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

[Sunset]

Dr. Daryan Brilla's Apartment, Landor City, Terra Incognito...

"...Holy fuck, what if we broke it?"

Whatever it was, Dr. Brilla didn't seem particularly concerned about it. Instead she focused her attention and her spoon on the menacing tower of fudge brownies, cut chocolate ice cream squares, and drizzled caramel sauce that occupied a position of prominence on her counter. Already one corner had been severely eroded and the process lubricated by a tumbler that smelled suspiciously of rum next to it.

"You're presuming too much of your power as a civilization."

"Yeah? But how do we know that? Holographic theory has been around a couple centuries;" At least among the Sol-based civilizations;" But we're just now really looking to use and exploit it. The idea that the Universe is a simulation has been around just as long and holographic theory would be one way to accomplish a machine universe without accounting for every physical interaction. It allows the observed universe to be constructed procedurally from the standpoint of the observer. If there are observers. That suggests the possibility that there are no observers, that we're all just sub-programs that have been instructed to think and act as if we are real."

"To what end, and you're thinking about it too much. Just eat your dessert."

"Is it a dessert that contains the secrets of the universe?" Her spoon plunged into the stack and she continued, her mouth full, "Cause that's what I do, you know. Theoretical physicist. We theorize. That is, we do if we're not just a program running on some kid's phone in a higher dimension. We do that, you know. SimUniverse. Spend your whole life in there if you want. So how far down does the stack go? Or up?"

"We don't know, but we're pretty confident you haven't broken it."

She cleared her throat with a swallow from the glass, "Nice cryptic answer there. How do we know that you're not the interior manifestation of whoever is running this thing? After all - a sentient galaxy-spanning electromagnetic field isn't possible according to every theory on the books. Unless of course one were to manipulate the galactic..."

"Universal."

"...boundary conditions. Universal? Now who's presuming too much of their power as a civilization? You want some of this?" She pushed the plate towards the odd shimmer and there was something akin to a nod though neither the other spoon nor the cascading treat changed in any perceptible manner. "What do you get out of that? Can you taste it?"

"We can," but the i-We did not answer which question it was responding to but added another cryptic respond, "Have you ever been somewhere we have not been able to contact you?"

"Tricksy. But if you are an expression of the universal boundary condition and we're just sub-programs, there's no real energy barrier. Woah," she pushed herself back from the counter, eyes closed and mouth moving oddly as she pushed at the roof with her tongue. "Brain freeze, or you touching my dessert made it really taste funky. Like... Like you pulled all the energy out of it..." She rocked forward and looked closely, holding up the spoon to prod at the ice cream. "Ice crystals. Aha! You did lower the local ambient energy! Did that show up on BOOBYTRAP?"

Her question was for herself; She'd created her own miniature TRIPWIRE array that covered - mostly - the confines of her apartment. A gesture and the holographic interface appeared and she played back the last few seconds of recording. Indeed there was a notable spike just after she'd asked the enigmatic energy to take a taste, "Like that name?" She grinned and pointed the spoon down to her own generous cleavage, "Only took a second to come up with that one."

"It is apropos."

"You guys would make pretty killer assassins. Guy. Just go around freezing people when they are on the shitter, right?"

"We grew out of it," but there was an odd tone of reluctance - odd at least for nothing more than a shimmering patch of air.

"Or were forced out of it by those crystal fellows. Yeah, I know, you don't want to talk about it. But we're way off the rabbit trail here - what if we broke it? What if we broke the simulation by creating an interior condition that will require the simulation to run forever? What if the end of our universe was - is - just the pre-determined end of the simulation? And we broke it?"

"Pushing a patch to a production system without first testing it on a sandbox system? And you call yourselves a high-tech civilization..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, The Kion Homeworlds, The Delta Quadrant...

"Following Lieutenant Mohali's example and a bit of a hunch, I've done a full reconstruction of every destroyed body in the system and they are all missing a significant amount of their volume even after accounting for the nearby debris and including the asteroids in a close orbit. Also, mapping out the remaining portions of the subterranean complexes shows that all of them likely penetrated far into their respective cores - right where the densest elements will have naturally accumulated. Just the elements," Lieutenant Commander Ingersol finished dramatically, "That would be required for the creation of the post-transitional material needed to construct the Circlet. That would lead me to the possibility that this system served as one of the material sources for the construction - but only one."

"And I have some confirming evidence," the Eye chimed in. "When we were doing the repairs and conversion on the transit gates I noticed that certain components were substantially more advanced than others. The components of the wormhole generator in particular. It wasn't particularly important at the moment but when the Lieutenant Commander mentioned his theory I went back and did some further analysis. The gates are Kion constructs but they were built around an older and more advanced core made largely from the same unobtanium;" That was, the same post-transitional atomic elemental arrangement; "As the Circlet."

"So I would speculate that these were resource extraction complexes used to extract the needed elements and then, when the mines were 'played out', they were abandoned and then brought back online by the Kion. It doesn't answer the question of whether the Kion originated in this system but it does answer the question of why there seems to be more material extracted than could possibly be accounted for in the number of Kion warships discovered to date and why their warships were of considerably lesser technology. They couldn't build anything better. That could, however, meant that the Kion were this Precursor species or at least a local branch of their species."

"Which is plausible, but..."

Now it was Doctor Vikoso's turn to put forward her accumulated findings. Pushing herself forward at the conference table, she swept aside a number of images that she had been studying on the virtual surface for her, and her colleagues, undivided attention, "But there's a number of facts working against that. We know from imagery and biological data since recovered by the scientists working on the Dragon's Eye that the Kion were primarily an aquatic species. They would have been capable of moving about on dry land but their bodies were largely evolved for underwater or at least coastal living. They had a well-developed gill analog, their feet and hands were wide and paddle-shaped and, Dr. Prescott?" She looked to the Ojeni's chief medical officer, who sat nearly opposite, "Your report on their auditory functions said..."

The balding Doctor nodded, "Yes. Auditory processing was very well developed and they spoke by vibrating a section of stiff tissue just between their chest and neck, isolating their speech functions from their breathing functions."

"Very much an aquatic species," Vicky went on, reemphasizing her point. "But the Settings on the Circlet are all terrestrial. While they include some aquatic habitats I would expect to see far more and of a far more connected nature. Instead they... Well, they reflect nature. Additionally the non-setting transport network is all designed around terrestrial use and I think that seals it. The Kion are not the Precursors - at least not directly. As to whether they evolved here, I think these largely settle the question." One by one she pulled the images back up and tipped them up to display them to the full table. For everyone who had experienced the complexes scattered widely across the undersea surface of the Dragon's Eye they were immediately familiar; Temples, amphitheaters, and palaces all carved in a similar style and decorated with statues that served both architectural and artistic purpose. "These were found in the shallow areas of seas and rivers that were either frozen or obliterated when the planets they were built on broke up. However, unlike those under the Eye, these were lived in. We've found bodies frozen in the ice along with large numbers of household and personal items. Construction quality ranges from high to low - just as you would expect to find among various social strata - and their military technology is inter-mixed with these structures."

"Interestingly, they didn't seem to make much if any use of what we would consider quality of life technology. There were no entertainment screens, no home automation..."

"Because they didn't have any infrastructure," Commander Eye'tumno noted, looking up from his own set of borrowed images. "No power conduits, no solar panels. Nothing to allow continued use of these technologies beyond whatever on-board power they might have had."

"...and so my speculation is that the Precursor civilization established their extraction operations in this system before the construction of the Circlet hundreds of thousands of years ago. After construction was complete they decommissioned the operations and left, abandoning their own gateway system at the same time. Somewhere around eighty thousand years ago the Kion, who had been living on the surface as something close to a Bronze Age civilization, discovered the Precursor complexes. Perhaps an earthquake or volcanic activity opened a breach - the extraction operations having significantly impacted the tectonic stability of the planet, this may have been so common as to be inevitable. The Precursor technology and knowledge base seems equal or slightly more advanced than our own and so when the Kion encountered a command and control system they were able to interact with it. It learned their language, they perhaps worshiped it as a god, but you now have a culture that is still primarily centered around war and conquest with access to advanced technology. They don't care or understand the concept of increasing personal productivity, or individual commercial specialization, or advanced education. They want shiny things and they'll take them from whoever they can."

"Perhaps this AI-God understood this, perhaps it didn't," she offered, pushing her theory further, "But it seems to me that the Precursors did a lot of experimentation. They built the Circlet and then didn't fill it with their own cities - it's really more like a nature reserve now. Which could be exactly what they had intended. A zoo on a massively unprecedented scale. But somehow they started the extraction complex working again and, discovering that they were surrounded by species that had all kinds of physical wealth, set the machinery to building warships so they could go take it. Eventually they pissed off enough of their neighbors that they were conquered and, given how damaged the planets in the system already were, a relatively 'minor' bombardment was enough to finish the job. Once they saw what had happened to one - maybe they figured out why, maybe they didn't - their enemies just started popping the rest like party balloons. It probably made for a pretty epic battle if you're into that kind of thing."

It was time to wrap things up, "If we want to confirm this, we're going to need an outside source. Documentation from one of the species that participated in the last battle. Fortunately we have a lot of their ships, and fortunately they have computers. So I've already talked to the head of the recovery operation - Rear Admiral Tae Lee - and he's agreed to have his crews extract whatever computer cores they can find. There will be some degradation after seventy-odd thousand years, but we can puzzle-piece it together. Hell, with whatever combat footage we might find, we might be able to make a movie..."

[Sunset]

Nest-47 Docking Complex, Esti System, Delta Quadrant...

"You gotta break some eggs to make an omelette. Is that a little bit racist," Friday asked herself, speaking aloud in the safe confines of the little work pod.

She hadn't stolen it - yet - and along with several others it hung secure against the wall of the enclosed docking bay with a pair of titanic robotic arms folded up next to it. Down the middle of the bay lay the damaged length of the Kion warship that had ferried her to the Esti System while positioned all around the upper level of the bay bulkheads were both windows and gantries in profusion where those working could control both the robot arms and pass orders to the smaller pods as they worked. Importantly there was no work being done; The ship had laid at anchor for the past several days while it was searched and re-searched and then searched again. With Friday safely off and secreted away in an auxiliary-auxiliary airlock and maintenance room the search teams had found nothing other than the abandoned derelict the ship had appeared to be.

It might have been a little bit racist.

A boarding tube had been extended from the bay to the ship and a large group of the local Este'Ilwe Avians were making their way across. In the narrow confines of the tube they couldn't fly and so they slowly hop-walked as the armed guards in the lead controlled the pace of the small knot of officers in the middle. That was her target and those were her orders and with a good couple hundred meters between the bulkhead and the hull she was waiting for just the right moment.

"Too bad I'm an egg. Don't break yourself, Friday," she told herself for the fifth time that morning. After the botch-up of her last assignment she'd been told just that in just as nice of works. "You're being placed as an expendable asset. Your orders are to target the military government for incapacitation and elimination while avoiding civilian loss of life. Your transport to the system will be one-way; Any recovery will come at the end of the operation. They didn't even add 'And don't get yourself killed'," she finished with barely a sigh as she tore open the control panel. There was a knot of wires inside and she began to cut and reconnect them one after another to a small unit she'd pulled from a pocket.

They were nearly half-way across the tunnel now, only a thin layer of insulation and aluminum protecting them from the ravages of vacuum. In any other situation it would have been reasonably safe - the bulk of the station itself would have protected them from anything short of a ramship. The ramship was on the inside now, however, and she finished connecting the wires and booted up the control rig. In space the idea of seat-of-the-pants flying was a no-no; Even if a biological hand was on the stick most of the actual control was done by much faster and more aware computer systems and this was the same in the little work pod. Intelligence had recovered the technical details needed to control the ship from the two Este'Ilwe ships that had come into the Republic's possession and now the little controller knew them as well. She tapped in a set of commands, saved them, and disconnected the unit. The inspection party was past the three-quarter mark now - too far to run and trapped up against the closed airlock on the warship side.

"Like chickens with their heads cut off. Damnit, why am I being so racist today?"

The hatch closed behind her and that was the trigger for the program to launch. Only a meter away, maneuvering thrusters began to burn and she scrambled to put hard metal between them and her as the pod pulled away from the pack and lanced straight towards the boarding tube at ever-increasing speed. If she had been able to spare a moment to look she would have seen the startled faces of the station crew look up from their terminals and through the windows that ringed the bay. One even threw himself against the glass, fist pounding in futility as the shouted warning reached the officers clustered inside the tube. They reacted as best they could, running for the Kion airlock while those who were less steady of mind tried for the other end but the attack was fatally well-timed. Slamming into the tube the pod tore it into metal and plastic shreds to spill the vital atmosphere and the panicked Avians out with a rush.

A rush from the station crew but it was already too late. Two Flock Leaders - Admirals to those with a familiarizing translator - were dead along with a dozen more senior officers and the escorting guards. In the rush to save those in the tube no one noticed as the pod parked itself just at the edge of the main control station and used those same menacing maneuvering thrusters to cut through the thick glass. When they did it was only as the senior staff found themselves pulled towards the sudden, searing vacuum. The air inside ignited as engines that could move an enormous, heavy plate around with ease emptied themselves into what was now a broiler oven complete with convection.

"...I wonder what they taste like. Bet its chicken. Damnit, Friday... Racism!" The thought occurred to her that she should stick around, make merry chaos among the teams sent to recover the bodies and investigate what was surely a terrible, terrible industrial accident, but she shook it off and headed for the airlock she'd marked as an escape route, "Meli would be proud. Then she'd kill me."

A line of explosions ripped through the remaining work pods as their programmed instructions went live and chaos once again reigned as the crews rushed to attempt a rescue now found themselves similarly floating free in space.

"...so proud."

[Sunset]

The Red River Wilderness, The Southern Continent, Denali, The Yukon System...

It would be an odd sight for the random hiker travelling through the supposedly uninhabited wilderness of the nearly-uninhabited planet's vast southern continent. Tucked in at the edge of a rocky cliff line among the towering near-Fir trees were eight tall poles stripped of their bark and supporting another eight that met in a crown at the center. A thick chain netting - the chain dotted with short, mean spikes - had been strung between these to form an enclosure while the floor had been cleared to nothing but dirt and straw. During the long Indian summer this had dried to a crispy brown and crunched satisfyingly underfoot as the warrior within paced the confines of his enclosure. A single thick chain ran to a pulley overhead and this was linked to a similarly sized black iron ring set into a heavy wooden square directly in the center of the arena.

Dr. Kraus pulled at the straps that ran across his pasty white chest and around his shoulders, flesh not built out from years of strength-training exercises but rather from the casual consumption of vending machine snacks. These supported a heavy worked steel shield on his left arm while the right hand held a magnificently crafted gladius, its edge honed to an invisible razor sharpness. There was clearly some familiarity with the weapon as he swung it to and fro, the weight stretching and limbering up his muscles for the fight to come, but every nervous twitch spoke of a lack of experience. Nothing but a leather loincloth hung with plated straps and a pair of calf-high sandals with similarly styled metal greaves protected his body - his head was bare and already sweat was trickling down to drop from his nose or find its way into his beard. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and a rattle from the center chain came as his only warning that the fight was to begin.

Thick iron pulled tight and the oaken square rose to reveal a barred cage similarly pulled along, a hulking man-like shape sitting in the center. As soon as it spied him it leapt to the bars and began to scream unintelligible provocations at him, it's jaws wide and fangs bare. Whether it had once been a man descended to the savagery of ape or an ape raised to the barbarity of a man one could only guess at but the black-furred and muscular form gave broad indication of a violent past as well as current intention. Kraus fell into a fighting crouch, shield extended in protection and the sword held behind it where it could stab out at any number of unexpected angles. As the cage rose above the level of the floor it began to twist and turn and he followed it, feet as light as he dared as the straw and dirt gave up a fine mix of chaff and dust. Metal shook and rattled as the beast placed cruel hands on the bars and sought to tear them apart with nothing but brute strength and the scientist's steel blue eyes widened in alarm as they bent just that fraction. The final distance was reached and a cord cleverly rigged pulled a pin in the cage door, the great ape kicking it open with enough force to bring it springing back nearly in his face.

