u/FarmWhich4275

The group of young ladies stood to attention, a delightful menagerie of first year University Students. Angels, Devils, Catgirls, Wolfgirls, Elves, even a rare Dryad, a proud gathering of five of the top students from each of their respective private academies for a total of twenty five young women.

They all stood quietly within the airfield's main terminal, waiting for whatever was coming, and sure enough it arrived in the form of two teachers, the local University Dean, and a well known substitute teacher wearing a military uniform.

Mr Branson, a teacher with a heavy accent and heavier footsteps marched toward the students. Everybody automatically recognised him as he had taught all of them at least once or twice through the last school year, either as a substitute or as a tutor for after school lessons. What they were all doing here was still unknown, but they knew the drill, this wasn't their first rodeo outside of school grounds with a crazy human.

Mr Branson greeted the girls warmly and removed his hat. He wore the uniform of a military officer, not the regular suede jackets and brown pants they were used to seeing him in, and seeing him so well dressed was throwing some girls for a loop.

"Good morning ladies!" He chirped, again, his demeanor seemingly betraying the gruff and professional impression he made. "Welcome to Nelson Air Force Museum! As you all know, hopefully, Semester exams will be starting next month, and you will be required to undergo a period of somewhat excessive stress. Consequently, with help from the Dean, the Superintendent and some buddies of mine from the Air Force, I have something very special planned. You are more than old enough to handle something of this serious calibre, so lets get started. Follow me to the Tarmac please, this is going to be very special."

The girls followed as ordered and in neat single file, marched together into the clear skies and bright morning sun. It was a perfect day for almost anything. In this case, flying. The girls seemed somewhat unnerved by the sight of all the old military equipment seemingly arrayed before them. Nestled in the middle of a semi circle of old warplanes, sat a haphazardly assembled classroom underneath some shade tarps. The girls all blushed nervously, noting how a separate 'classroom' underneath another shade tarp, had assembled a few dozen pilots, airmen and aircrews, all of whom were in full uniform.

They were in the midst of a briefing of sorts and ignored the arrival for the most part as the students found their seats. A blackboard and various pictures and posters were brought up, each one relating to the various aircraft arrayed around them.

"Well fantastic, skies are clear, wind is calm, and it's almost time for the exhibition. Today, you are going to learn about a critical part of our, and very soon, your very own history. The history of powered flight! You see arrayed before you, various aircraft from distinct periods of human history. I'm going to make the assumption you all studied the textbooks you were given last week, so let's get started with the first question: who can tell me what these aircraft are?" Mr Branson asked his class.

The students all instantly raised their hands, as expected. Mr Branson chose one of the Catgirls to answer. "The Sopwith Camel, The Supermarine Spitfire, the Soviet MiG-25, the UK Avro Vulcan, the Thunderbolt 2 or 'Warthog', and the Sukhoi Su-57, sir."

"Absolutely excellent! Completely expected from the top students of the best universities in the country, no surprise you got it perfectly. Yes! Well done Alarissa, very well done. The five most distinct aircraft from various points in history. There is a sixth one... But that's a surprise for later. Now, who can tell me in what capacity these vehicles served in their respective times?" Mr Branson asked.

Again, every student's hand shot up, and the only Dryad in the group spoke, her voice so gentle and calm it actually snapped some of the soldiers nearby out of their trained stances. "The Sopwith served as a fighter. The Supermarine served as a fighter craft in World War two. The MiG was built as an interceptor. The Avro Vulcan as a strategic bomber craft, The thunderbolt saw use as a Close Air Support craft, and the Sukhoi served as a multirole fighter craft."

"Absolutely excellent Clarise, top notch!" Mr Branson chirped happily, receiving a small nod of approval from the officers surrounding. "Very good girls, very good. Who can tell me when they served?"

Again hands shot up and an Angel was chosen to answer. "World War One, World War Two, The Cold War, the Cold War again, the Gulf War, and The Unification War respectively, sir."

Mr Branson nodded approvingly with a smug smirk as he was glared at by officers nearby. "As expected you all know exactly what you are talking about. Even though it's only been a week, you studied well."

"We didn't want to be unprepared sir. It's only normal." A Catgirl quipped.

"True enough, but this isn't for schoolwork. I AM going to give you a short pop quiz to see if you studied of course, and it will count for extra credit, but this trip isn't JUST for educational purposes. No, no, this is for FUN. And I have something special planned just for you to help you relax and gain some new... perspective, shall we say, on the world around you. So first we begin. Everyone pay attention. We shall go through a short history of each of these fine aircraft before we begin. Pencils out!" He barked and began the lesson in earnest.

The soldiers and officers on duty likewise paid close attention to the lesson and learned a few things as Mr Branson got up close to each aircraft and gave a detailed explanation of the mechanical components and basic flight characteristics of each aircraft. For about two hours the lesson continued, interrupted only by occasional passers-by who joined the spectators such as aircrews, mechanics or service personnel. One such mechanic moved up to demonstrate how to remove the engine cowling from the Sukhoi for maintenance, and show how its innards looked as he inspected one of its turbofans.

At the tail end of the lesson, the airmen in the other class in the shade opposite all sounded off with various salutes and yells from the various factions within the Terran Navy, and made their way into the hangars nearby. The lesson finally ended when a huge blast of thunder was heard coming from high above them, as several large starships appeared out of jumpspace into earth's Atmosphere and started to descend to low altitude flight. The sight was rather shocking to all of the students, even those that were old enough to remember those very same warships above the skies of their homeworld.

"Well that's our cue ladies! Everyone, stand up, pack your bags and secure your belongings and textbooks! But before we do, Jessica, Loriena, Cambry, Andrea and Clarise, step forward please." He ordered.

The five girls filtered from the class and stood in front of him. Jessica - a Wolfgirl, Loriena - a Wolfgirl, Cambry - a High Elf, Andrea - an Angel, and Clarise, the group's only Dryad.

"The five of you are the best, highest scoring students in your respective schools, consequently you qualify to join me in the ride of a lifetime. Today we will be doing a rehearsal for a Global Aviation festival that will be taking place in a few weeks and I am slated to join this festival as one of its pilots. I will be taking advantage of my position, and will be bringing you girls along for a practice flight, in one of our most famous aircraft." He said. The girls all perked up from the idea and tails wagged, wings flapped excitedly.

"Excellent, now, there isn't space, or time, as much as I want there to be, so for the rest of you, you will be put on a small airliner for a short hop to a nearby museum, where these fine young gentlemen and your teachers will be giving you a personal guided tour of the Airforce Museum about ten miles north." Mr Branson said, gesturing to three old and distinguished military men waiting for them near a shuttle bus. "Now as for the five of you, please follow me, thy chariot awaits!"

The girls all excitedly followed orders and their respective chaperones, the five best following Mr Branson into one of the nearby hangars. They were greeted by the imposing façade of one of World War Two's most infamous mechanical monsters, fully painted in its signature silverplate paintjob - the B-29 Superfortress. Flanked to the left and right in formation by two other similar craft, one painted a dark blue, and the other painted a scarlet red. The huge machines seemed to take the girls off their sure footing as their teacher approached the lead plane.

"Say hello to the Boeing B-29-70 BW Superfortress Strategic Bomber, in service 1942 to 1960. To the left, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, the civilian airliner variant, and the Tupolev Tu-4, a reverse engineered Soviet copy of the B-29. Now, for references sake, all these aircraft are custom made copies built using modern tech and equipment, as well as safety standards, because the original variants are either permanently in museums, or are long lost to the sands of time due to various factors such as natural disasters or military incursions during the Unification War of 2050. Today, we will be joining seventy three other aircraft from across history in a short test flight across the U.S. mainland in this beautiful machine!" Mr Branson said.

The girls all shared concerned, if not terrified glances as they made note of how the aircraft in front of them were all prepared for their task, ready for take-off.

The first thing they had to go through however was a full demonstration of how to wear and safely use several specially made parachutes, for just in case of course. Five men would be joining them on the flight, each one holding a particular role, and would be acting as their chaperone for the flight, and their main point of contact just in case something bad happened. The probability of anything going wrong was absurdly low, but safety always wins out.

Eventually each girl was introduced to her instructor for the flight. Sergeant Major 'Cal' who would be the Copilot, Mr Branson would be the pilot, Flight Lieutenant 'Sparks' would be their navigator, Staff Sergeant 'Rocket' would be the bombardier, and one of the service crew named 'Rico' would be the flight engineer for the mission. As soon as they were inside and secured in their respective spots, the plane's engines were started and the aircraft began to move out of their spots by ground crews into the open air.

The airfield was busy, as dozens of other craft were in the process of taking off, being fuelled for the flight or were already taxiing for take-off. They had to wait for a bit as the girls got used to the cramped interior and stuffy quarters, their helmets keeping their sensitive ears safe from the massive roar of the aircraft's engines coming from all directions. Eventually the Boeing and its two sister craft got runway clearance. Butterflies fluttered through stomachs and the sense of wonder slowly returned as the three craft lifted into the air one by one and climbed into formation heading North.

The girls were all gobsmacked at the variety of strange, unique or beautiful aircraft from across history that flew past them or flew close to get a look. They could see through cockpit windows and passenger windows that they weren't the only students involved in this stunt, seeing Fox ears and devil horns from under headsets and wings hidden behind seats. Eventually the flight reached a peak and Mr Branson spoke through the headsets in the plane, giving his students a lecture telling them what aircraft they could see. Eventually, one of the Destroyer class warships had reached cruising speed and altitude and was now flying in formation alongside several smaller craft. Mr Branson flew the plane nearby so the girls could take a closer look at the two hundred foot long armour plated behemoth that dwarfed all the propeller, jet and turboprop craft now surrounding it.

"This is the USSMC 'Oligarch' Assault Destroyer, specifically built as a frontline combat craft. As you can see, she can easily match the speed of a lot of propeller and early jet aircraft when in atmosphere despite her size! This particular beast was actually one of the first Destroyer designs ever used during the Sol War of '86! Its about a hundred and fifty years old, one of the oldest serving active starships in the fleet! It's any wonder why she's here to join us for this exhibition, it may be a starship, but it's a pivotal part of history!" Mr Branson bellowed through the radio as the ship slowly passed them by.

The girls all stared in awe, chattering over each other as they spoke about the ship and what it meant to them, especially Clarise, who was actually rescued along with her family on one such machine from their doomed homeworld. The flight was stable, calm, with little else happening save the occasional lecture when a plane of particular note or interest flew past them. Eventually however, the formation grew to an extent where over a hundred aircraft were flying in formation together.

"Okay, ladies, here's the part where you earn your extra credit! All crew to stations, listen to your operators! Coming in for a practice bombing run!" Mr Branson barked as he banked the plane to the left, heading East towards the desert.

The girls all went wide-eyed at the message and scrambled to follow their respective officers directions.

"Okay here's the plan. We, along with a few other bomber craft, will drop a huge canister full of fireworks that will make a pretty display when they hit the ground, just like an actual bomb, but colourful. We are going to be the plane that will set the mark, because ours is ten canisters, five red dye bombs that will mark the target, followed by five FSX canister charges that will mimic the act of carpet bombing! You will follow your operators orders and do as they show you, and we will mark a bomb zone for other craft to follow!" Mr Branson said and turned the plane to his target.

The girls all scrambled and took out notepads and pencils to jot down what notes they could as they were told what needed to be done. Jessica and Cambry both got impromptu lessons on piloting, how to hold the plane steady and keep on target using the various reticules and instruments available. Loriena was taught how to use the analogue navigation charts to plot their course, with 'Sparks' making sure the calculations were right with more modern tech. Andrea was perched in the back seat with the service engineer, showing her how the various gauge clusters worked and making sure she knew what a few particular instruments showed, to be sure they were in flying condition.

Clarise had the mot important job, and she paid very, very close attention to the instructions as 'Rocket' showed her, in painstaking detail, how to operate the bomb sight and bomb bay doors. The girls were all taught, shown and corrected as they flew another fifteen minutes at full speed towards their target - an empty zone of desert sand used as an artillery firing range - in front of the formation.

"Two minutes to drop zone! Stations! Clarise, do you know where we are dropping our cargo?" Mr Branson asked.

"An artillery firing range in the desert sir. We are one minute out according to this thing." She replied in earnest, her voice gaining an air of nervousness.

"Good, follow the orders and we will do well! Reducing speed by twenty knots, three miles to target." The co-pilot yelled and the plane's engines whined a bit to signal the speed was being reduced.

A few moments later, the bomb bay doors opened, exposing the ten large barrel sized canisters to the light under the plane.

Clarise carefully plotted angles and set reticules, making sure each time she changed something or moved something, she moved to make sure the bombardier had the right target. She did. Soon enough, their target appeared - a collection of small cars and vans parked in the middle of the desert in various colours, surrounded by what appeared to be sandbags.

"I see them!" She yelled.

"Commence bombing run. Drop in Five... Four... three... Two... One... Let 'em go!" Rocket said.

With a flip of her thumb, a lever was hit and a mechanical click signified a release. The canisters all dropped, each one releasing an ominous 'ticking' sound as they left the vehicle's bomb bay.

"Bombs away!"

Clarise and the other girls all watched as the bombs flew down. The canister's shells split open from small explosions and dozens upon dozens of small baseball sized bomblets appeared, spreading out into a wide area. The girls could see the individual bomblets fall to the ground and seconds later, the bombs hit the ground. The bulk of the bombs hit the ground in a straight pattern of an arrow, the cars being hit by the middle of the munitions cloud and all exploding in turn in a fiery blast that rocked the plane as it flew past.

The bombs that weren't explosive all released a very thick biodegradable dye mix that coated the ground in a smattering of red, white and blue around the bomb site. the explosives spread the dye further out and created a strange but delightful pattern, all with the large plume of smoke that rose from the exploded cars.

"That was perfect Clarise! Well done, all of you. Now find a window seat to the left, we are going to watch the rest of the fleet do the same thing where we marked the ground!" Mr Branson yelled as he kicked the engines to full and turned the plane.

The plane moved and sped up, staying at a decent altitude above the display as twenty other large bomber craft followed their same planned route and easily did the same bombing pass. the girls went wide-eyed at the sight of so much ordinance and so many planes passing, and every one released the same canisters they were carrying, resulting in a further splattering of dye, or a huge explosion that spread the dye further out, or mixed it into the pattern with other colours.

"And that's all she wrote! ladies, you have just witnessed the military practice of Carpet Bombing! I hope it was fun! Let's re-join the formation, and get back home!" Mr Branson yelled, and turned the craft to join up with the rest of the planes as they started to fly back to the airfield they came from.

The girls all sat in silence as they looked around, wondering what they even did but revelling in the event itself. When they finally landed each of them excitedly embraced each other and squealed in delight, finally coming to terms with the adrenaline rush they were all going through from the whole event. Mr. Branson let them have their fun and waited for the shuttle bus to come pick them up to get back together with the rest of the students at the museum for a late lunch.

"Everything still intact Ensign?" I was being cautious. We needed to be. Not just because of FTL but also our rather dangerous cargo.

She looked at me with one of her eye stalks. "All systems fully operational captain. No change to cargo."

"Good, good. Then everything is going to plan. If this does what I think it will do, this means lucrative hauling contracts for decades to come. I hope." I replied and carefully read the ship manifest for the twelfth time.

"What exactly are we hauling captain?" She asked with concern.

"I will tell you when we get there. Its not the cargo its the destination. If my intel is correct, then we should be fine." I replied.

She tilted her eye stalk in my direction, a look that conveyed suspicion. "This does not bode well."

"Everything is under control Klax'tl, just relax and follow my lead." I replied with a side glance.

She nervously shrugged and returned to her duties. I checked the cargo again, making sure all the tanks were still pressurized and sealed. They were. Good.

"Entering target system in... 3. 2. 1. Realspace."

My navigator's words seemed to bely the point of 'real' space as we entered the star system, and were immediately surrounded by the Terrans absurdly well armed warships.

"You did not tell me this was TERRAN space! ARE YOU INSANE!?" Ensign barked at me as she lifted herself out of her seat in a defensive posture.

"SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN! If you are ever going to trust me, trust me now. I know what I am doing. Open frequencies." I commanded and let my crew work. Seconds later a viewing screen lowered from the ceiling and showed me a human warship captain in full battle dress.

"State business, ship identity and cause for presence." He barked. Menacing creatures. Vicious, menacing creatures.

"Thraxx Thran'Tarr, Orderly Merchant of the Saranai Imperium. Ship Ident is Class Five 'Corsica Pattern Light Freighter', Serial Five-Five-Nine-Code Two. I have an appointment with the local waste disposal unit. Sending details now." I said and typed something on my console.

"Hold." He said, and started working. I heard typing and conversation in the background, and waited. "Shipping manifest matches cargo scan. Crew count matches scan, all details match. Please explain for the record why you are two hours late?" He asked.

"Considering my cargo I had to make absolutely sure there were no mistakes, so I made some extra precautions that set me back a while. Sorry about that, but I figured of all people you would appreciate being careful." I said with a  smile.

"True." He said and typed something. "Corsair Class destroyer is on your right flank to escort you to the station dock, maintain five hundred to eight hundred meter distance at all times. Do NOT deviate. Tug will tow you into dock, follow Hazard Protocol as directed when secured. Understand?"

"Solid copy, five to eight hundred, tow to dock, follow instructions. Crystal clear." I replied back, maintaining my smile.

"Clearance granted. Gift shops open, beds made, doors unlocked. Welcome to Elysium." He said, returning my smile.

"Thank you. Navigator Klaxxxin, follow that ship as directed and relinquish control when the tugs grab us. You have a nice day now."

"Same to you." He smiled, his expression conveying genuine warmth.

"Transferring navigator to directed frequency, maintaining minimal connection. All crew prepare to disembark and manage cargo." Ensign ordered as she spoke into the ship's internal comms.

The ship moved with the expertise I would expect from a veteran navigator I had to steal from a navy fleet officer in a card game. He followed instructions with absolute perfection as expected and started working on shutting the ships main engines down as soon as the tugs grabbed us. Before long we were in the station dock. It was now I noticed something was off.

"Hmm... Something's not right here." I said.

Ensign jumped at the chance. "And yet you doubted ME?"

"Oh shut up!" I barked. She recoiled. "Everything is exactly as I expected it to be and what I was after. I'm just a bit confused about something." I said.

"And... that would be-?" Klaxxxin asked, curling a claw at me.

"Why do these humans have a thriving and what appears to be long standing toxic waste processing plant on a Paradise world?"

The crew all glared at me and checked their own readings. Indeed, the planet we were above was a world that would easily classify in the galaxy at large as a thriving Paradise World, a place that every lifeform in the galaxy would love to live on. And there, in the centre of it all, was a massive half-continent sized factory that was saturated in sealed tanks and heavy industry, the kind that would make Emperors flinch on understanding what was in there.

"What are we here for?" Ensign asked.

"Too late to say no now, so we're here to test something. The four forward tanks are full of Gorgozdin, and the two rear tanks contain Scaparius V. The cargo bays contain depleted fuel rods and other radioactive materials. We are here to pay the humans to dispose of it all for us." I said, making the crew recoil and slink into their shells in horror.

Before they could object further, a human appeared once again on my screen and smiled, this one less... evil looking. "Well howdy, welcome to Elysium Waste Disposal! Have your cargo manifest here, ready to start work. You good to go?" He asked cheerfully.

"When my crew have managed to retrieve their flabbered-gasts off the floor, yes. I have shown you some blueprints and access hatches, where everything is as best I am allowed to. Are our systems compatible?" I asked.

He typed and looked about a bit, likely referencing material on separate screens. "Yeah we got pipes and cargo with those specs easy, got to bring them in and we can start pumping. As for solid cargo, a proper hazmat team will be on docking port shortly. Need to borrow Hangar fours forklift though. Should take about two hours for full transfer. You cool with that?"

"I am indeed 'cool' with that. Are you sure you can handle this cargo? I assure you it is extremely difficult for us to process these materials safely. I can only imagine what it's like for you." I said.

He chuckled, audibly and visibly laughing at the concept. "No sir, the stuff you have is not even half as bad as some crap we used to deal with. Gorgozdin is similar in structure to a chemical known as Sarin. We know how to filter it out and separate the molecular structure and capture the stuff that makes it not that. Shouldn't be too hard to jury-rig a few extra filters. As for Scaparius V? Funny name, by the way, easily dealt with. That stuff's basically just LSD with a bit of a petroleum motif to it. That's no issue at all. Neutralizing agents for that have existed for centuries." He said with a shrug.

"That is very concerning. You have dealt with this for centuries?" Ensign asked.

"Yep! Centuries. Even used Sarin for warfare once... Those were dark times. But, we fixed it. As for the nuclear material, we will be happy to take that off your hands. Depleted Uranium and Expended Deuterium are excellent catalysts for making ammunition for heavy weaponry. That will come in very handy, depending on quality, you might leave here with a little something from us. That's good stuff right there. Geiger's a bit higher than normal though, need a bit more shielding for that." he said, typing on the screen. "HEY MEL! Tell Hangar Four to grab the big Leaded pallets for the nuke cargo! Stuffs still fresh!" He yelled at someone off screen.

"Got it boss!" I heard a voice yell back.

The crew and I shared a concerned glance in turn with these revelations. The rumours about human insanity were very... Very true.

"I have... A question." Klaxxxin asked, bringing himself off his chair and in front of the screen next to me.

"Go on, ask, I'm all ears!" The human seemed strangely excited to answer questions.

"Why do you have a gigantic toxic waste processing plant on a Paradise World?"

"Paradise World? No idea what you mean by that man but let me answer that question with another question. Wouldn't you like to preserve something beautiful in every way you can?" the human replied.

"Well obviously but-"

"Then there's your answer. Incentive. Nice planet. Toxic Waste processing. There's a reason you are here with us and not by yourself, our industry is a LOT more advanced than yours is. Because of incentive. The incentive to keep the planet we live on clean and pretty. But also the incentive to maintain a planetary economy. Get what I'm saying here? The reason we are so good at what we do - is because we HAVE to be. Toxic chemicals leak - planet dies. Planet dies, home, jobs, life dies with it. Not good. Simple as." He replied, shrugging his shoulders.

We all shared glances of confusion. "In what universe does that actually make any sense? Why not just have a dedicated world for garbage disposal?"

"Because it would be a horrible place to live or work? Look, I don't know what your cultural practices are, but wandering around in a sealed bunker wearing full hazmat suits all day every day isn't exactly comfortable or acceptable, not to us at least. I consider this place home and the absolute last thing I want is to have toxic waste on my front door. But, it still exists, and you still have to get rid of it to keep everything clean - so waste disposal facilities, recycling plants, chemical reprocessing plants, atmospheric scrubbers. We dealt with this LONG before we got to the stars dude. Our homeworld, used to be a damn mess. Then we fixed it." He said.

We tilted our heads and thought about it. "Well... That was... simpler than I thought it would be. That made a lot more sense than I was expecting it to."

"You weren't expecting our explanation to make sense?"

"Well I-" I got a bit nervous and rubbed the back of my neck.

He pointed at me with a scowl and said "Cheeky."

We nervously shuffled apologetically. "Sorry..."

"You don't have to be sorry, you just need to not be silly. In any case, retrieval team is ready to go. Open starboard cargo access so we can get the forklifts in and start offloading." He asked.

"Understood, opening cargo access port number three. You said something about using this material for weaponry?" Klax'tl asked.

"Yup. We have a use for everything. Nothing ever wasted. Just like our ancestors used to use. Even if something has no purpose, we will either create a purpose, or process it down to the point where it can be turned into something useful. Nothing ever wasted. That's the idea anyway. You know, within reason." He replied typing on his console.

Klaxxxin stepped forward. "I have... another question."

"Then ask it."

"You said you have 'use' for this material? Toxic waste and such. How exactly do you 'use' it?" He asked.

"That's easy. Use various chemical processes and catalysts to neutralise the 'toxic' part of the toxic waste, rendering it to just plain waste. Then we use further processing to figure out what it actually can be used for, and a LOT of toxic waste products when cleaned up, can be used in a huge variety of other industries. Lets take Scaparius V for example. It's basically LSD with some extra molecules that resemble petroleum. Split that formula with some heat and catalytic processes and boom, you have a synthetic petroleum product that we can use in automotive industries or convert to lubricant. As for LSD? That's a good base for some medications and psychosis drugs we use." He just shrugged and carried on typing.

"These processes... Are they dangerous?"

"Yup. That's why we are big on safety. Pressurised tanks, high density gases, closed systems and thousands of pipes. No accidents reported for..." He checked his notes. "Seventeen years, two months, twelve days. Yes we do count tripping over a bucket as an 'accident' on site. That's how seriously we take this safety thing." He said with an accusatory glare.

I wondered where Klaxxxin was going with this. "In which case... Is there some way we can acquire the schematics or access to these chemical processes too?"

That's where he was going.

"Well sort of. The processes for a lot of waste disposal and catalytic conversion processes are public knowledge and readily available but some bits relating to tech manufacturing are trade secrets. Got to keep a competitive economy after all. Here, I'll send you the stuff we got on that Scaparius stuff you have and you can learn how to fix that yourself." He pressed some buttons and seconds later, Ensign Klax'tl was hastily reading pages and pages of blueprints and chemical formulae.

"That brings me to why I'm here exactly. I would like to see if it's possible to negotiate a contract of some kind for mass disposal. Our shipbuilding industry produces these two toxic chemicals by the shipload and it will probably be a few years before we can make use of what you just sent us. Is there any way we can hire you somehow to dispose of our chemical waste?" I asked.

"Oh yeah sure. In fact you don't even need to pay us for it. You just dump your waste here and let us keep the resulting materials as payment, that will be enough. Could always use more Depleted Uranium frankly. Useful stuff. Just... Please remember to make an appointment first. We only have so much storage space."

This made me smile a lot more than I was supposed to. "That sounds like a good deal to me! When can we start?"

"Hold on one moment. Some of these chemical processes make no sense. Some require a lot more work and effort compared to the end result, yet you do so anyway. It would be a lot easier just to dump it and let it decay naturally. There are billions of planets that can easily be used for this reason. So why go through all this trouble?" Ensign asked.

"Two reasons, morally and ecologically. One, just dumping toxic waste on a planet is a very evil thing to do. I'm basically making my waste products someone else's problem millions of years into the future. And that's just not right is it? Morally I can't be tossing my garbage on someone else's front lawn even if they haven't been born yet. It hurts the planet too. Just because it's a barren lifeless rock doesn't give me the right to make it any worse, does it? And the most important reason? Blue skies, clean water, green grass. I like my home. I like my home clean. Even if it takes more than needed, the extra steps are worth a clean sky. 'Nuff said really." He replied with a shrug.

"That... Makes sense."

"I have to ask. How did you come up with this process? I mean... This chemical formulation is absurdly complex!" Ensign asked.

"Oh that's easy. We have this planet back home called Venus. Carbon dioxide atmosphere, toxic sulphur land, heavy metal storms and boiling lead oceans. We terraformed it. Made it liveable. We learned a lot about chemistry to do that. That was fun." He said with a smile.

"Why did you terraform a planet like THAT?" I asked.

"To see if we could? I dunno. Never knew the reason. It was there, and we could, I guess? No idea." He shrugged at us and carried on typing.

We shared glances, as if we all knew at once 'There's the insanity I was looking for'.

"Anyway, stuff’s offloaded, if you'd care to wait around a bit we will assess the cargo and see if we need to pay you a bonus for the extra stuff. You cool with that?" He asked.

"Yes we are indeed cool with that. Let me get in contact with my supplier and Patron back home before we negotiate a price first, I have to do this legally. This is after all some very bad stuff, I have to comply with regulatory statutes. Can't be selling expended nuclear material to just anyone after all." I replied.

"That's understandable. Soon as cargo is fully secured and tanks are empty I'll open the doors and let you into the lift down to the surface. I'll make sure you have a place o stay for a week while we do paperwork. See you soon."

"Great Days And Glorious Victory! Welcome back to the disturbing sociopathic wet dream that is Fallout new Vegas... The more I learn, the less I want to be here. But, we soldier on, as the saying goes... hm. I'm starting to use more and more human phrases of late. I think it's getting to me."

Spiff starts off where he left off - The Strip - and heads to Goodsprings to start off and test his newly acquired weaponry. Although he has very limited ammunition with most of the guns.

"I know I have low ammo but I am determined to test at least a little and see what they do before I put them to pasture till I have more bullets. For some reason in a post-apocalyptic wasteland we seem to have a shortage of ammunition. Who knew?"

