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

[Sunset]

CORE V Deep Space Station, Squarely in the Middle of Nicean Territory, Thank God Space is Really, Really, Really, Really Big and Mostly Empty... Now Republic Date 176.197.602...

"...it's a particle beam cannon alright - but a particularly well-crafted one. Or at least crafted in just the right way to give the ME'ople a whole fist-full of trouble," Chief Polvado explained, emphasizing his last point with a clenched fist that was nearly as big as Admiral Villanova's head. It wasn't particularly 'meaty' or 'ham-like' - two descriptors often used in similar comparisons - but the Chief (Engineer) had been born on a circuit board, as he was known to say. Instead the AI's robotic hand was a mass of different manipulators from heavy claws to delicate tendrils. The rest of him still looked more-or-less Humanoid, but this defining characteristic did get him a few odd looks walking down the street.

And a few odder invitations.

"At the core - or the ring - you've got twenty heavy-duty particle accelerators laid down side-by-side with an armored super-structure around them. These are then linked to two hundred emitters on the outside of the ring, which are adjacent to the same number of advanced fusion power plants. I'm sure they'll be really interested in these if they get their hands on them. Instead of the normal confinement methods, these use Laconium as a natural constrictor. This dramatically reduces the portion of the plant's output that is needed for self-sustaining nuclear fusion. You could almost call it a mixture of hot and cold fusion techniques - lukewarm fusion?"

"And the same power plants are likely used in their warships," Commander Huang ventured a guess. "Smaller for more other stuff, or larger for more dakka."

"More than likely," Polvado agreed, nodding to the young woman. "It doesn't make any sense for them to be the only ones who know about this stuff, especially with the Niceans sitting right on top of it like they are. When I take a look at the action report from 'Snake Clan's VDA;" which had wrecked havoc on the Nicean's orbital and manufacturing infrastructure - conversion warheads having a bad habit of making a mess of things wherever they went (off); "I'll be able to say for certain. Anyway..."

"Basically, these things are really potent and they are nicely configurable," he turned back to the virtual window that showed the ring itself floating not a few thousand hundred kilometres off CORE V's starboard side. "Each accelerator ring can fire one big blast or they can fire a whole bunch of smaller shots - or whatever you want in between. Since they're particle beams and thus really, really fast, they're a good counter to Congo naval construction and doctrine. Even the small shots are like taking a face-full of spinal from a Domain cruiser."

"And they can saturate their target's engagement envelope," Janice noted. "Unlike a spinal."

"Right. Another advantage of building big. They do have a weakness, of course..."

Which is why the Nicean weapon platform was where it was now rather than where it had been then. The White Nile had come in at full combat speed - which was 'plaid' with at least two expletives in front of it - and aiming right for the center of the ring. Chalk that up to Commander Huang's intuition, but that had put it effectively 'inside' the ring's firing arcs. Almost as soon as she'd come out of faster-than-light, she'd spit a volley of torpedoes out of her launchers and these had surrounded the ring by virtue of the cruiser's spherical launcher coverage. Then they and the ring had disappeared while the 'Nile had curved away towards the platform's fire control center.

That would be a story in itself, but that would be told at the Admiral's next stop and so the Chief Engineer picked up where he hadn't left off, "...which is that they can't engage inside a pinched cylinder. So they have to rely on other rings and ships for in-close engagement. Which explains why they are oriented the way they are," he said, toggling a control. The window 'changed', now showing a series of rings that were unrealistically close but all 'facing' outward.

"How fast can they turn?"

"Slow. Not fast at all. The shape is wrong for any kind of rapid change in orientation. They'd tear themselves apart;" A finger went up and he moved it down, a scroll of numbers and designations following along for her to look at. "Surface shear. And they'd throw those accelerators out of alignment. Good chance that if they exceeded this," he poked at a particular number, stopping the scroll and highlighting the entry, "They'd blow a hole right through the outer wall from a misaligned coil. They have some mitigation measures in place - the coils can move physically, and can be magnetically adjusted - but they can't go too far. Physics is a bitch."

Janice answered with a dark smile, "So am I. What this means is that there's a linchpin to each system's defenses. Take out that one ring, at the right time, and the rest of them won't be able to cover each other as effectively. It won't be as simple as sweeping them up in a circle - more like the Seven Bridges of Königsberg - but it is there..."

[Sunset]

Strategic Command Center, RDF-Vigilant, Underway to the Ethirelin System... Nineteen Minutes After Republic Date 176.197.602...

"...destroyed, per Admiral Campion-Eterna's orders. The engineering team on-site grabbed anything of further interest and sapping charges were laid. Both the items of interest and the prisoners are being held aboard CORE V, which has relocated along with Task Force Snake Clan," Commander Reynolds finished to the apparent satisfaction of Grand Admiral Erriki; "Good. And the raid?"

"We're watching both the system and local Nicean activity closely. They dispatched a scout ship to a location several light-hours out from where CORE V had been stationed but otherwise they've been busy with clean-up. The active VDA did quite a number on their orbital infrastructure across the system. The downside of automated construction and maintenance facilities is that the VDA didn't have any qualms about excessive civilian casualties so it's looking pretty bad up there..."

A touch of a hidden control and he showed off a remote image of one of the targeted worlds, "This is from the VDA outside the terminal shock boundary. Either they haven't picked it up or they're busy with other problems."

The image showed the greater curve of a planet, blue and green and yellow with huge splotches of gray that had to be the sprawl of enormous cities here and there. Above them was the faint glow of atmosphere and above that was the remains of what had once likely been a reasonably impressive orbital construction and manufacturing infrastructure. Now there was mostly debris; shattered stationed, drifting hulks, and a thin band of smaller objects that had formed up at the equator. Moving in and around all this were ships of various vintages and purposes, though some were obviously engaged in tasks normally unsuited to them.

"I'd say the latter; that scout ship suggests they know what they are doing. The nearby systems buttoned up tight as soon as we hit but here we gave them a nice Kessler Syndrome haircut. They lost a lot of their satellite coverage and anything that was moderately stationary is dead. Our estimation is that actual casualties will be in the low thousands - we're looking to our intelligence assets on the ground to confirm that."

"And what's the status of that deployment?" Erriki asked, prompting a change in imagery. This time the sphere was surrounded by hundreds of smaller panels, each showing a live feed from somewhere. Most were close to the ground though others were zipping through the air.

"Again - good. The strikes against their orbital infrastructure provided good cover for IntelX insertions. We've got animals on the ground all over the place. Intel is putting together cultural stuff right now. One thing we have noticed is a distinct lack of Nalari. Slaves. This is one of their core systems - a minor one, admittedly - but right away we'd expect to see more but we're not. Intel is working up a briefing on that."

"The prisoners Zero Div took should be able to shed some light on that."

"If we can crack them, yes Ma'am. As I said - they're being held on CORE V. Intel has advised that they wait until we get a good read on their culture so right now it's just 'name-rank-and serial number'. We'll leave the bagpipes and lutefisk for later..."

[Sunset]

Post-Secondary Applications Division, Special Projects Wing, CRUX I Deep Space Outpost, Ares Cluster, Somewhere in the River of the Heavens... Republic Date 176.238.164...

"...too big?" the technician asked, his footsteps activating the sliding door in front of him in that oft-used replay of a classic scene. "What do you mean, 'too big'?"

The second stopped for a moment as the next pair split down the middle, large hasps 'clicking' open before retracting into the panel itself and each half sliding up or down as per their personal preference, "What do you mean, 'too big'?"

The first shrugged, "They said they were too big. Well, not too big for some things. Just too big for other things. I'm not going to object... Are you?"

"Well... No. Did you stop by your quarters? More like a suite at the Excelsior..."

The next - and hopefully last - set of doors broke up into a hexagon pattern, each flipping over in place to disappear completely.

At least it was tidy.

"...is that even a real hotel?"

Again with the shrugging. Clearly the author shouldn't have late-night ideas. Too bad for you suckers. Anyway; "I don't know, but this place is five star. There's an open shower with a soaking tub in the guest bath. Oh - and there's a guest bath."

"...which you'll never get to use," his new nemesis finished as they entered polite behavior range of the lettered academic whose lab this now was. That didn't stop the first trying to kill the second with his mind, but fortunately the new CRUX-Class Outposts had excellent D-Wave dampening fields or else the lab space might have acquired a new coat of paint in 'brain matter gray'.

"Doctor," the first said with a saintly smile, the second following up with something that might have sounded nicer if it hadn't been ground out from between clenched teeth. "You needed some able-bodied assistance?"

"Hmm? Yes! I mean... I'm not a Doctor. I have an ENG, not a PHD. Call me 'Earl'..." she put out a hand. "And yes - I wanted some assistance setting up this test rig," she nodded over her own handshake to what they had both mistaken for some kind of artistic take on a wall but was in fact a huge number of individual hexagonal containers, stacked up exceedingly neatly so they very much resembled a wall.

"Earl?"

"Short for 'Early'," the Engineer explained. "My mom was, so I am," she grinned, the freckles on her nose wrinkling. "But you can call me 'Earl'. Fits better with the overalls."

"Alright, Earl. Ted," he pointed to the other fellow, "And Larry. That's me. What are we helping you set up today?"

"Ah! Well, you'd probably be interested, right? Or at least might find it interesting to know why you're going to all this trouble?" They looked at each other and nodded; "Yep;" "Sure."

One of the containers - and that should really have been a big clue as to what they were in for - was open on the bench in front of her and she swung it around to face them. Whatever was inside, it didn't look like much - just a black capsule with a neat seam down the longitudinal and another around what might have been a cap at one end. The bad end, as it turned out.

"So what we have here," she started at the other end so as to make the big reveal all the better, "is a standard twenty-kay-gee reactionless drive. That is, it weighs twenty kilograms. Someone's really brilliant on the ol' naming methodology tonight. That's hooked to a battery pack here," she pointed, though it was hard to say to what since that portion of the case was as featureless as Ted and Larry. "Which also supplies power to a matrix sensor package here," she pointed just a little further up. "And this single-use FTL drive. Both of which interact with this network communications and targeting node..."

"...and can talk to this conversion warhead here," she finished, pointing at the bad end.

Both technicians jumped slightly.

"Conversion warhead..?" they echoed each other; "Is it live," Ted asked and then Larry followed with; "Fuck that - is it armed?"

"Umm - duh? Didn't you two have a conversation about 'too big' on the way here? That's kinda the point of these small outposts. So we don't blow up (any more) big ones..."

"What do you mean, 'any more' - and how did you manage to put parenthesis in there?"

"...umm... Anyway, I call it 'BEARTRAP'. It is a fusion of a TRIPWIRE array and a VDA. Which is a Very Dangero..."

Ted interrupted her, "Yeah, we get that part. So you're saying 'don't drop them'. And where are we putting them?"

She pointed to an airlock, "Outside. The idea is that BEARTRAPs will act kinda like minefields, kinda like strategic weapons, and kinda like a big ol' nightmare 'fuck you' to anyone we might get pissed off at. The networked matrix sensors will look for anything in a particular engagement zone that looks like something we don't like and they'll get a warhead to the face. Or several, depending on the target in question."

"And how do we deploy them safely?" Larry asked, looking for anything that looked like a safety and finding none.

"...underhand lob..?"

[Sunset]

The Secretary-General's Office, RDF-Unconquered Sun, Chains of Jade Orbit, Ares Super-Cluster... Republic Date

"...why now? Because the calculations have changed, Doctor Kaerren," Erika answered, her fingers steepled as she looked across the open expanse of her desk to the blue and white Esti'Ilwe sitting across from her. The avian-humanoid did not look all together comfortable; perhaps it was the unfamiliar seating or perhaps more reasonably the subject matter but there was nothing to be done but continue.

"And what are those changes?"

Again, she sounded anxious but this too was strange. On almost the same day that those Esti'Ilwe who had survived their own government's attempt to murder them through sabotage had arrived on the planet below, she'd been agitating for something to be done about that government. And something had - intelligence operations had been launched and tiny budges had been made towards destabilizing it until the analysis showed that this would result in a bloodbath nine times out of ten. So they'd stopped, waited, and watched.

Until now.

"Information we have suggests that an entity known as the 'Welded' is actively operating near the Esti System. Are you aware of the Welded?"

Kaerren shook her head; a Human gesture she'd picked up. Chains of Jade was a pleasant but out-of-the-way world and it was thus the perfect site for a lot of marginal populations - rescues, resurrections, recoveries - to make a second start of it. That also meant those populations also got a lot of exposure to outside cultures with those of Earthly derivation being the most dominant. This in turn meant that cultural assimilation mostly went in one direction - towards Sol.

"I'll have a briefing ready for you, but the basics are that they - it - are religious fanatics who seek to join biological and cybernetic life and then bring it into communion with itself. Thus the Welded. They mostly operate through infiltration and subversion but one of their victims got off a 'last message' warning and that pretty much blew their cover."

Erika swiveled her chair to the side and Kaerren followed her as a holographic 'screen' flared into life off the side of the Secretary-General's desk. The recording showed a similarly Avian being and with both paying attention the recording played and the Tezekian's warning was issued once again. When it was done, the two turned back to each other while the last image stayed frozen in place.

"Frankly, the Welded are of little threat to the Republic. But they are a threat to the Esti'Ilwe - just the kind of low-hanging fruit they would love to pick. All it would take is the smallest infection to take the entire system and that's billions of lives lost. So there's the calculations, Doctor. Intervene now and there's the possibility of war that will kill millions. Don't intervene and there's the good possibility that a Welded infection will kill everyone."

