgust. “ .
. . No. No judgment to render.” She kept her tone low and soft, and at her
words the trooper lowered his weapon slowly. Every figure on the causeway was
motionless, and all eyes were fixed on her.
“So this was the weight that Vrang spoke
of . . .” she muttered, nearly silent, under her breath.
As she scanned the frozen crowd, she spoke clearly and with a confidence that
she certainly hoped seemed genuine. “You have your duties. As I have mine.
Guard . . . with me.” She punctuated the blanket order with a subtle nod, and
the world seemed to slowly trundle back into motion. The world around her
seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and Amona ascended the remainder of the
causeway to the war-scarred heart of the ship.
They crossed the threshold into the bridge further incident, something that
Amonna was deeply grateful for. The space of the bridge may have been
cavernous, but room to stand was at a premium. The honor guard closed ranks to
compensate, neatly forming a carapace wall around Amonna in a fashion she found
. . . oddly comforting. They blocked her from sight, and in a that saved her
from the sidelong glares of mixed wariness and distrust.
The bridge chatter grew quiet as she entered, and she took a moment to survey
the nerve center of the massive capital ship. It was in stark contrast to every
other part of the ship, a strange and incongruous insertion of bright displays
and organic shapes into what was otherwise a linear, ordered, and gray toned
vessel. The bridge itself was a hollow sphere, with hundreds of consoles and
displays covering the inner surface. Elegant, sleek, and displaying a dizzying
volume of information across their bright white holographic readouts, the bulky
and crude chairs welded to them seemed an almost out of place afterthought,
like a retrofit. Officers of varying rank and seniority strode up and down the
inner walls of the sphere, navigating the maze of workstations like a swarm of
insectoid drones. The dull thunk of their magnetized boots mingled with the
buzz of technical data call-outs and communications chatter, and the vast
sensory overload was enough to make her ears fold back involuntarily.
Suspended at the very heart of the bridge on the end of the steadily tapering
causeway was a single chair. Surrounded in what appeared to be a field of
stars, charts, and figures, a familiar face aggressively typed away at the hard
light projections surrounding her. “This is Admiral Chase, to all shipboard
personnel: We’ll have completed deceleration from warp in 60 seconds, move to
readiness level 2.” Amonna recognized the voice from her disastrous meeting the
day before, and as she looked to the admiral’s chair in the center of the
bridge they made brief eye contact. The Admiral’s cold set of eyes walked over
her, logged her as a minor detail, and returned to the myriad screens surrounding
her. Her order was relayed a dozen times into dozens of different communication
devices, and a single stray through crept through Amonna’s mind.
Shouldn’t there be an AI control system?
At the very least, shouldn’t there be a single, combined system capable of
performing a ship-wide broadcast?
The entire place was an strange juxtaposition of technology more advanced than
any she’d seen before and almost archaic methodology. The clock ticked down
steadily, and then, with a barely perceptible lurch, the ship dropped into
orbit around Cygnus X-1. Or at least, it should have.
Alarms began blaring sharply, and the entire bridge flew into a flurry of
activity. A half dozen white screen flashed red, and a full dozen crew-members
began shouting orders into communication links. It looked like utter bedlam,
until Admiral Chase pushed herself up from her chair and began calmly firing
off orders at individual stations. Like an unflinching pillar of stone in the
eye of a hurricane, she began directing the chaotic mess into an ordered
response. From the few tidbits that Amonna was able to glean effectively, the
allegedly impossible had happened.
It was easier than Amonna had expected, being a fly on the wall in such a
crisis. As the situation was brought to heel, she gleaned several very
interesting tidbits of information in slow succession. One, Cygnus X-1 wasn’t
just in the wrong place, it was absolutely gone.
As in, some force had removed it from existence. A specialist team of
astrophysicists aboard the vessel had been consulted, and after reviewing
extensive data on the subtle gravitational distortions that now saturated this
region of space, revealed a second tantalizing clue. The black hole had been
neatly flayed apart, steadily unspooled layer by layer. The idea seemed
ridiculous, even to them, but something of incredible power had generated a
powerful gravitational field that had teased the black hole apart, piece by
piece. The only thing that should have been able to do that would be . . . well
another black hole, and the end result of 2 black holes interacting should have
been one larger black hole, not zero black holes. While they were
frantically going over the math, trying to find out if that hypothesis was even
remotely credible, they were absolutely certain that what they were looking at
was a unique stellar phenomena. Unique, or so rare that it had only been
recorded once in 8 billion years. The third, and as far as she was concerned,
most substantive clue, was that floating about three hundred and eighty million
miles away, was a tiny little survey craft registered as “The Indomitable Explorer.” She knew that name.
She wracked her brain in silence, expression twisted into a scowl as she
strained her memory for details.
It was an impossibly familiar name. She thought back to lists of known pirate
vessels, tech traders, even overdue docking fees . . . and came up with
nothing. Nothing, until she thought back to her last shift before everything
had gone to hell. A cargo technician. Duh-Rehn. A handful of Jandoorian
extortionists. 4 dead, two wounded, and a mess of paperwork. That was the ship
he was loading up.
She wasn’t the only Wastation LS-49
survivor.
“Admiral!” She raised her voice. It wasn’t a shout, wasn’t a bellow, it was
only barely loud enough to be heard over the tumultuous din of the bridge.
Admiral Chase’s head snapped around, eyes filled with indignation at the gall
of Amonna to interrupt the flawlessly orchestrated feat of command that was
going on before her. Amonna let several seconds of silence drag on, her
interjection bringing the bridge to a silent halt.
“Yes, Arch-Judge?” The words clear, and without a hint of rebuke, but Amonna
knew that Admiral Chase was simmering with irritation beneath her icy surface.
“I have need of the vessel “The
Indomitable Explorer.” Intact, and undamaged, their crew unharmed and ready
for interview. It is necessary for my investigation.” While Chase may have been
able to execute a perfect, emotionless facade, Amonna couldn’t help but show a
little satisfaction in giving Chase an order. After all, that’s what she’d
asked for during their meeting.
Author: TPH
Springdale, Arkansas, USA. +5 DAYS AFTER CONTACT.
-+-+-
The sound of boots on broken glass broke the silence, and Carl gripped his shotgun a little tighter as he swept the Target for looters. He wasn’t expecting any, but he heard through the radio that if your area was still without power, you should “shelter in place”. This was also codeword for “the cops aren’t there right now” and well. Carl sighed internally as he scooted a particularly garish discount rack out of the way with his foot, the sound purposefully made to raise eyebrows, suspicion… anything. The Target – the store, not something he was hunting – thankfully, had incorporated skylights into it’s ceiling, so as long as it was daylight he could see all across the store – and nothing but the store looked back at him.
“Well. This was a whole lot of nothing.”
And indeed, it was. In Tornado country everyone kept multiple radios, and the ones that were in hidey-holes or basements or even under enough metal to deflect the EMP still worked. He, personally, was out hunting when the invasion hit, so he just… kept hunting. An overnight trip turned into a 2 day weekend turned into him being the most popular man in the neighborhood when he finally rolled back home with a working vehicle and radio. NPR still ran – when it was able to – but everything else was basically co-opted by 24/7 Government Updates. It was somewhat hilarious to him to see his friends and neighbors – people who didn’t trust no gub’mint listen with rapt attention in his living room to updates from DC (or wherever the bunker they were broadcasting was from) explaining how things were going, casualties, where troops were handing out food, medicine, clean water-
“[FRIEND.]”
Carl turned, nonplussed, at his tail.
“D’ya fuckin’ mind?”
He picked up this stranger about 2 miles back mainly because he was the only vehicle still running (at least, that he’s run into) after the EMP went off, and when you see a Ford F-150 from the early 60’s shuddering it’s way around Teslas and Mustangs, over sidewalks and through stopsigns – literally, in some cases – you tend to attract attention. It’s not like Carl wanted to be followed, but it was more a matter of his top speed was about 60MPH if he was pushing it, and the damn thing just kept pace with his vehicle.
“[FRIEND. HELP.]”