A single standing leap brought him flying towards the man on the ground and the shield came up to block the grasping hands while the sword stabbed out to seek the vulnerable belly but at the last moment cowardice proved the better and Kraus threw himself aside to avoid the monster. His blade missed utterly but so did the ape, both rolling to their feet but it was the cage that drew first blood as hands nearly that of a man closed around the chain and the spikes intended for just such a purpose punctured and tore deep. Howls of rage filled the clearing and echoed off the cliff as it shook the chains mightily and for a moment Kraus considered a head-long lunge, a perfect three-point stance that would end with the blade through the beast's heart. He stepped forward to put his plan into action but his opponent turned and the ripple of muscles flexing beneath charcoal skin as blood dropped from clasped fingers again brought him pause. The great fangs showed and he fell back into his chosen stance, training taking over where intuition had failed him.

One foot across the other and it began to circle him, cutting the wide octagon into a small semi-circle as it pinned him against one wall. A long arm lashed out and he cut at it with the blade, the other reaching through with unexpected speed to grab at the protective shield. One was rewarded with a fresh line of red across the arm while the other took successful hold of the steel edge and tore it away, the great strength of the ape lifting Kraus and sending him spinning across the arena. In a moment the challenger was on him and he swung the blade wildly, only momentarily forcing his opponent back before the arc completed and the beast lunged through. In an instant Kraus felt himself lifted off the ground as the great hand closed around his throat and he tried to stab out only to find the already bloody hand of the beast clutching his blade, holding it firm despite the crimson flow across the steel. A bracing hop propelled by rage and anger and the monkey crossed the distance to the nearest of the posts to slam him bodily against it.

The air left his lungs with a rush and then the fingers clamped shut, holding his throat as he struggled to breath. He tried to twist the sword, tried to cut it free, tried to bring the shield down on the beast's head but already the strength had fled his body. Another blow and the back of his head struck the post and there was a clatter as the magnificent blade dropped through the chain netting. Another as he sagged and now the hand made bloody and raw by barb and edge came up to grasp at his face as the other held him firm against the wood. It pushed at his cheek and through those terrible fingers he watched as his vision closed, watched as those eyes glowed red with hatred, and then there was a terrible crack as his neck broke and his body went limp.

A single clap hard and firm broke the silence as the figure reclining on his couch at the edge of the cliff above pushed himself off the cushions, "Bravo, savage. Bravo."

Emperor Kraus sat at the edge of the lounge and the slow steady clap seemed to mesmerize the ape as it came to the near edge, the body of its foe forgotten behind. Whatever fire still raged in its belly was lost behind eyes that had gone glassy, powerful breaths now slowing as the loss of blood took its toll.

"The monster has overcome the man. My training and dedication was poor and incomplete but..." And one hand fell to his lap while the other turned thumb-out to hold above the arena below, "...but what of the monster? Should it be allowed to live? Has it brought entertainment to me, its ultimate master?"

If there had been an appeal to be made, it was not heard and was not recognized as the thumb turned up but the ape did not know or understand the ancient meaning. It was only when the Doctor dropped the imperious tone and grabbed up an archaic-looking weapon from beside the lounge that the victor realized the peril and began to run, looking for someplace to hide. The first bullet fell short to raise a splatter of dust but there was nowhere to hide in the open area and Kraus grinned maniacal as he chased it down with a hail of hot lead. Rising to his feet he held the M60 - replica - at his waist and the draped belt over the other arm as links churned from the opposite side amid the crack-crack-crack of gunfire. One then two then three fell home with the wet slap of flesh parting ways and the ape staggered, fell, and twitched as the last of the belt ran through the receiver and the machine-gun clicked dry.

"Yep, nope. No damned dirty ape is gonna get a reprieve from me. Not now - not ever!"

----

Back in the Lab, Denali, The Yukon System...

"...custom code to allow two completely separate Prime Eien Nodes and then I modified it further for the Bio version. Two complete but separate sense streams, two complete sets of physical controls, hormones, pain responses, everything works. Sorta," Dr. Kraus raised his mug and took a sip of single-sense coffee. "People have messed around with clock cycles, resource pools, you name it, but the Human cyber-synthetic brain just isn't meant to do that. Splitting ourselves into two distinct points of consciousness... It was fun, yes, and worth the experiment, but it'll give you a ripper of a headache and," he finished by tossing the dregs of the cup into the laboratory sink before sticking it under the drip for a refill; "You damned well better brush up on your swordsmanship before you try it."

[Sunset]

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

"Jackpot!" Jadak ran down the barrel of his own gun, the heavy metal not even wavering under his sixty-something kilo weight, and jumped the last meter down to land in a festival turned to glass, "Come on, big money!"

The room was more than just another ordinary space filled with the everyday; It had been a meeting place of some kind with a long table down the center built in the alien's distinct inverted-Y fashion. There were plates and utensils set at the edge for those perched on their high seats to share while along the ridge both serving vessels and decorations slowly thawed in the melting atmosphere. His eyes lit on a candle set in the middle of the table; Cut from what looked like silver and draped with dangling mirrors on delicate silver chains to reflect the light around the room the piece would fetch a fortune among the Roanians. Then he turned to the walls where there were painting in intricate relief, and small statues in corner niches.

"Perfect, oh yes, this is fucking perfect!"

Dropping his rifle onto its sling, he pulled a bag out of his pack. They'd even come to call them looting bags; Fitted with small internal air sacks they kept items inside from jostling up against each other. He had no idea where the Colonel had found them but he knew what he was going to fill this one with and the candle piece disappeared inside before he even remembered the radio. Grabbing his collar he pressed the call button on the antique rig, "Blud Dawgs, this is Point One. I've got valuables at coordinates," he read off from the readout on his wrist, "Nothing spooky, proceeding with pillage."

That fulfilled his duty to the other Dawgs. With his coordinates mapped and hastily secured they would fan out to uncover their own little treasure haul but as the old saw went - one man's junk was another man's treasure. Each would make their own assessment as to what qualified as what and it wouldn't be until they returned to the markets closer to Sol that they would find out how right or wrong they were.

"Wish I had some kind of stasis unit..." Jadak said aloud as he watched the congealed gasses slowly melt away from a frieze for a minute before shoving a statuette into another bag. "Keep these things in their original condition, be worth more money that way, right?"

It was a reasonable notion and he thought about it as hands went to anything that looked shiny or intricate. The Corporal wasn't exactly an agent of science - he'd grown up inside various violent virtual reality simulations and the mercenary life had come half-naturally when he'd been forced to seek gainful employment - but there was at least a trickle of intelligence behind that seemingly expressionless face.

"Ya know, something to keep them cold. Probably get twice what they're worth unthawed... Look pretty too," he considered one, a delicately detailed landscape that was now losing its crystalline sheen. "Hang it up in a museum or some shit, right?" He reached for his collar again, "Major, do we have some kind of... hibernation pod or stasis unit in the medical supplies? Something we could use to freeze some of these things up solid til we get them back to civilization? Be worth a fair bit more that way."

There was a pause on the other end. By the nav display on his wrist the Major was now inside a nearby building where he too was likely stocking up on lootables, "...that's a negative, Corporal. We have some medical stasis supplies but the Colonel won't... Won't let them be used. In case of emergency. Just keep looting, Corporal."

Jadak sighed and opened another bag before realizing that he already had four filled and ready to be hauled outside and stashed away. Tossing it over his next objective he grabbed two in each hand and looked around for something like an exterior door. There wasn't any chance of making the climb up the rounded incline of the gun barrel and no way he was going to be given a hibernation unit either - the cat was out of the bag and likely the medical staff was now gearing up to make their own arrival in the plunder zone. That was the way things worked in the company; The Major had probably tossed the idea back to the medical section who'd denied the Corporal's request. They'd do their own looting and toss the Major one or two choice prizes or simply owe him a nebulous favor. If it ever came down to who to bag first, it would now be the Major. Unless someone else owed them a bigger favor.

"Fucked over by the chain of command again..."

Jadak dropped two of the bags with nothing more than a bounce and hefted his rifle. There were no doors that led outside so he pointed the weapon to a bare section of wall, thumbed the selector, and made his own as the burped grenade punched a ragged hole. Grabbing his bags and stepping through the rubble he'd just edged up to the new exit when a noise behind him make him turn; 'Kejelkij!'

"What the..."

He immediately recognized it, of course. There was already one of the four-armed robots strapped to the rear deck of one of the Bandito's but it wasn't moving into the room from a nearby hallway with two arms raised and repeating the same unknown phrase; 'Kejelkij!' 'Kejelkij!' 'Kejelkij!'

"Huh," Jadak looked down at the rifle, "Must have woken it up. Well, go back to sleep you useless..."

Panels and rails on the robot's arms fell open and slid back as something that definitely resembled a gun emerged and were aimed in his concise direction.

"...piece of shit. Shit."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, The Kion Homeworlds, The Delta Quadrant...

"Alright," Captain Blaine flopped herself into the command chair either oblivious to or purposefully taking advantage of the slim blonde woman who already occupied the spot. Sitting upright in the more traditional manner and for the moment uncaring that her commanding officer was now sitting across her lap with one leg hooked over the opposite arm of the chair and that her head was resting between her own shoulder and that of the chair back, Commander Sloane continued her work except long enough to just barely return the kiss Kami planted on her lips; "Alright, tell me more about the Kion. Rumors, speculation, what's the scuttlebutt since lunch?"

"Speculation? I've got speculation..."

Doctor Vikoso looked up from her claimed spot at a console tucked away in one corner of the bridge. It had become something of a clearinghouse with screens dedicated to new scans of Kion warships, projections, and other assorted bits and pieces of raw data collected at that nexus for evaluation. While that could be done anywhere on board the modern connected starship there was a convenience to having it on the Ojeni's bridge and close to the decisions of the command staff.

"Here's one for you; The Kion found the Gen Celet System, attacked the Circlet, blew a big hole in it, and then left. Why?" There were shrugs; "Because they didn't have much in the way of shiny stuff. Look at the reasons why we - the Republic - has ramped up our presence sharply and you'd think that those would be the exact same reasons why the Kion would too. It's a natural toehold, established resource and population base, multiple transit gates... But they didn't stay. Just long enough to destroy the Sitsizi'i civilization, take what they wanted, and leave. Look at what they have piled up in the crypt - lots of shiny stuff that is, ultimately, worth far less than the immense amount of material and labor that went into the construction of the Circlet. It says to me that the Kion were a civilization that had come upon their strength by chance and never had a chance or perhaps the desire to grow their understanding of the universe to the point where they would know the true value of what they were abandoning."

Vicky continued with a manipulation of several of the Kion warships, concentrating on the limited living spaces, "There's some supporting evidence for this in the way they commanded their warships. There are physical controls but they are non-technical. More like the controls on an atmospheric fighter than a spaceship. Voice interface as well - I'd very much suspect that the Kion hadn't progressed to the point of a written language when they came across the Precursor complex and somehow gained access. There's almost no text present on any of the Kion artifacts we've found aside from a few common symbols - a handful, really, and most of those are mutations of others. Clan affiliations, family emblems. The same symbols they have painted on their ships but in less detail. Illiterate barbarians with spaceships."

"Nice of the Precursor AI to build them ships that they could use," Kami pointed out. "Why would it do that? Unless it recognized in the Kion their old builders."

"Maybe. It could be that the Kion were... A lot tribe? Like the tribes that were still occasionally found in the Amazon jungle until the end of the twenty-first century? Unfortunately the Precursors were very lax about leaving their own records as well. Or very efficient in making sure they didn't."

"Alright - anyone else?"

After a moment it was Lieutenant Commander Ingersol who piped up, "Guilty!"

"Of what?"

"Of being forgetful. I've been working so hard on the reconstruction of the system I forgot about the very big picture." He paused and there was a swirl from the central holosphere as the local galaxy emerged along with a smaller view of the complete disc of the Milky Way. "The very big picture. Now that we know where the Kion homeworlds - presumed - are, I compared the plot of their position over the years against the plot of the course of the Dragon's Eye and there you go..."

Everyone watched as the green circle around the still-tiny rogue planet moved through the rotating starfield until it came very close to colliding with the similarly marked star that was circled by the now-ruined planets around them.

"...close enough to observe and reach using the sublight drives demonstrated by their warships. The timing matches up perfectly as well - seventy-two thousand three hundred forty-five years ago to just two hundred years after that. Long enough enough to find it, built out the crypt complex, and then watch it disappear into the night with their greatest leader safely locked away. Or at least safely to them. And..." He punched up another set of information, this time in the unfamiliar but familiar language of computer logs, "It's all right there. The gate complex still has the logs of various events that could impact the operation of the system and the close passage of a rogue planet counted. In fact, I'd guess that the gate complex alerted the Kion to the Dragon's Eye. They don't seem like the type to have discovered it on their own."

Kami gave him the eyeball, "Anything else pertinent in these newly announced logs that we should know about?"

"Not as much as you'd hope. They are very technical. Data points - nothing like a comment section that would give us any insight other than the mathematics used by the Precursors. Base ten. Very straightforward and rational."

"Which, I suppose that is another point for the separation between the Precursors and the Kion," Vicky pointed out. "If the Kion had a concept of mathematics it was very organic and oral."

"Okay, so if the Kion and the Precursors were not the same thing, why did the latter build an extraction and manufacturing complex under the former's homeworld? You gotta think they knew that it would significantly weaken the planet and that there was a sentient civilization living on the surface."

"Maybe they were going to move them," a voice just to Kami's right suggested. Sloan went on, "Maybe they were going to move them to the Circlet and something interrupted them. Frank, are there any similar logs on the Circlet side? Showing where the other resource systems that the Precursors used were located? I mean - is it possible that the Zeer'Gen and the Sitsizi'i were moved to the Circlet from these systems?"

There was a moment of activity from the Lieutenant Commander's station and then an answer, "No. I suspect the system logs on that side were lost when the gate was taken and rebuilt by the Kion. But in galactic terms we're not really that far from the Circlet either. Hmm... I've got an idea, and it's a bit of a deux ex machina, but when the gateways were originally built they were constructed like our own Aurora network - any gate could connect to any other gate. But the Kion didn't know how to do that so they rebuilt the gateways as point-to-point, just like the Zeer'Gen did. Convenient for us now since we can rebuild all those gates to connect to our system and have a bunch of backups. But those gateways still exist, even if they've been severed from the network. Or have they? I'll talk to the Eye, but I'm thinking we can have the system send out something like a 'hello world' and, even if they can't connect, the other gateways may be able to at least respond and we can then triangulate their position."

Of course, there was a faster way but Captain Blaine only nodded in agreement. Even with his new rank insignia, the Lieutenant Commander wasn't in a position to need to know about TRIPWIRE or the new array that had just been launched. But she was, though even she didn't know the technicalities of the system. That it could pick up the distortions caused by the mass activation of the Kion gate network? That was obvious.

"Do that, and talk to Admiral Falk's staff. They might be able to help out there;" and in such a way that the source of the information wouldn't be known...

[Sunset]

Silaco Electronics Research Headquarters, Chuh-Yu, Ares System...

It looked just like most any other standard intermodal shipping container that one might find scattered across the Human-touched areas of the galaxy - which was pretty much all of it. Certainly the corners were nicely rounded, the sides flat rather than corrugated, and the locks at each corner showing none of the regular wear and tear that would have been evident if the container had been in regular use, but it was in the end just another shipping container; "We haven't come up with an official name for it yet, but the guys have started to call it the 'Civilization in a Box'."

Erika stopped in her slow circuit of the device, one hand running down the seam of the two doors and hovering just over a darkened control panel build into one, "That sounds like another self-contained terraforming system. We have those."

"It's not," the project lead assured her, joining her at the control panel to swipe in a quick code before there was a hum as it scanned and verified his identity. "Suir Guccini, Project Lead. Load demonstration program..."

He finished and a faint half-world appeared around them, holographically projected over the real world so that the suggestions of terrain vaguely matched one to the other. It was however a different world filled with dangers from active volcanoes to crashing waves driven by roaring hurricanes. The most primal of chaos there was nothing visibly alive though the faint sounds of birds chirping could be heard through the cacophony, bleeding through from the real world to interject yet more discord.

"Not exactly the kind of place most of us would want to live, is it?" Suir asked, watching as a fountain of molten red rock surged out of a nearby cleft that was otherwise a grassy hill where a family had laid out a picnic for the afternoon. "Even with protective gear it would be miserable and possibly lethal - every day. But that's for us and we don't exactly have to be us anymore, do we?"

