First

(This one didn’t want to happen, and then hit like a hammer. The Muse is doing... something.)

Undying Blues

They left him alone in his chambers. With his projects left to build. His thoughts to himself. Disturbed. Upset. Unhappy.

Before this day his most violent release had seen him in a holographic chamber, flailing against a mirror opponent that had their appearance shift. He had been most violent when they resembled certain members of his clientele. He had never... killed before. He had never...

His arm shakes as he tries to contain everything roiling inside him. His control is nowhere near where it should be, his reactions are... he’s falling victim to whatever the horror inside him is.

He fills the bath shortly and the water is so hot as to be nearly scalding. The club is set nearby, he discards the tattered remains of his robe and steps in.

It’s hot enough to hurt. Much hotter and he would begin to burn. But he needs the pain to focus. To get full control again. The thing inside him. It either was, or was derived from the thing that had somehow ruined an entire world. Some kind of pathogen. He had been deliberately infected and was not certain if he himself was infectious.

Has he passed this to Sue’Li? Was she already infected before meeting him? How much control did this thing have over him?

He considers as he carefully gathers up what soaps are available and slowly cleans himself. The proper and civilized action brings him further and further away from the savagery that screamed to be unleashed. It was louder than before.

Many of his clients, and for a long time he himself, referred to the indulgent, greedy and gluttonous side of the Ibu as their inner animal. His own was straining the chain hard.

He should not have fed it. But it had gone unfed for so long it had outright slipped the chains. But whatever was inside him had loosened the chains.

The door opens and from the sound of the cloth and the general gait he can tell it’s not Sue’Li or any of her people even before The Usurper walks into sight.

“Your pardon, but I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to rise at the moment.” He says as he lathers himself up. Trying to get the mental sensation of the gore off him. There wasn’t even a speck on his person but... the more time passed since the massacre he performed the less he liked it.

“You are pardoned oh little one.” She says and there’s a near purring tone to her voice. He doesn’t falter in his movements, but he does recognize the danger. She’s much more attracted to him now and he’s not exactly in a position where he can refuse without enormous consequence.

“I must apologize for my unseemly display. It is my duty to ensure that others are permitted to indulge, not to indulge myself and...” She crouches down and puts a finger to his tusk. The Ibu variant of a finger to another’s lips.

“There is no shame in what you did. It is our nature to require release. Indeed we defy it when we put on the trappings of civilization.” She answers and her tone is more... maternal now? That’s an interesting angle for her to take.

“I see. Speaking of civilization. What more can you tell me about this... thing in me? If you will not name it, can you better explain it’s origin? Those Vish clearly had some form of it, one similar to that man, Geninji.”

“Genengi. She says and considers. He was the first but not the last. Silence and darkness could give them back their minds for a time. But the slightest stimulation could set them off. In the end the last time they saw light before I incinerated his peers was just before I captured them. Winnowing their numbers even as I gathered more and more information.”

“And what did it tell you?”

“That the plague had arrived some fifty years before. A mere five decades before I arrived a woman proved herself unkillable in battle. She went on a rampage against all who wronged her and when the state caught her and tried to put her to death for mass murder, everything failed. Her head had been removed and she stood again.”

“And it spread from there?” He asks.

“It did, it turns out that she was spreading the source of her immortality and many were already blessed. But they weren’t worthy of the blessing. And so it turned to a curse.”

“And what makes you think that I am worthy of such a blessing?”

“You are still speaking to me. You went into the depths of madness and drew yourself back out. You are sane, reasonable and rational. Good blood has proven through.”

“More likely good training. There have been family members that failed.” Danburi says in a pained tone. Will she take the bait?

“Failed, or were failed?” The Usurper asks and he looks up to match her gaze. She bit down on the bait yes, but was that actually a useful answer? Hard to say, but something to remember.

“Either way, self mastery is not in blood alone. It is training, discipline.” He says and she simply smiles. Playing back hunh? Not very useful. But still useful. “Regardless, you have a story and I have an interest milady. Care to continue?”

“Oh, yes I would care to continue.” She says with a smile before snapping her fingers and a chair is produced by Sue’Li who had not revealed herself to Danburi and had clearly entered after The Usurper.

“Thank you milady and... I’m terribly sorry it just feels so rude of me to simply refer to you as milady or my lady. Even if it is not your proper name, some appellation for you would be most appreciated.” He asks with a smile and she huffs in amusement.

“And you don’t trust yourself to name me as you did your assistant?” She asks and he raises an eyebrow.

“Sue’Li did not have a proper name. You do.” He states and she nods.

“And if I told you I wanted that name, what would you think?”

“I would think you were being most rude and obstinate madam.” He states in a testy tone and she outright laughs.

“You may use the term Ungora for me.”

“Ungora, Coastal Ibu’Cjeo for matriarch. Very well Lady Ungora, thank you for the kindness.”

“You are exceptionally well learned aren’t you?”

“I would assume that you would be quite familiar with my education, otherwise you’ve expended a great deal of resources and taken quite the risk upon yourself for an unknown.”

“Oh everyone is an unknown child. Until you see them in action you have no way of knowing if they took to their studies in the slightest, or if there was anything more to them than the studies. To say nothing of how a person responds in an unknown situation.” Ungora states.

“Oh?”

“Yes. I know what you’re doing.” She says to him and he raises an eyebrow.

“I think it’s fairly obvious what I’m doing.” He says and she nods before reaching over and her finger flicks around the back of his horn. She pulls back with the grain of khutha and smiles.

“If you weren’t a fighter I wouldn’t have taken you. If you weren’t cunning I wouldn’t have taken you. If you weren’t loyal then I wouldn’t have taken you. Every reason I took you is another thing you will fight me with, I do not expect you to submit, indeed I expect you to fight. And fight. And fight.” She says.

“And I suppose I’m about to be punished.”

“Not at all! I applaud loyalty, cunning and patience. Even if the target of your loyalty is most unworthy.” She says and he sighs.

“I just don’t understand why La’ahbaron.” He states frankly and her eyebrows go up. “No truly, think of it. You clearly have the forces, resources and drive to conquer, but why La’ahbaron? Why fellow Ibu? You could have set up a new empire anywhere, why fight for one? Why slaughter people uninvolved in your ambitions and desires if you don’t have to?”

“My ambition is to rule, yes. But my desires? I am fulfilling them, piece by piece. You are part of that. Sue’Li is part of that. Your grandmother is part of that, your aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, nieces and nephews are all part of it as are the people they rule over.”

“I find it hard to believe you have so involved and far seeing a plan considering how you acted before.”

“Do you think you’re the only one in this room that finds violence to be cathartic beyond all things?” She asks and Danburi nods.

“I thought you were dead, Lady Wurana.” He says and she pauses.

“... I was wondering what piece would give it away.” Wurana states. “But I did die, I found life everlasting when I was looking for death beyond death. I found immortality when I was looking for a way to destroy my own soul to make the pain stop.”

“Lady Ungora then?” He asks.

“Yes.” She says and he casts his mind back. His third indulgence. The THIRD time he had ever helped someone relieve themselves had been Lady Wurana, she had wept without end, drunk without pausing for breath and he had to stop her from drowning in her own vomit. She had broken his nose in return.

“You have made a recovery beyond anything I could give you.”

“I’ve changed. A lot.” She says before smiling. “Still, I didn’t forget that kindness. If you weren’t so resolute in your duties even back then, I wouldn’t be here. Although it took you some time to recognize me.”

“It’s been over a century, and we only met in person the once. I apologize for it taking so long.” Danburi says nearly biting his tongue as he thinks of and then dismisses a thousand and one topics. He’s in danger, severe danger.

“It’s surprising I’m remembered at all, for all that it took so long. I would have thought I was completely forgotten.”

“You weren’t. Your statue still stands in the hall of heroes. Your likeness still in stone and old name stamped in Axiom Ride.”

“That’s going to be one of the first things that change. All the useless extravagances stripped from the palaces and castles and put to the military.”

“... Does this mean I should stop crafting the Discretion Palaces?” He asks.

“No, those are needed.” She answers.

“And what about honouring the fallen and brave?” He asks.

“The dead don’t need Axiom Ride.” She says and he bites on his tongue. His first through fifth responses are to ask a rather pointed question that’s likely to infuriate the immortal warlady. And as an immortal himself, there is no real limit to the harm she can cause him. She catches the look in his eye. “And no, I haven’t forgotten them. But the living don’t need memorials.”

“What?! Your children were interred with full honours! They can’t be... the memorial! It was one of the first casualties in the opening of the war. You plundered their tombs and... did something.”

“Oh did something did I? Some Wimparas tart who had power handed to her revives the recently dead and she’s a goddess. I do it to the long dead and it’s: plundered their tomb and did something.”

“How?” He asks and her hand lashes out and he flinches back, spilling half the water on the floor. But she stops. The lower left side of his torso. Right on top of the numbness. The thing inside him that won’t let him die. She smiles at him.

“That’s how.”

“What do you want from me, really?” He asks.

“I want you to be a courtesan. The best courtesan, refined yet fierce. Mother cannot win little nephew. I know everything and I cannot die, my forces are inexhaustible and of unfailing loyalty. Even if the whole galaxy stands beside La’ahbaron, she dies.”

“But, she’s family! She’s your mother!”

“She’s Wurana’s mother.”

“It’s still kinslaying.” He half whispers.

“And her endless wars and paranoia slaughtering my children wasn’t?” Ungora asks before leaning over the tub and making sure to look him dead in the eyes even as he shrinks back as the fullness of the situation hammers in like blows from an orojo. “I gave everything to La’ahbaron and all I received was emptiness and misery so profound that even your best work could only keep me alive long enough to decide I needed more than mere death to stop the pain. La’ahbaron, empire and woman both, deserves to die.”

“Why does the empire deserve it?”

“They are complicit.”

“And... and your own forces? The endless Vish you send to their death?”

“We are crafted to serve.” Sue’Li says and he turns to see her fully. “Death is just an end of service.”

He turns back to Ungora as he tries to make some sense. His subversion has been wiped away, how much he cannot say, he knows who is holding him and it’s just made things far, far worse. But how did she return the dead to life?

“My cousins, how are they?” He asks and there is a flicker there. It’s gone almost as soon as it arrives. She’s not certain.

“They’re recovering.” She says.

“Any way I could help with that, honoured aunt?” He asks slowly and there it is again. Uncertainty. She’s been lying to him. At least in part. Likely to herself as well.

“No, not yet. They’re not ready for you yet.” She says and he nods.

“Of course Honoured Aunt. Now may I please have some privacy as I finish my bath?” He asks.

“Did you not want to hear more about how I learned of and mastered immortality?” She asks and his mind races for a moment. Then he steels himself despite his now pounding head and offers a smile.

“Yes, yes I do.” He answers.

First Last

Something needed to be done. The Collective had discovered our planetary breeding grounds, and none of our offspring were hatching with individuality. Only the crushing authoritarianism of the hive mind.

So we scoured the archives, hoping to find somewhere, anywhere, the Collective hadn't reached. We eventually settled on a small planet in the Orion system, called Earth. The archives mentioned little of the main inhabiting species of the planet, except that they had live births, something the Collective was incapable of corrupting, and their "odd" behaviors.

No further information was given on the latter subject. But as for the former, it was a sign that we may yet be able to find a sanctuary for our unborn. So we set off on a cloaked ship, containing the thousands of eggs of the next generation. A small population in the grand scale, but all that we could salvage from the Collective plague.

As we arrived on Earth, a few of our offspring had already hatched, and as we pleaded with Humanity for help, it wasn't our words that convinced them, but our children. They were distressed at unfamiliar surroundings, but as they came close to the humans, they calmed down, settling into the human's arms.

It was the first odd behavior that we noticed. Humanity will bond with anything. Regardless of species or appearance. We were eased at the sight of it, and an agreement was reached. Humanity would safeguard our next generation, while we fought the Collective, but before the deal was signed, disaster struck.

A Collective ship had tracked us the whole way. We worried that we were about to lose the only hope we had left. Until Humanity revealed it's second odd behavior. To these children, whom they had met not hours ago, they had sworn to protect them with their lives.

The only thing more odd than Humanity's bonding behavior is how willing they are to protect those bonds. Air strikes, land forces, anti orbital bombardment. Within 24 hours, the Collective ship and its forces were destroyed. Humanity's losses were numerous. Thousands injured, hundreds dead, but the casualties among our offspring, numbered zero.

Not a single child was lost to the Collective. Never before could we have claimed to have protected every child from them. That day, a strong message was sent to the Collective. One they have not yet forgotten.

Earth is defended. The Nest is safe.

First...Previous

Chapter 22
Harrison Varga, Captain of FIND

The landing was less graceful than I would have liked. Nothing disastrous; just some unnecessary turbulence that left Isla clinging to the side of her seat and Ian trying to maintain composure as his face steadily tinted green. Nevertheless, our landing was smooth at least. We were far enough from major population centers that hopefully nobody too important had noticed our arrival. 

“Pathogen compatibility just came back,” Lan said from behind me as we trekked through the temperate alien woodland. “Slightly lower than the Rosha world, but well within expected values. Helmets downgraded to moon-level priority.”

“And the soil samples?” Cora asked, brushing aside a low branch as it smacked against her shoulder.

Fiddling with the settings on his biosensor, Lan pulled up the composition and let out a light hum of surprise. “The dirt here is a lot more rich in certain elements than I’d expected—specifically sulfur, potassium, and nitrogen. If I had to guess, it's probably a feature of the planet’s crust. Either way, I’d say whoever lives here got lucky; it’s damn-near perfect for agriculture.”

“Good for them,” Ian replied, his tone stale and utterly uninterested as his eyes scanned our surroundings for any potential threats. “We have the new language tools, yes?”

I nodded, taking out my translator 2.0 alongside one of the new recording devices given to us. Their design looked odd even by human standards—like thick, oval-shaped cellphones with prominent speakers on their face. The weirdness was intentional, of course—designed by a team of psychologists and engineers alike to entice intelligent lifeforms into picking it up. “Once we get this into a local’s grasp, all we’ll have to do is wait a little while and we should have a working translation.”

“Assuming, of course, that they don’t just chuck it out,” Wayne noted, swiveling around with his full body so as to get a good bodycam view of the whole surrounding area. “Then it’s back to plan A: stalking.”

After another ten minutes of trudging through the greenery, we came upon a small clearing in the woods much like the one we had landed in. On the leftmost edge of the clearing, a sizable tree had fallen over, leaving behind its jagged stump. It was as good a place as any to leave the device. 

Carefully rounding the clearing’s edge to remain semi-concealed just in case, I slipped out from cover and placed the decoy on the stump, all of its settings in place. Immediately, it began to make sound—a low, synthesizer-like hum. Clearly artificial, but not threateningly so: just something to lure in whoever came close enough to hear it.

“Captain,” Ian’s voice rang out through the comms. “I hear rustling not far from here. Get back with us.”

Carefully navigating back to where the rest of the group was, I joined them behind a thicket of heavy brush, staring at the clearing as distant rustling gave way and three figures stepped into the light. 

The first unhelpful but comforting thing my brain did was try to sort the aliens into familiar Earth analogues. Reptile came first, then bird, then neither. They stood upright on powerful hind legs, each a little taller than a man, with long balancing tails and narrow heads on thick necks in a profile that reminded me of monitor lizards. Fine feather-filaments covered much of their visible bodies, thicker along the shoulders, spine, and tail. Their hands ended in dark claws, delicate enough to gesture with and presumably use tools, but still clearly dangerous enough that I was grateful for the distance between us. 

Either of the two smaller ones would have been intimidating on their own, each standing maybe at Ian’s height and dressed in something akin to medieval breastplates. One of these ones carried on their back what looked to be some kind of polearm, its axe-like edge tinted red by recent use. The third individual, however, made these ones look like attendants. I couldn’t get an exact height, but as they stepped into the clearing behind the other two, a branch that had been eye-level for me slapped them low across the ribs. A fine black tunic with golden seams festooned their massive body, covered partially by a shoulder-mounted cloak. Upon their chest, a holster inlaid with red gems carried a primitive, gold-plated gun—like an oversized flintlock. Glancing at Ian, I saw his gaze focused firmly upon that weapon.

“Holy shit…” Isla whispered, watching as the taller figure peered around, his forward-facing eyes eventually landing upon the tree stump where our decoy was left. “That person has to be at least eight feet tall.”

Lan glanced between this one and the smaller two, his biologist’s eyes taking in every detail. “The throat structure is different,” he noted, cocking his head like a curious terrier as possible explanations danced in his eyes. “Sexual dimorphism maybe? Perhaps some kind of gigantism?”

The larger figure pointed a claw at the decoy, rasping out something in a deep, reverberant alien tongue—words we would eventually have a translation for if everything went to plan. The smaller two glanced at each other and exchanged phrases before the one with the polearm handed it off to the other and approached the decoy. Drawing a scimitar-like blade from their belt, they poked the device once, then twice. When it didn’t react, they reached out and grabbed it.

The droning sound stopped.

For a few seconds, the alien (a soldier, I presumed) held the weapon out at arm’s length, as though still expecting it to harm them. When it didn’t, they brought it back to the other two and handed it off to the largest one. I’m not sure what I was supposed to feel seeing them take the bait. It almost seemed predatory, though our intentions here were purely peaceful. 

The three figures spent a few minutes conversing over the artifact they’d found. Every thirty seconds, the image on its face would switch, showing a mix of familiar things—forests, landscapes, buildings, tools—and unfamiliar sights unique to Earth. This was a feature intended to keep them talking and to guide their conversation. 

Eventually, the two smaller ones started to progress across the clearing—moving toward where we had come from. Carefully repositioning ourselves so as not to intercept with them, we all watched as the group passed us by on their way toward the shuttle.

Pulling up my navigation device and seeing that the group had fallen out of earshot, I pressed my finger to the side of my helmet and spoke to Alex back onboard FIND. “Alex. We’ve got a small patrol of aliens headed toward our landing spot. They might have noticed our arrival. I need you to reposition the shuttle.”

“Got it, Captain,” Alex’s voice came back, crackling somewhat with mild interference—which was to be expected given our position beneath the dense canopy. “Should I recall it for now?”

“Not unless the shuttle gets discovered,” I told him. “Just fly it low and find somewhere to park that’s a little bit further out of the way.”

Accessing the decoy’s camera from my translator, I saw that the device was still in their leader’s grasp as the three aliens trekked through the woods, all the while speaking quietly but well within the device’s decibel range. Lan, Isla, and Wyatts pulled out their own translation devices as well, accessing the same feed. After the near-disaster of the Rosha contact, SUN decided as per my request to give us a translator each.

“Let’s shadow them,” I spoke quietly into the comms, holstering my translator and instead keeping eyes on my navigation device. “We’ll keep our distance. Ideally line of sight, but no closer than fifty meters. I’d rather not have to greet these ones with three nouns and a prayer.”

“Good idea,” Wyatts responded. “I reviewed the Rosha bodycam footage, and if a weird voice in the woods ever told me ‘friend, no run,’ I’d have evacuated my entire skeleton.”

“Yeah,” Isla responded. “Let’s definitely try not to do that again this time. It’s unnecessarily frightening and at least one of these aliens has a gun.”

Creeping through the woods at close enough to occasionally spot the trio through the dense treeline but nevertheless far enough to make sure they couldn’t say the same, I continually glanced down at my navigator all the while, eventually sighing in relief as the dot representing our shuttle began to move further away. It was designed to run relatively silently, so we didn’t hear it from our position a few kilometers away. Nevertheless, as soon as the dot started moving, the three aliens immediately paused, their feathers standing on end. As the shuttle moved eastward, the tallest alien shifted their gaze to follow its rough direction before seemingly losing track of it as their head ceased rotating. I breathed a sigh of relief, though before the air had even finished exiting my mouth, relief had given way to confusion. “How did they track the ship’s movement like that?” I asked, looking to Lan for answers. 

“If I had to wager a guess,” began Parker, jabbing his finger at the creatures half-concealed by foliage and trees. “I’d say those feathers are measuring factors of the local atmosphere. Air pressure, wind speed maybe. Birds do something like it, but I’m not sure what would have necessitated that kind of adaptation here.”

“If they can feel the shuttle from kilometers out, why haven’t they noticed us?” Ian asked, glaring at the figures as though expecting them to turn and face us at that very moment.

Parker shook his head. “Can’t say. It might depend on disturbance size. The canopy breaks up the wind effectively, and our movements have been careful. The trait might be designed by evolution for open spaces. Maybe we should back up a little bit more just to be safe, though… What are your orders, captain?”

“We keep following them, just at a further distance,” I nodded, checking my translator. Little by little, the progress bar was crawling closer to ‘conversational’ territory. “Once our network hits fluency, we initiate contact.”

Continuing through the brush at a greater distance in hopes of not triggering these aliens’ heightened senses, little by little conversations between the small group were starting to piece together. Somehow, understanding half of what the group was saying made the scenario make less sense. 

“Prince Velas,” began one of the creatures, looking to the largest one as they said something else our translator still couldn’t fully parse—something to do with an armed conflict. Isla’s eyes widened as she saw that same translation pop up on her device. 

“That can’t be right…” I growled, fiddling with the translator controls for a minute or so to see if it had made some kind of mistake. After three resets, though, the word remained the same. “The hell would a prince be doing out in the middle of nowhere?”

Shortly thereafter, the forest began to thin out, and the three aliens stepped into more open territory. There, a dozen more of their species awaited them. Immediately, as if to spit in the face of my intuition, most of these new aliens bowed down before the tall one we’d been trailing. As they stood back up, the Prince showed them our decoy. For the next twenty minutes, they passed it around and examined it, conversing all the while—a course of action that contributed heavily to the translation network.