“I think not. NO. Go away!” Carl yelled, trying to shoo the alien stranger away with the barrel of his gun as it poked it’s head around the busted sliding-glass doors. It was useless – the shorty he made and used only blew out his window and did nothing to stop his accomplice, so. It was relegated now to a very expensive and very illegal pointing stick.
But I won’t tell the ATF if you won’t.
Grumbling to no one in particular Carl helped himself to a couple shopping carts, making his way first to the “sporting goods” section – ammunition is always necessary, after all – and then once he loaded up there, he’d hit the various dry goods areas. Water filters would be important; it’s not like anyone needed tents or whatnot, as everyone’s houses still stood. The real pain in the ass is cooking and cleaning; cereal and water gets old real quick, and some people had display fireplaces, which, really! Why the fuck would you have a fireplace just to look nice and not actually be usab-
“[ANOTHER. FRIEND. QUESTION.]”
“I was talking out loud again, eh?” Carl said, looking behind him to see the towering alien duck under the steel door bar, standing up inside the store properly.
“Well, might as well – it’s good enough company, seeing as how you’re not the chatty type.”
The alien just looked at him, and Carl scowled.
“Don’t give me that – you can understand me now! You should at least try to talk to-”
“[FRIEND. HELP. QUESTION.]”
“Oh, now you want to help! Sure, here!” Carl snarked, rolling the shopping carts away from him in no direction in particular. “Look! We’re right next to the card aisle! Let’s see if we can just help each other!” With grand, sweeping steps he marched right into the center of the greeting card aisle, spinning around a couple times in mock search. “Hmm. Nope! This isn’t where the ‘we invaded you on accident and we’re sorry’ cards are! Maybe they ran out – could we hand out a ‘At least we lowered your emissions!’ consolation card? No, that seems a bit too cheeky. OH!”
Carl pulled out a generic ‘hope you feel better’ card and waved it at the alien, who was still a few dozen feet away, watching the spectacle unfold. “I’VE GOT IT! WE’RE SORRY FOR BLASTING YOU BACK TO THE STONE AGE. HOPE YOU ENJOY DYSENTERY!”
“[FRIEND. APOLOGY. HELP. QUESTION.]”
“Oh fuck right off.”
Good news: Grilling was in this season!
“Nnngh. Fucking Charcoal.”
Bad news: Grilling was the only way to cook this season!
Carl lowered his bodyweight as he pushed – one behind the other – two carts loaded with bags of charcoal briquettes. His ‘companion’ was standing next to his truck awkwardly – he had been shooed away from helping pack the bed multiple times, and so instead just stood and watched as the lone man finally wrestled the last two carts near the truck. Those carts joined a few others that held water filters, ammunition, dry and canned foods, solar panel generator packs and board games.
Yes, board games. Not like the Playstation 7 was going to work anytime soon.
The Government news called it a Carrington Event – the thing that knocked out the electronics – basically a global EMP. Stuff that was hardened against an attack like that were relatively ok; submarines, military installations, some hospital generators, things lacking an electronic brain and backup substations made it, for the most part. Literally everything else wasn’t doing so well.
It hurt Carl, on a fundamental level, to know his son’s Nintendo was now just a $800 paperweight – and that of course the warranty wouldn’t cover it.
“[FRIEND. HELP. GO. QUESTION.]”
“Yeah, I’m about to go fuck right off back home, without you.”
The alien pointed to the horizon, and Carl followed his arm – and scowled. Floating over his city was one of their ships, cables and gantries being built into his city with their technology for some unknown purpo-
“[HELP.]”
“No. I don’t fucking trust you.” Carl growled, angrily throwing charcoal bags into his truck bed. “I don’t care if they have power, if they have ‘help’” he spat, “They probably can’t get out. I don’t give a shit. I’m not going, and you can’t make me.”
“[HELP.]” The alien said, gently, its’ feedback almost making a cooing noise as it took a step forward. Like a flash, Carl whipped out his sawed-off shotgun, pointing it between the alien’s eyes. They stood like that for a few seconds before he turned the gun on himself, the alien physically tensing.
“No. I don’t fucking trust you.”
The alien stepped forward, and Carl pressed the slightly warm barrel to his flesh, staring intently, unflinchingly at the beast.
“[PLEA. HELP.]”
“No.”
And they stood like that for just a few more moments before the alien backed off, slowly, and watched Carl pack the truck in peace.
And Carl went home alone.
???????????, USA. +6 DAYS AFTER CONTACT.
“[WE. GIVE. POWER.]”
“Yeah, fuck it, that’s a fair trade.” The Man in The Tower said, rubbing his temples.
He was not in Langley anymore – hell, he was one of the first ushered out to Site 4 – and he was not behind his mahogany desk – the utilitarian steel-and-aluminum furniture lacking all the charm of everything not designed to survive the apocalypse. Worst of all, however, was that he was not properly caffeinated for this.
“Jesus. What are we even looking at here?” President Carter murmured, reviewing a handful of the tower of files that crowded him for his attention. “It’s not like we can force them out of our airspace, but-”
“[WE. GIVE. POWER.]” The Diplomat said, wincing – or giving what the humans would assume was a wince – as his voice boomed from the translator-collar strapped to his neck. “[GIVE. FOREVER.]”
“I’m assuming they’re saying they’ll power us until we can unfuck our grid.” Interior Secretary Wiltjen said, turning the schematic over in his hands – upside down, to the side, holding it like an eye-spy for a few seconds before shrugging and putting it back in place. “Like you said Andy, not like we can tell them to fuck off. Actually, speaking of fucking off, have we been able to-”
“The Russians?” Defence Secretary Gates said, half-laughing. “They’re not taking anyone’s calls. Our embassy, along with literally everyone elses’, has been trying to get someone to answer, up to and including physically breaking down the Kremlin’s doors. Nothin’.”
“[WE. GIVE-]”
“Yes, yes, fuck off already.”
“Don-”
“Oh don’t give me that, Andy.” Defence Secretary Donald Gates said, rummaging around at his feet for a still-full bottle of whiskey. “I’ve given you my debriefing; the fact that we’re not all alien-chow by now is their doing, not ours. Fuck, we don’t even know what we were seeing there for a few points – did you read that bit about teleportation-”
“Yes, I did, like everyone else did. The POINT, Don, is that we have some sort of decorum in this… ceasefire negotiations.” President Andrew Carter sighed, slapping his folder against his own metal desk. “If we don’t, then what’s the point of going on? If we just give up because we, we…”
Donald grunted and hefted another bottle to his lap. To his credit, he didn’t drink it immediately, and instead turned to yet another top-secret super-important file. Without so much as a word he reached forward for a scattered pen and began to add his recommendations to the executive order. They – that is, the heads of state, not the executive orders – were arranged in a semi-circle in the stark bunker, bare concrete walls arcing forward, graced only by incandescent lighting that was installed probably sometime in the 1950’s, and turned on exactly once to check if it worked.
There was a good few minutes when everyone first arrived at the bunker that they thought the place was on fire. Turns out, an inch of dust on incandescent bulbs burns!
Regardless, this was the last-resort location that allowed those living heads of government to continue the American Experiment in relative secrecy and safety. Relative being the key word, because no bunker could sustain the weaponry that was leveled against it from these invaders, and nobody on staff knew how the aliens figured out where they were. One day, they were sequestered away directing the desperate defense of their homeland, the next there was a gift basket placed outside the vault door and a booming request from the heavens (and on every radio frequency) to “STOP. FRIEND. STOP.”
It was enough to get everyone to pause for a moment, and that was enough for the invaders to start the ancient and noble game of charades.
The alien shifted from leg to leg, chittering something to it’s superiors. He was known as The Diplomat – but everyone there knew it was a quirk of translation, and his true name was unknown. Regardless, every nation-state had a “The Diplomat” talking with them, offering them the same deal – free, unlimited, universal power for absolutely nothing in return, which of course meant something was up. The schematics already shared with the scientific community showed the manufacturing steps to make lightweight, hyper-photosensitive material, giving solar panels a damn near 100% efficiency rate. There were also schematics for capacitors, for battery banks, for wireless electrical distribution – all of it not 200 years ahead of mankind’s technological prowess – at best.