From out of the ground a terrible monster appeared, tearing aside the broken rubble as easily as one might scoop away sand. Covered with armor and wielding both horn and claw it seemed well-adapted to the environment. A splash of lava landed on its shoulder and it simply flinched it off to go about its business.

"That's you. Or me. Or at least an Eien Extension of either of us. And that's why this unit isn't a terraforming system. Instead it combines a few things we already do into one package and makes it possible for us to live and work where we want to. The unit itself can survive in nearly any hostile environment from a raging volcanic wilderness to the bottom of an acidic sea. Once deployed it will use the built-in systems to create living spaces that will blend into the original environment; A network of underground tunnels, or a coral reef filled with chambers. It will then also create an Eien Extension that will be able to live and thrive in that environment. A whole new species; Cybernetic at first, but it contains all the expertise needed to build up to the point of creating biological versions. If instructed and allowed to run the unit will exponentially expand its own resource extraction operations, construction programs, and quickly fill a world with a new civilization tailored to it. For those living in the Eien who want a new experience and new challenges with real risks this system can provide it."

"It can also expand our borders," Erika noted. "Expand the worlds we can quickly settle, push out our presence. Even give us a way to establish a foothold on hostile worlds with existing civilizations. Done;" He'd been expecting more argument and he looked at her sharply; "Make it happen. It's brilliant."

[Sunset]

Setting Five, The Circlet, Gen Celet System...

"The Eternal Tree..."

The symbolism was laid out plain in front of them, the collection of hard river rocks spread out on a survival blanket draped over one of the inflatable benches that angled out from the tent like the spread legs of an enormous man kneeling around the camp fire that flickered between them. Another faced it from directly across the flames but it was the bench Commander Timmons and his team were similarly spread out around; Wheels within wheels.

For most of the palm-sized rocks the iconography was simple. A detailed image of the tree that towered over them had been left in the rock when the surrounding mineral had been removed by some sharp instrument. Sometimes there were small figures circling it, and other times there were two smaller trees flanking it. Occasionally flames covered the ground in front but the image of the tree was always the same. Just under the false roots of the tree they had found nearly a hundred buried in a large cache but sniffing their way and probing into the ground with various sticks, knives, and then knives on sticks they had found others scattered all the way out to a stones-throw distant.

"A constant in their world," Timmons looked up at the looming trunks, now crossing with shadow as the true night began to wear on. It was either spectacular engineering or the most fortunate of luck; The Circlet and its Primary were at such a distance from the nearby star that as the Circlet rotated there was both a dim twilight as the light reflected from the gas giant lit the interior of the Circlet and then a true night as a particular Setting passed around the backside with the first being nearly twice the length of the later. "Or at least what they experienced of it, I'm guessing. Why would they venerate this tree when the construct of the Circlet is clearly more eternal than anything except that the tree is natural;" Or at least looked to be; "While the Circlet... Well, would it be unnatural? To us it is, but we know the essentials of how to build such things and that they can be built."

"Right. So they might see the tree as a symbol of life or fertility. For a second there I was thinking that maybe they just didn't know about the Setting or hadn't seen the Walls but I'm pretty sure you can see the Wall from the top of the hill."

Deania did just that, standing and stepping up onto one of the other benches to put her hand to her forehead and sweep the horizon. Vaguely she thought - avoiding any visual enhancement for the sake of accuracy - that she could see a faint glimmer of silver on the horizon but it was hard to be sure in the fading light. After a minute she sat back down while Timmons took two of the rocks and turned them over and over, examining each as a whole.

"...no visible tool marks on this one but," he pushed another forward and then began to sort through the rest of the pile. "Some here, and here. Trinya, scan these. Look for some indication as to how old each is. The rocks themselves should be of the same age, unless whoever built this place went to all the trouble to set up artificial geological ages. I don't know if I'd put it past them but there should still be some variation in the rocks from..."

"Isotope decay, got it."

Holding the scanner above each rock as it was presented, she began to sort them out into different columns until there was a large spectrum spread across each. This presented one useful point of data; The various image sets cut into the rock varied across the presumed age range and this was noted though, for the moment, not considered important enough to dwell on. Instead the Commander began to turn and again sort the columns by his own unknown method, moving the rocks up and down in each. Near the end of the process he reached out to grab up one of the tent poles that had been re-used to mount a light on and pulled it close before stabbing it into the ground with a now-familiar clack, "Figures."

"So assuming we can use the isotope decay as a dating method, there's still a wide variety to the tooling on each sample. We'll have to do some testing in the morning to see what the local distribution is like, but we'll go with what we've got for now. Science is always progressing, right? But based on that premise, whoever made these had access to a wide range of tools across the entire date range. Or could still have access to those tools. Annya, do you recall if the ground looked to have been recently disturbed? Any of you?"

The Ensign looked up from where she had been laying, muzzle across her crossed forelegs, and shook her head. There were similar reactions all around and she added, "No. I wasn't looking, but it seemed like just regular old dirt."

Not that this meant anything and Timmons was quick to acknowledge this, "A couple years, or a few thousand. Which means whoever made these could be long gone or right around the corner. But if I had to make a guess I'd say we're sitting on another sacred site," and thoughts of their just-previous encounters with the Bjur came to mind, "So sharp eye out tonight," and his eyes went to Trinya and Lae specifically. "I'll set some drones on a perimeter patrol. Tomorrow I want to see if we can get the dates on these tied down and then do a search of the neighborhood. This could be a pilgrimage site but there could also be something right over the next ridge. Even if they're long-vanished they worked in stone so... Get some sleep," he finished, setting the stones he'd been working with down and hauling himself to his feet. "Everyone."

[Sunset]

Tree-13 Military Station, Esti System, Delta Quadrant...

"...total dick move," but despite her proclamation Friday put her wide feet against the hull opposite and pushed with all her might. With a tremendous effort the module moved free of its moorings and began to drift down towards the planet below. In an hour or so the faint edge of the atmosphere would catch it, slow the disconnected station further, and then cataclysmic destruction would ensue as the fiery heat melted through the structure and incinerated everything inside before the burned-out remainder slammed into the surface and obliterated itself and - with any luck - the military base she was aiming for; "Now, whether my aim was any good..."

The hard part had been breaking into and then re-wiring the dozens of mooring clamps, maneuvering thrusters, and escape pods so that they would alternately not report that they had been opened, report firing when they in fact were not, and would fail to launch when the big red button (or whatever the Este used) was pressed. She'd started back-to-front with the swan-shaped escape pods, swan-shaped units that had been attached to the underside of the module so that they could quickly and easily be ejected towards the planet in case of an emergency. Since the emergency was to be staged - if ultimately fatal - she wanted to make sure that if a random test or inspection of the clamps or thrusters revealed her sabotage the next step wouldn't be to simply toss her targets into the pods and hit the button. Once the pods had been disabled she had then proceeded around the outer ring of the hull in essentially random order, prying open the maintenance panels and crossing the wires as it was carefully instructed not to on the inside of said panels. Test circuits and warning indicators disabled or cross-fed she'd completed the rotation and found herself back at the thick neck that connected the disc-shaped module to the larger station stack.

Had she mentioned that this particular piece of low hanging fruit was also the officer's quarters?

No, she had not.

"But should I stay or should I go now? If I stay there might be trouble... But if I go there might be double," she giggled, swinging from hand to hand across the face of the larger station's hull.

Double for her; Already she could see the blue burn of activity as ships of some sort came to rescue the slowly fallen from their fiery fate. It would take either a specialized craft or a large warship and quickly to pull off the rescue and she'd at least made sure that most of the Este fleet was out of sight before attempting her little coup de plummet. Which didn't make a whole lot of difference when said ships were still capable of crossing that distance in seconds, but it was at least some comfort that she wouldn't be immediately spotted and fired upon as she hurried across the open plain towards her hiding hole. The next step was to figure out how to get herself off the station but perhaps, as with her last operation, a ship would come close enough at the right time for her to make a grand leap of faith.

"Say... Shooting at me. Wouldn't be a very good idea for them to do it here, would it?" She looked up through the clear visor of her helmet to where one of the large turreted batteries mounted on the station was moving to track the fleeing sibling. "Shooting themselves in the foot. But if it could be arranged to appear in two places at once, and one of those two places was bad for them and good for me... Brilliant!"

Slipping into her hole, she paused - or pawsed, which she told herself with a giggle - to place a sensor strip on the edge facing towards the fleeing module. With the feed established she retreated as far as she dared while still keeping an eye out for a passing ride. It was an unfortunate turn of events as, for the next hour, every size and shape of ship moved past but all out of jumping range and all headed with clear purpose towards the descending station module. After forty-three minutes on her clock and first one rescue attempt where they discovered that the escape pods no longer worked and then a second where a small craft was able to dock at a very small secondary airlock the atmosphere reached out and caught it. Then it flipped, and flipped, and flipped, and all hope of a rescue became useless. Spinning like a strange alien coin it turned heels over head until the heat of the passage caused the outer skin to ignite and the hulk was lost in a streaming fireball.

The resulting explosion when the module hit was very satisfying though.

By her reckoning she'd missed the terrestrial target but with any luck she'd knocked off by proxy another few senior military officers and it was time to wait. Easing up to the edge she took a look around and then stuck out her fist, thumb up, "Anyone going to New York? Come on, New York! I'll pay in tail!"

[Sunset]

'For Every Soul Fighting for the Betterment of Tomorrow, One Hundred Stand Ready to Bar the Gates of Progress...'

~Unknown

----

New Victory Super-Arcology, Southern Ares, Ares System...

It was an often overlooked but none-the-less absolute fact; Under the Federal Constitution that bound the Republic together there were no explicit restrictions on the types and manner of arms that could be bought, purchased, carried, or owned by the common citizen. This was most often overlooked and essentially ignored because of another facet of the Constitution which was the strong protections given to private property owners. Because of the tremendous costs associated with the construction of large cities such as the sprawling starfish-shaped New Victory, they were typically owned and operated either as a single corporate entity or as just one among many others under a larger parent company. Both to protect their property and the interests of their paying tenants, most of these organizations placed restrictions on the sales and bearing of weapons that varied from tolerable to draconian. These restrictions were then enforced by security measures that similarly ranged from light-handed to invisible and all-pervasive.

None of which stopped the young man from mixing together two common household cleaning agents and combining the resulting toxic mixture with an apparatus that would quickly disperse it over a wide area with typically debilitating to lethal results. Concealing it inside a pack, he walked out the front door of his apartment and down the hallway that led onto the massive interior terrace. In each direction the pedestrian space wound snake-like into the distance with a wall of dark glass on one side dotted with hanging greenery and foliage while the other spread out over first the commuter line dangling on the edge and then to the opposite wall. Far above the hexagon panels of the dome were just barely visible, thin white lines against Ares' purple-blue sky. All around him the crowds surged back and forth as they went about their late-afternoon pleasantries with some heading off to various entertainment while others finished last-minute dinner shopping. Here and there drones and robots zipped past on errands unknown while the general chatter and occasional cry added a low background noise that seemed to permeate everything. It was, all in all, a typical day in the arcology.

Setting his face into a bare scowl he walked on, the flicker of a hologram to the left of his eyes fair warning to any that might engage him that he was on his way to another destination and that - as exemplified by Galactic Assembly statistics - any interruption was to be met with a bone-searingly rude response.

It would not continued - he glanced around, moving only his eyes to light on the faces of the young and the old - and it could not continue. What they did and what they were doing was heresy. To elevate Humanity to the level of Gods, to pluck immortality from the divine and simply put it in one's pocket as simply as fruit from a neighborhood stand. In the not-so-distant past he too would have considered it his to enjoy but he had been shown the truth. Man was meant to die, to face judgement, to be redeemed and reborn as better than they were. But this...

His fist clenched and he shoved it into a pocket to bump up against the trigger he'd laced through the fabric before matching it with the other.

Normal. Everything was normal. He was just another young man on his way to meet someone. To fuck pointlessly. To enjoy a meal meant for the starving mouths of those better than him, those that lived in harmony with their world while all around him this foul work enforced its hand on a world it had never been meant to set foot on, a world that had been judged and wiped clean for its sins. How could they not see that?! Teeth ground against each other under the half-frown and he struggled to chill his thoughts. It was a hard road he walked, each step both literal and figurative as he trudged towards his destination. Salvation was coming at the end of it for both himself and for those he would free of the damnation this society was bringing on itself. Judgement was coming. Fire was coming.

Every few seconds he glanced to the right and to the commuter line waiting there with its siren call of easy access to wherever he could want to go. Cars zipped past, stopped, took on passengers, then zipped away again noiseless within the insulating confines of the tube. It was a temptation to be avoided; There would be sensors on the platform and at the doors checking for a multitude of anything and everything that violated corporate regulations. How easy would it be for the car to be diverted off to the side into a maintenance tunnel? He might save five people that way, but there... Right there.

He stepped far enough around the corner for the very edge of the floating zoo to be seen. Suspended on two delicate-looking arches that spanned the center of the sprawling arm of the building was the irregular blob of a private zoo. Species from all over the galaxy put on display for the amusement of those who did not care that they had been ripped from homes on their proper worlds, their proper place. Fingernails dug into his palm. They would die too and be free. A tiny smile crept in. It was amusing to consider the fate of an animal more highly than that of a person. But both were outside the right and proper order. He would help put them back into their proper place, a candle shining in the darkness. A fire to wash away heresy. His thumb traced across the button, felt the semi-rough surface of a component that had come off the printer just that morning. A replacement for a part that had worn out. That was the way the cycle was supposed to work.

The way it would work.

Right at the gates. There was a line there, the rush of families gathering from their own distant places. A father stepping off the platform to greet his wife and daughter. Three squabbling children circling around a harried mother. Every gathering and every group unique in their way but all needing - all deserving - the redemption he offered. Stepping into the line he closed his eyes, trudged forward as those at the front alternatively presented payment or swiped their hands over the display showing the day's offerings and a host of ignored advertising. One turn, two, three. The line was moving quickly and now he was in the middle of the pack. Fingers grabbed tight around the control and he pressed his thumb down until there was a solid click. Behind him the hiss of gas - loud enough to pierce the chatter of the crowd - and he reached back to pull the water bottle out of the mesh pouch and began to pour it over his head as those nearest heard, then realized, then took their last breaths. Some reacted in horror and others in wonder, staring at him or somewhere else as the invisible burning cloud swept into their lungs. Others tried to run, others tried to protect their loved ones. A father scooped up his daughter and ran with eyes already burning.

An alarm sounded.

They would be on their way already, police officers in armor and with weapons far greater than any he could possess. They could cut him down in an instant but it was also his place to be seen. Be seen as the liquid poured over him. He raised his hand and began to shout, his only words since waking that morning; "You break the Cycle! You bring Heresy to the Soul! Witness now the return of those you hold dear to the proper cycle of life! A Fire is coming, a Fire that will cleanse this place! Hold not to your false immortality but to the justice and salvation of the divine and the flames of Purification! Witness their coming!"

His thumb clicked again and the antique lighter snapped, flint against tinder and sparks falling to ignite the fuel. Flames raced down his arm and across his body and then he was alight. A step forward and the pain brought ecstasy; "Again I say to you, you break the cycle oh People of Sunset! Fire will purify! You will find redemption in the flames! Heed to the divine, discard your falsity... Embrace the redeeming Inferno!"

One last step and the gas overwhelmed him as well, sucked deep into his lungs as he shouted the practiced manifesto. Its last lines died on his lips as he pitched forward, the raging inferno of his body his own sacrifice to the cycle.

----

Virtual Press Conference, CORE VirtuaGov Chambers, Minutes Later...

"...as of right now this is a law enforcement matter," Erika repeated, looking over to Secretary Noldo. "Until any link to a foreign organization are proven, the only involvement of the Secretary-General's office will be to provide any requested assistance to the Department of Justice and local law enforcement."

She was tempted to add, 'That's not how this government works, you imbecile,' but tact and the Secretary kept her tongue in check; "At this point we are investigating any possibilities and asking the public - especially those near the area - for any recordings or any information they might feel is pertinent to the investigation. We will be investigating any evidence presented as quickly and effectively as possible but I will note very carefully - and repeat myself if I must - that we will not conduct this investigation in front of the media. Until we have the facts in order we will only be soliciting and accepting information on an individual basis. We are a nation of laws and we will follow those laws..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, The Kion Homeworlds, The Delta Quadrant...

It would be the Knock Heard Round the Galaxy...

