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

[Sunset]

The Maric Cabin, Kayv, Alawk's Star...

"Junior Seaman Amao Maric..." Alwyra reached up to peel back, adjust, and then gentle smooth the name blazon across the left breast of her step-son's new uniform. "It looks good on you."

"Thank you."

His expression was rigid but she could still sense the nervousness and anxiety behind his voice as he stood there, hands behind his back to keep them from picking up and fiddling with something, anything, as he looked down at the fresh from the package uniform. Tailored to fit him perfectly - there was no reason not to, not in this day and age - it was the same mottled dusky gray as the regular Defense Forces uniform except for the green bead of fabric at collar and tab. It was to have been one or the other; If he hadn't been accepted into the Junior's, he would have left to apply at the regular Academy the next day. She'd pulled every string she could find to make sure it had been the first rather than the second. He might never truly consider her his mother, but she would treat him as her son and if that meant helping him life his dream away from their cabin under the snow then so be it.

"You'll need this... Here," she picked up the heavy parka that was laying out across his bed. Unlike the two officers who were sitting comfortably in her living room talking to her husband and flirting with his daughter, Amao didn't have a suit of power armor dripping wet snow all over her entryway to carry them back to their shuttle in something like comfort. "Just once, I get to help my boy put on his jacket, right?"

He sighed and surrendered, putting out one arm so she could slide the Pelwyr-lined garment on and hang it around his opposite shoulder while he threaded the other arm down the sleeve. There had been a regulation parka in the package as well but there was nothing like the fur of the ferocious carnivore for protection against the fierce cold and no reason to send him out without one. While he gathered up the rest of his things, she tucked the regulation jacket into his bag before looking around the room. There was so much he could take but so much he would have to leave behind. A child growing into a man; A collection of old toys from many years before she had met his father would remain on their shelf, a few posters would stay pinned to the back of his door. Maybe they would find some new use for his room but just as likely it would remain this way until he returned, perhaps with a partner of his own in tow.

"Are you ready?"

"I think so," he cast one last look around the room, hooking the strap of his bag further up over his shoulder as he did.

"Then let's not keep them waiting..."

But she still ambushed at the door with a hug as he tried to open it with his hands full. Then he was tripping down the spiral staircase with her waiting just at the top until he had reached the bottom and stood there alone, tall, with the two officers pulling themselves to their feet while his Dad rose as well to stand just a few paces back with his arm clasped tight around his daughter's shoulders.

"Junior Seaman Maric reporting, Sir," he tried for a salute, but the strap of the bag slipped off and fell down into the crook of his arm to make the gesture look as awkward as it sounded.

But both of his new superiors grinned; They'd been there as well in their own time and place. The closest, a man with the stark blonde hair of a Scandinavian heritage and a coffee cup still in his hand, stepped forward; "You look good, kid. Like this is the life for you. Are you ready?"

"Don't forget to say goodbye," Alwyra prompted as she descended the stairs, "Even to your sister."

"Ma'am," the other acknowledged her as she finished to circle between them and join her husband, wrapping an arm around his back and putting the other on his heart, "Thank you for having us in your home."

"You just take good care of our boy..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, The Capuchin System, The Delta Quadrant...

"Your presence is not necessary, Captain," the stern-faced Elf continued, the tone in his voice expecting an objection from the young woman seated across from him at any moment. "Construction of this outpost is well underway and, as you guessed, they will not make any attempt at violence with the flag of the Eternal Noldorin Empire fluttering over it. Our scientists have reverse-engineered some of their foodstuffs gathered by the Mornehosse;" A not-so subtle dig; A team of the elite warriors and infiltrators had covertly boarded the hulk that housed the hidden settlement and returned unobserved with numerous samples, "And a sampling of what they can expect if they choose to accept our invitation has been readied. There will be no unexpected developments; Soon enough they will see that they have been offered salvation and will accept it. Meanwhile the presence of your ship will do more harm than good."

Kami nodded in agreement and the Menelmacari Captain carefully folded his uniform robes over again, content that the conversation had both gone well and seemed to be at an end.

"Perfectly right, Captain," She stood and he followed. While their conference could have been conducted via hologram, the Elven way - even when it was excessively stiff and formal - had that personal touch. A one-on-one conversation that would make one feel either completely at ease or in dire threat of mortal danger while still somehow offended by the pointy-eared bastard's smug attitude. A step and she was through the door from her small office onto the bridge of the Ojeni, "We will depart at once. After all, there's plenty still out there for us to do; We'll be eagerly awaiting word of your success."

"And you shall have it," he finished, a slight bow as required between those of equal rank if not, doubtless in his estimation, ability, "Good travels to you."

"And to you, Captain..." He turned and walked for the exit but instead of taking her chair, Kami began to walk around the outer concourse of the bridge, her voice rising as she began to sing; "The snow glows white on the mountain tonight, Not a footprint to be seen. A kingdom of isolation, And it looks like I'm the Queen... The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside, Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I tried!"

Seated at her usual spot next to the Captain's chair, Sloan now rose to her feet and turned to grab the railing behind her and lean across while Kami put her backside to the station built into the squared-off horseshoe and leaned back, the two crossing and locking eyes as the Freodian started to sing as well, "Don't let them in, don't let them see, Be the good girl you always have to be. Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know... Well, now they know!"

And with that the whole bridge went up, every officer rising from their station to burst into song and slowly circle the pair; "Let it go, let it go, Can't hold it back anymore, Let it go, let it go, Turn away and slam the door!"

The chorus fell away and it was back to Captain Blaine, "I don't care, What they're going to say, Let the storm rage on, The cold never bothered me anyway! It's funny how some distance, Makes everything seem small, And the fears that once controlled me, Can't get to me at all!"

"It's time to see what I can do," Sloan answered, taking up her partners hands and swinging her around in a circle that sent them spiraling across the lower deck of the bridge, "To test the limits and break through, No right, no wrong, no rules for me I'm free!"

"Let it go, let it go, I am one with the wind and sky, Let it go, let it go, You'll never see me cry!"

"Here I stand," Kami spun the Commander back into her chair and raced up to the front of the bridge to stand in front of the main display with its expansive view of the debris field and the stars beyond, "And here I'll stay, Let the storm rage on!"

"My power flurries through the air into the ground, My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around," The Elven Captain suddenly burst out in a voice as crystal clear as the afternoon sky, "And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast, I'm never going back, The past is in the past!"

"Let it go, let it go, When I'll rise like the break of dawn, Let it go, let it go, That perfect girl is gone! Here I stand;" the whole bridge continued, "In the light of day, Let the storm rage on, The cold never bothered me anyway!"

[Sunset]

SDF-Wright Brothers, Deep Space, Ares Super-Cluster...

"One down, seven hundred nineteen to go," Ensign McPedro declared with an exuberance that didn't seem to be at all shared by his companion, the taciturn Ensign Alluvial.

"Mmmph."

"Oh, stop it," the young man declared, wrapping an arm around the equally young woman's shoulders. "Nine more for us then a trip back to port while we wait for the next batch and while we're waiting we can try to find you some happiness, you joyless fun-pire," he teased, his tone that of mock support.

It was hard to see why she wouldn't have fun, or be able to find it, in nearly any port city through-out the galaxy but it took only a few minutes with her to understand why. She was lean and attractive with the kind of body conditioning expected of a young officer. High cheekbones elongated her neck and gave her a sharp chin and dark eyes while a long cascade of raven-black hair dropped down her back and slid over one shoulder. The solid black tattoos and sub-dermal markings hinted at a dark side, however, and she flinched almost imperceptibly as his hand came near those on her exposed neck.

"If I were a fun-pire or any flavor of essence-sucking monster I'd make sure you were first," Alivia promised. "Not turned, just dead-dead."

"And if you want to bite me, I've got a couple suggestions as to where," he shot back as he manipulated the controls to maneuver another one of the self-deploying buoys into the shuttle bay. These had been a last-minute addition to the design, which had ended up being too large to deploy via any shuttle other than a Loki or other full-sized dropship. The shape and size of a regulation cargo container, each pod contained the buoy itself as well as an array of maneuvering thrusters that would move it out beyond the influence of the starship's gravimetric drives. It would then open up to release the contents from the protective cocoon and return to the ship. Launch to load, the process took about an hour and then it was a carefully couple more to the next deployment.

Times seven hundred and twenty.

When it was complete the array would form a titanic blanket around the core systems of Republic space and provide a vital early warning against any intrusion. It would be a game-changer for both military strategy and for galactic politics. As the array expanded, it would provide monitoring and warning services not only for the Republic and its Triumvirate allies but friendly nearby powers and not just for the military but for those who monitored trade and security. Piracy especially would be pushed even further to the fringes and possibly out of Republic space altogether, as would smuggling and slaving. Instead of a haphazard patrol occasionally showing up during the commission of a crime, Republic warships would be waiting on the other end to spew cyan death. A few of these unexpected ambushes and the owners and operators of what were, in the end, expensive ships would turn elsewhere in their pursuit of ill-gotten gains.

Trade too would be affected; By monitoring the trade lanes, merchants from the Republic and her allies would gain a crucial advantage. Instead of showing up to a planet or settlement where their goods were plentiful and competition was fierce, they could pick and choose and only present their wares to their own advantage. A minute or an hour ahead of a competitor; Sometimes free trade was only as free as it appeared.

"Well, I tried..."

"I didn't sign up to go back to that," she said suddenly.

"What's that?"

"There's a reason, alright?" She lifted her eyes from the console that she had been paying studious attention to throughout his attempts to draw her out and for the first time he noticed her eyes; Slate white, the iris were nearly entirely devoid of color. "I'm not interested so don't ask again. Please."

[Sunset]

Lake Clockface, The Southern Expanse, Denali, The Yukon System...

Named because of both its near-perfect round shape and for the half-circle of rocky pinnacles that ringed one side, Lake Clockface was the perfect location for testing various drones, manned vehicles, and other similar systems that might require either a semi-soft landing, an unobstructed wide-open space, or both. The rocky outcroppings also made an ideal location for the command, control, and observation of these tests and so a concealed test station had been built into the most stable of these though, with no one in the habit of looking, most of the observers preferred to stand or sit on the small table of knee-high grass that crowned the bluff.

"It certainly looks nicer than the old version," Dr. Kraus commented as he watched - hands deep in the pockets of his lab coat - the science drone fly back and forth across the lake on its (local) maiden test assignment. "And those manipulators look like they could really choke someone..."

The drone's predecessor had been a very boring looking sphere studded with the same variety of sensors and instruments that now had their own careful place on the more aerodynamic and certainly stylish prototype. It zipped from here to there across the glassy surface, a low wake following it as its gravitic drive pushed the water away in front of the invisible mountain it generated and sent it rolling across the lake in a gentle swell behind the drone in a fashion that made it look as though the wake was coming from the craft itself. Occasionally as it turned one of the tapering wings would dip low enough to slice the surface of the water and pull it into a tight spiral that seemed almost intentional before rising high above the waters of the lake to dive at high speed towards some programmed objective. At the bottom of one of these dives the manipulator arms the Doctor seemed to be admiring shot out to spike into the water with a splash and grab something that glittered and flashed before disappearing into the hidden sample containment unit.

"Yep, just squeeze the life out of them. Get those hands around their neck and..."

"I didn't know Meri was into that," Director Tibowski interrupted in a flummoxed effort to keep the Doctor from discussing what he presumed was the Doctor's bedroom habits, "And I didn't want to, either."

Kraus turned, one eyebrow raised, "She isn't..."

"I..." Adam stopped, half-swallowing his sentence. "I thought..."

"Me? Noooo," Fredrick rolled the 'oooo' out long, "Nothing kinky going on in the Kraus bedroom. Well, aside from;" Adam's warning glare stopped him cold, "But no. I've got a client who..."

Tibowski sighed and his shoulders slumped. There didn't seem to be any winning today but the Doctor's explanation of his side-job was interrupted by a wholly new participant to the conversation.

"Excuse me?" Both men turned to find the cyclopian sensor-eye of the drone staring at them from just a few feet away where the grass ended and the cliff fell away to the gentle lapping waters of the lake below. "Sorry if I'm interrupting something, but all of this testing and re-testing is really boring. So I'm going to go explore off that way," the drone gestured with one of its winglets, pointing to a low range of hills that quickly turned into the shatteringly scaled mountains that formed the spine of Denali's massive southern continent. "Bye!"

Drifting backwards, it turned to one side before shooting forward and swooping around the table-top pinnacle and away into the distance with only the blue glow of the radiator on its backside showing. Both men stared as it left and then just as suddenly it was gone, dipping down into a hidden hollow before just the tiniest cyan dot showed for a moment against the massive green of the treeline as it re-appeared and then disappeared amid the canopy.

"Hmm," Kraus broke the silence, rocking back and forth on his heels, "Do we log this under 'Test Failed'? Or under 'Test Really, Really Successful'?"

[Sunset]

Special Projects Development Centre Tau, Memuru Nebula, Ares Super-Cluster...

Tungwanuk appeared in the laboratory with a pop and Karl, previously the only occupant, was busy pacing the floor and muttering to himself. Again.

"J... J... I need a word that starts with J..."