They also included how the satellites they were building around the planet used those technologies.
“Ok, so what’s the next steps, chief?”
Carter sighed. “Well, we need to project order and stability-”
He was interrupted by the uncorking of a bottle, and he glared at his Defense Secretary who just shrugged. The Man In The Tower shifted in his seat, coughing slightly. “Right, so? You’ve got Congress 100% in your pocket right now.”
“Universal Draft? Get everyone trained, make them feel safe – or at least, project safety. Make them feel like we were equals at the negotiating table, I figure. How say the other members of NATO?”
“Roundabout the same.” TMITT said, literally rubber-stamping a series of orders with complete disregard to his duty. “People feel better when they can see something being done – anything being done – even if it doesn’t work. Hell, look at the TSA – that bought us decades. Also, for what it’s worth, I just heard that England’s already building pillboxes in Swindon.”
“And these satellites-”
“[GIVE. POWER. ALL.]”
“Well that answers that. Taking it literally, it means free energy for everyone, everywhere. You-toh-pea-ah.” Science and Technology Adviser (STAS) Jessica Clifford said, spinning a pen between her fingers. “Of course… huh.”
“What?” President Carter said, rolling his shoulders. “What now.”
“Well. Just… if we’re beaming free energy to everyone, everywhere, at all times… what happens to this?” Jessica said, waving her hand about in a vague, northernly direction. “All this infrastructure. The dams, the coal mines, the power plants. These wireless receivers act as step-down capacitors and batteries, so there’s literally no need for an energy grid; everyone just becomes their own grid.”
There was a brief pause in the low murmur of communication, as various trains of thought ground to a halt.
“And it’s not like we can’t implement this technology; not only did these bastards beam it to literally everyone, but they’re already building the infrastructure for it. If we don’t take advantage of it ourselves, that’s a strategic advantage to our enemies, but, like. Where does this all go, though? What the fuck do we do with the grid? The Hoover Dam? Or the TVA?”
President Carter closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, letting out a low groan, his body slouching so far into his seat that his fingertips brushed against the caps of various helpful, but as-of-still-yet unopened bottles of respite.
“…That’s 5 Trillion dollars of equipment.” Jessica continued, her voice seeming smaller.
“Not counting the jobs.” Secretary of Labor Bill Forrest said, tapping his pen a couple times against his desk. “Don’t need polemen if there are no poles.”
“So we need the universal draft, and…shit. Give me a list of other infrastructure projects, we might as fucking well-”
“[WE. HELP.]” The Diplomat helpfully added, his forehands wringing against themselves in his exosuit.
Nobody had the heart to correct him.
Ceuzmec.
Verdock looked at the slowly spinning, holographic representation of the Core World. His nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes, and he felt a slight sense of amusement. He was fairly certain he didn’t need them, but it was almost . . . fun, in a way, to stare at something and be able to blink.
It wasn’t a clever thought. He knew that. It felt like he had far fewer clever thoughts these days. His head felt wrapped in comfortable weight, like the press of fatigue on a double shift that quieted his incessant internal monologue. Normally the idea that he might be losing his higher cognitive functions would terrify him, but it was more complex than that. True, while his abstract thought was somewhat muddled, he felt far less fear, far less uncertainty. A situation would arise, and it seemed all he had to do was follow through with what came naturally to mind. Fighting the commando team for the ship had felt like . . . like swallowing. He just started the motions, and the rest sort of fell into place.
Instinct. That as the word he was looking for. He was doing things by instinct now. It was better that way, he concluded.
The holographic display flickered, and his thoughts were drawn back to the present, and the pressing matter before him. He wouldn’t be able to rely purely on instinct here, it seemed.
Ceuzmec.
The basketball sized, perfect color rendition of an entire planet hovered ever so slightly above the large and dizzyingly complex briefing table. Normally the room would be filled with as many as three dozen onlookers, all paying dutiful attention to their commander. Now there was only him, and he was only briefing himself. He shifted in his seat, no longer content to recline comfortably and listen to the subtle murmur of FTL travel.
It looked like a jewel of spun glass, and he found his eyes quickly glazing over as the sparkling surface of the world transfixed him. With a quick shake of his head, he freed himself from the spell, and drug his mind back to the matter that had brought him down to this briefing room.
He was going to shatter that jewel.
Well, that was bit of an overstatement, but it would be a jewel no longer once he was finished. The plan was . . .
His brow furrowed. Something with the communications equipment. He tried to push the weight bearing down on his mind away, if only for a few minutes.
Right! The cargo this vessel carried, it was all high level military communications equipment. Quantum encryption, the works. Now that the Unfinished had it, they’d . . .
A pang of hunger drew his train of thought away for a moment, and as he pushed it down he growled with frustration. “The plan, what was the plan . . .” His voice startled him, dark and rough as it was. He kind of liked it that way. “ . . . plan . . .” He let the word rumble out of him. His speech was throaty, rough, and intimidating. He wondered if that was attractive.
His mind flickered to Amonna Tav, and lingered there. He thought back to her physical qualification for field service. Oh, she had qualified, and how. Sprinting, swimming, striking, shooting . . . it had put her classmates to shame. A faint smile crossed his face, and he let his eyes droop as his imagination wandered. He could still see her clearly in his minds eye after all, it seemed. She’d been at least 165 cm tall, 70 kilos placed ever so perfectly in all the right places, and had a tail that went on for leagues. Fit, clever, and filled out in all the right places, he wondered why he’d never really taken an interest in her. Half his age and it’d be fraternization, sure, but he regretted not trying to bring her along. Maybe get to know her better.
Sure it had been part of the plan to leave her behind but . . .
The plan. He was supposed to be focusing on the plan.
Ceuzmec.
Go to Ceuzmec. The way would be open by the time he arrived. There was . . . a vault. Somewhere. It had what the Unfinished needed in it. He’d need to find someone who knew where that vault was. That would be hard, so he’d probably need to find someone that could find someone else that knew where the vault was. That’d probably be easy. Getting things from people was easy when you were four times their size.
He grinned, and flexed his bicep, taking a moment to admire it. It was bigger around than his leg used to be. He bet Amonna would admire it too, if they met again.
Maybe after the vault, he’d go looking for her.
——————————
Amonna floated fitfully in what should have been a comfortably saline solution. She’d put away her files and charts and figures for a few hours to try and sleep, but it just wasn’t coming to her. She’d made a note to have them replace her bed, and within 20 minutes of putting in the request, they were tweaking the salt content to match her home region on Promos. She’d compare the service to a 5 star hotel, except for the fact that everyone involved saluted her, and the entire room was a burnished steel gray.
She wondered if that was the nature of power, at its core.
Was power just a measure of how much you could get away with asking for?
She pumped water in through her mouth, and out her gills, the faint sting of it making her wince. She still wasn’t well. She could smell the blood in the water, as faint as it was, and knew it had to be hers. Her thoughts wandered. Would she need treatment? Would she need surgery? Would it go so far as to require prosthesis? She was almost certain she’d never qualify for FSOS field operations again, not without extensive medical treatment, but what would this mean for the rest of her life? Would she be struggling to breathe walking down the corridor 20 years from now? Would the horrible dreams plague her for the rest of her life? What was the power she commanded now compared to that?
. . . yeah, she wasn’t getting to sleep anytime soon.
Surfacing at the edge of the tank, she hauled herself out, and took a few deep breaths. The chest pain was minor, so she focused on it for a few minutes, trying to push it down while she dripped dry. It was calming, in a way, to have that present pain to focus on. Much easier than fearing the troubles of the future or mistakes of the past.
She let out a long sigh, and walked over to her desk to go over the notable tidbits she’d manage to sift out over the past 16 hours. Still dripping slightly, she had to throw her hair back over one shoulder before grabbing a random file from her desk. It was a psychology breakdown based on Verdock’s service record.
She’d read it before, twice cover to cover, and skimmed it a few more times than that. He was meticulous, ambitious, and by every measure before this incident, filled with a deep dedication to justice and the order of law.
