Sunset: Then, Now, Tomorrow (Maintenance & Role-Play)

[Sunset]

Long-Distance Conference, Captain's Office, SDF-Ojeni, GEC-1400971, Beta Quadrant...

"...we can't concern ourselves with unintended consequences, Captain," Grand Admiral Erriki continued. "We'e got to analyze and move forward. Based on every report and advisory I've been given, the two leading theories - that the Circlets and their attendant structures were meant for either migration or evacuation - were the most likely. If your information invalidates both; Well, in a way, it doesn't, does it? The Krȃng meant to migrate and fortunately the i'Halalaentariel stopped them. Or so they claim - but we'll get to that. First, what are you doing?"

"Right now? Right now we're holding position," Kami explained, pulling up a hologram of the situation around Ojeni and across the system. The Avatar's warships had completed their movement through the wormhole and spread out from the gate complex with a pair of the smaller ships taking up position nearby while the rest - including the titanic sphere that presumably acted as i'Farerelia's flagship - had moved to the Circlet local to the system and had taken up close station-keeping. "I have Engineering working on a state back-up of the external communications system to try and find out how they got in so we can plug that hole, but closing the gateway at this point seems likely to provoke them."

Alyndra nodded. She - or her holographic representation - was seated on the short couch that spanned one side of the small space. Her face was unfamiliar though Kamilia knew of her by reputation. There was some discomfort there; She'd known her predecessor through Grand Admiral Glafka's godfather, Titan. Given the potential import of the events in GEC-1400971 she'd been put straight through to the newly installed head of Fleet operations but that she had not been entirely authorized to undertake a mission to the system and onward to Ursa Major II. That left the debriefing feeling somewhat more like an interrogation and Kami with the need to defend herself.

"A cautious approach, given your reputation, but sound. We need to know as much about them as possible. What they told you might be true; They simply want to ensure that the Krȃng are entirely eradicated from our galaxy. But there's a bit of a puzzle there - the Circlets seem entirely abandoned and we've found no trace of the Krȃng ourselves. Given they've been here for seventy-odd thousand years and have had access to several species to feed on, why haven't they made a resurgence separate from their holdings in Ursa Major II? And why, after that same seventy-odd thousand years, did the i'Halalaentariel chose to make themselves known? That seems extremely odd as well. You'd think after all that time they'd have moved on."

"Post-Singularity?"

"Perhaps. The use of the term Avatar strikes me as particularly familiar, and something I want you to investigate. If I were to put my money down, I'd put it on these ships being some kind of automated or AI-driven guardian force. When you forced the connection from our side, they activated and now they are following their previous instructions - defend the gateway and assess for any threat posed by the Krȃng. Since we haven't come across any civilization where there is routine abduction of its foremost citizenry, I think I'm semi-safe in laying a side-bet on the Krȃng having abandoned our galaxy. But its a big galaxy and we don't know every inch of it."

"Ma'am..." She paused, considering how to put forward her thoughts, "When we did the super-ping of all of the operational gateways, the one in Canis Major II wasn't the only extra-galactic response - and after all that time, it's possible that we still haven't heard back from one or more. If the Krȃng ran..."

"I'd make sure my gateways weren't set to respond," the Grand Admiral noted, though there was a nod of recognition as well, "But something we should look into - or point out to the i'Halalaentariel. Frankly I don't want them going around and exterminating planetary populations even if there are Krȃng hidden here and there. Those might not be our ships, and I don't intent to broadcast our responsibility for their arrival far and wide, but that sort of thing has a habit of getting out. If we can distract them - or point them at the villains - that will keep our reputation more or less intact. Which brings me to another question..."

"Grand Admiral?"

"Can we take them? Based on what you've seen of them, what's your tactical assessment of their capabilities? I know what they've told us, but they could be pulling an Orange Orangutan - accusing someone else of being exactly who they are. What better way to spread themselves around our galaxy than under the cover of hunting terrible monsters? I'm sure there is, but I want you to make sure they aren't. After all, the Krȃng aren't exactly here to defend themselves. Gather every scrap of information you can, Captain."

Returning to the Admiral's first question, Kami shrugged an answer, "Sure. The Hoberman Sphere is perfect for fighting what we've seen of the Krȃng military. High-precision laser weapons - makes sense if you might need to put down the occasional revolt among the cattle without killing potential hosts - would have a hard time dealing with those empty spheres while they can put out a lot of firepower in return. Hell, it would be a good design for countering other beam-heavy navies. The advantages in all-around firepower of a sphere and the spread advantages of multiple ships while still having the energy output of a larger ship. But according to Lieutenant Commander Ingersol, they are constructed of materials roughly comparable to our own. If we had to, we could destroy the gateway to cut off reinforcements and then drown them in warships."

"Something to keep in our pocket - at least for the time being. That 'asshole' vibe you mentioned earlier... Well, I'm picking it up too. But we've got our own share of assholes as allies - and enemies..."

[Sunset]

Landing Pad Sept, Ville Pourprenuage, Tsubasa, GEC-9978, The Western Expanse...

"Jovians?" Pierre glanced up from the hose he was maneuvering into place underneath the gull-winged merchantman to one of the open docking ramps on the far side, "What's a Jovian?"

Jon sighed, though he didn't stir from his spot leaning against the ship's mottled gray and green outer hull, "Who are... Honestly, Pierre, if you were to cut your mother's ficelle de tablier and come out with us, you'd see there's a grande mer d'étoiles out there and plenty of adventure to be had. Argent to make..."

Catching the younger man's shoulder, he turned him so that the pair were nearly cheek to cheek and pointed off across the landing pad to where one of the ship's crew walked between her and the terminal. Like most Sanglanti crews, one could only tell that she was part of the crew by her familiar interactions with the rest and by the drape of weapons - a pair of pistols on her left hip, rolling as she strode down the walkway between maintenance alcoves, and a heavy dagger on the right - that she wore as a matter of status. Otherwise she wore a fitted waistcoat open over a slender dress with a high front and low back; Better for her particular position aboard ship.

"...a fair mademoiselle to take to bed?"

Pierre's response was skeptical, "A woman for sale? I could have that..."

'If he could afford it' went unsaid. Like many of his people, Pierre was educated as an apprentice in his particular trade in a tradition that had lasted from before the Sanglanti were the Sanglanti. The son of a ship tender, he too was expected to live and work as one with the only opportunity to better himself being to either inherit the family business and make it his own, or to put to sea and see where fortune took him. Unlike the beautiful woman who just now disappeared through the swinging doors of the terminal, he was fated to marry whoever his father and her father chose for him. Where he scattered his seed; Well, that depended on what he could afford. All that was neither here nor there, though, and Jon laughed before clapping him on the shoulder, "Non, vous ne pouvez pas!"

"Neither can you!"

"Ah, this is true. Only when the Captain divise le porte-monnaie or we, how you say..."

Pierre nodded and smiled sly understanding. By the books and the taxes they paid, the Sanglanti people were now merchants and traders who plied the stars in everything from the lumbering-looking merchantman perched above them on her octet of heavy landing legs to one-or-two man skiffs that did little more than run courier between systems. With a wink and a nod, however, that lumbering merchantman packed enough firepower to put her on fair footing with the forces de l'ordre and more than enough to nuzzle the odd freighter out of the proper trade lanes. Others might call it piracy, but as long as the Sanglanti shied away from ships bearing a particular mark and provided the occasional service to the right people, there was no official condemnation of what was considered unofficial privateering by their Lords and Nobles.

"So you say," Pierre grinned, "So you say."

Pushing the hose into the right position, he nodded to Jon, who spoke into his collar for a moment before a hatch opened up above them. A manifold descended and a collar latched onto the pipe and while the fuel, water, and noxious air was transferred on and off the ship they resumed their conversation; "But me? I do not have to pay - Elle est satisfaite de mes compétences, oui?

Pierre made a crude thrusting gesture with his hips and another with his tongue and fingers to a laugh from Jon, "Sure, sure. So what about these Jovians? Why are they here?"

"Ah, well, it seemed they like the weather!"

In truth the newcomers were refugees fleeing from a civil war in their home systems. Accustomed to worlds of low gravity and thin atmosphere, Tsubasa was especially suited to them. While the planet's core was located many thousands of kilometers below Ville Pourprenuage, the city itself was built under a dome stretched across one of the many floating islands that drifted through the upper atmosphere. They would not enjoy the Earth-normal atmosphere of the city - as attested by the compensating gear they wore as they disembarked - but there were many islands still scattered across the swirling gas giant and only so many Sanglanti.

"And their monnaie est bonne," he added, rubbing his fingers together. "They want to escape the suffering of guerre civile and the Captain, he says to me, 'Jon, who will they suspect when one of their ships go missing? The traders who bring them medicine and supplies? Or the traitors and rebels who defy their laws?' The Captain, he is a smart man. And when something else goes missing," he added his own thought to those of the canny Captain, laying a finger beside his nose with a wink, "And they come here to look? Well... Les étrangers sont toujours suspects, oui?"

[Sunset]

SS-Qasr, Dragon's Eye Orbit, Delta Quadrant...

"You know Sergeant, the more I think about it, the less I think an immortal fish bowl is the kind of prize we're after. Maybe we should take another look..."

"Maybe we should..." But this was not the push-back she was expecting and for a moment Alwyra relaxed against her palms, leaning back against the counter in the smaller ship's mess before he continued; "But not because it isn't a good pull. No; I think this is a really good, interesting lead. And I have a hunch it will lead to something more than an immortal fish. But we've got a problem..."

"I guess it is a pretty fish... What's the problem?"

It was a pretty fish. An exact duplicate of the spherical bowl and the accompanying cage had been made by the friendly robotic systems in the tomb far below them along with a quite dead representation of the fish itself and this had been positioned in the center of the sphere. The fish itself was a liquidous metallic blue with a rainbow of related colors scattered along the length. A single long fin ran from just shy of the mid-point of the slender body to trail out into a long tail nearly twice as long. This was edged with sparkling silver and flecks of the same material glittered here and there. A second set of small fins split into a V a third of the way down the flank and it was at the root of this that a small sensory stalk emerged and at the end the orb of a single black eye.

"The problem is finding where they came from. The same problem Ojeni had when they were trying to find the Otterkin homeworld. Now, they did manage it, but to be honest I'm not sure how. It would seem Captain Blaine is as good with a hunch as I am. But I've been talking to Doctor Philus and he's got some ideas..."

----

"...the first of which is a simple spectrum analysis," the Solonic offered, chatting with the absent officer from the comfort of his office aboard the far-away Southern Cross. "Water is the universal solvent after all. The contents of the bowl, being of the kind required by your mysteriously long-lived animal to continue said lifespan, should contain a variety of dissolved solids in amounts that can be compared to the spectra of various planets within the Kion's known sphere of operations. Better than that, I may have an additional method of refining your options if you can get me that data..."

----

"...which leaves us with here," Timmons jabbed a finger into the middle of the holographic starfield, where a system was marked in green, "Here, or here. Philus was able to compare our sample to frozen samples recovered from some of the ships found in the Graveyard in the Kion home system and one of these was a match. Nothing so fortunate as to find another fish on board - she'd been gutted by a nuke inside her hull - but there was enough of her left to build a spectrum profile. Combined with what's in the bowl, we narrowed things down to these three systems and these three planets. The first is a long-shot - and not much of a planet, either," he opined, pulling up a graphic of the system in question and zooming in on the planet. It wasn't a planet at all - a moon, actually - and most of the water was locked up under a half-kilometer of ice. Pushing that one aside he moved on, "Which brings us to number two and my personal favorite."

The second would be familiar to anyone who had entered orbit of Terra Incognito, Chuh-Yu, Sslaa VI, or any of the other watery worlds within the Republic or its sphere of influence. Crisp blue and with a scattering of archipelagos, the planet was home to a pair of modestly-sized continents that bloomed with obvious volcanic activity. What was more important and more useful to the big man's instincts was the next feature, though it wasn't exactly of the planet itself. Instead a vast ring of debris surrounded the world, pin-pricks of glittering metal and dull ceramics that marked the end of some great orbital endeavor.