There was never really anyone there but Karl. SPDC-Tau was located in an area of space that was so dangerous that not only was it only remotely manned but that Tau was not the original designation for the complex. That had been Pi. Pi had, metaphorically, sunk into the swamp. Rho, which had replaced Pi, had burned down. Then Sigma had burned down, fell over, and sunk into the swamp. But Tau stood tall! Fortunately it had only taken one lesson before the precariously perched installation had been switched to a (nearly) completely virtual operation which meant - again metaphorically - that there was no laboratory. Instead it too was a representational work space that allowed the virtual inhabitants to interact in a familiar way while having complete access to the array of tools and instruments present in the distant facility.

It was not really the ideal place for brainstorming though unless one liked their thought-space sterile. If there had been windows to gaze out of and daydream, they would have looked out on an unholy vista of torn space where time itself seemed to be meaningless and the light from distant stars flowed backwards to reveal prophecies both strange and dire. How this worked when the windows would have been representational displays of what was otherwise a quite beautiful and tranquil nebula of sprawling extent was anyone's guess but they had shut the windows off after Day Two and not really bothered to figure out where or how someone had plugged them in wrong. While others might suppose the threats to the facility were external, they were really from Karl.

"Why do you need a word that start with J? Jacuzzi," the Kal-En-Vesho offered, sliding up the wall to hang from her usual position high on the ceiling. It was a good perch to watch the more-than-occasional disaster unfold from and it kept her - virtual - body away from whatever subsystem that might be somehow corrupted by the man's experimentation.

Karl was a unique one; He was an idiot. Not just an idiot, but an idiot's idiot.

He had opened the box.

There were certain boxes on board the various starships and other advanced Defense Force and Combined Services war-fighting platforms that were given a Black label. These had, as they say, no user serviceable parts inside and their normal maintenance procedure was to be - carefully - swapped out for another. While it was known what they did the how and the why was often in question and - again, according to the labels and stickers on the box - not something you really wanted to know. Even more explicit, one of the labels on this particular set of boxes was very carefully and boldly labeled in a dozen languages; 'Do Not Open; Permanent and Inescapable Insanity Will Result.' Given the space requirements for the large, bold, day-glow orange text with the skulls on each end and worked into each 'O', the only space left blank on said box was the input port and the output port.

None of these warnings applied to Karl since his name was Karl, not User.

The warning 'No User Serviceable Parts' had been printed on the box next to the 'Permanent and Inescapable Insanity' box, but as has been said; An Idiot's Idiot.

On the rare occasion that one of these boxes was opened, the typical course of action was a push-broom and a hose. But when the poor soul survived - on the even more rare occasion - they were then shipped off to build more of these boxes. It was the Great Secret of the Black Boxes; Opening one granted the knowledge of how to make more, but it also resulted in insanity that fluctuated from the mild to the homicidal. And yes, the warning was accurate. There had never, ever, despite very many attempts by the best and brightest minds of a score of star-faring civilizations, been a successful reversal of the condition. In fact one such attempt had resulted in nearly twenty new cases as the patient had somehow tricked the team into supplying her with the needed components to build the box - though no one was sure what those components were - and then opened it during an evaluation session.

This would seem to have been the end of it; Surely precautions would have been taken that would have eliminated any ability to open these boxes. But as the saying goes; The Safety Engineer's job is to produce an idiot-proof design but the Universe's job is to produce a bigger idiot. The Universe is winning.

Karl was that idiot.

But he was also an experiment; Instead of being locked away in a very secure facility along with the other individuals who shared his condition to produce more of the black boxes that were vital to the security of the Triumvirate, he had been locked up in Centre Pi to see if he could somehow come up with another of these black boxes. Note carefully that he had been locked up in Pi; Despite the total loss of Pi, Rho, and Sigma, Karl had now been the lone survivor three times with the fortunate occurrence that he had also been the lone occupant twice.

"No, Jacuzzi won't work. It needs to be a bit more... Science-y. You know, like Jet or..."

"Will Jet work?" Tungwanuk asked as she began to manipulate a trio of virtual consoles with her three hands, trying to find out just what he had been working on while she was away.

Karl liked her. For some reason - well, for a well-known reason - he had an adverse reaction to anyone who looked Human or even near-Human. Even in the virtual reality that connected one to another, he would keep attempting to kill them even though the virtual knife passed right through them, their virtual body was shredded and squashed and torn without effect, and the poisons only made them do a soft reboot. But the tri-laterally symmetrical Kal-En-Vesho was definitely not Human or even Humanoid and was thus apparently immune to that particular aspect of his condition. Some of the other researchers had offered the less-than-charitable opinion that this was because the Kal-En-Vesho were possibly responsible for whatever madness lay inside the box, but as none of them wanted to open the box and find out, none of them could prove that the former Galactic Tyrants had anything to do with it.

"No. Needs to be more Science-y. Something Integrated Gravity Lens Shield..."

"Shield?" Her interest was perked and she looked past the roving Karl to take in the rest of the lab. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it's right over here..."

That was enough to trigger the lock-down. Suddenly everything in the lab went blurry as the II-Core that acted as a filter between the real world of the lab where Karl was and the virtual environment of the lab where Tungwanuk thought she was picked up one of the phrases that might mean that Karl was attempting to expose someone to the contents of a black box. He'd tried it before but the II-Core had been there and had done that, learning its craft in the near-AI-eat-near-AI mean streets of the Triumvirate's holding facility on No, You Still Don't Get to Know, Nice Try Though!.

"Describe it to me."

That was safe, or at least had been proven so. It was apparently all about the contents of the box; Not what it did, and not what they were, but that they were in that box.

"I'll show you," he offered, and this at least was visible. A half-sphere bubble appeared - still quite fuzzy, but distinctly so - and he walked out from behind it and whatever unit had created it. "Now watch."

He picked up a stool and threw it at the bubble. There wasn't a hard clatter as with other existing forms of shield technology, nor did the stool fly into a million pieces or burst into flames or slow to a crawl. Instead the bubble wobbled and the stool fell to the ground with the requisite clatter. Karl walked over, picked it up, and then sat on it before reaching out to flick the semi-transparent apparition, "See? It jiggles. Like a tit on a girl when she's runnin' on the beach in a bikini."

It was apparently quite a lonely existence for Karl, but the cloned inhuman successor to a nightmare empire of experimentation, manipulation, and extinction didn't have the same set of sympathies that a more Human companion might so her question was only, "Can you make more?"

Karl rubbed his bald head, "I think so? Pretty easy, I'll just need more toilet paper. But I need to figure out what the J will be first. Can't have a JIGL Shield without the J..."

"Juncture?"

[Sunset]

SDF-Ixutsangi, Near Frontier Post Pere'Nolde, The Therian Hegemony...

"The two lead ships have altered their trajectory in a manner that suggests they are lining up on Captain Luzurth's ship," Lieutenant Mead offered from her place at the sensor station. With the entire bridge crew deep in the machine-accelerated virtual battle-space of the Ixutsangi's Combat Control Environment, there was a lot of time to consider the possibilities. "The third;" This was the most heavily damaged of the three, "Is maintaining a trajectory on the outpost. It will enter maximum projected firing range in forty-six seconds and the lead pair will reach firing range in ninety-four seconds."

A hard red line connected the combatants and this was again buffered by a larger soft yellow cone that showed each ship's potential maneuvering based on their currently assessed capabilities. That for the two lead ships was virtually identical while the third was considerably smaller.

Behind Captain Turbell the Tactical Officer added another detail, "Most of the Therian ship's firepower is concentrated forward-laterally;" More cones to show firing angles, this time with the vast majority facing along the ship's forward arc with a decidedly nominal amount elsewhere, "And would suggest they prefer high-speed striking passes followed by maneuvering for advantage."

It was essentially the same as Republic offensive tactics. Instead of staying to slug it out in extended broadsides, the Defense Force warships were designed to rapidly unload their ordinance on a target and then withdraw. To draw the blue-water analogy, they were the carrier aircraft while the majority of their prospective opponents were battleships. That the Therians followed a similar tactical model wasn't surprising; There were several notable Therians in the history and evolution of the Sunset Defense Force and it was the natural evolution of a strategy that had moved away from the concept of glorious battle for battle's sake and towards the rapid elimination of opposing war-fighting capability instead.

"Highlight the wounded ship," Turbell ordered, pushing forward to study the enhanced details around the third vessel. "It won't have a lot of room to maneuver, not at those speeds." The path of the ship would, by the numbers so far, put it on a near-collision course with the Outpost and this seemed to be what the Captain was suggesting. "Cutting it very close - it could be attempting to ram."

That too was a signature Republic tactic. Part of its strategic doctrine held that wars are won by economies and the Republic's economy was simply frightening. Trading a smaller vessel for a larger opposing ship was a more than fair trade when the smaller vessel could be easily replaced while the larger vessel could not, even presuming equal economies. In this case the smaller vessel was simply so by being wounded; It would not last very long in a protracted battle and the Outpost was worth many times what the damaged ship was.

"Sacrificial crew, or even unmanned," Lieutenant Obermost agreed, leaning forward over his station. "They've had plenty of time when the ships were incommunicado. We're in a good position though," he noted, pointing out their place on the flank of the battle, "We could come across their rear, take advantage of their lower aft gunnery, and knock that ship out before it has a chance."

"If their guns are even manned..."

"If they are," Obermost seconded that notion; If the goal was to ram, most of the repairs would have gone into the engines. "We've got," he looked over to the Sensor Officer...

"Twelve seconds."

"Bring us around then," Turbell ordered, waiting while the Helmsman entered the new instructions. "We're tossing the dice here, but why all the tests if they were just going to jump us later? They," he nodded towards the Outpost and its lone defender, "Are either looking for an ally or making sure we're not an enemy. Let's make some friends."

The requisite seconds crawled past as the Ixutsangi turned and burned to close the distance to the oncoming ship. With only a few seconds remaining before they could open fire, Mead announced; "They are maneuvering, but they haven't fired. Still plenty of wiggle room to ram."

"Alert me as soon as that changes," Turbell ordered before switching to the Tactical Console, "Limited engagement arc, I don't want anything even near that Outpost."

The two lead ships still had a significant distance to go before they could engage Captain Luzurth's ship and as soon as the Ixutsangi fired they began to peel off, his ship turning to give chase. In the stretched-out time of the battle-space, the eye-blink quick flash of the Horizon-Class's particle cannon became elongated cyan beams that chased down the on-coming patrol ship and tore into her heels like the repeated bites of a jungle predator. It was enough to knock her off her course and she tried to correct, flares of maneuvering thrusters burning along one flank, but there was a sudden blossom from one as a hasty repair failed and ruptured and a string of secondary explosions burrowed along the already wounded flank.

"That's put her into a glancing course with the Outpost!"

"Keep firing! Torpedoes!" Out of the corner of his eye, something else caught Turbell's attention. The two ships that had turned from their chase were now facing his own; "Quickly, not a second to lose..."

[Sunset]

Deep Underground, Terra Incognito, The New Latin System...

"Hold on..." Doctor Richardo knelt, putting one armored knee down on the gravel-covered floor of the tunnel, "This is starting to look familiar."

Pulling out another scanner from a pouch secured to his armor, he ran it over a small outcropping that sparkled with reflected crystalline light. A pause to check the results and he stood before creating an array of floating holograms with an open-hand gesture.

"Not personally, but this looks like the description I read of the exploration of the caves under the Rhelith Uplands on ePyrk. Near-machine precision but organic in appearance and with an initial scattering of crystalline nodes." A video of the entrance to the deepest part of the caves played, complete with scattered scientific equipment occasionally adorned with large purple crystals in metallic black settings. "If the form follows, we should start seeing more of them - larger, with distinct settings. Is this giving you any weird vibes, Tell'Vik?"

"Yes," the Heon answered, moving to take the Doctor's former place in front of the nodule. "There is an odd sensation of separation here. I would not equate it to loss; What is here is here, and should be here, but somehow my gestalt feels that it is and should be separate from it."

"Is it a hostile feeling?" Symphony pointed her rifle down the tunnel and into the darkness, a fierce beam of light illuminating it for a half-second to reveal the sparkle of a million dark diamonds.

"I... I would not say that. There is no reaction by the warrior."

"Again, if form follows, this should eventually open up into a chamber with a crown-like cage of dark metal set with these gems. We should push on, but perhaps Ensign Tell'Vik should stay here in case there is a reaction?"

Now it was Lieutenant Commander Yu's turn to look around the cave and made his decision; Leaving the Ensign behind to guard the rear might eliminate some risk to his team, but his insights had already proven valuable. Standing off to one side so that he could look both up and down the tunnel as well as judge the mood of his team, he watched them stand and shuffle for nearly a minute before coming to his decision, "You're coming with us. I'm not going to split the team for an unknown and only possible benefit. Let's see that full video though. Don't let it color your perceptions or block your intuition, but let's go into this thing with our eyes open."

"Right," Richardo re-started the video and they all watched at least out of the corner of their eye as they went about individual preparations. A few samples collected and secured and the Doctor too was ready as the last pieces faded away. "At that point, Dr. Brilla is taken into the interior of the... Whatever it was. There's an additional recording of that, " he gestured and played a quick pan of the interior of the space, "But unless we go inside this cage-transporter, we should be fine."