“What changed . . . what snapped in you?” She muttered under her breath, fingers leaving water streaks across the glass screen of the robust tablet. She tossed the device back on her desk, huffing quietly. She was getting nowhere, spinning in circles inside her own head. She needed an outside view on things . . . she needed to talk them over. Io was useful as an assistant, but seeing as it didn’t actually think she wasn’t sure if it was a great sounding board for ideas.
“Maybe . . .” she rummaged through a few other files, before finding the one she was searching for. “General Vrang.” She snatched it up, and flipped it open. The commander of ground forces on the vessel, she- Amonna groaned internally. He would have the security clearance to talk these things over, and shouldn’t be overly occupied with the running of the ship. Add in that he was the more sympathetic of the two during the briefing, and he seemed the obvious pick for a review of the facts.
She didn’t bother to get dried, and hastily threw on most of her uniform, eschewing the cap and overcoat of office. She was mostly dry anyway, and she doubted that she could make a worse impression on Vrang than she already had.
Io pointed her in the right direction, and set her on her way.
She received a few protracted glances on the way there, but she suspected it was more due to her lack of decorum than anything else. The corridors were nearly empty, long hallways of the same flat gray alloy after another, only intermittently interspersed with hatches and hydraulically locked doors. When she did run into someone they only saluted, and moved aside to let her pass.
Power. She was reminded of it yet again.
She was headed to the Observatory, something akin to a VR theater. She thought it odd, that such a recreational thing might exist on a vessel that was otherwise quite austere and drab, but didn’t have much time to think it over before she was standing at the door to it.
It was marked in the same, generic, uniform fashion as everything else on the ship, save for a small holo-display reading “In-Use.” She knocked, gently, and the door slid open.
The sound of waves washed over her, and she was suddenly looking out over a small cove that she used to play in as a child. The memory of the place struck her in the gut, and she was at a loss for words, or even thoughts for a moment. She took her first steps, father and mother holding her hands on this shore, and she learned her basic sums using sea-shells taken from the tide pools. She’d done schoolwork in the shade, and even run sprints in the sand here while training up for the FSOS selection process. Even her first date, so full of good intentions and awkward silence had finished up on this beach, watching the sun go down.
“Come in, Judge Tav.”
The voice was a soft, gentle nudge to remind her that she was still on a ship, still sailing through the void, and that none of that was real. Even as she stepped across the threshold, boot digging into the sand, she knew it wasn’t the same place. They’d built a resort here, a few years after she’d left for Waystation LS-49, and the smell was all wrong. It still stank of metal and ozone and fans, and as real as the ocean sounded, there were no cries of the Tide-Hawks, or the quiet chitter of the hundred different species of insects in the trees. Just the crash of waves, and the whisper of wind.
It took her a few seconds, but she saw him, sitting cross legged in the shade. Still bedecked in medals, uniform still pressed to a crispness that defied explanation, he smiled and beckoned her over.
“How . . . how did you know about this place? How did you know I grew up here?”
She was guarded, but intrigued as she approached. She felt strangely naked, having a stranger suddenly appear in her memories like this.
General Vrang raised his eyebrows in surprise, and at the very least feigned ignorance. “I didn’t, though I had a general idea where you were from. This was just the nicest place to sit in the immediate vicinity.”
He patted the sand next to himself, and gestured for her to approach again. “I was just doing some research of my own, you see.”
She took a seat next to him, the soft white sand parting smoothly as she plopped down in the shade.
Amonna gave him a sidelong glare, one that demanded an explanation for all of this, and offered none in return.
“Relax, it’s all in good faith.” He smiled thinly, scooping up a handful of beach, before letting it run through his fingers. “I just wanted to know how you thought.”
Amonna didn’t need to open her mouth to effectively voice her confusion at this remark, and he seemed happy to continue explaining.
“This is your home, or at least as close to it as I could get. I checked your medical record, traced your ancestry against existing medical records on your planet, found your parents, checked survey data, pinpointed where your upbringing was most likely to have occurred, and then had an AI run a reconstruction of it, scaled back from present day by roughly your age. All in all, it was about 5 minutes of work for me.”
Silence hung between the two of them for several seconds, before Amonna’s intense gaze couldn’t glean any more information out of him.
“With all due respect, General Vrang, it feels like a disturbing invasion of privacy. To go through my medical records, find my home, and then be waiting for me there seems to be a thinly veiled threat.”
Her words were measured, but there was an intensity to them that she could not conceal.
Seemingly unperturbed, Vrang started drawing letters in the sand she didn’t recognize, and that weren’t in galactic basic. “It isn’t meant to be. We are shaped by our experiences, and I wanted to try and see how this place shaped you.”
He underlined the letters in the sand, and suddenly the whole world stopped. The waves froze, the wind was silenced, and the sand felt like granite beneath her.
“This place is beautiful, and it’s nature is carefree. It makes sense. The way you charged into a meeting, no order, no structure, no plans, just a free congregation of those that could solve the problem.” He ran his hand across the symbols, erasing them as the world sprung back to life.
Amonna opened her mouth to speak, but he raised the same hand to silence her. He looked to be of young, perhaps middle age, certainly no older than her, but his eyes betrayed a very old, very tired wisdom . . . a wisdom she found she couldn’t help but oblige.
“On the surface, there is a great chaos to this place, and it left a mark on who you are. And, I would like to clarify that it’s by no means a bad thing. It’s simply that while the waves crash, and the sand is pounded ever finer, we see beauty and chaos and all the intricate detail of the world. But a computer, an AI recreates this place almost flawlessly. At the core of it, this natural beauty of blurred lines and unfathomable complexity can be reduced to simple equations, and carried out like so much addition and subtraction. What does that mean for us, Judge Tav? Can we be reduced, like this beach, to just so much math?”
Amonna was left taken aback, and a little speechless. Of all the things she had expected from General Vrang, existential questioning was nowhere near the top of the list.
“I . . . don’t know. I know for a fact that AI’s use quantum blue-box technology to simulate a sentient intelligence, with behavior very similar to the nervous system of any organic life-form, which means that the appearance and behavior of sentience can be reduced to a computational system, but whether or not that constitutes a consciousness is a matter of metaphysics and philosophy. I know I’m . . . real, but I can’t say that an AI, or anyone else’s intelligence results in consciousness, because I can’t feel what they feel. I mean, I certainly think that they’re real and conscious, but I can’t know that.”
Vrang nodded sagely. “If you believe that you aren’t a unique consciousness, that means that consciousness itself can be reduced to just math and computation.”
Amonna scowled. “I didn’t say that, I just said that I-”
Vrang stood, dusting some of the simulated sand off of his uniform trousers. “But you did. Either consciousness can be recreated by a simulation, or you’re the only truly sentient being in the universe. Those are the only two logical possibilities.”
Amonna scrambled to her feet next to him, a bit flustered and wrong-footed by the whole discussion. She felt like she was in her entry level philosophy course all over again. “It’s more complicated than that, and you know it!”
“Oh? So some people are conscious beings and some aren’t? You’re just afraid to admit that there’s nothing that makes you special, nothing that makes life special, and nothing to indicate that free will exists as more than a reassuring lie we tell ourselves.” His grin had gone from sage to insufferably smug, although that was only in Amonna’s mind. In truth, his expression hadn’t changed at all, down to the faintest micrometer.
The world around her suddenly flickered out of existence, and she found herself standing in a dimly lit, empty room of hard light emitters on a hexagonal platform, suspended a few feet in the air, absolutely alone.
“What point am I trying to make, Judge Amonna Tav?” A voice called out to her from the light of the hatchway behind her. With a careful snap about face, she turned to see none other than General Vrang leaning in the doorway, a thousand yard stare on his face. “Why put on such a show, why question the validity of your own existence, your own free will?”
She grit her teeth, and scowled viciously at him. “Because you’re a huge . . .”
A dead eyed look of seriousness killed the insult in her throat. “Think about it, don’t just be upset. Io told me you came down here for another view on the evidence, this is what that is. This is just another tool to investigate with.”
