u/KipperBeanGrower

“No insult cuts deeper than theft beneath one’s own roof.”

Lord of the Keep's words to his court.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

Two of the men were of Davy’s build, about his height, maybe a little heavier. Identical leather jackets over the same plain shirts. They were worn but carefully mended, stitched-up rips, old cuts, even arrow holes, all signs of a hard-fought life. They were most likely twins.

The third was a small woman wearing a purple outer robe, the hood thrown back revealing a pale white face framed by a shock of red hair. Fabric flowing down her shoulders pooled at her feet; revealing nothing of what lay within. The cloak was pinched at the neck with stitched leather straps and held by an elegant copper clasp. The icon at its centre was vaguely familiar to Davy; a flame, rising upward and tapering into curling shadows that roiled as if alive. She turned and the clasp caught the light, its flaming edges standing out, bright and powerful against the hollow centre, which was all-consuming, a darkness beyond black.

The last man was a massive slab of muscle, a giant. Half as tall again as Davy and twice as broad. He wore a patchwork of thick, tattered hides, some fur in, some fur out. They were stitched together with crude but sturdy seams. The leather, like his arms, bore the scars of old battles; scorches, deep cuts, and dried blood that had long since darkened. His feet were bare, thick-skinned and calloused, as though no boot could contain them. Such was his size and proportions that the restraints at his ankles were thick loops of chain, more a suggestion of restraint than a true hold.

There was a shrill whistle; the hound immediately sat and turned to look back to where the sound had come from.

“Good girl. Well done Whisper,” said Burford as he walked past the prisoners. The dog leaned into his touch, enjoying the scratch behind its ears, tail wagging. 

He stopped at the cell door, spoke words that Davy’s decoder failed to grasp, and made some gestures around the lock. The cell door shuddered and swung open, its rusted hinges shrieking like a wounded beast.

“He has magic, I reckon,” muttered Davy. “Rebecca would have liked that,” the thought caused his mind to linger on his Rebecca’s. He missed them.

“In you lot go, git going. Come on, move, move. I’ve a weddin’ proposal to git ready for.”

While the jailer was distracted, Davy discretely looped iron links around his ankle and wrapped the end inside his boot. 

It was only when he stepped back from the door that the jailer acknowledged Davy, as if for the first time.

“Well I never. What have you been up to?” he asked, before continuing, “Well, lucky for you… we have room. I’m in a bit of a rush.” He followed the four into the cell and pulled the door closed with an audible clunk. “I’ve got me a proposal of marriage to make.”

Once the door was shut and locked, Whisper laid down and took to staring at Davy again. 

“Me names Burford, Burford Turnkey,” he said to the newcomers.  His uniform was old, had multiple patches and repairs but more from wear and tear than any action. His hair was clean, his shoes and hands clean. He projected the image of an honest man, clumsy but dedicated to his work. 

He kept up his incessant chat, frequently repeating himself, as he removed the manacles and chained the four to iron rings in the wall. “This place ain’t like it used to be. Not when my da’ was in charge. Sometimes he’d bring me with ‘im to work, as a treat. Even let me brush the floors. Whisper’s ma was here then.” 

Upon hearing her name, the hound’s tail swept back and forth across the floor. 

Burford turned to Davy, “So, you’re with these ‘ere thieves.” It was a statement.

“We’re not thieves.” Responded the small woman who was gesturing and muttering, getting very frustrated.

“Give it up Veyla. There’s some sort of magic blocking you.”

“Yeh, well…” She didn’t finish the sentence but shifted her attention to Davy. “So, what’s your story?”

“I ain’t got no story. Not here anyways.”

“Everyone’s got a story,” said one of the twins. “I’m Edran and he’s Joren,” pointing to the other who nodded.

Sitting next to each other they looked identical but for a nasty scar across Edran’s cheek. “The big guy is Kaelor.” 

Before Davy could say anything, Kaelor pointed a thick finger at him and spoke, his voice reverberating from deep within his chest, “Don’t know you and don’t trust you.”

“It’s mutual,” replied Davy, holding the big man’s gaze. “I’m Davy.”

He grunted; it was all the response he would give.

Burford moved between them and finished off putting chains on their ankles. 

“So, if everyone’s got a story, what’s yours,” asked Davy, looking at the others in turn, hoping for an answer.

Edran responded, the talker in the group. “We’re not really sure but seems like we’re being blamed for stealing some stuff.”

“And?” asked Davy.

“And. It wasn’t us.”

Burford laughed. “That’s not what I ‘eard. The Lord’s furious; not just about the stolen goods, but the guards gettin’ killed. They was supposed to be part of the pageant.”

He finished binding the last of the group and turned back to the door. As he did, a second hound padded down the side of the cell, a head taller than the female. Seeing the other hound, Whisper got up, they nuzzled through the bars, growled and mouthed each other. 

Burford called out to it, “Murmur, you ‘ere alone or with the Lord?”

The dog gruffed and looked back to where it had come from. It was a strange bark, not the deep bass you’d expect from a big dog but more a muted cough or … a murmur.

The cell rang out as the Lord dragged his fingers across the bars, looking at the prisoners. He rubbed Murmur aggressively behind the ears as he reached the cell door. Torchlight flickered un-naturally across his iridescent coat making it shimmer blue, like an earthryl beetle. Despite its fine tailoring, it couldn’t quite disguise a body softened by indulgence. He gestured at the door, a complex fluttering of fingers from one hand, muttered some words and waited as the cell door opened, allowing him access.

Murmur went in first and sat between those chained to the wall and the door. 

“Good boy,” said the Lord stepping into the cell, counting the occupants. He paced, scanning them as they sat against the wall.

“Five? I was told four.” A confused look flit briefly across his face.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

Those first brave steps along the continuum of shadows through Penumbra and out of the umbra takes courage. But what awaits us in the light?

From “Questions” by The Keeper

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

Darkness surrounded Davy; not the chaos of a firing squad, but something confined, silent, and absolute. His ears were ringing, and his body was alight with pain.  

He forced himself upright, but his legs wavered, and his head spun. He clutched at his wounds and fell back to the ground. The heat of day, and smell of gunpowder were still strong as the realisation struck. He wasn’t in his cave, and he certainly wasn’t at the Alamo, probably not even in the valley. 

“Not again?” he thought, and shook his head, instantly regretted it. His stomach stirred as if he was going to vomit, and there was a dull ache behind his eyes. He fiddled with the coin, tied at his wrist; reassured by its presence.

“At least I’m alive”, he muttered, that much was clear. “But where?”

The space around him was filled with darkness. No comforting scent that pervaded his cave, no welcoming motes, no warmth from the valley’s air. He leaned back and felt rough-hewn stone press through his shirt, damp and cold. The other three sides of the room were nothing more than thick, rusted iron bars. “Not a room, more a prison then.” 

It was oppressive.

Even the walls wept.

Those were Davy’s first impressions of the jail; damp stone slick with condensation. Nothing down here could have been dry for ages. And the flickering lanterns did little but push back the shadows.

This place had been carved by old hands, craftsmen’s hands. It hadn’t been crafted as a place of punishment, not originally. The arches in which the cells had been built were too good, too symmetrical. There was a reverence to the stones that had rotted over time into something else, something worse.

The echo of keys clinking broke the quiet. Boots followed; measured and heavy. A door grated open, and a pool of lamplight stretched across the floor like a strip of yellow carpet.

Burford, jailor of the keep, stepped into view. Lantern in one hand, his bulk filling the corridor. The man was of medium build; rotund if one was being kind; no adornments and just a dagger at his waist. He had a fat ruddy face that exuded warmth, an unusual trait for a jailer. The kind of man that didn’t just work the jail but was a part of it.

Davy didn’t rise. Just rubbed at the knot behind his eyes which he kept on the man.

Burford lowered himself onto a bench, outside the jail, and opposite Davy, grunting as he did. “You sure have a nerve, stealing the Lord’s stuff like you did and then coming here. You’ll get you dues; we’ll make sure of that.”

He smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. "Still. You’ll like this; I’m getting married next week.”

Davy raised an eyebrow. “To one of the guards?”

Burford snorted. “Jodie. Merchant’s daughter. Cooks a fine meal and has soft hands. When she smiles it cuts through you, makes you want to smile back.”

Davy grunted. “Sounds romantic.”

“She is,” Burford said, tone shifting. “She’s real, y’know? Not one of those pretty made-up girls but real.” He stopped, thinking. 

“Real like the sun through chapel glass before the… before it cracked. And the screaming started and…”

He froze mid-sentence.

Davy took a deep breath and waited.

Burford continued for a second or two, his mouth working but no words came out. His left hand twitched as if his funny bone was alive. 

Then, in a voice lower and wrong, he started muttering:

“Tuor maya… hush now… the nave burns slow…Shhhh Shh it watches from beyond the Veil.”

After a long blink. He shook himself, like a man waking from a nightmare.

“Apologies,” he said, then suddenly, his voice louder, “These walls got echoes in ’em. Been working here far too long without light.”

Davy said nothing, but he got goose bumps and the hairs on his arm stood up.

Burford raised himself off the bench and paced, idly running his hand across the bars of the cell.

“This place…” he said, tone suddenly lighter, “wasn’t always a cage. Used to be a sanctuary. A holy keep full of Templars or monks, or whatever name they gave themselves. There was lots of chanting, praying and all that SolDiri stuff. Claimed they were guarding something; guarding us, even.”

He scoffed and spat into the gutter. 

“Then the fires came and burned ’em out like rats in a barn. The temples collapsed and fell into the sewers down ‘ere. And sewage flowed through their chapel and crypt; a river of shit like the rubbish they spouted. 

“Now look at it, a jail. Put to a practical use, at last.”

After a moment, Davy spoke. “Judgment comes in many shapes.”

Burford turned. For just a moment, the lantern caught his face wrong, casting it in red.

“Don’t go spouting zealot talk down here,” he warned, his voice low and flat. “The walls remember.”

Then, after a few moments of silence he softened. 

“Jodie don’t mind me doing this job. Says I keep the rot in its place. Says it keeps me grounded in the present.” He paused. “Keeps me real, but she don’t know it all.” He winked.

Then the words stuck again. This time Davy sensed it, rather than saw it; a shimmer like fire burning beneath the surface. Here for a moment then gone.

Above, the sound of doors opened and then the sound of feet echoed faintly down the stairs off to one side.

“They’re bringing the others,” Burford muttered, more to himself. “Best straighten up. You’re about to meet the rest of your story.”

He was chuckling, turned without another word and disappeared into the shadows as if he’d never been there.

Davy sat alone again, save for the drip of water. Then he caught the smell. “Had the valley always been so fresh?” Or had his senses sharpened in ways he hadn’t noticed until now?

This air carried a pungent mix of damp stone, and stale confinement. It was thick with the creeping scent of mould and the musk of unwashed bodies. A single burning torch sat amongst the sconces flickering with an unknown source. Mixed in with it all was the faint, sour tang of rotting straw that rose from the floor like the memory of something left to decay. 

Davy heard a key turn, then a door open, and a gust of air that blew across the cell from the single barred window high in the wall. It carried the scent of the world beyond; of damp earth and the distinctive smell that came with lightning.

As if on cue the window lit up, a flash cut through the darkness in the cell, leaving deep shadows and an after image burned into Davy’s eyes and surrounds. A dull crack of thunder followed, almost disconnected given the lag.

Four prisoners shuffled down the length of the bars and stopped at the cell door. Their manacled ankles jangled as they jostled, waiting to get into the locked cell. A massive white hound flanked them, keeping close. It turned and fixed its pink albino eyes on Davy, slow and deliberate. He shuddered; the look carried a level of intelligence at odds with the slobbering maw of fangs. It was assessing him.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

"The pendulum of time moves forward and back, and as it swings, histories are written, unwritten and rewritten."

Veyzith, SolDiri Keeper of Histories

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]  

The Crucible flinched, pulled back. Not physically but structurally as if it had taken a deep breath in.

 

Chen saw it immediately.

A discontinuity in the convergence map, gaps not caused by the Kestrel, but by something external disrupting the logic that had been building, holding the alignment across layers.

 

Rockson, tapped his console, “That wasn’t me, wasn't us.”

 

Feebee knew that already and said in a quiet voice, “No. That was elsewhere.”

 

Outside The Kestrel, the motes reacted instantly. Not as individuals but as a collective memory, distributed and spreading recognition. A ripple of bright awareness that flowed through them, not as fear but as an adjustment, a correction. It didn't flow in an ordered pattern but stuttered across them, as if finding its way, recounting memories as detours; moving in directions they had not accounted for. 

 

Chen frowned, looked at Feebee. “What just happened?”

Feebee’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Something broke, altered patterns, not all of it, bits” she said. "Forcing it to adjust."

 

Outside the hull, the Crucible's geometry loosened for a moment. Flow lines widened, but not through weakness. They had been interrupted.

 

And in that interruption, the Beast’s coherence lost precision.

 

Ithuris didn't retreat; didn't attack.

He stabilised himself differently. Found a different way.

As though adjusting the weight in the system, moving, removing; throwing it overboard because the load supporting assumptions had failed.

 

Feebee felt him clearly now. Not as a presence, she felt the adjustment.

 

“He’s not trying to escape, not yet,” she said softly.

Rockson frowned. “Yet?”

Feebee nodded once.

“He’s still pulling the conditions together so it can happen.”

 

Garaf was off to the side, watching.

The Alphas stood quietly behind her. Their stillness no longer ritual.

No longer a chore or discipline, but contribution. An anchor point embedded into The Kestrel’s interaction with the Crucible itself.

 

Chen saw a sudden discontinuity race across the model. Lines shifted, nodes fell away only to reform elsewhere, elsewhen.  "What just happened?"

He reset the model. It returned the same result.