"We do have several useful factors in our favor if we act now - and one of those factors is you, Doctor..." Erika trailed off, looking expectantly at her guest.

"Me?"

"Yes - you're recognizable. You were a leading voice in the scientific community, and the experiment that resulted in your apparent 'death' was well-followed. If you show up, along with some of the other members of your crew, and happen to have a fleet of helpful aliens at your back... Well, that all makes sense, doesn't it?" she stared at the Doctor over laced fingers. "Ideally, you'd come in and topple the military government in a popular uprising. Institute a democratic government, put everything right, and then return to your work. Which is a tad bit unrealistic..."

Kaerren nodded, "There would probably be war."

"That's the most likely scenario, yes. It isn't a pleasant thing, but the analysts think that if you're 'in charge' and we present this as a liberation from the military government - along with the evidence our intelligence activities have gathered regarding their malfeasance - it would most likely result in a short, sharp event with relatively few casualties. Compared to a Welded infiltration where everyone dies. We have the material resources to make it happen and so the question is - are you willing to take on that role..?"

[Sunset]

Induction Day, Defense Force Training Academy 421, Haec Island, The Caolin Archepelago, Yendaf, The Uliav System... Republic Date 176.253.803...

"...I still feel bad about deceiving them like that, but..." the blonde woman paused and pushed her coffee cup around on the table in front of her. "They weren't going to let me live. I was a threat - well, they thought I was," she answered his question before he could ask it. "I'm not, of course. But I couldn't be controlled and they were in a time and place where if it couldn't be controlled, it had to be destroyed. Just too risky. I understood that. So when the capsule wouldn't take me home, I faked my death and found a way off-world. Alone. Then I wound up here."

The gray-faced man across from her remained silent for a minute, absorbing her story. While he waited life seemed to pass both by; it was the first day for both the new class and the new Academy here on Yendaf and both cadets, staff, and workers passed by in a steady stream on their way to here or there. An occasional one or two stopped at the sidewalk cafe but very few stayed with most content to grab a coffee or the similarly harsh local equivalent and then leave to go about their business once again.

"What about you, 597?" Kaul'i asked finally. "How'd you end up here?"

"I volunteered," and he followed that with a soft laugh as the quizzical expression crossed her face. "No - well, yes. I volunteered, but that was after my own adventure. A Defense Force vessel stumbled across one of our kind in the remains of our home..."

That was a similar start. She too had been discovered in such a manner, though it had instead been by a group of mercenaries hiding out in the jumble of broken geography that had once been the planets Afoam & Ibari.

"...and when Captain Ria was tasked with discovering the fate of the Suwen, he referred her to me. I've become something of an expert on our creator since then. After completing the assignment, Bar Harbor returned to its regular duties and I considered my future. We held a conclave and decided that we would accept the Republic's offer of membership and thus protection and I was offered a leading position in the new government but..."

"You've had an adventure," she smiled. "Like me. That's what we were built for and now that you've got a taste of it again - you want more."

"They would call it finding your purpose in life. We were built with one - and a fair number of our kind were set upon by their... 'our' now, I suppose... Our intelligence services. And most accepted, happy to be restored to their purpose. The same offer was put to me as well and I nearly accepted but I wanted more variety."

The other shape-shifter looked around, "You can't get more variety than this."

Organized into a larger cluster of similarly positioned planets and systems, Yendaf had only been a part of the Republic for less than a year but here at least the face of the population had changed. Haec Island was a tourist destination well-known for the enormous canyon that split it nearly in two and the wind-driven sports enthusiasts that flocked to it. Where most of the planet was still pre-Industrial cities, the island was crawling with people and faces from all over the Republic and beyond. From where they sat one could pick out some twenty and her own count was at more like thirty-something.

"Only by getting out there," he agreed. "So I enlisted. And you? Your former life as a mercenary?"

"Exactly. Figured it was either that or rob a bank. Again."

A voice came on above their heads and both looked up to follow the words as the loudspeaker announced the imminent arrival of the induction ceremony. That was the signal for both to push themselves away from the table and rise, he following her as she returned her cup to the counter and then as they both headed towards the campus quad and their formal entrance into the Defense Force.

"Again?"

"Again. Actually, that would have been the sixth time. My old crew... They really weren't the best mercenaries, but they were really good bank robbers..."

[Sunset]

RDF-Ojeni, GEC-204986, Just Beyond the Leki Cluster, Southeastern Beta Quadrant... Republic Date 175.947.302... Just After Breakfast...

"...so, can we talk to them yet?" Captain Blaine asked, her first question after walking onto the bridge directed to Lieutenant Yu, who was also sliding into what was now her seat at the communications console. Around the room the same actions were being repeated as third shift - graveyard, as it was still called by some - gave up their stations to their first shift replacements. Some would head straight to bed, others to a few hours of relaxation and entertainment. However they chose to spend it, they now had point-six-six of a day ahead of them before they would again replace Commander Sloan's second shift.

The Ensign who was on his way out paused next to the console and for a few seconds the two conferred, one over the other's shoulder; "We can. Actually, we've been able to talk to them for a good while - they're putting out a lot of chatter and the difficulty was in sorting it all out. There's forty-seven different languages and dialects in common use as well as a number of different communications protocols but Ensign Xesiata sorted everything out last night. It looks like we're in for an interesting time," she added with a mysterious and mischievous grin.

"...good morning..;" that was from the other Yu - Yu Two - who headed straight for the coffee machine rather than her (already empty) place at Navigation. "What's up?"

"Apparently Third Shift discovered all of their secrets last night but they're unwilling to share..."

"...'yet', Captain - 'yet'," Lieutenant Yu replied, nestling into her chair and re-configuring the station to her preferences with a touch of a button. "The closest ships are still a few hours out. At this point, with their equipment, we'd still have a few seconds delay."

"Out with it then. What's going to make our morning so entertaining?"

"And ruin the surprise?" the woman returned, apparently aghast at the notion.

"Yes, 'and ruin the surprise!' If it wasn't important enough to let it sit through third shift, why do you think I'll be shocked now instead of waking me up in the middle of the night with whatever's going on?"

"Fine." It was a pout but a good-nature'd one and Yu turned to her console and began entering commands. The central holo-sphere - already marked out with a representation of the system and the locations of the various ships and other objects of interest - began to light up with indicators as she worked. "So what we have are two - three, really - groups. The third;" apparently indicated in yellow; "are either automated vessels or those that are just going to keep doing what they are doing. They know we're here and they just don't care. The other two is where things get interesting!"

"That was my guess as well," Kami said dryly as Sub-Commander Dren'Eth Kennet joined them, taking up his usual spot next to Lieutenant Kershaw. "So what's their deal?"

Across the holo-sphere a broad semi-circle of red lit up, individual ships picked out against the emptiness of space.

"These..," she paused dramatically, "Are protesters. Peaceful protesters," she added hastily. "They've formed a movement to protest our arrival and the government's response to it. They've decided that they will surround our ship and follow it and do the usual protester things..."

An image of a ship appeared on the main display and as one might guess, it could be interpreted to be hung out with signs and slogans though these had been marked on the hull rather than hammered into the lawn with a heavy mallet. For those familiar with the sport, it gave something of the impression of a rally car.

"Safely, though. They're organizing publicly - and with government support - so they have rules about how far apart ships have to stay, what frequencies they can use - all very orderly."

Kami cocked her head to the side and stared at the ship, "So wait - they're protesting our arrival. Not much we can do there, of course. But they're also protesting the government's response with government support? So far this sounds like a pretty nice place! So I'm gonna guess the blue ships are from the government?"

"...I was going to go with green. But yes;" the sphere lit up with another cluster of markings, this time with green triangles indicating those ships that were apparently under government control. A few were headed their way - and those that were were out in front of everyone else - but most were circulating near the various planets and marked infrastructure.

"And what's their deal?"

"They are coming to capitulate..."

[Sunset]

RDF-Ojeni, GEC-204986, Just Beyond the Leki Cluster, Southeastern Beta Quadrant... Republic Date 175.947.323... A Dropped Jaw Later...

"...surrender?" Dren'Eth leaned over, double-checking at Lieutenant Kershaw's board what he suspected in his head. "We are not at war with them. You are correct, Lieutenant Yu," he murmured over his shoulder, "This should be interesting."

But Captain Blaine was up and out of her chair, "Yeah, what gives?"

"I'll let them explain it," Yu answered, turning to where Ensign Xesiata had settled into the spare console next to the comms station. "Xesieta found this news broadcast in all the clutter and it does a pretty good job of explaining things... Here," she prompted and he queued it up on the main display so everyone could turn and watch.

The scene as projected on the main display was familiar yet foreign with a pair of news anchors - one sitting, one standing - on either side of a stretched-tall floating hexagonal screen. They stood and sat in front of a wall split horizontally with attractive wood paneling on the bottom, a stylized nature scene in glass on the top, and what was likely some kind of seal or logo on either side of the floating screen. The one sitting had a computer or at least a reader of some kind floating in front of her while the other was holding a controller of some kind and they were looking both at the camera and back and forth at each other as they talked. This was the bridge crew's first chance to take in their hosts and so for a moment what was said went ignored while they looked them over.

They were broadly humanoid and of a same height - though what that height was was impossible to tell based on the screen - and covered in medium-length fur. Long ears stuck out to each side giving their heads a broadly triangular appearance while their bodies were sleek and slender. A slightly elongated nose or muzzle showed a flash of a single large chisel-shaped tooth at the front and their eyes were wide with oval-shaped and brilliantly colored irises with the female having glowing orange and the male mismatched blue and white. On each a strip of white or tan fur ran from just between the eyes down their neck to disappear under the matching robe-like outfits both wore. Their most interesting feature though was their arms - or rather a second set of arms. These were more likely and properly 'feeders' as each sprouted just where the collarbone would be and ended in three tri-symetrical fingers. As they spoke, these would move around to occasionally emphasize or add meaning to something they said and captions - added by the Ensign - clarified these where the meanings were known.

"...consultation with the Contemplative has rendered the unanimous opinion that immediate capitulation to the aliens is the course of action most likely to result in the continuation of our species. The Executive Council - in a five-seven vote - has taken the advice of the Contemplative and made it policy with representative vessels dispatched to treat with the aliens;" an image of Ojeni appeared in the center screen while the faces and names of what was presumably the Executive Council along with their votes scrolled by below it, "and inform them of the Counsel's decision. As a point of peaceful dissent, the two Councillors who voted against the adoption of the Contemplative's advice have formed a non-violent protest organization that will also contact the aliens and provide an alternative path forward..."

Xesiata paused the recording at a gesture from Yu and she explained, "This is a government broadcast, if you were wondering. The Contemplative is..."

"From what I gathered, they're a group of Artificial Intelligences," Xesiata said, picking up where the Lieutenant had left off. "They don't 'run things' like we see a lot of times - they're high-level analysis. My guess is that they take in huge amounts of data and look for trends, patterns, and then game out possibilities. These opinions or options are then given to the Executive Council and they make the final decision on what the government will do."

"So who's this 'Executive Council'?"

"Based on other broadcasts, the Executive Council is made up of the 'chief executives' elected from nine of the system's governments. There was mention of an election in another broadcast - three were just replaced. The Contemplative is actually made up of a number of different high-level AI - some are government controlled, some are from private corporations, some are from institutions. Membership in the Contemplative is based on some kind of 'rating' but I haven't been able to clear up how that works yet. Or how many there are..."

[Sunset]

The Mount Kidni Observatory, Fer Gul Region, The Great Principality of Don A Lucc, The Planet Rins... Republic Date 182.723.995...

"...of course the math works out," Vermir gestured dismissively to the scattering of papers, equations, pencils, and - yes - even the odd folding of origami scattered across the workbench. "But math is not reality, now is it son?"

That it was his own work laying there without a solution was all the more frustrating. A moment of inspiration had led to many sleepless days of laboring over numbers and symbols in his personal study and grumpy nights watching over Killermi and mediating disputes between him, Finin, and the other few astronomers who shared the observatory. Though the initial objects of their affection was now gone, there were still mysteries to be solved regarding both circumstances. This meant that he had blessed few moments to work on his theory at the office and thus could only find the peace of mind to do so at home - and again, the lack of sleep making his office work all the more difficult.

It was a nasty cycle that seemed like it would only break with his mind.

"But math is a reflection of reality, isn't it?" Killermi asked, his own hands busy doodling a meaningless scrawl on the margins of the Director's masterwork.

"Of course, my boy! Of course... One and one will always equal two, but in the physical world something is often more than the sum of its parts and other things are worthless even when only one of those parts is removed! This..." he gestured again to one of the folded paper models, numbers marked on the multitude of sides to help him keep his place in the process, "...is still far more substantial than what the math allows. If you were start a journey, travel half the distance in one day, then travel half that distance the next day, half that the next, and so on - would you ever reach your destination?"

"Of course!"

"Then try it," the Director challenged, walking across the observatory floor to stand near the door and quite opposite the telescope where Finin was working and the workbench curving around the raised platform where Killermi waited. "Come here - half the distance of the time before."

It took quite a while - a time that the other astronomers put to good use now that Killermi (and to a lesser extent, the Director) were distracted with each other - but eventually the two ended up near toe-to-toe.

"And so here I am," Killermi declared brightly, putting out his hand and the Director swatting it away; "But no, you have not! You are still that much away," he held up his fingers to the slightest pinch.