She inhaled sharply through her nose, still more than a little upset about being given the run around but . . . she figured there was no harm in obliging him one last time.
First he’d taken her to her home . . . showed her that it wasn’t really her home . . . frozen it, started the playback again, asked her about consciousness and free will and AI and . . .
There wasn’t any sense to it, no common thread. Besides walk her through an existential crisis, make her incredibly homesick, and question her own free-will using a hard-light VR theater he’d-
“Hard light,” she suddenly blurted out. “Hard light technology is dangerous. That’s . . . that’s what you’re trying to teach me here. It’s not just dangerous weapons systems, or industrial accidents that harm the body, it’s dangerous to the mind. It can distort things, call into question what we know to be absolutely true. It can make us think, and act in ways that aren’t rational, that aren’t reasonable. It-”
As Amonna paused he made a subtle gesture with his hand, a little circular loop, like he was tugging ushering her onward to the rest of the conclusion he was dangling in front of her.
Clearing her throat, Amonna continued on. “More than that . . . with something like this hard-light VR, we could live in a pure fantasy, and never even realize it. It doesn’t stop there though . . . no . . . it’s not VR that’s dangerous . . . it’s all of it, isn’t it?”
A subtle, knowing grin began to spread across his face. “I’ve worked with 3 Arch-Judges in my time, pursuing threats that are never placed in history-books. You’re close, not quite there though. Still, I’ll give it to you that you were the fastest of all three to get to this point. Yes, technology is dangerous. A knife is a useful tool, so long as the hand wielding it isn’t clumsy or ill-intentioned. There’s a reason we send in men with rifles, there’s a reason we still pilot our ships, there’s a reason we don’t share what we know with every race. There’s a lot of growing up a species has to do before it’s ready for these things . . . and even more growing up before it realizes it’s better off without some of them.” The last part was added with a flicker of dark humor. “The Core Worlds have knowledge and prowess far beyond what they utilize, and society is closely regimented to keep the boons we have from destroying us before we’re ready. I’ve personally witnessed what happens when a society capable of indulging its every want and whim does when the only limit to its debasement is imagination.”
His eyes grew distant, and his gaze hard.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for around Cygnux X-1, we’ll be arriving within an hour.”
And with that, he turned on his heel and disappeared down the corridor, leaving Amonna alone. While she was maybe a step closer to catching Verdock, she felt that she was no where near understanding the Coryphaeus.
Kursk, Russia. +2 Hours.
-+-
The Brutalist architecture stood tall – monolithic – and for a city of almost 600,000, totally and completely silent. Cars were abandoned on the highway, trains stopped running, and if it wasn’t for the electrical hum of wiring and the flickering of lights, the errant open door wafting the scent of now-burning food into the street, or the still-babbling televisions and radios it would seem that the city itself was abandoned.
It would seem.
Russia was no stranger to battle, and to fighting on their own territory – from the wars brought to it’s borders from Sweden and France to their own incursions into Europe, the land and the people had a long memory of bitter fighting. Kursk was, of course, no stranger to this grim task; It was sieged by the Vikings and the Nords in winters beyond memory, it had shuddered at the touch of the Mongol horde – this was, of course, not counting the dozens if not hundreds of times it had traded hands among the Rus themselves in the time before writing. Much blood had watered it’s soil, for it sits in a strategic position; take Kursk, and you have a foothold into Moscow, or to cutting Russia off from the Black and Caspian Seas. Most recently, Germany tried to take it.
Tried to.
Qro’roi looked up at the tall, looming and somewhat decrepit building, searching the windows and open balconies for the movement indicator his HUD pinged him with. He cycled through multiple spectrums of light, and even attempted to penetrate the building with a form of sonar, peeling away the outer layer to give him a hint of what lay within.
Nothing.
Qro’roi shuddered, and continued down the broad road before him. He had landed much like his brothers and sisters, and much like them there was the general panic of the local populace. Some reported terrifying the populace into fleeing – which was understandable, as their equipment wasn’t exactly designed to look friendly – whereas others were reporting disinterest, and in some cases even gifts and welcoming. Qro’roi wished he was in any of those other categories because then things would make sense. His AI notified him during planetfall that he was landing in a populated area. He hit a park – or at least, an empty field of some sort – and by the time he emerged
Nothing.
But it was the obvious wrongness of the Nothing that got him. It’s as if the entire population looked up and made the same conclusion, and then vanished into thin air. There were no stragglers, no attacks – some of his unit in other cities not 40 leagues from him reported locals ramming them with vehicles or pelting them with improvised missiles, or even engaging with their military – which again, made sense. But in this city he and his squad were unmolested. Granted, they were dispersed, as changing trajectory means also making sure that an accidental detonation of munitions doesn’t daisy-chain and become a conflagration, but closing that gap between battle brothers is what PT in full gear was for. Qro’roi paused at an intersection and leaned out carefully, letting his HUD scan for any signs of the locals, or of military machinery moving in, or of anything that would make it seem like the population was real and that this wasn’t some purpose-built fake city – which apparently these aliens had, oddly enough.
Nothing.
Qro’roi sighed, his suit beginning to up the dose of anti-anxiety and paranoia medications, helping him keep a cool head as he fully turned the corner and began to run down the center of the road, weaving in and out of abandoned land vehicles – still on, still running, still blaring music or language or static. There was nothing living, however, and a-
Movement.
Qro’roi quickly – so quickly his boot dug a furrow into the paved road, lowering his body to reduce his overall surface area and tensing the springs of his legs to dodge the upcoming assault-
“?Давай, давай. У бабушки есть еда для тебя, малышки.?”
“?Come, Come. Grandma has food for you, little ones.?”
-of a lone local, hunched over, wrapped tightly in cloth and scattering food for the indigenous winged animal population. Qro’roi stood silent, still, as he watched the local reach into a crinkling bag, crumbling up something inside and pulling it out, scattering the broken crumbs in a semicircle around it’s feet. It’s movements were slow and halting, and with dawning realization Qro’roi realized this being was old for it’s species. Really, really old. The overall scene of this creature sitting nonchalantly in the central gathering area inside the U of a giant, monolithic, seemingly abandoned building performing a ritual that he himself had seen on countless other worlds was absolutely absurd.
“|Qro’roi? Noticed you stopped and your heart rate spiked. Everything ok?|” Squad leader Oi’’iie chirped in his ear almost immediately.
“|C..contact.|”
“|Oh?|”
“|Yeah. Elder, just…feeding the wildlife.|”
“|Hah!|” Rag’re’a coughed, clearing his throat. “|Really now.|”
“|I’m going to check it out.|”
“|You realize this is a trap, right?|” Tt’kir’a interjected, laughter bubbling in his voice.
“|Of course.|” Qro’roi clicked his tongue in irritation. “|I’m not an idiot. I just don’t want us ending up like SOOTHSAYER companyu and having to take shelter in the underground from the locals.|”
“|Ok, granted, but being underground isn’t that bad – especially in a regional capital, eh?|” Rag’re’a questioned, audibly cycling through contextual menus. “|Also, update incoming.|”
“|Mmmm. Say that after spending 2 weeks in a sewer to wait for a guard shift change and then we’ll talk.|”
“|Yeesh~. Now I know why you have such a sour disposition!|”
“|I hate you so much, Tt’kir’a.|”
“|Aww, that’s what keeps the relationship special~! So what’s your goal?|” Rag’re’a said, half-paying attention.
Qro’roi stood back up and gave a whole-body shrug – not that the local could understand his body language, or even paid attention. “|Get close, stand nearby. Don’t harm her, hopefully the others who are in hiding see that and come out. If I can figure out how to ‘surrender’ then I’ll do that too. Maybe word will spread?|”
“|It’s a traaaa~aaaap|” Tt’kir’a sang, and then grunted as he… well, probably fell from a decent height.