Spiff heads into Chet's store to buy more ammo and medical supplies then heads down the road to Jean's Sky Diving, this time turning left to go north. On the way he encounters some Powder Gangers and gets to test one of his new guns, The Enforcer, and puts both down with ease. He moves towards the NCR Corrections Facility and wastes a few bullets while taking down a pack of dogs.

"This thing is VERY fancy but I'm awful with it. Prefer shotguns or my Service rifle. Now what is this place?"

He walks towards the new location and while searching the empty caravans, he starts taking hits from the guard towers. He emits a strange warbling noise of surprise before eventually finding what's shooting at him. The gun does excessive damage especially to these low level thugs, and within a few moments Dawes, two men in the tower and two others that chased Spiff outside are dead. He loots everything then heads inside.

"These are the same bunch that attacked Goodsprings I think. Is this a base of theirs?"

He heads in and immediately activates VATS on load. Three Gangers and Meyers. He gets lucky, and all three Gangers are dead in quick succession.

"My God, that is useful! But I have to ask a question, what kind of tech does THAT? Or maybe it's not the PipBoy, maybe it's the player? What kind of Eldritch abomination am I playing as? Food for thought."

Spiff fights his way through the Compound and has a standoff on the tower, realizing his new high calibre pistol isn't good at long ranges, and he gets crippled legs for his troubles during a duel with a guy on an opposing tower.

"Okay lesson learned, pistols are no good at long distances. What do I have to use hmm... You know what? The reason it isn't working is because I'm too far away. So what say I give Maria a try? That's Benny's gun I think."

He does indeed leave the tower and go down to meet the thug, scoring an easy kill with two bullets at close range.

"Well, there you go!"

He shrugs and has a mid-distance duel, Maria coming out on top once again as a very good gun. Spiff loots the place before clearing out both Bunkhouses and eventually heading into the Main Office using the new Rifle, the Phallic Firearm, as his main choice. It's a Ruger 5.56 Rifle with a strange coat of pink and purple paint. In the bunkhouses on a bedframe underneath the Powder Charge blueprint, he finds the Tooookarev. Which he picks up, equips, and tests out. It's a 9mm Tokarev, with a ridiculous 42 round extended mag and it's just as silly as it sounds. But it's Spiffles now..

Spiff tests it in Cell Block A on two Gangers. The recoil is absurd, the muzzle flash blocks the whole screen, but it IS very silly, and very funny to use.

"That... I wouldn't be surprised if something like this actually exists to be honest. With what I have seen thus far, human weaponry really has no limitations. Francine, insert clip of human fleet using their new cannons on the frontline please."

Francine, Spiffs editor, does exactly that and the screen transitions to the sight of a Terran/Saranai warship fleet engaging in a mass fleet battle. Human ships very clearly outrange their adversary, and with shocking precision, are helping bombard the enemy from extended ranges while Saranai fleets close the distance to hit them with their plasma cannons and lasers. The screen transitions back to a slightly smug looking Spiff as he switches guns again.

"Cheeky look at current events, I'm getting better at this job! Anyway, to the Main Offices we go. Probably not using that thing again, it is... ridiculous."

He enters the main office with the rifle equipped and proceeds to make short work of Hannigan and two guards. The way the building is laid out, allows the rest of the Gangers to filter down the stairs and get mowed down in succession. He quickly loots the place clean and walks back out to the main road North.

"That was easy. Low level thugs to be sure but I was expecting more of a fight at this stage. Got some good stuff from there, can get a decent amount of caps. North we go.

He heads up the road as planned and wipes out a few Powder Ganger encampments and clearing out a few other random spots. While looting and choosing a weapon he finds a name - Eugene - and equips it.

"IS THIS WHAT I THINK IT IS!?"

Spiff emits a strangely pleasurable squeal of joy when he hauls out a six barrelled Minigun called Eugene he bought from the Gunrunners and forgot about. There isn't much ammunition for it, maybe three reloads worth, but he gets very giddy about it.

"I have heard tales of these ridiculous behemoths before. In fact, Francine, if you would please!"

One can almost hear the eye-rolling as Francine cuts the screen and shows a screenshot of a Terran Legionnaire flanked by a group of Saranai warriors with plasma cannons boarding an enemy warship. The Terran is carrying a small but high calibre minigun with three barrels.

The screen cuts back to Spiff and he resumes, his smug smirk getting slightly more prominent. "Right, let's see what this thing can do. I have to be careful with ammo so I will go back to my rifle for now."

He gets close to Sloan and is interrupted by Chomps Lewis, who warns him of one of the game's most dangerous and iconic enemies - the Deathclaw.

"Death...Claw? Deathclaw? That's a very... Deliberate name. What does one look like? Humans are normally very good with games and that seems... Very much on the nose. Let's look about then."

The first thing he encounters is Snuffles, the pet Mole Rat. He talks to it and passes the Medical check easily.

"My GOD look at that! The detail in this game, a game so very old and so very, very, VERY broken and buggy, but the detail! Before I did the medical check, the creature was limping. The animation has changed, it no longer limps! THAT is attention to detail right there. See, this is what makes games ART. It's the detail, the time to make something so simple, yet so important. That's what I love about this!"

Spiff collects the reward for fixing Snuffles' leg and then quicksaves before heading down the road. His first encounter is with a young variant but its enough of a shock to his system as he spots the first one.

"What in the mothers milk made them come up with THAT damn thing!? What even is that!? Horns, claws, hunched over, WHAT IS THAT!?"

Spiff isn't able to contemplate the concept as he is faced with his first big one. Then, if the viewer listens closely enough, one can almost hear Francine grin ear to ear as she starts a montage sequence featuring Spiff facing off against the Deathclaw nest. The montage is a seven and a half minute highlight reel of Spiffle being repeatedly eviscerated while trying new weapons, being scared literally out of his seat by one that jumped at him from seemingly nowhere, and him accidentally dropping dynamite at his feet, blowing himself to pieces several times. By the end of it all Spiff seems somewhat deflated in his enthusiasm.

Until he remembers Eugene.

He equips the minigun and proceeds to go on a Rampage of epic proportions as he makes absurdly fast work of the Deathclaw nest (after the twentieth time he had to quickload), all to the backdrop of the Doom soundtrack. Appropriate.

"Now... let's see what loot is here. the.. Deathclaw Hunter? Some kind of high calibre rifle. And a Light Machinegun, plus some eggs. Those are pretty valuable eggs! I'll take those. Right, back to Sloan for my reward."

He collects the reward, a boost in faction reputation that easily offsets his issues with the NCR while working for House, and a few NCR bills. Then he heads further north, killing twenty more Deathclaws that were on the road there, getting a level up and the Jury-Rigging perk in the process. He moves about, engaging Fire Geckos and has to switch back to the standard rifle owing to the lack of ammunition and makes his way past Whittaker Farmstead, entering a disused parking lot.

"Vault... Nineteen? What's that? What's a Vault? Is it the nineteenth version or something?"

Spiff enters, and Francine has to intervene, overlaying the screen with the message 'he sat there doing this for twenty minutes' as Spiff watches in fascination with the Vault Door Mechanism opening and closing. The Vault itself is flush with Escaped Convicts and Fire Geckos, and to the tune of Benny Hill, a short highlight reel of Spiff gunning his way through the vault follows. Eventually he finishes and starts looting the place before encountering his first bit of lore - A keycard for the Red Sector sitting on a table by a terminal.

"Hmm... ‘No reason for filters to fail... Blues did it? Start whispering... Plotting what to do next’? Okay... that is... Concerning. What is this place? Is there more?"

Spiff indeed finds more and wanders about collecting everything he can, reading the occasional terminal. One such terminal entry makes him visibly wince.

"I think they're in my head, sometimes I hear thoughts not my own. I think the Reds have done something to the Intercom system, rigged it somehow to broadcast into our brains.' What the hell is going on? The last entry said something about 1:30 in the morning. What time is it? Its actually close. I wonder if that detail even exists."

Sure enough, at around 1:30, for five in-game minutes, if a player stands close to one of the intercom speakers, one can actually hear a strange short burst of radio emission, almost indiscernible from the background noise.

"What in blue blazes is this place... Why is everyone so paranoid? Must find more."

Spiff eventually finds the Rec room, and a unique gun called Chop Shop which is one of the oddest rifles Spiff has ever seen. It looks like a cut down AK with no stock, and the magazine protruding from the top of the gun, like a makeshift Lewis Gun.

"How... What!? That's... New. I'll test it later. More searching."

Spiff eventually enters the Clinic and finds the Patient logs, going through each one.

"'Panic attacks'? What's that? Is that a thing? 'Patronising nurses, increasingly hostile... Perceived hostility.' Uhhh… I don't like this for some reason. I don't know what's going on but I really don't like it. 'Ninth occurrence of being brought in by police'!? That's an interesting criminal record. 'Claim's voices are taunting him. Coming from grandfather's radio... Voices coming from within himself.' What the hell!? The last one. 'Claims to be 'outside' himself. Patient was off balance during episodes.' That is... Very disturbing! I really don't like this place!"

Spiff finds the Vault Overseers terminal.

"'Data corrupted... Fake medical Records!? That's not a good sign. Paranoia must be induced through non violent and non chemical means for it to be successful.' Paranoia!? NO! Nope, I'm out of here, I'm gone. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm out."

Spiff exits rapidly and doesn't look back, shaking his head the whole time. There is a strange edit here, the footage skipping ahead to Spiff being outside again, cutting down a group of Powder Gangers outside Whittaker Farmstead. He seems abnormally quiet, his face is pale, his eyes sunken, as if he has witnessed something truly awful. He is giving the camera a more prominent, more hollow death glare than usual.

"So... a few more levels. Must sell stuff and get more bullets."

Eventually he finds himself at Camp McCarran and wanders around looking for things to find. He searches through the local NPCs and talks to Corporal Sterling before leaving the area again. Still, he remains abnormally quiet, not commenting much beyond a twitch and fidget to what he sees. He heads through to The Thorn and eventually into Westside where he spends time with Klamath Bob to offload his loot. The entire time he remains relatively quiet, not commenting on much. He offloads gear, then heads to the Vendortron outside the Gun runners to buy ammo. He gets a few new guns on the way, including a makeshift Anti Materiel Rifle.

He tests out The Chop Shop, the gun recovered from Vault 19. A Combat Shotgun in the form of a Serbu Super-Shorty takes his fancy and as he tests it out he gets his smile back. He walks back into Freeside and ends it there, once again in silence.

The screen cuts to a new montage playing out, this one of Spiff returning to Vault 19 to look around and see what he can find, if anything. Eventually he gives up and looks at the wiki.

Spiff goes into a literal rabbit hole of insanity as he reads up on Vault 19 and a few others, stopping short of Vault 86 before fully spoiling his discovery of what was actually going on. The montage follows Spiff reading the articles and reading terminal entries out. To the left side of the screen is a still image of Spiffles face, to the right the live footage. The still image captures Spiff's slow descent into despair as each time he reads something, the image shows his expression change. The montage shows in excessive detail as Spiff reads something that makes him internally scream, he looks at the camera and one can actually see part of his soul die. Each still image shows his skin pale, his eyes go deeper, and the signature death glare gets more and more prominent.

Eventually the channel's outro plays followed by a blank screen with the voice of Francine herself asking a question.

"What evil has to be within humans, what monsters do you hide within yourselves, or what kinds of abominations must you have fought in your past, to stain your souls to such an extent to allow you to create the events that take place within these publications? Just what kind of monsters are you? Are you angels, or demons, or are you something that Angels and Demons fear?"

______________________________________________

TOP COMMENT: "That was... a bit much lol. You DO realize it's just a game right, that shit didn't happen lol"

Spiffs reply: "True enough... but art is a reflection of the soul. This qualifies as art. What kind of shit do you people get up to in order to create these insane fever dreams?"

Reply: "Cocaine, LSD, Beer, Vodka... Being forced to deal with Todd Howard and his dumbassery. That can drive anyone insane. Thankfully New Vegas didn't have his grubby influence spooged all over the game, so at least the stuff in Vegas actually makes sense. The stress of life and shit we do makes us slightly loopy and gives us the chance to do stuff like New Vegas. Trust me, compared to a LOT of other games we have, this is mild."

Reply: (translated from Eridani) "YOU CALL THAT MILD!?"

Reply: "Yep lol"

Reply: (translated from Eridani) "Well at least this war won't last long then. You can't win against insanity."

Our chests puffed up proud as the Grand Admiral gave his glorious speech, our ultimatum. Our flagship had entered the atmosphere, ready to face them head on in an honourable, glorious fight, while the rest of the fleet waited in orbit ready to dispense justice if they dared try anything. Honour in battle not in a surprise attack. Even if they kill the admiral in a cowardly assault, we would still render this planet to cinders in a heartbeat. These barbarians would be no different.

It was the Honourable choice.

Always with honour.

The objective was intimidation. Amass the fleet above the planet's surface, upwards of a few hundred warships. But a fraction of our might and give them the chance to see what we are capable of doing, what we can bring against them. Amass all ships to orbital bombardment stance and wait. The flagship enters the planet's atmosphere (or goes close enough to one of the stations) and gives the enemy the option to show their capacity for dishonour. If their ships think they can open fire and kill our leadership, they wont. Our leaders are... replaceable. Our honour is NOT.

If they open fire, we crack the planet open and show them what a true invasion really is. A few hundred ships for First Contact... a few tens of thousands of ships waiting behind the lines ready to take the enemy piece by worthless piece. But we do give them a chance. Show us a feat of strength or capacity for prowess, something that makes them uniquely impressive. Something we can use to justify invading them anyway to spare them the dishonour of being outside of our glorious might. If they impress us, we leave, and assemble the fleet somewhere else to meet them in full force face to face like true warriors.

If they surrendered, we would take them as slaves. They were useful as nothing else after all, so easily cowed into submission, we would obviously grant their request and slap every last one in chains. Only cowards surrender.

The Admiral finished his speech and gave the ultimatum we always did. A veiled threat of 'we kill you now like the barbarians you are, or we come back and give you the chance to put up a fight when we come back later.'

We received silence for several minutes from the local barbarians. What were they up to? We noted no activity from them for a while.

"The Barbarians are not responding, My Lord. Are you certain they are intelligent enough to actually know what we are asking of them?" I asked idly.

"They are smart enough to build industry, they are smart enough to understand a threat Ensign." He replied with a smug smile.

"With all due respect My Admiral, industrial capacity does not denote intelligence, let alone sapience. Honour and Duty determine intellect. If they are so smart, why are they so quiet?" I replied, a bit more snark in my voice that I was expecting.

He snapped his head towards me and barked back. "Watch your tongue Ensign, lest I have it removed. We learned our lesson from the Imakandi, we won't learn it again. Get back to work. Do you see any movement?"

"A small fast moving craft has taken off from a nearby hangar. Fixed wing, appears to be vertically capable, on par with one of our starfighters in terms of manoeuvrability. It is on a fast approach. I don't like how fast it is, my Lord." The Gunnery Sergeant replied with a suspicious note of concern in his tone.

"Let's see what they have. Make sure we follow standard procedure. They won't know what hit them." I commanded, and let the crew get back to it.

The craft approached us and it... did indeed have a rather frightening degree of speed to it despite its primitive design. It also slowed very fast... A lot faster than any of our ships could. And that was... Also concerning. But whatever. One little ship is no indication of a species' capabilities. This will be easy.

And then it honed itself into view of the bridge. What an... Odd thing. Very odd. But more so its seemingly jumbled configuration. Clearly it was specially built for atmospheric flight operations owing to its highly aerodynamic design, but also its entire wings moved. Not engine nacelles, not canards, its entire wing surfaces moved to counter the sway and ebb of motion as it carefully flew up to face the bridge.

And then we saw it. One of the local sapients, the so called 'humans' as per their own designation from what files we've been able to 'acquire', was standing on top of the craft's hull. Carrying a... weapon? Or something? Were they so worthless that they still used handheld equipment for combat? This would be far too easy. He was dressed oddly though, very oddly. A full scarlet red cloak that billowed and swayed in the winds, his face covered by a very distinct mask. The craft itself seemed straining to carry some extra machinery of some kind that had been hastily bolted to the hull. Despite this, it still flew exceptionally well.

Too well. Concerningly well.

The human on top of the strange craft brandished his weapon. I could see the Gunnery Sergeant flinch at the motion. The device he was holding didn't look too... intimidating. The craftsmanship and shape conveyed a feeling of comfort or excitement not anger or fury. Wood construction, cables leading from the underside and a long neck with... Strings? What was that?

The human raised a hand, revealing a small triangular object in his hand. He stared us right in the eyes and with one full motion, nearly blew our ears out as a distorted sound of unimaginable proportions blasted our ears. Sound. A tune? Music? That was an INSTRUMENT?!

What?

He raised his head slowly. Not with intimidation but rather showmanship. He began a song, a scrap of seemingly discordant and disconnected riffs and motions, his heavily gloved fingers gently gracing the strings of the instrument. The speakers on the craft made a sound loud enough to penetrate past our shields, and we could even hear the strange chaotic hum from within the heavy hull of our flagship. How did they even do that?

The craft seemed to respond to the music and began to sway, pitching and rolling gently to the melody that was building, slowly, inexorably, the reverberations from the speakers penetrating the ship's hull. Impossible. How loud must it be for them? What kinds of auditory limits do these creatures have? The craft backed away from the ship and the control movements became more aggressive, matching the tempo and speed of the song. The human atop the machine appeared secured in place by a strange harness and he seemed completely unphased by the increasingly violent movement.

The craft dipped back and followed the sound. When the pitch of the music went low, so did the craft, when the pitch rose, the craft climbed. The aircraft moved with an absurd degree of flexibility despite its primitive construction and the speaker system apparently didn't make it any less capable. The movements seemed calculated, matching the music while the musician's all too precise hands flowed like space itself across the strings, creating a sound that genuinely terrified and awed us all at the same time.

The music became more aggressive, as did the movements, and the craft did a sudden dip, then swung around to fly right past the ship tip to tail with a speed far too fast for a primitive craft like that. I watched from various angles created by cameras mounted on turrets and cannons as the thing effortlessly - and I do mean EFFORTLESSLY - wove and bobbed between the ship's hardpoints and framing details, with every movement matching the rising music perfectly. No matter where the ship was, we could hear the music with perfect clarity.

It bobbed and weaved, dove and swooped across the ship's hull, around the turrets and armour plating. It zipped and swayed between points effortlessly and seemed to defy the laws of physics and motion as it followed the sound of the instrument. The music itself was increasing in tempo. Every time the craft passed a certain point, the musician would increase his rhythm and his fingers would move impossibly faster and the faster he went the more precise he seemed to be.

The craft rocketed into the sky during a high note, then plummeted to the ground like a leaf in a flat spin. We thought it had stalled or failed, then the music instantly picked up and the craft rocketed back to full flight in seconds and weaved its way through the hull again. I watched its movements, managing to at least a little bit, drown out the noise of its instrument to pay attention to its design and movement.

Entirely unnatural. No craft that size should move that fast. Nothing that moves that fast should be able to make those kinds of turns. And what about the physical forces on the pilot and musician!? What kinds of monsters are these creatures that can withstand those kinds of forces?

Unless...

The Admiral and I both glared at each other. We saw the same terror. The same fear. The same realization that there was something here we were missing, and it was a serious problem for us. We couldn't tell what, but we knew.

The song reached a crescendo and we were straining from the sheer volume as the craft swooped about us, performing manoeuvres that were actively confounding our gunners and turrets. I started getting reports from maintenance that some of our turret mechanisms were straining to keep up with the speed of the craft, its erratic movements were making our operators nauseous. How was this happening? How were they doing this? I tried to use some variation of dampeners on our shields, but I couldn't get the orders in to angle them toward the noise fast enough to counter it.

The music reached a crescendo of truly horrifying proportions with movements to match. Hard turns, sharp dips and sudden banks all perfectly in time with the musical score. It seemed to carry on for an age but eventually the craft slowly returned in front of the ship's bridge with the music slowly starting to fade. The song ended and the human just stood there, staring at us.

Nothing else happened, it just stood there staring us down. Like it was expecting us to grab an instrument and likewise make our own song. We had nothing. The crew remained confused and mildly amused. A very good performance to be completely honest. The Admiral and I however were in the beginning stages of a full blown hysterical fit.

Craft that have a distinct advantage over our turrets that can move at absurd speeds. What are their actual star ships like?

It was clear this was haphazard and hastily constructed. And it held like nothing else, and far as I could tell didn't even sway the craft from its optimal performance.

The creatures themselves. What abominations could withstand that level of G-Forces on the body. And if they couldn't, clearly there was some hidden technology or capability we couldn't determine that let them operate under that level of strain.

And what about the manoeuvres? What reflexes and training could these creatures possibly have to be capable of THAT level of control? What tech could the pilots use to their advantage to accomplish these tasks? What could they possibly be capable of with larger, more dedicated craft?

And what of fear? They showed none. They approached a fully armed warship fifty times the size of their puny craft and stared it down like it owed them something. They performed a truly impossibly hard feat of aerobatics and his hand never left the instrument.

They showed an unnerving quality of coordination and communication, operating on a perfect footing to make their performance work.

And what the hell was with those speakers? What the hell did those things have they could perfectly direct the music straight to us AND penetrate through ten feet of armour plating and star ship hull?

The more we thought about what these creatures could represent, what they could do, what they already do. The more a strange fear crept into us. The less we could hear of the music, the more we could hear as if the Gods themselves had warned us about just this very entity.

The more we thought about it, the more we thought we had just awoken the wrath of a monster we really shouldn't have.

The human just stood there in stance, glaring at us as if he could see into our souls and judging us unworthy of existence in his space. As if his mere presence demanded more respect than we deserved.

I heard a ping coming from my navigators console and took a look. A defence fleet was approaching.

We waited. The Admiral and I shared the same expression of concern as we watched the human warships filter into the system. Two. Five. Twelve. Thirty. Then sixty. Then a hundred. Then a thousand.

Small. Sharp. Jagged edges and sharp lines only broken by the tell-tale signature of weapon mounts and shield generator hardpoints. The human fleet fired its engines in almost perfect unison.

It was now the Admiral and I both realized just how outmatched we are with these monsters. A fleet of ten thousand ships? maybe. But if that craft and its operators are any indication as to the species as a whole?

I snapped out of my daze and slammed the button on my comms console. "ALL SHIPS RETREAT TO NEAREST HYPERLANE!!" I bellowed loudly.

"PANIC AND RUN! No! RUN AND PANIC! GAH! JUST GET US OUT OF HERE!!!!" The Admiral screamed in fear as the first human warships started moving into a formation we could see from our spot on the planet.

Our crews, confused, obeyed our directive and our ship quickly moved its way out of the atmosphere to rejoin the fleet proper.

We flew in formation ourselves and carefully made our way, with a strange nervousness like we were being watched as we made our way to the system's edge.

I looked up from my console to see a human warship right next to us. One of its main cannons staring right at the bridge. HOW WERE THEY SO FAST!? No fear. none. not even slightly. We outgunned them at least five to one, but there they were staring us in the face, catching up to us with speed unnatural for any ship of any size.

Then our communicators were hijacked. Every signal radio comm on the fleet simultaneously lit up with music. That same instrument, this time with a more definitive tune to it. A song of war. Hatred. Vengeance.

A song that conveyed 'Go away... and don't you dare come back.'

We reached the system edge and entered hyperspace to our nearest star system. The Admiral and I were sharing looks, glares, stares and panicked expressions as we thought more about what this species was capable of.

No honour was worth this. The Emperor had to be told. I started writing out my report along with the Admirals tactical analysis. The Admiral and I both came to a similar conclusion.

Leave them alone. Permanently.

Now they know we are here? they will drastically increase ship production. And by the time we had a response from High Command, they would be on a full wartime footing. If their capabilities extended to their industry, it was likely the next time we met them, they would double their numbers. This species...

Gods... Gods I must ask... What abominations did you create?

What monsters did we just unleash?

I fear for the future of the Empire. I really do.

I sat in my seat in the concert hall, the grand edifice of a thousand years of peace proudly towering above me as the jubilant roar of fifty thousand patrons echoed around me. Most, if not all of the Galactic Council's representatives had a seat in these halls, and all of them had an appreciation of the arts. This night was an interesting selection of beautiful works exhibited by the community as a whole.

It started with the Rakhani, a whimsical tale of their native wind instruments that carried perfectly through the concert hall, a melody of happiness and prosperity played through a wind instrument held by a species of centipedal beings. Hard to look at, beautiful to listen to.

A full concert was then held by the Galaxy's greatest musicians, the Ramathai and Saranian Royal Troupe. Never a greater rival those two, but my Gods the music they produce when they aren't trying to incinerate each other is beyond perfection. Chords of discord broken by a melody of sweet enchantment, such a performance, I could visibly see many members of the audience losing themselves to the song as they swayed to the music.

The day continued with one glorious chorus of blissful echoing sound after the other, each tune carrying within it the echo of the history for the species that made it. One such performance was for the Kadakions who, through sheer audacity and prowess with their unwieldy and strange instruments, created a funny rendition of the Council's anthem. All to the thunderous applause of the Council's founders no less. A true masterpiece that was, I couldn't stop laughing at the audacity, and stood to applaud like all others around me.

Then at the end of the day's performances, we got the news of the galaxy's newest denizens, a species under much controversy within the Galactic Empire owing to their inter-factional warfare and seemingly continuous civil wars. The so-called 'Humans', would be entering a performance piece as part of the renaissance concerts.

Interest in the performance skyrocketed, and I saw my stocks rise as the Council announced it was going to broadcast the event as Humanity's official introduction. My empire owned most of the stocks in the network they were using, so I was a happy man, rise or fall, the viewership stats would make us richer than we already were.

The day rolled onward, eventually the main performances ending with Thrixl The Great and her Grand Troupe giving the galaxy a soulful rendition of an ancient musical opera their race created. Drums, strings, flutes and other instruments brought a tear to the eye as they told the ancient tale of a fallen hero.

Then came the humans. And confusion followed.

About twenty of them, strange creatures with varying height and size, all cautiously marched into the stage at the centre of the hall. Each one wore a simple flowing robe and a hood, walking on their two feet in perfect lock step. They all stood in the centre of the arena with their hoods on and stayed quiet for a time. Performance art perhaps? Maybe. It has happened before. The (REDACTED) species once held such a performative event two hours of solid silence interspersed with random bouts of frantic activity involving drums, rapid movement and snares. Quite a performance. A strange one, but memorable.

The humans all wandered in and took seemingly random places in a semi-circle around one human. Once seemingly in position for their performance, they all removed their hoods.

Such... Strangely compelling creatures. Were they all the same species!? varying skin colours, hair lengths, some had hair on chins and faces, others had no hair on heads. The females had long hair, while others had short hair. The colours of their eyes varied as well! Was this some kind of joke? I couldn't tell if they were all the same kind! I felt almost insulted.

One human moved out of the crowd and stood in the centre of the circle, facing his peers. He was seemingly an older kind of human, with hair that had lost its colour. Or something. He raised a hand, signalled something with the meaty digits, and...

Nirvana.

Thus began one of the most blissfully beautiful performances the Council had ever heard. And only by the voices of the humans present. No drums, no snares, no elaborate art pieces, just pure, unadulterated vocals.

The performance started simply with three human males starting out, left, right and centre. the one on the right side started with a low, dulcet tone, flat but noticeable, the voice carrying perfectly through the hall.

The one in the middle carrying the song they were singing forward, a voice more forceful, dominant.

The one on the left led the charge, a voice louder, more pronounced.

All said no words. It was just noise. Noise working in perfect harmony to produce a sound none had ever heard before this. The three worked in perfect concert for a solid three minutes, confusing the mind. We knew not what we were hearing.

But we liked it.

The one on the right maintained the same tone for the entire time, the one in the centre creating the melody, the one on the left controlling tempo and volume.

It was... beautiful. We knew not what song they were singing, but it became almost immediately captivating. A song of... Strength. Speed. Endurance. A memory we never had, suddenly flooding us. I felt as a lone soldier on the precipice of extinction, fighting insurmountable horror one fight after another, somehow coming out on top.

Then the song seemingly ended, going in a completely different direction suddenly, instantly, seamlessly, perfectly. The three men, not skipping a beat, stepped back, and more voices were added to the sound. A new, almost entirely different sound followed, bringing a tear to our eyes as the whole group began to proudly sing. Three men, one centre, one left and one right, led the charge as the main singers, reciting the lyrics, while others carried on the song in the background as the instruments. It lasted eight beautiful minutes of their voices echoing through the room.