"We're all set," Commander Eye'tumno said, pushing himself up from the odd saddle-shaped seat that was his resting position before the Engineering console at the rear of the bridge. The screen was filled with the status reports from the various known Kion transit gates with a sea of green lights showing their ready status. "Every gateway shows ready and all the teams report their end of the system is stable. We've been sending test status requests through the network and I'm confident that, no matter how corrupted the reply might be, we'll be able to isolate and identify them. Though after this I'm largely convinced of Doctor Vikoso's theory; The system was held together with shoddy maintenance, duct tape, and chewing gum. No professional engineering service was responsible for it - or at least I wouldn't call it professional."

Between the need to use the gates to move ships back and forth, as well as problems encountered during the setup for Ingersol's experiment, Captain Blaine had had several days to handle her own side of the plan; Contacting Admiral Falk and requesting use of the TRIPWIRE array to track the returns. Normally the gateway stations could be used to triangulate the position of the return status reports but that was made unreliable by the age of the systems as well as excruciatingly slow. TRIPWIRE would be more accurate as well as useful to the operation of the Array itself. A vast test case that would help determine the overall sensitivity of the early-warning system. For the experiment the Ares-based array and the Gen Celet-based array would be isolated from each other and used as a cross-check with each competing for accuracy. This would, of course, take time - the closer the source of the signal was to the array, the faster the array could determine the source - but the mathematics of adjusting for locations three-quarters of the way across the galaxy were not unavailable to the Republic.

Nor to the Menelmacari. They too had volunteered to cross-check using their own array; In their typical way they had rapidly built out their own version of TRIPWIRE.

"Love them or hate them, at least they are on our side," Kami noted aloud to the confused look of the Engineering Chief. "Then let's see where this takes us. On your mark, Commander..."

Each of the gates would send out their own signal but they had all been coordinated to send them at once. The timing was crucial and useful; Each known gate would also respond in kind to the request and this would set a baseline that the unknown responses could be compared to. By having each gate respond to many requests it would also produce a stronger aggregate signal. There were, however, two potentially unpleasant results. The first would be that there were no other gates - the experiment would be useless. The second would be that there were a lot of gates - enough to overwhelm the existing systems, duct tape and chewing gum, and knock them offline for however long it took to effect repairs. Since the data would still be picked up by TRIPWIRE all concerned felt this to be an acceptable if messy result.

"Status request in three, two, one..."

And then they waited.

That too was part of the rigmarole required to obscure the data from and the nature of TRIPWIRE. In normal circumstances the TRIPWIRE Operations Center had both the dedicated resources and operational judgement to act on threats and information as they appeared but this was data for a ship in the field with no ordinary connection to the array. Advertising the system to the general crew - some of whom had only just graduated from the Academy and had not been as completely vetted as to their loyalty as officers as senior as the Captain - would inevitably result in loose lips and sunk ships as the system's existence and then technical specifications were derived from even the most casual chatter. Thus the first results from TRIPWIRE would come in as the first triangulation data similarly arrived and would then be salted through that data set, effectively obliterating its origins.

And waited.

"First returns..." Now it was Ingersol's turn and as the first responses were confirmed and cross-checked they appeared as brilliant blue circles around the stars painted out on the main holosphere. This was nominally set to show only the local sector - D14-2 as it were - but soon returns from further afield forced this to expand and then expand again until over the next few hours the entirety of the galaxy was laid out. By then dinner had been called and the bridge rotated through a shift of junior officers taking their turn at the stations but with the last of his drink in hand the Lieutenant Commander took back his console, "Well, it looks impressive but its not so much as you'd think. There are returns from forty-three unknowns spread across the galaxy but only a quarter of them are intelligible and there are some big blank spots. The center of the galaxy is bare, as is the HSE portion of Delta. No real surprise there. They hate gates with a passion;" though he couldn't be sure if that was the real cause.

"My first guess is that we're looking at ten to twenty usable with the potential that the others are from stations where the gate mechanism has been wrecked but the communications system is intact. Which means there could be more gates with the opposite but we'll have to figure out another way to hunt those down."

"Interesting," though the Captain wasn't directly referring to this bit of trivia. Instead she was looking at the larger view of the galaxy. A pattern had presented itself, "Most of the intact nodes seem to be clustered along the outer reaches of the galaxy. Not a whole lot in the center and middle. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say they were either used for an invasion..." Her words caught on the very air as the image in the holosphere shrunk and retreated and a new contact appeared, attached to one of the nearby dwarf galaxies, "...or an evacuation."

[Sunset]

Demi & Erika's House, Botany Bay, Chuh-Yu...

"KAI..."

Foot bare, Alex lashed out at the hovering board. The loose fabric of her white pants rippled and rode up and then snapped at the trailing edge, cracking like a whip as her heel snapped the target in half with wood grain revealed as polymer as the three chunks spun away.

"Haa!"

Another flurry of attacks and targets followed, her body moving from one side of the open garage to the other as practice drones scooped up their simulated attackers from stands in the four corners. A heel snapped a long board in two, a palm fractured a round plate, and the freckle-faced young woman leaned back to dodge a thrown square. It passed cleanly over her stomach and as it continued on its course she spun on the opposite foot to bring the side of the other up against the flat plane of the spinning projectile and send it off course and into another. One after another she destroyed and demolished the targets until none were left standing and she stood alone with flecks of the foam-like boards dotting her crisp white uniform. There was a pause as she breathed deeply and fell into a formal stance, bowing to no one in particular, and then she began to pick up the shattered targets and throw them into a waiting bin with the same agility displayed just previous.

"Ya know," a short shape detached itself from the open door that led into the rest of the house, "Seems odd for ah robot to be practicin' karate."

There was a sharp, terrible grinding noise as the bin received another large hunk of fake wood and the butler turned to the intruder, "The true purpose of the martial arts is to discover oneself. Whether you're flesh and blood or metal and silicone doesn't matter."

"Ah, but I've ahready found ya," Meli countered with a sly smile. "Yer raht here. Doesn't look ta me lahk you have to go looking any more. Where's the boss?"

Alex's eyes narrowed. Mentally she checked the security logs - just in case someone had decided that impersonating the Dwarf would be a good way to assure their own future safety - but there were no deviations, "She is away on business. Some aspect of the terrorist attack at the New Victory arcology." Standing over the receptacle she disposed of the last few bits, dropping in a handful of gathered pebbles and then brushing some stray crumbs from her dress. "Why are you here?"

"Ah guess Ah just missed her then," Meli shrugged, moving to one corner of the blue practice mat that had been placed in the center of the room. Her feet and elbows fell into a casual fighting stance and she eyed the butler, the invitation - or request - clear. "Same reason. She must have somethin' or someone she wants me tah take care of. Ah got a question..."

Alex had moved to the opposite corner and, feet together and hands at her side, she bowed to the Dwarf without taking her eyes off the killer for a moment. It was not a fear of death but instead of embarrassment; It would not do for either of her employers to return home to find her body in pieces. But there was no sudden attack and she too prepared herself with legs spread and a knife-hand extended while a balled fist held solid just below her breast, "Ask."

"Have ya ever considered comin' over to tha dark side?" The Dwarf stepped forward and her body blurred, reactions suddenly increased by a hundred times and speed pushed to the limits of her enhanced body. It was only Alex's own electronic nature that saved her from the first offensive and she too countered with a hard edge to the throat that was barely avoided before she pulled it away to block a sharp upper-cut from the shorter woman. "Do the bosses dirty work. Its a lot of fun from tahm to tahm ahn as legal as they ken get when it comes tah killin' people."

Which was to say that the dwarf and her cohort's actions would be officially ignored by the government as long as they were in service to that government. If they were caught... Well, Meli hadn't been caught yet.

"I haven't had to kill anyone but yet I have protected the person of Ms. Silaco on several occasions without loss of life. That would seem to suggest a certain level of..."

A hand had gotten hold of her blouse and her center of gravity shifted as the Dwarf rolled backward, one foot up to propel her not into the far wall but straight up and into the ceiling or presumably so. Shifting her weight and checking the building blueprints, she spun upright and connected her foot with a cross-beam before lancing straight back down at the half-prone target. The generous hourglass rolled aside and she opened her hand to first absorb, then brace, then redirect into a handspring that left her back to the murderer and spinning around to punch at nothing with blind hope that it might stop the next attack. Instead Meli threw herself onto her back, sliding under her opponent and punching sharply upward into her groin.

"Yah, ya felt that one, didn't ya? Pretty glad ye don't have any lady bits, raht?"

"I do," there was a moment of surprise on Meli's face but Alex erased it with the sole of her foot as she sent her head-over-heels back into a very solid wall, "But I turned off the pain receptors."

The blow hadn't seemed to stagger her much and she bounced back to her feet, "Yer supposed to spend a hundred days under a waterfall or somethin' lahk that. How do you expect ta find yerself if ya keep pickin' the locks?"

"You cheat, I cheat. Or is that simply using the tools at one's disposal?"

There was a meaningful glance at the Dwarf's forearm and the reversed combat blade that had appeared out of her harness and was now laid against the skin with only the silver edge of the darkened blade showing. Across the room the butler held up her own fists and the matching glint of claws appeared between her knuckles before disappearing. The point was made and taken and the knife disappeared as quickly as it had entered the field of play but there were other tools at hand. Edging around the arena, Meli found herself not a footstep away from the target recycler as Alex closed for her next attack. A casual approach had turned into a lunging rush and she pivoted into a classic soccer kick, propelling the pile of freshly extruded boards at her opponent with mixed results. The flurry of flying targets was enough to allow one to slip through and smack the butler across the forehead. This blocked her vision just long enough for the punch that followed to connect and hit the android square in the solar plexus, folding her in half like a taco and sending her sprawling across the mat where they had begun just a second ago.

"Well, tha was fun," Meli slapped her hands together, stepping up to the fallen robot and extending a hand, "So, where's the boss?"

Another figure detached itself from the door frame and Erika walked into the room to stand at an unused corner of the mat, "Right on time. Are you ready for the boss fight, level ten?"

"Ah, ah dunno about that." Meli shifted her forearms, looking down at skin that had already begun to turn a deep, gruesome purple. "If ya win, I don't think ah'd be in any condition for whatever assignment you've got in mah'd and if'n Ah win you mah't not want ta give it to me... Who do you wahn't me ta kill?"

"Be prepared to," she nodded to Alex, who left the room and carefully shut the door behind her. Whether or not she would listen at the keyhole or the modern equivalent there-of was unimportant; It was the deniability that was key. "We've tracked back the source of some of the materials that may have inspired the attack. Nothing that ties them directly to a state actor - which would say to me that someone is being very careful to not leave fingerprints - but there's enough to tie them to a producer."

"Ahn that's mah target?"

A nod and Erika retreated to a shelf in one corner that was filled with the usual assortment of garage-worthy odds and ends; Snow boots, spare bike tires, several tubes of tennis balls, and a flat metal case that might contain any number or type of small tools, "Here. Happy New Year..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Dogana, Circlet Near-Orbit, Gen Celet System...

"...it's an outlandish theory," Admiral Falk offered, sitting back in her chair to cross one leg over the other above the knee so that she could tap the edge of the desk with her toe. In her hands she held an intricately carved wooden cup and the aroma of steaming hot kenj drifted across the room and through the bordered hologram that hovered above her desk to pluck and pull at Captain Blaine's salivary glands. "Glad you didn't include it in your report or someone up the chain might think you're in the Exploration Command or something."

Where the image of the Ojeni's commanding officer hovered on one side of the desk a smaller display consisting only of that very report hovered just on the other, just out of sight of the Captain. With that ship about to return to the Ares System for some needed rest & relaxation the Admiral wanted to make sure that there were no surprises lurking in the Circlet's back yard where the exploring starship had been digging holes. Since most of its investigations had centered around a civilization some three-quarters of a centamillenium past, she wasn't especially worried though there was the distant plausibility of stumbling across another dormant Kion warfleet. "Which would be a good source of materials for additional repairs to the Circlet;" as she'd just previous pointed out.

She took a long sip, letting the warm and slightly thick liquid sit on her tongue for a moment, "Though I should mention that it's not as outlandish as it seems. I have a Karmabaijani company in here repairing the damage that the Kion did to the Circlet at the Breach and since they've already got some experience under their belt, I've put them on a side-contract to do some additional maintenance and repair work here and there. Boring stuff normally - checking for wear and tear, that kind of thing - but their lead engineer is a sharp one and he did some digging on his own. When we were surveying the Breach he made the suggestion that there were emergency systems in place to seal off the Settings in case of a catastrophic failure somewhere in the Circlet and it turns out he was right."

"Oh?"

"Mhm," Jamie leaned forward and fingers tapped at the dark glass surface of the desk. A second latter a hologram generated from the engineer's report appeared out of the air between them. It showed, in slow motion, the Circlet first orbiting normally its primary and then breaking up into the several distinct segments now known as Settings. "Turns out those emergency systems are a lot less emergency than you'd think. More like core functionality. There's a doming system that can span each Setting in a couple hours, the atmospheric generators have huge backup reservoirs, and the Bands have a system for complete controlled separation. Use the altitude correction thrusters along the rim as maneuvering thrusters and you have seven very large and very, very slow spacecraft. If you were looking to evacuate seven planetary populations in a reasonable amount of time, that would be one way to do it. The problem is that they don't have an FTL drive, as near as we've been able to find."

There was a pause as the distant hologram considered this before putting out a finger to spin the miniature Circlet in the opposite direction and back to stability, "Which rules out the invasion side of the scenario, I suppose. Everything we've found here seems to indicate that the materials for the Circlet were sourced locally. Huh..." Something crossed her forehead and she looked for a moment as if she was trying to hold two thoughts in her head at once. "Okay, first - what plane is the Circlet spinning in? If one were to cut it at the right time, would this be 'aimed' at the Kion Gate Complex? We already know that the gateways don't have to be one-to-one linked as the Kion did when they captured and rebuilt them. At the rotational velocity of the Circlet the detached Settings wouldn't be that slow. Like a giant gyroscopic slingshot."

Falk nodded, "I'll check, sure. Second?"

"Second, that would potentially explain why the Precursors were willing to carve out so much of the Kion Homeworlds. They weren't worried about the long-term survival of the system. At least, in theory," she finished. There was a lot of speculation going on now and despite the fact that said rampancy had led them somewhere time after time, she was starting to get the feeling that they were engineering the facts to fit the theories. "But why evacuate? What was going on at the time of the construction of the Circlet that they saw the need?"

"Andromeda?"

It was a purely off the cuff suggestion; The Andromeda-Milky Way Collision was not scheduled for another four billion years and while the Republic was now predicted to survive the duration it was not even on the most distant of planning radars.

"Whatever it was - if it was - it looks like they either stopped or were interrupted. And not by any kind of violent event. The only real damage is from the Kion."

"Right," the Admiral agreed. "Though I suppose you could go even further down the outlandish rabbit hole if you wanted. Suppose the Otterkin evolved in Setting One, the Zeer'Gen in Setting Two, but suppose that was all after the fact? What if the whole Circlet was supposed to function as an intergalactic Noah's Ark for this undiscovered Precursor civilization and they were wiped out by one of the more malicious varieties of super-weapon? Genetic plague, nanites, pick your insidious poison. In something around a hundred thousand years there wouldn't even be dust to tell us that they were living in the structure of the Circlet itself, though there aren't what we would call living areas. But look at the Vahkiran or the Huerdaen - they pack themselves into similar spaces and seem to do pretty well. We're just a civilization that likes our breathing room."

"Why build seven super-continent sized outdoor areas if you live like that though? Pretty sure they didn't need it for gardening."

The Admiral laughed, putting her cup down on the desk. It was empty now and she slide it off to the side and under the spout of a large wooden cask with similar carvings and a slow fire burning inside a clay stove that had been built into the interior. A touch of the knob and the slow drip of a refill began, "No. They've got aquaculture, hydroculture, aeroculture - you name it. Vacuculture? I'm sure that's a thing somewhere. And if you can build this thing I'm pretty sure you can figure out various ways to grow or raise food outside of its native environment. Anyway - I want to try to get my daughter to pick up the phone again. Once you've reached a good stopping point feel free to head to Ares at your discretion, Captain. I've passed the results of your mapping project up the chain and they've indicated they are going to be sending out Explorers to check them when ships become available. After a hundred thousand years they can probably wait a few more months. The exception is the gateway out in the dwarf galaxy - and if you want to go out that far you'll have to ask for authorization directly from Fleet."