"Alright, Villasana? You're on point, with the Doctor right behind you," Yu ordered. "If anything happens, or you feel anything weird," he turned to Tell'Vik and to Haack, who had been re-checking his gear, "Call a halt. And that's an immediate halt," he directed that last to the entire team. "These two are our psychic mediums, especially with something we really don't know much about, got it?"

Everyone nodded and, with the Sanglanti in the lead, the winding tunnel began to open up ahead of them. Just as foreseen the number and intricacy of the crystals increased until every sweep of light sent a wide scattering of sparkles back into the group. It was only a few minutes but they came to a halt as the space opened up ahead into a circular chamber with a smooth sandy bottom and a dark hole in the back wall.

"This is where it should be," The Doctor declared, looking to the Heon and then to Yu for confirmation, "But it's not."

He stepped forward and they all followed even as he boldly crossed the middle of the sand where the cage would rise up to trap him and take him to the hidden vaults. But there was no surge of sand; The gaping eye of rock on the far wall was empty and the lights that shown through revealed a vast and open chasm.

"It's gone..."

"But not long," Richardo declared, turning around and picking up one of the crystal nodes. Right in his hand, it began to crumble and fall apart. With the other he gestured and explained as the hologram sprang up; "The current measurements from the TRIPWIRE mini-array. The mystery link is gone, fading away."

"I felt it," they all turned to the Heon and Tell'Vik explained, "Just as we crossed into the chamber. The feeling of separation and anxiety. It is no longer present in my gestalt..."

[Sunset]

High Security Cordon, Liquid Design Laboratory, Landor City, Terra Incognito...

"...It was already gone," Katryna finished as she walked through the sliding glass doors emblazoned with the crashing wave logo of the design firm. "My guess is that they are somehow able to watch us watch them; Picking up our passive measurement of the tensor maybe? I'm not sure that should be possible but..."

Beside her, Horus Zumwalt stopped in front of just one more in a line of security scanners the pair had passed through. With its underground link to the high-security Special Projects complex, the lab was one of the few locations with such a privilege and there were numerous hidden and obvious precautions in place. As one of Liquid's senior systems designers, The Heretic - as he was known - was one of the few who could pass freely back and forth.

"Are you worried that we might be stepping on some post-Singularity toes?"

"Maybe?" It was only a guess but Katryna's answer was nullified as a deeply distant voice followed her's; "I wouldn't worry about it too much."

"What was that?" He stopped and looked at her just as the next set of doors slid open, "Was that you?"

She could only shrug, "No. And I don't know if that is comforting or not," she addressed the open air above her, "Are you saying don't worry about it because there is nothing we can do about it if they are pissed at us? Or are you saying that we shouldn't worry about it because we're just completely beneath their concerns?"

"You're reading too much into it. Sometimes don't worry just means don't worry."

"This from the pan-Galactic entity that can apparently overhear a conversation inside a heavily shielded facility..."

There wasn't a reply to this and she turned back to the designer, "See what I get to worry about?" Pausing for a moment, she conjured a hologram of a three-dimensional matrix marked with several dozen different troughs, cones, and stars. For the next few seconds a timer below played in reverse as she explained; "The monitoring output from the tensor array."

"To see if you can see how our deep-voiced friend was talking to us?"

"Yeah, and nothing," she stated, a note of aggravation in her tone. "Either they somehow avoid the tensor or..."

"I manipulate the readings so it looks like I can."

"Dick. Now I don't know which one you are lying about. But that's probably your point." When no reply was again evident, she went back to The Heretic, who was now following along but looking into every nook and cranny with a haunted look on his narrow face. "That's pretty much what they do. Cryptic non-answers, useless bullshit, and the occasional artificial star. Which is part of why I want you guys to move forward on the Prominence-Class pronto. Something with direct TRIPWIRE integration will help us jump on these problems before they become big problems."

"And it's a new toy. Ask her if her mom knows..."

[Sunset]

Jer'Don Central Power, Jer'Don City, GEC-99791B 'Alice'...

"The primary fuel sources are mercury and lead," Janice lifted two thick glass tubes with samples of the two elements in the bottom. "Either will work in any combination, but it is as simple as..."

A click and the toothed mouth of the tube containing the chunks of lead was mated to the port and the unit swiveled up to dump the contents into the unknown depths of the power plant as the assembled engineers and technicians who would maintain the plant looked on with interest. Most were dressed in dirty brown coveralls or bib overalls made of the same rough brown fabric. It was a staple of the city's industry and woven from a local plant that grew in wild profusion along the river banks. It was rugged, durable, and rough but the rabbits didn't seem to care thanks to their pelts. It did tend to stain though but that, at least for these men, would be a thing of the past as their job would be mostly limited to feeding the power plant and maintaining the feed stock.

The solar fabrics that powered the inflatable greenhouses worked fine for their particular applications but for baseload - the constant and consistent power that would be needed for the industrial growth to come - Jer'Don would need something bigger. Or rather the city would need to replace something; The Hauyht were at the stage in their technological development where most of their limited electricity came from burning soft fossil fuels - peat and lignite - in steam power plants of limited scope and scale. It was enough to fuel a manufacturing base that was mostly centered around firearms and vehicles with the still-rare internal combustion engine or electric motor as the state-of-the-art. While these would work, they were both horribly dirty or highly inefficient and any technical advances would require an expanded manufacturing base; The black-box reactor would not.

It would also gobble up all the highly toxic lead and mercury that the bunnies could throw at it.

"At least if it is as bad for you as it is for us," the Lieutenant Commander added, pouring in the mercury. "I'm sure it isn't doing you any good, crazy rabbits."

There was some additional set dressing as well. The bread-box sized unit had been mounted on a heavy concrete pad and surmounted by more concrete, armor plate, and a very authentic-looking casing that made the whole look like just a marginally more advanced version of their current power plant. There were plenty of levers and gauges as well as a whole series of interconnected heavy gears that slowly churned behind a heavy steel mesh to keep the occasional errant floppy ear from being devoured whole. Not of it worked of course; Matter in, more energy out. Most of the magic occurred at the distribution station next to the reactor, where cracking conductors sparked and massive insulators kept everyone safe except for the odd flying lizard.

Huang was just about to begin the next portion of the demonstration when she heard the first of what was starting to be a familiar distant popping sound. Word of the advanced technology - presumably including weapons - available to the city had begun to spread and attract the right and the wrong sort of attention. Caravan clans would arrive, interested in trading the ability to feed their families for the fertility-modifications that came with it, but so too had the raiders. These were largely hit and run affairs with a small number of attackers trying to breach the cities furthest perimeter and grab whatever they could make-off with before the defenders came down on them.

Literally.

----

Jer'Don Outskirts, Jer'Don City, GEC-99791B 'Alice'...

It was the simplest and purest expression of a flying machine that one might conjure from the imagination of every child that had ever seen one soaring across the sky. A tapered body, straight wings stacked on top of each other, a tail painted with the military insignia of Jer'Don City, and a single rabbit behind the stick with a pair of flying goggles and a long scarf trailing out behind him alongside his ears. A stick and two rudders - not even a throttle - were all he needed to swing his sky-blue biplane around for another strafing run against the raiders. He'd caught them in the open - no one expected an attack from the air - and he lined up a small group of them in his open circle gun sight.

Bullets rat-a-tat-tatted through the spinning blade of the propeller and on the ground the small forms twitched and thrashed as lead tore them to pieces. Furred feet pressed the rudder pedals to slew the fabric-covered fuselage left and right as he tried to make contact with the last of their number but his little plane was too fast and before he could get a clean shot he was forced to bring the nose up. Grass clipped the bottom of his wheels and then he was headed skyward again as nervous rounds whined past. Pushing the stick over and the rudder with it, he pulled hard right in a tight circle that wouldn't have been matched if he'd turned left. The torque of the electric motor tended to haul the light aircraft to the right and he'd already learned it was best to just follow it around for a quicker turn.

Another pass and the raiders were fleeing with a good number of their own dead in the fields. A few more planes like this - wooden frames covered with solar fabric that powered a heavy electric motor - and they'd be able to take the fight to the enemy and some of the less-desirable caravans too...

[Sunset]

Ambrosia, Southern Anuke...

"Whoever it is," Stephen seethed, clenching his fists and slowly uncurling them to crack his knuckles ferociously, "I want them found! And alive! No matter how many have to die to make it so!"

Another pair of gray-faced minions jogged by, their heavy boots pounding on the dusty concrete of the underground corridor, and he turned to watch them retreat down the long passage with their helmet-mounted lamps sweeping every niche. The entire complex was now crawling with guards and patrols; The cloning tanks had been emptied and every armory opened to put the sprawling maze on a level of alert that it had never seen before. Even the rapidly-evolving rat race had been put on hold as the Doctor's forces set off to follow his every barking order. Gone were the sunny afternoons and mint juleps on the veranda...

Doctor Stephen Ambrose was at war.

"Agent Sixteen!" He rounded on the shapely woman who had, until just then, been patiently waiting just a half-step back from his shoulder. Even the up-close confrontation with a navel-to-neck line of tight cleavage wasn't enough to pull him away from his rampage, "Take your best squad into Vine Wreath;" The Mangalan city was the closest of any size and a very infrequent stop for either the Doctor or his underlings, "Search it from top to bottom. Any clue, any sign, alert me at once. Witnesses... Capture them - indiscreetly if you must! - and bring them back here for interrogation. Miss Seventeen!"

Even his echoing yell could not find his lab assistant. While he was in the depths, she was busy testing each and every batch that remained in storage for any sign of contamination. Contamination was the right word for it; While the results of the test had send the Doctor into a frothing rage, they were just as much or even more-so interesting by their contents as by their presence. Even among the hodgepodge of differing DNA strings and proteins and molecules from a score of sources, there had been the distinct traces of something else and something more. A mutagen factor that was clearly the source of the escaped rodent's rapid evolution. He barely understood it - a fact that erked on his genius like a too-short dog leash staked to the fence - but he knew at once that it was something not from any of his known rivals or enemies.

"A spy..." He questioned aloud, turning this way and that to look into the dark corners. "A saboteur?"

A snap of his fingers and two of the freshly decanted super-minions appeared almost out of nowhere to flank him. They were magnificent; Supremely sensual and deadly with their exotic tetra-gram eyes and matching black sensory organ in the middle of their forehead. Each wore a hard combat vest hung with various pieces of gear that left a tantalizing slice of paper-tight skin and importantly the sensory organ at the base of their breastbone exposed. Skin tight cargo pants that just barely covered their hips and a pair of high-heeled combat boots complemented the vest and both wore a head-mounted holographic display that was more than a few slices ahead of what was issued to the ordinary grunts. Disintegrator carbines hung from carrying straps just at their wrist and the other hand was always hovering over a stun gun, combat knife, or other implement of carnage.

"Far too dangerous for Erika or her whelp - it could spread. Kraus, no. Hillcock, no... Reckless, yes, but irresponsible? If it got loose it would possibly threaten his own power base. Does he have a power base?" For a moment he was sidetracked as he considered the resources available to his closest non-governmental rival. "Thadeus Hillcock... You may hate me for that prank that put you on quintuple-secret probation back at University, but do your backers have this kind of ability and could you call on it?" The Doctor's answer was a whispered, "No."

"But who?"

Further musing was interrupted as the radio carried on the vest of one of the two guards crackled to life, 'Doctor, Unit 74 has found something of interest in Sub-Sector 9A;'The voice was toneless - a Minion who had been taken over by the relentless mental conditioning he'd subjected them to, 'Recommend dispatch of tactical strike unit and personal presence. Securing the immediate area and waiting for further instructions...'

[Sunset]

Cal'Ico Marshland, Jer'Don City Outskirts, GEC-99791B 'Alice'...

"Move with the wind," Agent Madison instructed as she waited for the moment when another stiff wind would send the reeds and canes that grew in staggered abundance along the river's edge moving again. "When nature tells you to move, you move. When she is still, you stay still;" Her own trainer had taught her that many years ago and it still held true.

A moment's hesitation and there it was. Twenty figures, with the addition of Ivy's own camouflage-shrouded body, slid forward through the muck and mud to tug the bags that carried their long rifles along behind them. Like the Agent, each of the trainees was clad in mottled fatigues that were speckled here and there with twigs and branches to break up the long line of arm, leg, and back that drew the eye as well as to help the dirty uniforms blend in just that tiny bit more. Unlike her, they all had their long ears either tied back or pulled down flat under bandannas that were then covered with the floppy-brimmed hats she'd introduced them to. It had taken them nearly an hour to cross the tiny strip of peat bog that ran between the fields and the water that was their goal for the training exercise.

"Here we go," There was a tiny knoll of dry land just in the middle of an inlet of especially muddy ground and while the class might have hoped she would make her way towards it, she instead slithered through the reeds that rimmed it to just on the other side. "If it's a good spot to shoot from, chances are that's where they'll be looking," she explained as she elbow-crawled forward. There wasn't anyone to spot them - not today - but today was about technique and getting to that goal rather than the long string of failures that would follow as she ran them through the wringer of the Marine's introductory sniper course. "There's our target..."