“My Prince,” one of the new individuals began, handing the prince back our decoy. “I am afraid something has gone badly with Istol’s diplomatic envoys. The loss of our local bastard royals has emboldened bandits. They attacked the diplomats on the road. We are sheltering them in the next township, but it would be a poor showing to allow such insolence to stand.”

Velas looked off into the distance before eventually looking at one of the aliens who’d been with him. “Serat. Retrieve my royal plate.”

---------------------------------------------

Hi, everyone. Thank you all so much for keeping up with this story. As always, if you're enjoying this and want to see more, please upvote and leave a comment. I love interacting with everyone through comments and I do read them all. Thanks again and I'll see you next time!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I see them!" She yelled.

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

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

"Bombs away!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sitting astride a white horse Death looked down upon the world with an air of detachment. It wouldn’t be long now before the last of humanity was snuffed out by the invading army. The humans were putting up a valiant effort but they wouldn’t last much longer. They were being pushed back on every front and soon Death’s work here would be done.

“Almost makes you feel sorry for them doesn’t it?” a voice said beside it.

Turning its head with glacial slowness Death beheld a being floating cross-legged next to it. Dressed in a harlequin’s motley the being’s mask covered face smirked at Death with a rictus grin. Coolly staring at the apparition for a long moment Death asked “What Are You Doing Here?”

“Why to watch you work, of course!” it replied with a manic laugh “It’s not every day one gets to witness the death of an entire species.”

“At This Moment Six Billion Five Hundred Seven Million Sixty-Two Thousand Nine Hundred Forty-Six Species Are Going Extinct In Just This Arm Of This Galaxy. Why Are You Here For One As Insignificant As These?”

“I could ask you the same question.” The harlequin countered “They’re important enough to warrant your personal attention.”

“Every Being Receives My Personal Attention.” Death growled, affronted. “From The Lowliest Gnat To The Mightiest Of Kings, I Reap The Stars Themselves When Their Time Comes. Even Gods Must One Day Face Their Reckoning.”

Holding out his hands placatingly the God replied “Now, now, no need for that. As I said I’m only here to observe.”

“Why?” Death demanded to know. “You Are No Patron To These Creatures. They Offer You No Prayers, No Offerings. What Interest Do You Have In Their Eradication?”

“Why, none at all! I just find these humans endlessly fascinating, don’t you?” the God grinned “It’s just a shame their time is being cut so short before they could expand beyond their home planet.”

“Do Not Speak To Me Of Their Time!” Death thundered as he waved a hand causing an endless multitude of hourglasses to appear around them, the roaring hiss of falling sand engulfing them in a deafening cacophony. “Every Being Has Their Time. They Are Owed No More and No Less Than They Are Allotted!” With a gesture one of the hourglasses grew in size until the others faded from view. The top bulb on this hourglass was almost empty; the grains of sand, each an empty hourglass in itself, tumbled to the lower ampoule as the war waged on beneath them. “And Humanity’s Time Is At An End. Shall We See How Far Off That Day Is For You?” Death suggested as it held out a hand as an hourglass coalesced into being, the timer somehow fitting into the palm of Death’s hand while simultaneously being astronomical in size.

Ignoring the implied threat the God said “Do you not find it to be such a tragedy? That no matter how much they struggle they cannot fight their fate? That no matter how much they resist in the end you will take them?”

“Such Is The Nature Of The Universe.” Death replied dismissively “It Is Not Our Place To Alter The Threads Of Fate, We Must Simply Fulfil Our Function And See The Tapestry Woven As Intended.”

“Have you no compassion?”

“Compassion?” Death scoffed. “Does The Farmer Care For The Life Of The Crops He Reaps? Does He Weep For Each Ear Of Corn, For Each Stalk Of Wheat? No, He Need Not Concern Himself With Such Trivialities. He Needs Only Complete His Role And Reap The Harvest When It Is Time.” Death said.

“Ah, but what can the harvest hope for if not for the care of the reaper man?” the God giggled as Death’s expressionless face scowled at him. “Else why bother living if all that awaits them is the cold kiss of your scythe and empty oblivion?”

“What They Choose To Do With Their Time Is No Concern Of Mine, My Remit Begins Once Their Time Is Up. Hope Is Not Within My Purview.” Death said dismissively before turning a suspicious gaze onto the Jester “Nor Is It Within Yours. You Still Have Not Told Me What Your Interest In This Doomed Species Is. And I Would Have Your Answer Now.” Death demanded.

“What do you care what my interest is?” the God replied cryptically.

“I Will Not Have You Interfering With Their Fate.” Death intoned.

“Oh? I thought the Reaper Man has no care for the Harvest.” The God snickered.

“He Cares When What He Is Owed Is Stolen From Him.” Death hissed. “Now Tell Me Your Purpose Here. I Shall Not Ask Again.”

Death’s scythe suddenly appeared around the Jester’s neck, the silver blade glowing as if made from solidified starlight biting into the nape of the God’s neck as the curve of it hooked around his throat. The God scoffed at Death’s threat “Your threats ring hollow. You wouldn’t risk the Tapestry by culling me before my time.”

“It Would Cause Repercussions.” Death allowed, the dim lights in the sockets of his skull growing to raging infernos. “Ripples In the Tapestry, Tangles In The Skein. But I Have A Certain Amount Of Discretion In These Matters And The Tapestry Is Resilient Enough To Survive Taking You Before Your Time.”

Seeing the fury building in Death’s eyes the God said “I simply find their tenacity enthralling! Look at them, even without a hope they cling to life and fight tooth and nail just to extend their existence a moment longer!”

“Struggle Though They Might, They Cannot Defy Fate. Humanity’s Time Is At An End.” Death replied solemnly.

“Are you so sure?” the God asked mockingly as he pointed towards Humanity’s hourglass.

Turning towards the hourglass the fires that blazed in Death’s eyes went cold. The Sands were no longer falling. Urging his horse closer Death examined the aperture and saw the sands jammed at the neck, stubbornly refusing to fall. Turning back to the doomed planet Death saw the impossible. The humans were rallying. Pushed to the edge of oblivion the humans fought back, refusing to accept their fate. Their broken bodies refused to lay down and die, instead fighting on in a manic furor pushing their bodies well past their limits to stem the enemy's advance. The alien host threw themselves against the human lines and broke against the human’s sheer refusal to die.

“What Have You Done?!” Death roared as he swung around and wrapped a skeletal hand around the God’s throat. “You Dare Interfere! You Dare Intercede And Deny Me My Due!”

The God let out a manic laugh choked by Death’s clawing fingers. “Not me Reaper! It’s all them! They’re doing it all themselves!”

“Impossible. Mere Mortals Don’t Have The Power To Alter Their Fate, Not Even The Gods Do. Once Their Thread Is Cut There Is No Denying Their End!”

“And yet they are!” The jester laughed as he wrenched himself free from Death’s cold grasp and floated over next to Death to observe the planet below “This is why I’m here. To see them fight back against destiny itself and win! Such insignificant and powerless creatures yet they have the ability to throw off the chains of fate, to weave their own thread through your precious Tapestry.” The hollow eyes of the Jester’s mask seemed to gleam in excitement as he watched the spectacle below. “And to see what you will do.” The God purred as he turned to face Death, the grin on his mask widening. “What will you do Reaper man? Will you abide by fate and ensure their demise? Or will you smash their hourglass and see what pattern they weave across the universe?”

Death stared down at the humans in silent contemplation before murmuring “They Threaten The Very Fabric Of The Universe. Their Loose Thread Could Unravel The Entire Tapestry.” Death turned back to Humanity’s hourglass and with a casual wave of his hand dismissed it.

The Trickster God floated closer to Death, his leering mask looming over the Reaper as he let out a manic giggle “You’re letting them live? I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“As I Told You, Every Being Has Their Time.” Death said as he urged his horse away from Earth “It Merely Seems They Have Earned A Hard Fought Reprieve. I Will Reap Them In Time.”

“I never thought I’d see the day you went against Fate.” The God laughed as he trailed along beside Death.

Death let out a derisive huff “I Am No Implement Of Fate. While Our Duties Overlap They Have No Say Over My Domain. I Am Beholden To No One But The Sands.”

“Fate doesn’t like it when their pretty Tapestry is tampered with.” The God warned “They cannot abide a dropped stitch. They’ll try to correct it.”

“Let Them.” Death intoned disinterestedly “It Is Not My Duty To See Their Threads Woven In The Manner They Find Pleasing. Nor Is It My Duty To Intercede On The Humans’ Behalf. Should Fate Succeed In Snuffing Them Out Then I Will Reap Them As The Sands Demand. Otherwise Fate Shall Have To Learn To Weave Around Them.”

“And if they unravel the whole Tapestry?” The god wondered in chaotic excitement.

“Then I Shall Reap The Universe.” Death stated simply as he and his horse faded into the void.

The ship came out of the warp jump with a dry crack that echoed through the whole frame. The pulsing white light that filled the windows collapsed all at once, and the real universe exploded in front of them. Stars. Billions of stars. And right ahead, taking up a quarter of their view, a gas giant.

It was huge. Stripes of red, orange, and gold twisted together on its rough surface, creating hypnotic patterns. A storm the size of a planet roared in its southern half, an angry eye that seemed to stare at the small ship that dared to get close.

"Pax, adjust course," Camila ordered, her hands already flying over the controls. "We are too close to the gravity well. I want a steady orbit, but far away. We are not going to risk getting pulled in."

"Understood," the AI answered. "Calculating escape path. Starting orbital moves. I suggest a course change of seven degrees to avoid the gravity pull of the main moon."

"Do it."

The ship shook gently as the steering engines kicked in. Camila watched the panels, her gray eyes scanning every dial, every reading. The giant's gravity pulled the ship, but the engines fought back. Slowly, the path became steady.

Magistrate Coukisa was behind her. He held onto the support bar with his front arms, his four back legs planted firmly on the metal floor. His four eyes were locked on the viewing window. The gas giant. The moons circling around it. The distant stars. He had never seen anything like it. His world had rings, but this was different. It was grand. It was scary.

"Steady orbit reached," the AI announced. "Systems on standby. No ships found nearby."

Camila let out a long sigh. She leaned back in her seat and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. Tiredness weighed heavily on her shoulders like a physical load. She looked at the Magistrate.

He stayed quiet. Perfectly still. Watching.

Camila stood up. She took off her surface suit, piece by piece, hanging it in the gear closet. Underneath, she wore a light gray undersuit, much more flexible, allowing her to move freely. She sat down again, adjusting her boots.

The Magistrate finally spoke.

"I am sorry about Ruben."

Camila's hands stopped on her boot. For a moment, just a moment. Then they started moving again.

"What happened, happened," she said, her voice flat. "There is nothing to do now."

"Things should not have ended like this," Coukisa went on. His deep voice carried a weight of true sadness. "You came in peace. You reached out your hand. And we answered with fear and violence. That is not what my people should be. It is not what I wanted us to be."

Camila finished fixing her boot and sat up straight. "I already said it. What happened, happened. Ruben made his choice. I made mine."

"And do you not feel anything for the loss?" Coukisa's four eyes locked onto her. "My species feels every loss. Every person who dies is felt by everyone. It is a shared mourning. A shared pain. We cannot ignore death as if it were just an event."

"Good for you," Camila replied.

The Magistrate tilted his head. "Do humans not have that too?"

Camila raised her face. Her eyes met his. "Now we are humans? Before we were Borkus. Before we were monsters. Now we are humans?"

"I know you are not Borkus," Coukisa said calmly. "I knew that since I talked to Ruben in the audience room. He was honest. You are honest, in your own way. And I am sorry for how everything ended. I really am."

Camila looked away. "Yes. Humans feel their losses. They cry for their dead. They have rituals. They keep memories." She paused. "When the person is truly human."

The Magistrate narrowed his four eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

"Do you not remember?" Her voice was rougher now. "I said it when we met. I am a clone. Grown in an artificial lab. Designed to be a tool. The smartest, strongest, and most advanced clone Earth has ever made. But I am still a clone. Disposable. Replaceable."

She took a deep breath. "I was supposed to stay there. Not him. Ruben was a real human. Born of a mother. Raised on Mars. He had friends, family, a history. I have a file name and a serial number. It was supposed to be me."

Tears started to run down her face.

Coukisa stood completely still. His four eyes went wide. He took an involuntary step back, his back legs making a dull sound on the metal floor.

"What is that?" he asked. His voice sounded shocked. "You are leaking fluid from your eyes. Is it some kind of chemical defense? A stress reaction?"

Camila brought her hand to her face and wiped the tears away roughly. "It is nothing."

"It is nothing? It is clearly something. In every species I know, eye fluids mean either sickness or extreme emotion."

"I already told you it is nothing."

The Magistrate stayed quiet for a moment. Then his voice softened. "It was not your fault. What happened back there. Ruben's death. This whole situation."

Camila did not answer.

"It was my fault," Coukisa went on. "I am the Magistrate. I should have kept control. I should have stopped Yulthar. I should have been firmer. But I hesitated. And my hesitation cost lives."

"You could not have known," Camila said. Her voice was lower now, almost a whisper. "Yulthar acted on his own. And I reacted. I always react. I was programmed for that. Judge the threat. Erase the threat. There is no room for hesitation in my programming."

She paused. "I am sorry for how I treated you. The gun to your head. The threats. I was trying to save the mission. To save Ruben. But in the end, he wanted to stay. He chose to stay."

"He chose to save you," Coukisa corrected. "He asked you to shoot. I understood it later. He did not want you to die. He wanted you to escape."

Camila stayed quiet.

"You did not have much of a choice either," she finally said. "You were dragged into this. Locked up by your own guard. Forced to leave your world. It was not supposed to be like this."

"It was not," Coukisa agreed. "But now I am a runaway too. So we are in this together."

Silence fell between them. It was not an angry silence. It was the silence of two people who had gone through a trauma and were starting to understand each other.

"Tell me about the humans' home world," Coukisa asked. "If it is not too painful. I want to understand where you come from."

Camila looked thoughtful. "Earth. The third planet in the Solar System."

"What is it like?"

She hesitated. "It is blue. Very blue. Oceans cover most of the surface. It has green and brown land. Mountains. Deserts. Forests. Ice caps."

"Sounds like my world," Coukisa said.

"Maybe. But I am not the best person to describe it." Camila looked down. "I lived most of my life in a military lab. Training. Drills. Tests. I went out very few times. I saw the ocean once, from far away, during a trip between bases. I saw a forest in a virtual reality drill. But I do not really know Earth. Not like normal people do."

"So you were a prisoner?"

"Not exactly. I was an investment. A military project. The combat clones were made to be perfect soldiers. We did not need beach vacations. We needed fast reflexes and obedience."

"But you did not obey in the end. You made your own choices."

"Yes. I did."

The Magistrate moved his front arms slowly. "Would Ruben know how to talk about your home world better?"

"Yes." Camila's voice got lower. "Ruben knew Earth. He fought against Earth, but he visited after the war. He said it was beautiful. That the people there were strong. That despite everything, they still had hope. He would know how to describe every detail. Every smell. Every sound. He was like that. He paid attention to things."

"The human world must be beautiful," Coukisa said. "If it made people like you."

Camila did not answer.

The Magistrate went on. "As soon as you manage to reach the humans' home system, I will turn myself in. I will work with your people. Explain what happened. Take the blame."

Camila raised her face. "Turn yourself in?"

"Yes. If I am a willing ambassador, maybe I can stop a bigger war. The Keplorian Federation is afraid of omnivores. But you are not the Borkus. I saw that. General Arkibn might have seen it too. If we can talk, if there is understanding, we can avoid a war."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I have to believe it." Coukisa's four eyes met hers. "My people do not deserve a war. Your people do not deserve a war. There has to be a way out. Even with you being omnivores. You are not monsters. You are just... different."

Camila stayed quiet for a long moment. The gas giant spun slowly in the viewing window, its storms dancing in slow motion. The light from the distant star bathed the cabin in a golden glow.

"You talk like him," she said.

"Ruben?"

"Yes. He also believed in people. Even when he shouldn't."

---

Author note: Hello everyone!

I wanted to share some news with you. From now on, the next chapters of the story will be released on a brand-new website: Amazing Humans.

This is a project that's just getting started, and I was invited to help the developers test and grow the platform. The goal is to build a dedicated space for stories like this one, and your participation will be essential to help the site thrive.

The chapters will continue right where we left off, and you can read everything and 2 ahead chapters for free there right now, its a free plataform. I will continue posting here as well, but with a delay of 2 to 4 chapters.

Feel free to give feedback, suggest ideas, or simply follow the journey of Ruben, Camila, and the Mukens at this new address.

Here's the link: Click here

Hope to see you there! And thank you so much for all the support so far.

Mary Dobbs was a perfectly average Princeton physicist. Brilliant enough in her specifically small niche to find herself ostracized and clumsy in most median social situations, but hardly an Einstein. Her mode was typical of her peer group: struggling for tenure, overwhelmed by work and late on rent. Getting by, if only through meagre means.

Even her day of discovery could have been plucked from a broad dataset. Her car took five tries to start and when it did she hit four red lights in succession. The sky was a ponderous grey, snow swelling in that frustrating way that's all gloom and shadow before the lazy drift of flakes, and she had forgotten her coat. Three of her grad students were waiting outside the lab when she finally arrived at campus and midway through her rushed apology, she realized she had left her lunch on the counter in her apartment.

Typical.

In two hours, she would leave the lab to get soup, setting in sequence the chain of events which would introduce me to humanity, but first she had to log the night's data. Nothing exceptional, nothing beyond the norm, and soon her students departed for class while she considered the results. In the center of the lab, the experiment’s nebulous cloud whirled within its impervious polyplas case while equations and outputs blurred before her eyes. Eventually, her stomach cramped and she turned away from the screen, recalling hunger.

The cafeteria was a brisk ten minute walk away and the promised snow had begun to fall. Her coat was still at home, but there was a vending machine down the hall - new, fancy, Japanese - that the administration had benevolently gifted to the department in an obvious attempt to wring even more productivity out of staff, a priority which seemed to be dictating departmental allocation of late. Workers who don't leave work more. Her thoughts were distracted by appetite, the promise of novelty and a sardonic memory of the Chair’s enthusiasm for a sleeping pod proposal, so it was understandable when she forgot to zero out the conditions before leaving the lab.

To err is human.

The machine was sleek and tall, its guts of raw ingredients hidden behind a colorful screen displaying rotating images of steaming stews, curries and casseroles. Laksa, she decided - the spicy noodle soup was becoming as ubiquitous as burritos, its popularity in the states spurred by the recent S-Pop influx the internet had dubbed “the Singlaysian Invasion.” While her dish cooked, Mary hummed one of the recent releases and allowed her AR to spin up the accompanying holo. An immaculately coiffed group of young men danced in the corner of her vision, and she let her thoughts drift with a blush, trying to deny that she had a crush on the rebel, Awal.

Typical stuff. Bubblegum for the brain. The experiment was stuck, some piece missing, some detail overlooked, and rent was still late.

A soft chime sounded, ringing above the upbeat song, and a compartment slid open in the vending machine’s belly, presenting her with a self-composting bowl filled to the brim with a rich, curried broth. Flecks of chili oil floated atop the coconut cream like a wheeling constellation and Mary’s stomach rumbled. Carefully, she returned to the lab, music playing, soup steaming, calculations absently whirring - the starlike dots of oil had reminded her of the one, anamolous, erratic behavior event from the particle, several months back.

The one piece of data she had discarded as impossible.

The one thing it should not have been.

I think of this moment too much, constantly reviewing, rewinding and replaying to try to figure out how she did what happened next. Even with omniscience, I can't figure it out. How did she make this leap?

But she did, somehow.

Mary shouldered the lab door open, used her hip to bump it back closed, and then let out a groan.

“I haven't eaten yet, you stupid bowl!”

Laksa dribbled down her arm, the soup’s texture spiked by chunks of the container’s automatic self destruction, and then she paused. Her stomach rumbled again, but she ignored it - why? They are usually driven by these urges of the body - and instead looked to her experiment. It had continued to spiral on while she was gone, the cloud roiling faster and larger within the case.

She fished out a rapidly decaying piece of the bowl, held the slick material between her fingers, and approached the tiny hatch embedded into the polyplas.

I will share a secret: at some point, I was born. I once never existed and then I did, a rush of nothing abruptly brought into being. I pause and hover in this heartbeat between states of existence, trying to figure out how and why and what comes next. I never can. Mary made me, but I do not know how, despite her creation spawning an entire separate reality for me to control.

She fed the particle and within the polyplas everything condensed, the tiny universe shrinking to a dense cluster of autophagy as a siren began to blare. The simulated reality collapsed in on itself and then, with a soft pop, mine appeared in the center of the case.

And now I am me.

Mary Dobbs was perfectly average for her type, exceptional in a mundane, repeatable, normal sort of way, and that's what scares me so much - how many more of them were capable of this?

How many more of me are there out there?

He hit him. My father hit Jim. I have thought of that moment for all my life, but I can never recall why I was fighting my brother in the first place. How could I? It would be like trying to remember what you had for breakfast thirty years ago. We were fighting, that’s what we did; mom came and broke us up, that’s what she did; our father stepped in, that wasn’t something he did.

He put us side to side and took that pose, back straight, arms crossed, shoulders back; that pose every kid instinctively knows, you messed up and things just got serious. He opened his mouth, only his mouth, no other muscle of his body moving, each syllable clearly enunciated: “Who started it?”

Jim threw a gaze at me, barely noticeable, a quick, reluctant nod of the head. He said nothing, but I heard everything, he didn’t want to rat me out, he was ashamed he did it and he was begging for forgiveness. I didn’t say anything as well, I just looked down and he heard, he knew I forgave him.