"Well, yes - but effectively I am here," the younger man stepped up and down, demonstrating his physical proximity to the Director. "And it would not take but the smallest step to cross the distance."

"Yes, but it would still be something - that... 'Thing'," he pointed to the wall and the photo of the... Whatever it 'had' been... that had been hanging there since they'd returned from the Capital Region. "That thing managed to make it nothing. There was no last step equal to the one before!"

"So it isn't physically possible."

Vermir thrust his hands into his pockets, sighed, and then stalked over to stand in front of the photograph, his eyes searching it for some clue.

"No. And yet - it must be..."

His eyes fell on the line of strange alien writing that wound around the object - if writing it was. They were garbage, as far as everyone who had tried to decipher them could determine. Meaningless - at least not without more examples to compare and correlate them w...

The Director's jaw worked for a second and he spun, "Quickly, boy! Bring me the folder! All of them! Every photograph we have!" Rushing to the table, he swept his work to the side, even ignoring the mess when several of the folded pieces fell to the floor and were promptly trampled underfoot by the returning junior astronomer. A mere minute later and the photographs were scattered across the space in a semi-orderly arrangement that he rapidly improved, swapping picture for picture until they were in a particular order.

"Here!" he exclaimed, pointing to a particular patch of a particular photograph. "Interesting - very interesting..."

"What?" Finin had given up his place at the eyepiece to descend from the platform and join them at the table. "You heard we've lost another one?"

"Another what?" Vermir asked, the distraction in his voice clear as he didn't bother to look up at his friend's question.

"Another star. Disappeared - completely. Haven't had one in..."

"Mmm - three months, two weeks, one day. It was in the papers this morning," he waved the distraction away. "Interesting, but here - look," Vermir swept his finger around the photograph again, the thick digit coming to rest at the same particular place. "What is happening there?"

"Well - it is folding in on itself. I think you've made that clear!"

"Exactly! Exactly! But look what is happening here," he referred his friend from the current photograph to the next. "These markings - that we assume are writing of some kind. What do you see here?"

"They come together. Interesting," but his tone was as dismissive as the Director's had been just previously. "But so? When a piece of paper is folded the two sides naturally meet."

"Exactly! Precisely! When you half the distance every time, you never manage to actually arrive! But what we have here is a change in the equations! It is not now half, but one!"

"I... I'm not sure how that helps," Finin confessed, scratching at his brow. "But you know the math far better than I. Does this allow one to somehow travel faster-than-light?"

"Perhaps... Perhaps!" A pencil was in his hand and with no spare paper on hand, he began to scribble out the equations in his head directly on the table. Distracted by his furious movement, he did not notice Finin calling Killermi's attention to this until the latter slipped a fresh sheet retrieved from somewhere under his pencil. "Ah, thank you."

As his hand absentmindedly retraced his writing, his mind churned over the implications and here and there he murmured as he worked, "...but here you'd need... and what about... no, this would... Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes." He stood straight and looked around the table to where the other astronomers had now also gathered. "Yes, it does. In theory, of course - but again, math reflects reality. It would require many things we do not have. New ways of generating electricity. But math reflects reality - it must be possible because they," he gestured to the photographs, "have already done it. And now we know how..."

[Sunset]

Grandpa Lektor's Apartment, Par Par City, Cr'Emith Prime, Somewhere in the Leki Cluster... Republic Date 176.213.118...

"...seen 'em? Maybe - but just as much chance that you have," the oldster answered, leaning forward in his chair to look between his visitors, his still-sharp eyes taking in every detail. "Could be I could be one of 'em and you'd never know - and I'd never tell you! Not much use to you, am I?"

He didn't give them even a moment to answer; "That's not the way the Hu'unya work. Not from when I was young. It was the name that was important and who you were with. Different names for different... Well - if you're rich, the name you're going to worry about is different than the name you don't want to hear when you're poor. And they might be the same person and they might not be. But there's every chance that the fellow who comes in and sits down next to you and says in a nice quiet tone that 'Denere' wants to talk to you could be Denere..."

"...now, if Denere is still alive, then I'd say you've got a problem," Lektor mused, looking past the two women to where his grandson stood at the back of the room, leaning up against the wall next to the door. "We probably killed him a dozen times. Or thought we did."

"Is it possible that someone else just took over the name?" Ivy asked. "A dozen times - you had to get him at least once."

"And we probably did," their host said with a soft shrug or the Anixtl equivalent there-of. "And maybe someone did. But that's a risk - a big one. If the Hu'unya came to you, it was with certainty. If Denere told you to do something, you did it - or else you'd be dead. If they couldn't keep the threat in their name..."

"'Your name is in the mouth of others - be sure it has teeth'," Ivy quoted. "Maxim 16."

"Exactly! Smart lady here... You married?"

"You asking?" she replied with a smile which earned her a laugh; "No - no. Too old for that," he shoo'ed the idea away. "Be a lucky... Anyway - yeah. Just that. It happened a few times too, and I hear that's how the Supreme Commander finally broke them. They couldn't carry out their threats and so their names weren't worth mentioning. At least until they talked to him and he told them what he wanted them to do. But now?"

"Would they go back to the old ways?" his grandson asked. "Or have they?"

"They have," Lektor said, as certain of that as anything before. "They have. Now, right now they're probably still sorting themselves out, but you'll start hearing names again. 'So-and-so' wants you to do this. And the first time someone doesn't do what so-and-so wants, they'll end up dead."

"Unless we can bring them back in," Ivy offered, a question mark just barely hanging on to the end of her statement.

"Maybe. Maybe. The Supreme Commander did it with lots of violence. A real blood-in-the-streets type, he was. Is? He's still passing out the orders, isn't he? But your... She's the big name now, isn't she? Must be a wonder, a woman who can order a man around..."

There was an uncomfortable silence broken finally by the Dwarf's question and one much to her liking, "How much blood?"

"What's that?" he asked, looking to her as she clenched a fist and massaged it with her other hand. "How much blood?"

"Ya. How much blood was in tha' streets? Ah lahk that idea. Might jus' get started today!"

"Well, it was after my time," he looked to his grandson and then back to her, "And before his, but my son told me they were bringing in bodies every day. Either someone in the Circle, someone who crossed them, or folks the Supreme Commander had gotten killed tryin' to make sure the Circle couldn't carry through. Thousands? Ah'n this was in jus' one city. Right now the Hu'unya are here," he pointed to the carpet. "But let them be and they'll be everywhere..."

[Sunset]

Breakfast, Grand Admiral David Edge's Office, Staging Area (Alpha), Deep Space, The Ares Local Cluster... Republic Date 176.278.800...

---

'Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.'
~Sun Tzu

---

"...Kathleen's birthday is coming up on Wednesday and we're going fishing. If Angelo would like to come along, we'd be glad to have him," David said, looking across the table to where Captain McFarlaine sat. Tucked into a comfortable corner of his office, the seating area was a frequent gathering place for staff meetings and bull sessions or - as with today - breakfast.

Which was just as much an excuse to keep up with his staff as it was to get those informal-but-formal but important things done at the start of the day.

"Fishing?" Beverly eyed him over the top of her tea, a scone in hand, "You're really putting your future son-in-law through the wringer. The closest I ever catch him to water is in the shower."

David grinned, "Kathy wasn't too thrilled with the idea either, but that's exactly the point. Marriage is about a lot more than waking up in the same bed together - they do that enough now. They've gotta be ready to do the pleasant and unpleasant things together. Anyway - we'll be going to her Uncle Ralph's cabin up on the lake. She might not like fishing, but her cousins will be there and it will be a chance for her to run her prize past her family."

"You realize this just means I'll have to cook up some manner of revenge?"

"...I've got one for you." This was Commander Jwayaa, a tall, brutal-looking Therian who sat on an ottoman at the end of the group, his thick tail sweeping out into the rest of the office. "My mate and I wouldn't mind a night out - they could watch our brood," he said with a viciously toothy smile.

"How many again?" the Grand Admiral asked. He knew the answer was between four and six but even four of the young Reptilians would be a handful; their's was a martial culture and even at this age they were already sparring. Otherwise known as fighting and rough-housing but with teeth and claws.

"Four;" he listed off their names. "They are just old enough to break things now."

"...I think I'll have to run that one past Donatella..;" his wife and an Italian by way of the Dominion with all that entailed.

Jwayaa laughed - or at least something that sounded related in some distant way to one - and leaned forward to take another treat, "I will understand if the smooth-skins do not accept. I would not accept but that they are my own brood!"

It was one of the most significant differences between the Grand Admiral's Command and, say, Fleet or Exploration. Most of the Planetary Command officers were assigned to stations, bases, and other similar facilities. Families were common as were officers on the verge of retirement - though that had certainly changed in the past few years - and so was fraternization between them. In a way, the Planetary Command served as the ultimate recruiting pool for the Defense Force with service seen as a family duty. Kathleen Edge would be a rarity in her family - as would Angelo. Both showed a strong preference towards civilian life while their siblings were already either enlisted or making their preparations for the attempt.

"Alright - enough chit-chat," the Grand Admiral decided, setting his cup down and straightening up in his chair. "Some business. BEARTRAP - the new hybrid array," he looked between them, checking for understanding and attention before continuing. "We're going to start deployment on two-eight-zero and I wanted to make sure you're all up to date in case something crosses your desk. BEARTRAP is something of a chimera between our existing TRIPWIRE arrays and a deployed VDA. We'll actually be deploying three variations which have been creatively dubbed 'Papa Bear', 'Mama Bear', and 'Baby Bear'."

"The smaller the bear, the larger the array," he explained further. "Baby Bears will be smaller as individual elements but larger in number, Mama Bear will be between the two, and Papa Bear will have the largest elements but the smallest numbers. They'll act as a connected Family with assets deployed appropriately per the threat detected. Now deployment is going to be interesting. They're going to be deployed by CORE Stations via their NEMESIS launchers just before they do one of their random re-positioning jumps - shoot'n'scoot. One Station, one system."

"Will every system get one?" Captain McFarlaine asked. "Every Triumvirate system that is? Sol?"

It was a useful question; the Alliance was active again - or more active, as there hadn't been any kind of official ending. And Sol... Well, Sol was...

"Sol is the exception. We've put the offer forward to the other member states but we're not firm there - the Kajali have indicated they will be doing their own deployment and we're still waiting for word from the others. Yet. So for now BEARTRAP will be deployed around every fully Republic star system. As I said - they'll be deployed via long-gun outside the target system. We expect that this might be picked up by some surveillance networks but this is a dick move - we'll be watching for those who get curious enough to go looking. Because the deployment will be staggered;" CORE Stations moved around essentially at random, both to keep their positions unknown and to keep their current operations something of a mystery for those few who could track their movements; "they should look essentially random."

"And the payloads will be moving fast - the individual elements are loaded into a 'bus' that will dump them into the deployed array..."

Commander Jwayaa interrupted with a question, "How many elements in each array?"

"It depends on the sub-array, as I said. Papa Bear has the least," he spun out a number with a bunch of zeroes behind it, "and Mama Bear and Baby Bear add one onto the the end. So... By the time anyone comes sniffing around - if they come sniffing around - they'll likely be long-gone. I would expect to anyone who can pick up these arrivals, they'll look like the kind of thing where someone doesn't particularly want to be seen arriving. Smugglers, pirates - that sort of thing. Maybe they'll be ignored, maybe they won't, but again - dick move. If someone shows up to investigate these out-of-system and thus outside of our territory arrivals we'll know that they're both capable of it and that they're looking our direction."

"As the arrays are deployed they'll go into a high-speed orbit outside the target system's terminal shock boundary. Papa, Mama, and Baby Bears will be staggered randomly so as to make them less predictable to a possible attacker and this will also allow the arrays to act as KKV swarms - not an optimal use, but it opens up additional options for the wartime commander. Of course, ideally they won't ever have to be used, but we're not in the business of preparing for peace..."

[Sunset]

RDF-Springbok, Lead Element of Task Force Chunky Salsa, Deep Space, Somewhere in Nicean Space... Republic Date 176.285.044... Lecture Mode [Engaged]...

It wasn't the smallest assault force in the history of space warfare but it might well have been somewhere in the running. Among the dozen ships that raced silently between the stars towards their chosen target, the Springbok was the largest and as a Resolution-Class Frigate not particularly intimidating as these things are often viewed. The rest were Opposition-Class Corvettes; small, nimble, and more engine than anything else.

"...everything laid in? Everything good?" Captain Brown asked, checking for himself as he looked over the shoulder of his helm officer. This would be his first combat command in quite a while and while he expected to do zero shooting the planning and the timing was - as we will see - everything; "Aye, Captain..."

Speaking of timing.

"Alright," Brown retreated to his own chair but instead of taking up his seat he stood next to it, entirely not at his ease as he watched the timers tick down at the bottom of the main screen. "So. One of the most important inventions necessary to successful space flight was the introduction of high precision timepieces. Not only do things move fast in space;" a star directly ahead was doing exactly that, rapidly growing larger as Task Force Chunky Salsa darted towards it at fantastic speed, "But by knowing the precise time one can keep track of where planets, stars - where all of it is. Of course, a clock doesn't just 'know' the time - you have to set it."

And that was the really important part.

The outer star system whipped past; planets blue and green and muddy brown. He'd chosen a course that took Sprinkbok and its companions within spitting distance of several major pieces of Nicean infrastructure and was thus sure to turn heads and throw up the appropriate alarms. Up ahead was the middle system - the junction between the outer system with its smattering of Jovian worlds and the Goldilocks Zone of the inner system. Here were the system's Defense Rings and thus Chunky Salsa's targets.