"Eh, two weeks, a few months. I'm sure we can beat someone somewhere without going all that far..."

[Sunset]

Tree-13 Military Station, Esti System, Delta Quadrant...

The interior of a space station was a dangerous place for any would-be infiltrator or intruder. Sensors of various stripes and functions watched every intersection, live patrols and drones walked the corridors, and every door, access panel, and hatch required some kind of key, code, pass, or bio-metric identifier. Motion detectors could pick up the slightest movement of not only the cloaked and shielded individual but the disruption in the air around them - even if they were somehow shielded against various thermal and electromagnetic emissions - and there was always the simple sound of a footfall to give someone away. After all, a station was a very large and typically very expensive installation that often performed many functions that would involved highly-classified intelligence or military information. To have even a single intruder could compromise fundamentally the integrity of the entire system. Thus the maze of checkpoints, identifiers, and security grids was absolutely necessary to the safety of those moving through the hallways and corridors.

Friday paused, considered the geometry of the pipe and the conduit that crossed it as well as the carefully strung bundle of cables that had been hung from the ceiling by some previous technician. One leg extended forward and - wrapped in a tight gray-black suit that pressed her furry coat down to an intimately-revealing form - extended it over the pipe to find the matching structural beam on the other side and plant there while she rolled onto her back and slide between cable and conduit. Just the bare trace of her nipples outlined under the skin suit touched the wires but even that was enough to bring a wince to her invisible face.

It was not the threat of discovery that urged her to caution but the threat of real, active danger. Many infiltrators found out the hard way that while the maintenance tunnels and crawl spaces were a better way to attempt to pass undetected, they too were often monitored in some way and in some ways they were harder to navigate than the regular crew passages; Sensors were more sporadic and often wedged into odd places because the regular points where they would be placed were needed for the utilities the hatchways were designed to carry. In the regular crew spaces the risks were just that - regular. Each intersection had its sensors in their regular spot and once one knew where they were it was easier to bypass or temporarily disable them. Patrols could be timed, patterns navigated. But where military planners enjoyed regularity - especially those of a civilization rooted in the idea of tightly organized flocks - technicians often had to make due and reduce their own orderly desires to structured chaos per the dictates of the leadership that presumed to know better.

Agent Friday was inside neither of these. Instead she had gained access to a maintenance airlock and then through that to the adjoining utility spaces. Then she had cut through the wall of that into the interior of the station itself; Behind the walls that were behind the walls. Here the dangers were completely different. While a conduit might emerge into a maintenance area to allow a technician to access the control unit, she was crawling along the surface of the pipe that held the liquid that was otherwise controlled. Here the overhead cables had been bundled in place during the construction itself and made to last for the duration where the more failure-prone junction box would be located somewhere the crew could otherwise access it. Her flooring was the beams and structural members that supported the bulkheads of the hallways, passages, and rooms where the regular crew - and thus the regular security measures - lived and worked. From joist to joist and over every odd obstacle she moved from point to point until she found herself under her objective; A long hallway that linked one section of the station to another with no less than three independent security stations spaced along its length.

According to the maintenance diagram, this particular corridor was the direct link between the regular crew quarters and the command center that sat at the bottom of the station. Since she'd severed the module that would have regularly housed the command officers and sent it plunging into the planet below, their replacement or any survivors would naturally have to bunk - perch? - with the lower ranks until the module could be replaced. Pulling a multi-tool out of her pocket she made a very, very small hole in the ceiling and attached a similarly small micro-camera. It was now a waiting game but she was not idle. Instead she turned to the same bundle of cables that had presented an obstacle and was now an opportunity. Measuring several of them, she began to drill and then seal more holes in the structure that were made to fit the very thin individual wires. At a guess they were some kind of super-conductor and by the same maintenance diagram they carried a current that would prove more than sufficient. Somewhere off in the distance the cable bundle split with some leading off to the sockets at the base of some of those same gun turrets she intended to exploit later and that was testament enough to their potential power.

Timing would be everything.

Keeping an eye on the camera, she finished out her array of holes and then moved to the underside. Here she only needed one hole and then a nice thick wire culled from a storage bin to connect it to a structural member. Then it was back to the top side and the hanging cable bundle but first she checked and re-checked the insulation on her gloves. A pass of her survival knife through the bundle and the cables were severed and underneath chaos ensued as the attached weapon systems went off-line and reports lit up the command center. Pulling a wire out of the bundle she stripped it to bare element and threaded it into a hole. One after another, as fast as she could, with an eye on the camera. Any moment now...

The doors at one end slid aside and there was a mad dash down the corridor as command officers rushed to man their stations and investigate what was either a major malfunction or another case of possible sabotage. In their rush they hopped forward, half flying and half running as wings spread to give them extra impetus. Right into the dangling wires. The first Este through the web burst into flames as the delicate feathers on his wings brushed through and the current arced to the cathode on the floor. The second reacted valiantly but equally lethally as he reached out to try to push his comrade onto the floor and extinguish the flames, not realizing that it was the electricity that had already killed him. He too was dead a moment later as the intense heat of a lightning strike flowed through his hands, exploding the fragile bones like pitch-laden wood, and then into his heart and down through legs that similarly burst into flames. Another jumped back and into a hanging wire to throb and convulse under the lesser current, and then a fourth died when he looked up to the ceiling and his beak brushed the end of the barely visible wire. Super-heated brains and eyeballs exploded and the corpse toppled while one after another Friday pulled the wires back.

It was now time for another form of chaos as she attached the live leads to whatever systems she could access. Where a sensor grid on the station's exterior might have been designed to withstand external events that might have posed a danger, they were not designed to protect against the sudden application of extra current from the inside. Impressive sparks arced out over a section of the hull as the grid blew, a turret spun hard in place to smash the heavy barrels into the outer hull, an airlock began to suck all of the air inside out until it was a near-vacuum, and another pushed the pressure inside so high that the unfortunately trapped crew couldn't breath out and suffocated as their lungs ruptured.

Mischief managed, she headed away from the scene of destruction. Soon enough someone would realize what had happened and turn off the power to that particular feed. Her next goal was to somehow figure out a way to get them to shoot themselves...

[Sunset]

The Labyrinth, Anuke Underground, Ares System...

"It's a genetic manipulation and cloning apparatus."

The oddity of the answer to Lieutenant Lybecky's question had not been simply with the matter-of-fact response - the kneeling figure had not even looked up to see in what direction the Constable was pointing - but had begun with the arrival of the requested science personnel from the Defense Force. Instead they were anything but; Where he had been expecting the sort of crane-necked scientists and gawky technical nerds the complex had been swarmed by a squad in power armor that had first done a by-the-book tactical sweep up to and including him and finishing at the face of the huge machine with everything from remote sensors to drones staking out an expanded route from there to the surface. His first call would have been Marines - even when stepping from one section of the enormous chamber to another they moved in pairs with weapons out and constantly sweeping - but the dark gray trim on their already mottled-gray armor indicated that they were from some aspect of the Intelligence service.

They didn't say which and he didn't ask.

In fact he wasn't even sure if the leader - or who he assumed was the leader - was male. Underneath a suit of power armor that was notably of a more recent generation than the second-hand GhostDragon II's that the Constabulary was issued the pilot could be male, female, and of any number of humanoid species that would fit in the standard form. The voice sounded male but only slightly so in a way that suggested that the pilot could be a particularly husky female or that the voice could be an electronic modulation of the pilot's own. Since no one on the squad had identified themselves as anything but Theta Section it was again hard to assign anything but the most general assumptions to the unit. Since that was likely the goal, Lieutenant Lybecky sighed, noted it for his case report, and moved on.

"Is there any risk if it activates? Some of the platforms back there have the habit of disappearing..."

That and he'd seen the bodies. During Theta's sweep they'd nudged into every nook and cranny and down below the disappearing platforms they'd found the disturbing remains of several gray-faced members of a species he wasn't immediately familiar with. They had impacted the floor and various unidentified protrusions at high speed - fallen over a hundred meters, in other words - and had splattered all over the place without leaving so much as a scratch. A comparative image search of one of the more intact bodies had revealed them to be the singular employees of one Doctor Stephen Ambrose, who had recently owned the neighboring property and who had also been engaged in an extended fire-fight with the presumed inhabitants of these tunnels. Some of these remained alive in Constabulary custody but others - which was why he had been tasked with investigating the complex - had killed both themselves and the crew of the Constabulary Cutter Boundless Depths. That explained their presence in the abstract but Lybecky now had his heart set on a further interview with the Doctor.

"Yes. Don't stand there;" Again the leader pointed without looking, his hand over his shoulder as he knelt at what was presumably a control station. His paired fingers indicated a section of the curved platform that was no different on appearance from any other but immediately the Lieutenant noted it as a place to be avoided.

"Any idea how it works?"

"That's why we're here, Lieutenant. You asked for a science team."

Which didn't really answer the Lieutenant's question or the question he hadn't asked, which was how they had known both what it was and where not to stand without demonstrating any particular understanding of the control station or the apparatus in general. Instead the Section was mostly concentrating on securing the premise against unseen, unheard, and unknown attackers while the unnamed leader went about the business of setting up various pieces of equipment around the control terminal.

A sudden thought hit Lybecky, though he wasn't about to voice it aloud; If they knew the what and the where, they likely also knew why they were still moving around as if they were about to be attacked at any moment. He hadn't seen a particular need to copy them up until that moment but his mechanical hand went to his weapon and there was a reply from the anonymous figure; "Good idea. Everything is in place, recording is live, all elements show ready..." He finally looked up, the cyclopian helmet moving along with the armor's torso to face the hovering black eye that dominated the center of the room, "Activating terminal."

The Constable turned to look but it was what happened beyond the Eye that drew his attention. Silently pressed keys had started some kind of process and the great sphere had turned to focus on first that spot - the spot he'd carefully avoided - and now towards the far wall where another enormous iris waited. Metal rippled like water for a moment as the leaves separated and then smoothly moved away to reveal an inner chamber set in the middle with a mirror of the Great Eye. Around it were spaced a number of pods - perhaps a hundred - and each translucent black and filled with a liquid of some kind. Inside this something moved.

"Medium of some kind. A proto-material that whatever the input sensor;" He meant the Eye, "Scans and then imprints onto. No input, no imprint. We'll see what comes out this time."

"This time? You mean you've done this before?"

"No."

It wasn't much of an answer, and it certainly didn't help the Lieutenant relax. Instead he watched silently along with the leader as the whole thing began to move and change. Starting with the nodules closest to the center, they began to push out from the solid-looking metal as whatever swam inside the viscous milky-white liquid solidified into a distinct mass. He hadn't noted the time but the leader had; "First ejection at two minutes, thirty five seconds."

Had it been that long? Lybecky hadn't realized it but he'd lost track as they grew - they were clearly growing - and then reached that instant where they seemed like they might hover in place but instead fell to the platform below and shattered to spill clear fluid across the bare metal. The form inside moved and began to rise, still covered in the sickly white remnants of the nutrient ooze that had surrounded its birth. He recognized them immediately; The four-legged aliens that had been responsible for the deaths aboard the Boundless Depths but the scattered squads did not move, nor did they open fire. Instead they watched their surroundings while only the Lieutenant and the leader witnessed the birth.

"Lieutenant Lybecky, your scanner. Check their particulate count."

He'd forgotten all about it, of course, but now he took up the scanner that had been calibrated to note the density of the living dust shed. That it was heavy still in the immediate area was to be expected but as he checked the display this was no longer the case. Some unheard and unseen system had disposed of nearly all of it. It was not safe by any means but with weapon drawn he stepped forward, holding the scanner out towards the still figures. There was nervous apprehension and yet a great curiosity - just what were they?

[Sunset]

The Road to A'iruka, Great Northern Wastes, Hanson's Kneecap, Parson's Shoal System...

With an ragged-arm open flannel shirt tied up between her breasts and a toothpick between her lips below a battered wide straw hat, Alwyra looked every inch the bumpkin she was not. An elbow draped out of the open window of the dirty old airtruck, she looked out over the desert wastes as they sped away from the city a few meters off the ground. In the rear view mirror she could see the glittering pyramid of the city that still dominated the skyline even as it retreated into the distance; Her city, as it was. She was no country girl out for a joyride in the backseat of Daddy's pickup but instead the co-owner of the luxury goods company that bore the city's name. The other co-owner and her husband, Kedo Maric, sat on the opposite corner of the bench seat with his window up and a crisp black cowboy hat pulled down over his ears as the Neko caught a cat-nap wedged into the corner. The driver was the truck itself but occupying the front seat was the uptight business manager that she'd hired to run the business during her considerable absences. Somewhere beyond the far horizon was their destination and the woman sat forward in her seat, every ounce of her being concentrated on somehow hurrying their arrival, but it had been years since Alwyra had visited the planet and done more than arrange some matter in the city itself.

The road was less an organized road and more the chosen route by which hundreds and now thousands of debt-miners had made their way to and from what had first been a ragged desert camp erected by her predecessor Erik Hendrick, lesser scion of the ultra-wealthy Hendrick Brothers extraction empire. As the slow push of grav-motors had gradually scoured the sand down to bare rock and the wealth of the planet had improved the camp had first been replaced by a fanciful life-sized sand castle and then by the more practical and imposing city-ship. Other than the city itself there was little else to see in the Great Northern Wastes though just outside there were a scattering of large open-frame buildings - growing operations, vehicle storage, and similar - where the self-sufficient construct simply didn't have enough room at low enough rates to support their needs. These were long past, however, and now it was only the golden three-sided summit that could be seen while all around them the desert stretched out to the barren mountain range that encircled the vast arid basin. For the most part the floor was hard rock with fine gravel and dust cementing them together into a flat surface that made travel easy but both prospecting and mining difficult.

That in turn helped to explain the value of the stones that the debt-miners - criminals who's labor had been purchased by the self-titled Amirah - pulled from the ground. Found only in scattered patches and in small amounts the Tyrant and Shifting Tyrant gemstones were luminous and luxurious gems that sparkled with a brilliant inner light when they were moved sharply or touched with anything but the lightest hand. It was a truly odd property for a natural gemstone and since they were only found on this world and required many hundreds of man-hours to prospect, extract, and then shape they had become a notable exotic through the Republic and beyond. As befitted the owners of such an enterprise both Alwyra and Kedo both wore them in various places; Her as the buttons on the blouse and on a thin-chained pendant that lay in her cleavage, he as a large stone set in the band of his hat. It was also these stones that had summoned their expedition into the wasteland with their destination a lonely miner's camp that lay still far beyond the distant horizon.

It was early evening by the time the truck pulled into the edge of the camp, the drifting rooster-tail of dust raised by their travel slowly drifting away to disappear into the sky. Laid out on the floor of a dry wadi the miner's temporary residence consisted of a medium-sized tent in the traditional triangular style and a campfire made of desert stone arranged in a ring in front of the gently flapping entrance. Supplies were scattered here and there - a pick and shovel leaned up against the rear pole, a stack of dry rations to one side of the fire, a great sack of water on the other side - with the miner sprawled out in the last as an improvised bean bag chair. For some the continual condensation shed by the thick plastic bag would have been an annoyance but the woman was an Ojeni, one of the amphibian inhabitants of one of Hanson's Kneecap's sister-worlds, and undoubtedly this kept her somewhat comfortable in the dry heat despite the shade thrown up by the sides of the ravine and the looming mountain range behind it. In fact it was this combination of conditions that had likely led her to this location far from the city in the middle of the basin.

A hover-gator sat grounded just outside the camp - its dirty and battered exterior giving an impression of age older than their own airtruck - and they pulled to a stop next to it to settle down on the landing skids as the engines whined to a halt. The last of the dust drifted into the cabin as three doors opened as one and the party emerged, the woman not stirring from her place as they walked through the heat to stand around the dull black embers; "Skora, this is..." But Alwyra interrupted her, kneeling next to the desiccated amphibian and putting out a hand, "Alwyra Maric."

"Right, the Boss," she took the Neko's hand and shook limply. "Sorry - near the end of the day I get all dried out. I was going to crawl into the bag and get moisturized but I saw you coming and figured I should be here to greet the big frog. Guess that wasn't the best idea," she finished, her tongue dry in her mouth. "It's in the tent."

The Amirah nodded, pulling down the brim of her hat and looking around for a moment before walking past, "Go ahead. Can't have my people dying of thirst before they can answer any questions."