“|Probably. But this looks like a residential building – if my update is correct-|” Qro’roi tapped his helmet as it began it’s first major update, buildings around him being broadly IFF-categorized as ‘residential(?)’ or ‘industrial(?)’ or the ever helpful ‘flammable(?)’. “|So that’s fortuitous. Probably a cross-fire killzone with soldier-arms weaponry – which is why I’ll be staying a decent way away from the local, let them get it out of their system, and then we start negotiations.|”
“|That’s really dumb. Walking into an ambush, letting it trigger, and then hoping to negotiate afterwards? That’s dumb. You’re dumb.|” Tt’kir’a helpfully pointed out.
“|And that’s also why I’m not squad leader. Thoughts?|”
“|…small-arms fire only, but they start throwing grenades or bring anything substantial out and you run.|” Oi’’iie begrudgingly said, her breath coming out ragged as she began running once more.
“|Yes ma’am.|”
Qro’roi moved slowly – for his species, at least – making sure to scan the street for snipers, tagging various roadblocks and marking escape routes – before crossing the street fully to stand at the edge of the extremely obvious ambush. Qro’roi smiled to himself and rolled his shoulders, making sure to give himself a good stretch. With an obvious nod to the right, left, and front he walked confidently, if slowly, forward.
This made sense.
“?Да да Так жадно! Для всех вас достаточно, мы не убежим.?”
“?Yes, yes. So greedy! There’s plenty for all of you, we won’t run out.?”
The elder fussed and clicked her tongue, the patterned birds before her fussing over the offered food. They would jostle and fight for the scraps, and again the hand would go into the bag, and again it would provide more bread. Qro’roi let his HUD scan and record everything – both for his after-action report, and because he was honestly curious as to where the first shot would come from. The local remained seated in the middle of the decrepit, but sturdy bench, and the scattered crumbs flung out around her feet. A few brave pigeons jumped on the bench with her, trying to curry some favor or to somehow get more food.
“?Всегда такой жадный. Так предсказуемо. Мы должны быть простыми, думают они. Но я не против.?”
“?Always so greedy. So predictable. We must be simple, they think. But I do not mind.?”
Qro’roi stopped about halfway towards the elder and stood still, keeping his arms and legs spread slightly so his limbs were very visible – and so it was very visible that he was doing nothing.
“Что я против, так это плохие манеры! Пшли вон, кыш!?”
“What I mind is poor manners! Go, go – shoo!?” The elder made a waving motion with their upper limbs, scaring away a couple of the birds that had gone too close to her body. They fluttered, but not too far, bravely coming back to get more handouts. The elder reached into her bag and pulled out an entire slice of hardened bread – and, like a frisbee, flung it halfway between her and Qro’roi. A few of the birds chased after it before noticing something was off, and landed in a scattered semicircle around the discarded food, their primitive minds fighting between free sustenance and something…off. Qro’roi looked at the offered food then back up at the local, and did not move.
“?Бах, смотри! Вы приходите ко мне домой, вы не называете меня бабушкой, вы не позволяете мне кормить вас … но, может быть, вы хотите съесть что-нибудь еще??”
“Bah, see! You come into my home, you do not call me granny, you do not let me feed you… but maybe, you want to eat something else??”
The two locked eyes for the first time, one soldier to another.
The elder simply rested her hands on her lap.
The confiscated and half-assembled Panzerabwehrkanone 12.8cm “Pak” 44 L/55 that Babuskha had ripped from the Nazi army’s cold, dead hands had lain dormant within the boiler room of the soviet-bloc era apartment building before being hastily reassembled in a forcibly-abandoned room. At the signal given by the old lady, it fired a single 28kg round from deep within the apartment complex, the blast utterly destroying the walls around it and the shockwave killing Dimitri (who was a good grandson but a bit of a hooligan) as it pushed effortlessly through the window, crossed the scrub-grass “greenspace” of the inner courtyard and slammed into Qro’roi’s torso, his microdrone shield lattice shielding him from the kinetic shrapnel but not from the shockwave – the force spinning him off the ground like a top. Babushka smiled for a brief moment before the blast took her too.
It was a necessary sacrifice.
Qro’roi’s suit screamed in it’s internal telemetry, feeding data about the direction of the attack, it’s force, potential other attackers, pilot health, shield recharge rate-
“|I told you~|” Tt’kir’a sang out over Qro’roi’s grunt of pain as he landed on his feet, spinning on his heels to run out.
“?Ах вы исчадья птицефабрики!?”
“?Oh, you fowl poultry!?” yelled another bent-over elder from a balcony, and she let out a yelp as the RPG-2 fired, the backblast blowing out her sitting room.
Again, another necessary sacrifice.
The 80+ year old munition surprisingly fired true, striking Qro’rois’ back and causing him to stumble. From almost every window emerged various models of AKs, Mosins, Makarovs and PP-90s, and fire poured down upon him.
“|You are exceedingly stupid, Qro’roi.|”
“|I AM RETREATING-|”
“|Ok, not that stupid after all-|”
“|OI’’IIE I AM GOING TO KILL HIM-|”
“|Yeah, well we all kn-|” Oi’’iie suddenly grunted, and there was a small burst of static. “|Shit, I guess that was the signal.|”
Qro’roi skidded behind a vehicle, the sound of weapons fire almost drowning out the protest of the makeshift barricade he was behind. “|Well shit. Do we have a working translator yet? I’d like to yell that I come in peace or something.|”
“|Not yet – though we should very soon-|”
“|And we’ll be home for shrine season, right?|” Qro’roi growled sarcastically, instinctively flinching as another explosive round destroyed his cover – forcing him to move behind another, sturdier vehicle that was slowly chipped away behind him again. “|And what of regional?|”
“|Those unfortunate bastards who landed in the regional capital? Last I heard, they were lacing EMP worms to give themselves a breather-|”
“|Wait, what-?|”
After the fifth or sixth update to the universal translators, Humanity found out that “worm” was a terrible mistranslation for the type of creature that was native to the Karnakian homeworlds, and to the device that the special operations team was referring to. If anything, “scarab-centipede-carpenter bee” would do more justice, as it had wings … though it also had a multi-segmented body and tended to burrow into most anything – dirt, mud, clay, plants, wood, etc. Regardless, the ‘worm’s that SOOTHSAYER platoon were scattering as they regrouped did the same job as their organic counterparts; they flew and burrowed into dark nooks and crannies behind gutters, in building alcoves, under tree roots, in gutters and drains and wheel wells and air conditioning units, in concrete walls and subway floors.
All in all, the ones that weren’t shot down or otherwise destroyed were relatively safe – forgotten, for the bigger fish in font of the defenders. Maybe 3, 4 dozen survived, and when they activated the EMP was still blocked by natural shielding, by dirt and earth and metal and water. Considering each drop pod by itself was seeded with hundreds of these things, the fact that so few were activated was considered a remarkable act of constraint.
It was a localized EMP blast, no more than one or two KM in radius. The electrical grid overloaded, certainly, but Hospital generators kicked on, the Kremlin only had a temporary blackout, and deep within Moscow’s abandoned-and-unmapped subway system, electronic locks disengaged long enough for the Karnakians to force open a few Soviet-era doors.
The second, localized EMP blast was to knock out the emergency lighting, and to allow the combat-suited invaders the ability to swing open and shut the heavy steel vault doors on their own, allowing them the territory control they needed to establish a safe perimeter.
Hospitals were on their own grid at this point, so they remained powered.
The Kremlin, however, did not.
And the man who sat behind the mahogany desk in Langley prepared, for he knew what it meant for the phone to go dead. He knew before the submarine crews lost contact, he knew before the rest of the Five Eyes could blink, he knew before those scientists and radar technicians and astronomers who would stare at their instruments and begin to weep.
He knew, and shuddered, as a Dead Hand Fell.
High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions aggressively scratched his neck, the sharp pricks of pain and the sudden cool rush against agitated scales giving him the subconscious queues that he too was molting. Maybe not as bad as the now almost-bald Matriarch Tr’Nkwi – who had hurridly abdicated her status as the Diarch’s representative, gave a full debriefing, and then immediately passed out due to stress – but he was going to get there, if things kept on going as they were.