"In our tear-down of the Nicean Ring, we found what you might expect to find - encrypted communications, isolated sub-systems. And our prisoners assured us that all of those systems would be re-worked so as to harden them against future attacks. New encryption algorithms, new communications protocols - whatever they had to do to keep us out. They're not stupid - they knew that once we had physical access to the system all of its secrets were ours."

"But in war - like comedy... Timing is everything..."

All at once the ship came to a dead halt, the sickle-shaped crescent nearly touching one of the enormous Rings - at least on stellar terms. They were still hundreds of thousands of kilometres away and a precise number of them at that. A shot from the structure flashed past, then another and another, and Springbok turned as had been previously programmed - along with the rest of the Task Force at their respective Rings - and headed purposefully towards a new and specific destination.

"You see, we found a vulnerability. There's a clock on these things, you see - again, important so it knows where it is as well as where whatever it is shooting at is. The right time, a little math, and there you go. If you have the right time that is. You see, these clocks have a way to reset them remotely. Not set them," he clarified, "But reset them - and then they get a signal from a master timepiece in the system's military capital. And there's the vulnerability..."

There were no more shots and for a moment - just for a moment before the system's defenders showed up and tried to make them all dead - he had an opportunity to finish his explanation.

"When we came in the various control centers for the Rings sent firing instructions - where we were and when to shoot us. Those firing instructions were predicated on their timekeeping. But when we arrived, we sent the reset signal to the clocks on the Rings. That created a discrepancy - an opportunity. Because we were closer to the Ring than it was to its control center, our signal got there first and they didn't know about that discrepancy until it was too late. So the Ring fired using the coordinates provided modified by its own now reset clock. Coordinates we carefully chose so that when modified by said clock..."

He looked to the forward display to where an asteroid lay cracked in half like an egg, its contents spilling out to drift uncomfortably through the vacuum. Beyond it and in the far distance they could also see one of the other Rings, this one torn into several pieces.

"...they resulted in the Ring firing first on the other Rings and then on its own command center. Thanks to the speed of light, the shots from one Ring were just hitting the others when the correct time came through."

Which meant it was just about time for what ships the Niceans had in place to show up and get what revenge they could.

...which they did.

Or tried, as the 5th through 14th Combined Services Fleets dropped in on top of them and introduced them to the concentrated hate that was TYCS open-bore lineguns. Around the rest of the system things were busy as well as everything from red-and-gold to blue-silver-and-gray popped into existence. Dropships fell away and eager defenders suddenly realized what the words 'Super-Federal Military Alliance' meant...

[Sunset]

RDF-Dogana, In Orbit of Falk's Gambit, Near the Artifact Union, The Monoceros Ring, At the Distant Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy... Republic Date 176.291.090...

"...it looks like one of those finger trap novelties - like they pass out at kid's parties," Admiral Falk mused, studying the image projected across the wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling display that ran across the front of Dogana's bridge as she stood only a pace or so away. "Any response yet?"

This was not directed at the screen itself but rather the communications officer, a perky young woman who reminded the Admiral of herself when she was that age and ready to fight smile & skill for that next promotion. She could almost hear her ponytail 'swish' as she swung her chair around, carefully neutral expression in place and perfect posture ready - except for one hand that still remained on the console in case something came in while she spoke; "No, Admiral. No response from the i'Halalaentariel. Grand Admiral Erriki has been appraised and is monitoring events as well..."

Useful that last bit, of course, but Admiral Falk didn't expect to need anything from Fleet. Whatever the i'Halalaentariel's answering machine was up to, it likely didn't involve the Republic of Sunset - at least not directly. She wouldn't call their relationship with the Avatar 'friendly' but open to communications during events of mutual concern?

Sure.

Whatever was going on had begun late the previous evening - Republic time - with the arrival in short order of several WarSpheres. This itself wasn't that odd - as a bunch they weren't that active but there was the occasional coming and going. The interesting thing was that these particular 'Spheres - similar in appearance to another toy, the Hoberman Sphere - were 'new'. And that they had somewhere sustained damage. New in that the Republic and the sensor platforms set up for just that purpose had not seen them depart the expanding helicoid artifact known as 'Union' and damaged as in heavily, though all were some of the largest examples yet seen. They had all immediately broken up, their individual segments quickly lost in the larger mega-structure, and then...

The whole thing had begun to shift.

That had been the cue for the monitoring officer to summon her from her bed and for a monitoring alert to be set to Fleet and spread out across the Republic's friends and allies. The i'Halalaentariel were up to something and there was the sure bet that the Krȃng were involved. Her gut instinct was that this was something bad - something bad enough to send a handful of the toughest warships she'd ever seen running to safe harbor and then to send one of the largest constructs she'd ever seen into what darn well looked like panicked metamorphosis.

"But more complex," her sensor officer agreed. Somewhere behind her he had an image of that very toy up on his screen as well as some more utilitarian industrial examples of braided metal sheathing. "It is a mesh instead of wires;" reasonable when the basic shape you had to work with looked like a Q-Tip cut in half; "but with the same expansion and contraction dynamics."

"Keep your eyes open for a pair of giant fingers," she ordered dryly.

"Yes, Ma'am..."

That shape though; it reminded her of something. They weren't done yet - the last few DNA-like segments of Union were still falling apart as they watched. Individual segments either dropped away to cross between the two alone or long whip-like fragments swung away to latch on and fall smoothly into place. Given the tight mass of the helicoid, the resulting tapering tube was many times the apparent volume of the first though less complex as a structure.

"Does that remind you of the topology of a wormhole?"

"You think it's a gate?" Commander Aendem asked, quickly typing the suggested shape into the console on the end of his armrest. If it was important enough to wake the Admiral, it was important enough to pull her XO away from whatever he'd been doing and so the Ju-Docri sat at his place next to the captain's chair, two arms at his side while another raised a sandwich and the last slid over the glass screen.

"Could be;" though the i'Halalaentariel version of the Quantum FrameShift Spindle was even faster than the Republic's own - because they'd 'stolen' it - and the arriving WarSpheres had been using it when they'd rocketed into the system. Given the amount of time it was taking to reconfigure Union, it would have simply been faster to break up into individual 'Spheres and travel to wherever it might be that way...

"...unless they're getting ready to catch," she said at nearly the same time as the sensor officer spoke up with; "Maybe they're expecting something? There's no sign of wormhole formation though, and it isn't a capacity we've seen them use in the past."

The Krȃng though.

They had used an extensive network of gates to connect their spread-out empire - the natural result of being built in the diffuse stretches of the Monoceros - and that had been one of the sources of their eventual destruction. But this wasn't the Krȃng. This was the i'Halalaentariel and while when the second acted the first were almost always involved, they shied away from technology associated with them.

It was time to sit back and wait. With any further speculation kept to herself, Admiral Falk retreated to her chair and sat back to watch out of one eye while using her undesired waking hours to get some lingering work done. On the screen it was nearly an hour until the process was apparently complete and with the last segments in position she closed what she had been working on to pay closer attention.

"It's moving;" that much was easy to tell, though anything other than the obvious change in orientation was impossible to tell against the distinct vastness of space. The only other reference point in the system was the star itself and the camera angle on the screen swung around at someone's command to show the new structure relative to this. Since the distant orb was now growing larger, it was clear that the construct was headed for the star - though not to what purpose. It still retained the middle-tapered shape of one of the mentioned party favors left unattended though the axis had shifted so that it was pointed now straight at the approaching sphere.

"Now it looks like a barrel," she said, sitting forward in her seat. "Where's it pointed?"

Numbers and lines popped up on the screen around it as the sensor operator plugged in the equations to answer the question and then the holosphere in the center lit up, showing the great disc of the galaxy with both their own and the artifact's current position as nothing more than a tiny little marker on the very indistinct edge. A line of color shot out from the spot and the galaxy shrank, answering her question before it was answered, "Something extra-galactic?"

"Or something in another galaxy. It is pointing towards where M33 - the Triangulum galaxy - would be if we could see the light from it instantly."

The hologram stopped moving and labels popped up, showing the distance to Triangulum as well as other possibly important numbers. What wasn't shown was the Admiral's next question; "I don't suppose we can tell exactly what it is pointed at? Not at this distance." She didn't even need to turn to hear the silent shake of the man's head. "No. And we don't know that it is a gun, either. They could be sun-diving."

While a somewhat rare form of faster-than-light travel, it was not unknown to either the Republic or the Admiral. The enormous mass of a star made some methods of singularity generation far easier with the caveat that in order to utilize the resulting transit corridor one had to steer one's ship directly at it. Thus there was always a bit of uncertainty involved, compounded with the fact that stars were not as static as they might appear from the comfortable environment of a planetary atmosphere. Occasionally unexpected shit happened - bad shit.

But no; "They're slowing." And quick; "They've stopped."

And they could also see what else was happening. One end of the cylinder - the end facing the star - had retained its funnel shape while the other end had begun to shift into something that looked like a nest of teeth. Individual pyramids sprouted from the inside of the cylinder until the end facing them looked like the business end of something that had come swimming up from the depths of the deepest abyss.

"Gravitational manipulation," again the Lieutenant at the sensor station called out, swapping out the image in the center 'sphere for a mathematical representation of the on-going event. "They're star-lifting."

Also not unknown to the Republic, though they had essentially skipped that step directly to drawing power and substance from the totality of a star. Drawn up by the inevitable pull of gravity pumps, the captured material could be used for energy generation or as raw material for a variety of processes. Given the accustomed way in which they'd usually seen it, the next guess was both expected and wrong, "They're making more ships?"

That would explain where the i'Halalaentariel had made their vessels - and perhaps it still did - but the next few seconds corrected the Admiral's guess; "Spindle formation..." Lightning began to leap from the tips of one pyramid to another, spreading back from the closer end until it met as a solid sheet the rising blob of star-stuff. In an instant, both surged forward together and by the time they had left what was now clearly a barrel the lightning had left the walls to fully envelop the extracted plasma and then both were gone - vanished from the screen in a flash of purple-blue that left a searing after-image on the screen.

"How much..." but she was cut off, "Another lift..." Commander Aendem warned.

Again and again, great patches of the star's surface were lifted into the breech to be sent blazing past into the unknown until dozens had been fired. When it stopped it was as though a switch had been thrown and the artifact moved forward, away from the star as enormous patches of the cylinder began to peel away. One after another these folded in on themselves, their shape changing until it became the more familiar volume of an i'Halalaentariel WarSphere. Much faster than the first process, this took only a few minutes until there was an enormous armada of the craft spread out and the Admiral had remembered what her interrupted question had been.

"How much of it? How much of the star did they just fire? And where? Are we tracking it?"

"We're tracking it," the Lieutenant answered, "But we'll never catch it. Those shots were fast - easily ten times faster than their standard drive;" which was again much faster than the Republic's version of that same drive. "How much..." he read off a number followed by a more useful number, "...which is about one-hundred thousandth of the star's mass!"

Or was. Admiral Falk's next command was quick, "We're going to have to! You don't go firing a gun that big at nothing!"

On the screen the armada had been motionless until this point but then as the Admiral tried to contemplate her next move they sprang into action, each one zipping forward to rapidly encase itself in the same sheath of discharged lighting before disappearing in a collective rush. Within seconds the star now diminished was alone except for one - the largest - that paused and turned on its axis seemingly to face directly towards them. Then it too vanished in an elongated streak as the communications officer called out from behind her.

"Incoming transmission, Admiral! From Avatar i'Grathenial; 'Answer our calls'..."

[Sunset]

The Mount Kidni Observatory, Fer Gul Region, The Great Principality of Don A Lucc, The Planet Rins... Republic Date 182.801.040...

"...and so I was wondering if I might be of service to you, Sir?" the young man asked, hat literally in hand as he stood in front of the Director's desk, Vermir staring at him over the top of the newspaper he held sharply in front of him.

Judging just on his appearance alone he didn't seem worth very much - if anything at all. The moment he had presented himself at the observatory door, the Director had almost mistaken him for Killermi except now younger and if possible thinner than the obnoxious junior astronomer. He'd been holding a newspaper then - the same that he now held - and that explained why he'd turned up at the early-morning hour but not precisely 'why'. The article at the bottom of the page was about him; an interview, in fact, where he'd discussed the goings-on at the observatory in light of events previous. For all except the most high-minded it was a way for the editor to fill space.

Which meant...

"You'll have to explain yourself, my boy - how do you think you might be of some service to me?" There was a process, of course - and if this young lad thought he'd sidestep it and become an astronomer simply by putting himself out at the door. Well. Killermi was still here, wasn't he? Vermir sighed inwardly. "You're not looking to become an astronomer, are you? Because..."

"Oh, no Sir!" the young man interrupted in his haste to correct the misunderstanding. "Not at all! I've very little interesting the subject. You see, I was reading the interview you gave with the paper. The last... Third to last paragraph there, Sir..."

Vermir read it over. He'd read it when it had first come out, of course - but as he'd been there this had mostly been to ensure that there were no inaccuracies and that any such would have a proper correction issued. This section was mostly just the trivialities that one might expect at the end of an interview - how one was doing, what one was looking forward to. A bit about his theoretical work, "This? Are you a mathematician?"

Again he was corrected, "No, Sir. Not a mathematician - an electrician. I read the bit there about your theory about how one might travel faster than the speed of light but that it would require an extraordinary amount of energy to do so. Electricity, really. Steam might suffice but only as the means of generation. Well, as I said - I'm an electrician."

