A Time to Gather Stones Together [Nation Development]

[The Ctan]

Sirenna had to admit she was going up in the world. The proof of that was staring at her right across the station’s piers, in the form of her fifth bulk freighter. They were the backbone of galactic shipping, slow as a drunken gandar-monkey and about as graceful, but they carried two huge intermodal containers and had a crew of ten each, though they could run with less with the newest automation upgrades. One hundred sixty-three meters in length when loaded, they were legitimate commerce personified.

Cherka Station was the hub of trade through the coreward sectors leading to the Mid Rim from the Centrality, and it was as good a place as any to expand a shipping business.

“You don’t need to worry about us,” Jau’va said. The captain of the Bolraidas IV was an ugnaut, four feet of pride right now.

“I’ve got every confidence,” Sirenna said, looking down at him, “it’s a nice safe flight most of the way, keep your wits about you and stay in convoy,” she said.

He gave her a grin and headed away to the boarding tubes on the level below.

“Do you always see your captains off?” the voice was familiar and Sirenna turned, old instincts pulling her hand to a blaster that she no longer wore rimmer style on the station, but tucked away inside her jacket.

The man who stood there was in his thirties, he had lost some of the youth she had first known him with, but she could also tell that he had been using the juvenats that she had, or something similar, to slow ageing into an eternal summer of full bodily strength. He wore the black uniform of the Jedi Covenant, a sub-order that had taken pains to redefine themselves as an active force in the galaxy after the collapse of the core, wearing wide-shouldered robes that incorporated light body armour in the chest and vambraces just visible under his black cloak.

“Eth!” she said and subjected him to a hug. “What brings you out here?”

He laughed, and put his arm around her, “Can’t I look in on an old friend?”

“Unannounced?” she said. “I don’t think so, there’s always trouble when you go anywhere quietly. Let me show you this new place that’s opened up, I think you’ll like it, it advertises an authentic necrontyr menu. I’ve been meaning to try it,” she said.

She had seen Ethril Arknet walk into a room full of the worst thugs in the galaxy with total confidence, but he paled at that. “Maybe a standard tapcafe?” he asked.

She grinned, “I’ve heard that too. The food is so bad where you come from that you fled to another galaxy, huh?”

The cafe was busy but Sirenna had been able to secure a table out of the way, and steaming noodles sat barely touched on the table between them. “I’m honestly surprised you’re wanting me Eth, don’t you have one of those sleek new Jedi corvettes or even a Civ-ship?”

The young man gave a broad smile, “Let’s just say I want to keep this on the down-low, divided loyalties are a thing, and the Jedi aren’t involved here. I’m just here as a student of the force and a Great Civilization citizen.”

“Oh? Not an official commission?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, sometimes Civilization is a bit, staid and procedural, but there’s a long tradition of informal request and solution. They’re very interested, shall we say. We want to find a lost planet, by the name of Tund.”

“The Sorcerers of Tund?” Sirenna asked. “They’re a myth.”

“We don’t think so, and more interestingly, the Sorcerers are said to blend the tradition of the Force with ‘magic.’

“Sounds like superstition.”

“Maybe there is some, but there’s a great interest in the Great Civilization to developing a ‘unifying theory’ of magical traditions. Over in the Great Wheel there are thousands and places where shamans casting spells works. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

“So how does that never work here?”

“Well it does, you just don’t see nearly so much of it,” he said. “Some of our people have answers, or rather they have hypotheses, but nothing so concrete.”

“So you want me to fly you out to this lost planet?”

“Actually I was hoping to borrow the Flutterplume,” he said.

She studied his high cheekboned face for a long moment. “You can't be serious? I never let anyone borrow my ship.”

“You have a few now.”

“The Flutterplume is my ship, the others are ships I own,” she said, “and she’s the only one I’d trust to fly too far off the beaten track.”

“Well, in that case, I guess I am hoping you will fly me there, yes,” he said, “but I guess that might be difficult.”

“Nonsense, I have been meaning to get away a bit. K5 pines for the danger of real rim work I think,” she said.

“There’s not much better going on in the Core,” Ethril said, “from the Chaos Wars and the Huntaerian collapse, the Thrashian Withdrawl, I am kept pretty busy just trying to intervene in refugee conflicts and crises. It could take five generations to reach a new galactic equilibrium.”

“It’s been a good time to be in shipping for small rim colonies, shame about the piracy,” Sirenna said.

“Are you sure you can take the time away?” he asked.

Sirenna laughed, “Am I going to get turned into a pile of shale?”

Ethril looked at her, “Probably not.”

[The Ctan]

Great Civilization Retrieval Service

Disclosure-Class ISA-2 (Citizen and Patriate Eyes Only)
Breach of DISCLASS regulations is a felony carrying extensive penalty

Message Body Begins

Priority Notice

All GC Persons are advised to vacate the Hypatian Commonwealth without delay.

GC Citizens and Patriates are advised to withdraw from Hypatian Commonwealth Territories, Vessels and other administered areas. Hypatian and third-party persons will be accommodated as required in line with relationship policies. Specific disclosure of the general outline of this message is permitted ONLY to relationship partners excluding any directly employed by the Hypatian Government. Further guidance is available on request.

Retrieval Service (Non-Militant) aligned vessels are being deployed to all known Hypatian territories and areas of influence. Personal routing details are attached to this message for all recipients.

All other traffic is advised to re-route unless carrying non-military emergency supplies.

The cause of action in this circumstance is the lack of resolution of the Menelmacari ultimatum to the Hypatian Commonwealth, now with ten (10) Mars-Standard days to expiration.

The estimated time to full evacuation of Citizens and Patriates from the Hypatian Commonwealth minus any recusance is 2 days.

If no further progress has been made in Menelmacari-Hypatian negotiations one standard week before ultimatum expiration, a general notice advising refugees of third party nations and Hypatians of the availability of relocation options aboard second wave vessels is available.

For reference, the following timeline applies.

T-10 Days (This Message) - Citizen and Patriate withdrawal operations commence
T-8 Days - Citizen and Patriate withdrawal operations conclude
T-7 Days - General Refugee Announcement
T-2 Days - Drawdown of GC Diplomatic Service assets in Hypatian Commonwealth
T-0 Days - Menelmacari ultimatum expires

At this time, GCV Opinions on Tradition will remain on station at Sigurdshafn continuing medical assistance operations.

Citizens and Patriates in Menelmacar and aligned territories are advised to operate in line with local guidance to Menelmacari citizens.

Personalized evacuation details follow.

Message Body Ends

[The Ctan]

Mars, Terra Noachis, Terra Sabaca Territory, Martian Forum Administrative Zone

The scout soared over the dry desert dunes of the uplands of Terra Noachis, a lean and raked machine of golden metal and blue crystal, sustained by power fields that blended the pilot’s essence with the machine itself. It was one of hundreds that were criss-crossing the plains in a wide search pattern. They had been launched from the citadel of Naraz Galar, close to the far border of New Bajon. This remote settlement was one of the few holdouts of the Protoss on Mars, a population that had been common when Tor Yvresse had maintained a settlement on the world.

The Protoss had a strong common interest, and it had moved offworld over the years for many clans, but for the people of Naraz Galar, the Red Planet still had secrets to reveal, and their pinnacles and slab sided golden buildings sat at the northernmost point of the New Bajon colony, divided from the Hellas Sea and the Hellaspontos depression by the bare ashen wastes of the original mars still visible on the highlands.

Their forces surging over the Sabaca territory were a manifestation of the GC’s form of localism. Where a problem could be dealt with by local assets they strongly preferred it. Naraz Galar and the few Neitzchian settlements along the north western border.

Here and there strands of red weed and wild quickbronze flashed by in the desert, travel hazards for the unwary. The pilot watched with interest as the sensors in her craft picked up reams of data on the ground conditions. Celdaris had little interest in the welfare of the people of the region, but a general understanding existed that there needed to be some governance. Humans, particularly, were wont to atrocity if left without governance. Most species, even. The Khala provided her people with a unity of purpose that few could match.