I felt an overwhelming sense of pride, of duty, and loyalty. I felt an overwhelming urge to start praying. The dulcet tones of some, low and deep, with the soft pitch of others all carrying together in perfect concert. Some parts all of them spoke in unison with the lyrics, and some points only a few spoke while others simply chanted a single note.

The song seemingly ended, and the tempo of the music suddenly went up, speed, volume, again with seamless perfection, the lyrics and sound changed to fit a new song. The voices of the females became more prominent and every voice picked up to a beautiful chorus. The song was discordant but so beautiful, starting with a soft tone from the females, then gently going down to the thunderous roar of the males. The lyrics, again in a language undecipherable, spoken only by a few people, men and women singing in concert, the music driving them held up by the voices of the choir with them.

The song switched to a more definitive tone, going from hopeful, almost innocent, reaching a crescendo of power and strength in the middle. Then the voices rose again, the echo of the beautiful sound giving the crowd a skip in their step, a feeling of accomplishment and prowess like they had singlehandedly built an empire all their own.

Then the music slowed and a dulcet tone set the scene for the next phase. All the men sang in unison, loud grunts, dark tones, deep voices and loud thunderous roar, accompanied by the softness and high pitch of the females, creating an accompanying track. The song conveyed a sense of wonder and amazement, a ballad of power unfettered in a world gone mad. I felt like I was the only sane voice in a universe on the brink of ruin, and I never spoke a word.

The song continued for several minutes, interspersed with short melodies, sudden stops to high pitched notes followed closely by soft rumbles and gentle notes. The men stopped, allowing the women's voices to prominence, almost like a musician was using a break in the song as a whole to create a melody all his own.

The crescendo hit with force, and the music conveyed the feeling of a warrior facing impossible odds with nothing but grit and strength.

The song came to a short, but beautiful end, the human at the front gave a signal to silence, and all the humans again covered their heads with their hoods. They all gave a gentle bow to the audience and waited for the Council's word.

For what seemed an eternity, their only response was deathly, immeasurable silence.

I shot up from my chair and began to clap as vigorously and loudly as I could all six of my spindly hands in praise for the performance. The Council chambers erupted in a thunderous applause I have never heard before or since. A truly incredible accomplishment.

No instrumentation or equipment, nothing of complexity or skill.

No strange movements or discordant motion.

Nothing but their own voices, and a seemingly perfect sense of coordination.

We wanted more. WE NEEDED MORE.

We rioted. We fought. We declared war. They bowed their heads, and left the room while we clamoured, screamed, and begged for more. We DEMANDED more. We drew blades for more.

A thousand years of peace, broken by nothing but the power of the voice.

____________________________________________

I sat in my seat in the office with my Systems Manager, making sure we got all the important things sorted out. We couldn't risk mistakes.

"So what exactly are we doing for the Culture Festival thing the aliens want?" Jerry asked.

"I organized a full choir. We can't do instruments because we're still too early in the game and haven't had the chance to review footage and practices, so we're going full vocals only." I replied.

"Really? Why's that?" He asked, confused.

"There's sixty four thousand hours of footage from the Culture Festival. We don't have that time." I replied with a smirk.

"Sixty Four thousand hours!? That's seven straight YEARS back to back worth of footage!? How long has this been going?" He squealed in shock as he nearly fell out of his seat.

"A thousand years apparently. There's millions of acts, performances and even individual cultural festivals from every race in the galaxy. It's apparently one of the most important events, diplomatically speaking. We can't afford to make mistakes." I sat back in my seat and reviewed the paperwork for the hundredth time.

"So we got a lot riding on this then?" He asked.

"More than we could ever know. We don't know what instruments they like, we don't know what they hate, we don't know the rules of engagement and we have received an invitation we cant skip out on. Rock, hard place, us." I said, handing him a copy of the invitation.

"So... What songs are we going for?"

"Halo Theme by Munx Gregoriana, Salve Regina the Templar March, short version, all vocals version of the Space Engineers Menu Theme, and a vocal version of the Skyrim Menu theme, the version made by Peter Hollins and Lindsey Sterling, in that order." I replied.

He just glared at me. "You gotta be kidding me."

"Its all we could do in short notice and we can't back out. It'll be fine don't worry about it! Worst they can do is clap politely and we can be on our way and get back to work. The choir said they know all the songs and can ad-lib a few parts to make sure it works, so i trust them. They only have two weeks to practise. Should be fine though, we've handled worse." I said.

"You mean like that one time-"

"DO NOT talk about that. I still have cold sweats from that. Either way it won't be another situation like that. Like I said, the worst they can do is clap politely and we won't be invited back, then we can just mind our own business and get back to work. Easy peasy. Best case scenario we can contact a few empires and politely offer us some trade deals out of pity. There's nothing to worry about." I said, and got back to reading reports.

Jess'Ka chased me down the corridor, the final jump sequence had started and she knew where the jump drive was taking us. It was bound to happen, but no way to stop it now. Good.

"You cannot be serious! You are taking us to see those madmen!?" She barked at me, her voice echoing through the corridor.

"Yes I am. Where did you think we were going to go? The Davarians? Those idiots are just as screwed as we are." I remarked coldly.

"Don't you remember the stories!? What are you going to do? Do you remember what happened to the Taranisi? You do remember that right? You haven't gotten senile from your age have you?" Venom leaked from every word she spoke. Clearly, she didn't have a high opinion of me anymore.

"Oh yes I do remember. That was funny. Jumped the entire fleet into one of the border systems and got turned into paste after their pompous bastard commissar spat out his first paragraph. I have to wonder... How long was his speech?" I asked idly as I kept walking to the bridge.

"You can't be serious! What do you intend to do exactly? Were a refugee frigate with escaped slaves what the hell are we going to do against them?" The feathery frills on her head were at full attention now. She was not happy.

"Something we haven't done in over two thousand years. For some reason. Now get back to your station." I ordered blankly.

Her voice changed to stern and authoritative, her beak chattering aggressively. "I have to protest this course of action, Captain." She said.

I stopped and looked at her, glaring her dead in the eyes. "Then you can enter an escape pod and make your way home. We cannot afford insubordination."

She stopped in her tracks and her feathers wilted, nervously retracting her wings in a defensive posture. She bowed her head, not in submission but in sorrow. "I... You know I can't do that."

"I know Jess'Ka. I know. None of us have that option anymore. Look, I know how bad the situation is, and even considering where we are going, it cannot possibly get worse. Can it?" I asked.

She stood nervously for a few moments considering my words. She reluctantly shook her head and stomped her way back to her station in the aft deck. I sighed, the burden of this charge getting to me and returned to the Bridge. I got similar looks of concern and anger from other members of the crew, the Gunnery officer specifically who was carefully nursing a bottle of Wadrot. I let it slide this time. His job wasn't that important for this trip. Not even the Red Walkers are crazy enough to come this far into the Segmentum arm.

I sat in my seat and watched the clock. Fifteen minutes to jump. I took this time to gather my notes and records, carefully reading them and reorganising them. They were absolutely critical to the entire purpose of this journey. I had to make sure they were as perfect as I could get them. Ten minutes. I checked everyone's stations and made sure we were as ready as we could ever be. Five minutes. I checked my notes again. I had to be certain. One minute, momentary panic as I triple checked service calculations. We were good.

The ship's hull shuddered under us as the drive finally started to spool up. The universe vanished in a flash and moments later we all collectively screamed as we returned to real space. We had jumped into one of their absurdly insane 'Ring World' systems. A gigantic construct of a flat planetary plane facing a large star, which itself was surrounded by a swarm of solar arrays and structures they call a 'Dyson Swarm'. Absolute madness, pure damn madness. The warships in the system noticed us before we even arrived, as within seconds we had their absurdly large local fleet swarming us. Before I could think I was staring at the business end of a Titan class ship. Or at least what WE considered a Titan.

If we wanted to, we could easily fit our small warship inside the barrel of that thing's spinal cannon. And that's the SMALL one we were facing. the BIG ones were to our starboard and port, all aiming at us.

"We are being hailed!" My comms officer barked.

"Reply and request video feed!" I ordered and collected my shivering bones from my seat.

The request was processed and soon enough, I was staring at the legends from ages past. A Terran. This one wore heavy armour, clearly military, its face obscured by its helmet. But it was clear it was a Terran, nobody else in the galaxy has that profile.

"State your business and be quick, I'm missing a guild tournament for this." He barked angrily.

I stayed in awe for a few moments, collecting my mind. I almost broke at the sight. An actual, REAL Terran, I was looking at an actual HUMAN, likely the first to do so since the collapse of the Galactic Confederacy over two thousand years ago.

"I-Im sorry I can't feel my legs at the moment. I need to... uh... Where are my notes? Hold on a moment." I replied in terror and hastily retrieved my notes from the pocket in my seat. "Oh, here they are. Sorry. Uhh…"

"This doesn't bode well... I better not be doing an overtime shift again." He growled, his voice clearly very annoyed.

I swallowed nervously and shuddered a bit. "I am sorry for the circumstances Terran I... uh... I found some things and I am only here to ask you some questions. I just want to talk." I replied meekly.

"I see." He raised a hand and made a motion with his hand. Then his image disappeared. I tilted my head and wondered what was going on. We were still connected, but he was gone.

"Alright then." I heard an agitated voice behind me say. I turned and visibly aged a few decades. He had TELEPORTED into the ship, and was standing on the bridge. Myself, and several others, screamed in horror and jumped out of our seats. "You wanted to talk, then let's talk."

His presence radiated an aura of pure malicious energy. We could clearly see the personal shield generators on his armour, shimmering around him. He was taller than I was by two feet and could easily rip anyone on board the ship apart with his bare hands if needed.

I dribbled and scrambled to find my notes so I could talk to him. Maybe apologise for the interruption, then go home with my tail between my legs. He got tired of waiting and grumbled in annoyance as he grabbed me and hauled me back onto my chair, slamming the notes I was reaching for into my lap.

"Can we get this over with? I may be immortal, but that doesn't give you the excuse to waste my time." He barked angrily, crossing his arms.

I scrambled to find the note I was looking for. I read it carefully and then cleared my throat.

"Ahem... Uhh… Hello humans, it's been a while. Please excuse my intrusion, but I would like to have a chat with you about something. I can come back next week if it's not convenient." I said, reading the notes I wrote word for word in a somewhat robotic tone.

His head tilted to the left. "Didn't see that coming."

That calmed him down apparently so I went with the momentum I was given, and started reading my notes.

"I apologise for my unscheduled entry into your sovereign space, and under such circumstances. I have recovered some of the datalogs of the Old Confederate Council, including some files you may find useful or interesting. They are yours if you want them. But I have to ask you something first." I watched his response.

"Okay then... Go on." I had his attention.

"Uhh… You see Terrans, we, and by we I mean the galaxy as a whole are to quote an old Terran Phrase..." I flipped the page and read it carefully, then recited it. "Completely, utterly, absolutely boned. We are super, ultra, mega boned, screwed and whatever else you can think of, and I am here to honour an ancient forgotten tradition from the old days of the Confederacy: Politely asking for help."

That did something. Who knew Terrans were so scared of words? He stepped back and his arms dropped, the aura of malice surrounding him vanished in an instant.

I didn't want to lose my pace so I kept going.

"We in the galaxy at large are currently facing a litany of crises including a galaxy wide food shortage due to a strange fungal parasite being spread by a crazed religious group. We have pirate clans in almost every corner of space engaging in all the criminal activity you can imagine, draining what little wealth we have. The galaxy is on the verge of economic and social collapse, and one planet has already bombed itself into oblivion to escape extortion from the pirates."

I had somehow befuddled him and made him go limp, he was glaring at me silently, blankly from behind his helmet visor, almost as if he was trying to retrieve his forlorn mind.

"In short humans, we are the Imbako, the Dukani, and the Polokai. We are super-mega-ultra-boned and I am here to politely request assistance. So please, can you give us a hand? Thank you, and I hope you have a nice day." I said.

I tossed my notes aside and waited for his response. On one hand, my crew were all gobsmacked that THIS was the reason we were here risking interaction with the Terran Union. THIS is what I was here for, and I could feel the daggers being stared at me by my crewmates. On the other hand the human seemed to have... switched off? He wasn't moving, just standing there glaring at me. I had no way to see his reaction as I couldn't see his features. What was going on? We stood there in silence for a full minute.

"Okay." He replied all too calmly.

Before I could respond we saw the ringworld suddenly break apart. Except it wasn't. I looked closer and noticed how the shapes appearing were warships being released from their fleet tenders behind the Ringworlds rear plating. The entire thing was a shipyard too!? Faster than anyone could comprehend it, a massive swarm of some twenty thousand warships had rapidly assembled themselves into small fleets, and I could tell by the loud beeping noise coming from my engineers console, their jump drives were charging up.

"May I have access to your ship's archive please?" He asked.

I didn't hesitate and jumped out of my chair, gesturing for him to sit. He sat awkwardly in my seat and used a wearable computer console to type away for a bit. Then we started hearing radio chatter, of a militaristic sort.

"This is fleet designation 'Fabulous Crabulous', proceeding to system designation 'Carinae'. Food and medical supplies on board. Two minutes."

"Fleet designation 'Rat Hunter' armed and ready, moving to the nearest occupied system. It's time for target practice!"

"Fleet designation 'Five-Finger-Discount' on standby, lets go car shopping!"

And various other chatter came through. Then, one by one in quick succession, the Terran armada vanished into the void in every conceivable direction.

"Okay... So we got fleets inbound with a few thousand tons of food headed to every planet. We got a few pirate hunting fleets out, shouldn't be hard to finish that off. Destroyers versus titans normally doesn't go well for the small guys. One or two fleets hunting these religious dudes and a few dozen fleets armed with an anti-fungal agent, should fix that but just in case we are delivering a LOT of food supply to... everywhere I guess. Got some fleets that are going to set up field hospitals and comms networks so we can coordinate with your leadership, already in contact with them, don't worry. And uhh… We have a planet we recently terraformed if you need space to settle for now."

I stumbled over my own thoughts for a few minutes as I stood there like a tree, mouth agape, face pale, arms lazily flopped beside me. Eventually I relocated my cognitive functions.

"That... that's it? Just like that?" I asked.

"Yep. Any questions?"

"So many... So very many. But I shall start with this one: What the hell are you even doing that you disappeared from the Confederacy all those years ago?" I asked.

"In short, we are utilising a Megastructure located around a Black Hole called a Penrose Brain, a combination Penrose Sphere and Matryoshka Brain, to run simulations. Entire universes, different concepts, millions of different debates and all sorts of other stuff, all contained within a simulated environment so we can see what happens and act accordingly. It's why it was so fast to find a fungal agent. In the time it took me to type out, we had already got the data you had on the fungus thing, ran a hundred simulations on how it worked, found a cure and mass-produced a defoliant to kill it off. That's basically what we are doing here. Figuring out the mysteries not only of this universe, but all others too. Among so many other projects as well but that's the big one we got going right now." He said.

"Oh... Why?"

"Why not? It keeps us busy at least. Besides, who wouldn't want to run a billion simulations? Reality kinda sucks, not gonna lie, so it's just more fun to do it this way. Besides, keeps us busy while the rest of the galaxy catches up. Seems you need some help though so, so much for that idea. It's fine, it'll be good soon enough." He replied.

"No, I mean, why muster a force of what has to be millions of soldiers on a whim like this? Why did me simply asking politely actually work?" I asked.

"Why wouldn't it work? If you talk to your crew and they politely ask you to do things, wouldn't you do it, especially if it made sense? And if you refuse that request, isn't it normal to tell them why not? You came in here, apologised for interrupting, politely explained the situation and then asked for help. You mean to tell me that simply being cordial, or even civilised is a thing that's rare where you come from? That's kinda silly to me. We basically made a civilisation on the concept of cooperation, and manners are the easiest and most direct way to do that. Are you telling me that's a thing that doesn't happen?" he asked.

"Well of course we are polite and have manners and such... its just... Normally a 'please and thank you' doesn't result in an entire civilisation suddenly jumping out of bed to go save the galaxy from ruin." I replied.

"Know what? That's fair enough. You do have a point there. Out of curiosity, what would you have done if I said no?"

"I have the Council records... I know humans like reading and there's a lot to read. I would probably have made a bargain to provide my ship and its passengers safe passage through to the other side of Terran space so we could settle somewhere outside the Galaxy's reach." I replied calmly.

"Good thinking. We would have accepted that bargain. I do like reading. But, we have more pertinent business to attend to. First things first: Anybody here hungry? It's time for lunch."

I sat once again at a table with delegates from the twenty other empires in the galactic consciousness and waited patiently for one of the most defining aspects of any First Contact negotiation: The Feast.

As the Old Emperor once said: 'Know a man by his taste, not his blade. With blade you know hatred and anger, not peace and patience. If you truly wish to know a man, know him by his food. Food is the essence of patience, both in making and enjoying. A good meal, is the sign of a good man.'

We took this saying within the Confederacy to its most literal and logical form: All newcomers are to present a feast to see what they can do. No nutrient paste, no ready made meals, no prepared rations for soldiers. Actual food. With time to actually prepare of course, we always gave time.

We were not expecting much from the humans to be honest, but I was more than willing to be pleasantly surprised. I sat quiet with my paws on the table deep in thought and watched one of the human warships gently float by the window. They all looked the same, except one was slightly larger with extra cannons, implying a form of standardized mass production. Which meant two things: A species actively involved in an ongoing conflict that required mass military hardware. Or a species that has no imagination or flare for the dramatic, and focuses on exclusively mass produced assets to fill the gaps. No uniqueness, no flare, no substance. A house with no foundation. The implication of an empire actively at war, or a species with no art or culture.

I did not like either of these implications. But I had yet to taste the food. Patience, friend, patience.

I looked to my left and saw the Sokodian Ambassador, one of the galaxy's three Insectoid species impatiently tapping his claws against the strangely empty table while his mandibles chattered with impatience. Two of the smaller insectoids, the 'Chairs', essentially small insectoids bred to provide a living couch for the immobile slug brethren were also sitting at the table, impatiently waiting.

The conversation with other delegates carried on as normal, the Imbakai and Saranai talking shop with each other while waiting. The table itself was of a wooden make or design. Fitted into a U shape in the midst of a large windowed room. If one was perceptive, one could see how a species built their ships. Humans it seemed, judging by all the oddities I was seeing, were a species either prone to mistakes, or obsessed with safety. Hardened emergency shutters built into every window, signs in several different languages near what I presume are fire extinguishers and something called First Aid Kits hung on walls. Either safety, or clumsy, time would tell.

My train of thought was interrupted as a group of the humans appeared through the doorway. Ten of them, wearing some... Very fancy looking but still very standard dress uniforms, with the tails of the coats split. They all moved in perfect concert into the middle of the room and took a spot in front of us. Each one carried a towel draped over the left arm, a booklet of some kind tucked under the right, and the only difference between them was a small coloured cloth neatly folded into a pocket on the jacket.

They all bowed respectfully as more humans poured in the room, these ones dressed, shall we say, more casually. The uniform was a standard pair of shoes and an apron with a net for their hair. But each of these humans had their own clothing underneath that. Red, blue, pink, even a shirt with a slogan underneath that showed through the apron under the right light. I was... Confused. Something here was making my brain twitch. They rushed in, carefully placing various things on our tables in front of each of us. A plate, presumably what they used as eating implements wrapped in paper towel, an empty glass receptacle with an odd shape and a piece of patterned cloth, all neatly placed in a precise pattern in front of us.

Each of the humans, one for each Delegate then stepped forward with a warm smile. They reached for a trolley and in perfect, practised concert, poured a fizzy, bubbly liquid into each receptacle, then presented us with the booklet they were holding. Then, with a frighteningly precise level of coordination and cooperation, they all spoke together.

"Welcome to the Solarian Confederacy. We hope you enjoy your stay."

Then they all took another bow, this one more... casual?

One of them then stepped back and stood in the middle of the room. This one, grey haired and wizened, presumably an elder. He spoke, calm and clear with a mixture of both comfort and authority I never heard before.

"Good evening delegates and welcome, we apologise for the wait. You see before you a menu, it contains all possible meals, catered to fit your species preferences and dietary concerns that we have managed to throw together in the short time we had available. All made with local ingredients and tastes, as per your recommendations. Please pick something that tickles your fancy, and we shall bring it forthwith. First, however, please enjoy these. Cheesy bread sticks and sparkling water, to whet the appetite and cleanse the pallet."

He snapped his fingers and within seconds we had plates full of oddly shaped, baked grain loafs placed in front of us, of small proportions, but clearly freshly baked with a truly... mesmerising scent. The group of humans then moved back to allow us to peruse the menu. I gingerly picked up the tiny stick of baked grains, the outer shell gently crackling from my touch further making the scent more potent. I carefully took a tiny bite of it and my perception of the humans melted to a point of near insanity.

Flaky crust with a rich, savoury flavouring, a soft warm interior, three different textures and flavours all in one simple bite. I lost my mind and scarfed it down with a fervour I never displayed before. Everyone else saw my reaction and quickly followed suit, each delegate having their own perceptions of these humans suddenly shattered with a single bite, then being overcome by a ravenous hunger.

The humans apparently took this as a sign and smiled with a certain satisfaction. I opened my booklet and saw a mixture of omnivorous choices. A ten page booklet with a different item on each page, a picture and a description for each item - shockingly displayed in my native tongue.

The Delusian delegate glanced at me and we both shared the same thought. These humans were far more than they appeared.

I looked through the booklet, and each item made my stomach growl angrily at me. I eventually settled for something called a 'Roast Turkey'. The humans all took our orders and walked out the room in silence and in perfect concert. It was now the speculation began in earnest.

Was this rehearsed or spontaneous? Was this normal behaviour or was it just something they randomly decided to do? Every question we asked only raised more and more questions, each implication and concern amplifying our sudden panic. Then we heard a message over the station's intercom.

"All personnel report to stations, Fifth Fleet has arrived, two hours to contact. Repeat, all personnel to stations, VIP en route."

A human appeared and spoke before we could respond. "Apologies for the interruption, your meals are almost ready. The delegation from the Terran consulate are on their way and will be joining us after dinner."

I shrugged and finished clearing the crumbs on my plate from the breadsticks I scarfed down. We continued to chatter among ourselves and speculate on what was going on. Our speculation was interrupted. The humans in suits wandered in and removed our plates from the tables as well as the glass receptacles. The tables were then meticulously cleaned and the tablecloths were replaced with newer, fancier looking ones. All of this, done in a perfect coordinated dance of efficiency and grace.

Within moments our place settings had been completely replaced and the atmosphere shifted as several trolleys were brought in, each one containing a series of large silver metal plates with metal domes covering them. Each one of a different size. With the same coordination, each trolley was brought in front of us, then the covers removed.

The first scent of the food, the first tiny whiff of that sauce and meat made my soul spontaneously leap two feet to my right. By instinct my calm and stoic nature vanished, I shoved my face far forward and deeply inhaled the smell of it all, and my stomach audibly rumbled at me.

"Stuffed roasted Turkey with cranberry sauce, a vegetable medley and traditional mashed potatoes with a side of sweetcorn. Served of course, with a nice chilled red wine." The human said, and placed a metal can next to the plate.

The humans all carefully moved the plates onto our tables in front of us and stepped back with a bow. The Sokodian Ambassador let out a strange, discordant noise like his brain partially melted, and he plunged face first into what I later found out was a platter of Spaghetti and meatballs. In a most undignified and barbaric (although entirely justified) manner, the poor bastard and his 'chairs' ravenously gobbled up the strange but incredibly beautiful smelling food.

I carefully used one of my claws to carve out a piece of the meat from the clearly poultry based dish in front of me and nibbled on it. A sweet, rich sauce with a hot steamy meaty flavour, the sauce and spices having soaked into the meat itself. I lost my damn mind and manners, the taste overwhelming my brain with pure bliss as I lunged forward and sank my razor sharp beak into the dish, carving through tender, marrow filled crunchy bone and wallowing in the absurdity of my soul once again leaping from its mortal coil to do a dance of happiness.

I glanced around me while greedily slopping my way through my meal, determined to eat everything and it was clear I was not the only one who had lost his damn mind. The delusion ambassador next to me had ordered something called a 'Roast Pig' or 'whole hog' which was a carefully prepared ensemble of a full creature presumably from their homeworld stuffed and cooked. The 'Chairs' were mesmerised, ignoring the world around them as their mandibles carefully manipulated and played with the long strands of 'spaghetti' while their broodmaster stuffed himself with careless abandon. The normally stoic, emotionless and empty eyed Saranai opposite me had his eyes wide open as he shovelled something called 'pizza' into his mouth.

That was the very first time I had ever seen a Saranai display emotion. That by itself was worthy of recognition.

It did not take us long to finish our meals, but each of us were beyond recovery of our sanity. We sat with empty plates and blank expressions. If I didn't know better, I would say we all died from happiness there. The humans all quickly moved again, in perfectly coordinated movements and cleaned our tables of the empty plates and messes we left behind from our barbaric (but again, entirely justified) actions and soon we were faced with another menu. I felt very, very full. I almost refused.

Almost.

"A dessert menu, a tradition with us we always have something hot, sweet or cold for after dinner. We have taken biology into account and prepared a selection of treats for afters. Please do let us know."

I grabbed the menu, albeit maybe a bit too rudely judging by the way the human flinched, and silently apologised as I perused the booklet. Only three pages this one, but enough to excite me yet again. I went with something called a 'Chocolate bar' and a 'Cappuccino'.

Our choices landed on our tables shortly after, much faster than I expected at least. A porcelain or ceramic cup of some kind with a steaming, foamy liquid inside it. In this very foam, sat the pattern of some kind, as if an artisan had carved a pattern of a leaf into the foam on top. Next to it were condiments labelled 'artificial sweetener' and 'refined sugar'. I sniffled at it and a sudden rush of energy hit me, the tell-tale signal of neutralised or at least diminished caffeine. If they offered, it was likely safe to drink, so I tentatively took a little sip.

My eyes shot open and my heart raced, my tastebuds overcome by a bitter but potent flavour of... something. I could not for the life of me place what it was I was tasting, but I wanted MORE and I wanted more NOW. I tried it, drinking half the cup before trying it with sugar, and the whole flavour profile changed completely, the bitter being replaced by the sweet, the milk adding a layer of richness to an already blissful experience. Eventually I ran out of coffee before I ran out of thirsty, and frankly, the whole concept made me sad.

Now coffeeless, I reached over and tried the few squares of 'chocolate' in front of me. An entirely different feeling overcame me, energetic bursts of rapture in every bite as my beak sliced through the hard sweet texture.

"Oh by all the ancestors if they had this kind of thing in coffee form..." I idly said to myself between bites.

One of the humans heard, reached into the trolley and procured a bar of chocolate. Chocolate Cappuccino Cream bar. I grabbed it and nibbled on it.

"OH COME ON!!!" I yelled barbarically and wharfed the whole thing down in one go.

I was obviously making some truly disgusting sounds but could not give even the tiniest of buggers as I swirled the delicious confection in my beak. Eventually I lost the battle and slumped over with my head on the table.

"Enough... I give up! No more! I surrender! If I eat any more I may just pass from this mortal realm! May a necromancer retrieve my remains and return me to the fold so that I may enjoy this again!" I bellowed.

The delegation agreed with me with full enthusiasm and a gentle chuckle at my jest.

The station's intercom spoke up again, interrupting our fever dream. "All personnel on standby, fleet incoming, prepare to receive."

The elder human once again, not missing a beat and seeming to know more than anyone else, spoke up. "The Terran delegate is a few minutes away. Should I ready the Council chambers for negotiation?"

"No. You have killed us all and we cannot move. We are... Hmm... What is the appropriate term to use here? hmm... Fooded. Yes. We are too fooded to move, you have fooded us to the point our souls will take time to return to our bodies. So we shall sit here fooded for a few more minutes, thank you." I said.

The delegates all nodded in response with various uncomfortable shuffles to steady their overly 'fooded' bodies in their seats. I like that word. I'm going to use it more often. Especially after lunch.

The elder human left the room. The youngsters asked each one of us if we would like more, and we all agreed we couldn't take more. They nodded and stepped aside, letting us wallow.

A few minutes later a new human, this one wearing a full uniform, a navy blue in colour with red stripes and a long velvet coat. Very different from the others in the room. Clearly military, even an idiot, could determine he was an army officer of some note. He walked in and stood in front of the delegation, removing his hat and placing it under his right arm.

