[ Mature ]
Strangers Beyond the Songline
Let there be more holy nights like these
Let there be more holy nights like these
"It is only fitting that a day we now commit to our memories as part of a larger history of heroes is so inextricable from myth that its very date is marked in our most comprehensive records with the label 'Mass of the Prophet.'"
-Mos Hai'ess, Supreme Lord-Ambassador of the Martial Solidarity
Elsewise in the Void
“You know—”
—dashed were his thoughts and spilled was his drink to a laugh, “For someone who frightens so easily, I don’t think they should have you on watch.”
And far faster than the light from the nearest star could reach them, they were in each other’s arms, and all he could think was—
“Sir, they’re practically screaming at us!”
“We got heat s—Sir we got an object on track to our approach vecto—Fuck! Station rec’s evade!”
And the entire ship lurched, and so too, the Captain felt, did the organs beneath his bones as the shipnet had processed the situation and Sensors’ recommendation with dangerously correct analysis and response.
But nothing else happened. They missed.
The Captain dared a sigh cut by Weapons, “Firing in three—!”
Boomed, “Hold fire, Weapons!”
Air already low as combat protocols had slowly been sucking it out died, and a new, far more personal fear washed across the room. “The fuck-Sir! Captain! We have been engaged, requesting permission to—“
“Denied.”
Sensors was out of their seat, and somewhere behind him, the Captain could feel a gun slightly shift from its resting position. If there had not been fiery pressure in the room before, as the shot had passed, there may as well have been then. “But sir!”
“Stand fucking down, Sensors!”
Retaking their seat, Sensors nodded, but Weapons was rising from theirs now, “Do we have a fucking problem, sailor?!”
The sailor felt that they did not and sat down, but plead either way, “Sir, are you fucking serious? That thing just fucking shot at us and we’re not gonna shoot back? They could be—“
“Shut the fuck up, hold fucking fire, and stand down. They would have either fired by now or we’d be fucking dead,” the Captain breathed as Weapons suddenly went a little limp in posture before shaking their hand and reorienting forward, “Navigations! Course difference from evasion!”
Navs replied with distinct tremble, “Back three—“
“Thank you!”
Quiet. Again, he thought, Run it again.
“Navs, align to object.”
“Aligned, sir,” as the ship’s interior stuttered and staggered to the Captain’s eyes—vapor thrusters doing their magic.
“Good.”
“Permission to—!”
“Granted, Weapons!”
“Sir, we are in a knife fight. And they just took a swing at us, we need to swing back n—“
“And would we fucking miss?!”
The quiet was brighter somehow, but silence no stronger than, “I don’t wanna fuck with this thing unless I fucking have to, do you fucking understand me?”
“Yes—“
“Good, now if you question another one of my orders in what you think is combat, I’ll have your limbs.”
Darker then, the quiet became but the silence weaker still, “Sir!”
“Intel? Where the fuck have you been? Any luck on a language, a code, fucking anything?”
“Uhhh no, sir, not yet, but they are fucking spamming us.”
“Wh—say again!”
“Uhh shit, like, we are getting great data. Great data, and I bet ship’ll have this cracked in none, but-b-but—Sir, look and see for yourself.”
Images flashed, audios mashed, and text slashed across his sensors through his console outputs. “Fuck me, it’s just like—“
“The fucking movies!”
“Not what I was gonna say, Sensors, but—“
“No, sir, it’s a fucking disk.”
The Captain almost cackled but his composure was too wracked by what followed next out of Sensors, “Object on approach,” hearts sinking in and around him, “Low velocity.”
“They’re coming closer,” he tried to think aloud before Weapons interrupted, “For the love of fucking—Weapons rec’s fire!”
Nothing happened, and the room erupted into chaos. Too many, far too many, things were going wrong…
…and none of them made any sense to be happening at the same time. Least of which was how They even got there.
Weapons lay bleeding on the ground by the end of the brawl over command, but it would be all for naught but a feeling as shipnet confirmed, “Object will not intersect current vector. Object is a product of life. Object is non-hostile. Object is not a threat. Conditions for fire not met.”
Logic, so it seemed, would prevail for a mere moment, “Get me the fucking chaplain!”
Being pulled away in restraints, “Is no—“ a fist shut.
Sensors, holding one arm in another, returned to their station and input through comms, “What is going on, Captain?”
“We’re all going fucking crazy, that’s what,” realizing he had not made himself a good captain let alone any friend in the aftermath of the near-mutiny, “if we don’t settle the fuck down right now and think.”
“Did anyone here sign the fuck up to fight a god? No! And that’s what this fucking thing is to us right now. It saw us before we saw it, got here from out of nowhere with,” checking Sensors’ datafeed, “Bout fuck all but a gee-wake that’d warp our navs if we tried to cross it. ‘Missed’ us. And is sending us pictures.”