The governance of the area would call to the OSA but she saw several things that warranted further investigation as she flashed over the rimwall of a crater-marsh in the Noachian plains, there were settlements that had to be as old as the Santa-Barbaran colonies, and newer ones. She tagged them for follow-up observers to come on station and observe for criminal activity, and wondered briefly at what the nature of the people who had dwelt in such places in all the long years.

Notification of handover to OSA control would be available to anyone with a linkings connection in the region, but many of these would need ground teams and probes to inform the local population of where they could go for major support going forward.

---

Aaathor City, Hellas Crater Wall, Hellaspontes Montes, New Bajon

Celdaris had returned to base and phased herself across the New Bajon colony to the city of Aaanthor, the wind from the Hellas sea was pleasantly relaxing. Like all of her kind she did not regularly consume organic matter after growth, but she could derive a passive energy from sunlight, here on Mars that was weaker than many worlds, and the major source of power for her was the psychic nourishment she derived from the collective consciousness of her kind. The mist of the Hellas went over the city-strip, a conurbation that had grown up on the sides of the impact crater and above the green strip of farmland and cultivated rainforest that made up the Hellas Basin.

She drew no attention here, her own kind were the least populous of the three native peoples, but they were common enough here, and the Great Civilization was a diverse place. The inner track of the crater-wall was home to Aaanthor, a distributed city that ran its entire length, the places where the delvings of the Bajoni opened out into the wide gardens. Gleaming silver and bone white buildings rose toward the sky gracefully in a wide circle, and here they were at one atmosphere of pressure, rather than the higher pressure natural on the crater-floor, hanging gardens and wide apartments and entertainment venues hung over the greenery, and sub-cities with names like Helium, Zodanga and Gathol jutted outward like the prows of ships pointing toward the centre of the Hellaspont.

Her reason for being here was simple enough, a social call. Some who came here from across the seas imagined that without the incentive of starvation, public hospitality venues would be extinct here. They were wrong, but their nature was changed; Kaalauri’s was just such a place, down a flight of stairs built in the intermediate style of tread, she placed her feet carefully, and entered it.

Graceful arches of silvery living metal held the upper floor of Kaalauri’s to the underside of the larger observation platform above, and on three quarters of its curving side wide windows looked out to the views beyond, balconies displaying the view of the Martain sea and the thousands of flitters and light starships that came and went about the sea.

“Celdaris!” the call came, “over here!”

The flame of her blue eyes locked onto the speaker and she nodded, circling around the central bar and giving a bow of recognition to the proprietor, selecting a phial of rosewater and letting the multi-legged being draw out a trio of psychic tinctures. A combination of essences that served as a social lubricant in a way not dissimilar to alcohol on near-humans, though with less impairment of judgement in extreme cases. Kaalauri’s was a family environment.

She gave her thanks and stepped away toward the nearby area, the table that had called her over was a stonework carved from a single piece of red mars rock and inlaid with coloured mica chips beneath a crystalline surface, depicting the first Mangalan accords.

The guests at the table could have represented a microcosm of Bajoni opinion.

Rauva who had called her over was a longtime friend, a drow woman of the old kind, she was a celebrant of sacred rites of Araushnee. She’d been the nucleus of this particular group, during the early settlement of New Bajon she had been deeply involved and she had been there before all of them. She had been involved in the wars against the Vacillian League centuries ago, as had Celdaris, something they had bonded over. Beside her sat Gauderian, one of the rugged post-human Nietzschean settlers who had for a time ruled old Bajon after a coup, and whose clan had largely moved here when the Olympus Mons colony had integrated with Menelmacar, preferring to settle on the frontiers, he was actually a doctor, which was an occupation that one imagined from their standoffish reputation that they would shun, but nothing could be further from the truth, aiding survival was a worthy goal. Rounding out the trio was Asmal, who professed no occupation, but was held in high regard.

“How was the trust territory?” Asmal asked, clad in scarlet and ochre robes, with a ruff of feathers at his shoulders and neck, he rose to give her the brightest seat and shifted to the shadows adroitly.

“Undeveloped,” she said, her telepathic voice was converted into audio as she spoke, speaking the neo-silvan that was in common currency within the region. She was surprised to hear her disapproval inflected clearly in the tone, perhaps she had felt it more than she had said. “An archeologist would tell you the place had never been under the Phoenix Domain’s custodianship.”

“Disappointing,” Rauva said, on her side of the table there was a small pile of wingpacks discarded by her children and Gauderian’s, who were in the floor below at the moment. She held her spice tea with an attitude of someone who knew they would have to gland it away in short order. “I had higher hopes for the Phoenixi.”

“The Hypatian fallout continues. Pride is a good thing to have but not one to bring to a multi-polity system.”

“I don’t understand why they didn’t have the wherewithal to keep the whole matter of these Revenants secret, if they’d not put it in their AMJRI delegation, the Menelmacari would be oblivious, and we would all be settled, and they could just have… not deployed that technology with their allies.” Rauva’s tone was baffled, “A storm in a teacup for most of us, and if the Menelmacari had been who they’d wanted to keep it from they could just have… not told anyone until they were done with it. Or dropped the treaty,” she shrugged, her tone was one of bemused weariness. “It is always better to gain forgiveness than permission, surely they knew that.”

Gauderian’s disapproval was harsher, “They see themselves as having a special relationship with the Menelmacari, ignoring that the Menelmacari get very little out of it. I would punish them for that. A failure to exert punishment will make the Menelmacari look foolish.”

Asmal laughed, “Harsh!” he declared, “it costs the Menelmacari nothing to forgive them either, and that is often wiser,” the elf decreed, “though the wider discontent over the whole affair puts me in mind of the old Martian wars, and not in a good way.”

“You think someone will quickbronze them?” Rauva laughed.

“Let’s not forget it was a First Triumvirate of Yut member that planned that, sorry, dissidents within one,” he said, “and I suspect Neja could have stopped it, if she’d wanted.”

“Maybe,” Celdaris said, “the Phoenixi withdrawal is simply sound thinking,” her tone was wry, pulses of amusement converted into humanoid tonal markers as she imbibed.

“Some pundits are blaming the Phoenixi collective consciousness,” Asmal said, “for a sudden unexplained change that has diminished trust. What do you think?” He looked at Celdaris.

Celdaris flexed the long tendrils that hung like dreadlocks from her large head, stroking them with one hand in thought. “I suppose,” she said. “Certainly we never feel much obligation to explain our decisions, but then,” she paused, “we can also answer inquiries about our policies. I don’t think it’s anything to do with their decision making,” she paused, “I think they’re just rude.”

“It is foolish to separate from the Sol System over the Hypatians when the Hypatians desperately wish to remain attached to Sol,” Gauderian said, his tone was stern; Celdaris knew his philosophy approved of such things but she always found it jarring that he was a rehabilitative therapist by trade. Last time they spoke about such things he had described the work being done for the Triangulum expedition. “If the Hypatians wished to vacate Mars, they would have done so.”

“They wish to be the hegemon of Mars, as if anyone would take that seriously,” Asmal said with derision, looking out across the crater sea. It was hard to make out what he could see, atmospheric attenuation prevented Celdaris from seeing the details of the far shore, across the crater-sea, perhaps elven eyes, able to blend magic and optical acuity, could see more clearly.

[The Ctan]

Embassy Row, National Mall, Hypatian Commonwealth

Callithua Regantar looked out from the window, her yellow eyes moving across the crowd of protestors. Her posting as Resident Emissary of the Great Civilization to the Hypatian Commonwealth had been deeply uneventful. It was now over. She moved with care, where there had once been tasteful displays of cultures from across the Great Wheel and beyond, there was now only bare walls and stripped back furniture.

“Well, I hope you’re ready for a show,” she said, looking to the protestors. They would not hear her, of course, as she stepped back from the window, leaving the conference room that had the main view toward the national mall. The facilities of the spacious building were now pared down to the flotilla of escort-class knife missiles that accompanied her, and the fanblade open on the room she returned to, which had formerly been a waiting room.

During the recent crisis, she had begun preparations to remove personnel, and these had been augmented by her instructions from Coordinator Neja since then. She had one final job to do. Her touch brought the fanblade, a lotus-like pane of living metal over which back-shadowed holographic screens sprang to life.