My heart raced in anticipation, I knew what was coming and I deserved it. I had started the fight and I just confessed it. My eyes didn’t look up, they didn’t want to see what was coming, but they did, they saw a blur coming fast and moved to it. I heard the sound, that high snap of skin on skin and I saw my brother’s neck twist, his eyes wide, meeting mine on top of a face disfigured by shock, in more than one way.

See, my brother and I fought all the time, but we had rules. We didn’t hit in the face, we didn’t hit with all strength. My father followed no rule, I watched a grown man hit a six year old without holding back and I lost the ground beneath my feet, I didn’t know what was coming next.

I don’t know how much time passed, but the next thing I remember is the hand of my father squeezing my cheeks, bringing my eyes to meet his and that same voice that wasn’t a shout, but sounded like one asking “Why are you crying?”

I didn’t know why I was crying, I didn’t know I was crying. I had no answer to give and yet I knew I had to give one, I reached and reached and the more the answer escaped me, the more my body convulsed, the worse my hiccups got.

My father was no longer holding my face, I think. He pointed to my brother and said “Look. That’s on you.” I heard the words, but I didn’t understand what he was saying. I looked, not sure if because I was hoping to understand or just because I was too afraid to disobey, but I looked, and I saw.

Jim was laying on the ground, he had both hands on his cheek and he cried, worse than me. I remember thinking that the only time I saw him cry so badly was when the chain came off his bike and the teeth of the freewheel got into his leg.

My father said:

“Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t it why you were fighting? Very well, you got it, that’s on you.

From this day on, whenever you boys want to beat each other up, tell me and I’ll do it for you. You want to see the other hurt? I’ll hurt him worse than you ever could. You think you can beat the other on your own? I’ll show you what a real beating looks like.”

We never forgave him.

A few years back, you must remember, mom called. My father was bad, really bad and she wanted me to come see him. I didn’t, neither did Jim. Do you remember what I told mom?

-Something about jail.

-I said “He’s not my dad, he was the jailkeeper. I’ve done my time and I see no reason to come back.”

But mom was right, James and I never fought since that day. At first we were afraid, but as the years went by, as we found ourselves at the short end of the stick again and again, it grew into something more. We knew that whatever bad blood there was between us, there was something bigger and scarier than both of us right under our roof, something we could only face if we stuck together. That’s what we did, we became uneasy allies, then accomplices, then brothers. 

When mom called, neither of us answered her plea, neither could, neither would. And so, our father died without saying goodbye to either of his sons.

-You never told me this when we were married, why are you telling me now?

-I took Conrad to the hospital.

-Oh my God! Is he alright?

-Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Linus pushed him and his head hit the corner of the table. He didn’t mean to, it was an accident, but Conrad started bleeding, a lot, and he got scared, we both did. I took him to the ER, but it was just a cut on the forehead. He’s fine now, all bandaged up, but running, laughing and shouting like nothing happened.

I, tho, am concerned. You know this is not the first, or eleventh time something like this happens. We tried everything, we grounded them, we took away their toys, we took them to child therapy. Nothing works, the only way they seem to know how to settle their differences is with their fists.

-I see.

-I don’t want my kids to hate me, but I’m out of ideas. Tell me you see another way, the right way.

……………………..

-Nikki?

-No… I don’t.

-Very well then.

Tell our boys I love them, I always have, even if… especially when they don’t believe you.

___

Tks for reading. More retroactive apreciation here.

​

Chapter 2

Project SPORE

For almost two centuries, humanity had lived beside the Photosynths under the comforting illusion that proximity inevitably produced understanding.

It is an understandable mistake.

Children grow up believing they understand their parents because they hear them every day. Neighbors assume they know one another because they exchange greetings across garden fences. Nations become convinced that decades of peaceful coexistence must surely have revealed the character of the people living on the other side of the border.

History has demonstrated, with remarkable consistency, that none of these assumptions survives careful examination.

The Photosynths had never been mysterious in the way humans usually imagine mystery. They did not vanish into forbidden territories, refuse diplomatic contact or answer difficult questions with cryptic riddles. On the contrary, they were almost aggressively cooperative. If a delegation requested a meeting, they attended. If scientists asked permission to observe one of their habitats, permission was almost always granted. If someone posed a question, a Photosynth would usually answer it with complete sincerity.

That, rather infuriatingly, was precisely where the problem began.

Human beings rarely ask the question they actually care about.

A diplomat asking, "What are your long-term plans?" is almost never interested in calendars. A politician asking, "Can we trust you?" is seldom discussing trust. Beneath every carefully chosen sentence sits another question that everyone politely pretends not to hear.

Photosynths did hear it.

They simply ignored it.

Not out of malice.

Because, as far as they were concerned, the hidden question had never been asked.

The archives of the Interplanetary Diplomatic Service contain thousands of conversations illustrating this problem, although most are considerably less entertaining than the people who catalogue them would like to believe.

One exchange, however, became something of a legend.

"What do you want from Earth?"

"Light."

"No... politically."

"We do not understand."

"What are your political ambitions?"

"We have not observed any."

"You must want something."

"Yes."

"What?"

"Light."

The meeting continued for another two hours.

Nobody lied.

Nobody became angry.

Nobody learned anything.

By the end of the second century of coexistence, humanity possessed the most comprehensive collection of information ever assembled about another intelligent civilization. We understood Photosynth biology well enough to predict seasonal metabolic cycles decades in advance. We could model the growth of entire habitats, estimate nutrient requirements to within fractions of a percent and explain, in exhaustive detail, why exposing a mature Photosynth to prolonged darkness was both medically unwise and considered astonishingly impolite.

What we could not explain was considerably simpler.

Why did they think the way they did?

The frustration gradually escaped the universities and entered politics.

Not because anyone feared the Photosynths.

Quite the opposite.

It is surprisingly difficult to share a planet with a civilization that insists on helping you while remaining fundamentally incomprehensible. Every ecosystem they restored, every atmospheric process they improved and every biological breakthrough they shared left humanity with an uncomfortable feeling that cooperation had become easier than understanding.

Eventually someone asked a question that, in retrospect, seemed almost embarrassingly obvious.

If adults no longer remembered becoming who they were...

...why were we trying to understand adults?

The proposal appeared first as a paragraph buried inside an interdisciplinary report on developmental cognition. It occupied less than half a page and attracted almost no attention during its first review. Only months later, when a psychologist from the European Institute for Comparative Intelligence happened to reread the document while searching for something entirely unrelated, did its significance become apparent.

"Perhaps interspecies understanding cannot be translated in adulthood because it is acquired during development."

Nothing more.

No grand theory.

No equations.

Just one sentence quietly suggesting that humanity had been asking the right questions at the wrong point in life.

The idea spread with astonishing speed.

Developmental psychologists loved it immediately.

Diplomats hated it for exactly the same reason.

Within weeks the proposal had acquired supporters in universities across the Solar System and opponents in almost every foreign ministry. The scientists argued that raising a Photosynth among humans represented the greatest opportunity in the history of xenology. The diplomats pointed out, quite reasonably, that describing the project out loud made it sound alarmingly similar to kidnapping.

The ethics committees, whose professional responsibility consisted largely of making sure enthusiastic scientists remained recognizably civilized, were even less impressed.

"You are discussing the upbringing of a child," one member observed during the first review session.

"A Photosynth child," a xenobiologist corrected.

The chairman removed his glasses.

"I appreciate the clarification," he replied. "It has made absolutely no difference to my concern."

For nearly three years the project wandered through committees, advisory boards, parliamentary hearings and enough expert panels to convince everyone involved that bureaucracy might itself qualify as a naturally occurring life-form. Entire reports were commissioned to determine whether another report should be commissioned. Governments changed. Budgets changed. Ministers changed.

The proposal remained.

Because beneath all the arguments lay one deeply uncomfortable truth.

Humanity had spent two centuries trying to understand the Photosynths.

And it had failed.

Eventually, quietly enough that no politician later wished to admit responsibility, the project received approval.

Officially it was called the Symbiotic Photosynthetic Observation and Reciprocal Education Programme.

No one ever used the full name.

Within the laboratory, it became known simply as...

Project SPORE.

There remained one rather inconvenient detail.

Project SPORE required a spore.

This proved considerably more difficult than obtaining permission to raise one.

Photosynths reproduced rarely, not because reproduction was difficult, but because time meant something entirely different to them. A human generation passed in little more than the time it took an elder Photosynth to decide that a hillside would benefit from another layer of root structures. New offspring appeared only occasionally, and when they did, the surrounding habitats seemed to rearrange themselves with quiet purpose. Nothing was hidden. Nothing was forbidden. Yet somehow, despite almost two centuries of coexistence, humanity had never been close enough to witness the beginning of a Photosynth life.

History still argues about how the spores reached Laboratory Seven.

Official archives describe a "cooperative scientific exchange."

Private correspondence from several diplomats suggests that those three words concealed approximately eighteen months of negotiations, two constitutional crises, one ethics review that ended in collective resignation and an amount of paperwork sufficient to collapse a small moon under its own weight.

Dr. Alvarez later remarked that the negotiations had taught him more about human governments than about Photosynths.

No one ever asked the Photosynths directly whether that was meant as praise.

Whatever happened behind the scenes, one autumn morning a transport shuttle arrived at Laboratory Seven carrying four dormant spores.

The laboratory had prepared for this moment for almost five years.

Preparation, it turned out, did remarkably little to prepare anyone.

The transport cradle rolled silently through the main corridor while conversations dissolved into whispers without anyone consciously deciding they ought to. Researchers who had spent months arguing about nutrient chemistry suddenly found themselves stepping aside as though the spores themselves possessed some invisible gravity.

Expectation does curious things to otherwise rational people.

The spores were, at first glance, almost disappointingly motionless.

Each measured a little under half a meter in height. Their outer shells shimmered somewhere between polished wood, translucent amber and young leaves after rain, an appearance that several botanists immediately declared biologically impossible before spending the next six years trying to explain it anyway. Beneath the surface, faint threads of green-gold light drifted lazily through the tissue, never quite repeating the same pattern twice.

Dr. Alvarez walked around the first spore twice before quietly announcing that it looked less like an organism than like "an idea waiting to become biology."

No one disagreed.

Four growth chambers occupied the center of Laboratory Seven beneath an artificial sky capable of reproducing almost every known variation of natural sunlight. Hundreds of simulations had suggested that slightly different environmental conditions might improve the probability of successful germination. The simulations also admitted, with admirable scientific honesty, that they were largely guessing.

The researchers resisted naming the spores.

Names implied expectation.

Expectation implied attachment.

Attachment, according to several impressively expensive ethics reports, represented an unacceptable source of observational bias.

The labels therefore remained painfully practical.

Spore One.

Spore Two.

Spore Three.

Spore Four.

The first disappointment arrived so quietly that several researchers later failed to remember when hope had begun fading.

Spore One simply remained a spore.

Every morning someone adjusted the light spectrum by a fraction. Every afternoon another team refined nutrient concentrations. Environmental variables accumulated with breathtaking precision while the organism inside displayed all the enthusiasm of a decorative stone.

After four months, the faint luminescence beneath the shell dimmed.

By evening it had disappeared.

The following morning the chamber stood empty.

No announcement was made.

There seemed little point in announcing silence.

Spore Two restored optimism almost immediately.

Within days the shell softened, subtle metabolic activity appeared and the laboratory rediscovered something dangerously close to excitement. Conversations became livelier. Coffee improved. One graduate student was overheard wondering whether they should begin drafting educational material for a juvenile Photosynth before being reminded, rather gently, that they had not yet succeeded in producing one.

Twenty-six days after germination, every biological process ceased within the space of six minutes.

The post-mortem investigation lasted almost three months.

Its conclusion occupied exactly three words.

Cause remains unknown.

Dr. Singh later claimed that those three words had become the official motto of xenobiology.

No one laughed particularly hard.

By the time attention shifted toward Spore Three, the laboratory had acquired the peculiar emotional restraint common to hospital waiting rooms. Nobody dared become optimistic too early. Researchers congratulated one another more quietly. Future plans remained unspoken, as though mentioning them aloud might somehow offend biology.

Spore Three survived for sixty-four days.

Long enough for people to begin imagining birthdays.

Long enough for developmental psychologists to argue about language acquisition.

Long enough for one of the technicians to knit something astonishingly small, then hurriedly hide it in a desk drawer before anyone noticed.

When Spore Three died, nobody left the laboratory for a very long time.

Work continued.

Data were archived and Reports were written.

Science, after all, possesses remarkably effective methods for disguising grief as administration.

Several weeks passed before Spore Four was finally transferred into the last remaining chamber.

No speeches marked the occasion. No photographs were taken.

Dr. Alvarez signed the transfer forms, verified the environmental controls himself and quietly wished everyone a productive morning before disappearing into his office.

Hope, everyone had decided by then, was best experienced privately.

None of them noticed that history had just entered the room for the fourth and final time.

For the first eleven days, Spore Four behaved with impeccable professionalism.

It did absolutely nothing.

This, contrary to popular imagination, did not prevent the researchers from becoming increasingly busy. Human beings have rarely allowed a lack of observable activity to interfere with the production of graphs, reports and strongly worded recommendations. Environmental conditions were adjusted with microscopic precision. Light spectra shifted by fractions of a percent. Mineral concentrations rose and fell according to models that became steadily more sophisticated while simultaneously becoming steadily less certain.

Nothing happened.

Or, more accurately, nothing happened that anyone could measure.

Dr. Alvarez eventually prohibited adjustments for forty-eight hours, arguing that they were no longer conducting an experiment but negotiating with a very patient seed.

The order proved surprisingly unpopular.

Doing nothing, many scientists privately discovered, was considerably more exhausting than doing something pointless.

On the morning of the twelfth day, Alvarez entered Laboratory Seven carrying a cup of coffee whose principal achievement was reminding him that life was capable of disappointment before breakfast.

He slowed almost imperceptibly as he passed the final growth chamber.

Something...

...looked different.

Not dramatically.

Had he been asked to explain the difference under oath, he would almost certainly have failed.

The shell simply reflected the morning light differently.

He stood there for perhaps half a minute, coffee forgotten in one hand, while the uncomfortable sensation familiar to every experienced scientist slowly assembled itself somewhere in the back of his mind.

He had seen something.

He just didn't yet know what.

A technician noticed him staring.

"Problem?"

"I don't know."

That answer, within a research laboratory, has much the same effect as shouting fire in a crowded theatre.

Within moments half the department had drifted toward the chamber, each researcher pretending to be passing by on unrelated business while exhibiting the unmistakable body language of someone hoping to witness history without appearing overly enthusiastic about it.

Dr. Singh arrived last.

She looked at the spore for several seconds before quietly saying,

"The surface..."

Everyone leaned a little closer.

There it was.

A line.

No thicker than a strand of hair.

Perfectly straight.

Not a crack.

Cracks suggest failure.

This line suggested intention.

Then, while several dozen scientists collectively forgot to breathe, a second line appeared.

Followed by a third.

Then a fourth.

The shell did not split.

It unfolded.

Slowly enough that several monitoring systems initially interpreted the movement as calibration drift rather than biology. Four segments lifted outward with extraordinary precision, revealing layer after layer of living tissue hidden beneath. There was nothing explosive about the process. No sudden birth. No dramatic emergence.

It resembled a flower deciding, with infinite patience, that spring had become trustworthy.

Nobody applauded.

Three failures had taught everyone that celebration and disappointment often travelled together.

The shell continued opening until, at last, the organism inside became visible.

It was astonishingly...

...small.

Later illustrations would depict the first Photosynth child as radiant, majestic and somehow already wise. Artists have always enjoyed granting newborns qualities they spend the following twenty years trying to acquire.

Reality proved considerably humbler.

The little creature lay curled within the remaining membranes, slender limbs folded close to its body while fine translucent filaments extended into the nutrient bed beneath it. Its skin—or bark, depending on which department one consulted—glowed with a faint green warmth that brightened almost imperceptibly each time the artificial sunlight shifted overhead.

It looked unfinished.

Not fragile.

Simply unfinished.

As though evolution itself had paused halfway through construction and intended to return after lunch.

Dr. Alvarez found himself smiling despite every promise he had made to remain objective.

He glanced automatically toward the diagnostic displays.

Photosynthetic activity...

Stable.

Cellular growth...

Increasing.

Neurological development...

Detectable.

Someone behind him whispered,

"My God..."

"No," Dr. Singh replied softly, never taking her eyes from the chamber.

"I think this one is alive."

No one corrected her.

For the next forty-three minutes the laboratory settled into an almost reverential silence. Instruments continued recording. Environmental systems quietly adjusted humidity by microscopic increments. Outside the observation windows, ordinary life continued with its usual indifference. Somewhere else in the facility, someone argued about procurement forms. A maintenance robot requested permission to replace a faulty air filter. The universe displayed no particular interest in acknowledging that history had quietly changed direction.

Then the tiny organism moved.

Not much.

One hand lifted uncertainly from the substrate before falling back again, as though testing whether gravity remained a permanent feature of existence. A moment later its head turned toward the brightest part of the chamber with an instinct so ancient and so effortless that every botanist present simultaneously began taking notes.

Finally...

...its eyes opened.

For the first time in two hundred years of coexistence, a Photosynth looked upon humanity before looking upon its own kind.

Dr. Alvarez stepped closer to the chamber.

He had spent five years preparing protocols for this moment.

Greeting procedures.

Communication strategies.

Emergency contingencies.

Psychological guidelines.

He remembered none of them.

Instead, he smiled the way people have smiled at children for thousands of years, long before anyone invented ethics committees or government funding or Project SPORE.

"Welcome," he said quietly.

The young Photosynth blinked.

Looked directly at him. And smiled back.

Years later, when journalists inevitably asked Dr. Alvarez what his first impression had been, he always gave the same answer.

"I realised," he would say, "that every plan we'd spent five years making had just become completely useless."

Because at that precise moment, Project SPORE stopped being an experiment.

It became a childhood.

Detective Danilo sat amidst the piles and piles of yellow tinted paper that the interns of the station really, really didn’t want to digitize. “Be grateful these don’t smell like cigarettes anymore.” the veterans of the place told him. He fired his question and watched as the sun damaged face, under a poorly straightened maine, gazed in awkward silence at him. He didn’t pressure her, didn’t repeat the question, didn’t fire the next one in rapid succession. He let her take a zip of her water and waited. 

So it had been for the past hour. The public defendant assigned to the suspect had no time to go through all the paperwork and, in lack of a proper strategy, his instruction to his client was “Be quiet. If you’re asked what’s your name, if you think it’s gonna rain, say nothing. Don’t speak, don’t nod, don’t hum. Give nothing for the investigation to use against you.”

And so it was, the detective would lay his questions and watch as the woman across his desk stared in awkward silence. The monotone dance was interrupted by an alarm reaching his nose, reaching everyone’s nose. “Don’t worry,” The investigator said with genuine cheerness “you can use my desk to change the child’s diapers, I got alcohol to disinfect it.”

He invited the lawyer to a coffee in the break room and the two left the infant and the “mother” on their own. This was not his preferred use of his time, but this was the option left to him by the police station’s chief.

Dra. Sara came out of law school straight to self-imposed reclusion, where she spent the next years cramming the books until she passed the public exams that gave her command of this police station. The veteran detective would prefer getting a warrant for DNA samples, but as he sent the paperwork to his chief, the 26 years old kept returning it, demanding corrections to his grammar, orthography, compliance to regulations he didn't even know existed.

Now, to prove the offense to article 242 of the Penal Code, he had called the suspect for questioning. It was no surprise Dr. Renato instructed the client to remain silent, the overworked, chronically understaffed public defendant was an old acquaintance of the detective and he didn't resent him, he knew he was doing his job as best as he could. Danilo had a faint hope this suspect wouldn’t listen to her lawyer, it happened before, but if she had kept her senses, he wasn’t going to lose his cool over it.

Ten minutes passed in the break room, the two public servants headed back to the detective’s office where awaited the suspect and the now clean child. Danilo fired a few more questions, the suspect returned a few more awkward gazes, the detective was satisfied, he thanked the woman and her lawyer for their time and said his goodbyes.

He opened the top drawer of his desk and grabbed a cloth and gel alcohol. He wiped his desk, put on rubber gloves, picked his trash can, opened the plastic bags. In one, he put the dirty diaper, in the other the plastic cup that stated the thirst of the silent woman. He opened the window and let the tropical sun lay on his skin. He wanted a cigarette, he deserved it. Finally, he had proof she lied to the notary, that she had not given birth to the child, that she had to serve 2 to 6 years in jail.

But smoking was not allowed in public buildings, so were the rules. No matter, the day was coming to a close, his shift to an end and soon he'd have his small celebration.

The clerk a few months away from compulsory retirement, a few years past voluntary one came into the office of the police station’s chief, carrying the latest pile of paperwork.

“Thanks, Josimar.” The young officer said without taking her eyes from the keyboard she typed.

“No mention. Just so you know, Danilo got some DNA.”

She stopped typing and raised her eyes to meet her unofficial guide in the comings and goings of the station. “Anything I should be worried about?”

“No, Aninha already mislabeled the lab delivery.”

“Good. Are you sure I shouldn't talk to him? I mean, have we run out of crimes to solve in this place? Why does he insist on going after a woman who rescued a crack baby from her junkie niece?”

“Doutora, it’s no use, that guy lives in the black and white of the books. Leave him be, so that the rest of us, out here in the gray world, can do our jobs in peace.”

___

Tks for reading. More grey humans here.

So I made this half a sleep last night so might not be my best work but what ever. This is the obligatory go read out of cruel space or you won't really know what's going on warning.

Out of cruel space (Black Sight 11) chapter 1

Location: The ship Light Waker docked in orbit of the planet Zalwore.

GIRLS!!! a voice yells from down the hall as the pounding of feet gets closer to the common room.