"And I'd bet the Kion were responsible. Since Philus' third pick is only two light years away from this one, and has much less debris in orbit, I'm going to guess that that was a world they settled and terraformed. Now whether this one has our fish," he pointed back to the first of the two, "That's a good question. Depends on how much of the biosphere was destroyed when the Kion obliterated the orbital complex. Since its had seventy-odd thousand years to rejuvenate, I think we're at least safe in taking a look-see. It doesn't look like whoever lived here before has tried to rebuild and Fleet would like us to check things out, see if there's useful knowledge to be had. So if I'm wrong, we get paid once just for visiting. If I'm right..."

"We get paid twice," the Neko held up a pair of fingers with a sigh. "How far away is it," Alwyra asked, resigning herself to his advice. "A few days?"

"Nope - According to ship's time," he glanced at his chronometer and listened to the rumbling of his stomach, "If we set out now, we'll arrive just after dinner!"

[Sunset]

GEC-79291Cc1, The Spinward Expanse, Alpha Quadrant...

"...it's better than ah metal bikini, Ah suppose."

In fact the moment of awakening had played out just as Meli had expected. True to the trope, thousands of the cylindrical four-armed robots had gathered in the great hall while flames rushed up the face of the enormous columns and trembling music had played in the background. Where the music had come from was a fair question but the moment the flaring gas had erupted from concealed jets to incinerate the facing sides of the square pillars as well as the odd stack of priceless artifacts she'd decided that it was a good idea to follow the script. Pushing itself out of the casket, the titanic form of the ancient alien overlord had stood upright and then raised its four great arms to surround that great scarred visage while the apparatus containing the poorly-preserved mind of the same had risen from its place to hover above the reanimated corpse as a technological crown. As the cries of the alien robots rose to their crescendo it lowered, mighty hands receiving it, and fitted the base to the skull as if it had been designed such many thousands of years ago.

The bowl emptied, the malformed brain that would surely bring terror and death to the galaxy once again sliding whole into the body that had been built to bear it, and after a tremendous shudder the eyes opened. With a crash that brought a shout of triumph from electronic voices the halo of wires and tubes was cast aside to shatter across the platform and a roar erupted from vocal cords just thawed. Muscles bulged and where the cybernetic attachments were not particularly well-seated they began to weep blood and viscera, the gore only adding to the worshiper's adulation. A single great step brought the behemoth to the edge of the stairs and the four arms extended, calling for silence. A moment, then two, then a minute, then two - each a conscious effort to control its audience and prove dominance over it. When the tension finally seemed unbearable the great crack of a mouth opened again, "I... Return!"

"...well shit."

Meli understood the words well enough, which meant she understood the words perfectly. If her plan had worked perfectly there would have been just enough rotted protein left in that moldering cerebellum to enable the Doctor to ad-lib the rest. That left her - and the vast horde of robots - staring at him as he mulled over the possibilities. The first was that they would rush the platform and cut him down where he stood while the second... Another half-step to the very edge and he leaned forward, spreading his arms wide and letting loose a roar and then one far longer. Seemingly satisfied in his ability to dominate the audience, the newly-reborn emperor turned to walk away, stopping only to kick aside the ruins of his resurrection to the apparent and sudden delight of the crowd. A room presented itself and he entered, regardless of the destination, before sidling to the side out of sight. A moment later the Dwarf followed, slipping through before the robots could rouse themselves from their celebratory efforts.

"I feel that may have been a tactical error, Ms. Slaghammer," the giant bare-whispered, turning to look down at the much smaller woman. "Even if we have momentarily confused them, they will soon realize that their leadership has been subverted and turn on us."

"Gotta wonder why... Why they'd be confused, tha is. Robots don' get confused."

"You are correct. They encounter conditions outside of their normal operating parameters and wait for alternative instructions. And these robots were recovered from the planet by scavenging mercenaries, attacked the same, overtook their ship, and then piloted it back to the planet of their origin to undertake this great effort. That implies something more than a simple worker. What did the Wall say?"

A glance out the door to confirm what she'd already suspected and she looked back, "Don't look lahk they're following us. Yet. But tha' may change." Bypassing his question for the moment, she looked around the room. Here it was much different than the side rooms leading off from the grand gallery and its rising tiers. This was laid out like a regular living space but in grand scale and she made the assumption that the Doctor's impulse had led him in the right direction. "Wonder if he's got a private escape..."

"It. While the deeper mysteries of biology are outside of my expertise, I have already made the assessment that this species lacks male or female reproductive apparatus; Your earlier statement regarding lust was incorrect. But did the Wall have any information that might allow us escape from our predicament?"

"Kahp an ah out," she warned, pressing past him to begin a circuit of the room. "Ahn no, it didn't. It was yer typical megalomania tripe. 'Ah will return to rule this world ahn all the stars in the sky. Those who do not heed me will fahl...' Blah, blah, blah. At least the Roanian's ahr better worded about it. This gah was a fan o' simple statements in twahny centimeter letters. Let's seah..." She stopped at a cabinet, grasped the edge, and pulled. It was not unexpected that the shelving simply ripped away from the wall - she'd punched her way through thicker stuff - but that there was no secret exit behind was a visible disappointment. "You'd figure he'd have some kind o'... Oh..."

Meli stopped and looked at the door, which towered well over her head, "Ha - guess that's why the cabinet was full o' really big shoes. Ah wonder if its true what they sah 'bout fellers with really big feet ahn the size o' their..."

"...I already explained that this particular example of the species appears to be genderless, though perhaps I should repeat myself?"

"...nah," she sighed, "But ah girl ken dream, can't she? Dream bahg, Ah always say!"

"Not to interupt you," but he did so anyway, looking back from where he had been keeping an eye on the great chamber just beyond the door, "But I assume our situation is about to be uncovered. Several of the robots are headed this way and they appear to have one of the caskets between them. I cannot say for certain; My eyesight is much the same as it was in my previous biological incarnation. That is to say - poor."

"Ah... Well, thahk you ken stay quiet? Mayhbe tha'll tell you what thah'r up to." Without waiting for confirmation, she cast about for someplace to hide before settling on the far side of something that looked darn near a bed. "Just keep yer mouth shut. Play the pensive tahp..."

[Sunset]

The Imperial Hive, Setting One, Circlet I, Gen Celet System, Delta Quadrant...

"A Biege Alert? Not to question the Admiral," the insectoid replied, his long trailing antenna quivering in what could be called laughter, "But that sounds less than serious."

"It is not," Admiral Falk answered, despite the stern expression across her plain face. "There is no Biege Alert level. But we've received new information as to the possible nature of the species that constructed the Circlet and while we wait for confirmation of some of the claims, it behooves us to follow up on those that we can. Specifically it may be possible that they were a species of parasite that treated the inhabitants of the Circlets as cattle for purposes of feeding and reproduction. Some of the information we have already would seem to confirm this; Writings discovered in the ruins in Setting Four, for instance. Because this leads to the possibility of unknown infiltration and control - and to give your soldiers something to do - I'm ordering a full-scale search for and investigation into that possibility, General."

"Is that one of them?"

The Zeer'Gen was pointing to the cat held in the crook of her arm and she looked down and then back, "No. This is a gift - for you as it happens. It is a RealityKitten - something we've developed for just these kinds of circumstances. It will watch you, keep an eye on your habits and behaviors, and if there is a significant deviation from your normal habits it will attempt to intercede. If it cannot rectify the situation on its own it will put through a priority alert and units will be dispatched to protect you."

"That doesn't sound like protection," though he put out his hands to take the animal. Orders were orders and Zeer'Gen society had a martial streak kilometers wide.

"It is, but that doesn't mean we like doing it. They were originally meant to stop psychic and so-called 'magical' entities who routinely attempt to control the minds and actions of others as a matter of warfare and politics. We only deploy them in the event of a known threat or when there's a strong plausibility of an unknown threat... Such as that potentially posed by the Krȃng. Don't let it get under your carapace, General," Jamie advised with a grim smile. "I have one too. They also have the capacity to act as an adjunct so don't think of it as being assigned a minder - think of it as gaining a secretary. At least until we're sure we don't need them."

"And these Krȃng?"

A turn of her hand and she produced a hovering hologram with a reconstructed example of the species, "Briefing documents and materials are being sent to your command as we speak, but these are they. At least that's what we've been led to believe. I'm counting on your soldiers to keep their eyes open, General. It's plausible that we're being played here, or at least someone is trying to. They seem to line up in shape and size with what we've discovered but that could be a false lead. Full details will be in the briefing."

"And if you're this concerned, why only a Biege Alert, Admiral?"

"Seventy thousand years. Its possible the Krang survived hidden somewhere but highly unlikely. Still - best to make sure..." And with the possibility that warships of unknown capability would be scouring the galaxy - and the Circlets in particular - for any trace of the parasidic predators, she wanted to make as close to damned sure as she could. "I'll leave the organizational details up to you, but I would suggest focusing on the basics. Food, water, shelter. The Krȃng need them just as much as anyone. Talk to the various communities, investigate any rumors of disappearances, examine the criminal elements especially closely. Hiding within the hidden..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Geim, Circlet I Primary High Atmosphere, Gen Celet System, Delta Quadrant...

"All stations report locked and ready for descent, Captain..." The call came from the Helmsman - a woman, older and with the confidence of someone who'd been at the job for a long time - and like the Captain and the other bridge officers at their stations she was belted in. "Upper atmospheric conditions are reasonable, middle conditions are..."

"...shitty, but passable," came the retort from the Sensor Station.

The Dulyani on duty there was one of the younger members of the crew and more rarely one of the few of his species to even call the Republic home, much less the Defense Force. As technically part of the Defense Force's Planetary - read 'Logistics' - Command, Orbital-Class Recovery Cruisers such as the Geim hardly ever saw combat except as an after-event where they were set the task of recovering disabled ships of both sides and rescuing their crews from whatever cold fate the stars had for them. Very, very occasionally they would be ordered into combat to do active recovery, but this was not one of those situations. In fact it was more to the more common current duties of that notable Class; The salvage and retrieval of wrecks and wreckage that might prove of scientific interest. Such was the current purpose of the Geim. After the successful retrieval of several of the so-called 'Volcan'-Type Artifacts, she had been rigged for the much more dangerous job of attempting to recover one of the larger Krȃng warships, dubbed 'StarLancer'-Type.

"The lower atmosphere is even worse," he added. "There are shifting currents all around the extraction point. We're really going to be threading the needle here!"

"I can handle it," the woman at the helm retorted. Orbital-Class crews tended to be older, less interested in the potential excitement (and death) of combat, but also more experienced if a bit crusty, "Down the middle, and up yours!"

"What's our window look like? How much time do we have," the Captain asked, mostly ignoring the by-play.

He was perfectly content to sit in the upper atmosphere until something better opened up; The average recovery time on the earlier Artifacts had been thirty minutes with the longest taking nearly an hour. This would be their first foray into the lower atmospheric bands of the Circlet's gravitational primary - no one had bothered to name it and the Circlet natives all had their own word for it - and an important step to the next destination. Just below the drifting 'StarLancer'-Types was the liquid core of the gas giant and there, riding the waves of a sea of ignoble gases, was a final Artifact in the form of a spire-like station or outpost. How it had managed to survive in the depths was up to the remarkable strength of the PTU-557 alloy it was likely composed of; Sensor scans mostly bounced around it and even light - now known to be yet another property of that engineered material - seemed to pass through it as segments flashed reflective in the highly-charged atmosphere.

"It's going to be like one of those games where you try to cross the road before being hit by a bus. The center of the vortex is moving around, and we'll have to weave through the side walls as we descend. So we've got about ten more minutes here before we miss the middle atmosphere window, another five there, and then maybe twenty five down below before we get another ascent window. Maybe."

Twenty five wasn't a lot of time, but they'd managed to grab a 'Volcan' in less; "Alright, we're going for a touch-and-go. Helm, take us down. Engineering, get ready to grab. If you don't think you can pull it off on the first try, call an abort and we'll head up. Check your belts again - on your go, Helm!"

One last check of the rarely-used seat belts and she touched the controls, the stubby ship heeling over to drop straight into the center of the maelstrom nose-first. Already the added-on maneuvering thrusters were flaring as they fought to keep the ship on-course. Stability was a relative term; While the currents past the side-wall would throw the ship around like a leaf, even inside there was a near-constant buffet from micro-currents and the sturdy ship shuddered and bucked. Each moment was a decision for her between the next least-bad approach and her instinct for what would be waiting on the other side. The minutes stretched past and the rattle increased as the Sensor officer announced first; "Middle zone entered," and then "Lower zone entered... One minute from the target!"