The primary document she had displayed had been prepared and authenticated, though it was not usual for such things to be sent electronically. More often than not an elegantly inscribed and illuminated example would be provided on permaparchment. This wasn’t required however.

The Office of the Coordinator of Mars of The Great Civilization of the C’tan
To Her Majesty Tristan I the Empress of the Hypatian Commonwealth

Your Majesty,
The Diplomatic Service of the Great Civilization has decided to give our citizen Callithua Regantar another appointment, having recalled her from the position of Resident Emissary of the Great Civilization to the Hypatian Commonwealth.

Being confident that Callithua Regantar has faithfully executed the office entrusted to her, the Diplomatic Service of the Great Civilization feels obligated to explain this decision.

Although the Diplomatic Service is gratified to see that the Hypatian Commonwealth has resolved amicably the poor relations between the Eternal Ascendancy of Menelmacar and itself, it is duly concerned by the increasing militancy that the Hypatian Commonwealth has expressed towards its citizens of Kadrian ethnicity, including the resignation of former Prime Minister Njord Ragnvold Stigandr immediately following the Sigurdshafn incident. Today this has been followed by the decision by the Rovanian Parliament to further extend its state of emergency and to effectively impose martial law in the region. This among a raft of other recent emergency measures have proved alarming to the Diplomatic Service.

The Diplomatic Service has also noted with concern that the senate of the Hypatian Commonwealth has today directly invested you with emergency powers. The Diplomatic Service is most concerned that the effect of these emergency powers will be to forestall the constitutional convention called for by your present Prime Minister, and that they are instead intended to allow you to proceed with the ‘Ascendance Project’ disputed with the Menelmacari, without scrutiny from your parliament, nor dispute from your people.

Your Majesty, the Diplomatic Service has considered less stringent warning measures than this, but regrettably, we do not feel your officials are capable of relaying to you the gravitas and urgency of our concerns without this tangible token of our deepest concern. We believe you are skirting the line of atrocity.

We call on you to disclose the full and complete details of the ‘Ascendance Project’ to your people, who will be greatly impacted. Should you fail to do this, the Diplomatic Service shall be sadly forced to conclude that their assessment is correct and that regardless of stated motives, your intention is to bind your nation under your direct rule in ways that undermine fundamental rights.

The Diplomatic Service believes that you feel that a sudden ‘Ascendance’ of your nation will result in a re-assessment of their status by involved polities and respect and eminence being accorded to the Hypatian Commonwealth. This is not likely; if you press ahead with reckless action, it will only cement a reputation for pressing ahead with foolish risks.

We remind your people that a number of options for immediate resettlement exist, including ourselves and the Republic of Sunset.

After consultation, the Diplomatic Service has decided not to expel your ambassadors, though you are of course at liberty to recall them, and you may also contact me directly via the medium of the Martian Forum.

Samara Neja
Co-ordinator, Mars

Callithua knew much more than was in the letter from her superior of course. The whole affair was deeply troubling to the Great Civilization, the increasing centralization of power around what they considered to be clearly poorly understood xeno-technology provided by aliens who most likely did not have Hypatian best interests at heart, which they showed every intention of forcing upon their people invasively, was reminiscent of one of the blackest of the many dark chapters of our bleak history.

The evacuation warning of the Great Civilization's persons from Hypatia was not going to be reversed, even though the Menelmacari had set aside their treaty concerns. In fact the meeting had made them all the more concerned.

A great number of their citizens recalled the forced bioconversion of their people by their predecessors, which was affected by tyrannical government overreach. The ‘Ascendance Project,’ also known as the ‘ATLAS project’ that the Menelmacari had been briefed on, appeared deeply reminiscent of this, a wide-reaching operation to alter the fundamental mind-state and substrate of the Hypatian people prepared in secret with aid from a species they barely knew. Famously, the monarch who ordered this in the Second Translation was wholly consumed with regret when he realized the depth of the mistake he had made, and abdicated his crown for penitential exile.

The bioconversion they remembered – that version of it at least – provided a form of immortality and certainly a physical upgrade, but the famous philosophical principle of double effect applied in full; it was also hoped by the Silent King Szarekh to have the effect of quelling disunity and ensuring his legacy. His goals were personal and dynastic, as well as, in his mind, providing greater national strength and he did not act as a true servant of the people. He was not remembered as a faithful servant of the people. He lived yet, but he did not rule, and alone among the great multitude of the Great Civilization, no others bore his name, for his crime was so abominated that none would name their children with it or take it for their own, and those who had borne it before the great sleep had cast it aside, for it was a soiled thing.

Callithua pressed the confirmation button to relay the message, and touched a few more controls, folding the terminal and letting her eyes look out at the crowd, as a wave of discorporation flashed through the building, and through her body, the whole building became a rain of denatured dust that left a gap in the city, a hole in the ground like the wound in a gum after a tooth extraction. Not a single particle remained of Callithua or her embassy.

[The Ctan]

Truneval Ancalimiva held her breath as she plunged through the freezing waters, feeling her frame tighten in the darkness even a few dozen feet down as she kicked her legs, her wings propelling her with oar-like strokes as she pushed herself through the water, before bursting again from it a short way off.

She was one of the worst swimmers in the world. But then, it was an ocean world.

The world was known as Larna’s Breath, one of the countless worlds settled by the Great Civilization, or at least marked for settlement, though for many cultures it was far from prime real estate, as it was all but without a terrestrial surface, a single vast ocean seven hundred kilometers deep.

She burst from the ocean with a gasp, her pale hair pulled back against her head, and she pulled herself up so that her forearms rested on the outrigger of the pier, before she took a deep breath and hauled herself out.

She called upon the aether and cast a charm of fastidiousness on herself, the water fell from her body, leaving only a touch in her hair and dismissed from her wings as though repelled by magnetism, and her cheeks colored with the touch of visible makeup on her pale skin. The suns were already warming her again.

Another touch to her bracelet converted the swimming garment she wore from its cling-tight deployed form, to long dress that reflected her homeland, leaving her shoulders and arms bare, displaying a tattoo of the ankh of the triarch on her shoulder, leaving no doubt as to her commitment. As if there were any doubt left by that the dress she wore bore the pale blue of the Ancalimë clan, worn with the seal of her husband on its shoulder strap in gleaming gold. The dress worked by shifting molecules, it was a single layer of living metal that could become a mist or a garment. Stooping she picked up a string of pearls and Altean jade, wrapping it loosely around her waist. She was not a C’tani Citizen, but one of the many Patriates of the Great Civilization.

In a society that prized identity as much as the C’tani did, and disparaged distinction by species or gender or other biology, dress was important, and her garments proclaimed belonging, a place in the universe, and the status of her family. Although she had come to the Great Civilization, she had decided against the political participation required of its citizens, though it was something she would absolutely require from her daughter, and the son she would soon treasure, in time.

To much of the galaxy she would look like a human with broad wings mounted on her back and subtle augmentation of her chest muscles and bones to accommodate them, but they were not the product of science but aeons old magic. She considered taking to the air, but decided against it, resting her hand on her belly, as she glanced at the bangle around her wrist, glancing over prenatal information and her demanding health regimen. She could have kept her body in shape in less traditional ways, but she enjoyed the sense of accomplishment. Satisfied, she dismissed it and walked in from the pier, toward the circular rings of the floating city.

Miliah and Chance were waiting for her, the pair had arrived around the same time, and their garments were similar in the symbols they displayed. “I still cannot believe you do that for leisure,” Miliah said.

“You’ll succumb eventually!” she said, teasing the other woman, both were of similar age and upbringing, from a society that had treated all manner of contact with seawater as ritually impure.

“You’re a swanling, I’m a gracklan!” she added, “Water is hardly good for me.”

Truneval gave a broad shouldered shrug, “It’s absolutely fun, though,” she said, “thanks for waiting for me.

“What’s next?” Chance asked, he actually was a human, tousled dark hair and piercing steel-blue eyes, as he looked to Miliah, who in turn looked back to Truneval, “It’s your trip,” she said.