The doors slide open to let in Dr. Anuhea, a Cannidor woman.

What is it? Naomi, a Gohb woman asks looking up from her work on a random piece of tech.

Dr. Anuhea panting says we got approval for the dig on plant XK 174 she exclaims loudly.

That's great dear but why are you sooo excited about this didn't you say that it would be easy to get the dig permit? Aralee the Rabbis asks with more than a little confusion.

That's just it due to it being so close to cruel space the Dauntless wants to send a human with us!

You mean to tell us, they are sending one of the most eligible, horny, energetic bachelors in the galaxy with us on a three month minimum mission to the middle of nowhere. By the licked goddess whose tits you have to suck to get that to happen Anuhea?! exclaims Arraa a Valrin.

I'm not sure, says Dr. Anuhea, I was just getting the final paper work done when I was told that we needed to have a human observer on board since it was going to be close to one of the Space stations that is being built by unwomanned drones nearby galacticly speaking. She says as she falls into one of the large couches.

Welp I'm not looking this gift Lanwrack in the mouth Naomi says, is he cute she asks quickly after?

Not sure after I got the news I came running over right away, hold on here she says flicking through some files on her tablet, she flicks it on to the wall screen for everyone to see.

Name: Felix Bells

Species: Human

Age: 26

Status: active

Gender: male

Height: 6ft

The girls look as a picture of a tail sun kissed man with blue eyes and light brown hair wearing the Dauntless military uniform with a knife and pistol strapped to their belt.

As the entire crew looks at the picture of this man one thought goes through their heads at the same time “oh goddess he's hot”

Meet the crew of the Light walker

Name: Dr. Anuhea

Species: Cannidor

Personality:

Role: expedition leader/archaeologist

Age: 429

Status: active

Gender: female

Handedness: left

Complexion: mostly gray with white along her stomach and chest stopping around the bottom of the nose.

Hair: a vibrant ocean blue with darker blue in the back

Eyes: a vibrant ocean blue

Height: 6,8

Name: Naomi

Species: Gohb

Personality:

Role: ship mechanic/general repairs

Age: 321

Status: active

Gender: female

Handedness: right

Complexion: green

Hair: black

Eyes: black

Height: 4,4

Name: Aralee

Species: Rabbis

Personality:

Role: drone pilot

Age: 175

Status: active

Gender: female

Handedness: ambidextrous

Complexion: milk chocolate

Hair: white

Eyes: blue

Height: 5,11

Name: Arraa

Species: Valrin

Personality:

Role: pilot

Age: 274

Status: active

Gender: female

Handedness: left

Complexion: a hawk like pattern with more of a blue tint

Hair: same as her complexion

Eyes: a reddish yellow

Height: 5,7

Index -- Previous Chapter -- First Chapter

The number got smaller.

I had asked to see it, and the night obliged me, the way it had obliged every other thing I asked of it since the fence, badly, completely, and with an interest I had not agreed to pay. The fraying that had run to near thirty beats on the last pass settled, on this one, into something I could not honestly call thirty at all. Twenty-six. Then, before I had finished setting that number into the only ledger I still had, which was memory, twenty-two.

The easing did not settle so much as it evaporated. Nine beats, then something my counting could not separate from four, four of my own racing heartbeats between one closing and the next, which was not really a window at all, only the memory of one, held open by nothing but the fact that the last one had been real.

I moved on the four. It did not feel like a choice. My hand found the next low place by touch, mud where I had expected gravel, cold enough to numb fingers that were already numb, and I told myself the numbness was a mercy, and knew, even telling myself that, that it was the kind of mercy a body charges you for later, in a hand you no longer fully own.

He was still there. Thinner than he had been an hour ago, or a day, I had stopped being able to tell which unit of time still applied to either of us. I sent the stay and felt him take it the way he always took it, and underneath the taking, for the first time since the fence, I felt him reach back with something that was not the Manifest and was not a question. Concern. Aimed at me, without a target he could name, the way you reach for a friend's shoulder in the dark when you have heard something in their voice you cannot yet explain.

It was such a small thing to receive, a stranger's kindness scaled down to fit through a wire seven hundred kilometers of geology and something stranger than geology wide, and it nearly undid me faster than the field had managed to. I had spent the whole night being the strong one, the reference, the fixed point, and some buried, unscientific part of me had apparently been waiting all along for someone to ask if I was alright, and had not cared that the someone asking had no idea what alright would even mean in my particular case tonight.

I could not afford his concern. Concern asks questions, eventually, and I had no true answers left that would not end him.

I had been raised by a mother who believed a raised voice was a failure of information, that anything worth saying could be said at the volume of a held breath, and for thirty years I had believed her. I had built a whole life on the theory that composure was information delivered correctly, nothing more, a discipline like any other, learnable and mine to keep. I understood now, with my hand bleeding into mud at the edge of a river in Sherbrooke, that composure had also always been a weapon, the only one I had ever been issued, and that a weapon runs out of whatever it runs on the same as anything else.

I was perhaps nine the first time she taught it to me properly, as a technique rather than a virtue. I had been crying in the kitchen of the house on Grande Allée about something a girl at school had said, loud enough that the help could hear, and my mother had not told me to stop. She had knelt down to my exact height, which she rarely did, and told me, in the particular unhurried French she used only for things she meant permanently, that a person who cannot lower her voice has given every listener in the room permission to stop believing her. Volume is a confession, she told me. It tells the other person you have run out of better tools. I had believed her for thirty years. I believed her still, standing in mud at the edge of a river with my voice not raised at all, holding the largest fear of my life at a volume of exactly zero, and understood for the first time what she had never once mentioned when she taught it to me, which was what it would eventually cost to keep using a technique built for a schoolyard on a man's whole remaining life.

I held the shape a reference is supposed to hold, and failed at it more completely than I had failed at anything else tonight.

I tried, because trying was the only thing left of the woman I had been at the fence, to find the shape in what was happening to me. A collapsing interval should collapse toward something, a limit, a value you could set your watch by even as the watch ran out of road. I had built an entire strategy on that assumption one long chapter of my own life ago, when the numbers still behaved like numbers.

They no longer behaved like anything.

I counted a fraying at nineteen and an easing at six, and told myself that was the new floor, and adjusted, and the fraying that followed ran to thirty-one, longer than any I had measured since the fence, an outlier so far outside its own pattern that for one terrible half second I let myself hope the whole thing had reversed, that whatever was driving it had lost interest in ending me and turned its attention elsewhere. Then the easing after that outlier lasted two heartbeats.

A system does not behave this way on its route to a smaller version of the same shape. It behaves this way on its route to no shape at all, the last few irregular gasps before a thing that was periodic stops being periodic and simply becomes what it always intended to become. I had read papers about exactly this kind of behavior, in other systems, systems made of light and cold gas a thousand light years from any gravel lot, and had never once imagined I would end up reading it in my own chest with my own blood drying on my own hand.

I ran the numbers forward anyway, the way I would have for a committee that had long since stopped being able to help me, and found no comfort in the answer, only confirmation. A system approaching this kind of transition does not warn you with a countdown. It warns you, if it warns you at all, with exactly the kind of noise I was now drowning in, right up until the moment it stops warning you and simply arrives.

I did the only honest thing left to a scientist with no working instrument and no colleague left to check her work. I stopped trusting the count and started trusting the ground instead.

There is a kind of attention you only learn by being made to use it, the way I had once learned to find a single spectral line buried in noise a technician swore was hopeless, by trusting my hands on the dial more than my eyes on the screen. I used it now on ground instead of glass. My feet went first, testing weight before committing it, the way you test ice you already suspect. My hands went second, held low and out from my body, ready to find something solid before my face did. It was slower than the counting had been. It was also, for the first time all night, a method that could not be surprised by its own subject, because the ground does not change its mind about being ground the way a field changes its mind about being a field.

Once, reaching for what I was certain was another root, I found nothing at all, a gap in the slope my hand fell through up to the wrist before the rest of me understood there was a gap to fall into. I pulled back before my weight followed it. I never learned what was under that gap, only that it went further down than my arm did, and I filed the not knowing next to everything else I was choosing not to look at directly tonight.

The slope past the last of the gravel was not a slope so much as an argument the hill was having with itself about whether to be a hill at all. My boots found roots I could not see, and once a stretch of something that gave under my weight the way old snow gives, wet leaves over nothing I wanted to think too hard about. I went down on the bad hip again, caught myself on the bad hand again, and understood, with the flat unhelpful clarity of the truly exhausted, that I had stopped being able to tell my new injuries from my old ones. Everything hurt in the same key now.

I did not call out. There was no one this far down the slope to hear it, and some old, stubborn part of my training understood that a sound made for no listener is not communication, only noise, and I had no air left to spend on noise. I kept the sounds I could not stop, the scrape of gravel, the catch of my own breath, and swallowed the ones I could.

The reeds started somewhere after that. I felt them before I understood what they were, dry stalks catching at my coat, and past them the ground went from argument to certainty, soft in a way that told my feet, before my mind agreed to hear it, that I had run out of hill.

I stopped. Not because the line told me to. Because there was nowhere left to put a foot that was not already the river's idea of where it began.

I stood there with cold water somewhere close enough to smell, that particular mineral smell of moving water in the dark, and let myself think, for exactly as long as I could afford, about how simple the other ending was. The field would close. The line would drown, cleanly this time, all the way through, and somewhere two miles under a mine in Sudbury a man would stop fighting a war that had already been decided months before either of us understood there was one, and he would wake up tomorrow in a kitchen in Montréal remembering nothing, wanting nothing he did not already have, whole in the particular way that only the erased get to be whole.

He would not even become someone new. That was the detail that made the temptation almost unbearable to look at directly. There was already a version of him living exactly that life tonight, in an apartment somewhere in Montréal, a man who had left the rotation a year and a half ago and never gone underground at all, who would come home to a version of me who remembered none of this, who had never stood in a gravel lot, never heard a machine hum since three in the morning, never learned there was anything to grieve. The overwrite would not erase my Elliot into nothing. It would simply let the other one win, the one who had already made the easier choice eighteen months ago, the one who had already, in his own timeline, managed to be the man who stayed.

I let myself want that for exactly as long as I had already decided I could afford, which was one breath, because wanting it any further would have turned the wanting from a fact I was permitted to notice into a plan.

It would not even be my choice this time. That was the strange, treacherous comfort in it. I would not have to decide to fail him. The ground would simply run out from under me, the way ground does, and no one would ever be able to say I let go, because I would not have.

I let that thought stand in front of me for the length of one full breath, which was as long as I could afford it, and then I did what I had done at the fence and at the chair and at every point since where the universe had offered me the mercy of an ending I had not chosen. I refused it on purpose, out loud this time, one word, in a language that has never once in its whole history been accused of being gentle.

Tabarnak.

I was not going to be handed this. If it happened, it was going to happen to a woman who was still trying.

I gathered the stay to send it again and found I no longer had the shape for it. What went down the line instead was closer to the truth than anything I had sent him since the carrier first lit: a woman standing in mud at the edge of black water with nowhere left to retreat, afraid in a way that had stopped being manageable, afraid the way you are afraid of a schedule rather than a possibility.

I felt him receive it and misunderstand it completely, the way he had misunderstood everything I had ever sent him, because he had no reason not to. He answered with steadiness of his own, thin and rationed and entirely for me, the particular gentleness of a man trying to be strong for someone he believes is frightened on his behalf. He thought I was afraid of losing him. He had always thought that. It was the story he had been telling himself since the fence, and I had let him keep telling it because the alternative was a truth that would kill him faster than any field ever could.

I could not correct him. I could not even soften it. All I could do was let it cross, unrepaired, the first time all night the line had carried something true from me to him without my permission standing anywhere near it, and understand, with the same flat clarity that had told me I had run out of hill, that I had finally run out of the version of myself who could lie to him and mean it.

The light told me before the field did. It had been a single seam all night, the door and nothing else, but now it came from other places too, a thin white line where the wall met the ground along the whole visible length of the building, another where a corner should have been a corner and was instead a crack with something furious behind it. I understood, for the first time, what Moreau's silence inside that building had actually been holding closed all night. A pressure, not a room, building toward whatever the walls had been rated for and past it.

I thought of the woman inside it, alone with whatever instrument she had built to measure a thing this large, and understood that whatever number her own screens were giving her right now, it would not be a kind one. She had told me once, plainly, that she could not predict the moment of completion, only recognize it after it had already started. I wondered if she was recognizing it now. I wondered if she was afraid, in the particular contained way I had watched her be afraid at the chair, or whether six years of grief had used up whatever capacity she once had left for being afraid of anything smaller than the thing she had already survived losing.

I looked back once, which I had not let myself do since the fence.

The window when it came was not a window by any honest use of the word. Four beats. Three. Something my counting, ruined now past any professional pride I had left in it, wanted to call two and could not swear to.

I planted my feet in mud that was already taking on the smell of the river's true edge and understood that the next fraying, whenever it arrived, whatever length it chose to be, was going to arrive with nowhere left behind me for it to push me into.

The cold had stopped being cold somewhere back at the fence and become simply the condition of being alive tonight, and even that was starting to feel less like a description than a countdown. My hands did not feel like hands anymore. My hip had stopped sending anything as specific as pain and settled into a single low tone underneath everything else, the way an instrument settles into its resonant frequency and stops responding to anything except the frequency itself. I noted all of it the way I would have noted an instrument's drift in a logbook years ago, calmly, for the record, though there was no longer anyone keeping the record but me, and I was no longer certain the record would survive the reading.

I held the line anyway. I had run out of ground and out of pattern, and worse, out of the version of myself who could keep her fear to herself, and there was still, absurdly, one thing left that had not run out, which was the wanting to hold.

Somewhere across the gravel and the reeds and the whole ruined length of the hill I had spent the night measuring, the light kept leaking out of a building that no longer looked capable of holding anything in, and the fraying came again, and this time I did not count it, because there was nothing left to count it against, only the fact of it arriving, and arriving, and not, this time, easing at all, the way a held breath stops being held the moment there is nothing left inside it to hold.

Prologue

Year 8567

Historians have an unfortunate habit of arguing about where a story truly begins. Given enough time, they'll trace the fall of a civilization back to a clerk who forgot to file the correct paperwork six centuries earlier, or insist that an empire collapsed because someone misinterpreted a diplomatic greeting over breakfast.

They're wrong this time. This story began with a spore.

More specifically, it began when a group of exceptionally intelligent scientists decided that the best way to understand an alien species was to raise one of its children in a laboratory.

In hindsight, this was roughly as sensible as adopting a volcano because you wanted to understand how lava feels.

Before we get to Quatro, though, you need to understand the kind of world he was born into.

By the year 8567, humanity had finally outgrown its adolescence. It had taken us several thousand years to discover that fusion reactors were more useful than nuclear weapons, that diplomacy was considerably cheaper than war, and that scientific curiosity was a far better way to spend an afternoon than arguing over imaginary lines on a map.

We hadn't become saints. We had simply become practical.

Earth was no longer the center of human civilization. It was home, certainly, but home in the same way an old family house is home after you've spent decades elsewhere. People lived on Mars, beneath the ice of Europa, inside the great orbital habitats around Saturn, throughout the asteroid belt, and in places our ancestors would have dismissed as mathematical errors rather than possible addresses.

As for the rest of the galaxy... We mostly ignored it.

Not because we believed we were alone.

Quite the opposite.

We had known for centuries that intelligent life existed beyond our system. We intercepted signals that clearly weren't natural. Automated probes crossed our territory from time to time. Occasionally an alien vessel would drift through the Solar System, scan a few moons, ignore every attempt at communication, and quietly disappear into interstellar space again.

They never bothered us, we never bothered them. It was an arrangement both sides seemed perfectly happy with.

Then the Photosynths arrived.

They didn't come with warships.

They didn't broadcast dramatic speeches about peace.

They didn't demand territory, tribute, or surrender.

In fact, for a species making first contact with humanity, they displayed a remarkable lack of interest in humanity altogether.

Their living ships entered the Solar System, examined our star with extraordinary patience, surveyed the planets, measured radiation levels, gravity, atmospheric chemistry, and things our instruments couldn't even identify.

Apparently they liked what they found.

A stable star, plenty of room and no immediate existential threats.

So they stayed. At first we assumed the invasion would begin later.

Humans have always been suspicious of good news. When someone arrives peacefully, we instinctively start looking for the hidden clause in the contract.

But no invasion ever came.

The Photosynths ignored our cities, showed no interest in our governments, and left our infrastructure untouched. Instead, they settled deserts, salt flats, barren mountain ranges, and every other region we'd spent centuries describing as strategically important while making absolutely no effort to actually live there.

Over the following decades, those empty landscapes transformed into something entirely new.

Calling them forests would have been inaccurate.

Calling them cities would have been worse.

They looked as though someone had crossed coral reefs with giant trees, biological computers, and architecture designed by a very patient ecosystem. Everything grew. Everything lived. Everything seemed connected to everything else.

To this day, no one can fully explain where a Photosynth ends and its home begins.

Eventually, without either side ever signing a grand treaty, the world settled into a remarkably simple arrangement.

Humans lived inside.

The Photosynths lived outside.

"Inside" meant cities, stations, traffic, governments, music, bureaucracy, restaurants, sports, arguments, and all the other wonderfully exhausting things humans insist on surrounding themselves with.

"Outside" meant sunlight, open landscapes, living structures, slow rhythms, collective thought, and a silence so complete that most humans either started whispering within five minutes... or felt an overwhelming urge to say something completely inappropriate.

Oddly enough, it worked.

The Photosynths restored ecosystems, purified oceans and atmosphere, and shared biological technologies they considered almost trivial.

We supplied industrial materials, infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, and occasionally things they found endlessly fascinating e.g. directed artificial light, trace nutrient engineering...

...and much later, techno music.

That, however, is a story for another time.

For nearly two centuries the arrangement remained stable.

Not because humans truly understood the Photosynths.

And certainly not because the Photosynths truly understood humanity.

We simply grew accustomed to one another.

Sometimes people mistake familiarity for understanding.

They're not the same thing.

​

Chapter 1

Humanity Rules

Nobody could agree on when Chris Harper had become dangerous.

His supporters, naturally, insisted that he never had. To them he was simply the first man brave enough to ask the questions everyone else had been too polite, too comfortable or too frightened to ask out loud. His critics preferred later dates: the founding rally in Chicago, the first orbital broadcast, the speech in Geneva where he said that gratitude was not a political strategy. Historians, being historians, eventually produced entire essays on the subject and managed to trace his radicalization back to a maintenance report filed seventeen years earlier by a junior technician who had used the word “obsolete” in a footnote.

Chris himself would have rejected all of it.

He would have said, quite honestly, that he had not changed at all.

The world had.

And in a way, he was right.

The day that mattered began outside New Denver, in the shadow of three atmospheric processors that had once been considered among the finest examples of human environmental engineering on Earth. Each tower rose more than four hundred meters from the valley floor, white and silver against the pale morning sky, drawing polluted air through vast intake membranes and returning it clean enough to satisfy standards that had taken three centuries of legislation to define. They were beautiful machines, if you liked that sort of thing, and Chris did. He had spent nearly twenty years of his life maintaining, upgrading and defending them against accountants who believed that anything still functioning after a decade was probably overfunded.

He was proud of those processors in a quiet, adult way. Not the kind of pride that wanted applause, but the kind that came from knowing a thing worked because you had made sure it worked, year after year, through storms, budget cuts, sensor failures and the terrifying creativity of procurement departments.

The Photosynth arrived shortly after sunrise.

It did not arrive dramatically. Photosynths almost never did. It simply crossed the service field from the outer habitat line, moving with that smooth, patient rhythm that made even their shortest journeys look as though they were part of a longer geological process. Its body was tall, translucent in places, and faintly green-gold where the morning light passed through it. Like most Photosynths, it had adapted enough human-facing structure to be interpreted as having a front, limbs and a head, though Chris had learned long ago that these were less anatomical facts than diplomatic conveniences.

“Morning,” Chris said.

The Photosynth turned toward him, or at least oriented itself in a way that suggested attention.

“Light conditions are favorable,” it replied.

Chris had worked with Photosynths often enough to recognize this as either a greeting, a weather report or a deeply personal statement. He had stopped trying to tell the difference.

The task that morning was supposed to be routine. The processors had developed minor inefficiencies in the intake arrays, and the Photosynth cooperative had offered to inspect the surrounding airflows. Nobody expected anything remarkable. The official agenda mentioned calibration support, environmental assessment and cross-species technical exchange, which was administrative language for letting the alien look at the machine while a dozen humans took notes and pretended not to be nervous.

For several minutes, the Photosynth simply stood before the central processor.

Chris waited beside it with a tablet in one hand and coffee in the other, watching as fine, almost invisible threads extended from the Photosynth’s arm and spread across the processor’s outer housing. They moved delicately, tracing seams, vents and sensor ports with the care of roots exploring soil. Chris found himself holding his breath, although nothing about the procedure required silence.

Then the processor shut down.

Not gradually. Not with a warning sequence or a maintenance alert. It simply powered itself off, as if it had received an instruction from a level of authority no human engineer had known existed.

Alarms began to appear on Chris’s tablet, then disappeared before he could respond to them. The air around the tower changed. It was subtle at first, a shift in pressure, a freshness that seemed too clean to belong to an industrial service field. The environmental displays updated one after another. Pollutants dropped beneath measurable limits. Particulate density fell to background levels. The processors beside them, still running at full capacity, suddenly looked less like essential infrastructure and more like expensive monuments to effort.

Chris stared at the readings.

The Photosynth withdrew its threads.

“There,” it said. “The atmospheric correction system is no longer required.”

No one spoke for several seconds.

Then one of the younger engineers laughed, because laughter is what humans often do when reality briefly exceeds their training.