It wouldn't be an easy one; Far out on the water sat one of the low-sided boats that the locals preferred when they had to venture out on the water. Shallow-drafted and equipped with a stern-mounted paddle wheel, they were ideal for river crossings where they could be ran ashore and then pull themselves free by running the thrashing blades in reverse. Most were steam-powered and only a few had metal hulls, but this one was made of wood and mostly rotten at that. Meli had driven it out into the river earlier that day and had tossed out the anchor to leave it sitting far from the near shore in a choppy section of water just downriver from a rocky island. Sitting upright in the boat were four metal silhouettes and these would become the targets that would taunt them over the next few weeks.

"One shot, one kill," she instructed, pulling a box of match-grade ammunition out of her own bag and pulling one round out to feed it into the magazine of the bolt-action rifle she had selected as the best of the lot. It was a local weapon - a hunting rifle - and highly accurate even without the scope and adjustments to the stock she had made. There was a suppressor as well and behind her each trainee began to assemble their weapon out of their bag, doing their best to stay down while they did. "The one in the center;" With all the others half-obscuring him of course, "Is your target. One shot. If you ding that guy, you get tomorrow off."

She cheated. Augmented implants let her know the exact wind speed, bullet drop, velocity, the motion of the boat and when it would reach the apex. The only thing she had to do was put the crosshairs of the scope exactly where they told her to and pull the trigger at the right time while controlling for her breath and heartbeat. A few long breaths and the second slowed and then, just as she breathed out, she held it and waited in stillness for the red pips to cross.

Crack-Ding!

A splash of silver appeared on the painted metal, just where the bunny's nose would have been, and she relaxed. It would have been embarrassing if she's missed, especially after an hour of practice the previous day, but there was always that chance.

"Tomorrow off," she promised, sitting up to hand the first one in line his lone bullet. It was both symbolic and cautious; While the soldiers were supposed to be loyal to Jer'Don first, there was always the chance that when given the chance, one might decide to advance his career and his clan by putting one into another trainee. He slid forward, readied his weapon, and she looked out towards the targets.

Crack-Ding!

"Took his foot off;" The soldier looked through his scope and grunted when he found the streak of missing paint, "But a hit's a hit. Next..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, Deep Space (GEC-A2386, The Dragon's Eye), Delta Quadrant...

"The navigational sensor array picked up a large object on a passive collision trajectory and changed course to go around but Lieutenant Ingersol was paying attention when you told the Helmsman to take us 'Where No One has Gone Before.' He took a second look and I put the brakes on as soon as he said 'Wow,'" Commander Sloan finished just as the pair stepped through the sliding doors that led onto the bridge.

She'd been running again when the call had come through - sports bra and underwear rather than the rigmarole of changing into one outfit and then the other - and Sloan had met her quarter-way around the circuit that intersected with the bridge access corridor. Captain Blaine finished pulling her uniform blouse on, leaving the front half-open to stand over the Sensor Console where the Lieutenant on duty was looking over his find, "So what do we have, Lieutenant?"

Throughout the vastness of the galaxy there are many planets and many moons that have become orphans. Thrown away by their gravitational primary they roam the dark places between the stars until chance pulls them back into a new orbit or destroys them. Estimates range from the million to the billions but an exact number is impossible to discern. Some of these had been found and had found use by the Republic - the Ready Assault Fleet was based around one such deep space traveler - and the Ojeni's chance encounter was another such nomad.

And what a second look it was. Where Kami had been expecting a dark world with a perpetual frozen surface or endless gray scarred only by the craters of an untold number of impacts was instead a world that glowed cool blue with an inner light that flickered and flowed across the opalescent sphere. Slowly spinning at the center of the main holosphere, it looked like the eye of some great dragon awake in the darkness of a lair pierced with a billion diamonds.

"Phosphorus, before you ask," Ingersol supplied. He was the model of a career Lieutenant; Essentially average, he knew the position to precision and had little inclination to leave it. "Not a very big world either. Probably formed as a moon of a gas giant in its home system and then was thrown out thanks to its unusual mass. Enough to keep a captive atmosphere. Surface gravity should be," he checked his console again, "Point four-five, if you can find a place to run. Otherwise I'd dig out your bikini; All I'm reading is ach-too-oh."

"Water?"

"And lots of it. Ranging from a few hundred to a couple kilometers in places. What you're seeing is the glow from deep phosphor veins filtering up to the surface and burning off. I wouldn't want to breath the air but below you should be fine as long as you stay below the surface and out of the risers."

"Phosphorus?" Sloan touched a side console, sliding through to a particular section of the readings, "That's a DNA component and important element of modern agriculture."

Her parents were immigrants to the Republic from Freod and had settled on the breadbasket world of Anuke in the Ares System. The Mercelandia had had a proud tradition of individual farms and farmers before it had dissolved into the Greater Triumvirate and they had followed this tradition to start their own in the wide open spaces of the southern continent.

"With water and phosphorus you've got half the components you need for life so," she tapped away, "Is there life down there? Yes..."

"That's right," Ingersol swiveled around, his motion pulling the console in front of him away into an exact holographic replica that he continued to manipulate while sending a stream of commands to the holosphere. Charts and graphs appeared, labels filling in as the system added commonplace names to the more precise scientific notations. "Everything you'd need... Minus ultra-violet radiation. Not without a nearby star. But there is always a trace, and it probably passed close enough to a star at some point to get hit with a good dose because there's not only the precursors but the after-effects as well. The kind of organic compounds and the gases they give off to indicate that there is life and complex life at that."

"And nothing threatening?" The lessons of the Capuchin System and the Esti System before it had started to really sink in and the consideration of possible threats to her ship and crew were closer to the front of her mind than they had been before, but Ingersol shook his head; "First thing I looked for. The surface fires are the largest sources of energy that I can find, though that much water cuts the sensor readings to only a couple klicks. There could be something hiding really far down but I'm keeping an eye on it," he patted the console.

"Put us in a close orbit then," Captain Blaine turned to the Helmsman, "Looks like we'll be sending some shuttles down. Prep a couple away teams," she patted her partner's butt, "And we'll go put our feet on the ground;" Sloan looked sharply at her, "After the initial survey, of course."

[Sunset]

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

Demi lay asleep in their bed, a tangle of blankets half-wrapped around her and one hand draped across Erika's bare thigh. It was as natural and comfortable thing as there ever was in the world...

----

Forgettable.

That was the right word to describe the woman who stood outside the front door talking about something or other with Erika. She could have been young or middle-aged, mouse-y or plain, with hair that could either be brown or nearly black. Demi had only pulled back the curtain long enough to see who had come calling before letting it drop again. Whoever it was, they were clearly expected as they were sitting casually at one end of the wooden porch swing that flanked the entry while Erika, her back to the window, sat at the other.

A minute later and she'd returned to her lesson; Her Augmented Agent had alerted her to an addendum to a report filed with the Exploration Command by a distant Explorer, SDF-Ojeni, that included a full sample of the Esti'Ilwe language. The chirping tongue of the bird-like sapient had immediately intrigued her and she had contracted with a firm to provide a course of study. Their lack of a soft palette and teeth and her lack of a beak had made the material most interesting and she'd been absorbed in it for the past week to the point where, as a snatch of a familiar song came on in the background, she paused the lesson to close her eyes and sing along, translating as she went; 'Hold on tight - you know she's a little bit dangerous... She's got what it takes to make ends meet - the eyes of a lover that hit like heat...'

----

"...it's more than a little bit dangerous," Erika emphasized, glancing back over her shoulder to where a shoe dangled from the tip of a familiar foot as it bobbed back and forth to an unheard tune. "The situation there has every chance of bubbling over into something bigger. Part of that is my fault; Of all the people who could have ended up in the same stew pot, those three are either going to blow the lid off or they're going to make something delicious."

"A food analogy? From you?" Evening's expression didn't even change; "Demi has been a good influence."

"Thank you, but that was Alex. You haven't met her."

"No reason to," the woman rose. "I'll keep an eye on it. I'll need to do some field work to get the backup plans together. That should give me a chance to work with them, get to know how they think. Reports are one thing, but it sounds like you've got two hair-trigger cannons here."

"With biplanes and sniper teams."

"...right. Because nothing can go wrong with that."

[Sunset]

Introduction to Engineering Design, Defense Force Academy, Ares...

"Have you ever wondered why the starships of the Defense Force resemble those of a certain fictional television series two centuries ago?"

Kyang Tae Lee, newly minted Cadet from Zeta Irregularis and ex-subject of the Tonhi prefecture hadn't, though he didn't indicate it with so-much as a yawn. Respect for one's teachers was deeply ingrained in his culture and he paid close attention, even if he didn't particularly find it interesting.

"The history of Republic starship design is as much about its international history as its technological past and we'll start with one of the most recognizable elements; The saucer section. The first Republic spaceships were built on what we sometimes call the Tintin Model." Activating a hologram, he showed an advanced model of one of these older ships, a silvery rocket-shaped craft with three large pods on the end of their individual fins that were in turn studded with weapon turrets. More bays for missiles circled the nose and there was a clear marking for a radio-dome under the pointed cone. "These were in turn designed around the atomic impulse motor that allowed continual acceleration and thus the continual illusion of gravity. These motors, in a more compact and powerful form, are still used today as the docking and maneuvering thrusters for capital ships where their superior thrust makes them more desirable than gravetics for quick maneuvering. In this design, you can already see the very beginning of what will become the starship but yet the saucer section;" The silvery rocketship began to change and metamorphosis with the weapon pods growing into the distinct shape of space-warp nacelles and the cone of the rocket changing to the distinct hollow of the primary sensor array, "Is still missing."

"Cadet JuJeuBee;" A shapely female ArAreBee stood up and for the moment Kyang had reason to part close attention. The ArAreBee women seemed to follow a universal pattern of narrow waists, gentle hips, and a shapely chest that most males seemed to find appealing. Their large eyes - a solid, glinting black in JuJeuBee's case - gave them a look of perpetual interest, as though they were fixed on whoever they were talking to no matter how dull the subject really was; "Sir?"

"And that is thanks to our contact with the ArAreBee. They already had a functioning artificial gravity system when they arrived in the Sol System at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century and;" A large image of one of the iconic shapes of Alien Invasion Conspiracies appeared; A Flying Saucer with a band of slowly flashing lights around the perimeter and a brilliant beam of white light coming down from a portal in the center. "As evidenced by their designs, the system relied on a large coil or hoop apparatus to operate. In the great capitalist tradition practiced by our new friends, they then sold the technology behind this system to the Republic government in exchange for access to specific resources and patronage. That, without any other reason, is the origins of the saucer section as we know it now. While this system has evolved to fit a variety of shapes and size;" More holograms with everything from civilian gravcars and hovercycles to power armor and space stations appeared, with the sections that housed that vital system rendered semi-transparent and highlighted with technical details, "It is more-or-less the same system as it when we purchased it."

"Which takes us to a related section; The main sensor array and what has been termed either the Engineering or Secondary Hull, depending on how cantankerous the Chief Engineer is!"

There were a few laughs, a couple clearly forced, and for a few moments all of the various holograms except for the original silver rocketship - restored to its original form - disappeared.

"The primary sensor array is vital to the function of any starship; It allows the ship and its crew to see where it is going and importantly where others are also going. This system evolved from the RADAR antennas of the early Twentieth Century and then, as now, an important aspect of their proper function was the elimination of interference. While much of that now occurs on the back end - signal processing, AI-driven interpretation, and other software-centered solutions - the elimination of physical sources of interference was important during those early years and the artificial gravity system was a prime source of that interference. The earliest Defense Force warships somewhat off-set this by moving the sensor array away from the saucer section into a secondary hull, along with the main reactors. These systems were already essentially black-box enclosures - most of their maintenance was done at a docking facility rather than underway - and thus placing them in a section of the ship without artificial gravity was of limited inconvenience. So, if we take our rocketship..."

He manipulated the hologram, adding a saucer section that closely emulated that of the ArAreBee's flying saucer and attached to the rocket by two thick spars that put it out ahead of the tubular shaft.

"We now have the first generation of Defense Force warship; The Cohort-Class, which has evolved to become the Equinox-Class of today. Now, you might ask yourself why that saucer is presented as it is; Edge-on, rather than simply staying with the same internal planes as before? That answer has everything to do with war; A large disc orientated flat to the direction of travel would have presented a much larger cross-section to the targeting systems or gunnery of any potential foe. Since the shape was constrained by the shape of the artificial gravity system, the best least-worst option was the current configuration. All that is missing," he pointed up to the mutated rocketship, "Are the space-warp nacelles."

"Unlike the artificial gravity system, the space-warp drive that allows our starships to travel at faster-than-light speeds was a purely internal creation. The Printz-Iwamoto Space-Warp Drive was developed in the first half of the Twenty-First Century by Kira Printz-Iwamoto, a physicist at Toconao University on Mars. Reasonably efficient and fast, the early models had one particular flaw: They tend to explode when they are damaged. While this isn't the all-consuming nuclear fireball we think of when we think Explosion!" he gestured, backed up by a room-shaking boom and a dramatic visual, "It was more than enough to pose a threat to the integrity of these early starships. To counter this, the early designers and engineers mounted them on the outside of the ship, replacing the weapons pods on our rocketship;" the hologram changed with two of the pods replaced with the long shapes of space-warp nacelles, "And quickly evolving to add a fourth fin and weapon pod to offset the loss of firepower. Which," he spread his hands and the weapon pod became a bridge that linked the two nacelles to each other and the secondary hull, "Gave us the third generation of the Cohort-Class, the second having the single and double weapon pods."