Which was a very rare trade. In its infancy still, really. Something for young men with a fascination to take their chance at - and this was certainly an example of the species.

"...and as you know, electrons are very small. The smaller something is, the less energy it would then require to move. My thought was that I might be able to use my skills with electricity to help you there."

Vermir leaned back in his chair, gaze fixed on the young man as though he was considering him when he was in fact considering his words. It took nearly a full minute but finally there was a decision behind those dark eyes, "Yes - yes. I see what you are thinking, and of course electricity would have to come into play. There's no way we could hope to do this mechanically. How are your maths, though, my boy? If I were to show you my work, could you understand it?"

"The only way to know that is to show me. There are equations and such for the electrician and I do my best to understand them but I don't doubt you'll have to explain many things to me, Sir."

"Well then..." The Director pushed himself up from the desk and walked around to where a folio sat on a shelf that was itself dusty though the envelope was clean. "Here we are. Let us put our heads together and see what we come up with..."

----

"...now, if the electron gun is working, what we should see next is the bulb over there," Fillon said, pointing first to the small device bolted to the workbench and then to the light bulb on the other side of the laboratory, "light up. At least until the generator burns out."

That was the important bit. Or at least one important bit. The other was the thick sheet of rubber hanging between the two. The generator itself was a marvelous contraption that sat off to one side, whirring and chuffing as the steam-powered flywheel spun endlessly, creating an unhealthy current of electricity that flowed from the dynamo through to the switch in front of him.

"Or the gun. But let us find out!"

Vermir nodded his agreement, the lad took a last second to quickly check everything again, and with a simple flip of the switch...

The light bulb burned!

At least for an instant. Then the electron gun caught fire followed by the generator in short order. Still, as the staff rushed to douse them, there was only one thought running persistent through their heads; "It worked!"

[Sunset]

RDF-Ojeni, GEC-204986, Just Beyond the Leki Cluster, Southeastern Beta Quadrant... Republic Date 175.947.700...

"...so I think it is safe to assume that everything we say and do will be transmitted back to this 'Contemplative' so that they can... re-form their opinions?" Captain Blaine said, the question marking hanging half-off the end of her sentence like a skier at the top of the ramp. "Which means best-or-better behavior, but it looks like we also need to make it quick because the protestors will be here..."

She turned around and shot the question to Ensign Tilassi, who only hesitated for a moment, "Sixteen minutes, fifteen seconds, Captain."

Of course that number was also on the bottom of the main display along with several others of greater or lesser importance, but this was the chance to make sure that everyone was paying attention. Ensign Xesiata had left the bridge; he was doomed to act as the 'voice in the chair', going through the various media they'd been able to intercept and seeing if there was anything new that might change the outcome of the conversation while that very conversation was taking place. Everyone else who required some form of straightening up or fussing about was now doing so and she herself went through the full Picard Maneuver a couple times as she decided whether she would be sitting down or standing up before finally settling on standing up.

'Because Dren'Eth is standing up, and he's really not dressed the same, and Kershaw is standing up, so if I'm sitting down it might look like they're in charge and...'

Second guessing herself was fun! And it wasn't something she normally did, but this was weird with a capital 'W'. She already had something of a game plan laid out in her head but the question was whether that plan would survive first contact. They had one significant advantage; they already knew how to talk to them and that was something like the element of surprise, right?

"The lead ship is now close enough for low-latency communications, Captain," Lieutenant Yu announced. That was the trigger; the incoming vessels had been sending out messages for the past few hours but between here and there would be first minutes then seconds of dead air. Better that they could both see and hear each other in real time.

"Alright," she tugged down the hem of her uniform blouse one last time and looked around the bridge; everyone at their stations, everything clean and neat. "Hail them..."

"Opening communications link..."

Prepared speech time; "Greetings, this is Captain Kamela Blaine, commanding officer of the Republic of Sunset Defense Force vessel 'Ojeni', operating under the aegis of the Exploration Command. This is Commander Sloan, my second-in-command..," she worked through the various stations introducing each officer in turn to end with, "...and this is Sub-Commander Dren'Eth Kennet, an attached officer from the Kennet Circle of the Gulsvig Hierarchy. We are here as part of a search and rescue assignment looking for a lost Gulsvig Hierarchy vessel, the 'Desire of the Seventh Circle'. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

For a moment - just a moment - the screen remained the same; an endless starfield with the much-magnified lead vessel front and center. Then it flashed to color with the same logo - on the same background even - as they'd seen on the government news broadcast right in the middle. This disappeared and instead of the ship's bridge they were presented with the image of a small room; an office or perhaps a side alcove - again with the same backdrop and logo and again with one of their 'hosts' seated and another standing and again male and female with the female standing. They were both in what was instantly considered a uniform but was more-or-less a more formal version of the outfits that the newscasters had been wearing.

"Captain Kamilia Blaine," the female spoke, her stance more authoritative than the male while he appeared to be taking something of a supportive role, "I am Situation Leader Edoma Bardof Dwoharid Soakin, commanding the 'Kederrac One'. This is my Supporting Officer, Kier Ibu Coi. We have been attempting to contact you regarding the immediate and unconditional capitulation of our government. We stand ready to recognize and work with our new leaders, the... Republic of Sunset Defense Force."

It was a close guess but a good one and Kami couldn't help but grin though she quickly followed it up with, "That won't be necessary, Situation Leader. As I said, we came to this system to search for and hopefully find the Hierarchy vessel 'Desire of the Seventh Circle' - the general appearance and specifications of which you will find attached. If you would be so kind as to forward these to your Executive Council and the Contemplative..."

The Situation Leader looked up sharply and if she'd have been Human her mouth might have worked for a second, but instead there was a moment and then, "Of course. We will be willing to assist in any way useful. Is this all that you ask of us?"

"No." Again, the grin couldn't help itself but she did her best to hide it while sinking carefully into her chair. "While you do that and we wait for them to get back to us, we're going to have a bit of a discussion. And if you're willing, I'd like to wait for the protestors to arrive before we do. There's some things you need to know..."

----

"...I will not be accepting the capitulation of the Executive Council;" which brought cheers to the faces of the protestors and what had to be thoughtful looks to those of the Situation Leader and her Supporting Officer. "We are not a warlike civilization. We are a civilization of curiosity, inquisitiveness, exploration, knowledge, and learning. Our appearance in your system was by chance - to search for the lost crew of a vessel belonging to Sub-Commander Dren'Eth Kennet's government with the goal of returning them to their family and homes. That said..."

"We are not alone in the galaxy," Dren'Eth picked up, his prepared lines spoken with the confidence inherent to his species and position. "There are civilizations who would gladly destroy you, take you as servants or slaves - whatever manner of horrors your imaginings might suggest. You are fortunate here in that we were the first."

"So, we will not be accepting your capitulation. We are not conquerors - but neither are we stagnant. If you look at my crew," she gave them a moment to glance between them, "You see five species - there are hundreds more across the Republic. And all here are here willingly..."

Which were weasel words, but to explain the complications would take days and days and that was to be the responsibility of someones else.

"...and so a diplomatic team will be arriving shortly to initiate regular and peaceful contact with your Executive Council and the governments it represents. Your civilization will have the opportunity to enter the galactic community on its own terms. That might be as a Federal State under the Republic, it may be as an independent political entity - it may well be as something altogether different and new. But you will have that opportunity," she finished.

"We thank you, Captain!" the Spokesperson for the protestors said, a half-cheer in his tone. The rest of them were gathered around, their signs - yes, actual signs - now discarded or leaned up against something as they sat naked in the middle of what was likely a cargo bay.

"Yes, thank you, Captain," Edoma added, looking to her second who spoke in turn; "Captain Blaine. While we were speaking, the Executive Council has been meeting and has come to some early decisions. While some are internal matters, others are related to you and your crew. Firstly they have extended a formal invitation for your vessel to return with us to Soakin and meet directly with the Executive Council and a representative avatar for the Contemplative. There they will present you with any information we have on this missing vessel. Secondly, they have issued congratulations to the brave actions of both the government vessels and those of the protestors. Both will receive a hero's welcome on their return. Congratulations, Spokesperson Ibohath."

"On behalf of myself and the other willing protestors, we thank you," he replied.

Which was again, weird. But Captain Blaine kept that thought to herself as the Situation Leader spoke again, "And can you tell us when this diplomatic team is due to arrive, Captain?"

Valid and useful question and she looked over to Commander Sloan who was already checking the message from Fleet on her seat console, "The 'Kangaroo' and Ambassador Caronyc are already underway and should be arriving within the hour..."

[Sunset]

Republic Defense Force Monitoring & Analysis Center (Echo), Deep Space, Somewhere in the Ares Super-Cluster, Milky Way Galaxy... Republic Date 176.306.885...

"...Ma'am? I've got something interesting here."

Vice Admiral McGinnis looked up from her paperwork. It wasn't as bad as actual paper - mostly read this report, look at that file, sign off on this. Anything that could be automated had long ago done so but there was still deskwork to be done - particularly as a duty station like (Echo) rated a Admiral to command it.

Barely.

Lieutenant Remyr stood there at the entrance to her office - an archway, really; she didn't have a door - with the most casual expression on his face for someone who had just said 'I've got something interesting here.' Which didn't mean it wasn't interesting or even urgent - the man was simply unflappable. It was a useful personal attribute for someone who's job mostly involved deciding if one bit of something was urgent enough to alert her to or whether it was just another 'something' to let the system take care of - and most of the time it was just another 'something'.

That was because (Echo) had been somewhat ironically named. In an organization as large and sprawling as the Defense Force was, there were a lot of times when someone somewhere said 'we'll keep an eye on it' and then whatever 'it' was wasn't really very important but it was a commitment. And the Defense Force took its commitments seriously. Or at least seriously enough to establish Monitoring & Analysis Center (Echo), whose job it was to 'keep an eye on it' even if the original reason for keeping an eye on it had turned out to be far less important than initially thought.

Still, it was an interruption and that was better than paperwork. Pushing it away from her, she rose from her desk and the chair to leave both floating behind her without any visible means of support as she walked past him into the monitoring center proper, "Alright, what is it?"

The room was pretty much what one might expect. There were banks of consoles spread out in a circle around a central holo-tank where a large image of the galaxy sprawled out past the edge of the stars to end just at a railing that ran around the whole thing. Here and there things were marked but most of the officers present were sitting at the outer consoles where they were likely doing just what she'd been doing - reading and reviewing reports and files generated by the system before they were sent off to whoever or whatever thought they might be important.

But probably weren't.

He led her over to his space, explaining on the way, "A few years ago, a 'ping' was sent through the old Krȃng gateway network. They were trying to establish whether any of the other gates were still operational and where they were. This was before we knew just how dangerous the Krȃng are, of course. The replies to that 'ping' led to the locations of the other Circlets and to the gateway that was in the Krȃng's home system before the i'Halalaentariel destroyed the system and moved the gateway away to act as a honeypot. At that point, we thought we knew where all the gateways were so the responsibility for listening for any other replies was transferred here."

"And we got a reply."

"Exactly," he took his seat and she stood just behind him, looking over his shoulder as he went through the screens in front of him. "And I suspect it has something to do with whatever the i'Halalaentariel are up to, because..."

"It came back from somewhere in M33."

Again, exactly. That something was up somewhere in the vicinity had crossed her desk within the hour, but as of yet no one knew anything other than that they had fired a really big gun in that direction and had then chased off after the shots. All of them. Leaving the Republic to apparently answer their messages. 'An operation is in the planning stages,' etc, etc, but what that really meant was that they didn't know anything more than what they did fifteen days ago. Even for the normally fast-moving Defense Force, Triangulum was a long, long, long ways away - more a neighbor to Andromeda than the Milky Way - so whatever maybe had been in the planning stages likely still hadn't even crossed the gap yet.

"We got fairly useful coordinates and cross-referencing with the data from their departure says that there's a pretty good chance that this signal came from where they're going," he said, pointing to the various data streams and his work on the numbers. "The system's already got a report through to Fleet;" anything with 'Krȃng' in it went right past her desk without even a signature; "but I was wondering if you had any thoughts?"

Sure, a whole ton of them. Vice Admiral McGinnis hadn't been posted to (Echo) just because she liked paperwork. She'd also been posted there because she loved trying to make sense of these weird little oddities. The 'one-offs', the 'irregular returns'. She'd been a hellova Sensor Officer back in her Command days but with a couple kids and all the 'grown-ass adult' stuff... Well, here she was...

"Why now? Why did we get a return now?" she continued, reaching past him to poke at a set of numbers. "Right here - this is how long it took for the various gateways in the Circlet systems to get back to Ojeni when they first sent out the 'ping'. There's not much difference, but there is enough that you could map them out to where the sending location was and they'd draw you a circle. Now take the difference and extrapolate it out to the distance to M33. How long would it have taken to get a response back from a gateway in M33?"

He ran the numbers, "A week or two, at most."

"And here it has been years. What did the 'ping' return look like? Pull up the records for the original returns and compare them."

Again, she was spot-on; "They're close, but not exactly the same." He tapped away, launching a search request to match the pattern against other existing data. Since they were already looking at the Krȃng files, the search did the intelligent thing and looked there first; "Match. This is a connection initialization request."

"So - something or someone was trying to activate one of the gateways on 'our' side. Possibly under the guise of a ping return. How about some more math? How long at the observed speeds would it have taken the i'Halalaentariel WarSpheres that Dogana observed returning to Union to get there from M33? And how long would it take for either their first strike or their fleet to get to M33? And which of those numbers better matches how long it would have taken for this initialization request to reach 'us'?"