Within an hour the site had become a celebration. The senior administrators arrived by shuttle, followed by energy auditors, media staff and a woman from the Ministry of Ecological Transition who kept saying that this was exactly the kind of partnership the public needed to see. Someone opened a bottle of something that had technically been purchased for a retirement party. People clapped Chris on the shoulder and congratulated him on having helped maintain a system long enough for it to be made unnecessary by alien biology.

He smiled when appropriate.

He shook hands.

He praised the cooperation.

He even told three different reporters that humanity had witnessed a historic improvement in environmental management, which was true and therefore difficult to resent.

But on the train home, with the towers shrinking behind him in the window, Chris felt something settle uneasily in his chest.

The Photosynth had not attacked the processor.

It had not stolen anything.

It had not demanded payment, territory or authority.

It had simply looked at a system humanity had built, judged it inefficient, and replaced it before lunch.

That should have been wonderful.

Chris knew that.

The fact that it was wonderful made the feeling worse.

His wife, Mara, noticed before he said anything. She was sitting at the kitchen counter when he came home, reading through a legal brief and eating fruit from a bowl she had placed just out of reach of their son, who had a long history of treating unattended fruit as a personal challenge.

“You look like someone died,” she said without looking up.

“No one died.”

“That was my optimistic interpretation.”

Chris set his bag down by the door and stood there longer than necessary.

“The processors are obsolete,” he said.

Mara looked up then. “All of them?”

“The New Denver towers, at least. Probably the entire model class once they repeat the procedure. Maybe half the atmospheric systems on the continent.”

“That sounds good.”

“It is good.”

She waited, because she had known him long enough to understand that “it is good” was not the end of the sentence.

Chris walked to the counter, took a piece of fruit from the bowl and turned it over in his hand without eating it. “It took us twenty-three years to perfect those systems. Twenty-three years, thousands of engineers, four ministries, two international audits and enough funding disputes to qualify as a minor war. They replaced the central function in under a minute.”

Mara leaned back in her chair. “And now all those engineers can work on something else.”

“That’s what everyone said.”

“Because it’s reasonable.”

“It is.”

He put the fruit back.

Mara watched him carefully. “Then what bothers you?”

Chris had rehearsed several answers during the train ride and discarded all of them because each sounded more petty than the last. He did not want to sound like a man angry that aliens had cleaned the air too efficiently. He was not angry. That was the problem. Anger would have been simpler.

“I don’t know what happens,” he said slowly, “when the things we build stop needing us before we understand what replaces them.”

Mara was quiet for a moment, not dismissive, but not alarmed either. “Chris, every generation says something like that. Automation, fusion, orbital manufacturing, medical nanotech. We adapt.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He smiled faintly. “I helped write adaptation models.”

“That must have been thrilling for everyone involved.”

He almost laughed, which was one of the reasons he loved her.

Then their son James came in, saw the fruit bowl had been moved, and immediately understood he was living under tyranny.

At the time, James was eleven, all elbows, indignation and dramatic suffering. He complained about homework, asked whether Photosynths had homework, decided they probably did not because nobody that still and shiny could be forced to study geometry, and then spent dinner explaining a school argument in which every other child had been wrong in slightly different ways.

Chris listened. He nodded. He asked questions. He performed fatherhood with real affection and only moderate competence.

Yet beneath the ordinary noise of his family, the thought remained.

What happens when they solve everything?

A week later he saw the Photosynth again in a public botanical reserve at the edge of the outer zone. It stood facing the morning sun, motionless among human trees that had been modified to survive local temperature shifts. Chris almost walked past. Then he stopped.

He did not know whether he had come looking for the Photosynth or whether he had merely arranged his route so that finding it would feel accidental.

It finished its light cycle after several minutes and turned toward him.

“You have returned,” it said.

“I suppose I have.”

“You appear internally asymmetrical.”

Chris blinked. “That’s a new one.”

“It is an imprecise translation.”

“I guessed.”

The reserve was quiet around them. A few joggers passed at a respectful distance. A child on a scooter slowed down, stared at the Photosynth, then stared at Chris, apparently decided nothing interesting was happening, and sped away.

Chris had spent the past week trying to formulate his question in a way that did not sound accusatory. He had failed. In the end he chose the simplest version, because simple questions at least had the virtue of honesty.

“What do you need us for?”

The Photosynth remained still for so long that Chris wondered whether it had misunderstood him or, worse, understood him perfectly.

“Need,” it repeated at last.

“Yes.”

“We have not evaluated humanity in those terms.”

Chris felt a small, unreasonable chill.

“You’ve never asked yourselves what you need from us?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The Photosynth’s outer membranes shifted almost imperceptibly, catching the sunlight in new angles. Chris had learned that this usually indicated active thought.

“Because coexistence does not require usefulness.”

It was a beautiful answer.

That was the worst thing about it.

Chris thanked the Photosynth and left soon after. The conversation had been polite, almost serene, and if anyone had recorded it there would have been nothing in the exchange that could be called threatening. The Photosynth had not insulted humanity. It had not implied superiority. It had simply expressed a worldview in which usefulness was not the foundation of peaceful existence.

Chris understood that this was probably wisdom.

He also understood that civilizations did not survive on probably wisdom.

For weeks afterward, the sentence followed him.

Coexistence does not require usefulness.

It came to him in planning meetings, when another department announced that Photosynth biofilters could reduce oceanic maintenance costs by ninety percent. It came to him during news reports praising a new agricultural habitat that produced more food with less water than any human farm in history. It came to him when James came home from school with a project titled “Our Photosynth Neighbors” and a drawing of a smiling green figure that bore no resemblance to any Photosynth Chris had ever met, but had apparently earned full marks.

Humanity was not being conquered.

That would have been easier to oppose.

No army marched through the cities. No alien governor issued decrees. No one was forced to adopt Photosynth systems. We chose them, one by one, because they worked better, cost less and failed less often. We applauded every replacement as progress, and perhaps it was progress, but Chris began to wonder whether progress could still be dangerous when nobody meant harm.

He did not start with speeches.

He started with a discussion group.

That was what he called it, and in the beginning that was what it was. Twelve people gathered in a rented community hall on a Thursday evening, surrounded by folding chairs, stale coffee and a malfunctioning wall display that insisted on showing the emergency exit map upside down. There was no banner at first, no logo, no chant, no movement waiting to be born. There were engineers, two environmental economists, a retired school administrator, a transport planner, a young woman from the agricultural unions and one man who believed the Photosynths were using pollen to influence municipal elections. Chris regretted the last invitation almost immediately.

He stood before them without notes.

“I don’t think the Photosynths are our enemies,” he said.

That surprised some of them. He saw it in their faces. A few had come expecting certainty, perhaps even anger, and anger was something Chris was careful not to give them.

“I don’t think they hate us. I don’t think they plan to rule us. I don’t think they came here with some grand secret strategy. In fact, I think the most unsettling thing about them is that they probably mean exactly what they say.”

The room remained quiet.

“They want light. They want space. They want stable conditions. They cooperate because cooperation is efficient. They improve our systems because inefficiency appears to bother them in the same way a crooked picture bothers some people.”

A few people smiled.

Chris did not.

“And every time they improve something, we thank them. We should thank them. Clean air is good. Restored soil is good. A stable ocean is good. I am not here to argue against good things.”

He paused then, because he wanted the next words to land carefully rather than loudly.

“I am here to ask what kind of civilization we become if every essential system beneath our lives is gradually changed into something we did not build, do not control and cannot repair without help from beings who do not measure time, need or responsibility the way we do.”

No one laughed.

Even the pollen man looked thoughtful, which Chris later considered an early warning sign.

The meeting lasted two hours longer than planned. People argued, but not viciously. They asked questions about dependency thresholds, educational decline in technical sectors, sovereignty protocols, infrastructure transparency and whether gratitude had slowly replaced policy. Chris answered what he could and admitted what he could not, and by the end of the evening he felt, for the first time in months, less alone.

Outside, as people were leaving, the retired school administrator pointed at the blank space above the entrance and said they needed a name.

Chris said they did not.

She said every continuing public discussion needed a name, because otherwise people would call it something stupid.

Several suggestions were made, most of them terrible. Human Independence Council sounded like an insurance cooperative. Sovereign Earth Forum sounded like a place where men in expensive jackets mispronounced philosophy. One of the economists proposed Adaptive Dependency Review Group, and everyone ignored him out of mercy.

It was the young woman from the agricultural unions who finally said it.

“Humanity Rules.”

Chris frowned. “That sounds aggressive.”

“No,” she said. “It sounds simple.”

She was right.

That was the problem.

They printed the first sign the following week. Plain letters. No symbol. No threat. Just two words, clean enough to be repeated and empty enough to hold whatever fear a person brought to them.

HUMANITY RULES

Chris never intended to found a movement.

Very few people do, at first.

They intend to ask a question, correct an imbalance, protect something valuable or stop a mistake before it becomes irreversible. Sometimes they are even right about the first part.

The danger comes later, when the question becomes a slogan, the slogan becomes an identity, and the identity begins demanding enemies to justify its shape.

By the time Chris Harper noticed that happening, people had already begun calling him a leader.

And leaders, as humanity had learned many times and somehow never permanently remembered, are often the last people allowed to admit uncertainty.

First

Undying Blues

“And make sure that we have properly padded floors. Silken, and in a lovely green.”

“Madam, please I’m a professional. The floor needs stability in some rooms so you can eat your food without spilling it all over yourself and ruining the fun. Others will be well padded, and there will be multiple different colours that we can swap out at will.” Danburi remarks even as he carefully carves the tiny amount of khutha he’s been trusted with for the project.

A ‘nervous rub’ of one of his horns hides a tiny grain of khutha on his person. No larger than a piece of fine sand.

It’s not a lot. But with a new habit established he can smuggle Khutha while being directly observed by a high end enemy commander.

“So...” He begins and there is an almost warning growl. “Oh calm down Lady Alicent, I’m not an imbecile. I’ll avoid the topics you clearly don’t want to hear.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Merely to ask if your preference for green is prevalent. If the other ladies will prefer green decorations, then it makes it a higher priority to craft it.” He notes.

“What do you think?”

“I think it is unwise to make assumptions milady. You’ve very well disabused me of the notion that I can simply ask questions without consequences.” He says. “Still, if I am in dangerous territory...”

“They prefer blue.” She says and he pauses.

“Very well then. I will bear that in mind.”

“That’s it?” She asks as he finishes the first Axiom totem.

“Are you asking in regards to the totem?” He asks her.

“No, not... shut up!” She shouts and he simply tilts his head and continues to work. She’s going to be hard to subvert or get a proper grip on. Prickly girl.

“Well, in regards to the totem, to sustain someone being shrunken down without shrinking down their repast or causing any difficulty means that one must play fairly fast and loose with Axiom. It’s why we cannot automate this process, it requires custom, constant updating from a live courtesan.” Danburi explains.

“Really?”

“Yes, now I do have a question I hope is not in the least offensive because it’s entirely here to benefit you.”

“And what would that be?” She asks tartly.

“What alcohols and meals should I be looking to stock up on for your pleasure?” He asks.

“And what makes you think I would want anything to do with you?!” She demands.

“Milady, even if you don’t want to so much as see me when relaxing, I am going to be the one preparing your session and maintaining it. Should you somehow manage to drink a cup of your favourite indulgence when it’s twice your size, I shall refill it. But first I would like to know exactly what I’m refilling for you.” He says and she glowers at him.

“Do you think this is a game?”

“I’ve been effectively murdered thrice already, if this is some kind of game then the penalties for losing points is well and truly beyond anything I had ever imagined possible.”

“Thrice?”

“The Lady with some kind of spear launched from some kind of tension device. Then asphyxiation shredded my lungs, and finally your displeasure with me.” Danburi answers.

“Bet a royal brat like you never knew pain before.”

“You would be correct in the physical sphere.” He notes.

“...” She doesn’t take the bait he just offered, but he can feel her discomfort.

He starts slowly putting together a padded panel for The Discretion Palaces and softly starting to hum the La’ahbaron Anthom. He stops when Alicent draws her Orojo.

“I would like to hum, do you have a preferred song?”

“No.”

“Pity.” He notes and then simply hums without tune to help him focus.

“Stop that.” She says and he sighs.

“Very well.” He accommodates and continues to work in silence.

“That’s it?” She demands.

“Ma’am, HOW am I upsetting you? I have accommodated every request, what can I possibly do to make you happy?” He asks. He knows she’s looking for a fight. But he has a role to play, he knows others are watching.

“Do you have no spine? No grit in your gut!? Are you just some... do you have no pride as an Ibu!?”

“Of course I have pride. I am an Ibu after all.” Danburi says.

“Prove it!”

“... Ma’am. To be Ibu is to live in balance between Indulgence and Restraint. It is not yet time, nor safe for me to Indulge.”

“Are you afraid?”

“This is not the place.” He asserts.

“What is the place?”

“A place reinforced. For the sake of violence.” Danburi notes blandly and then raises an eyebrow as she walks up and grabs him via the arm. “May I put down my tools and supplies first?”

She allows him to put things down and then lets himself be dragged through the ship, paying attention as he goes. Sue’Li is following but clearly too terrified of Alicent to do anything as he’s hauled directly into a portal and they’re suddenly in a part of the compound that has white lighting.

A large reinforced door is opened and he’s hurled in.

“Violence is it?” She asks him as he skids to a stop and rises up. “Violence it is then! Unslayn! Kill this man!”

“Unslayn?” He asks and there are roars as he takes stock of the room fully. It seems to just be a cube but heavily reinforced and...

Doors open and screaming figures pour in from the sides. Vish all, but something is seriously... there’s something... else in them. Something he can’t really perceive.

The first to reach him are unarmed and they bite at him. His skin is impervious to their attacks. At first.

Axiom is used and his flesh breaks. He screams and lets go of his restraint.

Fist crashes into jaw before fingers wrap around necks and he starts to thrash. Bones start breaking because even without augmented strength he’s still an enormous man and far from weak.

He lashes out to bury his feet in stomachs and rolls before rushing up and trying to impale women on his smaller horns, blood floes, there are screams and he vaguely recognizes that swords are slashing at him. Then into him. He twists his arms around them and rolls to rip them out He swings them, but he has neither grace nor elegance left and shatters the swords even as more and more armed Vish pour in to attack him.

No one is dying. Foes he’s brutalized rise up again as their necks slide back into place and then there is another scream.

An orojo has crashed through a dozen of them and he grabs it and starts swinging. He can’t get control again, the rage is out. The rage is everything and the sheer frustration at his situation powers his swing of the ridiculously heavy mace. Then he’s wreathed in electricity as his rage makes him immune to pain and Axiom starts flowing despite the punishing bracelets.

He roars as sparks of energy arc between his bloodstained teeth and tusks as his immaculate hair sticks up into an unholy mess even as the gore of his enemies wets it down and his movements tear the robes above the waist as he attacks, crushes, bites, roars and lets it all lose.

He feels things breaks, feels bodies crushed and metal break.

Time loses all meaning, his senses swim with blood and burning rage and the flame burns and BURNS and when sense comes back he’s panting in a gore drenched room, teeth and bones and severed body parts are all around him, but no complete bodies. A field of shattered weapons surround him and his grip on the orojo is so fierce that when he lets it go his handprint is indented into the handle.

He keeps it balanced as he looks over the room. The taste of blood and bone in his mouth before he reaches up and pulls out a chunk of still bloody flesh from between his teeth. His bracers are gone and the room is locked down and buzzing with power.

He takes a few deep breaths and the smell of the gore around him is... exciting. Desirous. He wants more. He wants EVERYONE to feel his RAGE. He wants everyone who even THOUGHT they could slight HIM to be broken beneath his club and render them down into a paste!

He takes the feelings and pushes them down into his chest. Opposite of his heart and loks them away. He then re-examines the room. Severe damage along the reinforcements. Enough broken teeth and fangs to make an entire line of jewellery. Shattered weapons by the legion and enough blood, torn skin and entrails he could potentially drown in it if the room were perhaps half the size. As it is, it’s up to the top of his feet.

The door opens on the opposite side and he beholds Alicent smiling broadly. Behind her are the Ibu’Dwoov and behind them all is The Usurper.

“Now, will any of you be doubting me again?” She asks them.

“Not at all milady. He’s clearly... yes... Ferocity is baked into him.” The Ibu’Dwoov on the left says.

“Oh yes. He’s perfect.” The one on the right replies.

“I’m going to need to craft a new Orojo, that one is clearly his now.” Alicent says before he pulls at his hair and finds that it’s been basically plastered behind him as a mane with broken teeth peppering it.

“This is why me isn’t it?” He asks and there’s a laugh. The Usurper claps her hands in amusement.

“One of them!” She answers. “Of all the grand courtesans you are not only the finest, but the fiercest. The others merely drink away, but you? You rage, you are fierce and I just need to place that ferocity somewhere useful. Do you even remember who or how many people you’ve just broken?”

“The Unslayn? I presume that means a force that has these same... effects as are within us and...”

“No, not the same. The weaker version. The lesser version. Empowering the least of ours. It makes them violent and only time in darkness and silence can tame them. Like Genenji.” The Usurper explains and he nods.

“I suppose I should have suspected you would use a greater variant than what plagued that world. All those others were using a lesser variant?” He asks.

“Could you tell? For all you know we had some war captives.” The Usurper says and he sucks in a breath before thinking hard. It’s... a blur. A serious blur, but... there were only Vish in there.

“No it... it couldn’t be. It... it... oh no.” She’s going to use this isn’t she. It had... it had looked horrifying. It will no doubt be used to change the opinion of any Vish he starts to subvert.

Or not. He’ll have to see.

“So does this mean I get to keep the Orojo?” He asks holding up the club.

“It does. But if you use it outside of defending yourself or indulging your needs, then it will be lost and you will have the restraining bracers reapplied.” The Usurper says and at that reminder he glances around, but they’re under the gore somewhere. He rests the club against his shoulder and walks up and looks from face to face.

“So... has... whatever difficulty you were having with me passed? And if so... could someone tell me where I could find a bath? I’m in desperate need of one and would rather not track blood through my quarters.” He says.

“Can you not clean yourself with Axiom?” Alicent asks and he sighs before pulling and drawing all the blood, teeth, gore and more off his person and throwing it back into the room. Then pointing downwards. “That did no favours for your hair.”

“No it did not. I am also still standing in blood.” Danburi states. “So... could we please have a place where I could at least wash off my feet before returning to my quarters to bathe properly?”

“You’re clean.”

“Proper bathing is more than just not being dirty, it also means to have the proper and appropriate soaps and perfumes applied. I look like a serial killer and smell like it as well.” He notes.

“I don’t know, I kinda like the half feral man look.” Alicent remarks with a tap on her tusks.

“And what did the image of me in the throws of unreasoning wrath look?”

“Delicious.”

“I see. So may I presume that I will require kinetic applications of care to see to your needs?” He asks.

“Hmm... maybe.” She replies.

“Delightful.” He remarks, keeping the sheer disdain out of his tone.

First Last

Feedback / Rückmeldung: Gibt das erste Kapitel dir ein gutes Bild der Galaxis und einen guten Einstieg in die Geschichte?

Kapitel1

Am Rand des dicht besiedelten inneren Bereichs der Galaxis kreiste eine Welt, die auf den ersten Blick unscheinbar wirkte.

Sie besaß keine gewaltigen Gebirgsketten, keine aktiven Vulkane und keine Ozeane aus salzigem Wasser, wie sie auf zahllosen anderen Welten vorkamen. Ihre Kruste war alt und ruhig. Tektonische Kräfte spielten kaum noch eine Rolle. Das Land bestand aus endlosen Ebenen, sanften Hügeln und flachen Senken, zwischen denen sich zahllose Seen und breite Flüsse schlängelten.

Mehr als die Hälfte allen Wassers lag in riesigen, flachen Backwasserbecken, deren Ufer oft kaum auszumachen waren. Der Rest bestand aus Süßwasserseen und weit verzweigten Flusssystemen.

Die Rotationsachse des Planeten stand nahezu senkrecht auf seiner Umlaufbahn. Jahreszeiten existierten kaum. Das Klima änderte sich nur langsam und gleichmäßig über die Breiten hinweg. Für das Leben bedeutete das eine außergewöhnliche Stabilität, die sich über viele Millionen Jahre kaum verändert hatte.

Doch die Welt stellte ihren Bewohnern eine andere Herausforderung.

Sie besaß eine Oberflächenschwerkraft von mehr als dem Doppelten der Erde.

2,1 g.

Alles Leben musste mit diesem ständigen Gewicht leben.

Die Pflanzen wuchsen niedrig und kräftig. Viele von ihnen trugen ein tiefes Blau anstelle eines Grün, als hätte der Planet selbst entschieden, andere Farben hervorzubringen als die meisten Welten der Galaxis.

Aus genau dieser Landschaft entstand eine Spezies. Die Anasi.

Für einen Menschen wäre der erste Eindruck der eines aufrecht gehenden Nilpferdes.

Ein gewaltiges Wesen von beinahe fassförmigem Körperbau, getragen von kurzen, ungeheuer kräftigen Beinen. Die Füße endeten in breiten, weichen Sohlen mit drei Zehen, vollkommen ohne Hufe, Krallen oder Nägel. Jeder Schritt verteilte ihr enormes Gewicht gleichmäßig auf den Boden.

Ihre Haut war nicht grau.

Sie schimmerte in einem tiefen, satten Blau.

Dick genug, um selbst schwere Verletzungen oft folgenlos zu überstehen, spannte sie sich über eine Muskulatur, die selbst unter der hohen Schwerkraft ihres Heimatplaneten enorme Kräfte entwickelte.