“They’re desperate and alone.”
The crew laughed, but somehow, in the vast distances of time and space, two creatures, absolutely strange in their origins, feeling the same weight of the same universe for the first time, shook hands and all he could think in that darkness of deepest night was
—dashed were his thoughts and spilled was his drink to a laugh, “For someone who frightens so easily, I don’t think they should have you on watch.”
And far faster than the light from the nearest star could reach them, they were in each other’s arms, and all he could think was—
“Sir, they’re practically screaming at us!”
“We got heat s—Sir we got an object on track to our approach vecto—Fuck! Station rec’s evade!”
And the entire ship lurched, and so too, the Captain felt, did the organs beneath his bones as the shipnet had processed the situation and Sensors’ recommendation with dangerously correct analysis and response.
But nothing else happened. They missed.
The Captain dared a sigh cut by Weapons, “Firing in three—!”
Boomed, “Hold fire, Weapons!”
Air already low as combat protocols had slowly been sucking it out died, and a new, far more personal fear washed across the room. “The fuck-Sir! Captain! We have been engaged, requesting permission to—“
“Denied.”
Sensors was out of their seat, and somewhere behind him, the Captain could feel a gun slightly shift from its resting position. If there had not been fiery pressure in the room before, as the shot had passed, there may as well have been then. “But sir!”
“Stand fucking down, Sensors!”
Retaking their seat, Sensors nodded, but Weapons was rising from theirs now, “Do we have a fucking problem, sailor?!”
The sailor felt that they did not and sat down, but plead either way, “Sir, are you fucking serious? That thing just fucking shot at us and we’re not gonna shoot back? They could be—“
“Shut the fuck up, hold fucking fire, and stand down. They would have either fired by now or we’d be fucking dead,” the Captain breathed as Weapons suddenly went a little limp in posture before shaking their hand and reorienting forward, “Navigations! Course difference from evasion!”
Navs replied with distinct tremble, “Back three—“
“Thank you!”
Quiet. Again, he thought, Run it again.
“Navs, align to object.”
“Aligned, sir,” as the ship’s interior stuttered and staggered to the Captain’s eyes—vapor thrusters doing their magic.
“Good.”
“Permission to—!”
“Granted, Weapons!”
“Sir, we are in a knife fight. And they just took a swing at us, we need to swing back n—“
“And would we fucking miss?!”
The quiet was brighter somehow, but silence no stronger than, “I don’t wanna fuck with this thing unless I fucking have to, do you fucking understand me?”
“Yes—“
“Good, now if you question another one of my orders in what you think is combat, I’ll have your limbs.”
Darker then, the quiet became but the silence weaker still, “Sir!”
“Intel? Where the fuck have you been? Any luck on a language, a code, fucking anything?”
“Uhhh no, sir, not yet, but they are fucking spamming us.”
“Wh—say again!”
“Uhh shit, like, we are getting great data. Great data, and I bet ship’ll have this cracked in none, but-b-but—Sir, look and see for yourself.”
Images flashed, audios mashed, and text slashed across his sensors through his console outputs. “Fuck me, it’s just like—“
“The fucking movies!”
“Not what I was gonna say, Sensors, but—“
“No, sir, it’s a fucking disk.”
The Captain almost cackled but his composure was too wracked by what followed next out of Sensors, “Object on approach,” hearts sinking in and around him, “Low velocity.”
“They’re coming closer,” he tried to think aloud before Weapons interrupted, “For the love of fucking—Weapons rec’s fire!”
Nothing happened, and the room erupted into chaos. Too many, far too many, things were going wrong…
…and none of them made any sense to be happening at the same time. Least of which was how They even got there.
Weapons lay bleeding on the ground by the end of the brawl over command, but it would be all for naught but a feeling as shipnet confirmed, “Object will not intersect current vector. Object is a product of life. Object is non-hostile. Object is not a threat. Conditions for fire not met.”
Logic, so it seemed, would prevail for a mere moment, “Get me the fucking chaplain!”
Being pulled away in restraints, “Is no—“ a fist shut.
Sensors, holding one arm in another, returned to their station and input through comms, “What is going on, Captain?”
“We’re all going fucking crazy, that’s what,” realizing he had not made himself a good captain let alone any friend in the aftermath of the near-mutiny, “if we don’t settle the fuck down right now and think.”
“Did anyone here sign the fuck up to fight a god? No! And that’s what this fucking thing is to us right now. It saw us before we saw it, got here from out of nowhere with,” checking Sensors’ datafeed, “Bout fuck all but a gee-wake that’d warp our navs if we tried to cross it. ‘Missed’ us. And is sending us pictures.”
“They’re desperate and alone.”
The crew laughed, but somehow, in the vast distances of time and space, two creatures, absolutely strange in their origins, feeling the same weight of the same universe for the first time, shook hands and all he could think in that darkness of deepest night was