“The deep tour leaves in about an hour,” glancing off to the side of the city, “but I wanted to take a look through the markets, before we do,” Truneval said.

The platform-city had several markets, it was after all a primary trade hub for bringing things to and from the world. Intra-system and even intra-planetary trade were a small percentage of the volume of production within the Great Civilization but that was still a vast amount.

[The Ctan]

The Outer Rim, Skyriver Galaxy

The Flutterplume shot from hyperspace.

“That’s it, then?” Sirenna asked.

K5 confirmed the scans, looking at the screens around him. “I can confirm,” he said.

Ethril looked up, leaning over the emancipated security ‘droid’s dome shaped head to look at the planet in the forward pane of the cockpit’s transparisteel windows. “Tund,” he said. “I feel it.”

Sirenna knew better than to question his insights. Often Ethril knew things that the woman couldn’t comprehend. He was a Jedi, a knight of that mystic order, of the division called the Jedi Covenant.

Tund was a lost world, green as a polished jade in the darkness of the sky. Long lost except from the rarest maps.

The wayfinder sat in the cradle linked to the Flutterplume’s navicomputer. A piece of stone and glass, with strange liquid computer medium flowing within it in response to heat currents.

The thing was precious, few could reach this world, and only Ethril could have made it, of all the hundreds of pilots that Sirenna knew, even herself, and she was always a better pilot in real space.

Sirenna was already in action, her hands dancing across the controls, “No sign of any traffic control, some industry, but no full spaceport homing signal,” she said.

Ehtril disconnected the wayfinder. There were ways to get here, the Jedi could do it, several of their holocrons held the secret path, but this wasn’t a mission for the Jedi.

“Where to now?” she asked, watching him.

He looked far away, and she shifted from the pilot’s seat, standing, hovering like a probe droid, watching carefully, squeezing around one another. He keyed in a series of landing coordinates. Guided by the force, perhaps.

“There we go,” he said. “Do you want to…”

He didn’t need to wait, and moved out of the way as Sirenna retook her place at the front.

Tund

As they disembarked, Sirenna could feel the unspoilt air of the world hit her nostrils, hand on the butt of her heavy blast pistol. The landing site was a cleared area, blast-baked solid. Ahead of them, a series of buildings rose, mountainous structures of stone half overgrown by jungle.

“Could this world be dead?” she asked, “or this city at least?” she added, thinking back to the signs of industry.

“It’s not dead,” K5-U3 said. “I sense several life-forms in underground tunnels. He held a heavy blaster rifle, too large for a man to carry. She’d seen him split a chaos marine in half with it, and level small buildings.

She smiled, “Guess they don’t get many visitors. Do you know if they even speak basic.”

“Maybe,” Ethril said.

“Hello!” she called. “We’re explorers, we mean no harm.”

Ethril looked at K5, who gave a small shrug of his mechanoid shoulders.

“Hello?” she called again, stepping forward. “I don’t suppose there’s an ancient language you want to try?”

Ethril began to think, considering the ancient languages.

A roar split the jungle’s song.

“Or maybe they’re hiding from that,” Sirenna said, turning.

Ethril and K5 took a moment longer to look at the monster.

The creature was a hulking simian beast with a head that looked like a ramship.

K5 wasn’t subtle, he fired at once, a direct shot that hit it head on. It dropped back and was thrown three meters.

“I do hope that wasn’t a sacred beast,” Ethril said.

As if called by his words, figures began to emerge, wrapped in dark red clothes. None of them were armed, but they were clearly a range of ages and species.

“Hello?” Sirenna said.

The group chattered in a strange tongue. Ethril listened carefully. He spoke the old Sith tongues, and he could tell this was a descendant tongue. He was saved from having to venture an attempt to communicate as one stepped forwards.

“Jedi, offworlder,” the figure was a woman, he thought, though not human, half the height, and strange. “Welcome. We thank you.”

“Could you not have done something about it yourself? Do you not have any blasters?” Sirenna asked.

The woman shook her head. “No, outworlder. Blasters are not found here. This is Tund. The Sorcerers have no time for guns.”

Sirenna put her hands on her hips and looked at Ethril with clear reproach, just for a moment, “Well if you want to leave, we’ve got room for a few dozen people.”

She laughed, a bitter laugh, “Came here to escape the galaxy, in the ruins. I wouldn’t want to go back to the chaos.”

Sirenna wondered how she’d come to this hidden world, but couldn’t argue that with the quadrillions who had died recently, there was certainly chaos.

“My name is Ethril, this is Sirenna and K5,” he said.

“Ulta Zeen,” she said.

“Are there any sorcerers here?” Ethril asked.

“Not for days,” she said. “Caron Saa said that he would return, but he went to hunt a dragon that was affecting the outlying settlements,” she said.

“Perhaps we should go looking,” Sirenna said, not looking forward to spending days waiting for this Sorcerer to return.”

“Do not worry,” Ulta said, “we have prepared for you. Both of you.”

“Both of them,” K5 said.

Ulta shook her head, “No, you too. Both your group and the other ship.”

[Covenant Jedi]

Ossus

“Master Ingar, is this truly a wise option?”

The Jedi Master Tammas Ingar was a species called Quelid, almost entirely unknown to the wider galaxy. He wore brown robes that covered a frame slightly larger than most humans, his hands folded before him in his lap. Four scarlet eyes looked out over the plains of Ossus. “It is not because of ill will that we should consider preventing this, but practical reasons.”

Jedi Knight Zada Vas watched him attentively. She had been his student for many years and though she was now a Jedi Knight in her own right, she still appreciated Master Ingar’s guidance. She said nothing.

“The Great Civilization has given us a lot of assets, and they seem quite content to shower the Jedi Order with resources, to a degree we have not seen for generations. They offered twenty five Praxeum-ships, and those are Rendili-built star destroyers, along with escorts and mission ships of many sorts,” he said.

“With respect, Master, that does also fit with their general policies, they are seeking to build up galactic resources against another threat. They have rebuilt the Centrality Navy, and more independent planets than you can shake a stick at. They are even trying to persuade Aquilae to become a new nexus of Outer Rim activity. I have heard that the Queen of Aquilae has been invited to make a state-visit to their galaxy.”

“Ah, Aquilae. The Jedi order has always kept a distance from the rangers of Aquilae, but the C’tani want the Jedi Order to work closer with them, to man the navy they want us to have. They seek to make the Jedi into a military. The dissident conclave they have established is more proof of that.”

She nodded, she had her own concerns about the way they wanted to change the order. Everyone in her circle agreed there was a need for change. Over recent generations there had been no shortage of states that had either become, or proven to be, hostile to the Jedi, while Sith marauders were encountered in the wild with alarming regularity, even outside of their supposed empires. And then there were other threats, the worshippers of ‘Chaos’ that had poisoned the galaxy, and the likes of the Clone Masters and the Covenant.

Master Dooku’s proposals had found a willing audience, but she agreed with Master Ingar, splitting the Order, as he had functionally proposed, and returning to the practices of thousands of years ago, adult recruitment, decentralized training, and Jedi led by their own conscience rather than the council, and even recognizing the orders of state-jedi some cultures had, was a slippery slope to total dissolution. “I agree that this is a provocation,” she said, “and concerning.”

“That Dooku’s former apprentice has taken an interest in the Sorcerers of Tund cannot be allowed. Consider the danger they could pose if the C’tani get what they want,” Ingar said. “The Sith ideology destroyed Huntaer, an reprehensible state, certainly, but the deaths of countless billions marked their virulent implosion. The Sorcerers may be passive, but they also preserve their own form of the Sith ideology. They must be convinced to remain where they are.”

“I had hoped to lead a mission to Kendar,” she said, “they are in urgent need. But, I fear you may be right, Master Ingar,” she said. “I will go to Tund.”

[The Ctan]

Tephet-Sheta, Duat, The Mictlan System – Capital of the Great Civilization

Axatirno sat in his chamber with a finger pressed to his temple. He wasn’t alone. Triarch praetorians stood on either side of him, and his finger rubbed gently in place, slow circuits around and round once more. The weight of his office hung heavy sometimes.