"Now, why do we still stick to the same designs? Tradition, heritage, idiom; These ships and their design aesthetic is part of who we are. While the starships of the Defense Force will continue to evolve, they will always be one of the first things that our friends - new and old - and our enemies will see and a large part of the image that we want to, and will continue to, present."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ixutsangi, Near Frontier Post Pere'Nolde, The Therian Hegemony...

One and then two; In turning back to attack the Ixutsangi the renegade patrol ships had willingly put themselves under the guns of Captain Luzurth's ship and the Therian attacked with a ferocity that was unlikely to leave any survivors to answer the question posed by their fatal tactical mistake. First the aft drive section of the lightly wounded ship was shredded by a volley of long range missiles before the glittering beams of energy weapons dug deep into the shattered hull. Rewarded with a slew to starboard and a sudden loss of power, the Ceaseless Sword raced past, accelerating hard as it chased the remaining ship down. Bursts of short-range missiles, fired in barrage, sprang from its flanks as it passed and dealt the crippled ship the fatal blow. Warheads burrowed under its skin and blossoming explosions rippled through the hull.

"Will they hit?!" Captain Turbell turned his attention back to the ram-ship, which was still bleeding fire as compartments vented and added their scant fuel supply to flames that would gutter and die in stark symbolism.

There wasn't a lot of time either way; The spare moments that had been spent on the attempted interference had lowered the margin for error to near-zero. Any attempt to modify the course of the craft could send it into the outpost or vis versa and so an elongated second passed as they held their breath and watched as the craft twisted and turned and spun end-first to slice the skin of the station like a dagger. It was neither a fatal blow nor gentle and in the slow time of the battle space they watched the impact send rippling shock waves up the hull to terminate where one segment overlapped with another.

Turbell's attention might have been focused elsewhere but that of the Helmsman was not - sudden shaking dive sent the Ixutsangi over on its side as first the remaining attacker and then the Ceaseless Sword darted past. Counter-fire burned away at a bloom of missiles rising from their launchers and the cyan light of the frigate's own particle cannon silenced the bays but the distant shudder of the hull told of warheads bursting against her armored shell and Turbell winced; "Nothing bad," The Lieutenant at the Engineering Console supplied, not even bothering to show the damage and distract from the chase, "New paint job..."

It might have been worse than that, but the point was now moot. Her course had taken the now-fleeing ship past and the Ixutsangi spun around to join the hunt but the prey was already bolting. Armor boiled off as Luzurth's ship fired but a cascade of blue lightning signaled the imminent departure of the turn-coat and as another volley of reloaded missiles from her forward tubes chased after, the ship disappeared to leave a momentary hole in reality that faded as the daggers found nothing and sped into the darkness.

A half-moment of looking around and the Communications Officer spoke; "Incoming transmission from Captain Luzurth..."

Turbell nodded and the Therian appeared on the main screen. He seemed none the worse for wear and the expression on his long face immediately reminded the Human of a satisfied predator standing over fallen prey. Behind him his own bridge crew were going about their duties and nearly as one the two ships split, turned, and headed towards the disabled ship at an almost leisurely pace when compared to the frenzy of combat.

"Now you see the strange circumstances we find ourselves in, Captain," he began, turning to pace the bridge as though he did not know entirely where to begin or end. "I have known Captain Kerev for many years. He was a brave warrior and a leader beyond reproach. No cause would he give for those under him to turn against or even away from his command. We will board the vessel and we will find what remains of her crew in a daze, blindly obeying orders that stand contrary to their nature but nothing in their blood or in their bone to cause such a condition. The riddle is always that of who gave these orders? It is the way of our kind to lead by example and those who commanded the vessel will have died at their stations. Some of the warriors will emerge from their haze to a rage while others will end their own lives in shame. Some will never come back..."

[Sunset]

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

'...have been cut off with the Tonh Prefecture - formerly the Kingdom of Thanh-Tonh - leaving many Tonhi living in the Republic fearing for the status of their relatives and family members,' Tanya went on, the stage behind her showing an image of the planet as though she was aboard a ship in orbit and it just behind her. 'Attempts are being made to establish contact with the Prefecture, but...'

Erika muted the channel, leaving the rest of the newscasters words to flow across the bottom of the hologram, and sat back with her arms folded across her chest and dark thoughts flickering through her eyes, "They might be better off not knowing."

"Poor AiQien..." Demi Love - Erika's wife, Ambassador of the Republic, and notably involved in the events that had led to AiQien being selected as the Imperial Consort - was about to offer further words of sympathy when she was cut off by the roaring blast of an assault shuttle setting down in her driveway. A glance to the living room window and she just caught the silver and blue of a Triumvirate roundel mounted on the shoulder of an armored Marine as they finished deploying around the house. Their normal pick-up was a casual affair with the pilot knocking on the door after a whisper-quiet landing but the jarring arrival had been enough to strip the petals from the flowers and send them scattering after the soldiers as they deployed. "Are we going?"

The butler's sudden appearance at the top of the stairs with two bags was enough to confirm her question and she stood to leave her thoughts for AiQien's safety on the couch as she walked to the door. Erika and Alex followed, the latter stopping just outside to leave an already-prepared note for the landscapers with both an extensive list of damages and what should replace them.

"How did you know that?"

"Hmm?" Alex paused at the shuttle hatch, a wide-swung armored panel that blocked her view of the dismayed gardening. "That's the key attribute of a butler; Anticipation."

The freckle-cheeked girl was not the only one with such readiness; Right behind her came the same Marine squads that had secured the landing zone and she had barely brushed her hands up under her skirt before sitting down when the door slid shut to be replaced by a view of the outside as the shuttle rose. Turning as it did, she looked out across the bay to another house that stood on the water's edge. Just a few days earlier a mother had stood watch there over her younger children - was she now at her daughter-in-law's side as she lay near death? The thought chilled her and she turned to Erika and asked, "What will he do? If she dies?" Or if she was already dead, but Demi knew the answer already.

"He'll burn it down, or try," the Secretary-General answered with complete certainty. "A young man, tainted with the belief in his own god-like status, given the love of his life," there was a moment's pause as she put her hand on Demi's leg with a soft stroke and her partner half-covered it with her own, "To have her taken from him? It's not the path I'd choose, but I'd understand it, now." But there was no time for introspection; High above them the outline of the Unconquered Sun loomed and she was already in leadership mode; "General conference," she instructed, with the butler already making the calls to the various military and diplomatic figures as required in her role as majordomo, "And Executor Miranna."

The Executor would play a pivotal part in whatever was to come; Most of the refugees from the abortive conflict over the now-Tonh Prefecture had settled either on N'Xypndiltn or Zeta Irregularis, both worlds with a similar climate and topology to their former homeworld, with the majority of these on the far-newer Republic world of N'Xypndiltn. She had taken her title from her role in the overthrow of the former rulers of that world, a bloody slaughter that had seen the decisive Xypndi warrior-woman eliminate the murderous false gods in an extended bloodbath that had pitted her and her Adjutant equipped with cutting edge technology against a cult of diabolic rapists and torturers. It was that dynamic ability that the Secretary-General was about to call on.

"Already on the line;" Part of the forward bulkhead was replaced with an image of a much shorter woman with goldenrod-yellow skin and a shoulder-length head of sandy-brown hair pulled back into a set of complicated braids. She was walking the floor of her own office - the sprawling command deck of a retired-but-still-active Bulldog Super-Heavy GravTank that had also served as her base of operations during the God Purge.

"...I don't see that happening," Miranna finished, turning from the end of a conversation with one of her staff - a bored-looking woman who had her feet up on a console and a sandwich in one hand while the other worked the controls of the massive war machine - to the interior of the shuttle on the far side of the communications link.

"Keeping track of the news?"

"That's right. The Roanians are asking, politely, for all of the Tonhi to come back home to assist in the investigation and as of right now we've had exactly zero uptake on that one. In fact, Tradia;" Her Adjutant and the more enthusiastic of the two killers, "Told me just a second ago that there are reports of at least one Tonhi Prince going into hiding as well as a handful of the more prominent families. We're not looking too hard for them, at least right now, but rumors are already lighting up the 'net that they might have had something to do with it."

A slight gasp at this and she turned to look at Demi, who had her hand over her mouth in half-apology; "Why?! AiQien..."

"...is a traitor," Ambassador Penguin made his presence known with a plop that ended with his holographic avatar seated on the butler's lap and his head - seemingly - resting comfortably between her rounded breasts and half-disappearing through her blue button-down vest. "At least that's the word filtering out of the Palace. Some snot-nose relative stabbed her and got most of his family killed in return. Right there too, blood on the carpets."

As the highest-ranking Republic representative in Roania, the Ambassador and his underling Liaison to the Thanh-Tonh Prefecture had the best conduit to the rumor-mill both in the Imperial government and among the common citizens.

"She saved them from a war that would have killed millions," Ambassador Love countered, pointing out the more reasonable course that the Imperial Consort had piloted, "And she was smitten with him."

She had been there in the room while the Princess of the Lotus Throne had been presented to the Emperor as a possible ending to the conflict and as a way to integrate what was, essentially, a culturally Roanian world into the Empire. It wasn't the ideal solution but realpolitik trumped idealism on more than one occasion. She'd also seen the glances, the very veiled attempts at flirting, and the not-that-unwilling look of acceptance when the notion of a Tonhi Consort to the Emperor had been breached.

"That's not the way they see it," he shrugged, invisibly resisting Alex's attempts to dislodge him. "Or at least a notable segment. You remember Senator Thang? Got shot in the face while she was on the pooper? She was part of a block of Thanh-Tonh ex-pats who would have rather seen the whole thing burned to the ground, salted, and defiled with an unholy alter to P̳͈̺͎̯̝͖͗ͧ͑̊͘͝h̤̫̮̰̓̏̍'̱̫̗͓̮́̋̿n͉̥͇̙̲ͫ̚̕͞g͍̮̩͖͔̹ͦͭ̉̒l͌̑̏̾ͧ́̐͏͏̺̥̰̘͚͎̦̳u̧͓̫͖͙̝̰͖͌̍̔ͧ̓͒ͫ͞i̩̬̣ͯ̈́͆͝ͅ rather than live under the easy heel of the Roanians."

"As was our missing Prince," Marinna added.

"Which means that if the Roanians come after the Tonhi that puts you right on the front lines," Erika broke in, changing the course of the conversation. A little bit of history was all well-and-good, but it was time for planning and for action. "Expect a TYCS Fleet to arrive shortly, along with an auxiliary force from the Sakkran navy." The Sakkran Empire was the closest distinct Triumvirate state to the E'Xypndiltn System and while Erika had every confidence in the Republic's ability to defend itself, it was always wise to go with overwhelming rather than matching force. "Your priority is the people first, but evacuating all of the Tonhi won't do you any good. If Damalin wants any one of them dead, he'll go after the whole lot to make sure. The second is the ship lines..."

As part of an effort to boost the planetary economy, N'Xypndiltn had been chosen as the site of a primary production facility for the new Tempest-Class Assault Transport as well as minor production of several other classes of Republic starships. These facilities would be important both militarily and economically; The Tempest-Class was a Marine transport and if it came to war they would be a useful component in any attack on a Roanian world. Additionally the production facilities provided the largest single source of jobs for the planetary population, both through direct work on the ships under construction and through the web of component manufacturers that made up the enormous spiderweb of modern ship building.

"...I'll get on them to push everything that can fly out of the yards as quickly as possible. Even if I have to man them with cadets and police officers."

[Sunset]

Special Projects Hidden Facility, Denali, Yukon System...

"So... This is awkward."

Kraus slowly circled the woman he had encountered in the hall, she doing nearly the same in a dance that brought each in turn close to a doorway that led into an empty office, a fire extinguisher held in its cabinet, and a fire ax behind a sheet of near-glass. Escape, evasion, or attack, though neither had yet made a particular move in either direction. She was thinking about it though, as was he, and their eyes went from each other to the door controls to the cabinet latch to the hickory handle and then back to those same familiar eyes.

"New around here?"

"Yes, that's right;" But there was something intimately familiar about the woman. It was not even a sense of deja vu but rather a certainty disconnected from the knowledge of why he was certain. Tall and lean with half-hollow cheeks and crisp blue eyes that seemed particularly expressive. A wild shock of brown hair was tucked back behind one ear without purpose as the other side was practically short and always out of the way. Brown slacks and a white lab coat mirrored his own, but a fitted pink shirt gave her a feminine touch. His eyes drifted lower and spied a badge tucked in under the lapel of the coat.

"Kryger?"

"That's right, Francine Kryger..."

His eyes narrowed and he stopped, one hand reaching slowly out to what he hoped was the fire ax but found was nothing at all. His fingers slowly grasped at empty air and he tried to turn the gesture into an odd half-arm yawn, "Mind if I ask what your assignment is, Francine?"

If that is your real name...

"I'm the new Site Director;" His eyes widened sharply, "Here to replace Director Tibowski. He's retiring..."

Kraus sunk to his knees on the mismatched industrial carpetting that lined the halls, "No..." Raising his hands to the heavens he called out once again in a loud voice that would have torn the temple veil, "Nooooooo!"