Up ahead and splashed across the main display, the target Artifact grew closer but for those not intently concentrating on their station the sight beyond it was distracting. While the 'StarLancer' was not outside of the range of the Geim's abilities, the Artifact beyond it clearly would be. Already it swallowed the first in size as its slender spire stretched upward from the spherical mid-section towards them like an arrow. Edging closer and closer the narrow tip moved in circles as the ship moved within the roaring currents, creating odd patterns for those who stared at it for too long.

"Twenty seconds..."

"Ten..."

"Preparing to deploy grapple," the Chief Engineer called out. "Deployed..."

"Captain," the Sensor Officer called out a warning, "Currents are increasing in speed rapidly! We might want to..."

"Abort!"

But the call was too late. Whatever fickle winds of fate governed the heart of the maelstrom, they had chosen that moment to surge in unpredictable intensity. Just now below them the Artifact twisted and skewed, spinning from its previous path and into the underside of the cruiser. The Helm tried to react, but there was too little time and the only thing she managed was to save the main body of the ship as the tri-nacelled craft tore through one of her own to leave the whole suddenly unbalanced and flailing. Thrusters blared as she tried to correct, to get the nose up, and to push back towards the distance surface with the more-powerful aft thrusters but every move seemed to be blocked even as the 'StarLancer' spun out and into the side-wall to suffer a grinding fate.

The Captain opened his mouth to order an eject but there was nowhere to eject to; The tiny escape pods would suffer the same fate. Instead he fixed his eyes on the spire far below; "Full ahead - all hands, brace for impact. See if you can wedge us in there somewhere!"

...somewhere, before the Geim suffered the same fate...

[Sunset]

Internal Comms, SDF-Ojeni, GEC-1400971, Beta Quadrant...

"...so what we need to figure out is if they are telling us the truth - about the Krȃng, about themselves - and as many details as we can gather. All without letting them know that we're investigating their story, at least until we're ready to make a run for it."

"So what's your concern, Captain," Ingersol asked, "It should be simple to just scrub comms and jump to warp. They aren't exactly sitting there with a gun to our heads. There are a lot more of them than there are of us, but they don't seem to be threatening in more than a blunt way."

Though the i'Halalaentariel were certainly being more than just blunt. It was a level of intrinsic proclamation that just rubbed Captain Blaine the wrong way, "We also don't know if they have a way to keep us from going to warp, or worse a way to track us to our destination. I suppose that they haven't attacked us directly should give me some optimism."

In fact, after their penetration into the Milky Way, the Avatar's fleet had done little except for stand watch around the gate and inspect the local Circlet. No ships had left or arrived, and according to what the probe could see, no additional vessels had arrived on the Canis Major II side. As it was, there was now nothing on that side of the gateway. That in turn gave the Lieutenant Commander a sudden start, "Where's the Circlet?"

"What do you mean, where's the Circlet? Circlet II is right..."

"Not that one," he nodded towards the holographic display of the far system with its gate complex, "That Circlet. We've been so busy looking at the ships - there's no matching Circlet. And," he manipulated the controls of his console, "There's no debris field either. Granted, PTU-557 is so valuable that you'd want to harvest any of it you came across, but the planetary system on this side is intact." A whole array of planets and moons, familiar in approximate configuration to any explorer, spread out from the system's single star and it was coincidentally over the third of these that the gateway orbited, trailing far behind the larger of the planet's two moons. Swinging his gaze to first the surface of those and then to the planet below, he searched them quickly and then made his discovery clear, "Lots of craterization on the planet's surface, and similar on the moons. There was some there before, since playing catcher is the fate of most moons, but this is only slightly weathered. Seventy-odd thousand years weathered is hard to say, but..."

"At some point, all three were subjected to intense orbital bombardment," Lieutenant Cadindra agreed. "Enough to trigger catastrophic biosphere collapse. I doubt there was anything above a bacterial level that would have survived."

The planet was green again - time had a habit of curing all wounds - but the images under the Lieutenant Commander's gaze were of plants equivalent to mosses and lichens with the odd towering fern sprinkled in for good measure. If there had been some trace of civilization left on the planet, it was now covered by the bloom of far newer life.

"And you're not going to get that with precision laser weaponry," she continued. "Not unless you happen to have a Death Star or two in your front pants' pockets."

"The Lieutenant at Tactical with the science-fiction reference! Okay, so from what we know about the Circlet builders - the Krȃng - they couldn't have done this. Wouldn't have either, presuming the Avatar's telling the truth. Why destroy your own host farm? That would suggest that the bombardment was the i'Halalaentariel's doing, which would fit with what they told us. Though if you're going to tell a story, might as well make it suit the evidence. It could be that the Krȃng were the good guys and we're looking at the bad guys, though why wouldn't the bad guys have made a move on us by now?"

"Because we out-number them," Thomas pointed out, pulling up some statistics at his station. "By about eight hundred to one. There's just about a billion-odd stars in Canis Major II, and with the trailing gap as it loops around, more like half a billion before it's hard to make the mix between it and our thin edge accretion disc. If you want to invade, make sure you've got the numbers."

Kami agreed with a nod, "Or make sure you stay in your own backyard. But why come over at all? Seventy-thousand years is a long time - and if the Krȃng had survived the trip and spread, they would have come back with the firepower of eight hundred to one. They didn't, supposedly. And seventy-thousand years is a long time to stand guard. The notion has been proposed that these are automated sentries and we just happened to wake them up. Is there a way to confirm that, without asking directly?"

Now it was Commander Eye'Tumno's chance to speak and the Skri put his two cents in the slot and turned the lever, "Yes. In fact, I'd say that notion is spot-on. First, their ships would be terrible for most biologies. All those linkages, you'd need transport between the major nodes... They are probably as close to solid-state as they can get. If there's anything as far as habitation is concerned, it's in the major nodes that retreat to the center when the sphere collapses. Second, the attack methods on our external comms were brute-force. Nothing elegant, nothing social. They just kept pounding, but very fast. That would lead me to suspect they have a lot of computing, and if you've got a solid-state warship you have a lot of computing. Which doesn't mean we're not dealing with an AI or other electronic intelligence, but as you say - seventy-thousand is a long time. Unless you're the most ass-backwards civilization to learn the secrets of the stars, you're going to be pushing past mortality and possibly this universe in that time."

"Which isn't to say that it hasn't been done," she finished, "Plenty of 'hundred thousand years of plying the stars' civilizations, even in our own galaxy. And they do see themselves as the Salvation of their galaxy. That's motivation to stick around."

"As far as whether they have the technology to keep us from warping out of here - I don't think so. And we can always abort to Tesseract. I'd say we say our goodbye's, leave a few probes around to 'survey the Circlet', and do some random-walking until we lose them..."

[Sunset]

Dr. Ambrose's Laboratory, Steven's Crater, The Moon Minamoto, Hachiman, Ares System...

"Try this," the Doctor extended the tin to 54, the gray-faced slab of a Minion taking the now-tiny container from his hand and holding it between thumb and forefinger to twist the top off. "See how it..."

A rattle and a clatter as the flat metal cylinder and its lid hit the tile floor and the man fairly jumped out of his skin, leaping backwards to crash bodily into a rack full of supplies and sending it and himself toppling over as he scooted backwards on hands and feet until his broad back was firmly against the wall. His face was contorted in fear and, perhaps a bit too slowly for his own good, Stephen too spun and crouched, grabbing for the heavy pistol tucked at the small of his back as he looked desperately (and perhaps a little wild-eyed, if he admitted it to himself) for whatever unknown attacker had materialized out of thin air. There was, of course, nothing there; His complex and above all his laboratory was a maze-like fortress with only the most well-admitted or clever opponent suited to gaining access. Since there was no costumed do-gooder lurking among the cloning tanks in an effort to entertain the Doctor, he stood up and holstered the weapon, his razor-sharp mind immediately returning to the task even as he turned back to the Minion...

"...how it works. I suppose it works too well," he noted, bending to pick up the tin while keeping his eyes mostly averted. The cause had been apparent the alarm bells had stopped wringing behind his eyes and he snatched up the lid to screw it in place. "The Essential Oil of Undefined Dread. Something to dab under the eyes, in the manner of those cretins on the football pitch. Professional sports... I can mildly entertain the notion of playing out some contest on the field to prove one's own momentary superiority, but to pay someone an enormous amount so that the masses can sit in their homes and grow fat and lazy while cheering on 'their' team? As if the players had any interest in their fans as anything other than a revenue source." With a sigh, he tucked the container away, "Perhaps contrary to my interests, but it is still stupid."

With the offending gel removed, 54 had regained his feet and with a shake of his head - and thus nearly his whole body, being as the Minions were mostly lacking in the neck department - he began to clean up the mess. First pulling the shelves upright, he bent the shelves and uprights back into their proper place with a casual effort before beginning the task of carefully stacking what could be salvaged back in its original place; He liked sports, but he liked whatever was in the Doctor's pocket far less.

"Perhaps an applicator of some kind," Stephen mused, pulling the container out of his lab coat pocket once again. "Once it is on the skin and the wearer cannot see it - but what of his unit? Well, perhaps some additional mental conditioning..."

He turned to consider 54. Like all of the various Minions, the towering brute had been subjected to a harsh regime of chemical and mental conditioning as part of his pre-employment screening - as well as a course of post-hire genetic manipulation - but while that had left what had once been a gawky teenage boy with barely the social skills to answer the drive-through window at a fast-food restaurant an over-bound muscular behemoth, it had apparently not rendered him moot to the visual synesthesia evoked by the Essential Oil of Undefined Dread.

"Or a lighter dose. Still, given what it did to you, I would rather go with the full strength version. Tell me;" And the Minion straightened up, that same conditioning forcing sudden obedience to the Doctor's spoken order, "What did it feel like? What was the cause of your sudden action?"

"Fear. Total and complete fear."

"Hmm..." He tossed the can into the air, letting it flip end-over-end while briefly contemplating another demonstrative test. Show it to the man, see if he reacted again... "But no, not for the moment. Perhaps in controlled conditions where you cannot manage to wreck more of my lab equipment. I do have a wonder though - if the reaction to this is so strong, perhaps I can evoke a reaction in the opposite direction? Young Mr. Hendrick's advertising has given me an idea. Loyalty..."

Walking over to one of the tanks, he pressed a button and waited patiently while it slid out into the horizontal position so that he could look down on the form of the lovely young woman who lay inside, as bare and naked as the day she had not yet been born on. He didn't dare admit it to himself, but the outside observer might draw more than a casual connection between her facial structure and proportions to those of one Katryna Silaco. Whether or not she was, in a moment the clone had vanished as he tapped at the controls, process aborted.

"I wonder - perhaps I can fine-tune the process and imbue her with a distillation of Loyalty. Can that even be considered an emotion? Do I care!? No! Science is all about making the impossible possible, is it not?!"

[Sunset]

SS-Slippery Sloop, Cruising Off Botanical City, Chuh-Yu, Ares System...

"...you were kidding, right?"

Demi leaned against the forward railing, her back to the bridge of the yacht as the breeze ruffled the thin fabric of her floral red dress around her knees and thighs while in a repeat of the previous conversation a narrow flue of wine twisted in her fingers. In front of her the normal ripple of waves had gone strangely calm and if she had bothered to check the weather it would have noted that the sun beating warm across her shoulders was due to be replaced by a sudden squal of torrential rain within the next fifteen minutes. Since even the rain would prove warm on the tropical paradise she didn't much care other than being reduced from spiraling flowers to suddenly see-through.

"About what?"

Erika was wearing gray - and slightly more formal at that, given the purpose of her presence aboard the luxury craft was business rather than pleasure. Deals would be signed tonight over dinner and wine and it wouldn't do to even have a spot of water on her shoulders. Thus where Demi relaxed carefree, she stood back with one eye - electronic - on the thin clouds that loomed at one edge of the horizon to crawl ever closer. The thunder and rain would make a perfect backdrop for the clash of competing interests and the quieter clatter of dinnerware. Instead of a wine glass she held the railing with one hand, seeming to steady herself against the slow drift of the yacht's bow. With a boat of her own - and a rather more feisty sailboat at that - the gesture was only for appearances, even with the high heels that had somehow never fallen completely out of fashion.