Brown fabric was brushed aside as she stooped and half-walked into the interior, followed shortly by her manager, who scooted past to crouch over the object that sat in a place of honor on top of an old tool chest. Kedo stayed outside with one eye on the tent flap as he helped the miner to her feet and then into the water-filled bag and its welcome relief from the heat; "I found it up the gully a couple hundred meters. Should be marked with a stake and ribbon if you want to see..."

Her voice was already wetter as she sank into the clear liquid but Alwyra ignored the suggestion in favor of the miner's find. It was a gauntlet - or glove - that had previously been constructed of some unknown metal but was now so heavily decayed that it could only be barely identified as such. Those of a more scientific bent might have noticed first the odd arrangement of fingers - four on the upper and three near-thumbs on the lower - but to her the more obvious and crucial interest were the plates that formed an additional layer of protection or purpose across the forearm. At the wrist they lay flat but as they rose towards what was presumably the elbow they edged out until they assumed a sharp-edged crystalline formation. A touch and a sparkle of light confirmed the suspicion but it was obvious that this was the same substance that would otherwise be known as a Tyrant gemstone. Given the current market rates for such a large amount - and in perfect condition - the piece would be worth many hundreds of millions.

That was, of course, the reason they were there. It had always been assumed that the gemstones found scattered across the planet in amounts ranging from pea-to-walnut had a natural origin but this seemed to set the whole idea on its side; "She found it a few days ago and put a message through to my office. Pretty cryptic, but as soon as I saw it I called you. This... This is a big deal."

Current market rates; It was a big deal for just that reason. If the gemstones were not, in fact, natural but some element of the technology of an unknown and presumably lost civilization or species then that could - possibly - affect the value of her majority product in positive or negative ways. The galactic market was funny like that - even if they were not a natural product they might end up being worth more as the storied artifact of an ancient people. If they, however, uncovered a way to make them in large quantity as evidenced by the armor in front of them then the story would be quite different and the value would plunge to the level of costume jewelry. Rarity - that was the key word and Alwyra looked to the tent flap and the lumpy sack of Ojeni curled up just a few footsteps beyond, "How cryptic? And has anyone else seen this?"

"'I've found something that might interest you,'" Heikkila quoted. "I'd call that pretty cryptic. As far as I know she sent it straight to me, so only my secretary;" Who was a non-sentient expert system, "You, and me. And her."

Alwyra paused in thought and tapped the visible fang opposite the toothpick, "So there's a good tight lid on it. Alright, pay her off. Clean out her contract, give her a healthy bonus on top of that. Strict non-disclosure agreement and if she pushes give her more." She didn't even bother whispering that last. She had always been generous with the debt-laborers ever since her own rise from their ranks and she wasn't about to stop when the future of her company rode on it. "Then put in an order for some mining bots and use the side channels to get them geared for archaeology work. I don't want anyone working on this who can talk about it."

"Right," her manager nodded. "Complete silence. Just a larger than average stone. And this?" She pointed to the gauntlet.

"Safe in the safe in the safe in the office. Until we can figure out where it came from, I don't want it seeing the light of day." As if for emphasis she scooped it up, handed it to Heikkila, and turned out the tool chest on the floor with a rattle and clatter. Scooping up a blanket they bundled the object inside and shut it inside, locking the chest despite the lack of an evident key.

"We?" There was both suggestion and understanding in the woman's voice as she backed out of the tent with the case cradled in front of her and the Amirah just behind. The big hand of Kedo grasped the handle and took it from her and as he left to stash it in the cargo bay at the back of the airtruck, "Thank you."

There was a grin on the Neko's lips now and she plucked out the toothpick to toss it away, "That's right, We. No one I can trust more than myself to get to the bottom of this so it looks like Kedo and I are going to play archaeologist for a bit. Have my ship land here, but take the crew back with you. I'll need the right supplies... Talk to Titan. Tell him we're investigating some ruins out on the islands or something. Even if he gets suspicious the old goat knows to keep his mouth shut."

And where his bread was buttered. The Rear Admiral was a frequenter of A'iruka's entertainment offerings and had met his current girlfriend - a stripper with the stage name of Ginger Snap - at the aptly named 'Hind End'. Unless he wanted to shoot himself in the foot as far as free drinks went, the old miner would be wise to keep anything he happened to pick up close to his vest.

"Right..."

"Kedo, honey?" The big Neko's head appeared from behind the truck and he looked at her with an expression as if he knew the next words out of his wife's mouth, "Let's take a walk..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, Ares Orbit, Ares System...

"Not fer me," Titan shook his head, the decision expressed in his thick gray eyebrows and thin gray hair, "Mortality is som'in to look forard to inna morning. Gives me mah edge lah'k ah razer fer mah beard. When its mah time to go;" Though at more than one hundred Human years and spry enough to keep up with his girlfriend and the junior officers under him, the old man had clearly been doing something to keep that clock running, "It'll be mah time ahn mah time to see if'n there's something else out thar fer us. But you... Whal, thet's up to you. Way ah sees it, you've latched on to this whole business whal yer young. Pert near grown up wit it. If'n you wants to be immoral, whal, I donna see any reason wha not. Big 'ol universe out there after ahl. Hell, maybe ah jus' talked mahself into it!"

Kami laughed, the senior officer's sudden expression of wonder and confusion under his thick gray eyebrows and perpetually squinting gray eyes adding a comical punch to his sudden change of heart. It didn't hurt at all that the backdrop to his side of the interstellar holo-call was the floor and stage of his usual planet-side haunt and that the young women of various stripes and species dancing behind him suggested that there was more than a little vigor left to the old man.

"But yer question 'bout all this Eien stuff ahn immortality ahn what-not done got me distracted. Thet's not wha' ah called. Ah gots ta admit Ah've been keepin' ahn eye on you. Not lahk yer mah proper pro-to-ge but yer as close as they come, Ah reckon'. So when Ah saw yer ship was due bahk fer some Ar 'n Ar Ah put mahself one Ahn two together. Whal, ahn ah may have flagged yer ship thar' fer mah watchlist," he admitted to another grin. "So Ah gots to ask ya a favor whal yer in town or inna neighborhood."

"You're moving and you want my help hauling your stuff up three flights of stairs?" Not that she couldn't handle it - though the Rear Admiral's Dwarven girlfriend could probably top her, at least in the body strength department - but she didn't relish the idea of giving up her own vacation to help even an old friend and sorta-mentor with some task too hard for his elderly body to accomplish. "It better not be setting the time on your wall clock..."

"Ha! T'aint either o' them things. Gots me a younger woman fer thet. Looks real good standin' on that stood ah'n stretchin' up to adjust those pictures too..." A sudden fist came out of nowhere attached to the thigh-thick arm of a stout red-haired woman who's breasts would have to be lifted to rest on the table in front of him, "Oww! Why'n ya done thet fer?! Ain't nothin' wrong with givin' a woman a complement now, isn' thar?!"

"As long as it's just me thaht yer complementin'!"

"Hey, Ginger. How's it going?"

"Fahn," she answered, pushing herself up so that she was kneeling on the bench. Judging by her attire - or mostly lack there-of - she had just come off the stage herself and Ginger confirmed it, "Just chattin' with the girls after mah set. How you two doin'?"

A few minutes of back-and-forth girl-talk followed until the Admiral put his elbow on the table and, leaning on his palm, rolled his eyes with a sigh loud enough to grab the attention of the entire bridge crew, "So... Iffn' Ah ken ask mah favor? Then you two ken get back to it?"

"Before he pulls rank," Ginger grinned, but she moved aside and he leaned back into the frame; "So ah gots a favor," he lowered his voice and looked around as though someone might be watching before leaning in even further, "Ahn here it is. Alwyra - you remember her? Pretty girl thet runs this place? - Her boss-lady came askin' me for some gear. Made it sound lahk a request from the Governors office. Now, she ain't the Governor ahn neither is her boss but they got thet podium-hugger wrapped aroun' their finger so'in it maht as well be. Archaeological gear. Says they's gonna do some diggin' out at those ruins you-all found out on the islands. But heren's the thing - those ruins been out there fahr ever ahn a half and they've known about those ruins jus'a long. Why would thet purty girl go lookin' aroun' there now? But Ah hed mah ears open the 'oter day ahn Ah herd she left town ahl quiet-lahk..."

"...cause I told you that!"

"Keepin' yer voice down! But yeah - Ginger told me they was ahll sneakin' round like. And they didn't go out to no islands. Went east to the mountains. So Ah figure she's up to somethin'. Something that needs gear lahk thet. Now Ah don't have no official reason to go lookin' into it but two young wimen lahk yerselves maht. Iff'n ya got the time to humor ahn old man, thet is..."

[Sunset]

Setting Five, The Circlet, Gen Celet System...

"...is similar to that of some Greek philosophers. A Duab is not born inherently sapient but grows into it as they experience the work of Akii. In fact, under the philosophy of Akii, there are individuals who never achieve either, or who stop at some point. One of your Terran philosophers arrived at something of the same conclusion when considering certain populations of Earth; Due to lack of nutritional resources, education, and stimulation beyond an extremely simple and essentially rote day-to-day living a certain percentage of these individuals never or would never progress beyond sentience to sapience. Many found the implications disturbing because it enabled some to consider those individual useless - able to be used and disposed of without considering them more than animals. In the philosophy of Akii we view that somewhat differently; There are people who will, by their nature and circumstances, never progress to sapience but that is why we should reach out to help them. Thus our socialist ideals are more than economics but philosophical as well - not only distributing the means to live a happy and productive life but also the means to progress as an individual and to thus better understand Akii and her work."

"Then why are the Duab'Akii isolationist," Trinya asked, pushing her way up and around a trio of enormous boulders that had somehow become lodged - or been placed - in the middle of the shallow ravine in times long past. "That would seem to be at odds with that philosophy. Why aren't there Duab ships off spreading goodness and light to all the starving worlds out there?"

"They tried that at one point. Not enough ships, too many assholes. It's more complex than that - of course there are people who don't completely give themselves over to the Ideals of Akii but instead use them to further their own goals. Greed, lust, control. We still have those in our society as well. When we had our first encounter with a hostile space-faring civilization this group 'won' by - essentially - arguing that if an entity was not willing to embrace the Ideals of Akii then they would ultimately find no benefit from it. Obviously I don't agree, and there's a pretty wide spectrum through Duab society from strict isolationist all the way out to interventionist. Most of those find their way into the space service - hint hint - and due to the current government often find themselves posted to far away lands. Two birds with one stone, as you Humans say. If I were in charge, we would extend our hand to any civilization that has a philosophy that reasonably matches the Ideals of Akii."

"Sunset being one of them?"

"That's right," Deania ducked under a hanging tree branch and the thick carpet of moss-like nodules that was draped over it. "There are others as well, but I think my government's doctrine of Understanding in Isolation will backfire and violates the Ideals of Akii as well. Instead of experiencing the wider galaxy they are fleeing from it, even if they don't think of themselves as doing that. It's like the Isolationist period in American history - Isolationism works really well if everyone is. But they aren't and so you get two World Wars as just the tip of the iceberg. Three if you want to count the Western/Islamic conflicts of the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First Centuries."

"So are you going to steal a battle group and lay anchor off Edo?" Annya asked. She had fallen to the back of the group from her usual position in the lead, stopping at the small waterfall that drained out between the three boulders Trinya had passed through earlier. Sticking her head under the curtain she let her hair plaster to her skin before withdrawing and shaking it out to a spiked mess. "Like Perry opening up Japan?"

"Pretty hard to steal one starship, let alone five. No, I think the best way will be to let the current situation proceed. The Duab exiles - which is really what we are - still have some limited communication back home but you shouldn't be surprised how much of your media is filtering through our society. They can't make it illegal since that would be a blatant violation of the Ideals and no matter how hard it is to access... Information wants to be free. Even the upper echelons indulge in outside media. If the Ideals hold true, that alone should be enough to change the government's position. How long that will take..."

"...longer than it will to stop for some lunch," Timmons interrupted and to him this looked as good of place as any. With the waterfall just a little behind them and a nice low bank on one side of the stream, there was plenty of space to unpack and spread out and take an hour to break from both discussion of competing philosophies and the weariness of the trail. Their slow patrol of the surrounding wilderness had proven to be mostly pointless - no trace of whatever society had made the engraved stones had been found. They had taken readings of the nearby stones, of course, but that had only given them a potential date range for the last deposit of within the last thousand years. Without the progression of geology to move things around there wasn't as much of a spectrum to compare their results to.

Which meant that whoever it was could have moved on yesterday or eight hundred and fifty seven years ago.

Unslinging his bag and dropping it next to a convenient rock, the Commander sat down with a sigh. Thick fingers found the latches and he shrugged off the armored clamshell around each arm to detach the plates and drop them next to the backpack. With his arms suddenly free to fully flex and move he swung first one and then the other in a wide circle and then leaned over to open the pack and pull out a bagged field ration. He'd placed his hand on the other side of the rock to support himself and as his fingers felt the surface something ticked over in his head and he dropped the pouch on the ground, "Aww, fuck."

Several other pairs of eyes looked up at him as the rest of his team stopped what they were similarly doing and a thought crossed his mind. It wasn't important - or it was, but it would keep. It had already kept a thousand years, ten, whatever. It would keep another hour.

"Dropped my lunch. Five second rule, right?"

[Sunset]

Kelvania Township, Independent Colony World, Intermediary Zone, Beta Quadrant...

With the rise in both national governments and of professional militaries, the gulf between what the common individual in the guise of freedom fighter, guerrilla, terrorist, or concerned citizen and state-equipped soldier could be expected to bring into battle began to widen to the point of inevitability. To exist on the modern battlefield without the likelihood of being washed away in a heartbeat required the fiscal or material backing of an organization far larger - and with potentially the same compromised morals of that which the rebel or loyalist sought to defend or defeat - than that same common individual could ever hope to muster outside of the most outrageous edge cases. So it was with Allu Konradi, self-described revolutionary, who had to his personal wargear a derelict energy rifle made during one of the many conflicts that had cost the lives of billions and had sown the simple weapon across the stars as well as a simple breastplate concealed under flowing robes tucked into the pockets of his trousers and the cuffs of similarly worn and ratty boots. A dirty brown, they blended well with the mud-plastered walls of the compound villa he patrolled from the inside with the display for the few sensor poles spaced out around the perimeter constantly in hand.

Every few seconds he would stop - well away from the few windows that he glanced out as he passed - and check the palm-sized device for any sign of movement. It was less a worry than simply his post; Kelvania Township was an unimportant place on an unimportant world, host to less than a thousand like-minded souls who had managed to scrape survival out of a place unfit for Human habitation - or most other species for that matter. Beyond the elevated homestead twinkled the lights of the few other walled homes that surrounded it as they stood alone atop a mountain peak surrounded by the poisonous fog and roiling lighting-filled cloudy seas that guaranteed that they were alone on the world. Perhaps the harbinger of bad news would arrive in the form of a space ship from some distant power but they were blessed by the possession of several monitoring satellites, relics from another war in another time and turned to their purposes. If a ship did arrive they would retreat to the caves that had housed their parents when they had arrived on this world and there they would survive to emerge again and rebuild.

Allu stopped at the end of one hallway and checked again. Once again there was nothing and he turned to look down the long corridor towards the central chamber where a radiant brazier warmed the place and the scattered equipment of a rag-tag production studio was clustered. There at the opposite side of the artificial flames sat the head of the Ten Families of Kelvania, Varni Po Kelvan. He was not the old man that many would imagine - his face was in fact shaven and the fiery red beard many associated him with was looped over the tall back post of the low chair he sat on. At his right knee was his eldest son, just a man now at thirteen. At his left was his closest adviser and great friend Alvini Re Don. It was he that most visitors to the homestead came to see for he brought stories of the outside galaxy, news from far places and far worlds. Then he would take their messages of truth and wisdom away with him as he left once again to return in a month, a year.

The patroller turned back to his own feet and raised his eyes to continue when a strange sensation overcame him and he realized suddenly that it was the monitor in his hand buzzing. He lifted it; Something was coming towards the building as straight and as quickly as an arrow and he had only time to turn to look at the wall, mouth agape, before calling out "Soir!" in the digested local dialect as the wall exploded inward. Concrete ladled by hand over iron rebar shattered as easily as dry wood as something penetrated the building behind it and a spinning chunk of cement and bent rod smashed him aside and then through, pinning him to the inner wall as the display fell from fingers gone limp in death. Behind it his killer continued forward, turning in mid-air to plant a black-booted foot on his face and smash it backwards against the wall to close his eyes forever as bone smashed and brain splattered into a fan of gore across the dirty brown wall.