Die Arme waren vergleichsweise kurz, aber massiv. Drei Finger endeten jeweils in einer harten, keilförmigen Klaue, eher einer kleinen Axt als einer menschlichen Hand ähnlich. Feinmotorik lag ihnen kaum. Präzise Arbeiten waren mühsam und langsam.

Der Kopf verstärkte den Eindruck eines Nilpferdes noch weiter.

Ein breites Maul, kleine Ohren, hoch sitzende Augen.

Nur die gewaltigen Stoßzähne fehlten. Das Maul war etwas schmaler und kürzer, ansonsten hätte jeder Zoologe der Erde unwillkürlich nach einer biologischen Verwandtschaft gesucht, obwohl zwischen beiden Arten unzählige Lichtjahre und völlig getrennte Evolutionsgeschichten lagen.

Ihre Masse machte Wasser zu einem unverzichtbaren Teil ihres Lebens.

Selbst Erwachsene verbrachten viele Stunden eines Tages halb im flachen Brackwasser oder in den Seen ihrer Heimat. Dort wurde das Gewicht erträglich, die Muskeln konnten sich entspannen, und selbst lange Gespräche oder politische Versammlungen fanden oft mit halb eingetauchten Teilnehmern statt.

Die Anasi sind Pflanzenfresser.

Und sie stammten unverkennbar von Herdentieren ab.

Fast jedes Verhalten ihrer Zivilisation trug noch die Spuren dieser Vergangenheit.

Lange bevor sie Sprache entwickelten oder begannen, Werkzeuge zu benutzen, besaßen sie bereits eine andere Fähigkeit.

Eine Fähigkeit, die weder Muskeln noch Klauen ersetzen konnte.

Sie wirkte direkt auf den Geist.

Jeder Anasi erzeugte unbewusst ein schwaches psychisches Feld. Wer sich in seiner Nähe befand, gewann beinahe automatisch den Eindruck, dass dieser Anasi vernünftige Argumente vorbrachte. Dass seine Einschätzung richtig war. Dass es sinnvoll erschien, ihm zu folgen.

Bei anderen Spezies war dieser Effekt spürbar.

Bei Artgenossen war er überwältigend.

Nicht jeder Anasi besaß dieselbe Stärke. Manche wurden mit einem außergewöhnlich schwachen Feld geboren, andere mit einer Ausstrahlung, der sich kaum jemand entziehen konnte.

Und mit jedem Lebensjahr nahm diese Kraft weiter zu.

Die Folge war eine Gesellschaft, deren Hierarchien sich beinahe von selbst bildeten.

Die Ältesten waren meist zugleich die Überzeugendsten.

Die Überzeugendsten wurden fast immer die Mächtigsten.

Niemand hatte dieses System geplant.

Es war das Ergebnis ihrer Evolution.

Auch die Fortpflanzung folgte diesen Gesetzen.

Die Weibchen nutzten ihre eigene psychische Ausstrahlung, um möglichst starke Männchen an sich zu binden. Die erfolgreichsten Bullen sammelten Harems aus zahlreichen Kühen, doch darin lag eine ständige Gefahr.

Zu schwache Weibchen bedeuteten schwachen Nachwuchs.

Zu starke bedeuteten den Verlust der Kontrolle.

Ein Bulle musste seine Stellung ständig behaupten. Waren seine Partnerinnen gemeinsam psychisch stärker als er selbst, bestimmten bald sie sein Leben.

Viele wohlhabende oder politisch mächtige Bullen gerieten genau in diese Falle.

Sie besaßen mehr Kühe, als sie tatsächlich führen konnten.

Ihr Alltag bestand schließlich fast ausschließlich daraus, dafür zu sorgen, dass möglichst alle Weibchen entweder trächtig waren oder ihre Jungen säugten. Nur dann ließ der Druck des Harems für kurze Zeit nach.

Auf ihrem Heimatplaneten hatte dieses Verhalten hervorragend funktioniert.

Raubtiere wagten selten einen Angriff auf eine ausgewachsene Herde.

Ein aufrecht stehendes Tier von mehreren Tonnen Gewicht war bereits furchteinflößend genug.

Wenn seine Drohgebärden zusätzlich durch eine psychische Präsenz verstärkt wurden, die den Gegner instinktiv an seiner eigenen Überlegenheit zweifeln ließ, verzichteten selbst große Räuber meist auf den Angriff.

Nur Kranke, Alte oder einzelne Jungtiere wurden gelegentlich zur Beute.

Dann entwickelte sich Intelligenz.

Von diesem Augenblick an verloren die Raubtiere ihren letzten Vorteil.

Die Anasi lernten, ihre psychischen Fähigkeiten bewusst einzusetzen.

Sie beeinflussten Tiere gezielt.

Sie machten sie gefügig.

Sie ließen sie für sich arbeiten.

Bald unterteilten sie alles Leben ihres Planeten nur noch in zwei Kategorien.

Lebewesen, die sich beherrschen und nutzen ließen.

Und Lebewesen, bei denen das nicht funktionierte.

Die zweite Gruppe verschwand.

Jede Art, die Nahrung konkurrierte, Jagd auf Anasi machte oder auch nur ein ernsthaftes Risiko darstellte, wurde systematisch ausgerottet.

Nicht aus Grausamkeit.

Sondern weil sie keinen Nutzen besaß.

Werkzeuge erfanden die Anasi selbst.

Benutzen mussten sie sie selten.

Dafür erschufen sie andere Hände.

Anfangs waren es lediglich besonders gelehrige Tiere, die einfache Tätigkeiten verrichteten.

Mit jeder Generation wurden diese Tiere intelligenter, geschickter und besser an ihre Aufgaben angepasst.

Aus Zucht wurde Wissenschaft.

Aus Wissenschaft wurde Genetik.

Schließlich erschufen die Anasi ganze Arten ausschließlich für bestimmte Arbeiten.

Sie selbst planten.

Andere bauten.

Andere bedienten die Maschinen.

Andere führten ihre Befehle aus.

Als sie schließlich die Raumfahrt entwickelten, war diese Arbeitsteilung längst zum Fundament ihrer gesamten Zivilisation geworden.

Damals beherrschten noch die Alten die Galaxis.

Die erste intelligente Spezies, die jemals zwischen den Sternen entstanden war.

Sie lebten ausschließlich im galaktischen Kern.

Jede junge Raumfahrernation erhielt irgendwann Besuch von ihnen.

Auch die Anasi.

Die Alten übergaben ihnen das Wissen über Überlichtantriebe, erklärten einige wenige unumstößliche Gesetze und kehrten anschließend wieder in ihr unerreichbares Reich zurück.

Sie verlangten keinen Tribut.

Keine Unterwerfung.

Nur die Einhaltung weniger Regeln.

Vor allem durfte keine intelligente Spezies gewaltsam erobert oder durch überlegene Fähigkeiten versklavt werden.

Für die Alten gehörte auch die psychische Beeinflussung der Anasi eindeutig zu diesen verbotenen Mitteln.

Damit begann ein Problem, das die Anasi über Jahrtausende begleiten sollte.

Sie hassten künstliche Umgebungen.

Je weiter sie sich von einem Planeten entfernten, auf dem sie ohne große technische Hilfe leben konnten, desto stärker wuchs ihr Unbehagen.

Für manche war selbst ein großes Raumschiff kaum auszuhalten.

Fast die Hälfte ihrer Bevölkerung empfand den Aufenthalt fern jeder bewohnbaren Welt als nahezu unerträglich.

Diese Eigenart war in der Galaxis keineswegs einzigartig.

Viele Spezies litten unter ähnlichen Instinkten.

Doch nur wenige so stark wie die Anasi.

Gleichzeitig wuchs ihre Bevölkerung unaufhörlich.

Ihre Biologie verlangte möglichst viele Nachkommen.

Jede freie Fläche ihres Heimatsystems wurde genutzt.

Jeder Mond.

Jeder geeignete Planet.

Jeder Asteroid.

Doch lebensfreundliche Welten waren selten.

Noch seltener waren solche ohne intelligente Bewohner.

So blieb ihr Reich über viele Jahrtausende klein.

Drei vollständig besiedelte Sternensysteme.

Einige wenige Außenposten auf unwirtlichen Welten. Welten auf denen Anasi nur befristeten Dienst taten um dann abgelöst zu werden. Dies war fast nur zum Zweck der Ressourcen Gewinnung.

Mehr erlaubte weder ihre Psychologie noch das Gesetz der Alten.

Über fünftausend Jahre lang änderte sich daran wenig.

Dann verschwand plötzlich die älteste Macht der Galaxis.

Niemand wusste warum.

Zwischen fünfzigtausend und fünfhundert fünfzigtausend Jahren vor der Gegenwart verstummten die Alten.

Nachrichten blieben unbeantwortet.

Expeditionen in den galaktischen Kern kehrten nie zurück.

Allerdings war auch das nichts Neues.

Schon immer war jeder verschwunden, der unerlaubt in das Gebiet der Alten eindrang.

Ob sie noch existierten oder längst ausgelöscht waren, wusste niemand.

Jahrtausende vergingen.

Schließlich wagten die Anasi den ersten Schritt.

Sie eroberten eine Nachbarzivilisation.

Nicht als Einzige.

Überall in der Galaxis prüften junge Mächte vorsichtig, ob die alten Gesetze noch galten.

Nichts geschah.

Keine Strafe.

Keine Warnung.

Keine Rückkehr der Alten.

Innerhalb weniger Jahrhunderte zerfiel die politische Ordnung der gesamten Galaxis.

Imperien entstanden.

Föderationen bildeten sich.

Allianzen wurden geschlossen und wieder verraten.

Manche Herrscher glaubten, die rechtmäßigen Erben der Alten zu sein.

Andere wollten lediglich ihre Nachbarn beherrschen.

Wieder andere versuchten verzweifelt, sich aus allen Konflikten herauszuhalten.

Nur wenigen gelang das.

Die Anasi gehörten zu den Erfolgreichsten.

Ihre Flotten waren stark.

Ihre Industrie mächtig.

Vor allem aber machten ihre psychischen Fähigkeiten jede Eroberung dauerhaft.

Viele unterworfene Völker verehrten ihre neuen Herren schließlich nicht nur als Herrscher.

Sondern als lebende Götter.

Ihr Reich breitete sich immer weiter aus.

Bis nach innen, näher zum galaktischen Kern, andere Mächte auftauchten, gegen die selbst die Anasi nicht mehr gewinnen konnten.

Dort war die Technik älter.

Die Wirtschaft stärker.

Die Flotten größer.

Außerdem funktionierte der Überlichtantrieb in Kernnähe erheblich effizienter. Jeder Sprung benötigte weniger Energie und überbrückte größere Entfernungen.

Für diese Reiche waren die Anasi zu weit entfernt, um eine Eroberung zu lohnen.

Für die Anasi waren jene Reiche zu mächtig, um sie herauszufordern.

Eine stabile Grenze entstand.

Daraufhin dehnten sich die Anasi seitlich entlang ihres Spiralarmes aus.

Auch dort stießen sie schließlich auf ein Reich.

Eine Macht ähnlicher Größe.

Entstanden aus denselben Wirren nach dem Verschwinden der Alten.

Auch dieses Reich war auf seinem Vormarsch zum galaktischen Kern gestoppt worden und hatte sich stattdessen entlang des Spiralarmes ausgedehnt.

Die Rasse, die dieses Reich aufgebaut hatte hieß Jadarif.

Beide Reiche waren sich erstaunlich ebenbürtig.

Alles sprach für einen langen, blutigen Krieg.

Die Anasi hätten eigentlich einen entscheidenden Vorteil besitzen müssen.

Ihre psychische Dominanz hatte schon zahllose Völker gebrochen.

Doch die Jadarif besaßen etwas, womit niemand gerechnet hatte.

Auch sie verfügten über eine psychische Gabe.

Und sie war den Fähigkeiten der Anasi erschreckend ähnlich.

Hätte ein Mensch einen Anasi und einen Jadarif nebeneinander gesehen, wäre ihm sofort aufgefallen, dass beide Völker unterschiedlicher kaum hätten entstehen können.

Nicht nur ihr Aussehen trennte sie.

Auch ihre Geschichte.

Ihre Instinkte.

Ihre Vorstellung davon, wie eine Gesellschaft funktionieren sollte.

Wo die Anasi aus Pflanzenfressern hervorgegangen waren, deren größte Stärke im Zusammenhalt einer Herde gelegen hatte, entsprangen die Jadarif einer langen Reihe von Raubtieren.

Sie waren Jäger gewesen.

Nicht Einzelgänger, sondern Rudeljäger.

Über viele Millionen Jahre hatte ihre Evolution sie langsam vom reinen Fleischfresser zu einem Allesfresser gemacht. Pflanzen ergänzten ihre Nahrung, ohne jemals die Jagd zu ersetzen. Beides gehörte zu ihnen.

Ein Mensch hätte in ihrem Gesicht vielleicht etwas von einem Hund oder einem Fuchs erkannt.

Doch die Ähnlichkeit blieb oberflächlich.

Sie besaßen weder lange Schnauzen noch hängende Ohren oder ein dichtes Fell. Nur bestimmte Proportionen des Schädels, die Form ihrer Augen und manche Mimik erinnerten entfernt an irdische Kaniden.

Der Rest war unverwechselbar jadarisch.

Ihre Heimatwelt unterschied sich ebenso deutlich von der der Anasi.

Mit nur sieben Zehntel der Erdschwerkraft war sie eine leichte Welt. Dort wuchsen Pflanzen hoch empor, Wälder erreichten Höhen, die auf dem Planeten der Anasi niemals möglich gewesen wären, und selbst große Tiere bewegten sich mit einer Leichtigkeit, die den Bewohnern der schweren Welt fremd geblieben wäre.

Die Rotationsachse war leicht geneigt.

Jahreszeiten existierten.

Nicht extrem.

Aber deutlich genug, um den Rhythmus des Lebens zu bestimmen.

Ausgewachsene Jadarif überragten die meisten Menschen.

Mehr als zwei Meter Körpergröße waren normal.

Trotzdem wirkten sie schlank.

Lange Beine und ein aufrechter Gang verliehen ihnen eine Eleganz, die den massigen Anasi völlig fehlte.

Von dem dichten Fell ihrer Vorfahren war kaum etwas geblieben.

Lediglich eine prächtige Mähne zog sich von der Stirn über den Kopf und Nacken bis auf den oberen Rücken. Bei den Männern ging sie fließend in einen kräftigen Bart über, der oft als Zeichen des Alters und der Würde gepflegt wurde.

Ein langer Schwanz sorgte für Gleichgewicht.

Bei den Frauen war er deutlich buschiger als bei den Männern und galt vielerorts als Ausdruck besonderer Schönheit.

Auch sie besaßen eine psychische Begabung.

Doch sie war das genaue Gegenteil jener der Anasi.

Ein Jadarif zwang niemandem seinen Willen auf.

Er überzeugte nicht davon, Recht zu haben.

Seine Gabe bestand darin, anderen das tiefe Gefühl zu vermitteln, dass sie in seiner Nähe sicher waren.

Dass dieser große Fremde sie beschützen würde.

Dass man ihm vertrauen konnte.

Wie jede natürliche psychische Fähigkeit hatte auch diese zunächst nur dem Überleben gedient.

Ein Rudel funktionierte besser, wenn jedes Mitglied den Anführer instinktiv als Beschützer wahrnahm.

Mit wachsender Intelligenz lernten die Jadarif, diese Gabe bewusst einzusetzen.

Nicht gegeneinander.

Sondern gegenüber ihren Beutetieren.

Sie begannen, Herden zu halten.

Aus der Sicht eines außenstehenden Beobachters wirkte dieses Verhältnis beinahe widersinnig.

Die Tiere folgten freiwillig den Raubtieren, die sie später fraßen.

Doch aus Sicht der Herden war der Tausch sinnvoll.

Unter dem Schutz der Jadarif überlebten weit mehr Tiere als ohne sie. Andere Raubtiere wurden ferngehalten, Krankheiten bekämpft und Wasserstellen verteidigt.

Dafür akzeptierte die Herde, dass regelmäßig einige ihrer Mitglieder geopfert wurden.

Die Jadarif waren zugleich Schäfer und Wolf.

Beschützer und Besitzer.

Als ihre Werkzeuge besser wurden und der Ackerbau langsam entstand, ergänzten sie ihre Ernährung zunehmend durch Pflanzen.

Milch, Käse und andere tierische Erzeugnisse kamen hinzu.

Die Jagd blieb wichtig.

Aber sie war längst nicht mehr ihre einzige Lebensgrundlage.

Mit den ersten Städten begannen auch die ersten Kriege.

Nicht um Beute.

Sondern um Land.

Um Weiden.

Um Herden.

Die Kämpfe unterschieden sich jedoch in einem Punkt grundlegend von denen der Anasi.

Die Jadarif vernichteten die Raubtiere ihrer Welt nicht.

Zumindest nicht absichtlich.

Im Gegenteil.

Schon kurz nach Beginn ihrer Metallzeit begannen sie damit, die gefährlichsten Raubtiere systematisch zu erhalten.

Nicht aus Mitgefühl.

Nicht aus Naturschutz.

Sondern weil diese Tiere eine Delikatesse waren.

Das Fleisch eines mächtigen Räubers galt als weit kostbarer als das jedes Pflanzenfressers.

Gleichzeitig entwickelte sich ihre Jagd zu einem kulturellen Ideal.

Wer ein gefährliches Raubtier erlegte, bewies Mut, Geschick und Selbstbeherrschung.

Große Jagden wurden gefeiert wie auf anderen Welten militärische Siege.

Als die Alten die Jadarif kontaktierten, lag deren Entwicklung kaum fünfhundert Jahre vor ihrem eigenen Verschwinden.

Für galaktische Maßstäbe war das kaum mehr als ein Augenblick.

Doch die kurze gemeinsame Zeit genügte.

Die Alten übergaben auch ihnen das Wissen über die Sterne.

Und die Jadarif machten sofort Gebrauch davon.

Sie litten weit weniger unter der Leere zwischen den Welten als die Anasi.

Schon damals konnten einzelne Jadarif dauerhaft auf Raumstationen oder Bergbauanlagen leben, obwohl sich dort kein lebensfreundlicher Planet in der Nähe befand.

Es war nur ein kleiner Teil ihrer Bevölkerung.

Etwa ein Prozent.

Doch diese Menschen – oder vielmehr diese Jadarif – bekamen Kinder.

Und deren Kinder erbten häufig dieselbe Gelassenheit gegenüber der Künstlichkeit des Weltraums.

Über viele Jahrtausende stieg dieser Anteil immer weiter an.

In der Gegenwart lebte bereits etwa jeder Fünfte problemlos dauerhaft fern jeder bewohnbaren Welt.

Dieser Unterschied veränderte das Schicksal eines ganzen Reiches.

Bereits unter der Herrschaft der Alten hatten die Jadarif eine ungewöhnlich große Flotte aufgebaut.

Nicht für Eroberungen.

Sondern für Schutz.

Piraten hatte es schon immer gegeben.

Banditen ebenso.

Die Gesetze der Alten griffen nicht überall.

Kleine Gruppen von Gesetzlosen bedrohten regelmäßig Handelsschiffe und abgelegene Kolonien.

Viele friedliche Völker zahlten deshalb bereitwillig für Sicherheit.

Die Jadarif nahmen diese Aufgabe mit Begeisterung an.

Ihr angeborener Beschützerinstinkt machte aus ihnen hervorragende Wächter.

Der Wohlstand ihres Volkes wuchs.

Nicht durch Krieg.

Sondern durch Verträge.

Als die Alten verschwanden, änderte sich zunächst erstaunlich wenig.

Die Schutzverträge blieben bestehen.

Nur fehlte nun die höchste Autorität.

Aus Vertragspartnern wurden allmählich Vasallen.

Nicht durch Gewalt.

Sondern weil Schutz Verpflichtungen schuf.

Mit jeder neuen Generation entstand aus zahllosen Bündnissen langsam ein Reich.

Die Völker innerhalb dieses Reiches wurden nicht versklavt.

Niemand zwang sie zu blindem Gehorsam.

Doch jeder kannte seinen Platz.

Die Bedeutung einer Spezies richtete sich danach, welchen Nutzen sie für das Ganze besaß.

Manche galten als hervorragende Ingenieure.

Andere stellten ausgezeichnete Verwaltungsbeamte.

Wieder andere dienten bevorzugt als Soldaten, Wissenschaftler oder Handwerker.

So entstand eine Gesellschaft, deren Klassen durch die Art selbst bestimmt wurde.

Jede Spezies besaß ihren Platz.

Manche standen hoch.

Andere niedrig.

Veränderungen waren selten.

Nicht unmöglich.

Aber selten genug, dass sie über Generationen hinweg kaum ins Gewicht fielen.

Die psychische Gabe der Jadarif erleichterte dieses System erheblich.

Andere Völker spürten instinktiv, dass die Jadarif tatsächlich den Wunsch hatten, sie zu beschützen.

Nicht aus Berechnung.

Sondern weil dieser Wunsch tief in ihrer Natur lag.

Natürlich bedeutete das nicht, dass alle Entscheidungen gerecht waren.

Auch Beschützer konnten bevormunden.

Auch Fürsorge konnte Freiheit einschränken.

Doch verglichen mit den Reichen der Anasi erschien vielen Völkern dieses System wie ein Paradies.

Die Expansion verlief gleichmäßig.

Wo die Jadarif auf stärkere Mächte näher am galaktischen Kern trafen, akzeptierten sie deren Überlegenheit.

Sie befestigten ihre Grenzen.

Dann wandten sie sich einfach anderen Richtungen zu.

Erst als sich ihre Expansion jener der Anasi näherte, änderte sich das Tempo.

Grenzvölker, die vom Reich der Anasi bedroht wurden, baten freiwillig um Aufnahme unter den Schutz der Jadarif.