To his left, a screen showed the status of the greater conflicts the Great Civilization was presently engaged in. Some were well known, such as the Triangulum Affair, while others such as the Endymion Expedition, which made all other commitments look trivial, were obscure outside the Great Civilization and set its future.

To his right, an armature held the Heirloom Silver Robes of his office, stately official garments spun from fragments of ancient pre-War-in-Heaven living metal fabrics, and the wide crest headdress that ancient traditions granted him, and the Scythe of Dust, the traditional weapon of his ancient office.

Axatirno was older than many civilizations, six thousand years old and more, but the weight of his responsibility and expectations on him were enormous.

Hemmed between these, he looked at his guests.

‘So, explain this new weapon to me again,’ he said.

‘Certainly,’ the Interlocutor said, ‘essentially it uses a Chirine Dark Matter conversion process to create a dark energy pulse that expands the local metric of spacetime by accelerating the decay of dark matter into an expanded region of spacetime metric, for a vessel in the capital ship range this is essentially unnoticeable except with modern sensors, but for something with a wider spatial configuration, like a World Engine, God-Star or a Sekhedau WorldShip, the effect is directly proportional to the acceleration the target is under, particularly if it uses a reactionless drive. The deeper a gravitic drive reaches into the spacetime metric, the more… you might say sheer forces are exerted.’

He looked at the woman opposite him, one of a dozen that had come back with an answer from the Great Civilization Conflict Service’s request for a more elegant way to demolish WorldShips. After a recent incident it had become clear that a more elegant way of engaging such targets was needed; not that simply applying overwhelming force didn’t work, but cleanup operations from the recent engagement had lasted longer than the military engagement.

‘And this isn’t going to be stopped by faster-than-light interdiction technologies?’ he asked.

‘Not at all, the weapon works on purely sublight techniques.’

‘And of course, it goes through shields because it starts the decay process in the spacetime volume the ship is accelerating into, not the one within its fields or shields. When a target is engaged, what happens to the gravitic effect of suddenly making an enemy WorldShip inert?’

‘Because the weapon uses Chirine decay it is dumping a huge quantity of dark energy into the local environment, offsetting the gravitic impact until the dispersal is complete, at which point all the models we’ve run show a ten-exponent-five reduction in radiant gravitic impact.’

‘How much of a risk of Sekhedau imitation do we need to worry about? Mon’keigh see, mon’keigh do, after all,’ he said. The world was Yldari, often thought incorrectly to be a slur against humans; in fact, it was a slur against all sorts of interstellar cretins, and its use referred to an ancient species of furred barbarians who had caused trouble for the Yldari before the war in heaven. Axatirno was a Bajoni, not a Yvressi, but he had lived closely with them on Mars for many decades, and he could not resist the pun.

Here the Interlocutor spread her hands wide, ‘The usual “we have that too” brigade will try the moment they see it fired in anger, of course, but without an extensive understanding of dark matter structures and entities and long-range intergalactic drives, and a substantial operational history with both, anything they could manufacture would be a cheap and nasty imitation, easily defended against. With a reliance on humanoid labour and resistance to gravitic technologies, most of them would not even be able to confine the requisite amount of any form of dark matter.’

Axatirno was one of the political leaders of the Great Civilization, but he had to admit he was less intelligent than the Interlocutor, he couldn’t even pretend to have the in-depth understanding mentioned, even the Interlocutor might not be able to.

Many of the Great Civilization’s most intelligent citizens, vast AI constructs such as Xolotl, the gas-giant mind in the outer reaches of this star system, were strange and found speaking to organic sapients difficult or frustrating. Their intelligence was vast and often remote; they were in some ways like gods, though on the far side from humans of that scale.

Interlocutors were the prophets of these creatures, a mixture of training and preference that made them intuitively able to grasp the scintillating thoughts of such remote beings, and relate them to others; not all were organic, it was little easier for a Sepa-class AI such as a warship, or Apis-class AI such as most humanoid scale drones to speak to something like Xolotl without both parties becoming frustrated. It was a rare vocation to ease such interactions.

Contemplating the existence of such hyper-sapient beings was always a little injurious to the ego, of course, the political and even military institutions of the Great Civilization were largely run by Sepa-class intellects and below, and technically he was the joint-second most powerful being in all Civilization. But when dealing with Interlocutors and the entities they spoke to, he did feel something like the chief ant in the terrarium. The higher intellects tended to keep their distance but it was still… off-putting at times.

Yesterday the Conflict Service had asked for a new weapons platform to exterminate hostile WorldShips in an FTL-interdicted environment from a standard capital ship; today he was looking through the answer.

‘We’ll have to let at least the Peer Group of nations know we have this, if we’re rolling it out, it is simple enough to defend against but a few of them might get jittery about their megastructures if we just vaporise some neobarb warship with a single shot with a new weapon,’ he said, ‘once they run their own analyses and determine it is only a threat to megastructure-scale craft that is actually accelerating, I don’t think there will be too much concern, and I agree but I think there’s enough here to authorise production. I’ll have the briefing made up.’

[The Ctan]

Great Civilization Diplomatic Service
Mystrian Strategic Interest Conclave

Pan-Mystrian International Convention for Glory and Prosperity Retrospective
Year-End B.593
Disclosure Class: Public

The Great Civilization Mystrian Strategic Interest Conclave considers the Glorelheim Conference a limited success, with a number of actions taken away from the events. With the intention of the Strategic Interest Conclave being in-part to facilitate response to an anticipated time of crisis.

Some acrimoniousness was observed in the latter part of the conference, as well as the general outcomes, in terms of frameworks for international institutions, and agreement to limit interactions of superluminal states within the region to the Eternal Ascendancy of Menelmacar, the Great Civilization of the C’tan and the Colonial Republic of Dornalia, the conference was also used to detail the Ardarisil megastructure by the Ascendancy, and to address a programme of uprunging for participating governments, as well as to propose a number of cultural institutions.

Bilateral agreement was also achieved for the transfer of the Plains of Hubris to Rohane Alista, and the Kouralian government’s approval obtained.

A Kouralian spy, operating under the name Lyanyr Reyhm, was apprehended while attempting to interfere with the security of the conference, and has since been held by the Great Civilization Insight Instrumentality.

As predicted, by the end of the year the region has been affected by a number of armed conflicts, though the specifics of course were not known in detail in advance. Substantial conflicts to-date are:

• The Winter War, located in Silverdale. Current Status: Concluded
• The Return of Tambelon, located in Kouralia, Malgrave, Hippocratia and the Freethinkers.
• The Dragon States Conflict, located in Catedonia and the Dragon States. Current Status: Escalated from pre-conference state.
• Subterranean Insurrection in Rintyar, Current Status: Unresolved
• Subterranean Insurrection in Rohane Alista, Current Status: Unresolved
• Civil Insurrection/Revolution in the Greater Pony Herd, Current Status: Unresolved

Great Civilization intervention has mitigated casualties in a number of these.

Conflict Service Deployments

The following operations are active within the purview of the Mystrian SIC:

• Altean Confederation Liberation Mission, Nemesor Niphrekh ita Thurasid
• Crystal Spires Stabilization Mission, Nemesor Anatirakh ita Aravakh
• Dragon States Liberation Mission, Nemesor Aat Ithakas Meretnebty
• Malgrave Planetary Defence Mission, Ascendant-General Pai’len Raruon
• Miauku Assistance Mission, Expedition-General Sanethre Djedmose
• Plains of Hubris Containment Mission, Royarch Larshen Nauris

The Mystrian region continues to be of paramount importance to the Great Civilization and the region is still assigned a full contingent of voidships, typically between sixty and one hundred Apedemak-category voidship assets are ring-fenced for the support of these missions and rapid reaction throughout the rest of the region, these are typically positioned in geo-stationary orbit above the equator.

Healthcare Development

In the coming year one of our major proirities will be to localize anti-thantoic medicine throughout the region, although the Great Civilization’s Ardan policy has been to allow juvenat treatments sufficient to extend the baseline hominid lifespan to six hundred years (essentially the entry-level life extension regime) on request to any person exempting nations under specific sanction (e.g. Dragon States, Turtleshroom) the uptake of this is usually limited by mistrust and local utility, with most users instead moving to the Great Civilization over time.