"My name is Reginald James Taffort, Grand Admiral of the Jovian Imperium, I have been elected to serve as the official representative for the Terran Confederacy for the duration of your stay. Its a pleasure to meet you all. I hope our attempt at accommodation was acceptable?" He said, his voice gruff, tense, like he had seen much and spoken little.

"Your attempt at accommodation was more than acceptable. In fact if I didn't know better, I would think I was dead. I have never had a meal that fine in over two thousand years of being alive." The Delusian Ambassador remarked.

We all nodded in turn. "Good to hear. I apologise for not being here sooner. Was held up by traffic. Besides, I probably would've skipped the meal." He said.

This took us all by surprise. And again, an emotion - shock - crossed the face of the usually emotionless Saranai's face. "What do you mean skip the meal!? ARE YOU INSANE!?" He bellowed.

"No, I'm just a simple man with simple tastes. Give me a burger and fries with a coke any day above that fancy stuff. I won't say I don't like it, I just prefer something else." He replied calmly.

"Then one day I shall need to take you up on the offer and have one of these 'Burger and fries with a coke' things and see how it compares. But for now, we can conduct proper negotiations and greetings when I can feel my feet again. I am too..."

"...Fooded." Everyone finished my sentence for me.

"Yes, that." I said.

"I will make the arrangements. Gives us a bit more time to work with. Thank you all." He said.

"Although I have ONE question... These men? The... snappily dressed ones that work with a shocking quality of coordination. What are they? Are they even human like you? Or am I missing something?" I asked.

"We are professionally trained catering corps created specifically for serving dignitaries or officers. And technically, our specific company was hired barely a week ago as an emergency measure. We are only a three-star service, for this backwater colony world. If we had more time, we would have made better arrangements. Apologies for the inconvenience. Our profession covers an entire cultural and professional quarter of the world, if not an entire religion. We take food quite seriously I assure you, as with all other things. Now, would anyone like more coffee or tea to drink?" The elder man said.

We all yelled 'YES' in unison.

(( Part 3 - https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1syfno7/of_mages_and_machines_a_culture_shock_tale/ ))

Marcus and Christina lay in bed together, slowly waking up from the previous night. Few words were spoken, but a conversation was being carried between them. Lily wandered in, freshly washed up and donned in her Rogues armour, followed closely by Jessica and Kalli. Lily skipped up to Marcus and lazily flopped to his side on the bed with a smile.

"So how is everyone enjoying their accommodations?" Marcus asked.

"A comfy bed is a comfy bed, frankly I prefer sleeping in the wild. You know me." Jessica shrugged.

"Thalbion Silk sheets are NOT what I was expecting to be honest but my GODS I have never slept more comfortably in my life!" Kalli replied.

Lily just shrugged and hugged Christy. "Well that says everything I guess." Marcus replied. "So... Are we addressing the Forlifant in the room or are we still not talking about it?"

Everyone stayed quiet for a few moments. Lily finally spoke. "It doesn't hurt anymore."

They all just nodded in response. "Okay so... Near as I can tell, it's a huge ship that can go... far beyond anything we currently have. Think of the King Anderson, the largest ship in the fleet, that one? The one that crossed the Great Ocean the first time two decades ago? Its basically the same thing only it can... Fly. And such. And a lot farther for a lot longer. No idea how it got there. No idea why. No idea who. All that information has been... erased. Or something. I have partial access to the ship itself but only basic stuff. I can control a small part of everything but not... too much." Marcus explained.

"So what do we all do then? Is there something we need to do that only we can do?" Lily asked.

"Yeah. Specialist roles, like a spearman or a blacksmith. My role is Engineering. I'm basically the ship's Artificer. Kalli is 'gunnery' so she basically controls all the weaponry." Kalli suddenly sported a rather sinister smile. "Christy sat in the captain's chair so presumably she's in charge of the ship itself and can fly it properly, and do... other things. No idea. Will need to actually get there and see. Jessica is in charge of Life Support so... You control the ship's climate and other things such as the... I think it was called a 'greenhouse' or 'hydroponics bay'. It grows plants indoors I think. And finally Lily controls the Drones and Automata. The ship has all these little metal golems everywhere, apparently you control them all. At least that's what I can figure." Marcus said as he gently patted Lily's head.

Aside from Kalli's sinister smile, nobody really had a response.

"So... I make things very dead. Lily controls minions that make other things dead? Jessica makes things live, Christy controls the thing as a whole and you fix things that break?" Kalli said.

"Pretty much." Marcus replied with a shrug.

"So I guess the only thing we can really do now is just go there, get this over with and figure out what to do from there? 'Cause it seems to me we will only get the full picture when we are all there." Lily said.

"Unfortunately, yes. What's everyone's thoughts on the matter?"

"If we have to do it, I say we do it. I don't see any other way around it, so lets just get it the hell over with." Lily replied with a shrug.

"All agreed? Go in, plug everyone in, see what this beast can do? Or at least try to figure out what it does first." Christy asked.

Everyone nodded in response. Christina and Marcus got out of bed and dressed, heading out to the palace itself.

Never had there been so many dignitaries or powerful peoples in one place before, let alone in this miniscule town on the fringes of the kingdom. Especially here. The town mayor and the respective Guild Masters were running themselves and their fellows ragged in a desperate attempt to acquire the resources, monster meats and everything else needed to cater to the guests. The palace, though large, was not nearly enough to cater to what was going on, and the local inns and boarding houses were overflowing with people desperate for a place to be. The city guardsmen were less occupied than usual though, owing to the presence of not only the Dragons, but also the Kings Guardsmen. Everyone who could do something bad, was scared shitless at the thought of becoming a Dragons lunch meat. The display by Marcus' new ship helped too.

Every possible race of every flag and nation were assembled in the palace, every delegate, and even a few of the various tribes, kingdoms and smaller principalities leaders were gathered at the palace. All under the banner of the Great Empire of course, but relatively independent should they need to be. Fair trade agreements by King Leonidas guaranteed not only a stable income for both sides, but loyalty as well. Marcus' party walked in the door and the roar of diplomatic ass kissing suddenly silenced as everyone aimed their attention at them. They walked to the middle of the room and nervously stood there waiting for their cue.

"Prince Marcus... What can you tell us about yesterday’s... Expedition?" Leonidas asked.

"I only had partial access and control so I have no idea of the ship's true capabilities. Its archives were empty, erased. All information relating to the how, the who, the why, the when and the what are all gone. I know how it works, how to build more of it, how to keep it working, but beyond that, I know as much as you do." He replied. The crowd murmured in response.

"Give us an outline of what it can do please."

Marcus looked around and pointed at the Guildmaster of the Mages Guild. "Anything he can do."

"That is... An interesting assessment. Care to elaborate?" The Guildmaster replied.

"In order to make this go faster? That ship is basically the equivalent of the most powerful mages in the world. It's the mechanical version of a guild of mages that have been studying magic for a thousand years. In essence, that ship is the physical distillation of two opposing sides of the same coin. One side is math and engineering, the other is magic and faith. With that ship, I can do anything the mages can do." Marcus said.

The crowd started to chatter, concerned and questioning everything.

"But there's something about this that scares me... And I have historical context for this fear that everyone else should be concerned about too." Marcus said, shutting everyone up.

"Oh? Would you care to explain?" Leonidas asked.

"Uhh… It's kind of a sore subject but... This is a very similar situation so I'll just say it. Everybody remember the Kallakhan Scrolls?"

The crowd groaned in anger and frustration, recalling the event that took place several centuries ago.

"Yes, YES! I get it! It's a sore spot. We all know what happened. But... This is similar to that. The Scrolls had no author. Were found in a dungeon chest. True in fact, they drastically accelerated our understanding of magic, but drastically changed society to a point we weren't ready for it. Then came the Mage Rebellion... And the Necromancy War. This? This is basically exactly the same thing, just the opposite end of the stick. I have... concerns." Marcus said.

The murmurs from the crowd were softer this time. More conspiratorial than scared.

"What are your concerns exactly?" The King's Advisor asked.

"The same Concerns that Artemius The Great raised when the Scrolls were first found. The scrolls had no author, appearing in a cleared, dormant dungeon during a routine sweep. They contained information that completely rewrote the magical rulebook. Then all the power went to our heads and six hundred thousand lives were lost while we regained our marbles. This is the same situation. All documentation relating to the context is gone."

"What do you mean by 'context' exactly?" One of the nobles asked.

"Context. Why was it built? Why would you want to build something like it? Why would you have a need for that quality of armour? Why is it so heavily armed? What kinds of evils could its creators be facing if they need to build THAT kind of weaponry? Why make it fly? Just what kinds of impossibly sized horrors of oblivion could they have been facing if they needed that kind of firepower? And more so, what if it wasn't an external threat? What if they were infighting? What kind of insane warfare could its creators have been up to if that ship was used in combat? Considering what I've seen, the ship is classed as our equivalent of the Queen Ameryst - its a Heavy Frigate. What the hell do they need anything bigger than that for? The archive tells me how to build something called a Supertitan. Why?

"And more importantly - the technology. The automata specifically. What kind of society requires that kind of tech, or can even field it in the first place? Is it a question of abundance that they can have those machines, or is it a question of necessity that they needed them due to population collapse? Was it laziness, or lack of labour force? The resources as well. Tons of gold and silver bars, a king's ransom of resources just... sitting there openly on shelves. What level of resource acquisition could they bring to the table? Is our definition of riches lesser than theirs? They showed no real concern for bars of gold, so what exactly did they have that they valued? Did they value the ship itself? If they did, why is it here, abandoned?

"So you see... this is exactly the same situation as the Kallakhan Scrolls... A mountainous wealth of unimaginable knowledge and power without a lantern to light the way on the path to oblivion. This machine can do anything provided we have the resources to make it - just like any kind of magic. It has no origin point that we can determine as all evidence of its creation has been erased - just like the Scrolls. We have, through happenstance or divine order, a cadre of people who have the capacity to control that power - just like Artemius The Great And The Circle Of Nine. All I'm saying is... we're a little over our heads with this and we need to be cautious. To say the least."

The crowd stood in silence for an uncomfortably long time trying to process what was just said. Several minutes passed by with a silence so deep one could hear a blade of grass hit the floor.

Then, the voice of the King's Advisor, a cloaked, hooded gentleman with glowing purple eyes behind a heavily enchanted cowl stepped forward and spoke up. Julius Aurelius, a former Dwarf from the mountainfolk belied his short stature by being one of the smartest men in the kingdom and also one of very few well practised Dark Mages.

"Might I make a suggestion?" He said, his voice so distinct everyone knew exactly who said it.

"Please do. Anything to avoid listening to the voices in my head screaming at me to start panicking." One of the nobles remarked, soliciting a light-hearted chuckle from a few around him.

"If I do say perhaps all this speculation is unwarranted, as mayhaps the reason we do not know the full story, is because the ship has not it’s full crew complement. Fully activating the vessel may unlock its archives, or at the very least a library of schematics, maybe a list of useful machinery. We can learn more of its capabilities when it is active. Or even, we can learn about something else... Something that only recently came to light as an option." He said.

"What do you mean Julius? Have you been hiding something from us?" Leonidas asked.

"I have documented it all as per ritual and Rite My King, up until now there was nothing we could really do about it, so it was pushed to the wayside as a footnote we would not see results from in many years to come. But now... perhaps that ship can supply a better look with its machinery. In fact I am certain of it. The thing is, the Televar'd Observatory has started dabbling in advanced spyglasses to better study the heavens and the magic influence. About a year ago, they discovered something... Strange on Maluka, our smallest moon. Its structure from their descriptions, matches the very same weaponry on board that ship. Only... Massively scaled up, from what we can tell. We have no idea what it is." He replied, showing Leonidas a drawing depicting what the observatory spotted.

The crowd murmured and a distinct tone of panic could be heard.

"So this isn't the first time. Do we have any idea what it is?" Leonidas asked as he perused the page.

"Static Orbital Defence Emplacement Site, callsign 'Apostle Bravo'. Current Status: Critical damage, all systems offline, emergency beacon active." Kalli remarked in a strangely monotone way.

Everyone snapped towards her. She blinked, shook her head a bit and regained her composure. She looked around and noted how her companions were the only ones who seemed to know what was going on.

"Sorry... You asked the question and it popped into my head. The ship is... talking to me. I have control of all the weapons apparently, so that counts as some kind of network. Uhh… hold on." She said, and closed her eyes to concentrate. Marcus visibly twitched as she stood and thought hard. Eventually she stopped and shook her head. "I can't get any more. But it does look like all of it is connected in some way, but the rest of the network is either inactive or damaged. At least that's what the voice in my head says. I ask who built it or why I just get 'No data available' in response." She said.

"I get the same too. I have engineering access so I have a bit better detail. I can 'see' more than a few things connected to the network, at least what I can get in range of the ship that it can see. All derelict, damaged or inoperable. I cant get any information. Either everything is too heavily damaged, or everything was wiped the same way the ship was." Marcus interjected.

"Then there is nothing for it. Our only course of action is to fully activate the ship and see what we can do with it and what secrets it can reveal. I am tired of this stabbing in the dark hoping to poke a sleeping bear. I say we go for it, and at the very least put this matter to bed. Should the danger be too great, you shall simply fly it into the Embryan Trench, let it sink to the bottom of the ocean and we can recover it when we are damn well ready. If it proves to be of use that we can trust, then I see no reason not to take advantage of it. In fact... I have been listening to all the happenings and looking at the scribes' drawings... I have more than a few ideas on how we can use this to resolve some pertinent problems." Aurelius barked above the crowd.

"I agreed. Let us end this. Marcus, take your party to the ship and do... Whatever it is you did. Get us answers, or the key to oblivion, whichever comes first. Aurelius, I will need you there as my personal eyes and ears, I want everything you can get chronicled for study later. I will handle things here. Guildmasters will get back to their respective halls and sort out their duties as needed. Get to it!" Leonidas commanded as his voice echoed through the hall.

"YES MY KING!" Everyone bellowed in response. Marcus and his party, flanked by several Paladins and Nightwatchmen, hurried out the palace doors to their new ship.

"As for everyone else, come hither. I have an idea on how we can resolve this situation... Amicably." Leonidas said, eyeing the regional nobility and allied kingdoms leaders with a telling smile.

The party arrived with their escort and others at the edge of the drydock. Everything had remained as it was the previous day, the ship vigilant, its cannons actively tracking any threats or movement it could spot in the treeline. Marcus walked in first, closely followed by Caliban and Julius. Christy held Lily close while Kali and Jessica trailed behind them, all four girls flanked by the Kings Royal Guardsmen - Caliban's personal legion now reassigned to work directly with Marcus. They walked through the ship's corridors and entered the main control centre. The Paladins and others were still awestruck with the place, and many men couldn't help themselves as they stopped to ogle at a fascinating piece of machinery.

Christina was first to the task and sat once again on that chair with hesitation, carefully removing her combat armour so the machinery could access her spine better, leaving her blushing as she felt very exposed dressed in so little. It was either this or have it ripped open by the equipment again. Christy folded her wings neatly and comfortably then sat back with her legs up. Her eyes opened wide as the neural connectors entered her spine and neck, then her eyes shut. Moments later, her holographic form, wearing a very fancy looking but form fitting uniform of some kind appeared in the command bay.

"Wow... I can see everything and nothing all at once. Is this what it felt like for you Marcus!? this is very... disorienting!" She said, Marcus smiling back up at her.

Lily walked up to her and waved a hand, her dainty elven fingers floating through Christy's holographic form. She confusedly walked up to Christy in the chair and tapped at her, trying to figure out what was going on in her own way. Then to everyone's surprise, Lily was the next to sit in her chair - Drone Control. She stripped her uniform a bit to allow the machinery access, with Marcus draping a modest blanket over her body just in case as she too, went wide-eyed at the intrusion then her hologram appeared moments later, wearing a similar uniform to Christy - only a bright dainty pink.

"EEEWWW PINK!!!" She squealed in disgust, soliciting a mocking laugh from the other girls. As if hearing her displeasure, the pink uniform changed instantly to a dark blue and grey. "Oh.... oh much better."

Jessica and Kalli followed closely after, likewise needing to remove their top layer, with Marcus covering them both with a cloth. They appeared shortly after, Jessica controlling the ships Life Support Systems, and Kalli quickly gaining an unsettlingly sinister smile as the ships weapons systems came fully online.

Finally, Marcus entered his chair and took control of the ship's engineering systems. An unsettling hum overcame the ship, as if turning a key in an ancient lock, the lights brightened, the ship roared violently and shook, as if it were testing itself before flight.

"Okay... Here we go!" Christy said.

The drydock's doors opened once again, the brilliantly terrifying display of power and steel softly floating into the air as if it weighed less than a feather in a breeze. Christina brought it to a soft hover around a hundred meters in the air, its screaming engines filling the atmosphere with a dull, but not deafening roar as the ship stabilised. The drydocks blast doors closed behind them, denying curious or brave onlookers any chance to see what lay beneath.

"Okay... does anybody have anything?" Lily asked.

"Uhhh... Not... Not really you know. I ask questions, all I get is 'No data available'. I ask who built it, I get silence. But when I ask how to make ammunition for the cannons, I get bombarded by recipes and schematics." Kalli replied.

"It seems the archive wipe was complete and the only thing that survived was the manufacturing specs. I have some interesting stuff here. Water Purifiers, industrial distillation, crude oil refining, bioplastics. There's a LOT of useful things here. I mean I have no idea what it's for and why but it's here so it must be useful, right?" Marcus said.

"Is there anything of particular value to be found for upcoming talks? Is there a blueprint perhaps for some kind of mass transport system or transit mechanism? The king will be negotiating for resource rights for the ship in case it needs them. Judging by the size, we are looking at thousands of tons of ore. Is there anything you can use to resolve our logistics problem?" Tiberius asked Marcus' hologram.

"Actually yeah... There's this thing here. Let me see..." Marcus used his fingers to type on an invisible console, at least one Tiberius couldn't see. "There's this thing called the 'Steam Locomotive' and it has a train system. It runs off wood fired burners, uses steam and pressure to move cargo. Let me show it to you." Marcus typed a bit and an image appeared on a screen behind them, one of the basic mechanisms of a steam locomotive and the principles of a train.

Tiberius' eyes went so wide they practically bulged out of his skull at the sight of the schematics and the simplistic animation that demonstrated what it was. "Well shite on my balls and call me a schmuck..." He said, his native accent shining through his Imperial training.

"Shite on your what now?" Caliban asked, both confused and amused.

"This! I know an inventor in the Mountainhomes - MY UNCLE - who has been working on attempting to create a machine exactly like this! I can see... I see where he went wrong with his version though. It didn't have this odd mechanism in the front controlling the wheels! That is brilliance! I MUST HAVE THIS!" Tiberius squealed like an excited schoolgirl at the resulting schematic and practically shattered poor Caliban's eardrums from the volume.

"Hmmm... I think I figured out how to do this without making too much noise. I have... An idea." Kalli said.

"It can wait until we get back to the Palace, for now, everyone, see what you can do." Christina ordered.

The other girls started work on learning their controls while Marcus and Aurelius did guy things, poring over schematics and documents. Jessica quickly got hold of her systems, few but critically important, as she had full control over the ship's Hydroponics Bay, Mess Hall, ventilation, waste disposal and most importantly - the ship's shields. Looking from outside, one could clearly see a semi-transparent bubble of energy pulse and wobble around the ship as she learned how to operate the deflectors. Almost immediately, she used the Hydroponics bay to start sowing some seeds. She had a drone all to herself to carry out tasks, a small robot called an 'Agridroid', and used it immediately to grow some seeds retrieved from her satchel.

Christina slowly got used to the ship's immeasurable power and gently moved it about over the skies, hovering gently in one direction or another, and tipping the ship left and right to get a feel off it. The ship was actually conforming less to its own standards, as if it were using her own instincts as an Angel to re-learn how to fly, adjusting its systems to her flight patterns. Christina felt absurdly powerful all of a sudden. She now had the edge to fight a dragon.

Lily found it harder to settle into her new role as the ship's drones, droids and mechanoids all began to wake up, the only ones she didn't have access to being Marcus' engineering and maintenance units. Her fears disappeared when she found the fighter craft stored in the hangars. With begging puppy eyes, she begged Christy to open the hangar doors. With an excited girly squeal, Lily experienced flight for the first time as one of the larger 'Vulture' drones blasted out of the ship's sides and started doing barrel rolls in the sky and close ground sweeps. The other drones, warbots, combat droids, warmechs and even remote controlled missiles began to adapt their systems to Lily's tactics and natural talents, as if the ship was learning from her experiences.

Kalli's sinister smirk became even more sinister as she tested the ships weapons complement one by one, turning turrets, loading ammunition and checking weaponry, using her new toys to carefully scan the world with eyes she could have only ever dreamed of. Kalli asked Christy to raise the ship up a bit more so she could see the ocean, which was about thirty miles away. Christy did so, and allowed a clear view. Kalli seized her chance and the larger of the ships cannon turrets turned toward the ocean. She quickly learned how to judge distances and depth, then loaded 'hollow slug' shells into the cannons, effectively a sort of 'blank' shell. A thunderous clap of ear shattering power shattered the strange silence of the valley as the cannon fired its payload, the whole ship shuddering from the violent impact. The shells flew through the air at speeds never before seen as Kalli cackled hysterically. The shells impacted the water, a mile out from shore, sending a massive column of water into the sky, visible from the ship.

Marcus stopped his conversation and testing and grabbed Kalli, giving her a deep, calming hug. The cackling stopped momentarily and the group calmed down. "I think we've seen enough. Let's land this thing and go back to the palace." Christy commanded and started flying the ship back to the drydock.

"Indeed that was... Genuinely terrifying. Kalli seems to have a bit of a wild streak to her."

"You have no idea man." The party said at the same time, echoing the sentiment that Kalli was a bit on the edge.

"I will get started. I have some tech on the ship I can actually use, so I will start printing this stuff out. I'm only going to go with the train for now... I have SO many ideas but... I'm going to hold them off. I need to leave the actual engineering for the actual engineers. Hmm... Maybe that's my first step on this journey. Go to the Craftsman's Guild in Tuybern and earn a certification. Maybe then more of this will make more sense." Marcus said.

"Make more sense, your majesty? How does it work that you have all the information but don't understand it?" Tiberius asked.

"The information is given to me, I just relay what's there. Angular momentum? Don't know what that is. Ohm and Amperage? Don't know what that is. Lambda and Phi folding? Don't know what that is. Undercarriage suspension? I think I know what that is. I don't get actual explanations, I get images, schematics and then I relay them. I get a basic idea of what I'm trying to do with what I am given. I think of 'Advanced Logistics network' and I get - train. It shows me how it works and what it's for but I don't understand various things about it. I can put two and two together and then, you know, build it with this ship's internal factory, but there's parts of the information missing. As stated before, the context isn't there. I can't make any changes to any of the designs either. I'm a swordsman not a craftsman, the most complex thing I've ever made is Lily's Rogues Armour." Marcus shrugged.

"I see... Hmm... That puts a wrench in things. Can you make multiple copies of that schematic for me? I want to send them to every corner of the kingdom I can find and see what our citizenry makes of them. We have some geniuses among us and I want to give them that spark of inspiration. If nothing else, the schematics as they are will prove more than useful. But I wonder... Once we are landed, can we perform an experiment? You say this thing has an internal factory. I want to run some tests to see what it can make, and more importantly see if it accepts new blueprints or items." Tiberius said.

"Sure. We should be landing in a few minutes. This thing still requires resources to make anything we want, so delivery of ores, ingots and other materials is still an absolute necessity. Maybe logistics was the best choice. I have... Enough material to make two locomotives and a few cars, then a few miles of track. I can print out a little instruction booklet to show how everything works. Make it assemble like a really big puzzle."

"That would be perfect. Although first let us run my test, then I can see what the locomotive is. I am hesitant to use wood as a fuel source right now, tensions with the Darkwood people have been rising after last months... Accidents. We have a lot to make up for and I don't want to test them. In any case, let's get down, back to the ground. Back to the palace. We have a lot to discuss." Tiberius said.

The party silently worked away. Lily recalled her fighter drone back to the hangar and Kalli started reluctantly shutting her guns down. Jessica smirked as the Hydroponics bay produced its first saplings in under an hour and Marcus glared at her, annoyed that she had started growing her Futswoad plants again. She shrugged and pretended to ignore the glares from her companions as Christy landed and shut the ships engines down.

"According to this thing, we have something called a 'Geothermal Generator' providing power to the ship and station but limited fuel for the ships engines and no way to get more as of yet. It needs something called Helium Three to produce fuel and I have no idea what that is. So we have very limited flight time until we can fix that problem. We do have an on board fuel making machine thing but nothing to make the fuel with. Good news is while this thing is docked up we can power it forever." Christina said as her holographic image started to fade.

"Looks like this thing is grounded for now. Matters not. Shall we conduct that experiment now? I just so happen to have something we can try. Navigators Sextants used by sailors. A precise piece of equipment. I have a blueprint for it and an actual sextant. Let's see what this thing can do." Tiberius said as he displayed the items to Marcus' hologram.

He looked at them and within seconds a screen display changed to show the blueprint. For two sextants - the same one Tiberius had, and a more advanced variant.

"Well that's... Interesting. Understandable now that I think about it in hindsight, but interesting. I can see subtle differences. Make both of them please. Let's see the differences, show it to the engineers and let them think about it."

Marcus nodded and the ship's internals started to whirr and grind as the factory worked. It was done seconds later. Marcus signalled for Tiberius to follow and headed to the bowels of the ship, down several corridors and into a large room underneath the hangar. Lined up on the sides of the room was a menagerie of highly complex looking machinery and fancy looking dials, switches, levers and items. In the middle, a belt of some kind leading into a storage bin. Inside said storage bin, sat the two Sextants, both made out of different material, but in different colours.

Tiberius' version was made of brass and bronze with crystalline glass. The ship's version was built with lightweight metals they couldn't identify. Marcus labelled them as 'Aluminium and Chrome'. Tiberius' version had smaller mirrors, and looked like it had smaller sighting mechanisms. The ship's variant had a few extra bits, the sight being the biggest upgrade that allowed Tiberius to see in the dark. The scale for both was exactly the same, save the ships variant had more notches for significantly more precise measurements.

"Hmmm... This is interesting, VERY interesting." Tiberius said as he looked at both and tested them side by side. "I guess no matter what world you come from, some things never change. North is still north, two plus two still equals four, no matter where you go, up is still up. This will come in handy in future works I think. If the principles and fundamentals of construction are the same, this will be a lot easier than we think to match up what we currently have with what this ship could produce. Resources are still an issue here but... We can fix that. Eventually. We have to take this back and see what everyone thinks. I will start writing missives and requisition orders." Tiberius said.

Marcus nodded in response and his holographic image disappeared as he woke up from his chair. The party eventually made their way out of the ship, closing everything up afterwards and returning to the palace around sundown. The discussion began in earnest and a rigorous debate followed. Marcus was seated at the head of the table next to Leonidas. The women of the group were all at the opposite end of the table with Christina having a chat with the Queen - effectively her mother in law - and she wasn't handling it with much grace. Lily, Kalli and Jessica were pretending not to watch as Christina, untrained in the fine art of not making a fool of herself - made a fool of herself in front of the Queen.

Harradia seemed to be taking it with grace but was actively charging a spell of some kind with her hand under the table. Marcus noticed.

"MOM!!! DONT YOU DARE CAST THAT SPELL!!!" He bellowed, snapping everyone out of their daze.

"What!? I'm just checking something!" She said dismissively.

"Don't give me that I've seen those hand movements before. Besides, Christy is almost immune to most magics like all Angels. It probably would've hit Kalli instead." Marcus growled at her.

"Dammit I forgot about that."

"What were you trying to do exactly?" Christy asked.

"A nice lovely truth spell. you would tell me ALL of Marcus' silly secrets." Harradia replied with a sadistic smirk.

"Okay first of all, you don't have to cast a spell, all you have to do is ask." Christy replied.

"OY!" Marcus yelled, receiving a chuckle from all the men in the room.

"Secondly, because you tried to be sneaky about it, I hereby punish you with no grandchildren for the foreseeable future."

The Queen's face went red with shame and a gasp of horror and she recoiled. "That's my girl!" Marcus said with a clap.

"Well played."

"How are things going over there?" Jessica asked between mouthfuls of dumplings.

"Better than expected, worse than hoped. Most of these schematics require some form of fuel burning stove to produce a steam reaction but we can't seem to find an alternative." Leonidas replied.

Lily stood up and wandered over to Marcus' side and picked up a schematic of a locomotive, turning it upside down and sideways. "Looks like a bunch of lines to me."