"The second. Anywhere from just after to just before, depending on where in Triangulum the signal originated from. So you think this is..."

"I think this is the Krȃng trying to run as they got hit by the i'Halalaentariel again. I don't know, of course, but... does this indicate which gateway they were trying to activate?"

That was a question that took a little bit longer to answer, but there was one eventually, "No - this is a general request. Or uncategorized. The first available gate likely would have responded."

Which - there weren't any, at least not in the Milky Way. The RoS, the UIK, and the PD had all been very diligent in their destruction of the old Krȃng gateways. That there was anything at all to receive the connection request was due to the foresight of whoever had decided that someone 'should keep an eye on this' in the future and had made sure (Echo) had the hardware to receive that return.

"Which means that it might not have been directed here at all," she mused. "Add my notes and send it off. But keep an eye open for another one. I wouldn't be surprised if we get more..."

[Sunset]

RDF-Ojeni, The Soakin Dolmus System (GEC-204986), Just Beyond the Leki Cluster, Southeastern Beta Quadrant... Republic Date 175.947.731... 'Shortly' Being A Few Minutes Later...

"...you might be interested to know that I'm already familiar with your work, Captain," Ambassador Caronyc added, a smile splitting her fact. "In a round-about way. I was an attaché a few years ago - assigned to the diplomatic team sent in to clean up after the Qi incident."

"The war, you mean?"

"Incident. 'War' tends to... Well, some people don't like being reminded that they lost and someone else won."

Kami made a face, "I'd rather call it a war. But that's why you're here..."

Or rather 'not here' as the italics around the communications link indicated. It was probably also why Kangaroo had streaked past both Ojeni and the flotilla of government ships and protestor vessels that proceeded her. At least the Ambassador's second call on approach to Soakin had been to her, but the intention was clear; sideline the Fleet Captain, get the Diplomats out in front.

At least the Ambassador had the kind of presence required to make that happen effectively.

There weren't a lot of - to put it impolitely - fat people around anymore but the Ambassador was one such example. That didn't make her ugly though and the dark-skinned woman had a certain appeal to her appearance even as she filled out the uniform to a barrel-chested fullness. Or two barrels; whether by force or tailoring there was more cleavage on display than any three women on Ojeni's bridge had combined. With a thigh-length skirt and long auburn hair tipped with blonde she cut an impressive figure that seemed more than backed up by her charisma.

"That's exactly why we're here, Captain. We've already contacted the Soakinan Executive Council and arranged a change in plans. Your crew will still be welcomed by the Council, but we'll be handling all the boring stuff - the state dinner, the formal party, the hobnobbing. As soon as the greeting ceremony is finished - about an hour;" Again Kami made a face and again the Ambassador answered it with a smile that was somehow both understanding and competitive, "We'll turn you loose for a quick tour. You'll hit their military command center..."

"...they have a military?"

"You wanted to call it a 'war', Captain. They call it their 'System Monitoring and Navigational Hazard Service'. That seems to be the closest thing they have. Anyway, they'll walk you through there - bad news, Sub-Commander," she looked past the Captain to the Anixtil, "I'm sure you've already guessed this, but they don't know anything about your missing ship. They were just being nice."

Dren'Eth didn't even bother to look perplexed, "I had already come to that conclusion, Ambassador. They are acting on the advise of this 'Contemplative' to be as accommodating as possible in order to avoid the annihilation of their civilization at our 'superior' hands."

"Got it in one - you've got a smart one there, Captain. I'd keep a close eye on him," she said. "Or I might steal him when you're done with him," she added with a wink. "Anyway, I've arranged for you and your crew to be shown the sights. They're going to take you around the capital region and do a little showing off for their visitors. This isn't a simple dog-and-pony show for you, Captain - you're going to be doing a little snooping for me as well. I've heard you've got a whip-smart Chief Engineer and a few pretty good hands on your sensors. If we're going to persuade them to join up..."

"And why wouldn't you?" Again, the Sub-Commander took advantage of a moment to insert his own commentary. "The Soakin Dolmus system is very close to the Hierarchy on a galactic scale and as the Republic has already been forced to absorb it, adding additional systems in the area makes strategic sense. Based on what I can see here, they have a significant population and a well-considered, stable government that would take well to the benefits of becoming directly affiliated. That affiliation would also show well in the Hierarchy as a nearby example of peaceful and beneficial integration."

"You're hired. As soon as you wrap up your assignment, put in for a diplomatic spot. So - don't just walk around like a bunch of slack-jawed foreigners. Figure out where they are, what they could use, and how we can make them want this, Captain..." she finished.

[Sunset]

'The Fat Woman's Purse', Par Par City, Cr'Emith Prime, Somewhere in the Leki Cluster... Republic Date 176.225.818...

"...best stake-out Ah ever been on," Meli said, pushing her plate off to one side just in time for the waiter to take it away, replacing it in the same motion with another featuring yet more of the local herbivore. She didn't quite know what it was - and the color was a bit off compared to a good ol' fashioned t-bone - but it was delicious. And a bit bloody, assuming that was blood.

It could have been giant hornet for all she knew, but one plate kept following another and she wouldn't have objected even if she was paying.

Agent Madison - who was paying - objected. Though it was more to the bad pun than to the Dwarf's uninhibited rate of consumption. She rolled her eyes, "Steak out? Really?" but her focus was still on the man sitting opposite the two. A pair of what she supposed were 'beautiful' Anixtl women were sitting on either side of him. Her opinion of beauty varied, of course, but from where she sat neither had been chosen for their sparkling wit or charming personality; nary a word had passed their lips the entire night and now it was drawing to a close.

That was the way this worked, according to Grandpa Lektor. To find the Hu'unya Circle, go to one of the nicer restaurants in the city on a weeknight - they didn't like crowds, apparently - and find the best-dressed party and offer to buy them dinner. Once everyone has eaten, the dishes cleared, and drinks have been served, a bit of conversation would tell the interested whether the someone they'd chosen to treat was an associate of the Circle or not.

Or whether she'd just bought a pimp a free meal.

The Anixtl were dedicated eaters and they preferred to be accompanied by silence, carefully cutting apart whatever was put in front of them and enjoying it before the next plate was brought out. That put Meli as something of a spectacle as she'd plowed through plate after plate after plate, feeding one after the other into her maw with gustatory delight. But at last her reign of carnage ended and with a satisfied 'sigh' she left the plate in front of her, a signal to the looming waiter that she was at last finished. A tray with drinks was presented and this confirmed the conclusion of the meal as each took something or several - again, the Dwarf - with the waiter now clearing away the tableware.

"...so, Agent Madison;" she looked up sharply, that detail wasn't broadly known nor had it been the man who'd spoken. "You are interested in talking to us," she went on, her voice dropping an octave as she leaned just slightly forward.

"How do you know who I am?"

"Aside from the obvious? The better question is, 'doesn't this mean we are who you think we are?' Again, you want to talk to us. Why?"

Ivy's mouth twisted - it was a fair point.

"If you know my name then I suspect you already know the answer as to 'why'. My government wants to know the exact intentions of the Hu'unya - I'm here to get them the nice way;" but it was Meli who smiled.

"And for you, the easy way. As much as your murder machine there might enjoy killing people who might or might not be associated with the Circle, you have little way of judging whether or not your actions have any impact. More, this might also be the only way for you to make any progress in your assignment. Your government is unwilling to engage in the same level of violence that Supreme Commander Hoyt Kennet Cyan Gulsvig was willing to use in order to bring the Circle to heel. Or at least into the fold. Your options are to either tolerate our presence or pursue a focused campaign against us - neither of which are particularly attractive for a professional 'problem solver'."

A slow drink and Ivy lowered her glass to the table. It gave her a chance to think and to contemplate the drink itself, which tasted a bit like horse water with a notable touch of alcohol and a strange sweetness. She didn't like it - both the drink and what the unnamed representative was saying. Still, "Thank you."

The woman nodded - nodded, a notable gesture that told Ivy just that much more about who she was dealing with. They had done their research and likely expended a considerable amount of resources to do so. That this knowledge was concentrated in one individual meant that she was either fairly close to the center of the circle or at least closely associated with someone who was. But...

"What about the future? What will the Circle do as the Hierarchy is fully integrated into the Republic?"

"You refer to your 'UBI' and other social welfare systems? An interesting question. The Circle has previously made its living from what the Hierarchy and the other governments before it deemed 'criminal' activity. But why?"

"Because you are unable to accept the status expected of you. You have ambitions, goals - desires. So you'll welcome the opportunity. You're selling off your assets, eliminating anyone who might recognize your past, and as soon as possible you'll buy your way off-world. You'll abandon the sheep to their shepherds. Which sounds nice, but you're still criminals. That is what you know."

"Perhaps. You are right in that the Hu'unya are not as unified in their purposes as those who accept their place are. But as a general assessment, yes - you've accidentally given us the opportunity to get what we want. Independence. It is our assessment that you will see those Anixtl who are inclined to accept their place remain here and those who are not will immigrated out into the galaxy. A favorable situation for you - we are criminals because that was required to survive. Now we can go where we want, do what we want, with the only limitations being our own. Perhaps some of us will become criminals, but the same is true of your own society. A society that emphasizes personal freedom."

"And personal responsibility," Ivy pointed out. "Something you should make clear to the rest of the Circle..."

[Sunset]

Unity City, The Soakin Dolmus System (GEC-204986), Just Beyond the Leki Cluster, Southeastern Beta Quadrant... Republic Date 175.948.505... One Really Boring Ceremony Later...

One of the nice things about the whole 'Eien/ExoCortex' arrangement was that it made certain arrangements much easier to make. While the welcome ceremony had been what one might expect - boring - most of her crew were interested in some sight-seeing. In the past that would have required certain choices be made; Captain or Commander? Lieutenant or Ensign? 'Now' the bridge was being manned by a temporary crew cobbled together from Cadets at Defense Force Academy 26 - the Captain's own alma mater. This gave everyone a chance to go planet-side and her old Commandant a chance to sit in the big chair with a smug grin on his face while he ordered a group of particularly advanced students through endless and seemingly-random systems checks, mock alerts, and intellectual red herrings.

They, on the other hand...

"...no, Ensign - the intelligences that make up the Contemplative are not sentient. There is an interesting story there, if you're interested," the Proctor - one Liren Pigod Caand - answered, his response directed to Ensign Xesiata who had thus asked the question.

Altogether they were standing around the chamber reserved for the use of that body - or rather, where individuals could come to ask questions of it. As a space it was suitable to the task. Perfectly circular except where a notch was cut out for the door, the walls were shadowed gray except at the bottom where a waist-height wood-paneled wall concealed projecting lights that softly rose and fell as a voice answered whatever question was put to that particular portion of the wall. In the center of the room was a single stool and curving, floating desk reserved for the Proctor and his Supporting Examiner, a younger woman who floated among the other questioners. Conversely the Proctor was much older with fringes of hair on his face and ears having ran to white and the feeders on his collar content to stay folded while in the younger generations they were usually very active as they spoke.

"Sure," Xesiata replied. "A lot of the civilizations where there's a similar situation seem to require sentience of their electronic advisors. Why not here?"

"Because the first member of the Contemplative was built at the Institute of Ethics and Philosophy at Nydelikath - that's a City-State on the Gwomawin. Of course you don't know this, but Nydelikath has been famous for its philosophers for thousands of years. Some historians even point to it as the source, though there are others who point to the Iberanydd Coast. Wherever it started, Nydelikath is the modern mind of philosophical study and contemplation on Soakin. Naturally, when the possibility that sentient electronics arose, they set about debating the ethics and morality of this and as part of that debate decided to build a computer that could possibly become sentient so that they could adequately answer those questions."

"But you said the intelligences that make up the Contemplative are not sentient."

"Yes I did - and as far as we know IEPN failed. At least in that aspect. Though as you might imagine..." he paused for a moment, turning to another visitor who'd been waiting patiently and pointing them to a place on the circle where the lights had turned a brilliant shade of blue to indicate an opening, "...they provided that system with an enormous amount of data, both as relevant information and as part of their attempt to stimulate the growth of a possible sentience. From the system's self-constructed algorithms came a distinct set of ethical and moral guidelines as well as a set of suggestions. One of these was that the ethical quandaries posed suggested that the intentional creation of sentient electronics should not be pursued at that time. Further, the system made factual note that sentient electronics were not necessary. This combined with the first - as well as the preeminent reputation of IEPN - resulted in nearly all research into sentient systems ending or being severely curtailed."

"Before you ask - no, the system at IEPN was not the founding member of the Contemplative. Though it did suggest the name. It was the first system to reach the one-hundred terabyte per second calculation speed now required to join the Contemplative as well - followed by a system from Alilaldan and another from Thera Pharmaceuticals. Those were the first three. There's now several hundred."

"So these systems are privately owned?"

"Privately? No," he gave the Ensign an odd look. "There's no single person who owns one. Governments, businesses, institutions. They are far too expensive, even a half-century later."

It was now the Telari's turn to give the Soakinan an odd look, "Hold on a second. Am I connecting the dots correctly here? In the Republic - and in a lot of places - 'privately owned' can mean that it is owned by a business, which are then owned by individuals. Those individuals can then decide who can use that asset, sell it to someone else - another business, a person - or not use that asset. Is this not true for the Soakinan?"