At the end of the hallway men moved, reaching for the weapons they kept at their feet, while in rooms to either side of the passage the sounds of others turning from their own pursuits could be heard through the thin plasti-wood doors. The closest of these opened and a man with straight razor in hand and the patchy foam of shaving lather across his chin put his head out just as a pistol drawn from poor Allu's own waistband coincided with the space his mouth occupied. Teeth were shattered and torn from their root as the barrel plowed through before punching out the backside of his head and leaving him for the moment staring down the open sights before his eyes began to roll back. A black shape blurred towards him and with his final moments of existence he felt himself taken up by the front of his shirt and heaved around as she planted a foot on the door frame and used it to pivot him around her and towards another doorway two ahead and on the right. Just as unexpectedly this too opened and the faux wood sundered at the hinge to sweep both it and the man behind it, rifle gripped in a determined hand, into the arms of a hanging shelf filled with the everyday needs of life.

Meli's knee bent and she kicked off the frame and into the room opposite as the first shots fired traced their way across the opening of the corridor to buzz through space she had safely occupied only an instant before. It was too much time. Landing in a crouch, she grabbed the steel frame of the bed in front of her and shook the headboard loose before winding back and flinging the improvised spear through the wall opposite. Thin lathe plastered over with concrete-laced dirt pierced through and through along with the chest of a woman who had sat upright in her just-abandoned bed. She tugged weakly at the projecting cruel head while the sheet raised in modesty fell away to run thickly red. Clawing through the strips the attacker followed, the hallway no longer safe as the click-clack of magazines again slamming into receivers indicated. Expected movement from the left caught her attention and she rolled to the side and forward as another fighter crossed the hall with his rifle up, determined to finish her as close as he dared.

Close was too close. Faster than he could move, she reached up to grab the barrel and squeeze it shut. He had just a moment to look awkwardly at it, to raise his hand in practiced action to clear the jam that wasn't there, and she grabbed his forearm to tear it off at the elbow. Ragged bone reversed itself and punched up through his gut below his sternum to tickle his heart with his own fingers before she pushed him out into the hallway. One shot then many followed as the body was chopped into a bloody pulp but she did not appear. Instead all three - one now standing and the others kneeling amid the cushions that offered cover but no protection - stared intently at the hallway with their guns ready. Even the youngest held his out, the heavy barrel quaking as he struggled to keep the weapon aimed and his fear from overtaking him. A motion, a blur, out of the corner of his eye and he turned before his father caught his arm and focused his aim again down the hallway. Something above him landed with the thump of loose rope and he looked upward in amazement as a bundle of cable from the nearby equipment looped over a rafter and dropped towards him.

Jerking his gun to the sky he pulled the trigger and was rewarded only with an instant shower of dust while behind him something grabbed him roughly and he turned to expect once again his father's reproof. Instead the clean-shaven man shot out of his chair as if propelled by the spirits themselves while he felt something warm and snakelike draw around his throat. An instant later he too soared, jerked upwards as a thick arm that bulged with muscle hauled him up, the rifle just given to him in celebration of adulthood falling to the ground as he struggled to live. Young eyes looked to Alvini Re Don; Surely that great man would help but he was already dead, pitching forward in his place with the blade of a knife just sprouting from between his eyes while the hilt sunk to the cross in the mass of his thick hair. Fear rose, fear of death he did not yet truly understand, and he kicked out with his feet at the small woman who looked up at him for a moment with dark eyes that seemed to sparkle in delight.

Passing around and through his flailing she crossed the room to grab his father roughly by the shoulder and spin him over onto his back. In his hand and clutched tight to his chest he held a grenade. To take her life he would give his and he released the handle as she looked down at him.

With a laugh, strong fingers stripped the orb from his clenched fist as simply as one might pluck a flower and she tossed it behind her without turning. The doors at the end of the far hallway burst open and two men summoned from the basement charged into a cloud of shrapnel as it exploded, shredded to bone and bloody rags as they rushed forward to collapse into crimson-stained heaps, "Ya've got bad timing ahn bad taste in friends..."

There was no struggle left in the man and he laid passively as she kicked one arm and then the other aside to place her foot on his chest, "Now, let's talk inspiration," she lifted the bloody boot and nudged it into his throat as the body of his son swung from the cords behind her. "Who's your muse?"

[Sunset]

Tree-13 Military Station, Esti System, Delta Quadrant...

"The knee bone's connected to the... Thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the..." Friday reached up and grabbed the pin that locked the turret's inner ring in place, pulling it free and allowing the magnetically-turned apparatus to float free of the constraints of the gun's alignment system, "Hip bone... The hip bone's connected to the..." A push and the four-barreled arrangement - though she couldn't see it thanks to the layers of structure, armor, and then bare vacuum between her and the mounted weapon - turned much farther than it should have. That was the point of the pin, after all. To keep the gun from aiming at the station itself if, somehow, the firing computer made the mistake of ordering that particular weapon to come to bear on something on the opposite side of the station, "Back bone, the back bone's connected to the..."

With the old Mark One eyeball as her only guide, she pushed the pin through the first of the two holes and then hard up into the second, missing by several centimeters and leaving a scratch that would doubtlessly be noted with dismay by any future maintenance crews, "Damnit."

It took her more than a handful of additional tries but finally she slotted it into place and now the gun could only aim the wrong way. The perfect way, as she considered it, though again her guess as to the turret's general orientation was now likely off by a considerable amount. Still, it was generally aimed just where she wanted it to be and generally was more than enough. On the bottom of the turret shaft was a complex wiring harness where the various cables that controlled the weapon - each cable and thus each input isolated for safety - and she pushed herself down to complete her ambitious plan. Any minute now someone looking at one of the external cameras would notice that the turret was facing the wrong way and would probably, maybe, hopefully, order the computer to turn the turret around. They probably wouldn't know about the whole pin arrangement that kept the turret within the proper arc and more importantly that she was about to play musical chairs with the wiring harness, "Cause the neck bone's connected to the... Head bone!"

Plucking first one wire then another, she switched them from place to place until the appropriate level of confused mess had been obtained and then began her retreat from the scene of the crime. Her plan had been to try to make it to one of the various maintenance bays located along the underside of the spindle-shaped station's primary module and launch one of the maintenance pods. Friday wouldn't have been aboard but since a ghost seemed to be terrorizing the station it would be easy to assume that one was operating the pod, train the station's weapons on it, and...

Behind her the gun fired.

"Or that!" She laughed, the high-pitched near-giggle unheard outside the clear plastic of her helmet. "My lucky day..."

The station lurched beneath her as she jumped from beam to beam, twisting sideways as something went entirely wrong. What exactly that was would be hard for her to tell as the rotating beam caught her square across the chest and head, knocking the wind out of the mock rabbit and sending her spinning away to suffer the effects of a million ton gut punch. More twists and turns and she looked up to realize that something was extraordinarily wrong. Through the maze of internal structure she could see the distant orange of fire blooming and then retreating as something exploded. The lack of atmosphere protected her from what would have been a devastating blast wave but she had nothing to push against either and now the station was rocking the other direction.

'Or not...'

Another blow, this time to the back of her head, and her face smashed forward to leave blood gushing from her nose and the taste of copper all through her mouth. Instinctively she raised her hands to staunch the flow but they were outside the suit and scrambled useless while she barely clung to consciousness. Her toe touched something, she nudged it, tried to hold on, but the action pushed her away again and she spun in place as the world turned upside down and then suddenly dropped away. A second later the station caught her and she slammed into the insulated outside-inside of a compartment module with enough force to put her under. The station was a bottle rocket now as the reactor core burned through the containment vessel and became an impromptu fusion rocket...

[Sunset]

Defense Force Training Academy 123, Fath Heartlands, ePyrk, Ares Super-Cluster...

"...but more than a brainstorming session, today's class will be an opportunity," Lieutenant Mauria continued as she circulated through the gathered cadets, her four tapered legs clicking on the floor through the thin industrial carpeting. "It will be an opportunity for leaders to step forward, for those with a creative aptitude to show their ability, and even for those who find themselves best suited to following to show how well they build up their team. For the purposes of this exercise, these teams will be self-organized unless a specific need interjects itself and that too will be an opportunity. Remember that your time at the Academy is not just about learning those skills that will translate into a superior seaman and eventual officer but to also demonstrate that you have the ability to work together in groups large and small. Some of you may eventually find yourself posted together with individuals from this very same class aboard a ship with a thousand crew - or only five. But both are expected to perform to the highest standards. Today is another opportunity to prove yourself."

For the most part the students attending the multiple Academies on ePyrk were of that same species and thus visually female and only to be separated by the distinct personality differences that still existed between the two genders. Males tended to be chaotic and thus agents of change while females tended to be supportive and orderly and both more strongly so to the point where one could easily guess as to the reproductive organs they carried internally by the way they moved. However though they were the majority, they were not singular. As the various Pyrk national governments had begun to integrate into a planetary whole, so too had they integrated into the larger Republic and even the Triumvirate. Here and there representatives of various species - herself the lone Qoyat - could be seen. It would be safe to say that the diversity of this class of cadets would increase in the coming year as they were graduated and then assigned without fear or favor across the Republic as their aptitudes and desires dictated.

Producing a hologram of a small drone, she stopped in the center of the field where everyone could see her and they moved to spread out around her as a school of fish - appropriate in that it reflected the blue-and-gray skinned Pyrk's aquatic origins. "Today you will be studying, dissecting, altering, and integrating this. It is a drone manufactured by Puruhkese Armaments Coalition, a business entity located in the Republic of Kassaran. Currently the Republic of Sunset has no direct contact with Kassaran;" The galaxy might have felt smaller every day, but it was still enormous with any number of unknown polities tucked away here and there, "And this example was obtained through trade by the crew of SDF-Murray from a bazaar located on an independent trade station on the Beta-Delta border. It was damaged but repairs were made and the drone restored to function. Its purpose is to assist an individual in various survival situations, whether that be shipwreck, wilderness, military, or medical. It is notably durable and is well-suited to the task with a variety of tools and manipulators available."

Passing the hologram to the closest student, who then began to replicate it out among the class, she stepped through the crowd to the object that stood at the edge of the outdoor arena. It was a standard Defense Force escape pod - or life boat, if one preferred - and the purpose of the exercise began to crystallize. Carried in numbers aboard every strip of Republic starship they served as not only survival mechanism but also as the primary fighting habitat for crews under combat conditions and were thus a crucial component of the Republic military arsenal. Some ships - notably the Nova, Super Nova, and Opposition-Class Destroyers - went so far as to make the pods the living and crew quarters so as to free up additional space for more war-fighting systems. Each was a semi-lobbed half-dome with an armored heat shield on the underside and an interior compartment that housed four comfortable-looking crash couches as well as a large variety of survival equipment in the hatches, compartments, and wells concealed and tucked away under and behind anything and everything.

"The goal of this exercise will be to redesign and refine this example for inclusion into the escape pod as a default. The particulars are up to you - be creative - and you will have the entire day as well as the run of the Academy facilities with which to fabricate and test your ideas. While there is no guaruntee that your particular ideas will make their way into the final product, I will draw your attention to the survival tent included presently. During a similar session at my alma mater on Ares, several improvements to the poles used to erect the tent were suggested and subsequently adopted while during a similar session just last year a cadet came up with the idea of further improving the design by making the tent vacuum-capable and thus a further option as an emergency life raft. Interestingly, the first use of this came not as a life raft but as a sealed medical environment to contain an unknown plague that was ravaging the colonist population on GEC-62749D only a week after the new model was deployed. Let that serve as inspiration for you as well - you never know what the fruits of your ideas will become."

They had all died, but Mauria left that to the side, "And with that, you may begin..."

Stepping back and out of the way, it was easy to see who the future leaders were - or at least who wanted to be one. Pyrk culture was already one of strong personalities with the various national political entities named directly after their singular leadership, despite whatever representative government might spread out below them. Only Republic insistence kept the now-united planet under the same name or else it would have been a nearly yearly change as various factions and personalities rose and fell. Already the cadets were sorting themselves out into a number of clusters and disappointingly these almost universally fell down to the various planetary factions with those students coming from the Fath-Jirag Combine being the largest. There was some crossover but - again somewhat disappointingly - these were largely sexual partners who followed one or the other as personalities dictated. As the ground began to clear, the Instructor began to circulate and listen as ideas were offered and the little drone discussed.

"...Eien Node."

It was a popular starting point. Even at the relative fringe of Republic space the cybernetic immortality technology broadly known as 'Eien' - itself Japanese for 'Eternity' - had gained a foothold in the cultural consciousness, especially among the young adults who formed the majority of the cadet population. Nearly every group had chosen this as their departure point from the Kassaran design and some had spun off a sub-group devoted to this specific task. The most-often leader of these groups were those rare individuals who already had the implant and thus the most familiarity with it, though there were exceptions. One of the more interesting was a proposal to include a small-scale industrial fabricator in the design and the Lieutenant had to hold herself back from noting that such an inclusion would require either a dedicated supply of feed stock or a manner in which to refine that same stock from local sources.

"...which we'll solve by including a second drone to tear down salvage or even biological material into the needed components."

"Biological material. So feces, urine..."

"Even dead bodies. They won't be needing them, right?"

Pragmatic, if still repugnant to a large percentage of the student body. Still the problem may have solved itself even if it had then created another. She'd seen the industry advertisements for the OmniForming units coming out of Silaco Electronics and this notion of including more drones for specialized tasks in the escape pod would eventually lead down that path. It was an interesting notion in itself - the OmniFormers were designed to not sculpt a world to match that of the civilization that wanted to inhabit it but instead the civilization to the world that it would inhabit - but outside of the scope of the Academy-wide project. In nearly all cases it would not due to have OmniForming units raining down on inhabited worlds and establishing Republic civilization there no matter the potential benefits. The idea of including OmniFormers aboard Explorers for planting among the occasional hostile rock was an interesting one and she would note it in her report but again - beyond the established scope of the day's event.

"...durability and survivability is key. Adding all kinds of fancy features won't help if they are damaged when the pod crashes down on some hell-world. Yes, pods are durable;" Outside of the ship's cutting-edge composite hull armor, they were in fact the most rugged portion of a starship, "But to me the most delicate thing on the pods should be the crew themselves. So sure, let's add a fabricator like the Cheiwyr team but let's make it more rugged even if it doesn't have the same level of precision. If you get to the point where you are needing to make some nanites in the field you're probably already dead..."

"...statistically most people die of injuries taken before they found themselves in a survival situation;" Must be a medical student, "So I think we should focus on both prevention and on moving off as much of the survival needs onto the drone as we can. Injury prevention, making sure proper incident procedures are followed, taking care of the survivor's basic needs so they can recover..."

Lieutenant Mauria drifted to the last group, "...in a few years this won't be needed anyway. Eien Noded individuals will be so common that we won't need escape pods at all. We'll just punch out of our biological extensions when things go pear-shaped. The futurist in me says we should be re-designing the escape pod into a hardened Eien Integration Suite like they have on board the Aleadalat Al'iilhia. Then we won't need the survival drone - just create a new body appropriate for the local environment instead..."

That too was an interesting thought, but again... Today was about the here-and-now and she moved on, hands tucked behind her while her legs click-clacked across the room...

[Sunset]

SDF-Horizon, Hanson's Kneecap Orbit, Parson's Shoal System...

"Y'all ahr crazy idjits."

"Objection," Commander Sloan held up a gloved hand and then pointed at the shorter woman next to her as an Ensign took advantage of the opening to swarm up under her raised arm and check the buckles and straps she had just finished attaching and double-checking herself, "This was her idea. She's the crazy idjit."

"Ahn you're goin' along with it, ya idjit. Could jus' take ah shuttle. Ah'n nothin' strahnge bout no shuttle. Couple smaht - ahn Ahm startin' tah question mahself thar - youn' wimins throwin' themsalves out o' ah perfectly good ship cause they saws it in ah movie..."