"The Thing and the Other Thing," Demi replied, the ominous tones somehow coming through to include the capitalization. "When we got that letter from..."

"You know, I never did look into that. At least not too far. A few days later we had that photo-shoot for next year's 'Underwear of Women in Power' wall calendar and the question was rendered moot. Not many ways you're going to get thirty-six women into fourteen months without a few implied menage e trois. But no - I was kidding. There's no Thing or that Other Thing. Though you should keep an eye out for That Man. I hear he's swept many an attractive young woman off her feet and stolen away with her secrets."

"I have secrets? Then you were lying about the Thing..."

"We've all got secrets," Erika answered, sliding her hand up the rail until she could comfortably lay the other on her partner's waist, "Fortunately I don't think we have any like the Other Thing. Murder-dwarves? Sure - but the general public understands, or at least I hope they understand, that governments will always have an amoral killer or two on hand for when the best answer isn't black or white but red and with bits of bone mixed in here and there. But something like That Other Thing? Something that could conceivably bring down the government if it became public or even limited knowledge? No... We try our best - I try my best - to be the good guys. But its like starting a new diet. You have your cheat so you can keep up your self-control where it really matters."

"Siccing Meli on someone is your cheat?"

"It could be her cheat, actually. At least with me it's people who do bad things and operate outside of the normal boundaries of civilization, literal and metaphorically. Otherwise... She'd probably be sitting on top of a mountain of skulls on a throne of bone. At least until someone figures out a way to kill her but not kill her."

"Freeze her solid in a block of ice and then put that ice inside reinforced concrete. Water doesn't compress - or at least, if she managed it she'd be able to pull off the first known instance of biologically-induced fusion - and the cold would keep her body frozen..."

The taller woman glanced sideways at the shorter, "Wow, that's vicious. What have you been thinking about lately?"

"I was brushing up on my conversational Japanese by watching an old anime. Immortal soldiers who spring back to life a few seconds after they die. The protagonists couldn't figure out a way to keep them at that point between life and death so they were always stymied in their attempts to stop the bad guy. Which is what happens when you have kids trying to do a job like that, I suppose. It was probably supposed to be a morality tale about how life is a constant struggle and you'll never really win but it seemed to be just an excuse for occasional bits of ultra-violence."

"No fan service?"

There was the ring of a bell from behind them and they turned to catch the steward just as he called out from the upper deck, "Dinner will be served in ten minutes!"

"Not even a little bit..."

[Sunset]

SS-Qasr, GEC-1042091C Long Distance Orbit, Northeast by North Delta Quadrant...

Alwyra stood at the railing - a different railing, the one edging the large windows that looked out through the horseshoe at the back of the Qasr's saucer section - and looked out at the debris ring that slowly circled the planet beyond, "It's kinda beautiful, really. Even for so much death and destruction..."

What had once been an incredible network of orbital stations, elevators, dockyards, depots, and storage facilities had been ravaged first by the Kion Warfleet however many eons ago and then slowly torn to pieces in the eons since, one large piece grinding against another to become medium pieces and so on and so on until everything from a few dozen huge remaining chunks that had accumulated their own micro-rings to millions, perhaps billions of fine particles expanded out into a glittering ring. Without a moon or moons to disturb them and sent them either further out into the system or down into the atmosphere to burn away, they had remained essentially what they were for untold centuries.

"You know, that's a lot of debris. Especially when you compare it to the planetary landmasses." Beside the Neko, the German Shepard rose from her place sitting to put her chin on the railing, paws curling over to grip the rail as well. "Like, base back-of-the-paw estimate is that there was more here in orbit than there was on the surface. I'd almost make the bet that whoever lived here before moved into orbit once they had reasonable access to space..."

"And you'd be right on that bet..."

A voice from behind them, deep and wholesome, and Timmons joined them. Striding across the empty dining room with its upholstered chairs tucked under rich table clothes and elaborate place settings prepared for a meal that would come the next evening, the staff had already completed their turnover and abandoned the space, leaving it as the perfect place for casual observation. Facing back and between the ship's two raised warp nacelles, it offered a spectacular view of the planet and its rings as they slipped past, slightly off-kilter thanks to the ship's own orbit. A few long steps and he joined them to finish his explanation, "Imagery shows the islands are pristine, not even the odd bit of space debris, and teeming with life. Now, it's plausible that the native species was aquatic, but I'd expect to see more ice in the debris field and we're not seeing that. So... I wouldn't take that bet."

"And our immoral fish?"

"Making their parents happy."

"Huh?"

Timmons chuckled, "Our missing pair. Trinya and Lae. I'm sure by now they are well into setting up house wherever they've chosen and trying to give her mother and his parents the grand-children they've been asking after for the last few years. Won't happen, but hopefully they have a couple baby-boxes in the closet with some Cyar-Human cross-breeds. They were... Notorious for fucking around, both on and off the job. Maybe this will give them a chance to get it out of their systems."

"Not going to happen..."

He looked down at Annya, who looked back and shrugged her canine shoulders, "Not going to happen, Commander. I was doing some reading, pawing through recent alerts and advisories on the Defense Force feed; Apparently Cyar semen is addictive. Explains a lot, doesn't it? Only Humans and Meta-Humans though. Gotta get her fix."

"Is it harmful?"

"No..." But the former Ensign answered with a wolfy-grin, "But do you want to know the preferred form of consumption? Apparently a few Cyar who immigrated to some of the more Human-populated areas figured this out and they've been..."

"...thank you, Annya," he interrupted, snatching back the conversation from the depths of perversion. "As I was saying, the islands are pristine. And our fish is probably somewhere near them. Get out your snorkel gear though; Just to add more numbers, the planet's surface is eighty-three percent water. Which means there's a lot of coastline and reefs down there."

But unlike the expected enthusiasm at the opportunity to go play in the ocean, Annya instead sunk onto her fore-paws and stared at the window with a far more human-like sigh, "I knew I forgot something. Hand-paws, flexible joints... But I can't breath underwater!"

"Aww..." Alwyra knelt and stroked her head, "I'm sure we can fabricate you some custom scuba gear," she looked up at Timmons, "Right?"

"...she's pulling your tail. Cyber-dogs don't breath..."

[Sunset]

Special Projects Covert Research Facility 74-A (Sigma), Denali, The Yukon System...

Dr. Fredrick Kraus coughed short and sharp into a balled fist, eyed it - the fist, not the cough - through strange blue eyes and past a raised eyebrow and then coughed again. It wasn't that there was anything odd there but it was potentially inconvenient. Rummaging around in a seemingly random drawer, he didn't find what he was searching for but then another and he pulled out a clear slate with the familiar red cross translucent in the plastic. Holding it up to his face, he thumbed the corner and was about to give it a nice long breath when another cough provided the requested sample. A moment later for it to provide the undesired answer and he threw it back into the drawer to be promptly forgotten.

"'You Have A Cold'. Fan-fucking-tastic..." Looking around the lab with a sigh, he began rummaging in the drawers again. "So much work to do. A couple hours for the cure for the common cold to take effect, or..."

Like the feathered dinosaur people, of which there was a sample still in the bag dropped off just the night before by one of the 'freighters' that made the irregular run to supply the planet's one official occupant and release the occasional group of hikers and campers into the wild. The intention was to clone the gigantic bipeds and station them as the guard detail at various hidden facilities. Thus if the existence of said facility were to be discovered, it could be plausibly denied as belonging to the Sessool while the work being done there was moved elsewhere; "Which, you know, double-whammy. Great idea. Stir up the specter of infiltration while keeping my immoral and unethical experiments safely under wraps. Though whoever came up with these things had to be tripping serious balls. For weirdness, these things give ol' Ambrose's gray-faced goons a run for first place."

Wandering over to the desk next to the door where the sample bag - as well as a stack of other projects and one-off requests waited - he picked up the innocuous-looking blue bag containing whatever body part had been harvested, "I wonder if I could goad him into an attack on a 'Sessool' facility at the next frat alumni meeting. Clash of the Titans. Two men enter, one man leaves. Thunderdome, but without the midgets and chainsaws."

Tapping on the console beside the sample bag he brought up a half-size hologram of the Maiorca, as the species were called. This still brought them to within a hair of brushing the laboratory ceiling and he stepped back to look them up and over. Broadly humanoid, they had the distinctive beak and crest of a protoceratops and this, along with the rest of their body, was then covered with a short layer of proto-feathers. However - and most distinctive - there was a third eye set into the skull just between and slightly above the two other eyes and this was protected by a bony ridge. An ankle-length tail was capped with a bony knob and the crest was capped with a spectacular row of colorful feathers. All in all, they were distinctly outside of the normal Republic appearance of gray-on-gray with some accents in slightly darker gray.

"And boobs. Why does a reptilian species have boobs? But there you go. Armor them up, fabricate some exotic-looking armor, and there you go. But that's a couple hours work and," he coughed again, "I have a fucking cold. So I could spend the next few hours in misery or..." Hands returned to searching through the drawers, reaching up under the workbenches into spaces long occupied by spiders and who-knew-what-else. Finally his left emerged with his quarry, a large chrome-plated revolver that looked almost comical in his hands. "And just about here..."

Flipping it up to his temple, he moved the barrel back to just above the ear, eyed it again, adjusted the angle, and pulled the trigger...

----

"What the hell..." Site Director Kryger stopped short, the Marines normally stationed at the clandestine entrance to the facility right behind her. Dr. Kraus was standing at his workbench, casually working on something - though he was staring at her with a question on his long face - and standing over the body of Dr. Kraus. Blood and brains were splattered over the floor behind him and a large pistol sat on the desk, "What the fuck is this?"

"This?" He followed her finger to the body on the floor and then flinched as she picked up the gun and gestured with it at the corpse, "That?"

"Yes, that!"

"That is... The five minute cure for the common cold?"

[Sunset]

Liquid Design Team Meeting, Corporate Headquarters, Ares, Ares System...

A dozen chairs gathered around a black matte table, the greasy slickness in stark contrast to the rough appearance of the surface. Around the perimeter were gathered the various department heads and their adjuncts with the chair at the head of the table falling to the lead facilitator, a deep-fried donut of a Dwarf named Tognus. Nestled in the depths of an over-stuff bag chair, his particular job was to work with all of the other departments to get things done; To goad a project forward when others were feeling lazy or un-creative or just plain uninspired.

"Two proposals," he slid a pair of virtual documents across the table with some opening them up or others ignoring them. "First, we have the question of the Qasr-Class, which we designed as a one-off project for Alwyra Maric. Airuka Industries paid for the process and build-out on that one, so we're even money-wise, and there's been enough interest in second-run units to add some profit. But now," he flipped open the document to project a small spray of insignia above the holographic paper, "We've received inquiries from a number of different client and federal states interested in acquiring the Qasr either for local production or on commission. Since most of these inquiries follow a similar pattern, or share notable design elements, I've ran them past engineering," he nodded towards the lead engineer, who responded in kind, "And they've produced a preliminary redesign proposal."

Pulling the first page off to the side, he tossed the next forward to leave a hovering model slowly turning in front of him. A touch of the paper and various details were captured and labeled with lines running spider-like across the table to whichever designer or engineer would be prospectively responsible for implementing them. This prompted some others to pick up their folders as expected or unexpected tasks dropped near-literally into their lap.

"The key points are the visual similarity to existing product lines - and thus the Republic Fleet in general - as well as the small size and thus low price-point. Most of the interest has come from either law enforcement organizations, a few system defense forces, and throw in the odd educational institution for flavor. Cobbling all of these together, what we're looking to offer is a ship with a small crew, reasonably armed and armored, and with a high-precision sensor array that will allow it to cover all of the ground between mine-hunter, law enforcement cutter, and auxiliary science ship. We'll all have to make some modifications of course," he added, eyeing the various core players one after another.

"First, we'll replace the civilian-level hull with the Fleet-standard composite. Under this, we'll pull some of the quarters..."