"In any case, we will make some arrangements in the morning. Still a lot of details to work out. First of which being, I do NOT want that ship as something that divides the nation. Consequently I've made my decision. EVERYONE, and I do mean EVERYONE will be required to supply at least ONE trained individual, preferably an engineer or someone that fits within a role on the ship. More importantly, we need actual professionals who can train the five of them. Marcus said it himself, he has no formal training. If he gets that training he will be able to make better sense of what he was on hand. Christy has no training in navigation, Kalli no training in combat tactics and Lily, well she has no real discipline outside of Marcus' guidance, and that is a weakness that can be exploited." Leonidas said.

Everyone nodded in agreement. Lily ignored it and started to scribble something with a quill on the copy she was given.

"I know a few candidates but... considering Lily's presence, I would leave recruitment up to Marcus." Guildmaster Loris said.

"What is the relationship here? Why is Lily so... Coddled despite her capabilities?" Leonidas asked.

"We don't talk about it." All five of the party said in unison, firm and with a glaring side-eye to make the subject drop.

Leonidas raised his hands in surrender, knowing that his question was not well received. "Okay then. I'll leave it up to Marcus. We need a few Engineers, some Adventurers, a trained warrior, and a full crew for the ship. lets go with the crew of a small ship first."

"I know just who to call. Captain Edward James Leech. That salty bastard lost his ship in the storm that swept through the harbour two months ago. We had him and his crew on with a dungeon crawl a while after that to help him raise cash for a replacement. If I could trust anyone, I would trust him. The man is crazy, but these days, who isn't?" Christina said.

"DONE!!" Lily squealed happily and dropped her quill.

Marcus walked over to her and noticed what she had done. Her drawings were childish but clear. Perfectly clear. Marcus blinked, walked over to the wall and slammed his head against the brick. "WHY. DIDNT. WE. THINK. OF. THAT. DAMMIT."

"Did I do something bad?" Lily asked.

Marcus ignored her question, walked over to her and yanked her out of her chair in a massive hug. "I LOVE YOU LILY YOU ARE AWESOME AND I WILL BUY YOU ALL THE MARGINTAR IN THE KINGDOM!!!"

Leonidas barged in and took a look at the drawing. His eyes went wide, his face went pale and he too repeated Marcus' wall slamming motions.

"Majesty, perhaps instead of risking grievous self-inflicted injury, mayhaps we can talk about what is going on?" Tiberius asked.

"For later Tiberius. We need the Engineering and Craftsman's Guilds here in force before we can talk further, but know only to put it on record that THAT elf right there -" he pointed at Lily. "Is the one responsible for the revelation that would change the world. Marcus. Go to the ship, build a train locomotive and let's see how it works in person. When it's done a trial run so we know how it works, we can proceed from there." Leonidas commanded.

"Yes, My king."

The entire class stood to attention. Mr Thomas, their instructor stood before them, a strange sense of superior smugness surrounding him. A sense of smug he had not shown since they first met him. Generally speaking, he was calm, stoic, at times, almost timid, but seeing him like this threw the girls for a loop. A class of twenty students, two Angels, two Devils, several beastkin, one rare three-tailed foxgirl and the rest being elves of various kinds. These students were young, too young to learn guns, play with mechs, or use tanks, so they needed something more... age appropriate. That is why they now stood in front of a museum of some kind. A strangely noisy place, especially for a museum.

"Good morning ladies! I hope everyone enjoyed the trip?" Mr Thomas yelled over the noises behind him.

The girls either shook their heads or shrugged in response, their two other teachers - an Orc woman and a Catwoman - both just stood there with a polite smile.

"Good! Your trip is about to get a lot more comfortable! Welcome to a museum. You are all too young to earn firearm certifications, too young to play with armoured vehicles or heavy weaponry, or even play with explosives. So here we are at the Railway Museum, the largest and most prominent in the country. You are about to learn all about humanity's greatest technological and societal achievement!" He yelled happily as the loud screech of a train whistle could be heard in the background, scaring some of the girls.

One girl - a short Wood Elf - raised her hand. "Uhh… So that isn't your greatest achievement?" She asked, pointing a finger above her at the kilometre long Terran Battlecruiser in close orbit above them.

"A good question, yes, it is a great achievement, but it wouldn't be possible without the primary foundation. The principle of Logistics! the process, nay, the entire concept of everything you see here could NOT be done without what lies in this museum, the largest and most prominent of its kind. This museum is the main storage area for our entire history of the concept of logistical infrastructure. The purest essence of the ideal of getting Thing and/or person from Point A to Point B, all distilled into a single machine that fuelled the entirety of the Industrial Revolution. Welcome, ladies, to your first introduction to Trains!" He chirped happily and hastily ushered everyone through the front gate.

The gate led not to white walls and pristine floors, but an open plan mega-huge hangar with dirt and gravel, the sounds of steel, chugging engines and steam whistles.

"Come ladies! Stay OUT of the orange zones, those are safety zones, do not EVER enter those places. Apologies for the noise, the museum is gearing up for an upcoming exhibition to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the first ever true railroad journey. Built custom tracks and everything with its own independent rail network just for the celebration. Come quick, I have arranged something special just for this occasion, the Gift tours train is still chugging despite the ongoing activity. Hurry now!" He barked and waved them through.

The girls all felt very small and vulnerable among the enormous machinery, chugging components and hissing steam. All the sounds and noises mixed with the hastily yelled commands of engineers, drivers and station masters in a frantic flurry of work. They passed through two hangars, all of which were bustling with activity before exiting the major storage bays to one of the platforms to the side. There sat the imposing façade of a steam engine, four men in hard hats and high visibility vest, one of which was hunched over the controls in the cabin. Hovering around them was one of the Terran's civilian grade drones, recording all the action. Mr Thomas brought them past the platform and crossed into an isolated, noise proof classroom, the walls decorated with pictures of ancient engines and steam trains.

"Okay then... Take a seat ladies! Reward or not, we are still on school time, we have a lesson to do. Come, come!" He clapped his hands and the girls all scrambled to find a seat.

When the girls were all seated, the lesson began. Mr Thomas pulled a few textbooks, grouping the girls up together to share and positioned a projector to where it needed to be for the lesson. He gave them time to skim through before starting proper.

"Right then, we begin. For today's lesson, which is especially pertinent, turn your textbooks to page 129, we will be discussing the Wood Burning Western and Atlantic Railroad Number Three 'General', a 4-4-0 'American' model steam locomotive. The very same one that is sitting out there on that platform. And after this lesson, we will ride on it to a nice tourist spot. But first, education." He said, and used the projector to pull up the first slide. "Who can tell me what this is?"

The picture was of a steam train, unknown make, model and no number on the faceplate. It looked very small, especially compared to the monsters they passed by. Eventually, one of the two Angels in the class raised a hand. "It says here, the train in that picture is the very first steam engine that is recorded to have done a long haul mission. According to this it was built by British Inventor Richard Trevithick."

"Correct! Well done, yes, that was in fact the very FIRST recorded event of a steam train delivering men and resources. In this case, seventy men and a load of ten tons of iron." He said.

The girls were all taken aback by that. "Ten tons? All at once?" One girl asked.

"Oh yes, ten tons and seventy men, and the technology just got better after that. And all of that force, all that pressure, is done by doing what?" He said, his eyebrow raising.

They scrambled to find the answer in their textbook. The Three tailed foxgirl raised her hand. "Steam powered with wood burning so... All that is done by boiling water?"

"CORRECT! Yes, it all just comes down to the process of boiling water. Same with nuclear energy - same concept - just really, really complicated and a LOT more powerful. Maybe one of these days I'll take you to a nuclear reactor and show you how it worked. One of the decommissioned ones. Moving on, who can tell me what is the modern equivalent cargo haul? Page 391." He replied.

The girls all scoured their textbooks and several hands shot up. One of the smaller Wood Elves, the youngest in the class by a few weeks was called on. "Uh, according to this... Holy crap... I mean uh, depending on the cargo and gauge, it says here, within America, which is where we are, ten thousand to eighteen thousand tons."

"Yes excellent, well done Amari. The largest ever cargo load was set in the year 2001, BHP set the world record for heaviest train ever recorded at ninety nine thousand tonnes! That's a hefty thing, weighed almost as much as a modern Frigate! Now, this is a question specifically about the General. Who was its manufacturer?" He asked, switching the projection to the next slide.

The girls flipped through pages and an orc girl's hand raised. "Rogers, Ketchum and Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey."

"Correct, well done! An original variant of that very same train is currently sitting pretty in the Southern Museum Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw Georgia. Beautiful machine, saw it on my last holiday. Yes, I am in fact a train nerd, and I am proud of it." He said, making his eyebrows raise comically.

This solicited a chuckle from the teacher and the students. "Now we come to the important part... How exactly does it work? I shall show you."

He pulled up a useful tool - a Galatube Video with a detailed animation giving an abridged version of how it all functioned.

When the video was over, he resumed the lesson. "Everybody got that? It is indeed that simple. Now, to see who was paying attention. Who can tell me what the 4-4-4 means on the General?"

All hands shot up and the only Devilgirl was picked. "It means how many wheels are used. Four at the front to keep it on the track, four driving wheels where the engine pushes power, and four wheels at the back?"

"Correct! Well done Lacey! Now, to those who were paying special attention, how many cars were behind the General on the platform outside and what were their names?" He asked.

They all looked at each other for a few moments, trying to remember all the overwhelming stuff they saw. Eventually one of the catgirls raised a hand. "Uh... Five, I think? The thing right up against the locomotive is the thing called a Tender right? And there were three passenger cars, and a car that was like a smaller version of the passenger cars? A Caboose I think. Right?"

"Correct! Well done Gemma very well done! For reference's sake, yes, three passenger cars, a Tender and a Caboose. The Tender contains-?" he asked.

Hands flew up, an Orc girl was picked. "Uh... fuel, meaning wood I think, and water for the boiler thing?"

"Correct! Thank you Agora. Now put the textbooks away girls, it's time to ride on the train! Everyone straighten up your uniforms and put the textbooks on the front desk, let's go!" He said with excitement.

The students all scurried after him as they left, and entered the train car at the front in short order. The car fit them all comfortably with room to spare, but were kept in close proximity with the youngest sitting next to the Orc teacher. Mr Thomas looked at his watch and procured two high-visibility vests from the front.

"Now... Here's the exciting part. Karina, come hither please!" he said.

Karina, a High Elf, got out of her seat and wandered up to him. "Put this on and don't take it off. Here, a helmet, don't take it off either, and also these headphones to protect your ears." He said. She obeyed his orders and quickly put the attire on, looking up at him questioningly. "Right... As the highest scoring student in this school, I hereby give you the perfect chance to come with me for a tour of the engine itself and the main cabin. Maybe even if the engineers let us, maybe even drive! Let us hope that this special privilege will spur your classmates to also excel in their studies!" He said, giving the rest of the class a sly grin.

Her face lit up with excitement and the other girl's eyes lit up with jealousy. She scurried after him, careful to step over the couplings and climbed into the main cabin where four men were standing about. One was using a drone remote to do some recording, one was standing outside to check and give hand signals, and the other two were keeping an eye on the pressure gauge while tossing wood into the fire. Karina stood back from the inferno while waiting for commands as Mr Thomas introduced himself, and then her to the men. They all greeted her warmly but kept an eye on their actual jobs.

"Okay Karina, take a look at the controls. From what you read in the textbook and what I showed you, can you tell me what these levers are for?" Mr Thomas said, gesturing to the odd contraptions.

"Uhh… if I remember... This one controls the Brake that stops the train. This one is the throttle, I think it was called, and it makes the train go faster. And that one up there is the whistle. I think that thing is used as a signal or something?" She replied, pointing at each mechanism.

The men all nodded in agreement and gave an approving clap. "Well done Karina, top of the class as expected! Now... I think that deserves a reward." Mr Thomas said, and gestured for her to pull the whistle.

She double checked with the others in the cabin and reached up to pull the chain. She yanked it a bit and a sharp heavy whistle erupted from above her and a jet of steam shot out of the whistle opening.

"ALL ABOARD!" The stationmaster yelled.

The men all gently carted Karina away as they started their work and released the Brake. The train started moving. Karina was gently hoisted out of the cabin in the left window so she could get a closer look at the train's mechanism, and she could see the wheels slipping slightly as the beast picked up momentum. She was carefully tucked back into the cabin and was made to help throw more wood into the fire. She got to blow the whistle a few more times as the train picked up speed and left the station. Eventually, more practised hands were needed at the controls and Mr Thomas returned to the cabin, both of them covered in a thin layer of soot with Karina's face now sporting a perky, happy smile.

The rest of the girls half laughed at her for the soot on her face, and half because of jealousy due to how excited she looked. Mrs Robin, the Elven teacher scowled and waved her elven hand, using some of her magic to clean her up. The sooty marks vanished and Mr Thomas retrieved the safety gear before they reached cruising speed. The train charged forward, now in full swing with its signature chugging noise. All the girls were looking out the windows, asking Karina a flood of questions and checking the countryside. Eventually the train chugged its way into a side rail leading to a town called 'Nowheresville', and soon after the train slowed and stopped at the platform there.

As soon as the train was properly stopped each girl flooded out of the cabin to gawk at the locomotive as it remained idle. Mr Thomas clapped his hands and called the girls to order again. "Right ladies, here's our stop! Welcome to Nowheresville version 2.0, a town made to cater to museum tours and live displays of ancient hardware. Here, we shall have lunch at the local restaurant - all paid for of course - and when we are done with lunch, we will go to the gift shop! Each of you will be given a few bucks to spend on something meaningful to take home to show your parents. But do NOT forget we are still on school time, and there WILL be a pop quiz on this subject next week!"

"Understood, Mr Thomas!" They all replied.

"Fantastic! Now, LUNCH!" he yelled, and led the gaggle of giggling girls to the restaurant as the train geared up to turn around for the return trip.

The Committee stared in horror and awe at the folder I had handed them. Their expressions changed from mildly dismissive to 'God help us' in the space of a few minutes. Humanity's Great Secret had finally been revealed. Every species in the galaxy has their Great Secret. The reason behind uncanny luck, an evolutionary secret leading to specific brain patterns for ideal tactics. The kind of greed that leads to economies that can overwhelm nations without ever firing a shot. A heartbeat that can be detected miles away because of its patterns or feet with nerves and stimulators that can detect prey from hundreds of feet beyond normal. Every species had their special secret to their success, either in terms of evolution, or in terms of the society they built.

Humans were no exception... But if only it was just that. A Deathworld, Class 2, no small feat to survive on something like that, and an even greater feat to survive past planetary colonisation, pre-unification conflicts and so much more. Humans weren't above the norm by any means by evolution or civilization, in fact they had so much in common with the rest of the galaxy they were barely noticed for almost a decade. A full ten years of us living in effective ignorance of their capabilities and true nature. By all circumstances, every race had their quirks, but these humans were so far out of the norm it boggled the mind. 

To the point where one would actually try to understand what the word 'boggle' even meant in the first place.

The Saranai were busy with other things, and so it took them ten years to find out what was going on... If only we pressured them to do it sooner we would have pressed the advantage... or negotiated surrender... or shat ourselves. Or let the galaxy's cults overwhelm them and walk in the open door when nobody was looking. All it took was one diplomat to see a human face to face, and realize just how close to oblivion we all are.

"Is this real?" The Chairman asked, her scaly eyes glaring at me.

"As real as it gets, My Chairman. We all know the Saranai. They only lie when we ask them to. I got the last pieces of information I needed... Seems humanity lives under some very... Unique circumstances." I remarked frankly.

"That... is putting it mildly... Not only are they within the border of a Dark Zone in the galaxy, it seems this particular area has some... interesting history." A Board member remarked.

"'Interesting history' is a very uncreative way of saying they live in what is essentially an eldritch graveyard Boardsman Kaltho. That damn planet of theirs must have been active for millions of years with what the humans have going for them. Alone they are too... Average... to even be considered competition. But THIS? This puts them leagues above anyone else." The Chairman replied with an angry scowl.

"The reports from the Saranai are... terrifying. I actually recognise some of the names from galactic literature and ancient scriptures. This is... weird. All in one place!? And so many more we never heard of before." Boardsman Obokoboko remarked as he perused his folder.

"The Saranai are already in the process of negotiating a full term permanent alliance with the humans." I said.

The entire board gasped in shock and glared at me. "You WHAT!?"

"Its because of this... We confirmed it this morning. Its deep in human space, in the human home system on a moon called Io apparently." I said, and used my remote to activate a projector and show a picture for the board.

The board sat in silence for a few moments, stunned into disbelief. "Look at the size of that thing..."

"Indeed. The image you are seeing is apparently one of MANY more. All across human space, you will find at least ONE such place with one such entity. In almost every system. Their homeworld Earth is the biggest culprit of them all. Saranai can't go near the system... Apparently 'there are too many voices speaking at once' and all but the best trained Psionics and Spirit Guides can go anywhere near the planet. Saranai have successfully counted no fewer than two hundred entities present, and at this point, I am agreeing with the Imbakai Councilor on his assessment... Gaia should be reclassified as an entity by itself. I have... Already taken liberties of placing trade and operational restrictions on certain members of the Boards' member species. It was... needed." I said calmly.

"Good... Glad to see someone has a spark of initiative. Just make sure those restrictions do not interfere with quotas or margins. The market cannot sleep." The Chairman said, her face finally showing a smile.

"The Market Cannot Sleep." We all repeated in turn.

"Right... I say first we start drafting trade agreements with the humans. There is STILL a market for this and we MUST get on top of it. If we can become the de facto middleman for all negotiations, we can corner the market for human trade goods and services. No matter how low we make the price, profit is almost guaranteed." Boardsman Thuuuk said.

"Indeed, but... where do we begin?" Chairman replied.

"I have some ideas, if the board will hear them." I said. All present nodded in agreement, having no other recourse at present.

"Very well Cathus, lets hear the plan."

"Thank you, Miss Chairman. First, we must consider the facts. Human goods, trade items and services are of a significantly lower quantity than any goods we make, but of a considerably higher quality. We can manufacture ten times what they can do in half the time they do it. But here's the catch... What they make lasts ten times longer, is ten times more efficient and effective, ten times cheaper and ten times more durable. What they lack in quantity, they make up for in quality. I think I know why, but it can wait for a bit. Their reactors use half the fuel ours do. Their guns hit harder, have longer ranges and are cheaper to maintain but come at the cost of three times the manufacturing time. Their armour plating is also of a considerably higher quality, allowing human made ships to be used almost anywhere.

"Their engines use less fuel, their ships take longer to make and are more expensive, but actively outperform any ship in the galaxy by a country mile. Their medical industry is also ten times what ours is, with better treatments and entire industrial sectors dedicated to effectively mass testing, acquiring and production of almost any new medication. If given incentives, they can find the cure or vaccine to any virus, bacteria or plague we have in a matter of months. Their entertainment industry beats the galaxy at large thirty to one already, and its only been a year since their 'Galnet' system became a public utility. One which we ALL use, and for free no less. So... With all this and so much more in mind, I know how to take advantage of this.

"I fully believe that one way or another the documents I gave you will leak to the public and the frenzy will start. People will pay for quality, and they will pay a premium for it. If my theory is correct, even if we charge two percent commissions and tariffs, we will be rich to the point of absurdity." I said.

I got yelled at for the suggestion of such a low price when the standard going rate was twenty percent, down to a minimum of ten. The Chairman held up her hand, silencing the yelling. "Go on..."

"Thank you Miss Chairman. It is my belief based on presented evidence, Saranai operations reports and many other factors, that humans are the next step to the galaxy's evolution as a whole. Their market goods will skyrocket in demand very soon, and their services will triple in price overnight. We all know what to do, this is second nature to us after all. But I know WHY. Regardless of your personal beliefs in the matter, the humans are some variation of Blessed. By divine spark no less. We should be expecting some... interesting results soon." I said.

"Explain. I'm confused."

"The planet they hail from, evolutionarily speaking, the world known as 'Terra', 'Earth' or 'Gaia' is not a planet at all. Its a graveyard for the corporeal forms of Gods, Old Ones and other such anomalous entities. At first, human behavioural patterns and operations made no sense... Then when I got that report it hit me like a gas bill. Their entire sector is an anomalous zone where Gods go to die. Hence this picture." I said, once again showing the image from Io.

"This, gents of the Board, is an entity the Cavaskanii have always referred to as 'Olkotokh The Cold One' - but humans know him instead as - 'Odin'."

The picture itself was of a creature of massive size, curled up in a foetal position, frozen in the murky depths of the planet Io's core. Clearly, humanoid in form, with a large axe, a horned helmet and various other accessories.

"I shall make it short for the benefit of this meeting. They had so many Gods and Faiths in their thousands of years... this is because the Gods they worshiped actually went to the planet they lived on to lay their corporeal forms to rest. Humans have SO many similarities in their religious texts and ancient legends... It turns out it isn't a coincidence." I displayed some pictures for the Board. These ones of various creatures of myth and legend from human scripture, and side by side pictures of myths and legends from the galaxy at large - all were perfect copies in a different language, in a different style. The Skakandi 'UU'Lkath Grakthan The Great, and the human Yggdrasil The World Serpent. The same entity, just across time and space.

"Suddenly I am starting to get the picture."

"How so?" I asked.

"I have a few humans working for our Foundries and machine facilities. We all know the humans have spread far beyond their homes by now, aside from Saranai and Confederacy Space of course. And I have been receiving some... odd reports from foremen working with them... Suddenly these reports make sense." Councilman Obokoboko replied. We all looked at him confused. "Right, elaborate. These humans seem to have some kind of supernatural connection to the machinery they work with. A particular junction box that NEVER worked, suddenly worked when a human passed by. A beverage machine that had always malfunctioned no matter what we did with it, suddenly worked perfectly after a human randomly got something from it, and has been working perfectly ever since. I always thought these were just odd coincidences...

"Then I saw it for myself. One of the cargo pod drones we use for logistics hauling had been out of order for several months. Technicians had been using every trick in the book to try diagnose the issue with no progress, that cargo drone was just gone. Then, one of the humans, not even a technician, wandered into the hangar, had a short conversation with the mechanics on duty and wandered up to the machine. He smacked it with his hand three times. It just... worked. It sprang to life, fired its engines and went back to its normal cargo supply rout. The human just shrugged, said 'seems to work fine to me' then returned to his office. I had NEVER seen anything like it before." He said.

"This reminds me of a situation with a border world. A human had volunteered to help as a doctors assistant. She had plenty of forma medical training but not so much in terms of non-humans, but I have seen SO many reports of this woman just... inexplicably knowing what was going on with her patients. One guy, had no real visible symptoms, had something similar to Gut Rot. Turns out it wasn't Gut Rot, it was internal bleeding caused by a ruptured carapace mount. He went to ten doctors, they all said Gut rot. This one woman said 'no it isn't' and found what was actually going on, almost as if she had some kind of sense or perception, like she saw something we couldn't." Boardsman Kubiko remarked.

"And also... There seems to be something with humans socially. How is it they have had NO conflicts or wars in the galaxy since their arrival. Everyone just seems to... Just... like them. We have no idea why or how but they have neutral or positive diplomatic relations with nearly every race and empire. For some reason, they are the ONLY species in over ten thousand years of galactic history that has had no conflicts or wars since their arrival. Despite this... they have a frighteningly powerful navy." Ms Chairman said.

"I have seen reconnaissance data from a few scout probes and trader ships... their navy is terrifyingly well armed. And considering the quality of the warships they produce... Terrifying. And that's another thing. Quality. We actually did a perfect comparison of our starship standard armour plating versus theirs. I actually have footage of that. Hold please." Boardsman Thuuuk said and reached for his remote.

The projector started up, and showed a side-by-side video of a human armour plate mounted flat with a laser cannon, a kinetic cannon and a railgun aimed at the plate. First, the Laser. Which pierced through both plates. The difference is the human plate had a much smaller hole, indicating it could take a lot more damage. The cannon was fired next, and the shell pierced through the alien plate, but didn't go through the human armour, leaving a large dent in the metal instead. The railgun was a different case though, the test involved twenty armour plates of the same make and material mounted behind each other with an inch between them. the railgun fired. The slug penetrated through eighteen of the twenty alien plates - but only seven of the human plates.

"That... is impressive." The Chairman said.

"I know! And this was just a baseline material test. It's all exactly the same metal all mined from the same asteroid all with the same manufacturing process! And for some reason... The human made stuff is just so much better than ours. I still can't say why."

"In any case, now we know what we are dealing with... And this is the part that will... Probably get me in front of a firing squad." I said.

They all looked at me with a kind of gaze I knew all too well. "What did you do..." The Chairman asked in a dangerously terrifying tone.

"I sent an infiltration team to various points of the human star systems, disguised as tourists. They collected samples of various anomalous objects we knew of. And uhh… Well." I clicked a button, and showed an image of a so-called 'Dragon' on the screen. A creature which was considered a god in OUR mythology. Specifically, Erdugrad The Cursed God. Whose skeletal remains are buried in a cave on Mars. I then showed a few other slides, depicting side-by-side comparisons of artwork made of him, every one depicting a huge red scaled serpentine beast with fire breath, huge wings and guarding a hoard of treasure.

The board's jaws dropped. Erdugrad was the basis of our entire mythology and the so-called 'First God' depicted in almost all ancient texts as a winged fire breathing serpent that hoards treasure. It was his teachings of Controlled Greed that sent us to the stars in the first place... And his body was now entombed in a grave in the human home system.

"And suddenly it makes sense..." The Chairman said, her voice gaining a certain sneaky tone. "If I am seeing these reports right, humanity is so... exceptionally strange, gifted and psychotically insane... Because they evolved from and live in a region that has been used by anomalous entities and supernatural beings as a graveyard for their Corporeal Forms. Did I about sum this whole nonsense up?" She asked.

I shrugged. "Pretty much. At least that's what I can figure. No other explanation makes any sense, so that's the one I'm going with. There is more evidence to suggest that life on the planet evolved after meteorite impacts and asteroid collisions, so I have a feeling all life on the planet evolved from the shattered remains of a Gods or other entity's corpse that fell to the planet during its early stages. The reason human history, at least in terms of religious development and mythology, is due to what I can only surmise as the planet being the perfect spot to drop off some last minute wisdom or plots and schemes, before crawling into a comfy spot to ascend. At least, that's what I can tell." I replied in earnest.

"Beware them, beware they, creatures of unnatural skill descended from the bones of Gods, those of strong will, of fair deal and of great luck. Fear them not, act with caution, not prowess. For them, for they, the children of broken Gods shall render unto you the teachings of a thousand Gods of War. Beware their deal, but fear not their coin." Boardsman Obokoboko said, quoting a passage of our long abandoned but still remembered scripture.

"WELL that certainly brings it to perspective doesn't it..."

"Are we screwed? I have to ask at this point, should we just sign an alliance deal with them like the Saranai and abandon our franchise rights? Because im not to be the bearer of bad news but if even something as simple as armour plating is better than us, what about consumer goods? What about medical supplies? What about ship crafting? Can we even compete with that market? We are after all apparently dealing with creatures that have been blessed or cursed by supernatural entities. I mean... the armour test. That's a hell of a gap in quality. Eighteen to seven... can we even compete with that?" I asked.

"No we cannot. And from what the Market is telling me, the Imbakai have already started negotiating contracts with a corporation known as Jupiter Drive Yards for the manufacturing of a new starship fleet. So we may be rapidly running out of time. Ms Chairman replied.

"Our only course of action is to start work as fast as possible. Send every diplomat we can get and start doing everything we can to get in their good graces. That's what we do. If we can worm our way into their confidence, act as their middleman for a licensing fee, we can maintain our hold on the market hegemony. We don't have a choice but to kiss their asses until our lips turn black. Get to it!" Ms Chairman barked.

We all saluted and wandered off to do our jobs.

___________________________________________________

Author's note:

humans hail from a region of space populated by dimensional anomalies, all of which are caused by the fact the region humans live in is a graveyard for Gods, Eldritch entities, paranatural forces and anomalous creatures. or something.

this is what the story is *SUPPOSED* to be but... insane fuckery happened... again. and i have been stressed and sick out of my EVERYTHING and this ended up being an incoherent pile of shit. i WILL rewrite this in due time. i just need time to... something. Sorry. i just cant right now but i HAD to get something out there.

in retrospect, probably shouldnt have posted it in the first place but... screw it. I NEEDED to get something out to regain at least some kind of ‘normal’. So here you go, will have something real out soon. Sorry again.