A wide grin was Kami's only answer, visible plain through the faceplate of her streamlined helmet just before it went dark. She too had her arms up as one of the engineering technicians from the Horizon went about the business of checking each one of the numbered buckles to make sure it was securely mated to its opposite before dropping to one knee and similarly checking the disc she was locked into by a pair of sturdy-looking boots. Both women - along with the techs and the Rear Admiral - stood on the bare metal deck of one of the frigate's drop bays while the drone fighter that had previously occupied it made slow lazy circles just outside. Far below and still isolated from them by the closed doors was the planet where they would be landing, though there was no hostile force in place nor any particularly good reason to go through the effort other than her desire to start their two-week vacation off with a rush.

"People do it all the time. Wouldn't have this gear if they didn't, right?"

"...burn up in tha' atmosphere, plow inta' tha' side o' the mountain', go face-firs' inta a rock... Draw'n..."

"How would we drown?!" Sloan sounded concerned but Kami ignored her; "Sunburn, terminal case of the funs, some really good pictures for the photo album," she countered; A small drone would be following each of them on the way down. "You sure you don't want to go? You did ask us to do this."

The old man shoot his head, "No. Ah seems to remember sahm whipper-snepper of a young Louie fresh outta ta' Academy putting mah ship sidewa's through some circus bahloons ahn Ah pert' near crapped mah pants. No. You'all ken kill yerselves iffn' ya lahks. Ah'll jus' watch from har ahn baht mah nails to the quick. Ahn Ah'm the one who'll be written letters iff'n ya'll get yerselves splettered ah'll over the place!"

"All good, Admiral," the first tech finished, looking up to the Captain and then to his partner with a confirming nod. Neither seemed as particularly concerned as the Admiral and in fact both had been selected on the basis of previous - though civilian - experience in the sport. "Everything shows double-green!"

Again he shook his head and put one hand on top of his battered old cowboy hat as he turned to the ladder that would lead up into the main body of the frigate's hull, "A'ight then. Let's get outta here ahn let these two idjits kill tham'selves..."

For a long minute the two stood on their disks as the ship moved lower and slower, just barely kissing the edge of the atmosphere before the bay door suddenly yawned wide and they were sucked out to begin their plunge. A few moments of tumbling and they straightened, boards trailing behind to drag their bodies out into a falling head-first dart towards the ground far below. The whole continent spread out around them and they could see the enormous arid desert just to the north that was their target and the dismal swamp to the south that would have been in the entirely wrong direction. Far to the west where both trailed away blue water sparkled and there was a tiny hint of green while above them the gray disc of the Horizon steadily moved away to begin yet another orbit of Hanson's Kneecap. With their adjustments made they began to weave back and forth, slowing and looping over or under as the boards provided an extra measure of control. For the most part Sloan simply drifted but the Captain made the most of her cyborg body, pulling tight spirals and hair-pin turns or even a flat spiral that only ended when the altitude indicator in their helmet began to beep warning.

Bracing themselves against the rushing air, arms went out and they dropped into the classic stance of a surfer while the windcarvers on their feet began to shift and lengthen into that same familiar near-form. A hand braced one side and Kami darted to one side and then back again before flipping over an invisible wave to drop in next to her partner. Cajoling ensued and then finally the Commander loosened up to follow as best she could as they both angled their boards towards the white-capped peaks that were their destination. They'd been there before - landing on the summit with the Admiral and his girlfriend to snowboard to the ocean - but their destination was on the leeward side and here the snow ran out far before the base. The summit was coming up fast, however, and one reluctantly followed the warnings while the other did so with a grateful sigh. Once again they spread their arms to slow while brakes deployed on the boards as they again shifted into the flat-bottomed infinity shape appropriate to the snow.

A splash of powder and ice and they were down, bouncing once and again before they fully gained their feet to carve across the stark white face of the mountain and towards their distant goal. The whole of the great basin spread out in front of them with the maze of ravines and cliffs giving it the appearance of a giant cracked plate tossed with blown sand. Back and forth and then down as straight as an arrow to circle narrowly around upright pinnacles and drop over the top of boulders and down into a brace of powder before gaining their feet and heading towards the last trailing stretch of clean snow. Here would be the final transition and it was just as a particularly tempting looking cliff came up that Kami steered straight for it, topped the ledge, and tucked low as the board spread out again into an airfoil that lofted her on a single long, arching jump high over the now-rocky cliffside until there was a 'pop' as the triangle parachute deployed behind her. Another followed and as she whooped and hollered her satisfaction the two red deltas lazily wafted back and forth until the boards fell away with a click to dangle on their tethers and then they were on the ground in a roll.

"Ow," Sloan pushed herself up from hands and knees. "Let's never do that again."

"I'm doing that again!"

"Not today," she repeated the objection, rolling onto her back with knees bent and ignoring the rock that seemed to want to make intimate acquaintance with her spine. "Not today."

Kami was already on her feet again though, reeling in the short lines of the parachute to ball up the fabric and smash it into the bag. Picking up the board, she checked it for damage and then pulled a strap out of a hidden sleeve and slung it over her back before beginning the same procedure for the woman who still lay prone, "If you don't get up by the time I'm done, I'm gonna jump on you and fuck you," she promised.

"All right! All right..." She grabbed the tether and reeled in her own board. "I'm up, I'm walking..."

It would be a long walk. A summoned map showed that the Amirah's personal ship was landed at the mouth of a narrow gully nearly twenty kilometers away and across the barren side of a mountain still scattered with treacherous boulders and not a trail to be seen but Kami finished shifting her burdens with a shrug, finishing with her helmet as she shook out her long brown-black hair over the edge of the dive suit, "Let's go drop in. Like a ninja. A space ninja..."

[Sunset]

Erika & Demi's House, Botany Bay, Chuh-Yu...

"Ready?" Erika looked across her bare shoulder, one eyebrow raised slightly in question while an exceptionally slender champagne flute dangled from her fingers. The bubbles rising through the amber liquid were reflected in the surge of the Jacuzzi she relaxed in, hanging her arm over one corner while her wife lounged in the other. At the other end two sets of toes emerged on occasion from the foam to run along the other. "Any minute now..."

High above them and projected somehow onto the air of the high atmosphere stretched an enormous series of numbers that slowly rolled upward while inside the Secretary-General's head a more precise set scrolled past. The only holiday of the year - Election and Independence rolled into one - was already past and the detritus from the street parties swept away but even long past the days of religious prophesy and superstitious astrology the popular culture still retained a fascination with big round numbers. Thirty billion was one of the biggest, though as with all such things it was largely inaccurate; The titanic numerals only represented the citizenry of the Sunset territories while leaving the larger population of the Federal States and those expatriates scattered among the stars to an uncounted record. Mangala, Khenala, the space-borne Therian Clans. Inside her head the nearly-exact number surged back and forth as births and deaths were recorded, prospective citizens signed on the dotted line, ships arrived with the refugees from conflicts across the galaxy to begin a new life in the shining city on the hill.

Like Wildfire...

She'd read the report earlier that day, a detailed document assembled from sources culled from the internet as well as what had remained in the New Victory bomber's apartment and his direct inspiration on Kelvania. What had emerged was an indistinct snapshot of an organization that called itself Wildfire, though even this was not wholly accurate. Emerging reports put it as present across most of the galaxy and distinctly tied to various refugee and conflict areas. These seemed to be the source of many of the adherents; In many ways, Wildfire was more philosophy than organization with individual members - or even cells - typically operating separately but cogent to a particular set of manifestos with a distinctly religious tone. By their creed, this put the followers into the simplified category of Fatalist Religious Nihilists with all the dangers associated to this proposition. Many had been self-radicalized and drew from the lot typical to similar past entities; Young disaffected men of below-average intelligence and disadvantaged social or economic circumstances.

There was more, however. A distinct pattern of success beyond their means had emerged. While the New Victory attack had been carried out using relatively low tech methods - and with only limited casualties and few fatalities, only limited success - other attacks claimed by Wildfire had been rather more dramatic. The most notable of these had been an engineered space elevator collapse that had killed millions and held, to her mind, the possibility of either a well-to-do core adherent or outside sponsorship. That raised the specter that Wildfire was, itself, not an organization solely of troubled youths but potentially a weapon wielded with some skill by a larger entity. To use the cover of a terrorist group to conceal the origins and goals of a political, religious, or business concern was not unheard of though, if this was a conspiracy, it was thus-far a hidden one.

If it was, it wouldn't remain that way for much longer. While there had been only one successful attack attributed to the organization inside the Republic, its claimed success in other segments of the galaxy made the potential threat actionable on a level that would concern the Secretary-General herself. Her Anathema agents were already involved, of course, with the intelligence from Kelvania provided by the murder-Dwarf and she'd given orders to expand the intelligence service's gathering activities. Some of the attacks had been based on lax security protocols or simple negligence and she'd similarly passed along instructions for all of the electronic and biological security apparatus under her preview to completely question all suspicious activity. While much of Wildfire's activity seemed localized to conflict areas, her goal was to prevent the kind of outrageously successful operation that would spread their name and their ideology around the greater Sol region. Containment was key, but it was also important to find out if the snake had a head. If there was she would dispatch her own tool to cut it off.

Looking down from the skies to the houses across the bay, cozy and elegant, and then to the lights of the city that grew in the far distance where walls of silver windows surged towards the heavens above walkways and streets edged with greenery she reflected on the harsh thesis that Wildfire presented; Civilization was a plague, an ever-growing cancer on the universe and one that would eventually consume it with the only solution the purity of flame. It was an attractive philosophy to those borne of chaos and destruction, to those who had already lost so much and now stood to only lose themselves. That had been the case with the New Victory bomber - an orphan, a refugee. Presumably he had seen his only hope for salvation in the destruction of the self and perhaps that was an appealing philosophy where such was common.

Perhaps other places, but not here.

The Republic would remain a bastion against such backwards notions. To protect the people who called it home and provide a place untouched by the fire. High above them the remnants of a war long-past waited; megatons of retired ordinance carefully maneuvered into place to be detonated when the giant numbers reached their destination to provide the greatest fireworks show the system had ever seen. Then it would be on to the next billion and the next.

Leaning across the waters she crossed her arm and the glass across her chest to hover just a moment away from her partner's. Zeros stretched across the stars and they clinked together, "Into the future; Here we go..."

[Sunset]

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

It was exactly like the action movie Jadak had fantasized about but had never really, truly, wanted to be in. There was a difference between shooting up a bunch of primitive naivos - as the mercenaries called them - from the safety of his 'mech and the remote risk of instantly dying when some bit of advanced weaponry flash-cooked him in the cockpit and a face-to-face life-or-death fight. At heart he figured he was just like most people - in it for a quick buck and some cruelty to animals. That might have said a lot about his deepest personality but that didn't mean he'd just throw up his hands and die. Instead he jerked up the barrel of his rifle and pulled the trigger while his feet told him to dodge to the side but ended up in a near-action perfect dive instead. It probably looked really cool as the hyper-velocity rounds tore through the table and walls and ricocheted off the metal case of the robot but when he landed and tried the weapon again he realized that he was now both out of ammunition and laying prone in a scattering of shattered dinnerware and melting ice crystals.

"...fuck! Major," he yelled into his headset with forgetful hope that it was still set to send, "One of the robots came to life! I'm pinned down! And God, that sounds fucking pathetic..."

He had to do something other than just die. Rolling to one side, he looked under the table for the robot and caught a glimpse of a smooth black cone that shrouded some kind of hover unit just turning the corner at the close end of the table. There wasn't a lot of time before it would come around and find him laying there like an idiot and so he rolled the other way, under the table, and scrambled for another magazine. The first dropped from the receiver with a clunk and the flier, now on the other side of the table, stopped and turned around, 'Kejelkij!'

"Is it that stupid? Major... Major?"

He slide it home, slapped the butt to make sure it was seated, and jerked back on the charging bolt. Once again it was circling around and he rolled again, nearly catching his boot on a chair - or something like it - as he moved to the center. There was just enough width to the table above him to where it couldn't see him and yet hey could see just enough of the motive unit to draw a bead. Aiming across his chest, he braced the rifle low and pulled the trigger just as the bottom of the cone lined up with his barrel. Each following shot pushed it higher and for the few seconds until the magazine again ran dry the thing dances as bullets smacked into it. Mostly they bounced away to whiz far and wide but either luck or firepower was with him and something sparked, flashed, and then the whole thing slumped over to drift limply to the ground.

That was enough for a celebratory yell and the Corporal jumped out from under the table to put the boot in, kicking the automaton over on its side, "Yeah, take that you fucker! Major... Major?" His finger went to the mouthpiece and found it firmly in the off position.

"Eh... fuck em. I beat this one, right?"

He turned to look down the hallway, half-expecting to see a whole phalanx rushing towards him, but there was nothing except a shattered light fixture that had been blown off the wall by his first failed volley. Not a sound, not a shrill 'Kejelkij!' interrupted the slow tinkle of melting ice. Still Jadak hefted the rifle, plucked out the used mag and tossed it down the hall. Again nothing, but this time he crept forward with weapon ahead...

[Sunset]

Setting Five, The Circlet, Gen Celet System...

"Alright," and with a belly made satisfied and full by the meal pouch that now withered in the sun, Timmons slid off the rock to kneel next to it. The ration had included a pseudo-plastic knife/fork combination and before he set this too out to degrade away to nothing he improvised it to a scraper, cutting away the matted vegetation that had been both comfortable to sit on and concealed the stone carving beneath. "Lets see what we've got..."

Trinya looked up from her bag, where she was rearranging the contents before predictably slinging it back across the shoulders of her armor, "Who what's got?"

"The carving he was sitting on," Deania answered. She had not begun to pack up for the resumption of their patrol and her rank was about to hold true, "When he sat down for lunch he found something on that rock. Probably a carving - I've never seen him drop anything, ever."

That was true; The Commander had never been described as physically clumsy and his hands proved this as he cut away, stacked, and then scrapped the last of the coating away with admirable efficiency. What was left was clearly of outside workmanship though he dug in a pocket for one of the stones to compare it. Instead of a tree, one side of the knee-height boulder had been carved away into a relief image of the very waterfall it was facing. The three stones - one that the water flowed over and two that restrained it on either side - were clearly set out as was the circle of figures that variously knelt, bowed, and stood in front of it. Between them the creek ran uninterrupted but it was Timmons who stopped his own work to rise and stride purposefully to the stones, "...do you think? No."

A thump of his clenched fist and then a probing scrape with the utensil told him his answer and he returned to the carved stone, though Deania was already behind him with the hand scanner to confirm.

"Just a rock, but a pretty important one to these guys."

One question was why but before that puzzle could be aired aloud Annya stepped in with an observation of her own, clambering between the two split sides and putting her nose nearly in the water as the sheet rushed and parted around her feet. "How deep is that cut," she asked, taking another tongue-lashing drink before dipping her muzzle into the flow as a measuring device, "Three, four centimeters?"

It wasn't the most accurate unit of measure but the point was taken as the Seeker tugged her survival knife from its sheath and dipped the blade into the current, using the markings on the back of the blade to measure more precisely, "Two and a half. Flow is..." And with a couple minutes of research and comparison a new baseline had been set. Over time the particulates suspended in the water had acted as a scour to carve away the rock and this was as good as any watch - at least on certain timescales. "Just about a thousand, twelve hundred years."

Which also meant that the rocks themselves were nowhere near as old as the Circlet's original construction but they were soon traced to their origin as well; A high cliff further above the creek where a portion had broken off and tumbled down to block the flow sometime in the past. The water had built up behind the accidental dam, found a place to flow past, and begun to work the magic of slow, steady erosion into the rocky sluice.

"Good work. Which means these little guys," Timmons pointed to the figures gathered around the imagery, "Carved this during that same period. And likely these as well. The tool marks are a solid match as is the technique. I'm not going to say they are from the same hand, but the same tradition?" He tossed the smaller stone up in the air, let it flip a couple times, then snatched it mid-fall and tucked it back into his pocket. "So we have the Eternal Tree and the Water of Life. I'd rather not work our way through the rest of the elements of nature before we find the sculptors - any ideas?"

But there was nothing but blanks to be drawn. Annya circled the banks, pushing her nose under every bush and between every rock but there was not a trace of anything other than the animals they had already encountered. No other carvings presented themselves, and every other exploration came up empty-handed until he was forced to the difficult path, "Then we follow the creek. Civilization has always tended to crop up around sources of fresh water - let's just hope that holds true. Keep your eyes open. I've got a hunch we're missing something..."