Under his fingers, the larger hologram exploded with the irregular armor segments moving away to lay in a carpet across the surface of the table while one spun to the side, resting in front of the engineer who would be responsible for making that particular upgrade. This revealed the ship's inner structure - a single lattice-work space-frame and an enormous number of modules that hung off it like ornaments off a Christmas tree. Between these snaked all the conduits and cables that supplied power, back-up power, and redundant services to each. Highlighted thus were the ship's crew and passenger compartments, which were notably well-appointed and spacious even on the rotating illustration.

"...and replace them with WALNUT en-pee-cee emitters linked to emitter plates on the hull. These will replace the existing weapon systems, which will be upgraded to light open-bore lineguns to allow for multiple munitions; Probes, drones, that sort of thing. Not exactly the same kind of firepower as a Tornado but it'll do for a ship of this size. Then we'll re-configure the rest for multiple occupants with an eye towards keeping the same crew total but in less space. Upgrade the civilian-class sensor array with a high-precision targeted sub-array and it will do the job that all three of those client classes are trying to do with it. A couple cosmetic changes - an armored shutter over those big windows, a new paint job, some fleet or organization insignia - and there you have it."

"What do we call it?"

"Erm, well," Tognus leafed back to the start, "Looks like someone higher-up has settled on Anomaly-Class. Fits, I suppose. Looking for navigational hazards, scientific data, smuggled goods."

"Except we've already used it," interrupted one of the designers, whose team would be responsible for the exterior look and feel. "Pretty sure..."

A few taps on the tabletop and a search of the Liquid database and another ship appeared but judging by the immediate groans and comments around the table, the replacement was preferable to the old; "How did that one even get out of committee?"

"Not important - we'll just do this, appropriate the name, and forget that abomination even happened. And in an effort to forget," he produced the second document and thus the second proposal, "Which is the Aphelion-Class. This one has a bit more work to go..."

The first hologram was replaced by an entirely new second, which depicted a ship somewhat like the Opposition-Class - a ship designed and produced by a competitor to Liquid - but with a horseshoe at the rear that placed the visual origins with the just-shown Anomaly. That in turn prompted the first question, before the facilitator even had a chance to start; "What's with all the 'A' names?!"

[Sunset]

GEC-79291Cc1, The Spinward Expanse, Alpha Quadrant...

The written language is not the same thing as the spoken word and Meli was quickly learning the difference between the two as she tried to get the gist of what the robots were blabbering at the re-embodied consciousness of ScLappi. Sitting firmly in one of the massive chairs, his chin on his fist and his face locked in what he hoped was a look of both contemplation and arrogance, the re-born titan waited while they trooped into the room and she hid herself behind an appropriately large piece of furniture with only the remote camera peering out. They had started by bringing in one of the onyx caskets that they had seen earlier and tilting it upright before sliding the top half of the cover up and away to display the contents within. That it had formerly been one of the crew of the Blud Huntr didn't need to be guessed at nor were the collection of what were presumably cybernetic and bio-prosthetic implants placed here and there around the body. By her own experience the woman was in the early stages of the process but the black cylinders went on as if it was the greatest thing in the universe.

"Oon!kreerturkra triiam!ngruurr'k tootegxuupultuu a reekiieerrgurmale mooniakikr!" The robot to the right of the casket said, gesturing to the casket and then to the other robots with two of its four arms. "K!lee gamga'rx!!n likrara kakap gaamkutr'ar aeekatra 'xkri gnaamgadree kignaapgn'kt' kriakk'ng. Kekka'gh' gakark'meexk' kal 'kr' hkanteedrrikrnikeek iipkeextikrrax kugnim."

The last seemed to be a claim of some kind as the rest of the robots moved out into a line and one by one made a gesture that might be considered a bow or other request for recognition. That possibly meant that the last few words spoken were names or titles though the robots did not handily confirm this by repeating them. At least their erstwhile master seemed to gain the gist of it, acknowledging them all with a grunt and a similar gesture from one of his arms. This sent the six into a brief chorus of "Agaxarraagrkit, Agaxarraagrkit!" and again he acknowledged them with the same gesture. It seemed to be a good catch-all and the robots responded by repeating their bow and closing up the casket.

When this was done the representative came forward and spoke at length; "Ghakrari akixkootgnakatkuur kr'eet!kk!ragh' rrarlangrakukeegr mbu. Kuuraa!!!gnulrra texi'l ket, Kuukaa k!' kr'rakreeng. Ain atghurra ixa!gr!kkru't ankaxool!'rrxkaarr ukk!k girrghaxaabkt'tgh' krakxtaghaarrhk'x tiikr. Xt'likirr alu narhkegnul!ral raktuma b!'krruxta uukakrtiigr eegzuu a t'axan'n ee'ee'l iigh'armauu reoorrkibktu," it bowed again and the rest moved to pick up the container. "Kr!truu'k 'ii kuxkakrkr' !'kakr'kbik xaaal!!kghaktrip akrn!kr!raargharr't k!etrrako m!akakr'ka akootarrookrgrarr rrurleerrghi!k!k."

Another grunt, another gesture, and they repeated their chant of "Agaxarraagrkit, Agaxarraagrkit!" before picking up the coffin and circling around to troop out of the room with it swaying between them. After a moment ScLappi caught onto the next step and moved to the titanic doors, closing them solidly before he could be interrupted by another set of visitors and what would be, presumably, a repeat of their previous performance.

"Did you catch any of that?"

"Naught ah all," Meli answered, slipping out of her hiding place to peer through a gap in the door. "Inerestin' though. You've got four arms, they've got four arms, I'm guessin' they are the housin' for some kind'oh biological upload but you're the only one with the meat body. Ah least fer now. You wonder if the bodies they're preparin' are fer their own regeneration?"

"I would place that as the highest position in the rank of possibilities. That then raises the question as to what you and I will do about it. Admittedly, under my own familiar system of governance this would be a prime opportunity for subversion and the assertion of my own dominance. A prince in potential, as it were, and the possibility has crossed my mind. But there are immeasurable risks involved with that stratagem - we cannot be fully aware of what other mechanisms have been set into motion by this reawakening. It also remains fully possible that I will be discovered and they will attempt to kill me."

"Aye. Ah've got no issue with you setting up your own little kingdom. This ain't our turf, ahfter ahl. Ah'n better to deal with the devil you know, though Ah ain' seen you as particularly devilish. But as you said - 'What happens next?'"

"Let us gather more information then," he turned to the room and began to inspect cabinets and shelves. "Books, scrolls, the odd grimoire. Perhaps there are planning documents that would shed light on our potential future."

"Aye, but not in here," she said, certainty in her tone. "This is a bahdroom. But here," she knocked on the enormous doors that led into an unknown room, "Unless it's the biggest walk-in clohset ya'hve ever seen."

"Having never experienced such a luxury, I cannot comment. But the suggestion is warranted," he grabbed the handle set into the panel and pulled one side apart where it slid nearly noiselessly into the wall. Beyond was a corridor just wide enough for the four-armed goliath and he slipped through to come to an early corner and another that led to another set of doors. Holding his leg for a moment, Meli stopped him before he could open these and she slipped between his legs to press the camera extension through a small gap; "Just wha' we're lookin' fer. Ah'd call that a command center, ah'n better yet its empty..."

A nod and he pulled one door open again, this time with more effort than before, but as soon as he stepped inside what had been a lifeless chamber suddenly churned with activity as panels lit up, a great holographic display stretched across one side of the room, and a clearly electronic voice greeted them; 'Mba'krikkaghun! ree iik!'.'

"A pity I don't speak their tongue."

"No," Meli walked over to the closest display and looked it over, as well as the controls arrayed to either side for the convenience of the four-armed species, "But Ah kin read it..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Dogana, Circlet Station Keeping Orbit, Gen Celet System, Delta Quadrant...

"Admiral!"

The sharp call roused Jamie from the stupor of reports and reviews and Admiral Falk practically jumped at the opportunity to do something else - no matter the event. Unfortunately the call had come from the officer on duty at Dogana's communications station and as she turned to look at the woman she missed the switch as the main display went from a calm image of the Circlet's interior geography slowly sweeping by to an image entirely more perilous; "What is it?"

"Urgent distress call from SDF-Geim," she nodded towards the screen that was now behind her and the Admiral turned while she went on, "They encountered unexpected turbulence when attempting to retrieve one of the Artifacts in the lower atmosphere, there was a collision, and..."

"And now she's stuck." The tension that had built in her gut released with a sigh and Jamie dropped back into her chair to stare at the images on the screen and contemplate the stricken starship.

She'd missed the moment - caught by one of the other ships in orbit of the Circlet's primary - where the mutilated cruiser had dropped spinning and twisting past the gleaming white surface of the floating spire, missed as it flipped end over end, missed the moment when it went into the dreaded flat spin, and finally she'd missed the miraculous effort by the Helmsman that had thrust it out of the spin and towards the relatively flat area where the titanic sphere that made up the center of the deep-dwelling complex joined to the rising trio of flanges that surrounded it like some ancient mace. All of this had passed in only a few seconds but this had left the ship at rest where one joint met another with her bow crumpled and a nacelle missing, torn away in the mentioned collision.

"Status of the crew?"

"Casualties reported, bridge crew is okay;" Geim's bridge, like that of her own and in fact most Defense Force starships, was not as imagined atop the iconic saucer section but instead just as they had been designed by the original ArAreBeen engineers to which they owed their lineage - an armored capsule at nearly the exact center of that larger super-structure. "But they are dead in the water."

More than that, they were scrap. The impact had pushed the nose of the ship up and this had buckled the center of the multi-billion ship like a sheet of folded clay. Against the distorted image of the artifact and the occasional flash of complete reflection that rippled across the bizarre surface the damage was startlingly clear. There was simply no way that the recovery cruiser was flying again though that led her directly to her next question; "What's the status of Benz? Can they attempt a recovery of the crew?"

That was the second cruiser being fitted for Artifact recovery in the crushing, turbulent depths of the gas giant's swirling atmosphere, but before that question could be answered the original call was repeated, this time from the sensor operator.

"Admiral, you might want to hold that thought - they might have another more pressing problem," the Bajoni added. "We're not one-hundred percent, but several of the other operators think they are seeing movement from the artifacts idling above the Spire. The ships, Ma'am - they might be moving."

"Moving?" The view from the display swung back from a telescopic view of the crash site to a wider and clearly enhanced view of the entire area and her eyes widened. It wasn't clear - the structure of the ships themselves and the interference from the atmosphere made things hazy - but even her guess was that the collection of light and medium ships formerly held in a state of suspended flight were now moving to surround the Spire and notably the site of Geim's ill-fated encounter with its surface. Her next order was an easy decision, "All ships, battle stations..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, Circlet II Gate Complex Station Keeping, Beta Quadrant...

"How many replies did we get in Canis Major II from the super-ping?"

A moment to double-check the answer on the console in front of him and Lieutenant Commander Ingersol replied with the answer he suspected Captain Blaine already knew, "Just one... Presumptively the gate on the other side. Just a second," Again he double-checked, "And yes, the projected coordinates match what the probe established before it was hacked."

"So either they destroyed all of them or the rest have been suborned. Presuming they built more in the first place. Interesting that they only built them at the edge of the galaxies. From a strategic standpoint its reasonable - they can avoid detection, have their back to the wall, but that suggests that they have their own ef-tee-el drives. Otherwise there should be gates all over the place."

There were plenty of valid reasons to have both. FTL drives were the largest component expense of any ship outside of the hull itself. Transit gates were very efficient as well and between the reduced operating and startup costs they allowed commercial traffic to move lower margin products than would otherwise be profitable but only to those worlds with a gate nearby. For an automated freighter on a set route it was an ideal system and so it was that the vast majority of intersystem trade in the Republic operated under that very system.

"Which still doesn't establish whether their story is true," Kami sighed. "Oh well. Any other..."

But before she could finish her sentence, she was interruptes by the sensor officer, "Captain... The i'Halalaentariel ships are in motion. They've all begun to collapse and are moving together..."

"Collapse? Towards?"

She looked at the holosphere where the system was spread out in miniature with the various ships and sights marked. The projected course of each was momentarily laid out in front of it and it was immediately obvious that their joint destination - if there was one - was far outside the system. On the main screen she could see the closest pulling itself together into a multi-point star as it accelerated towards an unknown destination. The moment the center sections touched and assumedly locked together a brilliant red energy leapt from one point to another and the ship's speed rapidly increased and it was now encircled by a crackling red sheath.