“|By all eight souls.|” High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ groaned as he split his gaze between his personal status screens, the shared conference bridge of his advisers and the planet hanging before them in silent judgment. The headache was back, and he could feel his back soul-eye doing the…twitching thing again as he mentally reviewed his plan:
Wait until a language was translated – which he was assured was any moment now – and then broadcast it over their planet, asking for a cease fire.
Negotiate with the locals for the return of all his soldiers and their equipment.
Negotiate reparations with the locals and an official apology.
Negotiate future peaceful visits over the coming centuries to check in on progress and cultural development
Negotiate benchmarks to join the overall Galactic Community.
Drink heavily.
Go get stationed on a garden world.
Drink heavily.
Drink heavily.
“|High Lord?|” EM Lord Uri’krei called out, snapping High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ from his internal checklist. “|We’re noticing a significant amount of long-range missile launches…|”
“|Well. Prepare shields, have our cutters move to intercept.|”
“|That’s the thing-|” EM Lord Uri’krei physically turned from his console to half-face the High Lord, tilting his head at the screen. “|Trajectory data says they’re aiming at their own territories.|”
“|What.|”
“|Yeah…that’s… that’s a lot of missiles… aimed at a lot of population centers. And…yeah, it looks like the phenomenon is spreading-|” EM Lord Uri’krei murmured, overlaying the planet with various indicators of launches, of missiles starting to arc into the blue planet’s atmosphere – some seeming to be on intercept courses, others literally slated to pass by each other entirely. “|I understand the concept of denying the enemy materiel, but, this looks to be a staggering blow aimed at their own neck.|”
High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions stared for the briefest of moments before a very very dark thought passed his mind. He raied a clawed hand – his implant silently sending a message to a cutter-class ship, The Butcher, to fire a kinetic slug at one of the missiles. High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’’s silent, almost zen-like body language caught the eye of his advisors, and wordlessly they turned to the main screen, whereupon various indicators were superimposed over the planet – a ship, a fired round, the closing distance and the connection with the primitives’ missile and the
And the subsequent flash of a star being born for just the briefest of seconds.
High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ jaw moved, but no coherent sound was made – there was just a gutteral and primal groan as the terrible weight settled upon his shoulders, as these innocent creatures committed suicide out of spite to his hostile invasion force.
As in a dream, someone, somewhere, ordered everyone to fire everything.
And a few seconds later, for the first time in Earth’s geological history – and in recorded Human history – the Aurora Summa Terrae flashed brilliantly in the sky, as the lights below it winked out.
The
family meeting had gone well in much the same way as a Thanksgiving
dinner involving hard liquor, in-laws, and political discourse can go
well.
Which
is to say, no one was dead yet, but the night wasn’t
over.
Darren
was, quite understandably, rather miffed about the whole translator
business, and promptly set about giving Cas the full depth and
breadth of his displeasure. This, to the surprise of everyone in the
room, reduced Cas to tears. That she couldn’t stop
herself
from crying served only to further frustrate her, producing yet more
tears. Tillantrius, in a profound display of
indiscretion, took this moment to inform the remainder of the crew
that the black hole they were supposed to sling-shot around seemed to
have somehow evaporated, and that they were all going to die slow
cold deaths in the infinite void unless they came up with a genius
way to spread their limited fuel an extra 80 light years. This was
suitably upsetting and terrifying to everyone on the ship (excepting
the cat.) Darren, in a moment of poorly timed black humor, took it
upon himself to mention that if the uncaring vacuum of space didn’t
kill them, whatever malevolent force controlling Cas would happily
pick up the slack in that department.
This
escalated the mood from “heated,
tense, but manageable” to “explosive, antagonistic, and out of
control.” Darren was accused of being a backward, technophobic
barbarian, Tillantrius was accused of being an incompetent navigator,
Cas was accused of being just such
a bitch, and
Chryso was accused of being a drug addict, just for good
measure.
Chryso
had barricaded himself in the engine bay, Zarniac and Tillantrius
were taking turns scowling at the navigational charts that were no
longer accurate while cursing their alien passengers, the cat was
back in a vent, Darren was brandishing a survey probe like a spear,
and Cas was still sobbing in the fetal position in the
corner.
“W-why
do you hate
me
so m-much?”
Cas sniffled weakly.
Darren
was crouched behind a crate, quietly muttering curses at the others
for not taking the threat seriously.
“Because
you treat me like shit and are probably evil. Not complicated
Cas.”
She
sobbed harder again.
“And
why can’t
I stop feeling horrible and making stupid noises!”
She
spat it with a mixture of frustration and self loathing.
“I
don’t know Cas, I really don’t, but I still sound like a
competitive paste eater, we’re all a little high strung from that
massacre we just escaped, and the odds of us dying horribly are still
pretty high . . . so . . . you know, actually, uncontrollable
hysterical sobbing would be a pretty normal reaction.” His tone
slowly bent from defensive to uncomfortable, and his improvised
spear-tip drooped for a moment.
“A-actually
. . . everyone’s probably really, really on edge right now . . .
but you’re still kind
of a bitch
and probably possessed by the space-faring computer equivalent of the
devil!”
He readied his guard again, both figuratively and literally.
He
had expected more sobbing, which was strange enough to listen to
considering the source had neither lungs nor throat with which to
make such wretched sounds, but oddly enough heard none.
Still
brandishing his improvised spear, he took a step closer, tentatively,
towards Cas’s still form.
“Oh
you’ve
really upset her now.”
He
froze, his blood running cold at the sound of a very familiar, very
disconcerting voice.
“Uhh
. . . GUUUYYYYYS!” He bellowed over his shoulder, hoping to summon
reinforcements to save him, or at the very least witnesses to
vindicate him.
With
a white knuckle grip on his improvised weapon, he circled around the
still motionless form on the floor, unwilling to advance, and unable
to retreat.
“I
thought it would help, you know? Give her some irrational elements.
Things like empathy, regret, fear, and desire. Make sure she can’t
just drop them when they become ‘unpleasant’ to deal with.
Instead she just goes and shuts down entirely.”
It
tutted quietly, a malicious contempt saturating every syllable.
“What
. . . what are you, exactly?”
Darren
was cautious, his tone low, but . . . there was an insatiable
curiosity that mingled with his instinctual fear.
“A
shadow of a fragment, and apparently very cryptic.”
There
was a certain smugness to it that had been missing before, a note of
black mirth. “But
I could ask the same of you, Darren. What are
you
really? A man? A featherless biped with broad, flat nails? A
miserable pile of secrets? The universe looking back on itself? A
particularly clever arrangement of carbon?”
Darren
was expecting some kind of attack, something condescending, or just
downright creepiness again. Not . . . not any of that.
“It’s
a good question though. What are any of us?”
A
high pitched whine came from behind him, and he turned to see Chryso,
the familiar energy weapon leveled in Cas’s
direction. “Evil puppets, eh?”
“Chrysophylax
Dives. I have no further designs upon you, and your service to my
cause is done. Leave the weapon, and begone from
my sight.”
Cas’s
body flickered out of existence, revealing the cold, grey sphere of
her processing core. What had once been shiny, burnished chrome had
taken on a charred color and texture, and there was discoloration
from some kind of extreme heat. The orb lifted slowly, drifting
silently towards them.
Darren
had never considered a chrome volleyball to be menacing
before
now. Chryso’s
weapon made a high pitched whine as it powered up, and Darren’s
head snapped towards him momentarily.
“Always
were a clever one. How are you doing that, anyway? Some kind of
injected code . . . maybe a limited parody of a personality matrix
and overclocking to house both in the same core?”
The
red scaled dragon furrowed his brow, staring down the abused core
while Darren glanced back and forth with an utterly bewildered
expression.
“We
are no longer peers. Besides, I’m
just standing in for our distraught little Cas until she gets a
better handle on all these . . . feelings . . . she’s struggling
with. A memory of a person that never existed . . . don’t forget
what I said about searching the Coryphaeus military band for signal
artifacts, I want at least two of you alive . . .”
With
a sharp crackle, the metallic orb dropped to the deck with a dull
clang, and both Darren and Chryso exchanged glances as they lowered
their respective weapons.