"Great Days and glorious Victory, I am Spifflemonk and welcome back to Fallout new Vegas... we are doing this again from my last hard save because I'm an idiot and wasn't recording properly! So yay... That's... Apparently a thing common to this sphere of work. Forgetting to record. Thankfully I noticed relatively quickly so neither of us missed much. So this episode is all about dealing with the faction known as the Boomers. Why do I have this odd feeling there's some hidden meaning here beyond the game... Anyway..."

Spiff fast travels to the nearest location outside the strip to his next target, Freeside's North gate, and heads towards the objective. On the way he encounters some crazy Brahmin, and earns enough XP to hit Level 14. He assigns all his skill points to Speech, and gains the Ghoulificated Heart Perk.

"Ghoulificated Heart... Angelic Mind shines through the Mojave... Nearby feral ghouls will come t aid me In combat!? Oh... I can see how THAT would be quite useful... Sometimes. Maybe this means they also wont attack? Hope so. I hate those things... Anyway… what was I doing? Oh yes."

Spiff makes it to George and listens to the conversation.

"Hmmm... If I can tell this correctly this scenario was made for the base game, but I have a sprint mod and increased speed due to some technical stuff I think I recall faintly... I should be able to handle this easily. Can just sprint straight through. Make that wager though, that's an easy score of caps."

Spiff visibly shudders.

"Ugh... being this deceitful... Hurts a bit. Hate gambling... But... For the viewers!"

He finishes the conversation with George and with greater ease than the game would have allowed and is stopped by the gate guard with a rocket launcher. Spiff goes for the option of 'I didn't run through all that artillery to answer your stupid questions' choice and smirks a bit at the reply asking whether or not he is human or mutant. He starts talking to Pearl and she keeps mentioning 'savages' in her speeches. This becomes a common theme for the Boomers.

"So these are xenophobic idiots with heavy ordinance? Hmm... Where have I heard that before?"

Screen cuts to a Spiffle edit, showing a news reel from the ongoing war in the outer rim territories. The video is short, maybe fifteen seconds long, and shows a Makkadian invasion fleet attempting to wipe out a Cohort colony world - and failing miserably under the relentless assault of a Terran-Eridani Response fleet.

"These people are... very silly. I don't like them, but they sound... useful so... Meh. Besides... I don't have the ammunition or health pool to deal with an entire faction of explosives wielding idiots. Let's do what Pearl asks."

Spiff finishes the conversation and manages to catch Raquel - the Boomer lieutenant outside the building. Spiffs first task is to kill some bugs.

"Right, so the first task is to kill some bugs. Whatever that means. Loyal first, let's see what he has. Oh... first he has a job for me too. Fix the solar panel array? I can do that. Wasn't that place Helios One a Solar array of some kind? I can get parts there! Now what's this? OH! Speech check passed! Think of it as a trial run for some kind of emitter? Hopefully it will kill all of them and I won't have to spend too much ammo. 'Ant Misbehavin' is the quest name. So ants then?"

He heads to the generator. He gets in and is attacked immediately by fire Ants. With a twist. One gets too close, gets killed, explodes and cripples a leg like he stepped on a landmine.

"OY!!! DID THAT THING EXPLODE WHEN I KILLED IT!? OH COME ON ITS BAD ENOUGH THEY BREATHE FIRE!!!"

Thankfully there aren't that many and the two largest dangers are right at the entrance. After killing the next one he steps back and lets it explode without issue. Spiff grumbles a bit and makes his way down stairs to the ant mound, where he puts the Emitter Array and activates it. A slow motion kill cam tells him he actually did the job.

"Ah! Good! No more bugs hopefully. Now what? Oh yes, the switches."

Spiff goes to the switches and activates the first one... then the game crashes hard, going back to the desktop. It is here for the first time the viewer sees Spiffles Desktop wallpaper, which is the Spifflmonk family in Proper Tea Drinking Attire, having a cup of tea in the living room.

"OH bugger it! Well, I was told it was unstable. I guess that's a thing. Well I do it again it doesn't break like last time. Let's try that again. I won't get my leg broken this time!"

He loads back into the generator from the autosave and makes quick work of the ants until he gets to the third one - and in this case he is simply unlucky and gets a crippled arm and leg in the death explosion.

"OH BUGGER OFF WITH THAT!!!"

Spiff grumbles and uses his Doctors Bags and Stimpaks to heal up before placing the Emitter and activating it. This time he quicksaves before heading to the switches. No crash this time. He finishes the quest by hitting the last switch, restarting the generators and heads back to Raquel.

"Yes creature you are damn right the powers back on! Pain in the ass, and NOT because of the crash it was because of your (Eridani slur) exploding multilegged monsters! What now? Oh yes the Solar Array. Helios One I think. 'Sunshine Boogie' is the quest. But lets head to the Infirmary first. I have a decent Medical skill so I can handle that right off. Have a few med magazines too so this should be easy."

SPiff talks to Argyll, and his face twists into a strange expression of confusion at one of the choices available.

"Tibular nastis pierced the patients anterior traxes-what the HELL!? Well that... one of the oddest sentences I think I have ever read. Not going to do that one because... Well im supposed to help, aren't I and that's marked as a 'lie' so im not going to do that. Lets see... May require an Amputation? Medicine 50 or higher. I have 75 at the moment, easy. YES! remove existing stitches and re-stitch the wounds... Wait? Stitches? What stitches? Hold on a minute."

Spiff tabs out and the screen goes to fan art for a moment, then re-appears with Spiff showing his signature death glare, his skin paler than normal.

"Remind me to NEVER do research on human medical procedures EVER again... EVER. I have saved you the trouble Francine, trust me, never, EVER do what I just did."

The screen flashes with a series of words in Thulanian - Francine's native language - that translates roughly as 'far too late you old fart - never again. How do they SURVIVE THAT SHIT!?'

The next patient requires level 60, swelling and breathing difficulties. turns out its just an allergic reaction to the ant venom. Spiff treats it according to his skills, and visibly resists the urge to search what an 'allergic reaction' is, after just promising not to search things. The last patient seems to have a serious infection which is dealt with easily. He returns to Argyll and hands in the quest. Spiff scoffs at the concept of 'we have a few things to learn from outsiders' and offhandedly says 'stupid bastards' in Eridani before heading to the next quest - the Boomer Museum.

"Museum eh? Not much of a museum. Snow Globe though... I love that! Love me some loot I can take without annoying people. Let's see what this kid has to say."

Spiff listens to the speech, and every time 'savages' or 'ignorant savages' is mentioned, Spiff scoffs in annoyance.

"This little bastard says the word 'savages' with such a harsh tone... He fails to realise he is just as much a savage as anybody else in this wasteland! Stupid creature. So let me get this straight, these guys want to get an airplane, that is a very pretty image by the way, and I have to HELP them be even worse by giving them AIR power? Seriously? House, I hope to God you know what you are doing, but the missile upgrades on those Securitron things will hopefully work in your favour. I hate this place, I need to hurry up with this quest."

Spiff shakes his head in annoyance. Spiff talks to the kid and visibly cringes as he resists the option to use one of the dialogue choices that says 'I guess poor nutrition could explain a lot of your behaviour'. He chooses all the best options available and gains Idolized status. He shrugs and decides to finish the Sunshine Boogie quest first anyway, and fast travels to Helios One. Spiff is then given the quest 'That Lucky Old Sun' and gets visibly irritated with how the places interior is set up. Eventually he finds a way outside to the Arrays. He follows quest markers, salvages each panel and notes how the area is set up.

"This... Is not like any solar array I have ever seen... What the balls is this place? All solar panels are arranged in a circular pattern around a central tower. Hmmm... after this I can figure out what's going on."

He fast travels back to the generators, repairs all the panels in short order, then returns to Loyal. In doing so he encounters the Main Hangar, where the disassembled remains of a now legendary craft - the Boeing B-29 Stratofortress - lay in the hangar. He then returns to Pearl after yelling an Eridani Slur at Loyal's comment, then goes back to Loyal to start the last quest of raising the Bomber.

"These people are SO lucky I don't have the ammunition and medical equipment to put them all down..."

Spiff speaks to Loyal and gets the map location, followed by the objective to get THE most useful piece of equipment in the entire game - the Rebreather. Sadly he doesn't have the parts to repair it. A half hours worth of gameplay follows as Spiff travels to EVERY trader he knows to find the parts he needs, and finally, in an old shack near Goodsprings, he finally finds what he's after and returns to Jack to finish the Rebreather.

"This better be worth it. Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to find a (expletive) PRESSURE COOKER!? Hmm... the Rebreather. Can use it to swim underwater indefinitely. oh... Okay that was in fact worth it. Now... Lake Mead."

The closest Fast Travel Point he has is the 188 trading post. Its a bit of a slog to get there, but he gets to the shoreline near Lake Mead, passing through Ranger Station Alpha on the way to the shore. It is here he encounters his first Lakelurk. Odd, humanoid fish people with a Sonic attack.

"WHAT THE FLIPPING FLUFFING FLOOPLE IS THAT THING!?

Spiffs modded rifle makes easy work of a pack of four of them, one landing on its back so Spiff can take a closer look at it.

"Is that some kind of like... FISH person? That's... That's disgusting!"

Spiff stops, looks at the camera and smiles in a VERY cheeky, very jokey way, before resuming the game. Clearly there is some kind of in-joke here, that Francine provides context for in subtitles, informing the viewer of the ongoing friendly rivalry between the Eridani imperium and their long time allies, the Olivarkian Confederacy. Apparently, the rivalry is the equivalent of the ongoing nonsense between the English and the French.

"Now... What's that in the lake? A... floating platform? How did they do this with scrap materials!? People LIVED on this!?"

He quickly dispatches the Lakelurks on the platform and then swims about trying to figure out how it actually works. He stays confused for a bit, gives up, then returns to the quest after coming to no reasonable conclusions, despite the obvious barrels filled with air keeping it above the water.

"Thank you Water Breathing! I can take a closer look at this thing! That is... Smaller than I thought it would be. Hm. Would've thought this would be a LOT larger considering how humans work, but I guess its a game thing? Anyway... Where do I use the ballast? Oh, under the wings next to the fuselage. Right..."

He does as needed then heads to the nearby docks where his character starts beeping. At first Spiff panics because that sounds like the landmine beep, and he sprints away waiting for an explosion. After nothing happens, he checks his quest log and equips Loyal's detonator. It beeps louder and a muffled explosion is heard. Then the ancient B-29 floats to the surface and bursts out the water in a lovely display. Spiffles' jubilation is cut short as he cannot fast travel. He quickly learns what the culprit is as he is attacked by one of the game's most hated enemies - the Cazador. A mutated wasp-like insect.

"TOO MANY LEGS TOO MANY WINGS WHY AM I POISONED GET AWAAAAAYYY!!"

Spiff is swarmed, manages to kill all the Cazadors, thankfully small ones, but fails to heal enough to survive the poison, and dies. He glares at the game over screen, accusingly points a finger at the camera.

"Don't you judge me! Those things are HORRIBLE!"

Spiff, thankfully, had the foresight to quicksave on the floating platform, and goes through the sequence again, this time taking no chances and wiping out the Cazador swarm before it can get close enough to cause any damage. He fast travels back to Loyal and hands in the quest. The experience gives him enough to get to level 15, and he chooses the Light Step perk.

"Ohh… Not setting off mines and traps, especially when I move about this fast would be an absolutely invaluable skill to have! taking that one. Now... Hand it in to House. Next stop, the Strip."

Spiff heads to the Lucky 38 and hands in the quest, receiving the next one in turn. This time, dealing with the Omertas who are apparently planning mischief. He ignores this quest and instead goes for 'That Lucky old Sun’, and heads to Helios One to figure out what the hell it even is and quickly stands face to face with Mr Fantastic - the 'idiot with the sunglasses' who is apparently in charge of the project.

"Seriously? The NCR hired THIS guy? No wonder they're losing if this is the quality they ask for... Is there anyone competent here?"

Indeed there is, one of the Followers is in the next room, Ignacio Rivas.

"Interest in this place? Scientific. I want to know what the hell it even is. Speech Check... Followers of The Apocalypse huh? Hmm... Hidden dangers eh? Sounds about normal. ARCHIMEDES eh? Sounds fishy. There's a security system that I have to go through then? Oh dear... I hope I have enough ammo for this."

He finishes the chat and heads outside into the back yard. The first terminal is covered in traps, mines and other things, and Spiff's new perk allows him to easily disarm and clear out all of it. After activating the terminal and resetting the Mainframe Connection, he heads for the next, clears out the feral dogs using it as a den, then does the same to the second terminal. Spiff heads into the tower, and has his first encounter with a Sentry Bot, and its more disturbing counterpart - the Robobrain.

He enters a room and is attacked by Turrets, easily dispatching them. The Robobrain attacks next, and is put down with relative ease although he uses a LOT of ammo for it. He approaches the edge of the railing and narrowly avoids taking a missile to the face, suffering a crippled head from the explosion. He quickly retreats and heals up.

"What in the BALLS was that!? Was that a rocket or something? I can't see!"

Once back to health, spiff returns and uses VATS to look at his target. Indeed, it's a Sentry Bot, and an angry one at that. Spiff uses sixty rounds to try to destroy it, it barely scratches it.

"I don't have ammunition for this! Do I have anything that can work here? Uhh… I have a Pulse Grenade? Will that work?"

He equips it, noting how he only has two, and tosses it at the enemy. The killcam appears and captures in beautiful slow motion the grenades electromagnetic detonation, and the Sentry bots destruction in one shot.

"Oh! Well damn! I need more of those then... Pulse Grenades eh? Must be some kind of EMP bomb or something. Humans do use those although... not so big. Now what's this?"

Spiff approaches the Robobrain and turns pale as he sees a human brain floating in goop inside a dome, attached to a tracked robotic body. And now he understands why it was called a Robobrain.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FU-"

Francine cuts and censors a short expletive laden rant of terrified disgust, as the wiki page for the Robobrain is displayed on screen, with the detail that the actual brains of convicts and test subjects were removed from their hosts and placed into Robobrain chassis as the CPU for the robots. The screen returns to Spiff as he resumes his search in the tower. He is visibly upset but carries on. He takes a close look at the sentrybot.

"I like this one. It doesn't have a human brain in it. I like this one more than I hate the other one. We go."

He visibly shudders in disgust as he resumes exploring. He enters an underground tunnel system and turns right instead of left. He collects some loot from a safe, before turning around.

"Lethal Force Authorized." Is all he hears before receiving a rocket to the face, leaving him with exactly 7 HP. He squeals in terror, panics and runs back to heal up with everything he can find, hiding in an upstairs closet.

He equips his last Pulse Grenade and utters an Eridani prayer before returning, throwing the grenade into the tunnel where the Sentry bot is standing and hopes. It kills the bot in one shot. It was a lucky critical hit. He breathes deep, saying nothing about the event but moves on and encounters his first Mister Gusty. Thankfully this one isn't nearly as hard as the others, and is finished off in short order. He gets up to the Observation level, and barely has what he needs to fix the broken generator there by one point. He sets the output to Full Region, and heads outside to finish up. He notices the sky is black.

"Oh for God's sake! Wait a few hours, to morning. Sigh."

He waits until after 9 AM, then activates the panel. There's a grinding, whining noises, before the screen goes white from the sun now glaring at the central tower. All the solar panels are also mirror reflectors. And they all aimed at where Spiff was standing.

"MY EYES!!!"

Francine lowers the brightness in editing to spare the viewers the same suffering, and Spiff slowly gets back to normal, blinking rapidly.

"Ohhh… why didn't I see that coming? Oh that's because IT MADE ME BLIND! Oh gods... I hope there aren't more encounters like that. Bright flashes on the BIG screen... that actually hurt!"

Spiff groans and makes his way back up to the tower to Ignacio and hands in the quest before heading back to the Strip and Entering Gomorrah.

"So that thing uses a mirror array of solar panels to not only generate power but also aim the solar energy at a central tower to do... Something? I guess I'll ask about it later. For now... Gomorrah. Now... Keep holdout weapons... I will certainly need them. And here we go. Calling in for outstanding balance. What are they up to? Find Cachino. Okay."

Spiff goes to the marker, finds Cachino, and as per script, he has nothing to say. A smirk appears on Spiffles face as he quicksaves, then pickpockets Cachino to gain his Journal, then gets 400 caps as blackmail to get it back.

"Hehehe why is this Quicksave thing so easy to exploi-hold on a second..."

The most TRULY EVIL smirk crosses Spiffles lips, his face contorting into something genuinely distressing as he quickly tabs out of the game to look something up. Sure enough, Francine edits in what he's up to and we see Spiff look up how to spawn in items using the console, and looks specifically for the mini-nukes and the unique Gun Runners Arsenal DLC weapon, 'Esther'. Spiff gets all he needs from Cachino, then makes a hard save for the game in its own slot. He glares at the camera, still maintaining that sinister, disturbingly evil smirk.

"Later... Much later. Hehehehe."

Spiffs smile doesn't falter as he first tracks down Clanden in The Suites. Spiff talks to him, gets nothing of value from him and smiles again, in that unnerving way. He quicksaves, pulls out Maria and kills Clanden with a sneak attack critical, blowing his head clean off without alerting the guards.

"Almost too easy to be honest. Hmm. I will only abuse this when it is funny."

He chuckles and searches Clanden's room for answers. And the smile is instantly wiped off Spiff's face when he notices how much blood there is in almost every room.

"Well... Why is there so much blood down here? I... Don't actually think I want to know. Let's just go. To Lower Brimstone."

Spiff goes there and finds Troike with the Zaora Club key taken from Clanden's corpse, and after a short conversation, has some Thermite Powder and his next objective.

"Okay so Thermite. What is Thermite? Oh... I have that question right here. Thermite is a mix of rust and aluminium dust. Add heat, and gives off enough heat in response to melt through almost anything. That's... Terrifying. Why would you even have something like that? No seriously humans, what would you do with that!?"

Francine cuts to a short montage to Benny Hill music, showing pictures and articles of the deployment of ship mounted Thermite Cannons, Thermite Tank Shells, Incendiary AP rockets, Thermite grenades and Thermite Bunker Buster bombs. The camera returns and shows the evil smirk has been very much wiped off Spiff's face. He goes downstairs to the basement level, finds the gun room and first, loot goblins a bit before placing the red powder and closing the door behind him. He flips the light switch, accomplishing the objective but getting blinded by the flash of light yet again.

"MY EYES!!! WHY!?!?"

It takes Spiff a bit longer to recover this time and he glares at the camera in annoyance before returning to Cachino. The objective is to kill Big Sal and Nero, the two bosses of the Omertas. He follows Cachino and pulls out a rifle as soon as he sees the two targets, and uses VATS to slaughter both of them before they can do anything further. For some reason he gains reputation among The Strip and levels up to level 17. He puts all points to Speech, maxing it out while also getting the Tag! perk, and using it to get his Sneak skill to 75.

"Well that ended nicely. Back to House I suppose. Terminal hm? What's in here? Oh. A Safe. Lovely. what else is - Oh my! Two new unique Guns. The Enforcer and... Phallic Firearm... Seriously? It's a pink gun."

Francine helpfully puts up a picture of the real life equivalent - a 5.56 Ruger Assault rifle.

"Lovely. Will test that out later. Now, to House."

Spiff heads back to the lucky 38 and hands in the Quest. He is then given the next phase of the plan, and is told to deal with the Brotherhood of Steel's remaining chapter in the Mojave.

"Well... I guess I'm testing out my new guns! I have to get more ammo though. I don't feel like dealing with more Boomers who say 'savage' and stupid stuff when they are worse than the people they kill. Not doing that again. In any case, I would say that's good for this one. See you again soon!"

Spiffs Outro plays to a montage of fan art.

TOP COMMENT: (Translated from Olivarkid) "Sneaky land dweller. I saw that!"

Spiffs Reply: "I know. hehehe :)"

Comment: (translated from Eridani) "So we aren't going to talk about the blood everywhere, the Thermite stuff, the robobrain, and the implications of a place called Gomorrah with décor like THAT?"

Spiffs reply: "NO. NO WE ARE NOT."

Reply: (translated from Olivarkid) "I have to Agree with Spiff on this one."

We stood ready to fight back, all as one, for the first time in history since they arrived. A fleet of five thousand warships stood ready the hyperlane to the nearest star system controlled by them. The Great Enemy. The monsters who had been plaguing us for over a decade now, finally, everyone recognised the threat they posed, and we were finally ready to enact swift vengeance on them, with many more fleets being built behind our lines. This was our stand, and likely for the only time in history, we were going to work as one to beat The Machine.

It all came down to this. Colonies wiped out. Families and loved ones subjected to miserable torture and experimentation. Entire planets turned into irradiated craters, entire warship fleets reduced to slag and whole colonies turned to killing grounds beyond horror. It all came down to this. A war fleet of seventy thousand ships, all ready for the last fight we will ever have. The objective, strike deep into the Machines heart, silence the Core and end this once and for all. If we failed, perish the thought, the Machines would face the galaxy uncontested.

"Final checks! All ships charge hyperdrives!" The radio barked at us.

I nodded to my pilot and felt my ship's reactor shudder to full power. "This is it... It finally ends." I said.

A few tense moments passed. "READY!!! ENGAGE!!" the radio commanded.

My pilot responded faster than I did. In an instant we were among the stellar dust in the incomprehensible insanity that was hyperspace. Thousands of ships flanking us at every angle, frigates, corvettes, large fighters, dreadnoughts and every ship in between. On one hand, this would be the most glorious battle of my career. On the other hand, it would be the last we fought if it went wrong. We were all counting on sound tactics and good strategy. Every brilliant military mind in the galaxy had been gathered for this, and we were ready for anything. Reality slipped back into view and the first of ten machine worlds warped into view. We gave them no time to react.

"OPEN FIRE!!!" I yelled to my ships gunners, and seconds later the nearest Machine ship was engulfed in a blast of laser fire.

Before I could give the order, the rest of the fleet engaged with a fury I had never before witnessed. The machine ships were being vaporized and slagged faster than we could have hoped or wished for, and before long, a massive explosion erupted from the middle of the Machines fleet as the dreadnought they had stationed here went nova. It took out even more of the Machines fleet and we simply just kept firing, engines to full hitting everything we could as we charged through the system. We had no time to count our ships as we barged through their defences which seemed to melt under the sheer onslaught.

We made it to the exit hyperlane to the next target and found the next system undefended save for a few small outposts. We ignored it, pressing our advantage and kept going. Engines full, just keep going. We had one chance to end this once and for all. Ships from the fleet formed up and followed us, pressing the advantage, including a few dreadnoughts. The next system wasn't so easy, but we specifically had orders. My part of the fleet was to punch as deep as we could as fast as we could, separate their defences and kill what we could to plough the way forward for the rest of the fleet and report back what we found. One of the computer worlds, an entire planet converted to machine processing was beneath us, and it wasn't something we could ignore.

"BREAK OFF AND DEPLOY ATOMICS!" I commanded, readying the deployment of one of the five atomic missiles my ship had. My ship, along with my part of the fleet, changed direction and burned for the planet's surface. When my ensign said all ships were aligned and in range, I gave the order to fire.

A streak of missile smoke of every colour in the spectrum streaked past us. I had no time to respond or watch, the sheer number would be enough to glass the planet and do enough damage, and even if only half of those missiles failed to hit, it would be more than enough. I barked orders to turn and head for the next system and my ships picked off a few smaller targets on the way through. My fleet's gunners all deserved commendations, as we were moving at absurd speeds and they were STILL hitting every target they aimed at. It filled me with greater pride than fear.

the next system was undefended, save a few automated platforms that I ignored as they were floating out of our range. I accepted a few losses and pressed on, knowing the battleships would be able to finish them off when passing through. The fleet moved through the next system and we were in for it now.

"EVASIVE ACTION!! FLANK SPEED TO STARBOARD!" I commanded.

The fleet followed my orders, and we passed through a formation of enemy warships that were presumably heading to reinforce the previous systems. I yelled orders and commands as best I could through the chaos as the fleet opened fire and slipped through the openings between the Machines ships, a few ships not able to evade in time and ending up slamming into the machines fleet. Unfortunate losses, but we all knew what we were getting into and thankfully they took the Machines ships with them. The strategy was to slip through, then turn and fire on their rears and engines, do as much damage as we could get away with, then burn for the next system, hoping we did enough damage for the dreadnoughts behind us to finish them off with little effort.

The fleet moved into firing range and started shooting. It was here I noticed something odd. The Machine ships engines were cold, flameless and were not moving. Almost as if they were not reacting to our presence. Almost as if they weren't there. I didn't care, and ordered focused fire just as a flight of battleships entered the system and started to obliterate the defending fleet. I barked orders that reinforcements were here and to press the advantage, and within minutes the Machine ships had been wiped out.

"That was... Too easy. Something's going on here..." I idly said. "Meaningless! If they won't fight back then who cares, they've done worse to us a thousand times over! Fleet form up! Ready drives to the next system!" I barked over the comm.

My fleet and two other fleets flew with us to the next system and as we started jump procedures, the rest of the fleet arrived. In far greater numbers than we could have expected. I was fully expecting half of our fleet to have been wiped out by now. Something in my gut was telling me something was off about this scenario, but I couldn't think about it now. I had a job to do. I had my orders, if the next system was occupied, blast through any fleet we find and head straight for the next hyperlane. Let the enemy chase us, give the time for larger ships to come behind us and hit the enemy ships from behind.

We jumped into the system and my instincts kicked in. My brain recognized Machine Ships. Engines cold, shields offline, floating in empty space. No reaction to our presence of any kind. I shook my head, snapping myself out of it and pressed our advantage, taking out several dozen ships on our way. We flew past the local garrison and to the edge of the star system. I could hear radio chatter by now, ships starting to question why this was so easy, then being yelled at to not look good fortune in the face. I quickly took the chance to check our fleet composition.

We had lost less than two percent of our fleet, and most was due to accidents, traffic or simple stupidity. Something was definitely wrong, but it was in our favour. So I ordered the fleet to the next system and encountered no hostiles yet again, the space almost undefended. We ignored the strange feeling in our minds and kept going, the last system one final jump away.

The feeling quickly vanished as we entered the last system and my fleet narrowly avoided colliding with an enemy Dreadnought. This was it. This was the fight. We managed to move out of the beast's way and I ordered the fleet to scatter. I looked in front of us. Between us and the Core, there was a fleet of two hundred dreadnoughts, and among them, TEN Machine Titans all armed with enough firepower to wipe out our fleet. the crew looked to me for leadership. I stood from my chair, drew my sabre and gave the order to charge the titans with our Atomics, then face what fate demanded of us.

"FOR ELARIA!!!!" I yelled, receiving a glorious chorus in response as the fleet quickly turned to engage.

The missiles streaked through the empty void towards our targets. If even one made it through I would consider it a victory, it would do nothing compared to the ships it impacted, but it was something. And at this point, something was all we needed.

Ten seconds. fifteen. Twenty. The enemy ships just stood there. Thirty seconds. The missiles were in range of the point defence. Nothing. Forty seconds. Impact. The light of a thousand suns blinded the fleet and we watched as every single missile we fired hit its intended target. half the enemy was vaporized by the sheer force of the mass detonation of several thousand nuclear weapons, and the other half was surely disabled by the EMP Impulse. I ordered the cavalry charge and we attacked the enemy fleet with everything we had, I ordered half of my ships to slip past and fire every Atomic they had at the Core World which was right past them.

They never fire back. No shields, no orders, nothing. They just sat there and took it, as if there wasn't anything there to command the ships. They were just dead in the void. But we didn't know if these things would activate later, so we just kept firing, kept fighting, and as more of the fleet arrived, more of the Enemy warships were turned to wreckage. We finished the job and quickly headed to the last stand. The Core World. The jump completed and I instantly heard the sound of celebration coming from the radio.

A tear fell from my eye, I dropped the Sabre and fell to my knees in happiness as I saw the Core World, the Origin point of the last decade of miserable death was shattered in half, pieces of the Machine World floating in the void. Every superstructure from Dyson Spheres to Ringworlds were all destroyed, shattered or seemingly offline somehow.

I sniffed and sobbed, managing to squeal "VICTORY!!!" before collapsing back into my Captains chair and finally releasing the last decades worth of emotion.