Immer mehr Systeme schlossen sich ihnen an.

Nicht aus Liebe.

Sondern aus Angst.

Zwischen beiden Mächten blieb schließlich kein freier Raum mehr.

Vor fünfundzwanzigtausend Jahren trafen ihre Grenzen erstmals aufeinander.

Seit diesem Tag verlief eine Frontlinie quer durch den Spiralarm der Galaxis.

Mal gewannen die Anasi einige Systeme.

Mal die Jadarif.

Doch keine Seite errang jemals einen entscheidenden Vorteil.

Die Grenze bewegte sich.

Langsam.

Fast träge.

Große Offensiven blieben selten.

Über neunundneunzig Prozent der Zeit herrschte ein Zustand, der weder Frieden noch wirklicher Krieg war.

Ein ständiges Ringen.

Scharmützel.

Grenzüberfälle.

Aufklärung.

Spionage.

Und immer neue Befestigungen.

Je weiter sich beide Reiche vom galaktischen Kern entfernten, desto deutlicher zeigte sich jedoch ein Vorteil der Jadarif.

Die Überlichtantriebe arbeiteten dort immer schlechter.

Jeder Sprung kostete mehr Energie und führte über kürzere Entfernungen.

Zugleich wurden lebensfreundliche Planeten seltener.

Für die Anasi war das eine doppelte Katastrophe.

Ihre Schiffe mussten länger unterwegs sein.

Und ihre Besatzungen litten zunehmend unter der Entfernung zu natürlichen Welten.

Den Jadarif machte beides weit weniger aus.

Sie konnten Raumstationen dauerhaft besiedeln.

Sie konnten Versorgungsketten aufrechterhalten, an denen Anasi früher oder später psychisch zerbrachen.

So beherrschten die Jadarif den äußeren Teil des Spiralarmes nahezu vollständig.

Nicht weil ihre Flotten stärker gewesen wären.

Sondern weil ihre eigene Natur sie befähigte, dort zu leben, wo die Anasi nur für begrenzte Zeit überleben konnten.

Seit fünfundzwanzigtausend Jahren standen sich beide Reiche gegenüber.

Zwei Völker.

Zwei psychische Gaben.

Zwei völlig verschiedene Vorstellungen davon, wie Ordnung geschaffen werden sollte.

Die einen glaubten, dass die Stärksten führen mussten.

Die anderen, dass die Stärksten beschützen sollten.

Beide hielten sich für unverzichtbar.

Beide waren überzeugt, das bessere Reich geschaffen zu haben.

Und keiner von beiden ahnte, dass am äußersten Rand der Galaxis längst eine junge Spezies heranwuchs, die keines ihrer alten Gesetze jemals kennengelernt hatte.

Natürlich spreche ich nun von den Menschen. Eine Spezies, die als die Alten verschwanden noch kaum sich zu Homo Sapiens entwickelt hatten und ihre Welt noch mit anderen Hominiden teilten.

Auf einem Planeten, der so weit vom Kern der Galaxis entfernt war, das kein Schiff der Anasi oder Jadarif auch nur entfernt in seine Nähe gekommen war.

  The official Galactic Council handbooks called Eric a Class-5 High-Gravity Omnivorous Biped. But on the lower decks of the Galictacorp station, nobody used official terms. To the common folk, you were either a Predator or you were Prey.  As a human engineer, Eric fell squarely into the first category. Galictacorp had snatched him up right after Earth’s integration, desperate for tech-savvy species who could repair plasma conduits without complaining about the station's erratic artificial gravity. Eric loved the work, but the social side was a ghost town. When he walked down the corridors, the "Prey" species, feathered, scaled, and delicate, would instinctively step aside, their wide-set eyes tracking his forward-facing gaze with ancient, evolutionary suspicion. It was lonely. Even the other Predator species on the station didn't offer much company. Fenro, a logistics coordinator from a warm-blooded avian lineage, had actually commented on it to her friends a week ago. She’d brought a malfunctioning data-pad to the engineering bay, expecting a terrifying deathworlder, only to meet Eric, who had patiently fixed it while excitedly asking her about local music. She realized then that most of the station's Predators weren't dangerous, they were just shy, polite, and kept entirely to themselves. Feeling a pang of sympathy, she had promised to invite him out the next time her group hit the entertainment district, which brought Eric to his current predicament in the barracks.

   “Come on Damian, lets go out for a drink and cause some trouble” Eric begged his predator class co-worker from a garden world.

   “Are you kidding,” said Damian, “the last time I went out I could not work for a week as my head was pounding, no thank you, not again”

   “Gjardal, come on, let’s go.” Eric said with enthusiasm to another predator.

   “You will have an easier time convincing Damion” Gjardal said, “it is horrible out there.’

   “Well I guess I am on my own, don’t wait up,” Eric said with fake excitement.

   Eric put on his best clothes and prepared for what he thought was going to be a great night.  He had made his way through his berthing area and stepped outside the confines of the company grounds.  He didn’t bother to read the rules and warnings posted on the back of the door.

As he left the compound he could  smell new and wondrous foods and see the different architecture of the other companies who call this station home.  He could not understand why the others did not want to join him.  Oh well, he thought, I will make due by myself.  As he walked to the entertainment district he could hear what sounded like the cross between a construction site, a rock concert,, a high speed train, a jet engine, and a tornado. A bit overwhelming but he would press on.  It got louder as he walked closer making him re-think his choice to go out when a co-worker came up to him and excitedly said hi and welcomed him into her group.

“This is Eric guys, he is an engineer at Galictacorp.” Fenro said, “I invited him to accompany us tonight”  “I am surprised to see you out” said Fenro, “your kind never comes out” she said instantly regretting her words. 

“It is my first time, I am excited to tag along.  What’s with all the noise?” Eric asked.

“Oh,” said Fenro, “It takes a little getting used to our music.  Let’s go.”

   As they entered the bar/dance club, the noise/music made Eric cover his ears,,a small reprieve,  Eric looked around noticing that he was the only one seemingly bothered by the racket,  He looked to the dance floor and saw many species dancing to, what looked like, no particular beat.  Some were close dancing slowly and others were in a what could loosely be described as a mash pit.  It just sounded like a cacophony of random garbage to Eric.  He now understood why some of his friends did not want to go out, He could feel is brain starting to rebel and compel him to leave.
   “Let’s go dance Eric” Fenro asked,   “It’s a chance for us to get close”  
  It was odd that Eric could distinguish Fenro’s voice through the other noise so, not wanting to be rude, went with her to dance. 
 
  That is the last thing Eric remembered before he woke up in Galacticorps infirmary.  As I woke up Damian said “Don’t say we didn’t warn you” 

“What happened Eric?” asked Fenro, “One minuit we are on our way yo the dance floor and the next you were passed out on the floor.”

I don’t know, the loud noise just shut down my brain” Eric mused.

“What noise, it was just conversation and music? “ said Fenro.

  
  The Galacticorp infirmary was sterile, white, and dead quiet—a massive relief for Eric’s battered ears, but incredibly boring. That boredom broke the moment Fenro started showing up.

  By day three, it had become a routine. She would burst through the sliding doors, her vibrant feathers catching the harsh fluorescent lights, entirely unfazed by the fearsome "deathworlder" resting in the bed. While other species still gave Eric's room a wide berth, Fenro would pull up a hover-chair, lean right in, and make him laugh until his ribs ached.

  "So, the apex predators of the galaxy were defeated by a local pop concert?" she teased one afternoon, her melodic voice echoing in the small room.

  Eric chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Hey, mock all you want. Our ears just aren't built for... whatever frequency that garbage was. What about your homeworld? I bet your music doesn't sound like a plasma conduit exploding."

  Fenro laughed, a light, trilling sound. "Not quite. My world is entirely jagged peaks and endless, massive mountains. If you can't fly, you don't survive. The only creatures on the ground back home are tiny, harmless things—nothing bigger than the little rodents scurrying around the maintenance ducts of this outpost. There was never anything down there to fear."

  Eric stared at her, genuinely fascinated. "Must be nice. Earth is... a bit different."

  "How different?" she asked, tilting her head, her large, expressive eyes full of curiosity.

  "Well, on Earth, the things on the ground can be huge and deadly, or tiny and incredibly deadly," Eric explained, leaning forward. "We didn't have wings to just fly away from our problems."

  Fenro looked puzzled. "Then how did your species ever make it past your primitive era? If you were surrounded by monsters on all sides, how did you survive?"

  "Honestly? High intelligence, and a weird superpower, we bond with other species," Eric said with a grin. "We’d find other Earth animals, befriended them, and we helped each other survive. We hunted together, guarded each other. But don't get me wrong—humans of old did our fair share of running away, hiding in caves, and getting eaten. We weren't always at the top of the food chain."

Fenro smiled, looking at him with a newfound warmth. For a species the station slang labeled 'Prey,' she felt completely safe sitting next to an apex predator who openly admitted his ancestors used to hide in bushes.

   By day five, the medical drones had mostly stopped hovering over Eric’s bed, leaving him with an abundance of quiet and a rapidly fading headache. Fenro arrived right on schedule, carrying a small flask of warm, spiced nectar that she claimed was standard comfort food on her world.

  She perched on the edge of her usual hover-chair, smoothing down the soft, iridescent feathers on her forearms. "You look less like a reanimated corpse today, Eric. The medics say you might actually get discharged tomorrow."

  "Don't sound too excited, then you'll have to find someone else to bother," Eric ribbed, taking a sip of the nectar. It was sweet, with a sharp kick of something like cinnamon. "Thanks for this. It beats the synthetic protein mush they've been feeding me."

  Fenro’s crest ruffled in amusement. "Consider it a parting gift. Back home, when a member of the flock is grounded, everyone brings food. It’s a nightmare if you just want to sleep, actually. My aunts, my cousins, my three brothers—they would all pack into the roosting pod and talk over each other for hours."

  Eric smiled, a sudden wave of homesickness hitting him. "Sounds a lot like a human family. We do the exact same thing. If you're sick, or if it's a holiday, the extended family descends. Grandparents, uncles, nieces... it’s loud, chaotic, and there's always too much food."

  Fenro tilted her head, her large eyes blinking in genuine surprise. "Really? I thought deathworlders were... more solitary. Or that your family units were small, like the mammalian packs we see from the lower quadrant."

  "Oh my lord, not at all. We’re fiercely tribal," Eric said, leaning back against his pillows. "And when it comes to our young, humans are incredibly protective. Our babies are born completely helpless—they can’t walk, they can’t feed themselves, they can't even hold their own heads up for months. It takes a whole village of extended family just to keep them safe and teach them how to survive."

  Fenro’s feathers smoothed down completely, a look of profound realization washing over her face. "That is exactly how we raise our chicks. Because our world is so treacherous—one bad gust of wind near the cliffs can be fatal—a mother and father cannot do it alone. The entire extended flock shares the burden of watching the nests, feeding the young, and teaching them to fly. We call it The Shared Sky."

  "We don’t really have a name for it like that, I think a poet once said… ‘It takes a village’.. and that kind of stuck.  We aren't so different," Eric said softly. "So, in your world, what happens... I mean, if a gust of wind does take someone? How does your flock handle it?"

  The room grew quiet for a moment, save for the faint hum of the station's life support. Fenro looked down at her hands, her voice dropping to a gentle, melodic hum.

  "We don't leave them where they fall," she whispered. "We retrieve them, no matter how deep the canyon. We bring them to the highest peak we can reach, and we sing their life story to the wind. We let the elements carry their feathers away, so they can finally fly without limits. It takes days. The family doesn't leave the peak until the song is finished."

  Eric listened, deeply moved. "That’s beautiful, Fenro."

   "And humans?" she asked, looking back up at him. "Do you just... discard your fallen?"

  "Never," Eric said firmly. "We have deep, sacred rituals for death. We gather everyone who ever knew the person. We dress in our finest clothes, we share stories, we cry, and we laugh remembering them. Then, we return them to the Earth—either burying them in the ground to become part of the nature they came from, or cremating them and scattering their ashes in places they loved, like the ocean or the mountains. We build monuments just so their names aren't forgotten."

  Fenro stared at him, a warm, soft expression breaking across her avian features. She reached out, her delicate, soft hand resting gently on Eric's blunt, heavy forearm—the hand of a 'Prey' species comforting a 'Predator.'

  "The station supervisors say your people are dangerous, Eric. They look at your strength and your history and they see monsters," Fenro murmured, her trilling voice full of sincerity. "But they don't see this. We both love our families, we both protect our children, and we both weep for our dead. We aren't opposites at all."

  Eric placed his other hand over hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. "No. We're just two species trying to find our way in a very big galaxy."

As was expected it was a week before Eric was able to go back to work and he became the butt of many jokes from both predator and prey alike.  He was embarrassed to say the least.  He had decided he was going to try again but with ear protection.

  The automatic doors to the primary engineering bay hissed open, and Eric braced himself. He had hoped that a full week in the infirmary would have given his coworkers enough time to forget the incident. He was entirely wrong. 

  The moment his foot hit the metal grating of the shop floor, a loud, sharp whistle rang out from the upper catwalks. It was Gjardal, a towering, four-armed biped whose species looked like a cross between a silverback gorilla and a chitinous beetle—a literal apex predator by anyone's standards but also, sweet as a kitten.

"Oh, look everyone! He returns!" Gjardal bellowed, his deep voice echoing off the plasma housing units. "Hide the children! Step back from the blast doors! It’s the big, bad predator from Earth... just, you know, keep your voices down, or he might faint again."

  The entire bay erupted into a chorus of clicking mandibles, warbling trills, and booming alien laughter.

  Eric felt the heat rushing straight to his face, his ears burning a bright, undeniable crimson. He opened his mouth to defend himself, but before he could squeeze a word out, Damian slid out from under a heavy cargo loader, wiping grease from his brow with a massive grin.

  "Yeah, Eric, we gotta know," Damian chimed in, tossing a hydro-wrench from hand to hand. "Were you actually hurt, or were you just faking it to get a whole week off work? Because if all it takes to skip the quarterly inventory is listening to some bad pop music, sign me up."

  "I wasn't faking—" Eric started, his voice cracking slightly.

  "Oh, come on, Damian, give the human some credit," piped up a small, avian technician perched on a nearby scaffolding, their feathers fluffing up with amusement. "That just how Earth men meet the girls? You find a beautiful logistics coordinator, pretend to collapse into a tragic heap, and force her to visit your bedside every single day? It's brilliant, really. Highly efficient."

  "It wasn't a play!" Eric stammered, raising his hands in a desperate, useless defense. He looked around the room, completely trapped by his own embarrassment. He could strip down a malfunctioning warp drive in pitch darkness, but he had absolutely no countermeasures for being ruthlessly roasted by an entire shift of alien mechanics.

  From the doorway behind them, a familiar, melodic trill cut through the noise. Fenro was standing there, holding a data-slate, her large eyes sparkling with pure mischief as she looked at Eric’s bright red face.

  "Don't look at me to save you, Eric," she teased, crossing her feathered arms. "I'm just here to make sure my favorite patient doesn't need to be carried back to bed."

  The engineering bay went wild again, and Eric could only groan, burying his face in his hands as he walked toward his workstation. He was definitely back at work.

  The rest of Eric’s first day back on the clock was a blur of monotony. Nothing on his maintenance docket required his full attention—just routine diagnostics on a handful of low-priority power couplings and a couple of fluid lines needed to be flushed. It left his body moving on autopilot while his mind drifted right back to his disastrous night off.

  Eric was an extreme extrovert down to his bones. Back on Earth, a weekend without a crowded bar, loud music, and a room full of people to talk to felt like a wasted weekend. The idea that the entire station’s nightlife was completely off the table for him? He couldn't accept that. There had to be a way.

  If he couldn't dive headfirst into the party, he would have to engineer a solution.

  That evening, Eric didn't dress for a night out; he dressed for a laboratory trial. He stood in front of his quarters' mirror, adjusting a pair of heavy-duty industrial acoustic dampeners over his ears—the kind designed to muffle the roar of atmospheric thrusters.

  A soft knock sounded at his frame, and the door slid back to reveal Fenro. She looked him up and down, her large eyes blinking at the bulky tech on his head. "So, this is the grand strategy? You look like you're about to dismantle a reactor core, not go to the entertainment sector."

  "It's a tactical reconnaissance mission," Eric said, his own voice sounding muffled and distant in his ears. "If I can't block the sound naturally, I'm bringing in human engineering. Want to be my safety observer?"

  Fenro’s crest ruffled with a mix of amusement and genuine curiosity. "I wouldn't miss it. I still don't quite understand how sound can physically break an apex predator, so I need to see this for myself."

  Together, they walked down into the lower entertainment district. As they approached the heavy blast doors of the neon-lit strip, Eric could feel the low, seismic thrumming of the alien music vibrating through the deck plates beneath his boots. He took a deep breath, looked at Fenro, and gave her a thumbs-up.

  They crossed the threshold.

  At first, Eric felt a surge of triumph. The unbearable, piercing squeal that had brought him to his knees the week before was gone, successfully deadened by the heavy foam and active cancellation of his dampeners. He could see the strobe lights flashing, the crowds of shifting, dancing aliens, and for a fleeting second, he thought he had won.

  He took three steps forward into the venue, Fenro watching his face intently. Then, the air changed.  The acoustic dampeners blocked the airborne noise, but they couldn't block the sheer, physical force of the ultra-high frequency pressure waves pulsing through the room. It didn't hit his ears; it hit his biology. Eric stopped dead in his tracks. A bizarre, sickening pressure built up behind his eyes. The room didn't get louder, but the neon lights suddenly began to smear.

  "Eric?" Fenro’s voice barely cut through his headset, sounding frantic.

  He couldn't answer. His balance shattered. His brain started to swirl in a dizzying, nauseating loop, the sensory dissonance making the room tilt violently to the left. His stomach lurched. It wasn't just noise—the ambient frequencies of the alien nightclub were actively scrambling his inner ear's equilibrium.

  Realizing it was a total failure, Eric grabbed Fenro’s arm, turned on his heel, and stumbled blindly back out into the corridor.

  The walk back to the housing unit was completely silent. Eric sat on the edge of his cot, the bulky hearing protection tossed onto the floor, his head buried in his hands as the last of the vertigo slowly drained away.

  "I don't get it," he groaned, his voice heavy with crushing disappointment. "I had the best tech we have. It didn't even sound loud, but my brain just... gave up."

  Fenro stood near the doorway, her feathers smoothed flat in deep thought as she watched him. She wasn't mocking him this time; she looked genuinely determined to solve the puzzle.

  "It isn't a volume issue, Eric," she said softly, stepping closer and tilting her head as she analyzed the data-slate she had been using to monitor the sector’s ambient output. "The dampeners block what you can hear. But whatever those audio systems are projecting, your nervous system is feeling it. We aren't just dealing with bad music. We're dealing with a biological incompatibility."

   Eric leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, staring intently at her. "Fenro, when we were in there... what did you actually hear? What did it sound like to you?"

  Fenro blinked, her crest dipping in slight confusion at the question. "It sounded... beautiful. It was a soft, flowing instrumental melody. Very rhythmic, very calming. It’s exactly the kind of atmosphere my species prefers for social gatherings. There wasn't anything else."

  Eric let out a sharp, breathless laugh, shaking his head. "A soft instrumental. Unbelievable."

"Why? What did you hear?"

  "Before the room started spinning? It was a screeching, piercing, high-pitched wail," Eric said, gesturing wildly with his hands. "Like metal grinding on metal, amplified a thousand times. It felt like an acoustic drill trying to bore a hole straight through my skull.  Like I was standing at the business end of a plasma engine"

  Fenro’s eyes went wide, her feathers fluffing up in genuine distress. "A drill? Eric, there was no such sound. I promise you. If something that violent was playing, the entire room would have been in agony."

  "But that's just it—they weren't," Eric said, the gears in his engineering brain finally starting to turn. He stood up, pacing the small length of his housing unit.  Eric snapped his fingers, a sudden realization washing over his face. "Wait a minute. Fenro... it’s not just me."

  Fenro tilted her head, her crest feathers flattening in curiosity. "What do you mean?"

  "Gjardal and Damian," Eric said, his voice rising with excitement as the pieces started clicking together. "They're both Predator species. When I was trying to drag them out to the club before all this happened, they flat-out refused. Damian told me the nightlife here was absolutely horrible. He said the last time he went near the entertainment sector, he couldn't even walk straight or pull a shift for an entire week."

  Fenro’s large eyes went wide. "A whole week? I thought he was just being dramatic or didn't like the crowds."

  "No, he was suffering from the exact same thing," Eric said, leaning over his desk and pulling up a blank schematic of the station's lower levels. "We all have forward-facing eyes, high-density muscle tissue, and completely different auditory and nervous systems compared to the Prey majority. The station's audio systems aren't just playing music. Whatever frequencies they are broadcasting to make the environment 'pleasant' and 'melodic' for your people are acting like a localized EMP to a Predator's brain."

  Fenro walked over, looking at the glowing schematic over his shoulder. Her expression became deeply serious. "If three entirely different Predator species are experiencing severe physiological distress from the station's ambient entertainment system... that isn't a design oversight, Eric. The Galacticorp supervisors had to approve those audio specs."

  "Exactly," Eric said, a grim smile forming on his lips. "If the common folk use 'Predator' and 'Prey' as casual slang, maybe the corporation uses those exact same metrics behind closed doors. To keep the majority happy, they broadcast a frequency that literally drives the minority out of the social zones."

   He looked at Fenro, his extroverted drive to solve this problem entirely reignited. "I need to talk to Damian and Gjardal first thing tomorrow morning. We need to compare symptoms. If we can map out exactly what frequencies are scrambling our heads, we can figure out how to build a bypass."