She looked at him oddly and then with a sigh sank back on her heels and thrust her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, "Are you done yet?"

"Yes?"

He pulled himself to his feet, one long knee after another, and she continued to regard him with those strange blue eyes.

"I'm not sure this was the best idea," she said after a few moments, not a trace of confession in her tone. "You might be my clone, but I'm not sure..."

"Wait. Your clone?" A finger went from his chest to point to her and back again and his jaw flapped uselessly for far too long before he pulled himself together, "Are you sure? I would have thought..."

[Sunset]

Jer'Don City, GEC-99791B 'Alice'...

"What are they doing over there?" Meli asked, her voice a whisper as she peered over a mixed pile of crates and trash bins that half-blocked the street. Further down, a group of bunnies was gathered around the door to a large warehouse and one could instantly tell they were up to something by the way they were looking around and craning their heads, their long ears occasionally rolling forward to be brushed back with a hand or left to stray as they went about their work.

What exactly they were doing was unclear though the majority seemed to be simply clearing the street in from of the warehouse. Jer'Don had started out as a disorderly city littered with the barricades from a hundred clan battles and the arrival of the Republic had simply made it worse. The industrial uptick had created mounds of waste that the city's infrastructure was just not ready to deal with. Much of it ended up in the streets - more of an inconvenience than a hazard, since most traffic was by hop or by high-wheeled truck - and it was a frequent resource for new arrivals with a slum sprawling out towards the river. Any form of organised cleanup was - suspiciously - unheard of.

"I'ma have to get closer," she half-muttered to herself before taking a quick look around and stepping back into a shadowy corner where the low building met the expanding pile.

All but the very newest buildings were constructed the same way; A half-basement dug out of the thick topsoil and then reinforced before being capped. This created a network of buildings that were both easy to build and light on materials. This was valuable in the tree-sparse savanna and many of the single story structures had walls made of loam shot-through with roots and faced with clay. Additional stories would be made of wood and Meli latched on to the knotted siding of the one above her to begin her assault.

A holographic shroud concealed her but it wouldn't stop the relatively poor-sighted rabbits from hearing or smelling her; The garbage building up would help with the second. There were plenty of bird and insect analogs around though and she followed Ivy's previous suggestion of moving with the wind and the noise as she scaled first the outside and then roof of the structure before walking the tightrope of a pile of crates from one building to the next. This put her right in front of the suspicious warehouse with a slim view through a narrow slit at the top of the door.

'What is that?' she though, craning her neck and moving back and forth to get one small slice of the object inside at a time. A stream of commands to her Augmented Reality and she let it build a composite from her views as she moved again, 'It looks like a giant kite. Ivy...' A video link opened to send the senior agent what she was seeing, 'Any ideas?'

There was a span of a few moments while the distant agent considered the images, 'It looks like a Horton Ho 229;' A flying-wing fighter-bomber from World War Two, 'But how?'

The answer became apparent as Meli continued to sniff around. What appeared to be a single warehouse was really a large warren of connected buildings that each held some stage of the construction process with final assembly done in the building where the crowd outside had raised her suspicions. Solar fabric was being diverted from the storage warehouse, cut and shaped in one building, and then glued over the top of a laminated wooden shell constructed in a frame in another. The most alarming aspect was the engines; Instead of propellers that had driven their earlier generation of biplanes they had somehow happened across the idea of thermoelectric expansion jets.

'I blame the damned Internet,' Ivy bemoaned as she watched Meli look over the engine production line. 'Force for good, my ass...'

'They're not making very many of them,' Meli noted. Indeed, there was only enough room in the scattered facility for one at a time to be crafted and assembled. Each step was still full of hand-made components and these were causing notable problems with each step having a pile or shelf full of discards off to one side. Thick hands took one of these components and turned it over as Meli gave it a good Dwarven once-over. The workmanship wasn't even solid; Their industrial base was too primitive for that. They were cast in hand-made molds from metal that practically sparkled with impurities but; 'They don't really care, do they? A few of these will turn things heavily in their favor and what's a few dead?''

Movement from a side area drew her attention and Meli watched, crouched behind a stock of sheet metal, as three Hauyht in notably nicer clothes emerged from a tunnel that led down below the building. One she recognized - an official in the Mayor's Office - and the other two looked to be engineers or of a similar technical bent. They closed and locked the door behind them but it was only a moment after they had left that she was kneeling there instead with an eye to the lock. The local style was a three-tine key with set depths and she soon had it twisting open. The room beyond was empty - a studio and office with desks and a pair of drafting tables and a dowel-cabinet draped with blueprints along one wall - and she slipped inside to close the door after her.

'There's your culprit,' she fingered a drawing of an aircraft that had then been translated out onto a large sheet of paper. 'Probably sketched out from the holo-unit in the Mayor's office late at night. Who didn't put a child lock on that thing?'

'Not really important for the moment; Anything else in there?'

Meli walked around the first draft table to the second, which faced the door and the lone direct light source, a buzzing incandescent just overhead, 'Whoo yeah. These bunnies are up ta' bad news...'

It was an airship. But not just any airship; A large double-bag model with a solid platform between the two. A double-line of the flying wing aircraft had been drawn on top for scale, and there was a large compartment underneath with an open bay down the center.

'Paratroops... Fightin' bunnies from the sky... Hares who fight, and hares who die...'

'Nice. And that's just fuckin' great. Cause I'm pretty sure I'm training them.'

[Sunset]

Deep Under Ambrosia, Southern Anuke, Ares System...

"I confess I do not often find myself shoehorned into the role of explorer," Stephen half-protested as one of his Minions carefully set an armored clam-shell down over his bony shoulders. "In fact, isn't this something my tax DiCoins go to fund? Something along these lines? Actually, a better question would be do I pay taxes? I can't recall."

Agent Sixteen, who was also dressing for their presumed adventure into the dark spaces below the Doctor's already-deep subterrainian complex, paused just at the moment where she was sliding her skin-tight jumpsuit off her shoulders and down her arms and chest. It would have surely caused the Doctor's eyes to bug out as he watched her peeling it down past her hips and thighs to fall to the ground but unfortunately for him - and possibly planned by her - another one of his tetragram-eyed Minions was fitting his helmet and not only was the face shield down but he was facing away and trying to avoid having his nose squashed. Thus he missed the side-on view of the fully-naked woman and was only treated to her answer; "You tried to avoid paying your income taxes for a few years when SEXYE launched - 'Not one thin dime!'", she recalled, her voice a half-decent facsimile of his own, "But then someone pointed out that we don't pay income taxes."

"Ah! Yes, quite right Agent... Uh..." He'd turned around and flipped up the visor only to find the buxom hourglass woman who had formerly been clad in a skin-tight grey leather catsuit split from navel to shoulders now wearing a surprisingly disappointing hard armor suit nearly like his own except tailored to accommodate her curves. His eyes drifted to the pile of soft armored animal hide that lay on the dusty floor next to her and his eyes nearly welled up with tears before he could blink them away. "Ah," he sighed, his shoulders collapsing under the stiff pauldrons. "Yes, quite right. I recall the moment now that you mention it. I was simply furious. Misdirected rage. A shame - Ninety-One had considerable experience in this area."

"It was a nice couch, too."

"Mmm, yes, quite right. Couldn't replace that one." Protection secure, the Doctor stepped up to the hole in the wall that was the point of this whole gathering and turned on the infrared searchlight on the chin of his helmet, lighting up the interior in fine detail when he'd remembered to again lower his visor; "Much better. Let us see what we see!"

On one side of the hole was a massive undertaking; Minions of both inferior and superior quality went about their appointed tasks - often involving standing around in small, vulnerable knots of three to four - amidst a maze of crates and boxes of supplies and equipment that had been moved into place on the backs and shoulders of these same, often while blocking their view of their immediate surroundings. These had been stacked up in piles, columns, and rows that would have provided both easy cover for an attacker as well as easy access to their useful contents. Weapons and ammunition of all shapes and sizes were scattered about, propped up against this metal container or half-buried in the protective egg-crate foam that they had been shipped in. There was even a fine selection of edibles thanks to the eager catering staff, who had set up both several stations and a full lunch service counter just at the junction where this level led up to the next via an elevator and a set of emergency stairs that, by regulations, remained unlocked at all times.

The hole itself was a neat one. Cut through the concrete, re-bar mesh, asbestos, fiber-glass laced concrete, and moisture barrier that lined every square inch of the many kilometers of winding tunnels except where the Doctor had run short of money and made due with a thick layer of waxed cardboard, it was a neat rectangle from nearly floor to ceiling that had somehow gone completely unnoticed until one of the Minions, in an uncharacteristically zealous effort to uncover the source of the presumed intruder that had doped the Doctor's test formula with an unknown mutagen, had shoved aside a stack of suspicious crates to check behind it. That too had caused an uncharacteristic moment of acclaim as the Doctor had held up Number Twenty-Three as a prime example of Minion-hood while simultaneously jabbing him with a needle the size of a pencil to extract some of his blood. Even as he'd slumped to the floor unconscious from the large volume reclaimed, Stephen had assigned Miss Seventeen herself to screen it for any sign of abnormalities and raised the possibility that he might sire an entire legion of Minions through the miracle of cloning while simultaneously putting the kibosh on his after-hours dating by having him trucked off to an isolation unit.

There was even a frame.

Beyond was a vast chamber that should have immediately raised alarm bells when construction had occurred, especially among the black eyed purple contractors that the Doctor normally relied on for such endeavors. There was literally no way that such a space could have been missed during the excavation but yet there it was; Sprawling pipe-like constructs ran through walls and ceilings to join and split off and merge seamlessly with spur walls that shot far out into unsupported space or grew out of floor and ceiling to branch off in odd and seemingly useless directions. Despite the apparent confusing nature of the space, there seemed to be a purpose for it. Winding down the middle, parallel to the space where the Doctor and his Minions surveyed the chamber from, a platform ran from an opening on one far wall to an identical opening in the opposite. At each end, just before the opening, this platform split to encompass a complex spire that hovered in the middle completely without visible support and of a size and volume that suggested it should show up on the energy-output sensor grid that the Doctor had ordered installed.

"Check the energy sensors," Ambrose ordered, turning to one of his Super-Minions. She saluted with a motion that set her finger-tight cleavage snapping together for a heart-skipping instant and then immediately responded; "Already done. Penetration tests elsewhere show the grid is working."

Snatching up a rifle, she pulled a small display out of one pocket, thumbed the controls, and then shot Number Forty-Five in the foot to produce a nice, clear bright spot on the three-dimensional grid. "Testing confirmed. The grid is working."

"But yet it is not," Ambrose put one hand on the display to study it for a moment while sneaking only the occasional glance into the depth's of the slate-gray Minion's tactical vest.

There was, however, a solution to the question of discovering why exactly that was. A spur from the central platform shot off through the tangle of pipes and conduits to end up only a bare meter away from a very short platform that projected out from under the door frame into the chamber. Tailor-made for the application, it was a simple matter for the Doctor to order a Minion across the gap. And then another.

"It would seem that there is some disturbing visual property at work - jump further," he suggested, looking over the edge of the chasm to see if he could pick up any trace of the missing Forty-Four. "Perhaps on thermal..."

A large blotch and a number of smaller trailing smears satisfied him to the possibility that there was, in fact, a bottom to this particular area of the chamber and he looked up to find the pleasantly surprised Forty-Three looking back at him from what seemed to be only a meter and a half away. Stepping back from the abyss, Stephen paused as if seriously considering a running jump before his finger found his strapped-in chin and began to tap, "No, not at my age. Two ladders and the lids to some of those crates, I think."

The first ladder, at nearly three meters, proved too short and it was a fraught ten minute wait for longer to be retrieved during which the Doctor enjoyed a pleasant lunch after jostling through the line at the counter. The tops of several crates were slid out to form a bridge and the heavy feet of Number Forty-Three tested them several times before he collapsed against the door frame with a sigh of relief that almost drew the Doctor's attention away from his meal but, as both Doctor and Minion would afterward admit, the Beef Wellington was superb and the wine choice perfection.

"Of we go then," Ambrose declared. The napkin tucked in at his collar was discarded and his helmet and armor rearranged and, taking his place behind Agent Sixteen and two Super-Minions as well as the fortunate Number Forty-One, they carefully cross the span and began to duck and bob their way through the maze that both allowed a clear view of the two ends of the chamber but made passage tricky at best. "I must admit and restate my previous position - I do not relish this. Not at my age."

That did not stop a childlike grin from spreading across his face as they reached both the main platform and the left-most of the two hanging spires, "Marvelous, simply marvelous!"

[Sunset]

SDF-Unconquered Sun, En Route to Rudan Prime...

"...right behind you," Grand Admiral Glafka finished, her hard-cast disguise not showing the stress that had crept into her tone though there were other signs; Hair that had been pulled back into a short tail now hung half-loose around her face and the muscles on her neck were visibly tense. "It would help if you would slow down."

Their meeting, held via holographic relay from Glafka's Dauntless, was being held at the elbow of the chair at the center of the upper command deck aboard the Unconquered Sun. Wheels within wheels, the larger strategic headquarters of the Defense Force itself encircled the regular command deck of the starship with its own cadre of officers and array of stations and consoles. At the center of the whole thing sat the tactical holosphere that currently showed the orientation of the ship relative to its destination while above it, across the ceiling, floated an enormous version dotted with a hundred stars and many times more brilliant points that displayed the disposition of the forces at their command.