"No, that is true, though only in part. A person might own a business but only if they are the only person involved in it. But when multiple people work at a business, that business is owned by all of them. They all do the work, they all receive the results of that work. They all make the decisions as to who to sell to, who to lend to, and who to borrow from."

"Huh..."

"Yeah, 'huh'," Kami cut him off. "Sounds like the IEPN should be on our itinerary. But what you're saying is that the members of the Contemplative aren't sentient, and that they're all data-crunchers? High-level analysis and numbers? So I've been wondering - what happened when we showed up? Did the Executive Council run in here and start screaming?"

"You're not actually that far off," he laughed. "They came in in quite the rush. Shoo'ed everyone out. Came back out a couple minutes later really quiet. You know, I haven't looked at the data they put in, but if you're interested we can take a look..."

[Sunset]

The Secretary-General's Office, RDF-Unconquered Sun, Chains of Jade Orbit, Ares Super-Cluster... Republic Date 176.307.285...

"...the general feeling is that this 'ghost ping' was sent out either as an attempt to trick the unwary into opening a connection for the Krȃng to exploit or that it was sent out as an attempt to reach out to any other possible infestations. There's too many unknowns still though. Yes, two i'Halalaentariel WarSpheres were damaged, but we've also been tracking their comings and goings - these don't correspond to any 'goings'. They most-likely came from M33 though. My gut instinct is that the i'Halalaentariel have - or had - an outpost in M33 and it has been overrun."

"How close are we to confirming some of these 'unknowns'?" Erika asked, sitting forward in her chair to study the miniature galaxies spread out across the top of her desk. The Milky Way, Andromeda, and Triangulum - these were the Big Three in the Local Group but it was the first and third that were the focus of her gaze.

"Special Projects says they'll have a long-range version of a TRIPWIRE array up by the end of the day. According to the math, the i'Halalaentariel have been there for a few days now. That could mean anything, of course. And we know practically nothing. But that new array will only be able to start the search..."

"We should put ships in Triangulum," Grand Admiral G'OgraPhi interjected. "Yes, the array will tell us a lot - but it will have to find them first. That could take years. And it won't tell us what an experienced crew would be able to."

"And I'm not one to limit our options if we can at all help it," the Secretary-General agreed, focusing her attention on the ArAreBeen. "But safety is also an issue. From what I've been told, it would take a lot of power to extend the Eien out that far. Multiple stellar outputs. Katryna's working on an alternate solution - grabbing a power source in M33 and creating a concurrent bubble there - but that also takes time. If M33 is full of Krȃng then I'd like to start preparing now rather than in ninety days."

"Again, my gut says 'no'." This was Grand Admiral Alyndra Erriki, who had been speaking first and who now took back the podium, so to speak. Like the other Grand Admirals, she sat across from the Secretary-General in a comfortable-looking chair though she herself didn't look at-ease. Instead she sat up straight with her hands grasped between her knees. "Avatar i'Grathenial's message to Admiral Falk was 'Answer our calls.' Nothing more. That two WarSpheres made it back to Union suggests that - yes, they do have an outpost in M33 but it wasn't capable of handling the problem on its own. But they did return and they were damaged. That means they saw action, that means that they had first-hand knowledge of the situation. And they didn't share it with us."

"So you think there's enough of a problem for them to fire a good chunk of a star at it but not enough to warn us about whatever it is?"

"Pretty much, yes. You don't get yanked out of bed when the local police have to track down a murderer - they didn't feel that we needed to know what was going on. To me, that implies that the information supplied by the returning WarSpheres indicated that they could handle the problem. Barely," Erriki clarified. "Or that they're just the kind of answering machine to put overwhelming firepower on a relatively small problem."

"I still want to know what's going on. Geo, work with whoever you have to to get ships in M33. And I'll talk to my daughter, see if there are any other ideas floating around. Even if we get there and there's nothing but a charred husk and an answering machine with no new messages waiting for us, I'd still rather know what happened the night before..."

[Sunset]

Special Projects High-Energy Practical Applications Laboratory, CORE XIV Deep Space Station, In Orbit of Tau Mercid, Somewhere in the Ares Super-Cluster... Republic Date Hey I'm Walkin' Here...

"...ideas? Of course I have ideas, Mother. I'm an idea person, a problem-solver. Says so right on my resume. Now, they weren't all my ideas," Katryna emphasized for her mother's benefit, "but good artists copy. Great artists steal!"

"Alright, so what idea are you stealing and who did you steal it from?" Erika asked, her projected hologram looking around the workspace like she expected it to pop out of a closet or cupboard at any moment.

Three kids, another on the way. That pretty much explained everything.

The laboratory was like one might expect of a so-called 'perfect utopia' with clean surfaces, matching appliances, a lot of white, and not a horribly disfigured cyborg servator in sight. No children either, though one of the scientists working at another station was a rarely-seen Taog and the unpleasant sight of the inverted goat likely met most people's definition of 'disfigured'. What was also missing was any kind of physical or holographic representation of what Katryna had been working on but this was explained as she drew her mother's attention to a sprawling virtual window on one side of the space.

On one side of this the star they circled turned endlessly, its oppressive glow suppressed to nearly friendly by the screen's filters. There was something else out there as well but even with the flash and fade of navigation lights they were nearly unseen at this distance. Altogether there were thousands upon thousands of them, a nearly-invisible Christmas tree washed out by the star's brilliance.

"The i'Halalaentariel and their star cannon. Except instead of shooting stellar matter, we're going to be shooting ships. The stations out there are being configured," she pointed over to a set of consoles where a technician sat, feet up on the glass, and a sandwich in hand. They waved, the Secretary-General waved back, and Katryna continued, "with the same outside waveform drive node as the i'Halalaentariel demonstrated. We'll bring in some ships, load them up, and then fire them at M33. They'll get there in a week or so..."

"A week or so?"

"A week or so. They might have to finish the trip under their own power. See, here's one of the really interesting things about their star cannon - they were shooting at something. Not only that they were shooting at something two-point-seven-three million light years away. And if I'm going to be opening with a bombardment of that magnitude and then following it up with a fleet of that size, I'm going to want to be sure I'm going to hit. Which means that they are capable of accurate Newtonian fire over that range. That's incredible. More incredible than a star cannon, actually."

"So our shot will land..."

"Somewhere in the galactic halo. Their first operation will be to encapsulate the nearest suitable star and that will provide enough power to create a local Eien volume. Then we'll put crews on the ships, they'll deploy TRIPWIRE and BEARTRAP arrays, and then start the search. Triangulum only has around forty billion stars so that should make it easier. While they head out, we'll set up an Aurora and start turning the surrounding star systems into a beachhead!"

"...I'll run that by the Admirals first. How long until you can take the first shot?"

"A day - maybe less, maybe more," she dithered, waggling her spread hand for emphasis. "I've also got a search function going to look for possible SMBH's in the area. A star as the starting point would be okay, but another Penrose? That would cut our power generation and resources worries off at the knees..."

[Sunset]

OSAMI R&D Centre, JenLuk City, Juniper, Pinales System, The Coreward Fringe, Ares Cluster... Halloween...

"...because when it really comes down to it, all you need is an engine, a seat, and controls, right?"

It was a rhetorical question, based simply on the fact that the 'prototype' being dog-and-pony'ed by the junior engineer looked more like the finished product. For the moment it was stationary; an angular pod in the usual OSAMI style that sat at the end of the table while the rest of the team - and a few more senior types - looked it over. The assigned project had been an aggressively-portable personal transport and at something less than two-thirds of a meter it seemed to fit the bill.

"Padded seat here," he put a hand on the dark gray indent on the apparent top of the pod, "and the controls are here..."

'Clicking' open a latch on the top, he pulled and the point of the seed pod detached, extending away from the engine on a long, straight bar. Formerly concealed under the engine's housing were a very simple set of controls and he demonstrated how the bar could be slid back and forth, setting it to the needs of the rider.

"Very simple. When the controls are extended it goes to passive power and when they are stowed it goes dark. When the unit is passively powered..." he took the carrying handle that was on the tip of the pod and pulled the whole unit off the table to let it hover next to him, "there you go. There's a sensor in the handle - you can position it wherever you want. Hell," he demonstrated, putting one foot on the back and boosting himself up, "you could use it as a step."

Hopping down he put a hand on one of the legs that had formerly kept it semi-upright, "Retractable. And there's wheels on them, so you can roll it around without powering it up," he demonstrated, sliding the control shaft back in and letting it settle back down onto the legs. Grabbing the handle again, he pulled the unit towards him until it 'tipped' onto the wheels and he rolled it around a bit. "And the legs are both stirrups for the rider and can be retracted..."

Again, he pulled it up onto the table, pressed a latch, and the legs swung forward into their housings, "Simple."

Pulling it off the table, he extended the legs with a toe on the latch, pulled out the control shaft, and then swung himself across the unit so he was sitting astride it with his hands grasped just below the controls and his feet up in the stirrups. "Now, you can steer with the controls, but it also has feedback controls. Lean forward to accelerate, pull back to slow, lean left, lean right."

"What's the flight ceiling?"

"Variable," he answered. "Depends on the rider. Me? Two hundred meters. Same with the power pack," he patted the shaft, "About a day for the me-average rider."

"Can it be armed?"

"Sure," he hopped off and tipped it upright, rotating it around to demonstrate. "There's a picatinny mount here. Or what you'd normally find on an accessory. Slide your rifle or whatever in here, then it interfaces with the controls..."

"...okay," another engineer in the back raised her hand. "I have a question. Sort of. I mean... You do realize this is a flying broom, right..?"

[Sunset]

A Sun-Dappled Hillside, Somewhere on the Conquered Planet Eowira, The Nicean Sector, Beta Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy... Republic Date 176.293.230...

"...once again I find your ways odd, Secretary-General," Supreme Commander Hoyt Kennet Cyan Gulsvig said as he stood on the hillside, a long-brimmed hat shading his eyes as he looked out across the valley to the farms and roads that stretched into the distance. "It was not that long ago that we stood together in a similar place watching my soldiers surrender to yours and now we stand here watching them fight alongside each other..."

Though to tell the truth, there had been little fighting. The combined Triumvirate forces in the system had put the Nicean defenders below the decimal point and they'd been pushed down again before they'd managed to rally a surrender. Drones swarmed across the sky and small craft came and went constantly, yes - but they were there now to defend rather than attack.

"As much as I have experienced your culture, I still do not understand it."

As before they were alone except for the other's company though this time they were both in uniform; she in the varicolored form-fitting gray of the Defense Force and he in the variegated green-brown of a species that had evolved while hunting the marshes of their homeworld. The uniform was old - it had been in the closet in his room back on High Bluff - but the atomic sunburst and star roundel on the shoulders were new. Not so the emblems on his sleeves as once again he was the Supreme Commander of all Hierarchy forces.

"It isn't often that we get a chance to see why we fight," she answered after a moment. "Wars in space are often very clean things - we do not see who we are fighting and so we do not always understand why."

Not that far away he could see her point. A Nicean manor stood under siege, surrounded by Domain combat servitors while a mixture of Anixtl soldiers and Nalari volunteers worked to load a staggering crowd onto waiting transports. These were slaves - Nalari, of which the volunteers from the Domain were often related - owned by the Niceans and forced into labor. Here they grew the crops and picked the fruits that fed the Empire but in other places they swept the floors and cleaned the rooms. One at a time or family by family, they were being checked, documented, and bundled onto the transports as the rest waited with what meager possessions they had clustered at their feet or held tight under their arms.

He nodded, "True. But you also asked. They are soldiers - they do as they are ordered."

"Yes but these are unusual circumstances. For some Anixtl their natural place is as a soldier," she answered. "For some they may see their next natural place as a member of the Defense Force. So this will help them understand who we are and what we do - and why. Although," and here she paused as though hesitating to admit a secret, "In my experience there are few soldiers who do not want to do the job for which they have trained."

"To fight. So you are giving them an opportunity to decide their place and to be valued."

"Among others," she agreed with a nod. "The Martian Empire started this war as a point of pride and honor, along with an unhealthy leavening of economic interest and personal power mixed in. These are not why we fight - or at least, they shouldn't be. We're here because the Nalari are people and deserve the same freedoms, safety, and respect as any other Republic or Triumvirate citizen. For them that means getting them as far away from here as possible and for us that means helping them get there."

Out among the group of transports one had filled to capacity and as they watched the doors swung up and it lifted off a moment later, rising smoothly into the air and swinging around in a quick hairpin to fly nearly over their heads as it angled up into the sky. Somewhere up there a ship - perhaps his, perhaps one of the half-dozen other forces represented - was waiting to take them away from here and to a new home far across the galaxy. Turning as it passed, he followed it until it disappeared from sight.

"Yes, an odd people," he mused aloud. "I think I am ready to go home..."

[Sunset]

The Mount Kidni Observatory, Fer Gul Region, The Great Principality of Don A Lucc, The Planet Rins... Republic Date 182.821.321...

"...is there something I can do for you two gentlemen?" Vermir looked up at the two new arrivals from across the great expanse of his old battered desk. They looked to each other first - one tall and slender, one short and thick - and then back to him before unceremoniously and quite without asking taking their places in the open chairs. Both were wearing long coats; very useful in this season where only the gaggle of laborers outside went about their work without at least two layers on.

The first and then the second reached inside their jackets to produce heavy leather wallets, first dropping them open to expose a flash of polished tin and then sliding them across the desk to where he could see the badges clearly.

"Intelligence Directorate," the taller of the two said with a confirming nod from the second. "We've become aware that there may be an external interest in the project here at the observatory..."