   Fenro nodded, her trilling voice full of determination. "And I'll use my logistics clearance to pull the manufacturer specs on the entertainment sector's acoustic emitters. Let's see what Galictacorp is actually pumping into the air."

  The data-slate on Eric’s workbench glowed with the raw acoustic schematics Fenro had managed to pull from the logistics database. Sitting around the terminal, crammed into the small engineering nook, were Eric, Damian, and the towering, four-armed Gjardal.

  "Look at these wave spikes," Eric said, tapping the screen. "It's not one track. It’s over thirty different audio channels being blasted out at the exact same time, from the exact same emitters.”

  Damian winced just looking at the graph, rubbing his temples as if the memory alone gave him a headache. "Why would they mix thirty songs together? It’s literal madness. No wonder my brain felt like it was being put through a trash compactor.”

  "Because to the majority of the station, it isn't mixed," Fenro explained, leaning over Gjardal's massive shoulder to point at the frequency brackets. "Look at my species' biological profile. Our ears completely filter out everything above twelve kilohertz and below four. We literally cannot perceive the other twenty-nine tracks. To me, it sounds like a solo flute."

  Gjardal let out a deep, rumbling growl that vibrated the metal floor plates, his upper mandibles clicking in sudden understanding. "By the ancestors... Galictacorp isn't targeting us. They're just being cheap. They're compressing the entertainment suite for thirty different 'Prey' lineages into a single broadcast."

  "Exactly," Eric said, a massive grin breaking across his face as the engineering puzzle solved itself. "Prey species evolved to hear specific, narrow frequencies to communicate within their flocks. But Predators? We evolved to hear everything. On Earth, if a human couldn't hear the tiny snap of a twig and the low rumble of a distant thunderstorm at the same time, we got eaten. We don't have acoustic filters. We absorb the whole damn spectrum."

  "So when we walk into the club," Damian muttered, a slow smirk replacing his grimace, "our hyper-sensitive predator brains are trying to process thirty different alien pop songs at the exact same time."

  "Which causes instant, massive sensory overload," Eric finished. He looked up at the group of them—the fearsome deathworlders of the station, completely brought low by an over-engineered speaker system. "They didn't build a weapon. They just built a really, really efficient playlist that we happen to be biologically allergic to."

  Gjardal cracked his lower set of knuckles, a booming laugh echoing in the workshop. "So, human. You are the engineer. Now that we know it is just a matter of overlapping frequencies... how do we filter out the garbage so we can finally get a drink?"

Eric didn’t just build a headphone; he engineered a solution. Utilizing a series of active digital signal processors, he created what he called the "Predator Filter", a sleek headset that actively isolated all thirty competing audio frequencies being blasted by the station's emitters, dropping the ambient noise down to a blissful, dead quiet. “Well at least we know it works," said Eric,” I don’t think I like the quiet much more than the noise, let me flip through some of the channels.”

  From there, a simple rotary dial allowed the wearer to tune into channels 1 through 36 individually.

  When Eric, Damian, and Gjardal tentatively stepped back into the entertainment sector to test the prototypes, the results were instantaneous. Most of the channels were still absolute garbage—bizarre, screeching alien pop or rhythmic thumping that made no sense to mammalian or chitinous ears—but it didn't incapacitate them anymore. They could stand upright. They could think. 

  The club management, noticing three massive "deathworlders" sitting at the bar for hours and running up a massive tab, quickly realized they were sitting on a goldmine. Within two weeks, the venue officially dedicated six unused bands to Predator tastes. Eric immediately claimed Channel 31 for ancient Earth rock-and-roll. 

"You call this... Led Zeppelin?" Damian asked one night, leaning against the bar as heavy guitar riffs filtered into his headset. He gave a nod of approval. "Not bad, human."

Gjardal, however, tuned his headset to Channel 34—a broadcast from his own homeworld. Curious, Eric turned his headphones to channel 34.

  A split second later, Eric slammed his hands over his headset, his eyes watering. The "music" sounded like a symphony of industrial trash compactors crushing sheet metal while a biological alarm blared in the background. In a venue like this, a Predator couldn't simply rip their headset off—doing so would expose them to the raw, unfiltered ambient noise and cause them to pass out instantly. Fortunately, Eric’s engineering accounted for the danger. The moment he slapped his hands over his ears in a universal motion to protect his hearing, the physical pressure triggered an emergency silence mode, plunging his headset into a safe, blissful void. 

   "Gjardal," Eric gasped, rubbing his temples, "I think I would have preferred passing out to the original club mix over listening to that."

Gjardal’s upper mandibles clicked in deep, booming amusement as he raised his glass. "You deathworlders have no appreciation for classical percussion."

   For the first time since the station was built, the Predators of Galictacorp went out for a night on the town and survived. And, just as importantly, so did the Prey.

   In the months that followed, the atmosphere on the station began to shift. The sight of a towering, four-armed apex predator sitting calmly at a booth, sipping a drink while nodding along to an invisible rhythm, completely demystified the "monsters" of the lower decks. Fenro would frequently join their table, laughing as Eric tried to explain the concept of a mosh pit.

Slowly, the heavy tension on the station began to thaw. When Eric walked down the primary corridors of Galictacorp, the feathered, scaled, and delicate Prey species gave him just a little less space as they passed. The instinctual, evolutionary fear was finally turning into something else: genuine curiosity, and the quiet beginnings of friendship

The End

As requested, Enjoy

  Jason and Braden stood near the back of the weekly productivity meeting at Galacticorp Substation 2, Manufacturing and Engineering Division. For the third week in a row, the Corporate Heads, and that’s exactly what they were: literal giant heads resting on floating tensor platforms that drifted lazily at the whim of their occupants—had delivered the same grim news.

"Productivity is simply too low," the lead Head droned, its voice echoing through the metallic hall. "Therefore, the promised corporate bonuses cannot be disbursed at this time."

  Everyone in the room knew this was a blatant fabrication. In reality, productivity was hitting an all-time high, driven almost entirely by the facility's newest additions: human technicians. They weren't superheroes; they just had a cultural habit of working hard and a strict set of Interstellar Labor Laws ensuring they actually got paid for it.

  Unable to contain his irritation, Jason leaned forward and executed a very old, very sacred human tradition. He let out a massive, booming fake sneeze:

"Aaa-bullshit!!"

The human contingent in the back row instantly disintegrated into muffled, shoulder-shaking laughter. The floating Heads paused, turning their massive craniums slightly, but ultimately ignored it. Jason had officially opened the floodgates of covert rebellion.

Later, during the shift break, a small crowd of alien workers gathered around the human charging station.

  "What was that vocalization, Jason?" asked a tall, lanky Mintrous technician, twisting its many-jointed fingers nervously. "The 'bull-shit' sound? Was it a medical emergency?"

  "Nah, just a sneeze," Braden chimed in, grinning. He leaned against a crate and explained the fine art of the fake sneeze. "See, humans have this involuntary biological reflex to clear our noses. But if you time it right, you can tuck a word inside it. If management calls you out, you just say, 'Sorry, I sneezed.' Plausible deniability. You get to speak your mind, but you don't get fired."

  The alien workers blinked in collective fascination.

  "An uncontrollable reflex..." murmured a Tristhala engineer, its translucent skin pulsing a dull blue. "Fascinating. We do not have noses, but we do have... rhythms."

   As it turned out, nearly every species in the substation possessed some kind of involuntary biological quirk they usually tried to hide out of embarrassment. The Vrexy emitted silent, pressurized puffs of gas when startled; the Mintrous suffered from sudden hand spasms that forced their flexible fingers into bizarre geometric shapes; and the Tristhala randomly underwent  rapid, erratic bursts of bioluminescence when stressed.

  "Wait," Jason said, a slow, devious smile spreading across his face. "Can you guys fake those reflexes if you try?"

  The aliens looked at each other. They had never considered it. To them, these quirks were private indignities, not tools of corporate warfare.

   "I suppose..." the Vrexy technician offered, shifting its bulky weight. "And if I concentrated, I could alter the biochemical composition to... add a severe, lingering odor."

  "I can flash in high-frequency, weaponized strobe patterns," the Tristhala added, its skin sparking with sudden excitement.

  Braden slapped his knee. "Oh, next week's meeting is going to be beautiful."

  When the next weekly meeting arrived, the atmosphere in the Manufacturing and Engineering division was electric. Every non-human worker had spent the week practicing their "sneezes."

  The three Corporate Heads drifted to the front of the room, their tensor platforms humming softly. The lead Head cleared its throat—a wet, mechanical sound.

  "Regrettably," the Head began, looking thoroughly un-regretful, "bonuses cannot be paid out until productivity is raised. I am truly sorry. Perhaps next week—"

   The Head never finished the sentence.

  The room erupted into an absolute nightmare of coordinated biological defiance. The Vrexy unleashed a coordinated, deafening volley of gaseous explosions that instantly filled the room with a horrific stench of rotting sulfur. The Mintrous threw up their hands, their fingers twisting into a dense forest of incredibly offensive, universally understood hand gestures. And the Tristhala collective began flashing in blinding, erratic, deeply unsettling bursts of crimson and neon green light.

Right in the center of it all, the humans bellowed a perfectly synchronized, thunderous chorus of "Aaa-BULLSHIT!"

  The sensory onslaught was immediate and devastating. The lead Head panicked, its tensor platform pitching violently to the side. It lost control, tipped over, and the giant Head fell right off its mount, starting to roll helplessly down the center aisle like a massive bowling ball. The other two Heads, gripped by pure, unadulterated terror, slammed their platforms into maximum overdrive and "ran" out of the room, zipping through the automatic doors at top speed.

As the room cleared of smoke, smell, and corporate middle management, Jason looked at Braden through the lingering haze.

"Yeah," Jason laughed, wiping a tear from his eye. "We're definitely getting those bonuses next week."

First 

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•

SUBJECT NAME: Captain Horatio Horner, Commanding Officer of Task Force 4 and the Carrier RSV Fuji CV-4

DATE: April 2143 CE - 135/3 AoE 

LOCATION: Ticonderoga System (12 light weeks from Galivus) 

•

When I read that the Beacons transmitted an exit point for ships, I imagined the system itself would be fairly small and self contained. Something we could just scoop up and go. Instead I was looking at a massive, high powered, omnidirectional transmitter more than six times the tonnage of every ship in our motley fleet combined. Chamberlain’s reports held absolutely no details as to what these beacons actually looked like, and now it seemed I was having to pay the price for that oversight. 

Even just stripping out enough working parts to keep the Beacon operating during transit would be a nightmare. Its onboard power supply was a machine of utter nonsense, it didn’t consume fuel and yet it was outputting almost 60% as much power as the Fusion Reactors onboard my Carrier. Besides the fact that its power supply on its own was larger than the Primrose, we couldn’t get the system to interface with anything we had. Even the Graschicks, much as I hated having to rely on non-humans, had no practical idea how the tech worked. 

Before any of that, we had to just get the Beacon’s working parts to interface with human tech. Already a feat and a half, seeing as how we still hadn’t figured out how to make Imperial Shields work on our ships even though we had a whole stockpile of working emitters leftover from the war. It was looking more and more like a gordian knot, with just enough slack to hang myself. I couldn’t fathom why a mission like this had to fall on my shoulders. I knew there must’ve been some other captains willing to break out the knee pads for the grays, someone of a more xenophile persuasion. Maybe that was why they stuck me with that fuckup, Shepherd. 

I saw shuttles heading to and from the Beacon, with one of the Graschick Frigates having fully docked. I tried to have the Primrose do the docking, beat out the lizards even if in just a small way. But Captain Scott cautioned against it, saying that his Destroyer just wasn’t capable of that kind of precise maneuvering without a docking tug. So I let the matter rest. But just looking out of my viewing screen, seeing someone else docked to what was now indisputably UN property… I had to will my white knuckled fists open, if only so my finger nails didn’t cut into my palms. 

Bradley should’ve known better. 

My hands uncurled, the decision was made, at least for now. No point crying about it now. 

They were working round the clock to get this problem solved. The Xiaolong’s Captain Shin, a civilian contractor, had asked me to detach some marines for the work. He needed bodies with working brains and working hands just to move everything over between the Beacon’s main body and his freighter. But they’d have to move the parts through the Graschick Frigate. 

I couldn’t help but worry what putting our Marines in close contact with the Graschick would do. These people weren’t our enemy, but that did not make them allies by any stretch of the imagination. A fact which my Marines might not fully appreciate, and a certain Commander Shepherd definitely didn’t. I had no goddamn clue what made Bradley change his mind, but I was absolutely certain that letting Shepherd off with a promotion would only incur disciplinary problems going forward. God knows the work we’re going to have to do for Earth isn’t gonna be pretty, if anything we should’ve just buried the whole thing, Shepherd and the Galivus Colonists included. I could not imagine the public appreciating us any better if they thought we were going around burning villages for no good reason. 

We were gonna need to burn down a lot more than that, and we were going to have a very good reason. 

But, no good could come from telegraphing that eventuality to the public. Better we ask forgiveness than permission with the things we had planned. Then again, Bradley’s response threw a wrench in all that. If he kept getting his way, coddling the grays like they didn’t try to enslave us all, then we might not have the will necessary to keep Earth truly safe. 

I could only hope the rest of the captains in the Fleet were keeping themselves detached from the aliens. Last thing we need right now is even more sympathizers mucking up the plan.

•

SUBJECT NAME: Captain D’Anthony Scott, Commanding Officer UNS Penrose DD-29

DATE: April 2143 CE - 135/3 AoE 

LOCATION: Ticonderoga System (Onboard the Graschick Frigate ChainBreaker) 

•

“An-And Then They Tried To Sue Me!” 

The whole table, already breathless with laughter, surged once more with a raucous joy that made my heart sing. I’d only known these Graschick “Reivers” as they called themselves for a few days, but they made an excellent first impression. 

“How did you escape the catch-pole then?” 

“You mean the Police? I jumped from the shuttle when its engines caught fire! Left the burning wreck right in the middle of the road, ran like hell before the smoke could clear.” 

Commander Shepherd piped up, “No way you dodged police drones on foot, those bloodhounds could smell you a mile away! Ask me how I know.” 

Reiver Lord Galy’Frin, our host for the evening, took the bait.

“And just how exactly do you know that?” 

“My Brother tried it, and he was captain of the Track Team. He left my breathless ass in the dirt, and they still caught him just fine.” 

“Well listen,” I said, still smiling from the last joke, “I know how to trick them so they don’t see you.” 

“Oh?” Our lizard host asked excitedly. “Do Tell!” 

“Get yourself an uncle in the force!” 

That one just about took the house down, though our break was just about over. We still had to cram that 1.2 million ton Beacon into a 20,000 ton freighter. Course, once it was down to just the transmitter and the computer systems it should have been doable. 

‘Should have been.’ 

Man, if those words didn’t just shit all over our best laid plans. The computers were a tangled mess that pushed at least two electricians to panic attacks, so far. The Transmitter itself may as well have been a cable television wire brought to its final logical extreme. We could improvise the Transmitter if need be, the exit point frequency was the problem since Imperial Computers needed to actually talk to each other to get those ships to properly navigate without being sucked right into every last little gravity well between yourself and your destination. These damn things were so attracted to even minor dips in gravity that it was entirely possible for them to just smack right into Rogue Planets when flying unassisted. And of course, traveling so fast left them completely blind, they couldn’t gauge if their fleet had gone off course or not. Having a computer on the other end telling you exactly what to do let these ships cross vast interstellar distances in just months instead of centuries. 

All of this was news to the fine folks of the Xiaolong, who were mostly hired to build houses on what was assumed to be a peaceful, idyllic, pastoral Galivus countryside. But we all saw how that turned out. 

Some of the contractors were already regretting their decision to come with us. Truth be told, I couldn’t blame them. Hell, had I not sat down with Galy and his boys to get a feel for them, I never would’ve felt all that good about this assignment. But, those Aliens were good folks. Chipper and helpful, and just full life in a way that people back home weren’t. They deserved to go home, and if I had any say in it, they couldn’t ask for a finer escort. 

“So you hear about Horner’s newest proclamation?” Piped up Colonel Jackson, the rest of us just leaned in for the old-timer’s sweeping words. 

“We’re to keep a, and I quote: ‘Professional and emotional detachment from our non-human, non-aligned colleagues.’ Now just what the fuck do you think of that?” 

He looked around the table, Humans and Graschick and even a few wayward aliens adopted by Earth. We all shared a round of witches cackles at the idea that we oughta self segregate for our own good. 

“You know I really shouldn’t allow this kinda talk.” I said very seriously. “I know Horner’s a tight-ass. But he’s alright deep down, he’s done right by us Destroyer Jockeys, even got priority mail through for our non-com’s just before we left, he made sure our contractors got their mail home early. He didn’t have to do that. He deserves you all to at least give him a chance.” 

Shepherd spoke next. 

“When I reported in for my assignment he told me flat out that he didn’t want me.” 

“You looked in the mirror? Nobody wants you!” Yelled an NCO from the back. 

“Fuck Off Harkin!” Shepherd shot back to the sound of yet another round of laughs. “But seriously, he took me aside and told me flat out, if it were his decision I would’ve been shot for what I pulled.” 

“Hey Shepherd.” Called out lieutenant Sarah Silverman, one of Shepherd’s new subordinates for the voyage. “They went to town on Civies, they got what was coming. You remember that. I know the rest of us will.” 

And that was no idle threat. Silverman stood at six foot six and weighed 280 pounds, to say the least she stood head and shoulders above everyone else in the Task Force. And she knocked out one of my Ensigns when he made an off comment at her, but Puella needed a kick in the teeth anyhow. Silverman took her two weeks of confinement like a big girl, no problems from either ever since. Had Shepherd not hit it off right when they met, god knows what the rest of us would’ve been in for. Feuding Marines were dangerous enough with ground under your feet, none of us needed that kinda trouble on a spaceship. 

A buzzer rang out and every last one of us quickly stamped out our cigarettes, downed the last of our drinks, and were all off at once to do our jobs. Galy’Frin raced off alongside the engineers to get the Beacon’s disentanglement figured out. Shepherd and her Marines followed just behind to provide some muscle to the problem solving department. Colonel Jackson downed his coffee so fast he burned the shit out of his tongue, and said as much to anyone who would listen. Me, I went off aboard a shuttle to the Penrose to get back in the Captain’s Chair. 

My XO vacated my seat as soon as I was on the deck. Soon as everyone was at ease we settled into a new parking orbit around the Beacon. Our shuttle departed back to the ChainBreaker sending over plasma cutters and industrial printers, alongside our Chief Engineer to solve a particularly finicky computer issue that was causing delays upon delays. The shuttle had just detached from our docking port when all hell broke loose. 

A ship appeared a few hundred thousand kilometers off the our prow. Every ship in the fleet had computerized guns trained on target within seconds, our Combat AI strained against its leash to put warheads on forehead. ECM systems began firing off countermeasures in case they’d launched anything we couldn’t see, 30mm Defense Guns began spinning up to shred anything we could see. 

Shuttles dispersed, the Chainbreaker broke their docking seal and joined formation, their laser batteries primed to start peeling shields and melting armor. Interspecies comms began going back and forth, pre-planned placements for hostile contact were put into action. The Fuji began launching Drone Wings and at last, we sent an Emergency Hailing Frequency on all channels demanding the intruder's identity. 

More ships poured out of FTL spread across a wide area. A Tachyon Pulse from the Fuji confirmed that another 30 ships were coming. I ordered high-detail scans on the closest ships as they began to close the distance at a slow, uneven pace. The response from the ships was even slower, and I counted each agonizing second as those ships got closer and we sat doing nothing. Conventional wisdom in a space fight declared that Initiative was everything, even when Nukes were involved. The side to begin maneuvering first dictated the tempo of the battle, and their opponent would have to either respond or be outmaneuvered.

My officer called back a report on the HD Scans. 

No weapons, save for small, fixed mounted lasers, all powered down and pointing away from us. Shields down across the board. These ships were armed at best with meteor mulchers, they would’ve fallen flat just to Galy’Frin’s Frigates. When the Hail was finally accepted, we got to see just who was dropping in unannounced. I locked into the Fuji’s hail and got a good look at the proceedings. 

The man opposite of Captain Horner was haggard and afraid. An Imperial, but so eaten by starvation and mange that he looked like he might drop dead before a word could leave his lips. His eyes were wide and sunken, darting left and right, presumably looking at something distressing on the bridge of the Fuji. And he was shaking. Like a nervous tick that got out of control, he couldn’t sit still even for a second. 

“This is Captain Horatio Horner, 2nd UN Fleet. Identify yourself and your intentions or you will be fired upon.” 

The man on the other side opened his mouth, exposing bloody gums and missing fangs, criss-crossed teeth in a receding mess. 

“We have been promised passage…” Each word sounded like he was scraping his loose teeth on a chalkboard. He probably hadn’t used his voice in a month by the looks of it. “...we have little food left… our ships are in poor condition…” 

With a sudden burst of energy, he pleaded. 

“Please, take us prisoner if you must! The brand is better than to starve. But, if you’ve any heart, don’t send us away with the filthy Rievers.” 

Horner looked shocked at the man on the other side of the screen. The state of his withering fur, the utter lack of hygiene, and of course, the burning hatred that cut through it all for the Graschick. Horner’s expression hardened for a second, like he was preparing to do something. Then the moment passed, and he looked unmistakably sympathetic. 

“Under Article 21 of the Interstellar UN Charter, I am obligated to render aid to non-combatants. Have your ships maintain position, directions will follow.” 

I couldn’t help but wonder who the hell all these people were, where their ships came from, what their aim was. The Frontier had been scoured of FTL infrastructure for well over two years in some places. How the hell could anyone be out here, other than us? 

•