 

Feebee did not take her eyes off the structure ahead.

“It removed one of the Beast's stable histories,” she said. “One of the places it could reach through, where certainty had already been written into reality. A place it had shaped over time.”

Garaf’s voice was low.

“And the change weakens it… without ever confronting it directly?”

Feebee nodded.

“That’s all anyone can ever touch," she said. "The influence. The pressure it leaves behind.”

 

Everyone was quiet, it settled across the compartment.

 

Then Chen asked the question that others had been thinking.

“How many of those places are there?”

 

Feebee hesitated; the smallest of pauses, for the first time.

 

“Too many,” she said quietly. “Spread through time and space. Where ever he can reach and influence, until they start collapsing into each other and become stable histories.”

 

The motes brightened again and with it Feebee felt... not relief but release. The feeling was unclear, ambiguous. Worrying.

 

Across the Crucible, across time, across the layered fracture system they pushed against, something was beginning to fail in coordination.

 

Not the prison.

Not the Beast.

 

But the assumption that both could remain perfectly aligned forever.

 

And for the first time since containment began Ithuris was no longer the only one shaping the system.

 

 

The convergence no longer behaved like a prison under strain and Feebee felt it.

Felt it start to move.

"The lock. It's turning," she said.

 

Ahead of them, The Crucible’s geometry folded inward around the Kestrel in vast harmonic layers that no longer felt chaotic. The instability that had once obscured or distorted everything was disappearing, loosing form.

Not collapsing, but settling into coherence.

 

That frightened Chen more than the pressure ever had, because now the structure made sense.

And if it made sense, then something inside it was succeeding. That scared him. He fiddled with the model. Feebee crossed and rested a hand on his arm. He looked up at her. Before he could speak she just shook her head and let the hint of a smile reach the edges of her mouth. He cocked his head, unsure how to read that smile, what to read into it.

 

But the motes surrounding the ship brightened in response, thousands of them now visible through the layered distortions. Blues and greens dominated, with scattered purple and rare flashes of red threading through the latticework like warning embers.

 

Not random. Holding positions. Assignments.

 

An ancient watch reorganising itself.

 

Feebee stood unmoving while The Kestrel drifted deeper into alignment. Her breathing remained calm. Her thoughts no longer raced but radiated peace, calm.

 

She understood now why the SolDiri had feared certainty more than chaos.

 

Chaos could still choose.

 

Certainty removed choice entirely.

 

And Ithuris sought a perfect reality where all possible outcomes eventually collapsed toward a single elevated state. No suffering. No decay. No death.

 

No agency. No choice.

 

Behind her, the Alphas remained steady. They no longer breathed in formal cadence, but their discipline remained intact, embedded in them. Their stillness had become structural; a necessary part of the harmonic balance surrounding the ship.

 

Garaf's voice broke through the quiet.

“It's close.”

 

Feebee nodded once.

“Yes.”

 

Chen looked up sharply from the model.

“How close?”

 

Feebee answered honestly, not holding anything back.

“Close. Closer than he's been since the Shattering.”

 

Silence settled heavily across the compartment.

 

And then the Crucible moved.

Not metaphorically, but physically.

 

The entire layered structure shifted with impossible precision as fracture lines converged across realms and eras. The Kestrel groaned softly as reality compressed around it. Pressed hard with all the weight of histories told and untold.

 

Chen stared in horror as his console locked up, unresponsive to his input. The model rewrote itself, faster than the processors could display.

 

“The Beast, it's aligning pathways,” he whispered.

 

Rockson looked over.

“To where?”

 

Chen swallowed once.

“To every fracture it still influences.”

 

And in that moment Feebee understood its plan.

The Beast was not escaping through one opening.

It was reconnecting itself across history, unlocking, synchronising pasts and futures. Shaping the basis of his future reality.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

“Is free choice ever that, or a warm construct that allows us to make the words real?”

Extract from speech made by Ithuris to a SolDiri Gathering.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

The Kestrel did not move forward. It was no longer accurate to describe how it moved as travel or motion.

Space around them had become a negotiation between layers of reality that were adjusting themselves around a single coherent intrusion. The slow push forward of The Kestrel.

The Crucible was no longer distant. Untouchable. It felt intimate. Close.

Chen looked at the console and could see it clearly in the model now. Not as lines of probability, but as a self-correcting system struggling against constraints in its coding, in its logic. The model was attempting to resolve the presence of the ship into a single acceptable outcome. Into a WIN.

At the centre of that negotiation stood Feebee. She wasn’t forcing alignment, nor was she resisting it. She was allowing contradictions to exist without collapse. Paradoxes to exist without contradiction. Collapse to exist without chaos or paradox.

 

And that acceptance, more than anything else had changed how the system behaved.

 

Rockson’s field no longer pushed outward, stressing the structure.

It leaned into it gently, breathed with it accepting the movement. The slow expansions. Gentle compressions. A contained rhythm that prevented any one layer from becoming dominant.

 

“It’s not stabilising,” Rockson said quietly. “It’s listening to us.”

Chen shook his head. “Not us. Her.”

He pointed at Feebee, she didn’t respond.

 

She was distracted, could feel something else now.

 

Not the Crucible as a prison. Not Ithuris as a presence.

 

No, she felt the shape of a memory. One that was not hers alone. It was an ancient memory distributed across space, across time. And it was fractured but still held to a coherent pattern. Slowly the memory resolved within an expanding reality that was aligned to her.

 

The motes flared in response.

 

Across the layered structure beyond the hull, distant points of light reassembled into networks that had not existed in full awareness since the Shattering. Light pulsed along lines connecting the motes.

 

Not restored. Reawakened.

Feebee felt her chest tighten, her heart beat as if hit with the thrill before a fight. She whispered, almost without sound.

“They’re coming back together.”

 

Garaf frowned. “What does that mean?”

 

She felt the inspection of his eyes focused, four at once and focused hard. She held her’s forward.

“It means their watch is no longer passive.”

 

And deep within the Crucible, something vast shifted.

 

Not violently, not with anger or distrust but with curiosity.

 

As if it had just realised the system it relied upon for certainty was no longer singular. That there could be other systems of truth.

 

And then…

 

A second thread entered the system.

Not through space but through time.

 

 

| Passchendaele, Earth, Sol System. 1917 |

 

Davy moved through mud that felt less like ground and more like memory that had forgotten how to settle.

 

The air itself was wrong; thick with suspended inevitability, as though the battlefield had already decided what it would become and was simply waiting for confirmation.

 

He felt it before he saw it.

 

The distortion was not in space. It was in a choice.

 

Orders became certainty before they were spoken. Men moved because they believed there was no alternative movement available to them. No other options.

 

That was the signature.

Not chaos.

A collapse of possibility.

 

The Beast did not stand here.

 

It convinced here. Made decisions easy.

 

Davy stepped into the broken trench line and felt the weight of it immediately, a narrowing of thought itself, as if the world was slowly removing every path except one.

 

“This ain’t natural,” he muttered.

 

The officers were gathered ahead, voices tight around a map that no longer represented terrain, but inevitability. Possibilities collapsed to one outcome.

 

Men had gone forward, stepped into the fog and not returned. Not killed. Not captured.

Simply removed from the logic of the battlefield.

 

 

Meanwhile, somewhen else… The Long Quiet answered.

 

OBSERVATION: Excessively stable and predictable outcomes detected. Suggests external interference.
RISK: Loss of choice.
QUIETUS PROTOCOL: ENGAGE.
PRIMARY EFFECT: Reality is being forced into one fixed result. Alternative outcomes are closing.

 

STATUS: ACTIVE

 

Back now…

 

 

Davy listened. Not to the words but to the certainty behind them.

 

That was where the conviction and confidence lived.

He stepped out into no-man’s land.

 

And reality shifted the moment his boot touched the ground. The world thinned, not to breaking but enough to reveal something beyond it, through it.

 

A fracture that had allowed a nudge to the variables controlling it.

 

Davy saw them. Not soldiers. Not ghosts. But decisions still in motion, still un-made.

 

Men who had already been chosen by the system, their paths narrowed until deviation was no longer possible.

 

And then he understood.

This was not a battlefield.

 

It was a correction mechanism.

 

And he was the thing it hadn’t factored in, a soft inversion, gently pressing against assumptions already made. He had enough influence to bend assumptions and allow outcomes already closed to be reopened. To happen, because something inside reality was trying to ensure only one outcome remained valid.

 

The Beast was here, but not as form.

 

As certainty. Nudging here, suggesting there. Reducing outcomes.

 

Davy pressed his hand to the silver coin at his wrist. Lady Liberty; an anchor across threads.

 

A refusal encoded in silver.

 

He took another step forward. Not against the certainty. But into it.

 

“You don’t get to finish this thought,” he said quietly. “The final choice is yet to be made.”

 

The distortion reacted. The single available outcome began to tighten.

 

Reality started to collapse as the moment approached resolution.

 

And then…Davy broke it.

 

Not by force. But by reintroducing choice where none had been permitted.

 

Single impossible deviations. Each insignificant in isolation.

A soldier turned left instead of forward

A commander hesitated instead of ordering.

A decision split, decided by a coin toss.

 

The entire structure of inevitability fractured. Calm surety was replaced by the chaos of choice. And balance was restored.

 

The fog ripped open like cloth torn from both sides revealing the next act in the play.

 

Men collapsed backward into reality.

The battlefield reappeared.

 

Uncertain again.

Unfinished again.

 

Davy exhaled.

 

And somewhere far beyond time, in nowhere and nowhen… something noticed.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

A visionary, a prophet and a despot can, at times, be hard to tell apart.

Pre-“Age of AI” saying.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

 

The pressure around the Kestrel deepened, pressing in on both the ship and its crew through more dimensions than should have been possible.

It pressed through metal, through flesh. It pressed through memory and through certainty.

There was no pain. No fear.

Just a conviction that it was right above all else. And everyone else was wrong.

 

And ahead, the fracture geometry continued folding across, inside and around itself in slow, impossible layers. Vast distortions churning through one another like interlocking systems trying to settle into a final shape. They started as small islands of distortion, tendrils of time hung down across dimensions, drawing past and future together into paradoxical realms.

 

Within this chaos, motes surrounded the ship, brightening as the pressure increased. Hundreds now. Thousands. More.

 

Watching.

 

Waiting.

 

Inside the Kestrel, no one spoke loudly.

Rockson worked steadily at the field controls, making small adjustments as warnings popped up and scrolled across his displays. He no longer fought the fluctuations directly. He guided them, allowing movement where earlier he would have tried to suppress it. Going ‘with the flow’.

Beside him, Chen had stopped forcing or demanding new solutions from the model. The equations still shifted constantly across his console, new traces were plotted, but now he watched them with a different understanding. Learning the shape of the instability, embracing the change with calm indifference, instead of trying to dominate it.

Garaf remained in the centre of the compartment, standing perfectly still. But his eyes moved carefully across the crew and consoles alike. The Alphas had risen from where they had been seated. Weapons secured but ready. Calm. Focused. Their discipline no longer performed but absorbed into the rhythm of the ship itself. They could feel the change, in themselves and how the ship now spoke back to them.

 

No one needed instructions anymore.

 

Balance held chaos, calm held turbulence. And stillness just held.

 

Feebee stood near the forward screen, watching the convergence ahead.

Then slowly, she closed her eyes and sank to the floor.

 

And this time, she was open to what-ever came. There was no resistance or opposition, just open acceptance of whatever came.

The memories settled differently now. Resolved but not as visions, nor as enhanced visual modality but as understanding.

The SolDiri had not stood united at the edge of the Great Shattering. Fighting against it as one. There had been others who believed as Ithuris did. SolDiri who saw limitation as weakness, and balance as restraint masquerading as wisdom.

These SolDiri believed transcendence, ascension was not merely possible, but a necessary next step in their evolutionary path.

Some followed cautiously. Others with a fervour bordering on spiritual fanaticism or zealotry.

And at the centre of it all stood Ithuris. Brilliant. Certain.

 

And there was the fulcrum around which balance slowly lost its hold. The SolDiri had not feared growth. Some had even believed parts of his vision could succeed. Would succeed. But he crossed the boundary balance demanded. He chose certainty over collaboration and consent.

And when many resisted, requested scrutiny, he pushed forward anyway.

 

The Great Shattering had not begun in hatred. It had begun when enough powerful voices stopped listening to stillness and let the voice of one lead them to destruction. It had happened before, many times through many histories but never with such devastating consequences.

 

Feebee drew a slow breath. The memories were there. Clear and in place.

She opened her eyes.

 

The effect was immediate.

The Kestrel steadied.

Not mechanically. It was something deeper than that.

 

The pressure moving through the hull softened, losing the sharp edge that had been building around them. Rockson’s field stopped resisting the distortions and instead settled amongst them, flexing naturally with the surrounding fracture layers rather than fighting to dominate them.

 

Rockson stared at the readings.

“The field’s changing.”

 

Chen shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s responding to her.”

 

Feebee kept her gaze fixed on the layered distortions ahead.

She understood now.

 

Ithuris had always sought imposed coherence. A perfect state without uncertainty. Without limitation. Without divergence or decay.

 

But balance could not survive without agency.

Without choice.

 

The motes surrounding The Kestrel brightened sharply.

 

Across the layered distortions beyond the ship, distant points of light answered in turn. Vast hidden networks reconnecting through the substrate across distances too large to measure.

 

The SolDiri were never truly gone after the Shattering. Their essence had fragmented outward across the substrate and the countless realms tied to it. But they endured as motes, diminished but unbroken, carrying the obligation of their long watch forward one fragment at a time while guiding balance where they could. All the while, they waited for balance itself to gather them whole once more.

 

The light beyond the hull intensified.

Not awakening.

Re-aligning. The long watch strengthening.

And deep within the Crucible, something immense hesitated.