"A shield?"

"Both," Ingersol answered, studying the data streaming by. "Emissions closely match those of known quantum slipstream drives. The shield is a side-effect of that - it likely renders the ship slightly transparent to incoming fire. Goes in one side and out the other. But they all have the same course..."

The image in the holosphere zoomed out as the lines traced out over time, notable systems and objects appearing as labeled and then disappearing as they continued to expand. In moments the entire galaxy filled the sphere to leave only one possible destination.

"...and they are going to be there in a hurry."

[Sunset]

Special Projects Covert Research Facility 74-A (Sigma), Denali, The Yukon System...

"Now those are some kick-ass boots!"

"Aren't they?!" Meri was enthused and the mood bubbled up in her words as she conjured up image after holographic image of both her designs and her inspirations, "I found them online - or at least I found these," she pointed out a pair with a similar missing heel and the projecting pivot that would allow the wearer some sense of balance. "Webster & Leone. That's the brand."

"Did you order a pair?" Fredrick asked, relaxing back against the workbench behind him as he looked over the collection; "Of course! They'll come on the next ship. Custom-made from my measurements and some exotic leather. They'll fit me like a glove!"

To equip the Maiorca, Kraus had turned to his wife and the idea had been proved sound. The Kaissi had little experience with the technology and aesthetics of the Republic and so he had charged her with producing designs and illustrations for the weapons and armor that the bipedal reptilians would use. As could be guessed, she'd taken various articles of clothing from across known space and fitted them together into a cohesive outfit before recreating them in alternative materials and textures. As an example she'd replaced the thick leather sole of the boot with a synthetic and aggressively functional rubber tread. The supple hide had been replaced with a hard armor composite in a soft blue that was then carried through the rest of the outfit. All of the rest of the pieces - gauntlets, breastplate, shoulders, and collar - were worn over a flexible armor suit except where the last element of the design precluded this. The last was the addition of various transparent sections inside or at the edges of the various hard armor sections.

Most notable was a large hourglass keyhole on the breastplate - exposing the Maiorca's impressive feathered cleavage - and a half-mask that covered the recessed third eye in the center of the forehead. This was fitted with a visible heads-up display that swirled and moved with seemingly important data. Similarly the tail had been covered with clear armored segments that were then pierced by solid armor spines that would give the swung appendage some added bite. In tests the tail had proven surprisingly flexible and nearly the equivalent of a third hand if it wasn't for the bony knob at the end. A skilled wielder could use the extension to attack targets both behind and ahead, swinging it around to take an opponent on the flank. Last was an addition that Meri had suggested to give the towering warriors a unique appearance. This was a long shield made of the same material with the emitter for a blaster embedded in the middle, allowing the wielder to fire from behind some measure of cover as well as use the shield itself as a weapon.

With the limited mass of the uniform to work with, the suit itself could only be self-supporting; Just enough power to negate its own weight. Against the typical soldier it wouldn't matter as the Maiorca were as strong as they looked and could swing fist, shield, or tail with enough force to crush someone inside standard flexible body armor into a thick red paste.

"It looks really good. You'd never know where they were from," Fredrick suggested. Certainly there were ways but further disguising the source he'd leave to the technical team that would be designing the inner workings. "Just have to wait until the first batch is out of the tank. I think you've got a future ahead of you in... I dunno. If you want your name on it, you'd have to go to work for the movie industry. Can't sign your name to something people aren't supposed to find in the first place."

"Actually! Actually, I have. Reasonably they'd have some kind of manufacturing mark on them, so I made a unique logo for them - and I looked up some Sessool images in the database and tried to add some of their particular nuance. So..."

"Blame laid," he nodded, "And credit taken."

[Sunset]

Wreck of the SDF-Geim, Circlet I Gravitational Primary Deep Atmosphere, Gen Celet System, Delta Quadrant...

"Captain, Admiral Falk..."

"Thank god," Captain Edwards breathed, "At least they can hear us. If they can can hear us..." He'd been about to say that they could then be saved but the look on the Communication's Officer's face cut him short, "What is it?"

"She's ordered all ships on high alert and into combat positions. The other Artifacts, Sir - it appears they've activated and are surrounding us. They're trying to rush Benz into readiness but..."

"That wouldn't come soon enough. Damnit - can you get anything working," he turned to the Chief Engineer, who was frantically moving over the controls at his station. Numbers and indicators flew by but if there were potentially hostile ships above them it wouldn't do a damned lot of good. "External cameras, anything?"

"I'm trying - the crash destroyed most of the data conduits. We're crumpled up like an accordion and there's only so many keys," he paused, something attracting his attention. "There. Best I can do and it's a miracle at that. One of the shuttle bays was ripped open and I've fired up one of the docking cameras," he looked up to where an image appeared on the main display.

It certainly wasn't much. Most of the shot was of the interior of the bay but past the armored doors - torn apart as if they had been made of wood by the force of the impact - a narrow slice of the spire below them could be seen. Ceramic white and seemingly unmarred by both the crash and the intense pressure of dwelling for unknown ages in the deep atmosphere of the Circlet's gaseous primary, it almost appeared as an inviting beach if it wasn't for the occasional flash of mirror-like reflection where the charged atmosphere would momentarily light up the hull. This gave it an unreal quality - as if their ship was sitting in the midst of a malfunctioning holographic simulation. For a moment Edwards clenched his fist in frustration and he was about to bring it down on the armrest with a bang when another flash of reflective hull caught his attention.

"Grab the feed, slow it down. I think I can see something in the reflections;" but there wasn't enough time to recognize whatever it was before the charge faded. A few commands and the whole scene replayed itself in slow motion while the true image played out above. Something caught his eye and before he could raise a finger to call for it, the Engineer focused on the same and slowed the feed still further. "Something's moving out there."

In fact they could all see it now: A spherical bulge on the spire's hull not more than a hundred meters away had rotated, turning inward and revealing something that had been sitting inside. It wasn't a turret or gun as he'd initially feared but almost worst. An odd three-legged robot or suit of some kind along with more of its kin as well as a number of the bipedal suits discovered earlier had been concealed - or raised from - below and were now moving towards the ship. Just as the details were about to become clear the charge faded but the Captain already knew his next orders.

"Tell the Admiral we're about to have company. All hands prepare for boarders! Chief, focus on getting the internal defenses up! Comms - get Doctor Gibbons on."

There had been casualties when she'd crashed and that had been Edwards first priority, as well as that of the medical personnel aboard. In that they had been fortunate since Recovery Cruisers were expected to be able to handle the trauma and casualty cases routine to a damaged or disabled ship. That it would their own was less so, but with a fight anticipated, he hoped they would already have most of the casualties out of harm's way. A nod from Comms and he didn't even wait, "Doc, we have incoming. Likely boarders. Get all the casualties to safety. Escape pods, shuttles, wherever you can hole them up. We're trying to get the internal defenses online," he looked at the Chief but was only offered a shake of the head, "But its not looking good."

It could be worse. He didn't know it, but sitting in his pile of virtual paperwork was a report and attached video from a far-distant starship showing the fate that awaited them, presuming the boarders were hostile. That question was at least answered as a three-wheeled shape rolled into view of the camera in the bay and pointed what was distinctly a weapon around the interior. After a moment it lined up and fired, sending the camera dark.

"Here they come..."

[Sunset]

GEC-79291Cc1, The Spinward Expanse, Alpha Quadrant...

"...tell mae yer secrets," Meli cooed, stroking the keys with all the tenderness of a lover. Words and phrases appeared and she tickled the control lever to move the encircling cursor from one entry to another. Against her hand, large as it was, the stick was obscenely (and puerile humor intended) large and less than precise. After a few miss-moves she finally centered it and pressed the button on the cap. Script began to flow and she skimmed over it, a translation appearing just in front of her vision as she read over the highlights, "Rest until the next cycle, awaken from my slumber, call forth my generals..."

"Then the former mercenaries are to be used as vessels for the minds of my - his - former adjutants. Interesting that we then have not seen the same arrangement of decayed cranial tissue; Does it make mention of this," ScLappi asked, kneeling so that he could peer over her shoulder. Letter by letter he was attempting to decipher the alien language but without the specialized software embedded in the Dwarf's head he was forced to rely on memory and comparison. "Though I would have my speculations."

"Hmm, well, if yer speculations are as to the loyalties of his minions, you'd be raht. This section," she moved a finger over the hovering text, momentarily interrupting the beam that generated it and creating a blank spot where the words had been. "Says that he had his senior officers executed as he doubted their loyalty, but then their... engrams? Close enough. He had thar engrams copied and altered to ensure thar absolute loyalty. Then they were loaded," she touched the toggle and a side image appeared, this time of a familiar four-armed cylindrical robot, "Into our screamin' fraends out thar. These would be paht into storage, blah blah, ahn' when the thaw took they would awaken to execute has plan. Too bad tha Blud Dawgs got in thar way."

Straightening behind her, ScLappi put one set of hands on his hips while another scratched the back of his head in a gesture more characteristic of his species, "Or presented opportunity. Is there any indication that they were in possession of any kind of space flight capability? From what we observed from orbit, there was no indication of either ground-based nor orbital infrastructure. They seem to have been confined to their home planet." Holding up the hand in front of his nose, he noted the presence of some large pieces of tissue and fluid on the tips and then shook them away, "Interesting. It seems that this body is decaying or has suffered from the thawing process. Fortunately as my consciousness has migrated wholly into the cybernetic cortex, I have little fear of its death. But this does not suggest that their plans were fully thought out."

"Spess ships... Spess ships... Ah'm not findin' nothin."

The reason was soon obvious, as she read into the plans and notes with more attention to detail. To the dominant sentient species of GEC-79291Cc1, their world was both the center of their universe and their religion, "Ahn he - you - was tha' lord o' it. By conquest, of course. Religious tenants, dictates, acetera - ah'll laid out nahc ahn tidy. No mention of ships. Ahn fact - Ah'd venture they never made it off their rock. Shore makes it easier to be lord 'o ahl creation when everything alse is the mysteries o' the heavens," she finished, finger tracing past the relevant passages.

"I would then place my worry in their very possession of the unmentioned ship. To fulfill their beliefs, the simplest way to restore this planet to the center of their universe would be to wipe out everything that threatens their viewpoint."

"Ha! Thet's unlikely. Tha' thing barely a step above civilian. Could jus' call in a hech-de-em strike ah'n kill it. In fahct, tha' just seems like the safes' thing. We sneek bahk to the ship, ah cut yer head off, an'hn we watch the fireworks from somehar' safe..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, Circlet II Gate Complex Station Keeping, Beta Quadrant...

"...no, we'll handle it," Admiral Falk finished, waving Captain Blaine off with an idle hand though her face showed clear concern. "We've got reinforcements on their way but we need answers one way or another and Ojeni is in the best place to get those answers. Head through that gate and find some - now!"

"Understood, Admiral. We'll find them; Ojeni out... You heard the Admiral," Kami looked towards the Helmsman, who was already looking over his shoulder waiting for confirmation. "Take us through. We've got a lot of questions and not a lot of time to answer them."

They even had a convenient if unfortunate timer. Against the greater plane of their own projected galaxy, the traces of the i'Halalaentariel ships crept towards the far distant Gen Celet star system at a speed that was near-invisible until one looked away for a minute or two and then the pace was obvious. Such was the power of their drives and their impression on the very fabric of the universe that all were clearly visible to the TRIPWIRE arrays, their ultra-classified data relayed to the ship's navigation systems under the extra-ordinary circumstances. Closer to their own situation, the waiting circle of the Krȃng gateway yawned wide as they plowed towards it, crossing the distance they had put between it and themselves earlier while the Captain stared through the first to the second.

"How did they know? How did they know about the Geim? That wouldn't have been on external comms, would it?"

That was the obvious answer, but behind her Lieutenant Ya was already working and after a few seconds, "It was, but only as chatter. No coordinates, no specifics. Not enough to act on - not unless they knew where the Geim was or even where the Gen Celet system is. All the technical details are on the internal side. It's plausible they penetrated those but through the air gap? And with all the security?"

"Unlikely, right. That's not what my gut says either. My instinct is that they are reacting to whatever brought down the Geim."