It is worth noting that certain species and species-groups have an innate resistance to anti-thanatoic medicine, including most north Mystrian beastlings, and certain elves, although research in these areas continues. Likewise, the specific availability will vary by species and general healthcare plan for an individual.

In the past we have not sought partners to locally produce juvenats as the precursor technologies allow for misapplied or other dangerous uses. Although this remains a risk, institutional access to uprunging guidance on domestic production of class-A juvenats will be made available to Mystrian nations not under specific sanction by the GCDS in the coming year.

International Aid

Aid is presently given or offered to the following nations:

1. Catedonia, general aid including arms transfers, supporting the movement of Tlatoani Tizocicatzin to expel Dragon States settlers. Weapons used typically consist of synthesis of munitions and equipment at any scale of surface or atmospheric equipment, as well as deployment of fire-and-forget missiles, charge-shot and las-frac rounds for uprating conventional weapons, but respond to requests proactively.
2. Dragon States, restructuring and rebuilding aid, although the Dragon States may be transferred to occupation by aligned forces, at the present time the Great Civilization ground presence translates into an interim governance situation.
3. Fortuna Colony, Freethinkers Commonwealth, medical aid for the Tambelonic Conflict.
4. Hippocratia, medical aid for the Tambelonic Conflict.
5. Kouralia, including arms transfers, to support in the Tambelon Conflict. Great Civilization support in this area is subordinated to aid provided by Crystal Spires, in return for aid previously provided to Crystal Spires.
6. Malgrave including arms transfers, to support in the Tambelon Conflict. Great Civilization support in this area is subordinated to aid provided by Crystal Spires, in return for aid previously provided to Crystal Spires.
7. Rintyar, medical and rebuilding support for cities affected by attacks by the rogue actor classified as Pseudo-Tzitzimitl, most commonly known by the pseudonym ‘Vahzen.’ Great Civilization support in this area is subordinated to aid provided by Crystal Spires, in return for aid previously provided to Crystal Spires.
8. Rohane Alista, medical and evacuation support for the Golden Towers Incursion. Great Civilization support in this area is subordinated to aid provided by Crystal Spires, in return for aid previously provided to Crystal Spires.
9. Silverdale, rebuilding aid after the Winter War. Great Civilization support in this area is subordinated to aid provided by Crystal Spires, in return for aid previously provided to Crystal Spires.
10. Thalassium, medical and rebuilding aid for cities affected by attacks by the rogue actor Pseudo-Tzitzimitl.

Aid distribution is routed through the Nightspire of the Principality of Princess Luna, the City Ship of Isasrach, and the current attachment of the hospital vessels Kerowyn and Bhaisajyaguru, each of the Ayu class and capable of trauma medicine and intensive care for a combined total of six million persons at any given time. Munitions and reconstruction material is presently provided by the Manufactory Vessel Sublimation of Virtue.

Wanted Persons

The Great Civilization has in this cycle added two more wanted persons to its upper-level classification:

• Pseudo-Tzitzimitl alias Vahzen, wanted confirmed proof of death, or alive.
• Grogar, alias Father of Monsters, Lord of Tambelon, wanted confirmed proof of death, or alive.

The reward for information leading to capture or death of either of these persons (the general location of Grogar is known and no reward attaches to this information in itself) is sixty million credits.

[The Ctan]

Summergarden, Special Purpouse Fringeworld

Jagada’s library was a place of gothic arches that loomed cavernously away from the lancet windows that looked out on landscaped gardens that extended for sixty acres beyond the towering residence she called home. Summergarden was a fringe world as the Great Civilization would ordinarily classify it, and that meant that the residential surface area was formidable. Few people wanted to live there, however, and continuous exposure could make most standard humans uncomfortable, while those of more magically inclined breeds would find themselves persistently affected by maladies that had no medical explanation; even If they were in wholly augmented bodies, so long as they were ensouled.

Laughter came from beyond the door and she laughed with her companions, two men who appeared young but were far from it, the older of them wore a black wig with a badger stripe through it over short hair, and a frock coat adorned with the Ancestral Aquila. ‘Come back quickly,’ he said, standing in the doorway with one heel adjacent to the toe of his buckled boot.

‘Of course!’ she said, her arm trailing her flowing robe as she blew him a kiss, crossing the room past a wealth of printed books as he went back the to drawing room, and she headed into the study.

Her study was a little different to the rest of the house, architecturally. While much of it was a slice of her home culture, the study was built in two parts, one a simple reading room, but the other to Great Civilization Conflict Service standards, several immersive soligram projectors made up one wall while a broad table with a tapering aspect that allowed her to attend meetings and examine documents securely, outside her own head, but without needing to travel, which was more often than not her preference.

On Summergarden’s northwestern continent it was close to midnight, but in Mystria it was early afternoon. They would vary over time, Summergarden had a twenty-six hour day. Such things did make timekeeping a little tedious sometimes, but it was easy enough for her to deal with, she had dealt with far worse privations in her long life.

The secure area closed and confirmed a security sweep, and she made the sign of invocation as she sat down at the table, adjusting her evening robe. The room shimmered away and she was sat at a larger table with half a dozen mages and her fellow pariahs from Squad Verais. It was the only way to keep most mages in the room with them.

‘Sisters,’ she said, to the others, as they waited, she knew who was on Fallgarden and who was embarked on a ship, but she could see most were attired in civilian garb, as she was, ‘Comrades.’

Similar greetings flowed around the table, and a hush fell as the group waited for the briefing to begin. ‘This is the status update for Terran Empyric Intrusion Zone Two, better known as the Plains of Hubris,’ one of the mages, Jagada was almost certain that his name was Melagaunt, but she didn’t want to query the executive buffer within her mind to confirm it, it felt a little rude to do that rather than to actually remember. She knew that Katisha did just have it prompt her for everyone she met twice.

‘With the reduced nullity of the Rohanian population, we have stepped up monitoring in this area, and it appears that Telissat Amris’ political gambit is in danger of failing. We’ve confirmed at this time that the entire original population is wholly and completely non-extant, and scattered contact with organic chaos worshippers is due to enemy activity, namely empiric transit of chaos-loyalist populations to the territory,’ Melagaunt continued.

‘But despite this we have also observed that as overall nullity effect of the Rohanian population has reduced, this is no longer deemed a worthwhile effort by the Manifestations-of-Glories-Unearned,’ Jagada really preferred to say “greater daemons” but the formality of these sort of meetings tended toward technical terms, there were many things that could call themselves daemons, but this particular typology was unique, ‘who lead enemy forces in Terran Zone Two.’

‘They don’t think they need mortal hands any more,’ Thelia said. She was one of Jagada’s squad, one of her Mystrians. She was proud of all of them, she did not lead, that was Verais’ job, but Thelia was the one who usually spoke first in this sort of briefing.

‘That’s our assessment,’ Melagaunt said, ‘we believe it is highly likely as the anti-magical effects of the Rohanian population diminish we will see a sustained attack by the Primordial Annihilator’s forces on their settlement there, and an effort to remove our pylons.’

‘Can they handle it?’ Jagada asked.

‘Possibly,’ Melagaunt said, ‘we are also concerned about conflict spreading to the Kouralian Wall Redoubt, and the southern frontier. Our main concern is that the removal of the anti-magic effect may actually prove worse than not having it there in the first instance, and that there will be an empyiric upwelling in the region that will temporarily expand a major Warp influence over the whole continent.’

‘Can we handle it?’ she asked.

‘That is the main question,’ Melagaunt said, ‘we could easily blanket the continent in full nullification pylons and null matrices, but that would displace a substantial part of the Kouralian population, the population of Haywaii and perhaps the Silverdalean population,’ Thelia’s home nation, ‘too. That’s our least preferred option. Ideally, we need to begin a programme of structural reinforcement of the continent’s existing pylon networks to compensate for the influence of chaos, without relying on brute force nullification.’