Erika shook her head once, "I can't do that. The Roanians announced their arrival by destroying the planetary communications array from orbit. The Triumvirate Consulate reports they are holding their position, but that's for the moment;" Glafka nodded in turn - she'd seen the transmitted recording as well. The pillar of fire as the Communications Centre had been annihilated had been a stark reminder of what fate awaited the Tonhi if nothing swayed the Emperor. The question of what would happen after that awful moment hung in the air like a millstone around the neck. "And now the Tonhi fleet has fled."

By all indications they were headed toward the Diaspora - those worlds settled by the refugees from the previous crisis that had led by a short path to their current position. It was an perverse reversal of affections and a warning against the very nature of a Tyrant. Though manipulated, Damalin had desired the Tonhi for his own and had been willing to spend the blood and treasure of the Roanian people to take it. Now they were his and he would destroy them if he so much as desired; The perils of one given power without earning it and rewarded without understanding the value of the gift.

"But it's not your intention to try and stop them."

"No. Even if we attack their fleets, all he has to do is give the order and the loyal men of the Roanian navy will open fire on the planet, even if they have to die to do it. And if we do, he might just order it out of petty revenge. This is about one man - a boy - who shouldn't be sitting on that throne. His rage might be understandable," She squeezed the hand that sat under her own, "But his actions have no excuse."

"But we don't have solid proof that he intends a massacre." It was Demi's turn and the Ambassador slipped her hand out from under her partner's so she could sit forward, "If we step in before he does, we will be the aggressor."

"Murdered wives and children would seem to state otherwise."

"And I can't condone or even understand something so terrible, even in the heat of the moment. No matter if they agreed with the sentiments of the assassin or not, he has already received punishment for the crime. But if we try to step in - especially if she dies - we could be pushing the whole thing over the edge. Not just the Tonhi but anyone else who happens to be inconvenient to the war that will follow. I would hope that his allies see this as being as stupid as we do, but... Let's find out first."

"You don't have much time to talk," Glafka warned, her tone dark. Taking a half-step back, she turned to emphasize this by looking pointedly at the holosphere below them and the regular command deck that showed their destination and the rapidly approaching arrow that was the Unconquered Sun. "That golden tongue better be quick, too. And subtle. If he catches wind that we're talking behind his back, he might just flip the table then and there."

"Let's do it then," the Secretary-General ordered, "Right here. Get everyone with a stake in the matter on the line and let's see how they all feel about the petty tyrant..."

[Sunset]

Thang Long Citadel, Near D'Zytendi City, N'Xypndiltn...

A small insect moved on the trunk of the tree, brilliant orange and red spots speckling across its back and mimicking the same distinct coloration of a patch of fungus that grew not centimeters away. One was poisonous, one was not, and it was the nature of the jungle to disguise one as the other. Except as a dimly remembered childhood warning Tradia's focus on the first was only momentary and she swept the imager up past the ripple of brown and green to a space where sparkling blue was visible through the canopy from their vantage point on the tree-covered hillside. Small dancing waves blown by the evening breeze broke lightly on a rocky gray shore and she carefully focused until a rusty red and brown citadel came into view. Perched on the rocky volcanic spire that sat at the middle of the lake, it was a magnificent example of the architectural style of the Tonhi and an exact match to what she was looking for.

'Prince Li Nesar... I wonder if you're home.'

'I do not think he will be,' the man next to her said, whispering despite the unspoken nature of their Augmented communications. He was not used to it but now was not the time nor place to quibble over technological familiarity; Their arrival would not be appreciated and it would likely be expected thus every advantage would be sought. 'What little I have been able to glean states his departure as almost as soon as word of the attack on the Imperial Consort arrived.'

With a click, the image enhancement faded away and the pair began their careful trudge down the cliff side towards the waters edge. As they walked the Adjutant kept sweeping her eyes between the nonexistent path ahead of them, the darkening jungle, and the distant unlit manor on the far island. She'd been there before and not in the distant past of childhood but it seemed only a few weeks ago, though it had to have been more. The rush of combat, of death and blood, had seared the moment into her mind as another panel in the sharp, crisply drawn pages of the book that was the extermination campaign against the False Gods that had ruled this world. Emaciated corpses hanging on the walls of underground cells, the cries of women pinned in cages and laid out on tables. Tortures terrible and foul and the blood that had washed them away as the two Avenging Wraiths had butchered the pretenders to a man.

'I wonder,' she paused in her steps, allowing Inspector Min to invisibly step past her, 'I wonder if the taint of that place had some effect on him.'

But that wasn't a proper question to ask, was it? The question as put forth by the Executor was whether Prince Nesar was involved. The restless spirits of the defiled and their tormentors might linger still - or so she had been raised to believe - but motivation was secondary to involvement and against a stage back-dropped by the galaxy itself the notion of ghosts and terrors influencing the thoughts of a man would seem laughably archaic. They would cross, search the citadel for any indications, and report in. Perhaps he was just a rabble-rouser and perhaps not though the man from Internal Harmony had already put forward his own opinions while the two were travelling between the Capital and D'Zytendi City.

She turned to look behind her; The spire of the city's red-gold pyramid was now gone, vanished as the hillside had dropped away to leave them only a few meters from the edge of the water and the next stage of their trek. Again, she'd been here before and their path had been chosen to take advantage of that. While the citadel stood high on the rocky outcrop to command a stunning view of the small lake and the far shore, she knew that the rock it was build on was latticed with tunnels and caves and on this side of the island a hole had been blasted through, courtesy of the destructive firepower mounted on a super-heavy gravtank. It had also cleared a path through the jungle, throwing aside trees like tumbling spears, but she had avoided that route; It has been cleared and built up into a private road that led from the city to the lake and a small dock.

That too was a potential indication as to the status of the fortress and at the water's edge they stopped to look; A large flat-bottomed ferry stood tied to the near docks while their first sign of life - four guards dressed in mass-market fatigues with short rifles - stood or walked the dockside.

'Waiting for if their master's household decides to return,' the Inspector offered, crouching down beside her to focus his own magnifier on the scene.

The Prince would have a flier, of course, though he might not use it. Even on a Republic frontier world, they were expensive and rare enough that any travel by personal aircraft would be noted. Tradia had taken her own to the city but left it behind in favor of a hike. Even if there was no one home, someone in the city would have noticed their flight out to the island and it was that same network of gossip and rumor that had led them here in the first place. A little bit of time for the surety that they would not be spotted as the experienced warrior led them through cleft and shadow.

'But nothing on the far bank...'

At least nothing that she could see. But even under the holographically shrouded armor that both wore, the water would give them away as they swam across. They didn't need to but she'd decided and he'd agreed that they did. The guards were right there, of course; Questioning one would be a matter of waiting for nature to make her demands and then jumping him with the Treznor-made stun pistol she carried strapped across her chest. But even if he told the entire truth, they would still have to verify that truth by checking the island and so it was that the pair instead watched carefully to make sure no one at the closer dock was looking in their particular direction before slipping into and under the water. For a warrior, the ability to swim was a necessity but there was more than a bit of hesitancy as the Roanian joined her.

'Keep breathing,' she instructed, watching from behind as he swam slowly ahead. A meter then two then three under the surface would render them effectively invisible, especially in the fading light, but his unfamiliarity with both the equipment - which he'd practiced on in the car - and the very act of swimming combined to remove his everyday air of confidence. 'Slowly, and breath.'

'A terribly experience I do not wish to repeat,' he admitted as he pulled himself out of the water on the far side. Hidden from view behind a cluster of massive boulders that had been blasted free from the cliff above, they rested as he peeled back both his mask and hood to appear as a floating head while invisible hands pressed at his eyes in an effort to wring out the unfamiliar.

'There could be worse ahead.'

Above them, she could see the dark hole where the twin beams had punched through and left a caricature of glaring eyes that sunk deep into the mountainside. Inside there had been horrors; How many of them were still there?

[Sunset]

Special Projects Development Facility, Landor City, Terra Incognito...

"There are a lot of possibilities here beyond the obvious; TRIPWIRE is potentially one of the biggest multi-taskers I've seen in a long time," Commander Brown emphasized as he pushed the empty plate that had contained a pair of tacos to the inside edge of the table. There was a click and then they were gone, sucked away by the booth to be cleaned and readied for the next patron. The hard cider that replaced them was served the old-fashioned way, however; A waitress walked by and placed it on the table in front of him as she continued on her rounds. No matter the advances in technology there was still something special about a long row of draft heads waiting to dispense frosty-cold goodness to thirsty patrons.

"The obvious is the early warning system, but that's thinking local. For that application we need precision, so we're building a lot of them. More buoys, more precise, and the next pirate raider that pops up will find itself right under the guns of a Defense Force cruiser..."

"Mhmm..." Saryan spun her own shot glass up on its side with a finger, spinning it around and around with a flick. "Katryna's got them working on some kind of TRIPWIRE-integrated special strike cruiser. They put the math across my desk, but not really my area."

"Little specialized, but," Brown shrugged, "Not my choice. But now we've got the idea of using it to monitor trade and I'm sure it's only a matter of time;" In that he was wrong - his forthcoming idea had already been discussed, "Before someone has the bright idea to sell the information to those willing to pay. Then we'll see merchants not even bothering to show up if a competitor is already there, or only visiting ports where their goods will be rare and thus in demand. Why bother heading to some far colony if some ZMI mega-freighter is already there, and of course they're not going to tell us they are there. Now we'll know. But that's the other thing - the big thing."

"Now we'll know where those colonies are. And not just here. Here we need the precision of a lot of the buoys in order to establish specifics. But they can also tell us generalities at range. Instead of hunting down all the colonies and core worlds of that distant potential enemy, we turn the TRIPWIRE array on them. Their own traffic will give them away and it will be even easier if they are the hyper-aggressive patrol-and-destroy kind. Trade routes, maintenance hubs, fleets... Exactly what the war planners need. And there's crap all they can do about it - if they even know about it. But they won't."

"Right..." The glass spun away to rattle on its side and come to rest against Brown's own tall pint. "Too fundamental. I think I've said that before."

"Even if they do find out about it, its a self-defeating trap. The easiest way to attack the thing is a mass attack on all the stations, and it will see it coming. Then it's ramships at dawn and a visit from the TYCS for some regime change. But I was thinking about this too," he took a sip, "And this is right along your field... You know, there are a lot of star-faring civilizations that power their ships by using some kind of artificial singularity. A little fine turning and we could probably pick up those ships from here. Put up a hidden array on their borders and we've got their whole fleet mapped out. We're talking a potential first-strike level opportunity here. But..."

"But?"

"There's a lot of risk. Right now, as far as we know, we're the only ones with TRIPWIRE. And I'm glad we'll have it first. But if one of the Black Hats gets their hands on the idea, we might end up in a situation where strategic strikes replace fleets. A chess game of super-weapons where we're trying to convert as much of the galaxy to our side as quickly as possible before the bad guys do the same. Or just destroy it."

[Sunset]

Above the Dragon's Eye, GEC-A2386, Deep Space, The Delta Quadrant...

Above a perfectly still sea a shuttle hovered, the pilot maintaining position far above the water so that the disruptive force that was the craft's gravity drive would not mar the surface. There was something unnatural about it, something odd to the eyes of those who, even if they spent most of their lives in space, were still used to the subtle ripple and flow of basin, cup, or bath. But the surface of the Dragon's Eye was perfectly smooth - as smooth as glass - but yet tinged here and there with the soft glow of rising particles. Far below the surface strange veins moved here and there where the peaks of submerged mountain chains came close enough to pierce the deepest darkness and show as ragged lines of shadow against the endless ocean. It was particularly mesmerizing and for a long while the craft simply hung there while those inside looked on in quiet contemplation. Finally there was movement and the hatches on both sides slid back before one, two, three, four and five shapes dropped from the side to plunge down towards the stillness and splash through, leaving a series of concentric rings that radiated, joined, and then drifted away to slowly die; The only sign that something might be alive on this alien world of endless ocean.

"There's plenty alive down here, Captain," Lieutenant Quaife explained as he switched on first the exterior lights of the GhostDragon suit so that those around him could see, and then the powerful spotlights on each forearm that would serve to pierce the darkness to a limited degree. "But that's not the best part..."

It was all very mysterious but that was perhaps the Lieutenant's intentions. One by one, the Captain and Commander followed his lead and switched their own lights on to follow him into the depths as the two Marines fanned out behind them. In the still water, depth and distance was very much an illusion and while the darker patches seemed either right at hand or many kilometers away, it was only a few minutes before the suits and their occupants reached the closest pinnacle. Something yawned up out of the darkness at them and Kami nearly gasped as the towering form of an enormous statue loomed up at them. Two arms raised to the unseen sky were each draped in long flowing strands of brown and purple dotted with the muted reds that might have been the most vibrant yellows and oranges on the surface but here could only show a trace of their true potency. If there had been a head, it was now missing but the ragged stump of a neck showed that there had once been something there, though what had been lost to the depths.