"You think that was intentional?" Sloan asked, her eyes on a virtual console even in the last few seconds before they entered the wormhole. A moment later and the stars shifted around them; Where they had once been surrounded by the familiar face of the Milky Way, they now looked out on the unfamiliar with the disc of their own origins behind them. "That it was the Krȃng?"

"Yes. We were hauling more artifacts out of the atmosphere every day. If they were hiding down there, their discovery was inevitable. Causing the crash might have been their attempt at subtly, but by their own account the i'Halalaentariel have created themselves as Krȃng hunters. We just happened to wake them up. The next question is whether the Avatar was telling the truth. Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys? Who are the real monsters? There's a lot of conflicting evidence here; Why didn't they just make the crossing from Canis Major II if they can go that fast? Why stake out the gate?"

"Because the Krȃng would use the gate," Ingersol put in. "No evidence of other i'Halalaentariel ships on this side, Captain. And I'm not finding anything that would change my first impression of the planet. Someone did a great job of obliterating the biosphere and the dates roughly line up. We'd need to put some scientists down there to confirm, but do we have that much time?"

Kami looked back to the holosphere. Already the traces were double the length they had been five minutes ago. It was clear the ships were accelerating; Who was to know how quickly they would arrive?

"No... But why not use the gates themselves? They'd fit, right? Unless they don't want to alert the Krȃng. Except they just did. So that's not the best line of inquiry. We need some way to establish the Krȃng as good or bad, and pronto..."

[Sunset]

Shuttlecraft Anaconda, Above the Clear Blue Sea, GEC-1042091C...

"How's the water!?" Alwyra called out, taking a moment to cinch her bikini top tighter around her chest before grabbing the upper lip and adjusting the fit across her breasts. Not that it would do any good; She couldn't check the water herself because the Anaconda was hovering some four meters above the shallow waves. There would be no easing a toe in - she'd have to jump and there was every chance that the long plunge would knock her suit top right off, "Is it cold?"

Of course the fact that no one heard her was even more tell-tale. She hadn't put on her mask yet - the full face-plate also wrapped up and over to cover her ears and provide the wearer with nearly normal underwater hearing - and this meant she could not hear the others as they swam beneath the surface. She could see them down there, their awkward movements turned into the back-and-forth glitter of fish by the crystal reflections across the top of the waves. Further below them a riotous bloom of color spread out across the bottom of the shallow sea, the local equivalent to a coral reef in full undamaged bloom. This wound for hundreds of kilometers in a broken chain around the local island cluster but what had drawn the Commander to suggest this exact spot was the broken-back shape of a space ship laid out across one jagged band, its rendered hull just brushing the surface. According to the officer it was a Kion warship and thus had likely been submerged for nearly seventy thousand years with more than enough time for the reef to recover its former glory.

"It's not cold," Kedo assured her. Her husband was sitting on the edge of the doorway, also finishing his preparations. The broad-chested Neko already had his mask half-on and he was adjusting the flippers that would give him added maneuverability. "If you put your mask on, it will show the water temperature - just about twenty four degrees."

It wasn't exactly the steaming bath she preferred but it would do. But it would do Kedo better and she giggled as she stepped back, put a foot in the center of his back, and shoved as hard as she could. Against his greater mass she nearly fell backwards herself but he still went over the edge with a satisfying yelp, just barely pulling his mask down before he hit the water in a tangle of limbs and tail.

'Hey!' But she was already in flight and a moment later she hit the water feet-first next to him, the plunge fulfilling its promise to rip the top right off her and leave the string around her neck as she surged to the surface, 'Damn..i...t,' she glubbed as he put a hand on her head and shoved her back under, letting her emerge where she went on in a mocking tone as she pulled the brilliant white fabric down, 'Not so effective when they're wearing a mask, is it?'

There was no time to admire her assets; Leaving the discombobulated muffin top to be sorted out later, she turned tail up and pushed herself vertical, the mask sealing hard against her face with the increased water pressure. Flippers sent her deeper still with Kedo following right behind as they swam towards the team of explorers, who were circling around a particular looking column of coral adorned with various brilliant sculptures in such profusion that it appeared to be a single organism.

'What is it,' she asked, as she reached the top and then pushed to one side to similarly circle the object, 'It's... hot. Is it supposed to be hot?'

In fact the water surrounding the pillar was nearly five degrees warmer on average and for a moment she stopped to enjoy something close to her usual heat. Swimming up next to her, Timmons grinned through his own mask, his dark body nearly interposed between her and the organisms. She'd never seen him naked - shirtless, in a pair of small briefs and a belted garter with a variety of tools attached to it - and the criss-cross of scars momentarily drew her attention until he answered, 'It is, and I don't think you'll want to hang around here too long. Not unless you have your RadAway on you!'

'RadAway?'

He nodded, 'That's right. This is a warhead that was thrown free of the ship,' he turned to point into the distance, where she could just see the encrusted remains of a box-like launcher that dangled to the side of what had to have been the bottom of the wrecked warship. 'Not exactly high-tech either. Thermonuclear, probably in the fifteen megaton range. The heat is from the plutonium core fissioning and throwing off radiation. Won't help us, but these guys,' he swung to the side, pointing to the coral analogs, 'Seem to love it.'

'Oh.' Drifting backwards, she eased into the colder water with some slight sense of regret, 'Where's our fish?'

In response, he help up his hands and gestured everyone towards him, calling out as he did so, 'Circle up, everyone. Here's the plan - we'll split into two teams. Deania, you and Annya will take the ship and its perimeter;' The Seeker saluted her response while the Shepard just wagged her tail; 'And you, me, and Kedo will work the reef. These things are small,' he pointed towards several of the nearby fish species, which averaged several times more than the fist-sized specimen they were seeking, 'So they're probably going to be hiding or at least in among the coral. Deania, when you're done with the ship call out time and we'll start heading back. Then we'll rendezvous and make for the island together and it should be time to eat. Sound good?'

Everyone nodded their agreement and a moment later they split, one pair heading towards the broken back of the Kion warship while the other swam towards the long line of color stretching out towards the underwater horizon...

[Sunset]

Republic Special Projects Division Research Tower, Landor City, Terra Incognito...

"One of the problems with our ramships or even the smaller high-distort munitions is that they are relatively dumb. Because the here to there is by some external method of faster-than-light travel - fired through a wormhole, tesseract cloud - we have to know where what we're shooting at is at before we can shoot. In some cases that's okay. Planets don't tend to dodge around much. But sometimes, say gigantic purple space kraken, there's something the size of a planet or bigger that could really use an HDM gift basket or two to speed it on its way. In the case of the lavender squid we were able to use the Nemesis platforms because the target's course was essentially linear. If it had known it was going to be taking a point-nine-three-cee sucker punch it likely would have done some zigging and zagging," Katryna demonstrated, moving back and forth herself as she dodged imaginary projectiles.

"So how do we solve this problem?"

A wave of her hand and she generated a hologram that at first glance appeared to be one of the older StarLancer-Class Ramships. While they had been effectively replaced by the Nemesis platform and their high-distort munitions, there were still plenty of the monolithic ship-killers around. A long tapered cylinder, it looked very much like one of the first generation of Printz-Iwamoto Space-Warp Drive nacelles though the enormous atomic sunburst raised across the bow and titanic sub-light drives built into the rear spoke otherwise. Here and there small point-defense batteries studded the flanks and one could, with little effort, draw the connection between these and the modern 'disguised' ramships concealed beneath the hulls of some Opposition, Nova, and Super Nova-Class Destroyers. But with twinkle of her fingers the design began to change and she explained as it did, "We started with an old StarLancer because we still have plenty around."

"First, we added a second warhead spaced forward of the osmium penetrator. This," she pointed to the new cone sitting atop a thick-barred cage that linked it to the main body of the design, "Is a super-heavy conversion lance warhead. Bigger than anything we currently mount, and likely enough to destroy most any ship by itself. But this is our crazy galaxy so you never know. Might as well have a little bit of insurance. This is spaced out from the kinetic warhead so that the conversion part won't just eat up the entire ramship. A one-two punch. But the big change is buried behind the slug..."

The diagram exploded and she twisted it around to show the targeting package positioned behind the solid fist of toxic metal. By the numbers it wasn't a very large percentage of the ship but by the look on her face it was the most important part.

"A TRIPWIRE node. Essentially, each StarLancer will be part of the TRIPWIRE array until the moment we shove it up someone's ass. This will allow them to track FTL-capable targets and home in on them, but better yet - we've added the capability for that particular node to home in on a particular type of drive or power plant signature and target it precisely. As you know, some navies use things like artificial singularities or wormholes or sub-space taps to provide power, in addition to their particular flavor of faster-than-light drive. Adding this information to the TRIPWIRE node will allow it to target not only ships in FTL transit but potentially a particular ship, if the precise drive and power plant signature is already known."

"What about our own drives," a voice piped up, "Or a CIDES unit?"

"Oh, yeah..." Katryna made a face, "That should carry a warning. Yes, you can target any variety of Alcubierre-based drive with these and it's particularly effective, since they leave something of a line in the matrix as compared to the hole or ripple of some other drives. We're working on ways to negate that - spectrum hopping, frequency shifting - but there's a bigger can of worms in the CIDES units. Which, I suppose, works in our favor. At least in a way. When we started this idea, I assigned a researcher to take a look at whether the CIDES shows up on TRIPWIRE. The easy answer is that it does, though it is faint and erratic. Lots of peaks and valleys, which is weird since most power plants are either one or the other. Question answered, right? Well, he kinda decided to go a bit further," she sighed, regret in her tone.

"According to the bloody writing we found on the walls, floors, and ceilings of his laboratory space the signature left on the matrix by a CIDES unit seems to be nothing but gibberish until one looks at it over time. And by over time I mean a few seconds, maybe a minute. Then it resolves itself into some ancient and terrible tongue dredged from the depths of horror and misery into elder runes that carve themselves on the very soul and leave the revelation of things best left unknown and madness unresolved. So basically the same thing that happens if you're dumb enough to ignore the warning labels and open the box. Which means we're issuing a warning to all TRIPWIRE operators to not attempt to track a ship using CIDES by the power plant signature. Or even look to closely. Or sideways. Poor bastard - he was a pretty good scientist and I can only blame myself."

That was enough for a collective grimace and she went back to the diagram, "So, what I'd like to do after field testing is figure out a way to..."

"Field testing?"

"Yes! Field testing! In fact, we have a target and we're just waiting for the all-clear from the agent in the field before testing. Anyway - I'd like to integrate TRIPWIRE micro-nodes into our current torpedo target acquisition gear. This would both improve accuracy and allow them to act as a rapidly deployed TRIPWIRE vee-dee-ea. The problem is that some construction and all final assembly of TRIPWIRE nodes is currently done at Anviltop, which limits production to what we can slot in between new warships. Since any kid with a screwdriver and a soldiering iron can make a conversion lance warhead;" Not actually true, but hyperbole sold t-shirts; "There's no way we'd keep up with production needs until the next Anviltop comes on-line in twenty-one-seventy-five..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, Somewhere in Canis Major II...

"Nope! They're evil as fuck!"

It was a declaration born not out of some seismic discovery or new nugget of information but instead a mental assessment of all of what was previously known, pondered while the Captain sat in her chair looking from station to station in search of a solution she realized now was plain as the nose on her face. It did bear the verbalization test, however, and after sitting up to stretch her arms high above her head and kick her feet out to hold the position for nearly a half-minute, she relaxed and went through the paces, "Carvings - graffiti - found in ruins on Circlet I accuse their mysterious benefactors of abducting the best and brightest of their kind. The video presented to us by the i'Halalaentariel says the same thing. Baring the off-chance that they planted it themselves - which is the stretchiest of the stretches - it all matches up. Brain-sucking parasites that infest and birth their young in other sophonts. The technology we've found matches up to the video as well, so that's two strikes. And if they were the bad guys, why haven't they taken over our galaxy yet? I suppose setting themselves up as galactic protectors is one way of taking over the galaxy..."

"Just because the Krȃng are evil doesn't mean the i'Halalaentariel aren't," Sloan pointed out. The Commander had taken the break offered to go to one of the dispensers and retrieve something that looked both extremely edible and smelled even better and now the Captain's stomach was growling. "They said as much themselves - 'To destroy the monster, you must become one.'"