 

Recognition. Not of force. Not of power. But of something encountered before.

 

Balance willingly chosen.

 

For the first time since entering the convergence, the fracture geometry ahead stopped tightening around The Kestrel.

And began to loosen.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

"Cage a thing long enough and it will learn the shape of every weakness."

Feebee on the "Crucible Strategy"

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

The motes no longer drifted aimlessly. Now they moved with purpose.

Small clusters aligned themselves with the fracture lines nearest to The Kestrel. And as they watched the lines closed in on each other, reinforcing weak points. Tiny acts against immeasurable pressure.

 

Rockson watched the readings in disbelief.

“They’re stabilising the lattice.”

 

Chen shook his head slowly.

“No. They’re pulling at the edges, bringing them back together.”

 

Feebee stepped closer to the forward screen.

 

The motes weren't weak.

She understood now. Yes, they were diminished; scattered with their coherence broken by the Shattering. Spread across realms and ages, space and time, but they weren't powerless.

 

They were still there. Still here, watching.

 

A single blue mote separated from the cluster and drifted toward The Kestrel’s forward shielding. It paused there, pulsing faintly against Rockson's field that was surrounding the ship.

 

It conveyed a sense of recognition. Not of the crew, but what they carried.

 

Feebee felt understanding slowly fall into place within her.

 

The SolDiri were never truly gone after the Shattering. Their essence had fragmented outward across the substrate and the countless realms tied to it. But they endured as motes, diminished but unbroken, carrying the obligation of their long watch forward one fragment at a time while guiding balance where they could. All the while, they waited for balance itself to gather them whole once more.

 

 

And here, at the edge of the Crucible, they had remained on guard, on watch.

 

Waiting.

 

Holding the prison closed one fragment at a time.

 

Garaf watched Feebee carefully.

“You seeing something?”

 

“A duty,” she said quietly. "And commitment. That's what I'm seeing."

The words came from somewhere deeper than memory.

“An obligation still being carried.”

 

 

Ahead of them, the layered fractures shifted again. Not randomly but with purpose and intent.

 

The structure was reacting faster now.  It knew them and was learning them fast. And behind the facade something had turned fully towards them.

 

Chen stared at the model, running through calculations that no longer behaved like they followed their own math. Every refinement only clarified the same impossible conclusion.

 

And ahead of them, the convergence geometry continued rearranging itself.

 

The structure was stabilising around them. Not collapsing or failing but aligning to them.

 

Rockson frowned at the field's output.

“That shouldn’t be happening. The deeper instability gets, the more chaotic, less coherent these readings should become.”

“But they aren’t,” Chen replied quietly.

"No, they're not."

No one spoke for several seconds.

 

Then Chen’s expression changed. It was a light bulb moment, recognition dawned.

 

“Oh…”

Rockson looked over sharply.

“What?”

 

Chen barely seemed to hear him.

“The instability,” he murmured. “That was part of the lock.”

 

The compartment became quiet, focused.

Feebee turned toward him slowly and cocked her head, "Continue."

Chen gestured weakly toward the shifting model.

“Old jump corridors were violent. Loud. Turbulent. Fractures aligned constantly but never held for long. Not long enough for sustained interaction.” He swallowed once. “The Beast could reach through and project influence… but only briefly. ”

 

Rockson’s face tightened as the understanding reached him.

“And my field…”

 

Chen nodded slowly.

“It holds things steady, which should good. Yeh?"

Rockson nodded, "Yeh."

Chen continued, “But holding it steady also allows the fractures to stay aligned longer than they should.”

 

Feebee said nothing. She already knew where the thought was leading.

Chen looked back toward the distortion ahead of them.

“Quieter jumps weakened him, which again is good,” he said. “Every improvement reduced the number of moments he could reach through. The gaps became fewer. Shorter.”

 

He drew a slow breath.

“But here… under the Crucible's influence.”

 

His eyes shifted across the Kestrel’s systems.

“Your field keeps the space around us stable and my modelling keeps the path aligned.” He swallowed once.

“And Feebee…”

Chen struggled for the words.

 

“It’s like the structure responds to her,” he said at last. “Not because she controls it. Because she calms it. Settles it.”

 

Outside the hull, the fracture lines shifted again, slowly tightening around the ship.

Not attacking. Adjusting.  Listening.

 

Rockson stared out at it.

“We made it easier for the Beast. For it to hold on,” he said quietly.

 

Chen’s expression hardened with dawning horror.

“We thought instability was the danger,” he whispered.

 

Another pause.

“But instability was part of the lock. We created a hand that could reach through it.”

 

The Alphas remained seated against the bulkhead. The formal breathing and cadence had faded, but the calm it created remained. It sat lightly through The Kestrel now, carried in controlled voices, measured movements and the absence of panic.

 

Feebee looked toward them briefly before turning back toward the convergence.

She smiled through an expression that remained calm.

 

“Then we stay, and don’t reach further,” she said.

 

Chen looked at her.

“You think we can still stop this?”

 

Feebee gave the faintest nod.

“We stop trying to force balance,” she replied.

Her gaze lifted toward the motes drifting beyond the hull.

“And we remember what balance was for. How it fits into the way of things.” 

 

The structure moved first.

The convergence layers ahead folded inward with terrible precision, fracture lines reaching across times, and aligning across distances too vast for the mind to comfortably follow. The Kestrel shuddered softly as pressure built, though the shielding resisted.

 

It wasn't physical pressure, but harmonic strain, that saw a dramatic pulse of resonant energy released from the structure. It spread out in all directions; Rockson's console struggled to adapt as the raw power of the omni-directional pulse as the burst coursed through it.

 

Chen’s model erupted with cascading pathways.

He looked at his hands, still hovering above the keys, "That wasn't me."

 

The Crucible was responding to them as a complete system now.

Every line, every model converged towards the same result. Resonance. Not a random collapse, the directed release of energy. But to what end?

 

Rockson’s hands tightened on the console.

“The convergence is propagating through the field.”

 

Chen nodded once, pale now.

“And my modelling.”

 

The Kestrel had become a stabilised harmonic bridge inside a structure never meant to permit one.

 

The Kestrel had become a key.

 

Beyond the hull, more motes appeared.

Not single motes, or tens of motes but hundreds.

Then thousands. They just kept coming. Blues. Greens. Purples. And faint traces of red.

They didn't all suddenly glitch into being, but becoming visible as coherence spread outward through the fracture layers. Ancient SolDiri remnants were responding to a call sent out across distances, realities and time that were impossible to measure.

 

The structure brightened around them, haloed.

 

And something answered from deeper within. The pressure that followed was immense.

Not rage but intent.

Feebee felt the Beast pressing against perception itself and held firm, not pushing or resisting, just holding balance and calm admits the threatened chaos.

 

And she held against a will vast enough to bend systems. But it wasn't seeking destruction, but resolution.

 

Not repetition. Not continuation. It wanted correction.

The Great Shattering was not something it sought to relive. It was something it believed had been misapplied. A failed transition toward a higher state.

Ithuris was not trying to return to that moment. He believed he had finally found the way it was always meant to end.

Garaf steadied himself against the bulkhead as The Kestrel groaned softly around them.

 

“This thing’s waking up.”

 

“No,” Feebee said quietly.

Her eyes remained fixed ahead.

“It already awake.”

 

The convergence geometry tightened. The resonance cascade accelerated.

And for the first time, the Kestrel began to move not because the crew guided it.

But because the Crucible itself was trying to position the key correctly.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

"Strive to be more than a product of what happened to you."

SolDiri cultural principle

  [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

The convergence point stopped being abstract, it had moved beyond the theoretical as had their movement.

It became directional with everything around them wrought for its use. Space and time became arrows guiding them through its structure. 

 

Chen saw it clearly now.

“This isn’t just influencing us,” he said slowly. “It’s shaping us into something that can interact with it.”

Rockson’s voice dropped. “Like a key?”

Feebee nodded, her expression was distant now, layered. Something inside her was rising and was closer to the surface than before; ancient memories joined ancient instincts, fighting suppression.

 

The Beast’s presence was no longer pressure. It had a name, Ithuris, and intent.

 

Not escape. Not destruction. Release.

 

Garaf stepped closer to Feebee.

“Ma'am?” he said quietly.

She blinked once, then steadied.

“I remember pieces,” she said.

 

No one spoke.

 

Feebee looked forward again. “The SolDiri didn’t just imprison him,” she said. “They removed him from the flow of time itself.”

 

She paused.

“And now… after an eternity of looking, he's found something that can reach him.”

 

Chen’s voice was almost inaudible.

“Us?”

Feebee nodded, slowly, just once.

 

Outside the hull, the structure closed in on itself, not in resistance, but in anticipation. Was the hand finally here that could turn the lock?

 

 

The structure didn't change.

Not outwardly.

 

There was no rupture or further spread of fractures, no visible shift in the distortion ahead, no dramatic signal on Rockson's console that would tell them something fundamental had altered.

It looked the same and yet everything inside The Kestrel tightened, hardened as if bracing itself for something. Ready and waiting.

 

Feebee felt it first; not as a memory, but as alignment. Something buried deep inside that had always been there, but never belonged, was pressing gently against the surface of thought. Not pushing or trying to force itself through, but there, submerged and waiting to be admitted into her conscious mind.

 

The ship was still under strain, but the nature of it had changed. It was no longer random resistance. It had become focused. Intentional.

 

Chen saw the change in the model. The convergence lines hadn't moved, but they were no longer passive.

“It’s reacting to us,” he said quietly. “Not our movement towards it but our recognition of it.”

 

Rockson looked up from his console. “That’s not how these systems work. There's nothing in the model that's conscious.”

 

Feebee didn’t take her eyes off the forward view.

“It isn’t conscious,” she said. “It’s remembering. There's a difference.”

 

A silence settled across the bridge.

 

Behind them, the Alphas maintained their rhythm; steady, relentless and unchanged.

“In… Out…”

But the cadence felt... different, more like a counterweight giving balance. As though their discipline was holding something else in place by simply maintained the pattern.

 

Garaf was close to Feebee, watching, waiting. She touched his arm briefly, gentle recognition of his support, his presence.

 

Chen swallowed hard.

“I can feel it again,” he said. “The path. It’s still there.”

 

Feebee nodded once.

“It'll always be there,” she replied.

 

And after pause she added, “That’s the point. This was for eternity.”

 

The structure ahead shifted; not physically, but in perception. Layers and folds that had registered as opaque chaos began to separate. Not revealing clarity, but depth. As though something hidden and long sealed away was no longer fully contained behind uniform pressure. As though occasionally seeing beyond.

 

Rockson frowned. “Field’s not reacting properly anymore. It’s like the substrate is… adjusting, agreeing with it.”

 

Feebee finally looked toward him.

“That makes no sense,” she said. “It’s not agreeing.”

 

Her voice softened slightly.

“It’s recognising the shape of what it used to be and realigning.”

 

A faint tension passed through the ship; not mechanical, not system-based, but environmental. The kind that didn't register on instruments, not until after it had already changed how everything behaved.

 

Chen turned slowly toward her.

“You’re hiding something, not telling us,” he said carefully.

 

Feebee didn’t answer immediately. When she did, it was quieter than before.

“Not hiding,” she said, then after a pause.  “Remembering.”

 

Then Feebee let her breath go. And as she did something dropped into place. A state of being became clear, noticed and 'seen'. It was deep inside, had always there but submerged; buried and waiting beneath everything else.

Her eyes shifted and locked onto the structure.

And when she spoke again, her voice carried a stillness and a character that did not belong to her or the ship, or the crew, or even this moment in time. It was ageless...

“It’s not just a prison,” she said. “It’s more than that. The Crucible has become responsive through all its interaction over time, unfathomable time, with the will that’s imprisoned inside.”

 

Her words landed and the effect was immediate.

The structure responded, crowding in on them, specifically in on Feebee. It was listening, feeling more intensely than before. The pressure in the ship rose, pressing down on them. Movement became hard.

 

For the first time since they'd crossed the boundary, Chen felt it clearly. Not just the pressure but a sense that they were seen.

And he was uncertain, scared... but not.

 

Something ancient recognised them.

 

Subtle at first, then spreading through perception. Not just Chen's but everyone, like a slow correction rather than a reaction.

The Kestrel didn't suddenly shake or shudder, yet everyone aboard felt as though the space around them had shifted, as if the structure had reached out and given them a shake.

 

Feebee felt it most clearly and flinched.

It had been accompanied by a thought, and behind that thought there was a heavy weight.

 

The hidden depth she had inspected and seen was no longer contained. It was echoing outward now, meeting something that had been waiting, for it.

Chen’s hands hovered over the console.

“The model's changing again, the lines redrawn,” he said quietly. “Not updates; rewrites.”

Rockson leant across and watched, “By what? How?”

Chen hesitated. “By itself, in response,” he said with a shrug.

 

The structure ahead was no longer simply revealing layers. It was rearranging how the strata within its boundaries were seen. Distortion lines that had been fixed began to shift, points of view changed relative to their observation. The system was correcting itself, making allowance for their presence.

 

Then as Feebee looked ahead she saw them. Flaws in the distortion, in its boundary. Small flickers buried between the fracture lines.

"You seeing this?" she asked.

"What?" Asked Rockson looking up.

 

As Feebee watched, she realised they weren't reactions. They didn't behave like interactions or instability.

They held position. Watched. Tiny points of light.

 

Blue. Green. A faint pulse of purple.

 

They moved slowly through the layered structure beyond the hull, drifting along the stress lines like embers caught in the currents of an invisible breeze.

 

Rockson saw them a moment later. “Contacts?”

“What? No!” Feebee said, softly but with certainty.

 

The word came before she understood why.

“Motes.”

 

The lights shifted at the sound of the name.

Not toward her. Towards The Kestrel itself.