They dropped further, their lights playing over the surface of the monolithic construction, and then it was gone. A thick spire caked with more vines and the twisting-arm growths of what resembled coral speared up into what was now obviously a bust of some kind while below it spread out into the first level of a temple that descended into the darkness terrace by terrace. At the Lieutenant's lead, they drifted back up and around the half-figure, taking in every detail to try to establish some sense of the beings who had built it. These were frustratingly few, however. Cracks had begun to worm their way through the stone and these were the anchor points for plants of all shapes and sizes that then obscured more of the features.

"The whole floor is like this..." Quaife drifted closer to put a hand on the rock, "At least what we can get to. Endless temples, palaces, fortresses... But whoever built them? Some like this, it's the head. The smaller statues have had their faces chiseled off or smashed completely. And it's all abandoned, at least so far. Completely overgrown with this," his searchlight flickered over the plant growth.

A dark shape flickered at the edge of Kami's vision and she turned the light on it. A shape, tall and flat, moved back and forth like a tall ship tacking into the wind and after a moment the Lieutenant's light joined her own.

"Fish analogue. They don't like us - as soon as we get close, they hide or run away. They feed on those nodules;" The light swung to the red spots on the drifting weeds and the Captain drifted closer to find that they were really raised nodules that almost bulged from the flesh of the trailing plant.

"And no sign of whoever built this..."

"Not yet. We're limited by the depth and numbers. She might not look big from orbit, but there's still millions of square kilometers and more that we just can't reach at all. Not without specialty diving gear."

[Sunset]

Chains of Jade, The Schumann System, Ares Local Cluster...

Gluestick swayed under her butt as the horse, slow and lazy, plodded his careful way along the beaten dirt trail. The heady aroma of herbs and flowers filled the air and Alwyra offered no objection as the beast stopped to crop some of the long grass that grew up beside the path. His was not the only rider and ahead of her Kedo's mount, a more exotic Kesterling Trinayk, rolled along on its six segmented legs. To describe it as insectoid would be half-accurate; stiff fur that matted together into hard plates indicated just how recently it had arrived on that particular branch of the evolutionary tree.

It was the perfect way for the owner to survey her holdings. Winding between the varied terraces of the agricultural colony, she could see both the individual workers and the carefully scattered mounds that sheltered the growing Syn flowers. In the middle of each an anachronistic lamp rose with its shrouded hood shedding the required wavelengths that would allow the otherworldly flower to grow on this new world. Between them other plants grew as to the desires of the individual worker; Some had chosen plants native to their own cuisine while others had selected those which might bring them a little extra income. All of the regular laborers were debt-labor but she was not going to contest their preferences as long as their focus was on her product. She'd been in a similar position not too long ago herself and the memory of weeks in the fetid swamps, wind-scorched deserts, and finally pleasure-dens of Hanson's Kneecap were still solid in the back of her mind.

"Hoah! Woah!"

Something fluttered and flashed in the corner of her eye and she hauled on the reins of the already stationary horse. A creature - no, a person - had dropped from the sky to land next to one of the field supervisors. They were clearly familiar to the woman as the two fell to ready chatter with the avian humanoid showing her something she carried and the other calling out to and then waving over a young man who looked to be just out of his teens. A profusion of body modifications gave the perhaps-unfair impression of an uncontrolled life but while there was a slouch to his shoulders, he accepted the package from the supervisor and looked it over while the two continued to talk and gesture.

"I wonder who that is;" The name of both the supervisor and the farm boy had appeared in her Augmented Reality, but the unfamiliar avian was still unidentified. "Best way to find out," and with a stumbling slid she dismounted to leave the reins slack and Kedo rolling his eyes at her naivety. While he tied off his own mount to a convenient fence post and set about retrieving the horse that had already begun to wander, she ambled over to the three with her thumbs in her pockets and her cowboy hat pulled low against the afternoon sun.

"Hey..."

"Hello," the supervisor - Alonso Trakk, according to his virtual badge - half-waved and she pushed her hat back so they could see just who she was. "Boss..."

"Who's this?"

There was the sound of sing-song chatter from the avian and then; "Doctor Kaerren," with her warbling speech blending together with the cybernetic translation in a way that wasn't altogether unpleasant.

"The Doctor is a recent arrival," Alonso explained, pointing out of the group to a far-distant building that rose out of the center of the valley on the edge of the river that fed the many farms and agricultural stations. A circle of flags fluttered from the half-round roof to represent the various entities that occupied the research center with the banner of the Exploration Command and several noted universities prominent among them.

Kaerren nodded, though the gesture seemed half-forced and unfamiliar; "I am an Esti'Ilwe. My people are from a far-distant part of the galaxy where they live under the domination of a harsh military government. I was rescued by one of your ships and taken to a trade center called Liu Xiu. They sent me and my crew here and told me that they would help us build a new home for our species here on this world and others in your... Republic? We will need food and I have some samples of our native grains that I wish to have grown."

The laborer held up the container and Alwyra took it, looking inside the clear compartments to find a wide array of green and red shoots nestled inside with their roots in tiny cubes of growth matrix. If each row was its own variety, there had to be nearly a dozen different species inside.

"Oh, neat!" She handed the box back and he turned to slouch off towards his own terrace, plodding along between the mounds of Syn and their glowing lamps. For a few moments the conversation stopped as they all watched him go, but then the Alwyra turned back to the Doctor, "How do they taste?"

"Delicious to me and my people, I am sure, but taste is subjective! I tried some of this," she nudged a clawed foot at an encircled clump of long-stemmed grain and made a face, her lower beak slewing off to one side while her tongue emerged in a gesture the Neko immediately interpreted as disgust, "Whatever it is, and it will never cross my beak again!"

"Quadrotriticale?"

"It is foul," the Doctor nodded enthusiastically.

Alonso shrugged; The genetically-modified wheat was a staple grain nearly everywhere.

"Do you eat it raw? Or cooked?" Alwyra asked just as two strong hands fell on her, one on her shoulder and the other at her hip. Kedo slid in beside her and she stopped to introduce him, "My husband, Kedo."

The supervisor nodded his acknowledgement but the Esti'Ilwe took a hopping step back, "Hello!"

"What was that?!" Alwyra looked up at her husband in surprise, her large eyes going even wider, "He's a big guy;" The broad-shouldered Neko stood nearly a fifth of a meter taller than the Doctor, and nearly half-again as wide, "But he's as gentle as a kitten! Err..." She looked back to the Avian, recognizing the potential misstep, "Lamb?"

"No, no!"

Kaerren held up her hands to object but the trapper was already breaking out in laughter, dropping onto his haunches to put his forehead on crossed forearms.

"I... I have been told of your cats and kittens but no, that is not why I;" Once again she hopped back. "It is the manner of greeting among my people. A motion to take flight together; It is a pleasure to meet you, Kedo."

"So you said you're a Doctor," Alwyra looked to the supervisor, who nodded his agreement, and then back to the Esti'Ilwe as she tried to recover her bearing, "Are you a botanist? Biologist?"

"No!" And once again the Amirah felt as though she'd miss-stepped until Kaerren clarified, "Oh, no. Nothing so useful. I'm a scientist, but a physicist. Or at least I feel useless in this situation. That," she pointed off to the worker, who was kneeling next to a line of freshly tilled soil, "Is my only contribution and even there I had help from the botanists from your... Federated Segments? They have the oddest banner; Why decorate it with food?"

[Sunset]

SDF-Ixutsangi, Docked at Frontier Post Pere'Nolde, The Therian Hegemony...

"I've checked everything, including their viral load," Philus explained, leading the Captain and his senior officers through an exhaustive roster of possible conditions that could explain the traitorous actions of the renegade Therians - acts that seemingly occurred at random without any particular outside influence. "There does not seem to be any physical factors that could even remotely explain it and, speaking plainly, the Hegemony is being polite. Doubtless their knowledge of their own biology exceeds our own; I am a mere charlatan by comparison."

It wasn't a completely fair comparison; Philus had many hundreds of years of comparative experience in the sciences but the Solonic was given to the fanciful - a hallmark of his species. The rest was true; The Therians had allowed the crew of the Ixutsangi access to the corpses of the fallen without hesitation and without comment. Their focus remained on repairs to the damaged outpost and in recovering the destroyed warships. Like Republic starships, their primary weaponry and energy sources were non-volatile except in exceptional circumstances and what had survived could either be rehabilitated or recycled.

"Captain Luzurth essentially said as much. I'm not sure they are as much looking for help as they are for recognition. This may not be the end of the Hegemony but it may be the end of their influence in this sector and a careful contraction and hardening of their borders. Which means I think we should be looking at their neighbors."

"Who benefits."

"That is correct, and here I think we can be of assistance. The Hegemony's connections to its various vassal states and even to singular individuals such as Ms. Zu are likely well-known in this area of space. They have a reputation, as it were, especially considering the," Philus tapped at a display and a timeline of the Republic and its introductions to various species appeared, "Two centuries that these events appear to have continued over since the original Kinslaying. We do not."

"There would be a side-benefit to this investigation," Timmons pointed out, with the rest of his team perking up as a familiar enthusiasm entered his voice. "We know very little about this area of space and while the Therians have been generous with what they know, they are neither a particularly expansionist or exploratory people. They bring new civilizations into the Hegemony when it is prudent and desired and do not seek conquest. Of the fifteen conflicts they have fought in the past two hundred years, most have been defensive actions against aggressor states with a few police actions and two preemptive strikes."

"Or what they are telling us are preemptive strikes," Commander Pham pointed out. "But here nor there. We can poke around and get some science done while we're investigating, right?"

"Exactly."

Captain Turbell sat back to look around the table. With no objections pending, he leaned forward again and clubbed his hands together on the slick black surface, "Alright, since you're the man with the hunches, do you have any that would put us right next to whoever or whatever is causing this?"

It was an awful specific request, but the big man seemed to have something of an answer as he drew a milk chocolate finger across the table surface to generate a map of the local stellar neighborhood. Pinpricks appeared here and there as he pulled in the Hegemony's shared information as to the deposition of their neighbors and began adding numbers and figures to that.

"I'm not gonna say I've got the hunch, cause I've got a bunch of them. And some numbers to back a few of them up. First, who's been around that long? We can eliminate a lot of the new players just based on that;" A few stars went gray; Civilizations that had emerged on the galactic scene after the events of the Kinslaying. "And then who has - or had - the technological prowess to pull it off? The Hegemony has a ranked structure for nearby potential threats and one of the components is technological advancement. Which..."

More went grey, this time a vast swath that only left a few patches of orange, yellow, green, and blue.

"Now, here's the gotcha... This might not be about these guys and our guy. Just recently there was an attack on our colony of Ghost Island. When all was said and done, the origins of the attack were not in who they initially appeared to be but rather a third party entirely. Not just a false-flag attack;" That is, an attack that appeared to be from one nation but was instead from a second nation operating covertly, "But a false-false-flag attack. The third state had orchestrated the attack so that it looked like, under close examination, a false-flag attack. Presumably they wanted to provoke us into attacking their enemies in retaliation. So the gotcha could be that one of these old - but not very advanced - star-states has somehow originated the attack from inside one of their neighbors."

"And is really fucking patient about it..."

"Well, yes," Timmons nodded agreement to Commander Pham, who was sitting across the table. "Two hundred years and still at it."

Deania leaned forward across the table to poke at the various blobs, an action that caused the jacket she normally wore to slip up on her back and her chest - barely covered in the black rubber-like appliances that the Duab'Akii favored over cybernetics - to dangle just in front of Commander Pham. His eyes went wide for a moment and he blushed to turn to the outside wall and the display of the outside of the Frontier Outpost that sprawled across it.

"Who's been around that long?" She didn't seem to notice his side-long attention and instead started drawing lines between the various states, "Not just the star-state, but the leadership? I mean, this is big. Maybe the biggest Republic corporations or someone like ZMI could pull this off, but it is essentially a national-level game. And someone has to be moving the pieces. So who's really old and warty?"

"This guy..."

"Argh!"

Any enticement Pham had had at the shapely form just in front of him was obliterated as the Seeker jumped back with a shriek. The image of a bloated wreck of an individual appeared over the star-map; Numerous deep scars hash-marked their way across a face that wasn't even entirely humanoid but rather looked like a moldering hammerhead shark that had thrust its way up and out of the backside of a warthog. The robes draped around its rounded shoulders didn't do much to enhance the appearance; Gaudy and covered with gems, they were beyond ostentatious and had crossed the parody line into thrift store reject.

"Regent Kuam Kuam Kaum. His father's father, in their naming nomenclature. According to the dossier, the Feknarthi Imperium is supposed to be led by a democratically elected head of state - the Imperator, as autocratic as that sounds - but the Regent's grandfather bypassed that by, presumably, having the Imperator killed and then locking up the selection process in trivialities and legal bullshit for the past three hundred years. Long enough to pass down what was supposed to be a hereditary and ceremonial position to his grandson. They are dirty as hell..." Timmons brought up a visual of the Hegemony's dossier including text and pictures with various atrocities noted in bold, "It even says so," he pointed to the highlighted section, "No diplomatic niceties reserved for the Feknarthi. But only one major action during the last two hundred years."

"But what about before that?"

Captain Turbell's question hit the nail on the head and Timmons smiled broad, "Like cats and dogs."