"I'm not sure I like that. It might be true for them, but not for us."

The blonde woman shrugged and took a bite, speaking past a mouthful, "I don't either, but we don't know what the Krȃng did beside farm people and infest them, but since they didn't exactly show us pictures of them eating babies off the grill, we can only assume it was bad enough to justify at least one orbital carpet-bombing."

"I'm still wondering how they knew about the Geim."

"Trent Lockwood," Lieutenant Ya replied, tossing up a still image onto the main display. The freelance reporter sprang to life as they watched, talking animatedly about something while the Communications Officer explained, "We didn't put anything out, but the contractors who are working on the Circlet did. They were paying attention to the dive and when something went wrong, they put video up on the 'net. He jumped on it and they piggy-backed him a live feed from orbit. That would be my guess anyway - cracking our external comms would give them internet access, and from there they can go anywhere. We haven't exactly kept the coordinates a secret. Not with colonists heading there every other day."

"So I guess we're going to find out who's the bigger monster," Kami slouched. "The monster, or the monster you become."

But Ya sounded confident, "I'm not sure I'd want to be either monster. Fleet traffic says that if they try anything they're fucked..."

[Sunset]

Non-Canon; Idea for the Intro to a Tabletop RP/Miniatures Game...

----

...April 1st, 2023: Comet P/2023 F2 (Folker-Haught) passes over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States in a spectacular light show that ends with a high atmosphere explosion over Northern Florida. Spotted just seven days previous, apocalyptic predictions abounded when a near-Earth trajectory was established but after an intense few days of calculations it was established - to the relief of many and consternation of some few - that it would only indirectly hit the planet if at all. Millions gathered on the streets to watch the late evening pass-over with some still holding out fears or hopes of a cataclysmic impact. Arriving with a long silver streak over Long Island, it fled south past New York City to pass over Savannah and then over the state line where a series of detonations heralded its demise along with a few broken windows through the outskirts of Tampa. The Great Prank, as it was immediately dubbed by the evening news outlets, was cause enough for parties and revelry and only by the early morning had the last witnesses left the streets altogether unaware of their coming fate.

Monday morning a rash of sick calls turned into a flood and where the comet had passed there were unsettling rumors of mass food poisoning, drunken revelries gone awry, and worse. Where millions had witnessed the passage, similar millions now claims aches and pains, strange cravings, and an uneasy lethargy that sent many to bed with the well-meaning intention to sleep it off. Emergency rooms were packed with families and by the afternoon an unknown epidemic was declared. All eyes turned to the skies and the comet but the symptoms didn't match any known disease and, as the early signs turned to a gnawing hunger and a trance-like state, every attempt was made to assign a conventional cause to what must have only originated from the visitor from the stars. Urgent investigations were launched into the hundreds of shattered pieces discovered and a suspected cause discovered; A micro-organism of off-world origins contained within the ice and rock had been thawed and dispersed through the upper atmosphere in all defiance of current science. Simply put, the intense heat should have destroyed it but somehow it had survived and was now thriving among millions of hosts.

Quarantine was now impossible. Over one hundred million people lived within the area and an untold number of these had witnessed the passage of the Great Prank. Travel bans were put in place but panic and fear clogged highways and freeways with cars until they were shut down behind accidents and blockades. Worse, international flights had continued unknowingly through the weekend and reports of infected sprouted up in every country. As of mid-week, the only bright spot was that no one had died aside from a few with severely weakened immune systems. The rest simply slipped into hunger and dementia as the micro-organisms multiplied inside their body unchecked. It was only by weeks end, when the infected began to stir and seek out whatever sources of nutrients that they could find, that the true horror was revealed.

Most would call them zombies, but these were not the dead made living. Instead they were people trapped inside their own heads and driven by instinct to seek out whatever nutrition they could find with the easiest being the flesh of those around them. But here the infection revealed its nature; The flesh of the infected was now bitter and foul to their own. Tear at it with clawed hand and bite at it with bloody teeth, it would not satisfy and those that managed to consume some morsel quickly vomited it back up. Their only option was the uninfected; Friends, neighbors, loved ones. The Hordes began to roam the cities and where they passed the infestation followed...

[Sunset]

Kion Wreckage, Below the Clear Blue Sea, GEC-1042091C...

"They sure lived the simple life, didn't they?" Pushing herself through the water with webbed paws, Annya grabbed a floating trinket with her teeth and delicately maneuvered it to sit on one of the intricately carved tables that sat still attached to the floor - now the wall - of the wrecked warship. After a moment it began to float away again and she laughed, "The cleaning robot's worst nightmare!"

The Kion did not travel light. That was very much in evidence as soon as the pair had pushed their way through a thick curtain and half-hallway hung with rope-like strands akin to kelp. Past these were the ships living quarters and control room, a combined space that ended with a dais projecting up from the wall and nearly devoid of the colorful plant life that sprouted here and there where a minor rend in the hull allowed some small sliver of light through. Furnishings - tables, smooth-humped stools, a half-circular bed that would have allowed the sleeper to tuck into the curve - were all secured directly to the floor but everything else floated loose, sometimes accumulating in a corner or behind a larger object while others drifted here and there in the dreadfully slow currents. There was no clothing, which was not a surprise as it had already been established that the Kion preferred to be naked when not wearing armor, and every other bit and bob was typically either metal or mineral. Whether there had been something else was never to be known; Seventy thousand years of plant and animal life invading the space, as well as the universal solvent effects of the seawater, had likely obliterated anything made of flesh or bone.

"But no mystery fish," Deania swam past the command column, putting one hand on a bare patch and pulling herself around so that she could inspect the backside. While there were a collection of knobs and switches arranged in an arc around the commander, the central fixture was a large microphone and speaker that sprouted up to near chin level. "Hello? Computer? Computer?" She tapped the mic in a futile gesture; The ship was dead and through the mask only the distorted sound of her voice could be faintly heard.

"If it comes alive and eats us, I'm making you pay for a new body..."

"Deal!"

But there was no life left in the ancient wreck and after another minute the Seeker left to poke through everything else in search of both the strange fish and more cultural artifacts of the vanished Kion. Weapons and armor made their appearance, as well as various tools and utensils shaped for both the aquatic environment and whatever they ate, "Which explains the oyster forks. Given the bent tines, I'm guessing this was a bachelor."

"Can they be bachelors? They were hermaphrodites..."

Deania shrugged and pulled open a drawer to spring back suddenly as a gaggle of eel-like creatures sprayed out. Whatever they were, they weren't hostile and neither were they a particularly long-lived and vibrant species of fish. With the example laid, it was time to retreat from the area and explore the rest of the ship. Pushing down the hallway and across the gap, they slipped through the curtain again and into the rear section of the ship only to come to a quick halt. While there was an access hatch, it was shut tight and if there was a lock it had been overgrown with some brilliant example of rainbow-colored coral. That left the only entrance outside the hull and they swam out together before circling the ship in search of a way inside...

[Sunset]

SDF-Aleadalat Al'iilhia, Gen Celet System, Delta Quadrant...

"We are here to support an ongoing search and rescue operation," Fleet Admiral Vamvakis answered, standing stiff at his position at the center of the prototype battleship's bridge. Two-something kilometers of WarShip was intimidation by itself and the instrumentality could only add to it. As one of the few Flag-rank Artificial Intelligences he had opted to maintain a body styling in line with that of his flagship - a hulking robotic carapace with something of a pre-War styling. World War One, to be precise. That gave him something of the look of a dreadnought underway and the hatchet head practically built into his shoulders looks sufficient to cut through the thickest bulkhead or bullshit it encountered. "The question is; Are you here to assist in that operation, or are you here to give me cause to alter our purpose? Make your answer short - the crew of the Geim has little time to spare."

The answer from the Avatar was not immediate but whether this was a good thing or bad was very much up in the air. If the Fleet Admiral had been in the reverse circumstance his own answer would have been much more immediate; Either agreement or retreat. All around the Aleadalat Al'iilhia were arrayed the starships of Admiral Falk's local task force, a Combined Services expeditionary force relayed through the gate from Titan, a detachment from the QACF that had been in the same orbit for maneuvers, and waiting out-system was a Defense Force assault squadron. In comparison to the half-dozen ships of the i'Halalaentariel it was a ridiculous imbalance in numbers but perhaps, based on the speed evidenced by their rapid transit of the galaxy, not one of power. While the more analytic minds bent their sensors and their science to that question, it was his job and duty to establish the framework for whether that equation would even be necessary.

Finally i'Farerelia responded, the holographic projection moving just as sparsely as the Fleet Admiral as it stood wide-legged in the middle of the long plank that ran down the middle of the bridge, the horseshoe of officers at their stations looking in towards the middle where the Captain's station stood at the end, "We are here because we have detected signals from a Krȃng installation located in the deep atmosphere of this planet. The Krȃng represent a threat to all species and must be eradicated before they spread. I must impress on you the danger you face; The crew of your vessel are already dead and the only course of action is to destroy the installation now before they can use the information gained."

The first was true. Without regard for a miracle, the information relayed from the stricken cruiser was of a rapid and overwhelming assault that had ended with the seizure of the ship through brute force. Attempts to support it through orbital fire had been hampered by the dense atmosphere and the intervening warships, which had destroyed both incoming ordinance and put themselves between the crash site and the starships in orbit. It all spoke of an intelligent opponent rather than any form of automated defenses and this was proof enough in the mind of the Fleet Admiral to come to the conclusion that the Krȃng were - at least here - alive, well, and nefarious.

"In what way?"

"They will use your advances against you. We have studied your civilizations, your connections, your technology. As soon as they breach your communications networks, they will begin to spread themselves around your galaxy and there will be little to stop them. Your own freedom will be their tool. Your civilizations are capable of creating life, of reconstituting it from only the scattered cells of life. They will commandeer your artificial wombs and their own young will be birthed instead. Your places of medicine will replace a failing organ but one of their young will be inside. Do not delay, Vamvakis. Our electronic nature gives us some security but yours is still a civilization of biology and it is immediately vulnerable to the insidiousness of the Krȃng."

Now it was Vamvakis's turn to pause. He had been expecting demands filled with militaristic bluster but here was an unexpected answer along a unique and terrible vector. The i'Halalaentariel had already demonstrated the ability to penetrate the external communications system of a Defense Force starship and while that particular hole had been plugged - and their current conversation had been accomplished by more traditional methods - there was the plausibility that the Krȃng could do so as well. Spreading through the internet, they could then seek out the many millions of baby-in-a-box units, organ cloning tubes, or even body replacement systems that might be somehow connected and that was in the Republic alone.

"They have done this before," the Avatar continued, emphasizing the moments of hesitation. "And I state this specifically to force your hand - this is but one of the many atrocities they have committed and a full litany would give them ample time to commit just one. Destroy them, now, or your civilizations may very well fall to ash and ruin. And if you cannot, if your sense of duty and honor to those lost on the surface prevents it, we will do it. We will once again take up the mantle of Salvation."

"And if we try to stop you?"

"We will do it despite you. Others have held similar thoughts, similar hesitations..."

"...but to fight the monster, you must become one," Vamvakis interrupted.

"Then you have made all the study of us you need, Fleet Admiral," i'Farerelia said, stepping forward once, the bio-luminescent spots along his head and neck suddenly glowing brightly. "Decide, and quickly!"

Behind him, the officer saw sudden movement in the holosphere that sat at the conjunction of the raised platform and the two ramps that curved down to the crew stations. The Avatar's ships were moving now, expanding out from their contracted star-shape to the cross-linked sphere that would allow them to present both maximum firepower and minimal targeting. It was slower than the speeds they had presented earlier and distinctly pointed in objective with the cluster moving directly towards a point directly over the installation in the gas giant's deep atmosphere.

"Very well. You desire the destruction of the Krȃng and it is you who will undertake it." It was a hard decision, but there was every likelihood that he wouldn't be able to prevent the Avatar from taking the shot and, if their encounter did turn hostile, an appreciation of the firepower possessed by the unfamiliar ships would prove useful. "But be warned - we will be watching."

For a moment the array of spots glowed brighter again before rapidly dying away and the Avatar replied just as the hologram too faded away, "Do so, Fleet Admiral, and as closely as you dare. For if we fail..."