Garaf frowned slightly. “What are they? Do you know them?”

 

Feebee’s expression lightened, there was no confusion this time. Recognition was pressing upward from somewhere ancient and buried.

She said it again, "Motes." 

An ancient word from ancient memory. “No,” she whispered, “I don't ...but something in me does.”

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

“With a labyrinth, you make a choice to go in – and once you've chosen, around and around you go.”

Credited to a human entertainer.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

[Link to image of the Irregularity / Distortions]

The deeper they moved, the more the structure began to feel familiar. Not in shape, but in the logic of the place. The distortions were no longer random. The patterns that they followed felt intentional in a way that did not belong to chance. 

Chen saw it first, “They’re elegant,” he said. “Efficient.” 

Feebee felt it differently. Not as data and certainly not as elegant. It felt too clean to her, too efficient. Un-naturally so.

And the shapes, the arrangements of form within areas of nothing didn’t behave like something natural. They were like a memory that didn’t belong. Pressure behind a thought. 

Then the line of thought settled, it was a recognition of something without a point of origin. Something she knew without being seen. Ancient memories surfacing?

Rockson adjusted the field again, but this time the response came before the correction was needed. The system seemed to anticipate him, matched up with him, and then adjusted slightly ahead of expectation.

“The models not reactive anymore,” he muttered. “It’s… learning us.”

“Oh. Ok. Good.” Feebee responded, distracted. Her attention had drifted inward, not to introspection, but to a feeling that was forming in the now.

Something was stirring at the edge of her perception. It felt old and buried within her, not fully formed. It was almost in her grasp. That feeling it was…

Stillness looking at her.  Containment searching for her. Absence finding her.

And that absence felt like something vast and ordered, familiar. Like holding something that refused to stay contained.

She recoiled, a reflex as if touched. It forced a sharp intake of breath.  

She blinked once, and it was gone. But not gone enough. She ran her hand up her forearm, the hairs stood, on end. 

It presented itself without warning. Not as an instruction. As certainty in the chaos, in the nothingness of the distortion.

Chen saw it first; clean and efficient alignment through the structure. An adjustment to the trace that defined the area around them. 

No instability spikes. No resistance. A direct harmonic path through the layers that converged and roiled around them.

The model saw and glitched before settling. It was not just viable. It was optimal. It was as if the model didn’t believe what it had mapped.

“This works,” Chen said quietly. “It actually works. Look.” He pointed to the trace running within the model.

Rockson leaned in. “It shouldn’t. It’s too clean for this level of load. There are fractures everywhere.” He shook his head, “No, shouldn’t work.”

“But it holds,” Chen replied, insistent. “Look at it, it stabilises everything around us… and ahead of us.”

Feebee had heard and stepped closer. The model looked elegant. Too elegant.

However, it felt wrong. Not wrong like an error. The model was running fine, but wrong for a reason she couldn’t place. 

She closed her eyes and let silence press against her thoughts. Not empty nothing, but a freeing up of her thoughts. She released them, given them agency and free rein. Not the QI, but her thoughts.

Garaf shifted slightly, reading her hesitation, seeing her eyes glaze over.

Feebee didn't move. Her brain ran free-form across her senses, testing, feeling and then it settled.

She said softly, “No.”

Chen frowned. “But Feebee, this reduces the load on the ship by nearly forty percent.”

“Yes,” she nodded, “I know.”

“So why?” He looked genuinely confused, “Why?”

Her voice was quiet.

“Because it isn’t reducing the load. It’s redistributing it.”

The moment she said it, the structure in front of them seemed to tighten. Not by much, a subtly shift as if acknowledging the observation.

It was like something had listening and was pleased. But also, she felt disappointment.

Rockson spoke up, “I am getting push back. The shield is holding. Just.”

The shift didn't come as sound.

It crashed through Feebee’s senses as recognition breaking through suppression, like an image being actively hidden within a storm of distraction.

Garaf was watching as Feebee staggered slightly and was immediately at her side, steadying, supporting. It wasn’t physically, but he felt it. Felt the pressure cut through her presence just for a fraction of a second. 

And as it happened the Alphas both gasped, their eyes snapped open as they felt something vast press through the ship, targeting Feebee. They struggled to hold focus. 

In… Out…

It came again. There weren’t words. No language. But this time Feebee felt an identity.

Ithuris.

The name did not arrive like information. It was without form or context. Just… meaning.

Ithuris. 

It hit her like remembering something that had been deliberately removed, redacted or excised. 

Rockson looked up sharply from his console. “Feebee?”

She didn’t answer.

Her eyes were unfocused, shoulders slumped. But her breathing was steady, she wasn’t lost. She was anchored. To the Alphas that held the state. A centre for calm, and for stillness.

“Stillness…” she said quietly.

Chen turned. “What?”

“Stillness.” She repeated. 

She tensed and her voice tightened slightly. “Not absence,” she said. “It’s not absence but containment.”

The structure around them reacted; not violently, but like a system adjusting to recognition. It had been seen… recognised… and it liked it.

Garaf had been watching Chen, closely and stepped forward instinctively as he faltered under the increased pressure.

Feebee’s breathing slowed. Something ancient in her was brushing against the surface. Trying to surface.

The Beast didn’t push harder. It tried to clarify what it was ‘seeing’. 

What it was able to sense and reach outside, in the time between those moments when the fractures were just so.

The distortion ahead The Kestrel resolved, not visually, but conceptually. They began to understand the structure not as a prison, but as a response system.

A Stillness Crucible. Containment built from balance and restraint. By the SolDiri who had survived the Great Shattering.

Feebee’s voice dropped. “This isn’t random containment. It’s SolDiri architecture.”

Rockson stared at the readouts. “That’s impossible. That would predate anything we’ve mapped.”

“Not impossible.” She sighed, “It predates… everything.”

Feebee’s expression tightened slightly, like something within her was resisting becoming fully conscious. She was trying to remain in both states at once. One of absolute stillness, the other firmly in the now. Guiding and communicating.

“They didn’t kill him,” she said quietly. “They… contained him.”

A pause.

“Contained who?” asked Rockson.

Then, softer, almost a whisper, “Ithuris.”

The name caused the structure to twist again; ripples flowed across its surface, stressing and distorting as it reacted.

The structure wasn’t breaking, it was acknowledging, remembering.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]  

“Both paths are the least trodden.”

Counter to an ancient proverb.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]   

| Jump space near the outer node |

The map lingered between them, no longer shifting but settling on the shape they had imposed upon it. The outer node, the one they had steadied held firm.

It stood out as a single point of quiet. Residual noise was all around and beyond it, everything bent. Not outward and not dispersing but falling inward, as though the fractures themselves were collapsing in on themselves.

Rockson was nearest and pulled up the projections again. The map unfolded across the display and showed future possibilities branching, places where fractures were likely to appear or get worse. Some were overlapping, folding into one another. It just kept getting worse.

“We can keep working the edges,” he said, his voice less certain than before. “We could take them one at a time. Slow it down. Maybe keep it from spreading.”

 

Chen watched the lines as they writhed and shifted like snakes in a pit. He followed some as they curved and returned. “All that does is buy us time,” he said.

 

Feebee said nothing.

 

Rockson adjusted the model, reduced the fidelity within it. The branching paths folded in on themselves, drawn toward a single point that was unstable. Maybe it was a flaw in the model, or their eyes being tricked but the lines seemed to form a mouth, open and inviting.

Rockson shivered, he continued, quieter now, “are we going there?”

 

Silence settled, they all looked at each other.

 

Chen looked closer, studying the convergence, ignoring the symbolism. “If the crystal world is holding the structure together…” he said slowly, “then this is where the strain is coming from.”

Rockson gave a small, humourless laugh. “Or where it finally gives way.”

Garaf’s attention moved, away from the room and on to the point itself. It was as though he was measuring it.

“Then that’s where we stand,” he said.

 

Rockson glanced up at him. “That’s not something you can stand against.”

Garaf didn’t look away. “Then we hold it.”

Chen waited a moment then answered. “It’s not like the node. This won’t be something we can adjust and then leave behind.”

“No, I agree.” Feebee said quietly.

 

At the edge of the field, StillFall remained. Present but remaining at a distance. From the group and the discussion; as if marking a boundary none of them could cross.

“They won’t follow us in,” Rockson said.

 

Feebee’s gaze was on the map. “Yeh. They told us as much.”

Chen folded his arms. “So, we keep working outward… plugging holes and patching things up? Hoping it’s enough.”

 

The thought lingered, unsatisfactory. As unfinished as the plan.

 

Rockson gave it voice, exposing what they all thought, “Or we go to the centre and risk making it worse.”

Garaf’s reply came in quick, his voice low, almost thoughtful. “It’s already worse.”

 

The room went quiet.

 

Feebee reached forward and stripped the projections back further. She removed the branching paths, cancelled alternatives. Only the convergence remained, a single consuming point drawing everything toward it. 

 

She studied it for a long moment. “That’s where it breaks,” she said.

Chen stepped in beside her, his voice softer. “It’s also where it still holds.”

Rockson exhaled slowly. “Not much room between those two extremes.”

“No,” Feebee agreed with a wry smile.

 

Garaf centred his stance, he didn’t tense but signalled that he was ready in a way for whatever was agreed.

Chen glanced at her. “If we go in, we go alone past the boundary.”

 

Feebee nodded once. “Yes, we do.”

 

Rockson leaned back, the edge of unease still in his voice. “And if we misjudge it, if your read is off…”

StillFall shifted, reminding them of its presence, of the line it would not cross.

Feebee didn’t look away from the point, eyes fixed on it.

“We won’t,” and as she spoke it wasn’t with false bravado or defiance. It was with something quieter that reassured.

 

The map remained steady before them. Yes, it still held questions, but the puzzle had been solved and a destination found. More importantly, the path forward was agreed with a clear target in sight.

 

 

The Kestrel didn’t move, not immediately. They didn’t step onto the path in a hurry. Instead, they built a quiet stillness through the ship as they focused on a state of calm.

 

In… Out…

In… Out…

 

This was different, purposeful, and it was as though the ship itself understood what was being asked of it. Systems settled into a low hum that threaded through the hull, across the decks like a mother’s heartbeat.

 

Rockson worked in silence, refining the field, extending its reach as far as it would hold without collapse.

“It won’t carry us all the way,” he said at last. “You’ll feel where it ends.”

Feebee inclined her head. “That’s enough. More than we thought we’d have. Well done.”

 

Chen remained at the console, running the model again and again. He wasn’t searching for a new answer but testing the one they had. Each iteration held for a bit longer, ran a fraction cleaner. The systems were learning to accept the new shape the model imposed upon them… and they seemed to like it.

 

“It wants to slip,” he said quietly. “Even now it’s not fully happy.”

Feebee stepped beside him. “Then we don’t let it. Nurse it, comfort it.”

He glanced at her, a tired smile briefly showed. “You make it sound easy, simple.”

“Not easy,” she said shaking her head, “Not at all.”

 

Across the compartment, Garaf checked his gear; methodical, careful. Ticking off a mental checklist. When he'd finished, he did sit and rest, relax. He crossed near the door, to a point where he could see them all and stood. Waiting.

 

Alpha-2 and Alpha-3 were sitting off to one side. Leaning back against a bulkhead, backpacks on. Their weapons had been stripped back and cleaned. Both had their eyes closed. ‘Sleep when you can.’

 

StillFall lingered, its presence was steady now, no longer prowling around within the field. No longer withdrawing. Witnessing.

 

Feebee looked out toward it for a moment, then back to the map.

“We go to the boundary,” she said. “After that… we find the rest of the way.”

Rockson gave a small nod. “That’s the plan.”

No one pretended it was enough.

 

 

The Kestrel moved without acceleration, slipping forward onto the mapped path.

 

At first, there was nothing, just clean space. Sensor readings were stable. The systems were quiet, it meant they were behaving as they should.

Then, gradually they crossed. Things shifted.

Stars held on the forward viewer but were not quite firm. Colours changed as light stretched and shrank before settling back into place. Time itself seemed to hesitate, not breaking, but pausing, quickening just enough to be noticed.

Rockson’s voice came low. “We’re entering it.”

Feebee felt it, then saw the instruments confirm it.  Pressure was building, not from any one direction, but from everywhere at once.

“Hold steady,” she said.

The shielding deepened around them, its edge pressing outward, holding space back just long enough for them to pass through it.

 

At the boundary, it faltered. It didn't fail but was no longer holding anything beyond the hull.

Rockson’s hands tightened slightly on the console. “That’s as far as it goes.”

 

And ahead, the distortion thickened. It was no longer something subtle or an aberration that could be mistaken for drift or a sensor error.

It gathered and boiled up, layered upon itself, a place where the structure of things had been pushed too far for too long.

 

StillFall stopped.

 

As they continued, its presence lingered at their back. Thinner now, drawn tight across a point it would not cross.

It held there. Not retreating, not following.

 

Observing.

 

Feebee watched the Shadow for a moment, then turned towards the forward screen again.

“That's its limit, as far as it'll come,” she said, her voice steady, carrying just enough to reach them all.

“This is where we go on.”

 

The Alphas remained seated. Alpha-3 muttered under his breath.

Garaf got up and stepped closer, beside Feebee.

Chen drew a slow breath; his gaze fixed on the distortion ahead.

Rockson didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

 

The Kestrel held at the edge of what they could control.

 

Beyond it…

Something waited.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]   

DEFINITION: Wound healing;

A complex, dynamic process that repairs damage and restores integrity after injury.

 

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]   

Back in clear space, away from the distortion, the QI rebuilt the map of the node within the model.

 

This time, it held. There was no drift, the stars didn’t blur or double.

The model held; the map steady.

 

But not quiet, there was noise at the edges. Chaos threatened.

Chen stared at it. “Run the projection again.”