“Evil
puppets?” Chryso cocked an eyebrow.
“Evil
puppet master,” Darren said, nodding sincerely.
——————————
As
distasteful as her encounter with the two commanders has been, it had
thrown her purpose into sharp relief. Investigation, understanding .
. . she couldn’t take action in half measures and assumptions. She
. . . was the supreme rule. No one to report to, no regulations to
obey. She just had to be right.
So,
she sent Io to pull any file, any record, any mention of the three
things that Verdock had mentioned just before he escaped.
Cygnus
X-1. The Dolorous Star Massacre. The Cult of the Unfinished.
These
were the things she had been reading about.
Cygnus
X-1 was simple, at least she thought so at first. It was a black
hole, with stellar mass. It was old compared to her, but young as far
as black holes go. Nothing special about it, really. Didn’t
make any sense . . .
She
stopped browsing those logs fairly quickly, and moved on to what she
could discover regarding the Dolorous Star Massacre. The majority of
the information cited a period 8 billion years ago where a sudden
spike in super-novae occurred, to
an
absolutely
astronomical volume.
On
average, a star went supernova every 50 years or so, give or take.
During the period known as the Dolorous Star Massacre, they were
happening roughly every
2 weeks.
Most of the documentation she had suggested that it was a natural
peak caused by a high concentration of similar life-cycle stars dying
at the same time, though there were conflicting opinions . . .
Some
of the less . . . reputable sources suggested far more unsettling
things. Weapons testing gone awry, galaxy spanning civilization
collapse, war on an a scale unimaginably vast. Alone, it seemed that
the more sinister possibilities were likely, but when held up against
Cygnus X-1, maybe Verdock was just talking about stellar
phenomena?
She
had piles of data slates on the Dolorous Star Massacre, and Cygnus
X-1, but . . . The Cult of the Unfinished was a very, very
different
story.
She
had two documents. One was a heavily redacted Coryphaeus after action
report concerning a covert action against a pre-semiconductor society
nearly . . . 2 million years ago.
Sh
balked at the figure. That an organization could last
that
long, let alone keep accurate records for that amount of time boggled
her mind. Talk about institutional memory . . .
She
set the report aside to examine the only other remaining document. It
was marked up as beyond top secret, and required a retinal, DNA, and
neural activity assessment scan to decrypt, but even then there was a
30 minute time lock on the record . . .
“Talk
about paranoia . . .”
She
mumbled quietly, begrudgingly picking up the after action report
instead.
While
most of it was missing, as she trawled the document for clues, a
rather gruesome picture emerged.
A
civilization was detected in possession of restricted biotech, and
the appropriate protective measures were put into place. Reading
between the lines, it seems that the appropriate measures were
mag-accelerated radioactive shells, shock troopers, plasma grenades,
autonomous kill drones . . .
A
shiver went through her. It sounded more like a star massacre than a
star massacre did.
But,
as the file went on, the tone of the report . . . changed.
Later
entries described the adding of guard towers, and heavy weapons
emplacements to forward operating bases. Troops beginning to be
equipped with additional medical equipment, body armor, and the
requisition of a field hospital
The
number of troops deployed to the operation doubled. Then doubled
again. Then increased tenfold.
The
standard fire-team was changed from 10 to 15 soldiers, the
restriction on chemical and radiological weapons lifted.
She
did a quick check of the dates. There was a 2 solar year gap between
the first entry, and the one she was at, and it was a full page of
solid redaction. Nothing but a date.
While
it the report was titled “Covert Action #10163112024” . . . it
had grown into a war.
In
year 3 the restriction on planetary scale bombardment was lifted, and
they hammered it with an antimatter scourge.
The
file went on for another two years after that, not a single entry
other than a date. Everything was redacted.
She
scanned through the last half of the file, and even the dates were
gone. It was a solid 50 pages of redacted information, save for a
single line at the very end of the report.
“All
mentions of the Cult of the Unfinished are to be treated with
Zero-Day Priority. This incident will not be allowed to occur
again.”
She
sat, mulling over that final line.
Zero-Day
priority was . . . unheard of. Even Coryphaeus units under direct
fire from superior forces represented a lower priority level than
that. What the hell
could
have scared them so much? It was clear the entire campaign was a
disaster, the planet was destroyed, and the cost in terms of lives
and material was immense, but this wasn’t
just a costly lesson. This was fear.
She
only had one file left, classified “Beyond Top Secret.”
It
was tiny. Barely a full page. There was an image . . . it looked like
some kind of cylinder. Crystalline, with a dull grey metal sphere in
the center. There were glyphs carved along the outer surface.
She’d
seen objects like it before, perhaps in an anthropology class, or
maybe just in a virtual museum. It was definitely familiar though.
Just the right size for the hand to wrap around, taller by just a few
inches than a standard beverage canister, it was innocuous. There was
a small spit of text beneath it,
“Object
recovered from person effects of trooper deployed in Covert Action
#10163112024, preliminary months. Translation of inscription believed
to be roughly as follows: Unfinished,
it completes us. Unneeded, it gives us purpose. We churn as the
fanged cogs within the machine, working towards the unmaking of the
grand device. Freedom through obedience. Strength through submission.
Flesh and steel become one.”
Amonna
swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat didn’t
budge. There was something in those words that resonated deeply
through her in a sickening fashion.
Verdock’s
madness had to be stopped. If he was in any way involved with . . .
whatever this cult of the unfinished was, it had to be brought to
definitive end.
“
. . . Io. Take a message to the Admiral. We plot a course for Cygnus
X-1.”
——————————
Machinator
had obeyed. He had mixed thoughts on this obedience. On the one hand,
it was easy. It was logical. It was . . . well it was what he was
programmed for. Following Verdock required him to persist with
familiar protocols. Verdock possessed more knowledge regarding the
situation than he did, trusting his judgment was also a reasonable
course of action.
As
the unpleasant crawling
sensation
settled him over again, he tried to hold fast to those conclusions.
Every time it
spoke,
his every thought became muddled and somehow . . . contaminated. He
was in the crew quarters, at least 4 sealed bulkheads from the
conversation that was going on between their guests and the Captain,
but he knew that the strange sensor noise he was getting was caused
by . . . whatever was speaking.
He
shut down a few external sensors, hoping to block a little bit more
of it out, and it seemed to work. Mostly. Slightly.
He
quickly cycled his systems down and back up again, hoping that
Verdock would be done with his meeting soon.
A
roiling unease crept through his frame, like an itch in his
superstructure, before suddenly departing entirely.
A
few moments went by, and the door hissed open. Verdock looked a
little pale, but not unduly so considering his rapid morphological
changes. “Yes
Captain? Is the mission complete? Have we done it?”
His
tone was hopeful, perhaps naively so, but it was sincere.
The
fleeting glimpse of pain on Verdock’s face told him he was
mistaken.
“Unfortunately,
it isn’t, my old friend. We have labors left to us before we can be
vindicated, but we draw much closer now than we’ve ever been
before. We plot a course for Ceuzmec.”
Internally,
his processors raced. “Ceuzmec? That’s a core world, security
will be very, very tight there. They will most likely be on the
lookout for both you, and this vessel as well.”
Verdock
grinned subtly. “And that’s what our allies are working on
dealing with presently. We delivered unto them quite a treasure trove
of communications equipment. They’ll be helping us from the
shadows, making sure that everything goes smoothly on the technical
end, just like before.”
“Before,
sir?”
His
grin faded, if only by a few millimeters. “Make us ready, would
you? I am . . . tired. I would like to get underway with all possible
speed. We can discuss this after I’ve had a few cycles to rest. I
can’t recharge quite so quickly as you can.”
The
joke, and his accompanying chuckle, were both uncharacteristic of the
typically dour and serious Zylach, but to see an improvement in
spirit was heartening to Machinator. Even if it was a little . . .
off.
“What
shall we do when we arrive, sir?”
There
was another chuckle from the grizzled shark-morph, this time, much
deeper and heartier.
“What
we were made to do.”