‘You want to use the waystone technique instead?’ Irulan said, ‘To channel the warp energies from the rift away from the populated areas?’

Melagaunt nodded, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do…’

[The Ctan]

Project Callion required few administrative staff, one of those quiet things that existed in the interior of the Great Civilization. Their role was a simple premise, to contemplate the location where major Falls might happen, and to prepare reality stabilization for such things.

Edgar Leyton sat at wide desk with a series of permaparchment maps and a galactic orrery, lit by Mictlan’s light through a series of curving windows that made up most of the study.

On that desk sat a piece of material as black as ink, with the texture of schist, broken loose from a larger object, one side of it utterly flat and glassy, the other sides marred by damage. From time to time as he studied, the human man picked it up, his fingertips stroking the inerting material.

Before him projected from a fanblade was a risk analysis on an entity labelled Nikau Sic Kami, one of the more pressing risks that had crossed through Project Callion’s workflow in recent years. Possible emergency points were myriad, though the risk factor was moderate, it necessitated a whole new generation of thought on how to deploy inertic arrays.

With a nod he attached his approval to the motion, the last one required to move the next phase of Callion, intended to counter Nikau Sic Kami forward to deployment.

[The Ctan]

Small fighters were far from the backbone of the Great Civilization’s interstellar forces. The notion was largely considered laughable within the military schools of peer powers, perhaps only the Menelmacari had a reputation for maintaining a bleeding edge proficiency in this area from the peers in the Great Wheel, with the Thoron and Soron fighters seen in their many generations over many battlefields.

Some considered the love of such craft an expression of individualism, the Dornalians were also users of the niche.

Many other nations wrote off the whole field as unworthy of consideration as a ‘snub fighter’ could never threaten a warship, could not penetrate shields unless they were kinetic triggered shields.

But there was another law to military operations, as much as it mattered to be resilient, being able to deploy the forces wherever an opponent could often mattered more. The mission to the Skyriver Galaxy had often found that cheap hyperdrives made an environment in which relocating even a raider was simply wasteful, the traditional response to this was the Striker-class patrol boat, ubiquitous in the Great Wheel, but even that was a tremendous overscale of force.

‘Now ready for serialized production in four forms,’ Kyrrik said as he announced his solution to this particular concern, gently moving with a tip-tapping of his four locomotive claws, moving toward where holographic bubbles concealed the work of his nest-cooperative, gesturing expansively to the first of them. The soap-bubble like concealment field vanished to reveal the core of the new series.

‘The Canoptek Tri-Fighter,’ he announced.

Senator Windthorn watched with polite interest, she’d seen a lot of new weapons at this point, part of her role in the oversight of the conflict service was monitoring their development to feed back to the Senatorial Permanent Committee of Military Affairs, and the ritual of presenting these things was familiar to her now.

‘Most impressive,’ she said, the small cluster of other interservice observers, some uniformed, some not, waited for her to speak first.

‘This is the default model,’ Kyrrik said, ‘capable of operating with a tachyonic shunt hyperdrive or inertialess drive, either mode allows a tesseract drive to be equipped for tactical maneuver and capable of being deployed “Tavan Style.” The additional tesseract drive is a payload concession however, and the lowest production synthesis cost is to create the unit with a tachyonic shunt drive, which allows a total internal payload volume of ten cubic meters, the currently designed payload is a quadruple carousel dispenser that can release missiles from any of six weapons ports on the joining points of the forward wings. A standard load for the Skyriver patrol mission is one hundred twenty eight missiles, concussion missiles or proton torpedoes, but of course, it is also capable of holding any standard category three missile.’

‘And the variants, Doctor?’ Elsina Windthorn asked.

‘Variant one, a spaceframe variant with metagold weave, higher synthesis cost of course, but capable of energistic conversion to photonic waveform,’ he said.

‘Impressive,’ she said, ‘and the next?’

‘Manned, capable of holding organics in volume up to your own subspecies for missions up to multi-day duration with essential facilities, reducing payload to thirty six standard missiles, but allowing for manned-unmanned teaming and for local political decision making as needed,’ he said, ‘Of course all variants can interface via entanglement so there is not necessarily a need for that in routine operation. The final one is for the Astral Fleet...’

[The Ctan]

Martian Housekeeping

There was an old story that you could boil a frog if you gradually increased the temperature of the water in which he had been placed, he would not notice and perish. It was false.

There was an old tale that people would forget what it was to be free if you simply ignored them long enough. That one was also untrue.

The removal of Triumvirate of Yut iconography was the biggest offence to the people here that had been possible. Resistance had started immediately, first small acts of economic noncompliance, protests, and then sabotage of military apparatus.

In most circumstances the Occupier would have been able to transfer more troops into the territory, more settlers, more brutalisers. They didn’t have the chance, they didn’t have enough troops.

The Triumvirate Protectorate Territory of Ravenspire Mars (previous administrators including Cetaganda) had at one point been a domain of warlords brought into line with a mix of the threat of orbital bombardment and diplomacy, but it was still an area awash with guns and munitions, with clans of vulpine natives of Ravenspire still surprisingly able to take large scale action.

The Cetagandans had built first class infrastructure that was now crumbling under decades of misrule and embezzlement, maglev lines scraping in places as elements had corroded and roads with cracks that spider-webbed into massive potholes.

But with Sentinel Two just over the border there was no shortage of new weapons and ammunition for old ones. The mean level of munitions was surprisingly even, with the Occupier forces defined largely as “all bling, no basics” in places.

Three months from mild to maelstrom.

Of course, the mercenary orcs of the Angoron had their own role to play, crossing the border in numbers that astute observers attributed to the support of the Great Civilization Influence Instrumentality. Such comments were not answered. Neither was the viral footage of both natives and orcs eating at least one occupying soldier at a barbeque commented on by the northern neighbours.

When the last of the battered Occupiers were in their garrisons or shallow graves, the resurgent warlords had time to assemble a civilian mouthpiece, and a vague effort at a democratic mandate; the argument was that the Triumvirate Protectorate Territory could not remain as part of an ex member’s de-facto governance, and the response forthcoming from the Coordinator in Sentinel One had been a simple acceptance and forces had been deployed to excise the remaining military occupiers.

This constituted in the ordinary scheme of things, a small but necessary bit of business.

[The Ctan]

Naevys Nhaéslal ita Hyksos stepped from the Far-Angled Gate, the sensation was a sharp one. Standard travel had no sensation save a momentary coldness and whatever change in the atmosphere and gravity one experienced, but those that went over far greater distances had a characteristic sensation of motion, a lurching in the bones. It was an artifice, she believed, a way to distinguish these vastly more accomplished foldings of space from those that might be as routine as passing through a doorway to many C’tani.

Courelie ita Thurasid greeted her with a smile. ‘Welcome to Pinnacle,’ she said.

Naevys looked up at the stars above. She recognized none of them, but had not expected to. Everything else was familiar, a standard template of sea-green metal, ornamented with patterns from dozens of cultures to a whole that blended the austere angles of the ancient necrontyr with softening personalizing elements from many cultures. ‘The pleasure is mine,’ she said, touching her sternum and then making an informal salute.

Courelie turned around, folding her wings close, ‘Have you ever been to the far wall before?’

‘I have not,’ she said, ‘I have visited the Unitarian Front but not here,’ she said.

‘You will find things much quieter here,’ Courelie said. ‘A place to chart future designs.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, as they crossed the courtyard from the gateway, security stele standing dormant on either side of them.

‘Is it the best place to discuss the design for the Drift,’ she said.

‘The C’tan is here, so it is useful to be here,’ she said.

They entered a building, one of many that had been clearly built together with the rest of this place, all harmonious enough to have been simply erected according to a simple template, long planters of dark soil showing that no plants had yet grown in this place.

‘No native ecosystem yet?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Courelie said, ‘and a simple still pool of mana, no weave yet,’ she said. ‘Pinnacle is the flat lake before the first stone is cast.’

‘Excellent,’ Naevys said.