The system complied. The line reformed and was stronger now. Much clearer.

 

Rockson rested his chin on an elbow, “That’s new.”

“No,” Feebee said. “It’s just not moving anymore.”

The QI extended the pattern connecting node to node, fracture to fracture.

They didn’t spread. They curved, all of them. And they curved toward a single region.

Feebee was surprised, it wasn’t the crystal world. The pattern went past it. Deeper and concentrated on an empty region.

Chen felt it before he understood it.

He caught his breath. “That’s where it was pushing from.”

 

Rockson didn’t answer straight away.

“The Shadows won’t go near it.”

 

As if called, StillFall withdrew, pulled further away from them. It was retreating. It was refusing. Again. The message clear. That’s taboo.

 

Then it was gone.

 

Garaf hadn’t moved far. He wasn’t watching the map; he was still watching Chen.

 

Feebee stepped closer to the display, isolating the convergence point.

Everything leaned toward it. Every line was drawn into the epicentre.

Not falling away.

 

“That’s where it gives,” she said.

“No,” Chen said quietly. “That’s where it flexes but holds.”

Silence.

Rockson leaned back slowly. “And we just pushed on the outer edge.”

Feebee didn’t look away.

“Yeah. Let’s hope that’s all we’re doing. Flexing it.”

 

She adjusted the controls and brought the crystal world back onto the projection. Then drilled out until the point of convergence was visible beyond it.

They sat side by side.

“They’re not the same,” she said.

Chen nodded. “One holds it together; it looks cleaner somehow. The other...”

Feebee nodded and finished the line of thought, "...is where it breaks.”

 

The map remained between them. Stable, aligned and for the first time it made sense.

 

Garaf shifted slightly, releasing the tension building in his legs, but not relaxing. He still watched Chen. Feebee looked at the forward screen.

 

The Kestrel held position well clear of the mapped distortions. Systems were steady and space quiet.

 

Too quiet. StillFall had left and not returned.

 

Rockson leaned back from his console. “I’m taking that as no. StillFall wants to stay away.”

Feebee didn’t respond. She was looking at the empty space beyond the forward screen.

“They felt it,” Chen said. “What we did to the node.”

“Yeah,” Rockson replied. “And decided they want no part of what comes next.”

Garaf stood off to one side, arms loose, eyes flitting around, moving not on the displays, but across the people.

 

Feebee let her breath escape slowly. “Bring the shield up,” she said.

Rockson frowned. “It’s already running.”

“Yeh but not the full field,” she said. “Push it out, further.”

Rockson hesitated, just for a second, “But that’s untested.”

Feebee didn’t look at him. “Do it.”

With a shrug, Rockson looked back at the console. “Alright… expanding the shield envelope.”

 

The hum of the ship shifted, the tone deeper. Feebee could feel it through her feet, a resonant hum.

The field had expanded beyond the hull, the change subtle but tangible.

 

Chen glanced around. “You’re changing the boundary?”

“Trying to,” Rockson said. "We'll see."

 

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, Rockson's console lit up. It was showing the presence of a distortion.

But it wasn't ahead. Wasn't even on the sensors. Somehow, it was just present.

 

Garaf and Feebee both turned to the forward screen at the same time. Both smiled, StillFall had returned, but this time it didn't come close but stood off, at a distance. Just beyond the edge of the field.

 

Watching.

 

Rockson’s voice was excited, “It’s back.” He looked up and saw Feebee and Garaf exchange a smile. "We know." They pointed to the screen, "Oh, Ok, Good."

 

StillFall drifted slightly, circling like a predator, but not the ship, the boundary around it.

Testing, pushing close but it did not cross.

Feebee stepped forward, closer to the forward screen. “We’re going in,” she said.

 

StillFall stopped circling. Paused.

You move toward the wound.

 

Chen answered this time. “We already did. This is just nearer.”

 

StillFall shifted again, moved closer to the edge of the field surrounding the ship.

 

Then it touched it.

The field reacted immediately, just a bit, a faint ripple. StillFall pulled back.

 

Rockson exhaled. “Okay. So it doesn’t like that. Wonder why?”

Feebee didn’t move. But then called out to StillFall, “Again, try again,” she urged quietly.

StillFall hesitated. Feebee sensed inner conflict. Then it moved forward once more. This time it didn’t pull back but instead, pressed against the field; feeling.

 

The ripple steadied. And held.

 

Slowly, StillFall crossed inside the edge of the field. The ship shuddered, not from an impact, StillFall hadn't touched the ship, but from something adjusting. Sound seemed dampened, became muffled.

Feebee clapped her hands, the sound was normal. She stamped on the floor. The sound was quiet as if partly absorbed.

Rockson blinked. “Well… that’s new.” He checked his console, replayed the data from StillFall.

The model had adjusted to the Shadow. Changed the parameters that defined the model's reality.

And the ship became quieter, more balanced.

 

StillFall didn’t come closer but held its position just inside the boundary.

Not comfortable. But present. Feebee inclined her head slightly.

“We’re going to the centre,” she said and waited.

 

After a long pause StillFall responded.

We do not go there.

 

Chen nodded. “We know.”

 

StillFall shifted its attention, fixed it on Feebee.

That place… presses back.

 

Feebee didn’t argue.

“Yeah,” she said. "I know."

 

After another pause.

You changed the edge.

 

Chen glanced at Rockson, then the stabilised node on the display. “A little.”

StillFall held there, considering. It held its position.

Feebee waited, then pushed, “Long enough. You coming?”

Silence followed.

 

Then...

We will not lead.

 

Rockson muttered, “That figures.”

 

StillFall didn’t react, its focus remained on Feebee. Sensing her thoughts.

We will come... to the edge.

 

Then it added, but no further.

Feebee nodded once, “That’s enough. All we can ask.”

Garaf shifted slightly, settling back into a ready stance.

Chen looked between them. “They coming?”

Feebee shook her head, “No, they’re letting us go first.”

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]   

“We knocked on the structure, and something answered from inside it.”

Extract from Chen’s AAR.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]    

The Kestrel dropped out of jump space near the outer node. Nice and clean.

They scanned the area. No traffic, no markers. It was quiet, disappointingly so.

 

The QI saw it, Rockson detected it. The Shadow had come along, out of curiosity, and it felt it too. A thin distortion in space that wasn’t quite right.

 

Rockson frowned at his board. “There. You see it?”

“The ship’s off,” said Garaf.

“We know.” Rockson snapped back at him.

Garaf ignored it, “No, this is different.”

 

Chen was already busy, watching the drift, analysing the distortion’s signature.

“It’s got timing slip, light lag that’s causing star doubling.”

 

Feebee felt a subtle pull. Wrong, like the irregularity.

“That’s it,” was all she said.

 

Rockson brought his new system online, the lights dimmed for a moment as the ship fed the power-hungry shield, and a second layer settled over the ship. There was nothing to see, but the hum of the engines changed. They dropped to a lower register, as loud but somehow quieter.

The ship adjusted to the new power demands and the lights brightened.

 

“The shield’s up,” he said. “Let’s see if it holds.”

The Kestrel eased forward, towards the distortion. It reacted.

Not violently, but it shifted. Noticing the move without responding.

Chen worked fast, feeding the model into the live system. “Matching alignment… now.”

The QI translated, pushing harmonic corrections through the drive.

For a moment there was nothing. Then space pushed back harder… resisted.

And the drift worsened.

 

Stars stretched, snapped back. Time stuttered, half a beat off as past and future overlapped.

Rockson swore. “It’s pushing back.”

Feebee stepped closer, eyes unfocused. Looking through the display.

“Hold,” she said.

 

Chen adjusted. “I’m close…”

“No!” Feebee cut in. What he was trying felt ... not wrong, but misaligned. She reached across, “Not like that.” And made a small correction to the model.

Barely anything but just enough because as the system ingested the changed inputs the distortion shuddered.

 

Then… settled.

 

The doubling collapsed and resolved, stars held steady and time stopped glitching. Running smoothly forward instead.

Rockson blinked. “That… worked,” he said surprised.

Chen had been holding his breathe, he let it go. “We stabilised it.”

Feebee didn’t relax. “Yeah,” she said, “for now.”

 

“We knocked on the door, now we watch and wait to see what answers.”

 

 

They didn’t have to wait long. It responded quickly, quietly. Not an attack, not in the traditional sense. More an increase in pressure that saw the shielding dip, not drop but just enough for the instruments to hesitate before correcting.

 

Rockson frowned. “That wasn’t me.”

At his side, Chen stiffened. Something brushed his thoughts; clean, certain, familiar now.

You see it. You understand it. It’s all Ok.

His hands slowed over the controls. His eyes lost their focus, but he kept working.

 

Garaf noticed first.

Not the words. Not the system, but the stillness. Chen had gone too still.

 

Garaf shifted, one step nearer, making no sound. He closed the distance without drawing attention.

 

You can fix it properly.

Chen leaned forward, eyes gain an element of focus. Enough to observe the board.

“I can stabilise more,” he said. “Push deeper… I’ve got this.”

 

Rockson snapped, “Shield’s taking additional load. I can hold it, but not…”

 

Garaf moved again.

This time he didn’t stop short, he stepped into Chen’s space. Close enough to cover anything Chen might do but not blocking.

Not yet; just hovering there at the edge of Chen’s awareness. Present and ready.

 

Feebee’s voice cut in. “No.”

Chen didn’t look at her.

“It’s incomplete,” he said. “It needs more.”

“Enough!” Feebee cut through.

Chen stayed his hand. Garaf stood ready.

 

The distortion ahead shifted as if opening; inviting.

The pressure deepened, started to leak through the shield.

“The shield’s still holding. Just.”

 

Finish it.

Chen reached for the controls.

 

Garaf’s claw came down on the console between them.

Flat. Heavy. Not forceful but unmoving. Final.

 

Chen’s hand stopped an inch from it.

Garaf didn’t look at the display. He didn’t look at Rockson.

He looked only at Chen and held his gaze. Something moved behind the eyes.

 

“Step back,” Garaf said.

 

Quiet. Not a suggestion.

 

Chen’s jaw tightened and a snarl flickered across his face.

“I can do this.”

 

Garaf didn’t move his claw.

“No,” he said. “No, you can’t.”

 

StillFall surged closer to the hull, its movements sharp and agitated.

It presses.

Rockson’s voice tightened. “Shield’s slipping. Feebee, we need help here…”

 

Feebee stepped up and stood beside Chen and Garaf.

Not between them but with them. A part, not apart.

“We’re not here to fix it all,” she said and touched Chen on the forearm.

 

His focus flickered and his expression changed, just slightly.

The pressure intensified, pushed harder. The hairs on Feebee neck, and on her arms stood up and she shivered.

You are close.

 

Garaf leaned in, almost on top of Chen, enough to close the gap completely.

Chen would have to push through him now if he wanted to do anything via the board.

He’d worked the board, done his time, and that wasn’t going to happen.

 

“Not today, Sir” Garaf said.

Simple.

Certain.

Chen looked up at Garaf, caught by the pull from within.

Then… he exhaled and leant back.

 

Garaf lifted his hand from the console but didn’t step away.

 

The pressure in the ship eased.

 It was still there, hadn’t gone.

 

Watching.

 

Rockson let out a breath. “Right. That felt targeted.”

StillFall drifted back from the hull, unsettled.

 

Feebee didn’t take her eyes off the distortion.

“Oh. Ok. Good,” she corrected herself, “But actually not good, it knows we can touch it now.”

Garaf stayed away, just enough to give Chen some space but nothing more than that.

 

Chen didn’t look at him. His eyes were focused on his hands that rested near the edge of the board. He didn’t reach for the controls but knew he’d resisted twice.

A question rattled around in his mind, how many more could he resist?

 

Outside, the distortion held. Barely.

 Inside, the ship felt steady again.

For now.

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https://preview.redd.it/ckjhq20g6ozg1.jpg?width=531&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0cf5e1382a5b12212d20406821f4b2156eeb3ee0

Image taken from Rockson's console of irregularities and distortions within the model as they moved outside jump space within the substrate.

[Link back to Chapter 136] ... easy to navigate from here.

[Link back to Chapter 1] ... for those who want to start the journey

Some extracts, sanitised for spoilers, that gives context ...

[1] ... Stars held on the forward viewer but were not quite firm. Colours changed as light stretched and shrank before settling back into place. Time itself seemed to hesitate, not breaking, but pausing, quickening just enough to be noticed. At the boundary, it faltered and curled back on itself. It didn't fail but was there, beyond the hull.

And ahead, the distortion thickened. It was no longer something subtle or an aberration that could be mistaken for drift or a sensor error. It was real, as real as anything in nothing can be. And to prove it, the distrotion gathered and boiled up, layered upon itself. It became a place where the structure of things had been pushed too far for too long.

[2]... The structure ahead was no longer simply revealing layers. It was rearranging how the strata within its boundaries were seen. Distortion lines that had been fixed began to shift, points of view changed relative to their observation. The system was correcting itself, making allowance for their presence.

The QI began to speak, 'Every action has an equal and opposite....'

'... reaction.' Feebee finished it.

Then as Feebee looked ahead she saw them. Flaws in the distortion, in its boundary buried between the fracture lines. Not static, but moving as if alive.

[3]... They didn't travel randomly along the lines of convergence but with deliberate care, touching areas of instability briefly before moving on. Wherever they passed, the fractures calmed for a moment, and closed. Their layers becoming regular.

Holding. Maintaining. Enduring.

Then understanding came to her not as knowledge, but as grief.

[4]... It moved beyond the theoretical as had their movement and became directional with everything around them wrought for its use. Space and time became arrows guiding them through its structure. Tendrils reached down to the substrate, through the substrate as if testing, tasting it.