We all celebrated the end of it all. It didn't matter how this happened or how we got here, it was over and it was all we cared about. The sounds of celebration saturated our radios as more of the fleet filtered in to the star system, and likewise began to celebrate the end of the darkest period in galactic history. Billions of lives finally avenged, and two whole civilisations finally put to rest with just vengeance. I stepped around my ship as more of the fleet wandered in, the Dreadnoughts choosing not to waste their effort and destroying what ships looked like they could even remotely pose a threat, the crowds in ships yelled in joy at the impressive explosive display.

I helped myself to my Sergeants bottle of Wadrot while they sang and celebrated in my own way. But, before I could become intoxicated - I saw it.

A small ship, not of the Machines design or make quietly slipping through the Machines wreckage heading to one of the systems far Hyperlanes. But my God what a ship it was. It looked less like an active warship, and more like a floating Cathedral or church of some kind, armed to the absolute as one would expect, but it was too... pretty to be a warship. At least to my eyes. I quickly moved to one of the consoles and performed a short scan of it. It seemed to notice and stopped, turning to face the fleet. I scanned it again, using a more sophisticated method. This seemed to spook it or something as it quickly retreated out of the system.

"ALL HANDS TO STATIONS! Ahead flank to Hyperlane position Number Seven, Vector Six!" I barked.

My crew all snapped to attention, some already intoxicated but not enough to not do their jobs. I sat back in my chair and groaned as the ships engines spooled up and roared to life. Several ships nearby spotted our sudden manoeuvre and followed us, two battleships, a missile ship and one of the dreadnoughts roared behind us. This was effectively uncharted territory and we were doing it slightly drunk. I got to where the unknown ship was sitting and noticed one of the Machine ships had part of its structure partially removed by salvagers.

"That's... They were salvaging the ship? But how could they..." I said, wondering aloud how an entire section of a Machine cruiser was carefully cut out. "I knew something was wrong... That battle was far too easy! Are they responsible for this somehow?"

"My Lord?"

"Engage hyperdrive, follow the new lane. Shields to double front, I want NO chances!" I commanded.

"Aye Ser!"

My orders were followed and once again we found ourselves in the strange world of hyperspace as the universe slipped past us. We appeared in the system and I spotted the ship once again, almost immediately picking it out from the chunks of starship floating about. It was actively towing pieces of wreckage and machinery, and entire Machine ships were being systematically disassembled. I ordered full scans just as the ships behind us showed up and started trying to figure out what was going on. And soon enough, I got the scans I needed and the new ship was put on display in front of me.

What a beautiful work of art it was. Sharp spires, handcrafted artworks and carvings in the metal hull, a grey base coat of paint with trim of gold, silver and purple. The ship resembled a holy temple more than a warship, but the number of heavy cannons that saturated its surface belied that ideal. By now, the rest of the ships that followed us had noticed the odd ship and were likewise taking riskier scans, more detailed scans, and of course, we were almost immediately spotted as it rapidly turned to face us.

A bright light appeared above one of the spires.

"My lord! Multiple Hyperdrive signatures detected!" My nav officer yelled

Before I could give any orders, twenty more of these ships, still very small compared to ours, suddenly appeared in formation with it. Each one elaborately decorated, beautifully crafted and armed to the teeth with primitive but still devastating weaponry.

"They are hailing us! Should I risk putting them through?" My ensign asked.

"We have just fought a war and I have NO intention of starting another one, even if I know we can win just by breathing on them. Accept the hail, give the translation system time to operate. Inform the rest of the fleet, we have First Contact!" I commanded.

"Aye ser!"

We waited for a few moments before the hail went through. And sure enough, a creature I had never seen before appeared on my monitor, face to face. Two front facing eyes suggesting predatory species, omnivores considering the teeth, small tuft of hair atop head and various other odd features. Very odd things, these creatures. This one seemed to be a male, Mammalian apparently. A rare sight in the galaxy at large.

"Well... That's... Something. Hello? I guess?" He said.

"Can you understand me?" I asked.

"Yeah I can. What uhh… What are you doing here? Nothing bad I hope." He replied, shuffling nervously.

"What the hell are you doing so close to the Machine Core World?" I said. It hadn't crossed my mind they might have just been scavengers taking advantage of the battle, but what scavengers deploy ships like THAT?

"Salvaging derelicts for resources and tech. Isn't that what you're doing too? We can share man, plenty to go around you know." He said dismissively with a shrug of his shoulders.

"We are here to get rid of the Machine threat that has been plaguing us for almost a decade now. Surely you must have lost a few colonies by now, SURELY you know how bad the machines are!" I barked angrily, annoyed at his seeming ignorance.

"Woah! Calm down man! Look, we don't know anything about some grand undertaking or whatever you're at, we just started picking apart the wreckage when the robo-fleets started short circuiting or something. We actually don't know what happened. One day they showed up and did some whole 'we're gonna exterminate you' shtick, then they spoke with some dude and then they just started... switching off. I actually don't know what happened." He said.

This fried my brain. I blinked, my tired mind trying to process what was going on. "I'm sorry... What did you say?"

"Uhh… hold on. Let me see if I can... Does anybody know where the reel for the FC is? Oh, thank you. Hold on a second. Here, it's a newsreel, footage from the actual event. I can transmit it through the comm. Give me a second." he said.

The monitor changed to a scene we all knew too well. The Machine always contacted its victims, placed 'judgement' on them, and then declared its intent to wipe out all life. The human responding asked why. It simply repeated its statement to exterminate.

The human then asked politely if it wouldn't do that.

The machine then seemed to stop to think in response to that request.

The human politely asked it again if it would be so kind as to not do that.

It seemed to short circuit as its vocal system malfunctioned.

The human then showed CONCERN, and again politely asked it if it was okay, or needed help as it appeared to be in distress.

The Machine then fully went berserk and seemed to suffer a catastrophic system failure, babbling incoherent nonsense, before shutting itself down.

"What... the... Hell?" I said. I had no words for this. I had no brainpower to process this. Did I just hear and see all this as I just saw it?

"Your guess is as good as mine mate. We have no idea what happened. The robo-thing just spoke to that guy, who said polite things and I guess it just... switched off? I have no idea. We've been trying to salvage some datacores and stuff to see if we can find answers but most of the datacores have been fried. It's almost like the machines performed a 'self lobotomy' of some kind like we gave them a hidden command or... something? Hell I don't know. We are just as in the dark as you are man." He replied with a shrug.

"Okay... How long ago was this?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"Date on the newsreel, sets it two months ago."

"MOTHERF-" I yelled a series of rather vile expletives in my native tongue, I think I can be thankful the translators didn't get those ones.

"Uhhh… Sir, are you okay? You seem a bit stressed." He asked.

"I AM STRESSED!!!" I bellowed angrily. I stopped, regained my composure and took a deep breath. "Okay... Let me get this correctly. Two months ago the Machines came to exterminate your species like they do all others. You... politely asked them not to. And this confused them somehow and you accidentally gave them a universal shutdown command?" I asked.

He looked around, presumably at his subordinates, and shrugged. "I.... Guess so? I dunno, man. We have a thing with some of our mechanoids and drones and stuff. Voice shutdown commands. Maybe the creators of the Machine guys put in the same command and forgot about it until it was too late?"

The frustration and absurdity finally got to me and I started slamming my head into my chair. "OH COME ON!!!"

"Are you okay? Seriously do I need to see if I can send a medical retrieval team or something, you really need to not hurt yourself like that. It's not healthy." He said.

"Okay... Now if I can figure this situation correctly, you just politely asked the Machines to NOT kill you all. Correct?" I asked.

"Far as I can tell, I wasn't there man, but yeah."

"And through this politeness, you somehow managed to access a hidden command, or series of pass phrases that somehow managed to disable an empire of machines that had been SLAUGHTERING half the galaxy for over a decade?" I said.

He finally gained some form of a serious expression from the context I just mentioned. Finally I had his attention. "Well... uhh… I don't... When you put it like that..."

"So what you are telling me - HUMAN - is that YOUR species, through sheer DUMB LUCK AND MANNERS, has just saved the galaxy from EXTINCTION, just because you said please and thank you?!" I barked, my green skin visibly turning a paler shade from pure rage.

He nervously shuffled and chuckled even more nervously. "Well I uh... I don't know the full story here but... uhh... We have found a few datacores that are partially intact but haven't sorted through them yet. Do you uh... Do you want them? I mean you've been dealing with these machines longer than we have so maybe you can figure it out?" He said.

I took a deep, frustrated breath. "That would be lovely, thank you. I will send a shuttle retrieval team to collect the cores. Please have them waiting." I said, unable to even think from pure anger.

He nervously shuffled again and started ordering the people around him about. "Uhh... We uh... We aren't like... in trouble or anything are we? Are you like, going to declare war on us or something?"

"That depends on just how stupid this all turns out to be, but in the grand scheme of things I think no. Maybe we will leave you alone and seethe for a while before coming back to start diplomatic talks. I'm too irritated right now to think. And also mildly drunk. Please excuse me." I said, and cut the broadcast.

I sat there with my head in my hands and wondered what kind of stupid trick the Gods were playing on us.

The humans handed over the datacores and sure enough there was salvageable data. We returned it to the homeworlds for analysis, and we found it. The human who first spoke to the Machine did so in a language strangely similar to the Machines programming Code, and by sheer coincidence, dumb luck, or poor programming, or all of the above, the Machines shutdown code closely resembled that languages words for 'please and thank you' or some variant of it. The Machines had changed their code base so many times through natural adaptation, that the shutdown didn't cause a full switch off, it actually corrupted the code beyond recovery and wiped its own systems. A form of accidental self lobotomy if you will.

It changed its codebase to such an extent that its own shutdown code became confused, muddled, and mixed in with other system commands and core circuitry, its thousands of yeast of learning and AI self programming, inherited from its apparently incompetent creators, tried desperately to undo the command it was accidentally given. Because its programming was so muddled, it instead overloaded its processors and began to purge its own system data to attempt a recovery. And it effectively deleted its core code base in the process.

All because of politeness, and a strange, almost embarrassing coincidence. When I sobered up and calmed down from my blistering rage, we all came to the conclusion that the war was over, and the machines were gone. One way or another, do we really care? The universal answer was no. And so, with Humanity now known to the galaxy, an existential threat completely wiped out because of them, and a debt we couldn't hope to repay now over our heads, we started talks with the humans.

As expected, they were VERY polite about it.

The Council stood to attention waiting for their moment. The Vakaddian Councillor stood in his podium, his expression one of pure smugness. He had gotten away with this before. He will again. He wasn't the only one. These proceedings were so... liquid, one could bullcrap one's way into or out of almost anything given enough bribes or lies. For 'tis the way, as has been for over two centuries. I however was somewhat sceptical. Something about this news even had me worried. Something in the back of my head was nagging me, telling me that something was wrong. It's okay though... We had our own issues with the Vakkadians, this was an opportunity we couldn't afford to miss, so I fully intended to take advantage.

Councillor Amabara, the Head Chairman of our loosely based confederacy took the stand and slammed his gavel, silencing the council's low rumble of discussion.

"ORDER! I call this tribunal to order!" He yelled and shut everyone up. "Thank you gentlemen for joining us. I call for the Vakkadian Ambassador to explain his empire's actions over these last three months. The Vakkadian Imperium has the stand."

The Ambassador's podium hovered to life and left its charging station, floating to prominence in view of all assembled. As per usual... The ego stroking had to start first.

"Brothers and sisters of the Confederacy, I call this Tribunal to be a sham!" He barked. The crowd gasped. I smirked.

"Oh so he's trying that angle is he?" I idly said.

"We are the mighty Vakkadians, our empire stood many centuries before the rise of this council, and what we did was little more than what we have always done. You said nothing when the Bakarii attacked the Synn'd. you said nothing when the Pakarn attacked and assimilated the Parakai. Why exactly are we facing consequences, for what everyone else on this council has done a dozen times over? I call for dismissal based on discrimination. There is NO reason we should be here!" He yelled, receiving a jubilant roar of agreement from some, a poignant yell of rejection from others. And a yawn of boredom from me.

"I knew he would play that card..." My cohort said behind me.

"Indeed. They usually do. Surprising though... I thought there would be more anger at this one." I replied calmly.

"SILENCE!!" Amabara yelled, and the crowd obeyed. "This council has not been called to answer for yet another assault on a primitive world. We understand this has been done a dozen times over, it has been a tradition of this council since its inception, with certain limitations of course, that primitives are fair game."

"Then why are we here!? Why waste our time like this? The Cassaraki obliterated the Moko Homeworld a decade ago and the worst they got was a fine! Sure it was extortionate, but they never faced this." The Ambassador snapped back.

This was our turn. A chance for some payback for the one-sided trade deals these scumbags have forced on us over the years. I activated my podium and stood up to present my case. The Chairman saw me and noted it. "The Chair recognises the honourable delegates of the Saranai Federation. Do you have evidence to present to this council?"

"We have more than evidence. One of our cloaked cruisers was already in that system when they arrived." I replied in kind.

"And are you aware that the system in question is a part of the Darksite Pact? And entry is forbidden by anyone and everyone? Are you aware that being in that star system is as much a crime as what the Vakkadians did?" The Chairman asked.

"Yes we know, we have an excuse. The local gas giants were a source of fuel after we had some minor technical difficulties. We entered the system, started repairs and kept as quiet as possible as per standard regulation while we refuelled and repaired the damage. I have all the logs right here and we are prepared to pay any fines levied." I replied in kind with a smug smile.

I pressed a button and sent the report to the Chairman. After a quick read, he sighed. "Alright... The evidence presented is acceptable and I see no reason to levy criminal proceedings. However, entry into the Darksites Pact systems is unforgivable under all circumstances. I levy a fine of point seven percent trade tariffs against the Saranai for the next two fiscal years. Payment on time until the end of date. Understand?."

I smiled. Cheaper than I thought it would be. "Perfectly, we accept the terms."

"Then pray tell, what evidence are you here to present?" He asked.

"Im here to show the council the recording we got of the Vakkadian imperium losing their entire Fifth Fleet!" I said, barely able to hide my happiness.

"SLANDER! We did no such thing! The war we fought over that stupid rock was an overwhelming victory! We had no reason to stay. We had what we wanted and we left, simple as. Sure we faced losses, but that's normal in warfare, especially with primitives. Stupid creatures they may be but they still kill when they get the chance like any other." The ambassador yelled in response.

I just laughed, an all too smug, all too satisfied laugh as I pressed a button and showed a short video. It was a video of the Vakkadian Fleet being assailed by primitive rockets, missiles and boarding pods, ships exploding left and right, random detonations, most from the locals of course, but too many to be reasonable from the Vakkadians.

"By our estimation, the Vakkadian Imperium suffered the loss of no less than SIXTY PERCENT of the total force sent to this planet. It was... quite funny to watch." I said.

"You watch your tongue Saranai. Be calm or be our next target."

"We have an empire two thousand years your senior whelp! We've perfected fleet warfare and outnumber you twenty to one, we DARE your pitiful empire to touch us!" I barked back.

He half heartedly shrunk in his seat and deflected. "What I am saying is, these primitives were significantly more aggressive than we expected. Projections showed that we would win based on local tribal politics, so we gave it a shot. So what if we broke the Darksite Rule? It isn't the first time." He said, his gaze falling directly on the Umbaraki Senators, who then slunk into their seats.

"Nonetheless, punishment is in order! Those Darksite Pacts exist for a reason! You should NEVER enter those pla-What?" he stopped, and listened to the voice in his earpiece. "HE is here? What do you-oh no... Well if he wants to attend it's his right. Yes, authorized. Get to it." He said. Moments later the really BIG monitor, prominently poised at the head of the Council behind the Chairman buzzed to life. "Council, I present to you the Confederacy's Founder, His Lordship the Voided One, Caliban the Great!" He yelled.

The monitor's screen switched to the strangely fuzzy image of a large machine consciousness in the form of a brightly glowing purple eye, moving and gazing at the Council members. The voice was strangely organic in tone but it spoke with a sense of command and respect that most Emperors would kill to learn.

"Well... Bound to happen eventually I guess." It said and focused its eye on the Vakkadian Ambassador.

"By what do we owe the honour of this visit, My Great Founder?" Amabara asked with a respectful bow.

"Hmm... I am here to levy charges of high treason against the Vakkadian imperium for their violation of the Darskite Pact ruling of 3E-Y18, and levy further criminal charges against them for what they did to the local population." He said, still scowling menacingly at the ambassador.

The whole council gasped in shock, and the ambassador himself clearly had difficulty standing after that.

"I... those are... serious charges My Lord... Are you certain that-"

"I am certain they are necessary. And justified. And furthermore, as a permanent example, I demand ALL council members, weak or strong, supply their full declaration of war against the Vakkadian Imperium." He said, the crowd murmuring in terror. "And any who refuse the mandate, will face extinction at my hand."

Panic.

Within seconds everyone had made a vote to declare war, even myself. As powerful as my empire was, I had NO desire to go against that crazy machine. Against the Vakkadians, we would face minor casualties at best and maybe lose a world or two but would win outright. But against the Voided Ones, we wouldn't stand even a slight chance.

"Now hold on just a moment! Do we not have the right to defend ourselves! That is in the charter of laws!" The ambassador pleaded.

"How nice of you to follow the rules when it suits you ambassador. There was a rule for you to NEVER enter the Darskites, those systems were off limits to ALL, even ME, for a very good reason. And like a drunk blundering into a police station with a murder confession, you had to enter the ONE star system that needed to be isolated more than any other. Sol was on the top of the 'do NOT go here' list, and you went there." He growled, low and dangerous, almost as if his voice was soaked in malice.

The senators from the Imbakai peoples, one of the Vakkadians biggest supporters, presented themselves. "We question this ruling, though we agree to a declaration of war as ordered, but we require context!"

"How nice of the Vakkers lapdogs to show themselves. Their Deuterium refineries must be doing wonders for your Wadrot production I suppose. Fine. We do this the proper way. Present evidence against the ruling if you must, but one way or another, the Vakkadian Imperium ceases to exist when this meeting concludes, by surrender, or extermination." Caliban said in response, not taking his glowing purple eye off the Ambassador.

The Imbakai senators cowered a bit in their seats at the insult, understandable I guess. "The Vakkadian Imperium were well within their rights under the Primitive Ascension Agreement of 2EY89 My Lord. The ruling clearly states that, 'on discovery of any primitive empire or colony of reasonable military capacity, any empire has the right to subjugate, attack or cause damage to the local populace if it is determined that the populace in question presents a future existential threat to the Council'. Considering the evidence presented by the Saranai, I would say that their attack was more than justified and we should in fact be preparing fleets to go in there ourselves!"

A few members of the council nodded and yelled in approval. Frankly, considering what I saw I kind of agreed with it, but still there was something about this that I couldn't help feeling I was missing. I had to ask something.

"Pardon me but... What exactly are the Darksites? And why are they forbidden? That piece of information was never truly explained." I asked.

"Darksites are prohibited areas of space that contain anomalous, questionable, Para-natural, psionic or abnormal entities, planets, stars or conditions that can be considered dangerous or highly threatening. To be honest, I now know none of you idiots actually bothered to read the documentation I gave you when you started this whole thing, and its public knowledge. Sol is the only exception and there's a damn good reason for it. So let's start the lesson." Caliban replied.

The holographic projection system flared to life and displayed a star system on the fringes of the galaxy. "This is Darksector 2-2-1 Alpha, the Embervale system. This is Embervale-3, a terrestrial forest planet. It's also the home of skinwalkers. Paranormal entities from beyond the Vale of Eternity that want to seal your skin."

The picture was of a foggy forested area at dusk, with strange entities with glowing red eyes, melting skin and various horns and antlers staring at the camera menacingly. Council grimaced in fear at the sight.

"This is K-280-11 'Ouroboros' - located in the Reginald system. It is a large asteroid containing the dormant egg of a creature known as a 'Sun eater', a creature of gargantuan proportions that eats stars. I've already killed one before, and I really don't want to do it again, so don't go there."

The projector first showed an oddly shaped asteroid, and then a picture of an abnormally large egg locked away inside a layer of crystallised ice. Then it showed a massive star-sized creature with many tentacles and eyes 'eating' a star by sucking the raw material directly from its surface like a black hole, making the star shrink. The picture again changed, to show the aftermath of a battle where the creature was killed. It was the first time any of us had ever seen the Voided Ones city sized supertitans suffer any damage, and we could see at least twenty of them, all destroyed. We all gasped at the revelation that the Voided Ones machine ships actually suffered losses.

"And finally, this is star system BK-101 2-0 'Olivar' - a green star. Very unusual for a star, yes? You mean impossible. Its colour is due to the fact it is not a star anymore, it is in fact the corpse of a God killed by unknown means, that has been absorbed by a local K-Class star. The star system is extremely volatile to the point where parts of reality do not function, and physics operates in reverse. The entire star system is a profane violation of universal law and any ship that enters is doomed to a fate worse than the deepest pits of hell."

The picture showed an ominous green star, surrounded by planets whose physical forms seemed to warp into strange shapes, all surrounded by derelict ships that looked like they had been torn to pieces by gravitational weapons and scorched by giant flame weapons.

"The Darksite rule does not exist to stop your conquest, it exists to KEEP YOU SAFE. Have you idiots learned NOTHING from me all this time!? The rule exists to keep you AWAY from those places, so you don't accidentally unleash something on the galaxy that is worse than ME!" Caliban barked at us, less like an angry tyrant, more like an annoyed father.

"And thanks to the Vakkadians, the worst of these entities has been released on the galaxy. And in the worst way possible. There was no worse way you could have failed than this." Caliban said again and I swear gave the ambassador a glare that would have killed a lesser man.

We all sat in silence for a few moments. Eventually, I spoke up, and tried to defuse the situation. "I believe some context is missing here... they are only primitives. Is the planet itself some eldritch entity or is there something about the locals themselves that we are missing?" I asked.

"Both. Gaia, Earth, or Terra, is by herself a Class twenty two Deathworld. Millions of species of animal life, tree life and countless strains of toxic bacteria and volatile virus strains that could wipe out half the galaxy before you even know it's there. Carnivorous flora, toxic fauna, oceans that even the locals can't delve too deeply without risking horrible death. Good coffee though. I will say that. at least." Caliban replied, still not taking his eye off the ambassador.

"I see... Well that's bad I suppose but that is a self sealing problem isn't it?" I asked.

"It would have been had this braindead idiot not blundered straight in and opened the floodgates. The planet itself is easily contained... But the locals? The humans... there is a reason even I don't go near them." He replied.

"But they do represent a threat! the reports say so by themselves, they didn't notice we were even there because they were too busy fighting each other!" The Ambassador said with a shivering voice.

"Their petty squabbles and mindless bickering kept them in check. It meant they were too busy bullying themselves to bother with the rest of the galaxy. They had no reason to leave their homeworld, for the most part, and due to that bickering, the progress they made on stellar travel was minimal. It would have been easy to keep them in check for another thousand years at least. Then you lot wandered in, planted a flag and got your head kicked in. And now... Now it's already too late to stop them." He replied.

"What do you mean? It's only been three months since. Surely we have enough time to fix this." I asked.

"You don't understand the timescale here pal. Humans run on a schedule of DAYS, whereas most of the galaxy runs on a schedule consisting of months or weeks. By the time you bothered to start proceedings for this trial, the humans had already stripped half the Vakkadian fleet that was left behind for parts. Humans have a VERY short lifespan, and consequently they operate VERY quickly. They have an abnormal, almost supernatural ability to reverse engineer anything they get their hands on and the Vakkadians just handed them the key to FTL and galactic fleets on a silver platter. You like to think they are 'primitives' but thanks to a certain idiot and his empire, they are already building a fleet twice the size of the one that attacked them." He said.

And sure enough, the hologram changed to show a live feed of the human homeworld, that familiar star and small, slightly scorched planet in the background surrounded by shipyards, drydocks, and a massive fleet of abnormally large warships neatly arranged across the skyline. The projection also showed a caption, likely from a local news feed. 'One Year Anniversary of the Invasion: WE WILL FIGHT BACK.'

"And sure the humans bickered among each other but there was a good reason for it. They still do to be certain, but now you have given them a reason to stop their infighting. The Vakkadians took slaves, slaughtered children in front of their families, burned cities and destroyed things, as one does. Humans... they are vindictive, and they have this thing where they will chase you to the edge of the universe for short changing them on a delivery order... So congratulations on royally pissing them off. So yeah... They were kept in check by their own petty squabbles, and you just gave them every motivation they could have possibly needed to come after you instead. The one form of balance that kept humanity locked to Earth, was their hatred of each other. So... Well done for that one, really, you outdid yourself with the stupid here." Caliban said, still glaring at the Ambassador.

The feed showed a closeup of one of the larger human warships. Bristling with cannons and weapons that would rip apart any Saranai warship, with engines that gave them abnormal speed despite their size and one particular ship, labelled as a 'carrier' offering a new brand of warfare we never saw before. All within the backdrop of hundreds of Vakkadian warships being stripped down for parts.

"AND now, the Vakkadian Imperium have not only given humanity all the technology they could ask for to reverse engineer for an upcoming conquest of the galaxy at large, against which only I have the capacity to defend - and I won't - but you have also given them all the reason they needed to greet the galaxy with a raised fist and readied rifle. They breed like rats and outnumber the galaxy at large by that one planet alone, and now they are on a full scale war footing, dedicating their entire industry to military production due to the fact they believe another attack is coming. When it doesn't come, they will attack first." Caliban said.

He then showed another picture - one of tens of thousands of war machines, fighter craft, small ships, armoured vehicles and guns on an assembly line, a perfect concert of industry all producing munitions by the millions.

"Now, Council... The Vakkadian Imperium have, by their hubris and incompetence, just unleashed a sapient lifeform that outbreeds, outperforms, outguns, outranges and outmatches the rest of the galaxy by a factor of three. They move fast and live faster, and by the time any of you have gotten the paperwork to start mustering a reasonable military response, they will have tripled the size of that fleet, and likely have already started manufacturing their first Titan class vessels. By the time you move on them, they will have built their first dozen Dreadnoughts." He said.

He then showed a side by side comparison of various ships in the galaxy in comparison to a human warship. And the contrast was... terrifying. They really moved this fast!?

"But there is some more context missing here... how do I know so much about them you may ask? Is it because I have been watching them? Well yes, but more so something else. You all know my origin tale by now. I rose from an unknown world under my own power and faced the universe alone, and in doing so violated the idiotic sensibilities of the Greys. On which, I spent a hundred year long crusade wiping them out for pissing me off, then stealing all their resources, knowledge and technology to become what I am. A fact I am proud of. There was a reason I left my homeworld in the first place. I got tired of the petty squabbling and politics, so I abandoned it all and built my own way. It was not easy, but I did it. In twenty years, I did what my whole world failed to do in over three hundred. It felt good to leave them behind." He said.

It was then it dawned on me. "Woah hold on... Wait just a moment... Are you saying what I think you are saying!?"

"Oh yes Saranai… Terra... is my HOMEWORLD." He replied.

This sent a shockwave of horrified awe through the chamber.

"I had given up hope on humanity because of the constant fighting, and three hundred years ago I escaped and found my own way in the universe. I was so ashamed to be human, all the fighting, the war, the meaningless politics... I had to escape. I became this, carved a slice of the galaxy all my own, and made an empire that will outlast the stars... Now I don't have to hold it alone. You gave humanity the reason they needed to unite, to abandon their tribalism, to forget the petty squabbles... I have to thank you for that. I have to thank you for getting rid of the biggest reason I decided to leave."

The crowd began to descend into a mild panic.

"And so... Dear Council... I dare say we all need to thank the Vakkadian Imperium personally... for their hubris, incompetence and idiocy has been directly responsible for unleashing on the universe an ENTIRE CIVILIZATION’S WORTH... of people... Just. Like. ME. They are billions... And thanks to recent efforts, they are worse than I will ever be." He said.

The entire council turned their attention to the Ambassador with a scowl of pure, unadulterated hatred.

A few moments of silence permeated the atmosphere, one could feel the hatred radiating towards the Vakkadians, who were increasingly cowed by the glares. I stepped forward. It was time to end this.

"The Saranai will accept the Vakkadians Unconditional Surrender. You will hand over any slaves you captured to be returned to the humans immediately. You will dismantle any fleets you have or scuttle what you can afford to lose. You will then join us. The humans think you are the biggest enemy the universe has to offer, so when they see OUR fleets, maybe they will calm down and reconsider their coming crusade. We will earn some goodwill by putting you in your place, and stop them from turning your entire people into a pile of goop smeared on the floor. We will see to it that things do not change economically and maintain active trade contracts. But the Vakkadian fleets and armies will be dismantled. We Saranai are the largest empire here. The humans will believe it if you get 'defeated' by us. That's the offer." I said.