[The Ctan]

Great Wheel Galaxy, Norma Arm, Dorsal Outer Boundary, Galactic Longitude 112 degrees

There were many places in the universe where things that shouldn’t have been were. Many of them held secrets. This was one of them. The crescent shape of one of the larger personal transports used by the Great Civilization’s citizens, that could match a pre-Starchange raider in its displacement rested in the sky of a worldlet whose atmosphere was unbreathable to most.

Hordes of machine constructs crawled the land below, the protean life, none of it larger than two hand-spans, did not react to them, second-order predators had not yet emerged from the seas. Fields of stromatalites made wide curves around the edges of the landscape, and anything that entered or exited the ship was swept by rad-cleansers and anorganic fields.

The pop of the displacer wasn’t audible to Meridia Nightwing as she arrived on the surface, the sea-green surface of the environment suit was not entirely unfamiliar to her, she had trained with a number of such tools, but it was her first time using it to walk the surface of a Sanctuary World, one of many that the Great Civilization’s gaze rested on.

The small perimeter of the work site that had been established was marked out by a flickering field that kept the native wildlife out, and she remained within it, stepping up to the wall. Three figures stood before it, one working with the text, the other two watching him. The taller figure wore no suit, while the two others did, he did not need it.

‘If I may,’ she said, ‘a moment of your time Kal’thara.’

Ranisath turned from the ruins of the ancient Slaan, ‘Of course Meri,’ he said.

‘I thought it best to come and check before I interrupted, but given who it’s from, even though it’s not marked urgent,’ she said, holding out a fanblade to him.

‘The CIDES and Allied Misadventures Correction Group,’ he said.

Ranisath was no longer the head of state, but that did not mean life or interests ended. He had several social roles and titles. Proctor of the Universariate of Vanath-Thekt, Emperor of Axara, a commission as a reserve officer to justify occasionally calling on him to destroy something. He had several organizations, too, the Sathsarrion Foundation, the Redsands Institute and Political College, and more. He still had a staff, even though many of these roles he could have handled directly; people liked to speak to someone to put their case forward when they wanted something. That was the largest part of Meridia’s job.

‘Apparently, they would like access to your archives, they want to know about policy decisions relating to early promulgation of cortex technologies in the pre-New-Triumvirate era. An interview too,’ she said.

‘I see they want to know about old policy. They should have it in the old ISA archives. Though I suppose de Vere will tell them to fuck off if they go to ask him for anything without a warrant. We really need to find him some way to put his energies into something other than his grudges. I’ll answer their questions. Tell Sala to invite them in for a meeting at Saubala House next week,’ he said, ‘and give them what they want on the Personal Archive, they could subpoena it but I don’t think anyone wants these kinds of inquiries going through the courts, and there’s not much they won’t have in the Triarch Archives anyway.’

[The Ctan]

The Crimson Star Combine were one of the more famous shipbuilders in the Great Civilization, with shipyards scattered through the arms, halo, streams and satellites of the Great Wheel Galaxy and beyond. Demand for ships was vibrant and endless. The shipyards at Siedon were however among the five most prestigious in the galaxy. The entire system was given over to this, from the classically inhabited planet to its gas giants and surrounding volumes, or the stellar harnesses that cradled the system’s stars, drawing power to shape the captured dwarf stars that rosetted the system. Dimensional oubliettes and interstices made more of it invisible to the naked eye than was visible.

The Crimson Star’s principal ring-dock complex was only one of many in the system, home to a corporate headquarters that was tastefully industrial and welcoming.

Matriarch G’rel’ta watched the facility as her skiff approached. Her homeworld of Igzia was smaller than Siedon, but reputed highly for the artisanal ships they produced, her species were a collective breed and the instincts that made them hive-spinners in their ancient days made them uniquely suited for producing an aesthetic effect that was pleasing to the eye. They built no two ships alike, as they were more a product of cultural art than a means to an end.

The massively parallel production of Siedon was the antithesis of their work, and they had never desired to increase their output with the same tools. Automating the work of construction was meditative, and instead they produced their ships for their own use and as gifts and rewards for cultural service or moral character.

That wasn’t why they G’rel’ta and her nest-commune had come to Siedon though, today they had a more important goal.

As their skiff docked with the Crimson Star facility, a figure that was scarcely more human than she approached and made the Sign of Welcome. The figure hovered, its upper part humanoid and slender to the point of waspishness, its head lenticular and horizontal with mandibles and sensory cilia, and huge compound eyes of black lensglass against its bronzed form. From its shoulders robes of white with blue trim hung, metallic fabrics spun with equations in the ancient languages of the ancestral universe and in the sine script of Great Civilization Formal Writing. From her waist down, a trio of limbs were tucked in on each side, and an abdominal fabricator array like a canoptek spyder’s. Her own technological heritage was more prevalent in the scores of mechadendrites and hundreds of mechatendrils that sprouted from anchor points on her back.

‘Greetings, Archmagos Ultima Katisha Malefinse of the Order of Tech-Priests,’ she said, speaking in the frictive-obstruant spoken form of that same language that best suited her vocalizer parts (which were separate from her masticatory mouthparts).

‘Greetings, Matriarch Natal of Val’ret’ka, welcome to Siedon,’ the Archmagos said. ‘I allow myself to experience satisfaction and pleasure in your swift response to our request.

‘We rarely decline an opportunity to toil,’ G’rel’ta said, ‘although I will confess we rarely produce export warships.’

Their party moved languidly to a wide conveyor terminal, G’rel’ta scuttling and Katisha floating. ‘We would not expect you to participate beyond prototyping and iteration,’ she said, ‘my other instances and I have been working for some time as a personal project, along with the shipmind of the State Barge Eleemosynary’s Reward. Of course as I do not hold an official,’ one of four primary human arms raised with a gesture that G’rel’ta did not recognize, but all forms of the Great Civilization’s Common, from the Necrontyr used by the majority of humanoids to this insectile form, to aquan, bioluminescent and radiopathic forms, used deliberate emotional signification and a common grammar, to facilitate immediate translation from one to another without ambiguity to the greatest fidelity that species-cognition differences allowed, and so she knew that it was a gesture further emphasizing her mood, ‘position with the state itself, we agreed that it would be best if I put this forward as a personal initiative.’

‘As much as you are a single person,’ G’rel’ta striated a laugh along with the jesting signifiers.

There were very few poets in the Great Civilization’s interchangeable constructed languages, though there were forms of poetry one could use. Still, the point worked, for they passed another Katisha after exiting the conveyor, this one far more human in appearance, but with the build of a gorilla mixed with an earthmover, the instances paid one another no attention except in the noosphere. ‘Instance 321 actually came up with the idea,’ Katisha who had greeted her said, as they reached the observation gallery.

‘Who else have you called?’ G’rel’ta said, waving a manipulator over the controls of a holographic table.

‘Gellow-mera, from Skyriver, Umbolc ita Atun, Lassiter D’rae ita Nepheru, Oscott Kendal-Adoboli and Breel of Nuvata,’ she said, and G’rel’ta’s halo automatically fetched biographies of each of the naval architects who she mentioned, with a brief query as to which renowned naval architect named Lassiter D’rae ita Nepheru was being referred to. Without intervention it sent the query to Katisha’s own halo which clarified.

‘Do you think anyone will object?’ G’rel’ta said, as she looked through the armourcrys into the vast bay where transuranics were filtered from the ring’s toroidal synthesis innards into the base-structure of twelve bays separated by movable mesh partitions. G’rel’ta’s acute sight could pick out the shapes of hundreds of other Katisha instances shepherding machines working on the six prototypes she had already begun fabricated, directing tear-down testing and system fatigue analysis.

‘If no one else wants to build a Triumvirate of Yut Combined Services Fleet, well, the surplus capacity is here so I see no reason not to make one,’ she said. ‘I allow my cores to overflow: It’s not a secret, and when they see the design lineage, they’ll know just who they’re for,’ she said. ‘This is no secret. If they aren’t following the infosphere-blog I’m running, they’ll see them when I sail our proofed prototypes to Saturn and leave them there like a Gyrinx with a dead rodent.’

G’rel’ta striated another laugh. ‘Shall we start on the Supreme-Emperor IV prototype?’ G’rel’ta asked.