[5]... And on the console, the tears in jump space became evident. Holes, surrounded by noise, slowly closed. Residual jump corridors, forced through substrate, slowly repaired. The noise of their cocooned passing a shriek in the night for the Shadows.

“A blade for hire remembers the coin, not the cause.”

Princess Veyla post rescue.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]  

The corridors narrowed as they pushed forward, deeper into the facility. It was as if the geometry of the place was closing in on them. The tighter the space the more the pressure pealed back allowing the air to became less oppressive.

 

“Stability’s improving,” Rockson said over comms, a note of surprise in his voice. “You’re close to the centre of the irregularity. Near the most stable pocket.”

Feebee didn’t answer, she could feel it and slowed. Reaching out with her senses, trying to read what lay ahead.

 

Garaf moved forward with her, tight at her back. Supportive.

Ahead, the corridor ended in heavy wooden looking door. Much heavier than the rest they’d seen and surrounded by living crystal that pulsed.

It was out of place.

She reached into her pocket, expecting River’s crystal to match the pulse flowing around the door. But there was nothing, a stillness to the crystal that was uncanny.

 

And the lights, there was flicker to them here. Random, chaotic not aligned to the pulse of any system.

She stamped her feet. The sound matched the fall of her boots but was quickly lost as if gobbled up.

Stillness. A calm stillness fell across the corridor.

 

Not a natural stillness but something engineered, made. Too ordered, too perfect. The absence made her ears ring.

 

A single guard stood by the door, lit by the glowing crystal. Not moving, still but not displaying stillness. His weapon was lowered; not relaxed or unready. Just… not raised. No threat.

He saw them and watched as they approached slowly.

Garaf first. Then Feebee.

 

His grip on the weapon tightened but the gun stayed low as he took in the quiet, and the absence of anyone coming to help.

 

Feebee stopped a few paces out. Happy to take her time, no hurry.

“Step aside,” she said. It wasn’t a threat; there was nothing there to take offence at. Just the plain fact; step aside.

The guard let out a slow breath, something between a laugh and a resigned sigh. He glanced at the door, then back at them.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “No.”

It wasn’t defiance but a decision.

“They don’t pay me enough to fight… whatever you are.”

 

Garaf didn’t move. Didn’t need to.

The man looked at him once more, gauged the weight of the axe, the casual ease with which it was held at his side.

 

Then the guard took a step back.

And another.

He placed his hand on the wall.  Panel lighting came on, telltales cycled, a screen lit up but the door remained closed. The screen showed the inside of the cell. Chen was sitting at a table, back to the screen, facing the door as if waiting to be called.

“The cell’s clean, no tricks. He’s… been cooperative. I’m just a guard, no key.”

Feebee held his gaze a moment longer.

“Go,” she said.

 

He didn’t wait to be told twice and stepped past them. Careful, controlled. Then once clear of Garaf’s reach he sped up and ran down the corridor. The sound of his boots fading until they were nothing but a weird echo that rattled around within the facility’s strange acoustics.

 

Garaf watched him leave, then turned back.

“Door,” he said.

Feebee nodded.

The door resisted Garaf’s axes at first, there was a lag between impact and sound, then correction. His attempts barely scratching its surface.

“Stand easy,” said Feebee. ‘QI?’

 

The QI took that as an invitation to give the door a go. It slipped between the rings of protection, clearly it had been waiting for the chance to test itself against the security. The lock cycled. RED…AMBER… AMBER… then GREEN and with a series of clicks they were in.

 

The door swung open.

 

Inside, the room was small. Sparse. Stable.

The table was pushed back, close to the far wall. Chen faced the door; wrists bound within a restraint field that shimmered in the steady light. He looked up as the door whooshed aside, eyes weary, fatigue showing, but there was immediate recognition.

For a moment, he didn’t move. She stepped into the doorway within the halo of flickering light, backlit from the corridor.

Then he blinked, as if checking that the image was real.

“…Feebee?”

She stepped in.

“Yeah,” she said. “You look like hell.”

A corner of his mouth twitched, then broke into a smile, “You took your time.”

 

Garaf entered behind her, his massive frame filled the doorway. He gave them space but kept his position between Chen and the corridor.

Feebee moved to the restraint field, studying it briefly.

‘QI?’

‘On it,’ came the reply as he studied the images and data the QI had sent to his overlays. ‘Field’s tied into local stability. I can drop the field or leave them on.’

“Drop it,” she said out loud, “Please.”

 

The field flickered, went out, came back in a single pulse, just once, then failed. The shackles fell off.

Chen breathed out, hard; flexed his hands slowly, testing, working his fingers.

“You Ok?” Feebee asked.

He stood up, a little unsteady but stayed standing.

“I will be,” he said. His eyes flicked briefly to Garaf, then back to her. “I was starting to think you were never…”

He stopped.

An expression, gone as quickly as it appeared.

But Feebee caught it.

“Save it,” she said instead. “We’re not clear yet.”

 

Garaf shifted slightly, head tilting as if listening to something deeper than the corridor.

He tapped the deck with a claw, “Movement … Distant.”

Rockson came in over comms a second later. “He’s right. They’re trying to regroup, but it’s thin. Not many of them. They weren’t ready for this. For you.”

“Oh. Ok. Good.” Feebee nodded once. “Then let’s leave before they are.”

 

She stepped back to the door, covering the corridor. Garaf moved to Chen’s other side without being asked, steadying him, encouraging him towards to the door.

Chen straightened, finding his balance and moved.

“Lead on,” he said.

 

Feebee didn’t look back.

“Stay close,” she replied, already moving.

 

Behind them, the cell door whooshed shut with quiet, controlled finality. The tell-tales cycled back to RED and the screen went dark, returning to its engineered stillness.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]  

“It had felt this before, and it had learned not to touch it.”

Echoes from the Beast

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From deep within the state of utter calm, of absolute stillness, Feebee took control of The Kestrel and moved it slowly towards the irregularity. She approached slowly, with patience and slipped through a split in the seam.

As the ship passed through, space suddenly felt compressed, heavy.

 

The lights flickered, went out, then came back on again just as the forward screen went blank. They cycled through the external views, all were blank.

"What's just happening?" Asked Rockson.

"The screens are on," Garaf said. "There's just nothing out there."

"Nothing? There can't be nothing."

Rockson looked up from the console, "You're right, nothing’s there. Nothing that registers anyway." He shook his head, “This is very confusing.”

“I think… I think we’ve crossed into… an area of nothing,” said Garaf hesitantly.

 

Garaf pointed to the main clock, "Is that supposed to happen?" he asked as the clock visibly slowed, then stopped.

"Don't know. This is my first time. Excuse the pun."

There was some uneasy laughter between them.

Rockson also noticed that the Alphas’ breathing had changed, it was no longer in sync.

 

Within the stillness, Feebee reached out through the vast timeless expanse of nothing. Feeling her way as they flitted across the substrate. She felt a difference, subtle like the gentle breeze through an open window. It brushed against her senses, so she turned the ship towards it.

The QI sent her a message, "Environmental variance exceeds safety thresholds." The message hung, sent but never delivered. Trapped, hanging in nowhere. Ignoring time.

Feebee kept her perception moving, mapping the area. She felt the edges of something anchored to nothing. She pushed closer towards it, able to sense an outline. Small changes, inconsistencies like the cold breath of a winter's night.

It was an area where nothing itself was denser, it was a resistance that pushed back against her stillness.

Rockson called out, "There's something up ahead. Very faint. Artificial."

Garaf instinctively looked to the view screens. Nothing was shown. Literally.

 

Feebee pushed The Kestrel 'forward'.

 

 

| Inside the irregularity, Nowhere and Nowhen |

 

Within his cell Chen felt a clarity of thought that was too easy. Opinions and theories emerged that weren't his own.

'Am I conscious?' he asked; then answered, 'Yes.'

 

Problems he'd pondered strobed as if being watched rather than experienced. Answers came... easily, clearly. Solving escalating situations that had previously been murky.

 

Necessary actions became clear. Stabilise here. Act like this. Attack there. Destroy. Kill. Do.

 

He shook his head, something felt off.

'No. Everything is fine.'

'These aren't my thoughts.'

'But they are.'

'No. I don't think they are*.*' He pushed back; using the doubt.

 

 

| Aboard The Kestrel, An area of irregularity, Nowhere and Nowhen |

 

The corridor fell away from under them as if the ship had dropped off a cliff. So much so, that it jarred Feebee and the Alphas back to now.

 

And again; another pulse rolled through the deck. The floor moved up but gravity was ...late, then it was there, pushing. It threw them off balance. Literally, in both a physical and mental sense.

They scrambled for their weapons. The ship lurched again.

"Are we being attacked?"

"Unclear." Was all Feebee said. “Gear up.”

 

The lights flickered then failed. Red backups came on. Out of sequence, as if hesitant, waiting for permission.

The air, already thick felt thicker. Not in a sticky way but like walking through water, as though you were pushing through something unseen.

 

“Timing’s slipping,” Rockson snapped, pointing at the clock, it stuttered, slowed, sped up as if unsure of its role. “Doors are all out of sync. I’m getting, hang on. That’s not sensor drift. That’s… selective, it’s being directed.”

 

The bridge door began to open, and then it shuddered to a stop. A ping arrived, completely mistimed. The door closed, then started to slowly open again but stalled halfway.

Something bounced across the floor. It spluttered and smoked. Feebee was the first to see it for what it was and react.

"Down. Down. Flash bang grenade." Feebee quickly covered her ears and closed her eyes. The others did the same, training kicking in.

 

**FLASH - BANG**

 

Before the sound had stopped echoing across the ship a pirate had stepped onto the bridge, through the gap before it should have been possible. She was already moving, firing controlled, aim-shoot. Another appeared behind her, then another.

 

Alpha-2 returned fire, one shot, dead centre, catching the pirate off guard. She’d expected the bridge crew to be stunned but still reacted and moved somewhere else. The bullet passed her by.

Garaf was already in motion, closing distance with brutal efficiency, axes drawn and raised. Alpha-3 pushed past Feebee, drawing fire away from her.

Everything was happening, but in a weird out-of-step way… nothing landed quite where it should have been.

Feebee moved to follow Alpha-3, and everything glitched, slipped in time. Not visibly, but just enough for her to notice. A foot landed and a fraction of a second later the sound arrived. The sound zipped past, then the bullets. Off. All wrong.

She felt a flicker of wrongness run through her, subtle but definitely there.

Feebee slowed down… stopped and sat down in the centre of the bridge. Reaching out, she felt the chaos and worked to steep the area with stillness. She crashed her senses, forcing them into stillness in a way that would have been impossible only a short while ago.

 

“Feebee?” It was Rockson, his voice had an edge. The others hadn’t heard that from him before. Fear?

“We’re losing sync here, falling... Oh, it’s steadying.”

But just as he said it, another pulse coursed across the bridge causing it to lean, twist out of shape before falling back into place.

And somewhere deeper, beneath the substrate, beneath the ship, something moved. It shifted its attention and turned towards the sense of space that Feebee was holding onto.

 

It drifted across her. Cold.

She felt it, like the breeze from earlier but this time stronger. Pushing, testing.

She shivered.

 

Movement surged again around her as more pirates appeared on the bridge. Garaf raised one axe then a second; a deadly combination, but he was too early. The pirates moved, the blows were about to miss but Garaf corrected, mid-motion. Before the blows could land, one pirate reacted deflecting the blows, reacting before the strikes were fully formed. Garaf stepped back confused, disbelieving what he’d seen.

Alpha-2 cursed as the shot clipped empty air, exactly where the woman had been a heartbeat before. He could have sworn the pirate had moved before the shot was fired. He put the gun away, not trusting it.

This wasn’t chaos. Their moves weren’t random. They showed bias. The moment that mattered bent, again and again. Bent just enough to favour one outcome over another. Always in favour of the pirates.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

Q: What did one substrate particle say to the other?
A: Are you sure we aren't connected? I feel like I’m ready for you to jump me.

Old SolDiri joke.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

It was just the EO and Feebee. Sitting, face-to-face across a small table.

“They moved when the system, the sensors were blind. It coincided with a disturbance in the substrate.”

That got the EO’s attention. “Are you saying the Shadows are involved?”

“No. They confirmed there was a disturbance that looked like jump fluctuations, showed us it in the data. But involved, no. I asked outright. They denied it.”

“The Drexari then?”

“No. This was carried out by a highly trained and efficient group. Most likely mercenaries, the timing is exceptional. Too good for a purely human or Drexari military unit.”

 

The EO snorted at that, “Sorry,” he said, wiping his nose.

“We caught one alive, knew nothing, had no allegiance. They wore no uniform, carried no id of any sort. We analysed one of their dead, their food was generic and non-regional. A simple blend of standard dietary needs. Even their gut flora was a neutral synthetic human microbiome, a standard hCOM reset package. Designed for privacy, with a standardized consortium of essential bacteria. Now that's extreme.”

“I get it.” The EO looked worried, “Someone did NOT want this to come back to them.”

Feebee nodded. “Not just anyone, that’s high end, expensive. We think we identified one of their dead, got a partial match. Enough. It aligned with our working theory that they are an elite mercenary unit.”

“Good work, but how does that help us?”

“Well, they don’t plan stuff. They execute the plan and are really good at it. So, they did the job; someone else planned it.”

The EO laughed, “And that helps us how?”

 

It was Feebee’s turn to laugh, “Mercenaries are mercenary. Greedy. We followed some money transfers that arrived in our dead friend’s account. They were ghosted and backtracked through a number of exotic jurisdictions, interesting transactions and hinted at a sponsor.”

The EO sat up and leant in, “And?”

“And, there’s more.” 

Feebee brought up recent shipping transits through the jump corridor where Chen’s Glory had been attacked.