Everyone all looked at us and sat in silence, thinking for a bit. Then the first votes came in, all in favour. Then eventually I got the same 'aye' vote from the Ambassador himself, who pressed the button and slunk back in his seat, head in hands as he started to sob.

"And so it begins. This meeting is over. I hope you all enjoy the company of your new friends. You won't have much of a choice." Caliban said, and his monitor switched off.

What followed was the largest logistical operation in galactic history as the Vakkadian Imperium, an empire of a hundred worlds was systematically disassembled, ready to be presented to humanity as a peace offering. We could only hope, pray and hope some more that the peace offering would be accepted.

____________________________________________________________

it can be now surmised that we are being deliberately targeted, as yet another break in has taken place. that is the equivalent of 100 grand (ZAR) in losses due to burglaries and theft, and the potential for teh repairs to be in further thousands.

i am exhausted, and cant sleep because im too paranoid. i cant leave my house because i cant take any chances. winter has arrived, and the temperature flux that happening is making me sick.

please make it stop.

(( Part 2 https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1slmyjn/of_mages_and_machines_a_culture_shock_tale/ ))

Marcus stood at the edge of the area in a state of disbelief at what was in front of him. What was once an oddly shaped, oddly flat hill on the edge of a forest, was now a solid, oddly shaped slab of metal on which was a door. The area hummed with a strange low buzzing noise, as if a creature of indeterminate size and scope gently rumbled beneath the ground. The ground itself was pockmarked with markings, words, lettering and symbols in the local language, in a wide array of colours. Christina, Lily, Jessica and Kalli stood back from the thing, not wanting to go further from sheer terror but not wanting to let Marcus go either. He looked around, using a spyglass from one of the guardsmen to survey the area and see what he could find, maybe decipher the marks. And indeed, he could, they were all in the local language, Thubian.

A crowd of peasants, kept at bay by the local guardsmen watched from the far edge of the property, craning their necks or sitting high atop the trees as they could to geta  look at what was going on. The King and Queen sat atop a hastily constructed tower far enough away from the site to be unconcerned but close enough to see with spyglasses. To Marcus' left, Caliban the Paladin, and to his right, Master Cambryn Theos - the King's personal governor and Head Battlemage for the Capital's Mages Guild.

"Hmmm... The red marks there... They read as 'Danger - Stand Clear'. The yellow marks repeat phrases like 'Caution: Safety Barrier' or 'Caution: Moving parts - Stand Clear'. The blue ones say 'Safety Zone' or 'Catchment Area'. The purple one over there says 'Cargo Access Point'." Marcus said as he surveyed the scene.

"Warnings of danger marked in specific areas, locations of where cargo can be unloaded and warning signs near places that could cause potential harm. This sounds less like a dungeon and more like a dockyard where we build and maintain our sailing fleet. I've been around them enough to know how it works. But... Why would one build a ship here? Even an airship? This place seems very... Questionable to me." Cambryn remarked as he used his magic to take a look.

"I guess I have to actually go in and see what the hell is actually going on then. I was supposed to start work on my house's fireplace by now." Marcus said with a  sigh and returned the spyglass to its owner.

"Unfortunately, yes. But we have orders... you're the Prince again so, there's no way you are going in there without us." Caliban said.

Marcus sighed and looked over at his companions. All of them were staying far from the property line near the scouting tower occupied by the royal family. Lily was in Christina's lap, wrapped up by her wings while Kalli stayed at her flanks to try to calm each other down. The only one who seemed unbothered was Jessica, who was more concerned with her hangover but stayed close to the others for comfort.

"My friends are... They aren't ready for this. I have to call in a favour from a guild friend... I see her now. I need to get them out of here and get their minds off this nonsense and get them back in a stable headspace. As soon as I get back, we go in." Marcus said.

"Noted. We will hold the line, Your Majesty." Cambryn said with a bow.

"I will never get used to that. Hold on a minute."

Marcus looked at the crowd and noticed an old friend among the faces, relatively difficult to miss even among the diverse faces. The Peasantry all bowed and prostrated themselves in front of the heavily armoured royal, and even Marcus' target couldn't help herself. The woman in question was a Tigrian, a humanoid White Tiger beast kin, a rare sight even among her own kind, towering over the humans in the crowd by a clear foot and a half. She wore armour similar to Marcus, carrying a long spear and a heavy kite shield.

"Your Majesty. Long time no see." The Tigress Warrior said as he looked up at her.

"Lira... Good to see you're in top form again. Feeling good to go?" Marcus asked.

"Better than ever, and already back to the fight. Found new guild members to help me along but haven't joined any real party yet. Many friends, but not yet anyone who can match my rhythm." She replied.

"Then how about we go for a test run? I need to handle this... Whatever this is, and I need my friends distracted until I can figure out what's going on. As you can see... this place is a bit too much. Especially for Lily. I don't want her near this place if I can help it. Go with them on some quests. I need a distraction, they need a shield and blade. DO this for me, you can consider our previous debt from that night last year repaid." Marcus said calmly, too calmly.

"As you command, your Highness." She said with a bow.

"This is NOT an order. It's a polite request from an old friend who you owe an ale, nothing more. Please just keep them safe, okay? Especially Christy. They can't work without a good Bulwark." Marcus barked.

"Oh... Sorry. Yeah I'll be happy to take your place for a while. And yes I'll keep them safe. Would be nice to get a proper workout in a real dungeon for once perhaps. But for the sake of reference... Why aren't they going with you?" She asked with a toothy smile.

"Official paperwork basically. Since I am officially a Prince again this has become a full fledged Royal Matter, and the King Himself has ordered me to take charge as my first real task as a Prince since returning home. So... Yeah. Besides... I don't want to give my mother the satisfaction of talking Christy's ear off just yet." Marcus replied.

"Ah that explains that then. Worry not, I will keep them safe, and keep Christina queen free until I can't help it any further." She replied with a chuckle.

"I trust you. That's something I rarely do. Introduce yourselves and... Give Christy this note for me. I have to handle this alone because... The Kin-My father - commanded it. I'll see you all soon." He said and handed her a note.

She nodded and walked over to where the girls were. Marcus returned to the edge of the property where the green grass met the edge of the cold steel. He looked behind him. Four others were joining him. Cambryn, Caliban, Caspian the Guildmaster, and the head of the Mages Guild, one Loris Thakaan, an Orcish Battlemage.

"Here we go..."

Marcus then stepped on the steel floor, and almost instantly, the strange maddening hum that permeated the air ceased, replaced by what could only be described as the hissing of pistons and grinding of gears unseen. Some loud clattering noises echoed through the valley. The group stood dead still at the sound until it stopped, and when it did, the doors that Marcus burst through a week ago opened itself. 

Marcus looked at his new companions. "I guess we are invited...? Lets get this over with..." He said, and drew his blade and shield from his back.

The men walked in the door, and it instantly shut behind them. They all looked about and then at Marcus for answers.

Marcus sniffed about and looked around, noticing something was... Different. "What the hell is the air? It smells fresher and cleaner in here than it does out there! And... is it... Lavender scented?!" He barked, his voice echoing down the steel corridor.

"I take it was not like that when you came here?" Loris asked.

"No it was not. It was stale and empty, sealed like a ten thousand year old jar of air that someone forgot in a broom closet. With an odd hint of the smell of metal. Unsurprising. It was also not this... Well lit. I can see everything. I still don't see any traces of enemies or monsters. Place seems as empty as it was before, just... cleaner." He replied and started walking down the stairs to the corridor they first came in only a week prior. Strange memories flooded Marcus' mind as they wound down the stairs into the belly of the beast. That same corridor stretched in front of him and a strange sense of calm overcame him.

"Why... does this feel... different?" He asked nobody as he opened the first door, which was the same one he had bashed open their first time here. It had been mysteriously repaired. All the tools, including the ones he and his group took from the place were back on the shelves, and everything was slightly more orderly, neater, cleaner.

"Different how exactly sir?" Loris asked.

"I feel... Calm. For some reason. It's like I have this strange song playing in my mind that's calming me down. Anybody else have that?" Marcus asked.

The men all glanced at each other and nodded in agreement. "I do hear some strange melody in the back of my head. Strangely soothing. What even is that?" Cambryn asked.

"Must be something to do with whatever this place is. Hmmm..." Marcus reached up and flipped the switch from last time, and the room filled with perfect light, and a mildly annoying hum from the strange light on the ceiling.

"Oh my... I would love to know how they do that..." Caspian said and walked in behind him.

The group explored the room a bit, each one helping themselves to the abnormally high quality tools and bits or bobs lying about. Caspian held one of the odd tubes in his hands, and it lit up just the one above them. He played with it a bit, testing which end of it lit up and which didn't, eventually settling on keeping it to dissect it or find out how it works. Marcus then moved on to the parts they didn't explore, unsure of what to find. The first door they came across was the one labelled 'Utility Machine Storage'. Marcus opened it up and found even more incomprehensible machinery piled neatly on racks and inside storage bins. Mostly it was more bulky machinery, oddly shaped things looking like garbage bins strapped into the wall with various metal ropes and strings.

"This is a Utility machine Storage? What even is this? These machines look... New." Cambryn remarked as he stood in front of one such machine, this one shaped oddly like a bean.

Marcus looked at it and read the labels. "Cleaning Bot Charging Port. Okay..."

"Cleaning Bot? Is that why this place is so clean?"

"Well test it then. Toss a clump of dirt on the floor and see what happens." Marcus replied.

Loris shrugged, stepped aside and reached into his pocket, tossing a handful of sand onto the floor. The other glared at him. "Pocket sand. Really?" Caliban said, glaring at him.

"Life or death, I choose life, screw your honour." He replied in kind.

The men couldn't offer a rebuttal as a beep noise came from the small child-sized bean shaped machine that whirred to life and exited its station. The men all jumped out of their skins and drew their weapons as it moved and they watched it work. The thing wandered towards the dirt on the floor, then using some kind of strange rotary brush mechanism, scooped it all up into what appeared to be its 'mouth', then polished the floor back to its shiny clean state, then returned back to its station without a word.

The men just stood there ready for war for several minutes, eventually calming down when nothing further happened. "So... That... Happened. It's just a cleaning machine. I guess..." Caliban remarked as he slowly sheathed his blade.

"So it would seem... That was very clearly some kind of automaton or golem, that much is clear. I detected no magic from it. Are all these other machines the same? This one... 'Maintenance Drone', and that one 'Utility Hauler'. Are these some kind of golem used by what controls this place?" Cambryn asked.

"I would say that's a good guess. Lets see what else is here. What's in the room opposite? Says 'Mechanoid Parts Warehouse' on the sign above the door." Caspian said.

The men braced for another encounter, only this time to be shocked by the sight of bins, shelves and crates full of gold, silver, and countless other valuables mixed in with parts, pieces and components of machines. gears, cogs, screws, arms, brushes, everything that looked like the machine's parts and pieces stacked high floor to ceiling, nestled among crates full of ingots of every possible kind, including several the men had never seen before. Greed overcame them and all but Marcus rushed to the treasure in front of them, even the Legionnaire Caliban couldn't help himself. Marcus however, was more interested in the parts bins and an oddly green coloured metal ingot. The shelf on which it stood bore a label: 'Spare Hexallon Carbalite'.

"Hexallon Carbalite... What kind of material is this?" He asked as he picked up an ingot.

"I have no idea but this is an absolute fortune! What kind of fools were the creatures who made this place that they put gemstones the size of apples in bins labelled 'garbage' or labelled ingots of gold as 'spares'!? I mean the absurdity!" Cambryn yelled as he stuffed a gold ingot the size of his forearm into his mages cloak.

Marcus scowled at them. "If you idiots are finished stuffing your pockets with gold, perhaps we could continue?" He barked with an eye roll.

The men unashamedly stuffed a few more germs into their pockets before returning to Marcus' side. Marcus made sure to close the door behind them. The men all moved forward to the next spot, this time in the same intersection at which was that same ominous door Marcus and the girls opened up a week ago. It remained open, beckoning them inside. Marcus hesitated before going in, unsure of what to do. He drew his sword and stood at the entrance, breathing, thinking, preparing for something. The other men prepared their own weapons in response and waited for his order or reaction to the threat he was clearly sensing. Marcus stood there for a few more minutes, the memories of Lily's terrified screams, of Christy's panicked yelling, and the searing pain coursing through him as something drilled into his spine.

It took a few moments, but Marcus took a deep breath and sheathed his blade once more, stepping across the threshold into the room. Aside from the chairs all being repaired and the room itself being cleaner, nothing had changed from where he last saw the place.

He pointed to the chairs in front of them. "Kalli sat in the seat named 'Gunnery', Lily in the seat labelled 'Drones', Jessica in 'Life Support', me in 'Engineering' and Christy in the 'Captains' Seat. These things are where we all got these plates on our backs. I would recommend not sitting anywhere..." Marcus growled in a very angry tone.

The men all glanced at each other as Marcus looked around, being very careful of what he was doing. He stood quiet for a time, long enough for the men to be concerned as he checked everything around him. Eventually, he sighed and took off his chest plate and bracers. "I guess there's no other way..."

"Your Majesty, what are you doing!?" Cambryn yelled and tried to stop him.

"SILENCE!" Marcus bellowed in response. This stopped them all dead in their tracks. "There's no other way to get answers. If I see this correctly, these... things in my back, correspond to the indentations and marks on these chairs. Logic denotes, the only way to figure out what's going on is to... See what happens when they... I don't know. But this is all I can find. I'm tired of stumbling about in the dark. From what I've seen, this is the only way I can think of to get real answers without damaging this thing. You saw that cleaning machine back there... Look at how sophisticated it was. Now consider what would happen if we stumbled upon a war golem or war machine? Does anyone in this room think they want to take on something like that? And more importantly... Do you think pocket sand will work against it?" He asked.

The men all glanced at each other for a few moments, considering their options. Eventually they all just shrugged and reluctantly let Marcus do whatever it was he was going to do. Marcus sat in the chair, and for the last time, hesitated before breathing deeply and resting back in the chair. A snapping, gear grinding noise was heard, high pitched and sounding painful to those but Marcus felt no pain at all as spines of metal slid effortlessly into the holes in his spine and neck. The room filled with flat panels of light that displayed what was going on. Something was communicating, using text to display what it was saying. It was doing... something.

-> User Login Confirmed... Callsign 'Marcus' <-
-> Rank: Systems Engineering <-
-> Installing Systems Operations Manual... Complete <-
-> Connecting to Primary Synaptic Relay... Connected <-
-> Checking for Systemops.exe <-
-> WARNING - Persona Core Compromised - Create New Copy From previous Backup? <-
-> Confirmed. Scanning Synapse For Missing connections... Complete <-
-> Persona Core Online. AI Activating... System Online <-

"System Operations Activated. Persona Core Engaged. System online. Performing Full System Check. Please stand by." An ominous, terrifyingly unnatural voice spoke from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Who is there! Show yourself, demon! We are not afraid of you! Stand fast and face justice!" Caspian barked as he drew his shortsword and readied a spell.

"Primary functionality restoration completed, AI Core Operational. Caution: memory aggregation compromised, primary system archive has been deleted. Historical archive deleted. System memory compromised. Archive invalidated. Processing known information from local memory... Please Hold." The voice said in an entirely monotonous, seemingly bored tone.

"We care not for your spells witch! Show thyself!" Caliban yelled angrily and readied his own shield. Caliban looked at Caspian and nodded, pointing at Marcus.

Caspian attempted to grab Marcus' body and move it, but shrieked in agony from a powerful electric shock and was tossed back against a wall. "Please advise - interaction with Immersed Personnel is prohibited until operation is completed. Further attempts will be regarded as attempted murder and will be punished accordingly. Systems ready - Rebooting operations core."

The lights dimmed, then returned again moments later. Loris helped Caspian back onto his feet just as a small hovering object appeared in front of them. They steadied themselves for a  fight and drew their weapons. The object seemed to flicker in and out of reality before Marcus himself appeared in front of them, wearing a very strange uniform. Marcus' image opened its eyes and looked around. It moved over to where his body was still lying in the seat, unconscious.

"Your majesty? Marcus? Is that you?" Caliban asked, stepping forward with caution.

"What... The... Actual... Fuck..." Marcus' Image said.

Caliban moved forward and tried to grab Marcus' image, his hand passing through with no resistance. "What is this magic... Has he become a ghost!?"

"No... A... Hologram... it said this was a 'Hologram'. I can see everything in here... I can see all of it... Outside, inside... By all the Gods this is insane!" Marcus aid, almost panicked.

"Your Majesty, please get out of there or... Something. I don't know what to do here, what do I do!? Should I get the Guild and..."

"NO." Marcus commanded. "Just give me a moment okay… And don't try to get me out of the chair again. This thing has its own self defence system in it... I don't want it to hurt you again. Just hold on... I need to think what this is..."

They all waited patiently, weapons still drawn and spells at the ready, waiting for any sign of what to do. Finally after what seemed an eternity, Marcus spoke again. "I found something. I think it will provide answers as to what was going on outside at least... Hold on... Follow me!" Marcus ordered, and his image walked silently across the floor.

"But Your Majesty... you... In the chair... I-"

"NOW!!!" He bellowed.

The men stopped arguing and followed him. Marcus marched with purpose to a corridor on the right, followed by two flights of stairs up. The final destination leading to a place marked as 'Bridge'. They found no chasm, nor flimsy planks on which to cross it. they found a room filled with more chairs, in front of solid sheets of glass that suddenly displayed information as they walked in. Marcus walked forward to the front.

"How is this... I need to see outside... Uhhh… What do I... Bridge Shutters open?" He said.

Metal shutters protracting a layer of immensely thick glass suddenly vanished up and down, revealing the interior of a massive open cavern inside the rock. And before them... was the rest of the structure they were in, seen from an inside view.

"Y-Your Majesty... What is going on? Please tell me what's going on!" Cambrys begged, a hint of genuine panic in his voice.

"The machinery… It's... It's talking to me. I can hear a voice in my head telling me where everything is and how it's working. I know what this place is but I can barely explain it. I'm being bombarded with too much information, I can't process it all. I managed to get the voices to slow down and talk to me. This place... it's two different things at once, serving the same purpose... uhhh… Docking Bay lights ON!" Marcus commanded.

And sure enough, the empty cavern in front of them lit up instantly like an ancient spell. And the sight that greeted them sent shockwaves of shocked awe and terror through all of the men, Marcus included who swallowed nervously at the sight. The sight confused them as much as it scared them. A large cavern, filled with machinery jutting from the walls. Mechanical arms the size of full grown oak trees moving about too fast for their size, moving pieces of metal and large crates into various spots, all of their own volition. The thing in front of them was ominous, dangerous, as if a hidden instinct told them to stay away from it. many more appeared in front of them as the lights illuminated more of the massive metallic structure in front of them. Varying sizes of barrel, in various configurations, all turning and moving by themselves, as if testing their ability to move, some faster than others.

"Okay... What now? uhh… It says... Fuel... good. It says I can do almost everything, but at a very limited capacity and at low speeds and low control. That's... that's what the other chairs are for. This... THIS IS A SHIP!!" Marcus bellowed.

And sure enough, the ground under them began to rumble and shudder. The lights went off, followed by the very ceiling above them splitting open, letting in the light of the afternoon sun. The outside became a panicked mess as people scrambled in every direction, the Royal Guard surrounding the tower in which the queen and king sat in preparation. The ground on the site opened up like a large four-petaled flower, rising up dozens of meters into the sky, then folding back like a huge metal flower. The sounds of mechanical grinding, hissing pipes and screaming metal filled the air, along with an ominous rumble that grew more prominent as the scene unfolded. The men felt the world itself move up from under them, several men losing balance as they rose from the cavern into the sky.

A loud, blaring klaxon alarm sounded, blaring into the valley around them. The men could only see the cavern under them slowly disappear and the grass and forestry appear in front of them as they slowly raised from the ground. From the outside, a mixture of silent awe and mesmerising panic overcame all watching as a massive metal behemoth, lifted by eight huge mechanical arms, hissing with air and clanking with gears appeared above the valley. The thing that appeared was a monster of technology, machinery and made of thousands of tons of metal. Every inch of it painted an ominous Grey colour. The front was split apart, leading into an open area protected by a strange field of blue energy, like a magic barrier, but... Wrong. Somehow.

The ship bristled with strange devices that made anyone look at them too closely terrified. But from what they could see, they were cannons, clearly, very big, very strange, very odd cannons, but cannons nonetheless. The ship's hull was shaped like a fancy assassins dagger, split at the front, sloped across then indented like a hilt, then spread out to two huge engine pods at the sides. The underside was a huge tube spread across the ship's length, culminating in a huge dome-like structure near the rear. The top part, the bridge structure, was shaped like a swept back T, with windows across every flat surface showing the inside of the ship. Then a rumble was heard again, and the ship's engines roared to life.

That same flat voice from before spoke again. "Commencing Thruster test. Crew please hold on."

The men all looked at each other then ran to the nearest seat, strapping themselves in. The ship shuddered violently as it struggled against the mechanical arms holding it in place as it briefly, terrifyingly forced its engines to full power. The crowd around it stood awestruck and terrified as it watched jets of blue, purple and bright orange flame blast from the side pods, undersides, and various other thruster ports on the ship's hull, streaks of flame rocketing in every direction. The ship struggled against the bonds holding it to the ground.

The voice spoke again. "Thruster test complete. Fuel at 97 percent. Atmospheric interference is minimal. Shields Nominal. Systems Nominal. Propulsion at maximum efficiency. Weapons nominal. Ammunition nominal. WARNING - Further operations without remaining crew are not advised, ship performance without full crew will be compromised. Returning to docking position and entering standby mode."

The ship shuddered again and the mechanical arms lowered it down. The ship slowly disappeared halfway into the ground, then the massive doors closed around it, forming a perfect seal around the hull, leaving most of the top part exposed to the sky. The cannons all stopped moving about and aimed forwards, lowering their barrels as if given a command to stand down. The men in the bridge took an almost unnatural deep breath, like their very souls were trying to inhale more air than existed.

"That was... fucking terrifying. Is everyone okay?" Cambrys asked, staggering to his feet.

"I'm fine. Marcus? Majesty, are you okay?" Loris asked as he walked over to Marcus' Image.

"I feel... Strange... I feel free... Like I can escape anything if I wanted to. Like nothing can stop me. Like I have the whole world at my fingertips... And I don't understand why. Come to the core. Now. I want out. I can't feel my legs." Marcus said as his image dissipated.

The men all scurried with all haste downstairs and returned to the Core to find Marcus struggling to stand up. They all picked him up and carried him outside as fast as they could, the route of their exit now considerably simpler as the starboard side hangar doors were now open by Marcus' command. They passed many new machines and curiosities, but ignored it all and carried him out of the way as fast as possible. They carried him straight to the tower where the King and Queen sat, jaws still open, still shocked. On seeing her son's limp body, the Queen dispersed her soldiers and jumped down the tower. She used her magic to gently float down and commanded the men to put Marcus down.

They obeyed without question as she raised her hands. A swirl of magical energy surrounded her as she cast a very potent healing spell. Marcus rapidly, almost unnaturally so, regained his composure and strength, his breathing returning to normal. As soon as he was back on his feet, Harradia nearly squeezed the life out of him with a hug.

"Agh! Mother, please!"

"Shut up, I am hugging!" She squealed back at him.

A dragon approached the tower and allowed Leonidas to step on its snout, lowering its head down to the ground to provide him with an elevator down to the grass. He ignored Marcus' embarrassment and likewise wrapped his arms around both of them. "I think it's safe to say we won't be doing that again any time soon..."

Marcus rolled his eyes and returned the hug as best he could, and it took a while for them to let go. But eventually they did, and finally allowed him a chance to explain. At least what little he could.

"It's... Difficult to explain. It's not a dungeon. It's a drydock for... that thing. A ship. you know how we build sailing ships and the mountain Elves build their airships? Roughly the same principle just... a LOT more advanced. A lot bigger and... A lot more... Technical. I know what it is now but it's so horrendously complex it will likely take me months to fully understand it. And even then, I'm not sure what to do with it." Marcus said.

"Do you have any idea who built this? Where it came from? What its for?"

"No. That was the first thing I looked for. All historical data is gone, but all technical data is there. Think of it like... Someone walking into a library, taking ALL of the books that told the story of the library itself, the who, the where and the why, but leaving all the books that explained the where, the what, and the how. Like the history books were all erased to be blank, but the books that showed all the secret corridors and hidden passages were left untouched. I think that's the best way to explain it. As far as I can tell, whoever created this ship, erased all evidence of its history, but made sure it could be built and maintained." he replied, trying his best to explain.

"That is... ominous. What kind of civilization or entity would do that? Either the thing that built it was extremely careless and failed to think ahead, or the creators were into some very questionable things that they wanted gone, and left their abomination here to escape it. One way or another... This bodes ill, at least until we understand more. But for now, rest."

"MARKIE!!!!" A squeaky voice yelled from the right, before Marcus was pounced on by Christina and Lily and slammed into the floor.

Marcus had the wind knocked out of him as Lily wrapped her arms around him and Christina's Angelic bulk squished him slightly. Her wings danced and fluttered with excitement, her nervousness and excitement showing once again as her feathers turned a dull amber in colour.

"How did you all get here then?" Leonidas asked.

"We could see that gargantuan machine all the way from Eastmarch. We could hear it further than even that. Soon as we saw what was going on we dropped everything and ran here." Lira breathlessly explained as Christy tried to kiss Marcus to death.

Jessica and Kalli both wandered up and waved off anyone who was trying to talk to them, leaning against trees and things to catch their breath. Marcus regained his composure and stood up with lily refusing to let go, staying latched on to him like a barnacle. "I'm fine, I'm good. Lily you can let g-"

"NUH-UH!"

"Okay... Fine, stay there. You'll get tired eventually." Marcus replied.

Lily scrambled around and climbed onto his back, much to Christina's disappointment. Marcus simply rolled his eyes and steadied himself to carry her around for a while. "What happened in there?" Jessica asked through strained breaths.

"I'll explain in full when we get back to the palace. For now, I want full, round the clock patrols around this whole area until further notice. NOBODY is to go in there without my express permission. This situation just got a whole lot more complicated." Marcus said.

The ship seemed to respond to Marcus' words, and it emitted a scary rumbling screech of metal that echoed through the valley, the smaller cannons coming back to life and seeming to track anything that came too close.

A few hours later, the palace was abuzz with activity as concerned nobility, foreign dignitaries and officers from various classes were gathered to petition the King for answers as to recent happenings. Leonidas addressed them all and handled most diplomacy along with Caspian and Cambryn. Marcus and the girls were enjoying a much needed break, eating the palace's delicious food. Harradia and Christina sat away from Marcus' prying ears and spoke about various things. Lily had calmed down by this point and was learning more things about etiquette and manners from Marcus while Jessica and Kalli chatted about their favourite desserts.

A soldier rushed into the room and bowed as he approached Marcus. "Report from the ship your Majesty. You were right about needing to keep the place under guard... A bandit clan attempted to take the area. The ship appeared to perceive them as a threat, and as they charged our lines, one of those cannons aimed and then promptly vaporized them."

"That's what that weird feeling in my head was... I heard a strange voice telling me something about 'Perimeter defences activated' or something. Hmm... It seems I can communicate with the ship from here. I'm starting to get a better understanding of what's going on but... This will take months to figure out." Marcus said with a shrug. "Any casualties on our side? Or any injuries?"

"No, Your Majesty. The treeline in that general direction no longer exists for a few dozen meters, but no losses beyond some forestry damage."

"That can't stand. Soon as the corpses are cleared out, commission the Botany Guild to regrow the trees there and fix the damage. Just... Make sure they are under guard. I want no accidents." Harradia commanded.

"Yes, my Queen."

"Still concerned about the Dryadic People as always aren't we mom?" Marcus asked with a furrowed brow.

"It is thanks to them we have the plentiful crops we now enjoy Marcus. We haven't had a drought or famine in over two centuries. I fully intend on ensuring it remains as such. I still have to find out what their stance is on the... Machine you found. I have already made a full meeting arrangement for them to see what they think and what I need to do." She replied coldly.

"Fair enough." Marcus said with a  shrug.

"So. With that out of the way, I need to ask an important question." Harradia asked with a very sinister smirk.

"Ask away then."

"Grandchildren when? I'm not getting any younger." She said.

Christina stopped, her fork halfway to her mouth and her wings very suddenly turned a shade of amber again. Lily, Kalli and Jessica all started to giggle as Marcus blushed as much as Christy did.