"An external threat?" Vermir 'harrumphed'. "From who? I can only think of one possible threat and he's been kept strictly indoors!"

The two looked back at him without comprehension and one of them scratched at a place on their arm. A skin condition of some kind - or perhaps it was molting season in his original region - but it looked unpleasant. It took a long moment for him to realize they were waiting on him.

"Killermi. One of the junior astronomers," he waved a hand dismissively before getting up to wander over to the window that faced out onto the hillside. Outside construction was starting up again for the morning - as a practitioner of a nighttime profession, he usually left the observatory just as the workers were resuming - and shortly his office would be invaded by the sounds of all manner of building. "He's a menace but mostly to himself and anything delicate nearby. Certainly not a threat."

"...what'er you doin' here?"

He turned sharply to look at the short one. The accent was odd - like the skin condition, again he couldn't place it. But before he could ask the thin one interjected; "What my partner means to ask is - when we were given the assignment to investigate, we were told very little as to what is actually going on here," his eyes flicked to the plaque on the desk, "Director Vermir. Perhaps if you give us some more details that can help us determine 'where' a threat might come from."

Turning from the window he returned to the desk, picking up the closest badge and examining it closely. Then he referred to the carefully printed card and picture above it. There was something odd about the two but then again they were from the Directorate and while he'd only met one or two when he'd been at the National Observatory... Well. They all struck him as a little odd. A cursory check of the other and he folded them in half and handed them back.

"As I'm sure your superior mentioned," he studied them carefully for any sign that this was not in fact the case, "we're building a large version of the Vermir-Fillon Transmitter. It is an experimental device that will allow us to transmit very small amounts of matter to the moon at faster-than-light speeds. The goal is to again re-establish that the device works - scientifically - and then perhaps use it to set up a permanent outpost for more scientific endeavors. Again, I'm not sure even why there would be an external threat to the endeavor. Spies from foreign lands? Saboteurs? The only thing they would gain would be an unconscionable loss to the advancement of scientific knowledge."

"From your perspective, Director. There are other..," the man's reply was calm yet carefully paced, "...applications to the Vermir-Fillon Transmitter. Restricted applications. From what you've supplied, I think we're most likely looking at theft. Most of these sorts of operations are inside jobs..." Again, he let his words trail off and penetrate the Director's thinking before picking up again. "So we'd like to interview the foreman, Mister Fillon, and yourself, of course. The same question - do you know these men and can you vouch for them? Is there anyone you'd be suspicious of? Starting with the foreman..."

"Noune? No, not possible," Vermir scoffed. "I've known the man for years. He's working the job because he built the observatory in the first place. And his crew are all locals - Fillon is helping them and he's recruited several of his fellow electrical enthusiasts. Set back several of the electrical projects in town quite a bit, so I've heard. The price of science, there. But you gentlemen are chasing the wrong ynbeat there."

"We'll ask anyway. Our assignment is to secure the project and we'll chase down every ynbeat within a thousand miles if we have to."

"Yep!" the second seconded, though that was followed by a muttered, "As boring as that might be..."

Vermir eyed him, though the sentiment was understandable, "I'll introduce you to Fillon and Noune. But you won't find anything there. If you are convinced there is an external threat, I would suggest you start external to the project site, gentlemen. This is a port town - though minor - and every once in a long while a foreign vessel does come through the harbor. Rare enough that it makes the papers," he gestured to the folded roll on his desk. "In fact I was just about to skim through it when you arrived. If I find something there, I'll let you know. But the docks and the train station - that is where I'd start my investigations..."

[Sunset]

Between Unity City and Nydelikath, The Soakin Dolmus System (GEC-204986), Just Beyond the Leki Cluster, Southeastern Beta Quadrant... Republic Date 175.948.745... Another Stop on the Tour...

"...so what you're saying is that the Soakinan were already communal and the creation of the Contemplative accelerated that?"

"...that's a difficult question to answer," their new host said, scratching her cheek with one of her feeders before they settled down onto her chest, tendrils moving over each other as she digested her thoughts. "I would say 'yes' because it is a position you have proposed and for the time being you know more about the differences between our two civilizations, but I will have a more definitive answer as I research your culture further."

"That's a fair answer," Commander Sloan replied, moving up to the glass and putting her hand up against it, looking past it to where the countryside streaked past.

They were on the move now - aboard an elevated train that ran along a central pair of rails themselves elevated above a regular roadway. For those used to the super-highways of Earth and other historic transportation systems it might seem odd but efficient with most of the traffic on the rails above while what little ground vehicle traffic moved underneath was essentially using the service road built to maintain the tracks. Both in the distance and nearby enormous wind turbines spun slowly atop angled towers, their outsides glittering with glass and dotted with greenery. These were also the source of their conversation as the train had passed through the base of one not minutes earlier, stopping briefly to take and deposit a rush of passengers.

"Back home they call it NIMBYism. Not In My Back Yard," she clarified for their host's benefit. "Don't want a dam built, or a wind turbine, or a solar farm... Because it blocks 'my' view? Not in my backyard..."

Adin Hurien Cisa was their new host and by their guess she was the youngest; where older Soakinan had white tips or even pure white or gray fur, she had black tips still like they'd now seen on the children. This made her fur look darker at a distance - a deep brown rather than the tans of other adults. In her regular life she was the media representative for the rail network but for this special occasion she'd been seconded to host and tour guide, answering questions and chatting with the group as they rode the line to the distant city-state and philosophical center Nydelikath.

"There was always some of that - and there still is. Soakinan relationships are balanced around the idea of agreeing to disagree. Individuals may hold different opinions but these will be set aside to build the community as a whole. The Contemplative is an expression of that. It issues advice - which is not always followed - but the questions that are asked and the advice it then gives are usually based around bettering things for everyone."

"I notice we haven't seen any single-family dwellings," the Eye piped up. For Adin, he was the odd ball of the group and she had avoided making direct eye contact with the Skri until just now. "So I'm guessing there aren't any? They're inefficient, after all."

"...no?" It was more a question than an answer as she considered it herself aloud. "There were and there might be a few out there somewhere, but as we expanded into space the independent families who were the first settlers became the hubs of the communities that grew up around them. When a family in a community disagrees to such an extent with the rest, they move. These were the original space settlements. My own family was one a hundred years or so ago and Hurien Cisa is named after them. But there's very few places for new settlements now, so most disagreements are settled by migration now. That was me too - I came back to Soakin because I didn't agree with the Complex's foundational ethics."

"And that's okay, because you agree to disagree," Sloan said, her voice bouncing off the glass as she continued to look at the passing scenery. They were moving fast; the turbines of the farmlands surrounding Unity City were gone now and the train was passing along the shore of a long inlet, a bridge across the mouth getting closer and closer with each passing second.

"Yes!" Adin answered with what was now established as the Soakinan equivalent of a smile.

"Does that explain why we haven't seen anything like a military?" Captain Blaine asked, though she sounded sure of the answer. "Have the Soakinan ever fought wars?"

"Oh, yes! But that was in the past. There hasn't been a war in at least two hundred years! They were 'necessary' because the technologies and information sharing systems of the time were not capable of sustaining the population equally. It seems tragic now but some communities and groups had to die so that others might take their resources and live. It is not something we enjoy thinking about, but it is important to know and study that history so it does not happen again."

"...odd question then, if I might," Ensign Xesiata held up a hand. "Does this mean the Soakinan don't have violent video games?"

Adin looked confused by the very question and this gave the Eye a chance to nudge the Ensign, "Oh boy, are they going to be confused when they run into the Dornies for the first time..."

[Sunset]

OSA Systems Testing & Training Facility (Rock Candy), Outside JenLuk City, Juniper, Pinales System, The Coreward Fringe, Ares Cluster... Republic Date 176.369.159...

"...the results of a military-industrial complex run amok. The ability of a planetary-scale industrial and manufacturing facility to let us prepare to fight not just the next war but the current one. A forest environment in late spring which could certainly not come faster if you're sitting somewhere else where it's the first half of November and you're already freezing your ass off."

"All good smart-ass answers, Lieutenant," General CusTer said with a half-concealed smile as she pounded her way up the sheet-metal stairs that wound their way up through the middle of the tower, the junior officer just barely keeping up despite her clear attempt to leave him behind. "But what am I here to look at today?"

"Well, they are all related, Ma'am..." he said with a pant as they finally exited out onto the top deck of the soaring tower. "Binoculars, Ma'am?"

"Someone once said that if you can see your enemy through these they're already too close..."

But she took them anyway and stepped up to the railing before raising them to her eyes and sweeping them over the forest that was now below. Cone-shaped trees spread out to the horizon - Juniper was aptly named - while it was only behind them that there was some sign of civilization with the facility's numerous smaller buildings spread out here and there with the muffled gray of roads and paths linking them together. The largest was an enormous hangar with an attached helipad and it was here that her transport waited idly while they had jogged across to the observation tower just on the other side of the half-cylinder.

It was a very tall tower.

Birds swept by below them and she could just catch the scent of the trees on the wind but there was also the pleasant 'pop-pop' and 'fwooosh-shisssh-boom' of weapons fire from somewhere out there and she swung the glasses to follow, finally tracking a quick trail of fire back to its launch location. It was clearly a 'Mech - nothing else moved like that; an enormous demi-humanoid moving through the trees at a pace not even a fantastic giant could match. It was hard to get the full measure of the thing from here, not even with the advanced optics available, but it was also not alone.

Here and there a tree shredded around it or whipped wildly from the passage of some high-speed piece of ordinance. Other explosions drew the attention of her ears and they twisted here and there to localize the sources while she focused on her original discovery. For a moment it emerged fully into the open down a long lane of coincidental trees and she watched as it skidded to a stop on splayed toes, whipped around to raise a cannon forearm, and fire a single shot at an unseen foe with the piece rocking back as though it were some great oversized handgun. Then it was on the move again, feet digging into the earth to tear up a new track across the test range as it bobbed and weaved, ducking behind a stand of trees with its long torso tucked close to the ground.

"...a lot nimbler than my 'Dragoon. What is it, Lieutenant?"

"As I said - the ability of a planetary-scale industrial and manufacturing facility to let us prepare to fight not just the next war but the current one. I'm guessing you're looking at one of the 'Tombstones. They're a heavy 'Mech that emphasizes mobility and firepower over armor. Primary firepower is a pair of accelerators, one in each forearm. Those are backed up by two long-range missile pods on each shoulder, two short-range launchers in the torso, and a pair of extended range medium lasers in the nose. I'd also direct your attention to the nose..."

Which she couldn't see at the moment - in fact, the 'Mech had completely disappeared except for the occasional sounds of weapons fire and these were what she was now tracking through the woods as she tried to regain visual contact. She'd note the nose later, when and if she got a chance.

"Which has a highly advanced long-range sensor cluster. Our after-action analysis of OSA-only ground combat on Eowira;" which was the majority-inhabited planet in the Nicean Sector that had been overrun in a mass assault by the Triumvirate militaries; "shows that most of our combat casualties were taken at ranges of less than one kilometer. This compares to a more even distribution for all forces across all ranges. On further analysis, this was determined to be a training, technology, and of course opposition issue, Ma'am. The last we can't do anything about - the Nicean ground combat elements are set up as a primarily defensive force. So their hardware is concentrated on the mid-to-short range where they can inflict the most reliable damage."

"But our boys like to get in there and mix things up. Which is bad for us if the other guy favors the double-barreled shotgun."

That was a truism of the Hauyht and thus OSA ground combat forces in general. They were enthusiastic and more than a little headstrong which meant that - given the chance - they enjoyed a good short-range dance-of-death. As lagomorphs, they were quick on their feet and had fast reactions compared to other species. They weren't faster than a bullet though and this was the apparent problem.

At least from the perspective of those whose job it was to replace losses in both men and material.

From her perspective it was fucking fun; "Good luck on that first part."

"Yes, Ma'am. We've already figured that part out and we've come up with a solution in the second. Technology. As you know, we're pushing forward the state of the art in our man-machine interfaces. Compared to an older system where you're more 'driving' the 'Mech or the tank or the gunship, the new systems are more like 'wearing' them. More than that, even. The scent of engine oil on the wind, the tingle of the hairs at the back of your neck as enemy search radar lights you up. The new systems are like a second skin with all your senses engaged. What we've done is change some of the spatial parameters. You could almost call it enforced claustrophobia, Ma'am."

"That's the... fear of small space?" she guessed after a momentary consideration. "And what if they have to get up close and personal?"

"Our combat studies so far show that this is an advantage. The soldier is more aware, more focused. More careful. No one has come back saying they love it but the numbers don't lie, Ma'am - they're more effective."

She sniffed, "I'll have to try it. When can you get me out there?" she gestured towards the forest with her glasses. "I want to know what it's like for my men out there - I don't expect them to do anything that I won't."

And it would be a chance to score one of these new 'Mechs for herself. Her old 'Dragoon was a familiar saddle but it was showing its age. Time to turn it out to pasture and put a young stallion between her legs.

That... Probably came out wrong.

"What's the OpFor?" she asked, raising the glasses again to look for something that might be the enemy.

"We've brought in captured Nicean equipment. You'll be facing what your command will be facing," the Lieutenant answered, turning to lead her down the tower's turning staircases. "Have you fought the Niceans? We don't have any of those, unfortunately, so the OpFor personnel are mostly Qi. Veterans of the Ynij War. It isn't an exact match for tactics and attitude but they'll keep you on your toes..."