The EO saw it immediately. One group used that jump corridor more than anyone else, a lot more. It was also an area with higher than normal jump fractures; a noisy region close to their home base.  The Royal Guard’s fingerprints were all over it.

 

But the EO shook his head, “Sorry, but it’s still circumstantial at best, with dubious provenance.”

“Indeed,” commented Feebee, “but this led us to drill into the RG’s past. There’s a tactical ploy they employ to overpower opponents. A four-pronged attack, a tetrahedron. Sound familiar?”

“Yes. It does. Very familiar. So, we have local knowledge of the corridor, leverage of jump corridor fractures, hire of mercenaries. But the timing? So precise. How are the RG doing this?”

 

“We don’t know. The precision is beyond any model we have, including scenarios where they have inside help.”

 

Then Feebee felt something shift, flicker. She reached into her pocket and held River’s crystal.

“They didn’t find the moment. They were given it.” She couldn’t explain how she knew this. She just did and the warmth that came with the answer assured her of its veracity, its accuracy.

The EO knew better than to question these moments. He had seen them turn to gold and light the correct path all too often. 

 

“But we still have a major problem. Where did they take him? They jumped away?” asked Feebee.

“Yeh. All four, in motion, their movement co-ordinated.”

“Can you show me?” Feebee asked.

 

The EO pulled up the sensor data and projected it on the wall. It showed the four ships holding steady, then moving away and jumping.

But something was off, it was a feeling. She couldn’t explain it, “Play it again. Slowly.”

The EO shrugged but complied.

 

It looked the same. She ships started moving, all at the same time, co-ordinated. They began to lose coherence as they jumped and were then gone.

“See. Nothing.”

“Exactly!” Feebee shouted, “Nothing. No blue wake. Can we see the jump signature?”

The EO brought up the associated data, “That’s not right,” he said. “The jump signature’s all wrong.”

“And no exit vector,” added Feebee.

 

“You’re right,” said the EO. “They didn’t leave. Well… not properly.”

 

Feebee called Rockson, can you do a deep sensor sweep on the exact location of the abduction? You’ve got the co-ordinates? Yes?”

“Yes. Give me a minute.”

 

He took more than a minute, but they knew it would. He sent them an extract from the data with a narrative overlaid.

As Feebee played the snippet she felt something pressing back. As if trying to resist her inspection. It was at the edge of her awareness, an incredibly light touch but it was there.

And so was a faint decaying irregularity in the jump corridor. Not a jump scar that had healed but something different. More like a fold, or a seam that had been picked open and remained that way.

 

Feebee called Rockson back, “Thanks. Good work. I need you to get StillFall to have a look at the irregularity.”

“StillFall’s onto it. I asked as soon as I saw it.”

Feebee smiled, the EO nodded. “Your crew work well together.”

“Yes. We do. Thanks.” Responded Feebee.

 

He was seeing a side of Feebee and her crew he would never have guessed at. They were much more than the blunt instruments he had thought.

 

The QI interrupted Feebee, “StillFall won’t go near it. It’s a taboo area. My words not his. They’re rare. He said that not all regions with deep faults have them, but they are only found in them.”

Then asked, “Do you know what they are?”

The QI responded immediately. “I cannot classify it other than as a fault, an irregularity.”

“Helpful. Not!” She said it as a joke. “Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

Then she heard something she rarely heard from the QI. A refusal to engage further. It wasn’t fear but something deeper, more visceral. Avoidance!

After what seemed like an eternity to Feebee, the QI came back, “The Shadow has disengaged.”

She spoke to the EO, quietly, her voice almost a whisper, “There’s something out there freaking out the Shadow and playing with my QI.”

“Is that normal? For the QI,” the EO asked.

“No. Exceptionally rare. Only when it conflicts with higher order imperatives. They know this place, or places like it.”

“So, we’re stuck?”

 

Feebee smiled, “No. Never. There are always options.”

She called Rockson and explained the situation, “So they know this place?” he asked.

“Seems like,” she responded.

 

Rockson mapped the instability. Gave form to the irregularities that made it up. The readings fluctuated in an unpredictable manner, in truly random patterns that defied logic.

Feebee found herself holding River’s crystal. It pulsed, weak, at random.

 

“Give me a minute.” Feebee laid back in the chair and tightened her grip on the crystal.

The EO watched, fascinated. He’d heard Chen talk about this. Her ability to drop into a state of absolute stillness but had never seen it before. She focused on the crystal and reached out to the Alphas. They felt her ‘call’, stopped what they were doing, and compelled, sat down cross legged with eyes closed.

 

Rockson had seen them do this before, but never outside a monk session. He glanced at the console and saw Feebee’s signature, enhanced by the crystal, grow in power as the Alphas joined her. But as he looked, he saw a second trace, discordant and harsh, clipping and distorting their efforts.

He drilled into the second trace. At first, he thought it was some weird phase off-set, an echo but it wasn’t that. This wasn’t trying to smooth Feebee’s signal or correct discrepancies. This was reactive and trying to introduce them, create chaos around an otherwise smooth signature.

Rockson boosted Feebee’s signature and in her trance, she felt the additional power it delivered. The irregularity responded and pushed back.

She felt Shadows, previously gathered and watching at the periphery, pull back, actively avoiding it. In the same way that a hand, or claw, instinctively pulls away from a hot plate. This place was their hot plate, not for them to touch.

 

Feebee dug deeper, felt gaps in The Kestrel’s sensor arrays and the system misreads of them. It was as if reality had looked away. She projected balance and stillness upon the area and the irregularity responded. The substrate tightened, shoring up against the gentle, powerful waves that surged from Feebee.   

 

Then she saw it, not space shifting but a shimmering in the substrate. They all saw it.

“What is it?” asked Rockson. But Feebee was deep inside her state of stillness. Unreachable.

The QI tried to reach her, “The shimmering you are seeing is showing patterns consistent with a jump signature.”

Nothing.

Rockson tried again, “Feebee, what is it?”

She didn’t answer.

But the engines fired up.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

"Help is a coin. Spend it wisely."

Old Merchant proverb

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

| A dirty jump space corridor between Human and Drexari space

“In… Out… … In… Out…”

Around her the crew breathed in sync. The dark zone within a stillness capsule was perfectly quiet and within it they held a link to StillFall who, while drifting outside The Kestrel, helped them feel the jump-space substrate. They reached towards a region of low-level stability, one where these was imperfect substrate coherence.

It was a beautiful weave of vibrating stings that felt like one was riding inside a musical instrument, riding perfectly still and at the same time within a roaring, vibrating, higher-dimensional storm. Chaos and stillness in balance. Emotions were felt with a clarity that could be plucked or gently bent. Memories, some made and others yet to be physically experienced, were stretched out endlessly across a fretted continuum.

Outside the stillness capsule, within The Kestrel, systems were quiet, sensors were reading the ‘noisy area’ and the QI was running a deep analysis of the signatures they were able to track.

Around them, ships transited through this noisy region in a busy jump corridor. And then River’s crystal vibrated, gently, hardly noticeable in Feebee’s hand.

But the ‘stillness’ capsule was fragile and when the QI put the EO’s call through it shattered with a brittle snap.

Alpha-3 was the first to drop out, unfinished memories jarred. “Damn. That was weird, in a good way, and so close.” 

Alpha-2 followed almost immediately.

Next was Rockson. He reached for his console and checked the signatures, “Yeh, very close,”

Garaf, with all six appendages locked solid to the deck hardly moved, one solitary eye slowly opened and watched their boss remain perfectly still, in balance.

“Hello, this is Feebee.” 

"This is Chen's EO."

She noticed it for the first time, he never gave his name, just Chen's EO. Did he have a name, she thought with a smile.

"Chen's been taken, kidnapped." No preamble, straight to the point. Clearly, he knew how Feebee worked and what she needed.

She waited for more info.

"Chen's Glory was disabled and boarded."  The EO continued, "This is politically dangerous, unstable. We need containment and we need your help."

"Oh. Ok. Good."

Then he added, "and your team. We've started analysing the attack, the lead up and..."

"Ok." She cut across him, "Where are you?"

 

He looked at the Drexari officer? He nodded.

"Sending you co-ordinates."

"We'll make haste. Anything else?" She'd already accept the situation and pivoted.

 

Work progressed slowly on Chen's Glory. They were still drifting when The Kestrel dropped out of jump space and entered the docking bay.

They'd seen the damage as they approached. Still work to be done. Two of the hull breaches were ugly scars, repaired, the holes plugged; the third had droids scrambling over it.

The EO met Feebee in the docking bay, he was taller than she remembered but then he was usually behind a desk outside Chen's office.

It was clumsy, seniority unclear. He extended his hand as she moved to salute. She stopped and reached for his hand as he retracted it standing ready to accept the salute.

She stopped and stepped back.

"Jones." He said.

She nodded. "EO."

 

Her squad waited, at the top of the ramp, outlined in red light from within The Kestrel.

"You know the others." She gestured.

He nodded in their direction. "By name. We need to move on this. Time is our enemy."

 

Feebee said nothing, her thoughts focused on a need for clarity.

"I'll need total access."

"You sure? We've summarised it for you."

She smiled, "Yes, all the data, human and Drexari. And the logs behind them... Please."

 

The EO spoke into his comms. "I've got a Drexari bridge officer. He'll send you the data and be your first point of contact."

"Oh. Ok. Good. Garaf will work with them. We'll stay in The Kestrel, if that's OK. All our stuff's there."  Before he could reply she'd turned and walked back up the ramp.

"That's fine,” he called after her.

 

The QI updated Feebee, "I've got access to their data and logs?"

"That was quick... or did you..."

"Yes."

"You've got to stop doing that."

 

"I've compared the raw data with what I received and there are differences. I have low confidence in what they sent. The two data sets contradict each other and there are internal inconsistencies."

"Oh. Ok. Good. Well done." Then she quickly added, "And that doesn't give you agency to just go around hacking systems. Share the data with Rockson."

"I have."

The QI and Rockson seemed to be working well together, "Good."

 

Feebee let the data flow across her senses. Listening to it, trying to establish a baseline. She could hear Rockson curse as he flicked through the data, overlaying signatures, reconfiguring agents, looking for order within the chaotic data set.

The QI worked with him pulling more data in, rejecting the noise. They shared the data as they worked; both the raw and the refined.

"Find the smallest pieces that are relevant, that matter in the minutes before and after the boarding."

"Before?" asked Rockson. 

"Yes. Before. They knew what to do, where to go. It started before they boarded."

 

The data stabilised; a picture emerged. The QI brought it up.

"Eleven seconds? That's not possible," said Rockson. "That's too quick. Too precise."

"Exactly. But it happened, what changed in those eleven seconds?"

 

"Can we look at the human sensor data, then the Drexari?"

The QI complied and populated the display with the human sensor data. The cadence of system calls faltered leaving micro-gaps in sensor readings, lags that spiked at the time of the boarding.

"Now the Drexari data." Another trace appeared, it showed the same effects, but they didn't align.

"They don't match," said Garaf.

 

"I'd have been surprised if they did. This is intentional, they don't have to fail at the same time. But do they fail in the same way?"

Rockson brightened, "I see where you're going." His hands flew over the console, "...Here. And here. Same look to the way the gaps appeared, but different sensors."

Feebee watched, “It’s not random. The gaps are spaced, precise. They didn’t break in.”

“No?” Rockson looked confused.

Feebee felt the data. “No. They moved when the system couldn’t see them. Within the noise.”

“But there were no system anomalies.” The QI continued, “Nothing is in the logs.”

Feebee interjected, “There is.” She pointed to the gaps, “It’s just that it’s not sensor failure.”

“What is it then?” asked Rockson.

“It’s timing.”

“Timing?”

“Small gaps, not failures. Windows of opportunity. Vulnerabilities.”

The QI began recalculating. New plots appeared in their overlays. And patterns dropped into place. Obvious now.

“They used the instability, caused by the noisy jump.”

“Yes. And that was when they slipped through in a window that they opened in our sensor web. Within fluctuations, using jump noise,” added Rockson.

There was silence, just for a second. Then Feebee directed them, “We need to find out how that kind of window can be made.” She looked at Rockson. “We also need to know where they went. Their exit vector, or lack of.”

They made progress and agreed next steps.

So Feebee left The Kestrel and reported back to the EO, wanting to do it face to face.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

“All too often, all we see is the wood…”

Extract from an ancient Earth proverb.

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

The EO thought.

The marine asked again.

“Sir? A mole?”

“No. I don’t think so. This feels like something bigger.”

One of the marines frowned, “Sir?”

 

The EO stepped up to the display and brought up the sensor overlay again. The gaps in coverage loomed large. Clean, geometric absences while everywhere else there was the noise and chaos of an engagement.

“Look at it,” he said, his voice still calm. “Really look.”

One of the engineers spoke up, “Its too clean…” he hesitated but the EO nodded encouragement, continue, “If these areas had been knocked out during the fighting the coverage would have degraded, been spotty but this is as if they were switched off or just not there.”

“Exactly!” exclaimed the EO.

“Could be an inside job,” one of the marines suggested. “Shutting down the sensors at just the right time.”

The EO considered this but then shook his head.

“No, an inside job would leave a trail in the logs, there's nothing. And this is across multiple systems. Highly co-ordinated.”

He brought up a breach timeline again. “Three breach points, all within seconds of each other. And each one landing at or near a critical point that they ignored, a distraction, enabling them to get to the bridge and Captain Chen.”

His gaze scanned the room, resting on everyone. “That’s not someone feeding information that is acted on in real time during an engagement.” He said it again, “Too clean,” then continued, “That’s someone shaping the environment, the ‘battlefield’.” he made the quotes gesture.

The Drexari officer inclined his head and raised a claw, “I observed… irregularities. Minor disruptions to the sensor readings, glitches, drop-outs.” His shoulder frame slumped, all arms dropping, “At the time… I attributed it to effects from the engagement.”

The EO did not want any apportionment of blame, not at this time. Not to this group. “We all did.”

The Drexari’s shoulder rose and he visibly brightened. “Thank you Sir.”

“And now? What do they show?” asked the EO.

“When I left the board. All the reading appeared to be aligned.”

 

The word struck a chord with the EO, “Aligned.” He exhaled slowly. “Yes, aligned.”

He then logged in to his console, immediately rose and called the Drexari over, “Come. Show us everything from the last seventy-two hours.”

 

The Drexari sat at the console and widened the projected timeline in the data window. His claws flew across the keys. Additional logs were pulled onto the chronology leading up to the engagement. Logs from ship systems, comms and sensor arrays. Small things that had been flagged and dismissed. At first, it just looked like more noise on a chaotic roadmap. He let the chaos sit for a while for all to see.  And took in the detail, pattern recognition his ‘thing’. He started highlighting things within the chaos. 

And talked as he worked.

“One here, comms delay. Logged, dismissed.”

“Another. Targeting recalibration. Within tolerance. Dismissed.”

He continued through the timeline.

“Taken individually, they are nothing. Insignificant. But…” He pointed to the timeline, littered with highlights, and looked around the room.

Items dismissed as acceptable either by automated systems or a person went back days.

“This didn’t start with the boarding,” said the EO. “That’s just when it all came together and mattered.”

One of the marines swore under his breath. “They’d been probing us.”

“Either that or preparing the ground for the assault.”

“Like you said Sir, this attack displays a capability beyond normal pirates.”

“Indeed. These aren’t pirates, but who we don’t yet know.” 

 

The EO became thoughtful and turned to the engineers. “How long before we can get underway?”

The engineers all looked at each other. None would speak, this was their worst nightmare, an estimate required for something with no defined scope or what effort would be required to fix it. There was a collective shrug and a lot of head shaking but no answer.

“Who’s the senior engineer here?”

After some finger pointing and much discussion, a small blond-haired woman stepped forward. She explained, “I’m Rook, not the most senior in rank, or service but we all agree that for this job I am the best to lead.”

The EO smiled, “Engineering logic. Is it just Rook?” She nodded. “Well Rook,” he crossed and shook her hand, “I am promoting you to Lieutenant and the honorary title of Chief.”

She looked confused, “Sir?”

“What, Lieutenant Rook? Here are your first orders. Hand off your current work and get this ship jump ready.”

“Sir.” She said, accepting the situation with a crisp salute.

The EO smiled. “Get to it and take your people with you.”

The engineers congratulated Rook and followed her out of the meeting room, one stayed back. “I’ll stay. You may need engineering input.”

 

With all but one engineer gone the dynamic in the room changed. Not in volume but in mood. They knew this was no longer a breach and some of the marines blamed themselves.

“Before we go any further, this is not on you.” He pointed at each marine. “You were outgunned and outplayed. NOT… YOUR… FAULT.”

 

He repeated the last words, quietly. “Not your fault.”  And let them sink in.

 

“We have two problems.”

He raised a finger, “Chen has been taken.”

He raised a second finger, “We don’t fully understand how.”

 

He lowered his hand, “And until we do, we are vulnerable to another attack. Unlikely, because I think they have what they wanted. But we have to be secure, else we cannot get Chen back and take him back we will. Agreed?”

 

The marines nodded. “Yes Sir.”

“Argue if you disagree. Please.”

“Yes Sir,” they all said in unison, it was clearly a practiced response.

The EO smiled, “You’re messing with me now aren’t you.”

“Yes Sir,” they all responded again, breaking into smiles.

 

One of the marines spoke up, “Sir. To be sure that can’t happen again, or to see it coming were it to restart,” he whistled, “it would require a full systems lock down, audit and sweep of every log.” The marine looked to the Drexari officer. “Yes?”

“Yes. Probably more.”

“How long will that take,” asked the EO.

The marine hesitated. the remaining engineer answered for him, “Days, at least.”

“Longer,” the Drexari officer added, “especially if we need to cross check and establish oversight to catch any misalignment early.”

The EO nodded, “Too long.” He glanced at the Drexari officer, “Too long because your Command, and our Command, will soon start asking questions.”

“They already are, wanting to talk to Chen. I have been walling them.”

“Not walling, stone walling. Good. Our Command will also want reassurances.”

The Drexari’s expression changed and he laughed, just a little, “They will want more than reassurances. They have lost Chen. To them, we have lost Chen.”

 

The EO looked at the display again. At the gaps, the pattern and the questions he would face as the EO of a ship that had been boarded and its captain snatched.

He straightened and made a call, but he needed buy in.

“We’re not going to run this through normal channels.”

That got their attention.

“Sir?” one of his officers said carefully.

“If we escalate this formally,” the EO spoke carefully, “we will lose control of the narrative. It will quickly become public knowledge, and …” he looked around the room, “we don’t know what, or who we’re dealing with.”

 

The room remained quiet. Then, more quietly, the EO added, “And neither did Chen.”

 

That shifted the tone. They realised then that this was about containment.

Of information and of perception.

One of the marines was first to speak, “You’re saying we keep this internal.”

The EO’s reply was immediate, “I’m saying we solve this before it becomes external.”

 

The distinction was subtle, but it mattered. The Drexari was watching the EO closely, carefully with as many eyes focused on the EO as was possible.

“And how do you propose we do this? Solve this?” he asked.

Again, the EO didn’t hesitate, but answered straight away, “We bring in someone who is outside this system.”

 

Then after the smallest of pauses he added, “Jones. Captain Feebee Jones.”

 

They knew her, had heard the name and the reputation that came with it.

“She’s not in the command structure,” one of the bridge officers said.

“Correct.”

“She doesn’t report through standard channels.”

“Yes, also correct.”

“And that’s your solution?”

 

The EO let the question sit and then responded, “She’s seen and solved problems like this before, and her being outside the standard reporting line has advantages.”

There was no elaboration, no attempt to ‘sell’ the solution beyond what he’d already said.

 

The Drexari officer straightened. Then asked, “Is this the one your Captain Chen… employs. The one who has engaged with the Drexari?”

The EO, Chen’s EO let a smile flicker for just a moment, “Yes. Chen uses her when things have escaped from the box or don’t fit neatly inside.”

The Drexari translator struggled, but eventually the officer got the meaning, “And this does not fit in one of those neat boxes?”

“No,” the EO agreed. “It doesn’t.”

 

He looked around the room again. At the marines who had fought, at the engineer who didn’t understand how it had been done and at the Drexari officer.

“We don’t have a lot of time to be wrong on this,” he said. “We need to act decisively.”

 

He turned to his comms officer, “Get me the secure line.”

 

Then, after a pause he added, “The one that is off system.”

They understood immediately what that meant. The system, the ship, wasn’t damaged. It was suspect, almost certainly compromised.

Somewhere, Chen was being handled and moved. Whoever was doing that thought they were in control and had everything covered. Probably thought the gaps were under their control too.

 

The EO looked back at the timeline. “Let’s see how you do when someone stops looking at this how you expect.”

The comms officers spoke, “Secure, off-system line ready Sir.”

“Put it through.”

 

After the briefest of pauses, they heard…

“This is Feebee”

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

“In like a scalpel, out before the blood knew it was spilled.”

AAR Extract from the Chen’s Glory EO

 

| Where the trader’s jump co-ordinates took them |

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art] 

More updates came from the marines and security teams; the second wave had hit deeper. The marines had repositioned but were falling back, forcing the pirates into tighter and tighter positions.

It was working but then they adapted, changed tactics. Instead of attacking to get where they wanted, they deployed charges. Not to blow up the ship or even to disable it. They were to allow the pirates to reshape the action.

A corridor blew apart, the marines reeled, killed or disorientated by the blast wave that knocked them off their feet.

And out they poured.

Through the chaos the platoon leader called, “Flank. Flank.” Discipline held, the marines pivoted but it was too late; they were surrounded and exposed.

The fight became a brutal close-range exchange. Pistols and axes, even hammers were used to bludgeon the opponent. There was no room for thought or tactics, it was all pure instinct and aggression. Speed and survival.

The pirates were good. Too good to be just pirates.

 

On the bridge, Chen and the EO could hear the comms chatter from across the ship.

“Central access corridor is lost.”

Chen turned and looked to the EO. Both knew that corridor led to the bridge. The EO reacted first.

“Issue weapons.” He looked at the two marines, “Get ready to defend the bridge.” They nodded and took up positions.

The Drexari officer opened the bridge safe and handed out the two pistols that were inside. He kept his thoughts to himself, but two additional pistols felt hopelessly inadequate.

Tables were up turned; the two marines took defensive positions behind them facing the door.

Chen stood unarmed beneath the forward screen facing the entry point.

The door didn’t explode inwards. It wasn’t cut open. Blinking from red to green it unlocked and whooshed open. For a good second or two no one moved. Everyone just watched as the door remained open. No one spoke.

Two of pirates stepped through, weapons raised. Ready but not firing.

One of the marines stood quickly and swung his rifle around. A third pirate, unseen stepped forward quickly and struck, fast, precise. Two taps; one in the chest, the second in the head. Tap, tap and the marine went down, dead before he could let off a shot.

‘Definitely not pirates,’ thought the EO.

 

The silence that followed was broken by a voice that was clearly comfortable with command, “That was a waste.” 

The pirate chief, their leader, stepped forward, flanked by more pirates, and scanned the bridge, his gaze fell on Chen. “Target acquired.”

 

There was no anger. No urgency.

 

Chen held the leader’s gaze, and spoke, “You’ve made a mistake.”

The leader didn’t respond, but a tight smile appeared briefly but was then gone.

Two pirates stepped forward. More funnelled onto the bridge and spread out, providing cover.

Chen moved fast and struck out at the nearest. The blow never landed and was casually brushed aside. Chen followed it with a kick that was caught, his leg twisted sending him sprawling to the floor. He hit the deck hard, tried to bounce up but struggled to regain his feet. Clearly dazed.

Then it was over, the second pirate swept Chen’s legs, held him down, reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe. He then injected Chen in the neck; it was controlled, efficient.

Not rough or careless. Precise. Chen went limp, his face slack.

“You are outgunned,” the leader said, “Heros die, be smart and we’ll all be Ok.”

They picked up Chen, took him away and as they left the leader spoke into a comms device, “Package secured.”

The intruders wore no patches, no identification of rank or unit and were far too disciplined to be pirates.

“Who are you?” asked the EO. 

The question was ignored and as the Commander left, he turned, “We’ll be in touch.”

Once all his men were clear, the bridge door whooshed and the door’s telltales cycled from green to red as the door relocked.

Around the ship the marines and security details fought on. The EO could hear the occasional gun fire but in reality, it was over.

 

They dragged Chen back towards the breach point. Their movement carried the same precision and control they had used when entering the ship.

No wasted motion and no hesitation. It was a master class. Practiced.

The marines regrouped and pushed the pirates back, slowly gaining ground but it was too little, too late.

 

The pirates had their prize and took it out through one of the breach points. Clamps released and the small pirate crafts peeled away fast and clean making their way back to the frigates that held their tetrahedral position.

 

Behind them Chen’s Glory drifted, wounded and unable to follow but alive. Critical systems had been spared but their jump drive and weapons were off-line and would stay that way for quite some time. Alarms were still screaming, warning lights continued to strobe, but the target was gone. As medical teams went through the ship and started to triage, they were surprised by the percentage of wounded, few were dead.

The EO watched the pirate frigates jump as one; co-ordinated and perfectly timed. All their jump signatures tuned and aligned. One second there, the next gone.

“That wasn’t a fight; they just took what they came for.”

 

Whoever had planned this got what they wanted, with minimal force and had never intended anything else.

Chen’s Glory was stabilising with bulk heads sealing around the breaches. Air in those areas no longer vented, automated systems were working to seal the breaches themselves.

Comms were messy, the EO ‘s brain was thrashing. He'd lost his Captain and needed to establish control of his ship now the pirates had left. But first he needed to understand how it had happened.

“All marine officers, please report to the EO’s office.”

 

The marines filtered in, went through the office to the meeting room adjacent. Some had been visibly patched up; few were injury free; they looked damaged but not defeated. They lined up on one wall; senior engineers, covered in grease and black with soot, stood against the other wall. The Drexari Bridge Officer was there too and stood in the middle, near the doorway with two officers from the bridge.

“I’ve brought you all together specifically to conduct a review of the recent engagement. Does everyone know everyone?”

There were some nods, but most shook their heads. They went round the room and introduced themselves. 

“I have kept attendance at this meeting tight. You are a small, trusted group. What we discuss here stays here, for now. Agreed?”

They all nodded, the Drexari doing his equivalent to a nod.

The EO projected a timeline on one wall and when he spoke his voice was calm, measured. Reassuring.

“This wasn’t a raid and these weren’t pirates. Not what we think of as pirates anyway.”

The timeline was ragged, full of holes. He started from the left, “We detected them late. Not through bad practice.” He looked at the Drexari officer, “He is a diligent and accurate operative. There were gaps.”

Some of the attendees nodded, realising for the first time what they’d failed to see.

The EO brought up a schematic of the ship, “Boarders struck in three places within a carefully timed window.”

The positions of the hull breaches appeared on the schematic. They were numbered.

He continued, “Each breach put the boarders close to a key resource, a main corridor or access point. They were also optimally spread making the job of the marines and security teams doubly hard. No single focal point.”

One of the marines spoke up, “Inside help? 

“Inside help?” the EO repeated, “Either that or access. Someone messed with our systems, shaped what we saw. They knew our layout, our systems and our timings. Down to the second. We never had a chance. And neither did Chen.”

Realisation dawned on the group.

“Find out who knew all that and we have the traitor...”

“A mole?” one of the men asked looking around the room.

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